Alan Hart

On the third anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death (was he the first victim of Israeli biological warfare?) I recalled my favourite story about him.

Shortly after the publication in 1984 of the first edition of my book Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?, I was informed by one of his PLO leadership colleagues that something I had written had made him very, very angry. (Nobody liked being on the receiving end of Arafat’s terrible temper. It was the equivalent of a verbal nuclear strike, a weapon he unleashed to intimidate colleagues when he could not persuade them to see things his way by reasoned argument).

I asked the colleague to tell me what it was I had written that had made Arafat angry. He said, “I think you should hear it from the chairman himself … continue reading

Dear Director General,

Because it didn’t make any reference to Muslim hurt and anger and the reasons for it, your address (as reported) to the Society of Editors on 5 November will, I fear, give momentum to Islamophobia in our country and, also, will be counter-productive in its impact on many (but not all) Muslims.

I am not a Muslim. I am a white Englishman who does not subscribe to any religion and who does not buy the notion of a creator and omnipotent God “up there” or anywhere. (I believe God is the name that can be given to the potential for goodness inside each one of us. God so defined is a prisoner in man and it’s my view that the prime task of each and every one of us is to liberate the prisoner within).

It’s true that I dohave an agenda but it is, I think, quite a noble one. I’m a former ITN and BBC Panoramacorrespondent and now an author and public speaker. In my advancing years I’m trying to educate citizens about a critical matter in order to empower them to make democracy work … continue reading

I subscribe to the daily news service provided by the JTA, “The Global Network Service of the Jewish People”. One of its stories today was headlined Book puts Foxman in “lobby” fight.

Abraham Foxman (in America) is the national director and chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), one of the componement parts of the awesomely powerful Zionist lobby. He has just had published a new book, The Deadliest of Lies, The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. (According to reviewer Jeff Barak, the book “successfully demolishes the claims of two American academics <Mearshimer and Walt> that US policy in the Middle East is biased towards Israel, to the detriment of American interests, because of the power of the Israel lobby.”)

The JTA’s report contains this paragraph: … continue reading

In the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons on Monday 22 October, I was a principal guest speaker at a programme organised by the Indian Muslim Federation (UK). The following is the text of my remarks.

… continue reading

A friend of mine has just received the following short report from the Atfulna School for Deaf Children in Gaza.

In this “Enemy Entity” where we live under restrictions of a ridiculous embargo, I would not be surprised that the coming months will find us fighting over a pen or a sheet of paper … continue reading