A Quick Response to Blake Alcott’s The Case of Gilad Atzmon

Alcott's article in defence of Atzmon

Despite the fact that this blog was originally set up to combat the influence of Gilad Atzmon, his racism and anti-Semitism, I have ignored him in recent months.  After the issuing of a statement by Ali Abunimah and many other Palestinians and Arabs, and similar statements by activists, it is fair to say that Atzmon’s bubble burst.  The film that had been made of him bombed.  Activists were turned off by his attacks on BDS (very similar to those of the Israeli government which outlawed support for Boycott).

The imagine on the Redress site.  Note the 'subtle' alignment of Ali Abunimah, a key Palestinian activist, with Alan Dershowitz, a virulent Zionist zealot.

Nonetheless there are times when it is useful to go back over some of the arguments.  My attention was brought to a 20 page long apologia for Atzmon by one Blake Alcott, who describes himself as an ‘economical ecologist’ in his article in the anti-Semitic Counterpunch magazine, whose founder Alex Cockburn ended his life as a supporter of the French fascist leader Marine Le Pen.  One thing is certain and that is that Alcott was certainly being economical with the truth.  Just  how ecological it was I shall leave to others to judge.

Atzmon blows his own trumpet

Blake Alcott’s is one more attempt to put a leftist face on Atzmon and to try and provide a rationale for his repeatedly racist statements and assumptions.  It isn’t a question of words, or out of context quotes as Alcott believes.  Atzmon has himself demonstrated that he considers Zionism and Israel to be ‘Jewish’ phenomenon, arising out of a Jewish supremacist ideology, ‘Jewishness’. 

The fact that this article is carried on Counterpunch, which provides space for out and out holocaust deniers such as Israel Shamir speakes volumes.  When Mary Rizzo denounced Jews Against Zionism and myself in particular, Counterpunch not only refused to carry a response but it refused even to acknowledge the response of Roland Rance and myself.  But what does one expect from a web site that a sympathiser with the French National Front and Marine Le Pen, Alex Cockburn, ran?

When an essay begins with a lie then it is pretty clear that it’s going to be all downhill from thereon.  Alcott states that ‘I ignore denunciations of Atzmon by Alan Dershowitz, Tony Greenstein and Jeffrey Goldberg because they consist of associative thinking and are based on often-unreferenced quotations out of context.’

This is a demonstrable lie since anyone who takes the time and trouble to read my Guide to Atzmon’s sayings  will know that everything is sourced back to what Atzmon himself has written.  If Alcott finds that ‘associative thinking’ (I assume that associating Atzmon with his own writings is not unfair) is a problem then that demonstrates the limits of his own analysis.  Neither Goldberg nor Dershowitz are capable of any analysis worthy of the name because both are Zionists who defend Israel and Zionism without question.  I do not.  Hence the intellectual contortions of Alcott as he tries to make a case for Atzmon:

Colonialism

 Alcott tries to square the circle by saying that ‘Atzmon is basically asserting that the settler-colonialist paradigm is not sufficient to explain Zionism:’

That is one way of putting it.  However it is not the way that Atzmon puts it.  Atzmon is a somewhat better guide to Atzmon than Alcott Through Atzmon’s Looking Glass (with a tint of pseudo-left sophistry).  Alcott quotes argues that Atzmon doesn't reject the idea that Israel is a settler colonial entity.  He merely states that it is not the entire explanation.  However in order to sustain this thesis, Alcott only cites the quotation in bold in Atzmon's book.  He deliberately excises all that follows.  Let me remind him of what Atzmon wrote in toto:

‘Zionism is not a colonial movement with an interest in Palestine, as some scholars suggest. Zionism is actually a global movement that is fuelled by a unique tribal solidarity of third category members. To be a Zionist means to accept that, more than anything else, one is primarily a Jew.’ p.15, Wandering Who?.

A global movement fuelled by a ‘unique tribal solidarity’.  Clearly it is not a settler-colonial movement, it is part of a wider conspiracy.  And Atzmon continues in relation to the Organismus that

‘It is more than likely that ‘Jews’ do not have a centre or headquarters. It is more than likely that they aren’t aware of their particular role within the entire system, the way an organ is not aware of its role within the complexity of the organism…. This is probably the Zionist movement’s greatest strength. It transformed the Jewish tribal mode into a collective functioning system.
 
Looking at Zionism as an organismus would lead to a major shift in our perspective of current world affairs. The Palestinians, for instance, aren’t just the victims of the Israeli occupation, they are actually the victims of a unique global political identity, namely the third category people who transformed the Holy Land into a Jewish bunker.’ p.17.

In fact Atzmon rejects the settler colonial paradigm in its entirety, whilst paying lip-service to it rhetorically. 

‘These events [Mava Marmari & others] have nothing to do with the colonialist nature of the Jewish state as some Marxist ideologists insist. They may have something to do with the racist, supremacist, chauvinist ideology that fuels Zionism.’  Indeed Atzmon agrees with Alan Dershowitz that Israel cannot be a colonial state because it has no mother country. ‘Fair enough, I say, he may be right. I myself do not regard Zionism as a colonial adventure.’

An absurd formulation since Britain was the initial mother country.  It is what settlers do that counts.  The American settlers continued to colonise America after breaking with the British mother country.  Why not Zionism with the sponsorship of Britain.  So Alcott, having accused me of taking quotes out of context, does exactly the same and worse.  He selectively cuts his quote and thus distorts the meaning in order to bolster his case.

When Atzmon draws a straight line from Moses to Netanyahu he is in practice asserting a unique racial continuum, from.  Atzmoncites Moses oration to his people thus:

‘The Judaic God, as portrayed by Moses in the above passage, is an evil deity, who leads his people to plunder, robbery and theft. Yet there are many ways to deal with this negative image of the Almighty…. For more than sixty years, the Biblical call for theft has been put into legal praxis.’ 
What we have here is a Jewish race, a group of people who retain their characteristics, including their inclination to plunder and despoil, over the millenia.   I know that Atzmon denies he ever makes so much as a mention of biological race, but since race is a political construct, it can be based on biology, culture, ideology or a mixture thereof.  It is interesting that in his book (p.16) he writes that

‘In his book, Ostrovsky refers to it as racial solidarity; I call it third category brotherhood and Weizmann calls it Zionism. But it all means the same thing.’ 
Indeed it does all mean the same.  When we penetrate beneath Atzmon’s surface justification we see that he does indeed mean Jewish race and he ascribes to that race, bound together by a supremacist ideology (Jewishness) all that has happened in Palestine.  It is also the only way of justifying his comparison between the anti-Semitism experienced by the Jews of Europe and the dislike of Zionists (Jews to Atzmon) in Israel.  Both made themselves unpopular because of what they did.  The Bundists, who wished to confiscate the wealth of the capitalists [Atzmon singling out ‘Jewish socialism’ and the Bund is itself anti-Semitic – were all other socialists in favour of private property?  We should be told!). 

As for ‘Jewishness’.  How can there be one Jewish ideology?  Is there just one Christian ideology?  Clearly there is more to Jewishness than meets the eye.  It is the ideology of all those who consider themselves Jewish and it is only those who believe in race who succumb to the idea of a homogenous Jewry.  Atzmon ignores simple facts such as the rejection of Zionism from Herzl until 1945 by Jews themselves.  Atzmon has no explanation because for him to be Jewish is to be a Zionist.  [see ‘Not in my name’ for an expansion on this].

Let us be generous.  Alcott has never read my Guide to Atzmon so he is unaware of the passage which was omitted from his book.  Yet Atzmon made his views very clear and demonstrated that he was quite prepared to get into the sewer with the far-right. 

We even have the fascist canard that ‘Throughout the centuries, some Jewish bankers have gathered the reputation of backers and financers of wars’ and even one communist revolution. Though some rich Jews have been happily financing wars using their own assets, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States, found a far more sophisticated way to facilitate or at least divert the attention from the wars perpetrated by Libby, Wolfowitz and PNAC.’ p.20 

This combines the traditional far-right thesis of the Jews financing the communist revolution with them controlling capitalism.  Alan Greenspan was apparently acting at the beck and call of Aipac in destabilising the American economy, presumably at the Jews behest.  It is what is commonly known as the World Jewish Conspiracy Theory, beloved of fascists and Atzmon.  Presumably the ‘leftist’ ecologist Alcott also has no problems with it either.

Holocaust Denial

In ‘Truth, History & Integrity’  Atzmon writes that:

‘I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?’

I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start asking questions… We should strip the Holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status and treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time and place. The Holocaust, like every other historical narrative, must be analysed properly… Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their troubled history? If they genuinely planned to do so, as the early Zionists claimed, why did they fail? (pp 175-176)

Atzmon conveniently misses out the first paragraph of the essay in the chapter of his book of the same name.  Alcott also doesn’t mention it.  Perhaps he is unaware of it or more likely it didn't fit his thesis.  He clearly decided that it would be impossible to maintain the pretence that Atzmon doesn’t deny or query the factual aspect of the holocaust, i.e. that millions of Jews (& others too of course) were deliberately exterminated.  I can now understand Alcott’s objection to associative thinking.  Far better to stick with Atzmon’s denials and ignore the substance of his argument.

Instead Alcott cites with approval Atzmon’s trite and ludicrous observation that

‘People who place such questions out of bounds “are doomed to think that anti-Semitism is an ‘irrational social phenomenon that ‘erupts out of nowhere’. Accordingly they must believe that the Goyim are potentially mad.” (p 182) Alcott comments that ‘It is a matter of simple logic that to ask why Jews were hated in Europe is not to presuppose that there were good reasons.’ 

It is also a matter of simple logic to ask whether Atzmon’s statement is true or not.  This is, however, something Alcott is incapable of.  In fact it is quite possible to offer a rationale explanation for anti-Semitism which doesn’t assume that they were hated by everyone.  Anti-Semitism was for example a means by which aspiring and indebted rulers could scapegoat Jews for the ills that the peasants faced.  This however runs counter to Atzmon’s conspiracy theory of a straight line from Moses to present-day Israel.  In fact it is Atzmon’s explanation which is irrational.  Someone with a bit more intellectual depth would have asked who did the hating, why did they hate, what was the context in which they hated, always assuming they did hate.

And then one gets a far more nuanced understanding.  Incidentally the rolling up of ‘anti-Semitism’ as one long unchanging constant is itself an acceptance of a Zionist/Atzmon thesis.  In Germany the irony is that when Hitler came to power anti-Semitism was waning.  In many countries non-Jews did their best to protect Jews.  We all know that Ann Frank was hidden with her family by non-Jews, but this was not exceptional.  In Italy, the fact that 85% of Jews survived was on account of people, not least the much reviled Catholic Church, being willing to shelter them.

Alcott’s superficial apologia leads him to accept Atzmon’s nonsense.  Denmark’s whole Jewish community was rescued and taken by fishermen to Sweden.  There were large protest movements in Bulgaria, led by those wicked communists, which prevented the government deporting even one Jew (apart from the annex territories of Thrace and Macedonia).  In Amsterdam there was a general strike against the attacks on the Jewish community.  Atzmon speaks about the need to research the ‘historical narrative’ whilst pronouncing on something he has no knowledge.  He himself has made no attempt to acquaint himself with any research.  Instead he flatters the historical revisionists with their ‘research’ activities.  Alcott is his apologist.  The fact that the openly anti-Semitic Redress site, which Atzmon has a large influence over, has posted Alcott's article suggests that Alcott is nothing more than Atzmon's willing foot servant.

Other Observations

Alcott seeks to acquit Atzmon of the charge of racism by comparing him with Benny Morris, whose statements today are those of an overt Jewish racist, with Nazi overtones.  Morris defends his sweeping assertions about Arab culture by saying he is speaking of a dominant political culture.  So dominant that he regrets not expelling every single Palestinian in 1948.  Sorry Mr Alcott but comparing Atzmon to Benny Morris doesn’t excuse him.  If anything it compounds the case I and others have made.

Alcott says ‘Abunimah’s position is of course untenable’ referring to the blaming of Jewish ‘culture’ for Zionism.  Of course Alcott is unable to say why it is untenable.  Abunimah’s logic, that it is like blaming Afrikaaner ‘culture’ for Apartheid or British ‘culture’ for the crimes of British imperialism is meaningless is anything but untenable.

Alcott also confuses (or maybe doesn’t understand) Omar Barghouti’s position.  It is perfectly acceptable to cite, as Israel Shahak did, aspects of the Talmud which provide justification for the most barbaric practices of the religious Zionists.  The Talmud (compilation of Oral Law – there are 2 versions but the Iraqi version is more authoritative) is indeed as a form of legitimation but it is not the cause of Zionism.  It is only because Atzmon not only ignores Jewish opposition to Zionism but positively attacks Jewish anti-Zionists today, that he can maintain his thesis.

Alcott betrays his own motivation and beliefs when he talks of Atzmon’s ‘Exhibit A’ which is the ‘relatively large number of Jews in the UK Parliament (all hard or soft Zionists).’  Alcott writes pompously that ‘To declare out of bounds the subject of Jewish, as opposed to merely Zionist, influence in politics, finance and media is to claim that support for Zionism by many powerful people has nothing at all to do with the fact that they are Jewish, or rather, that they politically identify as Jews.’ 

Of course most Jews identify as Zionists.  That is the main basis of their being Jewish today.  There is no other socio-economic reason.  It is a trite observation.  But I am interested in the description of Jews in the UK Parliament as ‘hard or soft Zionists’ whatever that means.  Until the last general election the Jewish MP Harry Cohen identified himself as anti-Zionist.  The MP who made the most powerful speech denouncing Operation Cast Lead was none other than someone who is hated today by Zionism – regardless of whether he still calls himself a Zionist.  I refer to Gerald Kaufmann, who stated that his grandmother hadn’t died at the hands of Nazi butchers in order that Israeli butchers could murder Palestinian grandmothers.  No doubt this was a great aid to Olmert and Livni.

Alcott says that ‘Wandering does not demonstrate to my satisfaction that Jewish-ness is supremacist.’  Again he accepts the assumption that there is such a thing as ‘Jewishness’.  As such he goes down the road with Atzmon despite his protestations.  Alcott refers to the British Jewish Socialists.  Presumably he means the Jewish Socialists Group.

Alcott believes that ‘Atzmon is here too severe in his critique’ when he attacks Jewish anti-Zionists for merely trying to rehabilitate the idea of being Jewish.  If that were true then the next question would be so what?  Isn’t that another way of saying that there are some people who wish to assert a secular Jewish identity apart from Zionism.  Is that wrong?  In fact those of us who are Jewish and anti-Zionist face the most bitter attacks of the Zionists, as ‘traitors’ as Rabbi Shochet tried to do on BBC1’s Big Questions today when I disagreed with him.  The reason for their vitriol is that we are the living proof that there is nothing ‘Jewish’ about what Israel does.  Further that supporting the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.  The fact that Atzmon reserves most of his bile, not for Dershowitz but us shows where he is really coming from.

Alcott realises how difficult it is to defend Atzmon when he says of these attacks on Jewish anti-Zionists that he ‘overstates his case. It also seems merely polemical to claim that “when it comes to ‘action’ against the so-called ‘enemies of the Jewish people’, Zionists and ‘Jewish anti-Zionists’ act as one people – because they are one people.” (p 102)

It is not Jewish anti-Zionists who proclaim their opposition to BDS as a Jewish-organised campaign to take the heat off any focus on Jewish racial solidarity.  It is Atzmon who opposes BDS!  Unfortunately, in eschewing my very-well researched essay on Atzmon’s writings, Alcott is left scrabbling around reconciling opposites.  Take BDS, which let us not forget was a call from Palestinians and is universally accepted now by Palestine solidarity groups as the way ahead.  Atzmon does his best to pour scorn on it.  He has not a word to say in its favour.  To me has been explicit privately.  It is a Jewish con.






In his interview with Silvia Cattori  he says explicitly that ‘If anything, it has led to further intensified radicalisation within the right in Israel.’  Precisely the argument of apartheid supporters and apologists, like Thatcher.  It would only strengthen the Right.  Leaving aside that Atzmon believes there is a ‘right-wing’ Zionism as opposed to a ‘left’ – which in the past he has associated with the Israeli Labour Party) why is Atzmon opposed to describing Zionism and its fruit, the State of Israel, as colonial? Because it ‘locates Zionism nicely within their ideology… we first equate Israel with South Africa, and then we implement a counter-colonial strategy, such as the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions).’  Far better to concentrate on Jews as Jews with useful idiots, to use August Bebel’s famous phrase, seeking to pretend that Atzmon is just a bit confused and clear.  In fact, despite the attempts of Alcott to raise a smokescreen, Atzmon’s statements are very explicit and clear.

Alcott finds it impossible to defend the singling out by Atzmon of Alan Greenspan, who has not identified (to the best of my knowledge) as a Zionist, certainly is not prominent in so doing, but apparently was wrecking the US economy on behalf of Jewish interests.  If this is not an example of what Atzmon’s real motivation is then words are useless.  Yet Alcott  merely says that ‘Atzmon’s digression on Greenspan is harmful or at least pointless in the battle for justice for Palestinians.’  In fact all his digressions are harmful.  This is but one of many.  His singling out of Wolfowitz, as if all the neo-cons were Jewish is another example. 

Alcott’s essay is an exercise in exorcising the demons created by the Palestinians who signed the ‘Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon’.  The reason why he therefore ignores what Atzmon actually says and writes, and why the work which I’ve done is disparaged by association to Dershowitz, is that it is impossible to reconcile the anti-Semitism of his writings with his professed support for the Palestinians. 

Although I have vowed not to spend much time any longer on Atzmon, because his whole intention, to divide the Palestine solidarity movement, is ultimately aided by focussing on him, it is sometimes necessary to rebut those who try to pretend that Atzmon is a jolly anti-racist type.

The primary fault of both Atzmon and Alcott is that they operate ideologically within the parameters set by Zionism.  Alcott cites, presumably with approval, Atzmon’s own citation of Chaim Weizmann to the effect that there are no British or French Jews, merely Jews who are French.  Atzmon’s whole argument is based on an acceptance is this quite crucial aspect of Zionist argument.  However it is one which any self-respecting anti-Zionist would reject.  Jews living in Britain are British, unlike what the most inveterate anti-Semites, Atzmon and presumably Alcott argue.  It’s not a good idea to take one’s cue from the Zionist’s politically but that is Atzmon’s cardinal mistake, from which all the others – including his anti-Semitism follow.

Tony Greenstein

'This title is defamatory since it implies there was proactive contact between me the EDL prior to this demo. There was none.

Please alter it by Monday 8am to something which does not suggest active contact. Or you will hear from my lawyer.'

    JH

20 August 2010 19:15

‘On my Jewish Chronicle blog I described a photograph taken on 14 August 2010 at the pro-Ahava demonstration as "fraudulent". I also wrote "That photo was 'Photoshopped' -- and it is bloody obvious that it was 'Photoshopped' I do not discuss but I do identify lies and fraudulent Photoshopped photos."

 These statements were entirely without foundation and I had made no attempt to check their accuracy. I accept that the photo was absolutely genuine and had not been tampered with in any way. The photographer, David Hoffman, is a well known and respected photojournalist and I apologise to him unreservedly for my hasty and unfounded comments and for the distress and embarrassment caused.’

‘The Pakistani immigrant population alone have contributed a great deal to the anti-Semitic ‘culture’ of the country. The jury’s out on whether they’ve contribute much else. Oh yes, I forgot: white-child prostitution rings. How wonderfully multicultural.’

A Short Lesson in What is and Is Not Anti-Semitic

In Paris..., I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.  Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Gollancz, London 1958 p.6.   

Judaephobia is then a mental disease, and as a mental disease it is hereditary, and having been inherited for 2,000 years, it is incurable.  Pinsker, Autoemanzipation, ein Mahnrufan seine Stammesgenossen, von einem russischen Juden Berlin 1882 p.5.

Tony Greenstein

17-Point Guide To Anti-Semitism And Its Abuse

Image from 'Les 100 plus belles Images de l'Affaire Dreyfus' by Raymond Bachollet

Image from 'Les 100 plus belles Images de l'Affaire Dreyfus' by Raymond Bachollet

Gerald Scarfe, Sunday Times

Gerald Scarfe, Sunday Times

Eli Valley

AP Photo

Ariel Jerozolimski, modified by Eli Valley

Ariel Jerozolimski, modified by Eli Valley

AP Photo

Eli Valley

Jewish People Say Gerald Scarfe’s cartoon is NOT anti-Semitic

Today's Independent highlighted a letter from 28 Jewish people entitled Zionist Claims of anti-Semitism.  In fact the Zionist zealots are having trouble convincing most British Jews of how terrible the 'blood libel' cartoon of Scarfe really is!

Chaim Weizmann, President of the Zionist Organisation and fellow Zionists

Arthur J Balfour whose Declaration set the seal on the sponsorship of Zionism by British colonialism.  Balfour was a Christian Restorationist.  He was a typical example of an anti-Semite and Zionist.  In 1905, as Prime Minister, he introduced the Aliens Act designed to keep Jewish refugees from the pogroms out of Britain.

It is becoming increasingly evident that governance of the Occupied Territories is assuming permanent form. Israel’s regime is becoming established as apartheid: one legal system for Israeli citizens, based on the ‘Jewish and democratic’ version of Knesset legislation (incorporating discriminatory laws applied to Arab citizens, land expropriation, dispossession, restrictive measures such as delays in approving construction plans, deprivation in resource allocation, etc.); and another legal system –military rule – for the Palestinian population in the OTs, without any pretence of democratic rule.  For a little while after the occupation of 1967 it could have been thought that the Israeli occupation was indeed temporary, and the settlements were a sort of whim, an impulse of groups of the old ‘pioneering’ Zionist left and the new nationalist-religious right, trying to fulfil an outdated dream. But the subsequent intensive construction in the OTs, building of roads and other infrastructure, transfer of large Israeli-Jewish population into these territories, which required enormous multi-billion government expenditure – all this indicates clearly that Israel aims at permanent colonization of the OTs and creating there an irreversible state of affairs that will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and will preclude any solution other than continued Israeli rule.

Viscount Herbert Samuel - first British High Commissioner and an ardent Zionist, who appointed as Mufti, Haj al Amin Husseini, despite him coming 4th in the election to the post

The establishment of Ma‘ale Adumim, the disengagement from the Gaza Strip instigated by Sharon, as well as the construction of the Separation Barrier – all these are clues to the solution that Sharon and others have intended for the Palestinian population: concentration in autonomous Bantustan-style pockets. This setup has actually been implemented in Gaza, with well-known results.

Israel is not the only player in the arena. Resistance of the Palestinians to any solution that would not satisfy their minimal demands cannot be ignored. However, the Palestinians are divided between Fatah and Hamas regarding conditions for ending the conflict. Fatah, a movement representing the Palestinian bourgeoisie, seeks to resolve the conflict by establishing an independent Palestinian national state supported by the US and integrated in its regional order. A pre-condition for this is recognition of Israel, which Fatah (the leading movement of the PLO) has therefore accepted.

By contrast, Hamas, whose supporters are among the Palestinian proletariat and mainly the refugees, opposes a solution that would not resolve their problem. For them the problem is Zionist dispossession. Hence their demand is the restoration of their rights in the whole of Palestine, to be achieved by struggle.

But even the minimal moderate demands of Fatah – a state based on the pre-1967 borders including east Jerusalem and some kind of solution the problem of refugees (sufficient to mitigate their resistance) – are inacceptable to Israel, which shows its real intention by persisting with its policy of dispossession and construction in the OTs. The rhetoric of the ‘peace process’ can deceive no one, not even Abu-Mazen.

The US supports in general terms this solution (which, as mentioned above, implies integration of the Palestinian state in the regional imperialist order), but dare not impose it on Israel, so as not to antagonize and destabilize its main protégé. On the other hand, the Netanyahu government not only rejects this minimum solution but keeps raising the ante by demanding fresh conditions that make it impossible even to start negotiations. It must be said that should a left-Zionist led government be formed – which is in any case an unrealistic prospect in the foreseeable future – it would be unable, and most probably unwilling, to implement such a solution because of the reality that has been created on the ground, and mainly because of the massive opposition of the settlers, whose political muscle is greater than their electoral weight.

The fulfillment of the Zionist  dream - a permanent occupation of Palestinian territories

The resulting political deadlock, and the adherence to it of the Netanyahu government, appears to be leading to a bi-national state or an apartheid state. According to warnings issued by persons belonging to various shades within the left-Zionist camp, that would be the end of the Zionist dream. On the face of it, they seem to have a valid point: the Zionist right is leading Israel to an impasse. But this view – as though all Israeli governments have for years been investing billions in a pointless project and, with eyes wide open, leading Israel into a dead end – is one of denial and refusal to face the facts. Whoever is prepared to examine the system thoroughly will discover that there is method in this madness.

The colonial essence of Zionism

The terms ‘colonialism’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ are not deemed to be politically correct in the Israeli-Zionist discourse. There is a weighty reason for this: the need to repress and ignore the fact that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is essentially one between colonizing settlers and an indigenous people, that the Zionist project is fundamentally colonial, implemented via dispossession and ethnic cleansing. One of the thinkers who spoke about this openly and bluntly was Israel Zangwill, a Zionist leader admired by Benzion Netanyahu, the prime minister’s father, who quotes him approvingly in his Hebrew book The Road to Independence. This is how Zangwill put it:

“There is, however, a difficulty from which the Zionist dares not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. Palestine proper has already its inhabitants.... So we must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did, or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us.”(ii)

Zangwill was by no means the only Zionist leader to see that the implementation of Zionism must involve ethnic cleansing. Most of the Zionist leadership, from Herzl to Ben-Gurion, supported population transfer; but for the most part they understood that openly advocating it would be politically harmful to the Zionist project and tarnish its image, so they took care to speak and write about it off the public record. Quotations from their speeches and writings on the subject, as well as a wealth of information about the implementation of transfer in various places and the war crimes that it involved, can be found in the literature.(iii)

It should be pointed out that the aim of Zionist colonization was not to exploit the cheap labour power of the natives but to displace them, as was done by the settlers in North America and Australia, and replace them by Jewish immigrants.

Most of the leading circles of Palestine’s Arabs had no illusions about what the Zionist project meant for them. As far as they were concerned the danger became especially real following the Balfour Declaration, which meant that the British empire – the country’s new ruling power – supported the Zionist plan. As was to be expected, the Arabs’ reaction was implacable opposition.

As in the aforementioned colonies, the settlers in this country formed a new, Israeli-Jewish, nation. But unlike what happened in those countries, where the indigenous people were exterminated or overpowered and marginalized, the indigenous population here, part of the Arab nation, became a people possessing Palestinian national consciousness, whose specific identity was formed in the struggle against the Israeli-Jewish settler nation. This is why the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has the appearance of a national conflict over a piece of territory, to be resolved by territorial compromise.
The following two excerpts, taken from a Matzpen editorial of 10 December 1966, describe the essence of Israel’s regime; they are as topical today as they were then:

“The policy of Israel’s regime is a consistent extension of that of the Zionist movement since its beginnings: it consists in creating new facts and entrenching them by all available means, while planning and seeking to create new facts.”

“Since the existing Zionist regime of Israel cannot impose itself on the Arab World by persuasion, it needs to resort to violence. But as its own force falls short of subjugating the Arab World, it must seek the support of the power or powers that it regards as dominating this region.”

The ultimate solution: ethnic cleansing

The dispossession of Arab tenant fellaheen started right from the early days of Zionist activity in Palestine: land was bought from absentee landowners residing in Beirut or Damascus, and the tenants, whose families had worked the land for generations, were evicted by the British police. This is what happened in the Valley of Jezreel (Marj Ibn ‘Amer), in Hefer Valley (Wadi Hawarith), and wherever land inhabited by tenant fellaheen was purchased. The accumulated Arab indignation, caused by British-supported Zionist activity, resulted in the 1936–39 Arab uprising against the British authorities and the Jewish immigrants. The uprising was suppressed by the British forces, using tanks and aircraft. As a result, the Palestinians’ military, organizational and political backbone was broken and demoralization spread in their ranks. The leader of the Palestinian uprising, Hajj Amin al-Huseini, fled the country. (As is well known, he later collaborated with the Nazis against the British and the Jews.)

The momentous ethnic cleansing, the Palestinian nakba, took place during the 1948 war. Sporadic terrorist actions by both sides turned into a war following the November 1947 UN partition resolution, and subsequently escalated. It must be emphasised that for the most part the Palestinian population had little interest or involvement in the clash, and wished only to be left alone.

Nevertheless, although the Zionist leadership was aware of the Palestinians’ powerlessness, it spread fear in the Jewish yishuv, as though it was in danger of extermination. This made it possible to expel the Palestinians from villages and mixed-population towns, which were conquered more or less rapidly, without the slightest protest even on the part of those Zionists who had supported a bi-national solution and were supposedly against ethnic cleansing.

The Zionist leadership was indeed surprised by the feebleness of Palestinian resistance and the hasty escape of the population, but it knew how to exploit the situation in two ways. On the one hand it claimed that the the flight was ordered by the Palestinian leadership, wishing to prepare a clear operational arena for the Arab armies; on the other hand it intensified expulsions, especially from the areas conquered in the south following the Egyptian invasion. About 400,000 Arabs were expelled before the invasion of the Arab states’ armies, and about another 350,000 after it.

It is important to understand that process of flight and expulsion in order to infer what may happen in future. Spokespersons of the Israeli authorities and establishment historians claim, first, that the Arabs fled and were not expelled; and, second (in support of the first claim), that there had not existed a plan for expulsion, so that the flight of the Arabs must have been spontaneous or a response to an instruction/recommendation of the Arab leadership.

As for the first point: indeed the Arabs generally fled, because they realized right from the start of the hostilities that Palestinian resistance was weak and unable to withstand the Zionist military organizations and their attacks on centres of defenceless civilian population. In those few places where there was resistance, or where the Zionist forces wished to accelerate the flight, massacres were perpetrated.

The second point is of special importance for our present consideration: a detailed and comprehensive plan for expelling the Arabs and destroying their villages did not exist, nor was it needed. Transfer was an integral part inherent in Zionist ideology and practice. Every commander understood what was required of him; and if he was not sure, a small gesture of the hand was sufficient to make matters clear to him.

The same pattern was repeated in the 1967 war: immediately following the conquest of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, a ‘spontaneous’ process of transfer and destruction of villages was put in motion. By the time this move was stopped under American pressure, about 250,000 inhabitants had been expelled (‘fled’) from the West Bank and about 100,000 from the Golan Heights.

The facts that have been established on the ground and the political deadlock designed to allow continued settlement construction in the OTs have created a void into which may be drawn the classical ultimate Zionist solution – ethnic cleansing. Groups of settlers, motivated by an open ideology of transfer, are already creating provocations in the OTs, designed to ignite a major flare-up that would allow transfer to take place. The fact that the ‘security forces’ refrain from stopping them is a pointer to where this is leading. The Netanyahu government is aware that a confrontation, however great, confined to the OTs might attract international and internal opposition capable of preventing the implementation of the scheme. For this purpose what is needed is a regional large-scale conflagration lasting sufficiently long.

The scenario of the nakba may be repeated: a rocket attack may panic the Israeli public into supporting, or at least accepting, any action justified by ‘security needs’. It must be noted that the Zionist left and right do not differ regarding the Zionist aim: a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state over the largest possible territory with as few Palestinians as possible. The Zionist left supports territorial compromise when conditions do not allow this aim to be implemented in the entire area; but if that would become possible, some of them would give it their blessing, and others would perhaps accept it with regretful ‘understanding’, shedding crocodile tears. Of course, this scenario depends on the occurrence of a suitable international conjuncture, and on the acquiescence of the ‘international community’ (the states obedient to the US). In such circumstances the Palestinians would not stand a chance. 

Israel’s role in the service of imperialism, and the international situation

The idea of establishing a state for Jews in Palestine was mooted in the British government as early as the mid-19th century,(iv) in the heyday of British colonialism, decades before Herzl and the Zionist movement. At that time Britain had no foothold in the Arab east. The idea was that a Jewish state, alien to the Arab peoples, would be totally dependent on it British sponsor and serve its interests. This idea, proposed to Moses Montefiore, found little support among Jews at that time.

When favourable conditions materialized and the idea started to be implemented in Palestine, it didn’t quite work out as planned: support for Zionism created difficulties for relations between the British empire (and later the US) and the Palestinians, as well as the Arab states that coveted the territory and wished to annex it. (These states themselves were created through the division of the region according to the imperialist interests of Britain and France, following their conquest of the Ottoman empire.) Also, the prospective creation of an alien Zionist state and the dispossession of the indigenous Arabs caused internal unrest within the Arab countries, which destabilized their regimes and unsettled their relations with the British empire.

This ambiguous situation continued after the British domination of the region was replaced by that of the US and lasted until the June 1967 war. Since that war, the clear preference of the US was to support Israel as the principal and most stable mainstay of American hegemony in the region. The turning point was Israel’s decisive victory over Nasser’s Egypt, Syria and Jordan. This crushing victory also led to the downfall of Nasserism, which had posed the most significant threat to US domination of the region, and eventually to the collapse of Soviet influence in the Arab east. Thus the US achieved almost effortlessly an unprecedented gain during the cold war. Since then, the alliance with Israel has been a firm and unassailable feature of US policy in the region, granting the Israeli regime virtually absolute military, economic and political support. For its part, dependence on the US has become for Israel an existential necessity, so that continued US domination of the region is a vital Israeli interest.

At the same time it must be noted that, notwithstanding all the fine talk of shared values, democracy etc., and the influence of the Jewish lobby, US support for Israel is conditional on the latter’s role as watchdog of the imperialist order as well as on its meshing with US regional policy. This premise is now being put to the test, which threatens Israel’s strategic regional position.

The global crisis of capitalism has created shock waves around the world. Among the first to be hit were the corrupt regimes of the Arab world. The Arab Spring, the popular uprising that has spread almost everywhere in the region is undermining ‘stability’, that is to say the regional imperialist order and US hegemony.

We cannot go here into an analysis of the various events in the countries in which the Arab Spring manifested itself, so far with diverse outcomes. What is clear is that the opposition, generally led by the parties of political Islam, that has managed to achieve power, has no solution for the social problems of the masses, which had mainly caused the unrest in the first place. Therefore the insurgency has not had its last say, and stability has not been restored. It is also clear that the US has no intention of endangering the huge profits of the oil corporations, which depend on its strategic domination of the region.

Obama’s re-election, the ebbing of internal American support for the strong-arm policy initiated by G W Bush in Afghanistan and Iran, as well as the capitalist crisis and the Arab spring, have created a new situation, inviting reassessment of US policy in the region. Unlike his predecessor, Obama is reluctant to apply American military force directly (although he has not hesitated to do so by proxy: using NATO in Libya, Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in Syria). He is attempting to apply softer force and more conciliatory policy wherever possible, so long as this does not threaten basic US interests, particularly in relation to the biggest and most important countries of the region, Egypt and Iran. In Egypt the change in the style of US policy was illustrated by its acquiescence in the overthrow of Mubarak and acceptance of the Muslim Brethren opposition. Regarding Iran, it is illustrated by readiness to negotiate with the regime and accept some accommodation with the latter’s interests.

These changes in the policy of the Obama administration’s policy may reduce to some extent Israel’s strategic importance, and increase the importance of Palestinian demands, as part of the new stability that Obama is attempting to promote in the region.
The Netanyahu government, alarmed by these prospects, took unprecedented steps in an attempt to reshuffle the cards and lead back to the old strong-arm policy: it announced its intention to attack Iran without a US green light (an idea that was blocked at the eleventh hour), and made a hare-brained attempt at intervening in the US presidential election campaign, based on the assumption that a Republican administration would oppose Obama’s conciliatory policy and revert to the old policy that secures the position of Israel.
Obama’s policy has no better than even chance of working out. He has been revealed as a weak president, whose hesitancy may lead him to draw back from his plan. On the other hand, the uprising in the Arab world may continue, because the peoples’ hardship cannot be truly resolved by this or that imperialist settlement. In this situation, the entire region may be plunged into chaos and war. In such a scenario, in which Israel is supposed to play a major role, it could be rewarded by its pound of flesh: a large-scale expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and possibly also from Israel. This would spell calamity for both peoples.

Conclusions

The realization of Zionism depends on three main elements, which have been addressed in the present article: first, colonialism; second, ethnic cleansing; third, association with a foreign power that dominates the region. Without any one of these, Zionism is but an insubstantial idea. Therefore, irrespective of which ideological current is leading a Zionist Israel, these three elements will perennially determine the reality created by Zionism and its consequences. This is the essence of the problem; but Israeli politics, the Zionist parties and the media, do not address it but are engaged in debates about sorting out its symptoms.

This forecast of the outcome of the process just described is not a prophecy; it is inferred from the whole history of Zionist practice in Palestine. The fact that Israel prefers political deadlock and continued colonization to any solution, albeit partial, that would dampen the flames of the conflict; the extremely asymmetric balance of power between Israel and the Palestinians as well as between imperialism and the ‘international community’ and the peoples of the Arab east – all these suggest a process that may lead to an apocalypse. True, this is not the only possible outcome, and unforeseen circumstances may well arise, forcing all forecasts to be altered. But it would be wrong to bury one’s head in the sand and ignore the dangers.

In any case, it is clear that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict will not be resolved within the narrow framework of Israel-Palestine: it is inseparably bound up with the geopolitical situation in the entire region. Neither the existing imperialist order, nor nationalist or theocratic regimes, can genuinely solve the problems of the peoples of the region, which are basically social.

The Arab Spring – a popular uprising that will re-emerge so long as the problems that engendered it have not been resolved – is a struggle against all the ills of imperialism and its partners, the reactionary Arab regimes and Zionism; it renews the relevance of internationalist socialism as the solution to the region’s social problems and conflicts. Far off as it may seem to be, it has no real substitute.

Socialism (not modelled on the discredited Soviet regime) can also attract the impoverished Israeli working class, as well as the white-collar workers who are forced down into the ranks of the proletariat together with other disadvantaged strata, all those who came out in the social protest of 2011, to renounce Zionism, capitalism and dependence on imperialism, which shackle the Israeli people to endless wars, isolate it from the peoples of the region, and endanger its existence in confrontation with the Arab world.

I.  Hebrew text posted 27 December 2012 on Hagada Hasmalit This translation by Moshé Machover
II.  “Zionism and England’s Offer”, The Maccabaean (American Jewish journal), December 1904. Quoted in
III.  See, for example, Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (London: Oneworld, 2006).
IV.   See British Support for Jewish Restoration.

Rabbi Schochet - cultivates an air of liberalism but is a prominent member of a religious sect that justifies genocide against non-Jews and Arabs and excuses child abuse.  The mask slipped as he couldn't conceal his outrage at having to deal with Jewish anti-Zionist opponents and opposition to gay marriage

Tony Greenstein - despite being outnumbered by a gaggle of Zionists made the issue of Palestinian oppression the key issue - many members of the audience came up afterwards to express their agreement

Although the actual question was 'Is Criticising Israel anti-Semitic' the debate was entirely about the cartoon of Gerald Scarfe, that was falsely accused of being 'anti-Semitic'.

On Sunday I spent the morning in Leicester courtesy of BBC1’s Big Questions.  The Sunday Times last week published a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe showing Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, with a trowel dripping in Palestinian blood cementing Palestinians into the Apartheid Wall.  Sure enough the predictable calls came that this was ‘anti-Semitic’.  It was the medieval blood libel no less! 

Letter to The Independent from 28 Jews who Reject Zionist Libel of anti-Semitism

This was a bogus and wholly artificial debate about nothing.  Even dedicated Zionists like Howard Jacobson accepts that there was nothing anti-Semitic about Scarfe’s cartoon.   And Rupert Murdoch, who as proprietor, apologised for the cartoon, presides over newspapers like the Sun which are virulently hostile to refugees, asylum seekers, Roma and any other minority they can get their hands on.  Murdoch himself has been caught using anti-Semitic comments such as ‘Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel’.

Even ardent Zionist Howard Jacobson agrees that Gerald Scarfe's cartoon was not anti-Semitic.  To Lubavitch's aptly named Rabbi Schochet (a slaughterer in Hebrew!) it was 'pure unadulterated anti-semitism' or maybe pure unadulterated hype

As was pointed out by another member of the audience, traditional Jewish stereotypes, as per Julius Streicher’s Der Sturmer, show fat hooked nose Jews with duping the non-Jews out of their worldly wealth or debauching someone.  Scarfe’s cartoon did none of these things.  It merely told the truth is the form of a visual metaphor.  And the truth is what the main Zionist spokesperson, Rabbi Schochet and his minions wished to suppress in yesterday’s Big Questions.  It was one of the programme’s 3 debates.
Bogus Charges of ‘anti-Semitism’

Enjoying seeing Rabbi Shochet lose his cool as his bland assertions about Scarfe's cartoon being 'pure unadulterated anti-Semitism' fell as flat as a (kosher) pancake

When Zionists use the term ‘anti-Semitism’ what they really mean is ‘new anti-Semitism’ i.e. not hatred of Jews but opposition to Israel, the ‘Jewish’ State. And what is a ‘Jewish’ state but a state that gives privileges to Jews above non-Jews.  The old anti-Semitism manifested itself in things like beating up Jewish children if they walked down the wrong street in the East End of the 1930’s.  The new ‘anti-Semitism’ is manifested in opposition to the United State’s guard dog in the Middle East and the world's fourth strongest military power!

The Medieval Blood Libel

For those not aware, the Blood Libel was the invention of Christian anti-Semitism.  Every Passover and Easter, Jews were accused of kidnapping and killing non-Jewish children or babies in order that their blood could be used to bake unleavened bread (Matzot) on Passover.  It led to many hundreds if not thousands of deaths.  Its first appearance in the Middle East was in 1840 in the Damascus Affair when 13 Jews were accused of having murdered a Franciscan priest.  The French Consul and Franciscan monks whipped the population into a fury and arrested and tortured 13 Jews, 4 of whom died.  The Affair was subject to the vigorous intervention of Sir Moses Montefiore, the famous British Jewish philanthropist.  It is noticeable that the Blood Libel was only introduced to the region via French imperialism and its reactionary church.  Previously it had been unheard of in the Middle East.

The accusation that Gerald Scarfe’s cartoon was reminiscent of the blood libel is itself a libel.  If I was Gerald Scarfe I would be issuing a writ for defamation.  Unfortunately Gerald was placed under an enormous amount of pressure and forced to apologise.  

The accusations of the Zionists are based on the absurd idea that the depiction of blood in a cartoon is an anti-Semitic blood libel! A child could see that that is ludicrous.  Not so the Lubavitch Rabbi of Mill Hill synagogue, Rabbi Schochet, who was the principal Zionist spokesperson on Big Questions, arguing that it was ‘pure unadulterated anti-Semitism’.   Clearly Shochet has led a very sheltered life.

Zionist McCarthyism

What we have really seen is an exercise in McCarthyism.  An attempt to close down free speech by the Zionists.  So weak is their case that they are forced to resort to cheap, unsubstantiated jibes of ‘anti-Semitism’.  On American campuses many Zionist activists spend most of their time trying to silence opposing points of view.  So when Gerald Scarfe’s cartoon was published in a Murdoch newspaper (the idea of freedom of the press, as opposed to freedom for the proprietor is unknown to this far-right racist warmonger).

Lubavitch and Rabbi Schochet

Schochet himself is a thoroughly disingenuous fellow.  Despite an apparent aura of liberalism (which let slip over gay marriage and in his references to Jewish traitors in his tweet over the Scarfe cartoon) he is a member of the fanatically racist Lubavitch sect which believes non-Jews have animal souls  and that Jewish life is sacred when compared to non-Jews.  As the site of the former Lubavitch member and whistleblower, Shmarya Rosenberg's Failed Messiahexplains, the Tanya, the foundational religious document of Lubavitch, ‘contains some of the most virulent anti-Gentile statements ever printed in the name of Judaism, and that the author of the Tanya, the first rebbe of Chabad, Schneur Zalman of Liadi, did not consider non-Jews to be fully human.’ 

In Sholom Rubashkin Prints A Tanya Rosenberg, cites how

The souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot [husks] which contain no good whatever מו שכתוב בע׳ חיים שער מ״ט פרק ג׳: וכל טיבו דעבדין האומות לגרמייהו עבדין as is written in Etz Chayim, Portal 49, ch. 3, that all the good that the nations do, is done out of selfish motives. 

Since their nefesh [soul] emanates from kelipot [husks] which contain no good, it follows that any good done by them is for selfish motives. וכדאיתא בגמרא על פסוק: וחסד לאומים חטאת — שכל צדקה וחסד שאומות העולם עושין אינן אלא להתייהר כו׳

The Gemara [Babylonian Talmud] comments on the verse, “The kindness of the nations is sin”  that all the charity and kindness done by the nations of the world is only for their self-glorification

In Rabbi Schochet of the Racist Lubavitch - Big Questions Panellist and Guardian Columnist , which I posted at the time of my last acquaintance with Schochet on Big Questions, I noted how he had failed to dissociate himself from the racism of Lubavitch, to say nothing of Zionism.  I described how Lubavitch Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, who lives in Israel, had written a book, Torat HaMelech (The King’s Torah) which explicitly justified if not urged the murder of non-Jewish children and infants since they were the seed of the Jews’ historical enemy, the Amalekites.

Indeed beneath the liberal image he cultivates is a die-hard Lubavitcher, whose father and grandfather were also Lubavitch rabbis.  Perhaps this explains why he tried to persuade the London Beth Din - orthodox rabbinical court to call a halt to all conversions of non-Jews.  Since Israel's rabbis have got into the habit of not recognising some Orthodox conversions abroad (they have previously reversed conversions if the person left the State of Israel!) Shochet proposed to overcome the problems of non-recognition of conversions by putting an end to them!  What was of more concern to Shochet was the purity of the Jewish people/race and not being contaminated by non-Jews.  [London Beit Din Rejects Chabad Rabbi's Call For Worldwide Conversion Ban -The beit din said it took “exception” to Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet's comments].

Lubavitch's Rabbi Shapira was not an isolated voice.  He was volubly defended in Israel by hundreds of rabbis, Lubavitch and non-Lubavitch.  In one meeting there were 250 rabbis.  Hundreds signed a letter in Shapira’s support.  It says in his book that

‘It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation. If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder [either].'

See Max Blumenthal and ‘How to Kill Goyim and Influence People: Israeli Rabbis Defend Book's Shocking Religious Defense of Killing Non-Jews’

Rabbi Manis Friedman - another Lubavitch Rabbi on Child Abuse and the Killing of Non-Jews 

Child abuse is not damaging.  In fact it teaches you an important lesson as to who your friends are!

Another prominent Lubavitch Rabbi, Manis Friedman from America, where Lubavitch is based, is an all-round bigot.  Whether it is women, children, Arabs or non-Jews they are each in their own way inferior – some more than others.

Friedman’s views on the indigenous population of Palestine and the Arabs are best described in an article in Ha'aretz of 9th June 2009 ‘Chabad rabbi: Jews should kill Arab men, women and children during war (see below) 

‘Child victims of sex abuse – ‘they are not damaged’’

Rabbi Manis Friedman not merely sanctions child abuse but he blames the child for the abuse. He told one such victim that they had no need to tell anyone about what had happened to them, anymore than they’d want to tell anyone about having diarrhoea!  The event itself was unimportant, what mattered was the lesson it taught.  But Rabbi Friedman was only saying aloud what Chabad (Lubavitch) believes internally.  It has a long history of  trying to cover up child and sex abuse within the Lubavitch community.  Indeed to report an incident of rape or abuse to non-Jews is itself a sin. In another instance, where a Chabad vigilante group beat up 5 Yeshiva (religious school) students, Chabad Rabbis Avrohom Osdoba, Shlomo Yehuda Segal, and Yitzchok Raitport issued a summons which talked of “the terrible sin informing on Jews to the secular courts.”  This 'terrible sin' equally applies to those who report child abuse, rape and sexual assault. SeeCrown Heights Beit Din Rules Vigilantes Attacked By Other Jewish Vigilantes Violated Mesira Law By Pressing Charges

See below New York Rabbi Manis Friedman Filmed Comparing Child Abuse to Diarrhoea. 

Chabad Lies that Rabbi Manis Friedman Is Not A Chabad Emissary
In order to escape the embarrassment of Friedman’s comments condoning child abuse, the Chabad Yeshivah Centre, headquarters for Australia and New Zealand in Melbourne, issued a statement denying that Rabbi Friedman had anything to do with them.  This was yet one more lie.  Shmarya Rosenberg, a very reliable source on the crimes and misdemeanours of Chabad, demonstrated quite easily through the use of screenshots, that Friedman was prominently advertised on the Chabad website as the Educational Director of Lubavitch House in St. Paul's, Minnesota! See Chabad: "We Vehemently Disagree" With Rabbi Manis Friedman.  Rosenberg writes about 'The massive scandal surrounding Chabad's Yeshivah Centre (which) has been national news in Australia where police have openly condemned Chabad community leadership for what we would call in the United States obstruction of justice... for their roles in the coverups of this child sexual abuse and for attempts to intimidate victims and their families.

According to followers, the late Rebbe Schneersohn was either the messiah or god or perhaps both

It would take a whole chapter to point to the madness of Lubavitch, who believe their late leader the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, was the new Messiah.  Indeed some believe he was god himself.  Which from my perspective, being an atheist, he could of course have been!   See A Historian's Polemic Against 'The Madness of False Messianism' by David Berger , [The Forward 19.10.01] which argues that the Lubavitch sect, with its Messiah Now chants and its belief that the Rebbe was the Messiah, has effectively collapsed into Christian messianism.

For more on the genocidal anti-Arab comments of Rabbi Manis Friedman, see: Chabad rabbi to Moment: “Destroy [Muslim] holy sites”  [June 01, 2009] and also Chabad rabbi aims to clarify remarks on killing civilians  (see below)

Shmarya Rosenberg wrote that ‘I've known Manis for 25 years. I used to live around the corner from him. I heard Manis say the same thing many times. I also heard many other Chabad rabbis say it – even I said it.’ What is unusual is to have a Chabad rabbi say it for non-Chabad consumption. The theology is the theology of two people: The late Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson and the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.'

This is a very crucial point.  Chabad (Lubavitch) is a mainstream Orthodox group.  Kach is seen as belonging to the fringe.  Led by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane it was quite rightly seen, even by other Zionists, as a Jewish-Nazi group.  It called for the imprisoning of Arab males who had sexual relations with Jewish women, echoing the Nuremburg Law for the Protection of German Honour and German Blood of 1935 which outlawed sexual relations between Jews and 'Aryans' as part of the drive for 'racial hygiene' and the prevention of Rassenschande (racial defilement/pollution).


'Chabad and Kahane shared much with regard to Israeli politics and inner city Jewish community security.  The only real difference is that Kahane was theologically Zionist while Chabad is not.  By that I mean Kahane saw messianic portent in the Jewish state, while Chabad does not.
In day to day life, there is no real difference between the two positions except in religious matters. … That means Chabadniks and Kachniks can and do stand side by side in the dusty outposts and remote settlements of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). But on days like Yom HaAtzmaut, they make two minyans instead of one.’ Chabad Rabbi Tries To Clarify Remarks On Killing Muslims, Destroying Muslim Holy Places

Why do I concentrate on this Chasidic sect?  Because it is very powerful within the Jewish and Zionist community.  Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is very close to them.  The 3rd President of the Israeli state, Zalman Shazar, was a supporter.  Rabbi Schochet himself was talked about as a future Chief Rabbi. See Rabbi Schochet of the Racist Lubavitch - Big Questions Panellist and Guardian Columnist
 
Chabad however are not stupid and someone like Shochet, although a religious maniac who exhorts his congregation to chant ‘Moshiach (Messiah) Now’ in order to hasten the Messiah's arrival, itself held to be blasphemous in Jewish religion circles historically, cultivates the air of a liberal with all the rhetoric of diversity at his disposal.

New York Rabbi Manis Friedman Filmed Comparing Child Abuse to Diarrhoea

A leading rabbi has compared child sex abuse to diarrhoea and said it teaches victims an important lesson.

Rabbi Manis Friedman, a New York-based leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, was filmed making the comments in a lecture.

In it, he discusses a child abuse victim who asked him about discussing the abuse with a new girlfriend: "They ask me, 'do I have to tell her I was molested?'

"I said 'do you have to tell her you once had diarrhoea?' It's embarrassing, but it's nobody's business.
"What's wrong with him is that he mentioned it."

Friedman, who was born in Australia, suggested that the damage caused by child abuse was mainly psychological in that it results in "loss of trust".

"It's not the event itself, it's the loss of trust, the feeling of weakness or vulnerability," he explained.
However, the acclaimed Torah scholar also asserted that "being molested is the same as having teachers you don't like.'

"The event itself - 'I'm damaged from molestation' - no you're not. In fact you've learned that not every uncle is your best friend. You've learned an important lesson."

He goes on to discuss how we are all damaged people by events that occur in our lives and that such issues "are real for almost everybody", not just child abuse victims.

Manny Waks, an anti-sex abuse campaigner, has now launched a lawsuit against Friedman in the Jewish court, or Beth Din, in Sydney and Crown Heights in Brooklyn.

He says Friedman is doing "untold damage" to the entire Jewish community and that he is perpetuating a negative perception of the orthodox community in particular.

"Most concerning, he is having a direct, damaging impact on victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and their families," Waks said.

Rabbi Padwa - it is a Mesira - forbidden - to inform the Police or any non-Jew about Jewish child abuse.

The film of Friedman follows a similar video which showed Rabbi Ephraim Padwa, who leads the Charedi community in north London's Stamford Hill, telling an abuse victim not to go to the police -  ‘Child Abuse Hidden in London's Strict Orthodox Jewish Community, Claims C4's Dispatches 

Rabbi Padwa says that by going to the police would constitute mesira - meaning it is forbidden to report a Jew to a non-Jewish authority.

Rabbi Manis Friedman clarifies his controversial comment as quote from Torah permissible in case of self-defense.

Ha'aretz 9th June 2009 The Forward and Nathaniel Popper

Like the best Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Manis Friedman has won the hearts of many unaffiliated Jews with his charismatic talks about love and God; it was Friedman who helped lead Bob Dylan into a relationship with Chabad.

But Friedman, who today travels the country as a Chabad speaker, showed a less warm and cuddly side when he was asked how he thinks Jews should treat their Arab neighbors.

"The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle)," Friedman wrote in response to the question posed by Moment Magazine for its "Ask the Rabbis" feature.

Friedman argued that if Israel followed this wisdom, there would be "no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war."

"I don't believe in Western morality," he wrote. "Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention."

Friedman's use of phrasing that might seem more familiar coming from an Islamic extremist has generated a swift backlash. The editor of Moment, Nadine Epstein, said that since the piece was printed in the current issue they "have received many letters and e-mails in response to Rabbi Friedman's comments - and almost none of them have been positive."

Friedman quickly went into damage control. He released a statement to the Forward, through a Chabad spokesman, saying that his answer in Moment was "misleading" and that he does believe that "any neighbor of the Jewish people should be treated, as the Torah commands us, with respect and compassion."

But Friedman's words have generated a debate about whether there is a darker side to the cheery face that the Chabad-Lubavitch movement shows to the world in its friendly outreach to unaffiliated Jews. Mordecai Specktor, editor of the Jewish community newspaper in Friedman's hometown, St. Paul. Minnesota, said: "The public face of Lubavitch is educational programs and promoting Yiddishkeit. But I do often hear this hard line that Friedman expresses here."

"He sets things out in pretty stark terms, but I think this is what Lubavitchers believe, more or less," said Specktor, who is also the publisher of the American Jewish World.

"They are not about loving the Arabs or a two-state solution or any of that stuff. They are fundamentalists. They are our fundamentalists." 

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a regular critic of Arab extremists, said that in the Jewish community, "We are not immune to having these views. There are people in our community who have these bigoted, racist views."

But, Foxman warned, Friedman's views are not reflective of the Chabad rabbis he knows. "I am not shocked that there would be a rabbi who would have these views," Foxman said, "but I am shocked that Moment would give up all editorial discretion and good sense to publish this as representative of Chabad."

A few days after anger about the comment surfaced, Chabad headquarters released a statement saying that, "we vehemently disagree with any sentiment suggesting that Judaism allows for the wanton destruction of civilian life, even when at war."

The statement added: "In keeping with Jewish law, it is the unequivocal position of Chabad-Lubavitch that all human life is G-d given, precious, and must be treated with respect, dignity and compassion."

In Moment, Friedman's comment is listed as the Chabad response to the question "How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?" after a number of answers from rabbis representing other Jewish streams, most of which state a conciliatory attitude toward Arabs.

Epstein said that Friedman was "brave" for stating his views so clearly.

"The American Jewish community doesn't have the chance to hear opinions like this," Epstein said, "not because they are rare, but because we don't often ask Chabad and other similar groups what they think." 

The Chabad movement is generally known for its hawkish policies toward the Palestinians; the Chabad Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, rejected peace accords with the Palestinians. Rabbi Moshe Feller, the top Chabad rabbi in Minnesota, said that the rebbe taught that it is not a mitzvah to kill, but that Jews do have an obligation to act in self-defense.

"Jews as a whole, they try to save the lives of others," Feller told the Forward, "but if it's to save our lives, then we have to do what we have to do. It's a last resort."

Lubavitch Rabbi Manis Friedman - a big for all seasons

Friedman is not a fringe rabbi within the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. He was the English translator for the Chabad Rebbe, and at the rebbe's urging, he founded Beis Chana, a network of camps and schools for Jewish women. Friedman is also a popular speaker and writer on issues of love and relationships. His first book, "Doesn't Anyone Blush Anymore?" was promoted with a quote from Bob Dylan, who Friedman brought to meet the rebbe.

On his blog and Facebook page, Friedman's emphasis is on his sympathetic, caring side. It was this reputation that made the comment in Moment so surprising to Steve Hunegs, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council: Minnesota and the Dakotas.

"Rabbi Friedman is a best-selling author who addresses some of the most sensitive issues of the time," Hunegs said. "I intend to call him and talk to him about this."

But Shmarya Rosenberg, a blogger and critic of Chabad who lives a few blocks from Friedman in Minnesota, says that the comment in Moment is not an aberration from his experiences with Friedman and many other Chabad rabbis.

"What he's saying is the standard normal view of a Chabadnik," Rosenberg said. "They just don't say it in public."

For his part, Friedman was quick to modify the statement that he wrote in Moment. He told the Forward that the line about killing women and children should have been in quotes; he said it is a line from the Torah, though he declined to specify from which part. Friedman also said that he was not advocating for Israel to actually kill women and children. Instead, he said, he believed that Israel should publicly say that it is willing to do these things in order to scare Palestinians and prevent war.

"If we took this policy, no one would be killed - because there would be no war," Friedman said. "The same is true of the United States."

Friedman did acknowledge, however, that in self-defense, the behavior he talked about would be permissible.

"If your children are threatened, you do whatever it takes - and you don't have to apologize," he said.
Friedman argued that he is different from Arab terrorists who have used similar language about killing Jewish civilians.

"When they say it, it's genocide, not self-defense," Friedman said. "With them, it's a religious belief - they need to rid the area of us. We're not saying that." 

Feller, the Chabad leader in Minnesota, said that the way Friedman had chosen to express himself was "radical."

"I love him," Feller said. "I brought him out here - he's magnificent. He's brought thousands back to Torah mitzvah. But he shoots from the hip sometimes." See also Chabad rabbi aims to clarify remarks on killing civiliansJewish Telegraph Agency – Ben Harris 2.6.09.

Sodastream Advert Goes Down Like a Bomb 

Let no one suggest that I don't give a fair crack of the whip to Sodastream, Israel's soft drinks manufacturer which steals land and resources from the Palestinians.  Here is an advert for them!

Ireland: Rupert Murdoch's newspapers relationship with the powerful & corrupt may be his Achilles heel.

Cross posted from Organised Outrage

Idiot labour chauvinist Gordon Brown tries to cuddle up to Murdoch - Murdoch could smell a loser and backed Cameron instead!

Brown gets his come-uppance as Murdoch dumps him

The lugubrious right-wing git whose papers are the most racist around but who opposes 'anti-Semitism' when supporting Zionism

Senator George Mitchell - his senior aide was smeared in a made up sex scandal with an IRA man, Gerald Kelly as the Sun & Murdoch tried to derail the Irish  peace process

Made up IRA sex scandal story and others now come back to haunt Murdoch Empire.

The Zionists Examine Palestinian Supporters’ Speech for Traces of ‘anti-Semitism’ 

Whilst working with anti-Semites from the EDL to neo-Nazis

David Ward MP

Latvian Waffen SS march that Robert Ziles MEP supports

Today I had a letter in the Guardian defending David Ward MP, the Bradford East MP for the Lib Dems against false charges of ‘anti-Semitism’:

Purpose of Zionist supporters in accusing people of ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations are to deflect attention from the Israel’s racist policies and regime.   The individuals concerned will have never worked on anti-racist campaigns, can be relied on to be Islamaphobic and almost certainly support the right or far-right in this country.  If ever anti-Semitism became a major issue in Britain, they’d be the first to collaborate.

You wouldn’t think that only last year a gaggle of neo-Nazis were invited to pay homage to the Jewish dead of the holocaust at the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial and propaganda museum.

Far right and anti-semitic MPE who leads right-wing nationalist group in European Parliament

Our favourite Rabbi Schochet, who is so voluble when it comes to 'anti-Semitism' was an entirely different approach to supporters of Israel.  He is quoted in the Jewish Chronicle as saying that '

“We are intending to host Michal Kaminski at an evening open to the entire community once his itinerary is confirmed. It is hoped to hold this event in liaison with Conservative Friends of Israel and I personally hope to host him in a private capacity on a Friday night.
“I decided to extend the invitation precisely because of the ambiguity surrounding him. Mr Kaminski is known to have a colourful past but is presently a strong supporter of Israel and is leading a lobby against the anti-shechitah parties.”

Kaminiski - not happy

I guess that 'colourful' is one way to describe an open fascist (despite denying wearing fascist symbols he was caught out).

Nor would you imagine that Michael Kaminiski of Poland’s Justice and Freedom Party would have been invited to Yad Vashem.  He it was who opposed an apology for the burning alive of hundreds of Jews at Jedwabne in Poland was nonetheless a strong supporter of Israel.   Indeed, as Glenn Back has demonstrated with his accusations of Jewish financial intrigue, with George Soros in particular being behind the economic crisis, if you want to hid your anti-Semitism you become a Zionist. Glenn Beck, a believer in Jewish conspiracy theories, was nonetheless given a rapturous reception by Israel’s Knesset.

Glenn Beck, was too anti-Semitic even for Fox.  For 2 days he ran a feature on Fox attacking George Soros, a survivor of the Hungarian holocaust, as a Nazi collaborator as well as repeating many well-worn anti-Semitic themes:  He also devoted another programme to a conspiracy theory about various bankers, including the Rothschilds, to create the Federal Reserve. To make this case, Beck hosted the conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, who has publicly argued that the anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” “accurately describes much of what his happening in our world today.”


 
For example Deputy Minister Ayook Kara of the governing Likud Party invited a neo-Nazi millionaire to Israel for talks  and possibly the worst and most vivid example of how Zionists really think about the holocaust victims (who were previously held in contempt and known as soap) Yad Vashem, the Zionist attempt to capitalise on the holocaust by erecting a museum with a very particular Zionist slant (it is build next to the Deir  Yassin village which was the subject of a masacre by Zionist militias)  - has become the top tourist attraction for Europe’s neo-Nazi and far-Right politicians.
This is the context for the vicious attack on David Ward, Lib Dem MP for Bradford East, who is in danger of the Jenny Tonge treatment.  Except that, given the state of the Lib Dems nationally, standing as an independent in Bradford East with the support of the Asian community might be the best was to hold on to his seat.  But David Ward of course, od is no anti-Semites:
 
"Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza, he has been the subject of outraged condemnations.’
 
It is an extremely pertinent question.  How would Jewish people who had suffered from the Nazis become the perpetrator of massacre and expulsion.  Of course this is too simplistic.  Zionism was an independent settler-colonial project with its own internal dynamic.  It was interest in one thing above all – building a Jewish state.  Saving Jews came way down in its lists of priorities.  Indeed the movement to save Jews to anywhere but Palestine and Boycott Nazi Germany went against Zionist interests.  The biggest enemy was ‘refugeeism’ which sought to save Jews anywhere in the world.  This was anathema to Zionism which wanted emigration ONLY to Palestine.

But the Zionist were having none of this.  The comparison between what the Jews suffered under the Nazis and what the Palestinians are suffering is anathema to them.  Right on cue, Ken Pollock of the Zionists’ Holocaust Educational Trust mimed that ‘"These comments are sickening and unacceptable and have no place in British politics," "My Jewish husband is worth a thousand of you, @DavidWardMP," wrote Louise Mensch (which, to be fair, does not count as an edifying contribution to an already pretty unedifying debate.)  Mensch is the Tory MP for Kettering who bolted and handed the seat to New Labour when she realised that she wasn’t going to be re-elected.

The main mistake David Ward made was a trivial one.  He should have used the term ‘Jewish people’ instead of all Jews.  Perfectly understandable since Israel claims its atrocities and murder are carried out in the name of all Jews.

In ‘Why does Latvia still honour the Waffen-SS?’ the now described Zionist fraudster, Dennis MacShane asks in the New Statesman of 16th March 2012 why Robert Ziles, a Latvian MEP who marches with the veterans of the Waffen SS each year is  linked with the same right-wing group.  He might also have asked why it is that Israel welcomes him to Yad Vashem with open arms as an honoured guest?

see  also Is Michal Kaminski fit to lead the Tories in Europe?

A Comparison by Simon Pirani formerly of the WRP

How Solidarity saw the fall-out

The youth who Healy focussed on and whose political enthusiasm he destroyed

A dead reptile - Corin Redgrave covered up for Healy's rape of young comrades on the grounds of revolutionary morality.  Vanessa Regrave was and is equally culpable

A monster certainly but one who was tolerated by too many like Ken Livingstone and 'Red' Ted Knigh of Lambeth Council

By Corinna Lotz and Paul Feldman

Foreword by Ken Livingstone MP 

Paul and Corinna have been friends of mine for over 13 years. When they asked me to contribute a foreword to their biography of Gerry Healy I was delighted. At a time when political memories are growing increasingly short, it is good that the effort has been made to record the life of Gerry Healy, a revolutionary Marxist who had a massive impact on the working class socialist movement, in Britain and internationally.

The fashionable obsession with the "end of history" is no more than a disguise for jettisoning valuable common experiences and major contributions made by revolutionaries such as Gerry Healy. Naturally this suits those who would like to bury for ever the memory of his unique concept of political work.

I first met Gerry Healy in 1981, shortly after I became Leader of the Greater London Council and was immediately captivated by his vivid recollection of events and personalities on the left. He had recognised the changed political climate which enabled Labour to take control of County Hall, and that we were using the immense resources of the Greater London Council to support those struggling for jobs and other rights.

Gerry Healy saw that it was possible to use the GLC as a rallying fortress for Londoners who were opposed to Thatcher's hard-line monetarism. Contrary to the image spread by his opponents, I was impressed by the non-sectarian approach that the News Line took on the reforms the GLC introduced. News Line's coverage was thorough and objective throughout our struggles. Given we were under siege by the Fleet Street press, it was a relief to pick up the WRP's paper in the morning! The GLC's public relations department usually put the News Line articles on the front page of the daily press cuttings bundle.

The first discussion I had with Gerry Healy made a great impact on me. Coming from a party where long term thinking is usually defined by the next opinion poll, I was challenged by the broad sweep of his knowledge and the freshness of his approach. He knew how to operate in the political present through his understanding of the movement of economic and social forces.

Although we were in totally different political organisations, Gerry Healy always tried to find a point of connection with the world in which I moved. He did this because he wanted to find ways of working with the left in the Labour Party on common issues and principles. But he never laid down conditions. He accepted that there were fundamental differences between us, but they should not prevent us from collaborating against the Tories. It was a refreshing change from the world of intrigues and back-stabbing politics of the Labour Party. That is why I felt happy about speaking at News Line rallies, even though I came under a lot of fire from those like Dennis Healey within my own party.

During the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Gerry Healy and the News Line worked with a group of us in the Labour Party to end Labour's silence on the repression of the Palestinian people. In the aftermath of the slaughter of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shattila camps, we succeeded in winning the recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian People by the Labour Party Conference of 1982.
Gerry Healy and I both endured great upheavals during the 1985-1986 period with the Tories abolishing the GLC and the WRP torn apart by a major split. We lost touch for a time, but renewed contact a few years before he died because of his work in the USSR. I was happy but not surprised to discover that we had reached similar conclusions about the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union during 1987-1989. Our last meeting in the summer of 1989 was devoted to a long conversation about the significance of perestroika and glasnost. We both knew that the events in the Soviet Union would change the lives of everyone in the world, and especially those involved in socialist politics.
The other area we had a close understanding about was the role of the secret services in Britain. We knew that joint campaigning between genuine Marxists and socialists in the Labour Party was viewed as a dangerous threat by the intelligence services. In particular, contacts between us and national liberation movements such as the Palestinians drew even more attention from the British state.

My own research and experiences have strengthened, not weakened, my conviction that MI5 considers even the smallest left organisation worthy of close surveillance and disruption. Given the pivotal role of Healy in maintaining contact with Yasser Arafat's HQ through the WRP's use of the latest technology, MI5 clearly felt that they had to stop the growing influence of the WRP. I have never changed my belief that the split in the WRP during 1985 was the work of MI5 agents.

It was a privilege to have worked with Gerry Healy. I know this book will give those who did not know him an opportunity to understand his contribution to the working class revolutionary movement.

Ken Livingstone MP
March 1994

The Racist & Colonial Reality of Sodastream

 They were there to celebrate the 600m shekels of exports that Sodastream has brought in.  The award was given by Israeli President Shimon Peres and Sodastream had even brought along 3 Palestinian workers.  Just to show how liberal and enlightened they and the occupation was.

Palestinian workers that Sodastream brought along

Only problem is that the Palestinians were separated off and subject to a strip search.  Thus reminding us all of the context in which the Sodastream bubble operates.

Jewish Chronicle Tries to Incite the Police into Banning the Demonstration

Jewish Chronicle's Hysterical Leader

The Jewish Chronicle's Wishful Thinking

In the Jewish Chronicle’s Orwellian World a Peaceful Demonstration is ‘Anti-Semitic Mob Rule’!

Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle learnt his trade at the feet of the most unscrupulous and malevolent of all newspaper proprietors, Richard Desmond, when he was Editor of the Daily Expressgave Pollard his first journalistic break.  Pollard is an unabashed free marketer and holds the view that, in the "battle to save western civilisation", the "Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy".

Editor of the Jewish Chronicle - Pollard sees the Left as the main enemy and is a neo-con member of the Henry Jackson society

As Tim Walker of the Daily Telegraph of 15.10.11 noted ‘The tycoon, who once goose-stepped around a boardroom and accused all Germans of being Nazis during a meeting with executives of The Daily Telegraph, was criticised at the Leveson inquiry.’ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8827987/Porn-baron-Richard-Desmond-is-David-Camerons-guest-at-Chequers.html   Desmond owned ‘adult’ TV channels Television X, Red Hot TV and others and a host of porn magazines such as Asian Babes and Big Ones.  None of which stopped him funding New Labour under Blair!

Mob rule in Brighton (1)

 

 

Mob rule in Brighton (2)

Mob rule in Brighton (3)

Mob rule in Brighton (4)

Mob rule in Brighton (5)

Sodastream Brighton Is Already Damaged Goods– No one Wants to Buy Stolen Goods

I tried a small experiment today.  I went back to Sodastream shop and took some pictures, about an hour after the last demonstrator had left.  According to Simon Cobbs, the EDL supporting Zionist who organises the counter-demonstration,  ‘Dr Lucas rejected claims that if the protests did not move from directly outside EcoStream, the store would close.’

Not a shopper in sight

Of course to Cobb and the Zionists the fact that a demonstration is successful in persuading people not to shop somewhere is evidence that they are being intimidated and the protest should be banned.  Protests, after all, should only be allowed when they have no hope of persuading anyone of anything!

I was, therefore, curious to see what trade was like when we were not there.  Perhaps Cobb was right.  After all, even a stopped clock, and Cobb is somewhat repetitious, is right twice a day.  I went expecting to see a few customers.  Surely curiosity, if nothing more, would lead to people go in to see what the fuss is about.  Maybe some people are nervous and shy and steer clear of demonstrations altogether.  But that can't be true when we aren't even there.  I certainly expected that the shop would be busier than during the demonstrations, when the only custom seems to be from the demonstrators  opposite.

Richard Desmond - Britain's largest porn merchant - gave Pollard his big break

I was therefore staggered that during the time that I was outside, filming and observing, for at least 10 minutes, not one person went into the shop.  Indeed, if you want peace and quiet in Brighton, probably the best place to go is not the library, which is a hive of activity these days but Sodastream!  You can be sure that other readers/visitors won’t interrupt you.  Perhaps Sodastream should think of putting big cushions on the floor, getting rid of the counters that no one buys from anyway and instead offer courses on yoga and transcendental meditation.  Not only would the demonstrations stop but trade is likely to increase significantly!

Lights a flashing but nobody's a comin' or callin'

The Jewish Chronicle however is playing an entirely different and thoroughly disingenuous game.  It is trying to change reality through the use of deliberately false and hyped reporting.  The editorial in this week’s Jewish Chronicle is entitled ‘Mob-rule by the sea’.  Of course the JC hasn’t bothered to send a reporter, still less interview one of the counter-demonstrators.  Today it is no longer, as it once was, a paper of record.  Truth is an expedient.  The screeching of the JC betrays the mentality of Lord Haw-Haw – mix in a nugget of truth [there is a demonstration, it can’t be denied] together with a bucket load of lies.  It is no wonder that circulation has dropped from around 40,000 in 2,000 to around 25,000 today under Pollard's stewardship.

Harvey Garfield goes round photographing people - he dreams of being a secret spy!

I also took the time out to video a representative sample of just how peaceful the demonstration is – people talking, asking questions, quietly waving their flags, running a stall and on the opposite side waving the Israeli flag and butcher's apron.  Despite provocations from Jonathan Hoffman’s uglier twin, taxi driver Harvey Garfield, who stuck his camera in peoples’ faces (the Zionists tried that trick at Ahava – fat lot of good it did them) and the Christian woman in blue who is so fascinated with Bondage, Submission & Domination (she thinks that that’s what BDS is about! she comes along every week in hope), usually with a distorted picture of me to attract the punters.

And to enliven proceedings this week a group of about 8 kids – about 12-14 in age – came along to demonstrate and shout in support of the Palestinians.  This riled the Zionists even more as they accused us of  'brain washing'!!

a group of kids turned up to support us!

But the JC is determined not to let truth get in the way of its campaign to have the demonstration banned.  So the headline this week was ‘Protests turn nasty outside Ecostream’ with a picture showing 2 sets of demonstrators intermingling. In fact, at the shop’s request, the Israeli demonstrators went to the other side of the road as the shouting between the 2 sets of demonstrators was deterring shoppers.  Fat lot of good it’s done them as no one wants to be seen buying stolen goods anyway.  

Bedraggled Zionist Demonstration

But the real purpose behind the distorted and untrue coverage of the Jewish Chronicle is to provide a basis for an application to the High Court to issue an injunction against the demonstration, on the grounds of fear, intimidation etc. etc.  The only problem is that the evidence is against them.  Despite accusations of having been spit on and been subject to anti-Semitic abuse, the opposite is true.  3 members of the PSC demonstration have been assaulted, including myself.  Simon Cobb grabbed one demonstrator from behind and gripped his neck.  Another woman had a megaphone pushed in her face and I was attacked by a mentally ill transvestite who goes by the name ‘Chelsea’.

The only anti-Semitic abuse that there has been has been by the same Simon Cobb who thought it funny to shout ‘Jews Out’.  Not that he’s the first or the last Zionist to do so.   Since the Palestinian demonstration usually has a number of Jewish people on it the idea that we would demonstrate against Zionist racism whilst indulging in anti-Semitism is wishful thinking.  As for spitting, it is strange that there have been no reports of this or abuse.  'Twould seem that the Zionists are once again in the game of invention.  

Police Tweet - mentions we're peaceful as usual but nothing about 'mob rule'

 If you read Sussex Police's twitter feed than the Police Liason Officer says 'Looking forward to peaceful protest and good communication (as usual)!'  Hardly sounds like mob-rule.

The mad Christian Zionist woman in blue protests we are 'brainwashing' kids who turn up to support us!

What there has been is one conviction under the Public Order Act, where a passer-by  (not an ‘anti-Israeli activist as the Jewish Chronicle has twice stated) was convicted of making a Nazi salute in the direction of the Zionist demonstration.  Apparently someone else was also arrested for this today.  It is to be hoped that s/he pleads not guilty because what was almost certainly intended was a form of satire, in other words irony.  People see Jewish demonstrators in favour of ethnic cleansing [the Christian fundamentalists on the Zionist demonstration call the Palestinians who are being evicted and having their land stolen ‘occupiers’ - the Jews were there 3,500 years ago!] and people give a Nazi salute as if to say, you of all people should remember the evils of racism.

Bored security guard

Indeed I can remember the 3rd demonstration I attended in my life.  It was at Twickenham back in 1970 against the touring South African Springboks.  A crowd of thousands outside the ground chanted ‘sieg heil’ the Nazi chant at those attending.  Did it mean we were therefore Nazis?  Of course not.  We were indulging in a form of political irony.  Those who demonstrate in favour of racism and ethnic cleansing cannot expect a free pass.

The Tranquil Campus of Brooklyn College - Scene of Attempts by Zionists and other fascists to abolish freedom of speech

Palestinian and supporters outside Brooklyn College demanding the right to tell their story

Zionist Allegations of 'Anti-Semitism' and a ‘Second Holocaust’ Backfire

The saying ‘Those whom the gods seek to destroy they first drive mad’ is attributed to Euripides. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Euripides.  If Euripides or whoever coined the saying had seen the efforts of the Zionist movement and its propagandists to ban a seminar on BDS at New York’s Brooklyn College and their disdain for freedom of speech he would have shaken his head.  Judith Butler, a Jewish philosophy professor at the University of California and Omar Barghouti, who has spearheaded the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, were due to speak at a meeting on BDS.  This was too much for the Zionists.  Alan Dershowitz, Harvard’s Professor of Torture was prominent amongst those villifying and seeking the cancellation of the seminar.  However the  Principal of Brooklyn College stood firm in support of academic freedom.  This was too much for lunatics like Democrat Assemblyman Dov Hikind.  In a post ‘HIKIND CALLS FOR BROOKLYN COLLEGE PRESIDENT’S RESIGNATION’   he states that ‘Karen Gould is a nice person. But she is a disaster for Brooklyn College students.”   Presumably it would be beneficial for students of Brooklyn to have the methods of the Police State introduced into what can and can’t be discussed at the college.

But, as increasingly happens these days, the wholly false and synthetic campaign backfired.  Mayor Bloomberg of New York City pithily opposed this attempt by the Zionist fanatics to dictate what could and could not be discussed on campuses by threatening the funding of colleges in question.  “If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion,” he said, “I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea.”  The New  York Times, hardly known as a pro-Palestinian/anti-Zionist paper weighed in with an editorial Litmus Tests criticising those who would seek to outlaw freedom of speech on campuses.  Interestingly in the sub-text, with its reference to the nomination of Chuck Hagel, the message is being conveyed that US lawmakers should begin differentiating US from Israeli interests.

Increasingly the Zionist movement, with its shrill and false cries of ‘anti-Semitism’ is increasingly turning people off.  Unable to win the argument or show what is wrong with BDS, as a non-violent method of persuading Israel to stop occupying Palestinian land and to treat its own Palestinian citizens as equals, is a bad idea, it tries to outlaw criticism instead.  But the Zionists are all in favour of sanctions when it comes to Iran and any other country deemed an enemy.

The first report below is from the Israeli 972mag followed by an Opinion piece in the New York Times making the case for academic freedom.  An article, West of Eden, in Israel’s liberal Ha'aretz points out how the Zionist tactics are becoming increasingly self-defeating.  There follows a video and transcript of an interview with Omar Barghouti, one of the speakers and the transcript of Judith Butler’s speech.

Tony Greenstein

Dershowitz - the man who launched a campaign to deny Norman Finkelstein academic tenure and a plagiarist.  He advocated the institutionalisation of torture with the introduction of a 'warrant for torture'

Despite controversy, Brooklyn College BDS panel is a non-event

Lisa Goldman Published February 8, 2013

NEW YORK — After more than a week of controversy, including an editorial in the New York Times and a statement from Mayor Bloomberg, Brooklyn College hosted a discussion of BDS with Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti and nothing happened. That fact alone seems worthy of a story these days.

In a post for +972, Mairav Zonszein wrote eloquently about the outrageous attempts to intimidate the college into canceling the event. Alan Dershowitz started the whole controversy, but New York City public officials were quick to follow, with several threatening to cut the college’s funding. The New York Times published an editorial of quiet dismay, noting that “critics have used heated language to denigrate the speakers,” adding, “The sad truth is that there is more honest discussion about American-Israeli policy in Israel than in this country. Too often in the United States, supporting Israel has come to mean meeting narrow ideological litmus tests.”

Mayor Bloomberg expressed himself a bit more bluntly. “If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion,” he said, “I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea.”

And after all that, the event turned out to be a non-event. An audience of about 300 people sat quietly and listened to Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti speak, which they did — without interruption. People lined up quietly to ask questions at the microphone during the Q&A. As always, there were a few eccentrics who made statements, usually of the UFO variety, instead of asking questions. There was some post-panel schmoozing in another room, with books for sale laid out on a table and Omar Barghouti sitting behind another table to sign his tome on BDS.

And then everyone went home.

There were no heated arguments and no disturbances. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly. No-one shouted “death to Israel”or anything remotely similar — except a contingent of Neturei Karta, who always show up at this type of Palestine-related event.

Neturei Karta at Brooklyn College

I’m always a bit disturbed to see BDS advocates, who talk about Palestinian rights in the same breath as LGBT rights and feminism, rush to photograph and be photographed with these men, whose beliefs and lifestyle tolerate neither homosexuality nor women’s rights. Anyway, they were the only ones shouting that Israel must end, it had no right to exist, etc.

Outside the student building there was also a small group of young Orthodox men, accompanied by New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who was particularly involved in trying to intimidate Brooklyn College into canceling the event. One man, who wore the black fedora of an Orthodox Jew, handed me a photocopied page titled WHY BDS IS THE SAME AS AL QAEDA. On Facebook, someone posted a photograph of a page distributed at the college by a group calling itself Mobilization for Israel. EMERGENCY RALLY AGAINST HAMAS SPEECH, it announces.

Flier handed out at Brooklyn College

But despite all the semi-coherent drama of the flier, only a handful of protestors showed up. They did not try to stop anyone from entering the student building where the event was held, nor did they try to enter themselves. Up on the sixth floor I could hear them outside on the street, faintly. They sang “David, Melekh Yisrael,” (David, King of Israel) and shouted a few semi-audible slogans for the first part of Judith Butler’s talk. But soon they dispersed and there was no sign of them when we came out.

But the college and the city clearly anticipated trouble. There was a heavy police presence, both uniformed and plainclothes officers, outside the student building and inside. They were supplemented by uniformed college security and volunteer marshalls who kept the sidewalk clear, checked IDs and made sure all the people queued up for the event were on the list. Everyone had to submit to a bag search and go through a metal detector. The metal buckles on my boots beeped, earning me a pat down. It would have felt just like being back at home in Israel, except it was freezing cold outside and everyone was remarkably courteous — friendly, even.

According to an email I received yesterday, the event was filled to capacity — but there were at least 20 empty seats, possibly because the speakers started exactly on time, while the people who had been waitlisted were still going through security. No-one was admitted during the talks, to avoid causing a disturbance.

The audience was a mixed bag of the usual suspects. There were political activists, many of them Jewish “red diaper baby” types. There was also a very heavy Arab Muslim presence, noticeable because many of the women wore the hijab. And journalists, of course.

I was impressed by Judith Butler’s remarks, in which she touched on issues of free speech, BDS as a nonviolent civil society movement, the definition of anti-Semitism,  and Jewish identity — all in her inimitably dense, intellectual and erudite style. You can read the text of her talk on The Nation’s website. Below is an excerpt:

    One could be for the BDS movement as the only credible non-violent mode of resisting the injustices committed by the state of Israel without falling into the football lingo of being “pro” Palestine and “anti” Israel. This language is reductive, if not embarrassing. One might reasonably and passionately be concerned for all the inhabitants of that land, and simply maintain that the future for any peaceful, democratic solution for that region will become thinkable through the dismantling of the occupation, through enacting the equal rights of Palestinian minorities and finding just and plausible ways for the rights of refugees to be honored. If one holds out for these three aims in political life, then one is not simply living within the logic of the “pro” and the “anti”, but trying to fathom the conditions for a “we”, a plural existence grounded in equality.

Barghouti’s speech was less intellectual and more populist. I did not like it, not because I disagreed with anything he said, but because I dislike populism and am suspicious of speakers who rely on their charm to ingratiate themselves with audiences. He read out a long laundry list of Israel’s evil deeds (none of which I dispute), followed by a lengthy explanation of why he was not anti-Semitic, with liberal quotes from Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Shulamit Aloni and Avraham Burg, amongst others. He also gave a shout-out to Israeli Jewish partners of BDS, specifically the Boycott from Within movement.  The audience responded positively.

Omar Barghouti - founder of the Boycott National Committee speaks at Brooklyn College

This event at Brooklyn College should have been a minor one. If the subject of discussion had been anything but Palestine-Israel, there would have been a very small audience indeed. Not many people are willing to take a subway to the last stop on the 2 line on a cold February night in order to sit for more than two hours on uncomfortable folding plastic chairs in a bare room lit by fluorescent strip lighting. But thanks to people like Alan Dershowitz and Dov Hikind, they came out in pretty impressive numbers. The minor event became a big deal.

Besides the deeply shameful attempts of Dershowitz, Hikind, et al to limit freedom of expression in a liberal democracy, I am pondering a few other things as I write this post. Despite all the publicity, only a very small group of hardcore Orthodox Jewish men — yeshiva boy types — showed up to protest this event. And they did not last long. Also, it is very interesting to see how the hardcore “My Israel right or wrong” types in the Jewish community have split off from the liberal, Obama-supporting majority of the Jewish community. The latter are uncomfortable with strong criticism of Israel, with many seeing BDS as an ideologically suspect movement, but there is no way they will come out to demonstrate against academic freedom and free speech.

So we had a Jewish mayor making a strong statement in support of academic freedom and free expression; we had a Jewish philosopher, Judith Butler, speaking in support of BDS and freedom of expression; we had a certain Jewish Harvard professor who equates any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism; we had some marginalized hasidic Jews who hate Israel  and want it to cease existing; and we had a handful of yeshiva boys who actually believe BDS is the same as Hamas, which is a reincarnation of Nazism, and who equate unquestioning support of Israel with love of God and Torah. Which is so beyond absurd that I can’t even think of an adjective. Sorry.

Often, I feel as though the whole Palestine issue is more about the divisions within the Jewish community than about actual Palestinians.

Litmus Tests

New York Times February 4, 2013

One dispiriting lesson from Chuck Hagel’s nomination for defense secretary is the extent to which the political space for discussing Israel forthrightly is shrinking. Republicans focused on Israel more than anything during his confirmation hearing, but they weren’t seeking to understand his views. All they cared about was bullying him into a rigid position on Israel policy. Enforcing that kind of orthodoxy is not in either America’s or Israel’s interest.
 
Brooklyn College is facing a similar trial for scheduling an event on Thursday night with two speakers who support an international boycott to force Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories. While this page has criticized Israeli settlements, we do not advocate a boycott. We do, however, strongly defend the decision by the college’s president, Karen Gould, to proceed with the event, despite withering criticism by opponents and threats by at least 10 City Council members to cut financing for the college. Such intimidation chills debate and makes a mockery of the ideals of academic freedom.

Mr. Hagel, a former Republican senator, has repeatedly declared support for Israel and cited 12 years of pro-Israel votes in the Senate. But that didn’t matter to his opponents, who attacked him as insufficiently pro-Israel and refused to accept any deviation on any vote. Mr. Hagel was even forced to defend past expressions of concern for Palestinian victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the Brooklyn College case, critics have used heated language to denigrate the speakers, Omar Barghouti, a leader of a movement called B.D.S., for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, that espouses “nonviolent punitive measures” to pressure Israel, and Judith Butler, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, who is a member of the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that supports divestment and boycotts. Alan Dershowitz, a Brooklyn College graduate and Harvard law professor, has complained that the event is unbalanced and should not be co-sponsored by the college’s political science department. On Monday, Ms. Gould said other events offering alternative views are planned.

The sad truth is that there is more honest discussion about American-Israeli policy in Israel than in this country. Too often in the United States, supporting Israel has come to mean meeting narrow ideological litmus tests. J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group that was formed as a counterpoint to conservative groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has argued for vibrant debate and said “criticism of Israeli policy does not threaten the health of the state of Israel.” In fact, it is essential.

Professor Judith Butler speaks at the seminar that the Zionists tried to ban as a 'second holocaust' - Omar Barghouti looks on

West of Eden

by Chemi Shalev, Ha'aretz,  9 February 2013

The Brooklyn College BDS debacle highlights the perils of pro-Israeli overkill

Overzealous Israel defenders used a five-megaton bomb to swat a fly, and it blew up in our faces. But Brooklyn is only a harbinger of nasty things to come.

Far more Americans know of the Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement today than did a week ago. Many millions of people have been exposed for the first time to the idea that Israel should be boycotted, divested and sanctioned for its occupation of the territories. Many more Americans, one can safely assume, have formed a positive image of the BDS movement than those who have now turned against it.

Tafasta merube lo tafasta, the Talmud teaches us: grasp all, lose all. The heavy-handed, hyperbole heavy, all-guns-blazing campaign against what would have been, as Mayor Bloomberg put it, “a few kids meeting on campus” mushroomed and then boomeranged, giving the hitherto obscure BDS activists priceless public relations that money could never buy.

Bill Thompson, a candidate for mayor, has garnered the support of Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a follower of Meir Kahane and the Jewish Defense League (Photo via Dov Hikind's website)

Rather than focusing attention on what BDS critics describe as the movement’s deceitful veneer over its opposition to the very existence of Israel, the disproportionate onslaught succeeded in casting the BDS speakers who came to the Brooklyn campus as freedom-loving victims being hounded and oppressed by the forces of darkness.

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz’s article about the “hate orgy’ that is being co-sponsored by the College’s Political Science Department may have been tactically ill advised, but Dershowitz is a private citizen and is entitled to free speech, no less than the Israel-baiting speakers invited by the students. The same is true of the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, who took out a large ad in Friday’s New York Times in which he reprimanded Bloomberg for “confusing the issues”, and tried to equate support for the Palestinian “right of return” with anti-Semitism, a point which may have been lost on anyone but the most informed and involved of his readers.

But the true tipping point came when attention-seeking politicians got into the act. When a New York City council member engaged in nuclear overkill by claiming that a meeting of several dozen students in Brooklyn is tantamount to “a second holocaust”. And especially when eager beaver municipal pols - emulating, unfortunately, far too many of their counterparts in Israel – thought it proper to threaten cutting off city funding to a well respected academic institution because of one single student meeting that they found objectionable.

The result of all of this surfeit and excess was a clear-cut, perhaps unprecedented PR coup for BDS and a humiliating defeat for Israel’s interests. When the New York Times and Mayor Bloomberg found it necessary to step in and publicly stand up for a decidedly anti-Israeli movement – whatever one thinks of their true intentions- that only a few had ever heard of before. When the “pro-Israel camp” found itself, not for the first time, portrayed not only as heavy handed but a bit unhinged as well.

The Brooklyn College incident, after all, is far from isolated. It is, in fact, symptomatic. The distressing tone and self-defeating tactics of the most vocal elements of the so-called pro-Israeli camp in America have been the rule, not the exception, in recent years, and they are also bound to backfire on us all.

This inflated and melodramatic nature of what passes as political pro-Israelism was evident to many Americans, as the New York Times correctly noted, in the dismayingly over-the-top inquisition of Chuck Hagel at his confirmation hearings in the Senate last week. Senator after senator found it necessary to extract from Hagel meaningless vows of allegiance to Israel and to press him again and again on the etymology and usage of the two or three words he may have used many years ago.

The Armed Services Committee devoted more time to Israel than it did to all the other world trouble spots combined, a proportion no less preposterous, frankly, than the comparison between a college get together and a second Holocaust.

But that’s the way it’s been over the past year, since the Republican debates and primaries and throughout the presidential election campaign: disproportionate, hyperbolic and ultimately counterproductive. Did Obama really “throw Israel under the bus”, as Mitt Romney repeatedly claimed? Did the fact that Obama failed to visit Israel in his first term – as Ronald Reagan before him during his entire eight years – really constitute proof of his undying animosity towards the Jewish state? Was there anything that connected the overwrought campaign against Obama to the complex reality of his policies towards Israel? And was it truly to Israel’s benefit that candidate after Republican candidate found it necessary to vow undying allegiance to Israel in a way that, in some cases, could easily have been confused with an oath of subservience?

Because the sad fact is that far too much of the public discourse on Israel has been dominated and dictated by super-conservatives and ultra-nationalists and the billionaires who fund them. These are people whose visceral hatred for Obama has driven them over the edge, who view any measured or nuanced debate about Israel as treason, who are hell bent on making their observation that liberals are turning away from Israel into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And who usually know very little about the actual Israel they are talking or writing about.

They make mountains out molehills, carve Nazis out of Palestinians, evoke pogroms and massacres from each and every violent incident. They don’t acknowledge the occupation, see nothing wrong with settlements or “Price Tag” violence, turn a blind eye to 46 years of Palestinian disenfranchisement, regardless of whose fault it is. They recognize only one truth, their own, and view all the rest as heresy and abomination. By their narrow definitions, no less than 50% of Israelis who voted in the last elections for parties that support a two-state solution should be condemned – possibly by the U.S. Senate itself – as Israel-hating, Arab-loving defeatists.

This preposterously simplistic portrayal of Israel is bound to backfire. It is dishonest, and therefore self-defeating. It quashes disagreement and abhors true debate. It distances anyone and everyone who does not subscribe to its narrow definitions of what it means to love Israel and to truly support it, warts and all.

And it will eventually erode the genuine bedrock of support that Israel enjoys in America.

It will be like Brooklyn, but on a much grander scale.

They Can't Hide the Sun: An interview with Omar Barghouti

Feb 07, 2013 02:04 pm | Peter Rugh

Controversy continues to swirl around a planned forum scheduled to take place tonight at Brooklyn College to discuss the growing global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. The man at the center of the storm is Omar Barghouti. In 2005, together with Palestinian unions and civil society groups, he helped to launch the call for an international BDS campaign to challenge Israel over its occupation of Palestine and its racism towards Palestinians.

Barghouti talked to Peter Rugh about the Brooklyn College controversy, the global BDS movement and the Arab Spring rebellions across the Arab world, among other topics. A segment of this interview aired on Free Speech Radio News and this post first appeared in socialistworker.org. This is part one of a two-part interview.

Professor Alan Dershowitz - the man who got OJ Simpson off - a fierce opponent of free speech on Israel

What is BDS, and why has it prompted several pro-Israel advocacy groups and ardent Zionist Alan Dershowitz to stir up this "controversy" about your appearance at Brooklyn College?

BDS is a global movement that was formed in support of the Palestinian civil society BDS call issued in 2005 by the vast majority of Palestinian political parties, trade unions, women's groups, NGOs and so on.

The premise of the BDS movement is that given the international community's complicity with Israel's occupation and its denial of Palestinian rights, Palestinians cannot achieve our basic rights under international law without the mobilization of international civil society organizations. The basic tactic--which was also employed by the South African anti-apartheid movement--is to cut off links with Israel and institutions that maintain Israel's occupation and apartheid.

The BDS call specifically works toward achieving three basic Palestinian rights: one, ending the occupation of the 1967 territories (including the illegal colonies, the illegal wall, and so on); two, ending the system of racial discrimination within Israel against its indigenous Palestinians, who are citizens of the state of Israel but without equal rights; and three, establishing the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled and ethnically cleansed from their homeland in 1948 and ever since. This right of return is guaranteed under international law.

So BDS is very much a rights-based movement that's anchored in universal human rights and international law. And it calls for boycotting, divesting from, and eventually sanctions against the state of Israel--as was done against apartheid South Africa--in order to achieve those Palestinian rights. It's the combination of internal popular resistance to Israel's occupation and apartheid with the external pressure of boycotts and divestments that can bring about the change necessary to guarantee our rights.

I spoke to a woman from the Jewish Community Relations Council in New York, and she had some choice words for you. She described you as an anti-Semite who has called for the destruction of the state of Israel, and she said the "one-state solution" you and the BDS movement advocate is a call for the extermination of the Jewish state. Another of her criticisms is that BDS creates an atmosphere of hostility that is counterproductive to peace and harming Palestinian workers. How would you respond?

This claim is anti-Semitic. Why do I say that her claim that a call for boycotting Israel is anti-Semitic is itself anti-Semitic? Because she is equating a boycott of Israel with a boycott of the Jews--an attack on Israeli policy with an attack on the Jews. Equating "the Jews" with Israel--as if they were a monolithic sum of people, without diversity, without human differences--is an anti-Semitic statement. Saying that Israel speaks for all Jews, and that all Jews are represented by Israel and carry collective responsibility for Israel, is a very anti-Semitic statement.

There is no one who monopolizes the Jewish voice--in the United States or anywhere else. There are diverse Jewish groups. Some of our best partners who are leading BDS campaigns in this country are Jewish, like Jewish Voices for Peace, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and many other Jewish groups.

If you go to any random campus across the United States, and you look at the divestment campaigns waged on those campuses, you'll find a disproportionately high number of Jewish activists. This is something we are very proud of--that many, especially younger, Jewish Americans are abandoning Zionism and are realizing what Israel is about.

It's a colonial state, it's an apartheid state, and they do not want such a state to speak in their name, to speak on their behalf. And they are increasingly joining the cause for justice and peace.

The second point is that BDS does not take a position on whether a one-state or a two-state solution should be pursued in Palestine. So she's repeating a myth--it's a fabrication. Our movement is totally neutral on the terms of a political settlement to the conflict.

But each one of us, as a human and as an activist, has a position on this, and I'm not ashamed of mine. For 30 years, I've advocated for the one-state solution in my personal capacity. I've researched and written about the one-democratic-state solution in historic Palestine. That means equality for everyone--irrespective of identity, ethnicity, religion or any other attribute. And what's wrong with that? Why is one-person, one-vote good for every land in the world except Palestine? Why is it that democracy suddenly becomes a bad thing here?

Jewish Americans were at the forefront of the civil rights movement to overturn Jim Crow segregation in the American South. They stood alongside African Americans calling for equality for everyone, separation between religion and state, and equal rights for all humans. But in Israel, pro-Israel groups are defending an apartheid system.

This isn't something only the BDS movement is saying. The famous Jewish American writer I.F. Stone, as far back as 1967, said that Zionism and Israel are creating a schizophrenia among Jewish communities. On the one hand, they are defending civil rights and equality in the countries where they live, and in Israel, they are defending a set of laws that is racist, that doesn't allow mixed marriages, that frowns upon equality, that rejects equality in a categorical manner. This schizophrenia is more recognized by younger Jewish activists everywhere, especially in the United States.

Finally, the idea that BDS is counterproductive and that it hurts Palestinian workers who work in Israeli settlements. Let me start off by saying that this is an exceptionally patronizing, very colonial argument. For someone to have the chutzpah to claim that she knows what is in the Palestinians' best interests more than the Palestinians--that's the epitome of hypocrisy and condescension.

Protesters in Ireland call for a boycott of Israel, following the Israeli bombing of Gaza, November 15, 2012.Photo by AP

The assumption is that we--just because we're brown, just because we live the global South--somehow don't have the faculty to reason, that we cannot speak about nor understand how to defend our own best interests, that we need somebody from above, from the North, a white person, to tell us how to think, how to formulate our will, and how to express it. This is extremely racist.

But putting aside her patronizing outlook for a moment, that Palestinian workers have to work in Israeli projects, including illegal settlements, is a testament to the occupation's corruption and its strangulation of the Palestinian economy. Israel has systematically destroyed Palestinian agriculture and industry; it has systematically stolen the best, most fertile Palestinian land and water resources; and it has made the Palestinian economy completely dependent on the occupying power.

Those Palestinian farmers thrown off their lands when they were confiscated for Jewish-only settlements had no choice but to become workers. Given the total destruction of the Palestinian economy, the only option for many people is to work with Israeli projects. Is that ideal? Absolutely not.

Ending the occupation would allow the Palestinians to build our own economy and to have our own economic projects, where we wouldn't need to be dependent on a colonial power to sustain our lives. We can build, we can plant, we can produce, we can be creative--if given the chance. And to get this chance, we need the help of every conscientious person around the world, including conscientious Jewish persons around the world, to help us end Israel's occupation and apartheid, so that we can carry on with our sustainable development.

You've spoken at countless campuses across the U.S. and around the world. Have you encountered this kind of vitriol at your other events?

We so far have yet to experience any disruptions at our campus BDS events in the U.S. We hope Brooklyn College will be the first and last, but we're not assured of that because of the rabid anti-Palestinian sentiments that have been stirred up. There has been extreme racism and violent language directed at the event.

Some of the most extreme people behind these statements are supporters of Meir Kahane and his Kach Party, which is officially considered a terrorist entity by the U.S. government. Kach was even barred by the government of Israel at one time from standing in Israeli elections.

The supporters of this fascist and fanatical party are the ringleaders of the circus targeting the Brooklyn College BDS event. They are trying their best to suppress academic freedom in the United States by saying, "We, the pro-Israel lobby, get to decide who is allowed to speak on campus and who is not allowed, what subjects are allowed and what subjects are not allowed to be discussed on campus."

They're destroying the notion of academic freedom by twisting it around to serve their hard-right, anti-liberation and anti-Palestinian agenda. To be honest, it's been many years since I have faced such vile and violent racism as I have encountered around this Brooklyn College event. I've spoken on campuses large and small in the last couple years, and we've never had any disruptions.

We continue to hope there won't be any disruption, but alas, we are very concerned for our safety. With such incitement to violence and such racial hatred as has been conveyed by figures such as Dershowitz and others, I fear for my safety, and I hope that Brooklyn College will take the necessary steps to prevent these rabid voices from attacking us and/or disrupting the event.

If they have arguments against BDS, let's address them in a civil way. Let them come to the event, let them listen to Prof. Judith Butler and myself, and then present their points in a rational, cool-headed manner. Let's have a proper debate about it. That's how rational beings settle and discuss differences of opinion. This is how society progresses, by discussing differences.

The U.S. is directly, immediately and deeply responsible for maintaining Israel's occupation and apartheid through the billions of dollars that it sends to Israel every year--at the expense of social justice, at the expense of health care, at the expense of education here in the U.S. Instead of spending in this country to improve education, employment opportunities, job training and environmental protections, the U.S. is sending billions and billions of dollars to Israel to buy weapons--to kill, to maim, to ethnically cleanse. This has to stop.

American citizens have an obligation, a duty and a right to question in order to stop this enormous flow of money as well as the complicity that goes with it. We also have a right to debate Israel in this country, and to stand up against Israel's policies of occupation and apartheid here in the U.S., especially in this country that is so complicit in Israel's colonial project.

No one can stop this questioning from happening. They may succeed with their violence--and the impunity that they've enjoyed so far--in scuttling one or two events, or in throwing an academic out of a university, or in haunting a dissenter or a journalist who dares to question Israel. Yes, they've succeeded before, and they still continue to succeed in some cases.

But they cannot hide the sun with the palms of their hands. They cannot hide the sun with this violence and their violent language and their incitement to hatred. The movement is growing. BDS is growing. Israel's accountability to human rights and international law is growing every single month, every single year, including in the United States.

Many Jewish students across the United States are abandoning Zionism, and if not yet joining the BDS movement, at least questioning Israel's policies and questioning whether Israel indeed speaks on their behalf. The winds of change are blowing, and Alan Dershowitz and others cannot stop them.

They are coming to understand this, and that's why they are so fanatical and violent in their reactions. They've been absolutely hysterical, and this is a sign of weakness. If they felt strong and confident, they wouldn't have to resort to such incitements to violence and racial hatred. They would come and face our argument with a counterargument, as any rational person would.

Can you describe how this apartheid system impacts the day-to-day lives of Palestinians living in Israel, in the West Bank and in Gaza?

First, let me explain why I use the term apartheid, because people are sometimes startled when supporters of Palestinian rights say that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. Israel's defenders and anti-Palestinian voices exclaim in anger, "How dare you say Israel is an apartheid state? Israel is so different than South Africa."

But this is a misunderstanding of what apartheid is. Apartheid is not just a South African crime. It's an international crime recognized and defined by international law, especially the 1973 UN Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Of course, South Africa was a very clear case of apartheid, but so were the Southern states in the United States before the civil rights movement. So what makes one racist system apartheid and another one not apartheid?

The difference is not that this is only a racist policy being adopted here or there, or racism existing here or there, it's when this racism is institutionalized and legalized, when you have systematic oppression of one racial group against another group in a legalized manner. That's when it becomes apartheid.

So just to give a concrete example: 93 percent of the land of Israel can only be used for the benefit of the Jewish population of Israel. Not for the inhabitants of the state of Israel, not for the citizens of the state of Israel in general. So any non-Jewish citizen of the state of Israel can't benefit from 93 percent of the land. In comparison, in South Africa, it was 86 percent for the benefit of the whites and the rest for the indigenous population.

There are literally dozens of laws in Israel that discriminate between its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. In that sense, Israel is clearly guilty of the crime or apartheid, because that is what apartheid is. That's how it's defined in international law. You have laws that discriminate between Jew and non-Jew, giving a distinct set of privileges only to Jewish citizens.

Another very basic reality that Palestinians in Israel face is that Israel is the only country on earth that does not define itself as a state of its citizens. It's a state of the "Jewish people." What does that mean? It means that even if you have lived in Palestine for generations, even if you were there before it became Israel, you don't receive the full set of rights if you are not Jewish. Israel does not belong to you; it belongs to the "Jewish nation." In fact, the very concept of a "Jewish nation" is controversial, and Jewish communities around the world have debated and continue to vigorously debate it.

Imagine the equivalent here. Imagine if the U.S. declared itself a "Christian state"--a state of the Christian nation. Any Christian around the world would have full rights in the United States, but not its Jewish, Muslim or other non-Christian communities. Would anyone accept such inequality written into the laws themselves? Would anyone accept unequal treatment based on their identity? Why then is it acceptable that Israel has dozens of laws that discriminate against its non-Jewish citizens?

In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in Gaza, such apartheid treatment is obviously much more pronounced than within Israel. At least Palestinian citizens of Israel can cast a vote. Yes, all parties have to take a loyalty oath to the state as "a Jewish and democratic state," but this is, of course, an oxymoron: a state cannot be both a Jewish exclusivist supremacist state and democratic.

If we go to the West Bank and Gaza, we see that apartheid is concrete. Israel's "separation wall"--Israel's apartheid wall--lies predominantly within the Occupied Territories, and it has been ruled a violation of international law by the International Court of Justice.

You also have colonial settlements in the Occupied Territories that are for Jewish Israelis only. They are considered a war crime, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Transferring part of the occupying state's population to occupied territory is considered a war crime, and that's exactly what Israel has done. Since 1967 and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, it has transferred part of its population to the occupied territory in violation international law.

This means that those settlers have full citizenship privileges--they are part of the Israeli legal system, and they get to vote for the Israeli parliament--while Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are a totally different franchise. They are not part of the system, and they don't enjoy any rights under Israeli military law. The settlers get their settler-only roads, which serve Jewish Israelis only, whereas the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza quite often are not allowed to use those roads.

After Israel withdrew its settlements from Gaza in 2005, it doesn't have any settlers there, but Gaza is still under occupation. Israel is in full control of passage into Gaza, whether by air, land or sea. Israel is in full control of the territory, which under international law makes it the occupying power. Israel surrounded the West Bank and Gaza with walls and fences and hundreds of military checkpoints, which prevent freedom of movement for the Palestinians. So the reality of apartheid is extremely pronounced there.

In what ways have the uprisings that began shaking the Middle East in 2011 changed the situation on the ground?

The Arab Spring has opened up a huge opportunity for building support for Palestinian rights in the Arab world. Across the Arab world, support for Palestinian rights has always been a de facto reality, a consensus. Every single citizen of every Arab state--with very few exceptions--supports Palestinian rights.

However, in countries run by dictators and non-democratic governments, this support has never led to any effective change. And a successful BDS campaign requires a certain minimum of democracy and of civil rights in order to succeed.

It's not enough to have a million Moroccans demonstrating against Israel's bombing of Gaza, as they did during Israel's bombing of Gaza in late 2008-early 2009. We indeed had 1 million people in the streets of Rabat demonstrating for Palestinian rights. This was an extremely important display of solidarity.

But did that translate into effective campaigns against Caterpillar, against Veolia, against international companies that are violating Palestinian rights in their complicity with the Israeli occupation? No, it did not. And it couldn't in a country that lacks basic democracy.

With the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, we are seeing the dawn of freedom and the beginning of democratization, and we're not saying that it's a mature democracy yet. But despite the turbulence, despite the struggles that people have to go through to really build their democracies, this has already created a huge opening for Palestine solidarity efforts to become effective and sustainable campaigns that can lead to concrete results by holding corporations and institutions accountable to basic principles of human rights.

It hasn't been even two years since the beginning of the Arab Spring, so it is too early to expect big results. Revolutions take a long time to get past internal conflict and build a stable democracy. It will take some time until Egyptians, Tunisians and others sort out their internal strife and build their own systems on the foundation of social justice, freedom and rights for all citizens--and until they are able to address their obligation to stand with the Palestinians.

When we talk about Arab solidarity, solidarity is not even the most accurate term, because it's a family. That's how Palestinians feel--we're part of this family of Arab nations and Arab states. It's not like asking a neighbor for help. It's asking your father and mother and sister and daughter for help.

That's how we feel when we ask Egyptians to support our rights. We're not asking our neighbor for help, we're asking our brother for help. But the brother is in a lot of trouble at this point and is still trying to get his or her house in order so we need to wait patiently until they can stand on their feet. Then we're sure to have massive support.

Judith Butler's Remarks to Brooklyn College on BDS

The Nation 7.2.13.

Editors Note: Despite a campaign to silence them, philosophers Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti spoke at Brooklyn College on Thursday night. In an exclusive, The Nation presents the text of Butler's remarks.

Judith Butler is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature department at UC Berkeley.  As the UC Berkeley Student Senate votes to divest from two companies that profit from Israel's occupation of Palestine, the noted philosopher reminds us of what's at stake.

Usually one starts by saying that one is glad to be here, but I cannot say that it has been a pleasure anticipating this event. What a Megillah! I am, of course, glad that the event was not cancelled, and I understand that it took a great deal of courage and a steadfast embrace of principle for this event to happen at all. I would like personally to thank all those who took this opportunity to reaffirm the fundamental principles of academic freedom, including the following organizations: the Modern Language Association, the National Lawyers Guild, the New York ACLU, the American Association of University Professors, the Professional Staff Congress (the union for faculty and staff in the CUNY system), the New York Times editorial team, the offices of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Brooklyn College President Karen Gould whose principled stand on academic freedom has been exemplary.

The principle of academic freedom is designed to make sure that powers outside the university, including government and corporations, are not able to control the curriculum or intervene in extra-mural speech. It not only bars such interventions, but it also protects those platforms in which we might be able to reflect together on the most difficult problems. You can judge for yourself whether or not my reasons for lending my support to this movement are good ones.   That is, after all, what academic debate is about. It is also what democratic debate is about, which suggests that open debate about difficult topics functions as a meeting point between democracy and the academy. Instead of asking right away whether we are for or against this movement, perhaps we can pause just long enough to find out what exactly this is, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and why it is so difficult to speak about this.

I am not asking anyone to join a movement this evening. I am not even a leader of this movement or part of any of its governing committee, even though the New York Times tried to anoint me the other day—I appreciated their subsequent retraction, and I apologize to my Palestinian colleagues for their error. The movement, in fact, has been organized and led by Palestinians seeking rights of political self-determination, including Omar Barghouti, who was invited first by the Students for Justice in Palestine, after which I was invited to join him. At the time I thought it would be very much like other events I have attended, a conversation with a few dozen student activists in the basement of a student center. So, as you can see, I am surprised and ill-prepared for what has happened.

Omar will speak in a moment about what the BDS movement is, its successes and its aspirations. But I would like briefly to continue with the question, what precisely are we doing here this evening? I presume that you came to hear what there is to be said, and so to test your preconceptions against what some people have to say, to see whether your objections can be met and your questions answered. In other words, you come here to exercise critical judgment, and if the arguments you hear are not convincing, you will be able to cite them, to develop your opposing view and to communicate that as you wish. In this way, your being here this evening confirms your right to form and communicate an autonomous judgment, to demonstrate why you think something is true or not, and you should be free to do this without coercion and fear. These are your rights of free expression, but they are, perhaps even more importantly, your rights to education, which involves the freedom to hear, to read and to consider any number of viewpoints as part of an ongoing public deliberation on this issue. Your presence here, even your support for the event, does not assume agreement among us. There is no unanimity of opinion here; indeed, achieving unanimity is not the goal.

The arguments made against this very meeting took several forms, and they were not always easy for me to parse. One argument was that BDS is a form of hate speech, and it spawned a set of variations: it is hate speech directed against either the State of Israel or Israeli Jews, or all Jewish people. If BDS is hate speech, then it is surely not protected speech, and it would surely not be appropriate for any institution of higher learning to sponsor or make room for such speech. Yet another objection, sometimes uttered by the same people who made the first, is that BDS does qualify as a viewpoint, but as such, ought to be presented only in a context in which the opposing viewpoint can be heard as well. There was yet a qualification to this last position, namely, that no one can have a conversation on this issue in the US that does not include a certain Harvard professor, but that spectacular argument was so self-inflationary and self-indicting, that I could only respond with astonishment.

So in the first case, it is not a viewpoint (and so not protected as extra-mural speech), but in the second instance, it is a viewpoint, presumably singular, but cannot be allowed to be heard without an immediate refutation. The contradiction is clear, but when people engage in a quick succession of contradictory claims such as these, it is usually because they are looking for whatever artillery they have at their disposal to stop something from happening. They don’t much care about consistency or plausibility. They fear that if the speech is sponsored by an institution such as Brooklyn College, it will not only be heard, but become hearable, admitted into the audible world. The fear is that viewpoint will become legitimate, which means only that someone can publicly hold such a view and that it becomes eligible for contestation. A legitimate view is not necessarily right, but it is not ruled out in advance as hate speech or injurious conduct. Those who did not want any of these words to become sayable and audible imagined that the world they know and value will come to an end if such words are uttered, as if the words themselves will rise off the page or fly out of the mouth as weapons that will injure, maim or even kill, leading to irreversibly catastrophic consequences. This is why some people claimed that if this event were held, the two-state solution would be imperiled—they attributed great efficacy to these words. And yet others said it would lead to the coming of a second Holocaust—an unimaginable remark to which I will nevettheless return. One might say that all of these claims were obvious hyperbole and should be dismissed as such. But it is important to understand that they are wielded for the purpose of intimidation, animating the spectre of traumatic identification with the Nazi oppressor: if you let these people speak, you yourself will be responsible for heinous crimes or for the destruction of a state, or the Jewish people. If you listen to the words, you will become complicit in war crimes.

And yet all of us here have to distinguish between the right to listen to a point of view and the right to concur or dissent from that point of view; otherwise, public discourse is destroyed by censorship. I wonder, what is the fantasy of speech nursed by the censor? There must be enormous fear behind the drive to censorship, but also enormous aggression, as if we were all in a war where speech has suddenly become artillery. Is there another way to approach language and speech as we think about this issue? Is it possible that some other use of words might forestall violence, bring about a general ethos of non-violence, and so enact, and open onto, the conditions for a public discourse that welcomes and shelters disagreement, even disarray?

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement is, in fact, a non-violent movement; it seeks to use established legal means to achieve its goals; and it is, interestingly enough, the largest Palestinian civic movement at this time. That means that the largest Palestinian civic movement is a non-violent one that justifies its actions through recourse to international law. Further, I want to underscore that this is also a movement whose stated core principles include the opposition to every form of racism, including both state-sponsored racism and anti-Semitism. Of course, we can debate what anti-Semitism is, in what social and political forms it is found. I myself am sure that the election of self-identified national socialists to the Greek parliament is a clear sign of anti-Semitism; I am sure that the recirculation of Nazi insignia and rhetoric by the National Party of Germany is a clear sign of anti-Semitism. I am also sure that the rhetoric and actions of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are often explicitly anti-Semitic, and that some forms of Palestinian opposition to Israel do rely on anti-Semitic slogans, falsehoods and threats. All of these forms of anti-Semitism are to be unconditionally opposed. And I would add, they have to be opposed in the same way and with the same tenacity that any form of racism has to be opposed, including state racism.

But still, it is left to us to ask, why would a non-violent movement to achieve basic political rights for Palestinians be understood as anti-Semitic? Surely, there is nothing about the basic rights themselves that constitute a problem. They include equal rights of citizenship for current inhabitants; the end to the occupation, and the rights of unlawfully displaced persons to return to their lands and gain restitution for their losses. We will surely speak about each of these three principles this evening. But for now, I want to ask, why would a collective struggle to use economic and cultural forms of power to compel the enforcement of international laws be considered anti-Semitic? It would be odd to say that they are anti-Semitic to honor internationally recognized rights to equality, to be free of occupation and to have unlawfully appropriated land and property restored. I know that this last principle makes many people uneasy, but there are several ways of conceptualizing how the right of return might be exercised lawfully such that it does not entail further dispossession (and we will return to this issue).

For those who say that exercising internationally recognized rights is anti-Semitic, or becomes anti-Semitic in this context, they must mean either that a) its motivation is anti-Semitic or b) its effects are anti-Semitic. I take it that no one is actually saying that the rights themselves are anti-Semitic, since they have been invoked by many populations in the last decades, including Jewish people dispossessed and displaced in the aftermath of the second world war. Is there really any reason we should not assume that Jews, just like any other people, would prefer to live in a world where such internationally recognized rights are honored? It will not do to say that international law is the enemy of the Jewish people, since the Jewish people surely did not as a whole oppose the Nuremburg trials, or the development of human rights law. In fact, there have always been Jews working alongside non-Jews—not only to establish the courts and codes of international law, but in the struggle to dismantle colonial regimes, opposing any and all legal and military powers that seek systematically to undermine the conditions of political self-determination for any population.

Only if we accept the proposition that the state of Israel is the exclusive and legitimate representative of the Jewish people would a movement calling for divestment, sanctions and boycott against that state be understood as directed against the Jewish people as a whole. Israel would then be understood as co-extensive with the Jewish people. There are two major problems with this view. First, the state of Israel does not represent all Jews, and not all Jews understand themselves as represented by the state of Israel. Secondly, the state of Israel should be representing all of its population equally, regardless of whether or not they are Jewish, regardless of race, religion or ethnicity.

So the first critical and normative claim that follows is that the state of Israel should be representing the diversity of its own population. Indeed, nearly 25 percent of Israel’s population is not Jewish, and most of those are Palestinian, although some of them are Bedouins and Druze. If Israel is to be considered a democracy, the non-Jewish population deserves equal rights under the law, as do the Mizrachim (Arab Jews) who represent over 30 percent of the population. Presently, there are at least twenty laws that privilege Jews over Arabs within the Israeli legal system. The 1950 Law of Return grants automatic citizenship rights to Jews from anywhere in the world upon request, while denying that same right to Palestinians who were forcibly dispossessed of their homes in 1948 or subsequently as the result of illegal settlements and redrawn borders. Human Rights Watch has compiled an extensive study of Israel's policy of "separate, not equal" schools for Palestinian children. Moreover, as many as 100 Palestinian villages in Israel are still not recognized by the Israeli government, lacking basic services (water, electricity, sanitation, roads, etc.) from the government. Palestinians are barred from military service, and yet access to housing and education still largely depends on military status. Families are divided by the separation wall between the West Bank and Israel, with few forms of legal recourse to rights of visitation and reunification. The Knesset debates the “transfer” of the Palestinian population to the West Bank, and the new loyalty oath requires that anyone who wishes to become a citizen pledge allegiance to Israel as Jewish and democratic, thus eliding once again the non-Jewish population and binding the full population to a specific and controversial, if not contradictory, version of democracy.

The second point, to repeat, is that the Jewish people extend beyond the state of Israel and the ideology of political Zionism. The two cannot be equated. Honestly, what can really be said about “the Jewish people” as a whole? Is it not a lamentable sterotype to make large generalizations about all Jews, and to presume they all share the same political commitments? They—or, rather, we—occupy a vast spectrum of political views, some of which are unconditionally supportive of the state of Israel, some of which are conditionally supportive, some are skeptical, some are exceedingly critical, and an increasing number, if we are to believe the polls in this country, are indifferent. In my view, we have to remain critical of anyone who posits a single norm that decides rights of entry into the social or cultural category determining as well who will be excluded. Most categories of identity are fraught with conflicts and ambiguities; the effort to suppress the complexity of the category of “Jewish” is thus a political move that seeks to yoke a cultural identity to a specific Zionist position. If the Jew who struggles for justice for Palestine is considered to be anti-Semitic, if any number of internationals who have joined thus struggle from various parts of the world are also considered anti-Semitic and if Palestinians seeking rights of political self-determination are so accused as well, then it would appear that no oppositional move that can take place without risking the accusation of anti-Semitism. That accusation becomes a way of discrediting a bid for self-determination, at which point we have to ask what political purpose the radical mis-use of that accusation has assumed in the stifling of a movement for political self-determination.

When Zionism becomes co-extensive with Jewishness, Jewishness is pitted against the diversity that defines democracy, and if I may say so, betrays one of the most important ethical dimensions of the diasporic Jewish tradition, namely, the obligation of co-habitation with those different from ourselves. Indeed, such a conflation denies the Jewish role in broad alliances in the historical struggle for social and political justice in unions, political demands for free speech, in socialist communities, in the resistance movement in World War II, in peace activism, the Civil Rights movement and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. It also demeans the important struggles in which Jews and Palestinians work together to stop the wall, to rebuild homes, to document indefinite detention, to oppose military harassment at the borders and to oppose the occupation and to imagine the plausible scenarios for the Palestinian right to return.

The point of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is to withdraw funds and support from major financial and cultural institutions that support the operations of the Israeli state and its military. The withdrawal of investments from companies that actively support the military or that build on occupied lands, the refusal to buy products that are made by companies on occupied lands, the withdrawal of funds from investment accounts that support any of these activities, a message that a growing number of people in the international community will not be complicit with the occupation. For this goal to be realized, it matters that there is a difference between those who carry Israeli passports and the state of Israel, since the boycott is directed only toward the latter. BDS focuses on state agencies and corporations that build machinery designed to destroy homes, that build military materiel that targets populations, that profit from the occupation, that are situated illegally on Palestinian lands, to name a few.

BDS does not discriminate against individuals on the basis of their national citizenship. I concede that not all versions of BDS have been consistent on this point in the past, but the present policy confirms this principle. I myself oppose any form of BDS that discriminates against individuals on the basis of their citizenship. Others may interpret the boycott differently, but I have no problem collaborating with Israeli scholars and artists as long as we do not participate in any Israeli institution or have Israeli state monies support our collaborative work. The reason, of course, is that the academic and cultural boycott seeks to put pressure on all those cultural institutions that have failed to oppose the occupation and struggle for equal rights and the rights of the dispossessed, all those cultural institutions that think it is not their place to criticize their government for these practices, all of them that understand themselves to be above or beyond this intractable political condition. In this sense, they do contribute to an unacceptable status quo. And those institutions should know why international artists and scholars refuse to come when they do, just as they also need to know the conditions under which people will come. When those cultural institutions (universities, art centers, festivals) were to take such a stand, that would be the beginning of the end of the boycott (let’s remember that the goal of any boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is to become obsolete and unnecessary; once conditions of equality and justice are achieved, the rationale for BDS falls away, and in this sense achieving the just conditions for the dissolution of the movement is its very aim).

In some ways, the argument between BDS and its opponents centers on the status of international law. Which international laws are to be honored, and how can they be enforced. International law cannot solve every political conflict, but political conflicts that fully disregard international law usually only get worse as a result. We know that the government of the state of Israel has voiced its skepticism about international law, repeatedly criticizing the United Nations as a biased institution, even bombing its offices in Gaza. Israel also became the first country to withhold cooperation from a UN review of its human rights practices scheduled last week in Geneva (New York Times, 1/29/13). I think it is fair to call this a boycott of the UN on the part of the state of Israel. Indeed, one hears criticism of the ineffectiveness of the UN on both sides, but is that a reason to give up on the global human rights process altogether? There are good reasons to criticize the human rights paradigm, to be sure, but for now, I am only seeking to make the case that BDS is not a destructive or hateful movement. It appeals to international law precisely under conditions in which the international community, the United Nations included, neighboring Arab states, human rights courts, the European Union, The United States and the UK, have all failed effectively to rectify the manifest injustices in Palestine. Boycott, divestment and the call for sanctions are popular demands that emerge precisely when the international community has failed to compel a state to abide by its own norms.

Let us consider, then, go back to the right of return, which constitutes the controversial third prong of the BDS platform. The law of return is extended to all of us who are Jewish who live in the diaspora, which means that were it not for my politics, I too would be eligible to become a citizen of that state. At the same time, Palestinians in need of the right of return are denied the same rights? If someone answers that “Jewish demographic advantage” must be maintained, one can query whether Jewish demographic advantage is policy that can ever be reconciled with democratic principles. If one responds to that with “the Jews will only be safe if they retain their majority status,” the response has to be that any state will surely engender an opposition movement when it seeks to maintain a permanent and disenfranchised minority within its borders, fails to offer reparation or return to a population driven from their lands and homes, keeps over four million people under occupation without rights of mobility, due process and political self-determination, and another 1.6 million under siege in Gaza, rationing of food, administering unemployment, blocking building materials to restore bombed homes and institutions, intensifying vulnerability to military bombardment resulting in widespread injury and death.

If we conclude that those who participate in such an opposition movement do so because they hate the Jews, we have surely failed to recognize that this is an opposition to oppression, to the multi-faceted dimensions of a militarized form of settler colonialism that has entailed subordination, occupation and dispossession. Any group would oppose that condition, and the state that maintains it, regardless of whether that state is identified as a Jewish state or any other kind. Resistance movements do not discriminate against oppressors, though sometimes the language of the movement can use discriminatory language, and that has to be opposed. However, it is surely cynical to claim that the only reason a group organizes to oppose its own oppression is that it bears an inexplicable prejudice or racist hatred against those who oppress them. We can see the torque of this argument and the absurd conclusions to which it leads: if the Palestinians did not hate the Jews, they would accept their oppression by the state of Israel! If they resist, it is a sign of anti-Semitism!

This kind of logic takes us to one of the traumatic and affective regions of this conflict. There are reasons why much of the global media and prevailing political discourses cannot accept that a legitimate opposition to inequality, occupation, and dispossession is very different from anti-Semitism. After all, we cannot rightly argue that if a state claiming to represent the Jewish people engages in these manifestly illegal activities, it is therefore justified on the grounds that the Jews have suffered atrociously and therefore have special needs to be exempt from international norms. Such illegal acts are never justified, no matter who is practicing them.

At the same time, one must object to some of the language used by Hamas to refer to the state of Israel, where very often the state of Israel is itself conflated with the Jews, and where the actions of the state reflect on the nature of the Jews. This is clearly anti-Semitism and must be opposed. But BDS is not the same as Hamas, and it is simply ignorant to argue that all Palestinian organizations are the same. In the same vein, those who wrote to me recently to say that BDS is the same as Hamas is the same as the Nazis are involved in fearful and aggressive forms of association that assume that any effort to make distinctions is naïve and foolish. And so we see how the conflations such as these lead to bitter and destructive consequences. What if we slowed down enough to think and to distinguish—what political possibilities might then open?

And it brings us to yet another outcry that we heard in advance of our discussion here this evening. That was BDS is the coming of a second holocaust. I believe we have to be very careful when anyone makes use of the Holocaust in this way and for this purpose, since if the term becomes a weapon by which we seek to stigmatize those with opposing political viewpoints, then we have first of all dishonored the slaughter of over 6 million Jewish people, and another 4 million gypsies, gay people, disabled, the communists and the physically and mentally ill. All of us, Jewish or not Jewish, must keep that historical memory intact and alive, and refuse forms of revisionism and political exploitation of that history. We may not exploit and re-ignite the traumatic dimension of Hitler’s atrocities for the purposes of accusing and silencing those with opposing political viewpoints, including legitimate criticisms of the state of Israel. Such a tactic not only demeans and instrumentalizes the memory of the Nazi genocide, but produces a general cynicism about both accusations of anti-Semitism and predictions of new genocidal possibilities. After all, if those terms are bandied about as so much artillery in a war, then they are used as blunt instruments for the purposes of censorship and self-legitimation, and they no longer name and describe the very hideous political realities to which they belong. The more such accusations and invocations are tactically deployed, the more skeptical and cynical the public becomes about their actual meaning and use. This is a violation of that history, an insult to the surviving generation, and a cynical and excited recirculation of traumatic material—a kind of sadistic spree, to put it bluntly—that seeks to defend and legitimate a very highly militarized and repressive state regime. Of the use of the Holocaust to legitimate Israeli military destructiveness, Primo Levi wrote in 1982, “I deny any validity to [the use of the Holocaust for] this defence.”

We have heard in recent days as well that BDS threatens the attempt to establish a two-state solution. Although many people who support BDS are in favor of a one-state solution, the BDS movement has not taken a stand on this explicitly, and includes signatories who differ from one another on this issue. In fact, the BDS committee, formed in 2005 with the support of over 170 organizations in Palestine, does not take any stand on the one state or two state solution. It describes itself as an “anti-normalization” politics that seeks to force a wide range of political institutions and states to stop compliance with the occupation, unequal treatment and dispossession. For the BDS National Committee, it is not the fundamental structure of the state of Israel that is called into question, but the occupation, its denial of basic human rights, its abrogation of international law (including its failure to honor the rights of refugees), and the brutality of its continuing conditions—harassment, humiliation, destruction and confiscation of property, bombardment, and killing. Indeed, one finds an array of opinions on one-state and two-state, especially now that one-state can turn into Greater Israel with separated Bantustans of Palestinian life. The two-state solution brings its own problems, given that the recent proposals tend to suspend the rights of refugees, accept curtailed borders and fail to show whether the establishment of an independent state will bring to an end the ongoing practices and institutions of occupation, or simply incorporate them into its structure. How can a state be built with so many settlements, all illegal, which are expected to bring the Israeli population in Palestine to nearly one million of its four million inhabitants. Many have argued that it is the rapidly increasing settler population in the West Bank, not BDS, that is forcing the one-state solution.

Some people accept divestment without sanctions, or divestment and sanctions without the boycott. There are an array of views. In my view, the reason to hold together all three terms is simply that it is not possible to restrict the problem of Palestinian subjugation to the occupation alone. It is significant in itself, since four million people are living without rights of mobility, sovereignty, control over their borders, trade and political self-determination, subjected to military raids, indefinite detention, extended imprisonment and harassment. However, if we fail to make the link between occupation, inequality and dispossession, we agree to forget the claims of 1948, bury the right to return. We overlook the structural link between the Israeli demand for demographic advantage and the multivalent forms of dispossession that affect Palestinians who have been forced to become diasporic, those who live with partial rights within the borders, and those who live under occupation in the West Bank or in the open air prison of Gaza (with high unemployment and rationed foods) or other refugee camps in the region.

Some people have said that they value co-existence over boycott, and wish to engage in smaller forms of binational cultural communities in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians live and work together. This is a view that holds to the promise that small organic communities have a way of expanding into ever widening circles of solidarity, modeling the conditions for peaceable co-existence. The only question is whether those small communities continue to accept the oppressive structure of the state, or whether in their small and effective way oppose the various dimensions of continuing subjugation and disenfranchisement. If they do the latter, they become solidarity struggles. So co-existence becomes solidarity when it joins the movement that seeks to undo the structural conditions of inequality, containment and dispossession. So perhaps the conditions of BDS solidarity are precisely what prefigure that form of living and working together that might one day become a just and peaceable form of co-existence.

One could be for the BDS movement as the only credible non-violent mode of resisting the injustices committed by the state of Israel without falling into the football lingo of being “pro” Palestine and “anti” Israel. This language is reductive, if not embarrassing. One might reasonably and passionately be concerned for all the inhabitants of that land, and simply maintain that the future for any peaceful, democratic solution for that region will become thinkable through the dismantling of the occupation, through enacting the equal rights of Palestinian minorities and finding just and plausible ways for the rights of refugees to be honored. If one holds out for these three aims in political life, then one is not simply living within the logic of the “pro” and the “anti”, but trying to fathom the conditions for a “we”, a plural existence grounded in equality. What does one do with one’s words but reach for a place beyond war, ask for a new constellation of political life in which the relations of colonial subjugation are brought to a halt. My wager, my hope, is that everyone’s chance to live with greater freedom from fear and aggression will be increased as those conditions of justice, freedom, and equality are realized. We can or, rather, must start with how we speak, and how we listen, with the right to education, and to dwell critically, fractiously, and freely in political discourse together. Perhaps the word “justice” will assume new meanings as we speak it, such that we can venture that what will be just for the Jews will also be just for the Palestinians, and for all the other people living there, since justice, when just, fails to discriminate, and we savor that failure.

Open Letter on Academic Freedom From 'The Nation' to New York Elected Officials

Nation Action on February 5, 2013 - 6:34 PM ET

Alternate title: Grammar & Punctuation are Anti-Semitic - Flier handed out at Brooklyn College

We note that on February 6, seventeen of the nineteen signatories to the letter from Representative Jerrold Nadler & Co. released another letter thanking president Gould for her "leadership," affirming the right of the college to hold such panels and standing strongly against official defunding threats (though they did not apologize for misrepresenting the college's co-sponsorship of the panel as official endorsement of its speakers' views, or for their false allegations that the college had excluded alternative views). The two names missing from the follow-up letter? Assemblyman James Brennan and former Comptroller Bill Thompson. Earlier in the day, Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a far less tepid defense of Brooklyn College, saying, "If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea." We also note that the far more threatening and vicious letter from Lewis Fidler & Co., which had ten signatories, is still extant, though two of the original signatories, Council Members Letitia James and Stephen Levin, have withdrawn their names from it.

The Nation supports the right of Brooklyn College to sponsor a panel discussion with Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti on BDS. We urge Brooklyn College President Karen Gould to resist attempts by those who have attempted to intimidate CUNY into canceling, changing, or withdrawing its sponsorship for the panel. We are especially concerned that members of the New York City Council have threatened to withhold further money for CUNY if it does not either cancel the event or withdraw its sponsorship. This is a grave threat to academic freedom and sets a terrible precedent.

Progressive Democrat stands by terror-linked official railing against Brooklyn College BDS event
Feb 07, 2013 01:37 pm | Alex Kane

One of the leaders of the push to intimidate student organizers and the Brooklyn College administration over this evening’s boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) event at the school is a politician with links to a far-right Jewish group labeled a terrorist organization by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And a progressive candidate for mayor, Bill Thompson, is standing right by his side.

Dov Hikind, the Orthodox Jewish power broker who represents Borough Park in the New York State Assembly, has been railing against the BDS event and organized a January 31st press conference against the panel discussion. The conference was attended by a number of New York politicians who spewed falsehoods and smears about the boycott Israel movement. Notably, Thompson, a current mayoral candidate and former Comptroller who is considered a progressive, was happy to help Hikind out. Following the lead of Hikind’s rants, Thompson said the BDS movement expresses hate.

At the January 31 press event, Hikind claimed that Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler, the two speakers at tonight’s event, are supporters of Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. But it’s the height of irony for Hikind to be claim to be worried about terrorism. Hikind was a close follower of Meir Kahane, who founded the Jewish Defense League and the racist Kach political party in Israel. The FBI has labeled the JDL a violent extremist Jewish organization" and a "right-wing terrorist group."

Writing in The Nation, Max Blumenthal has more on the JDL’s violent past and Hikind’s ties to the group:

    Hikind gained his earliest experience in the early 1970s in local New York politics as an acolyte of Meir Kahane, the fanatical rabbi-turned-Israeli Member of Knesset who called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and establishment of a theocratic state of Judea in the West Bank. I’m proud of every single moment, let me make that very clear. Rabbi Kahane had a great influence on me, Hikind declared in 2008. Under Kahane’s guidance, Hikind became active in the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a nationwide extremist network that attacked Arab-American and Soviet targets while rallying vigilante squads to protect working-class Jews living in African-American and Puerto Rican neighborhoods...

    In their book on the plot to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, journalists Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman reported that Hikind had been arraigned in a federal court in 1976 for tossing a smoke bomb into the Ugandan mission after the Israeli rescue of passengers kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists on an Air France jetliner in Entebbe, Uganda. A decade later the FBI suspected him of involvement in planning a string of six bombings against Arab targets in NY, Massachusetts and California in which one man was killed and seven were injured but no evidence was found against him, Karpin and Friedman wrote. Two JDL members who fled from FBI prosecution to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank had been involved with Hikind in a campaign to undermine the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to Karpin and Friedman.

    The most significant figure the JDL was suspected of killing was Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) western regional director Alex Odeh. However, the FBI was never able to apprehend the likely perpetrators. After the murder of Odeh, more assaults followed on ADC offices, including a pipe bomb attack in Boston that critically wounded a member of a police bomb squad. In an interview with Robert I. Friedman, Hikind said he supported forming a group of intelligent professionals to assassinate Nazis and Arab-American supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

But before you dismiss Hikind as some kind of fringe crackpot better ignored, take a look at his influence. Blumenthal notes that Hikind has established himself as one of the most influential Jewish politicians in New York, delivering pivotal support to candidates from former Senator Alfonse D’Amato to former Governor George Pataki.

    These days, political upstarts from across the spectrum are eager for Hikind’s endorsement. In the 2011 special election held after Representative Anthony Weiner’s embarrassing resignation, Hikind helped deliver victory to Bob Turner, a Republican gentile running against David Weprin, an Orthodox Jewish Democrat. Hikind said he backed Turned in order to send a message to President Obama about his supposedly insufficient support for Israel. There was also the fact that Weprin supported same-sex marriage, an absolute faux pas for the ferociously anti-gay Hikind, who has compared homosexuality to incest.

    In a Democratic congressional primary last year, Hikind threw his weight behind Hakeem Jeffries, a youthful African-American Democrat running against Charles Barron, a veteran black nationalist community organizer and unapologetic supporter of Palestinian rights. At a press conference convened in support of Jeffries, Hikind joinedtop local Democrats, including Representative Jerry Nadler and the late Mayor Ed Koch, in denouncing Barron as hateful, a scary monster and an anti-Semite” the same language directed against organizers of the Brooklyn College BDS forum. I really feel that Hakeem Jeffries is a superstar, Hikind gushed. Weeks later, Jeffries cruised to an easy victory over Barron.

So Thompson, a candidate for mayor, is clearly looking to secure votes from New York’s politically influential Orthodox Jewish community. And to do that, he is standing by Hikind. In fact, they have a longer history together. In 2009, Hikind endorsed Thompson’s mayoral run, and said that he has known him for "more than 30 years." Hikind also decried "politics of fear" and "divisiveness." You can watch the endorsement here:

Thompson is a man who claims to be against racism. He has come out strongly against the New York Police Department’s stop and frisk practices that have targeted communities of color in the city. We have to end stop-and-frisk in New York City as we know it. It is wrong what is occurring right now, as Thompson said last year.

But Thompson clearly operates on a double standard: he remains silent about the NYPD’s blanket surveillance of Muslim communities. And he’s thrown his lot in with Dov Hikind, an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigot who wants the NYPD to profile Muslims in the subway system and was part of the smear campaign that took down Debbie Almontaser, the founding principal of the city’s first dual-language Arabic public school. Additionally, in 2006, Hikind supported a group of Jewish teenagers who beat up a young Pakistani man in the Midwood section of Brooklyn.

Thompson’s hypocrisy is now out in the open, and it’s clear his statements against the BDS movement are about pandering for votes. So the next time you hear Thompson rail against stop and frisk, remember that he has no qualms about virulent racism directed against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. When it comes to Hikind's racism, Thompson turns a blind eye.

If you want to give Thompson a piece of your mind, contact his mayoral campaign office at (212) 372-7565 or info@billthompsonformayor.com.

Bill Thompson, a candidate for mayor, has garnered the support of Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a follower of Meir Kahane and the Jewish Defense League (Photo via Dov Hikind's website)

Well Israel is always boasting about its unique achievements.  Here is another one.  It is the first country to boycott the toothless UN Human Rights Council.  As the Greeks once said, those whom the gods wish to destroy they first drive mad.

Tony Greenstein

The Only Democracy in the Middle East Boycotts Human Rights 

Israel expected to boycott U.N. rights scrutiny session

(Reuters) - Israel is expected to boycott a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council next week despite the United States urging its ally to show up for an examination of its record, the U.S. ambassador said on Thursday.

UN HQ

The Jewish state is scheduled to be in the dock of the Geneva rights forum on Tuesday, January 29 as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, the council's regular scrutiny of all United Nations member states.

"They (Israeli officials) signaled that they want it postponed. It is very unlikely they will participate on the 29th,"

Israel has long complained about criticsm from UN HRC

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, U.S. human rights ambassador, told reporters in Geneva.
If the review goes ahead, Israel would likely face criticism for its practices in the Palestinian territories, including treatment of detainees, settlement expansion and its naval blockade of the Gaza Strip which Palestinians say is collective punishment of the enclave's 1.6 million residents.
Arab states would be expected to denounce Israel's deadly air strikes on Hamas-ruled Gaza last November, launched with the declared aim of ending rocket barrages.

Israel's last review was in December 2008, when it attended. A boycott would be unprecedented and diplomats fear other countries might follow suit to avoid scrutiny of their own human rights records.
Israel suspended relations with the council last May because of what it called an inherent bias against it, and has informally told the council's president that it wants the session postponed, a U.N. spokesman said.

"A decision will be taken in the event Israel does not show up for its UPR, the council will decide on a course of action. States are working very hard behind the scenes to come up with a solution," council spokesman Rolando Gomez told Reuters.

The Israeli authorities refused to co-operate with a fact-finding mission investigating settlements

A team of U.N. investigators, set up by the council last year, is due to report soon on whether Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories violate international human rights law. Washington cast the only vote against the initiative brought by the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinians said on Wednesday they would complain about Israel to the International Criminal Court if the Jewish state proceeds with plans to build housing on land the Palestinians want for a future state.

"We see a strong bias against Israel that has not gone away," U.S. Ambassador Donahoe said.

"We have encouraged Israel to come to the UPR, to tell its story, to present its own narrative of its human rights situation. We think it is a good opportunity to do that."

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Andrew Roche and Robin Pomeroy)

Jews Speak Out Against the Racist Double Standards of the 'Law of Return'

 A Film Made About Jews Who Oppose Zionism
Despite an overemphasis on Neturei Kara, the Orthodox anti-Zionists, this is a good film that features among other things the young Israelis opposed to the occupation who refuse to serve in the Israel Occupation Forces, the Shministim, and also Gerald Kaufmann MP's excellent speech when he said that his grandmother hadn't been murdered in the ghetto she lived in by the Nazis in order that Israel could kill Palestinian grandmothers.


 

Initial Signers

 

SOME SURPRISES

Professor Ezra Elias.  of the Technion – a Distinguished Academic Racist

Issam al-Aryan calls on Jews to return

Palestinians, Egyptian Jews and propaganda

Despite claims to the contrary, it isn't all sunshine and rainbows when Jewish Egyptians reflect on Egypt.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University.

 Last Modified: 07 Jan 2013 05:31

"The statements made by Issam al-Aryan, a senior leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, calling on Egyptian Jews in Israel to return home, are hardly novel," writes author [AFP]

The current propaganda war in Egypt about the Palestinians and about Egyptian Jews, which was provoked by the recent pronouncements of Issam al-Aryan, a senior leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is nothing but a distraction from the real problems that the country faces with the increasing incompetence of the Morsi government and the opportunism of his vocal opposition.

Levana Zamir with mother on the balcony of their house in Egypt -1949

If this propaganda war did not have major implications with regards to Israel and US plans to undermine the Egyptian uprising and to control its outcome so as to serve US and Israeli interests, it would be nothing but a storm in a teacup. That it has many regional and international implications is what produces the ongoing media frenzy in the country and internationally.

The statements made by al-Aryan calling on Egyptian Jews in Israel to return home, however, are hardly novel. Indeed Egypt had already done so under Anwar Sadat's rule back in 1975 at the urging of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

In 1975, and based on its understanding that the departure of Arab Jews to go to Israel under the Arab anciens regimes was a boon to the Zionist colonisation of Palestine, the PLO undertook to call for the repatriation of Arab Jews and demanded that the current Arab leaders (none of whom had been in power when Arab Jews left their countries in the 1950s and 1960s) issue an open invitation to them.
Morocco, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Iraq and Egypt responded to the PLO call and issued an open invitation to Arab Jews to return home. Despite these efforts, neither Israel nor its Arab Jewish communities heeded the call.

Discriminating against Arab Jews

Indeed, it would not be until the last couple of decades that Israel began to exploit the question of Arab Jewry as a counterweight to Palestinian demands for their internationally supported right of return to Palestine from which the Zionists had expelled them.

The same Ashkenazi Jewish leadership that discriminated and discriminates against Arab Jews in Israel began to lead the effort of demanding compensation for Arab Jewish property losses while liberal Zionist commentators and their supporters in the West began to issue statements which summarised what happened in 1948 and after as an equitable "population exchange" between "Arabs" and "Jews" (often compared to the situation of India and Pakistan), and calling on the Palestinians to relinquish all their demands for return and compensation.

That the Palestinians were massacred and forcibly expelled from their homeland while Arab Jews left the Arab world in their majority due to Zionist harassment and endangerment of their lives is often forgotten by such propaganda.

Zionists and Israeli propagandists saw in this comparison another venue to prove how civilised Israel is and how barbaric the Arabs are. The argument goes as follows: The Arab countries mistreated the Palestinian refugees and refused to grant them nationalities and settle them in their new homes and kept them languishing in refugee camps while civilised Israel gave Arab Jews Israeli nationality, and indeed settled them outside refugee camps.

Synagogue in Cairo

The Zionist contradiction on this question is a bit scandalous. On the one hand, Israel claims that it is the homeland of all Jews, and on the other it argues that Arab Jews came as refugees to the country, rather than "returned" to it.

The Israeli claim about the Palestinian refugees is only partly true, as many Palestinians have been given nationality in some Arab countries (notably Jordan), but unlike Israel, which gave the stolen land and property of the Palestinians it expelled to its Jewish colonial settler population, including to Arab Jews (though the latter received the less valuable lands and property in accordance with Israel's European Ashkenazi racism against Arab Jews), Arab countries did not settle the Palestinians on Jewish property or in Jewish homes.

Thus, the Israeli crime of stealing Palestinian property and giving it to Jews, which is prohibited by international law, is trotted out as the actions of the civilised Jewish settler-colony compared to the barbaric Arabs. In this context, it is important to affirm that it is the Palestinians who are owed compensation for their stolen property by all the Jewish colonial settlers who have been living on it for some six decades, including Arab Jews.

The fact that Arab Jews were not expelled from any Arab country, even from those where some of them suffered from harassment by the authorities or even from segments of society at large is central to this narrative. In Yemen and Iraq, Israel undertook to remove the Jewish communities through various criminal means, most notably through Mossad bombings of Jewish locations in Iraq, and secret deals with varying Arab regimes, including that of Yemen.

In Algeria, Israel recruited members of the 100,000-strong Jewish community (all of whom carried since 1870 French nationality by virtue of the Crémieux decree issued by France, keeping in mind that a good percentage of them by then were European settlers) to spy on the National Liberation Front revolutionaries and report back to the French authorities.

Indeed, Israeli military forces would carry out military training on occupied Algerian soil with the French occupation authorities in the 1950s. This hardly endeared Algerian Jews to Algerian Muslims, who were suffering under one of the most brutal European occupations in Africa. This situation was of course brought about by French colonial policy of divide and rule, as Algerian Jews had fought in the resistance to the French in the mid-19th century with Emir Abd al-Qadir and Muslim Algerians.

Anger against Egyptian Jews

In Egypt, Egyptian Jewish interests would be attacked in 1948 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the non-Islamist Young Egypt Party (Misr al-Fatah), which led to the departure of a small number of Jews (especially those with foreign nationality). Israel would later recruit Egyptian Jews as spies who would undertake a bombing campaign in 1954 to undermine Nasser's standing in the West. Israel would also invade the country in 1956 along with the French and British and occupy Egyptian territory.

At the time, the Egyptian government expelled all French and British nationals in the country (about 17,000), including the Jews among them, as enemy citizens. When Nasser undertook a policy of nationalisation, families who owned big businesses, which were slated for nationalisation, began to leave the country. This included rich Egyptian Muslims, Christians and Jews (many of whom held foreign nationalities), and it also included Syrian Christians, Armenians, Greeks and Italians.

In the wake of the Lavon Affair (in Arabic, it is significantly called the "Lavon Scandal") in 1954, much popular anger ensued against Egyptian Jews, which was hardly surprising, even though the government discourse tried to maintain the distinction between the community and the terrorist recruits during the ensuing trials of the terrorists.

This should be contrasted with American anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism, which, as As'ad Abukhalil recently noted, continues to target Arab Americans and Muslim Americans eleven years after 9/11, even though not a single one of the terrorists who committed the crimes of that day was an Arab American or a Muslim American.

Indeed just a few weeks ago, a racist New Yorker pushed a young Indian man (who was Hindu) in front of a subway train to his death. "I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers," the suspect told prosecutors. This was the latest victim of American racist violence against Arab and Muslim Americans and of Indian Hindus and Sikhs mistaken for them.

We must also keep in mind that a substantial percentage of the Jews in Egypt were not legally Egyptian, as they did not carry Egyptian nationality and many did not even speak Arabic and carried European passports (Italian, Russian, British and French), a fact that intensified the perception in some popular quarters that they were not loyal to the country. This of course was not the case with the old Egyptian Arab Jewish community (especially the Qarra'in Jews) whose lives were eclipsed by the large and powerful Ashkenazi and Sephardi families who arrived in Egypt in the 19th and early 20th century.

That the Nasser regime did not do enough to safeguard members of the Jewish community from harassment by its own agencies and to shield it from popular anger is true enough and should be subject to much blame, but this is not the same as expelling a population, or deporting it.

This situation also coincided with the ongoing Israeli campaign to bring Arab Jews to Palestine through various criminal means and secret deals, which were successful in Iraq and Yemen and were ongoing in Morocco and which resulted in the destruction of these communities altogether. Israel's direct efforts to bring about the departure of half of Egypt's small Jewish community of some 60,000 to Israel (the rest went to France and the Americas) is still not fully known but should not be ignored in analysing the situation.

That most of the terrorist attacks against Jewish interests in Egypt took place under the rule of the Egyptian King Farouk in the 1940s and early 1950s seems irrelevant to the few Egyptian Zionist propagandists today, who appeared this week on Egyptian television and wrote articles in the Egyptian press, insinuating that all that went wrong with Egyptian Jews should be blamed on Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Indeed, such propagandists completely factor out Israeli actions from bringing about the departure of Egyptian Jews. One propagandist referred to the departure of Egyptian Jews as "nuzuh" or "flight", and agreed with al-Aryan, whom he opposes otherwise, that Jews were indeed "expelled" from Egypt.

We are even treated to the strange claims by the same propagandist that Egyptian Jews he met in the US and France continue to love Egypt, Arabs and Muslims. While there is no doubt that many Egyptian Jews, wherever they may be, harbour positive feelings towards Egypt, many of those prominent among them in the West have expressed much hatred towards Egypt and the Arab world.
Indeed, many among the latter have become prominent because of their hateful views of Egypt while those Egyptian Jews who love Egypt are ignored and given less prominence in the West and Israel.
'Silent' about the country of origin

Propagandists on behalf of Zionism often cite the Sephardi Cicurel family, which held British citizenship (a fact they forget to mention), as an asset to Egypt. What is forgotten often is that Moreno Cicurel who immigrated to Egypt from Smyrna (Izmir) and started the major family business, Les Grands Magasins Cicurel, was the maker of the first Zionist flag which flew over Jerusalem in December 1917 for 20 minutes before being taken down by the British.

His granddaughter Lili would marry future French Prime Minister Pierre Mendes-France, whose socialist government fell in 1955, though he would serve as foreign minister in the Guy Mollet government (of the Radical Socialist Party to which Mendes-France belonged) until May 1956.
It was during Mendes-France's term as prime minister in 1955 that Israeli nuclear scientists were invited to participate in France's nuclear programme. Israel's later deal with the French in 1956 to participate in the tripartite invasion of Egypt was concluded with one of the rewards being that France would build Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor where Israel's nuclear bombs would be manufactured.

It was Israel's current president Shimon Peres, who supervised the deal then, who tells us:
Before the final signing [of the Sevres Protocol where the plan was hatched to invade Egypt], I asked Ben-Gurion for a brief adjournment, during which I met Mollet and Bourges-Maunoury alone. It was here that I finalised with these two leaders an agreement for the building of a nuclear reactor at Dimona, in southern Israel... and the supply of natural uranium to fuel it. I put forward a series of detailed proposals and, after discussion, they accepted them.

In 1973, Golda Meir would threaten to nuke Egypt using these bombs. Throughout this period, Lili Cicurel, to my knowledge, not once made a public statement, either opposing the French invasion of Egypt or its alliance and nuclear assistance to Israel (she died in 1967).

Indeed, the Cicurel business was not even nationalised. Lili's uncle Salvator, whose assets were all already outside Egypt, sold the business to the Muslim Gabri family before leaving the country in 1957. The Cicurel business, which was by then owned by the Gabris, would be nationalised by Nasser in 1961.   

What next for Egypt and its neighbours?

 As for the propaganda that the Cicurels were harassed by the Nasserist government, it is just that: propaganda. As for Mendes-France, he would become a sponsor of Palestinian-Israeli "peace dialogues" in the 1970s in his own home.

Not only did many prominent Egyptian Jews in the West remain silent about their country of origin, many of them are part and parcel of the Western campaigns against Egypt, the Arabs, and Muslims more generally.

Today, the Alexandria-born Haim Saban, the American Likudnik billionaire, is hardly a friend of anything Arab and is a major supporter of extreme Israeli racist and colonial policies.
The Cairo-born Nadav Safran, the former Harvard professor on the CIA payroll, propagandised against Arabs and Muslims and was an early Zionist since before 1948 and was already a colonial settler living in a kibbutz in 1946. He fought in the 1948 Zionist war for the conquest of Palestine.

Propagandistic generalisations

As for Egyptian Jews in the US who have written memoirs about their time in Egypt, one of them complains in his memoirs about the disgusting smells of Egyptians who "smell" of fenugreek.

Of course, there are other Egyptian Jews who are not as prominent and who continue to love Egypt, but propagandistic generalisations of the sort being pushed by the few non-Jewish Egyptian Zionists today that "all Egyptian Jews" in the US and France, at least, if not those in Israel as well, love Egypt and the Arabs, are hardly apt when so many prominent Egyptian Jews expressly manifest their anti-Egyptian and anti-Arab attitudes in the West, let alone in Israel.

Another major commentator in the US on Egyptian Jews is one Lucette Lagnado, who along with her Jewish parents left Egypt in 1963. She would come back to visit after 2005 and published a memoir. She had a book-reading in Zamalek at the Diwan Bookstore where she befriended one of the owners, Hind Wasef, who welcomed her to Cairo and introduced her to Diwan's customers who welcomed her in turn.

In the meantime, however, Lagnado propagandises like many other Zionists, about the "population exchange" formula, among other Zionist myths. She tells us, towing the Israeli line, of how Jews were "forced out" of their homes in the Arab world while Palestinians simply "fled" Israel. 
Since the revolution, however, and despite the hospitality shown to her by Egyptians when she visited, Lagnado has been propagandising against the new order and tells her Wall Street Journal readers that she will not go back to the country given that the new government is led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Who knows, maybe after al-Aryan's invitation she will, even though his invitation seems to include only Egyptian Jews in Israel.

As for half of the Egyptian Jewish community who ended up in Israel, many of them would fight in the wars against Egypt and the Arabs, and some became military spokespersons for the Israelis, who often appear on Al Jazeera and speak Egyptian Arabic. It is unclear if those too are being invited back to Egypt.

That all of this was provoked by al-Aryan is not coincidental. In the last few months, the Egyptian remnants of the Mubarak regime and anti-Muslim Brotherhood liberals have continued to market Mubarak's anti-Palestinian campaigns in the country by claiming that President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are planning to give Sinai to Gaza Palestinians. Even such illustrious figures as the economist, Galal Amin, participated in spreading these false rumours.

That many of these people (Amin excepted) who fulminate about Sinai and the Palestinians have been silent for three decades on the fact that Sinai remains outside Egyptian sovereignty as a result of the Camp David Accords, and who do not give a hoot about Sinai's Egyptian population is quite telling of their suspicious agenda. That they have suddenly sprung to attention defending Sinai against a fictional propaganda story that Sinai would be given to the Palestinians is reprehensible at best. Other rumours about the Palestinians abound, such as Morsi's alleged depriving Egyptians of electricity, which he is allegedly giving for free to Gaza Palestinians.

Concomitant with these rumours is the Egyptian government's and the opposition's race to please the United States and its Zionist lobby. While the very same Issam al-Aryan spoke about the tragedy of the Jewish holocaust while in the US on a Muslim Brotherhood promotional trip in May 2011, the naïve and charisma-less Mohamed el-Baradei upped the ante by telling a German newspaper that elected Salafi and Brotherhood members of parliament should not be trusted to draft the Egyptian constitution because they allegedly deny the holocaust!

Al-Aryan's recent pronouncements on Egyptian Jews are part of this campaign of who can prove to the Americans and the Zionists that they can better serve US and Zionist interests.

This unfortunate level which the post-revolutionary Egyptian protagonists have reached tells us how successful counter-revolutionary forces in Egypt have become, and how they are undermining revolutionary gains and distracting Egyptians from the real economic, social and political challenges facing the country.

Joseph Massad is author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question published by Routledge.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
See also

Head of Alex Jewish community: Nasser did not expel Egyptian Jews

Yousef bin Gaon, the head of the Jewish community in Alexandria, condemned statements made by Essam al-Erian, vice president of the Freedom and Justice Party, in which he accused the regime of former President Gamal Abdel Nasser of expelling Egyptian Jews from Egypt.

Bin Gaon claimed that Nasser only expelled some Jews who had other nationalities and who were proven to have not been loyal to Egypt.

"We lived in Egypt and grew up in it, and our properties remain as they are. We use them to support the elderly members of the community, such as the revenues from the real estate surrounding the Nabi Daniel Synagogue, which dates back to 1910,"
Bin Gaon, 50, told London-based Asharq al-Awsat on Monday

Erian, who is the majority leader of the FJP's parliamentary bloc in the Shura Council, sparked controversy last month when he issued a call for the Egyptian Jews who live in Israel to return to Egypt.

Bin Gaon dismissed claims that Jews in Egypt are determining their properties' values to request compensation. He added that Jews who currently live in Egypt will not give any help to the Jews who left Egypt, alleging that they chose to leave Egypt and to sell their possessions or leave them to the Egyptians who worked with them.

He added that the statements made by Erian did not evoke the interest of any member of the Jewish community in Egypt because none of them was stripped of his or her possessions. He also said that he has the Egyptian nationality certificate of his grandfather's grandfather and the Egyptian nationality certificate of his father, which was signed by King Farouk.

"I have a national identity card, and my passport has not had the name of any country for dozens of years. I used to live in the Immobilia building in Cairo. All members of the Jewish community have Egyptian IDs".

He added that few Egyptian Jews have remained in Egypt, and that all of them have Egyptian fathers and grandfathers, and that is why they did not leave Egypt.

"My father was Nasser's tailor and he made him all his formal suits," he said, adding that he still has pictures of Nasser and his father together.

Death of a Christian friend of the Palestinians father of my friend Cathy

The last time I saw Roger was on the 11th August 1999, at the time of the last solar eclipse of the sun.  I got it into my head that the weather in Cornwall would be fine and I decided to drive down from Brighton.  Unfortunately it was as cloudy, if not more so, in Cornwall than in Sussex.
Over the years we spoke a number of times.  
 Roger’s only daughter Cathy is one of my oldest and dearest friends.  We met nearly 30 years ago when Cathy was a student at Sussex University.  Cathy was one of the original founders of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch in Brighton.  Her home was in Warleggan, a little Cornish village on the edge of Bodmin Moor.  She lived in a garden oasis in the midst of arable farmland on three 3 acres of land known as the Rookery.

hawkstore

I visited The Rookery on a number of occasions and got to know Roger, who was active in the Church of England Synod and a firm supporter of the Palestinians. He had a booming, distinctive voice.  Since Roger passed away on 22nd January I have found far more out about him, including that he was the Mensa Intellectual Activities organiser and in the throes of organising ten very different conferences this year.  

Laura - a poet and Roger's beloved wife

Roger was a lovely and kindly man.  A true British eccentric with a heart of gold.  He wasn’t prepared, as an active Christian, to try and atone for past Christian anti-Semitism by condoning the vicious military occupation of Palestine and the continuous ethnic cleansing.  Not for him the weasel words and platitudes of the Council of Christians and Jews. He was devoted to ensuring that other people live truly human lives. In 2003-2004 Roger was one of the first Ecumenical Accompaniers in the EAPPI programme and worked at sometimes high personal risk on the barrier wall separating Palestinians in the village of Jayyous from their farmland on the other side. A Palestinian colleague remembers:

Roger and EAPPI delegation to the Palestinians

Jayyous needs people like CATHY ROGER, and it is the right time to think to visit Jayyous. Since 3-weeks the Israeli Bulldozers started smashing the land and uprooting the olive trees. A new 4200 meters of walls and fences will be built in Jayyous. A new settlement will be built in Jayyous. Jayyous is passing a new disaster now on a very critical period which is more disastrous than the time Roger was here. Jayyous is crying today for Roger to come and witness what is happening and what he was expecting to happen. Tell CATHY, the land where the wall is being built was documented by Roger’s GPS. Tell CATHY the nuclei of new settlement is being built where Roger was fighting the bulldozers. Tell CATHY our land is mourning the man was trying to protect. Tell CATHY the people of Jayyous love Roger.

I still  remember the day we crossed together the mountains from Jayyous to Nablus where I have been working. There was no taxi, and we were not allowed to use the asphalt roads. It was risky, but he showed courage, strength and smiles never left his face. His heart is full of love; you like to set with him; you feel safe with him; you feel close to him as member of your family. Even after 10-years passed, I can still see him standing talking to me and remember his sweet words to me. He is so kind to kids and all people who met in Jayyous. It is not easy to forget him. If you met Roger you must love him. I share tears and good memories with his family. Tell CATHY, her father was a great man, very kind, peaceful; our land loves him, and we love him forever. Cathy come and see where your father was walking and why he was standing in the middle of land. Your father commitment to Palestine is his commitment to peace. Feel proud of your father’s name, memories, and biography.

Stowes pound cave

I have compiled below a number of photographs, poems and writings by Roger Farnworth. His memory lives on in the hearts of those who love him.  I can only extend my warmest sympathy to Roger’s children Cathy and Tristan and his grandchildren Katinka and Rozelle.

hawkes tor

Tony Greenstein



See http://www.warleggan.net/Roger  for further links

A obituary on the local Warleggan website

Stowes pound cave entrance

Roger was born in Truro, Cornwall. His parents, Edna and Reg, came from Lancashire. Roger well remembered travelling to visit his grandparents towards the end of the war, seeing Manchester in ruins, and the blackouts. His maternal grandfather, Thomas Wolstenholme, came from a Kearsley mining family but entered the cotton trade, moving from rags to riches twice over. He was famed for testing a bolt of cotton by simply fingering it with eyes closed and at one time took almost all the cotton from Mauritius. Roger’s grandmother, Effie, was a Primitive Methodist and had worked in the cotton mills before training as a dressmaker. The hardworking, strict lives of the Wolstenholmes were part of the weave of Roger’s life.

Roger went to board at Taunton Boys’ School when he was seven years old. He was desperately unhappy there. He then went to Probus School, where he was known as ‘Brainbox’ by all the boys. Later, he studied philosophy at the University of Bristol and then took a social work diploma at the University of London. In 1963 Roger became one of seven interviewers employed by the Central Council for Health Education for a completely new kind of investigation at the time into the sexual lives of young people (the results are in a book by John Schofield). One of the team members was Laura Renouf, from Jersey. He was immediately struck by her, recalling that he defended her views on Nabakov in a heated group discussion, upon which she turned to him and kissed him square on the lips. Only very recently Roger was recalling how he went to Selsey marshes with Laura. She was an ardent birdwatcher and flower lover, and he was stunned how she called the landscape from drab browns and greys into a throb of life. It was with Laura that Roger built his fundamental understanding of the world as ‘Miracle’ for a mystery that can be seen in wild nature but also goes beyond.

With Laura and their Latvian friends, especially Monika and Guntis, refugees from the war, life changed utterly for Roger. He was no longer a conventional boy who had never read for pleasure. Worlds opened up suddenly – drinking, dancing, the impassioned poetry of the Latvian diaspora. This joy stayed with him always as Roger’s friends will most certainly remember.

Racist graffitti daubed by settlers in Hebron

In 1964 Roger and Laura, together with Cathy, their six month old daughter, travelled to Zambia to work as English teachers. They stayed there for four years, working in three schools in the remotest parts of Northern Province near the Congo. These were huge experiences at a time when post from home took weeks and the skies and vistas in Zambia seemed endless. Tristan, their son, was born in the last year of their stay. Laura and Roger shared the birth of Zambia as an independent nation, and when they went for further training to Rhodesia they soon got involved in demonstrations against Ian Smith. At one hustings, together with some African students, they prevented Mr Smith from speaking. Roger called, ‘Beware the Ides of March’ and both Laura and Roger were arrested. Laura’s face was on the front page of the nation’s newspapers the next day, a never-ending source of pride to Roger. Their demonstration resulted in a court case and deportation back to Zambia. Roger fought all his life for the cruelly oppressed, supporting Survival International, a small Ethiopian trust and many more charities working in developing countries. About ten years ago he became an Observer with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) for several months, working at the barbed wire walls to ensure the Palestinians could cross to tend their olive groves. Upon his return Roger gave over sixty talks all over Britain to encourage new observers to come forward. He cared passionately about the freedom of the Palestinians and of all peoples.

 

For two years or so after returning from Zambia (via Afghanistan and India in Roger’s case), Roger and his family moved around Cornwall and Ireland seeking a new life, and they spent a year in Saudi Arabia, too. Their aim was to do up an old, remote property and enter the tourist trade. In 1970 they found a most beautiful dilapidated rectory in Cornwall amid tall beeches. The Rookery, Warleggan became their home and a place they loved passionately. Roger developed a new skill, building and decorating. For years he worked as a teacher during the day and on the house till late at night. The Rookery was let to holiday makers in the summer and then to quirky, wonderful hippies during the winters. After Laura’s death on January 2nd, 1980 the meaning of the Rookery changed. Roger came to see it as a haven for people harmed in some way and for this reason rented out flats to people with sometimes very difficult lives, and of course, he continued to seek out tenants with a wild unconventional understanding of the world. Throughout his life, Roger supported his friends in every way possible, including in their darkest hours.

boy narcissus

Roger was profoundly affected by Laura’s death and grieved for her deeply all his life. It took him years to build a new life that held true to the poetry, painting and love of the wild world that he had shared with Laura together with new interests. Roger was a founding member of the North Cornwall Seven group of artists which exhibited widely. He joined the Liskeard Poets and other poetry groups, writing poems with few words that went to the beauty and ache of the world. He loved going on retreats at Dartington Hall and Sharpham, and spent many years with the Julian Group and other religious study and meditation groups. He worked closely with Oxfam to teach school children across Cornwall about developing countries and was a member of the local United Nations Association. In his work for the Bethany Trust, he greatly valued taking people with HIV/AIDS on days out to the sea and pub at a time when this illness was not curable. An early association was with the Footsbarn Theatre company. He was on their management committee for many years, and following their fantastical shows, drank and danced many a night way. Roger loved world music and festivals, and delighted much younger festival goers as he joined in their revelry. Roger also had a profound interest in astronomy. He loved the vastness and mystery of the heavens, and took a huge interest in the latest scientific research into the galaxy.



Over the last decade or so, Roger started to study the archaeology of Bodmin Moor and further afield. Very recently he gave a talk to the Cornwall Archaeology Society and was to give a talk on cliff castles in May. Roger developed new ideas about the meaning of Neolithic monuments across Cornwall which came to be recognised by professional archaeologists as profound and significant, and he discovered many new cairn platforms, other archaeological features, and also view frames centred on Rough Tor above which the cosmos revolves with the North Star.  Landscape for Roger was holy. The way the Neolithic monuments called to each other across Cornwall and the heavens meant everything to him. Roger loved nature’s unknowable unpredictable hand on the landscape, the shifting light and trees bent down by the wind. Roger fought against wind turbines in remote locations, including in Warleggan Parish, whilst spending much time researching other forms of renewable energy and advocating community managed energy schemes. He said regarding a proposed wind farm on the slopes of Rough Tor, ‘I feel we will have let down future generations who will never again experience the wild isolation and rugged beauty of Rough Tor’s archaeology. Their insights into the earliest Neolithic will be dominated by energy generators. I fear that some think knowledge filleted from the past is all that matters. It is the quest to imaginatively recreate Neolithic experience that will irrevocably be harmed by the wind farms.’ 

stone row

Roger was very active in Mensa, working with them for many years on the programming of their Arts and Science Days. He organised Think at Oxford and compiled the Think magazine. He was recently appointed Intellectual Events Officer for Mensa and was preparing ten major conferences around the country this year. Mensa says: ‘Roger was a man with a huge intelligence but also a man with a wonderful sense of fun. And most of all he was a man with a great aim – to widen the scope of the intellectual side of Mensa. To that end he set about organising a series of events which would provide food for thought – a menu for the mind. Roger was a great character and a thought challenger. He enjoyed encouraging group discussions and watching where people went with their knowledge, imagination and interpretation.’

trethevy notch

Roger leaves two children, Tristan and Cathy, and two deeply loved grandchildren, Rozelle and Katinka. He will be missed terribly. It is profoundly true to say the world will miss him also, for it is less of a place without his deep perception and consciousness of it.

Roger Farnworth: Tribute by Mensa

23-Jan-13 

It is with great sadness to tell you that we have been informed of the passing of Mensa’s Intellectual Events Officer, Roger Farnworth, who died yesterday (22 January 2013). Roger was very much a champion of Mensa and organised several events for the society including the Science and Arts Days; he will be sorely missed by many at Mensa. Everyone in Mensa has been shocked to hear the news about Roger. Our thoughts our very much with his family at this sad time. Roger was a great character and a thought challenger. He enjoyed encouraging group discussions and watching where people went with their knowledge, imagination and interpretation. ‘Mensa will miss their Intellectual Events Officer but will continue to benefit from the programme that he set out for the society. He was a true Ambassador for Mensa and a friend of many.’

John Stevenage, Chief Executive

ROGER’S WRITINGS FROM PALESTINE

Plato & the Palestinians: Talk given to Mensa groups in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv    by Roger Farnworth

The purpose of this talk is to distance questions concerning the military occupation of the territories where Palestinians live from the usual contexts of controversial discussion by considering how the ideas of Plato’s ‘Republic’ might highlight new approaches and tentative solutions.
The hottest talking point in Athens was one that is bound up with the idea of justice.  “What is the best form of government?”  City-states were springing up round the Mediterranean wherever Greek traders settled.  There was a creative variety of experiments in just or despotic rule.  Likewise discussion of how the Israeli state and society should develop are perennially at the centre of this country’s political life.

Early in Plato’s ‘Republic’ Thrasymachus  advances an opinion you will hear every day in Middle Eastern countries.  There is no just government.  Might is right.  In nature the strong always have power over the weak and human societies are the same.  You will hear it said that the Israeli state occupies Palestine because it is supported by American military and economic power and the P.L.O. became the sole representative of the Palestinian people because it had the most firepower.  Plato’s “Republic” is the search for a more just form of government.

treggarick enclosure

Plato’s reply to Thrasymachus sounds weak.  People are not designed to be immoral.  They are intrinsically social and so inevitably moral.  It is a surprisingly modern idea.  Many sociologists would today reject much of the survival of the fittest model of evolution.  They contend that early humans survived by co-operation made possible by language, itself made possible by a change in the position of the larynx.  From this small beginning Plato built up his communitarian ideal.

Learning the lessons of history - Zionist prison camp in Negev desert

But first Glaucon suggests a wily argument.  If anyone obtained the fabled ring of Gyges, which made the wearer invisible, then most people would steal and cheat because they would escape punishment.  The suicide member ‘invisibly’ enters a community to commit his crimes but of course doesn’t get away with it.  Glaucon’s conclusion is surprising.   Seeing that by nature everyone is a scoundrel we need protection from each other.  This is how the social contract theory of government originated in a form made more notorious by Hobbes.  Israeli’s enjoy government by consent of the governed but it is not by consent that Palestinian’s are governed by Israel.  Military occupation is not a beneficial social contract.  Therefore in social contract theory, they have every right to resist the military government.  Maintaining power over Palestine can only be achieved by the government becoming ‘the gunman writ large’ and the word Palestinian’s frequently use to describe the occupying army is terrorist because they kill three times as many people as Palestinian terrorists and four times as many children.

River Jordan

Unfortunately, Plato now becomes mystical.  He says the concept of justice is known by encounter within the mind.  Like goodness, truth and beauty it becomes as real as if you had met it.  Plato thought that those in possession of this perfect knowledge should rule.  Such persons should be prepared for the task by state education with morally uplifting texts and physical fitness in the manner of Spartans.  Are there not Jewish and Moslem traditions and texts, which proclaim acquaintance with truth wisdom and justice through a form of religious insight?  But there is a dark side to trusting innate perceptions.  Plato would give absolute power to those who knew truth and justice over those who didn’t.  Absolute power in the hands of young people, who believe they know justice, is dangerous whether it be Islamic Jihad or Israeli soldiers.  At the gate in the separation wall that I monitor in Jayyous I have seen late teenage soldiers exercise their dominant power to deny the entry of farmers to their own land for the most arbitrary reasons.  Plato’s young guardians know the correct answer to all moral problems and hence were moral experts.  It may be the ideology of the day and seem natural and by consensus that state security demands a state morality which is exercised with absolute power by its guardians.  Because of their confrontation Plato’s version of the absolute power of state morality is the pattern of Israeli and Arab governments.  Yet from a European perspective we have become suspicious of state morality and Utopian ideology.  Some element of personal choice and commitment is necessary.  Wasn’t Plato wrong in thinking the state was more important than the individual?  Are not most questions of justice matters for assessment and personal choice?

ruins

Let us now consider how personal choice might best be exercised.  I want to clarify the precise nature of the choice situation by reference to John Rowle’s theory of justice. This theory is linked to the social contract tradition that dates back to Glaucon in Plato’s ‘Republic’, which holds that human societies are to be pictured as associations into which we have voluntarily entered because it is in our mutual self interest to do so.  However, unlike Glaucon, he seeks to find a way of removing the sorts of factors that could distort people’s choices by making them prone to act unfairly in their own selfish interests.  This hypothetical thought experiment he sees as like cutting portions of a cake.  If the cutter has been fair then she will be content to choose last, but may cheat if she knows she will choose first.  So to choose fairly the characteristics of a just society there must be a veil of ignorance drawn over the circumstances in society we were to occupy.  For example, we must imagine that we do not know whether we are to occupy a position of wealth and power.  The settlement of the Palestinian question would be justly considered if we ignored how we ourselves stood to gain or lose by the solutions we propose.  If we draw a veil of ignorance over whether we are an Israeli or Palestinian we could set aside the moral view point of the state to which we belong; the ideology which has come to seem natural.  We could then pursue justice rather than ideology.  Our choice would then not be determined by our social group but be personal.  Such a personal commitment could then start to change the society to which we belong.  I invite you to consider rights and duties and economic factors in the terms of this new version of a social contract both through debate and in a written version, which I will print in our newsletter ‘Think’.  Is it too much to hope that moves towards peace might be not only the outcome of agreements between statesmen but also the consequence of individuals freely choosing a just portion of a future settlement between Israel and Palestine.?

Poem by Roger, from the Palestinians to the Israelis: 

We have been here longer than the trees

We have been here longer than the trees
We will stay here longer than the stones

We are married with a ring
A ring of bright razors

The snake you feed until it grows long
Will bite the hand that holds it
It is for you,my friend, we mourn,
Power has made you rigid
Even a handshake troubles
And a smile alarms.

Newsletter from Jayyous

Hi,   Thought you might like to know how life is going on here in the village of Jayyous about three kilometres from the green line that divides Israel from what is left of Palestine.  There are about forty settlements between us and Jerusalem, many of them new, just a few caravans protected by soldiers.  They are on the top of the hills and they claim all the land on the sides though it has been terrace farmed for centuries.  Last weekend I was in a beautiful valley with the ninety people who farm there.  On the hills on all sides caravans and houses are appearing.  Lights beam down at night and armed settlers recently took a thirty acre field at gun point and ploughed it.  They shot one villager dead and last month shot sheep that wandered on to it.  The villagers never resist after the land is taken as they are very frightened.  I saw the largest settlement of Ariel yesterday.  It has more than a thousand houses – very expensive yet looking identical and seeming to march down the hillsides in serried ranks.  The infamous separation wall will go round the settlement and will take in all the surrounding Palestinian villages on the Israel side of the fence.  They will lose al their land and all roads to Palestine.  They will have no option but to work in Israeli factories.  I saw one such village that had lost its land and roads and had the fence on each side a kilometre apart with one side open and a new road that just led to the industrial estate the settlers had established.

The Dead Sea

Here at Jayyous our situation is worse.  The village is on a hill, twenty miles away you can see Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean.  The villages will never be able to go to the sea even though many are refugees from there when that land was taken in 1948.  Now the separation wall has taken all the village’s fertile land and the largest untapped water supply, the western aquifer, that lies under the land.  The farmers must now get permits to go to their land and many farmers have not been given a permit.  So their crops and greenhouses are not being harvested and they have no income at all apart from this land.  So we try to see as many farmers as possible get through each day.  I go the the gate at 6 am, 12 and 4 pm.  Often the opening is an hour late, which in Ramadan is an awful strain on those who are fasting all day and wanting to return home for food.  Last week stakes were driven into the ground in front of the other gate so no farmer get through again.  There are tears and anger.  They blame Britain for supporting the U.S. who is paying for the wall.  When permits are re-issued in two months we believe fewer will get the permit, only the old.  Our posters include the Cornish ‘One & All’ sign, which is translated into Arabic and Hebrew.  Delegations from the German Green Party, Tel Aviv University, Lutheran and Israeli activists have all been photographed with this banner and one that says ‘We have a right to work on our own land’.  I have plenty more plans for the farmers campaign.

Flowers on Mountain

Its lovely autumn weather, I am sitting under an olive tree writing this letter in shirtsleeves.  The storms, that are just beginning, are tremendous, lightening forks all over Israel.  Not as loud perhaps as the percussion grenade dropped at the feet of a farmer three days ago, who had lined up at the gate without a permit.  It was just outside our door.  On the all night prayer called Al Kader, at the end of Ramadan, two grenades were dropped outside the mosque and I have part of the plastic covering.  From the fence road the army often fires over the village, it’s hard to know why.  I see the tracer and the pathetic row of stones the villagers put at the village entrance to stop the jeeps of the fourth largest army in the world.

tregarrick cave

One and a half hours later I am continuing this letter.  After the farmers and their donkeys waited for an hour for the gate to open, without giving any reason when I asked but “orders” they say they will not open the gate today.  There were two trader lorries turned away who will not collect the 250 crates of clementines, tomatoes and lemons harvested each day and the community will be that much poorer.  This morning I painted a sign, which reads in Arabic, “The olive trees are our life and our symbol of peace” complete with illustrations of olives, it looks pathetic and the farmers will become more angry.  This situation has strange consequences.  Last year marriages in the villages were down by a third.  You have to have enough money to provide for a bride and to get a house before a marriage can be arranged.  Once a girl passes about 24 she will not marry in this culture.  For years to come their will be many unhappy women without children.

Jerusalem - a City of Ethnic Cleansing today

I have been made so happy by the birth of my second grandchild Katinka.  She looks beautiful on the email photo.  Here, men change their names when a son is born.  I feel I should call Juergen Abu Katinka for a while.  I shall be in Bethlehem for Christmas and will broadcast from there on Radio Cornwall on 24 December.  If you want another letter from me send me your email on rogerfarnworth@mail.com.  I am moved and happy to be here.    Love Roger

Newsletter: Christmas in Bethlehem

I spent Christmas in Bethlehem at the Shepherd Inn but more of that later.  First I want to tell you about Jerusalem which is even more closely linked to the life of Jesus.  As you know it is sacred to three religions but you may not have realized how close their holiest shrines are, literally a stone’s throw.  The Old City is dominated by the golden dome of the mosque on temple mount.  This hillock is also claimed as the site of Solomon’s temple so the Jews worship at the Wailing Wall, that west part of the temple that Herod built.  The Via Dolorosa or way Jesus walked with his cross is mostly in the Moslem quarter but the Holy Sepulchre is in the centre.  The wonky notice directing the public is held up by green earth fuse wire.  In the early morning many services are held at the same time but I much prefer the ancient rite of the Armenians, the earliest country to accept Christianity.

Even in this holy city guns abound.  I counted two hundred late teenage girl and boy soldiers in the city one day, fully armed with fingers on triggers.  It makes the quiet devotion of people of all faiths all the more admirable.  The leaders of the Christian churches in Jerusalem asked the World Council of Churches in Jerusalem to send observers to monitor and stand beside and listen to those who are suffering.  Palestinian Christians have practiced their faith down many troubled centuries.  One of their leaders told us to trust our eyes not our ears and to have no prejudice against Moslem or Jew.  In helping to seek peace and goodwill I feel Christians are fulfilling their Christmas message.

Between Jerusalem and Bethlehem I passed through several check points.  The ancient paths which Jesus used many times between the nearby towns have all been truncated.  All the routes from Nazareth to Bethlehem that Mary and Joseph could have taken are now blocked by the separation wall.  There are over 700 blocked roads, fences and checkpoints in Palestine.  When over 150 taxis were held at a checkpoint I began to think that Mary and Joseph and the donkey would travel faster.  Suddenly the blockade lifted and all the taxis raced towards Bethlehem.  When I checked into my huge hotel I was the only guest, many came on Christmas Eve, but every restaurant was closed or empty by Christmas day evening, such is the measure of the collapse of Bethlehem’s tourist trade because of the difficulty of entering.  It’s worse than the effect of foot and mouth on Cornish tourism.
It’s immensely moving to descend the steps to the small manger room where Christianity began.  On Christmas day there was a suicide bomb in Tel Aviv and nine shot in Gaza.  A child of six was shot a few days before in the nearest town to our village.  I’ve just become a grandfather and feel that all children are like the holy baby in being precious and vulnerable.  It wasn’t an easy Christmas.
This troubled conflict is about land.  On Bodmin Moor, near where I live, there is a farmer who, until a recent illness had never slept away from his farm in ninety years, he loved his land.  Behind the farm is a medieval longhouse and close by many ancient round houses, all were farmers on that same piece of land down the years.  In the holy land, Jews were amongst the first to start farming the fertile crescent.  When the Romans drove them out the Arabs took over.  The Israeli’s have 78% of the original land of Palestine.  I hope that they will soon withdraw from the remaining 22% where Palestinians could live in peace.

Newsletter: The Closure of the South Gate

On Sunday November 23 2003 twelve stakes were driven into the road to the Southgate.
Razor wire was then coiled round the stakes.  Overnight, without warning, a permanent barrier to vehicles had appeared.  It was then stated that no farmer would ever again access his land from this gate.  Only the Bedouin family will be allowed to pass through the parted razor wire to attend school.  But a crisis is looming for them.  The water bowser that brings their water every three weeks will be unable to reach them.  This refugee family may yet again be forced to start life again elsewhere.  The prospects for the farmers are more desolate.  Their only source of livelihood may soon be transformed into the well-watered lawns of a settlement.

olive groves

How can this sudden and arbitrary infringement of human rights be interpreted?  It will not prevent small boys throwing stones over the fence but it does prevent Israeli vehicles chasing the stone slingers.  The outer roadway, built at great expense is now blocked.  They may hope to reduce man-hours policing the wall, a problem that grows as the wall grows longer.  At the other gate, which most farmers use, I asked a large group why the South gate had been closed and they unanimously claimed that it was the start of the theft of all the land.

No one can deny the attraction to Israel of sinking deep wells into the catchment area of all the surrounding hills.  The abundant water for Israelis could increase the greenhouse culture, which is diminishing for Palestine as farmers are hustled, delayed or denied entry at the remaining gate.  I have seen two greenhouse structures and three irrigation systems dismantled and trucked back through the wall in a fortnight, a significant indicator of Palestinian morale.  Confiscation of the land would indicate Israel’s need for resources and their confidence that there will be no significant opposition from the international community.  What happens in Jayyous may be repeated a thousand times once the wall is complete.  AS this exercise in the imbalance of power could be a pattern for the future, the closure of the Northgate should be scrutinized and evaluated.

There is only one certainty in this assessment.  Though speculation abounds, the Israelis will never reveal their hand until the game is won.  Arbitrary, unprovoked action is their trump card.  The growth of misinformation, the breakdown of communication, the failure of all planning systems will dislocate the Palestinian economy, disconcert the forces of opposition and blunt collective response.  If the focus of the international community is also blurred we too may be disconcerted and weakened in our response.  We should protest the closure of the South gate loudly and clearly.

Newsletter: Visit to Yanoun

This beautiful upland valley of less than a dozen farms is surrounded by settlers who gradually encroach on the Palestinians’ land. At nightfall powerful lights from the hillside are shone upon the village so that the walker below sees his shadow many times. The village of Yanoun is at the neck of the valley.

Walking with many shadows by
The necklace of bright light
And that false moon, huntress posed to rise,
You cast me dark but tall.

Lace of fire and you at the neck
Where blood flows, breath expires
Breath deep, gather spit,
And hold your mind world high.

As I walked up the side of the valley I heard the voices of some settler children. Their sounds intermingled with those of the Palestinian children and reverberated around the cavernous hillside. The children never see each other.

The voices of children are calling each from each
Playing around the soundwell rim
Curdling the clear and pure within.

Each child unseen is shouting
The blind are playing, only their voices woven.
Out of the echoing gorge a dark bird flaps
Hunting a rat to feed its young.

Entering as a gleaming tongue of light, mists are wont to envelop the valley within minutes.

Son of sun, the shining enters the valley
Swiftly the trick is played.
And all between us is grey
As rocks that surrender slowly
Etching the pattern of time.

A mangy half-wild dog followed me as I walked to Nabi Noun, the burial place of Noun, the father of Joshua who took the promised land for Israel. I suddenly realised I had wandered too far when I saw a settler looking down on me. I felt, perhaps, like the dog felt about me. 

Under Nabi Noun

Out of the grave it came, the dark cave home,
It ran off when I looked,
But dogged my trail all day
Wandering the wilderness divide
Between the darkest cavities.
I raised my sights to the hills,
Where high eyes mastered me;
We shied away and ran off home.

Then a beautiful gazelle bounded by and both I and the settler turned to look.

Newsletter: Monitoring the Gate

Monitoring the irregularity of gate closure and the occasional arbitrary exclusion does not  put enough pressure on Israel to change its policies in Jayyous nor provide suitable copy for the international media.  More importantly, it does not provide the means for probing sufficiently deeply into the problems of the people of Jayyous.  Conversations at the gate rapidly stumble at the language barrier.  Insights have come through interpreters or the half dozen English speakers.  Such knowledge is fragmented and seldom representative of the average Jayyous villager.  The complexity of the developing consequences of the separation wall will not be understood by a succession of E.A.s in this manner.  We are not able to listen to people’s stories on a level deep enough to provide comfort.  Observation and empathy cannot achieve this.

horse and cart

Yet the deep listening and analysis of consequences are urgently required as the effects of the wall on Jayyous may be replicated in communities the length of the wall as it is extended.  Because Jayyous was one of the first communities to be affected by the wall, the social, economic and personal consequences will become apparent here before anywhere else.  Jayyous could be a warning of unforeseen ramifications and a predictor of future planning requirements.

The Apartheid Wall

The present E.A.s have found creative ways of entering the Jayyous situation with limited success.  There is a prospect of three E.A.s monitoring probably one gate with little effect on outcomes and with no wider role clearly defined and achievable.  There follows a proposal for deepening our involvement and sharing our experience effectively.

Ideally a study of the wall in Jayyous should be academically sound.  It would be an attractive prospect for a political science or sociology P.H.D. candidate who cold be helped by local Palestinian undergraduates to investigate the social and economic indicators of change.  Such a structure is beyond the scope of E.A.P.P.I. but whether the academic structure existed or not, E.A’s could make a start on being involved in the areas that should be studied, not as observers but as accompaniers, hearing people’s stories and conveying their feelings to a wider public.  For this, interpreters or improved language skills are essential.  They could make valuable contributions to any of the following which could feed into an academic programme if it had been set up.

The effect of personal loss of income.

 Consequences for families and teenagers of unemployment and emigration.
Poverty and changes in village life.
Changes in traditional agriculture.
The plight of farmers without permits.
Poverty, health problems and psychological stress.
Inability to pay university fees and unemployed graduates.
Fear, despair and decline of traditional values.
The decline in number of weddings and gender issues.
Imprisonment, militancy and non-violence.

Newsletter:  The snake will bite the hand that holds it

Apartheid Wall

The wall has a voice.  It says loud and clear that Israeli’s wish to live apart from their neighbours.  It has the body of a long black snake whose serpentine path is a wish list. As the wall approaches Jayyous it sweeps inland to enfold a settlement.  On the way it captures a Palestinian village which has lost its roads and farmland so it gets a new road leading to an Israeli industrial estate.  The wall then coils back on itself to imprison Qalqilia with a bottleneck exit.  It zig zags up, at vast expense to the commanding heights of our village to satisfy military requirements and loops in to take all the fertile lowland.  Was it the greenhouse of lush vegetables or the vast untapped water below that tempted the snake to leave the border with Israel three kilometres distant.  There the land is flat, at little cost of money or international condemnation a security barrier could be built.  At one stroke the future of the village was changed and the farmers severed from their land.  The ever inconstant opening of the gate disrupts the pattern of farming for those with permits.  They fear the land will be stolen.  So I photograph them on their land against prominent landmarks and record their global positioning satellite reading.  The details are recorded on disk permanently and their printed copy reads “This land belongs to (the person in the picture) and his family for as long as they wish.”  I hope it is a comfort.  For the majority without permits the future is bleak and uncertain, especially for the young.  Let me tell you about yesterday January 20th as an example.

Roger in front of more racist graffiti in Hebron - some of which includes 'Arabs to the gas chambers'

There was a temporary checkpoint set up outside the village.  The students were unable to travel to college and the local schoolteacher could not enter.  This cannot be for security.  During the night soldiers fired over the village.  I met a father who had taken his terrified toddler to the doctors ‘for comfort’.  Then a child told me he was scared to go home because the army were outside his house so I accompanied him there.  A group of young woman teachers feared to pass the soldiers so I walked alongside them.  “Why are you going to the village?” asks the captain.  “We live there.” Is the reply.  I listen to the young and ask about their future.  Fadhi had hoped to study telecommunications.  “My father lost his job in Israel when the border closed.  His hands started to shake through stress, so he could no longer work as a welder.  As a result I could not afford to go to university.  I built a greenhouse beyond the Wall  but I have no permit to go there now.  I sit around all day with no hopes.  I haven’t even permission to emigrate.  I am like a blind man who does not know where he is going.”

lillies of field

Last week I talked to a group of Israeli’s to find out what they wanted.  All spoke of fear and many of guilt.  They do  want a security fence and were surprised that it was not being built along the border.  There was some prejudice too shocking to record but one woman said

“The moral and spiritual damage being inflicted on our young people through serving in an unjust army is a threat to our existence.  We are deluding ourselves if we think right or time is on our side.  We are a trajectory that is undermining the moral and social fabric of our country.”

Picture of Child in the Crosshairs of Sniper’s Rifle Sight Distributed as ‘entertainment’ on Israeli social media