Bubblehammerblog

My remarks in support of Helen Thomas drew quite a few comments. I presume the ones in Chinese were both complimentary and supportive. Thanks for that.

I should point out to The Reality Show that Helen Thomas is neither an Arab, a racist, nor a hag. So far as I know she has never, during her many decades as a senior correspondent, used her position to argue, implicitly or otherwise, for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Palestine.

Many years ago, when I began learning Arabic, I witnessed Arab racism first hand, and was taken aback by how entrenched and casual it was. My first teacher was an elderly Yemeni, a decent, good natured and considerate gentleman, for the most part moderate and tolerant in his views, yet cheerfully convinced that the Jews were behind all the world's ills. We became good mates, yet he remained mournfully disappointed in me for showing no interest in becoming a Muslim, for my misguided insistence that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a laughable forgery, and because I was always 'sticking up for the Jews' by making a distinction between Zionism and the Jewish people. He would also become exasperated when I contradicted his claim that the 'bloody tyrant' Winston Churchill was secretly Jewish.

A number of my classmates in those days were young Muslim lads, from Arab, Iranian, or Pakistani backgrounds - would-be militant Islamists, and often bigots of the first kidney. This coupled with a shockingly profound ignorance of their professed religion and its history.

If, as has been claimed by our security services, lads like this were being groomed by fiery preachers linked to the likes of Lashkar-e-Taiba, their indoctrination surely lacked all sophistication. They had no clear idea of the recent history of the continent they were living on, and knew nothing of the Middle East. WWII, Warsaw, the Shoah, 1948, the Nakhba, wouldn't have meant much to them. Their antisemitism was entirely quranic, involving putting to the sword Jews found hiding behind rocks at the end of time. Much of their sexism, racism, prejudice and general bigotry was in this cartoon dimension.

Ignorance, racism and bigotry are remarkably similar in every culture. To experience the Jewish version view some footage of Israeli settler demonstrations, read the Jerusalem Post, or take a look at Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs blog, available on the right of your screen.

And yes, I know what sort of fate a person like me might face were I living in one of the Arab regimes that surround Israel. Some who left comments on this blog seem to have the idea that I'm a Liberal, and as such deserving of this and that indignity. I'm not a Liberal, I'm a Communist. My likely fate under the current crop of repressive regimes, from Egypt to Iran, is easy to imagine - no doubt they'd have me shackled to a slimy cellar wall, being continually bum-banged by rotating platoons of the elite,(US trained), presidential guard. Murderous Israeli bigots might be more contemporary, and simply deploy a sniper, (with the latest US laser sighting system), to put one though my head.

Criticism of Zionism and the government of the State of Israel in no way implies apologies for Egypt or Syria, Hamas or Hizbollah, Fatah or the PA.

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