Do they know it's Christmas? Updated

Dear Readers,

I’m feeling guilty and embarrassed by your appreciative remarks about the blog, which tactfully included my name alongside Craig’s (whose indefatigability never ceases to amaze) while my few and far between contributions to the blog have recently dwindled to zilch.

Humbled, I am.

I’m reminded of a well-known charity single called  “Do they know it’s Christmas?” Well, there can’t be much doubt about that. Even my domestic appliances know. They start to go wrong around  December 21st when you can’t get a man out, and even if you can, the parts won’t be available till mid-Jan. 

Who’s read Daniel Finkelstein in today’s Times? (£) I have. 

For those without access, or £s, here’s a small excerpt from the first paragraph:

“I’m not a big one for celebrating Christmas. We don’t have a tree, we didn’t have a turkey, there were no stockings and we haven’t decked the hall with boughs of holly. I’ve nothing against celebrations, it’s just that the birth of Jesus wasn’t exactly a red-letter day for the Jews.” 

The actual piece relates to ‘bias’ - and of course, the BBC is cited. He does say that people necessarily approach  - everything, really - with their own agenda though they generally see themselves as impartial. He’s kind of doing that himself here too, of course, and he more or less admits it. What interests me most of all in articles like this are the below-the-line comments. That’s the principal reason I’m willing to fork out for online access.

Anyway, as a secular, completely assimilated 3rd generation immigrant of Jewish heritage (is that the correct term?) and a defender of Israel against unfair reporting, my heart always starts to sink at this time of year, as I know we’re in for the customary deluge of passive-aggressive anti-semitic and anti-Israel reporting. 

Sure as eggs is eggs, we’ve had the same old same old stuff this year; Mishal Husain has made a massive meal out of her jaunt to Gaza, with reports on the BBC website about what life is like for the BBC’s favourite victims, plus various related tangential and somewhat forced spin-offs. 

If you’ve looked at BBC Watch over the last few days and weeks you’ll know what I mean ‘arry. 

Yolande Knell has been at it too.

Also, here, here,  and here, and the detailed five-part analysis of Mishal Husain’s ‘Gaza Special’ Today Programme 

As well as the BBC’s emotive, half-a-story stuff about a romanticised Gaza, we have the usual Bethlehem Christmas stuff. In all cases, anything negative about Islam is conspicuously absent, as it has also been (so far) in the BBC’s reporting of the Bishop of Truro’s newly commissioned inquiry into the persecution of Christians, (and our duty towards them). 

Who is doing this persecution, one wonders? Especially the persecution of Christians in that murky region known as “the Middle East”? Why, anyone who didn’t know better might assume it’s those malevolent Jews.

Here’s another extract from Lord Fink just to give you another flavour of the piece.

“I will at all times remember when watching the television news that it is just as likely to be me that is biased as it is the programme. 

One of the most striking features of recent political debate is the certainty of all participants that the news media is biased against them. 

Sometimes, of course, this is true. Sometimes reports are biased. But it’s a little odd, isn’t it, how supporters of Brexit are sure that the BBC is biased against them, while opponents believe passionately that the BBC is now campaigning to leave.”

I wish I could bring you all the btl comments, but I can’t.

Gosh. The Queen said something in her speech roughly to the effect that she wishes people would all stop being beastly to one another, despite their seemingly irreconcilable differences. The BBC took it upon itself to interpret this as a dig at the seemingly irreconcilable divide between Remainers and Bexiteers. But I couldn’t help wondering if there was another topic where irreconcilable differences were proving problematic.

Anyway, that’s the way my mind works, so there. In the end, I completely forgot to watch Her Maj, so I’ll admit that I might not know precisely what I’m talking about.  Oh yes, that’s another reason I haven’t been posting recently - I keep forgetting to watch TV or listen to the radio. Hmm. 

Interestingly, I saw the beginning of an interview with Julia Gillard before I left the room to write this. I know it’s a bit rude of me, but why does she does so remind me of a kangaroo? I think it’s partly the colour of her hair and partly her posture. Sort of upright and kangaroo-like.

By the way, I definitely do bring my agenda with me when I approach everything. I’ve always said only inanimate objects can pull off true impartiality, even if they deliberately choose not to exercise it just before Christmas; continually beeping fridge-freezers included.

Update:

As promised, here is my response to a comment on the Bumper Quiz thread:

Fred Monroe
Let’s imagine for just a moment that visitors from outer space arrive one day soon, intelligent enough to have developed the necessary technology but ignorant of the history of our planet. They quickly learn English and read in the news about Livingstone and the Jews. Due diligence informs them that since the beginning of recorded history a very small minority have encountered problems with almost all other groups into which they have come into contact, so that often they have been treated very brutally and even expelled from host nations to which they have migrated. So harsh was their treatment in the last century that now every effort is made to protect them from attacks or criticism, going as far as making it illegal to say things that were in common usage for millennia. Even so this treatment has not stopped. The outsiders apply their logical minds to the problem and suggest that the root cause might lie in the behaviour of this minority.

Fred Monroe seems to regard his comment (above) as his Magnum Opus as this and comments of a similar nature have appeared elsewhere. What we have here is an (un)imaginative analogy, composed in order to rationalise antisemitism and to demonstrate, using faux ‘reasonableness’, that Jews brought it on themselves. As I said in a previous comment, he contends that Jews are the architects of their own misfortune.

Even an Irish ‘Corbyn apologist’ blogger named Daniel Collins, who also makes a ‘faux-reasonable’ attempt to defend Corbyn & Co against allegations of racism, (otherwise known as smears) finds Monroe’s 'masterpiece' way beyond the pale.

This is the sole reply to Monroe’s obnoxious comment as it appears on that blog : 

 The Keep

 “So its the Jews fault then that they have been massacred and harassed then? Have you no decency man?”

……. and the solitary ‘like’ below that one comes from Daniel Collins himself,  who goes on to say the following:

Daniel Collins · May 3, 2016 - 11:13 PM ·
To what “behaviour” are you referring?
Certainly, the conduct of the modern state of Israeli is highly suspect; it causes great harm and pain to others in the region who find themselves excluded from its Judeo-centric ideal. Unfortunately, that breeds misdirected hostility towards Jews generally, but Israel hasn’t always existed, so it’s not as if it has always been there to provide a supposed “excuse” or “justification” for hostility towards Jews from anti-Semites. What do you think might have contributed to the animus directed at Jews through history (before the foundation of Israel)? You can’t just surmise that they must be at fault because they’ve been historically loathed and victimised and then depart without providing anything to further substantiate what is nothing but conjecture disguised as “logic” (albeit alien logic). 

I think you’re engaging in further victim-blaming really. If we believe in fundamental liberty, then people generally are entitled to be diverse or different (so long as they’re not harming anyone else). If people are stigmatised, marginalised or are subjected to suffering simply because of their perceived difference, the responsibility for that is on the part of the party engaged in mistreatment. Minorities are often demonised and exploited as social scapegoats. This has been the case through time, but it doesn’t mean their behaviour has justified their being treated in that way. It just means they’ve been easy targets for bullies with agendas. 

Are you really suggesting that, at root, the Jewish people themselves were responsible for the Holocaust, simply because they behaved “differently” from the dominant culture in Germany?

Now look at this (below the line) exchange featuring our friend in this 2016 Times of Israel article titled: Jewish Labour MP posts anti-Semitic abuse she received online.

Here’s the whole comment thread:

Jack Kuper
The most effective way for Jews to fight back is, by denying those countries their own presence, thus, their talents, their productivity, their brains. I look forward to the day when they offer inducements for them to return. Isn't that happening in Portugal right now ?

Terri Gold
It's tragic that she felt constrained about revealing this abuse prior to now. And, in response to Jack Kuper, below, Jews should not leave the United Kingdom ever. Stand and fight in every way possible. "They" may not "deserve" a Jewish presence but the Jews deserve to live anywhere they want and be safe. Fight back. 

Fred Monroe  

Why is it "that Jews deserve to live anywhere they want", but this privilege should be denied to other groups, even those whose ancestors lived in the land in question?

If in a referendum a majority of the citizens of the UK decided that they no longer wanted Jews in their land, would you insist that Jews had the right to ignore this decision?

Jack Kuper
Time to leave those countries, that allow this kind of
garbage to be spewed against Jews. Let them stew in their own mire.
They don't deserve a Jewish presence.
Beverley Price
prognosis for reform?

Fred Monroe 

Let’s imagine for just a moment that visitors from outer space arrive one day soon, intelligent enough to have developed the necessary technology but ignorant of the history of our planet. They quickly learn English and read in the news about Livingstone and the Jews. Due diligence informs them that since the beginning of recorded history a very small minority have encountered problems with almost all other groups into which they have come into contact, so that often they have been treated very brutally and even expelled from host nations to which they have migrated. So harsh was their treatment in the last century that now every effort is made to protect them from attacks or criticism, going as far as making it illegal to say things that were in common usage for millennia. Even so this treatment has not stopped. The outsiders apply their logical minds to the problem and suggest that the root cause might lie in the behaviour of this minority.

Mark Granat
...and then, on exploring Mr Monroe's hypothesis and concluding, inevitably, that there has been nothing at all in the behaviour of said minority that merits the evil treatment they have received, the visitors then turn their scientific attention to try to understand the sick behaviour of those who play "blame the victim." First subject under the microscope: Mr Monroe himself.

Martin Gray
And just imagine the visitors from outer space found that this minority restored by some miracle of a divine power to their own nation once again had developed weapons so powerful the International League of Assholes which you seem to be a guiding member would never be able to threaten them again. Just imagine.

Fred Monroe 

What you refer to as a conspiracy is something of which many American Jews are very proud - the 1965 Immigration Act which Jewish organisations helped draft and guide through Congress. It changed immigration to the US from almost exclusively European nations to predominantly Third World nations.

Theodore Slipchinsky
Upon further investigation they realized that this minority - although far from perfect - had the very disturbing tendency to excel whenever they were given the opportunity to do so in a manner far outstripping their numbers. This provided those who ruled over the majority a perfect scapegoat to deflect the majority's rage about their condition away from their real oppressors. Throw in intense religious mythology which indoctrinated the majority from the time they were children with the idea that the minority had killed their God, and you are looking for trouble...aren't you?

Henry Bonk
Fred Monroe Got you.Not only do Jews control the banks but
American Government and the world as well. You are severely
undermedicated. Get help.

Raymond Dalton
So that minority were responsible for the blood libel, the idiotic story of killing Jesus and the pogroms?

Judah Ben Zion
Mark Twain:
"If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.
His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished.
The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities, of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? "
- September 1897
Thus, Frank Monroe, I doubt you know better than Mark Twain. Perhaps it is you that is from "outer space" in which case, go back from whence you came because the Jewish State of Israel and the Jewish people are home and we are not going anywhere.

Having supplied as much evidence as I care to gather, I rest my case. 

P.S. Although there is a contradiction between the policy popularly known as “do not feed the troll” and my own complaints about trolls that ‘won’t engage’, I offer this background information FOC so our readers will know what’s what.

By the way, I do wonder how Fred Monroe and his Monroe-ic ilk have reached the position they hold. I mean what exactly are they afraid of? 

Let’s imagine just for a moment that Jews really do control the media; the world of commerce, of politics, entertainment, oh and the world in general? 

What’s the worst thing that could happen to you? That all the world’s assets would be diverted to Jews and hence Israel? That Israel would suck y’all in and you’d be damned and deemed ‘infidels’?  That you would be our slaves? That the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is real? That the Jews would bring about a world-wide k k k... Kosher c c c… Caliphate?

Do apply your logical mind to the puzzling question, why would Fred Monroe want to comment on what has been described as a Pro-Zionist blog?  

Strangely enough, we rarely get outright Jew-hate on this blog. The spam we sometimes get is primarily your bog standard, or should I say blog-standard, advertising and site-promoting junk and it automatically goes to room 101