In London, Jews Whacked by JC Reporter Whack Him Back

Figuratively speaking, naturellement.

That antisemitism is a serious problem in Europe, making many Jews, including young Jews, consider emigrating, is a sad fact of contemporary life. See, for example, the recent report here

That Islamic antisemitism and anti-Zionism is driving a great deal of this horrible antipathy cannot be denied.  And the danger of equating "Islamophobia" with antisemitism should be apparent to all of us, as brilliantly explained by the incomparable Melanie Phillips here

Very recently, in London, a number of concerned persons, mainly Jews, among whom were many women, including women well-known as activists in Israel's cause, attended a showing of Katie Hopkins's disturbing documentary on the subject, Homelands.  The meeting was addressed by the articulate Ms Hopkins herself, and among the attendees was Anne-Marie Waters, director of Sharia Watch.

Ben Weich, a young reporter for the London Jewish Chronicle (aka the JC), who seems to have an immature  penchant for poking fun at strong women, to judge from the photo of ex-Tory minister and Brexit Party star Ann Widdicombe on his Twitter page) went along.

The result was not a report but a childish sneering smear against those present, including several well-known Jewish women by name. He scoffed at concerns for the future of Judeo-Christian civilisation. Virtually everyone he poked fun at happened to be female. And if there is a preponderance of women among those who most fear militant Islam, the reason for that fear is not far to seek.

His conclusion, in the context, was nauseating:

"But Jewish flirtation with the far right and extreme nationalism – less than a century removed from the Holocaust – is sickening and tragically ironic in equal measure."

One only hopes that Ben Weich will not grow up to rue the day he dismissed well-founded concerns about Islamic mass immigration and its concomitant antisemitism so cavalierly and bloody-mindedly ashe did in his JC piece.

It's no wonder that the traduced have answered back, in a masterly rebuttal of Weich's piece.  Inter alia (emphasis added):

'.... We do not recognise much of Ben Weich’s JC piece, a great deal of which amounts to no more than vacuous, unctuous virtue signalling.

Naturally we requested a right of reply. JC editor Stephen Pollard declined.

Clearly Weich was so imbued with emotional enthusiasm having at last caught us ‘at it’, that he failed to speak with the producers of the film, failed to raise his concerns during the free and open discussion and failed to interview the organisers.

After we provided this journalist with all the means to investigate and write a true and honest report, he distorted and selectively reported with the sole objective of suggesting that we are extremists. This is completely untrue.

Weich fails to tell his readers that this event had to be cancelled four times in Israel and twice in London, because of input from members of the Jewish establishment, determined to suppress free speech and dialogue. At great expense in London we provided sufficient trained security personnel – including a guard dog – because we take seriously our responsibility for safety. Weich’s report mendaciously juxtaposes the guard dog with a mention of “the BNP in Barking”. He describes Katie Hopkins as a “right wing agitator” but he made no attempt to pose a question to her at the event. No – in Weich’s universe it seems that truth becomes the victim while antisemites get a free ride. Then in his final paragraph he invokes the Holocaust to attempt to add weight to his absurd and offensive conclusion that our event was “Jewish flirtation with the far right and extreme nationalism”.

You’d have thought that Weich might have commented on the revolting antisemitism which the film exposes. Instead he shoots the messengers....'  

Please read it all.

Reporter Marcus's Small Beer

The ("organ of Anglo-Jewry") Jewish Chronicle's political correspondent Marcus Dysch (whom I've always  regarded as one of the few reporters on the Jewish Chronicle these days with a nose for genuine and important news) has been swift to report a relatively minor transgression by the Students' Union of a university in Wales.

 As Marcus tells us,complete with screenshot to prove it,

'Officials at a students’ union have claimed the use of a Nazi logo in advertising material for a German-themed social event was “a genuine mistake”.

Students at Aberystwyth University in Wales complained after the advert appeared on Facebook featuring an SS emblem.

The Bierkeller event is due to take place later this month featuring German-themed attractions including a lederhosen band.'The online publicity material showed an SS logo between English and Welsh translations on the poster.

In a statement issued on Monday evening the students’ union apologised “for any offence caused”....'

In a paper that is meant to be "the newspaper of record" for the Jewish community of the UK even such small beer has its place.

Yet when Marcus was tipped off by e-mail (complete with screenshot to prove it) about an offence far more significant  – namely the "9/11 Israel Did It" link by Stephen Sizer, a public figure with numerous followers and the potential to influence many minds – his reply was inexplicable.

For the man who had earlier reported on Sizer's transgressions and tussles with the Board of Deputies in effect said "Thanks but No Thanks".

The upshot?  No report.  No tweet.  Not the slightest hint of Sizer's egregious post.

Marcus prefers small beer to a scoop of the hard stuff?!

Go figure.  For I can't work it out.

Liberal Rabbis on the Wrong Side of History

Recently, on the Jewish Chronicle website, Rabbi Aaron Goldstein drew attention to a composite sermon produced by him and his two rabbinical assistants at London’s Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue. He asked whether they could produce “the longest sermon in history”.

Since some of my best friends are Liberal rabbis – I had tea and scones with one yesterday afternoon – and since I’m inevitably drawn to matters historical, I decided to check it out.
http://www.npls.org.uk/Sermons/New/Civic%20Service%202011.html

I was most disappointed, and indeed perturbed, by the contribution to the sermon – a well-meaning but hopelessly rose-tinted celebration of multiculturalism in Britain – that one of Rabbi Goldstein’s colleagues, a young South American-born rabbi, had made. With what might seem a cavalier disregard for fairness towards the ethos and traditions of his adopted country, and a strange selection of "facts", Rabbi Hillel Athias-Robles opined, inter alia:

“British colonialism tried to anglicise and homogenise the different constituents of the Empire, and its missionaries sought to replace native religions with Christianity. UK Sodomy laws were exported to cultures that traditionally had more tolerant attitudes to sexual diversity. In 1864 the Anthropological Society of London concluded that Blacks were a separate species more akin to the ape, even though this was more than three decades after the Slavery Abolition Act was passed.... In the media and political discourse we constantly hear the tenets of multiculturalism come into question. We feel multiculturalism crumble as Islamophobia becomes more socially acceptable. The All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into anti-Semitism reported a sharp increase in anti-Semitic attitudes and incidents.

....Giving up on multiculturalism is not the solution to our social wrongs. It is in fact multiculturalism that prevents our social wrongs from deteriorating even further.”

It was not so much the last part of this quoted passage that I found objectionable, although I agree with Jonathan Hoffman’s observation:

‘What politically correct drivel. Even Trevor Phillips said that multiculturalism is not working. And "Islamophobia becomes socially acceptable" is the PC liberal way of saying "It's wrong to point out Islamic extremism." No it's not.’ http://www.thejc.com/blogpost/can-3-rabbis-produce-longest-sermon-history(Mr

(Mr Hoffman would no doubt have added David Cameron’s name to that of Trevor Phillips, who chairs Britain’s Human Rights and Equality Commission, had the former’s Munich speech already been given.  And see the following by the great Melanie Phillips: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6699875/hemming-the-lemming.thtml)

What I really deplore is the disparaging of Britain by Rabbi Athias-Robles, with the totally invalid implication that it is an endemically racist society. This picture shows some of "the great and the good" of Victorian Britain at a rally on behalf of persecuted Russian Jewry  – one of a number of such rallies held in Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to demand justice for oppressed Jewries; the participants came from all political parties, and from all branches of the Christian church, with "liberals" and Protestants predominating.  Many of the people at the nineteenth-century rallies had been active in the fights against slavery, for penal reform, for factory reform, and for Jewish parliamentary emancipation.

I’ve shown in other blogposts that post-Reformation England provided a climate conducive to philosemitism, and the rabbi’s assertion that British “missionaries sought to replace native religions with Christianity” is mischievously misleading. It was only animists – heathens – that such missionaries attempted to proselytise; they did not, and this was a matter of deliberate policy, interfere with the religions of the peoples of the British Raj, although as is well-known they did attempt to outlaw thuggee and suttee.

Disappointingly, the rabbi ignores Britain’s liberal tradition, he ignores the abolition of the slave trade and the Royal Navy’s proud record in enforcing abolition by intercepting slaver vessels and returning their human cargos to Africa, he ignores Britain’s lack of persecution of Jews (in contrast to the Continent) and the gratitude Jews showed in consequence for being in the land of freedom.  He ignores the great Wilberforce and instead invokes a bunch of obscure ratbags of the 1860s.  For he appears to have ingested the "received wisdom" of the self-hating British chattering classes that everything the British Empire did was automatically wrong, and that everything its subject peoples did was automatically right.  He ignores the fact that Britain exported parliamentary democracy to its colonies, and he has evidently imbibed the fiction that all cultures are created equal.

He implies that multiculturalism changed British attitudes from illiberalism to liberalism – when in truth some of the cultures represented are as hostile to liberalism as it is possible to get – hating secular democratic values, despising women, genitally mutilating girls, practising “honour” killings, persecuting gays, pursuing animist witchcraft that involves child sacrifice, indulging in explicit and often violent Jew-hatred, and delegitimizing Israel.  (The accompanying photos speak for themselves.)

In some ways, the rabbi's indictment of Britain is reminiscent of absurdities to be found on the website of the London-based Muslim Public Affairs Committee:

'Western States the real terrorists – not Muslims....

One must remember, it was not the Muslims that were responsible for such heinous crimes as the slave trade. [Their history is as dodgy as his!!!] ....

[ W]hen Britain went into India, ruling it for 200 years, massacring and imposing their rules upon the people, never integrating, never learning their languages and forcibly trying to convert its people to their customs and religion....

Much death and destruction has been committed by the British Government, yet it is British Muslims who label each other as terrorists, seeking to disassociate ourselves from fellow Muslims. It is not for us to disassociate ourselves from anyone, but rather British Muslims and the wider British population at large should hold their Government accountable over their foreign policies. We should be putting pressure upon our leaders to ensure such crimes against humanity are not repeated and that all forms of exploitation are ceased with immediate effect. It is not just for British Muslims to apologise....

We should not be seeking to apologise for anything, it is these war criminals that need to apologise to us and hang their heads in shame – not us.’ http://www.mpacuk.org/story/150211/stand-united-against-pimps-misery.html#ixzz1E94hkIfS

Elsewhere, Rabbi Athias-Robles has observed:

“You might have noticed that many of the sermons Rabbi Aaron [Goldstein] and I deliver have to do with the situation in Israel. Perhaps some might see them as political – beyond the remit of our task as a rabbi. Sometimes, it may seem that we mention to Israel too much. A few weeks ago I posted on my Facebook profile a link to an article about the enforced loyalty oath the Israeli government recently introduced for non-Jews seeking Israeli citizen, who are asked to pledge their allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state – an oath aimed mostly at Palestinians who marry Arab Israelis. Many people replied to the article I posted– some people who are usually very liberal wrote things like: It’s so easy to criticise Israel from abroad – if you want to change the country move there and vote, followed by a whole rant against Arab countries and Arab intolerance to Jews. On a similar note, when Mick Davis, head of the Jewish Leadership Council and a Zionist leader, decided to break the silence and speak out about the moral issues of the peace process, including the rights of minorities, settlements, etc. a wave of attacks ensued – he was using the language of our enemies, he was delegitimizing Israel, he had no right as a Diaspora Jew to speak out against the choices of the Israeli government. As Jews, we are expected to stay quiet – the raising of concerns equals a hateful attack against Israel”

And predictably goes on to defend his position. http://www.npls.org.uk/Sermons/New/Vayechi%205771.html

The unelected Mick Davis, by the way, is at it again, with the zealous cooperation of the Jewish Chronicle, in thral to the New Israel Fund.  (Robin Shepherd deals with this situation – and the Israel-is-an-apartheid-state canard – very nicely at http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/tag/mick-davis/)

Unlike most of their counterparts in Australia, Britain’s Liberal rabbis seem to have an ambivalent attitude towards the Jewish State. They seem to have a nineteenth-century mindset in some respects: Ma Yomru ha-Goyim? ("What will the non-Jew say?").  They have taken on the mantle of the "Gentlemen of the Mosaic persuasion".  Their full-bodied sense of Yiddishkayt is missing. And they seem to think that being left of centre religiously obligates a person to be left of centre politically. Israel is under existential threat, yet too many of them join the chorus of snipers. Their criticism, like Mick Davis’s, should be done in private, for their public condemnations serve the heinous purpose of Israel’s foes.

They remind me, indeed, of the Jacobin, famously described by George Canning as:

"A steady patriot of the world alone.  A friend to every country but his own."

Recently, British journalist Julie Burchill, known for her robust championship of Israel, revealed that she’s abandoned plans to convert to Judaism under the auspices of the Liberal movement. She’d been attending the Brighton Progressive Synagogue, but, as she explained in her final regular column for the Jewish Chronicle, the rabbi’s agenda drove her away:

‘You should know that the reason I'm stepping away for a while has nothing to do with the hysterical levels of abuse that greet any Gentile who expresses support for Israel; on the contrary, I very much enjoy a bit of a verbal scrap.

But don't get me wrong, my admiration for the Jews and Israel came first; the nasty name-calling is just a side benefit....

I realised that it wasn’t a Jew that I wanted to be, so much as a Zionist....

I began attending a shul, and took the first steps towards converting to Judaism, then threw in the towel on both.

Basically, I don't go to a synagogue on a Saturday morning to be preached at about how Islam is the equal of Judaism, and yet that's what I got the last time I was there – from a female, gay rabbi, already!

I'd love to see her walk into a mosque and tell the worshippers that Judaism was the equal of Islam, that women should be just as able to be preachers as men and that homosexuality is every bit as valid a personal choice as heterosexuality.

I wonder how many minutes she'd last?

Which makes my point completely: an intolerant religion is not the equal of a tolerant religion. And to say that it is, is surely pretzel logic of the most twisted kind.

I've also been back to Israel three times since my initial visit in 2004, and each time I have marvelled at the beauty and rudeness of its people.

At home I have witnessed the self-loathing Stockholm Syndrome of what my hero Howard Jacobson fingered in his Booker Prize-winning The Finkler Question as the ASHamed Jews, and came to the conclusion that it wasn't a Jew that I wanted to be so much as a Zionist.

And I can do this by helping to buy fire engines for frontline Israeli towns like Sderot, and by donating a good whack of cash each year to send care parcels to lone IDF soldiers - and still stay in bed with my husband of a Saturday without having to schlep off to a shul and receive lectures on the wonders of Islam.

Sorted!

Toffs For Terrorism or We Are All Hizbollah Now, Yah? Back in the summer I turned on the TV the day after the flotilla was floored, and there was a man called Lort-Phillips, bewailing the plight of his sister, one Alexandra Lort-Phillips.

A few days later a piece turned up on the society page of the Daily Mail explaining that Lort-Phillips is the great-niece of Dame Frances Campbell-Preston, a woman of the bedchamber (not as fun as it sounds) and friend of the late queen mother of England, who inexplicably claimed, "I am very proud of her. She is standing up for her principles."

Wow, from royalty-flunky to Hamas-groupie in two generations - that's the spirit that made this country great! At least, though, the old broad had the excuse of being 91 years old to spout such twaddle.

What was everyone else's excuse for sailing on the Ship of Fools?

The Jews: The Greatest Story Ever Told. You pick your team and you stay with them, through good times and bad. I may not be writing this column for awhile - but I'm not going anywhere.

L'hitraot!' http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/42900/my-loyalties-wont-fade-away

“The Palestine Government did its best to play down the Jewish effort”: More awkward truths that Britain’s Mandate Administration concealed

This is the third in a trilogy of posts concerning Britain’s suppression of information pertaining to the Jews of Palestine during the 1940s, especially news that reflected well on them in contrast to the Arabs. My earlier posts in this trilogy were “The Whole Thing Has a Nazi Smell About It” (23 December) and ‘Obliterating That Terrible Word “Jewish”’ (6 January).

“The maintenance of the censorship in Palestine during the period of the war produced many curiosities in the way of prohibited material”, the London-based Jewish Chronicle’s Jerusalem Correspondent observed in its issues of 19 October 1945.

It was only in the Spring of 1943 that the system of returning marked copies of cables were returned to him and other press correspondents; hitherto, they had no idea that their material had been expurgated. The file he’d kept from then onwards of material he’d sent to the paper but which the Censor had blue-pencilled “makes amazing reading”, he wrote.

“It shows the lengths to which local bureaucracy was prepared to go, not in protecting the interests of local security, but in justifying the White Paper policy, in white-washing the blunders of meddling departments, in concealing official incompetence, and in pursuing that course which a friend of mine here aptly described as trying to keep the dilapidated old ship of state afloat by taking the patch off one leak and putting it over another.”

He went on, with a more than touch of bitterness:

‘The weekly issues of the Jewish Chronicle arrived in Palestine as regularly as the dislocated wartime mails permitted, but only occasional, presumably innocuous copes trickled through to subscribers. The others were piled up and burnt: a waste of postage to the newspaper publishers, a waste of shipping to the war effort. But then, why should the bureaucrats in Palestine worry overmuch about waste? Had they not wasted so much Jewish manpower in Europe by keeping the gates of the country locked, bolted, and barred, and what did a few thousand copies of overseas Jewish newspapers matter? ....

Early in the war, when the British military authorities announced recruiting of Palestinians, the Palestine Government did its best to play down the Jewish effort. The Arabs were then reaching the top of their bent in disloyalty, the pro-Axis elements in Iraq and Syria were simmering (with what results we know), the British thought they were caught in the cleft stick of the Middle East between the powerful Axis forces to the west and north and the Arabs all around them. The Arabs of Palestine were scornful of the attempts to raise a local force of Palestinians to defend the country. Only the Jews cooperated.

So the publicity given abroad for a Jewish Army was put under a censorship ban. Obviously the Arabs would be peevish if they knew that the Jews wanted to raise a fighting force to help Britain in her predicament and stress, and the appeasement wallahs in Cairo would have nothing of that. Oh, no! Better that the Jews do their enlisting and their fighting and their effort for the Empire anonymously, secretly, without fuss or pother [sic], than that the noble son of the desert be enraged at this challenge to his own lagging loyalty.

So these things happened:

A Jewish news agency sent a cabled account abroad of a wartime exhibition in Tel-Aviv, around the summer of 1943... the exhibition was a Palestinian Jewish tribute to the Soviet war effort. The cable stated: “Zionist, British and Russian flags flew over the entrance to the exhibition.” The word “Zionist” was deleted by the Censor.

When the Palestine Regiment was formed out of the three Jewish battalions of the Buffs (to which the Jewish infantry regiments were originally attached), it was necessary to take account of the three or four companies of Arab infantry. So the badge devised was the same emblem as appears on a Palestinian 100-mil (two-shilling) coin: the olive branch. The Jewish soldiers wanted a national design of their own and refused to wear these two-bob badges. Courts martial ensued.

The P.B.S. Orchestra, an ensemble composed wholly of Jewish musicians, although organised by the Broadcasting Service, gave a concert at an army camp in Palestine, but had been ordered not to play “Hatikvah” at its conclusion. When the orchestra was packing its instruments at the end of the recital, a young Jewish subaltern in the A.T.S. [Auxiliary Territorial Service] rose and began singing the [Jewish] national anthem in a high clear voice. The audience joined in. So did the musicians. An emotional scene was witnessed at this remarkable demonstration of national pride.

When the Palestinian Regiment went out into the desert, and the Jewish transport companies of the R.A.S.C. [Royal Army Service Corps] did such yeoman work in servicing the Eighth Army from El Alamein to the Po, they had no flag of their own. At one place near Benghazi a Jewish company mounted its own blue and white colours and refused to strike them when ordered by the British Area Commander. “That is the flag we are fighting for,” they said. They were all charged with mutiny, and the matter would have ended disasterously for both officers and men, who had enlisted primarily as Jews, had not wiser counsels prevailed.’

And then came this unpleasant revelation:

'Pro-Fascist elements in the Polish Army in the Middle East about which a chapter of itself could be written – were protected by military censorship because it was an Allied Army. It is now no secret that Jews were put in gaol as “deserters”, that anti-semitism assumed a militant and active form among both the higher-ups and subordinate ranks in General Anders’ forces, and that there were numerous cases of the humiliation of Jews. I have it on good authority that a Polish colonel used to parade his battalion every morning, give the order “Jews to the front!” and when the Jewish soldiers stepped forward, he would say contemptuously, “You Jews cost us our country and are responsible for our exile. When we get you back to Poland we will murder you.” This, I am told, was part of the parade ritual and was not excepted even on the Sabbath. The story could not be printed – that Polish colonel was the ally of Britain.'

The Jerusalem Correspondent continued:

'Space would not permit the publication of the many incidents which occurred in the war years as part of the supreme contribution by the Palestine Government to winning the war by hiding the Jewish share. The Jewish Agency Executive’s files must contain more of the accounts of this debasing and shameful treatment than the memory of the ordinary mortal can encompass. It would be interesting in due course to read the history of the war against the Jews of Palestine which the protracted negotiations between the Jewish Agency and the Government and the archives of the Agency’s political Department would disclose. Perhaps that history will one day be written.’

In the Jewish Chronicle of 2 November the Jerusalem Correspondent returned to his theme, to complete it.

‘There is no doubt that the appeasement-minded circles in British officialdom in Palestine, who took their cue from the man at the top, Sir Harold MacMichael, were definitely hostile to to the manifestations of Jewish loyalty in the early days of the war and subsequently. The Arabs, as everyone but these sanguine souls had expected, were not “playing the game”. They had no aversion to taking British money in the form of war contacts and purchase of farm produce for the Army commissariats, but they showed a pronounced opposition to being roped into fight the Axis. After all, was not the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Hussein, an honoured guest of first the Italian Fascists and then the German Nazis? What was good enough for him was good enough for them.

Today there is no move to secure the custody of the Mufti, who, as a Palestinian citizen, and subject of His Majesty’s Mandatory rule, was as much a traitor as William Joyce to Britain and Vidkun Quisling to Norway.

Nor did those Arabs who joined the Palestinian units of the British Army behave any better. After a little while they began deserting in large numbers, with, of course, their rifles and ammunition. There were frequent outbreaks of mutiny; I can cite three which came to my knowledge:

One was at the Wadi Sarar ordnance depot, when Arab infantrymen attacked Jewish soldiers and had to be confined to barracks by force of arms, and subsequently transferred; another was during the troubles in the Lebanon this year, when Palestinian Arab troops joined a VE Day procession in Beirut without authority, carried a picture of the Mufti of Jerusalem at the head, and engaged in hooliganism and shop-window breaking, and, I am told, tried to attack a French convent because it showed only French flags and no Arab banners; again during this summer there was a similar outbreak.

As a result of the third demonstration, the Arab infantrymen were discharged out of their regular release groups on the ground that “their services were no longer required”. Today, few if any Arabs are left in the Palestinian units, but 15,000 Jewish men and women are still serving.”

A document in the Jerusalem Correspondent’s possession showed that, following a

‘long period of frustration of their effort, the Jewish Agency Executive was informed ... that its Liaison Officer at the Sarafand Recruiting Depot, who had been active in that capacity for over two years (... since the early part of 1941) was notified by the officer in charge to leave the Recruit Training Depot by May 1. On April 29, the premises of the Recruiting Office of the Jewish Agency in Tel- Aviv were entered by the police, a search was carried out, officials and members of the public who were present were interrogated, and the official in charge of the office was “detained for further examination”. The Jewish Agency was not advised of the action taken nor was it informed of any complaints or charges against the officials concerned.

The Jewish Agency Executive registered on April 29, in a letter to the Chief Secretary, its “most emphatic protest against the action.” It was added: “A police search in an institution of the Jewish Agency of the Mandate regime of which the Agency forms an integral part. The incident is all the more grave as the search and the detentions occurred in an office which is engaged in the recruiting of men and women for His Majesty’s Forces.”

The letter concluded:

“The Jewish Agency is driven to the conclusion that by the demonstrative action now taken the authorities have broken off their cooperation with the Jewish Agency in the organisation of Jewish recruiting. The Jewish Agency can obviously expect its officials and the numerous volunteers assisting them to engage in the tasks of recruiting under conditions which expose them to police searches, interrogations, and detention. It, therefore, begs to inform the Government that the procedure they have authorised has compelled the discontinuance of the activity of the Jewish Agency’s recruiting offices.”

That was the position in April 1943. The letter from which I have quoted was sent to foreign press correspondents by the Jewish Agency, but the correspondents (myself among them) could not get it through censorship. Subsequent efforts succeeded in overcoming the formidable obstacles which this letter indicated, and the Jewish Brigade Group finally emerged as a fighting force. It was not for several months, however, that Jewish recruiting was resumed.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His Master's Voice – From the NIF's Mouth to the "Organ of Anglo-Jewry"

Snow-bound in her igloo somewhere in the ice-covered rural landscape of the British Isles, this sun-loving Aussie gal wasn't able to pick up her hard copy of last week's Jewish Chronicle (17 December) until the lanes became passable. 

And what did I find? Why, the JC and the New Israel Fund tucked up in bed together.  Yes, cosily between the JC's sheets is a loose tabloid-sized four-page insert calling itself New Israel News ("NIF Publication", Winter 2010).  Under the banner headline "New debate welcomed by NIF", the insert's main frontpage article declares: 'The move by Mick Davis and leading figures in Anglo-Jewry, to engage in "honest and open debate" about the policies and actions of the Israeli government, has been welcomed by the Chair of the New Israel Fund (UK), Nicholas Saphir.' 

The article generously quotes Mr Saphir (pictured), and when we turn to page two we find – lo and behold! – an article by that gentleman entitled "Diaspora Jewry must speak up".  At the foot of the article is the note "Nicholas Saphir is Chair of the New Israel Fund" – he’s also, as a matter of fact, a trustee of the Kessler Foundation, which owns the Jewish Chronicle, as was noted in my recent post called "Screwing the Right".

Yes, folks, that’s the same New Israel Fund whose dodgier initiatives have been exposed by NGO Monitor, as I indicated in that same post.  And that’s the same Jewish Chronicle which has yet to feed its readers all the hard sober facts about the existential threats faced by Israel – for example, I have looked in vain yet again for anything about the possibly domino-effect recognition of a Palestinian State with its borders pre-Six Day War (those "Auschwitz borders" for Israel) by several South American nations (four at last count; the JC hasn't even reported one!).  I thought this news, which was ignored by thewebsite, would be in the hard copy.  It's been a futile search, and I don't think I need Specsavers.

Oh –  there is the now seemingly obligatory article denouncing the EDL, which according to the JC's headline has 'left the BNP a mere sideshow'. The report claims that the anti-fascist monitor Searchlight (whose representative is the source for the report and its analysis), "will launch a think tank to examine new forms of extremism such as the anti-Muslim politics of the EDL and totalitarian Islam".  Ah, so! We live in interesting times.

On page 26 the JC carries an article by Isi Leibler.  (Although he’s bestrode the Jewish world like a Colossus this past quarter-century and the “Organ of Anglo-Jewry” might be expected to be au fait with his name, they’ve in two places managed to misspell it as Liebler.)  His article declares – in response to criticism in the JC last week by the left-leaning journalist Jonathan Freedland – that he stands by his criticism of Mick Davis and reiterating why.   

As usual, he's a fount of sagacity.  The article, reposted to his blog, says:

'In these pages last week, Jonathan Freedland accused me of indulging in a “viciously personal” attack on, and misrepresenting the views of, Mick Davis.

Let me begin with a clarification. My source was the Jewish Chronicle itself, which summarised Davis’s remarks by stating: "One of British Jewry’s most senior leaders this week shattered a long-standing taboo by publicly criticising Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over the peace process, voicing moral reservations about some of Israel’s policies and calling for criticism of Israel to be voiced freely throughout the community."

In an exchange of correspondence initiated by Mr Davis, who also claimed I misrepresented him, I responded that if the JC report was incorrect or if quotations attributed to him were false, he was duty bound to request a correction - something he failed to do for obvious reasons.

I am personally unacquainted with Mick Davis and hold no animus against him even when he depicts me as "that mad Australian who attacks everyone".

My criticism was not about freedom of expression or the right of Davis to criticise Israel. My concern is about the propriety of a person holding one of the most senior positions in a major Jewish community publicly questioning the morality and “courage” of the democratically elected leadership of Israel and, from the vantage-point of London, having the gall to challenge Israeli security policies which have life-and-death implications for Israelis.

It is in this context that Davis made the bizarre statement: "I think the government of Israel has to recognise that their actions directly impact on me as a Jew living in London, the UK. When they do good things, it is good for me, when they do bad things it’s bad for me. And the impact on me is as significant as it is on Jews living in Israel… I want them to recognise that."

I am also appalled that, instead of rallying Jews to support an embattled Jewish state, Davis called on them to join in the criticism of Israel. It is not surprising that Freedland, who admits he condemned Davis for speaking at a rally supporting Israel, now rushes to defend him.

Having occupied senior leadership positions in national and global Jewish organisations, I reaffirm the view that a person heading bodies like the UJIA and JLC [Jewish Leadership Council] is totally out of line in making such remarks. I would further submit that, in the United Kingdom, where demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel - not to mention antisemitism - have reached record levels, it is the height of irresponsibility for a communal leader to behave in this manner, knowing that such remarks represent fuel for our enemies.

No other Jewish community in the world would tolerate such outbursts from a leader. American Jews are more inclined towards liberalism than their Anglo-Jewish counterparts but one could not visualise any mainstream American Jewish leader expressing such views.

My vexation is not merely that Davis still fails to appreciate that he was out of line, but that most Anglo-leaders lack the backbone to condemn his behaviour or have become so adjusted to living in an environment hostile to Israel that they cannot even appreciate the lack of propriety when one of their leaders acts in such a manner.

It was shameful that Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom was obliged to intervene and say what should have been conveyed to Mick Davis by his peers.

I hope Mr Davis resumes his positive work on behalf of Israel but refrains from unleashing his personal criticism until such time as he retires from his leadership positions. Had he not held office when he made his remarks, I doubt whether anyone would have noticed.

Anglo-Zionist pioneers of the calibre of Chaim Weizmann would turn in their graves were they aware that those who consider themselves Jewish leaders could voice public condemnations of Israel, when the embattled Jewish state is a facing such enormous pressures from a biased and largely hostile world.'

Screwing the Right – the "Organ of Anglo-Jewry"

A pro-Israel demo in Brazil

Early this month Brazil, its example soon followed by Argentina and Uruguay, announced its recognition of an independent State of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital. A not insignificant development, you might think. Certainly, those astute analysts Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post and Robin Shepherd of the Henry Jackson Society consider it so: they’ve devoted several paragraphs to this circumstance and what it may portend if it has a domino effect that causes other nations – especially France and others within the EU – to follow the South Americans’ example. (Scroll down to my blogroll for the Caroline Glick and Robin Shepherd blogs)

Not so, it seems, Britain’s Jewish Chronicle – the "Organ of Anglo-Jewry".  I've looked in vain on its website for any mention of this breaking news – there has been none. The website (an award-winning one, no less, though that was some years ago) is as shtum about that development as it was about the speeches of Geert Wilders and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Israel last week. The reasons for these omissions appears not far to seek – the JC obviously doesn’t approve of Mr Wilders and Ms Sabaditsch-Wolff for their robust unpolitically correct opposition to the islamification of Europe, so instead of reporting their speeches, vigorously pro-Israel though both were, and letting readers make up their own minds, they don’t report them at all.

That’s if the reporters ever learned about them in the first place – for while the JC does carry hard-hitting analytical reports from time to time, and mercifully still has several impressive columnists gracing its hardcopy editions, the thrust and quality of its online reportage is all too frequently inconsequential and poor.  The impression given is that a quick skim of Al Beeb's news website or a cursory google is all that's been done, and all too often it's the readers' blogs that contain the important stories.  I've even seen the reporters take their cues from readers' blogs and post a belated report.  But not often. The blogs get superseded by others and the news gets buried.

Indeed, about many matters that we might reasonably expect a Jewish newspaper of its supposed calibre to report, the JC website is silent. Instead, the seeming lightweights among its reporting staff  (they're of the female variety, I regret to say) were this past week, as usual, very much in evidence, displaying their characteristic preference for “news lite”, much of it revolving around “celebrities”, and with poking fun (not for the first time) at that good friend of Israel, Sarah Palin.

“You'll probably be shocked, but that kind of story will cause more of a stir around Shabbat dinner tables than all of the Israel-related stories put together”, noted a former world news editor of the newspaper, the man who was responsible for setting up the website in the first place. He might be expected to know. But – oh, surely not. Is the Britannic component of the People of the Book really that dumbed-down?

And are those not-so-intrepid reporters so clueless about world events impacting (and that deleteriously) on the Jewish State that they’re likely to imagine “the Brazilian initiative” is something to do with a trends in coffee-drinking or in hairstyles or in body waxing? Alas, I suspect so. (Don’t get me wrong, froth, frivolity, flippancy and – er – fluff do have their place, but not in every increasing measure on the paper’s website at the expense of important news.)

Initially launched in 1841, and in continuous publication since 1844, the Jewish Chronicle is British Jewry’s oldest-surviving newspaper, and still its most influential. For generations of Jewish families across this country, Erev Shabbos has not been complete without “The JC” –as the paper is affectionately known. Back issues of the paper are indispensable for historians and genealogists, and I’ve done more than my fair share, over the years, of digging into its archives – a wonderful resource. And, believe me, I’m something of a connoisseur of Jewish newspapers, having intimate knowledge of the contents of the JC’s original rival the Voice of Jacob (a grand read itself), as well as of the Jewish press in Australia, past and present.

In 1895, during Theodor Herzl’s first visit to England, the JC’s then editor, Asher Myers, asked Herzl for an article. The great man did not disappoint, and duly sent one from Austria. Translated from the German, it appeared in the issue of 17 January 1896 under the headline ‘A “Solution of the Jewish Question”’ and was a scoop for the paper, being the first time that Herzl’s vision of a Jewish homeland appeared in print. (The pamphlet Der Judenstaat was published shortly afterwards.)

In its issue of 8 December 1933 the JC wrote presciently of “the Hitlerist extermination regime”. And so on – a fascinating read guaranteed, at the local, national, and international level.

Below is a London newspaper vendor’s placard from the mid-1960s, when the JC was still a considerable force in the Jewish world. In common with other newspapers, as they compete with electronic media and try to carve out a viable online presence for themselves, the JC has its problems – there have been rumours of falling readership and revenue and of recent staff redundancies. But the quality of the paper has declined compared to what it was when that photo was taken; the amount of editorial news and solid features has diminished – I do not intend to imply that they have vanished altogether.  That would be churlish and untrue.

Today, an unprecedented campaign, ruthless and well-orchestrated, threatens Israel, uniquely of all the countries in the world. Yet the Jewish Chronicle – wrongly and indeed irresponsibly in my view – permitted its vocal enemies a voice on its website readers' blogs until finally shamed into removing them by an ongoing campaign waged by a number of concerned readers. Not least among those is keen Jewish Chronicle-watcher Avraham Reiss of Jerusalem, whose website http://jcwatch.wordpress.com/contains probably all you would wish to know about the episode – as well as rather alot more! ( The JC staff are said to look in at frequent intervals, wondering what the often somewhat intemperate Mr Reiss will come out with next!)

The paper seemed and indeed seems blissfully unaware that blogs on its website are reproduced on sites such as Jewish Press International – whose readers are no doubt startled and affronted to see the kind of blogs that were (until editor Stephen Pollard tardily heeded outraged readers' pleas and imposed a crack-down) and lamentably sometimes still are posted there. I’m not talking about blogs that criticise aspects of Israeli policy. I’m talking about blogs that demonised Israel and spewed out obnoxious vitriol about the Jewish State and its supporters, even comparing Zionists and the IDF to Nazis, and using words like "ubermenschen" and "liebensraum" [sic] in connection with Israeli attitudes.

A taunting poster who perpetually insulted Jews and Israel, including the Israeli flag, and addressed a zealous pro-Zionist poster, no less a communal personage than Jonathan Hoffman,  as "Mr Ten Per Cent", constantly personally insulting him and other pro-Israel posters, was allowed to remain for weeks and weeks, even after having numerous antisemitic posts flagged.  Some posts, including ones mocking and scorning the EUMC definition of antisemitism – were removed following complaints. There were many similar examples. I can only assume that the JC staff tolerated bloggers and posters such as that antisemite because they wanted to impress advertisers and potential advertisers with the impression that the website’s readers’ blogs (a feature that was almost as lifeless as a dodo only a year or so ago) are jumping with activity.

But advertisers can read – and if they did bother to find out what is actually being written by some bloggers and posters, with the apparent full blessing of the paper, they may well have taken their revenue elsewhere.

Moreover, readers’ blogs on interesting relevant topics were often summarily and inexplicably closed by the JC staff – under the signature "Anonymous" – although they had been onscreen for less than a day, a galling happening especially given the fact that the "Anonymous" moderator was rumoured to be a cadet reporter on work experience. Certainly, the suspect was herself (I'm sorry to sound unkind but it's true) a mediocre writer. Whoever was to blame, some serious meaty blogs were prematurely closed in this way, apparently on a mere whim, while others were left unscathed. Queries from bloggers as to why this occurred went unanswered until – out of the blue – JC editor Stephen Pollard (pictured) announced a set of guidelines, which has largely although not entirely curtailed the abuses.

The paper is still biased against certain viewpoints, or at any rate certain individuals who voice them. It’s failed to print letters this past week from two redoubtable rightwing Zionists, Jonathan Hoffman and Jon Cohen (of course, the reason could be that the paper had no space, has held them over, and will print them next week, although I believe both gentlemen – through past experience – believe such optimism to be misplaced!) "If your name is Stanley Walinets then you have a letter published weekly", grumbles Jon Cohen, a regular poster on the paper’s website, today, referring to a well-known activist within the fringe group Jews for Justice for Palestinians. This, incidentally, is presumably the same Mr Walinets who posted the following tasteful piece on the JC’s website not so long ago (8 November) as a blog; following complaints, the paper was prudent enough to remove it:

Said Hitler "I wanted the world to hate Jews!
But how can I do it? I’m dead…
I know! Re-incarnate as hard-right Israelis
And let them do it instead!"

"Apart [from] the token letter disagreeing with the JC's left-wing stance, no other letters of an opposing viewpoint are published. Why is that?" asks Mr Cohen. The reason for the JC’s willingness to post letters from people like Mr Walinets and its tendency to ignore letters from people like Messrs Hoffman and Cohen lies, it’s widely thought (and the assumption sounds reasonable), in the paper’s apparent connection to the New Israel Fund via the JC’s proprietor, the Kessler Foundation. The New Israel Fund’s links to dubious organisations aimed at the undermining of Israel as a vibrant Jewish State and to elements pushing the Goldstone Report have been fully explored and demonstrated by that eminently useful site NGO Monitor in a series of hard-hitting investigative reports that can be accessed here http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/new_israel_fund
The JC’s editor, Mr Pollard, is perhaps haplessly in thraldom to this state of affairs, and possibly despite his better judgment. After all, the poor fellow clearly has to eat. He has written of his own disavowal of leftist attitudes in the wake of 9/11. In 2006, before assuming the JC’s editorship, he wrote:

"...large, mainstream sections of the Left – typified by the [then] Mayor of London [Ken Livingstone]– now choose to ally themselves with Islamists who seek to destroy the essence of Western civilisation, who would put to death homosexuals and Jews, and who would put women in metaphorical – and sometimes literal – chains, and the moral cancer that has taken hold of the Left becomes clear.

.... It is not easy to acknowledge what the Left has become, and the mindset of leftists.... The mainstream Left has demonstrated clearly which side of the battle to preserve Western civilisation and freedom it is on. The Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy." http://www.stephenpollard.net/002558.html

And before the May General Election he revealed, in his usual  felicitous literary style, that he was endorsing the Conservative Party after a lifetime of voting Labour.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest.../article7108874.ece

Moreover, Mr Pollard began a book review in the New York Times last year with these words:

"There is no more important issue facing the West than Islamism, Islamofascism or –  to use yet another label –  radical Islam.  And there is no more necessary precondition to countering that threat than understanding it: where it springs from, how it is expressed and the ways in which it is spreading.  But before we do any of that, we have to agree that the threat exists".  (From the rest of the review there's scant doubt that he most certainly does.) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/.../Pollard-t.html

At the end of last month, at the height of the outrage over Mick Davis’s tomfoolery (see my post of 28 November, "Princes in Israel..."), Melanie Phillips (who, incidentally, the JC has the good sense to retain as one of its regular columnists) wrote on her Spectator blog:

"I hear that one or two Jewish community leadership figures have even been going round bad-mouthing certain non-Jews who defend Israel in public. Behind the scenes these leadership figures are viciously attacking people such as Douglas Murray or Robin Shepherd as ‘extremist’, ‘Islamophobic’, ‘right-wing’ and so forth, and urging other community figures not to support them.

This is utterly astonishing. Heaven knows these courageous, decent and principled people are rare enough in these terrible times; if only there were more of them. They are putting themselves on the line to support Israel and fight for the defence of the west in the teeth of mass hysteria, thus courting the threat of professional and social ostracism. Jews owe them an enormous debt of gratitude. Yet incredibly, these British Jewish community leaders, driven by a combination of ideological spite, empire-building and egomania, are blackening their names and thus trying to squeeze them into silence.

I have said before that the ingrained servility of British Jewish leaders, who believe in working behind the scenes in trying to influence the great and the good rather than putting their heads above the parapet and making their case in public, explains why they have so conspicuously failed to stand up in public against the madness over Israel that has engulfed Britain and the west. But the reality is far, far worse than that. By endorsing the positions of those who are demonising and delegitimising Israel through echoing their distortions, decontextualisations and grotesquely inverted morality, it has now become clear that Britain’s most senior Jewish community leadersheep [sic – well-characterised!] are simply, and tragically, on the wrong side." http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6493974/the-british-jewish-leadersheep.thtml#comments

This prompted Edgar Davidson (who on his own blog has made a number of strictures about the JC’s editorial bias against the Israeli and the British right and against the EDL such as this post of 27 June http://www.edgar1981.blogspot.com/.../jewish-chronicle-gets-it-all-wrong.html) to comment beneath Ms Phillips’s post:

'The increasingly indifferent (and at times hostile) attitude of British Jewish Leadership toward Israel is reflected in the deterioration of the Jewish Chronicle over the last two years. The JC is increasingly taking on the mantle of standard left-wing Jewish critics of Israel. This can be seen in the prominence it now gives every week to articles, letters and interviews with anti-Zionists. The JC is increasingly obsessed with the 'radical right wing threat to British Jewry' while continuing to ignore the real threat from the Islamist-leftist alliance. To confirm its total ignorance of what is really going on, it continues to refer to the American J-Street organisation as a "pro-Israel liberal lobby" even after the evidence that its leaders had hidden the fact is was being secretly funded by the anti-Zionist Soros and even Arab propagandists.'

He was supported by a comment from a certain Michelle, who observed:

'I agree with you wholeheartedly about the JC. This story is obviously boosting their declining circulation. It is to be expected when we know the connections between the JC’s owners - the Kessler Foundation and the New Israel Fund.

Nicholas Saphir, (a Sussex-based [actually Kent-based] farmer, is a trustee of the Kessler Foundation which oversees the running of the JC.  He is also Chairman of the New Israel Fund as well as being involved in "overseeing the running of the JC."  In such circumstances, could The JC’s current editorial policy actually be influenced by Nicholas Saphir and his New Israel Fund’s political views?

If so, are we to conclude, that the "Organ of British Jewry" is now moving very much left of centre in the various debates concerning Israel and diaspora Jewry?' [Hat tip to Michelle, for thereby inspiring the title of the present blogpost!]

The JC – the "Organ of Anglo-Jewry" – has become more the tool of the mealy-mouthed Anglo-Jewish communal establishment. It has joined them in the kneejerk vilification of the EDL in a series of not-very-subtle articles that had even a rightwing sceptic like myself falling for their line that the EDL consists entirely of scumbag ruffians and neo-Nazis. That their interpretation of the EDL might not be altogether accurate is suggested by passionately indignant comments on my post of last Thursday (“The Sad Old State of Cloud Cuckoo Land”) by the head of the EDL’s Jewish Division, Roberta Moore (pictured, becomingly wrapped in the Israeli flag) and by another highly articulate Jewish Division member, who blogs at http://www.juniperinthedesert.blogspot.com/)as well as by observations by other commenters. Certainly the jury – make that Jewry – should still be out as far as the EDL is concerned. As one commenter remarked: "I think that we need to reserve judgment on the EDL unless or until there is a definite proven connection to the BNP."

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again –  it’s time Anglo-Jewry realised that it’s no longer fighting Oswald Mosley and the BUF. The enemy these days doesn’t wear a blackshirt but an entirely different garb. And quite frankly, if its hard news you want, especially about Israel and related international affairs, the jc.com is not the place for you. You’re better off making a personal google page and adding the Jerusalem Post as a module. But if you’re still tempted by the jc.com, do accept its opinions with at least two pinches of salt, and – as someone reminded me this week – don’t allow its take on events to shape yours.

Talking Tachlis on the Arab Refugees

“The plight of Arab refugees, consequent upon the war that was started by the Arab League, has not only aroused genuine humanitarian concern,” remarked the London Jewish Chronicle in December 1948, “but has also formed the pretext of much unscrupulous propaganda against the Jews.” Sounds familiar?

If there is ever an issue which is going to prove a sticking point in the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, it is the notion of Haq el-Auda, the claimed right of return for the 725, 000 (some sources say 750,000) Arab refugees of 1948 – and not only for as many of them as are still alive but their descendants, a total of 5,000,000 people. One of the questions in the August AWRAD (Arab World Research and Development) poll of 3001 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza was : “With regards to the peace process and reaching a final status agreement, which issues do you consider to be Very Significant, Of Some Significance, Of Little Significance, Of No Significance, or I don’t know?” The issues identified were: Establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state (Very Significant – 91.7%); The status of Jerusalem (Very Significant – 91.0%); Security for Palestine (Very Significant – 86.2%); The rights of refugees (Very significant – 83.2% ); Settlements in the Occupied Territories (Very Significant – 81.3%). And as I stated in my last post, 87.5% of respondents consider it “Essential” that refugees be given the “Right of return and compensation”. But at the same time, 45.7% of respondents believe that “No change in the status of refugees will take place”.

It’s just as well that their demands are tempered by pessimism – perhaps realism is a better word. Although Bibi Netanyahu is surely more pragmatic than is often suspected, he’s hardly likely to give way on this one. To put it bluntly, Israel bears no culpability for the refugee situation, and it cannot be expected to solve it in the way most respondents (and extremist partisans of the Palestinians around the world) want. Had the Arabs accepted the hand of friendship proffered by the little Jewish State on its establishment in 1948 instead of – with the intention of obliterating Israel – immediately waging what proved for the aggressors a disastrous war, there would be no “refugee problem”, and the Palestinian Arabs would have their own state. 

‘For too long the public have been treated to all sorts of articles and announcements from a wide variety of sources in which the recurring theme has been that the appalling plight of the Arab refugees is the fault of the Jews, and scarcely a voice has been raised in protest. Even a prominent Jew has gone so far as to write that “these women and children would not be dying of starvation and exposure if the Israeli State had never been founded”’, observed the Jewish Chronicle (16 November 1948).

“The truth is surely quite otherwise. The plight of these unfortunate people is a direct result of the chaotic condition into which the British Government allowed Palestine to drift when its troops were withdrawn last May, and for which the United Nations must bear a large share of responsibility through its failure to establish an effective regime to succeed the Mandatory Government. Long before the last British troops left the country this newspaper joined the ranks of those who warned the Government and the United Nations that a vast toll of human suffering was inevitable unless effective steps are taken to enforce the November 29 resolution. It is patently unjust to saddle Jews with the responsibility for what has occurred, and naive for Jews to be misled into thinking that the responsibility is collectively theirs.”

The Spectator (19 November 1948), carried an article entitled “Refugees and the Jordan”. Its author, Michael George Ionides (1903-78), a British irrigation expert who was Director of Development in the administration of Transjordan from 1937-39, laid responsibility for the refugees’ plight not at Israel’s but at Britain’s door. He outlined a scheme for settling the refugees on the territory east of the River Jordan – in Transjordan – declaring: “so far as the refugees in the Arab parts of Palestine and in Transjordan are concerned, irrigation of the Jordan Valley terraces is the only possible hope for their future existence. There is none else.”

He acknowledged that there would be difficulties in implementing this scheme, but declared: “What of that, when half-a-million refugees face starvation, disease, and death – this winter, next winter, and the one after that, till something is done? Mulberry came off. So has the Berlin airlift. So can a Jordan Valley Relief Project – if we will it.”

As we all know, it did not eventuate.

Cruelly, cynically, cravenly, corruptly, Haq el-Auda is being held over Israel like a Sword of Damocles – the perceived suffering of people in refugee camps is the potent symbol of Palestinian victimhood which threatens Israel as surely as does war and terror. That is, of course, why the vengeful Arab states have never integrated the Palestinians or alleviated their suffering - to use them as pawns, as weapons against Israel. As is blatantly obvious to friends and enemies of Israel alike, such an influx as demanded – that of 5,000,000 persons – would ring the death knell of Israel as a Jewish State. In any case, I understand that under international law the progeny of a resettled refugee population has no right to return to the land that the original refugee generation left. The progeny are not, despite Arab-speak, refugees.

As the Jewish Chronicle editorialised on 20 August 1948:

“A very different problem is presented by the plight of Jewish Communities in Arab lands. This is acute and urgent, though little has been said about it in the British Press, which prefers to harp on Jewish transgressions, real or imaginary. For every word of editorial comment on the mass arrests of Jews in Egypt, or the brutal killing of Jewish tourists, at least twenty have been devoted to the isolated case of the abominable Deir Yassin massacre. This is understandable, since the pro-Arab school is badly in need of an explanation for the almost incomprehensible mass flight of Arabs from the land from which they were supposed to be so deeply attached. It is nonetheless regrettable, for it hides a very real problem.”

What would be their fate, the paper wondered,

“if the wave of fanaticism rises with every defeat suffered by the Arab forces in Palestine? Zionism now ranks with Communism in the eyes of the Arab authorities, and the measures taken to impress this fact upon the Jewish Communities range from simple imprisonment and confiscation of property – with a substantial rake-off going to persons in authority – to looting, mob violence, small-scale pogroms, and the imposition of the death penalty for such crimes as attempting to escape to Palestine. It is not surprising that many Zionists see in these incidents the harbingers of coming massacres, and insist upon the necessity to remove these communities – if necessary, by way of exchange for the Arab population which has fled from Israeli territory.”

Between 1949 and 1954 about 800,000 (some estimates say 900,000) Jews were forced by persecution and threat on the part of humiliated Arab regimes smarting at Israel’s failure to be vanquished to leave the Muslim lands in the Middle East and North Africa in which Jews had lived for hundreds and even thousands of years. These were the refugees of whom most of the world is unaware – the forgotten refugees, and whereas the Arab nations – with all the land at their disposal and all their petro-dollars failed to rehome the Arab refugees – the nascent Jewish State, despite all the other calls on its resources, ensured their welfare, education, and absorption.

Recently, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (Jerusalem Post, 9 September 2010), whose grandfather fled Algeria when on becoming independent of France it granted citizenship only to Muslims, took a leaf out of the Arabs' book by stating “I Am a Refugee”, and summarised the situation well when he wrote, inter alia: “However, I do not consider myself so; I am a proud citizen of the State of Israel. The Jewish refugees found their national expression in Israel; so too, the Arab refugees should find their national aspirations being met by a Palestinian state.”