Melanie Phillips, a real apology

Well here's the apology:

On 2 July 2008 we published an article entitled “Just look what came crawling out” which alleged that at a protest at the celebration in London of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, Mohammad Sawalha had referred to Jews in Britian as “evil/noxious”. We now accept that Mr Sawalha made no such anti-Semitic statement and that the article was based on a mistranslation elsewhere of an earlier report. We and Melanie Phillips apologise for the error.

But what about the article? Now you see it*:

It seems that last Sunday’s demonstration in London celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary has provoked a few scorpions to crawl out from under their stone.It seems that last Sunday’s demonstration in London celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary has provoked a few scorpions to crawl out from under their stone.Harry’s Place reports this gem:

Here’s Mohammad Sawalha, President of the British Muslim Initiative, speaking to Al Jazeera in Arabic about his demonstration against last Sunday’s celebration of the foundation of the State of Israel: 

The President of the British Muslim Initiative - Mohammad Sawalha - said in a speech to Al Jazeera:

‘We, the Arab and Islamic community, gather here today to express our resentment at the celebrations by the Jewish community and the evil/noxious Jew in Britain’.

[والوبيل اليهودي في بريطانيا]

Translation by DaveM

Apart from the British Muslim Initiative, Sawalha has been active in a large number of other ventures. He is the past President of the Muslim Association of Britain. He was the founder of IslamExpo, and is registered as the holder of theIslamExpo domain name. He is also a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque: which was taken over from Abu Hamza by the Muslim Association of Britain, with the help of Detective Inspector Bob Lambert. 

He was also fingered by BBC Panorama as a Hamas activist. A pillar of the community, then.

Meanwhile, a Times report of how al Qaeda is reacting to being driven out of Afghanistan and defeated in Iraq (not that you will have read anything in the British media about this last fact, even though by any normal yardstick it should be front-page news; I wonder why??

Update: Paul Reynolds of the BBC says below that he reported this here) by regrouping in Pakistan, Somalia and Algeria contains this nugget, buried at the very end of the story:

A large number of radicalised Somalis are living in Britain and it is feared that instead of going to Pakistan for jihad training, they are travelling to Somalia.

Welcome once again to Londonistan, where the British authorities ensure that the jihadi sun never sets. 

Now you don't.  So even their half-hearted correction wasn't enough and Mad Mel Phlips had to apologise.  Dear oh dear!  I'm just remembering when Melanie Phillips described the outcry over an Israeli junior minister's calling for a "bigger holocaust" against defenceless Palestinians in Gaza a "bigger holocaust" as "the mother of all mistranslations".  Pity her Arabic isn't as, er, good as her Hebrew.

* I've copied in the words attributed to Mohammad Sawalha in the original article.  That article was amended in the cache link that I provided so an anonymous commentator sent a better cache link.