Should Saudi Arabia behead, er, be head of key UN Human Rights Council panel?

Sorry, that headline was a paraphrase of a joke in Private Eye magazine.  I've just seen these cartoons in The Independent so I thought I'd reproduce them here.

Here's the first:

It's from this tweet from someone calling themselves the Power of One or @france7776.

Here's the second from Carlos Latuff:



The third is from Nat Shupe:



And the fourth is from Dr Kailash Chand:



Tony Greenstein has a post on the BBC's coverage of the Saudi executions on his blog.

Esther Rantzen, antisemitism and the threat of Maureen Lipman

To Flying Rodent's Twitter account again for this little gem:

None of the articles about Maureen Lipman fleeing persecution in the UK consider whether she might be, you know, a bit funny in the head.
— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) January 30, 2015

Now as far as it goes that seems to be correct.  There were a lot of articles following Lipman's interview on LBC radio including at least two papers that should have known better: The Independent and The Guardian.

But I remembered whilst waiting in a hospital for a passenger I read the Daily Mail in the reception and I was pleasantly surprised to see Esther Rantzen taking her friend, Maureen Lipman, to task over her, well, nuttiness.  Have a look at the headline:

As Maureen Lipman threatens to quit the UK because of anti-semitism, her friend ESTHER RANTZEN says... Sorry, Maureen, but you are being unfair - and ungrateful

Now googling "daily mail" "esther rantzen" "maureen lipman" yields 2,960 results.  I think it is only the Daily Mail that criticises Lipman but then it's the only paper that takes the idea of Maureen Lipman leaving the UK as a threat!

Eric Burdon cancels Israel gig but why?

The Independent is reporting that Eric Burdon has cancelled an appearance in Israel because of "threats".

 in a statement, Mr Burdon’s management, said: “We’ve been receiving mounting pressure, including numerous threatening emails, daily. The last thing I intend do is put Eric in jeopardy.” The nature of the threats is unclear, but according to Israel Radio this morning, Mr Burdon was not willing to risk his life to come to Israel.

 I can understand a person fearing for their safety given the reporting on Israel but I don't understand why these management people haven't published the threats or complained to the police.

Also, The Independent managed to open its article with a major howler.

He once sang, ‘You Gotta Get Outta This Place,’ but now Eric Burdon is not even turning up at all having deciding to withdraw from a planned concert in Israel

The song was We Gotta Get Out of This Place . Maybe the word "we" got nabbed for all that Royal nonsense.

Eric Burdon was just about to be on BBC Radio Scotland but not a word about Israel. Maybe they were too scared.

Independent letters: Responses to Howard Jacobson's Negative Hasbara

These letters were published in yesterday's Independent online and in today's print edition in response to a load of tosh, indeed a pack of lies, by Howard Jacobson, published in print on Saturday:

Criticism of Israel or hatred of Jews?

First-rate writer and columnist though he is, Howard Jacobson cannot resist conflating anti-Semitism with anti-Israelism (18 May).

Yet the big question about Israel’s hopes to continue as a Jewish state depend not on boycotts or on motions passed by a university union, but on how Israel will in future govern a non-Jewish-majority population if it fails now to accept a two-state solution when there is still – perhaps – time.

Brian Beeley, Tunbridge Wells, Kent

Israel doesn’t “just happen to be Jewish”, Howard Jacobson. In fact the current demography of Israel results from its policy of replacing Palestinian society with people from a Jewish background.

The building and expansion of Jewish-only illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank is a continuation of this policy.

Janet Green, London NW5

Howard Jacobson is absolutely right that the Palestinian movement has always had its anti-Semitic infiltrators. It is deeply dispiriting because it utterly contradicts the principal motive that drives the movement: the injustice implicit in the progressive dispossession and lockdown of a defenceless people.

A growing number of young Jews support the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign as a vehicle for getting Israel to disgorge the occupied territories, since the US and its allies are so disinclined to compel Israel to respect international humanitarian law.

They seem to do this for a number of reasons ranging from the pragmatic – Israel has swallowed more than it can digest – to the moral – the violation of Judaic morality in which, contrary to Mr Jacobson’s take, they identify the Palestinians as the persecuted party.

David McDowall, Richmond,  Surrey

And in the interests of balance:

Howard Jacobson has had the courage to expose the hypocritical anti-Semitism at the heart of the Israel boycott campaign of the University and College Union.

This will no doubt result in hate mail and worse, but may stimulate some academics to re-examine this highly selective boycott and instead support dialogue with Israeli counterparts, many of whom voice valid criticism of some Israeli government policies.

Ben Marshall, London N11

Not realising the Indie had already published these I wrote and sent this in the small hours of this morning:

Dear Sir

There are three major issues with Howard Jacobson's article, ostensibly condemning Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott an event taking place in Jerusalem.

First, he claims that the Employment Tribunal in the case of Fraser v University and College Union ruled on "a complaint that the Union was institutionally anti-Semitic" and that it "encountered not a trace of any such beast".  The case dealt with not "a complaint" of anything so vague as a "trace" of institutional antisemitism but ten very specific complaints that the UCU had racially harassed a Jewish Israel advocate on account of union activists' stance towards the State of Israel and various of Israel's illegal actions against the Palestinian people.  The tribunal decided that nothing the union had done amounted to harassment and anyway "support for the Zionist project....cannot amount to a protected characteristic.  It is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness.."

Second, having scoured the web for dirt on the presiding judge, Judge Anthony Snelson, Jacobson couldn't find anything and so he misrepresented the closest thing he could find (from 2009!) to suit his purpose: the case of a waitress complaining of sex discrimination on account of a dress she was being ordered to wear.  For Jacobson, the case hinged on the waitress being a Muslim and so he satisfied himself and sought to persuade his readers that Judge Snelson was pro-Muslim and anti-Jewish.  

This is how HR Magazine reported on the judgment:

They said of the dress: "Plainly, it related to her sex. It was gender-specific. The respondents did not introduce a summer uniform for male waiting staff. Unlike the women, the men were not required to switch to brightly coloured, figure-hugging garb."

Third, he makes a false assertion and a serious omission in the case of Stephen Hawking.  It's worth quoting Jacobson:

And now, with Stephen Hawking announcing, by means of an Israeli-made device, that he no longer wants to talk to the scientists who invented it, or to Israeli scientists who invented or might invent anything else, or indeed to Israeli historians, critics, biologists, physicists of any complexion, no matter what their relations to Palestinian scholars whom he does want to talk to, we are reminded that the cultural boycott with which he has suddenly decided to throw in his lot is entirely unJew-related, which is more good news. “Peace”, that is all Professor Hawking seeks, a word that was left out of his statement as reproduced on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign website, presumably on the grounds that everyone already knows that peace is all the PSC has ever wanted too.

But can PSC really be the only site Jacobson viewed to find Hawking's statement?  The following statement is all over the web and I copy it here from the Daily Beast:

“I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a Peace Settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank,” wrote Hawking.

And the omission?  Having listed all those great and good people that Hawking was refusing to meet there were three words missing from Jacobson's article: "Presidential Conference" and "Peres".  This meeting, like the State of Israel itself, is being presided over by a war criminal.  Surely that was worth a mention.

Yours faithfully

I wouldn't normally publish a letter before the intended recipients have a chance to accept or reject it (bad manners and bad luck!) but I think I missed the boat with this one and they're not likely to let me call one of their celeb commentators a liar, are they?

Jews against bogus allegations of antisemitism

This is the Gerald Scarfe cartoon saga revisited. Here's a letter published in The Independent from various Jewish signatories, including me, condemning the bogus allegation of antisemitism:

The suggestion by Zionist supporters that Gerald Scarfe's cartoon in The Sunday Times was anti-Semitic is a classic example of the abuse of the term. It drains the term of all meaning and, like the boy who cried wolf, desensitises people to anti-Semitism when it does rear its head.

Jennifer Lipman's grudging defence (Voices, 30 January) of Gerald Scarfe described the cartoon's portrayal of Palestinian blood cementing the Separation Wall as "profoundly offensive" because the intention of the Wall was to prevent suicide bombing. We disagree. Palestinian blood is being shed and the security pretext for the wall was a means of further confiscating Palestinian land. That was why the wall didn't follow the 1967 Green Line.

On 23 January, without warning or excuse, Israeli soldiers killed student Lobna Hannash, 21, outside al-Arroub Agricultural College. On 17 January a boy of 16, Saleh al-Amareen, was shot in the head at a refugee camp in Bethlehem. These are but two examples of why the cartoon was extremely pertinent.

Those who constantly raise the bogus cry of "anti-Semitism" whenever Israel is criticised are trading on the memory of the past oppression of Jews in order to justify the current oppression of the Palestinians.

As Jewish opponents of Zionism and racism we wish to declare that we do not believe that there was a trace of anti-Semitism in Gerald Scarfe's cartoon. Holocaust Memorial Day was indeed a fitting time to signal the evils of racism. As the Prophet Micah said: "They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity." (Micah, 3:10).

Miriam Margolyes

Alexei Sayle

Professor Jonathan Rosenhead

Professor Moshe Machover

Tony Greenstein

Mark Elf

Debbie Fink

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

Professor Haim Bresheeth

Mike Cushman

Michael Sackin

Abe Hayeem

Rosamine Hayeem

Dave Landy

Roland Rance

Rachel Lever

James Cohen

Seymour Alexander

Tom Suarez

Linda Clair

George Abendstern

Jan Hardy

Beryl Maizels

Riva Joffe

Elizabeth Carola

Frances Rifkin

Peter Cohen

Les Levidow

Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, Brighton

Good stuff. I believe the letter was originally drafted by Tony Greenstein.  Of course, in the interests of balance The Indie also published a whine from a zionist but we don't do balance here.

EU terrorises Netanyahu

Letter in The Independent:

Donald Macintyre's report from Jerusalem that the EU is giving up hope for a viable Palestinian state (12 January) is as extraordinary as it is appalling. The EU lists Israel actions: demolitions ; prohibitive planning for the Palestinians, but uninhibited for Jewish illegal settlements; the apartheid separation barrier; restricted travel except for the settlers; denial of access to water and other natural resources. This reads like the pogrom it is.

But what is worse is the mooted EU response, which consists of "calling on Israel to halt demolitions and building of settlements". Wow, I bet that makes Netanyahu plead for mercy!

Israel's main market is the EU, where Israel has special access, denied to her neighbours, with the associate status agreement. This agreement is supposed to be dependent upon a country's respect for human rights. The EU has suspended agreements where a country can be seen to be in breach. So I urge every one to write to their MEPs and demand the EU take such a course of action, before it is impossible for Palestine to exist.

Peter Downey
Bath

Here's a list of Members of the European Parliament. 

Musicians against apartheid at the Proms

The Proms is an annual musical event at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I didn't know but apparently it is organised by the BBC but now I do know I am not surprised that this year they have invited the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to perform.  Here's a letter in yesterday's Independent protesting at the BBC siding with the racist war criminals of the State of Israel yet again:

Proms exploited for arts propaganda campaign

As musicians we are dismayed that the BBC has invited the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to play at the Proms on 1 September. The IPO has a deep involvement with the Israeli state – not least its self-proclaimed "partnership" with the Israeli Defence Forces. This is the same state and army that impedes in every way it can the development of Palestinian culture, including the prevention of Palestinian musicians from travelling abroad to perform.

Our main concern is that Israel deliberately uses the arts as propaganda to promote a misleading image of Israel. Through this campaign, officially called "Brand Israel", denials of human rights and violations of international law are hidden behind a cultural smokescreen. The IPO is perhaps Israel 's prime asset in this campaign.

The Director of the Proms, Roger Wright, was asked to cancel the concert in accordance with the call from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott (PACBI). He rejected this call, saying that the invitation is "purely musical".

Israel's policy towards the Palestinians fits the UN definition of apartheid. We call on the BBC to cancel this concert.

Derek Ball (composer)

Frances Bernstein (community choir leader)

Steve Bingham (violinist)

John Claydon (saxophonist)

Malcolm Crowthers (music photographer)

Raymond Deane (composer)

Tom Eisner (violinist LPO)

Nancy Elan (violinist LPO)

Deborah Fink (soprano)

Catherine Ford (violinist, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment)

Reem Kelani (Palestinian singer, musician and broadcaster)

Les Levidow (violinist)

Susie Meszaros (violinist, Chilingirian Quartet)

Roy Mowatt (violinist, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment)

Ian Pace (pianist)

Leon Rosselson (singer-songwriter)

Dominic Saunders (pianist)

Chris Somes-Charlton (artist manager)

Leni Solinger (violinist)

Sarah Streatfeild (violinist LPO)

Sue Sutherley (cellist, LPO)

Tom Suarez (violinist, New York)

Kareem Taylor (Oud Player/Guitarist and Composer)

Miriam Walton (pianist, organist and French horn player)

I actually got this from the Israel advocacy site, Engage, where the first comment questions the musical credentials of the signatories though not the contention that Israel is an apartheid state as per the UN definition. That's left to the last comment by someone who appears not to know how the UN defines the crime of apartheid.

So it was about oil..or was it?

The Independent is reporting an exposé of the discussions regarding the sharing of the spoils of the war on Iraq.  Here's the main article:

Not about oil? what they said before the invasion

* Foreign Office memorandum, 13 November 2002, following meeting with BP: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity to compete. The long-term potential is enormous..."

* Tony Blair, 6 February 2003: "Let me just deal with the oil thing because... the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It's not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons..."

* BP, 12 March 2003: "We have no strategic interest in Iraq. If whoever comes to power wants Western involvement post the war, if there is a war, all we have ever said is that it should be on a level playing field. We are certainly not pushing for involvement."

* Lord Browne, the then-BP chief executive, 12 March 2003: "It is not in my or BP's opinion, a war about oil. Iraq is an important producer, but it must decide what to do with its patrimony and oil."

* Shell, 12 March 2003, said reports that it had discussed oil opportunities with Downing Street were 'highly inaccurate', adding: "We have neither sought nor attended meetings with officials in the UK Government on the subject of Iraq. The subject has only come up during conversations during normal meetings we attend from time to time with officials... We have never asked for 'contracts'."

So what was happening before these statements were made?

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."

The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."

Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".

BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.

Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.

The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.

Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day – seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.

Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on Fire is published next week, said: "Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq's oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.

"We see that oil was in fact one of the Government's most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize."

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.

The Independent's Patrick Cockburn doesn't think it was all about oil:

It has never seemed likely that the US and Britain invaded Iraq primarily for its oil. Reasserting US self-confidence as a super-power after 9/11 was surely a greater motive. The UK went along with this in order to remain America's chief ally. Both President Bush and Tony Blair thought the war would be easy.

But would they have gone to war if Iraq had been producing cabbages? Probably not.

Is any of this disturbing any more? It's certainly not surprising. Anyone who thought the Chilcot Inquiry was going to be a genuine attempt at getting to the truth about why the US and UK invaded Iraq will certainly be disappointed to know that the above mentioned "documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war". But did anyone believe that anyway?

I just checked the Chilcot Inquiry website to see if when they are going to report and if there would be an opportunity to include the new information and "On 02 February 2011, Sir John Chilcot said:

“We will provide a reliable account of almost nine years of the United Kingdom’s involvement in Iraq. It is a significant task. We believe it's important that we do justice to all the oral and the huge amount of written evidence we have received. My colleagues and I are also aware but completely unsurprised that different people have different perspectives of the same event. We shall also want to reflect on the many submissions we have received. We will reach our conclusions and recommendations on the basis of our analysis of all the evidence, and in the interests of transparency and public understanding, we will, where necessary, seek the de-classification of additional documentary evidence to support and explain our report.
“It is going to take some months deliver the report itself. I don't want to set an artificial deadline on our work at this stage. What I can say is that my colleagues and I want to finish our report as quickly as possible.”

The Inquiry will deliver its report to the Prime Minister. Publication will be a matter for the government but the Inquiry expects that the report will be published as a Parliamentary paper and debated in both Houses of Parliament.

So what are the chances of the oil business being included? I'm guessing they are about as likely as the oil business being excluded from the spoils of the war.

UPDATE: Following a comment from Gabriel, I'm adding the comment to the post and I've added "or was it?" to the original title, which was "So it was about oil". Now please read on:

"Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil."

That is false. The US has no interest in cheap oil. Cheap oil mean low profits for oil companies and lower accumulation for the capitalist class. The essence of capitalism is accumulation, and the cartelisation of oil that produces profits in the thousand percents (from a cost of $3 a barrel to a "market price" of $150!) is one of most potent drivers of capitalist accumulation in the world. This is both true of the US, see the stock market capitalization of Exxon-Mobile, and in the world. See Dubai, a city constructed out of oil profits.

Note that BP didn't push for the war. It pushed for a share of the spoils after the war. That is very different. Of course, oil companies are "national". Each oil company has its own little government. BP has the UK as XOM has the US and Total has France. So once there is war, there is a "national" competition over spoils. But that wasn't the driver of the war.

"Reasserting US self-confidence as a super-power after 9/11" is a very stupid "motive" for war in Iraq. It is totally circular. The US must fight a war so that it has the confidence to fight wars. But why should it fight wars?

The War in Iraq is not an isolated event. The war of Iraq was the latest stage in the DESTRUCTION of Iraq by imperialism. This started by the CIA helping Saddam Hussein take power. It followed with the US helping both Iraq and Iran to destroy each other. It then continued with the trap of Kuwait and the first Gulf War (fought with Saudi money), followed by the genocidal sanctions regime. And then there was the second Iraq war and occupation.

Iraq has been systematically destroyed from the late fifties by US interventions, and the destruction of Iraq has been US policy for over 50 years now. Talking about the causes of the war on Iraq outside this long history is nonsense.

Now why was there a policy of destroying Iraq for over 50 years? The best hypothesis is that this was done to prevent competition with Saudi Arabia, and in particular to concentrate capital accumulation through oil in the friendly and retrograde regimes of the Gulf, primarily Saudi Arabia. That meant primarily preventing Iraq from producing oil, and then preventing it from profiting from oil. In relation to this policy, BP, shell and Total were not competing. There were all on the same side as they all benefitted from a friendly and US dominated regime of accumulation through oil that centered on Saudi Arabia.

Peace in Palestine?

Here's a letter in today's Independent by my friend Diana Neslen:

It was with deep concern that I noted the headline of your report about the bomb in Jerusalem (24 March), stating it had shattered "seven years of peace". During this time, Israel has invaded Gaza, laying waste to the land and killing 1,400 people, including 300 children. 

Daily, there are incursions into Palestinian territory, to arrest and on occasion to kill Palestinians; there is an ongoing land and water grab by Israel, and Palestinians, including children, are arrested with impunity and incarcerated by the Israeli occupying forces, and are constant targets for attack by Israeli settlers.

All this while demolitions of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem continue apace and violence is meted out to non-violent demonstrators against the Wall. This does not sound like any form of peace that a neutral observer would recognise.

Diana Neslen

Jews for Justice for Palestinians, London W9

Eat liberal interventionism Gaddafi

Dave Brown cartoon in The Independent:

Interesting letters too.

Who learned what from whom?

I got a text yesterday telling me that I'd had a letter published in The Independent so I bought a copy. Here's what I was responding to:

Ian McEwan was absolutely right to criticise Jewish settlements on the West Bank (News, 21 February) when receiving his literary prize in Jerusalem. Hopefully the emerging democracies in the Arab world will soon be able to emulate Israel's openness.

Stan Labovitch

Windsor

Here's what I wrote:

Stan Labovitch seems not to have noticed that across the Arab world people have already found something to emulate in Palestine.  From where else did this generation learn the art of intifada?

And here's what they published:

Art of intifada is catching

Stan Labovitch hopes that Arabs will soon be able to emulate Israeli democracy (letter, 23 February). He seems not to have noticed that across the Arab world people have already found something to emulate in Palestine. From where else did this generation learn the art of intifada?

Mark Elf, Dagenham, Essex

Nice headline of its own but I rarely call the zionist occupation of Palestine "Israeli democracy".  Still there is one good thing.  You see how I italicised the word intifada? Well The Independent didn't see fit to do that. That means that for them the word "intifada" has now passed into the English language and that is good news.

Julie Burchill meets Alf Garnett in Palestine

I don't know why The Independent gives space to Julie Burchill but I'm guessing it's because she is provocative and the responses to her occasionally racist outpourings in favour of the State of Israel are more worth a read than anything she could produce. You can guess what she wrote by reading the responses over the last couple of days.

Here are yesterday's:

Julie Burchill's bizarre logic

For Julie Burchill to characterise film-makers such as Peter Kosminsky as "half-witted Jew-baiters" is contemptible (10 February). So far Kosminsky's four-part film The Promise is historically well-researched and fair. Burchill, however, finds any criticism of Israel offensive. Of course Israel can be proud of its achievements and democratic freedoms; but for Palestinians the knowledge that those who continue to annexe their land and who carry out policies of brutal collective punishment, may have been democratically elected, is of little comfort.

And of course there has always been a Jewish presence in Palestine. But Burchill seems genuinely unaware that the population had been overwhelmingly Palestinian Arab for 1,400 years, and that Jews still made up less than 10 per cent when the promise of a Jewish homeland was made by Britain in 1917. She is pleased that many Jews of the diaspora "made it home", and so am I, but does not seem to mind that in the process the inhabitants of hundreds of towns and villages were forcibly evicted.

David Simmonds

Epping, Essex

The bizarre logic of Ms Burchill's naive argument of the Israelites (as she quaintly calls Jews) having built a home in Palestine long before Islam even appeared would hand the United States back to Native Americans, Canada back to the Inuits, Australia back to the Aborigines, South America back to various indigenous natives...

Let us grant Ms Burchill her argument that Jews lived in Palestine years ago and deserved to return there. Historically we Palestinians were also there. There is a solution. Let us share the land, as I and many Palestinian and Israeli friends have clamoured for all our lives. It can be done. It just takes the will to do it.

Dr Faysal Mikdadi

Dorchester, Dorset

It is a pity that, for such an admirer of the Jewish intellectual heritage, so little rabbinical wisdom appears to have rubbed off on Julie Burchill. Her slant on Middle Eastern history is more Alf Garnett than Spinoza, and as a precedent for international relations it would give the builders of the Alhambra the right to reoccupy Spain, and the Romans to repossess Britain in the name of the Emperor Claudius. Residents of Brighton (and Hove) please note.

Colum Gallivan

London SW17

Julie Burchill's knee-jerk reaction to Peter Kosminsky's The Promise is disheartening. On the strength of the first episode it offered much-needed contextualisation. It brought home the centrality of the Holocaust to the current Israel/Palestine impasse. Thousands of terribly abused people arriving in a country whose inhabitants had no say in the redistribution of their land was a recipe for disaster.

As Burchill notes, there is no shortage of highly intelligent Jews (not all of whom want to be Israelis). It is now time for the truly intelligent to speak out and break the cycle of abuse rather than repeating the old mantras as Burchill does.

Maggie Foyer

London SW15

And here are today's:

Ancient 'rights' to a homeland

Julie Burchill's claim (10 February) that Israel's expansionist policies are justified by history is probably the oldest and most spurious of all such justifications.

About the time that the Israelites were committing genocide on the previous occupants of "the promised land", the British isles were occupied by various Celtic tribes. The descendants of some of those peoples now reside in the outer fringes of these islands. The majority are part of a diaspora that forms the core of the majority population of North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Should we declare England to be the natural home for these peoples and make refugees of all subsequent inhabitants and their descendants, including Ms Burchill? Of course not; the idea is ridiculous.

The truth is that no group has an inalienable right to any piece of real estate, since all have been fought over for hundreds of years and their present inhabitants are there as a result of the extermination or assimilation of the original occupiers.

Surely it is time for people to grow up, not only in the Middle East but also in other disputed territories around the world, and accept that none of us has a God-given right to live anywhere.

Frank Parker

Portlaoise, Co. Laois, Ireland

Julie Burchill is, of course, quite right about the Israelites being in the Middle East "from the start". However, while our forefathers were in the lengthy process of emerging from Africa on the only route possible, the ancestors of practically all the rest of us were probably being born in the Middle East as well.

Malcolm Addison

Woodbridge, Suffolk

There's a comment piece in the New Statesman that's worth a bit of a look at too but in case you're wondering who Alf Garnett is/was have a look at this.

That Israeli flotilla inquiry in full

Mark Steel has a very funny comment piece in The Independent today. It's about these inquiries that get held into the circumstances surrounding wars and attacks on civilians and deals mostly with Israel's ridiculous inquiry into its attack on the Gaza flotilla but also mentions Israel's stated intention to co-operate with the UN inquiry on the same thing. I'll just post the last paragraph here but the whole thing is well worth a read:

bit by bit Israel is finding it has to answer for itself publicly, and the old excuses are not so easily accepted. From now on they'll have to put a bit more thought into their bollocks, which has got to be for the good.

I don't know. I presume that if Israel is truly co-operating with a UN inquiry then it has been rigged in their favour much like its own inquiry.

Response to the Independent on Sunday swipe at Vanessa Redgrave

I'm really trying to get over to my mum's and then go to work but I keep finding post-worthy stuff. This time Brian Robinson has posted something to JPUK from the Independent on Sunday about the children of Gaza, two thirds of whom might be called children of Israel but let's not go there. Oh, they can't go there and I won't go there. Now where was I? Ah yes, the Independent on Sunday. Brian's post to the Just Peace UK list reminded that I had written to the Independent on Sunday protesting at their decontextualisation of Vanessa Redgrave's Oscar winning speech.

I know I already posted on this but here's what I wrote:

Dear Sir

I remember Vanessa Redgrave's Oscar acceptance speech where she applauded the Academy for resisting, "over the last few weeks", intimidation by the Jewish Defence League, who she described as "zionist hoodlums whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world."

It was an excellent speech and received gasps and applause in equal measure. It was falsely denounced on the night by screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, as the "propagation of personal political propaganda" when it was clearly a response to the violent politicking of a group characterised as "a right-wing terrorist group" by the FBI. And for David Randall to describe the speech as "embarrassing" strips it of its context.

It beggars belief that even in, arguably, the most Israel critical newspaper in the UK and even in an article about something as frivolous as the Oscars, space can still be found for a gratuitous swipe at an Israel critic over thirty years after an event.

Yours faithfully

Mark Elf

And here's what they published:

I remember Vanessa Redgrave's 1977 Oscar acceptance speech, in which she applauded the Academy for resisting intimidation by the Jewish Defence League, whom she described as "Zionist hoodlums whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world" ("Oscars Babylon", 7 March). It was an excellent speech and received gasps and applause in equal measure. To describe it as "embarrassing" strips it of its context.

Mark Elf

Dagenham, Essex

I can't complain. It was big of them to publish it at all really.

OK mum, here I come.

Independent letters

There are five letters on Palestine in The Independent today, three of which challenge Israel's "right" to exist as a Jewish state. They were responding to a letter from a chap called Dr (!) Jacob Amir in yesterday's Indie:

Criticism of Israel's policies, even very harsh criticism, is totally legitimate and has nothing to do with antisemitism (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, 8 February) . It is being done in Israel itself daily. But critics, Jewish or not, who deny the right of Israel to exist, as the nation-state of the Jewish people, while not opposing any other nation-state, exhibit a clear racist attitude and can be rightfully called antisemites.

Dr Jacob Amir

jerusalem

And here are the responses:

Israelis, Jews and antisemitism

Why is it antisemitic to deny the right of Israel to exist (letter, 9 February)? If I call for a united Ireland, thereby denying the right of majority Protestant Northern Ireland to exist, I am not opposing Protestants, only arguing that they would be better off in a different political environment, like the Protestants of Donegal. I am not insulting or racially abusing them, or defacing the graves of their departed.

To call for a united state of Palestinians and Israelis where neither is privileged is to oppose discrimination, not to uphold it. We should look at the example of Daniel Barenboim; his orchestra, the West-East Divan, is composed of Jewish and Arab musicians, where excellence alone is privileged. To many people Barenboim is showing the way forward; his orchestra is a template for the future of Israel-Palestine. Surely no one could call him antisemitic.

Christopher Walker

London W14

Dr Jacob Amir is wrong (letter, 9 February). There is nothing wrong and certainly nothing racist about being opposed to the existence of the State of Israel while not opposing the existence of the other nation states.

Nation states are states that represent all of the people of the countries they rule over. Israel is the state of the world's Jews and it exists at the expense of the native non-Jewish Palestinian people. There is no other state that exists more for people that do not come from there than for people that do come from there.

Mark Elf

Dagenham, Essex

Dr Jacob Amir claims Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Britain is the nation-state of British citizens, regardless of their ethnic or religious background; can he not tell the difference?

Janet Green

London NW5

Quite a result, that.