Another Letter by Loach, Another Lie by Rich

Ken Loach has had a letter published in the New York Times refuting demonstrably false claims made about him by Howard Jacobson.

Here's the letter:

To the Editor:

Re: “Now Labour is the Enemy of the Jews,” (front page, Oct. 7-8):

Howard Jacobson alleges that I defended questioning the Holocaust. I did not and do not. In a confused BBC interview, where question and answer overlapped, my words were twisted to give a meaning contrary to that intended. The Holocaust is as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged. In Primo Levi’s words: “Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.”

Exaggerated or false charges of anti-Semitism have coincided with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Discredit his supporters, and you weaken his leadership. The Jewish Socialist Group wrote: “accusations of anti-Semitism are being weaponised to attack the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party.”

We will not be intimidated. The Labour Party will continue to assert “the values of peace, universal rights and International law” as proclaimed in its manifesto.

KEN LOACH

LONDON

And here's what he was refuting:

In a moment that will live in infamy, the distinguished film director Ken Loach defended questioning the Holocaust. “I think history is for all of us to discuss,” he said, dodging the question of why the Labour Party should have chosen the Holocaust, of all historical events — and not slavery, say — to subject to scrutiny. 

But the defaming of Ken Loach didn't start with Howard Jacobson and didn't end with him either.  Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust thought he detected a claim of victimhood in Loach's letter.  He tweeted:

Ken Loach declares himself a victim. https://t.co/sBusGY95hI

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) October 15, 2017

I immediately knew he was lying but I was pleased Ken Loach had another chance to answer his slanderers so I followed the link and word searched "victim".  Obviously, you don't have to use the word "victim" to claim to be one.  But on reading the letter and re-reading it, there was nothing there to suggest that he was claiming that he was a victim.  Scroll back up.  See what he wrote.  Any sign of self-pity?  This is a guy who supports the Palestinian cause.  It's inconceivable that he would claim victim status when the only reason he's being smeared is because he supports the cause of a victimised nation.  Of course, Ken Loach has been victimised but I think he has enough self-awareness to refrain from complaining about it.  He was simply setting the record straight.

So did he write anything at all that could be construed as claiming victimhood?  Let's take it line by line.

1.   Howard Jacobson alleges that I defended questioning the Holocaust.

Nothing there.

2.  I did not and do not.  

Nope, not there.

3.   In a confused BBC interview, where question and answer overlapped, my words were twisted to give a meaning contrary to that intended. 

 Nor there.

4.   The Holocaust is as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged.

Hmm, nothing in that line about Ken at all.  I'm starting to think Dave Rich made this up.  Surely there was a kernel of truth, as Goebbels used to say.  Let's keep looking:

5.   In Primo Levi’s words: “Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.”

Aha!  Now I could give Dave a bit of a pass here and say that he might have thought that in agreeing with Primo Levi, Loach was actually likening himself to Levi.  See if he tries that one.  It would be all he's got because, well, let's see some more...

6.   Exaggerated or false charges of anti-Semitism have coincided with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

Nope, that's about Corbyn, not Ken.

7.   Discredit his supporters, and you weaken his leadership. 

Again. mostly about the leadership but also about the supporters.  Discrediting isn't necessarily victimising.  Dave to me is an utterly discredited figure.  He's hardly a victim.

8.   The Jewish Socialist Group wrote: “accusations of anti-Semitism are being weaponised to attack the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party.”

Now that's not a claim of victimhood, in fact it looks like Dave's job description.

Ok, to the final paragraph and what have we here?

9.   We will not be intimidated.

What we have here is a flat contradiction of what Dave Rich is claiming Ken Loach said.  What's extremely concerning is that Dave was so confident that his followers would "agree" with him, he even helpfully provided the link to the letter that he so flagrantly lied about.  If you look at the tweet, look at the replies too.  Last I checked I was the only one pointing out that Dave was misrepresenting what Ken Loach had said.

So to the last line:

10.  The Labour Party will continue to assert “the values of peace, universal rights and International law” as proclaimed in its manifesto.

And so we see, er, nothing to see.  And that is Dave Rich, one of the UK's most prominent antisemitism hunters.

But I did say in the headline, "Another Lie by Rich". So what else have we.  How far before yesterday do we have to go.  Well, the day before yesterday.  Really.  Check out this exchange between Rich and Jamie Stern-Weiner.  Here's a tweet that sums up the whole thing but there's a whole thread above and below it:

2. Your allegation, made explicitly now, that Machover agrees with Heydrich's account of Nazi Jewish policy is really scandalous.

— JamieSW (@jsternweiner) October 13, 2017

And from exactly one year ago, here's Dave smearing Jonathan Rosenhead of  Free Speech on Israel.

whoever's responsible it's a disgrace. "Wily" Jews "fabricate" antisemitism?

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) October 16, 2016

And here's what he was referring to on Free Speech on Israel:

It is impossible to know from the outside exactly what and who have made this moral panic [the antisemitism smear campaign] go with such a swing. Key individuals may well be Jeremy Newmark, well-placed in JLM, though only just in time, to fan these flames. The wily Mark Regev took up his post as Israeli ambassador in London at the start of April. In July Ella Rose left her job as public affairs officer at the Israeli Embassy to become Director of JLM. Who knows? Organisationally, judging by their public pronouncements there is an at least informal coalition of forces involving JLM, Progress (the Blairite pressure group), and Labour Friends of Israel which have all been promoting the idea that the left is permeated with antisemitism.

 See that?  Dave was clever here. He put the word "wily" in quotes but not the word "Jews".  So he could, and did, claim that he wasn't actually misquoting.  Again check out the thread.

And this is Dave Rich's job and, apparently his hobby too.

Dave Rich is just one player in this annoying and damaging game.  He's not a particularly bright one by any means, in fact, a sure sign that Rosenhead wasn't generalising about wily Jews is that, whilst many of the merchants of smear can be justly accused of fabrication, Dave Rich and many others can never be accused of being wily.

See a difference between Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism? No problem, just erase the line

I read Dave Rich's book recently and he mentions having done a PhD. I was curious about it so I googled Dave Rich PhD. Top of the list was The Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism's "About" page, and there's Dave.

Dr Dave Rich
Associate

Dave studied for his PhD at the Institute. His research covered the emergence of left wing anti-Zionism in Britain after 1967, particularly in student politics, and responses to it from UK Jewish organisations. He is particularly interested in the relationship of anti-Zionism to antisemitism, and the boundaries that separate them, that fuel debates over the ‘new antisemitism’.

Dave Rich works for the Community Security Trust which claims to oppose antisemitism but seems to put more energy into opposing criticism and condemnation of Israel.  And now having read the book, The Left's Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism, it turns out that Dave has been looking at the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism so that he can claim there is no difference.  He does this by claiming that Jews have such an instinct for supporting the colonisation, conquest and ethnic cleansing of Palestine that to oppose the Zionist ideology amounts to antisemitism.  This of course involves the redefinition of antisemitism so that anti-racists become antisemitic. Sadly it also has the effect of making ill-informed people subscribe to the old antisemitism because of course Dave and others like him, including now a Home Office Select Committee have decided that Jews and Zionists are the same thing.  All very sad and very irresponsible.

I didn't find the PhD by the way. I would be curious to have a quick look at it because Dave certainly doesn't seem to be down the intellectual end of the Zionist movement.

I wouldn't recommend the book.  There's a withering review on Red Pepper here and the always (overly) polite Richard Kuper has done one on Amazon here.

PS: I've decided to save people work by posting in full Richard Kuper's review here:

The Left’s Jewish Problem is an ideological tract and an intervention in the current battle in the Labour Party. It is designed to show “a sickness at the heart of left wing British politics… silently spreading, becoming ever more malignant” (cover blurb). That sickness is the sickness of antisemitism.

Of course there are antisemitic ideas around in Britain and it would be nonsense to assume that the left was immune. But Rich is on a mission to show antisemitism as widespread, systematic, hegemonic on the left.
As Rich is aware, there isn’t much Jew-hatred of a traditional kind around on the left, There is, rather, he believes, a different kind of antisemitism, expressed as an anti-Zionism of the left, in which movements and thinkers have come to view Israel and Zionism as “a product of western colonialism rather than a liberation movement against it”.

That large sections of “the left” fell out of love with Israel and came to rally around support for Palestinian rights and a Palestinian state is relatively uncontested. But why the change? For Rich, this shift couldn’t be a response to events, analysis, or improved understanding. It was, rather, an ideological hijacking by the “New Left”.
Rich’s New Left, with Corbyn as its embodiment, is a curious construct. “As New Left superseded Old,” he writes, “so identity politics replaced class politics as its primary mobilising idea… [This New Left represents] a new social class, rooted in intellectual and cultural professions, populated by public sector workers whose political agenda would come to be dominated by identity and iconoclasm.”

So the movement behind Corbyn is somehow viewed as a break with all tradition, rather than a popular, deeply-rooted, left trade-union and social movement, trying to incorporate class and identity issues, in a desire to restore something of older Labour concerns: equality, social ownership, trade-union rights, anti-imperialism and more.
Rich operates with free-floating, unchanging essences. So Zionism is, was and always will be nothing but self-determination/national liberation. Who could possibly criticise that? So by definition describing Israel as a colonial-settler or apartheid society can’t have any truth in it. Is can only be an emotional attempt to demonise Israel. For Rich, such concepts are products of a New Left mind set: the apartheid analogy was “hardwired into left wing anti-Israel politics in Britain during its formative [anti-apartheid] years in the 1960s and 1970s.”

But what if these concepts are gaining ground precisely because they make increasing sense of an emergent reality? Events have played crucial role in shifting ideas on the left in relation to Israel-Palestine – from the 1956 Suez invasion to the televised spectacle of phosphorus bombs falling on Gaza and bodies of children in the rubble.

Whatever Zionism might or might not have been originally, what has it become? Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank continues unabated. Green-line Israel’s discrimination against its increasingly second-class Palestinian citizens, and their physical displacement in the Negev, rolls on. What Israel is now needs to be judged by what it is doing, not by its ideological self-image. Israel’s actions are what are delegitimising it, not any antisemitism of the left.

It is clearly wrong to argue that all claims of antisemitism are simply made in order to silence criticism of Israel. Allegations of antisemitism should be taken seriously and investigated swiftly. But making an allegation is not the same thing as establishing a fact. Rich is entirely oblivious to (or simply ignores) the context in which recent accusations emerged – why, for example, emotionally charged posts and tweets from the 2014 Gaza war should only be dredged up in 2016, under Corbyn’s leadership. It does not take much to see the timing as contrived, rather than an innocent desire to unmask antisemitism.

Clearly, insofar as some remarks are antisemitic they need to be confronted. Conspiracy theories, e.g. that Israel founded Isis or that Jews escaped 9/11, should be dismissed out of hand. Individuals who make them should be dealt with appropriately. But appropriately means appropriately. It doesn’t mean suspensions without charge, condemnation without a hearing, or leaking stories to the Jewish Chronicle or Daily Telegraph - in short, the weaponisation of antisemitism and the complete absence of due process we have witnessed in recent months. On all this Rich has nothing to say.

If Rich’s book encourages us to be more precise in our language, to temper how we express our emotional outrage at the things Israel does with impunity, to be more strategic in how we build support for Palestinian rights, it may (inadvertently!) achieve something useful. But in its own terms, it must be treated as a polemical intervention rather than a serious analytical contribution to our understanding of antisemitism (or the left) today.

Good stuff. I said Richard is very polite. The Red Pepper review though is a real skewering but I gather Dave and his CST cohorts are paid to be a brazen embarrassment to the Jewish community.

Zionist Antisemitism and the Reinvention of Judaism in Home Affairs Select Committee Report

I just had another look at the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Antisemitism report.  It makes for such depressing reading I can only take in little looks at a time.  I was just looking at what I thought was the Chief Rabbi's contribution and I was struck by the casual way his evidence was used, it was gleaned from something he wrote for the Daily Telegraph.  I was also struck by his sheer dishonesty though Lord Sacks was a hard act to follow where dishonesty was concerned.

See this:

In an article for The Daily Telegraph in May, the Chief Rabbi criticised attempts by Labour members and activists to separate Zionism from Judaism as a faith, arguing that their claims are “fictional”. In evidence to us, he stressed that “Zionism has been an integral part of Judaism from the dawn of our faith”. He stated that “spelling out the right of the Jewish people to live within secure borders with self-determination in their own country, which they had been absent from for 2,000 years—that is what Zionism is”. His view was that “If you are an anti-Zionist, you are anti everything I have just mentioned”

That's utterly absurd. If Zionism goes to the "dawn of our faith" what happened between the destruction of the second temple and the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 1890s?  There were Zionistic ideas around before then but they tended to lead to the excommunication and even execution of their promoters.

Another question is, so what?   Even if Judaism does demand a Jewish supremacist state based on colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing, why should anyone else accept that?  The Chief Rabbi's sheer dishonesty or ignorance about the history and tenets of his own religion gives you some idea of why the Haredim (ultra-orthodox Jews) were excluded from the HASC's process.  If Satmar Jews were called upon they would say, as they often do, that "Zionism and Judaism are diametrically opposed".  Even the now Kahanist inclined Lubavitch would have to admit that they only became Zionist when the Jewish state moved from being an issue to a fact in 1948. Not the "dawn of our faith" then.

Moving on from the exclusion of the wrong kind of Jews I saw this:

Similarly, CST and the JLC describe Zionism as “an ideological belief in the authenticity of Jewish peoplehood and that the Jewish people have the right to a state”. Sir Mick Davis, Chairman of the JLC, told us that criticising Zionism is the same as antisemitism, because:

Zionism is so totally identified with how the Jew thinks of himself, and is so associated with the right of the Jewish people to have their own country and to have self-determination within that country, that if you attack Zionism, you attack the very fundamentals of how the Jews believe in themselves.

Neither CST nor the JLC are essentially religious so they had to admit that Zionism is an ideology not a religious tenet or religion in its own right but look at how Sir Mick Davis expressed himself:

Zionism is so totally identified with how the Jew thinks of himself

"How the Jew thinks of himself"?  Leaving aside that for Davis, the Jew is a "him", it looks like an extract from a Nazi tract.  Do Zionists know what they're messing with?  And to think they cry when you call them racist.  The Jew, the Jews, Zionism, Israel are all the same to them.  The individual, the race, the ideology, the state, and for the Zionists that is in reverse order of importance to them.

They're riding a tiger and they don't seem to know it.

Why is YouGov tarnishing its reputation for the Antisemitism Industry?

I don't know much about how the pollster organisation YouGov works but I always assumed they valued their reputation for producing meaningful polling data.  In this instance I smelled a rat when the Zionist, Community Security Trust retweeted the following YouGov tweet:

Today's survey: do you believe that antisemitism is so deeply entrenched in our culture it is often ignored? https://t.co/LQX8ykFyXC

— YouGov (@YouGov) September 27, 2016

 Now I shouldn't have voted because the question doesn't even make sense but having voted I couldn't access the survey via the twitter link.  I had to use this one but here's a screen grab:

I don't know how people accessed the survey in the first place but it seems a lot of people will have come to it via a retweet, same as I did.  Look at the question.

"Antisemitism is at the heart of racism".  What does that mean?  Surely anyone responding to the survey would have to say "Don't know" since that is the only honest answer you can give to a question that doesn't make sense.

"Yet, because it is so deeply entrenched in our thought and culture, it is often ignored and dismissed".  There you go, that's the last bit of the statement. And that is a YouGov survey on antisemitism.  So whose culture is "ours"?  And what do they even mean by thought?  The written up thoughts of public intellectuals?  School work? Academic books and treatises?  Or just the everyday thoughts of everyday people?

Now I know YouGov do fun surveys like asking people whether they agree or not with the statement, "Justin Bieber is wonderful" but clearly this survey isn't just for fun. It appears to be designed by an interested party, like maybe a player in the self-appointed anti-antisemitism industry but if that was the case surely an august institution like YouGov would offer a health warning, wouldn't they?

A "little bit of a conspiracy": a bit of an antisemitic trope or a bit of an understatement?

Let's have a look, shall we?

I wouldn't have noticed this but for The Community Security Trust's Dave Rich agreeing with what looked like an allegation from Linda Grant that Jeremy Corbyn is himself antisemitic.

@lindasgrant if Milne was a mensch he would have replied "no, I've known him for years he's a decent guy we just disagree." But he didn't.

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) June 1, 2016

A quick scan of Dave Rich's Twitter account yielded this little gem:

“There is a little bit of a conspiracy going on”. Jackie Walker certainly knows her antisemitic tropes, doesn't she? https://t.co/DPcQW1FStG

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) June 2, 2016

 A "little bit of a conspiracy going on" now has the official stamp of disapproval from the provisional wing of the Zionist movement in the UK.

So what was Jackie Walker thinking of when she invoked this "antisemitic trope"?  Let's have a look at The Jewish Chronicle.  I mean, I hesitate to allege a conspiracy but whenever lots of people in lots of media are saying the same wrong thing about someone falsely accused of antisemitism, the JC is usually in there somewhere.  And their headline:

Jacqueline Walker claims her suspension from Labour was part of a conspiracy

Now immediately we ought to smell a rat because Dave Rich put his quote in quotes.  That is, it was an exact quote.  Where he messed up is he made out "a little bit of a conspiracy" is an "antisemitic trope".  The antisemitic trope about conspiracies is usual the worldwide Jewish conspiracy theory.  That's the idea that all of the world's Jews are party to the same conspiracy to the benefit of all Jews and to the detriment of everyone else.  Not so much a little bit of a conspiracy but a literally impossibly huge conspiracy.

Now the JC was a bit smarter than Dave Rich (who isn't?).  They've made out that Jackie Walker could have been suggesting that the smear campaign against Corbynistas and Palestine solidarity supporters is part of a much bigger conspiracy.  That seems to be what they are attempting with their headline.  But they didn't just run with a headline.  They ran the story and like Dave Rich they seem to have run real quotes that contradict the headline:

Ms Walker, who was readmitted to the party after being suspended over allegations of making antisemitic comments, said: “There is a little bit of a conspiracy going on”. 

Speaking at a meeting in Brighton last night, she told a 50-strong audience that she had been abroad when she was informed of her suspension last month. 

She said: “Look at the date of the Jewish Chronicle when that came out. I was actually in Turkey.“My letter suspending me was actually dated 4 May. The Jewish Chronicle published the story about me on 4 May. 

“Now, you have to put two and two together. What you will know is that somebody in the [Labour] compliance unit, or around there, is leaking information out to the media.

Conspiracy? Well ok, but just a small one, like Jackie Walker said.

Now let's have a look at the case of Tony Greenstein and his suspension from the Labour Party.  Tony was told that he was being suspended because of certain things that he had said but he wasn't told what those things were.  Curiously, The Times and The Telegraph were told what those things were and they said that Tony had said that the Jews had supported the Nazis' antisemitic Nuremberg Laws.  Tony of course had said nothing of the kind and for fear of libel action by Tony (who knows his legal stuff) both The Times and The Telegraph ran retractions.

So the false allegations against Tony Greenstein were leaked to and published by The Times and The Telegraph and before the allegations were put to Tony.  Whoever the leaker was must have known that the details were going to be published.  Conspiracy?  Ok, make it a double!  Cheers, or L'chaim as we rootless cosmopolitans like to say.

So whilst Zionists can make an "antisemitic trope" out of just about anything, the suggestion that the smear campaign against various Israel critics looks like it is indeed a bit of a conspiracy.  I know size isn't important but "little bit" appears to be a little bit of an understatement.

On a roll: Lobby targets yet another anti-racist conference

Here we go.  Just when you think they can't stoop any lower the lobby manages to stoop lower.  Having got meetings cancelled in Southampton and Toulouse they now want to get a meeting called off because it treats antisemitism and islamophobia as equally nasty.  See the Jerusalem Post:

Jewish organizations worldwide expressed shock and dismay over the weekend following the announcement that the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency is planning on holding a conference that implies an equivalence between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The first annual colloquium on fundamental rights in the EU, held by the racism watchdog organization and titled “Tolerance and respect: Preventing and combating anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hatred in Europe,” is scheduled to be held in Brussels in early October.

It will focus on the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment and violence across the continent and the “growing evidence in many European countries, especially in the past two years, of very high rates of anti-Muslim incidents, including acts of verbal and physical violence,” according to the organizers.

Jewish community leaders in Europe and elsewhere told The Jerusalem Post that despite being largely supportive of the FRA’s work, they believed it inappropriate for it to juxtapose hate directed against Muslims with anti-Semitism as if both were one and the same.

“The challenge of combating anti-Semitism would be better served by a stand-alone colloquium fully focused on the problem,” said Eric Fusfield, the legislative affairs director of the B’nai B’rith International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy. [so why doesn't B’nai B’rith organise one?]

“Opponents of anti-Semitism have tried for years to promote greater understanding of anti-Semitism as a distinct phenomenon with unique dimensions sometimes requiring unique solutions,” he said.[I'm guessing he means they want the political persuasion of zionists to be included in the protected characteristics of Jews]

“It is true that some strategies for combating anti-Semitism may apply to other forms of intolerance as well, but the fact is that, for too long, the tendency of governments and international organizations to conflate anti-Semitism with other social illnesses has served as a means of avoiding the problem rather than addressing it head on, even as the crisis facing Jewish communities has intensified in Europe and elsewhere,” he added.

While it is “critical” to deal with discrimination against Muslims in Europe, the FRA “should have been more sensitive to the long and tragic history of anti-Semitism in Europe and kept these two issues separate, particularly in the context of the most recent anti-Jewish violence,” agreed Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman.[he's hinting that antisemitism is worse but there's more]

“These problems are totally different, the origin of both problems is very different, the only common point is that both are racism,” asserted Eli Ringer of Belgium’s FORUM der Joodse Organisaties.[heaven prevent intercommunal unity against racism!]

According to Ringer, even though the FRA is exhibiting good intentions by organizing the conference, he fears that “some might profit from such a colloquium to evade the issue of anti-Semitism.”

England’s Community Security Trust, an anti-Semitism watchdog, was likewise opposed to the format of the conference.

According to Michael Whine, CST director of government and international affairs, many European countries seek to “equate anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred in the same breath and they are not the same. Muslims are suffering in Europe, and that is being monitored, but it’s certainly not coming from the Jews, whereas many of the attacks against Jews are coming from the Muslims.” [I don't wanna do the whataboutery thing here but what about when chief rabbis addres thousands of Jews at rallies supporting Israel latest Palestinian cull?  A joint conference on antisemitism and islamophobia could discuss whether such rallies are good for intercommunal relations or not. They might also discuss whether nasty generalisations against the Muslims are helpful too.]

“The growing problem of anti-Semitism in Europe comes from Muslims and the Left and anti-Israel agitators,” he added.

In its announcement of the conference, the FRA pointed to other roots for the rise in anti-Semitism, citing a recent Pew study indicating that “incitement and hostility rooted in theological and other discourse, far-right ideologies and Holocaust denial are growing in Europe.”

“There is a heightened interest [regarding anti-Semitism], obviously influenced by the recent events in Paris and Copenhagen and so on,” Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos, the head of the FRA’s Equality and Citizens’ Rights Department, told the Post, referring to a number of recent terrorist attacks against Jews by Muslim extremists.

Research by the FRA indicates that “there is a problem which we haven’t resolved yet [and] we have to do more about it,” he said.

Asked if he thought that there was any problem with juxtaposing anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the context of the conference, Dimitrakopoulos replied negatively.

“I don’t think so, because first of all tackling anti-Semitism is part of a wider effort to tackle prejudice and intolerance, and somebody who suffers from a hate crime and hate speech can be Jewish, can be Muslim, can be lesbian or gay, can be Roma, can be a member of minorities that live within societies in Europe,” he said.

“I think that the approach to single out each one and see how we can tackle each one has not worked out, and it’s very important to see how we can build up a common approach to this,” he said, adding that “it is very important also to note the Jewish communities are largely behind this effort.”

“Nobody is denying that there are problems between the groups [Muslims and Jews] but one needs to look at it also from a common perspective,” Dimitrakopoulos asserted.

Not everyone in the Jewish community was fully opposed to the way in which the colloquium is to be organized.[now you wouldn't know that from the headline, sub-title and first half of the article]

“The Jewish people do not have a monopoly on persecution,” remarked Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which sponsors Jewish- Muslim interfaith events on the continent.

“This is an opportunity for Jews and Muslims to recognize that we share both a common faith and a common fate.

Yet, the Fundamental Rights Commission of the EU must acknowledge that a contributing force to growing European anti-Semitism are elements of the Muslim community.”[it might also note that western and Jewish communal leadership support from Israel is a manifestation of and a cause of both islamophia and antisemitism]

Maurice Cohen, the chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, was likewise rather sanguine about the conference.

“As Irish people, we are all too aware of how sectarian and religious intolerance has affected relations between Catholic and Protestant traditions in Ireland, and therefore we welcome any and all initiatives by the EU or anyone seeking to examine and highlight the futility and destructive nature of intolerance and xenophobia within societies,” he said.

“Time and perhaps the conclusions of the colloquium will tell how effective this initiative will have been and whether or not it was correct to examine both anti-Semitism together with anti-Muslim hatred,” he said.[wow there's an innovation the zionists might try, ie. see what the conference actually says and concludes and take it from there]

“As a small Jewish community in Ireland, we have experienced differing degrees of intolerance over the years. It should be pointed out, however, that this has been very infrequent and not anything like that experienced by Jewish communities on the continent,” he added.

“We have excellent relations with the Muslim community here in Ireland and they have informed us that they too experience varying forms of prejudice and intolerance against their community,” he concluded.

The FRA had previously drawn Jewish ire after it removed a working definition of anti-Semitism from its website in 2013.[aha, the good old working definition which zionists all over the net are now saying is simply a common sense consideration of context before loosing off about antisemitism.  It's nothing of the kind of course but some people will say anything to defend Israel and silence its critics]

So there we have it.  There are major Jewish organisations telling anyone who cares to listen that racism against Jews and Muslims cannot be dealt with at the same time because whilst no Jews can ever be accused of racism, the Muslims most definitely can.

Now CST's Mark Gardner loses it over Tribunal result

Many thanks to Ben White for monitoring the wackier fringes of Facebook so we don't have to.

Mark Gardner of @cst_uk asks if UCU Employment Tribunal was "harbinger of hate", calls the judges "sneering bastards" on.fb.me/12r6yYt
— Ben White (@benabyad) April 5, 2013

I've written about the Community Security Trust's Mark Gardner being a bit too spontaneous before but here he is loosing off again, this time against the Employment Tribunal in the case of Fraser v University and College Union (FUCU geddit?)



David Hirsh

10 hours ago · 

• http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/104578/does-ucu-harbour-hate-you-decide

  
  

  
  

  Does the UCU harbour hate? You decide | The Jewish Chronicle

  www.thejc.com
  

  In 2006, Ronnie Fraser stood as a delegate to NATFHE conference (a predecessor to UCU). It was said at the regional meeting that Mr Fraser could not be a delegate because he was a Zionist and therefore a racist. NATFHE held an investigation and found

  Share

  • 6 people like this.
  • 

    Mark Gardner 'is the UCU tribunal a harbinger of hate?' might have been more appropriate. sneering bastards.

    9 hours ago · 1
  • 

    Michael Cohen ‘if you want to understand the Jews, read Mein Kampf'..Sally Hunt thinks that it would not necessarily be antisemitic to think that ..Planet and which one is she on springs to mind.

    8 hours ago
  • 

    Dave Rich They could at least have spelt your name right.

    5 hours ago · 1
  • 

    Jonathan Hoffman yes. next question?

    5 hours ago

Oh, if you saw my "epic folly" post earlier today, I was right about it being on the front page of the JC's print edition.  I mention that now because I hope more in the Jewish community will see what a bunch it is that pass for our communal leaders and defenders.

Timely exposé of bogus allegations of antisemitism

Here's a good long post from Antony Lerman titled Another faulty, pseudo-academic antisemitism initiative:

It was inevitable. Another Gaza offensive by Israel begins, ostensibly to stop Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel, and within a couple of days accusations of antisemitism were flying around.

Two particularly caught my attention. The first was the claim that Steve Bell, in his Guardiancartoon of 15 November, was ‘get[ting] away with using antisemitic imagery and tropes‘ because it showed Tony Blair and William Hague as puppets of Bibi Netanyahu.

The second was in a tweet about a letter to the Guardian from emeritus professor Leslie Baruch Brent who condemned the ‘disporportionate response of the Israeli government to the Hamas rocket attacks’ and concluded ‘Has the world learned nothing since Guernica?’ The text of the tweet read: ‘Hard to take @guardian opposition to #antisemitism seriously when they publish letter comparing #Israel to Nazis.’

I was especially interested in these accusations because the first was by Mark Gardner, the communications director of the Community Security Trust (CST), the private charity that acts as the defence organization of the UK Jewish community, and the second by Dave Rich, his deputy.

One of the things that is most worrying about what I believe were these false imputations of antisemitism (and I will explain my reasoning for this conclusion in my next blogpost) is that they come not simply from individuals expressing their own views, but from officials of a very influential, major registered charity, writing in their capacity as officials of that organization. The view of the Community Security Trust is seen as, and is intended to be seen as, the view of the organized UK Jewish community. And yet that wider community has no means of calling the CST to account and therefore has to suffer the consequences of its officials’ doubtful and often damaging politically-motivated interventions in public debate.

The whole thing is worth a read and is particularly timely given that yesterday (29/11/2012) saw the publication of the Community Security Trust's "Antisemitic Discourse Report 2011".  I don't know why it took so long to produce a report relating to 2011 and I might not bother reading it yet but a flavour is given by Ha'aretz:

Explicit anti-Semitism is rare in British public life, Britain's Community Security Trust said in a report on anti-Semitic discourse in Britain in 2011.

The 35-page report issued Thursday also reported that anti-Semitic themes alleging Jewish conspiracy, power and hostility to others can resonate within mainstream discourse about Israel and about so-called "Zionists."

Explicit anti-Semitism tends to occur within circles that are also racist or hateful toward other groups, according to the report.

In addition, fears that economic troubles in 2011 would spark anti-Semitism in Britain proved largely unfounded, but the trend to blame "Zionism" for anti-Muslim hatred intensified. This manifested itself, for example, in allegations that Zionism inspired Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

The British daily newspaper The Guardian reinforced its reputation as being the most subjective and contentious mainstream newspaper on issues of anti-Semitism in the context of Israel and Zionism, according to the report, despite the paper also warning against anti-Semitism in editorials.

The report also found that fears and concerns about anti-Semitism expressed by mainstream Jewish communities and bodies are routinely ignored, or even maliciously misrepresented, within what are known as progressive circles, including some media, trade unions and churches. Few other minority representative groups, if any, are treated with such reflexive suspicion and ill will, according to the report.

Ah, I think I see why it took so long. It's hard to find genuine instances of antisemitism so a little added breadth to the definition is required and then you can accuse "new antisemitism" sceptics of antisemitism too. Very clever.

UPDATE: See Antony Lerman's note at the foot of his post as follows:

This post was amended on Friday at 13:51 to make it clear that the Tweet by Dave Rich of the CST referred to in the 5th paragraph was wrongly described as being sent expressing the official view of the CST. It was from Dave Rich’s private Twitter account, which makes clear that his tweets are his personal views only. Apologies to Dave for this error.