New Left Project: “God helps those who help themselves”

Jamie Stern-Weiner over at NLP did a really great interview with Norman Finkelstein about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

It’s split over two parts: here’s part one and part two.

Here’s my pull from the second part:

What is the British government’s role in the conflict? It is officially committed to the international consensus two-state settlement, but what has our record been in practice?

It’s been awful. Britain doesn’t have an independent role – it just does what the US tells it to do. On the other hand, the struggle is easier in the UK because Britain’s formal role, say in UN resolutions, is not bad. It belongs with the majority in virtually all of the votes that are taken – in the annual ‘Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine’ vote, for example. So in the UK your task is to hold your government accountable to its words and argue that there is a huge gap between its words and its actions. That’s a much easier struggle than in the US, where there is no gap between the words and the actions – both are wretched.

But I do pity you – I mean, as bad as Bush was, I prefer him to Blair. Blair is a freak.