Thursday, March 29, 2007

MPACUK Confusing Jews and Zionists Again

MPACUK reports on an interview given by David Cameron for The Jewish Chronicle. The report itself accuses the Jewish Chronicle of trying to force Cameron to "pledge his love for Israel"; questions why Cameron, when talking of a future Palestinian state, didn't include Jerusalem in it; and slips in claims of apartheid for good measure.

Just as a side point, it should be noted that apartheid is the discrimination of some citizens based on race. Palestinians are not citizens of Israel and therefore their differential treatment isn't apartheid or even racist. The Arab citizens of Israel are treated the same as any other citizen.

Anyway, back to the main point. The MPACUK report includes the following line:

Zionist institutions such as The Jewish Chronicle...
It may not seem like much, but it again indicates that MPACUK uses the word "Zionist" in place of "Jew", or "Zionism" in place of "Judaism". This is a tactic used to conceal anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism. In the All Party Parliamentary Report into Antisemitism, they were accused of exactly this. In paragraph 141 it states:

The use of ‘Zionist’ as a replacement for ‘Jewish’ is common on the MPACUK website. The CST submitted evidence that in one explicit case of this the Talmud, a Jewish religious text written many centuries ago, was described as a “Zionist holy book”. The website also posed the question: “Is this the most Powerful and Racist book in the world?!”

Well, here is another explicit case. The Jewish Chronicle was established in 1841 and has been running non-stop since then. It predates Zionism and is obviously a Jewish institution not a Zionist one.