Wednesday 21 March 2018

Stand up For Racism

The Labour Party! What is it like? 
Did you hear that hilarious debate between a lesbian woman and a transgender wo/man about ‘all women’ shortlists. Well, I say hilarious, but one (wo)man’s hilarious is another (wo)man’s dystopian. If you missed it ….
The first thought that struck me was that, like Sunni and Shia Moslems, they could simply unite by collectively directing their ire against the Zionists.

Forget jokers who train their dogs to impersonate Hitler. Forget stupid remarks about big noses. What we need to worry about is the “new’ antisemitism.
“It is the irrational, deceitful, and insidious vilification of Israel and its supporters under the guise of political commentary. It is just a cleverly repackaged form of hatred against the Jewish people.”

Many people regard Zionism itself as a racist concept, a belief that stems from a mixture of wilful ignorance and disinformation, principally from the BBC. How has the BBC choreographed such a thing?  Simply by regurgitating unadulterated Palestinian grievance-mongering over at least the last half century.  By partial ‘half the story’ reporting, which is effectively counter-factual, one-sided and cynically but subtly anti-Israel, from top to bottom.

Unfortunately a great many people believe that opposing Zionism is righteous and they sincerely see themselves as anti-racist.  They care about this so much that they only look at the speck in their brother’s eye while failing to notice the log in their own that prevents them from acknowledging that whole countries are positively riven with Jew-hate and the beam that blinds them to the racism in their support of a future Palestinian state that proudly and loudly boasts that it will be Jew-free. 

This half-baked anti-Zionist principle seems to satisfy the anti-Zionists enough to convince a group called “Stand up to Racism” that they were acting “against” racism when they went on the march in Glasgow where “balaclava-clad members of the Red Front Republic (RFR) group – which claims to be a community-based organisation fighting far-right bigotry– were involved in a stand-off with pro-Zionist supporters.” 

The same principle lies behind Jeremy Corbyn’s apparently sincere belief that the Labour Party is against all forms of racism. How often do you hear your friends saying sorrowfully, “You’d think the Jews of all people would have learnt their lesson. They are doing to the Palestinians what Hitler did to them.”
Firstly the latter sentence is obvious nonsense, and secondly the pathetic “Jews of all people” meme is a non sequitur. If there is a lesson from the past, the most obvious one is - and should be - never again; that acquiescence is fatal / self-defence is vital. The next obvious lesson is that the world stood idly by while Hitler was prosecuting his deadly work. 

We used to ask ourselves, in sheer bafflement, how the hell did the ordinary German in the street allow Hitler to orchestrate the industrial extermination of millions of European Jews?  
That this happened, not in medieval times, not during the Reformation, not in days of old when knights were bold and ladies weren’t invented, but less than a century ago, when there was Swing, there was Jazz, the Lindy Hop and the Jitterbug

Unbelievably, the storm clouds are gathering again. Throughout Europe and here in the UK, where we queue up in an orderly fashion and apologise if we bump into things, Jeremy Corbyn and his acolytes have hoodwinked Generation Ignorant, and the oldest hatred is back. A tipping point has been reached and we are, evidently, paralysed. 

The BBC is uninterested in reversing this. Jeremy Corbyn’s antisemitic connections have been noted but it makes no difference. The topic has been tentatively broached by the BBC but Corbyn’s followers call it a smear, announce that “Labour is against all forms of racism” and we move on. Nothing to see here at the BBC.

Jeremy Corbyn’s association with the antisemitic group Palestine Live has been casually brushed aside. Stephen Pollard says: 
If that isn’t front page news, what is? 
And yet it’s barely been noticed other than in the Sunday Times, which reported it, and the JC, which picked it up yesterday. 
I don’t criticise anyone for that, because you could argue it’s not even the biggest ‘Labour and the Jews’ news of the past 24 hours. 
This morning it has emerged that Jeremy Corbyn was far more than a mere acquaintance of Elleanne Green, the founder of the Palestine Live Facebook group. The Daily Mail reveals today that they enjoyed a “warm friendship” and that Mr Corbyn organised events with her, that they discussed poetry online and that she referred to having had conversations in person with him.

Several incidents and events have occurred recently, which should be of interest  - if not actually worrying -  to the BBC,  but apparently they aren’t.

The Times reports (£) “Brighton Labour leader Warren Morgan forced out after ‘upsetting abuse’". Does the BBC know? Not a sausage.

Upsetting abuse


It’s not only omitting relevant news. It’s actual bias. BBC Watch has raised countless examples. Here’s one about Mosque loudspeakers. See how the BBC treats the same issue when it arises in Israel and Rwanda with their outrage over Israel’s ‘unnecessarily divisive’ proposed draft “muezzin bill” to limit the use of “Call to Prayer” loudspeakers, compared with their relative acceptance of Rwanda’s ban on loudspeakers from mosques in Kigali.

What about the way the BBC reports the deportation of illegal immigrants? The BBC website has featured several emotive, negatively phrased reports on this topic, with the implication that for some reason Israel  (of all people) should have ‘open borders’  
Israel is far from being the only democracy that sends back illegal immigrants. The United States expels 400,000 illegal immigrants every year. Germany has been sending back illegal immigrants to Afghanistan, and Italy to Sudan. In 2017, Germany expelled 80,000 illegal immigrants. . . .
Israel is a safe haven to all Jews, as well as to non-Jewish asylum seekers who meet the criteria of the Refugee Convention—which most illegal immigrants don’t. Israel’s policy is consistent with international law and with the practice of other democracies, and it should not be judged by higher standards.

While I might have found the debate between Emily Brothers  and Lucy Masoud totally ludicrous, largely because of the former’s impenetrable newspeak, I can at least see the funny side of it. (sorry but I’m still, stuck in the days when Les Dawson in a dress was mildly comical) but I can’t quite raise a smile at a group calling itself ‘Stand Up To Racism’ whose slogan is “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here” and whose members are pro-Palestinian Muslims and......
 Scottish Trades Union Congress, Unison Scotland, Unite the Union Scotland, Educational Institute of Scotland, University and College Union Scotland, Scottish Labour Party, Church of Scotland, Justice and Peace Scotland, Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, Scottish Refugee Council, Scottish Faiths Action For Refugees, Show Racism The Red Card, Positive Action in Housing, City of Edinburgh Unison, Glasgow City Unison, Unison South Lanarkshire, Edinburgh College EIS-Fela, Unite Scottish Housing Associations branch, Unite NHS Ayrshire & Arran, Unite GPM and IT Branch, Unite Glasgow retired members, MEND, Afghan Human Rights Foundation, Social Work Action Network, The People’s Assembly Scotland, Govanhill Baths Community Trust, Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees, Govanhill Against Racism, Maryhill Integration Network, Perth Against Racism, Women for Independence Glasgow, Scottish Jews For A Just Peace, PCS Scotland, RMT Scotland, FBU Scotland, Interfaith Glasgow, Glasgow Unite Community Branch, Scottish Women’s Convention.
when it objects to a few pro-Israel Zionists marching alongside them.

7 comments:

  1. "If there is a lesson from the past, the most obvious one is - and should be - never again; that acquiescence is fatal / self-defence is vital. The next obvious lesson is that the world stood idly by while Hitler was prosecuting his deadly work. "
    I'm nearing my 70th birthday now and was interested how that played 'back in the day.' Father was in the UK with the RCAF and mother was single in high school and vocational training. Neither heard anything about systematic murder of Jews during the war. In such case acquiescence is a false premise.
    So when did they hear about it ? Not till after the war. When did they hear about all the post war deaths of Germans due to breakdown of society and interference with even Red Cross relief ? Never that I knew of.
    There is a lot of garbage going around about what people should believe - none so much as from the mother of lies, state media. But we are told we MUST believe in the Holocaust and believe in the accounts given. Anybody who thinks a person born after the events in question a quarter way around the world and speaking a different language is going to dispute the official story is nuts. Believe it ? That is a wholly different ball of wax.
    I watched interviews on YouTube of Dr. Ahmadinejad of Iran. He is lambasted as a 'Holocaust Denier' - yet the interviews were obviously scripted and the only person saying anything like the premise of the 'interview' was the interrogator. What did A actually say ?
    That those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. If do not allow open discussion by academics of the events of the past, they will not be known. Such defeats any argument for political correctness. The history of the Jews of Germany who came to Israel was of injury by a different agency than that of the natives living in the land to which they moved. Visiting similar treatment on them could not be viewed as having learned any lesson. Since Israelis were claiming these Jews had the heritage of the desert tribes, then the antisemitism was that visited upon those who had been living there - of whom a goodly proportion were semite Samaritans.
    Funny, isn't it. It looks like the story of one Holocaust obscures the facts of others.

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  2. Opit out of interest do you believe the Holocaust occurred? And either way point me in the direction of some examples where Israel has set up mass extermination camps?

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    1. As you expose one flaw in their argument they'll move on to something else, in a never ending game of irrelevant whataboutery.

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    2. Sadly, Monkey Brains I think you may be right.

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  3. Opit,
    The first part of your comment is not particularly coherent, so it’s rather difficult to know exactly what is your point. My parents also lived through the war, in fact my uncle was beaten up by Mosely’s thugs, well before war had been declared. People knew exactly what the Nazis were. It is true that the full horror of the death camps was only revealed to the people of Britain and the United States after the Allies had entered the camps at the end of the war, but to suggest that the British public did not know that the Nazis were murdering Jews en masse is a nonsense. Jews were streaming across Europe in vast numbers to escape, sadly in some cases only as far as countries like Holland and France. Were your parents unaware of the of the really rather shameful story of the ship St Louis? Had they never heard of the Kindertransport? My parents were aware of all of this and much more. What is more troubling is that in a rather vague way you seem to suggest that the accounts of camp survivors are untrue.

    Yet despite what appears to be an element of Holocaust denial in your own comment, you defend Ahmadinejad, on the basis of a Youtube interview you didn’t like, against the charge of Holocaust denial. You even invoke the charge of political correctness - interesting irony. I’m sorry to misinform you, but Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust on numerous occasions. He has even boasted about it.

    I think Clockworkorange has said all that needs to said about your last point.

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  4. Misinform = inform.

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  5. It's a very sad state of affairs and the BBC is indeed culpable on many fronts.

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