Monday 21 June 2010

Appeasement in our time?

Stephen Sizer posted a blog on 16 June in which he likened Tony Blair's success in persuading the Israeli Prime Minister to ease the blockade on Gaza to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" deal with Adolph Hitler.

On his web site in March, Rev Sizer, who is not known for his subtlety, featured some photos he had taken of Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem under the caption "Herod's soldiers operating in Bethlehem today".

Back then I emailed him to say:

I just saw your pics of "Herod's soldiers".
Your pictures are, as ever, technically good but in view of the caption and that the Israeli checkpoint you and Colin Chapman passed through reminded you of an "abattoir", are you suggesting that Binyamin Netanyahu is the new Herod and that the Israeli soldiers are murderers of Bethlehem's children?


Stephen replied:

Dear Mike,
I didn’t say that so please don’t put words in my mouth.
Blessings
stephen


I wrote back:

Thank you Stephen.
I didn't put words in your mouth. I asked a question.
The caption must mean something. So if it is not an allusion to Matthew 2:16-18, what does the caption mean?


I received no reply. Today I wrote to him about his latest blog:

I just read your read your “Peace in our time” blog.
It left me wondering: if Tony Blair is Neville Chamberlain, who is Benjamin Netanyahu?
When I wrote to you about “Herod’s soldiers operating in Bethlehem today” you were not prepared to say that Netanyahu was Herod or that his soldiers were killing Palestinian babies (even though the implication was crystal clear).
The implication of your latest blog is that “Tony ‘Neville’ Blair” is appeasing “Benjamin ‘Adolph’ Netanyahu”. Or is this “putting words in your mouth”?
I wonder if you will be blogging about Turkey’s air strikes last week that killed 120 Kurds, including a seven-year-old girl, in retaliation for an attack by Kurdish rebels on a Turkish naval base which killed twelve soldiers.
This incident was the latest flare-up of a 26-year conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people. For decades Turkey has oppressed its Kurdish minority by forbidding the use of the Kurdish language in state schools and government institutions. Layla Zana was expelled from the Turkish parliament in 1994 and imprisoned a year later for uttering from the parliamentary podium a single sentence in Kurdish .
I shall look forward to seeing you expose the hypocrisy of Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who in the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident accused the Jewish state of crimes against humanity and called for sanctions against Israel.
I see also that you cite Stephen Lendman with approval. I think I drew your attention to him last year so, knowing your aversion to Holocaust denial, I wonder why you were willing to quote at length a man who contributes to the surreally bizarre anti-Semitic website www.rense.com which, amongst other things, denies the Holocaust and defends as authentic The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.


I'll let you know what Stephen Sizer says.

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