Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Friday 31 May 2013

Muslims Going Against The Grain (includes video)

At the weekend I attended a booksale of Judaica, and included among my purchases a paperback entitled Al-Yahud: Eternal Islamic Enmity & The Jews, by Elias Al-Maqdisi and Sam Solomon.

It distills, in simple form, the often blood-curdling antisemitism inherent in Islam and the Muslim tradition.

Needless to say, it makes frightening and depressing reading.

So it's good to be reminded that there are Muslims out there (though woefully too few) who disavow Jew-hatred and even speak up forcefully for the right of Israel to exist, denying the "apartheid state" libel.

One such is British Muslim Kasim Hafeez, a former fierce opponent of Israel:
“When people say that anti-Semitism exists in the Muslim world because of Israel, that is simply an excuse.
People here [in Israel] get Islamic anti-Semitism. In Europe, we deny it.
As a university student, I would attend radical anti-Israel rallies in Trafalgar Square. Here I am standing in London in the middle of a European capital – chanting ‘death to Israel’ and nothing was ever done....
What people don’t understand, is that it doesn’t matter if you bend over backwards for radical Islamists. If you are Jewish, they will hate you no matter what.” 

Says Muslim-turned-Christian Rev. Majed El Shafie, the founder of One Free World International (OFWI):

“They [moderate Muslims] must speak up.  Anti-Semitism is everyone’s problem. The moderate Muslims don’t understand that after the radical Muslims finish with the Christians, Bahai, and Jews, they will come after them. The minute we stop fighting for each other, we lose our humanity....
When Israel’s right to exist and Israel’s right to defend itself, come into question, a line has been crossed, The new anti-Semitism today is to hate Israel.”
Both men were panel speakers at  the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism held this week in Jerusalem.

Read more here 

And, while on the topic of Muslims, see this ABC programme about Australian radical sheikhs.  I saw it last night and was impressed by the ABC's investigation (I can't imagine the BBC being as frank).  H/t reader Shirlee for the link

Thursday 30 May 2013

More BDS Cant


My previous post (with video) refers to the hypocrisy inherent in the call for UEFA to cancel Israel's hosting next month of the under-21s tournament.

Meanwhile, in Belgium, the Federation of French-speaking Students (FEF), which represents 120,000 persons, is demanding "a freezing of relations with Israeli universities".  Announces the FEF: 
"it’s now time to cut ties with Israeli places of learning, whether they be based around student exchanges or research."
Declares the organisation's president, inter alia,
"This [Israeli] army contributes, via its actions to denying Palestinians access to knowledge and the policy of occupation, the Gaza blockade and colonization hamper internal mobility and also that of the student and academic population."
Read more here

And last week, the governing general council of the two-million strong United Church of Canada, that country's largest Protestant church, endorsed the initiation of a boycott campaign, against Ahava, Keter Plastic, and SodaStream.

But, as reported here, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), which is calling for a "buycott" of the targeted companies in order to benefit "Israeli and Palestinian workers alike," points out that SodaStream provides employment to  "hundreds" of Palestinian workers.

Therefore, continues CIJA, the proposed boycott
"which claims to advance Palestinian aspirations by increasing the number of unemployed Palestinians, can only be described as intellectually dishonest.  Its goal seems to be the self-satisfaction of the General Council rather than an improvement in the life of the average Palestinian.”
(Talking of "intellectual dishonesty," do you ike the accompanying poster? Check out this page)





The Hate & The Hypocrisy: London Rally Against Israel's Hosting Of UEFA Tournament (video)

"Israel is an abnormal country.  It's a country that depends for its existence on violence and cruelty and repression,"  So claims Alexei Sayle, lending his weight to demands that Israel should not be allowed to host the UEFA under-21 championship tournament next month.

Ironically, the Jewish comedian was speaking to a reporter from Press TV, propaganda channel of the cruel, violent and repressive Iranian regime.

Also in this video, of a rally in London when UEFA officials were meeting, is Baroness Tonge ...


A letter in today's Guardian expresses the case for Israel and the inherent hypocrisy in the boycott merchants' demands very well:
'Firstly, the reason Israel plays in European football tournaments is that, long before the 1967 war and the subsequent "occupation", Arab and some Asian countries refused to play Israel at any level. Secondly, if countries were stopped from hosting tournaments because of their human rights records, we'd probably have to hold the World Cup etc in Luxembourg every four years!
Lastly, the games played in Israel will be played in front of crowds unhindered by restrictions on race or gender, unlike the United Nations-sponsored Gaza marathon, which was cancelled due to the fact women were banned from running with men. The World Cup after next is in Russia which, last weekend, saw the arrest of dozens of gay rights activists in Moscow. I don't see any "show Russia the red card" protests.'

Wednesday 29 May 2013

"They Would Prefer To Betray Their Country Than Be Labelled Racist": Paul Weston On Britain's "Treacherous Politicians" & A Media In "Denial"

Here's the courageously candid, urbane head of Liberty GB, talking complete sense, in the wake of the vile murder of Drummer Rigby, about the inexorable war wrought by Third World mass immigration, multiculturalism, and demographic change, on the traditional culture of Britain.   Note his strictures regarding the left-liberal double standards governing the status of indigenous people, and what he considers the "genocide" of the English people.  As he says, our children and grandchildren will one day ask how we allowed this "ripping out" of our country and our culture to happen:


In this latest video (hat tip: reader Shirlee) Pat Condell rails against Muslims who fail to equivocally disavow Jihadism.  He also criticises the double standards shown by the British police, and in some respects it's hard not to agree with him: for example, see here 



Still, for all Condell's bluster, I think this recent article by Melanie Phillips is hard to top.

Update: Edgar Davidson's always incisive blog summarises the ostrich-like reaction to the Woolwich outrage: see here

And see this re the BBC's woeful stance.

Israel: True Tales For Travellers (video)

"A must-do mission" that's taking place again this October:


For further information see here

Tuesday 28 May 2013

'Jew-Hatred Permeates The "Palestinian Cause"': David Singer Refutes Some Myths

"Palestine: Beware The Snake Oil Salesman," warns Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

'Paul Larudee – one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement – has made some incredibly misleading statements in his latest article “The Palestine Liberation Movement is not about Anti- Semitism” – published in Dissident Voice on 23 May.

Having studied linguistics and earned a PhD,  Larudee should be the first person to understand that the written language is one of the prime means of communication between humans and requires precision in its use to avoid ambiguity and misunderstanding.

Larudee has in his choice of words created a false and misleading impression of the Palestinian cause that bears no relationship to the conflict between Jews and Arabs that has remained unresolved for the last 130 years in relation to the former territory called Palestine.

Larudee claims:

          “The Palestinian cause has nothing to do with Jews…"

Hamas exposes the falsity of Larudee’s claim – as the Hamas Covenant makes clear in article 15:
“The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.”
The PLO also discredits Larudee’s statement – as article 20 of its Charter explicitly states: 
”Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong”
Jew-hatred permeates the “Palestinian cause”  – and Larudee’s attempt to whitewash this pernicious conduct is specious and false.

Who is Larudee trying to fool and for what purpose?

Larudee further states:
”It (the Palestinian cause) has everything to do with the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and with denial of their right to sovereignty, to self-determination and above all their Right to Return.  It does not matter who expelled them.  It is their land and they have the right to return.  It does not matter who denies their existence.  They have a right to return.”
Larudee’s claim that “Palestine” belonged to the “Palestinians”, that it is their land, that they were denied the right to sovereignty and self determination and have the right to return there is not borne out by the historical record.

Palestine had belonged to the Ottoman Empire for 400 years – forming a very small part of the territories lost by Turkey to the Allied Powers in World War 1.

The Arabs were offered self determination and sovereignty in 99.99 per cent of such conquered territories  by the Allied Powers – whilst the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted in the biblical and ancient homeland of the Jewish people within the remaining 0.01% – then called Palestine.

The civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine were not to be prejudiced  – but the Arab residents of Palestine rejected this decision of the Allied Powers and subsequently the League of Nations

Indeed the territory set aside for the Jewish National Home in 1920 was to be further restricted to just one-quarter of Palestine in 1922 – whilst the remaining three-quarters was to become an exclusively Arab state that is today called Jordan.

This minuscule area left for Jewish self-determination was earmarked to be further emasculated when the United Nations recommended its partition into Jewish and Arab states in 1947 – which the Arabs also rejected.

Larudee’s use of the term “Palestinians” is not inadvertent or unintentional but serves to mask his support for the Arab claim to sovereignty in the entirety of former Palestine to the exclusion of all its other non-Arab residents

The term “Palestininans” was only defined for the first time in 1964 when the PLO Charter proclaimed:
“The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian Arab father after this date, whether in Palestine or outside, is a Palestinian.”
The operative words are “Arab citizens” – disqualifying any non- Arab citizens from being classified as “Palestinians”

Larudee’s claim that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians underscores his support for this racist and exclusivist claim by the PLO – negating the decisions supporting Jewish claims that had been recognized by the League of Nations in 1922, the Peel Commision in 1937 and the United Nations in 1947.

The PLO claim to sovereignty in all of Palestine continues to be the major obstacle to ending the conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Larudee has every right to support this spurious claim – but it continues to plague the “Palestinian cause” and prolong the resolution of the long running conflict between Arabs and Jews.

Larudee pleads to remove anti-Semitism from the discussion of Palestinian rights.

He should be encouraging Hamas and the PLO to remove their overt declarations of unabashed Jew-hatred from their respective Charters as an essential first step.

Hopefully the removal of these vile provisions could lead to the end of a conflict that could and should have been resolved in 1947 or in the following 20 years when sovereignty for Palestinian Arabs in Palestine was denied by their Arab brethren.

The last thing the “Palestinian cause” needs is snake oil salesmen peddling false claims  – a sure prescription for continuing disaster.'

Monday 27 May 2013

Galloway On The Woolwich Atrocity (video)

George effortlessly manages to bring in "Israel's crimes" in his rant against "Western complicity" regarding "murder and mayhem and misery in the Muslim world" that he claims spawns Islamic extremism:

Switching Religions For A Fortnight: The ABC of it

On Sunday evening the ABC showed a much hyped programme in its "Compass" series entitled "Holy Switch". Here's the blurb:
'Mobinah, a committed Muslim, switches lives with Jordane, a young Jewish woman recently returned to Australia after a year on a kibbutz in Israel. Apart from their obvious religious differences, there are strong contrasts in their communities. Mobinah's family lives in the multicultural melting pot of western Sydney, while Jordane is from the leafy, middle-class suburbs of eastern Melbourne.
Mobinah's switch sees her living with Rabbi Fred and his wife for two weeks. This gives her many opportunities to experience a diverse range of ceremonies and activities, including a wedding, a christening and preparations for Passover. She embraces the experience with an open mind and heart, although she cannot be persuaded to take off her hijab. In the end she tells us that Holy Switch has made her a better Muslim.
Jordane spends two weeks with Mobinah's extended family in their large Bonnyrigg house that also doubles as a community centre. The Halal cuisine is hot and spicy, and mealtimes with up to 15 family members around the table are an education. At coffee with Mobinah's friends, the discussion ranges across issues such as faith, sex and marriage. She soon begins to struggle with the early morning call to prayer and she misses her friends from the Netzer youth group, but the real challenge comes when she attends a fundraiser for Syrian rebels.'
Persuaded to watch the programme by an enthusiastic friend, I was left singularly unimpressed.  For this was Judaism Lite, amid a spectacle superficial.

Judaism Lite because the young Jewish woman featured, like the rabbinic household shown, is from the Progressive wing of Judaism (and kudos to the Progressives for their willingness to try to build bridges).  But had the participants been Orthodox (and I don't mean Haredi) there would have been a very different and arguably more representative view of Jewish belief and practice, certainly of traditional belief and practice, to show to the Muslim girl and her parental household (which, though the significance of this was not dwelt on, was part home, part mosque, and part Islamic centre, three characteristics rolled into one.)

I can't imagine an Orthodox young woman wearing a sleeveless top in the household of her Muslim hosts (nor would she have a nose ring, since Judaism forbids bodily mutilation), nor, on an all-girls night in which the young, hijabbed Muslim women with her spoke of their much-guarded virginity, telling them that in her Jewish circle having a couple or so sexual partners before settling down and marrying is the commonplace thing.

Thus the programme gave both viewers and Muslim participants an incorrect impression of Judaism and Jewish teaching.

A spectacle superficial because obvious questions went unasked and unanswered.  Did either young woman feel that their communities are male-centric and patriarchal?  To be honest, I very much doubt whether anybody could regard Progressive Judaism in that way (indeed, some might argue that the pendulum has swung too much the other way).  But the attitude of Islam towards women was the elephant in the room.  Did the young Jewish woman, used to egalitarianism in the Progressive synagogue, baulk at the segregation of women and their placement at the back of the mosque?

And whereas Islam is a proselytising religion (the Jewish girl, on the expiry of her fortnight in the Muslim home/mosque/Islamic centre, was presented with a Quran by the senior male host, a genial gentleman, it must be said), Judaism is not.  But a veil was tightly drawn over such things.

Alas, the programme was nothing more than a fuzzy feel-good filler.

Zionism Is Not Racism (video)

Here's a new short video that ably makes the case:


Sunday 26 May 2013

An Angry Young Man (video)

Tommy Robinson, head of the EDL, vents his anxieties:


(Hat tip: reader Shirlee)

A Jewish Israel-Hater Spews His Venom On Nakba Day In Melbourne (video)

"Israel is not my homeland ... The State of Israel is a crime" intones a Useful Idiot (click here), delighting the usual suspects with talk of  a "terror state"that "steals water from dying children in order to fill the swimming pools of racist murderers" ...


(Hat tip: reader Shirlee)

Friday 24 May 2013

Do We Need An Islamic Reformation?

Against the backdrop of the ghastly butchery of British soldier Drummer Lee Rigby by evil jihadists (see here and here for the company one of his attackers kept), the following is cross-posted from the British Christian blog The Almond Rod,  Its author is Ian G:

After the terrible events in Boston (USA) and Woolwich (UK) , many Islamic organisations have united in condemning the attack. Forgive me for being cynical, but in the bad old days of the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland, Rome and the USA would routinely condemn the SinnFein/IRA/Noraid atrocities, but the terrorists were never handed over.

Islamism, radical Islam or whatever you chose to call it is the unacceptable face of Islam. There are those who call for a reformation. After all, it did a lot of good for the Christian Church (I'll deal with the antisemitism in a series I'm planning for later). For the most part, the reformers were a peaceable crew. Yes, there were some Roman Catholic martyrs and that was wrong, but a body count will prove my point. In due course, the Protestant Church abandoned force and subsequently the Roman Church has. The other denominations also followed suit.

Could this be a model for Islam?

I used to teach religion in schools. (Reminder to US readers, this is a UK blog). On one occasion, some 25 years ago, I taught Islam to Muslims using Islamic source material. That way, when we did Christianity, we could use the Bible and not refer to the Qur'an. They were great kids, genuinely interested in religion. I used to have to throw them out of the classroom at the end of the lesson! They were determined to prove me wrong and used the writings of one Ahmed Deedat to try to do it. A complete failure, Deedat, his writings and their efforts.

I used to plant thought bombs. Little ideas and questions that if followed through logically would completely undermine their worldview. I couldn't evangelise but I could try to make them think.

As I taught the subject, I realised that a clash between Islam and the West was inevitable. Sooner or later we would have to fight, not because the West wanted to but because it's at the heart of Islam. Park that for a moment and let's look at the Protestant Reformation.

The Reformation, was a back to the Bible, back to basics movement. Jesus was rediscovered by the masses and the core doctrines of salvation by grace through faith in the risen, crucified Lord Jesus Christ were preached and believed. In other words, the gospel as proclaimed by Jesus and His Jewish Apostles right at the start of the Church.

Now let us apply that model to other faiths.

It doesn't work for Hinduism as there is no agreed founder and a massive set of writings.
 

In Buddhism, you will discover that Siddartha Gotama wasn't really interested in this world or God.
 

Sikhism, which is a lot like Judaism, takes you back to a peaceable founder and a reasonable ethic, but no clear plan of salvation.
 

Judaism takes you back to Moses, to the Torah and the Tenach, to God's clear commandments and the hope of the Messiah.
 

Islam takes you back to Mohammad, the Qur'an and the unknowable Allah.

If you want to judge a religion, start with its founders. (Goodson's law of Comparative Religion - don't google it. You found it here)

Hinduism - no deal. Buddhism - traumatised youth leaves his wife and family and gets enlightenment after nearly starving to death.  Sikhism - Guru Nanak, a good man and peaceable. I wish he had encountered Jesus. Judaism - Moses. The meekest man who ever lived.God's friend.

Christianity - Jesus. See also Who killed Jesus? Murder or Suicide?

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS, THAT A MAN LAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS

Islam - Mohammed. Go and read their own accounts.

A Reformation, in Islam, would be a back to basics, back to the Qur'an, back to following the example of Mohammed.

Oh, we've got one.

We are in the middle of the Islamic Reformation...

And that's the problem.

Thursday 23 May 2013

Perverse Palestinian Christians

A current op-ed by Italian journalist Giulio Meotti has much to recommend it, a fact reflected by the irritation it is causing to Christian Israel-haters (you can probably hazard a guess at a name or two) who appear to love Muslims and Islam as much as they appear to dislike Jews and Judaism and who are expressing their annoyance on social media.

Writes Meotti, inter alia:

'Palestinian Arab Christians have chosen to support the side that wants to destroy Christianity. Hating Jews forges a bond between enemies....

There is a long tradition of anti-Semitism from the Palestinian Christian establishment. In 1989, Jerusalem’s Roman Catholic patriarch Michel Sabbah supported the Intifada as he celebrated a Christmas Mass at Jesus’ birthplace. “Despite all that is happening to you, you will win, in the end you will win,” declared Patriarch Michel Sabbah, appointed by Pope John Paul II. Off Manger Square, Muslims chanted: “The Zionist is God’s enemy!” and “Jews, Mohammed is coming back!”. ...
Palestinian Christians have manipulated Western public opinion so well that on the very rare occasion that Western media do cover the real plight of Christians in the Palestinian Authority areas, it is only to denounce Israel and its barrier or checkpoints. 


Last year veteran CBS News anchor Bob Simon reported on the Palestinian Arab Christians, indicting Israel’s “occupation” as responsible for their dramatic disappearance. The 60 Minutes story caused Israel tremendous PR damage. As in the case of “The Stones Cry Out”, the CBS video doesn’t mention forced marriages, conversions, beatings, land thefts, fire bombings, commercial boycott, torture, kidnapping, sexual harassment, and extortion which Arab Christians suffer under the horrible PLO dictatorship. 

A report in 2002, based on Israeli intelligence gathered during Operatio Defensive Shield, explained that “Arafat’s intelligence network intimidated the Christian population in Bethlehem. They extorted money from them, confiscated land and property and left them to the mercy of street gangs and other criminal activity, with no protection”.

Christian graves, crosses, and statues were desecrated and Christians suffered physical abuse, beatings, and Molotov attacks.

But it would be a mistake to depict these Christians as mere victims of Muslim Arab violence. They are also guilty, since they choose to demonize Israel as the human rights violator.

After the 1948 war, Christian communities suffered most in Judea, not under “Israel’s occupation”, but because Muslim refugees were settled in their midst by the corrupted PLO leadership. According to veteran journalist Danny Rubinstein, who has been writing about Palestinian Arabs for the last 46 years, “Bethlehem saw an influx of thousands of Muslim refugees from the villages in the southern part of Jerusalem, and three refugee camps were erected”.

Until Palestinian terrorists turned Bethlehem into a safe haven for suicide bombers and Jews’ assassins, the Christian Arab Bethlehemites were free to enter IJerusalem, just as many Israelis visited the "little town" in Judea.

The horrible Arafat gang turned Bethlehem and its holy places into the town which exported a string of deadly terror attacks into Jerusalem during the Intifada. In Beit Jala, the Christian town on the outskirts of Bethlehem, Islamic sharpshooters established their firing positions next to churches and Christian institutions and aimed. The target was the southern Jerusalem residential Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, but ultimately they also wanted to cleanse any Christians from the area. The result is that 25,000 Christians left Beit Jala and only 6,000 Christians still live in that town.

The Jews have always challenged any kind of totalitarianism and today are the first in line to challenge a political Islam that wants to destroy their soul: the State of Israel.

The Palestinian Christians stand today at the opposite side of the barricade. One day they may realize the strategic mistake they made by embracing Palestinian fascism, but it will be too late for all of them.' 


Read the entire op-ed here

Aussie Muslim Website Posts Antisemitic Article

Executive Director of Australian Jewry director Peter Wertheim has condemned as antisemitic a "truly shameful" article carried on the "supposedly moderate" Australian website MuslimVillage.com, telling J-Wire:
"The pretense of anti-Zionism disappears altogether in the final paragraph as the mask is ripped away and the author spews raw old-fashioned Jew-hatred." 
The article in question declares, inter alia:
"National catastrophe is the proper description of the Palestinian plight caused by the Zionist Jewish occupation of Palestine and the creation of a terrorist state called Israel.  Israel is the invention of Zionism, which is a colonial expansionist terrorist movement based on an extremist ethnocentric supremacist Judaic religious discriminative concept of God’s chosen people in God’s Promised Land. Its primary objective is the establishment of a Jewish only super power state in the heart of the Arab World to control its most needed natural resource of oil in order to control the economy of the whole world and to become the masters of the world as prescribed by their own Judaic religion. To accomplish this Zionist Jews sought to annihilate Palestinians, raze their towns, wipe off their homeland of the map, and erase their culture from history, for an independent Palestinian state negates Israel’s so-called right of existence.
The Zionist occupation of Palestine is a historically unprecedented unique form of occupation. While traditional military occupations take place when a colonial military power occupies another country to control its people, their natural resources, and their government, the Zionist Jewish occupation, on the other hand, is a religiously-racist genocidal obliterating occupation, whose primary goal is the complete annihilation of all indigenous Palestinian inhabitants, the complete destruction of their towns, the wiping off of their culture and history, the creation of an alien state, and the sub-planting of aggressive terrorist alien groups, with different citizenships of various countries, in the area.....

Zionism is just the latest Judaic façade based on Jewish ethnocentric divine superiority complex and the complete denial of the humanity and rights of all other nations; Goyims without any exception. This leaves no room for peace with such an ideology, not just with the Zionist terrorist state of Israel in Palestine but in any other place in this world. Supremacist Jews keep on planting more seeds of hatred among nations, and as in the past they will reap only hatred. Jewish history repeats itself."
Read more here (hat tip: reader Shirlee)

Wednesday 22 May 2013

In Sydney, A Magistrate Of No Standing (video)

Was it because she's an infidel, or more particularly because she's a mere female? Either way, a man in Sydney has given a whole new meaning to the phrase "it won't stand up in court":


(Hat tip: Vlad Tepes blog)

Tuesday 21 May 2013

CAABU, In The Beginning (Spot The BBC Connections!)

CAABU (Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding), began life as an Arabist rather than a radical ratbag organisation like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), but, with many names drawn from the top echelons of business, politics, and academia, it has been perhaps all the more dangerous for that.   Nowadays, given a common purpose and despite their diffferences of emphasis and personnel, the two organisations appear to be hand-in-glove in efforts designed to undermine support for Israel among the British public: witness the ruthless targetting of British schoolchildren with anti-Israel propaganda, about which I blogged here.

Funded by Arab money, CAABU was established in the immediate wake of the Six Day War:
"We believe that the need for mutual understanding and sympathy between the people of Britain and the people of the Arab world was never more vital than at the present time.
Britain and the Arabs have a long tradition of respect and friendship; they have much to admire in each other's way of life and the principles to which both people's adhere.
We have sympathy for the aspirations, achievements and rights of the Arab peoples, especially the Arabs of Palestine, for whose administration Britain was responsible until 1948, and whose case must not be permitted to go by default."
In the following words, Christopher Mayhew (1915-97; created a life peer as Baron Mayhew in 1981),a  Labour MP until 1974, and from then a Liberal, began a speech on 27 July 1977 in a committee room at Westminster to mark the tenth anniversary of CAABU's foundation. 
"Those who founded CAABU, at a meeting here in the House of Commons ten years ago, took on a formidable task - to challenge the deeply held beliefs about Palestine of the overwhelming majority of the British people.
An opinion poll just published by the Sunday Times had shown that only 2% of the British people supported the Arabs.  It was almost universally agreed that the 1967 war had been planned and started by the Arabs with Russian support; that the Arabs were racialists who aimed to drive the Jews into the sea; that the Palestinian refugees had left Israel in 1948 and should resettle elsewhere in the Arab world; that the refugee camps were kept in being by the Arab Governments as a political weapon against Israel; that Israel, a small country surrounded by numerous enemies, had no designs at all on Arab territory unless, reasonably enough, to secure her own security; and that, in general, after the appalling sufferings of the Jewish people, Israel was entitled, on moral, legal and historical grounds, to the wholehearted support of the civilised world.
To make things worse, these opinions were shared at that time by almost all newspaper proprietors and editors, almost all the directing staff of the BBC and ITV, almost all MPs, and almost the entire publishing and film industries.
They were also supported, with enthusiasm and sincerity, by the great bulk of Britain's large, lively and influential Jewish community, many of whose members were totally dedicated to Israel's cause and were willing to make great sacrifices of time and money to support it.'
Mayhew, whose talk was entitled "CAABU - The First Ten Years (it was followed by one from Lakhdar Brahimi, the Algerian Ambassador to the Court of St James, on the topic "CAABU from the Arab Standpoint") went on:
 'It was in those unpromising circumstances that a few individuals, sharing a quite different conviction about Palestine, came together, first in a provisional executive committee, and then at a formal constituent meeting, and founded our Council.  My researches suggest that the honour of actually starting the ball rolling belongs to Elizabeth Collard, but she was supported right from the start by Ian Gilmour and Colin Jackson as co-Chairmen of the provisional executive, and also, among others, by six members of our present executive committee Michael Adams, Hugh Norris, Doreen Ingrams, Dennis Walters, Anthony Nutting and myself....
To spread the truth about Palestine, CAABU has published large numbers of pamphlets, helped to produce several films, written of promoted hundreds of letters to the press and has produced articles - or material for articles - not only for provincial or national newspapers, but also for university publications and even parish magazines.  Our members have spoken at innumerable meetings all over the United Kingdom, including many meetings organised by Jewish societies and University debating societies ...
 CAABU members were discusssng and stydying the feasibility of a Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza as early as March 1969....
In fact, CAABU has undoubtedly helped to create the remarkable international consensus which has now emerged on the best way of achieving a just and peaceful settlement.....'
Mayhew went on to observe:
"None  of the founders of CAABU, I feel sure, expected to enjoy the experience of challenging the Zionist lobby ... but it was plainly a job that had to be done by someone.  Moreover, there are always compensations in supporting wildly unpopular causes.  To begin with, nobody joins you for a beer, so that your companions tend to be people of genuine conviction.  Moreover, in a situation where everyone desperately needs mutual encouragement, personal relations tend to flourish.  There have been notably few resignations or quarrels in CAABU during the past ten years. Sadly, death has removed some of our most vauled colleagues.  We remember, for example, Arnold Toynbee, Tom Little, Will Griffiths and Nevill Barbour."
Who were the people that Mayhew specified in his speech?

Calcutta-born, LSE-educated Elizabeth Collard (1911-78), a socialist and anti-colonialist, had latched onto the Arab cause following the fruition of her previous consuming passion, India's independence from Britain, and in 1957 she had founded the Middle East Economic Digest.

Ian Gilmour, PC (1926-2007; succeeded to father's baronetcy 1977; created life peer as Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar, 1992), ex-Eton, Balliol, and the Grenadier Guards; he was a barrister, a Conservative MP from  1962-92, and proprietor (1954-67) of The Spectator, which he edited from 1954-59. He was Secretary of State for Defence in 1974 under Edward Heath and Lord Privy Seal, 1979-81, under Margaret Thatcher. A pro-Europe "wet" who opposed many Thatcherite policies, he was a prominent pro-Arab and from 1993-96 was president of Medical Aid for Palestinians, a post later held by another Conservative "wet," the present chairman of the BBC Trust, Chris (Lord) Patten.


Colin Jackson (1921-81), a barrister by profession, was Labour MP for the West Riding constituency of Brighouse and Spenborough (1964-70 and 1974-79).

Michael Adams (1920-2005), a journalist, was CAABU's inaugural director.  He'd worked for the BBC early in his career (his son Paul is its chief diplomatic correspondent) but had later joined the Guardian.  As I observed here:
'It was owing to his articles in that paper that a columnist in the Jewish Chronicle (30 June 1967) observed: "It is with a sinking feeling and eventually turning stomach that one examines the Guardian each morning." (That writer would certainly vomit daily if he read the Guardian nowadays!)
One of CAABU's first actions had been to send Adams, while he was still employed by the Guardian, on a funded trip to the Middle East, from whence he sent a series of articles biased against Israel.  The Guardian had printed them without explaining that they had been subsidised by Arab money.  There was also a despatch from Cairo which talked of the "forcible expulsion across the burning desert of Palestinian Arabs to Gaza".  In fact, those deportees were members of the Palestine Liberation Army and a threat to Israel's security, as the Guardian grudgingly acknowledged the next day.  Adams also used the offensive term "final solution" to describe Israeli policy.
It was shortly after this that Adams became CAABU's director. The Guardian continued to offend.  In August it carried an advertisement from an Arab source that made "untrue and repulsive allegations about Israel's treatment of Arab civilians in the occupied territories" and in a report alleged the "collective shooting of civilians" by Israeli troops in the occupied territories as well as the discovery of "mass graves".  Yet overall it seems that with Adams's departure, and that of  leader writer Frank Edmead, the Guardian's coverage of Israel became more evenhanded - until it descended again into the travesty of truth and fair play that is its hallmark today.
The BBC's Keith Kyle was not slow to identify openly with CAABU.  He was a keynote speaker at one of its first major rallies.  The Jewish Chronicle (29 November 1968) noted "the intense anti-Jewish feeling generated in the CAABU audience - and among some of the speakers - by the very existence of the Jewish State, referred to as the Zionist State" as well as the way pro-Israel Jewish questioners were mocked and shouted down.
One of the worst features of Kyle's pro-Arab stance (apart from its infringement of the BBC Charter, of course) concerned the hijacking of an El Al aircraft at Zurich in February 1969.  Through his Arab contacts he had learned of the plan, but had not disclosed the information "to avoid Israeli retaliation against it".
In the same year he presented a series of programmes on the Middle East highly slanted against Israel and replete with gratuitous comments of his own.  Aghast, a  Jewish Chronicle columnist (9 May 1969) observed: "The casual viewer will doubtless have been fooled into believing that the Israeli occupation of Arab territories is barbaric and ruthless."
And that summer, on the BBC's Panorama, Michael Adams spewed out vitriol about "nation-wide and even world-wide Jewish pressure" - in other words, a certain lobby. 
In one of his platform appearances Adams - foreshadowing the avoidance by Al Beeb and the Guardian of the T-word - rhetorically enquired why the British press referred to "Arab terrorists": 'I can't remember calling members of the resistance in Nazi-occupied France "terrorists"', he continued.  (In 1999 his son, the BBC's Middle East correspondent Paul Adams, used the prescribed Al Beeb term "Islamic militants" of suicide bombers.  It was Paul Adams, when diplomatic correspondent, who in 2007 appeared to admit to BBC bias when he described Alan Johnston's job as "to bring us day after day reports of the Palestinian predicament in the Gaza Strip".)'
Hugh Norris had been married since 1965 to Cairo-born London-based clinical psychologist Fawzeya Makhlouf, a leftwing activist in the Arab cause who would vehemently decry Sadat's peace treaty with Israel.

Doreen Ingrams (1906-97), the daughter of barrister and politician Edward Shortt, Home Secretary under Lloyd George, was the wife of a British colonial administrator, Harold Ingrams (1897-1973), who'd been stationed in Zanzibar, Hadhramaut, and southern Arabia, dressing like the locals.  Her diaries of their travels formed the basis for her book A Time in Arabia (1970).  Like Michael Adams, she had worked for  the BBC (as we read in her obituary in the Independent authored by none other than Adams himself) and it would be reasonable to suppose that, again like Adams, she promoted CAABU's agenda via her contacts there :
'Doreen Ingrams spent 12 years as a Senior Assistant in the Arabic Service of the BBC, where she was in charge of talks and magazine programmes, especially programmes for women. Gathering material for these, she travelled widely and after her retirement in 1967 she kept closely in touch with developments in the Arab world.
In 1972 she made use of little-known archive material to produce a work of lasting historical significance in Palestine Papers 1917-1922 with the subtitle Seeds of Conflict, pinpointing the responsibility of British ministers and officials for the subsequent tragedy in Palestine. She was a founder-member of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (Caabu) and served for many years on its Executive Committee. At a reception in her honour in 1994 the members of the Arab Club in Britain presented her with a silver tray as a symbol of "her outstanding contribution to the promotion of Arab-British understanding"....'
(Sir; knighted 1988) Dennis Walters (1928-    ), Conservative MP for Westbury (1964-92), chaired CAABU from 1970 until 1982.  To push the Arab cause within his party he founded the Conservative Middle East Council in 1980 and served as it chairman for the next twelve years.  He was also an office-holder on the Conservative Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, chairman of the Euro-Arab Parliamentary Association and founder/director of Middle East International, a political journal that ran from 1971 to 2005.which provided news, analysis and commentary on the Middle East from 1971 until its closure in 2005.

Diplomat (Sir; succeeded father in baronetcy) Anthony Nutting (1920-99), a well-born Foreign Office Arabist with a fondness for foxhunting, was one of the first politicians to display enthusiasm for Britain's relinquishment of the vestiges of Empire and membership of the European Economic Community.  Thanks to family connections he became Conservative MP for Melton in 1945 when only 25.  Talked of as a future prime minister, he negotiated with Nasser, in 1954, the withdrawal of British troops from Suez.  He accordingly resigned as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs during the Suez Crisis of 1956, and soon afterwards lost his seat in the Commons.  His views on Israel were outspokenly intemperate and obnoxious. On 12 November 1969 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported:
'The Foreign Ministry confirmed yesterday that it has barred the entry to Israel of Anthony Nutting, a former British Minister of State who is now a journalist, because of "hostile" remarks he was reported to have made while visiting Arab countries. A ministry spokesman said the British Embassy in Tel Aviv was advised that Israel considered the proposed visit by Mr. Nutting undesirable.
The former Conservative MP said in Amman, Jordan today that the decision to bar him from Israel showed "how arrogant the Israelis' attitude is toward anyone who criticizes them." Mr. Nutting attributed the Israeli ban to his remark that the Israel-occupied West Bank was "one large prison." adding that they "must have something terrible to hide."
An Israeli spokesman said yesterday that Mr. Nutting would have been welcomed to visit the West Bank and see conditions for himself. He was barred because of a speech he made to students in Beirut several days ago in which he reportedly said that the Palestine question can be solved only by force and that it was up to the Palestinian guerrillas to impose such a solution. The spokesman called those remarks inimical to Israel's security. Mr. Nutting said he would not try to force his way across the Allenby bridge and preferred to remain in Amman with "my friends."'  [Emphasis added here and below.]
The other members of the Executive Committee (not mentioned by Mayhew) were:

Nevill Barbour (1895-1972), an Oxford-educated Arabic scholar from Northern Ireland, was another CAABU activist with influence at the BBC.  He had lived in Tangier and then Cairo for some years before moving to Palestine in the 1930s with his wife and children, acting as local correspondent for The Times, and editing the Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society.  Following the outbreak of the Second World War he returned to Britain, joining the BBC in 1940 as Arabic Public Relations Officer.  He launched the magazine Arabic Listener and subsequently became Assistant Head of the BBC's Eastern Service, retiring in 1956.  The best-known of his publications, Nisi Dominus: A Survey of the Palestine Controversy, was published by Harrap in 1946.
James Belgrave, an Arabist military officer's son who in Bahrain published the English-language newspaper Gulf Mirror;
Sir Geoffrey Furlonge KBE, CMG (1904?-84), who read oriental languages at Cambridge before starting his diplomatic career in the Levant; he authored a biography of Musa Alami entitled Palestine is my Country;
Will Griffiths (1912-73), Labour MP for Manchester Moss Side;
Frank Hooley (1923-    ), a Sheffield Labour MP;
Nicholas Hyman (his particulars evade me);
Peter Mansfield (1928-96), who'd resigned from the Foreign Office over Suez, was a journalist who edited the Beirut-based Middle East Forum and wrote regularly for several newspapers including The Economist and The Guardian, and was from 1961-67 Middle East correspondent of the Sunday Times. His books as author or editor include The Middle East: A Political and Economic Survey, Who's Who of the Arab World, Nasser's Egypt, Nasser: A Biography, The Arabs, and A History of the Middle East;
Richard May, whose details also evade me;
John Reddaway CMG, OBE (1916-90; Director of Administration); a diplomat, he was (1960-68)  Deputy Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and proved a tireless, high-profile representative of CAABU;
Miss Manuela Sykes, a Liberal Party activist and would-be MP who in the 1950s had chaired the Young Liberal International Committee.

Halachically a Jew, though not prone to say so!
The rest of the General Committee comprised:

John Allegro (1923-88),  famous as a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar who in 1970 caused a  furore with a book alleging that Christianity orginated in a "sex-and-mushroom" cult;
Dan Awdry (1924-2008), an Old Wykehamist who went to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, served in the Hussars, and became a solicitor and Conservative MP for Chippenham, Wiltshire;
Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish MP (l917-89; a prominent Tory backbencher (the inspiration for Private Eye's buffoonish Sir Tufton Bufton although he was never as rightwing as his persona suggested) made a life peer as Lord Chelwood in 1974), halachically a Jew, though he seems not to have volunteered the fact (his father was a non-Jewish admiral but his mother was the sister of Sir Ernest Simon and his maternal grandmother was an active shul member in Manchester and a Zionist, no less!), he had been outspokenly hostile to Israel's creation, and later formed a pro-Arab pressure group within the Tory Party);
Nicholas Bilitch, who appears from his writings to have been an economic libertarian and anti-statist, though how that connected with support for the Arabs is unclear;
Lord [Fenner] Brockway (1888-1988), a former Labour MP who was well-known for his attachment to socialism and anti-colonialism;
(Sir) William Connor (1909-67),  the leftwing columnist "Cassandra" of the Daily Mirror, who became a household name for the libel action brought against him by Liberace;
Major Derek Cooper MC, OBE (1912-2007), who had served as a policeman in Mandate Palestine and in 1969 awarded the OBE for his work among Palestinians in the disputed territories. In the 1970s he and his well-connected wife Pamela undertook surveys of conditions facing Palestinians for Oxfam and for the International Committee for Palestine Human Rights. They worked for Oxfam in Beirut in 1982, through the summer of 1982, and in 1984 founded Medical Aid for Palestinians (see Gilmour, above);
George Currie MP (1905-78), an Ulster Unionist who was a barrister by profession and had served in the Royal Air Force;
Kenneth Diacre, evidently a decorated major in the Army;
James Dickens MP (1931-2013), a member of Labour's leftwing Tribune Group, represented the marginal seat of Lewisham West from 1966-70 and in 2003 left the Labour Party in protest at its support for the War in Iraq;

A. D. [(Sir; knighted 1973) Douglas] Dodds-Parker MP (1909-2006); was an anti-Suez Conservative MP (Banbury, 1945-59; Cheltenham, 1964-74), who was  Educated at Winchester and Oxford, he was a former member of the Sudan civil service, and was an undersecretary for foreign affairs (1953-54 and 1955-1957).
Alistair Duncan; he authored The Noble Sanctuary: Portrait of a Holy Place in Arab Jerusalem.
Robert (Bob) Edwards MP (1905-90), a former chairman of the Independent Labour Party (ILP); he was a Liverpool-born trade unionist who sat as a Labour MP from 1955-74, first for Bilston and latterly, briefly, for Wolverhampton South-East;
Andrew Faulds (1923-2000), a larger than life character with a big voice and beard and an ego to match, was an actor by profession, and the son of a Prebysterian missionary; it's been claimed that his overt support for the Arab cause cost him the chance of ministerial office;
Sir Dingle Foot QC, MP (1905-78; one of the trio of brothers dubbed "The Three Left Feet"); he'd been president of the Oxford Union and in the 1940s and 1950s was moderator of a BBC current affairs programme called In The News; he was Labour MP for Ipswich from 1957-70, having previously been a Liberal MP;
Tim Fortescue CBE MP (1916-2008); a Cambridge-educated former colonial civil servant, he was Conservative MP for Liverpool Garston from 1966-74 and a whip and junior minister under Edward Heath;
Sir John Glubb CMG, DSO, MC (1897-1986), who, being Glubb Pasha, needs no introduction;
Princess Dina Abdul Hamid,(1929-    ) King Hussein's first wife; in 1970 she had married  the much younger Palestinian commando and high-ranking PLO official Asad Sulayman Abd al-Qadir, alias Salah Ta'amari;
John Alfred Haywood, author of the widely acclaimed A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language; he's been a Sudan-based member of the colonial service and from 1955-78 taught Arabic at the University of Durham;
David Holden (1924-77), author and journalist, who once worked for the Guardian but was best known as chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times, fated to be shot dead in Cairo by assassins unidentified;
Dr Albert Hourani (1915-93), an Oxford-educated scholar born in Manchester to Christian Lebanese parents;in the 1940s he'd worked succesively at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), in the office of the British Minister of State in Cairo, and at the Arab Office in Jerusalem and London; he subsequently taught at Oxford, where he founded and directed the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College; the author of A History of the Arab Peoples (1991) and other works, he was Reader in the History of the Modern Middle East at Oxfor, and is said to have trained more academic historians of the modern Middle East than any other academi historian of his generation;
Carol Alfred Johnson CBE, MP (1903-2000), Labour MP for Lewisham South from 1959-74 (notes his Guardian obituary: "In 1965, he wrote a report urging links between the six countries of the EEC and the Western European Union. He became secretary to the British Council of the European Movement and vice president of the Labour Committee for Europe. In 1974, he chastised the Economist for its "partisan" reporting of the Arab-Israeli war, and attacked Israeli intransigence in a letter to the Guardian");
Dr Kathleen Kenyon CBE (1906-78; created a Dame in 1973), the distinguished archaeologist connected in particular with excavations in Jericho;
Peter Kilner, a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs who was editor of the Arab Report and Record;
David Llewellyn (his particulars evade me);
Tom Little MBE; a journalist who authored several books on Arab countries, was director of a news agancy based in the Middle East, from where he'd also written for The Times, The Economist,  and The Observer.
(Sir) [Harry] Neil Marten MP (1916-85), an anti-EEC Conservative who represented Banbury from 1959-83 and held office under Margaret Thatcher; a solicitor and shipping adviser, he was, tellingly, for our purposes, he was employed by the Foreign Office from 1947-57.
David Mitchell (another who's hard to identify with certainty);
Mrs Elizabeth Monroe, author of Britain's Moment in the Middle East, 1914-1956;
James Morris (now gender realigned as Jan Morris), who'd covered the Suez Crisis for the [then Manchester] Guardian and exposed the collusion between France and Israel;
Stanley Orme MP (1923-2005; created life peer as Baron Orme of Salford in 1997), Labour MP for Salford seats from 1959-97; a Cabinet minister (1976-79), he also served (1987-92) as chairman of the parliamentary party, and was attached to such leftwing causes as the Movement for Colonial Freedom and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament;
(Sir) [Arthur] John Page MP (1919-2008); educated at Harrow and Cambridge and knighted in 1984, he sat as Conservatove MP for Harrow West from 1960-87;
C. J. Parsons (I have no idea of his details);
Brian Pease (ditto);
Professor Edith Penrose (1914-96; American-born as Edith Tilton, she taught economics at the SOAS, having previously done so at the LSE and, earlier, at the University of Baghdad);
Sir John Richmond (1909-90), a public school and Oxford-educated career diplomat who served with British military intelligence in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq during the Second World War; he was British ambassador to Kuwait (1961-63) and Sudan (1965-66), and then joined the Department of Islamic Studies at the University of Durham. ;
Miss Mary Rowlatt, author of Founders of Modern Egypt (1962);
David Rubinstein, whom I've been unable to identify (possibly the historian of that name, who's apparently a Quaker);
Patrick Seale, a journalist (Reuters, The Observer) and author specialising in the Middle East, whose Jewish-born father, a native of Jerusalem, was a noted Arabist and theologian;
Sir Frederick Snow (1899-1976), a notable civil and structural engineer;

The very model of a part-Jewish major-general
Major-General Sir Edward Spears KBE, CB, MC (1886-1974; pictured left in 1942, the year he was knighted), who happened to be of part-Jewish extraction but, like Beamish, was decidedly reluctant to admit it; he had been a Liberal and then a Conservative MP. opposed to Appeasement, and had famously served in the Levant during the Second World War;
Roger Stacey (an elusive member);
Mrs. Robert Stephens (presumably the wife of Middle East specialist Robert Stephens, author of Nasser: A Political Biography, and other works);
Desmond Stewart (1924-81), a journalist and author who spent many years in Cairo, an admirer of Nasser, his books include, of course, a well-known biography of Herzl (1974) and one of Lawrence of Arabia (1977);
Mrs M. O. Sykes (possibly Manuela Sykes's mother);
Professor Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), the Winchester and Balliol-educated historian, who was a consultant to government regarding the Middle East; notes Wiipedia:
".... His stance during World War I reflected less sympathy for the Arab cause and a pro-Zionist outlook. He also expressed support for a Jewish State in Palestine, which he believed had "begun to recover its ancient prosperity" as a result. Toynbee investigated Zionism in 1915 at the Information Department of the Foreign Office, and in 1917 he published a memorandum with his colleague Lewis Namier which supported exclusive Jewish political rights in Palestine. In 1922 he was influenced by the Palestine Arab delegation which was visiting London, and he adopted their views. His subsequent writings show the way he changed his outlook on the subject, and in the late 1930s he moved away from supporting the Zionist cause and moved toward the Arab camp. By the 1950s he was an opponent of the state of Israel";
Miss  Penelope Turing (1925-2010), who was an acknowledged authority on opera, especially of the Wagnerian kind.;
Christopher Walker (I'm not sure of his identity);
David Warburton, a Middle East scholar specialisng in Ancient Egypt;
Gordon Waterfield OBE (1903-87), author of Sultans of Aden and other works, was head (1949-59) of the Eastern Service of the BBC, and head (1959-64) of the Arabic Service at the BBC;
(Sir) William Thomas (Tom) Williams QC, MP (1915-86), an Oxford-educated Welshman who was a Baptist minister before being called to the Bar in 1951; he sat as a Labour MP for various constituencies between 1949 and 1981, served as Recorder of Birkenhead 1969-71, Recorder of the Crown Court 1972-81, and in 1981 became a High Court Judge. (Wikipedia states that in 1969 he "was appointed by the then-East Pakistan based Awami League, one of Bangladesh's main political factions since independence in 1971, to represent Pakistani and later-Bangladeshi politician Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the Agartala Conspiracy Case. The military junta of Gen. Ayub Khan did not allow [him] to represent Rahman, citing domestic security and interference in sovereign matters.")

In his speech, Mayhew went on to observe:
"None  of the founders of CAABU, I feel sure, expected to enjoy the experience of challenging the Zionist lobby ... but it was plainly a job that had to be done by someone.  Moreover, there are always compensations in supporting wildly unpopular causes.  To begin with, nobody joins you for a beer, so that your companions tend to be people of genuine conviction.  Moreover, in a situation where everyone desperately needs mutual encouragement, personal relations tend to flourish.  There have been notably few resignations or quarrels in CAABU during the past ten years. Sadly, death has removed some of our most vauled colleagues.  We remember, for example, Arnold Toynbee, Tom Little, Will Griffiths and Nevill Barbour."
Later in the speech, Mayhew reflected:
'It is extraordinary, looking back, to see how many statements about the Middle East that are now uncontroversial were considered, ten years ago, not merely wrong but wicked.  In June, 1967, a Guardian report of a meeting of the Labour Party's Foreign Affairs Group contained the following passage
"Bitterness came to the surface when Mr Mayhew began to speak .... the interruptions began when he argued that it was wrong to talk in terms of racial extermination by the Arab forces .... he was almost shouted down when he went on to claim that the existence of the Palestinian refugees was the root of the crisis".
If the same speech were made today, the audience, instead of shouting the speaker down, would gently fall asleep."
.... There are still some aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict which cannot be freely discussed in the press or on radio or television.  For example, the proposition that Zionism is racialist, or that Zionists have dual loyalties; but these propositions, though true and important, are not central to the basis argument.  Other criticisms of Zionism and of Israel appear quite frequently nowadays in the media....
This advance was, of course, only partly due to the pressure of CAABU and its supporters.  A much more important cause was the better showing of the Arabs in the war of 1973, and their subsequent growth of wealth and power, which compelled the world to listen to them.....
We have come a long way in ten years.  To begin with we were regarded as barely respectable: now we are part of the Establishment, officially visited by the Foreign Secretary.  We are becoming part of the European establishment too....'
During his speech Mayhew announced:

From a Lebanese newspaper of 1967
"I cannot resist giving a rather colourful and clearcut example of the collapse of a Zionist myth.  At the time of the June War, it was stridently asserted by Zionist propaganda, and almost universally believed in the West, that President Nasser had threatened to drive the Israelis into the sea.  This belief, for which there was no evidence at all, had a powerful effect on public and parliamentary opinion at the time.

Eventually [in 1973], when it was quoted against me by a Zionist MP during a television programme I was taking part in, I then and there offered to pay £5000 [about £30,000 to £50,000 in today's money] to any of the millions of viewers who could produce any evidence for Nasser's statement.  Later [also 1973], in the House of Commons, I repeated the offer and broadened it to include genocidal statements by other Arab leaders.
A steady trickle of letters came in from eager claimants, each one producing some blood-curdling quotation from an Arab leader, usually culled straight from some pro-Israeli publication.  I replied to each claimant, explaining that the quotation was mistranslated, or wrongly attributed or invented, as the case might be, but always adding that if the claimant was not satisfied he could take me to Court, and if I lost I would pay up.
Eventually one claimant [Warren Bergson: see Jewish Chronicle, 27 Feb. 1976] did take me to Court.  Perhaps significantly he offered no evidence for Nasser's statement.  Instead, he produced a chilling genocidal threat alleged by pro-Israelis to have been made by the then Secretary-General of the Arab League Azzam Pasha in 1948.  However, when we produced the original statement in Arabic, the claimant could not deny that his English version was a flagrant and apparently deliberate mistranslation, and he immediately tried to withdraw his writ.  But I refused to allow this, and on the 23rd February last year [1976], his Counsel declared in the High Court of Justice that his client offered his apologies and acknowledged that after thorough research he had been unable to find any statement by a responsible Arab leader which could be described as genocidal.
I should add that this admission by Counsel was not reported in any British newspaper, many of which had helped to propagate these slanders in the first place.  Nevertheless, since the Court case, the Israelis and pro-Israelis seem to have stopped this line of propaganda, which did a good deal after the 1967 War to blacken the Arabs' reputation and to increase tension all round.
Finally, since the Court case took place after the General Election, it did not prevent enthusiastic Zionists from circulating 15,000 leaflets in the constituency I was fighting, informing the voters that I was not a man to be trusted because I was refusing to pay out £5,000 to claimants who had sent me chapter and verse for genocidal statements by Arab leaders."
For the record, I asked several Middle East scholars whether Nasser did, in fact, say the words widely attributed to him.  One told me:
'The book by Theodore Draper, Israel & World Politics [New York: Viking 1968], presents extensive quotes from Nasser's speeches in the weeks leading up to the war. On p 222, we read: "The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel." He said this before the Central Council of International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions on 26 May 1967. I am sure that you could find additional quotes to the same effect if you read the appendices of the book.
 I also suggest the Israeli documentary film on the war, Six Days to Eternity. It shows a million-strong mob on the streets of Cairo deliriously calling for a war to destroy Israel, carrying skull-&-crossbones flags & banners.
 I don't think that Nasser threatened the Jews of Israel that they would be thrown into the sea, in 1967. However, he did make such genocide threats as did Ahmad Shukairy, shortly before the 6 Day War.
Moreover, The threat to throw the Jews into the sea was made in the 1947-1948 period by an Arab here in Israel. And this threat with the person's name is recorded in Dominique Lapierre's O Jerusalem. Dominique Lapierre had a cowriter for this book. I forget his name at the moment. But I suggest you check out that book, O Jerusalem.
Abdul-Rahman Azzam Pasha did in fact threaten the Jews in Israel with "Mongol massacres" [he used the word Tartar instead of Mongol]. These words and more appeared in an interview with an Egyptian paper, [Akhbar al-Yom?] on 11 October 1947. A somewhat similar statement by Azzam appears in a book by Kenneth Bilby, New Star in the Near East, or some such title.
Mayhew was one of the worst haters of Israel in the UK'
 Said another:
'If the claim is that the phrase itself never passed Nasser's lips, that's possible. If the claim is that Nasser never threatened to wage genocidal war against Israel, that's idiotic.
Abba Eban's My Journey has a section in the index on Nasser, verbal assaults on Israel. It goes to...
* "Israel is the greatest crime in history"
* Existence of Israel is a "stain," "a shame," "a disgrace", "a bleeding wound"
* [Quoted the communique signed jointly by Nasser and Aref in 1963]: "the aim of the Arabs is the destruction of Israel"
* "We are face-to-face with Israel. Hence-forward the situation, my gallant soldiers, is in your hands. Our armed forces have occupied Sharm el-Sheikh. We shall on no account allow the Israeli flag to pass through the Gulf of Nastier. The Jews threaten to make war. I reply, 'ahlan wasahlan,' welcome. We are ready for war: this water is ours."
* "Today we tell the Israelis we are facing you in the battle and are burning with the desire for it to begin. This will make the world realize what the Arabs are and what Israel is"
* [About Nasser and Hussein conspiring on an open line to blame the US for attacking them, risking global nuclear war in the process; note that 'destruction' is a quote]: "... as the victims of Great Power aggression than as having suffered defeat by the despised Jews whose 'destruction' Nasser had been predicting with a loud voice"
From there Nasser gets a lot less publicly ambitious, and falls into post-1967 "what was taken by war must be regained by war" rhetoric. Catastrophic losses will do that.'
(I've taken Mayhew's speech from the 10-page pamphlet  CAABU's Tenth Anniversary, published in London by the Arab-British Centre in 1977.  If anybody knows the particulars of the people I've failed to identify, please leave a comment to that effect.)

Ibrahim On Western Inertia Towards The Plight Of The Sunday People

In a timely and illuminating interview, Raymond Ibrahim, the young American Middle East scholar and chronicler of the contemporary plight of his co-religionists under Islamic rule or influence, has been discussing the findings of his book Crucified Again:
'.... Western academia and the media—they who are largely responsible for the Western epistemology—have maintained that the colonial era is the root of all Muslim anger and grievance (and hence violence and intolerance).
In fact, it’s the exact opposite.
During the colonial and post-colonial era—roughly from 1850 to 1950—most Muslims were very Westward looking and “Muslim” in name only.  The reason for this is simple: Islam is the quintessential religion of “might makes right,” and its mission was always proved to Muslims as they defeated infidels on the battlefield.
However, with the dominance of the West, Muslims began to respect and emulate the West.  As Osama bin Laden said, people by nature favor the strong horse.  But with the Western culture of the 1960s and afterwards—when the West became self-loathing, morally and sexually licentious, materialistic, etc.—Muslims, disillusioned, turned back to Islam and its “way” (Sharia simply means way, i.e., Islam’s way of doing things).  It’s no coincidence that the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran followed on the heels on the liberalization of the West in the ‘70s.  
From respecting and trying to emulate a confident West, Muslims developed contempt for the West and went back to reclaiming their Islamic heritage—all to “multicultural” applause and approval.  And, naturally, as Muslims become more pious and uphold the teachings of Islamic Sharia, hostility and persecution for Christians has returned, for these are integral parts of the “Islamic way” ....
The [Muslim] Brotherhood has a long history of publicly saying one thing in front of infidels and another to fellow Islamists, which of course is permissible in Islam, via doctrines like taqiyya, tawriya, and taysir....'
Ibrahim deplores the West's willful blindness towards the endangered Christians, and calls for action on their behalf before it is too late:
'The U.S. and its allies can start by ceasing to support avowed Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood—which Obama’s intelligence chief absurdly called “largely secular.”  They can stop empowering jihadis under the guise of the “Arab Spring.”  Wherever Obama has supported the “Arab Spring”—whether in Egypt, Libya, and now in Syria—things have gotten dramatically worse for Christians.... 
They can acknowledge the sufferings of Christians and other minorities and make all foreign aid conditional on their better treatment.  Sadly, this administration, far from doing any such thing, is still operating under the idea that Islam and its Sharia are intrinsically compatible with 21st century standards of human rights, and, in short, pretending there is no such thing as Christian persecution—just as it pretended that a second-rate movie was the source of pre-planned terrorist attacks on the anniversary of 9/11 in Benghazi....
The question is—does the West have the backbone to do what’s necessary, or has political correctness and multiculturalism so paralyzed its ability to see and deal with reality?'
 Read the entire interview here