‘Et tu, Theresa’ – welcome to the two faces of Mrs. May

FOREIGN affairs have never been Theresa May’s bag. And, judged by her recent form and Britain’s deceit in oiling the wheels of UN Resolution 2334 – one of the worst examples of Machiavellian back-stabbing since Julius Caesar’s assassination – the prime minister is still an innocent in matters abroad.

   That said, the country parson’s daughter now stands accused of demonstrating flagrant hypocrisy, not just to Israel but also towards the UK’s “special buddies”, the USA.
   True, she had – at least initially – gushingly fulsome praise for the Jewish state at the annual Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) shindig last month, before an audience of 800 MPs and supporters, until her verbal acrobatics earned her opprobrium.
   Having castigated the Labor party for allowing anti-Semitism to fester in its ranks, Mrs. May bragged how, as Home Secretary, she’d banned the French Jew-baiter, Dieudonné, from Britain and finally managed to shunt hate-preacher Abu Qatada back to Jordan.
   But, before the applause faded to a ripple, Mrs. May congratulated herself on declaring prominent pro-Israel activists, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, personas non grata, along with Terry Jones, the firebrand US pastor who rails against Islam.
   “Islamophobia comes from the same wellspring of hatred” as anti-Semitism, contended the prime minister – a remark that predictably fell on deaf ears. 
   No, it doesn’t. And Mrs. May should have known better than use moral equivalence by equating critics of Islamic Jew hatred, like Geller and Spencer, to terror-mongers like Qatada, who advocates the slaughter of Westerners in general and Jews in particular all in the name of Allah.
   The PM then put her kitten-heeled shoe in the proverbial doo-doo again, after proudly announcing she ordered a probe into whether British tax-payers money was being used to fund salaries for Palestinians convicted of terrorism offences against Israelis.
   It is – and even if it wasn’t, part of Britain’s largess to the EU ensures it does.
   Then came the sting in the May tail.
   Referencing “global obligations”, she hectored, “We must be honest with our friends, like Israel, because that is what true friendship is about. That is why we have been clear about building new, illegal settlements: it is wrong; it is not conducive to peace; and it must stop.”
   What should stop is back-stabbing an ally on the world stage and being ignorant of the vagaries of international law, which show Israel has a strong case for sovereignty over the disputed “territories”, whatever the knuckleheads in the cesspit of the Security Council assert.
   Some might also argue that Britain helping rid the world of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi hasn’t exactly proven “conducive to peace”, either – and I’ll wager nor will be the UK’s devious role as chief facilitator of the infamous Resolution 2334, dishonorably applauded by the UK delegation at the Security Council.
   As the Gatestone Institute’s Douglas Murray observed, “Only now has the true duplicity of the [CFI] speech been exposed. For now the world has learned what diplomacy the British government was engaged in even as May was making her speech.”
   The UK, however, has a long and often shameful history in trying to besmirch Israel, despite the 1917 Balfour Declaration – the centenary of which will be “marked with pride” later this year, according to Prime Minister May – being the midwife of an embryonic Jewish state.
   Never knowingly undersold in later opposition to Jewish settlement in its Palestinian Mandate, the staunchly pro-Arab Foreign Office is not for nothing nicknamed ‘The Camel Corps’ and Resolution 2334 is just the latest manifestation of its prejudice.
   One of its retired mandarins once told me, “Do the math, as the Americans say: there are 57 Muslim states, most of whom we do business with, and one Jewish state. So don’t confuse diplomacy with morality.”
   Clearly, this is a lesson St. Theresa must absorb. For the godliness she learned at her father’s knee, only self-interest matters and, for all her vows of solidarity with Israel, no British soldier is every likely to shed a drop of blood in its defense.
   But, it seems, she might be cottoning on…at least to the reality that a US president with an almost psychotic loathing for the Jewish state is set to be replaced by a Judeophile, with Jewish kin and admiration for Israel’s invention and tenacity.
   This could account for Mrs. May bluntly – certainly in diplomatic-speak – rebuking John Kerry’s hysterical speech justifying America’s refusal to veto 2334, in which he damned the “settlements” as the sole obstacle to peace and claimed Israel’s agenda was driven by extremists bent on jeopardizing a two-state solution.
   Sticking it to the outgoing Secretary of State – and, by extension the feckless Obama – a Downing Street spokesman said, “We continue to believe that the construction of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal. But we are also clear that they are far from the only problem in this conflict.
   “In particular, the people of Israel deserve to live free from the threat of terrorism, with which they have had to cope for too long. And we do not believe it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically-elected government of an ally.”
  For good measure he added, “Clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is deeply complex [but] the British government believes that negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between the two parties, supported by the international community.”
   If that is truly Mrs. May’s position, it’s fair to ask – as the chagrined Kerry did – was it not hypocritical for Britain to vote in favor of 2334, let alone indulge in skulduggery to expedite its progress.
   No matter: what’s bad news for Obama heralds glad tidings for Israel.  Amen to that.