It seems that Jewish pressure groups are having a great deal of success recently. Ken Livingstone has been suspended as mayor of London for comparing a Evening Standard journalist with a concentration camp guard. In reality, the newspaper wanted to drop the matter as in the 1930s the Associated Newspaper Group, had supported the rise of Hitler in Germany and the National Union of Fascists in the UK. The last thing they wanted was a discussion of these issues.

Livingstone was also a poor target as he had been a leading figure in anti-racist groups such as the Anti-Racist Alliance and the National Assembly against Racism. What is more, the Evening Standard had discovered that the anti-Livingstone campaign was unpopular with readers and circulation was in sharp decline. However, the Jewish Board of Deputies pushed the issue and Livingstone has got suspended as mayor by the Standards Board.

We have also the recent case of David Irving being imprisoned in Austria for making a speech questioning the Holocaust. Laws like this have been passed all over Europe after campaigns by Jewish pressure groups.

Then we have the case of the successful campaign by Jewish groups to get the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, banned from the New York theatre. The play tells the story of Rachel Corrie, the American peace-activist killed in Gaza.

Last night it was reported on the news that Jewish pressure groups are trying to get Paradise Now removed from Sunday's Oscar competition. Paradise Now tells the fictional story of two young mechanics from the West Bank town of Nablus sent to carry out a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. The film won a Golden Globe award in January and is nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film. Director Hany Abu-Assad is an Arab born in Israel. Israeli Amir Harel produced the film. Both Palestinians and Israelis acted in the movie, which was filmed in the West Bank and Israel.

It's all quite ridiculous. Jailing people for expressing an opinion (albeit a ridiculous one) on an historical event is a throwback to the dark ages. Surely he must win on appeal.

What if one goes to Russia and says they don't believe that at the end of WW2 Stalin threw hundreds of thousands of Russian troops at the German defense, effectively murdering them, until the Germans literally ran out of ammunition? Would one be imprisoned?

I didn't know Livingstone was suspended for merely using the term 'concentration camp guard' in an analogy. I suspect the Standards Board's actions may start a public debate which the Standards Board doesn't want to have. It's laughable overuse of their power.

Codswallop!
The law Irving was tried under dates back to the immediate post war period and is a reflexion of the revulsion most people felt at that time (and thankfully some still feel today) when confronted by antisemitism.

Livingstone was suspended for bringing his office into disrepute.

I must confess I'm not fully familiar with all the details of either the Livingstone or the Irving issue. Regarding Livingstone's suspension, how does merely using the expression "concentration camp guard" in an analogy bring his office into disrepute? He must have said more, otherwise the Standards Board and Jewish Board of Deputies are incredibly oversensitive and narrow minded. Who's acting like Nazis here?

I always thought he was a very popular figure. His congestion tax innovation is something we could do with here in Sydney, btw.

No one.
The Nazi approach to "justice" is not meaningfully comparable in either of these very diverse cases and it is disingenuous to claim that it is.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsourc.../peoplesct.html

What I meant was, in Livingstone's case, it seems there was no deliberate attempt to cause distress to Jewish people so the punishment is excessive, IMO.

So you would agree that in both cases no one sitting in judgement has "acted like Nazis?". I think it is important to be able to see the difference.

Irving flouted a rather old Austrian law repeatedly, received a fair trial by jury and was found guilty and sentenced.
Livingstone has been behaving extremely oddly in his relationship with the media in the last 18 months and seems to have brought his current problems upon himself.

I think it is likely however than Livingstone has had to endure some pretty awful treatment and exposure by the right wing media here - however he is an elected politician and really ought to know how to conduct himself by now.

I believe Livingstone's suspension was harsh. I also think that banning plays from the theatre and attempting to have movies removed from the Oscar awards is a backward step and reflects badly on the Jewish lobby. Corrie was killed by Israeli forces while they were demolishing Palestinian settlements and the Jewish lobby has to face that fact. Should such a story not be told just because it may reflect badly on Israel? No way.

Basically, I agree with the main argument of this thread. Jewish pressure groups are wielding too much power and in some cases are using that power quite irresponsibly.

The Standards Board found Livingstone guilty of being “insensitive” and “offensive”. Politicians are guilty of this all the time. However, it is not illegal to be insensitive. I found it pretty offensive that Tony Blair should invade Iraq. However, being offensive is not a good enough reason to overturn the democratic process.

The Jewish Board of Deputies of course complained to the Standards Board because they considered Livingstone’s comments to be anti-Semitic. That is of course ridiculous and cannot be substantiated.

This issue is not about comments made about reporters from the Evening Standard. It is an attempt to stop him from criticising the policies of the Israeli government. According to Livingstone, the Board of Deputies has been complaining to him for many years about his criticism on Israel's anti-Arab policies. They have accused him and others of being “anti-Semitic” because of these comments. As Anthony Lerman, director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research has said that equating criticism of Israel policies with anti-Semitism “drains the word anti-Semitism of any useful meaning.”

Anti-Semitism still exists in the UK. According to official statistics, a Jewish person is three times more likely to suffer a racist attack than a “white European”. However, a person of African, Caribbean or Asian descent is 10 times more likely to suffer such an attack. However, it is Arabs who have the largest problem. They are 11 times more likely to suffer a racist attack.

Racism is indeed still a problem in the UK and elsewhere. It tends to start with prejudice (eg "the jews are conspiring against us").
Regarding our Ken - he of course claims he has been targeted because he has been critical of Israeli policy consistently in the past.
Ken's full statement on the matter John is paraphrasing from can be read below.
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/mayor_statement_280206.jsp
The truth however is rather simpler - he made a crass and insensitive series of comments to a jewish journalist and then stamped his foot and refused to apologise.

Thanks for the link, Andy.

You have to give him points for answering his critics. Livingstone's comments regarding the usefulness of the Standards Board were refreshingly direct.

Seriously though, I think Livingston has a point. Criticising the actions of the Israeli Government doesn't make you anti-Semitic, any more than criticising the actions of the British Government makes you anti-British. There's a false link there.

Many Governments get criticised. Look how many critics the Bush Government has here but that doesn't make the critics anti-American. You should be aware that the Israeli Government has done some pretty wacky things over the years, worthy of criticism, IMO. Livingstone's well within his rights to discuss issues such as these.

Has anyone (other than you) suggested or implied that it does?

Yes. I've seen it employed quite often. Critics of the Israeli Government often get accused of anti-Semitism.

Not here they don't - please feel free to criticise Israeli government policy in as many threads as you like without being anti semitic.

I'm glad that this Forum is spared the equation of criticism of the government of Israel and anti-semitism, but Mark has a very good point.

Perhaps we all need to be very careful about the terminology we use. For example, if this thread had started "Pro-Israeli Pressure Groups …" then much of the debate in it would have lost a lot of its point.

For my own part, I have no problem separating my attitude to Islam from my attitude to the government of Saudi Arabia; my attitude to Roman Catholicism from the Italian government; and my attitude towards Judaism from my attitude to the government of the State of Israel.

But that would have distorted reality. These pressure groups do not claim to be "Pro-Israeli". Organizations like the Jewish Board of Deputies have a much wider mandate.

OK, perhaps 'pro-Israeli' is the wrong term. My plea, really, is to return the adjective 'Jewish' to the meaning of 'pertaining to Judaism' - in other words, a meaning relating to a specific religion - just as Catholic relates principally to the Roman Catholic faith, and Islamic refers to the Muslim faith.

The problem with a term which slips from the religious to the political and back again is that you can't pin down what the people using it are actually talking about at any given moment … which is where the 'criticism of Israel = anti-semitism" argument comes in. I understand that this suits the supporters of the various pressure groups with 'Jewish' in their names, but why should the rest of us accept it?

That movie "Paradise Now" is given a very high rating of 7.8 on IMDb, so it's no turkey.

If the past few weeks have demonstrated anything, it is the frequency with which allegations of anti-semitism surface in modern political debate. Ken Livingstone, the Church of England and the Guardian (over articles comparing Israel and apartheid) are the most recent to find themselves in the firing line. This is the backdrop against which an unofficial parliamentary inquiry on anti-semitism under former Foreign Office minister Denis McShane concludes its hearings in Westminster today.

A sober reflection on the nature of the problem is badly needed to take the sting out of the issue and establish groundrules that everyone can respect. But there is a suspicion that others have a different objective. In announcing the inquiry, John Mann, the MP who chairs the Parliamentary Committee Against Anti-Semitism, said: "Anti-semitism is back in fashion and can be found on the streets of Islington, Aldershot and Bethnal Green." This is no random list: Bethnal Green is included because of its large Muslim population, Aldershot because it is where a Jewish cemetery was desecrated last year, and Islington because it is widely regarded as the spiritual home of Britain's leftwing intelligentsia. It is this last group that has become the target of particular vilification.
Variants of this theme have become common since the breakdown of the Middle East peace process, and especially since 9/11. The left is said to be in the grip of what the rightwing American columnist George Will has called an "anti-semitic chic". Instead of declaring its hatred of Jews openly, this new antisemitism is expressed indirectly through criticism of Israel or even opposition to Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. A particularly meretricious version suggests that opposition to American foreign policy, or even criticism of neoconservatives, is really a coded form of anti-semitism.

This accusation isn't confined to the rough and tumble of the post-9/11 transatlantic debate, either. The normally measured Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has cited "a leftwing anti-American cognitive elite with strong representation in the European media" as one of the main sources of anti-semitism. He doesn't spell it out, but we all know who he means. The argument is not just that there are individuals who harbour anti-semitic views, but that something in the political culture or ideology of the left predisposes it to anti-semitism. This is said to be the real reason why it criticises Israel.

There is no shortage of examples, from Karl Marx to George Orwell, of prominent leftwing figures making offensive remarks about Jews. Instances of anti-capitalism spilling into "rich Jew" bigotry are also well documented. More recently, Tam Dalyell blamed government support for Israel on "a cabal of Jewish advisers" - comments that were deservedly condemned.

But these personal expressions of prejudice stand out precisely because they conflict so sharply with the left's universalism and its opposition to ethnic discrimination. A more sweeping charge is that this universalism is itself a source of anti-semitism since, in its maximalist interpretation, it denies Israel's right to be a Jewish state. But the few still calling for a single "secular, democratic state" in the whole of historic Palestine are making a statement about the inadmissibility of defining statehood according to religious or ethnic criteria that they apply as a universal norm. Impractical and idealistic this may be, but it is not anti-semitic, and it is plainly dishonest to suggest it is.

In any case, this is a minority view on the left, and has been for a long time. Decolonisation forced the mainstream left to incorporate expressions of national and ethnic identity into its worldview. The reaction of the democratic left to Israel's creation was largely positive as a result. It helped that Israel was governed from the left, but the example of a persecuted people creating a successful, independent state inspired a profound admiration for Zionism.

So what changed? The answer is 1967 and Israel's subsequent emergence as a power determined to annex territory beyond its legally recognised borders. The unbearable truth is that the left that identifies with the Palestinians today is largely the same left that identified with Israel in the 50s and the 60s. Moreover, it does so for largely the same reason: instinctive sympathy for the underdog. For some, the idea that anyone could see the conflict in these terms is literally unthinkable, so they are forced to impute to Israel's critics the motive of Jew-hatred. At best, this betrays a lack of empathy - at worst, something less forgivable. From Golda Meir's denial that the Palestinians existed to Ehud Barak's dismissal of them as congenital liars, there is a long tradition of prejudice that regards the Palestinians as lesser beings deserving of lesser rights.

A more subtle argument accepts that Israel is open to criticism, but complains that it is singled out to an extent that reveals an underlying anti-Jewish prejudice. Or to put it another way: "Others get away with it, so why can't Israel." Despite its cynicism, this argument deserves an answer, and it is provided, as it happens, by Israel's staunchest supporters. Israel, we are rightly reminded, is a democracy. Is it not legitimate, therefore, to expect it to uphold the democratic values we share in common? Far from being held to a higher standard, as its supporters often protest, Israel seems to operate with a greater impunity, and to do so with western acquiescence. This is the real reason why the issue is felt so deeply on the left and why unofficial boycotts are emerging to fill the moral void left by our feeble leaders.

A final objection takes issue with the left's supposed "demonisation" of Israel. Although often overdone, one suspects that comparisons with apartheid provoke anger because they contain an uncomfortable element of truth. More clear-cut are analogies with Nazi Germany. These should be deplored on grounds of both historical truth and taste. But are they anti-semitic as opposed to just plain obnoxious? Those who resort to them know they are bogus, but they understand their shock value and hope to shame and anger Israel and its supporters into modifying their behaviour. Indeed, as a debating tactic, it is indistinguishable from the one deployed by those levelling charges of anti-semitism against the left. They do it not because they believe it, but because they know the left takes its anti-racism seriously and is susceptible to this kind of blackmail. There has been enough of this intellectual thuggery on both sides, and it's time someone called a stop to it.

This is one way in which the report of the parliamentary inquiry could contribute something positive. Real anti-semitism is a serious and growing problem, and there is a need for political consensus about how to tackle it. But debate is poisoned and consensus becomes difficult when allegations of anti-semitism are bandied about for reasons that have nothing to do with fighting racism. An inquiry that wants to confront anti-semitism should also confront those who cheapen the term through reckless misuse.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1724459,00.html

Don't like the messenger?

No problemo!

Just shut down the whole university

Ah... it was to prevent an epidemic of 'holocaust denial'.

We quite understand!

(Well, actually...)