Among the Antisemitic Outrages, An Alleged Jew-Baiter Sends Jews Sends His Love

When Rabbi Y. Y. Jacobson made this very telling video for Chanukah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYG_DnYhKYc

he obviously cannot have known of the very latest of the recent antisemitic outrages in the United States:

Meanwhile, across the Herring Pond in two adjoining leafy suburbs of London, including on a synagogue (see report and further photos here):

Above: How the BBC described the daubing; Sizer please note

I wonder what the Reverend Dr Stephen Sizer (the now ex-vicar of leafy Virginia Water in Surrey) who tweeted this

makes of the fact that the calumny represented (which seems to have begun with the American Far Right but which, sadly, also featured in a book of his, published in 2004 by the Inter Varsity Press) thinks of those developments in London this Chanukah.

As CEO of the so-called Peacemakers Trust, Sizer's still blazing away with his Israel-hatred

(Don't blame Israel for the plight of Gaza's Christians, vicar. Blame Hamas. For starters, see here)

Warning: sick bucket alert.

In the meantime, this old political rogue has the gall to send Jews his love!

"'I'm Not English ... I am a Real Jew Now"

Former BBC journalist Llewellyn reacts to Freedland's angst

"We Jews have evolved to be neurotic; so neurotic that, in certain circumstances, the Syrian border feels slightly safer than Muswell Hill.... The libel that the Jews are the enemy of everything holy (formerly Christ, now socialism) has returned.
 
There are allies, but they are largely outside Labour now. Ian Austin, a Labour MP for 14 years, now an independent, this morning asked Labour supporters to vote Tory: due to anti-Semitism....
....‘Jew’ is absolutely a loaded word again. I have been told, very recently, that the Rothschilds control Europe — at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting of all places; and by a socialist, naturally. This is normal. When I ask Labour members about anti-Semitism they react with denial or, more likely, fury; why do we seek to maim the utopia, and why do we not do something about Islamophobia? ....  That Labour call themselves progressives, and yet are imbued with the infection of ancient Christian Jew-hatred — the murder of God was our original sin — is equally laughable. We have returned to our settled place; too proud, in every sense, to assimilate; rather, we drift across the world to where we feel safe: the Syrian border for some; Muswell Hill for others.

At least I feel close to my ancestors now; I understand them better. I’m not English ....No, I’m not. If I was an English schoolgirl, I am a real Jew now."

So declares Tanya Gold in a Spectator article here.

Meanwhile, in the Guardian, Jonathan Freeland, who deplores Boris Johnson and his "Islamophobia", has a similar lament of betrayal and political homelessness. Inter alia:

"Because while I want desperately to avoid Brexit, and while I have nothing but contempt for Johnson and his hard-right party, the prospect of Prime Minister Corbyn fills me with dread.... The thought of it prompts in me, and the overwhelming majority of the community I grew up in, a fear that we have not known before.

I’m referring to Britain’s Jews who, for the first time in their history, have concluded that someone hostile to them is on the brink of taking democratic power. Yes, of course, not every single British Jew holds that view. But the most recent poll found that 87% regard Corbyn as an antisemite, meaning an anti-Jewish racist.

Why? The recitation is now wearily familiar. Recall that Corbyn’s first reaction on hearing of a plan to remove a mural filled with hideous caricatures of hook-nosed Jewish bankers was to ask, “Why?” Or that he decided to challenge two “Zionists” not on their arguments but by suggesting that, though they “might have lived in this country for a very long time”, they “don’t understand English irony”. Or that, when a Palestinian Islamist preacher was found by a British tribunal to have peddled the medieval and lethal myth of Jews feasting on the blood of gentile children, Corbyn declared that man a very “honoured citizen”, and invited him for tea in the House of Commons. (And those are merely some of the greatest hits; the full discography runs much longer.)

For four years, Britain’s Jews have – naively, perhaps – waited for the moment when one of these revelations would prove too much for the Labour faithful, shocking them into action....

But no. No revelation has ever proved shocking enough that it couldn’t be explained away by those who’d rather not see it....

We’re meant to cheer that Chris Williamson has been barred from standing again as an MP. But Jews remember that, even when Williamson’s penchant for egregious Jew-baiting was well known, Corbyn was still praising him''.... Labour’s crop of prospective parliamentary candidates has included several with a documented history of anti-Jewish bigotry, Twitter back-catalogues playing on all the familiar tunes of Jewish conspiracy, greed and the rest of it. Two candidates were forced to step down on Thursday, one for calling a Jewish fellow councillor “Shylock”. It suggests this is no longer a problem of one man, but that the malaise is now institutional....None of us should be forced to choose between a hard Brexit enforced by an Islamophobe, and electing a man whose record fills one of Britain’s smallest minorities with fear...."

And in the meantime the Inminds group, an Islamic community initiative, finds yet another Zionist enterprise to rant and rave about:

http;//youtu.be/P2koyJorh7U

(An Alex Seymour/Seymour Alexander video)

Danger Man Dissected

Unsurprisingly, the defection of principled men and women from the cesspool that is the Corbyn-led Labour Party continues.

Three years ago, during the furore surrounding despicable comments regarding Hitler and Zionism made by former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who quit the Labour Party in 2018,  Labour MP Ian Austin, whose Jewish adoptive father arrived in England from Czechoslovakia as a ten-year-old in 1939, made (top left) what many Twitter users consider his finest tweet.

A few days ago, disgusted by the antisemitism that lurks in Labour's ranks, resigned from the party, telling the BBC's Kirsty Wark in an interview that if he remained he would no longer be able to look his father (whose immediate family was murdered in Treblinka) and his Jewish friends in the eye.

"I was one of the first to raise concerns about antisemitism following events at the 2017 Conference in Brighton", wrote a Brighton and Hove Councillor Warren Morgan a couple of days ago, explaining his resignation from the Labour Party, which he joined in 1993.

"It was my duty as council leader, as a Labour councillor, to call out racism wherever and whenever it appeared, without fear or favour, in defence of the city's Jewish community. For that I was vilified by members locally and supporters of Jeremy Corbyn nationally.

Friends in the Jewish Labour Movement urged me not to resign my membership, as others have done, in response to the unchecked and rampant antisemitism amongst Party members, in order to fight back and clear the Party of those with racist antisemitic views. I have done so until now. The resignation of Luciana Berger from the Party is a clear sign that members of the Jewish community and those who support them have no place in Labour."

Investigative journalist Tom Bower's searing exposé of Jeremy Corbyn's problem with da Joos published last week in the Jewish Chronicle must be actingas a final straw for some Labour members, and it is only to be regretted that the revelations it contains, uncovered during Mr Bower's researches for his just-published biography of Corbyn, Dangerous Hero,were not known and publicised before Corbyn was elected party leader.

Here, by the way, is anti-Israel hard leftist John McDonnell's insolent tweet regarding the biography.

McDonnell, a handpicked member of Corbyn's team and Shadow Chancellor, no less, showed his vile hostility Jews and Israel again last week when he called for Britons who fought in the IDF to be deprived of their British citizenship.

Writes Mr Bower, the son of child refugees from Prague and Vienna respectively, iner alia:

'I am among the few living people who interviewed for TV serious Nazi war criminals....

Like those antisemitic Nazis, Mr Corbyn blames the malign power of Jews for orchestrating a global conspiracy to oppress the workers. “The power of the Israel lobby is truly phenomenal,” Mr Corbyn said in 2003 to Hamas supporters, referring to his conviction that rich Jewish bankers, especially in New York, are orchestrating Zionist influence.

Ever since Mr Corbyn was elected Labour’s leader in 2015, he has faced accusations about his antisemitism, which he has denied. However, while researching the book I came across an interview he gave in September 2015 which confirms Mr Corbyn’s antisemitism.

Unsuspecting, Mr Corbyn had settled down in front of a microphone to help a local historian compile eyewitness accounts for The Holloway Project. Mr Corbyn was asked to describe his attachment to the Holloway Road, an ugly highway running through Islington, his north London constituency. But before identifying his favourite places along that dust bowl, he described his early life and, most noteworthy, his first job in London in 1973 as an assistant researcher at the National Union of Tailor and Garment Workers.

In Mr Corbyn’s version, as the most junior employee he personally challenged the Jewish employers of his members — “scumbags” and “crooks”, as he would describe the tailors — to recover the members’ unpaid wages. Their bosses, explained Mr Corbyn, “had mysteriously gone bankrupt just before Christmas, owing their workers a lot of wages and not paying National Insurance and all this kind of thing. Scumbags actually. Crooks. My job was to try and chase these people through Companies House and so on.”

Mr Corbyn’s account is contradicted by Alec Smith, the union’s former leader and Mr Corbyn’s direct superior, now in his eighties, who I tracked down in Essex, and by the trade union’s well-catalogued records.

Pertinently, the union’s archives stored at universities in London and Manchester do not reveal any issues about “unscrupulous employers” and do not show that any member complained about being unpaid, especially before Christmas.

Mr Smith told me with certainty that Mr Corbyn “never had any contact with our members. He just sat in at meetings passing me information”. Mr Smith recalled: “The clothing industry is a tough business. If an employer went broke it was because of trading conditions — not to fiddle their employees.”

Not for the first time, Mr Corbyn had reshaped the truth to improve his self-image. He conjured the tale of a brave personal fight against exploitative Jewish employers of sweatshop labour and exposed his disdain towards those Jews seeking self-improvement to fulfil the dream of moving from the East End slums to North London’s suburbs.'

Bower, whose first wife is a source for some of his discoveries, goes on to state:

'Uneducated and uninterested in culture and anything spiritual, Mr Corbyn, as a committed communist, was unsympathetic towards a race complicated by its history of survival over 2,000 years of persecution....

[He} defined Zionism as racism and accused white Jews of acting as supremacists, oppressing coloured Arabs in what he called “Israel’s apartheid occupation” of Palestine. He condemned the Balfour Declaration... and dismissed the effect of the Holocaust to explain the Jewish people’s longing for a return to their own country after 1945 to avoid future persecution.

[He] preferred to ignore that Israel was created by the United Nations and fulfilled all the legal requirements for international recognition. Pertinently, he never complained about the simultaneous creation of Pakistan in 1948, where partition of the sub-continent had caused millions of deaths and led to the persecution of Hindus by the new Muslim state.

In Mr Corbyn’s hierarchy of oppression, the descendants of slaves were the most victimised, while Holocaust survivors were at the bottom of the list. He did not distinguish between Jews in London and Zionists in Tel Aviv. To him, they were all guilty.

An original source of Mr Corbyn’s antisemitism in the 1960s ... was Malcolm X ...

Mr Corbyn’s antisemitism simmered unseen, even after he was elected as an MP in 1983, until the Islamist attack on New York on September 11 2001. In the aftermath, he organised with fellow communists the Stop the War Coalition (SWC), ostensibly to protest against the American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr Corbyn’s partner in SWC was the Muslim Association of Great Britain. This group was attached to the Muslim Brotherhood. Some on the left questioned the coalition of Marxists with political Islamists but Mr Corbyn successfully argued that the alliance was forged by a mutual opposition to Zionism.

Thereafter, during protest marches through London, banners against the war would be given equal billing to the Muslim Association’s placards urging the destruction of Israel. The two, said the Muslim organisers, were linked: Zionists were planning the imminent invasion of Iraq. Mr Corbyn agreed.

Thereafter, Mr Corbyn frequently associated with Muslim extremists who advocated in antisemitic language Israel’s destruction. Speaking on the same platforms with the extremists, he appeared to share his hosts’ refusal to distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism...' 

Be sure to read the entire article dissecting Danger Man's antisemitism.  It pulls no punches.

The fact that in his biography of Corbyn Bower by an unfortunate slip refers to "Cat Stevens" when he means "Cat Smith" the female Labour MP, does not validate the disdainful dismissive review of the book undertaken by reviewer Stephen Bush (political editor of the New Statesman) in the Guardian, where the issue of antisemitism is not mentioned by Mr Bush.

More (out of numerous other) examples of Corbynista slime:

MP Chris Williamson:

As others have asked, recalling this, has Williamson no mirror?

There seems to be a great deal of "rich man antisemitism" at the base of Corbynista Jew-hatred, the perception of Jews as plutocrats, the manifestly unfounded belief that all Jews are wealthy.  Still, Corbyn continues to have his as-a-Jew toadies,  They surface every so aften in the correspondence colums of the Guardian ... as well as of the Islington Tribune.

"The Police Don't Help Us. The Police Want an Easy Life" (Jewish Londoner)

With, at times, an unfortunate background of noise that almost obscures her remarks, a Jewish lady shares with a Daily Express journalist her views regarding the antisemitism stirred by Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=VEyDtdnUIv8

The Socialism of Fools: Hanbury Street Revisited

Back in October 2012, having read this, regarding, on the wall of a building owned by a certain Mr Hussein, a disgraceful antisemitic mural, I posted this:

Hanbury Street, in London's East End, looms large in the Anglo-Jewish story.  Among those once resident there was Chaim Reuben Weintrop, better known as comedian Bud Flanagan; a blue plaque on the wall of number twelve marks the spot.

Last week, on a wall in Hanbury Street, accompanying the message "The New World Order Is The Enemy Of Humanity," appeared this offensive image from the brush of an American muralist who believes that Jews and Freemasons rule the world.

Just fancy that! A Sizer post this January.

Sounds familiar? It is, having characterised antisemitic conspiracy theories of both left and right since the nineteenth century.

To the best of my knowledge the first conspiracy theorist to allege a sinister collusion between the two groups was the odious renegade Jew Jacob Brafman, whose pamphlet on the subject in the mid-nineteenth century anticipated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Kalen Ockerman (aka Mear One), the muralist responsible for this excrescence, claims that it's not antisemitic but classist.  Some have accepted his explanation

But the mayor of Tower Hamlets, Luftur Rahman, told the Jewish Chronicle:

"I have received a number of complaints that the mural has antisemitic images. I share these concerns. Whether intentional or otherwise, the images of the bankers perpetuate antisemitic propaganda about conspiratorial Jewish domination of financial and political institutions.

Where freedom of expression runs the risk of inciting racial hatred then it is right that such expression should be curtailed. I have asked my officers to do everything possible to see to it that this mural is removed."

It is instructive, and somewhat disturbing, to watch this video of the mural being painted, with narration by the artist, and see how the initial antipathy by locals changes as the mural takes shape.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9p8Og6-YcY

As is well-known, Labour MP Luciana Berger has recently asked a very pertinent question of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn regarding his reaction to that mural, with some leftwing Jewish diehards rushing (as they habitually do) to defend Corbyn from charges of antisemitism:

 (to the delight of non-Jewish Israel-haters, of course).

As the Telegraph reports here, accompanied by a video featuring Board of Deputies' president Jonathan Arkush, Corbyn has belatedly apologised, echoing August Bebel in terming antisemitism "the socialism of Jews".

But words are cheap, and the antisemitic rot that bedevils the Labour Party cannot be so easily dismissed.

See this post of mine on Elder of Ziyon, for instance (illustrated here). And, well-illustrated, this

Corbyn, 1986; See HERE

Onya, international relations specialist Dr Vaughan!:

In a hard-hitting leader yesterday, The Times, calling Corbyn's excuse ("I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on") "feeble",  and noting his links to "such preposterous figures as Stephen Sizer, an Anglican vicar who spread an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel was responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks", recalls the Labour leaders of the past who "understood the necessity and nobility of Jewish nationhood after the Holocaust".

Noting that on Sunday the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council issued an open letter accusing Corbyn of associating with antisemites, and that over the past few days Corbyn  "has been exposed as belonging to three Facebook groups in which antisemitic theories, including Holocaust denial, are commonplace" and which "display posts attributing nefarious global influence to the Rothschild banking dynasty and claiming that Israeli military forces harvest the organs of dead Palestinians", it concludes:

"Antisemitism is an issue beyond party and ideology.  Standing against it is perhaps the most basis test of political integrity.  Labour is led by a man who fails that test.  its many decent parliamentarians and supporters should abandon him to merited disrepute." (Hat tip: J.)

Corbyn's defence of Sizer has now been mentioned by the influential UK blogger Archbishop Cranmer here

For a highly interesting (and, like the proverbial curate's egg, good in part) analysis of this latest Corbyn affair from one leftist's perspective see here

Tasteless Tonge: Shame on her. Again.

Here's Baroness Tonge being interviewed on Iran's propaganda satellite channel recently, along with Massoud Shadjareh of the UK Islam Human Rights Council about Donald Trump and Israel.

Her Ladyship makes her debut around 4:30.  The interview is interrupted by a cross to footage of a Neturei Karta nutjob who went to Paris for the 15 January "peace conference," after which it resumes.

The Neturei Karta representative, who of course represents a minute fraction of Jewish opinion in the world today, made the NK's mantra-like distinction between Judaism and Zionism, and back in the studio Her Ladyship exclaims "It is very very wicked indeed to conflate the two [Jews and Zionists]"

She nods her head to Massoud Shadjareh's assertion that "What we need to have eventually is one state" and observes that "Trump and Netanyahu together could make the abscess explode" - as Shadjareh put it, "the beginning of the end" of the USA's "authority in the world" and downfall of Christian Zionism and the victory of the Palestinians.

When asked by the interviewer for her views on Trump's appointment of his son-in-law Jared Kushner as White House adviser, Tonge denounces the appointment as "medieval".

What's truly medieval is the treatment of women, virgins awaiting execution, homosexuals, religious apostates and political dissidents at the hands of the Iranian regime whose propaganda channel this avowed feminist has no qualms whatever about appearing on.

I've made these points before in relation to anti-Israel leftists who appear on Press TV and will not belabour them here.

For Her Ladyship, as for much of the Left, there appear to be Good Jews and Bad Jews.

No prizes for guessing what stance the Good Jews take towards what the Iranian regime that runs Press TV calls "The Zionist Entity". 

In the screenshot at left she's using  a recently reported humanitarian initiative by the South London Liberal Synagogue as a stick with which to beat those Israelis who have the temerity to defend their little state against terrorism, Arab rejectionism, and aggression.

It so happens that Her Ladyship like others on its mailing list has received a communication from the Community Security Trust  (CST) informing her of its new report on antisemitic incidents in the UK last year. 

Here's the video  referred to in the letter.

Dear The Baroness Tonge

Today CST has published our 2016 Antisemitic Incidents Report, which shows that last year we recorded a record high number of antisemitic incidents across the UK. The total of 1,309 antisemitic incidents in 2016 was a 36 per cent increase from the 960 incidents we recorded in 2015.

You can download and read a copy of the report here, and see our media release here. The media release includes quotes supporting CST’s work from the Home Secretary, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism and Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan, who is the national lead for the policing of Jewish communities.

There is no single explanation for the high number of antisemitic incidents in 2016, which was spread uniformly throughout the year. Rather than being caused by a specific, sudden ‘trigger event’, as has been the case with record totals in the past, it appears that the record high incident total in 2016 may be due to the cumulative effect of a series of events and factors that, taken together, created an atmosphere in which more antisemitic incidents are occurring, and are also more likely to be reported to CST and the Police. These factors include high profile allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party; a perceived increase in racism and xenophobia following the EU referendum, including an increase in recorded racial and religious hate crime; and regular, high-profile discussion of antisemitism, racism and hate crime in mainstream media, politics and on social media during the year. They follow the terrorist attacks on Jewish communities in Europe in 2015 and the war in Israel and Gaza in 2014, all of which have contributed to keeping antisemitic incident levels high in the UK since summer 2014.

Obviously this increase and the record high total are deeply concerning. CST currently records, on average, more than double the number of antisemitic incidents per month than was the case four years ago. All of these incidents require processing and analysis and most of them involve some degree of victim support and Police liaison by CST staff and volunteers. We will continue to endeavour to give the victims of antisemitism, and the wider Jewish community, all the support and assistance they require, as we do every day.

We have produced a short video about the 2016 Antisemitic Incidents Report which you can view here. Please feel free to forward and share this video.

I would like to thank you for all your help and support for CST’s work over the past year. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

Yours sincerely

David S Delew MBA Chief Executive Community Security Trust (CST)

 Here's more:

Baroness Tonge has lost no time in responding to the CST:

"Real Decent Jewish People".  There's that "Good Jews"/"Bad Jews" dichotomy again. Historians of antisemitism will know that it's a dichotomy with a long and ignoble pedigree.

This young tweeter has the measure of Her Ladyship:

And of her tasteless email:

Be sure to look at that CST video.

A rabbi's view of Tonge

"As a Growth Industry Antisemitism Has Become Immense ... Jeremy Corbyn is ... a Primitive Troglodyte"

"We are living in a crazy time ... in a world of total and absolute chaos ... As a growth industry antisemitism has become immense ... Europe is under siege ... Jeremy Corbyn is promoting the worst form of leftist antisemitism and he himself is a primitive troglodyte ... "

That's just part of Isi Leibler's compelling introduction to Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld discussing "the British Disease".

To quote the uploader of this long video, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:

"In recent months, a large number of extreme anti-Semitic expressions by elected representatives of the British Labour Party have come to light. The publicity has forced Labour, which is under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, to investigate antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism in the party. The antisemitism issue is overshadowed by the many consequences of Brexit, which include a major crisis in Labour.

Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld is the former Chairman of the Board of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. His many books deal with European-Israeli and European-Jewish issues. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism, and the International Leadership Award by the Simon Wiesenthal Center."

 In this recently issued video from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Adam Shay, a Jerusalem Center expert on the cultural boycott of Israel, answers Lenny Ben-David's question "Has the Cultural Boycott of Israel Peaked?"

To quote the uploader:

"In the 2016 concert season, there is no shortage of international performers coming to Israel and virtually all categories are represented. The South African rave-rap duo Die Antwoord, one of the hottest names around, was a prime target for BDS activity. However, the band paid little or no attention to this and once they took the stage in Tel Aviv they told the boycott activists exactly what they thought of them.

Guitar icon Carlos Santana had cancelled his performance in Israel back in 2010 when the cultural boycott was at its height. This is why Santana's recent performance in Tel Aviv was so important. The fact that a performer of iconic status, who has in the past cancelled a performance, now feels it is safe and legitimate to return, tells us that as far as the cultural boycott is concerned, the worst may very well be behind us."

As for the craziness that engulfs Europe, this new article makes grim reading indeed.

Meanwhile:
 Corbyn's little comeuppance
Antisemitism in Belfast

Been & Seen On The Streets of London (includes video)

At left is the link to a report in an Israeli newspaper regarding the squalid anti-Jewish demo held in central London on the 4th of July.

The commenter, one of the friends of Stephen Sizer (remember him?) on Facebook, has form in making anti-Jewish statements, notoriously in a spiteful little screed to the Jewish Chronicle itself back in 2007.  Stephen Pollard, the paper's editor, used the screed as an example of the malevolence that lies behind the BDS movement.

The 4th of July demo, as many readers will know, was due to have taken the form of a march through the London suburb of Golders Green, led by vile young neo-Nazi antisemite called Joshua Bonehill, who on his repugnant racist blog and elsewhere promised his followers: "We're going to have an absolute gas".

It was stymied owing to a groundswell of outrage and opposition on the part of the Jewish community and others, and moved to central London (authorities were powerless to ban it altogether) so that it was easier to police.

As the intrepid British pro-Israel blogger Edgar Davidson noted:

'It seems like the only thing of concern to British Jews at the moment is next week's planned demonstration by a handful of neo-Nazis in Golders Green to "end the Zionist occupation of Britain". Never before has the community been so united.'

http://edgar1981.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/on-hypocrisy-of-golders-green-demo.html

Many congratulations to those who stood firm against the march are of course in order.  But Davidson also writes :

'While the people behind the demo are clearly despicable attention-seeking antisemites deliberately trying to provoke trouble, I am somewhat bemused as to why this tiny piece of antisemitic theatre has so grabbed the attention of the Jewish community. On almost every day of the week on the streets of the UK there are much better planned and coordinated displays of antisemitism that use exactly the same pretext as the one planned in Golders Green (i.e. 'ending the Zionist occupation'). Just look at the future events on websites of organisations like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Socialist Workers Party, the UK Boycott Israel Campaign, and the dozens of other trade unions and students associations.

 These events range from weekly (and even daily) protests against shops and businesses with any connection to Israel and those selling Israeli products through to protests to stop any Israeli performer from appearing or any person at all speaking in public in support of Israel. Often they are quite elaborate, lavishly funded pieces of real street theatre with the sole intention of convincing normal Brits that Israeli Jews are the most demonic and evil people in the world. Every one of these events has more antisemitic participants than the number likely to turn up in Golders Green. And, of course, these events pale into insignificance when compared to the daily mass (often violent) rallies of antisemitic hatred that fill the streets of London whenever Israel dares to defend itself from terrorist attacks....

What it comes down to is that Britain's 'official Jews' feel comfortable demonstrating against anti-semitism when the proponents are white racists, but will not get involved when the proponents - - in far greater numbers - are Muslims and socialists....'

Speaking of "street theatre" in London, here's an old ( I mean a young old) friend of ours, attired as we've never seen him before, eliciting some ignorant anti-Israel comments from passers-by:

Also on the streets of London, the menacing sight of a man draped in an Isis flag, with a kid on his shoulders waving a similar item in miniature, strolling  near Parliament.  He was stopped by police, according to this report, but they let him and his flags go on their way unhindered (h/t Vlad Tepes blog):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Bats & Boycotts: Two Aussie Blondes

A still from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzU_YADWck

You may remember her here. 

She made a real fool of herself, and showed how viscerally, battily antisemitic she is, in explaining that the logo for the 2012 Olympics was a conspiracy by "Jewry" and "the world Zionist predator". With input from the Freemasons, apparently.

And you may remember my description of her here:

 'Born in 1946, Michèle Mainwaring was a beauty queen – Miss Newcastle [NSW], 1968 – who went on to marry, in 1970, an Australian psychiatrist of Russian background, she controversially styling herself Countess Griaznoff on the basis of a disputed title in his family, before making a brief marriage in 1991 to the Australian financier Sir Frank Renouf, nearly thirty years her senior, with whom she set up home in London, where she continues to be based.

As Lady Renouf, she has become notorious for her support of and personal friendship with some of the big beasts of the Holocaust denial movement including Germar Rudolf and Ernst Zündel ... the Frenchman Robert Faurisson ... Australian Holocaust denier Frederick Toben – as well as Bishop Richard Williamson and the Holocaust minimiser – he denies that he’s a denier altogether – David Irving....

In 2005, during his trial in Vienna for Holocaust denial, which she attended, Lady Renouf organised financial support for Irving's family, maintained his website, and called for "so-called Holocaust victims" to be "exhumed to see whether they died from typhoid or gas" ...

She’s described Judaism as a "repugnant and hate-filled religion" and travelled to Teheran in 2006 for the "International Conference - Holocaust Review: A Global Vision", where she reportedly declared that Judaism possesses a "dangerously misanthropic tendency" and a "fundamentally anti-gentile narcissism", and that “the anti-gentile nature of Judaism” causes antisemitism....

 Lady Renouf is obsessed with the bizarre notion that Birobidjan – the Jewish autonomous oblast in the far east of the Soviet Union, that Stalin dreamed up, is the true destination of the Jews; she wants the Israelis to up sticks and relocate there....'

Photo: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

She was wallowing in the cesspool of Jew-hatred again, a few days ago, at a gathering of Holocaust Deniers in a London Hotel.

To quote the perspicacious Douglas Murray:

'[The] Mail on Sunday had an interesting account of a meeting in London of Nazis, neo-Nazis, British National Party types and anti-Semites of various other hues. The paper infiltrated the meeting and exposed what was said - which is a very good service and deserves praise.

.... But I confess to feeling fairly unbothered by such a gathering where the best they can do in terms of personnel is to find an admirer of Hitler from Spain, a retired schoolteacher wearing a British Union of Fascists lapel badge and carrying a book by Oswald Mosley and the absurd ‘Lady’ Michele Renouf, a former ‘hand model’ whose brain has never been what I suppose her hands once were.

According to the Mail on Sunday, Pedro Varela, the Spanish man, gave a speech about ‘the children of darkness’, during which:

 ‘He also appeared to call for a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses, saying: “In the Middle Ages, the Jews had all the gold in the world but they were living in the ghettos. They still have the gold of the world and are the masters of it…”’

Barrister Mr Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the British Board of Deputies, the man who so successfully interceded with the Anglican authorities following January's despicable 9/11 Facebook post by Stephen Sizer, and who deserves to win the forthcoming presidential election at the Board, says, reports the Mail,

'The material from this white supremacist group makes ugly reading,’ said barrister Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

On the face of it, their proceedings should be investigated to ascertain whether criminal offences have been committed, including incitement to racial hatred.’

That's understandable, and in keeping with Mr Arkush's robust leadership style.

Nevertheless, it's hard not to agree with Douglas Murray when he suggests when we consider the real danger to Jews and Jewish interests the pathetic little group of Holocaust Denying nutjobs palse into insignificance when compared to Natalie Bennett (incidentally, like Lady Renouf a native of New South Wales, and her UK Greens):

'Natalie Bennett, the Green party’s Australian-born leader, has confirmed her stance. Bennett has told the Jewish Chronicle that she not only supports an economic boycott of Israel but a cultural boycott too. This presumably means that Bennett believes British citizens should not listen, for instance, to a performance by a Jewish pianist who has been born in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

 Or visit an exhibition by a painter from Israel or receive medical assistance from a Jewish surgeon who has migrated (aren’t the Green Party in favour of open borders?) to the historic homeland of the Jewish people seventy years after the creation of the State of Israel.

I suppose that for the time being Bennett would still allow us to hear a Jewish pianist so long as the said pianist had not asserted their right to go to live in the world’s one and only Jewish state. But it is striking that the only type of migrant Bennett thinks we should boycott and disdain are Jewish migrants.'

I think it's time I trotted out this Australian newspaper headline again.  It's from the Sydney-based Hebrew Standard, and I think the year is 1946.

A reasonable view to hold in the immediate wake of the Shoah.

But, alas, it  what  Conor Cruise O'Brien called "a very light sleeper" was only slumbering after all.

"Having Now Met Stephen [Sizer], In My Brand New Role As Bishop of Guildford, I Do Not Believe That His Motives Were Antisemitic" (updated: video)

"Having now met Stephen, in my brand new role as Bishop of Guildford, I do not believe that his motives are antisemitic.  But I have concluded that, at the very least, he has demonstrated appalling poor judgment on the material he has chosen to disseminate, particularly via social media, some of which is clearly antisemitic."

That's the newly-appointed Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Rev Andrew Watson talking.  He has rapped Stephen Sizer hard across the knuckles for the despicable "9/11 Israel Did It"Facebook post link Sizer made on 20 January.

Sizer is a keen "photo journalist"

The Jewish News, which while its competitor the Jewish Chronicle ('the organ of Anglo-Jewry') was napping, broke the news of Sizer's link on January 30 and sent the story viral, reports that this morning (Monday, British time), the bishop has:

 'told a Press conference at Guildford that Dr Sizer had agreed to a prohibition from using social media for six months and from commenting on Middle Eastern issues while he remains in the employment of the diocese.

He said:

“It is my view that Stephen’s strong but increasingly undisciplined commitment to an anti-Zionist agenda has become a liability to his own ministry and that of the wider church.

Many who more moderately support the Palestinian cause and share his critique of a particular brand of Christian fundamentalism, themselves find Stephen’s actions to be increasingly unhelpful and counter-productive, a fact he himself now recognises.

It is therefore my decision that Stephen’s work in this area is no longer compatible with his ministry as a parish priest.

In order for Stephen to remain in parish ministry, I have therefore asked for and received from him a solemn undertaking, in writing, that he is to refrain entirely from writing or speaking on any themes that relate, either directly or indirectly, to the current situation in the Middle East or to its historical backdrop.”

(Press conference reported more fully here; update:see more particularly here)

All praise to the British Board of Deputies, in the person of vice-president Mr Jonathan Arkush, for pursuing this matter so determinedly, and to the newly-appointed Bishop for dealing with it so promptly.

As one Christian organisation noted of Sizer's apology for the post (see right; when at length caught out, and following an initial show of defiance to the Jewish News),

 'This apology appears to show no genuine remorse, and is instead reminiscent of the child forced into apologising because he has been caught out. While the suspension of his blog is a step in the right direction, it seems too little, too late. His anti-Israel views and his questionable theology now pervade much of the UK and American church.

While 'anti-Israel' does not necessarily equate to 'anti-semitism', and clergy are entitled to air their political views, Mr. Sizer's actions have frequently been highly regrettable. Through the regular negative mass media coverage he has attracted, much damage has been done both to the Church of England’s reputation and to its witness, especially among the Jewish community. The media attention also reflects badly on the wider Church. It is to be hoped that the Diocese of Guildford will take this into account and plan to deal decisively with Dr. Sizer.

It is to be hoped that the Diocese of Guildford does not merely to settle for this inadequate apology and hope for the end of matter, but deals decisively and justly with the recurring problem that clearly exists. Through negative publicity, and his links and associations, Dr. Sizer raises serious questions about whether his occupations and habits befit his calling as a Clerk in Holy Orders. His actions have, on many occasions, been the cause of offence to others, and cannot be said to set a wholesome example and pattern for those in his care'

Should Sizer offend again, then one would expect more serious consequences.  It would seem that if he doesn't shape up he'll be shipping out, as the phrase goes:

 "If he is not repentant, if he continues working in this way I've made it very clear that he will go." 

Sizer's letter of 4 February to the bishop can be read here  

Meanwhile, in face of increased antisemitism in the UK, an All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism has just published its report and recommendations.
Full report here
BBC synopsis here

À Londres, Ils Sont Juifs ...

In the heavily Jewish Golders Green area of London, an avowedly Christian "Solidarity Patrol" shows its sympathy for British Jews in view of reports of heightened antisemitism (hat tip: Rita; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJkQcCU6lpU):

It is to Golders Green that Gorgeous George will soon be heading, to take part in an edition of BBC "Question Time"; his presence has, of course, been condemned by many as unnecessary provocation on Al Beeb's part, while the Board of Deputies of British Jews welcomes it as a chance to discredit George's opinions.

Have a look at this video, a collection of vignettes of viciousness  on the Israel-hating movement's part (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob26PJfq1XE):

 One of the newspaper articles that is shown in the first video above relates to Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.  He delivered a powerful speech on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day:

"Seventy years ago this week, Soviet troops stormed a large complex of Nazi prison camps in south-west Poland. They quickly discovered the apparatus for mechanised mass murder. The camps were called Auschwitz-Birkenau: a byword for the darkest depths of human depravity, and a period of unparalleled evil in human history.

Last Sunday, I travelled to Poland to represent the UK at this year’s liberation ceremony. The event was more poignant than ever, as it’s likely to be the last significant anniversary where survivors are present. It was also more sombre, because it takes place in the aftermath of another violent and disgusting attack on European Jews.

Recently I’ve heard people try to distinguish the antisemitism that propelled the Holocaust from the murders in Paris. They argue the former was born from fascism and ancient European prejudices, while the latter was driven by Islamic extremism and Middle Eastern politics.

This distinction is superficially reassuring. After all, we overcame the Third Reich 70 years ago. And as for those Jew-hating jihadists, well, they hate everybody else too. But there’s a problem: there is no distinction. It’s a delusion.

As I have said before, the irrational hatred of Jews is like cancer. It can be defeated, even crushed, but it can come back. Last year, Europe experienced a relapse, and only the most naïve would dismiss the potential risks that lie ahead.

Cancer begins in just a few malignant cells, but then it spreads, mutates and kills. The journey to the gas chambers began with small steps: newspaper columns, graffiti and broken windows. It ended with the murder of six million Jews and the destruction of European civilisation.

Some will dismiss such talk as hyperbolic paranoia. They’re wrong. The anxieties of French Jews were growing long before Amedy Coulibaly entered the Hyper Cacher supermarket, and increasing numbers were already emigrating to North America, Israel and Britain.

It is well documented that Jewish people in the UK are considerably less anxious about prejudice than elsewhere in Europe. But that is no cause for conceit, because last year we witnessed our own surge of antisemitic incidents.

Jews were spat at in the streets, intimidated and physically attacked. Cemeteries were desecrated, and the walls of Jewish homes daubed with vile and offensive graffiti. In July and August, there were more antisemitic incidents than the entire previous year.

These pernicious crimes have been accompanied by a creeping cultural acceptance of antisemitic attitudes and behaviour. A Jewish film festival was banned on the basis of Israeli policy in Gaza. A branch of Sainsbury’s cleared their shelves of kosher food to appease anti-Israeli protesters. During the Paris attacks, a respected BBC journalist started questioning a Parisian Jew about Israeli policy, as if she somehow bore responsibility.

These acts of antisemitism were almost casual, and their symbolism extremely troubling. The people and organisations involved eventually offered apologies, sometimes partial and begrudging, but I was dismayed by the initial denial and incomprehension that their behaviour was antisemitic.

The history of antisemitism shows the worst atrocities can begin when ordinary people turn a blind eye to small acts of discrimination, and minds drift lazily towards a mainstream, even fashionable, acceptance of prejudice.

Even some left-wing councils have jumped on the bandwagon. Labour-run Leicester considered it acceptable to play student union politics and ban Israeli-manufactured products. The Mayor of Tower Hamlets tried to create his own municipal foreign policy by flying the Palestinian flag. These public bodies should use their position of authority to promote community cohesion – not to grandstand and stir up tensions.

There is no excuse for this behaviour, or discrimination of any kind. Britain is a country where people of all faiths, and all backgrounds, can live peaceful and prosperous lives. British Jews have made and continue to make a huge contribution to national life: in business and commerce, the arts and literature, through volunteering and charities.

Britain without its Jews is not Britain at all, and this Government will remain at the centre of efforts to combat antisemitism. Last month, my department published a report about what we’re doing. That includes paying for extra security at Jewish schools, punishing online hate crime, and tackling anti-Semitism in football.

We are also ensuring all schoolchildren are taught about the Holocaust, so the next generation understands the horrors caused by inaction, and challenges any attempt to dilute the British values of tolerance and mutual respect.

Extremist behaviour has no place in modern Britain. It is a direct challenge to the values that define our nation. These values are very precious to us, and this Government will ensure they are never surrendered at the expense of British Jews. Freedom of religion is a hard-fought British liberty, and it is one that we will robustly defend."

According to this report Israel is even less popular in Britain than Iran.

The video of the magificent speech in Israel's favour given by Baroness Deech in a House of Lords debate on recognising a Palestinian State the other day is posted on this blog's Facebook page (link at the top of my sidebar) and on many other blogs.  Baroness Deech, a distinguished British educator,
is the daughter of Josef Fraenkel,  a renowned Yiddishist and co-author of Theodor Herzl, which appeared in 1943.  She is the lady about whom BDSer and ageing rocker Roger Waters made a grubby little crack drawing attention to her maiden name a couple of years ago.

It's worth savouring her speech in print:

My Lords, with unfortunate timing, this debate is taking place two days after International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, despite the millions spent on Holocaust education and remembrance, the museums and memorials and the school visits to concentration camps, there is a gap in memory and education that needs to be bridged. The desire and opportunity to murder 6 million people of a different religion whose presence on his territory the murderer resents must not arise again. The message Jews took from the Holocaust was that their nationalism was necessary. It has been a success. Israel is not Saudi Arabia; it is not North Korea, Iran or Pakistan. It is a flourishing and democratic outpost in the desert with an astonishing record. It is a safe haven, an imperative for existence that can be applied to no other country in the world.

Yasser Arafat declared an independent state of Palestine in 1988 and recognition followed from 100 states. The subsequent failure to change anything on the ground demonstrates the truth of the international law on recognition: namely, that statehood has to be founded in fact, not in numbers of recognitions.

As far as this Motion goes, almost every word of it is dubious. There can be no contribution towards a two-state solution because recognition of Palestine, falsely based, will only make the situation more dangerous. There can be no two-state solution unless Palestine recognises Israel, which she has steadfastly refused to do. There is no statehood attaching to Palestine in international law because it does not meet the criteria. A sovereign state of a Muslim Palestine has never existed—not before 1948, and not before 1967. It was Egyptian and Jordanian territory. Ehud Olmert’s offer of a state was rejected in 2009. The intention of many of the players in the region has always been the elimination of a Jewish presence in the area, not the establishment of yet one more Muslim state. The problem with Israel is not that it has displaced anyone; according to its neighbours, the problem is that its population is largely Jewish.

The practical result of a premature state of Palestine would simply be to free up the import of arms into the new state. The aim underlying this move is the takeover of Israel. Why is there no preparation by the Palestinians for statehood? There is no governance structure, no independent administration, no industrialisation and no negotiation of trade agreements with its neighbour, Israel. The state would not be a state in any recognisable form. Its leaders have declared that the current residents, whose status as refugees defies all logic, would remain defined as refugees. They would not be granted citizenship, nor would the state of Palestine open its doors to the Palestinian diaspora—those Palestinians whose miserable lives in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region are worse than the lives of those in Gaza and the West Bank. It has also declared that it would be a Judenrein state, unlike the 1.8 million Arab residents of Israel who have chosen to stay there.

So if a state has no citizens, and will not grant them citizenship in defiance of international law, what would it be for? It would be for a closer jumping-off point for the demolition of the State of Israel in pursuance of the alleged right of return. As other noble Lords have said, Fatah and Hamas want a one-state solution. Why should Israel recognise Palestine if there is no reciprocity but only a step towards elimination in return?

In the climate of extremism that is sweeping Europe, why should a country want to take a step that risks feeding it more? The only purpose is manipulative—to allow Palestinians to pursue claims against Israel at the UN and other international bodies. In the face of what is happening in Europe, what agenda do the proponents serve? Would it not be a good idea to examine the excesses of this position and turn to state building on the ground as an alternative?

Israel’s antagonists often accuse her of apartheid. In the worst times of genuine apartheid in South Africa, Mandela was planning his future independent country’s constitution, educating its leaders, preaching peace, not vengeance, and acting as a statesman. In the early days of Zionism, before statehood, the Jewish residents of what was to be Israel prepared their governance structure, set up the organs of a state, created universities, made the desert bloom, prepared a legal system and a free press, trade unions, hospitals and charities. None of this is present in the Palestinian leadership; nothing is readied. It is not a state under international law, but I have no time to describe that.

The worst element, of course, is that the residents will not be citizens but will be regarded as refugees whose aim is to return to a different state—Israel—rather than establishing citizenship in their own state, and the new state would be wholly dependent on international funds. For it to be recognised now—by the General Assembly, for example—would simply send the message to every other non-state entity in the world, such as the Basque country, Northern Cyprus, the Kurds and even Scotland, to bypass normal laws and claim to be a state. Let there be a two-state solution by all means if the Palestinians will create a homeland, accept the refugees, lay down their arms and be a country of peace.

And this insightful article about media bias against Israel, an article now getting the publicity it deserves, is very much worth reading.