EXCLUSIVE - The Lies of Ruth Smeeth MP led to the suspension of Marc Wadsworth

March 8, 2018, 4:21 pm

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Labour Against the Witchhunt Calls for an Inquiry as Smeeth's Claims of 25,000 Anti-Semitic Tweets are Shown to be Untrue

Smeeth has also been shown to be an informant for the US Embassy

Remember the Press Conference hosted by Shami Chakrabarti and Jeremy Corbyn on June 30^th 2016? It launched the Chakrabarti Report into Racism and Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.  Owing to the publicity-seeking antics of Ruth Smeeth, a right-wing Labour MP and officer of the Jewish Labour Movement, the main story that came out was about how a Labour MP had been subject to an anti-Semitic harangue by Marc Wadsworth.  So upset was Smeeth that the poor dear left the press conference in tears. This narrative has continued to hold sway despite the video evidence of the day.  It is an instructive story of how a media manufactured story can trump the facts.

Marc Wadsworth, a Black anti-racist activist of long standing had criticised Smeeth for handing over a press release to a Daily Telegraph journalist.  It was clear to those like John Pinar of the BBC and other journalists surrounding Smeeth that Wadsworth clearly didn’t know his place. His lack of deference was quite shocking.  After Richard Angel of Progress, who was sitting behind Smeeth, had mentioned the dreaded word ‘anti-Semitism’, Smeeth, got up off her haunches and left.  Although we are told she was in tears the camera did not manage to capture any, not even crocodile ones.

What the camera did capture though were her words of haughty anguish  ‘Are you serious? How dare you, How dare you, how absolutely dare you’.  It was as if the mistress of the house was talking to her uppity Black slave.  Or maybe an insubordinate Black servant who didn't know his place. After a good 20 seconds during which she appeared to take advice she got up and left followed by the same journalists she was accused of briefing.  Marc of course was immediately demonised in the press and expelled from the Labour Party before being readmitted only to be suspended.

It was at the press conference to launch the Chakrabarti Report that Ruth Smeeth MP staged her tantrum and walk-out

This tantrum and the orchestrated hysterics which followed were deliberately designed to destabilise the Chakrabarti Report and focus attention once more on the false anti-Semitism narrative. 

Smeeth has been one of the key figures in the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement arguing that under  Corbyn the party has faced an “anti-semitism” crisis.  Smeeth claimed to be one of the prime victims of anti-Jewish abuse inside Labour. Smeeth alleged that she had personally received some 25,000 abusive messages online, most of them via Twitter, in a few days in June 2016, of which no less than 20,000 occurred within a 24 hour period.

Ruth Smeeth - an informant and possible US agent

These figures have always been suspect.  Why would 25,000 people single her out over her histrionics? It is now clear that Smeeth was deliberately lying.  Smeeth is no victim of antisemitism.  She is guilty of false victimhood.  Her purpose was to provide substance to the false anti-Semitism smears in the Labour Party, smears suspected to have originated in a deliberate campaign of destabilisation in the Israeli Embassy.  She was also an informant for the US Embassy.

Smeeth's orchestrated walk-out and tantrum was guaranteed to get maximum media coverage

There is one major problem with her claim. There is no easy way to see how it could possibly be true. A new study by the Community Security Trust, a Zionist charity, identified only 15,000 anti-semitic tweets for the whole of the UK in a 12-month period that included June 2016. Either the study was grossly flawed, or Smeeth is a bad liar.

Smeeth did huge damage both to Corbyn’s personal reputation and to the Labour party’s image. She claimed that Corbyn's followers were responsible for a wave of anti-semitism and that under his leadership the party was no longer ‘a safe space for British Jews’. A headline in the Standard quoted her saying: “I’ve never seen anti-semitism in Labour like this, it’s normal now.”

Such quotes were intended to undo the good work that the Chakrabarti report had done and damage the Labour Party. Their real purpose is to counter and undermine support for the Palestinians and anti-Zionism.  The Chakrabarti Report found little evidence of anti-semitism in the party, but this was entirely sidelined, as was intended, by the media furore that ensued from Smeeth’s claims. 

The Jewish Labour Movement and the Zionist claim that ‘anti-Semitism’ is damaging Labour’s electoral prospects  is false. What has damaged Labour are these false reports of anti-Semitism. The kind of PR damage Smeeth caused the party may even have lost it a handful of seats at the last General Election – one of the closest-run in recent memory – allowing Theresa May’s Tories to stay in power.  Certainly Zionists like Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, Joan Ryan wanted  Corbyn to lose.  Ryan even telling her electors that she understood why they trusted May more than Corbyn.

Much of the following information is taken from research by Dr Alan Maddison who has also written an article for Jewish Voice for Labour.

The public relations damage that Smeeth caused the Labour Party may even have lost it a handful of seats at the last General Election

Remember also the wider context. Labour’s Blairite bureaucrats have been waging a witch-hunt against Corbyn-supporting activists, many of them anti-Zionist Jews such as myself. We have been suspended and expelled on trumped-up charges either of anti-semitism or of damaging the party’s image.  The latest victimis the Secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour, Glyn Secker.

There can be absolutely no doubt that Smeeth did far more damage to the party’s image and standing through her allegations than any of these activists.

Will she be investigated? Will she be suspended? Will she even be criticised? Don’t hold your breath.

Evidence suggests Corbyn supporters may suffer the most abuse DrAlan Maddison, 1^st March 2018

On-line abuse is unacceptable and causes psychological stress as well as offence and upset. There have been repeated allegations that Jeremy Corbyn supporters are the worst offenders. They are accused of frequently being abusive to Labour MPs who do not support him. Such claims are mostly anecdotal, made by those who contested his leadership, but still need to be explored.

However, recent studies suggest it is in fact the Labour MPs that have been loyal to Corbyn who get the most abuse.

Corbyn blamed for abuse received by Labour MPs opposed to his leadership

Jess Phillips asked Corbyn to distance himself from Momentum after complaining about alleged high levels of abuse against female Labour MPs (Huffington Post, 22^nd February 2017). 

Previously Phillips said that “Jeremy Corbyn should name and shame ‘ring leaders’ abusing MPs’ (Daily Telegraph, 16thAugust 2016). She also said that she had received 600 rape threats in one night, and a further 5000 twitter posts involving sexual abuse, though she did not relate these solely to Labour (Independent 31^st May 2016).         

Ruth Smeeth MP claimed to have received 20 000 abusive on-line messages within 12 hours of the Chakrabarti press conference, and a further 5000 in the following weeks (Guardian 2nd September 2016).  The implication was that these were mostly antisemitic and sent by supporters of Corbyn.  Smeeth said that antisemitism had become “normalised” in Labour and that under Corbyn there was “no safe space for British Jews” (Evening Standard, 20^th September 2016).

Referring to Smeeth’s allegations, Marie van der Zys, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said, “.....the party needs to drain the cesspit of antisemitism that has become so apparent in recent months”(Jewish Chronicle, 2^nd September 2016).

Despite these public attacks on Labour, we still don’t know how many of these abusive messages were antisemitic as implied, and what proportion were from Corbyn supporters.

A minority of Corbyn supporters may indulge in unacceptable abuse and even hold antisemitic views, but the Home Affairs Select Committee, in their report into antisemitism (October 2016), stated that, despite Smeeth’s contribution, they could find no convincing evidence that antisemitism was more prevalent in the Labour Party than in any other political party. The same lack of comparative evidence applies to other forms of abuse too.

In a recent study undertaken by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research group (1), the largest of its kind, it was clearly demonstrated that contrary to repeated claims, people on the Far Left and Left of politics have a low prevalence of strong antisemitic attitudes (3.6%), and that this prejudice is indistinguishable from those from the rest of the political spectrum, except for those on the Far Right, where it is around 4 times higher (13%). You would expect manifestations of  antisemitic abuse to correlate with antisemitic attitudes, and despite their small population size, the Far right has indeed been identified repeatedly as responsible for 60-70% anti-Semitic incidents motivated by political reasons, as reported by the Community Security Trust charity (2) shown below. Labour Party member perpetrators were never identified in these annual reports.

                 

Given this evidence, we have to ask whether these repeated and damaging allegations about Corbyn supporter and antisemitic abuse represent the true picture. Three prospective, well-designed, studies into on-line abuse are reviewed below and may help provide the answers to these questions.

1. Azmina Dhrodia, Amnesty Global Insights, September 4^th 2017 (3)

This study involved tracking on-line abuse for 177 female MPs over the 6 month period from 1^st January to 1^st June 2017. Of the total of 900 223 tweets received in total, 25 658 (2.85%) were judged abusive.

Below are the top five women MPs receiving the most abuse. There were two Corbyn supporter victims, with Diane Abbott MP getting around 8 times more abuse than the other four.  

                                                      

                                                                                          Amnesty Global Insights, 2017

We don’t know who the abusers were, apart from the fact they engaged in these on-line political exchanges, but it is likely many were members of political parties. As there are far more members in Labour (around 550 000) than any other political party, and as over 62% of these previously voted for Corbyn, it is likely that Corbyn supporters would dominate the membership participation in on-line exchanges. Yet as they are unlikely to attack the few Corbyn supporting MPsit seems reasonable to say that Corbyn supporters probably generate less on-line abuse than those supporting his critics, despite their greater numbers.

Jess Phillips is the only anti-Corbyn MP in the top 5, and got only 1/8^th of the abuse to which Diane Abbott was subjected, which also rather argues against Corbyn supporters issuing most of the abusive tweets.

Some complained that at last year’s Labour Conference Corbyn referred to Diane Abbott’s online abuse, rather than the alleged antisemitic abuse. However, none of the Jewish female Labour MPs appeared in the top 5. This means that they each had less than 1000 abusive tweets over the whole 6 month period, or less than 5.5 per day. This is a surprising result, given Ruth Smeeth’s  allegation that she had received 20 000 abusive messages in one day alone in 2016 , which is almost three times higher than received by Diane Abbott (by far the top scorer in this study) over the full 6 months. Perhaps Ruth Smeeth’s 20 000 abusive tweets were generated by robotic accounts and not genuine Corbyn supporters?

Jess Phillips, who claimed to have previously received 5000 ‘sexually abusive’ tweets, only received a total of 1002 abusive tweets over the 6 months of this study, an average of about 5.5 total abusive tweets per day.

Although abuses can spike significantly relating to specific events, it must be reassuring for those concerned that over the full 6 months period anti-Corbyn and Jewish MPs seem to have been rather spared. On the other hand it is of concern that Corbyn supporting MPs suffered more abuse than others, and that this is rarely mentioned in the media or the Labour Party itself.

A further analysis in this Amnesty study was made over the 6 week period up to the General Election. As shown below, we see with Angela Rayner’s inclusion there were 3/5 Corbyn supporting MPs in the top five and none of the Labour MPs opposing him.       

Over the 6 months 25 658 abusive tweets were generated by 16 707 perpetrators, the highest rate was 236 abusive tweets over 6 months from one person. The average was 1.5 abusive tweets over 6 months per perpetrator, indicating these are not chronic repeat abusers as the media has often implied. 

There was apparently insufficient data to analyse the influence of religion, but Black and Asian MPs received 35% more abuse than White MPs even when Dianne Abbott’s data was removed as shown below.     

Racist abuse is related to racial prejudice, and racial prejudice has been repeatedly shown to be about twice as prevalent with right-wing voters than with Labour voters. Labour Party members have a strong tradition as being anti-racist too, and it is reasonable to consider that such on-line abuse to Black and Asian MPs has probably come largely from those on the Right, who strangely get very little media attention.

For the full 6 months period of this study, Corbyn supporting MPs, dominated by Diane Abbott, received 76% of abuse in the top five group, and 88% in the 6 week run up to the General Election.  These findings totally contradict the allegations made in the media and by anti-Corbyn MPs.

This study involved female MPs only, but in the next study (McGoughlin and Ward) on-line abuse to all MPs were analysed.

2.     Liam Mcloughlin and Stephen Ward,  ECPR, 25th-29th April 2017  (4)

This earlier study into on-line abuse ran for 6 weeks from 14^thNovember 2016 to 28^th January 2017, and involved 573 MPs.  

The Table below shows the top 50 MPs having the most abuse.

Jeremy Corbyn is at the head of this list, receiving over twice the abuse of Theresa May.

If we include Corbyn, his 3 supporters (Diane Abbott, Clive Lewis, Richard Burgon), and those 3 previously cooperating with him (Andy Burnham, Sarah Champion, and Ed Miliband), then these seven had 1203 abusive tweets. Those 6 opposing Corbyn (Chukka Umunna, Ben Bradshaw, Owen Smith, Chris Bryant, David Lammy and Jess Phillips) had a total of 718 abusive tweets.

As for the Amnesty study, these results demonstrate more abuse received by Corbyn and his team (63% of abuse to all Labour MPs in top 50) than those Labour MPs opposing him.

Of the 20/650 (3.1%) Jewish MPs in Parliament today, Ed Miliband was the only one included in the  top 50 for abuse in this study, taking a proportionate share of 161/4761 top 50 abusive tweets (3.4%), though this is not necessarily related to his being Jewish. None of the other 19 Jewish MPs appear in the top 50. So Ruth Smeeth, Louise Ellman, Luciana Berger who have frequently complained about significant anti-Semitic abuse, must have received less than 50 abusive tweets (anti-Semitic or otherwise) over these 8 weeks.

The total of 6,952 abusive tweets came from 4,775 twitter accounts, and only 28 accounts sent more than 10 abusive tweets.  Once more the media stereotype of chronic   “keyboard warrior” abusers was exposed as false.  Most abuse occurred as a reaction to an MP tweet rather than being planned in advance.  Specific events could trigger spikes of abuse, and Anna Soubry mentions this in relation to the abuse she received over her Remain position when discussing brexit, including death threats. As around 88% of Labour Party members voted Remain, it is unlikely they contributed significantly to this abuse about brexit received by Anna Soubry.

Another finding contradicted the media theme that female MPs received more abuse than their male colleagues. For male MPs 3% of their tweets were abusive, for female MPs this was 1.7%, although female Mps did receive more gender –related “hate “ messages.

The authors of this study make quite a number of observations, including that the number of MPs receiving abuse may not have increased over recent years as many have claimed, just that letters may have been replaced by social media as a medium, allowing a greater volume.

They also make the important point that we need to understand what is motivating such abuse, rather than just analysing the symptom itself. The ‘political news packaging’ by the media, becoming more punchy and emotive, with more polarisation and populism, they say, leads to a more extreme and divided climate in political journalism.

3.     “Antisemitic Content on Twitter”, 2018 Community Security Trust (5)

In this recently published study by the Community Security Trust (5) it was revealed that for the whole UK, over a 12 month period (from October 2015 to October 2016), according to the criteria employed, there were 2.7 million tweets concerning Jews, of which only 15575 (0.6%) were considered to be antisemitic. The authors found this low proportion rather reassuring.

This study covered the period in which Smeeth claimed that she herself had received 25,000 abusive messages, mostly on twitter, with 20,000 of these sent over a single 12 hour period. 

The problem is that such a large number of antisemitic tweets, allegedly received by Smeeth, were not picked up in the CST survey which ran throughout that same period. In fact the maximum peaks the CST team found were around 200 antisemitic tweets a day, and that was for the whole UK.

While it is possible that not all of Smeeth’s tweets included the antisemitic key words used in the CST search, it seems unlikely that less than 1% of them did.

More abuse seems to come from those opposing Corbyn

Many allegations of abusive behaviour have been made against supporters of Corbyn. The findings of these three studies suggest there was far less on-line abuse detected, including antisemitism, than would have been expected from the previous allegations. 

Furthermore, those MPs opposing Corbyn received less abuse than those loyal to him. This suggests that it is individuals in the groups that do not support Corbyn that are generating the most on-line abuse, which is the opposite of what had been claimed.

This is not surprising.  Corbyn and the Left has received a volume of never ending abuse from the Tory tabloid press and it is no surprise that this has encouraged abuse on social media.

Phillips once observed that she found left wing men were the worst sexists. This is a strange generalisation from somebody who claims to fight abuse!  Phillips also threatened to “knife Corbyn in the front” and allegedly brags about telling Diane Abbott to F***K off.

More recently, Smeeth is reported to have spoken at a Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) meeting at the Labour Party Conference in September 2017 (Jewish Times of Israel, 4th September 2017 ), about the need to “break and destroy” the leaders of this alleged Labour Party antisemitism. Words such as   “break and destroy” could be taken as an incitement to violence against fellow Labour members. In addition, Ella Rose, the Director of the JLM, was filmed threatening to physically attack the anti-racist supporter of Palestinian human rights, Jackie Walker (6).

Such comments from members of the JLM, an affiliate to the Labour Party, would be considered abusive by most people, yet complaints by Corbyn supporters have been ignored. 

According to McLoughlin and Ward, on-line abuse is encouraged by the sort of aggressive, emotive and divisive language described above.

Abusive behaviour, including that motivated by antisemitism, exists across society and all political parties. But there is no justification for allegations that abusive behaviour, or antisemitism, is more prevalent amongst Corbyn supporters than other Labour members, or indeed the general population. The allegation that most of Smeeth’s abusive messages were sent by Corbyn supporters has no foundation in fact.

The ‘training’ sessions currently run by the JLM are contrary to the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report.  They are inappropriate. The JLM is an openly Zionist grouping, i.e. it supports the worlds only ethno-nationalist state, Israel, which is a segregated and apartheid society where Palestinian Arabs are institutionally discriminated against.

Given the serious electoral and reputational consequences for the Labour Party, its leader, and indeed the possible impact on millions of Labour voters too, it seems important that the Labour Party undertake a full and urgent investigation into the evidence for the damaging allegations and criticisms that continue to be made by MPs opposing Corbyn.

References  

1. Anti-Semitism in contemporary Great Britain” by Daniel L Staetsky, September 2017 http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.2017.Antisemitism_in_contemporary_Great_Britain.pdf

2. Anti-Semitic Incidents Report, Community Security Trust, 2017. https://cst.org.uk/data/file/f/c/Antisemitic_Incidents_Report_Jan-June_2017.1501074748.pdf

3.  Unsocial Media: Tracking Twitter Abuse against Women MPs, Azmina Dhrodia September 4th 2017

 Amnesty Global Insights.

https://medium.com/@AmnestyInsights/unsocial-media-tracking-twitter-abuse-against-women-mps-fc28aeca498a

4. Liam McLoughlin and Stephen Ward, April 25-29 2017, European Consortium of Political Research Joint Sessions, University of Nottingham, Nottingham

https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/4f8bacf9-27a8-44b3-9132-dd5fa9fdf70f.pdf

5. “Antisemitic Content on Twitter”, 2018 Community Security Trust (cst.org.uk)

https://cst.org.uk/news/blog/2018/02/22/new-publication-antisemitic-content-on-twitter

6.  “Ella Rose (Israeli Martial Artist) Wanting to Take Out Jackie Walker #Israel Lobby JLM”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx6t01PHaLA

See also Recent studies question whether attacks on Corbyn supporters were ever justified

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Stand Up To Racism – End Your Collaboration with Apartheid Israel

March 9, 2018, 9:01 am

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 Scottish PSC calls on SUTR to withdraw its invitation to an Israel Apartheid group to join their anti-racist march in Glasgow

I am posting this in solidarity with the statementput out by Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

At a demonstration organised in Glasgow next Saturday March 17^th amongst those invited to participate in the demonstration is the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland.  There is absolutely no excuse for marching alongside the supporters of Apartheid and the invitation must be withdrawn. 

There was a time when people on the Left like the Socialist Workers Party, whose initiative SUTR is, were ignorant of the racist and apartheid nature of Israel. That is no longer true.  There was a time when ‘socialist’ Zionists formed the main segment of the Zionist movement and were in government in Israel and people were deceived as to their true record but they spoke the language of the Left whilst engaging in ethnic cleansing.  This is no longer true either.

Support for Israel today means support for the gaoling of 17 year old Ahed Tamimi.  It means support for house demolition, imprisonment without trial,  the theft of land and water, the use of torture and a Jewish state which inherently and institutionally discriminates against Palestinians and non-Jews.  It means support at this very time for the deportation of 40,000 Black African refugees from Israel because they are Black and not Jewish.  This is unacceptable.

This invitation by SUTR to a pro-Israeli group is a consequence of the inability of the SWP to reconcile its anti-racism domestically with support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism.  The two exist in separate and ideologically watertight compartments. They should ask themselves why groups like the BNP  manage to combine anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial with adulation of Israel and Zionism. The SWP is out of date.  Virtually no fascist groups in Britain bar the National Front now pretend to support the Palestinians.

Zionism is supported by the far-Right internationally.  Indeed it is itself increasingly becoming part of that far-Right.  It is no accident that far-Right governments throughout Europe – from Viktor Orban in Hungary to Poland to Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz Christian Strache – combined anti-Semitism and fascism with support for the Israeli state.  We have the leaders of the alt-Right in the United States, from Steve Bannon to neo-Nazi Richard Spencer declaring that they are White Zionists.

Fascists and racists today love the Israeli state because it is the very ethno-nationalist state that they want to set up.  Britain First, whose two leaders – Paul Golding and Jayda Franzen – were yesterday gaoledfor racial harassment are overtly pro-Israel and pro-Zionist.  Israel is seen by fascist and neo-Nazi groups in Europe as the ideal anti-Muslim state. After all what is there not to like about Israel if you are a White Supremacist?

This decision, as Mick Napier says on the video, to march with this Zionist group is an outrage.  It is utterly shameful. If SUTR persists in this folly then the Palestine Solidarity groups will be forced to reconsider their links with them.  In Brighton PSC is affiliated to the group. 

The fascist Britain First group combines virulent racism with support for Zionism

What is particularly shameful is that this march is in commemoration of the massacre of Black people protesting against the pass system in South Africa in Sharpeville on March 21^st 1960.  Palestinians in the Occupied Territories face a far more sophisticated and obtrusive pass system operated by Israel with hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank with one entrance for Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers.  As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize stated:

"I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government."  Jerusalem Post 10 March 2014.

What part of the above statement does Stand Up to Racism not understand?  Or is it only racism in Britain that they are opposed to?

Tony Greenstein

On International Women's Day Scottish PSC received the following message from Nelson Mandela's daughter-in-law, Rayne Rose Mandela, and her daughter Nodiyala, Nelson Mandela's granddaughter, from Eastern Cape.

Message, 8 March 2018:

Greetings to those opposing racism in Scotland and around the world. The worldwide demonstrations on the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre should oppose all racism that blight our planet, especially the brutal apartheid system that still holds sway in Israel/Palestine.

International solidarity against the racist regime in South Africa played a part in our struggle for liberation and we have a duty on this anniversary to build another example of successful international solidarity for the long-suffering Palestinian people.

Amandla!

Scottish PSC statement on anti-racism and pro-Israel campaigns in Scotland

Scottish PSC spokesperson, Mick Napier

Introduction & addition, 8th March 2018

"We say that the organisers have no mandate to violate and corrupt this international commemoration. Scotland must not be the back door for supporters of Israeli Apartheid to promote their racist segregation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Were this effort to be successful it would shame Scotland internationally and make Mandela Place a meaningless relic."

No place for organised supporters of apartheid on a demonstration against apartheid and racism

The demonstration organised for Glasgow on March 17^th is one small part of a UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination established to commemorate the massacre on 21^st March 1960 of 69 peaceful demonstrators protesting against apartheid in Sharpeville, South Africa. The UN states the commemoration is to demonstrate “solidarity with the peoples struggling against racism and racial discrimination”.

The Palestinian people suffer under an Israel apartheid system much worse than the South African version.

Some organisers of the Glasgow demonstration on March 17^th, which is promoted as part of the UN day of solidarity, are determined to allow onto this march a group called Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland set up to defend and support Israel’s apartheid system and its frequent massacres of Palestinians.

We are expected to commemorate the heroes and martyrs of the struggle against South African apartheid by marching alongside the banners and flags of the defenders of Israeli apartheid. Desmond Tutu and other South Africans have declared that the horrors of South African apartheid were “a picnic” compared to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians today.

Ronnie Kasrils is a Jewish veteran of the ANC and was a Minister in the South African Government from 2004-2008. At SPSC meetings in Scotland he developed his view that “Any South African who goes to Palestine today and visits the West Bank and Gaza, or Palestinians living in the State of Israel, come away shocked and, shaking their heads saying ‘This is far worse than the apartheid we knew’."

(Jewish) co-author of the latest UN-commissioned report identifying Israel as an apartheid state, Prof. Richard Falk, spoke at the 2017 SUTR demonstration on behalf of SPSC and was warmly received. Now we are expected to welcome defenders of the apartheid State on the 2018 demonstration.

We say that the organisers have no mandate to violate and corrupt this international commemoration. Scotland must not be the back door for supporters of Israeli Apartheid to promote their racist segregation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Were this effort to be successful it would shame Scotland internationally and make Mandela Place a meaningless relic.

WATCH SPSC VIDEO: No place for organised supporters of apartheid on a demonstration against apartheid and racism

• Send a message to Scottish PSC, campaign@scottishspc.org.uk
• Send a message to SUTR, sutrscot@gmail.com (please copy us in campaign@scottishpsc.org.uk)

Statement from Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign on forthcoming anti-racism demonstration, 19 February 2018
.
The Confederation of Friends of Israel in Scotland (COFIS) joined the 2017 Stand Up to Racism demonstration in Glasgow and a clutch of members marched for some distance as part of that demonstration. They carried a banner of their racist organisation and Israeli flags, causing offence and consternation to many of those on the march.

COFIS works closely with the Israeli Embassy to close down public discussion of Israeli crimes and to impede organising for the Palestinian-led BDS movement, the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel until the crimes against the Palestinian people are ended.

COFIS opposes the demands of the Palestinian BDS Call: for Israel to

1. end the occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantle the Wall
2. recognise the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality
3. respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

COFIS defends and supports every Israeli war crime and crime against humanity, including Israel's Operation Protective Edge of summer 2014 which slaughtered over 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza. That indiscrinate mass killing led the Scottish Government to call for an arms embargo againt Israel.

COFIS works to smear Palestine solidarity activists as racists for opposition to the apartheid State of Israel, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the theft of Palestinian land and water resources, the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes, mass arrests and the killing of Palestinians purely on the basis of their nationality.

Yet some continue to defend the right of COFIS to participate in anti-racist marches despite COFIS' active defence of the state-enforced racism, i.e. apartheid, under which the Palestinian people suffer.

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign considers that this policy is inherently wrong, but also that, if unopposed, it would greatly weaken the struggle against the racism that blights Scottish society.

On any political demonstration it is never clear how many of those positioned behind a specific banner are associated with it. Throughout the world an Israeli flag is seen as a symbol of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and the genocidal siege of the people of Gaza. Flying such a symbol of apartheid on a demonstration makes it impossible for most Palestinians and Lebanese, as well as many Scots to participate, for how can Palestinians be expected to march behind the flag of the settlements which steal their land, the military outposts which fire on their family and friends, the checkpoints that creatively make their lives miserable, the symbol of a government which is openly committed to completing their disposession and copper-fastening their inferior status throughout the whole of Palestine.

Our solidarity with the Palestinian people and our opposition to the forces that work to violate them has to extend to the streets of Scotland. A people who suffer ritual humiliation from a rabble of Israeli soldiery at the checkpoints that blight their lives should not be further humiliated in Scotland by asking them to march alongside their violators and the repugnant symbol of their violators.

Seeing the parallels between their own oppression and that of the Palestinian people, anti-racist movements around the world such as Black Lives Matter in the United States have enthusiastically integrated support for the Palestinian freedom struggle into their official aims. Anti-racists in Scotland should do no less.

Some few are afraid of being labelled 'anti-semtic' if they bar an active campaign for Israeli apartheid from an anti-racist march, but this is itself a racist position because it implies that all Jews are complicit in the crimes of the State of Israel. SPSC rejects any notion of collective guilt and insists that Scottish Jews are not to be held responsible for the crimes of the State of Israel.

In any case, anyone who becomes actively involved in the struggle for Palestinian freedom understands that malicious and false accusations of anti-semitism follow as night follows day, and that the only way to avoid such politically-driven smears is to scale down support for the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid.

Israeli flags commonly fly in the ranks of fascist marches in Scotland and elsewhere; are we to have Israeli flags flying on both sides of racist and anti-racist mobilisations? The proposal would be very strange.

Permitting Israeli flags and an active campaign on behalf of Israeli apartheid onto anti-racism initiatives will divide and weaken any struggle against racism.

We call upon SUTR and its affiliates to bar any group that exists to defend state-enforced racism in Israel/Palestine as having no place among anti-racist campaigns.

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

19th February 2018
campaigns@scottishpsc.org.uk

When Holocaust survivor Professor Ze’ev Sternhell compares Israel to Nazi Germany It’s Time to Wake Up

March 9, 2018, 5:24 pm

≫ Next: Anti-Jew and Pro-Israel - Why anti-Semites Love Israel

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It’s not anti-Semitic to compare Israel to Nazi Germany – it's what all anti-fascists should do

If there is one thing that the Zionist movement and Israel’s supporters hate it is comparisons between the ‘Jewish’ State of Israel and Nazi Germany.  ‘Anti-Semitism’ they cry like crows. It is the only Zionist response to criticism.  The fake Zionist IHRA definition of anti-Semitism that Theresa May has embraced, gives as one of 11 illustrative examples of ‘anti-Semitism’:

Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’

Shami Chakrabarti, in her Reporton racism and anti-Semitism to the Labour Party also criticised the use of Holocaust comparisons. 

‘In day -to-day political debate , it is always incendiary to compare the actions of Jewish people or institutions anywhere in the world to those of Hitler or the Nazis or to the perpetration of the Holocaust. Indeed such remarks can only be intended to be incendiary rather  than persuasive.’

Shami Chakrabarti, whose Reportwas admirable in many ways, in particular its (so far ignored) recommendations on a fair and transparent disciplinary process in the Labour Party, was out of her depth when she dealt with Zionism and Israel.  It was not a subject she knew anything about and her opinions were shallow and superficial.

Even if it is ‘incendiary’ to compare demonstrations in Israel that chant ‘Death to the Arabs’to similar ones in Nazi Germany or Poland, where the chant was ‘Death to the Jews’, is that any reason to be silent?  If Nazi Germany forbade Jews buying German ‘national’ land in much the same way as non-Jews are prevented from buying ‘Jewish national’ land in Israel, is the fear of being ‘incendiary’ a reason to be quiet? 

But in any case the comparison is not between Jews and Nazi Germany but between Zionists and Nazi Germany - a big difference.

The reason that it should be compulsory to make comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany is not in order to offend those whose relatives died in the Holocaust but to ensure that the ideas of Nazism and Hitlerism do not triumph once again.  It is today one of the few moral constraints on the actions of the Israeli state and Israelis themselves.

It is precisely because Israel derives its legitimacy from the Holocaust, which it claims as its moral and political foundation that we should remind its supporters of the growing similarity between the State of Israel and pre-war Nazi Germany.

Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer is a self-declared  White Zionist

The fact that ideologues of White Supremacy, like neo-Nazi Richard Spencer of the alt-Right, call themselves White Zionists only reinforces this comparison.  Those who pretend that the welcome by neo-Nazi and far-Right parties for Israel is a one way affair, that it is not reciprocated, are being deliberately disingenuous. 

Sebastian Gorka at the Zionist Organisation of America 2017 Annual Gala Dinner

Mort Klein, President of the Zionist Organisation of America, who welcomed Sebastian Gorka to the ZOA’s 2017 annual Gala dinner asked rhetorically: “Reagan had Nazis supporting him, so what?”  The Jewish Voice describedhow ‘Tonight Klein outdid himself with a superstar cast of participants including Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Senator Joe Lieberman...’

Gorka, who was a deputy assistant to Donald Trump was photographed at Trump’s inauguration wearing the Vitézi Rend, a medal issued by a Hungarian fascist group. This group collaboratedwith Nazi Germany during the war. Vitézi Rend was founded by Admiral Horthy, who ruled Hungary as Prince Regent, in 1920.  During the war Horthy formed an alliance with Nazi Germany and from May to July 1945  Horthy presided over the deportation of nearly ½ million Jews to Auschwitz.  Horthy was a self-confessed anti-Semite. 

But it wasn’t only far-Right Mort Klein, at whose dinner Alan Dershowitz, former Senator Lieberman and Steve Bannon attended, who welcomed Gorka. As Joseph Massad noted in The shocking alliance between Zionism and Anti-Semitism, Gorka was welcomedby the Jerusalem Post with warm applause and a prominent speaking slot at its annual conference in May 2017 in New York 

Other speakers at the same conference included Israel’s Education, Defence and Justice Ministers Naftali Bennet, Avigdor Liebermann and Ayelet Shaked.  As the Forward noted, ‘Despite his controversial ties to allies of the Nazis, White House counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka has scored invitations to speak at upcoming pro-Israeli events.   Indeed the leader of the Israeli Labour Party, Isaac Herzog, a man who was always willing to condemn Jeremy Corbyn as ‘anti-Semitic’ was also a speaker at the conference.

An op-ed defending Gorka explained that “The real agenda is clear: Gorka has written forcefully about the need to defeat the jihadi threat to Western civilization,”

The alliance between Europe’s far Right anti-Semitic parties and the Zionist movement and Israel is founded, above all, on a common and shared hatred of Muslims.  Zionism feeds into anti-Islamic hatred in Europe and the fascists see Israel as the model kind of state that they would like to see back home.

In the fight against Islam and the Palestinians, the support of neo-Nazi Gorka is welcomed

Professor Ze’ev Sternhell

Ze’ev Sternhell is a childhood survivor of the Holocaust who was born in Przemyśl, Poland.  He was smuggled out of the ghetto into Lwow and survived the war, having been adopted by a Catholic family.  In 2008 Sternhell was injuredby a bomb planted by settler terrorists.  Sternhell is also an expert in fascism, which is why his comparisons between Germany 1933-39 and Israel today cannot be understated.

What Sternhell compares Israel to is not the Nazi Germany of the Holocaust post-1941 but the pre-1939 era when the Nazi programme was one of expulsion and the removal of basic rights from the Jews of Germany.  From 1933 onwards there was a steady process of what might be called incremental discrimination against the Jews of Germany.  The first act was the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which resulted in the dismissal of most Jewish civil servants.  The following six years saw the removal of citizenship from Jews and their economic pauperisation as Jews were prevented from owning businesses, Jewish children prevented from going to public schools and even, on November 29^th1938 owning carrier pigeons!  See Anti-Jewish legislation in prewar Nazi Germany.

A kosher certificate handed out by Lehava to employers who refuse to hire Arab workers

In Israel too there are growing campaignsfor businesses to dismiss Arab workers, for Jews not to rent land or property to non-Jews as well as state authorised discrimination in terms of the segregation of education, jobs, housing etc.  This is accompanied in the social sphere by government sponsored campaigns against social and personal relations between Jews and Arabs in order to preserve the ethnic purity of the Jewish race in Israel, because in Israel being Jewish is a national and not just a religious category. 

In 2014 we had the sick scenes of hundreds of protestors from Lehava, a state funded organisation, demonstrating outside the marriage reception of a Jewish woman and an Arab man.  Lehava itself organises lynch mobs to attack Arabs suspected of dating Jewish men.  Under the aegis of now Deputy Foreign Minister Tsipi Hotoveli, the ‘charitable’ front of Lehava has received state funding for over a decade. Israel Funds Group That 'Saves Jewish Girls' From Marrying Arabs.

Racism in Israel however has never been a private matter.  The Jewish National Fund is a body established by the JNF Law 1953.  The JNF controls 93% of Israeli land with the Israeli Land Authority.  Its constitution prevents it from leasing or renting land to non-Jews and when this arrangement was upset by a Supreme Court ruling in Kadan in 2000 the Knesset simply passed the Receptions Committees Law which substituted indirect for direct discrimination.  It was otherwise known as the "High Court- Kaadan bypass law".

After the Kadan ruling the JNF argued that not only did 70% of Israeli Jews oppose allocating their land to non-Jews, but that 80% of Jews preferred Israel to be a Jewish state to a state of its own citizens

At the present time the Israeli government is piloting through the Knesset a Jewish Nation State Law which will enshrine in basic law, the equivalent of Israel’s Constitution, the fact that Arabs are not even second class citizens of Israel.  They are, at best tolerated tresspassers.

The process of discrimination in Israel isn’t confined to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories but increasingly to Israel’s Arab citizens too.  Thus we see that the Jewish state is progressively becoming the equivalent of the Aryan state in Germany before 1939.  This is the background to the comparisons by Professor Sternhell.  Those who decry such comparisons are saying that the present apartheid situation in Israel is an acceptable price to pay for the existence of a ‘Jewish’ state.

Tony Greenstein

Professor Sternhell

Zeev Sternhell Haaretz, 19.01.2018 02:00 

I frequently ask myself how a historian in 50 or 100 years will interpret our period. When, he will ask, did people in Israel start to realize that the state that was established in the War of Independence, on the ruins of European Jewry and at the cost of the blood of combatants some of whom were Holocaust survivors, had devolved into a true monstrosity for its non-Jewish inhabitants. When did some Israelis understand that their cruelty and ability to bully others, Palestiniansor Africans, began eroding the moral legitimacy of their existence as a sovereign entity?

The answer, that historian might say, was embedded in the actions of Knesset members such as Miki Zohar and Bezalel Smotrich and the bills proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The nation-state law, which looks like it was formulated by the worst of Europe’s ultra-nationalists, was only the beginning. Since the left did not protest against it in its Rothschild Boulevard demonstrations, it served as a first nail in the coffin of the old Israel, the one whose Declaration of Independence will remain as a museum showpiece. This archaeological relic will teach people what Israel could have become if its society hadn’t disintegrated from the moral devastation brought on by the occupation and apartheid in the territories.

The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here, the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people. The interviews Haaretz’s Ravit Hecht held with Smotrichand Zohar (December 3, 2016 and October 28, 2017) should be widely disseminated on all media outlets in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. In both of them we see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.

Like every ideology, the Nazi race theory developed over the years. At first it only deprived Jews of their civil and human rights. It’s possible that without World War II the “Jewish problem” would have ended only with the “voluntary” expulsion of Jews from Reich lands. After all, most of Austria and Germany’s Jews made it out in time. It’s possible that this is the future facing Palestinians.

Indeed, Smotrich and Zohar don’t wish to physically harm Palestinians, on condition that they don’t rise against their Jewish masters. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression, or equal rights in case the territories are officially annexed to Israel. For these two representatives of the Knesset majority, the Palestinians are doomed to remain under occupation forever. It’s likely that the Likud’s Central Committee also thinks this way. The reasoning is simple: The Arabs aren’t Jews, so they cannot demand ownership over any part of the land that was

According to the concepts of Smotrich, Zohar and Shaked, a Jew from Brooklyn who has never set foot in this country is the legitimate owner of this land, while a Palestinian whose family has lived here for generations is a stranger, living here only by the grace of the Jews. “A Palestinian,” Zohar tells Hecht, “has no right to national self-determination since he doesn’t own the land in this country. Out of decency I want him here as a resident, since he was born here and lives here – I won’t tell him to leave. I’m sorry to say this but they have one major disadvantage – they weren’t born as Jews.”

From this one may assume that even if they all converted, grew side-curls and studied Torah, it would not help. This is the situation with regard to Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers and their children, who are Israeli for all intents and purposes. This is how it was with the Nazis. Later comes apartheid, which could apply under certain circumstances to Arabs who are citizens of Israel. Most Israelis don’t seem worried. 

Anti-Jew and Pro-Israel - Why anti-Semites Love Israel

March 10, 2018, 12:16 pm

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≪ Previous: When Holocaust survivor Professor Ze’ev Sternhell compares Israel to Nazi Germany It’s Time to Wake Up

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You don’t have to be anti-Semitic to support Israel but it certainly helps!

This is an excellent video by Jewish comedian Matt Lieb which shows why you don’t have to be anti-Semitic to love Israel but it sure helps.

The old lie that the Zionists perpetuate is that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism whereas in fact it is the anti-Semites who have most in common with Israel.  Of course it is possible to be anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic but it is rare and almost always a product of people who take Zionists at their word.  After all if someone says that supporting the Palestinians is anti-Semitic, there are some fools who will accept this and say ‘ok if the price of supporting Palestine is being an anti-Semite then I’ll just have to be anti-Semitic’.  However this is not only rare but these people also usually say that they don’t hate Jews but Zionism.  The are confused and Zionism makes them more confused.

However genuine anti-Semites and neo-nazis like ‘White Zionist’ Richard Spencer, who do hate Jews use support for Israel as a way of covering this up.

Below is an article by Israeli anti-Zionist Professor Neve Gordon about this phenomenon.

The ‘New Anti-Semitism’

Neve Gordon

London Review of Book,Vol. 40 No. 01 · 4 January 2018

Not long after the eruption of the Second Intifada in September 2000, I became active in a Jewish-Palestinian political movement called Ta’ayush, which conducts non-violent direct action against Israel’s military siege of the West Bank and Gaza. Its objective isn’t merely to protest against Israel’s violation of human rights but to join the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination. For a number of years, I spent most weekends with Ta’ayush in the West Bank; during the week I would write about our activities for the local and international press. My pieces caught the eye of a professor from Haifa University, who wrote a series of articles accusing me first of being a traitor and a supporter of terrorism, then later a ‘Judenrat wannabe’ and an anti-Semite. The charges began to circulate on right-wing websites; I received death threats and scores of hate messages by email; administrators at my university received letters, some from big donors, demanding that I be fired.

I mention this personal experience because although people within Israel and abroad have expressed concern for my wellbeing and offered their support, my feeling is that in their genuine alarm about my safety, they have missed something very important about the charge of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ and whom, ultimately, its target is.

The ‘new anti-Semitism’, we are told, takes the form of criticism of Zionism and of the actions and policies of Israel, and is often manifested in campaigns holding the Israeli government accountable to international law, a recent instance being the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In this it is different from ‘traditional’ anti-Semitism, understood as hatred of Jews per se, the idea that Jews are naturally inferior, belief in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy or in the Jewish control of capitalism etc. The ‘new anti-Semitism’ also differs from the traditional form in the political affinities of its alleged culprits: where we are used to thinking that anti-Semites come from the political right, the new anti-Semites are, in the eyes of the accusers, primarily on the political left.

The logic of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ can be formulated as a syllogism: i) anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews; ii) to be Jewish is to be Zionist; iii) therefore anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic. The error has to do with the second proposition. The claims that Zionism is identical to Jewishness, or that a seamless equation can be made between the State of Israel and the Jewish people, are false. Many Jews are not Zionists. And Zionism has numerous traits that are in no way embedded in or characteristic of Jewishness, but rather emerged from nationalist and settler colonial ideologies over the last three hundred years. Criticism of Zionism or of Israel is not necessarily the product of an animus towards Jews; conversely, hatred of Jews does not necessarily entail anti-Zionism.

Not only that, but it is possible to be both a Zionist and an anti-Semite. Evidence of this is supplied by the statements of white supremacists in the US and extreme right-wing politicians across Europe. Richard Spencer, a leading figure in the American alt-right, has no trouble characterising himself as a ‘white Zionist’ (‘As an Israeli citizen,’ he explained to his interviewer on Israel’s Channel 2 News, ‘who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood, and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me, who has analogous feelings about whites … I want us to have a secure homeland for us and ourselves. Just like you want a secure homeland in Israel’), while also believing that ‘Jews are vastly over-represented in what you could call “the establishment”.’ 

Gianfranco Fini of the Italian National Alliance and Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, have also professed their admiration of Zionism and the ‘white’ ethnocracy of the state of Israel, while on other occasions making their anti-Semitic views plain. Three things that draw these anti-Semites towards Israel are, first, the state’s ethnocratic character; second, an Islamophobia they assume Israel shares with them; and, third, Israel’s unapologetically harsh policies towards black migrants from Africa (in the latest of a series of measures designed to coerce Eritrean and Sudanese migrants to leave Israel, rules were introduced earlier this year requiring asylum seekers to deposit 20 per cent of their earnings in a fund, to be repaid to them only if, and when, they leave the country).

If Zionism and anti-Semitism can coincide, then – according to the law of contradiction – anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not reducible one to the other. Of course it’s true that in certain instances anti-Zionism can and does overlap with anti-Semitism, but this in itself doesn’t tell us much, since a variety of views and ideologies can coincide with anti-Semitism. You can be a capitalist, or a socialist or a libertarian, and still be an anti-Semite, but the fact that anti-Semitism can be aligned with such diverse ideologies as well as with anti-Zionism tells us practically nothing about it or them. Yet, despite the clear distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, several governments, as well as think tanks and non-governmental organisations, now insist on the notion that anti-Zionism is necessarily a form of anti-Semitism. The definition adopted by the current UK government offers 11 examples of anti-Semitism, seven of which involve criticism of Israel – a concrete manifestation of the way in which the new understanding of anti-Semitism has become the accepted view. Any reproach directed towards the state of Israel now assumes the taint of anti-Semitism.

One idiosyncratic but telling instance of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ took place in 2005 during Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. When soldiers came to evacuate the eight thousand Jewish settlers who lived in the region, some of the settlers protested by wearing yellow stars and insisting they would not ‘go like sheep to the slaughter’. Shaul Magid, the chair of Jewish Studies at Indiana University, points out that by doing so, the settlers cast the Israeli government and the Israeli military as anti-Semitic. In their eyes, the government and soldiers deserved to be called anti-Semites not because they hate Jews, but because they were implementing an anti-Zionist policy, undermining the project of settling the so-called greater Israel. This representation of decolonialisation as anti-Semitic is the key to a proper understanding of what is at stake when people are accused of the ‘new anti-Semitism’. When the professor from Haifa University branded me an anti-Semite, I wasn’t his real target. People like me are attacked on a regular basis, but we are considered human shields by the ‘new anti-Semitism’ machine. Its real target is the Palestinians.

There is an irony here. Historically, the fight against anti-Semitism has sought to advance the equal rights and emancipation of Jews. Those who denounce the ‘new anti-Semitism’ seek to legitimate the discrimination against and subjugation of Palestinians. In the first case, someone who wishes to oppress, dominate and exterminate Jews is branded an anti-Semite; in the second, someone who wishes to take part in the struggle for liberation from colonial rule is branded an anti-Semite. In this way, Judith Butler has observed, ‘a passion for justice’ is ‘renamed as anti-Semitism’.​＊

The Israeli government needs the ‘new anti-Semitism’ to justify its actions and to protect it from international and domestic condemnation. Anti-Semitism is effectively weaponised, not only to stifle speech – ‘It does not matter if the accusation is true,’ Butler writes; its purpose is ‘to cause pain, to produce shame, and to reduce the accused to silence’ – but also to suppress a politics of liberation. The non-violent BDS campaign against Israel’s colonial project and rights abuses is labelled anti-Semitic not because the proponents of BDS hate Jews, but because it denounces the subjugation of the Palestinian people. This highlights a further disturbing aspect of the ‘new anti-Semitism’. Conventionally, to call someone ‘anti-Semitic’ is to expose and condemn their racism; in the new case, the charge ‘anti-Semite’ is used to defend racism, and to sustain a regime that implements racist policies.

The question today is how to preserve a notion of anti-anti-Semitism that rejects the hatred of Jews, but does not promote injustice and dispossession in Palestinian territories or anywhere else. There is a way out of the quandary. We can oppose two injustices at once. We can condemn hate speech and crimes against Jews, like the ones witnessed recently in the US, or the anti-Semitism of far-right European political parties, at the same time as we denounce Israel’s colonial project and support Palestinians in their struggle for self-determination. But in order to carry out these tasks concurrently, the equation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism must first be rejected. 

EXCLUSIVE - The Lies of David Collier (Gnasher Jew) and his Dodgy Dossiers

March 10, 2018, 9:45 pm

≫ Next: Making Apartheid Official – Why Israel's Government is Introducing a Jewish Nation State Law

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Why are the BBC, the Guardian and the press repeatedly taken in by this bogus ‘Researcher’ & his attacks on Corbyn?

It is quite remarkable how the media, including the ‘liberal’ Guardian, are repeatedly deceived by David Collier’s ‘research’.  Collier claims in his latest Report Anti-Semitism Inside Palestine Live, an obscure Palestine Facebook group with no official status, that ‘This research is fully independent. I am not affiliated with any political group or community organisation. I believe this independence is important and adds to the integrity of the work.’ 

A cursory examination of this statement would show that it is a preposterous lie.  Collier is a dedicated Zionist activist and his ‘research’ is politically driven by his far-Right Zionist views and fascist associations.  Indeed it would not be an exaggeration to say that Collier himself is a died-in-the-wool racist with fascist tendencies.

Zionist 'charity' the Campaign Against anti-Semitism paints Scottish PSC as antisemitic

The BBC (& Labour's witchhunters) take Collier's 'research' at face value

The CAA calls PSC 'bigots for Palestine' in its normally politically neutral mode of operation

Perhaps the word ‘deceived’ is too strong. After all the BBC and The Guardian are willing dupes.  Even the most cursory examination of Collier would demonstrate that he is anything but independent.

His latest report isn’t the first such ‘research’ by Collier.  He was responsible for producing similar reports on Scottish PSCand Palestine Solidarity Campaign, both of which were also concerned with social media/Facebook groups. He is backed up in his work by the far-Right Zionist ‘charity’ Campaign Against Anti-Semitism which publicisesCollier’s work under such neutral and objective titles as Bigots 4 Palestine.  Collier openly admitsthat his work is ‘commissioned and published by Jewish Human Rights Watch’. 

For those who don’t know JHRW is another far-Right Zionist group dedicated to opposing Palestinian human rights. It is led by Emmanuel Weiss and solicitor Robert Festenstein. In its own words‘Jewish Human Rights Watch (JHRW) was established in February 2015 to fight the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS’.  In other words it has nothing to do with human rights, either Jewish or Palestinian.

Racist cartoon accompanying CAA pamphlet on 'Muslim anti-semitism'

We have campaigned to have the CAA deregistered by the Charity Commission as it is an openly political Zionist group. However the Charity Commission under its Islamaphobic far-Right Chairman William Shawcross has refused to act. Shawcross, an ex-Director of the cold war Henry Jackson Society was reported in the Guardian as having saidin 2012 that ‘“Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future”.  The CAA, in response to a petition calling on the Charity Commission to act triedto intimidate Change.org into taking the petition down (they failed!).

Collier's political agenda is quite clear

The only thing that Collier has proved in his copious reports is that people who are anti-Semitic are a problem on Palestine social media and Facebook groups and that the under resourced PSC who run one of these groups should have been more vigilant. The attempt of Collier and others to say that Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its Scottish equivalent are therefore anti-Semitic ‘bigots’ cannot be sustained. Both groups are not only explicitly opposed to anti-Semitism but in practice support anti-fascist and anti-racist activities, as do their local groups. Both groups are of course established to oppose the very real racism that Palestinians experience.  That is the real reason for Collier’s ‘research and it is why the word ‘solidarity’is found in their name.

Conspiracy theorists and advocates of Holocaust denial are a wider problem on the Internet and they are not confined to Palestine related groups. Many people, lacking any explanation for imperialism and its wars and devastation of the Middle East and Africa, instead of looking to simple explanations about international class relations, look to conspiracy theories or what they perceive as Jewish lobbies. Part of the reason for this is that Zionist lobby groups like AIPAC or the Board of Deputies of British Jews openly proclaim that their support for Israel is in the name of all Jews. It is no surprise therefore that some people take them at their word. 

Naturally John Mann MP seeks a share of the limelight

It is also unfortunate that because Israel and the Zionist movement use the Holocaust as a propaganda weapon against the Palestinians, some people react by denying the Holocaust. See for example Netanyahu blames Jerusalem mufti for Holocaust, is accused of ‘absolving Hitler’

This bizarre ‘logic’ epitomised by former Iranian President Ahmedinajad, holds that since the Holocaust legitimises the Israeli state, denying the Holocaust undermines Israel.  Unfortunately, since the Holocaust is an established fact, such people end up achieving the precise opposite. Such people would do better to understand the political opportunism of a movement which, during the Holocaust, opposed the rescue of Jewish refugees to any place but Palestine. A movement which, as Ken Livingstone noted, was itself backed by the Nazis before the Holocaust. Even Zionist historian David Cesarani, in his book The Final Solution (p.96) accepted that ‘The efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to further emigration.” (my emphasis)

Collier’s latest report on an obscure Facebook group, Palestine Livewas intended to paint prominent members such as Jeremy Corbyn and Baroness Tonge as anti-Semites even though they had nothing to do with and weren’t even aware of its anti-Semitic postings.  If you are on Facebook you are added automatically to numerous groups without your knowledge. Even if you contribute to them there is no reason why you would automatically know if Holocaust denial  material had been posted to them.

David Collier – Member of the Fascist Herut UK group

The letter to the New York Times signed by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and many other Jewish personalities

What is though relevant is that Collier, far from being a disinterested academic researcher, is a member of Herut UK. Herut was founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Russian Zionist who founded Revisionist Zionism.  As Ha’aretz noted, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister ‘repeatedly compared Jabotinsky to Hitler in print and in speeches, including one where he called him "Vladimir Hitler.’ In a famous letteron the occasion of the visit there by the leader of Herut, Menachem Begin (who in 1977 became Prime Minister of Israel), Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and 26 other prominent Jewish dignitaries wrote that:

Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.

At the relaunch of Herut-UK in February of this year, it was reportedthat ‘pro-Israel activist David Collier spoke about the legacy of Zionist founding father, Vladimir Jabotinsky.’Note how the Jewish News described Collier as a ‘pro-Israel activist’.  There is no pretence that he is a neutral researcher who just happened to stumble on anti-Semitism whilst browsing the Internet.

A former Israeli businessman Collier is deeply racist. He believes that Palestinian refugees are an ‘artificial entity’.  Collier criticised Naomi Wimborne-Iddrissi, a Jewish woman as “blind and stupid” and attacked “her life choices” because she had “married a Muslim, and has a child’.  In Israel sexual relations (miscegenation) between Jews and non-Jews is a social taboo, race-mixing.

Lehava thugs demonstrating outside the wedding reception of an Arab and a Jewish woman chanting 'Death to the Arabs.

In Israel the government-funded fascist group Lehava organises packs of young thugs to go round beating up Arab men suspected of wanting to date Jewish women (as is normal with fascist groups there is no objection to Jewish men having sexual relations with Arab women – this was also true in Nazi Germany).  See In Jerusalem, a Far-right Jewish Gang Frequently Attacks Arabs - and the Police Do Almost Nothing.  In Israel it is impossible for Jews and non-Jews to marry. The leader of this Jewish Nazi group, Benjamin Gopstein, who has also called for the burning of churches and mosques in Israel, was recently invitedto talk about the harassment of Jewish women by Arab men by the Knessets Committee on Distributive Justice.

Collier relies on the good old McCarthyist technique of guilt-by-association.  Corbyn is guilty of ‘anti-Semitism’ because of things other people have posted and the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism has even filed a complaint against Corbyn for anti-Semitism!

Collier's friend Debra Cohen refers to the victims of genocide in Bosnia as 'Muzli rats' - a Hitler like term - 'by their friends shall ye know them'

Collier’s hypocrisy is demonstrated by Jackie Walker who revealed that Collier was added to the Facebook Group International Community by Debra Cohen on 4^th August 2016. A friend of Collier, Cohen is a vile racist and Islamaphobe, who called Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, who were found guilty of war crimes at the Hague, including setting up concentration camps and perpetrating the massacreat Srebenica, ‘innocent men’.  In Srebenica more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were murdered. Cohen believes that ‘we made mistake not to support this 2 guys.... Now we have to deal with li rats on our own.’   Just as Hitler described Jews as vermin Cohen describes Muslims as ‘rats’.

Delivering the verdict last November, Judge Alphons Orie saidMladić’s crimes “rank among the most heinous known to humankind and include genocide and extermination” The denial that the genocide of Muslims in former Yugoslavia took place was famously made  by the magazine Living Marxism (now Spiked) when it accused ITN of doctoring photographs of the Trnopoljeconcentration camp.  ITN won £375,000 in libel damages.

It is ironic but no surprise that Collier keeps company with genocide denier Debra Cohen but since Collier devotes his life to denying that the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. None of this has been revealed by the BBC or Guardian who report in blissful ignorance.

In the introduction to his ReportCollier goes out of his way to pretend that his ‘research’ is not motivated by the conflict with the Palestinians or Zionism.  He asserts that his work‘sets the bar for antisemitism very high by completely discounting Israel based antisemitism.’  (note the assumption that ‘Israel based’solidarity work is anti-Semitic. This too is a lie. Even Collier doesn’t suggest that anything I have written is anti-Semitic. However that doesn’t prevent him from including me in his Report for no other reason than that I criticise his gang of Zionist fascist friends.

Last year I wrote an extensively researched article We Name the Gang of (31) Zionists Whose Purpose is to Disrupt Palestinian Events in London.  One of these Zionists, Jason Silver later committed suicide.  Almost immediately Silver’s former friends attempted to blame my article for his death despite there being no proof of any connection.

Paul Besser with  gaoled Britain First leader Jayda Fransen

The 31 Zionist fascists consist of individuals such as Paul Besser, Intelligence Officer for neo-Nazi Britain First, who go around trying to disrupt Palestinian meetings and activities.  Britain First are famous for receivingTrump’s endorsement. Their leaders, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen have just been sentencedto 18 and 36 months imprisonment for racial harassment and Thomas Mair, the killer of Jo Cox MP repeatedly shouted‘Britain First’ before murdering her.

Collier writes about a Free Speech on Israel meeting at the House of Commons last year:

‘The clearest example of legitimising antisemitism took place on 5th December 2015, (sic!) at an event hosted by Tommy Sheppard MP. The group holding the event was ‘Free Speech on Israel’ (FSOI), a group of Jewish Palestine Live members, who created FSOI to deflect accusations of antisemitism.’ 

Note how Collier adopts the conspiracy method of the anti-Semites.  FSOI has nothing to do with Palestine Live nor does my blog article. The meeting at the House of Commons was a meeting of FSOI.  Collier’s deliberately mixes them all together in one heady anti-Semitic brew.

Collier doesn’t provide an iota of proof to back up his assertion of a link between FSOI and Palestine Live. All the speakers at the meeting, who were Jewish, had a lot to say about Israel and Zionism but nothing they said was remotely anti-Semitic nor does he make any such claim. 

Nonetheless Collier has no hesitation in branding the meeting ‘anti-Semitic’. So much for setting the bar very high! In fact there is no bar.

Gemma Sheridan (left) and unknown both wearing tee shirts with Jewish Nazi Kach symbol

Collier writes that: ‘Four days after the event, Tony Greenstein ran a vicious attack piece, naming Jewish activists who attend demonstrations.’  What has this to do with the alleged purpose of his ‘research’, unmasking anti-Semitism?  It is of course a lie. I didn’t criticise Jewish activists who ‘attended demonstrations’ but those who deliberately tried to disrupt meetings with the use of violence and intimidation. I named people such as Roberta Moore of the Jewish Defence League (banned in the United States as a terrorist organisation) who has disrupted Palestinian events and assaulting attendees.  Her boyfriend Robert de Jonge was convicted of assault. Collier alleged that my article was:

‘full of false information... It gave names and addresses of some activist’s places of work. ... Complaints were lodged by unknown individuals to activists’ professional associations where applicable. Some people received threats. Several of those named filed police reports. One of those named activists, committed suicide within weeks of the attack post, and while he was under investigation from his professional body.

This is all almost certainly a result of allowing the antisemitism inside Palestine Live, the key to the doors of Westminster. Perhaps thanks are due to Tommy Sheppard MP for hosting the event?’

Here you can see the dishonest method of Collier.  By the most tenuous of routes he ends up blaming not only me, but even Tommy Sheppard MP, ‘for hosting the event’ and thereby giving ‘the key to the doors of Westminster’ to Palestine Live.  Leaving aside that it was FSOI not Palestine Live that held the meeting, this is guilt by association at 2 stage removed yet The Guardian is happy to go along with all this. Collier’s purpose is quite clear.  It is to have Palestinian meetings banned from the parliamentary estate.

Almost everything Collier writes is a lie.  No addresses were given of any of the 31 individuals. The articledidn’t mention anyone’s place of work and the allegation that it had anything to do with the suicide of Silver is another lie, again unsupported by anything so quaint as evidence.  Only in a footnote does Collier concede that ‘Additionally, there is no way of knowing, how much of a contributing factor the article was.’  In fact there is no evidence at all.

Collier quotes the Scottish Sunday Times of 30^th July that ‘'you would need to work hard at it’ to be included in the research.’  On the contrary it takes no effort at all if you are an anti-Zionist. Since Collier can’t quote one single thing I said that is anti-Semitic why is my name there?  This quote says more about the standards of the Sunday Times under Murdoch than anything else

David Collier with his Fascist and Neo-Nazi Zionist thugs and associates.

L- R.  DavidCollier.

Jonathan Hoffman aka Yonathan Scoffman - long-time associate EDL, Britain First and Jewish Defence League UK  (supporters US-designated Zionist terror group Kahane Chai).

Gemma Sheridan aka Sally Wisemann on FB is associated also with JDL-UK.

Sharon Klaff aka as Sharon KKKlaff due to her racist South African attitudes. Klaff is close to Anne-Marie Waterswho founded Pegida-UK with Tommy Robinson.

Paul Besseron far right in blue cap. Paul was “Intelligence Officer” for Britain First.

Anne Marie Waters

Al Quds Day June 2018.

Darren Osborne, Collier and Jason Silver (l to r)

On Sunday 18 June 2017 these three men planned to disrupt the legitimate Al Quds Day March.

Darren Osborne (on left) arrived too late to attack the march with his truck and went on to murder at Finsbury Park Mosque. 

Jason Silver (on right) who recorded himself shouting foul racist remarks all day went on to continue to harass the Metropolitan Police and hanged himself when the police rejected his contrived and false allegations. 

David Collier (centre) spent the day marching with extremists such as Thor Halland, just back from a prison spell in Thailand, Michael English who has family links to the Manchester Holland crime gang and who has spent considerable periods in Strangeways and other prisons. Collier, who likes to pretend he is working “undercover” was welcomed at the main Zionist counter-demo at Grosvenor Square by another jailbird, Simon Cobbs (HMP Exeter with bars) who “nudge,nudge, wink,wink” told “Dave 007” Collier he understood that he did not want to be filmed.

On Al Quds Day Collier edged himself to the front of the bunch of Zionist thugs as they approached the legitimate counter-demo in Grosvenor Sq.

007 wannabee sad Dave Collier with Yonathan Scoffman planning their next event. “Please pretend you do not know me – I will be wearing my Mossad toupee”

Collier was part of the small group of Zionist Fascist extremists who planned with Jonathan Hoffman, Joseph Cohen and Yochy Davis to disrupt the event.

Collier(on left) tries to defy police instructions and continues to obstruct and delay the legal Al Quds Day march.

“007 Dave” Collier meets up with Special Agent Britain First’s Paul Besser at another anti-Palestine event.

“007 Dave” Collier frequently meets with Yonathan Scoffman

Gnasher Jew Outed as David Collier & Other Assorted Scumbags in Labour Against Anti-Semitism

The Oddest Antisemites: Blog 2 – EXCLUSIVE – Gnasherjew identity revealed! It’s Collier

Much to the joy of pro Palestine activists, Gnasherjew dropped an almighty clanger which firmly outed David Collier as one of the notorious harassers and defamers in the Gnasher Twitter account. His expertise is trying to attach any perceived instances of antisemitism to Jeremy Corbyn and Palestine solidarity groups. This has always been the accounts MO as I persistenly claimed for the last year. Forcing them to put Ex Labour in their Twitter bio (P.S. they were never Labour). Collier is right-wing through and through. You also might remember him for diving under the security radar at Labour’s Conference last year in order to write yet another flawed exposé on the PSC stand. He was ejected. He has a track-record of being ejected or refused admission for example to the Jewish Voice for Labour meeting at Labour Party conference. He also has a track record of gross invasion of privacy and obtaining privately authored posts by deceit (check Facebook rule PL).

The marvellous clanger which named their 1 man down as the only person writing the exposé they were working on.  This made us laugh very much too..

Collier’s notorious gross invasion of privacy tendancies were previously reported here by @yoursocvoice blog Twitter Troll Networks

Which brings us onto @MomentumGod2 (MG2) a sockpuppet for Gnasher. MG2 (run by a few notorious Pro Israel agitators) let yet another howler loose the day they were vexed by harrassment victims of Gnasher/LabourAgainstAS organising and starting off their crowdfunding to take legal action. The account states he is ‘shitting’ himself at action ONLY being raised against Gnasher and LabourAGainstAS (who are the same team). Thanks for confirming!

After the Pro Israel mass reporting groups were called on, a member of the crowdfunder staff (Genevieve) with Justgiving (please boycott them) caved in to the demands of such notorieties as Kim Jong-Un and sockpuppet Twitter user Ben Marsden amongst other steaming deluded right-wingers.

At this point I was intrigued by the Ben Marsden account throwing his weight about, so decided to investigate. Who could this be?? He had a Luton FC cover photo until I realised who it was and started hinting in public only for him to change it to a nice scenic random honest it’s not me guv photo of somewhere random. So here are the clues.

• Intelligent alpha male with athletic physique? Hmm (likes to blow his own trumpet)
• Supports Chelsea
• Luton cover photo
• Bangs on about Islamism
• Hates Leftists
• ‘Interested’ in politics
• Supports Israel
• Has Israellycool people licking his boots
• Openly chats with Gnasherjew and its sock MomentumGod2 because he HATES Labour and Corbyn because he is a soft lefty and likes muslims (which is actually just not being a racist dick).

In fact it was MomentumGod2 who bricked himself and warned him he had been rumbled.

Let’s see what ‘Ben’ did after David Collier (Gnasherjew) released his classic underwhelming drivel where he frantically tries to connect Corbyn to anything and everything because he never ever wants Corbyn to reach power.

Yes we know Collier but fortunately you can’t control everybody registered to vote and he will win after I suspect setting his legal team on you..

Back to Ben.. he seemed realllly over the moon about Collier’s tome.. By the way, those of us with nouse knew you were in PL and never posted in there! So your work is minus the great thinkers.. yes you collected the remnants David.

1st up Ben goes Gung Ho at the bogus charity ‘Campaign Against Anybody we don’t like’ (as we affectionately call it) Go Ben!

2nd Ben rolls around in the hay with Andrew Burridge from Urmston & Stretford CLP – Ben seems friendly with all these Blairites and Tories, just who could it be..

We are just wondering what the little racist Ben has to say after this?

3rd BOOM straight to Guido Fawkes the most rancid man on the interwebz – I’m beginning to love this Ben character who brings Blairite, Tories and the far-right (him) together.

The previous year ‘Ben’ had a little lovers tiff with Collier or Dick or the other two and didn’t like that he voted for the only decent MP near him who happened to be Labour. But don’t worry, Gnasher knows Ben realllly well don’t you worry about that

What do you think of Tony Greenstein Ben? You love Israel loads don’t you?

Oh right…

So when you talk about working with racist scum Collier. Look at yourself first.

Making Apartheid Official – Why Israel's Government is Introducing a Jewish Nation State Law

March 11, 2018, 9:26 pm

≫ Next: The Silencing of Al Jazeera - How Free Speech in the United States Fell Victim to the Zionist Lobby

≪ Previous: EXCLUSIVE - The Lies of David Collier (Gnasher Jew) and his Dodgy Dossiers

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Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s ‘Justice Minister’, Explains Why Universal Human Rights Must Take Second Place to Zionism

The idea of a Jewish Democratic state is a fiction much loved by the Zionist left.  According to the 2013 Democracy Index 74.8% of Jews believe that Israel can be both Jewish and democratic whereas only one-third of Israeli Arabs believe this.

This definition is implanted in the nearest equivalent to Israel’s constitution, the Basic Law 1985 which stipulatesthat an election list cannot participate in elections to the Knesset, if their goals or actions include ‘negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.’

According to a survey commissioned by the Jewish National Fund, in reaction to the decision of the Supreme Court in Kadanthat it was illegal to refuse to allocate land to someone because they are not Jewish, over 80% of Israeli Jews preferred the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as a state of all its citizens.

This is the backdrop to the speech below by Israel’s ‘Justice’ Minister Ayelet Shaked at the Congress on Judaism and Democracy. Shaked is a member of Habayit HaYehudi/Jewish Home a far-Right religious settlers party and someone who has advocatedgenocide of the Palestinians.  Shaked sees it as her mission to move the courts and Israeli society away from western notions of universal values and human rights and towards Zionist ideals.  What matters are Jewish rights in a Jewish state.

Shaked articulated the case for the Jewish Nation State Law which spells out that Israel is a state of its Jewish citizens not all its citizens.  That is the foundation stone on which Israel as an Apartheid society rests.  An ethno-nationalist state represents a particular ethnicity not all its citizens or those who reside within its borders.  It is by definition a racist state.

Shaked raised the spectre of ‘a kind of creeping conquest from Africa.’ This fear of hordes of non-Jewish migrants, posed in apocalyptic terms of ‘conquest’ by a whole continent, represents the racist siege mentality of proponents of the racial state.  The fear of losing the Jewish demographic majority is the greatest fear of Israel's rulers and the Zionist movement because it lays bare the undemocratic reality lying at the heart of the Israeli state's existence.

The 'demographic question' governs the policies and actions of Israel’s government.  The desire for racial purity and with it domination is the fear and the bond that ties Israel’s Jewish working class to its ruling class.

According to Shaked, Israel as a Jewish state must accord the Arabs civil but not national rights.  In most states nationality and citizenship are coterminous, even if there is more than one nationality within an over arching nationality.  So for example all residents in Spain are Spanish although within Spain's borders there are Spaniards, Catalans and Basques. All have equal rights individually even though the rights of Catalans and Basques as distinct nationalities are circumscribed and subordinate to the greater Spanish nationality. But in Israel there is no overarching Israeli nationality. The dominant nationality is Jewish in a Jewish State. It is clear that one nationality, the Jewish nationality, is superior and favoured to all other nationalities.  There are many other nationalities but none of them have national rights which makes these 'nationalities' an absurdity, totally meaningless!

But what in practice does it mean to say, as Shaked does, that Arabs only have civil rights?  In fact it is a deliberate smokescreen.  What are termed Israeli Jewish national rights are in fact the individual rights accorded to Jews in accordance with Jewish racial supremacy.  The failure to recognise an Arab or Palestinian nationality on equal terms to a Jewish nationality means that the individual rights of Arabs and Palestinians, as individuals, is that much less. 

The Knesset

Shaked’s aims and desires are nationalistnot national in the same way as the Nazis were expressing German nationalist or volkish politics not those of German nationalism.  The same was true of Polish, Hungarian and Romanian nationalists.  Their angst was directed against other nationals on racial grounds.  So too in Israel.  

Jewish racial superiority in Israel results in segregation in most areas of life.  It means means that the individual rights of Israeli Arabs are inferior to those of Israeli Jews in almost every area of life.  Israeli Jewish ‘national’ rights are therefore, by definition, racist.  

It is expressed e.g. in the differing levels of poverty in Israel.  Whilst 30.3% of Israeli children lived in poverty at the end of 2015, this masked the difference between Arab and Jewish children.  Whilst one-fifth of Jewish children lived in poverty, some two-thirds of Arab children did. 30% of Israeli Children Living in Poverty; Arabs, Haredim Worst Affected, Report Claims, Ha'aretz 17.1.17.  Whilst poverty decreased between 2014 and 2015 for Israeli families overall, amongst Arab families the poverty rate increased from 52.6% in 2014 to 53.3% in 2015, while the poverty rate among Arab children increased from 63.5% in 2014 to 65.6% in 2015.  More than 1 in 5 Israelis live in poverty, highest in developed world, Jerusalem Post 15.12.16.

There is no end of justifications for Zionism's racism.  According to Shaked it is not offensive to talk of ‘Judaising the Galilee’ or Negev or Jerusalem.  What this means is seen in the demolition of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in January 2017, where a school teacher was murdered as part of the eviction and demolition of the village.  It means the demolition of other ‘unrecognised’ villages in order to replace them with Jewish  towns and villages.  It means ensuring that the majority of Arabs in a region is thinned out by Jews.  Judaisation is no different in principle from the Nazi deJewification.  Here we seen Shaked’s fully fledged racism.

Jerusalem Day, Damascus Gate which is an excuse for racist settler youth to rampage through the Arab quarter chanting 'death to the Arabs'

Shaked is also upset regarding the justification for the Jewish Nation-State bill.  She complains that people are not being honest.  ‘The state did not defend the law for national demographic reasons, it claimed only security reasons.’  One can understand her upset.  Shaked wants the racism to be upfront, not hidden behind euphemisms.  What she is saying is, let us not pretend that the reason for discrimination is ‘security’ when we know that is a lie.  Let us be honest, let us say it is because a Jewish state means a Jewish majority and Jewish privilege.

And just in case the meaning has not sunk in, she makes it crystal clear:
“the state should say that there is place to maintain the Jewish majority even if it violates rights.”
If the price of a Jewish majority means racism and an infringement of the rights of its minority Arab citizens then so be it.  In other words Israel is the kind of democracy in which it is impossible for Jews every to be in anything other than a majority.

Shaked concedes that ‘there is an advantage to democracy’ but ‘it must be balanced’.  In other words whilst ‘democracy’ is good for PR reasons it has its limits.  How can you balance democracy?  It’s like pregnancy.  You either are or you aren't.  You either have it or you don’t.  In other words Shaked is saying that if  Zionism and a Jewish state can be preserved democratically with a Jewish majority, then fine.  But if it maintaining a Jewish majority can’t be done democratically then it must be done undemocratically.

We only need to look back to 1948 when Israel was created as a Jewish state.  The problem then was that even in the UN allocated Jewish state there was a rough parity of about 600,000 Jews and a similar number of Arabs.  The solution that was chosen in order to create a Jewish state was to drive 85% of the Arabs out through the use of massacre and terror.

Again Shaked makes clear her worries that although universal human rights are enshrined in Israel’s court judgements (in fact they are not) what she terms ‘Jewish values’ are not. One wonders what it is that she calls ‘Jewish values’.  For Shaked ‘Jewish values’ are the values of racial domination.  In essence they are a euphemism for Jewish supremacy.  What worries her is that the emphasis has been on universal rather than on racial and ethnic Jewish rights.  I disagree that this is the case in Israel but for a fascist any concession to the minority is one too many.

“In our laws there are universal values, rights, already enshrined in a very serious way. But the national and the Jewish values are not enshrined. Over the past 20 years, there has been more of a focus on rulings over universal values and less over the Jewish character of the state.’

Notice how Shaked contrasts universal values against what she calls the ‘Jewish character’ of the state.  Universal values apply regardless of colour, ethnicity etc. whereas ‘Jewish values’ by definition only apply to Jews.  So universal values for example would suggest that anyone, regardless of ethnicity, can rent a piece of land or property.

Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948 contained a pledge of equality for all citizens (Arabs had to wait 3 years for citizenship) however the Declaration was never integrated into the law and therefore has no legal effect

Shaked is honest about equality.  She doesn’t like it.  Equality won’t feature in the new Jewish State Bill.  Why?  Because “Israel is a Jewish state. It isn’t a state of all its nations. That is, equal rights to all citizens but not equal national rights.”  Because  ‘the word “equality” was very general and the court could take it “very far,” god forbid.  And she makes it crystal clear that there are limits to equality under the law because “There are places where the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish state must be maintained and this sometimes comes at the expense of equality.”  Of course Shaked is too modest to spell out what the places are where equality must be sacrificed to Jewish ethnic domination, but we can guess.

What Shaked is arguing for is precisely what anti-Zionists have argued for years.  Zionism is inherently racist, it is a form of Jewish supremacy and it is the ideology of racial exclusivity.  Shaked, unlike her Israeli Labour Party opponents is at least being honest.  These arguments echo a speech Shaked made a year ago when she said that:

“Zionism should not – and I’m saying here that it will not – continue to bow its head to a system of individual rights interpreted in a universal manner”.  Translated this means that universal rights such as equality before the law, equality between people of different racial or ethnic origin, non-discrimination must be sacrificed on the altar of the Jewish supremacy inherent in Zionism.

And in case there were any doubt Shaked refers specifically to the Kadan case in 2000 in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Jewish National Fund could not discriminate in selling or leasing land to non-Jews.  This ruling was opposed not only by Likud but also by much of the Israeli Labour Party.  The reason as Shaked freely admits is ‘whether it’s all right for a Jewish community to, by definition, be only Jewish, I want the answer to be ‘yes, it’s all right.’”

In other words racially pure Jewish settlements inside Israel proper are perfectly acceptable to this racist.  If there were any doubt she refers to the Family Unification Law (which like any Orwellian law stands for the exact opposite – it is really the Division of the Family Law).  Non-Jews i.e. Arabs don’t have, unlike Israeli Jews, the right to bring in a partner to marriage if they live in the West Bank or the Arab countries.  A Jew can bring in whomeosever s/he wants.  Shaked worries that the Supreme Court only upheld the law by 6-5 votes and quotes approvingly from ex-Judge Chessin that Israel is not a utopian state.  Well racial equality in Israel might be utopian but in most of the world it is taken for granted, at least on paper.

Thus we have a Jewish Nation State law which is fundamentally racist, which demotes Arabic from an official language and lays the basis for an open acknowledgement that Israel is a Jewish Supremacist State.  Yet despite this Israel describes itself as the only democracy in the Middle East.

We should at least welcome Shaked’s honesty.  Unlike her hypocritical Labour Zionist opponents she is at least honest that Zionism and equality are opposites and that a Jewish democratic state is an oxymoron.

Tony Greenstein

Israel Cannot be Both Jewish and Democratic

By Ahmed Moor

Israel continues to lurch and stagger in the darkened bog of tribal chauvinism. The Jewish state’s further descent into the bellicose murk is being felt by the country’s minorities. Home destructions and deportations are portentous of a bleaker future for non-Jews in Israel.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have lived under an Israeli apartheid regime for decades now. Over the years, Israel has demolished homes, kidnapped thousands of political prisoners, transferred 500,000 settler-colonists onto the West Bank, conducted massive military operations in civilian areas, hoarded the vast majority of Palestinian water, and committed a host of other crimes under the apartheid banner.

Today, the Zionism which has destroyed so many occupied lives is turning inwards. Israel is being corroded by the ideology underpinning its existence. The Zionist state’s latest victims are Palestinian-Israelis and migrant workers.

The Guardian‘s “Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev,” depicts a hulking mass of baklava-clad riot guards descending on Al-Araqib in the pre-dawn morning. The village’s Bedouin residents were forcibly extracted from their homes while a bulldozer bulldozed their lives. Incredibly, the village was destroyed to make room for a national forest. It seems that against all morality, the desert will continue to bloom.

That the destruction of a Palestinian-Israeli village requires an audience is only slightly shocking. Groups of Jewish Israeli citizens were bussed in to cheer the spectacle of the state-sanctioned “ethnic cleansing.” What’s very shocking is that the Jewish state enlisted the services of young Jews in wreaking destruction. Teenage volunteers with the police civilian guard emptied the Palestinian-Israeli houses and “smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings.”

Elsewhere in Israel, non-Jewish youths learned that they were unfit to remain in country of their birth. Four-hundred migrant children — most of them born in Israel — will be deported soon. Ironically, their expulsion has been spearheaded by parliamentarians from the rightwing Yisrael Beiteinu party, many of whom are Russian immigrants to Israel.

Weighing in on the topic, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that, “this is a tangible threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel.”

Many of Israel’s staunchest supporters are baffled by what’s happening in the small Mediterranean state. Regrettably, they fail to understand that Israel is following the natural evolution of a country founded on a race-exclusive basis.

Israeli pundits frequently insist that their state is both Jewish and democratic. They say that minorities in Israel have equal rights and representation in state apparatuses. That’s not true, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that roughly 20% of Israelis are not Jewish. And those non-Jews are meeting one another, falling in love, and having children. To borrow Netanyahu’s words, it is these children that are a “threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel.”
Zionism — the idea that Jewish people ought to have a Jewish state in mandate Palestine — is anachronistic in the 21st century. The idea that non-Jews who have lived on the land for generations before the creation of the state of Israel should be relegated to second-class citizenship because they’re not Jewish is illiberal. It’s also racist.

These people, Palestinian-Israelis and other native non-Jews, have no way of entering the mainstream of political and cultural life in Israel. The only reason they can’t is because they’re not Jewish.
Is it possible for a non-Jewish person to become the Prime Minister of Israel today? And what about Minister of Defense? What does it mean for the Jewish state if the 20% minority grows to 50%, then 70%? Is it still the Jewish state?

For too long Western liberals have engaged in willful denial about the true nature of Israel. Israel is the Jewish state — of that I have no doubt. But can the Jewish state be squared with liberal and democratic values when one out of every five citizens isn’t Jewish? I don’t think so.
Israel is already an apartheid state. The separation of the people — their enforced apartness — arises not out of security considerations, but racial ones. In short, Israel cannot be both the Jewish and democratic state. That’s because Zionism is fundamentally anti-democratic in a mixed-race society. The important questions now are how will Israel prevent the growth of its non-Jewish minorities? And how long will Western liberals continue to pretend that Zionism is compatible with liberalism?

Justice Minister: Israel Must Keep Jewish Majority Even at the Expense of Human Rights 

Minister Ayelet Shaked addressed the proposed nation-state law, contending that Israel as a Jewish state must administer equal civil but not national rights

Revital Hovel. Ha’aretzFeb 13, 2018 2:57 AM

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Monday that if not for the fence erected some years ago on the Egyptian border, “We would be seeing here a kind of creeping conquest from Africa.” The fence effectively stopped asylum-seekers from Sudan and Eritrea from entering the country.

In a speech to the Congress on Judaism and Democracy, Shaked also said, “I think that ‘Judaizing the Galilee’ is not an offensive term. We used to talk like that. In recent years we’ve stopped talking like that. I think it’s legitimate without violating the full rights of the Arab residents of Israel.”

The justice minister made the remarks in a wide-ranging speech on the controversy over the Jewish nation-state bill.

She further said, “There is place to maintain a Jewish majority even at the price of violation of rights.” She added, however, that maintaining a Jewish majority in Israel and acting democratically “must be parallel and one must not outweigh the other.”

Regarding the nation-state bill, Shaked said, “I was disturbed at both the position of the state and the reasoning of the justices. The state did not defend the law for national demographic reasons, it claimed only security reasons.” Shaked told the conference that “the state should say that there is place to maintain the Jewish majority even if it violates rights.”

Shaked said she believed Judaism and democracy are values that can coexist. “From a constitutional point of view there is an advantage to democracy and it must be balanced and the Supreme Court should be given another constitutional tool that will also give power to Judaism.”

The purpose of the nation-state bill, she said, was to prevent rulings interpreting the Entry to Israel Law, or a ruling like the one in the Ka’adan case in 2000 that banned discrimination against an Arab family who wanted to move to a small Jewish community that sought to bar them.

“In our laws there are universal values, rights, already enshrined in a very serious way. But the national and the Jewish values are not enshrined. Over the past 20 years, there has been more of a focus on rulings over universal values and less over the Jewish character of the state. This tool [the nation state bill] is a tool that we want to give the court for the future,” said the justice minister.

In response to a question from the interviewer, TV journalist Dana Weiss, on whether the court could not consider the Jewish character of the state without a nation-state law, she said: “It can, but it’s as if you’d say that without the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty the court won’t care about dignity and human rights. It’s different when you have a constitutional tool.”

Shaked: Court could take 'equality' very far

On the coalition’s intent to keep the word “equality” out of the nation-state bill, Shaked said: “Israel is a Jewish state. It isn’t a state of all its nations. That is, equal rights to all citizens but not equal national rights.” Shaked said the word “equality” was very general and the court could take it “very far,” adding, “There are places where the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish state must be maintained and this sometimes comes at the expense of equality.”

Shaked said the nation-state bill did not deal with the issue of who is a Jew. “Everyone has his own Judaism. In the nation-state bill, when it talks about a Jew, it means the nationality.” Shaked then referred to the Ka’adan ruling and said that if such a case were to come up again or “the argument over whether it’s all right for a Jewish community to, by definition, be only Jewish, I want the answer to be ‘yes, it’s all right.’”

The question of the legality of the Family Unification Law, which prevents the unification of families where one of the couple is Palestinian and one is Arab Israeli, was twice decided at the time by the Supreme Court by one vote, with six justices supporting it and five dissenting. The justices gave precedence to security considerations over the importance of the right to maintain a family, in a case that split the Supreme Court.

In Shaked’s speeches, she often quotes the words of the late Justice Mishael Chesin, who was in the majority opinion that approved the law, in which he said Israel needed to awaken from the dream that it was a utopian state.

Israel’s Justice Minister endorses apartheid — the Jewish state ‘at the expense of equality’

Ayelet Shaked, the Israeli justice minister  has done it again: She has spelled out Israeli Apartheid in unequivocal terms, and tied it directly to Zionism:

“There is place to maintain a Jewish majority even at the price of violation of rights.”

she said yesterday (Monday) at the Congress on Judaism and Democracy, as reported by Haaretz.  

Shaked was speaking about Israel’s “Nation State of the Jewish People” bill, and made it clear that equality was essentially anathema to the “Jewish State”:

On the coalition’s intent to keep the word “equality” out of the nation-state bill, Shaked said that

“Israel is a Jewish state. It isn’t a state of all its nations. That is, equal rights to all citizens but not equal national rights.”

Shaked said the word “equality” was very general and the court could take it “very far,” adding that

“There are places where the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish state must be maintained and this sometimes comes at the expense of equality.”

She is thus echoing what she said half a year ago – that

“Zionism should not – and I’m saying here that it will not – continue to bow its head to a system of individual rights interpreted in a universal manner”.

Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy had then thanked Shaked for telling the truth:

“Thus Shaked believes, as do so many around the world, that Israel is built on foundations of injustice and therefore must be defended from the hostile talk of justice. How else can the repulsion to discussing rights be explained? Individual rights are important, she said, but not when they are disconnected from ‘the Zionist challenges.’ Right again: The Zionist challenges indeed stand in contradiction to human rights…”

And he concluded:

“Zionism is Israel’s fundamentalist religion, and as in any religion, its denial is prohibited. In Israel, ‘non-Zionist’ or ‘anti-Zionist’ aren’t insults, they are social expulsion orders. There’s nothing like it in any free society. But now that Shaked has exposed Zionism, put her hand to the flame and admitted the truth, we can finally think about Zionism more freely. We can admit that the Jews’ right to a state contradicted the Palestinians’ right to their land, and that righteous Zionism gave birth to a terrible national wrong that has never been righted; that there are ways to resolve and atone for this contradiction, but the Zionist Israelis won’t agree to them.”

Shaked is once again making points which are a direct confirmation of the essential conclusions of last year’s shelved UN report on Israeli Apartheid, which elucidated the racist practices of the Israeli state and its inherent Apartheid nature. The report noted that

“Palestinian political parties can campaign for minor reforms and better budgets, but are legally prohibited by the Basic Law from challenging legislation maintaining the racial regime. The policy is reinforced by the implications of the distinction made in Israel between “citizenship” (ezrahut) and “nationality” (le’um): all Israeli citizens enjoy the former, but only Jews enjoy the latter. “National” rights in Israeli law signify Jewish-national rights.” (My emphasis).

That report caused great furor amongst Israeli leadership, and the UN Secretary General bowed to Israeli (as well as American) pressure to have it taken down for its supposed ‘anti-Semitic’ nature – but here is Israel’s Justice Minister confirming what it is essentially saying.

Shaked, who has a penchant for genocidal and fascist rhetoric, is very clear about why she wants the Nation State bill to be consolidated into a quasi-constitutional ‘base-law’: The purpose of the nation-state bill, she said, was to prevent a ruling like the one in the Ka’adan case in 2000 that banned discrimination against an Arab family who wanted to move to a small Jewish community that sought to bar them. Shaked wants it to be completely possible for a Jewish community to bar entry for Palestinian citizens on a racial basis. Indeed, Shaked referred to the Ka’adan ruling, saying that

“the argument over whether it’s all right for a Jewish community to, by definition, be only Jewish, I want the answer to be ‘yes, it’s all right.’”

Shaked again bemoaned that “universal values” were supposedly taking over:

“Over the past 20 years, there has been more of a focus on rulings over universal values and less over the Jewish character of the state. This tool [the nation state bill] is a tool that we want to give the court for the future.”

So Shaked wants to close the door on those small aberrations, where there appears to be a tiny crack in the wall of Israeli Apartheid. She wants it completely shut and bolted. And most important: the world needs to accept it as a legitimate ideology and policy.

Let it be noted, this is all about Israeli policy vis-à-vis its own non-Jewish citizens. This is not even about Israel’s 1967 occupation (although it of course indirectly affects Israeli policy in all territories).

On the one hand, one could be tempted to believe that Shaked is just fighting a battle against the courts, and that there is a supposedly liberal Supreme Court that can act as counterweight to this. But remember – the Supreme Court is essentially Zionist, and therefore it is always biased towards the “Jewish State”. Since that concept cannot be challenged in any meaningful way, and since Shaked is actually voicing Zionist ideology honestly and vociferously, one is left with very little meaningful agency to protest or counter this.

One agency is, of course, the civil, democratic grassroots means of protest: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

But look what Supreme Court President Esther Hayut said at a recent anti-BDS conference. BDS is a “a civil wrong”, she said, and went on:

“Calling for a boycott is a means of coercion and not persuasion. It does not serve the basic principles of democracy, but instead undermines them by preventing a free exchange of ideas. As such, it is not worthy of the constitutional protection enjoyed by other forms of political expression.”

So, too bad – BDS is not protected speech, according to Israel’s highest court authority. And hence it is alright for the state itself to impose sanctions upon individuals for pursuing it:

“The imposition of legal sanctions is proportionate when the state is interested in defending itself against a boycott of civilians”, Hayut said.

It must become clear that this positioning is fascism in its very essence. The state may be ‘criticised’, by means that allow “exchange of ideas”, but not by means which the state itself deems may actually bring about change to its racial structure and hierarchy. This is not an unexpected external growth from a supposedly ‘democratic Zionism’. All this simply amounts to a further dropping of masks concerning the very essence of Zionism. It is Apartheid in its very nature.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak said a couple of years ago that “Israel has been infected by the seeds of fascism.” But he is the same ‘leftist hero’ who bragged about how the Israeli left had “liberated” the occupied territories, and bemoaned that the US didn’t recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital already 65 years ago. So Barak is saying that these “seeds of fascism” are just something that has “infected” Israel in the recent period. But they were there all the time, they are the seeds of the fruits of Zionism, which Barak is a subscriber to. It is doubtful that a ‘liberal’ such as Barak or his ilk, can ever ‘rescue’ Zionism from its more overt fascists such as Shaked.

The US has been through the Apartheid fairy-tale phase that Israel is in, with its ‘separate but equal’ legal doctrine, which maintained that even if there was racial segregation (literally Apartheid), African-Americans could still be considered “equal”, just “separate”. It took various Supreme Court rulings from 1950’s as well as the Civil Rights Act in 1964 to overturn this false notion of “equality”.

But Israel is working precisely the other way, and Shaked is confirming that the state ideology explicitly overrides equality. Truth be told, it has been so since day 1.   

H/t P.S. Arihant

The Silencing of Al Jazeera - How Free Speech in the United States Fell Victim to the Zionist Lobby

March 12, 2018, 2:09 pm

≫ Next: NEWS QUICKIES: Katy Hopkins & Mark Regev Love-in at Zio Federation – Britain 1st Snakes Lose Their Head! Scottish Friends of Palestine statement

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When is Al Jazeera Going to Show their undercover documentary on the Israel Lobby’s Undercover Activities in the United States?

 15 months ago Al Jazeera broadcast a programme The Lobby in 4 instalments.  It led to the departure from Britain of Israeli agent Shai Masot and an apology from Israeli Ambassador, Mark Regev for the fact that an Israeli ‘diplomat’ (in fact he did not have diplomatic status but was an operative of Gilad Erdan's Ministry of Strategic Affairs) had been caught discussing how to take down the Deputy Foreign Minister Alan Duncan, a perceived Arabist.

At the same time a similar under cover documentary was being produced in the United States focussing on the Israel lobby in the United States.  It has never been shown?  Why?  Because of massive pressure that has been exerted on the Qatari government.  Richard Silverstein in the article below asks why and then the key researcher on Al Jazeera itself, Clayton Swisher puts the same question in the Jewish Forward.

The real reason why the showing of the documentary has been postponed or cancelled, at this stage we don't know, is of course the blockade of Qatarinstituted in June 2017 by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries.   The aim of the blockade was to put an end to an independent foreign policy by Qatar. The formal demands included

• Cutting diplomatic ties with Iran and severing ties to "terrorist” organisations i.e. Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and anyone else who displeased the Saudis.
• Closing a Turkish military base and halt joint military co-operation inside Qatar
• Align with other Arab countries militarily, politically, socially and economically
• End interference in other sovereign countries' internal affairs by not allowing criticism of them by shutting down Al Jazeera and other Qatar-funded news outlets

The last demand, to shut or clamp down on Al Jazeera was one of the key demands.  The growth of a relatively free broadcaster shining a light on the iniquities of the Arab regimes (bar Qatar itself of course) more than irritated the Saudis, the UAE, Bahrain and Dubai.  At first there was also sabre rattling militarily though that was soon dispensed with.

The fact that the West and the United States, who are up to their ears in arms deals with a regime which is guilty of multiple war crimes in Yemen, keep silent says everything you need to know about the real commitment of the West to such values as freedom of speech.

It would appear that a major documentary on the Israel lobby in the United States had become a casualty of a blockade that Donald Trump, though not his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, supported.  Qatar’s response has been to try and win over the Zionist lobby in the United States.

Qatar has flown prominent Zionists such as Professor Alan Dershowitz o Harvard University and Mort Klein of the Zionist Organisation of America to Doha.  See Qatar turns to Israel to escape Saudi squeeze Although Netanyahu did his best to actually shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, such is his commitment to free speech on Israel, other Zionists have proved more amenable but for a price.  Either way it is a sordid affair.

The casualty of all this has been Al Jazeera and its reputation for independence and accuracy.  In on sense, having ensured that the threatened documentary isn’t broadcast, the aims of the  blockade of Saudi Arabia have succeeded.

It is to be hoped that the Qatar authorities will have enough courage to end their censorship and enable Al Jazeera to go ahead and broadcast the documentary

Tony Greenstein

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani who is believed to have prevented the showing of Al Jazar's documentary

How Al Jazeera’s Suppressed Israel Lobby Expose Got Entangled in Major Qatar-Saudi Arabia Battle

by Richard Silverstein

Al Jazeera's special investigations team has produced two astonishing documentary series on the Israel Lobby in the UK and U.S.  The former was aired to great fanfare and notoriety last year.  It revealed the deep penetration of Israeli diplomats into internal UK politics and cost at least one of those officials his job.  The Lobby filed a complaint against the series with UK media regulators, who dismissed it.

By then the documentary on the U.S. Israel Lobby was in the can and ready for airing.  But it never did.  In the past few months there has been a furious tug of war between those targeted in the documentary and their Lobby supporters in Congress and the Trump administration, and human rights and media activists lobbying for the Qatari government to air it.  So far, the Lobby appears to be winning the battle.  For months, the program has been ready to air but not received permission from the authorities.  By the way, the notion expressed by Qatari government ministers that the decision is out of their hands and rests solely with Al Jazeera is laughable.  No subject this controversial is decided solely on its journalistic merits.

The reason the documentary is even more controversial is that it has dropped into a major crisis facing Qatar.  Saudi Arabia's new boy prince, Mohammed ibn Salman, has determined to make his mark on the region by shaking up conventional thinking and acting aggressively in pursuit of Saudi interests.  So we have the disastrous siege in Yemen which has killed 50,000 Yemenis.  Next, Saudi Arabia lined up all its lackey states in a row and they all obediently declared Qatar a mortal enemy because it had the temerity to pursue a semi-independent path.  That included maintaining relations with both Iran and Turkey, who are persona non grata in Saudi eyes.

Elliott Broidy and Israeli premier Bibi Netanyahu (David Carp/Wallenberg Committee)

The Sunni Gulf alliance laid siege to Qatar and did everything short of declaring war.  The Saudis little brother in the Gulf is UAE, which has been pursuing a wide-ranging campaign to blacken Qatar.  That has included media hacks which aired offensive programming on Qatari TV which insulted the Saudis.  But it's gone much farther, sending Arab and pro-Israel American Jewish emissaries to Trump's inner circle to pressure it to advance Sunni interests, including advocating the firing of Secretary of State Tillerson.

The question is: did wealthy figures like Elliot Broidy approach Kushner and Trump et al not just at the behest of UAE; were they also coached or directed by Israel itself--or by cut-out intermediaries?  Remember, that the NSA has captured communications intercepts in which senior authorities from four countries essentially conspire to buy Jared Kushner.  So it is not at all far-fetched that Israel would approach its allies inside the U.S. Israel Lobby and organize such efforts.

Not that UAE or the Saudis especially need the Israel Lobby to do their work for them.  They already have a well-financed lobbying campaign of their own in this country.  But every friend counts and all hands help.

Jonathan Schanzer of the neo-con Israel Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

Qatar's new best friends in U.S. Israel Lobby: Dershowitz, Hoenlein, Klein, Dermer, Rosen

The Qataris too feel they have to play this game.  To that end, their former foreign minister took a meeting with Jared Kushner and discussed a major investment in a family property that is under water financially.  Naturally the investment, had it gone forward, would have cemented a golden relationship with Donald Trump just as he became president.  But prudently, the Qataris backed out to the chagrin of Kushner.  News articles have noted that only weeks later Saudi Arabia launched its siege against Qatar.  It's no accident that Trump's first statement was one of absolute support for the Saudi position; and denunciation of the Qataris in terms that could have been written by Saudi PR flacks.

The Qatari government has also bought the services of the leading DC Republican campaign consultancy.  That firm has in turn bought American Jewish leaders and sent them on junkets to Qatar just like the ones they organize for Congress members and Senators to Israel to cement the loyalty of the American political class.  Among the bought-leaders have been Malcolm Hoenlein, Mort Klein, Jack Rosen, and Alan Dershowitz.  After their meetings with the emir they've dutifully spouted pro- Qatari talking points.  This serves Qatar's purpose by driving a wedge into the usually unified Lobby leadership.  Where most side with the blossoming bromance between Israel and Saudi Arabia and denounce Qatar as a terrorist supporter of ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, now new voices are offering an alternative point of view.

This suits the Qataris who know the Israel Lobby could wield massive force inside Congress and the administration in support of the Saudi position.  They need to chip away at that unanimity in order to blunt the attack.  Thus Dershowitz et al are useful tools of disruption for them.

Returning to the documentary: it features extensive surreptitiously recorded conversations with officials of the neocon/pro-Israel Foundation for the Defense of Democracies boasting about how closely their lobbying is coördinated with and by Israel.  A senior official, Jonathan Schanzer, explicitly says on camera that not only are positions coordinated, but that its work is financed by Israel.  That is a huge no-no in terms of U.S. law.  Any U.S. person or group financed by a foreign government must register as an agent of a foreign government (FARA).  For decades, critics of the Lobby have demanded that groups like Aipac, FDD and others should register under FARA.  Naturally, the Lobby objects strenuously.  Admitting that it is a creature of the Israeli government would not only tarnish its reputation as being a wholly homegrown American enterprise; it would also raise the dreaded specter of dual loyalty--a canard often spouted by anti-Semites claiming that American Jews owe their loyalty not to their homeland, but to a foreign power.

Doha out of where Al Jazeera operate

In actuality, most American Jews are loyal to their country.  It is only the Lobby and its most fervent adherents who are guilty of dual loyalty.  And they should be formally registered as such.

Into this titanic struggle between Qatar and the Sunni Gulf states steps the Al Jazeera documentary.  A poor lost soul seeking to find its way to viewers.  The Qataris have two conflicting considerations: they can honor press freedom and the important issues the program raises; or they can play realpolitik and do what is best for their national interests.  My cynical self knows which one is most likely to win out.  But my optimistic self hopes that they honor their commitment to the right values of justice and fairness and a free press and permit it to air.

The Lobby wants to leave nothing to chance.  That's why both the Saudiphiles and the Qatariphiles have both exerted maximum force to stop it.  Dershowitz and the other Lobby guests of the emir lobbied him to shelve the documentary.  They came away believing that he had promised to do so.  Though Qatari officials have disagreed with this assessment and made mealy-mouthed professions of support for whatever decision Al Jazeera management makes.

The Lobby Saudiphiles have also concocted a scheme in Congress demanding that the Justice Department open an investigation into whether Al Jazeera itself is an agent of a foreign power.  Thirteen water-carrying Congress members have written to AG Sessions demanding that he force Al Jazeera to do what Putin's RT has been compelled to do: to register under FARA.  The apoplexy of the Lobby is based mostly on outrage that they were hoodwinked into talking to a reporter covertly recording their conversations.  The fact that the content of those conversations proved that the Lobby is an agent of Israel is what they'd like to suppress.  Instead, they'd like to focus on their outrage that Al Jazeera engaged in what one Lobby genius called "espionage:"

“Let’s not mince words about what this was – a well-funded, professional espionage operation carried out by Qatar on American soil,” Noah Pollak, executive director of the neoconservative Committee for Israel, has stated.

A telling term to use because it implies that the Lobby itself is a stand-in for America itself; and that betraying the interests of the Lobby is the same as betraying the interests of the nation.  A ludicrous, almost insane notion.  Not to mention that Israeli officials, the Lobby itself and UAE are engaged here in even more extensive monitoring, spying and hacking of the sort they complain about regarding Al Jazeera.

AIPAC - the major Israel Lobby Group that is the spider at the centre of Israel's suborning of elected representatives  and the attack on Free Speech in the United States

We Made A Documentary Exposing The ‘Israel Lobby.’ Why Hasn’t It Run?

The Forward March 8th 2018, Clayton Swisher

You never know who you’re going to spot at the Doha Four Seasons in Qatar. So I was only somewhat surprised when I found myself standing next to Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz in the omelet line last Saturday.

It was a fortuitous meeting. Dershowitz had recently played a small role in an episode that was threatening the reputation of my long-time employer, Al Jazeera. So naturally, I leapt at the opportunity to defend it.

The circumstances of the threat were these: In 2016, the award-winning Investigative Unit I directed sent an undercover reporter to look into how Israel wields influence in America through the pro-Israel American community. But when some right wing American supporters of Israel found out about the documentary, there was a massive backlash. It was even labeled as anti-Semitic in a spate of articles.
This uproar came at a time when due to an arbitrary blockade on Qatar imposed by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Qatar had been pursuing an end to its siege by appealing to the U.S. 

According to reports, Qatar sought to offer its own side of the narrative in this conflict by hosting thought leaders, including from the American Jewish community. From reports in the Israeli press, I learned that Dershowitz had been brought to meet with the Qatari emir, and that the American Jews had brought up what they saw as Al Jazeera’s “anti-Semitism” in those meetings.

Of course, our documentary is not anti-Semitic. It is an exploration of how Israel, a foreign government, influences U.S. foreign policy.

But I decided to show it to Dershowitz to get his point of view, and I was pleased when he obliged.
“I have no problem with any of the secret filming,” Mr. Dershowitz told me after watching nearly half of the documentary. “And I can even see this being broadcast on PBS. What I do take issue with is the lack of balance this program has, for example, not having a voice like me.” [Editor’s note: When asked about this by The Forward, Dershowitz said he did not specifically ask to be in the documentary himself, and that he brought up PBS for its use of undercover reporters.]

I understood Dershowitz’s remarks as a qualified seal of approval, which heartened me. And yet, our documentary has now been elevated to the center of an international scandal, with Al Jazeera’s reputation in America seemingly hanging in the balance.

Indeed, if the documentary doesn’t air soon, it might prove to be the ammunition sought by a group of zealous U.S. politicians who wish to declare Al Jazeera a foreign entity, and label us journalists as “spies.”
*
Since moving to Qatar in 2007, my professional life has been devoted to creating Al Jazeera’s first professional investigative unit, leading a team of committed journalists striving to challenge conventional wisdom rather than report the obvious. I am proud of how in such a short span of time, since our 2011 establishment, we have broken several important stories that have dominated the global news agenda, and even changed the course of history. You might recall our “Palestine Papers” leak of confidential meeting minutes from the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under Bush and Obama, or the investigationI led into Yasser Arafat’s death, resulting in his exhumationand the discovery of Polonium 210 in his corpse.

We have tackled a breadth of subjects and controversies, from exposing the depth of the Boeing 787’s battery problems to genocide in Myanmar to presidential corruption in the Maldivesto a recent exposé on pedophilia in British youth football.

And we’ve won awards, including the Foreign Press Association, CINE Golden Eagle, One World Media, and the New York Film Festival, as well as prestigious nominations in Europe’s top contests, including BAFTA, Monte Carlo, and the Royal Television Society.

Even though our network is a private company funded by the government of Qatar, my unit operates independently and without government interference. If that weren’t the case, I have every confidence our staff — comprised of mostly British and American journalists — would walk. And rightfully so.
From time to time, when other investigative tactics won’t work, we escalate our efforts to include undercover reporters and secret filming. This practice is used by many international broadcasters, including BBC and CNN, and is carefully managed, through multiple layers of legal and editorial review, to ensure it is performed consistently with local laws, industry regulations, and our own Code of Ethics.

This tactic helped us to uncover sports doping at the highest levels of American professional athletics and, more dangerously, to expose South Africa’s illegal and gruesome rhino horn trade, which implicated the country’s own minister of state security.

It was under these auspices that our Investigative Unit placed concurrent undercover journalists in both Washington DC and London to expose the clandestine efforts of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs to counter the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.

The UK Edition of “The Lobby” aired in January 2017. We captured on hidden camera an Israeli official, Shai Masot, manipulating domestic British NGO’s and threatening to target pro-Palestinian MP’s. Masot, then a junior employee with the Israeli Embassy in London, threatened to “take down” the Foreign Office’s number two, Sir Alan Duncan, a critic of Israeli settlements. A British civil servant entertaining the plot, who we secretly recorded, was summarily dismissed.

The UK edition of “The Lobby” was of such public importance that it resulted in a formal apology from Ambassador Mark Regev. Masot resigned. Most significantly, a parliamentary inquiry was launched into foreign interference in UK foreign policy.

Frustratingly, despite all these proofs of the importance of our work, we were met with accusations of anti-Semitism. The Jewish Chronicle anonymously quoted a “communal figure” saying “the documentary revealed an ‘anti-Semitic’ mindset among those who made it.” A number of pro-Israeli activists brought complaints against us, leading to an extensive regulatory investigation by Britain’s top broadcast regulator, Ofcom. But even that investigation cleared Al Jazeera of any foul play, including anti-Semitism. The lengthy verdict, issued last October, found that our work yielded “a serious investigative documentary” that was in the public interest. “Surreptitious filming,” Ofcom confirmed, “was necessary to the credibility and authenticity of the program because without it, the program makers would have had to rely on second-hand accounts.”

We could not have agreed more. Our journalism got at the heart of the crucial question of foreign interference in the UK government, and it was of vital public interest.

It was this same question — whether the Israeli government was funding or involved in lobbying efforts in the U.S. under the guise of a domestic lobbying group — that we sought to answer in the American edition of “The Lobby.”

Nowhere are these lobbying efforts more prominent than in Washington DC, where we had a second undercover concurrently embedded to report on how the groups in America really work. We explored American pro-Israel lobbyists and their relationships with Israeli entities, like the Israeli Embassy or Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Given the high volume of footage we obtained, it took us until early autumn 2017 to carefully ready the US edition for broadcast.

After our journalism was validated and upheld by Ofcom in October, we assumed that the US edition of “The Lobby” would be aired in just a matter of weeks, as I said in a series of interviews at the time. It was to be made available in the U.S. on YouTube.

There was a final step to the process. As a UK-regulated entity, we are obliged to send formal “right to reply” letters to anyone caught on our secret cameras, which I proceeded to do in January. This late stage formality is done in every project to notify unwitting people of our intention to broadcast. These letters clearly state the essence of our findings, providing the subjects the opportunity to respond. I duly instructed our reporter to proceed with sending the letters, which he did. More than 70 letters went out.

To this day, our letters yielded only a paltry three replies. Instead we faced a spate of articles by right-wing pro-Israel news sites in America, harshly attacking our work. They came from the likes of the “Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,” whose staff was included in our secret filming, and who, according to earlier leaked emails, has aligned its pro-Israeli advocates with the United Arab Emirates government to smear Al Jazeera’s work as “an instrument of regional instability.”

Others, like Noah Pollak from the Committee for Israel, impugned our journalism as a “professional espionage operation carried out by Qatar on American soil.”

Rather than reply to our letter inviting him to challenge our findings about him, Pollak and other “leaders of Jewish American organizations” instead took meetings with the State of Qatar’s registered agent and lobbyist, a former aide to US Senator Ted Cruz named Nick Muzin, to “see if he could use his ties with the Qataris to stop the airing.”

Muzin, it seems, told them he could. In February, Muzin told Haaretz that “he was discussing the issue with the Qataris and didn’t think the film would broadcast in the near future.” One anonymous source even boasted to Haaretz that “the Qatari emir himself helped make the decision” to spike our film.

These same zealots are now lobbying Congress to pressure the Department of Justice to require our network to register as “foreign agents” under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (or “FARA”). In a letter circulated on Capitol Hill last week, some lawmakers even raised alarm over “reports” that our undercover had “infiltrated American 501 (c)(3) and (c)(4) nonprofit organizations” in the course of our journalism.

I was outraged. When the network launched in 1996, it was set up to shine the light of transparency across the Arab and Muslim world. Established powers hated us, and on any given day, still do. Even the Bush administration contemplated bombing our headquarters during the second Iraq war. It was incredible to hear just a few years later then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defending Al Jazeera as “real news” in testimony before Congress. I defy any journalist who truly values her or his craft to say that Al Jazeera has not been a force for good in our troubled planet. Al Jazeera has without question expanded press freedoms throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

And yet, I have to admit that someone has been hard at work putting the kibosh on our film.
For since October, we’ve faced a series of unexplained delays in broadcasting our project, the likes of which I’ve never experienced. I was repeatedly told by everyone I asked to “wait,” and was assured our documentary would eventually see the light of day. Then, as now, I took my senior management at its word. To my own specially trained ears, “wait” did not constitute “stop.
”
In fact, it must not constitute “stop.” For if our documentary does not air, it may well lend credibility to the claim these 14 U.S. politicians have used and defamed us with — that Al Jazeera is indeed a foreign agent, at the direction and control of Qatar’s government.

I confess my own disappointment with Al Jazeera’s non-response to these attacks. In part because of this deep frustration and my inability to get any real transparency about the decision to delay our broadcast, I asked for and received a sabbatical, which I began this week. Meanwhile, the attacks against us continue. Although Al Jazeera is a world class media organization that wins awards and has changed history and the Arab world so much for the better, our shortcomings remain being way too shy (and late) to tell our own story. Worse, we often let others who have an agenda against us to tell it for us.

I am distressed to find that our investigation into America’s pro-Israel lobbyists may represent the most important test yet of Al Jazeera’s independence, and whether our network still has space to thrive amidst the unjust blockade against our Qatari host. I pray those outside our network do not seek short term political expediency and inappropriately interfere with our professional work, which we have zealously guarded and worked long term to preserve and uphold.

Nothing less than free speech and democratic values are at stake here.

Clayton Swisher is a Doha-based investigative journalist on sabbatical leave from Al Jazeera Media Network and author of “The Truth About Camp David” and “The Palestine Papers.” The author speaks for himself and not for Al Jazeera. Follow him on Twitter @claytonswisher.

What’s in Al Jazeera’s undercover film on the US Israel lobby?

Asa WinstanleyThe Electronic Intifada5 March 2018

Foundation for Defense of Democracies vice president Jonathan Schanzer testifies at a hearing in Congress. (CSPAN)

The leading neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies is functioning as an agent of the Israeli government, Al Jazeera’s forthcoming investigation on the US Israel lobby will reveal.

According to a source who has seen the undercover documentary, it contains footage of a powerful Israeli official claiming that “We have FDD. We have others working on this.”

Sima Vaknin-Gil, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, is said to state that the foundation is “working on” projects for Israel including “data gathering, information analysis, working on activist organizations, money trail. This is something that only a country, with its resources, can do the best.”

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, commonly known as FARA, US organizations and individuals who work on behalf of foreign governments are required to register with the counterintelligence section of the Department of Justice.

A search on the FARA website shows that the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is not registered.

Al Jazeera’s film reportedly identifies a number of lobby groups as working with Israel to spy on American citizens using sophisticated data gathering techniques. The documentary is also said to cast light on covert efforts to smear and intimidate Americans seen as too critical of Israel.

Israel lobby groups have placed intense pressure on Qatar, which funds Al Jazeera, to shelve the film, fueling speculation it may never be aired.

Covert agent of Israel

Sima Vaknin-Gil, who holds the rank of brigadier-general in Israel’s military, is now the top civil servant at Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

The ministry is in charge of running a covert campaign of sabotage against BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement in support of Palestinian human rights.

Vaknin-Gil’s ministerial boss is Gilad Erdan, a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Soon after she was appointed to lead the ministry at the start of 2016, Vaknin-Gil promised to“create a community of fighters” who would “flood the internet” with Israeli propaganda that would be publicly distanced from the government.

As well as getting funding from Sheldon Adelson, the anti-Palestinian billionaire and number one donor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has close ties to the United Arab Emirates.

In hacked emails last year the Emirati ambassador in Washington encouraged the foundation to push for moving a US military base from Qatar to his own country.

The film will also reportedly show undercover footage of a junior Israel lobbyist boasting of how close Israel’s ties are with the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf regimes.

UAE, Israel deepening ties

Information removed from Max Adelstein’s Facebook page. Click here for full resolution.

Max Adelstein is said to be seen in the film stating that the lobby has helped Israel and the United Arab Emirates develop security links “all under the table.”

Adelstein was an intern at Washington lobbying firm the Harbour Group. The firm’s clients include the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

It received $2.2 million from the UAE and more than $300,000 from Saudi Arabia during the six months ending 30 September 2017.

Adelstein now says he works for AIPAC, Washington’s most powerful Israel lobby group whose annual conference began Sunday. (Shortly after this article was published, Adelstein switched on his Facebook privacy settings and removed mention of his AIPAC role. Screenshots of his profile have been added.)

The film is said to show Adelstein boasting that ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel are “getting so much better, and nobody knows it.”

He told an undercover Al Jazeera reporter that “The governments have to coordinate on security. It’s all under the table. But on trade, security, tech, medicine, there’s a lot of cooperation.”

According to The Electronic Intifada’s source, Adelstein is seen in the undercover footage explaining that an American Jewish Committee “study tour” of the United Arab Emirates focusing on “mutual cooperation” was planned.

In January, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a forum of Israel lobby groups whose membership includes the American Jewish Committee, announced it had sent a “large delegation” of leaders to the United Arab Emirates, where it “met with everybody at the highest levels.”

The additional insight into the United Arab Emirates’ cozying up to Israel lobby groups comes as the wealthy monarchy’s activities in Washington are facing renewed scrutiny.

On Saturday, The New York Timesreported that special counsel Robert Mueller is expanding his investigation from alleged Russian meddling in the US presidential election to “include Emirati influence on the Trump administration” through the president’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.

“Anti-Semitism as a smear is not what it used to be”

Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is said to be seen in the undercover footage briefing recruits on how to smear Palestine solidarity groups in the US who support the BDS movement.

According to the source, Schanzer admits to the undercover reporter that “BDS has taken everybody by surprise.”

He calls the response by Israel lobby groups “a complete mess,” adding, “I don’t think that anybody’s doing a good job. We’re not even doing a good job.”

According to the source, Schanzer laments that attempts to smear Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine as linked to extremist Islamic terrorism have failed to gain traction.

He is also said to regret that the Israel lobby’s habitual tactic of falsely alleging Palestine solidarity activists are motivated by anti-Jewish hatred is losing its impact.

“Personally I think anti-Semitism as a smear is not what it used to be,” he is said to tell the undercover reporter.

Schanzer’s views echo a secret report endorsed by the Israeli government and distributed to Israel lobby leaders last year. That report, a leaked copy of which was published by The Electronic Intifada, concludes that Israel’s efforts to stem the growth of the Palestine solidarity movement have largely failed.

Film delayed

In October last year, Clayton Swisher, Al Jazeera’s head of investigations, first announced that the Qatari satellite channel had in 2016 run an undercover journalist in the US Israel lobby.

Swisher made the announcement soon after the UK’s broadcast regulator dismissed all complaints against Al Jazeera’s film The Lobby.

That documentary, broadcast in January 2017, exposed Israel’s covert influence campaign in the UK’s ruling Conservative and opposition Labour parties. The film revealed an Israeli embassy agent plotting with a British civil servant to “take down” a government minister seen as too critical of Israel.

Although Swisher promised the US film would come out “very soon,” nearly five months later it has yet to be broadcast.

Israel lobby in Qatar

Over the same period, a wave of Israel lobbyists has visited Qatar at the invitation of its ruler, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Among them have been some of the most rightwing and extreme figures among Israel’s defenders in the US, including Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and Morton Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America.

Multiple Israel lobby sources told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper last month that they had received assurances from Qatari leaders late last year that the Al Jazeera documentary will not be aired.

Qatar has denied this.

Pro-Israel groups have gone on the offensive to try and deter Al Jazeera from showing the film.

“Let’s not mince words about what this was – a well-funded, professional espionage operation carried out by Qatar on American soil,” Noah Pollak, executive director of the neoconservative Committee for Israel, has stated.

Ironically, pro-Israel members of Congress are now pressuring the Department of Justice to force Al Jazeera to register as an arm of Qatar, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, just as the Russian-funded network RT was recently forced to do.

Whether this pressure will succeed in burying the documentary for good is perhaps the ultimate test of the Israel lobby influence Al Jazeera journalists sought to expose.

Updated to add Max Adelstein screenshots.

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist and associate editor with The Electronic Intifada.

See also Electronic Intifada’s How “Russiagate” helps the Israel lobby. Russia’s RT has been forced to register as a foreign agent in the United States.  This is now being used to close it down.  The same is now happening to Al Jazeera, again to silence it.  Of course the corporate media, whose only allegiance is to the pockets of those who own them and United States capitalism will not be so registered.  It’s all in the name of free speech and democracy!

Morton Klein - far-Right President of the Zionist Organisation of America invited to Qatar as part of an attempt to win over key Zionists in America

How The Battle Over Al Jazeera Coopted America’s Jews

Sigurd Neubauer

The Forward March 9, 2018

Some surprising news emerged on the heels of the annual shebang of America’s largest Israel lobbying group. On the final day of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s policy conference, news broke that an undercover Al Jazeera documentary — about the very topic of Jewish advocacy for Israel — might lead to espionage charges against the network.

As part of the documentary, a young man went undercover to work for pro-Israel lobbying and fundraising groups. American critics have argued that this constituted “espionage” against US citizens, since Al Jazeera is funded by the government of Qatar. Al Jazeera should therefore be forced to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA.

A FARA designation would for all practical purposes cripple Al Jazeera and its ability to interview US officials and bring guests on air. But this week, the efforts got traction on Capitol Hill when U.S. Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Lee Zeldin sent a letter urging Attorney General Jeff Sessions to enforce the FARA. 19 members of Congress have signed onto the latter, as has a single senator — Ted Cruz.

This strange episode makes more sense if you take a closer look at who’s running the charges. The largest contributor to Gottheimer 2018 election campaign is NorPac, a “non-partisan” political action committee whose “primary purpose” is to support candidates who demonstrate “a genuine commitment to the strength, security and survival of Israel,” according to Open Secrets. Given that New Jersey has the second largest Jewish population after New York in the U.S., a re-election campaign focused on Al Jazeera and its coverage of American Jews would be a good play to Gottheimer’s base.

But Al Jazeera is facing intense international pressure, too. The FARA letter comes during a nasty feud between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which has resulted in a crushing blockade against Qatar. And in some ways, this Gulf crisis also comes back to Al Jazeera.

The blockade is the result of the Anti Terror Quartet, which consists of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They have long-standing grievances with Qatar’s independent foreign policy and especially with Al Jazeera, which has since its inception in 1996 prodded fellow Arab governments about sensitive issues, including the role of political Islam, corruption, Arab states’ support for the US/UK-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the lack of democracy across the Arab world.

Of course, while generally progressive on Arab issues, when it comes to the coverage of the Qatari royal family and of Qatari politics, Al Jazeera’s coverage is muted, at best (which falls in line with the rest of the GCC state media, which prohibits criticizing royal families and government policies in general). It’s also true that Al Jazeera is fully state owned, which explains why Qatar’s neighbors have long considered it to be a tool of Doha’s foreign policy.

And yet, the Arab world’s hatred of Al Jazeera is in direct proportion to its influence shaping the discourse, which runs deep, including on Israel. Al Jazeera Arabic remains the Arab world’s most popular news channel, and is the only Arab network to regularly provide Israelis with a platform to present their views.

That Al Jazeera continues to push boundaries was evident after it came under intense scrutiny on social media last month for providing IDF Spokesman in Arabic Avichay Adraee a platform to present the Israeli position. Still, Al Jazeera, along with Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya and Sky News Arabia networks, is well-known for presenting the Palestinian narrative of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. AJ+, an online news and current events channel run by Al Jazeera, is known for producing content sympathetic to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions agenda, along with other subjects popular with America’s far-left constituency.

Due to its influence, a core demand by those imposing the siege was that Qatar shut down Al Jazeera if they want the siege to end (Qatar, for its part, considers the 13 demands not a negotiation gambit but an imposition meant to curtail its sovereignty).

In other words, Qatar is now being pressured to shut Al Jazeera by Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, 19 congressmen, and Ted Cruz.

But this confluence of national and international pressure around Al Jazeera is not accidental. Qatar has long feared that its regional rivals would partner with American Jewish groups to jointly lobby the U.S. Congress to force the network to register under FARA.

It’s widely understood within Washington policy circles that the UAE sought to take advantage of the Trump presidency to solve the Qatar issue once and for all. It’s not just the Trump administration, either. Leaders of the American Jewish community have been courted by both Qatar and the UAE, and Jewish lobbyists have even been hired for their long-standing ties to the Jewish community.

Ultimately, it’s unclear whether the House Republican leadership would even consider bringing the FARA measure up for a vote. But no matter what American Jews think about Al Jazeera, they should recognize the true context of the FARA request: that media and intellectual diversity face unprecedented scrutiny at home and abroad, especially within the Arab world. Instead of using their lobbying influence to become partisans in the ATQ-Qatar dispute by calling for Al Jazeera’s FARA registration, American Jewish leaders should continue their respective engagements with the Qatari and UAE leadership.

If the Doha-based network is forced to register as a Foreign Agent, it will likely have ripple effects against media organizations around the world. The American Jewish leadership should not want this stain on its reputation, especially given that they are known for championing tolerance and pluralism at home and abroad.

Sigurd Neubauer is a Middle East analyst based in Washington and a frequent contributor to Al Jazeera. He is also a graduate of Yeshiva University in New York where he studied Political Science (BA) and Modern Jewish history.

NEWS QUICKIES: Katy Hopkins & Mark Regev Love-in at Zio Federation – Britain 1st Snakes Lose Their Head! Scottish Friends of Palestine statement

March 12, 2018, 10:39 pm

≫ Next: Open Letter to Jenny Formby of UNITE - Prospective General Secretary of The Labour Party

≪ Previous: The Silencing of Al Jazeera - How Free Speech in the United States Fell Victim to the Zionist Lobby

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VICTORY -  Glyn Secker Reinstated – Sack Labour’s Racist Witchfinder General Sam Matthews – Support the Lobby of Labour’s NEC -  March 20^th

Glyn Secker

It’s been a strange day.  As expected the Labour Party has reinstated the Secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour.  In a curt letter, Sam Matthews announced that Glyn’s suspension was being lifted.  He gave no reason for why he had been suspended in the first place, still less any apology for the stress that had been cause.  His only ‘explanation’ was that his suspension had been linked to David Collier’s racist expose of the Facebook group Palestine Live.  As I have already postedCollier is one of a number of far-Right Zionists and he works closely with open fascists to discredit the Palestine solidarity movement.

A delightfully romantic liason - Mark is 4th on the list of suitable husbands - we think he should be promoted - a war criminal and a would be genocidalist - an ideal match

Katy Hopkins

who says she doesn't have a heart?

Advocating a Final Solution to the Muslim 'Problem' - Could one think of a more appropriate guest to a Zionist Federation dinner?

The Zionist Federation's ideal dinner guest

Clearly the Zio Federation had gone to great lengths to find a topic suitable for Katy Hopkins - she must be delighted at Israel's proposed deportation of 40,000 African refugees

It was heartwarming to hear that Katy Hopkins, the person who described refugees as ‘cockroaches’ and who participated in a boat to the Mediterranean designed to prevent the rescue of drowning refugees (the boat ended up breaking down and needing help from the refugee boats!) was invited to the Zionist Federation Annual Dinner. 

Charming to a fault as usual

She must have felt at home there amongst all the other racist bigots.  Indeed the guest of honour was none other than Gideon Saar, a Minister in Netanyahu’s government, who proceeded to defend Israel’s deportation of refugees by denying there were any deportations!  He was heckled at this point by a Rabbi who was then escorted out of the room for her efforts.

Later on Katy had her picture taken with Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev, who according to Katy is 4^th on the list of eligible husbands.  My advice to her is to promote him to number one as quickly as possible.  This is clearly a marriage made in hell!

Britain First

The output from Britain First, now that their Fuhrer and his Deputy, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, are enjoying free accommodation at Her Majesty’s expense, is not up to the previous quality.  

Yesterday I had a perfunctory email headed This is unbelievable.  It then followed the usual routine of asking me to ‘chip in’£10 to help out the ever busy legal teams that BF employ to no good effect.

Well of course it wasn’t a hard decision.  I could think of no better cause to donate to than the Free the Nazi Two campaign. When you think of all the good causes around – Homelessness, Refugees, Victims of War, Poverty – then it is obvious that Paul and Jayda should be the recipients of my largesse.

Lobby of the Labour Party NEC

In the wake of the reinstatement of Glyn Secker and the determination of Sam Matthews, Head of Disputes, to continue with Crooked McNicol’s witchhunt of socialists, it is more important than ever that people turn out next Tuesday to lobby  the National Executive Committee.

Support Labour Against the Witchhunt’s

Lobby of Labour’s National Executive Committee

Tuesday, March 20^thSouthside 105 Victoria Street SW1E 6QT

End the Witchhunt

Drop the Charges Against Marc Wadsworth and Cyril Chilsom

Reinstate Tony Greenstein

Implement Chakrabarti – Close the Compliance Unit

Suspend Labour’s Witchfinder General – Sam Matthews

Statement from Scottish Friends of Palestine

I copy below a statement from Scottish Friends of Palestine on the situation surrounding the march of Stand Up to Racism this Saturday in Glasgow and the participation of supporters of the Israeli state in it.

Tony Greenstein

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Open Letter to Jenny Formby of UNITE - Prospective General Secretary of The Labour Party

March 14, 2018, 1:04 am

≫ Next: Stephen Hawking – the Death of a True Friend of Palestine

≪ Previous: NEWS QUICKIES: Katy Hopkins & Mark Regev Love-in at Zio Federation – Britain 1st Snakes Lose Their Head! Scottish Friends of Palestine statement

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 The Time has come to End the False Anti-Semitism Witch-hunt - Appeasement of Racists merely encourages them

Jenny Formby - Labour's next General Secretary - will she continue with the McNicol regime?

No tears will be shed for the disappearance of Crooked McNicol

Dear Jenny,

I readtoday that you are set to become Labour’s new General Secretary. I welcome your appointment but I do so with some apprehension as to whether you are going to prove to be a new broom or someone who upholds the ancien régime.  Labour’s long nightmare of Iain McNicol’s corrupt and autocratic rule must end.  

Corrupt because it led to the suspension and auto-exclusion of thousands of members for no other reason than that they supported Jeremy Corbyn.  We had the obscenity of peoples’ votes being fished out of the electronic ballot box. On the flimsiest of pretexts, such as calling the 172 MPs who stabbed Jeremy Corbyn in the back ‘traitors’, they were suspended as were parties such as Wallasey and Brighton & Hove on the basis of wholly fabricated evidence.

Ruthless because Labour Party regional officials saw their role as defending incumbent MPs and councillors and stemming the Left tide. For example numerous members of Liverpool Riverside CLP were ‘investigated’ in order to defend an unpopular local MP, Louise Ellman, who had been parachuted in during the Blair years.

It is strange how the racist tabloid press gets so worked up about 'anti-Semitism'

The Chair of the Disputes Committee and long-standing NEC member, Christine Shawcroft recently declaredthat ‘Nothing would induce me to support a candidate from a major trade union, they stick it to the rank and file members time after time after time’.  The reason for this statement was the passive acquiescence by NEC trade union representatives, yourself included, over the witchhunt of socialists and supporters of Palestine. 

Professor Moshe Machover & Glyn Secker - one expelled, one suspended, both reinstated

In the past week the Secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour, Glyn Secker, has been suspendedand reinstatedby Sam Matthews, Labour’s Witchfinder General.  Before him, Israeli anti-Zionist, Professor Moshe Machover, the honorary President of Labour Against the Witchhunt, was expelledbefore a wave of protest led to his reinstatement.  In both cases Matthews didn’t even offer so much as an apology to these members. 

I was expelledlast month after having been suspended for nearly two years.  The process was so unfair that I had to obtain a High Court Injunction when after 17 months suspension I was refused an extension to the 4 weeks I had been given to respond to the Labour Party’s dossier. The Labour Party’s barrister openly admittedthat none of the charges against me predated my suspension  In other words, I was suspended first and then they looked for evidence.  Despite being an anti-racist activist and the author of the only book on fighting fascism in Brighton and the South Coast I was expelled as part of the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.

On March 20 a similar miscarriage of justice is due to take place in Oxford.  Israeli born Cyril Chilsom is also accused of ‘anti-Semitism’. He is the child of parents who survived the Nazi concentration camps. This is what Labour has come to under McNicol.

Morning Star Editorial - Nailing the lie that Antisemitism is criticism of Israel

Other cases due to be heard include that of longstanding Black anti-racist activist Marc Wadsworth, who was framed by pro-Israel MP Ruth Smeeth at the Chakrabarti press conference.   Her allegations of anti-Semitic abuse have been shown to be a tissue of lies.

Another Jewish member of the Labour Party whose case is pending is Jackie Walker, who has been the target of a political lynching by the racist Jewish Labour Movement.  Jackie has produced in response a play The Lynchingwhich deals with the Black experience of racism in this country, including at the hands of McNicol’s regime.

Jackie has been the target of a campaign of demonization by the JLM, a group which refuses to condemn the supportof its ‘sister’party, the Israeli Labour Party for the forcible deportation of 40,000 African refugees from Israel because they are Black.

When you are appointed it is your duty to bring an end to the witchhunt in the Labour Party. You yourself have recently been the subject of the false anti-Semitism campaign from Labour Against Anti-Semitism.  Unite statement on the smear attack on Jennie Formby by LAAS

It is unacceptable that members of the NEC and Disputes Committee, in particular its trade union representatives, have just nodded through cases of alleged anti-Semitism. Has it ever occurred to you or the other union representatives why it is that the strongest proponents of the myth of Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ are Britain’s racist tabloids – the Mail, Express and Sun?

Historically there has always been a division in the labour movement between the political/ intellectual and trade union wings.  That should not however be the excuse for the failure of trade union representatives on the NEC to challenge the false allegations of anti-Semitism. Nearly all trade unions, such as UNISON and UNITE, have good policy on the Palestinians including support for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions on Israel.  In the eyes of the supporters of Israeli apartheid  BDS is anti-Semitic just as supporters of the Boycott of Apartheid South Africa were also accused of anti-White racism.  False allegations of anti-Semitism are being consciously used to deflect support away from the Palestinians.

Emily Oldknow - McNicol's trusted hatchet woman has also announced her overdue departure

Ms Oldknow featured in this document in my Subject Access Request

Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism is a constant theme of Zionist propagandists.

There seems to be a belief among the NEC’s trade union members that if Labour expels a few anti-Zionists then the false anti-Semitism campaign will go away. On the contrary, everytime you suspend or expel someone you give credence to the nonsense that Labour is an anti-Semitic party.  Instead of facing these allegations down and calling out the real racists, the people who support the demolition of homes, theft of land and the detention and abuse of Palestinian children you have doffed your cap to the Israeli Embassy.

This week’s ‘revelations’ of anti-Semitism on the Facebook group Palestine Live proves that appeasement of Zionists doesn’t work.  The more you feed an appeaser the more his appetite grows.  The ‘researcher’ behind these latest revelations has linksto the far-Right including Britain First and the EDL.  The fact that the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism has made a complaint of anti-Semitism against Corbyn this week demonstrates their real agenda.

The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign has one purpose and it isn’t to oppose anti-Semitism but to give support to Israel’s apartheid state.  The fact that Jewish anti-Zionists have been the most prominent victims of this campaign is in itself proof of its real motives.

The time has come to reinstate Galloway and lift Livingstone's suspension

We hope that one of your first actions as the new General Secretary will be to put an end to this nonsense.  That means removing Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth’s suspensions, reinstating George Galloway and myself and all those who have been autoexcluded.  In addition the Chakrabarti Report’s recommendations on natural justice and due process should be implemented without further delay.

The time has come to put the McNicol era behind us and move ahead.

Kind regards

Tony Greenstein

Stephen Hawking – the Death of a True Friend of Palestine

March 14, 2018, 7:48 pm

≫ Next: You can’t Stand Up To Racism and then March under the Apartheid Flag of Israel

≪ Previous: Open Letter to Jenny Formby of UNITE - Prospective General Secretary of The Labour Party

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As chance would have it I only finished reading ‘Beyond the Black Hole – Stephen Hawking’s Universe’ a week ago.  Hawking was the greatest theoretical physicist since Einstein and like him a political radical.  He was not only a brilliant mathematician and scientist but he also applied the scientific principle to the chaotic and unfair society we live in.  Politically he saw the State of Israel as a political black hole, nothing good could ever escape from it.

In particular Hawking was fiercely committed to the NHS and universal health care [Death of Stephen Hawking robs campaigners against 'backdoor NHS privatisation' of powerful supporter]  He sharply disagreed with the lugubrious Minister of Health Jeremy Hunt over Accountable Care Organisations, a device imported from the United States which are intended to put a financial cap on the NHS and thereby ration care.  Hawking was a fierce supporter of the Labour Party and although he criticised Corbyn he did that having accepted the received wisdom that Labour would perform disastrously under a Corbyn leadership.

What is most missing from all the tributes and eulogies is any mention of Israel and Palestine.  Hawking repeatedly made clear his views on Palestine and in 2013 he withdrew from an academic conference in Israel in deference to BDS.  He particularly condemned the murderous bombardment of Gaza in 2009-10, Operation Cast Lead, when 1,400 Palestinians were murdered by Israel.  As he said at the time about Israel:

‘The situation is like that of South Africa It cannot continue’

Below are tributes from BDS South Africa, an article by Ali Abunimah and an article today in Ha’aretz about Hawking’s relationship to Israel and Palestine.

Tony Greenstein

Palestine BDS activists saddened by death of ally, Stephen Hawking

14 March 2018

The human rights and Palestine solidarity organisation, BDS South Africa, joins fellow Palestinian solidarity activists from across the globe in expressing our condolences on the passing of world-renowned physicist and our ally, Professor Stephen Hawking. In particular our condolences to his friends and family.

We remember Hawking not only for the brilliance of his scientific mind and achievements but also as an impassioned campaigner who lent his voice to various causes for justice – including the Palestinian struggle against Israeli Apartheid.

– In January 2009, during Israel’s invasion of the Palestinian Gaza Strip, in which more 1000 Palestinians were killed, Hawking said: “A people under occupation will continue to resist in any way it can…the situation [in Palestine] is like that in South Africa before 1990, that cannot continue.” Click here for video.

– In 2013, Hawking withdrew from an Israeli conference stating that, based on advice from Palestinian academics, he had decided to respect the BDS academic boycott of Israel. Click here.

– In 2016, through a public video message, Hawking congratulated Hanan al-Hroub, a Palestinian woman who won the Global Teacher Prize. “From one teacher to another, you are inspiration to people everywhere.” he said. Click here for video.

– Last year in 2017 Hawking used his Facebook page to support scientists in Palestine, calling for his followers to donate funds to a Palestinian Advanced Physics School. Click here.

Stephen Hawking, may we continue where you left, in creating a better more peaceful and just world. As we continue to pledge out solidarity with the Palestinians and all other oppressed peoples, we will carry with us your wise words: “Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do. It matters that you don’t give up.” We will not give up, for the sake of the Palestinians, for your sake, and for the sake of a better world.

From South Africa, Hamba Kahle, Comrade Hawking!

ISSUED BY KWARA KEKANA ON BEHALF OF BDS SOUTH AFRICA

A Brief History of Stephen Hawking's Complicated Relationship With Israel

Stephen Hawking was critical of Israel and supported BDS, but also visited Israel a number of times and based his revolutionary theory on the works of an Israeli scientist

Ha’aretz Judy Maltz

Mar 14, 2018 10:16 AM

Stephen Hawking speaks to students at the Bloomfield Museum of Science in Jerusalem, December 10, 2006. AP

You can’t Stand Up To Racism and then March under the Apartheid Flag of Israel

March 14, 2018, 8:56 pm

≫ Next: The Desperate Dishonesty of the Zionists at Harry’s Place

≪ Previous: Stephen Hawking – the Death of a True Friend of Palestine

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Putting Anti-racism and Anti-imperialism in Separate Compartments - the SWP's popular frontism in action

Below is a statement which has been issued by the Secretary of Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign.  We, like many Palestinian supporters have been dismayed at the stance of the Scottish STUR to allow supporters of Israel, the Confederation of Friends of Israel, to take part in Saturday’s anti-racist march in Glasgow, along with the flag of Israel.

This decision makes a mockery of the purpose of the march, to oppose racism.  There can be no doubt that Israel is a racist state, in the same way that Apartheid South Africa was a racist state.  It is a state with racism at its very core and essence.  It is literally a State of the Jews, not just its own Jewish citizens even but of all Jews throughout the world.  That is why when Netanyahu paid a visit to French Jews at the time of the killing of 4 Jews in a kosher Paris supermarket, he told them that they should ‘come home’. ‘Come home!’ Israeli minister urges French Jews amid terror wave 

Palestinian refugees, driven out in 1948 in order to ensure a Jewish demographic majority in Israel are not invited ‘home’, despite they and their families having lived there for generations.  Instead of being a state of its own citizens Israel is a state of its Jewish citizens and Jews outside the state. 

The fact that a plurality of Israeli Jews support the physical expulsion of Israel’s Arab citizens bears witness to the degree of racism in Israeli society.  The chant of ‘Death to the Arabs’ is a favourite one of Israeli right-wing demonstrations.  At this very moment Israel is in the process of trying to deport 40,000 Black African refugees for the crime of not being White or Jewish.

For Stand up to racism to allow people with Israeli flags to march as part of its demonstration is a disgrace which throws into question the purpose of SUTR.  It is no secret that SUTR is a front organisation of the SWP.  It runs and controls it behind the list of sponsors.  This is how the SWP have always operated.  Nonetheless many people have supported it who are not in the SWP, like Dianne Abbot, because it does good work in opposing Islamaphobia and the Prevent Programme. 

For SUTR to allow the flag of Apartheid Israel to be present amongst its ranks negates all of this.  Of course no one objects to someone who is a Zionist participating in the march.  But to allow the flag of Israel to be present is an entirely different matter.  The Israeli flag to Palestinians is like the Apartheid South African flag was to Black Africans and the Swastika was to Jews. 

The reason for this debacle is the politics of the SWP itself.  On the one hand they claim to be anti-Zionist, albeit in an extremely crude and unworked out way.  On the other hand they prioritise racism domestically.  They seem to have a blind spot for the fact that racism in Britain is a product of Britain’s role as an imperial power and the British Empire.  Although the SWP have no problem attributing the growth of Islamaphobia to the War on Terror and the Iraqi and Afghanistan invasions they do not see that in the Middle East the bastion of Islamaphobia and unadulterated anti-Arab racism is the State of Israel and Zionism. 

Zionists hold joint demonstration with EDL (in paramilitary uniform in background) at Ahava in Covent Garden - Jonathan Hoffman, Vice Chair Zionist Federation (right), Roberta Moore of Jewish Nazi Jewish Defence League (middle) and Harvey Garfield (left)

It is precisely the viciously anti-Islamic policies of the Israeli state, which tolerates fascist attacks by Lehava on Arab males who are  believed to be in mixed relationships, and which promotes anti-Islamic racism internationally that makes Israel so attractive to the European and American far-Right.  Some of the most vehemently Islamaphobic politicians from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Heinz Christian Strache, the Vice Chancellor Austria to our own Tommy Robinson ex EDL and Britain First admire Israel for its hostility to Muslims.

This adulation of Israel by the far Right seems to have passed the SWP by.  Pictures of fascist organisations marching and  demonstrating with the flag of Israel also seem to have passed them by.  If Israeli flags appear on Saturday in SUTR’s demonstration in Glasgow the shit as they say will hit the fan.

Tony Greenstein

 

Statement of Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Organisation

I write on behalf of the Committee of Brighton & Hove PSC (BHPSC). As an organisational affiliate to Stand Up To Racism (since October 2016), BHPSC is shocked and disappointed to learn of the decision, by the organisers of Saturday’s anti-racist march in Glasgow, to allow members of the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS), to take part in the march.

In allowing representatives of an Israel advocacy group to take part (with banners and/or Israeli flags) the organisers of the Scotland march have undermined the fundamental principle upon which the march was planned – ie opposition to racism in all its forms. Moreover, they have failed to recognise that COFIS is not a group representing Jewish people, but instead an advocacy group (composed in part of evangelical Christians) for the racist and apartheid Israeli regime. COFIS has cynically manipulated the situation to normalise the image of Israel in Scotland.

EDL demonstration in Dudley

 The issue is not fundamentally one of support for the cause of Palestinian rights, or one of race hatred against Jewish people. It is about the racist nature of the Israeli regime, and the message that is conveyed to genuine campaigners against racism, and to genuine victims of racism, by allowing the visual symbols of that regime to be displayed in an allegedly anti-racist march.

We have written to Stand Up To Racism Scotland to urge them to reconsider their decision.

As affiliates to SUTR, and active supporters of the local SUTR group, we seek an assurance from SUTR that pro-Israel groups will not be allowed to take part in any overt way (and to carry pro-Israel banners and/or Israeli flags) in the London march on Saturday March 17^th. We also seek a public statement from SUTR, distancing itself from the decision in Scotland. Of course individual members of pro-Israel groups wishing to take part in a personal capacity cannot be excluded, but pro-Israel banners and/or Israeli flags have no place in the anti-racist movement.

Ben Steele

Secretary, Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Joint Palestinian-Israeli Demonstration in Tel Aviv in February 2017 against racism

Scottish PSC statement on 

Stand Up to Racism, 13 March 2018

"Palestinians have situated their struggle, the BDS movement, as part of a wider struggle against racism. Week after week Israel’s crimes escalate, fuelled by racism and genocidal discourse so malevolent that even Israeli generals, prominent journalists and Holocaust survivors have spoken out about how Israeli society develop ever more marked features resembling 1930s European fascism and Nazism."

As an anti-racist organisation, SPSC has participated over the years in Stand Up to Racism demonstrations; last year we provided a high-profile speaker, Prof Richard Falk, who co-authored the UN ESCWA report ‘Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid’ which concluded “that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole”. A year later, the active agents of that apartheid state, defenders of its crimes against humanity are to be allowed onto the march.

We understand that racism is a mortal danger to any project for a better future in Britain, threatens to hurl us backwards into the abyss and that ALL racist organisations need to be challenged and quarantined like political and social Ebola.

According to SUTR publicity, March 17th marks the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and is part of worldwide demonstrations called to combat all racism, including state-enforced racism.

How did this come to pass that an organisation that represents and works on behalf of apartheid Israel can be welcome to participate in such an occasion, in a city proud of the internationalism and solidarity that led to the naming of Mandela Place?

It is with great regret, that we have concluded that we cannot participate in Saturday’s march since SUTR in Scotland and UK-wide has let it be known that the racist Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS), will be allowed to present itself as an anti-racist group on the march with a banner and Israeli flags.

COFIS is a group that considers extreme racist Tommy Robinson to be “a colourful character”, refers to Palestinians as 'Pallys' and 'Fakestinians' and posts about Palestinians being “euthanised”. COFIS is led by a Christian fundamentalist and is closely allied with Christians United for Israel. CUFI leader, Rev. John Hagee, asserts that Hitler was chosen by God to carry out the Nazi Holocaust to drive Jews to the only place they should live, Palestine.

Ask why the extreme right across Europe and beyond fly Israeli flags and they will provide the answer; US White supremacist Richard Spencer calls himself a ‘White Zionist’ because Israel is already their model for a state built on racist principles, ethnic cleansing and permanent inferiority for the indigenous people.

Palestinians have situated their struggle, the BDS movement, as part of a wider struggle against racism. Week after week Israel’s crimes escalate, fuelled by racism and genocidal discourse so malevolent that even Israeli generals, prominent journalists and Holocaust survivors have spoken out about how Israeli society develop ever more marked features resembling 1930s European fascism and Nazism.

EDL demonstrators in Brighton, after having failed to attack PSC stall - with Israeli flag

An earthquake is sudden but it is the result of long-term movements in the earth’s crust. The shock of what happened last Saturday is the result of several factors:.

• The support for the Palestinian BDS call has been growing year on year since 2005.
• Since 2014, the Israeli government has mobilised their support through the new ‘Ministry of Strategic Affairs’, working with organisations around the world. In Scotland, that organisation is COFIS.
• The smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and the witch-hunt being conducted against his support base is having an influence, leaving activists fearful of being targeted by the campaign that secured expulsions and suspensions from the Labour Party of dedicated anti-racist, anti-Zionist Jews. Corbyn delivered a shattering defeat to the pro-war, pro-Israel Blairites to become leader of the Labour Party. He channelled the hopes of millions and spoke to tens of thousands.
• The Old Guard of the Labour Party are fighting back and the pro-Israel Labour groups are spearheading the attack by smearing Corbyn as an ‘antisemite’.
• Unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn has allowed some of his most active supporters to be expelled and suspended following demonstrably false accusations.
• The result has been increased intimidation of anti-racist, pro-Palestine voices across the unions and the wider society.

Corbyn will find that COFIS and their ilk are insatiable and will continue to come for him, for the left, and certainly for all of us concerned with ensuring a future in Palestine / Israel that is apartheid-free and based on equality, justice and freedom.

During the long agony of the Palestinian people, most of the British left openly sided with the colonisers. Groaning in a vast gulag, periodically massacred, denied minimum human rights, an entire people were violated over decades, while the Churchills and Thatchers cheered on and armed the colonisers.

But we also must acknowledge that the British Labour Party in 1944/45, in the most progressive Labour Government ever, asked the Palestinian people as a whole to move out of Palestine to make way for Jewish colonists. Only recently has the British trade union movement and most of the left begun to atone for this shameful past.

The movers of the motion to ‘unwelcome’ COFIS were informed that the decision to accept defenders of Israeli war crimes and apartheid on to the march “came from SUTR National Officers, from Diane Abbott all the way down”. The repeated reason given by SUTR for allowing COFIS onto the march was the fear of being attacked in the media as “antisemitic” if they told these uber-racists they were unwelcome.

This is a capitulation to racism in a double sense. Scottish SUTR officers agree that COFIS is a campaigning racist organisation. (“We fully agree with you about what COFIS is”). But as the letter from Scottish Jewish anti-racists makes clear, to treat COFIS as a Jewish community organisation is itself a racist position because it asserts that all Jews are in some way associated with the Apartheid State. When clear anti-racist politics are needed, when its ‘fight or flight time’, SUTR has chosen capitulation to a racist smear against Scottish Jews and has thrown the Palestinians under the bus.

We have seen that there is far to go and we have been thrown back by this rotten decision. We are even hesitant about communicating this betrayal to our friends in Palestine for we know the pain it will cause to people who gambled on our support and have been rejected by some in Scotland.

There is the danger of the retreat in the face of weaponised false antisemitism charges turning into a rout.

We pick ourselves up from defeats just as we have celebrated victories and we dedicate ourselves to a long struggle, seeking the new allies that will inevitably come to the aid of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle.

Palestinians are being occupied, murdered and dispossessed, many living in cruelly besieged Gaza under a military that uses guidance systems made in Fife to get bombs to their targets on Palestinian universities, schools, hospitals and homes. The same flag that flies over their constant humiliation in Palestine will now fly over the demonstration in Glasgow.

We have never been in such a situation before where a hard racist organisation has learned that they will be welcome on an ANTI-racist demonstration. This is salt in open Palestinian wounds and sends a message – the message COFIS and the Israeli Embassy work tirelessly to send – that resistance is futile because Palestinians under Israel’s iron heel are completely isolated. “Just look – even Scottish anti-racists are with Israel!”

What better way to spread pain and despair, for Israel’s benefit. Those progressive Palestinians and citizens across the Middle East who argue that international solidarity can contribute to their liberation and a better world have been kicked in the teeth and those elements who thrive on despair - ISIS and Al Qaeda - can put another slide in their PowerPoint.

Those Palestinians, our comrades in the fight against the Apartheid they suffer under, have reached out to join with anti-racists around the world and have been told that the flag of their torturers is welcome in Glasgow.

But everything is now out in the open for all to see. New lines must be drawn with those who oppose all racism on one side of that line, and on the other extreme racists and their partners, racist and "anti-racist" alike.

The Desperate Dishonesty of the Zionists at Harry’s Place

March 14, 2018, 9:43 pm

≫ Next: Why Israel is Racist in one word - Birthright

≪ Previous: You can’t Stand Up To Racism and then March under the Apartheid Flag of Israel

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‘Anti-Semitism’ trumps Collier’s       Far-Rights links

Times have not been good to the cold war site, Harry’s Place.  Having supported every war in the Middle East they have bathed in the Islamaphobic afterglow.

HP is a place where any racist and any warmonger can take part with pride, just as long as they support Israel.  That is why you have the imperialist warmongers of the ‘left’ like Andrew Coates posting there.

Most of the comments are juvenile, public school racism laced with a hefty dose of anti-communism.  Reflex support for Israel and an automatic demonization of any Palestinian or BDS is essential to politics there.

I guess I should be flattered that they reprinta post I did on the Facebook group Palestine Live, which was the subject of an ‘expose’ by far-Right Zionist blogger David Collier.  ‘Lucy Lips’ devotes all its attention to one phrase in particular:  ‘Antisemitism doesn't hurt Jews but it does hurt the Palestinians.’

How can this be the little neo-cons ask themselves.  Surely he doesn’t mean it.  In fact I did mean it as my response below explains (I posted it to Harry’s Place but despite their banner motto that ‘Liberty if it means anything means the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear’ doesn’t seem to want to extend it to me.  I was banned some years ago and I guess the ban is still in force as my comment hasn’t appeared.

My point, which is a simple one, is that the kind of anti-Semitism which occasionally graced the Palestine Live Facebook group, i.e. social media anti-Semitism doesn’t hurt Jews but does hurt the cause of Palestinians.  Obvious actual anti-Semitism in the real world does hurt people who are Jewish although even then, anti-Semitism prejudice in the Palestine solidarity movement, occasional and rare as it is compared to the virulent anti-Muslim racist of Zionists, hurts the Palestinian cause more than the Zionists.

Response to Harry’s Place

Let me put viewers of Harry's Place out of their misery.  I don't usually post here but someone drew my attention to this absurd piece of nonsense.

Any fair minded person, anyone who is not interested in deliberate distortion of someone's views would see that I unequivocally condemn all manifestations of antisemitism.  After all, unlike virtually all members of this site I have actually put myself on the line in the fight against fascist groups.  People here only talk about 'antisemitism' when they are defending the apartheid society of Israel.

On the day of the death of Steven Hawking let us remember that he too, like most reasonable anti-racist people, supported BDS and the Palestinians.  After all how can anyone who is an anti-racist support a state where 93% of the land is barred to Arabs or non-Jews, where Rabbis issue writs against leasing land or apartments to Arabs (Safed etc.) of where there are marches chanting 'death to the Arabs'.  All the circular wordplay on this site is devoted to defending the greater racism and of course most people except the elites in society and their echo chambers here know that.

What I meant about antisemitism not hurting Jews above is meant to be understood in the context in which it was said.  Of course it has nothing to do with the Holocaust, fascist attacks on the street etc.  It refers solely to what I refer to as the 'fruitcakes and loony tunes' who post on social media groups like Palestine Alive.  Social media anti-semitism, unless it is used to organise attacks on Jewish people, is anodyne.  It doesn't hurt a single Jew.  It is nothing more than people venting their frustration against Jews because of what the 'Jewish state' does in the name of Jews against Palestinians.

Such people are politically backward and reactionary and I called out Atzmon, Greta Berlin and Alison Weir.  My comments should not be understood as meaning I agree in any way with them but t o simply point out that they aren't hurting Jews, which they might like to do, but the very people they are purportedly supporting.

I suggest that if those who wish to ascertain 'antisemitism' in every crack or crevice were to turn their attention to the vicious racism in Israel, racism which people like Zeev Sternhell, a childhood survivor of the Holocaust, have compared to the Nazi era, then I would take their witterings over 'antisemitism' seriously.

Instead most of the posters here are serially dishonest in that they defend racism in the name of 'antisemitism', the new anti-communism.

Why Israel is Racist in one word - Birthright

March 16, 2018, 9:24 pm

≫ Next: Victory in Glasgow as Racist COFIS Kept Off Anti-Racist March

≪ Previous: The Desperate Dishonesty of the Zionists at Harry’s Place

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The Birthright Programme embodies all the assumptions of an Apartheid state

An all-white, all Jewish cast having a good time whilst Palestinians continue to pay the price

I must confess that when I was 16 I went on the equivalent of the Birthright programme.  It was a heavily subsidised trip for one month to Israel.  In 1969 the colonisation of the West Bank had barely begun.  A Labour Zionist government was in power but the racist framework was already over 20 years old.  Travelling in a hot bus in the Negev desert without any air conditioning and with Honky Tonk Women by the Stones at number one.

As long as you are Jewish you can be gay, straight or a young professional.  You can either be a progressive though if you live in Israel that will be knocked out of you

I went over already sceptical about Zionism and after losing my minders and hitch hiking around I became convinced that no good would come of the occupation of the West Bank.  The emphasis throughout the trip was that we were ‘returning’ to our home and that once kindled the spark would never die.  The only problem was that I didn’t feel any attachment to Israel, nor did I think of it as home.  It was too hot for me and I missed by real home back in Liverpool with its temperate climate!

Birthright however is the  programme that thousands of young Jewish people go on each year.  If you are between 18 and 26 and have at least one Jewish parent then you too are eligible for a free trip.  The reason for this programme is in order to encourage youngs Jews to emigrate to Israel and that is why, at its very heart, Birthright is the foundation stone of Israeli racism.

The most important category is that you are of 'Jewish descent' - Palestinians need not apply

If Israel is in need of immigrants then there are thousands of them languishing in the refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.  The only problem is that they are of the wrong ethnic category.  They are not Jewish.  It matter not that they and their families originated from Palestine and were expelled in 1948 or subsequently.  They are not of the right race.  And that is why Birthright is Birthwrong.

Tony Greenstein

Victory in Glasgow as Racist COFIS Kept Off Anti-Racist March

March 18, 2018, 10:03 pm

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The Shame of the SWP/SUTR as they accept the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative

A replica of the Apartheid Wall was used to keep the racist COFIS away from an anti-racist march

Despite attempted obstruction from the march stewards Mick Napier of Scottish PSC captures what happened

Yesterday in Glasgow, despite the best attempts of the SWP/Stand Up to Racism leaders, the Zionists of the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland were kept off an anti-racist march.  Scottish PSC, Palestine solidarity supporters and anti-racists were sufficiently incensed by the arrogant and dismissive attitude of SUTR/SWP that they  built their own model replica of Israel’s Apartheid Wall in order to keep the Zionist racists away from the march.  The Zionists got a taste of what it must be like when you face a wall separating you from where you want to go!!

The Zionist contingent was cordoned off

How the Zionists saw their predicament

The march itself, was apparently only a few hundred strong and it set off almost immediately after the time scheduled for the marchers to rally.  It is clear that the leaders of the SWP/SUTR realised the counterproductive nature of their decision  to allow racists onto an anti-racist march and were determined to get it all over with as soon as decently possible.

How did it happen? The SWP formed a ‘united front’ (in fact a popular front) against racism appealing to the lowest common denominator politically with the Labour and Trade Union bureaucracy and just about anyone who would have them. The SWP is anxious to keep the support of the Labour bureaucracy at any price and is fully aware that much of that bureaucracy has fallen for the lie that being Jewish and being Zionist is one and the same thing. 

When the question arose of the participation of Zionists, supporters of the world’s only apartheid state, in their annual racist march, the SWP took fright.  If they told the COFIS that Zionist racists were not welcome on an anti-racist march it would mean the usual allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ and the possibility of the Labour bureaucrats taking away their ‘support’.  So the SWP decided that they would buckle first by swallowing their principles. 

This is of course not the first time that the SWP has found its principles to be a flexible and moveable feast.  When they were in Respect they kept quiet about abortion.  In Stop the War Campaign they kept quiet about gay rights.  Ten years ago they gave their support to Gilad Atzmon, an open anti-Semite and turned a blind eye to his anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. 'Anti-Zionist' holocaust denier, Time to say goodbye

COFIS's Facebook page talks of 'euthanising' Palestinians

Five years ago the SWP was embroiled in a crisis when a woman made allegations of rape against the National Secretary Martin Smith. Instead of Smith being suspended and the matter investigated or, if that were not possible, the Police being asked to investigate, the woman herself was penalised and made to feel responsible.  Another woman, a victim of serious sexual harassment was effectively sacked for making such allegations. 

In a series of articles that I and others wroteThe Self-Destruction of the Socialist Workers Party – Now is the Time for a New Left Party, SWP Crisis Over Cover-up of Rape & Sexual Harassment Allegations against former National Secretary Martin Smith, SWP Central Committee - Rabbits Caught in the Headlightsand Ten years on: a comment on the British SWPby the late Mike Marqusee the question was posed how this could happen in an allegedly revolutionary organisation.  My own view was not merely that the question of rape and sexism was not taken seriously but that the deformed internal political culture and lack of democracy in the SWP, whereby a self-perpetuating leadership slate is re-elected each year, resulted in an organisation which has no means of checking still less analysing its own behaviour.  In short there was no democratic accountability.  For the SWP leadership’s analysis of what went wrong seeThe politics of the SWP crisis.

Zionist marchers were hemmed in and isolated

In the front groups it sets up like Stand Up to Racism it replicates this lack of democracy.  None of its previous groups, Globalise Resistance, Unite Against Fascism, the Anti Nazi League etc. were remotely democratic.  They consisted of hand picked sponsors from the Labour Party, like Peter Hain in the ANL and SWP permanent full timers who effectively controlled the organisation.  In the Socialist Alliance they deliberately destroyed its democratic structures.

It is little wonder that when Palestinian supporters made demands on SUTR that an openly racist Zionist organisation should not be allowed to participate in their annual march, the SWP panicked.  Knowing full well the way that the false anti-Semitism campaign of Zionism had impacted on the Labour movement they took the decision that COFIS could participate because otherwise any decision would be painted as ‘anti-Semitic’. This was a deliberate concession to reformist and pro-imperialist currents in the Labour Party because the alternative was to stand up for international solidarity and anti-imperialism.  It is a concession to social chauvinism.

The lies of the Zionists who, by their own admission, couldn't take part in the march - calling Mick Napier a 'criminal' is like calling Ghandi a criminal, since he too was convicted of defying the British

Of course the obvious way out was simply to declare that Jews, whoever they were, were welcome on an anti-racist march but that supporters of Israel and Israeli flags in particular were not welcome.  Instead of confronting the Zionists’ attempts to confuse the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism the SWP simply caved in and made the situation worse. 

Even worse the SWP then went to the leaders of unions like the EIS (teachers union in Scotland) asking them to back them up, which unsurprisingly they did.  Equally unsurprising the Muslim Council of Scotland backed out of the march.  So the main representative of the community which is hardest hit by racism, the Muslim community, was not represented.  So Zionists, whose sole raison d'être is support of the Israeli state and who are not affected in any way by state racism, were welcome to participate on the march whereas the victims of state and fascist violence, Muslims, were forced into a position where they were not welcome.

Hemmed in an isolated in order to protect the public - Zionist racists

The dunderheads of the SWP, who parrot their opposition to Islamaphobia, fell at the first hurdle.  Islamapobia is the consequence of imperialist interventions in the Middle East and Afghanistan primarily.  A racism imported back to Britain in the same way as the racism used to justify the British Empire found is reflection in the anti-Black racism of the 1950’s and 1960’s as symbolised by Enoch Powell. 

However anti-Muslim racism is also spearheaded by Zionist groups, their neo-conservative and far-Right allies and the State of Israel.  It is no accident that some of the leading Islamaphobic groups, in Britain and internationally, love Israel so much.  Whether it is Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, Marine Le Pen in France or Heinz Christian Strache of the neo-Nazi Freedom Party in Austria, all are agreed that Israel is the first line of defence of the Western world against the Muslim hordes.  Indeed the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right in the USA, Richard Spencer, declaresthat he is a White Zionist. In Britain a similar line is taken by the British National Party and Britain First – Holocaust denial groups at home but Israel supporters abroad.

According to Wilders, his film ‘Islamization in the West’  will show “how the forces of Islamization are specifically targeting Israel in a fight against all free societies.”  The leader of Netherland’s fascist Freedom Party explains that ‘The film will demonstrate that the fight against Israel is not territorial, and hence Israel is only the first line of defense for the West.’  But the SWP is too stupid to understand the relationship between Zionism and anti-Muslim racism and because it lacks any internal democratic structure such decisions cannot be challenged. 

The racist CoFIS  repeats the myth that the Arab refugees who were ethnically cleansed left voluntarily at the urging of the Arab states - this lie has been repeatedly shown by people like Erskine Childers to be false

What the debacle over the Glasgow SUTR march shows is that the SWP’s formal anti-Zionism and pro-Palestinian politics are a dead letter.  When the crunch comes they simply abandon them in an opportunist and unprincipled attempt to retain the allegiance of the labour and trade union bureaucracy.

Practically this means that the SWP’s credibility in the Palestine solidarity movement is about zero.  They have totally discredited themselves. Brighton PSC affiliated to Stand Up to Racism but I would not wager that that affiliation continuing much longer.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign nationally sent a letter to SUTR asking them to issue a statement that organisations participating in their march ‘need to stand on a platform of opposition  to all forms of racism – which includes resistance to or, at the very least,  not supporting the policies and laws of any state that are clearly racist.’

COFIS hold their own demonstration after everyone has gone home!

Instead they received a cursory, insulting response which addressed none of their concerns and merely informed PSC who SUTR supporters are and what their criteria are, namely ‘opposition to the rising tide of racism, Islamophobia, Antisemitism and the scapegoating of refugees and migrants.’  This response completely failed to address the question of the participation of an openly racist, pro-Israel organisation in a supposedly anti-racist march.

One of the problems with the SUTR response is the crude equation it draws between racism, Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism. Racism is not simply a prejudice but is closely related to the class division of labour in society.  It is about the exercise of power and the role of the state.  Anti-Semitism today is not directed by the state.  Jews do not suffer from state racism.  For example there are no Jewish deaths in custody.  Jews are not subject to stop and search or immigration controls or even fascist violence.  Jews are not the subject of economic discrimination such as low wages.  Whereas Mosques are attacked with firebombs and an attempt was made at Finsbury Park mosque to run over worshippers, killing one, no such attack has been mounted on a synagogue. 

Yet the bulk of State funding for the protection of religious premises goes to the Zionist Community Security Trust not Muslim organisations.  Jews are also not demonised like Muslims in the press.  It is noticeable that all Britain’s racist papers – from the Express to the Sun and Mail – throw up their hands at ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party.  All of them are opposed to ‘anti-Semitism’ when the question of Israel arises.  Jews are not subject to the Government’s Prevent Strategy.  Jews are, for the most part, a privileged section of the White population.  Anti-Semitism is a marginal prejudice.

Anti-semitism in the UK and  internationally is far less than other forms of racism

This is born out by the Pew Global Attitudes Survey 2016 where by 7% of people hold negative attitudes about Jews compared to 28% in respect of Muslims and a whopping 45% when it comes to Roma.  The figures in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden are similar.  The failure of the SWP/SUTR to take this on board testifies to the crude simplicity of their anti-racist strategy.  It is a simplicity that hit the buffers last Saturday in Glasgow.

Tony Greenstein

Letter from PSC to SUTR:

We wanted to follow up our telephone conversations with a written note about our concerns over the presence of the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland on the SUTR Glasgow march on Saturday.

We are aware that a range of groups in Scotland including Scottish Friends of Palestine and SNP Friends of Palestine have raised their worries about the participation of the Confederation. These include the fact that this places Palestinians – including a group of Palestinian firefighters currently being trained by the FBU – in a hostile environment on a march they had intended to a join.

Whilst we understand that SUTR want to build a broad coalition of partners wishing to fight racism – including anti-Semitism, a brief visit to the Facebook page of the Confederation reveals them as propagators of the most offensive anti-Palestinian narratives. These include denying the Palestinian Nakba and posting material stating that no Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed prior to and after the establishment of the state of Israel; denying the status of Palestinian refugees and posting an article from the CEO of AIPAC which states that any Palestinian state is incompatible with Israel’s security. The Confederation is also part of a campaign to have student activism on UK campuses under the banner of ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ closed down. The Confederation has links with groups in the UK who – alongside Britain First and the EDL – have attempted to disrupt PSC marches and meetings.

We understand that the Confederation has framed its desire to attend within the context of an opposition to anti Semitism and that there is a concern that to indicate that their presence is not welcome will leave organisers open to the charge of anti-Semitism.

There are many definitions of racism, but to promote prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against people of a different race, ethnicity or culture, as the Confederation does, must surely give you as organisers cause for concern.

We would hope that there could be a clear statement that all of those organisations participating in a SUTR march need to stand on a platform of opposition  to all forms of racism – which includes resistance to or, at the very least,  not supporting the policies and laws of any state that are clearly racist. As organisers, we would hope that you would agree that anyone who cannot sign up to these basic principles would not be welcome and that behaviour designed to intimidate other participants will not be tolerated.

We would hope it is not too late for such a statement to be issued. Notwithstanding this, after the events of this weekend, we would wish – as the PSC – to have a more detailed conversation with SUTR about the long term strategy to address these issues.

Ben Jamal, PSC Director, and Hugh Lanning, PSC Chair.

SUTR Response

Dear Ben and Hugh,

For your information the SUTR Scottish Steering Committee unanimously agreed the following statement:

Stand up to Racism is a broad coalition comprising many civic organisations, refugee and migrant communities, as well as trade unions, political organisations and individuals. The key criteria are opposition to the rising tide of racism, Islamophobia, Antisemitism and the scapegoating of refugees and migrants. If you support these principles please come and join us on M17.

Signatories: Scottish Trades Union Congress, Unison Scotland, Unite the Union Scotland, Educational Institute of Scotland, University and College Union Scotland, Scottish Labour Party, Church of Scotland, Justice and Peace Scotland, Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, Scottish Refugee Council, Muslim Council of Scotland, Scottish Faiths Action For Refugees, Show Racism The Red Card, City of Edinburgh Unison, Glasgow City Unison, Unison South Lanarkshire, Edinburgh College EIS-Fela, Unite Scottish Housing Associations branch, Unite NHS Ayrshire & Arran, Unite GPM and IT Branch, Unite Glasgow retired members, MEND, Afghan Human Rights Foundation, Social Work Action Network, The People’s Assembly Scotland, Govanhill Baths Community Trust, Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees, Govanhill Against Racism, Maryhill Integration Network, Perth Against Racism, Women for Independence Glasgow, Scottish Jews For A Just Peace, PCS Scotland, RMT Scotland, FBU Scotland, Interfaith Glasgow.

We urge the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to join us.

Support Palestine - Stand Up to All Racism

The depraved racist views of COFIS (Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland) have not been a sufficient barrier to organisers allowing them to participate in the march tomorrow in Glasgow. COFIS, working in partnership with the Israeli Embassy, share posts about "euthanising" Palestinians, and jeer at a people under illegal occupation whom they call "Fakestinians". COFIS suppports EVERY Israeli crime against the Palestinian people - massacre, mass incarceration, home demolitions, and the brutal siege of Gaza.

Their presence on the march tomorrow has nothing whatsoever to do with anti-semitism - which they equate with opposition to Israel's crimes - but is part of the Israeli Embassy's psychological war against the Palestinian people and their supporters. It is an integral part of the Israeli State's war against the Palestinian people, and against their supporters in Scotland and internationally..

That well known anti-racist Rupert Murdoch's The Times today provides a platform to COFIS to cover up their nauseating racism. COFIS has announced they will bring their members from across Scotland for the march tomorrow. The same publication that promotes uber-racist COFIS ran a Goebbels-like attack piece some months ago calling Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign "an open sewer". The Murdoch press are drawing a line.

And some people are on the wrong side. The Israeli Embassy was shown in Al Jazeera's The Lobby series putting millions into shifting domestic UK politics, not only against a Tory Minister but especially the Labour Party and wider labour movement. It is simply unacceptable that SUTR organisers to fail to acknowledge this and to attack as "obssessed with COFIS" and "dividing the movement".all those who want the Palestinian people to be acknowledged among the victims of racism.

We want anti-racists to oppose state-enforced racism of an increasingly genocidal type. SUTR has quietly removed the name of the Muslim Council of Scotland from their published list of supporters for the march but have refused to engage with the MCS concerns, or the pain shared by all Palestinians in Scotland and communicated eloquently to SUTR Scotland by APCS. Along with anti-racist Jews, UK Palestine Solidarity groups, they are being ignored while COFIS prepares to exploit an ANTI-racist march in Israel's war against the Palestinian people.

A letter below was signed by a huge number of South African activists in a very short time and it should be some balm on Palestinian wounds caused by Israeli State agents marching and gloating about the surrender of Scottish anti-racist organisers to their intimidation. We remember that Stephen Hawking supported BDS and refused to attend an event in Israel in solidfarity with the Palestinian people. SUTR are now allowing the active enemies of the Palestinian people, extreme racists, to march with them in Glasgow posing as ANTI-racists.

Members of Nelson Mandela's family are shocked that a march passing near Mandela Place will fly Israeli flags while Palestine is occupied. They urge that "demonstrations on the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre should oppose all racism that blight our planet, especially the brutal apartheid system that still holds sway in Israel/Palestine." They acknowledge the role international solidarity played in their own struggle for liberation from state-enforced racial segregation and urge that we accept our "duty on this anniversary to build another example of successful international solidarity for the long-suffering Palestinian people.

Yet SUTR turns a deaf ear to all these concerns and seems determined to turn the march tomorrow into a dark farce by excluding Palestinians and their supporters (for how can we betray our principles of consistent anti-racism by marching alongside those who would "euthanise" Palestinians?) in order to admit a group onto their march that they acknowledge is racist and complicit in Israel's settler colonial regime.

The message from SUTR is clear and unambiguous: 'We are afraid to stand up to the false and weaponised accusations of anti-semitism that have led to anti-Zionist Jews being hounded out of the Labour Party. We will treat a racist pro-Israel campaign group as if it were a Jewish community group.'

Statement of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Voices of Scotland Apologists for Israel’s crimes not welcome on anti-racist protest

The Confederation of Friends of Israel in Scotland should be a pariah as we march in Glasgow, write MARGARET PACETTA and JOHN HILLEY

Morning Star,

15-year-old Muhammed Tamimi was shot in the head at point blank range and his sister Ahed has been in a Zionist prison for 3 months for slapping his attacker

ISRAEL is becoming increasingly isolated as worldwide criticism mounts over its illegal occupation, its siege of Gaza and its apartheid crimes. The rising support for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and widespread condemnation of Donald Trump’s endorsement of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has seen the Israeli state also step up its external lobbying and media campaigning.

This is evident in the propaganda offensive against the Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, who was labelled a “terrorist” for slapping a soldier. Ahed and her mother — imprisoned for filming the incident — have had their trial, before a closed military court, continuously delayed.

Those criticising Ahed have to explain the awkward fact that an Israeli soldier had just shot her 15-year-old cousin, Muhammad Tamimi, removing part of his skull. While awaiting surgery, Muhammad was again arrested in a night raid and forced to “confess” he had sustained his injury from falling off a bike. Even after his doctors had shown medical proof of the shooting, the lobby has continued to malign the Tamimi family.

This is all part of a relentless hasbara seeking to intimidate anyone inclined to criticise Israel. US comedian Sarah Silverman has been denounced for urging fellow Jews to stand up for Ahed. Over here, the lobby has turned on Gary Lineker for daring to question Israel’s brutal treatment of children.

Netanyahu has approved a new $75 million “public relations commando unit” to counter BDS, with Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan leading a ”black-ops” campaign against BDS.

Among those targeted for supporting BDS are Roger Waters, with pressure on sponsors to close down his shows, and New Zealand singer Lorde, who has refused to play in Israel. Two young New Zealand women — one Jewish, one Palestinian — who sent a letter asking Lorde to support BDS are being sued by pro-Israel legal group Shurat HaDin.

Online Palestine activists are being censored as part of the corporate clampdown on “fake news.” Glenn Greenwald notes how Facebook executives approved Israel’s requests to delete huge numbers of pro-Palestine accounts.

Escalating fears over BDS and Israel’s deteriorating image has also placed the US lobby on heightened political alert. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, now before the US Congress, will make any support for a boycott of Israel a criminal offence in the United States.

The same US lobby has also launched a vociferous attack on Al Jazeera’s forthcoming exposé of US lobby activity.

Here, a previous undercover Al Jazeera investigation revealed connections between lobbyists and the Israeli embassy.

With disgraced former international development secretary Priti Patel’s recent “family holiday” in Israel and co-lobbyist Lord Stuart Polak now exposed, Conservative Friends of Israel are working overtime with Michael Gove’s shrill warning of Palestine activists’ “dark and furious energy.”

The enduringly Blairite Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) remains on-message too, with Emily Thornberry delivering a speech to LFI that could have been written by a pro-Israel lobbyist.

The lobby’s relentless smearing of Jeremy Corbyn for “harbouring anti-semitism” goes on, no matter how much he denounces such tendencies. Encouragingly, newly founded Jewish Voice for Labour now provides a strong counter while Jews for a Just Peace has declared its support for BDS.

However, all this pressure on Israel has spurred other zealous lobbying.

A replica of the Apartheid Wall was used to keep racist COFIS away from an anti-racist march

One group pursuing that kind of mission here in Scotland is the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (Cofis). Ignoring multiple UN resolutions and international law, Cofis defends Israel’s illegal acts.

It approves of Israel’s apartheid wall, blames Israel’s mass killing in Gaza on Hamas and fails to condemn Israel’s shooting and incarceration of children. It applauds Trump and his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It denounces BDS and artists such as Waters and insists that Ahed be punished as a “terrorist.”

Besides evangelising for Israel and whitewashing its crimes, Cofis consistently attacks Palestine solidarity groups in Scotland, as does Glasgow Friends of Israel (GFI).

Much of the literature Cofis hands out to the public comes from the same visceral right-wing group in the US, Stand With Us.

Film director Ken Loach, writer Paul Laverty and actor Tam Dean Burn were among the signatories of the Artists’ Pledge for Palestine, organised by Artists for Palestine UK, which in 2017 opposed Cofis’s “misnamed Shalom Festival, which promotes, not peace, but the apartheid state of Israel and its occupation.”

Their letter stated that the festival, organised by Cofis founder Nigel Goodrich and GFI’s Sammy Stein, and endorsed by Stand With Us, was “part of the state of Israel’s attempts to counter BDS.’ It claims to support ‘peaceful coexistence’ in Israel/Palestine, while whitewashing Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.”

Cofis claims to be anti-racist, while denying the inhuman effects of the occupation, the calamity of Gaza and Israel’s colonial settlements. This mirrors the very same deception Israel has peddled for generations with its contrived “peace process,” using every opportunity to extend the settlements, imprison Gaza, and deepen its racist treatment of Palestinians.

Cofis has no support from Palestinian civil society. While it speaks of “shared interests” and “open dialogue,” drawing in unwary progressives, serious observers see this supposedly “pro-peace” line for what it is: a cynical charade serving to normalise Israel’s land thefts and prioritise its “security concerns.”

People of conscience, whatever their background or religious beliefs, should reject any organisation which seeks to defend Israel’s apartheid state. And they should be particularly alert to any group which seeks to conceal their real purpose through stealth insertion into parliamentary life, mainstream parties or civil movements.

There should be no place for Israel-protecting bodies like Cofis at any authentic anti-racism event or demonstration.

The left must defend its position with principled argument rather than capitulate for fear of being falsely labelled.

Campaigns which help hide Israel’s mass crimes have to be resisted with moral resolve and tactical intent. You cannot stand up to racism while lying down to Israeli apartheid.

All Out for Lobby of Labour’s National Executive Committee – End the Witchhunt

March 19, 2018, 2:44 pm

≫ Next: Labour Against the Witchhunt Lobby of NEC: Lansman sneaks in through the back door

≪ Previous: Victory in Glasgow as Racist COFIS Kept Off Anti-Racist March

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Disband the Compliance Unit, Reinstate Greenstein & Galloway Purge Labour’s Regional Police

On Tuesday 23^rd January, we picketed the Labour's National Executive Committee meeting.  One of our key demand was to Sack McNicol, the Crook who was General Secretary of the Labour Party.  Within a month McNicol was gone!  

At the High Court

Amongst McNicol's many crimes was locking Jeremy Corbyn and his staff out of Southside, Labour’s HQ on the night of the General Election on June 8^thlast year. So confident was McNicol and co. that Corbyn was going to lose the election heavily that they in effect decided to stage a coup by cancelling their passes!  

Unfortunately for McNicol and many of the 172 bastards who tried to stage a parliamentary coup in 2016, the electorate decided to ignore the Sun, Mail etc. that these bastards had spent two years leaking stuff to.

Picket of Tony Greenstein's Expulsion Hearing

 Last week we heard that McNicol’s aide de camp one Emilie Oldknow also decided that it was time to go.  Today it was the turn of the hated head of the Compliance Unit, an expensive waste of space going by the name of John Stolliday.

It seems that having failed to capsize the good ship Labour many of the rats have now decided to abandon the ship itself.  Possibly to help Chuku Ummuna in his preparations to set up a new ‘centre party’ if reports in yesterday's Sunday Times have any foundation.

Let's make this happen

Now is the time to end the false anti-Semitism witchhunt, reinstate Tony Greenstein and George Galloway, end the suspensions of Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone and to set aside whatever verdict the National Kangaroo Committee decides on in the case of Cyril Chilsom, whose case is being heard tomorrow.  

Cyril, a former Captain in the Israeli army, is the child of parents who survived the Nazi concentration camps but to racist scum like McNicol, Matthews and Stolliday he is an ‘anti-Semite’.

At the High Court where an injunction was successfully obtained against McNicol

 We are lobbying tomorrow’s meeting of the Labour Party NEC to demand that the party’s leading body must use its pro-Corbyn majority to bring the ongoing witch-hunt against socialists and Corbyn supporters to a swift end. Can you be there? If so, please bring banners, posters and witches costumes!

After the hearing, at the Royal Courts of Justice, phoning the result to Mark MacDonald QC who'd advised me

Labour Against the Witchhunt Demands:

• The reinstatement of Tony Greenstein, George Galloway and all those summarily expelled or suspended without due process and natural justice in the last 2 years.
• The dropping of all charges against Marc Wadsworth (whose hearing is on Wednesday April 25 in London), Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone.
• That all cases in front of the National Kangaroo (Constitutional) Committee (which has a right-wing majority) be referred back to the NEC disputes committee

Our last lobby was covered by a number of TV stations and national papers and Jackie Walker was interviewed on the Daily Politics show on the same day. Click here if you haven’t watched her stellar performance. Click here for a report on our protest on our website here and here.

Tuesday March 20, 11am-1pm
LAW lobby of NEC meeting
Venue: London, Southside, 105 Victoria Street SW1E 6QT

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Labour Against the Witchhunt Lobby of NEC: Lansman sneaks in through the back door

March 20, 2018, 9:54 pm

≫ Next: EXCLUSIVE: David Collier – the ‘Independent Researcher’ who accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism keeps company with White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis and Islamophobes

≪ Previous: All Out for Lobby of Labour’s National Executive Committee – End the Witchhunt

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Guido Fawkes and Skwawkbox Sing From the Same Hymn Sheet

Well it was a bitterly cold morning for a lobby  of Labour’s NEC.  A few press were there behind barriers and we were asked to go behind them as well but we turned down the opportunity to kettle ourselves.

For over an hour, until the last NEC member had gone in (or sneaked in!) we maintained a vigil with the theme End the Expulsions – End the Witchhunt.  One of those who didn't sneak in was Jeremy Corbyn, who greeted us, probably remembering when he was Secretary of Labour Against the Witchhunt in the early 1980's!!  Last time we held a picket, in January, one of our slogans was for the removal of General Secretary ‘Crooked’ Iain McNicol.  Today it was time for his replacement Jenny Formby to be selected.  This is something we very much welcome.

The witches come out

Also McNicol’s familiars, his fellow tricksters and fabricators, John Stolliday, Dan Simpson, Patrick Heneghan, Tracey Allen, Julie Lawrence, Neil Fleming, Emilie Oldknow and Simon Jackson have also departed.  This is very much to be welcomed though I did query today what is holding back the Head of Disputes Sam Matthews, who wrote the suspension and expulsion letters to Glyn Secker of Jewish Voice for Labour and Moshe Machover.  He must be feeling very lonely!

There were, as far as we are aware, two reports of the lobby.  Skwawkbox, the ever so loyal Lansman blog of Steve Walker, reported the lobby with the absurd title Momentum: “Momentum logo at LAW protest without our ok”  Apparently they held it was a crime for Brighton and Hove Momentum’s banner to be there without permission from the Central Committee of Momentum in the form of its ‘owner’ Jon Lansman.  They quoted from unnamed ‘sources’ in Brighton that we had no permission to use the banner, which was an outright lie, only slightly corrected in later editions.  Discussion about taking the banner was flagged up in Brighton Momentum Committee Facebook group last week with no objections.

Skwawkbox attacks our picket

Guido Fawkes holds hands with Skwawkbox

Tory Guido Fawkes also laid into our lobby which suggests that we got it about right.  “McNicol’s gone, now it’s time for the rest of them”.

Below is a reportfrom the Labour Against the Witchhunt site.

Jackie Walker who has been suspended over 18 months and is producing the very successful play 'The Lynching' on the racist treatment she receives from those who attack her as 'anti-semitic'

Intrepid opponents of the Labour purge of pro-Corbyn supporters braved freezing weather to be on a lobby of the party’s National Executive Committee today. They included members of Grassroots Black Left, the Labour Representation Committee, Jewish Voice for Labour, Labour Party Marxists and Brighton and Hove Momentum. Organised by Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW), the high-spirited demo sighted party leader Corbyn, his political advisor Katy Clark and Campaign for Labour Party Democracy secretary Peter Willsman, an NEC member, going into the meeting at Labour’s Southside headquarters in central London. But, mysteriously, despite the people on the lobby being outside the office block an hour before the NEC meeting started, no more members of Labour’s 39-strong ruling body, where the Corbyn-backing Left recently took control, were seen – suggesting they may have slipped into the building from a back entrance to avoid being questioned. The campaigners chanted: “Stop the witch hunts”, “End the suspensions”, and “Implement Chakrabarti now”.

Former Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker, who has been suspended by Labour for almost two years, said: “We welcome the resignation of general secretary Iain McNicol and his replacement today by Jennie Formby, a Jeremy Corbyn supporter whom LAW has critically supported. Things are definitely changing in the party, but they are not changing fast enough for a lot of members who remain suspended or expelled based on trumped-up or false charges or simply because they are active supporters of Corbyn.”

Marc Wadsworth whose case is imminent before the National Kangaroo Committee

Such a nice tweet motivated by the Jewish Labour Movement's racist witchhunt of Jackie Walker - there is much more vile stuff even than this

Grassroots Black Left’s Marc Wadsworth, the veteran anti-racist campaigner suspended by Labour in June 2016 whose expulsion hearing is on April 25, was on the lobby with Walker and Tony Greenstein, who, despite being Jewish, has been expelled on a false charge of anti-semitism. Wadsworth said: “We demand that the recommendations of the 2016 Chakrabarti report in respect of natural justice and due process are implemented without any further delay. The NEC’s failure to so far make the long-overdue changes has brought the party, that prides itself on upholding justice for all, into disrepute. The divisive purge of Jeremy Corbyn supporters has prevented and discouraged new members from getting involved in party life, while costly Labour resources have been wasted in persecuting some of the most energetic and effective campaigners for social change.”

witches a plenty

In the conversation below is an exchange between Steve Walker the editor of Skawkbox, over the abysmal post that appeared there today, Sally who is media consultant to Labour Against the Witchhunt and myself.  Brighton and Hove Momentum has quite clear policy on the witchhunt.  However one right-winger today broke cover on Brighton Momentum Committee page to moan about how embarrassed he was.  I won’t name him but he blocked me in order that I couldn’t see the post, little realising that I was bound to see it anyway via others!

Tony Greenstein

Steve,

please take down the inaccurate article on Skawkbox or I'll respond.

LAW did not take the B&H Momentum banner.  I am on the Steering Cttee of B&H Momentum.  2 other people from B&H Momentum attended.   This was discussed without objection on the B&H Momentum FB group.

We do not need the approval of the dictator of Momentum, Lansman to bring the banner.

In short the report is a lie

Tony Greenstein

SKWAWKBOX Blog

17:21 (6 hours ago)     to me

Local Momentum people drew my attention to the banner's use, frustrated that it was being used in that context - a context that was almost certainly going to be exploited by the MSM - without proper discussion and agreement. I checked with Momentum central in case they'd ok'd it. They said no. The article is accurate in what it says - which doesn't include anything about the correctness or otherwise of your cause.

Steve

Editor

The SKWAWKBOX

Tony Greenstein

17:30 (6 hours ago)

to SKWAWKBOX,

I do not know who these 'local Momentum people' are since you have not named them.  The banner was at the demonstration and this was notified on the Momentum blogs without any disagreement.  It is also the policy of Momentum in BH to oppose the witch hunt.

We do not need Momentum central's permission.  This is not a Trotskyist democratic centralist organisation although Momentum is completely undemoxcratic.  The article is not accurate and you have a duty to amend or delete it.

What you could have done is to highlight the fact that Cyril Chilsom, whose parents are survivors of the extermination/concentration camps is up b4 the NCC today.  Or the demands to lift Jackie Walker or Marc Wadsworth's suspensions.

You could have simply covered the lobby instead you decided to focus on alleged opposition from Momentum in BH without quoting anyone and on Lansman's opposition, which we take for granted.

The article could be from MSM.  It is worthless and simply aids the Right in the LP.  How do you differ from the Guardian?

Tony Greenstein

SKWAWKBOX Blog

17:48 (5 hours ago)

Steve..

Your headline states LAW used it we did not. That is fact I'm afraid and I know as I see all our internal emails. 3 Momentumbh members brought it to the lobby as an independent and allegedly autonomous local momentum group. The issue it seems is an internal branding argument re banners/logos within momentum itself. It has nothing to do with LAW. This has arisen because of the photos. I've taken them off our Twitter as the suggestion has been offensive in itself. Clearly there is an internal dispute within momentumbh on this between your momentum contacts and others. It has nothing to do with LAW and we would appreciate a correction or changing your headline and any mention that LAW used a momentum banner at all.

Thank you

Happy to change the headline. Space constraints meant the shortest shorthand to get the message across was used, but we can rework it.

Steve

Editor

The SKWAWKBOX

In fact it is Momentum's internal argument that has tainted our event unfortunately which you really needn't have highlighted. Our last lobby produced no such similar article and we had 2 other banners brought independently to that one. Appreciate it if you would make it clear LAW did not bring the banner or use it.

Anything that Tony says on his personal Twitter or in 'real life' is also not an official position by LAW unless signed off by our Steering Group but I personally don't see anything unusual about what he said as 2,000% of the Left would no doubt be behind him.

I look forward to the corrections if you feel there is still a story there of public interest. I think the sniping between you two is unprofessional to say the least.

Thank you

Sally

Steve,

Your comments are just ad hominems.  It's the kind of rubbish I expect from the Right not someone who is, apparently, on the Left.

You say you are unwilling to allow my comment because otherwise you would have to let everything go.  I'm sorry that your software is so limiting.  Perhaps you should use disqus as I do on my blog.  .

You also say you won't be naming who you apparently spoke to. If they are not willing to go on the record then you shouldn't be quoting them.  I have no idea why they should not be willing to be named apart from political cowardice.  Your methodology smacks of the same mainstream media you were, I thought, set up in opposition to.  Quotes from anonymous people.  What does that remind you of?  I had a Momentum meeting tonite in Brighton and no one raised any objection to the use of the banner on the lobby.

No Momentum doesn't own its own logos, Lansman does.  The fact that Momentum is 'owned' rather than being a democratic organisation should give you pause for thought.  If socialist politics is about who individually owns a logo then it doesn't differ from capitalist politics.  The problem with Momentum is its command and control structure and its total lack of democracy.  This is of course Lansman's doing coupled with his imposition of a take it or leave it constitution.  Why does that matter?  Because if and when Corbyn gets into power we are going to need a powerful socialist organisation in the Labour party which can debate its own strategy and tactics, not least to defend a government that will be under constant attack.

Instead you seem to be subscribing to some quite dodgy political ideas.  Momentum consists of those 

in it.  Today the remaining remnants of democracy resides in its local groups but you seem to want that eradicted.  You are therefore happy, it would seem to go along with privatising everything in Momentum.

I haven't looked at Twitter today, partly because I have a major story on David Collier I want to get out.  A story about his fascist and far-Right links.  Collier, since you probably don't know, is the racist Zionist who has alleged that Labour members, including Corbyn, have gone along with anti-Semitism.  It is the type of thing Skwawkbox once did but instead you are happy to carry these nasty, bitchy, nitpicking articles with anonymous quotes aimed to please Labour's new hierarchy and Lansman. 

I shouted out that Sam Matthews, the Witchfinder General, who suspended two Jewish friends of mine should follow in the wake of McNicol, Oldknow and Stolliday.  I also declared that the Compliance Unit should be shut down and we could save all that money by being rid of these McCarthyists.  Sorry if that displeased anyone.

No we didn't hand any goal, easy or difficult to the Right.  That is your achievement.  The protest today was, like the one in January, aimed at highlighting the witchhunt that you've said next to nothing about.

You refer to my 'track record'.  Yes I have a track record of saying what I mean and meaning what I say.  Clearly that's something that Skwawkbox has abandoned.  If you want something to quote from me then you can quote the comment I submitted

The reasons we demonstrated today are contained in my blog article http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/all-out-for-lobby-of-labours-national.htmlthe reinstatement of George Galloway and myself.  The lifting of all suspensions, the implementation of Chakrabarti, the abandonment of the Zionists' IHRA definition of anti-semitism in favour of the one on the LAW Facebook page and the disbandment of the Compliance Unit.

I'm sorry that Swawkbox has decided so soon to become a part of the Labour establishment so quickly.  I just hope that Tom Watson thanks you for your services.

Tony Greenstein

SKWAWKBOX Blog

23:05 (34 minutes ago)

to me, Sally

Tony,

Unnamed sources are an integral part of journalism and have nothing to do with the credibility of the witnesses. You attacked me on social media over things that you'd conjured up in your own imagination, yet expect me to afford you trust? You provided another example with the Tom Watson shite at the end of the email below - you want to be a loose cannon, go for it. But don't demand everyone has to accommodate you.

You seem to be mistaking me for someone who is an unalloyed fan of Momentum. It's not true. But it doesn't mean your decision to protest today and hand the establishment a gift on a day that we got a left-wing woman as general secretary wasn't at best naive and short-sighted and possibly worse. 

You write off anyone who doesn't support your particular focus unequivocally. Sorry, but you won't get that from me - the big picture has more than one facet.

Steve

Editor

The SKWAWKBOX

---

From: Tony Greenstein <tonygreenstein111@gmail.com>

Sent: 20 March 2018 22:51:55

Sally E

23:23 (16 minutes ago)

to me, SKWAWKBOX

Steve. You are the one that handed the right a gift by writing your pointless article. Without that.. where would there have been any negative press? The answer is. You were the only one who conjured up a story that should have either been solely about a momentum row.. or the fact we had a lobby full stop. Having a lobby about the witch hunt and reinstatement of members hunted by the right has nothing to do with the appointment of Jenni Formby. Forgive me but years of being in PR gives me a second sight about things and I can feel that your repeated words about gifting the right something has been discussed with others. It's not a lone thought you had late at night and my question to you is. Who is or has been influencing you.

In this instance. It's you that was the loose cannon and my personal disappointment in you is that I worked hard to open the communication window with me because of your gripes about Tony but you actually threw us under a bus and by all accounts this is a theme.

May I remind you that we have never had an ounce of public support from you ever.. Let alone private.

to me, Sally

I won't be naming them. They might not dispute it with you, Tony - can't imagine why that would be!

Like it or not, Momentum owns its logos - and according to people complaining on Twitter you were saying "McNicol's gone, now it's time for the rest of them". That wasn't quoted in the article, but did anyone there say anything like that? If not, I'll happily add a note to that effect. For the record, I'm in favour of changing personnel - but the protest today was naive and that was what handed an easy goal to the right, not the article.

I see you've commented on the blog - I won't be approving that, because if I approve one comment Wordpress lets all your future comments go through unmoderated and putting it bluntly, based on your track record I'm not willing to give you open access. But if you want to give me a usable quote to add to the article body, I'll do that for you.

Similarly, if you want to give me something restrained and legally usable about the other reasons you were protesting, I'll put those in an article of their own. But if you go over the top as you sometimes do, I won't be able to showcase it.

Steve

Editor

The SKWAWKBOX

SKWAWKBOX Blog

23:34 (18 minutes ago)

to Sally, me

Sally, the negative media was already there well before I wrote anything. And please don't lecture me about PR - you don't need second sight to see that the timing was ill-advised today. I'm sure you have your reasons why it couldn't wait in your assessment, but it didn't achieve anything to protect your colleague up before the NCC and was a propaganda gift to people who want to damage the left.

You leap straight to assuming someone has 'influenced' me. Can't you see the problem with that?

Nobody was thrown under the bus today. If anyone got hit by one, you were driving it. As for your closing comment, it demeans you - you don't have to look very hard to find me sticking up for people falsely accused and criticising those making the false accusations. Just because it's not on tap when you decide you should have it doesn't negate it, so why haven't you looked to see the positions the blog has publicly taken?

Don't you see this kind of reaction is exactly why I haven't wanted to engage - with certain personalities rather than with the issues?

Steve

Editor

The SKWAWKBOX

Steve,

sorry I don't follow the logic.  'the negative media was already there well before I wrote anything.'  So you thought you'd add to the negative media?  I thought the purpose of Skawkbox was to counter that media.  How silly of me.

today was the best time to make it clear that the witchhunt has got to come to an end.  It is the end, almost, of the ancien regime yet already plotting is afoot eg the article in the Sunday Times about Chuku's new party.  But there is unfinished business.

For 2 years there has been a wholly false and artificial 'antisemitism' campaign driven by Israel's supporters whose main victims are Jews.  It is a campaign that has no end because feeding them victims only increases their appetite.  The real target is Corbyn and in particular a pro-US foreign policy of which Israel is integral.  Have you ever bothered to sit down and analyse these things rather than acting as Lansman's messenger boy?  All your jibes about a good news day doesn't work.  it is the kind of trivia I expect from Jonathan Freedland or the Guardian. 

I accept no one has influenced you not to support, as Chair of Garston Labour Party the Garston 3.  And likewise to oppose any challenge to your sitting MP Maria Eagle.  These are all things that you would have done naturally.

As to throwing people under the bus.  It is a fact that Skawkbox has kept clear of the witch hunt and 'difficult' issues like that. 

At least you have now come out with what you are about.  Skawkbox will no doubt entertain in the future but in terms of what lies ahead it will have little to say by way of strategy. 

Yes keep quoting anonymous sources.  That's not journalism it is muck raking at its worst.

tony Greenstein

Sally

Was it. Could you show us where it was other than your article. Last time our lobby actually attracted a rather positive broadcast from the BBC..

Steve I've just lectured you. It's happened. The timing is irrelevant as the right hate Formby for her Pro Palestinian stance.. and please note Corbyn chose not to sneak in the back of HQ but understood our democratic right to protest.

I know more than you about Cyril's hearing and outcome at this point and having it on the same day actually brought more coverage to his travesty of a hearing.

Propaganda gift how exactly? By being alive on the planet and having an opinion? Or just standing outside HQ together knowing Formby's appointment was a foregone conclusion. What exactly was gifted on this historic day?

Steve.. You leapt straight to throwing us under a bus in a pointless and still confusing jumbled hit-piece (with actual lies in it) without contacting either me or Tony. That's what I see. No.. You were driving it.

You've demeaned yourself Steve. Even for me this was gutter stuff and pointless, hence my opinion on the matter. Looking at the comments to it I haven't seen one in agreement with you.

Nice try but whataboutery won't work on this. I've been speaking to you before LAW and You've never had a problem with the help I've offered before and I said talk to me any time.

Again.. You've actually engaged with the issues and none of the personalities on this so that's the exact opposite of your claim. To my knowledge I have never said anything bad about you in public and I have been retweeting you in LAW and private account many of your articles. Also told you I can be contacted any time. None of what you are saying is true.

The reaction is based on the fact you did not contact anybody in LAW to find out more details. But from what it looks like as they have retweeted you.. the operator of momentumbh Twitter (whoever that is). Not even a right of reply which I could have sorted out. Tony is not always instantly available but Jackie is more often than not. But I fear there would not have been any basis for the article that appears now if you had known the truth.

I'm done with this. To clarify once again and with Tony as my witness. If you need information about LAW you can contact us via LAW Twitter or my personal Twitter, or here at this e-mail if you are too scared to contact Marc, Tony or Jackie and I will be able to get clarification or quotes for you.

SKWAWKBOX Blog

00:15 (0 minutes ago)

to me, Sally

It did. You just didn't like how it did.

Like I said, you have your reasons why you thought today was a good day. They're narrow, in keeping with your focus. Fair enough, just do try to be reasonable if others see things differently and have a wider picture.

Aaand there you go with the Lansman crap again. Have you been paying attention to anything going on outside your bubble? If you had, you wouldn't spout such crap.

The 'Garston 3' were three similarly blinkered people - they knowingly broke a clear party rule, did massive damage that undid gains others on the left had worked years for and then expected the people whose work they had just undone to self-immolate in their defence, when there was no defence. They were selfish and then served their own heads on a platter to the right - everyone else is still dealing with the consequences. Perhaps you'll see why I'm not in a rush to help others I don't trust not to do the same.

As to 'steering clear', again I invite you to bloody read. If you can't be bothered doing that, then as a next-best option refrain from flinging shit about things you're ignorant about.

And you're equally ignorant about journalism if you think the only sources that can be used are those who can be named publicly.

We're done. I have neither time nor appetite to beat my head against a brick wall any longer.

Steve

Editor

The SKWAWKBOX

Tony Greenstein

00:25 (0 minutes ago)

to SKWAWKBOX, Sally

Steve

Ok you accept you've thrown the Garston 3 under the bus.  I'm not aware they broke any rules but given that the Right break them all the time and get away with it, with a nod and a wink from our crooked ex-General Secretary McNicol then I would have expected you to see such allegations in context. Rule breaking is a pretext the Right use even when they blatantly lie about it as with Brighton & Hove's cancelled AGM of 2 yrs ago. .

You were the one who went out on a limb defending Lansman's 'ownership' of Momentum's logo not me.  It is such a trivial point, illuminating the undemocratic nature of Momentum but you see no problem in the unelected Centre dictating to local groups.  Fine. 

I'm well aware that sometimes you have to use anonymous sources. I do so when I expose fascists, as I said I've done so with my new blog on Collier.  I wouldn't quote anonymous sources in an internal Momentum dispute given that if they can't be honest enough to be open about who they are then what they say is probably not worth printing.  As I've already said, no one said a word to me today at the Momentum meeting about the banner being used or at it being there at the picket of my NCC meeting.  B&H Momentum has had 6 people at least suspended or expelled.  Your article wasn't journalism, it was sub-prime Private Eye gossip.

I suspect that if you did beat your head against a brick wall you might come to your senses.

Tony Greenstein

SKWAWKBOX Blog

00:34 (1 minute ago)

to me, Sally

Tony, not sure which part of 'we're done' was unclear. But since you asked - if you're going to raise something, for fuck's sake (again) have some information on it.

They were going to TUSC meetings, moving motions there etc, clear participation and support for another party. It might be a rule you don't like but no question it's a rule. They broke it - and admitted breaking it. There was no way to protect them without putting everyone else at risk - and it would be reckless to do that for people who knew better and did it anyway. They put their neck on the block then whined when the right swung the axe - putting everyone else's neck on the block would have achieved exactly nothing.

Difference between G&H and B&H is simple: the accusations against B&H were false. The ones against the 'Garston 3' were not.

For a person that everyone keeps telling me is highly intelligent, you have an enormous gap in your comprehension and seem determined not to recognise that or let it prevent you shooting from the lip every time you feel like it. That's what made me not want to engage and I'm regretting more every moment that I ever did.

Now do please get the point of 'we're done'. It means we're done.

Steve

Editor

The SKWAWKBOX

Tony Greenstein

00:38 (0 minutes ago)

to SKWAWKBOX, Sally

Steve

you don't get to decide when something is done.

My understanding is that the Garston 3 did not have any contact with TUSC and that it was a past association.  If I'm wrong then you're right.  That doesn't affect though what I understand is your support for the existing right-wing MP Maria Eagle.

My intelligence is for others to discern however I know when someone is bullshitting.

Now I'm done!

Tony Greenstein

Tony,

Not trying to - but you don't get to decide what I think or write about it, either.

Your understanding about the 3 is simply wrong. I have absolutely no idea why you think I support Maria Eagle. That said, given the damage the 3 and those who behaved idiotically in the aftermath, now is not the time to try to do anything about our MP. Picking a fight you can't win is pointless.

Steve

Editor

The SKWAWKBOX

Sally E

00:54 (4 minutes ago)

to me, SKWAWKBOX

As I understand it they were not TUSC members. They had not broken any rule and if they were not members they would have had no rights at all..

Night

From: SKWAWKBOX Blog

Sent: Wednesday, 21 March, 00:49

Tony Greenstein

00:58 (0 minutes ago)

to Sally, SKWAWKBOX

that is also my understanding of the affair.

Tony

SKWAWKBOX Blog

01:16 (0 minutes ago)

to me, Sally

The rule says 'support', not just 'be members of'. The rest isn't going to be shared, for their confidentiality.

According to the rules, they hadn't a leg to stand on. Your understanding is incorrect. If you're using the source I suspect you are, it's not surprising.

Steve

Editor

The SKWAWKBOX

Sally E

01:38 (5 minutes ago)

to me, SKWAWKBOX

Moshé Machovers expulsion was overturned for 'supporting' the Labour Party Marxists etc

By that I mean.. wrote an article in their paper.

Hmm looks like half the unions will need to go too.. strange this rule..

---

From:SKWAWKBOX Blog <skwawkbox@outlook.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2018 1:16:21 AM
To: Tony Greenstein; Sally E

Sally E

01:41 (2 minutes ago)

to me, SKWAWKBOX

Can you clarify your inference about a source?? Or not.. not really that bothered about imagined relationships. The Garston 3 are well known. It's known they were not members? Seems this is a bit sensitive and there is some bad blood in Garton..

From: Sally E

Sent: Wednesday, 21 March, 01:38

Subject: Re: FAO Steve Walker

To: Tony Greenstein, SKWAWKBOX Blog

EXCLUSIVE: David Collier – the ‘Independent Researcher’ who accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism keeps company with White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis and Islamophobes

March 21, 2018, 8:56 am

≫ Next: Ahed Tamimi – Palestinian girl 17 receives 8 months for slapping armed soldier

≪ Previous: Labour Against the Witchhunt Lobby of NEC: Lansman sneaks in through the back door

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How the British Press were willing dupes of an arch-racist 

EDL supporter and friend of Tommy Robinson, settler racist Dr Brian John Thomas with 'researcher' David Collier

Collier is always begging for money to fund his fake 'research' and extravagant lifestyle

David Collier passes himself off as an ‘independent researcher’ into anti-Semitism. In reality he is a far-Right Zionist activist whose sole purpose is to smear and defame Palestine solidarity activists, especially Jewish anti-Zionists, as ‘anti-Semitic’.  His latest effort targeted Jeremy Corbyn too.  However fooling the British press - from the Guardian's Jessica Elgot (ex Zionist Chronicle) to the Tory tabloids is easy.

The Guardian was fooled by Collier's claims

Huffington Post, founded by Andrew Breitbart, who also founded Steve Bannon's Breitbart News, which combines White Supremacy with ardent Zionism - HuffPost is little different - pro-Zionist and racist - it uncritically describes Collier as an 'antisemitism campaigner' rather than a racist who denies there are such things as Palestinians

Another anti-racist newspaper which is concerned about 'anti-Semitism' in the Labour Party

Even the so-called serious press take for granted Collier’s claims to be ‘independent’. Yet even he acceptsthat ‘the quality of my early posts was highly questionable.’  In fact all his posts are highly questionable.

This article should be read in conjunction with my introductory article:  ‘The Lies of David Collier (Gnasher Jew) and his Dodgy Dossiers - Why are the BBC, the Guardian and the press repeatedly taken in by this bogus ‘Researcher’ & his attacks on Corbyn? which was an initial reaction to Collier’s investigation into the Palestine Live Facebook Group, which he maintains is at the centre of an anti-Semitic conspiracy. 

In Palestine Live Part 1 Collier claims that he ‘sets the bar’ for anti-Semitism ‘unnaturallyhigh’. He claims that if he had used the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, then anyone calling Israel a Nazi state would be defined as antisemitic.  In other words virtually everyone in the Palestine Live group would have been an anti-semite. 

(see Defining Anti-Semitism by former Court of Appeal Judge Sir Stephen Sedley) 

In fact the IHRA does not say this. It is merely one of 11 illustrative examples which are not part of the IHRA definition.  The Introduction to these examples states that: 

‘Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’

The IHRA Secretariat confirm in an email that the 11 examples Collier refer are not part of the definition of antisemitism

Collier’s dishonesty, failing to mention that even according to the IHRA, the conflation of Israeli policies with the Nazi only could be antisemitic is an example of the dishonest methods he uses throughout the Report. Collier’s Report is a political polemic dressed up as academic research.

Collier is a brazen liar who is only allowed to get away with it by a media that allows him to. Collier reflects their prejudices. Anyone who seriously examines his ‘Reports’ cannot help but conclude that yes he finds some anti-Semitism but that his main purpose is to label all support for the Palestinians as anti-Semitic, especially Jewish anti-Zionism.

Collier fails to contextualise the anti-Semitism he does find, using it instead to reinforce his own Zionist narrative.  By contextualisation I mean this. If you say that everything the Israeli state, a self-defined Jewish state, does is on behalf of all Jews, then some people will believe you and react accordingly.  If the so-called representative body of British Jews, the Board of Deputies, claims Israel’s actions are on behalf of British Jews, then some people will believe them and become anti-Jewish. What this really amounts to is the creation of anti-Semitism by Zionism.  But for Israel there would be no such reactions. 

Likewise if you use the Holocaust, not in order to teach about the evils of racism but to justify racism and every barbarous act of Israel, including ethnic cleansing, is it surprising that some people deny that there was a Holocaust?  The responsibility for the increase in Holocaust denial is that of a Zionist movement whose propaganda museum in Israel, Yad Vashem, makes a point of ensuring that every visiting diplomat pays a visit in order that it can be emphasised that Israel is the answer to the genocide of European Jews.  So even openly anti-Semitic politicians like MEPs Michal Kaminski and Robert Zile are shown around.  They even have a special exhibition wall devoted to the long forgotten (except by the Zionists) Mufti of Jerusalem.  But I digress.

After having disclaimed his intention of following normal Zionist practice of equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, in the remaining 279 pages of his Report Collier does just that. Collier relies on the laziness of the average journalist to sit down, read and critically analyse his Report. Collier understands that most journalists, in eager pursuit of an anti-Corbyn article, will abandon what few critical faculties they possess.

If Collier was being truthful about setting the bar high in terms of anti-Semitism, then the question arises as to why Naomi Wimborne-Iddrissi, Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada, Glyn Secker, Mike Cushman, Leah Levane, myself and other Jewish anti-Zionists appear in this Report. At no stage does he quote anything we have said which is anti-Semitic. He relies entirely on guilt by association and inferences. The only conclusion is that Collier’s sole purpose is to smear Palestine solidarity activists and in particular Jewish anti-Zionist activists with the brush of anti-Semitism. Indeed he has a section on The Jewish anti-Zionists(page 87, Part 2) coupled with a little chart to show who is who.

Collier provides a map of some prominent Jewish anti-Zionists and which groups they belong to.  It matters not that it is inaccurate, what it demonstrates is that his real agenda has nothing  to do with anti-Semitism

The Daily Mail, the paper wot supported Hitler in his time, is most concerned about 'antisemitism' in the Labour Party

It is not just the Guardian which treats Collier as a neutral ‘businessman’. Huff Post calls him an ‘anti-Semitism campaigner’. To the Mail be is just a ‘blogger.’ Which is somewhat more accurate. This is not simply journalistic laziness. What the Press are interested in is fanning the flames of the false anti-Semitism narrative. In doing this they know that they can count on the complicity of Labour’s Compliance Unit and Sam Matthews who immediately suspended Glyn Secker of Jewish Voice for Labour.

Collier - Member of Neo-Nazi Facebook Group International Community

Jeremy Corbyn has been attacked for being a member of a Facebook Group on which a tiny handful of anti-semites posted.  The Zionist charity Campaign Against Antisemitism has even made a complaint about Jeremy to the Labour Party for antisemitism!

The strange thing though is if Jeremy Corbyn is anti-semitic because he was a member of a Facebook group which contained anti-semites, then David Collier, in addition to being an Anti-Arab racist is also an anti-Semite! Collier is a member of the International Community Facebook group.  It regularly hosts anti-Semitic world Jewish conspiracy stuff such as 'Lennin (sic) and Stalin All Mass Murderers!  All Jewish!'. (neither was!)  This is obviously anti-Semitic.

The post underneath is even clearer.  The real holocaust was the holocaust of 15m Germans.  By the Jews of course. 

Collier was added to this Facebook group by one Debra Cohen who is no slouch herself.  According to her Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadic, Serbians who were found by the International Criminal Court at the Hague to be war criminals are innocent.  Why?  It was Muslims whom they butchered and put into concentration camps.

Of course it may be that Collier wasn't aware of these posts, though it is clear he and Cohen know each other.  But according to the logic he deploys against others he is an out and out neo-Nazi!!

The far-Right Zionist group Campaign for Truth hosted a 'debate' with Melanie Phillips and an assortment of racists and oddballs - David Hirsh of Engage, who is a Labour Zionist 'moderate' was happy to take part

Collier Takes Part in a Far-Right Zionist 'Debate' on the Palestinians with Mel Phillips

Even by Zionist standards, and I set the bar pretty high, Collier is an extremist and a racist. In a ‘debate’ organised by the far-Right Zionist Campaign for Truth, Collier spoke on a far—Right panel that included Melanie Phillips, David Hirsh (the ‘moderate’), and Brian John Thomas (the fascist admirer of the EDL and friend of Tommy Robinson). Collier stated: 

‘The Palestinian refugee was forged as a weapon.  It was created as an artificial entity inside a paradigm of No to Normalisation and it cannot exist outside that paradigm.  It will do everything it can to stop any type of settlement.  And today, as demographics have changed in the West, this weapon has taken camp here too.  Today it spearheads BDS.  Another external weapon that does not care about the people inside Gaza or the West Bank...You scrap the ridiculous definition of the refugee.  You scrap UNWRA.... Taking an addict and feeding his addiction.’   (6:09) 

In other words the Palestinian refugees, the victims of ethnic cleansing and massacre, are a myth. Even Zionist historians such as Benny Morris accept that the refugees were expelled in order to create a Jewish majority state. Collier’s methodology is that of Holocaust denial.

Why Collier’s Report on Palestine Live is not worth the paper it is written on

Collier provides a link to a blog by me on how a large part of Orthodox Jewry maintain that the Holocaust was god’s punishment. It is a fact that for Orthodox Jewry everything that happens is preordained by god, the holocaust included. Collier infers that I am anti-semitic for saying this.  Collier repeats that I was expelled from the Labour Party, without explaining its relevance to a Report on ‘anti-Semitism’ with the obvious inference that it was for anti-Semitism whereas it was, of course, for anti-Zionism.  This too is his methodology.

One of the main purposes of Collier’s Report is to mount a crude attack on Jewish anti-Zionists. Collier admits that ‘these activists are not going to be found sharing or liking Rothschild Conspiracy or Holocaust denial posts...’   

Collier argues that ‘It is also confusing for people who are not Jewish’ to be confronted with Jews who are not Zionists. He writes that ‘Nothing will stifle the voice of someone who is not Jewish sticking up for Israel, better than one of these people will.’  What is Collier’s conclusion? ‘Quite disgracefully they weaponise antisemitism.’ At this point pots and kettles come to mind!

But even if Collier is correct, since he accepts Jewish anti-Zionists don’t share Holocaust Denial or Rothschilds posts, why are they in a Report that is only concerned with anti-Semitism not anti-Zionism? The answer of course is obvious. The Report is a dishonest attempt to use ‘anti-Semitism’ in order to attack anti-Zionists, especially Jewish anti-Zionists. 

Collier says that 'the clearest example of legitimising antisemitism'was a meeting at the House of Commons yet he fails to explain what it was said that was anti-Semitic!  Yet this is supposed to be a 'research Report' that sets the bar for anti-semitism 'unnaturally high'!

Collier employs classic McCarthyite guilt-by-association techniques. He describes FSOI as being ‘a group of Palestine Live members, who created FSOI to deflect accusations of anti-Semitism.’  

There is no connection at all between FSOI, which consists primarily of Jewish anti-Zionist activists and which has its own Facebook group and the Palesine Live Facebook group. The fact that a minority of FSOI members may also be members of Palestine, along with a few thousand other people, is irrelevant. They may also be members of the same golf club. 

There is not the slightest shred of evidence that FSOI and PL are one and the same but this confusion of groups is essential if Collier is to demonise FSOI and JVL, which is his real purpose. Collier also slips in the assertion that FSOI was created to ‘deflect accusations of anti-Semitism’.  No it was formed to rebut false accusations of anti-Semitism.  

Collier with Paul Besser, 'Intelligence' Officer of Britain First whose fuhrers Paul Golding (bottom right) and Jayda Fransen have just been gaoled for a total of 54 weeks for racial harassment

Apparently it's anti-semitic, as well as'vicious' to blow the whistle on fascist Zionists

Collier was rattled by the article I published on December 5^th 2017 naming 31 Zionist Fascists who went around London deliberately disrupting Palestine meetings, attempting to halt a Balfour march by PSC and in at least one case assaulting people attending a meeting. People who are named are both Jewish and non-Jewish but in any event their religion is irrelevant, it is their politics and activities that concerned me. 

This article is described as ‘vicious’ by Collier.  An adjective best applied to his own 'Reports'. A more accurate description would be truthful. However we know that those, Collier included, named in the article have been much put out by it and that it has caused them severe problems as well as embarrassment being named alongside for example Paul Besser, Britain First Intelligence Officer.  Again the question arises, what has this to do with anti-Semitism, Collier’s apparent target?

At SOAS some of Collier's Zionist friends disrupted a meeting on anti-Semitism

'Tony must know about the level of antisemitism'  Actually no.  It was very small and I didn't participate in any discussions, as Collier would know if his research was up to anything!

Collier’s only attempt to explain my presence in his Report is that I have been a member of PL and therefore ‘must have known’ about the few anti-Semitic posts. He gives no evidence for this assertion and it is simply wrong. I only used the group to publicise my own blog. I never participated in discussions until after his Report was issued. I knew nothing of such posts and because they were so infrequent it was unlikely that I would do so. Collier’s assumptions are speculative. This too is indicative of his methodology.

More to the point, Collier ‘must have known’  that the people he mixes with are associates of fascists and Jewish Nazis like Roberta Moore and her boyfriend Robert Jonge, Paul Besser and Jonathan Hoffman of EDL/JDL fame.

Hoffman with Thor Halland

David Collier with Jonathan Hoffman (left).  Hoffman was excorted out of a meeting at the House of Commons by the Police last year and above at a university meeting

Hoffman with EDL/JDL supporter Kay Wilson and her brother Ian Wilson

Jonathan Hoffman, who specialises in shouting down speakers, is inquiring about the email of Jason Silver, (above) one of the gang of 31, who committed suicide a couple of months ago having been put up to making false complaints about Palestine Expo to the Police.  Hoffman's purpose was to help instigate the malicious complaints of 'antisemitism' to the Police.   Silver's false complaint to the Police

You can see from these exchanges the depth of the racism: 'doubt you would get far with the Policeman... wasn't he Muslim?' 'try Britain First... to see if they will load your video, then you will then see who is racist and who supports your case!'  Mel Gharial adds that that well known anti-racist Tommy Robinson 'has also publicised this I see'

Jason Silver being egged on to  make a malicious and false complaint to the Met, in the belief he was thrown out of Palestine Expo because he was Jewish - despite his wife Claire trying to calm him down.  Even Lawyers for Israel refused to take his case on as it was obvious that he was thrown out of Palestine Expo for being a racist, not for being Jewish

Another person who features in Collier’s Report is Alan Maddison. His ‘crime’? He was the ‘academic enabler’ and he shared my posts and those of Jackie Walker. Also he worked with a 90 year old Jewish Dr Glatt who heavily criticised John Mann MP for his attacks on Corbyn. Glatt ‘absurdly’ supported Ken Livingstone according to Collier. What does Ken Livingstone have to do with anti-Semitism, given that the bar for anti-Semitism has been set so ridiculously high? Nothing unless of course Livingstone’s statement about Hitler supporting Zionism is anti-Semitic.

Collier's assertion is not borne out by the Report - but it served its purpose of fooling a gullible press

Collier, knowing full well the stupidity and gullibility of most journalists, states in his Introduction that ‘you would have to work hard at it’ to be included in his ‘research’. On the contrary, it takes no effort at all. Far from ‘setting the bar for anti-Semitism unnaturally high’ Collier ensured that just about anyone who criticises the Israeli state would be tripped up by his bar.

As for Collier’s claim that his research is ‘fully independent’ by his own admission it has been funded by the far-Right Jewish Human Rights Watch. Collier is about as independent as a dog on a leash.

Another example of ‘anti-Semitism’ that rankled with Collier was the fact that Jackie and I refused him admission to the JVL meeting at Labour Party conference. It was not as he alleged because he was a Zionist but because he specialises in defaming supporters of Palestine. His Report confirms our prognosis. 

Neil Horan - An Open Hitler Admirer

Horan on another Zionist demonstration outside the Albert Hall

Neil Horan demonstrating against 'anti-Semitism' with Paul Besser of Britain 1st (left) and Hoffman (blue anorak with hood behind) - part of the 'Neo-Nazis against Anti-Semitism' group that Collier has formed

A regular feature at Zionist demonstrations is Neil Horan.  He was part of those trying to halt the Balfour demonstration in November 2017.  What is strange is that those who are so busy fighting 'anti-Semitism' welcome on their demonstrations Neil Horan, a Christian Zionist, who is on record as believing that Hitler 'was a good leader who was following the word of Christ.'  Still, when you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas.

Collier Speaks to the Fascist Herut UK

Collier seen here at the founding meeting of Herut-UK giving a talk on the founder of Revisionist Zionism Ze'ev Jabotinsky - a 'moderate' fascist like Collier

Aryeh Miller, CEO of the Zionist Federation speaking

Mandy Blumenfeld speaking - she chaired the meeting

solicitor Mark Lewis speaking

Collier’s Links with the Zionist Far-Right and Fascists

At the founding meeting of Herut UK on 18th February 2018, David Collier was one of the speakers, alongside Arieh Miller, CEO of the Zionist Federation, Mark Lewis (a media solicitor better known for acting against News Group) with Mandy Blumenfeld as Chair. Collier's talk was on the founder of Revisionist Zionism, whom even David Ben-Gurion called Vladimir Hitler.

Jabotinsky, reached an agreement with Mussolini in 1934 to establish the Beitar Naval Academy at Civitavechia in Italy. , They trained with Mussolini's fascists.  Collier referred during his talk to Jabotinsky's famous essay the Iron Wall, which he wrote in 1923.  Jabotinsky's theme was that the Zionists should not give an inch to the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine. But at least Jabotinsky was honest. 

Today Zionists talk about Zionism as a 'national liberation movement' of the Jews.  Jabotinsky had no regard for such nonsense.  He was an honest colonialist.  

'My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.... Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised.'

The reason that Collier is an admirer of Jabotinsky is that he made no pretence of wishing to negotiate with the Arabs.  It was in his mind futile.  All that mattered was who was stronger.  This is pure fascist ideology. This is the man Collier admires. The same is true of Collier's attitudes to the Palestinians today.  Those who see him as some kind of neutral 'researcher' are fools, knaves or idiots - and in the case of the Guardian probably all three!

Other Rogues and Knaves

Thor Halland's charge sheet from the Thai Police

Collier is part of a small rabidly Zionist group, with the discredited clown Jonathan Hoffman, Walter Mitty fantasist Paul Besser of Britain First, Thor Halland who is wanted by the Thai Police for extortion and convicted small-time Salford gangster Michael English. This is in addition to hard-core antisemites and Islamophobes and deranged and frustrated white supremacist supporters of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer such as South African Sharon Klaff and Ambrosine Shitrit.  People who gather together to convince themselves that it’s all about antisemitism, and not Israel, the criminal and racist Zionist settler colonial state and its oppression of the Palestinians. [Halland denies the accusations of extortion in Thailand and in the interests of balance you might want to see his defence]

These are a group of Zionists so extreme that they are shunned even by the main Israeli propaganda group BICOM, Jonathan Arkush and the Jewish Board of Deputies and even by the disgraced Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement. Yet this is of no concern to the British press. The Guardian’s role in this is particularly despicable.

Sample post where  (1) Michael English threatens Joseph Cohen and (2) Joseph Cohen refers disparagingly to poodle-loving Mike Davidsohn and his Poodles Joseph Cohen insults Davidsohn by calling him “A prejudiced Poodle-breeding pensioner”

It is impossible to do justice to this in one blog. You have to read what I published in December “We Name the Gang Of 31 Zionists. and the following exposes – from Thor Halland’s past in Pattaya,Thailand, jailbird Michael English threatening to tear the head off pretentious Joseph Cohen, another Zionist extremist, to the vile anti-Palestine racism of poodle-lover and dogging afficiando Mike Davidsohn and his feud with Joseph Cohen of the troubled Israel Advocacy Movement.

DAVID COLLIER and TOMMY ROBINSON

Now living near Ilford, Collier was born in the UK in the 1960’s and spent 19 years in Israel between 1987 and 2006. Collier claims to have run his own tourism-related business there but is remarkably reticent on why he had to leave Israel although he professes a great love for the settler state. Oddly, for whatever reason, it appears he has not returned there in recent years.

Brian Thomas defends inviting Tommy Robinson to tour Israel with him

Brian John Thomas invited Tommy Robinson to Israel and has close links to the EDL. Tommy Robinson, founder of the EDL and latterly UK Pegida (left), Kenna in the middle runs a far-Right Zionist blog, Brian John Thomas (right).

Tommy Robinson with Kay Wilson, his tour guide

Brian John Thomas, aka Dr Brian of London – a Friend of Collier’s and Tommy Robinson

Collier is a very close associate of far-Right Zionist settler extremist Brian John Thomas who is also a friend of Tommy Robinson, aka Stephen Christopher Lennon, a fixture on Britain’s Islamaphobic far-Right. Thomas spoke with Collier on a Campaign4truth event organised by Shitrit and Klaff.  Even Jonathan Arkush, the right-wing President of the Board of Deputies and the Board itself shun C4T, Shitrit and Klaff  and have refused to speak at their poorly-attended events. Thomas writes on the ISRAELLYCOOL blog and on Twitter as Dr. Brian of London.   In the video he states:

‘I toured Israel with Tommy, in fact Tommy toured Israel with me, I’ve known Tommy for a long time, back to the early days of the EDL.  I watched the EDL very carefully.  I knew that they were good or at least I knew Tommy and those around him were good from early on. I just knew it.’

 Kay Wilson - the acceptable fascist

Aryeh Miller having just introduced Kay Wilson

 Besides being the tour guide for Dr Brian's tour of Israel with Tommy Robinson, Kay Wilson poses as a victim of terrorism in order to justify Israeli terrorism. Wilson sent a letter to the Cambridgeshire Police which was a character reference testifying to Robinson having 'devoted his life to speaking out' against Islam.  

Jonathan Arkush addressing the Zionist counter-demo at the Al Quds demonstration - in the front are Moore and Jonge of the neo-Nazi JDL and Mandy Blumenfeld is there along with Peace not Hate posters!

Her fascist links didn't stop her speaking at a Board of Deputies rally against the annual Al Quds demonstration which has been held for over 30 years without incident (except when the Zionists try to attack it!).  She was introduced by Aryeh Miller, CEO of the Zionist Federation.  Jonathan Arkuss and Paul Charney, Chairman of the Zionist Federation also spoke at the rally. 

A character witness letter sent to Cambridge Police by Brian Thomas's tour guide to Israel Kay Wilson And here we seen Kay Wilson 'giving a hug' to Neil Masterson, who served 16 months in prison for violently attacking, for no other reason other than a hatred of free speech, George Galloway MP.  Clearly there are some forms of terrorism that this despicable woman approves of.  What is remarkable is that leading Zionist and 'Jewish' bodies in this country give a platform to her.

Paul Charney and Aryeh Miller of the Zionist Federation alongside a member of the EDL in his paramilitary uniform

David Collier and Zionist Clown Jonathan Hoffman.

Hoffman is frequently ejected from Palestine events he attends with Collier (but Collier sits apart from him as he is “working undercover”).

See Paul Besser – Jonathan Hoffman’s Neo-Nazi Friend Goes into the Security Business and Far-right Britain First fosters ties with Zionist movement

 David Collier and Thor Halland

Halland is part of the small group of extremist Zionists often seen with Collier and Hoffman at anti-Palestine events. On numerous occasions at these events he has had to be restrained by Police. A video news report of Halland under arrest in Pattaya, Thailand for Robbery, kidnapping and extortion cannot be shown in the UK for legal reasons but we have been given a copy. He has also been recorded shouting antisemitic abuse at pro-Palestine Jews, including an elderly Rabbi.

STOP PRESS

Out soon. My next report covers the bitter internal feud between these Zionist extremists that erupted since I named and shamed them. Joseph Cohen of the Israel Advocacy Movement tried to distance himself from Mike Davidsohn, Gemma and Solly Sheridan, Michael English, Thor Halland, Nutter Neal Cohen of Herut, Sharon Klaff and Ambrosine Shitrit. 

Ahed Tamimi – Palestinian girl 17 receives 8 months for slapping armed soldier

March 22, 2018, 10:33 am

≫ Next: Arundel and the Swanborough Lake walk

≪ Previous: EXCLUSIVE: David Collier – the ‘Independent Researcher’ who accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism keeps company with White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis and Islamophobes

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Elor Azaria, who murdered an unconscious wounded Palestinian is released also after 8 months 

THIS IS ISRAELI JUSTICE 

Ahed Tamimi was yesterday sentenced to 8 months imprisonment for slapping a soldier who entered the grounds of her house. Ahed Tamimi, who has become a heroine of the Palestinian resistance, was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier who entered the grounds of her house. She was perfectly entitled under International Law to resist a soldier from Israel's Occupation.  But of course under the military dictatorship that Palestinians live under Ahed was guilty since Israel pays no heed to international law.

As she was led away to begin her sentence she shouted 'There is no Justice Under Occupation'.  Even during her pre-trial hearings Ahed retained her sense of humour.  Asked by the Military Judge how she hit the solder she said, 'take off these handcuffs and I'll show you.'  I have written extensively on this and you may wish to refer to my previous articles:

Jewish Chronicle Hits a New Low - A Vile Article Attacking 16 year old Ahed Tamimi, 

Ahed Tamimi’s arrest sheds a disturbing light on how children are targeted by Israel, 

Ahed Tamimi's lawyer: Her case is making people see the occupation again, Torture couldn’t happen to a Jewish child - 16 year old Ahed Tamimi’s Detention is Extended by Israel's Military Court

Immediately the video of Ahed standing up to the soldiers went viral, there were calls from the racist Education Minister Naftali Bennett for her to 'finish her life in prison'.

The Israeli army kidnapped Ahed in the middle of the night, video photographer accompanying them, awakening her in her house in the early hours of the morning and thus began a 3 month ordeal in which more charges were added to the bill of indictment.

She was prosecuted in a Military Court which has a 99.74% conviction rate.  In reality she is being tried by the same army that has arrested and brutalised her.  Unlike Israeli children she has no protection, access to parents, social workers etc.  She is, like in Nazi Germany, the untermenschen and is treated accordingly.

Caspit, the 'liberal' Israeli journalist called for 'a price to be exacted' against Ahed, 'in the dark, without witnesses or cameras'  He denies that he meant rape or sexual assault but, as Mandy Rice Davies said, he would wouldn't he?'

 She was subject to what amounted to calls to rape and sexually assault her by prominent Ma’ariv journalist Ben Caspit who wrote in Maariv:

 “in the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras”

Ahed caught the imagination of people world wide and Israel's hasbara propaganda machine couldn't keep up.  Instead of a Palestinian in traditional Arab garb with a headscarf, she was an engaging white teenager with blonde hair and an endearing smile.  

The kinda kid next door that people can empathise with.  

The idiot of a former Ambassador to the USA and now a government minister, Michael Oren couldn't accept this.  It was a 'fake family' she was deliberately dressed by her parents in western clothes.  Apparently there had been an investigation into the Tamimi family two years ago to establish if they were a real family!

As in South Africa under Apartheid or in the Deep South under Jim Crow the penalty for killing a Palestinian is always less than killing the herrenvolk, a Jew

But as her ordeal dragged on even the Israeli army realised that Israel has suffered massive PR damage.  Their treatment of a young Palestinian girl compared to what an Israeli child would experience is so obviously unjust that you would have to be a particularly thick Zionist to not notice.

That is why Fadi Quoran's article below is correct.  Israel's military prosecutors had originally intended to put Ahed away for years. They dug up false allegations from years ago but the scale of the international campaign has forced the bastards to back off.  In the end holding Ahed was a liability they wanted to be shot of.  All the weapons in the world were to no avail against a young girl's courage.

We should treat this as a victory and Ahed herself as a hero.  As a 17 year old girl under massive & enormous pressure she refused to answer any questions or co-operate in any way.  What a contrast between the Quisling of the Palestinian Authority  Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and Ahed Tamimi.

The case has shone a light on Israel’s Injustice System.  Hence the Israeli military judge decided, against the pleas of the family, that she would be tried in secret as befits a police state.  She and her parents were opposed to this because they wanted the light of publicity to expose these racists.

The Military Court decided that the court hearing should be held in secret not for Ahed's benefit but to save their own embarrassment.  The army were happy to video her arrest as a way of asuaging the racist Right in Israel but they didn't want the publicity that came with her continued detention.

Of course if a closed trial had  really been for her benefit then she would never have been incarcerated in the first place, still less held in pre-trial detention.  The lies just keep pouring off the Zionist PR machine.  

Israel, like all settler states, is essentially stupid.  The cries for revenge against Ahed resounded in Israel but people abroad could not understand the Biblical vengeance being exacted against a female David.  It was as if the story of David and the slingshot was being reversed with Goliath demanding his pound of flesh.

Racist murderer Elor Azaria receives the same sentence as Ahed - Palestinian life is cheap

Contrast her case with Israeli murderer Elor Azaria.  He shot a severely wounded Palestinian in the head whilst he was on the ground.  This supporter of the Jewish Nazi Kach movement was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, which was reduced twice and he was eventually let out after serving little over 8 months.  In other words the same sentence as Ahed who is unlikely to have her sentence cut. 

You can be sure that this murderous psychopath, who was a hero before he went into prison, was treated like a hero when he was inside.  Ahed's treatment by all accounts will be nasty and violent and it is a tribute to her and the hundreds of Palestinian children that they bear it with fortitude. 

Labour MPs Louise Ellman and Ian Austin Who Support Child Abuse Should be Expelled

A month ago I was expelled from the Labour Party because I called the execrable Blairite MP Louise Ellman a supporter of Israeli child abuse.  The idiot of a barrister, Thomas Ogg, said that I was shaming her.  Indeed I was and I intend to continue doing so.

To be fair to Ellman and I always try to be fair (!) she was joined by another Labour MP who should go, the detestable right-winger Ian Austin MP, the man who heckled Jeremy Corbyn in the debate on the Chilcott Report.  Let us hope that his CLP gets rid of him.

Below is a graphic of the contributions of these two supporters of Palestinian child abuse

Both these racists, Ellman and Austin believe that  Palestinian children are 'incited' to throw stones at the soldiers who occupy their homes and steal their land.  This is of course what every imperialist has argued throughout history.  The oppressed would love their oppressors but for the 'inciters'.  The real disgrace is that these 2 creatures are still members of the Labour Party

I have included a number of different reactions as this is an extremely important case.  The issue of Israel's child prisoners should be highlighted continuously.

This is Israeli justice – slapping a heavily armed soldier is equivalent to killing a wounded Palestinian

21 March 2018 Press Release - for immediate publication   ‘Ahed Tamimi’s forced plea bargain clearly illustrates role of military juvenile court: Protecting the occupation, not Palestinian minors The conviction rate in Israel’s military courts in the West Bank is almost 100% - not because the military prosecution is so efficient, but because Palestinian defendants reluctantly sign plea bargains in which they plead guilty. A new report published yesterday by B’Tselem shows how the measures that Israel has showcased over the last decade as examples of its improved treatment of Palestinian minors in military courts have little to do with the protection of minors and everything to do with public relations. In fact, the function of the military juvenile court boils down to signing off on plea bargains such as the one signed today. This afternoon, the military court at Ofer signed off on plea bargains for ‘Ahed and Nariman Tamimi. The plea bargains include eight months in prison and a fine. A new report published yesterday by B’Tselem, Minors in Jeopardy: Violation of the Rights of Palestinian Minors by Israel’s Military Courts, analyzes the changes that Israel declared over the last decade with regard to the treatment of Palestinian minors in military courts. The report reveals that while useful in Israeli propaganda, these technical changes have done nothing to improve the protection of minors’ rights. In particular, the role of the Military Juvenile Court, whose establishment Israel views as a landmark achievement in the protection of minors’ rights in the military court system, is primarily to sign off on plea bargains already reached between the defense and the prosecution outside the courtroom. Almost all minors sign the plea bargains, having been left little choice by the military courts’ detention policy: most minors are held in custody from the time of their arrest and until they finish serving their sentence. Carrying out an evidentiary trial from within prison is fraught with difficulties, and the defendants know that if convicted, they will be sentenced to prison anyway, as no alternatives exist. Even in the extremely unlikely case that they are acquitted, the time they spent in custody throughout the trial may be just as long, or even longer, than the time they will spend in prison under a plea bargain. ‘Ahed Tamimi’s case is exceptional only in that it garnered special media attention, but it is essentially no different from hundreds of such cases every year. According to figures the Israel Prison Service (IPS) provided to B’Tselem, on 28 February 2018 the IPS had 356 Palestinian minors in custody: 95 of them were serving a prison sentence, 257 were in pre- or post- indictment detention, and four were being held in administrative detention. While Israel claims to hold dear the rights of the Palestinian minors it arrests and puts on trial, the opposite is true: the rights of these minors are routinely and systemically abused from the moment of their arrest.

In Israeli military courts, Palestinian minors always lose

In Israeli civilian courts, detention is always a last resort for a minor. But when it comes to Palestinian minors in Israeli military courts, prison is almost guaranteed.

By Yael Marom

Ahed Tamimi in the Ofer prison military court. December 20, 2017. (Oren Ziv/Activestills)

Israeli authorities have dedicated significant effort in recent years to highlighting the improvements allegedly made in the treatment of Palestinian minors within Israeli military courts in the West Bank.

Among the ostensible achievements are the establishment a juvenile court in the military court system, allowing for the increased involvement of parents in the military justice system, decreasing the length of time a child can be detained before being brought before a judge, and even an abandoned experiment of issuing summonses to Palestinian minors instead of sending an invading force of soldiers to arrest them in their homes in the middle of the night — the common practice today.

A report published by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem on Tuesday argues that these so-called improvements have improved very little. The juvenile military court system system, which uses the tactic of denying bail to pressure over 70 percent of juvenile defendants and their families into accepting plea bargains, has a startling conviction rate that exceeds 95 percent.

The military juvenile courts do not come close to conforming to international standards and conventions signed and implemented by Israel, according to the B’Tselem report. And Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors contrasts starkly with the treatment Israeli children receive in Israel’s separate, civilian juvenile justice system.

The Israeli army prosecuted 1,046 Palestinian minors in 2014 and 2015, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. More than a quarter of those indictments were of children 15 and under. Already in the first two months of 2018, the army arrested 274 Palestinian minors who were thrust into the military court system, according to Palestinian human rights group Addameer.

Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian youth during a protest against Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Hebron, West Bank, December 7, 2017. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

 One of the most disturbing differences between the Israeli civilian and military juvenile justice systems is that in the Israeli system, arrest and pre-conviction detention is supposed to be a last resort; other options are to be exhausted before resorting to imprisonment. In the military system, to which Palestinian children are subjected, pre-conviction detention (denying bail) is the rule; there are virtually no alternatives to detention, and exceptions are extremely rare.

What this means is that Palestinian minor defendants are faced with the following choice: fight the charges and remain in prison for the duration of their trial or sign a plea deal and get a reduced sentence. Considering the time spent in prison awaiting trial, however, even defendants likely to be acquitted still might spend more time behind bars than if they had just signed a plea deal.

One of the testimonies collected by B’Tselem and published in the new report describes what the system looks like from the perspective of a Palestinian teenager:

Abed Sabah, a 15-year-old from the Jalazun refugee camp near Ramallah, was arrested last August. Soldiers broke into his house at 3:00 a.m. without explaining why. He was handcuffed and blindfolded. According to Abed’s testimony, soldiers beat and cursed him during the drive from his home to the military base. He was detained for several hours overnight at the base, handcuffed and tied to a wooden post outside, forbidden from going to the bathroom. The soldiers took him to a police station in the morning. In the interrogation room, he was questioned about stone-throwing and a pipe bomb. The interrogator permitted him to call his parents but not a lawyer. The interrogator never explained Abed’s rights to him, particularly his right to remain silent.

During this first interrogation, the interrogator pressured Abed to confess to the crimes of which he was accused, saying that it would help him. Abed refused. The interrogator wanted Abed to sign two documents in Hebrew, which Abed did not understand and refused to sign. Abed was then moved to the cell for minors at Ofer Prison, and then to the military court there. The entire ordeal was less than 12 hours — but 12 hours during which he was completely alone. There was no one waiting for him in court either — neither his parents nor a lawyer. Abed said he did not know what the purpose of the hearing was, and when the hearing was over, he was sent back to prison.

Two months later he was brought back to court. A lawyer told him he wanted to sign a deal that would include a sentence of two-and-a-half months — exactly the amount of time Abed had already spent in prison. And so it was. Abed’s parents paid a fine of NIS 2,000, and Abed received another five months of probation. At 7:00 p.m. that night, Abed was informed that he was being released. His brother was waiting for him outside of the prison, but the Israeli authorities instead released him at the Ben Sira checkpoint, where no one waiting. Abed said he used a waiting cab driver’s phone to call his brother, who came and took him home.

Israeli soldiers arrest a child during the weekly demonstration in Kfer Qaddum, a West bank village located east of Qalqiliya, on January 25, 2013.

So what about the improvements Israel has made? B’Tselem addresses them one by one.

Did the decision to require bringing minors before a judge sooner actually change the length of time they spend in pre-conviction detention? First of all, remand and bail hearings are not held in the new juvenile military court, so considerations of the child’s wellbeing are rarely raised — the use of detention as a first resort, as opposed to a last resort, has not changed. Secondly, seeing a judge sooner and more frequently has not led to any discernible reduction in the amount of time spent in detention or the ease with which the courts deny bail, according to the report.

Did the change allowing a greater role for defendants’ parents in the juvenile military court system lead to an improvement in advocacy for the child and their best interests? According to B’Tselem, however, the change is almost entirely symbolic, and parental involvement remains minimal. Parents do not have the right to be present during their children’s interrogation, nor does the army actually update parents on the details of their child’s detention.

The biggest problem is that none of the changes have affected the way Palestinian juveniles are arrested, interrogated, and remanded to custody without bail. As long as the system is designed to churn out confessions that lead to plea deals — and the protections for those earlier stages of custody remain unimplemented — reforms to the trial system inside the new juvenile courts will remain virtually moot. Palestinian children rarely stand trial and the merits and circumstances of their confessions are never critically reviewed by a judge.

Yael Marom is Just Vision’s public engagement manager in Israel and a co-editor of Local Call, where a longer version of this article first appeared in Hebrew. Read it here. 

Ahed Tamimi agrees to plea deal, to serve eight months

#Occupation

Ahed Tamimi, 17, became hero to Palestinians after 15 December incident outside her home (AFP)

Thursday 22 March 2018 0:33 UTC

Ahed Tamimi, the teenage Palestinian girl who was filmed kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank, accepted a plea deal on Wednesday under which she will be sentenced to eight months in prison, her lawyer said.

Tamimi, 17, became a hero to Palestinians after the 15 December incident outside her home in the village of Nabi Saleh was streamed live on Facebook by her mother and went viral.

The soldiers had deployed during a weekly Palestinian protest in the village against Israeli policy on settlements in the West Bank, one of the most heated issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tamimi was 16 at the time of the offence. Her trial began last month and she faced 12 charges, including aggravated assault.

"No justice under occupation!" Tamimi, handcuffed and shackled, shouted out to reporters at court in the Ofer military prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Tamimi's attorney Gaby Lasky said that under the deal approved by the court, Tamimi will plead guilty to a reduced charge sheet that includes assault and would be sentenced to eight months in jail and pay a fine of 5,000 shekels (about $1,430). The Israeli military confirmed the details of the deal.

It broke the stereotyped image of the Palestinian in the international community

- Bassem Tamimi, Ahed's father

Lasky said the jail term included the time Tamimi has spent in detention since her arrest in December.

Tamimi's family are veterans of protests against an Israeli settlement near their home. An Israeli watchtower stands at the entrance to the village and there are often soldiers in the area. Her mother, Nariman, and a cousin were also arrested. Both have accepted plea bargains, a family lawyer said.

"When the European people see my daughter, blonde and blue-eyed, they are shaken, because they saw their children in front of them. It broke the stereotyped image of the Palestinian in the international community,"Tamimi's father, Bassem Tamimi told Reuters.

The images of Tamimi striking the soldier had also made an impact on Israelis, who debated whether the officer should have hit back. The army said the soldier “acted professionally” by showing restraint but right-wing politicians described his behavior as humiliating.

"The honour of Israel's army cannot be trampled" Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said on her Facebook page after the incident. "We cannot have a situation in which soldiers are humiliated and hit and they do not act at that moment and arrest those who hurt them."

The Israeli army said in a statement after the sentence that it "will continue operating in order to preserve the security and public order in (the West Bank) and enforce the law as it pertains to anyone who harms (Israeli) soldiers and incites violence."

Ahed in court

Tamimi's trial

Tamimi's trial began on 13 February behind closed doors at the Israeli military court in the West Bank.

Lasky appealed to have the trial opened, but was rejected.

The court ordered the trial closed because Ahed was being tried as a minor, as is usual in such cases.

"When they decided to keep her trial behind closed doors, we knew that we were not going to get a fair trial," 

Lasky told AFP in describing her reasons for seeking a plea bargain.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has criticised Israeli authorities' actions in the case, while the European Union has expressed concern over Israel's detention of minors, including Ahed Tamimi.

When they decided to keep her trial behind closed doors, we knew that we were not going to get a fair trial

Gaby Lasky, Tamimi's father

"Ahed will be home in a few months, but Israel is putting this child behind bars for eight months for calling for protests and slapping a soldier, after threatening her with years in jail," 

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

Tamimi's family says the 15 December incident that led to the arrests occurred in the yard of their home in Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah in the West Bank.

The Israeli military said the soldiers were in the area to prevent Palestinians from throwing stones at Israeli motorists.

The video shows the cousins approaching two soldiers and telling them to leave before shoving, kicking and slapping them.

The scuffle took place amid clashes and protests against US President Donald Trump's controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Palestinians want the West Bank for a future state, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Most countries consider Israeli settlements built on territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war to be illegal.

Israel disputes that its settlements are illegal and says their future should be determined in peace talks with the Palestinians. Negotiations collapsed in 2014 and efforts by the White House to restart them have showed little progress.

Tamimi's case drew global attention. Amnesty International called her the "Rosa Parks of Palestine", and the small courtroom was often packed with journalists, diplomats and international observers during hearings.

A group of American cultural figures, including actors Danny Glover and Rosario Dawson and novelist Alice Walker, signed a petition calling for her release and comparing her case to those of "the children of immigrants and communities of color who face police brutality in the United States".

Three reasons why Israel backed down, and Ahed Tamimi will walk free

The Israeli military was forced to give in and drop 8 of the charges against Ahed as part of a plea bargain, in which Ahed recognized in court the fact that she slapped the soldier and called for protests. In return, Ahed will get the minimum sentence of 8 months instead of spending at least 3 years in prison based on what the military prosecutor was initially seeking. Lawyers at Ofer Military Court told us we would be lucky if they offered a 2 year plea bargain. But now, Ahed will be out in July — early enough to go to her first year in college. For the next 4 months in prison, Ahed will focus on her studies and take her final year exams. Ahed’s mother, Nariman, will also be released at the same time.

The fact that a child will be jailed for 8 months for slapping a soldier whose troops just shot her 15 year old cousin in the face is extreme, but in the context of the 99% conviction rate in the Israeli military court system and right-wing incitement against Ahed, this compromise by the Israeli military shows they have decided to back down in the face of growing pressure to release Ahed. In fact, they were begging Ahed’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, to accept the plea bargain. 

Below are the 3 main reasons why the Israeli military was forced to back down, and give Ahed the minimum possible sentence:

(1) Ahed refused to be coerced so there wasn’t enough evidence to convict her

Israel subjected Ahed Tamimi to intense military interrogations led by a member of Israel’s military intelligence. The interrogation tactics were meant to coerce her into admitting guilt on the 12 charges brought against her. Detained children, who are often beaten, disoriented, and afraid, end up saying anything the interrogator wants them to — but Ahed courageously maintained her right to remain silent throughout the entire interrogation.

Unable to break Ahed, the Israeli military arrested 10 other Palestinians from Nabi Saleh, 8 of them children. These children also remained steadfast and refused to allow the military to coerce them into giving false testimony to indict Ahed.

Hence, the prosecutor did not have enough evidence to indict Ahed, which made it difficult to complete here trial, especially while it was garnering significant international attention.

(2) Ahed’s case created massive global uproar from citizens to diplomats: millions around the world watched in shock as a 16 year old girl was terrorized, and Israel failed to spin the story.

After a massive right-wing Israeli campaign calling for the arrest, and sometimes even murder, of Ahed, which was followed by her arrest, Ahed quickly became a symbol of Palestinian children. 

Dozens of media networks flocked to cover her story, and in so doing shed a spotlight on the detention of Palestinian children in Israeli military courts. Over 1.75 million people around the world took action with Avaaz and demanded that Ahed and Palestinian children be released. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch joined her campaign — and news networks from the BBC to Xinhua, and from CNN to Al Jazeera reported her story.

In an effort to spin the story in Israel’s favor, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, claimed that the ‘Tamimi family were actors’, which journalists did not buy. Oren further claimed that the Knesset had a committee investigating the “authenticity” of the family, which was quietly ridiculed in diplomatic circles as a sign of Israel’s paranoia and its inability to humanize Palestinians.

In a last ditch effort to defame the Tamimi family, 15 year old Mohammad Tamimi, whose skull was shattered when a soldier shot him in his face, was arrested. Ahed slapped the soldier because she heard her cousin Mohammad was shot and in critical condition — and that story intensified global support for her case. The Israeli military interrogated Mohammad and successfully coerced him into saying he got his head injury (a third of his skull was missing and he needed surgery to replace it) from falling off of a bicycle. Major General Yoav Mordecai posted Mohammad’s “confession” on his Facebook page. However, the Tamimi family quickly released x-rays, footage, and hospital records that proved without a doubt that Mohammad was shot, forcing the military to retract.

Mohammad Tamimi — skull shattered by a bullet fired from an Israeli soldier during protests in Nabi Saleh. His injury led Ahed to confront, and slap, the soldiers firing at kids from her home’s front porch.

Diplomatically, many nations that were already worried about the ill-treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military prisons spoke up. The EU said it was “deeply concerned” about the arrest of minors. Diplomats from around the world were mobilised to watch Ahed’s hearing, with representatives from Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, and many others attending her trial.

(3) Ahed’s arrest was supposed to deter Palestinian youth but instead it inspired them to organise

The Israeli military hoped that the arrest of Ahed would deter the youth of Nabi Saleh (Ahed’s village) and Palestinians across the region from protesting. What happened was the opposite: The youth were inspired by Ahed’s agency, and protests in Nabi Saleh and elsewhere became larger and more intense.

Youth from the villages around Nabi Saleh also joined its protests. And Palestinian students began the process of organising a #March_for_our_freedom. Fearing further upheaval, and unwilling to make Ahed a bigger hero, the Israeli military was forced to give in and drop 8 of the charges against Ahed. Instead of spending over 3 years in prison based on what they had initially pursued, she will now be out in July — early enough to go to her first year in college. The only thing she was booked for were the things in the video — slapping a soldier and calling for protests. They dropped the charge of inciting to bombings and stabbings for her and her mother, and the charge of stone throwing. For the next 4 months in prison, Ahed will focus on her studies and take her final year exam.

It is essential that we tell Ahed’s story as it is, one of steadfastness in prison and a failure by the military to break her. In court, Ahed said: “There is no justice under occupation.” She’s right, and that’s why this plea deal, as unfair as it is, was the best she could hope for and the biggest possible compromise the Israeli military, under pressure, could give. There are 356 children, all like Ahed, still in military confinement. Every year over 750 children are arrested. Let’s continue to take action until they are all free.

Check out the HUGE campaign to free Ahed and all Palestinian children here: 

Arundel and the Swanborough Lake walk

March 22, 2018, 6:17 pm

≫ Next: MORE FAKE ANTISEMITISM Alan Bull, Labour candidate in Peterborough suspended as a result of malicious allegations of anti-Semitism

≪ Previous: Ahed Tamimi – Palestinian girl 17 receives 8 months for slapping armed soldier

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The Beauties of the Sussex Countryside

Arundel is one of my favourite towns in Sussex.  The River Arun runs through it and it has a Roman Catholic cathedral in it as well as a medieval castle owned by the Duke of Norfolk, which costs an arm and a leg to visit!  When I used to teach German language students we always went to Hever Castle in Kent, the home of Anne Bolyn.

When I first arrived in Brighton and went to Arundel, I visited a strange  museum which is long gone.  It had on display all sorts of strange things like babies with 2 heads, hands with 6 fingers and other curiosities.  I can’t remember a great deal about it now since it has been gone at least 25 years.

We sometimes go to Arundel for a day out and it has some nice restaurants and walks.  One particular favourite is around Swanborough Lake which is to the South-East of Arundel castle.  I thought I would share some of the photographs with you as I haven’t done a scenic post for a long time!

Tony Greenstein

MORE FAKE ANTISEMITISM Alan Bull, Labour candidate in Peterborough suspended as a result of malicious allegations of anti-Semitism

March 23, 2018, 5:24 pm

≫ Next: EXCLUSIVE: Lansman’s Lies Revealed in Leaked Memo

≪ Previous: Arundel and the Swanborough Lake walk

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It’s time for Jennie Formby to find Witchfinder General Sam Matthews a real job 

I learnt yesterday that Alan Bull has been suspended by Sam Matthews, Blairite detreitus left after the departure of McNicol, Oldknow, Stolliday and co.  Alan has been blocked from standing for Labour in the forthcoming local elections in Peterborough because of the malicious allegations of two  far-Right Labour councillors, Richard Ferris & Matthew Mahabadi..

The Real Target is Corbyn

What makes the allegations particularly heinous are the wholly malicious manner in which they have been made, including the photoshopping of social media posts in order to make out that Alan is a holocaust denier.  He has been subject to vicious and vitriolic abuse from the trolls of Labour Against AntiSemitism@LabourAgainstAS, most of whom aren’t even in the Labour Party.

Alan Bull has been under investigation by the Labour party since July  2017  as a result of these complaints, which involve doctored facebook posts being sent to Labour's Eastern region.  Mr Bull was asked a number of questions about these posts and he responded in full in November 2017.

Sam Matthews standard letter of suspension

 Since then Alan has not been given any information about the progress of the investigation. Many people have written supporting letters in his defence. At the local Labour Campaign Forum meeting in November, although these doctored posts were circulated, Alan’s candidature was nonetheless ratified and was selected as candidate for Stanground South.

Having failed to derail his nomination through Labour's democratic procedures the Right have instead used the tried and trusted methods of McCarthyism - false and wounding allegations.

Cllr. Richard Ferris - the race hate baiter

Cllr. Mahabadi - Ferris's partner in crime

A complaint was made  to the Eastern Region in November 2017 about the fact that these doctored posts, which were subject to investigation, had apparently been leaked to the press by Labour members. No action was taken against those who were responsible.

Cllr. Richard Ferris's malicious and baiting tweets - for which he should be suspended

 

Ferris's vicious racist tweets

An article about Mr Bull was published in the Peterborough Telegraph in February 2018. The two councillors who made the malicious allegations, Richard Ferris and Matthew Mahabadi, not happy with the investigation, took it upon themselves to launch a smear campaign against Alan. They have continually fed the press with leaked information.

It isn't anti-semitism that Ferris is opposed to but the Palestinians

Ferris and Mahabadi arrived at a full council meeting on 7th March in Peterborough wearing red T shirts with the slogan “Labour against anti Semitism” at the moment when Alan Bull arrived as a guest to the meeting. They have now launched a twitter page called “ Labour councillors against anti-Semitism” which is almost entirely devoted to defaming Alan and where doctored Facebook posts have been posted naming him publicly as an anti-Semite and a bigot.

This behaviour is not only grossly detrimental to the party but also detrimental to Mr Bulls’s chances of winning the seat for Labour. Mr Ferris, as can be seen in one of the screen shots, when Mr Bull advertised a canvassing session commented “We don’t canvass for deluded bigots, ta very much”

Another key target is Chris Williamson MP - one of the PLP's most committed socialists

As the Secretary of Alan’s CLP wrote in her letter:

‘This behaviour by two councillors from our own party is totally unacceptable  and should be dealt with as a matter of urgency. We have elections in 7 weeks’ time,  and Mr Bull like many others is working hard for his campaign, and is being hounded and smeared in this disgraceful way. They are bringing the party into disrepute as well as making slanderous and libellous comments about a fellow member and candidate... I sincerely hope that these individuals will be disciplined as a matter of urgency before they cause any more damage.’

The next meeting of the Disputes Committee is in 4 weeks time. It is clear that this sudden decision is intended to prevent a socialist candidate standing for election.  Even if as we expect Alan is cleared of any wrongdoing then the suspension will have served its purpose.  These most recent public smears and false allegations made against Alan by these two far right Labour councillors will have served their purpose and Sam Matthews is a willing partner to this deception.

The background to this story in Alan Bull’s own words is this:

In June 2015 I had 5000 Facebook friends, many of whom enjoyed discussing a wide range of controversial subjects that didn’t appear in the mainstream media. My habit then, as now is as follows - friends send me posts they think are of interest. I repost mostly without comment to discover what other friends have to say about the article/MEM. When a friend comments, I cut and paste this-complete with their name, and paste above the article before reposting. This stimulates more comments and we all get a better understanding of the subject as a result. The most controversial article I posted privately to friends only, 2 years ago, was a documentary, with the controversial title, “Red cross confirm holocaust is a hoax”. The more accurate and considerably less shocking sub heading of this title was excluded by the screenshotter for maximum impact. As were ALLof the 46 comments, including a short exchange I had with a Jewish friend who commented, “Can I ask the intent of this article, are you denying the holocaust”? To which I replied, “Not at all, just posting for discussion and debate, as usual, best wishes, Alan”. These comments were seen by at least two independent witnesses before the post disappeared from my inbox, two days laterI was ratified last November.

These comments were removed, to create the impression that I, in some way agreed with the article in an attempt to misrepresent my intention and have me suspended from the party. 

Other articles claiming I was anti-Semitic included supporting a petition to reinstate Ken Livingstone and another article which was actually written by one of my Jewish friends!

I have one chance to have this appalling  decision overturned, and prevent the local party appointing their own candidate to replace me. But I need your URGENT help.

I NEED YOU to write urgently to your CLP secretary TODAY! To express your opposition to me being suspended, and your insistence that the individuals responsible for making this internal matter public are sanctioned.  Also to bombard Jenny Formby @Jenieunite

jennie.formby@unitetheunion.org jennie_formby@labour.org.uk

The LAAS trolls instruct Matthews to suspend Alan Bull

Euan Phillips, Chair of Tonbridge CLP and Emma Picken of Lewisham West are the main trolls involved in LAAS

LAAS has 'serious concerns' that Jennie Formby won't continue the witchhunt - lets hope so

The real target of LAAS is Corbyn himself - the Palestine Live FB group is an excuse - and it in fact contains virtually no antisemitic material anyway

Alan Bull’s offence is not having ever said he is a holocaust denier but that he distributed a Holocaust denial article for discussion.  Since when are topics such as Holocaust denial ‘forbidden’ by the ‘Labour anti-Semitism’ thought police?  These people have one goal only.  To smear anyone like Alan who is a Palestine solidarity supporter, if necessary by doctoring screen prints.  Their purpose is to deflect attention from things like Israel’s deportation of 40,000 Black African refugees or the comments this week by Israel’s Chief Rabbi that Black people are monkeys.  Their outrage over racism is entirely selective.

It's in Israel that you get the real White Supremacist racism and bigotry - Ferris, Matthews and Mahabdi's purpose is to distract from the real racism

Alan’s case

Alan was asked, during the course of his investigation, a series of questions about the posts, mainly - whether he thinks that “some people might find them offensive and/or anti-semitic” His answers are below.  Questions asked of him are in bold.

1.   

      I don’t doubt that you are able to appreciate that in a broad party like Labour anything is likely to cause offence to others who chose to take a different view.

    Personally I find it offensive that doctored Facebook posts with my name on them were handed out to everyone at a recent LCF meeting by the regional colleague who introduced the material with statements like, “this is definitely anti-semitic”, before any serious analysis of the evidence had taken place.

    I am a lifelong anti-racist and opposes all forms of racism, including anti-semitism, and I draw a sharp distinction between anti-semitism and anti-zionism, the latter which as an internationalist I support.

    I am concerned that the party appears to have started this investigation without identifying any objective anti-semitic content.

    Baroness Chakrabarti in her Report of June 2016 wrote, regarding the Party’s complaints procedure that:“It is also important that the procedures explain that those in respect of whom allegations have been made are clearly informed of the allegation(s) made against them, their factual basis and the identity of the complainant”. This has not happened.

    I am entitled to see the exact allegations that have been made, the name of his accuser, when and in what context they were made.

    The articles were not posted with intent to offend anybody. Rather they were reposted to friends, (not the public), to encourage discussion and debate as I have done with many other posts on a wide range of subjects.

    Articles were reposted inspired by the idea of Machloket (Torah Debate), and in the same spirit. Because I post articles does not mean I agree with them.

    I am now aware that I should restrict posting on FB to party political matters only – something I have become aware of since becoming actively involved in the Labour party. I am sorry for any offence that may have unintentionally been caused.

    I am also aware that my Facebook account has been hacked so that posts intended for friends only have been seen by the public and this has been done with deliberate intent to find materials with which to discredit my  membership.

   The same intent was apparent when the doctored facebook posts were leaked to the local press after the LCF meeting on 9^th November from inside the Labour party which would not only discredit me but also the Labour party itself.

Other Points to support Alan’s case

    A.    Question - Do you think these posts are offensive to some people or could be seen as anti-semitic?

Shami Chakrabarti's point was that "even offensive language on its own is only antisemitic if it is coupled with antisemitic intent ".

     The sharing of posts in itself does not show an anti-Semitic intent. It may be upsetting or offensive to some, in varying degrees. It is possible to disagree with the content of these posts.  Posting something by itself cannot be an action deserving sanction.

     In any event the people who hacked into his account were clearly looking for something to be offended by.

 Noone can be in control of the offence that others take. The party asked him to speculate on the inner feelings of others and he was in no position to comment on that. In any event, giving offence is the essence of free speech.  If no one was offended then all speech would be anodyne.  Offence itself is not and should not be a disciplinary offence.

 A Recent email from Alex Hall . secretary of LCF, 1^stDecember gave information about the use of social media as a Labour Member and “Tom Watson’s code of conduct”. This information had not been sent to members at any point  - and now this information was being distributed to candidates.  How can a member be held responsible under these rules if they have not been given them?

 There must be no more Labour Party kangaroo courts. The Labour Party should adopt Trade Union best practice on discipline of members. Natural justice: not procedural unfairness based on prejudice. Moshé Machover must be the last to suffer this injustice. (recently  summarily expelled and then re-instated)

“The  issue of weaponisation and false and malicious accusations of anti-Semitism which are hurled at those who dare to speak against the Zionist project of colonisation and its Israeli settler colonial state needs to be addressed and this vicious weapon thrown on the scrap-heap” as happened in the case of Moshe Machover  December 2017

1.      At the LCF meeting of 9^thNovember 2017

2.      Procedural rules appear to have been broken as the screenshot facebook posts from Alan were taken out of context, doctored and then presented to attendees as “evidence” before any investigation had taken place or defence given.

3.      Teddy Ryan, the Labour Party Regional Representative, produced confidential papers relating to Alan Bull that he had photocopied which he handed round the meeting. These were supposed to assist the delegates with their decision on ratification of Mr Bull as candidate for Stanground South.

4.      Teddy Ryan, also made several judgements on what he saw in front of him as “evidence of anti-Semitism”, even though the investigation in the case had not been concluded.  Some of the evidence presented to members of the LCF included “doctored” facebook posts which were intended to be prejudicial.

5.      It should not be necessary to point out that opposition to the Zionism or the Israeli government has no relation whatsoever to anti-Semitism, just as opposition to the British government has no relation to anti-British sentiment. Clearly Ryan believes anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are one and the same.

6.      Under the new rules for investigations, accusations against a member must be assessed by the investigating officer before it is progressed or used in any way. That assessment and initial investigation had not taken place? It was therefore entirely inappropriate for the accusations of anti-semitism to have been spread around in the manner that it was during the meeting by the Labour Party Regional Officer Teddy Ryan.

7.      The subjective issue of evidence “bringing the labour party into disrepute” should be balanced against the very strong likelihood that a fellow member of the Labour Party actively  trawled the Alan Bull’s Facebook to find posts which would discredit him as a candidate. This action, and the fact that the posts were presented in a distorted and manipulated manner, could equally be seen as bringing the party into disrepute.  Nothing in the behaviour of Alan Bull, a hard working activist, has been brought into question before this time.

8.    The above allegations are particularly disturbing since the Labour Party in Peterborough is on the verge of making a major breakthrough in Council elections and it would appear that one or more people are seeking to prevent that.