On December 4 I wrote an editorial for Pajamas Media about the scurrilous Channel Four television documentary presented by British conservative commentator Peter Oborne exposing the “power” of the Anglo-Jewish lobby.
Now I would like to turn to some items following on that story.
No sooner had the program aired than the Jew-avoidance champion Richard Ingrams wrote in his Independent column that it was about time somebody stood up to the Zionists. Then on November 28 he hit the jackpot with a real doozy: he accused former Bush advisers Doug Feith, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz (he who liveth with a Libyan lady) of being ardent Zionists who are “more concerned with preserving the security of Israel than that of the U.S.” Let’s stop and look at that for a moment: he is saying that the triumvirate of Jewish neocons was subverting the security of the United States. Isn’t that an offense punishable by life behind bars? Would Mr. Ingrams like to let us know exactly how Messrs. Feith, Wolfowitz, and Perle were ignoring the security of the American people in favor of the Israelis?
Now, why did I refer to Richard Ingrams as a “Jew-avoidance champion” a moment ago? Well, in the 2007 documentary Kike Like Me, director Jamie Kastner notes that Ingrams felt ill-disposed towards opening letters addressed to him at the Observer if the name on the envelope looked Jewish. And before bloggers accuse me of being obsessed with anti-Semitism, please note that in the Jewish Chronicle of November 25, Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation UK, with whom I appeared on the terrifying hate-Israel fest on Press TV in London on June 12, describes Ingrams as “vile.”
This brings me to the second Jew-hatred event of the month, which Ingrams thinks is long overdue. In the Independent of November 22, Sir Oliver Miles, the former British ambassador to Libya (Melanie Phillips refers to his ilk as the camel corps), makes the staggering assertion that two Jews with obvious pro-Israeli leanings, Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman, should not have been selected to serve on the Iraq inquiry panel. He says, “Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism. Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media.” Well, Sir Oliver, inasmuch as these two men are prolific and quite brilliant historians of international repute, one doubts the media are fixating on their Jewishness but rather on the excellence of their acclaimed work.
Miles actually goes on to say that Jewish newspapers and non-U.S., non-UK media do talk about Gilbert’s Zionism at length; knowing their work as I do, the last thing I think of when reviewing Gilbert or Freedman is Zionism. What is deeply disturbing about the Miles accusation is that he suggests Freedman and Gilbert will have some kind of Jewishly unique pro-Blair, pro-Bush, pro-Zionist “handy ammunition” when needed and that this will result in the panel being “unbalanced.” So, this means that in the future, jobs in British government inquiries should have the health warning “Jews need not apply.”
The aforementioned Richard Ingrams is in seventh heaven about the Oliver Miles screed. He is thrilled that someone has had the gumption to take on the all-powerful Zionist lobby that is always bullying politicians and the BBC into blind support for Israel above all else. Needless to say, Ingrams and Miles did not go unnoticed in the press and the Times newspaper of November 25 even took the rare step of publishing a leader editorial rebuking the Independent for allowing the “Jewish question” to rear its head in the discourse on the Iraq war inquiry. To their credit, the editors at the Times refer to the Miles editorial as “disgraceful” and a form of “fanaticism.” The Times adds that the accusations of Zionist impartiality are “snide attack and irrelevant innuendo” and “malign, ignorant, and inflammatory insinuations against their independence.”
In his piece in the aforementioned Independent of November 28 entitled “Will Zionists’ Links to Iraq Invasion Be Brushed Aside?” Ingrams just won’t let it go. He fumes about the Times rebuke and bangs on about the “pro-Israeli bias” of the two Jewish professors. What I find hilarious — if one can see humor in this high-class Jew-baiting — is that Sir Lawrence Freedman’s claim to fame is his official history of the Falklands conflict!
Now on to the pièce de résistance: on December 1 I went along to see how a small group of Christian and Jewish supporters of Israel’s right to live in peace with her neighbors was going to fare standing outside a big church in Shaftesbury Avenue, London, where a pro-Palestinian service was being held. One of the officiants at the service was Caryl Churchill, playwright and author of Seven Jewish Children (are Britons obsessed with Joooze or what?), and the outdoor demonstrators, led by Jonathan Hoffman, read out slogans denouncing the one-sided view of brutal Israel.
No sooner had this small coterie of gentlefolk assembled than a stream of angry people began to scream at Jonathan. Although the whole scenario was sickening and frightening, I could not help feeling heartened because the endless parade of irate Britons shouting tirades at the pro-Israel group vindicated my book, Don’t Tread on Me, which many felt “exaggerated” the tirades of which I have been at the receiving end.
One furious man, John Sullivan, said to Englishman Jonathan Sacerdoti: “You should be part of Britain; it’s a culture Israeli or Jewish people do not understand. You’re not part of my country, and I’m British. … If you look through history, Jewish people are vindictive and probably evil and probably very unpleasant. … Most English people would tell you to f*** off back to Israel.”
And so on and so forth. In his long tirade at Hoffman and Sacerdoti, Sullivan also accused Rupert Murdoch of being Jewish, which he is not; this fits in, however, with the rage of Richard Ingrams towards the Times, a “Zionist” Murdoch paper.
The hatred I saw being spewed in the short time I stood out in the freezing cold of globally warming England was palpable. Perhaps we should all “f*** off back to Israel.” At least it is sunny and hot right now.
Happy Chanukah to all.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member