Former BBC journalist compares Breivik to Netanyahu

Jerusalem dismisses comment as "another nutty statement from another nutty Israel basher."

By JONNY PAUL JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
Alan Hart 370 (photo credit: jpnny paul)
Alan Hart 370
(photo credit: jpnny paul)
LONDON – A former BBC correspondent turned anti-Israel activist compared Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, currently on trial for murdering 77 innocent people in a terror attack last July.
In an article last Thursday on his website titled “What do Breivik and Netanyahu have in common?” Alan Hart – a former BBC and ITN correspondent – concluded by saying that the mass killer and Israel’s prime minister both share “the mania of victimhood.”
The activist wrote that the main thing Breivik and Netanyahu have in common comes from them both “living in fantasy worlds of their own creation” and talking “a lot of extreme right-wing nonsense.”
From this he concluded that Norway’s mass killer and Netanyahu both suffer from what he called “the mania of victimhood.”
“The nonsense Breivik speaks is driven in general by his fears about the consequences for Norway of immigration and multiculturalism and, in particular, by his vision of an Islamic takeover,” Hart maintained.
He then stated that the “nonsense” Netanyahu speaks is driven by his perception of Israel in danger of annihilation.
“As he tells and sells it, the current biggest threat to Israel’s existence is, of course, Iran,” he said, going on to say, “Arguably the single most ridiculous statement he has made to date on this subject was in 2006 when, as Likud chairman, he addressed a gathering of Jewish American organizations and said, ‘it’s 1938 and Iran is Germany.’”
The activist ended by saying that we know where Breivik’s mania led him, but “we can only speculate about where Netanyahu’s mania will lead his Israel.”
An Israeli official dismissed his comment as “another nutty statement from another nutty Israel basher.”
Hart has long been an ardent critic of Israel and anti-Israel campaigner. In 2005, he self-financed a three volume book titled Zionism: The real enemy of the Jews.
Speaking at an event organized by the pro-Hezbollah group Islamic Human Rights Commission in 2006, Hart blamed mainstream media for complicity in the suppression of truth of history, out of fear of offending Jews.
He said that “the anti-Semitism card is something the Zionists have exploited to suppress debate.”
Writing in 2010, Hart said that Israel is illegitimate as it came into being as a consequence of “Zionist terrorism and pre-planned ethnic cleansing.”
Israel, he said, “had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist without the consent of the Palestinians, which they have never given.”
The same year, Hart pointed to Mossad complicity in the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, claiming that the planes were fitted with satellite devices and that the Mossad had guided them into the towers, which also were pre-wired to enable a controlled demolition.
Herb Keinon contributed to this report.