A reduced number at the latest vigil, No 128, held in the wet
May 2026
Well it still goes on. There was a report on the Channel 4 news ostensibly about a ceasefire in Lebanon followed by footage of bomb damage from the latest raids. Surreal. One wonders if there ever will be a ceasefire so belligerent are the various parties and so deep the hatreds. Things could be better if the US curbed its seemingly unconditional supply of weapons and support for Israel.
In his latest book Israel, What Went Wrong (Fern Press, 2026) the Jewish academic Omer Bartov writes:
“By what bitter cunning of history have we come to the point that not even eight decades after the Jewish state was established in 1948 – the same year in the genocide convention was adopted by the United Nations in direct response the Nazi extermination of European Jewry – Israel engages for two years in a genocidal undertaking with almost total impunity from the very international legal regime set up after World War II to prevent and punish this crime?”
Eurovision
The Eurovision song contest was held on Saturday and Israel came second to Bulgaria the winners. Five countries boycotted the contest because of Israel’s presence and there have been protests in Vienna. Coming second to Bulgaria it represents a triumph for the country despite the protests. Ireland did not to participate and RTÉ said in December that it felt Ireland’s participation would be “unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there, which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk”. It also said it was deeply concerned by the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza during the conflict and by Israel’s barring of international journalists from the territory. At least 235 journalists have been killed there making it the most dangerous place in the world for them to work.
It is nonetheless troubling that the Israeli entrant could perform so well with reports that the voting was ‘nail-biting’ with a chance that Israel could have won. This despite the terrible events going on in the region. The European Broadcasting Union insists the contest is not political. Last year, there were reports of aggressive marketing by Israel to help secure its second place.
Most media have simply reported the results with discussions about the merits of the performances. So we are indebted to the New York Times who have investigated the Israeli contestant and reveal that the country has invested heavily to the tune of $1 million to promote him. The full story is worth a read and reveals the extent they went to achieve their success. Further details in this Al Jazeera story. Looking at the BBC coverage for example, there is no hint of this activity leaving readers or viewers none the wiser about what happened. The British entrant got the dreaded ‘nul point’ for a second year.
Around 20 attended the vigil on Saturday, down from recent ones but People in the Park kept many away as did the weather. As ever, no sign of the local MP, Mr John Glen who is a proud supporter of Conservative Friends of Israel.
Sources: Politico, Irish Times, International Federation of Journalists, NY Times.
Photo from the vigil courtesy of Peter Gloyns
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Comparing the 1939 White Paper to UN 446 passed by Carter whose book slandered Israel as Apartheid! UN 2334 voted with the aid of Obama. All three, explicit expressions of UN GA Resolution 3379 – Zionism is Racism; which the UN later annulled under President Bush – the bane of Saddam in Kuwait. “High Contracting Parties” post WWII legalese (legal language has been used as a political weapon) whereby UN official sought used the 4th Geneva Convention (1949) upon Israel as a badge of shame. The UN declares that Israelis do not have the right to rule territory originally declared by the League of Nations as “Palestine Mandate”, but “UN international law dictates” where and who live within the borders of Israel; a similar legalese first introduced by Chamberlain’s White Paper abomination.
When Neville Chamberlain’s government issued the 1939 White Paper, they used the mask of British administrative law to effectively nullify the Mandate. By capping Jewish immigration and restricting land sales, they didn’t just break a promise—they used bureaucratic decrees to freeze Jews out of their own recognized national home right when they needed it most.
The UN has essentially adopted this exact same tactic. By passing resolutions like 446 and 2334, the UN claims the authority to dictate who can live & where; treating Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem as “occupied” rather than recognizing the deep historical and legal continuity stemming from the original Mandate. The Fourth Geneva Convention, written in the immediate shadow of WWII to prevent brutal, aggressive regimes from depopulating countries, conducting forced deportations, and systematically destroying native populations (as the Nazis did across Europe). When UN bodies and international courts invoke the language of the “High Contracting Parties” against Israel, they steal a “convention” originally designed to prevent forced, aggressive population transfers and use it to sodomize Jews who choose to live, build homes, and buy land in their ancestral heartland – the UN and international courts now condemn Israeli guilt as equal to Nazi like war crime.
When Jimmy Carter wrote Peace Not Apartheid, or when the Obama administration allowed Resolution 2334 to pass by withholding a U.S. veto, the tuma spirit of UN 3379 dominated their Yatzir Ha-Rah. They treated the Jewish state’s defensive positions and historical claims – not as a matter of survival or legitimate common law rights – but as an inherent Palestinian injustice that the international community has the ‘Divine-Right of Kings’ to micromanage. The UN behaves as a global parliament, rewriting its own rules to fit prevailing geopolitical voting block alignments; while treating Israel’s foundational legal rights under the Mandate as if they can be erased comparable to how post Bar Kochba Rome erased Judea.
Resolutions 446 and 2334 ignores the core principle of legal continuity (found in Article 80 of the UN Charter, often called the “Jewish People’s Clause,” which preserved all rights granted under the League of Nations Mandates) and instead attempts to legislate Jews out of their heartland by bureaucratic fiat. By treating the Jewish presence in Shiloh, Hebron, or Jerusalem as a “flagrant violation” akin to the darkest crimes of the 20th century, international bodies strip the convention of its moral anchor, transforming a tool of human rights into a political badge of shame.
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