April 5 (Reuters) - Israel has detained two British members of parliament and refused entry to the officials who were visiting as part of a parliamentary delegation, British Foreign Minister David Lammy said in a statement late on Saturday.
Sky News, citing a statement from the Israeli immigration ministry, says that the detained parliamentarians are Labour MPs Yuan Yang and Abtisam Mohamed, who were rejected because they were suspected of plans to “document the activities of security forces and spread anti-Israel hatred.”
“I have made clear to my counterparts in the Israeli government that this is no way to treat British Parliamentarians, and we have been in contact with both MPs tonight to offer our support,” Lammy said.
Countdown to the UK government apologizing to Israel over this in 5… 4… 3…
What other country could get away with this you have to wonder. Like if Jordan had done this what would happen? If it was Eritrea? Chad? Would any of them be able to do this with impunity?
It’s time to recall all citizens in the terrorist regime and send messengers from the Secure Air Shipping for those missing.
Thats fine, the civilized world should not let Israelis travel freely then if thats their governments actions.
Israel gets around this by stealing New Zealand passports.
There is a reason why Israel is not allowing any international media to enter Gaza or the West Bank. They simply want to control the narrative there.
They are also against any independent international investigations and so far none of their investigations have led to effective sentences.
Arresting officials from the ruling government of one of your closest allies is… definitely a strat. Good job Israel, looking forward to more self-owns in the future.
They are not government officials.
Uh… what? They’re literally Members of Parliament.
You fell for another redirect, this is a known tactic from the IDF on socials. They derail arguments by focusing on minutia and semantics to keep people from noticing that the neo nazis just arrested two members of government of one of their biggest allies because they considered they were going to document the ongoing genocide.
I don’t think this person is a Zionist. They’re too… human, for lack of a better word. Or maybe I’m biased because their aside was interesting and not effective if it was intended as a derailment tactic.
Follow to the end of the thread, you walked out thinking someone just understood what you meant and probably with a sense of closed matter rather than boiling because some neo nazi government just arrested two UK MPs.
It was highly effective.
They don’t need to win an argument, they just need to make you think about something else.
boiling because some neo nazi government just arrested two UK MPs.
Oh I wasn’t boiling either way; I’m happy. To quote myself: Good job Israel, looking forward to more self-owns in the future.
Starmer won’t do much if anything about it. They’ve already sent the sternly-worded email. If anything he’s relieved that there’s a distraction from one of his MPs being arrested for child rape yesterday.
Jackbooted stormtrooper of a neo-fascist apartheid ethnostate, or person fed up with yanks mislabelling British politicians because they think everyone runs things like they do. Who can tell? It’s a fine line.
Or maybe you just don’t know what the words “government official” mean
Not the same thing. MPs are classed as frontbench and backbench. The Prime Minister can employ up to 140 MPs and Lords as ministers. This is the government, and forms the frontbench of the governing party. Non-government MPs of the governing party are backbenchers.
Both these MPs are backbenchers. They hold no office in the government, have little more influence on policy than any other member of the Labour Party.
There are strict separations between government and Parliament, a principle known as dual sovereignty. In some areas Parliament is sovereign, and in others (such as treaties, wars, most foreign policy) the King is sovereign, delegating his power to the Cabinet. So parliamentary powers are not government powers.
I don’t understand the point you are trying to make. They are government officials. Members of parliament. Your distinction between front and back benchers is accurate but off topic.
MPs are either government officials or backbenchers. These were the latter. It was the difference between the Foreign Secretary sending a stern message and the RAF fuelling the jets.
You seem to be confused. The phrase ‘government official’ refers to anyone acting on behalf of the government, including backbenchers. This could even include unelected aides, spokespeople or some civil servants.
You’re thinking of the cabinet. You do not have to be in the cabinet to be a ‘government official’.
As a fellow brit, these Americans correcting you are right.
Parliament has a handy guide to the difference.
Parliament and the Government are different. They have different roles and do different things.
What is the Government?
HM Government consists of the Prime Minister, their Cabinet and junior ministers, supported by the teams of non-political civil servants that work in government departments.
That’s where I’m confused. Maybe it’s a language/cultural difference, but I consider all elected members of parliament government officials regardless of the importance of their role compared to cabinet ministers.
Under the Westminster system, Parliament is a separate entity to the Government, even though members of the government are nearly always members of the parliament. It goes back to the English Civil War and what’s run by Kings and what’s run by the electorate.
I was using government in the broad sense (under which a Congressman would be a US government official) but fair enough.
Yeah, the US system doesn’t really have the government as Westminster does, it has appointed cabinet and agency officials instead.
If these were government ministers instead of backbenchers on a private trip it would be taken a lot further than a “please don’t” message from the foreign secretary.
It’s still a hell of a telling statement though.
Small correction (???): According to the article they were visiting as part of a parliamentarian delegation. Now I have no idea what that is, but it doesn’t sound like a private trip. Is it a private trip?
Not sure actually. One of the MPs is on the Foreign Affairs Committee, but the other is on no committees so it would be odd. But yeah, MPs can gang together on “fact-finding trips” without it being official business.
Funny that some yahoo can travel Europe despite ICC, yet the cleary barely trained genocide
armykids targets what gets them off unchecked.Fucking joke of a country (if it wasn’t so destructive).
* Nothing to see here, move along. *
How would they spread anti-Israel hatred by recording security procedures, if the security procedures are above board? I really don’t understand Israel’s officials anymore. Surely they are aware how shit like this looks outside of Israel. Are they just high on their own hasbara supply?
Surely they are aware how shit like this looks outside of Israel.
Nope. They’ve gotten so used to the West automatically taking them at their word that their ability to even TRY to make their lies plausible has atrophied.
Are they just high on their own hasbara supply?
Yup! North Korea has nothing on these guys when it comes to state propaganda.
Are they just high on their own hasbara supply?
Israeli behavior makes a lot more sense when you realize that they’re fascists. Israel has been fascist for at least 75 years, so them being divorced from reality is nothing unexpected.
Give Israel some credit, Ben Gurion wasn’t a fascist, despite his problems - but also you could understand where he was coming from.
It’s really from the 70s on when Israel moved from problematic and apatheidy into the full on genocidal regime we see today.
The watershed moment, not surprisingly, being the assassination of Rabin.
Give Israel some credit, Ben Gurion wasn’t a fascist, despite his problems - but also you could understand where he was coming from.
Huh? How is the Nakba anything other than the work of fascists? Remember that the only reason the death toll in the Nakba was “only” a little north of ten thousand people was because Israelis didn’t have the weapons of mass destruction they have today and Palestinians weren’t stuck in an open air concentration camp. Fundamentally what the IDF was doing in 1948 isn’t much different from what it’s doing today, and you should look up what they were doing to Palestinians within their borders until the six-day war.
The Nakba was a tragedy, and Ben has his role in that along with all the other high ups in the various paramilitary forces. The IDF didn’t exist then, though it does trace its routes back to those paramilitary groups.
That Ben G worked to limit their power once the nation was formed is a mark against him being a fascist to me, and he didn’t go as hard on violent struggle as the meaning of life as full fasc-fascism does.
Violent, racist, and did bad things yes (and genocidal to boot!). I don’t think that auto-makes fascist.
As for what was being done pre-Six Day War I’m going to guess pogroms, murders, and forced sterilisation. So I’ll go back up and add genocidal to it. Doesn’t make him fascist though, unless we’re making it a synonym for genocidist.
That Ben G worked to limit their power once the nation was formed is a mark against him being a fascist to me, and he didn’t go as hard on violent struggle as the meaning of life as full fasc-fascism does.
Fair enough. I’m still going to call the average Israeli a fascist from the start (something something settlements), but I guess their ruling class was too committed to the idea of a democratic Zionist state to allow a true fascist society to develop until Oslo and the lead up to the assassination of Rabin. The way I see it, the assassination of Rabin—rather than being a sign of a fundamental change—was things snapping back into place. The Israeli leadership had simply come to represent more accurately the people.
Aye, any Israeli who isn’t actively opposing the settlements in the West Bank is unambiguously in the wrong. And I wish that wasn’t a controversial statement.
You’re right in that Rabin’s assassination wasn’t the change in itself (that such Israeli extremists had continued to exist shows that that violent current in Israel had continued and been bubbling away), but it makes a good mark of a turning point and the loss of really any chance for reconciliation in at least our lifetimes.
When “anyone I don’t like” is “Hamas”
British imperialism created the zio terror regime. A century later the blowback is reaching their politicians.
Yeah, but these people or the current UK government is not the people who started that shitshow. Happened quite a while ago.
That said, they are still on the hook for continuing to support it and not even denouncing it.
