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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.
Related articles
- Antisemites, terror supporters, & Holocaust deniers: aka, just another Palestinian Solidarity Campaign event (cifwatch.com)
- Gilad Atzmon vs Tony Greenstein, in “Battle of the self-hating Jews” (cifwatch.com)
- CiF contributor Ghada Karmi promotes Greater Palestine. (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins is tired of our “obsession” with Nazism and the Holocaust (cifwatch.com)
- Jew hatred as liberal commentary: Guardian provides platform to vicious antisemite, Gilad Atzmon (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian publishes letter by Tony Greenstein suggesting comparison between anti-Israel protests & those against Nazis (cifwatch.com)
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.
Related articles
- Poisoning the wells: David Hearst’s Jewish problem (cifwatch.com)
- 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)
- Guardian publishes letter stating “Israel forfeits right to be treated as member of the community of nations” (cifwatch.com)
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.
This is cross posted at Richard Millett’s Blog
Matthew Gould: Britain's new Ambassador to Israel
Middle East Monitor (MEMO) is one of those nasty anti-Israel think-tanks which aims to win the ear of the political establishment.
It describes itself as “an independent media research institution founded in the United Kingdom to foster a fair and accurate coverage in the Western media of Middle Eastern issues and in particular the Palestine Question.”
Fair and accurate? Pull the other one.
They won’t even let you into one of their meetings if they disagree with your views.
Now MEMO asks: Is Britain’s new ambassador to Israel really going to be objective?
The question under discussion is:
“Can a Jewish ambassador to Israel ever be truly objective when advising his home government on relations with the Jewish state? That is going to be the big question for Britain’s new ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, who has just taken up residence in Tel Aviv.“
This is not the first time the someone’s Jewish background has been held against them recently in the media. When respected historians Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman were appointed to the panel of the Chilcot Enquiry to investigate the Iraq War Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, wrote in The Independent:
“Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism. Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media, but The Jewish Chronicle and the Israeli media have no such inhibitions, and the Arabic media both in London and in the region are usually not far behind. All five members have outstanding reputations and records, but it is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available. Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.”
Should being Jewish really disqualify them from all aspects of political life involving Middle Eastern matters?
And yet I wish I had a pound for the amount of times that someone’s Jewish background has been utilised to make a political point when it is to Israel’s detriment.
This is cross-posted at Richard Millett’s Blog.
Ahava protest 9/11/2010
There are not many times that you can say that anti-Israel activists are outsung and outnumbered, but yesterday they were.
The usual mob of nothing-better-to-dos turned up outside Ahava in London’s Covent Garden to vent their hatred for the Jewish state.
Only one person brought along an Israeli flag. She said she came as she was worried that as it was Jewish New Year there would be no one around to stick up for Israel. Apart from her and a few others the pro-Israel pen was looking pretty sparse.
A lone protester
Then as the small pro-Israeli contingent were deciding where to break for lunch twelve Israeli tourists who had seen the protests outside Ahava came into the shop and then marched out again, filled the pen and sang Am Israel Chai, David Melech Yisrael, Hatikva and Hava Nagila (see first two clips below).
The anti-Israel mob became less interested in handing out their leaflets and more interesting in demonising the Israeli tourists, with some directing shouts of “racist scum” towards them (see beginning of third clip below).
The next lets-all-demonise-Israel (and anyone who supports it) event will be at midday outside Ahava on 25th September from midday.
Subdued activists before Israeli tourists arrived:
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
Oh, Mehdi Hasan, feel free to tell us to “bugger off to Tel Aviv”.
November 22, 2011 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Comment is Free, Delegitimization, Guardian, Iran, Mehdi Hasan, Richard Millett | by Guest/Cross Post | 16 comments
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:
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:
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?:
As The CST‘s Dave Rich wrote in the comment section of that post:
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:
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.
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