We pay for this poison
 | By Stephen Pollard January 26, 2009 |
The London Review of Books, the house journal of a certain kind of intellectual, has long indulged in a particularly nasty form of anti-Israel propaganda - paid for by us, the taxpayer (it receives a £20,000 subsidy from the Arts Council).
The latest issue is even worse than I expected. The main piece is headlined:
Israel's lies
And then, to put that into 'context', it's followed by commentary from Tariq Ali, David Bromwich, Alastair Crooke, Conor Gearty, Eric Hobsbawm, R.W. Johnson, Rashid Khalidi, Yitzhak Laor, Yonatan Mendel, John Mearsheimer, Ilan Pappe, Gabriel Piterberg, Jacqueline Rose, Eliot Weinberger and Michael Wood.
Every single piece - every one of the fifteeen commentaries - is pure Israel-bashing. Nowhere is there even the most basic attempt to explain Israel's position. Pure poison - poison paid for by you and me.
COMMENTS
27 January, 2009 - 14:26 | This is not unusual for them, although it just illustrates the pernicious effect of state funding of the 'arts'. I suppose the only consolation is that its only read by a self-selecting clique of the uber left so they only talking to themselves. |
27 January, 2009 - 21:21 | I did a campaign about the Barbican Arts Centre last May. They also get Arts Council money. There has been no Israeli Film Festival for 18 years but there have been four Palestinian Film Festivals in four years. And the ‘Homeland Lost’ photographic exhibition they had last year contained text which falsely demonised Israel. Maybe Arts Council funding is conditional on being anti-Israel. |
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joemillis
26 January, 2009 - 18:37
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