Baddiel, an ignorant, arrogant charlatan

 If Twitter obsessed David Baddiel's book, Jews Don't Count was a Wikipedia entry it would be flagged as having "multiple issues".

The first problem I see is that David Baddiel is a so-called Centrist and Centrism could even be defined as a Rightism that thinks it's a Leftism. It becomes a major problem when it so thinks it is a Leftism it gets worse and thinks it is the only Leftism that the legitimate political spectrum has room for. Leftism has enemies to its right who it must defend against or attack but Centrism doesn't have enemies to its right, only to its left. 

The book is published by the Times Literary Supplement which is supposed to be intellectually highbrow. Well bang goes that reputation.  For a wit, indeed for a Yiddisher wit, Baddiel isn't very smart at all. He could be lamenting or simply asking where all our good Jewish intellectuals went but since the answer is probably that they got crowded out by a bunch of redbaiting self-appointees he won't be asking that. 

Uh-oh, I've just seen David Baddiel in conversation with one of the nastiest pieces of work in the Zionist movement, Ruth Smeeth, and he's describing his book as nuanced. Wow.

I guess Mr Nuance isn't going to be asking about any tntellectuals then

So what is he saying? According to Hugo Rifkind, "Calmly, relentlessly, wittily, Baddiel makes the case that anti-Semitism is a racism like any other".  While for Howard Jacobson, "This is a bare-knuckle fist-fight of a book". Clearly, they didn't read the same book. And for Hadley Freeman, Jews Don't Count is, "Just so brilliantly argued and written, I was completely swept along". I reckon she wrote that before she read it and then switched on a page turning auto-pilot. The book isn't argued at all. I'll show you what I mean by that.

Here's a whole passage from page 10 to 12:

The major BBC current affairs show, the one that sets the news agenda every morning, is the Today programme on Radio 4. It's a must-listen for those interested in politics. And a must-react to: if something controversial is said on Today, Twitter is set alight, and the conversation explodes. 

On 13 March 2019, the American pollster John Zogby was on. At one point, he began talking about fissures in the Democratic Party, specifically around the then new Congreswoman Ilhan Omar's views about Israel and its supporters in the US. The interviewer, Justin Webb, who is a regular on Today, said in response:

If the party decided to say to its supporters , "Look we think that anti-Semitism is a bit like the way some of our people might regard anti-white racism, that it's a different order of racism. It's not as important - it's still bad - but it's not as important as some other forms of racism", what impact do you think that might have?

It was a strange moment. It felt less like a question and more like a helpful suggestion. Maybe this would be a way forward for the Democrats? was the tone. Webb did not qualify or contextualise it. He did not preface or add "Obviously this is offensive to say, but perhaps it's what some people in the party actually think". His tone was neutral. 

Zogby moved on without really answering. But even if he had, it was the question itself I was struck by. I remember listening and thinking, Blimey, it's rare that someone just comes out with it: Anti-Semitism is a second class racism. I thought there would be an intense reaction.

Well it turned out there wasn't much reaction but Baddiel recorded the section he had heard and eventually got some reaction but only from Jews and from Justin Webb himself who got in touch to say that he only wondered if that was what some Democrats were thinking. A similar thing happened when Baddiel disagreed with Anthony Julius introducing the recital of TS Eliot's specifically antisemitic poems. He contacted Julius and spent 3 hours at lunch with him.

But where's the argument? It's all assertion. Where did Webb get the question about antisemitism from? Ilhan Omar has been falsely accused of antisemitism but from what we see that wasn't mentioned until Webb said it. Maybe there's as insight into Baddiel himself here. Look what he's done. Like Webb he has decided that the stuff about Omar and Israel is about antisemitism, not just a left/right thing or a foreign policy or a lobby group thing. Then he suspects Webb of saying that a) antisemitism is a bit like anti-whitism, ie, not really racist or not so racist, then b) that Webb would even suggest that the Democrats ought to play to that antisemitic prejudice that only Webb and Baddiel have inferred. And even when Justin Webb seeks Baddiel out to disabuse him, Baddiel still puts the thing in his book as if his own understanding of what Webb said trumps Webb's own explanation of what he meant.

And check out the very start of the session where the news agenda for the day starts with a BBC Radio 4 programme and continues through Twitter. I looked at Baddiel's own account for that day and it appears that Justin Webb's incitement to the hatred, well actually his helpful suggestion of incitement to the hatred of Jews in America didn't put Baddiel off his lunch.

Lunch today - Bigoli Carbonara - comes courtesy of brill pasta delivery service ⁦@pastaevangelist⁩. pic.twitter.com/E9MW057Qqy

— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) March 13, 2019

And apart from the next day, he didn't tweet again until some time in May 2019 so I don't know when he posted his recording. 

A few times Baddiel makes clear that his book "is for progressives" but it is embarrassing that he thinks of himself as one. He does combine laddish lad, even at 50 something, with Jew. Laddish lads are not progressive and his entire framework is a conservative one. I have read the book to the end but all of its general faults appear in the first few pages. And his Jewish identity is based on his oft stated belief that Hitler, the Gestapo, the SS or the Nazis would kill him tomorrow. In fact he rejects almost everything about Jews. He's not religious, he's not a Zionist. I'm very confused about his take on his own Jewish identity which only exists through his bloodline.

Baddiel swallows whole many a falsehood throughout the book, including the Nazis pseudo science of race, the good faith and even the meaning of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism without setting it out or relating any of the arguments against it, the sincerity of the EHRC without getting into any detail, etc, etc. He even accepts that Ken Loach supported at least the right to deny the Holocaust on the strength of a tweet by CST's Dave Rich where you can see, since Baddiel replicates it in the book, that Rich tampered with a quote from Ken Loach to make his point.

On page 40 you get a full blast of Baddiel's sheer ignorance of race, racism and history itself. He challenges the idea that there can't be racism against Jews because Jews aren't a race, only a religion and "religious intolerance is not as bad as racism". Of course, not being a race doesn't insulate people from racism and doesn't absolve racists, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-Catholic, etc, of racism. We'll leave aside that religious intolerance has taken millions of lives throughout history and is still taking lives and causing exclusions. But this is where in a footnote Baddiel "explains" why he believes Jews to be a race.

"I'm an atheist and yet the Gestapo would shoot me tomorrow". I have heard Baddiel say it many times. Here he is on Twitter. 

Not as far as racists are concerned. I'm an atheist. The Gestapo would shoot me tomorrow. I've said this on here about five thousand times. So yes: you are fucking silly #gutsforgarters https://t.co/Dp8QMKG2BI

— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) April 11, 2018

I couldn't resist a quick QRT when I found that by googling baddiel "gestapo would shoot me tomorrow" when I read his footnote (p41) where he wonders why he always says tomorrow "as they would no doubt shoot me today". They won't shoot him today and of course, tomorrow never comes.

But it is strange that Baddiel offers nothing really as a positive thing about being Jewish. For all he calls anti-Zionist Jews "self-haters" when I am with my own anti-Zionist Jewish friends, we are very conscious of our cultural identity, you might even say we take pride in it at the same time as acknowledging there is something jarring about taking pride in what is partly (Baddiel says entirely) an accident of birth.

And this brings us neatly to Baddiel's professed non-Zionism. If Baddiel is truly a non-Zionist, he certainly helps them out when they're busy. He has participated enthusiastically in the smear campaign against Corbyn and the left and more recently he joined the campaign against Bristol University's Professor David Miller. The campaign against the left was not entirely about Israel but you can't run a smear campaign alleging antisemitism without a significant number of Jews on board.  By no means all Jews or even all Zionists supported the campaign but Baddiel definitely did even minting at least one lie of his own. 

Click this link to Baddiel on Frankie Boyle's programme in 2018. Baddiel says "29% of people who voted for Corbyn in the Labour Party think the world is controlled by a secret global elite and that global elite are Jews". Here is the YouGov poll that is closest to what Baddiel said. 

28% agree with the statement, "The world is controlled by a secretive elite". Actually some might believe that the elite are Jews but it doesn't say so in the poll. It doesn't even say that the agreers agree that the elite is unified. They might just take the view that the aggregate of all of the world's ruling classes could be fairly described as a secretive elite. It wouldn't be a good way to describe it but of itself it is certainly not antisemitic and not even necessarily conspiracistic. Put simply, Baddiel lied. Ok, maybe he didn't lie. Maybe he is so paranoid he thought he heard what he falsely claimed to  hear. He actually feathers that nest of perception being more important than actuality on page 39:

We live in a culture now where impact is more important than intent; where how things are taken is more significant than how they are meant.

See him complaining about a culture he takes full advantage of to put the worst possible spin on what other people say or do. He's the same with the notorious mural by Mear One where he uses the artist's antisemitic reaction to criticism of his not unambiguously antisemitic mural.

Just a note here. This is the dreaded mural, a depiction of six founding fathers of the modern banking system, two of whom were Jewish and four of whom were not. Apparently two of them are Alister Crowley and JP Morgan but I can't be bothered to find which two. So, which two of the six men are supposed to be the Jews? By the way, Corbyn didn't even say he liked the painting.

Actually, Baddiel does do a lot of what he sets out to do with the whole book with the Mear One guy. He pretty much nails him as antisemitic. He might even be Jewish or maybe ex-Jewish. If so, he had a few full-on Atzmon moments even hashtagging #Rothschild and #Warburg to denounce the affiliation of complainants to them, ie, Jews.  The hashtag confirms Baddiel's belief, as expressed earlier about the Today programme that something hasn't really happened until it has been tweeted and #hashtagged.

Baddiel's stupid book

The book is ridiculous from its ludicrous title thru its methodology of preferring inference over research, description over definition and assertion over evidence, to its inconclusive conclusion. It's hard to see why this book has been written except maybe for Baddiel to settle some scores with people who, unlike on Twitter, can't have a right of reply or maybe it's just to make money. It is not to fight antisemitism and in some cases it's to invent it. It provides no insights and there is nothing new in any of Baddiel's suggestions/demands.

In fact come to think of it, it's hard to see who he's addressing. He claims he's talking about progressives and the left and sometimes the progressive left. But his own worldview like his framing is profoundly conservative

Something he is saying, you might say, clearly, is that Jews are a race/ethnicity (these are not interchangeable terms except in BaddielWorld). But anyway he claims Jews are a race and therefore that Jews are susceptible to racism like any other race of people. Actually he seems to think antisemitism, which he renders anti-Semitism. There's much literature on why you shouldn't do that but Baddiel hasn't read it.

So hard up is Baddiel for genuine antisemitism, he goes on extended whinges about when non-Jews have played Jews in movies and plays. He might not have noticed this if it wasn't for certain other communities protesting when one of their members is portrayed by a non-member like hetros playing gays or the fact that trans roles can only be played by trans actors. This is a logic fail and a lack of understanding. Trans and gays are still very much in struggle for emancipation. In both cases legal equality has only just been achieved and we are still in a culture around acceptance of the ever lengthening LGBTQ. Jews are not struggling for emancipation and there's no issue around the proportional representation of Jews in show business. 

Baddiel calls non-Jews playing Jews #Jewface though he's never seen it "trend on Twitter". (p60). Honestly, what is a Jewface? Of course, there's an element of self-justification there. Baddiel famously blacked up and used a pineapple to represent a still current hairstyle among Blacks. (pp 69-72)

His mea culpa re Black footballer Jason Lee was all culpa and no mea that I could see. In fact there's not a whole lot of culpa especially since he somehow thinks it's equivalent to an Italian-American playing the role of a Jew in a film or play. Really, he goes off on an extended one about how white non-Jews playing Jewish roles somehow equates with the mockery of our (yes our, whites including white Jews) ownership of and trading in Blacks people. That's where blacking up comes from. Oh and I checked #Jewface and it appears on Twitter often enough going back to 2012 (maybe earlier) usually from supporters of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians including a rabbi in 2019 to slag Corbyn probably over his attending a Seder night. But to equate serious non-Jewish actors playing Jews with whites (Jewish or not) blacking up calls into question Baddiel's understanding of antisemitism and racism more generally.

So quite early in the book, Baddiel has equated Jews to a gender type and a sexual orientation neither of which are races. They are however disadvantaged and the disadvantage of Jews is one of the things he wants to establish even though it's mostly absurd. But where does he get the Jews are a race idea from? Well, he is Jewish mostly because the Nazis say he is. He also likes Jewish food and a couple of Jewish authors. He doesn't like the religion. He so doesn't like the religion he manages to place the Talmud in the wrong millennium (p7) before saying that antisemites invent quotes from it to disparage Jews. Now given that he doesn't know the Talmud, how would he know if quotes are misquotes? Every so often an Israeli chief rabbi will make some statement about G-d's plan to make gentiles subservient to Jews according to the Talmud. Baddiel really should have done some research.

In spite of antisemitism allegations having been used every day for 6 years now to destroy the prospect of the Labour Party ever being a party of conscience and reform, Baddiel claims that racism against Jews is being given a free pass by the "progressive left". Ah, now here's where we rely on Baddiel's descriptions to know or guess what or who he means when he says progressive and left. At one point he even seems to include David Cameron. (pp 24/5) who Baddiel actually had access to.

Which brings us to the Y-word, ie, the word "Yid" versus the N-word which is, by progressives and leftists considered so taboo it can never be said in its proper form except by Black people themselves. Baddiel says the Y-word should be similarly taboo. What surprises me, I don't know if it's his laddish persona that prevents him from drawing on anything he learned from his double first in English at Oxbridge but he does nothing to analyse these words to establish their etymology and history. N-words were owned and traded by Whites including white Jews. The word Yid is actually Yiddish for Jew. Yes it's offensive but it doesn't denote ownership. Offence does happen in degrees. Not all slurs have equal weight. Having said that, Baddiel would be enormously hard pressed to find examples of leftists using Yid as terminology in any circumstances except in discussing his stupid book and the only people he quotes are David Cameron and notoriously racist football fans.

Baddiel's equating of N-words and Y-words is because he thinks racism against Jews is treated as not being as serious as racism against say, blacks. So often his examples tell us more about Baddiel than about what he claims to be writing about though sometimes he stumbles on something he has to shy away from. For example, BBC Radio 4 had a reading of TS Eliot's poetry including his antisemitic poems. Those latter were introduced by the famous Jewish lawyer, Anthony Julius. Baddiel said that the Beeb would never dream of reciting Agatha Christie's Ten Little N*****s. That may or may not be true (remember I said inference) but what is definitely true is that the Beeb would have had enormous difficulty finding a Black Anthony Julius to introduce the recital. That, of course, doesn't occur to Baddiel. By the way, Baddiel met up with Anthony Julius for 3 hours to discuss the Eliot recital.

Baddiel has been quite a key player in the smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and of course Corbyn isn't spared in this stupid book except Baddiel at one point comes across as almost charitable when discussing Corbyn's take on the not necessarily antisemitic mural. Remember MuralGate? Well for Baddiel it is unambiguously antisemitic in spite of him knowing that the portrayal is of six founding fathers of the modern banking system only two of whom were Jews,. Now where he gets that from is that he accurately describes the artist's response to the complaints about the mural as being wildly antisemitic even hashtagging #Warburg and #Rothschild. What he doesn't describe accurately is the mural itself. It does not depict "hook-nosed bankers". They are literally stoney faced and fairly representational except they are monochromatic. Suspiciously, in spite of pictures of some of the tweets he mentions he doesn't include a picture of the mural either freestanding or with a tweet. He claims "Jews seemed to think" the mural was antisemitic but David Toube of the rabidly pro-Israel hate-site Harry's Place didn't think so. He's Jewish. So am I and whilst I hate the stupid mural for its conspiracism and garishness there is nothing essentially Jewish in the symbols or the faces. 

But anyway, on Corbyn, Baddiel charitably though patronisingly, says that he might not have known about the depictions of Rothschild and Warburg. Actually if Baddiel was completely honest he would say what is the case and that is, no-one knows if Corbyn even saw the mural. He simply asked why it was being taken down. But Baddiel plows on and how. Corbyn would have seen the anti-capitalism but not the antisemitism. Well if he saw the mural at all he might have seen just what David Toube and I saw.  But the idea that Corbyn would place his anti-capitalism above his anti-racism across the board is just plain wrong. 

Corbyn has condemned antisemitism specifically many times. An aside here. When Baddiel was on Frankie Boyle's programme in 2018 he complained that Corbyn always says he is against all forms of racism including antisemitism but that Baddiel wanted him to commit to fighting antisemitism as a stand alone thing. That is just a little bit of a contradiction of his position in this book that Jews are an ethnic minority or a race just like Blacks are a race. Anyway, I remember Corbyn condemning Tam Dalyell for accusing a "cabal of Jews" of unduly influencing Tony Blair over Iraq. So his opposition to antisemitism was not obscured by his opposition to the war. He condemned Paul Flynn for saying that Matthew Gould shouldn't be ambassador to Israel because he is Jewish. That was in spite of Gould self-describing as a "proud Zionist". So again Corbyn's opposition to antisemitism was placed before his anti-Zionism. Baddiel's inference was plain wrong and unfair.  There is no reason to assume that Corbyn would allow his anti-capitalism to allow antisemitism to fly below his radar.

But what right has Baddiel to infer rather than research or simply ask people stuff anyway. With Julius he met him for lunch. He met Cameron too. Why doesn't he connect with the more ordinary people so he won't have to infer?

A similar thing happens when Baddiel manages an inference about someone else's inference. See this on page 10:

-----

"At one point, he [John Zogby] began talking about fissures in the Democratic Party specifically around the new Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's views about Israel and its supporters in the US. The interviewer Justin Webb, who is a regular on Today, said, in response:

If the party decided to say to its supporters, 'Look, we think that anti-Semitism is a bit like the way some of our people might regard anti-white racism, that it's actually a different order of racism. It's not as important - it's still bad -...." 

-----

From that Baddiel leaps to this:

-----

"It felt less like a question, more like a helpful suggestion. *Maybe this would be a way forward for the Democrats*? was the tone." 

-----

So, as far as Baddiel's readers can see, the idea of antisemitism wasn't mentioned by Zogby. Nothing antisemitic was quoted from Omar. The very notion was introduced by Webb and inferred beyond recognition by Baddiel. What tosh, honestly.

Yet another over-inference is in the case of Ash Sarkar. He even quotes her accurately and still manages to misrepresent the words he quotes. "Antisemitism...is primarily experienced as prejudice and hostility towards Jews as Jews largely without aspects of material dispossession (such as structural unemployment) that manifest in other forms of racism".  And here's Baddiel to infer, "The suggestion here is that, because Jews are better off....than other ethnic minorities, it is a lesser form of racism". Pay attention, she didn't say either of those things. She merely said that racism against Jews does not have a socio-economic impact. So wherever Jews are on the socioeconomic scales, high or low, is not down to their being Jews. Idiot!

Sorry about the disjointedness but it is such a silly book. Let's take a look at Baddiel's claim of being non-Zionist. It is true that most false allegations of antisemitism are made by Zionists to cover up their own racism and Baddiel being Jewish and happily repeating many false claims of antisemitism on Twitter and even inventing one of his own on telly make people suspect he's a Zionist. I remember in the 1990s Baddiel saying that leftists who criticise Ariel Sharon were antisemitic at the same time as saying he's not actually an Israel supporter. I think Zionism, like racism more generally and even antisemitism, is something he just doesn't get. 

For example he correctly calls Jenny Tonge antisemitic whilst cheekily linking her to Corbyn. She's actually almost literally a centrist having been a LibDem. But one of the examples he gives of her "antisemitism" is that she reports that she is sickened by the entitled attitude of a New Zealand woman presenting a YouTube vid titled Why I'm a Zionist". Baddiel watched it. He wasn't sickened by it. Actually I was as sickened by the racist video which accuses the Palestinians of colonialism and Israel as their victim, as I was by Jenny Tonge trying to explain away the killing of 8 worshippers in a Pittsburgh shul by reference to Israel's atrocities. Baddiel watched the vid and wasn't sickened by it. But then he's not sickened by racism.

So one accurate example of antisemitism on the left and it turns out to be closer to his own professed position of centrism.

Anymore naming and shaming? The stuff about (pp67-69) Ken Loach is bizarre because Baddiel shows that allegations that he supports Holocaust denial are lies. The thing takes a bit of unpacking but Baddiel can even see that the Zionist he quotes was lying about what Loach actually said. And this is where I think Baddiel uses the book to settle scores. He posts a tweet from Ken Loach's son protesting the defaming of his father and linking the most famous but not the only example of Baddiel's racism, the Blackface Jason Lee thing.

This gives Baddiel an opportunity to show he doesn't understand whataboutery. Whataboutery is when you justify wrongdoing on your own side by reference to similar wrongdoing by your enemy or opponent. Jim Loach wasn't doing that. He was saying that his dad is being smeared (defamed) and so Baddiel is a liar and he finished by pointing to one example of Baddiel's own racism.

Failing to mention the smear campaign against the left is a serious omission. At one point he has Dawn Butler rattling off a list of identity groups she said Labour was pitching to. He laments, you can guess, she didn't mention Jews. OMG, what if she had? Is not just faintly possible that she was terrified to mention Jews. It appalled me at the same conference that Corbyn didn't mention the Palestinians in his last speech ever to Labour.

A couple of times Baddiel's mask slips and it's clear he believes that Jews are more important than everyone else eg Jews are "one of the most persecuted minorities in history" (p3) and for all his claim of non-Zionism, he describes orthodox Jewish anti-Zionists as "stupid f*cking frummers" and secular ones like me as "ashamed Jews" which is downright silly given how we self-identify and actually how we live. 

Given his book revolves mostly round Twitter you don't need to read it. It is just a bunch of tweets or tweetable nonsenses.  His right to infer is there to see.

Away from the book there are several instances of Baddiel's racism available to see on line. In one interview he describes himself as looking "like a pikey". I remember him on a panel programme once being asked why a certain view of Jesus's mum was pulled from the schedules and whilst other panellists tried to point to the offensive nature of the portrayal, Baddiel simply said "the BBC heard the words "Muslim" and "offended" and crapped themselves". 

This is a putdown for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. The Jason Lee thing is legendary. Back in the nineties he penned for the Guardian "Black men can jump" where he pigeonholed the various ethnicities of the UK by occupation, Blacks jump, Asians shopkeep and of course Jews don't lay bricks, they do accountancy. Oh! See that? Jews do count after all.

Fake antisemitism claim, shock!

 Oh look, yet another false claim of antisemitism. I see Lee Harpin is now writing for the Jewish News maybe as a result of some merger of it and the Jewish Chronicle. Anyway, Lee Harpin is reporting on the fakery which is unusual because reports on fakery in Jewish media are more often about Harpin than by him. But this involves a false allegation that a nurse made a cutthroat gesture at a Jewish patient following the patient's refusal to be treated by a nurse wearing a badge indicating support for the Palestinian cause.

The Harpin report headed, Royal Free staff member’s ‘cut-throat gesture’ claim found to be fictitious, was the first I heard of the case. Let's see some of that report: 

The director of communications at the north London NHS hospital confirmed on Wednesday that following a “thorough” probe into last week’s allegation the claim was found to be “fictitious and has subsequently been withdrawn.

It had been alleged that a patient attended the hospital for a blood test last month when she allegedly noticed the health professional wearing a Palestine flag on their jacket and a badge which said: ‘Stop killing our children.'

So I did a bit of googling and found among the original reports of the alleged incident, the Campaign Against Antisemitism was claiming to be "in contact with a witness and officials from the hospital". But in the Jewish News it said that "the claim was found to be 'fictitious'." So who was CAA's witness?

A Plug for The Wayback Machine

If you see something on the net that you think might get disappeared save its url at the Wayback Machine. It's easy to use and I believe it's tamper proof. You save a url and the page is preserved as was no matter what happens after.

I'm saving this Amazon review. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R2KHFLYN8SCUUS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewpnt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B084GJ78FJ#R2KHFLYN8SCUUS

It's my own Amazon review of David Baddiel's stupid book. At the mo it has 281 helpfuls so that is what will appear on Wayback even if the figure increases. Wayback is also useful for saving fascist and zionist stuff so as not to give them clicks  or so as not to link directly to them.

Napolean the Zionist - Scottish PSC On This Day Series

On this day in 1799, Napoleon issued a call for a Jewish Palestine as a bulwark against Britain, a century

before the birth of Jewish Zionism. “In year 7 of the French Republic, Buonaparte, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the French Republic in Africa and Asia - to the rightful heirs of Palestine“...herewith calls on you…to take over that which has been conquered and, with French warranty and support...to maintain it against all comers.”  https://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/on-this-day?id=246&view=event  

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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. 

JDA Smokes Out the IHRA - It's all about Israel

It didn't take long for the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism to come to the attention of the Zionist movement. The JDA is a new definition of antisemitism that directly challenges the IHRA with its eleven examples, 6 of which are about The State of Israel and none of which mention racism against Jews or indeed Zionism.

Here's the JDA's definition:

Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)

There you go. I would have simply said racism against Jews but that'll do. It works as a definition which is more than can be said for the IHRA which is as follows:

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

It's hardly a definition at all. According to that definition I could go outside and say something pleasant to a non-Jew and that could be construed as antisemitism because I "may" have been perceiving Jews in a "certain" way when I "directed" my pleasantness at a "non-Jewish individual". On the other hand, someone could break into my house, point a gun and me, shout "die effing Jew" and shoot me and that "may" not be picked by the IHRA definition but it definitely would be picked up by the JDA as you can see.

But the IHRA has examples upon which it depends for meaning or I should say meaningfulness. Even the first one looks sound but is dodgy. 

Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

Really? What about calling for aiding or justifying the killing or harming of Jews simply for being Jews. Suppose militant supporters of some ideology or other kill people who turn out to be Jewish but it wasn't the reason they were targeted? Bloody stupid. But of course the JDA has that one sorted in the definition.

But of course the real villain of the IHRA piece is its example number 7:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

But it also has other little protections for The State of Israel:

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

 And

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis

But

criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic

That last little protection for free speech is a pretence because it has been taken to mean that if you criticise Israel you have to criticise other states for similar things on the same agenda.

Anyway, what does JDA say?

Israel and Palestine: examples that, on the face of it, are not antisemitic (whether or not one approves of the view or action)

Supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil and human rights, as encapsulated in international law.

Evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state. This includes its institutions and founding principles. It also includes its policies and practices, domestic and abroad, such as the conduct of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza, the role Israel plays in the region, or any other way in which, as a state, it influences events in the world. It is not antisemitic to point out systematic racial discrimination. In general, the same norms of debate that apply to other states and to other conflicts over national self-determination apply in the case of Israel and Palestine. Thus, even if contentious, it is not antisemitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases, including settler-colonialism or apartheid. 

Boycott, divestment and sanctions are commonplace, non-violent forms of political protest against states. In the Israeli case they are not, in and of themselves, antisemitic. 

Political speech does not have to be measured, proportional, tempered, or reasonable to be protected under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and other human rights instruments. Criticism that some may see as excessive or contentious, or as reflecting a “double standard,” is not, in and of itself, antisemitic. In general, the line between antisemitic and non-antisemitic speech is different from the line between unreasonable and reasonable speech.

You'd never know it but it all tallies with the current legal situation in the UK and in most of the world, including Israel funnily enough, though in Israel the legal situation often depends who is saying a given thing, a Jew or an Arab.

But anyway, first out of the stocks to condemn the JDA was an online mag so right wing, Melanie Phillips is there as a token moderate. It's called Jewish News Syndicate. It's a bit of a whinge simply insisting that criticism of Israel and seeking its abolition are antisemitic. I was pleased to see the piece because it showed that the JDA was already having an impact as Zionists scrambled to save their bogus definition. But next up was Dave Rich of the Israel advocacy and Jewish security group, Community Security Trust. Writing in the Jewish Chronicle Rich made clear that it was all about Israel. 

Dave is put out that the JDA mentions Israel and Palestine lots of times. Of course, the IHRA didn't mention Palestine at all. Rich says that the IHRA has been used as an "informal tool" for investigating incidents but he doesn't say where or how or what the outcomes have been. Of course, he doesn't mention its greatest success has been silencing criticism of Israel or getting people thrown out of the UK Labour Party.

He criticises that the JDA doesn't mention "hate crime" but neither does the IHRA. And take a look at this:

the Jerusalem Declaration has serious flaws. Its core definition tells us antisemitism is “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” This formulation risks missing all but the most overt cases. The Hungarian government’s campaign against George Soros never mentions the fact Soros is Jewish but it derives its resonance and force from the use of antisemitic language.

Actually it's nice of Dave to highlight the antisemitism of an ally of Israel and the Tories, the antisemitic Orban government of Hungary. But what does the JDA say?

Antisemitism can be direct or indirect, explicit or coded. For example, “The Rothschilds control the world” is a coded statement about the alleged power of “the Jews” over banks and international finance.

Is the Rothschild conspiracy theory really so different from Soros? No, it's not at all different. Why does Dave do this?

The IHRA definition’s warning against comparing Israel to Nazi Germany has been removed; instead we are told that “even if contentious, it is not antisemitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases”. Whereas the IHRA definition says it could be antisemitic to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination, the Jerusalem Declaration finds a convoluted way to say that it is not, on the face of it, antisemitic to argue for the elimination of Israel, as long as Jews’ “collective rights” are respected in any future arrangement.

Aha, now we see. The IHRA does not "warn" against comparing Israel to the Nazis, it forbids it and belies the claim that criticism of Israel similar to that of other countries is permissible. But why shouldn't people say that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians has been a crime against humanity? Why shouldn't people be allowed to argue for Jews and Arabs and neither to be equal in the one state that might not be called Israel?

The good news here is that a workable and genuine definition of antisemitism is out there and being noticed. If that Dave Rich article is the best the Zionists can do it should start getting adopted as soon as it starts getting discussed.

Jews Don't Count: a wretched book, cowardly, ignorant and dishonest

Purim is a time of laughter. It is a cross between Halloween and April Fools Day and it was in that spirit that a friend gave me the book because, she said. it's a joke. And so it turned out. I don't even know if Baddiel was joking by writing it. It contains no new insights at all. 

It is basically arguing that Jews should be considered an ethnicity or race (Baddiel conflates the two) mostly because the Nazis did. He ignores that it was actually an aspect of their antisemitism that the Nazis posited Jews as a race but Baddiel swallows whole their pseudoscience (p41) and refuses to consider that Jews in free societies have identity choices denied to the essentially non-white BAME communities.

The positive reviews Baddiel's book has received are either sycophancy or collusion especially those that say it is "well researched". It's a bizarre thing to say about a book which consists entirely of Baddiel's own experiences or whatever he has gleaned from Twitter, Facebook, television and newspapers.

If he had have conducted research he might have written a very different book. For example, he has an officer of an Israel advocacy and Jewish security group tampering with a quote (p68) from Ken Loach to make it look as if Loach had said that "history is there for us all to discuss" to promote debate on whether the Holocaust happened or not. 

He didn't. And when he replicates Loach's son's tweet (p69) objecting to the defamation of his father and calling Baddiel out on Baddiel's own past racism, 

Baddiel sidesteps the defamation issue and accuses Jim Loach of "whataboutery", a concept Baddiel doesn't seem to understand. 

Baddiel's claim to be addressing himself to the "progressive left" by highlighting what he claims are instances of antisemitism on the left is laughable. The progressive left is not Baddiel's milieu and apart from some faked cases, all the examples of antisemitism he gives come from non-left sources. Jenny Tonge (p94) with her LibDem background is a centrist now in the Lords as an independent, ironically since the centre is roughly where Baddiel places himself. Other genuine cases of antisemitism from football club directors (p28) or racist football fans (p13), are likewise not from the left.

The book is  peppered with accidental or deliberate false inferences. Discussion of the case of US Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, (pp10-12) had him and BBC's Justin Webb accusing her, without evidence, of antisemitism. He wildly exaggerated the notorious Mear One mural of 6 bankers (including 2 Jews) lording it over the suffering masses to claim that the bankers depicted in it had hooked noses (p44) and suspiciously he didn't include a replica of the mural so people could see for themselves. 

He quotes the artist's antisemitic response to criticisms of the mural (p41) and then quotes Corbyn asking why it is being removed and referring to other cases of anti-capitalist works being destroyed. But nowhere did Corbyn say he had even seen, let alone that he liked, the mural and certainly he wouldn't have agreed with the artist's response to criticisms.

Baddiel concludes MuralGate by patronisingly suggesting that Corbyn sees the anti-capitalism but not the antisemitism (p46). Another false inference. Again if Baddiel did any research he would know that there are many instances of Corbyn placing his opposition to antisemitism before his anti-war and anti-Zionist positions. He condemned Tam Dalyell when the latter said that Blair was in thrall to a "Jewish cabal" of advisers over Iraq and Corbyn condemned the late Paul Flynn for saying that the UK shouldn't have a Jewish ambassador to Israel. The ambassador in question, Matthew Gould, was a declared "proud Zionist".

Baddiel takes the opportunity thrown up by MuralGate to assert that "There is, on both left and right, of capitalist power being represented as Jewish power" (p46). No examples given, no research required.

Baddiel claims to be a "non-Zionist" and yet he appears to support the IHRA working definition of antisemitism (p74) which essentialises Jews as supporters of The State of Israel. He assumes that opponents of the definition don't care about Jews. It appears that Baddiel hasn't read the definition or, worse, he has. He protests (p75) that during a time of unprecedented pressure on universities over Covid19, one university official expressed irritation at, though Baddiel doesn't mention it, a blackmail attempt by a right wing Tory government to defund universities if they fail to adopt a bogus definition of antisemitism which, if adopted and adhered to, would prevent not just criticism of The State of Israel, which it already has, but also accurate description of its character and its history.  But for Baddiel, the failure or refusal of some universities to succumb to the blackmail shows that they don't care about Jews or antisemitism.

In order to falsely accuse the leftish journalist Ash Sarkar of antisemitism he misrepresents her as saying that all Jews are rich. She actually said that unlike racism against other identities the socioeconomic status of Jews is not affected by racism one way or the other. Baddiel even claims to be unable to consider anything other than his own misinterpretation (p26). Again, a lack of research. Why didn't he ask her? Later in the book, because Sarkar used the word "dispossession" in her tweet (p110) about the current situation, Baddiel takes the opportunity to mention his wealthy ancestors as having been dispossessed by the Nazis as if Sarkar was some kind of Holocaust denier. He misrepresents Sarkar three times overall (p120). I'm left with the impression she probably won the argument on Twitter.

Baddiel is a man who has chatted with a PM about a cause of his concern, he met up with Princess Di's lawyer to talk to him for 3 hours about TS Eliot's antisemitism and he had radio 4's Justin Webb contact him to tell him he wasn't advising the Democrats to pitch to antisemitism as Baddiel had falsely inferred. And yet he couldn't even conduct the basic research of contacting people on Twitter to get them to clarify their position before he went ahead and, well, smeared them.

Of course his lack of research wasn't just laziness. It was agenda driven. Why does multimillionaire David Baddiel worry about inflated and invented antisemitism from the redistributive left and not even seem to know about the very real antisemitism of the current PM and some.of his senior cohorts? 

This brings us to his nonchalant dismissal of those Jews with whom he disagrees. Like Howard Jacobson before him, he believes Jews who are perfectly, you might say proudly, upfront about being Jewish, are actually ashamed of being Jewish if they criticise Israel or if they are anti-Zionist altogether. Miriam Margolyes comes in for a particularly nasty swipe here (p30). Also, Baddiel seems unaware of a whole swathe of unabashed anti-Zionist Jews in the Haredic and very numerous Satmar and Chasidic communities who he dismisses on Twitter as "stupid fucking frummers" but doesn't mention them in his book unless he's lumping them in with democratic secularists like myself.

His condemnation of Jewish opponents of Israel like his condemnation of all leftist critics of Israel seems to belie his claim not to care about "stupid fucking" Israel at all.

Actually other Jews Baddiel seems to be unaware of are truly non-white Jews from North Africa and Asia also from other parts of Africa like Uganda. It's an irony when Baddiel makes Jews out to be "not quite" white, he is only referring to Jews who were on the white side of Jim Crow laws in America, the white side of apartheid in South Africa and of course on the white side of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Another thing suggesting his dismissiveness of much Jewishness (Yiddishkeit) is how he treats the Talmud. He dismisses it as a book of exegesis of the Old Testament, codified in the fourteenth century". (p7) It was the 6th century and Old Testament is Christian terminology and a bit of a putdown. He complains that antisemites misquote it to make Jews look bad but a) how would he know? and b) it's not unheard of for Israeli rabbis to embarrass Israel by saying how one day gentiles will be the slaves of Jews.

I really can't see why this book was written at all or why it is being so lavishly praised - including by at least two Tory peers. Ok, I can see why it's being praised by Tory peers and other Rightists. But we have had over 5 years of smears and the progressive left is all but destroyed for a generation. For Baddiel the book seems to be a settling of scores on a platform away from Twitter and real life where his targets cannot have a right of reply. It is cowardly, mean spirited and dishonest.

How so-called Jewish Labour Movement greeted Chakrabarti Report

With breathtaking arrogance and sheer dishonesty,  the so-called Campaign Against Corbyn Antisemitism has denounced St Paul's School for inviting Shami Chakrabarti to address pupils:

Shami Chakrabarti has been invited to speak at the prestigious St Paul’s School on the subject of “equality between people” on the occassion of International Women’s Day, despite her role whitewashing antisemitism within the Labour Party.

Following a complaint to us from an appalled alumnus, Campaign Against Antisemitism has written to the High Master of the boys’ school to ask why the disgraced peer has been invited to speak tomorrow, to insist that she is challenged on her role whitewashing anti-Jewish racism in the Labour Party, and to make welfare arrangements for Jewish students and anyone else affected by her address.

All very strange because CAA's partners in slime, so-called Jewish Labour Movement quite liked her report when it was first published:

Posted by Adam Langleben on June 30, 2016

Reacting to the publication of the Chakrabarti Inquiry report, the Jewish Labour Movement have released this statement:

"This is a sensible and firm platform which gives the Party an opportunity to get off the back foot and on to the front foot in setting a new standard for tacking racism and anti-Semitism. 

The report has accurately diagnosed the nature of the problem.  There will rightly be a debate and discussion about the specifics of the very detailed recommendations on rules, regulations and processes.

But all the talk about high standards will need to  be borne out by implementation. This will require strong leadership.

One of the very first tests will be how the party deals with the ongoing disciplinary case against Ken Livingstone. There can be no future for a politician with his track record in a post Chakrabarti report labour party. 

We at JLM will be meeting with the party leadership  in next few days to begin discussions around implementation."

ENDS

UPDATE: 6 July 2016

Read JLM National Chair, Jeremy Newmark on the Chakrabarti Report in The Jewish News - here. 

All the lies must catch up with them eventually.

 

Israel destroying Palestinian Covid19 Testing Centres - Ethnic Cleansing by Pandemic

Cor, sometimes I think Israel wants to destroy the Palestinians just because they can. Here's a Press Release from Hebron:

Information for a Press Release:

Israel has demolished Hebron’s Covid 19 Testing Centre
Early on Tuesday, 21 July 2020, the Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank oversaw the demolition of a Covid 19 Test Center located just outside the northern entrance to the city of Hebron. Hebron is currently the epicentre of the Corona outbreak in the West Bank, accounting for roughly 80 percent of all infections. The Covid Test Centre would have been a key line of defence in the population’s battle to contain the virus.


Background
Construction of the Covid Test Centre had begun in March, with clear signage indicating the humanitarian purpose of the building works. The Centre was located on land donated to the Hebron Municipality by a private landowner.  Since it is extremely rare for Palestinians to be granted planning permission in Area C of the West Bank, construction began without a permit.

On July 12th, with the Test Centre only two days away from completion, the Israeli Civil Administration issued demolition orders, using the controversial Military Order 1797, which has been criticised by human rights lawyers for the way in which it bypasses normal recourses to appeal.

This is not the first time that Israel has moved to squash Palestinian pandemic responses:
back in April, the Jerusalem police closed a COVID-19 testing station that was opened in the Silwan neighborhood in East Jerusalem, citing a law prohibiting Palestinian Authority activity in the city.

My Response to the Labour Party's Suspension Letter

The previous post links to the suspension letter I received from the Labour Party on 30 April 2020. You don't need to read the suspension letter to get its ghyst from here but the complaint purported to arise out of two blog comments (not posts, comments to posts) and four tweets. The suspension letter didn't link to any of them and the letter's author effected at least to believe they were from Facebook. I didn't find the "offending" items prior to responding to them so I will try to find them now.

I'll list them as the suspension letter does but by linking rather than quoting:

Item 1. https://twitter.com/jewssf/status/1245385832267165698?s=20

CST is an Israel advocacy group. It does security for shuls etc but its propaganda efforts are against Israel's critics, opponents and victims. As for Dave Rich invoking Cable St, Zionism began as an agreement with antisemitism collaborating with Tsarism, Nazism, Galtieri & EDL. https://t.co/7Mvy4CcB2G

— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) April 1, 2020

Note the date of item 1. It's 2020, this year.

Item 2.   http://web.archive.org/web/20090626033019/http://www.haloscan.com/comments/levi9909/5773458525484843543/#319340

If you've read Eurosabra's previous offerings, you don't have to read the latest at all to know that it offers "breathtaking mendacity."
The sad thing, I think, is this propensity for sheer instinctive dishonesty has become a habit of mind with many, maybe most, Jews. It's part of the culture now and it'll be a hard slog shifting it. I think as communities, the Jews are heading for a disaster thanks to this grotesque culture of deceit. I can't imagine what form this disaster will take but suppose it happens like a flash, in a moment. I wonder who will be identifying as Jews after it happens. 

I was just reading this: http://www.alfredlilienthal.com/...om/ zionamer.htm
The whole site is worth a look at but I find it a bit hard to navigate. Maybe it's me, I'm just a poor navigator. 

Mark Elf (levi9909) | Homepage | 11.13.07 - 7:49 am | #

And see the date on that one, 2007. Kinda outta sync. What's all that about?

Item 3.    http://web.archive.org/web/20090626033019/http://www.haloscan.com/comments/levi9909/5773458525484843543/#319538

Anon - the press in the UK is overwhelmingly pro-Israel. Even a pro-Israel journo - Sam Kiley - had to leave the Times because in spite of being pro-Israel himself he was asked to run an article on the unit of the Israeli army that killed Mohamed al-Durra, without mentioning the killing of Mohamed al-Durra. Kiley left in disgust. The Telegraph is no less pro-Israel now than when it was owned by Conrad Black who also owned the Jerusalem Post. He took the Jerusalem Post over to the Likud and did the same with the Telegraph. It has less op-ed pieces on Israel now because Barbara Amiel couldn't publish her fanatically right wing zionist vanity pieces when her husband no longer owned the paper. The Guardian and Independent both have determinedly pro-zionist editorial policies though both are more critical of Israel than the Times and Telegraph. Both have resident zionists commenting on Israel and zionism. They also have resident anti-zionists but rarely are they allowed to comment on Israel or zionism, they're just known to be anti-zionist. 

Logic can't really be used to assess the pro-Israeli-ness or not of this or that newspaper. It's a matter of observation. That being the case, show us some links to the ant-Israel op-eds in the Guardian or Independent newspapers. 

Mark Elf (levi9909) | Homepage | 11.16.07 - 12:40 am | #

Item 4.  https://twitter.com/jewssf/status/1229424582165135360?s=20

Yup the @BoardofDeputies helped antisemites into power in the UK. Sadly this is not the first time Zionists have collaborated with antisemitism. In fact at the inception of the Zionist movement many Jews saw Zionism itself as collaboration with antisemitism. They were right. https://t.co/B9cQqc70oK

— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) February 17, 2020

Item 5. https://twitter.com/jewssf/status/1231379194703220736?s=20

Most allegations of antisemitism against Labour members have been false and of course many have been made by racists like JLM members and LFI members. That's not zero tolerance. Labour "strictly protects" racists while suspending anti-racists. https://t.co/v1GN8lWnuC

— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) February 23, 2020

Item 6.    https://twitter.com/jewssf/status/1236296569789480960?s=20

You are in denial about Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. You are the revisionist https://t.co/eZAKSJa18y. The Holocaust would have happened without Zionist collaboration but of 6 m Jews dead, 100s of k could have been saved but for Zionist collaboration. Read about it.

— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) March 7, 2020

So there is the evidence now read on....

Dear Comrades

This is my reply to your email of 30 April 2020 and the Draft Charge and Questions.

In my response I will be calling into question both your integrity and your competence.

First, I must say that I am disgusted that whoever it is besmirching my character appears to have been stalking me online for some years going back at least to 2007. That being the case, they must know that my suspension has come at a time when I have been engaged in a project as an ambulance driver taking Covid19 patients to and from hospital. In my work I am more exposed than most people to a potentially deadly virus and it is known that stress makes people more vulnerable to sickness of many kinds, especially viruses, than during normal times. You are aware that your actions are intrinsically stressful because you have lately been including details of the Samaritans in case you drive people to suicide. In doing this you are confirming rumours that people are indeed taking their own lives because of the hurt you are doing to them. Whoever's bidding you are doing in this is deliberately seeking to appear ruthless and they are succeeding at that. They may even cause antisemitism by their/your actions. And of course by following instructions instead of telling the complainant to consider what they are doing and to back off during this time, you are culpable for your own actions.

In my case, the false allegations against me, including your own rehashing of apparently genuine quotes to make them appear like generalisations against my fellow "Jewish people" rather than comments about a state, some people and certain named organisations which they obviously were, you aren't causing me hurt except I do find it sad that you have resorted to such dishonesty. I also worry that you can't seem to distinguish between various social media (see my take on question 2. I now realise why your reordering of my comments looks so strange with a tweet from c 2020, two blog comments from 2007 and then three tweets from c 2020). Also you might be acting on a distortion of the McPherson Principle which is supposed to arise out of offensive incidents not invented ones and it doesn’t allow for a bogus definition of any form of racism, especially one which is internally contradictory and racist in its own right.

Now to the questions.

Question 1.

I actually have three Facebook accounts but I never use any of them for posting, just messaging of a personal nature. So there are no political comments by me on Facebook. I think pretending to believe the comments come from Facebook is my accusers excuse for the eccentric reordering of the tweets and comments, with the 13 year old ones being blog comments coming 2^nd and 3^rd while a far more recent one comes first thought it is a tweet. Other tweets come 4^th 5^th and 6^th. Weird...until you realise just how dishonest the whole exercise is.

Question 2.

It looks to me that 4 of the 6 comments, items 1, 4, 5 and 6, are from Twitter though I do not have links to the tweets in question and therefore I cannot find them. The other 2 appear to be from a blog commenting system which no longer exists. You will note that they are from 2007. So, I am sorry I cannot confirm or deny having written and shared them. It would help if your Informant or complainant could provide links.

I must point out that it is noticeable whilst Items 2 and 3 are from 2007 they have nothing to do with each other. One is about some Jews and is the only one about any members of my own Jewish community in a discussion with Jews from the same community and from across the political spectrum and the other is about the interference in the journalism in a newspaper owned by a renowned Christian Zionist, Rupert Murdoch, who many people believe to be antisemitic so definitely not Jewish. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/rupert-murdoch-jews-twitter

The way you have ordered the items is itself dishonest. You have taken 4 tweets probably from the past year which at a glance or in detail are completely innocent in any context and 2 from 13years ago but you have tucked one of the four tweets before the one comment which needs some unpacking and explanation. The other comment (as distinct from tweet) is again completely innocent by any interpretation but it is on the same subject as the tweets ie, The State of Israel, the media or this or that organisation. It stands out therefore that my accusers are conflating Jews with the State of Israel, the media and Jewish organisations, a conflation which goes to the heart of the antisemitic worldwide Jewish conspiracy theory.

Question 3.

I can try to interpret them but at present I cannot even confirm they were by me. In all honestly they resemble things I might have said. So let me try item by item:

Item 1. This is self explanatory. It is saying that a group founded by businessman Gerald Ronson, Community Security Trust (CST), together with its security work also does Israel advocacy.

Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian newspaper reported in a documentary on Israel lobbying and advocacy that the founder of the CST, Gerald Ronson, visited him in his office to complain about a 2 part article in The Guardian describing Israel as an apartheid state. Now clearly this had nothing to do with security for Jews in the UK. It was purely an exercise in Israel advocacy. Https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/pro-israel-lobby-in-britain-full-text/

There is no denying that CST works on Israel advocacy and lobbying as part of its brief and, clearly, that is what was meant in the tweet. In any case there is nothing antisemitic in criticising a group of activists whatever their activity.

Item 2. This looks like part of a wider discussion which appears to have taken place 13 years ago. I suspect the time on the comment is American time. It looks to me like a poorly expressed notion (if I am right about the time it was late at night) that supporters of The State of Israel cannot use standard means of defending its actions and have therefore cultivated (hence the word "culture") a dishonest means of argumentation in favour of Israel to undermine its critics and even its victims. There was no generalisation about "Jewish people" (draft charge number 2) . Instead the words are ‘many, maybe most, Jews’ and are in the context of a discussion with my fellow Jews If I was to express that now I would talk about the propensity of the establishment generally to self deceive. I certainly wouldn't ever denigrate Jewish people as a whole because a) I am Jewish myself and fear and abhor antisemitism and b) generalisations about whole ethnicities or faith groups are racist. I also wouldn’t discuss the specifics of Jewish identity issues on a public forum because I am frightened by the vilification of Jews who dissent from establishment narratives of which my administrative suspension is but one of many examples. Remember this was 2007.

Item 3. This is clearly a response to someone posting anonymously and it simply states the demonstrable fact that the print media is overwhelmingly pro-Israel. This http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27c/345.html is the the link to Sam Kiley's article in which he complains of Rupert Murdoch's proprietal interference into editorial and journalistic matters at his newspapers. Ironically among Jews, Murdoch is famous for being both a Christian Zionist and he’s believed to be antisemitic. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/rupert-murdoch-jews-twitter None of the media referenced in the comment are or were owned by Jews nor is it suggested or implied by me that they are. At this point I can only assume that my accusers are themselves antisemitic and might even be having a joke at my and the party’s expense. To conflate Murdoch with Jews is beneath contempt. I must say that you do not do enough background checking of these things.

Item 4. This again is self-explanatory. The Board of Deputies has been openly supportive of the Conservative Party. Various antisemitic utterances and behaviours by leading Tories have been conveniently ignored from Jacob Rees Mogg accusing the Jewish speaker, John Bercow, of being Illuminati to Theresa May unveiling a statue of the known Hitler admirer, Lady Astor. It has also ignored Boris Johnson's antisemitic portrayals of Jews in his novel, 72 Virgins. The Conservative Party is in power so it is fair to say that all those who undermined the Labour Party "helped antisemites into power in the UK". And it is the case that Zionist history is replete with episodes of collaboration with antisemitism. There is a very good article by SOAS Professor , Gilberta Achcar" about the "complementarity between the anti-Semitic desire to get rid of the Jews and the Zionist project of sending all Jews to Palestine" Https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/zionism-anti-semitism-and-balfour-declaration/

Item 5. Again this is self-explanatory. It is claiming that most of the specific well publicised allegations of antisemitism against Labour members have been false. This is the case with the allegations themselves and the direction they have taken. For example the allegations against Jeremy Corbyn included claims that he was antisemitc by Margaret Hodge. She must have known he saved a Jewish cemetery from being sold off by Islington Council. She was the leader of the Council at the time. She must have known that he condemned Paul Flynn for saying a Jew should never be UK ambassador to Israel. She must have known about his support for Haredi Jews over autopsies and the swift release of bodies for burial. She must have known of Corbyn's condemnation of Tam Dalyell for accusing Tony Blair of being in thrall to a "Jewish cabal". Jeremy Corbyn was also a great help to Yemeni Jews seeking to settle in the UK.

The references to JLM and LFI address the fact that in my experience, the policies of these groups support the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and do not simply support The State of Israel's "right to exist" but its right to exist as a state specially for the world's Jews rather than a state for all of its people. This is my opinion as a Jew of two groups whose membership is not solely or even largely Jewish. Again criticism of these group is not antisemitic.

Item 6. Again this is self-explanatory and addresses the oft buried issue of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. Ironically the best authors on this subject are based in Israel, many are supporters of Zionism, but in the interests of proper history, this episode has been included in the syllabus in Israeli schools. In the tweet the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust is stated to be 6 million. I understand that there were fully 11 million people murdered in the Holocaust but the tweet in item 6 is only referring to the Jewish element. There is nothing in that tweet to even hint at a denial or a revision of the scope and intentionality of the Holocaust. Any alternative suggestion is simply a lie.

Question 4.

There is nothing in my conduct that could be construed as being in breach of Rule 2.1.8., even if the quotes are taken out of context. Only by dishonestly inserting the words "Jewish people" as if I am negatively generalising about my own Jewish people can any of my own words or those genuinely or in good faith attributed to me be construed as being in breach of the rule.

Having said that, whilst I am not very scholarly I heard a great deal about rule changes in recent years. Please note that two of the comments attributed to me are from 2007. These allegations against me are bad enough without lifting comments out of their original context and from 13 years ago and applying later rules retrospectively. I need to write an aside here to the effect that your bad faith is plain for all to see and you really should desist from this. I have already mentioned how you seem to be building up to an absurd “pattern of behaviour” case and I believe that this is why you have taken one comment from 2007 which could be taken out of context by my use of the word “deceit” rather then the expression “intellectual dishonesty” and you have juxtaposed it with a perfectly innocuous comment about how a Christian Zionist (alleged to be antisemitic) runs his newspapers! You then appear to jump forward to 2020 as if to say I have behaved provocatively towards the Jewish people for a whole 13 years because you can liken not the first comment (item 2) to a comment in 2020 but the second innocuous one about Murdoch to a 2020 tweet again about non-Jewish proprietors of national media.

Question 5.

The comments you have attributed to me all appear to have been made in good faith and are perfectly polite, representing what I believe from years of learning and thinking about Jewish identity and Zionism.

Question 6.

If it was me using words like "culture of deceit" even though taking the comment out of the context of a discussion which it appears to be and importing words in charge 3, that do not appear in the original quote, I would not say "culture of deceit", I would say "cultivated tendency to intellectual dishonesty" and for many years now I have chosen my words very carefully so that unscrupulous people cannot quote me out of context only avoiding the charge of barefaced lying by judicious use of quotation marks. I also wouldn’t discuss internal Jewish business on what could turn out to be a wider public forum.

Question 7.

There is only one comment out of all of the examples that I would not personally post for reasons I have already explained. It is the comment in Item 2. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of the other comments and the comment in item 2 is only wrong taken out of context. I do not nor would I negatively generalise about the "Jewish people" and contest strongly the false allegation that I would. Indeed, I believe I have been targeted because I am one of the Jewish people. It's one of the cruel ironies of our time that the same people that describe The State of Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East" want to ensure that there is only one Jewish community viewpoint in the UK in spite of our political, cultural and ethnic diversity.

Question 8.

I need links to the comments you attribute to me in order to fully understand the context in which they were made. Context is all. You have provided none.

Question 9.

I was born and raised Jewish in the tradition known as mainstream orthodoxy under the auspices of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. This has left me with a profound sense of my Jewish identity and, without wishing to sound sectarian, and, as I wrote, an abhorrence, of antisemitism. I also, again without wishing to sound sectarian, have a very powerful belief that as a Jew I have a moral responsibility to express my revulsion at the abuse of Palestinian rights. I am not saying that Jews who ignore or even cause the plight of the Palestinians are somehow less Jewish than I am but I would never submit to the idea that I am somehow less Jewish than my upbringing has made me because of my support for the Palestinian cause.

Draft Charge

I have just revisited your Draft Charge page and I am utterly disgusted with you. I thought your timing was bad enough but to level such outrageous lies at a Jew is downright racist and if you cannot see this, you need some training. I am saying you are racist. It isn’t simply that the allegations are false but they are so demonstrably false and so deliberately set out to be offensive to Jews you have deliberately set out offend me as a Jew.

1. This applies far more to you than to me. I am anti-racist and internationalist. I have no hostility towards or prejudice against anyone on account of any group identity heritage.

2. I do not use antisemitic actions or stereotypes nor do I harbour any antisemitic sentiments.

3. I do not claim that “Jewish people” have anything negative in common. That is a manipulative insertion of words when the reference in item 2 is clearly to some people’s resort to intellectual dishonesty when defending The State of Israel

4, 5. None of the comments or tweets mention international connections of any kind unless you count the non-Jewish Conrad Black’s ownership of the Jerusalem Post and The Daily Telegraph. The references in item 3 are entirely to media that are not owned by Jews. Clearly it is my accusers who subscribe to an antisemitic stereotype. The references are all to pro-Israel stances chosen freely by the media in question.

6, 7, 8. These are the pack of lies that have caused me the most anger and distress and I cannot believe you have simply clumsily run with someone else’s demonstrably false allegations without actually checking to see how far from the words used in the items (for argument’s sake, my own words) depart from the description in the Draft Charge. The lies are so despicable they aren’t even laughable like the others. The others do reveal my accusers’ propensity for antisemitic stereotypes when none of the media I have mentioned have any Jewish proprietors.

Item 1 involved the fact that the idea of a colony in Palestine specially for Jews was proposed by antisemitic colonialists several years before the Jewish Zionist movement was established. For some. eg. Napolean, the motive was colonial for others, Churchill, GK Chesterton, the motive was antisemitic. “Jews to Palestine” was an antisemitic slogan before it became a Zionist one and when GK Chesterton was challenged on his attitude to Jews he said, “You see, I am not an anti-Semite, I am a Zionist.” https://t.co/IZwORsvROV?amp=1

After the founding of the World Zionist Organisation many antisemites would explain away their racism against Jews as Gentile or Christian Zionism. Christian Zionism is even more ominous for Jews, its position being that all Jews should settle in the Holy Land and there convert to Christianity or be annihilated if they refuse. That hasn’t stopped Israel’s current Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, addressing events of groups like America’s Moral Majority. https://t.co/08reXzusly?amp=1 The close association of Zionist movement founder, Theodor Herzl and Tsarist Russia’s pogromist-in-chief, Count von Plehve is well documented https://t.co/OhRVadqV1C?amp=1 The collaboration between Zionism and nazism began very soon after the nazis came to power and it too is well documented and is actually taught to Israeli secondary school students. Israeli Zionists tend to take much more seriously the idea that Jews belong in Israel, nowhere else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transfer_Agreement The most notorious of Zionist dealings with the nazis was the Transfer or Ha’avara Agreement but there were other examples even after WWII and even the Holocaust had begun. Zionist paramilitaries led by founders of the largest party within the Likud offered Hitler and Mussolini an alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(militant_group) and Hannah Arendt, in her famous book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, refers to the collaboration that had Zionist leaders in Hungary calling on Jews to assemble at designated places where the waiting SS would take them to Auschwitz for extermination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rezs%C5%91_Kasztner . Curiously the Ha’avara agreement was supported by the then mainstream Labour Zionists but rejected out of hand by the harder right wing group we now know as Likud.

Regarding the English Defence League, co-operation between Zionists and fascists on the streets counter-demonstrating against Palestine solidarity marches and demonstrations and breaking up meetings has a long history. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171121-pro-israeli-mob-with-ties-to-edl-causes-mayhem-at-balfour-event/ In 2008 one member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews described the BNP’s website as the “most Zionist on the web”. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/apr/10/thefarright.race#

Nothing in item 1 comes anywhere near your false allegations. There is no denial of the scope, mechanisms or intentionality of the Holocaust, nothing to accuse anyone of exaggerating the Holocaust and nothing using Holocaust “metaphors and comparisons”. The allegation is simply a lie without even a kernel of truth.

Item 4 goes to show that your chutzpah, in making these false allegations against me, knows no bounds. It is an approving retweet of the leader of the Jewish Socialist Group pointing out that the Board of Deputies did everything it could to ensure Labour would not win an election “knowing the alternative was Johnson, whose chief advisor employs a eugenicist aide; Braverman, who uses a/s tropes, gets a top job, and a Tory MP speaks alongside Euro far right” Or put another way, the Board of Deputies “helped antisemites into power in the UK”. You have already seen examples of Zionists doing similar things at different times and places.

It is hard to see why you have item 4 listed in the most despicable of your false allegations against me. It might be that any talk of Zionist collaboration or aid to antisemitism calls to my accusers’ minds, the most appalling of examples of that collaboration but that tweet does not mention the Holocaust or the nazis at all.

Item 6 fully exposes the sheer dishonesty of my accusers. There is a clear affirmation of the fact that 6 million of my fellow Jews were murdered by the nazis in the Holocaust. How anyone can even try to derive from that any hint of Holocaust denial or revisionism is impossible to understand.

None of the items 1, 4 or 6 in any way amounts to anything that could be described as Holocaust denial or revisionism. You and your informant/complainants are simply and despicably lying.

Conclusion

You have suspended me as part of the general sweep against Jews and other anti-racists and supporters of the Palestinian cause. You have one comment purportedly by me in 2007 which you could distort by preceding words which could have been mine with words which turn a claim about some people into a generalisation about Jewish people. You then, unfathomably at first, set out 5 other examples which taken separately or together are perfectly innocuous. The reason one of them is from 2007 is to try to link the other comment from 2007 to tweets from 2020. In this way you are seeking to establish one of your stupid “pattern of behaviour” raps in the absence of actual evidence of what you are accusing me of.

All in all I have clearly established that nothing I have said in any forum could be construed in its correct context as antisemitic. It is your conduct towards me which constitutes racist abuse and some of my accusers’ assumptions about, for example, media ownership go to show that it is my accusers who promote antisemitic tropes about Jewish media control. The comments in the items 1 to 6 where they mention the media at all all establish that there are no Jewish owners of mass media in the UK and even the Israeli newspaper in item 1 was owned by a Catholic. Likewise where the Holocaust is mentioned at all, the figure of 6 million Jews deliberately murdered by the nazis is affirmed,, neither minimised nor denied. So I reject the charges in total.

Yours sincerely