I was flicking through the TV news channels yesterday, when
I saw an angry-looking American with a drawly, rather camp voice being
interviewed by Sarah Montague for BBC News’s Hardtalk programme. He was talking
about Israel. I heard him say “It’s a crazy country. They’re like a junkie.
Every few years they go to war. They need their fix.”
While avoiding questions about his support for Hezbollah, he
stridently demanded of his interviewer, “How many countries in the last ten
years has Iran planned to attack?” (If you’re feeling strong – or if you happen
to believe Israel is the font of all evil - you can
watch the programme here).
Iran’s vicious repression of its own people, Avemedinnerdad stealing an election, the execution of homosexuals and adulterers, flooding Iraq
with terrorists , building nuclear weapons, calling for Israel to be wiped off
the map and Holocaust denial – yes, Iran, that demi-paradise, acts as a
really useful stick with which to beat the only functioning democracy in
the region.
I checked the information button and discovered that the
scenario under discussion was the possibility of American Jews “falling out of
love with Israel”. 80% of America’s Jews – according to loony-chops, at least – voted for Obama. This change of heart would apparently usher
in an era of peaceful co-existence as the Israelis ditch their tanks and guns and the Jihadists toss aside their rockets and suicide-bomb vests to
indulge in a vast, communal, exessively hairy man-hug.
It didn’t say who the interviewee was, but after a few
minutes I had decided he was probably Jewish (he didn’t possess notably Semitic features,
but his accent sounded distinctly American-Jewish). Not only a Jew, but a
rabidly self-hating one (perhaps he was angry because, unlike most other Jews, he
had been born without a sense of humour).
Who exactly, I wondered, was this awful man, and where had
the BBC found him? A name super duly appeared. Norman Finkelstein. I googled
him.
Academic (sort of – he keeps getting fired). Very pro-Hezbollah (they only want peace, apparently). Obsessive
Israel-hater who "can’t imagine why Israel’s apologists would be offended by a
comparison with the Gestapo” (er… right, Norm). Jews explot the memory of the Holocaust as
an “ideological weapon” (one of his grandparents died in the Holocaust and his
parents survived it - Finkelstein uses them as human shields to protect him against charges of anti-Semitism). Has referred to supporters of Israel as “war criminals”. Has
written five books, mainly about the evils of Israel. Habitually dismisses
critics as hoaxers and fraudsters. Has been barred from entering Israel until
2018. Was denied tenure by DePaul University in 2007 after a feud with noted
Jewish-American lawyer and writer Alan Dershowitz, who'd written a book about Israel's right to exist (he has also attacked Elie
Wiesel and Jerzy Kozinski – well, practically everyone who doesn’t want to see Israel destroyed).
My question here is why would the BBC give someone like this air-time? Okay, he’s a published author, but he isn’t a politician involved in
the Middle East. As far as I know he doesn’t represent any official body
connected to the Middle East. He doesn’t even have a job at a respected
university. What makes him a suitable subject for a half-hour one-on-one interview
on the BBC?
Why would one of the world’s most respected broadcasters – paid for by the British public – think it right to give the oxygen of
publicity to a man who has stated:
It has been a long time since I felt any emotional connection with the state of Israel, which relentlessly and brutally and inhumanly keeps these vicious, murderous wars. It is a vandal state. There is a Russian writer who once described vandal states as Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Israel is Genghis Khan with a computer… sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of hell, a satanic state…
We really have left the realms of rational discourse far behind. Of course, Hardtalk has featured
pro-Israeli guests – but I’d be surprised if any of them would have been invited on if
they’d ever described Arab states in such derangedly intemperate terms.
I spent some time on Finkelstein’s website (I bathed
afterwards) and of all the weird, creepy things I found there, the following struck
me as the most chilling:
American Jewish college students are having their eyes opened… The academic research on Israel is no longer the footnoted “Exodus,” and younger Jews, when they go to college, are walking away with very different picture of Israel.
And that, if true, obviously wouldn’t have anything at all to do with
the fact that the West’s higher learning institutions have been taken over by
nihilist, Jew-hating, terrorist-loving leftists.
Not a nice man - and not a particularly suitable guest for the BBC, I should have thought.
Why don't you pass Finkelstein's name on to Mossad? They have long tentacles. But they do have their hands full so mouthy, publicity-hungry drips tend to get a free-pass.
ReplyDeleteMossad could perhaps more effectively let the BBC know that they are getting irritated by their relentless anti-Israel bias. That should shut them up. As one of my German friends once said " Those Leftie Schweinehunde only put their Porsches into fifth gear while they are within the safety of the car-park."