No, Prime Minister, It’s Not a “Prison Camp”
Did British Prime Minister David Cameron have some special reason for pandering to Ankara? Or is he simply clueless on Islamist terrorism and the Middle East?
Speaking Tuesday in the Turkish capital, Cameron called Gaza a “prison camp.”
No, Prime Minister. Gaza is not a prison camp. It is a terrorist camp.
Gaza is controlled by Hamas, an Iranian-backed terrorist group, whose leaders seized all power in the enclave in a bloody coup in 2007 – slaughtering Palestinian rivals. Hamas is dedicated in its charter to obliterating the sovereign state of Israel, hostile generally to the values of free societies, and dedicated on its current turf in Gaza to imposing strict Islamic law. Hamas has launched thousands of rockets into neighboring Israel. The reason for the Israeli blockade is to keep weapons out of Gaza — from which Israel withdrew entirely in 2005, trusting that the “international community” would help ensure a future there of peaceful coexistence. Instead, what’s emerged is a terrorist enclave, its staple needs sustained by enormous handouts from the U.S. and European Union, while Hamas spends resources on propaganda and weapons.
The real answer for Gaza is an end to Hamas, and an end to Iran’s tyrannical regime and its toxic influence both in the Middle East and beyond — extending, apparently, to such places as London. Whatever constituency Cameron is playing to, he’s kidding himself if he fails to understand that with utterances such as this latest in Turkey, he is giving a nod to Islamist terrorism. That is all too likely to come home to roost.
OBL mourns the loss of the Ottoman Empire, which lasted for centuries, but bit the dust thanks to Attaturk.
It looks like Cameron pines for the day of Rule Brittania, because he does not accept the fact that Eden’s dithering of the Suez Crisis was the final nail in the coffin of the British Empire.
Which is why the british are among the last to sign onto trusteeships for those parts of Asia, Africa & South America, which have not seen the Magna Carta develop deep enough roots.
Claudia…. come on…. we all know on both sides of the Atlantic why Cameron is pandering to Ankara. It’s because he wants to be buddies with BHO’B. Same reason he said what he did about Gaza being a prison camp.
By all means lambast the trembling Cameron, but do it to Obama, too. We’ll take Cameron in hand at our end, here in the UK. You should understand this, very clearly. Most Brits ( quite a few of whom are Jews) are not as bothered about Cameron’s words on Gaza as much as they’re alarmed about his public support for Turkey entering the European Union. The last thing Europe needs is Turkey in the EU, leaving the door open for other Islamic countries to do the same. Their thousands of fanatical Jihadis (they make Hamas look like boy scouts, incidentally) are waiting in the wings in places like Bosnia for the go ahead to blow up infidels, thanks to mass immigration, open borders and multiculturalism.
David W. Lincoln – I wouldn’t trust Cameron or his Coalition with an old ladies’ tea party, never mind the British Empire!
Here is something that was thought of on the west side of the pond: a permanent council comprised of deputy foreign ministers of the Commonwealth countries, and that would define foreign policy for the Commonwealth.
The days of London having a veto over the foreign affairs, as well as military matters, and increasingly with a New Pound Sterling – those days ended with Eden’s departure from Downing Street at the end of the Suez Crisis.
I am positive that DLG, if he wanted to, would have been
the main player, with the influence of all the rest of the Commonwealth nations, in total, being less than what
he would have enjoyed.
For, he favoured a more efficiently run empire, hence his opposition to the Boer War. Let London run the foreign policy and military policy of all the Empire, and everything else would be run locally.
I am asking “What If?”, because the past impacts on the present.
It is a prison camp. Wake up Rosett! Stop being so emotional and think rationally for a second. PM Cameron is spot on!
Well, after the Libya-Lockerbie deal, Cameron wants to expand British corruption by embracing Turkey.
Anthony,
Wake up yourself. As is so well known – to any but the totally clueless – as to be tiresome to recount, after years of terrorism and unrest inside territories Israel controlled and administered as a result of winning wars of aggression and extermination waged against them, Israel decided to give up their control inside the Gaza territory and let its Arab inhabitants live as Judenfrei as they had long desired. This policy, driven by a combination of human decency, battle fatigue and hope for some moral credit from the “international community” has, of course, backfired on all accounts.
Gaza, now controlled by an “entity” (irony intended) brazenly and openly dedicated to the elimination of Israel and extermination of its Jews, all tied to the greater Islamic Jihadi agenda of Islamic domination of the planet (check it out, if you have the will to actually research it), paints itself as a poor victim while constantly doing its best to bombard Israel with anything that resembles a destructive missile. The embargo and other measures aimed at isolating Gaza are obvioiusly not to make of it a prison in any sense, but to try to keep it from obtaining any further weapons with which it can further its eliminationist Jihadi agenda.
Thought experiment for you. I assume from your language (“…spot on!”) that you are British, or at least familiar with England. Let’s suppose that British Muslims, espousing the destruction of all of the English state and all of its laws and customs, plus the death of any people living there except fellow Muslims, after years of terrorism, killing and propaganda aimed at driving all other Englishman from the island, were finally allowed to completely take over an English city and force all non-Muslims to move out – say, for instance, Manchester. After establishing the Muslim city state, Manchester receives the sympathy of the entire “international community” which then proceed to bully England into increasing it aid and employment opportunities to Manchester, criticising the rest of England for its horrible treatment of the Manchester Muslims and proceeds to give Manchester billions of dollars in aid. Then, let’s say the Manchester Muslims use that money to maintain their society without otherwise concerning themselves with ordinary matters of a self-sustaining state, but use all their resources beyond sustenance to build an offensive military capabilitiy with which to at first harry and with which they hope eventually to boldly attack and conquer the rest of England. To that effect, they announce that all English non Muslims are to be considered vulnerable combatants and are infidels unworthy of truly human status. They then begin stockpiling and building missiles, importing them plus parts and other weapons from the surrounding countries of an infidel-hostile Europe that is now made of Muslim dominated states with over a billion Muslim citizens, most of whom are symapathetic to a worldwide Jihad, after they find that ground attacks by commandos, car bombs, suicide bombs, sniping and unceasing international propaganda seem not to chase the English from their island. Then, they start firing their missiles, thousands and thousands, indiscriminantly hitting whatever they could. Do you think that the rest of England would stand by and do nothing? Do you think they’d do as Israel has done and let the mini-state stand at all? Do you think they’d do as Israel has done and, unceasingly, give aid, medical treatment and all humanitarian supplies to Manchester at their own expense? Do you think that they’d do as Israel has done and let almost all foreign shipments destined for Manchester go through with nothing more than an inspection to remove items necessary for building weapons or defenses aginst English weapons? If you are anything but clinically delusional, you already know the answers to these questions. Anti-Semitism, Arab oil wealth and fear of global Islamic Jihad has created a great and evil propaganda machine which has demonized Israel for being more humane and accomnodating to its enemies – who have sworn an oath to Israel’s destruction and the elimination of its Jews – than any other country in the world. Would only that those who criticise Israel for creating a “prison camp” in Gaza live for one moment in Israeli shoes.
The “prison camp” meme is nonsense and counter-factual propaganda typical of the effort to stigmatize Israel.
dafrank makes a silly analogy….
“Let’s suppose that British Muslims, espousing the destruction of all of the English state and all of its laws and customs, plus the death of any people living there except fellow Muslims, after years of terrorism, killing and propaganda aimed at driving all other Englishman from the island, were finally allowed to completely take over an English city and force all non-Muslims to move out – say, for instance, Manchester.”
…it’s like comparing apples and oranges.
British Muslims are relatively recent arrivals to the British Isles. Palestinians have a history in the occupied territories. It’s THEIR home! If Israel was interested in peace, they’d return to their mandated borders. Suicide bombing is wrong, but if someone drove me out of my home, to be sure I’d direct some violence in their direction.
David Walters,
I fail to see how what you have written exposes my comments as “silly.” Just because one, or even seven, generations of Gazans lived in the same place as they do now, or if they moved there in 1994, it makes absolutely no difference to my analogy. It is what they have been doing for the last 40 years or so, especially the last 5 or 10, that was the focus of my comments. It is about their behavior, not their residential history. So, if a Muslim in England did as I suggested in my analogy, but had only moved to England in 1994, would it have mattered one small bit? Obviously not. And if he had lived there since 1944 or 1804, would it have mattered? Not at all. It is really about the behavior of Gazans, under the leadership of the openly eliminationist Hamas, and what any sane government charged with the protection of its citizens would do in response to it. If Gazans merely wanted a state of their own, a Palestinian state, they would clearly not be doing what they are, and would have had it long ago. If you can’t yet “get it,” I’ll spell it out for you; however the conflict between the Jews of Israel and anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli Palestinians started, whatever the rational for the Gazans once was, and as shocking as it may seem to you in your parlor, it now only resembles a one-sided crusade, a Jihadi crusade, to wipe the Jews from the face of the Middle East. Anything less does not resemble their behavior at all. And, Israel is just now doing her best to remain humane, but survive nonetheless.
Furthermore, are you aware that the vast majority of the people now living in the Palestinian territories are recently descended from the same people, families and tribes who now refer to themselves as Jordanians, as well as those found in all the other Arab states surrounding Israel, and who had never had any kind of “Palestinian” identity until after the 1960′s, when encouraged by the Arab nation states and the Soviet Union to couch their desire for Israel’s destruction in terms of a new and never-before-heard-of nationalist movement, the most popular and successful form of revolutionary agitation at the time? Before there was Palestinian nationalism, there were only people who, if they thought of themselves as having any identity at all beyond their family or tribe, thought of themselves as part of the greater Arab Muslim Ummah, not separate from Syrians or Egyptians or Iraqis or Jordanians, but nonetheless anxious, just as now, to eliminate, despite the continuous presence of Jews in the area since records have been kept, as much of the Jewish presence that they could in what is now the State of Israel.
And, in the precise areas now occupied by Arabs now calling themselves Palestinians, a huge number of their forebears, perhaps half or more, moved there from other nearby Arab states and territories only in the late interwar and immediate post WWII years, due to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the relative prosperity of the nearby British Mandate where Jews, both native to the land and more recent early European Zionists, along with Christians and their accommodating Arab neighbors, had long been developing a much more modern and attractive economy. So, does residence since 1936 trump all other considerations, even the readily and proudly admitted attempt to exterminate a whole nation and its Jewish citizens? Well, then what about residence since 1947(Israel). What about international law (not just later UN proposals sponsored by the third world dictators and the Islamic coalition)and what it says about territories acquired and held by a nation as a consequence of defending itself from an attempted war of annihilation, in the event of the aggressor/loser refusing to agree to an actual treaty of peace, rather than a temporary cease fire? Please read a little about these matters before concluding that the latest story on PBS or in the Guardian is remotely relevant to the realities on the ground.
My mother was English (married an American WWII vet) and retained her citizenship even after emigrating to the U.S. and our family frequently vacationed in “Old Blighty.” As a result I have always taken a keen interest in British politics, history and social issues.
So I just have to get this off of my chest. Has there ever been a sadder or more pathetic group of politicans, whether Conservative, Labour, Social Democrat, Liberal or whatever, than that being produced in England today? I don’t believe that Cameron or Brown or even Tony Blair could organize a church rummage sale let alone manage the affairs of a nation. Harold MacMillian was a wishy-washy opportunist and Harold Wilson was probably a closet Red but these two guys look like William the Conqueror next to Cameron and the current lot. Cameron looks like the kind “conciliatory” politician that invariably equates with “weasly bootlicker.” Everyone in his government should be forced to read Andrew Robert’s magisterial biography of Lord Salisbury, “Victorian Titan.” That might give them a few pointers on how a statesman is supposed to act.
David Cameron is certainly a neophyte in international affairs. But that is too charitable a characterization. For he represents Perfidious Albion in its glory days of sucking up to the Arabs to quash the nascent state of Israel. Oh Margaret Thatcher! Can your legacy not be a sine qua non for your succeeeding whippersnapper conservatives?
No there has not been a more pitiful group of politicions the the current “British Crop.
In some respects Gaza is like a prison. There is a gang that controls the general population with violence. Contraband, including weaponry, is smuggled into Gaza. The ruling gang deals harshly with those who cooperate with “the man”. The population seems unwilling or unable to conform to societal norms of behavior.
In other respects, Gaza is not like a prison. There is good coastline and a mild Meditteranean climate. There are hundreds of millions of co-ethnics and co-religionists living in the region around them with whom trade and development could be possible and beneficial. The residents of Gaza simply must renounce their will and intent to destroy their neighbor Israel and its inhabitants. They can offer to negotiate a peace settlement with Israel. They can thus free themselves of their own self imposed imprisonment, which is not obligatory, but psychological and self developed and imposed.
IF Gaza is a Prison, It is a Prison to which the inhabitants Hold The KEY. It has been made “Judenrein” by the policies of the ISRAELI Government. Means to make a living were left when Israel evacuated, paid for by Jewish Americans and BILL GATES. Those installations were stripped of material in a scene reminiscent of an episode of the Sopranos where copper pipe was stripped out of abandoned housing in Newark, NJ. Gaza only needs to do the following to have open frontiers with Israel AND Egypt. Stop supporting persons and organizations seeking to undermine the Governments of BOTH states, and in the case of Israel, to eliminate it. Problem Solved! -S-
Kudos to “dafrank” for pointing out so powerfully and succinctly the sheer outrageousness & speciousness of PM David Cameron’s statement-SPOT ON! Isn’t it ironic that the British, who are partly responsible for the region’s current woes because of their activities when they occupied the area under the Mandate, are now sanctimoniously condemning Israel in a situation where it is acting much more humanely than any other country would in the same situation? Where I come from, that’s called Chutzpah! Please correct me if I’m wrong but when the British ruled over Israel under the Mandate, didn’t they import Muslims from as far away as Serbia & Bosnia in order to increase artificially the local Muslim population of Israel, thereby diluting the Jewish population in order to keep the local Arab muftis & sheiks happy? If anyone has any details about this, please post it. Thanks.