August 31, 2014

Zionists Demonstrate against the No Antisemitism

I just read a write up in Jewish News of the Zionist demo today at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand in central London.  I did a word search to see if I could see anyone using the expression "New Antisemitism" and the word "New" didn't appear anywhere.  But let's take a look at the piece:
An estimated 4,500 people rallied outside the Royal Courts of Justice this afternoon to demand zero tolerance to anti-Semitism, writes Justin Cohen.
Now let's have a look at the picture accompanying the piece:

Now does that look like 4,500 to you?  I don't know but I reckon there are no more than 100 in the picture plus, the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, so let's say 101 to be kind.

A friend of mine emailed to say that the BBC had said they numbered in the hundreds but that's still not the claimed 4,500.

Oh look, I found another pic:

I might have to up my estimate to 150.  Remember these people weren't marching, they were rallying in front of this building here:

And what's all this about the No Antisemitism?  See what Douglas Murray - yes that Douglas Murray - had to say:
“Don’t wait weeks and weeks and then for people to have to take the initiative with things like this,” he said. “Expect more, demand more from the people who say they speak in your name.”

Murray also urged community members to write to MPs and “help stop the lies”. If people don’t speak out when Israel is accused of genocide or of committing war crimes, he warned, “you help to feed the lies”.
 Accusing Israel of genocide or of committing war crimes is stating facts, how can that be antisemitism, old or new?  That's it, there was a demonstration today by Zionists against the No Antisemitism and let's face it, if they do ever find such a thing, on past performance they'll ignore it or collude with it.  They won't try leading a merry dance outside courts on a day when they're closed.

August 30, 2014

Oxymoron Corner: Zionists rally against Racism

Remember those notes I posted up about a Zionist Town Hall type meeting where people kept badgering the Board of Deputies of British Jews over what they're doing for plucky little Israel at a time like this.

The BoD were promising to organise a rally for Israel some time next month.  I think I have stumbled on the details of the rally.  I could be wrong because it's not actually next month, it's tomorrow, but I think this is the flyer:

"They openly say "Hitler was right""? Wow!  Who says that?  Oh well, never mind. The Zionists have realised that there is no positive case for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel so it's back to routine negative hasbara by smear.  You don't get many demos at the Royal Courts of Justice but you do get lots of roadworks and traffic bottlenecks so I am guessing since they know they'll get a paltry turnout they're hiding their shame.  I mean they wouldn't be well seen if they met at, say, Trafalgar Square, but at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand the fact that they can't be seen for lack of numbers won't be seen.

UPDATE: I've just seen the Board of Deputies' website on this rally:
This Sunday the Board's Senior Vice President Laura Marks (pictured) will be joining the likes of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, parliamentary candidate  and co-founder and chairman of Quilliam, Maajid Nawaz, and the social commentator Douglas Murray in addressing a communal rally organised by the Campaign Against Anti Semitism. 

The Board is  firmly   behind this vital initiative at a time when reported cases of anti-Jewish incidents are at record highs across the UK and the need for the law to be firmly applied relating to hate crimes is absolutely vital. The rally will also include messages of support from the denominational movements.
Only a couple of days ago the Board was outraging Zionists by issuing a touchy feely statement with the Muslim Council of Britain which ended with the words, "May the God of Abraham grant our World more peace, wisdom and hope."  Well, if the G-d of Abraham can't grant our world more peace, wisdom and hope, he can always call on Douglas Murray to help him.

August 28, 2014

Denis MacShane was too soft on Muslims like Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and Cyril Smith

At least I think that's what he told The Daily Telegraph:
Denis MacShane, the former Labour MP for Rotherham, has admitted that as a “Guardian reading liberal leftie” he shied away from the issue of the oppression of women in the Muslim community.

Mr MacShane, who resigned in 2012 over an expenses fraud for which he was later jailed, insisted no-one came to him with child abuse allegations during his 18 years in Parliament, but admitted he should have “burrowed into” the issue.

He told the BBC: "I think there was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat if I may put it like that.”


He recalled having a “huge row” with another local MP and council grandees because they were complaining about a newspaper investigation into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, which unearthed uncomfortable truths they did not want to hear.

He said: “Nobody pursued Jimmy Saville, nobody pursued Rolf Harris, nobody pursued Cyril Smith, nobody pursued Mrs Thatcher’s sidekick we now learn was a depraved predatory monster. 
Now really we should be enforcing the law without fear or favour irrespective of ethnic, national or religious background and irrespective of celebrity status but since MacShane was never known for having a "Guardian liberal leftie" attitude to Muslims anyway, I really don't know how he can hide behind "multiculturism" to explain away his inaction over rampant child abuse in his former consituency of Rotherham.

August 27, 2014

When Dodgy Dave met Uncle Joe

I had a bit of a twitter exchange with David Aaronovitch the other day.  I went into it with some trepidation because I thought some troll might pop up to derail the thread, simply insult Dave's interlocutor or even come out as a zionist sympathiser having been anti-zionist in the past.  I even thought that Dave himself might be on good form but it was not to be.

It all started when I noticed an unremarkable tweet from @ejhchess to @Flying_Rodent:
From David Aaronovitch's "logical" tweet I saw Dave angrily challenging someone called i was id (@iwasid to "Find me a single thing either of us has said or written that supports right-wing racism anywhere. One."

Well as coincidence would have it I noticed something Dave had written only the day before for the Jewish Chronicle that I thought was racist so, with some trepidation (see above) I mentioned it in a tweet:

To which Dave replied:
To which I responded:
And another guy joined in:
 And Dave responded, warming to his subjectivity theme:

 At this point it started to look like he wasn't simply being slippery, he really didn't know what was racist about generalising about whole minority groups so I explained:
Now he did start to get slippery:
 Yes I did know it was about France but how does that change anything?

I also mentioned that his last tweet was a non sequitur but now tetchiness was setting in as a nerve seems to have been struck:

Wow! What was that all about?  How does using "surely" amount to Stalinism?  Reading back I wish I hadn't used the word surely because it should have been clear by then that he really didn't know that his generalisation was racist.  Also I if I didn't say "surely" I could have put the apostrophe in "countrys" making it "country's".  Still never mind, it was worth the bad grammer to see Aaro lose it like a complete idiot.

It must have been while I was tweeting something else that Aaro tweeted to a @rico_hands and me that "You retweeted this earlier: "The Zionist Jews own all the Media the Film Industry and are all Corrupt."  It didn't look like a comment I'd approve of and I said so and Aaro said it wasn't me, it was that Rico chap.  I know some people put all their addressees at the beginning of a tweet but if you're making an accusation you should only put the target of the accusation at the beginning and other addressees at the end.  Just a word on protocol because people can get the wrong idea. Anyway, I asked Aaro for a link and he told me it wasn't me that retweeted it.  So that was nice.

But I still responded to the stalinist thing:

 So now he tried to modify what he actually said:

 Now actually I don't think that's much better but is better in that it's not a generalisation.  But it is a rather bland assertion and it's devoid of any analysis as to what he means by antisemitism or any explanation as to why he thinks it's the case but anyway back I came still focused on the undeniably (though he did deny it) racist  generalisation:

 Noticing that Aaro's reference to antisemitism meant that he was alluding to Jews when he said "old ones", I asked then what he meant by "new minorities" but heard no more from him.

Now all the while this was going on I was surprised that no one came along to help Aaro dig himself out of the hole he had dug.  None came until that Gerasite/Unrepentant Jacobin chap, Jamie Palmer appeared with this little gem:

I just couldn't be bothered with him and I was truly feeling too sorry for Aaro to point that Jacobin's use of the word "also" meant that he was agreeing with me, that what Aaro had written was indeed a racist generalisation (also).  Aaro smartly ignored the "supportive" tweet too and he was promoting the young Gerasite only recently

But what of the statement itself?  "Ethnic hatred has become a basic element in the everyday life of Israeli youth".  Of itself, it isn't making a generalisation.  As it stands it could simply be a reference to the racist environment that Israeli youth inhabits.  I found its origin just now.  It's a Ha'aretz headline.

Of course, Ha'aretz is an Israeli newspaper.  Israelis are not a minority in Israel so the headline wasn't even about a minority.  So a great help Aaro's protégé turned out to be.  He confirmed my own point about Aaro's racist generalisation and lifted a Ha'aretz headline out of context.  I'm sure he'll go far but he and Aaro have to bear in mind that context is all.

Plot Thickens in Tricycle Saga

I only got the chance to give Friday's Jewish Chronicle a good look at today.  In spite of the Tricycle Theatre's boycott (that wasn't a boycott) all being undone some time ago with the Tricycle agreeing to do what it always said it would do anyway Zionists want to make a big issue out of this thing given that BDS victories far outnumber failures to date.  So just as I thought the Tricycle''s non-hosting of the UK Jewish Film Festival was, of itself, no big deal so I thought the "retraction" of the policy was also no big deal.

But Zionists invested a lot into this.  Remember it's the UK, that is UK Jewish Film Festival and yet it receives funding from Israel.  It's not a whole lot of money in the scheme of things, £1,400, but it's enough to taint the whole festival with being more about demonstrating a link between the State of Israel and UK Jews than being simply a Jewish film festival.  The festival's director even said that "Jewish of course intrinsically connected to the state of Israel".  And of course there is the not insignificant matter of Israel being currently embarked on one of its periodic culls of Palestinians as part of a genocidal campaign that makes Israel's existence illegitimate anyway.

So, where we are right now with Tricycle is that basically it has issued a statement that restates its all along position as one which appears to express regret about ever raising the issue of Israeli state funding in the first place.

But apparently there are Zionists who still want heads to roll.  I did mention in an earlier post that there's a facebook page for the diehards but see what the JC reported on Friday under the headline,  'Sack Tricycle directors' call despite deal
The Tricycle Theatre should consider sacking directors who planned the boycott of the Jewish Film Festival, a senior figure close to the affair has argued.
And then look:
The Tricycle had demanded that the UKJFF drop its £1,400 sponsorship from the Israeli embassy before allowing it to use the north London theatre as its main venue. But, following talks between the parties, the theatre dropped the demand and said it would welcome the festival back.
And look again:
The deal came after Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub and Culture Secretary Sajid Javid intervened.
Now Sir Trevor Chinn was reported to have withdrawn his "four figure sum" donation to the Tricycle but The Arts Council stumps up about £760 k.  So I don't think private donors withdrawing their funds could explain the Tricycle's turnaround.

Barrister Adam Wagner reckoned that the Tricycle may have fallen foul of discrimination law. His logic is bewilderingly tortuous in that he tries to make support for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel an aspect of belief (thankfully, not specifically Jewish belief) and therefore, a "protected characteristic".  His subsequent post on the Tricycle's backtracking on its original decision verged on the incoherent but in a tweet he applauded, would you believe, Nick Cohen and Hadley Freeman saying that their false allegations of antisemitism had had an impact:

Now anyone and everyone who criticises the State of Israel over anything at all knows that they are in for some false allegations of antisemitism.  It cannot possibly have been the writing of Nick Cohen and Hadley Freeman, nor of any other of the whatabouters on this case.

But Adam Wagner does allude to an interesting fact in his second post:
The Tricycle’s decision was obviously flawed. Its board were under a lot of pressure from funders and the Jewish community to backtrack. However, that board includes very senior arts and legal figures such as Philippe Sands QC who would have only reversed the decision if they had decided it was wrong in principle. Which it was.
So the original Tricycle decision was made with a QC on the board.  Surely this means we can discount any legal consideration in the Tricycle's turnaround.

So if it wasn't the false allegations of antisemitism and it wasn't any legal consideration what was it?

The whole turnaround happened so fast it seems to me that only a threat to withdraw Arts Council support would have caused it.  And to explain that we again have to look at the JC article that prompted this post.  Yes, we may have to think the unthinkable here and that is that the JC got something right.  The Tricycle Theatre buckled to threats made by either the Israeli ambassador, Daniel Taub, the UK Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid or both.  And, given the courage involved in their original stance, what threat would mean anything to them?

My guess is that the Arts Council threatened to close the theatre down by withdrawing its £760+k contribution.  Now should an Israeli ambassador or even a UK culture minister be in a position to influence that for the sake of their own politcs?  I think not but I think that's precisely what happened.

August 25, 2014

In Memoriam: Dr Hajo Meyer

Honoring Dr. Hajo Meyer


The morning of his death, the following letter from survivors of the Nazi genocide and the descendants of survivors and victims, in response Elie Wiesel's attempt to justify the attacks on Gaza, was published as in the NY Times. Hajo was the first to sign on.

Since being published, this ad has generated media attentionmessages of solidarity, as well as Zionist backlash. Ha’aretz republished the letter and the reposting has generated over 30,000 “likes” on the Ha’aretz Facebook page. 
Please stand with the signers of this letter and against Zionist manipulation of the Nazi genocide, please sign this letter of support.


NYTs Ad Letter Photo


International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
© International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

August 20, 2014

Tricycle Diaries: a Win Win for BDS?
















August 16, 2014

Jewish Chronicle apologises to readers for appearing humanitarian

This is as weird as it's disgraceful.  Apparently The Jewish Chronicle has had complainst about an ad in its print edition yesterday (August 15, 2014) for the Disasters Emergency Committee for Gaza.  Stephen Pollard, the JC's editor, addressed those complaints so:





Both I as editor and the JC are entirely supportive of Operation Protective Edge, as our coverage has demonstrated. Almost alone in the British media the JC has stressed Israel’s right to defend herself and sought to explain why Israel was faced with no choice but to take action in Gaza.




So don't worry readers of the Jewish Chronicle, your weekly community newspaper doesn't do humanitarian when the most moral army in the world has created the humanitarian need.

So what's weird?  The apology by Stephen Pollard is dated August 14, 2014.  Now, whilst the JC is dated for the Friday it appears in most shops and arrives at most subscribers' homes it might appear in some shops and arrive in some homes on the Thursday.  It's delivered to my house on Fridays and I never see it on a Thursday.

So who was doing the complaining?  It could only be people from among the small minority of readers who get their copy on a Thursday, if such people exist.

Let's assume they do exist.  How many could have complained?

Ok, let's assume they don't exist and that no one gets their JC before Friday.  How did the complainers know about the ad if they hadn't seen the paper?

Now go see Stephen Pollard's explanation of how the ad, that appears to have appeared the day after he apologised to readers for its appearance, er, appeared at all.
Now people might think the ad was approved for humanitarian reasons but Pollard is simply contrasting humanitarian with political or partisan, he is not saying that the ad was run by the JC for any humanitarian reason.  Higher up the piece he has already said, "We keep editorial coverage entirely separate from our commercial operations."  In other words, this was a commercial decision.

But now look at the Beeb.  Now I'm surprised that the Beeb has run this story at all since it puts the Zionist movement in such an unfavourable light.

First they let the JC lie for itself:
Then typically it gave Israel's version of events about the attack on Gaza:
 But then comes a gem:
A Facebook page?  The plot thickens....

And what do we see on the Facebook page?  Well, there are 182 likes.  Did Pollard really make the Jewish community look so uncaring for the sake of 182 Facebook likes?

Back to the Beeb:
I would guess that this brings us closer to why Stephen Pollard has flaunted the sheer cruelty of Zionism.  It cannot possibly have been 182 or whatever many ordinary Joes complaining via Facebook.  Last I heard the JC had a circulation of about 30,000 and I remember reading that advertisers like the JC because it passes through the hands of every literate member of every household to which it is delivered.  182 is a pretty small proportion of its total readership.  But the State of Israel, now that's a different story.  The JC exists to promote the interests of the entity.  I reckon it was a telling off the JC received from the Israeli embassy that had Stephen Pollard suggesting his readers are a bunch of Nazis.  The only other explanation might, just might, be he doesn't like the Chair of the JC and dangerous "humanitarian" was the only putdown he could think of.

August 15, 2014

Tricycle Successfully Bullied by Zionists, but not how you might think

Don't panic!  The Israeli Embassy funded UK Jewish Film Festival will still not be hosted at Tricycle Theatre this year because it refused to ditch the funding it always gets from the Israeli embassy.  The Tricycle did make it clear that this was a once off decision based on the situation between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza.  That is the current cull, not the occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza and certainly not Jewish supremacy throughout the whole of Palestine (aka Israel and the occupied territories).

Unfortunately Tricycle has removed its original statement and replaced it with a more Zionist friendly one and that is where the bullies have succeeded. Tricycle is now misleading readers as to the history of what was a boycott of Tricycle by the UK Jewish Film Festival because of the latter's insistence that racist war criminality is part and parcel of Jewish culture.

So where to look for the truth on this?  The case is tricky because even when the truth lurked within the articles, the headlines tended to be misleading, then as now.

Oi gevalt! I forgot about Google cache.  I've rescued the original text:


The Tricycle Theatre and the UK Jewish Film Festival

Tuesday, August 5th, 2014 by Tricycle
We have been contacted by several patrons who have been given misleading information about the Tricycle and the UK Jewish Film Festival. We would like to set down an accurate account.




A comment from Nicholas Hytner:  ’I greatly regret the UKJFF’s decision to leave the Tricycle cinema. Indhu Rubasingham and the Tricycle board could not have made clearer their commitment to Jewish culture or their desire to host a festival that would have included films from all over the world, including Israel. It is entirely understandable that they felt obliged to insist that no government agency should sponsor the festival. The Tricycle serves a diverse community with a notably diverse repertoire and it has a clear responsibility to make no statement about the dispute that is behind the current conflict. It greatly saddens me that the UKJFF have unwisely politicised a celebration of Jewish culture and I deplore any misrepresentation of the Tricycle’s position. I support Indhu Rubasingham and the Tricycle without reservation.’ 

A comment from Dominic Cooke: ‘The Tricycle is a venue with a history of celebrating plural cultures and viewpoints. A central strand of this work is the platform it has given to Jewish artists, a recent example of which was Indhu Rubasingham’s delightful production of Paper Dolls, which was set in Israel. The UK Jewish Film Festival is similarly plural in spirit, giving voice to a diverse range of Jewish talents and viewpoints. As two organisations celebrating diversity, they seem to me to be a perfect match, which is why the UKJFF’s decision to withdraw from the Tricycle is so very sad.

By taking funding from the Israeli government, the UKJFF are coercing the artists, supporters and the venue involved in the festival into a public association with the actions of a government they may not agree with. This runs counter to the values of pluralism which are central to the Tricycle’s identity. That is why I fully support the Tricycle in their effort to encourage the UKJFF to accept their offer of alternative funding and hugely regret the Festival’s decision to force the theatre’s hand by withdrawing.’

A comment from Philip Himberg, Artistic Director, Sundance Theatre Program: ‘I am the Artistic Director of a major American theatre company, and the author of Paper Dolls, a play set in Israel, which looks at the warm and loving relationship between an Israeli citizen and his caretaker. The play’s world premiere was exquisitely produced by the Tricycle Theatre in its world premiere in 2013, and sensitively directed by Indhu Rubasingham. I believe, without a doubt, that as regards the current crisis in the Middle East, the Tricycle must remain neutral by refusing sponsorship from any government directly involved in the conflict. As a great lover of Jewish theatrical culture, (I will soon be supporting the development of a new Yiddish language opera), there was a clear way for the UKJFF’s celebration of diverse Jewish culture to go forward at the Tricycle – but at this particular moment in time, utilizing funds from any of the governments in power in the region would be taking an unfair political stand.’

A comment from David Lan: ‘What matters is not what is happening in Kilburn but what has been happening in Gaza and in Israel. Violence will only produce more violence – theatre has been saying this for 3000 years. The Tricycle have acted morally and with sensitivity. I support Indhu and the Board and hope that all theatre people throughout the world will do the same.’

A comment from Christopher Haydon: ‘It is wrong to describe the Tricycle’s decision as anti-Semitic – their commitment to Jewish people and culture is clear. Any arts organisation has the right to make decisions about who they will or will not accept money from – whether directly or indirectly. Personally, I feel very ambivalent about the whole notion of cultural boycotts – particularly around such a painfully complex issue as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But regardless, the Tricycle in no way tried to boycott the festival. A difference of principle around funding arose between them and the UKJFF. The Tricycle offered an entirely sensible alternative in good faith and have demonstrated a clear commitment to trying to make it happen. They have behaved reasonably and fairly and attempts by some to misrepresent their actions only serves to poison a vital debate. Indhu and her team have my full support.’

A comment from Sean Holmes: ‘Having directed many productions at the Tricycle I am writing to strongly support the Board’s decision regarding the UKJFF. It is important that the Tricycle remains politically neutral. It is a bastion of openness and tolerance and I regret the UKJFF’s decision to politicise the legitimate concerns of the Tricycle and refuse their offer of an eminently sensible compromise.’

A comment from Richard Eyre: ‘I wholeheartedly support the position of Indhu Rubasingham and the Tricycle Theatre and deplore any attempt to misrepresent that position.’

A comment from Dominic Hill: ‘The Tricycle is without doubt one of the most inclusive, multi-cultural, diverse and open-minded arts organisations in the UK. It must be, and be seen to be, politically neutral. I wholeheartedly support Indhu’s position.’

A comment from Dawn Walton: ‘The Tricycle is a space that has always delivered and supported work from a truly diverse community of artists. I support Indhu and the Board of the Tricycle Theatre for a position which seeks to maintain The Tricycle as a place of political neutrality. I support their sensitive approach in a challenging situation.’

That was, according to google, the Tricycle site as at August 11, 2014 but it could change, and how?  Look at the Tricycle site now:
A joint statement from the UKJFF and Tricycle Theatre:

That was from the same link for which I got the cache version.  

Many of us were aware from the start that this was not a BDS action.  What the Zionist bullying has achieved is not the reversal of a decision but an announcement of business as usual reworded to humiliate the organisers of Tricycle Theatre.  All very sad but not a disaster.

And I'm sure in the long term BDS will win this thing.

Did Lenin say "useful idiots" and if so who did he mean?

I've just seen this expression "useful idiots" and I know it is most often attributed to Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik revolution establishing the Soviet Union.

People who use the expression these days usually refer to leftist anti-war types or anti-zionists etc.  It suggests that Lenin referred to communists as useful idiots but I reckon if he said it at all and he was referring to people who helped or supported the revolution he can't have meant communists or leftists or he would have been calling himself an idiot.

I think I remember hearing the expression attributed to Lenin back when I was at university. I graduated 1982.  I can't be bothered to research this much  but I saw on Wikipedia that there is no evidence that Lenin said or wrote "useful idiots" anywhere.

Well I think I remember reading that Lenin did indeed say it.  According to what I think I read, there was a famine in the fledgling Soviet Union.  Western charities arranged for food aid.  Philanthropy, according to Lenin, was all about palliative relief for the poor to undermine the long term relief brought by the revolution.  So philanthropists who did their thing to undermine the revolution were alleviating famine in the Soviet Union thereby making themselves useful to the revolution.

Hence, useful idiots.  No? Yes?  Any takers?

Israel: The Community's Response to the atrocities in Gaza

13.08.14 HELD IN JFS (Jewish Free School)








SPEAKER FROM UJIA (the United Jewish-Israel Appeal)












2) Hamas has links with ISIS.

3) The Gaza casualty figures are all lies.



6) Why isn't the Zionist Federation up on the platform?





11) Comments about the Hamas Charter







August 14, 2014

When a man's tired of Geras he's tired of life

We're in one of the periods when many people are thinking thoughts like, just when I thought Zionists couldn't stoop any lower they pull something out of the bag.  That must have crossed a few minds when The Guardian decided to run an ad too racist even for The Times.

Similarly, the generalist Decents (Zionists all but with a few other violent racist staples thrown in) are in apoplectic why oh why mode what with Boko Haram and ISIS threatening democracy and much else besides and the Egyptian coup to defend.  I didn't say being a Decent was easy.

The Decents have mainstreamers like David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen and many others who I hardly ever read because, well, I always think I know what they're going to say without reading them and then looking at various tweets like this Flying Rodent chap's my prejudice is usually confirmed.  To list the Decents out doesn't really do justice to their ideology/political persuasion.  It dominates the discourse in the mainstream media on such things as Israel and foreign interventions/wars but it tends to be more shouty than the run of the mill mainstream media and the card carrying Decent tends to denounce the rest of the mainstream for not being hard enough on leftists who never get a lookin in the mainstream anyway.  The late Decentpedia or Encyclopedia of Decency is very good on er, Decency.

So what's new?  Nothing should be new in Decency, they've said it all before and when matters arise you just know what they're going to say but there is a new blog of Decency with the most ludicrous name ever imagined.  It's called The Gerasites.  Really it's a blog purporting to be followers of the late Norman Geras.  Norman Geras was one of those intellectual marxists who later on in life decided that intellectual and marxist weren't such nice things after all so he ditched both.  In common with a lot of the Decents I don't think he owned up to ditching marxism.  They usually claim that it ditched them.  Something like that.

When I saw the name, The Gerasites, I assumed it couldn't be anything to do with acolytes of Norman Geras because I thought even the worst of them wouldn't be so ridiculous.  It crossed my mind that it could be anti-Gerasites having a laugh at the expense of the er, Gerasites.  It also occurred to me that it looked like the kind of putdown that Enver Hoxha would throw at his enemies, like The Titoites.

Jeez, I'm falling over myself here.  I see that an Artful Hoxha has picked up on this new blog in a Flying Rodent twitter conversation:

Even a guy with the name the Artful Hoxha (UPDATE 01:48 Aug 27, 2014): He's now changed his name but it was Artful Hoxha) can't quite believe there's a supposed group blog called Gerasites!

Of course I could be missing some self-parody here like, yes these people are followers of Norman Geras but since his imperialist turn is pretty common among former leftists in the mainstream media there's no need to sanctify His, I mean, his name.  But it's not self-parody, these people are serious.

I say "these people" though the "about" bit is rather vague as to who they are in fact it doesn't say anything.

The home page is simply the latest article followed by previous ones.  The main person behind it seems to be some Jamie Palmer chap and I noticed Harry's Place's Sarah Annes Brown in the comments hedging her bets about whether to become a full blown Gerasite.

But the bit that makes me think that even Gerasites are tired of Gerasism is the sub-heading.  Take a look:

The Gerasites

Liberal hawks, Eustonites, Anti-Anti-West Left, etc

Really, that's all it says.  Liberal hawks, Eustonites, Anti-Anti-West Left, etc? Etcetera? What's that about?  They put etcetera in place of pro-Israel?   They  couldn't be bothered to say "anti-totalitarian"?  What's going on?  Are the Gerasites tired of Gerasism?  Sure, why wouldn't they be?

August 13, 2014

Guardian fills (un)subscriber with disgust

Here's a letter to the Guardian from my friend Deborah Maccoby to her former friends at The Guardian:
Dear Sir,

As a signatory of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, I am so outraged by your decision to publish the infamous Eli Wiesel/Shmuely Boteach ad that I have decided to make a protest by cancelling my subscription to the Guardian.  I do this with great regret, as I have been a long-standing Guardian reader and subscriber.  I switched many years ago from reading the Times to reading what seemed to me to be the much more interesting and informative pages of the Guardian. But even the Times refused to publish this ad.  

Freedom of speech does have some limits in a newspaper with civilised standards. The ad includes the sentence:  "It is a battle of civilisation versus barbarism".  This ad is barbaric.   After 1,400 Palestinian civilians, including over 400 children, have been massacred in an utterly unnecessary and avoidable onslaught, in what is a war crime and a crime against humanity, it is an outrage to publish an ad that effectively exculpates from responsibility the Israel soldiers who did the killing.  Even the Murdoch press could not stomach this ad, so why did the Guardian publish it?

Deborah Maccoby
Sadly there's a crop of letters in today's Guardian all (most anyway) making the same bogus argument that they wouldn't know what the zionists were saying if the advert hadn't been published.  That's absurd, the reason there were so many complaints before the ad was run was because the ad had been shown elsewhere so its content was known and The Guardian had already reported on it.  Of course, if they want to know broadly what Zionists are saying all they have to do is read Jonathan Freedland.

August 11, 2014

A Guide to the Perplexed Owen Jones

Another day another article purporting to be about antisemitism in The Guardian.  I haven't actually read it yet and I only know about it because I suddenly found myself tagged in a twitter conversation involving Owen Jones, who penned the latest piece.

Without rushing in and reading it there are some immediate problems with the article.   It has come hot on the heels of two bogus allegations of antisemitism in the print edition of The Guardian on Saturday just gone. One was an editorial presumably written by Jonathan Freedland and the other by a Hadley Freeman.  Both falsely claimed that the Tricycle Theatre conflated Jewish identity with the State of Israel and both did exactly that themselves.  Both of those arose over the very limited action by Tricycle Theatre in refusing to accept funding (£1,400) from the Israeli embassy via the UK Jewish Film Festival.  And both of those followed a dubious Guardian article on Thursday just gone, listing a mixture of genuinely antisemitic actions with perfectly innocent anti-Zionist/Israel ones. By way, inadvertently, of an explanation for the sheer panic on Freedland and Freeman's part, The Observer published, Theatre's decision to ban Jewish film festival is 'thin end of wedge'. Hopefully it will be the thin end of the wedge.

Anyway, on top of all this, The Guardian hasn't just seen fit to carry a racist advert from some fanatical American Zionist group in today's print edition, it boasted about it in an article by the usually reasonable (as far as I know) Roy Greenslade.  The advert is so racist it was even rejected by Murdoch's Times newspaper.  By the small hours of yesterday morning I had counted 6 pro-Zionist propaganda Guardian pieces on their site in 5 days only partially redressed by a crop of letters in today's edition.

And now we have Owen Jones in The Guardian with Anti-Jewish hatred is rising – we must see it for what it is.  Now I've got to sort myself for work so I'll read the article on my phone.  But if Owen Jones is perplexed and reads this post he might get some idea of why some people are so suspicious of allegations of antisemitism which appear in the middle of a campaign of abject slaughter in Gaza by the self-styled Jewish State.  Meanwhile. if you're not Owen Jones, you might read the article before slagging it.  That's what I'm going to do.

August 09, 2014

Minor BDS Victory over Gaza has Zionist Lunatics taking over Guardian Asylum

The Guardian is sinking fast under a welter of Zionist penned articles wantonly blurring distinctions between opinion and fact and fact and falsehood.

It all began with a calm factual article about the UK Jewish Film Festival's withdrawal from The Tricycle Theatre because of the latter's objection to the receipt of £1,400 from the Israeli embassy.  There were Zionist reports of how the Tricycle had simply banned this generalist Jewish festival.  In fact the Jewish Chronicle has a front page article now with the headline, Film festival BANNED, in spite of the facts of the case now being well known.

There has been tremendous coverage of this throughout the print media and on-line but the Zionists are in such a panic they are swarming all over The Guardian to smear BDS supporters and the Tricycle people as antisemitic.

The first I noticed was an editorial that could only have been written by Jonathan Freedland who, a friend of mine told me, has considerable editorial influence at The Guardian.  I know The Guardian is often described as anti-Israel by Israel advocates but there are lines it rarely crosses so as to stay on the right side of the Zionist movement.  And of course, without getting into details, how can it be anti-Israel if Jonathan Freedland writes for it and wields editorial influence?

Anyway, the editorial is headed, The Guardian view on Gaza and the rise of antisemitism.*  I just did a word search for Gaza because I just had a feeling he wasn't writing about Gaza at all.  I was right. The word Gaza doesn't appear in the text.  Yup, in an article supposedly about Gaza and antisemitism Freedland has fulfilled an important part of the Zionist dream: he's made Gaza disappear.  Actually, he does nod to the slaughter by reference to the (you guessed it) "conflict between Israel and Hamas". 

He writes mostly about something that wasn't antisemitic at all and that's the Tricycle saga though he also detours to France and Germany where he writes of what would be genuine cases of antisemitism if only they could be verified by a more reliable source than himself.  Apparently it is true that synagogues have been attacked in France but the first report of an attack on a synagogue was actually a counter-attack by Palestine solidarity demonstrators against the openly racist terrorist group, the Jewish Defense League (banned as terrorists in the USA, the UK and even in Israel) who had come from the synagogue to attack the demonstrators, the JDL having the protection of the police.  Richard Seymour aka Lenin is very good on this.

Now, what else does he do?  Ah of course, he gets downright silly over the boycott campaign:
Some have made the argument that, if receiving money from a state implies endorsement of that state’s policy, then the Tricycle ought to return the £725,000 it receives from the taxpayer-funded Arts Council, lest that be read as backing for, say, UK participation in the invasion of Iraq.
This shows the anti-BDSrs' failure to consider what BDS is aimed at achieving and on whose behalf.  Many Palestinian groups have called for a boycott of Israel and that is what the solidarity movement supports.  Israel is a foreign aid junkie and it gets privileged access to EU markets.  The boycott movement is aims to neutralise that.  Who among those oppressed by the war on Iraq is calling for a boycott?  What could it achieve?  Boycotting is not simply a principle, it is a tactic that could work against Israel, a joint colonial project of western powers.

In the same paragraph he comes close to saying that support for colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and Jewish supremacy is an innate Jewish characteristic.  In fairness he falls just short of that but look at what he does say:
 It's tempting simply to say, "Oh fuck off!" but let's not be nasty to the self-indulgent prick.  He is saying that if most Jews support a political project then the rest of humanity has to accommodate that.  As it happens, it's impossible to know what most Jews want because it's impossible, in the west anyway, to know who most Jews are.  Thankfully, in spite of the ravings of one mad Zionist blogger, we don't have to register as Jews here.

But what if most Jews do support the State of Israel? So what?  Does everyone have to support or tolerate the political persuasion of most Jews?  I've seen Palestinian flags flying around London's East End.  What if most Jews object, should they come down?  No matter where you stand on the question of Palestine, support for a state, any state, is political and there is no reason why everyone should support the politics of a proportion or the entirety of any ethno-religious community, especially if the political persuasion is so clearly racist.

He ends on a totally bogus line:
The logic is not the same.  The UK "Jewish" Film Festival came to the Tricycle declaring their support for and from Israel.  Tricycle said that they could not host Israeli embassy funded events at the present time.  The equivalent for Muslims would be if a Muslim group asked the Tricycle to host an event celebrating 9/11.  Tricycle did not ask the UKJFF where they stand on Palestine.  UKJFF volunteered the information, evidently with some pride.  And that flight from logic was in an editorial in a supposedly serious liberal newspaper of record.

So who's next?  Ah yes, someone I'd never heard of before called Hadley Freeman.  Now if that self-seeking tosh from Freedland wasn't enough, on the same day (yesterday August 8, 2014) we get a lecture from another zionist at The Guardian - two on the same day and both saying the same thing in response to the same thing.  Here goes, but we probably won't need as much detail as the previous one.

It's headed Please don’t tell me what I should think about Israel.  Now I suppose from the heading it could go either way.  Zionists are forever trying to impugn the Jewish identity of those who, like me, think the wrong thoughts on Israel but the sub-heading is an early giveaway:
To a liberal American Jew in Britain, the Gaza crisis reveals some very unsavoury attitudes among those on the left
Uh oh, it's those lefties again, those nasty people who as an article of faith object to colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing.  Right, a quick scan, I promise (myself).

Ah, I think I can use the Gabriel scale on this one.  You know, we rock, they suck, you suck, everything sucks.

Let's see:

Yes, there's a little glimpse of "we rock":
Israel, like America, was a country made from desperate immigrants
Well they certainly had a disproportionate number of refugees but the state was made by a well armed, well trained and well organised army, or armies if you count the minor terror gangs.  In fairness you can't quite tell if Ms Freeman is calling out the myth or promoting it.

How about, they suck?  Well she skipped straight to "you suck" with a false allegation of antisemitism leveled at the pro-Israel Rory Carroll:
This week it was reported in this paper that it’s “unthinkable” in Hollywood to criticise Israel (that pesky Jewish mafia – displease them and they’ll force-feed you matzos until you explode).
The article was actually about how new Israel-critical voices were being heard and support for Israel was rather muted. Needless to say this style guru offered nothing to refute the idea that criticism of Israel used to be ""unthinkable" in Hollywood". And then there came the "everything sucks" whataboutery with a swipe at "India’s not exactly perfect human rights record" and the UK's war on Iraq.

So what happened to "they suck?"  Well they, of course, are the Palestinians and like the Freedland editorial, Gaza gets a mention in the headline (well the sub-heading) but the Gazans are absent from the article. It's all about Jews according to these two articles that appeared in today's print edition of The Guardian.

Now the third hasbara by smear piece I saw on The Guardian website was published the day before the previous two.  Headed, Obsessive Gaza coverage is fanning antisemitism, thankfully it's so ludicrous I can dismiss it out of hand.  It's basically a plea not report on the atrocities committed by a state that's given more privileged access to EU markets than any other non-European state and receives more US aid than any other state.  Oh ok, here's a taste:
As it happens it used to be the case that you could tell when Israel was behaving badly without knowing what it was doing by the number of allegations of antisemitism that flew around.  This guy so realised that Israel was on the PR ropes he went out and formed yet another antisemitism project.  But now the media is reporting more the crimes of Israel.  The Daily Mail has been a bit of a revelation.  The Beeb was pretty dodgy at first but there have been some useful appearances and tweets by Orla Guerin and Jeremy Bowen.  Channel 4 too has been very informative on tv and in tweets.

Even The Times refused to take in an advert containing the nastiest racist hasbara I would ever have seen in a mainstream UK paper.  Israel's sheer ferocity has had the facts of its violent racist nature speaking for themselves and there does seem to have been a new-found openness in the media to reporting stuff that paints Israel in an unfavourable light.

Whatever has happened it has led to some influential hasbarista or other at The Guardian asserting enough control to get 2 articles in today's print edition that falsely allege antisemitism at BDS whilst clumsily coming close to insisting that support for the racist war criminal State of Israel is somehow intrinsic to the Jewish identity.

And hold that thought about The TimesThe Guardian has now, via the blog of Roy Greenslade, announced that it will be running the advert in its Monday edition.  This is particularly dismaying because Times owner Rupert Murdoch is very pro-Israel and The Guardian is supposed to be liberal or even left-leaning.  Let's have a look at what Greenslade is saying:
The Times is under attack for refusing to run an advert about the conflict in Gaza. The paper is accused of being part of a British media "infamously skewed against Israel."
Straight away there is something wrong here.  Greenslade must know that The Times of all papers is not "skewed against Israel".  He is also of course using his blog to announce that The Guardian is joining in this attack on The Times for a rare instance of it doing the decent thing.

Greenslade goes on to quote from the ad and one its makers,  Shmuley Boteach, without any question, criticism or correction of his own:
It [the ad] calls on President Obama and other political leaders across the world "to condemn Hamas's use of children as human shields", which amounts to "child sacrifice".
It's left to me to point out that no evidence at all has been presented to support the "human shields" endless run of repeat stories.  It doesn't point out that it is actually Israel killing this large number of children and even more parents.  Nowhere does Greenslade contradict what the ad or its maker says, so for one racist ad these extreme murderous Zionists get two bouts of publicity one of which is free.

And we get more quotes from Boteach:
At a time when Israel is fighting for its very existence against the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, the British media, already infamously skewed against Israel, refuses a paid ad that every major American outlet... was proud to run as a full page ad
Criticism came there none.

The only partial distancing of The Guardian from the content of the racist ad is Greenslade's parting line:
But the Guardian's acceptance of an advert does not mean, of course, that it endorses the views and claims made within it.
Well it definitely means that The Guardian finds such racism acceptable and it does mean that some Zionist or other at The Guardian wants the ad run because for the past 3 days they have been pulling out all the stops to place The Guardian firmly in the Zionist camp.

Curiously I noticed Roy Greenslade hasn't tweeted his article but he has recently done two tweets supporting demonstrations for Gaza.  It's almost like his heart wasn't in this piece.  I wonder why he wrote it.

Anyway, I have an update on Jonathan Freedland's editorial from reading the print edition.  Don't worry I didn't buy it nor would I.  The title is completely different.  Gone (again) is "Gaza" and instead it's headed, Intolerable Intolerance.  Got that?  Most of the article is about the Tricycle Theatre and after time to think The Guardian is accusing the theatre of intolerable intolerance.  So what, apart from self-indulgent whingeing, are the Zionists going to do?