You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Richard Millett’ tag.
Richard Millett was called a “typical Israeli” last night at an SOAS Palestine Society event in London.
(The event included a presentation by Abdel Bari Atwan – a ‘Comment is Free’ contributor who can be seen here explaining that if Iranian missiles hit Tel Aviv he would “dance in [London's] Trafalgar Square” and here praising a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.)
If you’re wondering whether the abuse hurled at Richard was racist, simply replace “Israeli” with any other identity and repeat the charge. ”You’re a typical Arab.” “You’re at typical Black,” etc.
Of course, Richard is not an Israeli. He’s a British Jew who routinely defends Israel and Jews at events hosted by the most hostile anti-Zionist, pro-Islamist (and often antisemitic) activists. His blog posts are frequently personal reports, using both photos and videos compiled while monitoring events hosted by the UK’s ubiquitous array of groups hostile to Israel’s existence.
His reports unambiguously demonstrate the illiberal nature of much of the pro-Palestinian movement. One post shows Baroness Jenny Tonge praising Hamas leaders at a Palestinian Return Centre event, another post details a confrontation with a Holocaust denier who attended a Palestinian Solidarity event and yet another recounts a PSC event at which Jews were compared to Nazis.
It’s quite telling that the incident began last night when participants objected to Richard filming their public event (where no restrictions on such recordings were in place and, as Richard noted, others were filming the event). What did they have to fear from a lone Jewish blogger who was merely attempting to disseminate information about what was said by a few pro-Palestinian activists?
One of the biggest scandals of the Guardian’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians is the dishonest manner in which they frame the debate: a binarism which imputes good will and progressivism to nearly anyone claiming to advocate on behalf of the Palestinians on one hand and racism (or at least illiberality) to those unapologetically advocating for the Jewish state.
Perhaps Richard Millett is feared so much because he consistently gives lie to this absurd moral paradigm.
Related articles
This is a cross-post from Richard Millett’s Blog
When I went to last night’s Palestine Society event at SOAS (public advertisement above) the audience was greeted with this slide when we entered the Khalili Lecture Theatre:
The slide that greeted us in the KLT at SOAS last night.
Before journalist Abdel Bari Atwan or Oxford University’s Dr. Karma Nebulsi spoke we were shown a film. Here is the eight seconds I was able to film before I felt some quite sharp prods in my shoulder while being ordered to stop filming:
Next I am told “You’re a typical Israeli, you know that”, which I took as a racist comment:
Next I am told to stop filming and recording by the chairperson before a rather large chap who had subsequently seated himself in front of me got up, turned around and tried to grab my camera, leaving me with a throbbing finger, before making off with my rucksack:
In the act of snatching the rucksack my phone, glasses case, pens and voice recorder ended up all over the floor and under the seats in front of me. I had to kneel to pick everything up, but I’m still missing a pen.
The audience started to taunt me and slow hand clap. Bari Atwan remained silent throughout while Nebulsi had the nerve to accuse me of being disruptive. Bizarrely, she offered to escort me outside to retrieve my rucksack but I refused to leave until my stuff was returned. At no stage did anyone in the 40 strong audience come to my defence in any way:
Eventually, SOAS security retrieved my rucksack and, suprisingly, my coat, which must have been removed by someone from behind me while I wasn’t looking. My coat had my keys in it:
After my coat and rucksack had been returned and after I had managed to retrieve most of my belongings from the floor and from under the seats I left.
To say I felt shaken and pretty distressed is the least of it.
I have turned off the comments just for this blog as I don’t wish to have prejudiced anything that may or may not happen but if anyone can help me with the names of any of those in the clips above then I would be very grateful.
Also, I’d be interested in knowing the translation of the Arabic on the slide above.
My email is richardblog@live.co.uk
Cross posted by our friend Richard Millett
A Global March to Jerusalem activist yesterday.
At the PSC’s “Global March to Jerusalem” outside the Israeli Embassy yesterday from 5pm to 7pm a three-year-old girl listened to two hours of hate-filled chanting and sermons before being called to the platform by her mother.
The microphone was thrust under her nose so she could do her own version of “Free Free Palestine”. Who needs preachers of hate when children are so indoctrinated with hate from birth in some British homes (see clip):
The little girl had heard repeated calls for Israel’s destruction and some things said about Jews in Arabic, which I didn’t understand.
She heard (‘Comment is Free’ contributor) Ghada Karmi, who teaches Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter University, declare “Israel is finished”, “it does not to deserve to continue as a state”, “Jerusalem does not belong to Jews”, “we respect all religions but we do not allow one group to take over this wonderful city” and “we muct act against Israel’s interests” (see clip):
It was Karmi, of course, who recently sat silently by as Ken O’Keefe compared Jews to Nazis. Karmi doesn’t seem to trust Jews to look after Jerusalem, but when the Jordanians controlled Jerusalem from 1949 to 1967 Jews were forbidden to visit it and its Jewish cemeteries were desecrated. Now people of all faiths can freely worship there, as long as your intentions are benign.
The “Global March to Jerusalem” turned out to be nothing more than a couple of hundred indoctrinated Israel haters taunting an empty Israeli Embassy building.
On its news feed Iran’s Press TV mocked the paltry turnout of pro-Israel activists and PSC head-honcho Sarah Colborne announced, to cheers, that those activists had left early.
Note to Press TV and Sarah Colborne: Friday night is Shabbat, the holiest and most precious time for Jews. They are with their families. That is why only 20 came and why those that came left early.
Here are Colborne et al aiming their chants towards an empty Israeli embassy building as Shabbat is about to come in. Even Colborne looks embarrassed:
As I walked back to the tube I chatted to some of the protesters.
I asked two teenage girls what they were doing to stand up for their oppressed sisters in Saudi Arabia who are not allowed to show their faces like these girls were doing. They answered that the Saudis treated women with more respect than women over here get. I asked a teenage boy whether he supported suicide bombings inside Israel. He said it was a response to having your land stolen.
With such sentiments you can start to understand where Toulouse Jew murderer Mohamed Merah came from.
More photos from yesterday:
The 2 middle maps are correct but the other 2 are laughable.
Roger Lloyd Pack - "intellect has rapidly diminished over the years until it reached its current level of hilarious stupidity"
Cross posted by Richard Millett
It’s a shame when one of Britain’s best-loved comedy actors joins with the forces of darkness to come to the defence of one of the world’s most reviled regimes, but such is the fate of Roger Lloyd Pack who played Trigger in BBC’s Only Fools and Horses.
Lloyd Pack is a seasoned anti-Israel activist and so it is no surprise to find his signature among the usual suspects in a letter to yesterday’s Guardian supporting Stop The War Coalition’s Don’t Attack Iran Campaign.
Ironically, the BBC website even gives the following description of Trigger:
“Although initially a (relatively speaking) sharp-minded villain Trigger’s intellect has rapidly diminished over the years until it reached its current level of hilarious stupidity.”
Who said art doesn’t sometimes mirror life?
The Guardian website even generously links the letter to the Don’t Attack Iran Campaign website. Why take out an expensive ad in a national newspaper, hire an expensive London venue or print millions of leaflets when all you need do nowadays is write a letter to The Guardian who will give you free advertising space if you’re anti-Israel.
The familiarity of these hardcore anti-Israel signatories is positive in as much as it shows how so alone they are in their support for such an oppressive ideology:
Tony Benn,
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Brian Eno
Lindsey German
George Galloway
Kate Hudson,
Jemima Khan
Ken Loach
Roger Lloyd Pack
Lowkey
Len McCluskey
John McDonnell MP
John Pilger
Michael Rosen
Jenny Tonge
You’d have thought that after her forced resignation from her party after wishing away Israel’s existence they might have left Jenny Tonge off for once but, then again, her recent statements that “Israel is not going to be there forever” and “then they will reap what they have sown” ties in nicely with Ahmadinejad’s genocidal desire to wipe Israel off the map.
Some say Ahmadinejad was mistranslated and that he merely wanted to eradicate Zionism. It’s the same weak defence that commentators like The Guardian’s Michael White and The New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan put up for Tonge.
Let’s forget that Israel and Zionism are not mutually exclusive and gloss over Ahmadinejad’s “mistranslation” and listen to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei who, as reported by Press TV, “described Israel as a cancerous tumor that must be removed”. It doesn’t get more unambiguous than that and straight from the fool’s and horse’s mouth.
And calling it an attack on Iran is like calling Operation Cast Lead an attack on Gaza or on the Palestinians when, in actual fact, it was a legitimate attack on the terrorist group Hamas in self-defence. Attacking Iran’s nuclear sites will also be a legitimate act of self-defence unless Iran opens itself up to a full nuclear inspection in accordance with its non-proliferation treaty obligations, something that it has so far proved suspiciously unwilling to do.
And calling itself Stop The War Coalition is as equally disingenuous. Let Them Die Coalition would be far more accurate judging by their calls for non-intervention in Libya and, now, Syria.
The Guardian letter compares the build up to a possible war with Iran to that with Iraq. But Stop The War Coalition’s approach is itself reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of another evil regime.
Galloway and German say they aren’t pacifists and Galloway has said that World War Two was a just war, but how can he, and we, be so sure he would have called it that at the time.
Stop The War Coalition is, basically, an organisation that supports non-intervention against regimes that are anti-American and/or anti-Israel. They were ecstatic when pro-American/pro-Israel Mubarak fell in Egypt but have criticised NATO’s ousting of anti-American/anti-Israel Gaddafi and will no way want Assad to fall with the negative impact that would have on Iran and, ultimately, Hezbollah and Hamas.
The hypocrisy of the signatories to The Guardian letter is fully exposed when Stop The War Coalition feels comfortable standing back watching Libyans and Syrians slaughtered in their droves while defending the vile Iranian regime and staying silent about the continued oppression of Iran’s women, gays, Jews (the 25,000 strong community is limited to one MP), Bahais, Kurds and anyone wanting to live a life in Iran as free as those signatories themselves can do in the west.
Related articles
- Chris McGreal Tweets away any possible claim to “liberalism” or journalistic integrity (cifwatch.com)
- How to become an anti-Zionist martyr on the pages of the Guardian: Jenny Tonge edition (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian’s former Iran correspondent legitimizes bizarre anti-Israel conspiracy theory (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian readers skew conversation about UK, U.S. & Iran in a decidedly Semitic direction (cifwatch.com)
- Mavi Marmara’s Ken O’Keefe compares Jews to Nazis at Middlesex Univ. Event: The Footage. (cifwatch.com)
- More Pro-Iranian “Hasbara” at ‘Comment is Free’ (cifwatch.com)
- Jenny Tonge & the Hamas Lobby (cifwatch.com)
- Seumas Milne or Ahmadinejad? Guardian warns attacking Iran would be ‘criminal aggression’ (cifwatch.com)
Cross posted by our friend Richard Millett
Tonge stays silent at Middlesex University after O'Keefe's horrendous attack on Jews.
Here is the footage from last Thursday’s anti-Israel event at Middlesex University in Hendon, which I blogged about here, when Ken O’Keefe compared Jews to Nazis. Proof, if it was ever needed, that these events are held more out of spite against Jews than out of any concern for the Palestinians.
The event was sponsored by Interpal whose website asks you to “donate” or “sponsor” in order to “join in our efforts to help Palestinians in need”. If only.
Equally disturbing is that Jenny Tonge, a British Parliamentarian, sat on the panel next to O’Keefe all night and stayed silent after O’Keefe’s attack on Jews and his accusation later on when he blamed Israel for 9/11.
There has also been a deafening silence from Middlesex University. No doubt they will explain it all away as “freedom of speech”.
(thanks to Harry’s Place for the edit)
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.
Related articles
- War Horse writer (& CiF contributor) Michael Morpurgo: Israel shoots Palestinian children ‘like a video game’ (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian welcomes back Ben White, tireless campaigner for the end of the Jewish State (cifwatch.com)
- Jenny Tonge rants about the Holocaust and idolises Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh. (cifwatch.com)
- ‘War on Want’ at Russell Tribunal on Palestine: “More direct action coming.” (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood, and the Guardian’s strange fixation on the survival of one Jerusalem bookshop (cifwatch.com)
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)
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Richard Millett’s latest Dispatch: Battle of Brent Street
May 24, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Cross Post, Guest Post, Neturei Karta, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, PSC, Richard Millett | by Guest/Cross Post | 20 comments
Cross posted by our friend, Richard Millett
Posing for daddy
Last night 50 Palestine Solidarity Campaign protesters marched through Brent Street in Hendon, an area of London where many British Jews and Israelis live, before congregating outside a hotel where Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman was due to speak.
The protesters spent the evening calling for Israel’s destruction, while being met with chants aimed back at them of “Fascist scum, off our streets” by the 100 or so pro-Israel supporters who had come out on a lovely summer’s evening to see what all the fuss was about.
Hendon rarely witnesses such excitement but had a fascist group wanted to march through an area of London while calling for the destruction of a country from where another minority group living in England originates there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have been allowed to.
Some PSC protesters couldn’t resist bringing their very young children along for an indoctrination session. One father tried to get his young son and daughter to pose in front of the “Jews are in exile” sign paraded by the Neturei Karta (see photo above). Such an evening’s entertainment is cheaper than taking them to the cinema, I guess.
Finally, the PSC protesters were given a police escort back to Hendon Central station as you can see in this clip where one protester, the kid in the black top, is articulating himself in the aggressive manner one has come to expect. If anyone can lip read please let me know what he is saying (richardblog@live.co.uk). I know it isn’t pretty.
Also, at about 2 minutes in another PSC protester gives a salute. Does anyone know its origins? Thanks.
Here are some more photos:
Who’s going to shoot first, me or him?
Not a pretty sight. At least tuck your shirt in!
Am Ysrael Chai
Yup, it’s all the Jews fault as usual, obviously.
Daddy lines up his children for that mantlepiece shot.
Oh dear, son looking pretty disinterested.
yeah man
More Am Y’srael
And more
I didn’t realise these were taking place in Israel in 2013, so thanks!
You mean free the Palestinians from their Hamas thugs.
What is it about Israel being a Jewish state that brings him here?
Saying evening prayers in front of those that despise you. Beautiful.
Related articles
Share this:
Like this: