Ah, The Old "Secular Democratic State" Trick: British Labour's heinous Mr Hain goes back to where he once belonged

As Daily Telegraph columnist Brendan O'Neill succinctly expressed it, in the context of an article regarding Scarlett Johansson, Oxfam, and SodaStream:

'There is nothing remotely progressive in this campaign to boycott everything Israeli, with its double standards about various nations’ behaviour and its shrill rhetoric about everything that comes from Israel being covered in Palestinian blood. This movement is not designed to have any kind of positive impact in the Middle East but rather is about making certain Western activists feel righteous and pure through allowing them to advertise how Israeli-free their lives are. It’s illiberal, because it effectively demands the censoring of Israeli academics and performers; it’s hypocritical, because it is led by people who are only too happy to use iPhones made in undemocratic China and to vote for the Labour Party, which, er, bombed the hell out of Middle Eastern countries for the best part of 10 years; and it has unfortunate ugly echoes of earlier campaigns to boycott Jewish shops and produce. So three cheers for Ms Johansson for taking a very public stand against this right-on pressure to treat Israel as the most evil nation on Earth.'

Hain leaves Downing Street in 1969 (Guardian photo)

Long before Omar Bargouti dreamed up the BDS Movement, and when Arafat's brand "Palestinian" was of fairly new mintage, but catching on fast among the leftwing cognoscenti, there was a bovver boy on the British political scene.  His name was Peter Hain; he craved the limelight; and he got it, for his antics ensured that he was often in the headlines.

 As I wrote quite some time ago:

'During the 1970s, before defecting to Labour and eventually becoming an MP and a minister under Blair and Brown as well as a member of Red Ed Miliband’s present team, the anti-Israel serpent in the still-pro-Israel British Liberal Party’s bosom was Peter Hain. A South African-born anti-apartheid activist with a penchant for publicity, he was chairman of the Young Liberals, and combined campaigning against white rule in South Africa with a parallel crusade against Israel’s very existence. Decades before the idea caught on in sections of the Israel-demonising left, Hain had made the replacement of Israel by a “Secular Democratic State of Palestine” the leitmotif of his frequent inveighing against the Jewish State.

Thus, reported the Jewish Chronicle (5 September 1975), “Calls for the destruction of Israel as a state and for British Government recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation were made by more than 1500 pro-Arab supporters who marched from Speakers’ corner to Downing Street on Sunday while the Jewish rally was in progress.” Flanked by some 500 police officers, marchers included Communists, Marxists, Young Socialists, Young Liberals, as well as hundreds of Palestinians, Surians, Iraqis and other Arabs. Hain called on “radicals on the left-wing in Britain” to fight for the Palestinian cause.

 He was even mean-minded enough to oppose the migration of Soviet Refuseniks to Israel.' [Emphasis added]

Hain's Israel-demonising past is not as well-known as it should be

Few individuals younger than myself (I was living and working in London at the time) will have memories of Hain's outrageous contentions, and how deeply wounding his much-flaunted Israel-baiting was to members of the Anglo-Jewish community.

Hain's stance dismayed the Liberal Party's leadership and its old guard (we're talking of a time when to be Liberal with a large L still meant to be a classical liberal with a small l, in the tradition of the old Manchester Guardian – stalwartly pro-Zionist under editor C. P. Scott, long before it evolved into today's wretched London-based Guardian rag – and the then elder statesman of the Liberal Party Jo Grimond).

By the time the ambitious Mr Hain had morphed into a Labour Party Cabinet member, he had fallen silent on the issue, toeing the party line as he was bound to do.  He was even tipped as a future British Prime Minister. (Shudder.)

This week, the heinous Mr Hain has been at it again, albeit in a more cautious manner than his no-room-for-argument enfant terrible manner of yore. To quote from an online Welsh source yesterday, evidently utilising a press release circulated by Hain:

'Peter Hain will make a major speech tonight [Thursday] in which he will warn that the long-term goal of a two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians may no longer be achievable and claim that a one-state solution is now “back on the agenda”.

The former Welsh Secretary and Middle East minister at the Foreign Office will not endorse calls for the creation of a binational state but will ask: “Instead of living in constant fear of the enemy within as well as without, might it be more fruitful for Israel to seek a settlement legislating for the rights of Palestinians and Arab-Israelis within a new common state to end the conflict?”

In a public lecture at Swansea University, the Neath MP will state that he has favoured a two-state solution but is “increasingly unsure about whether it’s still achievable” because “the land earmarked for a viable Palestinian state has been remorselessly occupied by Israeli settlers.”

Claiming that support is growing for a single state, he will say: “Palestinians on both sides are now questioning the two-state strategy to an even greater degree. Negotiations have so far failed, as has a reliance on the US to deliver Israeli cooperation.

“The two-state option was itself originally conceived as a compromise and one likely to be particularly painful for the Palestinian refugee community.  All of which explains why in academic and activist circles the one-state option is back on the agenda.  

“There are now a number of different campaigns for the creation of a single democratic, secular state for Jews and Arabs, made up of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”

Mr Hain, who as Northern Ireland Secretary played a key role in bringing Ian Paisley’s DUP and Sinn Fein together in the Stormont executive, will argue: “[If] Israel’s relentless expansion into Palestinian territories cannot be stopped then we must face one of two possible outcomes.

"The first is that all Palestinian presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem remains in a permanent and ever-more formalized ‘Bantustan status’, islands of minimal self-governance with the continued denial of basic rights, facing ongoing pressure, perpetual insecurity and possible future physical removal.

"The second is that they are absorbed into a common Israeli-Palestinian state with the opportunity for pluralism and human rights advancement.

“Is that solution now the only one capable of stopping the cycle of violence and preserving Israel’s potential to become a force for unity and peace, instead of a beleaguered source of division and a target for attack?

"And if the window for the two-state solution is indeed closing, then should the EU, the US and the UK make it plain to Israel that a one-state alternative may be the only one available to ensure its security?”

He will ask what type of state would be “politically feasible and deliverable,” stating: “Could a federal or con-federal state provide a way forward, with common security, a unified economy, common civil rights and guarantees of religious freedom for Jews and Muslims, but considerable political autonomy for the territories within it of ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’?  How then might Israeli and Palestinian security forces be integrated?

“These are fundamental, difficult and complex questions – but, if successfully answered, could a common state solution more easily resolve the deadlock than the two-state solution I and many others have long-favoured?

“I remain uncertain.  But I ask because I do not see how either the Israelis or the Palestinians can secure their legitimate objectives by perpetuating for still more decades their unsustainable and unstable predicament, with a two-state solution slipping away while violence and terrorism lurks constantly.”....'

Given the fact that he has advocacy of a single state lurking in his past, Hain's approach to this question this time smacks of testing the waters, or to state it more accurately, testing the reaction of Labour Party members.  The question, though, is why?  Since he's about to turn 63, it is presumably not through ambition to ride to the party's leadership on the coat tails of anti-Zionism that's impelled Hain to make such a speech. Or is it?  (He made an unsuccessful bid for the leadership a few years ago.) Are the speech's connotations more sinister than would seem at first glance?  Has Hain changed his spots? Time alone will tell.

The Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, writing yesterday on the Jewish Chronicle website, is evidently unaware that Hain has form on the issue, that he used when young to make strident, hurtful, unambiguous calls for the dismantling of Israel and its replacement by a "secular democratic state".

Freedland is in my opinion a tad too jejune when he observes:

'If you want to know what a politician really thinks, wait till he or she leaves office. It’s when politicians no longer have to court votes, or worry about party discipline, that they finally speak their true mind.

Plenty will say that explains this week’s intervention by the former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain. On Thursday, he was due to give a public lecture at Swansea University, departing from the position he has held for the past two decades and which represents the consensus of the international community: that the best answer to the conflict between

Israelis and Palestinians in two states, living side by side.

Now, Hain wonders if the moment for a two-state solution has passed and if it is time instead to look at a different scenario: what he calls a “common state” shared by the two peoples – in other words, a one-state solution.

“Ah,” many JC readers will say. “So, when Hain was in government, he was just paying lip service to Israel’s right to exist as a secure, independent state. All along, he actually believed in the old pro-Palestinian demand for a single state, in which the Zionist dream of Jewish self-determination would be swallowed up and forgotten. He’s no friend of ours after all.”

Such a view will be temptingly simple but unfair. Hain is clear in setting out his own credentials as a former Middle East minister under Tony Blair, one who worked closely with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders. He also underlines his understanding of what Israel is up against: the “unremitting hostility” of its neighbours, the state of “siege” the country has had to endure since its birth. He is explicit, too, that his past support for two states was sincere, that he believed it to be “the best plan for peace and the fairest outcome.”

But, now, reluctantly, Hain has concluded that time has all but run out for the two-state solution. He offers the familiar reasons: the serial failure of past negotiations; the Hamas-Fatah split; and, above all, the fact that “the land earmarked for a viable Palestinian state has been remorselessly occupied by Israeli settlers.” As others have put it, it’s hard for two people to agree to split a pizza when one is gobbling up slice after slice as they talk.

Doubtless many will dispute Hain’s conclusions, finding him premature in pronouncing two states near-dead. But whether he’s too pessimistic is not really the point. He is a mainstream political figure — with experience, in Belfast, of a bitter conflict also once deemed intractable — beginning to look seriously at an idea previously deemed beyond the pale. [My emphasis]

In that sense, his words are a warning...'

Whether Hain is up to his old "secular democratic state" trick for some agenda of his own, and indeed how far he will take it, remains, for the moment, immaterial.  For the present Labour Party leadership has disowned his views.

Reports The Guardian:

'The Labour leadership has slapped down the former cabinet minister Peter Hain after he raised the possibility of a one-state solution in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians....

Labour criticised Hain, who served as Middle East minister between 1999 and 2001, after the New Statesman published extracts from a prepared speech in which he raises the possibility of a "common Israeli-Palestinian state"....

Critics will argue that creating a one-state solution would mark the end of the state of Israel, which was founded as a Jewish state. The declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel on 14 May 1948, signed by the founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, said: "We … hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the state of Israel."

Labour said: "Peter Hain does not speak for Labour on foreign affairs and his views on the Middle East peace process do not represent Labour party policy. Labour is fully committed to a two-state solution with a viable Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, and we support the ongoing work of the US secretary of state, John Kerry, to help restart negotiations towards achieving this goal."....'

(For the speech and Labour's reaction to it see also here)

It will be interesting to see how Hain will handle the issue, and what impact he will have on his party, when he's no longer MP for Neath but, as he presumably will be, a Labour life peer in the House of Lords.

Drumont's Ghost Walks On Facebook ...

But Facebook (so far) refuses to exorcise it.

The vile Facebook page containing this, along with many other antisemitic cartoons (most attributed a Ben Garrison; but see a reader's comment below) that are reminiscent of the depravity peddled by such infamous judeophobes as Edouard Drumont with his La Libre Parole and Julius Streicher with his Der Stürmer, has been in operation only since 24 January.  In that short time it has managed to amass over 700 "Likes" (727 at the time of writing).

It has been reported for the hate-site it is by a growing number of disgusted people.  Among them is the indefatigable Shirlee Finn, who's no stranger to readers of my blog, and who herself blogs here.

Shirlee took the trouble to report every single one of the despicable posts on the despicable Facebook page in question.

She has been informed that, having carried out a review, Facebook sees no reason to take the page down.

Shirlee, who's since written Facebook a well-deserved "stinking" riposte, is so incensed that she is thinking of contacting the media about this.

I'm not surprised.

That Facebook sees nothing objectionable about the page beggars belief, and leaves a sickening feeling in the pit of the stomach.

Perhaps they have been swayed by the absurd introductory note at the top of the page:

The Merchant aka Le Happy Merchant is a famous meme
 Butthurts not welcome
 The page is just for fun,its not hate,so please dont be offened. [sic]

If such a piece of excrescence doesn't meet Facebook's criteria for offensiveness, what does?

And what does this say not only about Facebook's moral compass, but its commonsense?

Please bombard Facebook with complaints!

"Don't Let The Zionist Divide Us!": A strange call from Christians

Thanks to the kindness of a reader in London I'm now in possession of the Church of England newspaper editorial of 17 January, some of which so evidently irritated the anti-Zionist head of the Christian NGO Embrace the Middle East (see my post here).

Headed "Anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe", it's a robust editorial which, since it's now archival, and such a contrast to the toxin spewed out by some Christians regarding Israel, I feel compelled to reproduce in toto.

The editorial was, of course, written over a week prior to the disgraceful, despicable scenes witnessed in Paris on Sunday (see here) but is relevant to those scenes nonetheless:

'Fans flock to French comic Dieudonné on social media’ we are told by the BBC’s Georg Lentze of the BBC Social Media Monitoring Unit. Dieudonné has several convictions for anti-Semitic hate speech in France, and his very popular shows have recently been banned for this reason. All forms of social media are showing real spikes of interest and favour, YouTube, Facebook ‘likes’, tweets, a TV channel, all register enormous popularity. He unites the poor immigrant Muslim youth and the anti-immigrant National Front bloc. He taps into the growing anti-politics feeling rising in Europe. Dieudonné operates with a subtle ambiguity, as the New Yorker’s Alexander Stille reported: of a distinguished French Jewish journalist Dieudonné said: “When I hear him speak, Patrick Cohen, I say to myself, you see, the gas chambers … too bad.”

 The meaning is clear, the grammar broken up to gain deniability. He has developed a cynical inversion of the Nazi salute that has gained such traction as to have been used at a Premiership football match to bait Jewish fans. The French authorities are concerned and trying to suppress the activities of this ‘comedian’ and activist, but that suppression stokes a victim image and social media popularity.

Reuters photo of the French demo

 Hatred of Jews is now popular in France again, and barely 60 years after 1945. Dieudonné plans to use his Human Rights to free expression to overturn government bans on his very lucrative shows. The bitter irony is that the mass murder of the Holocaust was the driver for the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Dieudonné himself is a ‘holocaust denier’. In the UK there is a growing movement to boycott the state of Israel by academics who think that Israel is guilty of repressing Palestinians. The University and College Union of lecturers had invited Bongani Masuka, someone found guilty by the South African Human Rights Commission of anti-Semitic hate crimes, to speak at their conference, and the UCU Annual Congress voted against dissociating itself from his views. UCU refused to accept the definition of anti-Semitism drawn up by the EU Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. A Jewish academic, Ronnie Fraser, felt harassed by the UCU’s action and complained of anti-Semitism to a Tribunal, which denied his complaint.

The Tribunal likened Fraser to a rugby player who was asking to be bashed and bruised in such a game, and so was entitled to a low degree of legal protection – an astonishing argument. The Church of England is also perilously close to adding respectability to his movement, as the Sunday Programme debate between Lucy Winkett and Alan Johnson showed: fashionable St James’ Piccadilly protested at the protective wall around Bethlehem, Johnson argued this protest ignored the realities of the context. Christians should beware of singling out Israel for protest, the Israel – Palestine spat, like Northern Ireland, is just one of many contested areas in the world, and the rising tide of hatred of the Jews is a toxic movement to make fashionable – again.'

Just how toxic a movement can be seen in a number of avowedly Christian sites, including pages on Facebook.

Regular readers of this blog may recall my post here drawing attention to the truly heinous rantings and ravings of a heavy-duty antisemitic Facebook page calling itself "Christians United for Peace", which wallows in medieval-like lies concerning Jewish beliefs and practices.

Earlier this week, as a result of sustained pressure brought to bear on Facebook by concerned individuals and groups, the egregiously misnamed "Christians United for Peace" page was removed from Facebook.

Today, however, the page was back up, with its previous nonsense intact, and spewing out its customary venom against Jews, Judaism and its texts, Israel and Zionism in such new posts as these  (which like most if not all of the posts attract breathtakingly antisemitic comments from the site's avowedly Christian followers):

 

But this odious Facebook page  is not the only avowedly Christian one that specialises in invective that crosses the line into antisemitism.

Similar group pages, including that belonging to Christian Friends of Palestine, are  riddled with antisemitic posts from avowed Christians, posts such as these gems from an American with a Spanish-sounding name.

First:

Of all the people on planet Earth, the ones I love and respect most are the Palestinians!!!

Under any period of Human History on Earth there had been such brave and heroic people such as the Palestinians.

The entire Satanic Zionist world turned against them and there they are, without army, without weapons, without electricity, water etc... but they are steadily standing against the mightiest zionist countries of the world.

They don't need any super powers to support them!!! They already have the mightiest one on their side. They have God on their side!!!

Second, regarding the photo of a huge mass demonstration he’d posted:

This is not Egypt,

It is not Syria,

It is not Greece...

This is Spain and you won't see this in your News Channels because the Spanish Government is helping the Zionist Jooish Banks on behalf of the spanish population.

The Zionist Jooish Media keeps silent on this as long as the Government acts accordingly and in favor to Zionist rules!!!

Third, regarding Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and former Australian prime minister John Howard:

If you still believe we live in a democratic western world, you are then just as fucked up as these poor bastard leaders reading a peach [i.e. speech] ordered by their masters the Zionist Jooz Of PissraHell.

Fourth, regarding Hitler:

He was a filthy Zionist Joo himself. Don't take me wrong.

I need you to drop the way of thinking all of us been programmed to think to be able to understand what I'm going to say.

What Hitler did to the Joos is called Collateral Dammage.

First of all Germans never killed 6million Joos and all of us by today and hopefully know it was our history's biggest lie.

He maybe did kill some of them to show the real Jooish haters of Germany that he was one of them.

The Jooish Rothchild family sponsored him since he was a kid and placed him in the Nazi Youth Camps so he could blend….

And then, from others, there are posts denying the Holocaust, impugning the Jewishness of Ashkenazim, smearing the Rothschilds, likening Israeli statesmen to the anti-Christ, and so on and so forth.

One recurrent theme that runs through many of these sites is this one, the profile picture of Christian Friends of Palestine:

 Christians United for Peace puts it like this:

Strange, isn't it, how, despite the ruthless persecution of their co-religionists by Islamists in the Middle East, avowed Christians – and as we are only too aware, they include many (like the church authorities who enlisted the aid of Interpal in sponsoring the Piccadilly replica "Wall") who are unconnected with these dodgy Facebook groups – seek to make common cause with Islam by scapegoating Jews Zionists?

"There Are No Bystanders To History": Steven Spielberg on remembering the Holocaust (video)

At the UN General Assembly on Monday:

 Read more about that and about Ron Prosor's speech here
A thought-provoking article by Caroline Glick here

In London, A Fracas Following An Anti-Israel Event (video)

Our heroic young British friend of non-Jewish Iraqi origin and a companion went along to an Israel-demonising event in London.  Uploading the following to YouTube, he explains:

"We were at an event called 'attack on the people' by Jeff Halper! As we filmed inside, we were told we didnt have permission. So we decided to film them as they were coming out. Obviously they saw that there were two of us, so they decided to harass us, come close to us, pushing and shoving. I apologise for the poor quality of the film."

Things begin to hot up from around 4.40 seconds ...

Remarks a commenter on YouTube:

'The intimidating bullies here are the HAMAS supporters amongst the so called British Liberal Left. Shame on them, for attacking 2 honest and brave and PEACEFUL men, one of whom is a British Muslim of Iraqi origin and who has taken the time and energy to learn the facts about the regional conflict always targeting Israel, and as a result feels compelled to stand up and be counted while being heard. RESPECT!'

To our young hero: Keep up the good work, but above all keep safe.

Meanwhile, from the heart of Londonistan, a Holocaust Day 2013 speaker has been posting vile messages about Jews (see here)
For Catherine Ashton's missing J word this Holocaust Memorial Day: see here

France's Shame, France's Tragedy: Antisemitic scum march in Paris (video)

"The Same Venom"

Yesterday, the day before Holocaust Memorial Day, numerous feral antisemites (described in this report as "neo-Nazis and Muslims") took to the streets of Paris for a so-called "Journée de la Haine Anti Juive" (Anti-Jewish Hate Day).

 Hat tip to Jean Vercors for the following picture of a group of these ferals:

In the following video the loathsome scum can be seen giving the neo-Nazi "quenelle" salute popularised by the repellent Dieudonné, and can be heard chanting "Juif, la France n'est pas à toi!" ("Jew, France is not yours") and, in mockery of the Holocaust, "Shoah nanas".

To quote this site, where antisemitic videos by Dieudonné are to be found:

'Dieudonné's song "Shoah Nanas" (Holocaust Pineapples) comes from Annie Cordy's stupid song "Chaud cacao" (Hot cocoa), the original lyrics "Chaud cacao, cho chocolat" (Hot cocoa, cho chocolate) becoming "Sho Ananas, sho shoananas" (Sho Pinneapples, sho shopineapples) in Dieudonné's song. Just to explain that joke, hard to translate into English because "shopineapples" means nothing. The joke would work in English only if pineapple began with an "a" like ananas in French.' 

No wonder the Jews of France don't feel secure in the land of liberty, equality, and fraternity any more (see here).

There is something deeply, deeply rotten in the fabric of France.

It is French Jewry's tragedy.

It is also France's.

Weep for Marianne; weep for the Republic.

Sharon's Legacy Haunts Obama And Kerry, Argues David Singer

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.  It's entitled
"Palestine: Sharon's Legacy Haunts Obama And Kerry".

Writes David Singer:

'President Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry have a lot on their minds as they grapple with conflicts and political issues involving countries like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan
 – which no doubt must be causing massive overloading of their respective memory banks.

Yet this would be a lame excuse for them forgetting about – or seeking to minimise – the existence and crucial importance of the letters exchanged on 14 April 2004 between President Bush and Israel’s then Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who died recently after languishing in a coma for seven years.

These letters enabled courageous and highly dangerous decisions being taken by Sharon to kick start President Bush’s stalled 2003 Road Map – whose goal had been to end the Jewish-Arab conflict by 2005.

President Bush's letter provided the catalyst – and the political justification – for Israel unilaterally evacuating the entire Jewish population of 8000 from Gaza and withdrawing Israel’s army totally from there – without any preconditions or undertakings being sought from the Palestinian Authority.

The Presidential letter set out the framework that Bush would support in negotiations between Israel and the PLO – conditions that Obama cannot possibly now discard as Kerry finalises his own framework agreement.

President Bush’s letter clearly – and unambiguously – assured Sharon that;

1. The borders of any Palestinian Arab State would not encompass the entire West Bank despite successive Arab leaders having demanded this outcome for the previous 37 years,

2. Jewish towns and villages in the West Bank would be incorporated into the borders of Israel

3. The Arabs would have to forego their demand to be given the right to allow millions of Arabs to emigrate to Israel and

4. Israel’s existence as a Jewish State would be non-negotiable

Bush's commitments to Sharon were approved – almost unanimously – by both the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

It didn't take too long however for these Congress-endorsed commitments to be downplayed by Bush and his advisors.

In an editorial published on 14 May 2008, former Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz revealed the extent of the American resistance to remaining bound by President Bush's 2004 letter following a meeting with Bush in the White House with a group of Israeli journalists:

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, has been known to minimise the significance of this four-year-old letter. Just last week, for instance, she told reporters that the 2004 letter “talked about realities at that time. And there are realities for both sides….

Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has also given briefings to the effect that Israel had tried to overstate the importance of a rather vague letter, which was issued at a time when Sharon was seeking to bolster support for the pullout from Gaza.

And in answering my question, Bush did not at first even realise that I was referring to the 2004 letter. Hadley, who was also in the Oval Office, had to prompt him. “Okay, the letters,” the president then said, remembering.”

This was far worse and more sinister than mere memory loss. An attempt was being made – as early as 2008 – to renege on America’s clear and unequivocal commitments given to Israel as the price for Israel’s total evacuation of Gaza.

Israel had already paid a high price relying on Bush’s Congress-endorsed letter. Gaza had become a de facto terrorist State – with Hamas firmly entrenched as the governing authority.

Israel had – since its evacuation of Gaza in 2005 – been subjected to a sustained barrage of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centres from Gaza by a bewildering variety of terrorist groups and sub-groups who would have had no chance of operating so freely from Gaza if the Israeli Army had remained there.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – who succeeded Sharon – had neither forgotten nor overlooked the critical significance of President Bush’s letter when agreeing to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in 2007.

At the international conference held in Annapolis in November 2007 to announce a breakthrough in the resumption of those negotiations, Olmert told Bush and the world leaders gathered there that:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

The subsequent failure of those negotiations can be directly attributed to the Palestinian Authority's refusal to countenance the Bush commitments made to Sharon.

 As Obama gets ready to approve Kerry's framework agreement, he and Kerry need to have their memory banks updated to remind them of the importance of honouring Bush's commitments.

Any attempt by Obama and Kerry to resile from or circumvent Bush’s Congress-endorsed commitments to Sharon will torpedo any prospects for success in the current negotiations – leaving Obama and Kerry with no one but themselves to blame for bringing the current negotiations to an ignominious end.

The idea that any American President would not consider himself bound by the written commitments of a former President – as endorsed by Congress – would undermine America's very democratic foundations.

Disavowing the Bush commitments would prejudice the integrity of American diplomacy world wide
 – ensuring any political decisions by the current administration would not be worth the paper they are written on.

Sharon has left behind a bitter pill – which Obama and Kerry must reluctantly swallow.

Congress will be there to make sure they do.'