On April 5, at the onset of Passover, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer sent a message of welcome to the Jewish community: "Today I am sending my warmest wishes to members of the Jewish community as you prepare to celebrate the festival of Pesach. Chag Sameach."
Perfectly lovely, perfectly anodyne.
Replying to that tweet, Dan White, a journalist who claims to be a member of ITV's "diversity board", wrote to Starmer:
Did you see what happened at Al-Aqsa mosque while Palestinian worshippers are celebrating the holy month of Ramadan? Your silence is disgusting.
And now he's apologized:
Asked to explain his comments, White, told Jewish News: "I can only apologise for the ill timing of my tweet."
"I am not and never have been antisemitic."
"My response was not aimed at the community, but at the silence from all political parties around the conflict which is happening."
"I accept my response was badly timed, I can only apologise profoundly for it. My mental health sometimes makes snap decisions. As I said I am believer in peace, worldwide. I am sorry again for the ill timing and any offence."
Four paragraphs, all terrible. The pro forma "I am not antisemitic" is the usual level of eye rolling. Placing the blame on his "mental health" is accountability dodging (and for what it's worth, "mental health" doesn't make decisions. Dan White makes decisions, for which Dan White should learn to accept responsibility for).
However, I want to focus mostly on this framing of the problem as one of "timing". The tweet's problem was not "timing". If White had on April 5 just written a general message to the effect that Starmer or other British politicians are not paying sufficient attention to violence against Palestinian worshippers, and someone said "how dare you say something like this on the eve of Passover", that would be an objection about timing -- and an ill-taken one, since the fact that we're near the onset of Passover does not make it inappropriate to level commentary on violence occurring in Jerusalem right now.
But again, that's not the problem here. The problem is not when White wrote the tweet. It's where he did it -- in reply to an unrelated message of support for the British Jewish community in celebration of one of our holidays, having absolutely nothing to do with Israel whatsoever. The practice where anytime anyone talks about Jews in any context folks come swinging in with "what about Palestine?", is antisemitic per se, as much so as the Texas Republican who opposed a resolution honoring Muslims celebrating Ramadan because there are Muslim terrorists in Iraq.
If there's any saving grace for White, it's that the replies to Starmer's tweet are positively crawling with trolls saying much the same thing. Some consolation.
Grade: 2/10
1 comment:
I love this feature, not because the content isn't stomach-turning but because it's always interesting in covering the stupidity and craven nature of a lot of these jerks. I do have a question to add here: have you seen any cases since Fatima Hajigag of apologies that were definitely worse and more insulting than the original disgusting statement? My example would be 2008 Arun Gandhi, whose "defense" of stating that Israel and Jews would destroy the world is that he only meant the LIKUD would destroy the world and that he was in solidarity with everyone who fell into line with Jewish Voice for Peace. Yeah, he got booted out of his position, and rightly so.
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