{"id":132889,"date":"2014-07-23T22:42:51","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T22:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=132889"},"modified":"2014-07-23T22:42:51","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T22:42:51","slug":"hypocrisy-british-mps-gaza-tweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/hypocrisy-british-mps-gaza-tweet\/","title":{"rendered":"Hypocrisy over British MP\u2019s Gaza tweet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #111111;\"><em>Jonathan Cook<\/em><br \/>\n<em><a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #111111;\">It seems we expect our politicians to be more loyal to\u00a0Israel than Israel\u2019s\u00a0own prime ministers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #111111;\">David Ward, a member\u00a0of the British parliament for\u00a0the Lib Dem party, which is part\u00a0of\u00a0the ruling coalition, has upset his bosses with a tweet. Here it is:<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #111111;\"><a style=\"color: #022080;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Screen-Shot-2014-07-24-at-00.26.49.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1258\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Screen-Shot-2014-07-24-at-00.26.49.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"457\" height=\"235\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #111111;\">Ward was soon in hot water.\u00a0Douglas Alexander, the opposition\u00a0foreign\u00a0minister from the supposedly leftwing Labour Party, called\u00a0Ward\u2019s comment \u201cvile\u201d, and the Board of Deputies \u2014 a kind of weak-kneed British version of AIPAC \u2014 said the Lib Dems should expel Ward.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #111111;\">At first, Ward offered what was\u00a0described as a \u201cpartial apology\u201d, stating the mind-boggling obvious:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: #666666;\"><p>The comment was about understanding why people are firing rockets. I am not condoning that. In fact, yesterday in the House of Commons I condemned it. I\u2019m saying I understand why people are so desperate that they are doing it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: #111111;\">But then, under threat of disciplinary action, he was forced to\u00a0issue a more craven apology:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: #666666;\"><p>I utterly condemn the violence on both sides in Israel and Gaza. I condemn the actions of Hamas, and my comments were not in support of firing rockets into Israel. If they gave the opposite impression, I apologise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: #111111;\">So what would Ehud Barak, a former prime minister of Israel and much-decorated war hero, make of Ward\u2019s comment about firing rockets? Well, the Board of Deputies might be surprised to learn that he would wholeheartedly agree with the British MP.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #111111;\">Here is what Barak\u00a0said in an interview in 1998:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: #666666;\"><p>If I were a Palestinian, I would have joined a terrorist organisation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"color: #111111;\"><a style=\"color: #022080;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2014\/jul\/23\/lib-dem-david-ward-apology-gaza-tweet\" target=\"_blank\">www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2014\/jul\/23\/lib-dem-david-ward-apology-gaza-tweet<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jonathan Cook<\/a> is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonathan Cook RINF Alternative News It seems we expect our politicians to be more loyal to\u00a0Israel than Israel\u2019s\u00a0own prime ministers. David Ward, a member\u00a0of the British parliament for\u00a0the Lib Dem party, which is part\u00a0of\u00a0the ruling coalition, has upset his bosses with a tweet. Here it is: Ward was soon in hot water.\u00a0Douglas Alexander, the opposition\u00a0foreign\u00a0minister [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-132889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}