If you read one press story today, or at least one overseas press story, then you must read this one from the Times of Israel by Brian Thomas. It’s an absolute corker of a rebuttal to a piece written in the UK Jewish Chronicle by one of their staffers Marcus Dysch.
Following Tommy Robinson’s visit to Israel at the invitation of Mr Thomas, the Jewish Chronicle wrote a hit piece on Mr Robinson that was stuffed with lazy assumptions and even some gross inaccuracies. I along with a great many others were astounded that such a piece should be gracing the pages of one of the world’s longest lived and most respected Jewish newspapers and especially a publication that is considered by many to be a trustworthy newspaper of record.
Therefore I was delighted to see that Mr Thomas had written a rebuttal to Mr Dysch’s piece in the Times of Israel. It is a fabulously well written and passionate piece and deserves to be as widely read as possible, both by those within the British Jewish community and outside. I’ve reproduced below part of the article below, but I would urge you most strongly to follow the link at the bottom of the excerpt and read the whole article.
The Times of Israel said:
I invited Tommy Robinson to Israel for two reasons. I wanted to show him the real boundaries of Zionism today and give him a glimpse of the almost unfathomably deep connection between Jews and Israel.
I achieved both on our first day, starting from the beach in Tel Aviv, swinging through Arad and driving all the way north across Judea and Samaria along the west bank of the Jordan river, passing Massada and the Qumran caves as we headed to our destination on the shores of the Kinneret.
Tommy certainly has a colourful past and it’s all explained in his book, Enemy of the State. I’ve known him years but hadn’t met him till I arrived to pick him up from the beach in Tel Aviv where I told him and his friends to wait for me on the first morning of our trip.
Tommy learned of the amazing links between Jews and our land over the next few days. He saw Jewish and Christian history and our obvious, deep love for our land. He saw the stunning country we built out of the diseased ruin it had become under a succession of emperors, sultans, caliphs and Imperial British troops.
Since his earliest days opposing supremacist Islam on the streets of Luton, Tommy knew most of what he heard about Israel in the mainstream press was distorted. He knew how badly his own story had been twisted and could see the same being done to Israel.
We met Arabs, Jews, including an Aramaean Christian priest, IDF soldiers, Beduins, Palestinian “refugee” children, a Christian Arab exiled from Gaza and rude Jordanian guards on the Temple Mount. Tommy spoke with everyone with an open mind and heart. And we tweeted it all to his “142,000 followers”.
When we tweeted an unplanned picture on a tank on the Golan Heights, a Muslim pressure group in the UK seriously suggested that Tommy posing in shorts and flip-flops while gingerly holding a gun, was equivalent to Jihadi John beheading journalists in Syria.
I don’t believe Marcus Dysch has met or even spoken to Tommy Robinson yet he writes with great authority that Tommy’s
‘support’ for Israel and Jews was designed simply as a provocation to British Muslims”.
What nonsense. Do you hurl this baseless accusation at Douglas Murray, Col. Richard Kemp, Pat Condell or many other non-Jews who proudly support Israel? Why not? Why do you single Tommy out? Is it his accent? Did he use the wrong fork at dinner? He didn’t go to the right college at Oxford? He didn’t go to Oxford, unless you include his speech to the Oxford Union. One can only think it is your own bigotry. You clearly have never bothered to asked Tommy why he supports Israel.
Tommy had no need of seeking out new provocations in the UK. He challenged Muslims’ reverence for some of the very questionable deeds of their prophet. That was all the “provocation” they needed: everything can be a provocation if they wish. The death threats and repeated attacks on his life did not stem from waving an Israeli flag. Perhaps you don’t understand that the very existence of a non-dhimmi, Jewish State of Israel, rejecting Islamic Sharia and refusing to bow before Islam is a provocation to Muslims. Non-Jews who support Israel are no such provocation.
Your timid Jewish community in Britain, which is so careful not to rock the boat or vigorously defend “settlement activities” may not “desire any links whatsoever with Robinson and his ilk”. But I can assure you that strong and proud Jews in Israel feel much the same about you and the subservient parts of UK Jewry who seem more concerned with their future peerages than the real security of Israel.
Tommy has suffered persecution at the hands of the British state that rivals stories I’ve heard from Natan Sharansky about the Soviet Union. You might not want to believe that your host nation is capable of forcing a man to plead guilty to ridiculous charges to avoid having his wife jailed, but it is.
This is an excellent piece that is a an antidote to the lazy and inaccurate writing of Mr Dysch. For my own part I’m also disgusted at both the timid attitude taken by all too many in Britain’s Jewish community towards Islamic extremists who promote Shariah and the hostility shown to those like Mr Robinson who are standing up against it. For what it’s worth I’d like to tell Mr Dysch this: I’d rather have Mr Robinson on my side than those whether they be Jew or non-Jew who refuse to look at, let alone do anything about, the growing problems with Islamic extremism in Britain today
Links
Brian Thomas Times of Israel piece on Tommy Robinson
Original hit piece on Tommy Robinson by Marcus Dysch
Good grief… (I feel and RFB rant coming on…)