http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/michael_gove/article3653736.ece
If even Ed Stourton doesn’t get it, there really is a problem. Stourton is not just an exceptionally civilised voice on Radio 4, he’s also one of broadcasting’s most thoughtful figures. As well as Today, he occasionally fronts Sunday, the religious magazine programme, has written a well-received book on Pope John Paul II and presented a fascinating documentary on the Arab/ Israeli conflict. Which is why it’s so troubling that he, of all people, missed the point.
Stourton was interviewing Barbet Schroeder, who has produced biopics on Idi Amin and Claus von Bülow and has just made a film about the famous French lawyer Jacques Vergès. Like many lawyers who prefer to act for the defence, Vergès enjoys difficult cases. But he’s a little bit more daring than Horace Rumpole in his client list: Vergès has, in his time, defended the Vichy collaborator Klaus Barbie (the Butcher of Lyons), Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (Carlos the Jackal), various Palestinian terrorists and members of the BaaderMeinhof gang. Oh, and we shouldn’t forget Saddam Hussein’s No 2, Tariq Aziz.
Stourton was curious about this galère of clients, and confessed to feeling perplexed about what could possibly link Klaus Barbie and Palestinian terrorists. What on earth would unite these disparate people, and what would draw Vergès to them?
What indeed? What is it that has marked the most sustained terror campaign in the Middle East? What was it that characterised Barbie’s period in charge of security in wartime Lyons? What drove the arguments made by those survivors of the Baader-Meinhof gang who are still politically active today, such as Horst Mahler? And what tie binds Carlos the Jackal, the renegade terrorist of the 1970s, to Tariq Aziz, the Establishment face of prewar Iraq?
One thing unites them all: anti-Semitism. While Stourton might have found it hard to see what united Palestinian terrorists and Klaus Barbie, it was instantly apparent to me – both made the elimination of Jewish lives a central ideological mission. Just as Carlos the Jackal did in the 1970s, when he launched rocket attacks on El-Al airlines and targeted Jewish businessmen. And just as Tariq Aziz did in the 1990s, when Iraqi Scud missiles were directed against Israel, and Iraqi money subsidised suicide bombing.
Of course, despite the best efforts of the impeccably professional, utterly neutral and, I’m sure, entirely charming M Vergès, Klaus, Carlos and their ideological cousins have all been brought to justice. Yet the ideology that united them – a dark and furious hatred of the Jewish people – hasn’t been contained.
In 2006, Israel came under attack from the Lebanese-based terror group Hezbollah. The leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, is on record as saying: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli.” That summer the streets of London were filled with our fellow citizens chanting: “We are all Hezbollah now.”
The spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood is a gentleman called Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is on record as telling Newsnight that suicide bombing which targeted Israeli women and children was justified, arguing: “I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an evidence of God’s justice. Allah Almighty is just; through His infinite wisdom He has given the weak a weapon that the strong do not have, and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do.” The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, invited the Sheikh to City Hall in 2004 as an “honoured guest”.
Ron Paul is a Texan Congressman and one of the Republican Party’s defeated candidates for his party’s presidential nomination this year. Although he finished well behind the rest of the pack, he won plaudits from many and raised millions en route. The Guardian columnist Geoffrey Wheatcroft last week praised Paul for his opposition to the Iraq War and singled out as especially commendable his dislike of US policy towards Israel. Wheatcroft lauded Paul as an “excellent man” whose words on Israel were “sane and humane”. Yet, as the US magazine The New Republic has revealed, Paul has published some curious thoughts on the Middle East. In a 1987 issue of the Ron Paul Investment Letter Israel is described as “an aggressive, national socialist state”. A 1990 newsletter discussed the “tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise”. Of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, a newsletter said: “Whether it was a set-up by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists matters little.”
Whether it comes from the hard Left or the wildest shores of the Right, whether it masquerades as liberation rhetoric or brave truth-telling about hidden power brokers, anti-Semitism is finding new allies, making new connections, gathering new force. Something is clearly awry in our culture. The Iranian Government holds conferences to discuss the historical truth of the Holocaust, yet some newspapers try to minimise the danger from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and defend him from “misquotation”. Learned magazines devote thousands of words to the pernicious nature of Jewish influence on Western governments, and senior commentators then celebrate the delicious courage of this novel argument. Academics, without apparently being conscious of the irony, argue for a boycott of Israeli thinkers in the name of freedom. It is one of the grave distempers of our times, this prejudice towards the Jewish people, their nation and their collective identity. And one of the tasks of our times is its exposure, its combating and its defeat.
Embroidery is all part of life’s trapestry
Once again, my heart goes out to Hillary Clinton. I’ve already confessed that in her battle for the Democratic nomination she tugs at my heartstrings; something about her stubborn doggedness gets me in the gut, and I’m always inclined to back the unshowy battler over the charismatic one in any contest. But there’s another reason I’m coming over all Clintonista: the Battle of Tuzla. Hill is getting it in the neck because she allegedly embroidered her account of a visit to Bosnia in the 1990s. According to her recollection, repeated on the stump, she landed in a war zone and had to dodge sniper fire before being bundled into an armoured personnel carrier. But news footage shot at the time shows her being greeted with flowers, a curtsy and all due ceremonial.
Cynics are now targeting Hillary with all the aggression of a Yugoslav partisan, accusing her of mendacity, unfitness to govern, presiding over a foreign policy catastrophe, yadda yadda yadda. I’m afraid I feel “there, but for the grace of God,…”. How many of us have never embellished an anecdote or added drama to a story that would otherwise be commonplace because we wanted to please our audience? And that’s what she was doing: telling a fisherman’s tale about her Tuzla trip, exaggerating a tad, to keep the audience engaged. The only difference between her and the rest of us is that CNN doesn’t record our battles with salmon on the Tweed, our progress round Turnberry or our holiday tennis match with that guy off GMTV. Just as well, or the art of embroidery would surely die out.
Road hogs
Thank you, fellow Skodaphiles, for your solidarity, and for your recommendations of really ugly cars that are thus superb value for money. At present the Kia leads, but all other suggestions are welcome. And remember: the ideal vehicle is the one that the Top Gear team would reject because it combines terrible looks with great performance. What you might call the quintessential Clarkson combination.
Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath.