A glance at the panel for the mysterious event below explains why it has been picked up and promoted on the neo-Nazi site Stormfront (link to cached page). We are alarmed that it is advertised as taking place on a university campus – though it’s not featured on either the University of Westminster nor the Student Union events calendar. We’ve also received news from concerned correspondent Adrian Windisch that Berkshire Stop The War Coalition is promoting the same event (see Digest 1352).
Event: Zionism, Jewishness and Israel (Tuesday, May 3rd, central London)
A panel discussion examining Israeli Criminality in the wake of the Goldstone Retract.
Tuesday, May 3rd · 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Location: University Of Westminster – Cavendish Campus
115 New Cavendish Street
London
W1W 6UW
Map: http://streetmap.co.uk
Speakers include:
Ghada Karmi – http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/iais/staff/gkarmi/biography/
John Rose – The Myths of Zionism (2004)
Gilad Atzmon – http://www.gilad.co.uk/
Alan Hart – http://www.alanhart.net/
Enquiries Contact: [redacted – I tried to call the number to find out who was organising the event – straight to voicemail.]
What is wrong with this event? Despite its mysterious provenance and relative obscurity, it’s worth explaining in detail since it’s only the most recent in a long list of events of similar character on campuses around the country.
- The panel doesn’t include any speaker qualified or inclined to represent mainstream views about Jewishness, Zionism and Israel. The panelists share an implacably eliminationist view of Israel, and work assiduously to end Israel’s existence.
John Rose has by his own admissioninadvertantly given succour to antisemitism through his political writing.* Working within the University and College Union, John Rose pushed boycott of Israel, a boycott which according to Unison has limited support amongst Palestinians and in its academic form was consequently found to be unlawful in three separate legal opinions including the union’s own. Ghada Karmi, who holds the opinion that “There is actually nothing – repeat, nothing – positive about the existence of Israel” has self-evidently unanalytical approach to the matter in question, and campaigns against Israel’s existence. These two have for some years been staples of the anti-Israel circuit, and tend to be invited by partisans of the Palestinian factions who have vested interests in entrenching dichotomy and conflict. Sadly this is the most conspicuous kind of pro-Palestinian campaigning in Britain today. - Holocaust denier and 9/11 conspiracy believer on the panel. We have to hope that John Rose and Ghada Karmi are unaware of the presence of the other two invited speakers. Gilad Atzmon is openly antisemitic, to the extent that he campaigned to marginalise even the most virulently anti-Israel Jews in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Atzmon also referred to the Holocaust as “a complete forgery“. He has even been dropped by the Socialist Workers Party, who used to invite him to play jazz sax at Marxism events. It’s astonishing that this open campaigner for ‘de-judaification’ should be given a platform to pronounce on Jewishness. The fourth speaker, Alan Hart self-published a book called Zionism: the Real Enemy of the Jews. He has a track record of fabricating accounts of current affairs in which he makes Israel the culprit. He has a slot on the now disgraced Iranian ayatollah’s English language TV channel, PressTV. Last May he gave an interview for TruthJihad internet talk radio in which he circulated the far-fetched and accordingly unevidenced defamation that Israel was responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks and is planning a nuclear attack on the U.S. No wonder he is picked up and circulated by far right activists I’m not going to link to, such as Israel Shamir and rense.com. The Community Security Trust devotes a section to examining his professed pro-Jewish views in its 2008 Antisemitic Discourse Report.
- Who has organised this event? There is no mention of this event on Stop The War Coalition’s main site. However, at least one Berkshire Stop The War Coalition member is circulating details, and it is entirely continuous with StWC’s well-documented record of anti-Israel activism shading – or willingly leaping – into anti-Jewish activism, including the “We are all Hizbullah” and “from the river to the sea” sloganeering, the jihadi leaders. It frequently seems that StWC is attempting to start a war, rather than stop one.
- This event is not conducive to learning about Zionism, Jewishness or Israel and is not in accordance with academic or campus principles. If it indeed is taking place at the University of Westminster’s campus it is the University of Westminster’s responsibility. If you view education as an attempt to illuminate a subject and inculcate critical, humane analysis, this isn’t intended to be an educational event; if it were, it would have a representative panel, not a slanted one. It would not include Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists. If it saw fit to include polemicists, it would balance them.
- A spurious pretext. Goldstone, author of a non-judiciary UN-commissioned report into Israel’s attacks on military targets in Gaza in 2009, did not ‘retract’. He wrote an opinion piece noting that new information uncovered by Israel’s own investigations indicated that Israel had not, after all, deliberately targeted civilians, and that this would have been clear earlier if Israel had cooperated with the UN investigation. Those who rejoiced in his original damning report should ask themselves, if he was trustworthy at that time, isn’t it prejudiced to suddenly conclude that he is untrustworthy now?
Here’s what needs to happen.
- If Rose and Karmi are unaware that they are to share a platform with Atzmon, they need to take action to distance themselves from this openly antisemitic, Holocaust denying campaigner. Hart too.
- Stop the War Coalition members need to stop promoting events like these – they have no place on a genuinely pro-peace group’s calendar. The Green Party, which is affiliated to StWC, needs to take some responsibility here.
- The University of Westminster needs to recognise that if the evening proceeds as advertised, it will find itself hosting an antisemitic event. If in doubt about what to do next, the Equality and Diversity and Anti-Harassment policies will point the way, as well as the report and relevant case studies produced as part of the HEFCE-funded Religious Literacy Leadership in Higher Education project, at http://religiousliteracyhe.org/.
*My error – it was Nathan Weinstock, whose work Rose acknowledged, who admitted this.
Update: Sarah has picked this up, and provides more information.
Update 2: 27th April – Tony Greenstein reports that ‘Atzmon is abandoned by fellow ‘panellists‘ Ghada Karmi and John Rose.
Update 3: there’s a discussion about the role of Stop the War Coalition in the comments to a post on Shiraz Socialist.
Update 4: the University of Westminster has cancelled the event (reasons unclear – necessary procedures were not in place).
Update 5: David Hirsh summarises the panel
Update 6: Sarah is following developments
Update 7: as of 29th April Atzmon is insisting (link to cached page) the event will go ahead, including Alan Hart “and others”, at the University of Westminster. This has come as a surprise to the University of Westminster.
Update 8: the event has not been cancelled. The Facebook page (adoring messages for Atzmon mingled with etymological points about antisemitism and paranoid points about Jews) says that participants will meet outside the original venue. The University of Westminster will not be providing the venue and it looks as if Atzmon and fellow panellists have been forced by the general outcry to hide the new destination until the event is due to begin. He’s probably inclined to attribute this to the power of some notional sinister Jewish force. What actually happened is that people who recognise this kind of antisemitism managed to get their point across that a university campus is no place for an event of this nature.
Update 9: Adrian Windisch (who originally alerted us) has posted to Berks Stop the War Coalition’s Yahoo Group, concluding “Do we really want events like this advertised on this site? If so I wish to leave.” Hopefully he’ll get a responsible reply.
Update 10: the Facebook group doesn’t bother to introduce the panellists, so: part of the original line-up discussed above Alan Hart has finally come out and thrown in his lot with antisemitism. Alan Hart incidentally is an illustrative case of the oblivious self-contradiction which for now characterises much antisemitism – for example, he calls Zionists Nazis, writes preposterously of endgame to a Zionist holocaust, while also claiming he doesn’t seek to draw a parallel between Israel and Nazis. Both can’t be true. There’s Sameh A. Habeeb of the Palestine Telegraph (scroll down). Even Jenny Tonge, with her notions of Jewish conspiracy, could no longer find a way to give patronage to The Palestine Telegraph while plausibly brushing off charges that she is antisemitic. On Holocaust Memorial Day Habeeb gave column inches to Holocaust denier Atzmon to call Israelis today’s Nazis. And yet Habeeb insists that antisemitism in the pro-Palestine movement is a fabrication. Karl Sabbagh’s book Palestine: a Personal History sounds worth reading. Hopefully he will realise that to justify participating on that panel he is going to have to spend most of the evening defending Jews from calumnies.
Update 11: on May 2nd Adrian Windisch (see Update 9) is informed by a different fellow Berks Stop the War Yahoo Group member that he is incorrect, and that “advertising this event is quite appropriate”.
Update 12: Gilad Atzmon is arguing as hard as he can that the Jewish anti-Israel activists who sought to deny him a platform did so because they are Jewish, rather than because he is antisemitic. That doesn’t explain Greens Engage’s involvement, nor the University of Westminster’s recognition that he shouldn’t be offered any room of theirs. Have we all been hoodwinked by the Jews? (Some Greens recently argued on internal forums that we have.)
Update 13: Atzmon reports that the meeting was a great success and the room (wherever it was) was full. “Both Zionists and their anti Zionists collaborators who were desperate to destroy the panel didn’t dare showing their face”. No doubt a room full of like-minded people, and all the worse for it.
Greens Engage 
Please can I recommend
1) taking a screen shot of the Stormfront page, as irrefutable evidence (in case they change it)
2) using a link to Google cache instead, avoiding giving those neo-Nazis any links (which assist them when search engines crawl their pages).
Great post.
Done, thanks Mod.
I have hunted around a little and found that the event is also promoted in these Yahoo groups:
Real IRA – A place for IRA supporters
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/realira/message/1752
Saoirse na hÉireann
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saoirse_na_heireann/message/1118
By someone who calls himself, Red Republican, in Gaelic.
In anyone’s books these are fringe grouplets with a violent ideology mostly driven by sociopaths, etc so not unsurprisingly they feel comfortable with racism towards Jews.
I think she might be a she. There are some very fringe sites promoting this event.
A poblachtach dearg also circulated the details to Berks Stop the War. I guess Berks StWC would respond that anybody can join and post in their Yahoo group. And so if their group becomes a conduit for promoting antisemitic events, it’s nothing to do with them, free speech, takes all sorts to make a coalition, probably false flag &tc &tc.
And there’s a simple answer to that: either moderate the email distribution lists or be judged.
As for the U of W, I’m still hoping that it’s only host in the way a whale hosts barnacles. Emailed to ask. It has some problems though in this regard.
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Great post Mira but it needs a wider audience – can you put it on Engage or Harry’s Place?
I put it on Engage, James.
Mira,
You could be right, but I tend to assume (maybe wrongly) that the worst obsessives, like these tend to be blokes.
Searching using the unique string, “panel.3may@gmail.com” gives 9 results from google,
http://www.obwire.com/story/6083/ pushed from the racists at whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.wikio.com- as an arregator
stormfront.org < say no more
uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.com/…/event-zionism-jewishness-and-israel.html <looks, like and I am not sure, a front for Atzmon's writing, a bunch of wierdos and racists as seen in the authors page
truthiscontagious.com/2011/04/…/event-zionism-jewishness-and-israel <- Far Right aggregator
gilad.co.uk/writings/ <
hardons-blog.blogspot.com/…/event-zionism-jewishness-and-israel.html <- a self admitting "National Socialist"
whatreallyhappened.com/node?page=1
http://www.waketheflockup.com/category/israel <- another whatreallyhappened site
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“Those who rejoiced in [Goldstone’s] original damning report should ask themselves, if he was trustworthy at that time, isn’t it prejudiced to suddenly conclude that he is untrustworthy now?”
Of course it is; but they won’t retract themselves, because it is both too embarrassing and likely to show that they are less than enthusiasts for the truth and more partisans for bias.
It is also worth noting that there were many who questioned Goldstone’s (and his collaborators’) conclusions at the time, on the grounds of ignoring easily available evidence.
I have posted something about this on HP now as well.
The day will come, as it it does for us all when Atzmon and his ilk will be no more . His overriding legacy will be hatred and mendacity whereas the people he demonises will still be here and will continue to make in terms of numbers , a disproportionate contribution to every field of human endeavour and creativity.
Anti Semites such as Atzmon spring up like weeds in the field . Inevitably some are destined to to cause unparalleled damage in their
Mira, objectionable as this is, it’s scarcely surprising is it? These people are like an opportunistic infection which takes advantage of a compromised immune system – in this case the apparent incapability of peaceable decent people, Jews nor not, Zionist or otherwise, to take action and protest against the distortions of reality put out by such a collection of reprobates.
They are becoming bolder, too, as evidenced by their openly linking to Stormfront.
I note that this event abandons any semblance of open-mindedness from the beginning. Even if you did not know who was on the panel, the title alone should ring alarm bells – “A panel discussion examining Israeli Criminality in the wake of the Goldstone Retract.”
Indeed it’s a sort of parallel process with the Goldstone report, isn’t it, which set out to find Israel guilty before it actually set foot in Gaza?
I would like people’s opinions, please, as to how we, who are (I hope!) decent enough people, can mount counter meetings, again and again for as long as is necessary, at every campus where such one-eyed hatred is spouted, to put our take out there.
The events at Stirling, where a Jewish man was the object of antisemitic hatred in his own premises, shows how ineffectual are the university bodies in taking action against potentially damaging racism, and I still remember the events at Manchester.
Note that I am not advocating that these one trick ponies are silenced or prevented from speaking (unless, of course, they actively incite hatred or other law breaking)- rather that we, if we care enough about doing what is right, must be prepared to speak out too.
“their openly linking to Stormfront”
They (whoever they are) didn’t openly link to Stormfront.
It’s been interesting that nobody is advocating silencing these speakers. I think what we should primarily be concerned with is the bad choices of the conveners of these events. In this case the panel is ideological, entirely in favour of eliminating Israel (which is preposterous), and therefore of poor quality. So it’s liable to fail in shedding any light on the issues. Rather than counter events, personally I would like to see balanced discussions, parallel thinking rather than adversarial jousts which turn into popularity contests. I’d like to see more visionary discussions. I would never validate the contribution of ideologically motivated conspiracy theorists, antisemites or Holocaust deniers with an invitation to join a panel. I think that they need a different kind of scrutiny.
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Mira, I agree that we should be concerned with the bad choices of the conveners but what can we DO about them? (And incidentally to shut them up would be to give them more ammunition and publicity).
Will all respect, given the panel of this meeting at least you aren’t likely to get balanced discussion, (even assuming that they would invite anyone at all who disagreed with them) are you?
I agree with you that adversarial jousts accomplish nothing, but who says that these want to accomplish anything? As you well know, the best discussions, even adversarial ones, are those where the protagonists can remove their emotions from the argument and not get mixed up with half-facts. This meeting, given who is on the panel, is calculated to appeal to the already heightened emotions around the subject matter.
Theirs seems to me to be a curious sort of addiction, given the driven nature of their Israel-hatred and it is delusional because it persists in spite of the multitude (often) of unbiased evidence which contradicts their distinctly wonky view. When someone is addicted to, say, heroin or crack, they feel alive when they are high and when they are coming down they are searching for their next fix.
My analogy here is that these panel members probably feel alive most when they are get the buzz from the mindless hatred they spout, and when they are denied avenues to express it, are continually seeking their next hatred “fix.”
You are not going to get what you call visionary discussions from them, appealing to the emotions as they do, and unfortunately the universities fail in their duty of care by providing the facilitating environments to promote such hatred. The panel members may not themselves actively promote hate-filled activity, but they cannot know how their audience will construe what they say.
Can university bodies be sued for failing to protect their students sufficiently against hate crimes?
Workers’ Liberty has some presence at Westminster and we are on the case about this.
Btw, Engage supporters might be interested to know about what happened in the recent Westminster student union elections:
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/04/06/islamists-defeat-left-westminster-student-election
Thanks Sacha, that is good news. I had read that piece, and in fact linked to it in an earlier comment – important background reading.
In a free society like ours you can’t silence speakers, however objectionable their outpourings. But there is no reason why anybody should be expected to listen to their obnoxious rubbish or pay any attention to it. Why ordinary people are scared to say “Your opinions and your words are garbage” is simply because most ordinary people don’t know enough or don’t care enough to do so. They will go along with whoever shouts loudest because it’s the easiest option. At some base level the StWC, ISM and others know – or rather sense – this.
When Rupert Read was spotted recommending an Atzmon piece to his Twitter followers, he initially tried to defend this by saying that Atzmon is Jewish (implication: Atzmon could not therefore be antisemitic). I think that is part of the confusion here, as well as the loud shouting. The media, campus activists, etc give the impression that there is a more or less even split between anti-Zionist Jews and the majority who support Israel’s existence. It’s a bit of manufactured controversy, like climate change denial, and the reticent majority is ghosted out of the conversation. And the infuriating thing is that any efforts to redress the balance are liable to be howled down as ‘Jewish lobbying’.
Hey,
Do you have a link to the page on which the Berkshire SWP are promoting the event with Atzmon? I couldn’t find it on the link in the main post.
Cheers,
James
Hi James, if you sign up to Berks Stop the War Yahoo Group, you should be able to get to the post. I received the digest forwarded by a member.
Sweet, thanks. Was having a row with an SWP’er about this.
Can you elaborate?
So who originally organized this event? It’s been advertised in various places, but Stormfront and Berkshire Stop the War aren’t the organizers. Is it Atzmon himself who organized it? It’s mentioned on his website too.
I thought it was the American SWP that dissociated itself from Atzmon, not the British one.
In all fairness to the British SWP, years back they put out a statement defending Atzmon:
After Atzmon dropped out of attending their yearly Marxism event the SWP largely stopped commenting on him, although he was still advertised in the events pages of Socialist Worker.
Since then the SWP have not 1) admitted their mistake 2) acknowledged Atzmon’s racism 3) said why it happened in the first place, etc etc.
So when you search for ‘SWP and Atzmon’ on the Web you will find their defence of him, but little or no criticism of his racism.
Mira,
what is ‘digest 1352’? Message 1352 is that? All I can find is the poblachtach message. Is that it? It doesn’t show Berks STW is organizing, does it?
See updates, Z. There’s also a facebook event page by an admirer of atzmon.
Frankly, I believe you are being way too kind to Karmi and Rose. There is only a scintilla of difference between their portrayal of Israel and Atzmon’s. They too need to be delegitimized.
Here’s another up-dates. Alan Hart has now pulled out,leaving Atzmon to debate with himself, which he likes doing anyway! See: http://azvsas.blogspot.com/
The whole thing seems to be mystery – possibly an Atzmon hoax.
But it seems that you’ve used this as an opportunity to smear Stop the War (because of their affiliation to the Green Party) who have not organised the event, and now the JC has repeated that smear.
No, we don’t ‘smear’ here, and obviously what we are trying to do here is repond to antisemitism. If we had the secret aim you spuriously attribute to us to harm the Green Party, we’d not be limiting ourselves to antisemitism. but I think the post makes that clear.
But what does this have to do with the Green Party other than the fact that STW are affiliated to it?
‘We don’t smear here’….Well, I must give it to you, you do a a good sense of humour…..STW have not organised the meeting so why say that they have?
Read the post again, Debbie.
You’re used to having your careless accusations indulged on other forums, but consider this your final warning on this thread.
As I understand it STW are not affiliated to the Green Party.
It is the Green Party who are affiliated to the Stop the War Coalition.
There is an important point of distinction here. It means that the GP can send delegates to StWC and influence its policy and actions, but not the reverse.
Mira, I believe you have been remarkably patient so far.
(Give me strength.)
Just a quick message for anybody subscribed to the comments here and checking back on that basis – there have been some developments and accordingly some updates to the post.
Mira,
You are exceedingly patience with Debbie Fink.
From what I have seen Ms. Fink has a habit of threatening others who disagree with her, playing the victim or misreading what others say, to deliberately take offend. She’s best ignored.
PS: I believe a comment is stuck in moderation
Would it be reasonable to say that “Stop the War Coalition and Stormfront promote the same campus event” has now been shown to be a misleading headline at best?
Only if you don’t think there’s a problem with StWC and Stormfront lists being used to promote this event.
Ok, so the Green Party is affiliated to STW, but the point is, Greens Engage seems to find that it is in it’s interests to attack it. The Green Party has no control over what STW does and in this case, it isn’t doing anything. This is more a matter for Engage than Greens Engage.
“The Green Party has no control over what STW does…”
Organisations can and should be influenced by their affiliates. StWC has a well-documented history of antisemitism. The use of one of their groups’ email distribution lists to circulate this event is continuous.
“This is more a matter for Engage than Greens Engage.”
The matter was raised with Greens Engage by a Green Party member. The Green Party is affiliated to StWC.
Added to the post, reproduced below with links stripped out:
Update 8: the event has not been cancelled. The Facebook page (adoring messages for Atzmon mingled with etymological points about antisemitism and paranoid points about Jews) says that participants will meet outside the original venue. The University of Westminster will not be providing the venue and it looks as if Atzmon and fellow panellists have been forced by the general outcry to hide the new destination until the event is due to begin. He’s probably inclined to attribute this to the power of some notional sinister Jewish force. What actually happened is that people who recognise this kind of antisemitism managed to get their point across that a university campus is no place for an event of this nature.
Update 9: Adrian Windisch (who originally alerted us) has posted to Berks Stop the War Coalition’s Yahoo Group, concluding “Do we really want events like this advertised on this site? If so I wish to leave.” Hopefully he’ll get a responsible reply.
Update 9: the Facebook group doesn’t bother to introduce the panellists, so : Alan Hart has finally come out and thrown in his lot with antisemitism. Alan Hart incidentally is an illustrative case of the oblivious self-contradiction which for now characterises most antisemitism – for example, he calls Zionists Nazis, writes preposterously of endgame to a Zionist holocaust, while also claiming he doesn’t seek to draw a parallel between Israel and Nazis. Both can’t be true. There’s Sameh A. Habeeb of the Palestine Telegraph (scroll down). Even Jenny Tonge, with her notions of Jewish conspiracy, could no longer find a way to give patronage to The Palestine Telegraph while plausibly brushing off charges that she is antisemitic. On Holocaust Memorial Day Habeeb gave column inches to Holocaust denier Atzmon to call Israelis today’s Nazis. And yet Habeeb insists that antisemitism in the pro-Palestine movement is a fabrication. Karl Sabbagh’s book Palestine: a Personal History sounds worth reading. Hopefully he will realise that to justify participating on that panel he is going to have to spend most of the evening defending Jews from calumnies.
It’s delusional for Habeeb to suggest that the pro-Palestinian movement is not antisemitic, given the too-ready conflation of Jew-hatred with Israel-hatred among Palestinians themselves. If they don’t bother to make the distinction between Jews and Israelis then why should their supporters do so or force them to do so?
I find the notion of the participants meeting outside the University of Westminster almost amusing. I wonder whether they’ll adjourn to a back room in a pub somewhere.
Good to know that even Tonge has her limits, though I suspect the Palestine Telegraph’s support for the KKK was not her main driver, rather the remnants of her political career.
At the same time it’s important not to give the impression that the pro-Palestinian movement is by definition antisemitic. Israel’s prosperity depends on genuine pro-Palestinian activism – it’s just that the antisemitic activism is more strident and is attempting to colonise the movement. We try to redress this balance , if you look at our co-existence, cooperation (Greens Engage) and coexistence and conflict resolution categories (Engage).
Update 11: on May 2nd Adrian Windisch (see Update 9) is informed by a different fellow Berks Stop the War Yahoo Group member that he is incorrect, and that “advertising this event is quite appropriate”.
Mira, I don’t doubt that Greens Engage and Engage believe that pro-Palestinians are not automatically antisemitic. Trouble is, we seem to hear predominantly from and about those who are and as I am sure you will agree it’s often difficult if not impossible to tease out vituperative anti-Israel rhetoric from antisemitic – it often employs identical tropes
http://www.childrenofpeace.org.uk/
I hope it’s ok if I add a little plug for Children of Peace (link to website above) which is a UK based charity I’m involved with, and which works to help build friendships between children from the different communities in the region.
Thanks Sarah,
this was very much my area of work during my time in Israel.
I still hear from friends and their children working very hard in a positive attitude towards pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli peace making in equal measures.
It is the ‘tone’ set by such meetings, as described above, which is neither peaceful nor in line with the ‘green politics’ I signed up to and we should be doing everything to denounce it, withdraw our support for it and distance ourselves from it.
Update 12: Gilad Atzmon is arguing as hard as he can that the Jewish anti-Israel activists who sought to deny him a platform did so because they are Jewish, rather than because he is antisemitic. That doesn’t explain Greens Engage’s involvement, nor the University of Westminster’s recognition that he shouldn’t be offered any room of theirs. Have we all been hoodwinked by the Jews? (Some Greens argue on internal forums that we have.)
Update 13: Atzmon reports that the meeting was a great success and the room was full. “Both Zionists and their anti Zionists collaborators who were desperate to destroy the panel didn’t dare showing their face”. No doubt a room full of like-minded people, and all the worse for it.
Mira,
Any idea where they met? That is, if the University of Westminster barred them.
The University of Westminster did refuse them. Dont yet know where they met.
I had no special interest in pursuing this matter once the university stopped being involved and once two people had dropped out. My only concern was that Sabbagh seemed ok – but I was sure someone else would raise this with him, in particular pro-Palestinian activists, and if he was happy to join the panel – that’s up to him, ultimately.
Slightly irked that Atzmon claims that ‘not one single Gentile joined the Jewish campaign against me’.
Don’t forget, he is centrally antisemitic. He just assumes.
Thanks, Mira,
That crank Laura Booth has a piece on it, rambling doesn’t even begin to describe its content:
http://lauren-booth.blogspot.com/2011/05/jewishness-scare-tactics-and-sense-of.html
PS: I wouldn’t be offended if you choose not to post that link…..but it might be worth a post? Who is Karl Sabbagh, a writer? Has he got form like Hart? Am not familiar with him.
Just to clarify – my point about not wishing to pursue this was a response to GA saying people didn’t dare show their faces – I am interested (in a ghoulish way) in *reading* about it, but didn’t want to try to stop it going ahead. If people are determined to air horrible views, if they stay within the law, they should be able to do so.
My best case scenario is that meetings like this are cancelled due to lack of interest. Second best is that conscientious, switched-on proprietors refuse their requests to book a room, and are forced to hold it somewhere where they don’t have to get permission. Hopefully in chilly rain.
But like you, I thought the pressure was off once the University of Westminster noticed and cancelled. In my own communications, I didn’t request cancellation, I shared some demonstrable facts. I’m not sure what anybody else did. Sabbagh – I don’t know.
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