Dothe following reflections and judgements of Ted Honderich on the twoprogrammes show that they make up a casestudy, an illustrative instance of a general fact? Are they a casestudy of something too common in disagreement about Palestine,terrorismand so on? Something of wider consequence than just these twotelevisionprogrammes, deadly consequence? The programme 'The Real Friends of Terror', by meand nine other contributors, was to be the last one in the 2006Don't Get Me Started series ontheBritish television channel Five. It was decided, when a rough cut orfirst version of the programme was seen, that there would be anotherprogramme added to the series, a response. This would be by DavidAaronovitch, a journalist who writes forThe Times and theJewish Chronicle, and has himselfbeen atelevision researcher, producer and editor. It was 'NoExcuses for Terror', transmitted a week later. Both programmes, each 40minutes long, weredirected and produced by the award-winning Eamon T. O'Connor forLiberty Bell Productions. Transcript of the television programme Don't Get Me Startedseries, channel Five Broadcast 19 September 2006 Prof. Ted Honderich: Presenter Eamon T. O'Connor: Producer/Director Stuart Prebble: Executive Producer Production Manager: Judy Lewis Head of Production: David Buckley Production company: Liberty Bell Thetranscript is very close to giving the words in the programme astransmitted, but not exactly. There were small editing changes to theprogramme after the transcript was made. You can now see the programmeas transmitted, on the web athttp://www.corkpsc.org/db.php?cid=471and http://www.corkpsc.org/db.php?aid=47572 Appearing in the programme were: Rt. Hon. Tony Benn, MP andcabinet minister in Labour governments Lord Ian Gilmour, former MP andcabinet minister is Conservativegovernments Mr Reg Kees, father of TomKeys, British soldier killed in Iraq Baroness Helena Kennedy,barrister and human rights advocate Dr. Ghada Karmi, HonoraryResearch Fellow, Institute of Arab andIslamic Studies, Exeter University Dr. Brian Klug, Senior ResearchFellow & Philosophy Tutor, St.Benet's Hall, Oxford Dr. Riz Mokal, Reader in Law,University College London Prof. Steven Rose, Head of theDepartment of Biology, Open University;organizer proposed British university teachers boycott of Israeluniversities Baroness Jenny Tonge, pastmember Liberal Democrat shadow cabinet DON'T GET ME STARTED Prof. Ted Honderich: Terrorism is one awful fact of our time. Death and maiming and feargive rise to grim questions. Simple answers too... Tony Blair, archive film: This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. Baroness Jenny Tonge: What is the difference between the horror and the violence created bysuicide bombers and the horror and the violence created by bombsdropped from thirty thousand feet by aeroplanes? Ted Honderich: Who are the real enemies of terrorism, who are its real friends? Mr. Reg Keys: It's come home to bite us on the streets of London. You can’t invade asovereign state, kill tens of thousands of innocent people, withoutsomebody somewhere going to take action for that. Ted Honderich: Can suicide bombing ever be justified? Ted Honderich: You'll be hearing a proposition or two from me that you may not likethe sound of, maybe even find...outrageous or terrible. But we'vereally got to think about things. What is inflammatory now can turn outto be right and true. THE REAL FRIENDS OF TERROR Ted Honderich, University ofBath lecture: 7/7 has actual friends and actual enemies. Who are the actual friendsof 7/7? Ted Honderich, studio: My name is Ted Honderich. I am a philosopher. For me philosophy isn'tdreaming or deep thinking. It’s a kind of ordinary logic. Being clear,being consistent and not leaving things out. Sometimes about right andwrong. Ted Honderich, University ofBath lecture: It strikes me that the Palestinian's only hope is terrorism. That wastheir only means, which I absolutely believe without the slightesthesitation. Ted Honderich, studio: I can understand why a lot of what I say hits raw nerves. It's hard forexample to accept that maybe there are degrees of moral responsibilityfor the terror that afflicts us. That it's not just the terrorists thatneed to change or be changed. Jenny Tonge: It’s very, very easy to condemn suicide bombers or terrorists -- youcan say this is evil, this is terrible. And then you go away and youhave your meal and your glass of wine and you feel that somehow you’vedone something for humanity. Well you’ve done nothing, it’s the easyway out just to condemn, Jenny Tonge: What we have to try and do is get inside their skins, to empathise, totry and understand, to try and say where are they coming from, whatmakes them do this. Ted Honderich: I believe a direct line can be traced from where we are now, throughJuly 7, back through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on back throughthe terrible attack on America on 9/11, to here, the Middle East, thecreation of the State of Israel and the ongoing tragedy that is thestory of the Palestinian people. Dr. Ghada Karmi: You know, we have to remember something very important. ThePalestinians, historically and traditionally are a peaceable agrarianpeople. They have no history of violence or of warfare, or ofaggression. Had they been left alone they would have remainedthat to this very day. Lord Ian Gilmour: The Palestinians have been under a brutal and apartheid occupationwhich is probably one of the longest, post war occupations. The resultof which has been a sort of state of suspended war for the last sixtyyears, which has been a disaster for the Palestinians who have seentheir country disappear. Ted Honderich: I believe that the terrible and ongoing injustice done to thePalestinian people is a root cause among the causes of the violence wenow experience. Rt. Hon. Tony Benn You could argue that the Palestinians in seeking to recover the landthat in law belongs to them are not engaged in terrorism at all but ina liberation struggle. Tony Benn: But of course the media coverage of the conflict between the Israelisand the Palestinians is so biased because they always describeeverything that the Palestinians do as terrorism, and everything,military action taken by the Israelis, as police action. Ted Honderich: Well I agree about the bias, but my attitude is that the Palestiniansare of course engaged in terrorism. It's also other things, one of thembeing self-defence. Jenny Tonge at Trafalgar Squarerally: There are people dying all over Palestine because they can't get propermedical care, not just because... Ted Honderich: The Liberal Democrat peer and doctor Jenny Tonge visited the West Bankin 2003. She wanted to see for herself why people become suicide bombers. Jenny Tonge: Well I’d seen and experienced the things that are just getting worseand worse all the time. The confiscation of land, the inabilityof the Palestinians to make any economic progress at all, and Isuppose, most of all, the checkpoints ... if you’re a Palestinian,you’re made to queue and sometimes for days, but certainly for hours.People are strip-searched at checkpoints, in front of theirfamilies. They are humiliated and I think it’s the humiliationthat got to me more than anything. Ted Honderich: Jenny Tonge was sacked from her shadow front bench job in the House ofCommons after speaking out about Palestinian suicide bombers. Jenny Tonge: If I'd had to live in that situation myself, as a mother andgrandmother, and I remember saying and I say this advisedly, that Imight have considered becoming a suicide bomber myself -- that was theremark that was so inflammatory to so many people. Ted Honderich: The Palestinians are up against what is said to be the fourth largestmilitary power in the world. Do they have much choice in how theyrespond to it? Ghada Karmi: I say this within a context of what I shall call asymmetricwarfare. In other words where you have protagonists and one ofthem is extremely weak and the other is extremely strong. I would sayto you that they have a moral right to carry out any action in order toresist the occupation that they've had. Ian Gilmour: Well I think they have a moral right to resistance. I think the tactics that some of the resistance groups or terroristgroups have used have been totally wrong. The Palestinians should haveconfined their resistance or their terrorism to the occupiedterritories and it was quite wrong to go and murder civilians inIsrael proper. Ted Honderich: It could be that the Palestinian people do have reason to resort to theterrible weapon that is the suicide bomber. But could it also be thatthe Jewish people have a moral right to their homeland? What is it to have a moral right to something? To have a legal right tosomething is to have the justification of the law as it stands. To havea moral right is to have the justification of a fundamental moralprinciple. Ghada Karmi: The tragedy is that the so called moral act that you apparently supportcreating Israel in Palestine led to a string of tragedies which ends inus today discussing something called Palestinian terrorism. Ted Honderich: To many the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 in historicPalestine despite being an injustice to the Palestinians was right.Partly it was right because the human race had to give compensation forthe greatest horror inflicted in the 20th century. Prof. Steven Rose: Coming as I do from a family of Holocaust survivors, remembering verywell those of my relatives who survived, who came back with the brandmarks on their arms in 1945-1946, then absolutely the Holocaust was oneof the most horrific acts of human against human in recorded history Ted Honderich: For the Palestinians the creation of the State of Israel by the Alliesas a compensation for the Holocaust was what in Arabic is called al Nakba, the great catastrophe. Steven Rose: The Holocaust the aftermath was solved by the Europeans by acceptingthe Zionist premise that there was no way to resolve Europeananti-Semitism except by getting rid of your Jews, you got rid of yourJews to Palestine and in the consequence you actually created theNakba, the catastrophe by which the Palestinians were expropriated,evicted, killed and moved from their lands. Sound track, news film 1948,Palestine: Jaffa itself has become a deserted city...when the state of Israel wasdeclared Ghada Karmi: We are completely agreed that the Holocaust caused a problem so hugeand so awful that everybody needed to come to the aid of the victims,we’re totally agreed. The problem was that it wasn’t everybody who came to the aid, it was,it was done such that the Palestinians paid a disproportionate, or ifyou like, took a disproportionate share of the burden for compensatingthe victims of the Holocaust. Ted Honderich: The word 'Zionism' is vague. Zionism for me, as I define it, is thefounding and defence of Israel within roughly its original 1948borders. Neo-Zionism is something else -- taking or at leastcontrolling the last 20% of historic Palestine. There's a bigdifference, isn't there? Ted Honderich: International law has not helped the Palestinians. The United Nationshasn't helped. Does it follow it would not have been right to helpthem? Dr. Riz Mokal: Since 1972, no less than 39 resolutions have been put forward onPalestine, these resolutions were about things which were ascontroversial as condemning Israeli forces for murdering UN employeesand destroying warehouses containing internationally donated food forrefugees Archive film, U.N. SecurityCouncil, Chairman: Those in favour of the resolution please... Ted Honderich: Was it right that, time after time attempts by the United Nations tocurb Israeli aggression against the Palestinians have been blocked bythe Israelis’ great ally? Archive film, U.N. SecurityCouncil, Chairman: Those against? That resolution has not been passed because of a negative vote by apermanent member of the council. Riz Mokal: The US cast a veto and these resolutions, which were supported by allcountries represented on the Security Council, including the UnitedKingdom, were never adopted, simply because the US was able to castthem aside in this way. Ted Honderich: Maybe Zionism, the founding of Israel in roughly its original borderswas right. We have to decide. But what about neo-Zionism? -- going forthe last 20% of historic Palestine after the wars of 1967 and 1973? Isthere justification for that? Tony Benn: I think to get a clear understanding of what’s happening does requireus to be straight in our mind that the Israelis have no right in law tooccupy territory that does not belong to them Ted Honderich: As there are shares of legal responsibility decided by courts, so thereare shares of moral responsibility. Does America's support forneo-Zionism mean America shares moral responsibility for the injusticedone to the Palestinian people? Tony Benn: The answer is for Israel to withdraw and for a peace settlement to bemade because you see, a lot of criticism is made of the Palestinians,they don’t recognise Israel, but the Israelis don’t recognisePalestine. (Indeed) The answer is on the basis of decisions taken by the Israelis, theIsraeli government is not prepared to take and has the support of theUnited States in not being prepared to take. Ted Honderich: How are we to decide such judgements of right and wrong, and moralresponsibility? Maybe by depending on the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights? Baroness Helena Kennedy: Under international law, I’m allowed to kill you if you attack me, andin fact under international law that’s the law of nations too. I’m entitled to defend myself and to go to war against you if you arethreatening me and I feel that my own life or the life of my nation isendangered. What Human Rights law accepts is that inevitably there aregoing to be tensions between your rights and mine Ted Honderich: The plain problem is that claims to human rights can conflict. How dowe decide who is in the right? We need some general principle of rightand wrong. Riz Mokal: Israel does not accord any rights to five million or so Palestinians,virtually every aspect of whose lives, is controlled by Israel and yetwho have no influence over Israeli institutions or Israeli decisionmaking, perhaps other than in a negative way through their acts ofresistance or other violence. It also seems to me that ademocracy does not exist if you simply purge a particular territory ofanybody who would disagree. Ted Honderich: Should we decide on right and wrong not by UN resolutions or humanrights but by going by democracy? In January 2006 the Palestiniansdemocratically elected HAMAS the terrorist organization. Thegreat powers led by the United States and the UK went against thisdemocratic choice, and withdrew funding to punish the Palestinians formaking it. So it seems we can't take democracy as a guide to right andwrong either. Jenny Tonge: If we look at the recent elections, which all international observerssay were really well run, they were un-corrupt, there was no problem,we immediately get the Israeli government and the internationalcommunity refusing to accept the democratically elected government ofPalestinians. Now what sort of democracy is that? what law havethey obeyed, what principles do they have, what is right and what iswrong. I don’t know. Ted Honderich: What can philosophy do to help clarify thinking about all of this? Ted Honderich: It seems clear that you don't get a principle for deciding right andwrong, and moral responsibility, from international law, or doctrinesof human rights, or the verdicts of democracy. I myself stand by afundamental principle. It is the Principle of Humanity. Simply put, itis that we must take actually rational steps, rather than pretences, togetting and keeping people out of bad lives -- frustration,deprivation, misery. Ted Honderich: The principle gives my answer to a question about neo-Zionism, thefinal violation of the Palestinians. Yes, the Palestinians doindeed have a moral right to their terrorism against it in all ofhistoric Palestine. The principle gives another answer too. Yes, thefounding of Israel in its original borders, and the Jewish terrorismthat helped, was also right. Ghada Karmi: They have no alternative, as all people who are in that sort ofsituation where they are weak, do not have the weapons of the strongand therefore have to use everything at their disposal in order to wagethe war. Ted Honderich: The Principle of Humanity condemns Bush and Blair and those who goalong with them about Palestine. It condemns them as deficient in moralintelligence. Jenny Tonge: By doing the things that they do, everything they do, their war onIraq, their bombing of Afghanistan, their failure to do anything aboutPalestine, and so all of those wider issues are actually fuellingterrorism. END OF PART ONE Ted Honderich: Moral philosophy has the aim of thinking more logically about awfulfacts of our time. It is less distracted by other jobs. The Principleof Humanity seems a good example. No double standards. It doesn'thold only some lives sacred. No mere conventionality in it. Not a lotof respect either. No deference to other moral attitudes pretending tobe higher truths. It demands we do everything rational to get politicalleaders to think and act about both terrorism and the causes ofterrorism. Ted Honderich: The attack on America on 9/11 was monstrously wrong. It was wrong,according to the Principle of Humanity, because it was a monstrouslyirrational means to an end that was partly defensible. I mean supportof the Palestinians and resistance to neo-Zionism. Ted Honderich: Do Americans share with Bin Laden some of the moral responsibility forthe attack against themselves? American neo-Zionists in particular? Wereally need to ask that kind of question. Palestine demands it. Ted Honderich, at book launchin LRB Bookshop: It seems to me clear that the Palestinians have had and continue tohave a moral right to their terrorism against the ethnic cleansing ofNeo- Zionism. Ted Honderich: That judgement in my book isn't obvious. But we all have to judge underconditions of uncertainty. There are people around untroubled byuncertainty. Questioner in LRB bookshop: I don't think Palestine had anything to do with 9/11. Ted Honderich in LRB bookshop: No matter who was involved, the idea that Palestine had nothing to dowith 9/11 seems to me absurd. It's not a proposition that deservesrespect. Ted Honderich: I think I'm on safe ground there. and also on pretty safe ground withthe Principle of Humanity. It also rests on facts of human nature, veryfundamental facts. Ted Honderich: The Principle of Humanity is that we must take rational steps to reducebad lives. Those are lives that are deprived in terms of sixfundamental human goods... Ted Honderich: They are for a decent length of life, bodily well-being, freedom andpower, for respect and self-respect, for the goods of relationships andthe satisfactions of culture. Dr. Brian Klug: I think that you have made an original and genuine contribution tomoral philosophy and to the political debate with this Principle ofHumanity. I think what you have formulated here no one hasformulated before. I think it’s a noble principle and I think it’s auseful principle. Ted Honderich: It seems to me that the Principle of Humanity is better supported, morecapable of proof than any other moral attitude. But people becomeuncomfortable, even outraged, when the principle is applied on behalfof the Palestinians. Brian Klug: The Principle of Humanity says that we must take actually rationalsteps to get people out of bad lives and I would argue that theterrorism perpetrated by certain armed groups amongst the Palestiniansis in fact counter-productive, that it works against the end that theyare seeking, and this is a view that has been expressed by manyPalestinians -- Palestinians are divided about this. Ted Honderich: The Principle of Humanity and what you take to follow from it can getyou in trouble with both sides of a conflict. You can be vilified bytough Palestinians for justifying the existence of the state of Israelwithin its 1948 borders. Some have tried to break up my lectures.You can also be judged by lawyers. Ted Honderich: Q: It seems to me that the Palestinians have a moral right to theirterrorism against the ethnic cleansing of Neo Zionism in taking fromthem the last fifth of historic Palestine. Do you agree that theyhave a moral right? Helena Kennedy: A: I think the language you are using Ted is so inflammatory. Amoral right to terrorism, no. A moral right to their territory,yes. A moral right to having a homeland, yes. The moralright for Israel to exist, yes. I don’t believe that terrorism is amoral imperative in, even in, the circumstances the Palestinians findthemselves in. Ted Honderich: Q. There were inflammatory things that might have been said, in say1935 in Germany, inflammatory things said in defence of the Jewishpeople. So what’s inflammatory and what’s not inflammatory is a matterof operating conventions at a time. Don’t you think it’s a good ideathat one should get a little bit outside of those conventions, and askwhat can be said for the propositions that are said to be inflammatory? Helena Kennedy: A: But if you want to be an advocate for justice and fairness in theMiddle East, the language you use to win people to your argument and toyour side, the language has to be inclusive and has to be a languagethat doesn’t inflame hostility and prejudice and I think that you’reusing language which will drive people away from an argument aboutjustice. Ted Honderich: Well, you can disagree about conventions. And also about whether youcan grant somebody a moral right to something, say their territory orhomeland, and then deny them the only means to getting what they want.Don't you have to withdraw the right to the end if you deny the rightto the means? Tony Blair, archive: There is no justification for suicide bombing whether in Palestine Iraqin London in Egypt in Turkey anywhere in the United States, there is nojustification for it period. Ted Honderich: It's true that the suicide bomber intends to kill innocents, civilians,non-combatants. But what about the Israeli in his gunship, or theAmerican or British pilot dropping down death from the safety of thesky? Tony Benn: I don’t see any difference, moral difference, between a stealth bomberand a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for politicalpurposes. Ted Honderich: ...in the intentional killing of innocent people? Tony Benn: Ah, but then intention and unintention is irrelevant. If you killan innocent person it’s a consequence of your act... Ted Honderich: Thousands of innocent people died on 9/11. It was a monstrous wrong.But moral philosophy, as you've heard, asks who shares moralresponsibility for a crime, who has to change or be changed. George W. Bush, archive: And the people who knocked down these towers will hear all of us soon... Ted Honderich: In the aftermath of 9/11 the war on terror was declared. Once youdeclare vague war, you have to find an enemy to attack. Blair, archive: This new world faces a new threat of disorder and chaos born either ofbrutal states like Iraq armed with WMD or of extreme terrorist groups. Ted Honderich: Saddam wasn't linked to 9/11, and there were no weapons of massdestruction. But the lies or equally culpable self-deceptions weren'tthe main thing. We went to war for about a dozen pretended and realreasons that added up to a dirty mess. A mess that cost lives. Reg Keys: When Tom marched off to war, he marched down that platform, his headhigh, his chest puffed out with pride, to do his duty for his country,and he had my full support. But it became evident before too long thatthis was a betrayal. Ted Honderich: Lance Corporal Tom Keys was one of six young British Military Policemenwho were placed in danger while on duty in Iraq in June 2003. Reg Keys: Tom was a perfect son as far as I’m concerned, a thoroughly goodsoldier, recommended to go high up the chain, off he went to Iraq,immensely proud of this young man serving his country. Ted Honderich: Tom and his comrades were surrounded by a well-armed Iraqi mob maddenedby the invasion of their country. The British troops didn't have enoughammunition. Their radios were faulty and they were unable to call forsupport. When they’d fired their last bullet, they were all killed. Ted Honderich: Tom Keys' father has no doubt about who shares moral responsibility forhis death. Reg Keys: The decision has come from Downing Street to go on this illegal war,and I hold my Prime Minister as guilty of my son's death as the Iraqisthat pulled the trigger that day. He was ultimately responsible forputting my son in harm's way. Reg Keys: ...and it hurts me to say this Ted, but they wasted that young man,they wasted that young man. Ted Honderich: Since 2003 too many British soldiers like Tom Keys have died for a messof reasons. So too have between 20 and 80,000 Iraqis, exactly as human.Another awful fact of our time. These deaths have and will make formore deaths. Ted Honderich: It is a terrorist war too. Larger in scale than terrorism but sharingthe essential feature of not being legal. Helena Kennedy: That’s why I feel so angry about the Iraq war -- because I feel thatthe circumstances in which in this modern world we should expect ouryoung to go and fight for us, have to be really within very clearparameters... Helena Kennedy: And what our politicians don’t contemplate, is the cost that that hasfor the young that we expect to do it on our behalf and I think weshould be ashamed that that was done in the circumstances that it wasdone in relation to Iraq. Riz Mokal: There is no doubt that the war has forseeably resulted in the death oftens of thousands of innocent people. There is also no doubt thatthose who initiated and participated in the war, the American andBritish governments in particular, are deeply implicated morally aswell as legally in the deaths, unjustified deaths of those innocentpeople. Ted Honderich: In the general election of 2005 Reg Keys directly challenged Blair inhis own constituency over his decision to take us to war. Reg Keys, on election platformwith Blair, looking at Blair: I had to do it for my son Thomas Keys, Royal Military Policeman, killedin Iraq four days short of his 21st birthday. Sent to war underextremely controversial circumstances. Reg Keys: I feel that we were misled as a nation about the threat that Iraqposed. It was a downright, direct lie, it was a falsehood -- and doesdemocracy work, you have to ask yourself at times. One has to ask doesdemocracy work. Ted Honderich: Only a fool or a politician able to hold his people in contempt wouldtry to suggest that the war in Iraq was not a main necessary conditionof the terrorist attack on London. BLAIR, archive: And we will start to beat this when we stand up and confront theideology of this evil not just the method but the ideas, when weactually have people going into the communities here in this countryand elsewhere and saying I'm sorry we're not having any of thisnonsense about it's to do with what the British are doing in Iraq orAfghanistan or support for Israel or support for America, or anyof the rest of it, it's nonsense. Ted Honderich: That's another grim fact about our conventions and our hierarchicdemocracy. A prime minister can get away with vicious nonsense himself-- by saying the truth about Iraq and 7/7 is nonsense. Ted Honderich: Fifty two innocent people, men and women, Christian and Jew, Muslim andnon-believer, died in the horror that was July 7, 2005 Jenny Tonge: Everyone remembers when they heard about it I suppose. Terribleshock and great brainstorms as to why those men, who were not reallydeprived, were not uneducated, could so such a terrible thing in Julyin England. Yes of course it is terrible Jenny Tonge: It is also this deep anger that somehow has been transmitted startingwith the Palestinians has now been transmitted to many muslims all overthe world. Ted Honderich: In the law there are shares of legal responsibility. In real life thereare shares of moral responsibility. We all have shares in theresponsibility for 7/7. Some of us have larger shares, not a lotless responsible than the actual terrorists. I mean Bush and Blair.They have brought it about that the causes of that terrorism persist. Ted Honderich: Two of the July 7 bombers have attributed their action to the sufferingof their fellow Muslims, and particularly to the slaughter in Iraq. Tony Benn: Bush had decided to secure a regime change the day he waselected. 9/11 provided the excuse for it, although 9/11 hadnothing whatever to do with Saddam. Tony Benn: ...and so Blair, who said he took a tough decision, actually took theeasiest decision open to anyone -- take orders from the man above you-- and it wasn’t an independent decision at all. It was, I think, aterribly wrong decision. Ted Honderich: A real enemy of terror of terrorism is against both the terrorism andits causes. Someone who is only against the terror and who neglects thecauses is in effect its friend. Tony Benn: I think to say he was a friend of it would be to misread the situation.But you’re quite right in saying that no thought has been givenofficially to the causes of 9/11 or 7/7 or the bombing in Spain andother examples, because if it were believed, as I think officials inthe Foreign Office do believe, that these attacks on Britain or Spainwere actually a consequence of the war, then it would throw greaterdoubt on the wisdom of going to war, and they don’t want that questionraised at all, Brian Klug: We’re living in a world that’s becoming increasingly polarised, andBlair, unfortunately, has lent his weight to that polarisation. Theactions of America and Britain have, I think, mirrored the actions ofthe militant violent radical Islamists, like Al Qaeda. So that betweenthem, they are creating a world that is more dangerous, less securethan it would have been, and it’s this polarisation which I think is sodangerous, and I do think that Blair is complicit in that. Ted Honderich: In the face of this moral barbarism, the slaughter of innocents in Iraqand the response of the 7/7 terrorists, what is the morally responsiblething for all of us to do? We must take real steps to get politicalleaders act with humanity, I mean political leaders who are tough onterrorism and tough on the causes of terrorism. Helena Kennedy: Tony Blair made a decision to join with our American ally in a war thatI think was wrong. I think that he was, in many ways, deeplymisguided about joining in that, and I think he’s probably on darknights, visited that place that took him to that decision, but I thinkhe made the mistake of his life in doing that. It was also a mistake ofour lives and for that I’m angry. Jenny Tonge: Blair and Bush like to think they are fighting their ridiculous waragainst terrorism, by bombing Afghanistan, by going into Iraq. What they should have done is focussed on Israel/Palestine and sortedthe Palestinian problem out first, and then think of the other issues.Palestine is the crux of the whole issue of foreign affairs andterrorism at the moment. Ted Honderich: The principal aim of the war on Lebanon was not obscured by the usualpretext about self-defence and the capture of an Israeli soldier. Theroot aim was neo-Zionism. That indefatigable viciousness, unique in theexplanation of 9/11, the Iraq War, and 7/7, has now been unique in theintentional killing of 1,000 innocent Lebanese men, women and children-- about 30 times as many as innocent Israelis. What should we do if Blair or his successor tries to take us intoanother terrorist war? I believe, with the Principle of Humanity, thatwe must engage in mass civil disobedience. It can work. Bring down thereal friends of terror. END OF 'THE REAL FRIENDS OFTERROR' PROGRAMME +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ David Aaronovitch: Presenter Don't Get Me Startedseries, channel Five Broadcast 26 September 2006 Eamon T. O'Connor, Producer/Director Stuart Prebble, Executive Producer Judy Lewis: Production Manager Head of Production: David Buckley Production company: Liberty Bell Thetranscript is close to giving the words in the programme astransmitted, but not exactly. There were small editing changes to theprogramme after the transcript was made. You can see the programme astransmitted, on the web, at http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/clip.php?cid=464 Appearing in the programme were: Jane Ashworth, Democratiya;Engage; Euston Manifesto; Labour Friends ofIraq Ann Clywd, MP, Blair specialenvoy on human rights in Iraq Eve Garrard, Senior Lecturer,Professional Ethics, Keele University;Democratiya; Euston Manifesto Norman Geras, ProfessorEmeritus, Department of Government, ManchesterUniversity; Engage; Euston Manifesto Kim Howells, MP, Minister ofState, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Alan Johnson, Reader in SocialScience, Edge Hill University;Democratiya; Engage; Euston Manifesto; Labour Friends of Iraq Shalom Lappin, Professor ofComputational Linguistics, Department ofPhilosophy, Kings College London; Euston Manifesto Dr Rory Miller, SeniorLecturer, Mediterranean Studies Programme, KingsCollege London Abdullah Muhsin, foreignrepresentative, Iraqi Federation of TradeUnions Dr Martin Navias, VisitingSenior Fellow, Mediterranean StudiesProgramme, Kings College London Rev. Julie Nicholson, mother ofJenny, killed on 7/7, stepped down asvicar because unable to preach forgiveness Jon Pike, Senior Lecturer,StaffTutor, Region 13, Open University;Democratiya; Engage; Euston Manifesto John Strawson, Reader in Law,University of East London; Engage; EustonManifesto TITLE: DON'T GET ME STARTED David Aaronovitch: When suicide bombers blow themselves up, who do you blame? Julie Nicholson: Mohammed Saddiqi Khan killed my daughter. I'm very clear about that.And he could have made another decision. He took -- his choice was todo what he did. He could have chosen not to. David Aaronovitch: But can a human bomb in the midst of a peaceful society ever bejustified? Eve Garrard: I think that in some parts of the Middle East there is something like a"cult of death", an embracing of death rather than life. Alan Johnson: the recent demonstration saw leftists marching, and the banners weresaying "we are all Hezbollah now". If we are, we are finished. David Aaronovitch: Something has gone badly wrong, and we must face up to it now. Theremust be no siding with fascism, no "understanding of suicide bombers",and no excuses for terror. SUB-TITLE: NO EXCUSES FOR TERROR David Aaronovitch: I am a journalist and commentator who has always been on the left ofthe political spectrum -- pro-immigrant, pro-women's rights,internationalist -- but right now I am appalled at some of my formercomrades are coming close to justifying that negation of human values:Islamist terror. Kim Howells: Here we are on the streets of Britain, people claiming to be bigsupporters of Hezbollah, the armed wing of Iran -- this theocraticstate developing a nuclear bomb to kill us with. Eve Garrard: Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has explicitly declared that hewants to kill Jews. One of the reasons that he is quite pleased aboutZionism is that it tends to collect Jews in one place where they aremore easily killed. Now, people who say this is what we support andthis is what we are in favor of, I think, are lending themselves to akind of racist discrimination that they really should be ashamed of. David Aaronovitch: It is the contention of many of the new apologists for terror that tounderstand the new dispensation you have to travel to the Middle East;specifically, that you have to understand the conflict as being betweenthe almost wholly bad Israel and just about the entirely goodPalestinians. Thank god that there are those on the left and centerleft who haven't quite lost their marbles over Israel and Palestine, orthe threat posed by Islamist terror -- they do sometimes struggle toget a hearing, but that changes tonight. John Strawson: is betrayed in words as "I told you so, that is what they would do,what do you expect, that is how Israelis would behave." Of course theywould be disproportionate, of course they would kill civilians, and inparticular Arab civilians, that is what they do. Norman Geras: You have to say in the recent conflict there was a wide sector ofwestern opinion which were untroubled by Israeli deaths, or much lesstroubled by Israeli deaths. Shalom Lappin: I think that Britain is now the fulcrum of this now in Europe virtuallymore than any other place I know of. From the fringes of politicalopinion, the far left and far right, has crept right into the center akind of view of Israel as an intrinsically criminal state. David Aaronovitch: What is this obsession with Israel-Palestine? In the years since thecreation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the consequentdispossession of as many as 700,000 Palestinians tens of thousands ofIsraeli Jews, Arabs and Palestinians have died, but in that same periodmillions more have died elsewhere including hundreds of thousands,perhaps millions, of Muslims killed in wars launched by other Muslims,one million in the Iran-Iraq war alone. Why don't these disasters castequally long shadows? Eve Garrard: There seems to be something about the conflict in the Middle East thatinflames people's imaginations. They seem so ready to condemn the oneside and demand understanding for the other side, in ways that look soprejudicial because they are so much the result of using doublestandards. Norman Geras: A thousand, maybe plus or minus, deaths in the Lebanon, but how manydeaths in Darfur? Hundreds of thousands, and nothing like the volume ofoutrage, shock, horror, ... you know, it is an order of magnitude there. [scene of a Palestiniandemonstration] David Aaronovitch: Over Palestine there is always anger in the streets. When was the lasttime that the same street saw mass demonstrations by thousands ofslogan-chanting protestors calling for the West to intervene to stop,say, Chinese oppression in Tibet, or Russian slaughter in Chechnya, oreven the near genocide in Darfur? Can't recall? Neither can I. Rory Miller: The UN General Assembly hardly ever calls special emergency sessions.It felt that there was no need to call an emergency session to dealwith the tragedy in East Timor, to deal with Rwanda, but in 2003 aloneit called three emergency sessions to deal with the Palestinian cause. David Aaronovitch: It is as if Israel has acted as a lighting conductor, its wars andconflicts taking the attention away from other states. Once popular inthe West, it was the war in 1967 and its aftermath that seems to havemade Israel the pariah, turning it from doomed little guy into a localbully. John Strawson: Israel becomes the strong Israel, not the vulnerable Israel, and fromthat moment onwards it passed to the other side of the imperial divide,and now it is quite clearly on the side of the baddies, internationalimperialism; it is not on the side of the weak, the vulnerable, and theoppressed struggling for freedom. David Aaronovitch: You might thing that attacks like that at Kiryat Shimona wherePalestinian fighters killed 18 Israeli civilians including ninechildren would upset people who style themselves humanitariansocialists, but in the 1970s there was deep ambivalence among many onthe left even when terrorists were blowing up civilian airliners ormurdering Israel athletes at the Munich Olympics. Shalom Lappin: I think what you saw was the emergence of a kind of terrorism thatexplicitly presented itself as part of a revolutionary ideology thatidentified itself as anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist. David Aaronovitch: The deep sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians translated into atolerance of the crimes committed -- some with the knowledge of thePalestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Just two years after the MunichOlympics terror attack he was even invited to address the UnitedNations. Rory Miller: He would tell them, I am a rebel and freedom is my cause, and this wentdown fantastically, and not only with Western liberals and Westernintellectuals, but among the numerous countries that had foundindependence in the 1960s. David Aaronovitch: But while the Western left felt attracted to the cause of thePalestinians, their fellow Arabs in the surrounding countries didn'talways feel the same. At the start of the 1970s, the West's favoriteArab monarch, King Hussein of Jordan, was struggling with theconsequence of having hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugeesliving in squalor in his country. In September 1970, apparently fearfulthat Arafat was plotting to overthrow him, King Hussein struck out,bombing and shelling the Palestinian camps. Rory Miller: In the course of King Hussein's offensive against the Palestinianguerrillas, it is estimated that up to 5,000 Palestinians were killed. David Aaronovitch: Five thousand killed; innocent women and children killed as they hid intheir tents. They called it Black September. What was the internationalresponse? Marches, riots, demands for sanctions, an academic boycott? Rory Miller: There has never been street demonstrations over any wrongs against thePalestinians by anyone other than Israel. David Aaronovitch: Five years later the same thing happened all over again; this time inanother Arab country. And once again the West was silent. Rory Miller: In 1976, when Syria got involved in Lebanon in a major way, there was afifty six day siege of a Palestinian refugee camp by the Syrian armyand Christian militias which left an estimated 3,500 Palestinians dead. David Aaronovitch: I visited that camp two years later. In the intervening period therehad been no mass protests or public outrage, no demanding of UNsanctions against Syria or placards with Assad assassin written onthem. In 1991, the world and most Arab and Muslim countries seemedcontent for America and allied forces to intervene and kick theinvading Saddam out of Kuwait. The Palestinians were seen by localKuwaitis as having backed the wrong side. Once the Iraqis were ousted,the revenge began. Rory Miller: They were rounded up, they were executions held, they were beaten todeath by mobs, they were burnt alive; there was a ferocious response.Yasser Arafat at the time said that what the Kuwaitis have done to thePalestinians is worse than what the Israelis have ever done toPalestinians in the occupied territories. But again, very few peopleknow this, it doesn't influence attitudes in the West, no one takes tothe street because the bottom line is that the only people that worrythe West when it comes to Palestinian suffering is Israel. David Aaronovitch: It is a lamentable fact that no one ever stormed the barricades overthe massacres in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or Kuwait. And any honestleftie with a memory knows that is true. The only oppressor who countedwas the zionist oppressor. Jane Ashworth: The complaint is really not that the left supports the Palestinians --it should -- it should also support progressive Israelis, and it shouldsupport those Palestinians who are looking for a two state solution. David Aaronovitch: By the late 80s the tactic of terror was replaced by a mass movement ofordinary Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza, who rose in a largelyunarmed revolt against Israeli occupation. The intifada seemed adesperately unequal battle. Shalom Lappin: There is no question in most people's minds in Israel, from the centerall the way to the left, and even people on the center right, thatPalestinians suffered an injustice and that it is necessary to solvethat problem through the creation of a genuinely viable independentPalestinian state. David Aaronovitch: The first intifada with its images of heavily armed Israeli soldiersbreaking the arms of stone throwing Palestinian kids helped totransform the political situation in Israel. Sympathy for thePalestinians was expressed by Israelis themselves in Peace Now, aremarkable popular mass movement demanding recognition of Palestinianrights and a negotiated peace settlement. Shalom Lappin: People began to see that the occupation and annexation that were goingon were no longer viable, the brutalization of the Palestinianpopulation couldn't continue. And that is the point when the Israelileft, like Peace Now and associated groups, became particularlypowerful. David Aaronovitch: The politics of Peace Now found an echo amongst Palestinian moderates.Yitzhak Rabin, the man who had ordered the arm breaking, came tounderstand the need for Israeli concessions, and tearing up most of hismost bellicose speeches, struck a deal with the Palestinians. Yitzhak Rabin: We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today,in a loud and a clear voice, enough of blood and tears. Enough! David Aaronovitch: Such a peace was anathema to the rejectionists on both sides who wantednothing more than annihilation for the other side. Yitzhak Rabin wasmurdered while leading a peace rally by Jewish terrorists. It wasprecisely when the air was pregnant with the possibility of peace whenfundamentalists Islamists, Hamas, sent deluded young Palestinians ladenwith explosives to wreck at the heart of Israeli society and at thepeace process. You would think that such terrible and counterproductiveviolence would meet with utter condemnation from all who callthemselves progressives. You would be wrong. Shalom Lappin: Very few people actually justified it. Most people said: we disapprove of it, but... But the "but" cancels out the disapproval. Jane Ashworth: There is a fundamental problem when the left is unable to say "Icondemn the bombing of civilians and I condemn the use of children assuicide bombers, and I condemn the suicide bombers who are blowing upchildren." David Aaronovitch: The Hamas charter is not ambiguous: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam willobliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." Not peace,obliteration. So Hamas sent its human bombs to obliterate Israelis,Jews and Arabs, in shopping centers, on buses full of school children,in restaurants and night clubs. ITN reporter: The bloody twelve hours began with the killing of teenagers in thecenter of Jerusalem. The devices that they detonated simultaneouslycontained nuts and bolts; a hail of shrapnel that cut down dozens ofpeople. David Aaronovitch: Such actions could never be justified, but they could be understood.Not as the deliberate strategy of far right religious groups opposed topeace, but the almost as the natural response of the weak when dealingwith the strong. Norman Geras: All of a sudden we now hear that in their struggle against the strongthe weak have no other weapons but terrorism. It is not true. David Aaronovitch: Some demented liberals have even said that if they were Palestiniansthey might do the same thing. John Strawson: I think that it is because of the very strong streak of what EdwardSaid used to call Orientalism within the British left. That is, astereotyped view of how Asians, Muslims and Arabs actually operate. Andthe constant attempt to explain that suicide bombing, for instance, isunderstandable -- that if I were in the refugee camp, I would do it. Itis of course, ..., actually contains a rather coded racist message. Itis basically saying that that is what you would expect of Muslims andArabs isn't it? Jon Pike: I think the account that is given of suicide bombing that it is theonly in which that people can fight against the oppressive occupyingpower, and it seems to me that that is just false. Jane Ashworth: The left should have a moral benchmark. We should be the people whoshould stand up and say "don't do that, enough is enough, that is notjustified." And one of things where we should draw that line is aroundthe bombing of civilians, and in particular the bombing of civilianchildren. David Aaronovitch: A terrifying conjuncture has been created between long term Arab senseof victimhood and grievance -- some of it justified -- and a religioussuper zealotry. The end result is a cult of death. [Scene of a suicide bomberreading his will] Eve Garrard: I find it difficult to believe that God could possibly be pleased withpeople who try to secure their own salvation by way of killinginnocents. David Aaronovitch: The slaughter unleashed by Hamas didn't even aim at a solution as wemight understand it. It was designed both to kill as many Jews aspossible, and to sabotage any chance of a peaceful settlement beingreached. Jon Pike: The most telling statistic in these terms is that between 1994 and 1996there was more anti-Israel terrorism when the peace process was at itsheight than between 1996 and 1999 when the peace process was stalled. David Aaronovitch: But far from these tactics increasing the left support for the peaceprocess, it seems to have hardened the feeling that it is Israel, andIsrael alone, that is the problem. And once the left had found itselfable to make excuses for Palestinian suicide bombers, it wasn't longbefore they also found themselves understanding religiousfundamentalism and fascist terrorism closer to home. Julie Nicholson: We mustn't start try to and understand in terms of justifying theaction. Understanding to try to prevent any future action is one thing,but understanding in terms of justification is dangerous territory Ithink. David Aaronovitch: We all knew that one day something like 7/7 would happen, that it was amatter of where, when and who. When it did, one quite common response-- extraordinary really -- that it was in some way our own fault, orTony Blair's. We hadn't done enough to help the Palestinians, we hadkilled Muslims, our society was deficient, and our policiesdiscriminatory. Kim Howells: Suicide bombing, of course, long precedes our involvement inAfghanistan or in Iraq. And I am sombody who back in the late 60s wasvehemently opposed to the American presence in Vietnam -- right orwrong. I was up in the streets demonstrating constantly; I neverthought of strapping explosives to my chest and going on a LondonUnderground and murdering 52 people. Where is that link? David Aaronovitch: I am with Kim Howells on this. I struggle to understand how anyonecalling themselves "left" can defend Palestinian suicide bombing ordemand understanding the suicide bombers who attack us. Kim Howells: This is the bit that I find nonsensical really. You know, I hear thingslike, maybe life is a bit difficult for these people, perhaps they comefrom poor backgrounds -- which isn't true by the way -- but even there,I grew up with a memory of the 1920s and 1930s in South Wales wherethere were marches and protest to London, but above all it was aboutdemocracy, politics, and organizing people, it wasn't about blowingpeople up. David Aaronovitch: It is not as if we don't know what really motivates the 7/7 bombers, wehave their own vainglorious words as thoughtfully recorded on video. [Mohammed Saddiqi Khan, a 7/7Suicide bomber states his reason for hissacrifice] David Aaronovitch: Mohammed Saddiqi Khan was the self-slaughtering headman of the 7/7bombers. Twenty four year old Jenny Nicholson was just one of hisvictims. Julie Nicholson: I have occasionally wondered what might have gone through their mindsbefore they set off the bomb. But I kind of mostly hope, whatever wasgoing through their minds, that the last thing my daughter saw was notthe eyes of her killer. There was not any courage in the video; theword that sprang to my mind was petulance, there was a petulance. If Iremember rightly, there was in the video Saddiqi Khan pointing afinger, he pointed a finger of blame, "I blame Tony Blair, I am anangry young man, and I went out and I killed randomly andindiscriminately." David Aaronovitch: Mohammed Saddiqi Khan wasn't struggling to survive in some kind offetid refugee camp. No one was oppressing him, he had a good job, hehad good colleagues, he had a home in Leeds for god's sake. Is it saneor sensible to argue that he was prepared to kill and die simplybecause of a selective empathy for fellow Muslims thousands of milesaway in Palestine, Afghanistan or Iraq? Or was it because he had becomea religious fanatic, a kind of holy fascist, who thought he had themoral right to kill anyone who might disagree with him? Kim Howells: The world has got to realize that is the kind of enemy it is dealingwith. That enemy doesn't have the rationale when it comes to explainanything to the population. It is not accountable to anyone, it is notelected by anyone, it is a self-appointed murder squad. And it doesastonish me that so many people, especially people on the left, theyactually go along with that. OK, it is sort of a natural way ofprotesting against policies. David Aaronovitch: The 7/7 bombers claim that their primary motivation was to avenge theirbrothers and sisters in faith who were killed in Palestine, Kashmir,Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. Some commentators seem only to haveheard the bit about Iraq. And here is the thing: whatever you mightthink about the war in Iraq, the absence of weaponsof mass destruction, or the tactics of the occupation, do you thinkthat the Muslims of that country want Saddam back? Abdullah Muhsin: Saddam's dictatorial fascist regime was a catastrophe, a nightmare.Crushing repression, summary executions, killings, I mean he must haverun out of time to kill so many people. He used to carry them inlorries to their mass graves in the desert, and just buried them alive. David Aaronovitch: And lets recall, while we are about it, that the principal victims ofSaddam's regime were not pampered members of the secular Western middleclasses. Before toppling him, the West tolerated a dictatorship whoseMuslim victims ran into the hundreds of thousands. Some tolerated himmore than others. George Galloway: Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. Ann Clywd: Those who had associations with the regime throughout the period whenwe knew perfectly well what Saddam was doing, ..., I really despisebecause they gave succor to the regime when they knew what the regimewas doing to its own people. And I defy anybody to stand on the edge ofa mass grave like that Saddam Hussein was a good man, why did you getrid of him. David Aaronovitch: Now Saddam is deposed and on trial, what do hard core sections of theleft conclude? That the Saddam supporters and the headcase suicidebombers killing British soldiers -- the sadists who are killing Muslimseveryday for the crime of doing what ordinary people do -- are bravefreedom fighters and insurgents. There is a word for this isn't there?The word is surely "degenerate". Alan Johnson: I think that is right; I think that why it has happened is those valuesthat the left always held dear have been squeezed out. The reason theyhave been squeezed out is that a very simplistic world view has beenadopted. What it tends to do, very simplistically, that anyone shootingat Americans or involved in a campaign against imperialism must be insome sense on our side. Abdullah Muhsin: People who are going to the marketplace, and are in the process ofdoing their daily shopping are suddenly blown up into pieces, killedand maimed. Morally wrong this is. And politically is also dangerousbecause those people who are committing these crimes they have a formof absolutism, they believe in the absolute truth, and they believe insome form of ideology -- if you don't agree with us, then we have theright to kill you to impose our... This is also politically dangerous.These people should be stopped. David Aaronovitch: The apologists for terror state it as a fact, that only a fool woulddeny, that 7/7 was primarily caused by Blair's adventure in Iraq. Now,that is the same as saying that without Iraq it wouldn't have happened.But before Iraq it did, never mind 9/11. Remember the 1993 attack onthe World Trade Center; the African embassies in 1998... Martin Navias: First and foremost, for Al Qaeda is to combat the West, and moreparticularly the United States, the embodiment of all that is evil --both ideologically and ideologically in the West. Al Qaeda aims toattack the United States and its allies, to drive them out of theArabian peninsula, to reclaim lands that once were Muslim, and toestablish an Islamic caliphate along territories. Clearly the Israeli-Palestinian problem must be solved, but it must besolved on its own terms. Clearly that the situation in Iraq must besolved, the sooner the better, but to suggest that policies towardsthose areas will help deter and halt terror in Europe is just fancifulthinking. David Aaronovitch: The shift from insurgents killing American imperialist soldiers toinsurgents killing Iraqis hasn't faced the apologists for terror -- thedemonstrations were thinning out, the justifications were becoming lessplausible. Then Hezbollah crossed the Lebanese border amidst a barrageof rockets, killed several Israeli soldiers, and kidnapped two more.Next thing you know, the zionist demon was back. Shalom Lappin: Increasingly what has become the sort of sewage of the fringes of thefar right and far left political discourse concerning Israel, have nowcontaminated mainstream political discourse to the point that majornewspapers or major political figures very much in the center are happyto indulge in the full scale portrayal of Israel as a demonic entity ofmythic proportions. So, no matter what Israel does it is treated as theembodiment of malice, evil, child murder and bloodletting -- oftenwithout relationship to the facts. David Aaronovitch: The war in the Lebanon was the apologists indignant fancy. The pictureswere Israeli jets and missile hammering into Lebanese apartment blocksand villages with the cameras that Hezbollah media guides permitted tobe filmed. While Hezbollah fired missiles from hospital car parks andfrom behind schools, Israel was slammed for disproportionate actioneven though its forces attempted to distinguish between civilian andfighter. Intentionality was deemed to be unimportant, so was the issueof how this conflict began; once again, it was just bad zionistsagainst good Muslims. Alan Johnson: One of the things that has happened, is the prism through with the lefthas tried to understand the phenomena of Islamism and Islamic terrorismis the prism of resistance to imperialism. So we might not agree withevery dot and comma of what they do, we might have our criticismnonetheless comrade, fundamentally we have to side with the objectivelyprogressive forces. That has led them into the most terrible alliances,and caused them to... for instance, the banners that appeared in arecent demonstration "we are all Hezbollah now". David Aaronovitch: And who did the left think Hezbollah were: A kind of welfare sansfrontieres, freedom fighters willing to give uptheir lives for their Palestinian brothers? Or a reactionary religiousprivate army preaching hatred of Jews, destruction of the state ofIsrael, subjugating its women, militarizing its children, and takingorders from paymasters in Tehran and Damascus? George Galloway: I came here to extend my congratulations to the Lebanese people on agreat and historic victory, and in particular, I want to congratulatethe Lebanese resistance, and their leading edge, Hezbollah, whosemartyrs and whose heroes have achieved this great victory, and inparticular, to their leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose name now rings injoy around the whole world. Jon Pike: George Galloway got up and said that he wanted to glorify Nasrallah thehead of Hezbollah -- which is an anti-semitic communal organization,deeply anti-semitic, which has spent five or six weeks this summerlobbing rockets on Haifa and Tel Aviv. And you have the left glorifyingits leader. David Aaronovitch: It ought to be baffling, but somehow it isn't. Loathing of the primeminister, hatred of the Americans, and a lack of leadership on the leftis allowing many supposed radicals to enter into bed with the worstforces of reaction, and not with the oppressed or with democrats. Statement by Sheikh YusufAl-Qaradawi, Muslim cleric, translated: Do the Jews of yesterday (sic) bear responsibility for the crimescommitted by the Jew of the past? The principle is that they indeedbear responsibility for these crimes. Ken Livingstone: You are truly welcome to London, the city of all faiths. Alan Johnson: You get Ken Livingstone embracing a misogynist, anti-semitic,homophobiccleric in London. You get John Pilger, a fantastic journalist, who whenasked "do we have to support the resistance in Iraq?" he answered: wecan't be choosy. You get someone like Michael Moore, everyone iswatching films and reading his books and so on; Michael Moore is anidiot. It would be a healthy political culture if we could say thingslike "Michael Moore is an idiot". Michael Moore writes in his books,quote, there is no threat, there is no threat, repeat after me, thereis no threat, end of quote. Its kind of a corrosive poison, if you'dlike, that is seeping into much wider liberal left opinion. Abdullah Muhsin: They need to go to our country, to Iraq, and they need to assess thesituation. They need to stop plugging sentences from books, from grandtheories, and try to impose them on our country. Stop being culturalimperialists, give us the solidarity, and give us the support. We arethe same people who fought Saddam Hussein, and the same people who arefighting for democracy, for social justice, for equality -- we are thesame people, we haven't changed, we are wearing the same clothes.Support us, stop supporting these extremists and fundamentalists whoonly will bring chaos to Iraq. In the future they will haunt youbecause they are not your friends, they are your enemy. David Aaronovitch: The idea that we are somehow to blame for the terror that sits itselfdown on our buses and trains, and destroys our relatives and our peaceis not just wrong, it is degenerate. [One more time (fourth in theprogram) where Mohammed Saddiq Khan readshis testament before his suicide] Kim Howells: It is a sign of the ignorance that there is about what exactly AlQaeda, the sectarians that are murdering Muslims now within Iraq, thosewho never want to see a stable relationship between Palestine andIsrael; what they actually believe, they believe that infidels shouldbe killed. It is as simple as that. Julie Nicholson: I am in the business of celebrating creativity and the creation oflife. And I believe that we all should be engaged in living lives in alife-giving way for ourselves and for others. For those people thatcannot find a life to live, that is a great sadness and a greattragedy. But if their only redress is to strap a bomb to their back,and go into a random group of people, to make the point that their lifeis all wrong at some level, then the whole world has gone badly wrong. David Aaronovitch: Is the equivalent of saying that the racist murder has somehow to beunderstood because we have brutally forced him into a multi-culturalsociety. Or that the husband who beats his wife into a pulp is somehowthe inevitable victim of our modern sexual morays. How dare anyoneblame those who suffer for what is done to them. Julie Nicholson: I feel that the day that we find that in any way acceptable orunderstandable is really the beginning of the end of humanity. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Forsome of the book from which the first programme came, go toHumanity,Terrorism, Terrorist War: Palestine, 9/11, Iraq, 7/7....For one review of the book, go toTamDalyell. For another review, go toStevenPoole. There is more of relevance in the earlier bookAfter theTerror. On anti-semitism, there isTheFall and Rise of a Book in Germany andTedHonderich and LondonStudent. Related to the Aaronovitch programmein content isan article by Nick Cohenin the New Statesman.See alsothoughts on bothfrom The Guardian website. For Palestinian condemnation of propositionsby Honderich, go toOn Being PersonaNon Grata to Some Palestinians Too, and Some Moral Philosophy. HOMEto T.H. website front page HOMEto Det & Free website |