Lord Andrew Phillips of Sudbury
Lord Andrew Phillips of Sudbury has made a remarkable intervention on the Jewish Chronicle website.
Last week Lord Phillips spoke at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event at Parliament. The title of the event was Gaza – Eyewitness reports from the Viva Palestina convoy, Parliamentary delegations, and Westminster University Architects
Jonathan Hoffman blogged Lord Phillips’ speech that night.
Lord Phillips has blogged back as follows:
“I have just had drawn to my attention a contribution made to The JC.com website on 3rd November by Jonathan Hoffman. It comments on a short speech I made at a PSC meeting last week. It does not report what I said fairly, or accurately (sadly, not for the first time in the JC as far as I am concerned.)
I will not try the patience of the readers of this blog (and my own!) by detailing all his studied distortions. One example, taken from the start of his piece, may serve to give the flavour.
He states that I said “I do believe in the right of Israel to exist”, he adding “Well thanks buddy – and France? Germany? England?”
In fact I emphasised that I believe “passionately” in the right of Israel to exist in freedom and security, adding that I believed in a similar right for Palestine. I did not also say, but could have, that I volunteered to fight for Israel in 1973.
Israel is in my view destroying its long-term security and harmony inter alia and particularly by its military occupation and colonisation of the West Bank (now extending to 42% of that territory, according to the latest Foreign Office estimate).
I will not be deterred from speaking out against that self-defeating, provocative and illegal policy, and its awful impact on the Palestinians.”
The only alleged distortion Lord Phillips chooses to go on, so as not to try our patience you understand, is about Israel’s right to exist.
He is silent on Hoffman quoting him as saying, “Europe cannot think straight about Israel because of the Holocaust and America is in the grip of the well-organised Jewish lobby”.
Making suggestions of Jewish power, an anti-Semitic trope, is bad enough but invoking the Holocaust so gratuitously at a meeting which has nothing to do with the Holocaust is a particularly low way of gaining an audience’s attention.
Someone who feels the need to invoke 6,000,000 innocent dead souls at a political rally is totally lacking in moral integrity.
People really don’t care whether Lord Phillips thinks Israel should exist or not or whether he keeps wishing to speak out against Israeli policy. It is his right and no one will try to stop him.
He is a Liberal Democrat after all and it is an unofficial Liberal Democrat policy, and one it definitely won’t renege on, to bash Israel publicly.
But either Lord Phillips really doesn’t want to try our patience, as he claims, and he didn’t speak of a “Jewish lobby” and gratuitously invoke the Holocaust or his deafening silence on these matters is an admission that he did.
If it is the latter then he should make a public apology.
So, Lord Phillips, which is it? Our patience are all yours to try.
RichardMillett's Blog 
clearly there is a “jewish lobby” but i would not call it “well organised”..if you do not think there is a lobby then what is the JLC, BoD and ZF doing?. Does this make me anti – anti semitic for saying its not that powerful?? (Said in good humour but now expecting the usual humourless responses)
“I will not be deterred from speaking out …”
Pompous git (that’s vulgar abuse, by the way, which is still legal in this country, and I will not be deterred from using it against pompous gits).
The same can and should be said about his condescending, gracious permission for Israel to exist.
“against that self-defeating, provocative and illegal policy, and its awful impact on the Palestinians”
Not terribly clued up about what the word ‘illegal’ means, are you, your noble Andrewship?
Itay, of course there is ‘a Jewish lobby’, or rather many lobbies which sometimes fight each other.
Would it, however, be humourless of me to point out that you are tilting at the wrong windmill? His noble Andrewship seems to be saying, and certainly I haven’t seen him deny that he said it, that there is an all-powerful Jewish lobby that controls what the USA does.
Is that the same all-powerful Jewish lobby that controls the media in this country, and somehow forces the BBC to spew antisemitic propaganda day in, day out?
Aye – that was my point to an exent. Maybe the “puppet master” is Soros. See Glenn Becks bonkers take on this (already condemned by the ADL) – http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-10/glenn-becks-anti-semitic-attack-on-george-soros/
Hopefully some of those jewish people in the states will refrain from supporting the tea party – Beck is no friend
isn’t a Brit accusing Israel of “colonisation” a bit unworthy of a Lord?
(I don’t know whether a Lord these days is still this kind of Lord
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t15hrzn2iTo – Enjoy!)
seems i am blocked from commenting….
or maybe not – OK what i wanted to say to Yoni:
Aye – that was my point to an exent. Maybe the “puppet master” is Soros. See Glenn Becks bonkers take on this (already condemned by the ADL) –
Hopefully some of those jewish people in the states will refrain from supporting the tea party – Beck is no friend
Itay – how many Jews do you actually think support the tea party in the US? Not many – most Jews are still voting for the Democratic Party.
1 is too many – unfortunately too many jews in the states are attracted to Becks clear hatred of muslims (bit like the relationship with some here and the EDL) and fail to see that Beck and the EDL are no friends of jewish people…who is using who…?
If Lord Phillips refuses to list and verify the alleged “distortions” then Jonathan Hoffman could easily take him to court.
Since when did deafening silence on matters become an admission of ‘guilt’…?
If that is the case, however, then the [official] deafening silences surrounding Mossad’s assassinations and Israel’s nuclear activities at the Dimona ‘Textile Factory’ speak volumes.
If it’s such as low-blow to mention and invoke the holocaust at a public meeting where the topic is not related to it, then I look forward the holocaust never being mentioned at other public meetings attended by Mr. Hoffman or his hangers-on.
Or if JH can’t restrain himself and brings it up I’m sure we’re read it reported here as a low-blow. Right?
spot on. Have you seen Hoffman over at the JC comparing Gilad Shalit to Aung San Suu Kyi? – what an embarassment, what an imbecile, what a gift to all the so called delegitimizers..
I see the trolls have moved over from the JC Blog site only stopping to change their nom de plume. Baruch or whatever your name is the unacceptable and gratiutous invocation of the Holocaust to show how really His Lordship is sympathetic to the Jews whilst using language reminiscent of Nazi propaganda was the point being made – pay attention!
Italy – I see because Gilad Shalit happened to be a Jewish Israeli soldier defending his country from Arab terrorism he is not as deserving of human rights as Aung San Suu Kyi ? or why otherwise are you embarrassed?
Nachman – everybody is deserving of human rights – but Gilad Shalit is no Aung San Suu Kyi..Hoffmans idiotic equation shows him as the out of touch obsessive he is.
the out of touch obsessive he is.
a shrink would diagnose a severe case of projectionitis
as i said – Gilad Shalit is no Aung San Suu Kyi …its idiotic to suggest he is.
No Itay, he’s a 19 year old kid, who has been held in greater isolation than Aung San Suu Kyi.
oh did time stand still for him? He is 24…always with the “we suffered more than others” hoo haa…tell that to the congolese and so many others.