The row over the Thought for the Day broadcast by the Scottish cleric Rev Dr John Bell has taken an even more surreal and sinister turn. As I noted in a previous post, BBC Radio Four allowed Bell to broadcast a totally unsubstantiated smear that the Israel Defence Force ordered its soldiers to shoot unarmed Palestinian children. He was reporting a conversation he had had with a waiter in a Vancouver restaurant, who claimed to be an Israeli Arab who had resisted such an order. Embarrassed by the fact that Bell had made no effort to discover whether any of this was true, the BBC posted a qualified apology for factual ‘inaccuracies’, although it did not apologise for the libel about the IDF.

Now, an official in the Church of Scotland has weighed into the controversy -- by comparing Bell to Jesus! In a letter to the Herald, Sandy Gemmill, a deputy treasurer in the church, has written:

‘Two thousand years ago there was a man in Israel who used such uncorroborated tales of Samaritans, servants, agricultural workers, sheep, weddings and the like to illustrate various controversial points. Clearly the passage of time has not dampened the enthusiasm of the Israeli authorities to speak out against such tales and take action to suppress apparent lies …Unfortunately, any criticism of the Israeli government is now taken as being anti-Semitic…The term should not be used to deflect unfavourable comments about the way that governments abuse their powers. The Israeli government is no different from those in authority in, for example, Great Britain and the United States. Governments are like monoliths in exercising power on behalf of the people and from time to time must be reminded of the need to see beyond their own self-centred interests to those of the human race. If an uncorroborated story concerning any member of the Israeli Army, real or imaginary, can aid that process then that should be applauded.’

So faced with a libel perpetrated against the Jews, Gemmill concludes that the Jews who are protesting are trying to suppress the truth and crucify the perpetrator, just like he thinks they did to Jesus! One is aghast at this calumny piled upon calumny, at the anti-Jewish prejudice that is here revealed and at the brazen revelation of the ancient theological underpinning of this prejudice. Gemmill assumes that what Bell said was true, even though there is not a shred of evidence for it and even though his account contained two demonstrable errors of fact which should surely give any rational person grounds for suspecting that the whole thing was a farrago of nonsense. Gemmill nevertheless assumes it to be true because he knows, beyond any shadow of doubt and beyond the small question of demonstrable evidence to support such a claim, that Israel abuses its powers. Indeed, he would like to see even more such uncorroborated claims expressed – even about ‘imaginary’ Israeli soldiers — simply in order to throw mud at Israel. So even lies will do. What pathological spite is this? What terrifying beast has been unleashed here?

Gemmill also claims that claims of anti-Semitism are being used by Jews to ‘deflect unfavourable comments’ about Israel -- in other words, to promote ideological censorship. But this is itself a grossly defamatory and wickedly unfair accusation. Jews like myself do not cry anti-Semitism at any ‘unfavourable comments’ about Israel. What we are up against is a systematic campaign of falsehoods, ignorance, misapprehensions and grotesque prejudices designed to delegitimise Israel by falsifying current and historic realities and further delegitimising the moral probity of the Jewish people. Israel does not generally abuse its powers. Rather, it is abused by people spreading lies and libels about it, which are believed by the likes of Gemmill because -- as he has so graphically revealed -- they correspond to a vicious theological Christian prejudice against the Jews.

Bell, who has apologised for unintentionally giving offence, has expressed his bewilderment that what he thought was an unexceptional account should have been taken to be an expression of anti-Jewish prejudice. But now we can see that, whatever Bell may have thought he was thinking, there is a strain of thinking in the church which is indeed virulently anti-Jewish -- and can express such prejudice without any shame. Right from earliest times, the Jews have been doubly victimised -- first by being systematically persecuted, attacked and murdered, and then by being blamed for the destruction of others and of themselves. The Biblical antecedents of this vile scapegoating have now been shamefully reaffirmed in this aftermath to the Thought for the Day affair.

These are indeed the most dangerous and worrying of times for the Jews of Britain. And that's bad news for everyone else.

Posted by melanie at February 22, 2005