Why is the UK sheltering Israel's genocide-inciting ambassador?
https://x.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1930660190770114856
Why is the UK sheltering Israel's genocide-inciting ambassador?
Israel's ambassador Tzipi Hotovely has been undermining British foreign policy towards Israel and Palestine ever since she was appointed to the post five years ago. At that time, there was a campaign by British Jews to stop her bringing her extremist agenda to the UK.
Notably, Britain operates a draconian Prevent programme ostensibly aimed at stopping the radicalisation of minority communities. In practice, it has focused on targeting – and stigmatising – British Muslims, presenting them as especially susceptible to extremism and supportive of terrorism.
However, Hotovely illustrates the way the very same British establishment so obsessed with curbing Muslim extremism not only tolerates dangerous ideological influences on British Jews but actively cooperates with those influences.
Further, those radicalised by Hotovely’s incitement against Palestinians are largely insulated from criticism. Anyone trying to object to her brazen racism – or its impact on attitudes among British Jews – faces being smeared as an antisemite.
In late 2021 pro-Palestinian solidarity activists protested her racist statements outside the London School of Economics as Hotovely gave a lecture there. As she emerged to a waiting car, demonstrators shouted: “Shame on you!” and “Free Palestine!”
The then ruling Conservative government and the opposition Labour party rushed to her defence, denouncing the protest as antisemitic – and, in a moment of peak cognitive dissonance, as an attack on free speech.
Lisa Nandy, then shadow foreign secretary and now the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, called Hotovely’s treatment “appalling”. While Nick Thomas-Symonds, then shadow home secretary and now head of the cabinet office, even more egregiously smeared the protesters. “Antisemitism has no place in our society,” he said.
The British establishment has further rallied to her defence since she became Israel’s spokesperson in the UK for the genocide in Gaza.
In March 2024 the Metropolitan police imposed a wide exclusion zone around the area in London in which she lives to stop a group of anti-zionist Jews holding protests outside her home.
The voices calling for her expulsion have grown. In January, the former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell called for Israel’s complete isolation, and Hotovely’s removal.
He said: “We have an Israeli ambassador who’s an advocate of Greater Israel, refuses to recognize the Palestinian state, defies all the UN resolutions that have been passed about how we can secure that peace, and she still remains in this country. Why aren’t we expelling the Israeli ambassador?”
Zarah Sultana, an MP sitting as an independent after she was expelled from the Labour party by Starmer for opposing his austerity cuts, has also called for Hotovely’s expulsion, pointing to her “genocidal rhetoric”.
After a petition against Hotovely reached 100,000 signatures, it qualified for a debate in parliament. No such debate has happened. Nor is it likely to.
The truth is, whatever rhetoric the Starmer government deploys to soothe public anger, the British establishment considers its alliance with Israel – and Israel’s patron in Washington – as far more important than the lives of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
This is an exact from my latest article. You can read the rest here: declassifieduk.org/why-is-the-uk-
posted by Satish Sharma at
02:45
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