A man met another, who was handsome, intelligent and elegant: He asked him who he was. The other said: ‘I am the Devil.’

‘But you cannot be,’ said the first man, ‘for the devil is evil and ugly.’

‘My friend,’ said Satan, ‘you have been listening to my detractors.’ Saadi, Bustan (From Shah’s Reflections)

All nations possess the fork tongued humanoid character and not one single community is immune from this type of person regardless of religion, race and culture. So to single out one community would, in theory, be potentially unfair and indeed discriminatory. Yet one is humbly compelled to make a special case for British supposedly pro-Palestinian fork tongued characters, especially as Britain played the leading formative role in establishing the Zionist-colonial settlers in Palestine. These characters, to all appearances, seem to be genuinely horrified by the never-ending Gaza genocide yet paradoxically continue to express support and always champion the British geopolitical roots of the genocide. In this essay I identify some of the leading characters who play this rotten game as well as spelling out the central historical disconnect which characterises their forked-tongue nature.

If there was a doyen of fork tongued characters then one of the most esteemed historians in the western world, William Dalrymple is up there as the greatest contender for this accolade. When the Palestinian resistance carried out the October 7^th 2023 military operation, ‘al-Aqsa Flood’, breaking the siege of Gaza and capturing Zionist colonial settlements Dalrymple was quick to condemn on what can be perceived as an act of heroic resistance against occupation, colonisation and ethnic cleansing. The Palestinian resistance in the besieged Gaza strip had broken through enemy lines, humiliated the Zionist settler-colonial enemy by occupying military bases and capturing leading settler-colonial military personnel in what in this imperialist era is referred to as “southern Israel” or the “Gaza envelope”. In a statement posted on the social media platform, X, before any of the predictable lurid stories were confirmed or corroborated (and inevitably totally debunked) Dalrymple totally accepted the Zionist tales about how the resistance, specifically HAMAS, had allegedly targeted innocents and supposedly committed heinous crimes:

“I am a life-long supporter of the Palestinian search for freedom and statehood” he hissed, Continue reading →