Maureen in The Guardian

I've never really been a fan of Maureen Lipman. Sure she is adored by millions for her stereotypical Jewish mother character Beattie in those godawful 1980s advertisements for British Telecom and her other roles have never greatly engaged with me.

But I don't deny she has an impressive track record both on stage and screen. So it was all the more interesting to see that our Mo writes for The Guardian.

Thanks to Melanie Phillips for introducing me to Maureen's most recent column.

On the issue of Israel, our Mo writes:

So Israel must be wiped off the face of the Earth. It's official policy according to the president of that well known democracy, Iran. A member of the UN and the human race, he last week told the rest of the world his true agenda for the Middle East. On the same day, the suicide bombers took up their old position in the Israeli marketplace and killed five innocent civilians. There must have been much hand-rubbing and backslapping in Iran that night.

It proves that whatever Israel does right is ultimately wrong. Pull out of Gaza, at astonishing personal cost to their own electorate, and somehow it works against them. They cannot win without loss. They cannot protect themselves, surrounded as they are on all sides by warrior states, without being labelled the aggressors.

No, I'm not defending them arbitrarily; there has been enough to complain about in their behaviour over the past 50-odd years. There invariably is when a country is submerged in a lengthy war. America bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The Lusitania and the Belgrano happened. An innocent Brazilian electrician was shot, here in London, in a moment of post-bombing panic. Stuff happens.

Well said Mo.

Comments

[Lior]

There is nothing surprising about Maureen Lipman's point of view. It is surely shared by 90 per cent of British Jewry. (The remaining 10 per cent being members of Liberal Judaism, who claim the right to... "We believe that the Israel-Diaspora partnership requires mutual respect as well as open, candid and vigorous discussion of common concerns between the partners and within each. Such discussion should not exclude responsible criticism of particular governmental policies or other aspects of Israeli society, expressed with loving concern and due deliberation." It is such a shame that, following John Rayner's intemperate views toward the Jewish State, Liberal Jewish rabbis seem ever to discuss Israel's shortcomings with the minimum of due deliberation to their incessant outpourings and without seemingly an ounce of affection of concerned responsibility.)

No, what surprises more is the fact that The Guardian - the one institution in our national life that has done perhaps more harm to the Jewish people and fuelled more anti-Semitism than perhaps the BBC - should print it at all.