I note the strapline on her blog runs:

I always read Linda’s blog with a mixture of interest and trepidation!’ – Nick Clegg.

Quite… or rather, Quite!

Do I really have to explain that not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews?

Evidently you have to explain it to Jenny Tonge. Among here various unsavoury outbursts, there is this, from a couple of months ago:

The way Israel behaves is just not kosher. Jewish people should be totally ashamed of themselves that they are not doing more to stop them.

This is the kind of elision of Jews and Israel which ‘anti-zionists’ tend to engage in quite automatically. A recent star example here, Councillor Terry Kelly, has difficulty writing a sentence about Israel in which Israelis don’t turn into Jews by the end or vice versa. It’s clear that for Tonge, Kelly and others, ‘Jew’, ‘zionist’ and ‘Israel’ are indivisible and exchangeable terms, and even though they periodically claim to understand the distinctions, they have difficulty recognising even when they’ve just done it and it’s there before them in black and white.

Apart from the implicit equation of ‘Jew’ and ‘Israeli’, there is the unremittingly pejorative use of the other equational term, ‘zionist’. Since being a zionist simply means believing in the right to exist of a Jewish homeland, the fact that it is spat out as a dirty word, as it is so often by those on the left and centre, is quite revealing. The right for Jews to have a similar right to that other ethnic groups, especially historically oppressed ones, seems to be anathema to the ‘anti-zionists’, and indeed ‘zionism’ is portrayed today in the similar terms to those used by anti-semites from time immemorial, as a greedy land-and-oney-grabbing ideology wanting to and working to control the whole world. There are echoes of this in the Palestinian Telegraph defence of Tonge.

If you recycle the same smears and use the same rhetorical tactics as the Nazis did towards Jews, don’t be surprised if people identify you as anti-semites or fellow travellers of anti-semites.

A minor additional point:

Because unlike these other regimes which have committed homan rights abuses, Israel calls its self a democracy and a light unto the nations….

In the first place, are you seriously claiming that countries such as, let us say, Iran and North Korea do not call themselves democracies?

And in the second, can you point me to any country in the world which does not present itself as being at the very least a pleasant, admirable example to other nations, if not with some claim to historical distinction?

http://tongelashing.blogspot.com/

There isn’t one yet that asks The Fink to prove she is sane

Forget it, no problem

How appalling that Fink and NWI pretend to Clegg that they represent anyone but their craven deluded screwed-up selves

The review also says Littlewood is no historian – which is evident from the summary, and anyway he says he knew nothing about it until 2006 – but his co-author Philip Vine claims to have read history at Cambridge (at Cambridge or in Cambridge?) and been a teacher for 25 years. Vine is now the owner of the St Ives Nursery and has modestly named his son Philip Junior after himself.

http://www.stivesnursery.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=26

Stuart Littlewood gave an interview in November 2009
http://www.israel-palestinenews.org/2009/11/spotlight-on-palestine-interview-with.html

of which a sample is:

…Israel’s agents of influence are so embedded at the heart of government that signing up to the Zionist cause is a necessary stepping stone to high office. These stooges are fatal to our foreign policy and security…

He then links to a list of the stooges, some of which you may feel are indeed a risk to our security but their attitude to Israel will be the least of our problems.

A few weeks earlier, in September 2009, Littlewood fell out with the Palestinian embassy after he criticized them for not acting as quickly as he thought they should. He demonstrated his impeccable non-sexist communication skills honed by a lifetime in marketing and sales backed by a psychology degree: (it says on his CV at wordsandpixels.org.uk)

Anyway, I just had to drop the ambassador a line to tell him – as if he didn’t already know – that this ranting female, known to me only as “Linda X”, rang from the embassy and I suspect she’s one of his bird-dogs. She accused me of negative criticism and branded me an enemy of Palestine.

The ambassador replied to Littlewood, unhappy at the criticism of his staff in difficult circumstances, although it is not clear if the ambassador or an aide is writing:

I had promised myself not to react to your destructive and negative emails, that carry no weight and based on flagrant distortions of the facts about the Palestinian General Delegation. However, I must straighten the records with your extremely biased allegations that are utterly baseless and serves only the interests of our enemy.

I still insist to meet you face to face, but it seems you don’t have the guts to face the realities…
http://www.redress.cc/palestine/slittlewood20090911

How dare the Palestinian Authority wilfully ignore the advice of an ex-county counsellor. Just who do they think they are.

Tonge Digs Hole Deeper at Press TV http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118615&sectionid=351020601

Its obviously a puff piece to get some of her own back.

Inaccuracy:-

She said that the Israeli lobby had a lot of influence with all of the country’s three major parties, all of which are inevitably linked to a huge organization called ‘the Friends of Israel.’ (There are several along party lines, not one single one!)

In explaining the British government’s stance on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Tonge said, “Some thing that we always seem to do in this country is to follow America, and secondly, they are gurgling along with Europe and there are European countries like Germany, who are absolutely terrified of anti-Semitism.”

“I mean, we haven’t mentioned that word yet, but it drives policy, because of the holocaust, which I have read a lot about it and I think was one of the worst things that mankind has ever perpetrated on other human beings.”

That’s it Jenny, go the all the way. Guns blazing as you scuttle yourself. If anything she has made it worse and dares Clegg to remove the whip. (I’m all for applying it quite hard on her)

European countries like Germany, who are absolutely terrified of anti-Semitism.”

Jenny, you dolt! Thirteen Million Jews are “terrified of Antisemitism”

How long does a serial rapist of the Truth & Decency be allowed to get away with it?

Well, quite.

I wonder if, when doing no research that I’m aware of in the matter of a ‘not distressed’ Jewish community, Deborah and Naomi also got around to researching the outcome of the Council of Europe’s European Court of Human Rights (July 2009) with regard to boycotting Israeli goods?

I do wonder, though, in stating that the Jewish community was not distressed, how Deborah et al managed to get around to asking 327, Jews since the ‘Tonge’ story broke on Thursday – much less the total community number of 327,000.

European