YOU DON’T HAVE to be of a superstitious nature to believe in omens. For the signs are bad: whether it’s the steady driving out of Malmo’s Jewish community by Muslim immigrants, the murder of Jewish schoolchildren in France, the attacks on Israeli businesses and Jewish-owned shops via the BDS (Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions) movement, the protests against the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in the Albert Hall and the Batsheva Dance Company at the Edinburgh Festival, or the recurrent references in public discourse to the “Jewish lobby”, European antisemitism continues to grow in strength.
Thus we have Steve Bell’s recent cartoon in the Guardian, depicting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as a puppet-master manipulating the UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and ex-PM Tony Blair, against a backdrop of Israeli flags, suitably doubling as missiles, and the words “Vote Likud”.
The antisemitic nature of the cartoon was picked up by many people, particularly the way in which it mirrored similar cartoons from the Nazi period. For as every gentile knows, the Jews either control the world already or are in the process of gaining control – I’m never sure which, but as long as you stick with T S Eliot’s line, “The jew is underneath the lot”, you won’t go far wrong.
Let us first note the irony of the missiles, hundreds of which have been launched by Hamas and its associated terror groups into Israel this year, without any outrage from the world’s media or satirical cartoons from the likes of Steve Bell.
Let us also note Bell’s faithful toeing of the progressive line that the current Israeli response to the latest round of rocket attacks is motivated purely by the cynical desire of Netanyahu to show himself a strong leader and thereby secure his party (Likud) success in the forthcoming elections. Nothing to do with defending his country. It’s a line dutifully reeled out by the media (always a give away).
Bell has, naturally, sought to defend himself against the accusations of antisemitism. According to one source (The Jewish Chronicle Online), he said he felt compelled to draw the cartoon because “the coverage of Operation Pillar of Defence has been so skewed in favour of the Israeli side, particularly I regret to say on the BBC”. I could have been tempted to believe that Bell had no anti-Jewish bias had he not revealed himself to be a progressive beyond the pale with that comment. Anyone who thinks the BBC is skewed in favour of Israel is clearly so far to the left that their sense of reality has built its own rocket and left the planet.
It’s all a predictable and shabby demonstration of the left’s hypocrisy with regard to the Jews and the Arabs (discussed in one of my recent posts). None of them gave a damn while rockets fell on southern Israel, terrorising its civilians, but as soon as they got a whiff of Arab blood they were all fired up with outrage.
What’s going on is a slow-motion Kristallnacht, a steady, progressive legitimisation of anti-Jewish sentiment and behaviour. The mainstream media, especially the BBC and papers such as the Guardian, indulge in this moral rottenness oblivious to its possible consequences and wilfully blind to the examples of history. No good can come of it.
