Don’t you just hate hearing people saying would when they “really meant” wouldn’t.
Ditto, people saying anti-Semitist when they “really meant” anti-anti-semitist (or something).
Ditto, people saying anti-Semitist when they “really meant” anti-anti-semitist (or something).
That’s pretty silly stuff, with a distinctly humorous tinge. Far less amusing is the BBC‘s crass insensitivity (!) in choosing to broadcast unadulterated pro-Palestinian propaganda in the form of the creepiest passive-aggressive grievance-mongering from:
Raja Shehadeh, the award winning Palestinian writer, lawyer, and founder of the human rights organisation, Al Haq recollects a humiliating experience on his way home to Ramallah. Read by Peter Polycarpou.
What timing. Why, anyone would think whoever commissioned this virtually unlistenable drivel for this week's Book of the Week (BBC Radio 4) had some sort of agenda.
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The only reason I subscribe to the Times these days is that I can see the comments below articles such as Daniel Finkelstein’s. (£)
Jeremy Corbyn is blind to the racism in his party. Here’s a taster:
Complacently, I had always assumed that what happened to my parents couldn’t happen to me or my children. There were too many liberal, progressive people who wouldn’t allow it. I no longer believe this with the same confidence. (I found it really painful to write those words. I deleted the last sentence twice, but I left it in because, sadly, it’s true.)
It’s less the antisemitism itself that has induced this fear. It is the denial of it. The reaction I expect on the left to the rise of antisemitism — concern, determination to combat it, sympathy — is not the one I’ve encountered, at least not from supporters of the leadership. Instead there is aggression, anger at the accusation, suggestions that the Jews and zionists are plotting against Jeremy Corbyn.
Even though a few notable Jewish figures have started expressing similar concerns to the ones outlined above, their ambivalence vis-à-vis “the case for Israel” shines through. Maybe it’s partly a fear of falling foul of ‘rule 1a’, (dual loyalty) but I think it’s much more likely that it's down to pure ignorance, or (in other words) a lifetime of being under/ill-informed by biased reporting.
Looking quickly through the comments, I spotted Ian Hislop’s name. Not that the views of smug arbiters of moral righteousness through the medium of satire particularly interest me, but Hislop leaps straight to the Nation-State law, and cites Daniel Barenboim’s dodgy Guardian op ed, to boot.
One ambivalent asaJew refers to “incessant land-grabs by Israeli settlers.” Incessant land grabs? Now, there’s a typical example of the effect of absorbing a listening-lifetime of selective, misleading, partial and agenda-driven journalism.
