Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Thursday 6 January 2011

From the Community of the “Trembling Israelites”, Taylor-Made Nonsense attacking Isi Leibler

Owing to distance, I’ve only just received my copy of the 24 December print edition of the Jewish Chronicle, and note that the “Mick Davis Affair” rumbles on in its pages. There’s a big article in support of Davis by new boy on the payroll Orlando Radice, but it was a letter from a Derek Taylor of Hampstead attacking Isi Leibler for daring “to drag the British into his quarrel [with Davis]” that’s the unwitting star of the issue. It’s a tissue of stupidities.

Mr Taylor notes that Leibler claimed that “In the United Kingdom ... demonisation of Israel – not to mention antisemitism – has reached record levels. ”

“What rubbish!” Taylor fumes, with blinkered disregard for the facts.

“Antisemitism in Britain remains as insignificant as it always has been.

Mr Leibler might like to compare it with, for example, the ethnic cleansing of Aborigines in Tasmania in the nineteenth century.”

This childish jibe involves an allegation regarding Tasmania that is actually untrue, as Mr Taylor would know were he au fait with Australian scholar Keith Windschuttle’s magisterial The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847 (2002).

“Only two Aborigines have ever been elected to the Australian Senate. How does that compare to the record of the similar number of Jews in Britain?” Mr Taylor asks, with baffling logic, and proceeds to pontificate patronisingly:

“It’s far too easy for non-British Jews to try to equate the treatment they find Jews suffering from in other countries with our situation.

It would be better if they devoted their energies to copying us.”

Mr Taylor is evidently unaware that there have been Jews in Australia from the first day of European settlement; that, just as in Britain, there have been dozens and dozens of Jewish parliamentarians in Australia from the nineteenth-century to this, including a colonial premier (V. L. Solomon), that there have been two Jewish governors-general, and so on.

I don’t know for certain whether Derek Taylor the letter-writer is the Derek Taylor who, with Lord Janner, authored Jewish Parliamentarians (2008), a book about Jewish MPs in Britain that – quite frankly – is full of regrettable and even risible errors and a marked pro-left bias which manifests itself in near-hagiography towards MPs of whose policies they approve and hatchet jobs on certain MPs of whom they disapprove. But if he is, his ignorance of the situation in Australia is underlined by the statement in the book that General Sir John Monash (pictured, who commanded Australia’s Expeditionary Forces in the First World War) was a New Zealander! Oy vey!

KO’d by his own fist, I would say of Mr Taylor – certainly he failed to land a punch at Isi Leibler CBE.

5 comments:

  1. Daphne, that's very interesting. In the 1940s there was a Jewish group called something with "gentlemen" in the name, I think. Their whole raison d'être was to dissociate themselves from Zionism. I wonder if you have any information on them.

    Social reasons for separating oneself from Zionism really seem to me a fine way to prove that antisemitism is alive and alas well.

    Mr Taylor sounds like a descendant.

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  2. Ariadne, I wonder whether you're thinking of the League of British Jews, set up during the First World War to oppose Zionism. It consisted of the kinds of people who were often dubbed during the nineteenth "Gentlemen of the Mosaic Persuasion" because they blanched at the designation "Jews".
    The League somehow tricked General Sir John Monash, then based in Britain, into signing their letter to The Times in 1917 opposing Zionism, but he later dissociated himself from them and in 1927 became hon. president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

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  3. Daphne, thank you! Those are the ones.

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  4. Maybe I should tell dear Mr. Taylor, that we here "down under", appear to know more about the rise in antisemitism in the mother country, than he does .

    "“Antisemitism in Britain remains as insignificant as it always has been."

    Really??

    Maybe Mr. Taylor would like to ask my husband how many times he was badly beaten as a child for being Jewish. I have a friend who says likewise. Mr. Taylor obviously lives in a shetl and is not in contact with the world at large

    Has he heard of the Jewish massacre at York and London around the late 1190?

    Does he know that King Edward expelled us all in 1290 and that we were not permitted to re-enter until 1655?

    Does he know that Britain only created the State of Israel to get rid of us ?

    Britain didn’t want the homeless Jews of Europe at the end of WW2.

    Australia did…..other than Israel Australia took in the most Holocaust survivors, yes even more than the US, who didn’t really want us either.

    We even offered part of the Northern Territory for a Jewish homeland !

    Does Mr. Taylor know that Australia remains to this day, the only country in the world, other than Israel, whose founding members included Jews.

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  5. I think it's called "living in a bubble", Shirlee!
    Denial being a river in Egypt and all that ...

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