Why does Dawn Queva hate Jews?
I am personally philosemitic and have been so since I was in my pre-teens. The church I was born into told me that the Jews were God's chosen people and that Israel was their God-given land. And I believed that. I am no longer religious but I still believe the Jews live in Israel as of right. And I admire the success they have made of their return there.
I offer that context to explain why I have been a student of antisemitism for many years. Listening to antisemitc speech could not disturb me but it did seem curious that some people had such views. So I in fact sought out antisemities in an effort to understand them. I published my findings in Jewish journals.
Ray, J.J. (1972) Is antisemitism a cognitive simplification? Some observations on Australian Neo-Nazis. Jewish J. Sociology 15, 207-213.
Ray, J.J. (1973) Antisemitic types in Australia. Patterns of Prejudice 7(1), 6-16.
And in an odd turn of events, I did up until recently have a furiously antisemitic girlfriend
So I thinkI am in a good position to comment on the hate-filled Dawn Queva .
The first thing to note about her beliefs is that they are not the result of careful enquiry but instead contradict at many points the conclusions a spirit of sober enquiry would lead to. And most antisemitic people speak similarly. I have heard them many times. The speakers concerned make no effort to offer careful proof of what they say. They simply assert without proof a range of derogatory claims about Jews and Israel.
So from an academic viewpoint, there is nothing to argue about in what they say. Their words are a performance, not a set of examinable claims. They are empty assertions.
So where does the impetus for these statements come from? It comes from one of the oldest human follies: The tendency to believe what you want to believe rather than what the evidence shows. And that is a quintessential Leftist habit. Leftists do it all the time. They believe that things like rent-control are beneficial to tenants when all experience shows that rent control hurts tenants. Facts and evidence have no power to change their views.
And we see that Ms Queva comes from a Leftist environment -- the BBC -- and that it took a lot of pressure for the Beeb to fire her.
But not all Leftists are antisemites as far as we can tell so there remains something to explain. In answer, I think it is a matter of extremity. Moderate Leftists retain enough reality contact not to respect all the wild claims about Jews. They have enough balance to see that Jews are just people like us who happen to have a slightly different religious background.
So why do extreme Leftists hate Jews? Easy. Israel embodies all that Leftists hate. It is prosperous and influential. It is a top dog that sends its enemies packing with ease, not the underdog that Leftists favour. Israel is assertive instead of humble. It is the powerhouse of the near East. It is exactly what Leftists want to tear down. Israel's success negates all sympathy for it. So Leftist protesters have turned out in their usual droves with Israel being the new focus of their hate. So that explains recent demonstrations etc.
But antisemitism existed long before the present State of Israel. Whence that?
The answer is religious in two different forms. The simple form is Muslim antisemitism. In both the the Koran and the Hadiths, Mohammed attacked Jews. So among Muslims, antisemitism is simply pious. They are following their prophet
Its a bit more complex among Christians. For centuries Christians reviled Jews for killing Christ. But they were also told in their Bibles that Jews were God's chosen people. Problem: How could they revile God's chosen people?
There is only one way out of that. They had to deny that Jews were descendants of the Israelites of the Bible. It was a matter of history that Jews WERE descendants of people who had fled Israel in Roman times but that did not matter. All sorts of improbable stories were made up to give alternative and derogatory origins for the Jews. Ms Queva repeats many of them.
And over the centuries those stories became embedded in the folk wisdom of "Christian" lands. They were traditionally passed down among family and friends and are believed by many to this day. They became part of the culture. World War II discredited them to some extent but below the surface they were and are still believed, even among many Germans. And it is those stories that antisemites regurgitate to this day. Their historicity does not matter to believers. They WANT the stories to be true so they are believed without need of proof. Assertions are enough.
Dawn Queva, a BBC scheduler, has been fired after sharing 'horrific' anti-Semitic social media posts
Ms Queva, 55, described the Holocaust as a 'holohoax', prompting calls for the BBC to take action
One post by Dawn Queva claimed that 'being JewISH has zero to do with ethnicity' and suggested Jews were from the 'Synagogue of Satan'
In the messages, she refers to 'AshkeNazis', a slur that is a play on 'Ashkenazi' – Jews who descend from those who lived in central or eastern Europe.
One message claims the Ashkenazi Jews are 'a bunch of subcontinental European melanin recessive CaucAsian japhetic AshkeNazi who have no None zero zilch blood connection to the land of Palestine or Israel historically'.
Another brands Jewish people an 'invader coloniser species'. Ms Queva also allegedly described white people as 'barbaric' and 'bloodthirsty'. In other posts, she referred to the UK as the 'UKKK' – a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
Ms Queva, 55, a senior scheduler and playout planner for BBC Three, posted under the name Dawn Las Quevas-Allen. She previously worked in scheduling for A+E Networks, UKTV and Disney.
She doubled down on her remarks after they came to light, challenging her critics to 'come at me... my shoulders are broad'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13045017/BBC-Jews-invader-SACKED-dawn-queva.html
***********************************************************UK: Labour’s ‘trans inclusive’ conversion therapy ban will be a disaster
Keir Starmer has a reputation for changing his mind. But on one issue at least, the Labour leader remains worryingly consistent. Addressing an LGBT+ Labour meeting in Parliament this week, Starmer declared, ‘Labour governments and the LGBT+ movement have a history of achieving incredible things together.’ His own contribution to this long march of progress has already been determined. Starmer yet again pledged that a Labour government will outlaw all forms of conversion therapy.
Sir Keir is adamant that, on his watch, a conversion therapy ban will be ‘trans inclusive’. In other words, it won’t just outlaw attempts to turn homosexuals straight but, crucially, it will most likely make it illegal to try and change someone’s gender identity. Under a Labour government, facts be damned. If a man thinks he is a woman, it will be against the law to try and persuade him otherwise.
There is no evidence that gay people are being routinely subjected to conversion therapy
This trans-inclusivity matters to the Labour party because without it, there’s little to justify calls for a ban on conversion therapy. The days of chemical castration and electro-shock therapy are, thankfully, long gone. A handful of unhappy adults might seek out a vicar to pray with them, but there is no evidence that gay people are being routinely subjected to conversion therapy.
If it doesn’t include transgender people, Starmer’s proposed ban is pointless. But even here, evidence of coercive practice is scant. The latest government commissioned research into the scale of conversion therapy included only six trans or ‘nonbinary’ people who said they had been offered conversion therapy in the past three decades. Such small numbers suggest this is hardly a crisis. Starmer’s trans-inclusive conversion therapy ban might then be less about reality and more about sending a message, but it should trouble us nonetheless.
The line between ‘conversion therapy’ and plain old ‘therapy’ is vanishingly thin while the consequences of transitioning are monumental. Take two young adults. One has a relationship with someone of the same sex before changing her mind and deciding she is boringly straight after all. She goes on to get married and have children. Her youthful experimentation is nothing more than a happy memory.
The second woman thinks she might actually be a man. She socially transitions, changing her name and pronouns. She goes on to take cross-sex hormones and has surgery to remove her breasts. At this point, still unhappy, she decides to detransition. But the physical changes to her body are irreversible. She faces potential infertility, permanent scarring and lifelong changes to her voice and appearance.
No humane society should let someone put themselves through this without first making sure they are fully aware of the consequences. It might not be what a transgender person wants to hear, but it is necessary to point out that no amount of hormones or surgery can actually change a person’s sex. And, in some instances, advising against medical transition might be the best course of action. Yet for Sir Keir, these conversations, far from being compassionate, are ‘psychologically damaging abuse’.
His proposed ‘full, trans-inclusive ban on all forms of conversion therapy’ is particularly concerning for children. There has been a shocking rise in the number of children, particularly teenage girls, who claim to be transgender. Their first recourse is most likely parents or teachers; informal conversations often determine what happens next. Loving reassurance that the best thing is to wait and see gives children time to grow up and potentially change their minds. Yet banning conversion therapy casts a glare of suspicion over such reassurances. Rather than responding from the heart, parents and teachers will worry about being criminalised. A trans-inclusive conversion therapy ban threatens the intimacy of family relationships.
Many gender-confused children grow up to be happily homosexual. Ironically, a future ban on conversion therapy could send these youngsters headlong down a path to medical interventions that will ‘trans away the gay’. The most gruesome forms of medical conversion therapy might have had their day. But, under a future Labour government, young lesbians will be able to get their breasts cut off and become straight trans men while gay men can be transformed into hormone-pumped trans women. This is conversion therapy on steroids. Or, more accurately, on testosterone.
Labour’s allegiance to the rainbow flag means the party will plough on with banning conversion therapy despite the risk such legislation poses to vulnerable children. In his speech to LGBT+ Labour, Starmer also announced plans for tougher hate crime legislation and a promise to ‘modernise the Gender Recognition Act’.
Sir Keir’s flip flopping eventually brought him to a place where he can say that 99.9 per cent of women do not have a penis. But, it seems, this insight will do nothing to stop Labour making it easier for gender-confused children to be pushed towards medication and surgery and for men to enter women’s spaces. For the sake of family life, children’s health, lesbian and gay rights and women’s safety, it is vital Starmer’s conversion therapy plans are thwarted long before he gains the keys to 10 Downing Street.
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Why is the British civil service being given lessons on ‘microaggressions’?
Civil servants are being given lessons instructing them not to roll their eyes or look at their mobile phones while dealing with members of staff. Such behaviour can be deemed evidence of sexual or racial discrimination, examples of ‘microaggressions’.
As the Times reports today, more than £160,000 has been spent by the government since 2021 on hiring public sector consultants to train staff to recognise ‘perceived slights’ in the form of microaggressions. Complaints of microaggressions are even being brought to employment tribunals after Acas, the arbitration service, decided to include them in its guidance against discrimination. Elsewhere, in the same time period, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has spent more than £1,000 per worker on microaggression training for a small number of staff.
There is no conscious way to know we are making a microaggression and so no way to prevent ourselves from making one
A microggression, an idea derived from the school of Critical Race Theory, is the concept that someone might innocently or unconsciously display a dismissive or hostile attitude through unwittingly made minor gestures. The word was coined in 1970 by the psychiatrist Chester Pierce; and the psychologist Derald Wing Sue has since described microaggressions as ‘brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership’.
One class of British civil servants has recently been taught the following definition: ‘Microbehaviours are tiny, often unconscious gestures, facial expressions, postures, words and tone of voice can influence how included (or not included) the people around us feel.’ The definition pointed to examples such as ‘insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate unfriendly, critical or negative messages’. Elsewhere, Berkshire Consultancy, which has been teaching staff from the Competition and Markets Authority (which has spent over £60,000 on lessons), explains that microaggressions ‘are usually delivered by well-intentioned individuals unaware that they have engaged in harmful conduct toward a socially devalued group.’
There is of course one glaring contradiction inherent in the idea of teaching people how not to make microaggressions: you cannot avoid making an unconscious gesture. The unconscious by its very definition is unknowable to the rational mind. There is no conscious way to know we are making a microaggression, and consequently, no logical manner to prevent ourselves from making them. Furthermore, the consequential offence that they might generate is all in the eye of the beholder, beyond the ken of those putatively causing the offence: it is entirely subject to the interpretation of anyone sensing – or seeking – offence.
No wonder the fruits of such lessons have been disappointing, to say the least. ‘Feedback from trainees after one series of lessons was scathing,’ reports the Times. ‘Most respondents said that the training did not meet their objectives, did not enhance their knowledge, they did not feel they could apply what they had learnt to their work and would not recommend the sessions to others.’
Nevertheless, the whole notion of microgressions chimes with the times. They resonate with a culture that places a premium on feelings and subjective interpretation above dispassionate objectivity. As Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay wrote in their influential 2020 book Cynical Theories, one of the most significant shifts in culture at the end of the twentieth century was that ‘the boundary between that which is objectively true and that which is subjectively experienced ceased to be accepted.’
In the wake of the 1999 Macpherson inquiry, our legal system came to enshrine such subjectivity into the definition of a racist incident, which is now described as ‘any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim’. Now it’s not the intention, conscious or not, of a word or action that matters, but the subjective perception of it.
We have witnessed the corresponding elevation of feeling in the radical trans movement, which holds that so long as one believes oneself to be of another sex, or ‘identifies’ oneself as such, that belief should be respected or even enshrined in law. The Scottish government may be have been thwarted in December in its plan to make it easier to change one’s sex by law, basically by basing it on a personal decision, but it captured a zeitgeist that is enthral to subjectivity or. to put it less charitably, irrationality.
Microgressions resonate, too, to ‘woke’ ideology, and one of its central tenets: that power is exerted in an invisible, not obvious fashion – hence the presence today of such similarly nebulous and unverifiable concepts as ‘unwitting racism’ and ‘implicit bias’. Allied to this is the belief that those exerting power are invariably white and male and those at the receiving end are those categories who have been historically oppressed. This conceit has ostensibly been borrowed in its entirety by the civil service, who have made it the assumption that any microgression must be racial or sexual in its nature. As if a sensitive white male like me can never perceive a slight.
So far, the success of lessons on microaggressions in the civil service seem to have been limited. But don’t expect to hear the last of them. They are very much of our era.
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Australia: Antisemites fall out
Anti-Israel activists have fallen out bitterly over claims there are too many white people advocating for Gaza in a peak lobby group and that the use of a former Israeli soldier to back the Palestinian cause is wrong.
Block the Dock Melbourne, which targets Israeli shipping interests, has savaged Free Palestine Melbourne, claiming the umbrella campaigning group has been overrun by white people who do not speak for the people directly affected by the Middle East conflict.
The groups are two of the highest profile pro-Palestinian groups in Australia, often campaigning together to highlight their opposition to Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel last October.
But the groups are at odds, with Block the Dock declaring publicly it was opposed to the lack of Palestinian people involved in FPM’s campaigning and against using a former Israeli soldier to promote their cause on behalf of those opposed to the Jewish state.
“What an embarrassment to the Palestinian community,’’ Block the Dock posted on social media. “We don’t need Palestinian killers in our community.
“90% of FPM is run by white people. White people do not speak for all Palestinians.’’
The weekend post by Block the Dock provoked a strong response across the anti-Israel lobbying sector, with some calling for it to be taken down and others stridently backing it.
The division came as Greens leader Adam Bandt declared at a Melbourne rally that the Albanese government should change course on its position on Israel, flagging his party would move a motion for such a change.
He said it was beyond doubt that the “far right-wing cabinet of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s is intent on slaughter and dispossession’’.
“And it is time for Labor to change course,’’ he said.
Block the Dock is a radical left-wing group that has been camped at the Melbourne port, an engine room of the national economy, to try to disrupt Israeli-owned boats.
Israel’s ZIM is a global shipping line that activists accuse of helping the pro-Israel military cause.
The group has had only scattered success, but has received favourable coverage in some foreign media backing Gazans.
The entry to the dock has been defaced with anti-Semitic stickers, one declaring a picture of a Jew saying: “If I don’t steal it someone else will.’’
It was printed by the anti-Israel group @freepalestineprinting, which also has played a key role in the campaign against Israel and Jewish interests in Australia.
The anti-Israel groups have relied heavily on social media to further their cause, with Sunday’s rally in Melbourne live-streamed.
The Block the Dock post provoked a mixed reaction, with one woman saying the campaigns should be run by Palestinians.
‘’I think it’s only a problem if whites are running the organisations, we can be involved as allies,’’ she wrote.
“Palestinians should be the main people running the cause, with other groups as allies – especially First Nations as they’ve suffered similar.’’
Another respondent defended FPM: “They do have Palestinians in their organisation. I know them. And like all good and decent organisations in Australia it is an inclusive and multicultural space for activist who support Palestine. It is not closed to anyone.’’
Melbourne’s pro-Palestinian rallies are heavily backing First Nations causes, with Aboriginal activist Robbie Thorpe a lead speaker at the Melbourne rally.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
<> http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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