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This is cross posted by Richard Millett
Here is the transcript and much clearer audio of a remarkable exchange between myself, Jonathan Hoffman and someone calling herself Jane Green outside Rivercourt Methodist Church on Thursday 6th October after a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event. I also include the PSC’s response. (Warning: Extreme language)
Audio:
Transcript:
Hoffman: You’re a Holocaust denier.
Me: You said there were no showers.
Green: Fuck off, fuck off.
Hoffman: Did you say there were no showers, did you say there were no gas chambers?
Me: How did the Jews die, how did the Jews die in the Holocaust?
Hoffman: How did the Jews die in the Holocaust, Madam?
Green: They had their foreskins chopped off.
Hoffman: And were there any gas chambers, Madam?
Green: I don’t know, I wasn’t there, darling.
Hoffman: What about the historical evidence?
Me: You said there were showers beforehand.
Green: They had showers there, too.
Me: And how did the Jews die in the Holocaust?
Green: I have no idea, I wasn’t there.
Me and Hoffman: How many Jews died in the Holocaust?
Me: How many Jews died in the Holocaust?
Green: I think a few hundred thousand did.
Me and Hoffman: But not six million?
Green: I didn’t count them, no.
Me: And do you care?
Hoffman: Was there a Holocaust?
Green: I have Jews in my family, and I’ve fucked enough Jews to tell you about circumcised.
Hoffman: Did the Holocaust exist?
Me: What’s your name, Madam?
Green: Course the Holocaust existed, I’ve seen the fucking photos. My name, Jane Green. Nice Jewish name.
Me and Hoffman: How many Jews died in the Holocaust, Jane Green?
Green: Six million and one.
Me: You said a hundred thousand before.
Green: Six million and one if it makes you happy.
Hoffman: Were there any gas chambers in the Holocaust?
Green: I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
Hoffman: But before you said there weren’t any, so say that again.
Green: I didn’t say that.
Hoffman: Say there were no gas chambers.
Green: Stop harassing me.
Hoffman: Say there were no gas chambers in the Holocaust again.
Green: I’ve no idea, I wasn’t there.
Me: Do you deny the Holocaust?
Hoffman: Do you deny the Holocaust, Madam?
Unknown woman: Course I don’t deny the Holocaust.
Green: Nobody does. No one of any intelligence denies the Holocaust.
Unknown woman: I do not deny the Holocaust.
Green: But you’re using it to fucking kill the Palestinians. You are using it.
Hoffman: Sorry, nobody is using it.
Green: You are using it to commit genocide against another people, yes you are.
Hoffman: You know that calling it a Holocaust (against the Palestinians) is anti-Semitic?
Green: I don’t call it a Holocaust, the Jews call it a Holocaust. It’s meaningless to me. The Jews call it a Holocaust. A Holocaust is a general term for a conflagration. Look in your dictionary.
Hoffman: Do you know comparing Israel’s policy to Nazi policy is anti-Semitic? Do you know that, Jane?
Green: No.
Hoffman: You don’t know that?
Green: I see them as Nazis. I see the Jews in Israel as total Nazis.
Hoffman: You know that’s an anti-Semitic remark, Jane?
Green: I don’t give a fuck.
Hoffman: Jane Green, right?
Green: Jane Green.
Hoffman: Jane Green.
Green: Nice Jewish name.
PSC response:
START
Statement Following Public Meeting In Hammersmith On 6 October 2011We unequivocally condemn the views recorded by Richard Millett of a person on the public pavement in Hammersmith on 6 October 2011. Even though the recording suggests that the person appeared to have been harangued by the interviewers, the sentiments expressed have no place in the campaign for Palestinian rights and justice. Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has a very clear policy opposing all forms of racism, including Islamophobia and anti-Jewish prejudice. Moreover, PSC has issued a further statement opposing attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust.
It is important to remember that the recorded remarks were made outside,and not inside, a meeting organised by West London PSC which was widely advertised and open to all members of the public. The meeting itself drew upon a panel of speakers of different faiths – Jewish, Muslim and Christian – who all focused on the necessity for Jerusalem to be a city for all its residents, irrespective of faith or ethnicity.
West London Palestine Solidarity Campaign
pscwestlondon@googlemail.com
END
Even though PSC condemns Green’s “views” and “sentiments” it actually defends her by suggesting that she might have said what she did because she was being “harangued”. In any event she wasn’t harangued at all but took great pleasure in taunting us about the Holocaust, as you can clearly hear.
PSC also makes a weak attempt to distance itself from Green by emphasising that her remarks took place outside the meeting and that the meeting was focused on Jerusalem.
Green actually took inspiration from the meeting, at least for her accusation that Jews are using the Holocaust to kill the Palestinians. Not long before this exchange she had heard the Reverend Stephen Sizer in the meeting blame “guilt for the Holocaust” on what he thinks is happening to the Palestinians:
Jane Green is not a one-off. Remarks similar to hers are whispered at the many anti-Israel events up and down the country. You just don’t get an opportunity to record them, so they are easily denied.
Related articles
- Antisemites, terror supporters, & Holocaust deniers: aka, just another Palestinian Solidarity Campaign event (cifwatch.com)
- Gilad Atzmon vs Tony Greenstein, in “Battle of the self-hating Jews” (cifwatch.com)
- CiF contributor Ghada Karmi promotes Greater Palestine. (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins is tired of our “obsession” with Nazism and the Holocaust (cifwatch.com)
- Jew hatred as liberal commentary: Guardian provides platform to vicious antisemite, Gilad Atzmon (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian publishes letter by Tony Greenstein suggesting comparison between anti-Israel protests & those against Nazis (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins is just bored to death with the continuing pedestrian “Nazification of evil”.
In “Britain’s Nazi obsession betrays our insecurity“, Jenkins complains that the topic of Nazi genocide, in one form or another, continues to pervade the British national curriculum, the arts, history, and our politics – what he refers to as a national “obsession”.
Jenkins writes:
“We might have hoped that the new century would see this phase of Germany’s past set in some historical context. It was not to be.
[Yet] The British book-writing, book-selling and book-buying public seems obsessed with recounting its forefathers’ triumphs over the Germans… In 2000 there were 380 English-language titles on the Third Reich, adding to some 30,000 with the word Hitler in the title. [emphasis mine]“
Jenkins adds, wearily:
“Nazis are still a favourite [representation of evil within] the cultural wild west, the video games industry, with little sign of their being replaced by Russians or mujahideen.”
Jenkins’ diagnosis of the UK’s Nazi obsession:
“Only insecure nations should rely on creating or memorialising “necessary enemies”, as Britain appears to do with Nazism. Only frightened people seek sustenance from ancient rivalries and past victories. [emphasis mine]
Evidently, for Jenkins, Nazism should not be seen as history’s most dangerous and murderous political movement, but, rather, just one political actor in a tired national rivalry which needs to be put to rest.
Of course, Jenkins’ waning patience for the West’s continuing historical reckoning with the moral lessons learned from a Europe which allowed a totalitarian movement to arise which attempted to enslave a continent, and annihilate every Jew on the face of the earth, is a broader commentary on the post-modern relativism which informs the political zeitgeist of our day.
History since the Holocaust has demonstrated that the antisemitic evil which was presumed to be buried in Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka may have changed form but is still, most certainly, alive and well.
But, those intent on denying this tragic fact are typically the ones who also arduously attempt to frame the West’s war with militant Islam as merely a political rivalry to be negotiated or appeased rather than an existential threat and a moral challenge to the values of tolerance, pluralism and liberalism to be ardently resisted.
The Guardian’s endemic hostility to Israel is partially informed by this moral failure – an incapacity to see the annihilationist antisemitism which informs the Jewish state’s Islamist enemies (as with evil more broadly) clearly and without illusions.
As Barry Rubin observed recently:
“Part of the problem here is that all too many Western intellectuals no longer believe in fighting—or even sacrificing–for your country; patriotic pride or nationalism or religion; or even the nation-state itself.”
Israel’s fierce willingness to use force in defense of its existence, and the Jewish state’s unique national purpose, may lie at the root of Europe’s hostility towards Zionism.
Again, Rubin:
“Yet all of this also shows why Israel is the key to understanding today’s world. Israel’s survival shows that democratic societies can fight and defeat dictators and totalitarian ideologies.”
The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins isn’t merely tired of hearing about Hitler, Nazism, and the Holocaust.
He’s tried of the moral burden of waking up each day with the sober realization that there are real threats to our existence, and that there are some things in life worth sacrificing, fighting, and even dying for.
Related articles
- The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins repeats lies about Palestinian sympathy for the U.S. after 9/11 attacks (cifwatch.com)
- Antisemites, terror supporters, & Holocaust deniers: aka, just another Palestinian Solidarity Campaign event (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian publishes letter by Tony Greenstein suggesting comparison between anti-Israel protests & those against Nazis (cifwatch.com)
- A challenge to Facebook: Treat Holocaust Denial as hate speech (cifwatch.com)
This was written by Dr. Andre Oboler, and originally was published by the Jerusalem Post. Oboler is co-chair of the Online Antisemitism Working Group of the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism.
It’s been over three years since the issue of Holocaust denial on Facebook was first raised. The truly amazing thing is that after countless protests, petitions, letters and meetings with experts, Facebook continues to refuse to recognise Holocaust denial as a form of hate. The social media platform continues to make a special exception and would rather spin and stonewall than fix a bad policy.
The danger today comes more from Facebook’s own position than from the content itself. The $70 billion dollar company’s refusal to recognise that Holocaust denial is a form of hate has continued despite advice and research from numerous experts. Facebook’s various justifications and efforts to redefine the issue seem to be the only thing that changes.
When the leading international experts on online antisemitism gathered in Jerusalem last month, the issue of Facebook’s policy on Holocaust Denial was one of many issues on the agenda. The Online Antisemitism Working Group meeting covered a comprehensive review of conferences and research reports on online hate from around the world. The experts examined new challenges that result from technological innovation, discussed recent incidents, and reviewed past challenges that were enumerated when the working group last met at the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism in 2009.
The increased concern on the Facebook Holocaust denial situation resulted from a lack of progress over the past two years and growing frustration in the expert community. In 2010 it had seemed Facebook had changed their policy without publically announcing it, but in 2011 more Holocaust denial groups appeared to be making a comeback and Facebook reasserted it’s position that Holocaust denial in and of itself was not considered by the company to be hateful. In truth, many groups and pages were only removed when the media specifically named them or published photographs of them. Experts who had met with Facebook on behalf of their own organizations had begun to feel they were going in circles. There was not much more to be said, all the arguments had been laid out before Facebook, the logical conclusion was obvious, and yet no progress was being made.
A video conference with a senior manager from Facebook was productive on a number of other issues, particularly the question of the responsibility users with special privileges should have. In the meeting Facebook requested a policy paper discussing this proposal in more depth. The Holocaust denial issue however remained an irrational sticking point that was embedded in an unwritten corporate policy. Following further discussion, the working group co-chairs, David Matas and myself, wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to explain that Holocaust denial was in and of itself hate speech and that Facebook’s exception for “historical events” led to an inconsistency in its policies. All hate speech should be treated the same, to do otherwise is to condones certain forms of hate. Not only was no reply forthcoming, even the policy paper that was sent to Facebook at their request received no acknowledgement.
Of all the issue of online hate the working group discussed, Facebook’s Holocaust Denial policy appeared to be the only one where a company was clearly saying “won’t” rather than “can’t”. Technical problems have technical solutions; the experts on the Global Forum Working Group discussed such solutions, shared knowledge and brainstormed on new approaches. When people refuse to recognise the danger of Holocaust denial, that is a human problem, and a danger to much of the fabric of human rights in modern society. It was in response to the Holocaust and the global desire to avoid a repetition of history that much of the modern human rights framework was created.
Holocaust survivors will not be with us forever, and once they are gone it will become increasingly difficult to convince people the Holocaust really happened. Denial will become more popular and more acceptable. The Nazi’s told their victims no one would believe them even if they did survive because the reality was just so implausible. If we struggle to understand the danger when the survivors themselves write to us, as they recently wrote to Facebook, then how are we as a society going to fair once they are gone?
To see Facebook ignoring the danger and denying the hateful nature of Holocaust denial is deeply concerning. To see the ethnicity of Jewish staff brought up in official statements to support the company’s assertion that it must know what it is doing, even while ignoring the warning of so many experts, is troubling. Technology however continues to change, and with the rise of Google+, Facebook may soon have real competition. Having a choice of platform will restore power to the public and may see the start of a race to retain users. When this happens it will be up to society to assert loudly and strongly that hate has no place in our online communities, and that Holocaust denial is no exception. I wonder if we are ready for that challenge?
The comprehensive report of the Online Antisemitism Working Group, including many recommendations for different sectors of society, will be published later this year. I hope by then we will be able to report that Facebook has had a change of heart.
H/T David T.
Tom Gross’s CiF commentary on September 2, “Goodbye, Golden Rose“ was a truly sad tale of how Ukrainian authorities are callously erasing the last remaining traces of the 420,000 Polish an Ukrainian Jews murdered by the Nazis in Lviv (also called Lvov, Lwow, and Lemberg) and its environs. The author described witnessing bulldozers demolishing parts of the remnants of what was once one of Europe’s most beautiful synagogue complexes, the 16th-century Golden Rose in Lviv.
Most of the rest of the synagogue was burned down, with Jews inside, by the Nazis in 1941 – one of 42 synagogues destroyed by the Nazis in Lviv – and is to be replaced with a hotel.
The Golden Rose represents one of the few remaining vestiges of Jewish existence in Lviv, the majority of whose residents, in 1940, were Jewish.
Two years ago, another site of mass murder in Lviv, the Citadel – where tens of thousands of Jews and others were tortured to death – was converted into a five-star hotel.
There is no monument to the murdered Jews in Lviv’s old town.
The essay, as with any CiF commentary pertaining to Jews, Israel or the Holocaust, elicited quite a high volume of reader comments beneath the line – including this:
What the commenter is referring to is The Soviet caused Ukrainian famine (1932–1933), or Holodomor (literally in Ukrainian, “death by hunger”), which was one of the largest national catastrophes in the modern history of the Ukraine, and is widely recognized as a “crime against humanity” or an outright “genocide” by many.
The number of deaths in Ukraine’s Holodomer – which was caused by the forced Soviet collectivization, along with the murderous purges of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, religious leaders and politicians under Stalin – are often cited as over 7 million – which includes an estimated 80,000 or so Jews.
The notion, advanced by the Guardian reader, that Jews played a role in Stalin’s ethnic cleansing is simply perverse, and literally beyond comprehension.
You can find such insidious commentary at the site of White Supremacists such as David Duke and conspiracy theory sites like Rense.com.
Moreover, there’s something disturbing about this perverse moral tick displayed by some Guardian readers – those, as we’ve documented, who can’t simply express unqualified sympathy for Jewish victims of the Holocaust without either evoking alleged Israeli villainy against Palestinians or suggesting Jewish complicity in Soviet crimes – what David Duke refers to as the crimes of “Jewish Bolsheviks”.
The comment above garnered 16 recommends and has not been deleted.
Related articles
Anne Karpf’s CiF piece on Aug. 5, France and the Holocaust: A return of the repressed, focused on a new French film, Sarah’s Key, and the reluctance of the nation to honestly come to terms with the deportation, by French Authorities, of 13,000 French Jews in 1942 – only 25 of whom survived.
Not surprisingly, the piece elicited a high volume of comments beneath the line.
Among the comments was this, by HushedSilence, responding to another commenter’s thinly veiled criticism of the influence of Jews in Hollywood – but adding an equally pertinent observation regarding the Guardian’s well-documented disproportionate focus on Israel.
And, then, well, not only can’t my primitive screen capture software take a snapshot of empty space, I couldn’t even find a funny representation of nothingness on Google Images.
The comment wasn’t simply deleted – a CiF moderator act which produces the commenter’s moniker and time of comment – but literally vanished without a trace.
Then there was this comment by MacManus on the phases of European anti-Semitism, which included an observation about the pernicious influence of the Guardian’s well-known ideological orientation.
Again, vanished.
As we’ve learned, comment may be free but criticism of the Guardian is forbidden.
Related articles
- A curious deletion by the ‘Guardians of Hamas’ (cifwatch.com)
- Without a trace: CiF completely purges comment from thread (cifwatch.com)
- Curious deletion by Guardian comment moderators in Demjanjuk thread (cifwatch.com)
Though CiF moderators may be doing a slightly better job of cleaning anti-Semitic filth from their pages these days, a recent comment by a Guardianista named Berchmans recalls a CW post from 2009 called “The first Berchmans Award” – an award dedicated to exposing to recognise the most antisemitic posts on CiF.
Berchmans is a permanent fixture on CiF. And, as we noted, he may be a man of few words, but the words he does use are guaranteed to be used to vilify Israel and her supporters.
More recently, in response to a CiF essay by Timothy Snyder titled, “Lithuania neglects the memory of its murdered Jews“, July 29, about Lithuania’s failure to deal with their involvement in the mass slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust, Berchmans said the following.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
Of course, citing Norman Finkelstein is par for the course for Berchmans, as Finkelstein’s views – as expressed in his book “The Holocaust Industry”, which characterizes Israelis as “basically Nazis with beards and black hats” – naturally endears him to anti-Semites and Israel haters the world over.
No, the vile accusation that the Holocaust is cynically exploited by my country and our Jewish supporters does not dignify a reply, but it does need repeating that the memory of the anti-Semitism (the “respectable bigotry” of the time) which led to the murder of one out of every three Jews in the world is, to be sure, a constant reminder of why this blog continues to fight anti-Semitism (and the assault on the Jewish state’s legitimacy) advanced by Guardian reporters, CiF contributors, and commenters like Berchmans.
Related articles
- CiF, Henning Mankell, and the audacity of evil (cifwatch.com)
- Yes, denying Jews the right to self-determination is inherently anti-Semitic. (cifwatch.com)
- On CiF Watch and the fight against contemporary anti-Semitism (cifwatch.com)
- CiF Watch’s new Newsletter has hit the stands! (cifwatch.com)
- Curious deletion by Guardian comment moderators in Demjanjuk thread (cifwatch.com)
- Canadian Muslim Activist, Tarek Fatah, unveils “the myths that fuel Islamic anti-Semitism” (cifwatch.com)
- Perfect illustration of Guardian’s biased moderation when dealing with Israel related reader comments (cifwatch.com)
Here in Israel we commemorate the Holocaust on a different day to that chosen by the rest of the world and that difference is very significant.
In 2005 the UN designated January 27th as Holocaust Memorial Day – the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the advancing Soviet army.
Israel commemorates the Holocaust on the 27th of Nisan and remembers not only the genocide of six million Jews in Europe, but also the 93,000 Jewish Partisans, members of the Resistance and Ghetto fighters who actively opposed the Nazi regime.
Whereas the international memorial events take place on the anniversary of the rescue of Jews by a foreign force, the Israeli commemorations also highlight those who, despite having no country of their own, no support network or supply lines actively fought and worked to defeat the Nazis and save as many lives as possible. Those brave men and women were active all over Europe and North Africa, in forests, ghettos, towns and concentration camps and the wide variety of forms which the resistance took is echoed in Haim Gouri’s famous poem.
“Those who stole a loaf of bread – resisted
Those who taught in secret – resisted
Those who wrote, disseminated, warned and shattered illusions – resisted
Those who sneaked in a Torah scroll – resisted
Those who faked documents – resisted
Those who smuggled from one country to another – resisted
Those who kept a written record and hid it – resisted
Those who helped – resisted
Those who acted as couriers between prisoners and smuggled instructions and weapons – resisted
Those who fought hand to hand in the streets of the cities, in the hills and forests – resisted
Those who rose in revolt in the camps – resisted
Those who rebelled in the ghettoes, among the crumbling walls, in the most desperate revolt of all – resisted.”
In addition to the pledge of ‘never again’, the lesson of the Holocaust is also that we cannot and must not rely upon others to safeguard the Jewish nation. Our protection is our own responsibility and each one of us has a role, however small, to play in resisting those who, sixty-six years after the end of the Second World War, still seek to deny Jews the same rights as every other nation takes for granted.
The memorial to the Partisans and Ghetto fighters at Latrun (designed by Alexander Bogden – himself a former Partisan commander who passed away only last year) not only serves to commemorate the barely comprehensible bravery of those individuals who refused to be daunted by the insurmountable.
It also represents the continuation of that approach which underscored the establishment of the State of Israel itself and the I.D.F. and continues to inspire all of us who, in our own small ways, resist the types of ideologies which sadly did not fade into history with the liberation of Auschwitz-Birenau.
יהי זכרם לנצח אתנו
May their memory be with us forever.
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. So, as of today, 130,000 photos from Yad Vashem’s archive will be viewable in full resolution online – a project which represents the first step in the Jerusalem-based museum’s efforts to bring their entire collection online. Click here to visit the site.
Image from site of Yad Vashem
The following is Yad Vashem’s YouTube channel, which will allow you to view a series of videos of Holocaust survivor testimonials.
A Guest Post by AKUS
In a recent article, A perfect example of the Guardian’s appalling myopia, I pointed out how the Guardian overlooked a key event in a visit by a group of boys (no girls) from Gaza to the USA, and, specifically, the UN building in New York:
A Guardian video entitled, “Documentary follows 15 boys from Gaza on trip to US” contained the subtitle:
“Fifteen boys left their besieged homeland to visit America earlier this year. The moving film No Sharp Objects reveals their first experiences of snow and skyscrapers.”
Correctly, it should read:
Fifteen boys left their homeland to visit America earlier this year. The moving film No Sharp Objects reveals their first experiences of snow, skyscrapers and pictures and lessons from the Holocaust.
The Guardian, enthralled by the chance to show Hamas and UNRWA, which organized the trip, in a good light completely overlooked mentioning a significant portion of the clip which showed Arab-speaking guides explain to the youngsters from Gaza what the Holocaust was, and why it is so important to the Jews. Clearly, this was the first time that they these young boys had heard of the Holocaust and seen the iconic pictures that form the display.
A day later, despite the same timestamp on the article, Harriet Sherwood followed up with an article about the trip, noting briefly: “the group paused before a Holocaust exhibition at the UN headquarters. As the boys considered the terrible images from the death camps, their teacher, Rafiq Murad, spoke of the significance of what they were seeing. “And so, guys,” he concluded, “because we faced suffering and injustice we have to appreciate and understand the suffering of others, regardless of their religion and race.”
A great message.
It turns out, however, that it was not the message that Hamas wanted the children to see.
A guest post by AKUS
A Guardian video entitled, “Documentary follows 15 boys from Gaza on trip to US” contained the subtitle:
“Fifteen boys left their besieged homeland to visit America earlier this year. The moving film No Sharp Objects reveals their first experiences of snow and skyscrapers”
Correctly, it should read:
Fifteen boys left their homeland to visit America earlier this year. The moving film No Sharp Objects reveals their first experiences of snow, skyscrapers and pictures and lessons from the Holocaust.
It is moving to see them experience New York … and, for the first time, learn about what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust during their visit to the United Nations … and see an Arab guide draw lessons from that to promote understanding between different groups – a lesson the Guardian could learn.
It takes the obtuse, virulent hatred for Israel that infests the Guardian, still running videos from Cast Lead – expressed in the use of the word “besieged” – to overlook the section in the very movie clip they post on their website that shows Arab children seeing the iconic images of the Holocaust for the first time, and their Arab guide trying to help them understand, for the first time, the Jewish side of the conflict – the only way peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians will ever occur.
With the international Marine Biology community still abuzz over Harriet Sherwood’s groundbreaking reports on shark attacks in waters off the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Guardian’s premier reporter returned to Jerusalem to conquer more familiar territory: racism in Israel.
Sherwood, who was uncharacteristically silent about events in Israel for three days, in which the worst fire in Israel’s history (which killed 42 people, and destroyed 12,000 acres of land) raged across Mt. Carmel, managed to bookend two stories (on Dec 2nd, and 6th) about a number of bigoted Israeli rabbis who signed a (non-binding) petition calling on Jews not to sell land to non-Jews. (Sherwood’s only reports on the fire were filed after the blaze was contained on Dec. 5)
The ruling, which has no weight under Israeli civil law, and which was emphatically condemned by Israel’s Prime Minister, President, Minority Affairs and Education Ministers, has now garnered four stories at the Guardian.
In yesterday’s piece, Mya Guarnieri not only hyperbolically warned that the ruling represented nothing short of a “wave in a rising tide of religious fascism”, but managed to try and convict not only Israel – but the very “soul of Judaism” itself – all in a remarkably thrifty 614 words!
Sherwood, without a an hour to rest after her grueling Egyptian excursion, published a third piece today, on the rabbinical edict, which evoked the memory of the Holocaust in highlighting the fact that officials at Yad Vashem (Israel’s Holocaust Museum) issued a statement condemning the racist decree.
Time will only tell how long the Guardian will play this story – but the manner in which events in Israel over the past week have been covered by Sherwood and Guarnieri serve as a perfect illustration of how the world’s leading liberal voice views the Jewish state – a window into (what Ms. Guarnieri might characterize as) “the Guardian’s very soul.”
H/T Yochanan Visser, of the organization, Missing Peace, for the Dutch translation.
Phyllis Chesler tells us of the typically outrageous lies and doublespeak of the antisemitic Israel-hater, Gretta Duisenberg. Duisenberg is the widow of Wim Duisenberg, the former President of the European Bank, the darling of Yasser Arafat and of the Free Gaza Movement, and chairwoman of a pro-Palestine committee “Stop the Occupation”. Prof Chesler tells us that Duisenberg, in an act which almost beggars belief, has proceeded to sue the Iranian-Dutch professor of philosophy and jurisprudence, Afshin Ellian, for calling her an “anti-Semite.” Duisenberg seems to have forgotten that she proudly defines herself as an “anti-Semite.”
In response to an article by Leon de Winter writing in Dutch in Elsevier, Abigail Esman writes:
“I invite all readers to support journalistic freedom and freedom of expression by writing ‘I, too, think Gretta Duisenberg is an anti-Semite.’”
I would not expect any reader to accept that statement purely on my say so. I propose, therefore, to define Duisenberg’s behaviour in terms of the Working Definition of Anti-Semitism formulated by EUMC, [although the EUMC has since been succeeded by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA)]. I believe that it is fair to say that Duisenberg’s behaviour falls into almost every category of antisemitism in the working definition, but to list all the evidence here would be time and space-consuming. I shall concentrate therefore on the more florid and blatant examples, and an internet search about Duisenberg will almost certainly provide the reader with even more information. Among the Working Definition’s specific examples of antisemitism are:
Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
Duisenberg is a supporter of extremist Islam, and formerly of the PLO and Hamas whose nihilistic antisemitism is evident in its Charter and has been proven by its murderous behaviour again and again. In 2003 Duisenberg organised and spoke at pro Palestinian rally at which donations were collected for the Al Aqsa funds which supports the families of suicide bombers. She also did not protest against the chanting of Hamas supporters around her of “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas!”
Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
After the 2003 rally, Duisenberg draped a PLO flag from the balcony of her home in Amsterdam. When requested by her Jewish neighbours to take it down, they were told; “It’s the rich American Jews who make it possible for Israel to do what they are doing to the Palestinians”. More recently, in January 2010, Duisenberg added to this calumny by engaging in the too-ready conflation of Zionism with Judaism, invariably the hallmark of the antisemite who is trying to pass. See also Duisenberg’s answer in an interview in the Dutch magazine Keuzevrijheid :
“… These are the tactics of the Jewish lobby. By calling me an antisemite I will not be able to criticise the Zionist regime…”
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Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Current-day antisemitism obsessed with concept of Jews as the chosen people
October 22, 2011 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Delegitimization, Giulio Meotti, Holocaust, Jimmy Carter, Mikis Theodorakis, Stephen Sizer | by Guest/Cross Post | 10 comments
This is cross posted at Ynet by Giulio Meotti, and helps contextualize a recent Guardian piece by Deborah Orr (which CiF Watch commented on here & here).
The malignant use of the expression “chosen Jews” is recurring in the latest attacks on Israel made by secular intellectuals, archbishops, mainstream journalists and European politicians.
Such vilification inspired historical waves of violence, like the pogroms, the expulsion of the Spanish Jews and Martin Luther’s demonology (the founder of Protestantism argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people but instead “the Devil’s people.”)
It is no longer only Syria that aired a movie against the “Chosen Jews” or the former prime minister of Malaysia, Mohammad Mahathir, who warned that “the Jews must never think they are the chosen people.” The obsession for this issue now widely appears in the latest indictments of Israel as an “apartheid state” and in the legal campaigns against the Law of Return.
Recently, Stephen Sizer, a leading British theologian, released a declaration to support the UN Palestinian bid: “The New Testament insists the promises God made to Abraham are fulfilled not in the Jewish people but in Jesus and those who acknowledge him.” According to Sizer, the Jewish covenant with God is “rubbish.”
Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros, a cleric chosen by Pope Benedict XVI to draft the conclusions of the synod on the Middle East, declared that “there is no longer a Jewish chosen people,” resurrecting the ancient calumny that the Jews are damned for all time as cosmic exiles. Elias Chacour, the Vatican-approved Catholic Archbishop of Israel, says that “we do not believe anymore that the Jews are the Chosen People.”
Many anti-Semitic comments are based on the concept of Jews as the chosen people. “All Jews share a particular gene, that makes them different from other peoples,” recently declared German central bank executive Thilo Sarrazin. Christina Patterson attacked the Jews in a column for The Independent: “I didn’t realize that a purchase by a goy was a crime to be punished with monosyllabic terseness, or that bus seats were a potential source of contamination, or that road signs, and parking restrictions, were for people who hadn’t been chosen by God.”
‘We call it racism’
Meanwhile, acclaimed Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis told an interviewer that “today it is possible to say that this small nation is the root of all evil; it is full of self-importance and evil stubbornness.” Asked by his interlocutor, “what is it that holds us Jews together?” Theodorakis replied, “It is the feeling that you are the children of God. That you are the chosen.”
Elsewhere, European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, a former Belgian foreign minister, recently blamed the “Jewish lobby” and said that “there is indeed a belief – it’s difficult to describe it otherwise – among most Jews that they are right.” De Gucht’s target was the Jews, not Israeli policies.
Jostein Gaarder, author of the literary bestseller Sophie’s World, published an op-ed titled “God’s chosen people” in the Aftenposten, one of Norway’s major newspapers, in which he declared that Israel has lost its right to exist: “We no longer recognize the state of Israel….We don’t believe in the idea of God’s chosen people….To present oneself as God’s chosen people is not just stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.”
José Saramago, the Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize laureate, described the Jews in perfervid terms as “contaminated by the monstrous and rooted ‘certitude’ that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God and that, consequently, all the actions of an obsessive, psychological, and pathological exclusivist racism are justified.”
The plot of celebrated British playwright Caryl Churchill’s “Seven Jewish Children,” which got much acclaim at London’s Royal Court Theater, is built on the Jewish obsession. Churchill’s short play unfolds over seven scenes, beginning, dimly, sometime during the Holocaust and concluding with Israel’s wars. Characters appear as parents of an offstage child, and the dialogue revolves around what the girl should or should not know about her political circumstances as they unfold over the decades.
“Tell her”, says one of the play’s Zionist elders, “I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out . . . tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re chosen people.”
This is the same delusional lexicon of medieval Jew-hatred. Taken to its logical end, this language suggests that there is only one price the Jews can pay for being accepted by the world: Israel’s elimination. Indeed, this worldwide condemns the Jews to homelessness and humiliation, chosen to walk the earth alone until the end of the days.
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