Respected British commentator warns that Israel may precipitate “the end of the world”
This week’s anti-Israeli polemic by the widely celebrated British commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is so bizarre that I am not even sure that that headline is quite correct. But as I endlessly repeat, if you subscribe to an agenda which is not only counter-factual but outright irrational as well there can be no surprise if, having said things which are simply nutty, you leave yourself open to misinterpretation. What was that line from Orwell about insincerity as the great enemy of clear writing?
So try this from her piece on Yom Kippur (coincidence?), on Monday, ending an impassioned article about how America must stop grovelling to “fanatic and aggressive” Israel, how there are positive signs in global nuclear disarmament, but how even Iranian oppositionists would rush to their nation’s defence if the evil Israelis attacked.
After some truly weird remarks about Iran’s leaders trying to prove they had “really big willies” by test firing missiles, and the hippie-day rejoinder: “Listen people, we need to talk about Israel. And soon. Like now,” she concluded with the following:
“The Israeli human rights activist Gideon Spiro bravely asks that his country be subject to the same rules as Iran and all others in the Middle East: “Rein in Israel, compel it to accept a regime of nuclear disarmament and oblige it to open all nuclear, biological and chemical facilities and missile sites to international inspection.” The US has leverage because it maintains and funds Israel. If Obama shies away from this, there can be no moral justification to go for Iran or North Korea or any other rogue state. And the leader whose election and dreams gave hope to millions thereby hastens the end of the world.”
Meaning?
Ok. Let’s look at those last three sentences. I suppose it could mean that the Israelis are about to unleash the apocalypse by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. If Barack Obama does not step in to stop it, the entire world, all of it, will come to an end.
But does that mean that Obama will be responsible for “the end of the world” or Israel? Or perhaps there is a shared responsibility. If so, what proportion of responsibility is carried by either side?
Or hold on, given what she has said previously about global disarmament does it mean that if Obama does not force Israel to disarm this will make it impossible for him to effect the disarmament of “other” rogue states and that soon enough all rogue states will have nuclear weapons. This will then lead to a massive nuclear conflagration, “the end of the world”?
I suspect that, if you really wind your way through the hysteria, that is what she meant. But it still does not get her off the hook.
We are still left, are we not, with the nasty smell of something familiar from this article. For which people, in her worldview, truly holds the fate of the world in its hands? Whose behaviour ultimately will decide whether we live or die? When you boil it all down, to whom are we really beholden? Which people now has to be stopped, lest they kill us all?
Familiar?
But make up your own mind about what she is saying and the mentality which drives her. Click here for the full article?
Tags: Israel
October 1st, 2009 at 8:29 am
You see, the column starts with:
“Freedom of expression, we were given to understand, is one of the valves in Europe’s heart that must remain open to keep our continent alive and healthy. In good faith I exercise that freedom in this column. Let us see if readers and interest groups will support my right to write what follows even if they violently disagree with my observations.”
The lady wants the freedom to make a joke of herself — there is no other explanation. Her bizarre ravings in this piece really don’t merit much else but pity for her poor confused ramblings.
But since you ask — my reading is that she thinks that if Obama doesn’t do to Israel what she wants him to do, the end of the world will be his fault… Eh, maybe she’s a secret soulmate of Ahmadinejad, he also has those end-of-the-world fantasies, hoping for the coming of the Mahdi? Ah, Obama is her Mahdi, if he does the right thing!!! It’s a case of Obamamahdia!
October 1st, 2009 at 10:11 am
HonestReporting picks up on her article here:
http://tinyurl.com/ydxepte
October 1st, 2009 at 11:38 am
“Respected British commentator”
Not by decent people:
1) Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a disgrace by Stephen Pollard
“Long standing readers will be aware of my contempt for the Yazzmonster. I haven’t mentioned her witterings of late because I have grown bored by her monstrous ego and jaw dropping stupdity. Shooting fish in a barrel can grow dull.
But her piece today is so utterly vile that I feel I have to give her what was once called the oxygen of publicity, if only so that those of you who see and hear her when she pops up on the airwaves are aware of the sort of person she is.
Her piece is one long tirade of bigotry”
http://tinyurl.com/yb5wuzv (cache)
2) And here’s Professor Norman Geras on the “moral disgrace” that has “infected wide sections of the Western media and left-liberal opinion”.
Yasmin rides again
http://tinyurl.com/aoqac
3) Melanie Phillips nails the true measure of the woman:
Here we go again
“Even after this ludicrous theory had run into the sand, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent fearlessly risked what she described as ‘the wrath of Moses’ to suggest that LFI headed a Jewish conspiracy to manipulate the British government into support for Israel.
The ‘wrath of Moses’, eh? Yasmin’s got the Goebbeldegook for Jews off pat. But we can’t call this poison by its proper name, because that would only prove her claim that the all-powerful Jews use such labels to suppress the evidence of their perfidy.”
http://tinyurl.com/yby25gs
October 1st, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Joshua,
I can’t fault a word you’ve written, but to be fair to Robin, I’m sure he meant to write, “‘Respected’ British commentator”.
Cheers.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Robin, thanks for your insight. Johan Hari is another who shares this platform in the Independent and wears his Israel-hating credentials so proudly on his sleeve. I’m just glad there are people like you around who are committed and articulate enough to provide an antidote to this morally bankrupt and hysterical narrative that is lapped up with such smug satisfaction by the majority of the liberal-left.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:21 pm
“but to be fair to Robin, I’m sure he meant to write, “‘Respected’ British commentator”.”
Nah, I don’t believe that for a moment. I think he meant to suggest that, until this piece, he held her in the absolute highest regard. :-)
Robin Shepherd says: I actually used to write fan mail. I’m so disillusioned….
October 1st, 2009 at 7:12 pm
As far back as 2003 I wrote an email to her. It wasn’t exactly fan mail and I have never received a reply.
Here it is, the article seems to be unavailable now but it dealt with her losing her “Jewish friends”.
8th March 2003
Dear Ms Alibhai-Brown,
While I accept that not all legitimate criticism of Israel should be construed as anti-Semitic your article of 6 March 2003 in The Independent http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/yasmin_alibhai_brown/story.jsp?story=384215 clearly is. One particular phrase among many illustrates this well enough I believe, and it is this phrase above all that has prompted me to write to you:
You write, “Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust, yet today they are being made to pay the highest price for it.”
To suggest that Israeli’s defence of itself is in any way comparable to the policy of Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews is an insult to the memory of those victims, it is another example of the misuse of a very powerful word, only too common in these times.
In my humble opinion “the price” being imposed on the Palestinians, if that is how you choose to describe their suffering, is to be blamed on their own corrupt leadership. To suggest that Israel in defending itself from Palestinian terrorists today is in some way avenging itself for the crimes of others in the past is simply absurd, and yet another attempt to connect Israel to just about anything which would demonise The Jewish State.
I am aware of a connection between Iraq and Israel. The payments made directly by Saddam to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and to the families of “fallen” Palestinian “fighters for example. Isn’t it about time the world community made the connection between Iraqi sponsorship and Palestinian terrorism?
Israel is not making Palestinians pay for anything, Israel is defending itself. Perhaps I’ve overlooked it, but I don’t seem to find in your articles any condemnation of Palestinian terrorism. No doubt like Cherie Blair you understand them and feel that their actions are quite acceptable.
There is no spiral of violence. There is instead a constant effort by the Palestinian Authority to destroy the State of Israel and murder, or massacre, whichever you prefer, innocent Israelis.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2831515.stm
Friday, 7 March, 2003, 22:32 GMT
“A day of violence across the Palestinian territories has left at least two Israeli civilians and seven Palestinian gunmen dead.”
Please note Ms Alibhai-Brown, that’s at least two ISRAELI CIVILIANS and seven PALESTINIAN GUNMEN dead. Perhaps this is why there is an imbalance in the body counts on each side?
As a Jew I am proud and glad to count my friends from all walks of life, all religions, and racial and cultural backgrounds, but like you I too find I am losing them, perhaps for the same reason that you are losing your Jewish friends.
Shalom, may peace be with you.
Wandering Jew
“In the game of cat and mouse it serves no purpose
for the mouse to say, ‘I’m not playing!’.”
– Itzak Rabin
October 1st, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Alibhai-Brown: “History has made too many Israelis fear all humanity in perpetuity…”
Jim Riordan (10 days ago): “Jews keep on thinking the world is out to get them”
http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/jimriordan/Jews-keep-on-thinking-the.5667658.jp
Robin Shepherd: ‘The more one enters the world of the Israel-haters, the more obvious it becomes that it is a pathological condition, itself reflective of multi-layered pathologies inside it and constitutive of it’
(“A State Beyond The Pale”)
October 1st, 2009 at 8:08 pm
“Johan Hari is another who shares this platform in the Independent and wears his Israel-hating credentials so proudly on his sleeve.”
Here’s what Hari wrote on Israel’s 60th birthday:
“I would love to be able to crash the birthday party with words of reassurance…..But I can’t do it. Whenever I try to mouth these words, a remembered smell fills my nostrils. It is the smell of shit.”
http://tinyurl.com/6597to
So many lies, so much hatred.
October 7th, 2009 at 2:55 am
Robin, thanks to CiFWatch I have been introduced to your blog, which is now tacked firmly to the toolbar on my browser so I’ll see it and read it regularly.
Your commentary about “widely celebrated British commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown” whom I had never heard of – I don’t think sshe is as widely respected as yu give her credit for, and not just because I have not heard of her – has an interesting little point.
I refer to the demand by Ms Alibhai-Brown that “America must stop groveling to “fanatic and aggressive” Israel”. This is an excellent example of the bizarre belief that Israel, a country barely the size of one of America’s smaller states, and with a population less than that of several American metro areas, somehow “controls” the US.
Indeed, a smell of something other than an interest in political science wafts from demands like hers.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:15 am
The growing hatred of Israel that we are seeing today is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Read Psalm 83. What is it all leading to? Read Isaiah 2