Adloyada

How to do the Pretzel manoeuvre for Ken Livingstone

I've always been intrigued by the Heimlich manoeuvre, an arcane piece of first aid derring-do which helps you get a bone out of the throat of anyone unfortunate enough to have swallowed one.

But all this has paled by comparison with the spectacle of the Pretzel manoeuvre for Livingstone. I refer to the amazing intellectual contortions and posturings that I've been seeing from some prominent London Labour loyalists in the cause of trying to persuade sceptical Londoners to vote for Ken Livingstone.

The track record of Livingstone as a serial sayer of appalling things and a doer of somewhat murky ones has been regularly documented in Aloyada. Here is a sample of his track record in telling some Jewish propertry developers to ...go back where they came from, whilst at the same time praising other Jewish property developers who had contributed to his campaign funds for his previous election campaign. And here, he tries to explain away some of his more notorious political support acts, such as his support of the influential Islamist Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, advocate of wife beating, execution of gays and indiscriminate suicide bombing of Israelis.

The supreme prize for turning yourself into a pretzel to come up with reasons why you, dear Londoner reader, should vote for Livingstone has to go to Jonathan Freedland, writing in last Friday's Jewish Chronicle. His article is titled "Why Livingstone gets my vote", but it's much less about that than putting pressure on Jewish Chronicle readers to join him in voting for Ken despite his established track record of insulting individual Jews as Jews, of characterizing the Board of Deputies, the representative body of British Jews, as being controlled by the intelligence service of Israel, and of expressing sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers.

Jonathan Freedland's argument follows one of the main lines of the standard Pretzel manoeuvre currently being used by Livingstone and his supporters to try to get voters to overlook his more off the wall actions and statements. This particular variant is based on suggesting that these are minor matters which should be overlooked in favour of a supposed big picture of success in what are seen as the key issues.

Freedland's argument is breathtaking: Jews should ignore Livingstone's gratuitous offensiveness towards mainstream Jews and his characterization of the Board of Deputies as a sinister organization controlled by the Israeli intelligence services because he's standing as Mayor of London, not as Chair of the Board of Deputies or President of the Zionist Federation:

I wouldn’t vote for Ken Livingstone to be the next head of the United Synagogue. If he was running for the chairmanship of the Jewish National Fund, he wouldn’t have my backing. And if he wanted to lead the Zionist Federation, he could count me out.

We all know why Livingstone has disqualified himself from those posts. He’s the man who hugged Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim cleric who justifies attacks on Israeli civilians; who told the Reuben brothers to go back where they came from; who heard a Jewish reporter say he was offended to be compared to a concentration camp guard and didn’t care; and who, most recently, wrongly claimed that former Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits had declared the creation of the state of Israel a mistake.

So Ken can rule himself out as a future president of the Board of Deputies. Luckily for him — and us — that’s not the job he’s seeking. He wants instead to carry on serving as the mayor of London. And the basis on which Jewish Londoners make that decision should be entirely different.

For if we are full participants in the life of this city — and I believe we are — then we should elect a mayor not because of how he appeals, or doesn’t appeal, to our own particular, sectional interests, but what he does for London as a whole.

We would take a dim view of an American Jewish voter who chose between Obama, Clinton and McCain solely on the basis of how closely each candidate cuddled up to Israel rather than on what they would do for America.

What Freedland is saying here is that concerns about Livingstone's demonization of the biggest mainstream Jewish representative organization and Livingstone's endorsement and active support of an anti-semitic Islamist religious politician are only relevant to a leadership position within the Jewish community; they are irrelevant to a wider community role, even one which is supposed to be representative of the whole community.

Freedland isn't the first Jewish polemicist to suggest that caring about Jewish concerns in a wider community context is an indicator of an inappropriately parochial concern, and that the genuinely community-minded Jew should be disregarding those in favour of a supposedly wider agenda. He's gone much further-- to state that the most offensive of Livingstone's gratuitous Jew-baiting does no more than render him unsuitable for the leadership of either a Jewish religious or a zionist activist organization.

By suggesting "we" (who's this "we"?) would take a "dim view" of any American Jew who chose to vote for a US presidential candidate "solely on the basis of how closely each candidate cuddled up to Israel", Freedland manages subtly both to sneer at American Jews, and to suggest that London Jews' concern is about "cuddling up to Israel" rather than the gross accusations that Livingstone has made that the Board of Deputies is the tool of the Israeli government, and that the anti-semitic, misogynist and homophobic statements attributed to Sheikh Qaradawi are deliberate mistranslations by an organization controlled by Israeli intelligence.

Freedland twists himself even further into a Pretzel manoeuvre by going on to suggest that while London Jews shouldn't vote against Livingstone despite the whole farrago of his years of demonization of zionism and Israel, they should decide to vote against Livingstone's main rival Boris Johnson because Freedland alleges that he characterized once Islam as "viciously sectarian" and "mediaeval" in an article written after 9/11. Apart from the display of highly selective indignation that this represents, it's another example of traditional secular left attitudes to Jews, who are to be rebuked for any signs of concern with their own liberation, and enlisted as demonstration fodder in the service of others' grievances.

Apart from these so far thankfully unique variants of Pretzel manoeuvres for Livingstone, Freedland trots out most of the others which feature in almost every example of the genre:

You shouldn't vote for Boris Johnson because he went to Eton

You shouldn't vote for Boris Johnson because he's never been responsible for the administration of any major national enterprise before (but why is it that they don't also campaign against Vaclav Havel, the poet who became the President of the Czech Republic?)

You shouldn't vote for Boris Johnson because he's a buffoon (strange how the buffoon managed to get a scholarship to Eton, become President of the Oxford Union, make quite a positive impact on the Spectator, write a series of books and make a creditable television series on the history of Ancient Rome)

You shouldn't vote for Boris Johnson because the BNP is backing him. He doesn't mention that Boris Johnson very promptly and vigorously repudiated all BNP support. Still less does he mention that, by contrast, Ken Livingstone has done nothing to repudiate a letter of support from a group of Muslim organizations which includes some highly reactionary Madudist Islamists.

Pretzels are pretty much my favourite party snack. But as a template for effective political campaigning, they're at best ludicrous and at worst deeply repellent.

For another, if more harmless example of Pretzel manoeuvring for Livingstone, see Monday's article by Charlie Brooker in (where else?) The Guardian. Semi-literate, ranting, wholly self-important (another key feature of the genre), what is there to say when faced with arguments like this?

Now, even if the Standard photographs Ken carving a swastika into a dormouse's back, I'll vote for him for the following reasons:

1) I'm genetically predisposed to hate the Tories. It's my default, hard-wired position. If Boris wins, their simpering pudge-faced smuggery is going to be unbearable. Picture the expression Piers Morgan makes when he's especially pleased with himself, then multiply it by 10 million, and imagine it looming overhead like a Death Star. That's what it's going be like. Therefore I don't care who wins provided Johnson loses, and loses hard, preferably in close-up, on the telly.

2) Ken's other main rival is solid-but-dull Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick. He probably deserves a shot, but as he's not going to win, voting for him would be a waste of a perfectly good X, which might otherwise be used to pinpoint buried treasure, indicate affection, or mark a plague victim's door.

3) I wouldn't trust Boris to operate a mop, let alone a £10bn Crossrail project.

4) On a related note, I don't believe in my gut that Boris gives even the faintest hint of a wisp of a glimpse of a toss about London, or indeed humanity in general. Both of which are fairly important in a job like this.

5) But on the other hand OMFG LOOK AT HIS FUNNEEE HAIR LOL!!!! BORRIS IS A LEGERND!!!!

Anyway, if the worst happens and Boris gets in, then provided he doesn't obliterate the capital in some hilarious slapstick disaster, or provoke war with Portsmouth with a chance remark - provided, in short, that London still exists in some recognisable form - the rival parties should fight fire with fire by running equally popular TV characters against him in the next election.

It doesn't even matter if they're real or not. Basil Brush would be a shoo-in. Churchill, the nodding dog from the car insurance ads - he'll do. Or if we're after the ironic vote, how about Gene Hunt from Life on Mars? Or Phil Mitchell? At least he's a Londoner.

They might as well. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and there's no more desperate sign of the times than the current wave of LOL OMFG!!!! BORIS DONE A GUFF!!!! ROFL!!!!!!! THE MAN IS A LEGERND I TELL YOU LOL!!!!! I CARNT WAIT 2 SEE HIM RUNNING THE INTIRE CITTY!!! BORRIS 4 KING!!! LOL!!! LOL!!! LOLLL!!!!!!!!!

!!!!

Charlie Brooker is a Guardian columnist and satirical comedian. Oh,yes.........

Making seriously delicious charoses ice-cream for Pesach

Since last summer, I've become a fanatical keen home ice cream maker.

What originally inspired me to get started was eating home made ice cream as made by S, which she usually serves whenever I have Shabbos lunch there. Delicious..but the downside which held me back from having a go was her description of the amount of hand whisking she had to do to get the consistency good enough. Couldn't see myself having the time or patience for that long in action with a whisk...even an electric whisk. Plus the hassle of having to get it out of the fridge at the right time and re-beat.

Yes, well, I knew about ice cream machines, but my take on it was-- there are machines costing about £25 and machines costing £250. Seemed to stand to reason it was only the £250 jobs would do the business, otherwise why would anyone pay £250 when they could get an effective machine for £25?

But that was before the summer, when I was buying various household equipment for my about-to-be-married daughter and future son in law and Amazon were doing 25% and more off a good proportion of their kitchen machines. I started reading the customer reviews and discovered that there were a good many customers who'd bought the ">cheapo Kenwood IM200 machine and who raved about the quality of ice cream they were making. And then there was the fact that it would potentially enable me to make ice cream that was low fat and low calorie...and I could use goats' milk and cream, because my daughter's intolerant of cow's milk, but is happy to consume goats' milk products.

The obliging customer reviews also pointed me at a couple of good ice cream making books that they recommended. So I bought a Kenwood IM200 just like the one in the picture, which was sort of free given the various 25% off offers I'd acquired by buying the machines I was already going to buy, plus these two ice cream making books, which were the most highly recommended.

It was actually not until about four months after the wedding that I actually started using the machine. I started with a non dairy low cal ice cream--coconut lime ice cream, using the recipe from this book. It turned out delicious. It's easy to make--the only remotely complex bit is cooking up some sugar and water to make a syrup and then cooling it. And my daughter and my guests love it; it tastes quite rich and creamy, and you would never guess it's quite low calorie.

I think that what really got me hooked though was the discovery that making ice cream in my machine was really like getting to do alchemy. You pour this rather unimpressive looking liquid that you've put together into your switched on machine. And watch it churn it round. After ten minutes, the stuff looks a bit thicker. After twenty minutes, perhaps a bit thicker still. And then you might turn your back and after twenty five minutes, it's suddenly transformed. It's risen up to three times the size, and it's thick and substantial and---oooh-- looks just like real posh ice cream. But it tastes much, much better than anything you'll ever buy from a shop.

Since then, I've made all these flavours, in order of impressiveness (but they've all been delicious): pineapple; banana; blueberry; coffee amaretto; raspberry; strawberry, vanilla and pomegranate. And now of course my latest, which is a recipe I worked out for myself: charoses which is very impressive and recreates the heavenly taste of the charoses that I remember from my childhood. With the same deep apple/cinnamon/almond slurp plus the rich and delicious aftertaste of a good kiddush wine. If you need an explanation of what charoses (also known as haroset, charoseth and charosis) is, see here.

Yesterday, I took some coffee amaretto parev ice cream round to J., who's sitting Shiva for her lovely mother Lily, who I wrote about here. J is an absolutely ace cook and I nearly fell over when she said to the assembled multitude, "Judy makes the best ice-cream in England." Which shows that if you do a mitzvoh, you are almost certainly to get more out of it than the person you're doing it for. But I had noticed before that whenever I've had couples round to a Shabbos meal at which I serve the ice cream, the men will suddenly go very silent as they become completely absorbed in eating it. I never realised before how many men are deep ice cream addicts. And how few people have had the wonderful experience of tasting home made ice cream. Thank you, Kenwood.

Still with me? I'm still working on variants of the charoses ice cream. Because my first experimental version was done with a Ben & Jerry style recipe. I recommend the Ben & Jerry approach, which they describe very clearly and simply in their book. You make a base custard by whisking up eggs and sugar (and you can use xylitol to lower the calorie content), then adding milk and cream; then you add a syrup based on marinating your fruit or flavour sauce with lime and more sugar, and churn what you've got. Keep some chunks of fruit to add to the last couple of minutes of churning and that's it.

But you can only use that for Pesach if you're going to eat a vegetarian or fish meal, which is what I shall do for the Seder I'm doing for first night. Which just also happens to be on my 64th birthday. And my daughter and son in law will be my guests of honour. Ah, but then I have yet to make a version with goat's milk and goat's cream, but I'm pretty confident it'll be as good as the conventional cows' dairy recipe. It led to an even better discovery. My daughter's also somewhat allergic to eggs. But she told me she'd experimented with ducks' eggs, which she turns out not to be allergic to. And they're never battery produced, and they work beautifully; you'll virtually never find a duck's egg with a bloodspot. To my surprise, all the major UK supermarkets sell them, too. So I now usually use duck eggs, in preference to the very high quality free range organic blacktail hen's eggs, which are very good, but often turn out to have bloodspots.

So then I thought of my final charoses ice cream challenge. On the second night, I'm going to G's family Seder. They're going to have a meat meal. So if I want to make them some charoses ice cream to add to their meal, what can I make it with? The soya cream I usually use for parev ice cream won't do for Pesach, as it's not kosher-for-Pesach for us Ashkenazis. Ah...but how about coconut milk? Or even coconut cream? I've been inspired by looking at this site of a US based luxury coconut ice cream maker. The problem, though, is that in England you can't get kosher-le-Pesach coconut milk.

No, I'm not going to let that defeat me. I'm going to work on a dummy run for this Erev Shabbos, using ordinary coconut milk. Once I get that right, I shall make my own coconut cream from real coconuts. And Google's found me a convincing looking recipe on how to do that without gouging myself to bits trying to get the coconut flesh out of its shell. S and P are coming round for Erev Shabbos dinner, so I'll have the most discerning taste testers you can get.

As you can see, I've got the ingredients all ready.

This is some appetising looking coconut cream that I made last night from a packet of dried coconut milk. Using fresh coconut... which will have been roasted...should be that much better. I'll be interested to see how the coconut cream marries with the taste of the traditional charoset. The dairy ice version made a brilliant blend.

Key tip: most people who make Ashkenazi traditional charoses now grate the apple into shreds. It is nothing like as good as taking the trouble to use a grater fine enough to grate it into pulp. That black tool in the photo is my Microplane rotary grater, which does a good job of doing it without my grating my skin into the pulp.

Here's the recipe --enough for 4-6, which is as much as my machine will do in one batch:

Get your bowls, whisk blades and ice cream machine dasher good and cold.

In one bowl mix:
One to two organic apples (I use Gala--go for a sweet, crisp variety) grated to pulp
One half lime juice added to the apple
90gm organic caster sugar, organic agave syrup or xylitol
Ground cinnamon to taste (go easy...)
Enough ground almonds to mix and taste like it did when you were little
Enough top quality kiddush wine (King David Sacramental or Massoret, never Kedem or cheap Palwin) to absorb into the above over two to three hours in the fridge--and only then:

In a second bowl
One egg whisked in turn with:
90 gm organic caster sugar, organic agave syrup or xylitol (added a bit at a time as you whisk)
One half cup best quality (Jersey) milk (or whole fat goats' milk or coconut milk)
1 cup (250 ml) best dairy double cream (or goats' cream or coconut cream)
(Add a teaspoon vanilla extract or the seeds of a vanilla pod if using coconut milk & cream)

Stir the apple mix into the egg custard base. Check the taste to see if you need more wine or sweetening. It should be quite a bit sweeter than the charoses you remember as a child.

Set up the ice cream machine with the dasher turning. Pour in your mix and leave for 25-35 minutes or until you see it at least doubled in bulk, firm and scoopable. Scoop it out and pack into tubs and straight into your freezer.

Take out of the freezer and leave for 20 minutes in the fridge before serving.

And...I'm keen enough to have bought another identical Kenwood IM200 ice cream machine just for Pesach use. I told you I've become fanatic keen....

I'd show you a movie on YouTube of the machine doing its alchemy on one of my ice creams, but guess what? Even though I've a Master's degree in IT, I can't work out how to upload it to YouTube. The YouTube upload command doesn't seem to let me point to a file on either my Macbook or my PC. And YouTube have yet to reply to my pathetic appeal for help.

Grave concerns

On Sunday the BBC News web site reported the racist vandalizing of 148 Muslim WWI war graves in France.

I'm glad the BBC has done this, because, apart from anything else, it highlights the reality of Islamophobia.

These graves were attacked, for no reason other than their occupants were Muslims, by people who no doubt regard themselves as super-patriots of France, and despite the irony of their dead victims having died to secure the desecrators' national independence. Just in case anyone was in any possible doubt about Islam per se being the butt of their hatred, the vandals also hung a pig's head over some of the vandalized graves and wrote slogans insulting the French Minister of Justice, who is a Muslim. The graves were sprayed with swastikas and SS flashes; another layer of irony there, in the light of the history of the Muslim divisions of volunteers who fought for the Nazis.

It's impressive that President Sarkozy promptly spoke out about the attack as "a hateful attack" and "the most inadmissible type of racism".

I first came across a French war cemetery near Royan, in the Charente region, about fifteen years ago. I was intrigued by a roadside sign reading "Cimitiere Nationale" and stopped to visit it, thinking it might be a resting place for people of national stature, rather like the role Westminster Abbey plays in England's national memorialization.

It turned out to be a cemetery for the hundreds of Free French who died fighting their way through south-west France, where the German SS occupying troops fought to the last ditch as late as April 1945. And there I saw the rows and rows of Free French Muslim graves, almost all of them of young men in their early twenties, and tried to imagine the tragedies that spread through the North African villages most of them must have come from.

In the centre of the cemetery, there was a small glass pane let into the ground. It was filled with ashes brought from one of the concentration camps, in memory of the deported, most of whom were Jews. I was stunned by the sight of this painful little memorial; I couldn't imagine the Commonwealth War Graves Commission so eloquently demonstrating the indivisibility of all those who died at the hands of the Nazis. I doubt if there are any official British war memorials in Jersey to the British and refugee Jews who were deported from that bit of British soil to the death camps, with the assistance of the British police on occupied Jersey, or the slave labourers worked to death by the Nazis there.

Not that I really want to criticize the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Partly because I'm the daughter of refugees who reached England only a few months (or in the case of my father, just two weeks) before the start of WWII, and partly because I'm old enough to have grown up in the bomb-rubble strewn streets of post war Stepney, I am powerfully moved by the war cemeteries of WWI and WWII. It is a humbling experience to drive from Calais or Boulogne towards Paris past the miles of cemeteries of the British and American war dead. It's something that seems to have acted on me as a permanent inoculation against fashionable anti-Americanism.

To walk round a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery is to have one of the most powerful -- albeit low key--demonstrations of the ideals of British-style democracy. After the unprecedented carnage of WWI, the authorities made the decision that -- in a still deeply class-divided society-- the war dead were indivisible. Indeed, this was the very first war in which the fallen of all ranks were given the dignity of an individual named grave. All the dead, whatever their rank or religion, were given the same style memorial; the families of Jews, Muslims and Christians could ask for a Star of David, an Islamic Crescent or a Christian cross on their loved ones' memorials, and all the families were allowed to have engraved the same number of words of their own choosing. The cemeteries are all planted and superbly maintained, with beautiful, low-growing shrubs and flowers, making them pleasant and peaceful in a way that other cemeteries, particularly war cemeteries are not.

So it's doubly and trebly sad that neither the BBC nor, as far as I can see, any other British news outlet, has chosen to report the recent destruction by Palestinian gunmen of a British war memorial. It's the WWI British War Memorial in Gaza, which was blown up last week, and reported in the Israeli press, but not in the British media. You can see the photograph of the memorial as it was before it was destroyed in the background of the photo of the cemetery to which I've linked. No doubt it commemorated the names of over 700 soldiers who died in the battles to take Gaza without their bodies being found. There are around 4,000 war dead buried there, mainly from WWI but also from WWII.

And, far from a ringing condemnation by Britain's Prime Minister comparable with that of Sarkozy, there's just a somewhat plaintive statement by the British Consulate-General in Jerusalem, intended for the Hamas regime in Gaza:

"The history of this region is complex. But the right of the dead to lie in peace and dignity is simple and should be respected by all. We hope that the authorities in Gaza will make every effort to apprehend those responsible."

So I'm depressed but not at all surprised by the silence beyond the Jewish press and anti-racist organizations about the desecration a week ago of over thirty Jewish graves in East London's Plashet Cemetery. That's got a particularly strong resonance with me; the hatred of Jews so intense that they feel the need to attack the dead. My mother's parents are buried at a cemetery just half a mile from Plashet, and my father is buried at a cemetery a few miles beyond that, which I'm aware is in prime BNP territory.

From Gordon Brown? Silence. From the Home Secretary? Silence. From the Minister for Community Cohesion? Silence. Business as usual.

London's Snowy Spring Sunday

Yep. It may be nearly the end of March. And there may be an English weather proverb that goes, "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb." Only this year, March more or less came in like a lamb and looks as if it's going out like...a grumpy old polar bear.

Tough luck on the many people for whom this weekend is one of the few where they get a four day hoiiday, with the Bank Holidays for the Easter weekend.

Right now at 11:30am, the snow's melted. But the weather forecast I heard this morning was talking about heavy snowfalls later in the day.....

Fish babka

One of the pleasures of getting invited out on my friendship network of Shabbos dinners is that, not only do you get the company and the dinner, but, if you've got my level of nosiness lively curiosity, you can scan their library and their cookbook stock as well.

Last time I had one of S & P's fabulous Shabbos lunches, she had this beautiful Jewish cookbook, which a trainee she'd been mentoring had just given her as a thank you present.

I don't usually like encyclopaedia cookbooks; they're usually all about seducing you with pictures, but the recipes always end up as a disappointment. This one, though, was full of enticing sounding fish recipes that I'd never come across in Jewish recipe books before, not even in Claudia Roden's wonderful "Book of Jewish Food", which I think would be the one I would choose if I had to be dumped on a desert island with just one book.

Fish babka? A traditional Jewish dish from Ukraine, just down the road from where my maternal grandmother's family came from? How come I never heard of it? But it looked like an interesting version of fish pie without the pastry or the high fat sauces and toppings. So I made it, and...it turned out to be something quite special, much more attractive and versatile than the recipe and the photo showed.

As the recipe said, it was souffle-like. Which meant that when baked, it rose almost as much as a conventional souffle-- but stayed puffed up and impressive. The egg yolks, milk, fried onion, bits of bread and stiff egg white give it a lovely light and very tasty texture; an aerated clear yellow omlette-style base in which the embedded pieces of fish and herbs (nutmeg and dill or tarragon) are delicious, subtle and moist.

So I've experimented further with it, and worked out it would make great individual pies; the other week, I made seven for my Shabbos lunch guests, using high quality smoked salmon offcuts instead of the white fish cubes from the recipe. It was very easy, looked incredibly impressive and was even more delicious than the originals. And the pies kept beautifully in the fridge in individual plastic boxes.

This Thursday evening, I made some more with some supermarket sell-off smoked haddock, and that was very successful, though I like the smoked salmon version best. That made me two big and two small ones; the picture above is the one I had for supper on Thursday night

London spring morning

This morning, for the first time since last summer, the sun pouring into my living room felt really warm on my back. Really frosty, though, and freezing cold once I actually ventured out onto the deck.

We've had two or three days like this over the last week--not so warm, but the same sequence of very chilly frost, followed by beautiful, pure, pale sunshine. For the first time, the grass on the lawn is an intense, gold-flecked, brilliant fresh green.

Since December, I've had a small but never failing daily lift to my spirits from the sight of the white hellebores blooming by the front door. They're the variety called "Christmas roses", but they rarely do bloom on time. You're much more likely to find them flowering in late January. But these ones have surprised me, first coming into flower before Christmas, and they just keep going and putting out more and more showy little white blooms. Now the oldest ones have just started turning green, which is a bonus, as I really like green flowers.

Out on the deck, IKEA have provided me with some brilliant pots of campanula as the centre of the display when all the potted shrubs had stopped blooming and the bulbs hadn't come out yet.

But here comes the cavalry! The iris reticulata came out early last week.

And this morning, there were fronds of new leaf waving about on the wisteria. The first muscari were turning a full clear blue.

On my Shabbos walk yesterday, I walked as usual from my home in Finchley, through the Little Wood and the Big Wood of the Garden Suburb, across the square and onto the Heath extension and the Heath itself. Then over into the astounding garden of Inverforth House. And that's where I saw the first japonica blooms of this year, fragile and pale coral, against a pale blue sky.

February 17th. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life" (Samuel Johnson)

British Media Zionist Conspiracy Derangement Syndrome: A Virtuoso Display

My last post anticipated an outbreak of British Media Zionist Conspiracy Derangement Syndrome following the latest stories about irregular donations to the Labour Party by an all too obviously off-beam eccentric millionaire who also happens to be Jewish and a supporter of Jewish and Israeli causes. Of course, the fact that he also supports the Alzheimers Society and various pensioner causes seems to provoke no speculative headlines about shadowy geriatric mental health lobby groups or revealing photo opportunities with international elderly power brokers.

After a week of continuing attention to Mr Abrahams and recycling of the same innuendoes, not one scrap of evidence has yet been produced by anyone anywhere of Mr Abrahams succeeding in influencing any aspect of Labour Party policy in any field. On the contrary, much has been made of his presence in Labour Friends of Israel, although none of even the most heated has offered any significant evidence of anything he achieved in that organization, let alone anything that LFI itself has achieved of any real significance in influencing British foreign policy in directions which it was not already interested in taking.

Last week, though, we had a textbook case of British Media Zionist Conspiracy Derangement Syndrome. It should not be missed, since it managed to cobble together a farrago of toe-curling innuendoes and leaps of speculative fantasies, most of which are built firmly on out and out errors.

Take a look at Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's column in the Independent. It's a virtuoso display of the Syndrome, complete with all the typical symptoms of thoroughly bad journalism.

Ms Alibhai-Brown seems to have the same overblown view of her own significance which she takes so seriously in Mr Abrahams

For an easy life, some things, you learn, are best left unsaid. Nervous, am I? You bet. But these questions will not stand aside or lie down. They have been bothering me since the Labour party donor row broke last week. They are raised here in good faith. I have no wish to bring the wrath of Moses upon me and I can already hear the accusations of anti-Semitism because I dare to raise the question: Can someone explain what exactly is the role of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) in our political life?

Hmmm, the wrath of Moses, eh? Wonder what that's meant to imply? Clearly, she sees herself as heroic, as a daring raiser of questions no one else will ask, blithely ignoring the countless columns of endless attribution of almost boundless political influence to LFI across the British media and even more vociferously by bloggers and their anonymous commentators.

She mentions that there's a Conservative Friends of Israel too. But of course solid journalistic work on discovering exactly what Parliamentary Friends groups do and don't achieve is much less fun and a great deal less sensational than just ignoring the evidence and making up a good few blood-chilling innuendoes about hidden hands pulling the political strings. Especially as the evidence will demonstrate easily how very little real influence such groups have in practice.

Ms Alibhai Brown is silent on the existence of the Liberal Friends of Israel. That group has been singularly unsuccessful in influencing the policies of the party towards Israel. The very fact that Jenny Tonge, apologist and advocate for Palestinian suicide bombing, was still nominated a Baroness by the Liberals and remains under the Liberal whip, even after she suggested that "the pro-Israel lobby" had "got its grips" on the finances of the Liberal Party, should be enough to demonstrate how little practical effect they have.

The fact that the Conservative Friends of Israel, with its much larger membership, did not dissuade David Cameron and other senior Tory politicians from condemning Israel's response to Hezbollah's attacks from the Lebanon as "disproportionate" doesn't register on her horizon. Still less did she consider the implications of the many similar condemnations of Israel from Labour ministers, and to the widely circulated suggestions that Tony Blair's refusal to issue similar condemnations was one of the reasons why his Labour Party colleagues finally pushed him into standing down as Prime Minister. If LFI is such a powerful shadowy organization, how did it fail to prevent all of this?

All Ms Alibhai-Brown seems to think she needs to do is use words like "infamous" (as in "Mendelsohn is a passionate Zionist and infamous lobbyist, described by the Jewish Chronicle as "one of the best-connected power brokers" and display the powers of her own fantasy-driven imagination to make her case. Oh, and let's recognise too that she did phone up two Jewish friends who are senior Labour Party members. Of course, you could say this is a slightly more sophisticated update on the old line of "Some of my best friends are Jews". But so what? Why should the fact that the friends are Jewish lend any credence to her arguments? It's clear that the fantasies are her own.

She refers to Mr Abrahams as a "shape-shifter", invoking David Icke's absurd fantasies that Jews are behind the supposedly reptilian shape shifters who control the world. Mr Abrahams, she tells us, was Mr Big in Labour Friends of Israel. Wrong. Mr Bean, maybe. It's of course worth noting that the term "Mr Big" is usually used as a stereotype name for the hidden boss of an organised crime syndicate. Isn't she trying to imply that Labour Friends of Israel is a criminal organization? He was once its treasurer. So what? How much power or influence does the treasurer of any lobbying group have? And in any case, as she acknowledges, he was actually pushed out of LFI.

A brief look at the people actually involved at the top of LFI makes it clear enough that none of them are funders, and all are either MPs or members of the House of Lords. Most have them have in fact been involved at a senior level since long before Mr Abrahams came on the scene.

Secretive organization? It's odd that the Independent headline refers to the "shadowy" role of LFI when there's a web site which tells you exactly who they are and what they do. And that's primarily to act as an organizing group for Israel-supporting members of Parliament and the House of Lords. Their very limited effectiveness can be gauged by their reference to work with the trade union movement in the UK. Trade union after trade union has adopted policies strongly hostile to Israel, including support for boycotts of Israeli academics and Israeli goods.

Ms Alibhai-Brown mentions a similar Parliamentary lobby group for Muslims, but is silent about the much more significant Council for Arab British Understanding, financed by the Arab League, which has been doing the same job for the Arab world as LFI does for Israel, for forty years.

She appears to end her article with a token reference to worrying about the power of all lobbying groups. So why is it that she starts and fills her column with no more than a roll call of Jews, who are or have been connected with the Labour Friends of Israel?

Suspicious minds

Stephen Pollard has an interesting and informative article about the history of senior Labour Party contacts with David Abrahams, the would-be-secret donor to the Labour Party, who seems to have achieved not only a spectacular degree of unwanted publicity, but to have been the source of the most devastating blow to Gordon Brown's premiership since he came to office.

I'm not that interested in the story anyway--it seems to be yet another in a series of insights into the realities of funding political parties, which from time to time highlights the murky and shamefaced side of each and every major political party's funding practices in the UK.

What I was however expecting any day soon was that this story would morph into the latest version of the UK slant on the international-Jewish-conspiracy angle, which we last saw in full cry over the way in which press innuendo was applied to Lord Levy over his role in both organizing funding for the Labour Party and acting as Tony Blair's envoy to the Middle East.

Here we have today's Telegraph report which of course does not mention the word "Jewish" or even "zionist", but hints with no more evidence than a photo op shot of what could have been a chance charity event encounter at links between David Abrahams and the outgoing Israeli Ambassador, Zvi Heifetz, who Tony Blair has appointed as an adviser in his role as Middle East envoy to the Quartet:

Mr Abrahams is described by friends as a "secretive" person who spends little money on himself but likes to rub shoulders with the great and the good at political and charity events.

Last year he was pictured shaking hands with the then Israeli ambassador, Zvi Heifetz, who was questioned then cleared over money-laundering allegations. Mr Heifetz was recently appointed as an adviser to Mr Blair in his role as Middle East peace envoy.

The idea that Zvi Heifetz or any other mysterious politically experienced donor who wished to keep his identity secret would choose a man like David Abrahams, with a track record of having been rejected by even a local Labour Party as a constituency candidate after his clumsy attempts to present himself as having a fake family is....well...ridiculous. If you do want to hint at a conspiracy, it's hardly convincing to present as main frontman for the plot a character who's a great deal more like Mr Bean than Gordon Brown, or even Harriet Harman.

What I suspect here is that perhaps an enterprising Mr John Rifkin, whose name is credited for the charity event photo showing Abrahams shaking hands with Zvi Heifetz, realised that he had a very nice little earner and seized his opportunity to cash in on it.

But that doesn't stop the Telegraph from building up a further story, which does repeatedly mention the Jewish angle, full of hints and draw-your-own-conclusions innuendoes based on the following:

Mr Abrahams is Jewish

Mr Abrahams is a strong supporter of Jewish and Israeli charities

Mr Abrahams assiduously attended Jewish and Israeli charity events

A former Israeli ambassador once visited his house

A doesn't-want-to-be-named friend of Mr Abrahams suggests:

"David attends dozens of Jewish and Israeli charity events. Even back in the 1980s... he was always attending functions at the Israeli embassy and I believe he carried out some unofficial diplomatic duties in Israel."

Er, diplomatic duties? On behalf of which country was that? Seems that this is the Telegraph's attempted recycling of the Lord Levy as-agent-of-the-international-Jewish-conspiracy saga being shifted onto the pathetic shoulders of this bungling millionaire nebbish.

Not that that will stop this story and this angle from growing and growing....

Guardian ecstatic over Israel victory

Well, that's one headline I never thought I'd write.

The victory is of course the Israeli football team's 2-1 victory over Russia in the Euro 2008 Cup qualifying tournament, but still.... here's a few quotes from the ecstatic Guardian reporter, which show him morphing from patronising sceptic to incredulous cheerleader over the course of the game:

14 min There's a long way to go yet, of course, but if Russia lose England will only need a point against Croatia on Wednesday to qualify for Euro 2008. "Just think! England are only 80 minutes away from having a chance to qualify again," cries a disbelieving Neil Stainthorpe.

Goal! Israel 1-0 Russia (Barda 11) Unbelievable! Israel are ahead! Sahar, who is drifting cleverly between midfield and attack, picks up the ball on the halfway line, isn't challenged by any Russian defender, and slips it perfectly to Barda, who flicks it over Gabulov and into the net. "What a start for England!" cries an excited David Platt on Sky.

20 min Israel look like they're in again until the referee's assistant flags furiously for offside. "It will end in tears Wednesday, Sean, in a typical England scenario," says Rob Hisnay. "After Israel do England a favour today and get some kind of result, England, without Rooney, Owen, Terry, and Ferdinand will then lose at home to Croatia. Lampard can then commiserate with his Tory buddy Cameron." And his £90,000-a-week wages, beautiful wife, etc, etc.

22 min Dear oh dear oh dear: Israel should be 2-0 up. With no Russia defender near him, Yitzhaki misses a free header from three yards out.

25 min Twice Bilyaletdinov, who looks as cherubic as a first-year Westminster choralist, goes close from 25 yards. "This looks like it might be England's best result in years!" says Gary Naylor. "Who's the Israel manager? Can he be lured to replace McClaren?"

27 min God, Russia are awful.

33 min Israel are still looking the only team interested in winning this, with Sahar continuing to dance and duke his way through the Russian defence. Russia are apparently on a £100,000-a-man bonus to win this; they look like they're playing in a friendly.

Half-time It's been a dire half of football, but England fans won't care a jot.

44 min A bizarre piece of defending from Ben Haim, who puts his foot on the ball in the six-yard box with Zhirkov snapping at his ankles. Fortunately for Israel the referee blows up for something; I'm not sure what.

42 min Israel are reverting to page one of the Steve McClaren Bumper Book of Tactics (ie go ahead and then stick 10 men behind the ball). Let's hope they're able to pull it off better than England.

65 min Sychev shoots well wide from 15 yards, but it's all Russia now. "'Re: 42 min Israel are reverting to page one of the Steve McClaren Bumper Book of Tactics (ie go ahead and then stick 10 men behind the ball). Let's hope they're able to pull it off better than England.' Apparently not, they're just as rubbish at it as England are," says Ian Melven. Russia to win 2-1."

86 min Apart from the 10 minutes or so around their equaliser, Russia have been poor - if anything Israel are looking the more dangerous on the break. "Base metal?" scoffs Aidan Oswell in Gary Naylor's direction. "We're constantly being told the England players are diamonds in the rough, just waiting to be forged into the champion side. Personally, I see them more as bling-wearing compulsive consumers, more interested in being seen out with the right people that straining every sinew for their country. When the players share the commitment of the traveling fans, we may have a chance."

Goal! Israel 2-1 Russia (Golan 90+1) Unbelievable in excelsis! Russia throw all their men forward, Golan beats the offside trap and danks it past Gabalov. England now need just a draw to get to Euro 2008!

90+4 Peep! Peep! Peep! That's it! Israel have conjured up the most unlikely of victories -

Goodness! Breathless stuff! What on earth will the Grauniad's anti-zionist cheerleaders Seumas Milne and Brian Whitaker have to say about this appalling enthusiasm for the achievements of these zionist footballers. And especially as Seumas Milne has memorably written this paean of regret for the passing of the Soviet system.

For those readers who are mystified by why the Guardian should be so interested in providing a minute by minute account of a soccer match between Israel and Russia, and why I should be writing about it...Yes, I never thought I'd be writing anything about football other than a few passing references to the styles of self-adornment worn by the supporters. But I couldn't resist this one, and the attendant ironies that go with it.

After all, England were beaten by this same lacklustre Russian team that Israel just outplayed and beat. That's England, home of the multi-million pound world wide phenomenon known as the Premier League. Russia with its population base of 150 million football fans. And Israel, with its few players who occasionally make it into third or fourth ranking English teams.

But, then, the Israeli victory makes it possible that England can stay in the Euro 2008 final. And for the last few days there have been a good few plaintive articles in the UK press longing for what they thought was a highly unlikely Israel win for the sake of England getting a chance it couldn't win on its own merits.

I first heard about the Israeli victory when it came on the BBC Radio 4 evening news bulletin-- as a headline about England now having a chance to stay in the Euro 2008 tournament. So I went to look at the Israeli English language news sites to see how they were covering it. Not one of them had a report of the match at 8:00pm. The Jerusalem Post still has nothing about it. And even now, both the Engllish language site of Ha'aretz and Yediot Achronot feature it in their headlines as primarily offering England an opportunity.

And the Telegraph is running a headline "Israel Rescue England". Clearly not a report from their usual correspondent from Israel.

Still, my prize for Ethnocentric English Reporter of the Year goes to David Platt of Sky TV, quoted by the Guardian's Sean Ingle after Israel's first goal as excitedly exclaiming:

"What a start for England!"

Adloyada bakes challah

One of the things I've done since I last blogged is....buy a breadmaker and start learning to bake the traditional breads of my childhood so they taste like my childhood memories. Or in this case, even better.

I've learnt that, while it's fun to just put a pile of ingredients into the breadmaker and leave it to do the whole process, the bread that comes out at the end will be very acceptable, good to eat...but nothing like the magical experience of shaping it and baking it into the beautiful objects like the rolls you can see. And choosing your own baking temperature and time means you can get a taste, a texture and a degree of crumb and crustiness that doesn't seem to come from using the bread macfhine to do the whole process.

I baked these on Friday afternoon, and I enjoyed two of them over Shabbos. My childhood challahs were always crusty, whereas even the best shop bought ones in London are always soft. But the taste of these rolls was better than I remembered my childhood ones to be, and the look of the texture was much better; thanks to a tip from one of my favourite Jewish cookery books, I'd put saffron into the water I used, and it gave the crumb a beautiful pale ivory colour, with little streaks of pale orange where the strands of saffron had been.

I'd had the breadmaker for about a month before I discovered this book which inspired me to start trying to bake challah. It's got photograph sequences of how to do the complex braidings which go to make up the most impressive challah patterns-- six braids, four braids, twelve roll clusters and the like. I put the breadmaker on the dough-only cycle, and two hours and twenty minutes later, there was a very respectable looking risen dough without any of the mess or effort that goes into making it by hand. As usual, I tried to run before I could walk and no, I couldn't follow the apparently simple instructions to do the beautiful multi-strand shape for Rosh Hashona. I should have followed the book's advice to use plasticine to work out exactly how to do the shaping before trying it out on the real thing. Still, I did produce two decent looking challohs that tasted good.

But now, I'm producing these rolls that look quite like the ones in the book. I've adapted the basic recipe in the book (16 cups of flour-- about four times the amount the breadmaker could take). I've acquired a ready cup measurer that takes care of US recipes with their how-large-is-a-cup mystery. And by buying an oven temperature gauge, I've discovered that my oven cooks slightly cooler than the temperature says, and that I get the best results from cooking at a higher temperature than the recipes say.

As for the taste: simply fabulous and very satisfying. Half a roll spread with some organic set yoghurt made a wonderful breakfast.

I tried baking bread years ago. It was always too dense, didn't taste too good, and I never felt inclined to repeat the experience. But now, I'm baking myself batches of rolls to have every day....

It was a wonderful, wonderful day

Photograph by a friend

It had been raining for weeks and days before. Mid-June seemed to be one leaden downpour after another. It got to the point ten days before the wedding when it was possible to look up he long-range weather forecasts for the day. They varied from "Showers" to "Rain" to "Light Rain". Not even "sunny intervals", whatever weather site I went to.

Then there was the Photographer Who Controls the Weather........ Not a man given to modesty, he proclaimed, "It will be fine on the day. It will not rain".

"Oh?", I said.

"Yes", he said. "I've done over a hundred and twenty weddings. And it's never rained on any of them."

"These things are not in our hands", I said. I thought an overt religious allusion might be too much even for him. But it flowed straight over his head.

"It will not rain on the day", he said.

Friends of ours had a wedding the Sunday before my daughter's. At each point when I knew the ceremony was happening, I thought about them and hoped the weather would hold out. It did. For about the first twenty minutes. Then there were bits of cloudburst. I just hoped they wouldn't be at key bits of the ceremony.

I had plan A, plan B and plan C for my daughter's, all of which revolved round the central commitment to trying to hold the chupah in the traditional Jewish way-- out of doors, under the sky and the heavens.

Plan A was full sun and variants of it. Only problem: how to get enough suncream for up to 300 guests who might not have thought about the likely result of sitting an hour or two in even British sunshine.

Plan B was light rain. Put the chupah where it was meant to be, in the middle of the beautiful courtyard, but cover it with plastic till just before the wedding.

Plan C was heavy rain. Put the chupah right next to the metal canopy outside the hall, cover it with plastic and have the guests huddle under the metal canopy or watching it from inside the glass outer wall of the hall.

It got to the day before. And three am on the morning of the wedding. I did the round of all the detailed online local area forecasts. The ones that do hour by hour through the day. They all said, "Light Rain". They don't seem to tell you what Light Rain is. Is it better or worse than "Showers"?

Judging by the torrential "Showers" we'd had in the week before, it seemed it was better. Under Light Rain, you could probably manage with Plan B.

The friends who had the wedding the week before had ended up with a Plan C. Even so, given the showers they did have, that had its tricky side. "I've never seen the rabbis huddling so close to the women", said the mother of the groom.

My daughter was more cheerful on the morning. "I've found a forecast for Barnet", she said. It says it will be clear after twelve noon. The chupah was to be at four thirty.

"But the wedding's in Brent", I said.

"Brent's next door to Barnet", she said. She was determined to be optimistic.

Portrait of the artist as a young bride

No, she didn't get married in a white coat. That's the top of the wedding dress you can see just a glimpse of under the coat.

But when Bracha took it, my daughter had been married---oohhh, about three hours.

And this was a particularly lovely part of the dancing fun that takes place at an orthodox Jewish wedding, where there's separate sex dancing, On both the women's and the men's side, the young people like to get up to high jinks and masquerades, all with the object of making the bride and groom even happier than they already are.

That white coat is meant to be an artist's smock. See the paint brushes in the top pocket.

As for making her even happier than she already was-- I don't think that was really going to be possible. She was.. well... I think the picture speaks for itself. And see the next post.

My own camera was out of action. Days before the wedding, I was told the new one which should already have arrived was going to arrive the day after the wedding. It didn't. I'm still waiting. But I'm trying to collect up all the ones that friends took, and put some of the best of them on the blog.

It was a wonderful, wonderful day.

A change of heart, or a change of propaganda?

Yael has rather a breathless post tonight about what she takes to be the implications of the apparently momentous step by the Palestinian Fatah movement to ban its former partner in the "National Unity Government" of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas.

And according to one of her Palestinian fellow bloggers, Palestinian Authority TV has now started turning out broadcasts that stigmatize and demonize Hamas just as for so many years they have stigmatized and demonized Israel.

It all reminds me of those scenes in George Orwell's "1984" where the propaganda machine shifts the population seemlessly and without a pause for breath from fighting enemy-to-the-death Country 1 to fighting allies-for-ever Country 2. Only in this case, it's the other way round.

As Yael pointed out in an earlier post, this is the same Fatah whose Dahlan claimed only the other day that the whole Hamas coup was an Israeli plot anyway. And, by the way, didn't he also recently claim that the reason Hamas was able to trounce Fatah so quickly and decisively in the battle for Gaza was that the poor Fatah fighters were so exhausted by their years of struggle with Israel?

It all absolutely fits with Fatah still being an unreconstructed Marxist-totalitarian party, true to its
traditions from the Stalinist yearbook, which overlaid itself in recent years with a veneer of Islamism.

Maybe I'm being too cynical.

Maybe those hundreds of Palestinian organizations and trade unions, all controlled by Fatah, will now pass hundreds of identical resolutions overturning their call for a total boycott of Israel and calling instead for a total boycott of Iran, Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide.

Oooh, look--did you see those pigs just turning aerial somersaults as they zoomed past the window?

"They're simply negotiating the power-sharing arrangements"

You may have thought all those appalling accounts you're hearing from Gaza of Hamas and Fatah gunmen doing things like hurling each other off roofs, shooting up hospital patients with rocket-propelled grenades and murdering each other's families were evidence of some sort of low intensity civil war in progress.

But, thanks to Tuesday night's BBC Radio 4 "The World Tonight", we now know that what they are really doing is "negotiating the power-sharing arrangements" between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.

Yes, those are the exact words used by Dr Khalil Shikaki, presented to us as a "pollster and academic" based in Ramallah. He added. "We are still pretty much in the signalling phase."

You can listen in for yourself online by clicking on the "World Tonight" link, and clicking the "Listen Again" link for Tuesday's edition. The coverage of the Gaza situation starts about 7 and a half minutes into the clip, and includes some good comprehensive coverage of the shennanigans going on on the streets and in the hospitals. The interview with Dr Shikaki starts about 19 minutes 15 seconds in to the clip. It should be available till at least 10:00pm London time on Monday 18th June.

Dr Shikaki explained how, no, Hamas wasn't quite happy with the security arrangements as they were and they wanted to send a signal to Fatah. In fact both groups were actually sending signals to each other.

I suppose it's all much the same as those sort of signals the mafia send out when they come round and burn your house down. But his analysis is not too far away from that offered by in Haaretz' report on Tuesday night by Sami Abu Zuri, a Hamas spokesman who said that Hamas was simply trying to restore law and order.

Dr Shikaki is a curiously ambiguous and Janus-like figure, but you wouldn't know that if you just heard him as presented by "The World Tonight". According to Campus Watch, he has a track record of being associat with the radical Islamist terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, though he has always vigorously denied this. And the respected commentator Martin Kramer agrees that he's no terrorist or terrorist sympathizer, but it's the reliability of his polls that he takes issue with. It was after all, he reminds us, Shakaki's polls which failed to predict the substantial Hamas victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority elections, and perhaps lulled the US and Britain into supporting the election process even though Hamas were standing for office, something of course a terror-supporting group with its own private army would never be allowed to do in either country.

However you read Shikaki, the most interesting thing I draw from his polls (and I doubt they could all be faked) is the consistent evidence they present that Palestinians admire Israeli democracy and they even admire it more than any other democracy.

So given that, what price those hundreds of exactly identical resolutions from dozens of PalestinianNGOS which call for a complete cultural, social, political and economic boycott of Israel and which the pro-boycott activists of UCU cite in justification of their boycott proposals?

It couldn't be, could it, that they have no more relationship to the real views of the Palestinian public than the pro-boycott resolutions of UCU and UNISON have to those of their ordinary members?

Boycott hysteria: today's Israeli and UK variants

This story is a classic version of how to amplify a pipsqueak from some mice into a great lion's roar. Israel threatens British boycott, The Times portentously tells us.

What in fact has happened is like the equivalent of an Early Day Motion in the UK parliament by Jeremy Corbyn & Co. It's made by Knesset members whose mouths and ability to attract publicity are rather bigger than their brains or their ability to get said proposal adopted by the Israeli government, but, hey! -- it makes a good sensationalist story in The Times on a slow news day......

The hollow reality behind the UK unions' boycott bluster

The reality of the "massive demonstration", the "international event of the year in pro-Palestinian activism". Note the hollow and hypocritical opportunism of the pro-boycotters' banner, "It's kosher to boycott Israeli goods", especially when carried, in defiance of Jewish religious rules, on the Jewish sabbath. Then next to it there's the huge "Jews for Justice for Palestinians" poster, which seems larger than the group of people marching under its slogan. [Thanks to Jonathan Hoffman for supplying this image. The ones that follow are by the wonderful Tanya Nagar who specialises in photographing demos. See her revealing comments on the demo here. ] Saturday 9th June was meant to be a massive demonstration in London against the Israeli occupation and in favour of the Palestinians. It was organized by a relatively new pro-Palestinian pressure group, Enough! with the support of such unions as UNISON and UCU who are currently at the heart of attempts to start union boycotts of Israeli goods, individuals and institutions.

Enough's founding supporters include a motley range of unions, including the massive Transport & General Workers' Union, Amicus, the largest white-collar union and the insignificant and otherwise politically mute Bakers, Food and Allied Workers' Union. It also includes the radical Islamist Muslim Association of Britain-- open supporters of Hizbollah and Hamas, and the SWP dominated Stop the War coalition, a range of Arab pressure groups and a long standing array of pro-Palestinian and anti-zionist groups, including the notorious "Neturei Karta" Chassidic renegade groupuscule who participated in President Ahmadinejad's "Was there really a Holocaust?" conference in Iran. So really, it should have amounted to a massive turn-out of all the possible anti-Israel forces in Britain.

The Enough site was as modest in its hopes as such self-inflating organizations tend to be:

The ENOUGH! coalition is organising a major national demonstration and rally to take place in London on the afternoon of 9 June 2007 - the international day of action to mark the 40th anniversary under the slogan: "The World Says No to Israeli Occupation". The ENOUGH! coalition is organising a major national demonstration and rally to take place in London on the afternoon of 9 June 2007 - the international day of action to mark the 40th anniversary under the slogan: "The World Says No to Israeli Occupation". This is the primary international event of the year in support of the Palestinian people, and we are hoping to have tens of thousands of people at the rally to send a strong message both to the Israeli government and to No 10 Downing Street., and we are hoping to have tens of thousands of people at the rally to send a strong message both to the Israeli government and to No 10 Downing Street.

It seems that the most this "primary international event of the year" could drum up was too small even to get a tiny mention on the BBC News web site on Saturday night, or even a mention on the Guardian or Independent web sites. So much for the reality of the union support for anti-Israel action.

The Trotskyist and allied activists who dominate so many of the union meetings and conferences may be able to get motions passed and union money used to fund high profile, well resourced publicity and demonstration organization. The combined membership of TGWU and Amicus alone (and they have just voted to amalgamate) is over 2,000,000. But they can't even get a sufficiently large number of the membership for the entire Enough! coalition out to support what was billed as their key demonstration event of the year.

Meanwhile, instead of putting their efforts behind demonstrating just how hollow and unrepresentative their actions are, boycott hysteria on the part of some of the wilder US commenters continues unabated. There was an email in my mailbox tonight from a Mr Bromhead, who I've never heard of. It addresses me thus:

You have received this email because you are someone who cares about the one and only Jewish State. This is not your typical urban-legend “chain email”. This is about a real political issue— the growing British boycott of Israel. The chief union of British university professors has just voted to boycott Israel and to urge its members to terminate their relations with Israeli faculty and researchers. Worse, Britain’s largest and most influential union of government employees (1.4 million members) is expected to enact its own boycott and divestment campaign later this month. Other groups, including the Transport and General Workers' Union (900,000 members), the National Union of Journalists, the British Association of Architects, and the British Medical Association, have implemented or are now considering their own boycotts. It is not a stretch to say that these measures constitute a nationwide boycott of Israel.

Meanwhile, Mr Bromhead's fantastic ideas include these recommendations:

However, a boycott can be a two-way street. While the State of Israel, with its tiny population and economy, cannot respond in kind, we in North America can. So until Britain changes its attitude and policies 180-degrees, please do not travel to Britain, do not partake of British products or brands (e.g. HSBC Bank, Reebok, Umbro, Burberry, French Connection, Virgin Megastores, Cadbury, Twinings, InterContinental Hotels, Amstrad, Invensys, Economist Magazine, Financial Times, Jane’s Information Group), do not spend money on British movies or music, do not fly on any British airline (e.g. British Airways, Virgin Atlantic), and, if this applies to you, consider limiting your business with British nationals, divesting your British assets, and/or voting against tenure for British faculty in your department.

Please, Mr Bromhead and those of you of like mind, and please, less over-the-top but still over-alarmist British activists: don't do the absurd would be leaders of this non-existent radical army the compliment of taking their posturing at face value. Why not try devoting some of your efforts to exposing just how empty their statements are? Easily the best article I've seen so far on the subject of the UCU boycott is by Shalom Lappin. I don't by any means agree with everything Shalom says. But he's excellent in putting his finger on just what lies beneath the increasing obsession by radical union leaders with gesture politics of the boycott-Israel kind:

The rise of the boycott campaign in British professional unions coincides with their precipitous decline as effective agents of collective bargaining and industrial democracy. The constituent predecessors of the UCU, the AUT and NATFHE, had consistently failed to address the long-term decline in academic salaries and deep under-investment in UK universities. They showed themselves to be largely impotent in their attempts to protect their members' wages and working conditions. While tuition fees have soared, the government has made no serious attempt to correct the deterioration that threatens British institutions of higher education. It has also recently imposed deep cuts on research funding. The impresarios of the annual boycott hunt that now pollutes the UCU (and other professional unions in this country) have substituted the campaign against Israel for serious union activity addressing these issues.

It's not just the professional unions, Shalom. All union membership in the UK has declined massively, since so many people find them irrelevant to their work situation, and many despise their political posturing. That's the reason why Amicus, the main white collar union, whose very raison d'etre was to distinguish its members from rank and file workers, is now about to merge with the TGWU, the paradigm case of the blue-collar workers' union. So yes, there is a job to be done in fighting the propaganda unleashed in favour of boycotting Israel. But the best way to do that is to expose just where it's coming from and how empty and preposterous are the threats and boasts of those who want to set this particular political bandwagon in motion.

UPDATE:A correspondent who was on the counter-demonstration to the Enough! demo says he estimated not more than 3,000 came to support this "primary international event of the year". That coincides with my reading of its non-appearance on the BBC and other news media usually only to keen to report anti-government and anti-Israel demonstrations.

UPDATE UPDATE:Jonny Paul's Jerusalem report estimate of 2,000 shows how even the star attraction of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, failed to draw their supporters. Note his report of Haniyeh's reference to supporting the "right" of the Palestinians to "resistance" according to what he calls "divine law". And we know just what that means: suicide bomb jihadism and the "struggle" to expunge the state of Israel from existence. Also speaking: Azzam Tamimi, another mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood, and leading pro-Hamas propagandist in the UK, well known for saying that he'd welcome the chance to become a suicide bomb murderer in Israel. Most blatant of all was Haniyeh's reference to this anniversary of the Six Day War as the anniversary of the occupation of "the rest of the Palestinian lands". For those of you who didn't notice, that means that Israel itself is being referred to as "Palestinian lands" which need liberation through "resistance" of the type he justifies. So much for the Palestinian Authority, of which he is the elected Prime Minister, supporting the two-state solution. So much for the fantasies of the UK parliamentarians and journalists who act as apologists for Hamas and plead for the current embargo on aid to be revoked on the basis that Hamas has had to moderate its policies in office. And, do you know, I have a strong feeling that somewhere along the line, Haniyeh will have a totally unofficial, "we're not recognising you, but we are dealing with you" meeting with Foreign Office officials or even ministers under the banner of doing their best to free Alan Johnston. This is the elected leader of the Palestinians the UCU Congress has voted to stand in solidarity with

Is this the way to stop a boycott?

OK, that's the good news.

There's a whole series of these powerful and punchy posters/web ads here at the ADL site.

They seem to show up starkly the hollow selectivity of the UCU's proposed boycott; the blatant ignoring of huge massacres and attacks on freedom across the world, whilst calling for Israeli universities and academics to be boycotted. 

So that's the leading US Jewish organization which exists to fight anti-semitism.

And how is the organized UK Jewish community responding to the proposed boycott?

After two years of primarily outsourcing the campaign against the previous proposed AUT boycott to the Engage, something I've repeatedly argued, produced a degree of complacency and self-delusion that helped to smooth the path of the disastrous merger of the two unions which has resulted in the UCU. And, as I've been predicting since 2005, it's now dominated by the SWP-led would-be revolutionaries who did so much to make NATFHE into a byword for ineptitude, unsuccessful pay campaigning and absurd radical political gesture politics.

Well, the latest effort in the organized Jewish community's efforts to combat the UCU's pro-boycott resolutions is a Stop the Boycott campaign.

That's going to involve expensive ads in The Times and The Guardian and the like, aimed at getting people to sign a petition includes this:

We call on UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt to fulfill her manifesto commitment to take this decision to a full membership ballot. Indeed, this boycott is damaging for the union itself and is not representative of the union.

There's one very big problem with this. Sally Hunt never committed herself in her election manifesto or anywhere else to taking any boycott decision to a full ballot. And with very good reason. Because the General Secretary of UCU has no powers to implement a ballot. Only a decision of the UCU Executive can do that. And 43% of the UCU Executive are members of UCU Left, the SWP-led caucus of assorted hard lefters, consisting mainly of the old hard left of NATFHE (pro-boycott vote 2005: 252-2) plus a good chunk of the most notorious pro-boycott activists in the former AUT, such as Sue Blackwell, Gargi Bhattacharya and Malcolm Povey, who before the merger never got anywhere near making the national Executive of AUT> So what on earth is the organized Jewish community doing putting its weight and a great deal of money behind an unreasonable demand based on a non-existent commitment made by a General Secretary who anyway couldn't deliver on the commitment even if she'd made it in the first place? Here, taken from Sally Hunt's own election campaign blog site is what she actually said:

As general secretary of UCU, I will put forward proposals that: UCU’s first congress should adopt the former AUT policy of a staged and cautious approach to international academic boycotts rather than the policy passed at NATFHE’s last conference Our international policy should be firmly focused on defending academic freedom and the rights of educators and students to live and work unharmed and unthreatened rather than on a wider political analysis which distracts from our main message Any future proposal for an international academic boycott of any institution or country that is agreed by UCU Congress should go to a full ballot of the members affected before any action is taken The union work with Education International to protect educators worldwide against threats to their person, their family or their work We consider a fund to support the promotion of academic projects that enhance cooperation and dialogue between communities in areas of conflict

Note to BICOM and the brilliant minds behind the "Stop the Boycott" campaign: a promise to make a proposal is not at all the same thing as a commitment to hold a membership ballot. Especially in a situation where no General Secretary has the powers to make such a commitment anyway. If I was Sally Hunt, I would be hopping livid at this campaign for misrepresenting my manifesto pledges and whipping up a national and international campaign to call for me to do something I have no powers to do. But it just gets worse and worse than that. I have to close down for Shabbos now. But tomorrow night, I'll be back to spell out some more about just how wrong-footed, misguided and counter productive this whole UK Jewish community campaign is. And I so wish it wasn't.

What's behind the Alan Johnston video?

Caution: this is entirely my speculation, based on joining dots between some of the news stories about the UK's actions on Alan Johnston.

So here we have a video posted of Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent. `This is after the man has been missing for 81 days, by far the longest period of any of the many previous kidnaps of journalists by Gaza's assorted terror groups.

After all this time, why is this evidence that he was alive when it was made only being posted now?

It's interesting that in the BBC Radio 4 news reports I heard of it when it was first announced earlier this morning, it referred to the message that he spoke centring on the need to lift the economic "siege" of Gaza (the BBC newsreader's words) imposed by the sanctions from the USA and UK.

Actually, the central message Alan Johnston is made to read out in the video is this:

My captors say that my release is subject to the following...

[The video then plays an audio message from an unidentified man speaking in Arabic.]

We want Britain to free our prisoners and we specify Sheikh Abu Qatada al-Filistini, and at this position we won't forget our prisoners in the other infidel states and we say to them, free our prisoners or we will deal with you the same.

We don't specify a state without the others. And we say if you want the ransom to free them we will give you to the last piece of gold as the Prophet, peace be upon him, told us to do.

I've now been listening to the radio 4 news reports throughout the afternoon, and almost without exception they play up the story that the video (and therefore the "grievances" centre on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Authority territory. This section of the video was played in almost every news bulletin:

In three years here in the Palestinian territories, I've witnessed the huge suffering of the Palestinian people.

And my message is that their suffering is continuing, and that it is unacceptable.

Every day there are Palestinians arrested, imprisoned for no reason. People are killed on a daily basis.

The economic suffering is terrible, especially here in Gaza where there's an Israeli [audio jumps] absolute despair after nearly 40 years of Israeli occupation which has been supported by the West.

What none of the BBC's radio bulletins have relayed is this, which immediately follows:

The situation in Iraq is even worse, we see every day maybe 100 or more Iraqis being killed, in the violence there which followed the failed invasion of Iraq by America and Britain.

Ordinary people who are losing everything and can't live their lives properly. Because of not just the violence, but the shortage of everything they need for normal lives, for bringing up their children.

Errr... Afghanistan, the situation again terrible.

You see on your television screens ordinary people [audio jumps] suffering as the armies of America and B... [audio jumps] America attack [audio jumps] attack.

In all this, we can see the British government endlessly working to occupy, err, the Muslim lands, against the will of the people in those places.

From history, the British worked to bring about the state of Israel, which is the cause of all the suffering of the Israeli... of the Palestinian people, and we, the British, are completely to blame, along with the Americans, for the situation in Iraq, and the British are the main force in Afghanistan, causing all the trouble to ordinary, simple Afghans who simply want to live.

The BBC's major radio 4 afternoon news programme, PM, even featured former hostage Terry Waite saying he sympathized with the kidnappers' message about the Israeli occupation, and this above all was the one thing they needed to attend to.

How convenient of the BBC and the speaker it features to blame Israel and see it as holding the key to Johnston's release when you only have to look at the video transcript to see the inconvenient pointing to the greater blame of ...the British and the demand to release an Al Qaeda terror lynchpin currently banged up in a UK jail awaiting extradition to Jordan

Which brings us to the question of why this video was released now, and what exactly lies behind it.

It seems to me to be too much of a coincidence that in the last week a senior Hamas spokesman, Dr Ghazi Hamad has been in the UK, ostensibly on a "private visit" to participate in the Guardian-sponsored Hay on Wye Literary Festival, also being broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

And, given little press coverage is the fact that he has also been involved in talks in the Foreign Office related to their attempts to get Alan Johnston freed. So last weekend he actually met with a Foreign Office civil servant to discuss the release of Johnston.

Today's "Jewish Chronicle' (subscription only site) reports:

Dr Hamad, who is considered a moderate, had met Mr Johnston and claimed to have made contact with his kidnappers.

This is an example of what this moderate said last year:

More recently Hamad, serving as a spokesman for Hamas, has said of Israel (in response to the Beit Hanoun November 2006 incident), "Israel should be wiped from the face of the Earth. It is an animal state that recognises no human worth. It is a cancer that should be eradicated."

I think what we're seeing here is the visible tip of a negotiation process. I think the video was shown to provide proof that Johnston was alive prior to some agreed concessions or quid pro quo from the UK government.

If that's what's happening, will we find that Abu Qatada suddenly gets an appeal upheld and gets released? Or will he somehow succeed in getting extradition to Jordan turned down?

One thing's for sure. The BBC won't be telling us what's really going on.

Just an occasional dose of cynicism never did anyone any harm

I actually regard cynicism as one of the most corrosive and dangerous emotions, especially when it comes to education and politics. I've spent too much of my professional life around seeing teachers destroy their self respect and any chance of real improvement in what they achieve through using cynicism to undermine any new attempt to improve the outcomes for the pupils they are responsible for.

You know the sort of thing. We've seen it all before. It'll never work. Oh, it's just the latest fad. Not with kids like these. Not with parents like these. Idle consultants/inspectors/advisers who couldn't teach to save their lives. You'll see, blackboards and chalk and talk will be the next fashion. And so on. And so on.

But... just occasionally, I come across a cynical comment that really makes me smile with pleasure because it so deftly demolishes some enormous centre of grandiose self importance, or some utterly undeserving icon of international adulation.

I don't usually spend time reading the readers' comments on Ha'aretz' talkboards. Too much predictable ranting and raving. But today, there's a real gem in comment no. 21, from a commenter called Meni, in response to a routine anti-Israel article by Amira Hass, their renowned correspondent who actually lives in Ramallah. As it happened, since I spent some time responding to the comments of an Adloyada reader of my previous post who called Amira a saint, the tenor of the article to which this comme