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Published in Standpoint Magazine, March 2018
When Mrs Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, Foreign Office concerns over her position on Israel were summed up by Michael Tait of the British embassy in Amman: “It is presumably in the national interest to do what we can to counter Arab fears and suspicions that the leader of HM opposition is already a prisoner of the Zionists.” In 1979, Thatcher resisted the initiative of her Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, to support Palestinian self-determination and closer ties to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. During a visit to Kuwait in 1981, Thatcher told her hosts that she would not authorise ministerial meetings with the PLO because of its involvement in terrorism. She added that the PLO’s “real objective is to drive Israel into the sea and wipe it off the face of the globe”. MORE...
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Published in the special Balfour 100 edition of Fathom Journal, Summer 2017
The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George believed that Chaim Weizmann would be become ‘the one name that will be remembered in Jewish history a thousand years from now’. Hyperbole, for sure, but Azriel Bermant’s researches in the Guardian Archive at the University of Manchester reveal that he was indeed central to the discussions that led to the Balfour Declaration. The 100th anniversary is an opportune moment to revisit the role played by Chaim Weizmann, Zionist statesman par excellence, in the decision by the British government to issue the Balfour Declaration in November 1917. In the decades following the Declaration, Weizmann certainly revelled in the adulation of Britain’s political and intellectual giants, including many leading progressives and liberals. David Lloyd George believed that his would become ‘the one name that will be remembered in Jewish history a thousand years from now’. Winston Churchill described him as the ‘ablest and wisest leader of the cause of Zionism’ (Rose, 1986; 246). Richard Crossman, the Labour Member of Parliament and minister in the first government of Harold Wilson, believed that through the course of the twentieth century, ‘the histories of Great Britain and of the Jewish people have been tragically yet providentially intertwined – and the man chiefly responsible for this was Chaim Weizmann’ (Crossman, 1960; 13)... MORE Opinion // Days Before UK Elections, Has May or Corbyn Got the Greater Credibility Gap on Terror?29/5/2017 Published in Ha'aretz on May 29, 2017
In IRA and Hezbollah friendly-Corbyn, the Conservatives should have had an easy target on anti-terror policy. But they have skeletons of their own. According to the latest opinion polls, and with less than ten days to go until the general election, Britain’s prime minister Theresa May has seen a... MORE Published in The JC, January 6, 2017 Theresa May raised more than a few eyebrows recently when she attacked US Secretary of State John Kerry for focusing on settlements and underplaying the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his controversial address on December 28, following the UN Security Council resolution.
Understandably, the US State Department reacted with incredulity to Mrs May’s criticisms: Britain itself has been consistent in its condemnations of Israel’s settlement expansion. Not only did Britain vote for UN Security Council resolution 2334; it also played a key role in crafting the resolution and ensuring that it passed. Mr Kerry strongly condemned terrorism and incitement against Israel and said that settlements were not “the whole or even the primary cause of the conflict” which only adds to the incomprehension in Washington. MORE By Steven Erlanger, Published in The New York Times, 30 December 2016 LONDON — Even the so-called special relationship is subject to limits, it seems. With a Republican administration under Donald J. Trump only weeks away, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain scolded Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday night for his speech criticizing Israel — a public jab that would have been highly unlikely any other time during the Obama administration. In a statement that echoed Mr. Trump’s fierce criticism of the Obama administration, Mrs. May chided Mr. Kerry for, among other things, describing the Israeli government as the “most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements.” READ MORE "In an opinion piece in The Guardian newspaper, Azriel Bermant, a lecturer in international relations at Tel Aviv University, suggested that, by criticizing Mr. Kerry and currying favor with both Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu, Mrs. May may be hoping to, as Mr. Darroch suggested, persuade Mr. Trump to act more moderately in the Middle East and support the two-state solution that Mr. Kerry was defending. By Azriel Bermant, Published in The Guardian on Friday 30 December 2016 What was Theresa May thinking in attacking the US secretary of state John Kerry’s address on the need for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Her spokesman said on Thursday: “We do not ... believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this case the construction of settlements, when clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so deeply complex.”
This is extraordinary. Why would May attack Kerry for suggesting that settlements were the main obstacle to peace? Did she read his speech? In it, he stated that “settlements are not the whole or even the primary cause of this conflict” and strongly condemned terrorism and incitement against Israel. More extraordinary still, why would the British prime minister criticise Kerry when her own government played a leading role in the passing of UN security council resolution 2334 which condemned Israel over its settlement expansion? Kerry ordered the United States to abstain while May’s government voted in favour... READ MORE |
Dr Azriel BermantForeign Policy and International Security Analyst, Historian, Lecturer, Author Categories
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