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Livid in London
Last uploaded : Sunday 9th Dec 2001 at 14:20
Contributed by : The Editor

 

News Visitors to this site may be interested in the letters written by the Editor to newspapers during the past two years, a period of time in which a wave of articles hostile to Jewish aspirations have appeared with increasing frequency. Over these years, the Editor, an enthusiastic supporter of Peace Now and of the Oslo peace process, has steadily become alarmed at the tone of the journalism in the British press. It must be stressed that some of the offending articles have been written by Jewish commentators. It is very rare to find Muslim writers who earn their living denigrating Muslim countries and their faith. The self-hating Jewish syndrome is somewhat more prevalent in Britain than in the rest of the world. Many British Jews change their names and think this will make them instantly accepted by the old-boy network; one of these asked the Editor to modify a business prospectus on which we were working because the content was ?too Jewish.? It would be unimaginable for a Muslim businessman to ask a colleague to make a document ?less Muslim.? However, the most offensive articles in the past two years have been written by non-Jewish journalists and the following letters provide a taste of the Editor?s stand on the issues on which this site expects to concentrate.

To read the articles (via the respective archives of the newspapers) go to the following websites and type in the search box the names of the most vitriolic of the ?top ten? journalists:

Fisk/Reeves/Sayle www.independent.co.uk

Bodi/Goldenberg/ Guardian Unlimited
Soueif

Sewell/Hastings/ Evening Standard (click on This is London)
Glass/
(Also type in ?Sacks? for an excellent piece by the British Chief Rabbi)

You may also wish to type in ?Israel? for more articles. The British newspaper ?The Daily Telegraph? offers a fair view of Israel and the Middle East, as does ?The Times.?

Unfortunately, AN Wilson, the most offensive of the anti-Israel British journalists, and whose most recent article called for the dismantling of the State of Israel, does not appear on the Evening Standard website. If you wish to read his articles you may wish to contact the Evening Standard?s webmaster. If you have no success, please contact us (email@jewishcomment.com) and we can arrange for copies to be posted to you for a small fee.

The letters follow
************************************************************************
7th March 2000
Letters to the Editor: The Evening Standard

Dear Sir:

I refer to AN Wilson?s column, ?Sentimentality is Busting Out All Over,? (6th March).

In middle age I have come to the conclusion that Judaism is not so much a religion and ?way of life? but a life experience. AN Wilson did not grow up in a Jewish home, where from the time a child can comprehend words, one joyously relives the near 6,000-year history of this ancient people From building a sukkah to participating in Passover Seder, weekly Shabbat dinner and Havdalah, lighting Chanukah candles to celebrate the victory of the Maccabees or fasting on Yom Kippur and eating Hamentaschen on Purim, growing up Jewish is a river that runs deep. In Judaism, family is everything.

It is therefore unlikely that AN Wilson can possibly comprehend the significance of Anne Frank within a Jewish context. Indeed, this girl?s short life is symbolic of courage to young people of all faiths.

Whether or not this fifteen-year-old who perished in the squalid depravity of Auschwitz ?read? at the erstwhile British Library is of no relevance. Anne Frank?s book is possibly the most-read book of this century save the Bible. Her symbolism as a child martyr of war is as symbolic as a bust of Stephen Lawrence would be to young martyrs of racism. Indeed, how tasteless of AN Wilson to make light of the Lawrence case, and how tiresome of him to mention ?private money? in reference to a Jewish monument. Israeli rescue units are permanently based in various disaster spots around the world, helping Christians and Muslims with ?private money? from generous Jews around the globe.

In the same issue of The Evening Standard we read of St George?s School having to close because of violence within its walls. I suggest Lady Stubbs, the incoming Headmistress, include The Diary of Anne Frank in the course of study. This past fortnight The Evening Standard selected the Jewish Free School its School of the Year. The Jews are not known as ?The People of the Book? for nothing ? Anne Frank was not allowed to live long enough to become an eminent scholar. Would she had survived the ravages of Auschwitz, she might, after all, have been one of AN Wilson?s ?readers,? along with the other million-plus Jewish babies and children annihilated by the Nazis.

Yours faithfully,

****************************************
Max Hastings,
Editor,
The Evening Standard,
Northcliffe House,
Derry Street,
London W8.
3rd November 2000
Dear Mr Hastings,

Re: Brian Sewell?s article ?Bible Stories? 31 October 2000

It is lamentable that Brian Sewell?s article was ever allowed to be published as it contains so many inaccuracies. Its blatant anti-Jewish sentiment is akin to that found on extremist neo-Nazi websites.

1. The Crusades encountered few Jews in the Holy Land because of a seminal event in Jewish history: in 70 AD the Second Temple was destroyed and the Jews driven out, hence the ?Diaspora? for 2,000 years. During that 2,000 years unspeakable atrocities were committed against Jews in every Christian country. In Mr Sewell?s own country the first ?Blood Libel? was fabricated against the Jews and they were expelled from England after the York massacres in the 13th century, never to return until the time of Cromwell.

2. Does Mr. Sewell whom one assumes to be an educated Christian, not appreciate that the Hebrew Bible, along with the mountain of rabbinic commentaries of the last 2,000 years, dates back 5,000 years or so? The Jews have just celebrated year 5761 of their history. How dare Mr Sewell suggest the holy Land has no historical significance to anyone except Arabs? What about Christians?

3. Mr. Sewell?s disgraceful outburst about the Holocaust is an insult to all who suffered in the Nazi terrors. Israel is a magnificent, cultured little nation whose literacy rate towers above the rest of the world, whose scientists are making strides unprecedented anywhere else, and whose streets are so safe that one can take a walk at 3Am and not fear for one?s safety. The present violence in the Middle East was started by Palestinian riots after prayers at their mosque, just as every war against Israel has been started by its hostile, warlike neighbours.

4. Lest Mr Sewell, whose contempt for Jews is a disgrace to the word ?journalist? forget, Jews, who make up a tiny proportion of the world? s population, make up a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners. Muslim children around the world are now polio-free because of the vaccine discovered by Jonas Salk. TIME Magazine chose Albert Einstein as its ?Person of the Century 2000.?

Mr Sewell?s contemptible article could have been devised by Joseph Goebbels or Glubb Pasha, and he should be dismissed from his post immediately.

Yours sincerely,








Brian Sewell,
The Evening Standard,
Northcliffe House,
Derry Street,
London W8 5TT
10th April 2001

Dear Mr Sewell,

In an article you wrote last week about Mary Robinson, I was puzzled by your lumping Israel with Chechnya, East Timor, Congo, Palestine, China and Afghanistan.

Whatever Israel?s shortcomings on the human rights front, which no doubt fall far short of its original quest to be ?a light unto the nations,? it is still the only democracy in the Middle East, surrounded by retrograde autocracies that demean women. The worst that would happen, for example, to an excessively inebriated British visitor to Eilat might be a night drying out with plenty of coffee at the local kibbutz?s police station.. Just imagine one?s fate in one of Israel?s neighbouring countries.

It is important for all of us in the media to be aware of the brave and good work being done by Jewish human rights activists in Israel and abroad. I am taking the liberty of enclosing copies of some interesting readings sent to me by Vivien Lichtenstein, Chair of British Friends of Peace Now.

Also enclosed are indications of Taleban-like behaviour by the Jerusalem Islamists, an attitude that is as offensive to Christian sensibilities as it is to Jewish inhabitants of the Holy Land.

I visited Israel four years ago during a relatively quiet interlude. With a group of Christian clergy and journalists, I navigated the Hasmonean Tunnel. When we emerged on the East (Arab) side, we were pummelled by stones from Palestinian children and nearly run over by Palestinians intent on reversing their cars into us. We were unable to visit Bethlehem because Christian pilgrims were being attacked by Palestinians. This without any Israeli army presence to be blamed for provocation.

Like Conrad Black, I fail to be convinced that Israel is the demon of the piece. Having visited the Holy Land many times, I urge you and all journalists never to underestimate the extremism of Islam and the abject hatred of ?all other faiths? by the current Mufti.

I hope you will find these readings interesting and I wish you a Happy Easter.

Yours faithfully,






Simon Kelner,
Editor,
The Independent,
191 Marsh Wall,
London E14 9RS 24th April 2001

Dear Mr Kelner,

As a liberal Jew whose recent films have concentrated on interfaith dialogue, I wish to express to you my grave concerns over your recent articles in The Guardian. Do you live on another planet from the one I live on?

During the past eight months, Britain has become the centre of the universe for Israel-bashing journalism, to such a degree that Conrad Black used the term ?Goebbels-like? to describe it. How Can you say the British media are anti-Muslim?

You say you spend so much time complaining to the BBC. Well, never in my long life have I spent so much on ?phone bills as I have in the past eight months, complaining to the BBC about its biased, distorted and often inaccurate coverage of the Middle East situation.

Re Robert Fisk, whom you praise: In his April article ?When journalists refuse to tell the truth about Israel? he rants for an entire paragraph about Newsweek?s cover showing a Tanzim militiaman. He accuses the magazine of perpetrating a ?virtual fraud? by linking ?the entire Palestinian people? with Osama bin Laden. Mr Bodi, I refer you to Ha?aretz, reporting last week that the Israeli security Services have linked bin Laden with terror activity in the West Bank and Gaza. May I also point out that those of us whose families were annihilated in the Shoah get chills when we see headlines like Fisk?s? Those were the sort of headlines used by Goebbels ? ?When journalists refuse to tell the truth about Jews.?

In my ten years at ITV, I was astounded by the utter ignorance of British colleagues about Jewish and Israeli history ? of the JEWISH struggle. This post-1967 knee-jerk attitude, which does not take into account the fact that Israel was facing total annihilation in 1967 as Nasser ranted on about the destruction of my people, was personified in Ken Livingstone?s disgraceful piece in The Independent in March in which he attacked Israel for ?invading? Egypt, East Jerusalem, Jordan and the Golan Heights in 1967, resulting in the ?massacres? that followed. Have you been to the Golan? It is militarily and geographically impossible to ?invade? the Golan Heights: Israel DROVE BACK the Syrians who were trying to overrun and massacre the Jewish population of Northern Israel.

Do you seriously think the British are going to favour the Jews over Muslims? This country was the birthplace of the infamous Norwich ?Blood Libel? (William of Nrowich), the location of the first major massacre of Jews (York) and of the first expulsion, in 1290. This country has the ignominious honour of having forbidden Jews to enter its shores from 1290 until the end of the seventeenth century. Independent and Guardian readers are currently writing letters that reflect the ignorance and miserable anti-Jewish prejudice they are inheriting from the inaccurate and inflammatory columns being allowed to go to print.

For example, Mr Fisk wrote a piece about some Israeli soldiers with whom he had spent a day. He reported that one was a 34-year-old New York accountant. One of his readers wrote in that it was little wonder that Palestinian children were being killed by this new crop of ?religious Jews from America. ?

Mr Bodi, I have long-suffering, hard-working family and friends in Israel. The 34-year-old lad in question would be an American professional who gave up a lucrative practice in Manhattan to ?make aliyah? to Israel, as is the right of every halachically Jewish person, like myself. He is required to do ?miulim? (active army service) one month every year until he is 45. He is not a religious fanatic but an American Jew (85% of whom ascribe to the Progressive Movement) who emigrate to Israel at great physical and financial risk.

I do not know how much you know about the Jewish people, Mr Bodi, but I have NEVER met an average Israeli who wishes to actively pursue a war . It is because of fifty-three years of wars and terrorism that Israelis must plough billions into their military budget. What other nation in the world in this day and age has compulsory conscription for BOTH MEN AND WOMEN because of a perpetual state of war and of internal terror?

The Palestinians have had an example next door for 53 years of a small people who have overcome unspeakable odds to establish a prosperous and self-sufficient nation. When one travels, as I have done, from Israel to the PA, one is greeted by swarms of tragically aimless young Palestinian men who seem to do no work or who seem to be perpetually playing truant from school. This whilst the average twelve-year-old pre-Bar-Mitzvah age Israeli child is selling new computer programmes to worldwide high-tech companies. Where is Arafat?s leadership? These Palestinian youngsters could also be high-tech wizards, but he teaches only confrontation. This week it was commented on SKY NEWS that the PA ?top five? are eligible to be in the Forbes Top 400.

When I was taken on by Anglia TV as a Drama Script Editor in 1981 I suffered almost daily jibes about Jews. Regrettably this lasted for my entire ten-year career at Anglia. The British papers provide daily, detailed accounts of the sufferings of the Palestinians, but NEVER spend weeks at a time living with my petrified friends, left-wingers in Tel Aviv, who are ill from the constant threat of terror. How cna you say the British media are biased against your people?

Has a British paper done a lengthy report about the tragic killing in cold blood of Dr Shmuel Gillis, one of the world?s leading oncologists (he treated Arabs and Jews at the hospital in Jerusalem where he was a consultant) ? by a Palestinian sniper last month as he rushed to drive to attend to a patient?

May I remind you that Jews are raised in a very different way from the average Anglo-Saxon. Every week Jewish families sit down to Shabbat dinner around the world. It is a tradition that has nothing to do with being ?Zionist? or ?religious.? It is a peaceful time for thoughtful discussion and has been a way of life for thousands of years for us. Some Jews attend a minyan daily. From the earliest time, a Jewish child, in addition to commemorating the Passover Seder, Yom Kippur, Shavuot and Simchat Torah, not to mention the ancient fasts of Tisha B?AV and Gedalia, is bombarded from about age five with a litany of atrocities committed by the Nazis.

We are taught about the German and Polish camp supervisors and doctors tying together the legs of Jewish women whilst they are giving birth so they bleed to death in abject agony, slicing people in half without anaesthetic to see how much pain a human can endure, and conducting experiments on children and twins in bestial ?medical research? that equal indescribable torture. What manner of man castrates Jewish men without anaesthetic ?

This is just a tiny list of things Jewish children learn about the Holocaust from age five or so. What do they do in response to this catalogue of atrocities committed against their people? In the United States, they become the Dr Jonas Salks, Leonard Bernsteins, Stephen Sondheims, Barbara Streisands and Steven Speilbergs of this world. In the United Kingdom they become the Alan Platers, Harold Pinters and Tom Stoppards of this world. They do not throw stones at their Christian neighbours, or hijack aeroplanes full of Germans.

Do you really think your colleagues on the British papers know anything about Jews? Have they ever sat down to a Shabbat meal? Has your colleague Fisk ever attended a Passover Seder? When I was young my parents hosted scores of interfaith Seder meals. Have British papers ever investigated why Jewish youth never get involved in hooliganism or drunkenness or violent street crime? Jewish teens vie for places on gruelling Israel or Third World summer camp. They are a model for the rest of humanity where non-violence and the highest levels of academic attainment are concerned.

You and Mr Fisk may not be aware that one of the biggest events in the Israeli calendar year is the National Book Fair. Not something Mr Fisk would ever report in his poisonous columns! He has actually suggested sympathy for suicide bombers. When is the PLO going to sit down at quiet study and produce an Einstein, an Oppenheimer, a Freud or a Marc Chagall instead of hijackers, terrorists and war criminals like Gaddafi and Saddam?

I would like to see your paper writing the same sort of hysterical diatribes it has recently engaged in against Israel, about the Taleban destroying the magnificent Buddhas. Where is your ongoing condemnation of this barbaric, despicable behaviour ? Does your paper not see this as a metaphor for the relentless campaign by Islamic fundamentalists to discredit all of the world?s other religions? You did one article, and that was it. You have a running commentary about Israeli brutality ? where is the daily coverage from the Jewish side?

In 1996 I went with a Christian group to Israel and the tour was enthralled by the magnificent work of the Israeli Antiquities Authority and of its brilliant scholars and archaeologists in restoring and preserving Christian areas of importance that had gone into disrepair and even near-ruin during Arab rule. It was a very quiet time shortly after the Rabin assassination, when both the Arab and Jewish population were united in mourning and there was great hope for a peace treaty and Palestinian state. Wherever we went, however, to our utter bewilderment we were stoned and spat upon by Palestinian children.

I used to be an activist for Peace Now. You might have heard me as a relentless peace campaigner on the Jewish Programme on Spectrum Radio, which I did for four years 1997-2001. What began to change me? Three things:

1) In 1998, when I was producing a video about the three monotheistic faiths within the square mile of Lord?s Cricket Ground, I filmed happily at the many churches and liberal synagogue of NW8. When it came time to film at the Mosque, my cameraman, a Libyan, told me I would be ?stabbed? if I came to the Mosque on the Friday. In St John?s Wood, not Jerusalem! I thought he was teasing. He said, ?No, if they find out you are from the Jewish they will maybe even kill you. It will be an international incident like WPC Yvonne Fletcher.? It was the first time in my career as a film producer that I had had to stay home during a shoot.
2) The October 12 lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah made me realise the twain shall never meet. Have you ever seen Israelis or Jews behaving like this, despite our unspeakable oppression and struggles, in our long history? Your Mr Fisk will counter that Palestinian children are being shot dead. Please be reminded that enough stones can also kill.
3) The vicious, distorted and INACCURATE campaign to demonise Israel by the British press has had the same effect on me as did the Dreyfus trial on Theodor Herzl. The unfair, one-sided reams of venom in your paper and others has solidified my feelings of solidarity with Israel. Nothing unites Jews like Goebbels-style libels. Please be reminded that this intifada started NOT with Sharon?s visit to the Temple Mount but with the killing in cold blood of an Israeli soldier by a Palestinian policeman on patrol with him the day before.

It is generally acknowledged now, even by liberals, that Arafat was training squads of upwards of 20,000 children in summer 2000 for a major intifada. Jewish children all over the world go to camp to volunteer in deprived areas and to pursue their artistic and creative talents. I know because I was in charge of B?nai B?rith Youth Organisation for awhile and was awed by the devotion of these sober, studious 12-to20-year-olds who were a credit to Great Britain.

ORT, a Jewish welfare organisation, spends millions helping third world countries, be they Muslim, Hindu, Christian or anything else. Does your paper cover this blow-by-blow?

What the legion of Israel-bashing British writers and broadcasters does not seem to understand is that there is nothing wrong with praising a brave people who are trying to maintain their noble, immensely civilised way of life inside a tiny strip of land. Israel is surrounded by not one but five third-world, misogynist autocracies who desire its total annihilation. Why, then,, does your David Aaronovitch feel Britain must ?adamantly? support one of these neighbours, to whom Israel has GIVEN the rifles now being used to shoot its soldiers? Why don?t you also suggest Britons adamantly support the Real IRA?

Your newspaper has recently been actively promoting the idea that Israel is worse than white South Africa during apartheid. Until April 1996, the PLO?s charter was driven by the goal of annihilation of Israel. When did even the most extreme ANC supporters promulgate the annihilation of its white neighbours? When did white South Africa arm the blacks who then turned them on white police? Why does your Mr Fisk never mention Black September, when the PLO was driven out of Jordan by an exasperated King Hussein?

The ?oppression? and ?starvation? of the Palestinians by Israel is a two-way street. In the past three years the Arab League has arranged for $1 billion to come into the PA. As recently as February another $250 million was committed. The Israelis insist the aid is being allowed in ? even goods from Libya, Syria and Iraq!

Meanwhile, the Palestinians live in squalor whilst Arafat flies around in his personal 747. The Independent is always ready to match Sharon with Milosevic as a war criminal. Shall we not throw Arafat in for good measure? Was he not responsible for the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, singled out for being Jewish, shot and thrown overboard on the Achille Lauro in front of his elderly wife? Was he not responsible for the disappearance of Dora Bloch at Entebbe, and for the slaughter of the Israeli athletes at Munich? Has anyone from your paper looked into Arafat?s allegedly monstrous bank balances? Why are you not reporting this?

Have you, Mr Kelner, ever gone for a stroll in Tel Aviv late at night? It is the only place in the universe where I may walk at 3AM and feel safe as a woman on my own. Israel must be the only country in the world where bustling crowds of little children gather after dark in the centre of a metropolis ? with no fear of peadophiles ? to compare their homework notes and to write poetry. The only danger they might be in is from a Hamas suicide bomber. If said bomber were doing homework instead, HE might grow up to be another J Robert Oppenheimer.

I suggest you commission a series of Jewish and Israeli writers to provide a regular counterpoint to your one-sided coverage of this conflict. I would suggest myself as well as Rabbi Pini Dunner, Minister of the Saatchi Synagogue (www.coolshul.org), Norman Lebrecht, Rabbi Mark Winer, Minister of West London Synagogue and Clive Lawton, Jewish Youth Leader who writes a weekly column in the London Jewish News and is the former Director of Limmud.

Should Israel?s neighbours declare war, the British public will have been so grossly misinformed and so grievously influenced by papers like yours that it will be hell for the government to garner support for armed intervention or assistance. Should Israel suffer the unthinkable and be annihilated, my conscience is clear but I lament the fact that you in your not-so-small way will have aided in the destruction of one of the world?s finest examples of a cultured democracy.

However, if you or Robert Fisk can be bothered to read a Passover Haggadah, you will see that the Torah teaches my people that such injustices do not go unanswered by G-d.

Yours sincerely,



Letters to the Editor,
The Guardian,
119 Farringdon Road
London EC1. 22nd May 2001

Sir:

The Guardian notes (Leader editorial and Suzanne Goldenberg?s report 21 May) that the ratio of Palestinian to Jewish children killed in the present intifadah is 17 to 1.One death on either side is grotesque, but the reality of the situation needs to be addressed.

The Israeli security services have defused a formidable number of explosive devices within Israel itself since October, and citizens have thwarted attacks throughout Israel. In this past week alone, a Jerusalem publican, finding a suspect parcel, evacuated his packed premises and averted a catastrophe : sappers arrived and defused a huge bomb. Last week a packed passenger train from Haifa to Tel Aviv avoided disaster when a large bomb planted under the tracks exploded just as the train left a station.

It has been estimated that without such vigilance ? and such luck, in the case of the train --casualties on the Israeli side ? both Arab and Jewish ? would have gone into five figures in this seven-month intifadah.. From the onset of the Oslo process, a terror attack against Israeli citizens always occurred within hours of the signatures drying on agreements made amongst King Hussein, Prime Minister Rabin and Yasir Arafat, Rabin turned the other cheek and suffered the same tragic fate as Anwar Sadat. Unchecked extremism on both sides remains the demon in the woodpile in this seemingly endless conflict.

Whether the Jewish settler-farmers supply Marks & Spencer or whether their presence is, as the Guardian asserts, an ?obscene stain, ? it should also be noted that even after the ghastly ?live on TV? lynching of the two Israeli reservists in Ramallah on 12 October 2000, Israel continued to allow humanitarian aid from arch-enemies Iraq, Iran and Syria into the Palestinian Territories.

In conclusion, we in this country, with a less than virtuous legacy during the height of Empire, should refrain from inflammatory rhetoric and show compassion for both of these beleaguered peoples.

Yours faithfully,





Mr Robert Fisk
c/o The Independent Newspaper.
191 Marsh Wall,
London E14 9RS
17th April 2001
Dear Mr Fisk,

For years I have never ceased to be fascinated by your relentless vitriol against Israel.

During the past decade I have been active with interfaith organisations such as the London Society of Jews and Christians and the Three Faiths Forum and in light of this I would be happy for you to correct me were it otherwise, but I do suspect you are not a man of much faith or religious belief.

To wit, I contend that Britain?s disproportionate media pummelling of Israel is in direct correlation to our declining church attendance and our yobbo-secular ?let?s-mug-the- vicar culture.

I am actually beginning to find your effusive, obsessive reams of newsprint about what you perceive as the heroic, blameless, almost divinely-inspired Palestinians deeply disturbing.

May I indulge your time with a few home truths about the Jews, and about the sorry heritage of Anglo-Saxon /Christian misdeeds against this studious, industrious people?

Jews, particularly since the Nazi Holocaust, are raised in a very different way from the average WASP. From the earliest time, a Jewish child, in addition to commemorating the Passover Seder, Yom Kippur, Shavuot and Simchat Torah, not to mention the ancient fasts of Tisha B?AV and Gedalia, is bombarded from about age five with a litany of atrocities committed by the Nazis.

What manner of man, in our own lifetimes, Mr Fisk (I am assuming you are 50-ish like me) ties together the legs of Jewish women whilst they are giving birth so they bleed to death in abject agony? What manner of man slices people in half without anaesthetic to see how much pain a human can endure? What manner of doctor experiments on children and twins in bestial ?medical research? that equals torture? What manner of man castrates Jewish men without anaesthetic ?

This is just a tiny list of things Jewish children learn about the Holocaust from age five or so. What do they do in response to this catalogue of atrocities committed against their people? In the United States, they become the Dr Jonas Salks, Leonard Bernsteins, Stephen Sondheims, Barbara Streisands and Steven Speilbergs of this world. In the United Kingdom they become the Alan Platers, Harold Pinters and Tom Stoppards of this world. They do not throw stones at their Christian neighbours, or hijack aeroplanes full of Germans.

Do you know anything about Jews? Have you ever sat down to a Shabbat meal? Have you ever shared a Passover Seder meal? When I was young I attended scores of interfaith Seder meals. Have you ever wondered why Jewish people never get involved in hooliganism or drunkenness or violent street crime? They are a model for the rest of humanity where non-violence and the highest levels of academic attainment are concerned.

You may not be aware that one of the biggest events in the Israeli calendar year is the National Book Fair. Not something you would ever report in your poisonous columns! This week you have actually suggested you have sympathy for suicide bombers. When is Palestine, or for that matter, the whole of the Arab world going to produce an Einstein, an Oppenheimer, a Freud or a Marc Chagall instead of hijackers, terrorists and war criminals like Gaddafi and Saddam?

I would like to see you writing the sort of hysterical diatribes you have engaged in (especially during this past week) about the Taleban destroying the magnificent Buddhas. Where is your condemnation of this barbaric, despicable behaviour ? Do you not see this as a metaphor for the relentless campaign by Islam to dominate and destroy all of the world?s religions?

In 1996 I went with a Christian group to Israel and the tour was enthralled by the magnificent work of the Israeli Antiquities Authority and of its brilliant scholars and archaeologists in restoring and preserving Christian areas of importance that had gone into disrepair and even near-ruin during Arab rule.

What the legion of Israel-bashing British writers and broadcasters does not seem to understand is that there is nothing wrong with praising and supporting a brave, small people who are trying to maintain their noble, immensely civilised way of life inside a tiny strip of land ? a peaceful, educated and immensely cultured people who have been under perpetual siege from destructive, retrograde neighbours since the founding of their little State in 1948.

Have you ever taken a woman friend for a stroll in Tel Aviv late at night? Israel must be the only country in the world where bustling crowds of little children gather in the centre of a metropolis ? with no fear of peadophiles ? to compare their homework notes and to write poetry. The only danger they might be in is from a Hamas suicide bomber. If he were doing homework instead, HE might grow up to be another J Robert Oppenheimer.

Mr Fisk, I do not often do this but I have been so incensed by your journalism that my conscience would not be clear were I not to write to you.

Yours sincerely,




Letters,
The Evening Standard
London W8 24th July 2001

Sir,

Edward Fox in his waspish review of Anton LaGuardia?s book, ?Holy Land, Unholy War? (?An incurable hatred, ? 23 July edition), uses the opportunity for column space in The Evening Standard to launch a personal attack on Israel and, more specifically, on Tel Aviv.

He refers to ?the sheer ghastliness? of Tel Aviv. Has he visited the same vibrant city I have? Has he been to the Cameri Theatre, the Mann Auditorium (home of the Israel Philharmonic) or the magnificent opera house complex? He attacks Israeli coffee. When did Mr Fox last visit Israel? One of my greatest joys is going from hotel check-in to one of the plethora of cafes in Dizengoff Street to try the latest coffee, with milk fresh from a dairy kibbutz, not to mention the glorious fruit drinks still warm from that morning?s pickings.

Mr Fox insults Israel further by suggesting that the ?mud? one drinks in Israel ?tells us more than reams of political analysis what the place is really like.? Do visitors to Britain rave about our native culinary specialities as they struggle with Railtrack, closed country footpaths and London Buses?

Perhaps Mr Fox has not heard of the Torah, or of the New Testament, but his complaint about public fascination with events in the Holy Land beggars belief. The reason why humanity cares about the region is because it resonates, as does no other place on earth, for the descendants of the founders of the three ancient monotheistic religions.

Finally, Mr Fox whines about the ?obsessive type? of reader who is interested in the conflict in the Middle East, whom he sees abiding in the ?narrow domain of zealots and sado-masochists.? Had Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann and Hitler, those eminent sado-masochists, not been ?obsessive? about tormenting their Jews, Israel would not have been created and Mr Fox would not have had anything about which to earn money whining.

Yours faithfully,


Letters to the Editor,
The Independent.
By e-mail


27th August 2001

Sir,

Without wishing to devalue the suffering Phil Reeves describes, (?World Stays Silent as Israel flattens Palestinian Bases? 27 August), is it acceptable journalistic practice for a reporter to inject such bias into a piece of ?straight reporting?? Phil Reeves is not a political analyst nor is he a guest columnist invited to present an opinion. Would this country have considered it acceptable for a foreign journalist to demand ?why the world was not condemning? Britain?s fight against terrorism during the height of IRA activity on the mainland in the 1970s and 1980s?

Mr Reeves suggests that President Bush is fearful of criticising Israel because he might ?lose votes.? The old-fashioned, anti-Semitic myth of the ?Jewish lobby? is not something one would expect from as eminent a broadsheet as The Independent. Jews are still known to be politely refused membership in country clubs across the USA. The richest and most powerful moguls in the world, Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner and Bill Gates are not Jews. Jews are not a significant electoral influence: had they been so, Joe Lieberman?s presence on the 2000 Democratic ticket would have brought a landslide.

In pondering why the ?world stays silent? against Israel, it would be of equal significance to readers if Mr Reeves could investigate why the Arab League, which financially assists the Palestinians, stays silent about the squalor amongst Chairman Arafat?s people as he jets around the globe.

Finally, Mr Reeves refers to the ?Law of Return,? established after the obscenity of the Nazi Holocaust, as ?so-called,? and irritably denigrates this most treasured of post-Shoah Jewish aspirations, as merely ?requiring that new immigrants need have only one Jewish grandparent.? May I remind Mr Reeves that the Nazis made this the ?minimum requirement? to be exterminated?

Yours faithfully,






Alexei Sayle,
The Independent,
Independent House,
191 Marsh Wall,
London E14 9RS 7th September 2001

Dear Mr Sayle,

I wish to express to you my astonishment at your article about alleged Israeli association with apartheid in South Africa.

Do you know absolutely nothing about Jewish history?

May I point out to you that the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa was the almost exclusive domain of the Jewish community there? Amongst the lone voices battling ? and being jailed and killed --- for an end to apartheid were Helen Suzman, Joe Slovo, Albie Sachs, (maimed) , Ruth First (murdered), Lonnie Kasrils (jailed), Baruch Hirson (jailed), Ike Horvitch, Arthur Goldreich, Harold Wolpe, Jimmy Kantor, May Katzen ? the list goes on and on.

What would possess you to enrich the already inflamed appetites of anti-Semites in this country by zeroing in on some minutiae about Israeli rifles?

Lest you forget, Mr Sayle, that our beloved Britain was the location for the very first ?Blood Libel? against the Jews in Norwich in 1144; this was followed by massacres and forced conversions, culminating in the brutal York Massacre and Expulsion of the Jews in 1290. Jews were barred from these shores until the time of Cromwell (did I hear someone in Durban mention ?ethnic cleansing??) and in the meantime Europe tortured, demonised and massacred hundreds of thousands of Jews, climaxing with the Shoah.

I was set upon the other day in my local shop and for the first time in my life I understood what my forebears endured in the European pogroms. I asked the shop assistant why she was screaming anti-Semitic accusations against me, and she said, ?I read The Independent, so I know what you lot are up to.?

Shame on you, Mr Sayle, for feeding this frightening siege of anti-Jewish feeling.

Yours sincerely,




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