Saturday, February 14, 2009

Nasty piece of bad anti--Israel 'humour' in the Times

Today's Times contains an opinion piece by Giles Coren about dangerous dogs following the death of a young boy last week by two domestic dogs in his grandmother's home. Not a subject you think that should offer the opportunity for either 'humour' or stereotypical, inaccurate Israel-bashing. Yet Coren finds it perfectly natural to combine both in the article where he speaks about the banning of Staffordshire terriers:

  • Germany, where the import of staffies is illegal, has shown us some of the way, and Israel has gone one better, making the breed illegal altogether - and I doubt there are many who flout that little law. You don't go breeding dogs to scare your neighbours when you know that one false snarl and a helicopter gunship's going to whoop into view, flatten your house, your nan's house and your local school, and then blame it on the dog.

I have written to the editorial staff complaining about this example of lazy anti-Israel bashing. I am sure Giles Coren would not have dared to have joked about dog-owners in Muslim countries being blown up by Islamic suicide bombers yet, curiously, owning dogs as pets is forbidden in Islam, so it would have been a much more accurate target for his 'humour'. Moreover there have been genuine incidents of dog owners being attacked in Islamic countries.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Giles Coren thinks it's pretty cool, as a Jew, to bash Israel with his often "sniffy" prose. The truth is he's a lazy thinker whose obviously never bothered to pick up a book on Jewish history but prefers to absorb the offerings of the "The Hamas Bugle"