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BLT butty aside, though, I have delayed sending my invitation to Mr Ed because since then, our man has got something else between his teeth: Israel. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse. Just when the anti-Semitism in France, Denmark, Norway, Hungary is mounting savagely, just when our cemeteries and synagogues and shops are once again under threat. Just when the virulence against a country defending itself, against 4,000 rockets and 32 tunnels inside its borders, as it has every right to do under the Geneva Convention, had been swept aside by the real pestilence of IS, in steps Mr Miliband to demand that the government recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. 

Cue wild applause from the unions, smiles of approbation from the far Left — and shock horror from the Jewish Board of Deputies. Why would he do this? And why now? Many people on the Left and the Right would like to see a two-state solution if it means peace and mutual respect. I am one of them. Any future Palestinian state will be entirely free of Jews, of course. Yet the Jewish state is labelled "apartheid" with 1.7 million Arabs in residence and represented in parliament.

(1) It is a historical fact that the Arab states refused such an offer in 1937, 1948, 2000 and 2008. They have yet to accept Israel's right to exist and their constitutions and broadcasts to this day extol its destruction. 

(2) How can you recognise a state until its borders are decided?

(3) If you recognise a state you can officially arm that state. Already billions of pounds have been allotted to rebuild Gaza. Ha! Rebuild the tunnels and reequip the arsenal. Oh, how the propaganda has worked on these clever, concerned people again and again and again. If Hamas and Fatah cared one iota for the Palestinians, might they not have built schools and hospitals and streets for their people the first time the billions poured in and were converted into weaponry and hotel suites in Paris and citizens were used as human shields?

I'm an actress, Ed, and I am often commended for my timing. Frankly, my dear, yours sucks. The world is exploding around us. Isis is beheading our civilians while raping and pillaging across Syria and Iraq. Presidents Putin and Assad are playing such heavy-handed games that we don't know which rebel group to support. Hong Kong may be about to see a replay of Tiananmen. Islamist terrorism in every spot on the globe — and if one Jew had been responsible for any of those bombings, there would, I am afraid to say, have been another Kristallnacht. At this point in our history you choose to back these footling backbenchers in this ludicrous piece of propaganda?

And tell me this, Mr Miliband, sir, where are the pictures of the civilian dead from the allied bombings over Iraq? On which front pages can I see them? The daily count of dead and maimed babies? The howling mothers and screaming old women we saw every day, five times a day, from Gaza? May I remind you that no one is tunnelling into Dover or sending rockets into Coventry, yet we seem to have every right to bomb the living daylights out of Iraq. Again. Conclusion: one law for the Israelis, another law for the rest of the world. Plus ça change.

So, come election day, I shall give my vote to another party. Almost any other party. Until my party is once more led by mensches.

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amcdonald
November 3rd, 2014
8:11 PM
Zizek claims the scum of the earth Isis mafias actually feel inferior to (and in)the West. A cartoon can drive them nuts,women reject them so they decide to rape and murder women, those who flock to join Isis are the thickest and sickest mugs and sadists on the planet. Hamas are Isis allies who want to destroy Israel. Israel has every right to destroy Hamas. Israeli Intelligence are like Winston Churchill and his War Cabinet against the Nazis.

douglas redmayne
November 3rd, 2014
7:11 PM
I wonder whether Maureen Lipman has a house worth more than £1 million and this is just an excuse to hide greed?

Anon Mouse
November 3rd, 2014
10:11 AM
I am also a disillusioned labour supporter of some 45 years who cannot vote for a party that gives any support to a so-called state whose antisemitic propaganda output Goebbels would have been proud. So thank you Ms Lipman for articulating much of what I feel.

barney rubble
November 3rd, 2014
9:11 AM
did she really have not a word to say about the 2000 Palestinians killed or about Israel's settlements. Does she really not know there had been very few rockets into Israel for years until Israel started air strikes on Gaza this year. Its hard not to feel contempt for Lipman with her latest wipe Palestine off the map rant

deekay
November 2nd, 2014
9:11 PM
The plural of mensch is not mensches it is menschen.

amcdonald
November 2nd, 2014
8:11 PM
An excellent article by Maureen Lipman. Are mensches permitted in mainstream politics? Israel`s enemies are the enemies of life, civilisation and culture.

Anonymous
November 2nd, 2014
2:11 PM
Hear Hear, at last someone talking sense and facts!

LaPoint
November 2nd, 2014
12:11 PM
Martel Tamerlane Does it mean that Palestinians had no right for self-determination? On the other hand, does it mean that the right was given to immigrants, who had never seen Palestine?

A foreigner
November 2nd, 2014
4:11 AM
Wait a minute. An actress known only for playing Jewish mothers in TV ads? Wow, that's stretching the truth some. I looked Lipman up and found that she's an extremely popular actress in the theater, movies an TV in Britain. And she has a CBE! I, for one, am impressed.

Peresphone
November 1st, 2014
10:11 PM
Good lord what is wrong with you people? israel has just committed war crimes against a true Semitic people the indigenous Palestinians and you would deny them a free homeland. AND, this is not a Jewish issue- many decent Jewish people around our world are against israel's crimes- it is a human issue. Anyone who supports an entity that drops one tonne bombs and chemical weapons on 1.8 trapped men, women and children are severely lacking in humanity, bordering on sociopathology. You may have a powerful unprincipled lobby group but you are now in the minority of world citizens.

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