…[T]he government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown has quietly begun turning up the political heat on Israel in recent weeks, seeking to impose an economic choke hold on the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria.

On November 3, the Independent newspaper reported that London is pressing the European Union to clamp down on imports produced by Jews living beyond ’s 1967 borders. In a circular distributed to all 27 EU member states, the British Foreign Office grumbled that “there has been an acceleration in settlement construction,” and it urged Europe “to look at how and Community policies can avoid inadvertently supporting or encouraging settlement activity.” Israeli officials are said to be concerned that this may be the first step in a British campaign to bring about a total boycott of Jewish goods from Judea and Samaria . And so, while Palestinian terrorists in Gaza are busy firing rockets into the Negev , the British government is more concerned about Israeli tomatoes being grown in the West Bank.…

 Well, if the Brits want to have an open and frank discussion about “occupied territories,” I say bring it on. A good place to start would be with ’s own “occupied territories,” which are far more extensive and widespread than anything it accuses of possessing.…

The most famous of these, of course, are the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, which are claimed by . Although the islands are of little economic value and are home to more penguins than people, fought a brief war with over them in 1982 which left 900 dead. And just last week, the British sparked a diplomatic row with Buenos Aires by issuing a new constitution for the Falklands, which it said is intended “to protect interests.” This prompted Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taina to call a press conference at which he denounced the British for attempting to perpetuate “an anachronistic colonial situation.”

And they call us stubborn occupiers? Half way around the world lies another fine example of British hypocrisy—the Chagos Archipelago, which London refers to as the British Indian Ocean Territory . Both and the have strong claims to it as their own, but that didn’t stop from forcibly expelling all the inhabitants between 1965 and 1971 to make way for a military base it wanted to lease to the . And though the Chagossians, as they are known, have repeatedly won court cases against the British government demanding their “right of return,” the Brits will have none of it, and have largely left the islands’ former residents to fend for themselves in exile.…

Thousands of miles to the south, even the polar icecaps of Antarctica have not escaped London ’s lust for land. has staked a claim to a whopping 1.7 million square kilometers of the South Pole’s frozen terrain, part of which overlaps with territories claimed by and . But the fact that it is stepping on other nations’ toes, and ignoring their rightful claims, does not seem to trouble ’s Foreign Office one bit.

Back here in the Middle East, our neighbors in continue to suffer from some good old-fashioned British colonial covetousness. While efforts are under way to reunite the Greek and Turkish controlled parts of the isle, doggedly continues to cling to 254 sq. km. of Cypriot territory in the form of the Akrotiri and Dhekelia sovereign military bases. This has sparked the ire of ’ new president, who vowed earlier this year to remove the British “colonial bloodstain” from his country.