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Jacobson’s demolition of the ‘Ashamed Jews’ wins Man Booker

October 12, 2010 — David Hirsh

‘The Finkler Question’ by Howard Jacobson has won the Man Booker Prize.

Howard Jacobson

It is a dark and difficult comedy about contemporary antisemitism and about how contemporary Jews deal with it. It is a sharp and political satire on the “as a Jew” affectation, by which some attempt to mobilize their Jewish identity as an ideological weapon against Israel; some also try to mobilize their Jewish identity against the efforts of the overwhelming majority of Jews who gently and quietly try to live in a contradictory world. The “as a Jew” activists are happy to reassure the British intelligentsia that there is no significant problem of antisemitism in the UK. Jacobson challenges this bland and one-sided reassurance with a funny and complex narrative in which he outlines a more challenging reality. Tonight some, at least, of the British intelligentsia has shown that it is not necessarily convinced by the strange “as a Jew” variant of identity politics.

It was Miriam Margolyes the actress who went on Desert Island Discs and proclaimed herself to be “a proud Jew” but also “an ashamed Jew”. Perhaps she was the model for Jacobson’s central character in the book. Jacobson writes in the Jewish Chronicle:

“Every other Wednesday, except for festivals and High Holy-days, an anti-Zionist group called ASHamed Jews meets in an upstairs room in the Groucho Club in Soho to dissociate itself from Israel, urge the boycotting of Israeli goods, and otherwise demonstrate a humanity in which they consider Jews who are not ASHamed to be deficient. ASHamed Jews came about as a consequence of the famous Jewish media philosopher Sam Finkler’s avowal of his own shame on Desert Island Discs.”

“My Jewishness has always been a source of pride and solace to me,” he told Radio Four’s listeners, not quite candidly, “but in the matter of the dispossession of the Palestinians I am, as a Jew, profoundly ashamed.”

“Profoundly self-regarding,” you mean, was his wife’s response. But then she wasn’t Jewish and so couldn’t understand just how ashamed in his Jewishness an ashamed Jew could be.”

Jacobson goes on:

“When it comes to Jewish anti-Zionists, their Jew-hatred is barely disguised, not in what they say about Israel but in the contempt they show for the motives and feelings of fellow-Jews who do not think as they do. There is, of course, nothing new in such schismatics; Jews have been railing against one another and indeed against Judaism from its inception. It was a Jew who invented Christianity.”

“Monotheism probably explains this enthusiasm for dissent. The Jewish God demands a oneness it can feel like a positive duty to refuse. It might even be to our greater glory that we splinter with such regularity and glee. In our variousness is our strength.”

“But then let’s call the thing that drives us by its proper name. Hiding behind Israel is a cowardly way for a Jew to express his anti-Jewishness. That half the time he is battling his psychic daddy and not his psychic homeland I don’t doubt, though I accept that, in political discourse, we have to pretend that what we are talking about is what we are taking about.”

“But here is the beauty of being a novelist —- I can have fun ascribing pathology to whom I like. I know what’s really bothering them. They are my creations, after all.”

As well as brilliantly exploring the themes in fiction, Howard Jacobson has regularly written more straightforwardly and analytically on the question of contemporary antisemitism. In February 2009 this series of critiques in The Independent culminated in his a piece entitled ‘Let’s see the ‘criticism’ for what it really is’. The final focus of this column is Caryl Churchill’s play ‘Seven Jewish Children’:

Thus lie follows lie, omission follows omission, until, in the tenth and final minute, we have a stage populated by monsters who kill babies by design – “Tell her we killed the babies by mistake,” one says, meaning don’t tell her what we really did – who laugh when they see a dead Palestinian policeman (“Tell her they’re animals … Tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out”), who consider themselves the “chosen people”, and who admit to feeling happy when they see Palestinian “children covered in blood”.

Anti-Semitic? No, no. Just criticism of Israel

Caryl Churchill responded to Howard Jacobson’s essay on the distinction between criticism and demonization as follows:

Howard Jacobson writes as if there’s something new about describing critics of Israel as anti-Semitic. But it’s the usual tactic.

In this way Churchill accused Jacobson of being a dishonest propagandist for Israel rather than an intellectual or an artist. Today, the Man Booker committee has shown its profound disagreement with Churchill’s disgraceful accusation.

Read the full piece by Jacobson here. Read the bullying and libellous responses to Jacobson’s piece here, the following day, in the Independent. Read also Jacqueline Rose’s attack on Jacobson, as well as his further defence, here. It is charmingly entitled ‘Why Jacqueline Rose is not right’.

See Jacobson’s brilliant critique of the campaign to boycott Israeli universities here.

More on the ‘Ashamed Jews’: click here and also here.

Posted in Uncategorized. 4 Comments »

Turbulent Times: The British Jewish Community Today

October 12, 2010 — David Hirsh

Wednesday 20 October 2010 5:30-7:00 p.m. Institute of Education, hosted by the Centre for Jewish Studies at SOAS

Is this the best of times or the worst of times for Anglo-Jewry? What does Anglo-Jewry’s history tell us about multiculturalism? Does the community allow for enough dissent and innovation, or is there so much dissent and innovation that there won’t be a community left?

You are invited to an event to celebrate the publication of Turbulent Times. A panel discussion will explore the themes of the book, and there will be a short drinks reception.

Speakers:

Professor Les Back (Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths University of London)

Sara Abramson (Board of Deputies/London School of Economics)

Professor David Feldman (Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck College)

Clive Lawton (Limmud/Tzedeck)

Keith Kahn-Harris (Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society, Birkbeck)

Ben Gidley (Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford)

New Venue: Room 822, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL

Nearest Underground Stations: Russell Square, Goodge Street, Euston Square and Tottenham Court Road. Location details:http://www.ioe.ac.uk/sitehelp/1072.html

All are welcome and attendance is free. To help us get an idea of numbers, we would appreciate you letting us know if you intend to come at kkahnharris@yahoo.co.uk

This event is supported by Continuum Books and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society.

Further information:

Turbulent Times: The British Jewish Community Today: http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=132571&SubjectId=1043&Subject2Id=1726

Centre for Jewish Studies, SOAS: http://www.soas.ac.uk/jewishstudies/

Article in the JC: http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/the-simon-round-interview/36259/interview-keith-kahn-harris-and-ben-gidley

Keith Kahn-Harris: http://kahn-harris.org/

Ben Gidley: http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/people/staff/ben-gidley/

Posted in Uncategorized. 1 Comment »

David Hirsh: The Livingstone Formulation

October 5, 2010 — David Hirsh

David Hirsh

David Hirsh (2010) ‘Accusations of malicious intent in debates about the Palestine-Israel conrflict and about antisemitism‘ Transversal1/20010, Graz, Austria

The Livingstone Formulation, ‘playing the antisemitism card’ and contesting the boundaries of antiracist discourse

To download the whole paper as a pdf file, click here

Author: David Hirsh is a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is co-convenor of the European Sociological Network on Racism and Antisemitism. He has published on crimes against humanity, international humanitarian law and antisemitism. He is the founding editor of the Engage journal and website and has written on the Guardian’s Comment is Free.

This paper, publised in Transversal, the journal of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Graz, describes how theLivingstone Formulation operates as a way of de-legitmizing questions about contemporary antisemitism by means of ad hominem attack. It is possible to relate seriously and rationally to charges of antisemitism but it is interesting how often people refuse to take the charges seriously and instead resort to this counter-accusation of malicious ‘Zionist’ intent. This mirrors the operation against which the Livingstone Formulation originally sets itself – which is the raising of the issue of antisemitism maliciously in order to de-legitimise criticism of Israeli human rights abuses.

The paper describes and analyses more than twenty documented examples of the Livingstone Formulation from public discourse.

This paper is concerned with a rhetorical formulation which is sometimes deployed in response to an accusation of antisemitism, particularly when it relates to discourse which is of the form of criticism of Israel. This formulation is a defensive response which deploys a counter-accusation that the person raising the issue of antisemitism is doing so in bad faith and dishonestly. I have called it The Livingstone Formulation. It is defined by the presence of two elements. Firstly the conflation of legitimate criticism of Israel with what are alleged to be demonizing, exclusionary or antisemitic discourses or actions; secondly, the presence of the counteraccusation that the raisers of the issue of antisemitism do so with dishonest intent, in order to de-legitimize criticism of Israel. The allegation is that the accuser chooses to ‘play the antisemitism card’ rather than to relate seriously to, or to refute, the criticisms of Israel. While the issue of antisemitism is certainly sometimes raised in an unjustified way, and may even be raised in bad faith, the Livingstone Formulation may appear as a response to any discussion of contemporary antisemitism.

This paper is not concerned directly with those who are accused of employing antisemitic discourse and who respond in a measured and rational way to such accusations in a good faith effort to relate to the concern, and to refute it. Rather it is concerned with modes of refusal to engage with the issue of antisemitism. Those who argue that certain kinds of arguments, tropes, analogies and ideas are antisemitic are trying to have them recognized as being outside of the boundaries of legitimate antiracist discourse. The Livingstone Formulation as a response tries to have the raising itself of the issue of antisemitism recognized as being outside of the boundaries of legitimate discourse. In this paper I describe and analyse a number of examples of the formulation which come from a number of profoundly different sources, including antiracist, openly antisemitic, antizionist, and mainstream ones.

I focus on the accusations and the counter accusations of malicious intent which are made in public debates around the issues of the Israel-Palestine conflict and antisemitism. It is widely accepted in the sociological literature on racism, and also in the practice of antiracist movements, that racism is often unintended and that social actors who are involved are often unconscious of the racism with which they are perhaps complicit or of which they are unconscious ‘carriers’. Antiracists are generally comfortable with the concepts of institutional, structural and discursive racism and they are comfortable with the idea that discourses, structures and institutions can be racist in effect, objectively, even in the absence of any subjective racist intent on the part of social actors. Yet a common response to the raising of the issue of antisemitism in relation to discourses concerning criticism of Israel is that if there is no antisemitic intent then there can be no antisemitism. Antisemitism is implicitly, then, often defined differently from other racisms as requiring an element of intent.

One thing that follows from this is that the raising of the issue of antisemitism is often conflated with the accusation of antisemitic intent. So the raising of the issue of antisemitism is often claimed to be an ad hominem attack, an accusation of antisemitic intent on the part of the ‘critic of Israel’. Yet while there is fierce resistance to the possibility of unintended antisemitism, those who employ the Livingstone Formulation accuse those who raise the issue of antisemitism of doing so with malicious intent and of knowing that their concerns are not justified, and of doing so for instrumental reasons.

It seems to follow that the use of the Livingstone Formulation is intended to make sure that the raising of the issue of antisemitism, when related to ‘criticism of Israel’ remains or becomes a commonsense indicator of ‘Zionist’ bad faith and a faux pas in polite antiracist company. A commonsense bundling of positions leads to a binary opposition in which either you remain within the bounds of rational and antiracist discourse, and so you are on the left, and a supporter of the Palestinians against Israeli human rights abuses, or, on the other hand, you are thought of as being on the right, a supporter of Israel against the Palestinians, and a person who instrumentalizes the issue of antisemitism. To raise the issue of antisemitism is to put yourself in the wrong camp. Having already indicated the complexities relating to accusations of intent, it is necessary to examine carefully to what extent this charge of intent may be justified.

In the 1990s Gillian Rose identified a phenomenon which she called ‘Holocaust piety’. It was common, she argued, to be unsympathetic to attempts to analyse the Holocaust using the normal tools of understanding, of social
science and of historiography. Instead, people tended to think about the Holocaust as a radically unique event which was in some sense outside of human history or ‘ineffable’ and so unreachable by social theory and by various forms of artistic and scholarly representation. One of the consequences of Holocaust piety has been the construction of antisemitism itself as being an unimaginably huge and threatening phenomenon, beyond all other ordinary, worldly, threats and phenomena. A by-product of this is that the charge itself of antisemitism is in danger of being thought of as a nuclear bomb, a weapon, so terrible that it destroys not only its target but also the whole field of battle, the whole discursive space in which discussion proceeds. If to raise the issue of antisemitism is to unleash a nuclear bomb, then the issue is unraisable, as nuclear weapons are unusable. Under the conditions of Holocaust piety, it becomes difficult to relate in a measured and serious way to the issue of antisemitism. Either antisemitism is thought of as something radically different from ordinary ‘normal’ racism and then there is a temptation to be less vigilant against those other racisms than one is against antisemitism. Or the discussion of antisemitism is thought of as a weapon instead of an analytic or political question, which may be deployed to destroy ‘critics of Israel’ but which cannot be a serious question in itself. The weapon, instrumentally used, also destroys the very possibility of rational debate and analysis. The standard response to piety is blasphemy. The cartoon of Anna Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, President Ahmadinejad’s exhibition of Holocaust denial and normalization in Tehran and the increasingly common phenomenon of characterising Israeli Jews as the new Nazis are examples of Holocaust blasphemy.

To download the whole paper as a pdf file, click here

David Hirsh: ‘Accusations of malicious intent in debates about the Palestine-Israel conrflict and about antisemitism

NB some more examples of the Livingstone Formulation and some interesting discussion in the comments box here

NB an article about the Livingstone Formulation from z-word is here

NB there was discussion of the Livingstone Formulation in Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections

Posted in academics, anti-Zionism, anti-racist antisemitism, antisemitism, antisemitism denial, free expression. 19 Comments »

Perpetrators of the Holocaust were not anti-Communist patriots

September 30, 2010 — David Hirsh

Dovid Katz continues to map and to oppose contemporary attempts in Eastern Europe to normalize the Holocaust and to re-cast perpetrators as anti-Communist partisans.

His latest piece is here, on Comment is Free.

Keep a regular eye on his website, www.HolocaustInTheBaltics.com

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Neonazi Jobbik and “völkisch” (nationalistic) Fidesz

September 28, 2010 — Richard Gold

This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer

It was on “9/11”, the 11^th of September, that the Hungarian Neo-Nazi party Jobbik choose to celebrate it’s “Day of Hungarian-Arab Friendship”. There were proclamations by Gábor Vona, Jobbik’s leader, and by Lóránt Hegedüs jun., a pastor of the Reformed Church of Hungary and president of “Hamasz” (the official acronym of Hazafias Magyarok Szövetsége, the “Association of Patriotic Hungarians”). During the celebrations of Hungarian-Arab Friendship in Ajka both state they are sure Israel is buying up Hungary.

Nine eleven was just an excuse

“What is the Western World under leadership of America doing in Afghanistan?” Vona asked rhetorically. According to him “9/11” was just an excuse for the USA to occupy Afghanistan, as the actual facts of the day are not really known. Even if the official explanation should be true (which he doubts),“9/11 was just an act of revenge by some Arab terrorists because America had been making life in Arab countries miserable and, by supporting Israel, hindered the creation of the State of Palestine.”

Vona, who spoke of his good fortune to have visited Arab countries, said that he can confirm from first hand experience that Arabs are good people who do not constantly commit suicide attacks, at least in their own countries. He believes they have no chance to defend their rights, and fell victim of a battle for raw material. “Lets thank Lóránt Hegedüs jun. that the local Arabs now have the opportunity to express their opinion in a Reformed church, because they are not allowed to do so elsewhere.”

According to Vona Jobbik is fighting against the Israeli occupation of Hungary. His proof: a quote by Shimon Peres, the president of Israel, who stated publicly, at an economic conference, that Israeli realtors are buying up Hungary. As the statement was never denied, he considers it to be an official declaration of intent.

According to Vona “the days of Israel in the middle of an Arab sea are numbered”; the failure in Afghanistan proves how strong and forceful Islamic countries are. Therefore the Israelis are looking around for a new homeland, and have decided on Hungary, where the soil, food and water are good, and the inhabitants have been mistreated so much and for so long that they might not notice that their land is being occupied.

Jobbik MP wants concentration camps in Hungary

The “völkisch” (nationalistic) Fidesz-KDNP party wants to be considered abroad as a normal conservative party. However in Fidesz aligned Media, for instance in the daily „Magyar Hirlap“ [1], Jobbik’s MP Gábor Staudt can propose seriously to concentrate criminal Gypsies and their families in “settlements for the defense of the public good”, an euphemism for concentration camps. Prison inmates would have to work on buildings, the homeless on public works. And Staudt, Jobbik’s official candidate for mayor of Budapest, would intern socialists (MSZP-members) as well.

He “doesn’t understand” why Fidesz does not support Jobbik’s idea to create “settlements for the defense of the public good”. After all Fidesz proposed in parliament a law – supported by Jobbik – to sanction petty crime with confinement.

„Crime has no skin-color, and perpetrators must be held accountable to an objective standard. But this doesn’t mean that Gypsy crime should not be dealt with.“

However coded the words may be, there’s no doubt that Jobbik wants to set up concentration camps in Hungary for all those it does not like: Jews, Gypsies, Socialists, Homosexuals and others.

It is high time for the EU, which is so quick to condemn France for expelling Gypsies, not to close its eyes to what happens in the middle of Europe in Hungary.

Jobbik attacks Hungarian history

Eva Balogh publishes her comments on Hungarian affairs almost every day in English.

I highly recommend her Website: http://esbalogh.typepad.com/

Two days ago she wrote: “Huge political controversies can erupt in Hungary, even on Sundays. Here is the latest. Yesterday morning Árpád Szakács, a lawyer and history buff, gave a press conference in front of the Budapest Public Library named after its founder and chief librarian, Ervin Szabó (1877-1918). He demanded the removal of Szabó’s name because he was a communist.

First, some background. On September 16 MTI (Hungarian News Agency) reported that a group of historians established a foundation “to correct and neutralize the negative influence of Marxist historical writing that is still perceptible” in Hungary. The new organization is called the Foundation for National Conservative Historical Research and is headed by Gábor Vincze, editor-in-chief of a publication called Nagy Magyarország (Great Hungary). As the people close to the publication explained, the name cannot cause any confusion concerning possible revisionist tendencies b cause the title is not Nagymagyarország or Nagy-Magyarország,which would designate Greater Hungary. No, they simply want to make it clear that their research extends to all regions of the Carpathian Basin. I might add here that this has been always the case in Hungarian historiography and the distinction seems forced to me… What I find astonishing is that reactions to Szakács’s demands pro and con talk about everything, including the nature of Ervin Szabó’s political views, except what is really important: the far right is working on rewriting Hungarian history. They are trying to eradicate all traces of the Hungarian social democratic tradition of which Ervin Szabó was a part.

The Jobbik attack on Hungarian history began with an assault on Mihály Károlyi, the prime minister, later president of Hungary in 1918-1919. They demanded the removal of his statue that stands close to Parliament because, according to them, Károlyi was a traitor who was responsible for the Treaty of Trianon and who handed over power to the communists. I’m not planning to go into the details of this very confusing period, but believe me that Károlyi didn’t do anything of the sort. He happened to be a decent man who thought that because of his well-known pro-Entente stance the Great Powers would be kinder to Hungary. As we know, that was not the case. The accusation that he handed over power to the communists is also baseless.

One could easily ignore Jobbik’s demands if they didn’t receive support from important Fidesz politicians. In the case of the Károlyi controversy it was László Kövér, the speaker of the house, who came to the rescue. Yes, he said, Károlyi’s statue must go. He even had a suggestion about who should receive a statue in its place: Anna Kéthly, one of the leaders of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party who ended her life in exile after the 1956 Revolution.

There is no question that Ervin Szabó was a socialist who translated the works of Marx and Engels into Hungarian with his own introductions. It is also true that in his later years he was attracted to revolutionary syndicalism, but it seems to me that Jobbik’s real problem with Szabó is his total rejection of any kind of nationalism. If we had all read Magyar Hírlap religiously we could have predicted that Ervin Szabó would soon be a target. Gábor Szabó, one of the founders of Jobbik and the Hungarian Guard, wrote an article in Magyar Hírlap (September 17, 2010) about Ervin Szabó entitled “An anti-Hungarian ‘revolutionary.’”(In fact, in the original it was “népforradalmár” [people's revolutionary], a word that doesn’t exist and makes no sense.) In it, he accused Ervin Szabó of being the initiator of the Hungarian socialist movement’s antagonism toward natonalism which is of course nonsense. After all, social democracy was a movement based on internationalism.

In any case, in those days being a social democrat or a syndicalist or a translator of Marx and Engels was tolerated by the authorities. Ervin Szabó published widely in Népszava, the official organ of the Hungarian Social Democratic party, he became founder and chief librarian of the Municipal Library and was also accepted in Hungarian liberal circles. But this world is totally alien to Jobbik’s leaders. Even historical figures who don’t share their worldview must be banished. Their statues must be removed, streets or institutions named after them must be renamed: they were communists, traitors, “nemzetietlen,” or whatever. They held opinions different from what Jobbik considers to be acceptable. And that’s enough.

Géza Szőcs, born and educated in Romania, decided to support Jobbik in its quest to marginalize Ervin Szabó, the man who introduced the public library system to Hungary. Szőcs is a poet and writer who was picked by Viktor Orbán himself to head what used to be the ministry of culture. A few months ago Szőcs got all mixed up between linguistics and DNA; echoing Jobbik’s infatuation with Kazakhstan, he promised money and government support to find the real relatives of the Hungarians in that region. He now wholeheartedly supports Jobbik’s demand to remove Ervin Szabó’s name from the Municipal Library network in Budapest. After all, he knows so much about syndicalism. Just as much as he knows about the origins of Hungarians.

And now we come to the crux of the matter. We don’t know where Jobbik ends and Fidesz begins. The Hungarian right is composed of shades of radicalism that has nothing to do with conservatism even if Jobbik’s historians call themselves “nationalist” and “conservative.” The editors of Nagy Magyarország proudly claim that well-known, mainstream historians, economists, and academics have published in their quarterly. And indeed, Géza Szőcs himself appeared in the very first issue which was devoted to Trianon. We find in subsequent issues the names of the late Jenő Gergely, ELTE professor of history, Ernő Raffay, historian and undersecretary in the Antall government, Sándor Szakály, military historian, László Bogár, economist, member of the first Orbán government, and one could go on.

With thousands of threads these people are connected to one another and thus it will be practically impossible to get rid of Jobbik. Or, rather, one can destroy it as a party, and Viktor Orbán is very skillful at such maneuvers, but the spirit will live on in any party that claims to belong to the right.” [2]

PS. The neonazi Website hunhir commented the initiative to change the name of Budapest city library: „It does not behove one of the most important national institutions of the land to flaunt the name of an ultra-leftist Judeo-Bolshewik ideologue, a trailblazer of the Jewish Rat-republic.”

[1] http://www.magyarhirlap.hu/hatter/az_mszp_is_a_telepekre_kerulhet.html

[2] http://esbalogh.typepad.com/hungarianspectrum/2010/09/conservative-historians-in-hungary.html

Posted in Uncategorized. 2 Comments »

The “moderate” Qaradawi

September 26, 2010 — David Hirsh

Edmund Standing rounds up what the man Livingstone embraced at City Hall thinks. On Harry’s Place.

Livingstone cuddling up to antisemite Qaradawi

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OPINION SOUP: Are Jews Ashamed of being Jewish?

September 23, 2010 — David Hirsh

Monday 25th October

Is Jewish identity in crisis? Does the prevailing world view of Israel make us feel uncomfortable, ashamed even? Does it jar with our self-image as a liberal people?

And has proving those liberal credentials to non-Jews become more important to us than identifying with the Jewish state?

British Jews who publicly oppose Israel often say they are the true upholders of the time-honoured Jewish values of social justice and compassion. Their detractors say that far from turning to their Jewish identity, they are turning against it.

And is Jewishness now always refracted through the prism of Israel, or can we be proud British Jews, irrespective of what’s happening in the most Jewish place on earth?

Join celebrated novelist and broadcaster Howard Jacobson

philosopher at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, Brian Klug

former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research Antony Lerman

award-winning journalist and commentator Melanie Phillips.

This compelling discussion will be chaired by JC editor Stephen Pollard.

After the discussion, Howard Jacobson will be signing copies of his latest novel The Finkler Question which has been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker prize. Brian Klug will be signing copies of his book Being Jewish and Doing Justice, which comes out in October, and Melanie Phillips will be signing copies of her new book The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power.

8pm, Hampstead Town Hall, 213 Haverstock Hill, London NW3 4QP, £10 in advance, £12 on the door

To book Click here

Posted in Uncategorized. 27 Comments »

Livingstone and Qaradawi

September 23, 2010 — David Hirsh

Livingstone still can’t admit the truth about Qaradawi who he has trouble seeing as an individual. Here.

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New blog on antisemitism

September 20, 2010 — David Hirsh

http://jhate.wordpress.com/

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TUC is not thinking clearly on Israel and Palestine

September 18, 2010 — David Hirsh

Eric Lee on the British Trades Union Congress position here.

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