Thursday 31 December 2009

Detective Instinct

Hope this doesn't get overlooked in post-NYE comedown...

So-called expert on extremism, Glenn Jenvey, has been arrested on suspicion of inciting religious hatred against Jews, based on allegations he posted content on the Ummah.com website under an assumed Muslim name. He says this was with the intention of seeing whether Islamic extremists were attracted to the post, but it was own posts that were splashed across the Sun as proof that British Jews, including Sir Alan Sugar, Amy Winehouse and David Miliband, had become terror targets. Credit where it's due to Tim Ireland, aka Bloggerheads, for his work on exposing the fallacy of the Sun story. More info here.

I'm not sure he's facing the right charge... If his defence is that his intention wasn't to incite hatred against Jews but to expose Islamic extremism, it seems to me that could well succeed because he wouldn't have been trying to incite the hatred himself, but simply to get others to expose their own hatred. Whereas if he was charged with inciting hatred against Muslims, by making people think extremists were compiling a hitlist of prominent British Jews, I think he'd be on shakier ground. (Usual legal caveats apply, of course). Will be interesting to see how the case develops...

7 comments:

Remember Remember said...

It appears to be fine for Jews to incite hatred against Muslims though.

Kerry said...

I really think you have to elaborate if you're going to post comments like that - examples? In situations where UK law applies?

Remember Remember said...

Oh, it's done with deniable culpability. The media barrage against Muslims is an obvious example.
Can't remember ever reading anything positive about them in the media. Smells like bias to me.

It's also done by omission. Why do we hear next to nothing about the ongoing fest against human rights by Israelis in the occupied territories and the rest of Palestine?

Why are about 80% of all MPs members of Israeli lobby organisations like Lib/Lab/Con Friends of Israel etc.?

Of course, anyone daring to mention such obvious imbalances immediately attracts vicious and highly libelous slurs of ant-semitism from proponents of the numerous zionist organisations.

BTW, I'm not Muslim.

Kerry said...

I don't think the 80% figure is right. Plenty of Labour MPs are members of the All-Party Britain Palestine Group, Labour Friends of Palestine, and the Labour Middle East Council when it existed. And I don't think media bias against Muslims, where it exists, necessarily has any connection with zionism. The BNP for example, primarily push an Islamophobic agenda but that doesn't mean they're not anti-semitic too. (I'm playing devil's advocate here to an extent... if I don't push you to justify what you're saying, others certainly will!)

Remember Remember said...

Fact remains that Muslims are maligned at every opportunity, yet the sheer scale of the injustice inflicted on Palestinians on a daily basis by Israelis remains virtually unreported.

I read an article that even mathematically proves bias for Israel even by the supposedly unbiased (LOL!) BBC.

Considering that there are only a mere 260,000 jews in GB (many of whom are NOT Israel fanatics, btw) and 1,550,000 Muslims, I'd say Israel-supporting Jews are massively over-represented in most positions of major influence.
Per capita, they must be the most massively over-represented group (and attitude) in all of GB. (correct me if I'm wrong)

(The most under-represented, at 390,000 has to be be us Jedi knights :-)

No wonder GB foreign policy under any government has always been hugely skewed towards Israel (population mere 7.5 million), and that is part of the reason 1,600 million Muslims with lots of oil have good reason to be miffed with us.

Time for a paradigm change in foreign policy (by any party) and to stop such favouritism. It's pointlessly pitted the west against the Muslims and is totally against the national and international interest, especially now that oil is getting more valuable.

Too big a subject to discuss here though, unfortunately... and most likely too late for you to do anything about it.

Tim said...

FYI: I suspect the charges relate to a later period where Jenvey claimed to 'revert' to Islam, mouthed off about Israel this and Jews that, and then confessed the whole thing was a ruse. He was arrested very soon after rhe confession video emerged, which is a further sign that this confession changed the nature of his previous comments in the eyes of the law.

Thanks for the mention, BTW. Most people don't bother.

Tim said...

Whoops, I forgot to subscribe.

(subscribes)