Opinion
'Corbyn would have to resign if he made 'English irony' comment about other minority group'
Richard Millett looks at how universities, charities, churches and professional bodies are spreading Israel lies
September 27, 2018 14:26
3 min read
Richard Millett looks at how universities, charities, churches and professional bodies are spreading Israel lies
September 27, 2018 14:26In January 2013 I attended an event in Parliament where Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian representative to the UK, was due to speak. Soon after that event Jeremy Corbyn said, in recently revealed footage, that I and the other Zionists with me “clearly have two problems”. We don’t want to study history and we don’t understand English irony.
I had “dutifully recorded” Hassassian’s speech in which he stated: “I’m reaching the conclusion that the Jews are the children of God, the only children of God and the Promised Land is being paid for by God.”
Worried at the negative impact on our community of the lies spread about Israel and the accompanying antisemitic rhetoric, including Holocaust minimisation, I have been blogging about these events since 2010.
One of my first was on Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2010 when Corbyn hosted Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer in Parliament. Meyer said “Zionists picked and chose the best ones to escape to Palestine. Zionists had no sympathy for Holocaust victims; they referred to them as pieces of ‘unusable material’.”
Two months later I recorded Martin Linton, then a Labour MP, telling an audience in Parliament: “There are long tentacles of Israel in this country who are funding election campaigns and putting money into the British political system for their own ends.”
Linton eventually apologised stating he was “not aware of the antisemitic precedents of the image of the Jewish octopus.” Labour lost the election that year and the Conservatives were now governing with the Liberal Democrats so I focussed on Baroness Jenny Tonge. At an event chaired by Corbyn in Parliament in January 2012, Tonge asked: “How can the Israelis treat the Palestinians the way they do after what happened in the Holocaust?”
A month later, Tonge went to Middlesex University in Hendon where I filmed her saying “Israel won’t be here forever”. Nick Clegg asked her to apologise or resign from the Liberal Democrats. She resigned.
Also in January 2012 I attended an evening of poetry at Conway Hall in Holborn. Corbyn also attended. One of the poems recited contained the following lines about a boat called The Audacity of Hope: “It is not now the Nazi state but Israel that blocks the seas. It is not Auschwitz that stops the ship that carries hope and messages, but those that might have died there. So let this poem drive the Hope that heads for Gaza. The victims are now the torturers”.
My recording of events has led to physical intimidation. In May 2012 I went to film journalist Abdel Bari Atwan at the School of Oriental and African Studies, my alma mater. Bari had reportedly previously said that if Iranian missiles hit Israel he would dance in Trafalgar Square. Before long I was forced to stop filming and manhandled out of the lecture theatre.
At an event at Amnesty International in 2011, I questioned an improbable photograph of a Palestinian boy called Qasem who had supposedly had a Star of David cut into his forearm by an Israeli soldier using broken glass. I was told I was a “war crimes denier” and threatened by a member of staff. Amnesty has now banned me for “disrupting”. I don’t disrupt, I just ask questions people don’t want to answer.
Similarly, at a Palestine Return Centre event in Parliament last year I was escorted out by armed police at the request of Labour MP Mark Hendrick. All I did was ask Law Professor Penny Green, who had just compared Israel’s security barrier to the Berlin Wall, whether she felt any sympathy for Israelis left bereaved by suicide bombers before the barrier was built.
Over these years I’ve tried to highlight how universities, charities, churches, professional bodies and Parliament are being utilised to give the lies spread about Israel the veneer of respectability.
I’m eternally grateful to UK Lawyers for Israel who have defended me against false harassment allegations made to the police for merely filming hardened anti-Israel protesters.
I’m convinced Corbyn knew I was Jewish when he made his “English irony” comment. It’s still inexcusable if he didn’t know, as it could only apply to someone he doesn’t believe to be properly English. Had Corbyn been caught on film saying the same about a member of any other minority group he surely would have had to resign.
