Issues: General Discussion

There’s no getting away from Jeremy’s politics. If you have an opinion on any of his stances, I’ll be happy to consider its publication on this page. This is not necessarily an endorsement from me, and certainly not one from Mr H himself.

Northern Ireland

2002-02-06

Hi there

In a moment of idleness when I ought to be working I thought I'd read about Jeremy Hardy, so congratulations on doing such a splendid page. One thing though (and if you skip to the end you'll see why it's what I find so frustrating about Jeremy himself): "Crucially, and perhaps the main issue in his weekly column, Mr Hardy supports the reunification of Northern Ireland with Eire ("Northern Ireland is part of Ireland, not Britain, as can clearly be seen from aerial photographs"). [I find it surprising that so few people agree with him-people appear not to appreciate the inevitable problems that arise when a majority is gerrymandered by drawing a border to incorporate 6/9 of a province. How would the English react if Germany drew a red line around Buckingham Palace and claimed it because it was the will of the people
chosen? Gets off soap box.] "

Well… I'm not saying you're wrong, but… the protestant population moved there an awfully long time ago, before the founding of the United States for example. If there was a 300 year old German population of hundreds of thousands in an enclave of the British mainland, I think it might indeed have a case for at least some autonomy, as enjoyed by many similar historical anomalies all across Europe (the Aaland islands, Monaco, Kosovo etc.). At the very least, one could empathise with calls for such autonomy, and it wouldn't be surprising to hear such calls. On the aerial photo comment Jeremy made, one might as well say Scotland has no right to independence because it only represents a minority of the land and population of mainland Britain. Germany clearly was in the right to absorb Czechoslovakia and Poland, especially considering the large German minorities there. Spain would look *so* much neater on the map if it swallowed Portugal, East Timor should take over West Timor, China is entitled to Tibet etc.

I'm not saying the above arguments are right, just that it’s not very clear cut when you look at it objectively, there are rational arguments on most sides, and the origins of territorial conflict are usually buried deep in crueller less democratic times when every government was a dictatorship. The English/British-Irish thing is so old it actually predates protestantism, at the beginning it was catholics fighting catholics.

The crucial thing, and the only important thing really, is how you stop innocent people (most of whom don't commit violence whoever's in charge) being killed, and that's usually best done by each understanding the opposition's point of view, making concessions to them and doing things with the approval of both sides' populations. Gerry Adams made a speech in New York this week where he specifically said he couldn't see a united Ireland without the consent of the Unionist community, and this is also what the Irish PM has said many times. It's also enshrined in the Irish Republic's constitution (after a referendum in the Republic altered it following the Good Friday Agreement). Majority rule isn't a victory for the British, because the shifting demographics of NI mean in 40–50 years there will be a Catholic majority. (This is presumably why Blair said he doesn't think there'll be a united Ireland in his lifetime.) What it does is reduce the killing and violence in the long term, and that matters more than anything else.

(the Jeremy Hardy frustration bit)

What Jeremy Hardy does quite often (albeit in an extremely funny way) is give out a vibe that he's got it right, no one else could possibly be right and he doesn't have sympathy with other views. The funniest thing I ever heard ever from anyone was a remark he made (I think it was on "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue") about how he hates people responding to him with the phrase"well what's the alternative?". One night he crept downstairs to find a burglar shagging the video recorder screaming "What's the alternative?!". Now, I couldn't get that disturbing image out of my mind for quite some weeks and kept laughing out loud at Asda, on the bus, in court etc. BUT (if you're going to take it seriously, which is questionable)… what Jeremy Hardy was actually saying was that if he objected to something, it didn't matter whether there was a coherent alternative or not, or whether his proposal was coherent. If he didn't like something, he was entitled to call for an end to it, without any thought for the consequences. If you want an immediate united Ireland, it doesn't matter if hundreds of people die in the ensuing violence. It's creepy because it puts Jeremy Hardy in the same thought-free bracket as the Daily Mail, which regularly calls for a better funded NHS on one page and lower taxes on the next.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a left-winger, but I want to see things actually happen as opposed to just moaning, dreaming and posturing for fashionable effect. I also don't want to force my politics on the majority without their consent because, well, that's fascism. This half-funded half-ambitious state is a bit stuck, but unless you convince UK voters (who elected Thatcher three times in a row, and chose Peter Mandelson over Arthur Scargill in a left-wing seat last election) to be more left-wing, someone like Blair really is the most socialist person you're ever likely to see in national government. To misquote, it's the voters who control the means of election, and it's only by confronting and educating voters (not politicians) that you're ever going to change things.

Oh heck, why have I written all this? Sorry. Skiving instinct no doubt. Still, I hate to delete it now it's there. Ignore it if you like, you'll lose no karma.

I wish Jeremy'd either be a bit more open-minded or a bit less funny, cause then I wouldn't have a problem about watching him. But he is so amusing… aergh.

Thank you again for the site.

Patrick

The Middle East: Isreal

2002-04-04

Palestinians

Please THANK Jeremy for being one of the brave. He was one of the most outspoken people I have heard, when he reported by phone to Sky News (2002-04-03 20:00) on his recent experience in the West Bank. His sympathy for the Palestinians and their plight could be felt. He spoke sense. Here was someone who finally dared to mention the possible reasons behind the suicide bombings, whilst not supporting the use of violence. Yet the Sky News reader Bob Friend noticeably interrupted Jeremy, more than once, in an attempt to divert his comments away from the sufferings of the Palestinians. I have asked Sky News if they allowed Jeremy's report to be aired again or was he further silenced?

It is people like Jeremy that make a difference—Thank you.

Yours faithfully

Sally Al-Malak, Qatar

2002-04-05

TO MR JEREMY HARDY, CARE OF HIS SUPPORTIVE BAND OF BROTHERS

Hardly suprising whilst being the worst comedian in Britain, Mr Hardy’s visit to the Home of Terror, was not to give support and sympathy to the thousands of innocent children and families killed in the recent bombing in Israel, or to march down a London street with flags bearing "anti-terroism" but for him to give support vocally and in person to the terrorist organisations of Hamas and Hizbollah?

In fact to show the world what a supporter of nazi terror is, and to show himself to be a strong supporter of all that is Evil!

Is Mr Hardy a nazi sympathiser? I believe he is after his disgusting behaviour last week.

How dare a man a weak little man such as he, who has absolutely no morals, not bother to sit in an Israeli Pizzeria and support those who were unashamedly killed last week by TERRORISTS, but Mr Hardy has given support to THESE terrorists by his way of placing his and others lives in Danger. For WHAT???

Why don't you email him the TRUTH, for he FORGETS the TRUTH of who YASSER and his FLOCK OF MURDERERS are????

Why does AN ARAB PUT HIS CHILD IN THE FRONT LINE, PLACE WEAPONS STORAGE IN SCHOOLS, AND THINK OF A CHILD'S LIFE AS NOTHING AS TO SACRIFICE IT WHERE THERE ARE BULLETS SHOOTINGS? ANSWER: BECAUSE A terrorist and that of Yassers Army think nothing of life life or them is cheap!

Mr Hardy, why don't you know the past of Mr Arafat?

Arafat's family name is al-Husseini. He does not use his family name because he wants to hide the blood relationship to his uncle. His uncle was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the virulent anti-Semitic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The same Grand Mufti who was a close confident of Adolf Hitler and who also assisted in plans relating to the ‘final solution' of the Jewish problem, commonly known as the Holocaust. The same person who encouraged an ensuing Nazi occupation of the Holy Land and the genocide/holocaust of all Jews living there. In parallel with the Nazi propaganda of the Third Reich, Yasser Arafat has led his Palestinian Authority’s own racist indoctrination program that depicts Jews as 'murderers and rapists, bloodsuckers, dogs, monkeys and pigs, and enemies of Islam who massacre the faithful'. (Please excuse the terminology, but these are the exact phrases used in official Palestinian media, TV and education system.) Arafat publicly likes to hide his involvement and portray himself as distant as possible from any involvement in such racist incitement, as he also does in relation to the murderous attacks which we have witnessed upon Israeli civilians in recent days.

Arafat likes to promote this myth in order that he can direct the violence behind the scenes and yet publicly remain adrift and distant from those on the ground firing the guns and mortars, exonerating his involvement. This has been proved to be deceit of the highest order and those who are familiar with the conflict will not be deceived. And neither will the Israeli Leaders as we have seen today.

PALESTINIAN MYTH—WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS? READ AND LEARN MR HARDY FOR YOU NEED A HISTORY LESSON!
The general impression given in the media is that Palestinians have lived in the Holy Land for hundreds, if not thousands of years. No wonder, then, that a recent poll of French citizens shows that the majority believe (falsely) that prior to the establishment of the State of Israel an independent Arab Palestinian state existed in its place. Yet curiously, when it comes to giving the history of this “ancient” people most news outlets find it harder to go back more than the early nineteen hundreds. CNN, an agency which has devoted countless hours of airtime to the “plight” of the Palestinians, has a website which features a special section on the Middle East conflict called “Struggle For Peace”. It includes a promising sounding section entitled “Lands Through The Ages” which assures us it will detail the history of the region using maps. Strangely, it turns out, the maps displayed start no earlier than the ancient date of 1917. The CBS News website has a background section called “A Struggle For Middle East Peace.’’ Its history timeline starts no earlier than 1897. The NBC News background section called “Searching for Peace” has a timeline which starts in 1916. BBC’s timeline starts in 1948.

Yet, the clincher must certainly be the Palestinian National Authority’s own website. While it is top heavy on such phrases as “Israeli occupation” and “Israeli human rights violations” the site offers practically nothing on the history of the so-called Palestinian people. The only article on the site with any historical content is called “Palestinian History—20th Century Milestones” which seems only to confirm that prior to 1900 there was no such concept as the Palestinian People.

While the modern media may be short on information about the history of the “Palestinian people” the historical record is not. Books, such as Battleground by Samuel Katz and From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters long ago detailed the history of the region. Far from being settled by Palestinians for hundreds, if not thousands of years, the Land of Israel, according to dozens of visitors to the land, was, until the beginning of the last century, practically empty. Alphonse de Lamartine visited the land in 1835. In his book, Recollections of the East, he writes “Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw no living object, heard no living sound….” None other than the famous American author Mark Twain, who visited the Land of Israel in 1867, confirms this. In his book Innocents Abroad he writes, “A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely…. We never saw a human being on the whole journey.” Even the British Consul in Palestine reported, in 1857, “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population…”

In fact, according to official Ottoman Turk census figures of 1882, in the entire Land of Israel, there were only 141,000 Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab. This number was to skyrocket to 650,000 Arabs by 1922, a 450% increase in only 40 years. By 1938 that number would become over 1 million or an 800% increase in only 56 years. Population growth was especially high in areas where Jews lived. Where did all these Arabs come from? According to the Arabs the huge increase in their numbers was due to natural childbirth. In 1944, for example, they alleged that the natural increase (births minus deaths) of Arabs in the Land of Israel was the astounding figure of 334 per 1000. That would make it roughly three times the corresponding rate for the same year of Lebanon and Syria and almost four times that of Egypt, considered amongst the highest in the world. Unlikely, to say the least. If the massive increase was not due to natural births, then were did all these Arabs come from?

All the evidence points to the neighboring Arab states of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. In 1922 the British Governor of the Sinai noted that “illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria.” In 1930, the British Mandate-sponsored Hope-Simpson Report noted that “unemployment lists are being swollen by immigrants from Trans-Jordania” and “illicit immigration through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine is material.” The Arabs themselves bare witness to this trend. For example, the governor of the Syrian district of Hauran, Tewfik Bey el Hurani, admitted in 1934 that in a single period of only a few months over 30,000 Syrians from Hauran had moved to the Land of Israel. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted the Arab influx. Churchill, a veteran of the early years of the British mandate in the Land of Israel, noted in 1939 that “far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied.”

Far from displacing the Arabs, as they claimed, the Jews were the very reason the Arabs chose to settle in the Land of Israel. Jobs provided by newly established Zionist industry and agriculture lured them there, just as Israeli construction and industry provides most Arabs in the Land of Israel with their main source of income today. Malcolm MacDonald, one of the principal authors of the British White Paper of 1939, which restricted Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel, admitted (conservatively) that were it not for a Jewish presence the Arab population would have been little more than half of what it actually was. Today, when due to the latest “intifada” Arabs from the territories under 35 are no longer allowed into pre-1967 Israel to work, unemployment has skyrocketed to over 40% and most rely on European aid packages to survive.

Not only pre-state Arabs lied about being indigenous. Even today, many prominent so-called Palestinians, it turns out, are foreign born. Edward Said, an Ivy League Professor of Literature and a major Palestinian propagandist, long claimed to have been raised in Jerusalem. However, in an article in the September 1999 issue of Commentary Magazine Justus Reid Weiner revealed that Said actually grew up in Cairo, Egypt, a fact which Said himself was later forced to admit. But why bother with Said? PLO chief Yasir Arafat himself, self declared “leader of the Palestinian people”, has always claimed to have been born and raised in “Palestine”. In fact, according to his official biographer Richard Hart, as well as the BBC, Arafat was born in Cairo on August 24, 1929 and that’s where he grew up.

To maintain the charade of being an indigenous population, Arab propagandists have had to do more than a little rewriting of history. A major part of this rewriting involves the renaming of geography. For two thousand years the central mountainous region of Israel was known as Judea and Samaria, as any medieval map of the area testifies. However, the state of Jordan occupied the area in 1948 and renamed it the West Bank. This is a funny name for a region that actually lies in the eastern portion of the land and can only be called “West” in reference to Jordan. This does not seem to bother the majority of news outlets covering the region, which universally refer to the region by its recent Jordanian name.

The term “Palestinian” is itself a masterful twisting of history. To portray themselves as indigenous, Arab settlers adopted the name of an ancient Canaanite tribe, the Phillistines, that died out almost 3000 years ago. The connection between this tribe and modern day Arabs is nil. Who is to know the difference? Given the absence of any historical record, one can understand why Yasser Arafat claims that Jesus Christ, a Jewish carpenter from the Galilee, was a Palestinian. Every year, at Christmas time, Arafat goes to Bethlehem and tells worshippers that Jesus was in fact “the first Palestinian”.

If the Palestinians are indeed a myth, then the real question becomes “Why?” Why invent a fictitious people? The answer is that the myth of the Palestinian People serves as the justification for Arab occupation of the Land of Israel. While the Arabs already possess 21 sovereign countries of their own (more than any other single people on earth) and control a land mass 800 times the size of the Land of Israel, this is apparently not enough for them. They therefore feel the need to rob the Jews of their one and only country, one of the smallest on the planet. Unfortunately, many people ignorant of the history of the region, including much of the world media, are only too willing to help.

It is interesting to note that the Bible makes reference to a fictitious nation confronting Israel. “They have provoked me to jealously by worshipping a non-god, angered me with their vanities. I will provoke them with a non-nation; anger them with a foolish nation (Deuteronomy 32:21).”

On second thought, it may be unfair to compare Palestine to Disneyland. After all, Disneyland really exists.

If you must go into history, PALESTINE was Israel, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and some of Iraq, and you must remember that the so called "PALESTINIANS" Yasser and his ficticious biblical myth, were nothing more than Arabs. The palestinians themselves are not a people. They are a mixture of ARABS! Therefore, Yasser Arafat is portraying "his people" as a false people, that apparently came to the region thousands of years ago! WRONG… That gets it exactly backward.

Palestinian terrorists do not blow up crowded Israeli pizzerias because they want to provoke Jerusalem into abrogating the Oslo accords and abandoning the policy of “land for peace”. On the contrary: The Palestinian leadership uses terrorism to accelerate the Oslo process—to render Israelis so desperate and demoralized that they will make even deeper concessions, surrender even more land, and struggle even harder to make peace with their enemies. Yasser Arafat's Potemkin arrests this week notwithstanding, his Palestinian Authority is as wedded to terrorism as Hamas and Islamic Jihad are. All three share the same goal: the elimination of Israel. Strip away the rhetoric, and the Arab war against Israel is based, above all, on hatred of Jews. That is as true today, when an Arafat-appointed sheik promises "blessings to whoever saved a bullet to put in a Jew's head," as it was in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Jews of Hebron were massacred and the mufti of Jerusalem sang Hitler's praises.

To justify their violence and irredentism, Arab propagandists have developed an elaborate mythology about a stolen homeland, an ancient Palestinian nation and a cruel expulsion at the hands of the Jews. They have repeated it so often and so loudly that much of the world has come to believe it.

While attending the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's national convention in 1991, I stopped at a booth selling historic Palestinian artifacts. This was two years before Oslo—Arafat was still in Tunisia and there was as yet no Palestinian Authority—and I can remember the wistfulness with which the merchant showed me the old postage stamps marked ‘Palestine’. “These were issued in Jerusalem,” he told me, “when Palestine was ours; before the occupation.”

There was the myth in a nutshell: Palestine used to belong to the Palestinians, who ruled it from their capital in Jerusalem until the Jews swarmed in and drove them out. That is the root of all the violence and grief and until the Palestinians can return to their homeland, the violence and grief will go on.

The truth is rather different MR HARDY!

The truth is that there was never an Arab country of Palestine and that Palestinian Arabs were never a nation. So closely was Palestine associated with Jews, in fact, that in the years before Israel's birth, those who spoke of "Palestinians" were usually referring to the region's Jewish residents. Arab leaders rejected the notion of a unique Palestinian Arab identity, insisting that Palestine was merely a part of ‘Greater Syria’. Not that they saw Palestine as much of a prize in any case. Until the Zionist enterprise got underway, Palestine was stagnant and mostly barren. Its Arab population was small and declining. With Jewish development, however, came economic opportunity and better living conditions, which, in turn, attracted huge numbers of Arab immigrants from beyond Palestine's borders.

Yet, if the Arabs didn't consider themselves Palestinians, they nevertheless ended up with most of Palestine. When the Ottoman Empire was broken up after World War I, the Allies carved a raft of new Arab countries from its territory, reserving only Palestine to fulfill their promise of a Jewish national home. Then, in 1922, Great Britain severed the 77 percent of Palestine that lay east of the Jordan River and created yet another Arab country—today's Jordan. Three-fourths of historic Palestine is sovereign Arab territory, and has been barred to Jews for 80 years. Arabs displaced by war from one part of Palestine have always had the rest of Palestine to resettle in—if only their Arab brethren would permit it.

The Arab myth of an ancient homeland stolen by Jews is dramatic and affecting, but it is still a myth. The Jews, meanwhile—the real Palestinians—try to live on just the sliver of land that lies between the river and the sea. Yet even that is too much for their neighbors, who cannot abide a Jewish state of any size. On the day it was born, they tried to wipe it out. They have been trying ever since.

Mr Hardy, I hope that none of your family will ever have to die in a Suicide Bomb or terrorist attack!

You have nothing but selfish and an unmoralistic nature and I hope that you can live with yourself for what you have done.

Miss Botchin

2004-01-24

Dear Steve

'Miss Botchin' provides a fairly typical example of an anti-Palestinian rant with pretentions of objectivity. It might be worth noting that Joan Peters' book 'From Time Immemorial' which she cites and [from which she] seems to have copied much of the information in her letter has been widely discredited as a work of academic fiction—Peters can provide precisely no substantive evidence for her central claim that the Palestinians immigrated to Palestine after the creation of the state of Israel, and her work is riddled with inaccuracies, distortions and outright fabrications. For an interesting academic demolition of the book see 'Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict' by Norman Finkelstein, chapter 2. Objectivity is a quality that is perhaps over-valued in relation to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. An appeal to 'objectivity' is often made in an attempt to avoid substantive discussion of serious, difficult issues. I cannot comment on Mr Hardy's political beliefs, but I did think his film was laudable for showing someone struggling with their own beliefs and opinions, and in describing a process of the thoughtful change of opinions, in very difficult circumstances. The only hope for a just solution to the I-P conflict is through a careful process of reasoned debate by as many people as possible, both in governments and among the public. To aid this process we should confine outselves to reasoned arguments, rather than giving into the tempation to propogate ill-argued polemics, based on widely discredited evidence. Yours,

Christian

The opinions on this page are not necessarily ones Mr Hardy and/or I agree with. Opposing points of view are very welcome. Please use the normal email address, on the left of the page. Contributions have been subedited for formatting.