Britain Votes (274-12) To Recognize A Palestinian State,

Click here for an article by Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars entitled British Parliament Votes Overwhelmingly In Favor Of Recognizing Palestine State, 247-12.

According to Labour member Andy Slaughter, Israel has engaged in a new “barbarism”:

I think that the British people have been on the same sort of journey as the Right Hon. Member for Croydon South [Conservative Sir Richard Ottaway] described. It is certainly true of the Labour movemen -- from being very sympathetic to Israel as a country that was trying to achieve democracy and was embattled, to seeing it now as a bully and a regional superpower. That is not something I say with any pleasure, but since the triumph of military Zionism and the Likud-run governments [Netanyahu] we have seen a new barbarism in that country.

Madrak says:

One lawmaker says that the occupation is “much worse” than apartheid in South Africa. Another says that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 now seems like a “sick joke,” because it never guaranteed freedom to Palestinians. Many members offer frank descriptions of Israeli detention of children and unending settlement expansion. Several describe Israeli actions in Gaza as war crimes. One mentions the use of terrorism by Mandela and Begin long before Palestinians used the tactic. Labour and Conservative members alike speak about the role of the Israel lobby in the United States.

I seldom read comments to blog posts, but here's just a quick sample of the first of the comments:

* Chris L'Hommedieu • a day ago
So here's how I look at it. You go to war. You win. You put the losers in a very small box. No-one else helps them out either. You build walls. You occupy every inch of their box. You periodically make their box smaller as "settlers" move into the box. You prevent them from either moving around inside the box, or ever leaving the box. Every now and then the people in the box get really really pissed and throw things at you, but don't do much actual damage. But its scary as hell when they do it. So you blow the crap out of the box, killing piles of them. Then you send in more settlers and take more of the box.

And you're shocked, amazed, and appalled that the people in the box hate you and want to kill you.

Repeat. Decade after decade.

* Bill Lumbergh • a day ago

And the sick thing is that Israeli/U.S. govt. propaganda asserts that it's Israel that's in the box.

* Gil Randall • 12 hours ago
It was, but only in the earliest years.

By the mid-50s or so, after Egypt got the Soviet Union to support them, that was when Israel got the US involved to back them and, initially anyway, Israel and the Arab states were just more countries used by the US and the Soviet Union to fight proxy wars as a dick-waving contest against each other for the next forty years.

But as soon as the "religious" people got involved in the 60s, that's when the politicians (and Israeli leaders) starting merging more and more so that even after Egypt made peace (1979), then the Soviet Union collapsed (1991), then Jordan made peace (1994), they still look at Palestinians with contempt.

By today's standards, with the Soviet Union gone, two of the Arab state former antagonists out of the equation (including the largest and strongest one, Egypt), Syria and Iraq too embroiled in chaos and/or civil war, and Lebanon having absolutely no chance on its own if they even think about trying anything, there should be no reason for the US to be SO closely tied to Israel anymore beyond just allies (much less billions of dollars in equipment and such), and religious dogma is really the only reason.