Israel is a Rogue State

Photo by Gleicher Blickwinkel | CC BY 2.0

Photo by Gleicher Blickwinkel | CC BY 2.0

 

That Israel is a rogue state has long been beyond dispute in discerning company. In light of the recent revelation that an Israeli official, working for the country’s embassy in London, was plotting ways to “take down” various British politicians over their opposition to Israeli settlements and support for a Palestinian state, it is now becoming increasingly apparent within the mainstream. Or at least it should be given that this latest scandal comes as only the latest exposure of such nefarious activity on the part of a state that has long operated with scant regard for international law at home and overseas.

Indeed rather than a state operating in accordance with international law and diplomatic norms, Israel increasingly evinces the character of a rogue state making up its own rules and norms as it goes along. Whether the on-going illegal military occupation of the West Bank, the expansion of illegal Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land, or the siege of Gaza, which comes under rubric of collective punishment and is therefore illegal, we are talking here a country that believes it can act with impunity.

The Israeli official in question in this instance, Shai Masot, was secretly filmed during a meeting he attended a London restaurant with a British civil servant and former Conservative Party official, and a man he thought worked for the pro-Israel pressure group Labour Friends of Israel. This individual, known…

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