A Challenge to the Manchester Big Tent Event

I have received a bit of criticism for publishing my own criticism of one aspect of the Manchester Big Tent Event.  I would love to know if Jonathan Freedland received criticism for his JC piece which included this thinking directed at the conference:

...I wonder if they [Israel's friends in the British Jewish community] realise that the fight for the Israel they love may also need to take other forms - and not just against the obvious enemies.  Start with...Hebron...The centre of a city of 175,000 people has been utterly emptied, its streets deserted, its shops vacant, thanks to a policy the Israeli army calls "sterilisation" - ensuring the area is clear and safe for Hebron's 800 Jewish settlers...A map shows purple roads where no Palestinian cars are permitted, yellow roads where no Palestinian shops are allowed to open and red roads where no Palestinians are even allowed to walk.

a.  first, that division was part of the agreement, to divide Hebron to H-1 and H-2.
b.  the use of "sterilisation" instead of "cleansing" is a nefarious use of language which Freedland knows is not only wrong of itself, but is a play to Nazi ideology and practice. It is also a play to all the UK's antisemites.  That is sick.
c.  the reality was not that the centre was emptied for security but that the lack of security, the Arab terror, like the assassination of an infant girl, the stabbings of worshippers, the killings in their homes of Jews resulted in a necessary tightening of security measures.
d. don't fret, Jonathan, Jews can't walk in more than 95% of Hebron so who is more discriminated against?

...All this has made life so impossible that an estimated 42 per cent of the families who once lived in this central part of town have now moved out.

Maybe if there was less anti-Jewish violence, they'd wish to move back in.  Jews can't move about so easily.

Israelis can walk freely down streets that are barred to Palestinians, surveying the shuttered shops that have been covered with some of the most vile graffiti I have ever seen. The familiar "Death to the Arabs" is there, but so is "You have Arabs, you have mice," the words covered up, but still legible.

Yes, that is really nasty but someone obviously thought enough to cover it up.  And the Arabs?  When not acting violently, their vile sermons in mosques, calling Jews monkey, pigs and pygmies are at least as vicious.

...according to my guide, Yehuda Shaul, a kippah-wearing army reservist who served two long tours in Hebron and who now works with the Breaking the Silence movement which, via the new Yachad organisation, has shown several Anglo-Jewish Zionist youth leaders and synagogue activists around the city. Shaul believes that Hebron simply reveals the reality of the occupation in an intense, distilled form.

Nice to know how Yahad works, and with whom.

...if the Israel we love is the Jewish, democratic state established in the Declaration of Independence then we need to fight for it. It is under threat and not only from the usual suspects, the hostile media and the "delegitimisers". It is also threatened from within, by Israel's own actions...

If anyone is threatening Israel "from within", one need look no farther than someone like Freedland who is surely an ASHed Jew.


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