Yeah, f*ck us.
All we have done for the Jews is give them their own homeland, liberate them from concentration camps, stand alone and longest against Nazism (thanks for turning up late again), fight with Israel in 1956 at Suez (thanks again for stabbing both countries and France in the back). For all that we got bombed and shot by Jewish gangs in 1946 and called anti-Semites in 2014.
BTW, there are 650 MP’s in the UK, didn’t you notice that this (symbolic and non binding) vote was voted on by less than half?. Nearly just a third.
I opposed and oppose this vote and its result, but I also oppose Britain and the British people being attacked as anti-Israeli bigots for something done by a minority of MP’s.
No offense intended to those that did nothing wrong - and I do sincerely apologize to them.
However, British post-war policy was very decidedly opposed to Jewish independence...until there was enough of a resistance movement to make British policy-makers of the day realize “we have to get the Hell out of here no matter what.” There was no “giving” of independence to Israel - the UN partition vote was only possible because Britain went to the UN and essentially said, “Help us out of this mess, straight away!”
Arms were provided by Britain in massive amounts to the Arabs. Key fortresses and police stations were handed to the Arabs, or “abandoned” by the British Army with notice only to the Arabs. Much of the Foreign Office and British Army was, at the time, virulently anti-Semitic (though, of course, not nearly on the level of Hitler, et al). What the situation is now I cannot comment on, but I think that things have improved a lot as people in your nation have realized that Israel and its people are not Britain’s enemy - any more than Vietnam and its people are enemies of the US. In both cases, the native peoples wanted to be free of foreign domination, and were willing to fight for that essential human right (self-determination). I think that both Britain and the US are better off for having finally realized and understood this...though such offers cold comfort for the thousands or more dead that it took to learn this lesson.
Let’s also not forget the harsh treatment of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust - many beaten, imprisoned and starved, for the “crime” of wanting to get the Hell out of the charnel house of Europe to a place where they would be reasonably safe and among there own people. All that time, a blind eye was turned to Arab immigration, especially immigration of military-aged men and light arms.
Oh, and why didn’t the rest of the British Parliament issue a statement, or vote on a measure, that condemned the 1/3 or so that did vote for this measure? Silence does, in many ways, equal consent.
As for the US “turning up late again” for the fight against Nazism, let’s recap a few things, just so that you know that there’s another perspective:
1) Most Americans of the early and mid-20th Century were either European by birth, or descended from Europeans. Notice that they weren’t in Europe, as either they or their parents, grandparents, etc. didn’t want to have anything to do with that cesspool of a continent that oppressed the Hell out of people for a thousand years or more...that is while its leaders weren’t killing them by the tens of thousands or millions in innumberable wars.
2) The US had nothing to do with European affairs (except trade) in 1914. Your nations over there decided to have a rather nasty fight, and we got dragged in BECAUSE THE GERMANS WERE TICKED OFF THAT WE WERE HELPING YOU. After that, we mobilized 4.7 million of our men and our factories, turned the tide and kicked their arses back into Germany. Note that in approximately 18 months, we lost 53,500 dead and had 200,000 or so wounded, all to settle your fight.
3) Not content with learning the lessons of the prior generation, which consumed over 10 million lives, your wonderful continent decided that a rematch would be appropriate. I guess that learning to live with each other was never viewed as a viable option - validating the decision of millions to GTFO in the decades and centuries beforehand, and to go to the New World. Note that both Britain and France, possessors of the world’s most powerful navy and army of the day, respectively, let a two-bit, half-crazed ex-corporal bsmboozle and intimidate them, thereby allowing another world war to start...and this one resulted in some 40-45 million dead in Europe and Africa. We AGAIN got dragged in, and AGAIN mobilized our men (some 16.1 million had their lives interrupted - not including their families - and our industry was again mobilized to kick Germany’s and its allies’ arses (along with the Russians, primarily). We lost some 291,000 combat dead, and had some 670,000 wounded - again, to fix YOUR continent’s problems. Your vaunted Monty did nothing but hamper a decisive allied invasion in 1944, and definitely was responsible for the war extending into 1945 because his passivity and lack of action allowed tens of thousands of battle-hardened Germans to escape the Falaise Gap, along with a lot of their equipment. FYI, George Patton was on the way to close that gap and either kill or capture those Germans - until, that is, British pressure on Ike forced him to stop. He and the 3rd Army would have defeated the German’s western armies and been halfway into Germany in September, 1944 if Monty hadn’t interfered because he wanted his share of the glory.
Regardless of our differences in opinion, I am glad that you opposed this resolution, and that you otherwise appear to be a “good bloke.” I just wish that the politicians there that are of the same mindset as you would have spoken up, even if just as symbolically as those jackasses that voted for the resolution.