Daphne Anson: It’s Time for Nick Clegg to Scrape this Foul Tonge – Spinning Jenny the Lib Dem Peer Slurs Israel Yet Again

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)

Sunday, 14 November 2010

It’s Time for Nick Clegg to Scrape this Foul Tonge – Spinning Jenny the Lib Dem Peer Slurs Israel Yet Again

Jenny Tonge – who sits in the House of Lords on the Lib Dem benches as Baroness Tonge, having been given a life peerage in 2005 after several years as an MP – is a veteran detester and demoniser of the world’s only Jewish State, and as a result has earned the epithet “Jihad Jenny”. In 2004 the then Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, sacked her as a party spokesperson after she had refused to apologise for saying of Palestinian suicide bombers: "If I had to live in that situation – and I say that advisedly – I might just consider becoming one myself."

In 2006 Tonge made headlines when she announced: "The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party." Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell – himself no great friend of Israel – called her remarks "unacceptable" and possessing "clear antisemitic connotations”.

An all-party group of members of the House of Lords led by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey noted that her comments "evoked a classic anti-Jewish conspiracy theory”. She retorted that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's article "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" that appeared in the 23 March 2006 issue of The London Review of Books – whose “as-a-Jew” editor Mary-Kay Wilmers is on record, incidentally, as describing herself as "unambiguously hostile to Israel” – bore out her contention that the "'Israel lobby' had a disproportionate voice in Anglo-American foreign policy".

In 2008 Tonge, along with Lord Ahmed, leftwing Labour MP Clare Short, and several MEPs, sailed to Gaza to break Israel’s siege; Tonge compared the situation there to South African apartheid. The following year, shortly after Operation Cast Lead, she was part of a small British parliamentary delegation which, in the hope that the Blair government, followed by Bush’s, would be pressured into opening talks with Hamas, met the terrorist organisation’s leader, Khaled Meshaal, in Damascus.

In February this year she caused a furore when she said that an independent inquiry should be established by the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association into allegations that the IDF was harvesting organs from earthquake victims in Haiti. As one Lib Dem parliamentary candidate observed: “It’s abhorrent that anyone should suggest that something as perverse and sick as this should be investigated”, while the chairman of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel remarked: “On this basis, there could be calls for an investigation to discover the ‘truth’ in the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Party leader Nick Clegg, not distinguished for any great sympathy for Israel, described her remarks as "wrong, distasteful and provocative" and added that he recognised “the deep and understandable distress they have caused to the Jewish community”. He therefore removed her as the party’s spokesperson on health matters in the Lords.

The Israel-obsessed baroness (pictured here during an interview with Ahmadinejad's propaganda satellite channel, Press TV) has been up to her spiteful, slanderous tricks again. In yesterday’s debate in the upper house on the Strategic Defence Review, her ladyship made the following outrageous and untenable claim (hat tip: Jonathan Hoffman, over at the jc.com blogs):

"Prevention of conflict also means that we must start being honest about international law and UN resolutions. It is a disgrace to us all that problems such as Kashmir and Palestine are still alienating Muslims all over the world. The treatment of Palestinians by Israel is held up as an example of how the West treats Muslims and is at the root cause of terrorism worldwide. Even Tony Blair has now admitted this publicly. [Jonathan Hoffman: No he has not.] Why do we let it continue? Is it Holocaust guilt? We should be guilty – of course we should. Is it the power of the pro-Israel lobby here and in the USA? I do not know. Or is it the need, maybe, to have an aircraft carrier called Israel in the Middle East from which to launch attacks on countries such as Iran? The cynic might think that that is why HMS Ark Royal and the Harriers can be dispensed with – we already have a static Ark Royal in a strategic position, armed to the teeth and ready to fight, provided that we do not offend Israel. I feel sorry for the people of Israel sometimes. Their Government's policies have made that country the cause of a lot of the world's problems, yet now they are seen in the middle as the remedy and the base for the West to fight back."

Ironically, on the same day that Spinning Jenny’s venom-coated tongue was indulging in its latest round of lashing the Jewish State, the Jewish Chronicle (12 November 2010) printed on its front page extracts from a speech to the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel (to many people's amazement, given the party's track record, such a body does exist!) by Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister Clegg, who apparently concedes that the party’s past pronouncements in favour of the Palestinians should have been “accompanied equally loudly and equally clearly, by an awareness of the security challenges faced by Israel and of the right of Israel to defend itself against the threats that it continually faces”.

Given her past and present form, Jenny Tonge, if not actually an antisemite, is doing her utmost to seem like one. Her remarks are ludicrous and malevolent. I’ve already mentioned, on a recent blogpost regarding the remarks of Lib Dem peer Lord Phillips of Sudbury, how Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile is convinced that Tonge’s previous outbursts against Israel cost the Lib Dems vital votes in certain constituencies at the General Election. Indeed, the Lib Dems have a number of high-profile Israel bashers within their ranks.

If Nick Clegg is serious about mending his party’s fractured relationship with Anglo-Jewry – nay, if he is serious about a committal to truth and fairness – he should do what is long overdue, and remove the party whip from the incorrigible Jenny Tonge. Now!

4 comments:

shomer14 November 2010 at 23:55
After all that PR spin of his last week she must be giving Cleggy quite a headache.
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Daphne Anson15 November 2010 at 02:21
This is a timely reminder from the HonestReprting website:
The Palestine Telegraph - Flirting with Holocaust Denial & Anti-Semitism
The Palestine Chronicle isn't the only dubious English-language propaganda site claiming to be a credible media outlet. The Palestine Telegraph's Board of Patrons includes former British MP and anti-Israel extremist George Galloway, and Lauren Booth.
To recall, Booth referred to Gaza as a "concentration camp" while photographed shopping in a well-stocked Gaza supermarket. This earned her our 2008 Dishonest Reporter Award. Booth has recently announced her conversion to Islam following a visit to Iran, whose Press TV propaganda organ she draws a salary from (as does George Galloway).
A former Palestine Telegraph patron was British politician Jenny Tonge who infamously stated in 2006: "The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the Western World, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a certain grip on our party."
Tonge was previously removed from her parliamentary position in 2004 after saying that if she had been a Palestinian, she might have supported a political program of murdering Jewish civilians, by herself becoming a suicide bomber: "I think if I had to live in that situation, and I say this advisedly, I might just consider becoming one myself."
But it was too much for Tonge after the Palestine Telegraph published a video of former KKK grand wizard David Duke, which prompted her to resign as a patron. The Palestine Telegraph continued to promote racists and anti-Semites in August 2010 when it published an extended interview with Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben before removing it and issuing a half-hearted "statement of clarification" in the face of protests.
The Palestine Telegraph has also published an article by the anti-Semitic Gilad Atzmon in which he defends Helen Thomas's call for Israeli Jews to "go home to Poland, Germany, America and elsewhere." The Palestine Telegraph has also repeatedly published the most blatant Jewish conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic cartoons, while its editor Sameh Habeeb, has previously denied allegations of anti-Semitism relating to comments he made to a Leeds student newspaper about who runs the media.
In conclusion, the evidence above is more than enough to discredit The Palestine Telegraph and those behind it.
Both The Palestine Chronicle and Palestine Telegraph are dominated by radicals and extremists who even flirt with anti-Semitism. They are certainly not credible media outlets.
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Anonymous15 November 2010 at 13:45
Daphne,

Thanks for covering Tonge's latest outburst, she's unbelievabe, what a racist.

I covered her activities before, http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/lib-dems-dont-upset-the-money/

http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/baroness-tonge-the-penny-drops/

Good luck,
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Daphne Anson15 November 2010 at 18:51
Modernity Blog, thanks - and congratulations on the evenhanded condemnation of all racism you seem to show on your blog.
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'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'
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'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.
Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

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There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
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Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

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Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...
The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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