The Drip, Drip, Drip of Criticism and Hatred

In recent days, I have seen seven ostensibly different news stories and events that show the drip, drip, drip of criticism and hatred of Jews, Zionism and Israel.

Depressingly, there is nothing special whatsoever about these last few days. There have been no flood alerts, just the usual drip, drip drip of stories that you find in the Guardian, the Independent and any number of political websites. Nor is there anything special about the events, just more of the same drip, drip, drip of lobbying that you would find every month of the year.

Is the drip antisemitic? Is it anti-Zionist? Or is it anti-Israel? Is it fair criticism? Is it unfair criticism? Is it hateful? Is the hatred deserved?

Whatever the rights or wrongs of each solitary drip, together they leave us wading through a pool of anger, hatred, contempt, call it what you will.

It is up to you whether you feel the pool is ankle deep, waist high or reaching your nostrils. One thing is for sure, the waterline is still rising.

The last few days’ drips - more accurately, some of those that I’ve noticed - are as follows:

The opening paragraph of an article in the Guardian (5 July 2010) by its Washington columnist, Chris McGreal:

There are questions that rarely get asked in Washington. For years, the mantra that America's intimate alliance with Israel was as good for the US as it was the Jewish state went largely unchallenged by politicians aware of the cost of anything but unwavering support.

The closing paragraph of a book review in the Guardian (3 July 2010) by one of its literary critics, Nicholas Lezard:

Well, I know what's going to happen now. I and the blameless Review section of this newspaper will be denounced as either Hamas stooges, antisemites, or both. It would appear that unimpeachably impartial reporting from this miserable part of the world is a categorical impossibility. (I've seen pro-Israel websites which maintain that the residents of Gaza actually have it pretty peachy.) But whichever way you lean, this is a very important book indeed.

The obituary in the Independent (6 July 2010) of Abu Daoud, subtitled “Palestinian terrorist who masterminded the 1972 Olympic massacre”. Written by respected journalist, Adel Darwish, it includes this:

By 4:45am they had taken nine Israeli athletes hostage in their quarters after killing two who, they said, were armed secret agents (they were a weightlifter and a wrestling coach in the Israeli official version.)

The report in the Independent (6 July 2010) by Robert Fisk on his visit to Ketermaya in South Lebanon. Fisk’s report concentrates on the villagers’ lynching of an Egyptian murder suspect two months ago, but he reflects in passing:

The story in Ketermaya, a mixed Druze-Sunni village, is that way back in 1975, a Jewish couple who lived here – there was a tiny Jewish community in Lebanon at the time – were driven from their homes and that their son, an Israeli pilot, bombed the village in revenge during the Israeli invasion of 1982

By extraordinary chance, I was sitting on the hillside above Ketermaya in 1982 and saw the lone plane attack, repeatedly bombing the village on the morning of 7th June. There were no Palestinian fighters there – just civilians, of whom at least 50 were hiding in their homes – and they were all in their graves within 24 hours.

The reported words (2 July 2010) of Glasgow City Councillor Colin Deans, chairman of the Scrutiny Commission:

Build ever higher walls and appropriate ever more land and one day the Holocaust card will buy no more friendship or support. Then where will Israel be?

The hosting on 14 July 2010 at the Quakers' Friends House, Euston, London of a symposium of 9/11 conspiracy theorists that will feature:

four of the most outspoken and eloquent challengers to the Zio-American imperial order that has emerged post-September 11th.

The hosting on 18 July 2010 by the same Quakers' Friends House, Euston, London of a worldwide conference of the Hizb ut Tahrir group that only last month stated:

O Muslim Armies! Teach the Jews a lesson after which they will need no further lessons

March forth to fight them, eradicate their entity and purify the earth of their filth

Where to begin with all of this?

Is McGreal right, does anything short of unwavering support for Israel carry the kind of cost that he implies? If so, who or what is the power that lies behind such enforcement? Are they Jews? Are they Zionists? Are they Israelis? Is it a conspiracy, or is it just how those things have ended up? What are Guardian readers to make of such hidden power?

What about Lezard? He makes some criticisms of Israel in a review of a book that is critical of Israeli policy. For this, he and his colleagues will be set upon as backers of terrorism and antisemitism. What are Guardian readers to make of these slanderers? These Jews? – or perhaps they are Zionists? – or perhaps they are something else?

What about those armed Israeli secret agents, whom the "Palestinian terrorist's" henchmen had to…err…kill in self-defence? What are Independent readers to make of a nation so cunning that it would disguise its secret agents as Olympic athletes? Masters of planning and disguise, eh.

Then again, what about those Jews who have the bloodlust of revenge: the bloodlust that would cause them (in their new Israeli identity) to disobey their squadron commander's orders and veer off to kill 50 villagers in a one man revenge attack. What are Independent readers to make of such Jews and such Israelis?

And how about the playing of “the Holocaust card?” When will those who play that card realise that its fast running out? When will they realise that relations between Jews and non-Jews will return to pre-Holocaust standards unless Israel, the Jewish state, does what its enemies demand of it? The good citizens of Glasgow can now thank their Scrutiny Commissioner for slipping them off the Holocaust hook.

And what about Quakers’ Friends House, Euston, London? Where is the friendship in allowing these events to take place? The first will proclaim “Zio-American imperial order” responsibility for 9-11 and the subsequent “War on Terror”. And who are we to giggle and point fingers at their lunacy? Given what you can read in the Guardian and Independent about unspecified power; fake terrorist accusations; masters of disguise; and bloodthirsty avengers, why exactly wouldn’t the “Zio-American imperial order” be behind such events?

And as for Quakers hosting Hizb ut Tahrir who want Muslims to “March forth to fight them, eradicate their entity and purify the earth of their filth”, well, given what we’ve read above, hand on heart, who can really blame them? Wouldn’t they be doing the earth a favour?

And what’s that, “eradicate…purify…filth"...Holocaust you say. Oh shut up, we knew you’d call it antisemitic and we knew you’d end up playing that bloody Holocaust card.