| Submit your comments on this article |
| Britain |
| Blind Hatred, British Bigot Sounds Off |
| 2004-10-01 |
| Is this unbelievable? No, nothing is unbelievable when it involves the arrogance, presumption, dishonesty and vicious bigotry of the British chattering classes and their sycophants. What is the truth? British status-seekers, investors, and business hangers-on like this pompous knave Croke have been bought off with Arab money, it's that simple. This is especially true in any enterprise related to publishing, printing, or consumer products. Recycled oil loot is their life-blood and the whores who run them must bend over accordingly. You can't do business in the UK without being aware of this and it's high time non-dhimmified Brits made it a public issue. Unless Britain's media becomes more balanced, a hostile climate could worsen. Britain's Jewish Chronicle can make for sobering reading these days. At a time when fanatical hostility to the State of Israel and the related rebirth of anti-Semitism in Europe have become commonplace, the shock value of the latest cemetery desecration or the latest distortion of Israel's actions in the Middle East has become subject to the law of diminishing returns. The more we hear about it, the less it affects us. But last week's issue of that newspaper contains a story so appalling that it deserves to be heard by all. The author, Mark Scodie, relates the tale of how a 30-year-old Israeli woman, who wants to remain anonymous, was turned down for a job at a London-based Christmas decorations company called Gisela Graham. On rejecting the woman's application, the company's marketing director, Piers Croke, made a few comments in an e-mail to her about the reaction she was likely to elicit from potential recruiters by including on her resume' the fact that she had done two years military service in the Israeli army as a conscript. The following remarks attributed to Croke were quoted in the Jewish Chronicle: "The natural reaction of most educated Europeans to the information you provide is likely to be 'So it was she who guided those gunships to targeted assassinations and the murder of women and children with indiscriminate bombing and strafing of refugee camps.'" It is difficult to know what might qualify as "educated" in Croke's mind, but higher education used to involve elementary instruction in logic and rhetoric. Croke betrays a complete ingorance of these subjects by attempting to put words in the mouths of others and by arrogantly presuming to speak for an entire class. With this, be warned, Croke was merely warming up. "A sizable proportion [of Europeans and Americans] doubt the 'right' of Israel to exist. This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Nor is it racism - that is the kind of disgusting attitude which one might say is inherent in the idea of the State of Israel and, one might say, among a large section of believing Jews elsewhere, who regard the rest of us as inferior, unclean, and not chosen by God. What could be more racist than that?" One might say that an obvious strawman applied to "a large section of believing Jews elsewhere" is racist. One might also say that Croke is a pompous buffoon with a penchant for pretentious forms of expressions. Many of us have been disappointed at a rejection letter. But this surely sets something of a world record in the art of kicking someone when they are down. The case has been referred to Britain's Commission for Racial Equality, the official body charged with combating discrimination on ethnic, national, or religious grounds, and Croke and his company have apologized to the woman in question. But the broader point here is as obvious as it is alarming. An apology from this son of a bitch is no more acceptable than one from his predecessors, Goebbels and Streicher. Euro-bigot support and incitement are a crucial factor in Islamo-fascist terrorism all over the world. Follow their path, share their fate. The intellectual atmosphere in Britain has now become so hostile to Jews and Israel that the rantings one might usually expect from extremist political organizations have invaded the mainstream. In normal circumstances, after all, you would hope to be able to tell the difference between a job rejection letter from a respectable company and a tirade from a neo-Nazi fringe group. What is worse is that this case is no exception. Last year, Amit Dushvani, an Israeli biology student, had his PhD application turned down by Andrew Wilkie, professor of pathology at Oxford University, in the following terms: "I have a huge problem with the way the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because they wish to live in their own country." Prof. Wilkie, who was suspended but not fired, went on: "I am sure you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who has served in the Israeli army." In May of the same year a motion was proposed at a conference of the Association of University Teachers, a leading union for university professors, calling for a total academic boycott against Israel. The motion failed but was supported by one-third of the delegates. |
| Posted by:Atomic Conspiracy |
| #10 BD - "invariably" was over the top. Point taken. But the incidents ai described were so frequent as to suggest an atmosphere that tolerated anti-jewish insults. Again, I hope you're right, but my experience inclines me toward pessimism. Pretty telling that Britain's official news agency has been expelled from Israel for its blatant and outrageous anti-Israeli bias. I don't believe that the Beeb is a fringe organization, and think it safer to assume that more Beeb viewers than not consider the Beeb take on Israel to be close to the truth. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-10-02 1:43:28 PM |
| #9 Bulldog, check out the next televised meeting that Blair and the boys have - the ones where they fire questions at him on policy and he staunchly defends himself. Watch the jackals bay for blood when the subject of Israel comes up and watch Blair vainly trying to fend them off. It will be quite an education, I promise. |
| Posted by: Bryan 2004-10-02 2:22:36 AM |
| #8 Just my experiences at London dinner parties and the experience of yamulke-wearing jewish friends who, while at Oxford, were invariably sneered at and made the subject of snide jokes by the polite classes of that university town. Invariably? Really? I doubt that. It's possible that they each had a complaint to make, but: they were invariably sneered upon - by everyone?! That's crap. ..see if you can find one member of said govt. (Tony Blair aside) who is not rabidly hostile to Israel. The onus is on you to demosntrate the ridiculous proposition that they are all, besides Blair, "rabidly hostile to Israel". What shite. Good dhimmi. Good boy. Fetch. Care to elaborate, anonymous coward? |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-10-01 10:33:17 PM |
| #7 Good dhimmi. Good boy. Fetch. |
| Posted by: Anonymous6092 2004-10-01 9:00:37 PM |
| #6 Bulldog, have a look at the British govt., which presumably represents the majority of Britons, and see if you can find one member of said govt. (Tony Blair aside) who is not rabidly hostile to Israel. "Yes," the old argument goes, "but that is not necessarily anti-Semitic." OK, so why then does the JEWISH STATE warrant such disproportionate criticism? Why not direct criticism towards deserving nations such as Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudia Arabia? Well, um, er...... |
| Posted by: Bryan 2004-10-01 7:14:24 PM |
| #5 Got anything to back up your insulting insinuation that a large percentage of Britons are anti-Semitic? Just my experiences at London dinner parties and the experience of yamulke-wearing jewish friends who, while at Oxford, were invariably sneered at and made the subject of snide jokes by the polite classes of that university town. Perhaps my and my friends' experiences are not indicative; I hope not. Which is why I asked for some hard evidence. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-10-01 2:49:36 PM |
| #4 What % of Britons share this reptile's views? How many do so quietly? Got anything to back up your insulting insinuation that a large percentage of Britons are anti-Semitic? Presumably these are the same 'majority of Britons who despise Ariel Sharon' you claimed to be aware of earlier. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-10-01 2:34:30 PM |
| #3 What % of Britons share this reptile's views? How many do so quietly? Attitudes toward the middle east, not religion or the death penalty or global warming, are what divide the US and Europe today. This is a difference that can't be split. It may well be the death of NATO. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-10-01 1:15:21 PM |
| #2 Croke wrote a letter to the Guardian on Sept. 28, 2001 saying that the response to 9/11 smacked of "vengeance", which is so unfashionable, dahling. (Read the hand-wringing, pants-wetting Madeleine Bunting article he's agreeing with here. The pertinent stuff is five paragraphs from the end.) I'm assuming that this is the same Piers Croke, on the theory that there can't be too many Piers Crokes living in London. His company also offers Christmas decorations in the "Bridget Jones" look for those who find that old-fashioned green and red just too, too jarring against their sophisticated, understated decor. However, he's not above justifying the deaths of tiny, helpless children if it will allow his company to wring a few more miserable pence from their soon-to-be-bereft parents:
Common sense?? But what of those poor individuals who completely lack any common sense, hmmm? Wouldn't a truly caring person care about them, too? Think of the children! |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2004-10-01 1:01:04 PM |
| #1 A little bit OTT, if I may say. Croke's assertion that: "The natural reaction of most educated Europeans to the information you provide is likely to be ’So it was she who guided those gunships..." Is betrayed by: "...a motion was proposed at a conference of the Association of University Teachers, a leading union for university professors, calling for a total academic boycott against Israel. The motion failed but was supported by one-third of the delegates." In other words, Only 1/3 of some of the most left-wing and passionately unionistic university lecturers backed a call to boycott Israel academically. About what you'd fear, perhaps, but hardly indicative that most university educators are rabidly anti-Semitic. Wilkie should've been sacked from Oxford. His actions have massively discredited the University's reputation. Piers Croke should share the same fate. You can email Gisela Graham at: sales@giselagraham.co.uk. Website here. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-10-01 12:25:48 PM |