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MEMO 338 A weekly overview of information of interest to minority ethnic communities in Scotland, including parliamentary activity at Holyrood and Westminster, new publications, consultations, forthcoming conferences and news reports.
http://www.scojec.org/memo/2013/memo_338_4_february_2013.pdf

The motion ‘This House Believes That Israel is a Force For Good in the Middle East’ was defeated 132-208 at the Oxford Union Debating Society last night. It was a good debate with none of the drama that has preceded some other Israel debates at the Union. For example in 2007 most of the external speakers pulled out after Norman Finkelstein was disinvited (the motion was “This House Believes that One State is the Only Solution to the Israel Palestine Conflict” and Finkelstein bizarrely was invited to speak against the motion). It was clear from the quality of the debate that a lot of hard work had gone into the evening by Union President Maria Rioumine and her colleagues.

http://www.thejc.com/97741/the-hebrew-speaking-head-oxford-union

For the motion were Ella Robertson, a student at Balliol; Alan Mendoza (Director, Henry Jackson Society, replacing Stephen Pollard at very short notice), Richard Perle (Asst Sec of Defence under President Reagan), and Lord David Trimble (Co-founder of Friends of Israel Initiative and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for helping secure peace in N Ireland). Against were Ghada Karmi, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Anna Baltzer (a pro-Palestinian campaigner in the US) and Peter Tatchell.

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) is a nationally designated day of remembrance for the victims of the Shoah. It rightly calls on us to remember that man’s inhumanity to man has led to further genocides perpetrated since the Second World War. Sadly, there are no signs that genocide, or its intent, can yet be consigned to history. This year HMD has adopted the theme of building bridges between communities to combat racism and intolerance.

As if HMD last Sunday was not sad and thought-provoking enough, it was made much more depressing by two events in the public space here in the UK. The first consisted of comments by the Liberal Democratic Member of Parliament for Bradford East, David Ward. Using (more accurately abusing) a book of remembrance for HMD, Mr Ward accused Holocaust victims of committing atrocities on Palestinians comparable to those of the Nazis. He insulted their memory by accusing them of failing to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. He even received support from fellow Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies. Mr Ward’s remarks have been widely condemned, and the reasons are obvious. You can read the excellent post by the Board’s Jamie Slavin at http://www.bod.org.uk/live/content.php?Item_ID=130&Blog_ID=711

It took a summons by the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip to wring a brief apology from Mr Ward, the sincerity of which is considerably undermined by his leaving the offending remarks on his website. The Chief Whip has apparently censured Mr Ward, but only for his use of the phrase “the Jews”, which Mr Ward has undertaken not to repeat – and has already breached the undertaking by leaving the words on his website. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats said in a radio phone-in on 31st January that he finds prejudice abhorrent. Why then has he not acted to require David Ward to take down his statement ?

Yesterday Jonathan Arkush (Board of Deputies’ VP and Chair of the Defence Division) said:

We note that David Ward MP has been censured by the Liberal Democrats. However, the Board regards this as wholly inadequate. The whip should have been withdrawn and he should have been warned that he risked being expelled from the party. The Board further notes that Mr Ward’s offensive statement remains on his website, which hardly inspires confidence in the sincerity of his apology.

I called Nick Clegg on LBC this morning (13.58 on the mp3 file) to ask why David Ward MP (Bradford East) has not lost the Whip and why this antisemitic comment is still on his website:

SCoJeC Project Worker Fiona Frank discussed Being Jewish in Scotland on BBC Scotland's "Sunday Morning with Ricky Ross".
http://www.scojec.org/news/2013/13i_bjis_bbc_scotland.m4a

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21241711

He's debating today with JC Editor Stephen Pollard .. who starts by acknowledging Rupert Murdoch's apology ...

Bell: "Apologising for this cartoon - for once it wasn't a bad cartoon - I think Stephen Pollard invokes terms like "the blood libel" and kind of "genocidal hate rage".... he's attributing this to a cartoon which is actually ... it's sort of like a mirror image of the cartoon Scarfe did the week before ... President Assad clutching the head of a baby ... not a squeak about that ...

SCoJeC Director Ephraim Borowski presented "Thought for the Day" on BBC Scotland: "New Shoots from the Ashes".
http://www.scojec.org/pov/tftd/tftd.html

MEMO 337 A weekly overview of information of interest to minority ethnic communities in Scotland, including parliamentary activity at Holyrood and Westminster, new publications, consultations, forthcoming conferences and news reports.
http://www.scojec.org/memo/2013/memo_337_28_january_2013.pdf