March 21, 2014

Spectator's Absent Friends

I suppose any spectator can miss a lot of a game but The Spectator's Brendan O'Neill seems to have missed a whole team and a lot of the action in Palestine.  He had a dire article in last week's Spectator which I'm guessing elicited many adverse responses, only one (short one) or which was published:
Sir: Brendan O’Neill (‘Absent friends’, 15 March) wonders at length why Israel is so disliked, and he variously ascribes its unpopularity to fashion, bigotry or anti-Semitism. Perhaps there is another explanation. I read his article without once coming across any of the following words: settlement, Palestine or Palestinian.
John Hatt
Firbank, Sedbergh

He wonders why Israel is held in disdain but didn't mention the Palestinians. As I said, he didn't see a whole team. And he didn't mention Palestine itself.  Was he even at the ground at all?

In the interests of balance, The Spectator did publish a much longer letter from a zionist praising O'Neill's effort and promoting the plucky little Israel myth.  I won't reproduce it here. I just wouldn't want anyone thinking that The Spectator has gone soft on racist war criminals. It supports them as fervently this week as it did last week.

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