Guardian - Anti Semitism

[Kev]

Guardian Columnist Quits

Regular HonestReporting readers are familiar with our critiques of London's Guardian -- one of the most virulently anti-Israel publications around. Guardian columnist Julie Burchill has published an open letter, explaining that she is leaving the Guardian because its anti-semitism (a "dirty little secret masquerading as a moral stance") has simply gone overboard:

[I]f there is one issue that has made me feel less loyal to my newspaper over the past year, it has been what I, as a non-Jew, perceive to be a quite striking bias against the state of Israel. Which, for all its faults, is the only country in that barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist, could bear to live under.
I find this hard to accept because, crucially, I don't swallow the modern liberal line that anti-Zionism is entirely different from anti-semitism; the first good, the other bad...If you take into account the theory that Jews are responsible for everything nasty in the history of the world, and also the recent EU survey that found 60% of Europeans believe Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the world today (hmm, I must have missed all those rabbis telling their flocks to go out with bombs strapped to their bodies and blow up the nearest mosque), it's a short jump to reckoning that it was obviously a bloody good thing that the Nazis got rid of six million of the buggers. Perhaps this is why sales of Mein Kampf are so buoyant, from the Middle Eastern bazaars unto the Edgware Road, and why The Protocols of The Elders of Zion could be found for sale at the recent Anti-racism Congress in Durban.

Read More of the story at the above URL posted

[RichardP]

Originally posted by Kev
Guardian Columnist Quits




Read More of the story at the above URL posted

Thanks Kev... i got the e-mail re: of this article posted! Appreciated!

[britishchap]

Good on Julie!

[Isiah 2:4]

Anti-Zionism is anti-semitism

Behind much criticism of Israel is a thinly veiled hatred of Jews

Emanuele Ottolenghi
Saturday November 29, 2003
The Guardian


Is there a link between the way Israel's case is presented and anti-semitism? Israel's advocates protest that behind criticisms of Israel there sometimes lurks a more sinister agenda, dangerously bordering on anti-semitism. Critics vehemently disagree. In their view, public attacks on Israel are neither misplaced nor the source of anti-Jewish sentiment: Israel's behaviour is reprehensible and so are those Jews who defend it.
Jewish defenders of Israel are then depicted by their critics as seeking an excuse to justify Israel, projecting Jewish paranoia and displaying a "typical" Jewish trait of "sticking together", even in defending the morally indefensible. Israel's advocates deserve the hostility they get, the argument goes; it is they who should engage in soul-searching.

There is no doubt that recent anti-semitism is linked to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And it is equally without doubt that Israeli policies sometimes deserve criticism. There is nothing wrong, or even remotely anti-semitic, in disapproving of Israeli policies. Nevertheless, this debate - with its insistence that there is a distinction between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism - misses the crucial point of contention. Israel's advocates do not want to gag critics by brandishing the bogeyman of anti-semitism: rather, they are concerned about the form the criticism takes.

If Israel's critics are truly opposed to anti-semitism, they should not repeat traditional anti-semitic themes under the anti-Israel banner. When such themes - the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, linking Jews with money and media, the hooked-nose stingy Jew, the blood libel, disparaging use of Jewish symbols, or traditional Christian anti-Jewish imagery - are used to describe Israel's actions, concern should be voiced. Labour MP Tam Dalyell decried the influence of "a Jewish cabal" on British foreign policy-making; an Italian cartoonist last year depicted the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as an attempt to kill Jesus "again". Is it necessary to evoke the Jewish conspiracy or depict Israelis as Christ-killers to denounce Israeli policies?

The fact that accusations of anti-semitism are dismissed as paranoia, even when anti-semitic imagery is at work, is a subterfuge. Israel deserves to be judged by the same standards adopted for others, not by the standards of utopia. Singling out Israel for an impossibly high standard not applied to any other country begs the question: why such different treatment?

Despite piqued disclaimers, some of Israel's critics use anti-semitic stereotypes. In fact, their disclaimers frequently offer a mask of respectability to otherwise socially unacceptable anti-semitism. Many equate Israel to Nazism, claiming that "yesterday's victims are today's perpetrators": last year, Louis de Bernières wrote in the Independent that "Israel has been adopting tactics which are reminiscent of the Nazis". This equation between victims and murderers denies the Holocaust. Worse still, it provides its retroactive justification: if Jews turned out to be so evil, perhaps they deserved what they got. Others speak of Zionist conspiracies to dominate the media, manipulate American foreign policy, rule the world and oppress the Arabs. By describing Israel as the root of all evil, they provide the linguistic mandate and the moral justification to destroy it. And by using anti-semitic instruments to achieve this goal, they give away their true anti-semitic face.

There is of course the open question of whether this applies to anti-Zionism. It is one thing to object to the consequences of Zionism, to suggest that the historical cost of its realisation was too high, or to claim that Jews are better off as a scattered, stateless minority. This is a serious argument, based on interests, moral claims, and an interpretation of history. But this is not anti-Zionism. To oppose Zionism in its essence and to refuse to accept its political offspring, Israel, as a legitimate entity, entails more. Zionism comprises a belief that Jews are a nation, and as such are entitled to self-determination as all other nations are.

It could be suggested that nationalism is a pernicious force. In which case one should oppose Palestinian nationalism as well. It could even be argued that though both claims are true and noble, it would have been better to pursue Jewish national rights elsewhere. But negating Zionism, by claiming that Zionism equals racism, goes further and denies the Jews the right to identify, understand and imagine themselves - and consequently behave as - a nation. Anti-Zionists deny Jews a right that they all too readily bestow on others, first of all Palestinians.

Were you outraged when Golda Meir claimed there were no Palestinians? You should be equally outraged at the insinuation that Jews are not a nation. Those who denounce Zionism sometimes explain Israel's policies as a product of its Jewish essence. In their view, not only should Israel act differently, it should cease being a Jewish state. Anti-Zionists are prepared to treat Jews equally and fight anti-semitic prejudice only if Jews give up their distinctiveness as a nation: Jews as a nation deserve no sympathy and no rights, Jews as individuals are worthy of both. Supporters of this view love Jews, but not when Jews assert their national rights. Jews condemning Israel and rejecting Zionism earn their praise. Denouncing Israel becomes a passport to full integration. Noam Chomsky and his imitators are the new heroes, their Jewish pride and identity expressed solely through their shame for Israel's existence. Zionist Jews earn no respect, sympathy or protection. It is their expression of Jewish identity through identification with Israel that is under attack.

The argument that it is Israel's behaviour, and Jewish support for it, that invite prejudice sounds hollow at best and sinister at worst. That argument means that sympathy for Jews is conditional on the political views they espouse. This is hardly an expression of tolerance. It singles Jews out. It is anti-semitism.

Zionism reversed Jewish historical passivity to persecution and asserted the Jewish right to self-determination and independent survival. This is why anti-Zionists see it as a perversion of Jewish humanism. Zionism entails the difficulty of dealing with sometimes impossible moral dilemmas, which traditional Jewish passivity in the wake of historical persecution had never faced. By negating Zionism, the anti-semite is arguing that the Jew must always be the victim, for victims do no wrong and deserve our sympathy and support.

Israel errs like all other nations: it is normal. What anti-Zionists find so obscene is that Israel is neither martyr nor saint. Their outrage refuses legitimacy to a people's national liberation movement. Israel's stubborn refusal to comply with the invitation to commit national suicide and thereby regain a supposedly lost moral ground draws condemnation. Jews now have the right to self-determination, and that is what the anti-semite dislikes so much.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...095694,00.html

[Isiah 2:4]

There is no doubt that The Guardian puts forward the most Pro-Pal agenda of all the British newspapers. The Times is fairly neutral, being a moderate paper and The Telegraph and The Daily Mail are right-wing, but still pretty balanced. The Independent i would guess will be quite pro-Pal.

I have read many pro-Israeli articles in the Guardian however, or at least, truthful accounts or fair reporting.

I dont necessarily think the Guradian is anti-semitic though. The Arab-Israeli conflict is just over-represented in the British Newspapers. Look at a few of the Guardian Staff Names - Nick Cohen, David Aaronotvitch, David Grossman. Its not like they are an anti-Jewish establishment i dont think.

[Isiah 2:4]

Good, bad and ugly

Julie Burchill
Saturday November 29, 2003
The Guardian

As you might have heard, I'm leaving the Guardian next year for the Times, having finally been convinced that my evil populist philistinism has no place in a publication read by so many all-round, top-drawer plaster saints. (Well, that and the massive wad they've waved at me.) Once there, I will compose as many love letters to the likes of Mr Murdoch and Pres Bush as my black little heart desires, leaving those who have always objected to my presence on such a fine liberal newspaper as this to read only writers they agree with, with no chance of spoiled digestion as the muesli goes down the wrong way if I so much as murmur about bringing back hanging. (Public.)
Not only do I admire the Guardian, I also find it fun to read, which in a way is more of a compliment. But if there is one issue that has made me feel less loyal to my newspaper over the past year, it has been what I, as a non-Jew, perceive to be a quite striking bias against the state of Israel. Which, for all its faults, is the only country in that barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist, could bear to live under.

I find this hard to accept because, crucially, I don't swallow the modern liberal line that anti-Zionism is entirely different from anti-semitism; the first good, the other bad. Judeophobia - as the brilliant collection of essays A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia In 21st-Century Britain (axt.org.uk), published this year, points out - is a shape-shifting virus, as opposed to the straightforward stereotypical prejudice applied to other groups (Irish stupid, Japanese cruel, Germans humourless, etc). Jews historically have been blamed for everything we might disapprove of: they can be rabid revolutionaries, responsible for the might of the late Soviet empire, and the greediest of fat cats, enslaving the planet to the demands of international high finance. They are insular, cliquey and clannish, yet they worm their way into the highest positions of power in their adopted countries, changing their names and marrying Gentile women. They collectively possess a huge, slippery wealth that knows no boundaries - yet Israel is said to be an impoverished, lame-duck state, bleeding the west dry.

If you take into account the theory that Jews are responsible for everything nasty in the history of the world, and also the recent EU survey that found 60% of Europeans believe Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the world today (hmm, I must have missed all those rabbis telling their flocks to go out with bombs strapped to their bodies and blow up the nearest mosque), it's a short jump to reckoning that it was obviously a bloody good thing that the Nazis got rid of six million of the buggers. Perhaps this is why sales of Mein Kampf are so buoyant, from the Middle Eastern bazaars unto the Edgware Road, and why The Protocols of The Elders of Zion could be found for sale at the recent Anti-racism Congress in Durban.

The fact that many Gentiles and Arabs are rabidly Judeophobic, while many others are as horrified by Judeophobia as by any other type of racism, makes me believe that anti-semitism/Zionism is not a political position (otherwise the right and the left, the PLO and the KKK, would not be able to unite so uniquely in their hatred), but about how an individual feels about himself. I can't help noticing that, over the years, a disproportionate number of attractive, kind, clever people are drawn to Jews; those who express hostility to them, however, from Hitler to Hamza, are often as not repulsive freaks.

Think of famous anti-Zionist windbags - Redgrave, Highsmith, Galloway - and what dreary, dysfunctional, po-faced vanity confronts us. When we consider famous Jew-lovers, on the other hand - Marilyn, Ava, Liz, Felicity Kendal, me - what a sumptuous banquet of radiant humanity we look upon! How fitting that it was Richard Ingrams - Victor Meldrew without the animal magnetism - who this summer proclaimed in the Observer that he refuses to read letters from Jews about the Middle East, and that Jewish journalists should declare their racial origins when writing on this subject. Replying in another newspaper, Johann Hari suggested sarcastically that their bylines might be marked with a yellow star, and asked why Ingrams didn't want to know whether those writing on international conflicts were Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Hindu. The answer is obvious to me: poor Ingrams is a miserable, bitter, hypocritical cuckold, whose much younger girlfriend has written at length in the public arena of the boredom, misery and alcoholism to which living with him has led her, and whose trademark has long been a loathing for anyone who appears to get a kick out of life: the young, the prole, independent women. The Jews are in good company.

Judeophobia: where the political is personal, and the personal pretends to be political, and those swarthy/pallid/swotty/philistine/aggressive/ cowardly/comically bourgeois/filthy rich/delete-as-mood-takes-you bastards always get the girl. I'll return to this dirty little secret masquerading as a moral stance next week and, rest assured, it'll get much nastier. As the darling Jews them-selves would say (annoyingly, but then, nobody's perfect), enjoy!

This is Burchills original letter - printed on the same day as my other quote from the paper. I think the Guardian may be shifting its coverage after this. Ironically i think it may have been a Jewish liberal who played a significant part in the founding and funding of the Manchester Guardian, whenever that was...

[Kev]

Thank You Isiah 2:4 for the article that you posted from the Guardian.

Myself?
I don't have the time to venture through the Guardian nor the Times as there are only so many per day I can read, but I had always been led to believe that the Guardian had a nasty editorial slant.

That said?
I am suprised by your article, Anti-Zionism is anti-semitism - Behind much criticism of Israel is a thinly veiled hatred of Jews having heard about the anti-semetic editorials.
This one article leads me to wonder if they have been watching the situation with the BBC a "tad" closer then they would have liked to?

That article, plus the one by Julie Burchill leaves room for hope!


edit:
My post regarding Julies coloumn , did contain a link to the original letter, @ both, http://backspin.typepad.com/backspin...an_column.html and then, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists...094420,00.html
for whatever it's worth!

[Kev]

I dont necessarily think the Guradian is anti-semitic though. The Arab-Israeli conflict is just over-represented in the British Newspapers. Look at a few of the Guardian Staff Names - Nick Cohen, David Aaronotvitch, David Grossman. Its not like they are an anti-Jewish establishment i dont think.

One last point I did mean to add Isiah 2:4 was that of your comparison of last names, used at the newspaper.
The New York Times?

The names of the NTTimes owners?

There is no doubt that The Guardian puts forward the most Pro-Pal agenda of all the British newspapers. The Times is fairly neutral, being a moderate paper and The Telegraph and The Daily Mail are right-wing, but still pretty balanced. The Independent i would guess will be quite pro-Pal.

Having acknowledged that I just don't have enough time to read the UK papers, I was saddened to find out that the The Times is by suscription only, as I would have liked to have read more of Julie Burchills coloumns in the future!
But if I took out a suscription for every newspaper that I read online, I'd be a pauper, especially so if there are only 1 or 2 coloumnists that I am interested in reading?

Hopefully, if any of her articles are quite good, they will be found elsewhere!
I'm hoping of course, that you may be one who does have a suscription and will post some of the better ones here in the future?

[Isiah 2:4]

Kev, you can access The Times online withput subscription. Its a great read - The Times

Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, says Europe in particular must recognise the warning signs and address the problem robustly

Words of warning: the Chief Rabbi says that anti-Semitism "often masquerades under the disguise of anti-Israel sentiment"

ANGLICAN and Roman Catholic leaders in Britain are to join the Chief Rabbi in condemning the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe. The religious leaders hope to issue a joint declaration before Christmas and are likely to cite recent attacks on synagogues and cemeteries in Britain, Germany, France and Turkey.
In an exclusive interview with The Times, Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, expressed concern that nearly six decades after the Holocaust, Jews were once again afraid to walk the streets. He acknowledged that the problem was not as serious in Britain as elsewhere in Europe, but said that even here there was a worrying rise in anti-Semitic incidents.

Dr Sacks is to join the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, and Rabbi Albert Friedlander in speaking out in their capacity as joint presidents of the Council of Christians and Jews.

Secular European leaders are also uniting in an attempt to confront the issue. Dr Sacks disclosed in his interview with The Times that the European rabbinate is backing plans by Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, to organise a European conference on anti-Semitism in Brussels in January.

Dr Sacks said: “The 21st century should have moved beyond an age in which Jews are afraid to walk the streets and places of worship are bombed while congregations are at prayer. Europe in particular must know from its own history that these are warning signs and if they are ignored they will not go away.”

He said that the recent attacks were not directly comparable to the events of the past century that culminated in the Nazi Holocaust, in which six million Jewish people were killed. Today anti-Semitism often masquerades under the guise of anti-Israel sentiment.

“This is a new phenomenon,” he said. “But already many Jews have been attacked, many Jewish sites have been destroyed or vandalised, in this country less than the rest of Europe. But still some Jews here have been attacked, including one almost three years ago who was stabbed 27 times as he sat quietly reading a book on a bus. “People are being killed. Bombs are being directed at Jewish targets. There was Jerba in Tunisia in April last year, Casablanca in May this year. Istanbul in November this year claimed Jewish lives, Muslim lives and innocent passers-by. These are countries in which Jews had felt themselves secure.

“There is a strong case for religious leaders outside Judaism to make their protests. There is a consensus that there is a problem here to be addressed, and strongly.”

An Israeli expert on anti-Semitism warned MPs about the issue on Friday. Robert Wistrich, who addressed the House of Commons anti-Semitism monitoring committee, said that attacks could “happen tomorrow in London”. He told the Jewish Chronicle: “The wave of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe today is a threat not only to Jews but also to the essence of Western democracy.”

Dr Williams, enthroned this year, has already established a good relationship with Dr Sacks. Last month he was a guest at an informal reception at the Board of Deputies of British Jews and visited Istanbul and the bombed synagogues last month.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s office confirmed that he shared Dr Sacks’s concerns. The Roman Catholic Church has worked hard to improve relations with the Jewish faith in recent years and the Pope has visited the Temple Wall in Jerusalem.

Dr Sacks summarised the basis of his concerns: “Today there is a slide from opposition to Israeli policies to opposition to the very existence of the State of Israel to attacks on Jews. Whenever we see a slide from a political problem to the demonisation of a whole group we are in the presence of a very dangerous trend indeed. All of history tells us this. The second is that it is bringing together a strange coalition of radical Islamists, the anti-American Left and the extreme Right, groups who would otherwise have virtually nothing in common. Whenever an attack on a group unifies otherwise disparate groups then again we are in the presence of a dangerous phenomenon that can be manipulated to political ends.”

Dr Sacks was speaking to The Times on the eve of being awarded the $200,000 (£116,000) Grawemeyer Award in Religion by the Louisville University and Louisville Presbyterian theological seminary in America. The award, to be announced tomorrow, is for Dr Sacks’s book The Dignity of Difference, in which he says: “For too long, the pages of history have been stained by blood shed in the name of God. Allied to weapons of mass destruction, extremist religious attitudes threaten the very security of life on Earth.”

Dr Sacks told The Times that his intention in the book was to chart a positive way forward. “My belief is that politicians will attempt to exploit religious differences. In the 21st century, if religion does not become part of the solution, it will become part of the problem.”

A YEAR OF HATE CRIMES

Turkey: 25 people killed in suicide bombings of two synagogues in Istanbul on November 15.

Britain: More than 380 Jewish graves damaged at the Plashet Cemetery, East London, on May 8.

Britain: An arson attack on the Hillock Hebrew Congregation synagogue near Manchester, in November.

France: A Jewish school in Paris firebombed on November 15.

France: Prayer books torn and Juif-mort (Jew-death) written on a wall in a synagogue in Saint-Denis in July.

Italy: Graffiti at the office of the state-owned media network in March, after a journalist of Jewish origin named director.

Austria: A rabbi assaulted by two youths in Vienna as he walked home from prayer earlier this year.

Germany: Nazi slogans sprayed on headstones in Gundesberg, Germany in October.

Germany: Wreaths laid at a Kristallnacht memorial defaced.

Belgium: A man tried to explode a vehicle in front of a synagogue in Belgium in June.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...915268,00.html

[Isiah 2:4]

I believe Dr Sacks to be one of the most important figures in Modern Judaism, and probably one of the greatest leaders we could hope to have. He is very intelligent, compassionate and respectful. His words are always directed at humanity and not necessarily at the immediate Jewish Community.

Peace Be Upon Him

[Isiah 2:4]

http://www.axt.org.uk/

Here you can find collections of essays by Jews AND non-Jews about the threats and problems of anti-Semitism. One of the best is written by the honourable Chief Rabbi of Britain, Dr Jonathan Sacks.

[Mediocrates]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/st...099727,00.html

The hate that shames us

Julie Burchill
Saturday December 6, 2003
The Guardian

In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr published his Letter To An Anti-Zionist Friend: "Anti-Zionism is inherently anti-semitic, and ever will be. What is anti-Zionism? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the globe. It is discrimination against Jews... because they are Jews. In short, it is anti-semitism." MLK - what a mensch! A saint in the street; a superman in the sack. And this being so, no reason at all to be envious of the Jews.
As I said last week, I have come to believe - looking at how anti-semitism is the only form of racial prejudice that unites both left and right, from the KKK to the PLO - that loathing the Jews is more about the personal than the political, despite the phoney, anticolonial cant of the anti-Zionists. For instance, I've noticed that some people use the Jews as a sort of warped magic mirror, accusing them of things that they themselves are obviously guilty of. When the Old Etonian Tam Dalyell claimed that there was in this country a Jewish "cabal" of politicians wielding disproportionate influence, did he not consider the fact that, since time immemorial, the country has been run by overprivileged public schoolboys such as himself, allowing barely a look-in for equally (or, perish the thought, more!) electable and capable citizens of working-class origin?

Similarly, George Orwell could write in 1940 that he had nothing against Hitler, and follow up this gem with the declaration that European Jews would prefer the Nazi social system to that of Britain, "if it were not that they happen to persecute them". This would be the same Orwell (another Etonian!) who was revealed as spying and squealing on his leftwing friends for the CIA in the immediate postwar period, would it? Mmm, he'd have been quite at home in Nazi Germany himself, then.

Then there is Tom Paulin, he of the Ulster Protestant heritage, who has always seemed so unsuited to the dignity and stoicism of this ill-used, long-suffering tribe. Never mind: by shrieking away about the "Zionist SS" who gun down "a little Palestinian boy/In trainers, jeans and a white T-shirt", Paulin can be teleported to the moral, or at least fashionable, high ground and find himself the hot hunk of the humanitarian hop. Still, you've got to wonder if his refusal to see anything wrong with the murder of American Jews who settle in Israel means that he'd be equally sanguine if his relatives in Northern Ireland were murdered by looners whose nationalist creed dictated that Ulster Protestants were asking for it by settling in a country not "theirs".

So emboldened by the filthy free-for-all, the danse macabre of resurgent Judeophobia - attacks on Jews in this country have risen by 75% this year; and since 2000, there has been a 400% increase in attacks on synagogues - are the ignorant armies of darkness that even Germans are opening their yaps on a subject that you'd have thought they'd have the sense, if not the decency, to keep away from. Just a few weeks ago, a German MP was forced to resign after claiming that the Jews were responsible for Soviet army "atrocities" against the defeated Nazi state (makes you want to go back and bomb Dresden all over again, only properly this time). And in a sort of Hate version of the Eurovision Song Contest, Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis weighed in with his carefully considered view that the Jews are at the root of all evil. So, presumably, he won't be wanting the royalties from one of his most notable works, which documents the tragic love story of two young Jewish inmates of a concentration camp. Or maybe he can rejig it, to show how evil this pair were, and how they deserved what they got.

To contemplate the thought processes of such individuals makes any decent person want to wash their hands until the slime of hypocritical hatred is swept away. But when whole sections of society peddle such lies, it's scarier still. And when carriers of the disease are shielded by those who govern us, you start to believe the lunatics have taken over the asylum: the EU's racism watchdog recently suppressed a report on the rise of anti-semitism because it concluded that Muslims were behind many incidents. What sort of world do we live in, when racism is "allowed" to be reported only if it comes from the white and the right? What about a stubborn, shimmering little thing called truth?

I don't care who's doing it - white, brown or pink-and-purple paisley-patterned - if they're picking on the Red Sea Pedestrians, they're wrong 'uns, like all racists. Make no mistake, the Jews are not hated because of Israel; they are hated for their very modernity, mobility, lust for life and love of knowledge. Their most basic toast, "L'chaim!" (To Life!), is a red rag to those who fetishise death because they have failed to take any joy from their life on earth.

"Not our Jews! Leave our Jews alone! " yelled the locals who turned out to fight the Mosleyites in Cable Street. It may be politically incorrect to call this ancient people "ours", but what the hell: they're tough, they can take it. And they are still our Jews, in that if they are wiped out, in Israel or anywhere else, we will be wiped out, too, one day, all of the modern world and its achievements - swept back into the Dark Ages mulch from whence we came. The cry of Cable Street still rings true. Not our Jews! But, this time, "our" means mankind, and the very future of our species.

[Mediocrates]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists...094420,00.html



Part #1 resignation letter, the original link provided above was an indirect link.

Good, bad and ugly

Julie Burchill
Saturday November 29, 2003
The Guardian

As you might have heard, I'm leaving the Guardian next year for the Times, having finally been convinced that my evil populist philistinism has no place in a publication read by so many all-round, top-drawer plaster saints. (Well, that and the massive wad they've waved at me.) Once there, I will compose as many love letters to the likes of Mr Murdoch and Pres Bush as my black little heart desires, leaving those who have always objected to my presence on such a fine liberal newspaper as this to read only writers they agree with, with no chance of spoiled digestion as the muesli goes down the wrong way if I so much as murmur about bringing back hanging. (Public.)
Not only do I admire the Guardian, I also find it fun to read, which in a way is more of a compliment. But if there is one issue that has made me feel less loyal to my newspaper over the past year, it has been what I, as a non-Jew, perceive to be a quite striking bias against the state of Israel. Which, for all its faults, is the only country in that barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist, could bear to live under.

I find this hard to accept because, crucially, I don't swallow the modern liberal line that anti-Zionism is entirely different from anti-semitism; the first good, the other bad. Judeophobia - as the brilliant collection of essays A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia In 21st-Century Britain (axt.org.uk), published this year, points out - is a shape-shifting virus, as opposed to the straightforward stereotypical prejudice applied to other groups (Irish stupid, Japanese cruel, Germans humourless, etc). Jews historically have been blamed for everything we might disapprove of: they can be rabid revolutionaries, responsible for the might of the late Soviet empire, and the greediest of fat cats, enslaving the planet to the demands of international high finance. They are insular, cliquey and clannish, yet they worm their way into the highest positions of power in their adopted countries, changing their names and marrying Gentile women. They collectively possess a huge, slippery wealth that knows no boundaries - yet Israel is said to be an impoverished, lame-duck state, bleeding the west dry.

If you take into account the theory that Jews are responsible for everything nasty in the history of the world, and also the recent EU survey that found 60% of Europeans believe Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the world today (hmm, I must have missed all those rabbis telling their flocks to go out with bombs strapped to their bodies and blow up the nearest mosque), it's a short jump to reckoning that it was obviously a bloody good thing that the Nazis got rid of six million of the buggers. Perhaps this is why sales of Mein Kampf are so buoyant, from the Middle Eastern bazaars unto the Edgware Road, and why The Protocols of The Elders of Zion could be found for sale at the recent Anti-racism Congress in Durban.

The fact that many Gentiles and Arabs are rabidly Judeophobic, while many others are as horrified by Judeophobia as by any other type of racism, makes me believe that anti-semitism/Zionism is not a political position (otherwise the right and the left, the PLO and the KKK, would not be able to unite so uniquely in their hatred), but about how an individual feels about himself. I can't help noticing that, over the years, a disproportionate number of attractive, kind, clever people are drawn to Jews; those who express hostility to them, however, from Hitler to Hamza, are often as not repulsive freaks.

Think of famous anti-Zionist windbags - Redgrave, Highsmith, Galloway - and what dreary, dysfunctional, po-faced vanity confronts us. When we consider famous Jew-lovers, on the other hand - Marilyn, Ava, Liz, Felicity Kendal, me - what a sumptuous banquet of radiant humanity we look upon! How fitting that it was Richard Ingrams - Victor Meldrew without the animal magnetism - who this summer proclaimed in the Observer that he refuses to read letters from Jews about the Middle East, and that Jewish journalists should declare their racial origins when writing on this subject. Replying in another newspaper, Johann Hari suggested sarcastically that their bylines might be marked with a yellow star, and asked why Ingrams didn't want to know whether those writing on international conflicts were Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Hindu. The answer is obvious to me: poor Ingrams is a miserable, bitter, hypocritical cuckold, whose much younger girlfriend has written at length in the public arena of the boredom, misery and alcoholism to which living with him has led her, and whose trademark has long been a loathing for anyone who appears to get a kick out of life: the young, the prole, independent women. The Jews are in good company.

Judeophobia: where the political is personal, and the personal pretends to be political, and those swarthy/pallid/swotty/philistine/aggressive/ cowardly/comically bourgeois/filthy rich/delete-as-mood-takes-you bastards always get the girl. I'll return to this dirty little secret masquerading as a moral stance next week and, rest assured, it'll get much nastier. As the darling Jews them-selves would say (annoyingly, but then, nobody's perfect), enjoy!