‘This includes any reference to their wildlife’

  This is a guest post by Max Dunbar.

Following my post on the Manchester Leila Khaled controversy, a reader got in touch to share a marvellous Morning Star letter from Linda Clair, a Manchester PSC activist who was supposed to be hosting the Khaled event.

Not being a regular reader, I am unfamiliar with the Morning Star quiz. I’m not going for high-minded disdain. Maybe I really am missing out. A few weeks ago, the quiz apparently included a question about Israel’s national bird, the Hoopoe. This provoked letters from two readers, Linda Clair and George Abendstern, who complained that the question breached the anti-Zionist left’s academic and cultural boycott of Israel. I am not making this up.

I often wonder why so many of its readers find the Morning Star so exasperating.

Despite its condemnation of zionists it yet finds space to include an item in its daily quiz about Israel’s national bird.

Is the Star not aware there’s a cultural boycott going on?

And then, despite it’s condemnation of the Bahrain Grand Prix and rightly so, it then goes on to tell us who won.

For goodness sake comrades, get your act together.

George Abendstern

Rochdale

 

The Morning Star has always been the newspaper you could rely on to support the cause of the Palestinians, so why of all the birds in the world did you choose the Israeli national bird to include in your quiz?

Maybe you don’t support the methods chosen by the International Solidarity Movement of BDS to assist the Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and justice – a demand that came from them originally.

This includes any reference to their wildlife.

Linda Clair

Rochdale

Full credit to the Star though, for publishing this whimsical response from another reader, Martyn Lewis. The signoff makes it.

As a shareholder and daily
Reader of The Morning Star
I find Abenstern and
Clair’s objections to a bird
Just bizzare. It’s a pity the
United Nations can’t get
The dove of peace flying in
For some birdsong. No doubt
My letter will hit the waste
Paper bin faster than a can
Of Spam!

Marytn Lewis
Leighton Buzzard

But Lewis’s playful riposte was, unfortunately, not the end of it as the Rochdale duo, with an apparent lack of any humour or self awareness, decided to write another letter about the bird quiz question:

Regarding Martyn Lewis’s dismissal of our objection to quiz questions on Israel’s national bird (M Star April 30), it’s not the bird we object to but what this bird represents – the racist and apartheid state of Israel.

We too are shareholders and daily readers of the Morning Star and the Daily Worker before it.

George Abendstern & Linda Clair

Rochdale

The Star’s letter page has a tagline saying ‘If you have enjoyed this article then please consider making a donation to the Morning Star‘s Fighting Fund’. For moments like this, I’m tempted.