The Most Obnoxious Participant in the Demonstrations Against Sodastream

January 23, 2014, 7:34 pm

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An Odball Named Shaike Rozanski

His name is shaike Rozanski although at first I though he was referred to as ‘shaker’ on account of his unusual mannerisms. His appalling behaviour, although no doubt typical of the average Israeli settler (note – not the average Israeli) even casts the JDL’s Simon Cobb's in a (relatively) good light.

Shaiker in the middle is obsessed with Omar Barghouti - his favourite theme (when not attacking Jewish anti-Zionists)           is 'what about Syria' etc.

Knowing that I am ill he openly hopes I will dies because no one will miss me! He refers to people as ‘dogs’ and calls them Kapos. After a little of this I riposted back that he was a typical Jewish Nazi.

Passer by reads our leaflet - we distribute about 800 per week -  the Zionists only abuse

 

 

Shaike is Managing Director at ICTS (UK/IRELAND) LTD, which is a very large international airport security company Brighton, United Kingdom Aviation & A

Carrying the message each week

Fuhrer Cobbs seems thoroughly fedup

 

erospace, although find it hard to imagine him at work! Or anyone to work with.

His company will do doubt be very pleased to see above video & have their name connected to such a person & behaviour. If anyone is on Linkedin, here is ICTS site

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K39rRTCkR78

His profile is at http://www.linkedin.com/company/115724?trk=mini-profile-see-more and despite coming to these shores, he also seems to spend a lot of time belittling the UK to camera although it's been a while now.

This is another video of him outside the Bethlehem Unwrapped simulation of the apartheid wall in London.

I have personally made a complaint about him to the Police about calling me a ‘kapos’ which he openly admitted even though Cobbs made a complaint against me for the same reason. The Kapos were concentration camp inmates who were forced to work with the Nazis. After 3 months they were shot and another group selected. They had no choice in what they did and at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor they helped initiate the revolts that led to the escape of hundreds and the destruction of one gas/crematorium at Auschwitz.

What is far worse was the open collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists and the fact that the Zionists actually welcomed the Nazis to power – see their letter in Lucy Dawidowic’s War Against the Jews

The Zionist Odball, Shaiker, is spoken to by the  Police, after a complaint was made by me of the use of the term 'kapos', especially when the Zionists were the ones who collaborated with the Nazis and blocked both information about the Holocaust when it happened and attempts by Jews to gain refuge  anywhere but Palestine.

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Why Israel Doesn't Want Peace

January 24, 2014, 10:48 am

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Israel’s security elite don’t want peace

It is often taken as given that Israel wants peace. In a sense it does, but it is the peace of the vanquished. Peace on its terms. The failure of the current talks is predictable. Netanyahu doesn’t want any agreement. He therefore continues to add conditions which even Abbas has difficulty selling.

Zionism has always operated on the basis of ‘facts on the ground’. If you use the ‘peace talks’ to buy time to build a settlement or two, then it is worth going through the motions. But that is their only purpose. They act as a cover for colonisation and war.

The article below, which is on Jonathan Cook’s blog, shows that the security elite also don’t want peace. Not only is it bad for business, nothing better than weapons tested in battle, but it also create mercenaries who can go fight and train in other countries.

Zionism was always an expansionist movement. That is the nature of the colonial best. As Moshe Dayan put it, with his customary refusal to use euphemisms:

As Moshe Dayan said in a speech to young soldiers: 'During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road.’ ‘http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World by Avi Shlaim, Ma’ariv, 7.7.68.

 

Tony Greenstein

Israel’s security elite don’t want peace

23 January 2014

Hidden away both behind the Ha’aretz paywall and in its business pages is one of the most astute articles I’ve seen in the Israeli media. It tells how Israel (more so even than other western states) has been taken over by a security elite – what is termed here a "security network"– that has no interest in peace, though it increasingly likes an endless peace process. War and security are good for business, as far as this elite is concerned.

It is more than possible, as the article notes, that the Palestinian leadership is part of this security network. An academic quoted observes: "I think that in both elites, the Israeli and Palestinian, some want this perpetual state of a nation-waiting-to-be-born, and benefit from it. An established state means not only grave social problems but also limitations and constraints on the political leadership."

The first half of the article is equally interesting but of more parochial concern regarding what Guy Rolnik, one of Ha'aretz’s best writers, calls Israel’s "independent tax militias", corporations that have ramped up the cost of living through government-sanctioned cartel practices.

Meir  Dagan, former head of Mossad (MI6) and Yuval Diskin (former head of Shin Bet - MI5)

So people have a chance to read it, I’m appending the second half of the article:

I have constantly maintained that there is no connection between the threats Israel faces and its defence expenditure. Like all big systems, the defence establishment is preoccupied mainly with its own survival, with increasing its clout and budget. And now let us ask the real question: Do the interests of the defence establishment lead to a waste of billions upon billions, but also block any chance of diplomatic understandings in the region?

I asked these questions of Prof. Oren Barak, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who recently published the book "Israel’s Security Networks" together with Prof. Gabriel Sheffer (Cambridge University Press). The two claim that much of local politics, and economic and social affairs can be explained through the excessive influence of the "security network," as they call it. They claim that since Israel’s establishment, and mainly since the Six-Day War, an informal but powerful security network has been evident, consisting of security officers (on active duty and retired) and their civilian cohorts. This network affects the culture, the politics, society, the economy and the public debate. It also impacts Israel’s foreign relations. The two experts describe the weakness of Israeli civilian society and explain that it’s in the interest of the security networks to keep it that way, relegating economic, cultural and civilian considerations to the margins.

IOF admits that israeli soldier threw stones at bilin

I asked Barak if behind the arguments on the territories and the peace process, something simpler lies – a powerful interest group fighting to preserve its status; a defence clique that managed to bend foreign policy, politics and the budget to its interests.

"Yes, that is exactly what we claim in the book," Barak says. "It isn’t a club in the sense of a place where people meet, but of people who share the same beliefs and values, first and foremost the supremacy of security as they perceive and represent it, with the Israeli army as its main representative."

Those involved in this network can certainly collude to advance policy that serves their interests, Barak continues: "The defence budget is an outstanding example of the might and influence the security network has. Each year you can see how they frustrate any attempt to reduce that budget, and often act to increase it after its formal approval by Knesset. That explains the big gap between the approved budget and actual one."

Meir Dagan - former head of Mossad (MI6)

Fifty-two years ago Dwight Eisenhower warned the American public about that very thing: a club of generals and arms-dealers conquering U.S. foreign and defence policy. He coined the phrase "the military-industrial complex,"and indeed that club has dragged America into war after war during the last 50 years.

Isn’t the Israeli security junta, which inflated the defence budget to 70 billion shekels, essentially an Israeli military-industrial complex?

"When Eisenhower spoke in 1961 about the complex in the U.S., he was talking about its formation following the Cold War and the U.S.’ massive arms build-up, which could create ‘misplaced power’… he was warning the American people about what could happen. What we’re talking about in Israel’s case isn’t theoretical, it’s reality: The security network exists and penetrates a great many public areas, including politics, society, the economy and the culture."



Soldiers patrolling along Syrian border nr Druze Village Majdat Shams

Take the gas found in the Israeli seabed, Barak says. Right after its discovery, a process of "securitizing" the gas began – meaning it morphed from a civilian issue to being tagged as a military one, with the help of the security network. Since it had become a military issue, it suddenly became important to produce the gas quickly, lest it fall into enemy hands, and now also to protect the gas-drilling sites using costly new boats. "That’s exactly how the security network operates: frame a topic as military, and take it away from the civilian apparatus – the public, the Knesset, the government," Barak says.

There are claims that a military-industrial complex arose anew in the United States, especially given the interminable war on terrorism, he notes. Israel isn’t a military empire like America, but it does have massive defence exports and, of course areas that need protecting within and beyond its borders.

"In the book we discuss cases like the Israeli case: a small country facing a genuine or imagined existential threat, which chose to build a large military establishment that is not separate from the civilian sector. Good examples of this include South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa and Singapore," says Barak.

 



Both Israel’s left- and right-wing parties frame the debate on the Palestinian issue as ideological, religious, cultural and historic, and associate the inability to reach a solution with the ideology of the leaders, religion, history and so forth. The simpler possibility, the incentives of the leaders, is not seriously discussed in Israel or elsewhere, Barak says.

Could it be that the peace process is stuck because the status quo, meaning war and unending tension alongside an interminable peace process, serve the security, diplomatic and political elites in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the Arab world and in the other involved countries?

"I think the state of perpetual war in our area serves the security network, because it creates a need for the unique skills of its members as security experts. I do not necessarily claim that all the network members are warmongers. Some sobered up and acknowledge the importance of regional peace … but most still look at things through a gun-sight, and even when involved in a diplomatic process, they view it mainly as a defence issue, not a civilian one. Oslo began as a civilian initiative and underwent securitization."

The left views Israel’s leadership as bearing the main responsibility for the failure to progress in peace talks. Could there be elements on the Palestinian side who also want to perpetuate the process, because in the event of the establishment of an independent state, they’d have to contend with serious social problems?

"I think that in both elites, the Israeli and Palestinian, some want this perpetual state of a nation-waiting-to-be-born, and benefit from it. An established state means not only grave social problems but also limitations and constraints on the political leadership, such as clear boundaries vis-à-vis not only the nation and its neighbours, but in areas such as politics, the economy, society, the army and religion. It’s a lot easier to be an unborn state fighting for its existence against a hostile world … It’s quite clear that a Palestinian state, if one arises, and that’s highly doubtful, will be a failing state dependent on others, like Israel and the European Union, which is not a tempting scenario for its leaders. Look at South Sudan."

See more at:

Boycott Goes International

January 24, 2014, 12:36 pm

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Britain's main Jewish Boycott Group

 Boycott goes prime-time in Israel

As people can see Boycott is going international with campaigns springing up across Europe and even causing ructions in the Italian Jewish community. Also Israel’s most popular Channel 2 Channel devoted a whole programme to it.

Israelis are worried.  What 'degitimisation' means is a  refusal to accept a Jewish State.   That is what worries them

Tony Greenstein

 

From Israel’s +972 Magazine



The country’s number-one news show runs lengthy piece on the growing movement – and blames it not on anti-Semitism or Israel-bashing, but on settlements.

Stock photo boycott activists in France. (Photo: Olga Besnard / Shutterstock.com)

On Saturday night the boycott of Israel gained an impressive new level of mainstream recognition in this country. Channel 2 News, easily the most watched, most influential news show here, ran a heavily-promoted, 16-minute piece on the boycott in its 8 p.m. prime-time program. The piece was remarkable not only for its length and prominence, but even more so because it did not demonize the boycott movement, it didn’t blame the boycott on anti-Semitism or Israel-bashing. Instead, top-drawer reporter Dana Weiss treated the boycott as an established, rapidly growing presence that sprang up because of Israel’s settlement policy and whose only remedy is that policy’s reversal.



Canada's largest church supports boycott

In her narration, Weiss ridicules the settlers and the government’s head-in-the-sand reaction to the rising tide. The segment from the West Bank’s Barkan Industrial Park opens against a background of twangy guitar music like from a Western. "To the world it’s a black mark, a symbol of the occupation,"she reads. "But here they insist it’s actually a point of light in the area, an island of coexistence that continues to flourish despite efforts to erase it from the map."A factory owner who moved his business to Barkan from the other side of the Green Line makes a fool of himself by saying, "If the state would only assist us by boycotting the Europeans and other countries causing us trouble …"The Barkan segment ends with the manager of Shamir Salads saying that between the European and Palestinian boycott, he’s losing about $115,000 to $143,000 a month in sales. "In my view," he says, "it will spread from [the West Bank] to other places in Israel that have no connection to the territories."

Weiss likewise ridicules Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, who runs the government’s "hasbara war," as he puts it. Weiss: "Yes, in the Foreign Ministry they are for the time being sticking to the old conception: it’s all a question of hasbara."This week the campaign’s new weapon, developed with the contributions of world Jewry: (Pause) Another hasbara agency, this time with the original name ‘Face To Israel.’" She quotes the co-owner of Psagot Winery saying the boycott is "nothing to get excited about,"that people have been boycotting Jews for 2,000 years, and concluding, "If you ask me, in the last 2,000 years, our situation today is the best it’s ever been."That final phrase, along with what Weiss describes as Elkin’s "conceptzia," are the same infamous words that Israelis associate with the fatal complacency that preceded the surprise Yom Kippur War.

The Channel 2 piece features abortive telephone calls with boycott "victims" who didn’t want to be interviewed for fear of bad publicity. The most dramatic testimony comes from Daniel Reisner, an attorney with the blue-chip law firm Herzog Fox Neeman who advises such clients. He explains:

Most of the companies victimized by the boycott behave like rape victims. They don’t want to tell anybody. It’s as if they’ve contracted some sort of disease and they don’t want anyone to know.

More and more companies are coming to us for advice – quietly, in the evening, where no one can hear them – and they say: ‘I’ve gotten into this or that situation; is there something you can do to help?’"

Without giving the names of his clients or the extent of their losses, Reisner says the boycott is causing Israeli businesses to lose foreign contracts and investors. "My fear is of a snowball effect," he says. Prof. Shai Arkin, vice president for R&D at Hebrew University, says there are many cases of Israeli candidates for research fellowships at foreign universities being turned down because their resumes include service in the Israeli army.

Advice from a friend abroad comes from Matthew Gould, the British ambassador to Israel: "I love Israel. And I’m worried that in another five years Israel will wake up and find that it doesn’t have enough friends."

Weiss asks the EU ambassador here, Lars Faaborg-Andersen: "If Israel would change its policy, all this would go away?"The ambassador replies: "Yes. It is about Israeli policies. If the settlement business continue[s] to expand, Israel will be facing increasing isolation."

The piece presents Tzipi Livni as the country’s would-be savior. She says the current negotiations with the Palestinians (in which she represents Israel, along with Netanyahu confidant Isaac Molho) are holding back the boycott’s expansion, but that "if there is a crisis [in the talks], everything will break loose." She says she is "shouting at people to wake up."

Weiss: "What does this all mean? What is it going to be like here? South Africa?"

Livni: "Yes. I spoke with some of the Jews who are living n South Africa now. They say, ‘We thought we had time. We thought we could deal with this. We thought we didn’t need the world so much for everything. And it happens all at once.’"

Sixteen minutes of prime time on Israel’s all-popular TV news show on Saturday night, the end of the week in this country. Bracing stuff. A wrench thrown into the national denial machine – and by Channel 2. Definitely a sign of progress – and of life. Another reminder of why this country is worth fighting for – which, for many of us Israeli boycott-supporters, if not necessarily most of us, is what the boycott, strange as it may sound, is all about.

(Watch the segment here. http://www.mako.co.il/news-channel2/Weekend-Newscast/Article-0c7a93b9fc6a341004.htm?sCh=31750a2610f26110&pId=786102762 The English-language segments, interviews with UK Ambassador Matthew Gould and EU Ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen, can be seen at 08:11 and 14:05, respectively.)

Pressure on Israeli banks from investors intensifies

Financial Times, January 19, 2014 5:33 amBy Madison Marriage

ABP, the world’s third-largest pension fund, and two major European investors are reviewing their holdings in Israeli banks over concerns that the banks finance illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian-occupied territories.

As well as ABP, the Dutch pension fund with €300bn of assets under management, the investors include Nordea  Investment Management, a €130bn Scandinavian fund house, and DNB  Asset Management, a €60bn Norwegian fund group.
 
All three want more information from the Israeli banks about their involvement in financing the settlements, which contravene international human rights laws established under the Fourth Geneva Convention in 2004.

A spokesperson for KLP, one of the biggest Norwegian pension funds, with €45bn of assets, also confirmed that "dilemmas linked to financing [of Israeli settlements] will be discussed at KLP".

Palestinians see the settlements as an obstacle to achieving a viable state, and most countries consider the settlements illegal.

The reviews come after PGGM, the second-largest Dutch pension fund, two weeks ago became the first big investor to dump its holdings  in five large Israeli banks: Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank and Mizrahi Tefahot.

PGGM said in a statement: "Given the day-to-day reality and domestic legal framework they operate in, the banks have limited to no possibilities to end their involvement in the financing of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"Therefore it was concluded that engagement as a tool to bring about change will not be effective in this case."

ABP has held talks with three of the banks over the settlement issue for a year. The pension fund might exclude the stocks "as a last resort"if the banks fail to act on ABP’s complaints, a spokesperson said.

Nordea Investment Management has sent letters to Leumi and Mizrahi "regarding concerns about the violation of international norms", Sasja Beslik, Nordea’s head of responsible investment, told FTfm.

The Scandinavian fund house plans to meet these banks in March before taking a decision on whether to withdraw their investment at a committee meeting in May.

DNB Asset Management’s external consultancy GES is engaging with several Israeli banks on this issue.

Israel Discount Bank declined to comment. Banks Hapoalim and Leumi did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr Beslik expects other large investors to start looking at their investment policies on the Israeli settlement matter shortly.

He said: "Very few asset managers have a policy [on this issue], which means that the banks are not under pressure regarding these violations. The pressure on asset owners to live up to their values when it comes to these issues will increase, I am certain about that."

ING Investment Management, the fund arm of Dutch Bank ING, said that it has requested research on the settlement issue from an independent third party.

Latest

Germany, Israel’s best friend in Europe is increasingly imposing sanctions on companies trading across the Green Line

from Electronic Intifada

Senior Israel officials, including justice minister Tzipi Livni and finance minister Yair Lapid, have in recent weeks sounded increasingly desperatewarnings about the dire effects growing BDS campaigns were likely to have on Israel.

Italian Jews Grapple With J Street-Style Rift on Israel

Disruption of Critical Meeting Sparks Rethink

Special meetings are being held this week to discuss increasingly sharp political tensions within the Italian Jewish community centered on differing attitudes toward Israel and the Middle East.



Italian act or Moni Ovadia resigns from Milanese Jewish community

The meetings were called in the wake of an incident on Jan. 14, in which Jewish protesters disrupted a panel discussion of a book on the left wing and Israel, "The Left and Israel: The Moral Frontier of the West." The event was organized at a Rome Jewish center by the leftist Jewish group J-Call – which is modeled on the American J-Space, and the Hans Jonas Association Jewish cultural organization.

Amid what a report in the local Jewish media called "heavy intimidation,"the protesters prevented J-Call spokesman Giorgio Gomel, from speaking, and Gomel and another organizer had to be escorted from the premises by Jewish community security.

Gomel, who has been vocal in his criticism of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians, has frequently come under fire from opposing Jewish factions. Reports said protesters on Jan. 14 unfurled a banner saying "Gomel, go back to Gaza."

Expressing "alarm and concern," Renzo Gattegna, the president of Italy’s umbrella Jewish organization, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, called an extraordinary meeting of the organization’s council to clarify the "limits, procedures and rules" to be followed at Jewish community venues.

At the same time, the leadership of the Rome Jewish community convened an urgent meeting open to all members of the community. "Beyond the image of Italian Jewry as a whole, what is at play is the security of our members," Rome Jewish community President Riccardo Pacifici was quoted as saying by the Jewish media.

Italian actor Moni Ovadia last year resigned from the Milan Jewish community with accusations that it is a "propaganda office"of the Israeli government.　

The End of Palestine or the End of Norman Finkelstein?

January 24, 2014, 4:05 pm

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The Madness of King Norman

Once Upon a Time the brightest star in the firmament was Norman Finkelstein. With his prodigious academic talents he put to flight all those he conquered. It was Norman Finkelstein, more than anyone else, who exposed the forgery of Joan Peter’s From Time Immemorial which went from adulatory reviews in virtually every American publication that matters, to becoming something loathsome, even to the neo-cons who bought into it.

Peter’s book essentially said that there were no Palestinian refugees because the Zionists were there first and the Palestinians came, attracted by their economy. An argument that used to be made by the Boers in South Africa.

When Daniel Goldhagen wrote an appalling book, Germans: Hitler’s Willing Executioners, it was Peters all over again. Goldhagen, a mediocre academic who has long since disappeared. attack the distinguished holocaust historian Christopher Browning’s The Ordinary Men of Police Battalion 101, which was part of the Order Police, brought in to help the Einsatzgruppen exterminate Jews in Russia and the Ukraine in the wake of Operation Barbarossa. Once again Finkelstein’s analysis put a Zionist with a reputation to make to the sword. Although the same New York Times and America’s press claque was impressed, historians were unanimous in their condemnation. Even Yehuda Baeur, the prime holocaust historian of Yad Vashem called the book ‘worthless’ whilst claiming credit for its thesis that there was something about the Germans that made them mass murderers and killers.

There was no subject that was taboo for Finkelstein. It was he who wrote Holocaust Industry which showed that the Jewish Claims Conference and other Zionist groups who obtained billions of marks reparations from the German government (in return for being silent about Nazis in Konrad Adeneuer’s office such as Hans Globke, the senior Nazi civil servant who drafted the Law for the Protection of German Blood & Honour (the most important Nuremberg law). On 25 April 1938 Globke was praised by the Reich Interior Minister Dr. Wilhelm Frick as "the most capable and efficient official in my ministry" when it came to drafting anti-Semitic laws. Frick was the Police Minister who was hanged at Nuremberg but the Americans also sought to protect Globke.



Finkelstein showed how the Zionist organisations were ripping off the holocaust survivors, leaving them to die in poverty, whilst using the reparations for Zionist projects. The Claims Conference has been mired in corruption.

But Finkelstein has since had a personal crisis after losing a battle, in which he proved that Alan Dershowitz, a Zionist law professor at Harvard was a plagiarist. Dershowitz retaliated by campaigning openly for Finkelstein’s university, St Pauls in New York, to deny him tenure.

We don't know the details, but Finkelstein has hinted that after realising he had no academic future, and seeing himself a  martyr, in front of him, decided that his life should not be wasted without any return and he decided to use undoubted intellectual powers in aid of a bogus 2 State solution. It is as if Finkelstein had simply had a brainstorm or suffered from depression, but whatever the truth, Finkelstein has seen as his main task to attack BDS as a ‘cult’, the Palestine Solidarity movement act as a bourgeois politician who is nonetheless a pariah.

In the last issue of the New Left Project, Norman Finkelstein is interviewed by Jamie Stern-Weiner, who co-edits New Left Project. Finkelstein is convinced that a solution is round the corner. The settler blocs will be annexed, Hebron’s settlers will be abandoned and Israel’s Palestinian citizens will not be handed over to whatever monstrosity emerges. Out of darkness will emerge light!

Kerry is apparently different from all those who have gone before him. Finkelstein confidently predicts that a framework agreement will shortly be agreed, oblivious to what happened to the Oslo Accords. For someone who was an able analyst of Zionism he comprehensively misunderstands that Zionism will not brook the state of the indigenous population in any meaningful terms.

Finkelstein believes that a compromise whereby Israel is defined as the State of the Jewish people and its Palestinian citizens will be agreed, whereas Tsipi Livni and Liebermann both see any agreed solution as an ideal way of getting rid of much of Israel’s Palestinian citizens. See Clayton Swisher’s Palestinian Papers.

Finkelstein admits that ‘the whole thing is diabolical’ but nonetheless the question of the settlements, which divide the West Bank in two has been resolved in the settlers’ favour.

Just what kind of state Finkelstein thinks will emerge beggars the imagination. But the only reason things might not quite work out as he planned is that ‘one of the big stumbling blocks, oddly enough, is inertia.’ Not the Zionist logic of expansion but inertia. He says that the idea that the conflict might be settled (despite the Palestinian refugees) are the various NGOs, Zionist Israel studies and not least ‘all those Palestine solidarity activists, groups, websites, researchers and analysts (of which he includes himself). ‘A huge sprawling superstructure’ which has an interest in the status quo, has been built on the Israel-Palestine conflict and consequently their ‘fear and trembling’ is the major obstacle to Finkelstein’s idea of a Palestinian heaven.

Finkelstein says that ‘every day there’s another report of an individual or collective European initiative severing ties with Israeli entities linked to the illegal settlements.’ Ironically Finkelstein is now using the same BDS movement he denounced as a cult, as a threat to be wielded to make the Israelis come to an agreement'!

Yet BDS is not a governmental conspiracy but a result of a determined campaign in support of the call of the Palestinians and the Boycott National Council to boycott Israel. But the Palestinians rarely get a mention, except as two bit actors in our Norm’s scenarios.

When asked how binding any framework agreement would be, Finkelstein can only say that there will be a lot of momentum behind it. And in the unlikely event that any agreement is reached, one can be sure that the settlers and their representatives will make it unworkable as they did at Oslo (even if it meant assassinating Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Finkelstein admits that even at present ‘The Palestinians have no leverage over the Palestinian Authority.’ Quite why a mini Bantustan would be of any difference is something Norm doesn’t enlighten us about. But a settlement, whatever the cost, is worth it.

Norman Finkelstein has gone from political analyst to a fantasy diplomat who does not see the forces at work in Israel to prevent any Palestinian State emerging.

Perhaps Finkelstein should have read Moshe Dayan’s address given to Technion University students (19 March 1969), which appeared in Ha'aretz (4 April 1969), quoted in The Question of Palestine (1980) by Edward Said, p.14
We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country we bought lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat — in the place of Jibta, Sarid — in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua — in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan


Then perhaps we would understand why Zionism and peace are like oil and water. They can never mix nor can one make way for the other.

Tony Greenstein

New Left Project 11 January, 2014

The End of Palestine?

An Interview with Norman G. Finkelstein

US Secretary of State John Kerry was in the Middle East again this week, conducting intensive talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials and other regional actors. His aim, it has been widely reported, is to reach a "framework agreement" as a prelude to a final settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Norman Finkelstein is the co-author, with Mouin Rabbani, of How to Solve the Israel-Palestine Conflict (OR Books, forthcoming). I spoke with him about the significance of the negotiations, as we enter what may be a decisive phase in the Palestinians' long struggle for self-determination.

By Norman Finkelstein, Jamie Stern-Weiner

You’ve been warning for some time now that the Israeli-Palestinian talks being brokered by Secretary of State Kerry might, unlike many prior rounds of negotiations, actually produce a deal to end the conflict. Its content would amount to Israel’s long-standing terms of settlement. What’s your assessment of where the diplomatic process is currently at?

A "framework agreement" will shortly be reached, and a final settlement will probably be signed in the last six months or so of President Obama’s term in office. When the Kerry process was first announced I was virtually alone in predicting that it would actually go somewhere; now, it’s widely assumed. Many respected Israeli commentators now take for granted that an agreement is just a matter of time.

In recent weeks the Kerry talks have apparently focused on Israel’s demands for (i) an enduring military presence in the Jordan Valley and (ii) Palestinian recognition of it as a "Jewish state." The Palestinians will negotiate some face-saving deal on the Jordan Valley involving a US-Israeli joint presence for a period of time. The Jordan Valley was already essentially resolved at the Annapolis negotiations in 2008. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is raising it now only so he can later claim to be making a "heart-wrenching concession"—Israel is adept at "conceding" things to which it has no title in the first place—by allowing for only a temporary US-Israeli presence along the border. It’s been received wisdom for years—even pro-Israel hack Dennis Ross concedes it in The Missing Peace—that the Jordan Valley has no strategic value.

On the "Jewish state," the agreement will probably resolve on the formula: Israel as the state of the Jewish people and its citizens, Palestine as the state of the Palestinian people and its citizens. It will afford (legal) protection for Israel’s Palestinian citizens, but will negate the right of return for Palestinian refugees, which is what Israel really cares about. Palestinian President Abbas can then claim it as a victory because he secured the rights of Palestinians in Israel.

The whole thing is diabolical. The Israelis—with, of course, active and critical US connivance—have managed to completely shift the debate and shape the agenda. The only issues now being discussed are the Jewish state and the Jordan Valley, which, in terms of the international consensus for resolving the conflict, never figured at all. (Even in prior bilateral negotiations presided over by the US, such as at Annapolis, these were at most peripheral issues.) The key issue (apart from the refugees), in terms of the international consensus and in prior bilateral negotiations, has been the extent of the land swap along the border: Will Israel be allowed to annex the major settlement blocs and consequently abort a Palestinian state? But the debate has completely shifted, because annexing the settlement blocs is a done deal.

The framework agreement will probably just speak of land swaps in terms of percentages, and merely insinuate—as the Clinton Parameters did—Israel’s annexation of the major settlement blocs without divulging the precise details. But it is striking that in all of the discussion over the last several weeks, Ma'ale Adumim—i.e., the largest settlement bloc that effectively bisects the West Bank—has never even come up. Because it’s already been resolved, in Israel’s favour.

And a final deal will follow?

A lot of politicking still has to be done, a lot of marketing, a lot of hysteria in Israel—its usual, Oscar-winning performance. It will take the full three years that remain of Obama’s presidency, climaxing in a Camp David-like summit (Obama also loves drama, speechifying is his forte and he’s probably already contemplating which hip black leather jacket to wear), before the final deal is sealed.

One of the principal obstacles at this point to reaching an agreement, in my opinion, is not the details, because those are basically known: the annexation of the settlement blocs by Israel and the annulment of the right of return. One of the big stumbling blocks, oddly enough, is inertia.

If you date the political origin of the conflict back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration (before then Zionism was basically a self-help operation), you’re talking about a century-long conflict. When a conflict endures for such a protracted period of time, huge numbers of individuals and institutions develop a vested interest not in its resolution but instead in its perpetuation; what’s now called, only half-facetiously, the Peace Industry. Many are now consumed by the dreadful prospect that after a full century, it might actually end. It does send shivers down the spine: the Israel-Palestine conflict might be over. All those UN special sessions and special committees; all those Ramallah-based NGOs, Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations, and conflict-resolution getaways; all those IMF, World Bank, Crisis Group reports; all those academic programs—Israel Studies, Holocaust Studies—which sprung up to justify Israeli policy (none can lay a claim to intellectual content, and most have been subsidized by wealthy right-wing Jews); all those film festivals, scholarly studies, memoirs and "poetry"; all those Washington-based Israel "think"-tanks; all those Palestine solidarity activists, groups, websites, researchers, and analysts (present company included).... A huge, sprawling superstructure has been built on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and consequently a major obstacle to an agreement is now the fear and trembling across the political divide that it might actually be coming to a denouement. It’s not quite conceivable, is it?

But presumably inertia on its own can merely delay; it can’t prevent.

I agree.

What is Kerry doing to shore up support for an agreement?

As Palestinian political analyst (and my co-author) Mouin Rabbani has observed, the big difference between President Clinton and Secretary of State Kerry is that Clinton ignored everyone outside the United States; he imagined that he alone, without any external assistance, could be the kingmaker. Kerry, on the other hand, has in a very deliberate fashion set about lining up all the ducks. The Saudis, Arab League, European Union—the Palestinians are being surrounded and besieged. So are the Israelis, but to a much lesser extent because it’s essentially Israel’s terms of settlement that are being imposed.

The Europeans in particular are turning the screws. Every day there’s another report of an individual or collective European initiative severing ties with Israeli entities linked to the illegal settlements. My guess is, the threats currently emanating from Europe are being coordinated with Kerry, in order to convey, not so much to the Israeli government (for all his emoting, Netanyahu is on board), but to Israeli holdouts, that the settlement project outside the Wall has no future prospects. Within Israeli politics, those supporting the Kerry process—here’s an irony worth savouring!—have exploited the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to the same end: "If we don’t settle now, BDS is just around the corner."

And the various Arab states?

The Palestine issue has, at least, temporarily, died as a mobilising factor in the Arab-Muslim world. It’s fairly easy now for the US to get Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Iran either on board or to set Palestine aside. Iran hasn’t said anything about the Kerry negotiations so far, and probably doesn’t much care. Syria is a null factor. Egypt is playing a positively nefarious role, as it tries (in cahoots with the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority) to depose Hamas by tormenting Gazans. Saudi Arabia figures that by playing ball with the US on Palestine it can score points with the US on Syria-Iran. Turkey has its own agenda that for a while did (e.g., at the time of the Mavi Marmara), but no longer does, include Palestine. It is preoccupied by Erdogan’s blunder on Syria and his fear that, in the event of an American rapprochement with Iran, Turkey will drop a notch on the regional totem pole, whereas he has harboured visions of a reborn Ottoman Empire.

The Palestine issue had political resonance in the Arab-Muslim world mostly because it was popular on the so-called street. But people don’t much care now. They’re focused, rightly or wrongly, on other tragedies, such as Syria. In places like Libya, where people used to give at least lip-service to Palestine, they obviously have other things on their minds right now. Kerry is no genius, but certainly he shrewdly assessed the lay of the land when he concluded that now was the perfect moment to impose a settlement on the Palestinians.

It has been interesting to see everyone wooing Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Suddenly he’s the toast of the town in Washington, the British foreign minister is meeting with him, etc.

It cuts both ways, because Lieberman wants to be Israel’s next prime minister. So it’s time to shed the nightclub bouncer persona (the New York Times recently reported that Lieberman reads weighty tomes on history; sure, and on weekends I do pirouettes in the Bolshoi…) and to don the persona of a Responsible Statesman. So, he’ll go along with a Kerry agreement. He’s already signalled his acquiescence, even enthusiasm, this past week. He’s also been muttering about transferring Israel’s Palestinian citizens to a new Palestinian state, but that won’t go anywhere. It would violate basic norms of international law by sanctioning the right of established states to redraw internal borders in order to denationalize unwanted minorities. Nobody’s going to buy that.

How serious are recent moves by Hamas and Fatah towards reconciliation?

One possibility is that the Palestinian Authority is playing a silly game of threatening the United States and Israel, "If you aren’t more forthcoming, we’re going to reconcile with Hamas and won’t deal with you anymore." The second possibility is that Hamas wants a piece of the pie, and so will form a National Unity government that will guarantee it something in the final agreement. The third and, according to Mouin, most plausible possibility is that Abbas wants to neutralise Hamas by bringing it on board, thereby also reviving his claims to represent all Palestinians, while Hamas supports a reconciliation to bring it out of the cold after the disastrous developments in Egypt.

How binding will a framework agreement be upon future negotiations?

Nothing is inexorable, but there will be a lot of momentum behind it. The juggernaut will be hard to stop. For all the pieces to fall into place, a new Israeli coalition will probably have to form, a government of National Unity led by Netanyahu. Israeli public opinion polls show that a majority of Israelis would support the probable Kerry proposal. Hebron will have to be evacuated. Of course, there will be the usual Israeli anguish, but it won’t be difficult to pull off. The IDF can just march out, and say to the four hundred meschugge Jewish settlers, "You want to stay? You can stay"—alone, amidst the 150,000 Muslim Hebronites.

Does the Palestinian leadership have the capacity to resist?

I can’t, for the life of me, see how the Palestinians can extricate themselves at this point. There’s such a broad array of political forces ranged behind the Kerry process that the Palestinians are trapped. Abbas and his imbecile sidekick Saeb Erekat are playing good cop/bad cop. Abbas says "yes, this agreement might work," whereas Erekat whispers to the media—you know, the "senior Palestinian negotiator who doesn’t want to be identified"—that "oh, this agreement is horrible, it’s terrible, it’s awful, they can shove it." Erekat thinks that’s being clever, it’s putting pressure on the Americans, as if anyone on god’s earth gives a flying fig what Erekat has to say about anything.

The Palestinians are cornered, they’re isolated. When you’re in such desperate straits, of course, you must play your strongest cards. A real leadership would, first of all, level with the Palestinian people, "We’re in a bind, we’re being steamrollered, stampeded. We need you, we need to draw on all our collective resources and reserves to resist"; and second, it would call on Palestine’s supporters abroad, "We’re about to be clobbered, we need your help." I can’t say it would turn the tide, though, as you know, the Palestinian cause has sufficient resonance abroad that if Palestinians were to say, "We’re facing the moment of truth now, we might be extinguished," it could perhaps, in conjunction with a mass civil revolt among the Palestinians themselves, do something. It could become a factor.

But the Palestinian leadership is irredeemably corrupt, incompetent and stupid (petty and megalomaniacal, Abbas lost interest in Palestine long ago—he just wants the Nobel), while Palestine’s supporters abroad are, to put it politely, not acting smartly. They think the big issue now is the American Studies Association vote for an academic boycott of Israel and debating the virtues of academic freedom at a Modern Languages Association conference. (Watch what happens if and when BDS supporters try to introduce the academic boycott in a solid, established academic discipline such as History, Philosophy, or any of the Natural Sciences, where, among many other factors, Jews figure prominently. It won’t be a pretty sight.) But that’s the state of Palestine solidarity right now. They carry on as if the Kerry process is a meaningless sideshow, something that can be safely ignored. But it’s a very big difference, as Mouin and I have pointed out, whether the Wall is illegal or whether it is a legal border. Why? It would turn what are currently illegal Jewish settlements into ordinary Israeli towns; Israel could legally confiscate Palestinian land and evict Palestinians from their homes. In India or China, when the government wants to build a big hydroelectric dam, it removes 100,000 people in one fell swoop. They expel masses of people from their homes, and the international community sits by mute. It’s the sovereign right of a country—it’s eminent domain.

The moment the Wall is re-baptized a border, the settlements behind it become a dead issue. They’re Israel’s sovereign territory. And of course most of the world will be glad to be rid of the Israel-Palestine conflict. They’ll be happy when the dotted line is signed. What are you going to do then? An American Studies Association boycott of The World?

Once the framework agreement is signed, won’t it still be very difficult to implement? For example, for Abbas to agree to a formula that effectively nullifies the refugee question—that will be an extremely hard sell among Palestinians.

What can the Palestinians do? Israel just wants the refugee question excised from the international agenda; it wants a document stipulating, "That’s no longer Israel’s responsibility." If Kerry succeeds, they’ll get it. Especially if they get "Israel as a Jewish state plus its citizens" in the framework agreement, which nullifies the refugee question. How can the Palestinians stop it? They’re totally in thrall to European and American money right now. Yasser Arafat signed the 1993 Oslo agreement because the PLO was financially strapped after he aligned with Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War. (The Gulf states retaliated by cutting off their subsidies to the PLO.) It was either agreeing to Oslo or—as it was put back then—"bye, bye PLO." History is now repeating itself. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

At the popular level, though, Palestinians have influence over their own leadership.

The Palestinians have no leverage over the Palestinian Authority. The people are politically inert while the Palestinian police are quite effective now at quashing isolated dissent. It’s possible that Abbas will get a bullet in his head, which would probably slow things down because there’s no obvious immediate successor. But setting that possibility aside, I don’t see where Palestinians can exercise leverage. It’s not as if the refugees in Lebanon or Jordan can do very much. They haven’t been able to effect anything since Oslo, except languish in the camps.

What about Palestinians in the occupied territories? They won’t stand for a renunciation of the right of return.

This scenario is more romantic theory than current reality. The place is hopelessly fragmented. Gaza itself is alien to the West Bank now. What did the West Bankers do when Gazans were being massacred in 2008-09? Were there large demonstrations? We have to be realistic about the current situation. There’s no concerted will among Palestinians. They’re real, living persons, not a myth. Right now, the people’s spirits are shattered. Of course, a little spark can change things. I noticed a Haaretz article by Amira Hass some weeks back hinting at the possibility that a real popular resistance might yet emerge. It’s pointless speculating but, as of now, there aren’t visible signs that Palestinians are ready, able or willing to resist an imposed solution. Quite the contrary, if the final agreement is sufficiently nebulous to the untutored eye (like the 1993 Oslo agreement), and is sweetened with a huge "aid" package, Palestinians might, however reluctantly, go for it. The US/EU will have three years to soften the Palestinians, turning tight the economic screws, but not so tight as to cause the whole edifice to snap.

If a final agreement on Israel’s terms is signed, how big a set-back will it be for the struggle for Palestinian self-determination?

It would be almost irreversible. Many activists don’t want to acknowledge it, but these sorts of agreements and codifications can have real consequences. Didn’t the 1947 Partition Resolution, backed by Israeli wherewithal and will, already prove the point? There’s no obvious reason why you can’t have an agreement whereby a new border is drawn between Israel and the Palestinian territories, especially if such an agreement is ratified by the UN Security Council, which it almost certainly will be. Israel has the wherewithal and will to make that new border stick. Indeed, it already is a fact, except juridically. A political settlement would crown the already existing facts on the ground with the jewel of legality. It is a significant step, turning an illegal wall into a permanent, internationally recognized border; and it’s not beyond Israel’s reach. From then on, what claim will the Palestinians have beyond that border? None.

In your forthcoming book with Mouin, you recommend steps that Palestinians, solidarity activists and others should take to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict in a just and durable way. Will those steps, then, have to happen within the next three years? After that, will it be too late?

For anything to happen, it must begin among the Palestinians in the occupied territories. That would command international attention—though again, we have to be realistic about the political lay of the land right now. World attention is focused on Syria and Iran. There’s going to be the meeting in Geneva. It will be very hard for Palestinians to seize the political spotlight at this point. But that’s the only thing that can stop or slow down the juggernaut. Everything else is meaningless, it’s Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

Jamie Stern-Weiner co-edits New Left Project 

Palestine Solidarity Campaign AGM 2014

January 30, 2014, 6:13 am

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Hugh Lanning - Chair of PSC

Solidarity with Abbas & the PA is solidarity with Israel - PSC has to choose between the collaborators or the oppressed

Tony Greenstein asking a question about the Annual Accounts

It was over 31 years ago, that a group of us decided for form the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Most of those in attendance have scattered to the four winds and few are active today who remain. Names that come to mind are Helen Stollar, Roland Rance, Jeremy Landau, Moshe Machover (I think!) and myself. Possibly John Gee was there too. The meeting was called as a result of the ‘test’ invasion of Lebanon by Israel about 3 months before the invasion. Then world opinion had forced Sharon to withdraw but it was obvious to all that Israel was not going to tolerate an independent Palestinian enclave in Beirut in alliance with others in the leftist Lebanon Solidarity Movement. In the mid-70s the Druze, Palestinian, Shi’ite and Sunnis combined with communists and socialist groups to seek a change in the confessional nature of the Lebanese state, a present bequeathed by its former colonial power, France.

In June 1976, Israel and the USA gave a green light to Assad, the father of the present President, to go into Lebanon and help ensure that the right-wing Christian/fascist Phalangists were not defeated. No mention then of Assad’s brutalities. Preventing the ascendancy of the Left in Lebanon was what was important. I had personally visited Lebanon with a group of people via Syria in 1979 (the Phalangist controlled embassy in London refused us visas). Two of us, whilst visiting what was the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel al-Zaatar in East Beirut where there had been a massacre in August 1976 of thousands of Palestinians by Christian Maronite and Phalangist forces.

We had crossed the border illegally in a PLO jeep staying at the Triomphe Hotel in West Beirut which the Israelis bombed in 1982. When arrested by the Lebanese army I simply said that we were there as guests of the Syrians. As I suspected they didn't check nor did they wish to. Hiding behind sandbags where East and West Beirut meet they were just a figleaf.

Jeremy Corbyn  MP, a stalwart supporter of the Palestinians outside Parliament.

But I digress. The 2014 AGM was one of the quietest I have known. It may also be the last one I attend owing to illness and many people such as Sarah Colborne, its Director, Hugh Lanning, Kamel Hawwash and Jeremy Corbyn MP and many others went out of their way to be sympathetic and kind. Jane Foxworthy from Leicester made, completely unknown to me as I wished to leave to get a train but she asked me to say for 10 minutes more, a very moving tribute to my work in the movement.

Bur however kind comrades were on a personal level, our political differences hadn't gone away and Sue Blackwell who has been a close comrade and Naomi of J-Big telling me they could not support it tactically I was determined that a marker should be put down.

Owen Jones at the PSC stall at the Labour Party conference

Motion on Abbas & PA

Until I moved the motion on Abbas and the PA it was a quiet AGM. It was an Emergency Motion on Abbas’s attack on BDS at the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. My motion pulled no punches because there are times when you have to exercise one’s own capacity for independent thought and action, especially given that the Palestinians don’t, unlike Black South Africans, have one united Palestinian organisation. The PLO exists in theory, having not met in years and likewise the Palestinian National Council.



A full house



The motion supported a unitary democratic secular state of Palestine, condemned the Abbas regime as a ‘quisling’ one and called for the non-recognition by PSC of the Palestinian Authority, which I termed the ‘bitter fruit’ of Oslo.

I pointed out that the one area in which the Palestinian Authority had succeeded was in the torture and abuse of its own people. Some 95% of detainees of its security police are tortured. The PA's security forces are trained by the American General Dayton in Jordan, with Israel approving who is a member.

I asked a simple question. 'How can an organisation that is funded and trained by those it opposes be a movement of liberation?' I never received an answer.

I pointed out that Abbas’s attacks on BDS were just one in a long line of betrayals. According to Clayton Swisher’s Palestine Papers, PA officials were responsible for urging on the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2009. Indeed they criticised it for not killing more people, destroying more homes and retaking the territory. Of course like the Saudi rulers and Iran they don’t say these things publicly but when was the last time that the PA called for an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza? It is little wonder that when Palestinians took to the streets to support the overthrow of Mubarak, they were attacked and beaten and told that anyone detained would be tortured.

Perhaps a revisit to the Palestine Papers by Clayton Swisher (Hesperus Publishing, 2011 introduction by Ghada Khami) explains it better than I can.   When the PP came out PA/Fateh thugs laid siege to the Al Jazeerah offices in Ramallah.   Abbas denied they were true even as Nabil Shath and others were confirming their veracity.

 

The PP describe the negotiations Israel and the PA conducted. The obsequiousness of the Palestinian negotiators to the Israelis, led by Tsipi Livni is embarrassing.

"According to a September 2008 summary of a conversation between General Dayton and Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad the Israeli occupying forces began to see the Palestinian Authority as a partner because of the latter's performance on American inspired efforts in the West Bank areas they controlled."

The Palestinian Authority laid out the extent of its cooperation with Israel in a confidential memo it gave Middle East envoy George Mitchell in June 2009. Among the anti-Semitic actions the PA highlighted:

Arrested approximately 3,700 members of armed groups.

Summoned around 4,700 individuals for questioning about various offences, including affiliations with armed grops.

Confiscated over 1,100 weapons. (p.55)

"What in part took the Palestinian Security Forces from being hunted and killed by Israeli forces in 2002 to full partner and friend by 2008 was strong security collaboration, including an operational willingness by the Palestinian Authority to kill their own people…"! (p. 56)

"Abbas noted:

with pleasure that the fact that Sharon considered him a friend, and the fact that he too considered Sharon a friend, could serve them both in the days ahead." (p. 57)

This is the Butcher of Sabra and Shatilla that Abbas is prostrating himself before.

"Yes they [the Egyptians appear to have ended the siege. (Ahmad Q’rai Abu Ala)

"The Egyptians don’t do enough and we’re sure they can do much more. (Livni)

What can you do about Philadelphia Crossing? (Abu Ala)

We’re not there. (Livni)

You’ve reoccupied the West Bank and you can occupy the crossing if you want. (Abu Ala) p.117.

The Palestinian Authority is calling for the blockade to be strengthened.

The PA is nothing more than a handful of former senior Fateh officials and a number of rich Palestinian multi-millionaires who live in large mansions in or outside Ramallah oblivious to the plight of the refugees.

Its participation in the ‘Peace Talks’ merely allows Israel more time to colonise the West Bank and to justify its refusal to give even the slightest civil rights to the Palestinian population of some 4 million.

 

The attack on BDS wasn’t the first time that Abbas had done this. When Israel objected to the Goldstone Report on Israeli war crimes in Gaza the Palestinian ‘state’ submitted a critical motion to the UN Human Rights Council only to withdraw it when they came under pressure from Netanyahu.

Abbas himself lost his mandate to rule some 3-4 years ago and continues on as life President of the Palestinian ‘State’because he was told to by the Americans.

The speech received a healthy applause and it was clear to me that that Executive, who didn’t speak, were in somewhat of a dilemma regarding Abbas and the PA.

Unsurprisingly up jumped the Honorary President of PSC Betty Hunter to make a demagogic speech worthy of certain European leaders of the 1930’s. Her speech was vacuous and empty repeating that it is not for us to decide who should represent the Palestinians. The motion was ‘divisive’ which is what those European leaders used to say about democracy. Far better to have a false unity i.e. agreement with those who rule  than useless democratic  debate. That has been the stock-in-trade of dictators throughout the ages. Other speeches were against the motion but their points were obscure.

Betty Hunter it was who, in 2009, again made a demagogic speech when we proposed that PSC should have no links with anti-Semitic groups like Eisen’s Deir Yassin Remembered on the grounds that we had no links anyway and the motion implied the contrary. After two years, with Gilad Atzmon and friends becoming increasingly influential amongst supporters, and Ms Hunter having retired, members of PSC Executive worked with Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, to make it  clear that anti-Semitism and holocaust denial has no place in PSC.  Although moving their own motion, to expel an open holocaust denier from its ranks PSC Executive in effect reversed the position they took 2 years previously.

There is certainly an irony in Betty Hunter’s position. I first met year in 2005 at a private dinner party hosted by members of Bricup, following our success in successfully moving the boycott of Israeli universities. She asked me to rejoin PSC and I explained that I had resigned with 1993 when PSC had voted to support them. ‘Oh, noone support them now though’ and after much  I decided that if that was the case it would be foolish to decline the offer and so rejoined.

Unfortunately those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Ms Hunter had learnt no lessons from Oslo and it would appear will back anything the PA agrees as a settlement, which is a distinct possibility.

I put it to Conference that if a framework agreement was reached it would involve leaving the settlements in place, demilitarising the Palestinian entity and giving Israeli forces the right to enter at will, an abandonment of the refugees (which in essence Abbas had already done) and a possible ‘land swap’ that involves moving the ‘Triangle’ in particular into such a ‘state’ because the contains the greatest concentration of Palestinian citizens of Israel. As well as giving up Jerusalem.  Again this Ms Hunter had nothing to say about this. It was all a question of Palestinian self-determination.

The only problem is that Palestinians live under occupation and severe repression.  Failing a 3^rd Intifada they are unlikely to be organised enough to sweep the PA into Israel where the belong. We have to decide whether Abbas is indeed the chosen representative of the Palestinian people. Clearly Ms Hunter thinks that they do.

Needless to say the motion was lost overwhelmingly but the issues I raised will not go away and PSC will be force to take a stand on the '‘peace process’ and a future Palestinian Reservation (bantustan is being too kind). I also pointed out that the ANC had refused to work with Buthelezi, the apartheid supporting leader of the Zulus). PSC’s present position is de facto that it does see the PA as legitimate. Even Hamas, for all its many faults, is sincere in wanting a 2 state solution, despite the absurdity of a national liberation movement which is the Gazan wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. But since Israel helped create it in the late 1980’s that too is not surprising.

I can understand that there are some good people working in the offices of the PA in London, including Prof. Hassasian. However a means can be found to accept that they are the representatives of the Palestinians in Britain whilst seeing those who appointed them as worse than quisling (who at least ensured the territorial integrity of the whole of Norway).  Betty Hunter hoped to shock conference by the fact that I had described the PA as quislings.  In a sense she is right.  They are a Palestinian  Judenrat, the Jewish Councils in Europe who co-operated with the Nazis.

Whether I’m around to see it or not, there is no doubt that PSC cannot continue to bury its head in the sand.

PSC out campaigning for Boycott

There were no other contentious political motions (there was an absurd on the creation of a separate media entity along the lines of the Israeli lobby organisation BICOM but that too was heavily defeated

Those put forward for election were unopposed. It is clear though the numbers of those in PSC is well over 5,000 and is at a record high.  The organisation does excellent work around the media and boycott but it also has to become more political and not be afraid of offending leaders.

 

 

Tony Greenstein

 

A recent Boycott Protest in ADA Against Soda Stream

February 1, 2014, 11:19 am

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Brighton PSC Demonstrate in ASDA's (Walmart) Brighton Marina store

Like most big superstores, ASDA has no ethics other than making another fast  buck.  They have no problem with sourcing goods from the settlements, knowing full well that thousands of Palestinians in 5 villages were evicted from the Maale Adumim area where Sodastream is based in order to make way for its factory,

Unions are, of course, forbidden at the plant and despite a glossy PR campaign, it refuses to admit neutral observers (but not the yellow journalist John Keenan, formerly of the Argus, had an expenses paid trip there).

It will take more than looks to love Sodastream

February 1, 2014, 2:05 pm

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The face of Scarlett Johansson aims to Prettify Occupation

Another great demo outside Ecostream today. We all know that Sodasteam's a toxic brand, profiteering from Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. It was bizarre to hear the local mad Zionists shouting 'Oxfam is a toxic brand' because Oxfam had the good sense to drop Scarlett Johansson when she sold her soul and decided to also profit form Israeli apartheid by working with Sodastream.

The Zionists and Fundamentalist Christians who support them are getting crazier by the minute. An Israeli oddball, who goes by the name Shaike Rozanski stepped towards me with a view to attacking me and I was forced to throw a left hook. The Police took details but this nothing more.

 

Tony Greenstein 

 



 

 

 

Fizzy drinks win over human rights for celeb Scarlett

February 3, 2014, 6:39 am

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Scarlett Johansson Prefers Money to Human Rights

 



Cartoon from Katie Miranda



 



Image: Katie Miranda.  Scarlett Johansson preferring to be the global ambassador for fizzy drinks confected by Sodastream, a product from an illegal settlement, rather than for the charity Oxfam

.‘SodaStream is at the heart of Israel’s system of occupation’

 

Cartoon from Katie Miranda and articles from 1) Channel4 news, 2) Christian Science Monitor – short extract; 3) Electronic Intifada and Notes and links. Some of the many cartoons that have been launched into cyberspace are interspersed throughout.

From Jews  for Justice for Palestinians

 

Scarlett Johansson quits Oxfam amid SodaStream row

By Channel 4 news January 30, 2014

Scarlett Johansson quits her role as ambassador for Oxfam after coming under huge criticism for supporting the company SodaStream, that operates in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

The Hollywood actor’s global debut as the face of Israeli company Sodastream will take place on Sunday in a prime time advert during the Super Bowl.

Protest against Sodastream outside Macy’s department store, NY city. Photo by Flickr

But the multi-million dollar deal has caused a huge backlash from pro-Palestinian activists and humanitarian groups, because SodaStream’s largest factory is based in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.

After talks with Oxfam this week, the star of awards season favourite Her has decided to stick with the company and end her seven-year association with the charity.

Her spokesman said in a statement that she and Oxfam had a "fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement". It added that she was "very proud of her accomplishments and fundraising efforts during her tenure with Oxfam."

Settlements by Israelis on the Palestinian West Bank are illegal under international law, and Oxfam and other human rights groups are against any trade with companies based there.

And since the sponsorship deal was announced, the charity has come under huge pressure to drop Johansson as an ambassador. Activists encouraged alternative names for SodaStream flavours using the hashtag #ScarJos, which included Doctor Pepper Spray, Gaza Calorie Count and Palestinian Punch.

A ‘supporter of economic cooperation’

Johansson has pointed out that the company employs both Palestinian and Israeli workers, and affords its employees salaries that are triple the national average. SodaStream, which produces bottles and home soda makers, said it employed the highest number of Palestinians in the region.

Graphic from PSC Facebook

Yonah Lloyd, SodaStream’s president, told the Financial Times: "The boycotters are actually demonstrating a complete lack of humanitarian sensitivity to the thousands of people that benefit from the stable economic opportunity that we provide."

Yonah LLoyd promotes the Sodastream superbowl ad on CNBC ?video=3000144365 6 minutes in for a completely apolitical interview.

The actor said last week that she was a "supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine."

For its part, Oxfam said:

"Ms. Johansson’s role promoting the company SodaStream is incompatible with her role as an Oxfam global ambassador.

"Oxfam believes that businesses, such as SodaStream, that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support."

The Israeli Jewish settlements on land seized in the 1967 Six Day War are a key point of contention in the US-backed peace talks between Israel and Palestine. US Secretary John Kerry has called them "illegitimate", but Israel has continued to build and develop on land on the West Bank, despite its illegality.

 

‘SodaStream is at the heart of Israel’s system of occupation’

"The very existence of (Israeli settlements) amounts to a serious violation of international law,"the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Wednesday.

"It is impossible to ignore the Israeli system of unlawful discrimination, land confiscation, natural resource theft, and forced displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where SodaStream is located."

The Palestinian BDS National Committee, that supports boycotts and sanctions against Israel, said that Johansson had abandoned her reputation in exchange for money. "Just like the few artists who played Sun City during South African apartheid, Johansson will be remembered for having stood on the wrong side of history," said spokesperson Rafeef Ziadah.

"This controversy has shined a light on the fact that SodaStream is at the heart of Israel’s system of occupation, colonisation and apartheid."

Palestinian workers back Scarlett Johansson’s opposition to SodaStream boycott

By Christa Case Bryant, Christian Science Monitor

January 30, 2014

EXTRACT from article which begins with reports from Palestinians who are glad to have jobs at Sodastream because there is so little paid work available in the West Bank despite the PA’s donor income.

One of the workers waiting for the SodaStream bus this morning says he hates the fact that he’s working in an Israeli settlement, and lies to people when they inquire about his work.

"I’m ashamed I’m working there," he says. "I feel this is our land, there should be no [Israeli] factory on this land."



Graphic from PSC Facebook

He feels like a "slave," working 12 hours a day assembling parts – drilling in 12,000 screws a day, he adds.

While Israeli labor laws technically apply in the settlements, labor rights organization Kav LaOved says it is poorly enforced. Inspections, which are considered the essence of labor law enforcement, are reportedly sparse. Abed Dari, the organization’s field coordinator in the Jordan Valley and Mishor Adumim, the industrial zone where SodaStream’s factory is located, estimates that 95 percent of Palestinian employees of Israeli businesses in those areas do not earn the minimum wage of 4,300 shekels ($1,230).

Dari says SodaStream is one of the few companies in Mishor Adumim that does pay minimum wage, but adds that his organization’s worker hotline received a complaint about some 100 workers being fired recently, due to "seasonal" hiring practices. Workers in Azzariah mentioned that some fellow workers had recently been let go, which they attributed to boycott pressure.

As one of Israel’s largest food and beverage exporters, which ships to 45 countries, SodaStream indeed has international reach – and thus is potentially more vulnerable to international opinion. But Yonah Lloyd, president of SodaStream, says the company does not act in response to boycott pressure.

SodaStream "treats us like slaves," says Palestinian factory worker

By Stephanie Westbrook, Electronic Intifada

May 09, 2013

A professionally-produced video recently appeared on YouTube, taking the viewer on a carefully-constructed tour of the production facilities for the Israeli company SodaStream, manufacturer of carbonated drink machines.

The 8.5-minute video focuses on the firm’s factory located in Mishor Adumim, the industrial zone of the illegal Israeli settlement Maale Adumim in the occupied West Bank, and its Palestinian workers. The underlying message throughout the video is that the company’s settlement factory is a "fantastic sanctuary of co-existence" and, despite being built on stolen Palestinian land, is beneficial to the Palestinian economy and workers.

The video was recently shown to M., a Palestinian employee of SodaStream who has worked on the assembly line at Mishor Adumim for a long time and lives under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. M. spoke to The Electronic Intifada on condition of anonymity.

His immediate reaction to the blissful setting presented in the video was one of shock.

"Lies"

"I feel humiliated and I am also disgraced as a Palestinian, as the claims in this video are all lies. We Palestinian workers in this factory always feel like we are enslaved," M. said.

The release of the video coincided with the launch of SodaStream boycott campaigns in the US, considered the company’s most important market. Taking advantage of the company’s major marketing offensive in the US, including a $4 million Super Bowl ad, boycott campaigns succeeded in garnering press coverage exposing SodaStream’s complicity with Israeli violations of international law.

M. and his fellow workers were unaware of the boycotts. "They never told us about boycotts at all," he remarked.

Instead the premise for the video presented to the workers was nothing less than a way to maintain their jobs, otherwise at risk due to a lack of orders. M. said that "When they came and told us about the video, they announced that they wanted to market SodaStream globally, with a special presentation to the US, and they wanted to show the work and how it was improving."

M. and his coworkers had been told that the company planned to "let some of the workers go before the end of the year," but a $500-million order from the US had changed things and a "campaign to support the company’s sales" would save their jobs.

The YouTube video is clearly part of SodaStream’s public relations campaign, which lately has focused on the company’s Palestinian workers. In a speech given in early February at an Israel Advocacy Seminar in Johannesburg, Amir Sagie, director of the civil society affairs department for the Israeli foreign ministry, stated, "SodaStream have appointed lobbyists — an initiative that is paying dividends" ("Trends to expect from BDS & how to klap them," MyShetl, 6 February 2013).

According to M., the workers appearing in the video were given instructions on what to say. "I actually saw the company preparation work [for the video]; they were preparing all the workers and telling them what to say and how to say it," he said.

In the video, Sodastream’s chief executive Daniel Birnbaum appears as if he’s a constant presence in the Mishor Adumim factory. M. explained that this is not at all the case.

"I have worked here for a long time, and I have never seen him at the factory. This is the first time I see him [in the video]. They have their offices in Israel, and they do not come here," he said.

By M.’s estimates, SodaStream employs 800-850 workers on the factory floor, 90 percent of whom are Palestinians. The only Jewish Israelis doing "hand work" are "new immigrants, as they call them; olim hadashim or the ‘black Jews’ as they describe them."

Only a tiny fraction of the Palestinians employees hold higher level positions and there are none at all in management. "In all of SodaStream, there are only two foremen who are West Bank Palestinians, and they are supervised by two Israeli Arabs," said M.

Discrimination

When asked if there was discrimination between black and white Jews, M. replied, "Yes, for sure. You will not [find] white Jews wearing yarmulke [a skull cap] doing the hard work or ‘hand work.’ The supervisors who run the factory are mainly Russian and they are managed mainly by the white Jews, and we are ‘Palestinians,’ only workers."

M. also talked of discriminatory hiring practices, explaining that "most Israelis are hired through the company directly," while West Bank Palestinians require "a special security permit to be employed." The settlement factory has an internal security officer who "takes care of applying for the permits from the Israeli authorities."

M. added that Palestinian workers from Jerusalem, along with immigrant workers and African Jews, work through external manpower companies and may be hired after nine months "if they prove to be good workers."Otherwise, he said, "they are let go."

The recent report from the UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements notes that a "stringent system of permits and quotas that determines employment in Israel and the settlements lends itself to abuse by contractors and middlemen."

"Not allowed to pray"

The video touts an onsite mosque where SodaStream’s Muslim workers go to pray. M. told a very different story.

"A good example that shocked me was the claims [in the video] about the freedom to practice our prayers," he said. "Those claims are all false. There is a full discrimination against the [Muslim] workers and we are denied our right to practice our religion."

M. noted that the mosque shown in the video "is just the locker room," and that supervisors had "even hidden the carpets from the workers"in an attempt to prevent them from praying.

Restrictions on are especially severe on the assembly line, where most West Bank Palestinians work. M. explained that they are only allowed to pray if prayer times fall "during their lunch break," otherwise "they are not allowed to pray at all."

This is not the first time SodaStream has put its celebration of multiculturalism on promotional display. In 2009, following extensive negative press in Sweden, the workers’ rights organization Kav LaOved reported that SodaStream organized "a party celebrating the factory’s multicultural makeup: Sudanese, Ethiopian, Russian and Palestinian." The group noted that "some of the Palestinian workers, who had not registered for the event, were only allowed to participate for one hour, and then returned to work while others continued to celebrate multiculturalism in their name" ("Multiculturalism at the Soda Club factory," 2 May 2009).

While M. confirmed Palestinian workers are currently paid "three or four times the salary we can get at the Palestinian Authority"— not the four to five times more mentioned in the video — this only came about following workers’ struggles and protests in which many lost their jobs, the intervention of Kav LaOved and negative publicity in Europe, as documented by the group Who Profits from the Occupation? in a report on SodaStream ("SodaStream: A case study for corporate activity in illegal Israeli settlements," January 2011 [PDF]).

"From work to bed"

However, the same job insecurity and harsh working conditions reported by Who Profits remain. M. described the working week at the factory as "from work to bed," leaving little free time for anything else. Employees work on a "four-two" system, meaning that they work for four days, 12 hours per day, with two days off — totaling 60 hours of work in a seven-day period.

According to the Israeli Hours of Work and Rest Law, a working day "shall not exceed eight working hours" and shift workers "shall not be employed for more than one hour of overtime per day, and that the average for three weeks shall not exceed 45 working hours per week."

The SodaStream factory has two shifts, day and night, and M. explained that workers change shifts every four days with "no day that you leave early."

Requests to leave early are rarely approved. These working conditions apply to both men and women. M. explained that women workers also work night shifts and 12-hour shifts.

He also noted that "there is no extra pay for overtime or night shifts," in violation of the Hours of Work and Rest Law.

Making the work day or night even longer, Palestinian workers must allow two additional hours for transportation to and from the Israeli settlement, where they are not allowed to live. "They pick us up at six in the morning or the evening, and we arrive home at least an hour after work. Around 14 hours you are away from home, and there is no time to see our families," M. explained.

One big family?

SodaStream’s CEO Daniel Birnbaum has referred to the factory workers as one big family. M. disputed this portrayal, and explained some of the job insecurities Palestinian workers face: "They treat us like slaves. This has happened many times on the assembly line: when a worker is sick and wants to take sick leave, the supervisor will fire him on the second day. They will not even give him warning or send him to human resources, they will immediately fire him."

Birnbaum also claims in the video that SodaStream received no government incentives for its settlement factory. However, all three of the company’s own annual reports filed with the Security and Exchange Commission in the US, including the report for 2012, clearly stated that transfer of their production facilities "to a location outside of the disputed territories" may "limit certain tax benefits" ("United States securities and exchange commission, SodaStream International Ltd.").

M. noted that some production is currently being shifted to a new factory at Alon Tavor in the Galilee, within present-day Israel. "Now they have a new assembly department inside Israel, and [the factory] is getting less work. They are forcing the workers to work less, sometimes only for two or three days a week only, which means less salary." Those unhappy with just 10 to 12 work days per month "are ‘free to go,’" he added.

The rumors at the Mishor Adumim factory are that it will soon close, with all production moving inside Israel. Despite the conditions, M. and others "are hoping that the workers will be able to move and continue working there too." As M. explained, "All of the workers have no other choice but to work in the settlement factory; we want to feed our children and there are no work opportunities in the Palestinian Authority."

Cover for illegality

A recently-published update from Who Profits on SodaStream’s facilities showed that the Alon Tavor site serves as cover for the company’s illegal settlement factory. Who Profits cites an article from the Israeli business publication Globes, in which Birnbaum claimed products sold in countries such as Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, and France are manufactured at Alon Tavor due to "the sensitivity in these countries to Israeli products manufactured beyond the green line."

However, examining details on production facilities listed in SodaStream’s own annual report for 2012, WhoProfits demonstrated that it would not possible for a complete SodaStream machine to be produced at Alon Tavor.

The company has also won a 25-million-shekel ($7 million) government grant for construction of a new plant in the Idan Industrial Zone in the Negev (Naqab), capable of housing all of the company’s production under one roof ("SodaStream wins NIS 25 m grant for Negev plant," Globes, 4 April 2013).

Birnbaum recently threatened to move production to another continent if Israeli government subsidies, such as grants and tax breaks, are reduced. According to SodaStream’s 2012 annual report, its effective tax rate was 1.7 percent for 2012, and 10.9 percent for 2011. The corporate tax rate in Israel is 25 percent ("SodaStream CEO: More Israel investment depends on incentives," Globes, 24 April 2013).

While Birnbaum, beholden to his Nasdaq investors, concentrates on the bottom line, his settlement factory is part of a system described in the United Nations Human Rights Council report on settlements as exerting "a heavy toll on the rights of the Palestinians."

This systematic denial of basic rights outlined in that report creates the conditions that force Palestinians to turn to settlement companies for job opportunities. The report maintains that "the inability for the Palestinian economy to expand and offer opportunities, high unemployment rates and falling wages in the Palestinian labor market, inflation and increasing poverty are factors that drive Palestinians to seek employment in the settlements and in Israel."

In an email to The Electronic Intifada, a spokesperson for Who Profits stated that Israeli settlement companies exploit Palestinian laborers while claiming that the work benefits them. "A business that operates unlawfully cannot demand legitimacy on behalf of the workers and at their expense," the spokesperson said. Who Profits added that in other cases of exploitative employment, "civil society worldwide rejected employers as legitimate representatives of their workers" and maintained instead that "major corporations and colonial powers be held accountable for their actions."

In 1996, Sodastream made a decision to locate its production facilities in an area under military occupation and has maintained them there ever since. When confronted with this clear violation of international law, the company chose not to address it but rather sought to use its Palestinian workers to deflect attention away from its role in maintaining Israel’s unjust colonial system.

What we can do as people of conscience genuinely concerned for Palestinian workers, is to step up boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against companies like SodaStream, to ensure we can soon celebrate true multiculturalism, with guarantees of equal rights for all.

Stephanie Westbrook is a US citizen based in Rome, Italy. Her articles have been published on Common Dreams, Counterpunch, The Electronic Intifada, In These Times and Z Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @stephinrome.

Next Protest – Sat 1st February, 12-2pm outside John Lewis, Oxford St. London (nearest tube Oxford Street)

Join the regular protest to alert shoppers that John Lewis is selling Sodastream products which are produced in an illegal Israeli settlement.

Facebook:

Letter to Oxfam from a long-standing supporter

PSC

January 28, 2014

 For further information and references please visit

 See more at: http://www.palestinecampaign.org/scarlettjohansson/#sthash.wsMwb2vj.dpuf

Boycott Sodastream – Fortnightly Protests in London

NGOs campaign against house demolitions Oxfam is one of the 36 NGOs/aid groups to join in calling for an end to Israeli house demolitions, December 2013

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Israeli Soldiers Torture and Abuse Palestinian Children

February 12, 2014, 8:07 pm

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Israel’s Occupation Forces Have Learnt Well from the Nazis

Fighting 'terrorism'

I have to confess that, immune as I am to stories of the violence and brutality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, I found the programme below, made by Australian TV, shocking.  I’ve been on the streets of Derry and Belfast when British soldiers attacked demonstrators but compared to the film below, the Occupation of the North of Ireland was a genteel affair.

Israeli’s have learnt well from the holocaust.  Most Israelis turn their heads away or bury them in the sand, as not knowing is a comfort. But when Israelis put in a uniform, with a few exceptions, they behave like the savages of the SS.  If it were not for the genocide, they would be peas in a pod, and to some in Israel the Nazis are a model of how to conduct an Occupation [see Israeli Judge Ben-Itto 'We must learn from the Nazis']

Perhaps the most shocking revelations concerned the use of electric shock torture on children and a child who had food placed on their head and genitals with an Alsatian dog ordered to eat it.    There was a time in Israel when, because of their use in the concentration camps, that Israeli police were not allowed to use such methods.

Founder of the 'left' Zionist Mapam and Ahdut Ha'avodah, Yitzhak Tabenkin

Daniella Weiss, a settler leader, summed up the settlers claims that the West Bank is their land.  ‘This is Jewish land.  God gave it to the Jewish people’.  The military are there to enforce the settlers' claims.  Weiss may have been working in cahoots with the master butcher himself, Ariel Sharon, but it was the Israeli Labour Party (Mapai) which first established settlements in the West Bank.

As Israel Galili, of the militarist ‘left’ Ahdut Ha'avodah told Haaretz on April 18, 1972:

“Our right in Gaza is exactly like our right in Tel Aviv. We are colonizing Gaza exactly in the same manner in which we colonized Yafa. Those who doubt our right in Gaza should doubt our right in Tel Aviv as well.”  

 Together with Yigal Allon, Rabin and the rest of the war criminals who ran Mapai, they began the occupation regime.  It was one of the founding fathers of ‘left’ Zionism, a co-founder of Mapam and Ahdut Ha'avodah, the party of Poalei Zion, who became the most ardent of the settlers’ supporters.  I refer to Yitzhak Tabenkin, who founded Kibbutz Meuhad.

It is no accident that some of the most important founding fathers of Labour Zionism – Allon, Galilee and Tabenkin – were the ones who determined from the outset that the West Bank would never be given back.  From there it was a simple path to the abuse and torture of children, a practice that should bury for all of time Israel’s claim to be the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East.
Tony Greenstein

Aussie TV dares to show the real occupation

Jonathan Cook,  11 February 2014

Palestinian  child held in choke hold whilst 'trophy' photo is taken

I never thought I would see it. A mainstream TV programme, this one made by Australian channel ABC, that shows the occupation in all its inhuman horror. The 45-minute investigative film concerns the Israeli army’s mistreatment of Palestinian children. Along the way, it provides absolutely devastating evidence that the children’s abuse is not some unfortunate by-product of the occupation but the cornerstone of Israel’s system of control and its related need to destroy the fabric of Palestinian society.

Omar Barghouti has spoken of Israelis’ view of Palestinians as only “relatively human”. Here that profound racism is on full show. There are, of course, concessions to “balance” – in the hope of minimising the backlash from Israel – but they do nothing to dilute the power of the message. This is brave film-making of the highest order. It is an indication of quite how exceptional this film is that it has cornered Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, into expressing her “deep concern“. That’s the same Bishop who last month doubted that the settlements in the West Bank were illegal. - See more at:

Israeli soldiers pose for photos while abusing Palestinian child

 Ali Abunimah 02/09/2014

Israeli forces in the eastern occupied Jerusalem village of al-Eizariya were caught on video on Friday posing for trophy photos as they held a wounded, handcuffed Palestinian child in a stranglehold.
The disturbing video, shot by Rami Alarya was published by the Independent Media Center (IMC), however that publication’s website, which regularly documents Israeli abuses in the village, appeared to be down.

The images in this post are screenshots from Alarya’s video.
جنود اسرائيليين يطلقون النار على طفل و يعتقلونه في العيزرية 7-2-2014

a trophy photo

The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) which translated IMC’s report provided this description and analysis:

The soldiers assaulted the child during clashes that took place in the [al-Eizariya] town, east of occupied East Jerusalem.

another trophy photo - German soldiers did the same when invading the Soviet Union

One of the soldiers tried to push the cameraman, Alarya, and his colleague, Amin Alawya, away from the scene, and was yelling at them, “Enough, enough…. go away… what do you want…”
Medical sources said the soldiers shot the child, Yassin al-Karaki, 13 years of age, with a rubber-coated metal bullet which hit the 13-year old in the leg. After he fell, the soldiers began assaulting and abusing him.

The attack took place after soldiers, who hid in a building near the Annexation Wall in the Qabsa area, ambushed a group of children, and one of the soldiers opened fire on the children.
Several soldiers then attacked and assaulted the wounded child before kidnapping him.
The soldiers took pictures of themselves with the wounded child, and one soldier picked up a Molotov cocktail from the ground, while the child shouted in Hebrew, “it’s not mine, it’s not mine”, and a soldier responded, “it’s yours, it’s Ok … it’s yours”.

One of the soldiers was holding him in a chokehold, and was mocking the child by imitating wrestling moves while other soldiers took pictures, although the child was barely able to breathe.
The soldiers then placed the child in their jeep, while one of them was still filming the incident.
Trophies

In his book Goliath, The Electronic Intifada contributor Max Blumenthal writes that such so-called “trophy” photos have a long tradition in many military forces, including Israel’s.

Blumenthal recalls a series of such photographs released several years ago by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group which documents testimonies of Israeli soldiers while protecting their identities:
Among the disturbing shots culled from Facebook pages belonging to young Israelis was a photo of four smiling troops towering over a blindfolded preadolescent Palestinian girl kneeling at the point of their machine guns; a pretty female soldier smiling winsomely beside a blindfolded Palestinian man cuffed to a plastic chair; two soldiers posing triumphantly above a dishevelled corpse lying in the street like a piece of discarded trash; a soldier pumping his rifle in the air directly behind an older Palestinian woman tending to pots on her kitchen stove; a soldier defacing the walls of a home in Gaza by spray-painting a star of David and the phrase, “Be Right Back”; troops in the Gaza Strip playing with and posing beside corpses stripped half nude in acts of post-mortem humiliation; a young soldier mockingly applying makeup from a Palestinian woman’s dresser. The Facebook pages were so replete with documents of humiliation, domination, and violence it seemed that army basic training had been led by Marquis de Sade.

Blumenthal sees these images as documents of a “colonial culture in which Jewish Israeli youth became conditioned to act as sadistic overlords toward their Palestinian neighbors, and of a perpetual conquest that demanded indoctrination” beginning “at an early age” and continuing “perpetually throughout their lives.”

The latest shocking images from occupied Jerusalem are proof that this ugly tradition persists.

Shulamit Aloni - A Beacon of Tolerance Amidst a Sea of Racism

February 16, 2014, 10:35 am

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The Death of Shulamit Aloni and the idea of a progressive Zionism

It is with sadness that I learnt of the death of Shulamit Aloni, who formed the Civil Rights Party in 1973, which then went onto form an alliance with the ‘left’ Zionist Mapam and Centre Party Shinui Meretz, in 1992.

Shulamit was leader of Meretz for many years, having previously been an MK for Mapai (Israeli Labour Party).   She was a Zionist but one of the few who genuinely believed in peace. She was the last of the Magnes Zionists. Whereas Mapam, which joined Meretz, had a militaristic history and fully participated in the Nakba, and the massacre of Palestinians, Ratz genuinely had a commitment to civil rights and Aloni herself supported, for example, the refusal of soldiers to serve in the West Bank.

A feminist she fought against the oppression of women and the virulent hatred of the Orthodox for gays.  She was one of the first to  oppose the Occupation of The Territories.  She herself wanted to see a complete separation between religion and state and when she was a member of the Rabin government in 1992, she was shunted into a minor ministerial post from being Education Minister after the National Religious Party  joined Rabin’s government.  It couldn’t stand a woman having responsibility for the grants that the extreme anti-Arab Yeshivahs (relilgious seminaries).

Tony Greenstein

A tribute to the outstanding and outspoken Shulamit

Shulamit Aloni, then education minister, talking to students in 1992. Photo by David Rubinger/Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images

Return, Return oh Shulamit

Shulamit Aloni as a young woman with her mother.

By Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom, February 01, 2014

PETE SEEGER touched my life only once. But what a touch. It was a few days before the 1967 Six-Day War. After almost three weeks of mounting tension, the war fever was nearing breaking point. I knew that the war was only days, perhaps hours, away. Dina Dinur, the wife of the Holocaust-writer K. Zetnik, called to invite me to meet Pete Seeger. Dina, a huge woman, had for years gathered a small group of Jewish and Arab intellectuals who met regularly in her home to discuss peace.

The meeting took place in Tel Aviv’s Hilton hotel. It was sad, depressed, but also uplifting in a strange way. We were thinking about all the young men, ours and theirs, still alive and breathing, who were going to die in the next few days.

We were a group of two or three dozen people, Jews and Arabs. Pete sang for us, accompanying himself on the guitar, songs about peace, humanity, rebellion. We were all deeply stirred.

I never met Pete Seeger again. But 19 years later, out of the blue, I received a postcard from him. It said in clear handwriting: “Dear Uri Avnery – Just a note of deep thanks to you for continuing to reach out, and take action. I hope next time you are in USA my family and I can get to hear you. Pete Seeger.” Then three Chinese characters and a sketch of what seems to be a banjo.

TWO DAYS before Pete passed away, we buried Shulamit Aloni. Perhaps some of those who took part in that earlier sad meeting were present this time, too.

Shula, as we called her, was one of the few leaders of the Israeli Left who made a lasting imprint on Israeli society.

Though she was five years younger than I, we belonged to the same generation, the one which fought in the 1948 war. Our lives ran on parallel lines – lines which, as we learnt at school, can be very close but never touch.

We were both elected to the Knesset at the same time. Before that, we were active in the same field. I was the editor of a magazine that was prominent, among other things, in the fight for human rights. She was a teacher and lawyer, already famous for defending citizen’s rights in the press and on radio.

That sounds easy, but at the time it was revolutionary. Post-1948 Israel was still a country where The State was everything, citizens were there merely to serve the state, and especially the army. The collective was everything, the individual next to nothing. Shula was preaching the opposite: the state was there to serve its citizens. Citizens have rights that cannot be taken away or diminished. This has become part of the Israeli consensus.

HOWEVER, THERE was a great difference between our situations. Shula came from the heart of the establishment, which hated my guts. She was born in a poor part of Tel Aviv, and when both her parents enlisted in the British army during World War II, she was sent to the youth village Ben Shemen, a center of Zionist indoctrination. One of her schoolmates was Shimon Peres. At the same time I was a member of the Irgun, in stark opposition to the Zionist leadership.

After Ben Shemen, Shula joined Kibbutz Alonim – hence her adopted family name – where she met and married Reuven, who became prominent as a senior government official in charge of judaizing Galilee.

Apart from writing articles and dealing with citizens’ complaints on the radio, she performed illegal wedding ceremonies. In Israel, weddings are the exclusive province of the Rabbinate, which does not recognize women’s equality.

In the Knesset she was a member of the ruling Labor Party (then called Mapai) and subject to strict party discipline. I was a one-man faction, free to do as I pleased. So I could do many things she couldn’t, such as submitting bills to legalize abortions, to allow harvesting organs for transplantation, annulling the old British law against homosexual relations between consenting adults, and such.

Against religious dominion: Dozens of people demonstrate on Shabbat, September 2009, against the lack of public transportation in Jerusalem on Shabbat during a Meretz party protest called “Shabbat of Freedom.” Photo by Alon Hooter.

I also demanded a total separation between the state and religion. Shula was known for her attacks on religious coercion concerning civil rights. Therefore I was utterly surprised when in one of our first conversations she strenuously objected to such separation. “I am a Zionist,” she said, “The only thing that unites all Jews around the world is the Jewish religion. That is why there can be no separation between the state and the Jewish religion in Israel.”

From there on, her outlook widened from year to year. To my mind, she followed the inescapable logic of the Left. From her original concentration on citizens’ rights, she moved to human rights in general. From there to the separation of state and synagogue. From there to feminism. From there to social justice. And, in the end, to peace and the fight against the occupation. Throughout she remained a Zionist.

This was no easy path. In early 1974, when she was elected to the Knesset again, this time as the leader of a small party, while I lost my seat, I took her in my car to a meeting in Haifa. On the way, which took about an hour, I told her that now, as a party leader, she must get active in the fight for peace. “Let’s divide the task between us,” she answered, “You deal with peace and I deal with civil rights.”

But 20 years later, Shula was already a leading voice for peace, for a Palestinian state, against the occupation.

Golda Meir -  the Great Hater

WE HAD another thing in common. Golda Meir hated our guts.

Shula could disregard the party line as long as the benevolent Levy Eshkol was prime minister. When he suddenly died and the scepter passed to Golda, the rules changed abruptly. Golda had a domineering personality, and, as David Ben-Gurion once said about her, the only thing she was good at was hating. Shula, a young and good-looking woman, with unorthodox ideas, aroused her ire. In 1969 she removed Shula from the party list. In 1973, when Shula tried again, Golda showed the full force of her spite: at the very last minute she removed Shula again.

It was too late for Shula to go through the lengthy procedure of setting up a new party list. But a miracle happened. A group of feminists had prepared a list of their own, with all the necessary requirements already completed, but without a chance of passing the minimum threshold. It was an ideal combination: a leader without a list for a list without a leader. During the last hours of the time allocated for the submission of the lists, I saw Shula struggling with a huge pile of papers, trying to bring some order to the hundreds of signatures. I helped her to do the job. Thus the new party, now called Meretz, came into being and won three seats on its first attempt.

HER HOUR of glory came in 1992. Meretz won 250,667 votes and became a political force. The new Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, needed her for his new government. Shula became Minister of Education, a job she coveted.

The trouble was that the 44 seats of the Labor Party and the 12 seats of Meretz were not enough. Rabin needed a religious party to form a government.

The transition from opposition fighter to cabinet minister is not always easy. It was especially hard for Shula, who was more of a preacher than a politician. Politics – as Bismarck famously remarked – is the art of the possible, and compromise came hard to Shula.

Nonetheless, right at the beginning, when Rabin decided to expel 415 radical Islamic citizens from the country, Shula voted in favor. During the protest against this outrage, my friends and I founded Gush Shalom. Shula later admitted that her support for the expulsion was an “eclipse of the sun”.

But the main trouble was to come. Shula never believed in hiding her opinions. She was totally honest. Perhaps too honest. As Minister of Education she dispensed her opinions freely. Too freely. Every time she said what she thought about some chapter of the Bible and such, the religious coalition partners exploded. The climax came when she announced that in all schools, the theories of Charles Darwin would replace the Biblical creation story. That was just too much. The religious demanded that Rabin remove Shula from the education ministry. Rabin was occupied with the Oslo peace process and needed the religious parties. Shula was removed from the ministry.

AT HER funeral, one of her two sons, in a brilliant eulogy, hinted darkly at the “treachery” which was the hardest moment of her life. All those present understood what he meant, though he did not elaborate. When Rabin dismissed Shula from her beloved job as Education Minister, her party colleagues did not come to her aid. Among themselves they accused her of acting foolishly. She should have known that joining a coalition with the religious parties would demand a price. If she was not ready to shut her mouth, she should not have joined in the first place.

Meretz was the creation of Shula. Party founders are generally strong personalities, with whom it is not easy to cooperate. Shula’s party colleagues conspired against her, and eventually she was replaced as party leader by Yossi Sarid, a sharp-tongued Labor Party politician who had lately joined Meretz. In the next election, Meretz crashed from 12 seats to three. During the last few years, she was rarely in the public eye. I never saw her at demonstrations in the occupied territories, but she lectured incessantly to anyone, anywhere, when invited.

IN ONE of his frequent outbursts of vulgarity, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef of the Shas party said: “When Shulamit Aloni dies, there will be a feast!”

There was no feast this week. Even the Right acknowledges her contribution to Israel. The Meretz party, now with six members in the Knesset, is doing well in the polls.

The sixth chapter of the Song of Songs ends with the call: “Return, return oh Shulamite, return, return!” No chance of that. Not much chance of another Shulamit Aloni, either. They don’t make them like that anymore.

The legacy of Shulamit Aloni, our fearless teacher 

Shula made us aware of civil and human rights, the inequality of women, the plight of the gay community and the darkness of the occupation. Her legacy was great, but she didn't leave behind enough heirs.

Yossi Sarid Jan. 24, 2014       

I have had no teacher in my public life except for Shulamit Aloni - she was my only teacher, our great teacher. Nothing is more painful to me than having my name tied to the story of her resignation from politics, but I won’t set history straight today. Perhaps some other time, perhaps not.

I heard a radio presenter today speaking about “the woman people loved to hate."It’s true, many people hated her, many loved her, and nobody remained indifferent. What can be worse and more insulting to a person − especially a political person − than indifference? "Oh, just another of that ilk - how boring is this place around us, really, one big yawn." But Shula, on the other hand, always provoked, stirred and challenged.

After a death everyone asks about legacy: What mark or message does the deceased leave behind? And then everyone immediately tries to pull that legacy toward them, as if it is a blanket that is too small to cover them all.

Not in Shula’s death. Though we part from her, we cannot part from what she bestowed upon us all, those ideas and duties that are as pertinent now as they have ever been. Who can snatch away that legacy? Who would try to usurp it? Who would dare?

Shula made us aware of civil rights for the first time, and it's her creed that we passed onto the generations that followed. Not only the state has rights, as we were taught, and the state is not a deity, demanding sacrifice and worship. I seriously doubt today's Education Ministry would allow tender souls to be corrupted by her civics books, which have not lost their worth.

Shula also made us aware of human rights. There are some who live among us who aren't citizens, but are human beings nevertheless, with a full claim to inalienable rights. In a time when asylum seekers are high-handedly deported, Shula would surely have had something to ask the deporters: Aren’t you ashamed?

And Shula made us aware of inequality of women. Who but her had even thought of it as a problem? Golda Meir certainly didn’t. She held the highest office in Israel and was content at that. But Shulamit Aloni knew well that there are other women besides her, and that they still suffer egregious deprivation and discrimination.

Shula made us see that gay men and women and transgenders are people, same as everyone. Over 25 years ago she already fought to get them out of the closet of shame, fear and persecution.

Shula made us face the inherent tension between religion and state, between politics and faith. Who didn’t gape askance, or wring hands in a sigh, when hearing her demand to separate them? Yes, protecting the eminence of the state and the honor of religion, it is essential to detach the devout, to sever apart the forces that infect the country with ultra-nationalism and poison religion with zealotry. Leaving the two glued together is a recipe for disaster.

She was one of the first to make us aware of the occupation. That untold region beyond the hills of darkness, in which only a few ever bother to take an interest. The day will come when the state of occupied territories and occupying settlers will consume the state of Israel, which will then cast off the form of democracy and take the shape of apartheid.

Who but Shula could single-handedly start a movement that for decades onward would have an actual impact on the quality of living in Israel? One can picture our political landscape without other, superfluous parties, but not without Meretz, for all its ups and downs. Never letting her convictions be scattered to the wind, Shula has sown them with her spirit in every virgin soil.

And above all, "you've got nothing to fear." And indeed she feared not. What she had to say she said, even when you didn’t want to listen. You may have lost out on her, but Shula won herself integrity and an inimitable image.

In recent years, when we were upset or afraid, we would talk. I would call, she would call – never to gush out personal matters but to talk and feel no better for doing so. So she always urged action − we must do something, we must protest and resist, we must at least get our voice heard; if not we, then who? And if not now, when? Many of my columns in Haaretz were written at her urging and under her inspiration.

Shulamit Aloni left behind a legacy - that much is certain. What's uncertain is whether she left behind enough heirs. And I never forgot the big shoes I filled.

A Taste of their own Medicine

February 16, 2014, 10:44 am

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Incompetent as well as Brutal and Sadistic

Israeli Soldiers Gas Themselves

Tear gas is used almost as a matter of course by the Israeli Occupation Forces against Palestinian demonstrations at Bil’in.  It’s nice to see them tasting their own gas!

Tony Greenstein

Photo credit: Hamde Abu Rahma
Date taken: February 7, 2014
Location: Bil’in, West Bank, Palestine

Israeli soldiers quickly evacuate a military jeep after setting off tear gas canisters inside of the vehicle. The soldiers had been deployed to confront protesters in the West Bank village of Bil’in where a weekly demonstration against Israel’s barrier wall is held.

Just moments earlier, the soldiers had been chasing demonstrators and firing tear gas canisters at unarmed protesters with the sole purpose of scattering crowds and prematurely ending the demonstration. These tear gas canisters have proven to be fatal in recent years. On April 17, 2009, Bassem Abu Rahmeh was fatally struck in the chest by a teargas canister. On December 31, 2010, Jawaher Abu Rahmah inhaled the tear gas and failed to respond to treatment, dying the following day.

Protests in Bil’in have been organized every week since early 2005.

Sodastream – a toxic brand – sees profits slump

February 16, 2014, 2:20 pm

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Scarlett Johanssen doesn’t sell

Sodastream must rue the day that they opened what was going to be their first shop in Brighton.  It’s what’s called a loss leader.  No one goes in to buy their toxic drinks and the Zionist counter-demonstrators have done a good job in keeping the public away!

As usual an empty shop and a bored security guard

Sodastream is paying a high price for establishing a factory in the West Bank settlement of Mishor Adumim.

Palestinian demonstrators

Daniel Birnbaum, Sodastream's CEO, has engaged in non-stop PR to try and reverse the Boycott Sodastream campaign.  All he’s done is to dig a deeper hole into which his profits have flowed.
The big idea, buying Scarlett Johanssen, as a brand name has backfired.  She has shown how Hollywood stars place career and money in front of their human rights work.  In Johanssen’s case, it was just naked greed that was obvious to all.

the empty shop that adds to Sodastream's profit woes

Below are just some of the stories about their financial worries in mainstream and financial journals:

Now their profits have slumped and financial investors see it as irreversible.

SodaStream keeps the fizz going despite squeezed margins

BRENDA BOUW
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Feb. 04 2014

Shareholders in carbonated drink machine company SodaStream International Ltd. are looking for less controversy and more profit to prevent the stock from going flat.

James - one of the fundamental Christians who wanted to hasten the Rapture

SodaStream shares have fizzled out since the Israel-based company issued a profit warning last month that also coincided with a backlash for its decision to operate a factory in an Israeli settlement on the West Bank.  
Reality and my take: The Soda story has lost its fizz and is unlikely to get it back.
-- Written by Herb Greenberg in San Diego

Bubble trouble: SodaStream shares fizzle on profit warning

“We expected some weakness in U.S. sales but are surprised by the magnitude of the company’s gross margin and earnings miss,” Jim Chartier, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Company, said in a report cited by Bloomberg News yesterday.

A clear message Occupation is not Green

He downgraded the stock to Neutral from Buy. “While we continue to believe in the story longer term, we are moving to the sidelines until we have greater clarity on the company’s gross margin issues,” Chartier said.

Sodastream issues FY profits warning

SodaStream's NASDAQ shares plunged 25% yesterday after news of the profits warning. The stocks had dropped about 20% in the preceding three months.

SodaStream announces profit warning after 'challenging' Christmas

SodaStream loses fizz as forecasts are cut

Rising production costs and a poor festive season have seen profits slump

The Guardian, Monday 13 January 2014

a new Zionist who believes that the holocaust justifies Israeli racism

Shares of SodaStream International Ltd were down 21% at $38.96, at midday on Monday, in New York.

Palestinian supporter and ma Christian behind him

These are just some samples of the depth of the crisis facing Sodastream.  Brighton, the place where the Boycott of Sodastream took off (or its opportunistically named ‘Ecostream’) had made the campaign a national priority for Palestine activists.

Below there are photos of the Brighton Sodastream demonstrations for the last couple of weeks.

Picketing Sodastream

A few Zionists, weirdos and thugs, coupled with a few Christian Fundamentalists, the most dedicated of the lot, who would like to see all Jews perish in the battle of Armageddon to hasten Jesus’ return, are doing a good job in putting the people of Brighton off.  We gave in a petition of over 1,500 names to the local MP Caroline Lucas (who has been subject to some vile sexist abuse on leader Simon Cobb’s twitter a/c) – it was rapidly deleted but we got a screen print.

Shaker Rozanski, a lunatic Israeli, with the smiling fool beside him

When I come along, usually I can give only about ½ an hour because of health reasons, I get abuse of the ‘traitor’ ‘self-hater’ variety.  As I’ve pointed out to these dim Zionists, it was the Nazis who accused German anti-fascists of being ‘traitors’ and ‘self-haters’ because they literally hated their nation and race.  Once again Zionist bigots demonstrate that they have much in common with the Nazis,

Scarlett adds her voice to the Boycott

Cobbs called me a ‘kapos’ and self-hater a few weeks ago and when I responded he recorded the response only, since which time has made a complaint to the Police.  However the Police don’t seem that interested as I did get a request to be interviewed but after my solicitor intervened it seems to have been postponed sine die.

Another Zionist who made a complaint against me is an Israeli nutcase, Shaker Rozanski, who picks on one theme (‘traitor’, Syria etc.) and repeats it ad nauseum.  A few weeks ago I called him a Jewish Nazi and he complaint to no avail to the Police.  Last week he made a move across the path that people walk on in order to attack me, so I was forced to punch with with a left hook.   Shaker squealed and whined to the Police who have said they will no doubt want to talk to me about this too!  However the law on self-defence is quite clear.  If you perceive a threat of violence to you then you can act pre-emptively.

The Zionists fixate upon the Kapos, who the Nazis selected to carry out the supervision of other Jews.  However they had no choice.  Indeed it was the Kapos who initiated the rebellions at Auschwitz (where one of the crematoria was blown up), Treblinka, where many Jews escaped and Sobibor, where hundreds of Jews and others escaped.

It was the Jewish Councils, the Judenrat which provided the lists of who to round up and their accomplices in the Jewish police who were the real traitors and 66% of Jewish Council members were Zionists.  The Zionists, who were favoured by the Nazi government in Germany prioritised building their ghetto state to saving Jews.  Indeed they actively tried to prevent anyone else from rescuing Jews if the destination was not Palestine. One of Ben-Gurion’s most shocking statements concerned the attempts to rescue Jewish German children and send them to Britain.  Fortunately the Zionist attempts to sabotage the kinder transports came to nothing:

Scarlett Johanssen brings nothing but woe

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, then I would opt for the second alternative.   For we must weigh not only the life of these children–but also the history of People of Israel."Lenni Brenner, p.149 'Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, citing Yoav Gelber, ‘Zionist policy and the fate of European Jewry 1939-42, Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 12, p.199 and Tom Segev, p.28, the 7th Million.  Ben-Gurion to the Mapai CC, 7.12.38, Labour Party Archives, Bet Berl Tsofit., 22/38, Shabtai Teveth The Burning Ground, p.855.

Zionism was a favoured movement amongst the Nazis (see Lucy Dawidowic, p.118, War Against the Jews).  It is a movement of collaboration.  As Jewish and non-Jewish people recognise what Zionism is and its abuse of anti-Semitism as a weapon against its opponents, so Israel is facing a never increasing Boycott.

Jill Young - another mad Christian

It is important though to remember that whether or not Sodastream moves its factory from the West Bank, which is a distinct possibility, it will still be an Israeli company that should be boycotted.  The West Bank settlers have done nothing that the Zionists in Israel within the fictitious Green Line haven’t done before them.  As Israel Galili, a founder of Ahdut Ha'avoda, former Minister of Information and Minister without Portfolio and a member of Golda Meir's top Cabinet and a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Ministerial Committee for Settlement said:

"Our right in Gaza is exactly like our right in Tel Aviv. We are colonising Gaza exactly in the same manner in which we colonized Yafa. Those who doubt our right in Gaza should doubt our right in Tel Aviv as well."Israel Galili, quoted in Haaretz, April 18, 1972 as reprinted in Israel: Utopia incorporated, Uri Davis, Zed Press, London, 1977, p. 15.

Even were it possible to separate Israel from the West Bank, then Israel would still be the oppressor of the Palestinians and a reactionary gendarme of imperialism.  There can be no solution to the problem of Israel without de-Zionisation and the return of the Palestinian refugees.

Tony Greenstein

Netanyahu convenes ministers to discuss growing Israel economic boycott threats

Knesset ministers to consider whether to launch an aggressive public campaign or operate through diplomatic channels.

By Barak Ravid Feb. 9, 2014

Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Yuval Steinitz Photo by Daniel Bar-On

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a meeting Sunday evening to discuss how to cope with the growing threat of the economic boycott on Israel in light of continued occupation and settlement construction in the West Bank.

Senior Israeli officials said prior to the meeting that the plan was to try to decide on a strategy and determine whether to launch an aggressive public campaign or operate through quieter, diplomatic channels.

The discussion had been scheduled to take place last week, but cancelled at the last minute due to the political row between Netanyahu and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett. Sunday's meeting will take place amid a different confrontation – this time between Bennett and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The previous discussion was supposed to include a broad forum of ministers. The Science Ministry asked to separate the discussion on the economic boycott threat from a discussion on the academic boycott threat, since there is already a strategy for the latter, while the former has yet to be dealt with.
The discussion, scheduled to begin at 5:30 P.M., will only include Lieberman, Bennett and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, who is expected to present a plan his ministry has been working on.
According to plan, Israel should be proactive in its opposition to organizations who promote boycotts against Israel. The plan proposes to invest substantial resources in organising a public campaign.
Minister Steinitz is demanding a budget of 100 million shekels for implementation of the plan, which would include PR materials and aggressive legal and media campaigns against pro-boycott organizations.

The Foreign Ministry has a different approach. Diplomats think the non-governmental organizations pushing for a wide-ranging boycott against Israel and not strictly against the settlements are relatively marginal and that a public campaign against them will only play into their hands, bolstering them.
The Foreign Ministry thinks the public response to organizations promoting a boycott against Israel should be constricted. It wants to focus on less public diplomatic activity to combat such initiatives and believes advancing the peace process with the Palestinians will stave off a large portion of the boycott threats.

One of the issues to be discussed at the meeting is whether to file legal suits in European and North American courts against organizations that are proponents of the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Ministers will also consider whether to take legal action against financial institutions that boycott settlements, or boycott Israeli companies that are somehow operating in or connected to the settlements.

Another consideration is whether to activate the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., specifically AIPAC, in order to promote legislation in Congress against the economic boycott of Israel, akin to the legislation that was passed in the 1970's against the Arab boycott.

One of the issues that will be raised during the discussion is that there is a lack of knowledge and inefficient tracking by Israeli intelligence of pro-BDS organizations.

The Strategic Affairs Ministry has provided the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence department a budget of several million shekels for the purpose of bolstering military surveillance of such organizations. However, the need for the prime minister to instruct the Shin Bet Security Service and the Mossad on the efforts is likely to come up.

Ukraine - the Hypocrisy of the West

March 19, 2014, 10:03 pm

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Neo-Nazis led ‘revolution’ in Ukraine

Israel remains silent when it comes to genuine anti-Semites

Andriy Parubiy of the Right Sector, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Committee,  meets Senator John McCain

Many people have been bemused at events in the Ukraine.  A challenge to the legally elected government, supported by the West and European Union, and the formation of a violent militia amongst the demonstrators.  The militia, which consisted primarily of far-right/neo-Nazi groups first engaged with petrol bombs and then live ammunition

Oleh Tyahnybok, Svobada leader which has 4 seats in government including security

When the Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych signed an agreement with Russia rather than the EU, as had been expected, that was the signal for a concerted attempt to install another regime in Ukraine.  The USA reportedly spent $5 billion a subverting Ukrainian democracy.
If Ukrainians in the Crimea and east of the Dnieper River wish to secede then they have the right to.  It’s called self-determination.

It is strange that when Kosovo wanted to secede from the Serbian/Yugoslavian Federation, the West enabled it to do so through a massive bombing campaign.  But in the case of Ukraine international law prevails!  The same international law that Israel has flouted for 46 years of occupation of the West Bank.  The same international law that prohibits pre-emptive wars.

Under Secretary of State Nuland gives her blessing to Ukrainian fascists

Pre-emptive war is clearly illegal under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the precedent of the Nuremberg laws.  The only exceptions are self-defence or collective action.  The Bush Doctrine effectively means that only the US is entitled to attack at will.  Self defence can only be exercised in this manner in the case of an overwhelming threat.  In this case, invasion because of the bogus allegations that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction was clearly illegal.  But as I’ve argued before, international law had no enforcement mechanism and cannot be considered the equivalent of domestic law.  Effectively the US defines what is and isn’t permissible in international law.   Thus it has exempted itself from the International Criminal Court rather than sending Bush and Blair to be tried for war crimes.

Fascist Ukrainian leader protected by thugs in balaclavas - not a picture the BBC would show!

Russia, quite rightly, fears the US and the EU are encircling them with a belt of NATO states.  As in Georgia a few years ago, Russian troops invaded in order to protect the secessionist state that they had helped form. According to an interview by John Robles with Prof Francis Boyle ‘Ukraine: The Brown (Shirt) Revolution’ -  the break-up of Ukraine would serve western interests very well as it would move the borders nearer Russia.  The US could come to an agreement with Russia not to install nuclear missiles on its doorstep but instead they tore up the Anti-Ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972.  It was another achievement of George Bush. 

Mass demonstrations in Maiden Square

 An equivalent comparison was the Cuba Missile Crisis of 1962.   The US threatened to go to war with nuclear weapons if nuclear missiles were not removed from Cuba, 100  miles offshore.  But in the case of Russia it is expected to smile at the prospect of being ringed by US nuclear weapons.

The presence and participation of neo-Nazis is not in doubt.  In Ha'aretz it is reported that ‘Ukrainian Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, called on Kiev's Jews to leave the city and even the country if possible, fearing that the city's Jews will be victimized in the chaos, The chief rabbi of Kiev has told his congregants to get out.’

Below is an article by Paul Craig Roberts ‘Sleepwalking Again’  February 23, 2014

Add caption

On the 100th Anniversary of World War 1, the Western powers are again sleepwalking into destructive conflict. Hegemonic ambition has Washington interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine, but developments seem to be moving beyond Washington’s control.
Regime change in Ukraine for a mere $5 billion dollars would be a bargain compared to the massive sums squandered in Iraq ($3,000 billion), Afghanistan ($3,000 billion), Somalia, and Libya, or the money Washington is wasting murdering people with drones in Pakistan and Yemen, or the money Washington has spent supporting al Qaeda in Syria, or the massive sums Washington has wasted surrounding Iran with 40 military bases and several fleets in the Persian Gulf in an effort to terrorize Iran into submission.

So far, in Washington’s attempt at regime change in Ukraine large numbers of Americans are not being killed and maimed. Only Ukrainians are dying, all the better for Washington as the deaths are blamed on the Ukrainian government that the US has targeted for overthrow.

Fascist militia drove riot police off streets - almost  certainly the recipient of US money

The problem with Washington’s plot to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine and install its minions is twofold: The chosen US puppets have lost control of the protests to armed radical elements with historical links to nazism, and Russia regards an EU/NATO take-over of Ukraine as a strategic threat to Russian independence.

Washington overlooked that the financially viable part of today’s Ukraine consists of historical Russian provinces in the east and south that the Soviet leadership merged into Ukraine in order to dilute the fascist elements in western Ukraine that fought for Adolf Hitler against the Soviet Union. It is these ultra-nationalist elements with nazi roots, not Washington’s chosen puppets, who are now in charge of the armed rebellion in Western Ukraine.

If the democratically elected Ukraine government is overthrown, the eastern and southern parts would rejoin Russia. The western part would be looted by Western bankers and corporations, and the NATO Ukraine bases would be targeted by Russian Iskander missiles.

It would be a defeat for Washington and their gullible Ukrainian dupes to see half of the country return to Russia. To save face, Washington might provoke a great power confrontation, which could be the end of all of us.

My series of articles on the situation in Ukraine resulted in a number of interviews from Canada to Russia, with more scheduled. It also produced emotional rants from people of Ukrainian descent whose delusions are impenetrable by facts. Deranged Russophobes dismissed as propaganda the easily verifiable report of Assistant Secretary of State Nuland’s public address last December, in which she boasted that Washington had spent $5 billion preparing Ukraine to be aligned with Washington’s interests. Protest sympathizers claim that the intercepted telephone call between Nuland and the US Ambassador in Ukraine, in which the two US officials chose the government that would be installed following the coup, is a fake.

One person actually suggested that my position should be aligned with the “sincerity of the Kiev students,” not with the facts.

The friendly face of the US's friend

Some Trekkers and Trekkies were more concerned that I used an improper title for Spock than they were with the prospect of great power confrontation. The point of my article flew off into space and missed planet Earth.

Spock’s mental powers were the best weapon that Starship Enterprise had. Among my graduate school friends, Spock was known as Dr. Spock, because he was the cool, calm, and unemotional member of the crew who could diagnose the problem and save the situation.

There are no Spocks in the US or any Western government and certainly not among the Ukrainian protesters.

I have often wondered if Spock’s Vulcan ancestry was Gene Roddenberry’s way of underlining by contrast the fragility of human reason. In the context of modern military technology, is it possible for life to survive humanity’s penchant for emotion to trump reason and for self-delusion to prevail over factual reality?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under Reagan and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. His latest books are, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and How America Was Lost. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org

Pravy Sektor ("Right Sector") are now camped out at the bottom of the Maidan.  The Kremlin points to Right Sector as proof that what happened in Kiev was an ultranationalist take-over.
Right Sector's deputy leader, Andriy Tarasenko, told the Guardian his organisation didn't want to be involved in post-revolutionary party politics. Rather, he said, it sought to "transform the relationship between people and power". What this meant was a little unclear. He also wanted Kiev's new interim government to introduce a law that would allow his members to carry arms.

Kiev's protesters: Ukraine uprising was no neo-Nazi power-grab
We are not dealing with a transitional government in which Neo-Nazi elements integrate the fringe of the coalition, formally led by the Fatherland party.

The Cabinet is not only integrated by the Svoboda and Right Sector (not to mention former members of defunct fascist UNA-UNSO), the two main Neo-Nazi entities have been entrusted with key positions which grant them de facto control over the Armed Forces, Police, Justice and National Security.

While Yatsenuyk’s Fatherland Party controls the majority of portfolios and Svoboda Neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok was not granted a major cabinet post (apparently at the request of assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland), members of Svoboda and the Right Sector occupy key positions in the areas of Defense, Law Enforcement, Education and Economic Affairs.
Andriy Parubiy, co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine, (subsequently renamed Svoboda) was appointed Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU). (Рада національної безпеки і оборони України), a key position which overseas the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence. The RNBOU is central decision-making body. While it is formally headed by the president, it is run by the Secretariat with a staff of 180 people including defense, intelligence and national security experts.

Parubiy was one of the main leaders behind the Orange Revolution in 2004. His organization was funded by the West. He is referred to by the Western media as the “kommandant” of the EuroMaidan movement. Andriy Parubiy together with party leader Oleh Tyahnybok is a follower of Ukrainian Nazi Stepan Bandera, who collaborated in the mass murderer of Jews and Poles during World War II.
The Neo Nazi party also controls the judicial process with the appointment of Oleh Makhnitsky of the Svoboda party to the position of prosecutor-general of Ukraine. What kind of justice will prevail with a renown Neo-Nazi in charge of the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine?

Cabinet positions were also allocated to former members of the Neo-Nazi fringe organization Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defense (UNA-UNSO):

“Tetyana Chernovol, portrayed in the Western press as a crusading investigative journalist without reference to her past involvement in the anti-Semitic UNA-UNSO, was named chair of the government’s anti-corruption committee. Dmytro Bulatov, known for his alleged kidnapping by police, but also with UNA-UNSO connections, was appointed minister of youth and sports.

Yegor Sobolev, leader of a civic group in Independence Maidan and politically close to Yatsenyuk, was appointed chair of the Lustration Committee, charged with purging followers of President Yanukovych from government and public life. (See Ukraine Transition Government: Neo-Nazis in Control of Armed Forces, National Security, Economy, Justice and Education, Global Research, March 02, 2014

The Lustration Committee is to organize the Neo-Nazi witch-hunt against all opponents of the new Neo-Nazi regime. The targets of the lustration campaign are people in positions of authority within the civil service, regional and municipal governments, education, research, etc.  The term lustration refers to the “mass disqualification” of people associated with the former government. It also has racial overtones. It will in all likelihood be directed against Communists, Russians and members of the Jewish community.

It is important to reflect on the fact that the West, formally committed to democratic values, has not only spearheaded the demise of an elected president, it has instated a political regime integrated by Neo-Nazis.

This is a proxy government which enables the US, NATO and the EU to interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs and dismantle its bilateral relations with the Russian Federation. It should be understood, however, that the Neo-Nazis do not ultimately call the shots. The composition of the Cabinet broadly coincides with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland ” recommendations” contained in the leaked telephone call to the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Washington has chosen to spearhead Neo-Nazis into positions of authority. Under a “regime of indirect rule”, however, they take their orders on crucial military and foreign policy issues –including the deployment of troops directed against the Russian federation– from the US State Department, the Pentagon and NATO.

The World is at a dangerous crossroads: The structures and composition of this proxy government installed by the West do not favor dialogue with the Russian government and military.

A scenario of military escalation leading to confrontation of Russia and NATO is a distinct possibility. The Ukraine’s National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU) which is controlled by Neo-Nazis plays a central role in military affairs.  In the confrontation with Moscow, decisions taken by the RNBOU headed by Neo-Nazi Parubiy and his brown Shirt deputy Dmytro Yarosh –in consultation with Washington and Brussels– could potentially have devastating consequences.

However, it goes without saying that “support” to the formation of a Neo-Nazi government does not in any way imply the development of “fascist tendencies” within the White House, the State Department and the US Congress.

The U.S. has Installed a Neo-Nazi Government in Ukraine

 “The flowering of democracy” in Ukraine –to use the words of the New York Times– is endorsed by Republicans and Democrats. It’s a bipartisan project. Lest we forget, Senator John McCain is a firm supporter and friend of Neo Nazi Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok.

US-Backed Neo-Nazi Party Given Key Roles in Ukrainian Government

Ukraine's New Leaders: From Neo-Nazis To A Muslim, A Jew And A Heavyweight Boxer

Huffington Post 3.3.14.

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Bubbles All Round

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March 22, 2014, 3:12 pm

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Nobody knew where I was, nobody… I was simply disappeared’: An Italian tourist’s Ben Gurion nightmare

Andrea Pesce on March 22, 2014 5

My name is Andrea Pesce, I am 44 years old and I’m an Italian citizen.
 

ben gurion airport

For 15 years I had the chance to visit Israel and Palestine, thanks to my former job (I used to be a travel agent) and also because I’m interested in the political situation over there. I travelled as a normal person, without any official role or mission.

Last December I have been in Israel and Palestine for one week. I always stayed in a hotel in the Old city of Jerusalem and I went for one day visit to Bethlehem (twice), Ramallah and Nablus, always as a tourist. During my visit in Bethlehem I had the chance to learn about a non-profit organization, named Tent of Nations, which follows a non-violent approach to the conflict.

Between January and February I contacted Tent of Nations staff, and planned a visit in March to volunteer over there. Then I bought an El Al air ticket, from Venice to Tel Aviv and back, departure 18th March, return 16th April.

This is the background to my story and I want to say also that I have never participated in any event, manifestation or whatever against Israel, or have written something or declared something against Israel. On the contrary, in 1999 I wrote a book issued by a Italian publisher, specialized in Jewish Literature and subjects, (Casa editrice La Giuntina) with an afterword by Amos Luzzatto, who at that time was President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities.

Last 18th March, my day of departure, I arrived at Venice airport at 11 am, 3 hours before scheduled take off. For this kind of flight, there is an Israeli security staff interviewing passengers, according to an agreement between the Italian and Israeli governments. I waited around one hour, as Israeli staff are always allowed to pass Israeli passengers before me and other Italians waiting. Then one woman interviewed me, quite softly, but with some incredible questions like:
 
“You are going to stay one month away from home, isn’t your daughter sad because of this?”

There is no security reason behind this kind of question, not even to check if you get nervous because you have something to hide: it’s pure harassment, nothing more, nothing less.

I asked, “Why are you asking questions like this ? It’s too personal!”

She seemed to understand, and started to apologize.

Then I was told that my backpack had to be searched and that I cannot bring my camera (old fashioned) with me, it had to go in the hold. They checked everything, which included doing a body search on me.

Eventually they told me that maybe my baggage cannot arrive with me in Tel Aviv on the same flight: I complained a lot, saying that I had been waiting for two hours and I couldn’t understand why they waited so long. At the end they let me leave, I have to say, including my backpack.

During the flight I was tired but also happy: eventually everything was ok, and I was on the way to start my holiday and a wonderful life experience for one month in Israel and Palestine.
I couldn’t imagine what was waiting for me at Ben Gurion Airport.

Once I arrived, at passport control, I was told to wait in a corner of the hall, beside the “passport control office”. Several people were there already. I waited around one hour and then I had the first dialogue. It focused on what I was going to do during this month, I said “nothing special, I will go around”, ok, then wait again other half an hour, and then a second person interviewed me about my job, and what I was going to do it in Israel for one month, and I repeated the same answers again.
Then wait again around half an hour, and then the third interview with other people asking same questions, but in harder way, intimidating me and trying to scare me.

They argued that I was a liar because I didn’t say that somebody was waiting for me in Bethlehem, and that those who lie at the border will be not allowed to enter the country.

At that point I had been traveling for almost twelve hours, I was confused, tired and a little bit scared. But I had nothing to hide and I said, “check whatever you want, I’m a normal person, do what you have to do”. At that point it was pretty clear to me that they had read my emails and knew everything in advance.

Finally around 11.30 pm, I was interviewed by other people (they said they were from the Ministry of Internal Affairs) and after some minutes they told me that my entry was denied because I was a liar: I started to cry, more because of the stress itself, than for the final decision to reject me, even though it has been hard to me to accept the “destruction” of my travel, planned for months.

Andrea Pesci holding his passport with the Israeli “denied entry” stamp.

They started to laugh a little bit, saying that if only I said at the beginning I was going to volunteer they would let me in without any problem. But since I lied about it, I have to be rejected.
Until now, it was hard but not terrifying. But I still couldn’t expect what I was in for.

Around 1 am they brought me in another airport room where my baggage has been searched again and I had a second body search. Then they took away my backpack, empty, because they said that it was detained for security reason. They gave me a big plastic bag to put all my belongings in.
Funny detail: the bag has a broken zipper.

They brought me back to the same hall, where I was told to not go around. I had to stay near their office.

Please note that I could only drink some water because another tourist gave me some coins to buy a bottle water from a machine. And security staff gave me a sandwich only because I asked for it. In the meantime every request I made — to have some water or to make a phone call to my embassy or simply to alert my hotel in Jerusalem that I couldn’t go there — was refused. And refused is not the right word: I was not a normal person anymore, I started already to be seen like a second class person. I want to say that for the very first time I really felt what racism is.

As they decided to send me back to Italy, the problem was how and when: flights to and from Venice are only once per week. So I was told that I was going to stay in a separate facility, waiting for the flight back to Italy.

This is the beginning of the nightmare.

The separate facility is a “migration facility”, as they call it, which is actually a sort of prison. Around five minutes by car outside of Ben Gurion Airport, I was transferred to this “house” surrounded by iron net, with bars on windows. I was told to leave everything in a room, including my mobile. Strange, but I definitely realised I was under arrest when I was told I could not bring a ballpoint pen with me to my “room”. But actually it was not a room, it was a jail. So around 3 am on the 19th March started my new life experience: being detained in a prison.

I cannot express my feelings exactly: maybe I can say that, having fallen deeply into a total irrational system, the only way to avoid becoming crazy, was to start to think in a completely different way. But it wasn’t easy.

The jail has soundproof doors, so you cannot ask for anything, not even scream. You can only beat the door until somebody, maybe, is willing to listen to you. But you already feel completely unsafe and you are scared even to ask, because you know that they can do everything with you, about you. I cannot say what I thought and felt during that night.

By 7:00 am I was destroyed, I was imploring them to send me home. One man, never seen before just opened the door and screamed to me: “so you go tonight at 06.30 pm, okay or not ?!” I said “Okay, okay, please let me go, I didn’t do anything, I don’t even know why I’m here”. They say “Okay, you will go tonight”.

At that stage nobody knew where I was, nobody. I was simply disappeared.

At 9:00 am I was allowed to call the Italian embassy: an Italian official told me “once you are in that place we cannot do anything, you simply don’t exist for us if you are in that place”. She also expressed sympathy for what I was going through, but the fact I was leaving in the afternoon was decisive. She also called my wife in Italy, as I was not allowed to do it directly.

Then the wait for departure started: I was in another jail, alone, with the door open. But I couldn’t go out, and it’s hard to explain, but I was afraid to ask anything. When around noon they gave me some food (to consume it in the room, without any table, only sitting on the bed) I did ask for some water, they said “We will bring it to you.” They didn’t and I didn’t ask again.

All and all, during my 14 hours in the “migration facility” I had the chance to stay outside in the open courtyard for a total of around 40-45 minutes (in two visits during the morning, none in the afternoon).

From Andrea Pesci’s passport

Again: I cannot explain my feelings during the time between 4:30 pm and 5:30 pm, knowing that my flight was scheduled for 6:20 pm. I was scared to death that they wouldn’t let me go….

It the end, at 5:35 pm they did open the door, let me take my belongings (always in their plastic bag), transferred me to the airplane and let me go. My passport was delivered to me by an Italian officer at Milan airport, after it was handled to him by the El Al staff.

I won’t share anything about the fact that being flown to Milan cost me more fatigue, finding a hotel that night and then catching a train to Venice the next day (20th March).

Nobody, never, in those 24 hours, declared their identity or role to me (they all have a badge, but it’s not easy to read and you don’t’ have the courage to show that you want to know their name). In the end there is no written proof of what they did to me, not even the reason for my rejection and detention. Nothing, nothing at all. I only have a stamp on my passport saying “entry denied”.

The lessons for me at this moment are two questions:

Why do you want me to hate you ?!

If you can do this to me, what you can do to the Palestinians ?!

---

Open Letter to Left Unity

March 31, 2014, 6:10 am

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An Organisation that is Afraid to Campaign

 Left Unity was formed last  year with the many of the members coming from the fall-out in the SWP over Martin Thomas and the question of rape/sexual harrassment.  Others are relatively new to politics and of course there are those who are members of existing left groups - Socialist Resistance and the Communist Party of Great Britain.

 

 

At the Conference I attended in London 30th there were some of the same hard-boiled cooks that had played a role in other prominent left groups.  Andrew Burgin as Chair of Stop the War Committee, Liz Davies, who Blair stopped from standing in Leeds and who became Chair of the Socialist Alliance, acting as a cover for the SWP as it proceeded to destroy the SA, Kate Hudson of CND, ex-Respect.  LU has about 1,500 members but it is doing nothing with them other than involving them in interminable intra party elections and affairs.

I therefore send an Open Letter to LU members making my criticisms clear.  I have had a favourable response from a number of members but it is doubtful that the central leadership understands it.  Despite submitting it to the website a week ago, it has yet to appear

Founding Conference

There is, of course nothing wrong with internal elections, quite the contrary.  For ex-members of the various left sects it’s probably a novel experience.  But the intricacy and complication of the election process are self-imposed burdens.  Instead of simple elections, weighted to ensure that minority political opinion is represented there is a full-blown PR system.  Women won’t be elected of course in accordance with their politics but simply because of the biological fact that they are women.  We have yet to go down the UNISON road with every minority of a minority being represented (except the working class) but no doubt that that is a delight to come as the Left Unity confuses its own organisation with the society it is seeking to create.  No better example of the contempt for democracy that this breeds is the statement:  ‘There is no obligation on individual members to vote for at least 50% women in any section though members may of course choose to do so.’

BBC News Interview

I can remember when the demand for positive discrimination first raised its head, in the student group of which I was a member, the Socialist Students Alliance, in the 1970’s.  The SSA was dominated by the International Marxist Group (now Socialist Resistance) which had abandoned working class politics for ‘movementism’.  Positive discrimination encouraged clichés, slogans and a superficial support for socialism, in place of any deep commitment to opposing this system or involvement in campaigns at the sharp end of the battle with this capitalism.  Most of those women either became supporters of New Labour (Blair was a particular supporter of positive discrimination and all-women shortlists) or dropped out of politics. This was not true of all the men – especially the Irish and anti-fascist activists. We had 101 women (New) Labour MPs, who 75% of whom voted in favour of the Iraqi war (as opposed to 40% of men who did so).

Coupling this with the fact that the 30th November Conference devoted the whole day to drawing up a constitution and it appears ever more obvious that Left Unity is like the Malaysian Airline plane – destined to crash but we know not where, at least yet.

Left Unity is an organisation with a small number of members, yet it has a Rolls Royce constitution fit for an organisation of hundreds of thousands.   Indeed, until New Labour took over, it could be said that our constitution is more complicated and cumbersome than the Labour Party’s.
Some people are losing sight of the fact that the purpose of Left Unity is to make a political impact in and away from elections that the mass media and the establishment cannot ignore.  One thing that UKIP and to a lesser extent the Green Party have shown is that it is possible for parties that are determined and dedicated to succeed, even electorally, despite First Past the Post elections.  To translate the ideas and desires of the working class and chunks of other parts of society, into a vehicle for socialism.  A thoroughgoing debate on how to achieve it, what issues to prioritise, the targeting of resources on particular areas, the concentration on campaigns that epitomise everything which is wrong with market capitalism.  I’m thinking of the NHS and Welfare 'reform' in particular and above all steady and solid work over the lifetime of a parliament, with a possible focus on by-elections, are just a few example of this.  This will lead to steady but slow recruitment. A weekly paper (no not Socialist Resistance revamped!) But this hasn’t even been subject to any debate, nationally or in the local branches.  Instead the focus has been wholly internal.  The first thing you see on LU’s website is the absurd and trite slogan ‘Coming soon to a ballot paper near you!!’ with a picture of a cross on a ballot paper and the top three articles are  concerned with internal elections and then an equally trite article ‘A budget for UKIP not ‘hardworking people’ which, apart from anything else, is nonsense.

The term 'hardworking people' not the working class or marginalised or unemployed, is in itself a reflection of New Labour ideology.  Are the disabled 'hardworking people'?  Does it matter?

What is or should be the target for the website?  New Labour of course.  It is the beneficiary of the working class vote.  Articles hammering away at this would at least suggest that LU has some coherent strategy other than, as at present, being a mishmash of left and not-so-left ideas.  Attacking Miliband for support for the Benefits Cap, for following Gordon Brown’s strategy of engineering a boom via house prices inflation, the selling of council houses, privatisation of the NHS, the fact that the pension reforms will inevitably lead to growing poverty among the elderly, the pathetic suggestion of a 20 month prices freeze in utility bills when the real issue is nationalisation.  These are examples of what a focused and aimed political strategy might aim at.  But instead we debate the constitution and focus on internal elections!

There is also the absurd name – Left Unity.  What does it mean to people?  That the left is disunited?  Perhaps if we hadn’t faced a Hobson’s choice at the Conference, when suggestions could have been taken from the floor, we might have had ‘People Not Profit’ or something that sums up what LU purportedly stands for.

It is telling that no candidates came forward for the elections from Scotland, the North-East or South-West.  What does this say about LU’s present political trajectory and appeal?  Even the Socialist Alliance, before the SWP took it over and destroyed it had more political weight and substance.

One suggestion would be that national leaflets on renationalisation nd the NHS, Welfare attacks, the contrast between Bob Crow and the present TU leaders and privatisation, racism (G4S).  This would mean that LU becomes a vehicle moving in the same direction together.  How does LU achieve momentum and a critical mass?  This is of greater importance than interminable internal elections.  LU has a year at most before stagnation and decline set in.  It can either move forwards or backwards.   If it doesn’t start focusing on society out there as opposed to its own internal structures, it will lose any chance to do so.

I write a column every other week in the local free paper, the Brighton Independent, which has over 3 times the circulation of the daily Argus, a paid for paper, My articles have focused on disability, benefits, the closure of a children’s centre, Tony Benn and Bob Crowe, the parasites that Osborne represents, housing etc.   At present I would be loathe to even mention LU as I would be plugging a group that is unlikely to be around long and which is unable to live up to its own hype and pretensions.

Tony Greenstein

NHS Charges – The Slow Destruction of the NHS

April 5, 2014, 1:22 pm

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New Labour’s Lord Warner & Tories Propose The Introduction of Fees

New Labour scum seek to reverse  the  major achievement of the post-war Labour government.

Lord Warner, former New Labour  Health Minister, advocates charging for NHS services.  Creatures like Warner infested Blair's government

Simon Stevens, a former vice-president of the US health-care giant United Health and former health adviser to New Labour, became NHS chief executive this week.  It is unlikely to have been a coincidence that former Blair Health Minister, Lord Warner, and the New Labour Reform think tank came out with proposals for NHS charges.

The silence of Miliband and New Labour has been deafening.

Jeremy Hunt, friend of the rich and Rupert Murdoch, is now Health Minister

The NHS was created under the Attlee government under Aneurin Bevin, based on the principle that access was free at the point of delivery regardless of one’s means.  People paid for the NHS through general taxation not individual charges.

Lord Howe, government Health Minister, scapegoats migrants, the  poorest in society -

The proposal to make everyone pay for a doctor’s visit or a stay in hospital was, as is normal, accompanied by the usual scapegoating of migrants.  For the past few months we have had a racist government campaign which suggests that migrants are to blame for the crisis in the NHS.  According to Jeremy Hunt they cost £2 billion a year.

The only result of Jeremy Hunt's fiddling of the statistics is that some migrants will prefer not to seek medical treatment and hope to recover by themselves.  Migrants will now pay for emergency care and A&E treatment.  The public health threat is obvious.  It is also an example of the inhumanity of modern capitalism.

free but for how much longer?

It is an example of a petty nationalist attitude that believes that British people never go on holiday or travel abroad.  It goes without saying that we expect emergency treatment if we fall ill, without paying for it.  But the government relies on racist scapegoating (it won’t affect European Union citizens or those in most of western Europe, with whom we have reciprocal arrangements), as a means to introduce the principle of charging.  As it is the NHS is being used as another branch of the immigration service, itself preventing people seeking treatment.

The NHS is or was the envy of the world.  Unlike the United States, your ability to receive care doesn’t depend on the size of your purse.  But to those like Simon Stevens, the NHS’s budget is ripe for cherry picking by those such as his former employer.

What we can do

New Labour and Miliband were the origin of many of these proposals.  We cannot rely on these people to support any campaign to defend the NHS.  New Labour has no principles which are not for sale to any private interest.

The only way to stop the government and their Lib. Dem partners-in-crime in their tracks is a nation-wide campaign against charging for NHS treatment.  If there is a crisis, then there should be massive investment in the NHS.  The buzzword of these think thanks is that supporting the NHS is ‘unsustainable’.  On that basis we should abolish the Army, the Monarchy and the banks.  It is all about political choices.

Cameron and Miliband will always have room for corporation and tax cuts.  Bailing out the banks to the tune of billions of pounds is no problem as bankers come from the same political class.  But to these people, the NHS is a waste of money.  If the poor cannot afford private treatment then they should go without.

The very idea of the NHS and ‘socialised medicine (which US Republicans and The Tea Party hate so much) is an affront to the  ‘values’ of capitalism.  What you get you should pay for.  The NHS is based on the socialist idea that you contribute what you can and take what you need.

It is not enough that 56% of people oppose charges and only 12% would pay for an appointment the next day.  Multi national corporations aren’t concerned with public opinion.  Only a determined campaign, that includes general strike action, will halt the campaign to privatise the NHS.
The rot started when Blair introduced private companies into the NHS to cherry pick services.  He called it 'choice'.  Next we had whole NHS services being handed over to private companies.  The logical result of this is full-scale privatisation and charging.  We will have only ourselves to blame if the one major gain left standing from the post-war settlement is destroyed.

Tony Greenstein

IDS - The Tory's version of Scrooge

May 21, 2014, 9:56 am

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The Contemptible Ian Duncan Smith

Is there anyone more despicable than Ian Duncan Smith? He puts Scrooge to shame for the latter’s generosity. This is a man who spent £10,000 of public money having his portrait painted.

After being sacked as Tory leader he went on a mission of salvation to Easterhouse in Glasgow where he appeared to befriend the poor and unemployed. Little did they realise that he was rehabilitating his career and dissembling.

 

ALL of IDS’s ‘welfare benefits, i.e. cuts to the poor and unemployed have been supported by the Lib Dems and New Labour, whose Rachel Reeve promises to be tougher on welfare reform than the Tories. This is Reeve’s idea of Opposition.

 Bedroom Tax Protest - Scotland

 

There have been a battery of measures – forcing Incapacity Benefit claimants into Job Seeker’s Allowance, paying £27 pw less. The benefits cap, workfare, abolition of Council Tax Benefit Or the changes from DLA to Personal Independence Payments, whose openly declared aim is to cut £2 billion a year from the benefits bill. Reduction of Housing Benefit, the introduction of starvation sanctions and of course the Bed Room Tax. Dressed up as the Spare Rooms subsidy it is nothing of the kind. Houses are rented as an entity, not room by room. A ‘spare’ room is often used for children coming to stay, elderly relatives, carers and, horror of horrors, friends. The only effect of the Bedroom Tax is to drive people out of their houses or see them evicted because they cannot afford to pay with their rent. There are also the cuts to Tax Credits, the very people IDS claims he is seeking to benefit.

 

The net effect of all this is that people cannot afford even a hot meal for their children. The growth of food banks run by the Truscott Foundation is testimony to this. But to IDS they are simply a political gimmick. Surprise, surprise the Daily Mail has done its best to undermine them with an ‘exclusive’ about how their reporter obtained cans of food. ‘No ID, no checks... and vouchers for sob stories: The truth behind those shock food bank claims.’  From supporting Hitler to supporting IDS is quite understandable.

 

Bedroom Tax Protest, Trafalgar Square

 

And there is the new universal benefits scheme, which no one understands and which the computer systems implementing it cannot do it. IDS’s malevolence is only trumped by his incompetence.

If IDS is queried as to why people have committed suicide with anxiety It has led to people taking their lives such as mother-of-two Stephanie Bottrill – who suffered a crippling illness – committed suicide after realising she couldn’t pay the Bedroom Tax.  IDS has a standard answer. He is being fairer to those in work and he is trying to ensure that "people find work always pays". 

 

IDS (and the coalition’s) primary aim is to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich. Under this government the commitment to reduce child poverty has gone into reverse (though IDS fiddles the figures to show the opposite). Britain's richest 1% have accumulated as much wealth as the poorest 55% of the population put together, according to the latest official analysis of who owns the nation's £9.5tn of property, pensions and financial assets 

 

Whilst the poor suffer cuts, the richest 1,000 people in Britain has seen fortunes rise by 15.4% according to the Sunday Times Rich List. Their wealth has now reached a new high of £519bn

The Sunday Times described this as an 'Astonishing' year for richest Britons sees fortunes rise 15.4%, according to Sunday Times Rich List 

 

Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at Sheffield University, has charted the share of national income going to the richest 1% since 1918, the end of World War I. After falling for more than half a century, Prof. Dorling says, the share of Britain's richest 1% started rising sharply and inequality is now on course to return to what it was in 1918. This is the full measure of IDS’s ‘welfare reforms’ which are justified by trying to divide those who work from claimants.

Why I resigned from Left Unity

June 23, 2014, 6:38 pm

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Feminists Brook no Debate on  'Safe Spaces' - Manchester Branch suspensions

I resigned from Left Unity nearly a month ago. Set up in a blaze of publicity, it has fallen victim to identity politics and navel gazing. It reports that it has 2,000 members. If so they make next to no impact. There is no internal life in the organisation, no paper or journal, and criticism of policies such as ‘safe spaces’ for women are frowned upon or, as is the case in Manchester subject to censorship and suspension.

Ironically, despite the number of ex-SWP members, such as Richard Seymour in LU, they have taken up the SWP's forlorn campaign - understanding nothing and learning even less

Socialist Resistance of the 4^th International, a chameleon group that long ago abandoned any class analysis or Marxism, has no problem with identity, as opposed to class politics. The emigrants from the SWP have failed to understand that the problem with their leadership was not a failure to appreciate feminism, but a failure to create a democratic culture where the leadership could be held to account, unlike the present day oligarchy.

No campaigns have been organised nationally (what use a party?) and now we hear that those who have spoken out, in the Manchester Branch have been suspended and the e-mail list shut down. Left Unity: Freedom to criticise must be defended - Laurie McCauley reports on his suspension from Manchester branch Left Unity was supposed to be different. A pluralist party, we were told, which could accommodate varied views within its ranks. The mistakes of the ‘old left’, of enforcing a false ideological unity that only led to splits, would be avoided. Openness and transparency were to be the order of the day. http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1015/left-unity-freedom-to-criticise-must-be-defended/. It was a Socialist Resistance member, the miserable Ian Parker, who proposed the suspension and the closure of the e-mail list.

As Laurie writes: ‘Left Unity was supposed to be different. A pluralist party, we were told, which could accommodate varied views within its ranks. The mistakes of the ‘old left’, of enforcing a false ideological unity that only led to splits, would be avoided. Openness and transparency were to be the order of the day.’

It is clear to me that a small group of feminists and men they have guilt-tripped into agreeing with them, have effectively begun to ‘purify’ the organisation. No doubt it will be a good experience for these women before they continue their journey to New Labour.

What began this episode was when Dawud Islam, a former deputy leader of Respect, was demonised for the heinous crime of not coming to a snap judgement on the guilt or innocence of Steve Hedley, a trade unionist accused of domestic violence. His own union, the RMT found he had no case to answer but being working class he must be guilty of something!

Meanwhile LU, which has a Rolls Royce constitution but precious few people to fill all the new posts, flounders about making no impact whatsoever. Ironically, it has adopted the SWP campaign against a 'racist' UKIP, thus entirely misunderstanding this party.  That is why I resigned.

Tony Greenstein

Thursday, 29 May 2014

Dear Left Unity,

I have always supported the idea of a broad party to the left of the Labour Party that would include a spectrum from the left of the Labour Party to the far-Left. I have therefore been extremely disappointed in where Left Unity is going, or rather not going.
 

I sent an Open Letter to you from my web site earlier this year http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/left-unity-conference.html and asked that it be published on LU’s web site, a request that was ignored. I notice though how Fred Leplat, a prominent member of Socialist Resistance has an article on the web site and certain other members have privileged access. Clearly some people are more equal than others.

Despite having a flying start LU has become entangled in the sectarian politics of feminist and anti-racist identity politics, which 20 years ago were characterised by women for Palestine and Jenny Bourne of the Institute of Race Relations as profoundly reactionary. But then who is to say which identity trumps another identity? It has led to LU becoming an organisation primarily focussed on itself. In prioritising the demands of a few inconsequential feminists with no political base, whose desire is not to be challenged politically but for people to accept their arguments because of the ‘identity’ of those who make them, it has abandoned the most basic democratic norms. It wasted a whole day last December in London debating a constitution for an organisation 100 times as large.

Since then most mailings from the Centre have concerned elections for the multiplicity of posts in LU. Barely a word has been issued concerning prioritising campaigns such as the destruction of the NHS or the welfare state. Bogus issues of interest to just a handful of careerists, such as intersectionality, have been deemed of more importance instead.

It is little wonder that LU didn’t see fit to stand candidates in the European elections when it has such pressing internal issues to deal with. The result is that UKIP and its anti-immigration policies have been given a free ride and LU has abandoned what could have been an effective platform for introspective navel gazing.

As a political activist in the student movement, Irish, anti-fascist, unemployed and Palestine solidarity campaigns, for the past 40 years, I have wondered in amazement at where LU’s leadership believes it is going and its complete lack of strategy as the old, seasoned cooks of the left – Socialist Resistance, the SWP émigrés and people like Andrew Burgin, Liz Davies and Kate Hudson – have taken an organisational and political grip over LU.

LU’s leadership could do worse than to look at the success of Syriza in Greece and try and learn some lessons. However I fear that they are too fixed in their views and politics to learn lessons from anyone. They insist on following the same strategies that embraced Respect and destroyed the Socialist Alliance. Politically LU has demonstrated complete impotence on questions like Ireland. My conclusion is that the time for success has now passed and what is left is a terrible missed politically opportunity.

I have therefore decided that no purpose is served by my continuing to remain a member and I have decided to resign from Left Unity.
 

In Solidarity

 

Tony Greenstein

Israel Tortures and Shackles Palestinian Children

June 23, 2014, 7:19 pm

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Palestinian children as young as 9, are being held at the G4S prison at Ofer and at other gaols, beaten up, forced to sit in extremely uncomfortable positions, with food thrown on the floor.  It is impossible to imagine this could every happen to a Jewish child.

Thus we see the Israeli State in all its savagery, with its accomplices in the Palestinian Authority. Children in the Palestinian Authority juvenile justice system

It is fast becoming a scandal, the way Palestinian children as young as 9, are being held at G4Security Establishments, beaten up, forced to sit in extremely uncomfortable positions, with food thrown on the floor.

Thus we see the Israeli State in all its savagery, with its accomplices in the Quisling Palestinian Authority. Children in the Palestinian Authority juvenile justice system  adopting the same tactics as the Israeli military.

Below is a story that needs no further comment

Tony Greenstein

MOTHER OF TORTURED PALESTINIAN CHILD PRISONER TO ADDRESS MPs IN HOUSE OF COMMONS #FreeHaresBoys - 24th JUNE 2014

www.inminds.com, 22th June 2014

DATE: Tuesday 24nd June 2014  4:30pm (come 30 minutes early to give time for security checks)
LOCATION:  Boothroyd Room, Portcullis House, House of Commons, SW1A 0AA ( Closest tube: Westminster)

FACEBOOK EVENT:
Um Fadi, the mother of Palestinian tortured child prisoner Ali Shamlawi - one of the 5 Hares Boys, will address a special meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Britain-Palestine (APPG) on 24th June 2014. The meeting is in the House of Commons and is open to the public, please come to show your support. Its starts at 4:30pm but please come 30 minutes early for the security checks that have to take place before your are allowed in to the House of Commons.

Um Fadi's visit to the UK including this event has been graciously organised by our friends at Watford Friends Of Salfeet:
HARES BOYS - BACKGROUND

On 14th March 2013 a simple car accident, when a illegal Israeli settler car speeding along a road built illegally on stolen Palestinian land, crashed in to the back of an Israeli truck which had stopped to change a flat tire resulting in four people being hurt, was later at the behest of angry settlers presented as an attack by Palestinian stone throwing youth. The truck drivers earlier testimony that he stopped due to a flat tire was replaced with the new reason being that he had seen stones by the road, and an accident that nobody saw suddenly became a terror attack with 61 witnesses including the police!

Over the next few days over 50 masked Israeli soldiers with attack dogs stormed the local village of Hares in the early hours of the morning and in waves of violent arrests kidnapped the children of the village. In total 19 children were taken to the infamous G4S secured children's dungeon at Al Jalame and locked up in solitary confinement for up to 2 weeks in filthy windowless 1m by 2m hole in the ground cells with no mattress. The Israeli prime minister Benyamin Natanyahu announced to the settlers that he had “caught the terrorists”. The children were violently tortured and sexual threats were made against the female members of their families in order to coerce confessions from the boys.

With the confessions and the new “eye-witness” statements, five of the Hares boys were charged with 25 counts of attempted murder each, even though there were only four people in the car and all are now safe at home. Apparently the military court had decided that 25 stones were thrown, each with an "intent to kill". The five boys - Ali Shamlawi, Mohammed Kleib, Mohammed Mehdi Suleiman, Tamer Souf, and Ammar Souf are currently locked up in another G4S secured facility - Megiddo prison where G4S provides the entire central command room.

In violation of international law Israel has turned prisons in to money making enterprises with the boys essentially forced to pay for their own imprisonment. Israel deliberately fails to provide Palestinian prisoners the basic essentials - edible food, cloths (underwear, shoes..) and hygiene products (soap, toothbrush..). The boys are forced to buy these at the extortionately priced prison shop costing the families over € 125/month to provide for one child's basic needs in prison.

With no evidence of a crime the military court keeps on postponing the hearing dates from one month to the next, meanwhile the boys remain caged indefinitely and their families facing financial ruin in the process. The occupation in its cruelty doesn't inform the families of cancellations. The families spend most of their day queuing and enduring the humiliation at the checkpoints, then waiting at the court in anticipation of catching a glimpse of their son.. only to be disappointed at the end. Not that evidence, or lack of it, has any bearing in an Israeli military court - a study conducted by the Israeli NGO 'No Legal Frontiers' over a 12 month period concluded that 100% of Palestinian children brought before the military court are convicted. If the five boys are convicted they will be locked up for over 25 years - five young lives ruined with no evidence of a crime let alone their guilt.