Phyllis Chesler Interviews Carol Gould

carol gould

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An Idea for Anglo-Jewry and Anglo-Muslims
Last uploaded : Tuesday 3rd Jan 2006 at 20:22
Contributed by : The Editor

 

Revised on 6 January 2006
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Author's note:
I had to chuckle when I read on MPAC that 'Carol Gould had to move here' (to England) because she 'could not have a career.'
Her many distinguished programmes on 1980s and 90s ITV spanning more than a decade, seen in over 100 countries around the world, speak for themselves, not to mention her thirty years of a life of dignity and enduring friendships in her beloved adopted country, Great Britain.
Again, an example of angry young people spewing hatred about those of whom they know zilch.
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We have been trying to work out how to allay the fury that seems to dominate the MPACUK (Muslim Public Affairs Council UK) website.

To my disbelief and chagrin, instead of dealing with the quite scary aggression I witnessed at the ?Global Peace and Unity Conference? in December in London, MPAC has embarked on a campaign of vilification of ?Zionists? and even suggests the events I watched that day never happened. (Please see my first-hand report in the editorial column beneath this article)

On the British Muslim public affairs site, the home page boasts a moderated discussion board in which one writer says ?we must be rid of them [evil Zionists] once and for all!? When I complained to the site moderator I received this astonishing reply:

we are honoured to know tht someone of your Islamophobic
calibre is reading our site, but please read a bit carefully and note
the disclaimer at the bottom of the front page. Please also note the
commentator said 'Zionists' and you are the one inferrring a general
threat. Please go and see Little Green Footballs and similar sites to
read actual really serious threats to violence but you may not care as
they are against Muslims.

Kind regards,
MPACUK..

What is even more astounding is that MPAC is setting about denying the events at the rally actually took place. I was an eyewitness. The terrifying demagogue George Galloway ascended the podium and exhorted the crowd to stand up for the redemption of the oppressed Muslim world or else the nation had better get ready for ?rioting in every street in Britain.?. According to the MPAC website, Galloway never said this. I was there. I heard it. It was filmed. Here are a few excerpts form my on-the-spot report:

?The ?slaughter in Palestine and Iraq? being only part of the equation, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kashmir were also mentioned all afternoon by virtually every speaker at the rally including a crazed, chador-clad Yvonne Ridley, who at any moment I expected to self-immolate, such was her fury at the Zionists, the Americans and her fellow Britons. To my utter disbelief, she condemned the British police force, one of the aforementioned event sponsors, as some form of fascist brigade in ?jackboot Britain.?

?Legendary cricketer Imran Khan?s arrival from Pakistan to give a speech to the rally would be the equivalent of a sporting megastar doing similar in an American arena. The crowd of some 20,000 adoring, mostly young British Muslims went mad with joy when he ascended the stage and took to the dais. What followed was a stream of invective about his own leader, Parvez Musharraf, Egypt?s leader Hosni Mubarak, and of course the ?axis of evil? Bush, Blair and allies

?Khan actually said we should feel the degradation of modern Muslims in the context of Hitler and the Germans after Versailles. He used this example to accentuate the reason for ?Muslim rage? -- there was poor Germany belittled and humiliated, like the Muslim world today. He recounted being confronted by a fellow Pakistani after 9/11 who asked, ?Do you not feel ashamed?? and he told the adoring crowd he did not see what there was to be ashamed of, and anyway, 9/11 was an excuse for the criminal Washington neocons to start a New Crusade against Islam.

?To illustrate the level of extremism to which this event had degenerated, one of the organisers actually took the mike and said the event team wished to distance themselves from Khan?s 9/11 views.

?An elderly sheikh in Pakistan, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, was beamed in live to tell this excited crowd that he could hardly bring himself to articulate the word ?Israel? as this is not a country that even exists. (How would British Muslims like it if a rabbi got up and said partition had produced a country called Pakistan, a word he could barely utter because it is not a real country?)

?The sheikh's English was barely comprehensible but he appeared to imply that Jews from ?eighty nations? were brought to Palestine to drive the Arabs away and to commit murder, torture, imprisonment and theft of land and homes over fifty-odd years??

If I ran a Jewish or Christian public affairs organisation, and a Kahanist or extreme white supremacist rally had taken place -- filmed by a cable channel! -- I would make every effort to make peace with those who were offended. Instead, the MPAC (public affairs?? ..more like public confrontation..) organisation has chosen to have on its masthead accusations of Zionist plots against Muslims in Britain, simply because the Community Security Trust has complained to the police about their sponsorship of the aforementioned ?peace and unity? rally.

The anger on the website reflects the utter ignorance of Jewish culture and history amongst British Muslims and others who write in to such discussion fora. Were every young Jew to be in a permanent state of violence and fury about their families being displaced across Europe and the Middle East since 1938, there would not be a lot of non-Jews alive.

Anglo-Jewry is one of the most dignified, decorous and eloquent of all Diaspora communities. The United States does not have a Chief Rabbi, but Britain is blessed to have had a series of great religious leaders amongst whom were the late Immanuel Jacobovits, Hugo Gryn, Albert Friedlander, John Rayner and the still very-much-flourishing Jonathan Sacks, Louis Jacobs and David Goldberg. The attacks on Anglo Jewry in web blogs like those on the MPAC site are, frankly, shocking and sickening.

Here is an idea: Whether or not the angry young men and women spending time writing in to the site denouncing evil Zionists might like to enjoy an evening or afternoon out with a group of Jews would be an interesting exercise. After all, the Jewish Diaspora produces scores of Nobel Prize winners, Broadway lyricists, movie moguls, novelists, scientists, entertainers and more, so perhaps a coming together of the British branch of the two Abrahamic faiths could produce some interesting creative cross-fertilisation for the future. This is what 'public affairs' is meant to achieve, not a threat against the lives of every Jew in Britian.

'Public affairs' is not a total absence of remorse from the community that did, notwithstanding the PC crowd's insistence that 'angry, disaffected British Muslims' perpetrated the London artocities, spawn from its midst the bombers of July 7th. It will spawn future killers. Just look at the MPACUK site. This is Britain, not Yemen. It is scary. Watch this space.

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