Solidarity in crime: Miliband promises to protect Israeli Minister Livni

Miliband moves to protect Israeli politicians from UK laws
Mick Napier, 15 December 2009

Israeli ex-Minister Livni called off her planned visit to London after a Westminster magistrate issued an warrant for her arrest for her involvement in the planning of war crimes in Gaza. Like the verdicts of British juries that the Israeli Army murdered Tom Hurndall and journalist James Miller, previous arrest warrants for war crimes against Doron Almog, and the hurried exit of other Israeli generals, the latest UK magistrate's decision to issue an arrest warrant for an Israeli Government official on war crimes charges adds to the long-term build up of pressure for the British Government to break with its support for Israel.

For the moment, however, UK Foreign Minister David Miliband chose to "act with expediency to change the insufferable situation" where war criminals can be charged with war crimes. Livni had been due to address a London conference of the racist Jewish National Fund, whose sponsors include Gordon Brown and David Cameron, and Lib Dem Leader Nic Clegg.

The legal provision to charge individuals who commit war crimes anywhere in the world when they set foot on UK soil was largely due to revulsion at Nazi mass killings during WWII and the determination to make sure they could not happen again. UN Judge Richard Goldstone last month attacked the Israeli sense of impunity in its commission of war crimes, due, Goldstone said, to unstinting Western support for Israeli aggression.

Livni's office described her as "proud of all her decisions regarding Operation Cast Lead" and that, "the operation achieved its objectives to...restore Israel's deterrence capability."

How will Miliband force through a change in British law to protect Israeli "Pinochets"? If the Lib Dems support him, he might force it through Parliament very quickly. If they don't, he will have to find other means and, with opinion in Britain hardening against Israel as a result of its last massacre in Gaza, that move will provoke widespread opposition.

After all, Miliband has been promising the Israeli ethnic cleansers for a long time that he would sort this matter out to their satisfaction and he has failed to move on the matter because he knows the storm it could unleash to seek to undo a law designed to keep out mass murderers.

British support for Israeli crimes is consistent and long-standing. The UK Government's open interference in the British legal system to protect Israeli war criminals will be an issue on which Palestinian solidarity campaigners and human rights supporters need to force each elected politician to take a public stance and make each open supporter of Israeli war criminals pay a political price.