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This is cross posted by Richard Millett
This map, without Israel, took pride of place behind all the speakers.
Last night the Palestine Solidarity Campaign revealed the horrors of what life would be like for British Jews under Labour. The Jew killing Hamas machine would become regulars to Downing Street.
But, first, a love letter.
At the PSC event about Gaza, held at Conway Hall (which is owned by the South Place Ethical Society), actorvist Leigh Outram read the following from Love Letters to Gaza (see clip 1 below). The boat mentioned is the Audacity of Hope:
What can a poem do?
Create awareness?
Light a fire?
A fire to fire the boat to sea.There was no fire at Auschwitz
To stop the poison gas until
The fire part of the western world destroyed the evil of the Nazi state,
And Israel came into being because the will was there.It is not now the Nazi state but Israel that blocks the seas.
It is not Auschwitz that stops the ship that carries hope and messages,
But those that might have died there.So let this poem drive the Hope that heads for Gaza.
The victims are now the torturers.
Freedom must be for all not just the victorsWhose victory brings forgetfulness of what they suffered once now brought to others.
Maybe Ms Outram hasn’t visited Auschwitz and seen the gas chambers and the ovens or the pictures of naked Jewish women huddling together in front of a pit before being shot. Maybe she doesn’t know that one million Jewish children died in The Holocaust.
This is the true Holocaust industry, a term coined by Norman Finklestein, where the likes of Ms Outram get paid for minimalising the horrors of Auschwitz by comparing it to Gaza. But Outram set the theme for the evening.
The Love Letter read out by Tracy-Ann Woods (clip 2) described the Palestinians as “hated simply for being who they are” and that read out by Clare Quinn (clip 3) described Israel as “dying”. Ahmed Masoud, who has written for the BBC, compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. Another activist (clip 4) said “no oppression or injustice has ever gone without falling. The apartheid regime ended, the collapse of Nazism…”
Meanwhile, Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Andy Slaughter, the Shadow Justice Minister, sat on stage applauding and when it came to speak everyone stood in front of map of Palestine, where there was no Israel.
Of Hamas Slaughter said (clip 5):
“They recognise a Palestinian state on ’67 borders, which is to effectively recognise the state of Israel. Now I think if that is not enough for the Americans or Israelis then I think we are playing games because those concessions are considerable concessions and they are the right concessions to make.”
This from a potential Justice Minister. Except recognition of a Palestinian state is not recognition of Israel. A small swing from the Conservatives to Labour in 2015 and the Liberal Democrats could ditch the Tories. A Lib/Lab coalition would be the perfect storm for Israel and British Jews with Hamas becoming regular visitors to Number 10.
Slaughter has already met Hamas and the Labour Party offered no comment.
Corbyn (clip 6) finished off the evening calling for some potentially five million Palestinians to be allowed into Israel, effectively turning it into yet another Arab state while taking the benefits of the Israelis’ hard work builing up a successful country.
Michael Deas (clip 7), Palestinian BDS National Committee, attempted to paint Israel as being undemocratic, but he was soon followed by Kika Markham (clip 8), the widow of Corin Redgrave, who read an extract from a role she performed as Haaretz journalist Amira Hass in which Hass talks of Israel in the most despicable terms.
A country that allows Hass and Haaretz to attack it so regularly cannot be anything but democratic. There isn’t something even near the equivalent of Haaretz for the Palestinians and that speaks volumes.
Photos:
Jon McKenna, Tracy-Ann Wood, Leigh Outram, Laura Freeman watching Clare Quinn spew poison about the Jewish state.
Clip 1 – Leigh Outram (compares Auschwitz to Gaza)
Clip 2 – Tracy-Ann Woods (“Palestinians hated for who they are”)
Clip 3 – Clare Quinn (“Israel is dying”)
Clip 4 – Activist (likens Israel to the Nazis)
Clip 5 – Andy Slaughter MP (“Hamas recognises Israel”)
Clip 6 – Jeremy Corbyn MP (“Palestinian refugees” will go to Israel)
Clip 7 – Michael Deas (“Israel is not democratic”)
Clip 8 – Kika Markham (acts as Haaretz’s Amira Hass)
This is cross posted by Richard Millett
Mads Gilbert and Jenny Tonge last night in Parliament.
Last night yet another hate-meeting took place in Parliament with the Palestine Return Centre holding an event “to commemorate the memory of Palestinian victims over the past six decades especially the last war in Gaza”. (Here is what the PRC is all about. It makes unpleasant reading for Jews).
Jenny Tonge was there ranting about how the Palestinians weren’t responsible for the Holocaust and asking “how can the Israelis treat the Palestinians the way they do after what happened in the Holocaust”.
She criticised the power of the “Israel lobby” and held up a magazine with Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh on the front cover and proceeded to idolise him.
She told us about a Palestinian fishing-boat which was boarded by the Israeli navy off Gaza. She said the Palestinian fishermen had their hands bound behind their backs and were forced to swim to the Israeli boat.
And she spoke about why she thinks she comes in for such heavy criticism and put this down to the fact that she stands up for the Palestinians and criticises Israel. The latter, she thinks, is viewed as being anti-Semitic.
When challenged by Jonathan Hoffman to give an example of when criticism of Israel has been called anti-Semitic she said she could give “many examples”, but failed to come through with even one. Here’s the action:
We also heard from Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian anesthesiologist, who gave us the names of Palestinian children who had been killed or who had horrendous injuries. He spent most of last night trying to flog his book about it all called Eyes on Gaza. Available from all good retailers.
We heard from Manal Timraz. Manal lost 15 members of her family during Operation Cast Lead, 11 of which were aged between twelve and two, and has lost another four since. After asking us to stand for a minute’s silence she emotionally outlined how the only way forward is a one-state-solution.
She lives in England next to a Jewish woman who “didn’t steal my land and I didn’t steal her’s”.
Gilbert had called for an academic boycott of Israel and during the Q&A I asked him how he could propose such an obviously racist policy and whether he used any Israeli products himself.
He said that the accusation that he was “a racist” was “absolutely preposterous” (I didn’t call him “a racist”) and said that he used computers without Intel chips. He then accused me of “smiling and laughing arrogantly” while Manal was speaking. I was smiling, but only at Manal’s suggestion that Jonathan go to the West Bank with her to drink tea “like a Palestinian”.
Gilbert further rejected accusations of anti-Semitism, eventhough none were made, with:
“If you want to look for anti-Semitism don’t look among us because we are profoundly anti-racist”.
He’s even friends with a Canadian Jew!
But how can anyone seriously claim to be “profoundly anti-racist” while hero-worshipping a self-confessed Jew hater (see Hamas Charter) like Ismail Haniyeh?
Here is the Q&A footage. First you hear PRC’s Sameh Habeeb, then Manal Timraz, then Mads Gilbert (from 4 mins. 15 secs.) and, finally, Jenny Tonge again, who, sadly, wasn’t impressed with me or Jonathan:
Additional photo:
British Palestinian Manal Timraz speaking last night.
This is cross posted by Richard Millett
War Horse writer Michael Morpurgo:
The film of War Horse, adapted from the novel by Michael Morpurgo (Contributor to ‘Comment is Free’), has just been released in the UK.
But as well as horses being killed on screen there is something else for filmgoers to cry into their popcorn over. Morpurgo is happy to repeat vicious lies about Israel without seeming to bother checking facts.
Last February Morpurgo was given the honour of reciting the Richard Dimbleby lecture, which has been delivered by an influential figure every year since 1972, and he chose to speak on the lack of childrens’ rights around the world. He pointed out that 8 million children a year die before the age of 5. As he said, “that’s a holocaust of children every year”. He also mentioned that “69 million children never go to school” and that “3.5 million children in our own country are still mired in poverty”.
Most of those 8 million children die from AIDS, war, malaria, malnutrition and other diseases in Africa. But Morpurgo failed to say anything about that instead choosing to spend a large portion of this high profile speech on the darlings of the left, the Palestinians, and invoking the modern day version of the anti-Semitic blood libel. He relied on statements of those with an anti-Israel agenda.
He said he went to Jordan 10 years ago and met Jordanian children “about eighty per cent of whom are Palestinian refugees”. They are not refugees by any normal definition, but are simply born and bred Jordanians.
He mentioned a teenage girl who said:
“I want to tell you something real and true. My family lives here in Jordan, but I do not belong here. I belong in Palestine. It is my home but I can’t live there because it is occupied.”
Obviously, her “Palestine” means Israel and this was a call for the destruction of the Jewish state with its hidden aspiration for all Palestinians to head for Israel and turn it into another Arab state.
Morpurgo soon mentioned Gaza and repeated Israel-hating Amnesty International’s figure that 300 children were killed during Operation Cast Lead. But Amnesty and the United Nations class a child as being “under 18″. So a 17-year-old Hamas fighter pointing a gun at an Israeli soldier being shot dead in self-defence is classed as “a child”.
Morpurgo also gave the impression that from the moment he entered Gaza to the moment he exited it two days later that the Israelis were hell-bent on killing Palestinian children.
No sooner did he enter Gaza when:
“Halfway down I heard the sound of a shot being fired – it sounded to a country boy like me as if someone was shooting rabbits. All around young Palestinian boys were racing around on their donkeys and carts whooping and shrieking. I had no idea what they were doing at the time. I was in another world. I didn’t know who was doing the shooting. In this other world I went the next day to visit a hospital for malnourished babies and then on to a project for blind children.”
On his way out of Gaza he described how “earlier that morning, before I got there it seems, some of the scavengers had ventured too close to the wall and had been fired at and wounded”, and while he was waiting to leave:
“It was then I heard shots, then screaming, saw the kids running to help their wounded friends. Now I really was outside the comfort zone of fiction. A doctor from Medicins sans Frontieres, waiting there with me, told me that the shots were probably not fired by marksmen from the watchtowers on the wall, but that these scavengers were sometimes targeted, remotely, electronically from Tel Aviv, which was miles away – ‘Spot and Strike,’ they call it. Like a video game – a virtual shooting. I don’t know if these claims are true but I do know the shots were real, there was blood, the boy’s trousers were soaked in it, the bullets were real. I saw him close to, saw his agony as the cart rushed by me.”
So there you have it, the modern day reincarnation of the anti-Semitic blood libel. In the old days this involved the accusation that Jews abducted and slaughtered non-Jewish children and used their blood in religious rituals. Nowadays it is Israelis, or Jewish Israelis to be more precise, who, allegedly, just kill them “like a video game”.
Morpurgo admitted that he didn’t know if the claims by a doctor from Medicins sans Frontieres that the shots came remotely from Tel Aviv were true, but he made them anyway. For Morpurgo it doesn’t matter because it sounds like a wonderfully sad story, which he is in the business of telling.
Morpurgo did make a weak attempt at partiality with the following:
“I know Hamas rockets had been landing in Israel for a very long time and that Israeli children have been dying there too. And I know it is absolutely the right of every nation to defend itself.So most certainly the Israelis have had their reasons. But I’m sure that most of them believe as we all do that a child’s life in particular is precious, any child’s life. Yet Palestinian children died. Collateral damage, some might call it.”
He mentioned his visit to a village where “Arab and Jewish children play together and learn together”, but this mention of “Jewish children” should raise alarm bells. Why were the Israeli children described by him in terms of their religion and not their nationality, unlike the Arab children?
But if Morpurgo was really concerned about the rights of Palestinian children he would have highlighted the child abuse prevalent in Palestinian society where children are used as human shields by Hamas, where Hamas destroys childrens’ summer camps in Gaza and where television programmes are regularly aired by the Palestinian Authority on which children claim a desire to grow up to become martyrs.
Instead he chose to believe the propaganda of those who have their own financial interests in spreading lies about Israel and his words should have been prefaced with the following announcement:
“No facts were checked in the making of this speech”.
What a waste of an important speech last February. Instead of bravely speaking up for Palestinian children like he could have, Michael Morpurgo probably only succeeded in adding a little more hatred of Jews into the world.
A guest post by Richard Millett
I have an admission to make. You see the place where I live, and in fact the place where I am writing this piece, I have no rights to. That’s right I’m a trespasser, a squatter, a thief, or whatever you think is an appropriate word for a rogue such as me.
You see it all happened about 20 years ago. I had nowhere that I really wanted to live until I spied a nice little place in a London suburb one night. The light was on and pensioners Roberta and George Smith had just settled down to watch Coronation Street with a hot cup of cocoa in their hands.
As soon as they became engrossed in Corrie I barged in and told them to leave. I gave them 10 minutes to pack up their belongings and get the hell out.
I have been living here ever since and very nice it is too. The local council has passed a motion that the Smiths have a “right of return”, but I refuse to budge. You see it isn’t my fault, I tell the council. The problem is I’m Jewish and that is what us Jews do. If there is something we want, we just take it.
I mean we did it in 1948 too, I tell them. There was this already fully functioning state called Palestine full of millions and millions of people who had lived there since the dinosaurs, and the Jews (who hadn’t lived there since the dinosaurs) suddenly appeared from absolutely nowhere and took over their houses, farms and businesses and told them to get the hell out.
But it wasn’t those Jews’ fault either, I said. Just like a Tourette’s sufferer can’t help himself when swearing so us Jews just can’t stop ourselves from thieving.
Thanks to Nicholas Lezard, literary critic for The Guardian, I have recently discovered an explanation for all this; thieving might actually be in our DNA.
Lezard has uncovered a dirty little secret that has been kept hidden from us Jews and which explains a lot; one of our great forefathers, Moses, was a bit of a tea-leaf himself.
In his Guardian review (Jan. 3) of Intolerable Tongues, which describes Dr Donald McCollum’s journey through British Mandate Palestine towards the end of the 1930s, a novel by Ellis Sharp (and which is classed as “history” by The Guardian), Lezard concludes:
“And beneath all this rumbles history – not only that which is yet to come for the area, but all that has gone before. ‘I have always found it a bit rum that Moses parcelled out land that already belonged to others,’ muses McCollum at one point, which might seem like a piece of thumpingly unsubtle irony; but then sometimes that’s how history works, and it’s important to be reminded of it from time to time.” (added emphasis by me)
So now, thanks to Lezard, the truth is out; Moses, like me and probably you if you are Jewish, also stole land that wasn’t his.
You see when Moses led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt he led them to this already fully functioning state called Canaan full of millions and millions of people who had lived there since the dinosaurs and the Jews suddenly appeared from absolutely nowhere and took over their houses, farms and businesses and told them to get the hell out…..
H/T Margie
In Richard Millett’s guest post at CiF Watch, Channel 4s lying subtitles in Going for Gold in Gaza documentary, Millett demonstrated that the show’s production team may have intentionally mistranslated the subtitles to leave out words that would have shown Israel in a good light, and would have undermined the programme’s anti-Israel narrative.
Indeed almost half of the documentary was devoted to a totally gratuitous demonization of Israel. The problem for Aidan Hartley, the presenter, was that none of the Paralympians he was interviewing had been rendered disabled by Israel. Their disabilities stemmed from either accidents or intermarrying or were hereditary.
However, the subtitles used for the interview with the Palestinian Paralympians conveniently omitted their comments about being treated in Israeli hospitals and rehabilitation centers (per a translation provided to CiF Watch by a professional Arabic translator).
I subsequently paid closer attention to the glowing review of the documentary in the Guardian, by Tom Meltzer, on Nov. 11th.
Meltzer’s review similarly demonized Israel and omitted any mention of the free medical and rehabilitation care the Palestinians received in Israel.
Meltzer writes:
“Gaza, we learn, has one of the highest rates of disability in the world. The most common cause is genetic and congenital disorders, but much is, of course, man-made, the product of Israeli missile and artillery strikes.”
And, this:
“There is only one manufacturer of prosthetics in Gaza, which, naturally, we visit. With the city, as reporter Aidan Hartley puts it, “effectively under siege”, the materials needed are in tragically short supply.”
Perhaps Meltzer can be excused for failing to note that – despite the fact that Gaza and Israel are in a virtual state of war – whatever the particulars of the availability of prosthetics, tons of medical supplies cross from Israeli into Gazan each week. (In 2009, over 10,000 Palestinian Gazans received free care in Israeli hospitals.)
Moreover, in one week alone, from Oct. 7 to Oct. 13, 1,285 truckloads of supplies were imported via Israel into the territory “under siege.”
The cruel “siege” also allowed for 276 Palestinians during the week to enter into Israel and the West Bank for medical treatment, along with friends or relatives to accompany them.
But, an even more egregious example of Meltzer’s biased report is one telling omission.
Nowhere in the 363 word story does the word Hamas appear.
It’s quite a feat, really, to file a dispatch about deprivations in Gaza without making the intuitive observation that the terrorist government which governs the territory may bear some responsibility for the lack of resources – caused by a partial blockade necessitated by the Islamist regime’s prioritizing the use of precious national resources to import rockets and other deadly weaponry to be used against Israel.
But, of course, such an admission would seriously compromise Meltzer’s poetic truth of Palestinian victimhood and immutable Israeli cruelty.
When there is a competition between a fair and honest, nuanced report about Israel and the Palestinians vs. a poetic tale with familiar villains and victims, the latter will win out at the Guardian every time.
Related articles
- How the Guardian downplays terrorist attack on innocent Israelis (cifwatch.com)
- Channel 4′s lying subtitles in Guardian-endorsed “Going for Gold in Gaza” documentary. (cifwatch.com)
- What Harriet Sherwood won’t report: Hamas bans Palestinian merit scholars from leaving Gaza (cifwatch.com)
- The wretched scandal of David Miliband’s liberal racism (cifwatch.com)
- Channel 4′s relentless pursuit of Israel continues in Palestinian Paralympics documentary (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian provides free PR to Interpal, a “charity” widely known as terrorist front group (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted by Richard Millett
New Statesman Editor, and CiF commentator, Mehdi Hasan
Last Friday Luke Bozier, a Labour blogger, said of Mehdi Hasan, the embattled Senior Editor (politics) at the New Statesman magazine:
“Wouldn’t it be good if he just buggered off to Tehran.”
It was in response to Hasan’s ['Comment is Free'] article the previous day If you lived in Iran, wouldn’t you want the nuclear bomb? which some commentators have interpreted as a call by Hasan for Iran to develop a nuclear bomb.
Yesterday Hasan posted a response to the criticism of his article and made the following curious remark about Bozier:
Can you imagine the media reaction if a British Jew wrote a column about Israel which prompted the response of “bugger off to Tel Aviv”?
I can’t see the parallel myself. Hasan isn’t Iranian and neither does Bozier’s remark seem to be an attack on Hasan’s Muslim identity.
It might be in dispute as to whether Hasan’s article amounts to a call for an Iranian nuclear bomb, but what is not in dispute is his coming to the defence of the vile Iranian regime, describing it as “surrounded on all sides by virulent enemies” and he doubts whether Iran is looking to create a nuclear bomb when he gives credence to the regime’s rhetoric that its “goal is only to develop a civilian nuclear programme, not atomic bombs”.
And so Bozier’s comment is not so different from those by people who tell apologists for Hamas to move to Gaza if they love Hamas so much. It’s the same with telling Hasan to go to Tehran. It isn’t a racist slur.
And in reality, and Hasan must know this, the equivalent far-left racial slur against British Jews is for us to bugger off to Russia. I, myself, was once told to go back to Poland at an anti-Israel event in London.
So what a nice change it would be for British Jews to be told to “bugger off to Tel Aviv”.
Implicit in such a suggestion would at least be a recognition of the Jewish connection to Israel, a connection which both the Palestinian leadership and the far-left refuse to make.
But it wasn’t like that before 1948 when the common refrain of racists in the UK was for Jews to go back to Palestine. After 1948 it became politically inconvenient for the racists to suggest Jews go back to Israel, so Poland and Russia are now the new hot spots designated for us by the far-left, irrespective of the fact that Jews got slaughtered there in their millions by the Nazis.
And how ironic that Hasan now chooses to employ British Jews in his defence when he has previously shown us such disregard with his casual attitude to anti-Semitism.
In an echo of Ben White’s article in 2002 Is It Possible to Understand the Rise in Anti-Semitism? in which White wrote “I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are” Hasan wrote in his article Does Israel “cause” anti-Semitism?:
“Nothing justifies anti-Semitism…But I do find it both tragic and ironic that the state of Israel…through its actions today…provokes such awful anti-Semitic attacks against diaspora Jews who have nothing to do with the actions of the IDF or the policies of Netanyahu, Olmert and Sharon.”
As The CST‘s Dave Rich wrote in the comment section of that post:
“The people who are primarily responsible for racist hate crimes are the racists who perpetrate them; the “cause” is their bigotry and hatred for a chosen ‘other’…You would not write an article lamenting that fact that Muslim immigration “caused” the recent arson attack on the Luton Islamic Centre…Don’t make excuses for racists, and don’t use racism as an excuse to score political points.”
And anyway, Hasan and President Ahmadinejad do have similar ideas which suggests that Hasan might actually feel at home in Tehran. For example, they both wish for Israel to be wiped off the map. In his article I’ve changed my mind about a two-state solution Hasan describes his own solution as being:
“a single, secular and binational state for Israelis and Palestinians. No longer ‘two states for two peoples’, but ‘one person, one vote’.”
And in mid-July 2009 he wrote of the Iranian regime’s Press TV that “not a single critic so far has claimed that his or her views were ever censored”.
However, two weeks earlier Press TV interviewed Hossein Mousavi in his prison cell in Iran asking him questions prepared by the Iranian regime with Mousavi reading his answers from a script also prepared by the regime. (OFCOM recently upheld the complaint of unfair treatment and unwarranted infringement of privacy in making the programme containing Mousavi’s interview.)
So, Mehdi, by all means hate Israel, excuse anti-Semitism and support the Iranian regime if you are that way inclined but please don’t try to use British Jews in your defence when it suits you politically.
And if anyone does tell me to “bugger off to Tel Aviv” I will be happy that, finally, they will have stopped trying to force me back to Poland.
Related articles
- CiF comment, justifying antisemitism as normal reaction to Zionism: 74 “recommends” & not deleted (cifwatch.com)
- Jews, Israel, & the Atavistic British Left: A response to Bob from Brockley (cifwatch.com)
- Deborah Orr’s Disgusting Excuse For an “Apology” (cifwatch.com)
- Fight or flight? CiF Watch, David Yehuda Stern & Ben White (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian Left comic moral equivalence watch: CiF’s Medhi Hasan shills for Iran (cifwatch.com)
- Arab-Israeli Conflict: A continuation of the Jews’ struggle, 70 years after Transnistria (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by Richard Millett
It seems that Channel 4 has not been telling the full truth in its recently shown Unreported World documentary Going for Gold in Gaza, about the efforts of the men’s Palestinian Paralympics team to qualify for London 2012, shown on Friday night and which I subsequently blogged about.
Of its 23 minute duration almost half of the documentary was devoted to a totally gratuitous demonisation of Israel. The problem for Aidan Hartley, the presenter, was that none of the Paralympians he was interviewing had been rendered disabled by Israel. Their disabilities stemmed from either accidents or intermarrying or were hereditary.
Instead, Hartley sought out Palestinians, mainly children, who had supposedly been maimed or killed by Israel, which had no connection to the the title of the programme.
He also uncovered the case of a Palestinian boy, Yousef, who had lost an arm to cancer but who’d had a new artificial one, allegedly, blocked by Israel from entering Gaza. Terrible if true, but mean Hartley doesn’t bother trying to locate either the truth about the limb or the limb itself for Yousef.
Tom Meltzer’s review of the programme for The Guardian was equally villainous. For example, he describes the athletes as a “ragtag band of Palestinian Paralympic hopefuls”, even though one of them has a huge haul of medals from games from all around the world.
But now it gets worse.
CiF Watch had some subtitles in the programme translated by an Arabic expert and it now transpires that Hartley and his production team may have intentionally mistranslated the subtitles to leave out words that would have shown Israel in a good light, but which would have undermined the programme’s anti-Israel narrative.
Here is the relevant scene from the documentary:
Hartley is interviewing one of the Palestinian Paralympians who describes how he came to be disabled. The subtitles read:
“I was working on a building site and fell from a great height. After my accident, I went to a rehabilitation centre. At the centre I played sport for the first time. I felt it was a good replacement for something I had lost.”
But the subtitles should have read:
“After I was wounded, I went to Israeli hospitals and then to rehabilitation centers. The first time I did sports was at the Abu Raya center. I felt it was a good replacement for something I had lost.”
Hartley left out the fact that the Paralympian had been treated in Israeli hospitals!
And as for the “rehabilitation centers”, as opposed to just “a rehabilitation center” of the subtitles, our translator is almost certain that, from a grammatical point of view, those “rehabilitation centres” were also Israeli ones!
Additionally, the Paralympian actually said he first did sports at the Abu Raya centre, which is in Ramallah.
Mentioning those visits to Israel and Ramallah would not only have made Israel look too kind but would also have undermined Hartley’s later claim that:
“The Gaza strip has the atmosphere of a large prison. People are hemmed in and its claustrophobic and travel outside of Gaza is very restricted for any reason.”
This claim had, in fact, already been undermined when we learnt from the above clip that the Paralympian not only went to Israel and Ramallah to try to mend his broken body, but has since been everywhere to compete including to Birmingham, in 1998, to Guangzhou, in 2010, and to many Arab Games.
The programme was introduced by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, one of the main anchors of Channel 4 News, at the end of the news programme, giving it even more credibility.
Heads should roll for this but its Israel so they won’t. However, if anything, Channel 4′s subtitling should no longer be trusted.
(Thanks to Barry Mann who initially spotted the mistranslation)
Related articles
This is cross posted by our good friend Richard Millett
Channel 4 continued its attacks on Israel in Friday night’s Going for Gold in Gaza documentary, which was meant to follow the efforts of the men’s Palestinian Paralympics team to qualify for London 2012. Their disabilities consisted of congenital blindness and physical disabilities caused by either work accidents or intermarriage.
But as I settled down to watch I found that presenter Aidan Hartley couldn’t resist repeatedly taking the documentary gratuitously off-track in order to demonise Israel.
Here are my thoughts, in bold italics, as I watched:
It opens on a Gaza street showing posters of dead Palestinian men holding guns and with Hartley saying:
“In Gaza it’s those who have died fighting Israel who are seen as heroes, not sportsmen.”
FREEZE FRAME: Oh, Aidan! These men were not soldiers “fighting Israel” but Hamas terrorists who had probably walked into Israeli restaurants to murder innocent people or they had helped plan such attacks and were subsequently killed by Israel.
The next 10 minutes were fascinating as we found out about the athletes, their families, how the athletes became disabled, how they trained, the medals they had previously won, their excitement about London 2012 and also their concerns. A blind athlete is upset as he may be required to have his eyes retested.
Then there’s a scene of another blind athlete and his son, Mohammad, who had his eyes tested and he now knows he won’t go blind like his father. Sinister music then follows and Hartley says:
“Gaza is effectively under siege. Israel controls the goods that go in and its hard for people to get out. Israeli gunboats control the coastline. Gunfire is an everyday sound. The Gaza strip has the atmosphere of a large prison. People are hemmed in and its claustrophobic and travel outside of Gaza is very restricted for any reason.”
FREEZE FRAME: Ok, starting to go off-track now but you have to mention Israel as it is part of the picture, obviously, but why is Hartley solely blaming Israel for Gaza’s deprivations when Egypt also borders Gaza? Hartley could also have explained why Israel takes these security measures (see “freeze frame” above).
Hartley then tells us that they found out there is a women’s Palestinian Paralympics team and he goes to see them training.
FREEZE FRAME: Ok, that’s the Israel bashing out of the way, hopefully, and to hear about Palestinian women athletes will be interesting.
But it didn’t last long. Fatma needs a special prosthetic leg without which she won’t be able to go to London 2012, so Hartley visits the Artifical Limbs Centre of Gaza where he interviews amputees on the waiting list.
Nine year old Yousef lost his left arm to cancer and has been waiting 10 months for a new prosthetic arm. The medical centre’s director tells Hartley that Israel has stopped sending materials directly and that a donation from Slovenia has been left in Tel Aviv since February. Hartley repeats:
“Let me get this right. Yousef, that nine year old boy, could have had a prosthetic limb months ago had the materials not been sitting in a warehouse in Israel for the last, nearly, eight months?”
We then get a flash of the security wall and Hartley says:
“Israel denies blocking medical supplies to Gaza. The sense that Gaza is under siege is never far away. And the conflict swells the number of injuries and amputations. Gazan civilians are killed or maimed by Israeli strikes, often in retaliation for rocket fire from Palestinian militants.”
FREEZE FRAME: Aidan, did you mean that Israel attacks Hamas and accidentally kills civilians or that Israel intentionally targets civilians as retaliation? It’s unclear but sounds like you meant the latter, which is untrue. And why didn’t you investigate the whereabouts of Yousef’s prosthetic limb and maybe even help obtain it for him? How mean of you.
Next Hartley visits a Palestinian home where he says “there are family members who are injured in recent violence”. A man tells Hartley how two weeks earlier his two nephews had been playing in the street. Israel, he said, responded to Hamas rockets with missiles from pilotless drones. Hartley finishes the story himself:
“Out of the blue a drone fired a rocket in amongst the children horribly wounding his two nephews. Saba wanted to show me where the attack occurred. In the weeks before we arrived dozens of civilians had been killed or maimed.”
Hartley is shown a narrow hole in the ground where the rocket, apparently, hit and the uncle shows Hartley pictures of his nephews lying horrifically injured in hospital. Hartley points to their amputations and says that one of them, Ibrahim, subsequently died.
FREEZE FRAME: Could these horrendous injuries possibly have been Hamas inflicted, a case of a Hamas rocket misfiring? It wouldn’t be the first time. Hartley doesn’t bother investigating.
Next Hartley meets another Palestinian man who “had lost his left leg when he was blown up by an Israeli missile”.
FREEZE FRAME: Again, Hartley doesn’t investigate how he tragically lost his leg.
Eventually, Hartley, again meets up with the paralympians that he had started the programme telling us about, one of whom had just lost his mother to cancer. She passed away in an Israeli hospital but, we are told, her son had not been allowed by the Israelis into Israel to be at her bedside when she died.
FREEZE FRAME: This has now become a programme demonising Israel, while occasionally concentrating on Palestinian paralympians.
Hartley signs off with:
“The Palestinians who make it to the London paralympics in 2012 will be amongst the most remarkable athletes at the games”.
FREEZE FRAME: These Paralympians are incredible and I have full respect for them and wish them every success next year but ALL paralympians are incredible. I don’t know how they do it. I couldn’t.
It’s a shame Hartley wasted so much of this short programme gratuitously attacking Israel. But after Channel 4′s War Child and The Promise nothing surprises me.
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.
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- 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)
Richard Millett’s recent post, “Sizer, the Rivercourt Methodist Church and Holocaust Denial” should be read in its entirety to see how depraved discourse by anti-Israel activists in the UK has become, but here are a few highlights from the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign event that Millett attended.
The event was held by the West London Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Due to speak were Reverend Stephen Sizer, Arthur Goodman (Jews for Justice for Palestinians), Linda Ramsden (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) and Daud Abdullah (of Middle East Monitor, and CiF contributor). Ghada Karmi (a one-state solution proponent and CiF contributor) couldn’t make it, so was replaced by a “member” of Anarchists Against the Wall.
Director of the pro-Hamas Middle East Monitor, and occasional CiF contributor,Daud Abdullah
Rev. Stephen Sizer, who has a habit of associating with Holocaust Deniers, notorious antisemites, and Islamists who support terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, said that church leaders refuse to speak out about Israel’s crimes because of “guilt for the Holocaust and fear of anti-Semitism”. Sizer further added that churches which side with “the occupation” and Zionism have “repudiated Jesus, have repudiated the bible and are an abomination”
Millett also writes:
At the end of the event Jonathan Hoffman persuaded me to stand outside the church with him to hand out pro-Israel leaflets to the congregants as they left the church. It was a futile gesture and all it did was encourage someone who called herself “Jane Green” to tell us that there weren’t any gas chambers in the Holocaust, that the Jews had instead died having had their foreskins chopped off, that only a couple of hundred thousand Jews died in the Holocaust, that the Jews are using the Holocaust to commit genocide against the Palestinians and that all the Jews in Israel are total Nazis, as you can hear here:
This is the hatred that the anti-Israel movement engenders: a coalition which includes Christian inspired antisemitism, Sizer, Islamists who support terror attacks against Israeli civilians, Abdullah, and a PSC groupie who denies the Holocaust and thinks Israeli Jews are Nazis.
That two of the scheduled speakers at this hate fest have been given a platform by the Guardian comes as no surprise.
To turn an axiom coined by liberal Jewish pundit Peter Beinart around, it is simply undeniable that the pro-Palestinian camp increasingly demands that adherents to their cause leave any semblance of liberalism at the door.
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- Pat Condell on the endemic antisemitism which informs the Palestinian cause (cifwatch.com)
- Lauren Booth on “Jewish supremacism”, why antisemitism is justified, & the wisdom of Gilad Atzmon (cifwatch.com)
- Is it possible to “understand” Ben White’s antisemitism? CiF again sanctions opposition to peace with Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian story downplays firebombed synagogue, blames “settlers” for vandalized Arab graves w/o evidence (cifwatch.com)
- Jew hatred as liberal commentary: Guardian provides platform to vicious antisemite, Gilad Atzmon (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian again airbrushes Raed Salah’s extremism, antisemitism, and terrorist affiliations (cifwatch.com)
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This is cross posted from Richard Millett’s Blog
One of the main campaigners for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was arrested outside Ahava last night. After being taken to Holborn police station it was decided that no further action would be taken against him.
Pro-Israel activists went to Ahava on hearing that anti-Israel protesters have been congregating outside the shop for the past week without informing the police.
The protesters have been handing out anti-Israel leaflets, discouraging shoppers from entering the store and pressuring the employees.
Normal procedure is for the protesters to inform the police of an upcoming protest.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaigner approached the cameraman (me) and tried to stop him taking footage of the protest.
There is no prohibition on public filming and, as you will see, the cameraman (me again) was the one who was approached.
Then the campaigner inexplicably threatened to knock the camera out of the cameraman’s hands (20 seconds into footage).
The police asked to see the footage after which they felt there were grounds for the arrest:
The campaigner has never been camera shy before. He frequently allows himself to be filmed handing out anti-Israel leaflets outside various establishments that sell Israeli products.
He recently chaired a Palestine Solidarity Campaign meeting with Ben White and in the summer gave this interview where it is blatantly obvious, when he talks of 63 years of occupation, that his main concern is not “the occupation” but Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state:
Anyway, a very Merry Christmas/Festivus to everyone, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the other anti-Israel lobbies which, while claiming to be concerned for the Palestinians, just want to tear down the only Jewish state in the world.
You can try but you will be wasting your time, just like all those that have gone before you.
This is cross posted from Richard Millett’s Blog (The post by Richard Millett was originally entitled, “Arabs and Israelis facing the Holocaust and the Nakba: A book and talk at SOAS.” ”The Abuse of Holocaust memory” refers to the title of a book by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld – and I think aptly characterizes some of the claims made by Gilbert Achcar in his talk)
On Tuesday two hundred students attended the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) to hear Gilbert Achcar, a Professor of International Relations at SOAS, talk about his new book The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives.
Achcar claimed:
1. The Arabs bear no responsibility at all for the Holocaust.
2. The Israelis have Nazified the Palestinian people.
3. This Nazification has come about by Israel’s broadcasting of the Mufti’s connections with Hitler during WW2.
4. The Israelis must apologise for the Nakba (the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948) for there to be peace.
5. The Israelis are today still frozen with fear by Holocaust.
6. Any anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the Arab world is purely a result of Israel’s aggression or Israel’s societal shift to the right.
He presented the Arab and Israeli narratives, as he saw them, on the conflict as follows:
Arab – Israel is a Zionist colonial enterprise where the “ethnic cleansing” of 1948 was a defining moment. The expansion of this colonial state continued after the 1967 war and continues to this day with the oppression of the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza.
Israeli – Zionism was a response to anti-Semitism and Israel was created as redemption for the Holocaust. The Arabs are like the Nazis. There was no ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and the 1948 War was purely a defensive one.
Achcar didn’t refute the Arab narrative but did refute the Israeli one.
He said that there had been a total lack of sympathy with Nazism throughout the Arab world and no military actions were undertaken by the Arabs with the Axis powers but Israel needs to acknowledge its role in the Nakba and its oppression of the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Arabs must acknowledge the role of the Holocaust on the Israeli psyche.
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (The Mufti) cleared by Gilbert Achcar of any responsibility at all for the Holocaust
This is cross posted from Richard Millet’s Blog
Ahava is all perfectly legal. Come to the Buycott on 20 and 21 Nov.
With the incessant physical attacks on the Ahava shop in London’s Covent Garden it is about time that legislation was enacted to deal with the continuous intimidation of staff and disruption to business.
Last saturday anti-Israel activists stormed the shop again. They wheeled in a concrete block and locked themselves on to it before throwing themselves to the floor making it impossible to remove them. The shop was closed for three hours and the police came. The activists were arrested for aggravated trespass.
In a recent court case anti-Israel activists were prosecuted for taking similar action towards the end of last year but were acquitted on all counts.
The case collapsed because Ahava failed to show up in court. Ahava claim they were given no notice of the case. Others say Ahava chose not to turn up and defend themselves for fear of heavy cross-examination over their product labeling.
Ahava labels its products “Made by Dead Sea Laboratories Ltd., Dead Sea, Israel.”
It seems to be uncontroversial but when you have an ideological hatred towards the Jewish state anything, and everything, will be picked up on.
The Ahava factory that makes the products is based on the Dead Sea kibbutz of Mitzpe Shalem. It provides jobs in engineering, chemistry, research, and marketing & sales. There are 120 employees.
The main gripe for these Israel-haters is that Ahava’s products “come from stolen Palestinian natural resources in the Occupied Territory of the Palestinian West Bank, and are produced in the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem. Don’t let the ‘Made in Israel’ sticker fool you—when you buy Ahava products you help finance the destruction of hope for a peaceful and just future for both Israelis and Palestinians”.
Well, we know that for them “peaceful and just” means the ending of the Jewish state.
But all this talk of illegality and mislabeling is a hoax. If you attend the Ahava protests you can view the many “Boycott Israel” signs and hear the constant calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. The protest is not about Ahava at all.
However, when the activists get to court they have very able solicitors who will expertly argue the law for ends to which Parliament did not intend.
They will argue that being on the West Bank Mitzpe Shalom is illegal and so as Ahava was not engaging in lawful activity when the activists invaded the shop the activists were not committing a trespass.
They are likely to be acquitted again and activists will continue to attack Ahava. Intimidated Ahava staff will continue to see their photos put up on extremist websites.
But both Mitzpe Shalom and the product labeling are legal. It is not the duty of a local magistrate to decide the legal status of Mizpe Shalom. And as Ahava is an Israeli company and the Dead Sea is also in Israel the product labels are not a misrepresentation.
These are simple arguments that Ahava can make with the help of able, albeit expensive, legal representation.
But Ahava should not even need to make this case as it is being targeted solely because it is Israeli.
Britain should follow the French line and introduce the offence of incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence against a group of people on account of their belonging to the Israeli nation.
A French anti-Israel activist was successfully prosecuted recently for damaging Israeli product packaging in a French supermarket. Other prosections are due to follow. This is being supported by Bureau National de Vigilance Contre l’Antisemitisme.
So come to the Ahava Buycott, arranged by the Zionist Federation on 20th and 21st November, where you will receive a 10% discount on all Ahava products and treatments and where you can stick two fingers up to the anti-Israel protesters. The address is Ahava, 39 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden (near Leicester Square tube).
More importantly start lobbying your MPs for new legislation to protect Israeli products and businesses from being targeted solely because they are Israeli.
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(Ben) White Wash at Amnesty
January 28, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Amnesty International, anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, BDS, Ben White, Comment is Free, Cross Post, Delegitimization, Hamas, Richard Millett | by Guest/Cross Post | 12 comments
This is cross posted by Richard Millett
Ben White showing off his well-trolled quotes at Amnesty last night.
Ben White was last night handed the opportunity by Amnesty’s UK branch to call for the destruction of Israel. Not necessarily in the way Hamas would wish to achieve it, but White wants Israel changed from a Jewish state into another Muslim Arab state. This is what White thinks is “justice”.
Lest we forget that it was White who once wrote: “I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are”.
For that and other statements of his there was a small protest outside Amnesty last night. Once sign read “Amnesty is great, except on Israel”, which is probably about right. Amnesty will stand up against other human rights’ abuses except when they are against Israel. They raised their voice in anger when Gaddafi was cruelly tortured before being executed, but when Israeli soldiers are kidnapped or Israeli children are bombarded by Hamas rockets from Gaza Amnesty falls silent.
Amnesty’s opposition to Israel’s existence is now, sadly, almost policy. Virtually no month passes without there being an anti-Israel event and never will there be a pro-Israel voice on the platform. One of Amnesty’s roles is to try to bury Israel.
White was promoting his new book Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy and it will be instructive to jump straight to the end of last night’s talk.
After calling for “A future based on a genuine co-existence of equals, rather than ethno-religious supremacy and segregation”, with its obvious anti-Semitic connotation of Jewish supremacy, White said (see clip):
“Instead of asking ‘can we return?’ or ‘when will we return?’ Palestinian refugees can ask ‘what kind of return do we want to create for ourselves?’ I think that’s a kind of beautiful phrasing actually that speaks to the liberation of the imagination that has to take place as we move towards securing a peace with justice”:
I can’t see Israelis ever voting for their state being changed into a Muslim Arab state, so what White is basically promoting is more war and bloodshed.
White’s talk, probably like his book, was a long list of out-of-context and out-of-date quotes.
He started with an apparent quote by Balfour in 1919 – “in Palestine we do not propose to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country” – and ended with one by Moshe Dayan’s father, MK Shmuel Dayan, from 1950 – “Maybe (not allowing the refugees back) is not right and not moral, but if we become just and moral, I do not know where we will end up”.
White must spend many nights trolling through the internet and old books looking for quotes that support his pursuit of Israel, but it is obviously a money-making exercise judging by the queue of people waiting for him to sign their copy of his 90-page book.
In between quotes he criticised Israel for what he calls the “Judaisation” of the Galilee and the Negev and for Israel not allowing “Palestinian citizens of Israel”, as he calls them, to live in Israel with their spouses who come from the West Bank and Gaza. The serious security implications for Israel if it allowed the latter are obvious, but Israel’s security isn’t high up on the list of White’s priorities.
During the Q&A he praised the protests during the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert at the Royal Albert Hall saying that the protests:
“Were targetting a body, the IPO, that receives funding from the Israeli state and also does concerts and stuff for Israeli soldiers.”
He raised the accusation of anti-Semitism aimed at him and said:
“The irony of the accusation of anti-Semitism against me in this context is that it is precisely opposition to all racism that informs my personal opposition to Israeli apartheid”.
And when someone asked him about Hamas and its policies White simply said that the evening wasn’t about Hamas but he hoped that the questioner would “support efforts to end the discriminatory practices against the Palestinians”.
It seems that Hamas is not much of an issue for White or Amnesty, whereas the Jewish state’s existence is.
More clips and photos from last night:
Ben White on “Jewish and Democratic?”
Ben White on “Judaisation” -
I bought this last night as no one else was buying.
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