Sunday 28 June 2020

Lisa Nandy's silly Israel statement

Daughter of the Indian Marxist, Dipak Nandy, Lisa Nandy was a surprise choice for Shadow Foreign Secretary. It appears that her support for the two state Solution- which has prompted her to call for an import ban on products from occupied or 'annexed' territory- is Starmer's way  of keeping a balance between resisting anti-Semitism (for which Rebecca Long Bailey has just been sacked) while supporting the Palestinian cause.

Sadly, this balancing act shows that Labour is living in the Past. Nandy thinks ' Britain has a “unique moral responsibility and must step up. Should we fail to do so, the world will pay the price for a long time to come."

The fact of the matter is that Britain did once have a 'unique moral responsibility' as the Mandatory power in Palestine. But Britain was rejected by both the Arabs and the Jews. It failed. Why? Britain saw that a two state solution would require the Jews to subsidize and otherwise help the Arab population who simply could not go it alone. But the Arabs rejected this. They did not say they could be a separate state. Instead Egypt took Gaza and Jordan took the East Bank. The Jordanians realized too late that they had put their head in noose. Still, when some Palestinians ran amok, a previously absent Jordanian sense of nationalism suddenly materialized and so the Palestinian leadership was ejected. Other Arab countries soon had their own problems with Palestinians. Currently, Saudi Arabia wants Palestinians to show their Arab Nationalism by forgetting their quarrel with Israel and focusing on Iran as the common enemy.

In other words, there is no support for a two state solution in the region. The Palestinians remain divided and the regional patrons of their various factions are even more divided. Nobody in the region- except a diminishing number of Left-Liberals in Israel- still believes in a plan which Arafat sabotaged twenty years ago.

Lisa Nandy seems to want to return to Robin Cooke's stupid foreign policy which consisted of saying no issue can be bilateral if Britain had once ruled that territory. Everything had to go through the British F.O. The Indians kicked him in the crotch. Blair saw that Cooke's silliness stemmed from the belief that Europe was the new center of moral gravity. So he ruthlessly got rid of him.

Lisa Nandy too will go the way of Cooke. She is living in the Nineties. She thinks Europe matters. It has supernatural powers. Only it can set right all that is amiss with parts of the world over which it once ruled. But this is a pipe dream.

Suppose Israel is first to develop the COVID vaccine. Which country would be fool enough to impose a gesture political import ban on it? Nandy thinks Israel is a banana republic. We can get it to give up territory by saying 'we won't buy bananas from the plantations you have stolen'. But this is not the case. Israel is a knowledge economy. Banning Academics, or products, from there hurts us. It does not hurt Israel. It pushes it up the value chain so that it concentrates on stuff which no one else has but everybody needs. Meanwhile the Palestinians can offer nothing- not even terrorist training camps. Arafat well and truly destroyed the hope he created of a viable Palestinian state. Still, he died richer than any Israeli leader. Perhaps that is the true yardstick of success applicable to Arab politicians.

Corbyn, like Cooke, thought Britain should interfere in things like the Palestinian or the Kashmiri issue. But Corbyn, it turned out, was an utter cretin. More low income Britishers voted for BoJo than they did for him. Nandy, to her credit, had been part of the Shadow Cabinet rebellion against Corbyn. Starmer should get rid of her before another such event.

Politics is a service industry like plumbing. We may have to tolerate a good plumber lecturing us on Immigration as he fixes the boiler. But we don't have to tolerate a useless political party pretending that Brittania still rules the waves and therefore has some unique moral responsibility to talk nonsense. Cooke thought he had Europe behind him and that Europe could indeed develop into a counterpoise to the US. Nandy appears to share some such delusion. She said she would oppose a trade deal with US till America accepted the Paris agreement. This is the ethical foreign policy of an ostrich whose head is firmly buried in the sand while its feathers are plucked out leaving it with a naked bum. One may admire its unique moral position but only after laughing one's ass off.

Still, it is good to know that Lisa Nandy will make as great and fundamental a contribution to her natal country as her father did to his.

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