By Yaakov Ahimeir / Israel Yaakov Ahimeir is one of Israel TV’s most well-known presenters. A former Washington correspondent, he started his journalistic career in London, between 1964-67, at the BBC World Service’s now defunct Hebrew-language broadcasts. The following is his point of view about the attitude of some large chunk of the British people . I personally do not subscribe to his attack on Tony Blair but given the severity of the events that preceded the London Terror attacks , I have decided to post the article verbatim .
Unfortunately MR Ahimeir did not mention the cartoons that several renown British papers have published in recent times . In particular , the venomous Shtrimer type one by the British daily The Independent published a European classic of new anti-Semitism - a cartoon by Dave Brown showing Sharon as a child-eater. It should be pointed out that the libel that Jews use the blood of gentile children for religious purposes originated in England during the Middle Ages. In answer to protests, the UK press complaints commission cleared the cartoon. Thereafter it won the UK "Political Cartoon of the Year Award for 2003" of the Political Cartoon Society. The competition was held on November 25, 2003 at the Economist weekly and the award was presented to Brown by Labour MP and former Minister for Overseas Aid Claire Short.
So here is the article .
" Has anyone paid attention to the greetings, or more accurately the road-side bombs, that have been sent to us from Britain with increasing frequency?
At first it was the AUT, which failed in its attempt to impose a boycott on three universities in Israel. The boycott failed – but the residue remains. During the time of the great debate there – yes to a boycott, or no – an international organisation published a shocking report into how the Egyptian authorities restrict academic freedom there.
I quickly took a look at the Education Guardian’s website, a newspaper that deals in the politics of academe in depth, and I didn’t find even half a word on the possibility that British lecturers would impose an academic boycott of Egypt.
As is known, a threat to academic freedom exists only in Israel — at least that’s how it looks according to the best and the brightest from the country that gave us Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell and Lawrence Olivier.
Soon, Britain was attacked by Muslim terrorists, and Prime Minister Tony Blair blamed them, in effect, on the lack of a resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and because of the lack of democracy in our region. Again, Israel is to blame.
The latest road-side bomb, for now, was dispatched by London mayor Ken Livingstone, who expressed support for Palestinian suicide bombers. Further road-side bombs will be dispatched, no doubt. My own country’s Foreign Ministry, not Britain’s, is keeping quiet in the face of such diplomatic double standards.
It isn’t like us to keep quiet.
Britain is, it appears, trying very hard to appear like France in Israelis’ eyes. In other words, plumbing the depths trying to have a bad image. The French ambassador to Israel, Gerrard Araud, asked me soon after his arrival in Tel Aviv, with astonishment and concern: “How can you explain that Germany is more liked in Israel than France?”
The time is coming when Simon McDonald, the ambassador from the land of the ever so heroic “Battle of Britain” against the Germans — about whose pilots Winston Churchill once said “This was their finest hour” — will ask the same question with astonishment. In order to find an answer, the ambassador will have to look at the chronology of events.
Blair isn’t Churchill — and there hasn’t been another leader like Churchill who was so enthusiastic about the Zionist movement. Since he was re-elected, Blair’s administration has been characterised by very hostile statements about Israel expressed by key people and organisations in Israel. It is as if we, and we alone, are the source of all evil in the world. Who knows, maybe we are also to blame for Irish-Catholic terror against Britain.
And these statements have been greeted with a mute response, by a very British, very un-Israel, reticence, by a very angry Israel at the height of summer. The undersigned has often expressed his support for Blair, for the Parliamentary system in Britain, for the British use of understatement – which is not our style.
This support is derived from three years of working with the BBC in London, where my oldest son was born.
But even these things cannot prevent me from using words that civilised people do not use in their conversation: “Nimastem – we’ve had enough of you.”
