Paul Calvert spoke with Michael McCann, the director of the Israel Britain Alliance, about the need for a balanced debate and narrative of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Michael: The pledge for Israel ran during the 2017 general election campaign. We contacted every single candidate standing in the general election and asked them to sign a pledge for Israel. I called on them to support the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the antisemitism definition and a number of other things. We got around 500 candidates who responded and a number of those individuals were elected and are now in Parliament. What they vowed to do was to ensure that Israel gets a fair hearing. We understand it will make mistakes as a democracy, but up until recently, the situation we had in Parliament, is Parliamentarians were being bombarded with messages from the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and they are not fair or balanced and they reach all the wrong conclusions. We are redressing that and making sure the narrative is much more balanced in Parliament.

Paul: This summer Israel had to deal with terror on the Temple Mount, do people in Britain understand what is happening there?

Michael: I don't think so. It's very complicated, because the Jordanians through the Islamic WAFF control the Temple Mount. You have a situation where you have the Western Wall, which is an extremely holy site for the Jewish people and you have the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which obviously is a very holy site for Muslim people. It's a very complicated situation. We saw the attack on 14th July when two police officers were killed by three Arabs. Those three Arabs hid their automatic weapons in the Al-Aqsa mosque. It might further complicate the whole situation and it may be a surprise for you to know that the non-Muslim entrances to the Temple Mount have detection scanners, to make sure nobody can take a weapon in. It's only the Muslim entrances that don't, so these guys that went in with their automatic weapons, went in through the Muslim entrances and they murdered people. Then Israel put in scanners in all entrances, which to any normal minded person makes sense, but then the Palestinians go crazy and try to urge people to create violence because of the security measures that protect everyone. It's an upside down world in the Middle East. Effectively what people should do when looking through the prism of how we deal with things, is look at how we deal with things in our country and the common sense that you would apply and completely turn it on it's head for the Middle East. If you look at the Palestinians preaching incitement to the people, to hate Jews, how on earth are we to get peace so that two peoples can live in harmony with each other if we don't get Palestinian leadership to sort all these problems out?

Paul: As someone who has been a politician and doing advocacy work in the British Parliament, are you proud of one hundred years of the Balfour Declaration?

Michael: Absolutely proud of the contribution, even though it was a Conservative politician who created the Balfour Declaration and wrote that original letter.

There were some hiccups in the history after the war. People who'd been in German concentration camps were effectively put in internment camps, because they weren't allowed into what was the Palestinian Mandate. This is where the history gets so twisted, because some people believe that there was a democratic State of Palestine. There was never a democratic State of Palestine. It was a piece of land that was fought over for thousands of years, from the Romans and Babylonians, right through to the Turkish Empire and then through to the British Mandate, which was another hangover from our colonial past. The creation of Israel was breaking away from all of that and recognising that the Jewish people had a right to a national home, in their ancient homeland. The same offer was made to the Arab people, to have their own part of what was previously the Mandate. They refused. It's a continued refusal to recognise the State of Israel exists, and to create all this violence and disharmony, which now we struggle with in 2017. I hope in my lifetime we can find a solution, but that may be a hope that I have in vain.

Paul: How can we pray for Israel?

Michael: The prayers that people offer for Israel for peace will always be listened to by our Lord and Saviour, but we also have to pray for politicians and let our politicians know our opinions. All too often when it comes to the propaganda war, the Palestinian side have won, because they have more people prepared to advocate for the cause. The difference with us is we want to advocate for the truth. We want to advocate that people can find a solution and recognise that compromise has to come along the way at some point. That is the difference between us, we want peace and negotiations and we want people to live side by side with each other in harmony. The only way that that can happen is if we tell politicians what we believe in, and how we believe in the State of Israel. We want them to listen to the majority of the people and if we do that, we can win the propaganda war and we can do that quite frankly with a simple word, truth.

Paul: You have a website. What can people see on the website and how can they get involved

Michael: We run about six campaigns a year. If you go onto our website www.israelbritain.org.uk you can click on our current campaign. What we are asking you to do is simply click on a few buttons, put in your details and you can agree with the message and send it unedited, or if you think you want to add something, then add your own personal perspective, as that is available too.

What we have tried to do is create a simple mechanism, where people who are perhaps fearful about how to construct a letter to a politician, we do all the construction and make all the points, but we give people the opportunity to edit it and send whichever points of view they want to send to their Government ministers.

It makes a difference. Last year we had three campaigns. Payments to Palestinian prisoners, which is an outrage that British aid money is being abused by the Palestinian Authority. Those payments were suspended because evidence was uncovered by Britain Israel Alliance and others that money was getting into the hands of terrorists, who were effectively paid a salary for the time they were in prison. Secondly we had success with a debate in Parliament about the Balfour Declaration, where there were overwhelmingly positive contributions on 16th November 2016. Then finally, people will recall that UNSCR 2334 was passed by the United Nations on 23rd December. Effectively that blamed Israel and one single issue, the question of settlements, for the collapse of the peace talks. Now everyone knows, who knows anything about this subject, that it is a very complex issue. It's not about one thing and we were successful in ensuring that the British Government didn't send a delegation to Paris for the peace talks that were taking place crazily, without the two protagonists being present. It ensured that there was no further wrongful action taken about Israel, so people power makes a difference. If anyone is reading this and wants to get involved, then get on to the website and sign up, we need your help.