I’ll be chairing an event at Jewish Book Week where the great Gideon Levy will be speaking By Johann Hari
Ill be chairing an event at Jewish Book Week where the great Gideon Levy will be speaking, editors choiceIt’s on Sunday, 6th March. Please do come along – there’s a really ugly campaign going to boycott the event due to Levy’s brave stance defending Israel from those within the country who are leading it on a path to self-destruction by ramping up the occupation and further wars. You can book tickets here.
For myself, I’ll also briefly respond to a smear against me. In 2008, I witnessed how, on the occupied West Bank, raw sewage is sometimes pumped from the settlements onto Palestinian land, where it contaminates the water supply in obviously highly dangerous ways. I didn’t break the story: it has beendocumented by the BBC, Friends of the Earth, and others, and is an established fact. After I wrote about it, a number of far right websites invented the claim that, by factually describing this, I had “compared Israel to excrement”, and even tried to revive the blood libel of Jews poisoning the wells. These claims have now been revived to argue therefore I am an inappropriate person to host an event at Jewish Book Week. Anybody who reads the article can see that this description is an outright and preposterous lie. I said no such thing, and would vehemently oppose anyone who did. Unlike the people who invented these smears, I have in fact taken considerable physical risks to oppose and expose anti-Semites, including working undercover at the Finsbury Park mosque and among Holocaust deniers, and receiving a large number of death threats after I went on the Islam Channel to challenge Hizb ut Tahrir over their disgusting anti-Semitism.
Yet this blatant lie is repeated in the latest Jewish Chronicle in a call for a boycott of the event. Sadly, it’s not the first time the Jewish Chronicle hasprinted provably false (and weirdly contradictory) smears against me. The JC also contains some very good and valuable journalism, which makes these bursts of dishonesty all the more disappointing. By all means vigorously disagree with my position, or Levy’s – but not with a series of repellent straw men. Alas, this is part of a much larger process of smearing people who try to urge the Israeli state towards a safer path.
I’d urge people to ignore these smears and to come along to the event to hear one of Israel’s most remarkable people explain how the country can make itself, and the Palestinians, safe at last. You can read the full brochure for Jewish Book Week – there’s some other amazing events -
Here Independent - lots of links with this post
