Harry's Place

So they’re staging a reading so that people can actually see for themselves what the fuss is about and make their own mind up. And that’s the same as showing a Nazi propaganda film. A sense of proportion is required here I think.

” tell her we’re chosen people”

Let me put it this way, Andrew.

You’re not an anti-racist. You’re happy to give anti-semitism a pass, as long as it is plausibly dressed up as anti-Zionism.

Time to link to Norman Geras again : http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/03/seven-themes-for-caryl-churchill.html

David T, there is a clear distinction between anti-semitism and anti-zionism. Personally I feel this film is simply anti-zionist and nothing else, and I’m sure many others feel that way too. The point is people should be allowed to see things for themselves and decide, but the BBC decided that was too dangerous or something, because Israel is seen as too dangerous a topic too even mention. Witness for example, the British walkout at the conference on race, where they admitted that they had decided they would walk out as soon as Israel was even mentioned.

I think the Guardian are brave to stand up this wave of Israeli silence, and let some opinions be expressed for once.

For once? They are expressed all the time. As if anybody, anywhere had actually silenced Walt, Mearsheimer, Carter, Chomsky, Finkelstein or Fisk, to name but a few. And as for the “conference on race”, well, for YOU it certainly was on “race” not “against racism”

You’re not an anti-racist. You’re happy to give anti-semitism a pass, as long as it is plausibly dressed up as anti-Zionism.

Crap. I don’t have a view about whether the play is anti-semitic or not, I haven’t seen it or read it. But it has certainly attracted a lot of controversy so why not give people an opportunity to make their minds up for themselves.

Time to link to Howard Jacobson again :
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-let8217s-see-the-8216criticism8217-of-israel-for-what-it-really-is-1624827.html

I’m not suggesting it should be banned.

I’m just explaining that people who do put on a play, the thesis of which is that Jewish children are told to celebrate the deaths of others, because they are “the chosen people” are antisemites.

I also think that people who do not see this is a racist argument, are tolerant of racism.

David T, you mean “TO celebrate”, this is the whole point of the argument.

I’d add that Goebbels would most certainly not have regarded Jew Suss as a film that unfairly portrayed Jews.

I expect that there would be very many people who would have applauded him as “brave” for having the courage to tell the truth about Jews.

there is a clear distinction between anti-semitism and anti-zionism.

What is that distinction? i would say that, on the contrary, anti-zionism is a busted flush, fatally compromised by its entanglement with racism, conspiracy theorising and the promotion of various totalitarian ideologies. As zionism is no longer an active political movement, its objectives having been achieved many years ago, so it has become a spectral fantasy into which racists project their paranoia. Anti-zionism should be as stigmatised as other racist ideologies and it is a mark of the depravity of the so-called left that it remains so prevalent.

But it has certainly attracted a lot of controversy so why not give people an opportunity to make their minds up for themselves.

Ah, how brave of them. Just like when they reprinted silly cartoons about Mohammed.. and hosted the Fitna film… So people could make up their own minds. Oh hang on a minute, no there was in that case genuine attempts to censor free speech through both legal and violent means. Hence the Guardians principled stance not to show these items.

I’m not suggesting it should be banned.

And I’m not suggesting that you’re suggesting it should be banned.

I’m just explaining that people who do put on a play, the thesis of which is that Jewish children are told not celebrate the deaths of others, because they are “the chosen people” are antisemites.

If they were endorsing the play or making money from it then you would have a point. But their stated purpose is to give people the opportunity, given the controversy which it has caused, to see what the fuss is about and decide for themselves. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.

I also think that people who do not see this is a racist argument, are tolerant of racism.

I never said that wasn’t a racist argument.

I also think that people who do not see this is a racist argument, are tolerant of racism.

And yes, they should have printed the cartoons.

Good. Then we’re not in disagreement at all.

I’d add that Goebbels would most certainly not have regarded Jew Suss as a film that unfairly portrayed Jews.

Well quite, but given that he was a notorious Nazi and Caryl Churchill is one of our more celebrated playwrites with no reputation AFAIK of having dodgy views I think that people might be slighty less inclined to rush to judgement about her work.

I don’t have a view about whether the play is anti-semitic or not, I haven’t seen it or read it.

It lasts ten minutes, and consists of less than one thousand words; the majority of which have been reproduced, and the play itself discussed endlessly on this site.

I guess what I’m trying to say, Andrew, is that whilst this was a reasonable line when this revolting little morality tale first appeared, to persist this far down the lines makes you either guilty of headbanging craven amorality or you are fist-swingingly immoral. Which is it?

(And, no, it does not compare to the Motoons.)

Well quite, but given that he was a notorious Nazi and Caryl Churchill is one of our more celebrated playwrites with no reputation AFAIK of having dodgy views

So, everyone gets one crack at the racism whip before being thought of as a promoter of racism (well, anti-Jewish racism)? That lets Jostein Gaarder off the hook as well.

Carl Orff was one of Germany’s more celebrated composers. Just saying, like.

The guardian refer to Seven Jewish Children as ‘a play on Jewish history’ in headlines and a ‘controversial play’ in bylines. The point is that by using this impartial language – trying to split the difference between people who agree with the play and those, like me, who think it’s disgusting – is in itself showing a tolerance towards the arguments made in the play. I think the fact that the guardian didn’t show the Fitna film or the Danish cartoons adds to this sense of tolerance – the argument that the guardian wants people to see what the fuss is about is, frankly, untenable.

Caryl Churchill is one of our more celebrated playwrites with no reputation AFAIK of having dodgy views

She apparently believes that Jews take the view that they are exempt from common morality, because they are “the chosen people”

I can tell you, personally, that precisely this racist argument was used against me by an antisemitic teacher at my Church of England primary school.

Is there an anti-racist sense in which that argument might be deployed, do you think?

Amos 3:2 says nothing of the sort, of course.

Maybe I was being unkind on Carl Orff in equating him with Carol Churchill. He *was* a truly stellar artist

Andrew, have you availed yourself of one of the many opportunities to acquaint yourself with this play? Or, are you acting like the blind monkeys?

Time to quote Alain Finkielkraut for the first time :
“Anti-racism is the communism of the 21st century.” http://www.juif.org/go-blogs-15032.php

Caryl Churchill is acting as a perfect anti-racist in the “anti-racism = communism” (read: stalinism) sense. Denouncing, smearing, libeling “Zionists” for the sake of the international good and better. Joseph S. did nothing else in the years 1952-53.

“Given that…Caryl Churchill is one of our more celebrated playwrites with no reputation AFAIK of having dodgy views I think that people might be slighty less inclined to rush to judgement about her work.”

Nobody is rushing to judgement of her views. You only need to watch that disgraceful play to see that she has views which are not just dodgy but hateful and racist.

Howard Jacobson called it:”The old stuff – jew-hating pure and simple.”

The Jewish Chronicle’s theatre critic John Nathan concluded: “For the first time in my career as a critic, I am moved to say about a work at a major production house that this is an antisemitic play.”

Spot on. Dodgy views? That’s the understatement of the century.

Thank you Andrew Adams for allowing the aguments for The Guardian showing this play to be demolished so wonderfully.

You were just playing ‘patsy’ weren’t you?

I particularly liked the line that (as far as you knew) because someone hadn’t published a racist work in the past then they couldn’t be racist.

Noone would really think that would they. I mean seriously think that, as opposed to just playing the village idiot?

MattG

” I don’t have a view about whether the play is anti-semitic or not, I haven’t seen it or read it. ”

Thank you and good night.

I am surprised that there is so much ignorance on the nature of this awful racist play, as there has been plenty of discussion of the issues on HP, and more so on Engage.

Howard Jacobson’s articles are very clear, but let me cut to the chase.

Would anyone (who considers themselves to be an anti-racist) be happy with a play entitled, 7 black children, 7 gypsy children, 7 Arab children or 7 Muslim children, etc which then proceeds to essentalise those kids and their parents, and all those connected to them, putting crude words in their mouth along the way?

I would hope not.

And if you wouldn’t feel happy with black children, gypsy children, etc being subjected to this nonsense, then why should it only be “acceptable” when the particular social/ethnic minority concerned is: Jews?

Please, ask yourself why that is the case?

these links might help:

http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/

http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/howard-jacobson-says-it-all-about-contemporary-antisemitism-in-todays-independent/

“Anti-Semitism? Absolutely not. It is “criticism” of Israel, pure and simple. A number of variations on the above sophistical nastiness have been fermenting in the more febrile of our campuses for some time. One particularly popular version, pseudo-scientific in tone, understands Zionism as a political form given to a psychological condition – Jews visiting upon others the traumas suffered by themselves, with Israel figuring as the torture room in which they do it. This is is pretty well the thesis of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children, an audacious 10-minute encapsulation of Israel’s moral collapse – the audacity residing in its ignorance or its dishonesty – currently playing at the Royal Court. The play is conceived in the form of a family roundelay, with different voices chiming in with suggestions as to the best way to bring up, protect, inform, and ultimately inflame into animality an unseen child in each of the chosen seven periods of contemporary Jewish history. It begins with the Holocaust, partly to establish the playwright’s sympathetic bona fides (“Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting”), partly to explain what has befallen Palestine, because no sooner are the Jews out of the hell of Hitler’s Europe than they are constructing a parallel hell for Palestinians.

Anyone with scant knowledge of the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations – that is to say, judging from what they chant, the majority of anti-Israel demonstrators – would assume from this that Jews descended on the country as from a clear blue sky; that they had no prior association with the land other than in religious fantasy and through some scarce remembered genealogical affiliation: “Tell her it’s the land God gave us/… Tell her her great great great great lots of greats grandad lived there” – the latter line garnering much knowing laughter in the theatre the night I was there, by virtue of the predatiousness lurking behind the childlike vagueness.

You cannot of course tell the whole story of anywhere in 10 minutes, but then why would you want to unless you conceive it to be simple and one-sided? The staccato form of the piece – every line beginning “Tell her” or “Don’t tell her” – is skilfully contrived to suggest a people not just forever fraught and frightened but forever covert and deceitful. Nothing is true. Boasts are denials and denials are boasts. Everything is mediated through the desire to put the best face, first on fear, then on devious appropriation, and finally on evil.

That being the case, it is hard to be certain what the playwright knows and what she doesn’t, what she, in her turn, means deliberately to twist or just unthinkingly helps herself to from the poor box of leftist propaganda. The overall impression, nonetheless, is of a narrative slavishly in line with the familiar rhetoric, making little or nothing of the Jews’ unbroken connection with the country going back to the Arab conquest more than a thousand years before, the piety felt for the land, the respect for its non-Jewish inhabitants (their rights must “be guarded and honoured punctiliously,” Ben Gurion wrote in 1918), the waves of idealistic immigration which long predated the post-Holocaust influx with its twisted psychology, and the hopes of peaceful co-existence, for the tragic dashing of which Arab countries in their own obduracy and intolerance bear no less responsibility.

Quite simply, in this wantonly inflammatory piece, the Jews drop in on somewhere they have no right to be, despise, conquer, and at last revel in the spilling of Palestinian blood. There is a one-line equivocal mention of a suicide bomber, and ditto of rockets, both compromised by the “Tell her” device, otherwise no Arab lifts a finger against a Jew. “Tell her about Jerusalem,” but no one tells her, for example, that the Jewish population of East Jersusalem was expelled at about the time our survivors turn up, that it was cleansed from the city and its sacred places desecrated or destroyed. Only in the crazed brains of Israelis can the motives for any of their subsequent actions be found.

Thus lie follows lie, omission follows omission, until, in the tenth and final minute, we have a stage populated by monsters who kill babies by design – “Tell her we killed the babies by mistake,” one says, meaning don’t tell her what we really did – who laugh when they see a dead Palestinian policeman (“Tell her they’re animals… Tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out”), who consider themselves the “chosen people”, and who admit to feeling happy when they see Palestinian “children covered in blood”.

Anti-Semitic? No, no. Just criticism of Israel.

Only imagine this as Seven Muslim Children and we know that the Royal Court would never have had the courage or the foolhardiness to stage it. I say that with no malice towards Muslims. I do not approve of censorship but I admire their unwillingness to be traduced. It would seem that we Jews, however, for all our ingrained brutality – we English Jews at least – are considered a soft touch. You can say what you like about us, safe in the knowledge that while we slaughter babies and laugh at murdered policemen (“Tell her we’re the iron fist now”) we will squeak no louder than a mouse when we are abused.

Caryl Churchill will argue that her play is about Israelis not Jews, but once you venture on to “chosen people” territory – feeding all the ancient prejudice against that miscomprehended phrase – once you repeat in another form the medieval blood-libel of Jews rejoicing in the murder of little children, you have crossed over. This is the old stuff. Jew-hating pure and simple – Jew-hating which the haters don’t even recognise in themselves, so acculturated is it – the Jew-hating which many of us have always suspected was the only explanation for the disgust that contorts and disfigures faces when the mere word Israel crops up in conversation. So for that we are grateful. At last that mystery is solved and that lie finally nailed. No, you don’t have to be an anti-Semite to criticise Israel. It just so happens that you are.”

@Daniel

The guardian refer to Seven Jewish Children as ‘a play on Jewish history’ in headlines and a ‘controversial play’ in bylines. The point is that by using this impartial language – trying to split the difference between people who agree with the play and those, like me, who think it’s disgusting – is in itself showing a tolerance towards the arguments made in the play. I think the fact that the guardian didn’t show the Fitna film or the Danish cartoons adds to this sense of tolerance – the argument that the guardian wants people to see what the fuss is about is, frankly, untenable.

Much as Wilders is hardly is as skilled a playwrite as Churchill I see Fitna as somehow inherently superior. Seven Jewish Children is more rooted in emotion. It’s basic message is that whoever has the biggest guns are the bad guys, which is fundamentally irrational.

Fitna has a rational argument within it. Show terrorists blowing stuff up – show terrorists quoting from the Koran before they go off and blow stuff up – show preachers saying stuff that inspires terrorists to blow themself up – rip the offending passages highlighted earlier out of the Koran implying they are not fit for the 21st century. Sure it’s unbalanced and not nuanced, but it’s presenting a case for refutation, on a rational and not just emotional level.

In contrast the whole oppressed turning into evil demons once they get access to bigger guns narrative in seven Jewish children presents no rational argument on whether Israel should or should not exist or even whether the specifics of the Gaza operation were reasonable, on a rational level.

The Guardians spiel states:

“There were hopes of a British radio version but the BBC refused, saying that even with drama it had to remain impartial – the same reason it gave for not broadcasting a Gaza emergency appeal.”

Perhaps, if it was a real ‘newspaper’ the Guardian might add somthing along the lines of…

‘an editorial decision vindicated by the subsequent theft of the aid destined for Palestinian civilians being stolen by Hamas.’

I would have thought that would be a more intelligent and honest analysis…..as opposed to encouraging their erstwhile readership to nod heads sagely muttering about ‘the lobby’ as they drink a spot of herbal tea?

MattG

and http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/radio-4-and-seven-jewish-children-david-hirsh/

oh, please, what is going on with the moderation queue?

I appreciate that it is probably to stop cranks and jew haters spamming HP but the settings need looking at, please

Crap. I don’t have a view about whether the play is anti-semitic or not,

I suggest that if you are not Jewish then you don’t qualify to hold an opinion of any value whether its antisemitic or not – either way.

Neither do most people, and especially NOT the author or the Guardian.

You are allowed to guess and try your best to synthesise but you still don’t qualify.

Mod

“I am surprised that there is so much ignorance on the nature of this awful racist play,”

To be fair Mod, its not really ignorance is it. If you don’t like jews then the play presents no problem. If you are a decent human being and genuine anti-racist (regardless on your position on Zionism) then the play is a clumsy, anti-semitic piece of tat.

It really isn’t very complicated. Ignorance isn’t really an excuse for anything. If AA above was just ignorant then I doubt he would have rushed to make the first comment on this thread. He may instead have gone and read a transcript of the play, before attempting to make a (more informed) comment.

As with many other good people; the desire to place the jew in the position of the hysterical, controlling lobbyist was too hard to resist.

MattG

Presumably in order to secure the rights to perform they’ve had to make a payment to a palestinian charity, anyone know which one?

“there is a clear distinction between anti-semitism and anti-zionism.”

Which is completely lost when you accuse “Zionists” of teaching their children that they are the chosen people.

I can tell you, personally, that precisely this racist argument was used against me by an antisemitic teacher at my Church of England primary school.

David I share empathy with your experiences as well as geography.

If someone uses “Chosen People” in the context of a biblical/historical discussion then I think its OK. If its used to imply that Jews think they are superior to others and can do no wrong then its classical antisemitism.

I know we can both attest that we have never in our lives ever felt superior due to being Jewish. I may have felt superior because I think I’m, smarter at certain things but never because I was born a Jew.

We are “Chosen” though. Chosen for racist hate and abuse so that we can be scapegoated and sacrificed for the ills of the planet.

Its antisemitism itself that drives Jews to be closer and to organise their defences – and of course, this is just an illustration of Jews ‘exclusiveness’. Its a version of the Livingstone Formulation.

Lets face it. The Guardian thought this was a cheap way to attack Jews by disguise and so it appeals to them.

When they run “Mohammed and Aisha – The Love Story” – based on the book they tried to stop by firebomb, I’ll accept they are balanced.

Matt, I’d have to disagree.

Andrew Adams does not come over (to me) as someone with a major chip on his shoulder against Jews. There is a lot of it about, but he doesn’t strike me as one, in fact he’s made some good points here:

” 137. comment by
Andrew Adams

As for Hamas, well they are a terrorist organisation who are guilty of brutality and murder both of Jews and their own people. That should be enough for anyone to condemn them regardless of arguments about their anti-semitism although I’m not going to argue with any one who asserts that their leaders are in fact anti-semitic. I’m not sure exactly what Phil meant when he said “I don’t think it’s necessary to believe [my italics] the leaders of Hamas are anti-semitic”.”

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/04/21/anti-semitism-the-left-and-human-rights/

“I’d add that Goebbels would most certainly not have regarded Jew Suss as a film that unfairly portrayed Jews.”

“Well quite, but given that he was a notorious Nazi and Caryl Churchill is one of our more celebrated playwrites with no reputation AFAIK of having dodgy views I think that people might be slighty less inclined to rush to judgement about her work.” (Andrew Adams)

Given that you aren’t willing to read what a 10 minute play is about before commenting on the subject, I would say that if you lived in 1936, Goebbels would be for you just the German Minister of Propaganda, not “a notorious Nazi”. Other people are serious about antisemitism, but are not, Andrew.

The term ‘newspaper’ to describe the Guardian is an inaccurate reflection of what is indeed a propaganda organ for Hamas, Hezbollah and the entire absolutist caliphatic enterprise of global revolutionary Islam as envisaged by the political Salafi literalists or Salafi reformists.

It is probably irrelevant that Caryl Churchill is an antisemite as she fits so nicely into the global jihadist project which has desires nothing less than world domination.

Shame about her writing abilities though.

there is a clear distinction between anti-semitism and anti-zionism.

Wrong. There is a very murky distinction, if at all. And those who claim to be anti-Zionists and not antisemites had better be prepared to deal with that.

*you are not*

Good to hear you say that, Gene. Agree 100%.

Jon d -as far as I know the original stipulation was that all donations must go to Medical Aid for Palestinians. If one takes a look at their partners on the ground one comes up with some interesting reading which could probably keep Habibi occupied for days.

Also as far as I understand, any document/proposal at Durban 1 or 2 was supposed to refrain from mentioning countries by name. The singling out of one country for mention was against the guidelines set by the UN itself.

The ‘chosen people’ thing was never meant to be interpreted as Jews having special treatment or perks. If anything it is about being the bearers of greater responsibility and burdens.

We are “Chosen” though. Chosen for racist hate and abuse so that we can be scapegoated and sacrificed for the ills of the planet.

Isn’t that the fucking truth.

Time for a comment on CiF, David T.

Tell her it’s a load of cold crap and we’re tired of hearing about it.

If they’re that keen on letting people judge controversial literature for themselves they could always serialise ’satanic verses’

Wrong. There is a very murky distinction, if at all. And those who claim to be anti-Zionists and not antisemites had better be prepared to deal with that.

“If at all”?

Aren’t the Satmar anti-Zionist? Are they then also antisemitic?

What’s murky, other than antisemites posing as anti-Zionists?

I’d say that the murkiest thing was the extent to which many – but most certainly not all – either lionise groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, or contextualise their racism, or ignore it, or justify it.

‘there is a clear distinction between anti-semitism and anti-zionism”

There is something obvious here that no one is stating. If there is such a difference between anti-zionism and anti-semitism, why is the play called Seven Jewish Children. Why is it not called Seven Zionist Children.

Stan

It is interesting to me that people excuse the Churchill play by saying she’s a celebrated writer; similarly, people who walked out on Ahmadijenad were attacked as “childish” because his views are widely held in the Middle East.

Please.

Do we have to swallow garbage whole because Caryl Churchill is supposedly a celebrated personage or put up with Ahmadijenad because his POV is common in certain regions?

What copouts.

Tell me this: if some nobody had authored “Seven Jewish Children” would that make the piece more or less dreadful?

Fact: Jews (and others) have suffered because British “intelligentsia” have made Jew-hate respectable.*

I’d argue that antisemitism is particularly obnoxious in these cases precisely because of the lofty aspirations of British ideals.

Because of British ideals antisemitism from well-known or well-placed Brits and/or British media is exceptionally poisonous. It puts the stamp of respectability on the worst, the very worst sort of bigotry and this in and of itself has a ripple effect around the world.

*The flip side of the coin is the support for radical movements feeding the beast of conflict in the Middle East as well as undermining moderates – this victimizes not only people directly involved in the Arab/Israeli conflict but also people who’ve been killed or displaced or maimed or oppressed by extremists throughtout MENA and in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

When I read the Guardian I just want to cry. Guardian of what exactly? Is there no accountability?

Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens are Britain’s most celebrated writers. All them produced anti-Semitic works.

Winston Churchill is Britain’s most celebrated hero. Despite the nonsense talked about his philosemitism and despite his enormous influence and power, he did not lift a finger to aid the drowning Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. In fact, during his premiership much was done to actively prevent their rescue. Indeed, had he been a card carrying-member of the Nazi Party he could not have done less to help the Jewish victims.

Melanie Phillips put it best: “Truly, the Guardian is an evil newspaper.”

http://tinyurl.com/cc68ks

“Aren’t the Satmar anti-Zionist? Are they then also antisemitic?”

This is so stupid, one doesn’t know where to begin. But let’s try.

If a Jew says: “6 million Jews died in the Holocaust because of the sins of their fathers” he is a kook. He is also a Satmar. The idea that the Holocaust was a punishment for disobeying God is mainstream Jewish ultra-orthodox thought.

But if a non-Jew says the same as above, he is obviously an antisemite. He is using the kookish beliefs of some Jews to accuse them of being responsible for the Holocaust, even though, he doesn’t share the mental religious framework that those kookish Jews have. He just takes one point and uses it against them.

Now, if Satmar want to be anti-Zionist because Zionism seemingly doesn’t square with ultra-Orthodox Jewish thought, that is their prerrogative. But a non-Jew cannot be an anti-Zionist on those very same terms because he doesn’t share the rest of the ultra-Orthodox package.

So he can do one of these two things to solve the problem: become an ultra-Orthodox Jew or shut his antisemitic mouth up.

Aren’t the Satmar anti-Zionist? Are they then also antisemitic?

Yes. Classic demented god-bothering jew-haters.

Anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism?

Judea Pearl, father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, has an answer:

Is anti-Zionism hate?

“Yes. It is more dangerous than anti-Semitism, threatening lives and peace in the Middle East.

Anti-Zionism rejects the very notion that Jews are a nation — a collective bonded by a common history — and, accordingly, denies Jews the right to self-determination in their historical birthplace. It seeks the dismantling of the Jewish nation-state: Israel.

Anti-Zionism earns its discriminatory character by denying the Jewish people what it grants to other historically bonded collectives (e.g. French, Spanish, Palestinians), namely, the right to nationhood, self-determination and legitimate coexistence with other indigenous claimants.

Anti-Semitism rejects Jews as equal members of the human race; anti-Zionism rejects Israel as an equal member in the family of nations.”

“anti-Zionism targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, namely, the Jewish population of Israel, whose physical safety and personal dignity depend crucially on maintaining Israel’s sovereignty. Put bluntly, the anti-Zionist plan to do away with Israel condemns 5 1/2 million human beings, mostly refugees or children of refugees, to eternal defenselessness in a region where genocidal designs are not uncommon.”

“…anti-Zionist rhetoric is a stab in the back to the Israeli peace camp, which overwhelmingly stands for a two-state solution.”

http://tinyurl.com/ak4ccg

Caryl Churchill’s play is an incitement to hatred and collective violence against the Jewish people.

It is a perfect example of the antisemitic mindset and should therefore be used as an example by educational bodies to show how false premises acquire impregnable authority and wider acceptability through a process of self-mystification.

The Guardian is a racist publication and anyone associated with it should be ashamed.

There’s an important point about the Satmar, and it ties in directly with Caryl Churchill’s racist play.

Judaism is based upon the notion that there is a covenant between God and Mankind, and a special covenant between God and Jews. Mankind generally needs to keep the 7 Noachite commandments. Jews are ‘chosen’ to keep 613 commandments. In return, God will look after Man generally, and the Jews.

Now, if you believe that this is true, you need some explanation for the genocide of European Jews. Why didn’t God look after the Jews?

For religious Jews, for whom the notion of the covenant is at the heart of their worldview, the answer is clear. Given that God doesn’t break covenants, it must be the Jews who did so.

Most Jews will have come across this sort of rubbish. I heard it at Hebrew school – where I was once told that it was ‘integrating’ into German society and failing to keep the Commandments that had caused the Holocaust. Which was confusing, as in the same year I was told by my piano teacher, Mrs Gwynne, that she “wasn’t surprised that Hitler had killed the Jews, if they had all done as little piano practice as you”.

If you don’t believe in God, the reason is also clear. There isn’t a God, and God isn’t looking after anybody at all, including Jews.

If you are a religious antisemite, the reason is also clear. God has terminated his covenant with the Jews. They are no longer ‘chosen’ for special service to God. In fact, they’re accursed.

If you are a non-religious antisemite, the explanation is that the Jews brought disaster on themselves, through their intrinsic wickedness.

In both cases, it is imperative to mock Jews for thinking that they have a special relationship with God, and to think of ways of taunting them about it.

The best ways to do it, of course, is to taunt Jews with the Holocaust and taunt Jews with the failure of God to save them from genocide.

What a hilarious play Churchill has written. I would spit in her face.

(And, no, it does not compare to the Motoons.)

The offensive caricatures of Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) employed familiar racist symbolism used to associate Arabs and Muslims in general with backwardness and barbarity. No sincere anti-racist should have anything to do with them.

Would anyone (who considers themselves to be an anti-racist) be happy with a play entitled, 7 black children, 7 gypsy children, 7 Arab children or 7 Muslim children, etc which then proceeds to essentalise those kids and their parents, and all those connected to them, putting crude words in their mouth along the way?

But Arabs, Muslims and people of color *HAVE* been demonized for years by Hollywood and attendant cultural paradigms.

I suggest that if you are not Jewish then you don’t qualify to hold an opinion of any value whether its antisemitic or not – either way.

Neither do most people, and especially NOT the author or the Guardian.

Can non-Jews not judge for themselves?

anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism = racism? Jews and Zionists are a race, then?

BEfore I give my views about this anti-semitic piece of filth masquerading as high art, i want to comment on this silly remark:

“I suggest that if you are not Jewish then you don’t qualify to hold an opinion of any value whether its antisemitic or not – either way.”

I guess, if this were true, that I couldn’t comment on anti-black racism, mysogyny, or any other racism other than anti-semitism (since I’m jewish by birth). This is stupid, not to mention racist.

Now for the play:

Howard Jacobson is spot-on, not only in the way he defines the play as anti-semitic, but in how he notes that “Seven Muslim children” would never be (a) written; (b) staged anywhere reputable; and (c) broadcast online by the Guardian (ok, he didn’t say that last bit, but it was implied). So though I could go on and on pointing out how the play is a racist anti-semitic, anti-historical piece of crap, it’s been done so well by Jacobson and others there’s no point.

What I will point out is how similar the style of the play was to a broadcast by the notorious American anti-semite Father Coughlin (thanks to the Harry’s poster in another thread who pointed me to a maniacal anti-semitic web site (the french connection; synagogue of satan, etc. etc. yada yada) that included full hour-long father coughlin broadcasts). In the broadcast i listened to, the good padre began by talking about discrimination against Jews by the Nazis and how horrible it was…. only to segue into how all the Russian communists were Jews and the Jewish communists betrayed Germany etc etc etc. Anyway, when I heard the Churchill play segue from Ann Frank (figuratively) to the “chosen people” etc. etc. it was eerily similar to Coughlin’s speech, which also seemed sympathetic and reasonable at first.

One last note: The Guardian’s disingenuous rationale for airing this “play” makes no sense, given that they wouldn’t and haven’t aired Fitna or printed the Motoons, as others here have pointed out. This reminds me of a controversy in Feb 2008 at the Vancouver Public Library, which hosted notorious anti-zionist/semite Greg Felton during “freedom to read” week, but would NEVER EVER have hosted, Gert Wilders, Robert Spencer or others labelled as Islamophobes.

The reason for this double standard is not just anti-semitism; that might explain some people’s behavior, but the larger reason is the elephant in the room — FEAR. As Jacobson points out, as fearsome and cruel as the Jews are made out to be, nobody fears for their personal safety writing/producing anti-Israel/semitic material. They are, however, scared shitless at the thought of Muslim retribution. So in a sense, Churchill’s play is a manifestation of prophylactic stockholm syndrome, and that is how we should view it.

Anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism = racism? YES, because the word “zionism” is used in this context as a mere cover-word for “Jews” and “judaism” in general. Stalin did it in 1952, C. Churchill in 2009, and many people did it in between.

The offensive caricatures of Muhammad … employed familiar racist symbolism used to associate Arabs and Muslims in general with backwardness and barbarity.

No they didn’t. The cartoons were of Mohammed, not of Muslims.

They were specifically a comment on certain terrorist groups which explicitly used religious doctrine to justify terrorism.

The objection to the cartoons were orchestrated by supporters of those terrorist groups, and took quite some time to get going. They resulted in death threats.

That they resulted in death threats is very telling. The reason the MoToons had been commissioned in the first place, was because the writer of a childrens’ book on Mohammed had been unable to find an artist to illustrate his book, because the artists feared death threats.

What those demonstrators said – time and time again – they were objecting to was NOT racism. It was to the depiction – and in particular – the disrespectful depiction of Mohammed.

But Arabs, Muslims and people of color *HAVE* been demonized for years by Hollywood and attendant cultural paradigms.

That is true to some extent. We’ve moved a very long way from The Birth of a Nation, however.

By contrast:

1. Jews have not threatened violence over this, or any other of they myriad racist defamations to which we’ve been subject

2. This play claims that Jewish parents encourage Jewish children to revel in the dead of a civil war. That is, quite frankly, untrue. It is also essentially a rehashing of the Blood Libel.

3. This play also claims that Jews regard themselves as exempt from common morality, because they (falsely) believe themselves to be “chosen” by God. That is also a filthy lie

4. You may find a small number of religious Zionists who do see religious doctrine as a justification for their presence in Israel. Some settlers think this way. They are a minority in any Jewish community, as the Satmar are. They deserve condemnation. That is not why Israel fights to protect its citizens from terrorism.

“What a hilarious play Churchill has written. I would spit in her face.”

Join the queue.

Actually, I hope I wouldn’t. I hope I’d have the grace to walk away.

“I hope I’d have the grace to walk away.”

But does grace get us very far? We have been talking and arguing for years now and the situation only seems to be getting worse. I don’t believe anti-Semitism can be fought effectively, not with the weapons we have been using. I see only two solutions: fight or flight.

Some weeks ago, if I remember correctly, you suggested that your father is relatively safe from an anti-Semitic attack because of the particular type of headgear he wears. I can’t believe we are living in the type of society (the kind of society known only too well to Polish Jews in the mid-1930s) where you would need to think about such a thing. Is this really the kind of Britain you or indeed any of us want to be a part of?

Re the murky distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism: I’m willing to accept there are genuine and sincere anti-nationalists (like Red Deathy) who are equally opposed to Zionism and every other form of nationalism. The problem is that such people tend to think that Zionists should be the first of all the world’s peoples to give up their nationalism.

As for those who only oppose Jewish nationalism (i.e. Zionism), the burden is on them to explain why they are not antisemitic. And I have yet to see a convincing explanation.

But does grace get us very far? We have been talking and arguing for years now and the situation only seems to be getting worse. I don’t believe anti-Semitism can be fought effectively, not with the weapons we have been using. I see only two solutions: fight or flight.

Some weeks ago, if I remember correctly, you suggested that your father is relatively safe from an anti-Semitic attack because of the particular type of headgear he wears. I can’t believe we are living in the type of society (the kind of society known only too well to Polish Jews in the mid-1930s) where you would need to think about such a thing. Is this really the kind of Britain you or indeed any of us want to be a part of?

I see only a third option: the revival of a genuine anti-racist politics.

I think that is achievable.

Yes, but I do agree that the other options are for Jews to band together for self-defence, or to escape, again.

Faisal Baha: anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism = racism? Jews and Zionists are a race, then?

You are ignorant of European history. In Europe antisemitism has traditionally been racist. European antisemites have seen Jews as an inferior race of people… The fact that Judaism is not a prostelitizing religion plays into this – one inherits Judaism rather than converting. Also consider that if the nazis and other racists started killing left handed people for being, in their view, a vile, inferior, dirty and degenerate race, there wouldn’t be any point in arguing whether handedness is a race or not. If you hate people because of their supposed race then you are a racist.

Oddly this is why the new antisemites don’t see themselves as antisemite. They have the Jew hatred, they have the projection/conspiracism where they believe, as Churchill does, that Jews have attitudes that they certainly do not have. But since they are usually not crediting long discredited theories of “race” at the reason for Jews supposed evil, they don’t recognize their hatred as irrational and antisocial and well antisemitic.

It’s Springtime for the Guardian:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu2NqfISm9k&feature=related

Well, talk about bad taste … perhaps Caryl Churchill could be persuaded to do a rap version of her play.

Gene,

I think you give most of these so-called “anti-Zionists” far too much credit.

I doubt, with a few exceptions, that those so so opposed to “Zionism” know a damn thing about it?

For example, next time you see a non-Jewish “anti-Zionist” ask him/her to explain who were the Black Hundreds?

Or what were the consequences of the Czarist anti-Jewish laws of the late 19th century?

Finally, if they manage to get those questions half-right, ask them to explain the Dreyfus trial, why was it so important and what followed it?

I think it is much better to characterise most “anti-Zionists” as simply “anti-Israeli”, there is less ambiguity to that and it makes clear who they really loath.

“I suggest that if you are not Jewish then you don’t qualify to hold an opinion of any value whether its antisemitic or not – either way.”

Even though someone replied:

“I guess, if this were true, that I couldn’t comment on anti-black racism, mysogyny, or any other racism other than anti-semitism (since I’m jewish by birth). This is stupid, not to mention racist.”

I stand by what I said. I did NOT say everyone if not free to comment. You can comment all you like.

I said that an opinion about whether something is antisemitic or not does not hold value (implicitly), as much as the opinion of a Jew who is the intended victim.

When that civil servant said “Fucking Israelis – Fucking Jews” I’ll bet a lot of non-Jews said “So what’s wrong with that? Look what the Jews did in Gaza” – and they would say that without realising how antisemitic it is.

Let me be absolutely clear, some of us are a generation born less than ten years away from The Holocaust. Some of us have seen relatives and family friends with a hollow look in their eyes and a number tattooed on their arms.

Some of us have lived in streets where gangs chanted “Jew Boy – Jew Girl”. Some of us have had to swallow the greasy grin, fake European Jew accent while they run finger and thumb together in a money type gesture.

Like I said, most of you don’t qualify.

I don’t know David T and have never met him but I have gleaned enough from past comments that he probably knows exactly what I mean.

I am loathe to trust just anyone with a decision whether something is antisemitic or not. Certainly not the Guardian/Independent. When you are doing something so gross that you don’t reaslise it then you are never going to get it.

The offensive caricatures of Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)

Stop right there. Mo has been dead for 1,400 years, and the objections were towards religious sensibilities. Churchill is representing living and breathing humans here and now, and resurrecting the imagery which gave rise to the industrialized killing process which extinguished millions of people, many of whom will just about still be mouldering in the East European soil.

Your religion was offended? So the **** what?

employed familiar racist symbolism used to associate Arabs and Muslims in general with backwardness and barbarity.

This will be why an Egyptian newspaper printed the original montage, and had it not been for the deliberate forgeries inserted, next to no-one would have noticed?

No sincere anti-racist should have anything to do with them.

A sentiment which would havesounded much more sincere had you at least tried to condemn this wretched play.

What Alec said ^

First the tester to establish if I am being modded based on length of post, word content or just that irrational dice-spin.

Depending on what I see next determines what I do.

“I think that is achievable.”

I am not trying to be provocative here – that’s actually the last thing on my mind, but can you give me an example where Jews have been successful in fighting the kind of virulent and entrenched anti-Semitism we are facing today in the manner you suggest?

I am put in mind of the lawyer (I cannot remember whether he lived in Munich or Vienna), a highly intelligent and eloquent individual very much like yourself, who tried to argue against the evils of anti-Semitism in court and elsewhere. The response of the Nazis was to arrest and humiliate him by parading this dignified and learned man through the streets with an anti-Semitic sign around his neck. Now obviously you are not going to be arrested and humiliated, not, in any event, in the same manner. However, the anti-Semites and anti-Zionists will achieve the same result in their newspapers and on their blogs. They will simply redouble their efforts and attempt to diminish you and those like you at every turn.

“In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism… Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.” – Theodor Herzl, in his diary, 1895.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl

It’s very amusing to see how many of Caryl’s negative reviewers have written critiques imitating the “Tell her that–” model. The play has hit home, not because of its literary merit, which it absolutely lacks, but because of how effectively it ridicules Zionist brainwashing. The crude, childish indoctrination depicted in the play is in fact what young –and adult– Jews are fed by their political and religious leadership.

You don’t like it? Then stop repeating moronic clichés like ”they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” “we’ll have peace when they love their children more than they hate us,” or “we can forgive their killing our children, but not their forcing us to kill theirs.” Each time you Zionists repeat them you expose yourselves as the brainwashed lot you are.

It’s very amusing to see how many of Caryl’s negative reviewers have written critiques imitating the “Tell her that–” model.

On a first-name basis now? Does she call you Hasbara?

Nothing!

Its some rule-based lexical scanner. I won’t give the game away by describing to everyone how they work.

Good idea! Saves having to keep Gene awake 24/7!

The offensive caricatures of Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)

Reminds me that the publisher of the Mohammed & Aisha book was fire-bombed (admitted in court last week) and yet it was simply a story about a relationship that was a fact.

Are Muslim somehow embarrassed that non-Muslims would take an interest in their religion and its roots. Aisha is a role-model woman of Islam. What’s wrong with reading about her?

“Does she call you Hasbara?”

It is my understanding that she calls him “Joseph”.

I am put in mind of the lawyer (I cannot remember whether he lived in Munich or Vienna), a highly intelligent and eloquent individual very much like yourself, who tried to argue against the evils of anti-Semitism in court and elsewhere. The response of the Nazis was to arrest and humiliate him by parading this dignified and learned man through the streets with an anti-Semitic sign around his neck. Now obviously you are not going to be arrested and humiliated, not, in any event, in the same manner. However, the anti-Semites and anti-Zionists will achieve the same result in their newspapers and on their blogs. They will simply redouble their efforts and attempt to diminish you and those like you at every turn.

You assume, I think, that Harry’s Place is a blog written and populated by Jews, standing helplessly by while fascist politics is on the rise.

Well, you’re wrong on two counts. First of all – although I’m Jewish, and so is Gene – the other bloggers on this site are not. (Brett has a distant Jewish relative, and probably would count himself in on the basis of the Nuremberg Laws). It is simply untrue that the only people concerned about the return of antisemitic politics and public discourse are Jews. We work on these issues with people who are Muslims and Christians and of no religion at all.

Secondly, we most certainly aren’t standing around doing nothing. Our enemies have a pretty good idea of what we’ve achieved and it makes them very nervous.

“They will simply redouble their efforts and attempt to diminish you and those like you at every turn.”

There may be good reasons for this which have nothing to do with anti-semitism and everything to do with the requirement of a society to identify a sacrificial scapegoat as a surrogate for the internal violence which requires an outlet.

The tragedy is that highly educated people are not immune; they are in fact more susceptible to promulgating this type of violence, because they have greater access to influential organs of dissemination.

Ultimately, this is the way societies work -, and it will probably take another … another species to figure a way out of this bind.

1. Jews have not threatened violence over this, or any other of they myriad racist defamations to which we’ve been subject

Robert Faurisson has been repeatedly beaten to a pulp by Jews, and Serge Klarsfeld has approved of the beatings.

To the deafening silence of world Jewry.

So you are defending Robert Faurisson, then?

No; I’m just debunking the myth that Jews don’t threaten violence over the defamations they’ve been subject to.

Is Holocaust denial only defamation, or rather genuine malevolence?

I’m not getting into that; I’ll only say that Faurisson was beaten by Jews, who in turn were praised by a leading Jewish personality, for the sole crime of exercising his right to free speech.

Some people seem to believe that firebombing the publishers of Mohammed & Aisha is wrong, but nearly killing Faurisson (or smashing the windows of Ahron Cohen’s house, or physically assaulting Moshe Arye Friedman) is somehow understandable. Moral relativity anyone?

“You assume, I think, that Harry’s Place is a blog written and populated by Jews, standing helplessly by while fascist politics is on the rise.”

No. I do think that when push comes to shove, Jews will, as always, be mostly on their own. And it does seem to me that Jews on this forum (you in particular, especially in recent times), have taken a lead in these matters.

And members of the White Rose group also ended up at the end of a rope.

“Secondly, we most certainly aren’t standing around doing nothing. Our enemies have a pretty good idea of what we’ve achieved and it makes them very nervous.”

I asked you when such a movement has been successful in the past. You have not been able to furnish me with an example.

The notion that you have had anything but the slightest effect on those anti-Semites and anti-Zionists is utterly absurd. You have made them nervous? Hubristic twaddle. How little you have been successful is clear almost daily from the pages of the Guardian and Independent. I draw your attention in particular to the fact that a national newspaper which draws its readership from the political and media elites has produced and made available on its website a virulently anti-Semitic play (when was the last time a play this anti-Semitic was written, produced and favourably reviewed in Britain?)

The virus has escaped its confines. If history is anything to go by, and I’m sure it is, it will be years before this bout of anti-Semitism runs its course. In the meantime, Jews will have to decide whether they can continue to live in a country which has in large part dedicated itself to cheering on the destruction of the Jewish state (a “fight response” is obviously out the question for all kinds of reasons). One thing is for sure, they will get little or no help from their self-appointed leaders driven as they are by a mixture of pusillanimity, egotism and vapid idealism.

If you want to do something really useful, you might instead devote your considerable talents and energies to helping your fellow Jews plot an escape route. As Herzl says above anything else is empty and futile. You are whistling in the wind if you think otherwise, just like that lawyer who thought he could persuade people to abandon anti-Semitism.

Israel has existed for 61 years; surely it’s a bit late for anti Zionism, it’s rather a fait accomplis?

Just as it’s a bit late for anti being anti that acronymed entity (Punjab, Afghan Border States, Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan) that resulted from the partition of the Raj and became Pakistan – less than a year earlier than the creation of Israel. And for some bizarre, completely unfathomable reason, one doesn’t often find people that describe themselves as being anti the creation of Pakistan, who define themselves thus. I wonder why?……NOT.

We know very well where the Guardian is coming from – and Andrew and the midget. And it’s the sewers.

Hasbara Buster – you are having to reach so deep into the mud, you are having to look for the lowest, the most vile example to find the only one that fits your metaphor. In your world, Faurisson ought to have been no more offensive to Jews than Salman Rushdie to muslims, i surmise.

2. This play claims that Jewish parents encourage Jewish children to revel in the dead of a civil war. That is, quite frankly, untrue. It is also essentially a rehashing of the Blood Libel.

Where, David? Where does the play claim this? It is these small misrepresentations that in the end lead you to call the play antisemitic.

The play says:

Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her the names, why not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? tell her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves.

The play claims that Jewish children are told to blame the victims — NOT to take pleasure in their deaths.

We ALL know this is true. We all know the official Zionist line is that the dead children is something the Palestinians did to themselves.

You don’t live in Israel. However, a journo who does live there said:

I heard comments similar to these from some of my relatives during the war. Going back through the 24 years I’ve lived here, I’ve heard comments like these from relatives, neighbors, fellow soldiers – I’ve heard it and read it all over the place. I’ve heard it from Diaspora Jews too.

Caryl Churchill told the truth and she’s called an antisemite. The usual prescription.

Hasbara Buster – even tho’ your name is pathetically evident, I’ll still feel incumbent to point out to you that even the UN has been forced to admit that “dead children is something the Palestinians did to themselves.” And since the so-called Palestinians BRAG About it on YouTube, who are you to argue with them?

Caryl Churchill told a one-sided lie, and this is how she has exposed herself as a Jew-hater. Just like you.

Well, you lie every day you post here, and are called an anti-Semite by all honest posters.

David T 25 April 2009, 6:12 pm, Alec 25 April 2009, 7:15 pm excellent answers, more than the fellow deserved. It’s quite difficult to see that this isn’t obvious.

HB,

where is the evidence that Robert Faurisson was ever beaten up?

I remember some neo-nazi web sites ranting on about it, but apart from that I can’t think of any objective reports on the matter?

please, HB, produce some evidence, don’t just make wild assertions

where is the evidence that Robert Faurisson was ever beaten up?

please, HB, produce some evidence, don’t just make wild assertions

Reports on neo-Nazi websites are evidence enough for HB.

If you want to do something really useful, you might instead devote your considerable talents and energies to helping your fellow Jews plot an escape route. As Herzl says above anything else is empty and futile. You are whistling in the wind if you think otherwise, just like that lawyer who thought he could persuade people to abandon anti-Semitism.

Well, you may be correct. In which case, yes, that is what I should be doing.

I should add that I met up, a few months ago, with a Jewish friend from school, who I hadn’t seen for many years. He is not at all politically involved. He’s a tax lawyer. He is a religious guy – he goes to a synagogue near his workplace at lunchtime – but is not involved in issues relating to Israel.

What he told me, shocked me hugely. He said that at his synagogue – a small, local one in North West London – the majority of young couples in the congregation were actively planning to leave Great Britain. Most were going to Canada, Israel and the United States. They saw no future for Jews in this country.

Now, self preservation I can understand. It is a rational reaction. The time may come, indeed, when it is the only choice.

However, what I’m fighting for here is not ‘a Jewish future’. That is the function of Israel, or Jewish organisations and institutions. I’m in a struggle for the maintainance of liberal democracy, of cultural pluralism, of a society based on the notion of equality between persons.

This isn’t merely a Jewish issue, although it most certainly is that, too. It is about the future of my country, and the aspirations of millions of people of many faiths and none, whose kaleidoscopic selves can only exist in a true social democracy.

HB,

well? do you have any objective reports on Robert Faurisson?

Come on, you have made such a bold assertion, can you back it up with evidence, from a non neo-nazi source?

Fucking hell! Every single one of these sites is a Nazi one.

http://www.google.com/search?q=faurisson+beaten+up&hl=en&start=0&sa=N

Every one!!

Some I hadn’t even heard of.

Oh not, that’s not fair. There’s one from the Tehran Times!!!!

I’m not getting into that; I’ll only say that Faurisson was beaten by Jews, who in turn were praised by a leading Jewish personality, for the sole crime of exercising his right to free speech.

You bloody well are getting into that!

“I’ll only say…”

You scumbag Faurrison supporter.

He said that at his synagogue – a small, local one in North West London – the majority of young couples in the congregation were actively planning to leave Great Britain. Most were going to Canada, Israel and the United States. They saw no future for Jews in this country.

I’ve heard similar kinds of things from French people who have moved to Israel.

Though I think that the anecdotes show only the thinking of some more “affiliated” Jews in UK and France.

Modernity:

Can you read French?

http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=659323

An honest person would say: “you were right, HB; Faurisson was attacked by Jews and I was prejudiced and lazy enough not to believe you or do some research into your claim.”

What will you say?

Robert Faurisson has been repeatedly beaten to a pulp by Jews

http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=659323

This is one incident, 20 years ago, and the report makes no mention of Jews.

Joshua -I quite agree with your analysis, except for one thing; the escape route is already in place. It leaves daily from Heathrow and has ‘El Al’ painted on its tail.
Israel will welcome and help any British (or other nationality) Jew who wants to start a new life free from anti-Semitism.
British Jews just have to reach the conclusion, overdue in my mind, that they are no longer willing to put up with living in a permanent state of apology for who they are and that there is no need for their children to grow up in such an unpleasant atmosphere.

“Tell her about the family of dead girls, tell her the names, why not, tell her the whole world knows why shouldn’t she know? tell her there’s dead babies, did she see babies? tell her she’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Tell her they did it to themselves.”

All states kill children in war. The US, UK, Russia, NATO. But, when it happens, rightly or wrongly, it is described as unfortunate, an accident, and inevitable. Sometimes it will be said that the enemy started the conflict so it must hold some responsibility for the consequences.

But saying the children themselves are responsibe, that is another matter.

Israeli Jews, by and large, in my experience, do not say this. That is a lie. It is the assertion that Israeli Jews make children responsible for their own deaths, which is a monstrous assertion, and when falsely inserted into the mouths of Israeli Jews constitutes a monstrous lie.

It harkens back to the medieval blood libel, that Jews routinely ritually murdered gentile Christian children, and took great pleasure ijn doing so.

The assertion that children are themselves responsible for their own deaths is so monstrous that it is, I think, tantamount to justifying all and any killing of children.

The deaths of children or civilians in Churchill’s play are without context. They are not unfortunate “colateral” victims of a war against militants and a militant government and de facto state dedicated to Israel’s destruction (not to mention blithely negligent of the consequences of that aim for its own citizens). They are victims of Israel’s killing children who deserve it i.e. it is killing children for its own sake.

That is why Churchill’s primitive little polemic, her embarassingly poorly written (as Hasbara acknowledges) passion play, is antisemitic.

HB,

Er, no, an honest person would say:

“should we take the word of a quasi neo-nazi like Faurisson, or would we want decent evidence ?”

As an academic, HB, I thought you knew the rules of evidential reasoning?

A very rough translation:

“Robert Faurisson, sixty years, one of the leaders of those who deny the existence of gas chambers, was the victim, Saturday 16 September, an attack as he was leaving his home in Vichy (Allier) (our latest editions dated 17-18 September).

Three young unknown was severely hit in the face. Transferred to University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand, Mr. Faurisson, who suffers including a fractured jaw, had to undergo surgery for four hours.”

So that’s three young unknown assailants.

Why, HB, why did you assume it was Jews who attacked Faurisson?

It could have been local thugs, etc? what evidence do you have concerning the identity of the assailants?

correction: colLateral.

bloody hell, David T, what is going on with your moderation settings? another one of my comments got thrown into:

Thanks for your comment! It has been placed in the moderation queue, and if it is approved it will be published here soon!

I really don’t know why it catches people. It is usually because of profanity, or using too many links. But sometimes, it is just nothing.

This is one incident, 20 years ago, and the report makes no mention of Jews.

It has always puzzled me that while educated Argentinians can fluently surf the web in English, French and Portuguese, Americans seem unable even to use the “Translate this page” feature.

The word “juive” is French for Jewish.

The word “juive” is French for Jewish.

Any fool can claim responsibility.

Buster -I speak and read French fluently. It does not say in the body of the article that the ‘trois jeunes inconnus’ belonged to any organisation, let alone a Jewish one. In fact it specifically says ‘inconnus’ -unknown. Furthermore, as the article was published 3 days after the attack and nowhere does it say that the attackers were caught and brought to trial, it would seem a little premature to jump to conclusions regarding the political motivations of the attackers.

Thanks Nick and Josh. ~*snipples*~

So HB, you are doing what you seem to do constantly, blame Jews, out of the blue.

As pointed out, other than on neo-Nazi web sites, there is NO evidence that Jews attacked Faurisson.

But please, do tell us your views on Faurisson.

HB, do you agree with any of Faurisson’s ideas?

The beating of Faurisson, assuming it was done by Jews, is simply the exception that proves the rule. If Jews responded to slights like Muslims in the ME or Pakistan, they would be shooting and rioting 24/7 365 days a year.

In fact, virtually all of HB’s stupid and insipid analogies trying to compare Jews with anti-semites and/or muslims and/or lefties are the exceptions that prove the rule.

The police, at that time, found that three young Jews from Paris were responsible for the beating. If you care for truth, pay 6€ and read the full article.

Also, read here how Beate KIlarsfeld “understood” the incident as a “normal” reaction:

http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=659360

And now, proving that a hateful Holocaust denier was the victim of Jews has become so important to HB that he’s willing to spend 6€ to prove it. How sad.

As pointed out, other than on neo-Nazi web sites, there is NO evidence that Jews attacked Faurisson.

Unfortunately, the full text of articles covering the incident is not available on decent sites. This, of course, is evidence of Internet manipulation — how do you explain that the attack on Faurisson, and the controversy over Beate Klarsfeld’s justification of it, are not reported at the Wikipedia entry on the denier?

However, the title of the first article I linked to does allude to a self-styled Children of the Jewish Memory group claiming the attack, and the other article I linked to does refer to Klarsfeld’s outrageous comment. That is more than NO evidence.

HB, do you agree with any of Faurisson’s ideas?

No.

There is something odd about the online version of the Guardian article in the paper on Sat 25th April. The paper version Has a headline:

Nearly 6,500 Tamil civilians killed, says UN and then a subheading Toll greater that that of recent Israel-Gaza conflict. This statement is then repeated in the body of the article, followed by the- for the Guardian- unusual admission that “The Sri Lankan government has faced far weaker international censure for its offensive against the Tamil Tigers than Israel did for its war in Gaza.”

None of this is in the slightly different online article.The paper article links to a comment is free article by Geoffrey Alderman headed Why the media has underplayed the crisis, but I can find no trace of it on CIF by any search method, or by searching via Google.
What is going on?

“The Sri Lankan government has faced far weaker international censure for its offensive against the Tamil Tigers than Israel did for its war in Gaza.”

It cuts both ways.

The Tamils are blowing themselves up in Sri Lanka all the time, killing a vastly higher number of civilians than the Palestinians. Yet we don’t hear a single word about it from the mainstream media. See here.

Antisemitism? Anti-Palestinism? No. It’s just that one conflict attracts more attention than the other. IF the Jewish carnage in Gaza was prominently reported BUT the Palestinian attacks on yeshivot were not, ONLY IN THAT CASE would we be able to speak about an anti-Jewish bias on the part of the media.

“You don’t live in Israel. However, a journo who does live there said….”

And I know *numerous* people I know who live in Israel who completely dispute what that journo – and Caryl Churchill – say. They all think that Caryl Churchill is at best naive, at worst evil and racist.

PS – as HB linked to a Jpost piece, I recommend this one, which describes Seven Jewish Children as “an imaginary history created in the minds of people who need Israel to be something it is not”.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237461637110&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

HB,

again, you have proven NOTHING, you make assertions without ANY evidence, other than vague links which do NOT mention the unknown assailants.

Then you reply, “Unfortunately, the full text of articles covering the incident is not available on decent sites. This, of course, is evidence of Internet manipulation — how do you explain that the attack on Faurisson, and the controversy over Beate Klarsfeld’s justification of it, are not reported at the Wikipedia entry on the denier?”

The full text of articles are only on neo-Nazi web sites? doesn’t that tell you something?

Are you implying that there has been a conspiracy to silence Faurisson?

Please, give us your full views on Faurisson.

Caryl Churchill is one of our more celebrated playwrites with no reputation AFAIK of having dodgy views

Apart from the misspelling, Caryl Churchill, as far as I know, is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which actively campaigns for anti-Israel boycotts, including a boycott of all cultural activities, such as plays and university courses from Israel and all its supporters. She presumably endorses its propaganda, which regularly claims that Israel commits “genocide” and is a racist apartheid state.

As such, I’d say those are decidedly dodgy views to be patron of, and certainly hardly a position from which to be taken seriously as a writer of a so-called historical play about Israel and the way Jewish parents bring up their children.

One of our most celebrated playwrights?

Only if you believe that agit-prop theatre with cardboard cut-out heroes and villains and party line moralism represents drama worth celebrating.

You’re right, Modernity; Faurisson hired three thugs to beat him up and then pin the attack on the Jews.

Please, give us your full views on Faurisson.

I haven’t read a single line of his writings. He’s a Holocaust denier and I’m not interested in Holocaust denial.

HB,

you seemed to think that the information on Faurisson from neo-Nazi web sites was a valid source, why is that?

Your problem, my dear Mod, is that you know of no other source of information than the Internet.

As a freedom-of-expression zealot, a few years ago I wrote an article about the “politically correct” forms of free-speech muzzling, which include, of course, the punishment of Holocaust denial. I had to do some research, during which I read newspapers –physical newspapers, stored at the National Library in Buenos Aires– from the time when Faurisson was attacked.

It was established that the attack was perpetrated by what would be France’s equivalent of the Jewish Defense League (I don’t remember the name). But, unfortunately, the articles are not available on decent sites on the Internet.

Maybe a visit to your local library will help you find more info on the subject. For the time being, though, I think the excerpts from Le Monde I linked to are quite convincing.

HB, you haven’t answered my question

Why, in your view, do you think neo-nazis are a valid source?

Again, and I hope you read this, slowly.

The Le Monde article does NOT mention the ethnic origin of the attackers, but it seems that you’ve taken it as gospel from the neo-Nazi web sites, who would naturally, not unlike you, blame everything bad on Jews.

But if it is in a legitimate quality newspaper then scan it and post on your web site, if such an article truly exists.

PS: I am a bibliophile, if you know what that is.

HB, you haven’t answered my question

Why, in your view, do you think neo-nazis are a valid source?

Ah, yes, your question. I didn’t answer it because I didn’t say the neo-nazis are a valid source. That was completely made up by you.

The Le Monde article does NOT mention the ethnic origin of the attackers

Once again: it mentions that the attack was claimed by a “Children of the Jewish Memory” group. And the other article mentions Beate Klarsfeld justifying them. Why do you think the wife of Serge Klarsfeld would justify three thugs who attacked a 60-year-old man? If they were after his pocketbook, it would be a bit weird for a nazi-hunter to “understand” the incident, wouldn’t it? I’d like to hear your views on this.

In order to know that the French police estimated that the attackers were three young Jews from Paris, I’m sorry, you’ll have to go to your local library, like I did.

But if it is in a legitimate quality newspaper then scan it and post on your web site, if such an article truly exists.

These days, whenever I consult old papers I take pictures of the relevant pages with my digital camera.

But back then, digital cameras didn’t even exist. Sorry.

“As a freedom-of-expression zealot”

A Nazi accolite is more appropiate.

If you google around, you can find the play discussed at some arts-oriented sites. They all find the play moving, poignant, not at all anti-semitic, worth thinking about etc.

It’s not really possible to debate these people, because a) a play will always be interpreted differently by different people and b) the assumption is always that the viewer/reader will always be intelligent enough not to draw bigoted conclusions even when the text sounds bigoted.

“They all find the play moving, poignant, not at all anti-semitic, worth thinking about etc”

Yes, and?
Many posters here (in fact, I would say that the vast majority of the non-anti-Semitic posters here) DO find it strictly anti-Semitic.

Judy,

Pretty much what I was going to say. Celebrated palywright? Don’t make me laugh. I would go slightly further than you:

Only if you believe that agit-prop theatre with cardboard cut-out heroes and villains and party line moralism represents drama – full stop.

Not in my world, it doesn’t.

Hasbara Buster, good morning (it is the morning here in Europe). Why did you go to such lengths to find out what happened to poor old Robert Faurisson, searching in libraries, newspaper archives etc.? Were you searching for evidence for Jewish agressiveness per se or were you specifically focussed on that “researcher”?

And incidentally, Beate Klarsfeld has never been an advocate of non-violence, and she is not Jewish! You should have checked her biography at least somewhere.

David T, i’m pretty sure the next play the Guardian will be staging will be a sketch by that other great anti-racist Dieudonné M’bala M’bala – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieudonn%C3%A9_M%27bala_M%27bala

To quote from the blurb on the Royal Court website when 7JC was playing: “Angry, Sad, Confused? – Come and spend Ten Minutes with Us!”

Come and see “Seven Other Children”, the play the Royal Court refused to show – because “no balance is required – Are A Doll’s House or King Lear fair?”

Richard Stirling’s eight-minute play matches Caryl Churchill’s format and vernacular but seeks to provide the necessary context to the debate. ‘Seven Other Children’ is written not in its own right, but to show a dimension overlooked by recent plays on the subject: the tragedy of the Palestinian child as victim of a distorted education about Israel, and the crescendo of hate that continues to grow. A collection will be made at the end of the performance, for OneVoice, the international mainstream grassroots movement that puts pressure on politicians of both sides.

5 – 16 May 2009, Tuesday – Saturday at 9.50pm
New End Theatre, 27 New End, Hampstead, London NW3 1JD

Admission to Seven Other Children, as with Caryl Churchill’s piece, is free; performances last less than ten minutes.

Richard Stirling trained at RADA, and has appeared on film, TV, in the West End and US. His written work includes the Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling biography of Dame Julie Andrews and many articles for newspapers and magazines.

The fully staged production is directed by Simone Vause.

The cast of nine, matching the Royal Court number, comprises an international ensemble. Confirmed so far: Simona Armstrong, finalist from BBC’s How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?; Martin Brody, from ABC’s Emmy Award-winning series The Path to 9/11 and ITV’s Trial and Retribution; Jodie Osterland, 2002 Laurence Olivier bursary winner from East15 Drama School; Phineas Pett, The 24 Hour Plays, Old Vic; Claire Malka; Philip Chamberlin

Three more to be announced.

Advance booking is required. Please telephone the dedicated booking line 020 7592 9666 and leave a clear message with your name, telephone number, dates and ticket requirements.

The play follows nightly performances of the New End Theatre’s One Act Play Festival.

Press enquiries: please contact Emily Taylor, PR agent for the New End Theatre 020 7472 5800.

“Seven Other Children” is on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/event.php?eid=65716164228

Please forward as widely as possible

Here is the review of Seven Jewish Children that was posted on HP.

Unquestionably it is antisemitic

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/02/08/seven-jewish-children-a-play-for-gaza-by-caryl-churchill-at-the-royal-court/

Here is the correct link for the review of ‘Seven Jewish Children’ that was posted on HP. Unquestionably it is antisemitic.

HB,

sorry, but again you can’t keep your story straight from one post to another, now you are saying:

“Ah, yes, your question. I didn’t answer it because I didn’t say the neo-nazis are a valid source. That was completely made up by you.”

“Unfortunately, the full text of articles covering the incident is not available on decent sites. This, of course, is evidence of Internet manipulation —”

By not available on decent sites, I assumed that you meant it WAS available, but only on non-decent sites, that is neo-nazi and holocaust deniers sites?

The clip from the Le Monde article does NOT as you say:

“Once again: it mentions that the attack was claimed by a “Children of the Jewish Memory” group.”

It states that the assailants are unknown, thus their ethnic origins are not known either.

As Gene wrote previously:

“This is one incident, 20 years ago, and the report makes no mention of Jews.”

HB, if you are going to tell fibs then you should try harder

So let us review it:

1. HB you make a wild assertion concerning Faurisson
2. when asked for evidence from a non neo-Nazi source, you find a brief clip which does not confirm your arguments.
3. your final retort is ” I’m sorry, you’ll have to go to your local library, like I did”

Again, you make an assertion then can’t prove any of it, without reference to non-existent document, and links that you produced does not confirm your recollection of events.

In short HB, you are a windbag and a liar.

“What a hilarious play Churchill has written. I would spit in her face.”

I would put on a mask with a hooked nose and horns and scream “I’m coming to drain your precious Christian blood for my matzah! Heee heeee!” whilst pelting her with Kneidlach. Give her something to be antisemitic about.

Joshua, Israelinurse
Oh, no, no, no. If anyone is going to dangle at the end of a rope, an outcome to be avoided if poss, but only if poss, it’s the fascists.
I have a nice little multiracial family. The half-Jewish/quarter-Jewish bits come from comrades marrying other comrades in the days when there were comrades. ‘The Internationale unites the human race.’ I am fighting for what David is fighting for, a civilized, diverse, free and democratic Britain. I have come to the regrettable conclusion things may get worse before they get better, but it wouldl take more than knuckle-walking Trots and Islamists to turn this country into the Fourth Reich.

http://www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/dec27-05-faurisson.html
Communication between Faurisson and Teheran.

It does not seem to me we are talking the old Far Right here, those whose demented vision is of a blonde world. Push coming to shove would involve Islamists and the package on offer would impact hard not on just the Jewish minority but on the 60% of the population who are female or gay. I really do not think it at all likely that Jane Average Brit in her shorts and boob-tube would put up with it.

“Jane Average Brit in her shorts and boob-tube”

Not sure we are inhabiting the same country, Ysabel :-)

please, can we NOT post links direct to that neo-nazi filth from Zundel’s site.

By not available on decent sites, I assumed that you meant it WAS available, but only on non-decent sites, that is neo-nazi and holocaust deniers sites?

You assumed wrong. In fact, the information I have is not available on neo-nazi sites either.

1. HB you make a wild assertion concerning Faurisson

Which was in response to your question, “where is the evidence that Robert Faurisson was ever beaten up?” (25 April 2009, 9:34 pm). You asked for that evidence, I gave that evidence.

The clip from the Le Monde article does NOT as you say:

“Once again: it mentions that the attack was claimed by a “Children of the Jewish Memory” group.”

It says so in the headline. What can I do if you’re illiterate in French?

“This is one incident, 20 years ago, and the report makes no mention of Jews.”

It forms part of a pattern in which Holocaust deniers and their friends, and, to a lesser extent, anti-Zionists, are attacked by Jews to the silence or downright approval of the organized Jewish community. Faurisson, the IHR, Friedman, Ahron Cohen, Dror Feiler…

This is not to claim that Jews are particularly evil. It’s to rebutt the extraordinary claim that Jews have never threatened violence against people who say things that offend them.

“It forms part of a pattern in which Holocaust deniers and their friends, and, to a lesser extent, anti-Zionists, are attacked by Jews to the silence or downright approval of the organized Jewish community”

I’d like you to find some evidence for that blood libel – that “organized Jewry” regularly condones and approves violence against these admittedly vile people.

If you can’t provide such general evidence, perhaps you’d like to apologise for this slander?

Bloody hell. I made a mistake of clicking on HB’s website. He does go on rather a lot about organised Jewry and how terrible it is, including this disgusting slander about Rwanda:

“No grass-roots movement arose within organized Jewry, during the three months the genocide lasted, to try and do something to stop it. Was there any reason to expect them to do so? Yes, there was — or what else is the phrase “never again,” ritually chorused by Jewish organizations, supposed to mean? (I know, I know: it means “never again to the Jews.” But the people at the Holocaust museums won’t acknowledge it.)”

I have personal empirical evidence against every ghastly statement here, but there’s really no point. I have concluded today, after trying hard to give HB the benefit of the doubt (I don’t know why) that he is a true, genuine, unironic Jew Hater. Worse – I think he believes in his own mind that he isn’t!

HB, you wrote:

“It says so in the headline. What can I do if you’re illiterate in French?”

You are an academic? Someone with several degrees and years of studying?

So in which academic textbook or research journals does it say “headlines in newspapers are facts”.

You might be ignorant of Newpaper production but the headlines are often compiled by sub-editors, and not the journalists who filed the stories. Often they bare little or no relationship to the contents of the articles.

Thus, your final argument seems to be, it is in a Le Monde headline, therefore it is an refutable fact.

Which is intellectual nonsense, but if you wish to publish a research paper on “Headlines as Facts” I look forward to seeing you laughed out of academia as Faurisson was.

One final point, what did you mean by this:

“Unfortunately, the full text of articles covering the incident is not available on decent sites. This, of course, is evidence of Internet manipulation —”

Who is manipulating the Internet, in your view and why?

Well; for instance Dror Feiler’s work of art was destroyed by the Israeli ambassador in Sweden, in an act of violence that could have harmed a lot of people. The ambassador was not fired. On the contrary, he was congratulated.

I don’t know why I’m bothering to respond as everyone is so intent on willfully misunderstanding what I wrote. But, stupidest comment first

I particularly liked the line that (as far as you knew) because someone hadn’t published a racist work in the past then they couldn’t be racist.
Noone would really think that would they. I mean seriously think that, as opposed to just playing the village idiot?

I doubt that anyone would. I certainly wouldn’t and I said no such thing. What I said was that if someone did not afaik have racist views then I would be less inclined to jump to conclusion about their work, not having seen it, than I would about a film by Goebbels. I did not say they couldn’t be racist.

As to those people who object to my referring to her as one of our most celebrated playwrights, well here’s what the Times says

Is Caryl Churchill the greatest female playwright of our time? Of any time? Back in the 1980s, when she used to give press interviews, she would have slapped your wrists for asking such a sexist, reductive question. And did, whenever it was put to her.

It’s her uncanny ability to pull you up, flip you over, rewire your cosy assumptions that makes Churchill such an irreducible writer. On Wednesday she turns 70. And, to mark that birthday, this month the Royal Court will stage readings of her plays.

That would seem to me to indicate to me that she is fairly well regarded. Which of course does not mean (nor did I suggest) that she can’t write a racist play.

I guess what I’m trying to say, Andrew, is that whilst this was a reasonable line when this revolting little morality tale first appeared, to persist this far down the lines makes you either guilty of headbanging craven amorality or you are fist-swingingly immoral. Which is it?

Neither. I don’t actually have to have an opinion on every issue which gets discussed at HP or which causes controversy generally. I honestly haven’t followed the story very closely. But the main reason I made a point not to express an opinion about the play is that my opinion of it is irrelevant to my argument. The point is that to publish contentious or even unquestionably offensive material in order to enable people to see for themselves what the fuss is about does not mean you are condoning or promoting it. My point all along was to defend the Guardian, not to defend the Churchill’s play.

Ysabel -I too want to see the kind of Britain you envisage. In fact I’d like every country to be free, democratic, diverse and tolerant.
But the question is, can the Jews afford to wait and hope until the madness passes -if it passes? 70 years on, must the Jews be the canary in the mine yet again?
Then the Jews had nowhere to go; now they do. Our children have he right to grow up being proud of who they are. They can do that best in Israel in my view.

Andy Stallard, there often isn’t and the Guardian is the trailblazer in adding to the conflation of Jew- and Israel-hatred.

Caryl Churchill (and al-Guardian) showed their true colours by evidencing that conflation. If the play is only anti-Israel then why call it “Seven Jewish Children?”

You have a misguided sense of what is brave, too. How is it brave of the Guardian to have supporters of the suicide murder of Israeli women and children writing for it?

I have a suggestion for the furthering of your education. Since you are so evidently ignorant of how often anti-Israel sentiment shades into antisemitism, may I recommend that you read “Globalising Hatred: The New AntiSemitism” by Denis MacShane.

Given your post above, reading it may cause you some discomfort but as they say there is often no gain without pain.

If the play is only anti-Israel then why call it “Seven Jewish Children?”

Because they’re not yet Zionist. Only after the brainwashing depicted in the play will they become so.

The point is that to publish contentious or even unquestionably offensive material in order to enable people to see for themselves what the fuss is about does not mean you are condoning or promoting it.

Great. They can use that line when they start serialising Mein Kampf.

And the protocols.

Andrew Adams, sorry, your argument is very questionable:

“The point is that to publish contentious or even unquestionably offensive material in order to enable people to see for themselves what the fuss is about does not mean you are condoning or promoting it.”

I ask you would the Guardian publish racially offensive material against Irish people or the Roma?

Of course, not, because they would *see* immediately that it was racist rubbish and of no merit.

That being the case, why promote Caryl Churchill’s nasty little racist play?

The Guardian and you can do so much better than that.

And if you are in any doubt of the anti-Jewish racism embedded then read the play, in particular this part:

“…tell her we’re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her. “

Just in that particular extract you have two antisemitic myths in one:

Firstly, the age old Christian myth of the Jews as the chosen people is trotted out, that is not a tenet of Judaism as reference to Maimonides’ Thirteen Fundamental Principles” of the Jewish faith will confirm. Rather it is a common antisemitic lie to be found littered across neo-Nazi web sites, and if you are in any doubt go visit them and look up the “chosen people”, you will see what I mean.

Next, a variation of the blood libel, that somehow Jews relish others being covered in blood.

Those are just two examples.

So I ask you, would Guardian readers flock to a play witch caricatured Roma children as professional beggars? Or Roma kids as thieves?

Would the Guardian feel compelled to promote a play that portrayed the Irish as feckless, drunkards, thugs and murderers?

Therefore, if the Guardian and its readers would not stand for racial stereo types of the Irish, Roma or other social and ethnic minorities then why, oh why, is it permissible to do it when Jews are the object of that nasty piece of work?

And remember the title of the play, Seven Jewish Children, thus there is no ambiguity as to who this play is attacking.

I hope you now appreciate the nature of the play?

Next, a variation of the blood libel, that somehow Jews relish others being covered in blood.

Where does the play say that? Stop blood-libelling Caryl Churchill!

All the play says is that Zionism is indifferent to the suffering of others. Which is of course true, and a prime example is Israel’s stubborn refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide.

//Where does the play say that?//
“…tell her we’re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her. “

//Which is of course true, and a prime example is Israel’s stubborn refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide.//
“Shagal warned that recognizing the killings as a genocide could have repercussions for Israel’s diplomatic relations with Turkey, as well as the fate of tens of thousands of Jews who live in Azerbaijan.”
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/968844.html
Run of the mill diplomacy.

“…tell her we’re chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her. “

And as any person with an elementary grasp of English can confirm, there’s a difference between “I’m happy she’s covered in blood” and “I’m happy she’s not my daughter.”

I.e., Churchill’s play has been misrepresented on this thread.

That said, it’s still true that Zionist Jews relished the destruction of Gaza. See here how a group of Jewish tourists came to Sderot (which overlooks Gaza) to watch the carnage live:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjw8U0AcH4Q

Pay attention (at 0:48) to how a lovely young Jewish lady called Keren Levy says she went there to see it with her own eyes; she didn’t want to watch it on TV. She then adds, “They chose Hamas to rule them; it’s their fault. They got it to where it is now, not us” (the “they did it to themselves” in Churchill’s prophetic play). Then, at 0:57, she states: “I think they should just clear off all the city, just take it off the ground. Yes; I’m a little bit fascist.”

It’s no blood libel to denounce loud and clear that these very sick people exist within Zionism, and that they don’t face any form of social shunning.

It’s a neat trick, encouraging HB to stay on this website, an admitted nazi-sympathizer who discredits his relatively popular views by being a monster…

For the sake of your readership, can you finally ban him? I feel dirty when I read the comment section now. I feel like I need to be disinfected, my revulsion is so strong. I can’t be the only one.

Passer-by – And incidentally, Beate Klarsfeld has never been an advocate of non-violence, and she is not Jewish! You should have checked her biography at least somewhere. David T, i’m pretty sure the next play the Guardian will be staging will be a sketch by that other great anti-racist Dieudonné M’bala M’bala -

Whatever. However, Iam sure that i will not be Seven Muslim Children

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/feb/11/royal-court-theatre-gaza

“But Churchill also shows us how Jewish children are bred to believe in the “otherness” of Palestinians and how, for generations to come, they stand to reap the bitter harvest of the military assault on Hamas.”

- Michael Billington, Guardian

I think HB should be banned too. Life is too short …

Francois: what nonsense. HB should be allowed to spew whatever he wishes. I prefer to see Jew haters in the open, where I know where they are, than pretend they don’t exist

Seven Other Children, thanks for quoting the Guardian’s Billington, proof positive, were any needed, of how so many journalists take fairy tales as facts.

Josh, let HB stay. I know how you feel, but as has been said already, it’s better that he’s open about his hatred so we all know how we stand in relation to him. Besides, he makes the rest of us look like paragons of virtue despite our flaws. I would feel more worried if he suddenly started being pleasant and less one-track-minded.

Modernity,

I’m not disputing your account of the play, and I would point out that it wasn’t my intention to trivialise the obviously very real offence it has caused to some people. The fact remains though that there are some people who have seen it and who are not obviously bigots who say that it is not antisemitic. Now I’m not saying that all opinions about the play must be equally valid, or that it’s not possible to have an objective view about whether the play is antisemitic – you will after all always get some people defending the most indefensible rubbish. But it does mean that there are probably people out there who are aware of the controversy the play has caused, have seen conflicting opinions expressed and would rather decide for themselves rather than just take the word of journalists or internet commentators or rely on an individual line or paragraph from the play taken out of context. Unfortunately it is often the case in matters involving Israel/Palestine that people are relutant to take others’ opinions at face value.
What the Guardian claims to be doing is to provide the opportunity for those people to see a reading of the play and see for themselves, which is not the same as promoting the play. Now there is an argument that by doing so they implicitly accord the play a legitimacy which it doesn’t deserve, and that it is better in such cases to just disassociate themselves entirely from it. On balance I disagree because I think we are grown ups and should be able to see Seven Jewish Children, Fitna, the motoons etc. and have a rational discussion about them, but I accept it is a serious argument and if that was the objection which David was making then I wouldn’t have complained.
What I do object to is partly the assumption of bad faith on the Guardian’s part but mainly the suggestion that what they are doing is equivalent to pushing Nazi propaganda and that either the Guardian or Churchill are the equivalent of Goebbels. When you start making this kind of equivalence it just cheapens the argument.

Brownie, you can buy Mein Kampf on Amazon, are you accusing them of being Nazi propagandists?

I prefer to see Jew haters in the open, where I know where they are, than pretend they don’t exist

What nonsense he’s in Venisulia, he’s not gonna hunt down your children. He one of probably a half a billion obnoxious antisemites on the planet. Do you need all 500,000,000 of them in view?

If you’re gonna argue the he’s worth the constant nausea we all feel at his stench, at least make a rational argument, such as that by displaying his views publically he makes it clear what sort of a cesspit of a mind invents this sort of bilge. That public exposure to spitting, drooling Nazis shames people into reconsidering any views they have which might be in concert with his.

I am sick to death of the exposure though. I swear I’m going to stop reading these comment sections altogether if we don’t make a “no Nazis” rule

http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2009/04/purveyors-of-fine-antisemitism.html

For you, Andrew.

“I think HB should be banned too. Life is too short …”

Don’t be unkind: it’s the only kind of life Hasbara has.

“Tell her we killed the babies by mistake”

Hee heee the baby-killing Jews grabbing their pound of bloody infant flesh.

Huzzah to anyone who manages to watch this without detecting anything antisemitic. You are the sort of person who can stick your nose into a used cat-litter tray and inhale deeply without discomfort.

“What the Guardian claims to be doing is to provide the opportunity for those people to see a reading of the play and see for themselves, which is not the same as promoting the play.”

The Guardian may not be promoting the play but Michael Billington’s comments (see above) are hardly dispassionate or neutral are they, Andrew? On the contrary they toe the Guardian’s line of anti-Israel prejudice which can so easily open the door to Jew-hatred, by shamelessly biasing context for that reading/viewing.

Fabian,

I said above “there is an argument that by doing so they implicitly accord the play a legitimacy which it doesn’t deserve” so when he says

A video, however, if done well (this one is), has more power than mere words; if posted prominently on a popular website it may easily enjoy a second lease on life far more potent than the first round, where people read about it but didn’t see it.

I think that’s a valid argument. However, to accuse the Guardian of actively planning to promulgate anti-semitism is nonsense.

“an audacious 10-minute encapsulation of Israel’s moral collapse”

Jacobsen is too kind. There is no moral collapse in the state of Israel in Churchill’s play. There is merely a people – the Jews – apparently coming to terms with their own evil. That is the only ‘movement’ in the play.

(And, no, it does not compare to the Motoons.)

Yes, it does, in certain ways.

I suggest that if you are not Jewish then you don’t qualify to hold an opinion of any value whether its antisemitic or not – either way.

Yes, you probably have to be Jewish (or suspected of being Jewish) to experience it directly, but I do not find it at all difficult to know it when I see or hear it. In particular, you would have to be either dead or mind-meltingly stupid not to spot that 7JC is anti-semitic hogwash.

I can also spot when something is homophobic, and I’m not even the tiniest bit gay.

The Guardian may not be promoting the play but Michael Billington’s comments (see above) are hardly dispassionate or neutral are they, Andrew? On the contrary they toe the Guardian’s line of anti-Israel prejudice which can so easily open the door to Jew-hatred, by shamelessly biasing context for that reading/viewing.

I’ve no particular reason to think that when he wrote that review he was toeing the line rather than expressing his own opinion, which doesn’t mean he is right of course. But neither was he neccessarily acting in bad faith. The Times gave it a very good review as well, although the Sunday Times strongly disagreed. Of course when you have a work which deals with a controversial subject on which people have strong views they have to guard against their judgement being clouded by their views on the subject in general. You also have to consider that the reaction of someone who judges a play on a single performance may be different from that of someone who does so from studying the text. You can argue that Billington got it badly wrong without neccessarily assuming bad faith on his part.

I suggest that if you are not Jewish then you don’t qualify to hold an opinion of any value whether its antisemitic or not – either way.

Yes, you probably have to be Jewish (or suspected of being Jewish) to experience it directly, but I do not find it at all difficult to know it when I see or hear it. In particular, you would have to be either dead or mind-meltingly stupid not to spot that 7JC is anti-semitic hogwash.

Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, I just hate it when some leftist Israel-basher decides to lecture me, a Jew, on what is or isn’t anti-Semitism and presenting their ‘wisdom’ as fact. Such self-righteous pomposity is par for the course for these types; along with failing to spot the irony when they talk about the West imposing its value-set on indigenous locals.

However, to accuse the Guardian of actively planning to promulgate anti-semitism is nonsense.

The hell it is. Just because they dress it up as anti-Zionism or a valid discourse on middle-eastern politics or whatever bullshit crosses their mind, it is still anti-Semitic and the Guardian is still pumping it out.

Andrew Adams,

thanks for the considered reply, but you didn’t address the nub of my argument:

“So I ask you, would Guardian readers flock to a play witch caricatured Roma children as professional beggars? Or Roma kids as thieves?

Would the Guardian feel compelled to promote a play that portrayed the Irish as feckless, drunkards, thugs and murderers?”

“I think that’s a valid argument. However, to accuse the Guardian of actively planning to promulgate anti-semitism is nonsense.”

That is just you restating your initial assertion. But Yaakov’s argument demolishes it:

“We don’t know how long Caryl Churchill’s insidious little play Seven Jewish Children will be around to spread its poison. So far, it hasn’t gone away; on the contrary, it’s doing quite well at outliving the blogposts and newspaper critics’ opinions explaining why it’s antisemitc. Just to make sure, however, the Guardian has just posted a video of it, here. After all, a short pamphlet or PDF file will eventually lose its power to hurt the Jews, unless someone does something to enhance it; even word of mouth buzz must repeatedly be recharged somehow if it’s not to die out. A video, however, if done well (this one is), has more power than mere words; if posted prominently on a popular website it may easily enjoy a second lease on life far more potent than the first round, where people read about it but didn’t see it.”

“So this is an example of the Guardian actively seeking ways to promulgate antisemitism, beyond merely slanting its reportage and punditry of the daily events.”

thanks for the considered reply, but you didn’t address the nub of my argument:

Andrew may have not addressed your argument, but I did.

The play does not accuse the Jews of killing young children to bake matzah with their blood. It accuses Jewish supporters of Israel (not all Jews) of (a) being indifferent to the death of Palestinian toddlers, and (b) blaming the Palestinians themselves for their deaths.

Of course, to accuse them of being indifferent is rather an understatement, since we have already seen that a number of Israeli tourists actively relished the destruction of Gaza, which they came to watch live (see here). These war tourists did not cause any uproar in Israel, and commenters here do not find them particularly embarrassing.

But in any event, that’s what she accuses the Jewish supporters of Israel of saying. There’s a world of difference between “tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her ” (what the play actually says) and “I’m happy because she’s covered in blood” (what you claim it says).

That is just you restating your initial assertion. But Yaakov’s argument demolishes it

No it doesn’t, because he makes an assumption that the Guardian could only possibly have one motive for producing the video. Even it has the effect he mentions it doesn’t neccessarily mean that they specifically set out with that purpose.

I can also spot when something is homophobic, and I’m not even the tiniest bit gay.

And another fantasy bites the dust.

Modernity,

I find it very hard to answer that question because it depends on the individual work. Of course Israel/Palestine is a subject on which a lot of people seem to have strong opinions and yes a play on the subject may well be of more interest to Guardian readers than one on another issue with a lower profile, but then you could say the same about HP readers as well. But I can’t compare SJC to other hypothetical plays and now having seen SJC I think it is more complex than people here suggest and doesn’t just deal in the kind of crude stereotypes you mention. And because the Guardian staged SJC it doesn’t neccessarily mean that they would do the same for absolutely any play about I/P.
The only obvious comparisom I can think of is the one which has been mentioned earlier, the motoons, and as I’ve said they should been have been prepared to show them so there is certainly an element of hypocrisy there. But even then that is not an exact comparison because there is less consensus of opinion out here about SJC than there was about the motoons.
Sorry, I realise that’s a bit of a vague answer but I really think these things should be discussed on a case by case basis.

ModernityBlog wrote:

So I ask you, would Guardian readers flock to a play witch caricatured Roma children as professional beggars? Or Roma kids as thieves?

Would the Guardian feel compelled to promote a play that portrayed the Irish as feckless, drunkards, thugs and murderers?

Therefore, if the Guardian and its readers would not stand for racial stereo types of the Irish, Roma or other social and ethnic minorities then why, oh why, is it permissible to do it when Jews are the object of that nasty piece of work?

And remember the title of the play, Seven Jewish Children, thus there is no ambiguity as to who this play is attacking.

I hope you now appreciate the nature of the play?

I haven’t seen the play so I’ll abstain from opining on whether it is anti-Semitic or not.

But ModernityBlog’s argument is absurd. The play exists only within the Gaza context, it wouldn’t have been written without the massacre, in particular of so many completely innocent children.

In a comparable context a similar play about Roma, Irish etc would not necessarily be racist (but it could if handled badly).

It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that so many here come to the aid of the ‘it’s anti-Semitic’ thesis when so many at HP either partly deny, minimise, justify or highly relativate the suffering of Gazan children (before and during the assault): take away that context and the play would almost certainly be racist.

How many British Jewish supporters will have allowed their children to watch the atrocities play out on Press TV or Jeera? Quite a few but almost certainly quite a few not.

David T. also clearly overreaches by bringing Jud Suss into his post.

Gert,

You should watch it on the Guardian’s webside. Seriously.

Andrew: I will.

ModernityBlog also wrote:

For example, next time you see a non-Jewish “anti-Zionist” ask him/her to explain who were the Black Hundreds?
Or what were the consequences of the Czarist anti-Jewish laws of the late 19th century?

Finally, if they manage to get those questions half-right, ask them to explain the Dreyfus trial, why was it so important and what followed it?

So anti-Zionist positions can only be held by those with a near complete knowledge of the history of anti-Semitism? A person, hypothetically devoid of any knowledge of historic anti-Semitism, is automatically disqualified from judging what Zionism has done and is doing today in Palestine?

Clearly you are justifying crimes on the basis that the criminals have previously been the subject of crime, otherwise you wouldn’t link knowledge of historic anti-Semitism with the validity/invalidity of anti-Zionist positions. In short most anti-Zionists are wrong because they don’t fully understand anti-Semitism?

Another world-beater from the blogger who claimed elsewhere that I must have beaten up some BNPers, then later maintains (on his blog) that I’m Far Right. Ding dong!

Andrew Adams: you don’t take antisemitism seriously. For the Jews of the UK, you are part of the problem. It is a shame.

“Even it has the effect he mentions it doesn’t neccessarily mean that they specifically set out with that purpose.”

If you produce an antisemitic play, you are doing antisemitic stuff. Most antisemites in history thought they were doing the Jews or humanity a favor. The loftiest of the ideals. Conversion to the true faith, destruction of oppressive religious myths, purification of the race, justice for the Palestinians. Sadly, I doesn’t matter what is your intention when you produce antisemitism.

” Even it has the effect he mentions it doesn’t neccessarily mean that they specifically set out with that purpose.”

What do you want, a written letter: “We are the BBC and we want to produce an antisemitic play because we think it is good to promote antisemitism”?

You are not serious about fighting racism, Andrew Adams.

What do you want, a written letter: “We are the BBC and we want to produce an antisemitic play because we think it is good to promote antisemitism”?

Why not? After all, when an Israeli soldier kills an unarmed Palestinian demonstrator who wasn’t even throwing rocks we anti-Zionists are asked to show a written statement from the soldier saying “I did intend to kill the fucking raghead.”

Andrew Adams you wrote:

“I find it very hard to answer that question because it depends on the individual work.”

Ye gods, man.

Are you implying that the Guardian would even CONSIDER publishing a play that attacked the Irish or the Roma?

Of course, they wouldn’t. And you know it.

And that’s the point, Jews are now considered fair game for attack, with dodgy arguments marshalled to assist that process, etc

Then you wonder why people react so strongly?

I’ll put it again, I would NOT expect the Guardian to promote, publish or push crude works which essentalise ANY ethnic or social minority.

The fact they do it when it comes to Jews, speaks volumes.

And the fact that I have to point out that rather simple notion is bloody annoying, it should be obvious in this day and age.

PS: Did you get the point concerning the usage of “chosen people” and the loaded nature of that term?

Strange, Gert, how you bandy about the word ‘massacre’ in a totally irresponsible and unjustified manner and how you are very concerned with Gazan children, yet manage to completely ignore the suffering of Israeli children, some of whom have been as young as 2 when murdered by Hamas rockets.

Fabian -don’t forget that the first ever blood libels appeared in England and that this was the same country to be the first to expel its Jews.

I have to say I am very surprised by the level of antisemitism in England. It is much higher than in Argentina. I simply cannot imagine that Canal 7 (Argentina’s state television) would produce a blood libel like 7JC, like the BBC did.
It is something appalling what is happening in Europe.

Are you implying that the Guardian would even CONSIDER publishing a play that attacked the Irish or the Roma?

Of course, they wouldn’t. And you know it.

Not the right analogy.

The right analogy is: would the Guardian have considered publishing a play that attacked white South Africans during Apartheid?

Of course it would. No. Antisemitism. There.

Enough paranoia!

I’ll put it again, I would NOT expect the Guardian to promote, publish or push crude works which essentalise ANY ethnic or social minority.

Look; tomorrow morning I’ll complain to the Imperial War Museum because on its webpage it claims “The Argentinians invaded the Falklands on 2 April 1982.” Since I’m an Argentinian and I didn’t invade the Falklands, nor do I approve of the invasion, I’ll protest their essentializing the Argentinian people with such a sweeping claim.

IsraeliNurse:

Strange, Gert, how you bandy about the word ‘massacre’ in a totally irresponsible and unjustified manner and how you are very concerned with Gazan children, yet manage to completely ignore the suffering of Israeli children, some of whom have been as young as 2 when murdered by Hamas rockets.

How many before it qualifies as a massacre to you?

The rest of your comment is pot meets kettle: I don’t see you decry the Palestinian victims either.

Fabian -don’t forget that the first ever blood libels appeared in England and that this was the same country to be the first to expel its Jews.

Seriously, so what? Longshanks did some pretty nasty things to the Welsh and Scots. The expelled Jews were the lucky ones…certainly luckier than those civilians murdered in their thousands at Berwick.

Oh, and it was over 700 years ago.

Fabian wrote in reference to Hasbara Buster:

“As a freedom-of-expression zealot”
A Nazi acolyte is more appropriate.

and below that:

Andrew Adams: you don’t take antisemitism seriously. For the Jews of the UK, you are part of the problem. It is a shame.

Fabian, if you’re going around calling people like HB ‘Nazi acolytes’, you’ve really not only lost the argument but also have provided proof that you might take anti-Semitism just a little too seriously.

@ gert: טרול.

Fabian, if you’re going around calling people like HB ‘Nazi acolytes’, you’ve really not only lost the argument but also have provided proof that you might take anti-Semitism just a little too seriously.

On his second day here, HB recommended the Nazi party to all an assundry. He said something like “We are all Nazis, we just don’t have enough information [about how dirty the Jews are, he meant]“

“I have to say I am very surprised by the level of antisemitism in England”

Fabian, you know my views, as much as I am concerned, it is not as bad as made out.

I shall correct myself, if you read the Guardian, BBC news coverage, you could get that artificial impression.

By and large, I think that anti-Israel bias and that creeping racism is confined to the liberal intelligentsia in Britain (and of course, fringe groupings on the Left, who have sucked in too much Soviet-style “anti-Zionism”).

I don’t think that the vast majority of Brits are anti-Jewish.

Reading blogs, etc doesn’t give you a full sense of reality.

Just to be clear, I am NOT saying there are not problems, rather they are in particular areas.

As a student of history, you will remember that the strongest anti-Jewish racism was traditionally amongst the petit bourgeoisie.

Thanks Fabian! I’m convinced now!

He said something like “We are all Nazis, we just don’t have enough information [about how dirty the Jews are, he meant]“

I’m afraid there’s been a small misunderstanding.

I meant “We’re all Nazis; we just don’t have enough information about ourselves“.

A case in point is our friend Fabián. We didn’t know enough about him. Until one day he said “I came to Israel to live among Jews, not among Arabs”: then we understood that he was a Nazi. For the time being he doesn’t have the means to realize his full potential as a Nazi, but he’s one. Who knows?, maybe tomorrow he’ll be able to ship the Arabs to Madagascar, or lock them up in concentration camps, or — find another method of creating the Arabrein Israel he dreams of.

If we scratch under our thin veneer of political correctness, we’re all Nazis; we just don’t know enough about ourselves.

Nice try.

Fabian -it depends, of course, on one’s point of view. We, as Israelis, are used to living without anti-Semitism so when we come across it we are maybe more indignant. And of course as Israelis we come across it more than British Jews. People who would think twice about saying something overtly anti-Semitic have a lot less inhibition about making remarks they see as anti-Israeli, even though that remark is no less anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism is of course not acceptable in Britain’s PC culture, but it is still there, except that now it is presented as anti-Israeli, which is not only acceptable, but indeed laudable in many circles.

Gert -the deaths of Palestinian civilians of any age is of course tragic, but the difference is that Israel does not set out to deliberately kill civilians, unlike Hamas which fires rockets into towns exactly at 7:45 a.m. when children are on their way to school.

Brownie -that’s a very strange argument…..

Brownie -that’s a very strange argument…..

Really? I’d suggest what’s “strange” is your thinking it relevant what Edward I did 720 years ago.

“For the sake of your readership, can you finally ban him? I feel dirty when I read the comment section now. I feel like I need to be disinfected, my revulsion is so strong. I can’t be the only one.”

You most certainly are not the only one. His pathological lies, all stemming from quite hair-raising Jew-hatred, are sick and sickening to an astonishing degree.

“On balance I disagree because I think we are grown ups and should be able to see Seven Jewish Children, Fitna, the motoons etc. ”

So you are OK with the Guardian serialising Mein Kampf + racist tracts bashing Arabs and blacks, so that people can read them and judge for themselves? We wouldn’t like to think that you are a hypocrite.

“The play exists only within the Gaza context, it wouldn’t have been written without the massacre, in particular of so many completely innocent children.”

The term “massacre” exposes you at once as an anti-Semite, so I think I’ll pass on the rest of your nonsense.

Someone:

Bit of a lazy so and so, aren’t you? This place reeks positively of hypocrisy and double standards.

Andy Stallard
25 April 2009, 1:36 pm

”Personally I feel this film is simply anti-zionist and nothing else”

Personally I feel that Mein Kampf is simply antizionist criticizm of israel and nothing else.

chosen ppl
shmosen ppl

wtf?

‘zionism’ is a secular movement

I don’t have a problem with the play itself – I think it’s biased and emotive, but there’s nothing wrong with that in a play.

The problem is, WTF is the Guardian doing funding and supporting it? That is where bias is totally forbidden – in a newspaper. How on earth can they claim to be a balanced media source if they fund, publicise and stage this production on their media?

there is a clear distinction between anti-semitism and anti-zionism. What is that distinction? j.r.

As I’ve expressed to Mr. Hirsh, there is a simple and infallible distinction: anti-semitism is a form of adverse discrimination in which disfavor derives from stereotyical, ethnocentric categorications of people as “Jews”. One of the most common antisemitic actors in our current day is the State of Israel, which procliams itself as arbiter of who is a “Jew”, and uses the principles of the National Socialist Workers Party to do so. Anti-zionism, on the other hand, is the denial of legitimacy to the ethnic basis of the State of Israel, the privileging by the State of some to the detriment of others, based on ethnic heritage, because it results in inequality under the law and serves to destabilize society at large.

Anti-Zionism rejects the very notion that Jews are a nation — a collective bonded by a common history — and, accordingly, denies Jews the right to self-determination in their historical birthplace. It seeks the dismantling of the Jewish nation-state: Israel.

Actually, Joshua, what anti-zionism rejects is the claiming of Judaism by a group that is but one among multiple groups of people who are Jewish. One is just saying that not all those who are Jewish support the policies of the Israeli State, not all consider Israel to represent them. Many of those people feel compelled to proclaim “Not in My Name!” because the supporters of Israel lay a blanket claim on something personal to them, their heritage.

Oh, thank you, modernity blog for exposing your particular prejudices about Gypsies. Would you believe that my first recall for Gypsies is of people in coloful dress, living in traveling wagon-homes, who often gather around communal campfires to eat and sing. Bigotry is so damn boring; one would ignore it if it weren’t lethal.

yawn..cant you racist antizionists come up with some new shit instead of recycling the same old garbage?

“Oh, thank you, modernity blog for exposing your particular prejudices about Gypsies.”

WTF are you talking about?

AntiZionist killed the dinosaurs

Antizionist eat babies

AntiZionist murdered Jesus

AntiZionist have red or yellow eyes

Antizionist killed themselves so

Antizionits are liars

Antizionists control the banks

Antizionists control the media

Antizionists are responsible for 9/11

Antizionists responsible for swine flu

We know all Germans weren’t Nazis. There were many “good germans”. But the term ‘Good German’ is a term of contempt. If not for their moral cowardice in speaking up from the outset, Hitler may not have gotten as far as he did.

The victimization mindset here is truly astonishing. The Jewish role in the Bolshevik movement and the millions murdered in the purges seems to have been screened out. That’s why Russians are getting all ‘antisemitic’ at the moment – now they are starting to remember their history and the disproportionate number of Jews who were fully engaged in the bloodlust. Seems you’ve also screened out the fact you already had an autonomous State in Russia called Birobajan. If, as apologists now claim, it was “unsuitable”, then why hide it from history and pretend you were a “people without a land”? http://www.birobidjan.co.uk/

All you guys screeching “antisemitism” and refuting the word “massacre” might want to read this 2 year old article by John Pilger. A Jewish lady, who’s mother was a holocaust survivor, makes a comment that needs to be burned into your brain. “Looking From The Side” . Even many Jews are comparing the Gaza Strip to the Warsaw Ghetto. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4580

Israels actions cannot be separated from “Jewishness” because it is a State that revolves around that – not merely a State that happens to have Judaism as it’s religion. The Talmud reigns supreme there which is why only Jews have full rights, everyone else is a 2nd class citizen. Even Nelson Mandela was moved to comment that Israel had a worst apartheid system than South Africa ever did.

If you want to talk about savage bigotry I would suggest some of you guys take a look at the Talmud – quite obviously you are oblivious to your own ‘cultural’ laws. It is made quite clear that Jews are different, and even Rabbi Mendel Schneerson pointed out, just in case we were in any doubt, that Israel and Jews are “ontologically different”…and “of a totally different quality from the other nations of the world“ since a non-Jewish soul comes from “three satanic spheres” while the Jewish soul “stems from holiness”.

Someone explain to me how that isn’t delusions of racial superiority? If we can see that White Supremicist are hate filled sickos for believing they are superior on the basis of their skin colour, why then does the world overlook the Jewish belief that they are “special”. If the average Jew isn’t aware I’d say it’s about time he actually looked at what his ‘leaders’ believe and what they do in his name.

You might want to check out the writings of some “Righteous Jews” some time, that might help you escape your “conditioning”.

http://sites.google.com/site/onedemocraticstatesite/

http://atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/03/case-against-israels-right-to-exist.html

I’d suggest to you apologists, you quit with the puerile ‘antisemitic’ namecalling garbage and stop being ‘good germans’. If you don’t you are admitting by your silence that “Jews” really are different and cannot be accountable. I suggest you go buy one of the spiffy new t-shirts the Israeli Army have had printed showing a pregnant woman in the rifle scope: “One Shot – 2 Kills”

Gaza has finished any pretension to the moral high ground Israel ever had, and it’s time the craven Western Jew faced the Truth. You too will be called an antisemite by Zionist fanatics – just like Norman Finklestein a fine Jewish academic, whose only crime was to tell the truth about Gaza. His parents died in the Holocaust, but because he accuses the Zionists of milking it to guilt trip the West into turning a blind eye to Jewish crimes, he gets called a holocaust denier.

To be called an antisemite is preferable to tacitly supporting genocide with our silence. Oh, and it’s not a stretch when people call them Nazis – they may not be gassing them, but they are using White Phosphorous which is an illegal WMD banned by international law (I prefer to believe the medics on the ground rather than Israeli propaganda)

Oh and for those still buying the “land without a people” part of the BS justification for stealing that land – you “Nakba Deniers”

http://www.palestineremembered.com

There are some fine Jewish writers on there too.