Perpetuating Propaganda: David Singer challenges Jewish Voice For Peace

Entitled "Palestine – Perpetuating Propaganda Plagues Peace Process", here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, who previously wrote about the McGraw-Hill maps incident here and here

He writes:

McGraw Hill’s decision to trash copies of its textbook Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World  has been subjected to intense criticism on web sites propagating the “Palestinian Narrative” of the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict. The “Palestinian Narrative” is a concoction of lies and half-truths based on the 1964 PLO National Charter – as amended in 1968 – and the 1988 Hamas Covenant.

Catherine Mathis – a spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill – explained the Company’s reasons for destroying the textbook – which contained four misleading and inaccurate maps of “Palestine”:

"As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review. The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book."  

McGraw-Hill’s action follows similar criticism of MSNBC which aired the same series of maps last year on “MSNBC Live”.

 Host Kate Snow and her then guest Middle East expert Martin Fletcher made a return appearance to acknowledge that they realized after they went off the air that the maps were not factually accurate and they regretted using them.

Now, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has published a letter signed by 35 “prominent academics” attacking McGraw Hill’s “shocking and outrageous act of censorship of the Palestinian narrative from US schoolbooks”.

The fact that JVP openly acknowledges the offending maps are part of the “Palestinian narrative” is surely more than sufficient justification for trashing the text book – because no disclosure was made by the contributing editors that the maps they used were partisan in nature.

But the academics letter goes even further in claiming:

1. “The maps in question are historically accurate” – but gives no evidence to back up that claim.

2. “If there were in fact any minor errors with the maps they should have been corrected rather than removed altogether” – but fails to list such minor errors.

I contacted JVP requesting to know what those “minor errors” were. Rather than listing those “minor errors” JVP referred me to the fact sheet of another web site propagating the same maps and claiming they were accurate.

I then sent JVP my detailed reasons for questioning the accuracy of these four maps – adding:

“I know it would be very difficult to withdraw your letter signed by so many distinguished people but it needs to be qualified if their integrity and yours is to be maintained.

McGraw Publishing had the intellectual strength to remove the offending text book from sale when inaccuracies in the maps were brought to its attention.

I believe you now need to issue an appropriately worded supplementary letter that:

* errors appearing in the published maps drawn to your attention after your letter was published were regrettably incapable of being corrected thereby necessitating their withdrawal and the textbook from sale.

* McGraw Hill's decision to do so was justified.

Please give this letter your serious consideration and let me know what you intend doing.”

No response has been received to this and two subsequent e mails.

Misleading maps – like misleading statements – allowed to go unchallenged – soon become accepted as gospel truth if repeated often enough in text books and in the media.

Anti-Israel websites peddling the “Palestinian narrative” and refusing to publish comments seeking to correct unsubstantiated and untrue statements are increasing.

Jewish Voice For Peace does itself no credit in aligning with these insidious web sites by maintaining its deafening silence and knowingly propagating these totally discredited maps.

JVP types in Atlanta

Note from Daphne: the MSNBC map shown below appears several times on the JVP Facebook page. 

The comments below, like the signs in the photo of JVP activists above, are illustrative of the JVP's  outlook and agenda: click here for its sources of funding; (NGO Monitor has its measure)

Am Yisrael, Slavery, & The Greenslime Factor

Am Yisrael Chai  ("The People of Israel Lives") is of course an uttered reminder that Hitler failed in his intent to wipe every Jewish man, woman and child off the face of the earth.

It is an affirmation of life and of hope and refers to K'lal Yisrael, the entire community of Israel, the  remnant of the Jewish People who managed to survive the Shoah and the descendants of those survivors.

Shockingly, a certain British Jew has seen fit to observe:

Or perhaps not so shockingly to those au fait with the idées fixes of this Guardian-contributing "radical Communist" anti-Israel blogger, who has been cited by Professor Richard Landes here as being among the

"Jewish writers [who] don’t merely critique Israeli policy, but routinely engage in hyperbole, vitriol, and gross distortions.  Their rhetoric is often spewed with hate towards the Jewish state, all but ignoring the behavior of her enemies – the terrorist and reactionary movements who openly seek her annihilation.  Such commentators often infer that the democratic Jewish state (the most progressive nation, by far, in the region) is almost always in the wrong, is usually motivated by a hideous malevolence, and represents a national  movement which they, as Jews, are ashamed to be associated with."

That despicable tweet is, alas, seemingly representative of the mindset of Tony Greenstein, who's captured on camera below not by the BBC (which trots him out from time to time in discussion programs) but by Sussex Friends of Israel founder Simon Cobb outside Ecostream in Brighton.

 A couple of other very recent tweets from Mr Greenstein, who's evidently not shy of using the term "Zio" despite it's being used as shorthand for Jew by antisemites:

The admirable John Mann, of course, knows what antisemitism is as well as the vast majority of British Jews.  (Inter alia, he has said, "the threats" to Jews include "The British intellectuals who get nervous when I label them accurately, not as the anti-Zionists they wish to be known as, but as the racists that they have become."  Quite so, quite so.)

Despicably, too, Mr Greenstein has posted the following on Facebook (hat tip: reader P):

It is not necessary to hit back with reminders of the sorry story of the Arab slave trade, which over the centuries saw both black people and white deprived of their liberty under the most cruel and ferocious circumstances.

For those who hasten to comply with Mr Greenstein's  urgings to "Share" and "Share widely," thus further defaming da Joos, this book by Professor Eli Faber which refutes the odious slurs that are implicit in the above, ought to be mandatory reading.  I have it on my own bookshelf, and it's a work of scholarship and integrity that was written in response to ahistorical antisemitic calumnies.

This Kirkus Review piece appeared in 2010, and is a worthy introduction to Faber's book:

Despite the polemical subtitle, a scholarly and meticulously researched account of Jewish participation in the slave trade in the British colonies of the Caribbean and in the US.

In 1991, the Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam published an inflammatory document entitled The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, which charged that Jews had financed and dominated the slave trade in the American colonies and early US.

According to Faber (History/John Jay College, City University of New York), this study’s conclusions have been widely accepted as fact, despite grave defects in historical methodology, with deleterious consequences for historical scholarship and race relations.

Here limiting his study to slavery in the British Atlantic colonies in the 17th through the 19th centuries, the author uses primary source material, including shipping and tax records and other commercial documents, to refute the anti-Semitic theme of The Secret Relationship.

Faber concludes that Jewish involvement in the Atlantic slave trade was exceedingly limited: by successively examining the small, (initially predominantly Sephardic) Jewish communities of Barbados, Nevis, and Jamaica, and mainland colonies like Newport and New York City, Faber persuasively demonstrates that Jewish participation in the slave trade in each area consisted of tiny percentages of slave sales and ownership, from the earliest years of settlement through the abolition of the slave trade in the 19th century.

A well-researched study that neither allocates blame nor exonerates the participants in the peculiar institution, but puts to rest a pernicious anti-Semitic libel of recent coinage.

[Emphasis added]

See also here

Mark Regev at the Oxford Union (video)

Mr Ambassador at his very best!

One hour's worth of footage.

"Ask Them if They've Ever Seen a Picture of Israelis - in colour" (video)

No prizes for guessing who this question is posed to!

This fanatical Irish activist for a start!

Video bonus: The man who might be London's mayor in a few hours:

And Pat Condell on who he won't vote for (yes, the anti-Israel brigade gets a look-in!):

Hat tip: Ian

"Our Hatred of Jews Has Poisoned Us" (video)

No, not a confession from the Corbynistas in Britain's Labour Party (see my previous post) but the declaration of an Egyptian scholar.

To quote the uploader and translator (Memri.org):

'In a lecture posted on the Internet on March 21, Egyptian-German scholar Hamed Abdel-Samad said that the Prophet Muhammad had lowered the Jews to a "subhuman level, viewing them as animals," and he compared the treatment of the Jews in the years following Muhammad's death to that of the Nazis. "This hatred is poisoning us" and "preventing us from dealing with our problems in a serious way," said Abdel-Samad, adding that "instead of poisoning one generation after another with this hatred, we should let them learn something from humanity," in order to enable them to "overcome the barrier of hatred and of fear of the other." The lecture is titled "Islamic Fascism and the Jews." For additional lectures by Abdel-Samad, see MEMRI TV clips 5443 and 5356.'

Corbyn's Da Joos Crisis: items from an archive

As Jeremy Corbyn sinks deeper into the mire (hat tip Ian) allow me to  link to my latest Tuesday post on the Elder of Ziyon site.

The image at top left here appeared at the top of the article in The Times (7 March 1985) by Peter Bradley that I quote from in that Elder post.

Mr Bradley's article shows what a growing problem antisemitism was in the British Labour Party at that juncture, and of course (though the usual suspects have gone into overdrive to deny it, and turn their wrath on the estimable John Mann in crude and despicable fashion) it has hit crisis point now.
 
In the Elder post I quote from an article by the erudite Dr James Vaughan of the University of Aberystwyth.

I'll do more than hat tip Dr Vaughan.

I take my hat right off to him for the ensuing recent items I've borrowed from his Twitter page, items that help to illuminate the depth of Labour's antisemitism problem and are instructive as far as my Elder post is concerned.

So, should you happen to see this, Dr Vaughan, Diolch yn fawr!

The following is the cartoon that is referred to in Mr Bradley's article as appearing in Ken Livingstone's Labour Herald in 1985.

A retweet by Dr Vaughan (the [Sir] Richard Evans mentioned is this gentleman):

 The following item refers to Andrew Faulds, I believe, also mentioned in my post; I remember him well (even had an exchange of correspondence with him regarding his stance towards Israel).  This item from the notorious California-based Institute for Historical Review could have been innocently acquired and kept by him, of course.

 One from my own archive:

Getty image

 The photo shows the erstwhile Labour Secretary of State for Wales and Middle East minister Hain the Pain (also mentioned in my Elder post) in those radically socialistic "Young Liberal" days of his during which he did his best to demonise Israel and even opposed the right of persecuted Soviet Jewry to find respite there.

That was when this odious little man with the huge ambitions nauseously advocated replacing Israel with a "secular democratic state" (a goal to which he's openly returned).

Let's be grateful that he never fulfilled the prediction that he would one day become a Labour prime minister.

And let's hope that we'll be able to say the same of Corbyn and his ilk.

Meanwhile, a look at the archive of Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger:

"Beyond Rational Conversation" (video)

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