Shame on The Independent on Sunday

Last week the historian Martin Gilbert brought attention to an article published a couple of months back by the Independent on Sunday. He expressed a certain amount of reasonable outrage over piece in which former ambassador Oliver Miles had questioned the impartiality of the enquiry panel. It is an article that starts off reasonably. Miles makes some reasonable attacks on the enquiry and considers some of the expressed opinions of those serving on it. Gilbert – who is serving on the enquiry – is quoted as having said that Bush and Blair “may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill”. But then the article takes an odd turn. Miles states that “Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism.” Leaving aside the second comment abut Gilbert, what the fuck has Freedman’s ethnic background got to do with it. Miles doesn’t elaborate particularly on the implications of this, but then he doesn’t need to. Oddly enough he doesn’t meditate on the ethnic backgrounds of any White Anglo-Saxon panel members. yet for some reason it is reasonable to draw inferences about somebody’s character or viewpoint from the fact they are Jewish.

As far as Miles himself goes, this is not particularly surprising. I mean he is not the first foreign office tosser to express dodgy opinions. What is more dissapointing is that The Independent on Sunday would publish such cheap innuendo about an individuals ethnic background. Perhaps Rod Liddle will not be as out of place in the organisation as some would have you believe.