More Fake Anti-Semitism Propaganda from the Jewish Goebbels

The Jewish Chronicle conducts an Opinion Poll to test the effectiveness of its propaganda against Jeremy Corbyn!

Every week I get an Editor’s Letter from the Jewish Chronicle and this week is no exception. Usually there is only one story affecting the British Jewish community and that is the ‘anti-Semitism’ of Jeremy Corbyn or the Labour Party.

This week was no different except for the fact that there was nothing to report. There were no long erased murals, no exchanges with Jonathan Hoffman, Richard Millett orother Jewish fascists who lacked a sense of British irony, no ancient book reviews, not even a Holocaust survivor who detected a similarity between Israel today and Nazi Germany yesterday.

But Stephen Pollard, the Jewish editor, is an enterprising fellow.  That’s why he was the founder of the Henry Jackson Society and a former editor of Richard Desmond’s Daily Express. Long forgotten is his eviscerating front page on Margaret Hodge who is now a friend in the fight against ‘anti-Semitism’. Those with long memories will remember that Desmond was Britain’s biggest pornographer with titles like Asian Babes.  But Desmond too was a Zionist as well as an EDL supporter.

Pollard as readers of my blog will know is only interested in ‘anti-Semitism’ of the Left, i.e. anti-Zionism.  He has nothing to say about anti-Semites on the Right as long as they are pro-Israel.  People like White Zionist Richard Spencer are of no concern to him. Indeed Pollard has a history of defending pro-Israel anti-Semites such as Poland’s Michal Kaminski .

Letter from the JC Editor

I digress however.  This week was a very lean news week.  No reports of Labour anti-Semitism could be detected.  Gnasher Jew was having a week off. No Black people to pillory or bully.

So Pollard decided to commission an opinion poll into Labour ‘Anti-Semitism’ to test how effective the non-stop propaganda of the past 3 years has been and surprise surprise they found that ‘80% of the public are aware of Labour’ anti-Semitism crisis’ and 59% don’t believe he will do anything about it this non-existent crisis.

However if this bogus and contrived poll had been objective then the second question, after asking people had they heard of Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism crisis’ would have been to ask them what exactly this crisis was about.  What was it that the press, not just the Jewish Chronicle had gone on about. What did this 'antisemitism' consist of?  Unfortunately Pollard's bogus You Gov poll asked none of these searching questions.  

Were Jews walking around in fear of their lives? Was violence against Jews as Jews increasing? Or was it that support for BDS and Palestinian rights were increasing?

I suspect that the number of people who could have described this ‘anti-Semitism’ would have been in single figures and most of those would have been mentioning Israel. Indeed I suspect that 95% of British Jews would have been mystified and muttered something about Israel.

So what the poll was asking was how many people had heard of and been taken in by the non-stop propaganda blitz about ‘Labour anti-Semitism’ the sole purpose of which is to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party

This is the kind of bigotry that Desmond excelled in

In other words it was a poll about how effective at propaganda are the British press, the Jewish Chronicle and the BBC.

And this is how the media operates.  It campaigns around a lie and then asks how many people have heard of this lie.  George Orwell once wrote a book about this kind of propaganda.  He called it 1984 and the process he was describing was doublethink, the ability to hold contradictory opinions in one’s head at the same time or fragmented consciousness in Marxist terms.  Because most people and communities who are the victims of racism also know that one of the fiercest campaigners against racism is Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Pollard is rather good at doublethink. What he’s not good at is straight forward honest journalism.  But then that is a problem that is not confined to the Jewish Chronicle. It affects most of the media from the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland to the Daily Mail and Telegraph.

Brighton Rocks Against Racist Settler Shop Sodastream

 Enid Blyton Eat Your Heart Out as Jewish Chronicle and Pollard Continues to Invent the News

Jewish Chronicle Refuses to Print Letters Criticising Its Lies and Deceptions

Traditionally the role of a newspaper was to inform its readership of events.  Some papers like The Times, but also the Jewish Chronicle, considered themselves papers of record.  When  historians would come to write up the period in question, they could faithfully cite the newspapers concerned as a historical record.  Serious newspapers therefore took great trouble to ensure that Comment and Reporting were separated off, although of course a paper’s political stance would inevitably colour the nature of its reporting.

More 'mob rule' JC 9.2.13.

So anyone wanting to know more about the Jewish community and the British Union of Fascists would ignore the Jewish Chronicle at their peril.  But when  historians come to write about  how and why the Apartheid State of Israel was dismantled and de-Zionised in favour of a non-racist unitary state, they will want to look at the history of the movement for BDS which brought about the end of a Jewish Racial State in Palestine.

This was going to be a picture of a perfectly empty shop and its bored shop assistants - but the window has caught the image from the opposite side of the road where the Zionists demonstrate.  Like Dracula they aren't captured in the mirror!

Unfortunately using the Jewish Chronicle today under Stephen Pollard, as a source of information about the anti-Apartheid movement against Zionism would be about as much value as citing  Hogwarts as an example of the English public school system.  In fact it would probably be less accurage!

PSC demonstrators chatting as the forlorn Zionists wave the Union Jack on the opposite side of the road - hoping to attract the odd EDL supporter

As readers of this blog will know, Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle learnt his trade at the feet of the most unscrupulous and malevolent of all newspaper proprietors, Richard Desmond, when he was Editor of the Daily Express.  Pollard still writes for Desmond and the Express, whose circulation is faithfully reflecting that of the Jewish Chronicle – all one way down!

So accompanied by an admittedly nice photo of protestors and school students demonstrating outside the settler shop Sodastream, were the usual lies and disinformation – except that this time the article was subtitled ‘Sketch’ – which in serious newspapers is a clue to the fact that what follows isn’t to be taken seriously (usually write-ups of parliamentary proceedings).

According to the Jewish Chronicle - this is 'mob rule' and a festival of 'hate slogans'!!

The article is titled ‘Brighton rocked by hate slogans’.  Apart from the feeble witticism [clue:  Graham Greene!].  No doubt if this had been a 1930’s picket of a shop selling German wares, the JC would have characterised anti-Nazi slogans as being full of ‘hate’.  We should have learnt to love Hitler just as we should now love Israel.

Mob Rule in Brighton (S Pollard, Jewish Chronicle fiction novellist of the year)

The article itself finds it difficult to get even the simplest of things right.  Apparently Sodastream is 50 yards from the clocktower – in fact it’s about 500 yards.  We learn that Brighton is home to a number of the number of protests including outside Sainsbury’s which stocks settler products from the West Bank.  It concentrates on the arrest of 2 people who had nothing to do with the protest, but who found the Zionist protest in support of ethnic cleansing so objectionable that they gave mock Hitler salutes.  Unfortunately the first person who did so, rather than taking legal advice, pleaded guilty.  In fact there is a long tradition of people giving mock  Sieg Heils and Hitler salutes at racist events.  When I was 16 I travelled down from Liverpool to London for the Twickenham demonstration against the Springbok tour.  Outside the ground thousands of anti-racist, anti-apartheid demonstrators were giving the South Africans and their supporters sieg heil chants.

The Jewish Chronicle, which has never once interviewed a protestor, does manage to interview the vacuous Fiona Sharpe of Sussex Friends of Israel.  Apparently she is taking part in the counter-demonstration because she doesn’t like being bullied.  A good example of the Zionists’ disingenuousness.  Perhaps she opposes bullying on principle?  If so   then why isn’t she out demonstrating against the bullying of Palestinians who are stopped for hours at checkpoints, have their land  confiscated, their crops burn and their children subject to random military attacks.  Or maybe the bullying of the oppressed doesn’t count.  After all, to racists they are less than human so nothing counts.

The Jewish Chronicle even manages to interview the traditional enemy, a Christian fundamentalist, Daniel Laurence.  Many of the counter-protestors are Christian anti-Semites who want the Jews to go to Palestine so that Armageddon can take place, the Rapture begin and millions of Jews perish in the fires designed for the anti-Christ.  Because historically the first Zionists weren’t Jewish but Protestant Restorationists like Palmerstone and Lord Shaftesbury.

Sad to say that this Saturday gone, the demonstration was even quieter.  The solitary policeman seemed bored out of his mind as did Sodastream’s security guard.  People on the street were just as receptive to our message and once again, if you want peace and quiet to practice your yoga or meditation then you should consider Brighton’s Sodastream shop (it calls itself Ecostream!) which has now been designated a customer-free zone.

I include a short video to demonstrate how peaceful everything is, unlike the loud and lying  headings of the Jewish Chronicle’s articles.  And once again Simon Cobbs was conspicuous by his absence.

Tony Greenstein

Sodastream Brighton Is Already Damaged Goods – No one Wants to Buy Stolen Goods
I tried a small experiment today.  I went back to Sodastream shop and took some pictures, about an hour after the last demonstrator had left.  Now according to Simon Cobbs, the EDL supporting Zionist who organises the counter-demonstration,  ‘Dr Lucas rejected claims that if the protests did not move from directly outside EcoStream, the store would close.’ http://www.thejc.com/node/100197

Of course to Cobb and the Zionists the fact that a demonstration is successful in persuading people not to shop somewhere is evidence that they are being intimidated and the protest should be banned.  Protests, after all, should only be allowed when they have no hope of persuading anyone of anything!

I was, therefore, curious to see what trade was like when we were not there.  Perhaps Cobb was right.  After all even a stopped clock, and Cobb is somewhat repetitious, is right twice a day.  I went expecting a few customers.  Surely curiosity if nothing more would lead to people going in to see what the fuss is about.  Maybe some people are nervous and shy and steer clear of demonstrations altogether.  The point is that I expected that the shop would be busier than during the demonstrations when the only custom seems to be from the demonstrators  opposite.

I was therefore staggered that during the time that I was outside and filming and observing not one person went into the shop.  Indeed, if you want peace and quiet in Brighton, probably the best place to go is not to the library, which seems a hive of activity these days but Sodastream!  You can be sure that other customers won’t interrupt you.  Perhaps Sodastream should think of putting big cushions on the floor, getting rid of the counters that no one buys from anyway and instead offer yoga and transcedental meditation.  Not only would the demonstrations stop but trade is likely to increase significantly!

The Jewish Chronicle however is playing an entirely different and thoroughly disingenuous game.  It is trying to change reality through the use of deliberately false and hyped reporting.  The editorial in this week’s Jewish Chronicle is entitled ‘Mob-rule by the sea’.  Of course the Jewish Chronicle hasn’t bothered to send a reporter still less interview one of the counter-demonstrators.  Today it is no longer, as it once was, a paper of record.  Truth is seen as an expedient.  In reality the screeching of the JC betrays the mentality Lord Haw-Haw – mix in a nugget of truth [there is a demonstration, it can’t be denied] together with a vat load of lies.

I also took the time out to video a representative sample of just how peaceful the demonstration is – people talking, asking questions, quietly waving their flags, running a stall and on the opposite side waving the Israeli flag and the Butcher’s Apron (union jack).  Despite provocations from Jonathan Hoffman’s uglier twin, taxi driver Harvey Garfield, who stuck his camera in peoples’ faces (the Zionists tried that trick at Ahava – fat lot of good it did them) and the Christian woman in blue who is so fascinated with Bondage, Submission & Domination (she thinks that that’s what BDS is about! she comes along every week in hope).

And to enliven proceedings this week a group of about 8 kids – about 12-14 in age – came along to demonstrate and shout in support of the Palestinians.

But the Jewish Chronicle is determined not to let truth get in the way of its political campaign to have the demonstration banned.  So the headline of its article on the protests this week was ‘Protests turn nasty outside Ecostream’ with a picture showing the 2 sets of demonstrators intermingling.  In fact, at the shop’s own request, the Israeli demonstrators went to the other side of the road as the shouting between the 2 sets of demonstrators was deterring shoppers.  Fat lot of good it’s done them as no one wants to be seen buying stolen goods anyway. 

But the real purpose behind the distorted and untrue coverage of the Jewish Chronicle is to provide a basis for an application to the High Court to issue an injunction against the demonstration on the grounds of fear, intimidation etc. etc.  The only problem is that the evidence is against them.  Despite accusations of having been spit on and been subject to anti-Semitic abuse, the opposite is true.  3 members of the PSC demonstration have been assaulted, including myself.  Simon Cobb grabbed one demonstrator from behind and gripped his neck.  Another woman had a megaphone pushed in her face and I was attacked by a mentally ill transvestite who goes by the name ‘Chelsea’.

The only anti-Semitic abuse that there has been has been by the same Simon Cobb who thought it funny to shout ‘Jews Out’.  Not that he’s the first or the last Zionist to do so.   Since the Palestinian demonstration usually has a number of Jewish people on it the idea that we would demonstrate against Zionist racism whilst indulging in anti-Semitism is wishful thinking.

What there has been is one conviction where a passer-by  (not an ‘anti-Israeli activist as the Jewish Chronicle has twice stated) was convicted of making a Nazi salute in the direction of the Zionist demonstration.  Apparently someone else was also arrested for this today.  It is to be hoped that s/he pleads not guilty because what was almost certainly intended was a form of satire, in other words irony.  People see Jewish demonstrators in favour of ethnic cleansing [the Christian fundamentalists on the Zionist demonstration call the Palestinians who are being evicted and having their land stolen ‘occupiers’ as the Jews were there 3,500 years ago!] and they give a Nazi salute as if to say, you of all people should remember the evils of racism.

Indeed I can remember the 3rd demonstration I attended in my life.  It was at Twickenham back in 1970 against the touring South African Springboks.  A crowd of thousands outside the ground chanted ‘sieg heil’ the Nazi chant at those attending.  Did it mean we were therefore Nazis?  Of course not, we were indulging in a form of political irony.  Those who demonstrate in favour of racism and ethnic cleansing cannot expect a free pass.

Jewish Chronicle Refuses to Print Letter Pointing  Out Its Lies & Deceptions

Below is a letter which I sent  last week to the JC pointing out that their coverage, culminating in the 'Mob rule by the sea' article, was a tissue of lies and falsehoods.  Unsurprisingly it was not printed.  The JC doesn't do debate anymore.

Dear Sir or Madam:

For the past five months, the Jewish Chronicle has covered the weekly protests outside Brighton’s Sodastream shop.  We do not expect the JC, a pro-Zionist newspaper, to cover the protests favourably.  However we do expect your reports to be truthful.

We reject the repeated allegations which have been made that the protests are anti-Semitic and in particular the suggestion that there are ‘unparalleled level of antisemitism’ in Brighton.  (14th January 2012, New friends in Sussex).

Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Brighton has been actively involved in opposing the fascist English Defence League, an organisation which combines support for Israel with holocaust denial. When the EDL marched in Brighton last April, PSC members were there to oppose them. We are unaware of any Zionist participation in anti-fascist work in Brighton. 

The JC’s tendentious coverage of the protests culminated in your leader ‘Mob-rule by the sea’ (7th February 2013).  As can be sees from a video of last Saturday’s protests,  http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/brighton-sodastream-shop-possibly.html the demonstration is completely peaceful.  Even the Police twitter account agreed that the protests have been peaceful.  (‘'Looking forward to peaceful protest and good communication (as usual)!').   This hardly sounds like mob-rule.

The JC's real agenda appears to be to provide justification in court for an attempt to seek an injunction by the provision of false reporting.

A newspaper which was interested in reporting the truth would, at least have made an effort to interview some of those involved in the anti-Sodastream protests.  Instead you have printed any allegation, however absurd.  Your repeated suggestion that our objection is to Jews rather than the dispossession, theft and expulsion of the Palestinians is contemptible.  We are not in the slightest concerned with the religious affiliation of who owns a shop. 

Your allegation is particularly reprehensible as it is suggesting that the considerable number of Jewish members of PSC are conniving in, if not actual participants in, acts of anti-Semitism.

You have twice referred to a member of the public who was arrested for giving a Nazi salute, as an ‘anti-Israel activist’.  (13.12.12., 24.1.13.)  Your assertions are untrue and unsubstantiated. The man in question is completely unknown to us.

Yours faithfully,


Tony Greenstein on behalf of
Brighton Palestine Campaign

Brighton Sodastream Shop – Possibly the Quietest Place on the Planet

 Jewish Chronicle Tries to Incite the Police into Banning the Demonstration

Jewish Chronicle's Hysterical Leader

The Jewish Chronicle's Wishful Thinking

In the Jewish Chronicle’s Orwellian World a Peaceful Demonstration is ‘Anti-Semitic Mob Rule’!

Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle learnt his trade at the feet of the most unscrupulous and malevolent of all newspaper proprietors, Richard Desmond, when he was Editor of the Daily Express gave Pollard his first journalistic break.  Pollard is an unabashed free marketer and holds the view that, in the "battle to save western civilisation", the "Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy".

Editor of the Jewish Chronicle - Pollard sees the Left as the main enemy and is a neo-con member of the Henry Jackson society

As Tim Walker of the Daily Telegraph of 15.10.11 noted ‘The tycoon, who once goose-stepped around a boardroom and accused all Germans of being Nazis during a meeting with executives of The Daily Telegraph, was criticised at the Leveson inquiry.’   Desmond owned ‘adult’ TV channels Television X, Red Hot TV and others and a host of porn magazines such as Asian Babes and Big Ones.  None of which stopped him funding New Labour under Blair!

Mob rule in Brighton (1)

 

 

Mob rule in Brighton (2)

Mob rule in Brighton (3)

Mob rule in Brighton (4)

Mob rule in Brighton (5)

Sodastream Brighton Is Already Damaged Goods – No one Wants to Buy Stolen Goods

I tried a small experiment today.  I went back to Sodastream shop and took some pictures, about an hour after the last demonstrator had left.  According to Simon Cobbs, the EDL supporting Zionist who organises the counter-demonstration,  ‘Dr Lucas rejected claims that if the protests did not move from directly outside EcoStream, the store would close.’

Not a shopper in sight

Of course to Cobb and the Zionists the fact that a demonstration is successful in persuading people not to shop somewhere is evidence that they are being intimidated and the protest should be banned.  Protests, after all, should only be allowed when they have no hope of persuading anyone of anything!

Simon Cobbs - the overweight Zionist who likes to assault people from behind - a thorough reactionary who when not shouting 'Jews Out' is complaining about people on benefits.  On the Zionists' EDL wing.

I was, therefore, curious to see what trade was like when we were not there.  Perhaps Cobb was right.  After all, even a stopped clock, and Cobb is somewhat repetitious, is right twice a day.  I went expecting to see a few customers.  Surely curiosity, if nothing more, would lead to people go in to see what the fuss is about.  Maybe some people are nervous and shy and steer clear of demonstrations altogether.  But that can't be true when we aren't even there.  I certainly expected that the shop would be busier than during the demonstrations, when the only custom seems to be from the demonstrators  opposite.

Richard Desmond - Britain's largest porn merchant - gave Pollard his big break

I was therefore staggered that during the time that I was outside, filming and observing, for at least 10 minutes, not one person went into the shop.  Indeed, if you want peace and quiet in Brighton, probably the best place to go is not the library, which is a hive of activity these days but Sodastream!  You can be sure that other readers/visitors won’t interrupt you.  Perhaps Sodastream should think of putting big cushions on the floor, getting rid of the counters that no one buys from anyway and instead offer courses on yoga and transcendental meditation.  Not only would the demonstrations stop but trade is likely to increase significantly!

Lights a flashing but nobody's a comin' or callin'

The Jewish Chronicle however is playing an entirely different and thoroughly disingenuous game.  It is trying to change reality through the use of deliberately false and hyped reporting.  The editorial in this week’s Jewish Chronicle is entitled ‘Mob-rule by the sea’.  Of course the JC hasn’t bothered to send a reporter, still less interview one of the counter-demonstrators.  Today it is no longer, as it once was, a paper of record.  Truth is an expedient.  The screeching of the JC betrays the mentality of Lord Haw-Haw – mix in a nugget of truth [there is a demonstration, it can’t be denied] together with a bucket load of lies.  It is no wonder that circulation has dropped from around 40,000 in 2,000 to around 25,000 today under Pollard's stewardship.

Harvey Garfield goes round photographing people - he dreams of being a secret spy!

I also took the time out to video a representative sample of just how peaceful the demonstration is – people talking, asking questions, quietly waving their flags, running a stall and on the opposite side waving the Israeli flag and butcher's apron.  Despite provocations from Jonathan Hoffman’s uglier twin, taxi driver Harvey Garfield, who stuck his camera in peoples’ faces (the Zionists tried that trick at Ahava – fat lot of good it did them) and the Christian woman in blue who is so fascinated with Bondage, Submission & Domination (she thinks that that’s what BDS is about! she comes along every week in hope), usually with a distorted picture of me to attract the punters.

And to enliven proceedings this week a group of about 8 kids – about 12-14 in age – came along to demonstrate and shout in support of the Palestinians.  This riled the Zionists even more as they accused us of  'brain washing'!!

I have removed the photograph of a group of children demonstrating in our support as the Zionists have begun trying to target them.  No one, however young is it seems safe from the prurient attentions, abuse and false allegations of Simon Cobbs and his freakish 'Christian' friend Jill Young, people who spend most their lives justifying ethnic cleansing and the theft of land.

Sprin

But the JC is determined not to let truth get in the way of its campaign to have the demonstration banned.  So the headline this week was ‘Protests turn nasty outside Ecostream’ with a picture showing 2 sets of demonstrators intermingling. In fact, at the shop’s request, the Israeli demonstrators went to the other side of the road as the shouting between the 2 sets of demonstrators was deterring shoppers.  Fat lot of good it’s done them as no one wants to be seen buying stolen goods anyway.  

Bedraggled Zionist Demonstration

But the real purpose behind the distorted and untrue coverage of the Jewish Chronicle is to provide a basis for an application to the High Court to issue an injunction against the demonstration, on the grounds of fear, intimidation etc. etc.  The only problem is that the evidence is against them.  Despite accusations of having been spit on and been subject to anti-Semitic abuse, the opposite is true.  3 members of the PSC demonstration have been assaulted, including myself.  Simon Cobb grabbed one demonstrator from behind and gripped his neck.  Another woman had a megaphone pushed in her face and I was attacked by a mentally ill transvestite who goes by the name ‘Chelsea’.

The only anti-Semitic abuse that there has been has been by the same Simon Cobb who thought it funny to shout ‘Jews Out’.  Not that he’s the first or the last Zionist to do so.   Since the Palestinian demonstration usually has a number of Jewish people on it the idea that we would demonstrate against Zionist racism whilst indulging in anti-Semitism is wishful thinking.  As for spitting, it is strange that there have been no reports of this or abuse.  'Twould seem that the Zionists are once again in the game of invention.  

Police Tweet - mentions we're peaceful as usual but nothing about 'mob rule'

 If you read Sussex Police's twitter feed than the Police Liason Officer says 'Looking forward to peaceful protest and good communication (as usual)!'  Hardly sounds like mob-rule.

The mad Christian Zionist woman in blue protests we are 'brainwashing' kids who turn up to support us!

What there has been is one conviction under the Public Order Act, where a passer-by  (not an ‘anti-Israeli activist as the Jewish Chronicle has twice stated) was convicted of making a Nazi salute in the direction of the Zionist demonstration.  Apparently someone else was also arrested for this today.  It is to be hoped that s/he pleads not guilty because what was almost certainly intended was a form of satire, in other words irony.  People see Jewish demonstrators in favour of ethnic cleansing [the Christian fundamentalists on the Zionist demonstration call the Palestinians who are being evicted and having their land stolen ‘occupiers’ - the Jews were there 3,500 years ago!] and people give a Nazi salute as if to say, you of all people should remember the evils of racism.

Bored security guard

Indeed I can remember the 3rd demonstration I attended in my life.  It was at Twickenham back in 1970 against the touring South African Springboks.  A crowd of thousands outside the ground chanted ‘sieg heil’ the Nazi chant at those attending.  Did it mean we were therefore Nazis?  Of course not.  We were indulging in a form of political irony.  Those who demonstrate in favour of racism and ethnic cleansing cannot expect a free pass.

Jewish Chronicle Web Site is Dangerous

Edited by an Idiot - But was it worth hacking?

Warning that the Jewish Chronicle site is dangerous for one's computer and mental health

I was sorry to hear that the Jewish Chronicle web site has apparently been hacked!  I say apparently, because the following message appeared ‘Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!’

Stephen Pollard - without doubt the worst ever editor of the Jewish Chronicle - presiding over a precipitous circulation decline

The thing is, it’s not the computer I’m worried about.  Visiting the JC's site is far likelier to damage your mind, especially now that its editor, Stephen Pollard, is in charge, having been fired by Britain’s largest porn operator, Richard Desmond, from editing that quality paper, the Daily Express.

On Question Time Pollard demonstrated the quality of his intellect, when he said of Rupert Murdoch that ‘he has done more to enrich our lives than any other single human being of the past generation and should be a hero for his commitment to freedom’.  Try telling that to the relatives of the Hillsborough dead, or the Miners battered in the Great Strike or any other workers involved in disputes, or the family of Milly Dowler.  It just shows the warped and distorted logic of the fool who edits the JC.

Rupert Murdoch - the Boss of a Criminal Empire who Stephen Pollard believes has made the greatest contribution towards freedom of any human being alive!

And when questioned by David Dimbleby about whether he really stood by this extraordinary statement, Pollard responded ‘absolutely, absolutely’. 

Attacking the Messenger - Tony Lerman’s Book Attacked by Zionist ‘academic’ Hochhauser

Jewish Chronicle ‘Review’ Says More About Zionist McCarthyism than Tony Lerman's Book

Tony Lerman - former member of Jewish establishment and author of new book

Daniel Hochhauser - hack Zionist academic for hire

UPDATE
My suspicions have been confirmed by sources within the JC.  The hack 'review' by the Hochhauser hired gun of Tony Lerman's book, was commissioned over the objections of the JC's Literary Editor, Gerald Jacobs, who is by all accounts spitting blood.  Pollard himself is held in almost universal contempt by staff - no mean achievement given that anti-Zionists aren't exactly welcome in JC circles!  Pollard, who used to employ his talents in the service of Britain's largest porn operator, Richard Desmond, has decided that the Zionist movement is more deserving of his dubious services.  Meanwhile the JC's circulation follows an inevitable trajectory - downwards.  The paper which at the turn of the century had a circulation of over 40,000 now has barely two-thirds of that figure.

Circulation                  Date

30,436                                1.1.09.-30.6.09.
31,556                                1.1.10.-30.6.10
28,330                                1.1.11.-30.6.11
 

There is a long tradition of compliant academics using their expertise in their own field in order to justify authoritarianism and dictatorship.  Perhaps the most infamous example was the former lover of Hanna Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Professor of Philosophy and later the Nazi appointed Rector of Freiburg University.  There are unfortunately only too many examples of anti-Semitic academics who have lent their support to dictatorships and authoritarian governments.  Prime amongst these have been doctors and I don’t’ merely talk of the infamous Mengele but those who have lent their expertise in the service of torture and abuse of human rights. 

It is clear, from his slavish support for Israel – right or wrong – that Daniel Hochhauser fits comfortably into the second category, that of doctors for human rights abuses, since he has said and done nothing about Israel, the state that he acts as a propaganda spokesman for. 

Martin Heidegger - Author of Being & Time - Rector of Freiburg University & Nazi Party member - put his academic reputation at the service of the State

As it happens I’ve just been asked to review Tony Lerman’s ‘The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist’ by Pluto Press.  I haven’t finished it yet, so it’s difficult to make an overall judgment, but from the two-thirds I’ve read so far, I can say this.

It is an extremely interesting account of the journey from youthful socialist Zionist idealist to someone disillusioned with how Zionism actually turned out.  His misgivings about socialist Zionism – whilst not articulated in terms of their class contradictions or their antagonism to the Arabs – nonetheless proved to be true.  His account of the role of the Kibbutzim in particular leaves a lot to be desired in terms of the context in which they operated, but I will leave that to my review!

I would probably have some disagreements with Tony on the question of a Jewish diasporic identity or even whether it is possible in today’s age.  Nonetheless I respect his position, which is that it should be a separate identity from that of Israel and meaningful in its own right.

But Tony is above all a free-thinker, willing to challenge Zionist nostrums such as that ‘anti-Semitism’ is a growing threat and bogey and is now manifest, in its ‘new’ variety in anti-Zionism.  That anti-Semitism is continuing to grow.  That Israel is the centre of Jewish identity (the Jerusalem Program of the Jewish Agency).  He is someone who I would be quite happy to debate with and share a pint with afterwards.  He was a speaker at the founding conference of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods.  As far as I’m aware he’s not a supporter of BDS but he is willing to enter into debate.

All of this is anathema to Zionist activists today.  The job of Jews in the Diaspora is nothing more than cheerleaders of the Israeli state.  Their sole purpose to glorify and whitewash Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, to connive in the rewriting of history.  Instead of it being accepted that there is a large Jewish community now in Israel which should have no particular primacy and which has an obligation to come to terms with the Palestinians, by accepting that it is the Palestinians, not Jews, who have a right of return, Jewish communities abroad have effectively become Israeli colonies.

Of course to the anti-Semites, people like the now-discredited Gilad Atzmon, it is the other way around.  Jews outside Israel control Israel and Israel is merely an instrument at their disposal (it is another way in which Atzmon mirror’s Hitler’s own argument in Mein Kampf that a Jewish state would be a state of swindlers at the beck and call of ‘international Jewry’ – although he became a supporter of sending Jews to Palestine and nowhere else from 1933-39).

Unsurprisingly Tony Lerman opposes the misuse and abuse of the term ‘anti-Semitism’ when applied to those who are not anti-Semitic.  Because, in his own words, it drains the term ‘anti-Semitism’ of all meaning.

It is a sign of how low the Jewish Chronicle has sunk under its present editor, Stephen Pollard, that instead of commissioning a considered and proper review, critical no doubt, he has employed one Daniel Hochhauser, a Professor Medical Oncology to do a ‘review’.  Now I confess to knowing nothing about medical ontology and clearly Hochhauser knows nothing about Zionism and anti-Semitism, apart from whatever fables he learnt at his granny’s knee.  I doubt he knows that Arabs in Israel have lost half their land since 1948 and are not allowed to build outside the remnants of what they owned, or that a deliberate decision was taken not to industrialise Arab villages (not one Arab city has been created in that time) or that half of Arab villages are ‘unrecognised’ or that Arabs receive lower welfare benefits than Jews. Maybe he does but isn’t letting on. 

Maybe he isn’t aware that the leader of the Yisrael Beteinu Party, Avigdor Lieberman, has now joined Likud, whilst still avowing the ‘death to the Arabs’ sentiment of his party members.  Or maybe he doesn’t care about that either or that Jerusalem Day is celebrated by thousands of settlers marching through Jerusalem chanting ‘death to the Arabs’ or about the genocidal content of the Torat HaMelech by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira which hundreds of rabbis have endorsed.

Instead of taking up the debate on Jewish identity and where Jews will be in the next half century, Hochhauser launches into a bitter personal attack.  He has nothing to say about the fact that a distinguished Jewish academic (not ‘career bureaucrat’ as described in the opening paragraph) an acknowledged expert in anti-Semitism, was hounded out of his job as Director the Institute of Jewish Policy Research by conservative Jewish capitalists like Stanley Kalms and before him by Thatcher’s guru, Sir Alfred Sherman from the IJA.  He has nothing to say about Zionist McCarthyism in Britain today. 

Unsurprisingly Lerman describes what happened through his own personal experiences.  Hochhauser finds this difficult to understand, indeed he finds the whole book distasteful, speaking of Lerman’s ‘pedestrian prose and turgid accounts of the many symposia, conferences and lectures in which he participated make the book a difficult read.’

Perhaps Hochhauser found the book difficult to read (or comprehend), in which case the learned doctor should have stuck to his, no doubt, light reading on medical oncology and handed the task to someone more capable and enlightened.  But that would have defeated the whole purpose of the ‘review’ – which was essentially a hatchet job.

Indeed the whole of the ‘review’ (I put it in quotes because it is really an attack on the messenger, there is little about the message) has a political purpose.  There is only a cursory mention of Jewish identity when this concept runs through the whole book.  It is reduced to one quote “What is peoplehood anyway? Just another con-trick on the part of the Jewish Agency and Zionist bodies”. Is this not a valid question?  Does Hochhauser have anything original to say?

Hochhauser seems to find the Jewish Quarterly episode, how he was forced out as editor of an unusual and innovative Jewish cultural periodical for having printed an article, with which he disagreed(!) by David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists Group a strange one to include.  But of course the deliberately ignorant and blind Hochhauser sees, speaks and hears no evil in McCarthyism of the Zionist variety.  Literally he is like the 3 monkeys but there is no wisdom in his observations, merely bile.

Hochauser describes Tony Lerman’s ‘intense bitterness’ at how he was treated.  In fact Tony describes what happened in extremely neutral terms.  What is surprising is the lack of bitterness.  Nonetheless it would not be surprising if he was bitter at his outrageous treatment.  And guess what ‘Lerman frankly admits that he used invitations to meetings as “opportunities… to influence the direction of Jewish organisational life”. If so, why should he not be held to account for views differing radically from those of the majority of the Jewish community? The plaintive tone of the book is unjustified.’

Hochhauser may be a medical expert but he is a fool otherwise.  A Zionist fool but a fool.  It is normally accepted that academics and others will use meetings, seminars and debates to advance their ideas.  They are not therefore ‘held to account’ for them.  They do not have to justify holding their positions.  That is why the good doctor Hochhauser is (probably) tenured – precisely in order that academics can indeed make contributions to the academic life of their institution without being held to account or faced with the loss of a job.  That Hochhauser is incapable of understanding this demonstrates that, as is often the case with senior academics, they know a lot about their subject matter and nothing about life outside their discipline. 

Hence why the Israeli Medical Association has never spoken out about, and acted upon, the complicity of doctors in the torture of Palestinians.   No doubt that too is a subject that is taboo for Hochhauser.

If the Jewish Chronicle had any regard for its own (previous) reputation, it would commission another review, this time a serious review.  But under the editorship of former Daily Express editor Stephen Pollard that would indeed be a miracle.

Tony Greenstein

Communal courtier of controversy A former youthful idealist explains his disenchantment with Zionism, by Daniel Hochhauser, November 9, 2012 d.hochhauser@ucl.ac.uk