TV Host Refuses to Back Down After Calling Israel a “Cancer”
October 28, 2012 16:55 by Simon PloskerOn Tuesday 23 October, Irish broadcaster Vincent Browne referred to Israel as a “cancer” during his live show on TV3 channel’s Tonight With Vincent Brown.
In a discussion on the recent televised US presidential foreign policy debate between Republican challenger Mitt Romney and Democrat President Barack Obama, Browne lamented that Israel had barely been mentioned, stating:
Israel is the cancer in foreign affairs. It polarizes the Islamic community of the world against the rest of the world.
Unless you deal with the problem of Israel and the Palestinians in that part of the world, there’s going to be conflict and disharmony. It’s a massive injustice — they stole the land from the Arabs.
According to the Irish Independent:
Mr Browne admitted that his choice of language could have been better but insisted that the criticism was justified.
“What I resent is the suggestion that because you’re critical of Israel, you’re automatically anti-Semitic. I don’t think that’s acceptable,” he said.
Mr Browne refused to apologise for his remarks, saying that Israel was founded in 1948 by taking land from the Arabs.
He said it was “blackmail” to try to brand everyone who was critical of Israel as anti-Semitic. “I don’t think I differ too much from Irish or European foreign policy,” he said.
That Browne’s first response was to deny that he is an anti-Semite speaks volumes. Browne’s defense is often employed by some of Israel’s harshest critics who attempt to claim that supporters of Israel are smearing them as anti-Semites in a backhanded effort to silence them.
For while his comments were described as anti-Semitic, Browne himself has not been accused of being an anti-Semite. Instead, Browne cannot even bring himself to apologize, preferring to dismiss criticism as illegitimate.
The Jewish Chronicle reports:
Defending his remarks, Mr Browne said that by calling Israel a cancer “I didn’t mean it should be eliminated. It was an infelicitous use of the word.
“The reality is the Israeli state was founded by confiscation of land previously occupied by Arabs. That injustice is at the centre of the conflict.”
Vincent Browne evidently does not understand the difference between legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and his outrageous statements meant to demonize an entire country. It is doubtful that Browne would have referred to any other country as a “cancer” – a term used by anti-Semites aimed at Jews and Israel.
Indeed, Browne should have realized just how far beyond the pale he has gone when one considers that the most vocal proponent of such disgusting language is Iranian President Ahmadinejad who, in a diatribe last August, stated:
The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumour. Even if one cell of them is left in one inch of (Palestinian) land, in the future this story (of Israel’s existence) will repeat.
Israel’s deputy ambassador to Ireland Nurit Tinari-Modai said: “We today received phone calls and emails from outraged Irish people who intend to complain about Mr. Brown’s ongoing hateful comments towards the Jewish people and the Jewish state.”
According to the Irish Independent, however, a TV3 spokeswoman said she was not aware of any complaints being made about Mr Browne’s remarks.
Let’s see if we can change that. Send your considered comments to TV3 and demand an apology and the right of reply for a pro-Israel guest on Vincent Browne’s show - complaints@tv3.ie
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Ed Frias
2:19 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Mr Brown is to stupid to know, the Arabs are invaders from Saudi Arabia.
How do the Arabs have 22 countries when all the Arabs come from 1 country Saudi Arabia?
How did the Arabs get all of North Africa from the Berbers?
Look at the blacks in Sudan, Mauritania and Somalia.
How the heck did those people become Arab?
Its called Mohammad and his Jihad armies in the 7th century invaded and took the entire Mideast and North Africa and forced everyone they defeated to be Islamic and Arab.
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Asher Garber
2:33 pm
Oct 29, 2012
I’m merely being critical here. But is it possible that TV3 is like a vat of rabid blood and that Vincent Brown is some blind and diseased rat who can’t wait to spread his filth by eating flesh and drinking blood?
Again…. this is just criticism. How can I possibly HATE Vincent Brown or TV3 when I don’t know them from Adam?
Still, how can someone not want to eradicate rabies?
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Suebee
6:17 pm
Oct 29, 2012
I feel very sorry for Vincent Brown and his station.
One day he will close his eyes for the last time and then he will know the truth. Here is hoping he will know it before then, while there is still time to get his heart right.
Israel has always been, Jerusalem is the Lords city, the apple of his eye.
You don’t have to hate the person, only his actions and words. Both of these can be changed. He was created by our God. May the Lord have mercy on him and draw him.
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Murray Cohen.
6:18 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Millions of people have red the Bible or Torah. It is the history of the Jewish people in Israel
Not once is there mentioned of a group of people called Muslims.
The followers of Mohammed captured Israel and made it a Muslim territory. It is time that the Muslim occupiers gave the Jewish people their country back.
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snabieel
2:04 am
Oct 30, 2012
ofourse you eamt see it. If you saw it we would be a muslim by now. but your jewish scholars changed the torah and when jesus cam tomfix what you’ve done. you tried to kill him. YOU TRIED TO KILL JESUS. mo womder you won’t hear about muslims from your books
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m
2:56 am
Oct 30, 2012
snabieel
You do not deserve a response but I am feeling charitable tonioght.
You are incoherent and a moron. I think you need a pilgrimage to some islamic cesspool where you will be beheaded for farting the wrong away.
PS Learn to use a grammar and spell checker.
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Aster
6:39 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Mr. Browne claimed the arabs occupied the land. Which means it was not theirs. Gosh, whose was it? Think hard, Mr. Browne.
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bernhard
6:53 pm
Oct 29, 2012
There was another PR guy some 7o years ago, Dr. Josef Goebbels, who regarded himself not as a typical antisemite but a true intellectual missionary of the murderous Germanic Nazi ideas which saw in Jewish people something like cancer in their akward understandig. I will not name Mr. Browne an intellectual since his knowledge of history renders more to a pupil who visited school for just three or four years. What really concerns me is that why a man of these “qualities” can work undisputedly at a broadcast station without any internal discussion about his insufficient remarks. Has he got a fool’s licence? Yes, very soon we have Haloween. So, welcome to Browne’s Rocky Horror Picture Show.
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Léon
6:56 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Vincent Brown n’est peut être pas un antisémite, mais c’est sûrement un ignorant, et
TV3 devrait faire vérifier ses connaissances de l’histoire.
Sorry, my english is l just too weak.
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Craig
8:09 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Ne vous en faites pas, Léon.
“Vincent Brown might not be an anti-semite, but he’s surely an ignoramus, and TV3 should confirm their knowledge of history”
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gb
7:02 pm
Oct 29, 2012
By the same token America and Canada could also be called a cancer because immigrants from all countries of Europe occupied the lands of various Indian tribes with less historical and legal rights than the Jews took back their own land. No wonder the Islamoleftists are against those three modern, free countries when their dream is to build Gulags with plenty of Mosques.
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Ray Hampton
7:35 pm
Oct 29, 2012
It is always a foolish thing to use foul and abusive language or rhetoric when dealing with people who have little or no understanding of the issues discussed. Vincent would seem to have a very bad memory.. Irish people suffer from ‘Fading Memory Syndrome.. Were not the IRA considered the same, again were not the British Soldiers also bracketed like this. My request to Vincent is that.. Either he is very naive or he is indeed anti Semitic.. Neither is good for a person in this place of public trust. I would also suggest that to slander people like Vincent is like lowering yourself to their standards -Ray
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Moll
7:49 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Vincent Browne (b.1944) in his ~50 yr. career, forgot that the words he speaks/writes become seeds that germinate into events he finds himself living — heavy debt, no pension, no way to recover at the end. Brown has forgotten that G-d caused it to be written that He would “bless those who bless Israel, & curse those who curse Israel (Genesis 12:3); that words are the seeds which germinate to become the events humans find themselves walking through — words, such as ““Israel is the cancer in world affairs” & etc., now become reality; that prophets of old wrote “as you have done [to the jew] so it will be done to you; your dealiings shall return upon your own head…” (Obadiah verse 15ff).
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Richard Mather
7:56 pm
Oct 29, 2012
He’s obviously a complete idiot, with a poor grasp of history and current affairs, and an anti-Semite too.
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Joe
7:59 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Once again Israel is held to a different standard than most of the world, which IS anti semetism! Israel was born at a time when huge changes in populations occurred. . After world war two over 20 million people were victims of forced population transfer across Europe. Over 11 million people transferred between what is now Pakistan and India not to mention the one million who died on the way. After Israel was established till now almost one million Jews were forced out of Iran, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and other Arab Muslim lands. The starkest transfers that we dont hear about happened in recent History. During the 1990 Yugoslav conflict huge involuntary population transfers occurred. As late as 1999 during the Kosovo war 800,000 ethnic Albanians were forced from kosovo although most returned after the war. In contrast the majority of the 280,000 Serbians that were forced to flee never returned. Finally don’t forget the 500,000 Palestinians that were expelled from Kuwait during the Iraq war. With this evidence of historic fact why don’t people like mr Browne talk with equal indignation at these injustices? Remember that most Palestinians who left, left at the behest of the attacking Arab armies who set out to destroy the only place on Earth that the Jews could escape to from the world that rejected them and tried to annihilate them…..
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DAVID KAPLAN
8:07 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Anti-Semitic? I’ll go a lot further than that. By referring to Israel as a cancer he is openly calling for genocide. After all, what does one do with cancer? Eradic sate it, what else.
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John Bates
8:43 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Ah, Mr. Brown you are so obviously intelligently stupid man. What do I mean? Well you are obviously intelligent or you wouldn’t be in the position you are in! However, you are obviously stupid as well! Why? Well, you didn’t do your research, if you had you would know that the Jews were removed from their land by the Romans in or around A.D. 72. Therefore the Romans stole the land from them. What about the fact that in 1948 – 52 around 1 million jews were kicked out of various Arab lands. Why? because they were Jews! Their properties were then given to Arabs, isn’t that just as immoral, or do you have no opinion on that? Your’e biased against the Jew, just admit it & get it out in the open.
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Oleg
9:39 pm
Oct 29, 2012
I hope to hear one day Mr Brown calling USA and Canada “cancer” because of illegal Irishmen invasion. Before it happens I will call Mr Brown anti-Semite even he doesn’t like it
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Wobbletwig
9:53 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Vincent has a lot in common with the soft smelly stuff. They are both Browne
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Sandra
10:22 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Despite his denial, Mr Brown is very clearly an anti-semite. He is very lacking in knowledge of history of the Middle East – and of militant Islam, which is intent on turning the entire world Muslim. The best of British luck to you Mr Brown, when Ireland is overtaken by Sharia law!
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Jeffrey Nakar
11:10 pm
Oct 29, 2012
Just because the Arabs have occupied Jewish land for a few hundred years does not make it Arab land. Judea is the land of the Jews and Palestine is the Roman name for the ancient Jewish state, before it was overrun by Arabs. Those who prefer to call it Palestine are simply emphasising the antiquity of the Jewish claim to it.
Jews lived in Iraq for 3,000 years until the Arabs drove them out because at the end of the day Iraq is not Jewish land. Jews lived in Europe at least since Roman times until the Nazis and their friends murdered them. Again, Europe is not Jewish land. By the same token, Israel – all of Israel – is Jewish land and none but the Jews have any right to live there
Hot debate. What do you think?
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David
1:04 am
Oct 30, 2012
Mr Browne might have had a point if he had said that hatred of Israel and even of Jews is a malignant tumour in the brain of the Muslim world.
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martin
1:26 am
Oct 30, 2012
will this irish turd, call upon all those of irish ancestry to leave the usa and other countries? they celebrate st. patricks day all over the world. what a load of colonial shite.
to think they stole the lands from the native americans and they have the gall to send their starving people to britain, usa, australia etc. yes he comes from a most civilised country. ireland has been given a huge sum of money by britain to keep afloat. theuir country is bankrupt. that is why this idiot is fond of the arabs. he wants them to further fund his country out of its debts. bjjeesus !
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