Yiddish With Dick And Jane? (Hat tip: Normblog)

Leeds Rhinos 30 St Helens 18

It was another hard match for Leeds. They started off like true champions. Despite early St Helens pressure, they quickly got into their stride and slick passing saw first Mark Calderwood and then Chev Walker cross the line. Sinfield added the conversion and within ten minutes they were 12 – 0 ahead. But it was clear that the Saints were not there just to make up the numbers. They applied pressure and Paul Sculthorpe came up with one of his specials. Taking the ball at the play-the-ball he suddenly accelerated between two Leeds forwards, knocking them aside, charged down field and the backing up three quarters were able to outpace the Leeds cover. The Saints then really applied pressure and Cunningham scored a special from close in. Leeds were really rattled. The opposition were finding weaknesses on the Leeds left and around the ruck at the play-the-ball. Leeds were really missing Matt Diskin.

Nevertheless, as at Hull, Leeds always had the class to hit back. A pinpoint pass by McGuire put Mathers through the Saints’ defence. In reply the visitors had a kick through to the Leeds line covered by Mathers who spent so much time waiting for it to go dead that he let in Talau to score for the Saints. At half time the score was 18 all.

In the second half Saints made ferocious efforts to break down the Leeds defence but this time Leeds did not have their customary second half wilt. They absorbed everything that was thrown at them and hit back. They opened the half with a Poching try and spent the next twenty minutes meeting everything that Saints could throw at them. Then as the visitors started to tire they made the game safe twelve minutes from time with a second try by Calderwood. The final minutes saw Leeds controlling the game as a tired Saints side ran out of steam.

It had been a thrilling game and a full stadium seemed to thoroughly enjoy the match. There were too many errors on both sides but this seemed to be caused more by the pressure which each side exerted in its defensive aggression rather than any lack of skill. The fact that Saints tired at the end when Leeds still seemed to have something spare suggests that the visitors had played above their standards whereas the Leeds side still do not seem to have quite reached their peak. Perhaps they will not reach this peak until Diskin is back from injury.

Israel Gears Up For Burst Of Far-Right Anger, New York Times, February 20, 2005.

Asked this week by Israeli television if he considered violence against Israeli politicians legitimate, [ far-right campaigner] Mr. [Noam] Federman replied: “I didn’t take out Rabin. I didn’t weep when he died, but I didn’t wipe him out.”
“It’s very possible that someone will take out Arik Sharon,” Mr. Federman said, referring to Mr. Sharon by his nickname. But he added, “it will not be from me or my close friends. We have our own plans on how to struggle.”
Mr. Federman said that when the evacuation date drew near, the more militant opponents might try to sow chaos throughout Israel, rather than focus on Gaza, which will have a huge security presence.
Graffiti in several places around the country describes Mr. Sharon as a “dictator” and a “traitor.” “Hitler would be proud of you,” said one spray-painted message, along with “Lily is waiting for you,” a reference to Mr. Sharon’s wife, who died five years ago.
Several of Mr. Sharon’s ministers have recently received death threats directed at them and their families.
“You will attend the funeral of your children,” said a letter addressed to Israel’s transportation minister, Meir Sheetrit.

Militant Urges Restraint as Lebanese Chafe Under Syria’s Grip, New York Times, February 20, 2005.

“God forbid, if the roof collapses, it collapses on all of us,” Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, told tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims gathered for Ashura, the most solemn event in their calendar.
“Today we are responsible for a nation that came out of the civil war,” he said, “but we face acute problems, especially this year and in the past few months. As Lebanese, we have no choice for remedying our crises and problems except to discuss and meet, even if we are angry and tense. We must not repeat the mistakes of the past.”

I was struck this morning by the juxtaposition of these two quotes. One, from a militant settler, who growing up in a free and democratic country ought to be better than the vitriolic extremist quoted here. And the other, a leader of a militant organization which thinks it can achieve its aims down the barrel of a gun, talking “peace” and “calm”. Of course, Nasrallah has his own reasons for not wanting to upset the status quo in Lebanon, but does that make Federman’s opinions any less despicable?

“C’mon Tony!” I’m backing Blair. Are you?

People can say what they like about the BBC but sometimes it comes up wth a programme which is spot on. During my long months of exile in New York, the BBC’s online service has been invaluable, with such excellent programmes as From Our Own Correspondent, World Service news bulletins, and one-offs like Selling Malcolm X.

So it was with great delight when I accidentally bumped into That Mitchell and Web Sound (they don’t have their own page but you can find them in the listings here). For the first time in a very, very long time, I actually felt a slight twinge of homesickness. And then, this morning I received an email from my friend Adam with an excerpt from last week’s programme. You can listen to it here. And if you’re not fortunate enough to live in the UK but want to check out some English humor, That Mitchell and Web Sound is waiting.

Is comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard anti-Semitic? I’m not so sure.

Following the Ken Livingstone furor(e) from this side of the Atlantic has been relatively easy via the BBC, but I was surprised when the story popped up in the New York Times today. And then unsurprised, when I realized it was because our great leader TB had weighed in with his two-penneth.

Until now, the debate has been mildly amusing, and surprisingly similar to Ken’s thick mate Harry the Nazi:

Step 1: Public figure makes idiotic reference to the Nazis. Step 2: Politicos and outraged Jewish leaders call for apology. Step 3 Public figure is advised to apologise and it will all go away. The only difference is that in scenario 1. Harry complies, but in scenario 2. Ken refuses.

The problem is that stories like this, viewed from the United States, make Britain look like a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Witness this, not unusual paragraph in today’s New York Times:

Livingstone’s comment coincided with the release of a new report showing that the number of anti-Semitic attacks in Britain rose sharply to record levels in 2004, including physical attacks, name calling, hate mail and the desecration of property, such as the vandalism of synagogues with swastikas.

And two pars on:

In addition, the opposition Conservative Party recently accused Blair’s Labour Party of using an anti-Semitic advertisement on one its Web sites. It showed the faces of Tory leader Michael Howard and his deputy, both of whom are Jewish, transposed onto the bodies of flying pigs.

Unless it has changed considerably in the past 18 months, the UK I know is nothing like this anti-Semitic paradise. Non-Jews, living in communities with few or no Jews around them, may not understand Jews and Judaism, they may hold stereotypical views of Jews, and they may even (god forbid) have a negative impression of Israel (and by default Jews) because of the way the Arab/Israeli conflict is portrayed in the media. But none of this — not even unsympathetic reporting of violence in Israel — is anti-Semitism.

Which brings me back to the questions of what is anti-Semitism? Why a Nazi? And were Ken’s remarks anti-Semitic?

You will have to excuse this garbled definition–this is, after all, a weblog and is therefore a hurried expression of my thoughts. But in my opinion, anti-Semitism is anything which singles out a Jewish person for ridicule or hatred because they are a Jew. It is daubing anti-Semitic emblems, like swastikas, on Jewish property, inciting violence against Jews or making statements which would lead others to believe that Jews, by the simple fact of being Jewish, are evil.

Why a Nazi? Nazism is synonymous with oppression, persecution, racism, and evil. Most people use the word sparingly, but you do hear it when people refer to tyranical bosses, or anyone for that matter, who wields power ferociously. The word Nazi, like the swastika, is loaded with negativity. As (obviously) is the role of concentration camp guard. Surely everyone should be offended if they are called a Nazi? But, to call a Jew a Nazi is worse, because of the Holocaust and all the implications that go with it. Or is it?

By calling the journalist a German war criminal, ie a Nazi, Ken was insinuating that the reporter was evil, that he was oppressive, that he was persecuting him. He wasn’t singling the reporter out for being Jewish, he was singling him out for being a tenacious reporter (and, according to Ken, for harassing him and being part of the evil Associated Newspapers empire).

Now, if Ken had called him, for the sake of argument, “a Jew”, that would have been anti-Semitic. He would have been singling him out for being Jewish (and using the word “Jew” in a derogatory sense). So why the fuss?

Wel, it comes back to the usual media/political circus. The newspapers will squeeze every last drop out of this story. Meanwhile, politicians will keep voicing their righteous indignation that the mayor could be so thoughtless, racist and stubborn. At the same time, the leaders of the Jewish community will have to keep voicing their outrage that a politician could say such a thing, while the majority of the Jewish community (I assume) can’t understand what all the fuss is about, and will concentrate on the more important things in life like weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and whose house they are going to for Passover!

The full NY Times article can be read here

PS Never mind idiotic campaign advertisements about flying pigs (which NEVER would have been published if anyone had realized the Jewish angle). If you want to see a really worrying trend in rising anti-Semitism, try Russia where the BBC reports that:

Last month, 19 members of the Duma threw their support behind a letter to the country’s prosecutor general.

Claiming that a centuries-old Hebrew text incites violence, the letter compared Judaism to Satanism and accused Jews of ritual murder. It also called for all Jewish organisations in Russia to be investigated and banned.

Full story is here.

More interesting analysis of the Eason Jordan story (had enough yet?) over at Mediabistro. But woven into this article by Mediabistro editor-in-chief Elizabeth Spiers is an enlightening interview with the editor of Popular Mechanics magazine Jim Meigs.

Apparently Meigs took it upon himself to investigate some of the 9/11 conspiracy stories “that hinged on the structure of the building or the planes that hit the towers” — i.e. his area of expertise. Unsurprisingly, his team of reporters and researchers concluded that such theories were 100% incorrect. But what was interesting was the conspiracy bloggers’ reaction:

“It’s been interesting to see the way the conspiracy theory corner of the blogosphere has responded. There was a long detailed piece saying we’d commissioned a hit job on the 9/11 Truth Movement. There wasn’t even two seconds of thought given to possibility that well, maybe we were right. Immediately the conclusion was that we’re a CIA front! And that the entire program was to support the Bush administration or the Mossad or the Zionist movement and that our motives were to suppress the truth.”

Such a response illustrates the worst of what the blogosphere has to offer. But in a medium where anyone can set themselves up as a publisher, it’s an inescapable fact of life. I still hold to the idea that the blogosphere is primarily a forum for dialogue. It’s just that every so often, every idiot has their day.

Some interesting thoughts on the Eason Jordan debacle and blog mobs over at Complete Tosh.