Comment at end
23rd May 2010
From Michael Mansfield QC to Nick Clegg:
This is a request for action speaking louder than words by the new coalition. I welcome your early commitment to the restoration of civil rights as part of the mainstream agenda for the UK. However, there is a civil rights crisis in the Middle East. Both these situations were seriously ignored by the previous Labour administration.
I appreciate that you are well aware that the humanitarian disaster occurring on a daily basis in Palestine has been brought about by the well-recognised and documented unlawful activities of the Israel state.
Source CIFWatch, a site dedicated to highlighting the anti-Israel stance of the Guardian (AND part of today’s coalition government, as it happens.)
(For anyone not familiar, CIF is ‘comment is free’. (FGS – who’d pay for this stuff?) It can be found in all its now openly Liberal Democratic glory at the once Labour-supporting Guardian.
CIFWATCH article:
“Was anyone really surprised by the Guardian’s decision to publish Michael Mansfield’s open letter to Nick Clegg on May 20th? Ordinary standards of decency would suggest that in principle we should have raised an eyebrow at this editorial decision, particularly as Mansfield’s agenda is so blatantly transparent, but of course this would by no means be the first time that the Guardian has provided a platform for supporters of a terrorist organisation proscribed under British law.
Despite the respectable facade and the claim to be a defender of civil rights, Mansfield’s apparent blind spot when it comes to the civil rights of the citizens of Israel – in particular, the right not to be blown up – is adequately illustrated by his statements against the anti-terrorist fence.
“The UN and other bodies have passed resolution upon resolution about these matters as well as an extremely strong judgment by the international court of justice in The Hague concerning the wall. But nothing ever happens.”
No surprises there then; after all Mansfield has a record of acting for the Palestinians involved in the 1994 bombing of the Israeli embassy in London in which 20 people were injured, of defending Tahira Tabassum, the widow of the ‘Mike’s Place’ British suicide bomber Omar Sharif and of acting for the families of Tom Hurndall and James Miller against Israel.
Mansfield has lent his support to the Boycott Israeli Goods and other anti-Israel campaigns and currently sits on the recently formed ‘Russell Tribunal on Palestine’ together with other such ‘objective’ figures as Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Ronnie Kasrils and Cynthia Mc Kinney. As president of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, Mansfield collaborates with employers of lawfare such as Daniel Machover and in his chambers (Tooks) presumably rubs shoulders with Michel Massih, initiator of the attempt to arrest Ehud Barak in 2009 under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Were there any doubts that Mansfield himself is involved in the lawfare campaign against Israel, this letter of his in the Guardian appears to have dispelled them.
Mansfield has now publicly lent his voice to ‘the ship intifada’ organised by the ‘Free Gaza’ movement. Far from being ‘a collective of courageous individuals’ as Mansfield claims, this coalition includes among others the ‘European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza’, the ISM (the flagship hasn’t been renamed ‘MV Rachel Corrie’ for nothing), and Insani Yardim Vakfi – aka the IHH – a Turkish ‘human rights’ organisation which collaborated with George Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ circus in December 2009 and was declared illegal in Israel in 2008 due to its connections to Hamas. The Hamas regime in Gaza is directly involved in the organisation of this flotilla and in the UK, Hamas supporter George Galloway and former Hamas commander in Judea & Samaria, Mohammed Sawalha (still wanted by Israel) are also linked to its organisation and that of similar operations in the past. In January of this year Sawalha stated that “the confrontation will be directly with the Zionist enemy itself on the high seas.”
In a nutshell, a man bearing the title ‘Queen’s Council’ is publicly lending his voice to an escapade which has nothing to do with humanitarianism, but everything to do with political campaigning and lawfare against a sovereign state and ally of Britain, organised by supporters of a terrorist organisation which is proscribed under British law.
In any decent society, that should count as sailing too close to the wind as far as coming dangerously close to defying the letter of the law is concerned, let alone offending the sense of public decency and propriety. Unfortunately the previous British Government appeared to be rather good at making laws but considerably less capable when it came to enforcing them, particularly where the provision of support and funding for proscribed terrorist organisations and the glorification of terror were concerned. Let’s hope that Britain’s new leaders will work to rectify this situation because the fashionable casual acceptance of support for terrorist organisations is something which is bound to have detrimental effects at home as well as abroad.
What a pity that the editors of a supposedly libertarian newspaper have not caught onto that fact either and instead allow the promotion of campaigns by the mouthpieces of holders of opinions and principles which are directly contrary to all that modern Western society stands for.”
A commenter at the CIFWATCH post:
“Excellent job, Israelinurse, in laying out the unannounced track record that lies behind The Guardian’s collusion in Mansfield’s self-presentation as just a QC and upholder of human rights, with all the implications that might carry of being a disinterested pursuer of justice.However, Mansfield’s actually done us all a service in reminding us of Nick Clegg’s mind-boggling act, as the then leader of the second largest UK opposition party in using The Guardian to advocate the use of EU economic and political sanctions to coerce Israel and Egypt into opening their borders to an internationally proscribed terrorist regime with a track record of murder and active terrorising both those directly under their control and their neighbours on both sides. The fact that this man is now Deputy Prime Minister is really appalling, especially given so much of the language he uses about Israel in the article and his track record in refusing to remove the Lib Dem whip from Baroness Tonge despite her claims that “the zionists have got their grips” on his party.
The one consoling factor is that his DPM post does not give him any direct responsibility for foreign affairs. But lack of direct responsibility seems not to have curbed his penchant for grandstanding his non-Coalition opinions, as in his most recent speech following the judicial release of the Al Qaeda operatives following their successful immigration appeal.”
If only the average CIF commenter possessed a fraction of these braincells.
Tags: anti-Israel, CIFWatch, coalition, Condem government, Gaza, Guardian CIF, liberal democrats, Michael Mansfield QC, nick clegg, pro-Palestinian, pro-terrorist organisations
Tony Blair 
May 23, 2010 at 3:04 pm |
Mansfield is a disgrace to the human race.
May 23, 2010 at 4:51 pm |
Definitely, Clap Hammer. But the thing is there are millions of ’em who think like him. Or hundreds of thousands anyway. And they all read The Guardian.
May 25, 2010 at 10:50 pm |
He acted for the family of Tom Hurndall?
Well, that puts his credibility beyond defence – afterall, what sort of a man would pursue some justice for the family of a man shot dead in an act that was found to be unlawful by both an Israeli military court and a British inquest?
You silly people. The Israelis refused more than a routine inquiry until high profile pressure by the parents forced the issue. To hold this mans part in securing rightful convictions of a murderer of a British citizen against him does your argument no favours.
May 25, 2010 at 11:06 pm |
Troy,
You might have noticed that I used the reference to Tom Hurndall only as part of the article which I reproduced in full from the CIFWatch site. I did not express an opinion on any of their links or references.
The yeahs and nays of the good guys (Palestinians iinvariably, I imagine, in your mind – those who have been attacking Israel weekly for years) and the bad guys (Israelis, I imagine in your mind) is too complex for any of us ignorant bystanders to understand, it seems to me.
Let others decide on the BIG picture. One dead photographer does not an Enemy State make. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. Life and death. And realpolitik.
Btw, someone put this comment on the Ban Blair-Baiting petition recently:
Of course you are likely to just discount it. After all, that someone was from Israel.