While so-called ‘British nationalist’ leaders such as the crook Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (alias ‘Tommy Robinson’) shamelessly grovel to Israel, it took a 76-year-old retired diplomat to show some courage and regain some semblance of honour for our country.
Speaking to BBC News this morning, while Israel was bombing Tehran, the former British Ambassador Sir Richard Dalton said: “We would not be where we are, worrying about the prospect of further escalation, if Israel had not assassinated Hamas’s leader and prime negotiator for a ceasefire in Gaza, in a blatant act of aggression against Iran, in Tehran. That’s what provoked the Iranian attack on Israel, and now Israel’s response.”
Sir Richard, who was Ambassador to Iran from 2003 to 2006 and whose previous diplomatic roles included Consul-General in Jerusalem (in effect Ambassador to the Palestinian Authority), added:
“If necessary, we can go back to the abandonment by Britain of the principle of self-determination for colonial peoples, when it assisted the Zionist movement to gain control of two-thirds of historic Palestine through colonisation and war in 1948.
“But it doesn’t serve any purpose now to recall that, other than to remind the British government that its framing of this matter, most recently by Mr Starmer’s statement in the margins of the Commonwealth meeting, is wholly one-sided and is not contributing to his declared aim of seeking de-escalation.
“It’s time …for countries like the UK, European countries, to point out that (as President Macron did) Israel is sowing barbarism. It’s not conducting a war for civilisation, as Israel likes to claim. This is the opportunity now for a comprehensive ceasefire on all fronts, to spare further civilian suffering.
“That will still leave the underlying Palestinian question to be resolved, and it will still leave religiously inspired resistance to Israel intact. So even if Israel continues this war it is not going to achieve its objective of eliminating the Palestinian right to self-determination and a state.”
The tactic of assassination has been used for decades by Israel against political opponents, including journalists. In 2012 H&D assistant editor Peter Rushton was interviewed on Press TV as part of a tribute to their murdered correspondent Maya Naser, who had been shot dead earlier that day by a sniper on the streets of Damascus.
Peter pointed out that this was the most brutal end of a range of strategies employed by international Zionism to silence truth – whether using cash in the USA to swamp dissident views; using courts in Europe to jail dissidents; or using bullets and bombs in the Middle East.