April 8, 2013, - 1:24 pm
Margaret Thatcher Let Islam Take Over UK; Early Pal of Arafat/PLO, Pressured Israel – No “Iron Lady” on What Counts
I’ll start out my remembrance of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died today at 87, with the first line of my review of the absurd, unfair movie about her, “The Iron Lady.”
Unlike so many ignorant conservatives who can’t be bothered to know better or give a damn, I was never a fan of Lady Margaret Thatcher because of her anti-Israel, pan-Islamist pronouncements and actions done to please her Saudi and other Mid-East Arab petro-dollar buddies and many Muslim Brits.
While Margaret Thatcher is thought of as a conservative, all things are relative. Yes, she was conservative on taxes (she lowered them), deregulation (she supported it), and unions (she made coal miners and others go back to work), but she was not conservative on anything else, including social issues or foreign policy (unless it meant the British Empire holding on to the Falkland Islands halfway around the world). She was what the liberals in America’s Republican Party want the GOP to be today: conservative fiscally . . . and like the liberal Democrats on everything else. Thatcher didn’t care about illegal aliens, especially those of the Muslim variety who now dominate her country today because she did nothing about secure borders in 12 years as Prime Minister and really didn’t do all that much to stem the tide of British entitlements and welfare for them, contrary to her rhetoric. She was, like most European “conservatives,” a liberal Democrat with a Republican fiscal policy. And that’s why Europe, no matter what policies its countries have, is lost. If you ignore the social issues and immigration, nothing else you do matters in the long run.
The “Iron Lady” was actually made of tissue when it came to the important things, such as jihad against the West.
Margaret Thatcher, like all British politicians on the left AND right, was bought and paid for by the Muslims who’ve now made the name Mohammed the most popular baby name in London and throughout her country. She may have won some brief battles against unions and for lower taxes, but she lost the war because none of what she achieves will make a bit of difference when those babies newly named Mohammed grow up and have more and more kids, like their parents did. They will have the lasting effect on the UKistan, not Lady Thatcher, who was in the back pocket of their wealthier Arab compatriots in Britain and helped all of this come about by doing nothing, saying nothing.
And then there is Thatcher’s conduct toward Israel. Although she’s cited by ignoramuses for one pro-Israel quote she made, her actions spoke louder than her words. In fact, Thatcher was a friend of the P.L.O., the Saudis and Jordanians and others, but not Menachem Begin, whom she constantly fought and pressured. She encouraged Ronald Reagan to open dialogue with the P.L.O. and blamed Israel for the West’s problems in the Middle East, just like the anti-Israel left does. Again, she knew on which side her British-baked pita was buttered (or hummused), which is why she hung out with Yasser Arafat.
Thatcher called Begin, “most difficult,” because he would not just roll over and appease her demands that Israel pull out from the so-called West Bank and Gaza and stop so-called “settlements,” including hundreds of thousands of Jewish homes in Jerusalem and surrounding neighborhoods. Yes, Maggie Thatcher was a supporter of redlining for Jews and telling them where they could and could not live in the Middle East. Thatcher was a supporter of Palestinian Muslims, but not apparently of Falklandian Argentinians. Can you say, “hypocrite”? She wasted British lives to defend some sort of fictional hegemony over islands that Great Britain should really have little claim to today, while Jews have lived in Israel non-stop for thousands of years.
Moreover, Thatcher opposed Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, which was a tremendous success and an act that was not only a good thing, but necessary. Can you imagine if Israel had done nothing and Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons? But Thatcher condemned this.
Yes, Thatcher fought communism, together with Ronald Reagan, and she deserves credit for that. But while she was fighting communism, she let the much more dangerous and successful threat of Islam take over Europe.
And the UK and the rest of Europe can never recover.
***
Although I do not like the anti-Israel Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, I think this analysis from a year ago, by Azriel Berman, is spot on about Thatcher. Here are the important excerpts:
She began to see certain Israeli policies as a liability for Western interests, fearing they would exacerbate regional instability and undermine the security of Britain’s Arab allies. . . . Begin maintained that he could grant the Palestinians autonomy, but not sovereignty. His belief in Israel’s right to build settlements rankled with Thatcher. . . . Tensions with Begin grew worse when, in June 1980, the British premier offered her country’s endorsement of the EEC (now the EU ) Venice Declaration. The Begin government detested the initiative, which called for an end to Israel’s “territorial occupation” and expressed support for Palestinian self-determination and the PLO’s role in negotiations. . . . Thatcher encouraged the Reagan administration to also open a dialogue with the PLO, and it did so during its final days in power, though the dialogue was short-lived.
Thatcher remained protective of British political and commercial interests in the Middle East, and was unwilling to risk them through automatic support for Israel. This explains her direct role in controversial arms sales to Arab countries (which both Shamir and Peres strongly opposed) and her readiness to cooperate with Whitehall over restrictions on arms sales to Israel and the refusal to sell it North Sea oil.
All of this may have some rather unsettling implications for Israeli policymakers today. Thatcher regarded herself as a steadfast friend of Israel, and was certainly viewed as such by many of her Jewish supporters. However, she was influenced to some degree by a view that was commonly held by British mandarins following the establishment of the State of Israel: the perception that the Arab-Israel conflict was at the core of the difficulties facing the West in the region. Arguably, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is almost an irrelevancy in the context of the current turbulence sweeping through the Middle East.
Yes, it is. And Margaret Thatcher constantly bet on the wrong side. And while she was betting on that wrong side, the wrong side slowly emigrated freely into her country and now runs the place.
Good luck with that, Great Britain . . . or is that Akbar Britain, these days?
That should be her epitaph. In the long run, it’s her real legacy.
Tags: Islam, Israel, Jews, Margaret Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher Arafat, Margaret Thatcher Islam, Margaret Thatcher Israel, Margaret Thatcher PLO, Menachem Begin, PLO, Yasser Arafat
Once again, you are the only blogger/journalist telling the truth. On one hand, she helped bring Great Britain back from the brink of disastrous union based policies.
On the other hand, she was definitely, like virtually all Brits, and all other Eurotrach, anti-Israel, demanding Israel return to Aushwitz borders while opposing the pullout from their own colonies (England only pulled out of Hong Kong because they knew that fighting China would be suicide…it is easier to pick on Argentina).
Jonathan E. Grant on April 8, 2013 at 1:50 pm