Muslims Are Oppressed In Europe, Claims Amnesty International

Amnesty International, which is of course one of those prominent leftist NGOs that spend an inordinate amount of time castigating Israel, has issued a report castigating Europe's attitude to Muslims.  Says the blurb:

'Muslims across Europe belong to many different ethnic groups and follow diverse cultural, religious or traditional practices. They are discriminated against for different reasons, including their religion or belief, ethnicity and gender. This report highlights discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief and illustrates some of its consequences. Restrictive dress-code policies and legislation are enforced in several states. Muslims, and especially Muslim women, who express their cultural or religious background by wearing specific forms of dress or symbols have been denied employment or excluded from classrooms.'

Says an official press release embargoed until this morning: 

'European governments must do more to challenge the negative stereotypes and prejudices against Muslims fuelling discrimination especially in education and employment, a new report by Amnesty International reveals today....

.... Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination [observes]

“Rather than countering these prejudices, political parties and public officials are all too often pandering to them in their quest for votes.”....'

That Amnesty has produced this report will no doubt fuel allegations that it is, albeit unwittingly, helping to advance the propagandistic, political, and demographic agenda of those Arab regimes who aim to bring Europe closer to the Arabist viewpoint, if not to the Islamist one of suborning Europe under a Caliphate.


Discrimination against a person because of his or her religious beliefs is, of course, unsconscionable.  But so long as Islam is associated in the public mind with the subjugation of the female sex and of non-Muslims, with a barbaric penal code, with proselytisation of and contempt for "infidels", and, dare I say it, with acts of terror worldwide, so-called Islamophobia is likely to continue.

Meanwhile, I look forward to the day when an agency of the Jeddah-based OIC produces a report highlighting the oppression of Christians and other religious minorities in far too much of the Islamic world.

Update: See this important article on the OIC, Europe, and antisemitism

An Al Beeb Insider Dismisses Claims of - Wait For It! - Pro-Israel Bias

The guys at Biased BBC have Al Beeb sussed

The following, by leading British Zionist Federation figure Jonathan Hoffman, is entitled, with irony, "BBC Biased In Favour Of Israel???" and is crossposted, with his permission, from the Jewish Chronicle website
http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/bbc-biased-in-favour-israel

It's a spinoff from his previous crossposted blog (http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/05/in-london-amnesty-hosts-racist-garbage.html)

 Here's what he writes:

On Monday I blogged about a meeting at Amnesty in London where a new book was on sale by Professor Greg Philo called More Bad News About Israel. The theme of the book and the meeting was that the BBC is biased in favour of Israel. According to Philo, Israel has “a very sophisticated propaganda system”....“All their speakers are organised to give the same message …. BBC journalists “wait in fear for the phone call from the Israelis”.

Here is the response of a well-placed BBC source:

 'It's just silly to suggest that corporately the BBC is "pro Israel". In the first place, reports vary from reporter to reporter. Some (in my view) tend to have a default position whose subtext is that only real obstacle to a Middle East settlement is Israel. Others are impeccably balanced.

 Secondly, while I think there is some truth in the notion of "fear" from the Israeli side, in practice I don't think it's anything like as vocal as the Palestinian side which tends to be much better organised and co-ordinated.

 That's not to say that there isn't a vocal Israeli side, but it's a broader spectrum than the Palestinian side. For example, there's a big difference between, say, "Just Journalism" which I think is admirably fair and measured, and the US organisation, "Camera" which does sometimes take a "my country right or wrong" approach.

Just because the Israelis may be "pleased" with the BBC's coverage of the Mavi Marmara incident, seems to carry an assumption by Greg Philo, that the coverage must therefore have been unfair, inaccurate, bias etc. I mean, the evidence that the MM organisers and especially those on the top deck saw the mission pre-eminently as an opportunity to confront the Israeli Navy on the high sea is very powerful indeed. Those are the facts, and they are now available from several published sources and frankly anyone who can't accept that isn't really in a position to pass any sort of credible judgement about the bias or otherwise of the BBC's coverage.'

Pretty damning of the theory of BBC pro-Israel bias, don't you think?

In London, Amnesty Hosts Racist Garbage

This is a crosspost by well-known British pro-Israel activist Jonathan Hoffman, a leading figure in the UK's Zionist Federation.  It first appeared at http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/amnesty-hosts-racist-garbage:

Despite representations from the Board of Deputies, Amnesty went ahead with this Israel hate event: http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/no-hate-amnesty-next-monday-...

This was no surprise, since Amnesty has been taken over by a person or persons with a malevolent agenda towards Israel – see all my previous blogs [on the Jewish Chronicle website] on meetings there. Notably I have offered Ruvi Ziegler as a speaker but this offer has been ignored by Amnesty’s Campaigns Director Kristyan Benedict (he who told Richard Millett that he would “smack me [Millett] in my little bald head”).
https://richardmillett.wordpress.com/tag/kristyan-benedict/

About 15 of us demonstrated before the meeting. Well done to Campaign4Truth for organising this.
http://campaign4truth.org/

I guess that in one respect the meeting (which was largely about the BBC) was music to our ears. The pro-Israel lobby was incessantly said to have cowed the BBC into parroting its own output.... (If only!)

[Professor] Greg Philo, for example, said (in so many words) that the advocacy manual published by The Israel Project has become the BBC’s Style Guide on Israel. Would that it were so …. The question I wanted to ask was just why was the BBC so much in thrall to the few of us who actively support Israel.

But I never got the chance because Victoria Brittain (of the Guardian) who was chairing didn't call me despite having my hand up throughout the Q&A.

She never called the other pro-Israel person in the audience (of about 250) either. That's how powerful we are …

Reality check: The BBC will never refer to Hamas as “terrorists” – always “militants”. BBC journalists are instructed to say “regarded as illegal under international law" whenever the settlements are mentioned. And Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East Editor, was ruled by the BBC Trust’s Editorial standards Board to be in breach of the organisation’s guidelines on impartiality and accuracy. The notion that the BBC is biased in Israel’s favour is about as absurd as saying that Harold Shipman [the mass murdering physician] was kind to old people

The first speaker was Greg Philo [pictured left], author of Bad News from Israel, a book which in short claimed the media was biased in favour of Israel because it did not reflect his extreme pro-Palestinian view of history. (Philo has a new update out called More Bad News from Israel, inevitably published by Pluto Press who specialise in this drivel (they published Ben White's book - Israeli Apartheid - too)).

Here is what Mike Brennan (Warwick University) had to say in his review of Philo’s book:

"Ultimately this is a rather tendentious and agenda-driven book in which the researchers set out to prove their own politically-inflected views. Its claims are based upon data generated by the selective use of historical material and flawed research methods. The net effect of the book will be to reinforce perceptions of Israel as monolithic, and will give succour to those who claim that the western media are controlled by ‘Zionists.’" http://www.dissentmagazine.org/democratiya/article_pdfs/d3Brennan-2.pdf

According to Philo, Israel has “a very sophisticated propaganda system” (I wish).

“All their speakers are organised to give the same message …. BBC journalists “wait in fear for the phone call from the Israelis”

The next speaker was Tim Llewellyn (ex-BBC; pictured right). Panorama’s Death on the Med was distorted but “it has become impossible to raise these issues with the BBC” (those pesky omnipotent Israel supporters hard at work again …)

The level of Llewellyn’s bias became clear when he said that the BBC should be supervised by an independent body, not by the Trust. The truth is that the BBC has a “dual key” regulatory structure involving both the Trust and OFCOM. Then Llewellyn – unbelievably – told the audience members they should complain that Labour, the Conservatives and the LibDems have no “Friends of Palestine” organisations (they all do of course).

Finally Abdel Bari Atwan spoke. The first thing he did – to prove that “the Israel Lobby“ was out to silence him – was to hold up the Jewish Chronicle’s front page: “How Was This Hatefest Allowed on Campus?” Atwan is convinced that the “Israel Lobby” is to blame for the fact that he is not invited as a guest on TV shows (he thinks he is treated "worse than Adolf Hitler").

Has he considered that it might just have something to do with the fact that he is an extremist who says that he will “dance in Trafalgar Square” if Iranian missiles hit Israel?
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1506.htm

This meeting was uncomfortably redolent of the thesis in the forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed that Jews controlled the press. Shame on Amnesty for hosting it. It is about time that Amnesty members made their voice known against this racist garbage.

Judah's Lion told to Hop It – by a Kangaroo Court! The anti-Israel Russell Tribunal swings into action

‘Tis getting towards what’s commonly called “the season to be jolly”, but for many of Israel’s implacable foes in the UK – those incorrigible types who obtain their jollies by berating and defaming the Jewish State – that season has come early, for this month sees in London what Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation has aptly dubbed an anti-Israel “Hatefest from the Red/Green Alliance of As-A-Jews, Communists and Islamists” in the guise of the Russell Tribunal.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine is billed as “an International People’s Tribunal created by a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East.” The first Russell Tribunal was convened in 1966 during the Vietnam War by the distinguished leftwing Nobel Laureate, anti-nuclear campaigner, mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), whose phrase “May this tribunal prevent the crime of silence” has become the watchword of subsequent tribunals.

“The Russell Tribunal has no legal status but acts as a court of the people, a Tribunal of conscience, faced with injustices and violations of international law, that are not dealt with by existing international jurisdictions, or that are recognised but continue with complete impunity due to the lack of political will of the international community”, we learn from the present tribunal’s website.

"Today, and in the same spirit, the Bertrand Russell Foundation supports the setting up of a Russell Tribunal to examine the violations of international law, of which the Palestinians are victims, and that prevent the Palestinian People from exercising its rights to a sovereign State.

This Tribunal … will reaffirm the supremacy of international law as the basis for a solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It will identify all the failings in the implementation of this right and will condemn all the parties responsible for these failings, in full view of international public opinion."

On 20-21 November this “kangaroo court” will be in session on the premises of the Law Society, prompting distinguished barrister Jonathan Goldberg QC to observe:

"It is hard to think of any other learned profession in the United Kingdom which has benefited so much from its distinguished Jewish members over the centuries as the solicitors’ profession. Examples abound, right up to the present Supreme Court Judge Lord Collins of Mapesbury. It is deeply offensive to British Jews and lawyers that the Law Society is hosting this controversial political event. It is little more than an Israel-bashing fest, in the guise of a kangaroo court, which has arrogantly summonsed companies doing business with Israel to appear before it to justify themselves. Many of the usual cast of hard left-wing Zionist-haters are speaking."

And Jonathan Hoffman has added:

"It seems that the Law Society has been duped into thinking that this is some kind of high minded quasi-judicial inquiry. But it is a sham show trial with the result predetermined. By using the credibility of the Law Society, the organisers - utterly cynically - are trying to give it a veneer of respectability. They are bringing the name of the Law Society into disrepute and that should be sufficient to lead to the cancellation of the booking. Let's hope the Society's Officers make the right decision. If they do not, many lawyers will question why they should remain members and why they should hold events there."

Last evening, a preliminary session of the Russell Tribunal took place at the headquarters of Amnesty International. The panel comprised film director Ken Loach, well-known for his odious anti-Israel invective, journalist Ewa Jasiewicz (no stranger to readers of the Israel-hating Guardian), whose accomplishments allegedly include helping to desecrate a wall of the Warsaw Ghetto with anti-Israel slogans, and others of their ilk.

Standing sentry as the room filled up was Amnesty’s campaigns director Krystian Benedict, and when this flunkey of the kangaroo court saw Jonathan Hoffman about to enter he barred the man whose leonine courage in speaking up for Israel is legendary.  Mr Hoffman protested, whereupon Mr Benedict wasted no time in summoning not one but four Mr Plods to escort Judah’s Lion off the premises.

 “Rather than try to deal with my on-point objections to the speakers’ comments, I was censored”, notes Hoffman. “Bertrand Russell would surely be turning in his grave. Totalitarian societies begin with curbing free speech. It seems that Amnesty's espousal of 'human rights' does not extend to the right of Jews to protest at antisemitism during Amnesty meetings.”

However, on hand to report on (and photograph) last evening’s event was the doughty Richard Millett, who relates on his blog that “Last night at Amnesty felt less about the delegitimisation of Israel and more about the delegitimisation of Jews.”

Read more at richardmillett.wordpress.com/.../russell-tribunal-on-palestine-presents-ken- loach-at-amnesty/