Good Lord!

The recent federal election results in Australia point to a slow political decline for the Greens, which is very welcome news for all who love Israel.   Like the Greens in Australia and in Britain (this photo of the latters' former leader Caroline Lucas MP speaks for itself), Britain's Liberal Democrats have many enemies of Israel in their ranks, typifying the  noxious "Israelis are the embodiment of evil/the Palestinians are blameless" mindset of the Leftist/Islamist nexus so well described here in this video by Professor Robert Wistrich.

So embedded is such demonisation of Israel in parties and opinion organs of the Left (and as Wistrich notes, not only the Far Left) that it's easy to overlook the fact, and good to be reminded,  that there's a staunch pro-Israel life peer among the Lib Dems.  Baron Palmer of Childs Hill, a former chairman of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel and a member of the Golders Green Synagogue, is a splendid antidote to  such inveterate and unsavoury critics of Israel as Baroness Tonge (pictured) and David Ward (see a summary of his odious stance here), to name but two of the most notorious among  a monstrous regiment of Israel-demonising Lib Dems.

Lord Palmer, who was born almost a year before the Second World War broke out, is a councillor in the London borough of Barnet, and was made a life peer in 2011.  The following video shows him being introduced into the House of Lords in the traditional ceremonial appropriate to such occasions:

In February this year, during a Lords' debate on the Middle East, Lord Palmer said:

'… Israel is an incredibly diverse country. While over 70 percent of Israelis are Jewish, they come from across the world. Approximately half of Israel’s citizens today were born outside the country. In addition, Israel is home to Arab Muslims, Christians, Druze and Samaritans, as well as other religious and ethnic minority groups. What other country in the region allows such diversity?

 .... Arab Israelis have served as elected representatives of the Knesset since Israel was founded and were elected in the recent election. They also serve on Israel’s powerful Supreme Court, which a noble Lord mentioned previously. However, despite equality in the law, socioeconomic gaps remain—an issue which the Government of Israel, together with numerous Israeli civil society organizations, are rightly seeking to tackle...."

The following month, during the infamous David Ward affair, Lord Palmer received a hectoring letter (by no means the first one: "I do not normally reply to Morley missives ...") from Elizabeth Morley, an Hungarian-born anti-Israel activist who happens to be of Jewish extraction, and is quoted here as once saying

"if I wanted, I could make Aliyah. But I believe it would be wrong to do so because non-Jews have been ethnically cleansed from Palestine to make way for people like me who have no family connections on that land".

Mrs Morley arrived in Britain with her mother shortly after the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, she once told her local newspaper, writing elsewhere:

"My father ended up going to Palestine on his own after failing to persuade the mother of his under-age sweetheart (my mother) to let her and the baby go with him. I like to think that he learned from the Holocaust. I like to think that he did not kill or expel any Palestinians. I think that when David Ward made those comments he was thinking of people like my father, European Jews who went to Palestine immediately after the Holocaust."

Thus explained the woman who, as secretary, runs the Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch  in the little Welsh seaside resort and university town of Aberystwyth.

That remote branch, whose inner core consists of a trio of elderly women who meet weekly in a campus restaurant to plan their latest assaults on the Zionist Entity (here's a recent one, by the look of it), makes up in zeal what it lacks in numbers, as indicated by its secretary's numerous screeds hither and thither,  including this clumsy venture onto CiF Watch, her ludicrous letter to David Cameron, her risible e-petition asking David Cameron to apologise for the Balfour Declaration, and her badgering communication to the Board of Deputies of British Jews:

'She has also written to the Board of Deputies of British Jews expressing her concern about the way it exploits the memory of the Holocaust in order to gag criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people. “I cannot find evidence of the board having ever issued its own criticism of Israel’s policies... Several of my relatives died in the concentration camps, but that has not made me insensitive to the suffering of the Palestinians, who have been made to pay the price for what the Christian world did to the Jews.”'

Then there's her recent insistence here that Gilad Atzmon, widely perceived as a Jewish antisemite,  is more sinned against than sinning:

"I have heard the same old tosh from several people, that Gilad is this, Gilad is that. When I ask them to point to the passages in his book which subsantiate the accusations, they can’t. Gilad is asking Zionists to take the painful journey of self-examination, discovery, realisation and admission of truths they have tried to avoid. Not many are capable of taking this journey, of incorporating the message into their psyches. So they try to shoot the messenger instead."

 What Mrs Morley wrote to Lord Palmer is unclear, but it was perhaps along the lines of what she wrote to others outraged by Ward's remarks, including Karen Pollock, CEO of the UK Holocaust Memorial Trust:

"[W]hat’s wrong with saying that the Jews in Israel commit atrocities in Palestine?  They do. Is one not allowed to use the word ‘Jew’ in any negative context? Is that it?

.... Holocaust Memorial Day should sear our consciences and, more to the point, it should inspire us to defend all who continue to suffer injustice and oppression. I believe that you should be supporting David Ward and, moreover, expressing your admiration for him.”

His Lordship responded: 

"David Ward made very inappropriate comments as he signed a Holocaust Memorial Book. Can anyone think of a more crass moment to say the JEWS should have learnt lesson from The Holocaust. Firstly he said Jews not Israelis which are not the same. Secondly to compare actions of Israel which he disapproves of with the Nazi death camps is responsible[sic] and offensive.

I lost a grandmother in the Holocaust. I lost an uncle as a British soldier in 1st World war. My late father served in British Army in 2nd World War. What does Ms Morley and others believe I should have learnt. I was deeply hurt by Mr Ward’s comments. I await his apology.

Ms Morley and others criticise Israel; that is their democratic right even if they are wrong. It would just seem less ‘anti-Jewish’ if they criticized killings and murders in other parts of the world...."

At the close of last year, during a Lords' debate on Arabs in Israel initiated by the Israel-criticising Bishop of Exeter, Lord Palmer reminded the House:

"Sadly, to be a Jew in most countries of the region is not comfortable or even possible in many places. Indeed, Christians such as the Copts of Egypt are under severe pressure.... 

The right reverend Prelate told mainly a story of a half-empty glass. I will try to tell a story of a half-full glass and how the Israeli Government, unlike their neighbours, are working hard to improve the situation of their minorities ....

As an example of a half-full glass, in 2010 Israel approved a $220 million five-year development plan for thirteen Arab cities and towns, including $30 million for the expansion of public transportation. The plan is actually being implemented by the Authority for the Economic Development for Arab, Druze and Circassian Sectors, based in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, and is focused on twelve specific Arab and Druze localities, including Nazareth and Rahat... The Israeli Government are also allocating funds for thirteen industrial parks in Arab communities.

There are some real examples of action being taken. Prime Minister Netanyahu recognised the deficiencies in the workforce and stated earlier this year—I know it is only a statement but he said it—that:

 “The Arab sector is a main growth engine for the Israeli economy”

....In July 2012, the Israeli Government launched a new affirmative action campaign to encourage companies, especially in the high-tech sector, to employ Israeli Arabs, with the Government contributing 25 per cent of their salary. The hope is that this will encourage companies which are, as has been mentioned, reluctant to take on Arab employees to do so. Once this had been done, it will reduce discrimination in the workplace. In June 2012, the Israeli Government launched a public awareness campaign against prejudice and discrimination by Israeli companies against Arabs. That cannot be tolerated. Also in June 2012, Cisco chief executive officer John Chambers announced a four-year plan to create 12,000 new technology jobs for Israeli Arabs. He said:

“We have an opportunity to show the rest of the world what we can do together with a government that really gets it and with citizens who really get it”.

....This is all against a background of Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader, on his very recent visit to Gaza, referring to the liberation of Palestine in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa while the crowds yelled, “Hit, hit Tel Aviv”.

 This is also at a time when 40,000 have been killed in Syria without a demonstration in the UK. Nor were there Motions in this House when Hamas shot men accused of being Israeli spies without even the pretence of a trial. Their bodies were then dragged through the street behind motorcycles.

 I am not saying that there are not inequalities for Israeli Arabs—or Israeli Palestinians if you want—that need to be dealt with and are being dealt with, but perhaps we should also reflect on the bloody conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims, the hounding of the Christian Coptic community in Egypt, the unrest in a number of Middle Eastern states and the toppling of regimes.

In Israel, Arabs have served as elected representatives in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, since Israel’s first elections in 1949. There are currently 17 Israeli Arabs and Druze in the Knesset out of a Chamber of 120, although that is short of the 24 which under strict proportional terms would reflect the numbers of the Arab-Israeli population. There are many Israeli Arab judges.... They include Israeli Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran and George Kara—he has been mentioned—who presided in the Tel Aviv district court that convicted former Israeli President Katsav.

Israel’s first Muslim consul general was appointed in Atlanta in 1997; Israel’s first Muslim ambassador was appointed to Finland in 1995; Israel’s first Druze ambassador was appointed to Vietnam in 1999; in 2004 Bnei Sakhnin was the first Arab Israeli football team to win the State Cup; and—still on the soccer theme—the Arab Israeli football star Walid Badir is the captain of Hapoel Tel Aviv. The Arab-Israeli Mira Awad represented Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest; and the Arab Israeli Rana Raslan was Miss Israel.

Do noble Lords remember the amazing time—amazing to me and I am sure to everyone else—when Majalli Wahabi, a Druze, was the acting President of Israel? Noble Lords may have read the Bedouin Israeli diplomat Ishmael Khaldi’s book A Shepherd's Journey. In academia there are Bedouin professors and others whom I do not have enough time to relate.

Of course, if there was no problem, no action would be required. The reasons advanced

for the standard of living for Israeli Arabs being generally lower than the Jewish and Christian Israeli population are poorer participation in education and the failure of women to take up employment. I will tell your Lordships’ House the following sad statistics: twice as many Muslims leave school without qualification; three times as many are unemployed; three times as many live below the poverty line. I should add that these sad figures are not in Israel but in Britain. It is sad here and it is sad there.

The reasons for inequalities in Israel, Britain and elsewhere are generally due to education, employment and where you are in the food chain of life. The aim in Israel and the UK is to improve the conditions of all by improving opportunities for a better life.

Finally, it would be good if the right reverend Prelate could also acknowledge that 850,000 Jews have been forcibly displaced and exiled from Arab countries since 1948, and that justice for such Jewish refugees from Arab countries has been expunged from the peace and justice narrative for the past 65 years...."

In Britain, More Anti-Israel Radical Ratbaggery

That the Liberal Democrats in Britain, like the Methodist Church there, have attracted some real radical ratbags into their ranks, has been all too evident for some time.

The latest anti-Israel LibDem parliamentarian to make a crass statement offensive to truth and decency, Sir Bob Russell, asked in the Commons earlier this week a question regarding the national curriculum from the relevant minister:

"On the assumption that the 20th century will include the Holocaust, will he give me an assurance that the life of Palestinians since 1948 will be given equal attention?”

As LibDem candidate Matthew Harris, who's Jewish, blogged:

“There has been no genocide, no systematic attempt to wipe out every single person with ancestry from a particular ethnic group, so why suggest that there has?

It is entirely inaccurate to compare the injustices suffered by Palestinians to the genocide suffered by Jews; to make such a comparison is to misunderstand the former and to trivialise the latter.”

Despite expressions of outrage, Russell is unashamedly sticking to his absurd line, declaring inter alia:

"The stark facts are that Israel, by its actions, is a racist state which practices apartheid and ethnic cleansing."

Read more here and (yes, the Iranian propaganda station has been quick to pick this story up) here

As for the Methodist Church, which has been largely hijacked by political leftists with an agenda that includes demonisation of Israel, it voted last week to prepare a briefing document regarding whether to support the BDS movement.

Says a spokesman:

“All care and consideration will be taken by the Joint Public Issues Team to ensure that the briefing paper they have been asked to prepare is scrupulously fair to arguments for and against the BDS movement.

A consultation will ask for views from interested persons, groups and organisations. The briefing document is due to be presented to the council which will decide on a report to go the conference in 2014.”

 But, as Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, observes:

“We are deeply concerned that the UK Methodist Church is seeking to involve itself yet again in the politics of boycotts against Israel,” said Board of Deputies Vice-President Jonathon Arkush. ”The resolution is ill-considered and adopted after a debate lasting less than five minutes.

The last time that the Methodist Conference sought an internal briefing on the complex issue of peace for Israel and Palestine was in 2010, and what emerged was a report so inaccurate and one sided that it caused a crisis between the Jewish and Methodist communities.

 Having recently decided to terminate its productive interfaith office, it appears odd that the Church would be asked once again to embrace divisive religious politics.”

Read more here and here

Anti-Antisemitism, Nick Clegg-style

Described early in his political career by Lord Macaulay as "the rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories," the famous Victorian Liberal Party statesman William Ewart Gladstone (1809-98) served no less than four terms as Britain's prime minister, a dour foil at Westminster for the colourful Tory "Hebrew conjuror," Benjamin Disraeli.

In 1896, Sir Samuel Montagu (later Lord Swaythling), Liberal MP for Whitechapel, sent Gladstone a copy of Theodor Herzl's Der Judenstaat, translated into English by Sylvie d'Avigdor, daughter of a well-known Jewish communal leader.  The pamphlet appeared in April, and Gladstone received it hot off the press.

In a postcard to Sir Samuel, Gladstone gave a verdict of sorts contained in the following extract (his entire reply was reproduced in facsimile form in the Jewish Chronicle, 29 May 1896):

"The subject of your enclosure is most interesting: not easy for one outside to form an opinion on: impertinent, perhaps, to speak it were it formed.  I am surprised, however, to see the misery of the Jews so broadly stated.  Of course, I am strongly anti-anti-Semitism."

Fast forward to 2013.  Conservative MP Robert Halfon, mindful of the shocking antisemitism openly manifested in recent times by certain members of the Lib Dem party, asked party leader Nick Clegg (on whom, so to speak, the mantle of Gladstone has fallen) whether he would "take action" against party members who bring such offence and distress to Jewish people.  Was Clegg's answer as robust as might have been wished?  You decide (hat tip: reader Ian):

"Jihad Jenny" Quits Party Over Her Latest Remarks About Israel (with video)

So, rather than retract her latest abhorrent remarks about Israel, Baroness Tonge (pictured), aka Jenny Tonge, the virulently anti-Israel life peer dubbed "Jihad Jenny" by some commentators, has quit the Liberal Democrats (but will, of course, continue to sit in the House of Lords).

Known for a series of truly egregious remarks about Israel over the years, some of which have prompted allegations of antisemitism, for sharing platforms with people widely regarded as extremists, and for her unashamed appearances on Iran's PressTV, her remarks at the recent hate-fest against Israel at Middlesex University featuring the notorious Ken O'Keefe, drew a barrage of criticism from various sides of politics, with Labour leader Ed Miliband (hardly the warmest friend of Israel himself) joining the fray by tweeting:

"No place in politics for those who question existence of the state of Israel. Nick Clegg must condemn Jenny Tonge's remark and demand apology."

The remarks so widely condemned were these delightful sentiments:

"Beware Israel. Israel is not going to be there for ever in its present form. One day, the United States of America will get sick of giving £70bn a year to Israel to support what I call America's aircraft carrier in the Middle East – that is Israel. One day, the American people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough.

Israel will lose support and then they will reap what they have sown."

She also remarked that when the Israel lobby "decide to go for you, they will go for you in a big way. I bear the scars."

The Jewish Chronicle reports that

'[P]olice are investigating comments made at the event by former US marine Ken O'Keefe following allegations that he incited racial hatred when comparing Jewish audience members to Nazis.

Baroness Tonge was sitting next to Mr O'Keefe as he screamed at audience members, said Israel "must be destroyed" and claimed Mossad was "directly involved" in the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.

She made no attempt at the time to distance herself from his remarks, and launched her own tirade against Israel which has today been widely condemned from figures across the political spectrum.'

 Read more here

The Lady and the Sheikh, and Other Snippets

The following, entitled "Jihad Jenny Threatens To Quit The Lib Dems Over Salah Detention" (see my previous post for the details of his arrest) is is a crosspost by prominent British pro-Israel activist Jonathan Hoffman.  It also appears at http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/jihad-jenny-threatens-quit-libdems-over-salah-detention

At a meeting in a House of Commons Committee Room last night where I was present, “Jihad” Jenny Tonge spoke about “the power of the Israel Lobby”. Her remarks were in connection with the Home Secretary’s decision to arrest and deport Sheikh Raeed Salah (who had been billed to address the meeting). She declared herself “ashamed” at the action of a government of which the LibDems (her party) are a member and said “I am carefully considering my position in my party”.

Go on Jihad Jenny – I’ll lay odds that if you resign the words “Good Riddance” will be on Nick Clegg’s lips. I doubt he has forgotten your seemingly antisemitic comments in 2006:

"The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party."

 Most of the speakers at the meeting agreed that the banning of Salah was down to the all-powerful “Israel Lobby”.

Er ..how about the outrages catalogued here?
http://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=2639http://hurryupharry.org/2011/06/29/raed-salah-sitting-in-a-cell-awaiting...


I for one congratulate the Home Secretary. As the CST [Community Security Trust] says,

"The Government, therefore, is to be congratulated on its Prevent strategy and its efforts to better control those who would import and promote such politics (with its attendant hatreds) into the UK."

Sarah Colbourne of the PSC claimed that the ‘Lobby’ had ensured Salah’s arrest in order to stop his legal actions (against Andrew Gilligan of the Daily Telegraph and Robyn Rosen of the Jewish Chronicle).; Diana Neslen (Jews for Justice for Palestinians - JFJFP) spoke about “those with certain influence”.

Other lowlights of the meeting:

[Manuel] Hassassian (Palestinian so-called “Ambassador”):

“Rightwing fascist Israeli government … Israel is above international law .. supported unequivocally by the International Police – the USA”

Ismail Patel:

'The watchword of the early Zionists was “a land without a people for a people without a land”' [False quote: no Zionist ever said this]

 Lord Dubs [Labour life peer]:

“Israel is its own worst enemy”.

 He spoke with horror about seeing 14- and 15-year old boys in shackles in a military Court in the West Bank but when I asked him what crime they were accused of, he didn’t have a clue .. he even suggested they were not accused of any crime …

Diana Neslen (Jews for Justice for Palestinians): JFJFP has issued a statement deploring the arrest and banning of Saleh. (This puts them firmly in the extremist camp). Her talk “as-a-Jew” was no more than a tirade of vilification of Israel and Israeli Jews:

“Jews do not see the citizens of the West Bank as worthy of human rights"

Lib Dem Lords a-Leaping to Kick Israel

The British Liberal Party, which was on the wane and in the political wilderness during the mid-twentieth century, having been eclipsed by Labour, had a friendly (indeed, sometimes very friendly) attitude towards Israel until 1976, when the pro-Arab David Steel became leader.

And today, in its current reincarnation as the Liberal Democrats, the party, a catch-all for radical lefties of various stripes, possesses numerous obsessed Israel-bashers, not only at “grassroots” level but also at Westminster.

On 22 February our old friend (pictured) Baron Phillips of Sudbury – the Lib Dem life peer who declared not so long ago that “America is in the grip of the well-organised Jewish lobby” – chaired a panel discussion at the Senate House, London University, on the theme “The Palestine Papers: Under the Spotlight”. It was organised by Middle East Monitor, and featured a cast of speakers mainly reflecting in various degrees that body’s anti-Israel stance. Thanks to the indefatigable blogger Richard Millett (remember when he was thrown out of the Palace of Westminster by PC Plod? http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-unfair-cop-guv-mr-plod-shows-some.html) there is a reliable record of the event, although two heavies tried to relieve Mr Millett of his recorder and his camera!

One speaker, Tim Llewellyn – a former BBC Middle East correspondent (just fancy that!) – declared his support for boycotting Israel, whose “government is uncivilised and Israelis who support it take part in that uncivilisation. Israel is a rogue state in the Middle East.”

Another, former CIA political analyst Kathleen Christison, author of Palestine in Pieces, opined that “the only just solution” is the dismantling of the “exclusivist Jewish state” with its “Jewish exclusivist government” in favour of a single binational state. She stated that “The Palestine Papers laid bare the Israel-America relationship in all its obscenity” and observed that it was difficult to raise that subject in the United States for fear of being labelled “antisemitic”.

The latter remark struck a chord with the noble lord, who drew an analogy with McCarthyism and – presumably recalling the storm he had unleashed on that earlier occasion – lamented “We have a bit of that starting here, I’m afraid.”

Summing up, he said:

“Everything I hear from the platform speakers makes me think that the world we are now moving into has been turned upside down and that, er, the Jews aren’t lacking in intelligence, they may be deeply prejudiced, many of them, but they are going to be saying the same sort of thing as you on the panel are saying. It seems to me that it is not at all safe to rely on the past to interpret the future and that American, indeed American Jewry, quite apart from the progressive elements within Israel, who have been overshadowed in recent years, all of this could change quickly and rapidly in the face of a Middle East that suddenly becomes hostile.” See http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/lord-andrew-phillips-of-sudbury-many-jews-may-be-deeply-prejudiced/

Another Lib Dem life peer, Baron Dykes of Harrow Weald (pictured), a former leftwing Conservative MP, is now his present party’s spokesperson on Foreign Affairs in the House of Lords. Dykes, like Baroness Tonge and several other high profile members of his party, has a long history of vilifying Israel. He speaks as if Arab rejectionism had never led to the 1967 War and even compares Israel to apartheid South Africa, praises the Goldstone Report, and does not discount the possibility of sanctions. The abhorrent BBC, ever ready to give a helping hand to Israel’s detractors, has a video of him on its website inveighing ponderously against Israel during a Lords debate on 6 April last year(http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_lords/.../8599435.stm)


In that video he trots out his usual mantra of hate against the Jewish State (which he professes to love!) and singles out the odious Sir Gerald Kaufman (a Jewish parliamentarian who regularly defames Israel, comparing it to Nazi Germany – see some of his nonsense and a photo of him with Arafat here http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ma.rathfelder/kaufman.htm) for special praise.

In the above debate, Dykes claimed that “Israel has so much and the Palestinians so little.” Oh yeah? Does he think all Jews are rich? Does he believe that there is no poverty among Jewish Israelis? I rather suspect he does. Whatever the case, he should have a look at this video:

But I digress. On 28 February, at the instigation of Lord Dykes, the House of Lords held a short debate on the issue “To ask Her Majesty's Government how they will work with the Government of the United States to ensure that Israel complies with United Nations resolutions and international law.”

That’s the same United Nations that’s in thraldom to Israel’s hypocritical foes from the Arab bloc, and which has seen countries with human rights abuses and denials of women’s rights appointed to various UN bodies specialising in those very areas!

Dykes opened the debate thus:

“Over the weekend it was good to see for once – unusually, and I suppose sadly – the unanimous decisions of the UN Security Council calling on Colonel Gaddafi to account for the abominable behaviour that he is wreaking on his own people. In contrast, how depressing it was to see ... the previous weekend's United Nations Security Council session being ruined, even recklessly sabotaged, by another US veto concerning the Israel/Palestine issue....

Once again the Arab street sees the double standards of the US. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was quite rightly expelled after a year. The UN, quite rightly, did not hesitate then. Israel invaded the West Bank 44 years ago, but it is still there. I warmly congratulate the UK Government as well as the EU on their much more decisive stand in contrast to the still lingering, miserable and self-inflicted humiliation which is further eroding America's already tattered so-called leadership of the western world.”

You can read the full debate here http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/110228-0002.htm#11022845000189 but perhaps the finest riposte to the Israel-bashers came from the (Jewish) Labour life peer (and former MP) Baron Janner of Braunstone (with whom, he being on the opposite side of politics, I don’t always agree):

“My Lords, does this House recognise that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East? Democracies, like Israel or this country, do not always elect the Governments whom we would vote for. However, in my view, Israel continues to play an important role in the international community. It represents a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. It represents democracy, liberty and freedom in a region that has long been filled with tyrannies and dictatorships. We have all seen the people's aspirations, which have long been suppressed, now released in recent revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and now Libya, which we should welcome.

We should recognise the fact that the only democracy in that area is the country that Members of this House have been attacking so readily this evening. The instability of the region has always been a major problem for Israel. However, the current revolutions in the Middle East present an opportunity for Israel and the world.

The primary role of a nation state is to defend its borders and citizens from attack. Israel faces a tough task. Its duty is to defend its citizens. Hamas is not a Government and Gaza is not a nation state. Hamas has been praised. However, Hamas is a terrorist group, which rains terrors on civilians in Israel. These terrorists ignore international law and they, not Israel, should be the key focus of this debate. Let me make it clear to this House: Israel does not target citizens, unlike Hamas and Hezbollah, which target citizens in many parts of Israel. Mistakes occur in warfare, just as mistakes have occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq. When these mistakes happen, investigations are launched and, where possible, justice is delivered.

I would have been interested to hear how the noble Lord who triggered this debate would himself have responded if we in this nation suffered from attacks from terrorist entities, which is the position that Israel has to face. Many of these terrorists were funded and armed by an Iranian regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel and to attacks on Jewish people around the world. The true question for this House is who the real abusers of international law are: Israel, which defends its citizens, or the terrorists who target them.”

Lord Janner’s speech, however, greatly displeased the most virulently anti-Israel Lib Dem peer of them all, one who has on occasion sailed very close to – correction, into – the wind of antisemitism, another old friend of ours, Baroness Tonge. “I have somewhat had my breath blown away by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Janner,” she stated.

“The international community is outraged by the behavior of Colonel Gaddafi towards his people in Libya and has rightly condemned his actions, which have violated human rights and international law. The reaction from our leaders has been swift and decisive. Sanctions are being imposed and bank accounts frozen-quite right too. Any Government who behave in this way should receive the same response. Why, then, has the Government of Israel, who defy all international law, never been called to account by the international community and, why, just last week-as we have heard from other noble peers – did the USA veto the UN resolution on settlements after calling for a freeze on those settlements just a few months ago? Why has this happened when the behaviour of Israel towards the Palestinians lies at the very root of the problems in the Arab-Muslim world?”

Clearly, where Jews and Israel are concerned, Lady Tonge is incorrigible. See also http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2010/11/its-time-for-nick-clegg-to-scrape-this.html and http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2010/11/down-and-dirty-at-westminster-with.html

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Down and Dirty at Westminster with the Lefty-Liberal Israel Bashers – a Zionist Questioner is Silenced by Ejection

In an interview with the London Jewish Chronicle (17 September 2010) the distinguished barrister and Lib Dem former MP Lord Carlile, the son of Polish Jews who converted to Christianity, blamed Lib Dem life peer Baroness Tonge’s perceived antisemitic comments regarding Israel as helping to cost Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems two London seats (Hampstead and Kilburn; Islington South and Finsbury) during Britain’s General Election last May. Condemning as “completely outrageous, inexcusable and incomprehensible” her call for an investigation into clims that the IDF was harvesting body parts from Haiti earthquake victims, Lord Carlile, a strong though not uncritical friend of Israel, also warned that “there is evidence of charitable funding collected in this country being channelled through to Hamas and possibly to other Islamist organisations” by British-based front organisations and that much more should be done to stem the problem. Lord Carlile felt quite rightly – that Nick Clegg and Lord McNally, the Lib Dem leader in the upper chamber, were tardy in dealing with Lady Tonge’ outbursts.


Once upon a time, the Liberal Party was a fount of philosemitism. During the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, when the ultimately successful campaign for the right for professing Jews to sit in the House of Commons was in full swing, Liberal politicians and public figures were in its forefront. Their stance was exemplified in the noble words of Lord Macaulay, who observed in 1831:

“The points of difference between Christianity and Judaism have very much to do with a man's fitness to be a bishop or a rabbi. But they have no more to do with his fitness to be a magistrate, a legislator, or a minister of finance, than with his fitness to be a cobbler. Nobody has ever thought of compelling cobblers to make any declaration on the true faith of a Christian.”

Liberals were conspicuous in the numerous public rallies that occurred in Britain to protest oppression of Jews overseas – from the Damascus blood libel of 1840 through Tsarist and Nazi persecution. Liberals were also keen supporters of the Zionist movement – I’m thinking in particular of the journalists C. P. Scott and Herbert Sidebotham, who made the Manchester Guardian – forerunner of the notoriously anti-Zionist and even antisemitic Guardian of the present day – the most pro-Zionist newspaper in pre-war Britain.

But I’ve always felt wary of much Liberal support for Jews (with demonstrable justification on my part, given present trends). I view much of it as the “anti-anti-semitism” which Liberal Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone characterised as his own position – an abhorrence of the persecution of the Jews rather than an innate admiration for and empathy with them. It’s a position easily transferred – as we’ve seen increasingly since 1967 – to supporting the so-called Palestinians (known until that publicity coup of Arafat’s in  the 1960s as Arabs) and demonising Jews as persecutors. And this genre of demonisation isn’t confined just to British lefty liberals, of course – this drawing by the notorious Michael Leunig, cartoonist for Melbourne’s Age newspaper, displays the slanders perpetrated against Israel by lefties. Indeed, other anti-Israel cartoons by Leunig, invoking Auschwitz and mocking the comatose Ariel Sharon,show how very low a self-righteous left-liberal can stoop.

During the 1970s, before defecting to Labour and eventually becoming an MP and a minister under Blair and Brown as well as a member of Red Ed Miliband’s present team, the anti-Israel serpent in the still-pro-Israel British Liberal Party’s bosom was Peter Hain. A South African-born anti-apartheid activist with a penchant for publicity, he was chairman of the Young Liberals, and combined campaigning against white rule in South Africa with a parallel crusade against Israel’s very existence. Decades before the idea caught on in sections of the Israel-demonising left, Hain had made the replacement of Israel by a “Secular Democratic State of Palestine” the leitmotif of his frequent inveighing against the Jewish State.

Thus, reported the Jewish Chronicle (5 September 1975), “Calls for the destruction of Israel as a state and for British Government recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation were made by more than 1500 pro-Arab supporters who marched from Speakers’ corner to Downing Street on Sunday while the Jewish rally was in progress.” Flanked by some 500 police officers, marchers included Communists, Marxists, Young Socialists, Young Liberals, as well as hundreds of Palestinians, Surians, Iraqis and other Arabs. Hain called on “radicals on the left-wing in Britain” to fight for the Palestinian cause. He was even mean-minded enough to oppose the migration of Soviet Refuseniks to Israel.

His stance dismayed the Liberal Party’s leadership and its old guard, but since then demonising of Israel has become a stock-in-trade of numerous individuals in the party’s successor, the Lib Dems – and some Lib Dem parliamentary candidates at the May 2010 general election were sneaky enough to print up two sets of campaign leaflets – ones distributed to Jewish households having the encomiums to “Palestine” omitted. (richardmillett.wordpress.com/2010/03/.../mezuzah-wars-commence/)

In Robert Fisk’s journalistic stomping ground The Independent (1 February 2010) Lib Dem peer Lord Phillips of Sudbury – a veteran proponent of the Arab cause – wrote an op-ed piece filled with arrant nonsense, such as the assertions that ‘Israel is now more "rogue state" than the "strategic partner" [that then Foreign Secretary] David Miliband recently labelled it’ and that “the abuse of Palestine is the greatest engine” radicalising “working class Muslims elsewhere”. He ended by calling for the West to impose “escalating cultural and economic sanctions” since “carrying on as heretofore would be the sin”.

Last evening, at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign meeting in a committee room at the House of Commons, chaired by the PSC’s operations director Sarah Colborne, Lord Phillips was the first of several speakers. While conceding Israel’s right to exist, he made a highly tendentious speech about its policies and about the state of Israeli public opinion and claimed : "America is in the grip of the well-organised Jewish Lobby". He concurred with Unite trade unionist Richard Allday’s call at the meeting for a boycott of Israeli produce and people. (They’d better be sure to click on this video, then http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saeky9I5T9c/)

Also addressing the meeting was the leftwing Labour anti-Israel warhorse Jeremy Corbyn MP, who observed: “When it’s in Israel’s self interest they do something”. (Either Corbyn was defaming the motive for Israel’s humanitarian efforts in Haiti and elsewhere, or he has managed to remain oblivious to such efforts!) Andrew Slaughter,MP, another Israel defamer who seems to believe that Hamas are at heart reasonable guys (www.guardian.co.uk/.../2010/.../gaza-deadlock-hamas-engagement) declared the Palestinian Authority “does not have anything to give any more”. (“Recognition!” suggested Zionist Federation co-vice-chair Jonathan Hoffman from his place in the audience – and narrowly escaped ejection by Ms Colborne.)

The final speaker was Mavi Marmara activist Kevin Ovenden, formerly of the Socialist Workers Party and now of the Respect Party’s leadership, and when Ovenden had finished lambasting what he insisted on calling "The Zionist Entity”, Jonathan Hoffman, having remarked that Zionists in the United States comprise people from various backgrounds, challenged Lord Phillips to offer evidence to justify raising the spectre of the Jewish lobby. No evidence was forthcoming. Pointing out the antisemitic and genocidal nature of the Hamas Charter, Hoffman contested Phillips’s contention during his speech that Avigdor Lieberman is more racist that anyone the Palestinian side.   Phillips responded that the Hamas Charter is "a load of bullsh*t" - a (terrorist) leader had told him so!

Finding this answer unsatisfactory, Hoffman remonstrated, only to find that the totalitarian left machine had cranked into full gear – he was promptly given his marching orders by Ms Colborne. The police outside the room enforce any eviction by chairpersons of meetings – no questions asked. So Mr Hoffman went quietly. But in these days of increasing demonisation of Israel and of those who champion the Jewish State, it's perhaps a miracle that, unlike Richard Millett, about whose manhandling by PC Plod I blogged in July, he was admitted in the first place!

Slave Trade City votes for Israel Sanctions

Is there no end to the lies, distortions and fabrications - indeed, the obscenities - that emerge daily from the United Kingdom regarding Israel?

Two Bristol men were aboard the so-called "peace" flotilla intercepted by Israel in June. Last night, Bristol City Council  voted overwhelmingly in support of a motion put forward by a Lib Dem councillor (who having evidently swallowed Hamas propaganda hook, line and sinker compared Gaza to Britain during the Blitz) to "hold Israel to account for this illegal [sic] action" (boarding the Mavi Marmara, resulting in nine deaths)  and for sanctions against Israel until it "complies with international law and ceases perpetrating human rights abuses". 

The Libs Dems, of course, have many Israel-defamers within their ranks -  Baroness Tonge is just the most notorious.  But none of the parties seem to have had any councillors principled enough to speak up for Israel during the Bristol debate.  The best the Conservatives could do, reports suggest, was to put forward a motion couched in what they termed "less emotive language", urging Israel to "exercise restraint".

It says much for the level of ignorance among these leaders of a big city that they appear to have shared the mischievous misconceptions voiced by one of the local flotilla activists before the vote: "We question the morality of the council having money invested in Israeli banks or investment funds where it gains interest derived in any way over 60 years of ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine, the illegal occupation of the West Bank, and the brutal starvation and slaughter of the people in Gaza".

Naturally, the pro-Palestinian anti-Israel boycott brigade in Bristol is cock-a-hoop at this latest British blow against the little Jewish State in its struggle to survive.

The wealth of the great port city of Bristol was founded on the gross immorality of the Atlantic slave trade.  Many of the city's finest buildings and grandest homes were built with the filthy  lucre derived from that loathsome fount of human misery.  Might we now expect the councillors of Bristol to vote for the demolition of such  local structures, or for them to be given over to the poor and destitute?  That would be a surefire way of demonstrating that their "humanitarianism" is even-handeded.