Fancy a different holiday destination?

Then why not try a week in a Jewish settlement in Palestine’s West Bank? It’s easy: you can book a break through TripAdvisor, Booking.com or Air BnB, all of which are happy to flout international law by promoting holidays in settlements that have been declared illegal under international law for two decades.

International law prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilians into a territory it occupies, as well as prohibiting those powers from forcibly transferring protected persons from occupied territory. Yet that is precisely what Israel has been doing, on an industrial scale, for the last twenty years. Indeed, it is ramping up its policies as I write this today. This is part of Israel’s policy of ‘normalisation’, whereby it hopes to make the world believe everything is fine and dandy in the lands it controls; therefore it is perfectly legitimate to offer holidays in those occupied lands. They want the world to believe it is situation normal on the West Bank, and that the Palestinians under their thumb are doing just fine. Here’s the news: they aren’t.

I’ve been there and seen it for myself: the settlements perched atop all areas of high ground, from where the settlers encroach on what is left of the Palestinian Territories, harassing the locals, stealing their land, destroying their means of making a living (by, for example, poisoning or burning down their olive groves). Whole villages are being bulldozed to make way for the settlers, while the former occupants are relocated to areas next to rubbish dumps or sewage plants. According to Amnesty International, these constitute war crimes, but the Israelis have an answer: Amnesty is anti-Semitic. Yeah, that old chestnut again, accusing anyone who criticizes the actions of Zionist Israel of being against Jewish people as a whole. They aren’t, of course, any more than are the many Labour MPs who have dared criticize the Israeli state.

I’m not anti-Semitic, but I hate and despise what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people - and Pelagius says shame on the big holiday booking websites for buying into the great Zionist lie, and pretending it’s cool to go on holiday in a illegal Israeli settlement.