The Labour Party — Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party –has called for the U.K to impose a total arms embargo on Israel. This would not be the first time the U.K. has imposed such an embargo on Israel. In the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, at the time of maximum peril to the Jews of Israel, with the nascent state invaded by the armies of five Arab states, Great Britain also imposed such an embargo. It was not alone. The United States also banned sending arms to the belligerents on either side. The most important weapons deliveries, including airplanes, for the Jews in 1947-49 came from Czechoslovakia.
The British, unlike the Americans, did not impose an arms embargo on both sides in 1948. Instead, they continued to supply arms to Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. More important, the British armed, trained, and provided officers, to the Arab Legion of Jordan. Under the overall command of General John Bagot Glubb, the Arab Legion was the most effective fighting force on the Arab side, and the only one that could claim a clear victory — at Latrun — over the Jews during the 1948 war. Even before the war was declared by the Arab states, the Arab Legion joined forces with local Arabs, who attacked the four Israeli settlements that made up the Etzzion bloc. The Jewish forces consisted of members of the Hagana militia and kibbutzniks. Of the 129 Haganah fighters and Jewish kibbutzniks who died during the defence of the settlement, Martin Gilbert states that fifteen were murdered on surrendering.
Controversy surrounds the responsibility and role of the Arab Legion in the killing of those who surrendered. The official Israeli version maintains that the kibbutz residents and Haganah soldiers were massacred by local Arabs and the Arab Legion of the Jordanian Army as they were surrendering. The Arab Legion version maintains that the Legion arrived too late to prevent the attack on the kibbutz by men from nearby Arab villages. The surrendering Jewish residents and fighters are said to have been assembled in a courtyard, only to be suddenly fired upon; it is said that many died on the spot, while most of those who managed to flee were hunted down and killed. Israel continues to insist that members of the British-commanded Arab Legion took part in the killing of those who had surrendered.
John Bagot Glubb was one of those old-style British Arabists — some called him a second Lawrence of Arabia — who went native in a big way, even able to converse with the Bedouin in their own dialects. When he was finally discharged by King Hussein in 1956 — Hussein wanted to totally “arabize” the Legion and show other Arabs that he was indeed Jordan’s ruler — Glubb Pasha retired to his home in Great Britain, and wrote a series of books “to dispel Western misconceptions and prejudices about the Arab world and Islam.” Delving deep into the past, he started that series in 1964 with ”The Great Arab Conquests,” a book on seventh-century Arabia where, he wrote, the Bedouins ”established the greatest empire in the world of their day.” A second book, ‘The Lost Centuries,” published in 1966, “traced the destiny of the Moslem empires from the 12th century to the European renaissance in the 15th.” A third book. “The Life and Times of Muhammad” again was an effort to correct cliches he thought had “distorted the image of the founder of Islam and his religion.” Glubb was a great admirer of the Arabs. He adopted two Palestinian Arab children. He also was an apologist for Islam. And the Arab Legion stood for all the military aid that the British lavished on the Arab side in that 1947-1949 conflict.
So Corbyn’s call for an arms embargo on Israel brings us back to the earliest days of the state. But now Israel has one of the most powerful armies in the world, is itself in the top ten of the world’s arms exporters, and in some areas of military technology — such as drones — is among the world leaders. Furthermore, while Israel does import a large amount of weaponry from the United Kingdom, there is nothing it receives from the U.K. that is not available elsewhere, albeit at a higher price. Israel is a good customer, and its expert use of the weapons it buys serves as a kind of advertisement for those weapons with other potential buyers. The amount of British sales to Israel has gone way up in the last three years: £20m worth of arms licensed in 2015, £86m in 2016, and £221m in 2017.
If Corbyn wants to put a total arms embargo on Israel, will he also call for an arms embargo on any other countries? One country buys 49% of all British arms exports — Saudi Arabia. On what grounds could Corbyn deny democratic Israel arms and yet continue to supply them to one of the world’s most repressive regimes, a state where Wahhabism is the official religion, where human rights hardly exist, where non-Muslim workers have no rights and often are treated as little better than slaves, where women have far fewer rights than do men, where public executions and public amputations are the norm, where a ruling dynasty helps itself to tens of billions of dollars of the nation’s wealth? How could Jeremy Corbyn conceivably justify continuing to supply such a country with weaponry? And what of the other major buyers of British arms that are dictatorships or despotisms? China, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Qatar, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Venezuela, Egypt, Bahrain are among them. Most are outright dictatorships; Venezuela and Pakistan hold “elections,” but there is so much fraud, intimidation, and corruption that these cannot be considered democracies in the Western sense. If any kind of morality is to be invoked in arms sales, then none of these countries ought to be supplied. Is Jeremy Corbyn ready to declare an embargo on all of these countries, or is he interested only in depriving Israel’s Jews of the wherewithal to defend themselves?
“The UK has consistently armed many of the most brutal and authoritarian regimes in the world, and a number have been invited to London to buy weapons,” said Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade. “These arms sales aren’t morally neutral, they are a clear sign of political and military support for these regimes.”
I suspect Smith was not talking about Israel, which is neither brutal nor authoritarian, but about Saudi Arabia, China, Venezuela, the Emirates, Kazakhstan. That’s not something Jeremy Corbyn wants to hear. But even if Smith meant to include Israel in his indictment — as supposedly “brutal” in its suppression of the Hamas-sponsored riots in Gaza — he would certainly be aghast at an arms embargo that targeted only that country.
Odious Truth says
“If Corbyn wants to put a total arms embargo on Israel, will he also call for an arms embargo on any other countries? One country buys 49% of all British arms exports — Saudi Arabia. ”
In fact, Corbyn has repeatedly called for a cessation of arms sales to Suadi Arabia: see here:-
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/09/24/575050/British-government-must-stop-arms-sales-to-Saudi-Arabia-Corbyn
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Jeremy Corbyn has, indeed, called for a cessation of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but it’s a very different kind of embargo from that he wants to impose on Israel. The embargo on the Saudis is meant to be temporary, to help bring the conflict in Yemen to an end. He has never said that he wants an embargo on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia no matter what. He has not objected to resuming such sales once the war in Yemen has ended. He could have have called for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, unrelated to the Yemeni conflict, to last indefinitely, but he did not.
With Israel it’s quite a different matter. He wants a total arms embargo on Israel, and there is nothing Israel can do that would cause Corbyn to end such an embargo.
[
Richard James says
Jeremy Corbyn has consistently proved that he is a terrorist sympathiser, god help us if this man ever becomes the UK Prime minister
mortimer says
Jeremy KKKorbyn wants Israel to be defenseless against bullies like Iran and its surrogate terrorist organizations as well as against Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood surrogates.
This would lead to the destruction of Israel as a form of genocide. Israel is a legally constituted state which KKKorbyn would like to destroy.
He is a devious crypto-Jew hater. The Nazis would have put him to use in the Holocaust.
Buraq says
Imposing a total arms embargo on Israel would have almost no effect. From Business Insider dated 2nd of May, 2018.
‘Israeli arms sales increased dramatically — by 41.5% — from 2016 to 2017, according to new figures released by the Defense Ministry on Wednesday, including a massive missile defense system sale to India.
Defense exports brought in $9.2 billion last year, compared to the $6.5 billion in 2016 and $5.7 billion the year before, according to the International Defense Cooperation Directorate at the Defense Ministry, known as SIBAT.’
The latest figures show that British arms sales to Israel run at around 450 million Pounds. And many of the items – like sniper rifles – could easily be replaced by US high-grade replacements.
Corbyn knows that! Therefore, his suggestion is just another bit of breast beating and howling to impress the fascist left monkeys and the Hamas, Al Qaeda baboons.
Paul says
They make most of their own weapons. World class tanks with high survivability, world leaders in drone technology.
Every red blooded male wants a UZI, well, this one does.
Corbyn is just posing for some Islamic brownie points.
Paul
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Yes: everything from Merkava tanks to Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Iron Dome defense, and the Steel Dome anti-tunnel project. And as you noted, Israel is a world leader in drone technology.
But Israel’s accomplishments in delaying Iran’s nuclear project helped not just Israel, but the entire West (as well as Saudi Arabia and the Emirates). The assassinations, seriatim, of four of Iran’s most important nuclear scientists (and the wounding of a fifth), in the middle of Teheran, followed by the Stuxnet worm that caused the self-destruction of 1,000 centrifuges — these are deeds of human and technological derring-do.
Furthermore, Israel has had to defend itself against Muslim terrorists for decades, and in that time has acquired unrivalled experience in detecting, and foiling, terrorist plots. It has an intelligence network that monitors Muslim terror groups, including those that are supplied with arms by iran. Think of how it has eliminated several of the most important terrorists in both Hamas and Hezbollah, some found in Syria and the others in the Gulf. Israel’s Information is shared with Western powers and, recently, with Saudi Arabia.
Older Canadian says
Well at least he is a honest man. Not even attempting to hide his agenda.
Phil Copson says
Leftists don’t care about human rights and never have done – the concept is just a convenient flag to wave to their gullible followers and a stick to beat their opponents with. The Labour Party has always been the natural home of those who admire totalitarianism and wish to emulate mass murderers, from Stalin-groupies like George Bernard Shaw, the Webbs, HG Wells etc years ago, to the current crop of vicious violent haters in Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet, who openly admire Mao Tse-Tung, Hamas, Hizbollah, the IRA, Castro etc etc.
From Tony Blair’s “New Labour” to Corbyn’s “New Nazi Party” in under 10 years – way to go Jezza….I don’t think.
Westman says
Can Jeremy Corbyn be so naive as to believe that a UK arms embargo will make a difference or that Israel is actually dependent on UK manufactured weapons? Israel is the nation that purchases US weapons, improves them, and is fully capable of manufacturing any weapon bought from the UK.
£221m($307m) is peanuts in the defense industry. How many F-35A fighters will that buy? Almost 2. Corbyn’s embargo is symbolic and will hurt the UK weapons industry far more than Israel which can buy from the US or replace them with domestic manufacture. As long as the US is an ally to Israel, such Corbyn posturing is just this – a grab for Arab voters.
James Lincoln says
The United States is quite capable of supplying Israel with all of the military arms required to augment their own weaponry without the help of the UK.
This embargo will not help the UK or “punish” Israel.
Guy Forester says
I suspect the Germans, French, Dutch, Swedes, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and the US would be more than happy to see what could be sold to replace any UK armaments.
Tom says
As I have previously stated, Corbyn is a snake in the grass who will not only speak out of both sides of his mouth, but will switch allegiances at the drop of a hat when it suits his political agenda.
He is what used to be called a Quisling traitor. The one who smiles at you while putting his hand in your pocket to steal your wallet and stabs you in the back while giving you a friendly pat on the shoulder.
Better an avowed and open enemy at the gates, than the slimy, treacherous smiling traitor within.
Will Scott says
Hear, hear!
Maran says
I hope the traitorous Corbyn never gets the opportunity to have a ‘say’ with regards to Israel.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.
Re comment by KWAGNER: I believe the majority of our country would not agree with Corbyn.
Remember: We have to consider our options in relation to Brexit, etcetera.
However, we do need to remain prayerful in relation to what is happening in our country.
We do not have President Trump, unfortunately.
Edward Bellamy says
The uk now depends on Isreal for a new Air Defence system, would Corbyn cancel this.
R Russell says
Edward
I do believe he would.
Also if he cancels the weapon exports he will bring unemployment, increase the benefits bill and take the country further in to debt. He is dangerous.
He said reluctantly he would keep Trident, but refused to say whether he would press the button.
He is driven by anti-Semitic marxism
R Russell says
Looking at his eyes, I do believe I see something!
Will Scott says
The article claims that “The British, UNLIKE THE AMERICANS, did not impose an arms embargo on both sides in 1948” [emphasis mine]. But, in 1947, then-Secretary of State George C. Marshal imposed a total arms embargo on the Middle East. He had to have known that the Arabs were already well armed and that only Israel would be harmed.
He also must have realized that he was contributing heavily to a likely genocide of the 600,000 Jews then in (so-called) Palestine.
Roosevelt and the State Department preferred that there be NO Jewish State in the land of Israel.
Larry says
Great. Israel can buy whatever they need from the USA. That’s more jobs for us.