Nick Cohen is paid a great deal of money for publishing hate speech, and he has just published his most hate-ridden piece yet. It is hate-ridden because it is about the question of Israel, without including one single word of concern for the plight of the Palestinians or one single mention of Israeli occupations, land grabs, shootings and bombings. Cohen shows massive concern for British Jews whose collective feelings he claims were terribly hurt by the election of Jeremy Corbyn. [No, honestly, he really does say that, read his article.] He shows no concern whatsoever for the Palestinian children who get shot or beaten by occupying Israeli forces every single week.
Cohen is hate-filled also in what he says about Stephen Sizer, the Anglican cleric who campaigns for the rights of Palestinians.
Cohen describes Stephen as “an Anglican cleric who linked to extremist sites that blamed Jews for 9/11, and his defence of an Islamist who recycled the libel that Jews dined on the blood of Christian children from the bottom of a medieval dung heap.”
But as Cohen in fact knows extremely well, the Islamic cleric in question, Raed Saleh, consistently denied saying anything of the kind, and a British court determined that he should not be banned from the UK. This was rather a campaign against Saleh by one of Cohen’s fellow pro-Israeli propagandists.
For Cohen to continue the campaign against Saleh is hate speech. It is deliberate Islamophobia. It is astonishing that he is allowed to do this in corporate media.
The other point he makes against Stephen Sizer is also a deliberate misrepresentation. Cohen says Sizer “linked to extremist sites that blamed Jews for 9/11”. Cohen knows that the article to which Sizer linked was perfectly respectable. Elsewhere on that website there was indeed objectionable material which Sizer had not seen. It is a mistake which every blogger has made, including me, and Stephen has apologised for it.
I know Stephen Sizer and travelled to Baghdad with him a couple of years ago. Stephen does not have a racist bone in his body and for Cohen to claim otherwise is absolutely disgusting hate speech.
Note that Cohen does not name Sizer and Saleh. He calls them an “Anglican cleric” and an “islamist”. This is because Cohen is not only a liar, he is a coward. If he named them he could be sued for libel.
Personally I do not believe Israel should exist. I do not want a two state solution. I see Israel pursuing the same policies as apartheid South Africa, only with more violence, and I view the “two state solution” as a repeat of the Bantustan policy. I wish to see a single state in Palestine where all who currently live there are welcome and all are equal, whatever their religion or race, in a single democratic and secular state.
Nick Cohen will tell you that is anti-Semitism. But then Nick Cohen hates me. He hates anybody who speaks the truth about Israel.
This post was updated more accurately to reflect the tribunal ruling
Thanks for this Craig. I agree with your comments and feel that the points raised here are well worth sharing as the Anti Semitic debate hots up especially in the Labour Party. Cohen is a nasty piece of work and is part of a wider clique trying to suppress any criticism of apartheid Israel and BDS.
So people with whom we disagree are, as usual, ‘cowards’, ‘racists’, ‘haters’. How tiresome and dishonest.
Sure, Cohen is blind and very confused. Sure, Stephen Sizer does not have a racist bone in his body. When he links to a site connecting Israelis to 9/11 perhaps he thinks there are FACTS that should be openly and fairly discussed, however outrageous their implications.
When someone goes to a place that offends your religion (e.g. raising issues re 9/11 or the “human gas chambers” at Auschwitz) you respond like any medieval Churchman faced with heresy.
How about we try very hard to stick to the recorded physical facts and consider the possibility that charges like ‘hater’ and ‘coward’ are, most likely, mere projection
Consider, for a minute, the bigger picture i.e. The success of AIPAC in the U.S. Due partly, of course, to Zionist mega-buck bribes. But mainly to the rise of Christian Zionism, based on the Scofield Bible, published by Oxford University Press. It tells Christians they must support Israel. But appears nowhere in any previous versions of the Bible. For a clearer understanding of how Zionism is so powerful in the U.S and U.K., etc. Google convicted swindler Scofield and the pro-Zionist OUP.
Aipac is a success because the US state finds it expedient to make it a success. The zionist lobby is a convenient scapegoat for the US state to use when it pursues its imperial interests in the Middle East. In return for American Caesar’s complaisance in the existence of the apartheid occupation of Palestine, the zionists provide dirty services all over the world.
Of course, the OIC, the largest voting bloc at the UN, have no money or influence. That must be because they have no natural resources, such as oil.
Really…..?
There are no Islamic political groups in the USA and they don’t receive funding from Saudi Arabia?
Well, at least Nick Cohen called it correctly. You are either ignorant or simply choose to ignore history. Jews lived under Arab oppression for 1000 years. Israel was never devoid of Jews, when 135 years ago additional Jews returned to purchase land and develop a largely undeveloped country. The Arabs responded with a campaign of murder and destruction, loosing one war after another. After ww2 70 million people were resettled and moved on except the 1% who today call themselves Palestinians. Sorry, Israel will not commit suicide and useful idiots like you are powerless fools.
Dear Joseph,
Another Zionist apologist who likes to play screwball with history.
By your definition as a Welshman, that is a Celt, I too have been under the iron heal of Norman oppression since they still our lands after 1066, as such, and by your reckoning, I and my fellow Celts (Welsh), have a right to proclaim a homeland for the Welsh Celts, eject all English, take over all English property and farm land, place what English England won’t accept onto Anglesey and treat it as a concentration camp and kill any and all English who oppose our right to our own homeland, so for every Celt killed we’ll just kill 10,000 English to be on the safe side. No doubt the USA will furnish us with the latest arms, pay us US$5B per annum towards our defence from the unarmed English scum and turn a blind eye to any and all outrages we carry out against unarmed children, elderly and disabled.
Obviously, if i undertook this process or called for this racist process to be undertaken in my homeland I’d be arrested and put in a lunatic asylum, but this is exactly what you believe is correct as a Zionist.
Utter bollocks old bean, but alas as the saying goes: ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.’
We can all make historical claims of outrages, the Irish certainly can as can many others, however at the end of the day perhaps living in peace and treating all equally the same is more beneficial, which seems beyond Israeli apologists and Zionists like your good self.
Now bugger off and propagandise elsewhere please.
The 850,000 Jews from Arab countries are not celts.
There was an exchange of populations. Nothing unusual about that, except that the Jews expelled from Arab countries were thrown out because they were Jews and the Arabs that fled from Israel did so assuming they would return once the Jews were dispatched by the Arab forces.
But, somehow, over 1m still reside in Israel. Strange, ain’t it?
All that inequality and stuff? Maybe that’s why they’re queuing up to get into Syria, or Iraq, or Lebanon, or Iran – or Egypt?
They can’t wait to leave Israel for those peaceful climes, can they?
Consider that, in the 19 years from 1948 to 1967, when Egypt ran Gaza and Jordan was in the so called West Bank and Jerusalem, there was absolutely no clamour for a Palestinian state at all. Why?
It is this article above which is hate filled and full of convenient airbrush strokes.
Arab incitement against Jews, including the infamous blood libels, is a feature of their society, with bona fide TV series depicting rabbis slitting the throats of Arab children to make Passover matzah. The videos are available to see online.
Saudi daily papers regularly regurgitate the blood libels, whether it be associated with Passover or Purim.
For example:
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=16546
The so called ‘Ghandi of Palestine’, somewhat lionized above by Mr. Murray, is a nasty piece of work, who mourned the death of the martyr, Osama bin Laden. Although blood libel did not satisfy a UK court, he has since been convicted of incitement to violence by the district court in Israel. His inflammatory statements, that Netanyahu was digging tunnels under Al Aqusa mosque and was going to build a new Jewish temple caused riots and death.
He is the embodiment of Hamas within Israel.
That won’t be a problem for craig murray, because he doesn’t believe Israel should exist.
He shares that view with Hamas.
He’s honest about that, have to give credit where its due..
A Lee,
Sorry old bean, given the modern state of Israel was founded upon terrorist outrages against the British Administration in Palestine in the years before the UU partition vote, that members of HM forces were assassinated by Zionists and Zionists hide their racial intent from the general Jewish population of Palestine in the 20’s & 30’s I find your revisionism somewhat appalling. One’s beef with Israel is its despicable behaviour to Palestinians within the Occupied Terrorists and the fact that the Zionists expelled Palestinians at gunpoint from their own lands prior to Partition. You can whitewash it as much as you like. Now, as stated previously you Zionist and Israeli apologists have blood on your hands and I don’t. I don’t incite racial hatred, I don’t kill innocent kids, old, infirm or men and women, but above all, I don’t turn a blind eye to the horrors inflicted daily by Israel against the Palestinians. You blame game of blaming the Palestinians is laughable. However, and unlike you, if we changed the equation and it was the Palestinians inflicting all the horrors against the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine I’d be showing/sharing solidarity with the Jews – that is the way it works, and yet somehow I’m a anti-semite for demanding equal justice for all semites regardless of religion.
Oh, and as my fathers colleagues were in HM Forces during the Zionists terrorism after WWII, with my father actually seeing active service during the Cypriot civil war, we really do take exception to our kith and kin being killed by terrorists of whatever guise they take, whist at the same time not professing a fondness for Colonialism, given my own lot are well aware of what its like to be governed by those alien to our society and culture.
Mr Rogers
Could you please explain how you distinguish between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism?
“Sorry old bean, given the modern state of Israel was founded upon terrorist outrages against the British Administration in Palestine”
The British Admin was not a colonial power. They were mandated to facilitate the reformation of the Jewish Homeland in post Ottoman Empire Palestine. What the Brits did was what the Brits do…. they politely changed the rules, installed a Hashemite King into the fake state of Jordan, eating up the land which would have been designated, for the first time in history, an Arab Palestinian state.
As you can imagine, that pissed off a few people – and, admittedly, there was blood letting. The British were refusing to let Jews into Palestine, and giving the Arabs free passage to wander in and out. However, if it’s one thing a glance at a map of the ME will confirm, it’s that Israel is NOT expansionist. There are no ‘occupied territories’. Occupied from whom? There are disputed territories now that the Arabs have realised that they can’t drive the Jews into the sea, it’s only now that they’re thinking the 1948 deal which Israel accepted, and the Arabs refused, looks good.
As far as racial intent is concerned, a simple look at the population of Modern Israel makes that claim an absurd one.
If the UK or the USA had the same % of Muslims as Israel has in its population, (1/5th) you would be living in a very different place. The fact is, you’re already living in a different place because the indiscriminate terror outrages perpetrated across Europe which have nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with an ideology which seeks to impose a global caliphate. And, in case you were wondering, that is not down to some perverted reading of Islam. That’s why Al Azhar University in Cairo, the oldest and considered themost revered Islamic authority in the world, refused to condemn ISIS as ‘unislamic’. They all want the Caliphate, they just disagree on the method of subjugation.
It is remarkable that those people who go after Israel and refer to it as racist and a terror state, fail to recognize that the same atrocities Europeans face in their cities are the same atrocities that Arabs visited on Jews well before the modern State of Israel existed.
That’s the reason there was no bleating about a Palestinian State (or people!) for the 19 years from 48-67, during which time the Egyptians and .’Jordanians’ occupied Gaza and Judea/Samaria/Jerusalem; because they were under MUSLIM rule.
When the Arabs ramped up and blocked the Straits of Tiran in 67, they ended up losing big time..
There are consequences to acts of war.
There are also consequences to acts of peace. When Sadat came to Jerusalem and the peace treaty was signed, Sinai was given back.
The problem is not that Israel exists.
The problem is that Islam must reign supreme and impose itself globally over the infidels.
That’s not my reading. It’s theirs. And it’s your problem, far more than little ol’ Israel is.
Well Wisher,
For your benefit, as posted previously on these boards by myself a Zionist need not be Jewish, quite the reverse, a number of Zionists today are fundamentalist Christians with ulterior motives underwriting their support of Israel – something to do with inheriting the Holy Land’s once its Jewish inhabitants go up in smoke – something to do with the ‘rapture’ I’m led to believe. Given the fact not all Zionists are Jews and the fact that many anti-Zionists happen to be Jews any critique of Zionism therefore cannot be seen as ‘anti-Semitic’ nor should be seen in anyway as an attack on Jews in general, which by its own definition would constitute grounds for accusations of anti-semitism.
As for anti-semitism in general, we’ll I think European history provides ample evidence as what constitutes attacks on followers of the Jewish faith, many of which were state-sanctioned and culminated in late nineteenth century outrages – I’m thinking Odessa here, or the Holocaust itself under the NAZIS and their various supporters.
As an egalitarian a persons religious background, or indeed ethnic background is of little concern to me given I believe all are equal and should be treated accordingly, as such any attacks on followers of the Jewish faith just for being Jewish is ‘anti-semitism’, although Jews, some at least, are but one of many who constitute semites.
For the record I have a deep respect for Jewish society and understand only too well how Jews have been treated appallingly across history – Jewish resilience and sense of community is to be applauded. One also understands a desire of some, following European traditions for an ‘independent home land’ – hence one does call for an end of Israel, nor question its right to exist. I do question its current expanded borders and its unacceptable aggression towards the Palestinians and its neighbours given the fact no actual existential threat to Israel exists today.
Now I’m opposed to virulent Zionism, much as I’m opposed to any virulent form of extreme nationalism, and if that confers on me the title of ‘anti-semite’, so be it, but strange is it not that’s one’s bile is heaped equally on the UK’s own government, the administrations in Washington and indeed the EU, and yet in doing so I’m not labeled an anti-semite. But if I critique Israel that changes, which I find unacceptable and rather disingenuous to say the least.
@ A Lee,
Here’s a nice post by Norman Finkelstein on the Historian Benny Morris, who has changed his spots of late. However, Benny is/was a respected Historian and his original academic research and historical publications contradict much of what you claim. As i don’t have the necessary time today to counter your points with my own – I’m in the process of moving home – I’ll let you contemplate what Morris originally thought and what Finkelstein thinks about Morris’s volte face: http://www.unz.com/nfinkelstein/ethnic-cleansing-was-built-into-zionism/
Terra incognita? Who was growing the food exported all over the Mediterranean then? Palestinians, that’s who.
What years were they…be real specific..and show proof that Palestinians are 1%!…*
Show me statistics as you are talking to an expert here. That is a libelous statement if you can’t show proof!…*
The only politics worse than nationalism is theocracy. Religion back-crossed with Statism is a nasty hybrid with thorns and toxic nature. Note how the subject of Israel pricks the conscience of guilty parties showing up here regularly as they obsess over national Cardinal sins.
BREAKING NEWS – and Question to “Republicofscotland” and other cnuts denying terrorism:
Explosions at Brussels airport and TV chain VTM reports 11 dead and at least 25 wounded.
This comes a couple of days after the arrest of the main Paris killings suspect in Brussels. He is reported as having admitted that other operations were in the pipe-line.
Question to “Republicofscotland” and other terror-denying Cnuts: was this real or were they just firecrackers, actors and/or holograms?
It is unlikely that anyone denies that these were terrorist attacks.
But you would deny, I suppose, that the terrorists in question are inspired by wahhabi propagandists financed by US (and UK) ally Saudi Arabia.
That their arms and munitions are supplied by the same axis of GCC-NATO-Israel.
That they are allied with Al Nusra, which commands the forces in Syria which Cameron et al call ‘moderate’ and ‘secular’ but which act as integral parts of both Daesh and Al Qaeda military organisations. .
That they are allied with the Yemeni AQAP, which occupies land in co-ordination with Saudi air attacks, directed by British officers and re-fuelled by US tankers.
That they are also allied with the Libyan Fighting Groups that the GCC and NATO mobilised, armed, trained and financed in Libya and Tunisia.
This article outlines both the links between the “west” and these terrorists and the efforts that western propagandists take to obscure the truth.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/22/reporting-or-not-ties-between-us-armed-syrian-rebels-and-al-qaedas-affiliate
It is time for apologists for terrorism who, like yourself, work in cahoots with Terror’s Armourers, Paymasters and publicists, to come clean and confess that you endorse policies aimed at undermining order and peace wherever the government refuses to kow-tow to Washington. Hence the killing in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Balkans and Central Asia invariably carried out by agents of the power that you support. And whose every action you attempt to justify.
One has no need to resort to ‘false flag’ explanations for what happened in Brussels-though, given NATO’s record, they are not improbable- it is clear that the west and its tyrant-puppets in the Gulf are behind the attackers. Just as they are behind their mosques, their ideology of takfiri hatred and supply their money, explosives and weapons.
The great event, demonstrating the truth of this, was the speed with which a couple of squadrons of Russian planes dismantled the tanker convoy ‘pipeline’ which Daesh ran through Iraq, Syria and Turkey. This route had been operated for months, in the plain sight of NATO and GCC governments without once being attacked from the air. Why? Because NATO and the GCC supported a trade which undermined Iraq and Syria, financed their terrorist proxies and supplied Israel with cheap oil.
Here is another link:
http://angryarab.blogspot.ca/
“…You can really trace the current problem of terrorism hitting Europe to the beginning of the Syrian war in 2012 and the insistence of Western governments–against all available evidence–on creating the myth of “moderate Syrian rebels”. Western propaganda glamorized a non-existing Syrian “revolution” and romanticized those Muslims in the West who took the trip to fight with the various Jihadi group. The myth of the moderate Free Syrian Army was in full swing at the time, and any opinion which warned of the dangers of rise of terrorist groups in Syria was immediately dismissed as pure Syrian regime propaganda. The dangerous propaganda ploy of Western media continues. Look at this map from this article in Bloomberg. Look how the areas designated as “Syrian rebels” is so widely expanded. In fact, if you look at the areas around Idlib, the dominant force there is Nusrah Front even if it works with other militant Jihadi groups under the banner of Jaysh Al-Fath. So basically, whenever Nusrah Front (the descenents of the terrorists of Sep. 11) align themselves with other rebel groups, Western propaganda and media outlet regard the rebels in that area as “moderate Syrian rebels” because they are not fighting under the banner of Nusrah although the banner exists. This is one of many example but it gives you an idea. And Zionists have been most active in this regard and in spinning this propaganda but they are not alone: some liberal and leftists have also been spinning this fable. …”
Bevin
So the West and NATO are behind the Brussels bombings, eh?
Do you stand by that claim?
That is not what Bevin said and you know it.
You generally hide, like Boris, under the mantle of buffoon.
Like Darius Guppy, I always knew otherwise.
It seems that you are ‘coming out’ now.
That is good.
It means the BDS boycott is working.
Keep hoisting your petard.
“But you would deny, I suppose, that the terrorists in question are inspired by wahhabi propagandists financed by US (and UK) ally Saudi Arabia.”
It’s ridiculous that Saudi Arabia is considered an ally. It ‘s ridiculous that any group which believes in the (re) establishment of global caliphate should be considered an ally. By definition, they are promoting the end of your human rights.
I fear this goes a little deeper than Saudi, though.
There sits, at the UNHRC, a document acquiesced in by by the awful Mary Robinson, which is signed by the foreign ministers of 57 Islamic Nations. The so called, OIC, the largest voting bloc at the UN, I believe.
I am referring the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam.
This replaces the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted after WWII.
Why?
Because the ’48 declaration states ‘All human beings are created free and equal in dignity and rights’.
This is incompatible with Islam, which is at odds with that notion.
You will that this declaration states that Allah made Islam the ‘best nation’ (all others are varying degrees of worst) and that all human rights are predicated on accordance to sharia and that ‘true faith’ is the only guarantee of ANY human rights. (Even atheists can’t escape, I’m afraid)
You’ll get the scheme after the first couple of paragraphs I’m sure.
Here we are – at the UNHCR. Have fun pinning this on a few waywards:
http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3822c.html
Tony Greenstein, who contributed on Mar 20th,1956 hrs, to this thread, has been suspended from Labour according to his blog. He doesn’t know why. But we can guess, chums, can’t we?
http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/tony-greenstein-suspended-from-labour.html
Well it had to happen. I’ve just been informed by letter by the Labour Party that I have been suspended from the Party. Why? On the basis of comments I have apparently made. What comments? Who knows since they haven’t sought to tell me. Kafkaesque or what?
In other news Trump wows them at AIPAC…
Have you seen those guys who come on Channel 4 News to defend Israel? Slick, smooth-talking apologists for evil.
Strangely enough JSD has yet to add this post to his count of people who comment offering no argument or rebuttal but just insult and misrepresentation.
Why is this?
I’ve only just seen these comments. I stopped my count when I turned in on Sunday night, and several have been added since: however, this does not fit the peculiar pattern of people logging on out of nowhere, denouncing Craig without argument or rebuttal, and logging back off into limbo. I’m rather surprised that I need to point that out.
Where do we get some of his articles.
How can one educate the world of Zionism, which has been planned long ago, by the early Zionists Federation.
When the majority of American you ask in the streets never heard the word! ..*
@Craig
“without including one single word of concern for the plight of the Palestinians or one single mention of Israeli occupations, land grabs, shootings and bombings.”
Which is of course why he said “I might, I thought, not stop at opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and pledging support to leftwing Israelis and Palestinians who wanted a just and peaceful settlement for both peoples,”
The fact that I am the first person to point out this glaring inconsistency really just demonstrates that most people are just leaping to their usual knee jerk positions without bothering to engage their brains first.
Reading this open letter, this Mark Glenn strikes me as something of a nutcase.
“Just as they have for thousands of years defamed, mocked and slandered Jesus Christ and His message with the most scandalous, scurrilous and untrue statements in the interest of turning something that was wholesome and good into something profane, likewise have they done the same to you.”
“As you have personally remarked in many of your speeches before the UN General Assembly, the promotion of war and the deliberate, concerted attack on religion, family, motherhood, the innocence of children and the basic moral threads necessary for any stable society to function have been traced back to the very same organized forces of evil whom Jesus Christ Himself condemned.”
Glenn seems to believe that what you call “Organized Jewry” maintains an unbroken line of anti-Christian and immoral evil right back for more than two thousand years into the time of Christ (and, presumably. before). Given what he writes in this open letter, and that you say he is a “devout Catholic”, I assume he characterizes what you call “Organized Jewry” as Christ-killers. Would that be a reasonable conclusion? And do you agree with it, if so?
What is the difference between being anti-Jewish and anti-Organized Jewry? In what sense is this Glenn not anti-Jewish? Thanks.
Oh: yes, it is a reasonable conclusion. I have just discovered this Mark Glenn’s blog, on which he has posted an article called “Christ Killers”, in which he applies the term to Jews without irony: he really means it. He also writes in another article that if he could press a button and vaporize every one of them, he would do so without hesitation or guilt. The context in which he says this makes it clear that he is referring to all Jews, not just to “Organized Jewry”, whatever that means. The language in which he couches this article, such as disease, vomiting, etc is highly reminiscent of Nazism.
https://markglenn.wordpress.com/2006/11/05/judaism-is-nobody%e2%80%99s-friend-2/
https://markglenn.wordpress.com/2007/05/09/out-of-the-closet-now/
You say you know this man and that he is not anti-Jewish? Is that correct? Would you mind explaining, please? Thanks.
“The Red Cross had claimed that total Jews killed in Nazi labor camps were less than 300,000”
You agree with this, do you? You believe it is a fact that the total number of Jews who were killed in Nazi camps during the Shoah was less than 300,000?
Would you mind confirming for us, or otherwise, please, that these statements are by the same Mark Glenn as you refer to above as founding a website that is “not anti-Jewish”? Thanks.
“Wake up and smell the Knishes, my friends, Judaism has been at war with us for over 2,000 years, ever since this man named Jesus of Nazareth came and blew the lid open on what Judaism‘s real agenda was. Judaism is a declaration of war and manifested by thousands upon thousands of acts of intentional malice directed by Rabbinical generals against the rest within the non-Jewish world in matters involving money, business, politics, and culture.”
“As we said before, a good number of people already know (or are coming to know) that Zionism is nobody’s friend, that is obvious. It is JUDAISM that is the real problem. J-U-D-A-I-S-M, the tree from which Zionism sprung forth, the seedling that has brought the world to the brink of extinction. JUDAISM, the cancer that is eating the body away and left it a skeletonized hull of what it once was. JUDAISM, the root of all mankind’s present evils, and if not all of them, then what is certainly an impressive number.”