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.
I mentioned this on the Open Thread but I forgot to note that there was an edgy moment when Justin Webb said something like "This is all very well, but it's ignoring the elephant in the room.." I thought for a moment he was going to use the I word or the M or the S word...but - perhaps to spare Mishal's blushes the less-than-courageous-Webb simply referred to the "people" that "your party's leader" has been in contact with ...or something anodyne along those lines...It's like saying "There's a two tonne quadraped of unknown provenance in the room."
ReplyDeleteSome say Ian Hislop is one of the most loathsome of contemporary figures patrolling the political landscape and tell us what to believe while reaping millions of pounds of licence fee payers' money.
ReplyDeleteRichard Ingrams (who peremptorily appointed Hislop as Private Eye editor, much to the annoyance of many loyal readers) admits to have been accused of being an anti-semite all his life.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/mar/03/redbox.comment
Ingrams averred that: "Israel proved itself an aggressive and expansionist state" - much like our Jezza does too.
I am a free speech advocate and have no problem with people airing their prejudices (and it seems to me that Ingrams, Hislop and Corbyn have more than something in common in that department) but there is more to dislike in Hislop. I have complete contempt for the way he straddles being completely traditional in his minor public school, lower middle class, military background, with dad probably a freemason sort of way and yet also seeks to appeal to the snowflake generation by the simple tactic of cravenly targetting all the people they love to hate. He has desatirised satire and turned it into a branch of the virtue-signalling industry.
Fortunately I have been able to avoid his Thought for the Day style ethical monologues on HIGNFY in recent years by the effective expedient of not watching the rubbish. But let's not forget the way that programme targetted emotionally fragile but basically harmless people like Paula Yates who subsequently committed suicide. So much for the BBC's claimed concern for mental health and protecting the vulnerable.
Hislop is now super-rich, part of the pro-EU PC globalist movement. But when you think back to people like Peter Cook, people rich in satirical genius, you can see just how very poor he is in what really matters.