Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

Category: The Delegitimisation of Israel (Page 8 of 15)

Palestinian National Orchestra and BBC’s historical illiteracy

04/01/2011 / / 0 Comments

I had to read a BBC News article twice recently; not something I would recommend.

The subject was ‘Palestinian orchestra to hold debut concert in Ramallah’.

Great. I’m all for culture and it’s good to see what must be essentially a Muslim orchestra playing western music.

The article shows us orchestra members including a woman in a hijab. So far so good.

Then the jaw-dropping bit:

The first Palestinian orchestra of professional classical musicians since 1948 is due to perform its debut concert in Ramallah in the West Bank.

BBC’s emphasis.

Hang on a minute. When did the Palestinians ever have an orchestra before? The idea of a separate Palestinian state only took off with the creation of the PLO in 1964. Between 1948 and 1967 the West Bank and Gaza were occuped by Jordan and Egypt.

What’s this ‘1948’ business?

Then it dawned on me. 1948 was the year that the State of Israel was declared. It was the year the British Mandate for Palestine ended. Palestine ceased to exist as a political entity. It had never been a country. Ever.

The Palestinians the writer of the article refers to were the Jews of Mandate Palestine who formed the Palestine Orchestra in 1936. In Hebrew it wasn’t even called that, it was the Symphony Orchestra of the Land of Israel. In 1948 it became the Israeli Philharmonic.

So let’s see what the article is saying. It is saying that those who call themselves Palestinians today are somehow connected with the Palestinians of 1948 and before. It suggests that this orchestra is a reincarnation of that pre-1948 Jewish orchestra. Of course, it is not. It is a new thing. The old Palestine Orchestra still exists, it was just renamed.

Does the writer know this? Surely he/she must. Does the editor who let it be published know all this? Surely he/she does.

It’s as if Israel has been airbrushed out. It’s as if in the minds of the BBC news editors this version of Palestine, the one that wishes to destroy Israel, is somehow a legitimate heir to the one which ‘disappeared’ in 1948. It’s as if this new orchestra replaces that old one.

This whole article is a subtle example of the way Israel is delegitimised and how the putative ‘Palestine’ is legitimised.

It’s a kind of coup de theatre. It’s historical illiteracy.

But that’s not all. There is a nice piece of editorialising thrown in for good measure.

The programme also consists of a piece by the modern Hungarian Jewish composer, Gyorgy Ligeti, both of whose parents were sent to Auschwitz.

And the point is? Surely, it’s to show what a peace-loving lot the orchestra is and how they are so open-minded that they will play Jewish music. I’m sure that’s true.

It also tries to tell us that the Palestinians who are represented by this orchestra have deliberately chosen Ligeti because his parents died at Auschwitz.

Yet this orchestra grew from the Edward Said Conservatory. Said was well known for his work with Israeli musician Daniel Barenboim in creating an orchestra of Israelis and Palestinians to promote the noble cause of peace through music.

What the article fails to tell us, of course, is that this wonderfully tolerant group of Palestinians are completely atypical of the usual anti-Semitic filth vented by the Palestinian media daily.

The article doesn’t tell us about the Palestinian Youth orchestra that was closed down in 2009 because it dared play in front of Holocaust victims, thereby accepting that there are Holocaust victims and, therefore, a Holocaust.

I wrote about this here.

Here’s a snippet:

Fatah-linked community leaders in the PA-controlled city of Jenin slammed the participation of 13 young local musicians aged 11 to 18 in a “Good Deeds Day,” held at the Holocaust Survivor’s Center in Holon.
The PA politicians made a point of using the issue of the young musicians’ performance as a platform upon which to launch a diatribe against participation in any integrative activity with Jewish Israelis.

Any decent and knowledgeable journalist would know this and would have pointed it out.

The whole BBC article is typical of the way inaccurate and decontextualised reporting serves Israel’s enemies, even if this is not the intent of the journalist.

It’s simply shameful.

Update from muqata.blogspot.com..

IDF reporters uniform were ‘ejected’ from a concert in Haifa where this orchestra were performing.

Let me reiterate that: Israeli soldiers in an Israeli city were ejected because they were wearing uniform.

Can you imagine that happening in the UK? British soldiers thrown out of a BBC Prom because it might upset someone who doesn’t like the UK’s Afghanistan policy?

We find in this story that the organisers were the Mossawa Center for Arab Civil Rights who are supported by the New Israel Fund.

40 Palestinian National Orchestra musicians arrived at the Kreiger Hall in Haifa before an Israeli audience, but when posed questions by the IDF Radio reporters, they refused the uniformed IDF soldiers, even though they were simply reporters for IDF radio.

… the director of the Mossawa Center for Arab Civil Rights in Israel, [that] tried to explain the incident in the name of the orchestra. “The musicians are used to IDF uniforms interrogating them at checkpoints, but it was strange for them at a cultural event. You [IDF Radio] arrived to interview them wearing the uniforms of the occupying army.”

So much for the orchestra promoting peaceful co-existence.

It appears it’s just another tool of  Palestinian propaganda which has a Palestine orchestra performing in what the Palestinians regard as Palestine, namely Israel, so that their media can spout something like: ‘Today the Palestine Orchestra performed in the Palestinian town of Haifa’.
Wake up Israel!

New Year, new lies about Israel

04/01/2011 / / 0 Comments

I have been following the strange case of the Palestinian woman who the Palestinian Authority claim died of tear gas inhalation as a result of its use by Israeli police in Bil’in.

Now Bil’in is the scene of frequent protests against Israel’ security wall. It not only draws Palestinian protestors but also Israeli left-wing organisations and NGOs and people from all over the world who want Israel to take down the wall to allow terrorists and suicide bombers free passage into Israel. They value the comfort of West Bank Palestinians above the lives of Israelis.

But when I saw the BBC article reporting this death I was puzzled. I could not remember anyone previously dying anywhere in the world from tear gas inhalation.

I googled death from tear gas and the only reported death I could find were pages and pages of reports from various sources about this alleged death, that of Jawaher Abu Rahma.

I  noted that Israel said they would investigate this puzzling and, apparently, unique case. I even wondered whether Israeli tear gas had some especially lethal ingredient.

I could see that all the news agencies were reporting this death by tear gas as if it were a proven fact. No-one seemed to have done my simple research and mentioned that it was unusual.

I was hoping to give you a link to the BBC report.

But I can’t.

Because it appears to have disappeared.

If you can find it, I’d like to hear from you.

And then, thanks to the Elder of Ziyon, the scales were lifted from mine eyes.

The Elder reported “Tear gas death” was a hoax.

The Elder had it first hand from very simple initial Israeli security force investigations. You know, the kind of thing that good journalists should do before releasing stories that are clearly suspicious.

This is the basic story:

All evidence points to the fact that Jawaher Abu Rahma was not killed by tear gas.

The number of inconsistencies and the amount of evidence of lies by Palestinian Arab spokespeople is incontrovertible. Here are some of the facts that the security sources mentioned:

* Abu Rahma arrived at the hospital at 15:20 on Friday – but her lab report is dated/timed 14:45, 35 minutes earlier!

* There is no emergency room report for her arrival.

* The reason for death given was “Inhaling gas from Israeli soldiers according to family.”

10 days prior to her death she was in that hospital, taking medication for leukemia. There is evidence that she was in the hospital in the weeks prior as well, which indicates that she had a chronic disease.

Never has anyone died from tear gas in five years of riots in Bil’in.

There is no evidence that Abu Rahma even attended the riot. Her brother is the ringleader of the weekly Bil’in riots and yet there are no photos of her next to him, or anywhere else, on Friday (and possibly ever.)

The tear gas that the IDF used on Friday is exactly the same concentration and type that they have always used, and the same as used by Western countries for years.

Yet the PA had already called it a “war crime”. The entire world had accepted at face value the blatant lies of the PA>

This is not the first nor will it be the last in a long succession of fake incidents designed to demonise Israel.

Two things strike me:

1. the callousness of the Palestinians in using the tragic death from natural causes of a woman related to an ‘activist’ to promulgate a lie to further their political ends

2. the gullibility of the world’s press to accept the story at face value and their willingness, nay, eagerness to vilify and embarrass Israel

I do not see on the BBC News website any report that this was a lie and they fell for it. I do not see an apology.

Meanwhile, all the usual suspects in the Arab and Muslim world and their constituency will see it as another example of Israeli murderous callousness.

The Elder also links to other Israeli sources on this story:

You can read more coverage from other bloggers on the same call, Israel Matzavand The Muqata, and My Right Word had the initial Israeli news reports.

Update: I found a BBC article here which is not the original one and is full of Palestinian propaganda and not one Israeli representative.

The throw-away nature of the commentators reference to the reason for the barrier as being for security purposes and the tone in which this is said is not exactly impartial. It’s as if he has to say this for the sake of impatiality but we all know that this is not the real reason, nudge nudge.

Fins ain’t what they used to be – Mossad and its global reach

10/12/2010 / / 3 Comments

The guy on the left is the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan. Regard him well, he is responsible for the death of an unfortunate German tourist because he enduced a White Tip reef shark to attack her.

Now, I do not want to trivialise the death of this tourist; it was truly horrendous. However, according to sources inside Egypt, it was all part of a Mossad plot to ruin the Egyptian tourist industry.

Honest Reporting set the scene:

Conspiracy theories about Israel and the Jews are common fare in the Middle East and disseminated widely in the Arab media. From accusations that the Jews were responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks to classic anti-Semitic blood libels, the Western mainstream media have failed to report on this as an issue of Arab incitement.

Yes indeed, and it is Mossad with its global reach that is determined to undermine the Egyptian tourist industry with its usual clever tricks. It does not have any other fish to fry, it decided that to put an agent in a fish suit just would not cut it; it trained an ocean-going shark to operate in shallow water with the express purpose of causing a ‘Jaws’ effect and clearing the beaches of Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt’s premier Red Sea resort.

Honest Reporting cites The Scotsman’s apparent gullibility in going along with the story with its headline: ‘Egypt Refuses to Rule Out Mossad Plot Link to Deadly  Shark Attack’ implying that the ludicrous story might be true.

The BBC is not much better: ‘Shark attacks not linked to Mossad says Israel’. Well that’s a relief.

So what’s behind it? Again the BBC:

The reports – apparently quoting the South Sinai governor – have been picked up by the Israeli media…

Rumours had circulated in Egypt that there could be an Israeli connection to this unusual spate of Red Sea shark attacks.

However, it was comments attributed to the South Sinai governor, Mohamed Abdul Fadil Shousha, carried on an official Egyptian news site that drew attention.

“What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm,” he is reported to have said.

I am sure the governor is at this very moment seeking confirmation, but from whom about what remains a mystery.

Ami Isseroff in Zionism-Israel.com has his own take on the story:

In the context of historical anti-Semitism, the view that Jews are at fault for everything is hardly new. In the Middle East, the conflict with tiny Israel (population less than 8 million)   is routinely blamed for Arab underdevelopment and the misery of hundreds of millions of people. This view is not confined to kooks and krazies only. It is touted by respected analysts in the west and enshrined in U.N.reports.

But there is at least one sensible voice coming out of Egypt as reported in Israel: Daily Alert

Mahmoud Hanafy, a professor of marine biology at the Suez Canal University, said it is “sad” that Egyptian national TV helped perpetuate the theory that last week’s shark attacks at Sharm el-Sheikh were part of an Israeli conspiracy. On Sunday, Gen. Abdel-Fadeel Shosha, the governor of South Sinai, phoned a TV program to say that it is possible that Israeli intelligence was behind the incidents.

Hanafy said the Oceanic White Tip shark, blamed for the attacks, does indeed exist in Egypt’s waters. He added, “It is sad that they made a person whose only knowledge of sharks comes from the movie “Jaws” go on national TV to propagate this mumbo-jumbo.” ((Yasmine Fathi – Al-Ahram-Egypt))

‘Sad’ indeed that such ridiculous stories can still gain purchase in some circles where Jews/Israel are to blame for anything negative.

Barry Shaw has privately requested me to remind the Egyptians that if Israel cannot control a forest fire they are more likely to have dropped goldfish in the Red Sea. Of course, Barry, they would have to train them not to swim into Israeli waters to attack Israelis or tourists in just the same way that they trained the Sharm sharks to remain in Egyptian waters.

The moral failure of churches and the UN towards the persecution of Christians in the Middle East

30/11/2010 / / 0 Comments

Recently, the Methodists in the UK passed a resolution to promote the boycotting of goods from what it considers illegal settlements on the West Bank/Judea Samaria.

It did so because, as I have previously reported:

The decision is a response to a call from a group of Palestinian Christians, a growing number of Jewish organisations, both inside Israel and worldwide, and the World Council of Churches. A majority of governments recognise the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as illegitimate under international law.

In my article I cited the systematic persecution of Christians among Israel’s neighbours whilst Israel’s Christian population is growing.

Now the Hudson New York has an article by Khaled Abu Toameh entitled Muslim Genocide of Christians Throughout Middle East.

Genocide is a strong word. Let’s see what he has to say:

It is obvious by now that the Christians in the Middle East are an “endangered species.”

Christians in Arab countries are no longer being persecuted; they are now being slaughtered and driven out of their homes and lands.

So what is the world doing about it? What is the evidence?

Those who for many years turned a blind eye to complaints about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East now owe the victims an apology. Now it is clear to all that these complaints were not “Jewish propaganda.”

The war of genocide against Christians in the Middle East can no longer be treated as an “internal affair” of Iraq or Egypt or the Palestinians. What the West needs to understand is that radical Islam has declared jihad not only against Jews, but also against Christians.

This, surely, is a vital point. So many commentators are fixated on the Israel/Palestine issue as being the fountainhead of all Islamic fundamentalism. If only the Israelis would give the Palestinians everything they want, the argument goes, the Islamists would desist from their terror attacks. In other words, it’s the Jews’ fault.

In Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian territories, Christians are being targeted almost on a daily basis by Muslim fundamentalists and secular dictators.

What! In the Palestinian territories? Does he mean Hamas? Does he mean Fatah? But, according to the Methodists, it’s the Jews, stupid.

Dozens of Arab Christians in Iraq have been killed in recent months in what seems to be well-planned campaign to drive them out of the country. Many Christian families have already begun fleeing Iraq out of fear for their lives.

Indeed, and this has been reported, but it’s almost a sub-text with a shrug of the shoulders, as if to say, ‘what do you expect, fundamentalist elements are to blame in a volatile situation.’ Of course, the West does not want to have to face the fact that it has been Frankenstein to a new Iraqi monster, replacing Saddam with Al Qaeda at the expense of hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

In Egypt, the plight of the Coptic Christian minority appears to be worsening. Just this week, the Egyptian security forces killed a Coptic Christian man and wounded scores of others who were protesting against the government’s intention to demolish a Christian-owned structure.

Hardly a day passes without reports of violence against members of the Coptic Christian community in various parts of Egypt. Most of the attacks are carried out by Muslim fundamentalists.

Had this been, Israel the calls for boycott and sanction in the UN would be deafening, but the world does nothing. As Toameh says, they see it as an ‘internal’ affair whereas if an Israeli sneezes on a Palestinian, it’s reported round the world in minutes and 150 UN bodies are convened to condemn the murderous Israelis using germ warfare.

Some of the Egyptian fury against its ancient Coptic community is fuelled by unfounded, paranoid and extremist rumours. It’s as if certain elements want to believe them as an excuse for their actions. A similar pattern can be found in Israel with unfounded and, frankly ludicrous, accusations of Israeli actions against the Al Aqsa fuelling riots and civil unrest. Even today I read on the Elder of Ziyon about the ‘Latest nefarious Zionist plot to “storm” the Temple Mount’.
Back to Toameh:

According to the Barnabas Fund, an advocacy and charitable organization based in the United Kingdom, “Fears for the safety of Egyptian Christians are growing after a series of false allegations, violent threats and mass demonstrations against Christians in Egypt.”

Muslim anger was ignited by unfounded accusations that Egyptian Christians were aligned with Israel and stockpiling weapons in preparation for war against Muslims.

As Toameh, himself a Palestinian, points out, this pattern is also prevalent in the Territories which the world wants as future Palestine.

Last week, the Western-funded Palestinian Authority in the West Bank arrested a Christian journalist who reported about differences between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior Fatah operative Mohammed Dahlan. The journalist, George Qanawati, manager of Radio Bethlehem 2000, was freed five days later.

In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, the tiny Christian community is also living in fear following a spate of attacks by radical Islamic groups.

What would a future Palestine look like? No Jews, no Christians? And who is it in the Middle East that is constantly criticised for being an ‘Apartheid state’, of oppressing minorities and restricting access to religious sites? Why, Israel, of course. Except in Israel’s cases these are always lies or distortions. What excuses to Egypt and other Middle East countries have for Christian persecution?

All this is echoed in an article written on Cif Watch “.. then the Sunday People”:

There is an Arab saying, “First the Saturday people and then the Sunday people,” which is often heard chanted at anti-Israel rallies organised by the PLO/PA.  This is commonly held to refer to the deliberate eradication by Islamic regimes, everywhere they take root, first of Jewish and then of Christian kufar who refuse to convert to Islam.

Bataween, editor of “Point of No Return”, a blog mainly dedicated to creating awareness about the plight of Jews in Arab countries, informs us that Jews have almost been wiped out in Muslim countries (see also here).  The “Saturday people” have been almost completely eradicated.  Consequently – there now being very few Jews in Muslim countries – it would seem that Egyptian Muslim agressors [sic] are earnestly engaged in a murderous enactment of the second part of the saying.

I highly recommend your read this article in full.

How shameful is it when the UN is so fixated on Israel, mainly because of the influence of a built-in Muslim majority in many of its bodies, and does nothing about Christians.

How cowardly and shameful is it that the numerous churches around the world appear to sit on their hands when it comes to Christian persecution, unless it perceives Jews as the persecutors.

British troops and UN double standards

07/11/2010 / / 3 Comments

The BBC reports

More than 220 Iraqi civilians were subjected to “systemic abuse”, including torture, by British soldiers and interrogators in Iraq, the High Court was told on Friday

Now replace ‘Iraqi’ with ‘Palestinian’ and ‘British’ with ‘Israeli’.

Just mull that over for a while and test your reactions.

If it had been Israelis and Palestinians the full weight of the UN would undoubtedly be behind a Goldstone-style investigation which would be convened within a couple of weeks with the findings of the committee already decided.

Meanwhile, almost two years after Cast Lead, Israel is still investigating its own operations.

The UN enquiry into Israel’s interception of the aid ship (without any aid aboard), the Mavi Marmara, has come and gone with the inevitable foregone conclusions being reached by the usual stooges the UN seems to be able to dredge up when it needs to demonise Israel.

Israel’s Turkel enquiry into the flotilla continues after several weeks of taking evidence.

The British are a little more reluctant, it appears:

Solicitors acting on behalf of the Iraqis submitted video evidence to support their claims.

They are appealing for a judical [sic] review of a refusal by Defence Secretary Liam Fox to order a wide-ranging public inquiry into allegations that abuse was widespread.

But:

A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman said a dedicated team had already been set up to investigate.

Aahh!

So the British army is going to investigate itself.

Now do that little ‘what if’ thing again and imagine Israel had said that an IDF investigation into the torture and abuse of 220 Palestinians was quite adequate. Image the furore.

Allegations of mistreatment include sexual abuse, food, water and sleep deprivation, prolonged solitary confinement, mock executions and being denied clothes.

…

Michael Fordham QC, appearing for the Iraqis, said: “There are credible allegations of serious, inhumane practices across a whole range of dates and facilities concerning British military detention in Iraq.”

Referring to the prison which became notorious for allegations of torture and abuse against US soldiers, he asked: “Is this Britain’s Abu Ghraib?”

Of course, the British judicial system should be robust enough to deal with this. No?

“The IHAT is the most effective way of investigating these unproven allegations rather than a costly public inquiry.”

IHAT? That’s the ‘Iraq Historic Allegation Team’. Historic! These alleged abuses occurred between 2002 and 2008. That’s ‘historic’?

Anyway, I’m sure justice will be done. This is Britain and we British have a perfectly adequate way of dealing with such matters. And by the way, sorry, but we don’t have enough money these days for due process. Let the army sort it out.

So why is the UN not setting up an enquiry? These were Muslims who were abused. Where’s the UN Human Rights Council when you need it? Too busy trying to smear Israel, of course, because that seems to be their preoccupation.

A mere 220 Iraqis being allegedly abused is not a potential War Crime or a breach of any of the Geneva Conventions, or International Law or Customary Law. I presume this is the case as they appear to be blissfully unwilling to have anything to do with it. No Israelis involved, you see. Waste of time.

Two public inquiries have already been launched into similar claims.

The first inquiry into the death of 26-year-old hotel worker Baha Mousa in UK military custody in September 2003, began hearing evidence last July.

And last November, the MoD announced details of a second public hearing into allegations that 19-year-old Hamid Al-Sweady and up to 19 other Iraqis were unlawfully killed and others ill-treated at a British base in May 2004.

See what I mean? The British do investigate and prosecute when they have the money to do so and the public is shouting loud enough, but it was such a long time ago.

How many public enquiries into torture are necessary? We already proved we do it, albeit it’s not state policy, so why drag the name of Britain and the British Army through the mud? Is this not Liam Fox’s argument. And if we had a Labour government, I’m sure he’d support that government and wouldn’t be calling for a public enquiry. Would he?

But enough of British politics.

Back to the UN. Can you honestly tell me that if this had been Israel the UN would not be foaming at the mouth?

Double standards anyone?

Lawfare and the UN Human Rights Council

06/11/2010 / / 0 Comments

Brilliant speech by Trevor S. Norwitz reported on UN Watch.

It completely demolishes the absurdity of the UNHRC, the Goldstone Report, the so-called Flotilla Inquiry and the abuse of laws designed to protect democracies from the very people that are now using those same laws to attack those democracies.

This is highlighted on the sane website here: “Cuba Organizing Rogue Speakers’ List of Hardliners in Bid to Ambush U.S. at Friday’s U.N. Review”, where an alliance of the far Left dictators and Venezuela are attempting to dominate the UN Review in order to attack the US.

The US is not and should not be immune from criticism, but unlike most of the countries doing the hatchet job on the US’s reputation, the US is a democracy with a strong record on self-examination and self-criticism and responding, sometimes tardily, to misdemeanours of its armed forces. It is, therefore, monstrous, that Iran and Cuba can point an accusing finger at the US when their record on human rights, especially Iran’s, is abysmal.

It appears that the UN and its instruments are now an international union of nations inimical to democracy and peace who use the organs of the UN to spout lies and hypocrisy.

Is it not about time the UN took more robust action and limited its councils to true democracies rather than than allowing them to become propaganda weapons for serial human rights abusers?

The Norwitz speech is as strong a condemnation of the Flotilla Inquiry farce as I have seen.

Here’s a flavour of the speech:

Almost anything created for a good purpose can be abused or even “weaponized”: think of an ice-pick, a candlestick, a box-cutter knife, an airplane, a shoe, a pair of underpants.

And not just physical objects.  We have seen the abuse of almost every institution invented by man: democracy (think of Venezuela, Iran, the Weimar Republic); education (look at Gaza under Hamas or the PLO, Apartheid South Africa); religion (no examples needed).

It should be no surprise then that the law – one of humanity’s greatest achievements, designed for the creation of ordered societies, the establishment and maintenance of justice and the determination and protection of truth – is also susceptible to abuse.

Today what is really under attack is perhaps the most fundamental value in our Western culture: truth.  And it is ironic in the extreme that it is the law, which was created and designed to be the servant and protector of truth, that is the enemy’s weapon of choice to undermine the truth.

I strongly recommend you read it all.

Gabriel – arch, but no angel. How a Cambridge student defended Israel

04/11/2010 / / 4 Comments

The Cambridge Union recently hosted a debate with the motion: ‘This House Believes Israel Is A Rogue State”.

For the motion were Lauren Booth, journalist, neo-convert to Islam and well-know Hamas supporter and Israel basher, and a certain Gabriel Latner, 19 year old law student at Peterhouse.

University debating societies are famous for inviting controversy; holocaust sceptic (I have to use that word or he might sue me if I use ‘denier’) ‘David Irving and BNP leader Nick Griffin have both been invited to to speak at the Oxford Union, for example.

This debate, however, had no controversial figures (I don’t consider Ms Booth as controversial as these worthies). It’s the motion itself which was provocative. As Daphne Anson has written:

Grotesquely too, it is not Iran that the Cambridge Union chose to characterise as a “rogue” nation for the purposes of a debate on 21 October – it was Israel. You notice I say “grotesquely” and not “amazingly”, for these days there’s nothing remotely amazing about Israel being hauled up in the dock of public opinion. Conning the world through years of inexorable, mendacious leftwing and Islamist propaganda has achieved the desired consequence, though not as yet the intended denouement.

What was quite remarkable was that Mr Latner managed a rather clever Varsity trick by arguing that Israel was a ‘rogue state’ in favour of the motion whilst clearly being in strong support of Israel.

The motion was easily defeated.

The text of his speech has been posted in many places and I reproduce it below unedited.

The only blot on Latner’s copybook was a remark to Ms Booth as reported by Daphne Anson:

The President of the Union had Latner escorted off the premises and banned for life following a complaint from Lauren Booth that before rising to speak he’d told her: “I am going to nail you to the fucking wall up there.” Not that Latner is too perturbed. He told the student newspaper Varsity that he has no doubt that he offended Ms Booth, but doesn’t know whether it was his remark to her or the fact that he “actually nailed her to the wall” in his speech that offended her, adding “ I can guess though”. As for the ban, it was a “rash” decision of the President but “isn’t going to drastically change my life”. http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/2689/

Well, Canadian Gabriel is no angel, that’s for sure and maybe we can put this down to youthful exuberance. For a successful forensic career he needs to mind his language in future.

But well done to Latner for playing the Union at its own pesky games and turning Queen’s evidence, you might say.

But Latner is no poster boy for Zionism. On the Mondweiss website he says:

My personal beliefs on ‘Zionism’ are fairly simple: I believe Israel has a right to exist, and to secure itself. I believe the Palestinians, Tibetans, Taiwanese, Kurds, and every other stateless population has the right to a homeland. I think that the last 150 years of conflict in the Middle East (let alone the last four or five millennia) is far too complicated for anyone but a scholar to understand. I think there is enough blame to go around. Israel is wrong when it permits settlements to be built. I think it made a mistake when it kept the Gaza Strip after ’67. I was happy when Israel pulled out of the occupied territories. Then again, I am constantly afraid for my friends in family living there. Israel does face a serious threat. But I think every time Israel overreacts, new extremists are born. So yes, I could be considered a ‘Zionist’, but I think that term has been hijacked to a degree. Im pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, and pro-Peace. In my opinion, the biggest threat to peace is politicians – in both camps, not to mention Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and the West.

Others have commented that Jewish students should not engage at all in such debates. Doing so legitimises the demonisation of Israel, they say. This is certainly a view that is worth considering. After all, how many other countries have incessantly to argue the validity of their own existence or their level of roguishness.

I believe that such debates and such arguments have always to be opposed. We cannot leave the opposition to shoot into an open goal, as it were. If we believe that we should demonstrate, blog and write about the truth, then we should also oppose lies and falsehoods, bad history, bigotry, blind dogma and ignorance.

Gabriel Latner’s defence of Israel as a rogue state:

This is a war of ideals, and the other speakers here tonight are rightfully, idealists. I’m not. I’m a realist. I’m here to win. I have a single goal this evening – to have at least a plurality of you walk out of the ‘Aye’ door. I face a singular challenge – most, if not all, of you have already made up your minds.

This issue is too polarizing for the vast majority of you not to already have a set opinion. I’d be willing to bet that half of you strongly support the motion, and half of you strongly oppose it. I want to win, and we’re destined for a tie. I’m tempted to do what my fellow speakers are going to do – simply rehash every bad thing the Israeli government has ever done in an attempt to satisfy those of you who agree with them. And perhaps they’ll even guilt one of you rare undecided into voting for the proposition, or more accurately, against Israel. It would be so easy to twist the meaning and significance of international ‘laws’ to make Israel look like a criminal state. But that’s been done to death. It would be easier still to play to your sympathy, with personalised stories of Palestinian suffering. And they can give very eloquent speeches on those issues. But the truth is, that treating people badly, whether they’re your citizens or an occupied nation, does not make a state’ rogue’. If it did, Canada, the US, and Australia would all be rogue states based on how they treat their indigenous populations. Britain’s treatment of the Irish would easily qualify them to wear this sobriquet. These arguments, while emotionally satisfying, lack intellectual rigour.

More importantly, I just don’t think we can win with those arguments. It won’t change the numbers. Half of you will agree with them, half of you won’t. So I’m going to try something different, something a little unorthodox. I’m going to try and convince the die-hard Zionists and Israel supporters here tonight, to vote for the proposition. By the end of my speech – I will have presented 5 pro-Israel arguments that show Israel is, if not a ‘rogue state’ than at least ‘rogueish’.

Let me be clear. I will not be arguing that Israel is ‘bad’. I will not be arguing that it doesn’t deserve to exist. I won’t be arguing that it behaves worse than every other country. I will only be arguing that Israel is ‘rogue’.

The word ‘rogue’ has come to have exceptionally damning connotations. But the word itself is value-neutral. The OED defines rogue as ‘Aberrant, anomalous; misplaced, occurring (esp. in isolation) at an unexpected place or time ‘, while a dictionary from a far greater institution gives this definition ‘behaving in ways that are not expected or not normal, often in a destructive way ‘. These definitions, and others, centre on the idea of anomaly – the unexpected or uncommon. Using this definition, a rogue state is one that acts in an unexpected, uncommon or aberrant manner. A state that behaves exactly like Israel.

The first argument is statistical. The fact that Israel is a Jewish state alone makes it anomalous enough to be dubbed a rogue state: There are 195 countries in the world. Some are Christian, some Muslim, some are secular. Israel is the only country in the world that is Jewish. Or, to speak mathmo for a moment, the chance of any randomly chosen state being Jewish is 0.0051% . In comparison the chance of a UK lotto ticket winning at least £10 is 0.017% – more than twice as likely. Israel’s Jewishness is a statistical aberration.

The second argument concerns Israel’s humanitarianism, in particular,Israel’s response to a refugee crisis. Not the Palestinian refugee crisis – for I am sure that the other speakers will cover that – but the issue of Darfurian refugees. Everyone knows that what happened, and is still happening in Darfur, is genocide, whether or not the UN and the Arab League will call it such. [I actually hoped that Mr Massih would be able speak about this – he’s actually somewhat of an expert on the Crisis in Darfur, in fact it’s his expertise that has called him away to represent the former Dictator of Sudan while he is being investigated by the ICC.] There has been a mass exodus from Darfur as the oppressed seek safety. They have not had much luck. Many have gone north to Egypt – where they are treated despicably. The brave make a run through the desert in a bid to make it to Israel. Not only do they face the natural threats of the Sinai, they are also used for target practice by the Egyptian soldiers patrolling the border. Why would they take the risk? Because in Israel they are treated with compassion – they are treated as the refugees that they are – and perhaps Israel’s cultural memory of genocide is to blame. The Israeli government has even gone so far as to grant several hundred Darfurian refugees Citizenship. This alone sets Israel apart from the rest of the world.

But the real point of distinction is this: The IDF sends out soldiers and medics to patrol the Egyptian border. They are sent looking for refugees attempting to cross into Israel. Not to send them back into Egypt, but to save them from dehydration, heat exhaustion, and Egyptian bullets. Compare that to the US’s reaction to illegal immigration across their border with Mexico. The American government has arrested private individuals for giving water to border crossers who were dying of thirst – and here the Israeli government is sending out its soldiers to save illegal immigrants. To call that sort of behavior anomalous is an understatement.

My Third argument is that the Israeli government engages in an activity which the rest of the world shuns — it negotiates with terrorists. Forget the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, a man who died with blood all over his hands – they’re in the process of negotiating with terrorists as we speak. Yasser Abed Rabbo is one of the lead PLO negotiators that has been sent to the peace talks with Israel. Abed Rabbo also used to be a leader of the PFLP- an organisation of ‘freedom fighters’ that, under Abed Rabbo’s leadership, engaged in such freedom promoting activities as killing 22 Israeli high school students. And the Israeli government is sending delegates to sit at a table with this man, and talk about peace. And the world applauds. You would never see the Spanish government in peace talks with the leaders of the ETA – the British government would never negotiate with Thomas Murphy. And if President Obama were to sit down and talk about peace with Osama Bin Laden, the world would view this as insanity. But Israel can do the exact same thing – and earn international praise in the process. That is the dictionary definition of rogue – behaving in a way that is unexpected, or not normal.

Another part of dictionary definition is behaviour or activity ‘occuring at an unexpected place or time’. When you compare Israel to its regional neighbours, it becomes clear just how roguish Israel is. And here is the fourth argument: Israel has a better human rights record than any of its neighbours. At no point in history, has there ever been a liberal democratic state in the Middle East- except for Israel. Of all the countries in the Middle East, Israel is the only one where the LGBT community enjoys even a small measure of equality. In Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and Syria, homosexual conduct is punishable by flogging, imprisonment, or both. But homosexuals there get off pretty lightly compared to their counterparts in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, who are put to death. Israeli homosexuals can adopt, openly serve in the army, enter civil unions, and are protected by exceptionally strongly worded ant-discrimination legislation. Beats a death sentence. In fact, it beats America.

Israel’s protection of its citizens’ civil liberties has earned international recognition. Freedom House is an NGO that releases an annual report on democracy and civil liberties in each of the 195 countries in the world. It ranks each country as ‘Free’ ‘Partly Free’ or ‘Not Free’. In the Middle East, Israel is the only country that has earned designation as a ‘free’ country. Not surprising given the level of freedom afforded to citizens in say, Lebanon- a country designated ‘partly free’, where there are laws against reporters criticizing not only the Lebanese government, but the Syrian regime as well. [I’m hoping Ms Booth will speak about this, given her experience working as a ‘journalist’ for Iran,] Iran is a country given the rating of ‘not free’, putting it alongside China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Myanmar. In Iran, [as Ms Booth I hoped would have said in her speech], there is a special ‘Press Court’ which prosecutes journalists for such heinous offences as criticizing the ayatollah, reporting on stories damaging the ‘foundations of the Islamic republic’ , using ‘suspicious (i.e. western) sources’, or insulting islam. Iran is the world leader in terms of jailed journalists, with 39 reporters (that we know of) in prison as of 2009. They also kicked out almost every Western journalist during the 2009 election. [I don’t know if Ms Booth was affected by that] I guess we can’t really expect more from a theocracy. Which is what most countries in the Middle East are. Theocracies and Autocracies. But Israel is the sole, the only, the rogue, democracy. Out of every country in the Middle East, only in Israel do anti-government protests and reporting go unquashed and uncensored.

I have one final argument – the last nail in the opposition’s coffin- and its sitting right across the aisle. Mr Ran Gidor’s presence here is the all evidence any of us should need to confidently call Israel a rogue state. For those of you who have never heard of him, Mr Gidor is a political counsellor attached to Israel’s embassy in London. He’s the guy the Israeli government sent to represent them to the UN. He knows what he’s doing. And he’s here tonight. And it’s incredible. Consider, for a moment, what his presence here means. The Israeli government has signed off,to allow one of their senior diplomatic representatives to participate in a debate on their very legitimacy. That’s remarkable. Do you think for a minute, that any other country would do the same? If the Yale University Debating Society were to have a debate where the motion was ‘This house believes Britain is a racist, totalitarian state that has done irrevocable harm to the peoples of the world’, that Britain would allow any of its officials to participate? No. Would China participate in a debate about the status of Taiwan? Never. And there is no chance in hell that an American government official would ever be permitted to argue in a debate concerning its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. But Israel has sent Mr Ran Gidor to argue tonight against [a ‘journalist’ come reality TV star, and myself,] a 19 year old law student who is entirely unqualified to speak on the issue at hand.

Every government in the world should be laughing at Israel right now- because it forgot rule number one. You never add credence to crackpots by engaging with them. It’s the same reason you won’t see Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins debate David Icke. But Israel is doing precisely that. Once again, behaving in a way that is unexpected, or not normal. Behaving like a rogue state.

That’s five arguments that have been directed at the supporters of Israel. But I have a minute or two left. And here’s an argument for all of you – Israel willfully and forcefully disregards international law. In 1981 Israel destroyed OSIRAK – Sadam Hussein’s nuclear bomb lab. Every government in the world knew that Hussein was building a bomb. And they did nothing. Except for Israel. Yes, in doing so they broke international law and custom. But they also saved us all from a nuclear Iraq. That rogue action should earn Israel a place of respect in the eyes of all freedom loving peoples. But it hasn’t. But tonight, while you listen to us prattle on, I want you to remember something; while you’re here, Khomeini’s Iran is working towards the Bomb. And if you’re honest with yourself, you know that Israel is the only country that can, and will, do something about it. Israel will, out of necessity act in a way that is the not the norm, and you’d better hope that they do it in a destructive manner. Any sane person would rather a rogue Israel than a Nuclear Iran. [Except Ms Booth]

Why I’m an ashamed Jew

31/10/2010 / / 16 Comments

Yep, you read right.

I’ve had to admit it.

I can’t live a lie any longer.

I’m deeply, deeply ashamed.

Ashamed of being Jewish?

No way. I’m very proud to be Jewish and a member of the Jewish people.

Ashamed of Israel? Wrong again. I’m proud of Israel’s achievements. I worry about its policies, sometimes; I’m concerned, sometimes, about some of its actions and those of some of its citizens, but I could say the same for Britain and I’m still proud to be British.

So why am I ashamed?

I’ll tell you.

I’m ashamed of Jews who say they are ashamed to be Jews or Jewish.

I don’t hear Palestinians coming out to  declare they are ashamed to be Palestinian and denounce suicide bombs or missiles.

I don’t hear Arabs writing they are ashamed to be Arabs because of Al Qaeda or Sudan or Yemen.

I don’t hear Muslims forming groups of shame because of what Sunni does to Shia, or 9/11, or 7/7, or Madrid, or Mumbai.

I don’t know of any Ashamed Catholic groups forming because of the paedophilia apparently rife in Catholic clergy.

In fact I know of no other group of people who so often announce their ashamedness to be who they are as Jews do.

And you know what?

It makes me ashamed.

I’m an ashamed Jew who is ashamed of ashamed Jews. If that’s a paradox, so be it. And I’m not ashamed to declare my shame.

Shame on me!

I don’t see why Arabs or Muslims or Palestinians or Brits or Americans or Chinese or anyone else should be ashamed of what they are because of the actions of a few.

If I’m ashamed to be a Jew because I don’t like what Israel does, that is a form of self-hating, it’s bigotry – by golly, its anti-Semitic.

If I hate all of a group because of the actions of some, then I am a bigot. And if I am the target of my own bigotry then I’m a pretty sick bigot.

On the Andrew Marr program this morning on BBC 1, the eponymous Scottish interviewer had the (Jewish) actress Miriam Margolyes in the studio reporting on a recent visit to Israel and the West Bank.

We see her approaching a young Palestinian woman and asking through an interpreter whether she can see where she lives. The woman, carrying a young child, takes her to a canvas tent. Miriam is shocked and says ‘no-one should have to live like this’.

I absolutely agree with her. No-one in the West Bank should be living in a tent.

So why are they?

Miriam believes it’s because of the terrible Israelis who make her an ‘ashamed Jew’. Neither she nor Marr question why this woman lives like this. No-one asks why after 62 years a young woman whose grandparents left or were driven out of what is now Israel should be a refugee and have refugee status uniquely different from all other refugee groups in history.

Neither Margolyes nor Marr wanted to mention, or even wanted to entertain, the idea that refugee camps, so-called, exist for one reason and one reason only: to deliberately perpetuate the victimhood of Palestinians and to preserve the idea, which Margolyes and other ashamed Jews have swallowed whole , that it is Israel who is responsible for these conditions.

Margolyes appears unaware that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live comfortably on the West Bank in normal housing. She seems unaware that despite the billions of dollars poured into the Palestinian economy people are still allowed to live in tents and camps.

There is no need for it.

Pakistanis are not living in tents three generations after their forbears fled India.

There are no refugee camps in Israel for the hundreds of thousands who were forced from their homes after 1948 from Egypt and Iraq and Syria and North Africa.

Marr asks ‘Do you think being a Jew gives you a different authority, ability to talk about [the Palestinian question]?’

‘The only authority I have is as a human being’, Margolyes replies. So far, so good.

Then she says that it should not make a difference being Jewish or not Jewish to be able to comment on the situation, but then says, somewhat in contradiction, that she is ’embarrassed and ashamed’ (that word again) because ‘my “lot” is doing “it” to them’.

She then says ‘that’s why I wanted to go there, to see for myself’. Fine. But it appears she had already made up her mind that ‘her lot’ were doing ‘it’ to ‘them’.

Marr asks for her reaction, and she then puts on a faux Arab accent and says that some said ‘why do you come? You are a Jew. We hate you.’ And then in her own voice ‘And I totally understood why’.

Yet, she doesn’t understand why at all. She doesn’t understand that this hatred predates the Jewish state. She doesn’t understand the daily diet of anti-Semitism that is fed to Palestinians in schools, newspapers and on TV.

Marr then asks a question which links the Holocaust to what he clearly believes is a given Israeli/Jewish paranoia. He asks that, given Margolyes and her generation know what it’s like growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust, does she not realise that Israelis feel hemmed in and beleaguered by Iran, suicide bombs and missiles.

She admits her sympathy. She knows what anti-Semitism is. But ‘treating people the way the Israelis are treating the Palestinians is not making things better’. In other words, the blame for the situation is all on the Israeli side.

And then, lo and behold, the old ignorant trope comes out. ‘What people forget over there is that the Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust.’

Arghhh!  I’m so ashamed. What the hell has the Holocaust got to do with the situation? Is she suggesting that Israel exists because of Holocaust guilt? Is she suggesting that the Palestinians are paying for the crimes of Europeans? If so, she is ignorant of her own people’s history.

‘They were not the enemy at that time’, she says. But THEY WERE! The Mufti of Jerusalem was a friend of Hitler and organised Muslim Nazi brigades in Yugoslavia. He assured Hitler that he would solve the Jewish Question in Palestine. Hamas and the PLO are the ideological progeny of the Muslim Brotherhood and its anti-Semitic policies.

Margolyes and other ashamed Jews need to educate themselves. I am sick of being ashamed of them.

What is she saying now? Oh yes, the Israelis should understand and accept that they owe reparation to the Palestinians just like the Jews expect it from the Germans.

So she, perhaps unwittingly, makes a moral equivalence between the way Jews were treated in the Holocaust and  the way Palestinians (who have been hell-bent on another Holocaust for 100 years, and certainly 60) have been treated by the Israelis.

Who attacked Israel in 1967?

Why was the PLO formed in 1964 before there was any ‘Occupation’?

The Israelis are behaving ”so cruelly’. Yes, sometimes all those with power over others behave cruelly. Maybe she should understand why Israelis might do so to Palestinians who want to kill them, and blow up their children on buses and in their beds. Why can she only see one side to this conflict?

Even Marr has to remind her about suicide attacks and rockets. And then we get the real answer to Margolyes ashamedness. She is not a two-state solutionist. She wants  ‘those people to be back in their own villages, which is what they want.’

How ignorant is this. They just want to go back to their villages. But their villages are Haifa and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Eilat and Beersheva. Margolyes is clearly advocating the end of the Jewish state as a deluded one-stater who believes the Palestinians, who she admits hate the Jews, just want to go back peacefully to their homes.

How often do we see people in the media like Miriam Margolyes, Jews and non-Jews, well-meaning, decent people who just do not understand. They live in their cosy left-wing bubbles dreaming of world peace where all will be luvvies.

Sorry Miriam. You are a very nice woman and a wonderful actress, but you are a deluded Jew.

Go read some history. Go read the PLO charter and the Hamas charter. Don’t pose as a woman of peace when you clearly want a second Holocaust – because if you don’t, then you need to wake up out of your deluded lefty dreams, you and all the ashamed Jews.

Until you do so, I will continue to be an ashamed of ashamed Jews Jew.

Mike Leigh, Israel and the boycott

25/10/2010 / / 1 Comment
LONDON, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 18: Director Mike Leigh attends the 'Another Year' press conference during the 54th BFI London Film Festival at the Vue West End on October 18, 2010 in London, England. (Photo by Samir Hussein/Getty Images)

I returned from Berlin this week to be confronted by the Jewish Chronicle’s front page about the Salford-born, eminent film director, Mike Leigh and his decision not to go to Israel to teach a masterclass in Jerusalem and Jenin.

I was somewhat disappointed that Leigh felt he had to make this decision. I don’t see Leigh as one of the self-haters or ‘as-a-Jews’ as they are sometimes termed. Here is a man who grew up in a very Jewish part of Manchester, was a member of Habonim and a Zionist. His mother spent her final days at the same Jewish care home as my own mother. He has always been regarded with pride by the Jewish community in Manchester and Salford.

So it is instructive to see how yet another prominent Jew has fallen out of love with Israel and has decided to publicly make a series of remarks which are gratuitous, hurtful and which completely misrepresent Israel, and characterise it in what is now a fashionable way for many in the media and arts who see the Middle East conflict, not for what it is, an existential struggle, but through the prism of their own political dogma.

I’ll take a while to dissect Leigh’s thought processes so we can better understand his decision.

The full article by Stephen Applebaum and Simon Rocker can be seen here.

Leigh calls Israel’s policies suicidal. In other words, he believes that the current government is taking Israel down a path towards some sort of disaster, even annihilation, perhaps. The recent loyalty oath law was, for him, ‘the last straw’.

So, it is the right-wing nature of the Netanyahu coalition and its policies which have led him to decide to become part of the boycott. He was already ‘uncomfortable’ about going, but this oath law really swayed it for him. Really? Not exactly the Nuremburg Laws is it.

We can see he was wrestling with his one-time Zionist credentials and his conscience about appearing to condone policies of a government at the opposite end of the political spectrum to his own views.

Now, I’m a bit of an old lefty myself, believe it or not, and during the 1980’s I decided I would not go to Israel because I disagreed with the settlement policy on the ‘West Bank’. I, of course, was, and remain a nonentity. My ‘boycott’ was personal. So I sort of understand where he is coming from as a public figure and a man of conscience.  If it is ‘your people’ that you violently disagree with, then you feel a moral obligation to make a stand which you wouldn’t make for a country that you don’t identify with.

My ‘boycott’, however, showed that at some level I did still identify with Israel, and that I cared enough to make my little stand.

Things changed for me when I studied the history of the conflict and the Jewish people. I was finally radicalised by the discovery that, Israel, an imperfect country, was not in a struggle for land and borders, but was being demonised and delegitimised in an attempt to utterly destroy it. I also saw that this was part of a globalised and sanctioned neo-anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism. I saw that, as a Jew (yes, that phrase again) I was a target and a proposed victim of this insanity.

I saw that little or no space had been left for measured criticism of Israel. I saw that Israel had become the Jew amongst world states. And I saw that the cheer-leaders for this demonisation were mainly Islamic states with appalling human rights records, no democracy, no press freedom or free speech, religious intolerance, misogyny, often barbaric laws, homophobia and anti-Semitism.

At the same time I saw an imperfect Israel where there is democracy, a free press, freedom of religion, a robust and independent judiciary and free speech. I saw a country which despite its history and its imperfections has some of the finest universities in the world, is a leader in technology, medicine, environmentalism.

There are many things to dislike about some aspects of Israeli society, there are many societal problems, there is discrimination, poverty, crime, zealotry. In other words, Israel is like many other western democracies.

I saw an Israel prepared to make concessions and sacrifices for peace.

My personal boycott of Israel ended. Mike Leigh’s is just beginning, but is he motivated as I was 30 years ago?

Let’s continue with Leigh’s interview and statements he made.

As a member of the Jewish youth movement, Habonim, he believes he was ‘duped by Israeli propaganda’. Strange this. He was in Habo’ more than 50 years ago when there was no ‘occupation’ and no Palestinian cause. So what was he being duped about?

It appears that these feelings are related to ‘religion’. He calls organised religion ‘bull****’

So now we have a self-confessed liberal left atheist. Fine. Nothing wrong with that, although he needn’t be quite so disrespectful of 2000 years of Jewish scholarship, learning and community, let alone his own ancestors. After all, were it not for this ‘bull****’ he would not be here at all enjoying his nice life as a successful film director.

Presumably it’s not just Judaism he would describe in these terms.

Then we cut to the chase in this interview:

While cultural talks went on “in the nice cinematheques of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, it is hell on earth in Gaza and I wouldn’t want to be there basically”.

Ah! Now we really see where he is coming from. He has bought into the ‘liberal left’ Gaza myth. The myth that Gaza is hell, and it’s hell because of the Israelis.

Mr Leigh, who insisted that all his work was “unquestionably Jewish”, was dismissive about rocket attacks on Israel. “I don’t want to know about rockets,” he said. “What I am concerned with is humanity, is life being lived properly. And you cannot deal with this issue from an Israeli perspective and not from a Palestinian or a Gaza perspective. You simply can’t. And if you do it’s totally unacceptable. And that’s the bottom line.”

Agreed! And what is that Gaza perspective? Gaza which Israel evacuated completely several years ago and which was then used as a base to attack Israel. He doesn’t want to know about rockets. What the hell does he think caused the Gaza ‘misery’ in the first place. Does he want to put his fingers in his ears and jump up and down whilst Israelis have to run to bunkers like his parents in the blitz, and for much longer?

Does Leigh not realise that what is motivating Hamas and Hizbollah, even Fatah and certainly Ahmadinejad is religion, which he sees as ‘bull****’? Is there no contradiction there? Or is only Judaism faecal?

It’s not as if the eminent film director has put together a cogent argument to boycott Israel.

Like so many well-meaning people of conscience with left-wing political views, Mike Leigh remains ignorant of facts and perhaps a tad intimidated by his fellow luvvies on the Left.

Along with Cameron and Miliband and Clegg and so many others, he sees the Palestinians as victims and the Israelis as aggressors when the truth is, and always has been, largely the opposite.

Leigh has been in a struggle all his life, it seems, a struggle between his Jewish identity and his liberal left political views. Over time, as he has become more and more detached from his roots, he has increasingly moved towards the camp of those other Jews who even more stridently confess their hatred of Israel and their compassion for its enemies.

When it comes to ‘bull****’ Mike Leigh should take a long hard look at the propaganda, not of Israel, but of those who are determined to destroy Israel and the Jewish people.

Maybe when Gaza really is a prison camp, but one for the remnant of Israeli Jews, he will realise that the ‘bull***’ was actually on the other side and he is buried in it.

Queen’s University Belfast and the gagging of Professor Alderman

22/10/2010 / / 1 Comment

This is part of the Queen’s University, Belfast’s Mission Statement:

The University promotes the widest possible access to [a] portfolio of excellence in an environment of equality, tolerance and mutual respect..

Yet the University has failed in its Mission as the Professor Alderman reports in the Jewish Chronicle:

The annual Belfast Festival is the child of Queen’s University, one of the UK’s leading “research intensive” seats of learning. The festival grew out of an enterprising undergraduate initiative in the deeply troubled 1970s; it was – as its website rightly proclaims – “a cultural oasis in a landscape dominated by political upheaval.”

It has – as its website also rightly proclaims – played a pivotal role in the cultural renaissance of the city and has attracted celebrities and intellectuals from around the world.

But today this reputation for inclusiveness lies in tatters. There is now, about the Belfast Festival, a bad odour and a decidedly nasty taste.

Earlier this year, the Festival organisers decided that as part of the 2010 programme they would arrange
a discussion on “Conflict in the Middle East.”

The blame for this lies squarely with Queen’s University, Belfast

Whether this was an entirely appropriate event for what is billed as “a two week long arts extravaganza” is open to question. What is not open to question is that the planned format of this discussion was fundamentally flawed. Two and only two speakers were programmed for the event. One, professor Beverley Milton-Edwards, teaches at Queen’s, has written extensively on the Middle East, and is on record as having defended Hamas as an organisation simply intent on bringing order – of an admittedly Islamic variety – to the chaos of Gaza.

The other was professor Avi Shlaim, doyen of the so-called “New Historians” of Zionism, who teaches at Oxford. Professor Shlaim can justly claim to be a founding father of
the historical school that argues (with, it’s true, varying degrees of intensity) that Israel was founded in ‘original sin’ (namely the alleged wholesale expulsion of Arabs), that there was no coordinated Arab plan to destroy the Jewish state at that time, and that the roots of the present tensions in the region are to be found in Israeli intransigence rather than in Arab obduracy.

Now a discussion of “Conflict in the Middle East” in which the only presenters were professors Shlaim and Milton-Edwards was bound to be a shade one-sided.

Late in the day the organisers of the Belfast Festival evidently came round to this view.

And so it was that on 20 September, I received an invitation to join the panel discussion.

Let’s be absolutely clear on this point. “I would be delighted,” Festival director Graeme Farrow wrote, “if you would join our panel.”

So I cleared my diary and prepared to journey to Belfast, there (so I had thought) to present, in an atmosphere of civilised, scholarly discussion, a viewpoint radically different from that of either of my two fellow panellists.

As everyone now knows, this was not to be. Issued on 20 September, the invitation was peremptorily withdrawn on 15 October. And it was withdrawn (let’s be absolutely clear on this point too) after objections from Oxford professor Shlaim and Belfast professor Milton-Edwards.

I know this because Mr Farrow told me so, in the presence of Mr Steven Jaffe (co-chair of the Northern Ireland Friends of Israel) in the lounge of the Europa Hotel, Belfast, on the afternoon of Monday 18 October, and because Professor Shlaim also told me so at a meeting he and I had at the same hotel later that afternoon.

I told Professor Shlaim what I told Mr Farrow and what I am now telling you: that I had come to Belfast to be a member of the panel that evening, and that I found the alternative Mr Farrow had offered – of a reserved seat in the audience and the privilege of asking the first question – to be an unmitigated insult.

Either I would attend as per the
invitation – to be on the panel – or
I would not attend at all.

In the event I did not attend at all.

The blame for this, and for the consequent deluge of negative publicity that has fallen upon the Belfast Festival, lies squarely with Queen’s University.

It does not lie with professors Shlaim and Milton-Edwards. We can berate them (as I am sadly inclined to do) for their small-mindedness, for their lack of collegiality, even for their arrogance. But the fact that they were permitted to veto my participation in the panel was due entirely to the university administration.

The mission statement of Queen’s University celebrates its promotion of “an environment of equality, tolerance and mutual respect.” I was shown none of these courtesies. But – believe me – I do not weep for myself. I weep, instead, for the university and those who work and study within it.

So we now live in a country where not just Israeli academics are being subjected regularly to calls for boycotts but those who wish to debate the conflict and who have a pro-Israel view are ‘disinvited’ so that only the anti-Zionist narrative is given any weight and a revered academic is asked to sit in the audience and maybe have the chance to ask a question.

As Ami Isseroff states:

You heard about the evil Zionist Lobby that doesn’t give anyone else a chance to talk? Richard Landes details several instances in which pro-Israel  opinion has been stifled, evidently by a sinister international Palestinian lobby.

What’s happening to our great academic tradition when debate is stifled and panels are gerrymandered?

See also: CIFWatch. the Belfast Telegraph, Harry’s Place, Yaacov Lozowick’s Ruminations, Melanie Phillips, Daphne Anson and Daled Amos (h/t Israel News)

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