I linked recently to a piece just written by Richard Ingrams, where, in the pages of the liberal Observer, he said that he never read letters to the editor when their writers had Jewish last names. It turns out he has urged this before:
When people write to The Observer to complain about anti-Semitism (as happened recently), should they not be obliged by law to state whether or not they themselves are Jewish?
Ingrams was also responsible for one of the lowest responses to 9/11. Writing days later, his column was titled, “Who Will Damn Israel?” It included this passage:
Noticeable was the reluctance throughout the media to contemplate the Israeli factor – the undeniable and central fact behind the disaster that Israel is now and has been for some time an American colony, sustained by billions of American dollars and armed with American missiles, helicopters and tanks.
Such has been the pressure from the Israeli lobby in this country that many, even normally outspoken journalists, are reluctant even to refer to such matters. Nor would you find anywhere in last week’s coverage, any reference whatever to things I have mentioned here in recent issues of The Observer: the fact, for example, that Mr Blair’s adviser on the Middle East is an unelected, unknown Jewish businessman, Lord Levy, now installed in the Foreign Office; the fact that this same Lord Levy is the chief fundraiser for the Labour Party; unmentioned also would be the close business links with Israel of two of our most powerful press magnates, Rupert Murdoch and the newly ennobled owner of the Telegraph newspapers, Lord Conrad Black.
I think this is classic anti-Semitism: the need to blame the Jews for everything, the paranoid assertion that they operate at the highest levels of society and cannot be trusted; and so on. But the point is: this poison is published in a liberal newspaper. That’s how deep the problem is becoming in Europe.
The Dish 