One of the more unpleasant aspects of Mehdi Hasan’s gloating account of the court victory of the racist hate preacher Raed Salah, was the following line:
There hasn’t been a peep from the Jewish Chronicle
One commentator in the thread which followed tries to put Mehdi Hasan right:
Don’t you think that this might have had something to do with the judgement coming out during the Jewish festival of Passover?
Surely you’ve heard of that, Mehdi. It is the festival during which, according to your mate Raed Salah, Jews slit the throats of children to mix their blood with their “holy bread”.
Mehdi Hasan then updated the piece:
Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, has informed me via Twitter that the JCwebsite was closed for Passover, which is why there wasn’t a “peep” out of the JC, online, in the immediate aftermath the ruling. However, the current print edition of the JC, out today, has extensive and in-depth coverage of the Salah case – including this bizarre, over-the-top leader in which the Guardian newspaper is accused of producing a “classic, shocking and immensely significant example of pure antisemitism”. Hmm….
It really takes the biscuit, doesn’t it? Mehdi Hasan, a journalist and Shi’ite lay preacher who has praised Ayatollah Khameinei, and who describes non-Muslims as “Kaffirs“, has written an article praising a hate preacher who spreads the blood libel, without mentioning the fact that his hero is a vicious racist.
Then, he caps it, by objecting to Jews complaining about antisemitism!
Here’s the JC editorial
The significance of Raed Salah’s victory in overturning the Home Office’s attempt to have him deported lies not in its impact on Salah but in its wider implications. The most obvious is that a high court judge has decided that preaching the blood libel is no bar to entry into the UK. We will all draw our own conclusions about the mindset which can reach such a decision. On such grounds, it is difficult to know what would indeed be considered unacceptable for permission to enter the UK.
But in the immediate aftermath of the ruling, there has been a still more disturbing development. The Community Security Trust, a body which exists to prevent racist attacks on Jews and which is a model worldwide, has been attacked by Salah’s supporters – including the Guardian newspaper – for being, it is implied, at the centre of a Jewish conspiracy to mislead elected politicians and exert undue influence over the Home Office. This is not merely a lie and a gross calumny against a fine organisation for which every Jew in the land has reason to be grateful. It is a classic, shocking and immensely significant example of pure antisemitism in its traditional form.
So depressing as the judge’s ruling may be, it has served one very useful purpose. It has flushed out what often lies so lightly hidden under the surface of these issues.
Also read Despair is sometimes the only possible response and the JC’s news report.
