Twits, spats and tw*ts

Looking at Twitter can be a depressing experience. Look at this extraordinary Tweet from disgraced ‘charity fat-cat’ and widower of murdered MP Jo.

Brendan Cox Tweeted a couple of days after the Westminster ‘vehicular attack’.

“Last few days has shown that the far right hate our country. They used a terror attack to denigrate it. They are no patriots.”

I stumbled upon it when I was looking at professor Steven Barnett ’s re-tweets. (Mar 25th) 

Also on that platform, amongst various references to “Hopkins” (He’s not a great fan) and Fox News, (not a fan) I spotted something by “the Secret Barrister” relating to Katie Hopkins’s spat with Jack Monroe and Laurie Penny, which, as  you are probably  aware, eventually cost Ms. H. a huge fine, (£131,000) the magnitude of which was grossly inflated through her intransigence. (she could have settled earlier with an apology and a donation of £5,000)

(Incidentally here’s something about another case I blogged recently, which might be of interest.)

Anyhoo, here’s the 'iNews' post about Katie H: "At £131,000, Katie Hopkins should realise trolling on Twitter is an expensive hobby"

Her intransigence. Whether or not you agree with the gist of her trolling (I often do - but not always) her intransigence was patently ridiculous, and reminds me of - you’ll be able to guess - Ken. No, not Dodd. The other one. Will he be getting a fine?

This is leading up to an excuse to advertise a number of posts about this subject, which I’m only going to link to, knowing that it’s a comparatively specialised topic that holds little interest for many, more’s the pity.

David Hirsh: Livingstone, Labour and antisemitism.

Paul Bogdanor: Ken Livingstone’s claims are an insult to the truth 

Marcus Dysch: Ken Livingstone claims Jews and Nazis 'collaborated' before the Second World War 

Ian Austin: This is a moment of great shame, and we owe you an apology 

and finally, Marcus Dysch again.:

Livingstone case has opened the floodgates for antisemites  

It has allowed cranks and nutters, whose pathetic expressions were once dismissed out of hand, to feel as though they are part of normal society, and that the matter of Jew-hatred is open to the same sort of rigorous debate as Brexit, house prices and the football. 
Mr Livingstone’s case has, to a large degree, normalised antisemitism. It is no longer a taboo subject. “

This is a meandering tale with no middle, beginning or ending, with perhaps only an indirect connection with the BBC, and I can’t even say I rest my case, because I don’t.

The Livingstone affair continued.

The Ken Livingstone affair has turned into a soap opera.

100 Labour MPs have now expressed their disgust at the leniency of Livingstone’s punishment - temporary suspension rather than expulsion from the party. This is widely seen as a tokenistic punishment for bringing the party into disrepute, the offence with which he was charged and found guilty by a hitherto anonymous committee of three. (It now appears that at least one of the three was far from impartial) 

Jeremy Corbyn has come up with a “sorry if anyone has been offended” apology. (If Corbyn’s statement  sounded slightly more generous than that, its belated timing suggests the sheer weight of numbers of the Labour MPs  who have spoken out forced him to make it.) 

I have had a good look at LabourList.org  - not a site I would normally visit; I ought to say they are making a genuinely sincere effort to examine this issue. Here’s a snippet:

“LabourList reported these comments at the time – as did dozens of other media outlets. Ken has since adopted various defences, all of which are hopeless.

• accusing the Jewish Chronicle of “printing a lie”;  
• attacking Labour’s disciplinary panel, saying only a “biased or rigged jury” could find him guilty of breaking party rules; 
• refusing to apologise and claiming there was “real collaboration” between Nazis and Zionists before the Second World War; 
• apologising “if anyone is upset” by his views when he appeared on BBC Newsnight this week. 

I am not aware of any television programmes, newspapers or blogs which have published significant corrections to their reports of Livingstone’s comments. The editor of the JC derided the ex-MP’s attack on the paper as “bonkers”.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this whole pantomime is the amount of unadulterated Jew-hate that it has unearthed, both in below-the-line comments sections and in general.

The BBC hasn’t helped by narrowing the argument to a diversionary one, of semantics. ‘Did the former Mayor of London say that Hitler was a Zionist, or did he actually say that Hitler “supported” Zionism?’

Who cares? Lost amongst all this irrelevant dancing-on-heads-of-pins obfuscation is ‘context’.

Livingstone insists that his bizarre interpretations of the Ha’avara Agreement are “true” because they come from published material. The public might not know that the work he cites was penned by a tiny number of Marxist, anti-Zionist activists whose revisionist history  is generally considered to be deeply flawed.

As far as I know, no-one from the BBC’s vast reservoir of experts has delved into that argument at all; certainly not in a sufficiently erudite fashion to persuade the public that it’s nonsense. It’s up to the Jews, apparently, to refute these unfounded theories for themselves, and ‘they would do that wouldn’t they’. 

So the stench of an injustice - that Ken has been vilified for ‘telling the truth’ - ever-lingers.

To put paid to Livingstone’s loopy distortions once and for all, the BBC (as per its charter obligations to educate and inform) should immediately air legitimate, authoritative rebuttals such as those by Paul Bogdanor, which are perfectly accessible for those that care to look. 

I suppose the BBC considers them too dry, too difficult and too demanding and not at all what the loony left and the anti-Zionists want to hear.   They are “In our Time” territory at the very least. 

1.)

“First, Hitler despised Zionism. In fact he ridiculed the idea as he was convinced that the Jews would be incapable of establishing and then defending a state. More importantly, he and his government viewed the prospect of a Jewish state in Palestine as part of the broader international Jewish conspiracy which his fevered imagination presented as a dire threat to Germany. While (after robbing them of most of their possessions) the Nazis did allow some German Jews to leave the country in the 1930s in order to travel to Palestine, that policy was primarily driven by a desire to get the Jews out of Germany rather than to build a Jewish state in Palestine. 

By the late 1930s the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who later collaborated with the Nazis in wartime Berlin, had informed German diplomats stationed in Jerusalem that the entry of Jews into Palestine from Germany was angering local Arabs. For reasons of their own, the Nazis cut off Jewish emigration in 1941 to pursue their goal of murdering Europe’s Jews. This ignorance about the implications of the Holocaust is stunning.”

2.)

Defending himself during the Labour Party inquiry into his past statements about antisemitism, Ken Livingstone has unleashed a series of unfounded charges of “collaboration” between Jews and Nazis. 

According to him, not only was there a deal with the Third Reich (the Transfer Agreement or Ha’avara), but the SS also established training camps for German Jews, Hitler passed a law permitting the flying of the Zionist flag, and the Nazis supplied weapons (Mauser pistols) to the Jewish underground. 

All these claims are distortions or inventions. The Transfer Agreement, for example, allowed the salvaging of some German-Jewish assets from confiscation by Hitler’s regime while facilitating the rescue of many thousands of individuals. In his written submission to the Labour inquiry, Livingstone cites two sources on the agreement: one paper by Yf’aat Weiss and another by Francis Nicosia, who is also the author of two books examining the issue. Neither the papers nor Nicosia’s books endorse the “collaboration” fantasy.
  

3.)

“Brenner was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in 1937. By his teenage years, he was an atheist and a Marxist. In the 1960s he was arrested repeatedly for his activities in the civil rights movement and for marijuana possession, ultimately spending several years in prison. An acquaintance from those years remembered him as ‘a non-student “Marxist agitator” who would stand near the Bancroft strip and rail about the Pope, the Bay of Pigs, and marijuana, indifferent to the fact that most passersby thought he was “certifiably crazy”’ (Berkleyan, 2004).”

Revisionist historian Lenni Brenner

It shouldn’t really be necessary to have to rebut "Ken’s" theories at all. Why not? Because the all important context has been forgotten. 

Don’t forget, the reason his opinion was sought in the first place was because of Naz Shah’s unfortunate reTweet, and also because of the spate of antisemitic comments made by several Labour MPs, which eventually forced Jeremy Corbyn into the disgraceful Shami Chakrabarti debacle.

It shouldn’t be necessary to remind anybody that Livingstone’s ridiculous TV and radio performances were specifically concocted to defend Naz Shah even after she had confessed to her own, allegedly inadvertent, antisemitism; she’d apologised profusely for it and made considerable effort to understand it.

I don’t care whether the Labour Party expels Ken Livingstone because Jeremy Corbyn’s hopeless leadership has rendered the Labour Party an irrelevance. 

This particular episode together with numerous others, which Daphne Anson has neatly collated all but guarantees that “Ken” has made enough of a fool of himself to demolish what credibility he once had, and it looks as if he’s taking his racist followers with him. So, good.

I care more about the BBC’s duty to put things right. It must cease caving in to revisionists and distorters of history and it must replace nonsense with authentic historical data, tout suite. Pandering to Jew-hating Islam, for whatever reason, is wrong. By giving undue credibility to fools the BBC flaunts its own ineptitude.

Update: 
Naz Shah has tweeted again.  (Some of the replies are illuminating) 

While the cat’s away

With Craig temporarily off-piste, or piste-off - I’m not quite sure - this site is likely to become more Jewy than some readers might find necessary. 

It might even make some of our readers piste-off too, but I make no apology. While the cat’s away and all that.

Here are some things that have been on my mind for the last few days, then I’ll leave you alone.

One of the issues that have been simmering away for quite a while is that faux academic symposium which is taking place in Cork, right now.
  
(Update: More here. David Collier is there, reporting the event on our behalf.)

It calls itself a conference, and with all the speakers bar one hell-bent on delegitimising Israel, it certainly lives up to the definition: a formal meeting of people with a shared interest.

Of course this is something the BBC has no interest in, but as it is so controversial, (well, it is with some of us) you’d think at least it would have been featured on The Big Questions. Perhaps it will be, tomorrow?

The other thing that is taking place right now has been reported by your most trustworthy of broadcasters. 

It’s Ken Livingstone’s optimistic response to the hearing which is to decide whether his ‘Hitler’ remarks brought the Labour party into disrepute. Things are going his way, he’s beginning to think. 

Good old Ken. I hope they do reinstate him, for the very good reason that it will further cement the Labour party’s well-established ‘disrepute’. 

Never mind that he’s steadfastly determined that Hitler’s helpful approach to deporting Germany’s Jews was ‘supporting Zionism’ and nothing to do with antisemitism, despite Naz Shah’s belated admission that the Tweet in question absolutely was.

Never mind whether he did or did not say that Hitler was a Zionist. Even he realises that that is an absurdity too far.

Ho hum. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Beyond our Ken

Oh dear. The Daily Politics featured the Ken Livingstone inquiry. Is Ken bringing the Labour Party into disrepute? Do Bulgarian flower-pickers shit in the woods?

Will Ken be reinstated? 

Jo Coburn had a go at Jonathan Rosenhead (vice-chair of “Free Speech on Israel” which I assume is an Israel-bashing group of self-hating Jews and other antis) She reminded us that Ken went into this whole business (digging himself deeper each time he appears in public) whilst defending Naz Shah whose antisemitic Tweet she had already, rather remorsefully, apologised for. Ros Altmann also reminded us of that.

If Hitler did co-operate  (the Haavara agreement) with the Zionists in his early pre-extermination-camp period, it merely represented the first stage in ridding Germany of the 'Jewish pest'. 

It was antisemitism, wholly antisemitism and nothing but antisemitism.

We can dance with semantics on the Rosenhead of a pin till the cows come home, but it’s still antisemitism, but the labour Party is in disrepute either way. They may as well reinstate him. It can’t make the Labour Party much more obnoxious than it already is..

Andrew Neil made a funny joke at the end.

Elor Azaria Guilty and other Israel-related controversies.

Please excuse recent dereliction of duty blogwise (due to obligatory seasonal spike in Domestic Goddessness)

Shame, just when so much has been happening, too. 

John Kerry’s rambling speech rationalising Barack Obama’s vengeful decision not to veto a UNSC resolution that was so badly constructed that it shunted the prospect of peace even further into oblivion. 

Then our own government shamefully emerging as co-architect of that very resolution, the one John Kerry was attempting to defend, making both Theresa May’s pro-Israel speech at CFI and her public denunciation of John Kerry’s look expedient and insincere.

The fact is, the Government, the BBC and the man in the street do actually believe settlements are the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

********

All day yesterday the media were reporting the latest news about Elor Azaria the young IDF medic who had just been convicted of manslaughter by an Israeli court in a case quite similar to the one concerning Royal Marine Sergeant Alexander Blackman, described here.

I understand most popular opinion in the UK is with the soldier whose ‘battle fatigue’ defence struck a chord with the public, if not with conventional military due process. 

In both cases there is an element of the show-trial, where any perceived leniency could tarnish the reputations of the respective armed forces - although in the eyes of the BBC-educated British public the IDF’s reputation comes pre-tarnished - that is despite Col. Richard Kemp’s constant attempts to convince hordes of people who don’t want to hear it that Israel’s army is the most moral in the world.

Owen Bennett Jones said: “… Almost certainly the case, isn’t it, if it hadn’t been filmed, this [prosecution] would never have happened?” (H/T Happy Goldfish) Which is probably quite true of many parallel incidents and not necessarily confined to the I/P conflict. 

This piece in Haaretz is informative  and several other Israeli press reports from varying perspectives are linked by Honest Reporting here.  The  btl comments fields are illuminating.

Yolande Knell was on the BBC a lot yesterday, and, to be honest, despite her sour-faced delivery, her reporting wasn’t as unfair as it initially looked.  At first I thought she was far too keen to stress that the verdict “has divided Israeli society”, but I see she is by no means alone in remarking on that. What did jar, though, was her statement that some Israelis are calling Azaria a hero, which seemed to me an acute case of projection, for in Yolande’s ‘Arab World’, referring to any killer of an Israeli as “a hero” is de rigueur. 

Later though, I imagine as context, Knell presented a short clip of a young Israeli woman explaining that she did indeed regard Azaria as a hero. I took it as a generalised comment, which could be applied to all soldiers whose duty it was to put their lives on the line to confront murderous terrorists, rather than an endorsement of one specific act of manslaughter; but if I suspect Yolande Knell of cherry-picking that particular nugget for its apparent Palestinian-like qualities simply to inject false moral equivalence, I too may be projecting.

Like those vexatious, aggressive lawfare attacks that have been in the news lately, these public military trials will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on any or all soldiers. We mustn’t confuse peacetime criminality with acts necessitated by states of war.  

Here’s a piece about global media coverage. 

Whenever the BBC wheels Ken Livingstone in to express himself on any random matter my first instinct is one of extreme irritation that he has been given a platform (is he or is he not still suspended from the Labour Party?) but then I have to remind myself that there are certain people who feel sore affronted by the very appearance of Mark Regev on TV, even if, unlike Ken, his opinion is relevant to the matter in hand.

So when I heard Mustafa Barghouti opining to Tim Franks on BBC World Service, Newshour, I had to check to determine whether my instantaneous revulsion at hearing from him on the BBC was justified. In Barghouti World, the wounded Palestinian’s actual knife-attack had been completely air-brushed out of the equation, along with all the Palestine-shaped, blood-soaked-knife images that emanate from the PA. And Tim Franks, ever deferential, hardly batted an eyelid.

The thread on Harry’s Place airs some of the issues more thoroughly. For once Marc Goldberg sets out the case with extreme brevity and lets the btl department take care of all the nuance.  Bit of a shame that the comments are automatically deleted after a short time. 

******

The biggest impediment to a deeper understanding of the Israel situation is the widespread lack of knowledge. Tim Montgomerie of all people had written a surprising (to me) piece in the Tims (£) and the btl comments were a mixed bag, though, again surprising to me, mostly supportive. 

"Israeli settlements are not the real barrier to peace"

“When you are surrounded by people who want you dead, Israelis can’t be blamed for not rushing to repeat what happened after their 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. Vacated settlements became launchpads for missile attacks. I’ve visited the bomb shelters that Israeli schoolchildren scurry to when alarms sound.What those who deserted Israel at the UN miss, including Barack Obama and Theresa May, is that today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be understood within the context of the radicalisation of the region. Israel is in the front line against radical Islam and, in the words of the author Sam Harris: “We are all living in Israel, it’s just some of us haven’t realised it yet.” 

And here is a history lesson from Melanie Phillips. Whatever you might think of her politics, she knows her history. (please excuse video trespassing on sidebar)

Ken Livingstone v Mishal Husain

And yes, Ken did mention him

Here's a transcript of the interview from this morning's Today that appears to have really got people talking. It's Ken Livingstone on Fidel Castro.

Reactions to the interview seem to be just as sharply divided as the reactions to the ex-Cuban dictator's demise. I think it's safe to say that the far-Left are not happy with Mishal Husain.

******

Mishal Husain: How do you think we should remember him?

Ken Livingstone: I think an absolute giant of the 20th Century. If you had to live in any Latin American country you would have chosen Cuba because your children would have had good education and decent healthcare. Everywhere else in Latin America, small, corrupt elites, dictatorships. It was a beacon of light, I think, to people all over Latin America.

Mishal Husain: "A beacon of light", you say. And yet in his last year in power in 2007 Human Rights Watch said he was "the architect of a repressive machinery constructed over half a century", that under him "Cuban citizens had been systematically deprived of their fundamental rights to free expression, privacy, association of assembly, movement and due process of law"?

Ken Livingstone: Yes, but he was effectively in a war situation. He was constantly living with the threat of being overthrown and other American intervention. There was a completely illegal American block on trade which damaged their economy. And you've got to remember he came to power at the height of the Cold War. And I think, yes, had he...had America taken a different position, allowed him to develop, you might have moved more towards a traditional democracy and much better human rights. But he was living with eight attempts at assassination authorised by American presidents.

Mishal Husain (interrupting): You would really...sorry, you would really dismiss all of that criticism of his record in Cuba by saying he was in a 'war situation' for his entire period in power?

Ken Livingstone: It was...He lived with the constant fear of being over....just...It wasn't just in Cuba. When people elected democratic left-wing governments in Chile, Brazil and in Argentina, America, with its influence over there, militarily had them overthrown and tens of thousands of people killed and tortured afterwards. Basically the whole of that post-war period America wanted to keep control of Latin America so the mineral resources, the wealth, flowed to American corporations and didn't go to the local people.

Mishal Husain: Well, whatever the criticism of US policy in that period - and there are plenty - he was nevertheless someone who had absolute control over his country. He could do anything he wanted to do. In fact, he set up a whole system to make sure that dissent was completely clamped down on. And yet you seem willing to excuse all of that because of...because of what America was doing at that time.

Ken Livingstone: Well, absolutely. The position was...You actually look at the people of Vietnam struggling for their freedom. America killed 3.5 million of them. It was an unbelievably unhappy world to actually...and be trying to assert your independence and your own control over your own economy. And the simple fact is, yes, of course Fidel did things that were wrong but he was living in a world where....

Mishal Husain (interrupting): Go on. What did he do wrong? Talk about what he did that was wrong. 

Ken Livingstone: I mean, initially, he wasn't very good on lesbian and gay rights. Erm, but the key things that mattered were that people had a good education, good healthcare and wealth was evenly distributed. He was not living as a billionaire laundering money off into Panamanian bank accounts, or anything like that. He was good for the people.

Mishal Husain (interrupting): OK, so just to be clear. You would rather...you personally would rather live in a country with decent literacy and healthcare than a proper democracy?

Ken Livingstone: Well, if you have a proper democracy you'll get those things. But most of the democracies we've seen in the Third World, not just Latin America, have effectively been fronts for American imperialism and terrible things have been done to people who threaten that.

Mishal Husain (interrupting): Well, no, no, but...I asked you which of those scenarios you would rather have lived in; which you would choose; whether you think it's an acceptable trade-off. 

Ken Livingstone: If you'd said to me. 'You're going to live as an ordinary person in Cuba or in Brazil under the dictatorship there I'd have gone for Cuba.

Mishal Husain: Despite the fact that in all the political activity, everything that you've based your career on, would never have been possible in Castro's Cuba?

Ken Livingstone: No. I would have been a supporter of Castro. (Mishal Husain laughs). There was...

Mishal Husain (interrupting): Therefore, you're happy that no one could have had...no one even today can really have...an opposite view, openly?

Ken Livingstone: No. I've been there many times. It's a very open and relaxed society. And the simple fact is I'm sure they will over time move towards something like a traditional West European democracy but it could have happened a lot earlier if you hadn't had, the entire time, the blockade by America, attempts to overthrow the regime, eight assassination attempts authorised by American presidents. If you're doing things like that...I mean, we didn't have a fully functioning democracy during World War II. It was shut down. The general election was cancelled. Anyone expressing support for Hitler was thrown into prison. If you're living in a wartime situation it's not good for democracy.

Smoking kills

Mishal Husain (interrupting):  You've already...On Cuba...on Cuba...on Cuba - and Castro, because that's what we're talking about today - you've already acknowledged that you are partisan on this. You've been to Cuba as a supporter of the Castros. Let me tell you...give you an independent view. Human Rights Watch last year said, "Today the Cuban government represses dissent, discourages public criticism. Short-term arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders, independent journalists and other critics have increased dramatically. Other repressive tactics include beatings, public acts of shaming and the termination of employment". This is the country that you're a fan of.

Ken Livingstone: That...and that is happening all over the world. And that's a simple, brutal fact because we're still in a position where American imperialism, hiding itself in a much better way than British imperialism did, continues to undermine anyone that threatens its control of their economic wealth. 

Mishal Husain: And, therefore, any...If you follow that logic then any country which says it's facing that sort of oppression from the outside can do anything it likes within its own borders and you wouldn't have a problem with it?

Ken Livingstone: No. I would...I would oppose all of those things. I'd say, "It's time to move towards a proper democracy. You're not under a threat now." I mean, I don't think there's any prospect of an American invasion, even if Trump goes  a little bit bonkers....

Mishal Husain (interrupting):  So you would, therefore, attack all of this happening today?

Ken Livingstone: I mean, I would argue it's time to move on and put that behind. But throughout all those decades they lived with the fear of being overthrown, and the simple fact of the matter is you can walk down the streets in Havana and talk to people openly and relax in a way that you can't in a lot of brutal dictatorships supported by the West all over the world. 

Mishal Husain: But the things that you have...you say you have had a problem with, did you ever put that to the Castros?

Ken Livingstone: No. I mean, I was always dealing with the mayor of Havana. I never met Fidel or his brother Raul. The simple fact is they wanted advice on how you should...how you can develop their own things like that.  I think the last time I was there - 2008 - it was one of their sporting events which we were supporting. 

Mishal Husain: Hmmm. (Pause). Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London, thank you very much for talking to us.

Ken tells the truth again

Ken Livingstone was on Sky News  today, treating us to an almost identical interview to yesterday’s Victoria Derbyshire one. No doubt it’ll be on YouTube soon if it isn’t already. 

As before, he was invited on to Sky to opine about Keith Vaz, but it wasn’t long before Kay Burley brought up “Hitler”. 

Ken still insists that what he said was true. Obviously nothing is ever going to change his mind about that.

 Pity Kay Burley was so poorly briefed. It’s as if everyone has forgotten why he said what he said. (“Hitler  was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”)

He said it in defence of the indefensible, i.e., Naz Shah, who has already admitted to a string of antisemitic tweets, pleading ignorance or insanity, apologised and promised not to do it again.

“For Ken Livingstone to say Hitler was a Zionist is offensive – well, of course that would be offensive. I wouldn’t just apologise if I’d said that, I’d have been straight off to my GP to check if I was in the first stage of dementia. Hitler hated and loathed Jews, but that didn’t stop him doing a deal with the Zionist movement in the 1930s.”

Since people have already posited the theory that Ken is in the first, or some other stage of dementia, bringing it up all by himself in the form of a metaphor seems a bit close to the bone. 

He didn’t say Hitler was a Zionist - he said Hitler was supporting Zionism. See? Two completely different things, with plenty of wiggle room, or slither room if you like; enough for him to slither sideways with an almost conciliatory elucidation ….that the Zionists could’t help it, and he didn’t blame them, and what’s more Norman Finkelstein agrees with him, and no-one could call Norman Finkelstein antisemitic! 

At the end of the section, Kay Burley read out a message from a viewer complaining that Ken was given a platform.

Kay Burley put her down quite superciliously, saying ‘That’s democracy”. 

Not really, Kay. That’s show biz.

Ken Livingstone on anti-semitism row: you can't say "telling the truth can bring the Labour party into disrepute" https://t.co/yUH5zWnfGn

— Sky News (@SkyNews) 7 September 2016

You can't blame the Zionists

Wasn’t it a bit weird to see Ken slithering sideways over his Hitler remarks on the Victoria Derbyshire show this morning. 

“The Zionists had to work with Hitler”  is his latest plea - “it wasn’t their fault”.

People keep bounding up to him in the street to encourage him, he attests. They say: “I’m Jewish and I know you’re right! Don’t let the bastards grind you down”. In fact, he's sure that the whole enquiry into his conduct and reinstatement is has stalled because everyone knows he’s right.

However deep his hole doth grow (must be near Australia by now)  he still can’t slither out of the context in which he made the remark. Defending Naz Shah, if you remember. Now that she’s been reinstated it appears that she’s still under investigation by the CPS.  (Not that anything will come of it) but a number of other incriminating remarks have surfaced, which she would find difficult to defend, although her ‘deep and sincere’ apology might  cover them. 

To her credit Victoria Derbyshire appeared suitably cynical throughout, and she did a mean, 'BBC thing' to poor old Ken at the end of his appearance.  She summed by announcing the very thing he’d just spent the last ten minutes trying to slither out of, i.e., that Ken still claims that Hitler supported the Zionists. Or was it the other way round? Anyway, I don’t imagine he’ll be very pleased with that. 

You’d have to have a heart of stone……. etc etc. 

Home affairs enquiry

Sorry for the tardiness and belatedness of this post. Others have tackled it before me but  let’s go ahead anyway. The other parliamentary event that took place this week was the Home Affairs Select Committee enquiry about the rise of antisemitism. 

transcript

 video

This was chaired by Keith Vaz, who pronounces antisemitism with an ‘’e’, as in “antisemetic” .

Watching Keith Vaz being forensic and painstaking in that laboured manner of his is very annoying, and it makes him look a bit thick. He began by making Jonathan Arkush define antisemitism, dragging it out as though he’d never heard of such a thing in his life. It was quite an emetic, in fact. He used attitudes to ‘the right to self-determination’ as a kind of litmus test.

For all the laborious, misdirected unpickings of what is and what isn’t antisemitism, those familiar, lazy, defamatory generalizations were left hanging in the air.

This enquiry left an overriding impression of unchallenged falsehoods and inaccuracies, ranging from the ubiquitous “What Israel is doing to the Palestinians” to Ken Livingstone’s “700,000 Palestinians who were driven out of their homes illegally at gunpoint”  - not to mention the fact that Hitler supported Zionism because he was keen to rid Germany of all its Jews by deporting them to Palestine (before he went mad and killed 6,000,000.)

What was the point of it all?  Does it relate to Shami Chakrabarti’s ill-conceived chairmanship of the inquiry into antisemitism in the Labour Party, which is morphing into an enquiry into all kinds of racism including Islamophobia? It happened; therefore it was.

MPs who were sympathetic to Jonathan Arkush and hostile to Ken Livingstone still appeared to be in agreement that condemnation of Israel was understandable because of “What it is doing to the Palestinians”, but they seemed to think that the elusive affliction known as antisemitism was shameful and a real menace. Nobody seemed to wonder why Israel kept on  “doing” stuff to the Palestinians.  It was unanimous. Everyone, including forensic examiner Keith Vaz agreed that criticism of Israel was not antisemitic.

Mr Winnick: 

The last question I want to ask is arising from what the Chair asked you about Israel. You accept entirely that criticism of Israel is perfectly compatible with non-racism, and that it is not connected automatically in any way with antisemitism. The criticism of Israel, which could be very strong indeed—some, indeed myself would say that it is often very much justified—is not antisemitic.

The most interesting sound-bite and quotable performance arose from Chuka Imunna’s dramatic speech, somewhat marred by his consciousness of the need to preempt the inevitable trolling. That says a lot about the atmosphere in Corbyn’s current Labour Party, and is a tacit admission that antisemitism is the very thing that is motivating the predicted trolls.

“You know what? I will get trolled incessantly after this exchange. I don’t care—” 

He still let Livingstone get away with his appalling lies, if indeed he recognised them as lies. 

The speech, for which the Chairman admonished him -  “This is not an opportunity to make statements” - began:

“I just say this to Mr Livingstone. You were born in my constituency and you went to school in it. I and many other Labour colleagues of all backgrounds and faiths campaigned not just once but twice for you to be Mayor, and I think you campaigned for me. You did help reduce poverty, you did help reduce inequality and you did improve the housing situation in our capital city.”

 It’s all very well to set out a couple of carefully selected examples of Mayor Livingstone implementing Labour values, thereby excusing his party’s support for Livingstone’s mayoralty. An aspiring Labour rising star could do no other. But it does look hypocritical to have overlooked, as Umunna seems to have done,  Livingstone’s record of ( amongst other things)   courting such disreputable people as Qaradawi and the disgraced Lee Jasper. 

“But you are not a historian. You are a politician. And by needlessly and repeatedly offending Jewish people in this way you have not only betrayed our Labour values but betrayed your legacy as Mayor because all you are now going to be remembered for is becoming a pin-up for the kind of prejudice that our party was built to fight against. That is a huge shame and it is an embarrassment. “

That is if one overlooks the other (aforementioned) memorable contributions to the legacy of this particular pin-up boy.

Ken Livingstone is not alone in his attitude to Israel, Jews and his malignant version of history. Why do they so readily believe (and I’ve heard it from others) that (in 1948) 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes at gunpoint? 

Chuka Umunna could offer no substantive challenge to this falsehood, thus considerably weakening the whole enquiry.

Ken Livingstone: No, no. It is a catastrophe in the sense that the deal done was for two states and a division. The tragedy is—and it is the legacy that still leads to violence today—that 700,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes illegally at gun point. The Prime Minister of Israel said, “The old will d 

Mr Umunna: Sorry, we only get a small amount of time to ask you questions. Either you thought it was wrong, and it was a great catastrophe, or not. Yes or no?  

Ken Livingstone: It was right to say that we will create a haven for those Jews who wish to go there. It was not right for the Israeli Government to expel— Mr Umunna: Ken, was it a catastrophe and was it wrong or not?  

Ken Livingstone: It was not wrong to create it. It was a catastrophe to expel at gun point 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. 

Mr Umunna: Sorry—that was not the question I asked.

Over the page: Transcript. Umunna and Livingstone.

A Ken Livingstone joke

As it's a lovely sunny day, here's a joke from BBC radio comedy producer Ed Morrish:

Ken's way

Ken Livingstone is on BBC Politics again defending the historical accuracy of his comments about Hitler. He says “any Jew will tell you that I’m right” and “It’s a pity that MPs don’t know their history”.

It’s interesting to watch the video of Ken on an Arabic TV station that’s been doing the rounds recently, in which he sets out his position on western interference in the Middle East. 

It does give one an insight into his thinking, but his theories about our disastrous interventions in Iraq and Libya and the creation of Israel feature one glaring omission. 

He seems to have no interest or awareness of Islam.

You can easily look up some of his appearances on Press TV online.

This is true, deeply ingrained, antisemitism. It’s not about big noses. It’s a complete lack of empathy and a particular type of suspiciousness, which dehumanizes Jews and regards them as  ‘other’. It explains Jeremy Corbyn too.  It shows where they are both  “coming from”.

It certainly is a shame that so few people know history, especially those in the upper echelons of the BBC. (And those lower down the rankings)

The interviews are, again, slightly missing the point. Jo Coburn and Huw Edwards are out of their depth, so all they can chase from Ken is an admission of regret or an apology. 

An apology they’re not going to get. “I was stating the truth, and some of my best AsaJew friends will back me up” 

As for regrets, I have a few,

But then again, 

too few to mention

I did what I had to do

And saw it through without exemption

"What Israel did"

The coverage of antisemitism in the Labour Party and antisemitism in general is still going on, but I get the sense that it’s going nowhere. 

Most of the chief T.V. anchors that find themselves hosting discussions on this topic are out of their depth, therefore incapable of getting anywhere near the heart of the matter.

They’re jacks of all trades, and when tackling a specialised and vitally important subject such as antisemitism, distinctly lacking in mastery.  

It doesn't help matters that the interviewees on both sides of the divide are mostly plucked from the left, no doubt through left-leaning commissioning editors.

Where are the Muslim voices? What are their opinions on antisemitism? Which BBC anchor-person is putting them under forensic interrogation?  Let’s hear something straight from the horse’s mouth.

Jeremy Corbyn has employed a well-known antisemite, Seumas Milne as a strategist. Where are the penetrating questions about that?

There is one predominant thread that seems to run throughout all the T.V. coverage, be it by interviewer or interviewee, and that is the so-called importance of separating ‘criticism of Israel’ from antisemitism. Some go so far as insisting that ‘anti-Zionism isn’t necessarily antisemitism, and should be assumed ‘not’, unless otherwise stated.

Without any understanding of what Zionism is, debating this subject meaningfully is difficult, if not completely pointless, but without any understanding of the history of the Middle East, ‘criticism of Israel‘ reduces layers of complexity to a crude, blunt and dangerous instrument.

 Just before the first question (about antisemitism in the Labour Party) was brought to an unusually premature finish by a nervous Dimbleby, a Q.T. audience member illustrated this kind of thing. Referring to the recent NUS controversy, she put her hand up to say: 

  “I’ve seen antisemitism used as a political tool [..] antisemitism is not the same as disagreeing with what Israel did. It’s not the same thing.” 

What Israel did

“What Israel did.” “What Israel does to the Palestinians”  This sort of expression is all that’s needed to get the ignorant mob clapping and cheering and nodding with moral superiority.

Sky News brought George Galloway in to the studio. The anchor was totally out of his depth, so  not only did he allow a predictable stream of racist venom to penetrate the consciousness  of hundreds of viewers, Sky quite unnecessarily helped revive a waning public profile that should have been left to die a natural death. Who knows, it might revitalise his "0% success rate" campaign for London Mayor.

People have been expressing all manner of racist bile, too. No wonder the unleashing of this monster has raised concerns for Britain’s Jews.  One moment there were sighs of relief that at long last this issue was being openly discussed, next minute there were fears that this was one Pandora of a box that should never have been meddled with. It’s the backlash. Which brings up all sorts of parallels, legitimate and illegitimate. Let’s address the knotty subject of ‘tarring with the same brush’.

We have Sir Philip Green, who has recently come under scrutiny for dumping a massive pension debt onto someone (or group) that lacks the wherewithal to honour it, impliedly following a pattern set by the late Sir Robert Maxwell.

This article entitled “The Demonisation of Philip Green” in the Financial Times (£) says “the demonisation is ugly and disproportionate.” However, many of the btl commenters are not so sure. They don’t like Philip Green, and you can’t help wondering if there is more behind this sentiment than meets the eye.

The OMG Daily Mail has gone to town with a luridly vilifying piece which attacks the  Green family and all who sail in her. Not to mention that yacht. I must say the yacht is a thing to behold. It literally screams vulgarity. “Look at me, I’m the embodiment of greed, bad taste and a massive waste of £100m that could have re- floated the NHS single-handedly.” 

Yep. The Greens are not doing the image of British Jewry a lot of good. But, and it’s a big but. Is there truly a comparison with that, and, say,  ‘tarring the whole Muslim community with the evildoings of ISIS?’ 

You mustn’t tar all Muslims with the same brush, even though “the UK Muslim community” have stated that while they support a whole tranche of anti-democratic, illiberal beliefs, they do not support Islamic State, and some still claim Islamic State is nothing to do with Islam. 

The theory that Jews are considerably richer than yow is definitely flawed. It’s a myth.  I have no idea whether or not the bulk of the Jewish community hanker after super-yachts, or whether, given half a chance, they would offload huge debts without a care in the world. Trevor Phillips should organise a poll;  I can only assure you that I, for one do not and would not.  But, there is a palpable tendency to insinuate that the perceived greed of one man and his family exemplifies a racial characteristic. (No-one seems to do the same thing when someone Jewish like Green provides employment by running successful businesses.)  

The backlash is as inevitable as the continuing, ever-present antisemitism. Nothing will change unless the BBC and the other mainstream channels address the issues head-on with some balanced and thorough information, concerning both the history and the current situation surrounding the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. Truthful reporting of Arab incitement would be a good start. 

As it is, George Galloway and Ken Livingstone are given plenty of space to implant the implausible idea that Hitler collaborated with Zionists and supported Zionism. This is one interpretation of events leading up to WWll adopted by certain Judeophobic writers and authors - some of them Jews  themselves. These writings are popular with a particular kind of audience; reviews and comments related to these publications show which kind of person the notion appeals to.

I expect the BBC will lose interest in this topic (don’t forget John Whittingdale; don’t forget the migrant crisis.) (What? forgotten already?) And I get the sense that it’s already ebbing away, just leaving behind a nasty, scummy stench.

Update:

It seems Ken intends to “prove” the accuracy of his  argument because everything he said about Jewish people "was true".

He says Labour should reinstate him.  “I will be presenting the academic book about that to the Labour Party inquiry,” he said.” I understand it’s all there in a book by an American Marxist-Trotskyist writer author named Lenni Brenner.

He may as well quote David Irving to prove something or other about the Holocaust.

“It is inconceivable that Hitler could have wanted to move Jews to Israel, because there was no such place in 1932.Using the word "Israel" when what is meant was "the British mandate of Palestine" has the unfortunate consequence of stripping away the actual historical context and putting the words "Hitler" and "Israel" in the same sentence.Hitler was not a supporter of Zionism.He believed, on the contrary, that Zionism was one of many deliberately deceptive labels that Jews placed upon what he believed to be their endless striving for global power and the extermination of the human species.”

********

Jeremy Corbyn has no comment when asked what he intends to do about accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party https://t.co/guqNXzPTpt

— Sky News (@SkyNews) 29 April 2016