This is an
interesting vignette from a curious class of individuals who regrettably also
have designs on power and sometimes do arrive there through temporary
solidarity. I put the Obama presidency
in that group. They are very much
skilled practitioners of the Big Lie.
At best we can
bravely expose these little people and their horrible mental universe. That I cannot understand it is no particular
fault of mine nor do I think that much of the population is informed thusly.
I live in a
civilization well informed by the German orgy and its modern result. That is first a lesson and an awful one. Today we are slowly learning just how hard
the right minded labored to stop it and merely joined the victims by a
profoundly vigilant regime.
What bothers me
is that those pretending to our civilization refuse to teach this lesson over
and over again and wrap themselves in
self-righteousness when similar events emerge and test us.
CLAIM: OXFAM
EXEC DELIGHTED: “NOW THE JEWS ARE GOING TO GET IT!” ON EVE OF ’67 WAR
After all the gossip and speculation it’s time to
come clean: Scarlett Johansson and I are more than just good friends. Much,
much more. Yes, we have shared moments of intimacy – not, alas, together, or
even at the same time.
But we are both alumni of Oxfam, that billion-dollar
arbiter of humanitarian aid, political profundity and universal morality. It
doesn’t matter that we graduated almost half a century apart. It doesn’t
even matter that we’ve never actually met. Or that she doesn’t know I exist. We
have both shared the Oxfam Moment.
Last month, Oxfam announced that Scarlett
Johansson’s support for an Israeli company operating in a Jewish settlement was
incompatible with her continued role as an Oxfam Ambassador. She was faced with
a stark choice: continue her association with Oxfam or support SodaStream,
the Israeli fizzy drink manufacturer in Mishor Adumim, just across the
Green Line. Ms Johansson chose SodaStream.
In a statement, the Hollywood actress declared that
she and Oxfam have “a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the
boycott, divestment and sanctions movement”. She was, she added, “very proud of
her accomplishments and fund-raising efforts during her tenure with Oxfam”.
SodaStream employs about 500 Palestinians alongside
a similar number of Jewish employees. The Palestinians, who support an
estimated 10 family members each, are employed on the basis of equal pay,
social benefits, opportunities and rights with their Jewish colleagues.
In a debate on Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship
current affairs programme, SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum insisted that his
company was not in the business of financing settlements. On the contrary, he
said, “we are part of the Palestinian economy”, where unemployment is running
at about 40 per cent. Moreover, the company had been operating in the
territories for 17 years. “And the inconvenient truth,” he added, “is that we
are operating with the agreement of the Palestinian Authority.”
But Ben Phillips, the policy director of Oxfam, was
unmoved: ‘This is not about SodaStream or celebrities. It’s about settlements,
which impoverish the Palestinian people.” SodaStream must go, he said, even if
that means plunging 500 Palestinians into unemployment and 5,000 into poverty.
Stalin would have been proud. As far as Oxfam is concerned, it seems, Palestine
can only be Palestine when it is judenrein. Now haven’t we heard that
before?
When I arrived in London, a deracinated refugee
from apartheid South Africa, poor in cash but rich in far-left ideology, I
was ripe for a job at Oxfam. I moved to Oxford and settled into Oxfam’s
one-person press office, effectively the spokesman of the organisation.
Religious primitivism was not on the agenda of radical progressives like me. It
helped that I did not think of myself as a Jew, and no one else did either.
My South African credentials offered instant access
to far-left circles in Oxford, but it bothered me that my new-found
comrades, mostly at the university, liberally peppered our conversations with
casual, gratuitous anti-Semitism. The Jews, it seemed, were at the root of the
world’s ills.
[ I am sorry but
is has forever escaped me how an intellectual elite can be capable of
anti-Semitism let alone racism per se.
it is the nature of intellectual pursuit to question all one’s own
premises however received – all this is an outright admission of intellectual
failure of a most elementary kind – arclein ]
But my Oxfam Moment came one summer’s evening when a
senior Oxfam executive invited me to dinner at his sumptuous home in the
rolling Oxfordshire countryside. He was cultured, brilliant and cool. Every
inch the top Foreign Office diplomat, which had indeed been his
previous calling. Before dinner, he suggested we take drinks on the lawn. As an
afterthought, he asked the butler to bring out his portable radio so that we
could listen to the news. It was, after all, the first day of the Six Day War.
The BBC faithfully reported claims by the Israelis
that they had destroyed the air forces of Egypt and Syria on the ground. Then,
the newsreader intoned the Arab claims that they had inflicted extensive damage
on the Israeli army; that Egyptian tanks were advancing; that they were now 25
kilometres from Tel Aviv.
My urbane host lost his cultivated cool. His elderly
body shot into the air, fists pumping at the skies: ‘Now the Jews are going
to get it... Now they’re going to get it.’ Remember, Israel occupied no
territories, nor had it constructed a single settlement. There could be only
one explanation for his jubilation: the prospect of Israel’s imminent
destruction. When he recovered his composure, he raised his glass and
beamed at me: ‘Wonderful news. Simply wonderful.’ I stared back, shocked, not
knowing how to respond. To my shame, I said nothing.
His reaction was more or less typical of the
culture I encountered among the loony left, which perceived Jews as arrogant
and pushy, while it regarded determined Palestinian displacement as
principled and heroic. My own displacement – from the far-left and Oxfam – was
now more or less complete.
But the madness
of the Sixties never went away.
On the contrary, it triumphed. The past half-century has witnessed Europe’s
traditional sources of authority – political and church leaders – in full
retreat, ceding the moral high ground to bunch of unelected, unaccountable
NGOs, like Oxfam, which place themselves on the side of the angels. They
set the agenda now.
I doubt whether Oxfam would have been much exercised
if SodaStream was owned by, say, Jordanians, Egyptians or Saudis. Rather, I
believe, they have chosen to invest a large chunk of their resources in
advocating a boycott of the company because it is Jewish. Haven’t we
heard that before, too?
Douglas Davis is a former senior editor of the
Jerusalem Post
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