Today the Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism in the UK was published. Panel chairman is Denis MacShane, and here's his comment:
Anti-semitism is back
Guardian
07/09/06
Our parliamentary report finds that many British citizens who happen to be born Jewish face unacceptable harassment, intimidation and assault.
Another report:
British Jews facing more anti-Semitic sentiment than ever
Haaretz
09/07/06
Ian Duncan-Smith and the loathsome Bunglawala debated it on the Today Program this morning:
0730 There has been a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism in Britain. Listen
Here's what the loathsome one is defending:
Muslims boycott Holocaust remembrance
The Sunday Times
January 23, 2005
On the same Today Program there was another very interesting debate between the even-more-loathsome Steven Rose (organiser of the academic boycott of Israel) and Shalom Lapin, a peacenik left-wing Israeli academic. An unusually good choice of debating partner for Rose, Lapin does a great job of exposing the moral and factual bankruptcy of Rose's position. Well worth a listen
Related:
Important Decisions: Jewish graveyards attacked in the UK
Important Decisions: Ditch Holocaust day, advisers urge Blair
6 comments:
Gove is author of the superb Celsius 7/7 which I read a year or two ago, and I once saw the charming Horst Mahler at an NDP (German National Party) rally, so I had to blog this.
Anti-Semitism is finding new allies on both Right and Left
From The Times
April 1, 2008
Michael Gove
Hatred of the Jewish people, which united the likes of Klaus Barbie and Tariq Aziz, hasn't been contained
If even Ed Stourton doesn't get it, there really is a problem. Stourton is not just an exceptionally civilised voice on Radio 4, he's also one of broadcasting's most thoughtful figures. As well as Today, he occasionally fronts Sunday, the religious magazine programme, has written a well-received book on Pope John Paul II and presented a fascinating documentary on the Arab/ Israeli conflict. Which is why it's so troubling that he, of all people, missed the point.
Stourton was interviewing Barbet Schroeder, who has produced biopics on Idi Amin and Claus von Bülow and has just made a film about the famous French lawyer Jacques Vergès. Like many lawyers who prefer to act for the defence, Vergès enjoys difficult cases. But he's a little bit more daring than Horace Rumpole in his client list: Vergès has, in his time, defended the Vichy collaborator Klaus Barbie (the Butcher of Lyons), Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (Carlos the Jackal), various Palestinian terrorists and members of the BaaderMeinhof gang. Oh, and we shouldn't forget Saddam Hussein's No 2, Tariq Aziz.
Stourton was curious about this galère of clients, and confessed to feeling perplexed about what could possibly link Klaus Barbie and Palestinian terrorists. What on earth would unite these disparate people, and what would draw Vergès to them?
What indeed? What is it that has marked the most sustained terror campaign in the Middle East? What was it that characterised Barbie's period in charge of security in wartime Lyons? What drove the arguments made by those survivors of the Baader-Meinhof gang who are still politically active today, such as Horst Mahler? And what tie binds Carlos the Jackal, the renegade terrorist of the 1970s, to Tariq Aziz, the Establishment face of prewar Iraq?
One thing unites them all: anti-Semitism. While Stourton might have found it hard to see what united Palestinian terrorists and Klaus Barbie, it was instantly apparent to me - both made the elimination of Jewish lives a central ideological mission. Just as Carlos the Jackal did in the 1970s, when he launched rocket attacks on El-Al airlines and targeted Jewish businessmen. And just as Tariq Aziz did in the 1990s, when Iraqi Scud missiles were directed against Israel, and Iraqi money subsidised suicide bombing.
Of course, despite the best efforts of the impeccably professional, utterly neutral and, I'm sure, entirely charming M Vergès, Klaus, Carlos and their ideological cousins have all been brought to justice. Yet the ideology that united them - a dark and furious hatred of the Jewish people - hasn't been contained.
In 2006, Israel came under attack from the Lebanese-based terror group Hezbollah. The leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, is on record as saying: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli.” That summer the streets of London were filled with our fellow citizens chanting: “We are all Hezbollah now.”
The spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood is a gentleman called Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is on record as telling Newsnight that suicide bombing which targeted Israeli women and children was justified, arguing: “I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an evidence of God's justice. Allah Almighty is just; through His infinite wisdom He has given the weak a weapon that the strong do not have, and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do.” The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, invited the Sheikh to City Hall in 2004 as an “honoured guest”.
Ron Paul is a Texan Congressman and one of the Republican Party's defeated candidates for his party's presidential nomination this year. Although he finished well behind the rest of the pack, he won plaudits from many and raised millions en route. The Guardian columnist Geoffrey Wheatcroft last week praised Paul for his opposition to the Iraq War and singled out as especially commendable his dislike of US policy towards Israel. Wheatcroft lauded Paul as an “excellent man” whose words on Israel were “sane and humane”. Yet, as the US magazine The New Republic has revealed, Paul has published some curious thoughts on the Middle East. In a 1987 issue of the Ron Paul Investment Letter Israel is described as “an aggressive, national socialist state”. A 1990 newsletter discussed the “tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise”. Of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, a newsletter said: “Whether it was a set-up by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists matters little.”
Whether it comes from the hard Left or the wildest shores of the Right, whether it masquerades as liberation rhetoric or brave truth-telling about hidden power brokers, anti-Semitism is finding new allies, making new connections, gathering new force. Something is clearly awry in our culture. The Iranian Government holds conferences to discuss the historical truth of the Holocaust, yet some newspapers try to minimise the danger from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and defend him from “misquotation”. Learned magazines devote thousands of words to the pernicious nature of Jewish influence on Western governments, and senior commentators then celebrate the delicious courage of this novel argument. Academics, without apparently being conscious of the irony, argue for a boycott of Israeli thinkers in the name of freedom. It is one of the grave distempers of our times, this prejudice towards the Jewish people, their nation and their collective identity. And one of the tasks of our times is its exposure, its combating and its defeat.
This must be what all that press coverage on "Judeaophobia" is about.
Anti-Semitic incidents 'rise 9%'
Thursday, 31 July 2008
BBC
There was a 9% rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the UK in the first half of 2008 compared with the same period last year, a charity has reported.
Not specifically a UK story, but still:
Anti-Semitism floods Internet
The Inquirer
22 December 2008
Madoff scandal to blame
If you want to see quite how badly Madoff has screwed up the Jewish community with his dealings, making associated anti-semitism all the more ironic:
Bernard Madoff, bad for the Jews
Richard Silverstein
Guardian
Tuesday 23 December 2008
The whole Madoff affair is incredibly tragic for those charities and I was surprised the writer wasn't angrier with Madoff himself.
He writes that..
"When you hear the term "Ponzi scheme" you think of words like con artist, financial predator, flim flam artist, trickster. While I don't know Madoff personally or understand the ins and outs of his financial operation, somehow I can't see him in these terms."
I would have thought the terms con artist and trickster describe Madoff fine. Madoff himself confessed the whole thing was 'based on one big lie'.
Well said.
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