by
Les May
CARVED
into the wall at Broadcasting House are the words of George Orwell,
‘If liberty
means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they so
not want to hear’,
which
makes the juxtaposition
of articles in the most recent copy of the Radio
Times
all
the more interesting.
The
‘Pick of the
week’
on Radio 4 is ‘Morality
in the 21st
Century’
presented by ex-Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. We are told that his aim
is to ‘provoke
thought and discussion never to proselytise or preach’
and
that ‘Morality
is what lifts us above the pursuit of self interest and self esteem’.
And
in case you are wondering, yes that’s the same Jonathan Sacks who
are few days ago was denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and a
racist because he did not like what Corbyn had said. Or more
correctly he did not like his
interpretation of what Corbyn had said. This
in turn became his justification for his absurd comparison of
Corbyn words
with
Enoch Powell’s
speech.
The
other article is by the
BBC’s world affairs editor John
Simpson. In it he comments ‘People
have allowed themselves to be persuaded that there’s something
wrong with being given open and unbiased information from BBC
journalists’.
I think that Simpson is over egging the pudding a bit here because
all media outlets select what is ‘news’,
who
they are going to quote or interview, and how much space or air time
they are to be given, so reports are never going to be quite so
unbiased as he suggests.
But
that does not mean it is not worth making the effort. He
goes on to say ‘Well,
I’m sorry, but I don’t think any subject is too important to keep
our minds closed to it’.
I
agree and
the fact that someone might be ‘offended’
by
some subjects
cuts no ice
with me.
You
are never going to change anyone’s mind unless you can talk to
them.
Simon
Kelner, who writes ‘think
pieces’
for the ‘i’
newspaper, i.e. he’s a columnist not a journalist in the mould of
Simpson, wrote last week that Sack’s used his Instagram account to
tell the world that he was ‘a
religious leader, philosopher, award-winning author and a respected
moral voice’.
Clearly
Sack’s
is
not a man over endowed with
modesty
or self doubt.
Kelner
says that he is ‘definably,
a Zionist’,
which suggests to me that he, Kelner, has not actually spent much
time trying to figure out
what a Zionist is. Seeking
enlightenment I found that the explanation on Wikipedia runs to some
11,000 words which
is 28
A4 pages. Here
is the link, I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.
In
a remarkable bit of inventiveness Kelner writes, ‘Not
all Jews are Zionists, but (mostly) all Zionists are Jews, and I, as
a liberal-minded British Jew (rather than a Zionist) am offended by
Mr Corbyn’s pronouncements’.
The flaw in this bit of twisted logic is that one chooses to be a
Zionist, you are born a Jew. To my mind that means that you can
criticise a Jew for being a Zionist, but not for being a Jew. (I
would add
that
I feel uncomfortable using Kelner’s form of wording because in my
own speech I prefer to say someone is ‘a
Jewish person’
rather than ‘a
Jew’,
and ‘Jewish
people’
rather than ‘the
Jews’).
As
for Kelner’s complaint that he is ‘offended’
by what Corbyn said, all I can say is ‘So
what’?
Since when did Kelner, or indeed anyone else, have a right never to
be offended?
No
one seems to be too concerned about not offending me in matters just
as close to my heart as Sack’s and Kelner’s hobby horse.
(Andrea
Dworkin was once quoted in the The
Observer
as saying ‘All
men are Nazis’.
After it was published there was no rush to defend men or censure
Dworkin, so I am unlikely to feel I have to avoid making comparisons
between some of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians and the
behaviour of the Nazis.)
One
of the curious things about the claims that Corbyn is presiding over
a Labour party
riddled
with antisemitism is that I have not yet met anyone who has actually
witnessed it. And it’s not just my Labour friends who say this. A
friend who never misses an opportunity to denigrate Labour has made
exactly the same point on
more than one occasion.
Nor is antisemitic crime running riot in this country. About 15,000
prosecutions for ‘hate
crime’
are launched annually. Annual
prosecutions
for anti-semitism have yet to top two dozen. In
spite of Margaret Hodge’s silly
musings
no one is
being threatened by a new Holocaust.
So
I think we can reasonably ask who is behind the repeated complaints
against Corbyn. On the photographic evidence published in the
newspapers there seem to be two culprits, the
Jewish Chronicle and the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
We
also know from the films on the Al Jazeera TV channel which were
shown in 2017 that the state of Israel has been interfering in UK
politics and has tried to destabilise the Labour party.
Why?
That’s easy. Corbyn is unashamedly on the side of the
Palestinians. It
is to discredit any charges he
makes against the state of Israel by
claiming that
he
is an anti-Semite. It's to turn Jewish
people into victims, and by implication, Israel into a nation of
victims.
It's no longer Israel that needs to leave the Occupied Territories;
it's Corbyn
and the rest of us
who need to free ourselves
of antisemitism.
I’m
sure Corbyn has plenty of advisers and does not need my advice, but
I’m going to give it all the same. Fight these people on the basis
of freedom of speech. Put
them on the defensive for a change.
Remind
people
what Orwell said. Remind
them that the
first thing the Nazis did was to suppress dissent, so remind people
about how many British lives were lost in defence of that
liberty.
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