Aaronovitch Apologises for Anti-Semitism Accusation & Pays £1,000 to FOBZU
Tony Greenstein | 02.12.2007 01:43 | Anti-racism | Palestine | Leeds Bradford | South Coast
On July 6th this year, a particularly unpleasant Zionist activist who goes by the name of Mikey Mikey aka Michael Ezra posted a comment on David Aaronovitch’s Times-on-line blog asserting that Tony Greenstein spent his time ‘harassing Jews’ and for the past 30 years had been intimidating Jewish students at NUS Conference.
What made this clearly actionable is that the blog is moderated and could therefore only have been put up with Aaronovitch’s approval. After much huffing and puffing by The Times, who trawled through a barrel of allegations courtesy of the Union of Jewish Students, whose speciality is defaming those who disagree with them, including allegations that even I hadn’t heard of before, they agreed to settle. Their barrister Richard Rampton QC, of David Irving fame, couldn’t make his mind up from the one letter I received from him, whether or not The Times had a defence! What was the defamation alleged he asked. Thanks to a friendly socialist academic lawyer from Oxford University, I produced a concise answer – anti-Semitism! And breach of section 3 of the Race Relations Act, i.e. a criminal offence.
Some people may think it is an attack on free speech to issue libel actions and in general I agree. However accusing people who are not anti-Semites of being anti-Semitic, is a tactic which we see employed in the USA in particular, to destroy free speech. People like Tony Judt, Norman Finkelstein, Joseph Massad, Professors Walt and Mersheimer and even Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter have felt the lash of this particularly vicious allegations and smear. In Britain it has been used to try and prevent anti-Zionists like myself and Roland Rance from speaking on campuses. That is why I felt the need to bring a defamation action.
The rationale behind the posting is of some interest. Mr Ezra defended his decision to make the posting in a letter The Times sent me of 6th August:
“I was a student myself in the period X-Y and I can assure you that when I heard Greenstein speak, I felt very intimidated - and yes I was a Jewish student. In fact my current fascination with collecting information about Tony Greenstein and trying to deconstruct all of his arguments, psychologists might put down to getting some revenge for the stress he caused me with his pamphlets and speeches as a student.”
Well I’m not a psychologist and don’t have much time for psycho-babble. But it would seem that the very act of political debate and argument, if it upsets someone’s settled views, is an act of ‘intimidation’ and from there to violence.
The Mikeys of this world claim that views which are ‘offensive’ are best not be heard because they fear the reality of what they believe in being laid bare. It is one of the problems of the ‘diversity’ agenda and identity politics that even the most reactionary identity, founded upon the oppression of another, is held to be equally valid, regardless of the content of that view. It was because of the ‘offence’ he may cause that even Desmond Tutu was banned from The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. It’s Vice President Doug Hess stated that “We never made a judgment that he is anti-Semitic. We have not made that judgment. We have only been told by members of the Jewish community that his words have been hurtful,”
One wonders whether a speaker whose words is ‘hurtful’ to the torturers of Guantanamo might also be banned from certain US campuses.
That is why I sought to set the record straight publicly.
Tony Greenstein
http://timesonline.typepad.com/david_aaronovitch/2007/11/tony-greenstein.html
Some people may think it is an attack on free speech to issue libel actions and in general I agree. However accusing people who are not anti-Semites of being anti-Semitic, is a tactic which we see employed in the USA in particular, to destroy free speech. People like Tony Judt, Norman Finkelstein, Joseph Massad, Professors Walt and Mersheimer and even Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter have felt the lash of this particularly vicious allegations and smear. In Britain it has been used to try and prevent anti-Zionists like myself and Roland Rance from speaking on campuses. That is why I felt the need to bring a defamation action.
The rationale behind the posting is of some interest. Mr Ezra defended his decision to make the posting in a letter The Times sent me of 6th August:
“I was a student myself in the period X-Y and I can assure you that when I heard Greenstein speak, I felt very intimidated - and yes I was a Jewish student. In fact my current fascination with collecting information about Tony Greenstein and trying to deconstruct all of his arguments, psychologists might put down to getting some revenge for the stress he caused me with his pamphlets and speeches as a student.”
Well I’m not a psychologist and don’t have much time for psycho-babble. But it would seem that the very act of political debate and argument, if it upsets someone’s settled views, is an act of ‘intimidation’ and from there to violence.
The Mikeys of this world claim that views which are ‘offensive’ are best not be heard because they fear the reality of what they believe in being laid bare. It is one of the problems of the ‘diversity’ agenda and identity politics that even the most reactionary identity, founded upon the oppression of another, is held to be equally valid, regardless of the content of that view. It was because of the ‘offence’ he may cause that even Desmond Tutu was banned from The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. It’s Vice President Doug Hess stated that “We never made a judgment that he is anti-Semitic. We have not made that judgment. We have only been told by members of the Jewish community that his words have been hurtful,”
One wonders whether a speaker whose words is ‘hurtful’ to the torturers of Guantanamo might also be banned from certain US campuses.
That is why I sought to set the record straight publicly.
Tony Greenstein
http://timesonline.typepad.com/david_aaronovitch/2007/11/tony-greenstein.html
Tony Greenstein
e-mail:
tonygreenstein@yahoo.com
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