U.S. Military-Industrial Complex Needs War

 

Biden’s Message to NATO Summit: US Has Sacred Obligation to Article 5 War Clause

by Rick Rozoff Posted on June 13, 2021Categories News

Voice of America Sunday ran a story about the tenor and theme of President Joe Biden’s presentation at tomorrow’s NATO summit in Brussels with the headline Biden to Reassure Allies of US Commitment to NATO Mutual Defense Clause. In the report it cites a pledge Biden made in an address to American Air Force service members at the Royal Air Force Mildenhall base on June 9: “In Brussels, I will make it clear that the United States’ commitment to our NATO Alliance and Article 5 is rock solid. It’s a sacred obligation that we have under Article 5.” Today the White House posted an online fact sheet on the summit which contained in its opening paragraph this stark statement: “During the Summit, the President will reaffirm the enduring Transatlantic bond through NATO and underscore the United States’ ironclad commitment to Article 5 – an attack on one is an attack on all and will be met with a collective response.”

In the speech he also celebrated the fact that the U.S. and his host country, the United Kingdom, were founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He failed to add they’re both nuclear powers and have fought together in NATO’s wars in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya. NATO was characterized by the American commander-in-chief as “the strongest military and political alliance in the history of the world,” adding, “that’s not hyperbole.” Both points rare instances of veracity from him. NATO in fact is unique in a manner that cannot be exaggerated. It is unique in the following ways:

• it is the only military alliance in the world
• it is the longest-lasting military bloc in the modern history of the world, this year marking its 72nd anniversary
• it is the largest military bloc ever, with 30 members and 40 partners on all six inhabited continents (up from 16 members and no partners 30 years ago)
• it maintains military relations with as many more nations, including the 55-nation African Union and Troop Contributing Countries from the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America that served under its command in Afghanistan
• it has waged war in three continents (Yugoslavia in Europe, Afghanistan in Asia and Libya in Africa)
• it is the only military alliance to have ever included more than one nuclear power (the U.S., Britain and France) and to openly proclaim itself a nuclear alliance
• it is the only military alliance that has defined outer space as an operational domain as well as air, land, sea and cyberspace, and that has just opened a Space Centre (in Germany)

There are several other aspects of NATO and its activities that are unprecedented in scope and nature. Not the least important of which is its Article 5 mutual military assistance provision, the essence of which is:

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them…will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

There is no greater threat to peace, to world peace in the nuclear age, than for a military alliance of 30 nations (and growing) to be prepared to go to war (including against nuclear powers) at the request of any of its member states.

It is that collective defense obligation that Biden has focused on since taking office in January and that he will highlight at tomorrow’s thirty-nation summit. It is in fact a central theme, arguably the main one, of his foreign policy.

In his virtual address to the annual Munich Security Conference in February he said:

“We continue to support the goal of a Europe whole and free and at peace. The United States is fully committed to our NATO Alliance, and I welcome Europe’s growing investment in the military capabilities that enable our shared defense.

“You know, to me and to the United States, and to us, we’ll keep article – we’ll keep faith with Article 5. It’s a guarantee. An attack on one is an attack on all. That is our unshakable vow….”

In an opinion piece in the Washington Post on June 5, Biden wrote (or had attributed to him):

“As new technologies reshape our world in fundamental ways, exposing vulnerabilities like ransomware attacks and creating threats such as invasive AI-driven surveillance, the democracies of the world must together ensure that our values govern the use and development of these innovations – not the interests of autocrats.

“Those shared democratic values are the foundation of the most successful alliance in world history. In Brussels, at the NATO summit, I will affirm the United States’ unwavering commitment to Article 5 and to ensuring our alliance is strong in the face of every challenge, including threats like cyberattacks on our critical infrastructure.”

Dividing the world into NATO allies, partners and affiliates against the four nations that Washington and Brussels have branded autocrats, authoritarians and threats to the rules-based international order – Russia, China, Iran and North Korea (now five with diminutive Belarus) – is being done in the name of a global Manichean struggle between democracy (us) and autocracies (them). At the Mildenhall air base Biden also said:

“I believe we’re at an inflection point in world history – the moment where it falls to us to prove that democracies will not just endure, but they will excel as we rise to seize the enormous opportunities of a new age.

“We have to discredit those who believe that the age of democracy is over, as some of our fellow nations believe. We have to expose as false the narrative that decrees of dictators can match the speed and scale of the 21st [century] challenges.”

And after offering obligatory diplomatic platitudes about preferring to get along with Russia (if it would only change its ways; all its ways), he canceled out that message with these assurances:

“But I’ve been clear: The United States will respond in a robust and meaningful way when the Russian government engages in harmful activities. We’ve already demonstrated that. I’m going to communicate that there are consequences [for violating] the sovereignty of democracies in the United States and Europe and elsewhere.

“I’m going to be clear that the Transatlantic Alliance will remain vital – a vital source of strength for the UK, Europe, and the United States. And I’m going to make sure there’s no doubt as to whether the United States will rise in defense of our most deeply held values and our fundamental interest.”

A European and ultimately a global crusade by history’s most formidable military bloc to make the world safe for democracy in the face of tyrants, despots, autocrats, dictators and authoritarians – most bearing Russian surnames.

The U.S. chargé d’affaires at NATO headquarters (Biden is yet to name an ambassador), Douglas Jones, further clarified U.S. international military priorities in recently stating that while NATO needs to confront challenges presented by China, Russia remains the “most immediate threat to the common security of the allies.”

Speaking to Euronews, Jones confirmed that Biden’s main message to his 29 allies at the NATO summit will concentrate on “recommitting the United States to NATO and expressing the iron-clad commitment of the United States to Article 5.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking recently in the U.S. at an Atlantic Council event, asserted this concerning alleged cyberattacks of the sort regularly attributed to Russia:

 “In a way it doesn’t matter whether it’s a kinetic attack or a cyberattack, we will assess as allies whether it meets the thresholds for triggering Article 5. It sends a message that we regard cyberattacks as seriously as any other attack.” 

For all its assertions that it is a political-military alliance, NATO is a military bloc with Article 5 as its bedrock.

Rick Rozoff is a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum.

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/06/13/bidens-message-to-nato-summit-us-has-sacred-obligation-to-article-5-war-clause/

What America Taught the Nazis

 CULTURE

What America Taught the Nazis

In the 1930s, the Germans were fascinated by the global leader in codified racism—the United States.

By Ira Katznelson

NOVEMBER 2017 ISSUE

There was no more extravagant site for Third Reich political theater than the spectacular parade grounds, two large stadiums, and congress hall in Nuremberg, a project masterminded by Albert Speer. From 1933 to 1938, he choreographed massive rallies associated with the annual conference of the Nazi Party, assemblies made famous by Leni Riefenstahl’s stunning documentaries of 1933 and 1935, The Victory of Faith and Triumph of the Will. Nuremberg was the setting for the September 1935 “Party Rally of Freedom,” at which a special session of the Reichstag passed, by acclamation, legislation that disqualified Jews as Reich citizens with political rights, forbade them to marry or have sex with persons identified as racial Germans, and prohibited any display by Jews of national colors or the new national flag, a banner with a swastika.

Just eight days after the Reich Citizenship Law, the Law on the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, and the Reich Flag Law were formally proclaimed by Adolf Hitler, 45 Nazi lawyers sailed for New York under the auspices of the Association of National Socialist German Jurists. The trip was a reward for the lawyers, who had codified the Reich’s race-based legal philosophy. The announced purpose of the visit was to gain “special insight into the workings of American legal and economic life through study and lectures,” and the leader of the group was Ludwig Fischer. As the governor of the Warsaw District half a decade later, he would preside over the brutal order of the ghetto.

Princeton

Every day brings fresh reminders that liberal and illiberal democracy can entwine uncomfortably, a timely context for James Q. Whitman’s Hitler’s American Model, which examines how the Third Reich found sustenance for its race-based initiatives in American law. Upon docking, the Germans attended a reception organized by the New York City Bar Association. Everyone in the room would have known about the recent events in Nuremberg, yet the quest by leading Nazi jurists to learn from America’s legal and economic systems was warmly welcomed.

Whitman, a professor at Yale Law School, wanted to know how the United States, a country grounded in such liberal principles as individual rights and the rule of law, could have produced legal ideas and practices “that seemed intriguing and attractive to Nazis.” In exploring this apparent incongruity, his short book raises important questions about law, about political decisions that affect the scope of civic membership, and about the malleability of Enlightenment values.

Not even South Africa had a set of relevant race laws as developed as those in the U.S.

Pushing back against scholarship that downplays the impact in Nazi Germany of the U.S. model of legal racism, Whitman marshals an array of evidence to support the likelihood “that the Nuremberg Laws themselves reflect direct American influence.” As race law’s global leader, Whitman stresses, America provided the most obvious point of reference for the September 1933 Preußische Denkschrift, the Prussian Memorandum, written by a legal team that included Roland Freisler, soon to emerge as the remarkably cruel president of the Nazi People’s Court. American precedents also informed other crucial Nazi texts, including the National Socialist Handbook for Law and Legislation of 1934–35, edited by the future governor-general of Poland, Hans Frank, who was later hung at Nuremberg. A pivotal essay in that volume, Herbert Kier’s recommendations for race legislation, devoted a quarter of its pages to U.S. legislation—which went beyond segregation to include rules governing American Indians, citizenship criteria for Filipinos and Puerto Ricans as well as African Americans, immigration regulations, and prohibitions against miscegenation in some 30 states. No other country, not even South Africa, possessed a comparably developed set of relevant laws.

Especially significant were the writings of the German lawyer Heinrich Krieger, “the single most important figure in the Nazi assimilation of American race law,” who spent the 1933–34 academic year in Fayetteville as an exchange student at the University of Arkansas School of Law. Seeking to deploy historical and legal knowledge in the service of Aryan racial purity, Krieger studied a range of overseas race regimes, including contemporary South Africa, but discovered his foundation in American law. His deeply researched writings about the United States began with articles in 1934, some concerning American Indians and others pursuing an overarching assessment of U.S. race legislation—each a precursor to his landmark 1936 book, Das Rassenrecht in den Vereingten Staaten (“Race Law in the United States”).

Whitman’s “smoking gun” is the transcript of a June 5, 1934, conference of leading German lawyers gathered to exchange ideas about how best to operationalize a racist regime. The record reflects how the most extreme among them, who relied on Krieger’s synoptic scholarship, were especially drawn to American legal codes based on white supremacy. The main conceptual idea was Freisler’s. Race, he argued, is a political construction. In both America and Germany, the importance and meaning of race for the most part had been determined less by scientific realities or social conventions than by political decisions enshrined in law.

But even indisputable evidence of the Germans’ intense interest in American models doesn’t clinch a formative role for U.S. racial law, as Whitman himself is careful to acknowledge. After all, Nazism’s intellectual and political leaders may well have utilized American examples merely to make more legitimate the grotesque designs they already planned to pursue. In any case, answering the question of cross-national influence is ultimately less important than Whitman’s other goal, which is to examine the status of racial hierarchy in the United States through Nazi eyes. “What the history presented in this book demands that we confront,” he writes, “are questions not about the genesis of Nazism, but about the character of America.”

His disturbing report thus takes its place within the larger history of the United States as a polity founded on principles of human equality, Enlightenment reason, and constitutional limits on state power, yet molded by the prodigious evil and long-term consequences of chattel slavery based on race. To read Hitler’s American Model is to be forced to engage with the stubborn fact that during the 1933–45 period of the Third Reich, roughly half of the Democratic Party’s members in Congress represented Jim Crow states, and neither major party sought to curtail the race laws so admired by German lawyers and judges.

How to understand the relationship between race and democracy has been a pressing question ever since the United States was founded. The deep tension between the two—summed up in the irony of a plantation named Equality in Port Tobacco, Maryland, filled with slaves and owned by Michael Jenifer Stone, one of the six members of that state’s delegation to the House of Representatives in the First Federal Congress—puzzled the great student of American equality Alexis de Tocqueville. In Democracy in America, published precisely a century before the Nuremberg Laws, he began a discussion of “the three races that inhabit the territory of the United States” by announcing that these topics “are like tangents to my subject, being American, but not democratic, and my main business has been to describe democracy.”

Whitman invokes the work of political scientists who, in the separate-spheres spirit of Tocqueville, distinguish what they call a white-supremacist order from a liberal and egalitarian order. But his own book shows that such a division is too clear-cut. We must come to terms with race in America in tandem with considerations of democracy. Whitman’s history does not expose the liberal tradition in the United States as merely a sham, as many of the Third Reich’s legal theorists intimated when they highlighted patterns of black and American Indian subordination. Rather, he implicitly challenges readers to consider when and how, under what conditions and in which domains, the ugly features of racism have come most saliently to the fore in America’s liberal democracy. Conversely, we might ask, when and why have those features been repressed, leading to more-equal access for racial minorities to physical space, cultural regard, material life, and civic membership?

Liberal-democratic ideas and institutions in America, unlike in Hitler’s regime, have always been both vulnerable and resistant to racist exclusions. Although the United States entered the 1930s as the globe’s most established racialized order, the pathways from Nuremberg and Jim Crow unfolded very differently, one culminating in mass genocide, the other, after much struggle, in civil-rights achievements. Yet none of these gains, not even the presidency of an African American, has taken issues of race and citizenship off the political agenda. Current debates over both sharply remind us that positive outcomes are not guaranteed. The very rules of the democratic game—elections, open media, and political representation—create persisting possibilities for racial demagoguery, fear, and exclusion. As Freisler and other Third Reich jurists understood all too well, racial ideas and racist policies are profound products of political decisions.

Ira Katznelson is a professor of political science and history at Columbia University. He is the author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/what-america-taught-the-nazis/540630/

It's Irrelevant that Boris is Incompetent

 

Boris Johnson Is a Terrible Leader. It Doesn’t Matter.

June 11, 2021

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and President Biden in Cornwall, England, on Thursday. Despite all the havoc Mr. Johnson’s Conservatives have caused, the party is in a stronger position than ever.Credit...Pool photo by Toby Melville

By Samuel Earle

Mr. Earle is a journalist who writes often about Britain’s politics and culture.

LONDON — Boris Johnson, Britain’s freewheeling, clownish prime minister, is about to play host.

On June 11, the day after a private meeting with President Biden, Mr. Johnson is scheduled to welcome other Group of 7 leaders to Cornwall, on the southwestern coast of England, to discuss climate change, the global pandemic recovery and the retreat of liberal democracy around the world.

Yet Mr. Johnson may have other things on his mind. Over the past few months, a series of scandals and allegations has put the prime minister under unusual pressure. There have been accusations of corruption, reports of bitter rivalries on his closest team and, to top it off, explosive testimony from his former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, that laid responsibility for the handling of the pandemic in Britain — where over 125,000 people have died of Covid-19 — squarely at Mr. Johnson’s door. Story by story, scandal by scandal, Mr. Johnson has been exposed as a slapdash, venal, incompetent leader.

But it doesn’t seem to matter. The Conservatives, despite the controversy, are still comfortably ahead in the polls — and even managed to defeat the opposition Labour Party in a recent by-election, claiming the northeastern constituency of Hartlepool for the first time. And Mr. Johnson, for all the outrage and acrimony, can greet his fellow global leaders in a spirit of triumph. With healthy approval ratings and at the helm of a party boasting an 80-seat majority, his power is assured.

Further Reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/boris-johnson-g7-biden.html

Primitive Jewish Tribalism

EDITOR'S DESK

The Sad Descent From ‘Members Of The Tribe’ To Tribalism

Given such deep divisions one might ask: What Jewish community?

By GARY ROSENBLATT October 25, 2017, 8:49 am  

• 
  

President Trump: Deepening split in Jewish community? Getty Images.

Andrew Sullivan’s disturbingly insightful essay in New York Magazine on how America has become a tribal society in recent years (“America Wasn’t Built For Humans,” Sept. 19) describes two distinct segments “fighting not just to advance their own side but to provoke, condemn, and defeat the other.” I realized while reading it that one could just as well substitute “Jewish community” for “America” and his thesis would still ring true.

Of the two tribes Sullivan writes about, one is mostly white, living in rural areas, clinging to religious faith, strongly nationalist and voting Republican, and the other is made up of racial minorities and white liberals mostly found in urban areas on the two coasts, primarily secular, with a global outlook and voting Democratic. The gap between the two is widening as is the intensity of their contempt for each other, he asserts.

Much of Sullivan’s essay describes how the common bonds that held American society together have frayed, as evidenced by the collapse of bipartisanship in Washington, replaced by a zero-sum political climate where the parties try to negate the legislation passed by their opponents.

He also explains how “immersion in tribal loyalty makes the activities of another tribe not just alien but close to incomprehensible,” with tribalists responding to criticism not by reflecting on one’s “own actions or assumptions but instantly point[ing] to the same flaw in his [or her] enemy.”

The Jewish community, mirroring the larger society, has been plagued by the same kind of toxic divisions over religious and political issues, spilling over to attitudes toward the government in Jerusalem and, more recently, Donald Trump. On one side are the older, politically conservative and often religiously observant Jews, on the other is the majority Jewish population of younger and less observant and secular Jews who are political liberals.

The latter group, believed to be as much as 90 percent of the Jewish community, lists social justice, abortion access, gay marriage, universal healthcare, gun control and public school education as key issues for them. Some have described Reform temples as “the Democratic Party at prayer.”

The more politically conservative Jews care deeply about tuition credits to offset the high cost of a day school education, and support a government in Jerusalem that many of their fellow Jews fear has too little respect for democratic principles, and leans too far to the right in the sway of the religious parties and Jews living in West Bank communities.

Readers of The Jewish Week no doubt see Letters to the Editor that all too often characterize adherents of opposing religious streams as either too parochial or porously inauthentic. In our most recent issue, letter-writers wondered why Reform Jews care about praying at the Western Wall since the movement’s liturgy doesn’t call for the return of animal sacrifices. And we receive a steady dose of letters accusing Orthodox Jews of clannishness and unethical behavior, applying negative stereotypes to “the Orthodox” (as if they were a unified movement), who are portrayed as intolerant and discriminatory for adhering to fundamental religious beliefs, including the separation of sexes in religious roles or opposition to interfaith marriages.

(The dilemma for an editor is whether to publish letters expressing various forms of bias against fellow Jews. Should such letters be published, disturbing as they are, because they reflect common sentiment, or should offensive letters simply be tossed?)

Clearly, the lines are drawn between our two Jewish tribes, and civility has long been abandoned. The Iran nuclear deal two years ago exposed a new level of vitriol in our community, each side accusing the other of hastening Israel’s demise. The higher the stakes, the nastier the behavior. The goal is no longer to persuade the other side, but to marginalize, if not demonize, one’s fellow Jews.

Blogs and online comments allow for hateful bile to reach countless readers. And people seem increasingly eager to join the fray. Just this week, JTA reported on a Conservative rabbi in Atlanta who felt the need to apologize to his congregants for a Rosh HaShanah sermon that some said was too critical of the political left. Rabbi Shalom Lewis’ talk called out the Women’s March, Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ rights movement for their pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel elements. Rabbi Lewis told JTA he stood by his remarks — “as Americans and Jews, we must pick sides,” he said — but regretted that he had not made clear he was referring specifically to the radical left.

In much of the Orthodox community, this story would only be newsworthy if congregants complained that their rabbis’ sermons didn’t slam these movements.

The fact that a vocal minority of fervently pro-Israel Jews, many of them observant, view even domestic politics through the lens of support for Israel explains why they support Trump’s presidency in such high numbers. For them, Trump is, most importantly, not Obama. He shows empathy and support for the Israeli government and prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that Obama often clashed with, and he has cast Iran, once more, in the role of evil antagonist to be confronted, not wooed.

Liberal Jews, by contrast, are among Trump’s biggest critics, focusing on his boorish behavior, narcissism, nationalism and penchant for telling lies.

No community is as divided over Trump as ours.

Particularly disturbing is that Israel, once the great connector among American Jews, has become the great divider, and a community obsessed with its shrinking numbers seems all too ready to jettison those among us with whom we disagree.

The two extremes of our community are growing — the unaffiliated and the ultra-Orthodox — while the center is aging. It’s hard to see where common ground is when we can’t agree on “who is a Jew?” And there are major divisions on the most basic of values: Democratic principles vs. authoritarian ones; religious pluralism vs. religious coercion; and Israel existentially threatened or powerful enough to make compromises. Even something as sacrosanct as anti-Semitism has become politicized and weaponized.

We often like to think of ourselves as “members of the tribe,” but our troublesome tribal instincts are eating us up from within. And we fall victim to the same kind of refusal to accept a cogent argument — if it comes from “the other side” — that is eroding societal bonds around the country.

For example, when I recommended the Andrew Sullivan essay to a friend, his first response was to point out that the author, once a strong proponent of Israel, has become an outspoken critic of the Jewish state.

“I wouldn’t read anything that guy wrote,” my friend said, effectively proving Sullivan’s most basic point.

When will we stop beating each other up long enough to listen to what our adversaries/fellow Jews have to say?

Gary@jewishweek.org

https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/the-sad-descent-from-members-of-the-tribe-to-tribalism/ 

33% of UK cabinet members funded by pro-Israel groups

 

Investigation finds 33% of 

UK cabinet members funded 

by pro-Israel groups 

May 24, 2021 at 2:46 pm | Published in: Europe & Russia, Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine, UK

UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson leaves 10 Downing Street to chair the cabinet meeting in London, England on December 8, 2020 [Tayfun Salci/Anadolu Agency]

May 24, 2021 at 2:46 pm 

A third of the members of the British cabinet, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have been funded by Israel or pro-Israel lobby groups, Declassified UK has revealed. The investigative journalism website uncovered the various ways through which the occupation state has courted members of the government over the years, a trend that was denounced as "disgusting" last month by a senior Conservative former minister. British MPs have been courted in a number of ways including trips to Israel funded by pro-Israel groups. Johnson reportedly went on a five-day trip to the occupation state in November 2004, three years after he first entered parliament. It was jointly funded by the Israeli government and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a powerful Westminster lobby group which does not disclose its funders but has claimed 80 per cent of Conservative MPs are members. According to Declassified Johnson did not declare the trip in his parliamentary register of interests until four years later, in 2008, and did not disclose the cost of the trip, which may be a breach of parliamentary standards. Former chancellor George Osborne, who was also on the trip, registered it two weeks after returning. READ: Far-right extremist Tommy Robinson rallies in support of Israel In 2012, CFI organised a "battle bus" to take Johnson on a tour of north London as part of his London mayoral election campaign. Five other ministers in the cabinet – Alok Sharma, Kwasi Kwarteng, Robert Jenrick, Oliver Dowden, and Amanda Milling – took paid-for trips to Israel from 2011 to 2016. Kwarteng and Milling are said to have visited the year after they first entered parliament, while Dowden went before he became an MP A further two cabinet ministers, Michael Gove, and Priti Patel were funded to visit Washington DC to attend conferences put on by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier Israel lobby group in the US. Patel was sacked in 2017 by former Conservative leader Theresa May for holding secret meetings with Israel. Patel, appointed as the home secretary by Johnson, was given £2,500 ($3,530) by right-wing pro-Israel think tank the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) in 2013 to be a delegate at a "forum" organised by AIPAC. Details of trips to Israel by current members of the Cabinet were outlined at length by Declassified. During a trip by James Cleverly, the minister of state for the Middle East and North Africa, said: "Israel is an amazing country, there's no doubt about that." Over the past few months, a number of groups including Human Rights Watch have branded Israel an apartheid state, guilty of crimes against humanity. READ: British MP demands action against Israel as civilian casualties mount in Palestine Cleverly backed Israel during the occupation state's latest aggression on Gaza. "The UK unequivocally condemns the firing of rockets at Jerusalem and other locations within Israel," adding: "We strongly condemn these acts of terrorism by Hamas and other terrorist groups who must permanently end their incitement and rocket fire against Israel. There is no justification for the targeting of civilians." Cleverly also told parliament that the UK opposes an International Criminal Court enquiry into Israeli war crimes. Declassified's latest report once again highlights what has been denounced by Former Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan as "the most disgusting interference" in British politics by the pro-Israel lobby. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210524-investigation-finds-33-of-uk-cabinet-members-funded-by-pro-israel-groups/