Here is MPACUK’s response:
MPACUK exists to fight religious and racial prejudice and discrimination. That is the very reason we oppose Zionism – a racist political ideology that believes in a state for a particular racial and religious group, not for all its citizens equally. An ideology that endorses ethnic cleansing and an ‘ethnically pure’ state, as advocated by the new extreme-right deputy prime minister of Israel, Avigdor Leiberman.
Like every pro-Palestinian advocate, from Ken Livingstone to Christian Aid, we’ve endured the false smear of anti-Semitism. Recently we were accused of anti-Semitism on the basis of an article that was actually written by a Jewish Israeli blogger!
These false accusations are a classic tactic by the Zionist lobby: “The main purpose behind these periodic, meticulously orchestrated media extravaganzas is not to fight anti-Semitism but rather to exploit the historical suffering of the Jews in order to immunize Israel against criticism.”. (Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah, 2005, p.21)
We were therefore shocked but not surprised to hear that one of our members was facing fresh accusations – so we made sure we got the facts of the case straight. And here they are – not neccessarily as juicy as it reads in the newspaper, but reality isn’t always quite sensational enough.
The truth is that an individual who is now a member of MPACUK made a mistake 6 years ago – before this organisation even existed. At that time, acting as a private individual with no associations to any group, Asghar Bukhari supported and sent money and letters to anyone who he saw as people who stood up to Israel, and their powerful lobbies within Britain and the world. At that time, David Irving championed himself as exactly that, fashioning himself as a respectable historian, and writing articles opposing the Israeli lobby and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians – and appealing for funds for the libel case in which he denied accusations of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Now, 6 years and 2 Irving court cases later, a journalist Jamie Doward at the Observer has somehow come across a letter and small cheque to David Irving.
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