Why the Palestinian diaspora must become politically engaged
The following is the text of an address I delivered yesterday to a conference in London organized by the Palestine Return Centre on the subject of Britain’s Legacy in Palestine, which included a session on how to reverse the catastrophic consequences of the legacy. I was aware that what I was going to say would be uncomfortable listening for some in the audience, but almost all thanked me for saying what has to be said.
I wasn’t here for the morning session so I’d like to start with my own very brief comment on the Balfour Declaration.
Without it I think there would have been no Israel. What I mean is that without the spurious legitimacy the declaration gave Zionism to get organized, it would not have been well enough established on the ground in Palestine to take advantage of the Nazi holocaust and use it to justify everything it would do, including establishing a state by terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
So I think it can be said without fear of contradiction that Britain was the godfather of the monster Zionism is. But there’s more to Britain’s Palestine legacy than that. The “Palestine problem” created by Britain is the cancer at the heart of international affairs which could consume us all if it is not cured,
As some of you know, for telling the truth about the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, I have the honour of being red-flagged by both Zionism and therefore the mainstream media which is terrified of offending it, and the authoritarian Arab regimes. They are at one with Zionism in wanting and needing the truth of history to be suppressed. They don’t want the world to know, for example, that despite much stupid rhetoric to the contrary, they never had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. It was, in fact, the security services of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon that made the first attempt to strangle at birth the authentic Palestine liberation movement led by Yasser Arafat, Abu Jihad and a handful of others.
To signpost the way to the essence of what I want to say today, I’ll tell you a short, true, chilling story.
Three years ago one of the major figures of an Arab Gulf state, a royal, was here in London and it was suggested that I should meet with him. He was aware that I knew his father, who was assassinated. We met and talked for nearly an hour in private.
In the course of the conversation I made two very frank statements. The first was this:
“Nothing is going to change in the Arab world until your regimes are more frightened of their own masses than they are of Zionism and America.”
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