Posts by Stephen Pollard

Opera: Written on Skin

Stephen Pollard — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:49:39 +0000

After seeing Written on Skin, I have some idea what it must have been like to have been at the premiere of Peter Grimes. Just as Britten’s opera was immediately obvious as a masterpiece — and not just of British opera —so, too, George Benjamin’s work is a league above any other new opera I have seen.

From its first note to its last, through 90 riveting minutes, Written on Skin shows that reports of opera’s demise are nonsense. In the right hands, it can still be the most gripping of all performance media.

Benjamin’s score is at once exquisite, threatening, melodic and translucent. Better still, the match of music and libretto (by the playwright Martin Crimp) is not merely seamless but organic. And, as a theatrical performance, it is difficult to imagine anything more compelling.

The story is simple. A medieval landowner hires an illustrator to celebrate his life in a book. The landowner’s wife seduces the artist. The cuckold kills him and forces the wife to eat her lover’s heart. But that simplicity masks a wonderfully rich opera.

There are three performances left. Drop everything. Go. (www.roh.org.uk)

Calcot Manor, Gloucestershire

Stephen Pollard — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:00:40 +0000

It’s always fascinated me how one’s horizon’s change when you have kids.

Ask me four years ago to define paradise and I would not have come up with the idea of a hotel in the Cotswolds, let alone one that caters primarily for families. Ask me now, and I’ll give you two words: Calcot Manor.

The Pollards have been on a three year quest to find the perfect family hotel. I am here to tell you that at Calcot Manor I found it.

Whoever first had the idea of setting up a luxury country house hotel designed specifically for people with young children — which viewed them not as uncouth horrors but as part of their core clientele — deserves not just the profits that come their way but also a huge thank you.

From the moment you enter Calcot Manor’s grounds you are enveloped in relaxation. The fact that this is a hotel for children as well as adults does not mean that service is — as in some of Calcott’s supposed competition — less attentive and slick than it might be.

Quite the opposite: every need is anticipated and the whole shebang is structured around the needs of families with young children.

Our cottage-style suite had every conceivable amenity, and the walk to the main building was through beautiful gardens. There are 220 acres to explore — and a spa in which to be pampered. The Ofsted-registered crèche, the Playzone, is as good as they get.

Meals were a joy, from the delicious fresh lunch and kids’ dinner in the Gumstool Inn, Calcot’s own pub (with fantastically friendly staff) to more adventurous food in the Conservatory Restaurant for Mrs P and I after the children had gone down.

We stayed for two nights. Two weeks would not have exhausted Calcot’s powers of relaxation.

Rates: Standard room from £280 per night. Includes bed and breakfast based on two sharing
Tel: 01666 890391

Instructive antisemitic comparison

Stephen Pollard — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:53:56 +0000

Oh dear. I really didn't want to have to write about antisemitism again. Believe me it's not something I ever want to have to discuss. But this past week there have been two instructive episodes.

At the end of last week, a LibDem MP no one had ever heard of called David Ward decided to share his thoughts for Holocaust Memorial Day. In a spectacularly appalling piece of timing, he posted the following on his blog immediately after signing the Holocaust Memorial Trust's book of remembrance:

"Having visited Auschwitz twice– once with my family and once with local schools ... I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered
unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new state of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza."

Leave aside the grotesque comparison between 'persecution' of the Jews during the Holocaust and the 'atrocities' inflicted on Palestinians – I have yet to see the evidence which Mr Ward presumably has of death camps on the West Bank, and Israeli guards herding Palestinians into gas chambers to be murdered.

Leave that aside, as I say.

If I had a pound for every time I'm told that Jews use the Holocaust to justify Israeli policy then I'd be a very wealthy Jew. (I hope you see where I'm going with this.)

What's especially interesting about the otherwise deeply uninteresting Mr Ward is the way he turns that around. It's not the Israelis who inflict atrocities on Palestinians. It's me. It's 'the Jews' - at it again.

We Jews of all people – those in Golders Green, in New York and, I imagine, even in Ethiopia – are each of us, individually, responsible for what is going on. Presumably that's because we conspire the whole time.

Just in case there was any doubt, he went on Sky News to elaborate: "I'm accusing the Jews who did it so if you're a Jew and you did not do it, I'm not accusing you. I'm saying that those Jews who did that and continue to do it have not learned those lessons. If you are a Jew and you do not do those things and have never done those things then I am not criticising you."

I see. Good Jews are ok. It's bad Jews that are the problem.

Putting the most charitable gloss on it – rather than believing that Ward simply adopts casual antisemitism as his modus operandi – let's say he thinks that Jews, of all people, should know better.

Howard Jacobson has shown how this leaves Jews doubly damned: to the Holocaust itself and for ever more to elevated moral scrutiny as a result of it. Thus "the Holocaust becomes an educational experience from which Jews were ethically obliged to graduate summa cum laude, Israel being the proof that they didn't."

Worse, that argument means that it is Jews, not antisemites, who need to learn the lessons of the Shoah, and Jews who need to get their act together.

Ward has acted like a chided child ever since his post. A mealy mouthed 'explanation' and then a churlish response to the LibDem chief whip's demand that he never again refer in such fashion to 'the Jews'.

In truth, Ward is of no consequence to anyone and will slink back into deserved obscurity now. But his reaction to being found out speaks volumes for a certain mindset.

There's a useful contrast with the latest imbroglio, over the Sunday Times' Scarfe cartoon of Netanyahu appearing to glory in the blood of his Palestinian victims. As it happens, for me that does slip over the edge
into antisemitism, because it invokes the blood libel. It's a fair point to say that the previous week Scarfe depicted Assad in a similar way, and he's entitled to his view of Netanyahu, just as the Sunday Times are entitled to print it.

But there's never been an anti-Alawite blood libel, and the context matters. The blood libel is central to the history of antisemitism.

I don't think Scarfe is an idiot – far from it. So I find it impossible to believe he was unaware of the resonances of his cartoon.

(Incidentally, I am close to being absolute on the issue of free speech. I think every newspaper should be free to print pretty much anything. I disagree in principle with criminalizing Holocaust denial and I certainly don't think that just because something gives offence it shouldn't be published. But having the right to publish something doesn't mean it is always right to publish something. And with that right goes responsibility.)

In the end what I think is irrelevant, because here's the big difference between these two cases. Ward has dug himself further into his hole and clearly refuses to even consider that he might have made a mistake.

Martin Ivens, the Sunday Times' editor, has done the opposite (as has Rupert Murdoch). He's seen the reaction, thought about it, and held his hands up.

We all make mistakes – editors, of all people. Goodness me there are stories I regret running! But what matters is admitting it and saying sorry. The Guardian, which regularly publishes vile images and pieces dripping with hate for Jews, has never, as far as I am aware, once admitted getting anything wrong.

The Sunday Times has done just that, and deserves credit for it.

Israel-diaspora ties get boost in UK conference

Stephen Pollard — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 11:00:07 +0000

Some ideas are so obvious you wonder why no one thought of them before. The annual Australia Israel UK Leadership Dialogue is one of them.

Originally a meeting of Australian and Israeli leaders — defined as politicians, thinkers and journalists — the addition of UK delegates has lifted the two-day forum into a sort of Israeli Königswinter Conference.

This week’s meeting in London, at Portcullis House, was the most interesting so far. Graced with high-calibre Israelis — such as Ehud Olmert and Avi Dichter — and Australians including opposition leader Tony Abbott and a host of MPs and senators, the group grappled with issues such as Iran, the future of the two-state solution and the Arab Spring.

But as ever with these gatherings, much of the real value is in the conversations off-piste.

Israel has no more long-standing a friend than Australia and, at a time when diaspora views are increasingly dismissed as irrelevant and close allies are sometimes made to feel that their concerns are driven by hostility, it is encouraging that there are senior Israeli politicos who look outwards.

Settlements - the view from Jerusalem

Stephen Pollard — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:58:48 +0000

I’ve been trying to find out the thinking behind the Israeli government’s announcement that it intends to build a settlement of 3000 units in E1.Speaking to various Israeli government sources, here’s my take.

The feeling in Jerusalem is that, no matter what agreements are signed between Israel and the Palestinians, the international community refuses to acknowledge Palestinian infractions.

Instead, the argument goes, no sooner has Israel thwarted attempts to perpetrate a third intifada mounted by the Palestinians, than the United Nations rewards the Palestinian president with the new 'non-observer' status, and potential access to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

What the international community has done, my sources say, is effectively to open the door to any decision Jerusalem wants to take — particularly in the run-up to the elections on January 22.

Because even those in Israel who are unhappy about their government's settlement policy feel that the entire nation is being punished by the international community — over breaches of agreements perpetrated by the Palestinians. And, they say, it is not the first time: Palestinian suicide bombers, during the second intifada, were eventually stopped by the construction of Israel's wall. Yet the wall, which saved Israeli lives when nothing else did, was greeted with international outrage and condemnation.

In this latest such situation, Israel successfully protected its citizens from Palestinian rocket attacks, via Iron Dome and other missile defence systems. But the result was that when Abu Mazen went to New York, instead of being pilloried by the world for the rocket attacks, he was received with rapture and rewarded.

Thus Israel's response in announcing the housing units is born of a bitter reaction to the
wholesale international swallowing of the Palestinian narrative.

It is difficult to see how such a stance can be cooled down. Certainly the mood in Jerusalem is one of white-hot fury.

Opera: Verdi's Otello

Stephen Pollard — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:36:02 +0100

I have been spoilt by Carlos Kleiber. Nearly two decades ago, I heard him conduct Verdi’s Otello at the Royal Opera House and I know that, as long as I live, I will never hear anything that compares. The opening storm he conjured up (and yes, it was magic), when he made the orchestra sound as if the earth was opening up, was something beyond music.

I have since seen many wonderful Otellos. But none could ever come close for sheer visceral impact. Every note mattered.

When I say that this latest revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s production does not live up to that but is nonetheless a sensationally good, five-star performance, then it is the opposite of damning with faint praise.

Even to be mentioned in the same review as Kleiber’s Otello shows just how good it is.
In the pit, Sir Antonio Pappano unleashes a thrilling, dramatically taut account of the score — and masterminds a gripping drama. Nothing is wasted, with the three principals fully inhabiting their roles. Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko shows that there is life beyond Domingo. The vocal demands hold no fears and his is as fine a dramatic performance as I have seen this year. His confrontation with Desdemona in front of the Venetian ambassador was hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck thrilling.

Anja Harteros has cancelled more than she has sung recently, but she is worth the frustrations. This was a Desdemona at once mystified, angry, frightened, sweetly demure — and gloriously sung. With Lucio Gallo as a charismatic Iago, the casting is flawless. I cannot recommend this too highly.

Muslim Brotherhood's win in Egypt fits Islamist plans

Stephen Pollard — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 13:08:40 +0100

The victory of Mohamed Morsi as the new president of Egypt has not merely been greeted with equanimity in the West. It has been welcomed.

Typical is the view expressed by a Reuters columnist: "There is little to fear from the rise of Islamists to power. For more than four decades, the Muslim Brothers laboured to enter politics and gain legal status. They learned the art of compromise and pragmatism through hardship and persecution. On balance, ideology takes a back seat to the interests and political well-being of their movements."

It is difficult to overstate how wrong this is. The Muslim Brotherhood is not a moderate, pragmatic party but a fanatical organisation committed to the Islamification of the planet, which has spawned lethal terrorist groups, but which operates under the cover of mainstream politics.

Now it leads the largest, most important Arab nation. As a pan-regional force that is either in or close to power across the Middle East, its ability to implement its agenda of a sharia-governed Islamic region is growing ever greater. And if it gains power in Pakistan, as many think is likely, it will have nuclear weapons.

The Brotherhood is its ideology. Its credo makes this clear: "Allah is our objective; the Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations." The Brotherhood believes in Islamic rule. Its purpose is the establishment of a theocracy across the region and, ultimately, the world.

The argument that, in power, an organisation defined by extremism will see the value of pragmatism is dangerous wishful thinking. Why would the Brotherhood abandon its raison d'etre at the very moment it achieves power after decades of opposition and suppression? Its pragmatism will only ever be found in the tactics it adopts for achieving and holding on to power in order to advance the triumph of sharia.

Certainly, it behaves differently according to the social and political realities of the countries in which it operates. In Jordan, the monarchy allowed it to exist legally and it formed its own party, the Islamic Action Front; it now has the largest number of seats in the Jordanian Parliament. Elsewhere, it had to operate in hiding.

But whatever tactics it has adopted, as an Islamist - that is to say, political - organisation, it works to achieve a Muslim world order, in increments. Its publicly proclaimed method is to win secular power and then use that to turn states to Islamic law. From that, false national boundaries will be swept way into one Islamic entity, with the liberal, cancerous West a relic of history.

Its success is already daunting. Hamas, its terrorist branch, controls Gaza. In Tunisia, the Al-Nahda ("Revival") Party is now in control. The Moroccan Justice and Development Party won power last year. In the Libyan elections, due next month, the Brotherhood offshoot, the Justice and Construction Party, may be the largest party.

It has recently been reported that CIA officers in Turkey are using Syrian Brotherhood members to funnel arms to the opposition in Syria. No one can predict with certainty what will happen next. But at the very least we know that the Brotherhood comprises a large proportion of the opposition and is well placed to take power.

It wields considerable influence in Sudan. In Qatar it is supported by the government and it is represented in the Kuwait parliament. It is also strong in the rest of the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, where it is given political asylum, Yemen, Oman and Bahrain). It has a serious presence in Lebanon and Iraq and in Algeria is part of President Bouteflika's government.

The significance of this catalogue is that the Brotherhood does not recognise national borders, and is developing precisely as the regional force anticipated by Hassan al-Banna when he founded the organisation in Egypt in 1928.

Add to this mix Pakistan, one of the most unstable states in the world - and one with nuclear weapons - and the potency of the Brotherhood's Islamist threat becomes even starker.

Islamism is increasing its hold. And because it recognises no secularly drawn boundaries, it will, in all essential matters, operate as one entity - all working to the same common goal. Pakistan under Islamist control could soon make the threat posed by Iran seem relatively easy to deal with. Iran is one country, and is economically weak. The Brotherhood shows the potency of pan-regional movements driven by fanaticism.

Rooney, Hart, Walcott and the England Euro 2012 players who will never forget the Holocaust

Stephen Pollard — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:50:36 +0100

It would be difficult to think of a more inappropriate venue for a PR stunt than Auschwitz. So when it was announced that the England football team, staying in Krakow for the European Championships, was to visit the death camp, there were some howls of protest.

I was asked by the Football Association to accompany the team. Truth be told, I was wary. Footballers are hardly renowned for their sensitivity and decorum. But within minutes of the seven footballers and manager Roy Hodgson stepping off their coach, along with FA Chairman David Bernstein and former Chelsea and Israel manager Avram Grant (the rest of the team visited the Schindler Museum in Krakow), it was obvious that such fears were misplaced.

They may be footballers but they are also human beings. And when anyone with an ounce of humanity encounters Auschwitz, he leaves everything else behind.

The next time I see Wayne Rooney on the pitch, I’ll see not just the mindless oaf of caricature but a man with a hinterland. I’ll see the man who stood, silent and alone, reading the sign by the side of the entrance to the Auschwitz museum: “The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.’’

And I’ll see the man who, with his team mates Andy Carroll, Phil Jagielka, Jack Butland, Joe Hart, Theo Walcott and Leighton Baines, was transfixed with shock when shown the picture of SS doctor, Heinz Thilo, greeting the new arrivals at Birkenau and pointing them into two areas: one for work, another for the gas chambers.

Indeed, when we moved on to Birkenau and the exact spot where that picture was taken, Rooney and the others paced out the path taken by the victims. As footballers they think in spaces; it was as if they needed to see the geography itself, fully to grasp the implications of the picture.

As Rooney put it afterwards: “There was the guy who made all the decisions, whether they lived or died. He’s probably gone home after that, listened to music, and had dinner with his family as if nothing had happened. It’s crazy. It’s hard to understand.

“I’m a parent and it’s tough to see what happened there. You’ve seen the amount of children who died. You see the children’s clothes and shoes, it’s really sad. You have to see it first-hand.”

The whole squad had heard from two survivors the week before. But Rooney was already aware of what had gone on: “I did history at school but never really appreciated it at the time, so I wanted to understand more about what happened in the war. I watched the documentary The World At War last year, the night before away matches in Europe, and a lot of it is about what happened at Auschwitz.

“So I wanted to see it first-hand. What happened here puts football into perspective. It’s good for us to try to understand this history.”

In their normal lives these are some of the most confident young men on the planet. But here, they struggled even to summon the courage to ask the guide questions. They didn’t want to seem stupid, one told me afterwards.

Far from stupid, their questions — such as how long was the gap from arrival to death, why the Nazis did not burn all the victims’ possessions, did any try to escape and how many arrivals were there every day — were exactly those that any visitor finds difficult to comprehend.

Outside the crematorium at Auschwitz, Avram Grant, whose family were murdered there, spoke quietly but emotionally to the players: “It’s very important you came here. It’s so good that you came here. It’s important to talk about this and spreads the message of what happened here.’’

They knew this.

On the rails where the carriages had brought the latest set of victims, David Bernstein said kaddish alongside Roy Hodgson. The players did not understand a word; but they understood everything that mattered about the small, intensely moving ceremony.

Make no mistake, this was no mere PR stunt. For one thing, the FA’s decision to maintain decorum by allowing only three print writers, of whom I was one, to accompany the team angered most journalists — those who were excluded.

The visit was designed to give a group of influential young men a first-hand lesson about the greatest evil ever perpetrated. And then to turn that encounter to practical use, beyond just the education of seven footballers.

The Holocaust Educational Trust and the FA will now produce a range of tools for use in schools. And their impact will be immeasurably stronger with the participation of the England team.

Prisoners voting: time to ask who governs Britain (Express)

Stephen Pollard — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:06:53 +0100

My Express column on the ECHR is here: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/322045/Prisoners-voting-Time-to-ask-...

Opera: Falstaff is a Royal Opera House must-see

Stephen Pollard — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:20:07 +0100

If I could give this new production of Falstaff 50 stars, I would. Verdi’s last opera is as close to perfection as music gets, and Robert Carsen’s 1950s update does it justice. Carsen clearly loves Falstaff and wants only to share that love with the audience.

Ambrogio Maestri’s world-class Falstaff apart, the cast is not top notch. But it does not matter because as an ensemble they are glorious. And in the pit, Daniel Gatti lets the music breathe. A must-see. (020 7304 4000)

You work harder as civil servants take summer off (Express)

Stephen Pollard — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:28:20 +0100

My Express column on the civil service's 7 week 'work from home' wheeze this summer is here.

Only a fantasist could believe in the euro now (Express)

Stephen Pollard — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:10:00 +0100

My Express column on the euro, Hollande and Greece, is here.

The flying dutchman

Stephen Pollard — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:32:47 +0100

There is one reason to see this new production of Flying Dutchman. And it is a compelling reason which makes me urge you to see it.

Edward Gardner, ENO's music director, conducts his first Wagner. And he does not just make a decent stab at it - he produces some of the greatest Wagner conducting you could ever hear.

The ENO orchestra - which plays as if the Berlin Philharmonic is just some hick regional band - is sensational. Gardner's interpretation is white hot from the start. There is a visceral thrill on the overture which does not let up for a second until the end of the opera - aided by the welcome decision to run the three acts together without an interval.

All I can really say is, wow!

As for the singing: Stuart Skelton's Erik is world-class, and Orla Boylan's Senta draws you in (despite being made to wear perversely drab clothes).

The production itself is interesting, with clever use of video to recreate the storm, and a disturbing party scene which is - properly - unsettling.

But there is a big hole dramatically, which is James Creswell's Dutchman. Every note is well pitched, but there is nothing there. He is more like a ledger clerk than an accursed sailor. Very forgettable.

But what is entirely memorable is Gardner's revelatory conducting. Go. (Tel: 0871 911 0200)

La Boheme

Stephen Pollard — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:32:47 +0100

John Copley's production of La bohème opened in 1974 and this is its 25th outing. But it can rarely have seemed fresher than with this excellent cast, and under the stunning baton of Semyon Bychkov.

From the very first note, Bychkov has the Royal Opera House orchestra on top form. And - all too rare with Puccini conducting - he clearly thinks that the opera is as much an orchestral as a vocal feast. He finds such detail and panache that the score sounds more like a tone poem than the usual vocal accompaniment. It is worth an evening of your time just for this.

But there is far more than that. Joseph Calleja is the pre-eminent Rodolfo of the moment. Often he sings beautifully but his acting leaves something to be desired. That is certainly not the case here; he was as passionate and moving a Rodolfo as you could wish for. And his voice is simply glorious.

His Mimi, the Italian Carmen Giannattasio, got better as the night wore on. Her voice is fine, without being anything to write home about.

There is an excellent house debut from Fabio Capitanucci as Marcello, and Nuccia Focile reprises her classic Musetta.

But the real honours go to Copley, who, with this revival of his 38-year-old production, celebrates 50 years at the Royal Opera. This is as good a Bohème as you will see. (Tel: 020 7304 4000)

Heroic acts of a favourite villain

Stephen Pollard — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:05:42 +0100

There are certain sentences which just can't be uttered. You know the sort of thing. If a politician said that most voters are idiots, he'd quickly be an ex-politician; and a rabbi who said that his shul board should stick to selling shmutters would soon be looking for a new congregation.

A new sentiment has joined that list. It was always pretty outré. But recently it's become toxic. And I am the man to tell you just how toxic, because I've said it myself and am still being told what that makes me.

I'm going to say it again. Right here, right now. And I know exactly what's coming my way after you read the next sentence.

Rupert Murdoch is not all bad.

Say that in polite company and you can see the air freeze. I'm still getting angry emails from people who can't believe that they heard such words coming out of my mouth.

I've put it rather more strongly than that before. A few months ago, on BBC TV's Question Time, I was asked whether it was right to compare James Murdoch with the head of the mafia. My response (as well as the word "no") was to point out that Rupert Murdoch has done more to engender a broad, free and prosperous press than any other living human. He has poured hundreds of millions of pounds into subsidising The Times. And his battle with the unions at Wapping set free every other newspaper, saving the industry.

In gambling his entire company on BSkyB, when the sages thought satellite broadcasting was a failsafe way to lose a fortune, he introduced unprecedented choice and quality for viewers. In my view, I said, Rupert Murdoch is one of the great men of history.

The expression on the audience's collective face was a treat. Rupert Murdoch?!

So send me your brickbats, laugh, dismiss me as mad. But I am entirely serious.

Criminal acts have clearly taken place at News International. Those responsible must be punished by the courts. And News Corp is rightly paying a heavy price for the wrongdoing. My point, however, is that, despite all that, Britain is much better off for having had Rupert Murdoch's papers and investment.

I'd argue that with anyone. But it's an especially important point for our community to grasp.

Think about news coverage of Israel. Imagine that Sky News didn't exist. We are so used to it now that it's hard to remember it's been around only since 1989. It exists because of one man: Rupert Murdoch.

If we get angry at the BBC's coverage of Israel now, think how much worse things would be if there were no counterbalance - if the only 24-hour news broadcaster was the BBC, with its "condemn first, check later" attitude, and its correspondents' knee-jerk anti-Israel approach.

Instead, we have Sky News, with its brilliant and objective foreign editor, Tim Marshall (whose byline occasionally graces the JC's pages). Which of us does not turn to Sky News rather than the BBC for unbiased reporting of the Middle East?

Then there are his newspapers. Of course, The Times is sometimes critical of Israel. So is the JC. But its criticism, like ours, is always from the perspective of a friend and admirer. The Times loses tens of millions of pounds every year. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists - and, more importantly, is a beacon of quality - because Rupert Murdoch chooses to pay for it.

And yet the suggestion that Mr Murdoch's contribution to British public life is overwhelmingly positive is regarded, even within our community, as ridiculous.

Instead of lauding him for what he has done, we stand back and sneer.

It has always been fashionable to bash Rupert Murdoch. Now it has become almost obligatory. We should step back and think for a moment before joining the stampede.

The Guardian backs down

Stephen Pollard — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:19:54 +0100

I've just heard that the Guardian has agreed to post a correction to their diary story.

Having libelled me by implying that I lied to their reporter, they now accept they got it wrong and are about to post this:

"In a diary item about the presence of blogs by Carlos Cortiglia, the BNP's
mayoral candidate, on the Jewish Chronicle website we stated that the blogs were
still available on November 23. We went on to say that this "conflicts" with the
editor of the JC, Stephen Pollard's, account "that he became aware of
Cortiglia's blog and deleted all trace of it 'last September' ". To clarify: he
told the Guardian's reporter that "in September we were alerted to the fact that
Cortiglia had set up a user blog and the moment we were told, we blocked him and
changed [the] entire system". Mr Pollard has asked us to point out that this was
not meant to imply that all traces of the blogs had been deleted in September –
in fact the measure he took at that time was to block Cortiglia's access. He
ordered the blogs to be deleted more recently."

The Guardian's libel of me

Stephen Pollard — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:16:59 +0100

UPDATE:

I've just heard from the Guardian at last that they accept the need for a clarification and will be posting this:

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

I've had a very instructive week, seeing at first hand how Israel's enemies will lie entirely brazenly in order to further their own ends.

The JC, as many of you will know, used to have an open access policy for its blog hosting. Anyone who wanted to could simply register and set up a blog. (The idea was quite trendy among media outlets when we started it, years ago). We had no involvement at all in the process - any more than, for instance, the Guardian does when people register with it in order to leave comments on its site.

Last autumn, we were alerted to the fact that a man with BNP affiliations had set up a blog. We immediately barred access to the site to prevent him posting.

That was the end of the matter until earlier this month, when someone searched our archives and found his 3 posts buried inside.

Gleefully, the antisemitic MPACUK site, along with Stephen Sizer (the vicar whose views we have covered in the paper) ran posts that we had a BNP blogger - without of course checking the context or mentioning the fact we banned him - the message was that we had invited him to blog.

This then went into the realms of total fantasy when a fanatically anti-Israel blogger called Richard Silverstein simply made up a story that we had announced the BNP man (who is now their candidate for Mayor of London) as our latest columnist.

See what I mean about lying for the furtherance of political ends? These people will do anything to smear the reputation those of us who support Israel's right to exist.

All sorts of rumours went round the blogosphere and Twitter. And they led a Guardian journalist (Andrew Brown) to get in touch to - perfectly reasonably - ask me if it was true. I told him exactly what I've written above.

On Friday, the Guardian published a diary story under the byline of Hugh Muir which, in its own way, defamed me and the JC even more than anyone before. It said I had told them that we had removed all trace of the BNP blogs in September - and then said that because they had seen screen shots of the blog earlier this month, I had lied about this.

That is itself a lie. At no point did I ever say we had deleted all trace of him then. Patently, we didn't - the story only broke because someone saw the archive posts of his in April.

I pointed this out to the Guardian on Friday, and how defamatory it was to suggest I had lied. Their response so far has been to do precisely nothing. I have been told that the 'readers editor' will investigate. I am still waiting for the results of that investigation.

In the meanwhile, that diary post, effectively accusing me of lying, has gone viral - and because it is in the Guardian, some people assume it must be true.

It isn't. The Guardian has published a libel of me and - so far - refused to do anything about it, despite being given the full version of the facts.

Two explanations are possible. First, that somewhere in the passing on of the story from Andrew Brown to Hugh Muir, words were garbled and they made a mistake. Most of us accept that errors happen - and when pointed out, we correct and apologise.

That they have so far refused to make any correction or apology makes me wonder if the second possible explanation may be more accurate - that they know exactly what they are doing and have deliberately chosen to libel me.

I'll update this if and when they do the right thing.

Put Abu Qatada on a plane and quit the ECHR (Express)

Stephen Pollard — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 08:28:18 +0100

My Express column on the latest Abu Qatada developments is here.

North Korean tyrants spend on rockets as their people starve (Express)

Stephen Pollard — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 09:43:07 +0100

My Express column on North Korea is here.

Despair is sometimes the only possible response

Stephen Pollard — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:10:40 +0100

There are times when the only appropriate response to events is despair.

Yes, this week the European Court of Human Rights approved the extradition to the US of five terrorist suspects. But it's mystifying how anyone can take cheer.

The idea that as a free country we should have such decisions placed in the hands of foreign judges who make their rulings on the basis of a fundamentally flawed convention is so patently unsatisfactory that I cannot, I'm afraid, bring myself to react with anything other than anger to the whole farce.

This is the same court, of course, which has also ruled that Abu Qatada cannot be deported to Jordan. So when it comes to praise for the ECHR's judgment over Abu Hamza and his colleagues, I say "thanks but no thanks".

Indeed, any smidgeon of relief brought on by this week's ECHR ruling is dwarfed by the immigration court victory of Raed Salah. Or, to be more precise, by the reasoning of the judge responsible for Salah's win, Mr Justice Ockelton, and the outpouring of bile that followed the decision.

Central to Sheikh Salah's case has been his outright denial that his words in a 2007 sermon about children's blood being used to bake "holy bread" was a reference to the blood libel. The judge found that Salah's claims were "wholly unpersuasive". As the judgment put it "We do not find this comment could be taken to be anything other than a reference to the blood libel against Jews."

And yet in the judge's reasoning, this mattered not a jot. Salah is a welcome visitor to the country.

Decadent doesn't even come close to describing a state of affairs in which an Islamic preacher can make reference to the blood libel but the judiciary tells him that such remarks are irrelevant to his fitness to be granted entry.

According to the judgment, such views are "not at the heart of the appellant's message" and "it is not easy to see that any reasonable observer would associate the appellant with them in any general sense". Clearly in Mr Justice Ockelton's mind it's unreasonable to associate a man who preaches a sermon based on the blood libel with, er, the blood libel. Go figure.

In the end, Salah himself is an irrelevance. Rabble rousers like him are ten a penny. The importance of his case is symbolic, because it is of a piece with so much else.

When the hate preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi was invited to City Hall by Ken Livingstone, what was his party's response? To reselect him as its mayoral candidate.

When anti-Israel campaigners went on the rampage, destroying the property of a company they claimed has ties to Israel, what was the response of the criminal justice system? Judge Bathurst-Norman did not merely acquit but praised the men.

And when Michael Gove earmarked extra funds to protect Jewish children from violent racist attacks, how did a supposedly progressive newspaper - the Guardian - react? By attacking, on entirely fabricated sleaze charges, the role of the Community Security Trust, the organisation responsible for protecting Jews.

As if in an unbroken thread, the CST is under fire again, this time on the back of the Salah appeal judgment, with Mr Justice Ockelton saying that the Home Secretary was misled.

His words have given free rein to a barrage of conspiracists, who are not merely implying but trumpeting the idea that CST - in other words, the Jews - pushed a deceitful agenda to get a perfectly upstanding citizen removed from the UK because he dared to criticise Israel.

Yet it wasn't the CST that pushed the Home Office into anything. It was the Home Office that asked CST for information about Salah. And it was CST who provided the Home Office with the original copy of the disputed 2002 poem in Arabic and English translation. As CST says: "Nobody else provided this information either to the government or to the immigration tribunal, despite the fact that we obtained it all from public sources."

But this is Jews we are talking about, so the default reaction of so many is to push the idea of a conspiracy, whatever the facts.

Despair is, initially at least, an impotent reaction. It doesn't offer a plan of action. It doesn't change anything. But until we react appropriately to what is going on around us, we don't have a chance of changing anything.

And I challenge anyone not to despair about the events of this week.