An Audience With George Galloway. posted by Richard Seymour

This is not a post about Celebrity Big Brother. If you're still watching that shit, you are personally evil and deserve to be burnt at the stake. No, Mark Elf has been on the case of accusations of 'anti-Semitism' against George Galloway. Such claims typically come from untrustworthy buffoons whom one does well to ignore. However, if they come from Matthew Kramer, Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at Cambridge University, you sit up and pay attention (unless, of course, you are one of his students). And when Professor Norman Geras repeats them on his site (1), that's two potential libel suits. Double trouble. (Note that as I have no desire to improve the traffic for a number of the sites that I will be discussing, the URLs will simply be provided at the end of the post for you to pursue if you insist).

Matthew Kramer, writing to the Cambridge Arts theatre to protest Galloway's appearance in An Audience With George Galloway, suggested:

[Y]ou are apparently intending to allow the Arts Theatre to be used as a platform by a man who has made a number of anti-Semitic pronouncements in various settings. I shall be happy to supply you with relevant quotations. I should note that, when I say "anti-Semitic", I mean "anti-Semitic"; I do not mean "anti-Israeli" (though Galloway is of course implacably opposed to the state of Israel).

Naturally, the director of the theatre told him in various pacifying terms to cram it, but the allegations have not been retracted. As Jews Sans Frontieres asks "Leaving aside the fact that being anti the State of Israel doesn't make a person "anti-Israeli", does anyone have any quotations from Galloway that are anti-semitic?" Someone tried to find out. A friend of Mark Elf wrote to Mr Kramer to see if he would yield the "relevant quotations". The response: "He referred my friend to the comments of Harry's Place on 6 December 2005. Don't laugh it's true. A Cambridge don has used, not just Harry's Place, but the comments at Harry's Place as source material."

This called for some detective work. Reading HP Sauce, I suspect the comments box he refers to is actually from the post 'Mr Galloway Goes to Cambridge' from December 7th. HP contributor 'Gene' links to a post by Geras which cites, but does not link, comments GG allegedly made on Al Jazeera referring to "the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism". This, Norm says, is 'conspiracy theory' with 'poison at its heart' - the Professor is not a prose stylist (2). But let's put it bluntly: there are newspapers and news media controlled by Zionists, not least the Telegraph (well, it was at any rate). Rupert Murdoch is a Zionist, par excellence, and manages to control four of the nation's newspapers, not to mention Fox News, Sky News etc. Unless referring to obvious facts is 'anti-Semitic', Professor Kramer's defense team would struggle with this one (3).

Zionist academic David Hirsh of Goldsmith's College provides further such 'examples' in the same comments box. There is one in which Galloway is actually acquitted of having referred to Israel as a "Hitler state" (much to the chagrin of the Engage author), but then accused of conspiracy theories and "dehumanising" language, because he refers to the war leaders as having a "simian swagger". Galloway is then quoted as saying that Israel engaged in activities to drive Jewish people out of Arab countries. This happens to be true, and it was largely driven by the Jewish National Fund Yet, it is simply cited in order to imply some an anti-Jewish animus at work (4) Then there is some guilt by association in which Galloway and Joseph Massad are crudely compared to David Duke by Mr Hirsh because the latter believes the Jews control the global media and conspire to control governments. Hirsh adds that "George Galloway ... also believes that the 'Zionists' control the global media", which could land Hirsh in court too, as the evidence he adduces plainly confutes his claim (5).

Another article is sourced to support the claim that Galloway is anti-Semitic, despite the fact that Galloway is not mentioned once in the whole article (6). And yet another, where Galloway correctly pins Louise Ellman as "Israel's MP on Merseyside" because she is one of the most disgraceful apologists for Israeli crimes as well as a member of Labour Friends of Israel (7).

And that's it. From this, I would have to deduce that a) referring to Zionists controlling newspapers is 'conspiracy theory' (and no need to ensure the translation is accurate or that the words were ever said, is anti-Semitic, b) to refer to certifiable facts about Zionist history is anti-Semitic, c) to vilify warmonger Richard Perle is anti-Semitic, d) to criticise a Jewish MP is anti-Semitic... in fact, to oppose Zionism and to criticise anyone who happens to support it - especially if they are Jewish - is anti-Semitic. That's a definition that no court would accept, (unless perhaps it was an Israeli one).

What I'm saying is that these calumnious slagheaps, who are themselves - all of them - apologists for Israel, a racist settler state whose very existence relies upon ethnic cleansing, really have more to worry about than, say, Endemol productions. In fact, Respect could use a nice shiny new bus, so I hope George can be persuaded to sue.

1 http://tinyurl.com/9x9eb

2 http://tinyurl.com/9esss

3 http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=53

4 http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=162

5 http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=128

6 http://www.engageonline.org.uk/archives/index.php?id=7

7 http://tinyurl.com/763gb