Posted on 02/18/2005 7:59:31 AM PST by quidnunc
As a first time visitor to England many decades ago, the thing that impressed me most was how incredibly polite everybody was. By the time an Englishman approached within ten feet, he was already calling out, "Excuse me."
Civility is not the first thing a visitor to England would be likely to note today. Indeed if there is one thing in which the English, particularly the educated classes, seem to excel today it is vituperation.
All the old taboos against expressions of hatred have fallen. On the verbal level at least, the manners of soccer hooligans have been adopted by the chattering classes. Two days after 9/11, Philip Lader, former United States ambassador to the Court of St. James, was reduced to tears on the BBC's Question Time as the studio audience chanted anti-American slogans, while the BBC moderator sat there impassively.
Carol Gould, an ex-patriate American living in England for many years, describes a seen on a London bus, in which a tweedy Englishwoman, accompanied by a son in his public school uniform, set upon a hapless, elderly American tourist, telling her, "I rejoice every time I hear of another American soldier dying! You people all deserve to die in another 9/11." When the elderly American began to cry, her assailant grabbed her and started shaking her.
When the taboos start to fall, the weakest and shortest-lived taboo that against open expressions of Jew-hatred will be the first to go. Penelope Wyatt reported in the Spectator a few years back, a liberal lord's relief that, "Thank G-d, we can once say what we want about the Jews."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
What?
No, The BBC is a Liar. There was no Muslim in the Israeli army.
"As I live," says the Lord GOD, "surely with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, I will rule over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will plead My case with you face to face. Just as I pleaded My case with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will plead My case with you," says the Lord GOD.
"I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant; I will purge the rebels from among you, and those who transgress against Me; I will bring them out of the country where they dwell, but they shall not enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the LORD.
"As for you, O house of Israel," thus says the Lord GOD: "Go, serve every one of you his idols--and hereafter--if you will not obey Me; but profane My holy name no more with your gifts and your idols. For on My holy mountain, on the mountain height of Israel," says the Lord GOD, "there all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, shall serve Me; there I will accept them, and there I will require your offerings and the firstfruits of your sacrifices, together with all your holy things. I will accept you as a sweet aroma when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered; and I will be hallowed in you before the Gentiles. Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for which I raised My hand in an oath to give to your fathers. And there you shall remember your ways and all your doings with which you were defiled; and you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight because of all the evils that you have committed. Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I have dealt with you for My name's sake, not according to your wicked ways nor according to your corrupt doings, O house of Israel," says the Lord GOD."'
- Ezekiel 20:33-44 (NKJV)
Sounds reasonable - that was along the lines of what I was thinking, but since I haven't heard much of this before, I didn't know if there was some common, known link the author assumed the reader would be aware of. Cheers.
LOL! Damnit you got me! But seriously 300 anti-semitic crimes is relatively few out of 250,000 jews.
ALL racist crimes have increased in the UK by around the same amount. Some people seem to think that it is all the fault of the BBC when Muslims rarely watch the BBC for its alleged "Pro-Israel bias" same goes for the BNP, they get their news from STormfront.
Ex-BBC journalists all head to al-Jazeera!? Excuse me, but that is very funny. And total nonsense.
I'm sorry, B, but your post just angers me. You seem to be suggesting that Britain, partly because Shakespeare wrote an anti-semitic play(!), is comfortable relating to large numbers of anti-semitic Islamosfascists. This is obviously totally wrong. Have you ever been to Britain? How many British people have you ever met? I suspect, from your post, not many. To suggest that the average Brit is an al-qaeda sympathiser is totally offensive and inaccurate. What you and the author of this article have done is to take the complicated social reality of modern Britain and reduce it to a simplistic parody.
Britain has a long tradition of upholding human rights and supporting the downtrodden. The average Brit, despite the impression given by this misleading article, is not an anti-semite. Yes, there are many who disagree with Israeli government policy, but that doesn't make them racist. If we disagreed with Clinton's policies, did that make us anti-white racists, or anti-Americans?
I'm sure this incident is the truth, but a swallow doesn't make a summer. I think the other Brits on that bus would have been shocked and outraged at her behaviour.
I only saw in this article a criticism of media and itellectual decadence in England as a particular of its world generality, it did not say it was isolated to Englad, though. US and French media are culprits.
We cannot hide the facts on antisemitism in the world behind a comparison between US ad British media p$$ing contest. That said, it is a legit concern otherwise.
The business of hiding US sins are not on the agenda of this author.
I'm just passing along what a BBC (or former BBC) journalist said in Control Room. It might've been said in jest, but there is evidently a grain of truth there somewhere (if somewhat exaggerated). Take it for whatever it's worth.
IMO, given the fact that the BBC has long covered that area of the world more closely than the American media, it is quite plausible that some of al-Jazeera's staff learned the business while working behind the scenes at the BBC's Middle East bureau.
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