What’s worse? Shouting abuse, or deliberately hitting someone with a car?

by Martin Odoni

The selective outrage of the British media has struck again. A week of typical Israeli infamies against Palestinian innocents has led to an unusually high level of protest around the world – even in Israel itself – enough to make me hopeful that the false narrative of the conflict prominent in Western countries of poor-little-Israel-under-attack-by-Palestinian-terrorists is losing its traction.

However, the weekend past has shown that the false narrators have not given up their struggle to control minds just yet. This is demonstrated by widespread hysteria against one ugly incident, and widespread relaxation about an actual violent incident.

To start with the ugly incident, I am sure everyone by now is aware of the anti-Semitic abuse apparently yelled from car windows near Golders Green on Sunday. There seems little doubt that the abuse was an angry backlash against the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, or at least the bombardment was a pretext.

I am not in any way defending the men who are accused of the behaviour, which was disgusting and crude, and of course hurts me on a personal level. But I do think the overall reaction in media and political circles has been a little over-loud. Both Boris Johnson (you know, the guy who wrote a novel portraying Jews as money-grabbing twisters and media magnates) and Keir Starmer have issued statements of condemnation, and the incident was top of the headlines for around 24 hours afterwards. Appalling as the sentiments expressed were, we are, in the cold light of day, talking about someone shouting.

What is my point? Well, this is my point. During the last week, there were riots across the cities of Israel, with right-wing Jewish groups deliberately targeting Palestinians and attacking them and their property. The scenes were being compared to Kristallnacht, the infamous Pogrom-like night of attacks on Jews across Nazi Germany in November 1938.

This is why a lot of people preferred Corbyn to Starmer. Corbyn isn’t selectively self-interested about morality.

Johnson and Starmer had next to nothing to say about that. So shouting appears to be worse in their book than riot and theft. (Although mysteriously, not worse than riot when it happens in Bristol.)

But closer to home, also over the weekend, there was another serious incident involving pro-Palestinian campaigners in the UK, this one in Nottingham city centre. A crowd of protesters against the Israeli atrocities was rammed by a passing car. The protester at the point of impact was left with serious leg injuries.

A car drove into people at a Free Palestine protest in Nottingham city centre, leaving a man with leg injuries.

A 51 year old man was later arrested on suspicion of grievous bodily harm.

I’m sure you heard it on the news

pic.twitter.com/TattqUfGRC

— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) May 17, 2021

Well yes, he has leg injuries, but no one SHOUTED at him, did they?

I have seen and heard precious little about the incident in the British mainstream media at all. I am not saying that there has been a total blackout, but it is very clear that it has not been given anything like the same degree of prominence as the Golders Green racial abuse. I only heard about the attack myself when my partner told me about it, because she happens to live in Nottingham.

I cannot help but feel suspicious, especially in the context of the Israel-friendly narrative that has dominated Western discourse over the last seventy years. The anti-Semitic abuse yelled from a car reflects badly on pro-Palestinian campaigners. Even though it was only four fools behaving in this idiotic fashion, it inevitably damages the image and credibility of the wider pro-Palestinian movement. Especially when it gets so much coverage and such high-profile reaction.

As for the ramming of the crowd in Nottingham, a 51-year-old man has been arrested. His reasons for the attack are unclear; it may just have been a bit of ‘road-rage’ caused by the streets getting blocked up by the protest. But another possibility, which has surely occurred to everyone who knows about the attack, is that the driver may be a Zionist, and that he may have attacked the crowd for being his political ‘enemies.’ It would be entirely in-keeping with the bloody-minded maliciousness and self-empowered arrogance of Zionist law-breakers, both as individuals and as a movement.

The opposition to Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians is getting noticeably larger and more vehement

If that attack had made the headlines, it would have damaged the credibility of Israel’s supporters at least as much as the Palestinian campaigners have been. But the media left it for the small print. And the response from Johnson and Starmer? You could have read a book. So again, shouting is being treated as far worse behaviour than the deployment of potentially lethal force. One has to wonder why that is.

Because the establishment media and Government still want to protect Israel, if only by discrediting its critics and defending its supporters, is the most plausible reason I can think of.