{"id":298,"date":"2009-01-15T13:40:22","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T11:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=298"},"modified":"2009-01-15T13:40:22","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T11:40:22","slug":"liberal-democrat-leader-responds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/liberal-democrat-leader-responds\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal Democrat leader responds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The office of Nick Clegg MP, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has responded to my letter<\/a>. You may recall that the entire point of my letter was to answer Clegg’s failure to cite the Nazi rocket attacks on Britain in 1944-5 as a precedent<\/strong> for what Israel has suffered for the last several years from Hamas. (The photo below shows a damaged building hit by V1 rockets in London in 1944.)
\n\"v1rocketdamage.jpg\"Britain’s response to those attacks was to intensify<\/strong> the strategic bomber offensive against Germany even though the Third Reich was in already in defeat and could not really defend itself against aerial bombardment<\/strong>. The vast majority of victims of those bombings were civilians, including thousands of women and children.
\nIn my letter, I did point out the irony of the fact that Clegg’s predecessor as party leader actually helped plan the firebombing of Dresden – something which the Liberal Democrats today would almost certainly characterize as ‘disproportionate’ and even a ‘war crime’. But that is not what they thought at the time<\/strong>, when German V1 rockets were falling on London.
\nYou’ll see that the letter I’ve received from Clegg’s office is boilerplate and makes no reference to any points I raised (such as at the very least dismissing the analogy I made). Click on ‘Read more’ to read the full text of their reply.<\/p>\n


\nDear Mr Lee
\nThank you very much for your email to Nick Clegg MP regarding Israeli action in the Gaza Strip and Nick\u2019s article in The Guardian. Nick has asked me to reply to you on his behalf.
\nI am very sorry that you disagree with Nick\u2019s comments on the issue of Israeli actions in Gaza. I should clarify that Liberal Democrats were in no way questioning Israel\u2019s right to security and we do understand that it faces a uniquely difficult predicament among liberal democracies. Nick has, furthermore, condemned Hamas\u2019 rocket attacks and said that it \u201cmust turn its back on terrorism\u201d in the article. We feel, however, that Israel\u2019s current actions are not in its own best interests \u2013 this sort of action undermines the prospects for negotiation and for a settlement, which ultimately is the only way to guarantee peace for Israeli citizens. We have also advocated EU action to help broker peace and believe that an EU mission could help tackle the problems of weapons smuggling, helping to secure a much more proportionate and effective response to rocket attacks in the shorter term.
\nThank you once again for emailing us.
\nBest wishes
\nAnna Brown
\nCorrespondence Manager
\nOffice of Nick Clegg MP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The office of Nick Clegg MP, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has responded to my letter. You may recall that the entire point of my letter was to answer Clegg’s failure to cite the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-israelgaza"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}