I didn't know about his issue until just now. I was immediately taken by ennui: as in what's this? more anti-semitism in the UK Labour Party? So, what else is new? Yawn. But it did lead to a couple of comments on the hypocrisy of the egregious UK Foreign Minister David Lammy, who was so much anti-Israel that he stopped defensive weapons going to a country fighting an existential battle.
There's "Why Israel Just BARRED ENTRY To Anti-Israel British MPs" by Ollie Anisfeld at J-TV.
Then the article in The Spectator, by Stephen Pollard, as below:
I suppose we should name it the ‘Lammy Doctrine’, after the Titan of global diplomacy we are so privileged to have as our Foreign Secretary. So many and varied are David Lammy’s achievements that it is difficult to keep up, but this weekend he added yet another to the list.
Responding to the decision of the Israeli immigration authorities to bar two Labour MPs from entry, he appeared to announce a new doctrine: that British MPs are allowed to go where they want, say what they like and behave as they wish, and no country on earth has the right to bar them from entering. And yet Britain can nonetheless bar whoever we want from wherever we want, whenever we want.
He didn’t put it quite like that, of course; Mr Lammy is obviously far too sophisticated to put it so bluntly. But as British citizens we should surely all be grateful for his reinterpretation of ‘Civis Britannicus sum’, the maxim of his nineteenth century predecessor Lord Palmerston. And if that means trampling over Israeli immigration law, so be it.
To recap: at the weekend, two Labour MPs were barred by the Israeli authorities from entering the country. According to the Israeli embassy, they declined to petition the court to appeal the decision and so they were deported and flown home to the UK. Their names need not bother us. They are identikit Labour MPs of a familiar strand for whom Israel is an evil country. They are ten a penny.
Cue outrage from Mr Lammy: ‘It is unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning that two British MPs on a parliamentary delegation to Israel have been detained and refused entry by the Israeli authorities… I have made clear to my counterparts in the Israeli government that this is no way to treat British Parliamentarians, and we have been in contact with both MPs tonight to offer our support.’
(Let’s ignore the reference to the MPs having been on a ‘parliamentary delegation’, which implies some sort of official visit. In fact the MPs were on a trip organised by the Council for Arab-British Understanding, a lobby group which has spent decades attacking Israel.)
Along with the Foreign Secretary, a series of Labour MPs and Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, joined in with outraged criticism that Israelis should dare to refuse entry to two MPs.
In her usual gloriously self-important manner, Dame Emily Thornberry informed the Israelis that they had been ‘badly advised’. It must be a source of immense relief to the Israelis that the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee is now willing to offer them better advice as to how to conduct their affairs. It will be a real gamechanger for Israeli security.
There is only one problem with all this: the sheer galaxy-bending hypocrisy of it.
Take Sir Chris Bryant, Minister of State for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries. Sir Chris said this yesterday, in response to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch pointing out the basic premise of national sovereignty that countries are allowed to control their borders and determine who they admit: ‘I think it’s more shocking that a putative leader of our country should choose to applaud another country detaining and deporting British MPs rather than stand by the UK’s elected representatives. What price free speech? What price democracy?’
Sir Chris is not lacking in self-regard. Self-awareness, on the other hand, seems not to be his greatest asset. In 2017 he proudly posted on Twitter that he had written to the Prime Minister ‘asking her to ban Donald Trump from entering the United Kingdom on account of his support for far-right groups in this country.’
Does Sir Chris think only Britain should be able to decide who is admitted to the country? Or does he think there is one law for people he agrees with and one law for those he doesn’t?
Then there is the Foreign Secretary himself, who in 2008 was part of the Labour government which barred Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin from entry as it would ‘not be conducive to the public good’. I do not recall Mr Lammy resigning in protest. Nor do I recall him objecting the following year when the government barred Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders from entry.
But above all this stands the issue of the ICC’s arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. One of Mr Lammy’s first acts as Foreign Secretary was to drop the UK’s joint action with Germany seeking to have the arrest warrant overturned. The warrant, as is clear to anyone who looks objectively at the issue, is the product of a deeply politicised court and is entirely without merit. But should the Israeli leader seek to come to the UK he would be arrested and extradited to the Hague.
In other words, the very same David Lammy who considers it an outrage that two MPs have been refused entry to Israel because they support a boycott of it, also considers it entirely right that the leader of Israel’s government should actually be arrested should he come to Britain.
This is now a full-blown diplomatic crisis between Britain and Israel – a matter that will be of almost no concern to Israel, given the behaviour of the current British government. It is, nonetheless, instructive – as an illustration of hypocrisy as a driving force in politics.
