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news report
 Monday April 07, 2003 17:42 by Avi H.
 This article was written by a friend of mine in the UK. It illustrates the current climate of yobbish anti-Semitism, so much of which can be found in Ireland also. I have just returned from what I had fully expected would be an unpleasant experience, but I did not bank on the scope of its unpleasantness. I was invited to attend a live broadcast of the Jonathan Dimbleby programme at the ITV studios in London. The programme itself, a debate on the Iraq War and its aftermath, was civilised and informative, but the trouble came from the audience. Unbeknownst to the moderator, whose back was to the area of the audience from which the main disruptions were emanating, a group of people began to heckle the American spokesperson, Ruth Wedgwood, who was live from a Washington studio. It was impossible to hear her because the hecklers were shouting, ‘Shut up, you stupid prat’ and other abuse as well as hissing and guffawing. The real unpleasantness arose, however, when one of the men in the noisy crowd shouted ’ZIONISTS!’ when Menzies Campbell MP and Helen Liddell MP mentioned the post-war administration and the destiny of Iraqi being discussed by Britain and the UN with the main elements of the Bush Administration. At that point a commercial break was had, and this is what followed: Me: Excuse me, sir, did you say ’Zionists’ when the Bush Administration was mentioned? Man: What? What do you ask? Me: Can I explain something to you about American culture? Man: How dare you? How dare you? American culture? There is no such thing. Me: May I continue? Man: Not if you use the expression American culture, madam -- you ought to be ashamed of yourself. America has no culture. (Claps from others.) Me: (Duly ignoring him) The majority of people who rule America are still White Anglo Saxon Protestants. Zionists have no say in the ruling of America. Another man: Oh, shut up! Look at her, she’s a Zionist herself. Man: I say again, you should be ashamed of yourself coming here and lecturing us, bloody American. What are you doing here anyway? Me: There are still places in the USA, like country clubs, that Jews may not join. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft are not Jews. They represent the WASP ruling classes. Man: Your so-called democracy is a disgrace. (Another man shouted ‘The bloody Jews run America and its oil companies and now they’ll be running Iraq.’) Me: Please be reminded that millions of Americans like myself voted for Gore and another twenty million voted for Nader, and yes, the so-called democratic electoral system needs to be reformed.( Others, all English, shouting ‘shut up, Zionist! Zionist!’) Man: Whomever you voted for, you are a disgrace and ought to be ashamed of yourself. You may ask, why did I engage with a nutcase? The man was well-dressed, had been articulate when the broadcast was taking place and was sitting amongst a similarly-well-dressed and articulate group of people. (They were a mixed collection of white English and non-English individuals.) Their venom was palpable and for a moment I wondered if I might suffer the same fate as a woman who had attended a similar event in France last week and was attacked afterwards. (Three male audience members pinned her down and another carved a Star of David in her arm with his Gentleman’s Penknife.) This kind of angry abuse has become de rigeur for Jews and Americans in Europe. It is a frightening and serious problem. I would not mind energetic debate but even amongst friends and neighbours debate has become loud aggression and disgraceful remarks about America that betray their abject ignorance of American -- yes -- CULTURE. Thankfully, the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre daily monitor attacks on Jews and Jewish targets, but we Americans -- and Canadians whose accents provoke attacks -- are at the receiving end of uncomfortable abuse that started long before the Iraq War. What is the answer? Even when Bill Clinton was President, the obsessive loathing of American support for Israel regularly filled the pages of British newspapers. I say this over and over again: Who started the Holocaust? America? Who expelled its Jews? America? Who persecuted Jews for 2,000 years? America? Britain and Europe seem to feel that after the Holocaust Jews need to be further disabled by being starved of aid to their tiny state, when in fact it was unspeakable European anti-Semitism that culminated in the establishment of a Jewish homeland. Who ought to fund the Jewish State? The day at the ITV studio did not end with the America-haters. Near the end of the programme Menzies Campbell MP decided to put in HIS learned two cents about the United States. He made the astonishing suggestion that there is no hope for the Middle East peace process because the New Hampshire Primary is some fourteen months away and ’the East Coast United States lobby’ will get to work on that result. This is Britspeak for ’the bloody Jewish Zionist lobby will subvert the American electoral process yet again.’ Well, due to time restrictions I was unable to respond on-air to Mr Menzies Campbell MP, but I wish to state my views here: 1. William Jefferson Clinton, who (though the 'Jewish vote, it must be emphasised, is insignificant) was overwhelmingly supported by Jewish America (the vast majority of American Jews are Democrats) in 1992 and again in 1996 devoted eight tireless years to the Oslo peace process. He and Warren Christopher, along with Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk and others -- at great expense to the Israeli and American taxpayer -- worked with zeal and sincerity to bring the Arab factions to the peace table after fifty years of Israeli strife in a hostile region. Indeed, the Republican President Bush Senior and Likud Yitzhak Shamir figured in Madrd after the first Gulf War. 2. The so-called ’Jewish’ or ’Zionist’ lobby, which is coined every time I open a British newspaper or watch a BBC discussion show, is a fantasy of the mind of the anti-Semite. There are six million Jews in the USA, a tiny minority. As Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Lau (see our article ‘Gone With the Wind’) said last week, the American Jewish population is declining. There is a handful of Jewish Senators, Governors and Congresspeople. Had the ’Jewish lobby’ had such a stranglehold over the American electoral system, as Mr Campbell suggested, Joe Lieberman would now be Vice President by a landslide. 85% of affiliated American Jews are in the Progressive Movement, which, in turn, though supportive of Israel, has been critical of the Sharon regime and is not to be construed as a ‘Zionist lobby’ by any wild stretch of anyone’s imagination. 3. The so-called ’Jewish/Zionist lobby’ was never mentioned when Bill Clinton was masterminding the Oslo peace process. He gave up in despair at the end of 2000, when the deal offered at Camp David degenerated into the al Aqsa Intifadah, and the Bush Administration was installed. Indeed, this administration is fiercely sympathetic to Jewish aspirations. Its deeply felt Christian adherence, which make many people distinctly uncomfortable, transmogrify to the belief that the survival of Israel is essential for the next Coming of the Messiah. This has nothing to do with the political allegiance of millions of Jewish voters who will begin choosing a Presidential nominee next year. The vast majority will be Democrats who want peace in the Middle East. In summation, Mr Campbell’s assertion that the ‘East Coast lobby’ will begin to do its work to subvert the American presidential race to suit the destiny of Israel has no basis in fact and typifies the alarming ignorance in the United Kingdom about the nature of American society and its Jewish community. In this week’s British newspapers there has been an alarming amount of similar rhetoric: in ’The Independent’ Paul Vallely uses the expression ‘The Jewish connection we will come to later’ in his profile of Gen. (Ret) Jay Garner, who has been earmarked to administer post-war Iraq. Similar phrases were used by Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher in Nazi newspapers to denounce organisations that might have a tenuous Jewish connection. Vallely suggests that a fact-finding mission to Israel in 2000 was tantamount to being a dangerous pro-Zionist adventure . General (Ret) Garner, like any military, security or arms consultant worth his or her salt, consulted Israelis, some of whom are amongst the finest in the world. The article says he went on a ‘freebie’ to Israel -- how many ‘freebies’ are given every day by British agencies? Furthermore, when Gen Garner was told of the restraint of the Israeli army in 2000, restraint is in quotes as if to connote its lack of veracity. The new Intifadah exploded at the end of 2000. From 1994 to 2000, the Israeli army was withdrawing from areas won in the 1967 War. Anyone who knows Israeli history, which Mr Vallely obviously does not, will be aware that Yitzhak Rabin turned the other cheek when suicide bombs, kidnappings and other atrocities were being perpetrated against the Israeli population during the height of the Oslo Peace process, when lands were being handed back every month. It is a fact that in 2000 the Israeli army , when Gen Garner was advised by Israel on its forces’ conduct, continued to show restraint and had withdrawn from Lebanon. Finally, the article suggests it is unacceptable for the new Iraq to recognise the State of Israel. Does Mr Vallely seriously think that in the New Middle East envisaged by the ultra-dove Shimon Peres repudiation of the tiny Jewish democracy will contribute to regional stability? This has been an unpleasant week. This has been an unpleasant two years. Since Ariel Sharon’s visit to the al Aqsa Mosque after Rosh Hashanah 2000, the world began to turn against Israel once more. How interesting to see the faces of the US troops who tried to approach a mosque in Iraq this week in order to remove the arms and explosives from the holy place; a massive crowd of what can only be described as crazed citizens, who a few moments before had been friendly converged on the soldiers with such unmitigated fury as to frighten even the most hardened Marine or British SAS veteran. The Americans were bemused and withdrew. Five-hundred ago their white ancestors might have raged this way had non-Catholics tried to enter a church, but that was five hundred years ago. Arab rage is something we in the West do not comprehend. How disturbing it is to me, however, that ‘universal rage’ has risen from the dormant disease known as European and world anti-Semitism to become international condemnation of Israel, a pitifully tiny nation with no natural resources trying to defend itself for fifty-four years against that very rage. I want to see the Arab world examine itself and convert that rage into the energy that built my great native country, the United States and that built Israel from the ashes of Auschwitz. I want to see Arab peoples -- led by their staggeringly wealthy Emirs and Kings -- enjoying music and theatre and scientific achievement instead of blaming the USA and Israel for all their ills. But most significantly I want the people of my adopted country, Great Britain, to cease blaming the United States and Israel for the ills of Arabia. Long before America or Israel were even a concept, the Empires of the world were slaughtering each other in the name of Christianity and Islam, (this whilst Jews, stripped of their dignity in Europe, davened and wrote Torah.) I hope that the New Iraq will be an example to the rest of the Middle East and will herald the dawn of democracy, female equality and an end to perpetual, pointless rage. |
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Comments (18 of 18)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18we certainly are seeing much inflection on the thoughts of Irish Peace, I had expected to see the Avi H. post by tea-time.
and what a good one.
You really are quite right, and most Irish people north or South and those of Ulster agree that Israel is a kinship country.
The European Union after all shares the mediterranean with Israel and Palestine.
The European Union saw fit to invest extensive millions in rebuilding substantial parts of Palestine and furnishing it with an air-strip.
We need not say that they were deestroyed by Israeli actions, or maybe we ought for we ·IRISH· are aware more than many of the changing geo-political order and protocol.
The ties between Ireland and Isreal such as those perhaps embodied in the former President Herzog who we remember was born in Dublin, have stretched back through history before Portadown before the building of "Londonderry" before the sacking of Drogheda to the arrival of Ashkenazy jews themselves expelled from England my dear Avi H.
It is time (many of us in Ireland north and south think) for Israel, Washington and London to look to the positive contributions of Ireland's people to "peaceful resolution of conflicts".
The sad slow horror of Isreali-Arabic conflict must stop Avi. H you know that, Mr Ahern knows that, the people who closed Athens IMC know that, Mr Bush knows that and I assure you
the protesters at Hillsborough know that.
Shalom Toda
= Saleem
= siochian gurbh maith agatsa!
it is ·our wall·
Avi,
A serious question if I may:
What's your opinion on the current activities of Sharon in the West Bank, with particular refererence to the death of Rachel Corrie, the subsequent disruption of her funeral, and the recent shooting of Brian Avery?
Rachel Corrie was remembered the Sunday before the war with a candles and photograph shrine in front of the Government buildings in Barcelona, the same people who remembered her that night continued to bring candles and chairs and now you have an "espai alliberat", that first night someone tried to place a poster on the wall of the Government but they were stopped, it took a week for "Que se vayan todos" a slogan which means "May they all go" and is meant for the leaders of our political parties who have remained complicit with the warmongers who have twisted every shred of democracy.
That night of "que se vayan todos" three hours were spent by a throng of activists painting the walls, and banging pots and pans and dustbin lids.
Rachel's picture had a reference written beneath to the two thousand dead of Palestine, a passing Israeli tourist man shouted at me "two thousand terrorists", another tourist a young girl wrote at my request an addition in hebrew. The girl may give birth to future generations, the man probably was a soldier.
In some months we presume the wall will be repainted white.
Cant believe the rubbish that pro Israelis spout. Just read the first two postings. The saddest thing is the Israeli use of the holocost to justify their own version of Nazi tactics. Israel was built out of the ashes and blood of slaughtered Palestinians and continues to be so with the help of billions of US$$, pray tell, if there is no jewish lobby why do the americans give all this money to Israel??
SAD SAD SAD.
No mention or will there be of how shooting stone throwing children dead is a tribute to the dead vicitims of the Nazis? Facists thats all you Zionists are. SICKENING MURDERERS!
Victory to the Intifada!
http://www.chretiens-et-juifs.org/cje_files/D7/cje_images/image006_1625.gif
AVI wrote..."This has been an unpleasant week. This has been an unpleasant two years"....
When Avi thinks "unpleasant" and onlookers think "Jihad" then there is usually a [fundamental?] lack of understanding somewhere. I do not think that state-sponsored ethnic cleansing, assassination or torturing Arab children and adults is merely "unpleasant". Like many Arabs the word I would use is "unforgiveable".
The US and Israeli governments are used to being identified as murderers and nazis and rarely take offence. Jenin needs our support. Gaza needs our support. The antiwar movement needs our support. The Irish activists [Christians?/Arabs?/Jews?] who attacked the Shannon airport need your support in their prisons.
This is my last posting - shame on you 'Avi' for using your voice to confuse further a situation which needs no further confusion.
I recommend you stop typing Avi and fly - Fly to Tel Aviv and go on to Jenin - flights in are cheap now. I am sure the people who are left alive will do all that they can before they bleed to death on the streets of Bethlehem to ease your feeling of "unpleasantness". Tell the Arab women as they are dancing chaotically in the market, being shredded to pieces by american and israeli Apache gunships, of your irritation at being referred to as an American/Zionist pig.
Perhaps as a gesture ask Simon Wiesenthal to investigate their deaths and find out was it an anti-anti-semitic cause or some other cause.
One final thing Avi; I don't care what you are and I don't know who you are [thank god], but make sure to disregard this posting if you are completely fucking insane.
-Faisal
Readers with real intelligence will make up their own mind who is ranting and who isn't, who uses reasoned argument and who doesn't, who has values of civilisation and who doesn't.
There can be no justification for the way palestinians are treated in their own country.
The inquitious LIES must stop .... TRUTH must prevail .....
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/index.htm
avi your poor friend, dear oh dear, verbally attacked on the johnathan dimbleby show by a bunch of seemingly bourgeois gentlemen. the horror. the level of this anti semitic conspiracy about the zionist conspriacy, it boggles the mind as to which of these conspiracies we should believe, or should we reject both as another conspiracy perpetrated by the cia or their sneaky pals in mossad.
best to just concentrate on the facts avi, perhaps you should tell your crestfallen friend about them. remember the ADL and Wiesenthal centre both refused to condemn Sharons new coalition partners who have as part of their platform the transfer of Arabs from the west Bank, otherwise known (even in polite 'articulate and well dressed circles') as ethnic cleansing.
furthermore the facts about zionism and the US administration hardly need repeating and they have nothing to do with how many Jews enjoy elected office nor what percentage of the population are Jewish. but for the record Israeli citizens enjoy US subsidy of $660 per annum. thats about half of the federal funds enjoyed by citizens of new jersey. total direct aid to Israel since 1973 amounts to 247 billion dollars. nowhere else on the planet enjoys this kind of largesse from the US, nevermind the cover provided by uncle sam for the crimes routinely committed by israel against its hostage palestinian population in the occupied territories. Pro Israeli money plays a huge part in us electoral politics. the example of jessie helms is informative. He is a well known anti semite who was disciplined in the 1980s when zionist/pro Israel groups poured enormous amounts of cash into his opposition and almost unseated him. from then on he's been a great friend of Israel and has spearheaded one of the most sordid and immoral coalitions since the hitler stalin pact, that between anti semitic US christian fundamentalists and right wing zionist militarists in Israel, forces that unfortunately now run both countries.
but whats more incredible than all this is that avi has the nerve to post stories about hate and assumne some sort of moral authority on the matter when he himself has more than once been exposed here as a hate monger and racist asshole.
People from inside the Bush administration have been quoted as saying that there is no difference in the Sharon or Bush policies. Blair has an impossible task and will, ultimately, be left flat! See Ha'aretz today
"American Jewish groups maintain quiet contacts with nearly every Iraqi opposition group..."
Those who are consumed with rage, mouth obscenities, make personal attacks against other contributors and generally speak the language of hate are obviously inherently incapable of understanding that, every time they do these things, they discredit their own cause. No amount of taunts or vicious hysteria can validate the victimisation of the innocent. As Jews and the world's most scapegoated people, we have seen it all before, in age after age and country after country: we really are experts in recognising the contorted facial expression of the thug about to come kill us for what it is, and baying hoards of blood-lusting barbarians for who they are: only these days, we have both the means and the inclination to defend ourselves. We certainly have no intention whatsoever of either apologising for our existence or of being annihilated. If you don't like the existence of Jews or of the state of Israel, well that's just tough.
Avi, these things happen in combat ... don't get so excited about it .....
It is the Zionists (not the Jewish people, but a political faction among the Jewish people) who chose to live in perpetual war with their Arab neighbours ... yes chose it - they were fully aware what colonizing "Eretz Israel" meant and they accepted the inevitavle price ..... read Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall" where a prominent Zionist (and curiously a begrudging admirer of Adolf Hitler) explains it all .....
And by the way, your "friend" should really take a history lesson ... she seems pretty upset by "British" anti-semitism ... if the Brits are really such incorrigible anti-semites how does she explain the Balfour Declaration ?
And as for the question "Who should fund Israel ?"
pardon my French but it takes the f**king biscuit .....
Why the hell should Israel be "funded" by anyone .... ? Are its inhabitants incapable of standing on their own two feet .... ?
The Zionists wanted their homeland there, they got it and now they expect everybody else to fund it ... ? Give me a break .....
Wake up and smell the coffee my friend ...
PS: How's the general strike going over there ?
Hey Avi no use getting yer knickers in a twist.
The secret is out, and like the secret of King Midas and his long ears, it is being sung now from coast to coast, despite the frantic efforts to clamp the lid back on the boiling cauldron.
http://www.israelshamir.net/english/midasears.html
"Me thinks she protests too much."
EVERYTHING is seen through the lens of what's good or bad for Israel.
That tells the whole story.
I also want to see Arab peoples enjoying music and theatre and scientific achievement but they can only achieve this by removing the pro-US Emirs and Sheikhs.
As for Arab rage I think it is very understandable when they see the type of government foisted on them by the US and its allies.
It is especially understandable when they see the contrasting largesse and priveledge showered on Israel who threatens the whole of the middle east with her armies and weapons of mass-destruction and oppresses their Palestinian brothers with impunity.
How can you broadcast such hatred about the Jews and suck up to the Palestinian murderers? If there is any society completely devoid of culture and worth, it is the rabble who try to pass themselves off as a Palestinian people. They are only Arabs camping in Israel's back yard, campers who are so utterly detestable that even other Arab countries with vast wealth and land resources wisely will not take them.
You heap scorn on the Israeli soldiers who shoot back yet where is your scorn for the Palestinian mothers who willingly send forth their children to die just so that Arafat will have meat for the TV news vultures?
Reexamine your motives, friend, as you are pulling the cart for the very devil himself.
Bigotry from any source is wrong, anti-jewish bigots are wrong as are anti-arab, anti-irish, anti-american, anti-french etc,
Avi why don't you condemn the hate filled abuse and death threats that Israeli and Jewish people aim at Robert Fisk and other journalists that tell us what goes on in the Middle East (eg Isreali Prime Minister Ariel Sharon butchering 2000 Palestinians in 1982)
PS what are your thoughts on the war crimes commited by Ariel Sharon?
1939: German crowds chant "Death to the Jews"
2003: Israeli crowds chant "Death to the Arabs"