Viewpoint - June 16, 2011

UK 'anti-Sharia' legislator backed Israel group calling for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
Submitted by Ali Abunimah

A legislator who has introduced an 'anti-Sharia' bill into the UK parliament supposedly in the name of equality agreed to serve as co-president of an Israeli organization that favors expulsion of Palestinians, denies the Nakba, and espouses extreme anti-Muslim views.

In an 8 June article headlined "Bill limiting sharia law is motivated by 'concern for Muslim women," The Guardian reports:

Islamic courts would be forced to acknowledge the primacy of English law under a bill being introduced in the House of Lords.

The bill, proposed by Lady Cox and backed by women's rights groups and the National Secular Society, was drawn up because of "deep concerns" that Muslim women are suffering discrimination within closed sharia law councils.

The Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill will introduce an offence carrying a five-year jail sentence for anyone falsely claiming or implying that sharia courts or councils have legal jurisdiction over family or criminal law. The bill, which will apply to all arbitration tribunals if passed, aims to tackle discrimination, which its supporters say is inherent in the courts, by banning the sharia practice of giving woman's testimony only half the weight of men's.

Cox said: "Equality under the law is a core value of British justice. My bill seeks to preserve that standard"

In the UK, Muslim and Jewish courts can decide on certain personal status issues for those who bring cases to them voluntarily under the Arbitration Act (1996).

But an examination of the activities and views of Lady Caroline Cox, a member of the unelected House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK parliament reveals she may be motivated by something other than a yearning for equality and a concern for Muslim women.

Lady Cox's involvement in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian extremism

In 2005, Cox agreed to serve as "Co-President" of The Jerusalem Summit, an Israeli Zionist organization that denies the Nakba and which has advocated the ethnic cleansing, or transfer of Palestinians and espouses extreme Islamophobic views.

The chair of the International Advisory Board of the Jerusalem Summit is Gary Bauer, an American radical Christianist figure known for his extreme anti-Muslim and anti-gay views.

The Jerusalem Summit's Mission Statement proclaims:

We see Radical Islam as the third onslaught of Totalitarian Evil on the free mankind in the last 100 years. The first two were Fascism and Communism. The free world managed to defeat them by uniting, working out a joint strategy, and mastering resolve to fight and prevail. Now, too, is the time to unite and lay out a coherent moral and political strategy in that crucial fight.

The organization also views Muslims as fundamentally alien and hostile to the "West" - presumably this includes British citizens who are Muslims and whom Cox is supposed to represent as a lawmaker:

Coexistence between the West and the Muslim world, if not peaceful then at least non-belligerent, cannot exist or last unless a system of unilateral measures of self-defense is adopted by the West, but advertised and made clear to all, on the one hand; and another system of reward and non-lethal punishment is put in place, as a menu for every Muslim country or organization to choose from, if it elected to enjoy the goodies of the West, on the other.

Does this "self-defense" include the kinds of laws Cox is
pushing under the guise of protecting "equality"?

Increasingly, anti-Muslim organizations like The Jerusalem Summit are defining not just what they term "radical" Islam in this manner but are launching a broad onslaught against Muslims.

Cox, it should also be noted, invited Dutch anti-Muslim demagogue Geert Wilders to the UK last year.

Support for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians

On its website, The Jerusalem Summit explains its platform:

1. The establishment of a Palestinian State must removed from the international agenda.

2. However, removing the issue of a Palestinian state from the international agenda will not eliminate the humanitarian predicament of Palestinians residing in Israeli-administered areas.

3. This is clearly an issue that must be addressed and resolved. But it must be addressed not in political terms but in humanitarian ones.

4. Thus, to successfully resolve the Palestinian problem, the Political Paradigm must be replaced by a Humanitarian Paradigm. This, however can only be done if the current Palestinian narrative, which fuels the Political Paradigm, is de-legitimized.

5. Thus, the de-legitimization of the Palestinian narrative becomes a vital prerequisite to any comprehensive resolution of the Palestinian issue.

So what is the "humanitarian" solution that this extremist organization proposes? It is none other than the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from "Judea and Samaria" (the West Bank) and Gaza:

Generous relocation grants to Palestinians living in Israeli administered territories on an individual basis and not via any official Palestinian organization.

Paying Palestinians to leave, just because they are not
Jews, is, the organization claims, the "only one reasonable
and feasible alternative" to other approaches and would
make them "affluent emigres" rather than refugees.

Also on its site, the organization speculates:

No one knows precisely how many Palestinians can be induced to emigrate without putting the matter to a practical test.

One can only imagine the reaction if someone were to suggest that the conflict be solved by Jews leaving. It was exactly one year ago that veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas was forced to resign for making such a suggestion.

Nakba denial

Behind the crocodile tears and fake concern for Palestinian refugees that The Jerusalem Summit coats onto its extremist agenda lies not just a desire to make Palestinians disappear, but a denial of their history.

In a section entitled "The Palestinian Refugees - Myth and Reality," The Jerusalem Summit makes larges numbers of Palestinians just disappear. It claims for example that the number of refugees in 1948 was just 300,000 (it was 750,000) and repeats long-discredited myths that Palestinians left at the urging of their leaders, rather than as a result of expulsion by Zionist militias.

Moreover, the organization claims, in line with long discredited Zionist myths that the Palestinians who have deep and ancient roots in the country were recent arrivals from surrounding countries.

The alliance between Zionism and anti-Muslim scaremongering

Cox's endorsement of extremist racist The Jerusalem Summit, and her introduction of laws targeting Muslims in the UK in the name of "equality" is a marker of the increasingly close alliance between Zionists and Islamophobes and their attempt to stir up Islamophobia in Europe and the United States in order to bolster support for Israel as a supposed bulwark against a mythical Muslim invasion characterized by "creeping Sharia."

Just this week in the United States, Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain said he would require a special loyalty oath to be administered to Muslims appointed to government positions.

There is not such much a creeping, but rather a galloping alliance between pro-Israel extremists and Islamophobes that is causing dangerous polarization in the United States and Europe, largely for the sake of Israel.

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