How Labour Used The Law to Keep Criticism of Israel Secret
The full extent of government anxiety about the state of British-Israel relations can be exposed for the first time today in a secret document seen by the Guardian.
The document reveals how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial, now discredited Iraq weapons dossier. At the heart of it was nervousness at the top of government about any mention of Israel’s nuclear arsenal in an official paper accusing Iraq of flouting the UN’s authority on weapons of mass destruction.
The dossier was made public this week, but the FCO succeeded before a tribunal in having the handwritten mention of Israel kept secret.
The FCO never argued that the information would damage national security. The Guardian has seen the full text and a witness statement from a senior FCO official, who argued behind closed doors that any public mention of the candid reference would seriously damage UK/Israeli relations. In the statement, he reveals that in the past five years there have been 10 substantial incidents and 20 more minor ones relating to Israeli concerns about attitudes to their government within Whitehall.
The Information Tribunal, which adjudicates on disputes involving the Freedom of Information Act, agreed to remove the single reference to Israel when it ordered the release of the draft of the Iraqi weapons dossier written by John Williams, the FCO’s chief information officer at the time.
Along with unfavourable references to the US and Japan, the reference to Israel was written in the margin by someone commenting on the opening paragraph of the Williams draft. It was written against the claim that “no other country [apart from Iraq] has flouted the United Nations’ authority so brazenly in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction”.
In statement to the tribunal, Neil Wigan, head of the FCO’s Arab, Israel and North Africa Group, said he did not know who had referred to Israel in the margin. He went on: “I interpret this note to indicate that the person who wrote it believes that Israel has flouted the United Nations’ authority in a manner similar to that of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.”
Its disclosure would seriously damage the UK’s relations with Israel, Wigan said. The comparison with Saddam and the “implied accusation of a breach of the UN’s authority by Israel are potentially very serious”. It was “inevitable” that relations between the UK and Israel would suffer if the marginal note were allowed to enter the public domain, he added.
Wigan observed: “Unfortunately, there is perception already in Israel that parts of the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] are prejudiced against the country”. The note on the Williams draft dossier “would therefore confirm this pre-existing suspicion and would increase the damage”.
Writing in October last year, he noted that “criticism of Israel received a huge amount of media coverage”. The margin comment mentioning Israel would thus be given a “high profile”. Harming relations with Israel would undermine the FCO’s ability to prevent and resolve conflict “through a strong international system”. In addition, there was “an important national interest in relation to counter-terrorism”, Wigan said.
The FCO insisted on the removal of the reference to Israel after it lost a long battle to suppress the draft dossier, which was drawn up in early September 2002. It originally argued that the name of the author needed to be protected. It then said the contents of the draft dossier should be suppressed to protect the need for officials to give frank advice. The Williams document was finally released by the FCO last week, three years after it was first requested by Chris Ames, an independent researcher, who pursued his campaign in the New Statesman magazine.
Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, said last year that it was in the public interest that the document should be released in its entirety. The FO appealed against his ruling and took it to the Information Tribunal.
The FCO had no objections to references to other countries in the margin of the Williams document. Alongside the claim that no other country apart from Iraq had twice launched wars of aggression against neighbours, the unknown FCO official writes: “Germany?” and ” US: Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico”. Against a reference to the use of chemical weapons, the official has written: “Japan in China?”
Claims in the Williams draft are similar to those in the final government Iraqi weapons dossier published in late September 2002. The Information Tribunal ordered the release of the draft, without reference to Israel, observing that it may have played a bigger role in influencing the final dossier than previously supposed. The government tried to distance itself from the Williams draft.
© 2008 The Guardian
The foreign office only has reservations about releasing documents containing references to historical reality.
The Brits have been selling their souls to the Zionists ever since they betrayed Palestine for some Jewish Cordite to kill Germans in that was started by that Rabinical Student who shot the Archduke. They are still in a trance, Jorden.
This is nothing new. Even Collen Powell in his book “Soldiers” makes a glaring reference to the “Jews” in the administration (DOD, State Department) pushing for an attack on Iraq ASAP. Many of those responsible are either dual Israeli citizens or have strong ties to the political right in Israel. And also note that the US Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, is an Israeli-US citizen. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff is also a dual Isreali-US citizen and is now in the process of confiscating private land and building concrete security fences on the Tex-Mex border. Sound familar? The Palesinianization of Amerika is underway.
Israel, the real rogue nation. Down with Israel, the apartheid, racist, criminal state.
For those who want to see the facts, foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes has analyzed violations of UN security council resolutions. Some of his results are in this 2002 article:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021028/zunes
Israel, Turkey, (pre-invasion) Iraq and Morocco are the biggest violators. The specific violations are listed here:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=2417
All but Iraq are US allies who, as of 2002, persisted in their violations with active or passive support from the US. Israel’s violations relate mainly to its imperialist policy of taking land from Arabs and giving it to Jews.
If you enjoyed the wildly melodramatic passage of “whatfools” you may also enjoy the quite popular 20th Century ranting “Mein Kampf”.
For those who preferred the conspiracy theories of sung425, try Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
If you enjoyed the battle cry of Citizen1, you might find some equally startling insights from Statler and Waldorf, the two old fellows in the Muppet Show box seat who yell out “boo” and “yey”.
Finally, fresh1, what can I say, this one has actually cited two entire references of his own. Compelling stuff. Wow. So now it is clear, Israel and the Jews are evil, and the Arabs and Palestinians throughout the last century are collectively and each individually without blame or responsibility for the disasterous situation arising there now.
The thing is this: the way forward, the way to peace and harmony is not through vilifying one or another “side”, it is through demonstrating compassion to all involved. If one Israeli there was born into a Muslim family and vice versa, they as humans would be likely to be witlessly opposing each other in exactly the same way but on opposite sides. This as all conflicts is without wisdom. The sideline critics taking one or another side are only fanning the flames of hatred, they are as guilty as those directly involved. Only through compassion to all involved will the chance of a solution here and there be observed.
It’s so much easier to vent anger, and project your own frustrations in life against some abstracted “other”. If you are serious about making the world a better place, you need to find compassion. You know it’s true, but you need to ask yourself, is peace and harmony what you really want or do you just want to sit in the box like Statler and Waldorf and shout “Boo” and “Yey”?
The primary article to which we are responding was actually about what?
“jlocke123 February 21st, 2008 1:20 pm
The foreign office only has reservations about releasing documents containing references to historical reality.”
I DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THAT, but when the historical reality is about very incriminating truths for or against the U.K. govt, then I agree.
” sung425 February 21st, 2008 4:51 pm
This is nothing new. Even Collen Powell in his book “Soldiers” makes a glaring reference to the “Jews” in the administration (DOD, State Department) pushing for an attack on Iraq ASAP.”
TRUE, BUT TO STATE IT ONLY AS ABOVE-quoted about Powell is to mislead uninformed people. Powell is NOT innocent; he’s one of the criminal pushers for the war of aggression on Iraq, and like Harry Belafonte correctly said about both Powell and Rice over the past few years or so, they’re both slaves in their U.S. govt administration roles.
You’ll find plenty of people who read about that above topic and posted their views on Belafonte’s words refer to him as being hypocritical; only, they’re the hypocrites, not him. There’s no way to argumentatively prove their claims, while it’s very easy to prove that they are either liars and hypocrites, or damn stupid.
” believes Harry Belafonte’s remarks to Larry King of CNN were eloquent and inspirational. We also think he is right. We present a transcript of the entire interview, courtesy of CNN as a service to you if did not see it. If you did see the broadcast we feel you may want to read the text again.
CNN LARRY KING LIVE
Interview with Harry Belafonte
Aired October 15, 2002 - 21:00 ET”
http://www.blackcommentator.com/14_belafonte.html
I hadn’t read that, only found it now with a Web search, instead of looking through my MANY bookmarks; but quickly checking some of what this piece says, it definitely includes what I had read, and with respect to both Powell and Rice.
Doing a Web search using “Belafonte powell rice slaves”, minus the quotes”, provides many links, and you’ll immediately see some in the first page for articles or pages where people called Harry Belafonte a hypocrite for his [accurate] and excellently stated words. I’d be very surprised to find him being a real hypocrite, but he doesn’t come across that way [at all] in this interview with Larry King.
Continuing to quote from sung425’s post:
“Many of those responsible are either dual Israeli citizens or have strong ties to the political right in Israel. …”
YES, but I am cautious when people write in such terms, for most who do always do it superficially. They never provide more than superficial statements based on superficial observations of some but NOT all related facts; and that makes for negligent analysis.
There is strong AIPAC’er so Israeli influence in and acting upon the U.S. govt (and colleges and universities), but there’s a LOT more to determining who the real controllers of the govt are; and the U.S. is very much not on any new thematic path today than its ever been, throughout its whole history, from day 1. The whole C. Columbus part of the histories of North and South Americas is to also be included in this consideration, so PRE-day 1 is when it really all started.
Americans have absolutely no moral grounds upon which they can stand to moralise about Israel; because Americans maintain their conquest and domination, of extreme genocide, today and onward. And the same applies in South American countries, also extremely.
It’s not to say that we should not oppose what Israel’s doing to Palestinians, for we definitely must; but to moralise as if Americans are comparatively innocent is a sick, dark joke of hellish delusion.
Notice how virtually no immigrants to the U.S.A., Canada, and South American countries today care about the indigenous peoples of these continents and countries, too.
It’s a very selfish world.
Israel has been given a “free pass” for so long now, it’s just business as usual. Criticism of Israel is frankly considered unacceptable. That’s how it’s done.
Thank you mmmooo for pointing out the scapegoating going on in the far left. I agree that we need to stop projecting anger at Israel.
mmmooo writes:
the way to peace and harmony is not through vilifying —-one or another “side”, it is through demonstrating compassion to all involved. If one Israeli there was born into a Muslim family and vice versa, they as humans would be likely to be witlessly opposing each other in exactly the same way but on opposite sides. This as all conflicts is without wisdom
I agree that people are born into a world plagued with mindless divisions. But there are also larger power structures which perpetuate division and hegemony.
I feel that fresh1’s citations are good and clearly not anti-semetic. Prof. Zunes is a critic of Israel who is keenly aware of the evils of racism and anti-semitism.
Israel must not be exempt from criticism. Those of us who are critical of U.S. Imperialism in South and Central America and the Middle East must also be concerned about the way that imperialist policy manifests itself in the U.S. relationship with Israel.
On the surface it looks to me like the War Machine’s main controllers are a syndicate of Right wing Zionists and right wing American and British big boys.
Many Jews, like myself, realize this and left wing Jews do a lot of the exposing of the war racket but the majority of the people have not been abel to stop it yet.
Israel will often excuse it’s treatment of Arabs by reminding the world of Americas treatment of its natives. The only difference I see is that most America is not proud of that history while Israel doesn’t have history as an excuse …they relish what they do to the Arabs now.
Because so many Jews are in positions of power in media and government and finance, Jews in general get the blame for everything that the old Syndicate War Machine does. Look at how Bush makes sure that Jews are his appointed Stooges in the war business.
Jews have always taken on the “Chosen Ones” Identity as a Curse and Blessing if really religious. This of course puts the left wing Jews in a double bind of sticking up for their creed but unable to stop the racket that keeps us all together in the victim’s box of war.
This is how I view it in a nutshell…. and like a Nut I hope some day we can fix it so that Corporations and Governments and each of us build for peace and prosperity and sustainability, and transform the War Economy of the world to a Peace and Justice World.
I can Dream!