Incidentally, I would agree that this should lengthen the odds on a Khan victory.
Although the Tory campaign, of saying Khan is a sympathiser because he attended innocuous events with people who years later would prove to be extremists, remains racist, it will have more plausibility to the average floating voter who is only paying a bit of attention when they see various Labour people who genuinely are racist in the news.
How is it racist to equate Khan with extremists when he has repeatedly associated with people who are extremists, many of whom were known at the time to be extremists?
The same was said (quite rightly) with Livingstone himself last time. Was that racist too?
The difference being that Livingstone actually did associate himself with the SENTIMENTS of extremists. For all the hysteria, Khan has never associated himself with the sentiments of extremists, and attending events that were completely unrelated to Islamist causes that also happened to be attended by extremists, is not the same thing at all. Ask Zac:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
So "the Jews are rallying" is merely an objective critique of the State of Israel?
That's exactly what I said. You write anything about Israel and the bully boys are out in force!
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
So has the expression 'you can be anti-Israel without being anti-semitic', which is often trotted out. My sympathies are much more with the Palestinians on many issues, as they are the ones without the power in the situation, but the thing about racists is they know it is wrong and use the language of non-racists, and anti-semites maintain it is just about Israel even when patently their problem runs deeper than that, thus making it easier for people who use the 'I just criticise Israel policy' line look bad because they are associated with racists who use the same tone, but falsely.
Well in fairness, it might be being used by those part of a coup against him...it's just that the coup plotters are responding to events, not fabricating things, so even if the criticism is from them and they hate him, it doesn't matter, the reason for the criticism is still there.
I see this whole affair as a pile of crap which started last year by anti-Corbynites in the Jewish Chronicle, there are a lot of bear traps and Livingstone fell into one.
However the behaviour of John Mann makes it clear that this is part of the anti-Corbyn campaign and has nothing to do with antisemitism.
No one forced Naz Shah to send the tweets she did. No one forced Livingstone to say what he did on national television.
To minimise this as "falling into a trap" is disgusting.
There is virulent anti-semitism within Labour circles, I've seen it first hand, it is just now that the sane voices in Labour have lost control it is coming back to bite it in the arse.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
What do you think is a better expression for those racially predjudiced against Jews? While strictly anti-semitism does cover other semitic peoples, that is not common usage of the term.
Incidentally, I would agree that this should lengthen the odds on a Khan victory.
Although the Tory campaign, of saying Khan is a sympathiser because he attended innocuous events with people who years later would prove to be extremists, remains racist, it will have more plausibility to the average floating voter who is only paying a bit of attention when they see various Labour people who genuinely are racist in the news.
How is it racist to equate Khan with extremists when he has repeatedly associated with people who are extremists, many of whom were known at the time to be extremists?
The same was said (quite rightly) with Livingstone himself last time. Was that racist too?
The difference being that Livingstone actually did associate himself with the SENTIMENTS of extremists. For all the hysteria, Khan has never associated himself with the sentiments of extremists, and attending events that were completely unrelated to Islamist causes that also happened to be attended by extremists, is not the same thing at all. Ask Zac:
Dan Hannan Today, EFTA signed a free trade agreement with the Philippines. The talks took less than one year. Via @Hjortur_J: https://t.co/hpkFdpRoj4
Size of Philippines economy - $290 billion Size of US economy - $18 trillion
Different countries will require different amounts of time for negotiations to be concluded. Because you can do a deal with one country in a year, it does not follow that a deal with a much, much larger economy can be done in the same time frame.
And Hannan knows that. He is just playing the game.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Naz Shah and Livingstone did much more than criticise Israel.
When did I support Naz Shah or Livingstone ? That's exactly my point. Anything you write about Israel will be twisted round. In the end , any such people will be labelled "anti-semetic" even though the greatest number of Semetics are Arabs !
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
Dan Hannan Today, EFTA signed a free trade agreement with the Philippines. The talks took less than one year. Via @Hjortur_J: https://t.co/hpkFdpRoj4
Size of Philippines economy - $290 billion Size of US economy - $18 trillion
Different countries will require different amounts of time for negotiations to be concluded. Because you can do a deal with one country in a year, it does not follow that a deal with a much, much larger economy can be done in the same time frame.
And Hannan knows that. He is just playing the game.
Well it helps to have a 1 on 1 negotiation rather than a 27 on 1 - as there are so many competing conflicting interests - last time I heard Italian tomato growers were preventing a trade deal.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Naz Shah and Livingstone did much more than criticise Israel.
When did I support Naz Shah or Livingstone ? That's exactly my point. Anything you write about Israel will be twisted round. In the end , any such people will be labelled "anti-semetic" even though the greatest number of Semetics are Arabs !
You are coming over almost as paranoid as Livingstone was earlier. Perhaps a deep breath is needed - you appear to be seeing conspiracy theories round every corner at the moment.
I share Mr Smithson's views that Khan has spoken openly against anti-Semitism in his own party. And he deserves credit for that.
But the question remains: he has said that he is the one to take on Islamic extremists. Today is surely the day for him to show us what that means.
If I were Zac I would be saying to Khan just that: "Show. Don't just tell."
By his words or lack of words, by his actions can we then judge if Khan really means what he says and has the courage to follow through or whether it's just another sound bite.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Perhaps the current noisy neighbours are a factor and those beastly Nazis resettling 6 million of them in Polish agas.
Whether or not "anti-semitism" expression has been hijacked or not is largely irrelevant. Language meaning may change over time and we all know a bacon butty when we see one.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
What do you think is a better expression for those racially predjudiced against Jews? While strictly anti-semitism does cover other semitic peoples, that is not common usage of the term.
It was a common usage until recently. If someone is racially prejudiced against Jews, they should be called anti-Jew. Why bury the main thrust of the expression by including another 150m people. [ I haven't counted. I also think people in the Maghreb should not be included ]
Every single "toss up" state with a Romeny lead won by 5% or more by Obama.
No incumbency effect for the DEMs this time.
It's the non-college-educated man/ woman who is going to win it. Clinton cannot get much more out of the Hispanics/ blacks.
If that is truly the case, then there is no contest. Trump has it wrapped up already.
And yet strangely neither the pollsters or the markets are finding Trump so tempting ....
Which is why the words "if that is truly the case".
Personally, I don't know what the f*** is going on this election apart from the fact that I don't know what the f*** is going on. One of the reasons that I have been so quiet on the whole US election cycle since I realized my 'Trump and Cruz will never get the nomination' line was clearly incorrect. Rather eat humble pie once than continuously ...
In ARSE4US you must trust ....
The question is when the ARSE about-face is coming? My money's on August.
Well in fairness, it might be being used by those part of a coup against him...it's just that the coup plotters are responding to events, not fabricating things, so even if the criticism is from them and they hate him, it doesn't matter, the reason for the criticism is still there.
I see this whole affair as a pile of crap which started last year by anti-Corbynites in the Jewish Chronicle, there are a lot of bear traps and Livingstone fell into one.
However the behaviour of John Mann makes it clear that this is part of the anti-Corbyn campaign and has nothing to do with antisemitism.
No one forced Naz Shah to send the tweets she did. No one forced Livingstone to say what he did on national television.
To minimise this as "falling into a trap" is disgusting.
There is virulent anti-semitism within Labour circles, I've seen it first hand, it is just now that the sane voices in Labour have lost control it is coming back to bite it in the arse.
There is no virulent antisemitism within Labour circles, if there was Ed Miliband would never have had a chance to be elected Labour leader.
Those who decry the so called antisemitism in Labour fought against the Jewish leader of the Labour party for years. This is purely an anti-Corbyn thing, Livingstone and Shah should never have fed the blairite beasts by talking about it.
Incidentally, I would agree that this should lengthen the odds on a Khan victory.
Although the Tory campaign, of saying Khan is a sympathiser because he attended innocuous events with people who years later would prove to be extremists, remains racist, it will have more plausibility to the average floating voter who is only paying a bit of attention when they see various Labour people who genuinely are racist in the news.
How is it racist to equate Khan with extremists when he has repeatedly associated with people who are extremists, many of whom were known at the time to be extremists?
The same was said (quite rightly) with Livingstone himself last time. Was that racist too?
The difference being that Livingstone actually did associate himself with the SENTIMENTS of extremists. For all the hysteria, Khan has never associated himself with the sentiments of extremists, and attending events that were completely unrelated to Islamist causes that also happened to be attended by extremists, is not the same thing at all. Ask Zac:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Naz Shah and Livingstone did much more than criticise Israel.
When did I support Naz Shah or Livingstone ? That's exactly my point. Anything you write about Israel will be twisted round.
By Israel apparently.
Your words:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
In the context of a discussion centered on attacks on the character of Ken Livingstone and Shah and those who share their views, your words are a clear implication that the influence of Israel is behind the 'character assassination' of them and others who share their views.
Wikipedia (I know, I know) defines character assassination as an attempt to tarnish a person's reputation. 'It may involve exaggeration, misleading half-truths, or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person. It is a form of defamation and can be a form of ad hominem argument'.
Ergo, your words as quoted above quite clearly appear to indicate you believe people Israel does not like will be defamed by half truths, exaggerations and manipulations, for the reason of defending Israel, since you ascribe it to their influence, rather than other reasons (such as not liking racist views). And since the argument has arisen about Shah and Livingstone, and you did not specify they are excluded from the 'defence' you offer, it is not unreasonable to to conclude you seem to think the attacks on them are untrue.
If you didn't mean that, fine, but it does not take any twisting to get that interpretation
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Perhaps the current noisy neighbours are a factor and those beastly Nazis resettling 6 million of them in Polish agas.
Whether or not "anti-semitism" expression has been hijacked or not is largely irrelevant. Language meaning may change over time and we all know a bacon butty when we see one.
I am tired of listening to this nonsense. Arabs did not kill six million Jews ! Europeans did. Palestinians are simply the sufferers of the Western powers creating Israel, who then went on to occupy more lands and settling in them.
I do not hear any sympathy about Palestinians. They did not kill anyone in the concentration camps.
This argument is so depressing. That there are antisemites in the Labour party does not seem possible to deny. The question is how widespread they are and how much influence they have. People may believe it is minimal, and we have pointing to Ed M's time as leader as an example, and it may be the case it is not as prevalent a force in the party as opponents of the current leader are presenting. But that does not mean it is not there at all when people at senior levels of the party have made anti-Semitic remarks!
Perhaps Corbyn is right and there is no 'crisis'. Perhaps. That is a view one could reasonably argue, even if on the wrong side of it.
Pretending there is no issue here is not reasonable.
And just to be clear, I hope every single party is as serious at tackling any hint of racism as Labour needs to be. That the discussion is now about Labour does not mean others get a free pass.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Naz Shah and Livingstone did much more than criticise Israel.
When did I support Naz Shah or Livingstone ? That's exactly my point. Anything you write about Israel will be twisted round.
By Israel apparently.
Your words:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
In the context of a discussion centered on attacks on the character of Ken Livingstone and Shah and those who share their views, your words are a clear implication that the influence of Israel is behind the 'character assassination' of them and others who share their views.
Wikipedia (I know, I know) defines character assassination as an attempt to tarnish a person's reputation. 'It may involve exaggeration, misleading half-truths, or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person. It is a form of defamation and can be a form of ad hominem argument'.
Ergo, your words as quoted above quite clearly appear to indicate you believe people Israel does not like will be defamed by half truths, exaggerations and manipulations, for the reason of defending Israel, since you ascribe it to their influence, rather than other reasons (such as not liking racist views). And since the argument has arisen about Shah and Livingstone, and you did not specify they are excluded from the 'defence' you offer, it is not unreasonable to to conclude you seem to think the attacks on them are untrue.
If you didn't mean that, fine, but it does not take any twisting to get that interpretation
What the fuck are you fucking talking about ? I totally condemn what Naz wrote in her facebook. I have not read what Livingstone has done but presumably since he has been suspended [ as I have read here ] he presumably has said something equally silly.
The last Labour leader was Jewish. I don't remember anyone talking about it at the time. Sadiq Khan was his Campaign Manager !
Indeed, this has nothing to do with antisemitism, it's the usual campaign to get rid of Corbyn by the Blairites.
Nice trolling - I mean, you can't actually mean that right?
When I saw John Mann barking on the TV I was instantly convinced that this is simply to get Corbyn.
Why is it so hard to believe that, while he does want to do that and it is not even a secret he wants that, there are still unacceptable aspects to the Shah/Livingstone situation at the same time?
People are quite capable of being genuinely angry about things and still keeping their heads enough to try to use it to their advantage. The latter is irrelevant to those of us not in the party, but the reason for their anger may be legitimate.
FFS Labour supporters. Just accept it. There is vocal, virulent anti-Semitism inside the Labour party and the current leadership has done little to combat it. Maybe it did not realise until recently (yeah, right), but now there is absolutely no excuse. There has to be a strict zero tolerance approach. No ifs, no yeah buts. It must be uncompromising. There is no need to mention Zionism if you are criticising the government of Israel.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
Incidentally, I would agree that this should lengthen the odds on a Khan victory.
Although the Tory campaign, of saying Khan is a sympathiser because he attended innocuous events with people who years later would prove to be extremists, remains racist, it will have more plausibility to the average floating voter who is only paying a bit of attention when they see various Labour people who genuinely are racist in the news.
How is it racist to equate Khan with extremists when he has repeatedly associated with people who are extremists, many of whom were known at the time to be extremists?
The same was said (quite rightly) with Livingstone himself last time. Was that racist too?
The difference being that Livingstone actually did associate himself with the SENTIMENTS of extremists. For all the hysteria, Khan has never associated himself with the sentiments of extremists, and attending events that were completely unrelated to Islamist causes that also happened to be attended by extremists, is not the same thing at all. Ask Zac:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
This argument is so depressing. That there are antisemites in the Labour party does not seem possible to deny. The question is how widespread they are and how much influence they have. People may believe it is minimal, and we have pointing to Ed M's time as leader as an example, and it may be the case it is not as prevalent a force in the party as opponents of the current leader are presenting. But that does not mean it is not there at all when people at senior levels of the party have made anti-Semitic remarks!
Perhaps Corbyn is right and there is no 'crisis'. Perhaps. That is a view one could reasonably argue, even if on the wrong side of it.
Pretending there is no issue here is not reasonable.
And just to be clear, I hope every single party is as serious at tackling any hint of racism as Labour needs to be. That the discussion is now about Labour does not mean others get a free pass.
I bet in the posh Tory clubs , there is more anti-Jew comments than in the Labour party. In the 2010 labour party leadership election, in the first round, over 80% of the votes went to two candidates, both of whom were Jewish!
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Naz Shah and Livingstone did much more than criticise Israel.
When did I support Naz Shah or Livingstone ? That's exactly my point. Anything you write about Israel will be twisted round.
By Israel apparently.
Your words:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
In the context of a discussion centered on attacks on the character of Ken Livingstone and Shah and those who share their views, your words are a clear implication that the influence of Israel is behind the 'character assassination' of them and others who share their views.
Wikipedia (I know, I know) defines character assassination as an attempt to tarnish a person's reputation. 'It may involve exaggeration, misleading half-truths, or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person. It is a form of defamation and can be a form of ad hominem argument'.
Ergo, your words as quoted above quite clearly appear to indicate you believe people Israel does not like will be defamed by half truths, exaggerations and manipulations, for the reason of defending Israel, since you ascribe it to their influence, rather than other reasons (such as not liking racist views). And since the argument has arisen about Shah and Livingstone, and you did not specify they are excluded from the 'defence' you offer, it is not unreasonable to to conclude you seem to think the attacks on them are untrue.
If you didn't mean that, fine, but it does not take any twisting to get that interpretation
What the fuck are you fucking talking about ? I totally condemn what Naz wrote in her facebook. I have not read what Livingstone has done but presumably since he has been suspended [ as I have read here ] he presumably has said something equally silly.
But I can see the bully boys are out in force !
If one can call going on about Hitler for a quarter of an hour "silly", than yeah he was a bit silly. https://youtu.be/PrBQMJEObR8
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Naz Shah and Livingstone did much more than criticise Israel.
When did I support Naz Shah or Livingstone ? That's exactly my point. Anything you write about Israel will be twisted round.
By Israel apparently.
Your words:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
In the context of a discussion centered on attacks on the character of Ken Livingstone and Shah and those who share their views, your words are a clear implication that the influence of Israel is behind the 'character assassination' of them and others who share their views.
Wikipedia (I know, I know) defines character assassination as an attempt to tarnish a person's reputation. 'It may involve exaggeration, misleading half-truths, or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person. It is a form of defamation and can be a form of ad hominem argument'.
Ergo, your words as quoted above quite clearly appear to indicate you believe people Israel does not like will be defamed by half truths, exaggerations and manipulations, for the reason of defending Israel, since you ascribe it to their influence, rather than other reasons (such as not liking racist views). And since the argument has arisen about Shah and Livingstone, and you did not specify they are excluded from the 'defence' you offer, it is not unreasonable to to conclude you seem to think the attacks on them are untrue.
If you didn't mean that, fine, but it does not take any twisting to get that interpretation
What the fuck are you fucking talking about ? I totally condemn what Naz wrote in her facebook. I have not read what Livingstone has done but presumably since he has been suspended [ as I have read here ] he presumably has said something equally silly.
But I can see the bully boys are out in force !
You were the one mentioning the nefarious influence of the Israel lobby within a discussion of Livingstone's suspension.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Perhaps the current noisy neighbours are a factor and those beastly Nazis resettling 6 million of them in Polish agas.
Whether or not "anti-semitism" expression has been hijacked or not is largely irrelevant. Language meaning may change over time and we all know a bacon butty when we see one.
I am tired of listening to this nonsense. Arabs did not kill six million Jews ! Europeans did. Palestinians are simply the sufferers of the Western powers creating Israel, who then went on to occupy more lands and settling in them.
I do not hear any sympathy about Palestinians. They did not kill anyone in the concentration camps.
I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today.
Just as few living Germans bear any responsibility for the holocaust, so few living Jew bears any for the existence of the state of Israel. But we are where we are.
I would also draw your attention to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in WWII.
The state of Israel has a right to exist in peace, as does the state of Palestine. At some stage this will happen, only the when is in doubt.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Dear god, you too? WTF is happening to Labour?
Which phrase do you not agree with ? Do you really think being a Semite is the same as being a Jew ? You should read a bit more.
Dan Hannan Today, EFTA signed a free trade agreement with the Philippines. The talks took less than one year. Via @Hjortur_J: https://t.co/hpkFdpRoj4
Size of Philippines economy - $290 billion Size of US economy - $18 trillion
Different countries will require different amounts of time for negotiations to be concluded. Because you can do a deal with one country in a year, it does not follow that a deal with a much, much larger economy can be done in the same time frame.
And Hannan knows that. He is just playing the game.
Well it helps to have a 1 on 1 negotiation rather than a 27 on 1 - as there are so many competing conflicting interests - last time I heard Italian tomato growers were preventing a trade deal.
This argument is so depressing. That there are antisemites in the Labour party does not seem possible to deny. The question is how widespread they are and how much influence they have. People may believe it is minimal, and we have pointing to Ed M's time as leader as an example, and it may be the case it is not as prevalent a force in the party as opponents of the current leader are presenting. But that does not mean it is not there at all when people at senior levels of the party have made anti-Semitic remarks!
Perhaps Corbyn is right and there is no 'crisis'. Perhaps. That is a view one could reasonably argue, even if on the wrong side of it.
Pretending there is no issue here is not reasonable.
And just to be clear, I hope every single party is as serious at tackling any hint of racism as Labour needs to be. That the discussion is now about Labour does not mean others get a free pass.
I bet in the posh Tory clubs , there is more anti-Jew comments than in the Labour party. In the 2010 labour party leadership election, in the first round, over 80% of the votes went to two candidates, both of whom were Jewish!
You might be right - maybe the problem is not as prevalent in Labour as other places, and it is being played up by those who don't like the Labour leadership.
My point, however, was even if that is the case (and which would mean a lot of work elsewhere needs doing to resolve that), that doesn't mean things these senior Labour people have said right now are not significant. Shah did what she did. Ken said what he said. That you think John Mann MP is making a bigger deal of this than should be the case, or that Tory clubs are worse, have no bearing on that she did and he said.
If someone is goaded along into saying racist things, to make an example, they are still responsible for what they said, and it is still a problem, even if it may not be reflective of anything wider. And of course it needs to be established clearly that it is not reflective first.
The last Labour leader was Jewish. I don't remember anyone talking about it at the time. Sadiq Khan was his Campaign Manager !
Indeed, this has nothing to do with antisemitism, it's the usual campaign to get rid of Corbyn by the Blairites.
Nice trolling - I mean, you can't actually mean that right?
When I saw John Mann barking on the TV I was instantly convinced that this is simply to get Corbyn.
Why is it so hard to believe that, while he does want to do that and it is not even a secret he wants that, there are still unacceptable aspects to the Shah/Livingstone situation at the same time?
People are quite capable of being genuinely angry about things and still keeping their heads enough to try to use it to their advantage. The latter is irrelevant to those of us not in the party, but the reason for their anger may be legitimate.
If you want someone to talk about antisemitism inside Labour one should not use anti-Corbynites since their motives are completely suspect.
On this subject Gerald Kauffman has tons of greater credibility than John Mann.
Well in fairness, it might be being used by those part of a coup against him...it's just that the coup plotters are responding to events, not fabricating things, so even if the criticism is from them and they hate him, it doesn't matter, the reason for the criticism is still there.
I see this whole affair as a pile of crap which started last year by anti-Corbynites in the Jewish Chronicle, there are a lot of bear traps and Livingstone fell into one.
However the behaviour of John Mann makes it clear that this is part of the anti-Corbyn campaign and has nothing to do with antisemitism.
No one forced Naz Shah to send the tweets she did. No one forced Livingstone to say what he did on national television.
To minimise this as "falling into a trap" is disgusting.
There is virulent anti-semitism within Labour circles, I've seen it first hand, it is just now that the sane voices in Labour have lost control it is coming back to bite it in the arse.
There is no virulent antisemitism within Labour circles, if there was Ed Miliband would never have had a chance to be elected Labour leader.
Those who decry the so called antisemitism in Labour fought against the Jewish leader of the Labour party for years. This is purely an anti-Corbyn thing, Livingstone and Shah should never have fed the blairite beasts by talking about it.
This argument is so depressing. That there are antisemites in the Labour party does not seem possible to deny. The question is how widespread they are and how much influence they have. People may believe it is minimal, and we have pointing to Ed M's time as leader as an example, and it may be the case it is not as prevalent a force in the party as opponents of the current leader are presenting. But that does not mean it is not there at all when people at senior levels of the party have made anti-Semitic remarks!
Perhaps Corbyn is right and there is no 'crisis'. Perhaps. That is a view one could reasonably argue, even if on the wrong side of it.
Pretending there is no issue here is not reasonable.
And just to be clear, I hope every single party is as serious at tackling any hint of racism as Labour needs to be. That the discussion is now about Labour does not mean others get a free pass.
I bet in the posh Tory clubs , there is more anti-Jew comments than in the Labour party. In the 2010 labour party leadership election, in the first round, over 80% of the votes went to two candidates, both of whom were Jewish!
You may be right - but I don't think anti-Semitism is particularly prevalent in most of British society. But that is not what is being discussed here. Without a shadow of a doubt there is an element of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, some of which has been quite close to the leadership. I don't think the same can be said of any other major political party in Britain.
The last Labour leader was Jewish. I don't remember anyone talking about it at the time. Sadiq Khan was his Campaign Manager !
Indeed, this has nothing to do with antisemitism, it's the usual campaign to get rid of Corbyn by the Blairites.
Nice trolling - I mean, you can't actually mean that right?
When I saw John Mann barking on the TV I was instantly convinced that this is simply to get Corbyn.
Why is it so hard to believe that, while he does want to do that and it is not even a secret he wants that, there are still unacceptable aspects to the Shah/Livingstone situation at the same time?
People are quite capable of being genuinely angry about things and still keeping their heads enough to try to use it to their advantage. The latter is irrelevant to those of us not in the party, but the reason for their anger may be legitimate.
If you want someone to talk about antisemitism inside Labour one should not use anti-Corbynites since their motives are completely suspect.
On this subject Gerald Kauffman has tons of greater credibility than John Mann.
The evidence is not from John Mann. It's from Ken Livingstone.
Well in fairness, it might be being used by those part of a coup against him...it's just that the coup plotters are responding to events, not fabricating things, so even if the criticism is from them and they hate him, it doesn't matter, the reason for the criticism is still there.
I see this whole affair as a pile of crap which started last year by anti-Corbynites in the Jewish Chronicle, there are a lot of bear traps and Livingstone fell into one.
However the behaviour of John Mann makes it clear that this is part of the anti-Corbyn campaign and has nothing to do with antisemitism.
No one forced Naz Shah to send the tweets she did. No one forced Livingstone to say what he did on national television.
To minimise this as "falling into a trap" is disgusting.
There is virulent anti-semitism within Labour circles, I've seen it first hand, it is just now that the sane voices in Labour have lost control it is coming back to bite it in the arse.
There is no virulent antisemitism within Labour circles, if there was Ed Miliband would never have had a chance to be elected Labour leader.
Those who decry the so called antisemitism in Labour fought against the Jewish leader of the Labour party for years. This is purely an anti-Corbyn thing, Livingstone and Shah should never have fed the blairite beasts by talking about it.
There are no American tanks in Baghdad.
Open your eyes mate.
And there have been no American tanks in Baghdad for years now.
One should not be behind the curve you know with old jokes.
I see surbiton is still trying to win Muslim votes and pander to anti-Semitic sentiment among Muslims to do it. Labour in 2016 is identity politics and nothing more.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Perhaps the current noisy neighbours are a factor and those beastly Nazis resettling 6 million of them in Polish agas.
Whether or not "anti-semitism" expression has been hijacked or not is largely irrelevant. Language meaning may change over time and we all know a bacon butty when we see one.
I am tired of listening to this nonsense. Arabs did not kill six million Jews ! Europeans did. Palestinians are simply the sufferers of the Western powers creating Israel, who then went on to occupy more lands and settling in them.
I do not hear any sympathy about Palestinians. They did not kill anyone in the concentration camps.
I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today.
Just as few living Germans bear any responsibility for the holocaust, so few living Jew bears any for the existence of the state of Israel. But we are where we are.
I would also draw your attention to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in WWII.
The state of Israel has a right to exist in peace, as does the state of Palestine. At some stage this will happen, only the when is in doubt.
Jack, you are one of the very few people on the right here in PB I have some time for. However, I am aghast at your description "I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today."
Where did I say that ? Are you trying to pin down "the holocaust denier" badge on me too ? No, you can't. I do believe the Nazis [ Europeans ] killed 6m Jews plus another 5m Slavs [ little is mentioned of that ]. But it seems criticising Israel has become a no-go area. The Palestinians are blamed for everything and I repeat, they did not kill 6m Jews. The Europeans did.
Dan Hannan Today, EFTA signed a free trade agreement with the Philippines. The talks took less than one year. Via @Hjortur_J: https://t.co/hpkFdpRoj4
Size of Philippines economy - $290 billion Size of US economy - $18 trillion
Different countries will require different amounts of time for negotiations to be concluded. Because you can do a deal with one country in a year, it does not follow that a deal with a much, much larger economy can be done in the same time frame.
And Hannan knows that. He is just playing the game.
The Philippines' economy is bigger than more than half of those in the EU.
I see surbiton is still trying to win Muslim votes and pander to anti-Semitic sentiment among Muslims to do it. Labour in 2016 is identity politics and nothing more.
There will be fewer Muslims voting Labour now than last week. They will stay at home !
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Dear god, you too? WTF is happening to Labour?
Which phrase do you not agree with ? Do you really think being a Semite is the same as being a Jew ? You should read a bit more.
I detest racists of all stripes - I obviously read a lot more than you it seems.
The last Labour leader was Jewish. I don't remember anyone talking about it at the time. Sadiq Khan was his Campaign Manager !
Indeed, this has nothing to do with antisemitism, it's the usual campaign to get rid of Corbyn by the Blairites.
Nice trolling - I mean, you can't actually mean that right?
When I saw John Mann barking on the TV I was instantly convinced that this is simply to get Corbyn.
Why is it so hard to believe that, while he does want to do that and it is not even a secret he wants that, there are still unacceptable aspects to the Shah/Livingstone situation at the same time?
People are quite capable of being genuinely angry about things and still keeping their heads enough to try to use it to their advantage. The latter is irrelevant to those of us not in the party, but the reason for their anger may be legitimate.
If you want someone to talk about antisemitism inside Labour one should not use anti-Corbynites since their motives are completely suspect.
On this subject Gerald Kauffman has tons of greater credibility than John Mann.
The evidence is not from John Mann. It's from Ken Livingstone.
Livingstone is a done issue though, the talking subject is Mann.
FFS Labour supporters. Just accept it. There is vocal, virulent anti-Semitism inside the Labour party and the current leadership has done little to combat it. Maybe it did not realise until recently (yeah, right), but now there is absolutely no excuse. There has to be a strict zero tolerance approach. No ifs, no yeah buts. It must be uncompromising. There is no need to mention Zionism if you are criticising the government of Israel.
Apologies if it has already been mentioned, but Livingstone has a long history of making to say the least grossly inappropriate comments on the Jews:
He is incidentally completely wrong about the Nazis' motivation and sincerity for both the Israeli and Madagascar solutions. The goal was to expel them from Germany, true. But any Jew who left would have had to hand over all of their money. This is why although the Jews were encouraged to leave Germany between 1935 and 1937, very few actually did so in practice. Moreover, while in theory there was some prospect of moving Jews to Israel and them being able to survive, the idea of Madagascar was that it would be a gigantic camp where they would all die due to the lack of amenities, food and water. Personally, I'm also dubious that there was sufficient food and water in Israel without aid from the West, as indeed the events of 1946-48 go some way to prove. This is one reason why the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was never actually implemented.
Overall, I would say Ken Livingstone's track record on Jewish issues shows that he is either a naive and not very intelligent politician or a card carrying racist. I would say the track record he has in politics demonstrates he is not the former, therefore he is the latter. Corbyn's suggestion there is no crisis and no problem reveals however that he is definitely naive. In neither case should either be active in national politics, let alone in such senior positions.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
What do you think is a better expression for those racially predjudiced against Jews? While strictly anti-semitism does cover other semitic peoples, that is not common usage of the term.
It was a common usage until recently. If someone is racially prejudiced against Jews, they should be called anti-Jew. Why bury the main thrust of the expression by including another 150m people. [ I haven't counted. I also think people in the Maghreb should not be included ]
It has not been common usage in my lifetime, i.e. in the last 50 years.
Indeed, a quick web search yields, from Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time. Although the term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and yet they are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood."
Further, the spelling was adapted to antisemitism without the hyphen to minimize the potential to read it as being against Semites in general rather than Jews in particular.
Well in fairness, it might be being used by those part of a coup against him...it's just that the coup plotters are responding to events, not fabricating things, so even if the criticism is from them and they hate him, it doesn't matter, the reason for the criticism is still there.
I see this whole affair as a pile of crap which started last year by anti-Corbynites in the Jewish Chronicle, there are a lot of bear traps and Livingstone fell into one.
However the behaviour of John Mann makes it clear that this is part of the anti-Corbyn campaign and has nothing to do with antisemitism.
No one forced Naz Shah to send the tweets she did. No one forced Livingstone to say what he did on national television.
To minimise this as "falling into a trap" is disgusting.
There is virulent anti-semitism within Labour circles, I've seen it first hand, it is just now that the sane voices in Labour have lost control it is coming back to bite it in the arse.
There is no virulent antisemitism within Labour circles, if there was Ed Miliband would never have had a chance to be elected Labour leader.
Those who decry the so called antisemitism in Labour fought against the Jewish leader of the Labour party for years. This is purely an anti-Corbyn thing, Livingstone and Shah should never have fed the blairite beasts by talking about it.
There are no American tanks in Baghdad.
Open your eyes mate.
And there have been no American tanks in Baghdad for years now.
One should not be behind the curve you know with old jokes.
You are right, forgive me.
Labour are constantly giving us new material to use and I should have done so..
The last Labour leader was Jewish. I don't remember anyone talking about it at the time. Sadiq Khan was his Campaign Manager !
Indeed, this has nothing to do with antisemitism, it's the usual campaign to get rid of Corbyn by the Blairites.
Nice trolling - I mean, you can't actually mean that right?
When I saw John Mann barking on the TV I was instantly convinced that this is simply to get Corbyn.
Why is it so hard to believe that, while he does want to do that and it is not even a secret he wants that, there are still unacceptable aspects to the Shah/Livingstone situation at the same time?
People are quite capable of being genuinely angry about things and still keeping their heads enough to try to use it to their advantage. The latter is irrelevant to those of us not in the party, but the reason for their anger may be legitimate.
If you want someone to talk about antisemitism inside Labour one should not use anti-Corbynites since their motives are completely suspect.
On this subject Gerald Kauffman has tons of greater credibility than John Mann.
The evidence is not from John Mann. It's from Ken Livingstone.
Livingstone is a done issue though, the talking subject is Mann.
No, Livingstone isn't. He is still in the Labour Party and until today was a close confidant of its leader. Who must have known all about Ken's "special" views.
FFS Labour supporters. Just accept it. There is vocal, virulent anti-Semitism inside the Labour party and the current leadership has done little to combat it. Maybe it did not realise until recently (yeah, right), but now there is absolutely no excuse. There has to be a strict zero tolerance approach. No ifs, no yeah buts. It must be uncompromising. There is no need to mention Zionism if you are criticising the government of Israel.
The number one sign of someone who is not just a critic of Israel, but is actually anti-Semitic, is when they use terms like "Zionist" or "the Israel/Jewish lobby". People who use those terms know they are dog-whistling to the old stereotypes of sinister Jewish people pulling the strings of a big global conspiracy. Unfortunately, I have heard those terms far too much in Labour circles in the last few years.
However, I still maintain that people trying to conflate Sadiq Khan with the likes of Shah, Livingstone et al are out of order.
' I have not read what Livingstone has done but presumably since he has been suspended [ as I have read here ] he presumably has said something equally silly.'
So Shah & Livingstone's comments were just 'silly'.
FFS Labour supporters. Just accept it. There is vocal, virulent anti-Semitism inside the Labour party and the current leadership has done little to combat it. Maybe it did not realise until recently (yeah, right), but now there is absolutely no excuse. There has to be a strict zero tolerance approach. No ifs, no yeah buts. It must be uncompromising. There is no need to mention Zionism if you are criticising the government of Israel.
The number one sign of someone who is not just a critic of Israel, but is actually anti-Semitic, is when they use terms like "Zionist" or "the Israel/Jewish lobby". People who use those terms know they are dog-whistling to the old stereotypes of sinister Jewish people pulling the strings of a big global conspiracy.
However, I still maintain that people trying to conflate Sadiq Khan with the likes of Shah, Livingstone et al are out of order.
This argument is so depressing. That there are antisemites in the Labour party does not seem possible to deny. The question is how widespread they are and how much influence they have. People may believe it is minimal, and we have pointing to Ed M's time as leader as an example, and it may be the case it is not as prevalent a force in the party as opponents of the current leader are presenting. But that does not mean it is not there at all when people at senior levels of the party have made anti-Semitic remarks!
Perhaps Corbyn is right and there is no 'crisis'. Perhaps. That is a view one could reasonably argue, even if on the wrong side of it.
Pretending there is no issue here is not reasonable.
And just to be clear, I hope every single party is as serious at tackling any hint of racism as Labour needs to be. That the discussion is now about Labour does not mean others get a free pass.
I bet in the posh Tory clubs , there is more anti-Jew comments than in the Labour party. In the 2010 labour party leadership election, in the first round, over 80% of the votes went to two candidates, both of whom were Jewish!
You might be right - maybe the problem is not as prevalent in Labour as other places, and it is being played up by those who don't like the Labour leadership.
My point, however, was even if that is the case (and which would mean a lot of work elsewhere needs doing to resolve that), that doesn't mean things these senior Labour people have said right now are not significant. Shah did what she did. Ken said what he said. That you think John Mann MP is making a bigger deal of this than should be the case, or that Tory clubs are worse, have no bearing on that she did and he said.
If someone is goaded along into saying racist things, to make an example, they are still responsible for what they said, and it is still a problem, even if it may not be reflective of anything wider. And of course it needs to be established clearly that it is not reflective first.
"That you think John Mann MP is making a bigger deal of this than should be the case."
Again, why this deliberate mis-representation ? I have not written anything about John Mann. I still do not know what he has said. Only thing I do know, is that he is a right-winger in the Labour party. I know little else about him.
Incidentally, I would agree that this should lengthen the odds on a Khan victory.
Although the Tory campaign, of saying Khan is a sympathiser because he attended innocuous events with people who years later would prove to be extremists, remains racist, it will have more plausibility to the average floating voter who is only paying a bit of attention when they see various Labour people who genuinely are racist in the news.
How is it racist to equate Khan with extremists when he has repeatedly associated with people who are extremists, many of whom were known at the time to be extremists?
The same was said (quite rightly) with Livingstone himself last time. Was that racist too?
The difference being that Livingstone actually did associate himself with the SENTIMENTS of extremists. For all the hysteria, Khan has never associated himself with the sentiments of extremists, and attending events that were completely unrelated to Islamist causes that also happened to be attended by extremists, is not the same thing at all. Ask Zac:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Perhaps the current noisy neighbours are a factor and those beastly Nazis resettling 6 million of them in Polish agas.
Whether or not "anti-semitism" expression has been hijacked or not is largely irrelevant. Language meaning may change over time and we all know a bacon butty when we see one.
I am tired of listening to this nonsense. Arabs did not kill six million Jews ! Europeans did. Palestinians are simply the sufferers of the Western powers creating Israel, who then went on to occupy more lands and settling in them.
I do not hear any sympathy about Palestinians. They did not kill anyone in the concentration camps.
I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today.
Just as few living Germans bear any responsibility for the holocaust, so few living Jew bears any for the existence of the state of Israel. But we are where we are.
I would also draw your attention to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in WWII.
The state of Israel has a right to exist in peace, as does the state of Palestine. At some stage this will happen, only the when is in doubt.
Jack, you are one of the very few people on the right here in PB I have some time for. However, I am aghast at your description "I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today."
Where did I say that ? Are you trying to pin down "the holocaust denier" badge on me too ? No, you can't. I do believe the Nazis [ Europeans ] killed 6m Jews plus another 5m Slavs [ little is mentioned of that ]. But it seems criticising Israel has become a no-go area. The Palestinians are blamed for everything and I repeat, they did not kill 6m Jews. The Europeans did.
Amin al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis. The vile anti-Semite is responsible for the deaths of countless Jews.
Naz Shah and Livingstone did much more than criticise Israel.
When did I support Naz Shah or Livingstone ? That's exactly my point. Anything you write about Israel will be twisted round.
By Israel apparently.
Your words:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assass
If you didn't mean that, fine, but it does not take any twisting to get that interpretation
What the fuck are you fucking talking about ? I totally condemn what Naz wrote in her facebook. I have not read what Livingstone has done but presumably since he has been suspended [ as I have read here ] he presumably has said something equally silly.
But I can see the bully boys are out in force !
I object to your characterisation of my post as being 'bully boy' not least because you ascribe that behaviour to being in defence of Israel, and unlike you in my post I was clear about the context of my remarks and that that was not a consideration of mine. The use of it is a deflection.
People cannot reasonably be expected to know every post another poster makes on a particular topic, and I am glad to hear you condemned Shah's remarks. But all I did was quote your own post and point out how it was not unreasonable to interpret it in the way another person did - for instance using the term character assassination, which is usually only used when the person using it thinks the subject should not be 'assassinated'.
I even took pains to acknowledge maybe the other persons interpretation of your post was not what you had meant, as indeed you claimed, but as I indicated, your particular choice of language, and ascribing the motivation to the 'influence of Israel' did make other interpretations valid.
I'm happy to see you state unequivocally that the negative interpretation is not reflective of your views. Perhaps it might be better if you avoided inflammatory emotive language and aimed for clarity, rather than using the language of Israel conspiracists, then your point would not have been so reasonably misinterpretable.
It's fair to get angry or annoyed when people misinterpret our remarks, lord knows I've done it myself. But before responding petulantly, as I have also done in the past, it is worth re-reading those remarks to see how reasonable that misinterpretation might have been, given those reading it are not omniscient, with knowledge of every single speck of context you've ever made, and also whether they are actually attacking you personally or not, or the perceived content of the post, which you could simply rebut.
I do believe the Nazis [ Europeans ] killed 6m Jews plus another 5m Slavs [ little is mentioned of that ]. But it seems criticising Israel has become a no-go area. The Palestinians are blamed for everything and I repeat, they did not kill 6m Jews. The Europeans did.
It was considerably more than 5 million. If you include Russians, Byelorussions and Ukraininians, the figure would be closer to 25 million.
Or are you only referring to those that were murdered, rather than those that were executed or killed in fighting?
You should also remember that whatever else the Nazis did to the Slavs - which was brutal - they did not strip the gold out of their teeth, or cut the hair off their corpses to make blankets, or use the fat produced from the highly inefficient cremation process to make soap for commercial sale. That put the Holocaust on a whole different level.
I am no particular fan of Israel. But a suggestion that they are committing anything remotely resembling the Holocaust against the Palestinians is not merely fatuous, it is straightforwardly dishonest. Even drawing language that suggests that link ('transportation') is at best crass and at worst simply racist. Moreover, as you yourself have noted, it makes it much easier for Israel to bat criticism of its policies away.
The Holocaust should not be brought in to modern discussions of Israel. It confuses the issue and demeans those who do it, on both sides. However, it is quite obvious on looking at Shah's comments that these are not legitimate criticism of Israel, they are anti-semitism. Livingstone's defence meets the same criteria. If you cannot see that, it is you who need to read up on the subject.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
Perhaps the current noisy neighbours are a factor and those beastly Nazis resettling 6 million of them in Polish agas.
Whether or not "anti-semitism" expression has been hijacked or not is largely irrelevant. Language meaning may change over time and we all know a bacon butty when we see one.
I am tired of listening to this nonsense. Arabs did not kill six million Jews ! Europeans did. Palestinians are simply the sufferers of the Western powers creating Israel, who then went on to occupy more lands and settling in them.
I do not hear any sympathy about Palestinians. They did not kill anyone in the concentration camps.
I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today.
Just as few living Germans bear any responsibility for the holocaust, so few living Jew bears any for the existence of the state of Israel. But we are where we are.
I would also draw your attention to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in WWII.
The state of Israel has a right to exist in peace, as does the state of Palestine. At some stage this will happen, only the when is in doubt.
Jack, you are one of the very few people on the right here in PB I have some time for. However, I am aghast at your description "I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today."
Where did I say that ? Are you trying to pin down "the holocaust denier" badge on me too ? No, you can't. I do believe the Nazis [ Europeans ] killed 6m Jews plus another 5m Slavs [ little is mentioned of that ]. But it seems criticising Israel has become a no-go area. The Palestinians are blamed for everything and I repeat, they did not kill 6m Jews. The Europeans did.
No.
However we cannot turn the clock back and pretend that Israel isn't a fact or that it's the only functioning democracy in the region.
I think you were a little careless in your earlier post and a more comprehensive account would have saved you the response it achieved.
I have been critical of Israel in the past and probably will be again. But I make it in the context of firmly believing in the two sate solution.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
What do you think is a better expression for those racially predjudiced against Jews? While strictly anti-semitism does cover other semitic peoples, that is not common usage of the term.
It was a common usage until recently. If someone is racially prejudiced against Jews, they should be called anti-Jew. Why bury the main thrust of the expression by including another 150m people. [ I haven't counted. I also think people in the Maghreb should not be included ]
It has not been common usage in my lifetime, i.e. in the last 50 years.
Indeed, a quick web search yields, from Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time. Although the term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and yet they are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood."
Further, the spelling was adapted to antisemitism without the hyphen to minimize the potential to read it as being against Semites in general rather than Jews in particular.
You are not the only one who can quote. I can too.
"The term Semitic people or Semitic cultures (from the biblical "Shem", Hebrew: שם) was a term for people or cultures who speak or spoke the Semitic languages. The racial use of the term, together with the parallel terms Hamitic and Japhetic, is now obsolete.[1] According to some scholars the concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist[2] or should be avoided.[3][4]"
"Adolf Hitler is likely to have had Jewish and African roots, DNA tests have shown."
That's an old one.
His grandmother (unmarried) was working in a Jewish household when his father Alois was born, and they supported her financially while the child was young. A conspiracy theorist's wet dream!
This argument is so depressing. That there are antisemites in the Labour party does not seem possible to deny. The question is how widespread they are and how much influence they have. People may believe it is minimal, and we have pointing to Ed M's time as leader as an example, and it may be the case it is not as prevalent a force in the party as opponents of the current leader s.
I bwish!
You might be right - maybe the problem is not as prevalent in Labour as other places, and it is being played up by those who don't like the Labour leadership.
My point, however, was even if that is the case (and which would mean a lot of work elsewhere needs doing to resolve that), that doesn't mean things these senior Labour people have said right now are not significant. Shah did what she did. Ken said what he said. That you think John Mann MP is making a bigger deal of this than should be the case, or that Tory clubs are worse, have no bearing on that she did and he said.
If someone is goaded along into saying racist things, to make an example, they are still responsible for what they said, and it is still a problem, even if it may not be reflective of anything wider. And of course it needs to be established clearly that it is not reflective first.
"That you think John Mann MP is making a bigger deal of this than should be the case."
Again, why this deliberate mis-representation ? I have not written anything about John Mann. I still do not know what he has said. Only thing I do know, is that he is a right-winger in the Labour party. I know little else about him.
It's not deliberate misrepresentation, it was poor language on my part - I apologise that I conflated you, Surbiton, with 'you', those in general who feel this is not a big deal and is being stirred up by Corbyn's opponents.
You really need to stop ascribing to malice that which stupidity will explain. I would much rather admit to the latter than the former. But I will rephrase my point, which was:
That people may think some are making a bigger deal of this than should be the case, or that Tory clubs are worse, has no bearing on what Shah did or Livingstone said.
I trust you will accept the point now, even if you do not agree with it, as is your inalienable right?
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The expression has been hijacked.
Perhaps the current noisy neighbours are a factor and those beastly Nazis resettling 6 million of them in Polish agas.
I am tired of listening to this nonsense. Arabs did not kill six million Jews ! Europeans did. Palestinians are simply the sufferers of the Western powers creating Israel, who then went on to occupy more lands and settling in them.
I do not hear any sympathy about Palestinians. They did not kill anyone in the concentration camps.
I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today.
Just as few living Germans bear any responsibility for the holocaust, so few living Jew bears any for the existence of the state of Israel. But we are where we are.
I would also draw your attention to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in WWII.
The state of Israel has a right to exist in peace, as does the state of Palestine. At some stage this will happen, only the when is in doubt.
Jack, you are one of the very few people on the right here in PB I have some time for. However, I am aghast at your description "I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today."
Where did I say that ? Are you trying to pin down "the holocaust denier" badge on me too ? No, you can't. I do believe the Nazis [ Europeans ] killed 6m Jews plus another 5m Slavs [ little is mentioned of that ]. But it seems criticising Israel has become a no-go area. The Palestinians are blamed for everything and I repeat, they did not kill 6m Jews. The Europeans did.
Amin al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis. The vile anti-Semite is responsible for the deaths of countless Jews.
"JERUSALEM — Israeli historians and opposition politicians on Wednesday joined Palestinians in denouncing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for saying it was a Palestinian, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who gave Hitler the idea of annihilating European Jews during World War II."
Now if John Mann and other Anti-Corbynites were really persons of integrity they would go after you too with the same vile as they went against Livingstone.
You see the perils of being dragged to the mud is that you get dirty but the pig likes it.
The folks who are trying to unseat Mr Corbyn should perhaps in future choose a subject area the Great British public actually have any interest in or care about.
The folks who are trying to unseat Mr Corbyn should perhaps in future choose a subject area the Great British public actually have any interest in or care about.
Any suggestions? Certainly Corbyn's going nowhere, and the anti-Corbynites have tried many options.
The folks who are trying to unseat Mr Corbyn should perhaps in future choose a subject area the Great British public actually have any interest in or care about.
The Great British Public doesn't choose the Labour leader.
What those opposed to Corbyn need is a subject Labour members care about and, to be fair, they do generally care about racism.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist. Semitic people are those who spoke a Semetic language. The Israelis today are a very small part of the semetic people.
The expression has been hijacked.
I don't know I would say the success of Trump, Sanders and Corbyn shows the Israel lobby is just a paper tiger now. The traditional media has lost its power, information is freely available across the internet. Funding of politicians and political parties is clearly still a factor, but the direction of travel is clear.
They must unify around one candidate to start with to prevent splitting the anti-Corbyn vote, and then they must try to reinvigorate ordinary, sensible people who would vote Labour.
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The expression has been hijacked.
Perhaps the current noisy neighbours are a factor and those beastly Nazis resettling 6 million of them in Polish agas.
...
I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today.
Just as few living Germans bear any responsibility for the holocaust, so few living Jew bears any for the existence of the state of Israel. But we are where we are.
I would also draw your attention to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in WWII.
The state of Israel has a right to exist in peace, as does the state of Palestine. At some stage this will happen, only the when is in doubt.
Jack, you are one of the very few people on the right here in PB I have some time for. However, I am aghast at your description "I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today."
Where did I say that ? Are you trying to pin down "the holocaust denier" badge on me too ? No, you can't. I do believe the Nazis [ Europeans ] killed 6m Jews plus another 5m Slavs [ little is mentioned of that ]. But it seems criticising Israel has become a no-go area. The Palestinians are blamed for everything and I repeat, they did not kill 6m Jews. The Europeans did.
Amin al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis. The vile anti-Semite is responsible for the deaths of countless Jews.
"JERUSALEM — Israeli historians and opposition politicians on Wednesday joined Palestinians in denouncing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for saying it was a Palestinian, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who gave Hitler the idea of annihilating European Jews during World War II."
Now if John Mann and other Anti-Corbynites were really persons of integrity they would go after you too with the same vile as they went against Livingstone.
You see the perils of being dragged to the mud is that you get dirty but the pig likes it.
I knew it. Somehow the Palestinians will be blamed for the holocaust. It was just a matter of time. Maybe the Mufti wrote Mein Kampf too ?
The must unify around one candidate to start with to prevent splitting the anti-Corbyn vote, and then they must try to reinvigorate ordinary, sensible people who would vote Labour.
There can be only one. Step forward, Ed Miliband !
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
Today, if you criticise Israel, first you are labelled as anti-zionist and then anti-semetic.
The expression has been hijacked.
Perhaps the current noisy neighbours are a factor and those beastly Nazis resettling 6 million of them in Polish agas.
...
I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today.
Just as few living Germans bear any responsibility for the holocaust, so few living Jew bears any for the existence of the state of Israel. But we are where we are.
I would also draw your attention to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in WWII.
The state of Israel has a right to exist in peace, as does the state of Palestine. At some stage this will happen, only the when is in doubt.
Jack, you are one of the very few people on the right here in PB I have some time for. However, I am aghast at your description "I'm sorry you think the genocide of 6 million Jews has so little bearing today."
Where did I say that ? Are you trying to pin down "the holocaust denier" badge on me too ? No, you can't. I do believe the Nazis [ Europeans ] killed 6m Jews plus another 5m Slavs [ little is mentioned of that ]. But it seems criticising Israel has become a no-go area. The Palestinians are blamed for everything and I repeat, they did not kill 6m Jews. The Europeans did.
Amin al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis. The vile anti-Semite is responsible for the deaths of countless Jews.
"JERUSALEM — Israeli historians and opposition politicians on Wednesday joined Palestinians in denouncing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for saying it was a Palestinian, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who gave Hitler the idea of annihilating European Jews during World War II."
Now if John Mann and other Anti-Corbynites were really persons of integrity they would go after you too with the same vile as they went against Livingstone.
You see the perils of being dragged to the mud is that you get dirty but the pig likes it.
I knew it. Somehow the Palestinians will be blamed for the holocaust. It was just a matter of time. Maybe the Mufti wrote Mein Kampf too ?
That post only goes to show what an enlightened and democratic country Israel is. Israeli politicians joining Palestinians to criticise the government.
The folks who are trying to unseat Mr Corbyn should perhaps in future choose a subject area the Great British public actually have any interest in or care about.
Yup .... let's chat about Soviet state sponsored nuclear terrorism on British streets.
The folks who are trying to unseat Mr Corbyn should perhaps in future choose a subject area the Great British public actually have any interest in or care about.
Any suggestions? Certainly Corbyn's going nowhere, and the anti-Corbynites have tried many options.
Anti-Corbynites are like nuclear waste for Labour voters.
When they pre-announced their efforts to get rid of Corbyn even before he was elected, their credibility shrank to absolute zero.
No one will listen to them simply because everyone knows they are not sincere in their criticism, they are just out to get Corbyn.
The must unify around one candidate to start with to prevent splitting the anti-Corbyn vote, and then they must try to reinvigorate ordinary, sensible people who would vote Labour.
There can be only one. Step forward, Ed Miliband !
If that one came home, I think I'd mention my 200/1 tip in every single post.
Could this row hurt Labour's GOTV campaign next Thursday?
It will - no question.
Sadiq will comfortably win London as his opponent Zac has been maxing out on the politics of identity. Zac is also crap it has to be said.
It would seem so. I have to say I've been impressed by Khan, in relative terms. I won't say I'm unaffected by the arguments against him, but he seems to know how to respond, is keen to appear reasonable. He's deathly boring it seems, but Zac is just so bloody mundane as well, I get no sense from him at all, and Khan comes across as having more substance. That might not be the case, and I don't have the vote in London, but I can see why Zac is struggling to make headway.
Of course the Gulags and the Red Terror happened before the concentration camp system.
I hate to be contrary, LondonBob, but technically the former came three years later.*
For the Red Terror, it depends a bit on whether you are including Lenin's tactics in the Civil War under the umbrella of 'Red Terror' - if not, then again it was probably 2-3 years after the first concentration camps opened.
*Later than the ones in Germany under the Nazis, obviously, not later than the idea of a 'concentration' of people which dates back to the nineteenth century and came to widespread attention following British mismanagement of them in the Boer War in 1901.
Comments
No one forced Naz Shah to send the tweets she did. No one forced Livingstone to say what he did on national television.
To minimise this as "falling into a trap" is disgusting.
There is virulent anti-semitism within Labour circles, I've seen it first hand, it is just now that the sane voices in Labour have lost control it is coming back to bite it in the arse.
Size of US economy - $18 trillion
Different countries will require different amounts of time for negotiations to be concluded. Because you can do a deal with one country in a year, it does not follow that a deal with a much, much larger economy can be done in the same time frame.
And Hannan knows that. He is just playing the game.
Also anti-semitism is not racism.
If it's for Indiana that is way too low.
seen here.
(And the USA is our leading non EU trading partner - despite no trade agreement)
But the question remains: he has said that he is the one to take on Islamic extremists. Today is surely the day for him to show us what that means.
If I were Zac I would be saying to Khan just that: "Show. Don't just tell."
By his words or lack of words, by his actions can we then judge if Khan really means what he says and has the courage to follow through or whether it's just another sound bite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement
I'd heard of the Madagascar Plan but this was new to me.
Whether or not "anti-semitism" expression has been hijacked or not is largely irrelevant. Language meaning may change over time and we all know a bacon butty when we see one.
Those who decry the so called antisemitism in Labour fought against the Jewish leader of the Labour party for years.
This is purely an anti-Corbyn thing, Livingstone and Shah should never have fed the blairite beasts by talking about it.
Your words:
Israel has powerful influence. One way or other it will get you. Either by a death squad or through character assassination.
In the context of a discussion centered on attacks on the character of Ken Livingstone and Shah and those who share their views, your words are a clear implication that the influence of Israel is behind the 'character assassination' of them and others who share their views.
Wikipedia (I know, I know) defines character assassination as an attempt to tarnish a person's reputation. 'It may involve exaggeration, misleading half-truths, or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person. It is a form of defamation and can be a form of ad hominem argument'.
Ergo, your words as quoted above quite clearly appear to indicate you believe people Israel does not like will be defamed by half truths, exaggerations and manipulations, for the reason of defending Israel, since you ascribe it to their influence, rather than other reasons (such as not liking racist views). And since the argument has arisen about Shah and Livingstone, and you did not specify they are excluded from the 'defence' you offer, it is not unreasonable to to conclude you seem to think the attacks on them are untrue.
If you didn't mean that, fine, but it does not take any twisting to get that interpretation
I do not hear any sympathy about Palestinians. They did not kill anyone in the concentration camps.
Perhaps Corbyn is right and there is no 'crisis'. Perhaps. That is a view one could reasonably argue, even if on the wrong side of it.
Pretending there is no issue here is not reasonable.
And just to be clear, I hope every single party is as serious at tackling any hint of racism as Labour needs to be. That the discussion is now about Labour does not mean others get a free pass.
But I can see the bully boys are out in force !
People are quite capable of being genuinely angry about things and still keeping their heads enough to try to use it to their advantage. The latter is irrelevant to those of us not in the party, but the reason for their anger may be legitimate.
http://hurryupharry.org/2016/04/28/the-speech-that-would-make-me-vote-for-sadiq-khan/
https://youtu.be/PrBQMJEObR8
Just as few living Germans bear any responsibility for the holocaust, so few living Jew bears any for the existence of the state of Israel. But we are where we are.
I would also draw your attention to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in WWII.
The state of Israel has a right to exist in peace, as does the state of Palestine. At some stage this will happen, only the when is in doubt.
My point, however, was even if that is the case (and which would mean a lot of work elsewhere needs doing to resolve that), that doesn't mean things these senior Labour people have said right now are not significant. Shah did what she did. Ken said what he said. That you think John Mann MP is making a bigger deal of this than should be the case, or that Tory clubs are worse, have no bearing on that she did and he said.
If someone is goaded along into saying racist things, to make an example, they are still responsible for what they said, and it is still a problem, even if it may not be reflective of anything wider. And of course it needs to be established clearly that it is not reflective first.
On this subject Gerald Kauffman has tons of greater credibility than John Mann.
Open your eyes mate.
One should not be behind the curve you know with old jokes.
Where did I say that ? Are you trying to pin down "the holocaust denier" badge on me too ? No, you can't. I do believe the Nazis [ Europeans ] killed 6m Jews plus another 5m Slavs [ little is mentioned of that ]. But it seems criticising Israel has become a no-go area. The Palestinians are blamed for everything and I repeat, they did not kill 6m Jews. The Europeans did.
Keep defending the indefensible if you want.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/london-mayor-election/9229285/Ken-Livingstone-fury-at-concentration-camp-guard-jibe-was-a-huge-fuss-over-nothing.html
He is incidentally completely wrong about the Nazis' motivation and sincerity for both the Israeli and Madagascar solutions. The goal was to expel them from Germany, true. But any Jew who left would have had to hand over all of their money. This is why although the Jews were encouraged to leave Germany between 1935 and 1937, very few actually did so in practice. Moreover, while in theory there was some prospect of moving Jews to Israel and them being able to survive, the idea of Madagascar was that it would be a gigantic camp where they would all die due to the lack of amenities, food and water. Personally, I'm also dubious that there was sufficient food and water in Israel without aid from the West, as indeed the events of 1946-48 go some way to prove. This is one reason why the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was never actually implemented.
Overall, I would say Ken Livingstone's track record on Jewish issues shows that he is either a naive and not very intelligent politician or a card carrying racist. I would say the track record he has in politics demonstrates he is not the former, therefore he is the latter. Corbyn's suggestion there is no crisis and no problem reveals however that he is definitely naive. In neither case should either be active in national politics, let alone in such senior positions.
Indeed, a quick web search yields, from Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time. Although the term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and yet they are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood."
Further, the spelling was adapted to antisemitism without the hyphen to minimize the potential to read it as being against Semites in general rather than Jews in particular.
Labour are constantly giving us new material to use and I should have done so..
However, I still maintain that people trying to conflate Sadiq Khan with the likes of Shah, Livingstone et al are out of order.
' I have not read what Livingstone has done but presumably since he has been suspended [ as I have read here ] he presumably has said something equally silly.'
So Shah & Livingstone's comments were just 'silly'.
Pure comedy gold
Again, why this deliberate mis-representation ? I have not written anything about John Mann. I still do not know what he has said. Only thing I do know, is that he is a right-winger in the Labour party. I know little else about him.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/7113899/David-Miliband-in-line-for-top-Government-job-in-the-US-if-Clinton-wins-election.html
People cannot reasonably be expected to know every post another poster makes on a particular topic, and I am glad to hear you condemned Shah's remarks. But all I did was quote your own post and point out how it was not unreasonable to interpret it in the way another person did - for instance using the term character assassination, which is usually only used when the person using it thinks the subject should not be 'assassinated'.
I even took pains to acknowledge maybe the other persons interpretation of your post was not what you had meant, as indeed you claimed, but as I indicated, your particular choice of language, and ascribing the motivation to the 'influence of Israel' did make other interpretations valid.
I'm happy to see you state unequivocally that the negative interpretation is not reflective of your views. Perhaps it might be better if you avoided inflammatory emotive language and aimed for clarity, rather than using the language of Israel conspiracists, then your point would not have been so reasonably misinterpretable.
It's fair to get angry or annoyed when people misinterpret our remarks, lord knows I've done it myself. But before responding petulantly, as I have also done in the past, it is worth re-reading those remarks to see how reasonable that misinterpretation might have been, given those reading it are not omniscient, with knowledge of every single speck of context you've ever made, and also whether they are actually attacking you personally or not, or the perceived content of the post, which you could simply rebut.
Although the Telegraph has already proclaimed it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/7961211/Hitler-had-Jewish-and-African-roots-DNA-tests-show.html
"Adolf Hitler is likely to have had Jewish and African roots, DNA tests have shown."
Or are you only referring to those that were murdered, rather than those that were executed or killed in fighting?
You should also remember that whatever else the Nazis did to the Slavs - which was brutal - they did not strip the gold out of their teeth, or cut the hair off their corpses to make blankets, or use the fat produced from the highly inefficient cremation process to make soap for commercial sale. That put the Holocaust on a whole different level.
I am no particular fan of Israel. But a suggestion that they are committing anything remotely resembling the Holocaust against the Palestinians is not merely fatuous, it is straightforwardly dishonest. Even drawing language that suggests that link ('transportation') is at best crass and at worst simply racist. Moreover, as you yourself have noted, it makes it much easier for Israel to bat criticism of its policies away.
The Holocaust should not be brought in to modern discussions of Israel. It confuses the issue and demeans those who do it, on both sides. However, it is quite obvious on looking at Shah's comments that these are not legitimate criticism of Israel, they are anti-semitism. Livingstone's defence meets the same criteria. If you cannot see that, it is you who need to read up on the subject.
However we cannot turn the clock back and pretend that Israel isn't a fact or that it's the only functioning democracy in the region.
I think you were a little careless in your earlier post and a more comprehensive account would have saved you the response it achieved.
I have been critical of Israel in the past and probably will be again. But I make it in the context of firmly believing in the two sate solution.
"The term Semitic people or Semitic cultures (from the biblical "Shem", Hebrew: שם) was a term for people or cultures who speak or spoke the Semitic languages. The racial use of the term, together with the parallel terms Hamitic and Japhetic, is now obsolete.[1] According to some scholars the concept of Semitic ethnicity does not exist[2] or should be avoided.[3][4]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people
The largest Semite group are the Arabs. Are you saying the Arabs are not Semites ? Rewriting the language, are we ?
His grandmother (unmarried) was working in a Jewish household when his father Alois was born, and they supported her financially while the child was young. A conspiracy theorist's wet dream!
If you want a "how the mighty have fallen", you can back Andy Burnham for next Labour leader on Betfair at 90.
You really need to stop ascribing to malice that which stupidity will explain. I would much rather admit to the latter than the former. But I will rephrase my point, which was:
That people may think some are making a bigger deal of this than should be the case, or that Tory clubs are worse, has no bearing on what Shah did or Livingstone said.
I trust you will accept the point now, even if you do not agree with it, as is your inalienable right?
"JERUSALEM — Israeli historians and opposition politicians on Wednesday joined Palestinians in denouncing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for saying it was a Palestinian, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who gave Hitler the idea of annihilating European Jews during World War II."
Now if John Mann and other Anti-Corbynites were really persons of integrity they would go after you too with the same vile as they went against Livingstone.
You see the perils of being dragged to the mud is that you get dirty but the pig likes it.
What those opposed to Corbyn need is a subject Labour members care about and, to be fair, they do generally care about racism.
http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2015/03/bbn-e1427024666114.jpg
Sadiq will comfortably win London as his opponent Zac has been maxing out on the politics of identity. Zac is also crap it has to be said.
When they pre-announced their efforts to get rid of Corbyn even before he was elected, their credibility shrank to absolute zero.
No one will listen to them simply because everyone knows they are not sincere in their criticism, they are just out to get Corbyn.
For the Red Terror, it depends a bit on whether you are including Lenin's tactics in the Civil War under the umbrella of 'Red Terror' - if not, then again it was probably 2-3 years after the first concentration camps opened.
*Later than the ones in Germany under the Nazis, obviously, not later than the idea of a 'concentration' of people which dates back to the nineteenth century and came to widespread attention following British mismanagement of them in the Boer War in 1901.