Tuesday 9th September: Edinburgh
Darren's debate: Are protests against Israel encouraging anti-Semitism?
Free Speech spoke to a young British man going to join the IDF, Israel's armed forces.
We’re BACK! That’s right, forget Dr Who, forget Bake Off, the biggest television event of the year is here: the return of Free Speech! *Pulls party popper*
Our first show is on Tuesday 9th September at 8pm. One issue we’ll be looking at is the question of Israel and Palestine which dominated the headlines over the summer.
In our research we came across a young man named Darren who has decided to travel to Israel to join the army. Whilst talking to him about his experience we came to the question of anti-Semitism. What do you think? Have the Gaza protests – such as calls to make Scotland a ‘Zionist-free zone’ – crossed the line? Or is the cry of anti-Semitism being used as a way of deflecting legitimate criticism of Israeli foreign policy?
Our debate is in Edinburgh and of course it’s just one week before the big vote on whether Scotland becomes an independent country.
Our panel is made up of two speakers from each side of the debate: Joan McAlpine from the Scottish National Party, and Martin Compston, star of the Ken Loach film Sweet Sixteen, will be asking our audience to vote YES for Scotland to become an independent country; while Times columnist Hugo Rifkind, and leader of the Scottish Conservative party, Ruth Davidson, will be saying NO.
You can join the debate during the show on Tuesday 9th September (8pm BBC3 – don’t miss it!) by tweeting or messaging us. But you don’t have to wait until then to get talking about this topic. There’s our Facebook page and Twitter, and you can also vote on what questions we should be asking on our Choose Our Questions Page. It’s a veritable explosion of interactivity which will no doubt break the internet.
Join the debate
Have a look for behind the scenes photos, links to what we’re reading and watching, hashtag games and lots of other nonsense.
Tricycle Theatre
By the way, we recorded the above film with Darren before he went off to Israel this summer. In the film he talks of a theatre “banning” the UK Jewish Film Festival. The theatre he’s talking about is the Tricycle Theatre in London which had refused to host the festival while it received some of its funding from the Israeli embassy. The theatre had offered to replace the £1,400 grant with its own money but the festival said the Tricycle's demands were unacceptable. A few weeks ago the Tricycle Theatre changed its mind though and said that it had “withdrawn its objection and invited back the UKJFF on the same terms as in previous years with no restrictions on funding from the embassy of Israel in London.
