Thank you for getting in contact with us to complain about Toynbee Hall being used as a venue for one of the publication launch events for the book ‘Israeli Apartheid’ by Ben White on 9th July 2009.

The booking for 9th July 2009 is in fact from the organisation War on Want a registered charity and company limited by guarantee that receives funds from the British Government, the European Commission and several trust funders. This is an established anti-poverty organisation which is independent and non-party political and which has a strong commitment to policies of social justice, human rights and fighting discrimination. On this basis we have no organisational nor legal reason to believe that the booking should be cancelled.

We appreciate that the views contained in this publication are not ones that you support. Toynbee Hall supports the freedom of speech in line with the Universal Declaration. You would be welcome to hold a debate about this at Toynbee Hall, subject of course to our normal booking procedures.

As with all our room bookings and events, Toynbee Hall cannot be held responsible for any views expressed by hirers and their representatives.

Any complaints about this event and the publication should be directed to War on Want.

Yours sincerely
Graham Fisher

Brazilian Apartheid: a Beginner’s Guide?

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

The problem, however, is that triumphalist ideology is inherent to Islam. Thus, the problem becomes one of separating Islam from its core – a task more complex than the Reformation’s separation of Church power from secular government.

A further danger is the left’s enthusiasm for acting as collaborators – a fifth column, actually – of Islam. It seems to do so for 3 reasons:
1. Enthusiasm for any anti-Western ideology, no matter how murderous, from Maoism to Islam.
2. Reverse racism, with the left erroneously assuming most Israelis white and most Arabs/Muslims brown.
3. More-than-vestigial European anti-Semitism woven into the culture over two millennia.

Thus the banning of pro-Jewish spokesman from a War on Want event is merely one more disgraceful milepost on the long march towards complete support by the European left for (1) triumphalist Islam and (2) the elimination of the Jews.

“This is a very honest, clear and powerful book bringing us face to face with the reality of what Israel has done and is doing to the Palestinians. It would be convenient to ignore it. It would be convenient to assume Ben has got it wrong – that it’s not quite that bad. Sadly it is and we ignore it at everyone’s peril.”

- Garth Hewitt, Canon of St George’s Cathedral, Jerusalem

What a joke

Stephen Sizer does indeed profess to be evangelical, be assured though that there are many evangelicals, myself included who (a) have a different understanding of the Bible to him and who (b) are well aware of his insidious anti-Zionist and antisemitic agenda, and distance ourselves from it.