Something is rotten in the kingdom

Generalizations are generally an anathema for me, so I apologize in advance for this post. It is simply that a letter published by Indy that came to my attention today got up my nose.

As it goes, Indy and its various contributors are preoccupied by the exciting task of proving (mostly to themselves and to others of their ilk) that the State of Israel (or, for some of them, who are unable to pronounce this hated name, the Zionist Entity) is an illegitimate offspring of a passing mental weakness by the UN. Worthy pastime, and I shall not interfere with it by any means. However...

Writes one William Garrett from Harrow, Middlesex:

Between then and 1947, Zionist "boat people" flooded into the country but the Palestinians were helpless under the mandate to stop this.

Even for somebody who developed quite a thick skin, perusing all kinds of hate sites, messages and whatnot, this special mix of racism, bigotry and falsification was too much.

To start with, the term "Zionist" applied to the survivors of the Holocaust is a fallacy that points to the mental state of Mr Garrett more than anything else. To call the desperate and destitute Jews in search of a safe harbor "Zionists" is not a slip of the tongue - it is the sign of the times, when a Jew-hater hiding behind the mask of a defender of Palestinian rights lets his hate run away. Just like so many others of them do nowadays, but much less carefully.

Then the "boat people". Leaving Jews (sorry, Zionists for Mr Garrett) aside: it will be interesting to know how Mr Garret called the Chinese citizens of Vietnam trying to escape the communist regime that was taking over. Or the Cubans trying to get out from the Fidel's paradise? Or the Greeks trying to flee Smyrna in 1922? Why cannot I get rid of the feeling that I smell some classic British xenophobia, albeit much less refined than that of some members of upper classes?

The most interesting question, however is this: how in a nation with the most stringent (crossing to absurd actually) Political Correctness theology, in a nation that sends a senior police officer to discuss a forthcoming arrest of a terrorist suspect with his imam, in a nation where prison toilets are aligned according to tenets of Islam - in short how does it happen that a "progressive" paper like Indy is allowed to provide a pulpit to a hateful creature like our Mr Garrett?

It looks like the famous freedom of speech goes mostly one way in the Kingdom. And that the rot spreads...

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