Mike Leigh, celebrated UK film director and screenwriter (Secrets & Lies, Naked, Vera Drake), has cancelled a trip to the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem. He has cited the proposed ‘loyalty oath’ as the ‘last straw’ from an Israeli government that has gone from ‘bad to worse’.
The text of Leigh’s letter to school director, Renen Schorr, can be read here. Schorr’s response is here.
I just want to make one point.
Mike Leigh says in his letter that the planned trip has made him:
ever-increasingly uncomfortable about what would unquestionably appear as my implicit support for Israel…
Does Mike Leigh not support Israel? I’m assuming he does and he’s not previously given any indication he wants to see the demise of Israel. It’s a fair interpretation of this statement to assume Leigh is referring to specific acts by the Israeli government that he cites in the letter as having contributed to his decision to cancel his visit; acts for which he is determined his support should not be implied. But such an interpretaton renders his comment above – not least his conviction that to proceed with the visit has an ‘unquestionable’ appearance – illogical. A visit to the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem and a belief that Israel should not exist may be ideologically irreconcilable. Such a visit and mere criticism of the Israeli govenment can happily coexist, however, and the latter is not dilluted by the former. He is not shceduled to visit apartheid South Africa, or Iran, or North Korea where such a visit would indeed have been used for propaganda purposes and no opportunity to dissent from the government line would be afforded. Israel is a democracy. Should Leigh rethink his decision to cancel, the extent to which his visit could be interpreted as implicit support – or any other form of support – for the actions of the Israeli government, is something he controls. Does he not trust himself?
Supporters of a two-state solution have been traditionally vocal about the need for dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians: “You make peace with your enemy, not your friend, and this means, ultimately, sitting around a table and talking.” You know the drill. There are obviously many differnet routes to the negotiating table, but this is, I think, basically correct. It’s correct even when your opponent is a proto-fascist hate-monger who is on record as seeking your destruction. Maybe especially correct? Doubtless Leigh would concur, which makes his decisoin, sincere as it may be, even more unfathomable.
From Schorr’s response:
Boycotts and ostracism are the antithesis of dialogue.
Tony Greenstein has come out fighting in response to the revelation that he tried to fix a Jewish Chronicle online poll in an attempt to portray British Jews as a bunch of racists, and unsurprisingly it isn’t pretty. He writes, in a comment on the original HP thread:
I am in favour of political honesty. Orthodox Rabbis are the most racist and revanchist section of Jewish society and it is only right that they should work with their natural partners.
Those amateur psychologists amongst HP’s readership might like to speculate at this point on the fact that Greenstein is the son of an Orthodox Rabbi. Given that Greenstein began his far left politics in his teens and is now in his fifties, you could read his entire political career as an extreme case of teenage rebellion from which he has never emerged.
Greenstein then goes on to cite two examples of racism from Orthodox Rabbis to prove his point:
Greenstein is no different from the Islamophobes who cite the likes of Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Abu Hamza as representative of all observant Muslims, while ignoring all those who display tolerance and respect for those of other faiths.
He then repeats his current favourite myth of cooperation between British Zionists and the EDL before writing:
And unlike most of the tossers here, some of us have actually been active in the fight against neo-Nazis and fascism rather than feed it.
Greenstein has long traded on the image of being an anti-fascist of unmatched purity who once got punched by a neo-Nazi (when telling people that the National Front once beat him up, he neglects to mention that they have also praised his work).
But what is this, on the front page of Greenstein’s blog? A permanent link to Palestine Telegraph, which in the past six months has published a video by the neo-Nazi and former KKK leader David Duke, and an interview with the Holocaust Denier Frederick Toben. Some might call that ‘feeding neo-Nazism’.
And what is this, on the website of the Zionist-conspiracy site MPACUK? A message of support from Greenstein to Asghar Bukhari after Bukhari was exposed as a funder of the neo-Nazi Holocaust Denier David Irving. Greenstein praises Bukhari for “defying” his critics:
I write as someone who is Jewish, but not a Zionist.
This is a very excellent and painfully aware article.
Asghar Bukhari made a mistake and has been honest about that. The one’s who attack their opponents as anti-Semitic, when their movement is the most guilty of all of working with anti-Semites (hence why they’re once again trying to ban Perdition in Scotland which details what they did) are the ones who have problems with anti-Semtism.
Zionism is a Jewish variant of anti-Semitism. After all,even today, if someone tells me I don’t belong in England they are either a Zionist or a fascist and anti-Semite.
The real lesson from this affair is that like the boy who cried wolf, Zionist attacks on people who are not anti-Jewish have one effect, to legitimise anti-Semitism.
I’m glad that Asghar has been so honest and defied those whose stock in trade is guilt and blackmail.
Tony Greenstein
Greenstein then finishes with a reference to Gilad Atzmon. For the uninitiated, Greenstein used to support Atzmon but the pair now hate each other with a passion. I will not bore you with the details, other than to observe that their behaviour is typical of sectarians who reserve their greatest enmity for those whose views are, to an outside observer, almost indistinguishable from their own.
There are some Jewish critics and opponents of Israel who try to persuade other Jews that their support for Israel is misguided; and that Zionism is a terrible mistake that should be consigned to history. Then there is Tony Greenstein, who displays nothing but contempt for other Jews and revels in any opportunity to portray them in a bad light.
There is a word for people who behave that way towards Jews.
What does Joe Miller, the Republican candidate for senator from Alaska, have in common with Andy Newman of Socialist Unity?
They both find things to admire about the former East Germany.
At a town hall meeting, Miller responded to a question about illegal immigration. He said that while a cadet at West Point during the Cold War, he spent time at a border post between East and West Germany.
During that time, he said, “East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow” from one side of the border to the other. “Now, obviously, other things there were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, obviously to secure our border. If East Germany could, we could.”
Of course the East Germans were trying to keep people in, not out. And Spiegel Online reports:
There is no universally accepted figure for the number of people who died trying to escape East Germany, either across the Berlin Wall or through the minefields along the 1,380-kilometer (860-mile) border between East and West Germany, as the East German state manipulated records in a bid to cover up the deaths. The August 13 Working Group, a private initiative, puts the death toll at over 1,200.
As I write, Professor Geoffrey Alderman is lying in bed in a hotel room in Belfast.
He had been invited by the Belfast Festival to take part in a debate on the Middle East, where he was to appear on a panel with Professors Avi Shlaim of St Anthony’s College, Oxford and Beverley Milton Edwards, of Queens University, Belfast. Shlaim, you know. Milton Edwards is a founder of the pro-Hamas and Hezbollah lobbying organisation, Conflicts Forum.
[O]n Friday Professor Alderman says he received an email from [festival director] Mr [Graeme] Farrow withdrawing the invitation to be on the panel.
Mr Farrow told him that he had made “a mistake in agreeing to extend an invitation to you Geoffrey without consulting the academics in question”.
…
After a meeting with Mr Farrow early this afternoon, Professor Alderman said he had given the organisers three options: to allow him to join the panel and if his fellow-panellists were to object, “they could stay away”: to let him to take part while sitting on a separate table: or simply to call off the event.
The event took place.
From what I can tell, either or both of the other professors refused to sit on a panel with Professor Alderman. Professor Alderman is a Jew who supports Israel’s continued existence. One might fairly infer that this was their reason for refusing to participate in an event with them. Is it that they regarded any defence at all of Israel as illegitimate?
Why did Queen’s University Belfast turn a balanced debate into what must have amounted to a publicly subsidised delegitimisation of Israel, and a symbolic affirmation that nothing else should be permitted?
What about the waste of money – flying Professor Alderman out to Belfast, putting him up in a hotel room, and then flying him back – all paid for out of our taxes, chiz chiz!!
Can I just make one, small point?
Jews are quite paranoid. Well, you can see why that might be. For that reason, you might hope, really, that Graeme Farrow and Queens University Belfast might do their bit not conspire with maniacs to behave like utter wankers.
The same thing that’s wrong with a US Chamber of Commerce-sponsored attack ad aimed at Virginia Democratic congressman Tom Perriello, who voted for the health care reform bill that President Obama signed into law.
“Government run health care. Medicare cuts. Have you had enough? Tell Congressman Perriello, stop hurting Virginia families.”
To the extent that even conservative voters have expressed a backlash against health care reform, it has largely expressed itself in the fear that their socialized medicine will be reduced in order to provide for others, rather than in any principled opposition to big government.
Ken Livingstone is a politician with a parasitic relationship with the Labour Party. He shows the party no loyalty at all. He stabs it in the back at every opportunity.
As a result of his recent conduct, he is now no longer a member of the Labour Party.
Back in the 1980s, Ken Livingstone was close to the Workers Revolutionary Party, a rape-cult run by a repeat sexual offender, Gerry Healy, who took money from Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, in return for spying on trade unionists and other dissidents, and spreading racist conspiracy theories about “Zionist” plots. They used that money to run various scrappy far Left papers, one of which was Labour Herald, edited by Ken Livingstone.
Ken Livingstone’s verdict on this disgusting rapist?
It was a privilege to have worked with Gerry Healy.
Scroll forward to the 1980s, and Ken Livingstone had populated his administration at City Hall with members of Socialist Action, another revolutionary Communist party.
So little loyalty does Ken Livingstone have to Labour, that he ran against the Labour candidate for Mayor.
Then Ken turned up during the elections for a photo opportunity with George Galloway, a politician for the rival RESPECT Party.
And now?
Now Ken Livingstone is campaigning for the expelled Islamic Forum Europe candidate, Lutfur Rahman, who is running against Labour’s Helas Abbas for Mayor of Tower Hamlets.
Labour’s candidate for London mayor, Ken Livingstone, has been campaigning with a non-Labour candidate in a separate local election in the East End, in breach of his party’s rules.
He backed Lutfur Rahman, an independent running to be mayor of Tower Hamlets.
Labour rules state that any member who campaigns for another party should be automatically expelled.
Mr Rahman ran as an independent after being deselected as Labour’s candidate over “serious allegations” against him.
These concerned both “the eligibility of participating voters” and Mr Rahman’s “conduct”, Labour said in a statement.
Chapter 2, Rule A(4)(b) of the Labour Party Rules state:
“A member of the party who joins and/or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the party, or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a party member….”
The effect of the rule is that Ed Miliband and the NEC do not have to do anything at all. Ken Livingstone is no longer a member of the Party. He’s gone.
Ken Livingstone’s departure from the Labour Party is no great loss. He is unlikely to beat Boris Johnson. His support for racists like Qaradawi and his championing of Islamist political parties loses Labour votes. We won’t be sorry to see the back of him.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, chairman of the East London Mosque and former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), has written an indignant letter to the Observer about Nick Cohen’s piece on extremism in universities.
Through the usual tactic of guilt by tenuous association, Nick Cohen brands me, in all but name, an extremist, a label I utterly reject. I abhor extremism of any kind and continue to work tirelessly to bring communities together.
Oh really? This is hilarious coming from a man whose mosque has hosted hatepreachers for years and years. Even one of the worst, al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki, was not considered beyond the pale. Recall that Bari’s response to a query about Awlaki in January 2009 from Conservative MP Paul Goodman was this:
He wrote that “we saw no need to revoke the permission for the event based on one article in the Daily Telegraph, whose record on reporting our institution or our community does not inspire us with much confidence”. He didn’t address the US Department of Homeland Security’s view.
He did write that “we found no evidence that the event was promoting hate”.
Yes, never mind al Qaeda in your mosque, just moan about the Telegraph.
Bari’s letter continues:
Cohen labours hard to smear the East London Mosque, where I am currently the chairman. In his latest diatribe, he wrongly claims the mosque is dominated by Jamaat-e-Islami. I hold no brief for Jamaat-e-Islami. The East London Mosque is run by British Muslims of diverse backgrounds, with deep roots in the community, who expend time and energy to make it an institution that is welcoming to all faiths and none.
The mosque’s links to Jamaat-e-Islami are a matter of record. Consider this report (pdf) commissioned by the government:
The JI helped to create and subsequently dominate the leadership of the MCB, currently the largest Muslim umbrella body in Britain, with around 500 affiliates representing a broad set of orientations. Vying for the leadership of the MCB are the Pakistani and Bangladeshi wings of JI, alongside the Muslim Brotherhood and some politicised Deobandis. The current Secretary General is the Chair of the East London Mosque, the key institution for the Bangladeshi wing of JI in the UK.
The Islamists, by contrast, are sophisticated and up-to-date in their focus and appeal. The East London Mosque (and its affiliate, the London Muslim Centre [LMC]) shares the ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami.
…
A Bangladeshi Jamaat MP, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, has regularly appeared at the mosque and raised funds for his party there. These visits are controversial: older Bangladeshis accuse him of involvement in the massacres of Bengalis during the liberation war. But the Jamaat has made strenuous (and successful) efforts to distance itself from its extremist and anti-Bengali past, and young, third-generation, British-born Bengalis have demonstrated in support of Sayedee’s presence.
…
In Bangladesh, secularists and the left have been marginalised and suppressed by the post-2001 ruling coalition. While the Bangladesh Nationalist Party – and George Galloway in London – seek to ride the Jamaat-e-Islami tiger for political gain, the prospects of this strategy for resolving the enduring questions of social justice, equality and diversity are dim. Jamaat and other fundamentalist groups are sowing the seeds of future conflict, as well as obscuring more hopeful and humane pathways to equity and harmony for Bengalis, in both Britain and Bangladesh.
In leaked e-mails seen by The Times, the Home Office sought advice from research analysts in the Foreign Office while considering the case for excluding Mr Sayeedi.
Internal messages between advisers discussed the threat that he allegedly posed, and one attached a report from a Bangladeshi human rights organisation. The report quotes Mr Sayeedi as saying that Britain and the US “deserve all that is coming to them” for overturning the Taleban in Afghanistan.
The e-mail from one adviser, Eric Taylor, continues: “He [Mr Sayeedi] has made a particularly offensive comment about Bangladeshi Hindus, comparing them to excrement. He also appears to defend attacks against the Ahmadiya (Islamist) community.
“. . . Previous visits to the UK have been reportedly marred by violence caused by his supporters. In 2000, during one of his talks in Oldham, his supporters reportedly attacked and beat up five Bengali elders.
“A rally in Banglatown was also attacked and three people, including a 65-year-old, were injured. A Bangladeshi community group wrote to the Prince of Wales in June 2004 appealing for Sayeedi to be banned from the UK.”
What was the mosque’s response? Say nothing:
No one from the East London Mosque was available for comment.
Bari’s letter also includes this line about prominent Saudi preacher Abdul Rahman al Sudais:
Cohen fails to mention that the “Saudi preacher” he refers to is Sheikh as-Sudais, a leading imam at Islam’s holiest sanctuary in Makkah. The remarks attributed to him have never been uttered at the East London Mosque and I have no hesitation in dissociating myself and our mosque from such views.
Extremism and bigotry of any kind are to be confronted. Nick Cohen would do well to reflect on his own divisive rhetoric.
Right, so if BNP leader Nick Griffin promises not to say anything nasty he would be welcome to make a speech at the mosque? What kind of argument is that?
As for “dissociating”, is this how Bari thinks it is done? Here he is to Sudais’s right, awarding (pdf) the sheikh his very own plaque on the mosque’s extension project.
You can read all about Sudais’s extremism and bigotry here. A sample:
Read the history to know that yesterday’s Jews are evil predecessors and today’s Jews are worse successors. They an ingrate people, they altered God’s words, worshipped calf, killed Messengers and denied their Messages. They are exiled people and the worst of mankind. Allaah cursed them and cast His wrath upon them. He turned some of them to monkeys and pigs and worshippers of creatures. They are worst in position and are astray from the right path.
History of Jews is full of deception, trickery, rebellion, oppression, evil and corruption. They always seek to cause mischief on the earth and Allaah loves not the mischief-makers.
That visit too was controversial and there were protests. The mosque’s response? “Islamophobia!”
The director of the East London Mosque was stalwart in defence of Al-Sudais, however: “These are some of the old reports by Islamophobes. He is very popular. He’s not just coming to our mosque, he is also visiting major mosques around the country.”
Muhammad Abdul Bari is a dissembler. His words on extremism are a joke.
No one should fall for them.
Update: this tape demonstrates just how long Bari has been at it. It is a BBC interview recorded in 2004, when coalition and Iraqi soldiers, including the Black Watch, were trying to retake Fallujah from al Qaeda jihadis. You can hear Bari, then deputy secretary general of the MCB, from 4:25 in.
Roger Bolton “You’ve called the assault on Fallujah barbaric. Wasn’t its occupation by Iraqi militants and foreign fighters, using civilians as shields, also barbaric?”
Abdul Bari “Well we have to see what happened in the beginning, as mentioned by some of your, some of the people you interviewed, and I think agreed by the international community, that the occupation of Iraq was illegal. So, if people of Iraq come up and want to fight against the occupation army, we know that, we also mentioned somewhere, we know that there could be some people from outside Iraq that are coming and that is because the main reason that the occupation happened.”
Roger Bolton “Do you think therefore that armed resistance of the sort we are seeing in Fallujah is legitimate? You would support the fighters who are ranged against American and British troops?”
Abdul Bari “Well, people of Iraq have to decide, because the war has been imposed on them.”
Roger Bolton “I’m sorry sir, I was asking if you, not the people in Iraq, do you therefore think it is legitimate for people to fight against the American and British troops in Iraq?”
Abdul Bari “Well, it’s for the people of Iraq to decide.”
Roger Bolton “But it certainly could be legitimate, you’re not telling them it’s wrong.”
Abdul Bari “Well, what we are saying is that the occupation of Iraq itself was wrong”
The “people of Iraq” and “some people from outside Iraq” at work in Fallujah:
And here is a debate about extremism on campus which should interest this blog’s readers. It’s on Tuesday 26 October at 6:30 PM at the JZ Young lecture theatre in UCL’s Anatomy Building on Gower Street. The debaters are:
Fiona Caldicott
Chair of the review into Abdulmutallab’s time at UCL; former principal of Somerville College, Oxford.
Muhammad Abdul Bari
Member of the Caldicott Enquiry; former Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.
James Brandon
Head of Research and Communications at the Quilliam Foundation.
Shiraz Maher
Senior Fellow, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, King’s College London, and a member of the advisory board for Student Rights.
Michael Worton
Vice-Provost (Academic and International) of UCL.
Chairman: BBC Home Affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford.
The Elders of Ziyon blog has uncovered an interesting story about our old friend Dr Qaradawi:
The 8th Annual Doha Conference on Interfaith Dialogue is to start tomorrow, but prominent Islamic Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi is boycotting the conference, according to Palestine Today.
The reason? Because there will be Jews there!
He participated in the first, second and third conferences because they were centered on Muslim/Christian dialogue. But he refuses to participate when Jews attend, quoting the Koran 29:46 ["The Spider"], “Do not argue with People of the Book….” [the verse goes on to make an exception of certain types of arguments, and then an exception to the exception, against those Jews who "oppress," if I am parsing the verse correctly.]
Qaradawi said, “So why should we dialogue with the Jews, who… shed blood, and violated the sanctities, and burned farms, and destroyed homes… .. to sit with them on a single platform?”
The article does not say “Zionist Jews” but merely “Jews.” He has met with the Neturei Karta in the past, though.
The rest of the Koranic verse makes clear that Islamic “dialogue” with other “divine” religions is limited to telling them about Islam. Which makes it more like a monologue.”
There is a rough English translation of the Palestine Today article here courtesy of Google Translate.
Last December, as we approached Christmas and the New Year, I wrote that one reason to be thankful during the holiday season was that:
SocialistUnity has not (yet) published a semi-nostalgic look back at the regime of Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was toppled from power and executed 20 years ago this month.
Unfortunately we won’t have that to be thankful for this coming holiday season.
Yes, you guessed it: Socialist Unity has republished a rose-colored-glasses look back on the Ceausescu era from Calvin “Zin” Tucker’s 21st Century Socialism. It’s based in part on a poll which– like a lot of polls in Eastern European countries– finds some longing for the supposedly “good old days” of Communist rule.
Granted, when times are hard– as they have been for too many people in post-Communist Romania– there’s a tendency to remember previous eras as better than they actually were. But perhaps a better measure of Romanians’ attitudes is the result of last year’s presidential election, when Constantin Rotaru, candidate of the Socialist Alliance Party (now the Communist party) received all of 0.45 percent of the vote. The party holds no seats in the Romanian legislature.
You can learn about the supposedly golden Ceausescu era– including his draconian efforts to increase Romania’s population by outlawing contraception and abortion– at this website.
“The fetus is the property of the entire society,” Ceausescu proclaimed. “Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity.”
It was one of the late dictator’s cruelest commands. At first Romania’s birthrate nearly doubled. But poor nutrition and inadequate prenatal care endangered many pregnant women. The country’s infant-mortality rate soared to 83 deaths in every 1,000 births (against a Western European average of less than 10 per thousand). About one in 10 babies was born underweight; newborns weighing 1,500 grams (3 pounds, 5 ounces) were classified as miscarriages and denied treatment. Unwanted survivors often ended up in orphanages. “The law only forbade abortion,” says Dr. Alexander Floran Anca of Bucharest. “It did nothing to promote life.”
Ceausescu made mockery of family planning. He forbade sex education. Books on human sexuality and reproduction were classified as “state secrets,” to be used only as medical textbooks. With contraception banned, Romanians had to smuggle in condoms and birth-control pills. Though strictly illegal, abortions remained a widespread birth-control measure of last resort. Nationwide, Western sources estimate, 60 percent of all pregnancies ended in abortion or miscarriage.
The government’s enforcement techniques were as bad as the law. Women under the age of 45 were rounded up at their workplaces every one to three months and taken to clinics, where they were examined for signs of pregnancy, often in the presence of government agents – dubbed the “menstrual police” by some Romanians. A pregnant woman who failed to “produce” a baby at the proper time could expect to be summoned for questioning. Women who miscarried were suspected of arranging an abortion. Some doctors resorted for forging statistics. “If a child died in our district, we lost 10 to 25 percent of our salary,” says Dr. Geta Stanescu of Bucharest. “But it wasn’t our fault: we had no medicine or milk, and the families were poor.”
Abortion was legal in some cases: if a woman was over 40, if she already had four children, if her life was in danger – or, in practice, if she had Communist Party connections. Otherwise, illegal abortions cost from two to four months’ wages. If something went wrong, the legal consequences were enough to deter many women from seeking timely medical help. “Usually women were so terrified to come to the hospital that by the time we saw them it was too late,” says Dr. Anca. “Often they died at home.” No one knows how many women died from these back-alley abortions.
Mehdi Hasan, the New Statesman’s Senior Editor (Politics) has a scoop! An exclusive interview with Lord Paul about the expenses scandal:
Exclusive: Lord Paul responds to official report recommending his suspension
…
In the last few minutes, I have been speaking to Lord Paul to get his response to the committee’s conclusions. He said:
I welcome the publication of the report from the House of Lords Committee for Privileges and Conduct. First and foremost…
So excited was Mehdi about his exclusive, that the New Statesman sent out a press release to boast about it:
Top stuff. Granted, the interview is a bit of a hagiography, a puff piece with interjections from the great political interviewer such as this:
This is madness. Have officials in the House of Lords lost their minds?
And on what grounds have they gone after Paul, Uddin and Bhatia and ignored or excused the false/inaccurate/dodgy claims of dozens of other peers uncovered in the press?
Still, an exclusive is an exclusive. Well done Mehdi Hasan!
But wait – what is this?
Pretty much the same text as appears in Mehdi Hasan’s “exclusive” interview also appears on the Birmingham Post’s blog.
Where, slightly more honestly, this press release is described in the following terms:
Statement from Lord Paul on the publication of the Report by the House of Lords Committee for Privileges and Conduct, 18 October 2010
I welcome the publication of the report from the House of Lords Committee for Privileges and Conduct. First and foremost…
