UCL antisemitism

Apartheid Week watch – day one. The Jew hating fetish opens at UCL

UCL antisemitismIt is Apartheid ‘Week’ again. Last night, 27 Feb 2017 I was at UCL (University College London) for the opening night of UCL’s very own ‘Apartheid Fortnight’ (we were informed that their ‘classy’ week has been ‘doubled’). This event was titled ‘Apartheid: Stories from the Ground

The evening was put together by the UCLU Friends of Palestine Society. Which means that the welcoming committee was led by Yahya Abu Seido. A few months ago, Yahya was one of the ringleaders when the protestors tried to ‘no platform’ an Israeli speaker on this campus. In fact, Yahya was caught on camera celebrating what he had believed was the successful closing down of the event. He was part of the group that left the Jewish students locked in a room. Those that left Jewish students needing a police escort to remove them safely. Just a few months later he is happily leading a Jew hating festival on the UCL campus. Another bitter pill that the Jewish UCL students are forced to swallow.

At this event, there were two speakers and a Chair. The Chair was Dr Saladin Meckled-Garcia, the ‘co Director of the UCL institute of Human Rights’. Just in case anyone is foolish enough to believe that a Chair should at least maintain the veneer of impartiality, we can see that Meckled-Garcia has signed petitions against Israel, here, here, here and here. Just for good measure he signed one titled ‘Israel must lose’ in 2009. This ‘impartiality’ was visible throughout the evening, especially in the way the Q&A was handled.

The evening opened with the Chair announcing he wanted to make a political statement. Meckled-Garcia then proceeded to object to the use of the adopted definition of antisemitism for what he suggested was a way of silencing ‘free speech’.  How anybody can address the thugs of the UCLU Friends of Palestine Society about free speech and keep a straight face is beyond me.  At least we were left in no doubt as to which side the Chair was on from the very beginning.

In any event, Meckled-Garica hid behind the tired argument that because people like Ilan Pappe exist, demonising Israel is not antisemitism. This absurd logic glorifies Israeli outliers, argues they are in fact, part of the norm, and then uses them as cover to attack the Jewish state. We could do the same to those in the UK who believe they have been taken aboard an alien spaceship. We can reward their experience with academic positions in our universities, and then attack anyone who hasn’t yet seen the truth of their abductions.

The ‘forgetful’ doctor at UCL

The first speaker was Dr Swee Ang Chai, author of ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem’. Dr Swee described herself as a Christian, who grew up as a strong supporter of Israel. In some ways, you can understand Swee Ang Chai’s story. She saw conflict on TV, rushed as a medical practitioner to assist the wounded, and ended up sympathising with the victims of war that she treated. Given the very real horrors that I am sure she has witnessed, I have little doubt her passion is genuine. This much I understand.

What I neither understand, nor forgive is the one sided, propaganda machine this Doctor has turned herself into. She spoke almost exclusively about the horror of Sabra and Shatila, showing slide after slide of vivid images of the wounded, images that were clearly designed to shock. Yet she failed to mention at any point that it wasn’t the Israelis who committed the massacre. This completely skews the message.

This appears to be a habit of the good doctor’s. In 2014, Richard Millet wrote a piece about Swee Ang Chai in which he found her guilty of the same distortion. In fact when she was directly questioned on her inability to name the group that actually committed the massacre, she lost herself inside a conspiracy tale.

Mr slick at UCL

The second speaker was part of the modern slick Palestinian propaganda machine. Well presented, well spoken and speaking the universal language of ‘peace’. Just like the BDS movement Abed Salayma presents himself as ‘non violent’.  Just like BDS, Salayma verbally legitimises the use of violence in the same sentence as he suggests he is non-violent.

Salayma’s talk was full of the distortions that are so typical of these events. Error, distortion, error, distortion. At one point Salayma had the words ‘1929 massacre’ written on one of his slides. He did this to mention how during a massacre of Jews, Arab families had saved many Jews from the killings. At no point did he mention that the Arabs were also doing the killing. The 1929 Hebron massacre was delivered to these students as a positive message about the Arab treatment of Jews.

It is impossible to write a comprehensive report of every lie that was told at this UCL event. They came far too quickly. Each sentence contained another name, another event, another distortion. Both the Doctor and Mr Slick were relentless. This wasn’t an evening of information, this was part of a well-oiled system designed to turn terrorist in to victim and victim into terrorist.

The Q&A

The question and answer session began and the first question came from Jonathan Hoffman and was directed towards Dr Swee Ang Chai. It was at this point Hoffman informed the audience that the doctor had distributed a David Duke video to friends and colleagues. A video entitled ‘CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix’.   She had done so along with a note to say:

“This is a shocking video please watch. This is not about Palestine – it is about all of us!”

As Hoffman read out the horrifying contents of this video, members of the UCL audience actually laughed. This connection between the neo-Nazis and anti-Israel activism is rock solid.  During the exchange between the Doctor and Jonathan Hoffman, alongside her apology, the Doctor said of the video:

“I don’t think it is entirely anti-Jewish”

Imagine for one moment this scenario:

Somebody posts a racist Klu Klux Klan video pushing vile stereotypical racist slurs about blacks. The person involved would not easily be forgiven by anyone on the left. Certainly not have the accusation ‘laughed at’ when read out by a black member of an audience. Now imagine that what this person did for a career, was sell a greatly distorted vision about events concerning Africans. Demonising them through the use of carefully selected images, distorted stories, missing facts and maps that lie. Would anybody fail to join the dots?

There was a question that dealt with the lack of context provided by Abed Salayma during his talk. Israeli kill, Palestinians die. ‘There is no conflict’ Salayma insisted, no conflict at all. This is ‘oppression’ and the ‘oppressed’.

This was followed by a Jewish South African who is both too young and too galactically stupid to know what Apartheid looks like. He received applause by suggesting the context is oppression too. And when you oppress, ‘bad things happen’. I suppose he is referring to bus bombs, mall attacks, exploding cafes, slaughters at Seder nights and so on. The real historical suffering of Black South Africans under the Apartheid regime is belittled every single time one of these simpletons opens their mouths.

Then it was over. It is going to be a difficult week, fortnight, month.

Jew hatred is accommodated in a way no other hatred is.  Students with a Jew hating fetish, gathered at UCL to enjoy the annual ritual. The crowd, raised in rapture as they received their ‘fix’. Jew hatred is being permitted to publicly mutate and grow on campus. This won’t end nicely.

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17 thoughts on “Apartheid Week watch – day one. The Jew hating fetish opens at UCL

  1. Can I suggest that everyone simply ignores Stephen Bellamy? He has nothing to offer. He writes only to boost his own low self-esteem and ego and he feeds off this when anyone responds and tries to argue with him. Ignore him and he’ll eventually wither and die and all we’ll be left with is his inconsequential rants.

    1. Charlie anyone wanting to argue with me about Israel is doomed to eternal frustration. I don’t do arguments about Israel. Israel is not for arguing about it is for doing something about.

  2. Did anyone investigate who the softly spoken person in the distributed video was? Wikipedia describes David Duke as ‘David Ernest Duke is an American white nationalist, politician, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, and former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan’. Would I be forgiven for assuming that the kind of person there at UCL for that event would probably have been general supporters of his other roles?

    And as for Dr Swee Ang Chai, in her interview on the BBCs HARDtalk in 2011 (video on YouTube) she said that she wanted to make it perfectly clear that she did not blame the Israeli people for what happened in Sabra and Shatila, even if she thought that there was a possibility, because she’d been told by others, that the IDF may have had something to do with helping the Lebanese Christians who actually carried out the massacre!!

  3. http://hurryupharry.org/2017/03/01/ucl-in-la-la-land-2/

    ‘La La Land may not have won ‘Best Film’ at the Oscars on Sunday but we were treated to a version of it at UCL the following day. Excepting that this production was set not in Los Angeles but in the Middle East. And no singing and dancing – just two and half hours of unadulterated vitriolic one-sided mendacity about the Jewish State, poisoning the minds of yet another generation (some 150) of students.

    If there was an Oscar for ‘most duplicitous medieval disputation of the Jewish State at Israel Apartheid Week 2017’, this event is the odds-on favourite (though please be reassured that the rest of the week/fortnight/month will produce some close challengers).’

    1. Actually this puts me in mind of one of your previous UCL jollies when you claimed to have deprogrammed some UCL students. Of course you deleted the blog along with most of the others that proved to be more than usually embarrassing.

      But anyway here is a little trip down memory lane.

  4. The writer finds the speakers on this 2-week Israel Apartheid festival *untruthful *forgetful and twisting facts with fantasies.

    How the hell do you want to fill a 2-week Festival about Palestine?

    1) “Palestinians” are in reality Arabs.
    Under the British mandate of Palestine the JEWS were called Palestinians and the Arabs by their real name ARABS.

    2) “”Palestinian”” historic leaders were:
    Ahmad Shukeiry, born in Libanon in 1908.
    Yassir Arafat, born in Cairo/Egypt in 1929

    Not exactly “Palestine”.

    “Palestine” that magical country where citizens “Palestinians” have 2 democratic elected presidents Abbas & Hanyeh to rule them, which proves they are neither occupied nor fugitives.

    That’s it , that’s all there is to know about Palestine & Palestinians and their glorious history and ‘terrible’ present

    Sorry, but you can’t fill a 2-week conference with that.

  5. I call it Israel for “Palestine” is nothing more than a pipe dream for dummy’s.

    Jews have been the original inhabitants of Israel for thousands of years and were named after the land called JUDEA with their capital Jerusalem build by their King David.

    The Jewish Old Testament (the book of which the Christian Bible has been distracted) mentions all the places the “Palestinians” claim as theirs although “Palestine” didn’t exist then and aren’t mentioned in the Torah, the Bible or the Koran (exists only 1500 years)

    So, I wonder where their claims comes from. As I said pipe dreams!

    The Jewish descendants returned, reclaimed & rebuild Israel after 2000 years in a forced exile. The Israeli’s from Arab descent are Israeli’s and 95% live a full and integrated life as Israeli’s.

    So your beloved Palestinians have nothing to look for in Israel, as a matter of fact nowhere because
    Palestinian Arabs are the least liked group of people in the Arab world, only of good use as a football to be kicked around when needed for politics.

  6. David, few people are going to be swayed by the content on this site, that you’ve obviously spent much effort in authoring & curating. In terms of quality, it is poorly researched and produced – having seen just this article, I’m not eager to look at any more.

    It is not healthy to be devoting so much time to generating tendentious, antipathetic polemic. For the psychology underlying your motivation, you should seek some professional counsel. For what it has to offer the concrete political tensions concerning Israel-Palestine, you’d be better off spending the time out on the town with your mates.

    1. Thank you for your advice Simon. It is a shame, seeing as you took the time to point out the piece was ‘badly researched’, that you didn’t give an example.

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