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‘BREXIT’ VOTE TODAY—IMPLICATIONS FOR ISRAEL?

Britain and Obama’s ‘Back of the Queue’: Andrew Roberts, Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2016— On June 23 the British people will be going to the polls to choose whether they want to continue with the present system whereby 60% of British laws are made in Brussels and foreign judges decide whether those laws are legitimate or not, or whether we want to strike out for independence and the right to make all of our own laws and have our own British judges decide upon them.

Brexit and the Jews: Manfred Gerstenfeld, Arutz Sheva, June 14, 2016— The outcome of the 23 June referendum on Brexit, i.e whether the United Kingdom should remain or leave the European Union, will have consequences for Israel, whether direct or indirect. Polls indicate that the result will be very close.

Brexit is an Escape From a Failed and Frightening Europe: John Podhoretz, New York Post, June 19, 2016— In May, on a trip to London, almost every couple I met said they were in a mixed marriage. Their division was not over religion, or over party — rather, it was over Brexit, the referendum vote in the United Kingdom that takes place this week.

Exit Britain?: Douglas Murray, National Review, June 6, 2016— For at least a quarter of a century, there was no greater bore in British politics than the Eurobore, who warned against Britain’s loss of sovereignty to Brussels.

 

On Topic Links

 

Both Sides of the Brexit Referendum Sound Like Out-Takes From the 1988 Canadian Federal Election: Robert Fulford, National Post, June 3, 2016

Jewish Commentators on Brexit: Jeremy Sharon, Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2016

British Jewry Faces Brexit Vote With Fear and Trepidation: Jenni Frazer, Times of Israel, June 20, 2016

In Britain, Anti-Semitism Endures: George F. Will, Washington Post, June 10, 2016

Voting to leave the EU is a vote for freedom: John Robson, National Post, June 23, 2016

 

 

BRITAIN AND OBAMA’S ‘BACK OF THE ‘QUEUE’

Andrew Roberts

Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2016

 

On June 23 the British people will be going to the polls to choose whether they want to continue with the present system whereby 60% of British laws are made in Brussels and foreign judges decide whether those laws are legitimate or not, or whether we want to strike out for independence and the right to make all of our own laws and have our own British judges decide upon them.

 

It’s about whether we can recapture the right to deport foreign Islamist hate preachers and terrorist suspects, or whether under European human-rights legislation they must continue to reside in the U.K., often at taxpayers’ expense. The European Union is currently experiencing migration on a scale not seen since the late 17th century—with hordes of young, mostly male Muslims sweeping from the southeast into the heart of Europe. Angela Merkel invited them in and that might be fine for Germany, but why should they have the right to settle in Britain as soon as they get a European passport?

 

Surely—surely—this is an issue on which the British people, and they alone, have the right to decide, without the intervention of President Obama, who adopted his haughtiest professorial manner when lecturing us to stay in the EU, before making the naked threat that we would be sent “to the back of the queue” (i.e., the back of the line) in any future trade deals if we had the temerity to vote to leave.

 

Was my country at the back of the line when Winston Churchill promised in 1941 that in the event of a Japanese attack on the U.S., a British declaration of war on Japan would be made within the hour? Was Great Britain at the back of the line when America was searching for allies in the Korean War in the 1950s?

 

When America decided to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War in the early 1990s, was Britain at the back of the line when we contributed an armored division that fought on your right flank during Operation Desert Storm?

Were we at the back of the line on 9/11, or did we step forward immediately and instinctively as the very first of your allies to contribute troops to join you in the expulsion of the Taliban, al Qaeda’s hosts, from power in Afghanistan?

Or in Iraq two years later, was it the French or the Germans or the Belgians who stood and fought and bled beside you? Whatever views you might have over the rights or wrongs of that war, no one can deny that Britain was in its accustomed place: at the front of the line, in the firing line. So it is not right for President Obama now to threaten to send us to the back of the line.

 

Britain is the largest foreign investor in the U.S.—larger even than China—so it makes no economic sense for you to send us to the back of the line. Yet quite apart from your economic or strategic best interests, it also makes no moral sense for America to treat your genuine friends (you also see this phenomenon in the case of Israel, of course) as though they are your enemies, while all too often you treat your rivals and enemies—Cuba, China, Venezuela and others—as though they’re your friends. In what sane world does America put Iran at the front of the line for trade deals, while sending Britain to the back?

President Obama might be very clever intellectually, but he hasn’t grasped the central essence of American foreign policy over the centuries, which is the honorable one of being a strength and beacon to your allies and a standing reproach and constant source of anxiety to your enemies and to the enemies of freedom.

 

Fortunately, the best kind of Americans instinctively understand that truth, and outside the Obama administration nobody seems to want to relegate my country to the back of the line. Anglo-American friendship is far stronger than any one administration or government. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve read the obituaries of people who have written the obituary of the Special Relationship. It survives because it lives on in the hearts of our two peoples—who have so much more in common than that which separates us—rather than just in the pages of venerable treaties and history books.

The good news is that the British people don’t seem to have taken much notice of President Obama—indeed, on the day he left the U.K., the Leave campaign actually saw a 2% increase in the polls. (As it’s neck and neck at the moment, perhaps we should invite him back?)

 

The endless threats about trade deals and GDP per capita from the EU and the IMF and the World Bank and the OECD, instead of cowing the British people, seem merely to have excited their bloody-mindedness. They recognize that they might indeed take a short-term financial hit, but there are some things more important than money. Imagine if a bunch of accountants had turned up at Valley Forge in that brutal winter of 1777 and proved with the aid of pie-charts and financial tables that Americans would be better off if they just gave up the cause of independence. George Washington would have sent them off with a few short, well-chosen words on the subject—probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon.

 

Winston Churchill was warned repeatedly by the Treasury that it was bankrupting Britain to continue her lonely and seemingly doomed struggle against the power that utterly dominated the entire European Continent in 1940 and 1941, but he treated all such warnings with his characteristically coruscating ire. That is what people do who love their country, and that is what I hope my countrymen will do on June 23.

 

And if we do vote to leave the EU on Thursday, I hope that Americans with a sense of history, Americans with a sense of tradition who honor friendship past and future, above all Americans who know what self-government means to a free people, will rally to the cause of an independent Britain.

Contents                                                                                   

BREXIT AND THE JEWS

Manfred Gerstenfeld

Arutz Sheva, June 14, 2016

 

The outcome of the 23 June referendum on Brexit, i.e whether the United Kingdom should remain or leave the European Union, will have consequences for Israel, whether direct or indirect. Polls indicate that the result will be very close. If the majority of the British vote to remain, the EU will get a boost. It is unlikely that there will be a new British referendum on the subject for several years to come. Furthermore no other member country is likely to consult its citizens whether to stay in the EU or to leave.

 

Israel has a vested interest in the continued existence of the present EU membership, albeit greatly weakened internally. Like several other supranational bodies, the EU scandalously discriminates against Israel. It regularly incites against Israel and interferes in its internal affairs. The EU applies double standards in its relations with Israel, such as its requirement for labeling of products from the West Bank and the Golan. This is an anti-Semitic act according to the IHRA definition of this hatred which was accepted by many countries.

 

No such demands are made of other countries dealing with a similar territorial reality. In its stance against Israel, the EU's actions have more to do with imperialist law than with the precepts of international law which, it claims, govern its attitudes.  

Yet if Britain exits the EU, the resulting instability in Europe could potentially bring disadvantages for Israel in its wake. A Brexit would also free the UK from commitments to act in line with overall EU policies. If, untrammeled by such commitments, a Labour party government would win British elections in the future, the resulting problems for Israel could increase greatly.

This would be even more likely if Jeremy Corbyn, the current party leader who calls Hamas and Hezbollah ‘his friends, would become Prime Minister. A situation could then be created where many Government positions would be filled with extreme Israel haters. If Labour came to power while the UK remained in the EU, the need to stay more or less in line with other countries would be a constraining force on its anti-Israelism. That is why I think that a victory for the Remain supporters, preferably by a very small majority, would be in Israel’s best interest.

 

Only a few people have publicly stated that their viewpoint on Brexit is determined by their Jewishness or by their attitude toward Israel. Times Columnist and author Melanie Phillips wrote “I am in favor of Britain leaving the EU so that it can become once again a democratic, self-governing nation. I also believe it would be in the interests of the US, Israel and Europe itself if the EU were to break up.” She added: “Uncontrolled migration, Islamization and the absence of any ability to hold EU rulers to account have caused mass alienation among the European public from the political mainstream. This has created rising support for ultra-nationalist and extremist parties.”

 

Journalist Angela Epstein, also in favor of Brexit, referred to "the bloody history of pan-European fascism." Academic Geoffrey Alderman concluded a lengthy analysis of the pros and cons of Brexit by writing “Brexit comes down to a question of sovereignty. As a religious Jew, I pray for the welfare of the nation. And that is why I shall be voting for Brexit on June 23.”

Some well-known Jews have expressed personal opinions on Brexit which are not based on their being Jewish. For instance, Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, opposes Brexit. This Russian billionaire who lives in London, does so for economic reasons.

 

There is one group of Jews living in the UK who have potentially much to fear from Brexit. This is the growing colony of French Jews, who in recent years have left France for Britain. Part did so because of the increasing anti-Semitism in France. They may have to go through bureaucratic processes to maintain the right to live and work in the UK. In an extreme development, some may even lose their British residency.

 

The British have many problems running their own country. Yet like several other European governments they claim wrongly that they know what is best for Israel, and regularly interfere in Israel’s affairs. The Israeli government, by contrast, has wisely kept out of the Brexit debate.  However, an Israeli NGO Regavim, has teamed up with anonymous British expats living in Israel, setting up a campaign website in support of Brexit. The website features a clip of a fake Hamas press conference, praising the EU because of its – illegal — construction of housing in the Area C, its labeling of products on the West Bank and the Golan, and the EU aid funds made available to the Palestinians, part of which are used for Hamas’s terror tunnels and to support terrorists in Israeli prisons.

 

There are other aspects of the Brexit debate, which have some relevance from an Israeli or Jewish point of view. As with almost any major issue, the Holocaust has featured in the rhetoric. British minister and former London Mayor Boris Johnson, among the leaders of the Brexit campaign, invoked Winston Churchill and told Brits to be “the heroes of Europe again.” Johnson said of European integration….

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

 

Contents                                                                                                                                 

BREXIT IS AN ESCAPE FROM A FAILED AND FRIGHTENING EUROPE

John Podhoretz

New York Post, June 19, 2016

 

In May, on a trip to London, almost every couple I met said they were in a mixed marriage. Their division was not over religion, or over party — rather, it was over Brexit, the referendum vote in the United Kingdom that takes place this week. The results will determine whether Britain remains a member of the European Union, the financial amalgamation of 28 countries very loosely modeled on the United States’ domestic economic structure — or departs from it after 41 years.

 

A conservative thinker I know was passionately in favor of Britain exiting the European Union. His support for “Leave” centered on his understanding of his country’s ancient nationhood and how its sovereignty is slowly being eroded to nothing by the heavy hand of the central European Union bureaucracy based in Brussels. His wife, a leading businesswoman who shares most of his politics, was as passionately against Brexit as her husband is for it. She viewed Brexit as a danger because it will ignite trade hostilities with the rest of Europe and even the United States — since President Obama traveled to London in April and threatened the UK that a Brexited Britain would “go to the back of the queue” when it comes to future trade agreements with America. (Yes, he used the word “queue,” just to give it that extra dollop of locavore menace.)

 

Another friend, a freelance maker of television commercials, supported Brexit because it will weaken the British pound against the Euro and therefore make her bids for jobs more competitive. Her husband, a writer and intellectual, worried that the move is just too destabilizing and risky and so was inclined against it. Their 22-year-old son said he didn’t feel comfortable making the choice but said his friends were against Brexit because they feared their free movement through the continent with train passes would be stymied.

 

And so it went. You might say that the entire Conservative Party is now a mixed marriage—with Prime Minister David Cameron advocating that Britain remain in the EU, and his likely someday successor, the brilliantly flamboyant Boris Johnson, leading the charge to leave. When I was there, it looked as though Cameron had pulled off a coup by scheduling and framing the Brexit vote as he had. He wants Britain to stay in, but many of his Conservative Party’s natural constituents have been tempted to join the upstart UKIP — and to win their support in the 2015 election, he promised to bring Britain’s membership in the European Union to a vote. So he went to Brussels and spent a week supposedly negotiating new and more favorable terms for Britain and then announced there would be a vote on June 23.

 

Staying in the EU became the default position of the cognoscenti. Jeremy Corbin, the neo-Marxist clown who opposed the EU most of his career before becoming head of the opposition Labour Party last year, joined Cameron in supporting “Remain.” The polling was strongly in Cameron’s favor, but he took nothing for granted and inaugurated a campaign his opponents called “Project Fear.” Daily warnings about the dreadful fate awaiting Britain should it exit the EU came out of 10 Downing Street, capped by Obama’s threat.

 

And then something funny began to happen. The people of Britain began to change their minds. Nightly television debates of very high quality made it clear that the supporters of Brexit were serious, thoughtful and analytical — and that it was those arguing to remain who were more likely to erupt in unreasoning anger and simply accuse their rivals of bad faith or evil.

Those who want Britain to leave are accused of romanticizing a long-lost past in which Britannia ruled the waves. But what voters in Britain discovered was that the Brexiters are actually making an argument about the future — and using highly disturbing information and data from the present moment to bolster their case. The case is simply that Europe itself is in danger of a slow-motion collapse due to a perfect storm of troubles and that Britain should extricate itself from the EU’s suffocating embrace before it’s too late.…. [To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

 

Contents                                                                                                                                                  

 EXIT BRITAIN?

Douglas Murray

National Review, June 6, 2016

 

For at least a quarter of a century, there was no greater bore in British politics than the Eurobore, who warned against Britain’s loss of sovereignty to Brussels. From the moment the House of Commons narrowly passed the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s, turning the European Economic Community into the European Union, the species could be sighted around Westminster. But its natural habitat became sparsely populated meetings of the already converted. Occasionally an overreach by Brussels would find the Eurobore staring into the bright lights of the nation’s broadcast media, there to answer a few hostile questions while demonstrating an unappetizing combination of monomania and over-fondness for detail. But for at least a generation, people said to be “banging on about Europe” suffered from the political equivalent of halitosis.

 

And then things began to change. Of course, nobody wanted to credit the fact, but over the course of recent years the wilderness dwellers began to assume the mantle of prophets. The backbenchers in Westminster and the MEP (Members of the European Parliament) flotsam in Brussels who had kept a flame of British independence alive became politically palatable again. Their knowledge of the minutiae of EU laws and regulations proved useful. Soon bigger political beasts found the courage once again to join this renegade band. Today, with a vote on Britain’s remaining in or leaving the EU taking place on June 23, Britain’s Euroskeptics are not just back in the mainstream but at the helm of the most important decision facing the country in decades. Indeed, they may soon be running the country. With the polls currently showing “Remain” and “Leave” tied, an entire political establishment is now angrily trying to work out why Leave is doing so well. Why has wheeling out every other expert and authority in the land not browbeat the British people into overwhelmingly voting Remain? Why, indeed, does it seem to be pushing them the other way? Sad to say, the explanation is the facts — and two very large facts in particular, both of which have long been visible from Britain, even if not from Brussels.

 

The first is the legacy of the endless euro-zone crises. For years, British Euroskeptics argued that currency union, or the euro, could not possibly work unless the countries that participated in it gave up all remaining sovereignty. How, they asked, could Greece and Germany share a currency if they did not share fiscal habits and constraints? How the Europhiles scoffed at this! From different political sides, the former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine and the über-Blairite Peter Mandelson pooh-poohed all such complaints. Indeed, these grandees insisted that Britain would regret not joining the euro zone. Such men may still pretend to sail on as though nothing ever ruffled this core argument, but for seven years the nightly news has torn it to shreds.

 

The euro-zone crises that have battered the Continent since 2009 vindicated every British Euroskeptic fear. As one southern European country after another found itself unable to refinance its debts, the euro zone became a raft of the Medusa. In an effort to impose fiscal restraint on the southern European countries, northern European countries, especially Germany, not only imposed further financial rules on their neighbors but ousted their elected leaders, imposing bureaucrats to run things on Brussels’s behalf. Even now, youth unemployment in these countries sits between 25 and 50 percent, blighting an entire generation.

 

As events in Greece keep showing, these southern countries retain the ability to crash the entire continent at any moment. After lying their way into the euro zone (they cooked their books to mask the weakness of their financial state) and then refusing to impose sufficient austerity while inside it, the Greeks unwittingly demonstrated what the Euroskeptics had long warned about. In any ordinary financial arrangement, a country such as Greece should have been thrown out of the union and allowed to return to its own currency, devalue, and then climb its way out of recession in the usual manner. The EU’s refusal to allow Greece to do this was just one reminder that the euro project — like everything else the EU does — was never about economics so much as it was about politics. The economics could not be allowed to fail, because the political project could not be allowed to fail. A Greek exit from the euro zone risked pushing other countries to exit. So despite its failure, the euro zone stays together even now, with the effects felt even outside it. The EU today, as IMF figures show, remains the only region of the world to be consistently experiencing zero economic growth….

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]     

 

Contents           

On Topic Links

 

Both Sides of the Brexit Referendum Sound Like Out-Takes From the 1988 Canadian Federal Election: Robert Fulford, National Post, June 3, 2016— It came as a surprise, to many on this side of the Atlantic, when the British began seriously to contemplate the idea of withdrawing from the European Union. Why would they want to do a thing like that?

Jewish Commentators on Brexit: Jeremy Sharon, Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2016— With the UK poised for its fateful referendum on Thursday to decide whether to stay in the European Union or leave the continent to its own devices, political commentators from the Jewish community have weighed in both for and against Brexit.

British Jewry Faces Brexit Vote With Fear and Trepidation: Jenni Frazer, Times of Israel, June 20, 2016— As Britain heads into the last few days of campaigning before the historic referendum on whether to stay in or leave the European Union, only one thing is clear: This will be a narrow, knife-edge, vote.

In Britain, Anti-Semitism Endures: George F. Will, Washington Post, June 10, 2016— Of the fighting faiths that flourished during the ideologically drunk 20th century, anti-Semitism has been uniquely durable. It survives by mutating, even migrating across the political spectrum from the right to the left.

Voting to leave the EU is a vote for freedom: John Robson, National Post, June 23, 2016— If the British vote to leave the European Union, it will be the greatest blow for freedom the world has seen in many years. It would mean a return to what made Britain Great.

 

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