The UK media’s treatment of Israel has undoubtedly contributed to an atmosphere conducive to rising anti-Semitism in Britain. Criticism of Israel is, of course, legitimate and not all critics are anti-Semites. However, under the guise of “anti-Zionism”, Jew hatred has reared its ugly head and crossed into mainstream discussion.
Media commentator Richard Littlejohn is to be commended for tackling this subject in a Channel 4 documentary, The War On Britain’s Jews?, to be aired tonight (Monday 9 July) at 8pm. Previewing the programme in the Daily Mail, Littlejohn writes:
“Opposition to the war and loathing of Israel has led the selfstyled ‘anti-racist’ Left to make common cause with Islamonazis. And ‘anti-Zionism’ soon tips over into straight- forward anti-Semitism.
When The Observer columnist Nick Cohen – who has always considered himself of the Left and, despite the surname, isn’t Jewish either – wrote a piece defending the toppling of Saddam he was deluged with hate mail.
‘It was amazing anti-Semitism, you know – you’re only saying this because you’re a Jew.’
Cohen has also noticed the casual anti-Jewish sentiment around Left-wing dinner tables and in the salons of Islington.
He is appalled by the way in which his old comrades-in-arms have embraced terrorist groups like Hezbollah, one of the most anti-Semitic organisations on Earth.
Check out the way the National Union of Journalists singles out Israel for boycott, even though it has the only free press in the Middle East. Or the academic boycott of Israel by the university lecturers, which as the lawyer Anthony Julius and the law professor Alan Dershowitz argue, goes way beyond legitimate protest. The sheer ferocity and violence of the arguments is nothing more than naked anti-Semitism.
Under the guise of ‘anti-Zionism’, anti-Semitism is rife on British university campuses. But still the Government refuses to ban groups such as Hizb ut-Tahir, motto: ‘Jews will be killed wherever they can be found.”
Read the full article here.
HAMAS SANITIZED FOLLOWING JOHNSTON’S RELEASE
We welcome the release of Alan Johnston. However, many people were disturbed at Hamas’s PR coup and the resulting “rebranding” of a terror group that only weeks before had been throwing Fatah members off rooftops, into a responsible organization committed to law and order. Times commentator Gerard Baker notes:
“Funny isn’t it, how, when the US or British governments do anything they claim is good we always assume there’s some ulterior motive? They foil a terrorist plot and the world’s media note with heavy irony the coincidence of a president’s or prime minister’s flagging approval ratings. But when Hamas pulls a stunt like the one it managed this week, we’re all transfixed, lost in innocent admiration at the sheer humanity of these people. Our credulity is mocked further because we really ought to know that this latest incident is straight from the Hamas playbook – doing little works of charity and economic efficiency in Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinian equivalent of making the trains run on time to further their bloodcurdling big objectives.”
Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz sums it up nicely:
“You couldn’t make up some of the noxious garbage Hamas has been spouting since it sprang the BBC’s Alan Johnston from the hands of a rival/allied terror gang.
My favorite was the Hamas spokesman in Gaza telling a BBC World Service radio interviewer on Wednesday evening that no one should have been surprised at its success in securing Johnston’s release. After all, he declared without so much as a wobble at the absurdity of his contention (it was radio, so I couldn’t see if his nose was growing), Hamas never stands silent when violence is being perpetrated “against the Jewish, the Christians…”
The interviewer (it was radio, so I couldn’t see if he was nodding) chose not to contest this despicable claim – neither to point out that the Hamas charter features the quoted invocation to kill Jews, nor to confront the saintly Hamas interviewee over his gang’s ruthless murders of its own Palestinian brethren during the recent Gaza takeover.
Neither, needless to say, did he venture to highlight that Hamas, by its own admission, is itself holding a hostage, our own Gilad Schalit, snatched from inside Israel’s sovereign borders, whose time in captivity long exceeds the 114-day misery to which Johnston was subjected.
Straight after the Hamas man’s unchallenged humanitarian broadcast, a British Labor member of the European parliament came on the air to advocate a cautious reassessment of contacts with Hamas, which had now proven its capacity to act responsibly.
Who, after listening to the previous interview, could beg to differ?”
If you beg to differ, write to any media outlets who may conveniently forget that, despite securing Alan Johnston’s freedom (and remember – it is unclear what kind of deal was struck with his captors), Hamas remains what it previously was – a terrorist organization committed to the murder of Jews and the destruction of the State of Israel.
