I don't know why this picture made me think. This is a British MP sitting with a displaced Palestinian family from Jabalya camp in Gaza. You would never see an American member of Congress in that position. And it just happened that yesterday I watched a session of the British House of Common's committee on foreign relations on C-Span in which the British prime minister was interrogated. I was rather impressed by the extent to which he was grilled about Gaza and about Israeli human rights violations there. Don't get me wrong: British policies don't amount to much and they wound up catering to US diktats but still: at least the members of the House show some intellectual independence. You watch US Congressional hearings, and the word Palestinian is bandied about as if it is some dirty word. (Reuters)
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
UK versus the US: on Palestine
I don't know why this picture made me think. This is a British MP sitting with a displaced Palestinian family from Jabalya camp in Gaza. You would never see an American member of Congress in that position. And it just happened that yesterday I watched a session of the British House of Common's committee on foreign relations on C-Span in which the British prime minister was interrogated. I was rather impressed by the extent to which he was grilled about Gaza and about Israeli human rights violations there. Don't get me wrong: British policies don't amount to much and they wound up catering to US diktats but still: at least the members of the House show some intellectual independence. You watch US Congressional hearings, and the word Palestinian is bandied about as if it is some dirty word. (Reuters)