Is Baddiel calling Ken Loach a Holocaust Denier?

David Baddiel attempted a bit of a pile on against me a couple of weeks ago and in so doing seems to have accused Ken Loach of Holocaust denial.

The smearing of Ken Loach begins with the BBC wildly misrepresenting a speech by Miko Peled at a fringe meeting hosted by Free Speech on Israel at the Labour Conference 2017. Labour had done remarkably well in the general election of that year and the establishment decided to focus all the smearing on exaggerated, manipulated or fabricated allegations of antisemitism. Anyway, here's Miko Peled:

There was no discussion, just that remark by Miko Peled. Anyway, let's see now what the BBC did with that:

It's interesting but at some point in the interview the interviewer notes that Loach is alleging that some Labour MPs - actually it was mostly Labour MPs - were "confecting" allegations of antisemitism before going on to do exactly that herself. But anyway, this is the interview where Loach is wrongfooted by a Beeber flat out lying about what had occurred at the aforementioned FSOI meeting. She said that there had been a discussion as to whether or not the Holocaust had happened. Having no clue what she was talking about but knowing she was lying, he couldn't straight up condemn Holocaust denial or debate because that would have seemed like confirming that the discussion that had not taken place had taken place.  Wow, I just looked at the video again and the Beeber was such an outrageous liar.  Look from 01.44 "there was a discussion about the Holocaust, did it happen or didn't it?" Loach shakes his head vigorously and says "I don't think there was a discussion". She then says "well it was reported and it was on the [unintelligible]" She then says 01.57 "would you say that is unacceptable?" Loach then says "I think history is there for us all to discuss", thereby turning to a generalisation about history, not the specifics of the Holocaust.

This is one of the most lied about lines of the whole long smear campaign and the BBC's tweet truncating the clip so as to lie about Loach is still in place. Dave Rich of the Israel lobby and security group, Community Security Trust, couldn't resist his own mischief, tweeting that "Ken Loach said....whether the Holocaust happened "is there for us all to discuss".

But Dave stops short of calling Loach a Holocaust denier. He was challenged by Linda Sayle.

You are wickedly mis-quoting Ken Loach. He said "history is there for us all to discuss". Calling people holocaust deniers without basis and scattering accusations of antisemitism around like confetti does great damage.

— Linda Sayle (@LindaSayle) February 5, 2020

Now if you look, even Dave Rich wasn't stooping to accusing Loach of denial, just of tolerance towards deniers and debate with them.

I didn't call anyone a Holocaust denier, so you are misquoting me. I have no idea whether you are doing it "wickedly" or not.

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) February 5, 2020

Poor Linda didn't know how Dave likes to play with quotation marks. Do you see how his quotes are simply around "is there for us all to discuss", not "whether the Holocaust happened"? Dave does that all the time. Anyway, Dave did not, repeat not, call Loach a Holocaust denier. But note, he stops short of denying "scattering accusations of antisemitism around like confetti". He should have stopped at "I have no idea".

Anyway, David Baddiel picks up and runs amok with Dave Rich's smear and, for the book, sexes it up just a tad.  See page 66 on:

The film director Ken Loach was made a judge of a school competition run by Show Racism the Red Card, which is a football anti-racist charity similar to Kick It Out. In 2016, [it was 2017] during an interview at the Labour Party conference, Loach said, on being asked about the presence at a fringe meeting of a speaker alleged to have questioned the history of the Holocaust, [Miko Peled in the above clip] ‘Well, I think history is there for us all to discuss.’ He has since very strongly refuted being a Holocaust denier*, [my italics] but nonetheless this appointment led to protests from the Jewish community. For a while, SRtRC reacted angrily, doubling down, getting Eric Cantona to tweet about what a great anti-racist Ken Loach was and suchlike. In the end, Loach did step down from judging the competition, but as ever there was no outcry from progressive quarters – only Jewish ones – about the possible incongruity of his appointment.

I wouldn’t particularly mention this – it’s just a standard, everyday example of #JewsDontCount – were it not for the fact that while this minor furore was going on, a man called Dave Rich, who works for a charity, the Community Security Trust, which provides security against racist attack for Jewish schools, synagogues and community centres, [and lobbies the government for Israel and smears Israel's critics] tweeted this:

Followed by a second tweet that just said: ‘I can think of better judges for an anti-racism competition.’ I retweeted it. And then Ken Loach’s son, Jim, tweeted this:

I see @Baddiel casually retweets internet trolls like @daverich1 who defame my father @KenLoachSixteen. You’d think with his background he’d be a bit more careful when accusing others. pic.twitter.com/6gSlz4KSKw

— Jim Loach (@JimLoach) February 6, 2020

First up Baddiel misrepresents Miko Peled. Baddiel has written a book which he intends to be taken seriously. Clearly he is either lying about Miko Peled or he simply didn't check anything, even the thread that he RTd a tweet from. In fairness the lack of checking is possible given he gets the year wrong. But even without checking, surely he realised that Dave Rich was being slippery with the Ken Loach quote. If he didn't know any of this or didn't reason any of this for himself, then why did he ignore most of Jim Loach's tweet?  "@Baddiel casually retweets internet trolls like @daverich1 who defame my father @KenLoachSixteen".

Jim Loach protests Baddiel RTing "internet trolls like @Dave Rich who defame" his father. No pause for thought over the word "defame", no? Jim Loach is accusing Baddiel and Rich (and by extension and most concerning of all, the BBC) of lying about Ken Loach, which they all were. But Baddiel had points to score and scores to settle so he takes the opportunity to show what a know-nothing he really is. 

You see, Jim Loach references one of Baddiel's racist outbursts, this one against the former footballer, Jason Lee who Baddiel encouraged famously racist football fans to mock by way of Baddiel donning blackface makeup and wearing a pineapple on his head to represent dreadlocks.Googling Baddiel, pineapple, Jason Lee, stuff like that, you will happen upon many an article with Jason Lee saying that Baddiel never apologised to him for what he did. Baddiel claims he apologised. He doesn't say who he apologised to and doesn't seem to realise even what he did wrong. Now see page 70:

What the apologies make no difference to is the recurring presence of that photo on my Twitter timeline. Particularly since I started speaking out publicly about anti-Semitism, whether it be anti-Semitism in general or on the left. In fact, it can seem that what the people demanding apologies from me want is not apologies. What they seem to want, really, is silence. They want me to shut up, particularly about anti-Semitism. As far as they are concerned, the photo of me as Jason Lee is a trump card that means I cannot speak about racism...

There is a tactic some of you may be aware of called Whataboutery. 

Yup, there is a tactic called Whataboutery. It's when you justify your own wrongdoing by reference to the wrongdoing of your opponents.  But Jim Loach is not accusing Baddiel of doing what his father has done. He is correctly calling Baddiel a liar about his father and a hypocritical liar over antisemitism. 

But there is another charge of hypocrisy to be made against Baddiel. He says that his own racism is used to try to disqualify him from talking about racism in other situations, in particular in his case, against Jews, He says this is a #Jewsdon'tcount instance. But that's exactly what Baddiel is saying about Ken Loach. The only difference is that Baddiel, Rich and the BBC all lied about Loach. You don't have to look far to find examples of Baddiel's racism. That is, you don't have to lie to make a racist out of Baddiel.

Here he is saying he looks like a "pikey".

Here he is essentialising Blacks, Asians and Jews by occupation. He got some rare mainstream flack for that, albeit in the Guardian's letters page.

But really mentioning two (three with blackface - many with blackface many times) examples of Baddiel's racism spanning over 20 years doesn't convey nearly enough of it.

He does another slippery thing. He claims that people have tried to silence him since he started talking about antisemitism as if this postdates the examples of his racism which go back to the 1990s but I'm sure I saw him alleging antisemitism against Israel's leftist critics back in the 1990s, which you could say was Baddiel's racist heyday if only it was over. 

But the final thing is this. I remember the first time I read Baddiel's stupid book, the line about Ken Loach that baffled me the most was after Baddiel claimed Loach was challenged about "the presence at a fringe meeting of a speaker alleged to have questioned the history of the Holocaust" we have what looks like a non sequitur:

He has since very strongly refuted being a Holocaust denier

Now remember Dave Rich insisted he certainly wasn't accusing anyone, certainly not Loach, of Holocaust denial. So who did accuse Ken Loach of being a Holocaust denier? Why would Baddiel say he denies it?

It rankled with me as I was sure my skim reading had let me down. That's one reason I got the Kindle version, so I can cross-reference, search, copy and paste, etc.

But then a couple of weeks ago I was googling for something, probably Baddiel related and I found that Baddiel himself has been "confronting Holocaust denial", ie, debating with Holocaust deniers,ie, what I thought Baddiel, Dave Rich and the BBC were falsely accusing Ken Loach of promoting.

I noticed that in the BBC puff for the stuff two Holocaust deniers are named and it appeared that Baddiel goes off to debate these people. I tweeted that Baddiel was doing what he falsely accused Ken Loach of doing, ie, debating the Holocaust. Actually, it's worse, it's publicising not simply the fact that some people deny the Holocaust but their names. This meant that people intent on denying the Holocaust could hone and further publicise their arguments by going to the go-to names. 

I tweeted my criticism in a four tweet thread.

The irony of David Baddiel smearing Ken Loach as a promoter of Holocaust debate is that Baddiel & Lipstadt both publicise Holocaust denial and confront it with the facts thereby engaging in the very debate Baddiel falsely accuses @KenLoachSixteen of promoting. https://t.co/dtbyzR5saQ

— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) April 3, 2021

When Lipstadt wrote a book on deniers, including Irving, Irving's plan was to cross-examine her on the Holocaust & expose that she knew nothing. Thankfully she didn't have to take the stand so he lost but it could have been a disaster. That's the dangerous game they're playing.

— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) April 3, 2021

The BBC's lie that Jewish socialists discussed whether or not the Holocaust happened was the most disgusting of all the lies in a smear campaign that is still ongoing. In fact, Baddiel's book with the Loach smear replicated in it is the most recent contribution to the campaign.

— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) April 3, 2021

And the fact that Baddiel publicises Holocaust denial is of course much worse than irony, worse than hypocrisy, in fact it wasn't even hypocrisy,it was projection: accusing people of doing a bad thing that they don't do but Baddiel does.

— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) April 3, 2021

That could have been that but rather then respond to my first tweet that QRTd his tweet, he grabbed the fourth one which didn't name anyone and didn't tag him. He knew that I was slagging him over Loach but none of his followers could know because he grabbed the tweet, he didn't QRT it. Sneaky huh? Look: 

Here's @jewssf suggesting that because I did a documentary challenging and exposing Holocaust denial, I am secretly a Holocaust denier. When people on here hate you, for whatever reason, it's amazing the contortions they will undergo to channel that hate. pic.twitter.com/wg1VOv41Is

— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) April 4, 2021

Now even in the tweet he grabbed there is no suggestion he is a Holocaust denier. That's just silly and his followers are silly. Many of them replied to him saying how illogical I was and some had a go directly at me. I responded pointing out that I had said that he condemned Loach for promoting Holocaust debate whereas by confronting Holocaust deniers he is engaging in the debate that he falsely condemned Loach for promoting.

Well in all the toing and froing, I finally said to someone, the only way Baddiel's tweet tagging me works is if he thinks that me comparing what he is doing to what he accused Loach of doing is if he is accusing Loach of Holocaust denial. Oh wait! Finally the penny dropped. "He [Loach] has since very strongly refuted being a Holocaust denier" followed by the word "but". Baddiel seems to be flatly contradicting his mentor, Dave Rich (or maybe Rich is Baddiel's mentee). Baddiel appears to be accusing Ken Loach of Holocaust denial. I wonder.

By the way, the smearing of Ken Loach is yet another score settling exercise in Baddiel's stupid book. This time it is more aimed at Ken's son Jim. What a piece of work that Baddiel (aged 55) is.

BBC still smearing Ken Loach after all these years

 This BBC tweet basically lying about Ken Loach should not still be there. But since it is, I'll embed it here to show what liars they are. 

"History is for us all to discuss." - Ken Loach on reported #Lab17 fringe comments about whether it's OK to ask if the Holocaust happened. pic.twitter.com/cXkpqMsb0R

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) September 26, 2017

Please watch the 46 seconds that the BBC presents via its tweet. Thank you.

Now watch a fuller version of the same interview:

The length of that one is 2 minutes and 28 seconds. The fuller version shows the BBC's desperation in trying to present evidence of left antisemitism.

Does anyone know the name of the lying piece of shit from the BBC?

By the way, this is only clip I could find of Miko Peled saying "Holocaust, yes or no?" which was the only mention of the Holocaust at the Free Speech on Israel LabCon17 fringe meeting the Beeber was lying about. 

Zionists order Corbyn to follow John Vorster to Yad Vashem

This is interesting.  Having jumped through hoops to appease the UK's Zionist movement it turns out that Jeremy Corbyn may have disobeyed a direct order to indulge in a bit of holocaust hypocrisy at Israel's holocaust museum, Yad Vashem.  Here's The Guardian:

Jeremy Corbyn faced fresh criticism over his handling of antisemitism allegations after Labour’s sister party in Israel said it had had no reply to a letter its leader [Isaac Herzog] sent to him a month ago expressing dismay and inviting him to Jerusalem to see the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum.

Visits to Yad Vashem are something of a walk of shame given some of its past visitors.  Here's John Vorster, a one time president of apartheid era South Africa and a nazi internee during WWII:

The picture is from Yad Vashem's own website.

And apart from Israel's own leaders, Vorster isn't the only racist to have graced Yad Vashem with his presence.   Here's Poland's Michal Kaminski of the virulently nationalist, Civic Platform Party visited Yad Vashem too:

Here's Tony Greenstein on Kaminski:

Kaminski led the campaign against a national Polish apology for the burning alive of up to 900 Jews in Jedwabne by Poles in 1941 (see )  Kaminski was formerly a member of the fascist National Revival of Poland Party. 

Vorster and Kaminski are just the kind of people you might expect to turn up at the jewel in the Zionist crown.  That tribute to Jewish suffering that says that no-one else matters and Israel can do no wrong.

And so to Corbyn:

Herzog invited Corbyn to bring a delegation to Yad Vashem to witness that the last time the Jews were forcibly transported “it was not to Israel but to their deaths”. An Israeli Labour party official confirmed that it had “not had a reply” after rumours circulated in the Jewish community in London that no response had been received in Jerusalem or issued from London.

 So no answer from Corbyn so far so we can only hope that if he does ever answer he won't make that walk of shame.

But not content with implying that Corbyn has done something wrong, rather than the first thing he's done right since this whole orchestrated smear campaign began, Toby Helm (The Observer journo who wrote the piece) managed to take do something no self-respecting journalist should ever do.  He took a Zionist's words at face value.  Let's see that again:

the last time the Jews were forcibly transported “it was not to Israel but to their deaths”

Now that's just not true.  There have now been many instances of Jews being forced to go to Israel when they haven't wanted.  Even West Germany back in the 1980s handcuffed Soviet Jews and bundled them on to El Al planes bound for Israel.  Poland had an antisemitic campaign in the 1960s where an agreement with Golda Meir had Jews being forced to go to the Israel they didn't even approve of.  And with the collapse of the Soviet Union Jews who wished to go elsewhere once again found themselves being forced to go to Israel. For that unhappy episode, see 972 Mag.

Netanyahu the historian?

Apparently Bibi's dad was a historian. That's according to Anschel Pfeffer in today's Jewish Chronicle. Look:

According to Mr Netanyahu - whose father was a lauded historian - Hitler asked Al-Husseini: "What should I do with them [the Jews]?" He replied: "Burn them."

 I don't know if Netanyahu Senior was a zionist "historian" or a historian who happened to be a zionist but clearly Netanyahu Junior is no historian.

But then Aschel Pfeffer is no historian either.  Watch how he stumbles into no-shit-Sherlock territory:

Some commentators said that Mr Netanyahu's words revealed either that he sees the conflict between Israel and its immediate neighbours as a continuation of the Holocaust, or that he is prepared to manipulate history for political purposes.

Wow, there's an insight.  Zionist leaders play the holocaust card for political advantage.

Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry is available in good bookshops, at least it was several years ago. It might of interest to wannabe historians like Netanyahu Junior and Anschel Pfeffer.

Playing the holocaust card

This is as egregious an example of playing the holocaust card that you will find.  I first saw it on Harry's Place where their dullest blogger, Gene, says:

the BBC audience and Galloway were deprived of the chance to hear New York City Councilman David G. Greenfield’s reaction to “pro-Palestine” activists interrupting the council’s commemoration of 1.1 million people killed in Auschwitz.

Included in the post is this YouTube clip:

Now what's very strange about the clip, which even the average Harry's Placer must have noticed, is that it doesn't show the disruption itself nor, of course, what had prompted it.

In case for some reason you don't or can't watch the clip, here's a bit of what he had to say, from the algemeiner:

“While we were discussing a resolution regarding the murder of 1.1 million human beings – I will point out that 90 percent of them were Jewish, but the other 10 percent, they were political dissidents, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, they were gays, those were the people who were being killed together at Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Greenfield declared, “while we were discussing that, they had the chutzpah, the nerve, the temerity, to unfurl a Palestinian flag and yell at us.”

Voice rising, Greenfield contrasted Israel’s open society with the repressive regimes across the Middle East, before asserting, “What you saw here today was naked, blind antisemitism.”

Greenfield said that the demonstrators had unfurled the Palestinian flag out of anger that “Hitler had not finished the job. He only wiped out half of my family.”

He concluded: “Shame on them for disrespecting the most diverse democratically elected body in the United States of America, and that’s why we go to Israel.”

 But immediately after that bit was an explanation of what the disruption of council business was really all about:

The demonstrators immediate target was the trip to Israel which Councilman Greenfield referred to, planned for next year, and involving City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and 14 other Council members. Footage of the demonstrators showed them in a state of collective hysteria, showering abuse and hatred upon the council’s members. (See video below.)

Here's the clip:



and we're still none the wiser save for that little bit of honesty that seems to have slipped through the algemeiner's net.  The honesty, and inadvertant exposé of Councilman Greenman's dishonesty, was shortlived.  Read on:

Other councillors joined Greenfield in condemning the antisemitic disruption, which included the fringe group “Jewish Voice for Peace” among the participants.

Aha, now I have more that I can google to try to get to the bottom of this.  I eventually find the Jewish Voice for Peace site and their statement on the disruption:

JVP-NYC Statement on Jan 22nd City Council Disruption

Submitted by jvp-nyc on Mon, 01/26/2015 - 5:21pm

On January 22nd, members of Jewish Voice for Peace-NY participated in an act of civil disobedience organized by the Direct Action Front for Palestine inside of City Hall.  Our goal was to call attention to fifteen City Council members' upcoming delegation to Israel, a trip designed to whitewash Israel's occupation of and discrimination against Palestinians. During the political action, the City Council introduced a resolution commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  A banner supporting our cause was dropped just as this resolution came to a vote; this timing was completely unintentional. JVP-NY regrets disrupting this vote, as we respect without qualification the solemnity of the Holocaust and honor all victims of genocide.  

We unequivocally stand by our opposition to an all-expenses-paid junket to Israel by a delegation of the NYC Council, sponsored by organizations that promote Islamophobic policies in the US and defend Israel's human rights abuses and violations of international law. 

Above all, JVP-NY is committed to opposing all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. It is with those values in mind that we remember the victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and remain steadfast in our opposition to Israel's human rights abuses.

So the council was using the holocaust as a smokescreen for a junket to and a promotion of Israel and tacking on holocaust remembrance as an afterthought.  Nice people these official holocaust rememberers.

UPDATE: Within momemts of this post, Harry's Place has decided to come clean and play dirty over this Palestine solidarity protest.  Here's the HP update:

Update: The activists chose the moment of the Auschwitz commemoration toprotest a planned visit to Israel by several council members.

I wonder why HP chose their moment to come clean about what they must have known when they originally posted the post.  Of course,, they're still being as dishonest as you'd expect, There is no evidence to suggest that JVP chose their moment to coincide with the councillors' hypocritical resolution on the holocaust.  Nor is there any reason to suppose it.  HP has been caught in another lie to smear the critics of the racist war criminals of the State of Israel.

Whilst enduring the torture of reading Harry's Place I also check out the comments just to see if there is a spark of humanity there.  There usually isn't but I did notice some guy appealing for a hat-tip over drawing this Gene chap's attention to the speech in the clip.  Gene duly obliged, I wonder if he'll hat-tip whoever it was that drew his attention to the fact that his original post was utterly bogus.

Finally Abbas recognises Israel as Yad Vashem with an air force

Well Ha'aretz is excited about this new development:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas released a special message on Sunday in Arabic and in English on the occasion of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which he decried the murder of Jews in the Holocaust as "the most heinous crime against humanity in modern history.

But what's it got to do with anything now?

Apparently it represents a bit of a turnaround for Abbas:

A number of senior Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, have declared over the past year that Abbas is anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier. Their claims were based on Abbas' doctoral thesis from the University of Moscow, which asserted cooperation between elements in the Zionist Movement and Nazi Germany in the years before the Holocaust.

Abbas had since retracted these claims. In interviews he gave in recent years he maintained that he was not denying the Holocaust and that he recognizes the fact that six million Jews were killed during World War II.

They shouldn't do that conflation if they don't want people denying the holocaust.  So you see what they did?

Abbas' doctoral thesis from the University of Moscow.....asserted cooperation between elements in the Zionist Movement and Nazi Germany in the years before the Holocaust

Asserting the very well documented fact that the zionist movement, that is the mainstream of the zionist movement, collaborated with the nazis before and during the holocaust, and after, given that some zionists went on to testify for nazis at Nuremberg, is not the same as denying that the holocaust happened.

So what was Abbas's thesis?  That the holocaust didn't happen? or that it did happen and zionists collaborated?

What does it matter anyway what Abbas is forced to say now or what he used to say?  It seems like only yesterday that Ha'aretz was saying that "Israel should be more than Yad Vashem with an air force".  Apparently they don't believe their own position on this.

French Holocaust Rescuers Boycott Zionist Holocaust Memorial Event

This is from The Forward:

PARIS — A French organization that saved Jews during the Holocaust has declined to attend a commemoration because it was organized by pro-Israel Jews.

The Marseille branch of CIMADE, a French Protestant group established in 1939, declined to attend the region’s main memorial ceremony for Jewish Holocaust victims because of the pro-Israel attitude of CRIF, the umbrella group representing French Jewish communities, which organized the event together with the municipality.

The values that led CIMADE to save Jews make the group “equally committed to oppose the colonial, discriminatory and bellicose policy of Israel with regards to the Palestinians,” CIMADE regional deputies Françoise Rocheteau and Jean-Pierre Cavalie wrote in a letter to the local CRIF branch on Dec. 21. It also said CIMADE was determined to fight “apartheid.”

The letter, which was published online on Feb. 11 by a group which promotes a boycott of Israel, was a reply to an invitation extended by CRIF to CIMADE to attend the 70th commemoration on Jan. 20 of the deportation and subsequent murder of thousands of local Jews.

Marseille had a Jewish population of 39,000 in 1939, according to Beit Hatfutsot, the Museum of the Jewish People. Only 10,000 remained after the Holocaust. CIMADE organized “vital relief and later resistance” in connection with the murders, according to Yad Vashem, and helped smuggle Jews to safety. Yad Vashem named Madeleine Barot, who headed CIMADE during the Holocaust, a Righteous among the Nations in 1988. She passed away seven years later.

“We understand our positions may appear unacceptable, making us unwelcome at your commemoration,” the CIMADE representatives wrote. “We cannot keep silent on our convictions but do not wish to cause a scandal.”

It's interesting that they're trying a softly softly approach.  I wonder if CRIF will appreciate that. 

Minor victory for the antisemitism card

There have been many grotesque caricatures of Jews in the past and, of course, more recently.  One recurring theme is the power of Jews to manipulate apparently powerful politicians.  But what do we do when reality resembles these antisemitic caricatures?

Just recently Israel embarked on its equivalent of Super Tuesday.  It slaughtered a batch of Palestinians following the announcement of a general election.  In spite of Israel's clear escalation of the situation, Tony Blair, Israel's envoy to The Quartet, and William Hague, the UK foreign minister, both parroted Netanyahu's excuse which was something about Hamas firing rockets, without any mention of why Hamas might be firing those rockets.  As I posted earlier, Steve Bell, of the Guardian, ran a cartoon depicting Blair and Hague as glove puppets of Netanyahu.  Now this resembled an antisemitic cartoon of yore.

There were predictable complaints from the usual sources, here and here and of course not just there and there.  And eventually the Guardian readers' editor, Chris Elliott,  got on the case.  It's a strange title, readers' editor, because his job seems to be responded to the complaints of people for whom the Guardian can do nothing right. He set out a few complaints plus a defence of his own position by Steve Bell before concluding thus:

I don't believe that Bell is an antisemite, nor do I think it was his intention to draw an antisemitic cartoon. However, using the image of a puppeteer when drawing a Jewish politician inevitably echoes past antisemitic usage of such imagery, no matter the intent.

The Holocaust and its causes are still within living memory. While journalists and cartoonists should be free to express an opinion that Netanyahu is opportunistic and manipulative, in my view they should not use the language – including the visual language – of antisemitic stereotypes.

 Now how on earth did the subject morph from the sycophancy of western leaders towards the State of Israel to the holocaust?  Never mind.  It just did, that's all.  The Guardian readers' editor has come out in support of the zionists on this one and nowhere in his piece does it mention what gave rise to the cartoon in the first place, ie, the Israeli attack on Gaza and Tony Blair and William Hague's support for it.  It did mention Netanyahu's manipulativeness but not what it was deployed for.  So the last word in the Guardian on Israel's latest attack on Gaza is mention of the holocaust and condemnation of the kind of behaviour by Israel and its allies that resembles an antisemitic caricature.

By the way, I commented on the readers' editor's piece. I wonder if it will stay in place.

Israel's recent attack on Gaza follows a pattern of Israel killing lots of civilians in the run up to an Israeli election. Netanyahu offered a bogus excuse for the attack, as did Tzipi Livni before him, as did Shimon Peres over his attack on Qana. This time, Blair and Hague repeated Netanyahu's excuse as if it was a genuine explanation. That is, they behaved like glove puppets of Netanyahu. And there's the rub. There have been grotesque caricatures of Jews in the past but whose fault is it if an Israeli leader and high profile politicians in the west behave like those caricatures?

It's sad that one of the letters supporting Steve Bell says, "Mark Gardner can't be allowed to get away with the old trick of pretending all criticism of the Israeli government is antisemitic.". Unfortunately, looking at the last couple of paragraphs of the article above, he does seem to have got away with it. Shame.

Comments are still open at the time of writing.