The
Real Threat We Face
In Britain Is Blair
By John Pilger
19 August, 2006
Johnpilger.com
If the alleged plot to attack
airliners flying from London is true -- remember the lies that led to
the invasion of Iraq, and to the raid on a "terrorist cell"
in east London -- then one person ultimately is to blame, as he was
on 7 July last year. They were Blair's bombs then; who doesn't believe
that 52 Londoners would be alive today had the Prime Minister refused
to join Bush in his piratical attack on Iraq? A parliamentary committee
has said as much, as have MI5, the Foreign Office, Chatham House and
the polls.
A senior Metropolitan Police officer, Paul Stephenson, claims the Heathrow
plot "was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale."
The most reliable independent surveys put civilian deaths in Iraq, as
a result of the invasion by Bush and Blair, above 100,000. The difference
between the Heathrow scare and Iraq is that mass murder on an unimaginable
scale has actually happened in Iraq.
By any measure of international law, from Nuremberg to the Geneva accords,
Blair is a major prima facie war criminal. The charges against him grow.
The latest is his collusion with the Israeli state in its deliberate,
criminal attacks on civilians. While Lebanese children were being buried
beneath Israeli bombs, he refused to condemn their killers or even to
call on them to desist. That a ceasefire was negotiated owed nothing
to him, except its disgraceful delay. Not only is it clear that Blair
knew about Israel's plans but he alluded approvingly to the ultimate
goal: an attack on Iran. Read his neurotic speech in Los Angeles, in
which he described an "arc of extremism", stretching from
Hezbollah to Iran. He gave not a hint of the arc of injustice and lawlessness
of Israel's occupation of Palestine and its devastation of Lebanon.
Neither did he attempt to counter the bigotry now directed at all Arabs
by the west and by the racist regime in Tel Aviv. His references to
"values" are code for a crusade against Islam.
Blair's extremism, like Bush's, is rooted in the righteous violence
of rampant Messianic power. It is completely at odds with modern, multicultural,
secular Britain. He shames this society. Not so much distrusted these
days as reviled, he endangers and betrays us in his vassal's affair
with the religious fanatic in Washington and the Biblo-ethnic cleansers
in Israel. Unlike him, the Israelis at least are honest. "We must
use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting
of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population,"
said Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. Half a century
later, Ariel Sharon said, "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to
explain to public opinion... that there can be no Zionism, colonization
or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation
of their lands." The current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told
the US Congress: "I believe in our people's eternal and historic
right to this entire land [his emphasis]."
Blair has backed this barbarism enthusiastically. In 2001, the Israeli
press disclosed that he had secretly given the "green light"
to Sharon's bloody invasion of the West Bank, whose advance plans he
was shown. Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon -- is it any wonder the attacks
of 7 July and this month's Heathrow scare happened? The CIA calls this
"blowback". On 12 August, The Guardian published an editorial
("The challenge for us all"), which waffled about how "a
significant number of young people have been alienated from the [Muslim]
culture," but spent not a word on how Blair's Middle East disaster
was the source of their alienation. A polite pretence is always preferred
in describing British policy, elevating "misguided" and "inappropriate"
and suppressing criminal behaviour.
Go into Muslim areas and you will be struck by a fear reminiscent of
the anti-Semitic nightmare of the Jews in the 1930s, and by an anger
generated almost entirely by "a perceived double standard in the
foreign policy of western governments," as the Home Office admits.
This is felt deeply by many young Asians who, far from being "alienated
from their culture," believe they are defending it. How much longer
are we all prepared to put up with the threat to our security coming
from Downing Street? Or do we wait for the "unimaginable"?
John Pilger is
an internationally renowned investigative journalist and documentary
filmmaker. His newest book is Freedom Next Time (Bantam Press, June
2006). Visit John Pilger's website: www.johnpilger.com.