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More Apartheid Adventures
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Why ZIONISM is as relevant now as it ever was
A Response to Didi Herman’s ‘Zionisms’
Didi Herman - Believes We Should Vacate Zionism & Use Israeli Nationalism |
Zionism red in tooth & claw |
This argument is not taking place in a vacuum but in the context of a concerted attempt to depict the anti-Zionist left, including Black and ethnic minority members of the Labour Party, as anti-Semites. Part of the narrative of the defamers is that Zionism has become a dirty word, a term of abuse. There are those on the left who have been seduced by this special pleading. Not only Didi Herman but Jon Lansman of Momentum. [Why the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’]
Graffitti on walls of Hebron - is this a result of Zionism? |
There is, as always, when dealing with the Zionist hasbara [propaganda] a certain amount of disingenuousness. On the one hand we have the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis asserting that ‘One can no more separate it [Zionism] from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.’ and then Didi writes that ‘scholars replace Jews and Judiasm with Zionists and Zionism, and label Zionism ‘racist’ or part of a ‘racial contract’ or ‘apartheid’.] I’m sorry Didi, but it’s not left-wing scholars but right-wing Zionists who conflate Zionism and being Jewish. It hardly takes a logician to work out that if Judaism and Zionism are one and the same, then Jews must indeed be responsible for the actions of the Israeli state.
Theodor Herzl - founder of Political Zionism - saw in anti-Semitism the 'divine will to good' (Diaries) |
Didi Herman believes that the way to cut the Gordian knot is to agree not to use the term ‘Zionist’ as if that will remove the confusion between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. It will not because Zionists will cry ‘anti-Semitism’ for as long as Israel is under attack from BDS or any other civil movement. Didi Herman’s article merely furthers the confusion.
Didi says that ‘zionism is first and foremost a state of mind’ and that ‘some forms of it do not require (indeed, are opposed to taking) actual land’. I’m sorry but this is nonsense. Zionism is not some kind of spiritual experience, a psychedelic trip to the unknown. It involved the colonisation and settling of land and the forcible eviction of the Palestinian peasants from its earliest days. In 1948 it involved the massacre of thousands of Palestinian peasants and the forcible expulsion of ¾ million refugees. This was no state of mind.
Didi Herman - Professor of Law but a Mistress of Vacuity |
And let us deal with this ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ version of Zionism. Virtually all wings of Zionism – from Political to Practical to Socialist to Cultural agreed on the need for the colonisation of land. The only real debate, between Zionism and the Territorialists, was over which land. The history of Zionism is the collapse of the binationalist Zionists and the left Zionists into the colonialist wing of Zionism. As Ben-Gurion once remarked to Martin Buber, ‘was it with the permission or against the wishes of the Arabs that you came to this country?’
Perhaps Didi does indeed believe that she was once an anti-Zionist. I can’t ever recall her name cropping up as an Jewish anti-Zionist activist. Perhaps she kept the secret closely hidden. Maybe, in a vague and unformulated way she was, but clearly she didn’t understand the specific nature of the Israeli state and why it is different to other states, still less the dynamics of Zionism itself.
I don’t refer to the Zionist movement because I wish to demonise anyone, still less to summon the ghosts of anti-Semitism past, but because I want a precise and scientific term with which to understand the trajectory of the modern state of Israel and where it came from. Without understanding what Zionism is and was you cannot understand why Israel is what it is. The subjective prose that Didi wishes me to use by way of a substitute clouds rather than clarifies.
Didi writes that ‘‘Israeli nationalism = apartheid’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.’ That is true. A false equation rarely does have the same impact. Israel is quite unique as an ethno-religious state. Many states for example Ireland have immigration laws based on patriality, whereby those who have some family link to the country can immigrate and claim citizenship. But no state that I know accords such a ‘right of return’ to people who have never been there and who have a mythical attachment going back 2,000 years in preference to those who have always lived there.
I would expect someone who is a Professor Law to at least take the time out to study the basic constitutional framework of Israel, the legal position of the individual and the jurisprudence of the state they are pontificating about. Indeed I would expect Didi to have at least some idea of what it means for Israel to declare itself a ‘Jewish state’.
The socialist Zionist stockade & watchtower settlements |
Let me help her. There is no Israeli nationalism for the very simple reason that there is no Israeli nationality. There is a Jewish nationality and a Christian, Muslim and many more ‘nationalities’ but there is no Israeli nationality, for the simple reason that Israel is a Jewish state. It is a state of the Jewish ‘nation’, as the Jerusalem Program of the World Zionist Organisation prescribes. That means it is a state, not of its own citizens, but of all Jews throughout the world. That is why Israel is unique. That is what makes Israel an apartheid state. It is the Zionist movement, a settler colonial movement, which sought from the start to create a Jewish state which excluded non-Jews from its borders or, if they continued to live in it, from any notion of equality.
In 2013 Israel’s Supreme Court in Uzzi Ornan v the State of Israel ruled that there was no such thing as an Israeli nationality. [‘Supreme Court rejects citizens' request to change nationalityfrom 'Jewish' to 'Israeli' - Court rules against change in identity cardregistration, citing that there is no proof of the existence of a uniquely' Israeli' people’, Ha’aretz, 3.10.13.
Zionism or merely Israeli nationalism? |
This followed a similar decision in 1972 in Tamarinv State of Israel. George Tamarin wanted his nationality to be changed from ‘Jewish’ to ‘Israeli.’ Justice Agranat ruled that ‘the desire to create an Israeli nation separate from the Jewish nation is not a legitimate aspiration. A division of the population into Israeli and Jewish nations would … negate the foundation on which the State of Israel was established.’ The court ruled that “There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish People. The Jewish People is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of Diaspora Jewry.” O. Kraines, The Impossible Dilemma: Who Is a Jew in the State of Israel? (Bloch Publishing Company, 1976), p.67. Tamarin v State of Israel (1970).
Didi’s article is one long concession to the Zionists’ cynical weaponising of ‘anti-Semitism’. What is happening today has nothing to do with historical and largely dead Christian anti-Semitism. By disavowing the use of the term ‘Zionism’ Didi is left in a sea of subjectivity, wittering on about homelands of the mind.
It’s not Israeli nationalism that explains why mobs marching in Israel today chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’. Does this not remind her of another time and another place and another people? National Socialism was not merely a form of German nationalism but a particular political creed which used (volkish) concepts of the German nation in order to pursue imperialist aims in Eastern Europe. Both Zionism and Nazism took the form of blood and soil racial nationalism.
Does not the assumption to power in Israel of the fascist Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who promptly announces that the death penalty he is introducing will only be for Arabs, suggest other countries in other times. And what does the plurality of Israeli Jewish voters who support expelling Israel’s Palestinian citizens suggest?
Britain is a Christian state but Christianity is a constitutional adornment. The Prime Minister appoints the Bishops of the Church of England and the Queen is the head of the CoE. But there is no Christian National Fund which declares that Jews cannot rent or lease 93% of British land. Nor are there hundreds of Christian priests ruling that it is a mortal sin for anyone to rent a Jew a room or flat. But in Israel the Jewish National Fund controls 93% of the land from which Arabs are barred. In Israel there is a situation where hundreds of rabbis support commanding Jews not to rent to Arabs, all of them paid state officials. Dozens of Top Israeli Rabbis Sign Ruling to Forbid Rental of Homes to Arabs
In Islamic states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia Muslims don’t receive any benefits. Quite the contrary, an Islamic state is a heavy burden on Muslims. It legitimises the most terrible forms of repression in the name of Islam.
In Israel being Jewish entitles you to privileges in the same way as being Aryan in Nazi Germany entitled non-Jews to privileges. If you are a Jewish child then your school will receive about 30% more funding than if you are an Arab child. Jewish local authorities get far more state aid than Arab equivalents. Indeed half of Israel’s Arab villages are unrecognised, meaning they can be demolished at any time and they do not receive basic services such as electricity and running water. Al Arakabh in the Negev has been demolished nearly 100 times as part of the Prawer Plan for Judaisation of the Negev. As Meirav Arlosoroff observed‘Israel is a country of national separation − or to put it more starkly, of segregation.’
This isn’t accidental. It is Zionist institutions that have been used by successive Israeli governments, Labour and Likud alike, to implement apartheid in Israel. Organisations like the JNF and the Jewish Agency. Israel isn’t ‘post-colonial’ as Didi imagines, it is an active settler-colonial state which is still throwing Arabs off the land, even within Israel.
Zionism isn’t some warm dream of a homeland. In its origins it was a reaction to anti-Semitism in Europe but it was a reaction that accepted anti-Semitism as the normal reaction of non-Jews to the abnormal situation of Jews in their midst. In the words of the founder of Political Zionism Theodor Herzl
‘In Paris..., I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.’ [Diaries, ed. Patai, p.6]
Whilst Zionism accepted anti-Semitism most Jews rejected it.
The founders of Zionism constituted the most reactionary segment of Jewish society. They teamed up with people like Edouard Drumont, the leader of the anti-Dreyfussards in France. Both the Zionists and anti-Semites accepted that Jews did not belong in the countries they had made their home. Zionism consisted of the believers in eugenics and the racial sciences. They were the movement that welcomed Hitler to power because, in the words of Berl Katznelson, a founder of Mapai and editor of its daily paper, Davar, the rise of Hitler was “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”. [Francis Nicosia, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany p.91]
The sneering reference to Ken Livingstone, that he has been making stupid remarks about Jews for years is just that, an unmerited sneer devoid of substance. Because Ken is right. Zionism is a movement whose leader David Ben-Gurion could declare, in response to the Kindertransport that saved 10,000 Jewish children after Krystalnacht that:
‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel’. Tom Segev, The 7th Million, p.28.
Zionism was seen by most Jews in the pre-war period as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism.
Zionism wasn’t a movement consisting of ‘homeland’ dreamers. It was a settler colonial movement that took its inspiration from Cecil Rhodes in southern Africa. It colonised the land and dispossessed the indigenous population. Unlike in South Africa, it did not reintegrate them in the economy as exploited labour but sought to expel them first from the economy and then from the land altogether. It followed the Australian and American colonial models.
So yes Zionism has become a dirty word and quite rightly so. Just as ‘segregation’ and ‘apartheid’ were also considered dirty words. We didn’t use the term ‘separate development’ when the meaning of ‘apartheid’ was perfectly clear. Nor should we use Israeli nationalism when it is ‘Zionism’ that we really mean.
The suggestion that ‘Judaism is zionism’s parent’ is simply nonsense. If anyone was Zionism’s parent it was the Russian Czar Nicholas II and his Interior Minister, the instigator of the pogroms von-Plehve. British Evangelical Christians and anti-Semites like Arthur James Balfour and William Evans-Gordon came a close second. They supported Zionist colonisation of Palestine because they didn’t want Jews to come here.
Anti-Semitism in Britain today is minute. I don’t fear being physically attacked walking down the street. I am not only Jewish I am White. I don’t suffer from police raids, stop and search or being asked for my passport like Black and Asian people. The ‘Anti-Semitism’ of Zionism is a ruse, a device to deflect attention from the actions of Israel. That unfortunately is the effect of Didi’s article.
Yes Jews in Europe had a legitimate desire for a homeland. When fleeing the Czarist pogroms they found one – in Britain and the United States. That’s why Palestine was a racial dream that has turned sour.
In Israel Zionism means the demographic question, the fear that in the night more Arab babies were produced than Jewish babies. It is the fear of racists throughout the ages. When the issue of African refugees who had entered Israel illegally first raised its head, the question was posed in Zionist terms - the threat to Israel's Jewish identity. The refugees became 'infiltrators' a term first used for Palestinian refugees trying to make their way back into their own country.
Netanyahu exclaimed that "If we don't stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state," [Guardian, 20.5.12.].
Israel's then Interior Minister, Eli Yeshai, was even more blunt:
"I want everyone to be able to walk the streets without fear or trepidation ... The migrants are giving birth to hundreds of thousands, and the Zionist dream is dying,"
But I make a promises. If Zionists stop referring to their Zionist dreams and the World Zionist Organisation and all similar organisations abolish themselves then I will stop referring to Zionism!
And finally Didi, if there's one thing I detest it is when an academic deliberately uses obscure words for the general public, like autochthonous instead of the more normal word indigenous. This is just obscurantism. At least you have now corrected the spelling!
Tony Greenstein
In Israel Zionism means the demographic question, the fear that in the night more Arab babies were produced than Jewish babies. It is the fear of racists throughout the ages. When the issue of African refugees who had entered Israel illegally first raised its head, the question was posed in Zionist terms - the threat to Israel's Jewish identity. The refugees became 'infiltrators' a term first used for Palestinian refugees trying to make their way back into their own country.
Netanyahu exclaimed that "If we don't stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state," [Guardian, 20.5.12.].
Israel's then Interior Minister, Eli Yeshai, was even more blunt:
"I want everyone to be able to walk the streets without fear or trepidation ... The migrants are giving birth to hundreds of thousands, and the Zionist dream is dying,"
But I make a promises. If Zionists stop referring to their Zionist dreams and the World Zionist Organisation and all similar organisations abolish themselves then I will stop referring to Zionism!
Tony Greenstein
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The Times & Jewish Chronicle Report our Story on Corbyn Backtracking on Palestine
Corbyn's started running - the question is whether he'll ever stop
Last weekend I posted an article on Jeremy Corbyn and his previous support for a democratic, secular state in Palestine. I also noted that Corbyn chaired a Labour Movement conference whose main theme was that the British Labour Party should sever its ties with Poalei Zion (now the Jewish Labour Movement), the overseas wing of the racist Israeli Labour Party. When Jeremy Corbyn Supported a Democratic, Secular State & Breaking Links with Poale Zion (JLM)
Manuel Hassassian, the PLO representative in Britain noted that: British pro-Palestine politicians'scared' to stand up to Israel
‘leading British opposition figures are now "too scared" to stand up to Israel because "Israeli and Zionist lobbyists are monitoring people in public office." Hassassian ‘directed particular criticism towards UK Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn and new London Mayor Sadiq Khan.’
Hassassian said of Khan that "Like Jeremy Corbyn, who was an ardent, staunch supporter of the Palestinians and now we hardly see any statements coming from him in support of Palestine," Hassassian continued.
The article has been covered in both Wednesday’s Times and the Jewish Chronicle. I decided to release the information because Corbyn’s silence on Palestine and his decision to appease Israel’s supporters in the Labour Party is shameful. Corbyn fully understands that a Jewish settler colonial state, like any similar state, cannot help being a racist state. Just as in Ireland, Partition is absurd and would only offer, as James Connolloy remarked of Partition in Ireland ‘a carnival of reaction’ on both sides of the border.
There is never going to be a two-state solution. Zionism is not based on the idea of shared sovereignty of Palestine/Israel but on the exclusive right of ‘the Jewish people’ to the area which was the Palestine Mandate. The ‘peace process’ has only one purpose. To legitimise the current status of Palestinians in the West Bank who have neither civil nor political rights and who have been living under occupation for nearly 50 years now. The ‘peace process’ provides Israel’s only rationale for not giving Palestinians the right to vote and be subject to the same law as Israel’s settlers.
Having sold the pass on Palestine Corbyn has shown himself weak by going along with the ‘anti-Semitism’ heresy hunt inside the Labour Party. Instead of standing up to the Zionists and making it clear that the ‘anti-Semitism’ they were talking about was anti-Zionism, he has ritually exclaimed that he is against ‘anti-Semitism’. Appeasement is Corbyn’s only strategy.
Many people have said to me that Corbyn has to concentrate on the bread and butter issues. Palestine is a marginal issue. Well Corbyn was the most active supporter of Palestine in the past 30 years so his position is not good enough. But it is also incredibly narrow minded, something typical of the British Left. If Corbyn sells the pass on Palestine today then he will do so on cuts and austerity tomorrow if he ever gets into office.
The clear need is to stand up to the Zionist bullies and witch-hunters and make it clear that he will not tolerate the supporters of the world’s only Apartheid state, the Israeli state, trying to have supporters of the Palestinians expelled from the Labour Party. The privileged position of the Jewish Labour Movement should be ended. If there was any honesty in politics it would be called the Zionist Labour Movement. At least Poalei Zion, before it changed its name to JLM, was open about its Zionism. But today the Zionists bleat that they don’t like anyone mentioning the word Zionism.
Instead of Momentum standing up to this nonsense and saying that they will stop mentioning Zionism when the Zionists abolish the World Zionist Organisation and all the other Zionist institutions like the Jewish National Fund, the instruments of furthering and deepening apartheid in Israel, we have Momentum’s unelected Chair, Jon Lansman pontificating that we should no longer mention Zionism for fear of upsetting the Zionist children. Why the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’
What we are seeing is a deliberate programme of destabilisation, jointly mounted by the Zionist lobby and the Labour Right, whose purpose is to remove Corbyn and make the Labour Party a support club for the Israeli state. Jon Lansman, who should be removed as Momentum’s Chair as soon as possible, is leading the Corbyn left to defeat.
It is outrageous that the Labour supporters of Zionism, who haven’t said a single word about the assumption of the Israeli Defence Ministry by an open fascist, Avigdor Lieberman, are able to call the tune in the Labour Party. If we are to have expulsions then Jeremy Newmark, the Chair of JLM, should be first on the list.
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Hedy Epstein – a Woman who was a Saint in her Lifetime
Hedy Epstein - Childhood Survivor of the Holocaust and Jewish anti-Zionist RIP
In the Roman Catholic Church you have to wait until you are dead before they canonise you and make you into a saint. Hedy Epstein was one of the few people who became a saint during their lifetime. A holocaust survivor, she became an implacable opponent of injustice.
But Hedy was to be found wherever injustice showed its head. She went on the boat to Gaza and was arrested in Ferguson, Missouri.
Above all Hedy learnt the lesson that the Zionists could never hope to understand. The Holocaust should have been the reason to oppose all racism, not to justify or condone Jewish racism.
Hedy, I salute you. You will be missed.
Tony Greenstein
Hedy Epstein (Photo: Humans of St. Louis/Lindy Drew) |
The following obituary for Hedy Epstein was sent to us by Dianne Lee. Epstein was a friend and mentor to us at Mondoweiss, and she will be sorely missed.
Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, 91, died at her home in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, on May 26, 2016. An internationally renowned, respected and admired advocate for human and civil rights, Hedy was encircled by friends who lovingly cared for her at home.
Born August 15, 1924, in the Baden-Württemberg region of Germany, her lifelong commitment to human rights was formed by the horrific experiences she and her family endured under the repressive Nazi regime.
Unable to secure travel documents for themselves, Hedy’s parents, Hugo and Ella (Eichel) Wachenheimer, arranged for 14-year-old Hedy to leave Germany on a Kindertransport. Hedy credited her parents with giving her life a second time when they sent her to England to live with kind-hearted strangers. Hedy’s parents, grandparents, and most of her aunts, uncles and cousins did not survive the Holocaust. Hedy remained in England until 1945 when she returned to Germany to work for the United States Civil Service. She joined the Nuremberg Doctors Trial prosecution in 1946 as a research analyst.
Hedy immigrated to the United States in 1948. She and her husband moved to St. Louis in the early 1960s, and shortly thereafter Hedy began working as a volunteer with the Freedom of Residence, Greater St. Louis Committee, a nonprofit organization dedicated to housing integration and advocacy for fair housing laws. Hedy worked for many years as a volunteer and board member, and ultimately served as the organization’s executive director during the mid-1970s.
During the 1980s, Hedy worked as a paralegal for Chackes and Hoare, a law firm that represented individuals in employment discrimination cases. As an advocate for equality and human rights, Hedy spoke out against the war in Vietnam, the bombing of Cambodia, and overly restrictive U.S. immigration policies. She spoke and acted in support of the Haitian boat people and women’s reproductive rights, and, following the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila, Hedy began her courageous and visionary work for peace and justice in Israel and Palestine.
During her later years, Hedy continued to advocate for a more peaceful world, and in 2002 was a founding member of the St. Louis Instead of War Coalition. Much of her later activism centered on efforts to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine. She founded the St. Louis chapter of Women in Black and co-founded the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee and the St. Louis chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. She traveled to the West Bank several times, first as a volunteer with the nonviolent International Solidarity Movement and repeatedly as a witness to advocate for Palestinian human rights. She attempted several times to go to Gaza as a passenger with the Freedom Flotilla, including as a passenger on the Audacity of Hope, and once with the Gaza Freedom March. Hedy addressed numerous groups and organizations throughout Europe and returned to Germany and her native village of Kippenheim many times.
Three days after her 90th birthday, Hedy was arrested for “failure to disperse.” She was attempting to enter Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s St. Louis office to ask for deescalation of police and National Guard tactics which had turned violent in response to protests following the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Hedy was a member of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center’s speakers’ bureau and gave countless talks at schools and community events. She shared her Holocaust experiences with thousands of Missouri youth as a featured speaker at the Missouri Scholars Academy for more than twenty years. She ended every talk with three requests: remember the past, don’t hate, and don’t be a bystander. Through the years, Hedy received numerous awards and honors for her compassionate service and relentless pursuit of justice.
Hedy is survived by son Howard (Terry) Epstein, and granddaughters Courtney and Kelly. She was beloved and will be truly missed by countless friends in St. Louis and around the world.
Hedy often shared her philosophy of service with these words: “If we don’t try to make a difference, if we don’t speak up, if we don’t try to right the wrong that we see, we become complicit. I don’t want to be guilty of not trying my best to make a difference.”
Hedy always did her best, and the difference she made is evident in the commitment and passion of those called to continue her work. Her friends and admirers honor and salute her deep and lifelong dedication to tikkun olam, the just re-ordering of the world and promise to remember, to stay human, and to never be bystanders.
A memorial service will be held in Forest Park at a date and time to be determined. Donations in Hedy’s name may be made to Forest Park Forever to establish a permanent tribute, 5595 Grand Drive in Forest Park, St. Louis, MO 63112; American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102; American Civil Liberties Union, 125 Broad St. 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004; and/or American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri Foundation, 454 Whittier St., St. Louis, MO 63108.
Much of her activism was focused on advocating for Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
Michael McLaughlin Reporter, The Huffington Post
Hedy Epstein fled Germany during the Holocaust and later protested injustice in the U.S. and abroad.
Hedy Epstein, who fled the Nazis as a child in Germany and later protested what she saw as injustice in the Middle East and near her home in St. Louis, died Thursday, her friend Dianne Lee told The Huffington Post. She was 91.
Epstein’s long career in activist circles began when she was a teenager and continued for the rest of her life. At 90, she was arrested in St. Louis for “failure to disperse” while protesting Gov. Jay Nixon’s deployment of the National Guard to quell protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
“I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager. I didn’t think I would have to do it when I was 90,”
Epstein told The Nation. “We need to stand up today so that people won’t have to do this when they’re 90.”
Thank you for fighting for Justice, @hedyepstein! From the Holocaust to #Ferguson, Hedy fought for Peace! RIP pic.twitter.com/bLgq7UQo5M
— MariaChappelleNadal (@MariaChappelleN) May 26, 2016
Advocating for Palestinians under Israeli occupation was one of her core commitments. She traveled to the West Bank and attempted several times to sail to Gaza in recent years to protest Israel’s blockade of the area, according to an obituary that Lee wrote.
Along with dozens of other Americans, Epstein boarded the Audacity of Hope in 2011 on one of her trips to the region. The boat departed from Greece in an attempt to join a flotilla trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Greek authorities quickly stopped the vessel and returned it to port, but Epstein tweeted about the experience.
Our wonderful captain negotiated with them. We were in a holding pattern for probably 3 hours when the commandos arrived with drawn weapons.
— Hedy Epstein (@hedyepstein) July 1, 2011
I’m below deck surrounded by a doctor and a nurse and wonderful other people. Our spirits are high. I’m calm, unafraid, hopeful.
— Hedy Epstein (@hedyepstein) July 1, 2011
Epstein was born in the Bavarian region of Germany in 1924 as Hedy Wachenheimer. Her parents sent her to England at age 14 to escape the rule of Adolf Hitler, according to Epstein’s personal webpage. Most of her Jewish family, including her parents, did not survive the Holocaust.
In 1945, she returned to Germany to work for the occupying U.S. forces, and the following year she became a researcher for Nuremberg prosecutors in the war crimes trials of German doctors.
Epstein immigrated to the United States in 1948 and eventually settled in St. Louis in the 1960s. In that city, she volunteered with the Freedom of Residence, an organization demanding fair housing laws and an end to segregation. In the 1970s, she became executive director of the group’s St. Louis chapter.
According to Lee’s obituary, Epstein’s advocacy knew no limits. She took a stand against the Vietnam War, spoke up for the plight of Haitian boat people, and demanded women’s reproductive rights.
Epstein often spoke to young people about her life through the Missouri Scholars Academy. She ended each talk with the same advice, according to Lee.
“Remember the past, don’t hate, and don’t be a bystander,” Epstein often said.
Epstein is survived by her son Howard “Terry” Epstein and granddaughters Courtney and Kelly.
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The Labour Right’s Anti-Semitism Heresy Hunt
Learning from Galileo and the Inquisition
In 1633 Galileo was convicted for Heresy by the Inquisition for arguing in support of the Copernican belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun. This was despite the fact that most of the scientists and philosophers at the time were convinced that the Aristotelian concept of a stationery Earth, around which the Sun and planets moved, was false.
Galileo faced the Inquisition for daring to challenge accepted orthodoxies |
Galileo wrote to the German mathematician Johannes Kepler ‘"what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?"
I am reminded of Galileo’s travails since the heresy hunt in the Labour Party makes it an expulsion offence to even hint that Zionism is racist or to compare Israel in any way with the Nazis. Indeed even to pretend that Israel is anything other than a fine, democratic example to the rest of the world, a beacon of freedom, is not only reason enough for suspension but prima facie evidence of ‘anti-Semitism’.
Like Aristotle's Theory, the idea that Zionism is a wonderful movement opposed to all forms of racism is the New Labour orthodoxy |
In the Labour Party today there is a similar refusal to look through the telescope or perhaps it is the turning of a Nelsonian blind eye to the Israeli state as it actually exists. Israel is a state which permanently rules over four and a half million Palestinians, who cannot be granted the vote or any measure of civil rights, because that is incompatible with a ‘Jewish State’. It is a situation whereby there are two different systems of law– one for Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers. Even within the non-existent Green Line, Israel’s own Arab citizens are there on sufferance, with a plurality of Jewish voters wanting them expelled. Apartheid may not be officially declared, but it is practical politics.
The Labour Party now exists in a parallel universe whereby black is white and truth is false. The laws of logic have been suspended. How else can one describe a situation whereby those who support the world’s only apartheid state are the ones defining what is and is not racism?
In recent weeks, Ken Livingstone has been suspended for mentioning the relationship of the Nazis to the Zionists, David Watson has been suspended for claiming that Zionism is racist and I have been suspended for, among other things, claiming that Zionism is a Jewish form of anti-Semitism.
The latter is a question of fact. Although Zionist supporters today claim to oppose anti-Semitism, no historian of Zionism can be unaware that both anti-Semites and Zionists shared the same prejudices against diaspora Jewry. As Jacques Doron notes in Classic Zionism and Modern Anti-semitism: Parallels and influences (1883-1914) (Journal of Israeli History, no. 8, 1.9.83., p.171)
‘It cannot be denied that the Jewish self-criticism so widespread among the German Zionist intelligentsia often seemed dangerously similar to the plaints of the German anti-Semites.’
Tomás de Torquemada - Hero of Labour's Blairite civil service |
In the past week alone Israel’s Deputy Chief of Staff, General Yair Golan has compared developments in Europe, particularly Germany in the 1930’s to Israel today. [IDF general in bombshell speech: Israeltoday shows signs of 1930s Germany, Jerusalem Post, 4.5.16.] Yair’s speech at a ceremony remembering the Holocaust led to a series of events which culminated in the removal of Moshe Yalon as Israel’s Defence Minister.
Yalon was no slouch when it came to killing Palestinians but his replacement, Avigdor Lieberman is the Israeli equivalent of Isis. Lieberman has previously called for the beheading of ‘disloyal’ Israeli Arabs. [Lieberman: Disloyal Israeli Arabs Should Be Beheaded and the drowning of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea, Lieberman Blasted for Suggesting Drowning Palestinian Prisoners]
Lieberman agreed to join Netanyahu’s Likud coalition on the basis that he could introduce the death penalty. Naturally the death penalty will only apply to Palestinians since only Military Courts, which have a conviction rate of some 99.7%, will have the power to impose it. Jewish settler terrorists are tried in civil courts.
Having the Jewish Labour Movement presiding over 'anti-racism' training is like having Britain's biggest mass murderer, Dr Harold Shipman, in charge of developing a policy on medical ethics |
We have an Alice in Wonderland situation in the Labour Party whereby the Jewish Labour Movement, which supports the Israeli state and its founding ideology, Zionism, is to be put in charge of anti-racism training by Baroness Royall, who investigated ‘anti-Semitism’ at Oxford University Labour Club. Its akin to having the late Dr Shipman given responsibility for developing a course in medical ethics. The JLM is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation, which is responsible for the funding and development of settlements in the West Bank. Its institutions are key to the maintenance of Israeli Apartheid, both in Israel itself and the Occupied Territories. Since the JLM excludes from membership anyone who is not a Zionist or supporter of the Israeli state, it would be more honest to call it the Zionist Labour Movement.
It is part of the new political gospel that the Labour Party is being submerged in a tsunami of anti-Semitism. What we are witnessing is the manufacturing of consent that flies in the face of all the evidence. It is the perfect example of Marx’s dictum that the ruling ideas in any society are the ideas of the ruling class. The existence of ‘anti-Semitism’ is assumed as a given. It is above and beyond challenge in the mainstream press and media, despite the lack of any evidence for it. How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’santi-Semitism crisis
Almost everyday people who criticises Zionism, the movement which founded the Israeli state, are being suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’. Although it is anti-Semitic to equate Jews and Zionism, anyone who criticises the latter is deemed anti-Semitic!
Jackie Walker, the Vice-Chair of Momentum, has been suspended for mentioning the involvement of Jews in financing the slave trade. She is herself both Black and Jewish. [Jackie has since been reinstated] It is one of Zionism’s myths that anti-Semitism is a seamless continuum of Jewish oppression for two thousand years. Jews were always victims never perpetrators. It was this, the ‘lachrymose version of Jewish history’ that Salo Baron, perhaps the greatest Jewish historian of the 20th century railed against.
I was myself suspended on March 18th for having made comments, the details of which Labour’s Compliance Unit initially refused to give me, despite leaking them to The Telegraph which printed them on 2nd April. [Activist who derides critics as 'Zionist scum' admitted to Labour in latest anti-Semitism scandal to hit Party]
I will shortly be appearing before an investigation meeting. It would appear that the Acting Regional Organiser for the South-East Harry Gregson, has gone into overdrive trying to find some incriminating evidence against me. It is a strange process whereby you first suspend someone and then begin trying to find the evidence to justify the suspension.
One of the charges against me is that I wrote a blog post entitled ‘Israeli Policy is to wait for the remaining Holocaust survivors to die’ This was deemed such a terrible accusation by Gregson that it must be anti-Semitic.
It is of course a terrible accusation but exactly the same charge is made in an article in Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper! Israel Is Waiting for Its Holocaust Survivors to Die
It is beyond dispute that Israel is parsimonious in the extreme in withholding benefits from holocaust survivors. Thousands of holocaust survivors in Israel live in dire poverty, forced to choose between heat and food.
Israel has received billions of shekels in reparations from the German state. It has preferred to spend them on holocaust memorials and holocaust ‘education’, to say nothing of weaponry rather than on the holocaust survivors themselves.
The true reason for my suspension though may lie in one other charge that I am facing, namely that I have called for the deselection of Peter Kyle, the New Labour MP for Hove. Kyle is someone who believes fervently in private involvement in the NHS. He voted for bombing Syria and is a darling of the Progress wing of Labour.
The anti-Semitism witch-hunt in the Labour Party has one overriding purpose. It is not just about sanitising Israel. Its primary purpose is the removal of the Jeremy Corbyn leadership of the Party. Co’s appeasement of the Right in the Labour Party is a recipe for defeat. Its only effect is to whet the appetite of Labour’s McCarthyists.
Tony Greenstein
↧
↧
Hiding Zionism's Racism Behind an ‘Anti-Semitic’ Mask
Rabbi Elli Sarah is a Liberal rabbi in Brighton and Hove. Liberal Judaism is supposed to be the most progressive form of Judaism, however Zionism has dragged it to the Right. Reform Judaism, of which Liberal Judaism is a variant, wished to update Judaism in the 19th century in line with modern capitalism. It was to Orthodoxy what Protestantism was to Catholicism. Reform Judaism's reaction to Zionism when it first emerged was hostility. It rejected outright the idea that the Jews were a separate nation. That was the view of the anti-Semites and Reform Judaism wanted nothing to do with those who would reverse the tide of Emancipation.
Elli Sarah has written an essay entitled ‘WhyAnti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism – but criticising Israel isn’t’ Her essay is a good example of how people can genuinely believe that what they write is profound and original, even though it is little more than an echo chamber for the received wisdom of establishment politicians and their media outlets. Clichés and hackneyed phrases are dressed up as original.
said, ‘Anti-Zionism 99 percent of the time is a euphemism for anti-Semitism.’ Elli Sarah is not being new or innovative in her thesis. All that she is missing from her essay is a description of Jewish anti-Zionists as self-haters’ and traitors.
I have a different take. Anti-Zionism is never anti-Semitism. They are polar opposites. If anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic then it isn’t anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionists as individuals may, rarely, be anti-Semitic but anti-Zionism is a political ideology that is as different from anti-Semitism as chalk from cheese.
Rabbi Sarah has a saying on her website ‘At its heart, Judaism is about… trouble-making.’ Unfortunately this is not true, and Rabbi Sarah is the best example of why Judaism today is a religion of conformity, obedience and racist apologetics. Judaism has not had had the equivalent of the Catholic’s liberation theology or even the Protestant Reformation.
When Jewish refugees from the pogroms in Czarist Russia came to these shores, they were met with open hostility by the Rabbinate. Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler described the immigrants as “criminals... mentally or physically afflicted.’ [Geoffrey Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics, p.187, Clarendon Press]
One would have to go back to the prophets to find religious figures prepared to admonish the false priests and the worshippers of the golden calf. That is why the Zionist movement is more happy with the Book of Genocide (Joshua) than the Book of Prophets.
The ability to cloak superficiality in the clothes of profundity is a useful skill. It’s how people like Andrew Neil and David Aaronovitch make a living. However it only serves to reinforce peoples’ prejudices whilst turning most people off politics altogether. Its trade is in cynicism.
Ms Sarah’s essay asserts that which it tries to prove. The theme that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism is the constant of every gutter Zionist and rabid nationalist. The kind of people who march with their blue and white flags wrapped around them shouting ‘Israel lives’. They proclaim their righteous nationalism in Palestinian blood.
Ms Sarah graciously allow us the right to criticise the policies of Israel (but not too many of them) but we are forbidden to question where these policies and practices originate. We can condemn the sinner but not the original sin.
I began to consider my response to Elli Sarah after having written a tribute to one of the most remarkable Jewish women in the past half century, the late Hedi Epstein, who died last Thursday aged 91. Hedi was on the Kindertransport that took nearly 10,000 Jewish children out of Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to London in 1938-39. Her parents and most of her family died in Auschwitz. At the time the Zionist Organisation opposed the Kindertransport. David Ben-Gurion, the then Chairman of the ZO wrote that:
Elli Sarah doesn't have a clue why Ben Gurion wrote this or if she does she won't be letting on because it would mean admitting that on the even of the holocaust the Zionist moving was desperately trying to prevent German Jews reaching any other refuge than Palestine, which the British had all but closed to new immigration. The Zionist response to the Evian Conference which Roosevelt had called in 1938, on the even of war, was one of unmitigated hostility. In the fairy tale history that is now painted of that period the idea that, as Ben Gurion said, it would be better for the refugees to die than go anywhere other than Palestine is not one that is admitted to.
Far from anti-Zionists being anti-Semitic it is Elli Sarah who comes closest to this. She has contempt for the Jews who died in the holocaust even though she is happy to use them as the alibi for a state that is modelled on the same principles as the European fascist countries, Nazi Germany included. Hannah Arendt pointed out, in her book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ how ironic it was that the Nazis Nuremberg Laws were denounced during the Eichmann trial when in Israel too it was impossible for a Jew and a non-Jew to marry.
Elli Sarah’s essay is completely divorced from the reality of Israel today. A demonstration of thousand Jews in Tel Aviv 3 weeks ago supported the soldier who executed a severely wounded Palestinian in the head. Some 60% of Israeli Jews supported his action. The demonstration was held under a banner ‘Kill them all’ and the chant went up ‘Death to the Arabs’. One Jewish journalist, David Sheen, who was though to be from the human rights organisation Bt'selem, was beaten up. Because human rights NGO's have been targeted by the Netanyahu coalition. Indeed one banner said ‘My loyalty is my honour’ the slogan of the SS!
Just 8% of Israelis define themselves as leftists. We have as Israel’s new Defence Minister a man, Avigdor Lieberman, who has spoken of beheading Israeli Arabs and drowning thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea. His Deputy Eli Dahan describes Palestinians as beasts and remarked that ‘“A Jew always has a much higher soul than agentile, even if he is a homosexual.” I guess that his concession on gays is some progress.
Nor are Dahan and Lieberman unusual. According to Pew’s Israel’s Religiously Divided Society a plurality of Israeli Jewish voters want to expel Arabs and 79% believe Jews should receive preferential treatment. Israel is an apartheid society. It is a state, not of its own citizens – Jewish and non-Jewish - but of all Jews, wherever they live.
Why should Elli Sarah and me have the right to ‘return’ to a country we have no attachment to when Palestinian refugees, who were expelled in 1947-8 have no such right? Why should Jews have the right to lease 93% of Israeli land when Arabs have no such right? Does the fact that a book, Borderlife, was bannedby Israel’s Education Ministry from high school English syllabuses because it depicted a relationship between Jewish and Arab teenagers and thus threatened Jewish ‘national identity’ not have eery echoes of the 1930’s? Does not the refusal to admit refugees, because of Israel’s Jewish ‘national identiy’ not give her pause for thought? Or do examples of Israel’s racism cause Elli Sarah’s brain to go on vacation?
Borderlife was banned for the same reasons that the Nazi Nuremberg Laws banned miscegenation, an ugly word that was first used in relation to the Deep South of America, i.e. sexual relations between Jew and non-Jew. The Israeli government funds an openly fascist organisation Lehava which campaigns against mixed Jewish-Arab relationships and whose leader Benzi Gopstein openly callsfor the burning of mosques and churches.
If British Jews were treated in the same way as the Palestinians Ms Sarah would be the first to shout ‘anti-Semitism’. Elli Sarah knows that she can’t defend the indefensible. She therefore resorts to the same defence that supporters of apartheid South Africa use: ‘why don’t you protest the Black African states. Their human rights record is worse than ours.’ The answer then and now is that Apartheid is a particularly unique evil.
The suggestion that we single out Israel amongst all the other countries for reasons of ‘anti-Semitism’ is risible. Israel is 'singled out' because it singles itself out. It says it is the Middle East’s only democracy. It receives the highest US aid of any country in the world. Motions condemning its settlement activities are routinely vetoed by the USA in the UN Security Council. Israel receives favoured nation trading status in the EU. It even competes in the Eurovision despite being in the Middle East. Israel likes to portray itself as a western country but its chorus of apologists complain when we hold it to its self-proclaimed standards.
Israel is a democracy for Jews and a Jewish state for Palestinians. Its democracy is but skin deep. It has rigorous military censorship, administrative detention (internment without trial), it holds secret trials where even the name of the defendant cannot be mentioned, it uses torture regularly against Palestinian detainees (and recently when Jewish terrorists were tortured there was a mighty uproar). It maintains two legal systems in the West Bank (military courts for Palestinians and civil courts for Jews) which is as good a definition of apartheid as it gets.
If the ‘Jewish’ state was Jewish in the same way Britain is Christian, i.e. a constitutional adornment, then there could be little complaint. If Israel was simply a place of refuge for Jews suffering persecution, that too would be acceptable. However Israel isn’t even that. When the only post-war neo-Nazi government came to power, under the military junta in Argentina (1976-83), when up to 12% [3,000] of those who disappeared [i.e. died under torture] were Jewish, Israel turned its back. As the late Yossi Sarid MK of the left-Zionist Meretz observed, ‘‘the government of Israel never once lifted a finger and co-operated with the Argentine murderers because of their interest in arms deals….In Argentina, Israel sold even the Jews for the price of its immediate interests.’“Yes, I Accuse,” Ha'aretz, 31 August 1989.
I suspect Elli Sarah has never read Jacobo Timmerman's book 'Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number' of his experiences in prison in Argentina. He was a prominent editor and a left-Zionist (or at least he was until he went to live in Israel!).
In her attempt to prove ‘anti-Semitism’ Elli Sarah focuses on Naz Shah’s facetious joke about transplanting Israel to the United States. In fact the map she used came from the Jewish Virtual Library! The remark came about during Israel’s attack on Gaza when over two thousand people, including 551 ‘terrorist’ children were murdered. Perhaps Ms Sarah has forgotten the chant of the Israeli mob 'There's No School In Gaza,There Are No More Kids Left' This at a time when Israelis moved armchairs and a coffee machine to a hill overlooking Gaza so they could enjoy the bombing.
The hypocrisy of these holocaust mongers is best demonstrated by the fact that they pick up on Naz Shah's reference to the 'transportation costs' of moving Israel to the United States (note that it is automatically assumed that it is only the Jews of Israel who are involved). 'Transportation' symbolises death trains to Auschwitz. It is as if Jews never use the word transport, still less trains for fear that they might be carted off to an extermination camp! What utter hypocritical rubbish. Unfortunately Naz Shah was intimidated, like the defendants in Stalin's purge trials, into admitting her guilt.
Elli Sarah speaks about the Holocaust survivors who found refuge in Israel. In fact most of them wanted to go to the United States not Israel but their path was blocked by the opposition of the Zionist movement in the USA. They have become the alibi for the Israeli state but Israel’s use of the holocaust as a propaganda weapon is in stark contrast to their treatment in Israel. As Ha’aretz (6.2.13) noted,‘Israel Is Waiting for Its Holocaust Survivors to Die’ as it then won’t have to pay them the meagre benefits they receive.
Ms Sarah refers to the kibbutz movement as an ‘ideal way of living as a Jew’. She omits to mention that they were institutions founded on land from which the Arab peasants had been evicted and of which only Jews could be members. In other words they were racially exclusive clubs, stockade and watchtower settlements.
Elli Sarah states that there is no historical evidence that Hitler supported Zionism. In fact there is a lot of evidence that the Nazis favoured the Zionist movement over and above all other Jewish groups before and even after 1941. There is the Kasztner trial in Israel when survivors of the Hungarian holocaust accused the Jewish Agency and its representative Kasztner of collaborating in the round-up and entrainment of the Jews. The verdict of the Jerusalem District Court brought the second Israeli government of Moshe Sharrett down in 1955.
This isn't so. Elli Sarah and I live in Britain as full citizens. It is as much our country as anyone else’s. Only anti-Semites and Zionist proclaim otherwise. When Ms Sarah proclaims that ‘One of the main objectives of the early Zionists was the ‘normalisation’ of the Jewish people.’ She is accepting the anti-Semitic trope that Jews were abnormal. It is somewhat ironic that Rabbi Sarah then goes on to accuse others of ‘anti-Semitism’!
On June 4th Brighton will see an attempted march by a fascist and anti-Semitic group of neo-Nazis. Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been busy helping to organise the counter-mobilisation, as we did in 2012 when the March for England was halted in its tracks. EDL/MFE - We Won the Day
Once thing is for certain. Elli Sarah and all the rest of the Zionist claque will play no part in opposing the real neo-Nazis who will try and march in the streets of Brighton. Zionism never has opposed anti-Semitism. It is far more interesting in painting the opponents of anti-Semitism as anti-Semitic. Zionists have no interest in opposing anti-Semitism except where defence of the State of Israel is concerned. That is the lie at the heart of Rabbi Elli Sarah’s thesis.
Tony Greenstein
Elli Sarah has written an essay entitled ‘WhyAnti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism – but criticising Israel isn’t’ Her essay is a good example of how people can genuinely believe that what they write is profound and original, even though it is little more than an echo chamber for the received wisdom of establishment politicians and their media outlets. Clichés and hackneyed phrases are dressed up as original.
said, ‘Anti-Zionism 99 percent of the time is a euphemism for anti-Semitism.’ Elli Sarah is not being new or innovative in her thesis. All that she is missing from her essay is a description of Jewish anti-Zionists as self-haters’ and traitors.
Even today Zionist groups work with anti-Semites |
Rabbi Sarah has a saying on her website ‘At its heart, Judaism is about… trouble-making.’ Unfortunately this is not true, and Rabbi Sarah is the best example of why Judaism today is a religion of conformity, obedience and racist apologetics. Judaism has not had had the equivalent of the Catholic’s liberation theology or even the Protestant Reformation.
When Jewish refugees from the pogroms in Czarist Russia came to these shores, they were met with open hostility by the Rabbinate. Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler described the immigrants as “criminals... mentally or physically afflicted.’ [Geoffrey Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics, p.187, Clarendon Press]
One would have to go back to the prophets to find religious figures prepared to admonish the false priests and the worshippers of the golden calf. That is why the Zionist movement is more happy with the Book of Genocide (Joshua) than the Book of Prophets.
The ability to cloak superficiality in the clothes of profundity is a useful skill. It’s how people like Andrew Neil and David Aaronovitch make a living. However it only serves to reinforce peoples’ prejudices whilst turning most people off politics altogether. Its trade is in cynicism.
Ms Sarah’s essay asserts that which it tries to prove. The theme that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism is the constant of every gutter Zionist and rabid nationalist. The kind of people who march with their blue and white flags wrapped around them shouting ‘Israel lives’. They proclaim their righteous nationalism in Palestinian blood.
Ms Sarah graciously allow us the right to criticise the policies of Israel (but not too many of them) but we are forbidden to question where these policies and practices originate. We can condemn the sinner but not the original sin.
I began to consider my response to Elli Sarah after having written a tribute to one of the most remarkable Jewish women in the past half century, the late Hedi Epstein, who died last Thursday aged 91. Hedi was on the Kindertransport that took nearly 10,000 Jewish children out of Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to London in 1938-39. Her parents and most of her family died in Auschwitz. At the time the Zionist Organisation opposed the Kindertransport. David Ben-Gurion, the then Chairman of the ZO wrote that:
Elli Sarah doesn't have a clue why Ben Gurion wrote this or if she does she won't be letting on because it would mean admitting that on the even of the holocaust the Zionist moving was desperately trying to prevent German Jews reaching any other refuge than Palestine, which the British had all but closed to new immigration. The Zionist response to the Evian Conference which Roosevelt had called in 1938, on the even of war, was one of unmitigated hostility. In the fairy tale history that is now painted of that period the idea that, as Ben Gurion said, it would be better for the refugees to die than go anywhere other than Palestine is not one that is admitted to.
The 'equation of Nazism with Zionism'is anti-Semitic. Presumably Hannah Arendt (above) was anti-Semitic too? |
From 'War Against the Jews' the Zionists were not to be treated with the strictness that the non-Zionist Jews merited |
Just 8% of Israelis define themselves as leftists. We have as Israel’s new Defence Minister a man, Avigdor Lieberman, who has spoken of beheading Israeli Arabs and drowning thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea. His Deputy Eli Dahan describes Palestinians as beasts and remarked that ‘“A Jew always has a much higher soul than agentile, even if he is a homosexual.” I guess that his concession on gays is some progress.
Nor are Dahan and Lieberman unusual. According to Pew’s Israel’s Religiously Divided Society a plurality of Israeli Jewish voters want to expel Arabs and 79% believe Jews should receive preferential treatment. Israel is an apartheid society. It is a state, not of its own citizens – Jewish and non-Jewish - but of all Jews, wherever they live.
Why should Elli Sarah and me have the right to ‘return’ to a country we have no attachment to when Palestinian refugees, who were expelled in 1947-8 have no such right? Why should Jews have the right to lease 93% of Israeli land when Arabs have no such right? Does the fact that a book, Borderlife, was bannedby Israel’s Education Ministry from high school English syllabuses because it depicted a relationship between Jewish and Arab teenagers and thus threatened Jewish ‘national identity’ not have eery echoes of the 1930’s? Does not the refusal to admit refugees, because of Israel’s Jewish ‘national identiy’ not give her pause for thought? Or do examples of Israel’s racism cause Elli Sarah’s brain to go on vacation?
Borderlife was banned for the same reasons that the Nazi Nuremberg Laws banned miscegenation, an ugly word that was first used in relation to the Deep South of America, i.e. sexual relations between Jew and non-Jew. The Israeli government funds an openly fascist organisation Lehava which campaigns against mixed Jewish-Arab relationships and whose leader Benzi Gopstein openly callsfor the burning of mosques and churches.
If British Jews were treated in the same way as the Palestinians Ms Sarah would be the first to shout ‘anti-Semitism’. Elli Sarah knows that she can’t defend the indefensible. She therefore resorts to the same defence that supporters of apartheid South Africa use: ‘why don’t you protest the Black African states. Their human rights record is worse than ours.’ The answer then and now is that Apartheid is a particularly unique evil.
The suggestion that we single out Israel amongst all the other countries for reasons of ‘anti-Semitism’ is risible. Israel is 'singled out' because it singles itself out. It says it is the Middle East’s only democracy. It receives the highest US aid of any country in the world. Motions condemning its settlement activities are routinely vetoed by the USA in the UN Security Council. Israel receives favoured nation trading status in the EU. It even competes in the Eurovision despite being in the Middle East. Israel likes to portray itself as a western country but its chorus of apologists complain when we hold it to its self-proclaimed standards.
Israel is a democracy for Jews and a Jewish state for Palestinians. Its democracy is but skin deep. It has rigorous military censorship, administrative detention (internment without trial), it holds secret trials where even the name of the defendant cannot be mentioned, it uses torture regularly against Palestinian detainees (and recently when Jewish terrorists were tortured there was a mighty uproar). It maintains two legal systems in the West Bank (military courts for Palestinians and civil courts for Jews) which is as good a definition of apartheid as it gets.
If the ‘Jewish’ state was Jewish in the same way Britain is Christian, i.e. a constitutional adornment, then there could be little complaint. If Israel was simply a place of refuge for Jews suffering persecution, that too would be acceptable. However Israel isn’t even that. When the only post-war neo-Nazi government came to power, under the military junta in Argentina (1976-83), when up to 12% [3,000] of those who disappeared [i.e. died under torture] were Jewish, Israel turned its back. As the late Yossi Sarid MK of the left-Zionist Meretz observed, ‘‘the government of Israel never once lifted a finger and co-operated with the Argentine murderers because of their interest in arms deals….In Argentina, Israel sold even the Jews for the price of its immediate interests.’“Yes, I Accuse,” Ha'aretz, 31 August 1989.
I suspect Elli Sarah has never read Jacobo Timmerman's book 'Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number' of his experiences in prison in Argentina. He was a prominent editor and a left-Zionist (or at least he was until he went to live in Israel!).
In her attempt to prove ‘anti-Semitism’ Elli Sarah focuses on Naz Shah’s facetious joke about transplanting Israel to the United States. In fact the map she used came from the Jewish Virtual Library! The remark came about during Israel’s attack on Gaza when over two thousand people, including 551 ‘terrorist’ children were murdered. Perhaps Ms Sarah has forgotten the chant of the Israeli mob 'There's No School In Gaza,There Are No More Kids Left' This at a time when Israelis moved armchairs and a coffee machine to a hill overlooking Gaza so they could enjoy the bombing.
The hypocrisy of these holocaust mongers is best demonstrated by the fact that they pick up on Naz Shah's reference to the 'transportation costs' of moving Israel to the United States (note that it is automatically assumed that it is only the Jews of Israel who are involved). 'Transportation' symbolises death trains to Auschwitz. It is as if Jews never use the word transport, still less trains for fear that they might be carted off to an extermination camp! What utter hypocritical rubbish. Unfortunately Naz Shah was intimidated, like the defendants in Stalin's purge trials, into admitting her guilt.
Elli Sarah speaks about the Holocaust survivors who found refuge in Israel. In fact most of them wanted to go to the United States not Israel but their path was blocked by the opposition of the Zionist movement in the USA. They have become the alibi for the Israeli state but Israel’s use of the holocaust as a propaganda weapon is in stark contrast to their treatment in Israel. As Ha’aretz (6.2.13) noted,‘Israel Is Waiting for Its Holocaust Survivors to Die’ as it then won’t have to pay them the meagre benefits they receive.
Ms Sarah refers to the kibbutz movement as an ‘ideal way of living as a Jew’. She omits to mention that they were institutions founded on land from which the Arab peasants had been evicted and of which only Jews could be members. In other words they were racially exclusive clubs, stockade and watchtower settlements.
Elli Sarah states that there is no historical evidence that Hitler supported Zionism. In fact there is a lot of evidence that the Nazis favoured the Zionist movement over and above all other Jewish groups before and even after 1941. There is the Kasztner trial in Israel when survivors of the Hungarian holocaust accused the Jewish Agency and its representative Kasztner of collaborating in the round-up and entrainment of the Jews. The verdict of the Jerusalem District Court brought the second Israeli government of Moshe Sharrett down in 1955.
Herzl's fruitless approach to Cecil Rhodes, whom the Zionists much admired |
On June 4th Brighton will see an attempted march by a fascist and anti-Semitic group of neo-Nazis. Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been busy helping to organise the counter-mobilisation, as we did in 2012 when the March for England was halted in its tracks. EDL/MFE - We Won the Day
Once thing is for certain. Elli Sarah and all the rest of the Zionist claque will play no part in opposing the real neo-Nazis who will try and march in the streets of Brighton. Zionism never has opposed anti-Semitism. It is far more interesting in painting the opponents of anti-Semitism as anti-Semitic. Zionists have no interest in opposing anti-Semitism except where defence of the State of Israel is concerned. That is the lie at the heart of Rabbi Elli Sarah’s thesis.
Tony Greenstein
↧
Uncensor British Palestinian Award Winning Schoolgirl!
Sign & Share the Petition Against These Racist Zionist Bigots Who Have Sent Hate Mail to a Young Girl
Just when I thought that the defenders of Apartheid Israel and racist Zionists couldn’t go any lower along comes the affair of Leanne Muhamad. Leanne, who is a 15 year old school girl, a British Palestinian whose relatives are still in Gaza, spoke impassionately at the Speak Out challenge run by the Jack Petchey Foundation about her experiences. For a 15 year old girl it was a magnificent speech. It clearly came from the heart. She described how her baby cousin had died of heart problems in Gaza because of Israel’s Nazi style blockade of the territory.
The main challenge seems to be how to avoid being censored by the Jack Petchey Foundation |
Leanne spoke of her hopes and dreams and spoke of how terrorism had no religion. Watch it and see for yourself. The audience enthusiastically applauded her and she won this particular stage. But then the censors moved in. A particularly racist Zionist @EdgarDavidson81 complained. The Jewish Chronicle, which is edited by the cold-war -hawk and apologist for pro-Israel anti-Semites, former Daily Express editor Stephen Pollard, stepped into the fray.
They should add a rider - 'as long as you don't offend racists and Zionists' |
Leanne has been deluged with hate mail from Zionists as a result. Please sign the petition below and share with others so that the Jack Petchey Foundation and Wansted High School know that the overwhelming majority of British people reject Zionist censorship.
If the lies above are to be believed, the video of Leanne's speech was removed from the Jack Petchey site in order to protect her! |
Leanne should go onto the finals of the speaking competition as was originally intended before the censors stepped in.
No to Zionist and Racists’ Censorship – Yes to Free Speech on Palestine
Leanne Receiving her Award - This Didn't Happen as the Jack Petchie Foundation has deleted it from its website - all in her interests as they said today |
Can anyone think of anything else to add? 'Don't annoy any Zios?' |
Leanne Muhamad of Wansted High School won the "Speak out" challenge after giving an impressive performance to enthusiastic applause. However one day later, following complaints from the racist anti-Palestinian blogger @EdgarDavidson81 to the Speakers Trust (the charity that trains the students to take part in the Speak Out Challenge) the Jack Petchey Foundation and Wanstead High School, the judging panel have now decided “unanimously” against sending Leanne Mohamad through to the final rounds of the competition.
Leanne Muhamad |
Julie Holness, CEO of the Speakers Trust, alleged that Ms Mohamad had breached
"two fundamental rules that are made explicit during the training”.
She said:
“There are two fundamental rules that are made explicit during the training: the speech must have a positive and uplifting message - in fact this is one of the core terms of the agreement with the Jack Petchey Foundation [and] a speaker should never inflame or offend the audience or insult others and this, by definition, means that propaganda is ruled out absolutely from the outset.’
Given that the so-called "two fundamantal rules" are not written as Ms Holness shared them - and also were taken out of context - it is not stated anywhere about an "uplifting message" nor is it stated anywhere about "insulting others" nor any reference to "propaganda"in the topics recommended: Topics (note not rules) should be presented in a positive/constructive manner even if the subject is of a more serious or hard-hitting nature.
How Leanne was supposed to raise the death of her baby cousin who was trapped in Gaza and lacked basic medical aid due to the Apartheid blockade, positive and uplifting is macabre. She did manage to make it a part of her plea for peace and his passing has since been used against her in a cruel and malign fashion. This young person is still a minor and her cousin's death has been very upsetting and yet there are those who believe it is acceptable to slaughter thousands of children, imprison thousands more and in Britain at least censor a young person from speaking out about it in an event designed specifically for young people to speak out!
However controversial the subject, speakers are warned never to offend the audience. Given that the audience gave her a standing ovation and rousing standing ovation at that - there was no signal of offence reported or given, and given that she asked for Birds of Peace instead of Bombs and an uplifting message to free her people; as well as summarizing the traumatic past from which she at her young age has escaped; there is nothing to offend a normal audience, and nowhere is the term "others' mentioned. Also given that the speech was previously, marked voted on and won in another heat - by another panel of judges, and coached by teachers from Speakers Trust - all with no comments or remarks about its eligibility - as there was no offence and they thought it was constructive and positive - it is curious that a new panel voted against it, effectively silencing and deleting the previous panel's decision and also silencing a schoolgirl's story and plea for peace and freedom.
This petition will be delivered to:
- Trudy Kilcullen - Chief Executive Officer
Jack Petchey Foundation
- Councillor Wanstead Council
sheila bain
- Bob Hamlyn
Wanstead Highschool, london
UPDATED: The Jewish Chronicleerroneously reported that “Following complaints by blogger Edgar Davidson to the Speakers Trust” the decision was taken not to put her through to the grand finals. They had already taken the decision to censor her.
A British Palestinian school girl, Leanne Mohamad of Wanstead High School, won the “Speak Out” challenge after giving this impressive performance to enthusiastic applause. But a day later, Speakers Trust decided Leanne will no longer be sent through to the grand final of the public speaking competition. It seems that giving a personal account of the Nakba and a plea for an end to discrimination against Palestinians is not acceptable in the UK in 2016.
Competition organisers Speakers Trust have removed the video from their website, Speak Out Challenge, and their YouTube channel. Copy below.
The Speak Out challenge is described thus: “In each one-day workshop, students take part in games and exercises to encourage them to think on their feet in a fun, interactive and safe environment. The day culminates in a ‘Speak Out’ speech contest where students can speak on any topic they feel strongly about – using only their voices, their words and their passion. Notes are not allowed; they must use the techniques from the training.”
The Free Speech on Israel network object to the undue influence that was imposed on Speakers Trust; 15 year old Leanne Mohamad should have been allowed to go through to the final.
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Sleeping With Apartheid - Sleep over a Demolished Village Courtesy of BnB
Another Excellent Cartoon Strip from Apartheid Ventures
Take a holiday on the West Bank - you'll be kept insulated from the people whose houses were demolished and who live with a permanent water shortage.
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Labour’s Inquisition – from the banal to the mundane
Calling for the reselection of Labour MP Peter Kyle is a disciplinary offence
It is apparently a disciplinary offence to call for the resignation of Peter Kyle MP - a man who supports private involvement in the NHS |
On bank holiday Monday, having been suspended on March 18th and supplied with my list of crimes, I faced the person who was my Inquisitor. Accompanies by Christine Shawcroft of Labour’s National Executive Committee as my silent witnesses, I met Harry Gregson, Labour’s SE Regional organiser. Harry had a whole bundle more tweets to question me over thus demonstrating how absurd the process was.
My interrogator - Harry Gregson - Labour's SE Regional Organiser |
First I was suspended without any reason being given, then I found out what the reasons for my suspension were via the Daily Telegraph as Labour’s Compliance/Constitutional Unit had leaked the details, or some of the details. The whole process is devoid of anything remotely resembling natural justice. So blatantly unfair is this process that Labour’s General Secretary Iain McNicol’s only response was to complain that I had besmirched the name of those who had leaked details of my charges.
Christine Shawcroft of the NEC was my silent witness - Christine was herself suspended last year |
I have now transcribed what was slightly more than an hour’s interrogation. Amusing points for me were when, in response to a question as to why I had described Zionism as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism, I asked Harry whether or not describing Jews as vermin might count as anti-Semitism. He refused to answer! Of course I had already telegraphed the answer to him, by supplying him with an article Classic zionism and modern anti-semitism - Parallels and influences (1883-1914) by an Israeli scholar Jacques Doron in the Journal of Israeli History. The exact quote was by one Pinhas Felix Rosenbliith, who later became Minister of Justice in Israel. He described Palestine as "an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin."
Torquemada - A man whose picture adorns Labour's Compliance Unit |
One thing was clear from the interrogation. It wasn’t about any actions of mine but solely concerned with my views and beliefs. This demonstrates that it isn’t a question of any actions I have undertaken but my opinions which are on trial, something which is explicitly ruled out under the Labour Party’s own rules and constitution. That is why the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement is seeking to amend the rules in order that someone’s beliefs and views when it comes to anti-Semitism are indeed an expulsion offence. Of course the JLM will be the arbiter of what constitutes anti-Semitism. Hence if, like Jackie Walker and myself, you are Jewish and have been to the fore in anti-fascist and anti-racist campaigning, that will be no defence. Because the anti-Semitism the Zionists are talking about is not a form of racism but opposition to the State of Israel – and that certainly is an offence under New Labour.
One of the questions was about 'how Israel’s policy is about waiting for the remaining holocaust survivors to die.' The answer lay in the above article from Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper |
The interview took place at the Labour Party offices at 99 Church Street in Hove as it was a bank holiday and nowhere else could be booked. It did entail entering a building with the local MP Peter Kyle’s photo adorning it, however I had taken the precaution of wearing a silver cross and covering myself in cloves of garlic!
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Muhammad Ali – the Death of a Black Revolutionary
Malcolm X taking a picture of Ali |
I woke up today to the news that the great Muhammad Ali, who had suffered so terribly from Parkinson’s disease, had died aged 74. This was before I set out for an anti-fascist demonstration that wasn’t in Brighton.
I felt a sadness that I haven’t felt since John Lennon was murdered in 1980. Muhammad Ali was part of my life. He was the greatest ever heavyweight boxer. He was so quick and agile that he boxed without a guard, merely flicking his head back to avoid his opponent’s punch. He was cocky, sure of himself and had a way with words that few others could match. He literally floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.
I first watched his second match against Sony Liston, which he won with a first round knock-out. I watched many of his subsequent bouts, all of which he won. Although politically he moved to the right as he got older, endorsing Ronald Reagan's reelection in 1984, in his youth Ali was the personification of the Black Power movement.
In particular his refusal in 1967 to serve in Vietnam, which resulted in his being stripped of his heavyweight boxing title, was a courageous decision at a time when opposition to the war was still in its infancy. Ali's comment that the Vietcong weren't his enemy and that no Vietcong had called him nigger or lynched Black people was inspirational. It cut through the nationalist crap that says it is a crime not to support your own ruling class and establishment and that the foreigner is your enemy.
Even whilst his body was still warm he has been adopted by the white establishment with his radicalism gutted. The article below makes this point trenchantly
Tony Greenstein
History says we’ll try and forget the boxing legend’s radicalism. We shouldn’t.
04/06/2016
Maxwell StrachanSenior Editor, The Huffington Post
Mere minutes after Muhammad Ali died on Friday at the age of 74, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumpcalled the boxing legend a “great champion” and “wonderful guy” in a Twitter post.
Harry Benson via Getty Images Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, Cassius Clay, who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali, in 1964. |
Muhammad Ali is dead at 74! A truly great champion and a wonderful guy. He will be missed by all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2016
The tweet provoked swift and justifiable anger. On its face, what made the remark so despicable was that it came from Trump, a man who has peddled Islamophobia consistently throughout his racially and religiously charged political campaign for personal gain. In December, Trump called on the U.S. to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. Around that same time, he implied that there were no Muslim sports heroes at all. And now, here he was, moments after the death of the most prominent Muslim athlete of all time, hoping you’d forget those two facts and let him take advantage of the moment.
It was, depending on what you think of the businessman, either willfully ignorant or shamelessly cynical, requiring the sort of unique disregard for the past that makes Trump Trump. But as I sat last night looking at the reality TV personality’s tweet, I found myself thinking that what made Trump’s sentiment so truly disturbing was that it actually wasn’t out of line at all. Rather, it was and is right in line with a long-running tradition in U.S. history: whitewashing the radicalism of black Americans.
Throughout U.S. history, white Americans have toned down the life stories of radical people of color so that they can celebrate them as they want them to be, not as they were. It is why we first think of “I Have A Dream“ when we hear the name Martin Luther King Jr., and not his opposition to the Vietnam War. Narratives are altered. Complex people simplified. Revolutionary ideas watered down, wrapped and packaged with a bow for mainstream America.
Already, there are signs that people will waste no time trying to do the same with Ali. In the hours since his death, many people, most of them white, have taken to their various social media platforms to declare that Ali transcended race. The phrase is intended as a compliment, as a way of saying he was beloved by all, but comes across as odd to many people — funny, isn’t it, how you never hear about Steve Jobs or Peyton Manningtranscending race? In truth, the phrase is naive, bathed in white privilege. And most importantly, it is an eraser. Saying Ali transcended race banishes his long history of being uncompromisingly, beautifully black to the footnotes, just as the anti-Muslim Trump’s celebration of Ali whitewashes the boxer’s history as a proud Muslim man.
Is it okay to say that Muhammad Ali “transcended his race” & erase his clear commitment to & embracing of blackness? pic.twitter.com/EsKB2rYBmt
— deray mckesson (@deray) June 4, 2016
You can have broad appeal without transcending race. Prince and Ali, for example, reveled in their blackness. You can’t erase that.
— roxane gay (@rgay) June 4, 2016
So today, before it is too late, let’s get one thing straight: Muhammad Ali was a revolutionary black man, and proud of it. He opposed the Vietnam War at a time when it was so unpopular and career-threatening to do so. He proposed reparations by another name, saying in the 1960s that the U.S. government should take $25 billion meant for the Vietnam War and instead use it to build black Americans homes in the South. Ali was so politically radical that Jackie Robinson once called him a “tragedy,” and the Nation of Islam eventually distanced itself from him. In the 20th century, former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee chairman Stokely Carmichael said “the FBI viewed Ali as more of a threat“ than himself. In the 21st, it was revealed that the NSA had wiretapped his conversations. And still Ali never relented in his convictions — black until death, first and foremost.
“I was determined to be one nigger that the white man didn’t get,” Ali once said. “Go on and join something. If it isn’t the Muslims, at least join the Black Panthers. Join something bad.”
Ali didn’t transcend race, because he didn’t want to. History indicates we’ll try and forget all that, and one day after his death, there are clear signs that many people are already trying to do so. But we shouldn’t. We really shouldn’t.
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My Submission to the Chakrabarti Inquiry – Remember the Hutton Report into Blairs War!
Chakrabarti will be a rubber stamp for the Zionist Labour Movement & Progress
Shami Chakrabarti - no radical - Chair of Liberty which like its predecessor the NCCL was a breeding ground for New Labour types like Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman |
I will make a prediction. The Chakrbarti Inquiry has been fixed and it will deliver what the Zionists want. Those with long memories will remember the Hutton Report, which Blair convened after Dr David Kelly had killed himself. Kelly had been Andrew Gilligan of BBC Radio 4's informant. Gilligan had broadcast that the intelligence for the war had been 'sexed up'. Campbell was furious and at the Hutton Report, which was a model of openness, with thousands of documents going on line, there was an atmosphere of tolerance.
But Hutton was a reactionary Unionist judge. Blair had chosen well and Hutton's report was a savage indictment of the BBC. He found that Gilligan's allegations against the government were 'unfounded'. It led to the resignation of the BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies and Greg Dyke, its Director General. In many ways the BBC never recovered. It became more and more reactionary after this. Its coverage of Palestine was, to this very day, biased towards Zionism and Israel. The Blair government's full frontal attack on the BBC has led it to becoming the timid creature it is today.
Chakrabarti is no radical. She has already made her position clear – she opposes BDS and the Boycott of a State where Arabs are lynched and mobs go around chanting ‘death to the Arabs’ whilst a fascist, Avigdor Liebermann, who openly calls for the mass murder of Israeli Arabs and Palestinian prisoners, is appointed to be Defence Minister.
But Hutton was a reactionary Unionist judge. Blair had chosen well and Hutton's report was a savage indictment of the BBC. He found that Gilligan's allegations against the government were 'unfounded'. It led to the resignation of the BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies and Greg Dyke, its Director General. In many ways the BBC never recovered. It became more and more reactionary after this. Its coverage of Palestine was, to this very day, biased towards Zionism and Israel. The Blair government's full frontal attack on the BBC has led it to becoming the timid creature it is today.
Chakrabarti is no radical. She has already made her position clear – she opposes BDS and the Boycott of a State where Arabs are lynched and mobs go around chanting ‘death to the Arabs’ whilst a fascist, Avigdor Liebermann, who openly calls for the mass murder of Israeli Arabs and Palestinian prisoners, is appointed to be Defence Minister.
Israel is a state whose government includes a ‘Justice’ Minister who calls for genocide and which is based on the permanent subjection of an at best tolerated Arab minority. It is a state where Judaisation, i.e. ensuring that all areas of the country are dominated by Jews, is official policy. Shami Chakrabarti no doubt supported sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, but because Apartheid Israel is a 'Jewish' state it is allowed to get away, literally, with murder. Shakrbarti is a liberal member of the establishment but she is a member of the establishment and she will fall into line.
Professor David Feldman of the Pears Institute - a signatory to the non-Zionist Independent Jewish Voices - has come under attack from the Jewish Chronicle - will he wilt under the pressure? |
My submission to the Chakrabarti Inquiry is based on the assumption that the Inquiry is going to be heavily biased towards the Zionists. Baroness Janet Royall became the third member of the Panel. Unlike Chakrabarti and Professor Feldman, she has not been attacked by the Zionists. Royalls investigation' into alleged anti-Semitism at Oxford University Labour Club could have been written by the Jewish Labour Movement and indeed probably was.
In what was an astounding remark in her post on the Jewish Labour Movement site, Royall stated that
‘I know that you will share my disappointment and frustration that the main headline coming out of my inquiry is that there is no institutional Antisemitism in Oxford University Labour Club.’
Most of us would be delighted that no institutional anti-Semitism (whatever that is) had been found, but being a Zionist Royall found it disappointing and she knew that the JLM would find it even more disappointing.
The Zionist Baroness Royal - supporter of Labour Friends of Israel and a believer in the idea that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are identical |
In my submission I have heavily criticised Royall for her support for Labour Friends of Israel. If she had any integrity she would resign. She went on an LFI sponsored trip to Israel in 2007 and, like the 3 wise monkeys, she neither heard, saw or said anything. The fact that there was a military dictatorship in the West Bank didn’t once cross her ladyship’s fragrant mind. Her decision to recommend that the British wing of the Israeli Labour Party, the JLM, be responsible for anti-racist training takes satire to a wholly new level. It would be like suggesting that Tony Blair should be the next Chairperson of the Stop the War Coalition!
The Baroness is disappointed that she could not find institutional anti-Semitism at Oxford - she throws her hands up in horror at Jewish students being ridiculed 4 saying 'as a Jew' - perhaps she should read David Aaronovitch's recent article in the Jewish Chronicle Have I Got Jews 4 You which begins ‘my online world was invaded by the Asajews' |
I have no doubt at all that the Chakrabarti Inquiry will go along with much of what the Zionists want, which is in effect a declaration that opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is de facto anti-Semitic and further that the Labour Party is engulfed in a wave of anti-Semitism.
The fact that most members of the Labour Party know there is no anti-Semitism in the Party and further they know that these allegations are wholly contrived will be irrelevant. However it is important that those making submissions to Chakrabarti, under the illusion that it is an impartial committee, are disillusioned. Only the Zionists have representation on this committee.
My submission is here
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Momentum - Its Time for Jon Lansman to Go
Jon Lansman asks us to ‘understand’ the Nakba – the expulsion of ¾ million Palestinians
Palestinian refugees fleeing in 1948 |
Lansman explaining away the Nakba |
Likewise when Jon Lansman takes us on a tour of population exchanges and transfers in Europe, before and after the last war we can assume that his purpose is not so much an abstract academic exercise, or a hidden desire to explain the cruelties of ethnic nationalism but as a means of exculpating Zionism from its expulsion of the Palestinians in 1947-8.
Devastation of Palestinian Property in 1948 |
When someone asks us to ‘understand’ the Nakba, when ¾ million Palestinians were made refugees and thousands were massacred, the first thing to ask is where they are coming from. In the case of Jon Lansman its quite easy to determine this question.
One of the many massacres in 1948 |
Lansman’s original response to the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign of the Right and the Zionists, in the shape of the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel, in the Labour Party was to accept that there was an anti-Semitism problem. Indeed he was negotiating with the JLM and LF though to what effect no one knows.
Marlene Ellis - the latest Black member to be suspended as Lansman watches on |
It didn’t take a brilliant mind to work out that if Jeremy Corbyn was being attacked last summer for associating with holocaust deniers then the chances were that the campaign against ‘anti-Semitism’ in Oxford University Labour Club and the subsequent suspensions of mostly Black and Muslim members of the LP had less to do with ‘anti-Semitism’ and more to do with getting rid of Corbyn and attacking those who support the Palestinians.
There has been a non-stop campaign against ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party since last summer. When Ken Livingstone mentioned the fact that Hitler supported Zionism, which was in all essentials true, he was suspended amidst the normal hypocritical uproar by the mass media. What was Lansman’s response? To join in the calls for Livingstone’s suspension of not expulsion. He was told his career was over when that is more true of Lansman than anyone.
1948 war |
It was only when Lansman’s deputy in Momentum Jackie Walker, was suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’ Labour’s Thought Police claims another victim - Black Jewish activist Jackie Walkerthat Lansman realised that there might be a problem. A frenzied witch-hunt is not the way to combat antisemitism or any form of racism. We saw the Right’s cynicism play out a week ago when Jim Murphy, the man who lost Scotland for Labour at the last General Election, successfully opposed the nomination of Rhea Wolfson for Labour’s National Executive Committee because she was associated with the ‘anti-Semitic’ Momentum group that Lansman chairs. Despite the fact that Wolfson is Jewish she is one of those rare creatures, a left-wing Zionist! Young left-winger blames former Scottish Labour leader for her failed bid to replace Ken Livingstone
Yet Lansman has refused to draw any conclusions. On the contrary he has demobilised Momentum and turned it into a useless talking shop. Instead of mobilising nationally against the witch hunt and against those MPs that are trying to bring Corbyn down, it has done absolutely nothing. There has been no national conference, no national leaflets, no anything. It is possible that the Right will win out in the NEC elections in October. If so that is down to the abysmal failure of Momentum to organise nationally and the fact that Lansman has been an utter disaster preferring to appease the Right at a time when they have been gunning for Jeremy Corbyn.
Labour's Transfer policy in 1944 |
The witch hunt against anyone speaking out against the witch hunt is proceeding apace with news of the suspension of Marlene Ellis from Black Connexions this week. Her offence? Signing an open letter condemning the suspension of Ken Livingstone! Our witch hunters don’t like opposition and they therefore deemed that opposing the bogus anti-Semitism witch hunt was in itself an act of anti-Semitism! As the Jewish Chronicle, which has been driving the witch hunt explained:“Momentum activist Marlene Ellis has been suspended from the Labour Party over a blog which accused Jeremy Corbyn of playing “right into the hands of Zionist criminals” by suspending Ken Livingstone.”
This is an expression of her viewpoint. There is nothing anti-Semitic in it. Yet what has been the reaction of Jon Lansman? Has he spoken out and condemned this attack by the Right on mainly Black, Muslim and left-wing activists? Has he, as Chair of Momentum, taken a lead in fighting back against the daily suspension of activists? No, he has maintained complete silence. Even worse he is now rationalising the politics of those who are conducting the witch-hunt.
Lansman has embarked on rehabilitating Zionism and the State of Israel This began with an article ‘Why the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’ it has now ended up with an attempt to forgive Zionism for the Nakba. Labour and the Jews: from ethnic cleansing to truth and reconciliation.
In the first article he asked us not to mention the word ‘Zionism’ because we might begin asking why there are Jewish only settlements in Israel. Why hundreds of Rabbis issue edicts calling on Jews to refuse to rent flats or rooms to Arabs. Why Jewish residents of Afula call the attempt by Arabs to purchase building plots the act of ‘terrorists’. Why there are pogroms against Black African refugees in Tel-Aviv and the worlds largest detention centre for refugees in Holot in the Negev desert. Why a book Borderlife depicting a relationship between Arab and Jewish teenagers is banned from the high school syllabus for threatening ‘Jewish national identity’ etc. etc.
Zionism began as a mirror image of anti-Semitism in Europe. It took to heart its principles but it reversed them. What the anti-Semites had done to the Jews they were going to do to the native peoples of Palestine. So today being Jewish in Israel entitles you to land rights, better employment, education, welfare benefits. Being Jewish is a matter of national and racial pride. That is why Zionists love to wrap the Israeli flag around themselves in ostentatious displays of nationalist patriotism. It also expresses itself in the chants of ‘death to the Arabs and in the number of shops who display ‘kosher’ certificates in their windows testifying that they don’t employ Arabs. Israel is not a state of its own citizens but a state of the Jewish ‘nation’ – which includes not only its Jewish citizens but Jews who are not citizens but part of the Jewish nation, even though living outside the State.
And let us be clear what Lansman is forgiving. In the Jewish state that was allocated by Resolution 181 of the United Nations, in November 1947 to the Zionists, the number of Palestinians was approximately the same as the number of Jews. The Zionist goal of an ethno-religious state was not compatible with an equal number of residents being Jews and Arabs. Israel was not the equivalent of the British state, which is nominally Christian but in which no one really cares how many Christians there are. In Israel everything revolves around being Jewish. It is a Jewish supremacist state. Being Jewish is a national and racial category.
Israel is a settler colonial country. Its aim is to ‘redeem’ the land for the Jewish nation, much as the Nazis believed in the concept of a mystical attachment by the German Volk, who were connected by blood, to its land. , Likewise Zionism believes that in the attachment of the ‘Jewish People’ to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.
In the seminal case of George Tamarin v State of Israel in 1972 (a decision upheld in Uzzi Ornan vs State of Israel in 2013) Tamarin wanted his nationality to be changed from ‘Jewish’ to ‘Israeli’. Chief Justice Agranat ruled that ‘the desire to create an Israeli nation separate from the Jewish nation is not a legitimate aspiration. A division of the population into Israeli and Jewish nations would … negate the foundation on which the State of Israel was established.’ The court ruled that “There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish People. The Jewish People is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of Diaspora Jewry.”
And therein lies the problem. If Israel was a nation of all its citizens then Zionism would not rear its head. There would be equality between each citizen in so far as this is ever attainable in a class society. But there is no such thing as an Israeli nation because Israel lays claim to all Jews, the world over.
That is what makes Israel an apartheid state. But for Lansman it is some kind of national cultural state. Lansman attempts to equate the population exchanges in Greece and Turkey that took place following the Convention on Exchange of Populations of January 1923 as somehow equivalent to the Nakba. They couldn’t be more different. In fact, after a million Greeks had already been massacred, most Greeks fled from Turkey. The exchanges such as they were occurred on religious not ethnic grounds. In other words the exchange was largely a myth.
Another example Lansman gives to justify the expulsion of the Palestinians is the massive repatriation of up to 2 million ethnic Germans, from Eastern and Central Europe to Germany after WW2. The situation was again completely different from that of the Palestinians. It was part of Nazi policy to enrol what they termed the Volksdeutsche in a policy of German conquest of Europe. They were often unwilling to be co-opted but in the atmosphere of the second world war many willingly supported the Nazi party. In Czechoslovakia, the Sudeten German Party gained a majority of the vote under Henlein and this provided the pretext for the Nazi dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. In Hungary the Swabian Volksdeutsche made up most of the gendarmes who were responsible for rounding up, torturing and incarcerating the Jews in brick yards prior to deportation.
This is not the time or place to go into the history of the Volksdeutsche but there was clearly very fierce resentment after the war at the fact that large numbers of them had become Nazis and members of the Waffen SS and perpetrated numerous massacres. They acted as colonists in large parts of Poland, in particular the Warthegau and Silesia. In many ways their repatriation, bloody as it undoubtedly was, was the expulsion of colonists.
The Palestinians did not massacre Jews in Palestine, they were the subject of massacres. They were not employed by a foreign imperial power to colonise other peoples’ land they were the ones who were colonised. To compare the Palestinians to the ethnic Germans in Europe is crass and racist and a justification of a policy of racial exclusion. The same policy the Nazis employed in Poland and elsewhere.
Lansman quotes from the Labour Party’s 1944 resolution supporting the transfer of the Palestinians out of Palestine to accommodate a Jewish state and sees this as some kind of understandable reaction to the holocaust rather than for what it was. Labour’s policy through the 20thcentury had been an imperialist one, in which it had justified the British Empire by comforting itself that it was acting as a ‘trustees’ for the backwards races. The Tories didn’t bother to justify the Empire, it was their natural right to conquer the savages and to utilise their resources. Labour preferred to justify the same as helping to the same savages to civilisation. The Attlee government was one of the most exploitative imperialist governments Britain has seen, conducting a ruthless counter-insurgency war in Malaya against communist guerilllas in 1950-1. It was responsible for the super-exploitation of the African colonies. At a time of a chronic balance of payments deficit and having gone cap in hand to the United States in 1945 for a $3 billion loan, British imperialism under Labour had to ruthlessly exploit its colonies.
Once a Labour government took power it was faced with an entirely different scenario. They wanted for strategic reasons to hang on to Palestine but the Zionists’ terrorist militias took up arms against them culminating in the Irgun’s bombing of the King David hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, which acted as a headquarters for the British military, in which over 100 people, including many Jews, were killed. The Stern Gang followed this up in 1948 with the assassination of Count Folk Bernadotte, the Swedish UN mediator who had saved thousands of Jews from the camps at the end of the war by personally interceding with Himmler.
The United States, which wanted to see Britain decolonise (not for altruistic reasons but because it wanted to gain a share of the colonial markets which Britain’s preferential trade system and the sterling pool kept isolated) pressed Britain to admit the Jewish Displaced Persons from the camps in Europe. As Ernest Bevin remarked of the Americans, they wanted Jews to come to Palestine because they didn’t want them in the United States! It caused offence but it was true. There was nothing anti-Semitic about this as Lansman implies.
The USA had extremely rigid anti-Semitic immigration controls post-war, which the Zionists supported to the hilt. Indeed the Zionists were amongst the most vociferous opponents of lowering the immigration barriers because they didn’t want Jews to go to the USA as opposed to Palestine. They repeated this in the 1970’s and 1980’s with the emigration of Soviet Jews when they lobbied Reagan and the United States not to admit Soviet Jewish refugees. When Morris Ernst, a non-Zionist Jewish lawyer, was asked by Roosevelt to draw up a post-war resettlement plan for Jewish refugees ‘Jewish leaders decried, sneered and then attacked me as if I were a traitor. At one dinner party I was openly accused of furthering this plan of freer immigration in order to undermine political Zionism.’ [Robert Silverberg, If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem, p.334, Pyramid Book, New York, 1972.
Lansman argues that it wasn’t the Zionist colonisation up till 1945 but the holocaust which was responsible for founding the Israeli state. As a matter of simple historical fact this is nonsense. The Zionist movement began colonisation in Palestine from 1882 with the Biluim and in earnest from the second Labour Zionist aliyah in 1904, that is over 40 years before 1947. The refugees from the holocaust were directed towards Palestine despite their wish to go to the United States by a combination of American anti-Semitism and Zionism. The Zionist movement and the Hagannah terrorist group were allowed to operate in the European displaced persons camps and in many cases through violence the refugees were coerced into accepting that their destination was Palestine. Lansman suggests that the reason Israel was created ‘ was the Holocaust, the plight of the survivors seeking safe refuge.’ Israel certainly didn’t provide a safe refuge. One-third of those who died in the 1947-8 war were holocaust survivors and that was one reason that the Israeli state wanted them so badly, They needed conscripts for their militias and new found colonial army.
Lansman argues that ‘only truth can bring reconciliation.’ Unfortunately a deliberate re-writing of history is not the way of achieving that object. Lansman however isn’t merely engaged in rewriting history but in attempting to lay the basis for Labour’s acceptance of an Israeli state which is to this very day ‘Judaising’ parts of Israel with relatively few Jews such as the Galilee, Negev and Jerusalem. What Lansman wants is Labour’s endorsement for Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing and colonisation.
For the main left-wing group in the Labour Party, Momentum, to have as its Chairperson a Zionist supporter is absurd. Zionism is the antithesis of socialism. It posits not the unity of the working-class but the unity of the Jewish people. That was why the Labour Zionists ‘trade union’, which was in fact a large colonising agency, the Histadrut, banned Arabs from membership until 1959.
As David HaCohen, Managing Director of Histadrut’s building company Solel Boneh explained:
‘I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my Trade Union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they should not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there... to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash Arab eggs they had bought... to buy dozens of dunums from an Arab is permitted but to sell God forbid one Jewish dunum to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild the incarnation of capitalism as a socialist and to name him the 'benefactor' - to do all that was not easy.’ [Ha’aretz 15.11.69.]
See Jon Lansman's Labour and the Jews: from ethnic cleansing to truth and reconciliation
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How a Watermelon Posed a Threat to Israel’s Security
The Bureaucratic Malice of Israel’s Occupation
On one level of course it is amusing, that a water melon is deemed to be a security threat. :But the fact that Israeli soldiers won’t led an old Palestinian man pass with his watermelon is indicative of the crushing nature of Israel’s military presence in the middle of Hebron. Whilst the settlers are allowed to come and go without hindrance and the settlers are allowed to attack and intimidate the Palestinians of Hebron without let or hindrance, the Palestinians face bureaucratic obstacles every day.
Everything is a security threat. Despite Israeli human rights workers arguing that their action in preventing him pass into ‘a closed military zone’ which happens to be where the man lives, the soldiers refuse to budge.
Because in an illegal occupation there is of course no law. What matters is might, nothing more and so we see the crushing and bureaucratic nature of the Israeli occupation, which makes someone wait for 4 hours in order to pass with their water melon.
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Just Fancy That! Pegida leader, Anne-Marie Waters Joins the BNP and EDL in Supporting Israel
Yet more Fascists and Racists Declare their Love for Israel
Pegida UK rally |
EDL supporters attack Birmingham PSC Campaign - with Israeli flag in one hand and giving Hitler salute with other |
Israel in short is the ideal type of society that the fascist is seeking to build. It has everything that they could want, including extreme racist bigots in the Knesset and Cabinet. So we can go from Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party to Christian Strache of Austria’s Freedom Party (fascists seem to like the Freedom label and they like crushing freedom even more) to Marine Le Pen of France’s Front Nationale.
Tony Greenstein
Austria's Freedom Party |
Hilary Aked 9 June 2016
Israeli flags on display at PEGIDA UK rally in Rotherham, in the north of England, on 4 June. (via Facebook)
The leaders of a UK far-right organization have announced plans to visit Israel, highlighting the appeal of the country to anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant bigots.
Anne Marie Waters, a leader of PEGIDA UK, has pledged to go to Israel on a “fact-finding” mission in the wake of the row over mostly trumped-up accusations of anti-Semitism in the UK’s main opposition Labour Party.
Map of Euro far-Right parties |
PEGIDA UK is the British arm of the Islamophobic street movement “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West,” founded in the eastern German city of Dresden.
In Germany, the movement has merged with neo-Nazi elements, among them such figures as Karl-Heinz Statzberger, who planned to carry out a bomb attack on a Munich synagogue in 2003.
PEGIDA UK’s Waters admitted to a pro-Israel blogger that the inquiry ordered by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn“won’t find as much that is outwardly anti-Jewish, as is outwardly anti-Israel,” but made clear that she thinks “it is anti-Israel sentiment that we must confront.”
She has called for “a new and powerful pro-Israel argument” to be made in the UK and reportedly plans to write a book called “In Defense of Israel” following her trip.
Speaking to Canadian podcast Real Clear Israel, Waters said that she is planning to join the April 2017 “Ultimate Mission to Israel,” an annual propaganda tour of Israeli military facilities organized by Shurat HaDin, a lawfare group with close ties to the Mossad spying and assassination agency.
She characterized support for the Palestinian struggle for equal rights as “Islamic jihad against Israel” and “a Quran-inspired Jew-hatred” which “aims to wipe out Jews.”
Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn |
Conspiracy theories
Waters, who was nearly selected as a Labour Party candidate in 2013, joinedthe anti-immigrant United Kingdom Independence Party in 2014. She was removed as a candidate for the London Assembly, though not as a party member, for her links to PEGIDA.
She founded a group called Sharia Watch UK, which has propagated bizarre conspiracy theories including the claim that halal meat sales fund terrorism.
Its launch was hosted in the UK’s House of Lords by Caroline Cox, a member of the unelected chamber who was once co-president of Jerusalem Summit, a group that has denied the Nakba and supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Waters also attempted to host a “draw Mohammed” cartoon contest in London last year but could not find a venue willing to host it.
They include Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known by his pseudonym Tommy Robinson, founder of the Islamophobic street movement the English Defence League, and far-right politician Paul Westonwho admitted in 2014 that “I am a racist”.
Previously, anti-Muslim Dutch politician Geert Wildershas spoken at PEGIDArallies across Europe and has expressed support for Israeli settlers.
Wilders is the figurehead of the “counterjihad” movement, a growing strand of the far-right which distances itself from traditional neo-Nazism by claiming to abhor anti-Semitism and offering vocal support for Israel.
At PEGIDA UK’s most recent demonstration, in the northern English town of Rotherham on Saturday, several Israeli flags were clearly on display.
Pro-Israel, anti-Muslim
Whether the movement actually opposes anti-Semitism is questionable, as PEGIDA’s ties to neo-Nazis in Germany attest.
A Swastika was seen at a PEGIDA UK demonstration and Nazi salutes have been observed during marches organized by Robinson’s old outfit the English Defence League.
At a demonstration in Birmingham in April, PEGIDA UK gave a platform to Lutz Bachmann, founder of the original German PEGIDA, which at its height attracted 25,000 people onto the streets of Dresden.
Bachmann resigned as leader of the group in January 2015 after photos of him posing as Adolf Hitler emerged, but he soon re-joined the group’s leadership, claiming the images had been doctored.
Anti-Semitism and support for Israel clearly co-exist in sections of the far right. These developments also underscore the kind of friends that Israel attracts: proto-fascists who idolize the country for its ultra-nationalist, highly-militarized and anti-Muslim practices.
These politics chime well with Israel’s current government, the most right-wing in its history, and underscore the growing links between anti-Muslim and pro-Israel movements.
PEDIGA UK leader Paul Weston has visited Israel once before, in 2010, as part of a delegation of far-right European leaders.
Adar Primor, columnist for the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz, described the visit as part of “the very unholy alliance between figures on Israel’s right and extreme nationalists and even anti-Semites in Europe that is gaining momentum in the Holy Land.”
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Why Ken Livingstone Got It Right Over Nazi Support for Zionism
To Download This Article go to:
Ken Livingstone - pilloried for telling the truth about Nazi support for the Zionist movement |
Ha'avara Certificate |
a. Paul Bogdanor is probably the least qualified person to do so as he knows next to nothing of the period. He is not a historian but a self-publicist and has no obvious qualifications apart from being a rabid anti-communist.
The coin which the Nazis struck after the tour of von Mildenstein to Palestine - with the Swastika on one side and the Star of David on the other |
b. He is a rabidly libellous and dishonest commentator. He makes stripping out sentences and half-sentences out of context into an art form and comes a cropper as a result. He alleges is a worthless article that I supported the collaboration of Stalin with Hitler and the appeasement of the German Community Party of the Nazis’ anti-Semitism after 1930. Both these are demonstrable lies but so pathologically demonic is Bogdanor that he has probably convinced himself of his wilder allegations.
c. The fact that Fathom has been forced to rely on him is in itself a demonstration that the factual basis of Nazi-Zionist collaboration and the wider allegations that the Zionists consciously obstructed rescue to anywhere that didn’t involve Palestine cannot be challenged.
Tony Greenstein
Boats from Germany would fly both the Swastika and the Star of David - the Zionist flag was the only flag legally entitled to be flown under the Nuremberg Laws |
Reply to Paul Bogdanor’s
Fathom is the on-line journal of BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. Its editorial advisory board is a who’s who of Zionist academics, journalists and ex-military personnel.[1] It is a good example of how Zionist academics seamlessly intertwine with Israel’s military industrial complex. Fathom’s editor is the right-wing British academic Professor Alan Johnson
When Ken Livingstone stated, during the course of defending Naz Shah MP against accusations of anti-Semitism, that ‘when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.’ [2], the Zionists and their sycophants were outraged. How could anyone make such an accusation? Livingstone’s statement focused attention on the murky history of Zionist relations with Nazi Germany.
The hypocrisy of Zionism’s defenders is breathtaking. Zionists never tire of wheeling out the holocaust whenever it suits them. It was Abba Eban, the Labour Zionist Foreign Secretary who called the Green Line between pre-1967 Israel and the West Bank the ‘Auschwitz borders’. Netanyahu compared the Boycott of Israeli Goods to the holocaust: ‘We have a historical recollection of what happens when Jewish products are marked’[3]
Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement (Likud/Herut) was once called Vladimir Hitler by Ben-Gurion |
Nor is it just the Israeli Right. Veteran Israeli holocaust historian, Saul Friedlander, who no longer calls himself a Zionist because of the way Zionism has been captured by people like Paul Bogdanor, stated that he ‘regrets that his colleagues in the Israeli left prefer not to base their arguments more on the lessons of the Holocaust. “It’s a mistake of the left to keep clear from such a major part of our history. They are afraid of dragging the Holocaust into the political game but we can turn around the way the right uses it.”’ Cardboard cutouts of Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister used to be dressed up in Nazi uniform by his opponents.
In short those western Zionists who pretend that the holocaust has no lessons for today are not merely mistaken but hypocritical too, since the holocaust is almost the standard metaphor in debate in Israel.[4]
The holocaust has served as the primary justification for Israel ideologically. It has been the alibi for every atrocity of a state based on ethno-religious supremacy. When Israel lay siege to Beirut and bombed it, Israeli Prime Minister Begin justified it by comparing Yasir Arafat to Hitler in his bunker.[5] Israel’s enemies, such as Nasser and Ahmedinajad were the new Hitler. The Palestinians have been transformed into the new Nazis. We even had the spectacle of Benjamin Netanyahu, at the 2015 World Zionist Congress, seeking to exculpate Hitler for the extermination of European Jewry. According to this revisionist version of history, it was the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was responsible for the Nazis adopting extermination rather than expulsion as the solution to the Jewish Question.[6]
Zionism arose as a reaction to anti-Semitism which accepted the assumptions of the anti-Semites, viz. that Jews did not belong in other peoples’ territories – they were strangers. Zionism understood anti-Semitism and saw it as a perfectly justifiable and understandable movement. As the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl noted: ‘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.’ [7]
It is equally a surprise to people that the Zionists had no principled objection to the Nazis Nuremberg laws, “the most murderous legislative instrument known to European history”[8] Who would believe that the Zionist movement was in agreement with the Nazis over the need to for racial separation? As the Introduction to the Nuremberg Laws of 15th September stated:
‘If the Jews had a state of their own in which the bulk of their people were at home, the Jewish question could already be considered solved today, even for the Jews themselves. The ardent Zionists of all people have objected least of all to the basic ideas of the Nuremberg Laws, because they know that these laws are the only correct solution for the Jewish people too.’ [9]
It was because of their ideological congruity that collaboration between the Zionists and the Nazis came easily. The Zionists were focussed on building their state, not saving Jews.
Fathom therefore decided to commission an article from Paul Bogdanor, son of the eminently sane, if somewhat boring British constitutionalist Vernon Bogdanor. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of his son. Paul Bogdanor is a far-Right Zionist who writes for the Islamaphobic Frontpage.comedited by David Horowitz. It boasts columnists such as Melanie Phillips, Oliver Kamm and Nick Cohen. You get some idea of Frontpage’s bona fides from the Jihad Watch section with columnists like Pamela Geller, who even managed to get herself banned by Theresa May because of the virulence of her Islamapobia.
Bogdanor is a strange choice of writer for a magazine which has pretensions to academic respectability. Bogdanor is not only someone who cannot see anything wrong with Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, he is unusual, even by Zionist standards, in that he pens pathologically demented diatribes against his many enemies, all of them Jewish. His writing style is like the screeching of a hanging door. An anti-Communist who belongs to the McCarthy era, he combines venom, distortion and malice in equal measure.[10]. It is defamation by example. Bogdanor is incapable of discerning subtlety or shades of difference. Nuance is not a word in his vocabulary. He has a fixation with his supposed enemies that belongs to the realm of psychology. How else to explain the article ‘Tony Greenstein and the Nazi Apologists’ where he states that I ‘defend(s) communist collaboration with the Nazis but denounce(s) Zionists as joint perpetrators of the Holocaust.’
Anyone actually reading the excerpts which I am held to to have written would note that I criticise the German Communist Party’s 3rd Position policy of equating social democracy with fascism and its appeasement of the Nazis anti-Semitic policies. Neither is there anything I have written which would suggest that the Zionists were ‘joint perpetrators of the Holocaust.’ Lying and distortion come easily to Bogdanor. Fantom’s choice of a frothing at the mouth Zionist to defend Zionism’s record during the holocaust suggests a measure of desperation. There are a number of critical Zionist historians who could have undertaken the task of rebutting allegations of Zionist-Nazi collaboration. The choice of Bogdanor is bizarre and can only be put down to the politics of Fantom’s editor.
Despite having nothing in common politically with Fantom I had no difficulty in commenting favourably on Sarah Brown’s article Antisemitism and Oren Ben-Dor in Fantom. When Fantomsays that Bogdanor ‘skewers’ the author Lenni Brenner, it is engaging in wishful thinking. It is also an unfortunate metaphor for a journal with academic pretensions.
Bogdanor’s Introduction gives some indication of his style. He writes that ‘Britain was rocked’ by the anti-Semitism witch hunt in the Labour Party. No the pundits, Labour right-wingers and Zionist ideologues were ‘rocked’. It made next to no impression on public opinion. Bogdanor describes as examples of this anti-Semitism the fact that Vicky Kirby was quoted as talking about ‘big (Jewish) noses’. This is a good example of Bogdanor’s sloppy and lazy distortion. This comment was contained in one of a series of tweets of quotes from the 2010 comedy filmThe Infidel.[11] The film’s write David Baddiel is Jewish and the film describes itself as ‘An identity crisis comedy centred on Mahmud Nasir, successful business owner, and salt of the earth East End Muslim who discovers that he's adopted - and Jewish.’ Hardly the equivalent of the Nazis’ Jud Suss.
Although not mentioning her by name, Bogdanor suggests that Jackie Walker was suspended for suggesting that ‘the Jews were behind the slave trade’. Not so, she talked of the involvement in financing the slave trade of some Jews. An entirely different matter. More to the point it was a private conversation between friends not a policy statement. If Bogdanor had an ounce of integrity he would have mentioned that Jackie is half-Jewish herself.
When referring to Ken Livingstone’s comments about Hitler supporting Zionism, he notes that Livingstone referred to Lenni Brenner’s book, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. In his normal moderate style Bogdanor suggests that the book is a favourite amongst those who believe that ‘Zionists’ are to blame for all evil in the world. Really? I guess it would be churlish to provide an example of such a belief outside of the anti-Semitic far-Right with whom Bogdanor has so much in common. It is his hyperbole which renders Bogdanor’s article more of a propaganda text than a serious academic article.
In a personal attack on Brenner we are told that he spent several (3) years in prison for activities in the civil rights movement and smoking cannabis. Most people would hold that spending time in prison for campaigning for civil rights in America was a mark of honour. Not Bogdanor whose sympathies are with the segregationists – be they in the USA or Israel. There is nothing shameful in spending time inside for possession of cannabis. It is an outrage that people are still locked up for possession of the drug. Today many states like Oregon and Colorado and countries like Portugal have decriminalised possession.
Another example of the fantasy nature of Bogdanor’s criticisms is his suggestion that Brenner attributed the ‘collapse of the Weimar Republic’ to the Zionists. Given that the Zionists were only 5% or less of the German Jewish population, this is highly unlikely! I note that no reference is given.
Being a paranoid anti-Communist, Bogdanor sees Brenner’s criticisms of Nazi-Zionist collaboration as originating in Soviet propaganda which apparently held that the Zionists were jointly responsible with the Nazis for the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust. Even assuming that some Soviet propagandists did say this, and there is little Bogdanor says that can be taken on trust, to therefore suggest that ‘far-left falsifiers accuse a group of Jews of perpetrating the Holocaust in collaboration with the Nazis’ is simply a propagandistic lie and an implausible one too.
If Bogdanor wants to know what the origins of Nazi-Zionist collaboration is then he needs only read BenHecht’s Perfidy. Perfidy described the libel trial that Rudolph Kasztner, a senior official in Mapai, the Israeli Labour Party and the former leader of Hungarian Zionism, brought against those who accused him of collaboration. Zionist activists in Cluj, Kasztner’s hometown, persuaded Jews to get on the trains because they would be ‘resettled’ in a fictional place, Kenyermeze. The people who brought the accusations against Kasztner weren’t Soviet agents but Hungarian Jewish refugees. The Kasztner trial led to the fall of the second Israeli government of Moshe Sharrett in 1955 when Judge Halevi of the Jerusalem District Court found that Kasztner had ‘sold his soul to the Devil’.
Ben Hecht was a Revisionist Zionist, a supporter of Vladimir Jabotinsky but he was one of a group of dissident Zionists in the United States who were so appalled by the indifference indeed hostility of the Zionist establishment under Stephen Wise to doing anything concrete to help rescue Jews from the Holocaust, as opposed to ritual protests, that they organised their own lobby group and campaigns.
Hecht was a famous Hollywood screenwriter and adept at gaining publicity. The result of his activities and those of Peter Bergson and Shmuel Merlin of the Emergency Committee to Save Jewry was that in January 1945, in the teeth of Zionist opposition the Roosevelt Administration established the War Refugee Board, which is credited with saving 200,000 Jewish lives. Wise and the other Zionist leaders believed that their diplomatic struggle to establish a Jewish state took priority over everything including saving Jewish lives. Saving Jews for the Zionists was conditional on those Jews going to Palestine.
Bogdanor chose 12 particular instances of Brenner’s ‘factual misrepresentations’. I will examine them below.
(i) ‘Over-concern for the fate of German’s Jews
As Bogdanor admits, negotiations between the Zionists and the Nazis concluded in August 1933 with the Ha’avara (Transfer) trade agreement. It involved the liquidation of the assets of rich Jews in the form of frozen Reich Marks (Speermarks) and the purchase of goods in Germany with those RMs. When those goods were exported and sold in Palestine the owners received a proportion of the purchase price. The problem was that this broke the Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany and Jews all over the world reacted furiously to this treachery.
It is worth quoting Elie Wiesel, who is an ardent Zionist propagandist. Unlike Bogdanor he is a survivor of Auschwitz, and knows full well the full extent of Zionist indifference during the holocaust. In a review of Tom Segev’s The 7th Millionhe wrote, regarding Ha’avara:
Surely, Jewish Palestine… needed money to finance its development, but this brazen pragmatism went against the political philosophy of a majority of world Jewry. There developed a growing perception that instead of supporting and strengthening the boycott, Palestine was, in fact, sabotaging it.
There were justifications. Yes, the country was poor and needed financial input and yes, this course of action provided a chance to save German Jews who might otherwise have decided to "wait and see" and let the last possible opportunity of salvation go by.
But Segev goes on to show, supported by devastating evidence, that later, even as Germany carried out its Final Solution--liquidating one ghetto after another, one community after another--the Jewish leaders of Palestine never made the rescue of European Jews into an overwhelming national priority. We know that Zionist leader Itzhak Gruenbaum, a future Minister of the Interior in David ben Gurion's first cabinet, considered creating new settlements more urgent than saving Jews from being sent to Treblinka and Birkenau.
Read Segev's heartbreaking conclusion:
"There had been about nine million Jews in Europe on the eve of the war; about six million were killed, leaving three million alive. Most of them were saved by Germany's defeat in the war. Some were spared thanks to the help they received from various governments and organizations such as the Joint Distribution Committee and from thousands of good-hearted people in almost every country--the "righteous Gentiles." There were dramatic rescue operations such as the flight across the Pyrenees from France to Spain and the convoys of Jews that sailed from Denmark to Sweden. Only a few survivors owed their lives to the efforts of the Zionist movement."[12]
Bogdanor, as an amoral propagandist, is having none of this. He says that ‘the moral dilemma facing the Labour Zionists was whether to help German Jews leave with a fraction of their funds or to join a futile boycott of Germany.’
The Labour Zionists had no ‘moral dilemma’. They were eager to conclude a trading agreement with Nazi Germany even if it meant that pressure was lifted from the Nazis. The Boycott, which Bogdanor describes as ‘futile’ forced the Nazis to call off their siege of Jewish shops on April 1st 1933 after one day.
No less than 60% of investment capital in the Jewish Palestine economy between 1933 and 1939 came from Ha'avara.[13] The Zionist movement wasn’t so much interested in saving German Jewish lives as ‘saving the wealth’ of the Jews and ‘rescuing the capital from Nazi Germany.’ [14] What mattered, as the Jewish Chronicle noted, was not the loss of wealth to Germany so much as the need to keep the economic wheels turning.[15] ‘
Bogdanor says that to Brenner the Labour Zionists of the 1930’s who disagreed with his pronouncements… were guilty of ‘boycott scabbing and outright collaboration.’’ Not so. It was the labour movement and Jewish proponents of boycotting everything German who called the Zionists scabs.
In a debate between Berl Locker of the Zionist Executive and Baruch Vladeck, a Bundist and editor of the Yiddish Forwardand Chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee, Vladeck described how ‘The whole organized labor movement and the progressive world are waging a fight against Hitler through the boycott. The Transfer Agreement scabs on that fight.’Vladeck contended that ‘The main purpose of the Transfer is not to rescue the Jews from Germany but to strengthen various institutions in Palestine.’ Vladeck termed Palestine‘the official scab agent against the boycott in the Near-East’ because‘without the worldwide effort to topple the Third Reich, Hitler would have never agreed to the Transfer Agreement.’ [16]
The Boycott ‘forced the Third Reich to vigilantly restrain anti-Jewish violence in Germany since each incident helped intensify the anti-Nazi movement.’[17] The Boycott had the potential to destabilise Hitler in the early period when he had not consolidated his strength. Ha'avara came to the rescue of the Hitler regime
As Zionist historian Edwin Black, who has written the most comprehensive book on the Boycott, wrote Ha’avara was directly responsible for preventing the anti-Nazi crusade succeeding.[18] The actions of the ZO had allowed Hitler to drive a wedge into the world-wide boycott of German goods.[19]
The leaders of Germany realized that the anti-Hitler boycott was threatening to kill the Third Reich in its infancy, either through utter bankruptcy or by promoting an imminent invasion of Germany…’ [20]
The 20,000 German Jews who were able to go to Palestine under Ha'avara were the richest German Jews. They had to have £1,000 to enter on ‘capitalist certificates’. They were the ones who could have most easily gained refuge elsewhere. Zionism sacrificed the poorer Jews for the elites. Ha'avara also led to the Zionists being the main export agents of Nazi Germany as they sold goods throughout the Middle East.
Not only did the Zionist movement oppose ‘refugeeism’, saving Jews regardless of the destination, but they tried to persuade the Gestapo, the very agency charged with implementing the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policy, to ensure that German refugees could only go to Palestine. The Gestapo “did everything in those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine.”[21]
Bogdanor suggests that ‘Brenner’s trump card in his attack on the Transfer Agreement was the fact that two-thirds of German Jews seeking Palestine certificates in the years between 1933 and 1935 were turned down.’ But this is not true. A total of 119,315 immigrants entered Palestine between 1933-35, of whom 18,206 were German Jews. 6,307 entered from the US, Britain and the Western Hemisphere who weren’t in any danger. Those who were admitted were Zionists. Communists and anti-Zionists were excluded.
ii. Zionists who agreed with Nazi ideology
Bogdanor takes Brenner to task for his statement that‘the German Zionists agreed with two fundamental elements in Nazi ideology,’ namely ‘that the Jews would never be part of the German volk and, therefore, they did not belong on German soil’. This being the case, ‘it was inevitable that some Zionists would believe an accommodation possible.’ (Brenner 1983: 35)
Bogdanor cites a historian Poppel to refute Brenner’s thesis but Poppel did no such thing. Unfortunately Bogdanor is so rabid that he cannot read a text and properly comprehend it.
But leaving aside Brenner’s quoting of Poppel the assertion that Jews could never be part of the German volk is basic to Zionism. Zionism holds that Jews in any country cannot be full members of that national collectivity. As Francis Nicosia, a Zionist historian, observed ‘Zionism (was) a volkisch Jewish nationalist ideology and movement that started from some of the same philosophical premises as German nationalism…’ [22]
Joachim Doron noted that ‘It cannot be denied that the Jewish self-criticism so widespread among the German Zionist intelligentsia often seemed dangerously similar to the plaints of the German anti-Semites. The Zionists were keenly aware of this problem but they were not deterred by it.’
An example of how the Zionists adapted to the Weltanschauung was the behaviour of Kurt Blumenfeld, the Secretary of the ZVfD [German Zionist Federation]. In a letter to Walter Rathenau, a German foreign minister who was assassinated in 1922, Blumenfeld stated: ‘Under no circumstance does a Jew have the right to represent the affairs of another people.’[23]
Bogdanor deliberately fails to mention the memo that the ZVfD sent to Hitler on 21stJune 1933, which clearly demonstrates the ideological agreement between the German Zionists and the Hitlerites. It’s not difficult to imagine why!
‘On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the fatherland is possible. Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we don’t wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we too are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group…. The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda… is in essence fundamentally unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build.’ [24]
Of course the Zionists are consistent. They opposed a boycott of Hitler and they oppose a boycott of the Israeli state. However they are not opposed to an enforced boycott of Gaza or Iran.
iii ‘Favoured’ children of the Nazi
It’s difficult for Bogdanor to deny that the Zionists were the favourite children of the Nazis. He therefore resorts to nit picking and logic chopping. Brenner quoted an article by the Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a prominent German Zionist and later Deputy Chairman of the World Jewish Congress. In it Prinz wrote:
‘Everyone in Germany knew that only the Zionists could responsibly represent the Jews in dealing with the Nazi government. We all felt sure that one day the government would arrange a round table conference with the Jews… there was no country in the world which tried to solve the Jewish problem as seriously as did Germany… It was our Zionist dream!… Dissimilation? It was our own appeal!…’ [25]
Bogdanor quotes a further passage from the same article in which Prinz said that nonetheless the Zionists were ‘miserably treated’, that they were still called in to the Gestapo and treated in ‘not very polite terms’. That is often how the more powerful party treats collaborators, but these same officials didn’t experience the concentration camps like Communists and Socialists.
According to Zionist holocaust historian, Lucy Dawidowicz, Reinhardt Heydrich, the ‘engineer of the Final Solution’ and deputy head of the RHSA, the combined Police and SS, issued a directive that:
‘the activity of the Zionist-oriented youth organizations that are engaged in the occupational restructuring of the Jews for agriculture and manual trades prior to their emigration to Palestine lies in the interest of the National Socialist state’s leadership.’ These organisations therefore ‘are not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish organizations (assimilationists)’.[26]
In May 1935 Schwarze Korps, paper of the SS, wrote in a similar vein that 'the Zionists adhere to a strict racial position and by emigrating to Palestine they are helping to build their own Jewish state.... The assimilation-minded Jews deny their race and insist on their loyalty to Germany or claim to be Christians because they have been baptised in order to subvert National Socialist principles.' [27]
The evidence is so clear I don’t know why Bogdanor bothers.
iv. The Hagannah’s offer to spy for the SS
This revolves around a secret agent Feivel Polkes. His file in Israel is closed but thanks to a Freedom of Information request in the USA an SS Report was gleaned. If the Zionists have nothing to hide why, nearly 80 years after the event is it not opened to the scrutiny of academics? Bogdanor quotes from Brenner thus:
‘A Haganah agent, Feivel Polkes’ reached Berlin in February 1937 and opened negotiations with Adolf Eichmann;… Polkes invited Eichmann to visit Palestine (Brenner 1983: 93-4, 98-9). As Brenner put it, ‘Polkes had proposed that the Haganah act as spies for the Nazis’, and ‘The Labour Zionists were receiving Adolf Eichmann as their guest in Palestine and offering to spy for the SS.’(Brenner 1983: 99, 176)
Bogdanor’s attempt to rebut the allegations is ludicrous. He argues that the SS report of Polke’s visit exposes Brenner’s claim as a falsehood. The SS report stated that ‘In the beginning, [Polkes] didn’t know that he was dealing with a [Nazi] Security Service agent… He stated that he is ready to serve Germany and supply information as long as this does not oppose his political goal… His standing promises that important information and material will reach us regarding world Jewry’s plans.’ (SS 1937: 113-14).
This apparently is damning information! Does it matter if Polkes believed that he was dealing with the SD as opposed to another German government department? The fact is that he was a Hagannah agent and he offered to spy for Nazi Germany.
Bogdanor engages in the worst type of pedanticism. Apparently Polkes could not have been sent by the Haganah to contact the Nazis, as he did not at first know that he was in contact with the Nazis. Bogdanor claims that ‘as the report makes clear, Polkes was offering to become a Nazi spy againsthis fellow Jews, not for the Haganah.’ Well this changes the situation entirely. Offering to spy against German Jews rather than for Haganah was, according to Bogdanor acceptable!
v. Lehi’s Collusion with the Fascists and the Nazis
Again it is difficult to know why Bogdanor even bothered tries to defend Lehi and its offer, not once but twice, of a military pact with the Nazis in January and December 1941. Yes Lehi was a minority within the Zionist movement, though its sentiments went far wider. Did not Ben-Gurion promises to fight the 1939 White Paper restricting Jewish immigration as if there were no war? What is interesting is that the fascist/pro-Nazi sentiments of this group were no obstacle to one of the triumvirate who led the organisation after the death of Yair Stern, Yitzham Shamir, eventually becoming Prime Minister of Israel, not once but twice, serving from 1983-4 and 1986-92.
The full measure of how pathetic Bogdanor’s defence of Lehi is can be measured by the fact that he says that because ‘no reply ever came from the Nazis, so there was never any actual collaboration.’
vi. Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust
Bogdanor’s attempted defence of David Ben-Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency and first Prime Minister of Israel is, to quote his own words, ‘a masterpiece of deceptive phrasing.’ Ben-Gurion was at the forefront of the refusal of the Zionist movement to engage in rescue work and its obstruction of rescue by anyone else where the destination wasn’t Palestine.
When news of the holocaust seeped out of Europe and the British government issued a statement on December 17 1942 acknowledging the holocaust, there was a surge of public support for rescuing those Jews who could be rescued. The Zionists were not happy about this. They were determined to fuse rescue of Jews with emigration (aliyah) to Palestine. Moshe Sharrett, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive made the Zionist position clear:
“We were told that as long as we were asking for rescue we had everyone’s assent. But the moment we demand that the survivors go to Eretz-Israel we split the British public and hamper the government in wartime. We did not accept this argument, and neither did many of our British friends.” [28]
The Zionist movement went on to deliberately sabotage the growing movement among British parliamentarians to find a place of refuge in the colonies for those who could escape the hell of Nazi occupied Europe. Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld, who was Chairman of the Chief Rabbi’s Rescue Committee wrote, in a letter to The Times that:
My experience in 1942-43 was wholly in favor of British readiness to help, openly, constructively and totally, and that this readiness met with opposition from Zionist leaders who insisted on rescue to Palestine as the only acceptable form of help….
At the Parliamentary meeting held on January 27, 1943, …. a spokesman for the Zionists announced that the Jews would oppose the motion on the grounds of its omitting to refer to Palestine. Some voices were raised in support of the Zionist view, there was considerable debate, and thereafter the motion was dead. Even the promoters exclaimed in desperation: If the Jews cannot agree among themselves, how can we help?
It was useless to argue with a then current Zionist argument: 'Every nation has had its dead in the fight for its homeland the sufferers under Hitler are our dead in our fight'. [29]
Ben-Gurion was the foremost opponent of ‘refugeeism’. After Krystallnacht the state-sponsored pogrom, on November 9-10 1938, pressure built for the civilised nations to do something to rescue German Jews. In Britain the Kindertransport was organised enabling 10,000 Jewish children to be brought to England. The Zionists opposed this too. The children should be taken to Palestine not Britain, even though they knew that this was impossible as Jewish immigration was now severely curtailed. The Zionists wanted to use the plight of German Jewry in order to batter open the gates of Palestine to Jewish settlement as part of their settler colonial enterprise.
Ben-Gurion wrote to the Zionist Executive that:
If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.[30]
Christopher Sykes, a pro-Zionist historian and son of Sir Mark Sykes, observed that “From the very beginning of the Nazi disaster, the Zionist leadership determined to wrest political advantage from the tragedy.” [31]
Noah Lucas, another Zionist historian, reached similar conclusions:
While hopes and efforts for the rescue of Europe's Jews continued, the struggle for a Jewish state became the primary concern of the (Zionist) movement.[32]
Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion’s official biographer, was bitterly critical of his subject. He wrote that:
‘For nearly 2 years… Ben-Gurion was more concerned for the fate of the Yishuv than for that of European Jewry. Ben-Gurion repeatedly stressed that the importance of the Yishuv went far beyond the individual Jews of Palestine.’ Why? Because ‘the Yishuv was a “great and invaluable security, a security for the hope of the Jewish people.’ [34]
To Ben-Gurion it was imperative to ‘turn a disaster… into a productive force’ and he argued that ‘distress’could also serve as ‘political leverage’. Ben-Gurion told the JAE, “The harsher the affliction, the greater the strength of Zionism.” It islittle wonder that Teveth concluded that
‘If there was a line in Ben-Gurion’s mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one.’ [35]
Teveth observed that ‘The war and the Holocaust were not in his power to control, but he again resolved to extract the greatest possible benefit from the catastrophe.’ Ben-Gurion summed up the Zionist philosophy thus:
‘Zionism in the stage of development is not primarily engaged in saving individuals. If along the way it saves a few thousand tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of individuals so much the better. But in the event of ‘a conflict of interest between saving individual Jews and the good of the Zionist enterprise, we shall say the enterprise comes first.’ [36]
Ben-Gurion’s position was reflective of the broad position of the Zionist movement. Sharrett argued that the Zionist movement had predicted the holocaust decades ago. The implication was that European Jewry had brought the holocaust upon itself. Davar, the paper of the Histadrut, printed an article describing the Holocaust as ‘punishment from heaven’ for not having come to Palestine.[37]
To Ben-Gurion the disaster facing European Jewry is not directly my business….Although I was then chairman of the Jewish Agency executive, the enlistment of the Jewish people in the demand for a Jewish state was at the center of my activity.
A five page memorandum for the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee ‘Comments on Aid and Rescue’ by Apolinary Hartglas, a Zionist activist from Poland spelt out their attitude to rescue.
‘Purely philanthropic rescue, such as the rescue of German Jewry… can only cause damage from a Zionist perspective.’[38]As Segev commented ‘The leaders of the Jewish Agency generally agreed with the principle that the few that could be saved should be selected in accordance with the needs of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine.’ [39]
S Beit Zvi noted how, in almost all his speeches, Ben-Gurion ‘speaks about the prospects the Holocaust may open up for Zionism.’ Ben-Gurion, speaking in Rehovot in 1941 pointed to the fact that ‘all the significant steps in the progress of Zionism were always related to the intensification of Jewish distress.’ [40] Ben-Gurion explained that ‘The tragedy of millions is also the redemptive power of millions. And it is the word of Zionism.... to cast the great Jewish tragedy in prodigious moulds of redemption.’ [41]
Bogdanor, who is not unaware of Ben-Gurion’s record prefers to concentrate on the issue of a Jewish army, a complete irrelevancy in terms of the war situation and whose only purpose was to create an armed Zionist militia, who could continue the fight after the war.
vii. The Gruenbaum Speech
Yitzhak Gruenbaum was Chairman of the Jewish Agency’s Rescue Committee in Palestine during the war. The Committee had been established in January 1943 after the Jewish Agency statement declaring that the holocaust was being perpetrated on November 23 1942. Bogdanor cites the speech of Gruenbaum to the Jewish Agency Executive in early 1943:
‘‘We have to stand before this wave that is putting Zionist activity into the second row… we do not give priority to rescue actions… Zionism is above all – it is necessary to sound this whenever a Holocaust diverts us from our war of liberation in Zionism.’
Bogdanor takes Brenner to task for the fact that he did not point out the ‘Zionist reaction to Gruenbaum’s remarks’. Bogdanor notes that only one member backed him and 11 members rejected his views.[42]
This is true, Gruenbaum was heavily criticised by fellow Zionists for his statement. But his critics consoled their consciences whilst knowing that the logic of Zionism would not allow for rescue to be prioritised.
‘Gruenbaum did not backtrack one iota from his opinion regarding the subordinate place of the rescue enterprise as compared with the “war of redemption.” Following the detailed discussion in the Zionist Executive Committee and Gruenbaum’s concluding remarks, the Zionist leadership was confronted with a choice: to disqualify Gruenbaum as a candidate for the head of the Rescue Committee because of this abhorrent outlook, or to accept his ideological deficiency and let him remain as chairman. As we know, the latter option won the day.’ [43]
Shabtai beit Zvi, who Bogdanor quoted, explained, Gruenbaum at the same time having his hands full as head of the Works Department, as one of the heads of the Jewish Agency’s Organization Department, and also as director of the Bialik Institute. No “Ministry for Rescue” was established in the Jewish Agency. The Rescue Committee, … was not within the purview of the Jewish Agency and was not attached to it, but existed as a separate entity devoid of any organizational base, and lacking its own bureaucratic machinery and budget. For a long time it lacked even an official permanent name.
In short Gruenbaum’s attitude, that Rescue was not something that the Zionist movement should concern itself, other than having a symbolic Rescue Committee that did nothing, prevailed. Bogdanor quotes from Shabtai Beit Zvi’s 2 volume Post Ugandan Zionism on Trial. Beit Zvi although a Zionist was bitterly critical of the Jewish Agency and the Zionist movement’s attitude to rescue during the holocaust. He documents at tedious length how the Zionist movement obstructed rescue and played down the holocaust, but Bogdanor doesn’t quote any of this. Bogdanor accuses Brenner of selective quoting when he is shameless in this respect.
For example Beit Zvi describes how
‘On March 23, 1943, Davar was reprimanded by Yosef Gravitzky, the managing editor of the Jewish Agency’s Palcor news agency, for copying from a Nazi paper, Ostland, a “report” that two million Jews remained in Poland, after the paper had reported one day earlier, on the same page, that no more than two hundred thousand Jews were still alive in all of Poland.[44]
Gravitzky wrote.
“They themselves announce the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto but at the same time circulate reports that two million Jews are still alive in Poland. But why should we assist them in this work?” [45]
Bogdanor is forced to resort to these cut and paste tactics because the historical record is so clear concerning Zionist-Nazi collaboration.
viii. Zionist collaborators in Nazi Europe
Bogdanor complains that ‘Brenner’s attempts to incriminate Zionism included an examination of Jewish leaders in Nazi occupied Europe.’ Bogdanor appears to doubt that the Judenrat, the Nazi appointed Jewish Councils, were led by Zionists. However Isaiah Trunk, the author of the most detailed study on the Judenrat describes how ‘Over two-thirds of the Judenrat (67.1%) consisted of Zionist supporters of all factions.’ [46]
Bogdanor attempts to make something of the apparent fact that two Judenrat leaders, Adam Czerniakow of the Warsaw Judenrat and Chaim Rumkowski no longer belonged to the Zionist movement. However Rumkowski was an active member of the General Zionist party. He was banished from the party in 1938 because of a tactical difference with his Zionist colleagues, but he was reinstated in 1939.[47]
Whether or not Czerniakow formally distanced himself from the Zionist movement is irrelevant. He was a General Zionist and when the Bund won a majority in the Jewish Kehilla in Warsaw in 1936, the government refused to let it take office. It put in office Czerniakow “with whom it was more comfortable.”[48] There is no reason to believe that Czerniakow had abandoned Zionism and more to the point he was part of the milieu of Zionists who believed in co-operation and collaboration with the Nazis rather than resistance. Throughout the Warsaw ghetto there were Zionists such as Abraham Gancwajch who collaborated with the authorities.
ix The Slovakia and Europa Plans
Surprising as it may seem I actually agree with Bogdanor that the Europa plan was, in the words of Rudolf Vrba ‘a hairbrained scheme’. Unlike traditional anti-Semites the Nazis weren’t going to allow themselves to be bribed into stopping the deportations.[49]
I reject however Bogdanor’s bile that Brenner ‘twisted the facts’. Some historians do subscribe to the view that the bribe paid in Slovakia was responsible for the halting of the deportations from October 1942 till the summer of 1944.
The other way that Brenner is alleged to have ‘twisted’ the facts is in supporting the belief that Nathan Schwalb, the Hehalutz representative in Switzerland sent a letter saying that ‘Only with [Jewish] blood shall we get the land [of Israel].’
Since Schwalb denies having sent the letter it is one person’s word against another, but given Schwalb’s suppression of the Auschwitz Protocols, which revealed the existence of Auschwitz as a death camp, on balance Rabbi Weissmandel is the more believable. There is no reason why Weissmandel should have lied. When the letter was included in the Perdition play, Schwalb sued Jim Allen the playwright. Schwalb however refused an order for disclosure requiring him to open up his archives for inspection. He therefore withdrew the case, suggesting that he had quite a lot to hide. The letter itself read:
Since we have the opportunity of this courier, we are writing to the group that they must constantly have before them that in the end the Allies will win. After their victory they will divide the world again between the nations, as they did at the end of the first world war…. and now, at the war’s end, we must do everything so that Eretz Yisrael will become the state of Israel… About the cries coming from your country, we should know that all the Allied nations are spilling much of their blood, and if we do not sacrifice any blood, by what right shall we merit coming before the bargaining table when they divide nations and lands at the war’s end? Therefore it is silly, even impudent, on our part to ask these nations who are spilling their blood to permit their money into enemy countries in order to protect our blood. For only with blood shall we get the land.
x. The Brand Mission
Apart from saying that Brenner should have been aware of Brand’s confession at the end of his life that the Nazis’ Blood for Trucks offer, 1 million Jews for 10,000 winterised trucks was a trap, I am in agreement with Bogdanor that the Brand mission was an act of deception by the Nazis designed to split the allies and enable the Nazis to continue the war against the Soviet Union alone on the Eastern front. Unfortunately the Zionists actually did take the offer seriously. Rather than publicising the Auschwitz Protocols of the escapees Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler and publicising the deportations to Auschwitz they got enmeshed in a diplomatic game.
xi. The Kasztner Trial
This was initially a libel action brought by Kasztner against his detractor Malchiel Greenwald, a Hungarian Jew, who alleged that Kasztner had betrayed the Hungarian Jewish masses with his agreement with Eichmann. Bogdanor plays down the fact that the Zionists organised a train of 1,684 Jews, with hundreds, not a few, of Kasztner’s relatives consisting of the Jewish bourgeoisie and the Zionists.
Although Bogdanor doesn’t reveal this in his hatchet job, one of the understandings between Eichmann and Kasztner was that the Auschwitz Protocols would be kept secret. The Protocols were the written testimony of Vrba and Wetzler that they gave to the Slovakian Judenrat when they reached Slovakia, approximately April 25 1944. Kasztner collected them at the end of April and instead of seeing that they were disseminated throughout Hungary and internationally, he suppressed them in order to reach agreement with Eichmann.
Even Professor Yisrael Gutman of Yad Vashem conceded that Kasztner had received a copy of the Protocols on 29 April but that he had already made a decision, with other Jewish leaders, ‘not to disseminate the report in order not to harm the negotiations with the Nazis.’[50]
Details of the relationship between Kasztner and Eichmann were contained in 2 articles published in Life Magazine("Eichmann Tells His Own Damning Story," Life [28 November 1960], and ("I Transported Them to the Butcher," Life [5 Dec. 1960], Bogdanor describes the Eichmann interviews as ‘a transparently worthless source”. Why? Just because they are from a Nazi war criminal does not make them invalid. The Israeli Police interviewed Eichmann at length. Clearly they believe that they would obtain something of value.
What makes them credible is that the interviews were conducted freely in 1955 with Dutch Nazi journalist William Sassen, when Eichmann was hiding in Argentina. Eichmann discussed Palestine and Kasztner on tape. After his capture in 1960, Life magazine published excerpts. On the kibbutz in 1937, he did see enough to be very impressed with the way the Jewish colonists were building up their land. ‘I admired their desperate will to live, the more so since I was myself an idealist. In the years that followed I often said to Jews with whom I had dealings that, had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist. I could not imagine being anything else. In fact, I would have been the most ardent Zionist imaginable.".
Eichmann described Kasztner as a fanatical Zionist. ‘He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation -- and even keep order in the collection camps -- if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price of 15,000 or 20,000 Jews -- in the end there may have been more -- was not too high for me. And because Kastner rendered us a great service by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his groups escape").
Certainly it is embarrassing to have one of the worst Nazi war criminals praise the Zionist movement and say how much he sympathised with it.
If Bogdanor is right, we should eschew all Nazi sources, the memoirs of Rudolph Hoss, Commandant of Auschwitz, the diaries of Goebbels etc. This is patently absurd. Plenty of historians of high repute such as Randolf Braham cite Eichmann’s interviews in their own work.
Bogdanor falls back on his favourite sport of nitpicking. Thus he objects to Brenner’s description of ‘the sanctifiation of the betrayal of the many in the interest of a selected immigration to Palestine.’ ‘Selectivity’ was a cardinal feature of Zionist policy. Selecting the few out of the many. It was Kasztner’s legal representative Chaim Cohen, the Attorney General, who presented exactly this defence at the appeal to the Supreme Court. Cohen argued that:
“If in Kastner's opinion, rightly or wrongly, he believed that one million Jews were hopelessly doomed, he was allowed not to inform them of their fate; and to concentrate on the saving of the few. He was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundred and entitled not to warn the millions ... It has always been our Zionist tradition to select the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine ... Are we to be called traitors?"[i]
In the view of Eliyahu Dobkin, head of the Jewish Agency’s immigration department during the war German Jews who were given immigration certificates “merely as refugees” were ‘undesirable human material’.[51]
The Zionist movement itself set up rigid standards for prospective immigrants, which … excluded anti-Zionists as applicants for certificates. …persons with capital were the preferred candidates for Aliyah …the needs and interests of Palestine took precedence over a strategy of rescue. [52]
Judge Halevi was a right-wing Zionist judge. He was not a historian. His suggestion that the Zionists were the ‘activist’ element in the Jewish population needs to be taken with a hefty dose of salt given that the Zionist leaders under Kasztner had reached a deal with Eichmann.
Rudolf Vrba, the Auschwitz escapee made his views about the Zionists well known:
I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler's gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr Kasztner.
… I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks notice that [Adolf] Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers… Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet. [53]
After the war, Kasztner went to Nuremberg to give testimony in favour of no less than 7 major Nazi war criminals including Hermann Krumey, Eichmann’s deputy in Hungary and the man who oversaw the mechanics of the deportations.[54]
xii. The Zionist Paratroopers
In this section, the dishonesty of Bogdanor is plain for all to see. So transparent is his misquoting and misattribution that one wonders why he does it.
Bogdanor claims that Brenner used misleading tactics to conceal the Zionist rescue efforts in Hungary. He referred to the three paratroopers from Palestine, Hannah Szenes, Joel Palgi, and Peretz Goldstein, who arrived in Budapest during the Nazi occupation hoping to organise Jewish resistance. ‘… Through deceptive phrasing, Brenner implied that the paratroopers were sent by the British alone. In fact the British army sent them at the instigation of the Jewish Agency in Palestine.’
What does Brenner actually say?
Kasztner was also involved in the affair of Hannah Szenes which was described at the trial. Szenes was a brave young Zionist from Hungary, whom the British finally allowed, together with 31 others, to parachute into occupied Europe to organise Jewish rescue and resistance. [55]
The words in bold, demonstrate that Bogdanor was lying. Clearly Brenner was not implying that the paratroopers were sent by the British alone.
The 3 parachutists who made it to Hungary, were undoubtedly brave but one wonders why they were sent towards the end of the war when most Jews had already been exterminated. Members of the Resistance with whom they met were contemptuous of their ability to provide any help. What we do know is that all 3 paratroopers were betrayed by Kasztner, who tricked 2 of them into handing themselves over to the Gestapo. Only Palgi survived, by sawing through the bars of the train taking him to Auschwitz.
Bogdanor suggests that although the paratroopers failed in their mission ‘other Zionist rescue efforts in Hungary succeeded.’’ Hehalutz are believed to have saved 5,000 of their own cadres but that was not rescue of Hungarian Jews in general. Bogdanor refers to Moshe Krausz of Mizrahi, who sent the Auschwitz Protocols to Switzerland. A number of people and groups circulated the Protocols. Only Kasztner’s Va'ada (Rescue Committee) suppressed them. Most likely it was Georges Mantello, first secretary of the El Salvador consulate in Geneva and a Hungarian Jew, who sent it to politicians, academics and journalists immediately, who ensured that the publicity surrounding the deportations was such that Horthy, the Prince Regent of Hungary, was persuaded to call the deportations off on July 7th.[56]
However it wasn’t Moshe Krausz who was the main representative of the Jewish Agency but Kasztner whose Rescue Committee had been founded by and financed by the Agency. Krausz was very much out on a limb.
Brenner’s Writings in anti-Semitic Propaganda
Having failed to mount any sort of critique of Brenner’s thesis Bogdanor falls back on the laziest Zionist tropes. Brenner’s work was welcomed by the holocaust denying Institute for Historical Review. It is quite common for the far-Right to use the material of the left for their own nefarious purposes, but since the IHR is dedicated to holocaust denial and Brenner’s book is written on the basis that the Holocaust happened one cannot take the IHR’s views seriously.
However if Bogdanor wants to associate people with fascist and far-right organisations then he should look closer to home. In Britain the English Defence League and the BNP are both strong supporters of Zionism and Israel. In Europe it is the far-Right and fascist parties – Austria’s Freedom Party, Gert Wilder’s Freedom Party, Vams Belang in Belgium, Le Pen’s Front National who love Israel.
The attempt to portray Brenner as anti-Semitic because he is critical of the American Jewish leadership is absurd. Perhaps Bogdanor could answer whether American Jews would protest if there was a Christian National Fund in the US which owned 93% of the land and from which Jews were barred? I suspect so.
Bogdanor’s critique of Lenni Brenner and of Nazi-Zionist collaboration is shoddy and dishonest. One wonders why Fantom did not employ a historian as opposed to a hasbarist whose main gift is his resort to hyperbole.Bogdanor is the David Irving of Zionist propagandists, shrill, loud but insubstantial.
Tony Greenstein
[2] Labour antisemitism row: Read the Ken Livingstone interview transcipts in full http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-anti-semitism-row-full-transcript-of-ken-livingstones-interviews-a7005311.html
[5] Calling your political rival a Nazi is a time-hallowed tradition in Israel, Ha’aretz 19.1.14.
[6] See Tony Greenstein, Rewriting the Holocaust - Netanyahu’s attempt to shift the burden of Nazi atrocities to Palestinians is nothing new, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/10/holocaust-denial-mufti-netanyahu-yad-veshem-hagee-palestine-zionism/
[7] Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Gollancz, London 1958 p.6.
[8] G. Reitlinger, p.7, The Final Solution Valentines Mitchell. London, 1998.
[9] Khamsin 6, Zionism and its Scarecrows, Moshé Machover and Mario Offenberg https://libcom.org/library/zionism-its-scarecrows
[10] He focuses on particular Jewish dissidents like Tony Judt, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky and myself. He seems to resent the fact that some Jews do not wish to walk on the other side of the road when a state that calls itself Jewish treats non-Jews and Palestinians as the anti-Semites used to treat Jews. See Jews Who Hate the Jewish State http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=2777
[11] How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis, Electronic Intifada, Asa Winstanley 28.4.16. https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-lobby-manufactured-uk-labour-partys-anti-semitism-crisis/16481
[13] David Rosenthall, Chaim Arlosoroff65 Years After his Assassination, Jewish Frontier, May-June 1998, p. 28, New York http://www.ameinu.net/publicationfiles/Vol.LXV,No.3.pdf. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-DwJUnaW0sMb3dxRzd5NkExaEEaccessed 13.11.15. In 1937 over 31m RM was transferred. Nicosia, The Third Reich, p.213.
[14] Black, pp. 257-258.
[15] ‘The Unclean Thing’ JC, 27.12.35.
[16] Lenni Brenner, pp. 92-93, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis’, Barricade Books, 1972.
[17] Black, pp. 250, 372.
[18] Black, pp. xiii, 181-2.
[19] Nicosia, Zionism in National Socialist Jewish Policy, D1263, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 50, 1978..
[20] Black pp. xix, 110, 130.
[21] Nicosia, TRPQ, p.57.
[22] Nicosia, ZANG, p. 2.
[23] N. Weinstock p. 135.
[24] Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, p.150-153.
[25] Joachim Prinz, ‘Zionism under the Nazi Government’, Young Zionist, London Nov. 1937 p.18.
[26] Lucy Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, pp.118, citing Mommsen 'Der Nationalsozialistische Polizeistaat pp.78/9and Nicosia, Anti-Semitism, p.119.
[27] Randolph Braham, The Politics of Genocide – The Holocaust in Hungary, Vol. 1. Columbia University Press, 1981 p. 484, fn. 94., 5 May 1935, L. Dawidowicz, p.118, citing Karl Schleunes, The twisted road to Auschwitz – Nazi policy towards the Jews 1933-39, 1970.
[28] Shabtai Beit Zvi, Post-Ugandan Zionism on Trial, p. 274. Speech at a meeting of the Elected Assembly, Davar, May 4, 1943.
[29] The Times, 6th June 1961.
[30] Zionism and the Holocaust, http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/631/zionism-and-the-holocaust, Yoav Gelber, ‘Zionist policy, p.199, Segev, p.28. Ben-Gurion at the Mapai CC, 7.12.38, Labour Party Archives, Bet Berl Tsofit., 22/38, Teveth, p.855, Piterberg, p.99.
[31] Sykes p.137.
[32] Lucas p.188.
[34] Op cit, p. 849.
[35] Op. cit. pp. 850, 851, 854
[36] Op. cit. p.855.
[37] Tom Segev, the 7th Million, p.98, Hill & Wang, 1993.
[38] Segev, p.100.
[39] Segev, p.103.
[40] Shabtai Beit Zvi p. 115..
[41] Ibid.
[43] Op. cit. p.101.
[44] S. Beit-Zvi, p. 78.
[46] I. Trunk, p.32 Judenrat: the Jewish councils in eastern Europe under Nazi occupation, New York 1972.
[47] Michael Ungar, Reassessment of the Image of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2004.
[48] The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics – Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe, Edited Zvi Gitelman, Ch. 3 The New Jewish Politics and Its Discontents – Anthony Polonsky
HOLOCAUST: A HISTORICAL ABERRATION? LENNI
BRENNER REVISITED, Tony Greenstein, Journal of Holy Land Studies, 13.2 (2014): 187–212 and subsequent debate.
[50] Israel Gutman, Shoah Vezimaron, cited in Ruth Linn, Escaping Auschwitz – A Culture of Not Forgetting, Ithaca, London 2004. p.72.
[51] Tom Segev, p.44, Dobkin to Martin Rosenblut. 15.1.36. CZA, S/6 3637.
[52] Lucy Dawidowicz, pp.238-39.The 18th Zionist Congress 1933 established within the JA a Central Bureau for the settlement of German Jews and 4th council of the JA, July 1935;
[54] See Barri (Ishoni), Shoshana (1997) 'The question of Kastner's Testimonies on behalf of Nazi war Criminals', Journal of Israeli History, 18: 2, 139 — 165
[55] Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, pp. 260-261
[56] Braham p. 1120.
↧
Cameron Wriggles Over Tory Election Fraud
Wonderful entertainment!
Tony Greenstein
June 18th, 2016
For the first time since the election expenses scandal broke on Channel 4 Newsin January, Jon Snow got a chance to put the allegations to the Prime Minister.
The Conservative Party has come under increasing pressure regarding their alleged overspending at elections over several issues, with 18 police forces investigating potential fraud and 31 MPs implicated. The original Channel 4 investigation focused on 3 by-elections in Kent – Rochester and Strood, Clacton-on-Sea, and Newark-upon-Trent where £100,000of hotel bookings had not been declared.
There were further allegations that the Tories broke the law fighting off Nigel Farage in South Thanet. Investigations have revealed that undeclared expenses would have taken MP, Craig MacKinlay, £18,973over the spending limit. Kent police have now been granted an extension to investigate these claims – but not before the Conservative party sent a barrister to Kent to unsuccessfully oppose the application.
Following this, there were revelations that the Tories had overspent on their battle bus campaign – with 24 MPs under investigation for not declaring associated costs.
The Canary has also been carrying out its own investigations into electoral fraud with evidence from a whistleblower that the Tories conducted misleading surveys. Those paid to carry out the surveys were allegedly instructed not to reveal that they were, in fact, working for the Conservative party. Again, there are questions over whether this spending was, or should have been, declared on their spending returns.
The interview:
The last time Jon Snow tried to interview MPs about electoral fraud, he was left with nine empty chairs as none of the accused could face turning up to answer his questions. However finally, after five months, Channel 4 were able to put some of their questions to David Cameron. And it did not go well for the Prime Minister.
Having questioned Cameron over the referendum, Snow turned to the election expenses, asking:
Why have you been prepared to spend money on a QC to try and stop the police investigating what we have revealed?
Cameron’s first words were an outright lie:
Well, we haven’t been doing that, what we are doing is we are co-operating with a…
Snow immediately interrupted to challenge him:
You have a QC in the Thanet South constituency, in the court, actually asking the court to stop the investigation.
When Cameron tried to come up with more waffle, Snow hammered the point home:
You went to court to ask the court not to allow the police an extension to go on investigating these abuses.
To which Cameron responded in direct contradiction to his first answer:
That’s right.
Cameron then claimed that he was “very happy for the Electoral Commission to examine all of this” to which Snow immediately asked:
Well why get a QC to stop it then?
Yet again, the Prime Minister had no answer to give, and floundered saying:
Well, that was in one particular seat.
He then reiterated he was “happy” there was now time for the allegations to be investigations and that “they had all the paperwork to examine this”.
This was a another contentious issue as Snow interrupted Cameron again:
They have got the paperwork, but Prime Minister, with respect, the Electoral Commission had to go to court to wring the papers out of you.
Cameron denied this was the case, and Snow reiterated the point:
You were three days overdue and they had to go to court.
The Prime Minister then went from saying “they didn’t have to go to court” to saying that in their view it was “unnecessary” which is hardly the same point. This is especially pertinent given the judgement in the South Thanet case refers to the fact that the party failed“to provide complete and timely disclosure of relevant material such that application had to be made to the High Court”.
Knowing he was onto a losing article, Cameron resorted to:
But anyway there’s no point having a spat about this now.
Which led Snow to accuse Cameron of not taking the accusations “seriously” and that:
There are 31 seats, that you under-declared, and in some cases by tens of thousands of pounds, hotel costs which were never figured in the local inventory.
Cameron repeated the much touted rhetoric that it the battles expenses were “national expenses”.
Having not been able to give a clear, consistent or truthful answer to any of the questions up to this point, he then confusingly claimed:
I don’t think there are any questions that anyone is asking that we can’t answer.
Snow then nailed him with the judgement from the application for the extension to investigate the offences:
The judge said that Channel 4 news allegations indicate the potential for offences committed in a significant number of constituencies on an unprecedented scale. This is scandal of very large proportions.
Instead of giving a straight answer, Cameron attempted to see how many times he could put the word “national” into one reply:
Well, I don’t agree with that as I say all parties have these national bus tours, which I think by definition are national, and all parties have costs associated with those national tours which again I’d say by definition are national. And those should be part of the national declaration.
Cameron was then asked about his own majority being in “serious danger” if any of the allegations were proved. However, instead of answering the question, he chose to sneer at the investigation:
As I say look, it’s a Channel 4 investigation. I know that you’re proud of the work you’ve done.
We’re very happy we’re answering all of the questions. I think you’re making quite a large mountain out of what I think is a relatively straightforward…
Snow interrupted:
So you disagree with the judge then?
To which Cameron responded:
No, no. I think it is a relatively straightforward set of questions that we have to answer.
Well, Cameron, evidently you do disagree with the judge given the judgement clearly states that given the number of overlapping accusations the case is “complex and time consuming”.
Despite his assertions, it is very clear Cameron is able to give anything but a straight answer to these allegations of election fraud. Just the act of sending a barrister to attempt to obstruct the police investigation in South Thanet is an example of how worried is he is – and no number of glib replies can cover this.
Given the small majority the Conservatives have, this scandal has the real potential of costing them power. It is essential that these offences are investigated properly to ensure they haven’t been governing and imposing their mandate of austerity through fraud and false accounting.
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Jo Cox – A victim of Farage, Boris Johnson and the Daily Express’s Hate Campaign
Farage, Johnson & the Daily Express Editor should be in the Dock with Thomas Mair
We can and never will know what went through the mind of Thomas Mair. What we do know he was composed enough to answer, in response to a request to give his name, ‘"Death to traitors freedom for Britain" As far as he was concerned Jo Cox, who was well known for her campaigning for and in support of Syrian refugees, was a traitor.
Thomas Mair (centre) on a Britain First picket of a Muslim stall - Let's see Britain First proscribed as a terrorist organisation |
Jo Cox 5th from left outside the House of Commons with fellow MPs |
Mair's problem was that he was an aggressive, violent fascist.
Muslims who end up in court for murder, like those who killed Private Clegg, aren't considered mentally ill, though it is highly likely at least one of them was. They were considered, rightly, as responsible for their actions and that should be the same with Thomas Mair.
Louise Mensch, Zionist and former Tory MP makes excuses for Jo Cox's murderer - Nick Griffin of neo-Nazi BNP approves of her comments though |
What is true though is that Mair was emboldened to go out, with a knife and a gun and kill Jo Cox because in Britain at the moment there is a European Referendum campaign in which refugees and migrants are being demonised.
By chance I was in Leeds the very day that Jo was murdered, as I was speaking there that evening. As I came into the city I noticed a large poster saying that Turkey was going to join the European Union (a lie) and underneath that something about 78 million migrants.
If anyone bears responsibility for the death of Jo Cox MP it is Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and the Daily Express Editor amongst others, with their toxic and racist campaign. They should be in the dock alongside Mair as accomplices to murder.
See We mourn and will miss Jo Cox
In January this year, Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) moved that the House consider damning reports into Israel’s system of martial law that is now in its 49th year, including allegations that “alleged ill-treatment of children during arrest, transfer, interrogation and detention have not significantly decreased in 2013 and 2014”. Cox made one of the earliest contributions:
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She will be aware that evidence from Military Court Watch suggests that 65% of children continue to report being arrested at night in what are described as terrifying raids by the military. Will she comment on that worrying fact?
She was preceded by the execrable Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op) who asked Champion if she accepted that “the context in which these situations occur is an organised campaign conducted by the Palestinian authorities of incitement, to try to provoke young Palestinians to carry out acts of violence towards other civilians, some of which result in death, including the death of young children?”
Cox’s contribution was followed by that of Conservative Friend of Israel Vice-Chairman, Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con) who suggested Champion “knows full well that the difficulty of arresting people during the day instead of the night is that it has led to deaths and riots. The authorities are operating in a very difficult context.”
It is worth noting here that Jo Cox was joined in her condemnation of Israel’s actions by Naz Shah MP, who made a memorable and complementary contribution:
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing this very important debate, and it is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope.
I will keep my speech very brief. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) referred to a doll. I would argue that people do not need dolls to promote hate and violence. What we have before us in Israel and Palestine is children between the ages of nine and 12 experiencing discrimination. I have children of my own who are aged eight and 11, but I cannot begin to imagine the trauma and the stamp on Palestinian children’s brains and hearts of hatred towards the Israeli military as they grow up and face discrimination, as well as the way they are tret in custody. So I would argue that we do not need props.
Only recently, Shin Bet told the Israeli Government that Abbas was not encouraging terror and was actually promoting peace. So, I disagree with my hon. Friends when they say that the Palestinians are promoting this kind of propaganda.
As a former chair of a mental health charity and having my own children, I really struggle to understand why the Israeli Government and the world are silent on dealing with the trauma that these Palestinian children are growing up with. Surely we know that hate breeds hate; laws aside, that is just common sense. There are children who are blindfolded and tortured. We have got evidence before us. How can my hon. Friends ignore that? How can anyone even present a counter-argument to it? We are talking about the basic humanitarian right of children, which we in this House have signed up to, and we must support these children with conviction. There should be no excuse for taking children aged nine away from their homes, detaining them and sending them to prison. That is absolutely unacceptable.
I note my hon. Friend’s comments that a child should not be detained, and I assume that she means in any circumstances. Suppose a child was involved in an act of violence that resulted in the deaths of other human beings. That is what has happened with young Palestinians throwing stones—people have been killed. In those circumstances, surely she thinks that there should be detention.
Below is a tribute from Medical Aid to Palestine to someone who was an outspoken advocate for Palestine.
17 June 2016
The team at MAP were saddened to hear about the tragic death of Jo Cox MP.
She frequently spoke out in Parliament on issues in Palestine. Below is her intervention on Gaza made last year.
Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) (Lab): As a former Oxfam aid worker for many years, I have worked for far too long on and in the conflict that we are debating, but I still believe that there will be a resolution in my lifetime—hopefully in the next few years.
Because of the time constraints, I will focus on three things. First, I would love a response from the Minister about what confidence-building action the Government are taking, particularly on Gaza. The Gaza reconstruction mechanism is clearly not working, but it is also not a substitute for easing the closure. There is a need for urgent expansion of access to Israeli markets for Palestinian exports.
What measures are the Government taking to that end? We also need to remove the last restrictions on the export of Gazan products to the west bank.
I would like construction materials to be allowed into Gaza urgently. The facts are clear: only one home has been rebuilt in the past year, since the bombing, and the projections are that it will take hundreds of years to rebuild at the current rate. There is a need for materials to get into Gaza so that people can rebuild their lives. What is the Government’s view on that?
In addition, people need to get in and out of Gaza. In 2000 about 500,000 people were leaving and returning to Gaza, for work or to see family members. This year the number is 18,000, which is very low, and we need to raise it quickly. We also need the Israeli Government to continue to believe that there will be a cost to their allowing further settlement expansion in the west bank. I would love to know what the Government are doing to get that message clearly heard by the Israeli Government. I would be interested also in the Government’s view of the Israeli Government’s silent policy of retrospectively legalising illegal outposts.
Finally, the allegations—including allegations of war crimes—in the commission of inquiry’s report must be investigated fully by Israel and Hamas. Both sides of the conflict deserve access to justice and accountability. For the most part domestic mechanisms and investigations are poor; they are either rejected quickly or not run to international standards. Indeed, the report notes that Israel has a
“lamentable track record in holding wrong doers accountable” and that investigation by Hamas is “woefully inadequate”. Following the UK’s welcome endorsement of the report last week, I would love to hear what the Government intend to do to support international mechanisms to pursue justice and accountability, particularly in relation to preliminary work by the International Criminal Court.
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The neo-Nazi group Britain First Supports Israel and Opposes ‘anti-Semitism’
Thomas Mair - Member of Israel supporting Britain First & Suspected Murderer of Jo Cox MP |
Britain First counter-demonstrator confronts Palestine supporter |
Report on Britain First site of the neo-Nazi group joining Zionists in counter-demonstration in Downing Street - birds of a feather! |
Karel Dillen of Belgium's racist Vlaamsblok |
That’s why anti-Islamic politicians and parties throughout Europe fall over themselves in support of Israel. There’s Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party in The Netherlands, Belgium’s Vlams Beelang, Heinz-Christian Strache of Austria’s Freedom Party not forgetting of course Marine Le Pen’s Front Nationale.
Britain First demonstrator with Zionist |
Below is a report on the Britain First website of how the party joined in a demonstration with Zionist hoodlums at Downing Street when Palestine solidarity activists protested the visit of Netanyahu last year.
Tony Greenstein
Britain First Jewish activists take part in counter protest against pro-Palestine extremists in London
Clashes broke out yesterday when pro-Palestine extremists protesting Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s UK visit faced opposition from pro-Israel groups outside Downing Street, which including several members of Britain First (pictured below).
Britain First demonstration outside East London Mosque |
The pro-Palestine protest was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) with the support of various groups including War on Want, Palestine Forum in Britain, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Stop the War, the British Muslim Initiative and several other leftwing, pro-Islamist extremist groups.
Geert Wilders of Netherland's far-Right Freedom Party |
Pro-Israeli demonstrators came out to oppose the demonstration and show their support for Netanyahu and Israel, saying they wanted to promote peace in the region.
As tensions mounted between the two groups, heated words were exchanged.
One man told police he was called a “dirty Jew” by pro-Palestine protesters.
The “Left” and the Islamic community are fiercely opposed to the existence of Israel.
Heinz Christian Strache of Austria's pro-Israel fascist Freedom Party |
The same Muslims and white socialists that oppose Britain First also show unremitting hostility to Israel.
Britain First Jewish activists were proud to oppose the motley gaggle of communists and Islamists that gathered outside Downing Street.
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Time to Deselect Louise Ellman MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv North – Apologist for Israel's Occupation Forces
Louise Ellman - Supporter of Israeli Child Abuse - Night Time Arrests, Beatings and Incarceration of Palestinian Children
On the 6thJanuary 2016 the House of Commons held a debateon Child Prisoners and Detainees: Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Louise Ellman MP - more the MP for Tel Aviv North than Liverpool Riverside |
Councillor Nick Small - right wing witch hunter and red baiter |
Children Under Arrest by Israeli Military |
Ellman repeated Israeli army propaganda without even once attempting to question whether the Israeli army might be lying. An army whose statements have repeatedly been show to be fabrications when video evidence has been produced, when its soldiers have brutally attacked cameramen, murdered wounded prisoners and physically attacked children in broad daylight. Louise Ellman appears to be more the MP for Tel Aviv North than MP for Liverpool Riverside.
Ellman made 3 contributions.
Cllr. Nick Small on the left - being wined and dined by Balfour Beatty - a blacklisting building company who he purports to condemn on other occasions - is a supporter of the abuse below |
Hundreds of terrified Palestinian children are arrested each year - it could not happen to a Jewish child |
In the first she stated that ‘the context in which these situations occur is an organised campaign conducted by the Palestinian authorities of incitement, to try to provoke young Palestinians to carry out acts of violence towards other civilians, some of which result in death, including the death of young children?’
Children walk to school past soldiers who are watching them with gun pointed |
Note how the context is not Israel’s 49 year military occupation, nor the systematic use of violence by the Israeli army, the night time arrests of children etc. It is ‘incitement’ by the Palestinian authorities of ‘young Palestinians’. The violence of the Occupier is instead transferred onto the shoulders of the Occupied.
Palestinian children and youth do not need to be ‘incited’ to know they live lousy lives under a permanent military occupation. This is the standard text of those who believe the Israeli occupation is the most benign in history and that Palestinians just love seeing their land confiscated, their houses demolished, their economic prospects blighted.
Jewish Chronicle does its best to portray criticism of Ellman as 'anti-Semitic' |
It is in any case an Israeli propaganda lie. The Palestinian Authority is a collaborator with the Israeli military. It has done its best to prevent attacks on the Israeli military.
It doesn't matter how young or small they are |
Not satisfied with this, Ellman continued thus:
‘I note my hon. Friend’s comments that a child should not be detained, and I assume that she means in any circumstances. Suppose a child was involved in an act of violence that resulted in the deaths of other human beings. That is what has happened with young Palestinians throwing stones—people have been killed. In those circumstances, surely she thinks that there should be detention.’
One notes that Ellman doesn’t call for the arrest of the Israeli military killers because of course, in her eyes, the occupation is legitimate and the Israeli Police and Miliary are merely agents of law and order.
In a third contribution Ellman asks
‘Does my hon. Friend really believe that the solution to this horrendous conflict between two peoples—the Israeli and the Palestinian people—can be found by encouraging individual child Palestinians to commit acts of violence against other human beings?’
Ellman’s is the voice of the traditional colonialist who never sees or hears the violence of the occupier and who is only concerned by the resistance of the occupied. For Ellman it is Palestinian children who commit violence and the Israeli military, which raids houses at night when people are sleeping, which is perfectly innocent. An army which stands by when settlers attack Palestinian villagers and attacks them when they fight back, is above and beyond criticism as far as Ellman is concerned.
The debate was led by Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham. Champion described how
‘in June 2012, a delegation of leading British lawyers published a report on children held in Israeli military custody. That independent report was facilitated and funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and, based on a number of undisputed facts, found that Israel was in breach of six of its legal obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child and two obligations under the fourth Geneva convention. The report also concluded that if allegations of abuse referred to the delegation were true, Israel would also be in breach of the absolute prohibition against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’
Eight months after the UK report was published, UNICEF released its own assessment of the military detention system for children. UNICEF concluded that,
"the ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized throughout the process, from the moment of arrest until the child’s prosecution and eventual conviction and sentencing”.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that, “it would study the conclusions and work to implement them through on-going cooperation with UNICEF”.
Similar statements have been made previously following the UK report. Amongst the issues that British officials raised, were ‘the use of painful plastic ties to restrain children, arresting children in the middle of the night in terrifying military raids, and the mandatory use of audiovisual recording of all interrogations.’ Despite promises to the contrary, in February 2015, UNICEF issued an update to its original report and noted that allegations of “alleged ill-treatment of children during arrest, transfer, interrogation and detention have not significantly decreased in 2013 and 2014”.
Paula Sherriff, Labour MP for Dewsbury, spoke and described how she visited the West Bank in September 2015 having been briefed by Military Court Watch. Sherriff spoke of ‘the significant disparity between treatment of Palestinian and Israeli young people, including lack of legal representation and parental support, allegations of widespread abuse and having to sign confessions in Hebrew, among many others?’ Most Palestinian children don’t understand Hebrew but they are expected to sign a confession in a language they don’t understand.
Sara Champion responded that ‘The disparity between the two legal systems includes, for example, a maximum period of detention without charge of 40 days for an Israeli child and 188 days for a Palestinian child.’
Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, spoke of how ‘warm words to encourage Israel to act differently are not working. Does she agree that it is now time for action? For example, the UK could call for the suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement, which has a clause saying that if there are human rights abuses, there is a right to suspend the agreement. How can the agreement still be in place with that human rights clause when Israel completely ignores human rights concerns year after year?’ to which Sarah Champion agreed. ‘That recommendation is superb and there are others.’
Jo Cox, the MP for Batley and Spen, who was murdered by a fascist last week, made a short contribution:
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She will be aware that evidence from Military Court Watch suggests that 65% of children continue to report being arrested at night in what are described as terrifying raids by the military. Will she comment on that worrying fact?”
All Ellman’s statements were assertions lacking even the slightest evidence. Ellman is and always has been an echo chamber for the Israeli military. Despite appearances to the contrary, Ellman is not stupid but malevolent. The torture and beatings by the Israeli army, which refuses to record its interrogations, which refuses access to lawyers or even parents to accompany their children, is acceptable to Ellman.
If Liverpool Riverside has any integrity or principles as a constituency, it will take steps to deselect Ellman. She is in a long line of politicians who saw in colonialism a benevolent force. There were also those in the Labour Party previously, like the former Minister Ray Gunther, who supported Apartheid. Ellman is a supporter of Israeli Apartheid and the necessary military force that is required to uphold it.
3 members of the Liverpool Riverside constituency, who questioned Ellman on her pro-Zionist activities have now been placed under investigation. They are being accused of, wait for it, ‘anti-Semitism’. In other words concern for Palestinian children and their harrowing treatment by the Israeli military and criticism of their apologist Louise Ellman, is anti-Jewish.
Of course this is yet another example of a false accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’. Ellman normally, when she reports to her constituency, deliberately omits to mention her Zionist work so they asked her what she was up to. By all accounts she didn’t like being interrogated on her work for Israel as, understandably, it is indefensible.
On April 16th an article Activists 'hell-bent' on attacking Jewish Labour MP at constituency meetingsappeared in the Jewish Chronicle. In this a right-wing, red-baiting councillor, Nick Small, said: “I found these comments offensive and believe that they have no place within the broad church of the Labour party.” Defence of the Palestinians is ‘offensive’ according to this racist. Small is an extreme right-winger who is a friend of blacklisting building company, Balfour Beatty. [see Liverpool Councillor Nick Small & his ‘blacklisting’ friends]
Small continued:
“There are a tiny but vocal group within our CLP who seem hell-bent on attacking our MP in an orchestrated, horrible, personalised way. They are trying to create an atmosphere of intimidation and hostility that is making many members, particularly Jewish members, feel deeply uncomfortable. Mr Small said he had lodged a complaint with the party.’
No doubt Ellman did indeed feel uncomfortable at the fact that she was forced to answer for her defence of Israeli war crimes.
The Jewish Chronicle described an ‘orchestrated campaign’ against Ellman which Small said had created an “intimidating and hostile” atmosphere for Jewish members. The Jewish Chronicle continued: ‘The verbal attacks have taken place during the past two months at constituency meetings at which Mrs Ellman was present. A small group of hard-left activists have attended the sessions to attack her, repeatedly asking questions about her position on Israel.’ Holding your MP accountable is, in the eyes of the Jewish Chronicle, a crime. The article finished with an unsubstantiated assertion that on ‘at least three occasions, antisemitic remarks were made.’
Ellman is a disgrace to the Labour Party. She should be deselected immediately.
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It’s Time to Deselect Benn, Hodge and Kyle
Labour’s Progress MPs Should Be Helped to Join the Tory Party
It's time for Momentum to mobilise support for Corbyn and begin the process of delection of Progress MPs |
Corbyn demonstrates his boredom at Benn's actions by sacking him! |
Labour's Right come to the rescue of Johnson |
Added to this there is a constitutional crisis as the SNP moves to call a new referendum over independence whilst seeking to preserve its place in the European Union. The break up of the Great Britain is a distinct possibility as Scotland will almost certainly vote for independence in a new vote.
It is therefore no surprise that Labour’s Right has chosen this of all moments to challenge Jeremy Corbyn. It is entirely possible that the Tories will have to call a General Election. Their majority is less than 20. What Progress fears more than a Tory election victory is a Labour victory under Corbyn. As The Independent reported: ‘Tony Blair has said he would not want a left-wing Labour party to win a general election. The former prime minister saidthat even if he thought a left-wing programme was the route to victory, he would not adopt one.’
Labour's far-right Tory MP Peter Kyle should be helped to reach his natural political home |
Blair’s opinion represents the views of Progress. They don’t want a radical change to the capitalist system. They don’t want a radical programme which means the transfer of wealth from the super rich to the poor. They want to preserve inequality whilst tinkering around at the edges.
David Lammy MP calls for Referendum to be ignored |
It is now essential that Momentum, which Jon Lansman has ensured remains a toothless guard dog, now springs into action to begin the process of deselection of Benn, the multi-millionairess tax dodger Margaret Hodge, Hove’s Peter Kyle and all the other Labour Tories.
Corbyn has made a good start by sacking Hilary Benn from the Shadow Cabinet. He should now pre-empt any resignations by sacking Angela Eagle, who is equally disloyal, her sister Maria, Israel’s devoted supporter Fabian Hamilton and any other scab within the Shadow Cabinet. Stephen Kinnock, son of the Labour traitor Neil Kinnock, who managed to lose 2 successive elections, Anne Coffey and the rest of them should go.
The disloyalty of Labour’s Right is unacceptable. There needs to be a bloodbath and the deselection of at least 50 Progress MPs to encourage the others.
Farage ran a nakedly racist campaign |
It is not necessary for the Shadow Cabinet to cover every equivalent position in the Cabinet. A smaller and tighter Shadow Cabinet is better than a larger and more incoherent body.
The only question is whether Labour stands for anything radically different from the Tory Opposition. It is time to clean the Augean Stables of the PLP.
Politically Labour needs to make it clear that the Referendum on Brexit is not the final say on the European Union. There needs to be a political fight to win over the heartlands of Labour in the North and to defang UKIP. It needs to drain the poison which says that immigration causes low wages and loss of jobs. Immigration is a lightning conductor for fears over jobs, housing and prosperity. The idea that immigration causes job losses is nonsense.
If it were true then any country with unemployment could expel a section of its population and solve the problem of unemployment! In reality immigration creates jobs because it increases demand. The deindustrialisation of the North and Midlands was a result of a deliberate policy of Thatcher to make Britain dependent on financial services and a candy floss economy of coffee shops and services.
There is no reason why the referendum on the EU should be final. It was won on lies and there is no reason for there not to be a second referendum. See
A socialist economic policy is the only thing that can win over the Northern working-class. New Labour has no alternative. When Blair won in 1996 anybody could have defeated the divided Tory party. In every successive election Labour lost millions of votes. Blair’s reign was not a success, quite the contrary. Corbyn was elected Labour leader because of mass revulsion at the Tory’s victory and the half-hearted response of Ed Miliband. Now is the time for courage. Now is the time to wage waron Progress MPs.
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