antisemitism,  Israel/Palestine,  Media

Independent Letters

Two letters published in the Independent – yesterday and today –  demonstrate, in different ways, that the socialism of fools is apparently quite at home there.

Here’s the first one in full:

Is it illegal to boycott Israeli goods that purport to be from Jordan? Last week, in a London store, I bought a carton of dates labelled in large red letters, from the Jordan Valley, with the image of a waving palm tree. Then I caught sight, in tiny letters unreadable without glasses, “Produce of Israel”. Is such a blatant attempt at disguising the true origin of goods legal?

Colin Dale

London NW1

Well, if Confused of Camden carried out a bit of basic research into the country he’s so keen to boycott he might find out that the Jordan river runs through rather a lot of it: so it’s perfectly possible that the dates are both (a) products of Israel and (b) legitimately described as being from the Jordan Valley.

Perhaps if he had sat down and thought things through for a few seconds more than he did before rushing off to advertise his ignorance in the national press he wouldn’t be feeling such a chump now.

The second letter concerns another country in the same region. Here’s the final paragraph:

Mendacious politicians who lied about weapons of mass destruction now pontificate about Iran to create a climate of fear like that which preceded the assault on Iraq and its execrable leader, whose usefulness to the West had by that stage been all used up. We are the victims of a consumerist culture that makes sure we swallow lies with the same voracity as we shorten our lives by munching Big Macs.

Dr James Dickie

Greenock Renfrewshire

Standard Stopper fare you might think. Indeed so predictably does the letter push the usual unthinking leftie buttons that the Independent made it their lead letter online.

Fortunately there are still some leftists who can smell a rat when it scuttles close enough to get a good whiff of.

Yakob Zaki Born James Dickie, Yakob Zaki is a Muslim convert who works as an associate director of the pro-Iranian Muslim Institute, in which capacity he has contributed Holocaust denial articles to its publication Crescent International as well as the Tehran-based publication Kayhan. Addressing a rally of the Islamist group al-Muhajiroun in Wembley in April 1998 Zaki declared: “nobody was gassed to death in the concentration camps … David Irving has the right idea, destroy the Holocaust myth and you have destroyed Israel.”

Altogether more depressing I’m sure you’ll agree.