Last week, I upset a lot of people by suggesting Zionists saw themselves as “chosen”. My words were badly chosen and poorly used, and I’m sorry for it. But accusations of antisemitism have also been intemperate. One can accept the right of Israel to exist, while still believing that the manner in which the nation was created – against the wishes of many of the people already living there, hundreds of thousands of whom became refugees – was problematic and made a contribution to Israel’s subsequent and terrible troubles. (This, in turn, does not imply that the violence against Israel has been either justified or deserved. It has done the Palestinian cause much damage, and rightly so.)
Nevertheless, it would be absurd to believe that Jewish people are any more or less capable of making geo-political miscalculations than anybody else, or any more or less likely to be called to account for them. Evidence from every corner of the world, throughout the ages, attests to the fact that such behaviour is all too typical of humans, as is reluctance to accept that such actions are bound to have their critics.
Deborah Orr’s response is revealing. Does she even know what she has been accused of?
Addressing charges of anti-Semitism, she says that “one can accept the right of Israel to exist.” Orr’s use of the third person leaves us wondering whether or not she does actually does accept Israel’s right to exist. In any case, this was never the issue and it is incredibly disturbing that Orr’s best defense against the charges against her is to concede that Israel may have the right to exist as if this lame concession should immunize her against the criticism she is facing.
HA
12:54 am
Oct 27, 2011
Did anyone tell the idiot of the historical claim that Jews have to Israel? Not zionist, not political, but historical. Try arguing with that.
But, hey ho, I guess this is what marriage with Will Self does to you.
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David Aschkenasy
1:24 am
Oct 27, 2011
Orr is a Monster. Humanitarian gestures are to be praised.
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mark johnson
1:01 am
Oct 27, 2011
If this is an apology then the moon is always green and the sun is black!
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Albert Reingewirtz
1:02 am
Oct 27, 2011
Time to tell Blair to go home that no British anything is wanted in Israel because Britain has done enough damage to the Jewish nation for the past 60, 70 years. After that ignore any British politician. They are not worth speaking to at all.
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Peter Cohen
1:49 am
Oct 27, 2011
Overall Britain has been the friendliest European power to Jews. Even in the 19th century English Jews were receiving peerages and were being voted into parliament. English Jews like Lord Rothschild and Sir Moses Montefiore were the defenders of Jews in other European countries. It was Lloyd George and then Churchill who allowed the creation of the State of Israel during the mandate. Read Chaim Wiezmann’s autobiography. It was the post war Attlee government that reneged on the promise for Israel, for that historically illiterate people are seeing Britain wrongly as totally antisemitic. Yes criticise Deborah Orr and the Guardian all you can but they are not Britain. Forget the ancient pogroms and the ritual blood libel, these were in French speaking Norman and Anglo Saxon England and far from the worst treatment of Jews in France and Germany. My ancestors were sheltered in Britain from Russian pogroms. And for that matter Shakespeare was not antisemitic either, learn how to understand his plays
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Lina
1:04 am
Oct 27, 2011
I don’t think that I should waist a minute of my time to pay attention to stupidities
Bless you for your Honest Reporting!
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Roger G. Bensman
1:09 am
Oct 27, 2011
Just another JewHater with the contageous behavioral disturbance as now settled science. She could go in for the cure, but why bother. She gets paid for what she says. Further(and I have sent a missive—let’s all do) it is important that this Brit Rag understands that it is part of the Old Media. The New Media(Conservative, factual, sensible) rules. The Guardian is Dead Paper Walking.
Actually, the entire U.K. is Dead Country Walking. It is fully diseased with the contageon. Let it fall into the sea. As for the creation of Israel, it is done. Too bad for whoever didn’t like it; too bad for those who hate that in the present day. Live with it. Some things just suck, eh?
Like the fact that the U.K. still takes up space in this globe of ours. That is so yesterday to keep bringing such JewHate tripe to the fore. Same for the Chosen People remark(more JewHate). We Jews know what it means—an Obligation, not a priviledge. Again, too bad for those who don’t want to understand it and who therefore don’t like it. Tough it out, eh?
We do not accept this the non-apology of this tart.
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Victoirel la Demain
1:26 am
Oct 27, 2011
Jews are far too polite to this uncouth pig. Call her what she is, not just a pig but a shill for the guilty Britz who have done as much as the islamic imperialists to bring on WWIII. Hope the arabs shell this shill to concentrate her mind on the fact that Jesus was a Jew and the islamics will disembowel her the same as if she were a Jew even if she really is one of those soiled Anglicans.
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Roger Williams
1:27 am
Oct 27, 2011
Amazing that some one can come across as uninformed as she it. I find it strange that she is still allowed to work with the paper.
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Whiplash
1:56 am
Oct 27, 2011
Orr works for the guardian precisely because she is “uniformed”….and willfully so. If she were informed and objective, she could not possibly write the lies that she does.
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Nitsanc
1:32 am
Oct 27, 2011
Furthermore, was it really the “way in which [Israel] was created” that made many Palestinians into refugees?
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Montedoro
1:34 am
Oct 27, 2011
It probably serves no purpose to insist on an adequate apology, as it wouldn’t be truthful.
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Rocky
2:03 am
Oct 27, 2011
On NPR today there was discussion about a member of Sein Fein (sic) running for president of Ireland. There was much anguish and complaining that someone who had blood on his hands could now be so high up in government when he should be in jail. Yet its the Brits and the Irish who support Hamas and Islamic terrorism, unable to see the absolute symmetry involved. I guess their dead aren’t to blame for making the Irish terrorists kill them, like the Israeli victims of terrorism are, in their eyes, to blame for making the Pals commit murder.
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Roland
2:07 am
Oct 27, 2011
This woman is such a disgusting twit. Instead of an honest apology, she was heaping more criticisms at Israel. Get her out of our sight!!
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TeachersNotebook
2:11 am
Oct 27, 2011
I find it very disturbing that commenters are falling into a similar trap that Orr fell into. Just because one British paper is very anti-semitic, and this journalist is anti-semitic, does not mean that the entire Great Britain is anti-semitic or that every Briton is unworthy of living. This way of thinking and writing makes us as bigoted as the ones who hate us. We should not fall to such levels.
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Nathan Zafran
2:48 am
Oct 27, 2011
Now you have achieved the most unlikely and absurd anti-Israeli coalition in the world, which can only come about in a perfidious and hypocritical country like the UK. OK, here we go! The majority of the media, the nationalist party, the medical associations, the self-procaimed “liberals”, the Left, the trade unions, an array of “solidarity movements”, the Methodist Church, the Scots, Welsh and Irish falling over each other who will be the most ardent anti-Israelis, Communist/”Socialist” Jews (there are always self-loathing Jews around), skin-heads, rag-heads and just plain shit-heads. It’s just unbelievable. Ms. Orr, welcome to the shit-club.
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Gary Katz
2:48 am
Oct 27, 2011
So, Deborah, how many people living in a land have to consent before a country is formed? If one Palestinian opposed the recreation of Israel, is that enough? Does it have to be a majority? If they flee at the request of hostile neighbors who vow to commit genocide against the Jews, do they forfeit their right to object? Are you going to do a country by country analysis of whether people objected when the country was formed, in order to question the legitimacy of dozens of other nations and their borders? Or are you an Israel specialist, like the U.N. Human Rights Cancel, er, Council?
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elizah
3:07 am
Oct 27, 2011
the people living in Israel at the time of it’s inception as a country did not object to the newly formed Jewish state. They became refugees because militant Islamists, trained by the SS in the late 30′s, told anyone living in Israel who were not Jews to flee for safety to the surrounding countries because these countries were going to win the land back by war and would then give them back their homes. The newly formed Jewish government did NOT ask them to leave. Many non-Jews stayed and kept their homes. The nations that warred against Israel’s newly formed country did not have to leave the people they ‘saved’ in refugee camps. They have well over 1000 times as much land as the tiny country of Israel.
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Luke
3:10 am
Oct 27, 2011
Does anyone know how to edit Wikipedia pages???
Hit her where she hurts with a factual update that notes the controversy of her recent article and terrible attempt at an apology.
You can bet she loves havng a wiki page and would be more than “annoyed” if it told the whole history
Surely if it is a factual account… it should be ok to stay on the page
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Marilyn
6:55 am
Oct 27, 2011
This is comment is worth noting as a clearheaded response to Orr’s arrogance and bigotry. I wish I knew how to do it.
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norman a blumberg
3:19 am
Oct 27, 2011
Reading this woman’s column where she somehow manages to weave in the concept of a “chosen people” within the Shalit case (the connection baffles me) strongly supports the notion that we are superior. Unquestionably superior to this Orr creature.
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Ron
3:37 am
Oct 27, 2011
To Peter Cohen: I’m afraid you’ve lost your Jewish mind, not to mention your Jewish history. Please read this about your kind, caring and loveable munchkin by the name of David Lloyd George, one of the most arrogant, self-possessed, scullions ever to live in that noble nation called England!
file:///C:/Users/Ron/Desktop/David%20Lloyd%20George-Hitler.html
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MH8169
3:55 am
Oct 27, 2011
The Guardian and its journalists have never been friendly to Israel. Ms. Orr’s ignorance of recent history is appalling. Does she know that Jewish citizens of Muslim countries were kicked out of their homes because of the recreation of the State of Israel. Their concerns were never referenced in Ms. Orr’s ignorant pieces of s…t. And yes, most of the so called Palestinians were informed that the Jews would kill them but they (the various Arab countries) would push these “children of monkeys and pigs” into the sea. When they lost the war, they prevented these people to join their respective countries. They used these desperated people to create hate and etc. So much for the Guardian…
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Dirk Byker
4:32 am
Oct 27, 2011
It is the British who still have a superiority complex that shows through. They cannot forget their colonial empire and attitude to the rest of the (inferior) world. Rule Britannia?
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