Well done, Bibi. Yonni would be very proud.
Archive for March, 2009
Not In My Name: A Compendium Of Modern Hypocrisy is published in paperback this week. Here are some of the reviews from when it was published in hardback last summer:
‘A spirited attack’ – Nick Cohen, The Observer
‘Waspish and witty’ – Daily Mail
‘Privileged celebs get a vicious tongue-lashing’ – The Sun
‘Absolutely brilliant – this is a fabulous, clear-eyed book that will frequently make you laugh out loud’ – Jewish Chronicle
‘Burchill and Newkey-Burden are spot on’ – Gay Times
‘They write like Old Testament prophets’ – Church Times
‘At their entertaining best they skewer the worst sort of leftist poseurs’ – Arena
‘A majestic piece of work’ – Sunday Mercury
‘Piercing intelligence’ – Royal Borough Observer
‘Enjoyable…everything from anal sex to Israel and Amy Winehouse”‘ – Australian Literary Review
‘A feverish anthology’ – Word magazine
I was particularly pleased with the Jewish Chronicle review, and its praise for my Israel essay: ‘Where has Newkey-Burden been all my life? He’s every bit as entertaining as Burchill. His essay on Israel haters made me ache with gratitude. I had tears streaming down my face as I turned the pages. Because he’s right, of course.’
You can read that review in full here.
This is a great story from Ben Caspit and Ilan Kfir’s interesting book Netanyahu: The Road To Power, which was published in 1998. It is from when Benjamin Netanyahu worked at the Israeli embassy in Washington and involves his then personal driver, Moshe Hanini.
Netanyahu, as usual, was late for an urgent meeting. Though his tardiness did not usually bother him, this time he told Hanini to step on the gas. Hanini obeyed. Unfortunately, they were caught in a speed trap and pulled off the road by Washington policemen.
The cops asked Netanyahu and Hanini to get out of the car. They saw at once that the driver was carrying a concealed gun. Hanini showed them his permit to carry it. The police, however objected to the fact that the gun was concealed, and, permit notwithstanding, they promptly handcuffed Hanini.
“Bibi, what are we going to do?” the frightened Hanini asked. “Don’t worry, I’ll drive myself to the meeting,” Bibi replied. Hanini, in shock, watched his boss get into the car and drive off.
Hanini was taken to the police station. Netanyahu forgot all about the incident and did not bother to report to anyone at the embassy that his driver had been arrested.
Netanyahu returned to the embassy in the evening, still without having reported the incident. Late that night, one of the security guards asked Netanyahu where Hanini was. Bibi raised his head from some papers and murmured: “Ah, Hanini, there was some problem this morning. I think he was arrested, or something.”
Oh, Bibi!
Can you guess who the highlighted boy is in the photograph below? (If you click on the photo you can make it bigger.)
So who is he? Clue, he’s got a big week ahead of him…
The New Statesman’s decision to hire Alastair Campbell as a guest editor has prompted much fury this week from media people who still hate him for his part in removing Saddam Hussein from power.
I don’t read the New Statesman and I rather like Campbell anyway, so I had no problem with his guest editor spot. The generally wonderful Suzanne Moore did, and she resigned. Others have vowed to cancel their subscriptions and so on.
I normally admire people for taking principled stands, even when I disagree with them. But there have been far better reasons to quit the New Statesman in recent years. Such as when it sneered at the dead of 9/11, or when it further exploited its own poorly-paid writers, taking the whole operation to little more than vanity publishing.
Or, for that matter, when it published this antisemitic cover. It would have been nice to have seen some principled stands then.
…when you can have four?
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my next four releases, all published next month:
Amy Winehouse: The Biography (updated paperback)
Alexandra Burke: Hallelujah, A Star Is Born
Not In My Name: A Compendium Of Modern Hypocrisy (paperback)
Phew…
It’s important that people are made aware of the attempted bombing of a Haifa shopping mall on Saturday evening. The terrorists intended this to be a major catastrophe. The mall was crowded with post-Shabbat shoppers and movie-goers. Thank goodness the attempted attack was foiled.
With a few exceptions, the British media has paid scant attention to the attempted bombing. Journalists and commentators here are far too busy frothing at the mouth about the suggestions of IDF misdemeanours in Gaza, (suggestions which are being steadily discredited incidentally).
It is a familiar equation:
Shaky reports of Israel doing something bad = blanket coverage and discussion across the UK media.
Concrete reports of Israel’s enemies doing something bad = virtual silence in the UK media.
It is an equation that feeds the growing anti-Israel hatred in these shores. Each of us can make a difference by doing our bit to redress the balance. When rockets are fired from Gaza, let people know. When terrorists try and slaughter shoppers in Haifa, let people know. When reports of Israeli “war crimes” are subsequently disproved, let people know.
Make sure people know what Israel is up against.
This is an interesting video from 1978 of a 28-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu (then known as Benjamin Nitay because Netanyahu sounded too much like a native American name for US circles) speaking during a televised debate in America.
His words are prescient. He says that a Palestinian state would become a terrorist state that threatened Israel. Fast forward to the 21st century. Israel withdraws from Gaza, Hamas takeover and bombard southern Israel with rockets.
As he says of the Palestinian aims: “What were are talking about here is not the attempt to build a state, but to destroy one.”
(Looking good, Bibi!)
Here is George Galloway handing £25,000 to Hamas, the group that has slaughtered numerous Israeli civilians with its Qassam rockets.
And here are photographs of just some of the people that have been murdered by Hamas, including two-year-old Dorit Binisian and four-year-old Yuval Abebah.
Question: what sort of person funds such a terror group?
Answer: George Galloway.
I adore Nick Cohen for so many reasons. He once bought me a burger and laughed uproariously at my jokes as we lunched, even though his were much funnier. He described me and Julie’s book Not In My Name as “a spirited attack” in The Observer. His Facebook status updates are always hilarious and brighten up many an afternoon.
But mostly I adore him for his courageous writing. His book What’s Left is a shudderingly great attack on the hypocrisies and other ugliness of the modern British Left. Reading it encouraged Julie and I to write Not In My Name. She once described herself and I as “like Nick Cohen, but the K-Tel version”. I wish.
He now has a new book out called Waiting For The Etonians and gave Oy Va Goy an interview.
I loved What’s Left with all my heart. How does your new book compare with it in content and theme?
Waiting for the Etonians is a collection of journalism some new some already published and updated. Unlike What’s Left it’s a very British book, about my take on what it has been like to live and write over here at the end of an extraordinary and disorientating bubble market. There are two major themes:
* How the political left allowed speculators to run riot until they brought down the roof on the rest of society.
* How the cultural left failed to rise to the challenge from radical Islam.
In essence it’s about people forgetting their best instincts and disaster following.
You enjoy your spats. I do too, particularly your ones with Johann Hari and George Monbiot. Which one have you enjoyed most?
I enjoy arguments not spats. The one thing which shocked me after What’s Left? was released was people lying about what was in the book. Unless they are on drugs or soft in the head, they must sit down and quite deliberately invent. I’m used to it now, and quickly learned that you can’t really argue with people like that. All you can do is say “no I don’t believe that black is white and two and two make five”. It becomes very tedious very quickly. I’ve enjoyed arguing with European and Australian journalists much more than with Brits. Even if they think I’m wrong, they at least attack what I believe rather than invent some fantasy. I wasn’t aware I’d had a spat with Monbiot but I’ve had so many spats I may have forgotten it.
Spats with Monbiot rule. His one with Julie shifted thousands of copies of Not In My Name. On a separate note, what is the maddest thing an antisemite has ever said to you?
That the Israel “lobby” organised the second Iraq War. Madness straight from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, of course, but treated as sane by the London Review of Books, Independent, BBC etc, etc.
If you had to spend a month on a desert island with George Galloway or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which would you choose and why?
There must be a third way!
Why are people such arses, Nick?
Lots of reasons, Chas. In politics the main one is the fear of breaking with the received wisdom of those around them and being cast out of their tribe.
Well said. Waiting For The Etonians is out now.
I went on a long run early this morning. After months of running in the freezing cold, today’s 13 miles breezed past blissfully.
It brought to mind this passage from the fantastic book I’m currently reading: The Light And Fire Of The Baal Shem Tov:
When dawn came, the skies were clear, the trees gave off their fragrance and the earth emitted its own pleasing odor. It seemed as if the whole creation was praying: the birds were chirping overhead, the frogs were croaking in the ponds, the rooster was crowing in the yard, the water was muttering its soft gurgle, and the forest making its gentle murmur.
Johann Hari is one of the first to leap on reports from some IDF soldiers about Operation Cast Lead. He doesn’t let facts get in the way of a good Israel-bashing session.
For instance, in this short article alone:
* He says Operation Cast Lead “killed 1,434 Palestinians”. Not true – closer to half that number.
* He writes about “the 2007 war in Lebanon”. It was in 2006.
* He mentions “all sorts of people who cannot run away: the elderly, the disabled, the pregnant, the terrified”. As a journalist of his standing should know, Israel’s enemies routinely use just such people as booby-traps and suicide bombers but he doesn’t mention that. It’s easy to condemn the IDF from the safety of your London office, I wonder what decisions Hari would make in such circumstances.
* “This is not a few bad apples,” he writes, lending the report far more authority and scope than it warrants.
His article is titled “Dupes? No, were were telling the truth.” Oh the irony.
…for goodness sake make sure you do it properly. This video will show you how.
I see Banksy is back in the news. An anti-capitalist who sells his art for colossal sums and gleefully works for big corporations, he was a natural target for me in Not In My Name: A Compendium Of Modern Hypocrisy. Here’s a passage from my chapter on him:
In times gone by, hypocrites could be seen at art galleries, staring at the exhibits, wondering how long they should spend looking at each piece of work and pretending they knew what the hell any of it meant. Then, during the 1990s, they got excited about Damien Hirst and his formaldehyde-bound animals.
Sickening stuff but not half as nauseating the artistic idol of the modern hypocrite: Banksy.
Publications like The Guardian and The Big Issue treat Banksy with enormous reverence. The modern hypocrite believes that by championing Banksy they have moved out of the art gallery and out onto the street. However, it must be easy to get all wet between the legs about graffiti when you don’t live anywhere near the streets that are destroyed by vandalism. Few Banksy fans live in such communities and therefore few of them are forced to pay increased council tax to have it cleaned up.
When he travelled to the Middle East to paint some images on the West Bank security wall Banksy earned their lifelong admiration. The construction of the security wall has coincided with a 90 per cent reduction in suicide bombings in Israel. Yes, it has caused hardships for some Palestinian people but just for a moment imagine all those Israeli people who were not killed as a result of it being built.
Then imagine Banksy deciding that what the world needed now was him to fly to the Middle East and do some silly drawings on it.
Describing the wall as “the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers” he displayed a level of self-indulgence that was extraordinary even by the standards of the Not In My Name brigade. However, any hopes that his nine drawings might make him a hero for the Palestinian people were dashed when a Palestinian approached him and the following exchange took place:
Palestinian: “You’ve made the wall look beautiful.”
Banksy: “Oh, thanks!”
Palestinian: “We don’t want the wall to look beautiful. We hate this wall. Go home.”
Oh dear, how embarrassing for him!
Me? I don’t know much about art but I know what I don’t like: Banksy.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the negotiations. Whatever realm he currently exists in. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Gilad Shalit and his family.
