Last night’s George Galloway radio show (which believe it or not I’ve never listened to before) should have been called RESPECT on the Jewish Question. The programme was supposed to be a discussion of this week’s parliamentry report into anti-semitism but began with Galloway saying that the report was badly written, that the author of it Dennis McShane MP was an “opportunist” and that it was an awful document. To help him make his case (rather than dicuss the issues in any sort of challenging manner) – poet Michael Rosen , a RESPECT member was brought on. Galloway made great play of the fact that Rosen is Jewish but didn’t bother to tell the listeners that Rosen was a member of his own party.
After the pair agreed with each other about everything, particularly that the report into the growing concerns over anti-Jewish sentiment in the UK was essentially a way of Zionists trying to silence their critics, the first caller was taken and it was a chap fairly well-known in far-lefty circles and to our comments boxes – Jim Denham of the Alliance for Workers Liberty. After Jim made his first point – a criticism of Galloway’s failure to condemn conspiracy theories relating to Jews and 9-11 – the MP cut Denham off and with no chance of his guest replying proceeded to mock him and his political party.
Later on, after several calls from obvious RESPECT supporters, Galloway invited the second guest on to the air – Michael Lavalette, a RESPECT councillor in Preston who was calling from Bethlehem. Galloway made great fuss of the fact that BT’s caller ID had ‘mistakenly’ named Bethlehem as being in ‘Israel’ when of course it should have stated Lavalette was in Occupied Palestine. But again he failed to inform listeners that the councillor was a member of his own political party.
Do Talksport not worry that their airwaves are being used for undeclared party propaganda? I thought someone needed to point this out and so I called into the show and ‘Harry from Burnley’ told Galloway that he was being dishonest by not identifying his guests as members of his own party. I had expected him to fire back at me but he mumbled something about how pointing out the affiliations of his guests would be “proletysing” and conceded the point to me. I then went on to attack his position on the parliamentry report asking why he didn’t believe the Jewish community when they said that anti-semitism was on the rise? Was there any particular reason why he didn’t believe a minority community talking about racism? At this point Galloway cut me off and proceeded to claim I was guilty of ‘brute ignorance’.
During the earlier exchange with me about RESPECT members on his show Galloway did try a defence that the Scottish Brownite Labour MP Dougy Henderson was going to be a guest on the programme later that evening. I replied that Henderson was an old mate of Galloways – which he denied. But when Henderson came on to chat with GG about this week’s political events it was all very pally (both fans of footba’… Falkirk supporter…. going to Ibrox on Saturday…. allow you, by the way) and the host did acknowledge that they knew each other pretty well and despite political differences, decent man etc.
It was very disappointing to have a well-known Labour Party figure chummily chatting with Galloway in the midsts of what had been an hour long anti-Israel hatefest and party political broadcast for RESPECT. There was not a word of criticism of Galloway or his views from Henderson. One can only hope that he hadn’t been listening to the programme and had presumed it was just Galloway’s usual cabaret show and decided not to take it too seriously.
Anyway, George, I’ll be back on your programme again in the future. Next time have the balls to debate me.
Update: I missed part of the show but HP reader Mettaculture appeared as a caller and says he was able to get some serious points over:
I asked why (apart from references to Nazi Germanmy and the BNP having been ‘opportunistically’ ant-semitic but were really Islamophobic) he hadn’t addressed the source of the rise in ant-semitism, and who might be causing it?
I proceeded to read from Hamas covenant who also blamed the rotary and lions club for the Zionist conspiracy and article 32 of Hamas’ covennant citing the PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION. George admitted they were a forgery. I then asked why did he support people who propogated such vicious ant-semitism eg Hamas, Hezbollah (controlled TV mini series in Lebanon), TV in Iran, schoolbooks in Syria and Saudi Arabia, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem all propogating a lie.
So I’d say, at least 2-0 to HP.
Mettaculture’s point is the main one – throughout the whole discussion there was a refusal to even address why there might be a rise in anti-semitism. Perhaps because we all know, it is the political-religious movement that Galloway has allied himself with and which he fawns to, which is the main source of current, explicit anti-Jewish hatred.