Look out!

 

The NUS is belatedly looking at antisemitism.  (Is this an attempt to rehabilitate the Labour Party?)

Come on guys. Let’s not wang on about the Oxford Street bus incident and other low-hanging fruits that skirt over or miss the underlying problem. 

It’s a much more fundamental issue, which the NUS is unlikely to fully confront anytime soon. 

The BBC is dutifully fulfilling its holocaust-day-related obligations but the media’s annual mawkish celebration of that tragic historical event is not enough. Constant ahistorical pro-Palestinianism is hobbling rational debate. Antisemitism (and its proxy anti-Israelism) is back with a vengeance in Britain,  America, and Europe. Look out!

Antisemitism on campus

Antisemitism on campus is rife. It turns out that student unions are charities so the Charity Commission is looking into the matter. 

A report about this only went out on the Victoria Derbyshire programme this morning and BBCWatch has covered it already. (!)

I came in halfway through Jon Ironmonger’s report. I missed the intro as well as the footage from the incident at King’s College London earlier this year. But I’ve caught up with it since.

As BBC Watch points out, Jon Ironmonger’s narration includes:

“The Jewish state of Israel is deeply controversial; accused of wide-ranging human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and provoking anger around the world.”

That’s all very well, apart from the fact that the ‘controversy’ and the ‘accusations’ come from the anti-Israel lobby. It’s a bit like me citing one of my own articles to prove that something I said has also been said by ….’me’.

His explanation of the “global BDS movement” contained this little gem:

“BDS pressures Israel to end the occupation of Arab lands by calling for the boycott of Israeli companies and institutions.”

That is so loaded a statement that it’s a wonder it was able to float.  It both reveals and conceals the aim of the BDS movement all in one go. 

Palestinian activists take care to disguise their wish to dismantle Israel and to replace it with yet another Islamic state. But the 5 emboldened words accidentally reveal the truth; they want to end “the occupation”  but as they consider Israel itself to be ‘occupying Arab lands’ (What are Arab lands?) their true aim is more than clear. 

The problem with superficial reports like this is that they take place against a background of disinformation. BDSers justify their anger at “what Israel is doing to the Palestinians” by citing myths and memes based on falsehoods, anti-Israel propaganda and sheer ignorance of history. I doubt that Jon Ironmonger is any better informed than the anti-Israel activists he’s talking to.

We are told that the NUS did not want to comment, and there was no mention of Malia “Zio” Bouattia’s recent defeat in a new election for the NUS presidency. 

At the same time as the enquiry into antisemitism on campus is taking place, a letter signed by a huge number of anti-Israel activists is doing the rounds. The signatories are ‘artists, musicians and people in the arts’, all of whom want to stop Radiohead performing in Israel.

Some of the signatories are prominent figures and well known Israel-haters such as Roger Waters and Ken Loach; others are more obscure.  The most interesting name on the list is is that of Peter Kosminsky, the Bafta winning director of Wolf Hall. 

 In 2011, when “The Promise”, Kosminsky’s Channel 4 drama series was aired Channel 4 gave it the full treatment. 

The publicity surrounding the production promoted it as a drama-cum-history lesson. Channel 4’s International Editor Lindsay Hilsum's Middle East ‘expertise’ was brought in to enlighten viewers who wanted to know what it was all about and there was a ‘livechat’ in the form of a Q & A session, where curious viewers were ‘educated’ by Kosminsky himself. He claimed to be both an impartial observer and a great authority on the conflict.

After a respectable period of silence the mask slipped and Kosminsky started appearing on the panels of virulent anti-Israel /  pro-Palestinian events alongside several other well-known haters.

It’s hard to see how this state of affairs can ever change while antisemitic / anti-Israel myths and memes continue to thrive and the BBC and Channel 4 does nothing to counteract them.

Opposing racism

I have spent my life opposing racism. Until my dying day I will be opposed to racism in any form."

Jeremy Corbyn

“I’ve fought extremism all my life”

 Sadiq Khan

I’ve always been a strong campaigner against racism and fascism in all its forms.

 Malia Bouattia.

All these people are spending their lives fighting racism and extremism, so there's nothing  to worry  about. Move along.

Daily Politics. 

“In 2011 she claimed, for example, that Birmingham University had become something of a Zionist outpost” 

said Jo Coburn, introducing a short clip of Malia Bouattia addressing the NUS conference last week.

“I know that many of you will have seen my name dragged through the mud by right-wing media. You’ll have read that I’m a terrorist, that my politics is driven by hate. How wrong that is. I know too well the price of terrorism; the consequences of violence and oppression. I saw a country ripped apart by terror and was pushed into exile by (indecipherable) I know too well the damage done by racism and persecution I faced it every day.......and I will continue to fight  in all its forms whoever its target, whether it’s antisemitism Islamophobia, Xenophobia or any other bigoted idea and I’m so glad we passed a motion (indecipherable) 

said the newly elected president of the NUS in trembly voice, and towards the finale, a little stilted arm-waving.  

I’m not sure who from the right-wing press (the Telegraph?) accused her of being a terrorist but I suspect it was no-one. Someone might have impudently mentioned that she blocked a motion condemning ISIS, which might be Islamophobic.

I understand that she experienced “a hail of gunfire” as a child, but her by her own admission it doesn’t look as if she was exactly “pushed into exile”. 

She told the NUS conference in Brighton:

 “It wasn’t the bombs and the bullets, it was the fear for our education that drove them to leave everything behind” “They taught me that education is key to liberation, that it would give me the power to change the world.” 

Not necessarily in a good way;

In the studio with Jo Coburn were Nadhim Zahawi MP (Con) and Chris Bryant MP (lab) and Jonty Leibowitz of Cambridge University.

Jo Coburn turned to Christy McMorrow, president of the Sheffield University Students' Union,  whose face appeared on a screen. He was speaking from Sheffield. 

Christy McMorrow

“Why do you think Malia Bouattia called Birmingham University something of a Zionist outpost?”

said Jo Coburn

“Well obviously a lot of this ties up with campaigners for the rights of Palestinian self-determination and Palestinian liberation. Malia probably thought that on campus there was a lot of support for the state of Israel and in her campaigning for the rights of Palestinians and for Palestinian self-existence she found a lot of opposition, and I think that is where that came form. Perhaps the language could have been better.” 

“Zionism. That is used to explicitly mean right-wing Zionism or support for the current State of Israel. That’s not always accurate but I think Malia has already come forward and said she wants to talk to students”  

If Christy McMorrow is representative of your average student, as I suspect he is, I think the message is that he means well, but doesn’t have much of a clue. He knows next to nothing of the situation in the Middle East, besides the deafening racket made by Malia’s friends from the PSC and their ilk.

Jonty Leibowitz

Jonty Leibowitz; Cambridge University Society,  said:

“everyone knows that antisemitism isn’t anti Zionism and anti Zionism isn’t antisemitism....but sometimes they do conflate” 

Everyone doesn’t know that, though. Jonty is an unapologetic lefty, and sadly not a very impressive spokesperson for any Jewish student who happens to support the State of Israel, current, past or future. 

Nadhim Zahawi said:

 “if we mean by Zionist someone who wants to protect the State of Israel it should not be a negative [...] the implication there is that Zionism is a bad thing”  “Malia would be wise to dissociate herself from these comments.”

Chris Bryant tried to play down the Labour Party’s dalliance with antisemitism.

 “Antisemitism is always wrong. It was wrong when the Tory party was advocating it in the 30s, it’s wrong when people in the Labour party espouse antisemitic views - or near antisemitic views - today”

“And is this what this is?

“I’m not quite sure. It’s bordering on the edge, and that’s why i think she’d be wise to...”

“Apologise?”

“Look at different ways of expressing herself, because - look, I think we do bandy the word Zionist around so it almost sounds like a kind of pejorative term, and that’s the real danger here - I mean incidentally I think this applies to  how we treat Muslims in politics as well. [... ]Sadiq Khan[.........] 

“I count myself as a Labour friend of Israel and a Labour friend of Palestine in the Middle East and I want the two-state solution to succeed. It pains me that we are now in a situation where Israel, partly thanks to Netanyahu’s government, which I dislike 

(brief shot of Jonty nodding) 

and I think people on the left should be perfectly free to criticise Netanyahu’s government, that doesn’t make you antisemitic. My anxiety is that there seems so little prospect of peace.”

 The entire group, bar one, seemed to hold the view that Jewish students couldn’t be held responsible for the ‘current’, (extremely disagreeable) state of Israel, and we’re supposed to think that’s magnanimous, liberal thinking.

The only participant in that discussion who seemed to know what he was talking about was the least likely of the lot, even if it would be deemed racist of me to say so. 

(It was, of course Nadhim Zahawi MP.) 

 Chris Bryant is smug enough to describe himself as a friend of Israel. Superficial brownie points for that. But he blames PM Netanyahu, solely,  for the absence of peace. He’s proud of himself for uncoupling Jews from the Israeli government he dislikes so much, and thinks everyone should do likewise. Do not conflate the two, he warns. At the same time he thinks mentioning Sadiq Khan’s links with extremists is racist and we should not be ‘perfectly free ‘ to criticise him for such things.

In other words we’re free to criticise the Israeli government, but not, somehow the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas. We can’t criticise the real obstacle to peace in the Middle East.  We can’t mention the elephantine problem of antisemitism amongst the Muslim and Muslim-sympathising student bodies, let alone criticise it.