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David

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  • 4 weeks later...
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BBC Parliament had the 1964 election night show yesterday and I accidentally watched it for about five hours. It's a proper corker with the closest result of the last 150 years, they genuinely don't know the outcome until late on the Friday afternoon, and it ended up with Labour winning a majority but had they won three fewer seats it would have been up to the Liberals who would govern. Indeed, the Conservatives were only 12 seats away from a majority themselves.
 

There was loads going on as well, beyond presenter Richard Dimbleby being caught eating a sandwich (33 years before his son did the same with a Mars bar). Kruschev quit as USSR chief during the broadcast. Early in the night the Conservatives won Smethwick after the most outright racist campaign ever and pretty much everyone of every party was calling it a disgrace all night.

And then you had all the moments that would go viral today, starting with the most Welsh result ever (pictured below in 1955 and 1964). . Dimbleby and his co-host kept arguing about which constituencies were on the District Line (a tube strike that week is thought to have cost Labour some marginal seats.) And of course Alan Whicker was reporting live on people swimming in Trafalgar Square's fountains, which used to be an election night thing.

You had Labour's George Brown (the man whose previous drunken appearances on TV reportedly first inspired the euphemism "tired and emotional") being interviewed by Robin Day and not having any of it:

 

Harold Wilson bringing the zing:

 

Dimbleby gets trolled by viewers:
 

The most bizarre contest of the night sees future PM Jim Callaghan hold of the challenge of the somewhat unlikely challenger for a Cardiff seat, the then England cricket captain Ted Dexter:

Facial hair peaked:
 

At gone 1am they went to a steel workers club for a 10 minute argument between union members supporting Labour and the Tories, then returned to the studio for the 1964 version of gender equality:

And then it wound up with Labour stuck one short of a majority for a couple of hours waiting for a recount, to the point that the PM went to Buckingham Palace to resign anyway. Eventually the result came through, the majority was confirmed, power changed hands for the first time in 13 years, and... oh hang on... we have some breaking news:
 

 

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Edited by JNLister
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I was dipping in and out of that yesterday, as will all election coverage that doesn't feature Jeremy Vine it was fascinating stuff. When I used to work a lot of very quiet weekends at work I used to watch them to pass the time, I was stuck that Robin Day looked almost identical in 1964 as he did in 1987. In at the end of the 1987 coverage there's a point where he appear to have fallen asleep and is chastised by David Dimbleby, and wakes up and barks "I was waiting for you to say something interesting!" Golden telly. 

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  • 1 month later...

So, Sir Keir Starmer has sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey for tweeting out and sharing an interview in which Maxine Peake discussed an anti-semitic 'conspiracy theory'.

Anyone want to tell me what I'm missing here in this being anti-semitism? 

Born in Bolton to a lorry driver father and care worker mother, Peake is strident and expressive; if religion wasn’t anathema to her, she’d be perfect in the pulpit. “Systemic racism is a global issue,” she adds. “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.” (A spokesperson for the Israeli police has denied this, stating that “there is no tactic or protocol that calls to put pressure on the neck or airway”.

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To me, it seems like Starmer purging the Labour Party of the left wing so he can appease centrists. Amnesty have long reported that Israeli secret service have worked with US police so that isn’t really in dispute. I know this is rich coming from someone who isn’t Jewish but isn’t conflating Israeli with Jewish anti Semitic in itself?

 

Edit - I love Maxine Peake. 

Edited by Keith Houchen
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2 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

I know this is rich coming from someone who isn’t Jewish but isn’t conflating Israeli with Jewish anti Semitic in itself?

I agree with you, but for whatever it's worth my partner has an Israeli mother and significant family out there, I've visited them a bunch of times and very much get the impression that they don't really see any difference between Israeli and Jewish and will immediately view anything critical of Israel as antisemitic.

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7 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I agree with you, but for whatever it's worth my partner has an Israeli mother and significant family out there, I've visited them a bunch of times and very much get the impression that they don't really see any difference between Israeli and Jewish and will immediately view anything critical of Israel as antisemitic.

That’s really shit. Not every Israeli is a Jew and not every Jew is an Israeli. There are Arab members of the Knesset. 

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11 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

To me, it seems like Starmer purging the Labour Party of the left wing so he can appease centrists. Amnesty have long reported that Israeli secret service have worked with US police so that isn’t really in dispute. I know this is rich coming from someone who isn’t Jewish but isn’t conflating Israeli with Jewish anti Semitic in itself?

 

Edit - I love Maxine Peake. 

The quote is a bit....weird in that it comes out of nowhere and adds nothing really to the conversation, but I thought it was widely known that police forces in the US (and others) visit/exchange Israel to learn/train and I don't know, criticism of that doesn't equal antisemitism to me?

Maybe I'm being ignorant and need educating and for someone who for large parts of their life has shouted that they are part of the "Yid army", maybe I do.

Keen to see how people feel it's anti-Semitic and I know it could lead to weirdos perpetuating their "Jews run the world" bullshit, but to me it's weirdly out of context and that's it.

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30 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

That’s really shit. Not every Israeli is a Jew and not every Jew is an Israeli. There are Arab members of the Knesset. 

Oh definitely. I think the typical Israeli thinking is that everyone who is a Jew is welcome and encouraged to move to Israel (return to the religious homeland) and that if you were born in Israel and aren't Jewish you probably don't count and they would be a bit happier if you left the country. But this is just the impression I've had the times I've visited. Israelis are a lovely, warm and generous people but are extremely stubborn, difficult, hard-headed and quick to be offended when it comes to topics on Israel and Judaism. 

Edited by LaGoosh
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I mean, when your close neighbours have said they will wipe you from the face of the earth, I can understand being super defensive. Not that it excuses governments committing human rights atrocities. 

Edited by Keith Houchen
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1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

I agree with you, but for whatever it's worth my partner has an Israeli mother and significant family out there, I've visited them a bunch of times and very much get the impression that they don't really see any difference between Israeli and Jewish and will immediately view anything critical of Israel as antisemitic.

This is the part I'm not cool with. To be critical of the Israeli government is automatically deemed antisemitic and racist against Jews. How does that work? One might have no issue with the religion whatsoever but might have a problem with the human rights actions of the government.

Edited by PunkStep
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46 minutes ago, PunkStep said:

This is the part I'm not cool with. To be critical of the Israeli government is automatically deemed antisemitic and racist against Jews. How does that work? One might have no issue with the religion whatsoever but might have a problem with the human rights actions of the government.

I suppose it's because the Israelis feel they've had to fight and sacrifice so much even for the right to exist and survive that they see every criticism as an attack or a potential attack and react accordingly. While the Holocaust and persecution of Jews is an awful thing most of us only learn about in history class at school, it's a very, very real and living memory to them. I have met dozens of people who lost huge sections of their family tree because of antisemitism and the deep psychological scar of that on an entire peoples psyches cannot be underestimated. The religion and the government are very joined up. The people see the government as defenders of the religion and holy land. Therefore they are quick to raise the antisemitism alarm at any perceived criticism.

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2 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

I suppose it's because the Israelis feel they've had to fight and sacrifice so much even for the right to exist and survive that they see every criticism as an attack or a potential attack and react accordingly. While the Holocaust and persecution of Jews is an awful thing most of us only learn about in history class at school, it's a very, very real and living memory to them. I have met dozens of people who lost huge sections of their family tree because of antisemitism and the deep psychological scar of that on an entire peoples psyches cannot be underestimated. The religion and the government are very joined up. The people see the government as defenders of the religion and holy land. Therefore they are quick to raise the antisemitism alarm at any perceived criticism.

These are absolutely real concerns, and they must not be dismissed, but there is a point past which they're not just surviving any more. 

Europeans see this as "Jews vs. Gentiles/Antisemites". For the Palestinians and many other people around the world, it's just another gang of white Europeans stomping into another part of the world where brown/black people live, chucking them off their land violently, taking it for themselves, and then disingenuously wondering why the wronged parties aren't putting up with it.

This isn't helped at all by how the Ashkhenazi Jews (those of eastern European tradition) treat the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews), the Mizrahi (the Middle Eastern Jews, many of whom have families that have lived in Israel for centuries since before the state was founded), the South Asian Jews, and even the Sephardi (the Southern Europeans). Secret forced sterilisation programmes of Beta Israel and Mizrahi women, ostracism of the Ethiopian and Sudanese Jews to the point where they're amongst the poorest in Israeli society, shootings of black Israeli men in much the same manner that it happens in the US, the continual aggrandising and "setting as default" the Ashkhenazi traditions at the expense of and detriment to all the others, even being forced to convert to Judaism because the white Jews don't believe they can be Jewish already (and bear in mind, not being recognised as Jewish by the Israeli state severely curtails your rights as a citizen or resident), all of this paints a picture to those parts of the world that have experienced being colonised by the Western empires that Israel is just another European imperialist project, and that's what many on the left are responding to, not a hatred of Jews - the problem there is that unfortunately there's been a tendency to accept anyone who criticises Israel and not question their motives for criticism, and such laxity has let in the anti-Jewish racist fringe, when it should be anathema to any decent left-winger.

Quite a few progressive Israeli commentators have pointed out that the Israeli government's position as regards negotiation of land rights with Palestine is unreasonable, because, as the Palestinians see it, there's nothing left to negotiate. They've had almost everything taken from them, and Israel continues to enable more to be taken by allowing the illegal settlers to continue to build and encroach further.

Edited by Carbomb
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