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how much they respected the glories of nature.

In fact if anything it's surely the other way round. No doubt it's something of an over-simplification to say that before the Romantics people used to shun mountains and wild nature as ugly and frightening, but there's surely some truth in it. Only we moderns go off in search of the world's most desolate places, and only we moderns spend vast amounts of time and effort setting up national parks, trying to preserve endangered species, making films about the beauty of our world – and then build up decadent romantic fantasies about how nasty modern life is, and how our noble ancestors used to live in harmony with nature.

Baz Edmeades has a book, Megafauna, First Victims of the Human-Caused Extinction, out next year.

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From the latest Fathom:

‘The British Mandate in Palestine is now ended and the Jewish State of Israel has been proclaimed … this news will be acclaimed by friends of peace and progress the world over’. With these words, the British communist party – formed 100 years ago on 31 July 1920 – hailed the Jews as anti-colonialists and lambasted the efforts of the ‘imperialist’ British Labour government and their ‘reactionary’ Arab allies to sabotage the creation of the Jewish state. The Arab war against Israel was denounced by The Daily Worker as ‘a reactionary war conducted by the chieftains of the Arab League under British control [and] entirely against the interests of the Arab masses’.  It is enough to make a Corbynista’s head swim. John Strawson tells the little-known history of communist support for the Jewish state.

The position of the British Communist Party at the time may come as a surprise, but of course they were only following – as always – the Russian line:

The Daily Worker’s stance was in concert with the Soviet Union’s position which had been outlined by Andrei Gromyko, its ambassador to the United Nations, in May 1947 when he argued that ‘it is essential to bear in mind the indisputable fact that the population of Palestine consists of two peoples, the Arabs and the Jews. Both have historical roots in Palestine. Palestine has become the homeland of both peoples.’ For the Soviet Union ‘an equitable solution can be reached only if sufficient consideration is given to the legitimate interests of both peoples.’

How times change.

“The police kept coming to my home and asking my father about me. Later, the police installed a voice-recording phone in my father’s and my sister’s house. When I called them, they could not speak comfortably. We could feel the pressure growing.”

Mr Emet has been reporting on China’s abuses against the Uighur people since he emigrated to Turkey 30 years ago. He is also a prominent member of the World Uighur Congress, the Munich-based organisation that has worked to bring the plight of the Uighurs to the world’s attention. The congress has repeatedly called for trade embargoes against Beijing, and boycotts of companies whose supply chains lead back to the camps.

Turkey's Erdogan, as we know, has not the slightest interest in China's persecution of the Muslim Uighurs, despite the close ethnic ties between Turkey and Xinjiang, aka East Turkestan.

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Camille Walala 3, London Mural Festival – Adams Plaza Bridge, Canary Wharf, E14 – Photo credit: Sean Pollock

Was that mural of Audrey Hepburn and the tulips from yesterday part of the festival? I've no idea. I can't find any reference to it, and the festival map isn't up yet.

Aykan Erdemir at Politico writes that the attacks on Greeks in Turkey were planned by the Turkish government “to cleanse Istanbul of the approximately 100,000 Polites [Greeks].” These were some of the remaining Greek minority in Turkey after the conflict of 1915-1924 that saw most Greek and Christian minority communities ethnically cleansed from the country. This mass expulsion was part of a wider series of ethnic cleansing of minorities across Eastern Europe and the world in the first half of the 20th century.

However, the 1955 pogrom has generally been lost to memory. This may be because Ankara was needed as a Western NATO ally against the Soviets, and mentioning the crimes against minorities would tarnish its image. This was a time when in the US there was segregation, so Ankara’s abuses were not out of step with similar abuses by France and Algeria and the UK in suppressing the Mau Mau uprising during those years.

Erdemir links the attacks of 1955 to other incidents that were “swept under the carpet” in Turkey. For instance, he mentions the attacks on Jews in Thrace in 1934 and attacks on minority Alevis over the years in Turkey. “Turkey now has a plethora of organizations and initiatives dedicated to uncovering past atrocities and making amends with persecuted minorities, whether it’s the Armenians, the Greeks, the Syriacs, the Jews or the Alevis.”…

The attack on the Greek minority, which also impacted Jews, is now being commemorated and recognized more on social media as well. The 1955 looting and massacre also comes on the anniversary of the attack on the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul, where 22 were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 1986, after gunmen entered the shul on Shabbat and opened fire.

Like the 1955 pogrom, the attacks of 1986 are generally ignored because they don’t fit the narrative that Palestinian terrorists target “Israeli” targets, when in fact the 1986 attack was a mass murder of Jews in Istanbul with no connection to Israel.

The Aykan Erdemir article at Politico that Frantzman refers to was published back in 2015 under the title The Turkish Kristallnacht. Which explains the puzzle – for mathematically minded readers – of that "Sixty years after…" at the start of this piece. 1955 is now, of course, 65 years ago.

(the exact figure isn't known). Hundreds of children were orphaned, scores of women raped, hundreds wounded, homes and Jewish-owned shops were looted. Although some Arabs did defend their Jewish neighbors, stories abound of pregnant women eviscerated, babies mutilated, and Jewish hospital patients refused treatment or poisoned. The dead were hurriedly buried in a mass grave.

There's some controversy about the extent to which the Nazis were behind this, notably in the person of Fritz Grobba, the German ambassador to Baghdad from 1932.

Back to the Times article:

Baghdad and Washington are in talks to return the Iraqi Jewish Archives, over 2,700 books and tens of thousands of documents whisked away to the US after the invasion.

Such initiatives could save Jewish heritage across the country, including the Baghdad home of Sassoon Eskell, Iraq’s first finance minister under British mandate.

Eskell established Iraq’s first financial system and indexed its currency to gold.

“He was one of the columns in Iraq’s history. You don’t get two men like that,” said Rifaat Abderrazzaq, an expert on Baghdad’s Jewish heritage.

But today, Eskell’s home on the banks of the Tigris River in the capital lies abandoned and partly ruined.

More on the Iraqi-Jewish archives here.

And here's a brief (6 min) film I posted last year on the Jews of Baghdad.

pression from the areas that it conquered. It established justice. This is why our civilization is one of conquest."

He's a bit confused about this conquest business. He seems to believe that everyone in the Ottoman Empire was happy to be ruled by the Turks. Just as, presumably, all those Armenians were happy to be slaughtered….

‘pro-Palestine protest‘, mentioning criticism of Israel’s record, but failing to point out the relevance of both the Iranian and Pakistani flag captured in her photos. She did make sure however, that ‘black lives matter’ was given a prominent place.

Caitlin Hutchison of the Scottish Herald was probably the worst offender. Her report laid out the extremist case word for word, including the Apartheid smear and a full description of the content of leaflets being handed out. Hutchinson even praised the ‘social distancing’ demands of the organisers. Her readers would not have a clue that she was describing the activity of antisemites, terrorist sympathisers and rancid extremists. She is a hack.

The BBC had the protest as a backdrop to an interview, giving them plenty of unnecessary publicity. It is unlikely the BBC bothered to tell anyone this was a band of extremists.

Only the Scottish Sun, correctly identified the protest as being ‘anti-Israel’ and was responsible enough to balance out their reporting with allegations of antisemitism and criticism of the protestors.

A group of extremists and antisemites gathered outside to protest the arrival of a football team from the Jewish state. That is the news story here. If it should be shared it should be done to show people just what type of people are supporting the boycott Israel movement. That failure to report the truth – the news – is the central reason why anti-Israel hate has been spreading for decades. Instead of being researched and identified, the media is giving these racists and extremists sympathetic publicity. They are openly spreading hate.

On Brick Lane: