Robin Shepherd’s essay in The Commentator in response to Khaled Diab’s CiF piece on Thursday (Reinventing the Palestinian Struggle) should be read in its entirety but I wanted to note Shepherd’s opening passages where he put’s Diab’s essay in context:
It takes a lot these days to raise hackles among decent and reasonable people at anything written in the Guardian about the State of Israel.
This is a paper, after all, that back in January slated the Palestinian leadership for being “weak” and “craven” after it was revealed they had accepted – as any sane and normal person would – that practically all the so-called “settlements” in east Jerusalem would become part of Israel under any real-world peace agreement.
So after you’ve effectively described even the most obvious concessions in meaningful negotiations as the actions of surrender monkeys, the sheer fanaticism of your antipathy to the Jewish state is established once and for all.
Yes, the Guardian’s antipathy towards Israel is nothing short of fanatical and its at least comforting to know that a writer as erudite and prolific as Robin Shepherd is willing, without qualifications, to say so.
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5 comments
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May 14, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Hoi Polloi
Robin Shepherd is the Émile Zola of our times.
With his erudition, urbanity and great courage, he also puts me very much in mind of those diplomats who put their lives at risk during the war to rescue Jews and others from certain death. Men like Chiune Sugihara of Japan, Harry Bingham of the United States, Aristides de Sousa Mendes of Portugal, Luis Martins de Souza Dantas of Brazil, Ángel Sanz Briz of Spain and Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden (I apologise for the many I have missed).
May 15, 2011 at 3:42 am
Hoi Polloi
Some interesting notes about Harry Bingham:
God bless America?
1) “He served as a Vice-Consul in Marseille, France, during World War II, and helped over 2,500 Jews to flee from France as Nazi forces advanced.”
2) “Anxious to limit immigration to the United States and to maintain good relations with the Vichy government, the State Department actively discouraged diplomats from helping refugees. However, Bingham cooperated with Varian Fry in issuing visas and helping refugees escape France. Varian Fry had come to Marseilles to give 200 grants to “some of the best scientists and European scholars” (1) and help them settle in the US.
Hiram Bingham worked with him, and instead of 200, gave about 2,000 visas”
3) “He also sheltered Jews in his Marseilles home, and obtained forged identity papers to help Jews in their dangerous journeys across Europe. He worked with the French underground to smuggle Jews out of France into Franco’s Spain or across the Mediterranean and even contributed to their expenses out of his own pocket.”
4) “In 1941, the United States government abruptly pulled Bingham from his position as Vice Consul and transferred him to Portugal and then Argentina. When he was in Argentina, he helped to track Nazi war criminals in South America. In 1945, after being passed over for promotion, he resigned from the United States Foreign Service.”
5) “In November 2006, the U.S. Episcopal Church added Bingham to a list of “American Saints” published in the book A Year with American Saints”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Bingham_IV
May 15, 2011 at 5:47 am
MindTheCrap
Adam:
No, the passages you quote from the Shepherd article do not put “Diab’s essay in context” because they refer to the Guardian, not Diab. You would have noticed this if you had bothered to read his next sentence:
Thursday’s piece on the paper’s flagship Comment is free website by the Belgian-Egyptian writer Khaled Diab plumbs no such depths of depravity.
As to Shepherd’s referral to Diab’s “self-delusion”, this is a legitimately arguable point, but Diab repeatedly stresses the non-violent aspect of his dreams and he is on record as supporting the two-state solution.
May 15, 2011 at 6:18 am
Yohoho
Crap, Diab makes no statement that the views in the article are his own rather than those of the Guardian, and neither does the Guardian, therefore your nitpicking is just that.
It’d be reasonable to argue, given the rubbish CiF chooses to print, that most of CiF’s writers are delusional.
May 15, 2011 at 7:01 am
MindTheCrap
If you had bothered to read what I wrote, you would see that it is Shepherd who makes the distinction between the Guardian and Diab. Are you accusing Shepherd of nitpicking ? tsk tsk – Hoi Polloi says “Robin Shepherd is the Émile Zola of our times. With his erudition, urbanity and great courage, …..”