Who are the racists here?

There has been a massive campaign by Unions, leftist and Muslim organisations in Tower Hamlets East London to confront a demo by the EDL (English Defence League) planned for 20 June.

Here is the UAF's web page about it (the UAF is a front for the Socialist Workers Party):

http://uaf.org.uk/2010/06/unions-and-mosques-back-east-london-demo-against-edl/

The accompanying leaflet on the webpage talks about the EDL being a bunch of violent Nazis. The EDL actually has nothing about the demo on their webpage but there are details of a recent EDL march in Newcastle. In complete contradiction to the narrative presented by the UAF, it is clear that the EDL is intent on peaceful, legal - and specifically non-racist - demonstration as is clear from the following statement:

"Thank you all for your patience in waiting for this information, as you all know this Saturday the English Defence League will be holding a peaceful demonstration to oppose militant Islam in Newcastle upon Tyne....Our stewards and Northumbria police will be working side by side to make sure that anyone that is trying to disrupt our march will be ejected from it, racist chants and slurs will not be accepted ..."

In fact all violence at previous EDL demos appreas to have come from the UAF who have confronted them.

But here is the really interesting thing. What the UAF is not telling anybody is that the REAL event planned in Tower Hamlets on 20 June has nothing to do with the EDL but is an Islamist hatefest at the Troxy. This event - featuring some of the vilest, most racist anti-semitic Islamfascists around - was exposed here for example:

http://hurryupharry.org/2010/05/17/poxy-preachers-at-the-troxy-bilal-philips-and-hussein-yee/

The EDL demo was, I understand, simply a planned protest against this event. So, to say that the UAF has spun a different narrative on what is going on is an incredible understatement. They are deliberately covering up/ignoring an event where the speakers would genuinely be stirring racial violence (in their distorted view Muslims can never be racists or offensive of course). But a group of people demonstrating peacefully against them - well that is something to get very angry about. They must be the racists. It is a classic case of reason turned on its head.

But in the last few hours there has been a major development. As a result of the Council issuing a statement yesterday requiring the 'no hate pledge' for events at the Troxy, the Troxy has decided to cancel the conference as they felt that they could not meet the pledge:

http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/towerhamlets/advertiser/news/story.aspx?brand=ELAOnline&category=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsela&itemid=WeED10%20Jun%202010%2012%3A11%3A44%3A280

Jewish Chronicle gets it all wrong

The Jewish Chronicle seems to be doing its best recently to match the rest of the main stream media in the political bias and inaccuracy of its reporting. The article here (click it to enlarge) titled "EDL? This is what you get" takes the biscuit as one of the most ill-informed and ludicrous I have seen.

The article blames the English Defence League for violence that erupted in the East End on 20 June after a march/demonstration by UAF (United Against Fashion) even though the EDL was not even present. The UAF is the ultimate "Red-Brown" alliance being a front for the Socialist Workers Party but with strong support from the Muslim Association of Britain (which is part of the Muslim Brotherhood). To give you an indication of where the UAF really stands on racism, Weyman Bennett of its central committee has been accused of stating that Israeli Jews “should go back to where they came from … New York or wherever” (a claim he has never denied). This is the very same Weyman Bennett who is quoted at the end of the Jewish Chronicle article to support the JC's version of events.

I already wrote about the background to this story here. Basically, the EDL had planned to demonstrate against an Islamist hatefest conference due to take place at the Troxy in Tower Hamlets on 20 June featuring some of the vilest, most racist anti-semitic Islamists around. Fortunately, the event was cancelled under pressure from the local council and so the EDL demonstration was also cancelled. However, the UAF's planned massive march to confront the EDL still went ahead. Among the standard blood curdling speeches, was this this speech by George Galloway that includes the statement "If you dare touch the beard of a Muslim man in Tower Hamlets you will have to fight your way through 10,000 dead bodies first". Not suprisingly, the march ended with hundreds of duly incited Muslim men rampaging through the East End attacking Police and passers-by. Not that you would realise that from reading the JC article, which tries to cover up the Islamist violence. However, the East London advertiser reports:

• Despite no EDL presence, the protesters became agitated and ‘surged up and down’ the Whitechapel Road. According to the police statement, there were ‘concerted efforts by the crowd to attack people at random.' Police officers themselves were also attacked by the crowd ‘at points throughout the afternoon.’

Compare all the above with the Jewish Chronicle version of events. Also, while the Jewish Chronicle has run several articles demonising the EDL, it has never investigated or even questioned the agenda of the UAF who (unlike the EDL) pose a genuine threat to the Jewish community. Also the JC's failure to check out the background of the UAF spokeman it quoted is an example of extremely poor journalism.

But what I found most worrying of all was that, coupled with the CST quote in the article, was the message to Jews that essentially says: Do not try to to defend yourself against Islamic extremism. Any violence committed by the Islamists that occurs as a result of you trying to defend yourself - even if you are not actually involved in that violence - is your fault and we will hold you to blame for it. The irony is that this is exactly the message the world has been sending to Israel (a message the JC has, rightly, been condemning).

p.s. The JC has been giving prominent space to a range of anti-Zionists to vent their spleen recently, and has also allowed many ridiculous claims to go unchallenged. One of these persistent claims is the notion that the American organisation JStreet is somehow 'pro-Israel' (a claim which is stated yet again by the increasingly unhinged Jonathan Freedland on page 35 this week). I think the JC should take the trouble to find out about what JStreet really stands for by reading respected commentators like Noah Pollack here, or find out about the extent of Islamic/Arab funding of JStreet here.

The increasingly unhinged Jewish Chronicle

The JC's steady morphing into a mixture of the Guardian/Haaretz continues unabated (see here, here and here for some of my previous reports on this,  and there is also the excellent website http://jcwatch.wordpress.com/ that  is dedicated to the subject).

In fact, not only does the JC increasingly share the Guardian/Haaretz worldview (i.e. extreme left wing and grudgingly acknowledging Israel's 'right to exist' while frequently providing a platform to vicious anti-Israel bigots) but it is increasingly dominated by writers who really are from the Guardian/Haaretz. I have already noted the fact that Haaretz stooge Anschel Pfeffer is their primary Israel news reporter and we are now also getting the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland on the Comments page more or less every week now (I can save you the bother of reading what he writes since every piece can be summarised as either "as a Jew I wish to express my disgust with the Israeli government" or "as a Jew I wish to express my disgust with orthodox Jews").

Most Jews in the UK are strongly pro-Israeli and they assume that the one newspaper they can rely on to share their views on Israel is the JC. Most of these people get their ONLY news about Israel from the JC and they assume - if anything - that it is strongly biased in favour of Israel. To show how  they are being deceived here are some highlights from today's issue:

•  The whole front page (and page 11) is taken up with Pfeffer's scare story "Two months to sleep soundly" in connection with the growing threats from Iran and Syria, ignoring the irony that it is  Pfeffer and his left-wing colleagues who have continually warned Israel not to take action against Iran as there is no real threat.  I guess in his world he would rather live with a nuclear Iran - and hence not sleep soundly - than stop Iran from getting the bomb. Of course, Pfeffer has failed to report any of the genuinely good news from Israel in the last few weeks such as the shekel being the strongest currency in the world in 2013, and Israel being on the verge of energy independence with the beginning of the gas flowing from its enormous off-shore fields.  In fact, his other main article this week is on Page 13 titled "Thousands hit by Israeli airline strike"

•  On Page 21 (the Judaism page) we have the most offensive article of the week "We must take a stand against settler violence". This is the ultimate inversion of reality perpetuated especially by antisemitic NGOs. There are an incredibly tiny number of minor incidents recorded against Palestinians by 'settlers' (most of which incidents later turn out to be either hoaxes or, as in the case of Mosque daubings, to have been the work of Arabs) - far fewer incidents per head of population than there are acts of brutal racist violence in London. Yet there is a genuine - but unreported by the JC - intifada taking place against Jews in East Jerusalem and in Judea and Sumaria. This involves daily targetting of cars and even school buses with rocks that sometimes end up killing the occupants. The JC has failed to report on any of this, which has been going on now for several months - not even bothering with the story of the small child Adelle Biton who has been on emergency support and unconscious since she was injured in such a rock attack last month. Today was her 3rd birthday.
• On Page 26 with have the full page "JC Essay" by 'broadcaster' John Ware titled "How peace gap might just be bridged" which is full of the usual Kumbayar cliches about the Palestinians really wanting peace if only the Israelis would not be so aggressive, and including gems of wisdom like:

"Does any rational Israeli seriously believe that score of checkpoints, entry permits to Jerusalem, construction of settlements, restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, can continue in perpetuity without some sort of violent outlet, sooner or later"

It is funny how nobody expects Israelis to turn violent even though they have to suffer checkpoints at every single public building they enter, are currently banned from building in their own capital city, are not allowed ANY movement into Palestinian controlled areas, and actually have to face the continual real terrorism of the Palestinians.
But then again it is funny how nobody expects UK Jews to turn violent when they have to put up with the nonsense in the JC week on week.....

• On Page 2 (for the second time in 3 weeks) we have a story "Board Oxfam links stay" about the Board of Deputies link with Oxfam, which was always a scandal and should have been stopped immediately when news got out that Oxfam was funding the antisemitic, terrorist supporting Palestinian charity Miftah. But both articles have simply parroted  statements from Oxfam which not only whitewash the affair but are factually incorrect. Hence both articles are clearly supportive of the Board's ludicrous decision to continue its link with Oxfam. 
• On Page 4 we have an article "BNP set for trouncing in local election" which is one of the typically dozens of articles in any one week that focus on the 'extreme right-wing threat to Jews'. More often than not these focus obsessively on the EDL which is actually the only genuinely pro-Israel political organization in the country.  What you will almost never see in the JC is anything about either Islamic antisemitism or extreme left antisemitism. In fact you are more likely to see articles by those very Islamists and leftists (indeed it is not a joke that the JC has actually used, as its source of material on the EDL, the anti Semite Weyman Bennett who is a leader of the viciously anti-Israel, violent, socialist UAF which the JC laughingly refers to simply as an "anti racist organization").
• On Page 22 we have the Editorial and letters. As usual you will not find a single word of support for Israel on this page (typically Israel is either ignored or criticised) 
• On Page 23 we have the Jonathan Freedland commentary section. No further comment required.