Matthew Harris, a failed Liberal-Democrat candidate for Hendon, published a denial of my earlier article in which I exposed the anti-Israel connections and policies of the Lib-Dem leadership, including Nick Clegg (see 'Another nail in the coffin for British Jews').
Allow me to answer Mr. Harris point by point, giving him the facts and the details.
Mr. Harris failed to mention the disgraceful remarks made, for years, by Baroness Tonge. She has said that she would have ben a suicide bomber had she been a Palestinian. She refuses to condemn Hamas as a terror organisation. More lately she alleged that the IDF medical and rescue team in Haiti had been harvesting body organs. She was criticised by Clegg for this blood libel, but not dismissed from the party.
Even more recently, a Liberal-Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, William Wallace, admitted to the British Board of Deputies that he had met with Hamas leaders. He was not criticised for this by Nick Clegg. Why? Could it be that this 'balloon' statement echoes Clegg's own potential future foreign policy? It certainly echoes his staunch supporter Auchi and his Anglo-Arab Organisation which Harris feels should play a full role in British politics.
Harris would have us believe that Clegg's close friend, billionaire and conviced fraudster, Nahmi Auchi, does not contribute directly or indirectly to his political party. Harris knows that Auchi, through his companies and organisations is a major supporter of the Liberal-Democrats. A supporter, may I add, with an anti-Israel agenda.
Nahmi Auchi, as I exposed in my last article, supports Hamas. He provides aid and comfort to this terror group. His is the funding behind the upcoming blockage-running political convoy that will hit the headlines in the coming weeks.
Auchi funds one of the most anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic, websites in Britain.
The connection between Auchi and the Lib-Dems is close and undeniable. On 11th November 2009 he, through his Anglo-Arab Organisation, funded and hosted a banquet in honour of Nick Clegg at the five star Millennium Hotel in Mayfair.
He also organised a fund-raising dinner for Lib-Dem Richmond Park losing candidate, Susan Kramer, at the swanky Pembroke Lodge on the Thames.
So yes, Mr. Harris, Auchi does contribute to the Liberal-Democrats.
This, in itself, would be innocuous. As Harris states in his letter, British Muslims and British Arabs should get involved in British politics.
They are, indeed, getting involved. I question whether their involvement, and Arab Muslim political connections, are creating a more pragmatic Palestinian leadership which will lead to a solution to the Middle East crisis, or is their agenda to weaken and delegitimise Israel, thereby perpetuating the conflict?
As for Nick Clegg, let me include just a few of Nick Clegg's own policy statements.
Only two weeks ago Clegg told the Foreign Press Association "I remember when I first said that Israel acted disproportionately in Gaza. Now everyone accepts that this was a disproportionate use of military force".
Everyone, Mr.Clegg? Wouldn't it be more honest to say the far Left, the UK Arab and Muslim community and, of course, the Lib-Dems? That would still not make your statement, Mr. Clegg, correct. Force was not used disproportionately against a terror regime that had launched over eight thousand rockets, mortars, and sent suicide bombers into Israel over a six year period.
Nick Clegg has urged Gordon Brown to "condemn, unambiguously, Israel's tactics". Israel's tactics, Mr. Clegg, was an inevitable self defense operation launched after years of intolerable restraint during which politicians like Clegg did absolutely nothing to stop the terror attacks against us.
He urges the European Union to "immediately suspend the proposed new EU cooperation agreement with Israel". In other words, The leader of the Liberal-Democrats supports a boycott of Israel rather than engage with Israel to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict.
Furthermore, Nick Clegg has demanded that the EU and the UK "halt all arms exports to Israel" stressing that "Britain should act unilaterally".
If (when) Clegg achieves a position of power and influence what will be Israel's fate based on the Lib-Dems leader's stated anti-Israel policy?
As one Israeli told me "What does Clegg want? That we defend ourselves with our bare hands?"
Someone once said that if the Palestinians laid down their arms there would be peace tomorrow. If Israel laid down their arms there would be no Israel tomorrow.
In that atmosphere, why is the Liberal-Democrat leader trying to disarm Israel?
Nick Clegg was the first signatory to 'An appeal for the Gaza victims' that appeared in the Observer newspaper. This letter urged "The British Government and the international community to apply meaningful pressure on Israel in order to halt its flagrant abuse of interational law".
It further quotes that 'the Israeli Government continues to imprison 1.5 million Palestinians'.
Another signatory was Christine Chinkin who condemned Israel as being guilty of war crimes prior to examining the evidence as a member of the infamously biased UN panel headed by Richard Goldstone
Nick Clegg, by this statement, chooses to side with the false accusations hurled against Israel rather than temper his judgment with the facts.
Israel sends hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip It allows the sick into Israel for medical treatment. Palestinians in the West Bank have enjoyed a 10% improvement in their living standards. This figure was not achieved in Britain last year.
On the other hand, the Palestinians have rejected generous terms and solutions to end the conflict offered by Israel. They have refused to hold direct peace talks for more than a year with Israel. The Palestinians refuse to accept the concept of Israel as a Jewish state. They continue their incitement and hatred campaign against Israel, as well as glorifying mass murderers by naming their public squares, main streets, cultural and sports events after them.
Clegg has not admitted that Israel fully supports the concept of a two state solution, and has made generous concessions that have been met with a refusal to negotiate.
According to Clegg, the empasse is all the fault of a brutal Israel.
Nick Clegg leads a political campaign designed to paint Israel in a bad light and punish us while giving Hamas a free pass.
The restrictions on Gaza still allow humanitarian aid to reach the people, while choking the Islamist terrorist infrastructure that thrives in the Strip. This restriction is shared by Egypt, who are also greatly concerned by the threatening nature of the Hamas regime in Gaza.
Hamas cleverly combines terror and propaganda. It cynically inflicts suffering on its own people as a tactic in its unrelenting war on the people of Israel.
Gilad Shalit personifies the suffering of both peoples at the hands of Hamas. Held captive against his will in inhumane circumstances, not by Israel but by Hamas.
The Palestinians, and their supporters, cry about 'occupation' but the only Jew that occupies Gaza does not want to be there.
Nick Clegg should insist that Hamas release Gilad Shalit.
Clegg would prove himself to a better politician for justice and human rights if he were to pressure both Hamas and Fatah to renounce the use and glorification of terror, stop the incitement and hatred to kill Israelis and destroy the Jewish state, and force them to accept and and finalise a two-state solution that has been offered to them by Israel for decades.
Instead, he sanctions dangerous political gimmicks that give succour and emboldens both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and endangers Israel.
Clegg know that the Palestinians could have had a state decades ago had they been willing to live alongside the Jewish nation state of Israel, but Arafat refused to bite the bullet. He not only denied that there was ever a Jewish temple in Jerusalem, he went on to claim that Jesus was a Palestinian. Many Palestinians today accept this nonsense as part of their 'Palestinian history'.
More recently, Mahmoud Abbas rejected the far reaching concessions offered to him by Israel's Olmert. Today, he refuses to even talk with Israel.
The more people like Clegg batter Israel, the more intransigent the Palestinians become. They wear the victimhood badge with pride as they watch people like Obama and Clegg clobber Israel. They use the naive illusionists like the Liberal-Democrats to further their extreme aims.
Clegg's public statements echo those of his major supporter, Nahmi Auchi, his Anglo-Arab Organisation, and his anti-Zionist website.
Yet Mattew Harris is blind to all of this.
Is it any wonder, based on these political biases, that Clegg and the Liberal-Democrats oppose reforms to Britain's troublesome universal jurisdiction laws that, as they stand, leave Israeli politicians and military leaders vulnerable to arrest in the UK for alleged war crime allegations brought against them by organisations such as those of Auchi and slanderously quoted by the likes of Clegg, Tonge, Williams, and other prominent Liberal-Democrats?
Surely Matthew Harris is aware that this is the agenda of his political leader?
The close proximity of the political thoughts of Auchi and the policies of Clegg is deeply disturbing to Israelis.
Mattew Harris may talk of 'scaremongering lies'. They are, indeed, scary. They are not, however, lies.
They are scary for Israel. They should be scary for Jews in Britain unless, like Harris, they prefer to live in a Britain, and are satisfied, when the Arab and Muslim political agenda directly affects the policies of a future British Government.
Had I the confidence that British Muslims and their contacts would influence the Palestinians to reach a pragmatic and peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict my fears would be abated. This is not the case, and there is no evidence that this will happen any time soon.
All the evidence that I can see points to a biased, one-sided, slander campaign against Israel.
Matthew Harris would be better advised to face the truth and, under his Lib-Dem Friends of Israel, put pressure on his leader, Nick Clegg, to defend Israel and examine the Palestinian side of the argument,
rather than condemning and weakening us while supporting and aiding Hamas and a Palestinian Authority that has no intention of accepting a two-state solution, or recognising the Jewish State of Israel.
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