Harry's Place

Despite some of the anti-Ken Livingstone feeling and out of kilter polls it is still all to play for today as London finally goes to the polls. Boris Johnson’s team have tried as hard as possible to distance him from the Conservative Party, but that is his party and you can not divorce them.

This is a two horse race and if you vote today that is what it comes down to.  A choice between the party of bankers, public service cuts, austerity, attacks on the NHS and tax cuts for the rich and Labour.

Today is a day to put aside doubts and disagreements and vote Labour. It’s what I will certainly be doing and I hope many of you will as well as helping elect Boris Johnson only helps one party and one group of people and they are dedicated to looking after themselves and their friends and as far as I know none of them are from around here.

Livingstone said, earlier: “Today is a clear choice between Labour and Conservative. The choice has never been clearer. Vote Conservative for four more years of fare rises, police cuts and economic mismanagement.

“Or vote Labour for a fares cut, more police on the street, more and cheaper housing, the reintroduction of the London EMA, grants for childcare and cheaper heating bills.

“Today, David Cameron is urging voters to elect Boris Johnson. That tells us the stakes for Londoners. Despite the incessant and relentless attacks from the right wing press, this election is going to go to the wire.”

A Friend to Hate Preachers Read more »

This is a guest post by Rev Nick Howard

The Rev. Dr Stephen Sizer with Sheikh Salah, the anti-Semitic hate preacher in 2011.

According to a statement by Surrey police, the Rev. Dr Stephen Sizer will not be prosecuted for the incitement of racial hatred. While the police and the Crown Prosecution Service found that Dr Sizer did post a link on his Facebook page to ‘The Ugly Truth‘ (http://www.uglytruth.wordpress.com), they did not consider the material on the website likely to stir up racial hatred. Detective Superintendent Mark Preston said, ‘Whilst the webpages will clearly stir emotions … it is difficult to see a scenario in which these pages are likely to create a disruption in public order.’ The statement closes with these words: ‘I will of course reconsider future allegations [sic] in the event that the nature of the material deteriorates further.’ Much could be said about this conclusion. It is hard to imagine how the nature of the material could deteriorate further than the image below, which comes from ‘The Ugly Truth’. Surely it’s not exaggerating to say that the cartoon stands comparison with the worst propaganda of Nazi Germany, which contributed to arguably the most severe disruption in public order in human history?

However the purpose of this post is not to criticise the police, but to set out some as yet unanswered questions concerning Dr Sizer’s link to ‘The Ugly Truth’. Christian leaders are held by the Bible to higher standards than those maintained by the criminal justice system. If Dr Sizer cannot provide satisfactory answers to the following questions, it is hard to see how the members of Christ Church Virginia Water could continue in good conscience to submit to him as their moral and spiritual leader.

Dr Sizer’s link to ‘The Ugly Truth’ was on his Facebook page from October 4th 2011 to January 4th 2012. He took it down under pressure from a Jewish Chronicle reporter who contacted him on January 4th. During those three months Dr Sizer appeared to ignore attempts that were made to alert him to the racist nature of the website. For example Rev. Mark Heather, Chaplain to the Bishop of Guildford, has confirmed to me in a recent email, ‘As promised, Bishop Christopher forwarded your email of 22 November to Dr Sizer, and spoke to him, asking him to be more careful about his Facebook links.’ That email forwarded to Dr Sizer in November was a complaint about his link to ‘The Ugly Truth’.

The delay in removing the link, in spite of the complaints received by Dr Sizer, was central to the unprecedented criticism of Dr Sizer by the Bishop of Manchester and the Council of Christians and Jews. Dr Sizer’s explanations of the delay (see below) are therefore critically important, and yet they seem to contradict one another, and conflict with certain facts. Unless Dr Sizer can clear all of this up it will be impossible for observers to trust his word on the even more serious question of how he found his way to ‘The Ugly Truth’ in the first place – it has fewer than a thousand followers worldwide.

Explanation #1 (from Dr Sizer’s own blog):

‘”Israel’s Window to Bomb Iran” by Ray McGovern … had been reposted within days on hundreds of websites, including a racist website, “The Ugly Truth”. I made the mistake of linking to that copy on my Facebook in October rather than the original. When the unfortunate link was pointed out to me in January, I removed it straight away.’

Why does this explanation give the misleading impression that no complaints were received by Dr Sizer before the link was removed on January 4th? In addition to the November email mentioned above, I posted an article about Dr Sizer on the blog ‘Harry’s Place’ on 27th December, which began by discussing his link to ‘The Ugly Truth’. Dr Sizer issued a response to that article on his own blog on the following day, and yet still failed to remove the link. Imagine if Dr Sizer had used the explanation above in court (if the police and Crown Prosecution Service had given more weight to the racist material on ‘The Ugly Truth’, it seems the case would have gone to trial). Would Dr Sizer’s explanation have stood up to cross-examination? Christians, especially Christian leaders, are supposed to be as honest day by day as they would be in court (Matthew 5:34-37).

Explanation #2 (via the Diocese of Guildford, in a March 14th press release):

‘The allegation, as the Bishop understands it, is that Mr Sizer did not withdraw his reference swiftly enough once the nature of the website had been pointed out to him. The Bishop was informed by Mr Sizer that he had taken earlier steps to withdraw the reference, but that these had not effectively removed it, until January of this year.’ This explanation refers to ineffective attempts to remove the link, which are not mentioned in explanation #1. Why do the two explanations contradict each other? How are the members of Dr Sizer’s church supposed to know when to trust what he says, and when to disregard his word? It’s significant that this explanation was given by Dr Sizer to Bishop Christopher Hill, who – as Dr Sizer knew – had passed on to him my November email complaining about the link. It would have been awkward, to say the least, for Dr Sizer to admit to the Bishop that he had simply ignored my complaint or failed to read it. Did he therefore deliberately mislead an elderly Bishop unfamiliar with Facebook by claiming he had tried and failed to remove the link before January? (Anyone familiar with Facebook would know that removing a link is an extremely straightforward procedure. You simply click on the drop-down list next to the link. One of the options is “Delete Post…” Click on that, and a window appears saying: ‘Are you sure you want to delete this?’ There are two buttons: “Delete Post” and “Cancel”. If you click on Delete Post, the link disappears instantly from your page. It’s very hard indeed to believe that someone could accidentally fail to delete a link that they intended to delete. What’s more, checking that you’ve successfully removed a link on Facebook is an even simpler process than removing it – all you need do is refresh the page, a one click action.)

Explanation #3 (a message from Dr Sizer to his friend Phil Groom, as quoted on Groom’s blog):

‘The reality is I add many Facebook links daily and get criticised weekly. I did not look at the website till January and only then appreciated its anti-Semitic content. I removed the link as soon as I found it.’ According to this explanation Dr Sizer was aware of the complaints about the link before January (which fits #2 but contradicts #1) and yet didn’t actually look at ‘The Ugly Truth’ until January, having made no attempt to remove the link before then (which contradicts #2). Did Dr Sizer give a different explanation to Phil Groom to the one he had given the Bishop because he was aware of Phil Groom’s familiarity with Facebook - and therefore knew that telling him about ineffective attempts to remove the link wouldn’t wash? Again, how are the members of Dr Sizer’s church supposed to know when to trust what he says, and when to disregard his word?

Explanation #4: (via Dr Sizer’s supporter Rabbi Professor Dan Cohn-Sherbok, as quoted on Dr Sizer’s blog):

‘This week I have been in contact with Stephen Sizer regarding the issue of the website that has been referred to in the press. I asked him how it happened that this offensive website … on his Facebook was not removed straightaway. He has sent me all the relevant information including the offending website material. What he tells me is as follows: he assumed Nick Howard was based in the United States and did not in fact read Nick Howard’s complaint. This was a mistake and he regrets ignoring it, but due to his active involvement in Middle East affairs, he gets criticism on a daily and weekly basis. However, once he realized the seriousness of the error of linking his Facebook entry with the offending website, he did remove it and wrote to Marcus Dysch at the Jewish Chronicle on 4 January. He states that he had thought he had done so before.’ This complicated explanation conflicts in one way or another with all the rest. In this version of events Dr Sizer had no idea which link was being complained about until 4th January (which conflicts with #2), and so had not ‘realized the seriousness of the error’, yet nonetheless thought he had already removed it (which conflicts with #1 and #3). Why did Dr Sizer tell Rabbi Cohn-Sherbok that he thought he had already removed the link, when according to this very same explanation, he did not yet know which link was being complained about or ‘the seriousness of the error’? Did Dr Sizer add the afterthought recorded in Rabbi Cohn-Sherbok’s final sentence because he knew the Rabbi was planning to write to the Bishop, who had been told by Dr Sizer of ineffective attempts to remove the link?

God has provided the ten commandments to hold society together. When we persistently fail to keep just one of them the ground beneath us – and beneath those affected by us – starts to give way. If Dr Sizer has told a series of falsehoods concerning his link to ‘The Ugly Truth’ – which is what he appears to have done – he is surely not fit to be the moral and spiritual leader of the people of Christ Church Virginia Water. He therefore has a responsibility to account for the serious contradictions between the explanations above; and the departure of at least some of the explanations from the known facts. These explanations do not concern a trivial matter. They relate to the three-month presence of a link to a viciously anti-Jewish website on Dr Sizer’s personal Facebook page, which gave the impression that he endorsed the website and agreed with its position. Dr Sizer was first accused of anti-Semitism inThe Spectator ten years ago.
We acknowledge that he has publicly repudiated anti-Semitism, but that public statement is put in doubt by his apparent willingness to depart from the truth on other occasions, as demonstrated above. We await his response.

When presenting his show on the Iranian regime’s Press TV, Ken Livingstone expressed the remarkable view that the barriers to conversion to Judaism evidenced the religion’s “racial exclusiveness”, that these requirements arose in the 1880s, that this was similar to the racist notion of  the importance of “German blood”, and that this racism was the origin of Zionism.

Here he is:

[Part 3/3.24] Is not the problem here that when Zionism was conceived of back in the 1880s, the world was one that accepted racial division… The Germans talked about anyone of German blood, even if it had been a thousand years since they left, able to come back. The world broadly accepted this racism at all levels, and that was the origin of Zionism – ‘every other group is racially selective, we will do it’.

Here is Livingstone’s evidence to support his claim of Zionism as Jewish racism:

[Part 3/3.53] We see that today in this ridiculous situation that that whereas Christianity and Islam massively goes out there to convert people to its [sic] faith, it’s very difficult to convert into Judaism. I think it’s a real problem, there’s this racial exclusiveness that has its origins in that dreadful time… 1880s, when all nations suffered from it.

Just stunning.

I’ll leave it to you in the comments to respond to this.

But for starters:

- The contemporary rules on conversion to Judaism most certainly didn’t arise during the 1880s.

- What precisely does Ken Livingstone think would have happened to Jewish communities, living in societies which persecuted Jews for religious reasons, if they had actively sought converts?

- The Jewish position on conversion is not premised on “race”, in any event. Conversion by Orthodox ritual is designed to be difficult, but it is open to anybody.

Remember: Ken Livingstone expressed these views while taking the pay of the genocidally racist Iranian regime, on their TV channel.

The very best you can say about Livingstone’s performance is that he knows nothing about the history of Judaism or the history of antisemitism. But frankly, when a man starts railing against the problematic nature of the supposed “racial exclusiveness” of Judaism, I’m inclined to think they’re an actual antisemite.

Thanks to Joseph K in the comments.

Also, read Adloyada

This is a cross post by Marc Goldberg from The Times of Israel

Okay I’m just going to say it, when the Likud are in charge, fewer Israelis die!

The right wing government that we currently have has failed Israelis on so many other levels. With the widest social unrest the country has ever seen and strikes by everyone from baggage handlers to doctors to lecturers the one thing that Israelis can be sure of is that there is less chance of a war when Likud are running things. It is this that has proven to be their golden ticket and has led to the upswell in support for Likud that a recent poll by Yedioth Ahronot has noted.

The reason is clear, they aren’t interested in changing anything. The boat will not be rocked by the Likud, they will approve more settlements, more than the left would like to see and less than their own partners in government want. They will not try to make peace with anyone, won’t sit down with the Palestinians and in the meantime everyone, on both sides of the wall and in Gaza can get on with their lives in the knowledge that their daily routine won’t come under threat.

It is when the left are in power and politicians attempt to actually make things better in the long run that all the attacks start. Under Likud Hamas have been hitting us with just enough rockets to ensure an aerial strike but not enough to ensure another ground invasion and Hezbollah have been almost completely silent. Under Olmert and Livni it was open season for attacks on us leading to 2 wars. Whenever they tried to make peace the extremists came out of the woodwork to prevent the spectre of change and through war increased their own popularity.

When we go to the polls, probably in September, we will be asking ourselves whether we should continue to think of a relatively peaceful today and therefore vote for the Likud. All of us know that with every settlement built it will be that much harder for us to leave the West Bank though that choice may well be preferred when set against a stormy today. The left offers the eventual possibility of normalisation of relations with the rest of the Middle East, a state of Palestine alongside ours and a corresponding improvement of our standing in the international community. With the left there is everything to gain and everything to lose with the right there is nothing to lose and no prospect of any gain.

That may be comforting for now but in the long run we simply cannot continue like this. Unfortunately the left has little to offer except the proposition of more hardship in the short term combined with the hope of  a better life in the longer term.

I am going to be voting for Lapid in the hope that Yesh Atid will really bring in the future that I want to see, though I am under no illusions of the hardships that await us should any peace process begin. With this in mind I can certainly understand why people would vote for the right in the knowledge that the status quo will remain. But don’t be under any illusions for there is only so long that even the strongest swimmer is able to tread water.

This is a cross post from Adloyada

At 3:16 minutes into this clip, you’ll hear Ken Livingstone, speaking in 2009 in Tower Hamlets, push this anti-semitic conspiracy smear against  Labour MP Ivan Lewis and a Jewish “they” who he says conspired to keep the voice of the elected representatives of the Palestinian people silenced by keeping it out of the mainstream press.

Here’s my transcript of the key section:

A character called Ivan Lewis who- I discovered- I’d seen hanging round the House of Commons, and he’s saying- I’d assumed he was a lobbyist for the Israeli government- I’d no idea he was a Labour MP! [laughter] And he’d been given a job, because he’s one of that small group of Labour MPs who only ever seems to talk about the defence of the state of Israel, and denounce any Arab that may have a different point of view! And he came out and said, I had made a huge mistake in having this interview, and publishing it, and I assumed   avalanche of denunciations and outrage, and how someone like me should never stand for mayor again or something! And then, it went completely quiet – a little bit in the Jewish Chronicle in the next week – and of course! – the last thing they wanted to do, was, they realised this-- a lot of denunciations would mean people would buy it! More of them would read it!

I wish there had been more denunciations! I wish great extracts of it, had been published in the Sun! And the Daily Mail! And the Express!They’re not gonna do that. So, do get hold of copies of that, and just take a few photocopies and circulate it amongst your friends, groups at work, in your community, so more people get to see that. The silence spoke volumes, of how they don’t really don’t want the Palestinians to express themselves through their elected leaders.

HAT TIP Joseph W in this Harry’s Place blog post, who included his version of what I’ve transcribed above.

This is a cross post from Progress by Hasan Azfal

The progressive solution to campus extremism is not to ban or proscribe organisations or individuals but to counter them with moderate, progressive liberal Muslims.

University is supposed to be a time where minds are opened up to fresh ideas, debates ensue and views are moulded. Indeed, for many students that is the story of their time in higher education.

However, that’s often only part of the story if you’re a Muslim student. For the last five years, the counter-extremism organisationStandforPeace has documented, archived and exposed numerous occasions when hate preachers have been given a sole platform to air their, often, anti-liberal, Islamist and, to much sadness, down-right anti-British views.

We should, of course, make a distinction between Islam and Islamism. Islam is a diverse and fissile religion with just as many strands and schools of thought as there are followers. Most Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens of this nation who follow Islam, and have no interest in theocratic parties and their attendant hate preachers. Just like the readers of this blog, they are more likely to be angered by public sector cuts than be moved by the Islamist message of division and grievance.

Islamism, in contrast, is a radical political ideology that seeks to use and consolidate power to establish, in the most literal sense, a global Islamic super-state, otherwise known as a caliphate. This fantasy requires them to convince Muslims that they have a religious duty to unite behind their cause.

Week-in, week-out Muslim students are bombarded with the views of preachers that fall within the Islamist strand of the debate. Islamic societies have been taken over by Islamists.

Take Kingston University, for example, who are hosting the hate preacher Haitham al-Haddad. Haddad is a regular hate preacher and a favourite of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, who represent the majority of university Islamic societies in Britain.

In his ‘autobiography’, the Christmas day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab describes how went on a ‘retreat’ with Haddad. Many have described Haddad as among the worst preachers in the UK. Yet, he is welcomed with open arms at many FOSIS-affiliated Islamic societies.

Haddad is a supremacist in much the same way that Tommy Robinson of the EDL is a supremacist. On interfaith, Haddad is on record as saying that ‘peaceful co-existence is just full stop wrong’. He considers integration and assimilation of Muslims into society as a hindrance to their faith. He could not be further away from the mainstream views of Muslims in the UK.

On relations with Christians and Jews, he subscribes to the view of ‘declaring Jews and Christians to be kuffar, and the necessity of hating them, and avoiding them’. On Jews specifically, he expresses the worst kind of anti-semitism: ‘The devils of mankind are perfectly represented by these Jews. Do their Protocols [of the Elders of Zion] not say: “We must seduce the world with women and wine, through gambling and recreation, and if this is not sufficient then their reality will testify to this.”’ The reference to the anti-semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document that has been used to smear Jews, should send a chill to all anti-racism, anti-fascist campaigners.

Islamic Societies such as the one at Kingston University have a duty of care to protect their students from radical proselytisation from the likes of Haddad, but that provision is all but ignored.

Just looking at the case of Kingston University and Haddad, it becomes apparent how young moderate Muslims are brought in to the Islamist rhetoric and are taught to hate their country. Yet, that is the point. They are taught to do this. Islamism is a political idea – and it can be countered.

The progressive solution to campus extremism is not to ban or proscribe organisations or individuals as this merely offers extremists another talking point. The solution is to counter this narrative. It falls on universities to call out extremists like Haddad and make his attendance to talk at universities conditional on providing a dual platform alongside with a moderate, progressive liberal Muslim.

Progressive organisations like Progress can help turn the tide against these extremists. After all, fighting extremism is in the bloodstream of a progressive. Ask yourself this: if Haddad was a white European neo-Nazi (who could easily hold similar views on minorities), then would we offer an apologist’s account to Haddad? I don’t believe so. Fighting hate and sectarianism is part of the progressive movement – it’s time we unite and revive this tradition.

And Andrew Gilligan, and Melanie Philips:

“The reality is, as we’ve seen coming out of the horrors of Norway, humanity has to stand together against those that preach intolerance. But one thing does worry me. The way that most commentators on the right, write out of this act of horrific barbarity, any political significance. And, most of the commentators on the Right said, “This is a lone madman, this is someone who is insane”, a sort of political version of Hannibal Lector from the Hollywood movies. But this isn’t the case at all. There is a sort of spectrum of intolerance in our society. At its most respectable end, you have David Cameron saying multiculturalism has been bad for Britain. And it works its way to increasingly strident attacks, until you get someone like Andrew Gilligan who seems to be obsessed, and beyond that Melanie Philips, writing week after week in the Daily Mail [...]

I really do want to emphasise this point, there’s nothing extraordinary about Anders Breivik.”

Following up on Sarah’s post, here are some photos I took when I stumbled onto a May Day demonstration, sponsored by the leftwing Zionist party Mapam (now merged into Meretz) and the affiliated kibbutz/youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, on my first visit to Israel. (Click to enlarge.)

The sign says “There isn’t a non-socialist Left.”

The demonstration concluded with the singing of “The Internationale” and the Israeli national anthem “HaTikvah.”

Update: Ronnie Fraser provides a fascinating report from the labour attaché at the British embassy in Tel Aviv on May Day activities in Israel in 1955– when apparently it was a really big deal:

The International Labour Day celebrations in Israel yesterday passed off fairly uneventfully. There were parades in numerous towns as far south as Beersheba but the major events were, of course, in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. The turnout at Haifa, which is the main Industrial centre of the country, was estimated at 45,000 and in Tel Aviv at about 30,000. At the invitation of the Histadrut, the American Labour Attaché and I were on the platform in Tel Aviv to watch the march-past.
Read more »

With fewer than 48 hours to go before polling starts, Ken Livingstone’s tax-avoidance is still in the news. Today The Sun ran a headline saying:

£1.2m? That’s a good living – Ken Livingstone tax ruse ‘saved £220k’

But why is it still an issue? Instead of going away, why has it moved from the broadsheets to the tabloids?

Simple. He’s allowed 27 days to pass since promising to publish his tax records. He has failed to do so. In fact, the only thing that’s changed is the figures. And, despite saying repeatedly that his accountant would happily talk to the press,journalists have had and no success in contacting to his accountant.

When is Ken planning on coming clean? Tomorrow? On the morning of the election? Don’t bet on it.