Geoffrey Alderman at Jewish Telegraph: WHY THE ANTISEMITISM DEFINITION IS FLAWED

I nab these articles by Geoffrey Alderman at The Jewish Telegraph to keep them safe. The url now is: https://www.jewishtelegraph.com/alderman.html but on past performance it will be overwritten by his next article. I also save them at the Wayback Machine.

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN WHY THE ANTISEMITISM DEFINITION IS FLAWED

JUSTICE is a peer-reviewed journal published by the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. Its autumn 2018 edition carried an informative article by Michael Whine tracing the history of what is known as the “Working Definition” of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance on May 26, 2016. Whine — currently a member of the Council of Europe’s Commission against Racism and Intolerance — is a leading expert on all things antisemitic. His article provides a succinct account of how the Working Definition came about and of its embrace by the UK government and by numerous governmental organs in this country. He reminds us that although the government “formally adopted” the Working Definition in January, 2017, and although its espousal since then by well over 100 devolved elected governmental bodies in the UK — not to mention political parties and other entities — has endowed it with an almost sacrosanct status, it is not, in fact, “a binding legal act”. As Whine explains: It was not designed to be transposed into European or domestic legislation, and this was made clear by the team that drafted it . . . it was only meant to be a guide to assist police officers and human rights activists to understand contemporary antisemitism, and not the basis for legislation. The Working Definition — the grammatical construction of which is indeed “cumbersome”, as Whine concedes — is confusing, not least because it is composed of two unequal parts. The first consists of the definition itself. The second comprises 11 examples of what that definition might mean in practice. The definition declares: Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. So antisemitism “may” be expressed as hatred towards Jews, but need not necessarily be so expressed. If not, then surely we’re entitled to ask how else it might be expressed. The definition is silent on this point. The 11 examples are interesting, not least because they embed internal contradictions. One of them affects to condemn as antisemitic “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”. But the preamble that introduces all 11 examples explains that manifestations of antisemitism “might include the targeting of the State of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”. Well, a number of political regimes around the world have been criticised because they are alleged to be pursuing policies reminiscent of the Nazis. For example, the policy of Myanmar in relation to the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities. So how in principle can it be antisemitic to draw a comparison between “contemporary” Israeli policy and that of the Nazis?  [For the sake of clarity I state now that I do not believe any Israeli government has, in fact, ever pursued policies remotely reminiscent of the Nazis. The point I make is one of principle]. Another of the examples declares it to be antisemitic to accuse Jewish citizens “of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations”. This exemplar strikes me as very valid — up to a point.  There is no world Jewish conspiracy. There is no secret Jewish “government” endeavouring to manipulate to the exclusive advantage of the Jewish people the destinies of mankind.  But I know many Jews who hold dual citizenship — they are, for example, citizens of both Israel and the UK — who, under certain circumstances, would act (and have indeed acted) in the interests of Israel rather than of Great Britain.  How can it possibly be antisemitic to point this out? The examples also allege that it is antisemitic to make “stereotypical allegations about . . . the power of Jews as a collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about Jews controlling the media”. Well, in my book British Jewry since Emancipation, I point out — as other scholars have done — that in the early 20th century there was a case to be made in support of the view that Jews controlled important parts of the British film industry (of course, in so doing they had no Jewish “agenda” in mind). In summary, those who framed the IHRA’s Working Definition of antisemitism were well-intentioned, and the definition itself has commendable features. But it’s merely a work-in-progress. And deeply flawed into the bargain! E-MAIL: comment@jewishtelegraph.com

Geoffrey Alderman on Margaret Hodge

Here's Geoffrey Alderman in The Jewish Telegraph taking a bit of a swipe at Margaret Hodge.  Because of The Jewish Telegraph's habit of pasting the latest article over the previous one I save Alderman's pieces to the Wayback Machine and copy and paste them here:

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN DAME MARGARET HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO

THE abysmal showing of the Labour Party in the recent European Parliament elections is the cumulative outcome of many factors. Prominent among them are said to be the prevalence of anti-Jewish prejudice in the party and the party’s seeming inability to confront the difficulty head-on. Of course Labour has a problem with antisemitism. But so do the Tories. So does virtually every mainstream political party in this country. In Labour’s case, however, antisemitism (too often not even disguised as anti-Zionism) has led to the exodus from the party of some of its members, and dire public warnings from others, among the most prominent of whom is Dame Margaret Hodge, Labour MP for Barking and former leader of Islington council. On April 17, in a short but forceful speech in the House of Commons, Dame Margaret gave public expression to her concerns. Born in 1944 as Margaret Oppenheimer to Jewish parents then living as refugees in Egypt, she spoke movingly of members of her family who had been murdered by the Nazis, and she recalled how, on a visit to Auschwitz, she gazed upon a mound of suitcases, one of which she recognised as it bore the initials of her uncle. Powerful stuff! And, politically, more compelling still for what Hodge had to say specifically — and not for the first time — about the Labour Party of which she has been for more than 50 years a member and remains so to this day. Ever since Jeremy Corbyn’s election as party leader, Hodge has, in fact, spent a great deal of time attacking her own party for not doing enough to stamp out antisemitism in its ranks, and she has made no secret of her personal disdain for Corbyn, whom (in a celebrated incident in the Commons on July 17 last year) she reportedly accused of being “an antisemitic racist”. Dame Margaret is unquestionably Jewish. Yet, according to her own testimony (offered in the April, 2019, debate): “My upbringing has been entirely secular. “I have never practised Jewish religious traditions. Neither of my two husbands were Jews. I am a consistent critic of the governments of Israel.” Nonetheless, she added, “my Jewish heritage is central to my being”. In an article in the online Spectator on May 8, I drew attention to the fact that as Labour leader of Islington council from 1982 to 1992, Hodge appears to have played a part — though exactly what part remains unclear — in the council’s decision to approve a planning application that would have led to the destruction of the original 1843 cemetery of the West London Synagogue and the sale of the land to developers. I was part of the ultimately successful campaign to have the decision reversed. So was Jeremy Corbyn. Was Mrs Hodge personally in favour of the proposal? We simply do not know. Hodge has claimed — in The Observer on July 21, 2103 — that she feels “passionately Jewish”. In October, 1986, members of Islington council — not all of whom were Jewish, by the way— were moved to protest against the scheduling of a race relations committee meeting on Yom Kippur. Council leader Hodge apparently saw nothing untoward in attending the meeting. Three years later, the media reported that members of Hackney’s Jewish communities were holding “top-level meetings with Islington council” in an attempt to buy an Islington-owned property in Stamford Hill, which the communities wanted to turn into a nursery and old people’s home. According to press reports, “Islington leader, Margaret Hodge . . . informed groups that Islington intended to use the building for people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation”. Hodge denied that the move was in any way discriminatory. But her apparent lack of empathy with the educational and social needs of practising Orthodox Jews surely needs some explaining. If Hodge wishes to pursue a totally secular lifestyle, that is no business of mine or yours, but she certainly has some explaining to do! E-MAIL: comment@jewishtelegraph.com If you have a story or an issue you want us to cover, let us know - in complete confidence - by contacting newsdesk@jewishtelegraph.com, 0161-741 2631 or via Facebook / Twitter

Geoffrey Alderman on JEWS WHO TURNED AWAY KINDERTRANSPORT KIDS

Here's another article by Geoffrey Alderman in the Jewish Telegraph which, like the previous one will probably be overwritten by the next.  So off to the Wayback Machine go I and I'm posting the article here too.

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN JEWS WHO TURNED AWAY KINDERTRANSPORT KIDS LAST month an important conference took place to mark the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport. Two leading researchers — Dr Louise London and Professor Paul Weindling — presented what was reportedly regarded as shocking evidence relating to the choice of unaccompanied German and Austrian children who were — or were not — permitted to enter the UK under the Kindertransport scheme. Children were refused places if it was thought that they had ‘disabilities’ or had ‘too Jewish’ an appearance. What was wanted were children who were not religious and so could be all the more easily integrated into British society. Prof Weindling cited the case of a Viennese Jewish boy whom the authorities described as “very well behaved but very slightly mentally backward”. The application made on his behalf was rejected. We do not know what fate befell him. As Dr London remarked, the “problem of what to do with the Jews took precedence over efforts to save them”. I describe the evidence presented by Prof Weindling and Dr London as “shocking”. Unfortunately, those of us who have researched the Anglo-Jewish response to the Holocaust cannot have regarded it was shocking at all. Key to the choice of Kindertransport children was the Jewish banker Otto Schiff, head of the London-based Jews’ Temporary Shelter and ‘Overseer of the Poor’ of the United Synagogue. Schiff worked hand-in-hand with the Aliens Department of the Home Office, so that, in practical terms, Jewish refugees from Nazism were allowed into Britain — or were refused entry — on his authority. The Home Office trusted Schiff because it knew that, in his approach to this task, he would bring to bear prejudices and preferences of which the government approved. The Viennese boy was not rejected by the British government, but by Kindertransport officials in London. That is to say, by fellow Jews! Is there a case to be made in defence of Schiff and his colleagues? Anti-Jewish prejudice appeared to be on the rise in the UK at that time. With a handful of notable exceptions, the Anglo-Jewish leadership — at the head of which was the then-Board of Deputies president, Mancunian barrister Neville Laski — believed that allowing more foreign-born Germanic-speaking Jews into this country would add fuel to the fire. Laski had no qualms in publicly articulating the view that Jews, by their conduct, fostered antisemitism. In his book Manchester and the Rescue of the Victims of European Fascism (published 2011), the late Manchester Jewry historian Bill Williams reminds us that in December, 1935, the Manchester-based Women’s Lodge of Bnai Brith resolved that “the spread of antisemitism in England is largely brought about by ourselves”. But I need to stress that what was true of Manchester was equally true of London. Indeed within British Jewry this view was widely shared. And because it was widely shared, during the 1930s the official organs of Britain’s Jewish communities did their best to ensure that the least possible number of Jewish refugees were admitted to the UK, and that, as far as possible, only those were admitted who might be judged to be the most easily inclined to assimilate into the host society. Beyond that, the fewer foreign-born Jews who were permitted to enter the UK, the better. And what of those heavily traumatised children lucky enough to be chosen for the Kindertransport? Had they all been found billets in Jewish homes, their sufferings might have been lessened. But in 1943, Dayan Dr Isidor Grunfeld, of the United Synagogue’s Beth Din, recalled how in 1938, when the Kindertransport began arriving, Jews who had been only too willing to donate money to refugee causes “showed themselves very reluctant to take Jewish refugee children into their homes”. While a case can be made in defence of Otto Schiff and his colleagues, it strikes me as weak. As for Schiff himself, I never cease to be amazed at the praise still lavished upon him. I noted with dismay that as part of the 2018 Holocaust Memorial Day events, a number of posthumous awards were made to ‘Heroes of the Holocaust’. Among the recipients was Otto Schiff, upon whose activities the then-Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, waxed lyrical. Indeed, so preciously revered is Schiff’s memory in certain circles that a Jewish Care home in Golders Green actually bears his name. I am outraged. E-MAIL: comment@jewishtelegraph.com If you have a story or an issue you want us to cover, let us know - in complete confidence - by contacting newsdesk@jewishtelegraph.com, 0161-741 2631 or via Facebook / Twitter

© 2019 Jewish Telegraph
www.JewishTelegraph.com

The original of this article can be seen at the Wayback Machine.

Geoffrey Alderman on Jeremy Corbyn in Jewish Telegraph

I'm sad to say that The Jewish Telegraph website is a cheap and not very cheerful affair. I don't know if they maintain an archive but I couldn't find it if they do. Geoffrey Alderman came to the defence of Jeremy Corbyn just recently in the article you see below. He wrote another similar one in The Spectator. I just wanted a quick reread of the Jewish Telegraph article but, alas, it has now gone. This is the url for the original article https://www.jewishtelegraph.com/alderman.html. Click it now and it takes you to his latest article with no pointer to his previous stuff.

Well thank goodness for the Wayback machine.  The Wayback machine is a way of archiving web pages that you think might change or disappear. Simply take a web page's url and paste it into the box marked "Save Page Now" and Wayback saves the page as it was when you do it.  Well as luck would have it, someone did just that with this https://www.jewishtelegraph.com/alderman.html.  And so I can bring you this:   https://web.archive.org/web/20190419203707/https://www.jewishtelegraph.com/alderman.html

It is the only Jewish Telegraph page ever saved to the Wayback machine, so far anyway.

So now, if you see a web page that you think is going to disappear or change and you want the original, screengrab and archive in the Wayback Machine.

Now read on....

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN HORRORS! CORBYN’S A ‘PM IN WAITING’ – ACCEPT IT

WE live in interesting times. Earlier this month, our beleaguered prime minister, Theresa May, invited into 10 Downing Street Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Her purpose in extending this invitation — which he graciously accepted — was to enlist his support in the current crisis over the precise terms of the UK’s exit from the European Union. But don’t worry. I’m not going to bore you about Brexit. My purpose, rather, is to focus on the person of Jeremy Corbyn, whom we must now clearly regard as a potential prime minister. The opinion polls, which for months have been showing the Corbyn-led Labour Party trailing the May-led Tories, are now announcing a Labour lead. I would be the last person to insist that we must trust the polls. We mustn’t. But if a general election was held soon, it is entirely possible that Labour would win more seats than the Conservative Party, whose back has been well and truly broken on the Brexit wheel. In that scenario, the Queen would be bound to call on Corbyn to form a minority government. What, from the point of view of British Jewry, would such a government hold in store? In spite of numerous scare stories, I honestly can’t see such a government banning shechita or brit mila. If Diane Abbott, currently Shadow Home Secretary, found herself actually in charge of the Home Office, would she outrage her many charedi constituents by closing down synagogues and moving to deprive Jews of the rights of British citizenship? Of course not. We might indeed see a Corbyn-led government cosying-up to the BDS movement. Labour is already committed to recognising a Palestinian state “immediately” it forms a government, so such a recognition is a probability. Would Israel then sever diplomatic relations with the UK? I doubt it. The recognition of a Palestinian state would remain a symbolic but, in practical terms, meaningless gesture. Corbyn’s Foreign Secretary (the tactless Emily Thornberry) might enjoy striding on to the podium at the UN Security Council to support — perhaps even to propose — some blood-curdling resolution denouncing the Jewish state as a neo-colonialist plot. She would do so safe in the knowledge that American president Donald Trump would veto it. And let’s remember that on December 23, 2016, in the dying days of the Obama-led administration, a UN Security Council resolution condemning in the most explicit terms Jewish control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem — including the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and the Western Wall — was adopted with the full-hearted consent and approbation of Theresa May and her tactless Foreign Secretary, one Boris Johnson. The Tory-controlled UK government could have abstained. It could even have exercised its veto. It chose to do neither. Reacting to that act of betrayal, I outlined in this column on January 13, 2017, a number of concrete measures that those who order the affairs of British Jewry might have taken to signal the community’s anger. I suggested that May and Johnson could be disinvited from all communal events, and that Jewish groups should withdraw from co-operation with May’s government — for instance over security issues and the anti-terrorism “Prevent” agenda. A communal macher took me aside and pointed out that these bold suggestions would never be acted upon, because those who order the affairs of British Jewry would never forego the chance of a Downing Street photoshoot and the yichus that such an opportunity apparently confers. He’s right. By the same token, our narcissistic communal leadership would positively salivate on receiving, and being able to courteously accept, an invitation from Prime Minister Corbyn to take morning coffee or afternoon tea at No 10. As a matter of fact, Jeremy Corbyn has an impressive demonstrable record of supporting Jewish communal initiatives. In 2010, he put his name to an Early Day Motion — tabled by Diane Abbott in the Commons — calling on the UK government to facilitate the settlement of Yemeni Jews in Britain. He was supportive of Jewish efforts to facilitate the speedy issue of death certificates by the North London coroner. In June, 2015, he took part in a ceremony in his Islington constituency to commemorate the original site of the North London Synagogue. Of course, there’s another side to this story. In relation to Jewish sensitivities, Corbyn has on too many occasions acted foolishly, I suspect without thinking through the long-term consequences of his actions. The fact remains that he is a prime minister “in waiting”. We must learn to accept that reality. E-MAIL: comment@jewishtelegraph.com If you have a story or an issue you want us to cover, let us know - in complete confidence - by contacting newsdesk@jewishtelegraph.com, 0161-741 2631 or via Facebook / Twitter

Geoffrey Alderman now and then...

I got this copy of a Geoffrey Alderman JC opinion piece from the very useful Newspaper Direct website.  I don't know how it works but when I look for a newspaper article that I can't find on the newspaper's own site I often find it here.  It appeared in the print edition of the Jewish Chronicle dated 3 April 2015:

Racists seeking to destroy Israel

 

They deny to Jews that which they allow other ethnicities

UNDER WHAT circumstances should criticism of the state of Israel be deemed “illegitimate?” The nowcancelled Southampton University conference, “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism”, brought this subject into focus. But the question is hardly new.

Those of you with long memories may recall that, in 1956, at the time of the AngloFrench invasion of Egypt, a number of Jewish and — ostensibly — Zionist members of the British parliament found themselves at the receiving end of much communal opprobrium because they criticised Israel, whose armed forces had taken advantage of the invasion in order to neutralise terrorist cells in Gaza and the Sinai peninsula.[it was Israel that invaded Egypt in the first instance.  Israel occupied Gaza and Sinai until the yanks ordered them out.  I thought everyone knew that. Apparently the historian, Professor Alderman doesn't know that]

The MP for East Willesden — the highly vocal career Labour-Zionist Maurice Orbach — voted with his socialist colleagues to condemn the Anglo-French-Israeli initiative, and was subsequently booted out of his seat in a campaign whipped up by angry Jewish constituents. But in North-West Leicester there were few Jewish voters, and the local Labour MP there, who also voted against the Suez adventure, survived wider, vicious criticism of him. His name was Barnett Janner and, at the time, he was president of both the Zionist Federation and the Board of Deputies. What is more, at the deputies’ meeting on November 18, 1956, a large majority expressed full confidence in him.

There was a time when anti-Zionism was not merely a significant force in Anglo-Jewish affairs, it was fashionable. We need to remind ourselves that a former British chief rabbi (Hermann Adler) denounced Zionism from the pulpit, that the founding father of the Federation of Synagogues (Samuel Montagu) was an enthusiastic anti-Zionist, and the founding father of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue (Claude Montefiore) went so far as to blame Zionism for the rise of Hitler. [whereas Alderman would become quite grateful for the rise of Hitler] But into this sombre history lesson we need to inject the word “context.” The handful of Londonand Manchester-based Satmar chasidim who routinely join anti-Zionist demonstrations are campaigning against a nation-state that exists. The Jewish intellectuals and media personalities who apparently sympathise with them want to dismantle a vibrant liberal democracy —Israel — to have it replaced with a larger political entity in which antisemitism will be permitted to flourish. On paper, the “one state” that these extremes of left and right desire would be a purely secular entity. In practice it would become an Islamists’ paradise.[do vibrant liberal democracies ethnically cleanse whole swathes of population on the basis of assumptions as to how they might vote?]

In principle, today, we ought still to be able to distinguish anti-Zionism from antisemitism. In practice, the one has merged with the other. Anti-Zionists do not oppose the creation of a Jewish nation-state — such a state already exists. What they oppose is the continued existence of a Jewish nation-state. In seeking to dismantle that state, therefore, they expose their antagonism towards the very concept of Jewish self-determination.[there's nothing wrong with opposing the concept and reality of Jewish self-determination]

This is true especially of those who deny that there is any such entity as a Jewish “nation”. These positions are inherently racist: they deny to the Jews that which they freely grant to other ethnicities, and they do so on purely ethnic or racial grounds.[I know of no community for whom national self-determination is demanded on grounds of ethnicity and we shall see where Geoffrey Alderman stands on the question of ethnic equality]

None of this means that policies of Israeli governments cannot be legitimately criticised. Of course they can. But we need to recognise that, fundamentally, what drives the BDS movement is not antagonism towards Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, but hostility towards the concept of Jewish nationhood. This truth has been recognised by no less an opponent of the settlements than Professor Norman Finkelstein who, in 2012, launched a blistering attack on the Palestine Solidarity Movement’s campaign for the “right of return”, condemning it as a cover for its ambition to destroy Israel.[actually the BDS movement makes no demand regarding one or two states because no one knows how the people of Palestine will want the area/s constituted.  Finkelstein condemned not so much the idea of abolishing the State of Israel as a Jewish state but what he claimed to see as BDS supporters' lack of openness about the consequences of the right of return. To be sure Finkelstein is claiming to support Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state but he certainly does not decry its opponents as being antisemitic]

Finkelstein was absolutely right. Criticise Israel, if you must, to your heart’s content. Demonstrate to your utmost against Israeli domestic or foreign policy.

But do not espouse a cause that calls, even if indirectly, for Israel’s destruction and expect not to be condemned as a racist. For that is what you are.[we'll see who is being racist in just a moment]

Now I don't know why that piece has not appeared on the JC website but Geoffrey Alderman's latest offering on line is dated 8 April 2015.  This is the proposal whose opponents Geoffrey Alderman accuses of racism:

 under international law and in principle ethnic Jews have the right of settlement throughout the area of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River (including what is known as the West Bank), that this right extends to Jews whether or not they are citizens of the state of Israel, but not to Israeli citizens who are not ethnically Jewish, and that the state of Israel has a legal obligation to take any step and all steps necessary to uphold this right. 

Now that pretty much sums up Israel as is but it is rare to see it set out in such obviously racist detail. It is also self-exposing as to why there should be no such thing as Jewish self-determination.

Let's now have a quick look at how Alderman deals with the idea of abolishing the State of Israel:

It has been argued that the ultimate purpose of the conference was to cloak in a veneer of academic respectability the campaign for the delegitimisation of the Jewish state. Let us assume for a moment that it was. There is no subject on God's Earth that cannot be discussed in a university. Nor is it true that Israel is the only country whose legitimacy is currently being called into question. The whole purpose of the Scottish National Party is to call into question the legitimacy of the United Kingdom. There has recently been a referendum on that very subject.

Of course, the Scottish independence referendum debate didn't include any discussion of privileging this or that ethnicity over any or all others and Alderman manages to avoid alleging racism against either the SNP or the unionist parties.

But what of the "miscellany of Jewish interests" that had the conference cancelled?

Some terrible precedents have been created. I refer not merely to the gross betrayal of academic freedom. It will be said - rightly - that this betrayal was perpetrated at the behest and with the active connivance of Jewish interests. For antisemites the world over this is indeed manna from heaven.

Well yes that's true but the professor wasn't always so backward in calling forth what he saw as Jewish power.  Back in 2012, Jonathan Hoffman, for the Zionist Federation suggested to the Board of Deputies of British Jews that they adopt a policy of boycotting The Guardian.  And here's Geoffrey Alderman in the Jewish Chronicle on 26 January 2012:

Earlier this month, the Board of Deputies declined to adopt a resolution urging "all those who oppose antisemitism to refrain from buying the Guardian or advertising in it". The proposal, tabled by Zionist Federation vice-president Jonathan Hoffman, had already been rejected by the Board's defence division but the division's own alternative motion (a wrecking tactic if you ask me), noting the paper's "continued biased and anti-Israel reporting", and deploring the lack of action by the Press Complaints Commission, was also rejected. So, apart from rejecting both propositions, the Board did precisely nothing......

......my primary concern is with the arguments deployed by those who opposed the motion, and who presumably lobbied to ensure that it was defeated and its message never sent.

There is, for example, the protestation of Jonathan Arkush, the Board's senior vice-president, who reportedly instructed the deputies that, although he himself found the Guardian to be "odious", he nonetheless believed that "a boycott would be counter-productive and would damage the Jewish community's reputation".

What did he mean by "counter-productive?" That the Guardian's circulation would increase? That more companies rather than fewer would rush to advertise in its pages? And what did he mean by "damage" to Anglo-Jewry's "reputation"? That instead of being thought of as a docile collection of trembling Israelites we would henceforth be viewed with a great deal more respect and even - who knows? - with a tinge, a smidgen, of anxious deference?

I am told that, within the Board's defence division, some arguments equally as foolish were also placed on the table: that the passage of Hoffman's motion might suggest that Jews control the media (we should be so lucky though, if this fear is genuinely held, then the Board really should condemn the closing down of Press TV, which Tehran is blaming on the Jews); that a substantive and perhaps heated debate on this would reveal that British Jews were not of one mind (when have we ever been so?); that the Board did not believe in boycotts (not even of Iranian oil?). But of all these arguments surely none was more brainless than the argument that the adoption of the motion would play into the hands of antisemites.

Now Geoffrey Alderman has a very funny idea about what's racist and what's not.  He's also a little inconsistent when it comes to arguing his case whatever that might be.  I must say that his proposal for the world's Jews in Palestine would have been a laugh riot read out to an academic audience, presumably by a straight faced Alderman, assuming that is, that he wasn't joking.  But it's disappointing that he wasn't able to put his case for Jewish supremacy to the Southampton conference because I'm fully confident that in putting his case for Israel he would have made the most eloquent case against it.

UPDATE 11:02 17/4/2015: I've now found the Racists seeking to destroy Israel article on line at The Jewish Chronicle website.

Professor Alderman Hasn't got a Prayer

Here's a little noticed quirky comment from Professor Geoffrey Alderman in the Jewish Chronicle the week before last.  Last week's edition was the one that had Jonathan Goldberg QC ridiculing the notion of support for the Zionist project or attachment to the State of Israel being intrinsic to the Jewish identity.

Now let's have a look at what Alderman says:

The argument that "an attachment to Israel… is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness" is so manifestly absurd (I had only to consult my daily prayer book to reassure myself on this point) that I cannot believe any higher court would accept it. But if, indeed, at least for the moment, this ridiculous argument holds centre stage, it is blindingly obvious that it must be challenged - if not in a court of law then in some other public forum.

Now let's have a look at Jonathan Goldberg QC's comment on this:

The critics have chosen to take five words out of context from this much longer passage in order to condemn the court for allegedly not recognising the attachment between the Jewish religion and Israel.

In context, the court was saying no more than that an attachment to the modern State of Israel (“modern” is important here) is not intrinsic to Jewishness. And that is surely correct.

Apparently Geoffrey Alderman has a very modern or even post-modern Jewish prayer book.

Of course, if his prayer book does include prayers for the modern State of Israel this begs the question of what the Jewish identity consisted of before the state was established.  There's also the fact that prayer books in Hebrew and English which do mention or include prayers for the President and State of Israel also tend to include a prayer for Queen Elizabeth II, "Defender of the Faith".  Would Alderman say that royalism is intrinsic to the Jewish identity?  Maybe he would....

CORRECTION: According to Roland Rance in the comments

the prayer book includes a prayer for "the President OF the State of Israel", not "the President AND the State of Israel". Not quite the same thing...

Yup, not quite the same thing and it still begs the question, what does Professor Alderman's prayer book say that makes the Zionist project or the State of Israel intrinsic to the Jewish identity?

Zio-Nazi comparisons update

I've only just seen a letter in yesterday's Independent responding to this nasty little one from the increasingly unhinged Professor Geoffrey Alderman:

The Palestine Mandate of 1922, read together with Article 80 of the UN Charter, confers on Jews the right of settlement in areas of that Mandate that subsequently fell under Jordanian control.

These areas of course include East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The government of Israel is therefore fully entitled – indeed obliged – to permit and facilitate Jewish settlement there.

Those who oppose this settlement need to reflect on whether they are not indeed, at least in some sense, "carrying on Hitler's work".

Professor Geoffrey Alderman

London NW9

And here's the response:

Professor Alderman (letters, 23 May) says that any opposition to Israeli settlements is "continuing Hitler's work". Nazi policies included Lebensraum (with forced evictions to make way for people of a specific ethnicity), ghettoisation, and withholding human rights based on race. I think the comparison to Nazism is gratuitous, offensive, and irrelevant. But if one is brazen enough to make it, one should at least think it through fully.

James Ingram

London SE1

It's funny how some zionists jump through hoops to accuse others of trivialising the holocaust and yet when one of their own commits the offence we don't hear a peep out of them.

JC on the peacemakers

That's the Jewish Chronicle, not Jesus Christ. Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian's woman in Jerusalem has just got wind of Geoffrey Alderman's op-ed piece celebrating the murder of ISM activist, Vittorio Arrigoni:

I was sent a link this week to a piece published in the Jewish Chronicle by historian Geoffrey Alderman, the opening sentence of which I found pretty shocking.

Under the headline This Was No Peace Activist, Alderman wrote:

"Few events - not even the execution of Osama bin Laden - have caused me greater pleasure in recent weeks than news of the death of the Italian so-called 'peace activist' Vittorio Arrigoni."

Arrigoni, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was murdered in Gaza last month after being abducted by Islamic extremists. He was strangled with a plastic cord. Hamas subsequently killed those responsible for Arrigoni's death.

His murder, wrote Alderman, "was immediately pounced upon by the western media as an affront to the civilised world". This is indeed the case; many newspapers - including the Guardian - ran stories andprofiles describing Arrigoni's commitment to the Palestinian cause and the extremist stance of those who killed him.

But, wrote Alderman, "the truth is very different. Vittorio Arrigoni, a disciple of the International Solidarity Movement, had travelled to Gaza to assist in the breaking of the Israeli naval blockade. As a supporter of Hamas he was a consummate Jew-hater."

He said Arrigoni's Facebook page - in Italian - contained "explicit anti-Jewish imagery".

I asked Alderman - who has occasionally contributed to the Guardian - whether he regretted recording his "pleasure" at Arrigoni's death. "It's still my view," he told me on the phone from London. "He was a Jew-hater like Adolf Hitler. Yes, he deserved to die for being a Jew-hater. I rejoiced in the death of a Jew-hater. I have no regrets."

Jeff Halper, an Israeli activist and academic, who knew Arrigoni well, said Alderman's charges against him were "outrageous".

"Sometimes things are so outrageous there simply isn't a response. Vik [Arrigoni] was unique. He was political and he had strong opinions. But the idea that he would differentiate between someone Jewish and someone non-Jewish - there has never been a hint of that."

Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, told me he had no qualms about publishing the piece. "I have no problem at all with publishing it. I don't agree with [Alderman], it's not my view - it's his."

He rejected the description of Arrigoni as a "peace activist". "He was a member of the ISM, for God's sake. That's not peace activism, that's hard core Palestinian terror."

Neta Golan, an Israeli founder of the ISM, denied the organisation supported terror attacks or backed Hamas. "The ISM supports the avenue of non-violent and popular resistance," she told me. "It is a grassroots group, and we will work with anyone who wants to organise non-violent resistance. The ISM does not have a position on internal Palestinian politics."

She also rejected suggestions that Arrigoni was anti-Semitic. "It was so obvious he wasn't a racist. Absolutely he was not anti-Semitic."

I never met Arrigoni and I don't know what his views (if any) on Jews, as opposed to his views on Israel, were. Attempts to conflate opposition to Israeli policies with anti-Semitism are not new.

Scenes of Palestinian militants handing out sweets to celebrate suicide bombings or other deadly attacks are familiar - and sickening.

Now Alderman's rejoicing in the death of a pro-Palestinian activist seems to me a new and repugnant development.

Comments are still open for now.

Thanks to Senhal in the comments in an earlier thread.