David Collier: The BBC go to war with Jews in Jerusalem
Roman Abramovich has been a leading voice in the UK fight against antisemitism. Abramovich is also a proud Zionist Jew. A wealthy, proud, Zionist Jew who fights antisemitism – what is not for the BBC and Guardian to hate?Report: EU governments funding Palestinian legal actions against Israel
On the other side of this argument, the BBC and the Guardian are two media outlets that have done more than any other in the mainstream to belittle the fight against antisemitism. Both have bent over backwards to give voice to fringe and irrelevant Jewish voices – amplifying them beyond recognition until many people were duped to believe that ‘anti-Zionist Jews’ were an army equal in size to the ‘Board of Deputies’. Never forget the persistent publications of letters by the Guardian or the inclusion of JVL voices on the BBC – were editorial choices – not accidents nor a necessity. Both of these outlets are also obsessed with Israel.
So it is of no surprise at all that Roman Abramovich is a target.
The Panorama Story BBC Arabic has been creating a story about the funding of the City of David. It turns out Roman Abramovich has been a heavy backer of Elad – the NGO behind much of the investment in the biblical city. Shock horror – A Jew invests in Jerusalem.
The story broke this week on Panorama. All the usual smears were there. Instead of a Jew investing in Jerusalem, it was ‘secret funding’, ‘evicted Palestinians’, ‘settlers’ and nonsensical propaganda stories. The standard deceptive tactics were also deployed, with BBC Arabic finding a fringe Israeli left-wing politician to claim he was ‘shocked’ on camera. That politician left the scene 14 years ago after his party failed to gain enough votes to see him re-elected. This is truly desperate stuff.
Jews investing in Jerusalem is like Muslims investing in Mecca or Catholics in the Vatican. It is a non-story. The *only* difference is that Muslims in Mecca or Catholics in the Vatican can do whatever they please – whilst Jews are left to fight for every single cm of Jerusalem. Standing against them is a mammoth, and yes, well-funded propaganda industry – of which the BBC are clearly a part. BBC Arabic released their own extended ‘expose’, and tripping over their own anti-Israel bias as they did so, the Guardian quickly followed. Camera UK which monitors bias in the UK media, did a thorough take down of several pieces the BBC produced as a result of their ‘investigation’. It is worth noting in their article Camera highlight that this is far from the first time, the BBC have focused on the issue.
But what is the true story?
European governments are sending money to Palestinian NGOs to help them file lawsuits against Israel in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the watchdog NGO Monitor reports.The Dark Side of Holocaust Education
New research from NGO Monitor reveals that from 2018 to 2020, the Swiss government gave $700,000 to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).
Israel Hayom has learned that the governments – which include Denmark, Ireland, and Sweden – are knowingly and intentionally funding ICC petitions against Israel, especially those submitted by the PCHR. The PCHR states openly that its goal is to "inundate the [Israeli] occupation with hundreds and thousands of legal suits that will incriminate and convict it."
Another example is the organization Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, which also used European governmental funding – from the Netherlands, in this case – to petition the ICC. NGO Monitor underscores that in many other cases, Palestinian NGOs receive funding for unspecified "legal activity," which they then use to sue Israel.
Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor's legal advisor, said that donor nations must take responsibility for "failures" that prevent Israel from protecting its citizens against Palestinian terrorism.
BEYOND VICTIMHOOD
Representative Maloney doubtless meant well when she introduced the "Never Again Education Act," but her timing replicated President Carter's calculated support for the Holocaust Museum as a cover for anti-Zionism. Just three months after the bill was introduced, the Democratic Party refused to censure Representative Ilhan Omar for overtly anti-Semitic pronouncements. Instead, Democrats in Congress cobbled together a resolution condemning anti-Semitism — along with anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against a handful of other minorities — and shoved it onto the president's desk. Yet anti-Zionism flourishes in the party's ranks, to the point that its presidential candidates scorn the gatherings of AIPAC and support anti-Israel legislation in the party platform. Support for Holocaust education was presumably intended to show opposition to anti-Semitism, but intentionally or not, this "opposition to hate" feeds the hideous ideology it pretends to resist.
Unlike other anti-Jewish ventures that are powered by their declared enemies, this one has the backing of many Jews and well-intentioned liberals, who are often one and the same. When there is so much apparent unanimity on a subject, it may seem perverse to oppose it. The fact that supporters of Nazism are also opposed to Holocaust teaching may wrongly suggest that opponents in general are encouraging the Nazi cause. Many docents, teachers, and others involved in this project obviously trust that Holocaust education will protect Jews — and "other threatened minorities" — from harm.
Yet doubts about the Holocaust project were raised from the outset, and — if one needs reminding — consensus does not guarantee the good. The best intentions left untested can have the most damaging results. The decline of formal religion may have created a serious deficiency in moral education, but the Holocaust dare not serve as a lever of conscience. The liberal conscription of the Holocaust as a moral exemplum was misguided from the start, and as presently conceived, it conceals rather than confronts anti-Jewish aggression, falsifies both the nature of anti-Jewish politics and the nature of the Jewish people, advances political causes under false pretenses, and cultivates identification with victims rather than with the soldiers who protect and, if necessary, liberate the victims.
Dawidowicz concluded her study of Holocaust materials by citing the Sixth Commandment: "Thou shalt not murder." This, she wrote, was "the primary lesson of the Holocaust," and if invoking a biblical commandment would violate the doctrine of the separation of church and state, "something is clearly wrong with both our system of education and our standards of morality." I would add to that lesson as it concerns actual or would-be perpetrators a second lesson also — from the side of the victims. As the biblical story of the Exodus has inspired other oppressed peoples to gain their freedom by demanding, "[l]et my people go," the passage of the Jews from Holocaust to Homeland can teach how a people wins and maintains its freedom.
This is the education we need — an education whose meaning is universal. It will take time to revise thinking on this, so we had better begin now.