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Brit-Am Essays and Broadcasts of Great Interest and Importance
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Monday, Apr. 06, 2009 at 12:05 PM
Extracts:
Anti-semitism on the left
On the Saturday of the great anti-war demonstration of 2003, I watched one
million people march through London, then sat down to write for the
Observer. I pointed out that the march organisers represented a merger of
far left and far right: Islamic fundamentalists shoulder to shoulder with
George Galloway, the Socialist Workers Party and every other creepy
admirer of totalitarianism this side of North Korea. Be careful, I said.
Saddam Hussein's Iraq has spewed out predatory armies and corpses for
decades. If you're going to advocate a policy that would keep a fascist
dictator in power, you should at least talk to his victims, whose number
included socialists, communists and liberals - good people, rather like
you.
Next day I looked at my e-mails. There were rather a lot of them. The
first was a fan letter from Ann Leslie, the Daily Mail's chief foreign
correspondent, who had seen the barbarism of Ba'athism close up. Her
cheery note ended with a warning: "You're not going to believe the
anti-Semitism that is about to hit you." "Don't be silly, Ann," I replied.
"There's no racism on the left." I worked my way through the rest of the
e-mails. I couldn't believe the anti-Semitism that hit me.
I learned it was one thing being called "Cohen" if you went along with
liberal orthodoxy, quite another when you pointed out liberal betrayals.
Your argument could not be debated on its merits. There had to be a malign
motive. You had to support Ariel Sharon. You had to be in the pay of
"international" media moguls or neoconservatives. You had to have bad
blood. You had to be a Jew.
My first reaction was so ignoble I blush when I think of it. I typed out a
reply that read, "but there hasn't been a Jewish member of my family for
100 years". I sounded like a German begging a Gestapo officer to see the
mistake in the paperwork. Mercifully, I hit the "delete" button before
sending.
I experienced what many blacks and Asians had told me: you can never tell.
Where people stand on the political spectrum says nothing about their
visceral beliefs. I found the far left wasn't confined to the chilling
Socialist Workers Party but contained many scrupulous people it was a
pleasure to meet and an education to debate. Meanwhile, the centre was
nowhere near as moderate as it liked to think. One minute I would be
talking to a BBC reporter or liberal academic and think him a civilised
man; the next, he would be screaming about the Jews.
Politicians I'd admired astonished me: Tam Dalyell explained British
foreign policy as a Jewish conspiracy; Ken Livingstone embraced a Muslim
cleric who favoured the blowing up of Israeli women and children, along
with wife-beating and the murder of homosexuals and apostates.
I could go on. The moment when bewilderment settled into a steady scorn,
however, was when the Guardian ran a web debate entitled: "David
Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man anti-Semitic" .
The issue is whether the liberal left is as keen on universal principles
as it pretends. An impeccably left-wing group of Jewish academics, who are
against the war in Iraq and occupation of the West Bank, gathered recently
at <http://www.engageon
line.org. uk>, as they could see parts of the left
retreating into special pleading. Their union, the Association of
University Teachers, had proposed that academics abandon the freedom to
exchange ideas, on which intellectual life depends, by boycotting Israeli
universities. Asked why the boycott applied only to Israel and not nations
with far greater crimes to their names, the AUT had no reply.]
Racism is often subtle in England. David Hirsh, an Engage supporter,
caught it well when he wrote that "the act of singling out Israel as the
only illegitimate state - in the absence of any coherent reason for doing
so - is in itself anti-Semitic, irrespective of the motivation or opinions
of those who make that claim".
I'd agree, if it weren't for a brutal counter-argument that few have the
guts to make. Get real, it runs. Universal values are for the birds. The
left had a respectable record of exposing the dark corners of the right in
South Africa, the Deep South, Pinochet's Chile, Franco's Spain and the
Colonels' Greece. Only the bravest had much to say about the Soviet Union,
China or Cuba. On the whole, those monstrosities were opposed by the
right. Looking back, you can see that good came out of the activism of
both sets of critics. Equally, good will come from our obsession with
Israel. The Palestinians need help and you shouldn't ask too many
questions about the helpers.
You can read for yourselves the histories of the links between Nazism and
the Arab world in the 1940s, but to bring you up to date, here is what
Article 22 of Hamas's covenant says of the Jews: "They were behind the
French revolution, the communist revolution and most of the revolutions we
heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret
societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in
different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and
achieving Zionist interests."
That's right, Rotary Clubs.
While we're at it, don't excuse Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all the rest
by saying the foundation of Israel and the defeat of all the Arab attempts
to destroy it made them that way. Anti-Semitism isn't a local side effect
of a dirty war over a patch of land smaller than Wales. It's everywhere
from Malaysia to Morocco, and it has arrived here.
To explain away a global phenomenon as a rational reaction to Israeli
oppression, you have once again to turn the Jew into a supernatural figure
whose existence is the cause of discontents throughout the earth. You have
to revive anti-Semitism.
In 1878, George Eliot wrote that it was "difficult to find a form of bad
reasoning about [Jews] which had not been heard in conversation or been
admitted to the dignity of print". So it is again today. Outside the
movies of Mel Gibson, Jews aren't Christ killers any longer, but they
can't relax, because now they are Nazis, blood-soaked imperialists, the
secret movers of neoconservatism, the root cause of every atrocity from
9/11 to 7/7.
It's not that the left as a whole is anti-Semitic, although there are
racists who need confronting. Rather, it has been maddened by the
direction history has taken. Deracinated and demoralised, its partisans
aren't thinking hard enough about where they came from or - and more
pertinently - where they are going.
JERUSALEM - Under intense American pressure and
following a nearly unprecedented behind-the-scenes U.S. campaign, the
Israeli government has decided not to bulldoze Palestinians homes built
illegally on Jewish-owned property in Jerusalem, WND has learned.
The issue is critical since the 80 homes in question are
located in Silwan, an eastern Jerusalem neighborhood close to the
Temple Mount and Jerusalem's Old City that the Palestinians claim as a
future capital. Jewish groups have been working to fortify the
community's Jewish presence. Silwan is adjacent to the City of David, a
massive archeological dig just outside the Temple Mount that is
constantly turning up Temple artifacts.
Like tens of thousands of other Arab housing projects
throughout eastern Jerusalem, the Palestinian homes in Silwan were
illegally constructed on property long ago purchased by Jews. The
Israeli government ordered the structures' legal demolition.
But during a visit here in early March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
strongly protested the planned bulldozing.
"Clearly this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping
with the obligations entered into under the Road Map," she said. "It is
an issue that we intend to raise with the government of Israel and the
government at the municipal level in Jerusalem."
The Road Map calls for Israel to freeze Jewish settlement
expansion in the West Bank but does not bar Israel from dismantling
illegally constructed Palestinian homes in Jerusalem.
WND has learned that in the weeks since Clinton's visit here,
the U.S. has mounted an intensive campaign lobbying the Israeli
government against tearing down the illegal Palestinian homes in
Silwan. The campaign included letters from the Middle East section of
the State Department addressed to various Jerusalem municipalities,
with copies of the letters sent to the offices of Israel's prime
minister and foreign minister. The letters called on Israel to allow
the illegal Palestinian homes in Silwan to remain and stated any
The administration of incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was contacted,
as well.
Also, in a follow-up visit here, State Department officials made
it clear to their Israeli counterparts the U.S. opposes the Silwan
bulldozing.
According to sources in the Israeli government, including in
Netanyahu's administration, a decision has been made not to bulldoze
the illegal Palestinian homes. The sources said the issue of the homes
may be raised again in the future, but for the time being the houses
will remain in tact.
The sources attributed the decision against the bulldozing -
which has not yet been announced - to the intense American campaign
against the house demolitions.
Said one source in Netanyahu's administration, "This was very
frustrating to us. Can you imagine if a foreign government came in and
told a city office in the U.S. not to tear down a house that was
illegally constructed on someone else's property?"
While Clinton opposed the Palestinian house demolitions,
informed Israeli officials said the Obama administration is carefully
monitoring Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem and has already
protested to the highest levels of Israeli government about evidence of
housing expansion in those areas.
The officials, who spoke on condition that their names be withheld, said that
last month Obama's Mideast envoy,
George Mitchell, oversaw the establishment of an apparatus based in the
U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that closely monitors eastern Jerusalem
neighborhoods, incorporating regular tours on a daily basis.
The officials said that in recent meetings Mitchell strongly
protested Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem. Mitchell also
condemned the work of nationalist Jewish groups to purchase property in
Jerusalem's Old City, including in areas intimately tied to Judaism.
Israel recaptured eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount - Judaism's
holiest site - during the 1967 Six Day War.
The Palestinians, however, have claimed eastern Jerusalem as a
future capital. About 244,000 Arabs live in Jerusalem, mostly in
eastern neighborhoods, out of a total population of 724,000, the
majority Jewish.
U.S. helping Palestinians build in Jerusalem
A WND investigation last month determined the U.S. has been aiding the
Palestinians in developing
infrastructure in eastern Jerusalem, including on property owned by
Jews.
The situation has been unfolding in the northern Jerusalem
neighborhoods of Kfar Akeb, Qalandiya and Samir Amis, which are close
to the Jewish neighborhoods of Neve Yaacov and Pisgat Zeev in Israel's
capital. Kfar Akeb, Qalandiya and Samir Amis are located entirely
within the Jerusalem municipality.
Much of the property there is owned by private Jewish
landowners or by the Jewish National Fund, a U.S. Jewish group that
purchases land for the states purpose of Jewish settlement.
A tour of the three Jerusalem neighborhoods finds some surprising developments.
for more details see:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=94265
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