Fiddling With Israel's Truth

In London's East End during the era of the Great Migration of Jews from the Russian Empire, and for all I know on New York's Lower East Side as well, a small coterie of militantly atheist Jews would hold balls and eat ham sandwiches on Yom Kippur to mock the "benighted" ways of those who clustered into shuls and shtiebls on that, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

I see, in a sense, a parallel between those militant atheists and that small coterie of Jews today who make a fetish of demonising - I don't mean merely criticising, I mean demonising and helping to delegitimise - the State of Israel.

Several such persons, including former Children's Laureate, poet Michael Rosen, well-known for his intense hostility to Israel, are among those due to participate in the Tottenham Palestine Literature Festival, organised by the Haringey Justice for Palestinians branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which will encourage pupils from at least eight schools to write about "children under occupation," and which starts, incidentally, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah.  For more details see http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/54325/psc-target-primary-kids-lit-festival

And I guess Jewish anti-Zionists don't come much more extreme than this gentleman, a senior research scientist who also a violinist and as such is one of the signatories to that ignominious letter by musicians to the Independent urging cancellation by the BBC of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra's appearance at the Proms, a letter that has been widely denounced, not least by the distinguished music critic and writer Norman Lebrecht: http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/08/musicians-call-on-bbc-to-cancel-israel-philharmonic-prom.html  See also: http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/54319/soloist-suspended-after-israel-rant