r & d

Highlights: When asked to support the continuation of a Jewish State, the other three equivocated. The JFJFP representative said ‘it depends what you mean by Israel’ Yet the JFJFP statement says “Peace in the Middle East … must be seen as just by both sides”. The questioner who asked ‘why should there not be one Jewish State when there are 25 Muslim States and 30 Christian ones?’ was jeered. A number of the audience said ‘Jews use the charge of antisemitism to suppress criticism of Israel’ which is nonsense. (The ‘Livingstone Manoeuvre’) People who say that can never give examples. It is simply an attempt to remove the opprobrium from antisemitism. After the meeting one of the organisers told me that the Panel was ‘balanced’ because three out of the four speakers was Jewish….

One questioner (you know who you are) asked whether Israel ’s ‘racially-based’ citizenship law was the same as the Nazis’ Aryan laws. An unashamedly antisemitic question (he knew exactly what he was saying) but no one seemed to bat an eyelid. I should have remonstrated but I was so surprised I just said something like ‘that question goes very near the border you know’