British Jews who care about this sort of thing have had the disturbing experience of observing not one but three examples of public, home-grown anti-Jewish bigotry over the past few days.
First off the block was the former labour Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who in an article in the Independent repeated not only his inexplicable belief that his idol, Iran’s President Rouhani, was ushering in a new world order of peace and harmony, but also that the benighted Israelis were buying up Washington in order to frustrate this nirvana (I paraphrase, but you get the general idea).
The idea that there is something sinister about Israel’s desperate attempt to prevent Iran from hoodwinking the west to achieve nuclear breakout is, of course, as perverse as it is offensive. But the suggestion that Israel pays American lawmakers to take their marching orders from Jerusalem repeats the ancient libel of covert and malign Jewish power, expressed by Straw even more clearly last year when he claimed that ‘unlimited Jewish funds’ were being used to ‘control and divert’ US policy in the Middle East.
Now look also at this cartoon in the current Economist, spotted by the Commentator,which represents Obama being prevented from reaching out to Iran by his shackles to a shield depicting the American eagle framed by Stars of David among the stars of the union. The Economist is thus repeating the malicious lie that the Jews control America.
And now look at what Labour MP Grahame Morris tweeted, apparently with reference to an Israeli flag visible at what looks like some kind of demonstration:
‘Nazis in my village do you see the flag they fly’
thus corresponding to the European Forum on Anti-Semitism’s Working Definitionwhich states that ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ is a form of antisemitism.
The real problem here is not the existence of Jew-haters and Israel-bashers. It is the silence of everyone in a prominent position in the face of such vileness. As far as I can see, no politician from any political party slapped Straw down when he first talked about Jewish control of Washington, nor over his Independent article. No figure of authority, no mainstream newspaper has condemned Morris or the Economist – or if they have, it has been so sotto voce as to be inaudible.
Such audible silence suggests an absence of those who think there is anything beyond the pale in claiming sinister Jewish power, or likening Israel to the Nazis. It suggests a terrifying cultural shift: that Jew-hatred and Israel-bashing have now become acceptable and unremarkable contributions to legitimate national debate. It makes a whole society complicit in perpetrating such evil. That is what is so devastating.
This evil is not just the perpetration of outright bigotry by a few grievously misled or prejudiced folk. Examples now seem to occur almost every week in Britain. It is a positively deranged, obsessive, semi-hysterical general discourse about Israel and the Jews which is utterly irrational, indeed impervious to reason and evidence. It is a cultural phenomenon of incendiary incitement, to be ranked accordingly alongside the infamous eruptions of anti-Jewish hysteria down through the centuries.
It is thus a kind of cultural emergency, which in any normally functioning society would prompt decent politicians and other leaders to sound an alarm. They would denounce such a phenomenon in the strongest terms, exposing the outright lies and group libels on which it is based. But from British politicians and others, there is only silence. Silence in the face of home-grown bigotry; and silence in the face of the brazen denial of truth at the core of both the Arab war against Israel and the incitement fanning the flames of violence.
That fundamental truth is that the Jews alone are the rightful inheritors of what the Arabs call ‘Palestine’, since it is the Jewish people alone for whom the land of Israel was ever their national home, taken away from them by colonial invaders but in which nevertheless they never ceased to maintain a presence throughout the centuries of real occupation.
That truth, the intrinsic Jewishness of Israel, was to have been the subject of an exhibition at UNESCO called ‘People, Book, Land — The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land,’ due to have opened today. But last week, UNESCO suddenly ditched this exhibition on the remarkable grounds that
‘it could disrupt Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations’.
How could that possibly be the case? Simple: because, contrary to the west’s ludicrous obsession with ‘settlements’, the one and only reason for the war against Israel is the Arab desire to exterminate it. To achieve that, the Arabs must proclaim that they are the rightful inheritors of the land; and to support that, they must suppress altogether the actual historical truth of the unique Jewish presence in that land.
This was let slip by PLO official Riyad al-Maliki, who stated in Asharq al Awsat (h/tElder of Ziyon) that the most intractable issue was the requirement to accept that Israel is a Jewish state:
‘It would be dangerous to recognize this because this would mean our acceptance of the dissolution of our own history and ties and our historic right to Palestine. This is something that we will never accept under any circumstances.’
In other words, to accept the Jews’ history, the attested, demonstrable fact of their ancient sovereign nationhood in the land, would by definition destroy the Palestinian Arabs’ own ‘history’ – because that is not history at all but a lie, and a lie invented with the sole purpose of destroying the Jews’ acknowledged right to their own country.
If David Cameron, William Hague or any other UK politicians were to state such truths and denounce the falsehoods that are feeding the frenzy of bigotry and incitement against Israel and the Jews, they would start to drain these fetid swamps. But they are silent; the lies, hatred and bigotry consequently increase apace; and that silence will accordingly be for these leaders and for Britain a permanent stain.
Brit hypocrites call them “militants” when they attack the jews with EU funding. they should take back their agents.
It was in 12th century England that the blood libel ‘Jews kill Christian boys to use their blood to bake their matzot’ came into being with a number of Jews being executed for this libel. Then there was a dreadful incident where Jews hiding from a blood-thirsty mob in York cathedral preferred to kill themselves and their loved ones rather than fall into the hands of the pogromists. A few who didn’t commit suicide came out to the mob declaring they’d convert to Christianity believing they’d be allowed to live. But they were wrong and were torn to pieces by the enraged mob. In the January 22, 2014 Jerusalem Post there was an item with the headline “344 years after his execution, French Jew cleared of blood libel.” I wonder when the English will make similar gestures for the victims of that 12th century Blood libel the York Cathedral crime. Won’t be holding my breath, but who knows maybe, just maybe, some righteous Brit will right these wrongs! Meanwhile, we have ‘stars’ like Julie Christie and Emma Thompson, etc., who are shamelessly BDSing Israel. We should BDS them.
Lot of Anglo-Saxons from both sides of the ocean remain antisemites in hiding and can’t forgive for being expelled from Palestine by this “little” people. They resisted the last empire and the fading US empire. What a hutzpah!
@ yamit82:
Do you sleep in a coffin during the day and only come out at night??? You didn’t answer my question! I can be unpleasant when aroused!
Eric R. Said:
IMO, you are way too generous with your time assessment.
I give Britain a decade tops.
@ Clive:
Within 30-40 years, Britain will be enslaved under the Islamists. Will the British care? No. Because Britain will also be Judenrein. And for the Brits, enslavement under Islam is worth the price to achieve that.
Comment to Salomon Benzimra in moderation
Salomon Benzimra Said:
Easier to destroy the Palestinians:
When in doubt check out what the ancient Jews did and did not do and learn from their errors.
The Gibeonites had to pretend that they were from far lands in order to make peace with Joshua. When the Jews realized that they had been fooled, Joshua pressed the Gibeonites into servitude.
Nevertheless, Joshua 11:19-20 states that no town sought peace with the Jews because G-d hardened their hearts. The case of the Gibeonites supports the general principle that Jews must not leave any natives in the land they conquer. Presumably, those natives belonged to the six or seven tribes specifically proscribed, but in any case none of the previous inhabitants could remain in the land. The peace, therefore, could only be one of exile: the natives could leave our land peacefully or be killed. G-d, however, did not want the peaceful option. He hardened their hearts so that the Jews would exterminate them.
How do we know that the natives must have sought peace before the start of hostilities? In Joshua 13:13, and elsewhere, it says that several native clans remained in the land. The Jews did not drive them out. The Jews did not entertain the possibility of peace with them because by that time the option of peace has already closed, since the Jews had started their conquest. The option to expel rather than exterminate exists only for towns beyond the Land of Israel proper. We can expel natives in expansionist wars, but must exterminate them inside our own borders, says the Tanach.”
I would settle for exiling them. Peace = No Arabs in our land. Simple equation.
You are concerned not with the Palestinians but world opinion. Do you really believe that even if successful and you destroy the Palis narrative that the world would then accept Israel? The world intentionally uses and needs the Palis as a foil to be used to destroy the Jews, The intelligent among them are fully aware of the lie and actively promote the lie. The stupid among them want to believe the lie because it serves what they choose to believe of the Jews. If not the Palis they would conjure up some other equally nefarious foil to be used against the Jews.
As a student of history you should know that the Palis conflict is a contrived conflict of the West against the Jews using Israel as their surrogate for all Jews. Today little by little even that facade is cracking all over the place, if you care to look without blinders.
Precisely! And that is why the first item in the Israeli agenda should be to thoroughly demolish the Palestinian narrative. Suspend the “peace process” and focus exclusively on the above. What are we waiting for? We have history, archeology and law on our side. The only thing missing is the political will.
yamit82 Said:
Respectfully, is this true?????
Britain still controls through America. American policy reflected by the State Dept are in lock step with the British foreign office. Superficially when Britain seems to support America in her foreign adventures it is actually America doing the Brits biding.
Wall St. is controlled through London as is International banking and International Insurance, they along with huge multinational corp. like Bp set the worlds economic &political agendas.
Besides American Companies and banks ,look who the Federal Reserve bailed out in 2008: which was the tip of the iceberg
The American NSA is partnered with their British clone GCHQ: London’s Guardian newspaper reported that GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, also has been secretly gathering intelligence from the same internet companies through an operation set up by the NSA.
According to documents obtained by The Guardian,NASA’s ‘PRISM’ would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required in Britain to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside of the country. NSA does the same circumvention by using GCHQ’s data servers to circumvent American law and legal restrictions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
@ Laura:
My only solace is that the once mighty empire has been reduced dhimmitude as the Islamist are taking over.
This observation seems to apply to the entirety of western Europe and Scandinavian countries who traded 6 million loyal and productive Jews for 20 millions and counting Muslims (no adjectives needed!).
Never has poetic justice played itself out on such a grand scale!
It is sad but true that the UK has been a bastion of antisemitism for centuries, just post war it was open and then became unfashionable, now again it is ok to be a jew hater. I left some time ago and could never live there again the BBC Guardian, Independant and the rest reflecting the jew hatred of the elite, just got to much. I can not understand jews who continue to live there and choose to bring up their children there, Europe is becoming like Nazi Germany in the thirties, surely it is no place for jewish kids?
Very very sad and DANGEROUS
It would seem that the reprehensible Straw is projecting his and his own government’s responding to unlimited muslim funds being used to ‘control and divert’ British policy. So he assumes any kind of support for Israel is based on the same motive. And if pressuring Israel to surrender its territory to terrorists and release terrorist murderers from its prisons is an example of bowing to Jewish/Israeli power, I would hate to see what would happen if Jews were powerless.
And its happening while muslims are destroying Britain from within. If there was any sanity among the British elite and public, they would actually identify and feel a kinship with Israel and their rage directed against muslims. Instead its against the free, stable and productive nation of Israel.
I assume Phillips has packed suitcases next to the back door.
I love Melanie Phillips!
The power of antisemitism is truly remarkable. It drains the mind of reason and recognition of fact and truth. It willfully insights itself into a frenzy of hatred built entirely on fantasy and moral inversion.
Truly a form of contagious insanity erupting into mass hysteria.
That this unique phenomena targets only Jews and has existed since time immemorial certainly suggests that there is more to the story then plain facts or any plausible theory can explain.
Look, Britain is a Nazi state. We know that. It has been rabidly Jew-hating for 800 years, and for almost 400 years was Judenrein.
But it does make you wonder why they spent so much time and energy fighting off Nazi Germany, when basically, the Brits agreed with them on the subject of exterminating Jews. The Brits on Jersey and Guernsey, which were occupied by the Nazis, helped to round up the Jews. And we know how these Jew-haters tried to prevent Israel from coming into existence.
The only legitimate reason, it turns out, that American GIs had to fight to defend these morons was that it saved the 400,000 Jews in the UK. It certainly wasn’t because the Brits were enlightened and deserved saving.