Balfour to Blair is a special 30 minute film that investigates the role of British policy in the Middle East from the beginning of the 20th century to today.
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Balfour to Blair is a special 30 minute film that investigates the role of British policy in the Middle East from the beginning of the 20th century to today.
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Dandelion Salad 
Thanks for the additional info, Paul. You are such a great resource of knowledge!
Thanks for the that Lo. Sir Mark Sykes was my great, great uncle, and Jeremy Corbyn is my local Member of Parliament, so it was of great interest to me.
The film was right that Sykes was a ‘Crusader’ who was somewhat influenced by old time religion, and so was Lloyd George. Regarding Tony Blair’s appointment of his main bag man, the unelected Lord Levy as Middle East Envoy, this looked awful, especially in the light of later allegations about financial ‘sleaze’ involving Levy and Blair. However it should be said that Levy was actually surprisingly even handed for a Jewish lobbyist in this position, and he had a HUGE disagreement with Sharon during his time as envoy. He was also a little more knowledgable than his lack of experience would suggest. Although Jeremy Corbyn and Jenny Tonge were right about the more general influence of Labour “Friends of Israel”, it was Blair’s slavish adherence to idiotic American foreign policy decisions that were always the biggest problem. Depite his religious pretensions, their was no ‘Zionist agenda’ for Blair on Israel. He is just a venal little shit who is drunk on money and power. Levy gave him his money and America had the power, though Blair was sadly deluded if he ever thought that America was ever going to give any of it’s power to him.