Alan Hart: You Must Not Tell The Truth!

Chutzpah defined! Some of us do not believe what our politicians say, especially when the subject is Isreal's behavior, its ongoing colonization of the occupied West Bank, for the purpose of making peace impossible, except perhaps, on terms which require the Palestinians to surrender to Zionism's will. The responses of some Jewish supporters of Israel, right or wrong, to one British MP, who did dare to tell the truth, illustrate why most politicians throughout the Western world won't. That's yesterday's story, but I am driven to comment by the hypocrisy on display, hypocrisy which takes chutzpah to wild extremes. For those readers who might not be fully familiar with chutzpah, let's begin with a definition of it. Chutzpah is a Talmudic word that means many similar things, chief among them being shameless audacity, impudence and arrogance, each and all laced with incredible self righteousness. In the context of the conflict in and over Palestine, that became Israel, chutzpah represents an Israeli way of saying to the world, without actually saying it something like: "We know we shouldn't have done this. We know it's wrong. But we've done it because we also know there's nothing you can do about it." As I say in my book on Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, if there is one single word that sums up the whole Zionist enterprise, it is chutzpah. Sunday 27 January is Holocaust Memorial Day, and this year marks the 68th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where more than one million people, mostly Jews, died. As this day approached, the Holocaust Educational Trust placed a Book of Commitment in the House of Commons, to give MP's the chance to sign it, and honor those who were slaughtered during the Nazi holocaust and subsequent other genocides, and commit themselves to encouraging constituents "to work together to combat prejudice and racism today." Among those who signed the book, and pledged his commitment - I'd be somewhat surprised if there were a single available MP who didn't sign, was David Ward, the Liberal Democratic member for Bradford East, a 59 year old new comer to the House, elected in 2010. On his web site he then said this: Having visited Auschwitz twice, once with my family, and once with local schools, I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievably levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could, within a few years of liberation from the death camps, be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel, and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.