Harry's Place

Par for the course for a former FCO arabist. What did you expect?

It’s the Independent. What did you expect? At least (so far) he hasn’t said they themselves are war criminals.

Maybe a committee consisting of Oliver Miles, Jonathan Steele, Clare Short, John Pilger and George Galloway would give the right result.

When John Lee Barnes has become too much of an embarrassment to the BNP he can write for the independent.

I love the comment under the Independent’s picture:

‘The US’s ’shock and awe’ campaign in Iraq wreaked devastation. George Bush said he was inspired by the Old Testament’

Obviously the bombing of Baghdad was just like the bombing of Hamburg or Dresden, and obviously the Old Testament is full of surgical airstrikes against an enemy’s command and control systems.

Seriously, isn’t this a clear antisemitic comment from the Independent. Its saying that a committee doesn’t have balance because it has two Jews in it?

“They said we’d won a free luxury holiday to Devon. We saw pictures of the hotel and it looks fabulous. Apparently its some fancy dress bash and the family has to wear these stripey pajamas things. They said be at Victora station by 8:30 where stewards will help us onto the trains. Not to be worried that there aren’t any windows on the trucks because the party is going on inside and they don’t want the rest of the population to get jealous. Not to pack anything as its a free clothing holiday where we will be given designer clothes. Bring ALL the family! Uncles, aunts, cousins. It looks like fun…………………”

Yes, it looks like antisemitism to me. He is calling for Jews to be excluded from equal participation in British life – not because he is racist himself, heaven forfend, but because he fears the consequences of racism by others. It’s a particularly slimy tactic because its author can claim to be motivated by a sincere wish for the well-being of the very people he attacks.

Seriously, isn’t this a clear antisemitic comment from the Independent

From the Independent, the well-known Jew-loving paper? No way.

Notice the connectedness-of-all-things regarding antisemitic meme mongering. Here’s an extract from of the explicitly antisemitic comments to that article:

“I wonder if any other pundits will comment on the role of Gilbert and Freedman, especially in the light of the recent documentary by Peter Oborne on The Israel Lobby in the UK?”

Here’s a man embedded in the establishment who explicitly states that Jews are simply too hopelessly compromised to participate in public life. And a national newspaper that publishes this. And commenters who take the thesis even further.

Modern leftists have defined antisemitism as nonexistence except as an ad hominem attack; but the opinions above cannot be explained away as political criticism – it’s Jew hate. Classical, undiluted, unmediated and unambiguous.

Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish

Jews out!

Oh no, hang on a sec…

Creep.

What is disappointing though is that scum like Oliver Miles are accepted by polite society.

I knew I shouldn’t trust someone called Freedman, but look at how crafty Martin Gilbert is with his Anglo-Saxon name!

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/richard-ingrams/richard-ingramsrsquos-week-no-one-talks-nonsense-quite-like-a-historian-1710763.html

>> (and provides us with a clue by comparing the previous prime minister with Kurt Waldheim)

It’s more than that. He’s saying, I can’t be an antisemite, I hate Nazis!

More fairly blatant anti semitism from The Independent; no change there then.

It is the narrative of the extreme right, and many Muslim groups, that the Iraq war was principally about doing the Jew’s dirty work for them in an attempt to distract attention from the apartheid persecution of the poor Palestinians by the evil Jews.

How much more of this incitement to Jew hatred is there going to be before there is widespread violence against British Jews? Me, I don’t really feel that Britain is safe any more for us.

I know Yigal Diskin has come to say that removing Saddam may have been a mistake, but what was Israel’s formal position on the invasion?

Some Racist Old Tart -
Ingrams can’t even sort out his double negatives:

“There is, however, still a mystery about Iraq, which is why any inquiry into the war should begin by questioning Americans. It was, after all, their war and it was their president who started it.”

How much more of this incitement to Jew hatred is there going to be before there is widespread violence against British Jews?

How much more of this incitement to Jew hatred is there going to be before the cowardly BoD takes the Independent to court? The law is clear enough.

This article is really notable in that it does not attempt to couch itself in provisos and get-out clauses. It’s simply and unashamedly Jew baiting in a way that it could never get close to being with any other race or ethnic group. It really is extraordinary in how ordinary it has become.

Miles is a former Arabist diplomat who became the chairman of MEC international, a consulting firm for clients doing business in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya and Iraq. Remarkably, the Independent has featured him for years as an unbiased commentator on the Middle East without any vested interests. Amazingly, Miles now raises the perception of bias against Gilbert and Freedman because they are Jews.

“Amazingly, Miles now raises the perception of bias against Gilbert and Freedman because they are Jews.”

Sour grapes because he wasn’t invited?

Alec M: Israel’s formal position on the invasion of Iraq was that it would be a mistake and that Iran should have been tackled first.

Here is a comment written about the Iraqi war in 2004.

[by 2003] Continuing UN sanctions had made Iraqi re-armament difficult and Iraq was clearly not Israel’s primary concern. …Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would call Iran “the main existential threat to Israel.” http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief3-25.htm

Thought the Independent was going to close next month? If so, for helping to bring these kinds of racist slurs into the mainstream, good riddance

A balanced committee? George Galloway, Yvonne Ridley, Claire Short, Jenny Tonge and Richard Ingrams, perhaps with Lee John Barnes as legal director. Simples.

More on Miles here: http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000193.html

Thanks for that, John. And no surprise to see that the BBC and the Guardian were whitewashing him and concealing his commercial interests.

Alec M
22 November 2009, 11:42 am
I know Yigal Diskin has come to say that removing Saddam may have been a mistake, but what was Israel’s formal position on the invasion?

Yes….I remember it clearly……
Israel’s formal position: What the fuck are those idiots doing!? Now OUR citizens are at risk and it wasn’t even OUR idea to invade! We’ll have to spend millions on preparing gas masks and we might even need to recruit the reserves, and our economy isn’t exactly on the rise since there’s a decline in the hi-tech businesses not to mention the intifada……stupid Americans!

Gordon Bennet

Could it be that some BBC and Guardian staff also have financial interests in the Middle East? Perish the thought. Could there be an Arab Lobby? Perish the thought.

Perhaps, when Miles objects to Gilbert and Freedman because they are Jews, he means that they are Zionists as did the courageous Ingrams when faced with the powerful Israel Lobby:

“But it was their political sympathies, not their religion, that I was interested in. Since it is now recognised that the security of Israel was of prime concern to the American neocons who for years campaigned for the invasion of Iraq, this seems a perfectly valid issue for me to raise, even at the risk of incurring the usual charge of anti-Semitism from Maureen and others.”

Perish the thought, indeed …

Say it to my face and see what happens…

Mark, we try to avoid challenging each other to fights at HP. If you want to continue commenting here, you’ll have to fall into line, I’m afraid.

Lots more detail about the bought-and-paid for lobbyist Oliver Miles in my post here. Not just a lobbyist, but the leader of the Camel Corps and a major mouthpiece for the Libyan regime, including a video clip showing him shilling on PressTV for the Libyan denial of involvement in the PanAm 103 bombing.

…..I knew I shouldn’t trust someone called Freedman…….

I got the shock of my life a few years ago when I saw this headline “Wolves chase Freedman”. It was in the sports pages and referred to Dougie Freedman a footballer who I think has an impeccable gentile provenance. One of the origins of the surname is a freedman under the old feudal system and is said to come from Yorkshire – where I was born. My Latin master didn’t assign the nickname ‘libertus’ to me for nothing!

Mark, we try to avoid challenging each other to fights at HP. If you want to continue commenting here, you’ll have to fall into line, I’m afraid.

Happy to do anything which helps HP or Israel. I thought ‘Neil’ was some sort of coward or student. Maybe I was wrong…and I take KETAMINE not cocaine,
(his accusation)

I am delighted with the announcement of the inquiry, and in particular Sir John Chilcott’s assertion, made several times even though unprompted, that the inquiry will absolutely, definitely and in no ways be a “whitewash”. If anyone suggests otherwise, my good friend Alastair Campbell will be sure to find out where they live.

I am naturally only interested in the complete and unvarnished truth about my heroic decision to save Britain from certain annihilation. As the evidence will show, a lethal WMD attack would have occurred within 45 minutes if I had not courageously stood up to the greatest dictator since Adolf Hitler.

I will sleep very easily, and look forward to joining my rightful place among the pantheon of great British war leaders, from Richard the Lionheart, the liberator of the Holy Land from the muslim infidel, through to Margaret Thatcher.

I wouldn’t worry that we only have forty percent of the committee membership.

I’m sure the others share many of our values.