State of Terror
by Thomas Suarez
(Skyscraper Books, £20)

SINCE British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour fraudulently signed away Palestine for a Jewish state in 1917, zionism has been the driving force behind the decades of violence, subjugation, displacement and dehumanisation forced upon the Palestinian nation.

This year marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration and Thomas Suarez’s book is a timely reminder that a European land-theft movement, based on ethnic nationalism which hijacked Judaism and historic Jewish persecution, is the ideology behind Israel’s ruthless and perpetual expansionism.

Zionism created the mythical narrative of a covenanted “race” whose entitlement to Palestine was supposedly guaranteed by an ancient religious text. It reinforced it with a fanatical, shocking and indiscriminate programme of murder and destruction.

By focusing on the zionist terrorism campaign of the 1940s and 1950s, Suarez has produced a comprehensive catalogue and analysis of the carnage from which Israel was born.

Zionist violence was targeted against anyone who challenged its goals.

This included the British who, by 1947, had openly recognised that no-one was safe from the terrorists, including indigenous Palestinians and even Jews.

Most victims of targeted assassinations during this period were, in fact, Jewish.

Such was the ferocity of this insurgency it is surprising that the daily reports of murderous attacks on British armed forces and civilians, recorded in detail by the Westminster government, have not had more influence on foreign policy.

Even high-profile incidents — the murder of Lord Moyne in 1944, letter bombs sent to Winston Churchill, Ernest Bevin and Anthony Eden and even, heaven forbid, the bombing of London’s Colonial Club — seem forgotten.

The “peace-seeking democracy” of Israel still uses the same tactics, albeit now state-sponsored, to enforce its occupation and siege of Palestine and Britain remains wedded to this well-documented campaign of terror.

As Suarez points out, the personalities and circumstances have changed but, criminally, nearly 70 years after Israel’s birth zionism continues with its lethal attempts to create a racially pure state to which it claims messianic entitlement.

Jamie Johnson