I find it difficult to believe that an award winning Israeli journalist would go to a British university to talk about the Israeli Palestinian conflict only to bring up antisemitic tropes but this is preceisely what London based blogger David Collier claims happened.
At an event organised by the local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign at the University of Kent Amira Hass, Haaretz columnist allegedly said:
And I ask myself did the Elders of Zion really sit together at the beginning of the Seventies and then during the nineties, and plan, and have all these military orders, all these changes? I believe that they knew for sure that they don’t want to give back the land and in the Nineties, my conclusion is that they wanted to do everything possible to stop the two state solution.”
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic book allegedly depicting the minutes of a meeting of Jews who control the world. Although clearly a fake, this book has been a central pillar of anti Jewish sentiment ever since it was first published in Russia in 1903. The document helped incite pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe that led to the deaths of thousands.
Is it true though?
Did Hass, always a strident critic of Israel, really stray into the murky waters of self hatred and antisemitism?
Was she perhaps trying a bit of humor? Was this a sort of ironic, tongue in cheek remark aimed at the audience?
I find it hard to believe and yet the quote is there on Collier’s blog. Will she deny it? Or perhaps explain it?
Or just move on to the next meeting…
