Fake outrage as UK press distorts Israeli president’s remarks about anti-Israel sentiment in Britain and then stokes more anti-Israel sentiment
The fake outrage now sweeping through British media and political circles about Shimon Peres’ analysis of anti-Israel hostility in the UK is something to behold. Peres had made a series of remarks about Britain and other European countries to Tablet Magazine.
As anyone who reads the comments can see (link above) Peres was measured and fair in his analysis which centred on long standing pro-Arab sentiment in important parts of the British establishment, attempts to appease Britain’s Muslim population and traditions of anti-Semitism in some quarters. He did acknowledge that there was also some support for Israel in Britain but portrayed that as a minority pursuit largely confined to sections of the British right.
So, nothing much to take issue with here, right? Not according to Conservative parliamentarian Andrew Rosindell who was quoted in the Daily Express as describing Peres’ remarks as “wholly inaccurate” and “inappropriate”. “Maybe he should spend more time here, get to know the British people and realise we defeated the Nazis in the war,” said Rosindell, making the embarrassingly elementary mistake of confusing correlation with causation — Britain’s brave stance in WWII stopped the Holocaust from being completed, but we did not go to war to stop the Holocaust. We went to war to prevent German expansionism and save our own skins.
But it gets worse.
The Daily Mail — Britain’s second best selling newspaper and the best read on the internet — ran a headline saying: “Israel accuses UK of anti-Semitism”. The article slammed Peres for making an “astonishing outburst in which he accused the English of being anti-Semitic”. But he didn’t accuse the English of being anti-Semitic, not at least in the blanket sense in which the Mail implies. And since Peres is very clear on this point — after listing a host of reasons for anti-Israel sentiment he says there is “also anti-Semitism” — this must mean that the distortion is deliberate and malicious.
So even as the Mail indignantly attempts to refute the charge of anti-Israeli behaviour it simply cannot stop itself from engaging in it.
The “pro-Israel” Sunday Telegraph was up to the same tricks, headlining its own article: “Peres: the English are anti-Semitic; English accused of anti-Semitism.”
This all follows a familiar pattern in which anyone who raises the problem of anti-Israel sentiment is routinely accused of launching false accusations of anti-Semitism. The aim is to trivialise the nature of the problem by portraying the critic as hysterical, irrational and unreasonable.
Even more worryingly, the Telegraph quoted James Clappison, the Conservative MP, as saying: “Mr Peres has got this wrong. There are pro and anti-Israel views in all European countries. Things are certainly no worse in this country.” Bear in mind that Clappison is vice-chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel! So if Britain’s best supporters of the Jewish state are so utterly sheepish, so unwilling to acknowledge the extent of the problem in Britain, and so quick to jump on the bandwagon of false accusations against the Israeli president you get a pretty clear impression of the overall environment.
This is not to say that I agree with everything Peres says on the matter. For example, he seems to paint an overly rosy picture of the situation in some other parts of Europe. “…with Germany relations are pretty good, as with Italy and France”, he says.
Unless he is merely thinking about the personal relationship with the heads of government in the respective countries I am not sure that he is right about this. I quote in my book, A State Beyond the Pale, a major opinion poll from Germany in 2004 in which more than half of the respondents said Israeli behaviour towards the Palestinians was similar to the way the Nazis treated the Jews. French duplicity towards Israel is legendary and enduring, and Italy displays much the same anti-Israeli characteristics as all other west European countries.
But all of this could form the basis for a reasonable debate. What no reasonable person can deny is that there is a massive problem in Britain, that Israel is singled out like no other country in the world in the British press, that rising Muslim populations are bringing a new anti-Israeli dynamic into the equation, that the foreign office tends to support the Arabs against Israel — it imposes a Royal boycott on Israel, for example, while there have been several Royal visits to Arab countries — and that in some cases there is a problem with anti-Semitism.
That’s what Peres broadly said, and that is a fair picture of what is going on. The deniers and the distorters merely prove his point.
Tags: Israel
August 2nd, 2010 at 1:24 pm
“Maybe he should spend more time here, get to know the British people and realise we defeated the Nazis in the war,” said Rosindell, making the embarrassingly elementary mistake of confusing correlation with causation — Britain’s brave stance in WWII stopped the Holocaust from being completed, …
but unfortunately, in the process, they closed the door to “Palestine” on those European Jews trying to escape death, before stopping the Nazis.
August 2nd, 2010 at 1:42 pm
An interesting blog post from “Sultan Knish”
Albion and Israel – In the Same Boat, or Running Aground
How does one criticize in a general fashion such apparently general behaviour from the UK while UK media are so insistent on generalizing about Israel when it is a particular minister in question they wish to excoriate?
August 2nd, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Spot on, Robin Shepherd.
August 2nd, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Bullies are always outraged when you point out their behavior to them. It’s thuggish and crude and predictable. And if the Guardian complains it’s obscene.
August 2nd, 2010 at 5:14 pm
In the context of Cameron’s new-found fondness for “plain speaking”, one wonders why the British press are so upset.
Peres has just as much right as Cameron to say what he thinks, and in my opinion his remarks were noteworthy for their restraint.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:22 pm
As an American, I find the anti-Semitism here in the UK to be astounding, obvious, ingrained and endemic. My American friends unanimously agree. It is painfully clear to all outsiders that the UK will do whatever it can to appease its enormous Muslim population and, in turn, go against Israel. Maybe its just not that apparent to those who live in and run Great Britain.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Outrage over this saves one from worrying about the OIC’s attempt to officially declare the rest of the world Islamophobic via the U.N.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:34 pm
The point is clear, those that are not anti-Semitic would understand where Peres was coming from, and why he made the remarks he did. Those that truly are anti-Semitic take umbrage as if to say ‘those f***ing Jews are always causing problems’.
I notice the BBC declined to run this story. Since they’re largely responsible for the anti-Israel sentiment in the UK, which given the climate, leads on to anti-Semitism or certainly justifies those extremist Muslims to commit acts against Jews, they didn’t want to attract attention towards themselves.
My guess is they will have someone like Stephen Fry ridicule Peres’s statement, and he will be happy to do it. With Jews like Fry, I could be anti-Semitic too.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:53 pm
I don’t worry about what the Daily Express or Daily Mail print about Israel or about anything else for that matter as they’re mediocre rags. Meanwhile the article in the Sunday Telegraph strikes me as sloppy journalism, but not necessarily malicious. Opinions both for and against Peres are quoted. The considerable increase in anti-semitic attacks last year in Britain is also mentioned.
One thing I didn’t care for was how Harrison and Blomfield wrote …
‘Mr Peres … said that England’s attitude towards Jews was Israel’s “next big problem”.’
This makes Peres sound threatening, which is a misrepresentation. His previous answer dealt with anti-Israel attitudes in Sweden (and Scandinavia in general), so he was simply moving on to the next country where he felt anti-Israel attitudes were a serious problem. Nothing more than that.
I’ve read the whole interview with Peres and it really is fascinating. Peres is a man of immense intelligence, but no small amount of ego either. It’s amazing how active and lucid he is at the age of 87. In that sense, he’s an inspiration for all of us. Benny Morris himself is a top-notch historian.
I didn’t see any great issue with Peres’s comments about England. They struck me as being historically accurate and fair. There’s long been an element of anti-semitism amongst a section of Brits, but it is only one element in a complex overall picture.
As Cynic has indicated, Britain’s implementation of the 1939 White Paper and Ernest Bevin’s continuation of those policies were one of the most shameful episodes in British history. Britain is in no position to preach to Israel, even though our prime minister seems to think he can.
August 2nd, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Cynic, Peres is not a “minister”, at least not now. The rest is very true.
Moreover, now actually there are differences of tone, intensity and emphasis among the big European countries. He (Shephered) is very righ about modern Germany’s feelings about Israel. Britain is on much the same level as it is. But because it didn’t – at least actually- take part in the gencoide during WWII, it feels itself entitled to bring the ton of bricks on Israel in its press and various shpheres. I also take issue with the historical past which only obfuscates the problem in the sense that it covers the fact that the UK is the most hostile in a way, which is manifsted in the ever present boycott issues. No other EU states does this routinely. No other. (Other than that, the whole boycott-thing and BDS-mania is mainly an Aglo-Saxon fad. And the Aglo countries engage in it mostly, other than the Scandinavians.) Italy allegedly did wholly disturbing and unpardonable things with respect to Israel in the 1970s and 1980s – that mouthed into leashing Arab terrorists onto its own Jewish population, but bear in mind that those polititians were in a sense deeply Maffia-ridden crooks both on the left and the right, and the state of Italy in the past one decade did more than its fair share to rectify this problem by more often than not being Israel’s stalwart ally and introducing a quite clearly unparalleled Holocaust-awareness in its national media (mainly Television). Italy is almost certainly an incomparably more benign country toward Israel now than all the rest, and especially Britain, Spain and Germany. And then I didn’t even touch the uncontestable FACT that it’s by far the least antisemitic country of all the “Big5″ now and historically in the past *despite* the events in the 40s. Punto basta.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Defeated the nazis? Actually the Americans defeated the nazis and the Brits were hanger-ons, supplied and kept afloat by the US taxpayer and military. Without the US help Brits would be speaking German today.
The Brits did so well in WWII that they suffered privation after the war longer than Germany did! They lost their empire and are now in the process of losing Scotland and Wales, too. And where is Germany today? King of Europe, thank you.
There is a direct linkage between Britain’s treatment of the Jews and its fortunes. With the reintroduction of Jewry to England international commercial prowess increased, leading to the pound sterling as internationla benchmark currency. Mercantile power flipped from Holland, Spain and France to England. When England began distancing itself from Jews and Zionism to support of the Arab and Muslim world their powers fell away.
If only England had the R&D and new products to market of, as the French say “shitty little country” Israel it wouldn’t be stuck in sucky nowheresville.
August 3rd, 2010 at 11:33 am
“I don’t worry about what the Daily Express or Daily Mail print about Israel or about anything else for that matter as they’re mediocre rags.”
Whether they are mediocre or not is utterly irrelevant. One could make exactly the same point about Mein Kampf, Der Stürmer and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. What matters here is the enormous influence of these newspapers.
August 3rd, 2010 at 11:39 am
There is an excellent piece about this in the Jerusalem Post by Efraim Karsh who is “professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King’s College London, editor of the Middle East Quarterly and author, most recently, of Palestine Betrayed”. I particularly liked his comments about Cameron. I think it is worth a lengthy extract:
Shimon Peres versus the Brits by Efraim Karsh – 08/02/2010
[Extract]
“AS EARLY as March 1921, the British government severed the vast and sparsely populated territory east of the Jordan River (“Transjordan”) from the prospective Jewish national home and made Abdullah, the emir of Mecca, its effective ruler. In 1922 and 1930, two British White Papers limited Jewish immigration to Palestine – the elixir of life of the prospective Jewish state – and imposed harsh restrictions on land sales to Jews.
Britain’s betrayal of its international obligations to the Jewish national cause reached its peak on May 17, 1939, when a new White Paper imposed draconian restrictions on land sales to Jews and limited immigration to 75,000 over the next five years, after which Palestine would become an independent state in which the Jews would comprise no more than one-third of the total population.
Such were the anti-Zionist sentiments within the British establishment at the time that even a life-long admirer of Zionism like prime minister Winston Churchill rarely used his wartime dominance of British politics to help the Zionists (or indeed European Jewry). However appalled by the White Paper he failed to abolish this “low grade gasp of a defeatist hour” (to use his own words), refrained from confronting his generals and bureaucrats over the creation of a Jewish fighting force in Palestine, which he wholeheartedly supported, and gave British officialdom a free rein in the running of Middle Eastern affairs, which they readily exploited to promote the Arab case. In 1943, for instance, Freya Stark, the acclaimed author, orientalist, and Arabian adventurer, was sent to the US on a seven-month propaganda campaign aimed at undercutting the Zionist cause and defending Britain’s White Paper policy.
That this could happen at the height of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry of which Whitehall was keenly aware offered a stark demonstration of the mindset of British officialdom, which was less interested in stopping genocide than in preventing its potential survivors from reaching Palestine after the war.
So much so that senior Foreign Office members portrayed Britain, not Europe’s Jews, as the main victim of the Nazi atrocities.
THIS ANTI-ZIONISM was sustained into the postwar years as the Labor Party, which in July 1945 swept to power in a landslide electoral victory, swiftly abandoned its pre-election pro-Zionist platform to become a bitter enemy of the Jewish national cause. The White Paper restrictions were kept in place, and the Jews were advised by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin not “to get too much at the head of the queue” in seeking recourse to their problems.
Tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors who chose to ignore the warning and to run the British naval blockade were herded into congested camps in Cyprus, where they were incarcerated for years.
“Should we accept the view that all the Jews or the bulk of them must leave Germany?” Bevin rhetorically asked the British ambassador to Washington.
“I do not accept that view. They have gone through, it is true, the most terrible massacre and persecution, but on the other hand they have got through it and a number have survived.”
Prime Minister Clement Attlee went a step further by comparing Holocaust survivors wishing to leave Europe and to return to their ancestral homeland to Nazi troops invading the continent.
While these utterances resonated with the pervasive anti-Semitism within British officialdom (the last high commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan Cunningham, for instance, said of Zionism, “The forces of nationalism are accompanied by the psychology of the Jew, which it is important to recognize as something quite abnormal and unresponsive to rational treatment”), Britain’s Middle Eastern policy also reflected the basic fact that as occupiers of vast territories endowed with natural resources (first and foremost oil) and sitting astride strategic waterways (e.g., the Suez Canal), the Arabs had always been far more meaningful for British interests than the Jews.
As the chief of the air staff told the British cabinet in 1947, “If one of the two communities had to be antagonized, it was preferable, from the purely military angle, that a solution should be found which did not involve the continuing hostility of the Arabs.”
One needs look no further than David Cameron’s statements on the Middle East to see this anti-Israel mindset is alive and kicking. In the summer of 2006, when thousands of Hizbullah missiles were battering Israel’s cities and villages, he took the trouble of issuing a statement from the tropical island on which he was vacationing at the time condemning Israel’s “disproportionate use of force.”
Four years later, while on an official visit to Turkey, he went out of his way to placate his Islamist host, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by criticizing Israel’s efforts to prevent the arming of the Hamas Islamist group, which, like its Lebanese counterpart, had been lobbing thousands of missiles on Israel’s civilian population for years.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=183419
August 3rd, 2010 at 11:50 am
“Actually the Americans defeated the nazis and the Brits were hanger-ons”
1) In actual fact, the Russians made an even greater contribution to the defeat of Germany and her allies.
2) The U.S. had to be bombed into joining the war. She was a very late arrival at the party not because of conscience or the Jews (definitely not because of the Jews) but for reasons of expediency.
3) In the years before she became part of the war effort, the U.S. had acted in a most despicable fashion towards Britain. Providing out-of-date equipment and ships in exchange for much money and valuable bases was hardly the act of a friend.
August 3rd, 2010 at 11:58 am
@Wolf T.:
Actually, until the Soviets were attacked by the Nazis and started fighting back, the Nazi’s campaign was quite successful.
The Americans won the Pacific arena, the soviets won the Eastern European one and the west of Europe was saved by the collaboration of the US, Canada, England, France, Australia and a few others.
No single country won the war and anyone who claims that is an ignoramus…
Robin Shepherd says: This is basically correct, I think. It is nonetheless true that if Britain had fallen in 1940 there would have been no beach head for US and other troops to invade Europe from the West. One can only speculate about what that would have meant but defeating Hitler would obviously have been vastly more difficult and would have taken much longer. Even if it was possible to defeat the Nazis the Holocaust would have continued for much longer and would have claimed even more lives.
August 3rd, 2010 at 1:03 pm
@Jonathan Karmi
“I don’t worry about what the Daily Express or Daily Mail print about Israel or about anything else for that matter as they’re mediocre rags…”
This is a throw away statement (in my view) and should be reconsidered, with respect. (Please excuse me Jonathan I do not disagree with much of what you post.) It’s not important whether one considers one paper to be better than another. It is the readerhip numbers that are of concern here. If 4 newspapers report the incident in more or less the same terms, the message has been propogated millions of times, quoted, cut and pasted and sent around as a fact. This is the concern.
August 3rd, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Dear Friends: “Antisemitiism from different sources against jewish people and Israel is a jewish disaster, and permanent, negative, and aggressive factor in the world”. Presiident S.Peres used only FACTS and acted PATRIOTIC, EMOTIONAL, but not professionaly. Only FREE, DEMOCRATIC MEDIA can use FREEDOM of EXPRESSION on the basis of truthful FACTS-can professionaly make a “boxer knock out”. Facts against Israel and jewish people are very painful for a great “OLD ENGLAND DEMOCRACY”. I think professionals and people of Great Britain have to save and promote very famous “OLD FASHION DEMOCRACY” itself. Sincerely, Vladimir
August 3rd, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Its interesting that Cameron could make his remarks about Israel in Turkey to a round of applause back home, but when Peres returns the favor, and speaks truth to (a one-time) power the whining and howling starts up.
Some like to dish it out, but cannot take it back in return.
August 3rd, 2010 at 3:46 pm
The fact that the Tories are being lead by a pale imitation of Margaret Thatcher indicates how low British politics have become. Not that Barack Obama is any better.
August 3rd, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Sir Edward Spears was one of the more virulent anti Semites in Britain both during World War II and afterwards.
August 3rd, 2010 at 5:49 pm
“I don’t worry about what the Daily Express or Daily Mail print about Israel or about anything else for that matter as they’re mediocre rags…”
In response to Joshua and Another Joshua and any other Joshua who happens to stop by …
This was not intended as a throwaway line. I genuinely think the two publications and their respective websites are of poor quality, so the question is do they matter ?
On one hand yes, the two articles will reinforce negative opinions about Israel amongst a large number of British people and given what Peres was actually saying, this is unfair, as the articles took sentences out of context and misrepresented him.
On the other hand no, because the distorted drivel that appears in the British media is symptomatic of an increasingly dumbed-down society. Britain has some lovely thatched cottages, charming country pubs and beautiful stately homes, but the rest of it ? For sheer grimness and shabbiness, you have to go to Eastern Europe to find anything that matches large areas of Britain’s inner cities and (former) industrial towns.
Look at our car industry. Look at manufacturing in general. Look at the clueless England football team. The ‘greatness’ of Great Britain is waning fast.
Will the UK play any sort of role in the eventual resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict ? If it does it will be fairly minor. The Israelis will certainly look to keep the UK at arm’s length, as it will not be perceived as a helpful or neutral contributor.
The Israelis and the Palestinians really need to sit down alone and hammer out a solution. They know the area and they know the history, even though the official narratives are presently wide apart. The Israelis have done stupid things, like building settlements in provocative locations and isolated corners of the West Bank, and the Palestinians have committed countless violent and ultimately self-destructive acts. But so long as both sides can resolve the issue of the Temple Mount and surrounding areas in Jerusalem, all other West Bank issues are eminently solvable. And once agreement is reached, the Hamas regime in Gaza will wither on the vine.
At present the problem is a lack of strong, effective leadership on both sides. Someone needs to create a new narrative which admits that both Jews and Palestinians have been victims of history in different ways and neither side is going anywhere, so let’s just find the best solution for both peoples. And it means selling compromise to the respective constituencies.
Anyway, I don’t think Britain has much to contribute to the process, which is why I don’t overly worry about the Daily Mail or Daily Express. For most followers of Robin’s site, this stuff is pretty unpleasant, but there’s not much we can do about it without circumstances changing in the Middle East itself.
ps. As Robin’s book elucidates, there is a civilisational malaise affecting all of Western Europe and not just Britain. But Britain’s newspapers are unique, in that many seem to be aimed at people with IQs of around 50. Maybe with good cause.
August 3rd, 2010 at 8:35 pm
in answer to english parliamentarians, moslems, and the jewish ‘toadys’ :
METHINKS THEY PROTEST TOO MUCH. i have been around a long time and remember the pre and post world war two era and i see what is going on now. to paraphrase and old phrase: ANTISEMITISM IS AS ANTISEMITISM DOES. they are afraid to upset the muslim minority that will soon become a majority so they take it out on the tiny minority that is productive and patriotic, namely the jews. it is easier to pick on a small group of people who do not plot terrorist attacks on air planes and subway stations.
as to the jews who are afraid to step on the masters’ toes, GIRD UP YOU LOINS LIKE MEN!!!! TELL IT LIKE IT IS. they already hate you any anyhow. at least they will have some respect.YES. GREAT BRITAIN IS ANTISEMITIC. IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN. THAT IS THE TRUTH.
August 4th, 2010 at 2:14 am
No serious person can deny that the English have exhibited a marked degree of jew hatred starting in the middle ages and culminating in the blatant abrogation of the Balfour declaration to appease Arabs. Soon the Brits will drown in an Islamic sea of Sharia and dhimitude….serves them right; we will soon see if they have the balls to rescue themselves (I think not) instead of scapegoating the heroic jews busy building their country and fighting the Islamic oppressor bravely while the timid brits once more attempt to appease the fascists.
August 4th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
BY THEIR VERY DISTORTION OF PERES WORDS THEY HAVE PROVEN THE CASE OF ANTISEMITISM AGAINST GB.THUMBS DOWN.
August 4th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
With regard to England, Whales, and Scotland, I am looking forward to some shadenfreude. If Great Britain takes part in the establishment of a Palestinian state, thus making Israel smaller, in the future those who need asylum in Israel from the Caliphate will have to settle for a postage stamp-size flat. They will have to sleep standing up, but will be glad of it anyway.
August 5th, 2010 at 10:07 am
Whilst Peres maintains THAT IN England there is anti-semitism, those falsely accusing him of saying that he said England is anti-semitic fall head first into their own messy libel, by these accusers identifying themselves as the the anti-semites Peres is referring to. Haha. Irony of all ironies no?
August 5th, 2010 at 10:36 am
@Jonathan Karmi
I am the other Joshua.
I agree that face to face talks and dealing with the issues at hand can resolve the problem. In fact there have always been solutions to the problem throughout from the end of the 19th cetury until now. But negotiations usually to succeed must come from a position of strength. A compromise means that one gives more in negotiations than what one might plan to , whilst the other has to accept less than it wants. The present climate is that Israel’s position on the map is being undermined continuously, religiously, politically and legally,and that it is not being recognised, that makes this conflict so difficult. The question is really why is this happening and what can Israel do to reverse the situation.
I have read Melanie Phillips column in the JC about 2 weeks ago on Robert Aumann’s “Game Theory” (a Nobel Prize laureate in economics) He maintains that if you want peace NOW one must prepare for war first i.e. to be prepared. Game Theory as I understand it, and how it presents itself, is a game of paradoxes.
http://www.aish.com/jw/me/97755479.html
and on You tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJAFRF75OVA
August 5th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
@Another Joshua
Fully agree that Israel needs to be strong. I’m a great believer in ‘disproportionate’, ie. leave no room for doubt.
What I said about direct negotiations is indeed optimistic. There is massive asymmetry between the two sides in so many respects – culture, values, democracy, rule of law, education, economic and technological development, military strength … you name it.
And it’s particularly difficult when the other side has a massive propensity to self-delusion, for example a readiness to swallow daft conspiracy theories, which is something common right across the Muslim world (eg. 9/11 committed by the US administration or by the Mossad). When I was briefly learning Arabic in London, the teacher was a History graduate from the University of Cairo in his thirties. He told us that Israel won its 1948 War of Independence because the Russians had sold Egypt consignments of rifles that fired backwards.
Either that or the troops were taught to hold them the wrong way round. We’ll never know.
August 8th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Robin
.
” Peres was was measured and fair in his analysis ”
He said “There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary.”
You are suggesting that he did not say “the English are anti Semitic” and you are right…but the implication head butts one.
Teddy Bear
“those that are not anti-Semitic would understand where Peres was coming from, and why he made the remarks he did. ”
That is straight out of Joan of arc when she asks what crime she has committed and is told she should know.