Boycotts, Divestments, Sanctions ... and Jew hatred

Last night, I experienced a little of what it is like to be a Jew in the UK. In central London, in front of several police, some people loudly accused me of being a Nazi and a War Criminal. One particularly articulate lady wished I would rot in hell. When I smiled and wished her God’s blessing, she became incandescent with rage. She had no desire to be blessed by my God, she yelled; she had a god of her own. The insults were, of course, liberally spiced with the ‘F’ word.

These were not the worst counter-compliments I have ever received, I must confess, but they left a particularly bad taste in my mouth because the people concerned spat their venom at me because I was standing with Jews and, for that reason, they thought I was a Jew.

I was in London yesterday for a meeting with leaders of Jewish missions and also for a prayer meeting for the salvation of the Jewish people at Westminster Central Hall. I received an email early in the morning informing me that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was holding a demonstration outside Downing Street to call for the arrest of Tzipi Livni, the Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset. The Zionist Federation was holding a counter-demo to express support for Israel.

A number of the people who attended the prayer meeting accompanied me to Downing Street and, for the first twenty minutes or so, apart from the organisers, a counter-demonstration consisted entirely of Christians.

Livni was in the UK to discuss Israeli-British relations and building support for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. Two months ago such a visit would have been impossible. The universal jurisdiction law had prevented many high-ranking Israelis travelling to the UK because under that legislation they would have been arrested on charges of war crimes. An amendment to the law last month prevented pro-Palestinian organisations from applying for a warrant for Livni's arrest.

Despite the amended law, pro-Palestinian lawyers had issued a request to the Crown Prosecution Service to have Livni arrested when she arrived in London. The Foreign Secretary William Hague, intervened by issuing a certificate which designated Livni's visit a 'special mission.'

So there I was, just standing with an Israeli flag in my hand, when a lady I had never seen before informed me in no uncertain words that I was a Nazi.

What became clear over the next couple of hours was that the pro-Palestinians were not there to support the Palestinians so much as to denounce Israel. Their hatred was palpable.

As the Palestine Solidarity Campaign logo (pictured) eloquently demonstrates, the organisation does not wish to see a two-state solution to the present crisis in the Middle East (an issue that was being addressed by Livni and Hague).

The logo features what is currently Israel, Gaza and the Palestinian Authority as a single area. The PSC wants a single-state solution; a Jew-free Palestine. Nowhere on its website or on its printed publicity can I find any mention of ‘peace’. The PSC is committed to boycotts, divestment and sanctions. This is a call for destruction, not peace.

But of course the boycotts, divestments and sanctions are all selective. All the boycotters had mobile phones (available only because of technology developed in Israel) and you can bet your bottom shekel they all have laptops and/or PCs with ‘Intel Inside’ (perhaps that should be ‘Israel Inside’). And should these Israel haters become sick, it’s for certain they won’t boycott the numerous medicines available through breakthroughs in Israel. But then, anti-Semites were never all that hot on consistency.

Israelis View Foreign Media as ‘Anti-Semitic’

According to Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu on the Arutz Sheva website:

Nearly three-quarters of Israelis view the foreign media as being negative towards Israel, according to a recent poll revealed by Professor Avraham Tzion of Ariel University Centre, located in Samaria. Speaking at the annual conference on media and communications held there, he said the survey also showed that 88 percent of the respondents cited anti-Semitism as the main reason for Israel's negative image.

The Palestinian Authority’s information campaign and poor public relations by the Israeli government were close behind as reasons for the bad image.

The poll of 500 Jews from all sectors of society also revealed that about two-thirds view foreign reports in Judea and Samaria as being unfair and unreasonable.

Left-wing groups, such as Peace Now and B’Tselem, were viewed as contributing to Israel’s negative image by 64 percent of the respondents, while residents of Judea and Samaria (“settlers”) and nationalists, known as the “right wing,” were blamed by 58 percent.

U.S. President Barack Obama ranked relatively low as being a cause of the negative impression, with half of the respondents blaming him.

A breakdown of the statistics disclosed that anti-Semitism was cited more often as the main reason for Israel's image problem among female respondents and people under the age of 35. Respondents who defined themselves as on the right side of the political spectrum were inclined to point the finger left-wing groups and President Obama, besides anti-Semitism.

Those on the left end of the spectrum blamed the government’s information campaign and “settlers” as the main negative influences.

One surprising result of the poll was that 18 percent of Israelis are not aware of the legal standing of Judea and Samaria.

The Rev Slams His Critics

Rev Dr Simon Perry responded to those who criticised his church’s decision to go ahead on 1 December with a Carol Service in aid of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. You can read the full text of his response to the too-many-to-answer-personally critics here

This week has been extremely busy so there have been no musings for a few days. Still, I could not let Simon Perry’s response go unanswered. So, here is my letter to him.

Dear Simon,

Like you, I receive many e-mails and due to this week being extremely busy, this is the first opportunity I have had to address the post on your blog relating to last week’s PSC Carol concert. I hope my e-mail was one of the “polite” ones so, in the same spirit, I would like to respond to the “distinctions” you draw, all of which appear to me superficial and inadequate. I will [set your “distinctions” in bold] and respond to them. You state:

According to the Israeli Government, the fatalities on either side were as follows: 1166 Palestinians.13 Israelis (including 3 civilians, and 4 victims of ‘friendly fire’.)

This is a disparity of roughly 100:1. If, from a humanitarian perspective, we invest our solidarity with the victims of such violence in an even-handed way, then Palestinians deserve roughly 100 times as much support as Israel.

If my figures or calculations are incorrect, or if this is not a fair reflection of recent conflicts, I would be grateful to hear more from you. Otherwise, I ask you that you respect our right to show support for the victims of violence, which we try to do, regardless of their nation, race or religion, regardless of the root cause of that violence.

I find this over-simplistic canon of determining right and wrong bizarre, especially coming from a Christian minister. Does it not matter that a systematic assault on Israel had been taking place for the three years after Israel ethnically cleansed Gaza of Jews until Israel lost patience and decided to take out Hamas? Before the events of last December and January, 8,000 rockets had been launched from Gaza on the towns of southern Israel. Did Bloomsbury Baptist Church show support for the victims of violence in the southern Israel municipality of Sderot, which was at that time the most bombed town in the world?

To charge the protestors with denying BCBC’s “right to show support for the victims of violence … regardless of the root cause of that violence” suggests your critics have no concern for human suffering. Your “humanitarian concern” was not what generated the demonstration. Jewish people and many Christians were concerned that BCBC hosted an event that hijacked what many people see as the holiest event in the Christian calendar for the purpose of demonising the Jewish state and calling for a boycott of Israeli goods.

The assault on Gaza in 2008 came after three years of extreme provocation. After Israel ethnically cleansed Gaza of its Jewish residents, Hamas rewarded Israel for that costly withdrawal by waging a murderous three-year campaign of firing missiles at the towns of southern cities of Israel, notably Sderot. The fact that after 8,000 missiles landed on Sderot there was so little loss of life was due to the grace of God and the fact that all homes in Sderot have bomb-proof shelters.

The citizens of Sderot received 15-second warnings of rockets falling on their homes, schools and synagogues (and that was only because they could hear the missiles approaching). Civilians in Gaza received warnings from Israel by SMS messaging and leaflet drops two hours before Israeli struck at areas being used to launch rockets. The reason so many civilian men, women and children in Gaza died was because Hamas used so many as human shields. Col Richard Kemp who was Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan has stated that in the history of warfare there has never been a time when an army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the Israel Defence Force did in Gaza.

While you and PSC charge Israel with war crimes, the head of NATO has been studying the tactics and methods of the IDF in order to gain a better understanding of how to deal with the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

The overwhelming majority of those making accusations fail to make at least one of the following very basic distinctions.

1. The distinction between opposing some actions of the state of Israel, and being anti-Semitic.

I think it is more a matter that you fail to distinguish between opposing the state of Israel when it is blameworthy and supporting a group that raises funds for Hamas, a terrorist organisation which in 2007 murdered 31 year-old Rami Ayyad, the manager of the Gaza Bible Bookshop, and is religiously cleansing Gaza of Christians.
The clearly anti-Semitic Hamas Charter states:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours.

After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

Even more ominously, the Charter states:

Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign supports Hamas and I can’t believe you were unaware of the links between PSC and Hamas because I understand many people emailed you about the links. But, then, according to you blog, you don’t read all your e-mails.

2. The distinction between supporting the people of Palestine and being active endorsers of all that Hamas stands for.

In the light of the above quote from the Hamas Charter, how can you endorse anything Hamas stands for?

3. The distinction between supporting Palestinian victims and opposing Israeli victims.

You could support non-extremist groups.

4. The distinction between supporting people and being one-sided in our solidarity. (If we are even handed, then even by the State of Israel’s figures, one side deserve a hundred times as much support as the other).

I’ve already dealt with this above.

5. The distinction between a 2 year old girl surrounded by rubble, and a terrorist firing rockets.

Some Hamas operatives would have had no compunction about using that little girl as a human shield to prevent Israel neutralising their rocket installation. Why did Hamas deploy children as shields if they believed the Israelis had no concern for human life? With enemies like that, a Barbie doll would serve just as well.

6. The distinction between one rather racist outsider who apparently turned up to our carol concert, and the spirit of the community that hosted the concert.

A woman told one of the protesters it was a shame Hitler hadn’t killed him and them went into the concert to sing about goodwill toward men (presumably). How can you be so blasé about putting on an event that attracts even one anti-Semite! I would be ashamed to host a church event where such repellent characters would feel comfortable.