Grenfell Tower - Murder by May and Kensington Council

July 2, 2017, 9:23 pm

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The Privatisation of the Management of Council Housing Began with New Labour

In the long-forgotten case of Director of Public Prosecutions v Smith [1961] A.C. 290 it was held that ‘a person is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts.’

In this case a policeman had stopped a car and when it accelerated away he had clung on. The car zig zagged and eventually threw the policeman off into the path of an incoming car, killing him. Jim Smith was convicted at the Old Bailey in April 1960 of the murder of PC Meehan. At the Court of Appeal the charge of manslaughter was substituted for murder but on appeal the House of Lords substituted the original charge of murder. In those days murder was a capital, hanging offence but it was agreed that it would be wrong to reimpose the death penalty.

Brighton's successful campaign against the Labour Council's attempt to privatise council housing was led by Defend Council Housing

Some might say that this was a harsh decision substituting an objective test, that of the ‘reasonable man’ for the subjective state of Jim Smith’s mind, yet this was the decision of the highest court in the land as to the mens reaor guilty intend of someone who kills another. Of course in reality people often don't intend the consequences of their own actions because they don't have sufficient foresight, but if you act with sufficient recklessness or gross negligence you can be convicted of manslaughter. Sometimes however it is so obvious what the consequences of one's actions are that there is sufficent 'mens rea'for there to be a conviction of murder.

Tenants celebrating a 77% rejection of privatisation of council housing

I mention this long-forgotten case of murder because it is most apposite to what happened at Grenfell Tower. No one would suggest that Housing Minister Brandon Lewis deliberately set about to cause the deaths of 100+ residents of Grenfell Tower yet that was the consequence of his actions. If there was any justice then he, his successor Gavin Barwell and the leadership of Kensington Council would be starting terms of life imprisonment, with a recommendation that their actions are so heinous that they should serve a full life term.

Brandon Lewis - former Housing Minister who rejected the recommendation for sprinkler systems in tower blocks

After the death of 6 people in the Lakanal House fire in Camberwell, South London in 2009, Lewis warned MPs against beefing up fire safety regulations, because it could discourage house building. He accepted that automatic sprinklers could save lives, but said it was not the government's responsibility to encourage developers to fit them. It should be left to the market and of course the market in this case, Kensington Council, opted for the cheapest option, i.e. no sprinklers. Brand Lewis added that "The cost of fitting a fire sprinkler system may affect house building—something we want to encourage—so we must wait to see what impact that regulation has."

The coroner's report into the Lakanal fire had called for developers refurbishing high-rise blocks to be encouraged to install sprinkler systems. However we were into a time of austerity and in austerity it is the poor who must pay the price.Tory minister warned against beefing up fire safety rules to include sprinklers because it could discourage house building

Sajid Javid - another criminal in May's cabinet

Theresa May's new chief of staff Gavin Barwell was the previous housing Minister and he too refused to implement the recommendation that sprinkler systems should be installed into all high rise blocks of flats. Grenfell Tower fire: Theresa May's top aide Gavin Barwell dodges questions over failure to undertake tower block safety review

A dozen letters were sent by the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group in the aftermath of the 2009 Lakanal House fire and it warned the Government that it "could not afford to wait for another tragedy", according to BBC Panorama. However wait was exactly what Theresa May’s government did.

The parliamentary group wrote in March 2014:

"Surely ... when you already have credible evidence to justify updating ... the guidance ... which will lead to the saving of lives, you don't need to wait another three years in addition to the two already spent since the research findings were updated, in order to take action?

"As there are estimated to be another 4,000 older tower blocks in the UK, without automatic sprinkler protection, can we really afford to wait for another tragedy to occur before we amend this weakness?"

In response the Liberal Democrat minister Stephen Williams replied:

"I have neither seen nor heard anything that would suggest that consideration of these specific potential changes is urgent and I am not willing to disrupt the work of this department by asking that these matters are brought forward."

to which the All Parliamentary Committee replied:

"We're at a loss to understand, how you had concluded that credible and independent evidence which had life safety implications, was NOT considered to be urgent.

"As a consequence the group wishes to point out to you that should a major fire tragedy, with loss of life, occur between now and 2017, in for example, a residential care facility or a purpose built block of flats, where the matters which had been raised here, were found to be contributory to the outcome, then the group would be bound to bring this to others' attention."

Clearly Stephen Williams, who was the ‘liberal’ part of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition took exactly the same attitude to fire safety as his Tory colleagues.

Sir Eric Pickles, the far-Right racist and Zionist former Communities Secretary, ignored all concerns about fire regulations

Former cabinet minister and Communities Secretary Sir Eric Pickles also received a letter about fire regulations from the All Parliamentary Group in February 2014, according to the BBC and he too did nothing. Grenfell Tower: Ministers 'were repeatedly warned of a tower block tragedy if no sprinklers fitted'

Image result for gordon brown red tape bonfire

Making a Bonfire of Red Tape

But it wasn’t just the Tories who are responsible. New Labour in the form of Gordon Brown also boasted that there was going to be a ‘bonfire of red tape’ and regulations that inhibit free enterprise. The Independent of 14^thMarch 2005 reported that Brown had promised ‘to cut away the tangle of red tape suffocating British companies and is planning heavyweight appointments to a new executive body to oversee a streamlining of business rules and regulations.” Chancellor to promise a Budget bonfire of red tape

New Labour's record on social housing was even worse than that of the Tories. The Spectator magazine spoke of how, under New Labour

local authority housing passed into private hands far faster under Labour than Conservative prime ministers....Despite the huge building boom under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, only 13 percent of the 2.5 million homes which rose up under their watch were built by ‘social’ landlords. This compares with almost a quarter of 3.8m homes under Margaret Thatcher and John Major’s reign. Even David Cameron appears on track to match his predecessors’ trend, in market share at least. If Labour had caught onto the coat tails of their building boom to the same degree as the Tories, almost 300,000 more social homes would be dotting this land. Labour’s claim of being the party of council housing is in tatters

Whichever way you look at it Labour’s council housing halo has slipped. Investment in housing plunged under Blair and Brown to its lowest level for decades. During their first 12 months in power they spent less than in any year of Thatcher and Major’s 18-year reign. Their poverty of social housing ambition persisted throughout most of their administration. A big increase only arrived in its dying days- as a prop for builders tripped up by the financial crisis.

Of course the reaction of both the government and Chelsea and Kensington Council has been a complete embarrassment. Theresa May didn’t dare set foot at Grenfell Tower unless accompanied by a posse of police to protect her. The poor dear was apparently afraid of being shouted at! This is the same woman who a few months ago was pretending to be the workers’ best friend. Instead a pitiful £5m has been allocated as government compensation.

Kensington Council’s reaction has been even more embarrassing. Their complete indifference to the tragedy has been stark. They acted like guilty men. None of the Councillors has even dared set foot anywhere near the disaster area. A Council which has only ever seen its duty as catering to the richer inhabitants of the borough and which has actively sought to rid the borough of its poorer tenants was unlikely to react empathetically.

This has stirred even Tory columnists like Matthew d'Ancona to complain that:

The invisibility of Kensington and Chelsea council has been little short of scandalous. The visits of May and her colleagues have been badly handled, ineffective and twitchy. They have more closely resembled sallies into enemy territory than a campaign to reassure fellow citizens. Have the Tories learned nothing about compassion?

Sir Martin Moore-Bick - a fine representative of all those whose behaviour led to the Grenfell Tower tragedy - he has previously displayed his sympathy for Kensington Council's policy of social cleansing

Theresa May moved quickly to announce a judge led inquiry, knowing full well that it would be 3-4 years before it issued a report and she would, politically, be long gone. Just to make sure she moved to appoint as the Head of the Inquiry one Sir Martin Moore-Bick, a former Appeal Court judge, who specialised in commercial law.

Sir Martin distinguished himself in a 2014 case, when he said Westminster council could rehouse Titina Nzolameso, a single mother with five children, more than 50 miles away in Milton Keynes. He ruled that it was not necessary for Westminster to explain in detail what other accommodation was available and that it could take “a broad range of factors” into account, including the pressures on the council, in deciding what housing was available.

In April 2015, the supreme court reversed his ruling, pointing out that the council had not asked “any questions aimed at assessing how practicable it would be for the family to move out of the area”. To imagine that this scion of the ruling class will have any interest in examining the causes of what happened, is to imagine that kosher pigs might fly. Grenfell Tower inquiry judge has controversial history in housing cases

Indeed Moore-Bick made it clear in his meeting with the survivors of the fire that his Inquiry would not be a wide ranging one. He had no intention of examining the political decisions that led to the installation of the flammable cladding and the failure to install the sprinkler system. All he wants to do is examine the cause of the fire (which is already known – a Hotpoint freezer) and what led to the fire spreading quickly, which is also known (flammable cladding). No doubt he will rap over the knuckles a few of the long since gone Kensington Councillors without in any way addressing the root causes of what happened – the fact that housing for poor people has been subject to the decisions of the market.

There needs to be an insistence by the Labour Opposition as well as campaigners that Moore-Bick is totally unfit to be made Chair of the Inquiry into the fire. What is needed is a radical figure like Sir Stephen Sedley or Michael Mansfield QC.

Kensington Council outsourced the management of its social housing to an Arms Length Management Organisation the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation. The tenants had no say in the management of their own properties. Repeatedly they demanded that fire precautions be taken only to be spurned.

This private body which had direct responsibility for managing Grenfell Tower and other social housing has avoided the limelight so far - if anything it is the most culpable of all - it is unacceptable that this kind of unaccountable body should be charged with life and death decisions

Only last November, the Grenfell Action Group warned of “dangerous living conditions” and said: “It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO.” Grenfell Tower residents say managers 'brushed away' fire safety concerns

New Labour did their best to put Council housing in the hands of private sharks

It is worth remembering that this introducing of marketisation into social housing was not just the actions of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition. It began with New Labour. In Brighton in 2005-6 the Council under Ken Bodfish decided that they wished to be rid of council housing. New Labour nationally had blackmailed councils by saying money for renovations and repairs would only be allocated to third party private sector organisations which managed properties, not if they remained under the control of Councils. A national organisation Defend Council Housing was set up and in Brighton & Hove we campaigned fiercely against the Council proposal to set up what was called an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) which would take over Council properties.

Two Labour Councillors, Jack Hazelgrove and Francis Tonks were expelled from the Labour Group and Party for campaigning against New Labour’s housing policies. A campaign which was funded by UNISON and Brighton Unemployed Workers Centre and based at Leach Court swung into action and in March 2007 tenants voted by a massive 77%-23% to remain under Council control.

Times Investigation

Indeed there is very little for Bick-Moore to do as the facts are already clear. The Times [Keep costs of cladding down, tower experts told] of June 30^th quotes from a tranche of e mails between the Council and its contractors. It revealed that fireproof cladding for Grenfell Tower was downgraded to save £293,000. The project management consultants, Artelia UK came under pressure to reduce costs. What is termed an ‘urgent nudge email’ from the KCTMO said ‘We need good costs for Cllr Feilding-Mellen and the planner tomorrow at 8.45 am!’ Feilding-Mellen was deputy leader of Kensington Council and together with Nicholas Paget-Brown has now resigned.

Whereas zinc panels which are non combustible has originally been planned, aluminium ones were substituted as part of costs savings of £693,000. Use of the zinc panels themselves would have added just £5,000 to the overall costs.

The purpose of having cladding at all was in order that the block was considered an eyesore for residents in the better off north part of the borough. Originally the preferred bidder was Leadbitter whose estimate was £11.278m, however the housing committee was not happy. As their minutes stated this was ‘£1.6m above the current, proposed budget.’ This in a Council with an estimated £300m in reserves. So in August 2013 the KCTMO invited bids between £8m and £10m. On June 2^ndthe contract was awarded to Ryon. The main focus of the discussion between Rydon and KCTMO was on the appearance of the cladding. Should it be ‘champagne’ or ‘natural brushed aluminium’. The latter won out.

As long as the imperative is to extract as much as possible, Kensington Council was making a surplus of some £16m on its housing revenue budget, whilst denying tenants any say or control over the management of housing, then the same state of affairs will continue. Combine this with the cutbacks in housing repairs and austerity and Grenfell Tower was an accident waiting to happen.

Tony Greenstein

↧

It wasn’t just Dr Mengele and the Nazi doctors who conducted experiments on Jewish children – Israeli doctors did too

July 5, 2017, 4:16 am

≫ Next: Goebbels comes to Israel as ‘Culture’ Minister Miri Regev attacks dissident culture

≪ Previous: Grenfell Tower - Murder by May and Kensington Council

Labour Zionism's Kidnapping and Abduction of Thousands of Yemenite Babies

Children were routinely separated from their parents on kibbutzes Spielberg Jewish Film Archive

Less than two weeks ago, two thousand Yemenite Jews demonstrated in Jerusalem in protest at the latest saga of the thousands of missing babies. When the Israeli state was founded in 1948, it was primarily by White European Ashkenazi Jews. Their racism towards the native Palestinians was carried over into their treatment and attitudes towards the Arab Jews who came after 1948.

Led by the Labour Zionist movement which ruled Israel from 1948 till 1977, Israel’s rulers sought to eradicate the backward ‘Orientalist’ culture and behaviour of the Arab Jews. Zionism sought to bring over the Arab Jews as the new Israeli working class but they wanted to eradicate their Arab heritage as part of the creation of the new Israeli Jewish people.

In many Arab countries, like Morocco and Iraq, there was a deliberate policy of destabilisation of the Jewish communities. There was a steady determination that those communities had to be destroyed and transplanted to Israel. See The Zionist Destruction of the Iraqi Jewish Community - When the Zionist Underground Planted Bombs Outside Baghdad’s Jewish Cafés and Synagogues. The Zionist movement was nothing if not ruthless. It needed to replace the Palestinians, who had been expelled because they were not Jewish, with working class Jews, even if it meant uprooting ancient communities and destroying their way of life.

The racist attitudes which led to the destruction of these communities also made itself felt once these communities reached Israel. In the case of the Yemenite Jews, who were the first Arab Jews to be brought over, thousands of their babies and children were simply kidnapped and abducted, whilst their parents were told they had suddenly died.

Zionism had sought to create a racially pure Jewish state. They were fascinated by the ideas of eugenics [see Nazi & Zionist Eugenics] and selective breeding. What better way to improve the human material than to separate babies off from their ‘backward’ parents. A state based on racist barbarism towards the indigenous population was scared lest the same ‘unhealthy traits’ reappear in the Arab Jews.

Tony Greenstein

Thousands in Jerusalem protest abduction of Yemenite babies following disclosure some were experimented on

The surviving relatives of Yemenite Jewish children that families says were abducted by staff at state-run medical facilities and illicitly sold into adoption protest in Jerusalem. The demonstrators called for the Israeli government to investigate the alleged systematic kidnappings known as the Yemenite Children Affair, June 21, 2017.

(Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum and Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org)

Over 2,000 Israeli Yemenite Jews and supporting activists gathered in Jerusalem last Wednesday to mark an annual day of awareness for what families say was a state-sponsored program to abduct Yemenite Jewish infants and other Israeli children born to parents who were recent immigrants from Arab countries.

Known as the Yemenite Children Affair, in the first decade after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, there was a systematic kidnapping of newborn Yemenite children, carried out by Israeli hospitals and government institutions. Mothers, who often were in Israel for a short time and did not speak Hebrew, would enter hospitals or other state facilities to give birth. Once the child was born medical staff told the parents the child died unexpectedly. Yet none of the families were shown bodies or burial documents. Many of the families did not practice any mourning ceremonies because they believed their missing children were still alive.

(Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum and Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org

The babies who went missing, parents claim, were given away to childless Ashkenazi families (Jews of European descent–the dominant ethnic group in Israel at the time), leaving the Yemenite families with no answers regarding their children’s fate. In most cases, the families were told the children died unexpectedly.

There have been a few national state committees tasked with investigating the matter over the decades, but they were previously accused of ignoring real evidence and helping government efforts to cover up the affair. Following recent pressure by the third generation of Jewish Yemenite activists, part of the national archives and state protocols were disclosed to the public.

(Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum and Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org

Last year Benjamin Netanyahu had more than 3,500 government files on the investigation into the disappearance of the children published online. A Knesset committee followed up by confirming earlier this month that Yemenite babies died during the 1950s after state medical institutions conducted experiments on them. Despite the disclosures, the families are still in the dark regarding their relatives, and the matter is still an open wound in the Israeli society.

Seeking more answers, the Israeli nonprofit Amram organized the protest in Jerusalem last week under the title “Recognition, Justice, Healing,” calling on the government to open all of the national archives, which could allow for family reunification. The demonstrators also want the affair recognized as a crime against humanity.

This was the largest protest on the topic in the history of Israel to date.

(Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum and Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org

Shiraz Grinbaum is an independent photographer and photo-editor, and a member of the Activestills Photography Collective since 2012. She is the co-editor of the book "Activestills: Photography as Protest in Palestine/Israel" (Pluto Press, 2016). Yotam Ronen is an independent photographer and a co-founder of the Activestills Photography Collective. He is a staff member for Walla!, an Israeli news outlet.

Missing babies: Israel's Yemenite children affair

By Yolande KnellBBC News, Jerusalem

21 June 2017

In the years after the creation of the Israeli state hundreds of babies went missing. Their parents, mostly Jewish immigrants from Yemen, were told their children had died, but suspicions linger that they were secretly given away to childless families - and newly released documents have revealed some disturbing evidence.

Leah shows a death certificate for her daughter from 1969 - she was also given one dated 1966

When Leah Aharoni remembers losing her baby daughter five decades ago, she bursts into tears.

"I just saw her for a short time. She was pretty with fair skin. She opened her eyes and looked at me, as if she was saying: 'Don't let me go,'" she says.

Leah had given birth to premature twins in a hospital near her home in Kiryat Ekron, in central Israel, but the little girls were sent away to be cared for.

Leah’s family (she is second from the left) before they left Aden

She was told they were being taken to a special clinic in Tel Aviv. But when Leah's husband visited soon afterwards, only one of the twins was there. The other, Hanna, had died, he was informed.

Leah was shocked not to be shown a body or a grave - a common feature of such stories - but she and her husband did not doubt the heart-breaking news.

It was only years later that she began asking questions, when her surviving daughter, Hagit, turned 18 and was called for national military service.

Two draft notices arrived in the post simultaneously. One for Hagit - and one for Hanna. This is another hallmark of missing baby stories.

KNESSET SPECIAL COMMITTEE - Disturbing photographs of malnourished children in hospital with the word "spleen" marked on their body were shown in evidence to the Knesset special committee

Media caption 'I want to know where my daughter went'

"It started to bother me. Something was not right. I couldn't sleep at night. I decided I had to know what happened," Leah says.

Leah had experienced many calamities long before the loss of her baby. As a child, she and her family had joined thousands of Jews fleeing violence in Yemen. They were robbed as they trekked from one end of the country to the other and Leah was reduced to begging for food. Then they were rescued in an airlift known as Operation Magic Carpet.

Rafi Shubeli, Yemenite-Israeli historian and activist from the group Our Brothers Exist, giving evidence in the Knesset

"It was the land I had always dreamed about," the 78-year-old recalls, remembering the flight to Israel.

"When we got off the plane everyone kissed the holy ground.

"Then we heard the bombs and grenades and saw the smoke."

They had arrived, malnourished and penniless, during the first Arab-Israeli war.

Leah Aharoni Leah’s family (she is second from the left) before they left Aden

Many Yemenite Jews spent periods in transit camps before being settled in homes, and stories of babies going missing began to arise immediately.

Some reports talk of children disappearing after visits to the camps by wealthy American Jews.

In other cases children appeared to be recovering in hospitals from relatively minor ailments when the parents were suddenly told they had died.

On kibbutzes, where some of the Yemenites settled, it was typical for youngsters to be separated from their parents and looked after together, and here too it's said that some children vanished.

Image copyright Spielberg Jewish Film Archive Image caption Children were routinely separated from their parents on kibbutzes

Estimates of the number of missing children range from hundreds to thousands.

In many cases the parents believe their children were really kidnapped and given or sold to families of European Jews - occasionally Holocaust survivors who had lost their children - or Americans.

Over time, Leah, like many other parents, ceased to believe in the story of her child's death.

"I went to my father and told him, but he said I should never suspect another Jew stole my child," she says.

She went in search of documents that would reveal the truth about what happened to Hanna, and was deeply disturbed by what she found.

Image caption Leah shows a death certificate for her daughter from 1969 - she was also given one dated 1966

One document she obtained said the babies were moved to Tel Aviv after the date on Hanna's death certificate.

Another was a second death certificate, dated three years later than the first - long after Leah and her husband had been told their daughter had died.

Like Leah, most parents received no information about their child's grave. When they did, in some cases it transpired that the grave was empty, or DNA tests showed that the body was not theirs.

Three government inquiries have looked into the Yemenite Children Affair, as it is known, since the 1960s, and all have concluded that most children died of diseases and were buried without their parents being informed or involved.

But many of the families involved suspect a cover-up and continue to believe that there was an organised operation to snatch children, involving health workers and government officials.

So last year the government of Benjamin Netanyahu decided to open up most of the archives of the public inquiries and put them online.

Netanyahu said this marked a new era of transparency and would "right an historic wrong".

Last week it led to shocking revelations in a Knesset committee about medical experiments on Yemenite children. Testimony given under oath at one of the earlier inquiries revealed that four undernourished babies died after being given an experimental protein injection, and that many children died as a result of medical negligence.

Image copyright Knesset Special Committee Image caption Disturbing photographs of malnourished children in hospital with the word "spleen" marked on their body were shown in evidence to the Knesset special committee

Post-mortem examinations were carried out on children, who were then buried in mass graves in violation of Jewish tradition, the special Knesset committee on the disappearance of children heard. In some cases the children's hearts were removed for US doctors, who were studying why there was almost no heart disease in Yemen.

"It's a big scandal that the doctors didn't tell the parents they were doing experiments and research on their children," says Nurit Koren, the chair of the committee.

"And even worse there are healthy babies who died from an experimental treatment. It's a crime, it was on purpose, and it let to their death."

Koren is herself the child of parents from Yemen. One of her cousins and her mother-in-law's sister were among the children who disappeared. So one of her objectives, on being elected, was to reopen the subject, which she describes as "an open wound in the heart of the Israeli nation".

One of the disturbing aspects of the Yemenite Children Affair is the way the darker-skinned immigrants appear to have been treated as second-class citizens. The founders of Israel were mostly Ashkenazi Jews, of European descent, some of whom expressed fears that Mizrahi (literally "Eastern") Jews brought with them a backwards "Oriental" culture that might damage the new state.

"Zionism - what is it really about?" asks Rafi Shubeli, a Yemenite-Israeli historian and activist from the group Our Brothers Do Exist.

"What were its intentions towards Mediterranean Jews, the Jews of the Islamic world?

"There are very many elements in Israeli society who want to avoid this kind of discussion."

Image caption Rafi Shubeli, Yemenite-Israeli historian and activist from the group Our Brothers Exist, giving evidence in the Knesset

Whether there was an organised conspiracy to snatch Yemenite babies and give them away for adoption remains unproven though, according to historian Tom Segev, who has written books on Israel's early years and served as an expert witness for one government inquiry.

He points out that hundreds of thousands of immigrants arrived in Israel at a time of war, and in the years immediately afterwards, when the country was still reeling.

"All these people came in very, very difficult conditions and it's a story of chaos," Segev says.

Media captionTom Segev: "I don't think there was a conspiracy"

Yemenites were housed in tents and had to endure heavy winters. There were child mortality rates of 50%, he points out.

Some children may have been given away, he accepts.

"In some cases this might have happened: one, two, three, four, 10 - I don't know how many," he says.

But in most cases the children just died, he believes.

"It's probably the most tragic story of the return of Jews to Israel."

Working with Nurit Koren, MyHeritage, a company that researches family ancestry, recently began offering help to Yemenite Jews who have a missing child, or who think they were secretly adopted.

Leah Aharoni, who has long been convinced that her daughter, Hanna, could be alive and searching for her biological family, gave a DNA sample - samples of cells from the inside of her cheek - to be checked against others in a new database for Yemenite-Israelis.

"I want to find out where my daughter went. I want her to know that I didn't abandon her, that I love her," Leah says. "I was tricked."

She is encouraged by a few cases in which adults in Israel and abroad found out they had been adopted, and managed to trace their Yemenite parents. She is still waiting to find out if there is a match for her.

At a beachside cafe in Haifa, I meet a physicist who is philosophical about how his life was shaped by this time of turmoil.

Image caption Yehuda Kantor found his biological family through DNA testing

A few months ago, Yehuda Kantor became the first person to be reunited with his biological family through the MyHeritage testing programme.

He had spent more than 20 years searching for his biological mother - making regular appearances in the media to publicise his case.

"I got hundreds of telephone numbers and lots of information but none quite fitted my story. I tried some DNA tests but it was in vain," Yehuda says.

Yehuda as a child with his adoptive family

Yehuda had a happy childhood, raised in nearby Afula by Batia and Asher Kantor, an Ashkenazi Jewish couple originally from Eastern Europe.

Image caption Yehuda as a child with his adoptive family

Photographs show he had a darker complexion than his relatives and school friends.

However, it was not until he reached his twenties that he discovered what much of his close-knit community already knew: he was adopted.

His mother, who had been unable to conceive, revealed she had brought him home from a small orphanage, aged three.

She always feared losing him and so, out of respect for his adoptive parents, it was only after they died that Yehuda opened his adoption file.

This showed no signature of consent from his Yemenite biological mother and gave only her first name, Zahara.

MyHeritage was able to use that to trace a grave for a woman who had died 17 years ago.

They then approached her five children asking them to do DNA tests. These showed they are the half-brother and half-sisters of Yehuda.

"Wow, there are a lot," remarked Yehuda, as he was told the news ahead of an emotional first meeting filmed by Israeli television.

His biological siblings had never been told of the existence of an older brother and were unable to explain the circumstances of his adoption.

However, they were able to give some information on his roots and Yehuda is delighted to be getting to know them better.

"I'm happy the circle was completed and I now know the history, the origin and I know which family [I'm from] from a genetic point of view," he says.

"You cannot regret what happened in the past. This is my life. I accept it as it is."

Additional reporting by Erica Chernofsky

↧

Goebbels comes to Israel as ‘Culture’ Minister Miri Regev attacks dissident culture

July 5, 2017, 2:08 pm

≫ Next: Professors Ofer Cassif & Daniel Blatman of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem Compare Israel to Nazi Germany

≪ Previous: It wasn’t just Dr Mengele and the Nazi doctors who conducted experiments on Jewish children – Israeli doctors did too

In Nazi Germany the state simply banned all ‘deviant’ culture. In Israel it is more subtle Political pressure is put on festivals not to stage plays about the Occupation. In recent days she has threatened to cut the government’s 20% funding of the Israel Festival because plays which include full frontal nudity harm “Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” Quite how nudity threatens the security of the state beggars belief.

Miri Regev (left) Israel's Culture Minister, Joseph Goebbels (right) Nazi Culture Minister

Previously Regev has threatened the funding of any group that refuses to perform events in the Occupied Territories. She also frozefunds to an Arabic-language theater in Haifa for its production of a play that she claims incites violence against Israeli soldiers.

Culture Minister Miri Regev, a former military censor and Brigadier-General, clearly has as her role model one Joseph Goebbels. Culture must be seen to uphold the political and national norms of the day. Culture cannot be subversive of the existing order but on the contrary act to reinforce the message of conformity and loyalty to, in Israel’s case, nationalistic and Zionist shibboleths.

Regev is famous for having called refugees and asylum seekers a ‘cancer’ in Israeli society. [52% of Israeli Jews agree: African migrants are ‘a cancer’] When criticised for this comment, she then apologised to cancer patients, for having compared them to asylum seekers.

Below we see how the conscious attempt to repress dissident culture in Israel is taking its toll on one festival, in the city of Acre.

See 'What's happening is fascism': artists respond to Israel's 'war on culture'

Tony Greenstein

Banned Play on Palestinian Prisoners, Throws Israeli Theater Festival Into Turmoil

Artistic director quits popular Acre Fringe Theater Festival after public steering committee disqualifies 'Prisoners of Occupation'

Yair Ashkenazi Jun 05, 2017 8:35 AM

Einat Weitzman and Hassan Murad in 'Shame.' Very sad laughter. David Bachar

The artistic director of the Acre Fringe Theater Festival resigned Sunday because a play about Palestinian prisoners was disallowed by the event’s steering committee.

Avi Gibson Bar El informed the Acre municipality that he was resigning because the play “Prisoners of the Occupation” by Einat Weitzman was blocked by the committee. Gibson issued a short statement about his resignation to the festival’s artists. Afterward, Yosef Abu-Varda, a member of the festival’s artistic committee, also resigned.

Avi Gibson Bar El. Moti Milrod

After six of the eight ensembles that were to compete in the festival threatened to drop out if Weitzman’s play was not restored to the program, it was no longer clear what form – if any – the festival, scheduled for the intermediate days of Sukkot, will take this year. Several of the production’s artists met over the weekend to decide on how to proceed, and one of them told Haaretz that they planned to stage their plays outside the Acre festival.

“This year Acre will have the Miri Regev festival,” said the artist, referring to the culture minister who denounces and threatens the funding of works she deems unpatriotic. “The Fringe Theater Festival will take place in [another] city that understands freedom of expression.”

Israeli producers, actors condemn 'offensive' move by Acre

The steering committee’s disqualification of “Prisoners of the Occupation,” which deals with letters and stories of Palestinian prisoners, angered some artists’ organizations. The Association of Independent Theater Producers and the Israeli Actors Union supported for Gibson and several artists’ withdrawal from the festival, and condemned the Acre municipality, which they called “offensive and undemocratic.”

Craig Dershowitz

“All the years of its existence the festival has preserved freedom of expression and had become a symbol of coexistence and cooperation,” the two groups wrote in a joint statement. “Last year Gibson got high praise from the public, the critics, Acre residents and the municipality for the quality of the festival.”

They said it was critical that the steering committee and artistic committee operate separately. “From the moment the steering committee and the municipality choose the artistic director, they should back him, even if the artistic content doesn’t conform to their personal views, legitimate as they may be. [The decision] shook up the entire festival and put its very existence in question.”

Yehoshua Sobol Rami Shllush

Playwright and director Yehoshua Sobol, who planned to have his play “Shkulim” staged at the festival, told Haaretz the steering committee disqualified Weitzman’s play “without seeing her pilot and without reading her text, because the text was still being formulated. She submitted an idea and a pilot, and the disqualification was based on the name of the work – ‘Prisoners of the Occupation,’ and the name of the writer, who last year staged ‘Palestine – Year Zero.’ The politocrats decided the subject had been dealt with enough, and that’s the worst kind of censorship.”

In response, the Acre Festival management called Gibson’s resignation “irresponsible and evidence of his misunderstanding of his role and an outrageous lack of professionalism.”

The statement added, “Gibson’s decision that year after year the main topic would be terrorists with blood on their hands is evidence of a fixation and inability to diversify.”

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Professors Ofer Cassif & Daniel Blatman of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem Compare Israel to Nazi Germany

July 6, 2017, 7:17 am

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According to the IHRA definition of Anti-Semitism Israeli Professors Cassif and Blatman are 'anti-Semitic'

According to the discredited International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of 'anti-Semitism' which Theresa May adopted in January and which the Zionists are trying to foist on the Labour Party, manifestations of anti-Semitism may include ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’ No doubt for telling it as they see it Israeli Professors Cassif and Blatman are also anti-Semitic? Whereas the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, who signed up to the IHRA whilst seeking to rehabilitate Admiral Horthy, who presided over the deportation of nearly 1/2m Jews in 1944 is kosher!

According to this twisted 'logic' if you compare marches in Nazi Germany that demanded that Jews go to Palestine or worse to the ‘Death to the Arabs’ marches in Israel today that would be anti-Semitic.

If you were to compare turning Jew killers in Nazi Germany to making an Arab killer like Elor Azaria a hero that too would be anti-Semitic.

If you were to point to the repeated targeting of the Arab minority in Israel by legislation passed by the Jewish majority to a similar phenomenon in Nazi Germany yesterday with respect to its Jewish community that would be anti-Semitic.

If you were to point to the Nazi programme from 1933 onwards that demanded the emigration and expulsion of Jews to the support for the expulsion of Israel’s Palestinian citizens that too is apparently anti-Semitic.

Gen. Yair Golan, who compared developments in Israel to Nazi Germany in a Holocaust Memorial Day speech

Or if you simply compared the scapegoating of Jews in Nazi Germany to the scapegoating of Arabs in Israel e.g. for the wave of fires that spread in Israel earlier this year, which were held to be an ‘arson intifada’ that would also be anti-Semitic according to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

As the settler news agency Arutz Sheva reported at the time:

Security forces are dealing with a wave of fires breaking out all over the country. According to official estimates, terror squads are igniting the fires in various areas, and efforts are being made to locate these squads.

In January 2017 +972 Magazine reported Two months on, still no evidence of a 'fire intifada' in Israel but that had not stopped Netanyahu and Erdan, his security Minister talking about arson and launching a wave of arrests of Israeli Arabs, not one of whom was charged in the end.

Professor Daniel Blatman wrote in Ha’aretz a few weeks ago an article Heading Toward an Israeli Apartheid State which compared developments in Nazi Germany with the Nuremburg laws and Apartheid South Africa to Israel today. Professor Blatman is a Holocaust researcher and head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. According to the contemptible charlatans who use ‘anti-Semitism’ as a weapon of British foreign policy to defame supporters of the Palestinians, Professor Blatman too is an anti-Semite.

Well another Israeli Professor Dor Ofer Cassif has also compared recent developments in Israel and the legislation passed by the Knesset to those of the Third Reich. No doubt Professor Cassif too is an anti-Semite. It would seem that these days anyone who dares speak out and tell the truth is an anti-Semite. Zionism is determined it seems to legitimise and exonerate anti-Semitism by making completely legitimate and valid criticisms of racist rottweiller of a state equivalent to Jew hatred.

Of course the real anti-Semites, people like Donald Trump’s Strategic Advisor Steve Bannon are kosher because although they don’t much like ‘whiny Jews’ they love Israel!

Tony Greenstein

demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem against settler occupation of Palestinian hopes and against apartheid in Israel

Hebrew U professor: Israel today similar to Nazi Germany

Yocheved Laufer

June 23, 2017 10:48

Professor Offer Cassif

Hebrew University Professor, Dr. Ofer Cassif, compared recent Israeli legislation, both proposed and passed, to those of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany, reported Channel 2 on Thursday as a recording of his class became public.

The statement occurred in a Politics and Government course as part of a preparatory college program at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

One of Cassif's students objected to the comparison, but the political science professor continued with his analogy stating that it is comfortable to deny the situation in order not to come to terms with reality, but that it would very dangerous to do so.

He also explained to his students that the comparison is a matter of fact rather than opinion. His personal thoughts on the matter are even far more reaching.

Cassif further criticized the current state of of affairs in Israel saying, "those who refuse to see the similarities between what is happening in Israel, specifically in the past two years, and Germany in the 1930s, has a problem and will be responsible for the potential situation of the state."

Cassif drew specific parallels from recent Israeli legislature regarding Arabs and Jews, to policies of Nazi Germany.

The Hebrew University professor stated that the proposed Israeli nation-state law is similar to 1930s Germany's methods of creating a hierarchy of citizens according to classes.

Cassif also criticized recent legislation passed legalizing 4,000 homes in the West Bank, stating that this this law, "allows Jews to take over Palestinian-owned land for themselves, just like Aryans in 1930 Germany were allowed to kick Jews out of their homes."

Cassif's next comparison was regarding the recent legislative proposal pushed by Netanyahu to ban funding from foreign NGOs. Cassif explained to his students that this bill is similar to laws passed in Nazi Germany limiting organizations that criticized the regime.

The Israeli Right was furious about the teachings of Prof. Cassif.

The Likud party defended the nation-state law, explaining that it "is based on the Israeli Declaration of Independence, and therefore this professor the very creation of the state is racist."

“Comparing the State of Israel to the most wicked regime in the history of mankind is not only a disgusting display of anti-Israel propaganda, but something more severe than Holocaust denial,” said CEO of right wing NGO Im Tirtzu, Matan Peleg.

In response to the criticism surrounding the publication of his lesson, Cassif stated that, "the purpose of a classroom is to hold discussions and I did not prevent any of my students from speaking, therefore I will not give in to the attempt to silence me and prevent an open and constructive discussion."

He also added that he stands behind his Israel-Nazi comparisons.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem responded by saying that Cassif's "discussion took place during the class 'Fascism- past and present,' and it is unfortunate that certain students chose to record their professor when not agreeing with his stance, instead of conducting an open discussion based on facts and opinions."

This is not the first time Cassif has been criticized for making Nazi comparisons regarding Israel.

In late 2015, the Hebrew University professor called Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked "neo-Nazi scum."

In a similar occurrence Cassif took to social media last year, tweeting that Facebook blocked him for making a Hitler reference as a reaction to a pro-Netanyahu comment.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VG2cPkufLCFVSv4DmvRbOSQnzMdUt7so8AlrQHcXSyA/pub

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Destroying the Myths of Israel’s Birth – the Mass Gang Rape & Murder of an Arab Child

July 8, 2017, 1:02 pm

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≪ Previous: Professors Ofer Cassif & Daniel Blatman of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem Compare Israel to Nazi Germany

I was brought up to believe that when Israel was founded, she was attacked by her Arab neighbours because they hated a Jewish state. It was this in mind that the Arab villagers were instructed, by the leaders of the Arab states, to evacuate in order that the Arab armies could operate without let or hindrance.

A column of Israeli army half tracks travel through the Negev Desert area of Palestine during recent action against the Egyptians, Jan. 6, 1949. (AP)

It wasn’t until 1961 that two scholars, independently of each other, Erskine Childers and Walid Khalidi, examined the BBC and CIA transcripts of the period and found that these orders were a convenient fiction, that on the contrary the refugees had been ordered to remain.

We were also brought up on the myth of the purity of arms, that Israeli soldiers were the bearers of a Jewish morality. That having been founded as a result of the Holocaust they were more than aware of not repeating Nazi deeds. Jewish soldiers didn’t rape or pillage or massacre. A Jewish state meant Jewish morality.

In fact Israel waged at its birth a ceaseless war in the Negev to remove as many Bedouin tribesmen as possible to neighbouring states and, as in the following story, declared free fire zones where any Arab they met was murdererd.

The following story, which first appeared in Ha’aretz, describes how an Arab girl, between 10 and 20 years old, was mass raped, on 3 successive days, by different squadrons. Having abused her sufficiently a shallow grave was dug and she was murdered. The comparison with what happened on the plains of White Russia to the Jews, when Nazi Germany invaded hardly bears repeating.

Although 19 of those involved eventually received prison sentences of 4 years each, even this puny sentence was cut in half. Two years for killing a Palestinian child. For Palestinians who kill Israeli soldiers, life means life.

Tony Greenstein

'I Saw Fit to Remove Her From the World'

Newly revealed documents obtained by Haaretz tell the long-hidden story of what Ben-Gurion described as a 'horrific atrocity': In August 1949 an IDF unit caught a Bedouin girl, held her captive in a Negev outpost, gang-raped her, executed her at the order of the platoon commander and buried her in a shallow grave in the desert. Twenty soldiers who took part in the episode, including the platoon commander, were court-martialed and sent to prison.

Aviv Lavie, Moshe Gorali Oct 29, 2003

There was a particularly festive atmosphere at the Nirim outpost on August 12, 1949, the eve of Shabbat. A week of dusty patrols and pursuits of infiltrators in the sands of the western Negev desert was at an end, and the commander of the hilltop site, Second Lieutenant Moshe, gave the order to make the preparations for a party. The tables in the large tent that was used as a mess hall were arranged in rows, sweets of various kinds were laid out on them and even a bit of wine was poured, though not enough to get drunk on. At exactly 8 P.M. the soldiers took their places and platoon commander Moshe recited the blessing over the wine. He then gave a Zionist pep talk, reiterating the importance of the unit's mission and the troops' contribution to the infant state. At the order of his deputy, Sergeant Michael, Private Yehuda read from the Bible. When he finished the soldiers burst into song, told jokes, ate and drank. A merry time was had by all.

Shortly before the end of the party, at about 9:30, the platoon commander asked for quiet. He got up and, with a smile on his face, reminded the soldiers about the Bedouin girl they had caught earlier that day during a patrol in their sector. They had brought her to the outpost and she was now locked up in one of the huts. Platoon commander Moshe said he was putting forward two options for a vote. The first was that the Bedouin girl would become the outpost's kitchen worker; the second was for the soldiers to have their way with her. The proposals got an enthusiastic reception. A melee ensued. The soldiers raised their hands and the second option was accepted by majority vote. "We want to fuck," the soldiers chanted. The commander decided on the order: Squad A on day one, Squad B on day two and Squad C on day three. The driver, Corporal Shaul, asked jokingly, "And what about the drivers? Are they orphans?" The platoon commander replied that they were part of the staff squad, together with the sergeant, the squad commanders, the cooks, the medic and he himself, of course. He added a threat - if any of the soldiers touch the girl "the tommy [tommy gun] will talk." The soldiers took this as a warning not to violate the order the commander had decreed.

The party ended, the soldiers went off to their tents. The officer ordered the platoon sergeant to bring a folding bed to the tent they shared and to place the Bedouin girl on it. Sergeant Michael did as he was told, entered the tent, closed the flap and shut off the lantern.

Thus began one of the ugliest and most appalling episodes in the history of the Israel Defense Forces. Even at a remove of 54 years, it is difficult to understand how an event of this kind could have happened with the participation, active or less active, of dozens of soldiers in uniform.

Low professional and moral level

The IDF of 1949, still in its infancy and called upon to defend the borders of the newborn state, found itself having to cope - not always successfully - with the rapid absorption of a very large number of untrained soldiers, especially those who were sent to the front immediately after disembarking from the ship in which they had arrived in Israel. "A rabble of new immigrants with a low professional and moral level," was the blunt description offered by the special military court in its verdict on the episode of the Nirim outpost.

Yehuda (his full name, as well as the names of others who were interviewed for this article, are in the possession of Haaretz) was one of the soldiers serving in the outpost in August 1949. He is now a 74-year-old pensioner who lives in the north. He accepts the description of the group as a "rabble": "I was then 20 years old," he says. "I ran away from the Turkish Army to Palestine and immediately enlisted. I remember that all the members of our battalion were new immigrants. Everyone was from a different country: Algeria, Hungary, Romania, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco. We didn't know Hebrew, we communicated between us by sign language. We did our basic training at the Dead Sea. We were taught how to hold a rifle in a mess hall at Sodom. Then we were sent to the outpost, where we did patrols or trained in the trenches and practiced rushing to our positions."

Yehuda remembers the night of the party, but claims that he was then on guard duty and that he heard the story about the vote and what happened afterward only as a rumor. Together with 17 members of the platoon he was court-martialed for "negligence in preventing a crime." He was sentenced to four years in prison; his term was cut in half by the appeals court.

Yitzhak, who is the same age as Yehuda and now lives in the center, received the same punishment. He, too, had arrived in Israel a few months before the summer of 1949, and he did not know Hebrew. Today he is retired and has health problems. "I remember being in the Negev but I can't even remember the name of the unit. I had just arrived in the country, I looked like a boy, I did a lot of guard duty. I had forgotten about that whole affair, I don't remember a thing, I haven't thought about it for maybe 50 years. The only reason I was tried was that I was in the outpost when it happened. Beyond that I don't remember a thing and I have nothing to say. Was I angry at those who did it? What would it help me to be angry?"

The developments in the IDF after the War of Independence may furnish a partial explanation for the chain of events that is described in this article; but no more than a partial explanation. After all, the platoon commander, Moshe, who spearheaded the affair, was not part of the "new IDF.""The officer and the sergeant were veteran Israelis and spoke fluent Hebrew," Yehuda recalls. As far as is known, Moshe served in the British Army and afterward in the 8th Brigade under the command of the legendary Yitzhak Sadeh in what was the only IDF armored brigade in the War of Independence. The brigade was disbanded after the war and its officers and soldiers were reassigned to various units. Officer Moshe was sent to the Negev.

The Negev Region Command was established after the War of Independence. It was a regional command and its assignment was to secure the lengthy new border line between Israel and Egypt. The staff headquarters were located in Be'er Sheva, and the units were deployed in outposts along the border with the aim of preventing the infiltration of Bedouin from the Egyptian desert. The military historian Meir Pa'il, a retired colonel, was appointed operations officer of the Negev Region in December 1949, four months after the events with which this article deals. Pa'il: "The Negev was sparsely populated. We were barely able to cobble together one reserve battalion from all those who lived in the settlements in the region. In order to man the border line, units were sent on a rotating basis from other regions, such as the Golani Brigade, the 7th Brigade and so forth. In addition to preventing infiltrations, there was also an effort to remove as many Bedouin as possible from the country - from the Halutza Dunes area, for example. It was a kind of cleansing across the Egyptian border. The tribes who had cooperated during the war were left where they were; those who were hostile were expelled."

One of the battalions of the Negev Region was known as the Sodom District Battalion. The battalion was originally in charge of the Dead Sea and Arava area, but at the beginning of August 1949 it was moved to the Bilu Junction, near Rehovot, where it waited a few days for new orders. The battalion commander was Major Yehuda Drexler, who was nicknamed "Idel." Over the years, Drexler, afterward a leading architect, worked for the Jewish Agency, was one of the planners of Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev (Ben-Gurion's kibbutz) and reached the rank of department head in the Israel Lands Administration. One of the company commanders in the battalion was Captain Uri.

On August 8, his company was ordered to move south to man the outposts in the western Negev. The platoons were stationed at three kibbutzim: Be'eri, where the company headquarters and Captain Uri himself were stationed, Yad Mordechai and Nirim. Platoon 3, headed by the new commander, Second Lieutenant Moshe, who had been given command of the unit only a few days earlier, was sent to the Nirim outpost, which was responsible for the most remote and most dangerous sector - adjacent to the border with Egypt. Sergeant Michael was the deputy commander of the platoon.

On the eve of the move south, the company commander, Captain Uri, briefed the soldiers. Intelligence reports received from aerial patrols over the western Negev mentioned two Bedouin tribes that had been spotted in the sector. "You are to shoot to kill at any Arab in the territory of your sector," the company commander said. Moshe asked for the operational order in writing, as customary. The company commander promised to bring the written document to the outpost at a later date.

Platoon 3 reached Nirim on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 9. The infrastructure of the camp was quickly put in place: three large tents as the soldiers' quarters, a small tent for the officer and the sergeant, and a big tent as the mess hall. In addition, there was a small hut that served as the office of the platoon's headquarters and another hut, unused, which would play a central role in the episode.

In the summer of 1949, there was no longer any connection between Kibbutz Nirim and the outpost of the same name. The outpost bore the name Nirim because it was situated at the place where Kibbutz Nirim was originally established, in June 1946. The young kibbutz, which was located on the edge of the desert, fought for its survival in the harsh climatic conditions of the area and became the first settlement to be attacked on the first day of the War of Independence, on May 15, 1948. The Egyptians, with a force that included an artillery battalion, an infantry battalion and dozens of armored vehicles, launched a heavy barrage that caused immense damage: all the buildings of the kibbutz were burned to the ground, the animals died, and eight kibbutz members were killed and four wounded (of a total of 39 members). The barrage was followed by an assault mounted by hundreds of infantry soldiers, who reached the fence of the kibbutz. The kibbutzniks, firing from their trenches, inflicted heavy losses on the Egyptian force and miraculously the attack ended. The Egyptians changed their mind and decided to forgo the pleasure of infiltrating and capturing the kibbutz. Instead, they simply went around it on their way north.

The Nirim group spent the war in shelters and caves that they dug. When the hostilities ended and they were finally able to come to the surface in safety, they entered into talks with the army and the state authorities. There was a confluence of interests: the army coveted the site because of its strategic location; the kibbutzniks wanted to move north, to the line of 200 millimeters of rain a year.

In March 1994 the kibbutz moved about 15 kilometers north, to its present location. The IDF took over the terrain-dominating outpost, which was henceforth known as "Old Nirim," or "Dangour," as it was originally called - the name still appears on some maps - apparently after an Egyptian Jew who purchased land in the area. There is now a monument of rough concrete at the site that commemorates the kibbutz members who were killed in the Egyptian assault on the first day of the 1948 war. The monument bears an inscription: "It is not the tank that will triumph, but man." If you climb the monument and look west, you can see the rooftops of Khan Yunis.

The commander orders an execution

On Tuesday, August 9, the platoon organized itself at the outpost. The soldiers soon got used to the ways of the new commander. Second Lieutenant Moshe turned out to be a strict disciplinarian who demanded order and obedience. The soldiers had to dress properly and shave every day. Anyone who violated the orders was hauled before Moshe. The soldiers were apparently somewhat in awe of him. The next day the company commander, Captain Uri, visited the platoon. The first couple of days passed uneventfully. Until the morning of Friday, August 12.

At about 9 A.M. that day, Second Lieutenant Moshe set out on a patrol in the southwestern section of the sector, in a vehicle known as a "command car." With him were two squad commanders, Corporal David and Corporal Gideon, and three soldiers: privates Moshe, Yehuda and Aziz. The driver was Corporal Shaul. All the men were armed.

On the way they came across an Arab who was holding an English rifle. When the Arab spotted them he threw down the rifle and started to run up the dune. One of the soldiers opened fire at him with a submachine gun. The Arab was hit and died on the spot. His rifle was taken as booty.

A short time later, the patrol encountered three Arabs - two men and a girl. There are different versions regarding the girl's age. According to some accounts she was a young girl aged between 10 and 15; others say she was between 15 and 20. Platoon commander Moshe ordered the soldiers to seize the Arabs and search them. The soldiers found nothing. Officer Moshe then ordered the soldiers to bring the girl into the vehicle. Her shouts and screams were to no avail. Once she was inside the vehicle the soldiers scared off the two Arabs by shooting in the air. On the way back to the outpost they came across a herd of camels grazing. Officer Moshe ordered the soldiers to shoot the animals. Six camels were shot dead; their carcasses were left to rot in the field.

After the girl calmed down a bit, the soldiers exchanged a few words with her - especially Corporal David. They also talked among themselves, and the word "fuckable" came up in the conversation. The patrol returned to the outpost in the afternoon. At about the same time, another vehicle also arrived at the outpost: the battalion commander, Yehuda Drexler, was paying a visit, He was accompanied by Captain Mordechai (Motke) Ben Porat, operations officer of the Negev Region. Ben Porat eventually reached the rank of brigadier general in the Armored Corps and after his retirement from the army served as chairman of the National Parks Authority.

At the outpost, the soldiers removed the girl from the vehicle. Officer Moshe ordered that she be taken to the unused hut and a guard placed at the door. Private Avraham was designated the guard. Drexler, who noticed a certain commotion around the girl, asked what she was doing there. Officer Moshe replied that on the patrol he had encountered her and her husband, who was armed with a rifle. He told Drexler that they had killed the husband and taken the girl prisoner in order to interrogate her about the location of her tribe. Drexler authorized her interrogation but ordered that afterward she be taken back to the place where she had been seized, and released. He also asked platoon commander Moshe to ensure that the soldiers did not abuse her. Drexler and Ben Porat spent about two hours at the outpost, had lunch and left.

Shortly after their departure, Officer Moshe went out on another patrol, this time in the northern sector, in the direction of the new location of the kibbutz. After he had left, the platoon sergeant, Michael, removed the girl from the hut and pulled off the traditional garment she was wearing. He then made her stand, completely naked, under the water pipe that the soldiers used as a shower, then soaped her and rinsed her off. The pipe was outside and everyone at the outpost was able to witness the spectacle.

After the shower was over, Sergeant Michael burned the girl's dress and dressed her in a purple jersey and a pair of khaki shorts. Now looking like a regular Palmach commando, she was taken back to the hut and placed under the guard of Private Avraham. In short order a group of soldiers gathered around the hut. They milled around the guard and demanded that he let them go inside. At first he refused, but finally relented. In fact, he was the first to go in. He spent about five minutes in the hut and emerged buttoning up his trousers. He was followed by Private Albert, who was also in the hut for about five minutes, and then Private Liba.

Liba was still in the hut when platoon commander Moshe returned from the patrol. A few soldiers shouted a warning to Liba, who ran out of the hut and disappeared. Officer Moshe apparently understood what had happened, conducted a quick debriefing, and afterward, in the dining room, was heard to say that "three soldiers raped the Arab girl." He ordered her to be brought to the staff hut. The squad commanders, Corporal David and Corporal Gideon, were present in the hut. Officer Moshe took note of the girl's new apparel but said nothing. She told him, in Arabic, that the soldiers "played with her." It was obvious to Moshe what she meant. Corporal Gideon, who would be one of the main prosecution witnesses in the trial, testified that after the girl told Officer Moshe what she told him, he said to the others that she must be washed so she would be clean for fucking. Gideon, who lives in Givatayim and works as a tour guide, declined to be interviewed for this article.

At about 5 P.M., the platoon commander ordered Private Moshe, who was a barber by profession, to give the girl a haircut. That was done in the presence of the commander and the sergeant. Her hair, which had spilled down to her shoulders, was cut short and washed with kerosene. Again she was placed under the pipe, naked, before the scrutinizing eyes of the officer and the sergeant. Afterward she was dressed in the same jersey and shorts and sent back to the hut.

Then came the party, after which Officer Moshe and Sergeant Michael closeted themselves with the girl in their tent. After about half an hour, Officer Moshe ordered her taken out of the tent, because "there is a stink coming off her." Sergeant Michael called Private David and the two of them removed the bed from the tent, with the girl lying on it in a state of unconsciousness. They carried the bed to the entrance of the hut. Michael placed the girl on the floor, went to get water and poured the water on her. He then carried her in his arms into the hut. Corporal David accompanied him.

At about 6 A.M. the next day, Private Eliahu was on guard duty and saw the girl leaving the hut. He asked her where she was going and she told him, weeping, that she wanted to see the officer. Private Eliahu showed her the way to Officer Moshe's tent. She complained to him that the soldiers had "played with her."He threatened to kill her and sent her back to the hut. A short time later, while shaving at the water pipe, Sergeant Michael asked the platoon commander what to do with her. Officer Moshe ordered him to execute the girl.

Michael ordered Corporal David to have two soldiers get shovels and accompany him. Michael and David removed the girl from the hut and had her get into the patrol vehicle. Just before the vehicle left the outpost, one of the soldiers shouted that he wanted back the short pants the girl was wearing. Officer Moshe ordered her to be stripped and the pants returned to the soldier. She now wore only the jersey, her lower body exposed.

Eliahu and Shimon dig a grave

The vehicle set out, driven by Corporal Shaul. Also in the vehicle were Sergeant Michael, Corporal David, the medic, and the two soldiers who were to be the gravediggers, Privates Eliahu and Shimon, with their shovels. They drove about 500 meters from the outpost. The driver, Shaul, stayed in the vehicle, while the others, with the girl, moved off a little way into the dunes. Privates Eliahu and Shimon set about digging a grave. When the girl saw what they were doing, she screamed and started to run. She ran about six meters before Sergeant Michael aimed his tommy gun at her and fired one bullet. The bullet struck the right side of her head and blood began to pour out. She fell on the spot and did not move again. The two soldiers went on digging.

Sergeant Michael went back to the vehicle. Pale and trembling, he laid down his weapon and said to Shaul, "I didn't believe I could do something like that." Shaul said that maybe the bullet didn't kill her and that she was liable to lie in torment for a few hours, buried alive. He asked Michael to do him a personal mercy by going back to the girl and shooting her a few more times, to ascertain that she was dead. The sergeant did not manage to carry out that mission. Corporal David came over, took the tommy gun and fired a few bullets into the girl's body. The pit the privates dug wasn't very deep, only about 30 centimeters. They placed the body in the pit, covered it over with sand and returned to the outpost.

That afternoon the company commander, Captain Uri, visited the outpost. Not finding Second Lieutenant Moshe at the site, he left the written operation order that Moshe had requested with the platoon sergeant. Officer Moshe was then on his way to Be'er Sheva. It was Saturday night and he was on his way to see a movie. At the movie theater he met the battalion commander, Drexler. Drexler asked whether the Bedouin girl had been taken back to the place where she was found. Officer Moshe said she hadn't: "They killed her," he said, "it was a shame to waste the gas." Drexler said nothing but the next day ordered the company commander to go to the outpost and find out exactly what happened there.

Even before he received the order, Captain Uri, who had heard rumors about the events at the outpost, asked Officer Moshe for a report about what had happened with the Arab girl. Moshe ordered Sergeant Michael to draw up the report in his handwriting. When the report was completed, Officer Moshe signed it and sent it to the company commander. The following is the report, dated August 15, 1949:

"Nirim Outpost. To: Company Commander. From: Commander, Nirim Outpost.

Re: Report on the captive

In my patrol on 12.8.49 I encountered Arabs in the territory under my command, one of them armed. I killed the armed Arab on the spot and took his weapon. I took the Arab female captive. On the first night the soldiers abused her and the next day I saw fit to remove her from the world.

Signed: Moshe, second lieutenant."

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Palestine Expo 2017 - The Largest Palestine Event in Europe - Packed and Successful

July 8, 2017, 2:16 pm

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Despite the Best efforts of the Zionists to Ban It, Palestine Expo Has Been an Incredible Success

Well the Zionists, led by the far-Right Jewish Human Rights Watch (which watches over attempts to implement human rights) and the virulently Islamaphobic Campaign Against Anti-Semitism did their best to stop the biggest ever Palestine event in Britain and probably Europe. They tried every racist trick in the book but even Sajid David couldn't find enough of a pretext to destroy free speech on Palestine.

A rapt audience - all the sessions were packed out with standing room only - this demonstrates the level of support for the Palestinians in Britain - hence the feverish Zio attempts to have the conference banned - they probably forgot this isn't Israel!

I had to return to Brighton at 3 pm.m but the sessions were not only impressive but too often really good sessions coincided with each other.

David Collier and wife enjoying Palestinian food b4 being escorted out

I went to 3 sessions - the first one was entitled Balfour to Apartheid. The opening speaker was Ben Jamal, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He was followed by Professor Tilley, of Southern Illinois University who authored a Report by the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia which described Israel as an Apartheid state. Of course this proved politically embarrassing for the UN and the head of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, was forced to resign after the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced the report and asked for it to be removed from the Commission's website. Her talk on why Israel is an Apartheid state and why a Jewish state cannot be other than a racist state, given the systematic privileging of Jews in that state, was impressive.

Professor Tilley of Southern Illinois University spoke by Skype

I also went to hear two other equally impressive speakers Professor Ilan Pappe of Exeter University and John Pilger, who was impressive as always.

Professor Ilan Pappe

All the talks, I understand, will be put on Youtube.

During lunch I and others spotted one David Collier, a Zionist snoop who makes a profession out of defaming activists and groups as 'anti-Semitic'. He came up when he spotted me all friendly. I asked him how he was enjoying the 'Jewish hate fest' that he and his compatriots had called Palestine Expo 2017. He denied this and resumed his lunch, however we called for the security to evict him when he did. His wife was most put out at this attack on freedom of speech, which is rich coming from those whose whole life is spent trying to suppress Palestinian freedom of speech. Given the anti-Zionists are never allowed in Zionist functions and when they are spotted are usually assaulted Mr Collier should be grateful that we didn't behave like his friends.

Miko Peled, son of a famous Israeli General addresses the conference

Zionist protest outside conference

Another Zionist, Jonathan Hoffman - friend of fascists and EDL - was escorted out of the building too. Outside there was a pathetically small demonstration by a group of racists.

John Pilger, a life-long campaigning journalist

On another note entirely, I'm off on my holidays so this blog is likely to remain quiet for some time.

Tony Greenstein

Zionist attempts to ban conference - naturally it had to be anti-Semitic despite the large number of Jewish speakers

Racist solicitor Robert Festenstein Alleges Palestine Expo is an 'anti-Jewish hate fest'

Far-Right Zionist 'charity' Campaign Against Antisemitism Does its Best to Get Conference Banned

Racists demonstrate outside

Racist Zio is Desperate

Racist demonstration outside Palestine Expo 2017

Racists who found it difficult to accept a Palestine festival

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Why Israel and Zionism's Leaders Supports Viktor Orban's Anti-Semitic Campaign Against George Soros

July 22, 2017, 7:17 pm

≫ Next: Supreme Court Abolishes Employment Tribunal Fees - Thank the Lib Dems, Jo Swinson & Vince Cable for introducing them

≪ Previous: Palestine Expo 2017 - The Largest Palestine Event in Europe - Packed and Successful

Zionism has no objection to Orban Rehabilitating Hungary’s War-time pro-Nazi leader Miklos Horthy

The Main Enemy is Israel's human rights groups

Admiral Horthy and Hitler

In March 1989, in an article ‘Zionism and anti-Semitism’ [Return 1] I wrote, in respect of Israel’s warm relations with the neo-Nazi Junta in Argentina, which had tortured and murdered up to 3,000 left-wing Jews (as well as up to 30,000 non-Jewish socialists) between 1976 and 1983 that:

‘What Argentina demonstrates is that an anti-Semitic regime will also be authoritarian, semi-fascist and a creature of US imperialism. In short, one which the Israeli state is only too willing to do business with, politically, militarily and economically, its own Jews notwithstanding.’

The same could be said for Hungary today, which, with its 100,000 Jews is the largest such community in Eastern Europe. Indeed the idea of helping stimulate a little anti-Semitism in Hungary order to ‘encourage’ its Jews to move to Israel must be almost irresistible to Zionism’s leaders.

Once again, given the choice between anti-Semites and those supporting universal values of human rights like B’tselem and Breaking the Silence, Zionism’s leaders prefer the former.

George Soros

Last week Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to Hungary to meet his good friend Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban it was who was responsible for the erection of a barbed wire fence against Syrian refugees entering Hungary. Netanyahu boasts of constructing a fence against African refugees trying to enter Israel from the Sinai desert. Israel too refused to accept any Syrian refugees. Clearly these two racists had a lot to talk about.

Just before Netanyahu set out on his travels, the Israeli Ambassador in Hungary, Yossi Amrani, in response to pressure from the Hungarian Jewish community, criticised Orban for an anti-Semitic campaign against the US billionaire and philanthropist, George Soros. Soros grew up in Hungary as a child and he survived the Nazi dragnet and deportation to Auschwitz. As a result of his experiences, which include the notorious collaboration between the Hungarian Zionists led by Rudolf Kasztner and the Nazi butchers under Eichmann, Soros became a non-Zionist.

Protesters demonstrate against Orbán’s education changes, outside the Central European University, founded by Soros. Photograph: Zoltan Balogh/AP

Soros’s major crime in the eyes of Zionism and Israel’s Right (which comprises some 90% of Israeli society), is that he has helped fund the liberal New Israel Fund and various human rights groups. Soros has also funded various Open Society and anti-communist groups in Eastern European. Viktor Orban also hates Soros. His liberal Free University in Budapest has been the subjectof a concerted campaign by Orban to close it down. Budapest has seen a massive government funded poster campaign vilifying Soros. The poster tells Hungarians that Soros must not have the ‘last laugh’. This is a thinly disguised reference to Hitler’s notorious ‘prophecy speech of January 30 1939, which he repeated on numerous occasions.

Campaign posters against George Soros at a subway station in Budapest, Hungary (Credit Pablo Gorondi/AP)

In his speech Hitler announced that he would

“once more be a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe should again succeed in plunging the nations into a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation (vernichtung) of the Jewish race throughout Europe.”

Hitler continued:

… I have often been a prophet in my life and was generally laughed at. During my struggle for power, the Jews primarily received with laughter my prophecies that I would someday assume the leadership of the state and ... then, among many other things, achieve a solution of the Jewish problem. I suppose that meanwhile the then surrounding laughter of Jewry in Germany is now choking in their throats.’

An anti-Soros billboard with a swastika and Soros’s name replaced by Viktor Orban’s, seen in Budapest, on July 17, 2017. (Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel)

Soros, is well known in Britain for his role in Black Wednesdaywhen the pound was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, but not before Soros had made over $1 Billion at the Bank of England’s expense by selling sterling short. Since then Soros has occupied the position of the demonic, all-powerful international Jewish financier, a figure much loved by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.

One of the main purveyors of this image of Soros is Glenn Beck, formerly of Fox TV. I say formerly because even Fox TV was forced to fire Beck when his anti-Semitic conspiracy theories became too much. You get a flavour of the type of politics I am referring to from the following interview with John Cardillo who is described as an ‘investigative blogger at JohnCardillo.com, President of PsyID’.

Burnt out gas station in Fergusson Missouri

You may remember the riots at Fergusson, Missouri nearly 3 years ago. You might think that the cause of those riots was the Police murder of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18 year old Black teenager. You would however be wrong. It was all down to George Soros pulling the financial strings as the Jewish head of an ‘anti-American’ communist conspiracy.

Glenn: Okay, so my question was radical Islamists, anti-Israel people, Communists, Socialists, will work together to destabilize Europe and the Western world, so now we’re looking at Ferguson. That fits into the Western world, and I wanted to know where is this push coming from, this anti-police push? Because I don’t believe that it’s actually ground, grassroots. So, I asked you to go in and look, who is starting the fire, and boy—

John: It’s interesting, isn’t it?

Glenn: It is. John: Well, you’re right. It’s the Islamists. It’s the Communists. It’s the anti-Americans, and it’s funded by a guy we all know, George Soros.

Glenn: What a surprise.

John: To the tune of $33 million that we can find.

Beck’s two-part “exposé” of George Soros, whom he called “The Puppet Master,” is held to have finally pushed Fox TV into firing him. As Michelle Goldberg wrotein the Daily Beast, it was ‘a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles.’

Of course none of this stopped Beck being awardedthe Zionist Organization of America's 2011 Defender of Israel Award or being invited to address Israel’s Knesset. Beck’s reception was akin to a “rock concert.” MK Michael ben-Ari, an ex-Kahanist (who had previously torn up a copy of the New Testament) said“I think Glenn Beck should take my seat in the Knesset.”

During the course of his two year stint at Fox, Beck had openly recommended the work of Nazi sympathiser Elizabeth Dilling, who had spoken of “Ike the kike” and Kennedy’s New Frontier as the “Jew Frontier.” Beck devoted an entire show to a conspiracy theory on bankers such as the Rothschilds, interviewing the conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, who describedthe Czarist anti-Semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion “as accurately describing much of what is happening in our world today.” The Protocols, which were the basis of much of the Nazis’ anti-Semitism, were described by Norman Cohn as a Warrant for Genocide. Beck accused Soros of being a “puppet master notorious for collapsing economies and regimes all around the world” Beck has however a defence against the charge of anti-Semitism. He also attacksSoros as an atheist and for being a critic of Israel.

It is often said that anti-Semites hide their anti-Semitism behind criticism of Israel and Zionism whereas the opposite is far more common. Most anti-Semites today, of which Beck is a good example, hide their anti-Semitism behind support of Israel.

Viktor Orban therefore was in very good company when he launched his campaign against Soros. Far from Netanyahu criticising him for his anti-Semitism, quite the opposite took place and Israel’s Ambassador in Hungary Yossi Amrani was forced to withdraw his mild criticisms of Orban.

The attack on Soros was the least of Orban’s sins though. His real crime has been the campaign by Orban and his Fidesz party to rehabilitateAdmiral Horthy, Hungary’s ruler between 1920 and 1944 and the author of Hungary’s war-time alliance with Nazi Germany. Horthy was quite open about the fact that he was an anti-Semite:

As regards the Jewish problem, I have been an anti-Semite throughout my life. I have never had contact with Jews. I have considered it intolerable that here in Hungary everything, every factory, bank, large fortune, business, theatre, press, commerce, etc. should be in Jewish hands, and that the Jew should be the image reflected of Hungary, especially abroad. Since, however, one of the most important tasks of the government is to raise the standard of living, i.e., we have to acquire wealth, it is impossible, in a year or two, to replace the Jews, who have everything in their hands, and to replace them with incompetent, unworthy, mostly big-mouthed elements, for we should become bankrupt. This requires a generation at least. [R Patai, the Jews of Hungary, p. 546]

Instead from 1938 onwards Horthy introduced three successive anti-Jewish acts, the last one of which in August 1941 outlawed sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews and defined as Jewish anyone with 2 or more Jewish grandparents.

In March 1944, after learning of Hungarian peace overtures to the Allies, German troops invaded its ally and set up a pro-Nazi government under Döme Sztójay, the Hungarian Ambassador to Germany.

On May 15^ththe deportation of 437,000 Jews to Auschwitz began and it was not until July 7^ththat Horthy finally put an end to the deportations. Virtually all Jews in the provinces had been deported but those in Budapest had largely escaped (although around 50,000 were to die at the hands of the Iron Cross government that the Nazis installed from October 23^rd onwards). Historians will argue over the actual responsibility of Horthy for the extermination of the bulk of Hungarian Jewry however it is indisputable that if Horthy was able to put an end to the deportations in early July he could have done so far sooner. It was only with a massive US bombardment of Budapest on July 2^nd and what amounted to a ‘bombardment of Horthy’s conscience’ by the Pope, King Gustav of Sweden and many other world leaders, that the deportations were brought to an end.

The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu can not only sup with Viktor Orban but actually join in with the attack on George Soros shows the depth to which Zionism will go. The fake condemnation of ‘anti-Semitism’ by Zionism in the West should not blind us to the fact that Zionism has no problems with genuine anti-Semitism, indeed it welcomes anti-Semitism in many cases. It is only opposition to Israel and Zionism, to the racism and apartheid that Palestinians experience, that is deemed ‘anti-Semitism’. Genuine Jew hatred can always be forgiven if the anti-Semite in question supports Israel.

Below are a number of articles from Ha’aretz, Israel’s only liberal daily, decrying the alliance between Netanyahu and the Israeli government and the Hungarian anti-Semites of Fidesz and Orban.

Tony Greenstein

Editorial Israel Sides With anti-Semites

The more nationalistic Israel becomes, the more its affection will grow for those who promote nationalism and xenophobia, even if they are anti-Semites, as seen in Netanyahu's dealings with Hungary's government

Haaretz Editorial Jul 13, 2017 3:04 AM

The Hungarian government’s announcement that it will remove posters denouncing Hungarian-born Jewish tycoon George Soros before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrival in the country does not in any way mitigate the premier’s scandalous behavior in this matter.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his party, Fidesz, are conducting a nationalist, racist and Islamophobic election campaign. With rhetoric that is most familiar to the Israeli ear, they claim that Soros is funding civil society organizations and liberal nonprofits in Hungary. The Jewish community in Hungary has expressed concern that the campaign is encouraging anti-Semitism, and the Israeli ambassador in Hungary issued a condemnation and demanded the posters be removed. But the Hungarian right’s ideological partners among the Israeli right wing were infuriated by the ambassador’s announcement, as it ostensibly defended Soros, whom they see as assisting the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement against Israel.

Netanyahu, as usual, succumbed to the pressure, and his office ordered the Foreign Ministry to issue a clarification, stating that the earlier condemnation “in no way was meant to delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.”

Ultra-nationalism is and has always been inherently linked to anti-Semitism, including hatred of the “universal Jew,” whose very existence is seen as a threat to subvert the world’s division into nations. The behavior of the Netanyahu government shows that even Israel, the Jewish state, is not immune to this hatred.

Israelis don’t need Soros to know that Jews can be declared subversives in their own country. Those who advance universalist agendas and fight for human rights, including the rights of minorities and foreigners, are denounced in Israel as enemies. Their Jewishness is irrelevant to this loyalty test. Moreover, the more Israelis view the occupation not as a problem to resolve but as the flagship of Jewish nationalism, the more its opponents are perceived as enemies of the people.

It seems loyalty to Israel is being evaluated by new parameters in keeping with the spirit of the times. Two weeks ago Orban praised the Holocaust-era Hungarian ruler Miklos Horthy, who collaborated with the Nazis and under whom half a million Hungarian Jews were sent to the death camps. Israel protested Orban’s comments, but so as not to affect Netanyahu’s planned meeting with him next week, made do with the weak clarification offered by the Hungarian foreign minister.

The more nationalistic Israel becomes, the more the hatred of those carrying the banner of moral values and a universalist identity will grow, and they will be perceived as enemies even if they are Jews. At the same time, Israel’s affection will grow for those who promote nationalism and xenophobia, even if they are anti-Semites.

The 'Laughing Jew': The Nazi Backstory of Hungary's anti-Soros Poster Campaign

PM Netanyahu endorsed a campaign whose intent was clear: Soros, the Jew, and Orban's hate-figure, is Hungary's Enemy Number One. Hitler would have been gratified

Shimon Stein and Moshe Zimmerman Jul 13, 2017 3:24 PM

Adolf Hitler often referred to the trope of the 'Laughing Jew', the Nazi backstory to Hungary's anti-Soros poster campaign: Anti-Semitic Nazi poster auctioned in Munich, Germany. April 24, 2017. Matthias Schrader/AP

Adolf Hitler, November 8, 1942:

"Today, countless [Jews] who laughed at that time, laugh no longer. Those who are still laughing now, also will perhaps laugh no longer soon... International Jewry will be recognized in all its demoniac peril."

Hitler repeated this 'prophecy' many times from January 1939 onwards: that the 'laughing Jew' would be exterminated. By November 1942, the Holocaust was already no laughing matter. Nearly four million Jews had already been murdered.

Every literate person acquainted with the history of the Shoah is familiar with Hitler's repeated outbursts concerning the "laughing Jew." All the more, we should assume, must an Israeli, educated to remember the Shoah, be sensitive and alert when it comes to the anti-Semitic archetype of the laughing Jew.

With that historical context and moral commitment in mind, Israel's Ambassador to Hungary Yossi Amrani, in coordination with the Israeli Foreign Ministry, reacted immediately to the posters blanketing the country in a campaign instigated by the ruling Fidesz party, calling on the Hungarian people not to let George Soros "be the one who laughs last". Amrani stated: "The campaign not only evokes sad memories but also sows hatred and fear."

The intent behind the posters is clear: Soros, the Jew, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban's hate-figure, is Hungary's Enemy Number One. The allusion to Hitler's speech, conscious or not, is unambiguous and Amrani's protest against the men behind this poster was only natural. The Jewish community of Hungary is appalled and the ambassador of the country that claims to be the representative of the Jewish people reacted accordingly.

How do we therefore explain the response of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, usually extremely sensitive to supposedly anti-Semitic expressions, who openly criticized his ambassador's justified protest?

He did it by "reinterpreting" Amrani's statement: First of all: Amrani's intent was not to delegitimize those who criticize Soros, i.e. Orban and the Fidesz party. Moreover: Soros is a person "who continuously undermines Israel's democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state", and for that, he deserves this reprimand.

The anti-Soros posters blanketing Budapest metro stations. The government-led ad campaign included billboards, posters and TV ads Pablo Gorondi/AP

Here we are: The Israeli government exculpates the Hungarian government, and turns the victim of an anti-Semitic attack, Soros, into the perpetrator, the common enemy.

In pursuing its national interest, Israel has struck a balance between realpolitik and moral politics, that is to say, a value-based policy. Not always an easy task, but an essential one, especially for the state that has taken upon itself to speak and fight for the Jewish people when it comes to combating anti-Semitism.

And so in the case of Hungary, while preserving Israeli national interests, there is absolutely no need to embrace politicians (and parties) who are nationalists, racists or anti-Semites, who disguise themselves as supporters of Israel, just because both parties fight against a "common enemy"– the Left (in this case, Soros). This explains the absurd alliance between Orban's Hungary and Netanyahu's Israel and the slap in the face of Hungarian Jewry, or better – in face of diaspora Jews wherever they live.

Only a year ago Netanyahu went so far as to put the blame on the Mufti of Jerusalem for generating the Final Solution. The same Netanyahu is not going to cancel his upcoming visit to "friendly" Hungary in spite of the fact that Prime Minister Orban recently praised another of Hitler's collaborators, Admiral Miklos Horthy, who made a far more decisive contribution to Hitler's Final Solution than the Mufti.

Activists from the Egyutt (Together) party tear down an ad by the Hungarian government against George Soros in Budapest. July 12, 2017 Pablo Gorondi/AP

When the Hungarian government, under pressure, announced Wednesday that it would remove the posters from the public sphere, it did not apologize for their anti-Semitic character, but declared that their aim had already been achieved.

Israel, usually quick at suggesting anti-Semitic motives from people who dare criticize its policies, be it the foreign ministers of Sweden or Germany, or even Israeli human rights NGOs, seems to turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism stemming from dubious "friends".

Fighting anti-Semitism is a fundamental plank of Israeli politics, but anti-Semitism should not be confused with legitimate criticism against Israeli policies; the fears of diaspora Jewry must be taken seriously; and last but not least, any Israeli legitimization for populist right-wing parties in Europe, not least when they undermine the historical record of the Holocaust and the fight against contemporary anti-Semitism, must be avoided at all price.

Shimon Stein served as Israel's Ambassador to Germany 2000-7 and is research fellow at the INSS, Tel Aviv University

Moshe Zimmermann is a historian and Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Shimon Stein

Attacking Soros: Israel’s Unholy Covenant With Europe’s anti-Semitic Ultra-right

To crush ‘the ‘enemy within’, its leftist critics, Israel’s government will go all the way – complicity with Hungary’s anti-Soros campaign and spitting in the face of the Jewish diaspora included

Hillel Ben-Sasson Jul 12, 2017 2:18 PM

For more than a decade now, right wing NGOs such as Im Tirtzu and My Israel have been leading vehement campaigns against progressive philanthropies. They are enthusiastically assisted by politicians in the Likud and HaBayit HaYehudi parties.

For the right, such attacks kill two birds with one stone.

First, in the absence of a functioning center-left parliamentary opposition in Israel, attacks seek to delegitimize the most vocal opposition against government policies - those that tend to originate in civil society.

Secondly, by shifting the focus to "the enemies within", Israel’s right-wing leadership – de facto in power for four consecutive decades – manages to evade wide public criticism against its stagnant governance and policies. Attacking the New Israel Fund or European governments who support human rights work in Israel served as an Archimedean inflection point to discredit many dozens of their grantees, rendering all as traitors in a wholesale manner.

The success of the right’s strategy has been so overwhelming that in public debates in Israel and the Diaspora today, right wingers have largely abandoned the practice of providing arguments and simply respond to challenges by arguing that their interlocutor is funded by the aforementioned ‘evil’ anti-Israeli forces and therefore not worthy of stating any claim.

You’d expect that, bearing in mind this ever-expanding attack on progressive foreign aid, George Soros’ global philanthropic Open Society Foundations, which embodies the kind of support the right demonizes, would become an obvious major target.

Yet, until last week, little to no attention was paid by the usual Israeli right-wing attackers to Soros or to OSF. In all probability, the reason for “sparing” Soros’ philanthropy thus far lay in the nature of their giving. Spending many millions on humanitarian causes and democracy-building around the wider Middle East, OSF’s activity in Israel specifically and in relation to it has always been limited.

Mass protest against the Hungarian government’s campaign against civil society organizations, Heroes Square, Budapest. April 12, 2017.Zoltan Balogh/AP

If Soros and the OSF were never prominent enough to merit a direct negative campaign for Israel’s diligent right wing, why now? The answer is not to be found in any of Soros’ recent actions, but rather in the shifting interests of Israel’s hard right.

Underlying the official assault on Soros and his alleged support of BDS against Israel is the growing alliance of Israeli right-wingers with Europe’s radical right.

It began with the disturbing welcome given by members of the Likud governing party to Austrian radical right politicians. Later on, similar ties were forged between more members of Israel’s right wing, mostly its national religious faction, and new partners in Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, the American alt-right and of course, Hungary.

United around a shared hate of Arabs and Muslims, radical European right-wingers provided for certain Israeli politicians and activists a way out of their isolation in the international arena. In return, Israeli counterparts provided kosher certificates attesting that the foreign hardliners are not the anti-Semites they seem to be.

United by a shared hatred of Arabs and Muslims, radical European right-wingers offer the Israeli right legitimization: Hungarian PM Viktor Orban at the Fidesz Party congress, Budapest. Dec 13, 2015

United by a shared hatred of Arabs and Muslims, radical European right-wingers offer the Israeli right legitimization: Hungarian PM Viktor Orban at the Fidesz Party congress, Budapest. Dec 13, 2015Bloomberg

The naked truth regarding this unholy covenant was exposed when only two days after condemning the Hungarian prime minister’s vicious and openly anti-Semitic campaign against Soros, the Israeli government partly retracted and joined the choir against the Jewish billionaire and his progressive operations. It took no more than a handful of angry tweets from right-wing pundits to remind PM Netanyahu that his electoral base is not against the new anti-Semites, but rather consider them their next-of-kin. The fight against anti-Semitism could be discarded in order to make room for a shared negative portrait of Soros.

This move ought to be highly disturbing for anyone who believes in Israel and the Jewish project of national self-determination. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, one of Israel’s fundamental commitments was, and still is, the fight against anti-Semitism in all its guises and forms.

This is not only a way of protecting Israel and its international status from quasi-diplomatic forms of hidden anti-Semitism. It is also a core element of Israeli solidarity with Diaspora Jews. Abandoning this most basic tenet of Israel’s foundational core values and mission marks a dangerous slippery slope, that adds to the escalating rift between most U.S. Jews and the Israeli governing elites.

To crush ‘the enemy within’, its leftist critics, Israel’s government will go all the way, anti-Semitism included: Im Tirtzu campaign targeted left-wing artists as fifth columnists

To crush ‘the enemy within’, its leftist critics, Israel’s right-wing will go all the way, anti-Semitism included: Im Tirtzu campaign targeted left-wing artists as fifth columnists

An even more concerning aspect of these new and critically near-sighted alliances between the Israeli right and ultra-nationalist powers in Europe and the U.S. touches on the Holocaust itself. European ultra-nationalists don’t only rely on the Israeli support in rewriting their countries’ role in implementing the Final Solution; they also contribute directly to the recent upsurge in anti-Semitic incidents against Jews in the Diaspora.

Can it be that in order to secure support for the settlement project, Israel is turning its back to the Jewish people and their safety? Can it be that unwittingly, Israeli leaders are promoting a new and sophisticated form of Holocaust denial? These are the important questions to be asked, and not the irresponsible diversions of the nuances of George Soros’ position on Zionism.

Hillel Ben-Sasson is a visiting assistant professor of Israel Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. In the past he worked as Director of Programs for Molad, a think tank that received partial support from the Open Society Foundations.

On Netanyahu’s Orders: Israel's Foreign Ministry Retracts Criticism of anti-Semitism in Hungary and Strongly Attacks Soros

On Saturday, Israel’s ambassador to Hungary issued harsh statement calling on Hungarian PM and his party to remove posters against the Jewish billionaire ■ Foreign Ministry spokesperson: Soros is constantly undermining Israeli government by financing organizations that defame Jewish state

Barak Ravid Jul 09, 2017 10:26 PM

At the behest of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Foreign Ministry on Sunday retracted a statement issued the previous day by the Israeli ambassador to Hungary, which had called on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his party to halt a poster campaign against Jewish-American financier George Soros on the grounds that it was fueling anti-Semitism.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon issued a clarification that refrained from criticizing Orbán but also sharply criticized Soros himself, using claims similar to the ones being made against him by the Hungarian government.

“Israel deplores any expression of anti-Semitism in any country and stands with Jewish communities everywhere in confronting this hatred. This was the sole purpose of the statement issued by Israel’s ambassador to Hungary,” the statement said. “In no way was the statement meant to delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.”

The tension comes at a particularly sensitive time, since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Orbán in Budapest on July 18, during what will be the first visit of an Israeli premier to Hungary in 30 years. The day after their meeting, Netanyahu and Orbán are scheduled to meet with the leaders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.

On Saturday, Israeli Ambassador to Hungary Yossi Amrani issued an extraordinarily sharp statement in which he called on Orbán and his party, Fidesz, to remove posters hung throughout the country that criticized Soros.

The posters appearing all over Hungary over the past few days feature a picture of Soros laughing and are captioned, “Let’s not let Soros have the last laugh.”

Some of the posters were glued to the floor of train cars in Budapest and other cities, so that anyone boarding the train would have to step on them.

Orbán and Fidesz are attacking Soros – who was born in Budapest and survived Nazi-occupied Hungary – because of the latter’s supposed activity against Hungary’s harsh policies toward the entry of Muslim refugees.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Budapest, July 4, 2017.ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP

Orbán and Fidesz have taken what many see as a nationalist, racist and Islamophobic line ahead of the 2018 election. They claim Soros funds civil society groups and liberal associations in Hungary with the purpose of “settling a million migrants” in the country.

The Jewish community in Hungary, numbering over 100,000, is extremely concerned by the messages in Orbán’s election campaign – particularly the ones against Soros. Since the launch of the campaign, the Hungarian media has reported a number of incidents in which anti-Semitic graffiti has been spray-painted on the posters.

Senior figures in the Jewish community have conveyed very worried messages to the Israeli Embassy in Budapest about the posters, which they say have anti-Semitic connotations and encourage an atmosphere of aggression against Jews, especially because many Hungarians consider Soros as first and foremost Jewish.

Following the messages conveyed by the local Jewish communities, there were consultations between Amrani and Foreign Ministry staffers in Jerusalem, after which it was decided to issue a statement critical of the poster campaign.

The wording of the statement was approved by the ministry’s deputy director general for diplomacy, Alon Ushpiz, and Foreign Ministry Director General Yuval Rotem.

“The campaign not only evokes sad memories but also sows hatred and fear,” the statement said. “It’s our moral responsibility to raise a voice and call on the relevant authorities to exert their power and put an end to this cycle.”

Although Netanyahu holds the foreign ministry portfolio, the senior Foreign Ministry officials that approved the wording of the statement did not coordinate its release with the Prime Minister’s Office, which learned of it from the media.

After the statement was issued, there was also pushback from right-wing politicians and media outlets, which condemned the Foreign Ministry for issuing a statement that seemed to defend Soros, whom the Israeli right sees as leading the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

As a result of this pressure, the Prime Minister’s Office ordered the Foreign Ministry to issue a clarification that included a general denunciation of anti-Semitism without specifically mentioning Hungary, while also criticizing Soros.

This is the second recent clash between Israel and Hungary over messages with anti-Semitic connotations promulgated by Orbán and his party.

At an election rally two weeks ago, Orbán praised Hungary’s leader during World War II, Miklós Horthy, who collaborated with the Nazis and under whose rule 500,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to extermination camps, where most were murdered.

Israel protested the statements to the government in Budapest. However, in order not to compromise the upcoming summit, it agreed to restraint itself and made do with a weakly worded clarification by the Hungarian foreign minister.

see also With Netanyahu in town, Hungary’s Jews lament Israel ‘deserting’ them

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Supreme Court Abolishes Employment Tribunal Fees - Thank the Lib Dems, Jo Swinson & Vince Cable for introducing them

July 28, 2017, 11:30 am

≫ Next: More Fake News – Zionist Claims that Anti-Semitism has increased by 30% in one year

≪ Previous: Why Israel and Zionism's Leaders Supports Viktor Orban's Anti-Semitic Campaign Against George Soros

Grenfell Inquiry Judge Moore-Bick Rejected UNISON’s Application at the Court of Appeal

I must confess that I have a personal interest in the historic judgment of the Supreme Court to overturn the introduction of penalty fees aimed at deterring applications to Employment Tribunals. Before illness forced me into retirement in 2013 I had spent over a decade representing clients in Employment Tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal on behalf of Brighton Unemployed Workers Centre. Far from most workers submitting vexatious claims my experience was that most people were loath to go through a tribunal hearing if they could avoid it. It puts a great strain on most people. Vexatious claimants can be easily barred but my experience was that rogue employers would and did everything to cheat employees out of their rights. The Tory Government, with the active collusion of the Lib Dems, sought to prevent people exercising their lawful rights.

The Lib Dems and Jo Swinson now claim that they were taken by surprise at the drop in employment cases. Only an idiot or a fool could have thought that the level at which fees were set would have no effect on tribunal applications.

If fees had been in existence I would have been unable to have brought a whistleblowing case concerning corruption in a charity, the Deans Youth Project in Brighton. Corruption which was covered up by Tory councillor Dee Simson and New Labour's Linda Newman

Although most of my cases succeeded in general it is only a minority of workers who succeed in Employment Tribunal cases. Most cases are settled out of court. In discrimination cases in particular, levels of success are as low as 20%. It is very difficult proving that an employer sacked you because you are a woman or disabled or pregnant or because you were a member of a trade union. The employer's argument would be that the person wasn’t good at their job or that they were no longer needed. Very few people admit to discriminating. Employers have always had the cards stacked in their favour as very few employees are willing to give evidence against an employer if they are still working for them. British judges are notorious for twisting the law in favour of the employer. E.g. the Reverse Burden of Proof Regulations which were intended to make it easier for victims of discrimination have had almost no effect because of the way the judiciary has interpreted them.

A whistleblowing case I won at the EAT - it would have cost £2800 to bring the case if fees had existed

I specialised in Whistleblowing and my last major case involved a woman who was an office manager in a local Brighton charity, the Deans Youth Project, who revealed that the organisation was being systematically defrauded. When she told the trustees, one of whom Dee Simson was a local Conservative councillor, they decided to sack the whistleblower and protect the person who had raked in thousands of pounds through false invoicing! It took a 3 day tribunal with 3 other Conservative councillors giving evidence for us before the Tribunal unanimously finding in our favour.

If an employer had sacked you unfairly or because you were pregnant or failed to pay you holiday pay then before July 2013 you could make an immediate application to an Employment Tribunal and if you failed there you could appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal. In a discrimination cae you could also submit a Questionnaire to the employer asking why they discriminated against you. The Tories and the Lib Dems abolished this, extended the period before you could claim unfair dismissal to two years and introduced a raft of other provisions that reduced compensation and put other hurdles in employees place. However the introduction of Tribunal fees by the Business Secretary Vince Cable and Jo Swinson meant that for most people it wasn't worth paying a small fortune to a Tribunal that was likely to find against you on procedural or other grounds.

The Daily Mail warns of a 'tide of employment tribunal claims' a change from a 'tide' of immigrants

The most simple unfair deduction of wages claims would cost £390 to get into tribunal which meant that the lowest paid simply couldn’t afford to issue a claim especially as they would often be claiming less than that amount. You therefore had the right to things like 28 days holiday pay, maternity pay etc. but if you can't enforce your rights then they are nugatory.

The reduction in claims since the introduction of fees - it took some effort to say nothing of hostility to workers rights to ignore the evidence

For most other claims it cost £1,200 pounds to have a Tribunal hearing, a figure which deterred some 80% of people from even putting in claims. If you didn’t have a trade union backing you or you didn’t get a high salary the chances were you had to forego your rights. It cost even more, £1600, to put in an appeal to the EAT. I won five cases at the EAT, which was the High Court for employment cases, but I doubt if any of my clients could have afforded £1,600.

Lib Dems Vince Cable Introduced Tribunal Fees

The Lib Dems are and always have been a right-wing pro-austerity business party. It was therefore natural that they should go into coalition with the Tories in 2010. Whether it was the Bedroom Tax, the Privatisation of the NHS, Student Fees or Austerity, the Lib Dems played the part of the Tories loyal partners from 2010-2015.

Jo Swinson, Lib-Dem Deputy Leader - introduced fees and now opposes them!

Jo Swinson, who is now the Lib Dems Deputy Leader, issued a press release in 2013 supportingthe introduction of tribunal fees and as Under Secretary of State for Employment Relations she spoke in the House of Commons in favour of them! Ed Davey was another Lib Dem Minister who played his part in the introduction of these fees.

Yet what would you expect from these opportunistic hypocrites after UNISON’s victory in the Supreme Court after four years litigation? In the Daily Mail we have Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem’s deputy leader quotedas saying that ‘This is a landmark victory for workers and for access to justice.’ Yes it is indeed a landmark victory and a judgment that will be remembered for years for the way in which it embraced broad principles of the right to justice for those without means. But it was also a judgment against the decisions that she made when she was an employment minister.

Grenfell Tower Judge Moore-Bick headed the Court of Appeal decision to ignore the evidence in favour of their class interests

No doubt if the courts were to strike down the bedroom tax the Lib Dems would welcome that too as a victory! Only a party without a shred of principle could welcome a judgment which overturns their own previous policies in government.

The fact is that when you scratch a Lib Dem you find a Tory underneath. Historically the Liberals were as reactionary as the Tories. It was the Liberals under Asquith who led the opposition to womens’ suffrage and introduced the Cat and Mouse Act. It was Lloyd George who introduced the Black and Tans into Ireland and threatened a carnival of violence if the Partition of Ireland wasn’t accepted.

Whistleblowing case which unearthed naked corruption in New Labour inner city regeneration scheme

The victory by UNISON is very welcome especially given that three times in the past four years the High Court and the Court of Appeal have rejected the attempt by UNISON to have the fees declared unlawful. I have to confess that when I first read the Court of Appeal judgment in the case in 2015 I was quite amazed by the quality of the arguments used in justification of the decision to reject UNISON’s application. The Judges, including Sir Martin Moor-Bick went out of their way not to have to find in favour of UNISON.

On the face of it it was clear that with a reduction of the order of 80% in the number of people making claims then the introduction of fees quite clearly were deterring people from putting in claims. Not only was this an obstacle to obtaining justice but it breached the European legal principle of Effectiveness, that is they made it impossible to enforce one’s legal rights.

Yet the Court of Appeal adopted a miserable nitpicking approach that is typical of the lead judge Lord Underhill, a former President of the EAT and a judicial pedant. In Para 67 it ruled that:

‘It is quite clear from the comparison between the number of claims brought in the ET before and after 29 July 2013 that the introduction of fees has had the effect of deterring a very large number of potential claimants. However, that by itself does not evidence or constitute a breach of the effectiveness principle. It is inevitable that potential claimants will be more willing to embark on litigation when it is free than when they have to make a payment upfront, which there is no certainty of recovering; and the introduction of fees was accordingly bound to have such an effect.’

What they were saying was that yes, the introduction of fees had deterred people from making claims but it can be put down to the fact that it is inevitable that people will not exercise their rights when it costs them to get into tribunal! That was precisely the point that UNISON were making, that when a tribunal is not free people don't apply yet the Judges, Moor-Bick among them were happy to find the slightest pretext to avoid the obvious. In their Poor Law approach they cite the decision of the High Court that:

The mere fact that fees impose a burden on families with limited means and that they may have to use hard-earned savings is not enough. But it is not possible to identify any test for judging when a fee regime is excessive. It will be easier to judge actual examples of those who assert they have been or will be deterred by the level of fees imposed."

When UNISON’s counsel suggested that there was an ‘irresistible inference’ that the tribunal fees were deterring claimants, the Court of Appeal was determined to make it impossible to prove such a case. Instead of looking at broad overarching principles

Para 68: I have found this part of the case troubling. Like both Divisional Courts, I have a strong suspicion that so large a decline is unlikely to be accounted for entirely by cases of "won't pay" and that it must also reflect at least some cases of "can't pay"; and I have accordingly been tempted by Ms Monaghan's submission that the figures speak for themselves. But in the end I do not think that that is legitimate. The truth is that, looked at coolly, there is simply no safe basis for an untutored intuition about claimant behaviour or therefore for an inference that the decline cannot consist entirely of cases where potential claimants could realistically have afforded to bring proceedings but have made a choice not to.

What is most interesting about this tortured logic is the almost painful way the Court of Appeal struggled to find a way of avoiding the obvious inference from an 80% drop in claimants. In essence what they were saying is that claimants chose not to pay tribunal fees because they spent their money on clothes, going out or heaven forbid drinking alcohol. Working class people are expected to be abstemious and save up for months at a time (despite there being a 3 month limit on making most claims!).

Suffice to say that one of the three judges who were quite happy with this anti-working class clap trap was one Lord Justice Moore-Bick, who happens to be the judge who has been chosen to chair the Inquiry into Grenfell Tower. Yet again it would appear that when given the choice, Moore-Bick demonstrates no sympathy at all with the poor. It is yet another reason to campaign to remove this upper class reptile from the Grenfell Tower inquiry.

Tony Greenstein

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More Fake News – Zionist Claims that Anti-Semitism has increased by 30% in one year

July 30, 2017, 5:12 pm

≫ Next: This is why Netanyahu is proposing to ban Israeli human rights organisations receiving foreign funding

≪ Previous: Supreme Court Abolishes Employment Tribunal Fees - Thank the Lib Dems, Jo Swinson & Vince Cable for introducing them

Despite the headlines - Anti-Semitism in Britain is DECLINING not increasing

A decline in anti-Semitism doesn't serve Zionist interests

Update

A very useful comment by Alan Maddison below. The salient points are:

Anti-Semitism represents around 1.5% of reported Hate Crimes in the UK.
Evidence of the inflated and tendetious nature of the CST report is that only 8% of claimed incidents are violent compared to the normal ratio for hate crimes of one-third.
One in four hate crime assaults lead to injury compared to none, either this year or last year, in the CST reports. It clearly suggests that what is counted as an assault is trivial.

This suggests that in comparison with other hate crime incidents, the actual level of incidents in the CST Report are about one-quarter of those claimed. To include social media posts is absurd, as the CST itself recognises when it counts as a single incident multiple broadcasts by the same outlet. Social media attacks if actually counted would simply swamp any meaningful statistics given the level of racist tweets and FB comments and posts. They are on a completely different level from actual verbal abuse or assault.

Anti-semitism is a marginal prejudice compared to racism against Muslims and Roma in most countries

More fake news from Stephen Pollard's Jewish Chronicle

Pollard replies to Jonathan Freedland defending Michal Kaminski

The Community Security Trust, an overtly Zionist organisation, that works closely with Mossad, Israel’s MI6, compiles annual and 6 monthly reports of the incidence of anti-Semitism. Its figures often differ widely from those of the Police and are subjective. They are based to a large extent on self-reporting, social media posts and an ingrained Zionist political assumptions that opposition to Israel is inherently anti-Semitic.

The Zionist Communist Security Trust's latest bogus offerings - complete with two helpfully placed display boards

Their latest Report ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS - January–June 2017, comes with a photo in some junkyard in Suffolk with a Star of David and the word ‘Die’ underneath side by side with a swastika. Presumably the purpose behind this photo is to persuade us that this is a common phenomenon in most junkyards and industrial wasteyards in Britain!

We are breathlessly told that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain from January to June 2016 compared to the previous period has leapt from 589 to 767. Anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, should be condemned. But the deliberate inflating of anti-Semitism, the political use of false accusations of anti-Semitism in order to deflect criticism of Israel, are equally appalling. Zionism redefines anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism at the same time as ignoring genuine anti-Semitism.

A government poster in Hungary attacking George Soros - graffiti says 'stinking Jew'

We are told in the 2017 report that CST recorded 425 antisemitic incidents in Greater London, a rise of 10 per centfrom the 387 incidents recorded in Greater London during the same period in 2016. There are no comparisons with Police statistics but given the wide disparity between recorded crime incidents and the CST figures in previous years we should take the CST statistics with a hefty pinch of salt.

An example of Zionist anti-Semitism directed at anti-Zionist Jews - CST won't record any such incidents

In the Independent of 29.12.15. we learn that Anti-Semitic attacks in London soar by 60 per cent in 2015. ‘Between November 2014 and November 2015, a total of 483 such crimes were committed, up from 299 during the same period in the previous year.’ Although they say crimes were committed we are not told what the number of convictions are.

Compare this to the 2014 CST Incident Report the CST recorded 583 antisemitic incidents in Greater London in 2014. Compare this to the Police figures of 299, almost double.

The Independent goes from bad to worse as it accepts the CST Report uncritically

According to the 2015 CST Incidents Report there were 472 incidents compared to 483 police recorded crimes so it would appear that the 2015 figures bore some relationship to the facts. (in the 2016 CST Incidents Report the figure jumps from 472 to 494).

In 2016 the CST record the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Greater London as 813, a significant increase but how reliable are they? The comparable Police figures are not available but I suggest that they are a mixed bag consisting of some anti-Semitic incidents coupled with a lot of padding to make the figures look good (in Zionist parlance an increase in anti-Semitism is always good because it demonstrates that the only place Jews aren’t under attack is Israel).

The true face of Zionist anti-Semitism

However let us pretend that the CST figures are true. Then the question is how many of the incidents arise from the actions of Israel? After all Zionist and Jewish organisations in Britain go out of their way to say that British Jews support the actions of Israel against the Palestinians. They spend their time defending the indefensible in the name of British Jews. Is it any wonder that some people take them at their word?

It is ironic that the main cause of what is termed anti-Semitism in Britain today is the so-called Jewish state. This is not anti-Semitism, it consists is mainly of stupid reactions to the claims of Zionist organisations that British Jews fully supports Israel’s criminal actions. Since the CST fully supports the idea that British Jews are fully behind Israel’s crimes what they are effectively measuring is the efficacy of their and their fellow Zionists actions. Israel claims it represents all Jews, not just its own Jewish citizens but all Jews worldwide. Netanyahu describes himself as the Prime Minister of all Jews. Why shouldn’t some people take what the Zionists say to be true? Israel is, after all a Jewish State.

To the Zionists, the CST including, anything to do with support of the Palestinians or opposition to Zionism is automatically ‘anti-Semitic’. The attacks on Palestine Expo 2017 this month described it as a ‘Jewish hate fest’ – a massive gathering of some 17,000 people that included numerous Jewish speakers as well as people like John Pilger.

The Community Security Organisation, which changed its name to the CST, also sees as one of its tasks the removal of anti-Zionist Jews from communal functions - in this case they went to far removing members of Mapam, the fake Zionist leftists

Dave Rich, the CST’s Deputy Director of Communications, brought out a book last year entitled ‘The Left’s Jewish Problem’. As Wikpedia describes it‘Rich traces the origin of contemporary left-wing anti-Semitic anti-Israel rhetoric to the early 1970s, when Peter Hainand Louis Eakes of the Young Liberals wing of the British Liberal Party reconceptualized the national liberation movement of the Jewish people as an imperialist project imposing apartheidon an indigenous people.

The fact that a senior officer of the CST can seriously describe a settler colonial movement (which is how historically Zionism described itself) as a ‘national liberation movement of the Jewish people’ (when did change of description occur) is illustrative of the CST’s political problems. Historically anti-fascist and socialists Jews always rejected the Zionist alliance with British imperialism.

To the Zionists anything smacking of the term Palestine is automatically anti-Semitic. The fact is that most ‘anti-Semitism’ in Britain is a reaction to solidarity with the victims of Zionist settler colonialism and that is the main purpose of these fake news figures.

Those who cry ‘anti-Semitism’ at the drop of a hat are not only legitimising genuine anti-Semitism (because people find it difficult to distinguish between genuine anti-Semitism and the false Zionist variety) but they display their contempt for Jews who were the real victims of anti-Semitism.

If you want to know what anti-Semitism really was like you could do worse than read ‘The Crime and the Silence’ by Anna Bikont. This was a book about what happened in the town of Jedwabne on July 10 1941 in a town made up of 40% Jews. Some of their Polish neighbours herded up to 1600 Jews into a barn which was then set ablaze. It wasn’t even done at the instigation of the Nazis but by their own neighbours and activists in the Polish Nationalist Party (Endeks).

The Polish anti-Semite Michal Kaminski speaking at Israel's security conference in Herzliya

Nor was this the only such crime of this nature. In nearby Radzilow, three days before Jedwabne, the whole population was rounded up and burned. In 2001, a book by Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbours, revealed what had happened in Jedwabne. The Polish government under President Aleksander Kwasniewski reacted by apologising and under much criticism held a memorial meeting in Jedwabne and erected a monument to those murdered on the 60^thanniversary of the massacre.

At the same time, in Jedwabne itself, led by its Catholic priest Father Orlowski and Bishop Stefanek, there was formed a Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne. Its purpose being to defend those who took part in the murder of its Jews. They pretended that it was the Nazis who carried out the massacre and also claimed that in any event the Jews had brought it on themselves by collaborating with the Russian troops when they invaded Western Poland and Jedwabne between 1939 and 1941.

To cite on typical incident from the book:

‘In August 1937, 65 violent anti-Jewish incidents were noted in the Bialystock region.... on August 19 during a market in the hamlet of Sniadowo a crowd shouting ‘Jews to Palestine’ and ‘There’s no room for you in Poland’ drove away tradesmen. The fleeing Jews were thrashed with whips and one of them was hit on the head with a post.’ (p.44)

Marek Edelman ‘the last living leader off the Warsaw Ghetto uprising’ and a leader of the socialist and anti-Zionist Bund described how ‘Jedwabne was not the first case nor was it an isolated one. In Poland at that time the mood was ripe for killing Jews.’ (p.9) It wasn’t all Poles by any means, even in the Endek dominated Jedwabne. Many Poles were horrified by what happened. Edelman describes how in Warsaw maybe 100,000 Poles were involved in hiding and protecting the Jews, but nonetheless there was real murderous anti-Semitism even before the Nazi invasion, driven by the anti-communism of the Nationalist Right.

Polish anti-Semite Michal Kaminski having a friendly chat with Israel's Ambassador to the UK Ron Prossor

In 2001 the far-Right Law and Justice Party, a racist and often anti-Semitic party, which is now in government in Poland opposed a national apology for Jedwabne. Dr Rafal Pankowski, a member of the Never Again Association and author of The Populist Radical Right in Polanddescribed the role played by Law and Justice Party MP for the area of Jedwabne, Michal Kaminski

"As a local MP, Kaminski played a key role in the campaign questioning the Polish responsibility for the Jedwabne massacre. The campaign had strongly antisemitic overtones,"

In an interview with the nationalist Nasza Polskanewspaper in March 2001 Kaminski argued that, ‘while the massacre could not be defended, Poles should not apologise for what they did until Jews apologised to them for their actions which had included "murdering Poles".’ Is Michal Kaminski fit to lead the Tories in Europe? Can you imagine? Kaminski said that those Polish Jews, the perhaps 5% out of 3.3 million who survived the Holocaust should apologise to those who had acted as their executioners?

Not only did Kaminski chair the European Conservative Reform group in the European parliament, which the Tories had just joined, he was defended by people such as the current Chair of Conservative Friends of Israel, Eric Pickles. He was also defended by leading Zionists in the Jewish Leadership Council and not least by Stephen Pollard, the racist who editor of the Jewish Chronicle. Pollard is another who is very hot on ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party.

Pollard, penned an article for the Guardian (9.10.09.) titled ‘Poland’s Kaminski is not an anti-Semite – he’s a friend to Jews.’ Even Pollard had to admit that Kaminski as a 15 year old joined The National Rebirth of Poland which was ‘virulently anti-Semitic and neofascist’. Nonetheless Kaminski was a ‘friend to the Jews’. why? Because he was a supporter of Israel in Brussels where ‘visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ In other words his support of Israel and Zionism excused his virulent anti-Semitism. In the same article Pollard defended the Latvian MEP Robert Zile who every goesMarch on a march with the veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS.

None of this should be of any surprise. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has just returned from a visit to Hungary to greet his friend Viktor Orban, who when not demonising Muslim immigrants is busy rehabilitating the pro-Nazi leader of war-time Hungary who presided over the deportation of 437,000 Jews to Auschwitz. See Israel’s love-in with Hungary’s anti-Semites exposes the ugly core of Zionism. Indeed Netanyahu and the Zionists joined in with Orban’s anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros, who is held by the fascist and racist Right to be the archetypal figure of the International Jewish Financier.

Even some liberal Zionists began to find out with the ascent to power of Donald Trump and his chief aide, Steve Bannon, ex-CEO of Breitbart News, that being an anti-Semite and a Zionist are quite compatible. Naomi Zeveloff in Forward15.11.16 How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel — and Anti-Semitic at the Same Timedescribed how ‘Breitbart News, ‘is widely known as a platform for white nationalism and anti-Semitism. It is also brazenly Zionist…’

This is the context in which the CST’s Report on Anti-Semitism should be treated. 23% of the anti-Semitic incidents were held to be politically motivated of which 49, some 28% were ‘anti-Zionist’. This in itself is proof of where the CST is coming from. Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-racism. It opposes the Jewish Supremacist State of Israel. If someone is anti-Semitic then they are not anti-Zionist. It is Zionism which is happy to work with and co-exist with anti-Semitism.

I get from time to time virulent anti-Semitic tweets from Zionists, like ‘shame your family survived world can do without cunts line (sic!) you.’ It is a common insult to use the Nazi term of ‘self hater’ against Jews with a conscience. It is also logical. Zionism holds that the only way to avoid anti-Semitism is to go to Israel. Those Jews who don’t do this and even worse oppose Israel and Zionism deserve everything they get. So anti-Zionist Jews are often told that it was a pity that Hitler didn’t get them. Far from having a section for anti-Zionism if the CST were honest they would have a section reserved for Zionist anti-Semitism. But here is the catch. According to the spokesman for the CST Mark Gardener ‘CST does not classify clashes between Jews as antisemitic incidents.’ Zionist attacks on Jews, even if they are virulently anti-Semitic, don’t count as anti-Semitism!

In a message sent to my blog, a Zionist posted ‘Greenstein, you traitorous bastard, you leftist liberal Jew.’ (in Israel these days there is no greater insult than being a ‘leftist’) went on to explain how ‘It's a shame that either Hitler or the Angel of Death, missed your family's house. Or Neturei Karta's.’ finishing up with ‘Don't even call yourself a Jew,traitor.’ According to the CST this is a ‘conflict’ between Jews rather than Zionist anti-Semitism!

It would be easy to take apart CST’s 2017 Report on Anti-Semitism. 19% of it consists of social media posts, which may be anti-Semitic but hardly constitute a threat to someone’s life and limb. They document 80 physical attacks but we have no way of knowing what these consist of. What we do know is that none of them were what they describe as ‘Extreme Violence’ i.e. GBH. Of course any attack should be taken seriously, but when Muslims have to put up with arson attacks on Mosques and at Finsbury Park Mosque a racist driving a van onto the pavement killing one worshipper and injuring several others, we can put this into context. The attacks on Muslims are much more serious, much of the CST’s incidents consist of twitter posts and anti-Israel chants. Yet the government has spent millions of pounds defending Jewish institutions from a non-existent threat but has done nothing similar to protect mosques and Muslim institutions. Why? Because the Government’s anti-terrorist strategy Prevent is based on a racist perception of Muslims as a problem. Defending Jewish property is a way of defending support for Israel and Zionism – an essential requirement of British foreign policy.

We are told that there were ‘51 incidents of Damage & Desecration of Jewish property’but we are not told exactly what these consist of. Almost certainly they are trivial and minor instances of criminal damage, if that. Indeed the CST doesn’t bother to outline what ‘Jewish property’ consists of. There is no means of independently verifying the CST’s incidents except to say that there is a marked disparity, as I’ve noted before, between their reports and those of the Police. For example how many of the assaults resulted in Police prosecutions? What was the context? At the Ecostream demonstrations in British four years ago I defended myself against an extremely racist Israeli AShaike Rozanski who attacked me. Yet I was the one who was charged with assault. But perhaps this was too was recorded as an anti-Semitic incident? Who knows except that the Police dropped charges. Indeed there were a whole number of wholly bogus allegations made at the demonstrations against Palestine supporters, all of which led to acquittals in the courts. Were they anti-Semitic incidents?

Until there is proper verification and independent oversight of how the CST works and records incidents everything they say and report should be treated sceptically.

Of course there are anti-Semitic attacks, in particular on ultra-orthodox Jews in Stamford Hill who are easily recognised as Jews by their garb. Such attacks were completely ignored by the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Anti-Semitism of October 2016 which recommended adoption of the bogus IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

Like South Africa's Apartheid Prime Minister John Vorster before him, Kaminski is happy to pay homage to Zionism at the Yad Vashem propaganda museum

What we are seeing with the CST Report on Anti-Semitism, which has been taken up avidly by a press determined to defend and support the Israeli state, is the political weaponisation of anti-Semitism. For the Zionists the encouragement of the belief that the British Jewish community is facing a tsunami of anti-Semitism is useful, not least in order to encourage the emigration of British Jews to Israel.

In the Pew Research Centre’s Global Attitudes Survey 2016 just 7% of British people are shown as having unfavourable attitudes to Jews compared to 45% for Roma and 28% for Muslims. In other words racism against Muslims is measured as 4 times higher than anti-Semitism and anti-Roma hatred is over 6 times worse in Britain. In Hungary which Netanyahu praises so highly a third of respondents (32%) harbour anti-Jewish feelings, again less than the 72% hostility to Muslims. In other words, despite the best efforts of Zionism to create fake news about anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews in most countries, especially in Western Europe is all but non-existent. To even attempt to compare it with the Nazi era, as the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism does, is to belittle and diminish the very real anti-Semitism that Jews in the 1930s experienced.

↧

This is why Netanyahu is proposing to ban Israeli human rights organisations receiving foreign funding

August 2, 2017, 3:04 pm

≫ Next: Some of my best friends are Zionists – The Case of the Sunday Times Kevin Myers

≪ Previous: More Fake News – Zionist Claims that Anti-Semitism has increased by 30% in one year

In the video above , Israeli soldiers fire at an unarmed Palestinian youth who is then beaten with a rifle about his head. Clearly such incidents embarrass the Israeli government. So what is its solution? To prevent these violent armed thugs in uniform acting this way? No, the Israeli government believes in attacking Israeli human rights groups like Btselem and Breaking the Silence who publicise such matters.

Hence why Ha’aretz reported that:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the current law requiring some non-profit groups to disclose funding they receive from foreign governments is too weak, adding that he intends to push for legislation that would completely bar Israeli non-profit organizations from receiving foreign government funds.

Naturally the cruel and vicious occupation authorities then bar the parents from visiting their son and it would appear physically chain the boy to his bed, all with the co-operation of the Israeli hospital authorities.

Video: Israeli soldier shoots and beats fleeing teen

Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 1 August 2017

This video shows an Israeli soldier firing at Palestinian youths who are running away across a field. One of them, a 17-year-old boy, is hit and falls down. The Israeli soldier then strikes the boy on the head with the barrel of a gun as he lies on the ground, causing serious, potentially life-threatening injuries.

The youth, identified only as D.T. by the human rights group B’Tselem, suffered a fractured skull, bleeding inside his skull, a fractured rib and a bruised left lung. He required surgery and a prolonged stay in hospital where he was unconscious for five days.

B’Tselem saidthat the conduct of Israeli occupation forces in this incident “is particularly grave.”

The shooting took place on 10 March, in the occupied West Bank village of Silwad, where youths had earlier been responding to the incursions of Israeli occupation forces by throwing stones.

Shot while running away

A 17-year-old Palestinian suffered serious head injuries when he was shot and beaten as he ran away from Israeli soldiers.

Video of the incident, captured by the security cameras of a local gas station, was published this week by B’Tselem.

“A Border Police officer fired a sponge bullet at D.T., who was running away from him and posed no danger to anyone,” wrote B’Tselem. “Then, with D.T. lying on the ground, wounded and helpless, the officer hit him with the barrel of his gun, fracturing his skull and knocking him unconscious.”

Along with live rounds designed to kill, Israel employs a number of supposedly “less lethal” weapons to suppress protest against its military occupation, including, 22-caliber rifles, rubber-coated metal bullets and foam-tipped or sponge bullets, which are composed of an aluminum base and a dense foam nose.

But these weapons have nonetheless continued to claimchildren’s eyes and lives and to cause permanent disabilities.

Parents barred from visiting

B’Tselem said that it took another 15 minutes for the occupation forces to evacuate the boy to hospital “where he underwent head surgery” and was “treated as a dangerous prisoner, guarded round-the-clock by security personnel who prevented his parents from going near him.”

Israeli occupation authorities only gave his parents permits to go and see him for the first few days of his hospital stay and then cited “security” to ban his father altogether. During this traumatic period, the boy’s parents were not allowed to enter his room and could only look at him through a window.

Through all of this, according to B’Tselem, “D.T., a 17-year-old boy, remained in hospital completely alone, away from his home and family and restrained to the bed for part of the time.”

Routine violence and impunity

B’Tselem added: “While this account may be shocking, it is not all that uncommon: Firing unlawfully at a fleeing Palestinian youth, who posed no danger to anyone, and hitting him hard on the head – actions that could have resulted in disability or death; followed by disgraceful conduct during hospitalization in Israel, including placing restraints on an injured teenager and denying family visits are not a rare occurrence.”

In January this year, Israeli soldiers shot and killed Qusay al-Amour, 17, in Tuqu, a village near the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Video from the scene shows Israeli soldiers violently dragging away the boy after he was shot.

In December 2016, Israeli occupation forces were filmed shooting and killing 17-year-old Ahmed Zeidani as he ran away, during a night raid on the West Bank village of Beit Rima.

And in April 2016, the Israeli army closed an investigation into Yisrael Shomer, a commander of its Binyamin Brigade, who in 2015 shot to death 17-year-old Muhammad al-Kasbeh while the Palestinian teenager was fleeing. The Israeli army decided that Shomer’s videotaped slaying of al-Kasbeh had been nothing more than “a professional mistake.”

B’Tselem describedthe closure of the case as “an integral part of the whitewash mechanism which is Israel’s military investigative system.”

The following month, B’Tselem announcedit had stopped cooperating with the Israeli army unit that is supposed to investigate such abuses. The group said it no longer wanted to be a “fig leaf” for a system that guarantees impunity for perpetrators.

In the rare cases where an Israeli perpetrator is brought to trial, the penalty is normally a slap on the wrist.

B’Tselem reaffirmed in the case of D.T. that typically no one is held accountable, “guaranteeing that incidents of this sort will continue so long as the occupation does.”

↧

Some of my best friends are Zionists – The Case of the Sunday Times Kevin Myers

August 4, 2017, 8:15 pm

≫ Next: Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops Complains Again

≪ Previous: This is why Netanyahu is proposing to ban Israeli human rights organisations receiving foreign funding

Zionists defend anti-Semitic journalist because he is a devoted supporter of Israel

It used to be the case that anti-Semites used to deny their anti-Semitism by protesting that ‘some of my best friends are Jews’ . This attitude was best exemplified by Himmler. In a speech to leaders of the SS in Posen, Poland in October 1943 he declared:

And then they all come along, the eighty million good Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are swine, but this one is a first-class Jew.’ (some laughter)

Himmler went on to describe the trials and tribulations of the SS:

‘Of all those who talk like this, not one has watched, not one has stood up to it. Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet – apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness – to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written.’

This speech was recorded and used in evidence during the Nuremburg Trials.

Zionist UK Media Watch forgives Murdoch's pro-Zionist Sunday Times

Today anti-Semites deny their anti-Semitism by proclaiming their devotion to Israel and Zionism. The Jewish Chronicle's editor, Stephen Pollard, exemplifies this practice.

When speaking about Michal Kaminski, a prominent anti-Semitic politician and a leading member of Poland's far-Right Law and Justice Party, (as well as being Chair of the European Conservative and Reform Group in the European Parliament), Pollard exclaimed that: "Far from being an antisemite, Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israeli an MEP as exists."

In other words if you support the Israeli state then you cannot be anti-Semitic. This does of course have a certain logic to it, at least for Zionists. If you believe that anti-Semitism equals anti-Zionism, then it follows that supporters of Israel and Zionism cannot be anti-Semites. It is, as Tony Lerman described, an 'Alice in Wonderland' conclusion.

However it does ignore the fact that most of the far-Right in Europe - from France's Le Pen to Austria's Herr Strache - not forgetting our own British National Party and the EDL, manage to combined anti-Semitism and Zionism without any problem at all. The Trump administration in the person of Steve Bannon of Breitbart also manages to combined Zionism and anti-Semitism without any problems.

Pollard's defence of Kaminski was even too much for some Zionists, such as The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland. [Once no self-respecting politician would have gone near people such as Kaminski]. Kaminski denied wearing the Chrobry sword, the symbol of the far-Right anti-Semitic National Radical Camp Falanga. Kaminski issued a categorical denial: “No, I never wear it. I don’t even know which symbol you are referring to'before admitting that he had in fact worn it! The Chrobry sword was banned from being worn in Poland in 1933 because of its association with attacks on Jews.

Anna Bikont, a journalist with the leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza

Ms Bikont believes Mr Kaminski helped inspire anti-Semitism in Jedwabne

A BBC Newsnight Report Digging up the truth about Michal Kaminiski quotes Maria Mazurczyk, a member in 2001 of the Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne, saying of Kaminski:

"I remember at the meeting he invited older people who remembered those times, those who had been driven out to Siberia, to say that they had not just been driven out because of the Russians, but above all because of their neighbours, the Jews."

Anna Bikont, a journalist with the leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and author of 'The Crime and the Silence', described the atmosphere in Jedwabne where "there was such a lot of hate" against Jews.'' Although Kaminski was not there she believed he had helped inspire the deeply anti-Semitic atmosphere:

"Kaminski came to the place where an incredible crime was committed and he told not about the women, children, old people who died in this horrible manner, but he told about Jews who collaborated with Soviets and who killed Poles".

People gathered at Jedwabne memorial in 2001

Kaminski helped form in March 2001 the Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne. Most people would suggest that a good name was the last thing that Jedwabne possessed. In Jedwabne, a village in Western Poland, on July 10 1941 the inhabitants herded up to 1600 Jews, men, women and children, into a barn which was then set alight. Not all inhabitants committed this atrocious crime but many did.

Kaminski, whom Pollard defended as a 'good friend of the Jews' proclaimed in an interview with Martin Bright of the Jewish Chronicle (9.10.09. that '“If you are asking the Polish nation to apologise for the crime made in Jedwabne, you would require from the whole Jewish nation to apologise for what some Jewish Communists did in Eastern Poland.”

Just this one quote alone demonstrates Kaminski's anti-Semitism. Over 90% of Polish Jews died in the holocaust. Thousands were massacred by their Polish neighbours, even after 1945, yet Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle has no problem defending an apologist for these pogromists.

The suggestion that the Jews collaborated with the Soviet troops is one of the standard justifications that Polish anti-Semites make for the pogroms and massacres of Jews. After the Soviet troops had been driven out of Poland by the Nazis in June 1941, anti-Semites held that the Jews had collaborated with them and that they were responsible for the deportation of Polish non-Jews to Siberia. Kaminski not only led the opposition to the national apology of Poland's President Kwasniewski but he also opposed the ceremony of remembrance in Jedwabne on July 10 2001, the 60th anniversary what happened in Jedwabne.

Kaminski's lies about Jewish involvement in deportations were a theme repeated by those who either denied or defended the massacre in Jedwabne (& similar massacres took place in surrounding villages like Radzilow).

But speaking of holocaust deniers, no one comes closer to this than the former Irish Sunday Times journalist Kevin Myers, who was sacked last weekend. As the Independent and Jerusalem Post notedMyers had previously written that “There was no holocaust (or Holocaust, as my computer software insists) and six million Jews were not murdered by the Third Reich. These two statements of mine are irrefutable truths.”

It was therefore no surprise that in his column for the Irish edition of the Sunday Times, under the headline: “Sorry ladies, equal pay has to be earned,” Myers wrote:

“I note that two of the best paid women presenters in the BBC – Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted – are Jewish. Good for them.

“Jews are not general noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity.”

You would think it obvious that Myers is a died-in-the-wool anti-Semite. Surely our good friends the Zios are jumping up and down about this genuine, bona-fide, 24 carat anti-Semite?

The Zionist UKMedia Watch is hot on 'anti-Semitism' of the anti-Zionist variety

After all, there is no group which is as hot on ‘anti-Semitism’ as UK Media Watch, a division of the American McCarthyist group CAMERA. When the Guardian published a letter of mine earlier this year praising the late Jewish MP Gerald Kaufman, they were outraged. Their headline told it all: ‘How the Guardian’s decision to publish extremist Tony Greenstein normalises antisemitism’. They wrote that ‘Kaufman’s most insidious comments about Jews occured during a Commons debate on the war in Gaza in 2009, a speech alluded to by left-wing extremist Tony Greenstein in a letter published on March 3rd in the Guardian.’

Gerald Kaufman, Jewish MP and Father of the House of Commons was a wicked anti-Semite for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany

Even worse was Kaufman’s statement that the Israeli government uses non-Jewish guilt over the Holocaust in order to justify their murder of Palestinians. One would have thought this was a self-evident truth. Israel shamelessly exploits the Holocaust for political purposes. Indeed if it were not for the Holocaust then Israel would have been called to task for its racism years ago.

You would therefore assume that UKM would be down on Kevin Myers and the paper that printed his anti-Semitic comments like a ton of bricks. Well I’m afraid you are wrong. UKMedia Watch tweetedthat it found the Times to be “generally good on issues of antisemitism.’ Naturally because Murdoch’s Times is also virulently pro-Zionist.

Zionism washes anti-Semitism whiter than white

The Zionist leaders of the Irish Jewish community were even worse. The Jewish Chronicle reportedthat ‘Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, insisted Mr Myers was not antisemitic, and had “inadvertently stumbled into an antisemitic trope”.’ Zionists love ‘tropes’ possibly because it rhymes with ‘dopes’ which is as good a description of them as any.

I'm not sure how you 'stumble' into anti-Semitism or any form of racism. You either are or you are not anti-Semitic. Perhaps its permanently dark in the South of Ireland, such that columnists are forever stumbling into one error or another.

Of course there is another explanation. Besides being a rank anti-Semite, Kevin Myers is also a fervent Zionist. His belief that Jews are grasping, money grubbing, never knowingly under-paid sits well with his support for Israel. According to Cohen though, it is all down to Myers having ‘ a particular curmudgeonly, cranky, idiosyncratic style.’

Of course Myers is not the only non-Jewish Zionist who has stumbled into ‘anti-Semitic tropes’. There is Arthur J Balfour, a passionate Zionist who in 1905 introduced, as Prime Minister, the Aliens Act whose aim was to keep Jews fleeing the Czarist pogroms out of Britain. In the Introduction to the History of Zionism by Nahum Sokolow, who later became President of the Zionist Organisation, Balfour made his anti-Semitism clear when speaking about Zionism:

"For as I read its meaning it is, among other things, a serious endeavour to mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilisation by the presence in its midst of a body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb. Surely, for this if for no other reason it should receive our support."

Balfour told Chaim Weizmann that he shared the “anti-Semitic postulates” of Cosima Wagner, who would become one of the first patrons of Adolf Hitler. Balfour did not believe that Jews could be assimilated into Gentile British society but he was happy to send them to Palestine.

Another strong supporter of Zionism, in whose Cabinet Balfour was Foreign Secretary, was Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He describedHerbert Samuel, who was Home Secretary and who went on to be the first British High Commissioner in Palestine as “a greedy, ambitious and grasping Jew with all the worst characteristics of his race.”

Indeed it is hard to think of a non-Jewish Zionist who wasn’t an anti-Semite. From Edouard Drumont to Eichmann non-Jewish anti-Semites have nearly all been avid supporters of Zionism.

It is no surprise that Frank Coughlan, a columnist in The Irish Independent should provide the answer to the mystery why UKMediaWatch, Maurice Cohen of the Irish Jewish Representative Council and assorted Zionists believes that Kevin Myers has been much misunderstood. Coughlan, who described the critics of Myers as ‘the haters’ ( a strange way to describe opponents of a myogynist and anti-Semite) explained thus:

It is ironic, for instance, that the anti-Semitic paragraphs that have surely finished his career came from the same pen that has defended Israeli foreign policy more consistently and eloquently than any other Irish journalist.

In November 2011, he wrote a waspish piece on the Irish left and its obsessive hatred of the Jewish homeland, a theme he has returned to again and again. The very same left that has now turned on him for being anti-Semitic.

'a year later, a headline had him stating emphatically that the only thing Africa had ever given the world was Aids.'- Frank Myers

After all, the poor misunderstood little Zionist was racist and abusive to everyone. Coughlan writes that: ‘‘More controversially again, a year later, a headline had him stating emphatically that the only thing Africa had ever given the world was Aids.’

Racist? Perish the thought. He was simply ‘Deliberately provocative’ even when ‘he picked at some tender scabs, particularly the treasured myths of romantic republicans. Countess Markievicz, whom he thought mad, bad and dangerous to know, was caught in the crossfire a number of times.’

The Countess of Markievicz, for those who do not know, was a dissident member of the British aristocracy who supported Irish Republicanism. She was‘an Irish Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragette and socialist.’ who was the first woman elected to the House of Commons, though she did not take her seat and was also the second woman to hold a cabinet position in the world (Minister for Labour in the Irish Republic, 1919–1922)

Being a combination of Republican, socialist and suffragette the good Countess probably represented the trinity of evil as far as Myers was concerned!

In many ways Myers was an ideal journalist for the Murdoch press. They will be hard pressed to find a replacement bigot.

↧

Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops Complains Again

August 5, 2017, 3:24 pm

≫ Next: Appeal for a Wheelchair for Rani Bornat - a non-violent activist and photographer from Bilin

≪ Previous: Some of my best friends are Zionists – The Case of the Sunday Times Kevin Myers

Brighton’s most right-wing & racist councillor complains of ‘harassment’

Cllr. Caroline 'Poison' Penn of Brighton & Hove City Council

naturally I was overwhelmed with fear and guilt

Some of you may remember my post Racist Labour Councillor, Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn, Complains of ‘Harassment’ on @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops - How Political Opportunists and Racist Misfits Use the Criminal Law to Deflect Criticismon Brighton and Hove’s most right-wing and racist councillor, Caroline Penn.

She happens to be a member of the Labour Party and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement but that is almost an accident. She could equally be a member of the Tory Party and Conservative Friends of Israel. She is a bitter foe of Momentum and Jeremy Corbyn and is an acolyte of the New Labour MP for Hove, Peter Kyle.

I hadn't actually accused her of being a fascist or a member of the BNP, not had I accused her flatmate of the latter either

A couple of months ago a couple of policemen came to the door to hand me a PIN – Police Information Notice. It doesn’t mean anything, assumes no guilt but is just a way of delivering a warning that in case there is a prosecution for harassment then you can’t say you haven’t been warned.

Well Poison Penn has been at it again. Apparently she wasn’t happy with my response to her last act of whinging and so she has begun another bout of whining. Apparently she resented my audacity in daring to tweet about her last complaint and blogging on it!

I did try educating Poison Penn but to no avail

I’m not sure what her complaint this time is about. I accurately reported that this non-Jewish member of the Zionist JLM had called me an ‘anti-Semite’. Presumably since she supports the Apartheid State of Israel she considers herself an expert on racism – most racists do consider themselves experts on racism. The tweet accusing me of anti-Semitism has since been deleted.

Last week another member of HM Constabulary came to my door to tell me that Poison Penn, who shares a flat with BNP supporting Harris ‘fascist’ Fitch, was complaining of harassment again. However the PC assured me that having read the complaint he couldn’t see what the fuss was. It was legitimate free speech as far as he was concerned. A very nice chap he was too!

I told him that if you stand for a political position of Councillor you can hardly complain if people criticise you politically! In short, Harry Truman’s old adage of ‘if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’ applies. Some of these right-wing Labour women, Joe Phillips is another, believe that any criticism of your politics is ‘sexism’ ‘harassment’ etc. etc. In other words their sex privileges them. Or their whiteness does in the case of Phillips.

As the PC confirmed I hadn’t made public any personal details of Ms Penn, other than who her flatmate was. I hadn’t given away any phone numbers, addresses or any other identifying material, all of which can be obtained via Brighton Town Hall anyway. Nor am I interested in the personal details of Poison Penn.

Three of Brighton's Progress Councillors Join the Racist JLM

However I’m not going to be deterred by some racist Zionist into keeping quiet either. Poison Penn announced to the world that she was joining the Apartheid supporting JLM and she expected some kind of applause not criticism. Tough.

Please Retweet this as she has blocked me!

Tony Greenstein

↧

Appeal for a Wheelchair for Rani Bornat - a non-violent activist and photographer from Bilin

August 6, 2017, 7:23 am

≫ Next: Gilad Atzmon – BDS is a Jewish Conspiracy

≪ Previous: Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops Complains Again

Disabled by the Zionists - Rani is not Jewish - he is therefore not entitled to support

I don't usually broadcast appeals on my blog but I will make an exception in this case. If you can afford to make a donation, however big or small, please go to. This isn't charity, it is support of the struggle against the Zionist thieves who have taken the land and bodies of the villagers of B'ilin.

Tony Greenstein

https://www.generosity.com/medical-fundraising/new-wheelchair-for-rani--2

https://igg.me/at/KU0LmzxBx1I/emal/13929215

The video is a portrayal of a non-violent activist and photographer from Bilin, Rani Bornat. Rani was shot by Israeli snipers during the first days of the second Intifada during a peaceful protest in Ramallah. His injuries have left him confined to an electric wheelchair with only the use of his right hand. In 2004 Israel began to construct the apartheid wall in his village, Bilin, stealing 60% of the villages land. Since then, villagers have organized weekly, and sometimes daily, non-violent demonstrations against the wall and the settlements surrounding it, making Bilin a centre of non-violent resistance in the West Bank. Rani, one of the organizers of the villages popular resistance, has attended and photographed every single demonstration, and compiled a huge archive of photographs.

Rani was shot by Israeli snipers during the first days of the second Intifada during a peaceful protest in Ramallah. His injuries have left him confined to an electric wheelchair with only the use of his right hand. In 2004 Israel began to construct the apartheid wall in his village, Bilin, stealing 60% of the villages land. Since then, villagers have organized weekly, and sometimes daily, non-violent demonstrations against the wall and the settlements surrounding it, making Bilin a centre of non-violent resistance in the West Bank. Rani, one of the organizers of the villages popular resistance, has attended and photographed every single demonstration, and compiled a huge archive of photographs.

This is Rani's story in his own words
I was born in the village of Bil’in in 1981. Bil’in is a small, poor Palestinian village in the West Bank. In the past there were less than one thousand inhabitants in the village. Most of them make their living from agriculture. Some work in Israel, some in Palestine and a few in the civil service.

I began to go to school in 1987 and completed primary school in Bil’in. I then proceeded to go to a high school in the neighboring village. Upon my completion of 10th grade I moved to a vocational school, El Kouds in Elram junction. I completed my high school studies with honors, majoring in electronics, which was my favorite since childhood.

I began to work while waiting to hear from one of the universities or colleges to receive higher education in my profession, but the occupation put an end to that.

On September 30th 2000 I participated in a parade to protest Sharon’s entrance to the Al Aqsa Mosque. While we approached area B, a vast number of soldiers were waiting for us in the surrounding buildings and started to shoot live ammunition. They wounded and killed us, protestors whose only ammunition was their will.

I was badly wounded and was announced as a martyr after a bullet hit my neck and my back, damaging the third and forth spinal vertebra. I was paralyzed, lost my memory and could not speak. After a year of treatment and rehabilitation I was forced to remain in a wheelchair.

I live in a wheelchair, but it does not limit me from saying NO to the occupation, saying NO to oppression, and saying NO to injustice, slavery and bloodshed. I continue to say YES to peace, freedom, liberty and independence. I still participate in the protests we organize with Israeli and foreign activists who come to express solidarity with us. We protest against the racist wall, land confiscation and settlement construction. I am in front of the parade with my camera, with which I capture photographs. These photos are a tool in my struggle against injustice and those who responsible for it. I have been wounded numerous times from rubber bullets and shock grenades.
My injury has not stopped me from continuing my life like other people. I decided to get married and I had the good fortune to find a suitable girl who was able to understand my situation and agreed to become engaged to me. Our marriage happened on 10/25/2008, and after one year God has blessed us and given us triplets (a boy and two daughters) on 28/10/2009. despite the harsh conditions and the increasing burdens of life, I’m still a believer in justice and determined to continue resistance until we gain our freedom and independence.

Together we all continue to struggle, with our writing and photography, to secure ourselves and our children lives full of love, peace, and safety.

I need a new electric wheelchair, and because I can't work, I can't afford to bye a new one. Pleace help me, so my wife don't have to help me all the time.

Rani Bornat
raniab281@yahoo.com

Please go to:
https://www.generosity.com/medical-fundraising/new-wheelchair-for-rani--2

↧

Gilad Atzmon – BDS is a Jewish Conspiracy

August 6, 2017, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: COMMUNIST UNIVERSITY 2017

≪ Previous: Appeal for a Wheelchair for Rani Bornat - a non-violent activist and photographer from Bilin

Why Palestine Expo Should Have Boycotted Jewish Anti-Zionists

Prominent Palestinians condemn Atzmon as anti-Semitic

It is some time since I devoted a blog post to Gilad Atzmon – the anti-Semitic jazz player. For some years he and his supporters posed an increasing threat to the Palestine solidarity movement, polluting it with their overt anti-Semitism and giving comfort to the Zionists and supporters of Israel. The Zionists said that everything they did was in the name of Jews and Atzmon was perfectly happy to subscribe to that lie.

Gilad Atzmon - the anti-Semitic Jazzman

Even the Socialist Workers Party issued a Statement on Gilad Atzmon and Marxism 2005(21st June 2005) supporting him. This was in response to a Jews Against Zionism picket of a meeting the SWP held with Atzmon at Bookmarks. It stated that

‘The SWP does not believe that Gilad Atzmon is a Holocaust denier or racist. However, while defending Gilad’s right to play and speak on public platforms that in no way means we endorse all of Gilad’s views.’

The racist Campaign Against Anti-semitism did their best to have Palestine Expo banned

Unfortunately Atzmon was both a racist and holocaust denier and the title of his talk to the assembled SWP members, John Rose included, was the legacy of Otto Weininger, a reactionary German Jew of whom Hitler allegedly said that there was only one decent Jew and he killed himself!

The SWP statement seems to have disappeared from the SWP’s site! Presumably it therefore never existed. There are though still reportsof the SWP’s effusive coverage which have not yet been deleted!

Atzmon's take on Palestine Expo 2017

Following the issuing of a statement Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmonby Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada, Professor Joseph Massad, Omar Barghouti and other leading Arabs and Palestinians in 2012, Atzmon has faded away becoming both more bitter and more overtly anti-Semitic. In 2011/12 an open holocaust denier, Francis Clarke Lowes was expelled, firstly from Brighton and Hove PSC and then from the national PSC. As a result of these events Atzmon and his baleful influence has become a thing of the past, much to the annoyance of the Zionists.

Despite this I still come across the occasional supporter of the Palestinians, although more rarely now than before, who still believe that Atzmon is a supporter of the Palestinian struggle rather than a washed up ex-Israeli whose anti-Semitism is a reflection of the racism of his Revisionist Zionist father.

Atzmon - blowing his own trumpet

It’s now six years ago since I issued A Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazzman. I confess that I haven’t followed much of what he has written since then although by all accounts it has gotten worse. In 2012: Atzmon joined the far-Right conspiracy site, Veterans Today. In 2014: Atzmon praised David Duke of the KKK and also gave open support to Holocaust Revisionists. In 2015: Atzmon described the Paris shootings as a false flag, i.e. that it was perpetrated by Jews.

The SWP's original statement exonerating Atzmon

Atzmon’s primary theme is that the dispossession of the Palestinians is all the fault of the Jews and that to be Jewish and Zionist are one and the same thing. Indeed Jewish anti-Zionists are the worst of all because they are using their anti-Zionism in order to subvert the Palestine solidarity movement. Because they are 'ethnically' Jewish they are irredeemably Zionist. Ali Abunima dealt with this nonsense in their statement:

Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

Atzmon has flirted with Holocaust denial for some years and openly works with fellow holocaust deniers such as Horst Mahler, a neo-Nazi and former member of the Red Army faction who was sentenced to 6 years in Germany for Holocaust revisionism. [seeGilad Atzmon – Now an Open Holocaust Denier]

Mahler, a member of the National Democratic Party wrotea book ‘'The End of Wanderings – Thoughts on Gilad Atzmon and the Jewish people'. Mahler escaped from prison in Germany and fled to Hungary to escape prison before being deported back to Germany. [see German Nazis fail to save terrorist Horst Mahler from prison ]

In June as Al Aqsa and others were involved in organising Palestine Expo 2017, the largest cultural and political Palestinian event in Europe, the Zionists stepped up their campaign against it calling it a ‘Jewish hate fest’ and alleging that its main purpose was anti-Semitic. Groups like the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the so-called Jewish Human Rights Group were to the fore in trying to get the event banned. [Zionist 'Jewish Human Rights Watch' are Attempting to Destroy Expo 2017 the Biggest Palestinian Cultural Event ever in Europe]

In the face of these false allegations of anti-Semitism and support for ‘terrorism’, Jewish anti-Zionist groups and individuals mobilised to ensure that the Tory government did not cancel the event. At the same time Gilad Atzmon was doing his best to try and persuade people that Palestine Solidarity and anti-Semitism were inextricably linked.

In Palestinian Expo 2017: The UK Government and The LobbyAtzmon wrote complaining that

‘Over the last decade, Palestinian solidarity has been hijacked by many Jewish organisations - JVP, IJAN, J-BIG – and also by other insipid left-leaning groups that in practice, have reduced Palestinian solidarity into a paradigm that is lame, meaningless and leads absolutely nowhere. This loose collective of tribal and Identitarian merchants has managed to reduce the magisterial Palestinian call for Right of Return into a squalid and self-serving Jewish internal debate about the ‘Right to BDS.’ The discourse of the oppressed is now defined by the sensitivities of the oppressor.’

You may find Atzmon’s incoherent ramblings difficult to understand. Leave aside that the JVP – Jewish Voices for Palestine is an American group that had little nor nothing to do with Palestine Expo. It is true that Jewish anti-Zionists in this country, unlike Atzmon, did their best to rally to defend Palestine Expo. And what’s more we were successful and it went ahead.

Atzmon though attempted to counterpose the Right of Return, which all Jewish anti-Zionist groups support to BDS. He describes BDS as a ‘squalid and self-serving Jewish internal debate’ In fact BDS is something that originated in 2005, not from a Jewish internal debate but from Palestinian civil society groups in Palestine. It was a call for solidarity and was immediately taken up in this country by university lecturers in the Association of University Teachers union (later the University College Union) in 2005 when the AUT voted to support an academic boycott of Israeli universities.

Given that Netanyahu and the Israeli government has deemed BDS enemy number one and are spending $50m in the Gilad Erdan's Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the fact that Atzmon openly attacks it says everything one needs to know about his politics.

Atzmon complained that Palestine Expo 2017 , ‘could have been an attempt to re-instate the meaning of Palestine: its culture, its politics and its call for liberation.’ Perhaps if Atzmon had gone to the event he would have found out that that is exactly what it did. What Atzmon meant by ‘the meaning of Palestine’ was, however, different from what most people mean. He complained that it ‘Featur(ed) Jewish anti-Zionist voices, and endorsed by various Jewish organisations, it instead attempts to give voice to the most politically-correct and Jewish-friendly vision of solidarity available. And guess what, it didn’t work. Instead of welcoming this Zio-friendly approach, British Jews, utilising all their lobbies and employing every trick in the Hasbara playbook, have act institutionally and aggressively to cancel the event.’

Atzmon finds it hard to understand that Jewish anti-Zionist groups are in a minority and therefore not likely to be heeded by the majority Zionist groups in the Jewish community, although it is interesting that the Zionist calls for the banning of Palestine Expo were only from the far-Right of the Zionist movement in this country - the CAA and the so-called Jewish Human Rights Watch (which in practice is solicitor Robert Fenstenstein and a couple of mates). The Board of Deputies, which is normally so voluble, realised that there were no conceivable grounds to ban Palestine Expo other than the explicitly racist one of deeming anything Palestinian as automatically anti-Jewish.

The fact that prominent Jewish speakers such as Miko Peled, the son of dissident Israeli General Matiyahu Peled, or Ilan Pappe as well as people like John Pilger spoke gave the lie to Zionist accusations that support for the Palestinians is anti-Semitic. Many hundreds of British Jews attended this so-called 'hate fest'. This however is what Atzmon dislikes most of all. To him the ‘meaning of Palestine’ is an anti-Semitic meaning in which Zionist racism towards Palestinians is replaced by hatred of Jews.

It is because hatred of Jews is his most important priority that Atzmon rejects BDS. He sees the prominent role of Jews in it as being evidence of it being a Zionist conspiracy. In Gilad Atzmon Interview: Tangling with the Oppressor - What really matters is what Palestinians Do he attacked the academic boycott, because it was led by socialists and those on the left, Jewish and non-Jewish:

‘interfering with academic freedom isn’t exactly something I can blindly advocate. … I am against any form of gatekeeping or book burning. But it goes further, I actually want to hear what Israelis and Zionists have to say. I want to read their books. I want to confront their academics.’ ‘to impose a boycott is to employ a boycotter. ... the boycott is led by some minor academics with very little to say about ethics and even less to say about the specific conflict…. It has a lot to do with maintenance of some particular decaying old-school socialists within the fading progressive Western discourse. … When it comes to the current boycott we are unfortunately operating within a political mode rather than an ethical one. … Shouldn’t we ban as well any form of racially orientated activity? … I believe that the best way around it is to support freedom of speech categorically…’

For Atzmon ‘freedom of speech’ for the colonist trumps the freedom of the oppressed and that is why those who have illusions in him should think again.

↧

COMMUNIST UNIVERSITY 2017

August 6, 2017, 8:11 pm

≫ Next: Don’t Ever Underestimate the Stupidity of McNicol’s Witch-hunters

≪ Previous: Gilad Atzmon – BDS is a Jewish Conspiracy

Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism

I will be speaking alongside Professor Moshe Machover, one of the founders of Matzpen, the Socialist Organisation in Israel next Monday 14th August at Goldsmiths College University of London. Details below.

Moshe will also be speaking on the Wednesday afternoon from 4.45 to 7 pm on the colonisation of Palestine in historical perspective.

There are a lot of good sessions, in particular I recommend Yassamine Matther's session on Trump and the Middle East on Thursday evening.

Tony Greenstein

	10am-12.30pm	Lunch	2pm-4.15pm	Break	4.45pm-7pm
Saturday August 12			The Labour Party and the Communist Party Jack Conrad		The Bolsheviks and elections August Nimtz Jr
Sunday August 13	How revolutionary were the bourgeois revolutions? Neil Davidson		Lenin and the electoral process August Nimtz Jr		The challenges ahead for global capitalism Michael Roberts
Monday August 14	Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism Moshé Machover Tony Greenstein		The political economy of Stalinism Hillel Ticktin		Marx, Engels and the democratic breakthrough August Nimtz Jr
Tuesday August 15	The real alternatives when socialism in one country seemed inevitable Hillel Ticktin		The Lessons of the October Revolution Chris Knight		Marxism and Crime Mike Macnair
Wednesday August 16	The rule of law delusion Mike Macnair		The revolutionary sex Camilla Power		The colonisation of Palestine in historical perspective Moshé Machover
Thursday August 17	Computer says No Paul Demarty		Women and the Russian revolution Anne McShane		Trump and the Middle East Yassamine Mather
Friday August 18	Populism, nationalism and the new/old politics in Europe Kevin Bean		The birth of Soviet healthcare Bob Arnott		What makes a social revolution? The Bolshevik problem of breaking from capitalism Marc Mulholland
Saturday August 19	The Sunday Worker and the birth of the National Left Wing Movement Lawrence Parker		Bolshevism Vindicated Jack Conrad	3.30pm-4pm Evaluation of Communist University 2016

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Don’t Ever Underestimate the Stupidity of McNicol’s Witch-hunters

August 8, 2017, 9:04 pm

≫ Next: The Silencing of Seymour Hersh – Even the LRB refuses to print an article criticising the Trump version of Assad’s ‘Sarin Gas Attack’

≪ Previous: COMMUNIST UNIVERSITY 2017

Another Fine Mess

Iain McNicol –v- Tony Greenstein

another fine mess

Having done his best to lose Labour the General Electon 'gormless' McNicol pursues a Witchhunt in his own shambolic way

Bogus letter that McNicol's legal team relied on

Actual letter sent to Tony Greenstein with bundle of documents

As people should be aware, I was suspended from the Labour Party on March 18^th 2016. I am still suspended. At no time have any charges against me been formulated, although I learnt from The Telegraph and The Times on April 2^nd2016 that my suspension was because of the false anti-Semitism campaign that was being waged by the Right and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement in the Labour Party.

On the 30^th May I had an investigation meeting conducted by the Southern Regional Organiser Harry Gregson. The Transcript of our Exchange can be viewed here.[See also Labour’s Inquisition – from the banal to the mundane] Suffice to say Gregson did not have a clue as to what it was that he was supposed to be investigating.

The JLM's whining plea that my criticism of them would 'further exasperate (sic!) the problem of anti-Semitism in the party.'

I therefore decided on 13^thMay to apply, under the Data Protection Act, for copies of all documents relating to me to be disclosed by the Labour Party. Suffice to say the 40 days allowed for by the DPA was exceeded and it was only on 15^th July, 60 days later, that I was supplied with about 300 pages of documents. Many of these documents were either duplicates of each other or correspondence that I already had.

A number of the documents were redacted, i.e. blacked out. Correspondents’ names were deleted and often large chunks of text were deleted and in the case of 4 documents everything was blacked out. What, I wondered, did they have to hide? In some cases it was possible to guess the identity of the informant. In other cases they blacked out a name in the header and then kindly left it at the end of the document.

McNicol's idea of disclosure

McNicol's idea of a full and frank disclosure - the question is what is he hiding?

At other times, it was obvious from the context and content who the correspondent was. E.g. it is difficult not to recognise the whining voice of the Jewish Labour Movement’s Chair, Jeremy Newmark, complaining about my criticism of the little racists and urging McNicol to speed up the expulsion!

Nonetheless in a significant number of cases, it was impossible to discern what was being hidden. It was also clear from some of the comments left in that many of the remarks were prejudicial asides from the very Labour Party staff who were supposed to be impartially administering the process.

I therefore wrote to the Labour Party demanding that there be full disclosure. Suffice to say I received no response (Labour Party bureaucrats rarely engage in correspondence. From some of the correspondence it is clear that they debate among themselves whether they should response. This is quite understandable as they don’t see themselves as accountable to anyone.

I therefore decided, having taken legal advice via the Bar Pro Bono Unit that I would initiate legal proceedings on 8^th May against McNicol for full disclosure of the redacted documents. On 22^nd June the case was listed for a hearing on August 8^th.

Leaks to the national press about my suspension - at the same time as telling me nothing

Until the 28^th July, just over a week before the hearing, I had heard nothing. ‘Crooked’ McNicol was, I assumed, still recovering from the shock of the election result that he’d done so much to prevent. On 4^th August McNicol’s solicitors whacked in a 9 page witness statement, a bill of costs for £7,000 (McNicol’s legal beavers don’t come cheap) and two files containing some 350+ pages of exhibits. All were sent via 2 massive email files.

I noticed on the tail of the email a message ‘William Sturges LLP does not accept service of any court proceedings or other documents by email’. I therefore sent them an email informing them that Tony Greenstein also doesn’t accept service of court documents by email, especially when there are 350 pages of them to print off. Suffice to say they sent them by snail mail, arriving on 6^th August, i.e. less than 2 days before the hearing!

Satirical take on the logical implications of Labour's false anti-Semitism witch hunt is entirely lost on McNicol's humourless minions

Going through the witness statement I noticed a curious thing.. In Para. 8 it stated that ‘The Party replied to the SAR on 10 November 2016.’ This was rather curious since they had responded on 15^th July, some 4 months earlier. Consulting their Bundle, there was a letter, not much different from the one I had received, dated 10.11.16. Even more curious, it was addressed to me at an address I haven’t lived at for 14 years!

When I first moved to this address in 1993 I had also been suspended from the Labour Party along with about 30 others. After my one year suspension was up I briefly rejoined the party and received an agenda to a meeting of Woodingdean LP which announced that the Ward was supporting some local racist campaign to get rid of Gypsies from the local park. Zionism in the Labour Party party is bad enough without a dose of anti-gypsy racism too.

I know that the Progress Right and people like Cllrs. Poison Penn and Emma Daniels, who parade their opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ (i.e. support for anti-Palestinian racism) are only too happy to go along with anti-Gypsy/Roma racism but I wasn’t prepared to remain a member of a party that tolerated this racism. Although it is convenient to forget it today, since the Holocaust is treated as a Jewish only affair, but proportionately as many Gypsies/Roma were exterminated by the Nazis as Jews. Clearly my old address had remained on file and equally clearly McNicol’s incompetent buffoons in the Compliance Unit had somehow managed to swap my old for my current address, whilst forgetting that they had already mailed out a Bundle of Documents.

Letter to The Times

Either that or the Labour Party had simply forged the letter of 10 November as I initially suspected. Either way Jay Sharda’s tortured explanation for why the documents were disclosed 4 months after they had actually been disclosed was pure waffle. However it wasn’t until I emailed the letter to William Sturges and the Court that McNicol’s solicitors woke up to the fact that their whole case was based on the wrong set of documents!

Suffice to say that it was a rather shamefaced solicitor and barrister who approached me to agree on an adjournment which I had already indicated I would be applying for as even I find it difficult to assimilate 350 pages of documents and a torturous witness statement at less than 2 days notice. In fact I did pen a responseto a witness statement was dishonest and dissembling.

To give a flavour of Sharda’s witness statement take the following example from para. 21(b):

The Claimant also openly regards Muslims as "the route [sic] cause of our [the Party's] problems" [315] and talks with his followers about how it is "tempting" to shoot a Jewish Labour Movement staff member for being a Zionist [332 - 333].

A humorous exchange on Twitter becomes a plot to murder the fragrant Ella Rose

Not only am I an anti-Semite but I am also Islamaphobic and to cap it all I want to shoot a member of the JLM staff (its Director, the fragrant Ella Rose). Clearly if these accusations are true then I deserve to be expelled. Indeed ‘Crooked’ McNicol deserves to be censored for not having ensured that I was expelled months ago. But what is the truth of these allegations?

Letter to the Telegraph after article insinuating antiSemitism

Sharda referred to two documents, the first on pages 315-6. This is an email of 3 May 2016 to Iain McNicol from me. It was entitled ‘Rule Change re Anti-Semitism – Proposal Which Should Satisfy All Parties’. I realise that McNicol’s minions are a few sandwiches short of a picnic, as well as being humourless, but a proposal from me which suggests that all applicants to the Labour Party should have their membership vetted by the Israeli Embassy might just alert them to the fact that this was satire. Clearly not.

In the email I take McNicol and co. to task for the fact that their concern with ‘anti-Semitism’ revolves around the use of language. They reduce the Holocaust to a set of acceptable phrases and use of terms like ‘Final Solution’ is verboten. Their concern is not with the lessons of the Holocaust but treating it as some form of sacred icon. In that way they never draw any parallels between Nazi Germany and European fascism and what is happening in Israel today.

Labour supporting Telegraph prints the Compliance Unit's leaks

The Telegraph has second thoughts

For example Naz Shah MP used the words ‘transport’ – apparently this is anti-Semitic as it might refer to the transport the Nazis used to deport Holocaust victims. Whilst the Labour Right turns a blind eye to actual living examples of racism in Israel, which they portray as a democratic state, they examine under the microscope any deviation from language norms for signs that they might be ‘anti-Semitic’. So a state where chants of ‘Death to the Arabs’ is a norm or where Palestinians have their houses and villages demolished for Jewish settlers is held out to be a paragon of western democracy. But if you put a syllable wrong when it comes to the Holocaust, if you don’t pay due deference to language whilst ignoring the real lessons of what happened in Europe then you are classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ by these racist hypocrites. One might have thought though that a well paid solicitor might have been put on notice that satire is used as a way of highlighing the idiocy of his client’s views. Obviously not.

The second example is even more ludicrous (if that is possible). Readers may remember the Al Jazeera programme, The Lobby, about dirty tricks by the Israeli Embassy, the JLM and Labour Friends of Israel in the Labour Party last January. In one of the clips the juvenile Director of the JLM Ella Rose is captured as saying ‘I’m a Zionist shoot me’. On Twitter a few of us therefore agreed how tempting this invitation was! Only a complete fool or idiot would take such a comment seriously.

The Times withdrew its insinuation of anti-Semitism

The Hearing

At the hearing yesterday, having received my response to their witness statement at 4 am, McNicol’s minions were suitably subdued having got everything including the documentation wrong. At the hearing itself Directions were agreed for the filing of documents. The Labour Party legal representatives made themselves look pretty stupid because the Labour Party has no record of sending me a bundle of documents in May 2016! So it is up to me to supply them with a list of what they sent to me. Utterly absurd but McNicol’s witch hunters are not merely reactionary apologists for racism but extremely incompetent ones too. I therefore made an application that regardless of the eventual outcome of the case, the costs of the attendance of the Labour Party’s legal representatives should be borne by the Labour Party not me. Although their barrister resisted my application the Judge agree with the application and she ruled that no order for costs would be made. McNicol and co. will therefore pay at least £1,000 out of members’ subs because John Stolliday and the Compliance Unit are incompetent fools.

Despite the attempt of the Labour Party legal team prior to today’s hearing to have the whole application rejected, in the end they were forced to agree to a timetable over the next 3 months for the service and preparation of documents.

Thus the stage will be set by October 16^th or thereafter for battle to be joined on whether or not the Labour Party is allowed to drive a coach and horses through the Data Protection Act by supplying blacked out documents to protect the identity of its staff and informants. Watch this space!

And thanks to Becky and Anne from Brighton and Hove Momentum who accompanied me and provided me with moral support!

Tony Greenstein

↧

The Silencing of Seymour Hersh – Even the LRB refuses to print an article criticising the Trump version of Assad’s ‘Sarin Gas Attack’

August 9, 2017, 4:31 pm

≫ Next: It's An Ill Wind That Blows Nobody Any Good

≪ Previous: Don’t Ever Underestimate the Stupidity of McNicol’s Witch-hunters

Below there are two pieces, one by the former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook and the other by bellingcat ‘the home of online investigations’. According to the mainstream media, Syria launched a gas attack, using Sarin, on Khan Sheikhoun on April 4^th 2017.

US Navy fires 59 Cruise Missiles at Syrian Airfield

Trump used this as a pretext to bomb a Syrian airfield bring with it the possibility of a conflict between the USA and Russia. What lies behind this? It would appear that as ISIS comes close to defeat in Syria and Iraq the US is determined to try and prop up Jihadi opposition to the Assad regime as a means of perpetuating the conflict. Trump and his military backers also wish to be seen to be opposing what most people see as a successful Russian intervention in the Syria conflict.

Of one thing we can be sure – nothing the United States does can be treated at face value. The idea that the US is opposed, on principle, to the use of chemical weapons in conflict is for the children. The US has consistently used depleted Uranium ordinance in Iraq and Kuwait before it. In Vietnam it used Agent Orange to destroy the foliage of the jungle.

The reason why people are sceptical of the official US explanation is that it wasn’t in the interests of Assad to use chemical weaponry. Although the regime is a ghastly one what happened makes no sense.

Tony Greenstein

Hersh’s new Syria revelations buried from view

26 June 2017

(Updated below)

Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the man who exposed the Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and the US military’s abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2004, is probably the most influential journalist of the modern era, with the possible exception of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the pair who exposed Watergate.

For decades, Hersh has drawn on his extensive contacts within the US security establishment to bring us the story behind the official story, and to disclose facts that have often proved deeply discomfiting to those in power and exploded the self-serving, fairy-tale narratives the public were expected to passively accept as news. His stature among journalists was such that, in a sea of corporate media misinformation, he enjoyed a small island of freedom at the elite, and influential, outlet of the New Yorker.

Paradoxically, over the past decade, as social media has created a more democratic platform for information dissemination, the corporate media has grown ever more fearful of a truly independent figure like Hersh. The potential reach of his stories could now be enormously magnified by social media. As a result, he has been increasingly marginalised and his work denigrated. By denying him the credibility of a “respectable” mainstream platform, he can be dismissed for the first time in his career as a crank and charlatan. A purveyor of fake news.

Nonetheless, despite struggling to find an outlet for his recent work, he has continued to scrutinise western foreign policy, this time in relation to Syria. The official western narrative has painted a picture of a psychotic Syrian president, Bashar Assad, who is assumed to be so irrational and self-destructive he intermittently uses chemical weapons against his own people. He does so, not only for no obvious purpose but at moments when such attacks are likely to do his regime untold damage. Notably, two sarin gas attacks have supposedly occurred when Assad was making strong diplomatic or military headway, and when the Islamic extremists of Al-Qaeda and ISIS – his chief opponents – were on the back foot and in desperate need of outside intervention.

Dangerous monsters

Hersh’s investigations have not only undermined evidence-free claims being promoted in the west to destabilise Assad’s goverment but threatened a wider US policy seeking to “remake the Middle East”. His work has challenged a political and corporate media consensus that portrays Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Assad’s main ally against the extremist Islamic forces fighting in Syria, as another dangerous monster the West needs to bring into line.

For all these reasons, Hersh has found himself increasingly friendless. The New Yorker refused to publish his Syria investigations. Instead, he had to cross the Atlantic to find a home at the prestigious but far less prominent London Review of Books.

Back in 2013 his contacts within the security and intelligence establishments revealed that the assumption Assad had ordered the use of sarin gas in Ghouta, outside Damascus, failed to stand up to scrutiny. Even Barack Obama’s national intelligence director, James Clapper, was forced to admit privately that Assad’s guilt was “not a slam dunk”, even as the media widely portrayed it as precisely that. Hersh’s work helped stymie efforts at the time to promote a western military attack to bring down the Syrian government.

His latest investigation questions whether Assad was responsible for another alleged gas attack – this one at Khan Sheikhoun in April. Again a consensual western narrative was quickly constructed after social media showed dozens of Syrians dead, apparently following the dropping of a bomb by Syrian aircraft. For the first time in his presidency, Donald Trump received wall-to-wall praise for launching a military strike on Syria in response, even though, as Hersh documents, he had no evidence on which to base such an attack, one that gravely violated international law.

Hersh’s new investigation was paid for by the London Review of Books, which declined to publish it. This is almost as disturbing as the events in question.

What is emerging is a media blackout so strong that even the London Review of Books is running scared. Instead, Hersh’s story appeared yesterday in a German publication, Welt am Sonntag. Welt is an award-winning newspaper, no less serious than the New Yorker or the LRB. But significantly Hersh is being forced to publish ever further from the centres of power whose misinformation his investigations are challenging.

Imagine how effective Woodward and Bernstein would have been in bringing down Richard Nixon had they been able to publish their Watergate investigations only in the French media. That is the situation we have reached now with Hersh’s efforts to scrutinise the west’s self-serving claims about Syria.

US-Russian cooperation

As for the substance of Hersh’s investigation, he finds that Trump launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base in April “despite having been warned by the US intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.”

In fact, Hersh reveals that, contrary to the popular narrative, the Syrian strike on a jihadist meeting place in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 was closely coordinated beforehand between Russian and US intelligence agencies. The US were well apprised of what would happen and tracked the events.

Hersh’s sources in the intelligence establishment point out that these close contacts occurred for two reasons. First, there is a process known as “deconfliction”, designed to avoid collisions or accidental encounters between the US, Syrian and Russian militaries, especially in the case of their supersonic jets. The Russians therefore supplied US intelligence with precise details of that day’s attack beforehand. But in this case, the coordination also occurred because the Russians wanted to warn the US to keep away a CIA asset, who had penetrated the jihadist group, from that day’s meeting.

“This was not a chemical weapons strike,” a senior adviser to the US intelligence community told Hersh. “That’s a fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the weapon … would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There would be very little chance of survival without such gear.”

According to US intelligence, Hersh reports, the Syrian air force was able to target the site using a large, conventional bomb supplied by the Russians. But if Assad did not use a chemical warhead, why did many people apparently die at Khan Sheikhoun from inhalation of toxic gas?

The US intelligence community, says Hersh, believes the bomb triggered secondary explosions in a storage depot in the building’s basement that included propane gas, fertilisers, insecticides as well as “rockets, weapons and ammunition, … [and] chlorine-based decontaminants for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial”. These explosions created a toxic cloud that was trapped close to the ground by the dense early morning air.

Medecins Sans Frontieres found patients it treated “smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.” Sarin is odourless.

Hersh concludes that theevidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.

Political suicide

Hersh’s main intelligence source makes an important contextual point you won’t hear anywhere in the corporate media:

What doesn’t occur to most Americans is if there had been a Syrian nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar [Assad], the Russians would be 10 times as upset as anyone in the West. Russia’s strategy against ISIS, which involves getting American cooperation, would have been destroyed and Bashar would be responsible for pissing off Russia, with unknown consequences for him. Bashar would do that? When he’s on the verge of winning the war? Are you kidding me?

When US national security officials planning Trump’s “retaliation” asked the CIA what they knew of events in Khan Sheikhoun, according to Hersh’s source, the CIA told them “there was no residual delivery for sarin at Sheyrat [the airfield from which the Syrian bombers had taken off] and Assad had no motive to commit political suicide.”

The source continues:

No one knew the provenance of the photographs [of the attack’s victims]. We didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt. Sarin actually is very easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get a paint sample. We knew there was a [toxic] cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you cannot jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the UN because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun.

Trump, under political pressure and highly emotional by nature, ignored the evidence. Hersh’s source says:

The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an Assad atrocity. It’s typical of human nature. You jump to the conclusion you want. Intelligence analysts do not argue with a president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit’.

Although Republicans, Democrats and the entire media rallied to Trump’s side for the first time, those speaking to Hersh have apparently done so out of fear of what may happen next time.

The danger with Trump’s “retaliatory” strike, based on zero evidence of a chemical weapons attack, is that it could have killed Russian soldiers and dragged Putin into a highly dangerous confrontation with the US. Also, the intelligence community fears that the media have promoted a false narrative that suggests not only that a sarin attack took place, but paints Russia as a co-conspirator and implies that a UN team did not in fact oversee the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile back in 2013-14. That would allow Assad’s opponents to claim in the future, at a convenient time, yet another unsubstantiated sarin gas attack by the Syrian government.

Hersh concludes with words from his source that should strike fear into us all:

The issue is, what if there’s another false-flag sarin attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted himself into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys [Islamist groups] are not planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake.

UPDATE:

As was to be expected, there has been a backlash against Hersh’s investigation. If one thing is clear about the Khan Sheikhoun incident, it is that, in the absence of an independent investigation, there is still no decisive physical evidence to settle yet what happened one way or another. Therefore, our job as observers should be to keep a critical distance and weigh other relevant issues, such as context and probability.

So let us set aside for a moment the specifics of what happened on April 4 and concentrate instead on what Hersh’s critics must concede if they are to argue that Assad used sarin gas against the people of Khan Sheikhoun.

1. That Assad is so crazed and self-destructive – or at the very least so totally incapable of controlling his senior commanders, who must themselves be crazed and self-destructive – that he has on several occasions ordered the use of chemical weapons against civilians. And he has chosen to do it at the worst possible moments for his own and his regime’s survival, and when such attacks were entirely unnecessary.

2. That Putin is equally deranged and so willing to risk an end-of-times conflagration with the US that he has on more than one occasion either sanctioned or turned a blind eye to the use of sarin by Assad’s regime. And he has done nothing to penalise Assad afterwards, when things went wrong.

3. That Hersh has decided to jettison all the investigatory skills he has amassed over many decades as a journalist to accept at face value any unsubstantiated rumours his long-established contacts in the security services have thrown his way. And he has done so without regard to the damage that will do to his reputation and his journalistic legacy.

4. That a significant number of US intelligence officials, those Hersh has known and worked with over a long period of time, have decided recently to spin an elaborate web of lies no one wants to print, either in the hope of damaging Hersh in some collective act of revenge against him, or in the hope of permanently discrediting their own intelligence services.

Critics do not simply have to believe one of these four points. They must maintain the absolute veracity of all four of them.

Summary of Claims Surrounding the Khan Sheikhoun Chemical Attack

In the wake of the April 4th 2017 chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, various parties have made claims about the circumstances surrounding the attack. With today’s publication of the OPCW’s report on the attack this article aims to summarise key allegations made by each party in a systematic fashion. This article looks at claims made by the Russian, Syrian, American, and French governments, Seymour Hersh’s articles in Welt, and the OPCW report.

Time

Russia

On April 5th 2017 Sputnik quoted Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov as stating that Syrian aircraft conducted an airstrike around “11.30 to 12.30, local time, [8.30 to 9.30 GMT]”.

Syria

Walid Muallem, Syria’s Foreign Minister, stated in an April 6th press conference the first Syrian air force attack in the town occurred at 11:30am local time.

America

On April 6th 2017 the Department of Defence released a map showing what the Pentagon claimed was the flight path taken by the aircraft that launched the chemical attack. The map key states the aircraft was over Khan Sheikhoun around 337 Zulu Time to 346 Zulu Time, 6:37am and 6:46am local time.

France

The French National Evaluation on the Khan Sheikhoun attack, published on April 26th 2017, stated the following: “The French services are aware in particular of a Sukhoi Su-22 bomber which took off from the Shayrat Airbase on the morning of 4 April and launched up to six strikes around Khan Sheikhoun.”

Hersh

Seymour Hersh’s June 25th 2017 article in Welt, Trump‘s Red Line states attack took place at 6:55 a.m.

OPCW

The OPCW states their narrative is based on interviews with witnesses, and not open source information or information provided by States Party.

The OPCW report states that at “approximately 06:30, alerts were issued via hand-held radios reporting that military jets had departed an airfield and were heading in the general direction of Khan Shaykhun, amongst other areas” and“shortly afterwards, there was a swooping sound, as made by a jet when it attacks, but without a subsequent loud explosive sound.”

Two witnesses provided by the Syrian government and interviewed by the OPCW gave different accounts from accounts given by multiple witnesses, and the OPCW were unable to corroborate those narratives.

Target

Russia

The Russian Ministry of Defence stated that “According to the objective data of the Russian airspace control, Syrian aviation struck a large terrorist warehouse near Khan Shaykhun that housed a warehouse making bombs, with toxic substances.” According to Sputnik, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov stated the target was “in the eastern outskirts of Khan Shaykhun on a large warehouse of ammunition of terrorists and the mass of military equipment.”

In addition, Sputnik reported that:

“Konashenkov said that from this warehouse, chemical weapons’ ammunition was delivered to Iraq by militants.

Konashenkov added that there were workshops for manufacturing bombs, stuffed with poisonous substances, on the territory of this warehouse. He noted that these munitions with toxic substances were also used by militants in Syria’s Aleppo.”

Russia has not provided a specific location for the warehouse.

Syria

Walid Muallem, Syria’s Foreign Minister, stated in an April 6th press conference the attack was on “an army depot belongs [sic] to the Al-Nusra Front which contains chemical weapons.”

Syria has not provided a specific location for the army depot.

America

The impact site was marked on the Department of Defence map of the attack, at around 35.449610, 36.648163, on the north side of Khan Sheikhoun:

France

The French National Evaluation only states the aircraft “launched up to six strikes around Khan Sheikhoun.”

Hersh

In Trump‘s Red Line, Hershstates “The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site”, and the target “was depicted as a two-story cinder-block building in the northern part of town.”

Hersh states Russian intelligence established “that a high-level meeting of jihadist leaders was to take place in the building, including representatives of Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Qaida-affiliated group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra.”

According to the article, Russian intelligence described the building as “a command and control center that housed a grocery and other commercial premises on its ground floor with other essential shops nearby, including a fabric shop and an electronics store.” In addition:

The basement was used as storage for rockets, weapons and ammunition, as well as products that could be distributed for free to the community, among them medicines and chlorine-based decontaminants for cleansing the bodies of the dead before burial. The meeting place – a regional headquarters – was on the floor above. “It was an established meeting place,” the senior adviser said. “A long-time facility that would have had security, weapons, communications, files and a map center.” The Russians were intent on confirming their intelligence and deployed a drone for days above the site to monitor communications and develop what is known in the intelligence community as a POL – a pattern of life. The goal was to take note of those going in and out of the building, and to track weapons being moved back and forth, including rockets and ammunition.

Hersh has not provided the specific location of this two-story cinder-block building.

OPCW

The OPCW spoke to a number of witnesses to the attack, as well as considering various additional sources. Based on this, the impact of the munition linked to the release of Sarin into the environment is in the middle of a road on the north side of Khan Sheikhoun, close to the position indicated in the US Department of Defence map of the attack, 35.449610, 36.648163. The OPCW published a map of the crater:

Type of Attack

Russia

Russia stated Syrian aircraft performed the strike, providing no further information.

Syria

Syria stated Syrian aircraft performed the strike. Al Masdar News claimed Syrian military sources told them an attack on a missile factory in Khan Sheikhoun was carried out by a Syrian SU-22.

America

The Department of Defence map states the attack originated from the Shayrat Syrian Arab Air Force airfield. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated“We have a very high level of confidence that the attacks were carried out by aircraft under the direction of the Bashar al-Assad regime, and we also have very high confidence that the attacks involved the use of sarin nerve gas.”

France

France only describes aircraft launching “six strikes around Khan Sheikhoun“, but provides specifics about the Sarin used in the attack.

France claims to have carried out environmental samples collected at one of the impact points in Khan Sheikhoun, revealing the presence of Sarin, “”a specific secondary product (diisopropyl methylphosphonate – DIMP) formed during synthesis of sarin from isopropanol and DF (methylphosphonyl difluoride),” and hexamine. France adds a biomedical sample taken from a victim of the attack on the day of the attack shows the victim was exposed to sarin.

France states that intelligence gathered by French services indicates that “the process of synthesizing sarin, developed by the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) […] involves the use of hexamine as a stabilizer. DIMP is also known as a by-product generated by this process.” The French evaluation then details the 2013 Saraqib Sarin attack, from which they recovered an undetonated munition dropped from a helicopter containing “100ml of sarin at an estimated purity of 60%. Hexamine, DF and a secondary product, DIMP”.

Hersh

Hersh describes the attack on the “jihadist meeting site” as being performed by a Syrian SU-24, armed with a “Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives”. Hersh states as a result of that attack chemical agents were released that resulted in the casualties seen on April 4th.

OPCW

Multiple samples from the site acquired from various locals sources were tested, with Sarin, DIMP, DIPF, TPP, hexamine, and other substances related to sarin detected. The detection of additional chemical agents, such as chlorine, phosgene, or other organophosphates were not mentioned. The OPCW describes the chain of custody around these samples:

Most of the samples delivered to the FFM were supported by witness testimony and accompanied by documents, including photographs and video. Although the documentation and testimony, in most cases, provided a good degree of confidence in the chain of custody prior to receipt by the FFM, the entire chain of custody could not be categorically verified. Such samples included biomedical samples that were not collected in the presence of team members, environmental samples, and dead creatures (referred to biological-environmental samples).

One set of samples were provided by the Syrian government, after collection by an unnamed volunteer in Khan Sheikhoun, with a video recording of the collection provided. The Syrian government agency, the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), tested these samples and provided parts of the samples that were tested in OPCW laboratories. Both the SSRC and OPCW detected Sarin and hexamine from samples taken from the crater which was claimed to be the point of origin of the chemical agent by witnesses, and two metal objects removed from the crater. A number of other byproducts and degradation products from Sarin were also detected.

In addition, the OPCW analysed samples taken from victims of the attack and collected under the observation of the OPCW, which further confirmed the use of Sarin.

Aftermath

Russia

Russia provided no details of the aftermath of the attack. Russia Today reported Vladimir Putin stating that

“We have reports from multiple sources that false flags* like this one – and I cannot call it otherwise – are being prepared in other parts of Syria, including the southern suburbs of Damascus. They plan to plant some chemical there and accuse the Syrian government of an attack“

Syria

Syria provided no details of the aftermath of the attack.

America

The US provided no specific details of the aftermath of the attack, with U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley providing the following narrative in a speech tu the UN:

“The gas that fell out of the sky yesterday was more deadly, leaving men, women, the elderly, and children, gasping for their very last breath.

And as first responders, doctors, and nurses rushed to help the victims, a second round of bombs rained down. They died in the same slow, horrendous manner as the civilians they were trying to save.”

France

The French National Evaluation states:

“On 4 April 2017, air strikes against civilians in the city of Khan Sheikhoun killed more than 80 people. According to our experts, the symptoms observed immediately afterwards (pupil contraction, suffocation, bluing of lips, white foam on faces, convulsions), the high number of deaths, and the fact that certain responders and medical staff suffered secondary contamination are consistent with the use of a highly lethal neurotoxic agent. This has now been confirmed scientifically.”

Hersh

Hersh refers to a “Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military”, that determined that:

“the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered a series of secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fertilizers, disinfectants and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground.”

Hersh refers to casualty figures based on opposition activists reports, 80 dead, and outlets such as CNN, with numbers as high at 92 dead.

Hersh also references a report by MSF which states victims showed signs of Sarin exposure, and “that victims smelled of bleach, suggesting they had been exposed to chlorine.”

Hersh concludes:

“evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.”

OPCW

The OPCW spoke to various witnesses to establish where the victims of the attack were found. Based on these interviews, and additional evidence, a map was created showing this area, southwest of the crater which produced samples that were positive for Sarin:

The OPCW details the initial scene as encountered by first responders:

Upon arrival at the site, first responders belonging to the SCD found, in addition to a small number of casualties exhibiting trauma type injuries, many civilians who appeared to have no external injuries. The symptoms of those exhibiting no external injuries, as described at that stage by non-medical personnel, included “people who were walking and then fell down”, suffocation, and muscle spasms.

Interviewees reported cases of exposure due to cross contamination, such that 10 members of the SCD presented mild to moderate symptoms and about five medical staff from medical facilities presented similar symptoms.

The OPCW collected data from medical facilities in northern Syria, including the the Idlib Health Directorate (IHD), and the Khan Shaykhun Medical Centre. The full details can be found in the report, with IHD data shown below:

Conclusion

It is apparent that there is a correlation between the narratives of the French and US governments, and the OPCW report. The Russian and Syrian government narratives are consistent with each other, but entirely inconsistent with the OPCW. The narrative presented by Seymour Hersh in his Welt piece, Trump‘s Red Line, is inconsistent with all other narratives.

Open source material, as previously collected and analysed by Bellingcat and others, is consistent with the French and US governments, and the OPCW report. It is worth noting that the OPCW report explicitly states their conclusions are not based on open source evidence.

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It's An Ill Wind That Blows Nobody Any Good

August 10, 2017, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Netanyahu & Israel have no criticism of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s rehabilitation of pro-Nazi leader Admiral Horthy

≪ Previous: The Silencing of Seymour Hersh – Even the LRB refuses to print an article criticising the Trump version of Assad’s ‘Sarin Gas Attack’

Teva - Israel's largest company sees its share price dive 24%

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Netanyahu & Israel have no criticism of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s rehabilitation of pro-Nazi leader Admiral Horthy

August 10, 2017, 8:15 pm

≫ Next: The Dutch Gamble – Israel Destroys Solar Panels Because Electricity Might Encourage The Palestinians to Stay on Their Land

≪ Previous: It's An Ill Wind That Blows Nobody Any Good

This is what the Zionists used to mean when they talked of Israel being a 'light unto the nations'

When it comes to real, genuine anti-Semitism the Zionist leaders and Zionist movement has no problem at all. After all they agree with each other. Jews don't belong in non-Jewish society. The 'real' home of Jews is the so-called Jewish homeland, Israel. It's not for nothing that Israel has kept out all those Palestinian refugees. A Jewish homeland or state means a large Jewish majority. Arabs only live in Israel on sufferance because politically it would be too damaging to expel them today.

So it should be no surprise that Netanyahu finds Viktor Orban, the far-Right racist leader of Hungary so congenial. And not only Netanyahu. You are not going to find Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement or their 'sister party' the Israeli Labour Party criticising links with anti-Semites. After all the Israeli Labour Party when it was in power did exactly the same.

As the Times of Israel reported, both Hungary and Bulgaria sought Israel’s advice on how best to keep out refugees. Hungary was particularly interested in Israel’s wall across the Sinai that has successfully kept out African refugees. As Rania Khalek noted, Israeli leaders delight in Europe’s cruelty toward refugees.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Hungary’s far-Right Prime Minister Viktor Orban get on like a house on fire. Both are committed racists.

However there was a little awkwardness when Orban began the process of rehabilitating Hungary’s war time leader, Admiral Miklos Horthy. Horthy it was who presided over the deportation of 437,000 Jews to Auschwitz from May 15^thto July 8^th 1944 This was at a time when Nazi Germany was reeling under the Soviet advance and when it would have been possible to refuse to the deportations. Nazi Germany could not afford to lose its Hungarian ally yet Horthy, after having been summoned by Hitler to his lair on March 18^thagreed to the deportation of Hungary’s Jews.

Throughout the war Hungary’s Jews had been kept insulated from the Holocaust. They were the last surviving major Jewish community. Horthy was an aristocratic anti-Semite who despised the Jews of Hungary’s provinces as a ‘rabble’.

He therefore gave his blessing to the Szotjay government which was stuffed with anti-Semitic mass murderers such as Endre.

Birds of a feather - a racist Israeli government and Europe's most racist government see eye to eye

But the Zionist record in Hungary was nothing to shout about. Under their leader Rudolf Kasztner the Zionist movement co-operated with the Nazis, helping with the round ups and keeping the Auschwitz Protocols of Auschwitz escapees Vrba and Wetzler secret.

Today Hungary’s far-Right government is seeking to rehabilitate Admiral Horthy. Israel unsurprisingly has no problem with this. It is one more example of how Zionism is only concerned with anti-Semitism when it is the Left and criticism of Zionism and Israel that is at stake.

Tony Greenstein

Jewish groups critical of Hungarian praise for Hitler ally

Admiral Horthy and Adolf Hitler

WJC condemns ‘deplorable actions’ committed byNazi-era leader Miklos Horthy, after PM hails him an ‘exceptional statesmen’

By AP June 24, 2017, 1:54 am

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrives to address a press conference after attending a European Parliament plenum session on the situation in Hungary, on April 26, 2017 in Brussels. (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)

BUDAPEST, Hungary — The World Jewish Congress and the leading Jewish group in Hungary objected Friday to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s praise for Miklos Horthy, the World War II-era leader who allied Hungary with Nazi Germany.

WJC President Ronald Lauder said his organization would always condemn “deplorable actions” like Horthy’s and rejected any attempts to excuse or justify them.

Israel is more than happy to accept 'clarification' over Orban's rehabilitation of Hungary's fascist leader Horthy in WW2

“The horrors that Admiral Horthy inflicted on the Jewish community of Hungary by stripping them of their rights and their humanity, and his role in the deportation and murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews, can never be excused,” Lauder said.

In a speech on Wednesday, just hours before he hosted Lauder in Parliament, Orban called Horthy and other Hungarian leaders “exceptional statesmen” for leading the country after the traumatic disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I.

Orban’s comments were also criticized by Andras Heiszler, president of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, who said the Horthy era’s anti-Semitism “cannot be put as an example for future generations.”

Several busts and statues of Horthy have been erected in the past few years, mostly on private property.

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The Dutch Gamble – Israel Destroys Solar Panels Because Electricity Might Encourage The Palestinians to Stay on Their Land

August 11, 2017, 8:11 pm

≫ Next: Benjamin Netanyahu Proposes to ‘Swap’ Israel’s Arab citizens in exchange for the West Bank Settlements

≪ Previous: Netanyahu & Israel have no criticism of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s rehabilitation of pro-Nazi leader Admiral Horthy

The destruction of solar panels that the Dutch government funded in the village of Jubbet Adh-Dhib, is but a small example of the cruelty and ingrained racism of the Israeli military occupation.

Israel’s pretext is that the villagers didn’t have a permit. Why you might ask should there be a need for a permit for electricity anyway? The settlers don’t need permits. On the contrary every illegal outpost is connected to the mains grid.

The real reason is that village is in Area C, an area which Israel hopes to depopulate prior to annexation. It doesn’t want Palestinians living there and therefore it follows a consistent policy of destroying buildings, schools, development projects etc. It is a way of ‘encouraging’ the Palestinians to leave the area.

Of course the Palestinians who live here have lived here for centuries, unlike the Jewish settlers. The difference is, of course, that the settlers are acting with the authority of the Israeli government. Permits are therefore routinely denied to Palestinians whereas Jewish settlers receive them as a matter of course.

Just one more example of Israel’s racist occupation, which is otherwise known as the ‘most moral occupation’ in the world!

Tony Greenstein

Dutch Protest Israeli Seizure of Palestinian SolarPanels They Funded in West Bank

Netherlands' Foreign Ministry requested Israel return equipment it confiscated, valued at over 40,000 euro; Israel failed to hand out demolition orders in advance

Amira Hass Jul 05, 2017 1:15 AM

Palestinian solar panels confiscated by Israel in West Bank village of Jubbet Adh-Dhib, June 2017. Comet-ME

The Dutch officials who signed off on a contribution of half a million euros ($590,000) for the Israeli-Palestinian organization Comet-ME for an ecological electricity project in Palestinian villages (in the West Bank’s Area C) knew that the project was being carried out without a permit from the Israeli occupation authorities.

They decided to take a risk on the assumption that their country has a gentleman’s agreement with Israel: We, the Dutch, won’t bug you about your methodical breaches of international law and the settlements; we might wag our finger but we’ll continue our excellent economic, cultural, scientific and social ties with you. In exchange for our unending patience, you’ll close your eyes in a friendly way and allow us to finance a humanitarian project.

Most of the Dutch contribution, 350,000 euros, was invested in the village of Jubbet Adh-Dhib, east of Bethlehem. The village has been asking to be connected to the electricity grid since 1988. The Civil Administration refused. Since November 2016, when Comet-ME completed installation of a micro-grid, the village – with its 31 homes and 160 residents, a kindergarten, a mosque, five small businesses and a mobile clinic that arrives once a week – has enjoyed electricity.

For eight months, the Dutch officials could conclude that their gamble had paid off. Reports from the village were encouraging: Health and hygiene improved thanks to refrigeration to store food and medicines, a sense of security and safety was provided by night lighting, people could be more active during the day, especially children doing their homework; their school achievements improved thanks to computers that worked, women could work less hard thanks to electrical appliances.

Instead of noisy, polluting, costly generators that the people of Jubbet Adh-Dhib had been operating until then, which only provided electricity for three hours out of 24, an environmentally- and user-friendly solution had been found.

Nobody could be against this, the Dutch thought. But it turned out that somebody was. The heroes of the Civil Administration, the obedient executors of Israeli policy, could not abide electricity in a Palestinian kindergarten. They raided the village last Wednesday and confiscated the solar panels and other equipment and damaged the apparatus. In just an hour, they destroyed equipment that had taken five months to install, made the refrigerators and the computers superfluous, darkened the village and brought back the despair and the polluting generators. And all around them, the lights of settlements and outposts twinkled.

What allows Israel to spit on the money of Dutch taxpayers and thumb its nose at the good intentions of one of the governments friendliest to Israel? Here are a few theories: Because of that same Dutch and European patience with Israel and the way it ignores basic principles of fairness; because Israel thinks Europe is preoccupied with its own problems and won’t take any real steps against it; because Israel has already destroyed humanitarian equipment funded by European countries and, other than protests and declarations, nothing happened; because Israel is a Jewish-democratic country.

The great majority of Israel’s Jewish citizens do not oppose the destruction of a source of energy to a Palestinian village, or see it as a disaster or injustice. This lack of opposition encourages more of the same. Israelis also think foreign countries should not interfere in our business; after all, it’s clearly our private affair whether Jubbet Adh-Dhib has electricity or not.

Why is it our business? Quite a few young people have left the village and moved to Area A or Area B because they couldn’t stand the conditions, without building permits and without electricity. If everyone leaves, there will be more land available for us, the Jewish citizens of the Jewish democratic country. That’s simple arithmetic and typical Israeli long-term thinking.

Let’s hope that this time, the Dutch protest won’t stop at words.

Amira Hass

The Netherlands wants Israel to return Dutch solar panels seized from Palestinians

Israeli authorities confiscated 96 solar panels from Jubbet Adh-Dhib for lacking "proper permits".

By Ludovica Iaccino

Updated July 4, 2017 16:28 BST

On 28 June, the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA), the body governing Area C in the West Bank, confiscated 96 panels and electronic equipment from Jubbet Adh-Dhib's electric system, arguing that they had been built without proper permitsComet-ME

The Netherlands has filed a complaint with the Israeli government after it confiscated Dutch solar panels donated to Jubbet al-Dhib, a village in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.

The equipment was given as part of a Dutch-funded €500,000 ($567,612; £439,175) project to electrify areas of the West Bank. Of this, €350,000 funded the electrification of Jubbet Adh-Dhib.

However, on 28 June the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA), the body governing Area C in the West Bank, confiscated 96 panels and electronic equipment – worth €40,000 – from Jubbet Adh-Dhib's electric system, arguing that they had been built without proper permits, local media reported.

The Netherlands' foreign ministry demanded Israel return the seized equipment to the village and it is "currently assessing what next steps can be taken," Israeli news site Haaretz reported.

An unnamed source close to Dutch diplomats in the West Bank told the news site there was anger brewing in the Netherlands government following the seizure.

The electric system in Jubbet Adh-Dhib was built in 2016 by Israeli-Palestinian NGO Comet-ME, which provides sustainable energy and clean water to disenfranchised communities. The organisation said in a statement on its website that the equipment was seized "without prior warning and without having issued stop-work orders beforehand".

The organisation continued: "ICA workers also caused considerable damage, both to the solar panels and to the electricity room – breaking some of the panels, cutting many electricity and communication cables, and ripping the components off the walls of the electricity room – with the clear intention of preventing the future use of the system."

Michael Sfard, Comet-ME's legal adviser, told IBTimes UK the confiscation constituted "a violation of international law".

"International Humanitarian law and especially international laws of occupation, impose a duty on the occupying power – Israel – to supply the occupied communities with their humanitarian needs,"he said.

"Electricity is considered today by all legal experts a humanitarian need. It allows refrigeration of food and medicine, it provides light and energy for medical treatment and it allows the maintenance of social life. The installment of a renewable energy system in the village is an act of provision of humanitarian relief. As such, Israel has a legal obligation to allow it and assist its carrying out.

"By raiding the village, seizing the solar panel and damaging the system, Israel has further breached another principle of international law: the prohibition on damaging humanitarian objects. This is a grave violation and has no possible justification," Sfard concluded.

The Israeli embassy in London has not responded to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said in a statement sent to IBTimes UK: "On 28th June 2017, illegal solar and electric panels were detected in Jubb al-Thib, which were established without the necessary permits. Also, constriction freeze warrants were given to and illegal electricity room at the village and to the panels stands. We emphasize that the village has other electricity sources."

However, Comet-ME rejected the claims.

"The solar micro-grid that has powered the community since November 2016 was the first time in its history that the community had a reliable and consistent – not to mention clean and safe – source of electricity,"a spokesperson for the organisation told IBTimes UK.

Citing a 2010 report by Human Rights Watch, the spokesperson said residents in Jubbet adh-Dhib have applied for a "connection to the Israeli electricity" numerous times since 1988, but all requests have been refused.

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