Friends of Alibhai-Brown
by Scoop Shachtman, 9 December 2007
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown should read the “supportive” letter from Dina Turner in today’s Independent, praising her recent “wrath of Moses” article about Labour Friends of Israel [See Norman Geras].
Thank you to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. She is a brave woman. It is disturbing to think that our politicians are working for the benefit of a foreign country, and explains a lot about our Middle East policy.
Dina Turner is not alone in her views. It is a view that I find so common in left wing circles that I have reached the stage were a mild urge to avoid discussing Middle Eastern politics, with those I find otherwise intelligent and interesting, has arisen to avoid the sense of disappointment and distaste it invariably leaves.
Sunday 9 December 2007 at 15:06
What could any one ask for more? Being attacked by that woman is a badge of honour, though of no great currency. I have never felt closer to Israel (as a non-Jew) than I do now.
Sunday 9 December 2007 at 23:57
I’ve given up humouring these people (and there are a lot of them on the “left”): simply call them racists, and walk out
Monday 10 December 2007 at 0:01
Wot Jim said.
Monday 10 December 2007 at 0:02
Oh — and wot Larkers said.
Monday 10 December 2007 at 0:24
Sorry, but that’s just not true. Geras’ article is just facile, and well below his normal intellectual stadards (it reads like a Kenneth Williams style innuendo rather than anything politically serious). And Alibhai-Brown, whatever else might be wrong with her politics - and there’s a lot - is clearly not an anti-semite. You’d have to be precisely the sort of conspiracist that you lot usually rightly decry, in order to think that she was.
Incidentally I feel about as emotionally passionately “close to Israel”, or indeed as emotionally passionately “hostile” to it, as I do to a can of kippers. Political questions of this sort are supposed to be about what brings justice to the people on the ground,not about mystical loyalty to states. And they’re also supposed to be about what’s true, not what gets you hot under the collar.
The idea that Alibhai-Brown’s article marks her out as some kind of anti-semite, is just a nonsense, as anyone who reads it can clearly see. It *may* be entirely a co-incidence that all of those three key figures were members of LFI, but I hardly think that pointing the fact out is indicative of ethnic prejudice (you don’t have to be Jewish to join LFI, as I’m fairly confident at least one or two people reading this will know)…
Monday 10 December 2007 at 11:07
On a related note, did anyone else notice one of the weaker contributors over at Crooked Tomb calling Norm Geras a racist? (http://crookedtimber.org/2007/11/10/while-europe-slept/)
Are academics allowed to cast such grave, unfounded smears against their colleagues?
Monday 10 December 2007 at 15:02
voltaires_priest: Incidentally I feel about as emotionally passionately “close to Israel”, or indeed as emotionally passionately “hostile” to it, as I do to a can of kippers.
I now have a craving for kedgeree.
YAB’s article is a nasty piece of work. If thats her just asking questions I’d hate to see her making insinuations and weaving narratives.
Monday 10 December 2007 at 17:37
Look on the crazed websites today and you see how they feed on this crisis and rejoice.
It doesn’t matter what happens, the ‘crazed websites’ can always find something to be going on with. But thanks for adding your 5p Yasmin. See how easily ‘Group A may have influence in certain areas of policy’ becomes ‘our politicians are working for another country’ in the tiny brain of gibbering racist filth in Farnham.
Monday 10 December 2007 at 23:20
VP. If it walks like a duck , if it quacks like a duck. Well i guess it might not be a duck. It was a nasty antisemitic piece , containing several antisemitic themes. VP - if this was produced by the BNP or a far right group then you would have no hesitation in calling it antisemitic.
I sometimes wonder how strongly antisemitic somebody has to be to convince those in denial such as VP.
Put it another way VP - You know damn well VP that you wouldn’t have made those kind of comments that were made in her piece in a million years. That’s because your not an antisemite.
Monday 10 December 2007 at 23:56
Thank you for saying I’m not an anti-semite, Richard - you’re quite correct about that, and far more honest and less debased for saying so than a certain one of your colleagues on this site.
As to the point at hand, look: there is a difference between over-stating the role of a lobby group in this affair, and bug-eyed anti-semitic conspiracy theorising. I suppose it is possible that LFI’s influence relative to other lobby groups is completely co-incidental to the profile and wealth of several of its members. But it probably isn’t, any more than the influence (or lack thereof) of other individuals and groups is co-incidental to theirs. The fact that LFI has several high-profile members who are Jewish, some of whom happen to be prominently involved in fundraising scandals, renders those people no more able to cry “victim” if they are exposed to a corruption scandal, than anyone else. And neither should it.
On the other hand, if the argument is some version of the idea that a shadowy cabal of Jews secretly pulls the strings of the government to the exclusion of all other voices, then obviously that is anti-semitic, in the extreme.
But I’m not conviced that Alibhai-Brown (for whose smug attitude and crap politics I certainly don’t carry a torch, incidentally) meant to insinuate the latter.
Tuesday 11 December 2007 at 19:04
VP. Sorry but i’m not responsible for what other poeople on this website have called you as i’m not involved with this website.
The problem is that Alibhai-Brown has used conventional antisemitic themes. That’s the problem and that’s the crux of the matter.
So the question is - Can somebody use antisemitic themes such as conspiracy theorywithout being an antisemite ? When does somebody actualy become an antisemite ? If the article had been written by a BNP member we wouldn’t be having this discussion as there would only be condemnation.
Read through the article again and you will see conventional antisemitic comments.
BTW , Over Xmas , print this out and give it some time.
http://www.yale.edu/yiisa/workingpaper/hirsh/index.htm
Tuesday 11 December 2007 at 22:41
YAB’s article is clearly antisemitic and Geras’s critique of it was justified. Guess who thinks that the article was no more than lame and silly…
http://tinyurl.com/39ek5q
scroll down to the comments
Tuesday 11 December 2007 at 23:37
Richard - in what way is she “using conspiracy theory”? That implies some sort of obvious malign motive, whereas I think she’s just reading too much into an obvious point (that the three guys who she’s talking about are members of LFI, not that they’re Jewish).
Tuesday 11 December 2007 at 23:39
Eamonn: oh cripes, not the dreaded Hundal (VP swoons and faints)???!!! Get a life brother…
Wednesday 12 December 2007 at 9:17
1. It would help if people would actually address the subject of the post–ie the idiotic anti-Semitic approval of Y A-B’s article.
2. Shadowy role … backroom influence … these questions will not stand aside or lie down … we can assume LFI plays a part in shaping our foreign policies … [LFI] exists to present the official Israeli view.
This suggests that Israel or ‘the Zionists’ are in control of a substantial area of the foreign policy of a major imperialist power, when any sensible analysis would proceed on the basis that imperialist powers act in their own interests–which sometimes coincide with those of client states. Zionism is operating as the modern hidden hand here – manipulating the lesser powers of Yankee and British imperialism. Quack!
Wednesday 12 December 2007 at 9:21
3. Even George Galloway, when confronted with a sufficiently educated audience, will stress that it is the USA/UK who wear the pants, not Israel, and to suggest otherwise is to fall into anti-Semitism.