Zionism is bullshit. Three thousand years ago my Celtic ancestors were casting sacred swords into the lakes of Switzerland. Can I go back and claim Switzerland? No. Of course not. It’s nonsense.
I am rather proud of that critique, which still seems to me a short and elegant refutation of the basis of Zionism. I have never seen it answered with anything approaching intellectual success. I am especially proud as it came to me in a moment of inspiration, in the final 12 seconds of an allocated three minute speech to a crowd that stretched further than I could see.
A Ghanaian came up to me in an Accra hotel yesterday and said “Craig Murray. Zionism is bullshit. I miss London.” He then dashed off. It reminded me what a small and interconnected world we live in, as well as leading me to dig out the reference.
I have another motive in posting it. This blog now has a much larger regular readership than it did a few years ago. In particular, following the referendum campaign, it has a much larger readership in Scotland. Since I returned to Scotland to campaign in the referendum and then decided to stay until we achieve independence, which I am determined will be before I kick the bucket, a number of voices have been raised to query who I am and where I come from, in the wider sense of the latter. Sometimes those voices have been hostile or suspicious. I shall therefore give the odd riffle through the back catalogue. You could of course buy my autobiography Murder in Samarkand, thus helping us to eat.
I remember you talking about collating your blogs and writings into a book called Zionism is Bullshit. Is that an idea you could resurrect?
A short note relating to Scott and Co post. Just found out that Edinburgh City Council will now accept payment for bills that have already gone to Scott and Co. Do you think the emails they got about your case had anything to do with that?
Hi Beth,
That’s brilliant news. Where did you find it? If you are right, I certainly hope we had an effect. Tommy Sheppard, my MP, was badgering Edinburgh Council on my behalf which may have had an effect.
I was in the High Street office with my daughter trying to sort out her account and the person in front at the door reception was told his arrears had been sent to Scott and Co. He asked if he could pay that day in the council office and he was told ‘Yes of course you can’. When we had our appointment I asked the advisor just to double check and she confirmed it.
We atone for the loss of life and suffering visited upon innocents because of Palestinian violence. there is still the need, I think, also to say that no national movement has been so unfairly penalized, defamed, and subjected to disproportionate retaliation for its sins as has the Palestinian. The Israeli policy of punitive counterattacks (or state terrorism) seems to be to try to kill anywhere from 50 to 100 Arabs for every Jewish fatality.
The devastation of Lebanese refugee camps, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, and orphanages; the summary arrests, deportations, house destructions, maimings, and torture of Palestinians on the West bank and Gaza, the use of poisonous dehumanizing rhetoric by senior Israeli politicians, soldiers, diplomats, and intellectuals to characterize all Palestinian acts of resistance as terrorists and Palestinians as nonhuman (“cock-roaches,” “grasshoppers,” “two-legged vermin,” etc.) these, and the number of Palestinian fatalities, the scale of material loss, the physical, political, and psychological deprivations, have tremendously exceeded the damage done by Palestinians to Israelis. And, I must add, the remarkable disparity, or asymmetry, between, on the one hand, the position of the Palestinians as an aggrieved, dispossessed, and sinned-against people and, on the other, Israel as “the state of the Jewish people” and the direct instrument of Palestinian suffering, is both great and greatly unadmitted.
The Question of Palestine – 1 Feb 2003
by Edward W. Said
Hi Andrew,
Still plan to do it one day. Been finishing Sikunder Burnes first.
Craig Murray.
I would like to know, is what is linked to and reported here the “facts”?.
All my life I spent a fortune on books, and used the library in my quest for information.
That is why I am on the side of the “whistle blower”. Somebody always knows the truth, and I want to know the truth. Even if it kills me!.
What I have watched and listened to and read on here has been difficult for me to understand why we put up with all this badness, in the name of “democracy”.
You seem genuine as does most of the people who post comments on here.
So, come on what is the truth?.
I was there. As Craig says, there were thousands and thousands of us protesting at the last Israeli massacre of the people in Gaza but two. That was known by the pretty name of Cast Lead referring to the child’s plaything, the dreidl, given for Hanukkah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreidel
The people in Gaza have had Operation Pillar of Defense and Operation Protective Edge since as well as the daily atrocities performed by the Israeli Occupation Force, the IOF.
Interview on Real News Network on Gaza One Year On
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14191
The interview is with Laila El-Haddad and Refaat Alareer editors of Gaza Unsilenced an anthology of writings.
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=6051805ea28d7ad24c553979e&id=e2f14a9a76
Today is the first anniversary of the start of Operation Protective Edge but there will be no one minute silence.
btw if we have already bought Murder in Samarkand, what do we do next to support you? Do not be too proud to put up a donate button. Medialens accept donations, so do Counterpunch and many other blogs that give us sight of what lies behind the corporate media blackout blinds.
I could never understand the concept of the great real estate agent in the sky trumping international law.
Dear Mary.
I would gladly donate to keep Craig going.
btw. I bought two books.
“btw if we have already bought Murder in Samarkand, what do we do next to support you? Do not be too proud to put up a donate button. Medialens accept donations, so do Counterpunch and many other blogs that give us sight of what lies behind the corporate media blackout blinds.”
I’ve previously stated on here that the two books that have changed the way I think about things are John Pilger’s Hidden Agendas and Craig Murray’s Murder In Samarkand. And I stand by that. It would be a privilege to donate to this blog.
Mary @12:58 pm;
I second that. For the second time.:-)
Glad you agree Robert and Daniel.
O/T I am listening to Gideon’s strangulated voice announcing his giveaways for ‘hard working’ citizens. He has not got on to the cutz for the poor and dispossessed yet.
I am wondering if Gideon will light the fire of rebellion to-day by playing Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
“”Zionism is bullshit. Three thousand years ago my Celtic ancestors were casting sacred swords into the lakes of Switzerland. Can I go back and claim Switzerland? No. Of course not. It’s nonsense.”
I am rather proud of that critique, which still seems to me a short and elegant refutation of the basis of Zionism. I have never seen it answered with anything approaching intellectual success.”
___________o___________
It’s not hard. Your ancestors were not ruthlessly persecuted everywhere they settled, culminating with the genocide of 6 million of their number in the gas chambers within living memory.
“Do not be too proud to put up a donate button.”
I’ll think about donating when Craig pays up on the hundred quid he owes the Palestinians.
Indeed zionism is bullshit!
The hideous and unpleasant basis of this supremacist creed, for decades has been corrupting the human consciousness. Despite such an adverse and negative effect, still this creed has been tolerated and overlooked by the billionaire elite owning USUK et al. The degrees of indifference exhibited by the selected political leadership that have been doing the bidding of their masters and aided and abetted by the oligarch owned media have made murder, land theft, incarceration on an industrial scale, and a total destruction of the people of Palestine, as a price worth paying to keep the “balance of power”!
History shall recall these times as the second dark ages, and shall not be kind to those whom made such an appalling conduct as standard. Given the past “contribution” of the Jewish Supremacists plaguing this blog and elsewhere, it is abundantly clear that people of Palestine are only a handful of the target population that are to be extirpated, in fact the dreams of eretz zionistan (gross/humongous bullshit) deem necessary the destruction of any Muslim communities elsewhere in the West in general, lest these achieve a critical mass and put an end to the barbarism of these venal, hateful supremacist.
The fact that a butterfly’s wing flaps in Mongolia can be contributing to a force ten gale on the North Sea, somehow always overlooks the effect the barbarism of the zionist supremacists have had on our rights and values across the planet?
“Three thousand years ago my Celtic ancestors were casting sacred swords into the lakes of Switzerland. Can I go back and claim Switzerland? No.
“I am rather proud of that critique”
A problem that I have with it is that it repeats by implication the zionist untruth that modern jewry’s ancestors came predominantly from the middle east.
“Your ancestors were not ruthlessly persecuted everywhere they settled”
Excuse me, the celts of mainland Europe were almost wiped out by the Romans.
“A problem that I have with it is that it repeats by implication the zionist untruth that modern jewry’s ancestors came predominantly from the middle east.”
No, it fits in perfectly, it’s extremely doubtful Craig’s ancestors were ever anywhere near a lake in Switzerland. The early inhabitants of Morayshire weren’t Celts, at least not the ones that came to Scotland through Ireland, they came over the North sea from Flanders.
“Your ancestors were not ruthlessly persecuted everywhere they settled,”
But not by the Muslims, who welcomed Jews and kept them going. Anti-Semitism historically only existed in Europe, until European Jews came to Palestine and drove out the native inhabitants.
Excuse me, the celts of mainland Europe were almost wiped out by the Romans.
That don’t count!
Also not counted are the booby trapped bodies of the murdered British paratroopers by irgun (a bunch of terrorists) and hung in the baking sun of the orange grove, so that any retrieval of the corpses would kill even more British paratroopers. Although these were not our heroes then, they were just pain old paras.
Not forgetting not to count the bombing of David’s hotel, and the lady who reconnoitered the joint for the irgun terrorists to place their bombs, was interviewed by the beebeecee and she went on record; “I am proud of my part in that bombing” she said, to the sock puppet presenter, whom did not so much as ask; do you mean are you proud to be a terrorist?
British minister murdered and British paras murdered, and no airport frisking or any remembrance of any kind for our fallen heroes. In fact so much so that no a lot of people know what these zionist supremacist terrorists did, and how they conducted their murderous campaign from the inception of any notions of zionistan.
Fred,
Indeed. But how did they get to Flanders?
Anon[*]1 @1:42pm [Mod: abuse removed]
What do YOU care about the Palestinians? All I’ve ever seen from YOU is jibes & insults to the very man who provides you with the facility to use (in your case ABUSE him!) free of charge. No adverts/pop ups, nothing. And you want him to fork out a hundred quid when he’s on the bones of his arse? This blog has done PLENTY to highlight the Palestinian cause without him paying for the privilege. More so, when he clearly hasn’t got it. if Craig provides a ‘donate’ button, he soon will have! Enough to stop you from holding the sword of Damocles over his head for evermore.
In addition to keeping the issue live here, commentators may care to consider making a donation to Medical Aid for Palestinians. The charity is UK-based, and works on the ground in Gaza to alleviate what it can of the damage to its medical infrastructure perpetrated by Zionism, as well as sourcing medical supplies – still urgently needed a year after the last breach of international law by Zionism.
Website (my choice of page) here:
http://www.map-uk.org/notes-from-the-field/archive/article/71-in-the-ruins-of-a-hospital
El Wafah was given ten minutes to evacuate its severely compromised patients before being bombed, with everything it contained, into a pile of rubble.
By Zionism
I’m talking about recent history, MJ, though of course the Jews have been persecuted for millenia. It was obvious to the world that the Jews needed a homeland after WW2. Now that they have one and are safe from persecution, it really gets the anti-Semites like ‘Miss Castello’ fuming.
Laguerre
““Your ancestors were not ruthlessly persecuted everywhere they settled,”
But not by the Muslims, who welcomed Jews and kept them going. Anti-Semitism historically only existed in Europe, until European Jews came to Palestine and drove out the native inhabitants.”
————————–
Completely irrelevant if intended to be an “answer” to Anon1’s excellent response.
“I’m talking about recent history”
I take it then you support the idea of a homeland for Romany people. After WW2 and the persecution that has continued since it is surely obvious to the world that they need a homeland too.