And another one

Oh sure! It's all about supporting the Palestinians and opposing the war in Gaza. Nothing to do at all with wanting to punish or, at least, hurt all Israelis, regardless of their views and attitudes, an attitude one never came across in the battles with the Communist countries or the anti-Apartheid movement. Nor is it anything to do with wanting to hurt all Jews. Of course not. Well, here is another example of that: the Londonist site, who, as it happens, have not taken any sides on the Gaza conflict and why should they, reports that

The UK Jewish Film Festival (UKJFF) will not be held at the Tricycle Theatre this year because of a row over funding.

The Tricycle, which hosted the festival for the last eight years, has taken a decision that it can’t accept funding from any government agency or party involved in the conflict in Gaza. The UKJFF is partly sponsored by the Israeli Embassy and the Tricycle asked the festival to reconsider that sponsorship, offering to replace any funds it would lose. The UKJFF decided to keep its sponsorship and has now withdrawn the festival from the venue.

The Director of the Festival told the Jewish Chronicle:

She said: “That the Tricycle Theatre have shown themselves unwilling to work with what is clearly an apolitical cultural festival is tremendously disappointing.

"They have chosen a boycott over meaningful engagement – to the great detriment of this celebration of Jewish culture.”

A further statement from the UKJFF said it had "considered the demands of the theatre to be entirely unacceptable and is now taking its screenings elsewhere".

It added that the festival had received support from the embassy for the past 17 years, "portraying the unmistakable cultural connection between the Jewish people and the state of Israel".

But it stressed that the festival was "entirely apolitical, showcasing perspectives from both sides of the conflict in the Middle East."

I have never attended the festival but have seen the programmes and do not recall it screening any strong Israeli propaganda. The chances are (though, obviously, I do not know) that a good many of those involved with the festival oppose the Gaza war or accept it with a heavy heart as an unavoidable and hard necessity. Apprently, the Tricycle was not interested in establishing the truth about that and its offer of making up the money (out of what?) was disingenuous to put it mildly. The Festival is looking for another home and, if I have anything to do with it, the Tricycle, where I have been, will lose a good many putative audience members.

What exactly does the Foreign Secretary mean?

This blog rejoiced in the passing of William Hague, as he was a seriously inept Foreign Secretary and Angelina Jolie could always find someone else to be photographed with, someone more like the beautiful people she is used to.

That does not mean, we need to welcome his successor, Philip Hammond, unreservedly and reservations are being made already. In the wake of the disgraceful episode when a perfectly ordinary supermarket where people were going about their business had to close because of anti-Israeli demonstrations that made that business impossible with the police apparently doing nothing, we have the Foreign Secretary making some very curious statements.

I am quoting from JTA, who are in turn quoting from an interview in the Sunday Telegraph:

Much of the British public is “deeply disturbed” by the impact of Israel’s operation in Gaza, the new foreign secretary of England said, and the response could be more widespread anti-Semitic attacks.

“Of course it’s a concern,” Philip Hammond told the Sunday Telegraph, speaking of the hate crimes on Jewish communities in Britain, “and we have already seen certainly an upturn in anti-Semitic rhetoric.”

Anti-Semitic incidents have doubled since Israel began its operation in Gaza nearly a month ago, according to the Community Security Trust, the security apparatus for the British Jewish community.

Hammond, who assumed his post less than a month ago, said the British government shares the “widespread public horror” of a “wide swath” of the British public at the suffering of the people of Gaza.

“The British public has a strong sense that the situation of the civilian population in Gaza is simply intolerable and must be addressed – and we agree with them,” he told the Independent. “There must be a humanitarian cease-fire that is without conditions. We have to get the killing to stop.”

As a matter of fact, I think he is wrong about most of the British public. They have long ago stopped being interested in what is happening in what they consider to be a hell-hole, the Middle East, though it is unquestionably true that there is a large and vociferous minority that is campaigning against Israel and the old hatred as I have said before has morphed into a new shape. It is that old hatred, nonetheless.

Mr Hammond's comments about the cease-fire show that he is either ignorant or prefers to lie about what has been happening. Does he not know that each cease-fire was broken by Hamas if they even agreed to it which they did not every time? Does he not know that Hamas is refusing to have a proper cease-fire unless a number of its conditions are fulfilled? And if he does know this, why does he not appeal to them?

More serious is the implication that somehow Mr Hammond thinks that anti-Semitic attacks in Britain are justified by what is happening in Gaza and that they are likely to increase with the authorities not in a position to do anything about it. In other words, he is threatening Israel with increased anti-Semitism (as if they didn't know) if they do not do what they are told and surrender their military advantage.

Is that not virtual incitement to violence and hate crime? Should the Home Secretary, she of the kitten heels, not look into the matter. Imagine if any Minister had said that attacks on Arabs were understandable in the light of behaviour by the Syrian government, various Syrian groups and ISIS? How long would his career survive a statement like that?

As we witness an orgy of commemoration of the beginning of the First World War with candles, poppies and lots of memos about "we will remember them"; as we listen to the uncertainty as to whether that terrible war was fought for British self-interest or to preserve freedom (both rather questionable but the first at least debatable) there is one thing missing from all these tear-jerking accounts: the attacks on people and businesses with German names because Germany was now the enemy (here and here though this dates to 1915). That, in itself was wrong and obviously something rather shameful, not to be discussed. Nevertheless, according to the Foreign Secretary it is not altogether wrong or, at least, completely understandable, that there should be attacks on Jews because Israel, a mostly Jewish state is fighting a tough war and is not giving any quarter. The fact that Israel is not fighting Britain seems to be irrelevant. Anti-Semitism, apparently, cannot be stopped even in its violent form.

So, anyway, it's all about supporting the Palestinians

In an earlier blog I wrote about the limited concern for Palestinians shown by their so-called supporters in the West, suggesting that they are motivated less by that concern and more by an old and ever evolving hatred. Confirmation of that abounds.

On Wednesday we had news of certain goings on at the Edinburgh Festival that cannot be interpreted in any other way. Igor Toronyi-Lalic wrote about in the Spectator on Thursday.

When is a great international arts festival not a great international arts festival? When it can’t uphold even the most basic principles of free speech. Last night a play by an Israeli theatre company was forced to cancel its run at the Edinburgh Fringe as the result of the barracking of a group of anti-Israeli thugs. The show, The City, is now homeless and on the hunt for a new venue.

Where exactly would they like these Israelis to perform, I wondered? Outside the walls of the city possibly? Would that be more conducive to their medieval vision of the world? Owing simply to their nationality – owing simply to their race - a theatre company is being silenced. What does the artistic community have to say about this capitulation? They’re rather in favour of it actually.

So much for cultural freedom and culture overcoming political divisions. Somehow one never gets such demonstrations or this kind of pusillanimity when, say, a state owned Chinese orchestra, theatre or opera comes to town (any town). Nobody ever thinks that various Arab orchestras etc should be banned because of the way their countries treat women and religious minorities (though we do get protests in connection with gay rights sometimes). Yet an Israeli group, whose political affiliation, if there is one, is unknown and who may well be opponents of the war in Gaza (Israel being a democracy where cultural events are not controlled by the state) are banned in response to vicious demands. What is one to make of it? Hmmmm?

Why bring up race, you say? Because, make no mistake, race is the issue here. With every other nation on earth, extraordinary pains are taken to separate the government from the people. Putin, bad; Russian people, good. Chinese communist party, bad; Chinese people, great. Iranian mullahs, bad; Iranian people, lovely. Only in this one instance do we suddenly make an exception. Do we suddenly decide to demand the collective punishment of a whole population and its creative industries for the actions of its leaders. Strange, that.

When the state-funded Mariinsky Ballet come to town this weekend, there will be no letter asking the Royal Opera House to rescind the invitation. When the Qatar Philharmonic get a chance to show how cultured their slave-addicted state is at the Proms in September, there will be no commotion. When the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra drape themselves in the colours of a nation state that’s committed to abusing human rights whenever it can, we cheer.

And when, once in a blue moon, there’s a protest against an enemy that isn’t Israel, how do we behave? Last year there was the smallest, politest, most embarrassed-looking picket for the opening of the London Symphony Orchestra season with Putin-suck-up Valery Gergiev. Compare this to the ferocity of the protests when Jews are involved. Compare it to the humiliation of the Israel Philharmonic at the Proms a few years back.

To be fair to the Prommers, they showed their disgust with the protesters in no uncertain terms but I notice that the Israel Philharmonic has not been invited since. I also noted at the time that Radio 3 interrupted its broadcast of the concert together with the protests (even after the protesters were removed) and substituted a recording of a previous Prom. Not cowardly at all, our BBC, isn't.

As a matter of fact, Mr Toronyi-Lalic is wrong when it comes to Russia though there the dynamic is different, as this blog has pointed out before. Russia, it seems, is the only country in connection with which any criticism of the government, past or present, is seen as tantamount as an attack on the people. That remains true despite the temporary and, probably, short-lasting falling out between Putin and the West. Israel, however, is the one country where any criticism of the government or its policies inevitably spills over into attacks on its people and, when possible a ban on its various cultural representatives. What could be the cause of that?

Much noise about victims but very limited sympathy

Yesterday's Prom concert was Bach's St John Passion, a very fine work and a very fine performance, though I have to admit to listening to it on the radio. In the interval there was a discussion with a couple of the performers about the work and about the Gospel on which it was based. In the course of that discussion there was talk about the fact that of the four Gospels, St John's is the one that makes the Jews as a whole the guilty party. This was not the main point of the discussion but it is worth noting that, in many ways, the Mediaeval anti-Semitism grew out of that extraordinarily beautiful work, the Gospel according to St John.

We have moved on from there and over the ages anti-Semitism has changed shape and turned up in many forms. I do not think it is particularly controversial to point out that its most recent manifestation is not connected with the Christian Church or the more traditional right-wing groups: it is now almost entirely on the Left and is "justified" by horror at Israel's actions against the Palestinians who are clearly everybody's favourite victims in one way or another.

The day saw yet more anti-Israeli demonstrations, including one that brought the centre of London to a halt, though, it fell far short of the projected march of a million.

As ever we saw and heard a mixture of slogans and chants. Many carried the usual mass-produced Socialist Workers' Party posters that called for an end to the siege of Gaza. Clearly these people had not considered the possibility that if Hamas stopped spending the money it gathers from the world in the form of huge international aid on rockets that are fired into Israel day after day or tunnels through which they try to smuggle terrorists into that country, the "siege" might be lifted.

Nor do they consider that, possibly, if Hamas abandoned parts of its Charter, acknowledged Israel's right to exist, stopped using the Palestinians in Gaza as gun and propaganda fodder but started negotiating, concentrating on economic development (by which I don't mean luxurious existence for the Hamas leaders), there might be some change in the situation.

In fact, there would be some change if Hamas agreed to the various cease-fire proposals. We did have a few hours of it earlier today but Hamas has, apparently, not agreed to its extension and so fighting will resume.

Well, one cannot expect people who turn out to demonstrate for the currently most fashionable cause to do much thinking.

The other slogans, as ever, were a curious mixture: on the one hand, Israel was compared to Nazi Germany (the comparison, regardless of what one thinks about events in Gaza, is not in the slightest valid but is likely to be particularly hurtful to Jews), on the other there were, as usual, threats or promises to finish what Hitler started (an unlikely scenario). In a number of cities, Paris being one, there were attacks on Jewish premises and businesses. As in the past, what may have started as support for the people of Gaza has gone well beyond criticism of a particular country's policy and has morphed into anti-Semitism. There really is no other way of describing what is happening in this picture, taken in Paris yesterday.

This description on Breitbart gives a fair account of what was going on.

The activists were keen to avoid discussing the thorny issue of the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel. Instead they chanted things like: "1,2,3,4, Occupation No More" and "5,6,7,8 Israel is the terrorist state." Then they went on to a familiar classic: "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"; a reference to wiping out the State of Israel, and relates to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan - better known as the Jewish state.

In the meantime, the Middle East is, indeed, burning and far worse things are happening in other countries. The media has more or less given up on events in Syria but the activities of ISIS in Iraq still merit some mention though not exactly any great horror. One wonders whether the feminist organizations that, for some reason, have ranged themselves against the only Middle Eastern country where women have equal rights think about the news that

Islamic State (Isis), the al-Qaida offshoot that seized large swathes of northern Iraq last month, has warned women in the city of Mosul to wear full-face veils or risk severe punishment.

The Sunni insurgents, who have declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria and have threatened to march on Baghdad, also listed guidelines on how veils and clothes should be worn, part of a campaign to violently impose their radical brand of Islam.

Mosul, let us not forget is the place where one of the world's oldest Christian communities is being destroyed through murder, rapine and what might be called religious cleansing. We hear little from the world about it.

We hear little about the fact that in Libya there is now a full scale civil war going on and the United States has evacuated its embassy (a wise precaution, given certain events in that not too distant past).

We hear little about the daily figures of dead, wounded and displaced in a number of Middle Eastern countries. If Israel is not involved, the media and the loud-mouthed "supporters of the Palestinians" don't want to know. Muslims who try to raise the issue of the far greater number of victims in other countries on various sites, get barracked.

In fact, those "supporters" do not want to know that even UNWRA, an organization that exists, against all the supposed rules on which the UN and its off-shoots are based, to aid and abet the Palestinians and their leaders, are saying that it might well have been Hamas rockets that hit the UN school in Gaza, killing several children and wounding more.

Neither they nor organizations that are supposed to be fighting for children's rights are interested in the story that Hamas used children to build the network of tunnels (though not terror tunnels as the author of the piece explains in the comments section) during which 160 of them were killed.

The conclusion one has to draw from all this is that not only do these people not care about other problems and other violence in the Middle East, they do not even care all that much about the Palestinians, unless they are under Israeli attack. Here is an excellent piece by Cranmer, written on Thursday but nothing much has changed since then.

Curiously, there is no mention of Assad's persecution of Palestinian communities or the fact that he has "starved and murdered" thousands of them.

No mention of the Palestinians in Iraq who are subject to "discrimination, sectarian violence and ruthless killing by the Iraqi government".

No mention of the mass expulsion of Palestinians by Arab Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia, Libya and Kuwait, of which Yasser Arafat declared that "what Kuwait did to the Palestinian people is worse than what has been done by Israel to Palestinians in the occupied territories".

Israel has killed some 700 Palestinians in its latest offensive in Gaza. Every death is a tragedy, especially those of children. Some of the pictures coming out of the war zone are brutal, distressing and heartbreaking. God weeps at the suffering. If He has meaning and purpose in the pain, it is lost to the world's baffled intellects.

But it is a curious that Israel should be constantly singled out for special treatment.
After all, the Palestinians have suffered far greater atrocities at the hands of their Arab brothers and co-religionists. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced; tens of thousands terrorised, persecuted and ethnically cleansed; and many hundreds summarily slaughtered.

It is, indeed, curious. One is driven to the conclusion that what motivates all these "activists" of whatever nationality is not so much sympathy for the Palestinians, which is obviously very limited, as something very different: a much older and much uglier emotion.

Apparently, it is not working

One of the self-avowed purposes of the European project has been the annihilation of bad things in European history, such as racism, xenophobia, tendency to go to war and so on. In fact, given the emphasis given to something rather vaguely described as "European values", one could argue that these values are to be used in order to overcome European history's rather less valuable aspects. Europeans, runs the argument, cannot be trusted to uphold and promote those values unless all these organizations are set up; Europeans need to be saved from themselves and their history through the official  promotion of European values.

By 2008, that is fifty years after the founding of what was first known as the EEC, the situation became so bad that a Framework Decision on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law was put together. This was going to solve the problem once and for all. But  has it?

Well, one can argue about the effect it has had on domestic legislation and, indeed, we should discuss that. For the moment let me call attention to two items of news (apart from what is going on in Hungary, on which more will be written).

The first item comes from the Independent, so one may have to take it with a grain of salt but, if the results of the opinion poll conducted by Der Standard, a respected Viennese newspaper, are reported accurately, one can feel a trifle glum about Austria, a country that has, on the whole been admirable in its political stance since the Second World War, particularly in its readiness to help refugees from the other totalitarian system.

As Austria prepares to mark the anniversary of its annexation by Nazi Germany, an opinion poll has shown that more than half of the population think it highly likely that the Nazis would be elected if they were readmitted as a party.

A further 42 per cent agreed with the view that life “wasn’t all bad under the Nazis”, and 39 per cent said they thought a recurrence of anti-Semitic persecution was likely in Austria.

Of course, that does mean, as Russia Today points out that

Fifty-seven per cent of respondents believed that "there was nothing positive about the Hitler era".

As to sixty-one per cent wanting a "strong leader", I do not find that particularly worrying. People  in many countries, Britain included, seem to want strong leaders all the time, without going too deeply into what a strong leader might do.

The Independent gives more details and calls them "damning".

Neighbouring Germany’s popular “Stern” magazine described the poll’s findings as shocking today. The poll also showed that 61 per cent of Austrian adults wanted to see a “strong man” in charge of government, and 54 per cent said they thought it would be “highly likely” that the Nazis would win seats in they were allowed to take part in an election.

Some 46 per cent of those polled said they believed Austria was a victim of Nazi oppression in 1938, while 61 per cent said they believed that “enough” had been done to reappraise Austria’s Nazi past.

The last paragraph is, perhaps, a little muddled but probably reflects Austrian opinion in general. At the same time, it might be useful if the Indy made it clear, as RT did, that the poll asked the vast number of 502 people. The results may be worrying, though not exactly shocking, but do they reflect Austrian opinion at all accurately in all particulars?

An even more disturbing video comes from the Netherlands, though, once again, it is hard to tell how widespread the problem is though the fact that they have picked up on the meme about Palestinians being murdered by Jews (ahem, what of Black September of what is going on in Syria) would indicate that these  youngsters are of the "nice" middle of the road soft-left persuasion.

A video that appeared on Dutch TV recently shows a roundtable of adults and children discussing Jews. The children praise Hitler and his genocidal inclinations. One of the boys says, “on the one hand I am satisfied with what Hitler did with the Jews…” while another responds that Hitler was justified in killing millions of Jews because “now millions of Palestinians are being killed.”

The four young boys are joined in a roundtable by an older gentleman (identified as Mehmet Sahin, a researcher at Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit) who repeatedly challenges their assertions. When one of the boys asks the interviewer if he hates Jews, they seem surprised when he responds in the negative.

Later, the same boy who originally praised Hitler, says, ” as far as I’m concerned Hitler should have killed all Jews, ” a remark that merited laughs from the group of boys.

The interviewer, who repeatedly expresses his indignation at the boys’ opinions, ask them where they got their hatred for the Jews from–”from friends” they answer, noting that the term “Jew” is used as a curse word and that nobody at their school likes Jews.

And we know what the answer is to all these possible problems: more EU legislation.{Hey! That was a joke!]

What motivates these people?

Let us try to work out what motivates people who protest against orchestras that perform in the Proms or theatre companies that take part in artistic festivals; let us, further, try to work out what motivates brain-dead luvvies when they write letters to the Grauniad (it is usually the Grauniad whose readers seem unable to understand the principle of free speech) demanding that orchestras or theatre companies should be banned from performing in this country.

To be absolutely accurate the protests are against the orchestras and theatre companies of only one country; luvvies who get worked up about that particular country seem to be strangely indifferent to the fate of, say, an Iranian singer who has had to go into hiding because he dared to make fun of some mullahs.

Last summer there were disgraceful scenes when the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performed a politically innocuous programme at the Proms. This year, it is the turn of the Habima National Theatre that performed yesterday and will perform today at the Globe Theatre. They are part of the Globe's fascinating programme of the 37 plays as well as Venus and Adonis in different languages.

In case anybody is wondering, there were two plays in Arabic, Cymbeline in Juba, performed by a company from the newest Africa state, South Sudan and Richard II in Palestinian Arabic, performed by the Ashtar Theatre. Needless to say, there were no protests about the treatment of women, Christians or gays in Palestine. Nor were there any protests against the National Theatre of China, which performed Richard III in Mandarin, though being the national theatre of a highly oppressive state, it could conceivably be linked to that state's behaviour.

Unfortunately, I missed the Chinese performance. Richard III is one of my least favourite Shakespeare plays for a number of reasons but it is always interesting to find out what actors in a totalitarian state make of it. The plays I did go to see were the three Henry VIs in three different Balkan languages. It was an exhausting and absolutely fascinating day. The Macedonian idea of making Warwick the Kingmaker a woman was inspirational.

I am sure, by now readers would have worked out which is the only company that did elicit protests as well as stupid letters from half-witted luvvies. Yes, it was the Israeli Habima company, which performed The Merchant of Venice yesterday and will do so today. Again, I shall have to miss it though I was more than intrigued by the choice. It's not that The Merchant of Venice is an anti-Semitic play - it describes an anti-Semitic society, which is a very different concept - but I would like to have seen what the Habima made of Shylock and of the other, considerably less likeable characters.

Not so our rent-a-mob and our half-witted luvvies. They invaded the performance (easy enough and cheap enough) and had to be led out with one person arrested. It was known that there would be a demonstration and a counter-demonstration had been organized by groups who are pro-Israeli but whose main aim was to make it clear that the suppression of artistic performances is a bad thing in itself. Contrary to occasionally voiced opinions one cannot separate culture and politics. Anyone who believes that has not really looked at Shakespeare's plays.

Well, what does motivate these people? A large proportion of the protesters are not Palestinians so they clearly think that the cause of those settlements is of supreme importance to outsiders. It is not the cause of Palestinian freedom that they espouse as there are no protests against the bloodthirsty oppression carried out at various times by Hamas and Fatah or against the routine denial of rights to women and to minorities in Gaza or the West Bank.

It is not the cause of freedom in general since there are no protests against the theatre companies, orchestras or dance troupes that come from other, far more oppressive states where no artistic performance can be said to be independent.

No, the only cause that excites these people, whether protesters or half-witted luvvies, to the point of demanding a complete suppression of artistic endeavour is one they understand poorly but feel about very strongly: the Israeli settlements. Or is there something else behind it all?

ADDENDUM: An article in The Commentator answers that question in an unequivocal fashion.

YET MORE ADDENDUM: It was pointed out to me, rightly, that I did not mention that the half-witted luvvies did not have it all their way but were challenged by other thespians and one playwright, Sir Arnold Wesker, who used remarkably sane arguments.

Dangerous insanity

Do read this article by Phyllis Chesler. She may be going over the top in her fear for Israel and Jews in general but, equally, she may not be. As it happens, I think Obama's call for those 1967 borders is not going to be supported by a sufficient number of countries. Indeed, it has already been expunged through Canadian efforts from the G8 statement. I should like to think that our own government lined up on the right side in this matter but, I fear, that as ever, the Boy-King is bending with what he thinks is the prevailing wind (to quote Captain Renault). I would accept the argument that the Prime Minister of this country should not be seen to be a Patron of any charity that might be construed as being political (though I would like to see a list of those he is linked to) if he had also announced that no more taxpayers' money was going to Hamas. Let them find their own money to spend in those brand new shopping malls.

Whether her fears are fully justified or not (after all, the intent to kill all Jews and, presumably, other Israelis is there) the notion of "Queers for Palestine" is so monstrous as to defy description. Quite apart from Jews (and many of those Queers are probably Jewish), do these people not care what happens to people like them in Palestine and other Islamic Arab states?

Something in common

Der Spiegel says that German authorities have finally woken up to a fact that has been known for some time in many other countries:

Until now, attacks on Jews, Jewish institutions and Jewish symbols have almost always been committed by right-wing extremist groups. In the first quarter of 2010 alone, the German Interior Ministry documented 183 anti-Semitic offences committed by right-wing radicals, including graffiti, inflammatory propaganda and physical violence.

The stone-throwing incident in Hanover, however, has finally forced the authorities to take a closer look at a group of offenders that, though largely overlooked until now, is no less motivated by anti-Zionist sentiments: adolescents and young adults from an immigrant community who are influenced by Islamist ideas and are prepared to commit acts of violence.

One wonders why it has taken them so long to recognize reality and how many of those incidents that had been attributed to neo-Nazi groups were, in fact, the work of Islamist ones. It is understandable that German police authorities, politicians, journalists and analysts should be terrified of a resurgent neo-Nazi movement and its anti-Semitism. However, times move on and much of the European anti-Semitism now comes from the Left and the Islamist groups supported by the Left.

This a tricky problem

Both this blog and EUreferendum are vociferous in their support for freedom of speech, even if it means support for revolting specimens like Holocaust deniers. (The Boss of EURef and I have written about this too often to be able to link but those postings are out there.)

In particular, we were strongly involved in the "war" of the Danish cartoons, supporting the right of Danish newspapers to publish those cartoons and applauding the Danish government's refusal to become involved.

On the other hand, we have pointed out a few times that some of the anti-Semitic anti-Zionist anti-Israeli cartoons, especially on the left of the political spectrum, do resemble those that appeared in Der Stürmer of ill memory. Who can forget the infamous cartoon in the Independent of Ariel Sharon eating Palestinian babies? Herr Goebbels would have been proud of this revival of the old blood libel but the Press Complaints Commission did not deem it anti-Semitic, accepting the newspaper's explanation that they were merely being satirical and had not intended to cause quite so much discontent.

You can argue that freedom of the press should mean just that and anyone can publish anything they like, which raises the question about the absence of those Danish cartoons in any British media outlet. It also raises the question of what the point is of the Press Complaints Commission, but that is for another posting.

We now have a problem in Sweden. There are many good things about that country: their furniture design is superlative, their food is pretty good, and they were defeated by the Russians at Poltava, thus causing Peter the Great and some excellent poetry by Alexander Pushkin. They produced some astonishing singers and I do not mean ABBA. Pippi Longstocking and Karlsson on the Roof are among the best characters in children's literature. Swedish plays and Swedish politics, on the other hand, I find depressing.

The newspaper Aftonbladet comes under the second category. It is an evening paper of many years' standing, somewhat on the left of the political spectrum, being social-democrat and part-owned by the trade unions. Incidentally, I find it astonishing that although it is not the largest circulation Nordic newspaper, it still had 1,425,000 daily readers in 2006. I cannot quite work out whether that number applies to copies sold or whether the usual calculation of two readers per copy is used.

Aftonbladet published an article that accused the IDF on evidence that could be called dubious, that is Palestinian stories that have been denied by the people who had told them and a spurious link with a possible crime in the United States, of killing Palestinians in order to cut out and sell their organs. Naturally enough, the story was picked up by Arab media and the odd Russian writer who maintains that being Jewish allows him to produce rubbish of this kind.

The Israeli government has demanded an apology from the Swedish government, which it refused to give and, though the journalism is clearly shoddy and nastily unpleasant, we have to agree that a government cannot apologize for newspaper articles in a free country. Whether the Swedish government would behave the same way if those cartoons had been published and some Arab countries had demanded an apology is open to question.

In particular, I suspect, the Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, would have reacted differently. In fact, he did react differently. Though on his blog posting on the Aftonbladet affair, Mr Bildt talks much about freedom of the press and refers rather vaguely to the cartoons, he does not apparently mention that at the time the Swedish government was in favour of shutting down the website of the one newspaper that had dared to publish them.

The Italian Foreing Minister, Franco Frattini, has announced that the EU should condemn the newspaper for its article, adding that he had met Mr Bildt to discuss the situation and to encourage the Swedish Presidency to issue a condemnation of anti-Semitism. Mr Bildt has denied that any such discussion had taken place, informing the media that there is some Italian misunderstanding here. (What are these people on?)

Yossi Klein Halevi in the Jewish World Review sums up the various details and suggests that the Israeli government should use the story to highlight the growth of anti-Semitic (shum mishtake shurely - musht mean anti-Israeli) sentiments in parts of Europe and, particularly, on the Left. He also thinks that the Swedish government should have condemned the article without interfering with rights of publication. I am not sure about the second point. Governments should stay out of such rows but they should do so no matter who is being offended.

The most important point the article makes is about modern anti-Semitism, which does not need to be linked to nazism or neo-nazism:

Aftonbladet’s editor, Jan Helin, wrote that he was not a Nazi or an anti-Semite. The first claim is no doubt true, the second debatable. Contrary to widespread assumptions among Europeans, one does not need to be a Nazi to be an anti-Semite. Contemporary European anti-Semitism has two spiritual roots: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The big lie of Zionism as Nazism and of the Jewish state as successor to Nazi Germany originated in Moscow, and became an essential part of Soviet ideology following the 1967 Six-Day War. Of the two versions of modern European anti-Semitism as they exist today, the far more pervasive — and dangerous — is the Soviet version. The rise of Western European anti-Zionism, then, is a posthumous victory for the Soviet Union.

If the result of the Aftonbladet scandal is an understanding of that simple point, it will not have been in vain. But I am not holding my breath.