British Citizens vs an IDF Guard

The Times reported yesterday that the British Government is blocking a deal for Paul and Rachel Chandler’s release.

The British couple were kidnapped by Somalian pirates in the Indian Ocean. Paul and Rachel may be facing a doomed fate as the British Government is blocking a deal for their release.

A company that claimed to have had a deal for the release of Paul and Rachel Chandler said it was scuppered by the British Government’s refusal to negotiate with hostage-takers and said today that it demanded to be allowed to arrange their release.

In the centre of the British Government’s refusal to interfere in this saga we meet none other than David Miliband the Foreign Secretary

The Guardian reported that Miliband insisted that “the government would not get involved in any ransom payments to secure the Chandlers’ release”.

Miliband said he could not stop private individuals from pursuing a ransom deal, but it was not in Britain’s interests to make concessions to hostage-takers.

On the face of it Miliband’s stand can be easily understood. The foreign secretary could argue, for instance, that negotiating with pirates or other outlaws may expose more Brits to different security risks. Yet, it is very perplexing to find out that as much as Miliband is reluctant to interfere with the release of the abducted British couple, he rushed to voice his support in favour of the release of the IDF guard Gilad Shalit. In spite of the fact that Shalit is not a British subject and was taken prisoner in a military action while serving as a guard in the biggest concentration camp known to man namely Gaza, Miliband was rather vocal in demanding his ‘immediate’ release.

One would expect the Foreign Secretary to care primarily about British citizens rather than foreign soldiers who maintain an illegal occupation and the starvation of millions.

Here is the transcription of Miliband’s emotional plea to Hamas. It is taken from a British official governmental site.

Today is the third anniversary of the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. Both British Ministers and the British Ambassador in Israel have had repeated contact with Gilad’s family and emphasized our support for Gilad’s immediate release. Last September, the Ambassador helped to deliver over 2,000 Jewish New Year cards for Gilad to the ICRC as part of a campaign organized by the UK Jewish community. I repeat the UK’s call to Hamas for his immediate, unconditional, and safe release. We share the Shalit family’s dismay at Hamas’s refusal to allow the ICRC access to Gilad. (British Foreign Secretary David Miliband)

It is perplexing to find out that Miliband showed far more ‘restraint’ in his support of his troubled fellow British citizens: Paul and Rachel Chandler. Bearing in mind that Miliband is listed as an Israeli Hasbara (propaganda) author on an official Israeli website, one way to explain it all may have something to do with the teaching of Rabbi Akiva.

According to the Jewish Magazine, Rabbi Akiva teaches us that ‘Love your fellow Jew as you love yourself’ is the great general commandment of the Torah. According to the magazine, Akiva is basing it on the verse, “and you shall love your fellow Jew, for I am the Lord, your G-d.” The command to love your fellow Jew is one of the basic mitzvas of the Torah. ((This very Judeo-centric interpretation of Rabbi Akiva’s insight as a tribal bond is rather common within Jewish Rabbinical circles. However, it is crucial to mention that the Hebrew translation of Akiva’s insight is universal in its spirit. It could be translated as ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. As many scholars before have said, though Judaism could also be interpreted as a universal insight, in reality, the shift into a universal ethos was led primarily by Christianity which aimed to transcend itself beyond the tribal.)) So much so, that Rabbi Akiva made this the pivotal point upon which all of the Torah is based. And yet with all due respect to the Torah, Rabbi Akiva and other Rabbis, Brits may expect their foreign minister to care for the British Chandlers at least as much as he cares for an IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

Gilad Atzmon, now living in London, was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He is the author of The Wandering Who and Being in Time and is one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. He can be reached via his website. Read other articles by Gilad, or visit Gilad's website.

7 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. bozh said on February 2nd, 2010 at 10:46am #

    The mad priest doesn’t know that most or ?all diaspora ‘jews’ are mere cultists and non-hebraic.
    Thus, torahic mad scribbler cldn’t have had in mind the present multi-ethnicity with the cult.
    Neither nature nor god[s] divide people into ‘good’ and ‘bad’; priests do that. nature or gods love all they make! But priests do not; unless, one bows dwn to their vitriolic faces. tnx

  2. kalidas said on February 2nd, 2010 at 10:51am #

    Case number (fill in the blank) of so-called citizens of a nation which they really are not citizens of at all. At least not that you’d notice, come time to notice.

    Not shocking, not even surprising in the least.
    Option to either yawn or curse.
    I like to curse.

  3. Mulga Mumblebrain said on February 3rd, 2010 at 1:24am #

    One is reminded of that other Israel First double agent at the heart of the UK Foreign Ministry, Ivan Lewis, who stated that he was ‘sickened’ by the execution in China of a British drug runner. On the other hand when Israel was joyfully killing Gazan children,as the ‘Holy Torah’ enjoins them to do, Lewis was vocal in his support. How long the UK public tolerates being an appendage of a state whose religious ideology sees them,their children,their parents and their friends (so long as they are non-Jews)as closer to animals than to Jews, is an interesting thought. As for Shalit, Milipede, with typical Judaic racism I would say, simply does not mention the thousands of Palestinians illegally imprisoned by Israel. As we know these prisoners are routinely tortured or blackmailed into serving Israel as traitors to their people. For good,observant Jews, and dedicated Zionists like Milipede,these are simply ‘two-legged animals’ while only Jews, even concentration camp guards like Shalit, are fully human. Moreover Milipede is probably, I would say, prepared to see these British die, and their deaths used as propaganda tools in the Zionist controlled orgy of Islamophobia sweeping the West. Behind every anti-Islamic slur it doesn’t take much research to find a Zionist Jew pulling the strings, or one of their goy employees.

  4. mary said on February 4th, 2010 at 6:27am #

    You speak for me Mulga.

    I was going to put on a reply from Milipede’s and Lewis’s FCO in answer to our appeals not to alter our laws vis-a-vis Universal Jurisdiction but this has just come to hand. It is published in the article in the Morning Star today.

    Britain

    Ex-MP’s pro-Israel speech condemned

    Wednesday 03 February 2010
    Paddy McGuffin

    The chief executive of a British pro-Israeli lobby group has been condemned for making inflammatory comments flouting democracy and international law at a high-profile conference in Israel.

    Lorna Fitzsimons, CEO of Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) – a group which lobbies on behalf of Israel in Britain – was addressing the Herzliya conference on the state of the Jewish nation.

    Former Labour MP Ms Fitzsimons is reported to have told the conference that “public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain. Foreign policy is an elite issue.” …

    Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said: “Lorna Fitzsimons’s reported remarks on international justice are misguided. It’s not a question of any nation being ‘supreme’ in the realm of international justice, but of all countries – including Israel – living up to international obligations on human rights and humanitarian law.

    “There are numerous credible allegations that during the Gaza conflict both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups violated international humanitarian law and caused the deaths – in Israel’s case – of hundreds of civilians…

    ~~~

    Fitzsimons is an exceedingly vocal and visible advocate for the terror state. She was one of the Bliar Babes when he was swept to power in 1997 but lost her seat in 2005.

    Her voting record speaks fo itself.

    Voting record (from PublicWhip)
    How Ms Lorna Fitzsimons voted on key issues since 2001:

    Voted a mixture of for and against introducing a smoking ban.
    Voted very strongly for introducing ID cards.
    Voted very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.
    Voted strongly for introducing student top-up fees.
    Voted very strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws.
    Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.
    Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.
    Has never voted on replacing Trident.
    Voted very strongly for the hunting ban.
    Voted moderately for equal gay rights.
    Voted against laws to stop climate change.

  5. mary said on February 4th, 2010 at 2:01pm #

    Following the article in the Morning Star this good letter asks who the unnamed Israelis were at Crawford in 2002 when Bush and Blair made their evil pact to wage illegal war on Iraq.

    http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/86421

    Questions on Israel’s role
    Thursday 04 February 2010

    The pernicious role of Israeli self-serving and dissembling diplomacy on critical issues in Middle East security is dangerous, as your report of the Britain-Israel Communications and Research Centre exposes (M Star, February 3).

    Indeed, there was one striking revelation embedded in Tony Blair’s oral evidence to the Iraq inquiry last Friday which has been widely overlooked.

    Responding to a series of questions by Baroness Prashar on Mr Blair’s now notorious one-to-one meeting with George W Bush at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, from which Blair excluded from attendance his three closest political advisers – head of government communications Alastair Campbell, chief of staff Jonathan Powell and senior foreign policy advisor Sir David Manning – Blair said, perhaps unguardedly: “I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there.

    “So that was a major part of all this. But the principal part of my conversation was really to try and say: ‘Look, in the end we have got to deal with the various different dimensions of this whole issue.'”

    In a meeting so sensitive that Blair excluded his three closest confidants either unnamed Israelis were in attendance or else they were in direct contemporaneous communication with two would-be war leaders.

    Who were these Israelis? What role did they play in the meeting? And why did none of the Chilcot panel ask any follow-up questions after Blair made this admission of their involvement in this key meeting that Blair’s own ambassador to Washington at the time told Chilcot is where Blair and Bush signed a pact to depose Saddam?

    If Blair is to be recalled by Chilcot to clarify conflicting evidence, as is reported, he should surely be pressed to explain what role these mysterious Israelis played in the Crawford confab.

    We know according to recent reports that senior Israeli politicians are currently lobbying furiously for the international community to face down Iran over its atomic aspirations. Did Tel Aviv indulge in similar pressure when Saddam’s Iraq was perceived as the regional nuclear threat eight years ago?

    Dr David Lowry
    Stoneleigh

  6. Mulga Mumblebrain said on February 5th, 2010 at 1:53am #

    mary, the odious Fitzsimmons creature lets the cat out of the bag with her allusion to Jews being ‘supreme’. An unfortunate slip of the tongue because it betrays the simple truth that the Jews, or, more precisely, the religiously fundamentalist element behind Zionism and the Israeli state apparatus, truly believe that they are supreme on this planet, nay, in the Universe. Fitzsimmons was published in The Independent yesterday, lying with arrogant gusto,such a Zionist trademark as to be tautologous. The Independent seems to have a daily spot in its snippets from other newspapers for The Jerusalem Post, in my opinion the Die Sturmer of Zionist arrogance. Needless to say each little pearl of wisdom is delivered with that lip-curling belligerence and contempt for the truth and the rest of humanity that is the true voice of the Israeli Right. All that is missing is that loathsome reptilian drawl that the Zionist Right affects so well.
    I guess it would be facile to note that Blair’s little admission of the presence of his and Bush’s Zionist masters at Crawford was not pursued because the belligerent Zionists on the Chilcot panel, Freedman and Gilbert to the fore (but the others would be employees or sympathisers at the very least)would know that this was a slip of the tongue that must be whitewashed from Zionist approved history. Blair has probably been counselled over his ‘lose lips’.Needless to say the other effluent traps of the Western media sewer all pretended not to hear what Blair had said.
    Speaking of the Jerusalem Post,in my opinion one of its more insane hatemongers is an Australian Jew, Isi Liebler, who with his brother Mark, used to be particularly bellicose and aggressive propagandists for Israel. Isi decamped to Israel some years ago, God having ordered him to do so, I imagine, and one occasionally sees his pieces, spewing venom and bile over Goldstone for example as a traitor to the Chosen Ones,or arguing for those brave and principled Israelis who agitate against Israel’s multitudinous crimes to be ‘dealt with’ as traitors. However, I note with dismay, but no surprise whatsoever, that Liebler has been boasting that the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd,our Blair in every facet of his oleaginous,lugubrious character and his regime’s pursuit of precisely the same far Right policies as his predecessor, Howard, is a “Christian Zionist’. And just in case you missed that declaration of fealty to moral evil, Rudd and his dullard Foreign Minister, Smith, have let it be known that they are blocking exports to Iran of simple industrial products under the pretence that they are for use in Iran’s imaginary nuclear weapons program.
    So when the Chosen People decide to ‘obliterate’ (in their pawn Hilary Clinton’s lovely usage) Iran, our shitty little country will line up for the killing just as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Because like every other Western country, but the Anglosphere in particular,our politicians are controlled 110% by a tiny tribe who also control our media and vast stretches of business, and who are utterly determined and ruthless in achieving their ends. And yet again you must ask, how long can this go on, how many millions must die, how many countries be devastated, (and all to what end?) before these creatures are brought under control? Because, believe me, the Australian media is a maelstrom of Islamophobic ranting and febrile demands for Iran’s destruction at the moment, and in every case it is a Zionist Jew (Daniel Pipes, Daniel Finkelstein etc)or one of their devoted stooges leading the charge,precisely as before the destruction of Iraq.

  7. mary said on February 5th, 2010 at 3:33am #

    Good stuff. btw do you think Isi is a pal of Mark Regev? I believe he is one of the Aliya brigade from Oz. He is always on ZBC esp during Cast Lead. When he speaks now he displays a strange grimace. I think the strain of telling so many porkie pies has got to him.

    My brother sent this (and copied to Medialens) to the BBC this morning. We were regaled with details of Community Security Trust’s report on the increase in ‘hate crime’ against Jews. It is a registered charity, has an exemption not to disclose the names of its trustees, has income and expenditure approaching £6m and believe it or not has close ties with the Police and receives training for its staff from them.

    http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1265357813.html