Curious priorities

On the BBC Radio 4 program "Any Questions?" the panel addressed, at great length ,the dilemma facing PC Alexander Omar Basha and his employers, the Metropolitan Police about his request to be moved to other duties than patrolling to protect the Israeli Embassy in Kensington.

PC Basha has never been allocated to this task but sought to be excused such duties because his wife is Lebanese and he has relatives there, and feared for his personal security.

PC Basha expressed concern (according to press reports) that he might be the focus of groups such as al-Muhajiroun and al-Ghurabaa (both now proscribed groups) - which has happened to some Muslim POLice officers, according to Superintendent Dal Babu, of the Association of Muslim Police Officers.

The decision by the Metropolitan Police to excuse him from one particular protection responsibility provoked controversy about whether police officers should be allowed to "pick and choose" their duties for moral reasons. Hazel Blears, the Labour party chairman, is reported to have said that Police officers should not be able to "pick and choose" their assignments: "I do not think it's right that the police should pick and choose."

Apparently "a risk assessment" was carried out when PC Basha raised the matter at the time of the of the invasion of Lebanon by Israel, and as a result of this, and "not because of the officer's personal views, whatever they might have been", it was decided not to deploy him to the embassy at that time.

There was much discussion by the Any Questions panel of personal beliefs, rights, duties, principles, managerial responsibility etc.,

Not a single person mentioned the fact that the reason the Israeli Embassy is in need of such protection , is because of the malignant internal and foreign policies their successive governments have undertaken, result widespread and well deserved contempt and hatred - which might be expressed by shows of dissent outside their leafy seclusion.

The avoidable deaths of women, mothers, the elderly, children, the new born, the still born in Gaza, the devastation and economic destruction of Lebanon was left untouched.

The lasting and abiding legacy of one million lethal cluster bombs deliberately despatched by the Israeli Defence (?) Forces in the dying hours of their occupation , as world opinion , resisted at every stage by the UK Government, (of which panel member and wannabe Deputy Prime Minister Peter Hain was a member) George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and the huge Zionist Lobby (which doesn't exist) finally forged a half hearted resolution at the UN.

That the personal concerns of PC Basha, whom we have trained , and for which he has volunteered, to patrol our streets, with a lethal weapon ready to kill on request and instruction of his officers - as we know happens from the events at Stockwell Tube station on 22nd July 2006.... are of legitiamate concern, but there are larger and more serious matters for discussion.

Those with a modestly good memory might recall Jack Straw , when Foreign Secretary in April 2002 called in Israeli Ambassador Zvi Shtauber (see Pic)to explain how "disturbed he was" by reports of hundreds of deaths and casualties in the Jenin refugee camp at the hands of the Israeli Defence Force....Britain's ambassador in Tel Aviv, at the time, Sherard Cowper-Coles, expressed similar concerns to Israeli officials.