Video nasty

At Harry’s Place, David T draws attention to the remarks by an 'artist', Judy Price, who it appears has been awarded an Arts Council grant to

'curate a series of archival film screenings around the British Mandate period'.

This is a curious commission, to be sure, since Price is a member of Jews for Injustice Against the Jews and, to judge from her comments quoted here, a virulent opponent of Israel’s existence. One can think of many adjectives to describe her reported attitude – ignorant, bigoted, pathological – but objective wouldn’t be one of them. David T therefore comments:

I find it odd that a woman with these views, and with this political agenda should have been asked to put on, at public expense, an event of this nature.

Indeed, in any decent, rational universe that question would be baffling. But this is Britain. A clue is provided in this observation by Price herself:

The British Council is trying to operate with integrity, not to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel but to mark it in a critical way along with the Naqba.

Of course she may be wrong about this; after all, anyone who regards the restoration of the Jews to their rightful ancestral home as a ‘catastrophe’ for the people who tried to destroy it at its rebirth and haven’t stopped trying ever since can hardly be regarded as a reliable source on anything at all. However, given the general attitude of the British Council it wouldn’t be in the least bit surprising that it should be using taxpayers’ money to fund Arab propaganda and thus disseminate lies and hatred about the Jewish people. And I’m horribly afraid, as Israel approaches the 60^th anniversary next year of its rebirth, that this is but an early harbinger of the verbal pogrom to come.