The key concept behind the Friends of Lebanon organisation is the encouragement of a better and more peaceful Lebanon.  We do not endorse a particular religion or political party because it is only through accepting our differences in the spirit of cooperation that we can indeed achieve a better and more peaceful country.

British Lebanese Association 25th Anniversary

As part of its 25th Anniversary Celebrations the British Lebanese Association (BLA) will hold a special event in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 10th February 2010.  Read more and bookings click here

This will not be a fund-raising event. The intention is to give BLA members and others an opportunity to get together in congenial and prestigious surroundings to celebrate our silver jubilee, to meet British parliamentarians with a close interest in Lebanon, and to raise the BLA's profile as an Association on good terms with the centre of political power in this country.

  

Photo left: Ayalon, on the right, former co-chair of Nefesh B'Nefesh.  What other country in the world actively recruits immigrants?

Photo right: Victims at Qana, Lebanon, July 2006, who Ayalon says were “warned time and again to clear the area.”

 

Arrogant Ayalon Not Welcome—Demonstration Monday 8 February, 10.30 am, outside the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Temple Place, WC2R 3DX (opposite Temple tube—directions here) 

 

On Monday 8 February 2010, Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, is scheduled to speak on “Israel’s Challenges and Opportunities” from 11am-12pm.  The title is of course a euphemistic way of saying he is coming to London to drum up support for further Israeli war-mongering.

 Let us not forget who Mr American-MBA with his eloquent English is.  Recall, for instance, his defiant statements on 31 July 2006, the day after the Israeli military deliberately killed 27 Lebanese civilians seeking shelter in Qana*.  Free Speech Radio News [starting at 12 minutes into the broadcast] interviewed Ayalon, who was then the Israeli Ambassador to the US.  He shrugged off the attack as being okay by the Fourth Geneva Protocol (which it is not).  Ayalon went on to flatly deny that the Israeli military had used cluster munitions (even though at least 400,000 were fired prior to the last 72 hours of the war).  And then Ayalon made a pronouncement to explain away the decades of bloodshed brought on by Israeli aggression.

 

The interviewer asks:

“So you do not take any responsibility as the Israeli ambassador for the occupation role in all that is going on in the region for the last fifty years, am I hearing you right?”

To which Ayalon emphatically responds:

“You are hearing me. Damned right.  Absolutely not, we are there because it is our land.”

 

So never doubt that Israel still covets Lebanese land.  Never doubt that it aims to erase all non-Jewish populations from what it views as their god-given land, Palestine and South Lebanon.  It is such conviction of exclusive entitlement that led Ayalon to chair Nefesh B'Nefesh** in 2007, and in 2009 to become Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.  The IISS states that Ayalon will discuss “prospects for peace with the Palestinians.”  This so-called peace appears to be predicated on the premise that Palestine (a word Ayalon refuses to use) is Jewish land—thus spoke the arrogant Ayalon.

*See reports on Qana by Human Rights Watch, an objective organisation that certainly cannot be viewed as biased toward Lebanon: 29 July 2006; 2 August 2006; 30 July 2007.

** “The core mission of NBN is to revitalize Aliyah and to substantially increase the number of future olim by removing the financial, professional and logistical obstacles that prevent many individuals from actualizing their dreams. In the process of fulfilling our mission, we aim to educate and inspire the Jews of the Diaspora as to the centrality of the Jewish State to the Jewish people and its desirability as a Jewish home. Such enhanced awareness will send an unmistakable signal of Anglo-Israeli Jewish solidarity and of our mutual determination to strengthen the State of Israel and thereby increase the likelihood of an ever expanding Aliyah reality.” [http://www.nbn.org.il/about/nbn_mission.htm ] More here.

Please come and let it be known that Arrogant Ayalon is Not Welcome in London.