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Zionist agents are known for low cunning. Asghar Bukhari, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, gained brief media notoriety last month when he claimed that Zionists had sneaked into his home in an effort to intimidate him. The miscreants had stolen one of his shoes : yes, one of his shoes, not a pair of them, and nothing else, to let him know they'd been there.
Bukhari's claims were met with universal derision. Israel's ambassador to South Africa, Arthur Lenk, enterprisingly tweeted: "We have your shoe, @AsgharBukhari. Call me." For all I know, Bukhari may have done just that. He will, after all, believe anything. I've encountered Bukhari once, years ago, in a debate on Sky News. Bukhari shouted for around 10 minutes that I should "take a jump" before concluding (which I thought was quite funny) that we should "talk about this like adults".
He was shortly afterwards exposed as a donor to the cause of David Irving during the latter's ill-fated attempt to use libel laws to shut up Professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books.
My point is not to mock someone who is plainly not very bright but to note the surprising fact that he was ever in public debate at all.
Bukhari's organisation is an obscure lobby group. He's no more a representative spokesperson for British Muslims than I am. Yet he'd been treated by a major news channel as a serious participant in discussions about foreign policy and terrorism.
Don't pretend that all opponents are what they claim to be
My own approach to public debate is that I'll go a long way into the barrel to pursue a fight but try and stop short of the absolute bottom. I won't debate with racists and genocide deniers, and I won't appear on propaganda outlets for repressive regimes like Press TV (Iran) and Russia Today. Otherwise, I'll engage with just about anyone. A prerequisite for anyone who takes that policy is to be willing to describe your opponents accurately if the moderator or interviewer won't do it. Here are more examples from my experience.
Though I decline any invitation to appear on the Putin propaganda channel Russia Today, I once debated on BBC World with its London correspondent Laura Emmett. I pointed out that her channel was not a normal news broadcaster like the BBC or CNN but a conduit for conspiracy theorists. Its pundits includes neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, Bilderberg conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs.
In any debate on the BBC with a representative of the Stop the War Coalition, I point out that the organisation is not anti-war at all but anti-American, anti-British and - scarcely coincidentally - antisemitic. It is a front organisation for the Socialist Workers Party, which backs Hamas and Hizbollah, and which, in the Iraq War urged defeat for British and American forces.
When the identity of the Isis killer dubbed "Jihadi John" was revealed by news organisations , an organisation called Cage made the deranged and pitiful complaint that he got that way through being persecuted by Britain's security forces. Amnesty International has campaigned alongside Cage. It is important to expose the fiction that Cage is some sort of civil liberties group: it's an organisation of Islamists and Leninists, doctrinally opposed to pluralism, religious liberty and women's rights. Full marks to Amnesty's former employee Gita Sahgal, whose case I took up when she was sacked for her courageous opposition to its alliance with Cage.
Let's engage in debate. But that doesn't mean every opponent is worthy or is what they claim to be.
Oliver Kamm is a leader writer for 'The Times'
