Silence on Israel's crimes damaging UK, warns former Blair adviser
Silence on Israel's crimes damaging UK, warns former Blair adviser
London, July 27, IRNA
UK Wall-Israel
A former top foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair is urging the Prime Minister to speak out against the Zionist regimes's indiscriminate killing of civilians in Lebanon and destruction of the country's infrastructure.
"Unhitch us from the Bush chariot," Sir Stephen Wall told Blair, warning him that the silence was damaging Britain's reputation in the Middle East by his complicity.
"I defy any person watching TV not to cry out loud for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. Yet our government and that of the US have weasel-worded their way through this tragedy," he said in an article for the latest edition of the New Statesman magazine.
Wall, who was Blair's main adviser on the EU between 1997 and 2004, said that the Prime Minister's sympathy for Israel did not justify his silence or adequately explain the reasons for it.
"The overriding reason for Britain's loss of moral authority is Blair's conviction that he has to hitch the UK to the chariot of the US president," he said.
The former policy adviser said that the government had taken to unprecedented lengths the view that Britain's influence on the US can be exercised only in private.
"It has too readily lost sight of the fact that Britain's interests, and those of the US, are not identical," the career diplomat said.
He suggested that there were times, such as the past two weeks, when a British prime minister should have been thinking "less about private influence and more about public advocacy."
"Could the Prime Minister really not speak up for the simple proposition that the slaughter of innocent people in Lebanon, the destruction of their country and the ruin of half a million lives were wrong and should stop immediately?" he asked.
Despite Blair's contention that he was seeking a sustained rather than an immediate ceasefire, Wall believed that "one that stopped the horror, even for 24 hours, would be a start."
He recalled when the late US President Ronald Reagan told former Israeli leader Menachem Begin back 1982 that the Israeli onslaught on Beirut threatened to turn into "a holocaust," he was speaking from "anger and conviction."
"Is it the conviction of our government that we should leave it to George W Bush to set the bearings of our moral compass?" the adviser asked.
He believed Foreign Office posts around the Middle East will have been reporting on the cost to Britain's interests of our silence and that cabinet ministers would also have been warning about the price to be paid inside Britain for our apparent complicity.
"Blair has supreme confidence in his own judgment. Let us hope that the reflected light from the TV screens, even now, serves to illuminate the bunker," he said.
London, July 27, IRNA
UK Wall-Israel
A former top foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair is urging the Prime Minister to speak out against the Zionist regimes's indiscriminate killing of civilians in Lebanon and destruction of the country's infrastructure.
"Unhitch us from the Bush chariot," Sir Stephen Wall told Blair, warning him that the silence was damaging Britain's reputation in the Middle East by his complicity.
"I defy any person watching TV not to cry out loud for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. Yet our government and that of the US have weasel-worded their way through this tragedy," he said in an article for the latest edition of the New Statesman magazine.
Wall, who was Blair's main adviser on the EU between 1997 and 2004, said that the Prime Minister's sympathy for Israel did not justify his silence or adequately explain the reasons for it.
"The overriding reason for Britain's loss of moral authority is Blair's conviction that he has to hitch the UK to the chariot of the US president," he said.
The former policy adviser said that the government had taken to unprecedented lengths the view that Britain's influence on the US can be exercised only in private.
"It has too readily lost sight of the fact that Britain's interests, and those of the US, are not identical," the career diplomat said.
He suggested that there were times, such as the past two weeks, when a British prime minister should have been thinking "less about private influence and more about public advocacy."
"Could the Prime Minister really not speak up for the simple proposition that the slaughter of innocent people in Lebanon, the destruction of their country and the ruin of half a million lives were wrong and should stop immediately?" he asked.
Despite Blair's contention that he was seeking a sustained rather than an immediate ceasefire, Wall believed that "one that stopped the horror, even for 24 hours, would be a start."
He recalled when the late US President Ronald Reagan told former Israeli leader Menachem Begin back 1982 that the Israeli onslaught on Beirut threatened to turn into "a holocaust," he was speaking from "anger and conviction."
"Is it the conviction of our government that we should leave it to George W Bush to set the bearings of our moral compass?" the adviser asked.
He believed Foreign Office posts around the Middle East will have been reporting on the cost to Britain's interests of our silence and that cabinet ministers would also have been warning about the price to be paid inside Britain for our apparent complicity.
"Blair has supreme confidence in his own judgment. Let us hope that the reflected light from the TV screens, even now, serves to illuminate the bunker," he said.
posted by Joseph Khoury at 3:27 PM
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