“Mr Livingstone also claimed it was wrong to brand a British Muslim boy a ‘terrorist’ if he got involved in Palestinian violence against Israel, whereas ‘if a young Jewish boy in this country goes and joins the Israeli army and ends up killing many Palestinians and comes back, that is wholly legitimate’. These comments are simply utterly unacceptable. British Jews do not serve in the Israeli army.”
Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, 22 July 2005
“He grew up in suburban north London and still misses home comforts like milky British tea, the friends he left behind and the local pub. But yesterday Joe Wainer joined an elite Israeli army unit, and now he faces the prospect of active service in the occupied West Bank. The 19-year-old, one of nine young Britons who have signed up for a programme that recruits foreign Jews for the Israel Defence Forces, realised his life had changed when he fired an M16 rifle for the first time in training.”
Jeevan Vasagar in the Guardian, 23 November 2006
Postscript: Dan Judelson of Jews for Justice for Palestinians has a letter in the Guardian responding to the latter article: “We hear over and over again that there are two sides to this conflict. Yet the real problem of the west’s attitude is one of double standards. A programme to recruit young British Palestinians to join Palestinian security forces would be swiftly shut down and claims of ‘mentoring’ dismissed as wicked Islamist indoctrination.”