I came across this astonishing article by Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph newspaper today. As it had gone online yesterday I braced myself before checking out the expected tirade of hostile comments. Strangely, they weren’t predominantly hostile though the article was certainly ‘popular’ as it attracted over 1,400 comments.
The article begins by alluding to David Cameron’s speech to the CST in which he promised support for the Jewish people and Israel. Noting Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent concerns about the UK (which were explored in another Telegraph article by Charles Moore), Brogan explores the whole delegitimisation process we are undergoing, spearheaded largely by the BBC.
“Together, the BBC and the internet act as an echo chamber for a coalition of religious and political campaign groups and academics of all stripes – some of them Jewish – pumping out a propaganda campaign of explicit and implicit hostility to Israel.”
Melanie Phillips has posted an article about this ‘rare event indeed in the British media’. So. Cameron has talked the talk, but most people agree it is unlikely that he will ever actually walk the walk.
A B-BBC reader has asked me to include the following:
To the BBC and all those Israel-hating bigots in the media.
You may think you are doing a wonderful job in bashing, nay, delegitimising Israel. But consider this. Israel is full of people who are used to being ostracised and persecuted. They have been that for centuries. They have an independence of spirit and resilience which you will find difficult to understand and the words ‘never again’ have real meaning for them. You think you are alienating the world from Israel, but what you, the British media are doing, from the security of your smug complacent safe lives, is alienating Israel from us.
In spite of the fact that their country is under constant attack they are at the cutting edge of so much modern technology. 70% of the computer you’re sitting in front of was developed in Israel; they are significant players in stem cell research, something which one day some of you may be grateful for when you grow up. In case you haven’t heard, they give us huge amounts of information regarding terrorist threats relating to this country and advice on protecting ourselves. All this and much more, which they could take elsewhere. India, China, Russia, developing economies. None of them as in love with islam as we seem to be, they might prove to be better friends.
So while you enjoy the sport of Israel-bashing. Think on. We have more to lose than you think.
Forty-three major armed conflicts going on around the world right now – funny how the heart-bleeders manage to spill all their (metaphorical) blood and all their (crocodile) tears over a whole two or three of them, with ‘Palestine’ in the van.
Not to forget a side-order of (crocodile) tears over Guantanamo Bay. But only The Messiah’s one, not Castro’s one.
How I love the smell of rank, rank, and rank again hypocrisy in the early evening.
I shared Melanie Phillips’s surprise at seeing such an article in the present-day Telegraph – almost like the good old days of Barbara Amiel and Mark Steyn.
(Re comments at the Telegraph – I think you’ve got one too many noughts there, Sue.)
I remember those days. The past is a foreign country indeed!
yes, so I have! :-[
And remember how the BBC and other lefty hyenas tore into her.
About 4 years ago I commented on this blog http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/?p=192 about why the US supported Israel when realpolitik would suggest that the US should support those seeking its destruction and why I was highly dubious that the “Jewish Lobby” in the US was the cause of the US’s continuing support. Self-referential I know but my comment concerning US-Israel relations would, I hope, be true for Britain. Actually as Brogan (and I) fear, this is not so. The comment read as follows:
If the US was cynically pursuing foreign policies in pursuit of “realpolitik”, it would withdraw all support from Israel, refuse supply of arms and oil and let Israel’s opponents get on with it. A possible reason [ . . .] as to why the US apparently acts against its own apparent interests is, of course, the alleged power of the Jewish lobby: the fact that Jews (who in total comprise less than 2% of the US electorate) vote 80+% Democrat tends to torpedo this argument below the waterline [this was written when GWB was president].
Perhaps then the US is not as cynical or its citizens as ignorant as we might be led to believe. Maybe it’s just a question of taste: maybe the US and Americans generally simply prefer – at an enormous cost to the US in terms of political advantage – to support a state modelled on and reflecting the mores of Western civilisation rather than a collection of squalid quasi-dictatorships whose only claim to any importance in the world (apart, that is, from opting for the role of the world’s uber-victims) lies in having won a lottery concerning the siting of oil reserves.
Coming closer to home, I, as an English gentile identify – also as a matter of taste as well as common sense – the enemies of Israel in the Middle East with the domestic enemies of my own country.
BTW – and sorry to remain slightly OT – an ingenious explanation for the overt support of Israel by the US is given here http://sandbox.blog-city.com/israel_oil_realism.htm .
Well worth repeating DB
No doubt, INBBC is preparing for we British licencepayers to pay for increased anti-Israel propaganda via BBC ARABIC when INBBC gets full editorial control of that Islamic section of Broadcasting House, London in a couple of years. Close BBC ARABIC now.
Well as the French Socialist Pierre “All Property is Theft” Proudhon put it
“The Jew is the enemy of the human race. One must send this race back to Asia or exterminate it. By fire or fusion or by expulsion, the Jew must disappear. What the people of the Middle Ages hated by instinct, I hate upon reflexion and irrecoverably. THE HATRED OF THE JEW, AS THAT OF THE ENGLISH. MUST BE AN ARTICLE OF OUR POLITICAL FAITH.” (Carnets, 26 décembre 1847 – Translation by David Preussen)
Anglophile Liberals do exist in the cesspit that is Continental European politics, but they were (and are) a minority. The above is more typical. That is why the EU is not merely a gravy train for European politicians, it is a disaster for the UK – they not only hate us they expect us to pay for our own destruction. The same goes for the BBC.
As far as I remember Proudhon was an anarchist(as well as despising Marx of course.). I’m not sure he has a lot to do with the EU.
Anti-Israeli stances are regretable(as are anti-Palestinian ones.) but I don’t see it is anything but a peripheral issue to British politics. I do not want to see it become the sort of issue for us that it is for the yanks.
In Continental politics Jew hating is not restricted to Leftist anarchists such as Proudhon and Bakhunin (Marx of course was also a passionate Jew hater but then even you know that JJ) but was widespread amongst those all those who hated (British) free market liberalism. The two were seen as one and the same.
This hatred has not gone away; it now calls itself hatred of the USA and Israel. Although these days it is left to the Muslims to call for the extermination of Israel (and enthusiasm for the USSR and Hitler is not what it was) the old envy and hatred of the UK (in particular England) is still alive and kicking.
If it was announced that the British economy had collapsed and we were now begging in the streets, there would be widespread rejoicing amongst many European politicians, the same politicians by the way who take our money and castigate us for being insufficiently “European”.
The fact that in a post about the anti-Israel bias of the BBC you feel the need to attack “anti-Palestinians” (code for Jews) and “Yanks” tells us more than you realise.
Those who read our respective comments will make up their minds about who is ‘attacking”, to use your phrase. Civility costs nothing.
Personally I have precious little interest in the Israel/Palestine problem. I simply recall it was extremely peripheral to British politics and would like it to stay that way. I have a quite positive opinion of the yanks for a traditionalist Brit or so I think so.
I will say it is unhelpful to simply accuse people who are anti-Israel, ie biased against Israel as the pro-Israelis are biased in favour of it, of being anti-semitic and it was obviously absurd to accuse me of such when I’ve said nothing against Israel. It is like when people throw terms like Islamophobic about, it is just silly.
Yes I got your – Let’s not follow the “Yanks” and support the Jews – comment.
How entirely predictable that your conviction is coupled with the declaration that it is absurd to link being Anti-Israel and being Anti-Semitic. It nicely complements your – Islamophobia is silly – remark.
Again, you say more than you intend, I think.
When so many countries want to erase Israel (and the Jews) from history “neutrality” is analogous to the neutrality of Spain and Sweden (or for that matter Ireland) in the Second World War.
Nobody is deceived.
Well, no intelligent person.
I’m glad you feel able to talk for everyone and for all intellgent people. No doubt they are thrilled to have you as their self-appointed spokesman.
I stand by my comments. Israel is a peripheral issue to British politics and I hope it stays that way. Those of either side who take a biased and dishonest position are to be scorned, as are those who throw around labels like anti-Semitic with little grounding. Those who take sides because of anti-American or anti-Islamic feeling are particularly contemptible.
It is a shame that this new fascination with Israel on the British right seems to come from a dislike of Islam’s perceived growth in power in Britain. It is a misuse of our time however and we should be focusing on reviving British and English traditions, values and culture, not introducing foreign nations as central to our domestic politics. The Jews who should most occupy our mind is the great Disraeli, perhaps our greatest prime minister, and those of the bible.
wild,
I think one has to be cautious about automatically labeling the anti-Israel agitators as anti-Semitic. I’m sure a great many of them are, but I think it’s true to say that many are opposed to Israel out of a misdirected and uneducated lefty zeal, which is not necessarily anti-Semitic. It’s trendy and cutting-edge to be fighting for the “oppressed,” and no cause is more worthy in the eyes of many of the left than the resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
JJ,
You are wrong about the British government. Long before the establishment of Israel, in the days of the Mandate, the British had vital interests in Palestine and it still rankles among many of them that the lowly Jews drove them out of the place. But there are also many British people who genuinely support Israel. I think Gordon Brown is one but I’m not sure about Cameron, fine speeches aside. I recall his knee-jerk condemnation of Israel over the flotilla attack while he was on a visit to Turkey.
Anyway, Britain can hardly turn its back on the Israeli-Arab conflict. Politics doesn’t work like that. What concerns me is that Britain might gravitate more and more to the Arab side out of oil interests and the growing Muslim influence in the country.
You are wrong to equate anti-Israel and anti-Palestinian positions. Those who are anti-Palestinian generally don’t express their opposition with the vitriol of the anti-Israel crowd. And in any event they are more pro-Israel than they are anti-Palestinian.
Those who back the Palestinians should consider the type of country they will create out of an independent Palestine. A quick glance at other Arab countries should give them a clue.
I’m not sure I agree Too True. As far as I can see it is a two-sided issue with relatively equal amounts of blind partisanship, vitriol and silliness. I happen to think the sides in Britain today have a lot to do with anti-Islam versus anti-American feeling, which I find idiotic. To insert oneself into foreign conflicts on such premises to blinding support one side is just plain idiocy(not that you necessarily are doing this.).
Throwing around accusations like anti-Semiticism at the other side, and even the relatively neutral, is worthy of farce and will not appeal to the undecided. I fully agree with your points on such accusations.
It is debateable whether we can ‘turn our back’ on the conflict but that doesn’t mean it isn’t peripheral
JJ,
Intelligent people agree on all sorts of things (we are in orbit around a Sun) and do not waste time debating them. What they agree about is not fixed (it was once thought that our Sun orbited the Earth) nor do they agree about everything. When I say that something is an issue about which intelligent people do not disagree, this is simply a factual claim which is either true or false. I am no more a “self-appointed spokesman” than anybody is a “self-appointed spokesman” by expressing an opinion.
Too True,
You are right that you can be anti-Israel without being anti-semitic, but since Israel is a Jewish State, and its enemies seek the complete extermination of the Jews, I would say that to be automatically Anti-Israel, no matter what the issue discussed, is to be ipso facto anti-semitic. I think that “neutrality” is to be objectively against Israel.
I do not think the Britain ever saw Israel as geo-politically important, and British feelings about Israel are always going to be mixed. There is a vague sense that post-war Jewish terrorist gangs were scum (blowing up the Saint David’s hotel and rigging the bodies of British people they killed with explosives to cause maximum casualities) and that these low lifes are revered as heroes in Israel (as your comments reveal) and to this I would add that most people are aware that the Old Testament is full of a quite repellant ant-gentile Jewish nationalism. On the other hand however the contribution of (liberal secular) Jews to Western civilisation has been very great over the last 150 years, and that Israel is very much part of the West – its enemies are our enemies – and so for supporters of the West the conflict between Israel and the “Palestinians” at its simplest a conflict between civilization and barbarism, with the Left needless to add on the side of the barbarian.
I agree with much of what you say, but note that the British were fiercely engaged with the French for control of the Middle East for a large part of the last century.
The “Holy Land” has been fought over by the “West” and the “East” for over 2300 years, the last 1300 years of that because of its special religious significance, so it has never been simply Arab or even Muslim land. I am sure you know much more about the history than I do, but I am pretty sure that it was the fact that the Jews had been consistently persecuted during that entire period that led to the Balfour Declaration, not rivalry with the French. I am not denying of course that there was a post-First World War carve up of the Ottoman Empire between the British and the French, but the protectorate concept was (as I understand it) never intended to be anything other than a transition to independent States. I expect there are a 1000 histories, each one different.
What happens if your a traditional conservative who doesn’t much like liberalism or secularism? I have much admiration for Jewish culture but it is Rabbianic and Kabalic traditions and not their part is modernism and post-modernism.
Cameron walk the walk?? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Brogan mentions Mapping the Organizational Sources of the Global Delegitimization Campaign against Israel in the UK by Ehud Rosen as required reading for ministers. I’ve linked to it here.
Islam Not BBC (INBBC) using the propaganda of sport to boost its notion of ‘Palestine’ as a nation:
“Palestinian footballers in bittersweet Olympic match”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12693615
Would that INBBC supported Israeli sports people, musicians, intellectuals against boycotts and intimidation by advocates of ‘Palestine’.
Good article in the Telegraph. Sue, I think you were right about the 1 400 comments. It’s now grown to 2 692 comments. From the 100 or so I read, seems like quite a battle between the anti-Semites and some strong defenders of Israel.
‘Guardian’ just like INBBC, has permanent political propaganda against Israel:
‘Just Journalism’ has:
“Guardian admits Israel ‘straightforward target’”
http://justjournalism.com/the-wire/guardian-admits-israel-%E2%80%98straightforward-target%E2%80%99/