That’s David Ward MP, who is defending himself, in conversation with Aida Edemariam, for his remarks about the Jews not having learned from the inhumanities of Auschwitz. Edemariam does a pretty good job of trying to get him to see why his remarks might have been taken amiss. But Ward is staunch in his failure to see the point. It wouldn’t have mattered what he said, you see; he’d criticized Israel and that’s all it takes to land a person in the soup. Ward:
There is a huge operation out there, a machine almost, which is designed to protect the state of Israel from criticism. And that comes into play very, very quickly and focuses intensely on anyone who’s seen to criticise the state of Israel. And so I end up looking at what happened to me, whether I should use this word, whether I should use that word…
…..
What I am absolutely convinced of, is that no form of words would have been acceptable. We would have been having this same conversation if I’d not used those words. It would simply have been on something else.
Unto Ward, therefore, the prize for reconfirming so very quickly my hypothesis of yesterday that there’s a smelly fish theory of criticizing Israel. Some people plainly believe that it doesn’t matter what you say if you have criticisms to make of that country; even the most dodgy words should get ‘cleaned up’ by your good motives (‘when I say words it isn’t with intention of offending’). Unfortunately, there’s this damned machine at work protecting the state of Israel from criticism.