Guardian Prints Jewish Anti-Zionist Letter - Those Behind the False Anti-Semitism Campaign SUPPORTED the 2014 Immigration Act that led to the Windrush Scandal

August 8, 2018, 2:53 pm

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≪ Previous: Picket of the BBC– End the Bias Against Jeremy Corbyn – If You’re Concerned About ‘Anti-Semitism’ Stop Giving a Platform to Tommy Robinson’s Fascist Supporters

Jews are NOT an oppressed minority – Jews do not fear being deported

The printed version

The Internet version

Pete Willsman - dumped on by Lansman - Once again Momentum's dictator is allowed to get away with scabbing attacks on socialists

A letterfrom 15 Jewish people to the Guardian was printed today. The Internet version was uncut whereas the printed version omitted the part relating to Tom Watson and the support of the Labour Right for the Tories racist 2014 Immigration Act. An Act which led directly to the Windrush scandal. The Internet Version also contained all 15 names whereas the printed version had only 11 names.

It is noticeable that those who are so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party were the same racist scum – Chuka Ummuna, Wes Streeting, John Mann, Louise Ellman et al. – who supportedthe 2014 Immigration Act which introduced the ‘hostile environment policy’ which led to the Windrush Scandal wherein at least 70 Black citizens of this country were deported.

The Zionist dictator who heads up Momentum

Jews are WHITE and PRIVILEGED in this society. They do notexperience anything other than a marginal prejudice despite the attempts of the Zionist Community Security Trust to talk up anti-Semitic attacks.

The letter is a welcome antidote to the nonsense that we hear everyday about the false anti-Semitism narrative. When they go on about ‘fake news’ has there ever been a better example of it than the media’s Orwellian lie of Labour anti-Semitism? The tragedy is that Corbyn, at the behest of his malevolent familiar, Jon Lansman, has bought into this nonsense.

I also understand, speaking of Zionist scum that Lansman only managed to remove Pete Willsman from the JC9 slate by a vote of 4-3 of the Momentum officer’s group. The rest of Lansman’s National Co-ordinating Group weren’t even consulted! That is where the democracy of Momentum has ended up. The majority of the JC9 candidates however continue to support Willsman.

Tony Greenstein

↧

Nick Lowles and Hope not Hate Join the Zionist attack on Jeremy Corbyn

August 9, 2018, 8:47 pm

≫ Next: What Kind of Democracy Sentences a Poet to 5 months in Gaol for having written a poem?

≪ Previous: Guardian Prints Jewish Anti-Zionist Letter - Those Behind the False Anti-Semitism Campaign SUPPORTED the 2014 Immigration Act that led to the Windrush Scandal

**Anti-racists and Anti-fascists should cut their links with Hate not Hope - You can’t fight fascism with racism**

Lowles condemns Corbyn's decision to chair a meeting involving an anti-Zionist Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, Hajo Meyer. Talking about Israel's constant misuse of the Holocaust is 'quite terrible.'

It’s a very simple argument. Israel is an apartheid state. If you support the world's only apartheid state then you are no anti-fascist. You can’t oppose the Islamaphobic far-Right whilst supporting the Zionist attack on Corbyn. Israel today is rightly seen by the fascist Right as an Islamaphobic state. Yet HnH is attempting to insert itself into Labour’s debate on ‘anti-Semitism’ and on the wrong side.

Nick Lowles of Hope not Hate

In his article Labour and antisemitism: the way back from this new low Nick Lowles of Hope not Hate comes down on the side of the Labour Right, Tom Watson et al, who want Labour to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism which will render all meaningful criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

Nick Lowles playing down the impact of Bannon, who is pursuing Trump's agenda which is seeing a breakup in the European Union

The wilful blindness of Hope not Hate’s Nick Lowles beggars belief. The main forces behind the far-Right in the UK and Europe are also the most ardent supporters of Israel. Steve Bannon, the anti-Semitic Christian Zionist and former Trump adviser; Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazifounder of America’s alt-Right, Geert Wilders, the Dutch fascist and Tommy Robinson.

Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies addressing a Zionist rally which includes Robert de Jonge at hte front in a yellow starred teacher.

I have written a number of investigatory articles on the Zionist supporters of Tommy Robinson. The Zionist Establishment in this country is not prepared to disown people like Jonathan Hoffman who keep company with Britain’s fascists and neo-Nazis. Jonathan Arkush, the past President of the Board of Deputies who spearheaded the campaign against Corbyn, was more than willing to address meetings that included these fascists.

Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right describes himself as a White Zionist for good reason. Israel is the model racial nationalist state for Generation Identity. A state which is based on the supremacy of only the Jewish section of its citizens. A state which is currently trying to expel 40,000 African refugees because they are the wrong colour and ethnicity, all with the supportof the Israeli Labour Party. Israel is, as the debate over the Jewish Nation State Law demonstrated, an apartheid society. It is a state based not merely on its Jewish citizens but Jews everywhere. Palestinians who live in Israel have no such rights.

What is terrible is the way the Zionist press sings in unison

In his article Labour and antisemitism: the way back from this new low Lowles says that the question is not whether there is anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, but the ‘perception’ of an existentialist threat. So when the Zionist press go around stirring up peoples’ fears, we have to treat those fears as if they have some basis in reality?

The fact that Corbyn has been bullied into apologising for something that doesn’t exist proves nothing other than that you can coerce people into saying virtually anything. The Moscow Trials proved that innocent people confess to things they haven’t done all the time.

Lowles support for removing veteran left winger Pete Willsman from the NEC lines him up with the Right of the Labour Party

If the Zionist press believe that Corbyn’s long record of support for the Palestinians constitutes an ‘existentialist threat’ then ‘existential’ has lost all meaning. Lowles repeats the Zionist mantra that ‘Some people are talking about leaving the country if Labour wins a General Election.’ This is the kind of blackmail that was used in Nicaragua and Venezuela when people like Hugo Chavez were elected. In Latin America under Reagan, many in the small and privileged Jewish communities left and this was used by Reagan and Bush as proof of ‘anti-Semitism’ whereas if it is proof of anything it is that the political and economic interests of many Jews no longer coincide with the poor and oppressed. Zionism consistently encourages Jews to go to Israel and the fake antisemitism moral panic provides an ideal opportunity.

Gerry Gable, the arch-Zionist and Jewish racist who is editor of Searchlight

In a racist sop to identity politics Lowles says he doesn’t feel it is his right ‘as a non-Jew to deny the right of my Jewish friends to feel as they do.’ No one is denying anyone the right to ‘feel as they do.’ What I object to is the smearing of people who are appalled at Israel’s human right record with the label ‘anti-Semite.’

Ahed Tamimi, gaoled by a military court for 8 months has emerged as the Palestinians' hero - Lowles professes himself shocked at her sentence but doesn't ask why a 17 year old Palestinian girl is gaoled for 8 months for slapping a soldier and a soldier, Elor Azaria, who murdered a wounded Palestinian who was unconscious, is given 9 months

I don’t of course know who Lowles pro-Jewish friends are. Clearly they aren’t anti-Zionist Jews or even members of Jewdas. They are the same rich, privileged White Jews who see Corbyn as a threat and are threatening to leave.

Lowles continues the same trite point that the Freedlands of this world make, namely that Labour ‘cannot put itself in the position of saying that it understands antisemitism better than those who suffer it.’ The problem is that Jews don’t ‘suffer’ anti-Semitism today. That is why we have a bogus campaign utilising false anti-semitism.

Racism however isn’t a matter of perception or intuition, but a question of practice. Who is it who ‘suffers’ anti-Semitism today? What we are really talking about is bogus, fictitious anti-Semitism!

When Jews really did experience anti-Semitism before World War I, it was because people like the Zionists’ friend Lord Balfour wanted to keep them out and the British Brothers League in between attacking them complained they wouldn’t mix with them.

As we wrote in our letter to the Guardian, Jews today don’t suffer from immigration controls. There is no Jewish Windrush. There are no Jewish deaths in police custody and Jews are not the subject of violence or economic discrimination. Anti-Semitism today is a matter of prejudice not state racism. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is a phantom conjured up whenever Israel is on the agenda and that is what the IHRA is about.

The problem with some people who believe they are still on the Left is that they hide their stupidity beneath what they think are profound insights. Thus Lowles tells us that ‘For most of the last century the Labour Party was the natural political home of British Jews.’ The person who was most knowledgeable about the Jewish working class in the East End was the historian, William Fishman who told how on 26 January 1894 between five and six hundred Jewish unemployed invaded the Great Synagogue in Duke’s Place, in protest at remarks on unemployment which the Chief Rabbi had made. One hundred Police with truncheons drawn were called to evict them. [East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914, p.205]

Today a letterfrom 69 rabbis is seen as some kind of proof of anti-Semitism. When the Jewish working class fought for better wages and conditions, the last people they turned to were rabbis or Zionists.

When I was young, in the 1950’s and 1960’s, there were queues round the block for Blooms, the kosher restaurant in Whitechapel in London’s East End. Today the restaurant is gone because the Jews have gone. They have moved to Golders Green and the London suburbs. They have become wealthier and more conservative. There are relatively few Jewish trade union activists, certainly not in manual unions. To pretend that Labour’s position on Israel (which is what the anti-Semitism allegations amount to) is responsible for Jewish estrangement from Labour is either a product of ignorance, dishonesty or both.

Thirty five years ago, in The Jewish Community in British Politics, [Clarendon Press, 1983] Jewish Chronicle columnist and academic Dr Geoffrey Alderman demonstrated that the Jewish community had lurched to the Right. Those who think we are witnessing something new should read the chapter Return to the Right. Alderman described the by-election in Finchley North in 1978. It had a large Jewish electorate. Sir Keith Joseph, Thatcher’s mentor made an openly racist appeal for Jewish support by attacking the immigration of Black and Asian people. The Tories gained Ilford North with a swing of 6.9% ‘but among Jewish voters there the swing to the Conservatives was a massive 11.2%.’ (p.149) In other words Jews were even more hostile to immigration than others in the White community.

The move of Jews to the right occurred long before Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party. Perhaps Lowles has forgotten the attacks on Ed Milband? The Times of Israel published Ed Miliband has a very Jewish problem in August 2014 and 8 months later the Spectator led with How Ed Miliband lost the Jewish vote. We even had the Guardian’s Maureen Lipman drops long-standing support for Labour party in October 2014, a trick she managed to repeat recently! and YNet, the online site for Israel’s largest paid newspaper, Yediot Aharanot led with British Jews turn away from Ed Miliband's Labour Party, the subheadline of which was ‘New poll also shows dramatic drop in support for Labour, after Jewish leader's comments on Israel, support for Palestinian statehood vote.’

All this talk of a ‘Jewish vote’ is itself anti-Semitic. Jews don’t vote as Jews but as British people who happen to be Jewish. Israel comes fairly low down on the list of their concerns. In 2015 Yachad, a liberal Zionist group commissioned a survey The Attitudes of British Jews Towards Israel. The percentage of those identifying as Zionists (59%) had dropped 12% since a previous study five years before.

The whole Jewish community is barely 300,000. It is doubtful if more than 100,000 Jews vote. Compared to the number of Muslims, these numbers are trivial. Why then the concern about the voting habits of Jews? Because Jews are being used by the political establishment to justify Britain’s relationship with Israel.

Even if every Jew in Britain based their identity around Israel, it would still not be anti-Semitic to oppose Israel as a racist state and Zionism as a racist ideology. Criticism of religious or philosophical beliefs are never racist unless that criticism is a substitute for an attack on the people who hold those beliefs.

Just suppose that a majority of British Africans supported FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) it would not be racist to oppose FGM. Likewise criticism of the Niqab is not anti-Islamic. However, as Boris Johnson showed, if you attack the people who hold such beliefs, whilst pretending that you are only engaged in innocent banter then yes you are racist.

British Jews were moving to the Right well before Corbyn was even in Parliament. The Jewish Labour Movement 92-4% vote for Owen Smith two years ago speaks volumes. The JLM are the racist representatives of the racist Israeli Labour Party. They are affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation, whose Land Settlement Division funds and plans Jewish settlement in the West Bank, despite the purported two state position of the JLM.

Lowles argues that Labour should adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism because it is ‘the internationally recognised definition of antisemitism and... fully allows criticism of the policies and actions of the Israeli government.’ This is a double lie. The IHRA states that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.’ In other words since Israel is not like any other country any anti-Zionist criticism is automatically rendered as potentially anti-Semitic.

The IHRA has already been used to stifle criticism of Israel as an apartheid state. Hugh Tomlinson QC and Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge, have both warned that the IHRA has the potential to ‘chill’ free speech but Nick Lowles knows better.

Even the author of the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, in testimonyto the House of Representatives in November 2017 warned that:

The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus. In fact, at a conference in 2010 about the impact of the definition, I highlighted this misuse, and the damage it could do.

Stern spoke about how the IHRA was ‘was being employed in an attempt to restrict academic freedom and punish political speech’. For Lowles to claim otherwise means he is either a knave or a fool, or most likely both.

Nor is the IHRA‘the internationally recognised definition of anti-Semitism’. It is in its own words a ‘working definition’, the old EUMC Working Definition on Anti-Semitism which the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency junked around 2011. It has been swallowed whole by the IHRA and relaunched as a diplomatic protocol agreed between the leaders of 31 states, including the anti-Semitic governments of Poland and Hungary.

The IHRA’s whole purpose is to prevent criticism of Zionism, the ideology of the Israeli state and its racist colonial foundations. Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, of which there are many, are perfectly valid and not in any way anti-semitic. The IHRA's purpose is to negate all but the most anodyne criticism of Israel in particular questions such as why it behaves as it does..

Lowles calls for the dropping of disciplinary action against the Margaret Hodge whilst referring to Ken Livingstone’s ‘repeated anti-Jewish slurs’. No examples to back up this lie are given.

Searchlight's Zionism and racism led to a major estrangement between the magazine and many of its ethnic minority readers

Hope not Hate was formed in 2004. In 2011 it split from Searchlight anti-fascist magazine in an unseemly battle about money and resources. Despite this some of us had high hopes that the Searchlight era of duplicity and trading information with the secret state were over. Over the years Searchlight had become more and more distrusted by anti-fascists because of the way its editor Gerry Gable operated. See The Death Agony of Searchlight Anti-Fascist Magazine

Maurice Ludmer - the founding editor of Searchlight

Searchlight was founded by Maurice Ludmer in February 1975. Ludmer came from the labour movement and was President of Birmingham Trades Council. His anti-fascist work was part of his anti-racist work with people like the Indian Workers Association. He was first and foremost a socialist and a communist unlike his successors Gerry Gable and Nick Lowles. Unfortunately Gable and Lowles forgot what Ludmer had once said:

‘‘If every organisation in Britain that can be defined as fascist were to go out of existence tomorrow, we would still have a profound and deep-rooted problem of racism in our society. The truth of the matter is that there is no need to import racist ideas via pro-Nazi organisations; racialism in Britain is based on our own history of 350 years of colonialism. National Front activists have not introduced racialism but rather used and exploited what already exists in abundance.'

Mark Hosenball, American journalist who was deported from Britain for exposing GCHQ - Gable did his best to undermine support for the campaign

Ludmer’s successor Gerry Gable saw Searchlight as a bourgeois anti-fascist journal which obtained information on fascists through trading information about the left with the secret state (MI5/SB) and Israeli intelligence. One such example was the Gable Memo randumsent to his boss Barry Cox at London Weekend Television in which Gable tried to discredit Mark Hosenball, a journalist, and Phil Agee, a former CIA agent. The Labour Government at the time, under Home Secretary Merlyn Rees were trying to deport Agee and Hosenball. In the memo Gable refers to his Intelligence sources as ‘Left Watchers’ by which he means MI5. He is clearly trying to lobby LWT not to treat the trial known then as the ABC trial sympathetically. In other words Gable was acting as an MI5 agent. He wrote:

Phil Agee - CIA Caseworker who exposed the role that the CIA played in South American countries

The arrest of Campbell/Berry and Aubrey has caused a civil rights row, but according to my top level security service sources, they inform me in the strictest confidence that for about four years Campbell, Berry and Kelly and others have been systematically gathering top level security material. Campbell, who claims to have only an interest in technological matters in as far as the state is involved, had done four years detailed research into the whole structure of the other side of not only our Intelligence services but those of other NATO countries.

Searchlight since the death of Maurice Ludmer has been openly Zionist. Not only was Searchlight trading information with MI5/Special Branch but it was actively trying to split and destabilise the anti-fascist movement. At the 1985 Conference of Anti-Fascist Action in Birmingham the main debate occurred over allegations by Searchlight that the Class War Anarchist group were in an alliance with the National Front and fascists. There was no proof that this was true and none was ever forthcoming but coming from what had, until then, been a well respected anti-fascist journal, respected because of the work of Ludmer, the allegations had to be treated seriously.

At this conference, at which I was elected onto the Executive of AFA, a decision was narrowly taken to suspend Class War from membership of AFA until an Inquiry looked into the allegations. Amazingly Searchlight was unable to supply any evidence whatsoever to back up its allegations. A fellow member of AFA’s Executive, Unmesh Desai (now a right-wing councillor on the Greater London Authority) confirmed this to me. As the AFA Report into Searchlight Allegations Against Class War concluded:

‘Despite the leading role of SEARCHLIGHT Magazine in the affair, and despite many approaches to the magazine for evidence, the sum total of material from Searchlight was nil. We are bemused by Searchlight’s role in this affair.’

Smeeth is one of the most detestable of Labour MPs, quite an achievement in a group which has its fair share of villains

See also my own article for the Newsletter of Palestine Solidarity Campaign Undermining Anti-Fascists, Defending Zionism. Despite the appointment of Ruth Smeeth as Deputy Director in 2010, she later became a right-wing Zionist Labour MP in 2015, we had high hopes that HnH would not follow the Searchlight path. It produced the very useful Counter-Jihad Report. In an article Hope Not Hate refuses to be bullied, which was an article criticising Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazz musician, Lowles rebutted claims that his attack on Atzmon, an ex-Israeli jazz musician who portrayed himself as a Palestinian supporter were motivated by wider sympathies for Israel:

Let’s put aside the Israel/Palestine question (after all I have never once vocalised my opinion on this subject though my detractors are quick to accuse me of being part of a co-ordinated Zionist conspiracy) and let’s look at what Gilad Atzmon actually says

It is extremely unfortunate that HnH and Nick Lowles have gone back on this promise and followed Searchlight down the road to a reactionary ‘anti-fascism’ which ends up supporting the very system that produces fascism. HnH’s attackson Jackie Walker have been equally as disgusting.

We can only suggest that Nick Lowles and his followers take to heart the advice of Maurice Ludmer above.

Tony Greenstein

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What Kind of Democracy Sentences a Poet to 5 months in Gaol for having written a poem?

August 10, 2018, 4:13 pm

≫ Next: Support the JC8 for Labour's NEC - Why I Cannot Support Jon Lansman

≪ Previous: Nick Lowles and Hope not Hate Join the Zionist attack on Jeremy Corbyn

When it comes to Facebook ‘incitement,’ only Palestinians are arrested, never Israeli Jews

Calling for ‘Death to the Arabs’ is not a crime it is Zionist morality – but calls for ‘resistance’ are ‘incitement’

I have posted a number of articles about the case of Dareen Tatour [What kind of state gaols its poets? The Israeli state (if they're not Jewish)

Last May Dareen was convicted of 'incitement' and supporting a 'terrorist organisation'. On 31^st July Nazareth Magistrates Court sentenced her to 5 months in prison, 3 of which she has already served, in addition to a suspended sentence of 6 months in prison. Her offence? Writing a poem that talked of 'resistance'. Palestinian Israelis are not supposed to resist their oppressors and thus resistance is a crime.

This decision has been widely condemned in Israel and world wide. PEN International stated that ‘Tatour has been targeted for peacefully exercising her right to free expression through poetry and activism.’ PEN International President Jennifer Clement declaredthat:

"Today PEN International stands with Dareen Tatour, as we have for the past torturous years of jail time, trials and house arrest, and defends freedom of expression and asks for her freedom. We stand with Tatour’s own words: poetry is not a crime".

Dareen posted the poem ‘Resist, My People, Resist Them’on Facebook in 2015 (see below). This led straight to gaol and then a severely restricted house arrest (no Internet) for three years.

Many Israeli writers and academics have supported Dareen, including A B Yehoshua, one of Israel’s most famous novelists. However the security state triumphs over all such as these. As Dareen explained:

“I expected prison, and unfortunately there is prison, there is nothing surprising. This is an Israeli court and there is no justice in an Israeli court when the accused is Palestinian.”

Israel is a democracy, to a limited extent, for Jews but when it comes to Arabs Israel is a Jewish police state.

Israelis who changed their Facebook profile names to include the words “Death to Arabs.” - none of them have been prosecuted

There is one law for Israeli Palestinians and another for Israeli Jews. No amount of incitement by Israelis is punished. People who change their Facebook name to ‘Death to the Arabs’ suffer no penalty but an Arab who talks of ‘resistance’is under immediate threat of arrest and imprisonment.

Those liars and hypocrites in Britain who provide cover for Dareen’s gaolers, like Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry and Margaret Hodge, those who call Israel a ‘democracy’, are worse than the worst Zionist because they provide the legitimacy that Israel’s common and garden racists cannot muster. They provide the veneer of respectability that the purveyors of apartheid can never hope to match. They lend the stamp of approval to those who cry ‘death to the Arabs’ and who proclaim that their morality is one of racism. It is the Emily Thornberries of this world who place a seal of approval on Israeli racism. People like Thornberry, Hodge, Kyle and Ryan are worse than any Israeli racist.

Jon Lansman, the Momentum owner-dictator went to Tel Aviv recently in order to persuade people that Labour is tackling its non-existent’ ‘anti-Semitism’. It is like a White person going, during the heyday of Apartheid, to South Africa in order to assure the Afrikaaners that opponents of Apartheid, who were really anti-White racists were also being disciplined. That is why someone like Jon Lansman is worse than the worst Israeli racist.

When 2 young girls take a selfie telling you that hatred of Arabs is not racism but morality, then what they are describing is the morality of Zionism. Lansman tells us that Zionism is a ‘take your pick’ ideology. It can be anything that the oppressor wants it to be – it can be socialist to the faux socialists of the Jewish Labour Movement and it can be the rationale for the proud racists of Habayit HaYehudi/Jewish Home when they legislate for Jewish only towns.

What Lansman and his fellow racists in the Labour Party forget is that the decision as to what Zionism represents is not in the gift of the colonialist and his friends in Britain but the Palestinian who is faced with the reality of Zionism. When Jewish mobs demonstrate in Afula against the selling of a house to an Arab in a Jewish city, that is Zionism. When the World Zionist Organisation funds the expansion of settlements that is Zionism. When marchers chant ‘death to the Arabs’ that too is Zionism.

Hovav-incitement

The only disagreement I have with Daniella’s article is where she says that being Jewish is just a religion. In Israel it is also a nationality or ethnicity albeit a nationalism of the oppressor, which is why the fate of Israelis is to merge with the Palestinians and become a Hebrew part thereof.

Tony Greenstein

Resist, My People, Resist Them

Resist, my people, resist them.

In Jerusalem, I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrows

And carried the soul in my palm

For an Arab Palestine.

I will not succumb to the “peaceful solution,”

Never lower my flags

Until I evict them from my land.

I cast them aside for a coming time.

Resist, my people, resist them.

Resist the settler’s robbery

And follow the caravan of martyrs.

Shred the disgraceful constitution

Which imposed degradation and humiliation

And deterred us from restoring justice.

They burned blameless children;

As for Hadil, they sniped her in public,

Killed her in broad daylight.

Resist, my people, resist them.

Resist the colonialist’s onslaught.

Pay no mind to his agents among us

Who chain us with the peaceful illusion.

Do not fear doubtful tongues;

The truth in your heart is stronger,

As long as you resist in a land

That has lived through raids and victory.

So Ali called from his grave:

Resist, my rebellious people.

Write me as prose on the agarwood;

My remains have you as a response.

Resist, my people, resist them.

Tatour is also a photographer and directed a short documentary, according to Electronic Intifada.

You can follow Dareen’s case on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FreeDareenTatour/

Tariq al Haydar’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, Down & Out, Crab Orchard Review, The Cafe Irreal, The Los Angeles Review and others.

“A morning with lots of energy to slaughter Arabs!!!!” (Photo: Facebook)

When it comes to Facebook ‘incitement,’ only Palestinians are arrested, not Jewish Israelis

Danielle Alma Ravitzki on May 23, 2018

When I first heard of Dareen Tatour’s story, I had this terrible feeling deep inside. I am a musician myself, I know what it is like to express oneself through art. I imagined myself in her place, being arrested and persecuted for my art. Dareen is a Palestinian poet placed under house arrest since 2015, indicted for incitement to violence against the Israeli regime through a poem she posted on Facebook. Then it dawned on me that this could not actually happen to me, since I am a Jewish citizen of Israel, not a Palestinian. Israel has this tendency to oppress minority groups, and non-Jews specifically, through its homicidal apartheid regime. I reached out to Dareen, and we immediately connected. I met a beautiful young woman, so intelligent, so loving. We became friends immediately.

This April, after an extended legal saga of over two-and-a-half years, I joined Dareen at her final court hearing in Nazareth. Driving for hours on my way there, I had an ominous premonition. Her story is nothing but Kafkaesque, and her condemnation will most probably give rise to a wave of schadenfreude on the part of Israelis, quick to rejoice at the misfortune (and injustice) of weaker populations. When I walked into the courtroom, the judge was whispering and reciting her verdict very fast: “Dareen is convicted of incitement and support of terrorism.” She said it in such a low voice, she was asked to repeat her words louder a couple of times. Her stance was that after Dareen published her poem, there were many terrorist attacks against Israeli Jews. Yet, was the judge not deliberately ignoring the numerous attacks made towards Palestinians at that same time exactly? The verdict had a strong air of discrimination, it is unjust, and it is down- right detrimental to the freedom of speech and expression. This verdict not only silences art, it criminalizes it.

Dareen’s case attests to the blind-eye Israeli society is turning towards the Palestinian plight. For Israeli society, there is no acceptable means for Palestinian resistance that can be considered legitimate. Violence is of course illegal, boycott too is unacceptable as a form of resistance, and now, as Dareen’s case has shown the world, simple artistic expression such as writing a poem (which in itself is a non-violent way to resist oppression) can also be construed as a means of supporting terrorism. By taking away the freedom of words from Palestinians, and forbidding critical artistic expression, the Israeli regime has put Palestinians at a “dead end.” What they absorb from the Israeli belligerent apartheid regime will continue, including the occupation and daily acts of oppression, without the Palestinians having any option of uttering a single word or resisting in any way possible, violent or nonviolent, political or artistic.

Israel’s regime is apartheidistic, separating (by law) two populations in the same country. Dareen’s case is an excellent example of the discrimination between Israel’s Jewish population and its non-Jewish Arab population. Although she holds an Israeli passport, her identity is that of the indigenous people of the land, the Palestinians. But the Israeli media tags her as Arab-Israeli, disregarding her personal choice over that of the civil legal definition. It is crucial to understand that Israel’s belligerent apartheid regime is not limited to the occupied Palestinian territory. It is thriving deep within the State of Israel itself, and not only towards Palestinians, but systematic discrimination is also applied on other ethnic groups outside the white Jewish elite, such as Ethiopian Jewry, and desperate African asylum seekers tagged as infiltrators to be expelled under draconian laws. Dareen’s story cannot be discussed without delving into the very source of the problem, and that is Zionism.

Zionism originated and is still driven by the ideal of a white Jewish supremacy, upheld by a very militant, violent, masculine regime that is foremost colonialist. While it has flexed somewhat to also embrace Arab Jews (Mizrahi, or descendants of Jews from Arab countries), Zionism remains grounded on the foundations of a white supremacy (Ashkenazi, or descendants of European Jewry) who continue to shape mainstream Israeli society and culture. As for the occupation of Palestine, it began in 1881 with the first Zionist immigration to Palestine, which was not an immigration of Jews who ran away from massacres, but an immigration with a clear purpose – to Judaize Palestine, in a settler- colonialist process that aims to change the indigenous identity, culture, and population of the land with that of the colonialist’s. Dareen’s story is just an offshoot of the way Zionism comes about and realizes itself here in Israel. A quick trip down literary lane will show that canonical Hebrew Israeli poets have written much worse verses against Arabs.

In my search for an answer to this madness, for an act I could do to support my friend Dareen and express my profound opposition to what had transpired, I decided to launch a mini-campaign on Facebook showing how Zionism works. I want to expose its apartheid nature by sharing with the world the wretched comments written by Israeli Jews (in Hebrew) against Palestinians. Through this campaign, I will reveal that, unlike Dareen, Israelis who explicitly call for the slaughter and murder of Arabs and Palestinians are never arrested, let alone tried. Who is the real victim here? And was Dareen’s poem not written by the hand of one that has been victimized?

My campaign shows that Israelis openly call for “Death to Arabs,” even adding this malicious racist phrase to their Facebook profile name. These Israeli Jews will not be placed under house arrest for three years, or convicted of incitement.

Or this person, Yossi Hemed, who wrote “A morning with lots of energy to slaughter Arabs!!!!” This Israeli Jew will not be placed under house arrest for three years, or convicted of incitement.

Or this ex-IDF soldier, Eden Levi, who posted the following on Facebook in 2015, where on her hand and on a note it says: “It is not racism to hate Arabs, it is values!” This Israeli Jew will not be placed under house arrest for three years, or convicted of incitement.

Moreover, if we look closely at how things evolve, and try to validate the connection between social media and terrorist acts as the Judge in Dareen’s case had done, we can see that 24 hours before the 2014 murder in Jerusalem of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the Israeli Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked posted a very inciting post on her Facebook page, encouraging people to perpetrate violence and terror against others (as is also apparent by the comments made by Jewish Israelis to her post).

Ayelet Shaked posts to Facebook 24 hours before the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdier.

Jewish MK Bezalel Smotrich incited against Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi this year. This Israeli Jew will not be placed under house arrest for three years, or convicted of incitement.

Bezalel Smotrich posts to Facebook.

These Israeli Jews also incited against Palestinians. They will not be placed under house arrest for three years, or convicted of incitement.

“We need to burn them alive,” posts made by Israelis calling for violence against Palestinians on social media.

Israeli posts violent threats to Facebook. “I am in the extreme right and proud of it !!!!” Nor will these Israeli Jews be placed under house arrest for three years, or convicted of incitement.

Another important thing to note, on which Dareen’s story can also shed light, is the use of the word Arab in conjunction with the word Jew. This is both wrong and misleading, as these two words are not similar forms of identity to be compared. Judaism is a religion, while Arab is an ethnical identity. There are Arab Jews, as well as Arab Christians. In fact, I am half Arabic myself. One of my parents is originally from Iraq. Yet, Zionism cynically uses these two unrelated terms in close connection so often, it has blurred our common sense while propelling forward a general (however misled) notion of a legitimate Jewish identity that infringes on that of the Arab’s, just to justify its imperialistic and supremacist ideology. And the media collaborates, blurring this distinction in its hidden support of the Zionist ideology, to the point now that a religious identity seems to be the same as an ethnic one. This grounds the basic idea that drives Zionism, which calls Jews to create and lead a state that is both Jewish and democratic at the same time. But Israel cannot be democratic by definition, not as long as it is Zionist, or Jewish, because no religious country can be democratic. Israel is not a democratic country and never has been.

I believe Dareen’s story should be a lesson for us all – Can we imagine ourselves being jailed for speaking our mind? Can we imagine ourselves being detained for art? What a dangerous, foul place we live in, if people, especially marginalized populations, are oppressed for resisting with words. Dareen described her poetry as being her key to freedom, living under an apartheid regime that trials two populations differently, with roads meant for Jews only. Dareen’s story speaks volumes about giving a voice to those who need it most, and it will be a milestone towards ending apartheid and injustice in Israel/Palestine.

'Sad Day for Democracy': Israeli Writers Outraged at Conviction of Palestinian Poet Dareen Tatour

'What’s more surprising is that there are still people in Israel who expect a fair trial for Palestinians ... as if Israel were still a democracy'

May 06, 2018 9:15 PM

Poet Dareen Tatour at the Nazareth Magistrate's Court on May 3, 2018 Gil Eliahu

Israeli literary figures lambasted Thursday’s conviction of Arab poet Dareen Tatour on charges of incitement to violence and support for a terrorist organization.

The Nazareth Magistrate’s Court convicted Tatour, 36, on account of three posts published on social media, including a poem titled, “Resist, my people, resist them.”According to a translation of the Arabic-language poem that appeared in the indictment, it included the lines, “I won’t agree to a peaceful solution / I’ll never lower my flag / until I remove them from my homeland.”

Tatour, an Israeli Arab who lives in Reineh, near Nazareth in the country’s north, said after the verdict that she didn’t regret anything and planned to appeal the ruling.

“I wasn’t surprised by the verdict, given everything that’s been happening here,” said Ilana Hammerman, an editor, translator and writer. “The Israeli justice system has been taking this attitude for many years already. What’s more surprising is that there are still people in Israel who expect a fair trial for Palestinians and opponents of Israeli policy ... as if Israel were still a democracy. Anyone who’s surprised is someone who’s sitting with his eyes closed. This is the general direction in which Israel is heading.”

“It’s impossible to know whether this government attributes such importance to poetic imagery that it pounces like this on a Palestinian poet, or whether its compete lack of understanding of poetry causes it to treat every word like a drawn knife,” said author A.B. Yehoshua, an Israel Prize laureate. “The time has come for judges to read more Hebrew poetry throughout the generations and see the imagery and language it contains.”

Nissim Calderon, a Hebrew literature professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev who served as a witness in the trial, said,

“The verdict is a blow to one of the deepest traditions of Hebrew poetry – the poet’s freedom from being put on trial over his words. This was upheld under British rule toward Hebrew poets who called for the use of violence, and it’s of value to Israelis themselves even before being an obligation toward the occupied Palestinians. What begins by undermining the freedom of a Palestinian poet will surely continue by undermining the freedom of Israeli poets.”

Navit Barel, a poet and editor, said, “This isn’t an issue related to literary taste or editorial choice. It’s an issue of freedom and justice. This is a sad and frightening day for Israeli democracy. The court was asked to rule on the interpretation of a poem in a language the judge doesn’t read, and it decided this poem was dangerous.”

Barel noted that she has heard demonstrators at a protest shouting, “Rabin is looking for a friend” – a reference to assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin – at the army’s chief of staff. “Which of them was sentenced as an inciter?” she asked, adding, “I’ve heard a Hebrew refrain on the radio in which a singer sang that leftists are killing their brothers, handing them over to foreigners. The law clearly laid down rules on the question of what constitutes incitement. Would an Israeli Jew who said or wrote much worse things than the poem in question be brought to trial?”

Tatour was arrested in October 2015, when Palestinians were carrying out stabbing attacks against Jews almost daily. The indictment accused her of publishing posts on Facebook and YouTube “which contained calls to commit acts of violence or terror and for praising and identifying with acts of violence or terrorism.”

One video clip she posted showed masked men throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli security forces with a voiceover of her reading her poem. By the time the indictment was filed, the prosecution said, the clip had been watched more than 200 times and received several favorable responses.

“The content, its exposure and the circumstances of its publication created a real possibility that acts of violence or terrorism will be committed,” the indictment said.

Aside from the “Resist” poem, Tatour was charged over two other posts. In one, she wrote, “Allah Akbar and praise God, Islamic Jihad has decreed a continuation of the intifada throughout the West Bank and its expansion to all of Palestine. We must begin within the Green Line,” meaning inside Israel. That post received 35 likes.

The second post contained a picture of Asra’a Abed, a Nazareth resident who was shot and wounded after pulling out a knife in Afula’s central bus station, along with the caption “I’m the next martyr.”

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Support the JC8 for Labour's NEC - Why I Cannot Support Jon Lansman

August 11, 2018, 1:43 pm

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A Vote for Jon Lansman is a Vote for the Right

The time has come to remove this man to prevent him doing more damage to Corbyn and the Left

Although I do not have a vote in Labour’s NEC elections, as a well known blogger I have been asked numerous times who I would recommend that people should vote for in the elections for Labour’s NEC. My response has always been that people should vote for the full JC9 slate, Lansman included.

My doubts over the wisdom of such advice grew when Lansman, without any consultation or democratic vote, even on Momentum’s National Co-ordinating Group, removed Pete Willsman from the agreed left slate after false accusations of anti-Semitism. Willman’s ‘offence’ had been to ask for evidence of Labour ‘anti-Semitism’.

The ‘Officers Group’ of Momentum’s NCG voted 4-3 to dump Willsman. Only the ex-left Owen Jones has publicly backed Lansman. The time has come when Momentum’s dictator needs to be confronted. As Matt Wrack put it Lansman has ‘bottled it’.

Jeremy Corbyn has come under massive attack recently with Margaret Hodge’s attack on Corbyn as a ‘fucking anti-Semite and racist.’ Marc Wadsworth and me were expelled from Labour for ‘abuse’ yet Hodge is given immunity. When steps were taken to bring disciplinary proceedings against the Blessed Margaret, not only did the Right of the Labour Party protest but so did Lansman. ‘Mistake’ to discipline MP in Corbyn racism row, says Momentum founder

I don’t recall Lansman opposing disciplinary proceedings against Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth or me. On the contrary he played a large part in Jackie’s suspension, attacked Marc and followed up my expulsion with expulsion from Momentum too courtesy of a panel consisting of Sam Tarry and Caroline Turner.

Nonetheless I advised people that a vote for Lansman was preferable to seeing a creature like Luke Akehurst, who openly supported the massacre of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza, back on the NEC.

In recent days there has been an upsurge in the false antisemitism attacks on Corbyn. People like Jackie Walker, Marc and me were always collateral damage. The real target was always Corbyn even if he and McDonnell didn’t always realise it. Journalists and no doubt their researchers in the Israeli Embassy groups have been doing their best to unearth ‘evidence’ of Corbyn and McDonnell’s previous support for the Palestinians. The Jewish Chronicle and the Tory press have focussed on McDonnell’s description of Israel’s attack on Gaza as genocidal and on ‘exposing’ the link between him and the LRC in the wake of Pete Willsman’s attack on Zionist support for Trump.

Lansman has no shame about appearing on the platform of a group that has supported every Israeli war on the Palestinians and which works closely with the Israeli Embassy

The pretext for the attack on Corbyn has been Labour’s definition of anti-Semitism. It is very easy to define anti-Semitism, it takes 6 words in the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ However if you want to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism then this is obviously not sufficient. Hence why the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism is so important to the Zionists. It is 500+ words and of its 11 ‘illustrations’ of anti-Semitism, no less than 7 concern Israel.

Jennie Formby, Labour’s General Secretary drew up an Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct which contained 9 of the 11 illustrations of the IHRA. which incidentally are not part of the actual 38 word definition. The Zionists have objected vigorously because this Code of Conduct doesn’t contain all the illustrations.

The Zionists are not even trying to hide their intentions. In the words of Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, the problem is that ‘Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’

What was Lansman’s reaction? Initially in the Guardian of 12^th July, Lansman defended Labour’s Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct. Labour’s antisemitism code is the gold standard for political parties. Lansman argued that the illustration of ‘anti-Semitism’ which stated that ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.’ would prevent Palestinians’ right to criticise Israel’s racism. Lansman even criticised the Zionist organisations themselves recalling that when it came to fighting genuine anti-Semitism in the 1930’s they were absent. He wrote:

It cannot possibly be antisemitic to point out that some of the key policies of the Israeli state, observed since its founding days, have an effect that discriminates on the basis of race and ethnicity.

Lansman argued that Labour’s code was ‘essential to ensuring that people are able to make legitimate criticisms of Israel, while prohibiting comments that discriminate against Jewish people...’

Lansman went on to say that

‘If legitimate criticism of Israel were to be curbed, that would infringe on the rights of other oppressed groups, who have suffered at the hands of discriminatory Israeli state policies. The Palestinians have experienced decades of occupation, gross human rights violations, and war crimes. The Bedouins have had their homes destroyed, the latest example being the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar. And ethnic minorities within Israel have been treated appallingly, such as the Sudanese and Eritrean refugees who have been detained and deported, and questions over the treatment of Ethiopian women, including allegations they were given birth control without their consent.

I’ve just been in Israel… Those I met, Jewish as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel, spoke about racist state policies, not just in relation to the occupation and settlements, but also within Israel itself – the segregation of housing, education, employment, and systematic economic disadvantage. The Palestinian minority within Israel is as entitled as Jews in Britain to define the discrimination they have experienced as racism. Such criticisms cannot, and must not, be silenced.

Lansman concluded that:

It cannot be right that one vaguely worded subset of one IHRA example can deny other oppressed groups their right to speak about their own oppression…..

In essence Lansman rejected the idea that it is anti-Semitic to say that Israel is a racist state. He went on to make a thinly veiled attack on the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which always opposed any confrontation with fascist groups and genuine anti-Semites.

I regret that for some Jewish communal organisations, the IHRA wording is so sacrosanct… It does beg the question whether these organisations, which claim to speak for the diverse Jewish community, do speak for the 75% of British Jews who say“the expansion of settlements on the West Bank is a major obstacle to peace”, or for the 61% who, in the same survey, backed pursuing peace with the Palestinians as one of their top three priorities for Israeli government policy, the top priority of British Jews.

Lansman went on to rub salt in the wounds by drawing attention to the fact that ‘these organisations,… failed to come out against the Blackshirts marching through Cable Street’ and doubted that ‘those that welcomed the presidency of Donald Trump have the credibility to criticise a political party’s robust, thorough and far-reaching code of conduct.’ A point that was made by Pete Willsman. Yet what is the situation now? According to the latest issue of the Jewish News

‘Jon Lansman has for weeks been lobbying Labour’s leadership to adopt the international definition of anti-Semitism with all its examples. Sources close to the Momentum founder told Jewish News that he “regretted” the fact Jeremy Corbyn’s Guardian article “lacked a firm commitment” to include all 11 examples in the party’s code of conduct.’

Lansman has pointedly refused to disown this article.The justification for Lansman betrayal of Labour’s commitment to the Palestinians, despite the overwhelming support of Momentum members is that

‘Like many other leading party members close to the leadership, he recognises the necessity of agreeing that definition in order to be able to begin to rebuild trust with the Jewish community, whatever concerns we may have about the application of some examples.”

Lansman is now maneuvering to isolate Corbyn on this. It is yet another betrayal in the life of this multi-millionaire property developer who also owns Momentum. It is should also be his last betrayal. Lansman is effectively seeking to sell out the Corbyn leadership in the interests of the Israeli state. It places Lansman irrevocably on the Right and that is why he cannot be supported.

Couple this with Lansman’s appearance at a Jewish Labour Movement Rally on 2^nd September and it is clear that Lansman has sold the pass on Palestine, the most important international issue since the days of apartheid in South Africa. The JLM is the representative of the Israeli state inside the Labour Party.

Lansman is taking the side of supporters of Israeli apartheid on the grounds that they are Jewish. Even if British Jews do support Israel and do identify with Israel so what? Supposing that there had been a large body of White people in this country who had supported Apartheid in South Africa, would we have cowtowed to them? British Jews who support the Israeli state are reactionaries who should not be supported. That is not anti-Semitism it is anti-racism.

Lansman’s support for Israel is a disgusting mixture of racism, anti-Semitism and ethnocentrism. Lansman has forfeited the support of the Left and attention must now be turned to building an alternative left organisation in the Labour Party. Momentum nationally is no longer a force on which supporters of Jeremy Corbyn can rely.

The time is coming when Lansman will play the part of Brutus and wield the knife against Corbyn just as he helped in the assassination of Ken Livingstone. The ambitious Lansman, who tried to become Labour General Secretary, is now an avatar for the Right.

Tony Greenstein

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Felicia Langer RIP - Born 9th December 1930 in Poland - died 21st June 2018 in Germany

August 11, 2018, 3:09 pm

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In memory of Felicia Langer, the first lawyer to bring the occupation to court

Felicia Langer died on June 21^st this year. She was probably the first radical Israeli whose name I knew. I can remember that she was a hate figure for people in the local Jewish community as someone who was 'anti-Israel'. She was known as both an Arab lover and a communist - a deadly combination.

Below are two appreciations of the life of this wonderful woman who dedicated her life to supporting those who were the target of Zionist oppression.

Tony Greenstein

Felicia Langer was a Holocaust survivor, a communist, and one of the first Israeli lawyers to defend Palestinian residents of the occupied territories in the Israeli Supreme Court. She died in Germany.

By Michael Sfard By +972 Magazine

Published June 24, 2018

Attorney Felicia Langer in 2008. UNiesert, Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0)

Israeli human rights lawyer Felicia Langer died Thursday in Germany.

Langer was a human rights and peace activist, a communist, and one of the first attorneys to represent Palestinian residents of the occupied territories in Israeli courts. In Israel’s Supreme Court, she pioneered legal practices that today seem natural and obvious but were once considered outrageous. She was the first to challenge the expulsion of Palestinian political leaders from the West Bank, the first to challenge the army’s practice of demolishing the homes of Palestinians suspected of militant activities, the first to accuse the Shin Bet of torturing detainees, and the first to fight the practice of administrative detention.

In those days, there were very few Israeli lawyers willing to represent Palestinians. Langer — a Polish-born Jewish lawyer and Holocaust survivor who moved to Israel, joined the Communist Party, and defended Palestinians — became a hated figure among the general public. She was a Jew and a woman who joined forces with “the Arab enemy.” When I interviewed her during research for my book, The Wall and the Gate, she told me that there were periods when taxi drivers in Jerusalem would refuse to pick her up, that the threats against her were so severe that she was forced to hire a bodyguard, that she had to take the sign off of her office in Jerusalem, and that her neighbors asked her to clean off the words “you will die soon,” spray painted on her office’s door, because “it was not aesthetically pleasing.”

Langer fought, almost alone, against the heads of the judicial system at the time, against people with tremendous political and public power, like Justice Meir Shamgar and state attorney (and later a Supreme Court justice) Mishael Cheshin. The hearings in Langer’s cases were contentious. She never hesitated to accuse the establishment of carrying out crimes against her clients and to represent them — some of whom were members of the Palestinian leadership in the occupied territories, such as Nablus Mayor Bassam Shaka and Hebron mayor candidate Hazmi Natcheh — as victims of an evil regime.

Over the years, others followed the path that Langer blazed. First among them were Leah Tzemel, Elias Khoury, Raja Shehadeh, and Avigdor Feldman. Many others have joined since, as Langer’s path became a road, then a highway. But, in the 1990s, she came to see that highway as a fig leaf — that the judicial system was exploiting legal proceedings for public relations purposes and pro-Israel propaganda. She closed her office and moved to Germany, where she continued to fight the occupation and struggle for peace and coexistence.

Felicia Langer exits the High Court in Jerusalem, after the hearing of the appeal against Bassem Shaka’s expulsion. November 22, 1979. (Herman Hanina)

Veteran residents of Jerusalem will tell you that the winter of 1968 was particularly harsh and snowy. And they know that when it snows in Jerusalem, Hebron is usually also covered in white. In the winter of 1968 both of these biblical cities and the road between them were blanketed in snow. But neither snow nor impassable roads could stop Felicia Langer. With her famous determination, she decided to take to the slippery road and drive from her office in downtown Jerusalem to the Hebron police station. A Palestinian sheikh from East Jerusalem had come to her office in the middle of the storm and told her that his son, who had just returned from studying in Turkey, had been arrested and taken to the Hebron station. When the parents sent their son clean clothes through the authorities in the detention facility, they received, in return, a dirty bundle that contained a bloody shirt. They had no idea what had happened to their son and they were very worried. Having been retained by the father to represent the son and visit him, Langer took a file folder and marked it with the number 1, the first case involving a subject of the occupation. Client number 1, the son of an East Jerusalem sheikh, would be the first of hundreds, maybe thousands, of Palestinians Langer would represent before the Israeli authorities over the next twenty-two years.

The Hebron police and the jail were housed in an old building in the center of the city, the Taggart Building, named after a British police officer who had gained expertise suppressing insurgencies in India and who designed fortified police stations all over Mandatory Palestine for His Majesty’s forces. The Israeli army was the third regime to use the structure, following the British themselves and the Jordanians.

When Langer arrived, she looked not just for the sheikh’s son, but also for two other clients, ‘Abd al-‘ Aziz Sharif and Na’im ‘Odeh, both members of Palestinian Communist movements in the Hebron area. Unlike the sheikh’s son, who, Langer found out during her visit, was suspected of membership in Fatah and infiltration into the country, the two Communists were suspected of nothing. They had been arrested under special powers stipulated in the Defense (Emergency) Regulations that were enacted by the British Mandate and had survived long after it ended. The regulations permit “preventive” (or administrative) detention, which is designed not to respond to an act already committed but to stop the potential danger posed by the detainee. Administrative detainees are neither accused nor suspected of anything and may be held without trial or charges being brought. Langer’s clients, Sharif and ‘Odeh, were to be the first raindrops in a monsoon of administrative detentions that would flood the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Langer was born in Poland in the early 1930s. Nearly all her relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. She and her parents managed to escape the Nazis to the USSR, but her father fell victim to Stalin’s regime. He died a short while after being released, in very poor health, from a Soviet gulag where he was held in dreadful conditions. Langer nevertheless became a devout communist. After immigrating to Israel, she joined the local Communist Party and became a pivotal activist. She began practicing law in 1965 and for a while worked in a Tel Aviv law office as an associate litigating all sorts of cases, but immediately after the 1967 war, Langer decided to devote her practice to representing Palestinians living under the occupation and opened her own office in Jerusalem.

In the late 1960s, she was one of just a handful of lawyers representing West Bank residents. Most of these lawyers were Palestinian citizens of Israel, almost all of whom had ties to the Communist Party of Israel (known as Maki). At the time, communist factions were deeply entrenched in Palestinian urban centers and the connections between the Israeli and West Bank and Gaza Communist movements paved the way for lawyers from Israel to represent Palestinian residents under occupation. Following Langer’s lead, these lawyers laid the groundwork for the extensive legal activism that continues today, activism marked by partnership, Sisyphean legal battles, and trust, given daily by Palestinians to Israeli lawyers, some of them Jewish, to represent them before Israeli institutions, primarily the High Court of Justice. This trust and partnership was maintained through five decades of occupation: even in the hardest times, when it seemed as though all the bridges between Palestinians and Israelis had been burned or bombed, solidarity in the fight against human rights violations did not wane.

Langer arrived in Israel in 1950, after living through the rough years of the war in the USSR, where, as we know, her family had fled from Poland. Her father had been sent to the gulag for refusing to become a Soviet citizen (he feared being unable to return to Poland after the war). After he died in late 1944, Langer and her mother struggled to provide for themselves in extremely harsh conditions, selling their few possessions to survive. When the war ended, Langer returned to Poland, where she met her future spouse. Her mother, who had remarried, emigrated to Palestine; Langer and her husband answered her pleas and eventually followed her.

In the early 1960s, Langer realized a dream, and, unusual at the time for a woman who had a child, she enrolled in the Hebrew University Law School branch in Tel Aviv. Her past compelled her to represent the disempowered, to fight for people who, like her family and herself, were victims of government malice. She studied law to put her worldview, which had crystallized during the war, into action and challenge discrimination and injustice. By the mid-1960s, Langer had become a qualified lawyer, but her attempts to find work in the public sector were unsuccessful.

Langer claims she was written off because of her Marxist convictions and her membership in Maki, Israel’s Communist Party, at the time. She had no choice but to turn to the private sector. But there she faced a different obstacle—her own conscience. After refusing to represent a man who was a pimp and was trying to evade paying alimony, she realized she had to set up her own practice if she wanted to pick her cases according to her many principles. In her practice Langer represented clients who aligned with her ideological commitments: detained protesters, women whose rights had been violated, and Arab citizens of Israel in conflict with the authorities. This continued until 1967, when, in the space of six days, 1.5 million Palestinians came under Israeli occupation. At a time when Israeli society, with its many Holocaust survivors, was dedicated to the notion that the moral of the rise of the Nazis, their conquest of Europe, and the Final Solution was that the remnants of the Jewish people were obliged to build an invincible country that would protect Jews from victimhood, Langer drew a different lesson: any discrimination or occupation was fraught with danger, not just by the Germans and not just against Jews.

Representing Palestinians who had suddenly come under Israeli military rule, a regime of all-powerful army generals, was the very fulfilment of the goal for which she had studied law. The only lawyers representing the occupied at the time were a handful of Palestinian Israelis. Langer was a far cry from the typical defender of Palestinians: a woman, a Communist, and a European Jew. With her Polish accent and command of Latin, her partnership with West Bank and Gaza Palestinians may have been the strangest sight in the Middle East. To provide access to West Bank residents, Langer rented a small office on Koresh Street in Jerusalem, which would be her home base for the next twenty-three years. She soon became synonymous with the fight for Palestinian rights. To others she was a traitor and an enemy sympathizer.

In 1990, after a long career of public and dramatic battles with the authorities, Felicia Langer closed her Jerusalem office and left Israel to take up a teaching position in Germany. In an interview in the Washington Post Langer said, “I couldn’t be a fig leaf for this system anymore.”

Michael Sfard is an Israeli human rights lawyer and the author of The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights (Metropolitan Books, 2018).

Felicia Langer obituary

Holocaust survivor who became a human rights lawyer in Israel and defended Palestinians in the country’s courts

Daphna Baram

Thu 12 Jul 2018 16.56 BSTLast modified on Fri 10 Aug 2018 17.00 BST

Felicia Langer in 1991. Her personal ethical boundary was that she would not represent anybody who was suspected of having blood on their hands. Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images

In 1959, Felicia Langer qualified in law in Tel Aviv and joined the Israel Bar Association. Her first years as a lawyer were unremarkable, but the six-day war in 1967, with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, provoked a change.

The following year she started her own practice and began representing Palestinians in the Israeli courts, and in the military courts that were a part of the apparatus of the occupation. Langer, who has died aged 87, defended Palestinians who had demolition orders against their homes and activists facing deportation.

Her own ethical boundary was that she would not represent anybody who was suspected of having blood on their hands. And while her choice to defend Palestinians turned her into a hate figure among many Israelis, who branded her “the terrorist lawyer”, her refusal to represent those accused of violent crimes drew criticism from the ranks of some in the anti-Zionist left.

Langer’s most famous client was Bassam Shakaa, who was elected mayor of Nablus in 1976, whom she defended against a deportation order, filed by Israel in response to his criticism of the Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. Langer won the case – amid mass demonstrations and the collective resignation of all West Bank mayors – and Shakaa remained in Nablus.

By 1990, Langer had decided she could no longer work within the Israeli legal system, and told the Washington Post: “I want my quitting to be a sort of demonstration and expression of my despair and disgust with the system.”

She added, articulating a dilemma that faces many human rights activists in Israel: “I realised that all this time, by bringing Palestinians to the courts, I had been legitimising the system, but the system had not brought the Palestinians any justice. And I decided I couldn’t be a fig leaf for this system anymore.”

Langer moved to Tübingen, southern Germany, and accepted teaching positions in the universities of Bremen and Kassel.

She was born Felicia Veitt in the Polish town of Tarnow, close to the German border, a city with a large Jewish population. Seven days after the outbreak of the second world war, the Nazis occupied Tarnow and the Veitt family fled to Russia. There, Felicia’s father, a lawyer, was arrested because he refused to take a Soviet passport, for fear that he would not be allowed back into Poland when the war ended.

The family spent the rest of the war in one of Stalin’s gulags. Felicia’s father died in 1945, and she and her mother returned to Poland, where they found that many family members had perished. Despite these experiences, Felicia was an avid communist for the rest of her life.

In 1949, she married Mieciu Langer, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps who had lost most of his family in the Holocaust. The couple followed Felicia’s mother, who pleaded with them to join her, to Israel in 1950 and settled in Tel Aviv, where Felicia studied law at the local outpost of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Langer’s books about her experiences in the military courts included With My Own Eyes (1975) and These Are My Brothers (1979). Youth Between the Ghetto and Theresienstadt (1999) recounted her husband’s wartime experiences. Quo Vadis Israel? The New Intifada of the Palestinians (2001) analysed the second Palestinian uprising following the disappointment that followed the Oslo accords.

Her activity for Palestinians won her many awards, among them the Bruno Kreisky prize for human rights in 1991, and membership of the German Federal Order of Merit in 2009 and the Palestinian Order of Merit and Excellence in 2012. But according to her own account, the accolade that brought tears to her eyes was the naming of a square in her honour in the centre of a refugee camp near Nablus.

Mieciu died in 2015. She is survived by her son, Michael, and three grandchildren.

• Felicia Langer, lawyer, born 9 December 1930; died 21 June 2018

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Jeremy Corbyn Must STOP Apologising to the Zionists - he has NOTHING to apologise for

August 14, 2018, 4:48 pm

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It is Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement who should apologise for:

1. Supporting the Siege of Gaza

2.   Supporting the Murder of 160 Unarmed Demonstrators
3.   accusing supporters of the Palestinians of 'antisemitism' and thus belittling the experiences of those Jews who have suffered from antisemitism
4.   refusing to condemn Netanyahu for inviting Hungary’s Anti-Semitic Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Israel!
5.      For not being honest in declaring that they operate inside the Labour Party on behalf of the Israeli Embassy and work with war criminal Ambassador Mark Regev
6.      For failing to criticise the Jewish Nation State Law that openly declares that Israel is an Apartheid State

I wrote this before I left for on vacation! I'm pleased to hear that in my absence Corbyn may finally be starting to understand that you don't respond to attacks by mad dogs and Zionists by apologising but by going on the attack.

Instead of Corbyn apologising to the Zionists it is they who should be apologising for the killing, torture and imprisonment of children such as this

A few weeks ago when it was announced that Labour had taken a four point lead in the polls I joked on Twitter that this meant that the false anti-Semitism allegations would start up again. Almost on cue that is what happened. ‘News’, if that is what it can be called, emerged of an 8 year old meeting organised by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist organisation. The meeting was chaired by Jeremy Corbyn. The guest speaker was the late Hajo Meyer who compared the bombing and murder by Israel in Gaza to Nazi attacks on civilian populations.

Meet the author of Labour's witchhunt of socialists - Senator Joe McCarthy

Jeremy Corbyn, completely unnecessarily, apologised. I assume he was advised to do so by Seamus Milne. If so Milne should resign as he is clearly not up to the job. It doesn’t take many brain cells to work out that apologising to your enemies weakens you not strengthens you. The goal of our racist adversaries is not to secure an apology and move on but to remove Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party.

It doesn’t take many brain cells to work out that apologising to your enemies weakens you not strengthens you. The goal of our racist adversaries is not to secure an apology and move on but to remove Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party.

Corbyn should NOT have apologised for chairing a meeting addressed by Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer - the Holocaust is not the property of the Zionist movement, which did nothing to save Jewish refugees at the time

It's a simple message to Corbyn - stop fucking apologising to racists

Shortly after news emerged of John McDonnell, who has done his best to appease the Zionist lobby, telling people he ‘weeped’about the anti-Semitism that had sprung up in the Labour Party, having sponsoredthe launch of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Organisation in an EDM.

Of course all of this could just be coincidental. People just keep stumbling over meetings and events that Corbyn and McDonnell used to speak at. However there is another explanation. Which is that a lot of work is going on, no doubt being funded generouisly via the slush funds of the Israeli Embassy, into systematically going through the records of everything that Corbyn and McDonnell have ever done.

The Jewish Chronicle, edited by racist Stephen Pollard has nonetheless apologised to them

However much McDonnell tries to row back on his past he is going to be condemened by the right-wing press so he should stop appeasing racist Zionists

I’m sure that between the Israeli Embassy, the Zionist Federation, the Community Security trust and Board of Deputies copious files have been kept. When I did a Subject Access Request of the CST I got back a file of over 300 pages, of events I had long forgotten. I could write my memoirs based on this stuff!

The only way this can be dealt with is by Corbyn and McDonnelldefending their pastnot running away from it. The Zionists are not interested in apologies and none should be given. Corbyn did over Israel what he did over South Africa which is to oppose the actions of an Apartheid State.

That is why Corbyn’s acceptance of the IHRA was so damaging. This bogus definition should never have been accepted. Britain’s delegate to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is none other than Sir Eric Pickles the former Tory Cabinet Minister. Pickles is an out and out racist.

Eric Pickles defended the Tory link in the European parliament with the anti-Semitic Polish Law & Justice Party and the far-right Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party/LNNK (Nationalist Alliance). They have one MEP, Robert Zile who, every March goes on a walkabout around the centre of the capital Riga with veterans of the Latvian SS. Even more appallingly Pickles defended the Waffen SS.

Jonathan Freedland is not so much a journalist as a propagandist

Even arch-Zionist Jonathan Freedland, wrotethat

‘The party chairman, Eric Pickles, offered an appalling defence, telling the BBC last month that the Latvian Waffen-SS were only conscripts fighting for their country, and to say otherwise was a Soviet smear. Again, this misses the fact that a substantial minority of the Latvian Waffen-SS were eager volunteers, including veterans of pro-Nazi death squads who had already taken part in the first phase of the Holocaust – and that should be enough to decide that those who march in celebration of men who fought with Hitler, and against Britain and its allies, are beyond the pale.’ [Once no self-respecting politician would have gone near people such as Kaminski]

Kaminski was the anti-Semitic MEP for Law & Justice Party whom the Tories were allied with in the European Conservative Reform group yet he was defended by none other than the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, the far-Right Stephen Pollard. Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews

However today both Freedland and the Board of Deputies have forgotten about the Tories anti-Semitic allies in the European parliament. They are more concerned with Corbyn and McDonnell’s ‘anti-Semitism’.

Even the Sun, the paper wot employed vile racist Katie Hopkins, is horrified by having a survivor of Auschwitz address a Holocaust Memorial Day meeting on remembering the lessons of the Holocaust

Anyone with half a brain, which is clearly half more than Seamus Milne or Corbyn’s advisers possess, would realise that the aim of the Zionists and the Board of Deputies is not to secure apologies but the resignation of Corbyn. Because they are worried that McDonnell may step into his shoes they are also digging up dirt on him too.

Two peas in a pod - murderers both

That is why it is essential that Corbyn stops apologising and starts standing up to his accusers. Secondly he takes a firm stand that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which he stupidly supported in the wake of Theresa May’s adoption of this formula, is not allowed to suppress free speech on Israel. Which means that the treacherous Lansman has to be confronted. See A Vote for Jon Lansman is a Vote for the Right.

For two years I have spoken at meetings up and down the country with a simple message. The witchhunt is not about me, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth or Ken Livingstone. It’s about Corbyn. Unfortunately Corbyn and his advisers believed that they could appease the Board of Deputies, a ridiculous organisation that represents nothing but a group of small businessmen and synagogue goers. It doesn’t represent secular Jewry. If Corbyn had stood up to these blackmailers 3 years ago they would have faded away. Instead he encouraged them, pleaded with them and humiliated himself.

In a disgusting example of Zionist antisemitism the Zionists changed this slogan to 'For the many not the Jew'

I don’t pretend that it is easy to see a way out of this situation now. Corbyn has conceded so much ground. However the first task is that Corbyn and those around him recognise what the motives of his Zionist accusers are. They are not concerned about anti-Semitism, which is a historic low but the welfare of the State of Israel.

Despite kissing Zionist arse, McDonnell is still subject to attacks from them

Corbyn he will find it difficult given that he has made a rod for his own back. The first thing to do is not to accept the advice of those who are saying the IHRA must be accepted in its entirety. If necessary he must appeal over the heads of Jon Lansman and Dave Prentis of UNISON. Prentis was always a fair-weather friend.

The leader of the Israeli Labour Party Avi Gabbay has brokenoff links with Corbyn. It is a sign that they want Corbyn out hence they are refusing to deal with him. That is fine. It should be the cue to disaffiliate what is the overseas wing of the ILP, the Jewish Labour Movement which describes itself as the ILP’s ‘sister party’.

The Israeli state and the USA have been aghast at the fact that a perceived enemy like Corbyn was ever elected in the first place. It is unacceptable that an opponent of American imperialism, who rejects NATO and is sympathetic to liberation movements leads the second major party in Britain, the US’s closest ally. Israel is the US’s racist rottweiller in the Middle East and it is clearly undertaking the task of removing a perceived enemy of the US. It is this which Corbyn and apparently Seamus Milne don’t understand. It is difficult to believe that Corbyn and McDonnell haven’t had a strategy meeting to plan a response. Unbelievably that seems to be the case. It is the problem of reformism that it really does believe that the state is neutral despite all the evidence to the contrary (e.g. the bias of the BBC).

Katie Hopkings - a strong supporter of the Zionists and a spokesman for antisemites everywhere

The time to fightback is now. The opponents of Corbyn and McDonnell will stop at nothing to prevent a Labour government. That means saying no to the IHRA, saying no to Lansman and insisting that the members of Momentum regain control of their organisation from the millionaire property developer who is currently in charge.

This is a roll call of Corbyn haters

Below are a number of links to some really good articles by Richard Silverstein and Asa Winstanley concerning what is happening. I have also copied 2 really excellent articles by the legendary Jewish folk singer Leon Rosselson and Media Lens.

Educate, organiser and agitate. The Left leadership of the Labour Party is in peril as the representatives both of the British, American and Israeli states are determined to prevent a radical reforming socialist government from taking power in Britain.

Tony Greenstein

See

Richard Silverstein’s The Israel lobby is leading a witch hunt against Corbyn. It has to stop

Is Labour’s Jon Lansman capitulating to the Israel lobby?, Asa Winstanley

The Guardian hack, lies and distortions

Leon Rosselson

Singer/songwriter, children’s author. Here you will find provocative musings on songwriting, politics and life’s little ironies. http://leonrosselson.co.uk

Though we resist oppression, still our dream is peace
Theirs is the mask of hatred, ours the human face
Then let not our suffering turn our souls to ice
So that we do to strangers what was done to us.

It is not with conquering armies I belong
Their bloody retribution I disown
Their songs of triumph I will never sing
For the god they worship turns them into stone.

If any teach their children how to hate and hurt
Though they are Jews they do not live inside my heart.

(From ‘The Song of Martin Fontasch’)

Jonathan Freedland’s article in the Guardian of Saturday 28 July (Jewish anger is about Labour’s failure to listen with empathy) is a good example of the devious arguments and outright lies used to defend the IHRA definition of antisemitism and the accusations being levelled against Corbyn and the Labour Party.

It starts with the obligatory reference to the Holocaust. This has no logical connection with his arguments but is designed to soften you up. It’s a kind of emotional blackmail. Cynical? Perish the thought. That Israel and its supporters have, since the war of 1967 when Israel began to lose control of the narrative, exploited the Holocaust to give Israel victim status and thus to shield it from criticism is a truism. Norman Finkelstein, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, has written a book about it called The Holocaust Industry. The former Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman, was excoriated for saying: ‘The Israelis use the Holocaust: they use the murder of six million Jews to justify their murder of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians’. The accuracy of his observation, however, was not disputed.

But while the Holocaust has served as a shield to deflect attacks on Israel, actual Holocaust survivors can be more problematic. Some of them have inconvenient views. Dr Hajo Meyer, who died in 2014, is now at the centre of a media storm for having seen parallels between his own experience at the hands of the Nazis and the crimes committed against Palestinians under Israeli occupation. How odd that the mindless views of Margaret Hodge and her abusive accusations are somehow sanctified by the fact that some of her relatives were murdered by the Nazis while an actual Holocaust survivor is vilified and his experience negated. Clearly the wrong sort of Holocaust survivor.

The original flyers for Hajo Meyer's meeting

But Dr Meyer is not alone. In March 2017, Marika Sherwood was due to give an open talk at Manchester University entitled A Holocaust survivor’s story and the Balfour Declaration: You’re doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to me. She commented: ‘I was just speaking of my experience of what the Nazis did to me as a Jewish child…. I can’t say I’m a Palestinian but my experiences as a child are not dissimilar to what Palestinian children are experiencing now’. After protests from the Israeli Embassy that this violated the IHRA definition, the University insisted the subtitle be removed, that academics chosen to chair the meeting should be replaced by university appointees and attendance limited to university students and staff. And in August 2014, a letter signed by 40 Holocaust survivors — including Dr Meyer — and 287 of their descendants was published in the NY Times. It condemned the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and called for a total boycott of Israel.

Why has despicable racist Luke Akehurst, who justified Israel's murder of unarmed Palestinians not been suspended for justifying murder? This animal has instead been allowed to stand for Labour's NEC

Even Ken Stern, who drew up the IHRA definition, argues against its incorporation in the battle to suppress free speech

Recently, much media attention has focused laser-like on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, including 11 associated examples. Labour adopted 7 of these examples, but dropped 4 because of their implication that criticism of Israel was antisemitic. As George Wilmers notedin a piece for Jewish Voice for Labour, Kenneth Stern, the US Attorney who drafted the IHRA wording, has spoken out about the misuse of the definition. It had:

Lansman, an arch-Zionist has destroyed Momentum's democracy and is now lobbying for the IHRA

For shared elite interests in Israel and the UK, there is much at stake. Historian and foreign policy analyst Mark Curtis highlights 'the raw truth' rarely touched by the corporate news media:

'The UK's relationship with Israel is special in at least nine areas, including arms sales, air force, nuclear deployment, navy, intelligence and trade, to name but a few.'

Indeed, arms exports and trade are increasingly profitable to British corporations doing business with Israel. Moreover, senior government ministers have emphasised that the UK-Israel relationship is the 'cornerstone of so much of what we do in the Middle East' and that 'Israel is an important strategic partner for the UK'. As Curtis notes:

'The Palestinians are the expendable unpeople in this deepening special relationship.'

A Shameful Outburst

Unsurprisingly, then, the Israeli lobby have been trawling through Corbyn's life, trying to find past incidents they can highlight as 'support' for the ludicrous and cynical claim that he is 'soft' on antisemitism or even himself antisemitic. Hence the manufactured controversyof Corbyn hosting an event in 2010 during which Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer compared Israel's behaviour to that of Nazi Germany.

An Independenteditorial, titled 'Corbyn has been found wanting on antisemitism – now he must act', asserted that he was 'a fool to lend his name to this stunt'. It was:

'such an egregious error of judgement that Jeremy Corbyn, an extraordinarily stubborn man, has had to apologise for it.'

Under a photograph of Corbyn sitting at the 2010 meeting with Meyer, Times political correspondent Henry Zeffman said that:

'Corbyn has led Labour into a nightmare of his own making. The veteran left-winger will never recant the views on Israel that he formed over decades in the political wilderness.'
In the Daily Mail, the caption to the same 2010 photograph of Corbyn sitting with Meyer led with the word, 'Offensive'.

And on and on it went in the 'mainstream' media.

Adri Nieuwhof, a Netherlands-based human rights advocate and former anti-apartheid activist, was a friend of Meyer, who died in 2014. In an article for Electronic Intifada, she wrote:

'The 2010 Holocaust Memorial Day event took place the year after an Israeli assault on Gaza [Operation Cast Lead] that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and injured thousands more.

'Meyer was very upset by the assault because Palestinians were trapped in Gaza due to the blockade on the territory that Israel imposed starting in 2007.

'He could not help but compare the situation of Palestinians trapped under Israeli occupation and bombardment with Jews caged by the Nazis in ghettos like the Warsaw Ghetto.'

She added:

'Those attacking Corbyn today have no restraint and no shame. They will even call a man who survived Auschwitz and lost his parents in the Holocaust an anti-Semite if they believe that is what it takes to shield Israel from consequences for its crimes.'

Nasty abuse flung at the Labour leader has even come from supposed colleagues. Last month, rightwing Labour MP Margaret Hodge called Jeremy Corbyn 'a fucking anti-Semite and a racist'. The corporate media gleefully lapped up her outburst - the Guardian moved swiftly to grant her space to declareLabour 'a hostile environment for Jews'– and stoked the 'Labour antisemitism row' for weeks afterwards, with over 500 articles to date according to our ProQuest newspaper database search.

His comments as Mayor sparked a backlash from Jewish community leaders but, ultimately, did not fatally damage his party. That would come later, with Livingstone deep into his retirement from frontline politics but nonetheless still heavily involved in Labour’s internal affairs. On the day of Shah’s suspension, he was still serving on the party’s ruling national executive and was helping lead a review into its defence policy. He took to the airwaves to defend her, telling BBC Radio London that he had never seen anti-Semitism inside Labour (a sentiment recently echoed to much opprobrium by Peter Willsman).
Then, in comments that ultimately led to a two-year suspension from the party, he added: “When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews."

Livingstone denied he had claimed Hitler was a Zionist, and would go on to repeatedly defend his comments as mere historical fact. But the damage was done. In surreal scenes, the surprisingly serene 70-year-old was chased by the press into Milbank Studios, just down the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, as the backbencher John Mann turned puce with rage and accused him of being a “disgusting Nazi apologist”. Livingstone then sought refuge in a disabled toilet, as a bemused media scrum twiddled its collective thumbs outside.

The episode was so bizarre that it was almost treated as light relief in Westminster. But for Labour, it was anything but. Livingstone was suspended (he was not expelled for the comments but has since resigned his membership). “We are not tolerating anti-Semitism in any form whatsoever in our party,” Corbyn, his long-time friend and comrade, said. The following day – 29 April – the human rights activist and barrister Shami Chakrabarti was commissioned by the Labour leader to conduct an inquiry into accusations of anti-Semitism within the party’s ranks.

It was a swift response, but ultimately it would only exacerbate Labour’s woes. Chakrabarti found, to the incredulity of Jewish community organisations, that anti-Semitism was not endemic inside the party (she did, however, acknowledge an “occasionally toxic atmosphere” and “ignorant attitudes”). In June, the launch of the report was overshadowed when Marc Wadsworth, a veteran left-wing activist and anti-racist campaigner, accused Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish Labour MP, of “working hand in hand” with the Daily Telegraph.

Smeeth accused Wadsworth of anti-Semitism, an accusation he fiercely denies. “It is beyond belief that someone could come to the launch of a report on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and espouse such vile conspiracy theories about Jewish people,” she said. He was suspended from Labour after the incident, and expelled for bringing the party into disrepute (he continues to deny his comments were anti-Semitic).
Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi, also criticised comments made by Corbyn at the launch. The Labour leader had said "our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those various self-styled Islamic states or organisations”, which some interpreted as a comparison between Israel and Isis.

His spokesman clarified that Corbyn was in fact stating that “people should not be held responsible for the actions of states or organisations around the world on the basis of religion or ethnicity”, but Mirvis nonetheless complained: “Rather than rebuilding trust among the Jewish community, [his comments] are likely to cause even greater concern.”

Mirvis might as well have been talking about Chakrabarti’s report. Two months later, in August, things went bad from worse. In ordinary times, the appointment of Chakrabarti as a Labour peer – she was, after all, a liberal icon so revered by the public that she served as one of only six Olympic flagbearers at the London 2012 opening ceremony – would have been a shrewd PR move. That it came after her anti-Semitism probe made it a disaster.

Her ennoblement was met with disbelief and disgust from Labour MPs and Jewish community organisations. Tom Watson, Corbyn’s deputy, said it was badly-timed and wrong. Marie van der Zyl, vice president of the Board of Deputies, argued that it fatally undermined Chakrabarti’s “whitewash” inquiry.
“It is beyond disappointing that Shami Chakrabarti has been offered, and accepted, a peerage from Labour following her so-called ‘independent’ inquiry,” she said. “The report, which was weak in several areas, now seems to have been rewarded with an honour. This ‘whitewash for peerages’ is a scandal that surely raises serious questions about the integrity of Ms Chakrabarti, her inquiry and the Labour leadership.”

Chakrabarti denied the award had been a quid pro quo, but few were willing to give her a hearing. The vice-chairman of her own inquiry, David Feldman, said it had damaged her report's credibility"among large sections of the public, not only among Jews but among non-Jews as well". Howard Jacobson, the eminent Jewish author, said the peerage was tantamount to "showing the middle finger" to those in the Jewish community who had complained about anti-Semitism.

More damagingly, it crystallised a feeling that the party’s disciplinary procedures were unfit to deal with such complaints (there is a backlog of cases, which the party has pledged to expedite, while Christine Shawcroft, had to quit from her role as chair of the panel examining disciplinary complaints in March, after she was revealed to have opposed the suspension of a Labour council candidate who was accused of Holocaust denial).

Set against an already gloomy backdrop of unease with Corbyn himself, these episodes further damaged the relationship between Labour and the Jewish community. His record as a pro-Palestine campaigner in the years before he ascended to the leadership have returned to bring negative publicity almost relentlessly: his reference to Hamas as “friends” at a parliamentary event; his description of Raed Salah, an anti-Israel preacher convicted of blood libel, as an “honoured citizen”; his defence of an allegedly anti-Semitic mural; his appearances on Iranian state television. All have returned to haunt Corbyn throughout his leadership (he said this week that he had often shared platforms with people whose views he entirely disagrees with).
The Labour leader has always denied that he himself is an anti-Semite. A majority of those in Labour accept this. Indeed, he has repeatedly deplored anti-Semitism (though his habit of sometimes adding “and all forms of racism” has been criticised). But his party is finding it almost impossible to convert its uniform opposition to anti-Semitism in theory into practice. Though it retains a considerable number of Jewish members – including leading Corbynites like National Executive Committee member Rhea Wolfson and Momentum founder Jon Lansman, and the largely Corbynsceptic Jewish Labour Movement – trust across the community as a whole is arguably at an all-time low.

Where should Labour go next? Where can it go next? Those two questions are distinct from one another and their answers possibly irreconcilable. “Something must be done,” is a familiar refrain from all wings of the party. Ask a Labour MP – even one serving on Corbyn’s frontbench – what they make of the party’s current predicament and you are just as likely to get silence, a shaken head or one thrown into the hands as you are a suggestion.

It is not hard to see why. Arcane elements of Labour’s byzantine internal governance structures, obscure figures from its fringes and grassroots members now regularly make headline news. Of late, the row has loomed over almost everything else the party is trying to achieve. Attempts to use the summer recess to launch new policy have been hindered by the party’s need to firefight on other issues. “Brexit and anti-Semitism overshadow everything,” says one frontbencher. “This is not why I came into politics.” Privately, some in its press operation despair at the amount of ammunition it has handed to hostile sections of the media through its mishandling of the row.

The received wisdom – often recited as a grim silver lining for MPs – is that the crisis will have no electoral impact nationally. But some, frustrated by the extent to which the row obscures the party's work on other, more popular fronts, like economic policy, have begun to doubt it. "The drip-drip-drip is definitely having an effect," says one MP of the reaction on the doorsteps in a Northern marginal. "People are citing it as a reason why they can't vote for us."

Several shadow cabinet ministers – Barry Gardiner, Keir Starmer, Jonathan Ashworth and Andrew Gwynne – have all urged the party’s ruling national executive to adopt the full IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. But even then, some speculate that doing so after weeks of criticism and pressure would be too little, too late. “At this stage, the Jewish community won’t accept gestures,” a Labour source said. The party had a rude reminder of that this week. Corbyn offered to give a speech at Camden's Jewish Museum in a direct appeal to the Jewish community, but abortive talks to organise it failed. For now, it is a question of mitigating, rather than repairing, the damage. The latter process will arguably only begin once Corbyn has departed.

↧

This blog is having a temporary break!

August 15, 2018, 5:53 pm

≫ Next: How Long are Momentum Members Going To Accept a Jewish Supremacist and Zionist as Leader?

≪ Previous: Jeremy Corbyn Must STOP Apologising to the Zionists - he has NOTHING to apologise for

I am in Italy this week and therefore unable to blog much/most of the time. Normal service will be resumed later next week!

Tony

↧

How Long are Momentum Members Going To Accept a Jewish Supremacist and Zionist as Leader?

August 18, 2018, 3:30 pm

≫ Next: The sad, sick racism of Zionism - Brighton’s Anti-War Memorial is defaced

≪ Previous: This blog is having a temporary break!

Jon Lansman Joins the Lynch Mob in his Attack on Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Pete Willsman

A selection of the choicest tweets that were inspired by the Jewish Labour Movement/Jon Lansman's campaign against Jackie Walker

In May 2016 Jackie Walker, Vice-Chair of Momentum was suspended from the Labour Party for ‘anti-semitism’. In a private Facebook discussion with a friend about her dual Black-Jewish inheritance, she remarked that ‘my ancestors too, were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade.’ If this had been a public discussion then Jackie would have said that her ancestors were among the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade. [see The lynching of Jackie Walker]

However the intention of the Israel Advocacy Movement, which hacked the conversation, was to ‘take out’ Jackie, who was seen as a thorn in the side of the Israel’s supporters in the Labour Party.

McDonnell speaking alongside Jackie Walker at an LRC meeting in Brighton. McDonnell has subsequently capitulated to the Zionists

Three weeks later Jackie was reinstated but the Jewish Labour Movement, the British representativesof the Israeli Labor Party, refused to accept this decision and they decided to wage a campaign akin to a political lynching, whose purpose was to renew her suspension. When John McDonnell spoke at a Labour Representative Committee meeting alongside Jackie in early September 2016 in Brighton, he was criticisedand had an invitation to speak at a JLM fringe meeting withdrawn.

One of many abusive tweets caused by the actions of Lansman's Zionist friends - for some strange reason they weren't deemed worthy of comment by the yellow press in this country

Since then there has been a vile racist campaign, as the tweets I am publishing here demonstrate, against Jackie. Neither the Jewish Labour Movement nor Jon Lansman have uttered one word of criticism against this abuse. They have been happy to go along with racist abuse as long as it is not about antisemitism. Not once have they ever dissociated themselves from the abuse that Jackie has received. Lansman's only concern is with 'unconscious' or fake antisemitism.

That is why Lansman is a Jewish supremacist and Zionist. He looks at everything from one perspective only - is it good for Jews. Any other form of racism is secondary too him. He will surround himself with pliant Black people but the moment they rebel he will cut them off.

Lansman as part of Labour Party delegation meeting people from the Palestinian Authority

Ten days before the 2016 Labour Conference I wrote a blogThe Jewish Labour Movement and its Political Lynching of Jackie Walker. It was obvious to me what was going to happen. At the Conference Jackie attended a JLM ‘training event’ which Adam Langleben, the recently defeated racist Labour candidate in Hendon West secretly taped. Jackie said that she hadn’t heard a definition of anti-semitism that she could accept and that Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations should not just be about Jews but about all those who were murdered by the Nazis. This was held to be antisemitic because anything anti-Zionists say about the Holocaust or antisemitism is by definition 'anti-Semitic'.

Jon Lansman - unelected Chair of Momentum, Zionist and Jewish supremacist

Even a survivor of Auschwitz, Hajo Meyer, was accused of 'anti-semitism' for comparing what he went through with what Palestinians experience and Corbyn stupidly apologised. However when the Blessed Margaret Hodge compared being subject of a disciplinary investigation to what Jewish refugees from the Nazis suffered there are no cries of 'antisemitism'.

Free Speech on Israel's picket of the TSSA HQ near Euston in October 2016 when Lansman effected the removal of Jackie Walker as Momentum Vice-Chair

Jackie’s words were distorted to suggest what she was saying was anti-semitic. They clearly weren’t but the person who enabled this campaign of political assassination was Jon Lansman. Lansman proposed that Jackie be removed as Vice-Chair of Momentum and with the support of the Alliance for Workers Liberty this was agreed to early in October 2016.

Prior to this meeting a group of Jewish Labour Party members had written to Lansman and Momentum’s Executive urging that they resist the calls for a witchhunt and the removal of Jackie. We wrote:

‘We are seriously disturbed by the report in the Guardian Momentum likely to oust Jackie Walker over Holocaust remarks and a similar report in the Independent that ‘Senior members of Momentum are "fuming" at her remarks’. It is your duty not to betray comrades.’

Idiot Jess Phillips 'feminist' friend of Jacob Rees-Mogg

This gave Iain McNicol, Labour’s General Secretary, the cue to suspend Jackie. Lansman was quoted in The Independent as saying

“I spoke to Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement this morning, he’s very upset and I can understand that – I work closely with Jeremy, I’ve been meeting with Jewish organisations to talk… I’ve been outspoken. I was very, very unhappy about… and I did comment on it, about it, what she had previously said.’

These comments were revealing. Lansman openly admitted to working with the corrupt Chair of the JLM, Jeremy Newmark, who freely admitted to his close links with the Israeli Embassy and Mark Regev, its war criminal Ambassador. Lansman knows full well the relationship of the JLM to the Israeli Labor Party and its membership of the World Zionist Organisation, the main organisation of Israeli apartheid which funds Jewish only Israeli settlements. Lansman preferred to stab a Black anti-racist in the back rather than upset the JLM and the Israeli Embassy.

Fast forward to today. Recently Lansman has been to Israel. It would be difficult to go to Israel and not be aware of the virulent racism against Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Things such as the new Jewish Nation State Law which makes explicit the fact that Israel is an apartheid state, the interrogation of people at the airport (does any other democratic country interview people who visit to ensure that they hold the correct political opinions?) the violent anti-Arab demonstrations, the residential and educational segregation Lansman is aware of all of this yet what does he do?

In a private conversation with a member of Brent Momentum, Graham Durham, Lansman attacked Jackie Walker as an anti-semite, says he doesn’t know if Marc Wadsworth is anti-semitic and for good measure attacks Pete Willsman, though conceding he is not anti-semitic (probably because he is White).

Everything Lansman says and does is from the perspective of a privileged White community in Britain, a community that has overwhelmingly voted Tory for 50 years. Lansman is a Jewish Supremacist and a racist who cannot tolerate Black people who challenge him. That was Jackie’s real crime as Deputy Chair of Momentum. Lansman personally appointed her, there was no election, because of her well known record as an anti-racist and anti-fascist. However he could not control her and she was an anti-Zionist.

Lansman’s support for Israel is no different from that of the alt-Right in the USA or Tommy Robinson here. He supports Zionism, right or wrong and his justificationfor the expulsion of Palestinian refugees in 1948, ethnic cleansing and his belief that ‘the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’ mark Lansman down as a supporter of western imperialism and the racism that is its handmaiden. Lansman is a Jewish chauvinist who believes in Jewish exceptionalism. Zionism is the ideology of the Israeli State. It believes in a pure Jewish racial state with Palestinians confined to the margins - hewers of wood and drawers of water in biblical terms.

Luke Akehurst justifies the murder of some 160 unarmed Palestinians gunned down by the Israeli military in Gaza yet this vile creature remains unsuspended

Contrast Lansman’s obsession with anti-semitism which he even calls it ‘unconscious’in order to explain why it is that no one can ever find any examples of it in the Labour Party. Yet not once, has Lansman called for the suspension of Luke Akehurst, an NEC candidate, who openly supported the murder of 160 Palestinians, children included, in the Gaza demonstrations. If he had any integrity he would call for the suspension of Margaret Hodge for comparing her situation to that of Jews fleeing the Nazis but Lansman is not only a hypocrite but he is also a political coward.

How is it that a word out of place gets supporters of the Palestinians suspended yet Luke Akehurst is allowed to stand for the National Executive Committee? Yet Lansman is silent as is much of the Left. Anti-Palestinian racism is acceptable, but a word out of place about Jews leads to instant discipline.

Lansman stated to Graham Durham that ‘Jackie Walker is, I’m afraid, an anti-Semite. She provides leadership for other anti-semites.’

What utter malevolent racist bigotry. Jackie unlike Lansman has been an active opponent of the National Front. Whilst Jackie was busy fighting the fascists Lansman was accumulating millions as a property developer. Her crime is being an anti-Zionist. Lansman’s attack is despicable. He provides no proof for his assertion that Jackie ‘provides leadership’ for other unnamed anti-semites nor could he. This is a product of Lansman’s racist mindset. Lansman has never played any role or part in the anti-fascist movement. His sole concern has been to support the Israeli state.

Likewise Lansman’s attack on Marc Wadsworth. He concedes that ‘he may not be anti-semitic’ which is the only form of racism that counts for Lansman, but he asserts that Marc came to the Chakrabarti press conference to cause trouble. How does Lansman know this? Because he spoke from the floor, the only contribution from a Black person in a press conference supposedly about racism and not just anti-semitism.

Because Marc was determined to include racism against Black people in the agenda of the meeting, he was guilty of disrupting it and therefore bringing the Labour Party into ‘disrepute’. Even worse he called out the dealing between right-wing Labour MP Ruth Smeeth and the Daily Telegraph.

Lansman also attacked, for good measure, Peter Willsman. The only form of racism that matters to Lansman is anti-semitism, which barely exists. Racism against Black or Asian people is not his concern.

The question is how we are going to remove Lansman who made his name over 30 years ago as a supporter of Tony Benn. It would do well for us to remember the famous 5 questions of Benn:

“The House will forgive me for quoting five democratic questions that I have developed during my life. If one meets a powerful person--Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler--one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system.”

Today Tony Benn would be accused of 'antisemitism' and suspended for comparing Rupert Murdoch to Hitler!

If Momentum members are serious about supporting Jeremy Corbyn then it is essential to remove Lansman. Lansman’s treachery is such that it is only a matter of time before this racist property millionaire stabs Corbyn in the back too. You have been warned!

Tony Greenstein

Lansman’s Conversation with Graham Durham:

From: Graham Durham
To:"brent-momentum@googlegroups.com"brent-momentum@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2018, 10:36
Subject: [BRENT MOMENTUM] Exchange with Jon Lansman

GD: Ok Jon your view accords with mine on an anti-racist Britain.But whilst understanding the support amongst Jews here for Israel we must not allow this to restrict our criticism or our understanding of how Irgun and other murder gangs created the state and the racist policies since.On anti-semitism I entirely agree with you and would never agree it should be unchallenged but the Hodge and Smeeth etc attacks abuse the desire to see anti-semitism challenged as they are simply a code for anti-Corbyn attacks.Sadly Jon your attacks on Jackie Walker,Pete Willsman and Marc Wadsworth place you in the wrong camp

JL Jackie Walker is, I’m afraid, an anti-Semite. She provides leadership for other anti-semites. Marc Wadsworth went to the Chakrabarti report launch to disrupt it. He may not be anti Semitic but his actions were deliberate and brought the Party into disrepute. Pete Willsman is not in the same category at all but his consistent bad behaviour is not acceptable

Here is an image of Lansman and others from our Labour Party members visit to Palestine sharing views with a PLA governor of a West Bank territory in June this year.Following this visit the group members have been following and debating events there and in the ongoing debate in the Labour Party.Last night Jon and I exchanged views and I was surprised at his response ( I’ll leave you to read it and ,for context,my comments he was responding to)

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The sad, sick racism of Zionism - Brighton’s Anti-War Memorial is defaced

August 20, 2018, 3:37 am

≫ Next: If I Were a Member of the Knesset I Would Have Had No Hesitation in Voting for the Jewish Nation State Bill

≪ Previous: How Long are Momentum Members Going To Accept a Jewish Supremacist and Zionist as Leader?

Sussex Friends of Israel ‘prove’ that ‘there is no such thing as Palestine’ by chemically removing all mention of it!

It is unbelievable the lengths to which the racists of the Zionist movement will go to rewrite history - they even use powerful chemicals to help them!!

One of the main characteristics of any settler-colonial society is the desire to destroy any trace of previous indigenous civilisations or societies. When Zimbabwe was still called Rhodesia, the white colonists decried all mention of the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. When the Whites colonised South Africa they created the myth that the land had been empty before they arrived. It was their presence which attracted Black people. Likewise in Australia the settlers used the term ‘terra nullis’ (empty land). Palestine was no different. The ‘socialist’ Zionist settlers believed that Palestine was a ‘land without a people for a people without a land.’

Zionists hate the very name ‘Palestine’. The indigenous population are ‘Arabs’ not Palestinians. For Zionist supporters there is no such thing as Palestine. One of the most oft-repeated questions they ask is ‘When was there a Palestinian state’? Palestine is a recent invention they argue.

Of course this is very difficult to sustain given the name Palestine was in existence from Roman times. Indeed the term goes back even further. Use of the term ‘Palestine’ dates from the 5^thcentury BC. Anyone who doubts this should read the article Timeline of the name "Palestine".

Sussex Friends of Israel supporters have no sense of respect for the soldiers who died in the Great War as it was called. All that matters to their racist mentality is to erase all mention of the Palestinian presence. That of course was the Nazi attitude to Jewish history - to destroy all traces of it

Brighton and Hove’s Zionists, congregated around Sussex Friends of Israel are a particularly racist neanderthal lot. Containing as they do a large number of Christian fundamentalists they vehemently deny that there is any such things as the Palestinians. In their time they even invited to address them one Mordechai Kedar, an ‘academic’ from Bar Ilan University and a Professor who advocated the use of rape as a weapon of war. Because rape was so shaming in Palestinian society the mere threat of it would deter ‘terrorism’. Kedar spoke at the local Jewish community hall, Ralli Hall. Although the trustees of Ralli Hall were happy to have an advocate of rape address them they banned the Labour Party for 'antisemitism'.

It would however seem that in order to ‘prove’ that there is no such thing as Palestine one or more Zionist vandals took to using a chemical to erase the words Palestine on the local war memorial to the dead in World War One in Brighton's Old Steine. In 1917 in the First World War Britain captured, under General Allenby, the area known as Palestine. For 30 years the British ran the Mandate of Palestine (not the Mandate of Israel!). There was even a Palestinian citizenship andmany Zionists such as Shimon Peres became citizens of Palestine before they became citizens of Israel. Even the Zionist paper, the Jerusalem Post, in the days before it became a right-wing rag under Conrad Black, was named Palestine Post.

If the Zionist vandal had consulted the programmatic pamphlet The Jewish State of Theodor Herzl, who was the founder of the Zionist movement, t s/he would have learnt that when he argued for a Jewish state Herzl was torn between forming state in Argentina or Palestine. The latter eventually won out.

You can see how old this statue is because it refers to Mesopotamia, present day Iraq. But the Zionist vandals from Sussex Friends of Israel have no regard to history or facts - history is what they rewrite

However the act of vandalism is an important sign of the mentality of today’s Zionists. They seriously believe that they can rewrite history by eradicating evidence that there always was a Palestine. Pathetic as it is it is an important and useful demonstration of the mindset of Zionism, which in its determination to erase Palestinian existence is a genocidal movement as per the United Nations definition.

Tony Greenstein

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If I Were a Member of the Knesset I Would Have Had No Hesitation in Voting for the Jewish Nation State Bill

August 21, 2018, 3:34 pm

≫ Next: We are facing a Coup by Attrition as the Zionists and the BBC pore over every last word Corbyn has ever uttered

≪ Previous: The sad, sick racism of Zionism - Brighton’s Anti-War Memorial is defaced

The Open Racism of Netanyahu is Preferable to the Platitudes of Liberal Zionism

7,000 Protestors in Tel Aviv demonstrating against Jewish nation state bill - only 1% of Tel Aviv's inhabitants are Arabs

This blogpost was first published in the Weekly Worker as Clarity as to the reality It is a satirical post about the 'opposition' of many good liberal Zionists and their bleeding heart chorus to Netanyahu's Jewish Nation State law. I wrote it because of the hypocrisy of those whose main objection to the Law is that they object to putting down in writing what are already extant practices in Israel. In other words their objection is not to the practices but the open admission as to what is happening.

I realise that this may shock some of my friends. Why, some may ask, would someone whom the Jewish Chronicle calls a veteran Jewish anti-Zionist and whom the President of the Board of Deputies attacked for his ‘long record of noxious behavior’ support Netanyahu’s flagship policy of legislative apartheid?

Yes the Jewish Nation State Bill is racist and it is an official declaration that Israel is an apartheid state. However I prefer that Israel openly admits to what kind of state it is rather than hiding behind circumlocutions such as ‘The only democratic state in the Middle East’ or ‘a Jewish democratic state.’

I agree with Abed Azab[As an Arab, I Support Israel's Jewish Nation-state Bill] when I say that I prefer the enemy who is an honest racist rather than one who speaks of equality and practices discrimination.

In May I wrote Israel has officially declared itself an apartheid state. I stand by what I wrote. Which was more preferable in South Africa? The hidden apartheid of Jan Smuts before 1948 or the open apartheid of Dr Malan and the Nationalists after 1948?

In‘Racist and Discriminatory’: U.S. Jewish Leaders Warn Israel Against Passage of Nation-state Bill Allison Kaplan Sommer and Bar Peleg argue that the Bill, ‘would prioritize Jewish values over democratic ones.’

Forgive me if I am wrong but isn’t Israel already a Jewish state? Isn’t that what it has always done? When given the choice between the Democratic and the Jewish road Zionism has always chosen the latter.

We are told that ‘One controversial clause, which would permit the establishment of communities that are segregated by religion or nationality, was criticized last week by President Reuven Rivlin. Perhaps President Rivlin knows something that I don’t. Haven’t Jewish only communities always been the norm in Israel? How many Arabs have belonged to the Jewish only kibbutzim or moshavim? One I believe in over a century. Or the hundreds of Jewish-only communities that have been established in Israel post-1948. Did Rivlin call for disbandment of the Jewish National Fund whose sole purpose is to ensure that 93% of Israeli land is reserved for the use of Jews? Have any of the left Zionist parties, from the Israeli Labour Party to Meretz called for the winding up of the Jewish Agency and the repeal of the 1952 Jewish Agency Status Law?

To be a member of Mitzpe Aviv you have to undergo an ideological purity test and affirm you are a Zionist - which is one way to keep out Arabs

We have been here before. Did the Supreme Court not rule in 2000 in Ka'adanagainst the practice of refusing Arabs admission to Jewish only communities and force Katzir to accept the Kaadan family? Was the response of the Knesset not to pass the Acceptance Committees Law which effectively overturned Ka'adan, with the blessing of the Supreme Court? Of course this law did not specifically mention that Arabs were not acceptable. It merely allowed the Committees to adopt whatever criteria they liked to in order to preserve their ‘character’. So settlements like Mitzpe Aviv, Manof and Yuvalim, requireprospective members to declare that they believe in the values of Zionism, Jewish tradition and Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, something which most Arabs find a little difficult!

Eight years ago Amnon Beeri-Sulitzeanu, the Director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, wrote an article Segregation of Jews and Arabs in 2010 Israel Is Almost Absolute describing how the innocuously titled Amendment to the Cooperative Associations Bill, was about to be passed by the Knesset. Its purpose being to bypass the ruling in Kaadan. Amnon wrote of how:

Segregation of Jews and Arabs in Israel of 2010 is almost absolute. For those of us who live here, it is something we take for granted. But visitors from abroad cannot believe their eyes: segregated education, segregated businesses, separate entertainment venues, different languages, separate political parties ... and of course, segregated housing. In many senses, this is the way members of both groups want things to be, but such separation only contributes to the growing mutual alienation of Jews and Arabs.

Yet according to Rabbi Gilad Kariv, CEO of the Israeli Reform movement 'the nation-station bill is going to tarnish the Israeli law book.’ This is a law book that includes, according to Adalah, over 65 racist and discriminatory laws. Apparently it is going to be tarnished by this one law. Surely this is a cause for celebration?

Has Rabbi Kariv not heard of the 1950 Law of Return which grants me, the right to ‘return’ to a land I have only visited once but denies that right to Palestinians whose families since time immemorial resided in Palestine? Or perhaps the good rabbi has not heard of the 1950 Absentee Property Law which allowed property belonging to Arabs, even if they were in Israel during its War of Independence, to be confiscated and its owners to be classified as the Orwellian Present Absentees’?

According to Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund the bill is a ‘danger to Israel’s future’. How can this be? What Sokatch means is that the Bill is a threat to the Jewish nature of the Israeli state. It helps reveal the racist structure behind the democratic facade. Sokatch recited a familiar fairy tale.

‘Beginning with Israel’s Declaration of Independence... the principle of the equality of all people have formed the democratic foundation of the state. This law is completely incompatible with those values. It ... provides a legal basis to discriminate based on religion, race and sex.”

Israel’s Declaration of Independence is a favourite with liberal Zionists. The only problem is that it has never been incorporated into law. Not by Mapai nor by Likud.

Who would have guessed that at the very moment that David Ben Gurion was reading out these noble sentiments over 300,000 Arabs had already been expelled from their homes and villages and that another half million were destined to share the same fate, accompanied by up to 30 massacres? That Israel’s Arab population would continue to live under military law until 1966?

Netanyahu’s Bill is welcome if only in order to lay Sokatch’s myths to rest. To bury the lie about Israel’s formation. The Declaration of Independence waxed lyrical about developing Israel ‘for the benefit of all its inhabitants’ and a state ‘based on freedom, justice and peace’ which would ‘ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex’as well as being ‘faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.’ It can be safely said that all this and more was honoured in the breach.

If there is one thing at which Zionism excels it is public relations. It has long since mastered the art of saying one thing and doing another. If only half its pious declarations had been put into practice then Israel would indeed have become a light unto the nations. Instead we have to be content with the dark deeds of half-century’s military occupation.

Israel’s Arab citizens enjoyed none of the rights that Ben Gurion talked about in the Declaration. On the contrary the Israeli Labour Party (Mapai) government proceeded to enact a series of racist laws whose purpose was to legalise the theft of their land.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, explainedthe motivation behind his criticism. The Jewish Nation State Bill “will make Israel an open target on the world stage for all those who seek to deny the Jewish people our right to a homeland.” Precisely. His criticism is made in defence of the status quo in Israel not in order to change that status quo.

In other words his real concern is that the Bill will make explicit that which has always been implicit. When Rabbi Jacobs speaks of denying Jews their ‘right to a homeland’ what he really means is their right to continue to colonise Israel and Palestine. Because I and millions of Jews in the diaspora already have a home. It is where we live – in Britain, America, France etc. We do not need a second home when Palestinians are being thrown out of their only home. The ‘Jewish people’, a construction of anti-Semites and Zionists through the ages, does not need a Jewish state. What would be of benefit though is that in the 21^stcentury the Israeli state normalises itself and transforms itself from a State of the Jews to a State of its own people. Ethno- nationalist states died out in the Europe of the 1930’s and 1940’s with the defeat of fascism. It was only in places like Israel and South Africa that such a political formation survived.

Kfar Vradim halts tender because too many Arabs have won bids

When Rabbi Jacobs complains that the Bill ‘hurts the delicate balance between the Jewish majority and Arab minority’ he is engaged in sophistry.What balance would that be? The balance that led to the uprooting and demolition of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiranin the Negev in order to make way for the Jewish town of Hiran? Or perhaps he means the edict of Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Safed, forbidding Jews to rent apartments to Arabs? Perhaps this ‘delicate balance’ was evidenced in the freezingof plans for expansion in Kfar Vradim after Arabs were successful in nearly half the bids for new housing? Or was it the demonstrationsin Afula after an Arab family successfully bought a house there?

The 14 groups making up the Jewish Federation of North America argued that the Bill would eliminate “the defining characteristic of a modern democracy” such as ‘protecting rights for all.’ The problem is that the rights of Israeli Arabs have long since gone unprotected.

Kfar Vridim

In the history of the Israeli state just one Jewish demonstrator has been killed by the Police (in 1951) but the police have repeatedly killed Arab demonstrators. Jewish stone throwers are never shot at, Arab demonstrators are invariably gunned down.

The murder of school teacher Yakub Musa Abu al-Kiyan in Umm al Hiran last year, who was left to bleed to death, was particularly egregious. In any normal democratic state the village would not of course have been demolished. The police firing on an innocent man would have led to a judicial inquiry. Instead the murdered man was first demonised as an ISIS terrorist by Interior Minister Gilad Erdan and when it was proven that the policeman who died was killed as a result of Yakub Musa losing control of his car, after having been shot, there was a cover up. The life of Arabs in the Israeli state is cheap compared to Jewish life.

What has aroused the ire and anger of the major American Jewish organisations is not the systematic discrimination that Palestinians, have suffered. Their real concerns are for the damage that is being caused to the reputation of Israel by Netanyahu’s open racism.

The American Jewish Federation’s objection is not to separation and segregation but to writing this segregation down in law. From schooling to maternity wards, Israel is a segregated society. It is a society where an Arab poet Dareen Tatour can be arrested and gaoled for writing a poem yet the leader of Lehava, Benzi Gopstein remains free despite threatening to burn down churches and mosques. Israel is a society where the leader of the Northern Islamic Leagues, Raed Salah can be gaoled on disputed evidence for alleged incitement yet the authors of Torat HeMelech which explains how to kill non-Jews legally, according to halachah, remain at liberty.

It is therefore to be regretted that the clause which sanctioned Jewish only communities has been replacedwith a clause calling for ‘strengthening the Jewish presence in predominantly Arab Israeli areas.’ The latter refers to the policy of Jewish only settlement, Judaisation, of areas such as the Negev and Galilee, where there are too many Arabs. However is it not better to spell this out?

The Jewish Nation State Bill offers unprecedented clarity as to the reality of what a Jewish state means in practice. That is why the Jewish Federation of North America, which has not been known for championing the rights of Palestinians took fright at the Bill. We should not be afraid.

Tony Greenstein

This article is also printed as Clarity as to the reality in Weekly Worker Issue 212.

‘Racist and Discriminatory’: U.S. Jewish Leaders Warn Israel Against Passage of Nation-state Bill

Some 7,000 demonstrators in Tel Aviv march from Rabin Square to an 'emergency rally' to protest the bill ■ New Israel Fund CEO: 'This is tribalism at its worst'

Allison Kaplan Sommer and Bar Peleg

Jul 15, 2018 9:53 AM

American Jewish leaders, alarmed by the prospect of the controversial nation-state Basic Law, have intensified their lobbying efforts, strongly urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reconsider his government’s desire to pass it in the Knesset this week.

Jerry Silverman, president of the Jewish Federations of North America, was expected to arrive in Israel Sunday to express his organization’s concerns to top Israeli officials.

In Tel Aviv on Saturday night, meanwhile, some 7,000 demonstrators marched from Rabin Square to an “emergency rally” at the intersection of Dizengoff and Bar Giora streets, where they listened to speeches by politicians and social activists.

The New Israel Fund took part in the rally – organized by a number of Israeli advocacy organizations, as well as groups affiliated with the Meretz, Hadash, Ta’al and Labor parties – to protest what it called a “racist, discriminatory” bill.

The bill, which would have a Constitution-like status, would prioritize Jewish values over democratic ones in the state. One controversial clause, which would permit the establishment of communities that are segregated by religion or nationality, was criticized last week by President Reuven Rivlin.

Also participating in the protest were several Israeli lawmakers: Ayman Odeh, who chairs the predominantly Arab Joint List, slammed the bill as a "law whose purpose is to stick a finger in the eyes of a fifth of Israel's population, spark a dispute and polarize in order to make political gain for the Netanyahu tyranny."

Speaking at the demonstration, Odeh said that "in a government that has lost all shame, that fears its own shadow, the majority tramples the minority, legislation is racist and the democratic space is under constant threat."

MK Tamar Zandberg, who heads Meretz, charged that Netanyahu's government was attempting to push the law through in order to distract Israelis from the dire situation in the Gaza Strip.

"Today, we see what happens when the government doesn't have a solution facing Gaza – all it can offer are racist laws," she said.

Rabbi Gilad Kariv, CEO of the Reform Movement in Israel, echoed the criticism, blasting the bill as "contemptible."

"The real score we need to settle is with those elected by the public [Knesset members] who know deep inside how much the nation-state bill is going to tarnish the Israeli law book – and remain silent nonetheless," he said.

New Israel Fund CEO Daniel Sokatch is among a growing number of American Jewish leaders issuing strong public statements against the bill, calling it a “danger to Israel’s future.”

“This is tribalism at its worst,” said Sokatch. “Beginning with Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the Jewish value of human dignity and the principle of the equality of all people have formed the democratic foundation of the state. This law is completely incompatible with those values. It is a slap in the face to Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel and provides a legal basis to discriminate based on religion, race and sex.

“If racism, sexism and religious fundamentalism are to be protected in Israel’s Basic Laws, it should be no surprise when the country embodies those values,” he added. “This bill and the government that supported it are a danger to Israel’s future.”

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, also spoke out, saying that such a law “will make Israel an open target on the world stage for all those who seek to deny the Jewish people our right to a homeland.

“If passed, it will create a dangerous precedent for democracy in Israel,” said Jacobs in a statement. “It is a 180-degree turn from Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which enshrines freedom and democracy for all Israelis. This bill would instead upend democratic norms and create an Israel that is unequal. It is a grave threat to Israeli democracy,” Jacobs added.

Jacobs said the bill both “hurts the delicate balance between the Jewish majority and Arab minority, and it enthrones ultra-Orthodox Judaism at the expense of the majority of a pluralistic world Jewry.”

Reform Jewry, he added, was “vehemently opposed” to the bill and vowed to fight it “aggressively.”

A group of 14 American Jewish organizations directed their deep concerns about the bill to incoming Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog, who still serves as leader of the Opposition in the Knesset.

The organizations said the bill would eliminate “the defining characteristic of a modern democracy” – protecting rights for all. Instead, its letter said, “this bill would remove that democratic basis and give constitutional protection to policies that could discriminate against minorities, including women, Palestinian citizens, racial minorities, LGBT people, non-Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Druze, Christians and others.”

The letter was signed by the New Israel Fund, J Street, T’ruah, Americans for Peace Now, Ameinu, Aytzim’s Green Zionist Alliance, Habonim Dror North America, Hashomer Hatzair North America, Keshet, the National Council of Jewish Women, Reconstructing Judaism, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, Right Now: Advocates for Asylum Seekers in Israel, and Tivnu: Building Justice.

The Israel Policy Forum “urged” the Netanyahu government to “drop the bill entirely, or, failing that, to at least amend it, excising any discriminatory elements while incorporating elements that reinforce Israel’s democratic character, without delay.”

In May, two groups – the Anti-Defamation League and J Street – had expressed early opposition to the bill when it was approved by a ministerial committee to return to the Knesset floor for consideration.

Israel in turmoil over bill allowing Jews and Arabs to be segregated

Law will ‘reveal ugly face of ultranationalist Israel in all its repugnance’, professor says

Oliver HolmesLast modified on Sun 15 Jul 2018 17.40 BST

Israel is in the throes of political upheaval as the country’s ruling party seeks to pass legislation that could allow for Jewish-only communities, which critics have condemned as the end of a democratic state.

For the past half-decade, politicians have been wrangling over the details of the bill that holds constitution-like status and that Benjamin Netanyahu wants passed this month.

The proposed legislation would allow the state to “authorise a community composed of people having the same faith and nationality to maintain the exclusive character of that community”.

In its current state, the draft would also permit Jewish religious law to be implemented in certain cases and remove Arabic as an official language.

“In the Israeli democracy, we will continue to protect the rights of both the individual and the group, this is guaranteed. But the majority have rights too, and the majority rules,” the Israeli prime minister said this week.

A vote on the bill is expected next week, although a final draft has yet to be agreed on. The legislation has been compared to South African apartheid by Israeli parliamentarians, and several thousand Israelis protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

The Middle Eastern country sees itself as both a democratic and a Jewish state, saying its legal system protects the rights of Arabs, who make up more than a fifth of the population, and other minorities. However, the “Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people” bill would enshrine the country’s Jewish national and religious character into law.

“Our main concern is that it is changing the nature of the state and it changes the balance of Israel as a nation state,” said Amir Fuchs, the head of the defending democratic values programme at the Israel Democracy Institute. “You can be a nation state and still be a democracy as long as you don’t discriminate,” said Fuchs. “That the state is allowed to create villages that will separate on the basis of race or religion or nationality – this is outrageous.”

The purpose of the bill, he said, was “to change the balance, to make us more of a nation state, more of a Jewish state, and less of a democracy. There is no other way to put it. And this is the biggest problem.”

Netanyahu has lashed out at domestic and international critics, ordering the foreign ministry to reprimand the EU envoy Emanuele Giaufret after he was reported as saying the bill was discriminatory.

Both Israel’s attorney general and president, who holds a symbolic role, also opposed details of the bill. The president, Reuven Rivlin, said it would harm the Jewish people worldwide and “even be used as a weapon by our enemies”. The segregation clause, he said, could also allow towns that exclude Jews of Middle Eastern origin – who have been historically sidelined – or homosexuals.

Legislator Miki Zohar, from the prime minister’s Likud party, said:“Unfortunately, President Rivlin has lost it” and had “forgotten his DNA”.

Many Israeli neighbourhoods and towns are already effectively segregated, with residents either vastly Jewish or Arab. In many places, it is tough for an Arab to move in, although segregation is not legal.

Writing in the progressive-leaning Haaretz newspaper, Mordechai Kremnitzer, from the faculty of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the bill would “remove the mask so as to reveal the ugly face of ultranationalist Israel in all its repugnance”.

The debate has also opened a rift with the Jewish diaspora, with fears among more liberal American Jewish groups that it would prioritise Orthodox communities over other denominations.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said the bill was a grave threat to Israeli democracy and hurt “the delicate balance between the Jewish majority and Arab minority, and it enthrones ultra-Orthodox Judaism at the expense of the majority of a pluralistic world Jewry”.

Daniel Sokatch, the chief executive of New Israel Fund, which supports civil rights groups in Israel, decried the bill as “tribalism at its worst”.

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We are facing a Coup by Attrition as the Zionists and the BBC pore over every last word Corbyn has ever uttered

August 25, 2018, 11:32 pm

≫ Next: Duff by name and Duff by nature –The Editor of the ‘i’ is a Good Example of how the Press Prostitutes itself to the Establishment

≪ Previous: If I Were a Member of the Knesset I Would Have Had No Hesitation in Voting for the Jewish Nation State Bill

The Zionist war against Corbyn could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and INCREASE anti-Semitism

Many people who are deceived into thinking that the Zionist groups attacking Corbyn represent all of British Jews, who believe the lie that the Board of Deputies represents all Jews rather than the most reactionary and racist section of Jews, are likely to feel resentful at the way 'antisemitism' has been prioritised over their needs and concerns. Especially when it is clear to anyone who can has eyes to see or a brain to think that British Jews do not suffer from any discernible form of oppression.

There were after all not many if any Jews who were living in Grenfell Tower nor are there many living in the slums of Hackney or earning a living on a zero hours contract. The predominance of refugees and Black people at Grenfell was obvious to all.

In their attempt to take down the most radical leader that the Labour Party has ever had the Zionists are increasing not decreasing anti-semitism. Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who described Corbyn as an anti-Semite was the same Jonathan Arkush who effusively welcomed the anti-Semitic administration of Donald Trump to power. However most people will not understand why these right-wing and reactionary Jews are so concerned about what seems to them to be a non-existent antisemitism.

Black people fearful of Theresa May's 'hostile environment' policy and who have barely recovered from the shock of Grenfell Tower are not likely to be impressed by the claim that British Jews are suffering from an epidemic of anti-semitism in the plush neighbourhoods of Golders Green. Anti-semitic attacks in Hendon are few and far between and it is not synagogues but mosques that are at risk from fascist firebombs.

The homeless and those living in insecure accommodation, struggling to survive on reduced benefits or eking out an existence in the gig economy are likely to feel resentful at Jews for trying to remove the one hope that millions have for challenging the vice-like grip that the rich and powerful have on society. Why is it they ask that the George Osbornes, Theresa Mays and Sir Eric Pickles are so concerned about 'anti-Semitism' and Israel when the same people are indifferent if not actively hostile to Black and ethnic minorities?

People who really are oppressed and exploited will not understand that the Zionist campaign in the name of all Jews is a fake and phoney campaign on behalf of the British Establishment. Black, Muslim and ethnic minorities are likely to ask why it is that the concerns of a rich millionairess, Margaret Hodge, someone who turned a blind eye to child abuse when she was Council leader, should take priority over their very real needs and concerns.

Even the paper wot supported Hitler is opposed to 'antisemitism'

Zionism has never been concerned about genuine anti-semitism. Quite the contrary. As we saw in Paris in 2015 in the wake of the killing of 4 Jews in the Hypercacher kosher supermarket, the Zionist movement are always eager to exploit Jewish tragedy for Zionist purposes. Whilst the bodies were still warm, Benjamin Netanyahu flew in to tell French Jews that Israel, not France, was their 'real home' and that they should depart for Israel to become settlers. The Zionist solution for the Jewish diaspora, to abandon their actual homes, is no different to the solution of anti-semites through the ages. Netanyahu to French Jews: ‘Israel is your home’

This is the irony of the campaign in the Labour Party against the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Definition of Antisemitism. It is a campaign which will increase, not decrease anti-semitism and that is a prospect which most Zionists will be entirely happy with. Zionism has never fought anti-semitism. On the contrary Zionism has always seen itself as a political beneficiary of anti-Semitism.

Earlier this week Luciana Berger, Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, made what the Daily Mail describedas ‘her most outspoken attack on the Labour leader to date’. According to the Guardiana speech by Jeremy Corbyn five years ago made her ‘feel unwelcome in my own party.’

It is good that Luciana Berger should feel unwelcome. She has no business in the Labour Party. She is a racist not a socialist and she is a supporter of the world’s only apartheid state. She is deeply unpopular in the constituency she was parachuted into, Liverpool Wavertree and if she departed there would be few who would regret her passing.

It is true that Luciana Berger is unwelcome in Labour it is however it has nothing to do with her being Jewish and everything to do with her being a racist

Joan Ryan, Chair of Labour Friends of Israel followed this with a call for Corbyn to ‘apologise & take responsibility for actions which have caused such hurt anger & distress.’ Given her disgraceful role in falsely accusing Jean Fitzpatrick of anti-Semitism, as revealed by Al Jazeera’s The Lobby, it is Ryan who should be apologising. Joan Ryan is someone whose main concern in Parliament is claiming the maximum amount of expenses. Her Wiki entry notes that she claimed £173,691 in expenses for 2006/2007, the highest for any MP having come runner-up in 2005/2006. Ryan's dedication to her expenses didn’t prevent her penning an article in last week’s Jewish Chronicle Jeremy Corbyn appals me - and his behaviour will get no better

The idea that this corrupt racist MP has suffered 'hurt, anger and distress'is for the birds!

Even the most stupid right-wing member of Momentum (Jon Lansman excepted) should be able to see that there is a pattern here. Old speeches from Corbyn expressing solidarity with the Palestinians and opposing the antics of Zionist disrupters are now being dug up and recycled in what is a war of attrition. People like Luciana Berger then express how ‘hurt’ they are by what was said 5 years ago!

The time has long since gone when we need to fightback against Israel’s surrogates in the Labour Party. The meeting called last week by Camden Momentum, which was attended by over 110 members of Momentum from 16 groups in London, is a start. It decided to begin the organisation of a fightback since it is blindingly clear that Lansman and his National Coordinating Group have no intention of doing anything to defend Corbyn against the ceaseless attacks of the Zionists.

Even the Sun, which employed the vile Katie Hopkins, is opposed to 'anti-semitism'

Quite simply Momentum is politically paralysed at the moment as its owner and Leader is in bed with the very Zionists who are attacking Corbyn.

As the film of Jeremy’s speech shows he said nothingwhich was in any way anti-Semitic. The professions of hurt expressed by Luciana Berger and Joan Ryan are entirely synthetic.

Joan Ryan MP - Chair of Labour Friends of Israel which justified Israel's murder of 160 unarmed demonstrators in Gaza

We are however in a dangerous situation and Corbyn’s own reticence in fighting back is making things worse. It is crucial that maximum pressure is put on Labour’s National Executive Committee next week not to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.

That is why Labour Against the Witchhunt and other organisations are calling for a mass lobby of the NEC to make our voice heard. It is ESSENTIAL that people make every effort to attend.

Labour’s Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct is dead in the water. It was a bridge too far. It tried to reconcile the irreconcilable by accepting the IHRA whilst, at the same time, defending people’s right to free speech on Palestine. This is not possible. The whole purpose of the IHRA is to limit freedom of speech.

Indeed the Code bends the stick so far that Brian Klug, an Oxford philosophy don, an expert in anti-Semitism and founder of Independent Jewish Voices wrotethat ‘Ironically, it is the drafters of the Labour party’s NEC Code, not their critics, who have grasped the meaning of ‘working definition’.

The ‘working definition’ is another name for the IHRA. Brian is right yet he is also wrong, because he accepts the bona fides of the Code’s critics. This is a great mistake since the Zionist critics of Corbyn aren’t in the slightest concerned about anti-Semitism but Israel. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is a means to an end and Corbyn’s Zionist critics are intent on redefining anti-Semitism to mean hostility to Israel as opposed to Jews.

The IHRA has one and only one purpose, to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. It is important to remember this.

Anti-Semitism itself is easy to define. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ All of 6 words. According to Klug ‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’ That comes out as 21 words. By way of contrast the IHRA Working Definition on Anti-Semitism is over 500 words.

Professor David Feldman, Director of the Sears Institute for the Study of Antisemism, described the IHRA as ‘bewilderingly imprecise’. Hugh Tomlinson QC described it as having a ‘potentially chilling effect’ on free speech and Sir Stephen Sedley, the former Court of Appeal judge who is himself Jewish wrote in the London Review of Books (Defining Anti-Semitism)how the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’

The Origins of the IHRA

It is instructive to consider just exactly why it was considered necessary to construct a 500+ word definition of anti-Semitism when 6 words would do. Michael Whine, of the Zionist Community Security Trust, in A Short History of the Definition wrote how the intention was to create a definition ‘which could adequately describe both the demonization and disproportionate criticism of Israel which masqueraded as anti-Zionism, and which came increasingly from Muslims...’In other words it wasn’t anti-Semitism but Israel which was their main concern from the start.

Likewise Dave Rich, Deputy Director of the CST, explainedthat ‘The Working Definition was not created as a guide to antisemitic discourse.’ In other words this whole exercise that Labour’s NEC is going through is impermissible because its primary target is the spoken or written word. Rich writes that ‘it can be used to identify antisemitic discourse in non-criminal contexts, but only as a rough guide, or a starting point’ and that the original purpose of the Working Definition was for law enforcement

Even the principal author of the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, in testimony to the House of Representatives in November 2017, warned that:

Stern has subsequently spoken about how the IHRA was ‘was being employed in an attempt to restrict academic freedom and punish political speech’. One could argue that Stern was being hypocritical since the IHRA’s whole purpose was to render anti-Zionist criticism as antisemitic.

Stern described how Zionist pressure groups in the US, even when they lost court cases against supporters of the Palestinians ‘argued that even if the cases lost, they had what seemed to them a positive benefit – they chilled pro -Palestinian expression.’

Stern also asked a question particularly relevant to the current debate. Could Afro-American groups demand a specific definition of racism that included opposition to affirmative action, opposition to removing statues of Confederate leaders and opposition to the agenda of Black Lives Matters? Stern went on:

‘Imagine a definition designed for Palestinians. If “Denying the Jewish people their right to self- determination, and denying Israel the right to exist” is antisemitism, then shouldn’t “Denying the Palestinian people their right to self- determination, and denying Palestine the right to exist” be anti -Palestinianism?’

Stern described how the IHRA had been used to curtail free speech in Britain, listing the “Israel Apartheid Week” event which was cancelled by Central Lancashire University and the case of the Holocaust survivor who was required to change the title of a campus talk by Manchester university after an Israeli diplomat complained that the title violated the definition.’ Stern described as ‘Perhaps most egregious’ of all the call on a university to conduct an inquiry of a professor for antisemitism, based on an article she had written years before. Accurately describing what had happened as ‘chilling and McCarthy -like.’

Stern also gives a good example of why the IHRA is irrelevant when dealing with acts of genuine anti-Semitism. He describes how, when he was at the American Jewish Committee, he filed a complaint on behalf of Jewish high school students who were targeted for harassment because they were Jewish –

they were called “cheapie,” chants of “Heil Hitler” and “Nazi” were offered in their presence, and many were kicked on a so -called “Kick a Jew Day.” The case was successfully resolved. It was clear to the Department of Education that these students were being harassed because they were Jewish ; there was no need to consult a definition to make this determination.

And that is precisely why there is no need for a definition of anti-Semitism. It is like the elephant in the room – you recognise it when you see it.

In The Working Definition –A ReappraisalStern described howsome Jewish organizations were using it ‘in an inappropriate way, which bastardizes what it was intended’. He described their modus operandi as having ‘the subtlety of a mallet.’

Jonathan Cook givesan example of why the IHRA is a threat to free speech.

After 17 years of writing about Israel, after winning a respected journalism prize for being “one of the reliable truth-tellers in the Middle East”, the Labour party is about to declare that I, and many others like me, are irredeemable anti-semites.

What we have seen in the past three years is a deliberate attempt by Britain’s Zionist leadership to create an atmosphere bordering on hysteria in sections of British Jewry. The campaign has been both cynical and manipulative. The idea that anti-Semitism is prevalent in British society is absurd. We are living in a golden age where anti-Semitism is barely measurable. It is vanishingly small. [See The chimera of British anti-Semitism (and how not to fight it if it were real)by Norman Finkelstein]

Yet the Zionists have had a considerable success in creating the apprehension of anti-semitism amongst sections of British Jews because of the closed nature of the synagogue going Jewish community (secular Jews are largely outside their orbit) in what amounts to a campaign of panic inducement. I would argue that very Jews actually change their patterns of behaviour in any measurable way. There is no rapid upsurge in British Jews emigrating to Israel for example.

According to a surveycarried out for the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism ‘more than half of all British Jews feel that anti-Semitism now echoes the 1930s (CAA).’ Leaving aside criticisms of the methodology of this survey, Anshel Pfeffer of Ha'aretz hit the nail on the head when he wrote concerning the finding that 56 percent of British Jews agree that “the recent rise in anti-Semitism in Britain has some echoes of the 1930s.”

If the majority of British Jews and the authors of the CAA report actually believe that, then it’s hard to take anything they say about contemporary anti-Semitism in their home country seriously. If they honestly think that the situation in Britain today echoes the 1930s... then not only are they woefully ignorant of recent Jewish history but have little concept of what real anti-Semitism is beyond the type they see online.

The latest battle is not about a form of words. That is another act of deception. The IHRA is totemic. The Zionists will never be satisfied with how it is implemented. As Joan Ryan wrote in last week’s Jewish Chronicle ‘Nor should we pretend that even full acceptance of IHRA ends the battle against antisemitism in the Labour Party.’ In the words of the joint editorial of Britain’s 3 Zionist newspapers ‘hundreds, if not thousands, of Labour and Momentum members would need to be expelled.’

That is why Len McLuskey’s view that the IHRA should be accepted in full in order that the false anti-Semitism campaign against Corbyn will stop is pie in the sky and utterly stupid. Far from relieving pressure adoption of the IHRA will intensify the Zionist campaign.

After three years of denying that the false anti-Semitism controversy was just a convenient way to vilify criticism of Israel, the Zionists have now admitted that this is precisely what their objective is. In Sham: Labour’s plan to back down on IHRA Jewish Chronicle Political Editor Lee Harpin wrote that:

Instead of adopting the full IHRA definition, they are planning to insert a new clause which opens the door to criticism of the state of Israel as a “racist endeavour”.

The editor of the Jewish Chronicle and ex-editor of the Daily Express, Stephen Pollard, was even clearer in an article condemning the Labour Party as ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’. He complained that‘instead of adopting the definition as agreed by all these bodies, Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’

And if there were any doubt about their agenda, Pollard complained that:

‘Labour makes a distinction between racial antisemitism targeting Jews (unacceptable) and political antisemitism targeting Israel (acceptable).’

For the Zionists targeting Jews racially is perfectly ok but targeting Israel for criticism is wholly unacceptable. The Zionists would like criticism of Israeli state racism to be automatically branded as ‘anti-Semitic’. Even the truth will be outlawed.

Israeli racism which it will be antisemitic to criticise

Only a few weeks ago hundreds of demonstrators in the northern Israeli town of Afula came on to the streets to protest that a house in this all-Jewish city had been sold to an Arab. Hundreds of Israelis Demonstrate Against Home Sale to Arab Family Mentioning the above could now be considered ‘anti-Semitic’.

All over Israel towns and cities are segregated and there are nearly a thousand all-Jewish communities with the powers to reject Arab applicants under the Reception Committees Law. Suggestions that this is racist would clearly be anti-Semitic.

Presumably the existence of a policy to separate Arab and Jewish women in maternity hospitals is also an example of Israeli multi-culturalism? And what of the religious edict, handed down by the Chief Rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, that Jews are forbidden to rent rooms or flats to Arabs. An edict which, when subject to criticism, was backed by hundreds of Israeli rabbis. Eliyahu isn’t simply a racist bigot. He is a salaried state official. But to mention the above or hundreds of examples like it will also be ‘anti-Semitic’ if Labour accepts the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

If the NEC approves the IHRA it will be an act of racism in itself. Although the Zionists claim that Councils and police bodies approve of the IHRA, Britain’s Black and Asian, Migrant and Refugee organisations certainly don’t.’ [See UK black and minority ethnic groups blast Labour Party antisemitism debate for seeking to defend Israel by erasing Palestinian history] In a statement 101 organisations reject the IHRA because of its effect on freedom of expression.

We should not despair. The idea that the Labour Party is a racist, anti-Semitic party is a ruling class narrative. It is an accepted truth for the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, the New Statesman and assorted pundits who live in the Westminster bubble. However it does not have a popular echo. If you were to ask the man or woman on the Clapham Omnibus what anti-Semitism was, they wouldn’t give you a 500 word reply, they would say something like ‘It is someone who doesn’t like Jews’ not someone who doesn’t like Israel.

Packed meeting at London's Conway Hall

Last week we saw a meeting packed to over flowing in Conway Hall dedicated to opposing the latest coup attempt. The fightback is on: hundreds rally behind Corbyn in London

Huda Elmi, who is standing for a position on Labour’s NEC spoke of how the debate on the IHRA has been used to prevent Palestinians from describing their own oppression. She gave the example of Austria, which has adopted the IHRA definition, and is also governed by the far-right, where a proposal to make Jewish people register for kosher meat is being discussed. "This definition is failing Jewish people and criminalising Palestine activism."

This cartoon, unlike the mural controversy around Corbyn earlier in the year, is clearly antisemitic. Yet the leader of Austria's Freedom Party, Heinz Christian Strache, is an ardent Zionist who in 2016 visited Israel's Holocaust propaganda museum Yad Vashem

What Huda didn’t mention is that Austria’s far-Right Freedom Party, which contains large numbers of neo-Nazis loves Zionism. In 2016 its leader Heinz Christian Strache visited Israel and paid the normal visit to the Holocaust Propaganda Museum, Yad Vashem. Israel finds strange bedfellow in Austria’s far-right

Tony Greenstein

Migrant, Refugee, and BAME Communities Speak out Against Public Silence

As migrant and BAME groups in Britain, we reaffirm our fundamental right to the freedom of expression, and publicly to express our anxieties about the suppression of information on the history and lived experience of our communities.

Many of us arrived in the UK as migrants and as refugees, seeking safety from war and repression, and the effects of racism, persecution and colonialism both past and present. As a result, we know their oppressive impact on our communities, and can identify where many of the current experiences of injustices we face in Britain today are also based on racism and colonialism.

These problems are having a destructive impact on public discussions about race and immigration. It is therefore our right, and also our responsibility, to relay our direct experiences of human rights abuses suffered here and abroad, as well as their structural and historical causes, to address them. This democratic obligation is recognised in Article 10 of the Human Rights Act, to “receive and impart information”, and provides the basis for a democracy to function. As the Institute for Race Relations recently confirmed, our communities: “have a right to be heard, to make…information public, while others have the right to hear them, and the arguments based on these facts”.

We are deeply worried about current attempts to silence a public discussion of what happened in Palestine and to the Palestinians in 1948, when the majority of its people were forcibly expelled. These facts are well established and accessible, are part of the British historical record, as well as the direct experience of the Palestinian people themselves. The Palestinian communityin the UK has raised the disturbing absence of key information about these past and current injustices, and highlighted the racism it exposes then, and now.

Public discussion of these facts, and a description of these injustices, would be prohibited under the IHRA’s guidelines, and therefore withholds vital knowledge from the public. This silencing has already begun. Today we can freely describe the racist policies experienced in the era of British and European colonialism in our countries of origin (indeed it is taught in British schools), but the colonial history of the Palestinians is continually erased. This is a dangerous breach of our own rights, and of the wider British public: we must all hear the full story of the Palestinians in order to make sense of the current discussions about racism and Israel.

We also know of the efforts by organisations– including UK-based fundamentalist groups alignedwith the far-right in the US – to deny Palestinians’ basic humanity by suppressing their entire history and current plight. At the same time, hard-line conservative groups in the US, such as the Middle East Forum, are providing funding and support to anti-Muslim extremist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), deliberately increasing hatred, fear, and confusion. These coordinated efforts by right-wing extremists are being actively encouraged by President Trump’s racism and fear-mongering, which is now aimed at dismantling UNRWA, the UN agency that protects Palestinian refugees.

Over this past year, several terrible events have demonstrated the dangers of silencing migrant, and BAME communities. The fatal fire at Grenfell Tower and the shameful Windrush scandal have shown the active legacies of British colonialism, where racism forms an integral part of British policies, and renders our communities invisible. This denies our dignity and humanity, and our right to fair treatment under the rule of law: the bedrock of British society.

We urgently remind politicians and public bodies of their responsibilities to uphold the principles of the Human Rights Act for every British citizen and resident in the UK equally, especially the direct victims of colonialism, racism, and discrimination. As migrant and BAME communities we stand as one, united against all attempts to suppress our voices and our calls for justice, freedom, and equality.

Signed by 101 National Membership Organisations and Coalitions

Israel running campaign against Jeremy Corbyn,

Asa Winstanley

Corbyn’s Labour is Being Made to Fail – by Design

By Jonathan Cook

Hijacking Victimhood and Demonizing Dissent, Media Lens

By Gavin Lewis

↧

Duff by name and Duff by nature –The Editor of the ‘i’ is a Good Example of how the Press Prostitutes itself to the Establishment

August 26, 2018, 11:35 pm

≫ Next: Banned by Amnesty International for Harassment - How the BBC turned Zionist Thug Richard Millett from a Zero into a Hero

≪ Previous: We are facing a Coup by Attrition as the Zionists and the BBC pore over every last word Corbyn has ever uttered

The ‘i’ refuses to allow responses to Superficial Simon Kelner or Dishonest Ian Birrell - When it comes to ‘anti-Semitism’ the ‘i’ clings to the tabloid/BBC narrative

On its masthead the ‘i’ boasts that it is ‘Quality, Concise – the Future of Independent Journalism’. If true then the British press does not have a very rosy future ahead.

The ‘i’s main claim to fame is that it drove a nail into the coffin of The Independent as a print newspaper. Set up to provide a condensed version of The Independent, originally at 20p (30p Saturday s) its success as a low cost alternative to the Indie guaranteed the latter’s closure. As the price has continued to rise as its journalistic standards have fallen.

Ian Birrell's Dishonest Take on Labour's Anti-semitism Row

I must confess that the only reason I take the ‘i’ is that I get it free from a local hotel! However being a regular reader I responded to the bilge it was printing. In common with all of the press (bar the Morning Star) the ‘i’ has covered Labour’s fake anti-Semitism crisis in line with the fable of Labour being overrun with anti-Semitism.

Patrick Coburn - the Indepdendent's Middle East Columnist

This is despite sharing with The Independent Britain’s two best Middle East correspondents, Patrick Coburn and the legendary Robert Fisk. Given the way that Fisk has repeatedly spoken out about Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians it is inconceivable that he could support the dishonest coverage by the ‘i’ of the fake anti-Semitism allegations directed against the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn. I very much doubt that Fisk in particular looks upon the scurrilous false anti-Semitism allegations surrounding Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party with anything but distaste if not horror.

Robert Fisk the Independent's Middle East correspondent is unlikely to be happy with the 'i's trite coverage of Labour 'antisemitism'

Patrick Coburn, who comes from a distinguished journalistic family, has never to my knowledge commented upon the Establishment generated crisis surrounding the Labour Party. Given the meticulous nature of his writing it is doubtful if he subscribes to the ‘i’s editorial line.

My attention was recently drawn to two opinion pieces – one by former editor Simon Kelner and the other by Ian Birrell. Birrell is a right-wing journalist, who apart from writing for The Guardian, Independent and Mail, was a speech writer for David Cameron.

On 19^thJuly Kelner penned an article Labour’s leaders must listen to the Jewish community.Kelner has always struck me as a superficial journalist and this is amply demonstrated in both the title and body of the article. It never ceases to amaze me that those who purport to be concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ indulge in it without a seconds thought.

Contrary to Kelner’s assertions, the Jewish community doesn’t speak with one voice. It doesn’t have a view on either the Labour Party or the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.

Kelner states that the IHRA is ‘a commonly accepted definition of what constitutes anti-Semitic behaviour’. Yes it is ‘commonly accepted’ not least by the anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban and the equally anti-Semitic Law and Justice government of Poland.

Kelner's Superficial Attack on Corbyn - it repeats the same themes of all the Westminster 'journalists'

The IHRA has been savaged by academics and lawyers such as Professor David Feldman, Director of the Sears Institute for the Study of Antisemism, described the IHRA as ‘bewilderingly imprecise’. Hugh Tomlinson QC said that it was having a ‘potentially chilling effect’ on free speech and Sir Stephen Sedley, the former Court of Appeal judge, who is himself Jewish, wrote in the London Review of Books (Defining Anti-Semitism)how the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’

What never ceases to amaze is that the pundits who flit from one newspaper to another are incapable of anything other than repeating superficial clichés. Kelner’s argument for supporting the IHRA was that ‘it seems to me (a Jewish person), a fairly uncontroversial document, which states that anti-Semitic behaviour in public life includes “calling for… the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology”

Well yes. Calling for the killing of someone because they are Jewish is anti-Semitic. Why add the ‘radical ideology’tag? If you were to call for the killing of a Jew in the name of a conservative or socialist ideology would that be acceptable? Does radical not really mean Muslim? Is that not significant?

But if Kelner was merely superficial then Ian Birell’s article on 7^thAugust ‘‘Why Corbyn is unfit for office’was positively dishonest. Apart from being one long adhominem against Corbyn it treated its readers as being as stupid as its author.

Referring to Corbyn chairing a meeting addressed by Hajo Meyer, an anti-Zionist Jew who was also a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Birrell wrote that Corbyn ‘hosted an event on Holocaust Day at which someone compared Israel to Nazism, then turned on Jewish dissenters.’ In an email to the Editor of the ‘i’, the appropriately named Oliver Duff I wrote that

‘The dishonesty is breathtaking and if the ‘i’ has any sense of ethical journalism then Birrell should be barred from ever writing another article. The ‘someone’ referred to above happened to be Hajo Meyer, a survivor of Auschwitz who also happens to be Jewish. The ‘Jewish dissenters’ happened to be regular disruptors of Palestinian meetings. I was there, Birrell wasn’t

Suffice to say Oliver Duff never replied.

Tony Greenstein

Copies of Correspondence send to the ‘i’ newspaper concerning the articles of Simon Kelner and Ian Birrell

23^rd July 2018

to online, Inewspaper, Inewspaper

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif

Dear 'i'

I sent the following letter in to the 'i' 4 days ago in response to Simon Kelner's piece supporting the IHRA. Nothing has appeared in your letter columns in response to his article and nor has my letter

Is there some reason that you are afraid to publish anything on this issue that counters the mainstream narrative?

Kelner's superficial piece didn't of course ask why the anti-semitic governments of Poland and Hungary are happy to sign up to this definition. Instead he just repeated all the same talking points about a definition that antisemites have little problem with.

In other words you are happy to maintain the bias against understand that runs through our mainstream media.

If you don't want to take a letter I am happy to provide a response of equal length to Kelner's. Or is the idea of a genuine debate to difficult to handle?

Yours

Tony Greenstein

19^thJuly 2018

i@inews.co.uk

Dear Sir or Madam,

Kelner cites the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis as saying that it is ‘astonishing that the Labour Party presumes itself more qualified to define anti-Semitism than the Jewish community.’ [Labour’s leaders must listen to the Jewish community]

Yes it would be if it was true. The Jewish community has not defined anti-Semitism it is the pro-Zionist leadership of it that has. I doubt if one in a hundred Jews in this country has even read it.

Many Jews, especially those most active in anti-racist work and radical politics, reject a definition whose sole purpose is to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Anti-Semitism is a very simple concept. According to the OED it is ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ The IHRA definition, including 11 illustrations, is over 500 words.

Of course calling for the harming of Jews or Holocaust denial or making demeaning generalisations about Jews is anti-Semitic however we don’t need the IHRA to tell us that. Kelner is being disingenuous in not pointing out that the IHRA also deems calling Israel a ‘racist endeavour’ anti-Semitic. This on the day that Israel became officially an apartheid state, by passing the Jewish Nation State Law.

What Kelner refers to as the IHRA is in fact a series of 11 illustrations. The actual definition, some 38 words, has been described by Professor David Feldman of the Pears Institute as ‘bewilderingly perplexing’ and by Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge, Sir Stephen Sedley as not even a definition, since it is open ended.

Kelner’s article is part of the wall to wall one-sided media coverage of this issue, which is Orwellian in its unanimity. Perhaps Kelner would like to explain why the 38 word IHRA definition is superior to the OED definition? Opponents of the IHRA do not support anti-Semitism it’s just that we don’t support Zionism either.

Yours faithfully,

Tuesday, 07 August 2018

Letters Editor,

The ‘I’

i@inews.co.uk

Dear Sir or Madam,

Ian Birrell’s ‘Why Corbyn is unfit for office’ should have been retitled ‘Why Ian Birrell is unfit to be a journalist’. Never was there a more dishonest hatchet job than this. Lacking any trace of originality, it merely echoed received opinion.

Birrell alleges that Corbyn ‘hangs out’ with holocaust deniers. Nowhere is this libel substantiated.

Birrell complains that the ‘widely accepted’ IHRA definition of anti-Semitism has been rejected by the Labour Party. Unfortunately it hasn’t but if Birrell were seriously interested in honest or accurate journalism he might at least have mentioned the fact that academics, lawyers and anti-racist groups have objected to the IHRA because of the danger it poses to freedom of speech.

Even its author, Kenneth Stern, in written evidence to the House of Representatives in November 2017 complained that the IHRA ‘was being employed in an attempt to restrict academic freedom and punish political speech.’

But if we want an example of Birrell’s dishonesty none betters his description of the Holocaust Memorial Day meeting that Corbyn chaired in 2010. Birrell states that Corbyn ‘hosted an event on Holocaust Day at which someone compared Israel to Nazism..’’ A terrible thing to be sure comparing an apartheid state with Nazi Germany.

Who would have thought that this ‘someone’ just happened to be Hajo Meyer, a Dutch Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz extermination camp? Hajo being an ethical person, sought to understand why a state formed as a consequence of the Holocaust had emulated it in many respects. Clearly an argument Birrell finds difficult. A state where demonstrators march to the chant of ‘Death to the Arab’s in an echo of the old refrain ‘Death to the Jews’ which used to be heard in the Europe of the 1930’s.

If, as I suspect, this letter will be refused publication on the grounds that letters to the ‘i’ are only ever expected to deal with trivia then it shall be treated as an Open Letter and published on social media instead.

Yours faithfully,

Tony Greenstein

Tuesday, 07 August 2018

Oliver Duff,

Editor,

The ‘I’ Newspaper,

i@inews.co.uk

Dear Mr Duff,

I understand that you are the editor of the ‘i’ newspaper, which I happen to take.

On 19^thJuly I sent a letter in response to Simon Kelner’s article on the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism ‘Labour and Anti-Semitism’ whose thesis was that‘Labour’s leaders must listen to the Jewish community’. It was not printed. No letter criticising Kelner’s article was printed.

Kelner’s thesis was that it was ‘astonishing that the Labour Party presumes itself more qualified to define anti-Semitism than the Jewish community.’ In other words Kelner had nothing to say about the substance of the definition itself. We were presumed to judge the IHRA definition by who supports it (the Sun? Telegraph? Mail?). Kelner said nothing about why supporters of the Palestinians and anti-Zionists opposed it. Kelner ignored the views of secular and progressive Jews and focussed on the Zionist Establishment support for the IHRA definition. It was a deceptive and dishonest argument since it is unlikely that one in a hundred Jews in this country have actually read, still less understood it, the IHRA definition.

Kelner’s article conveniently ignored the weight of academic and legal opinion criticising the IHRA’s threat to freedom of speech. Nowhere in his article did Kelner even referred to any criticism. All that matters is who supports it as if it were a question of which football team to support. This is the quality of the arguments in favour of this false ‘anti-racism’ of the rich and powerful.

I refer to, for example, Professor David Feldman of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemism, who said the IHRA was ‘bewilderingly imprecise’ or Hugh Tomlinson QC who described it as having a ‘potentially chilling effect’on free speech or Sir Stephen Sedley, the former Court of Appeal judge who is himself Jewish who in a coruscating article Defining Anti-Semitismdescribed how the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’

None of these or other criticisms of the IHRA has ever appeared in anything in the ‘i’ yet you manage to devote space to articles supporting this definition.

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is over 500 words in length. It has 11 examples, which are not part of the actual definition (which Kelner also failed to mention), 7 of which refer to Israel. The OED definition of anti-Semitism, ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews’takes up only 6 words. Kelner of course did not bother to explain why a definition of racism requires 500+ words nor have any of its supporters.

Of course Kelner is entitled to put forward his arguments but any paper worthy of the name which pretends to have any commitment to democratic debate should at least acknowledge that there is another side to the argument. This you have signally failed to do. At no time has the ‘i’ even acknowledged the opposition of groups like Liberty to this pernicious definition.

Today Ian Birrell compounded this problem in writing a wholly perjorative article which substituted a personal attack for any discussion of the actual issue itself. Birrell’s full page article‘why Corbyn is unfit for office – His selective approach to rights is exposed by the anti-Semitism row.’ contains nothing which could not have appeared in the tabloid press. I understood that the ‘i’ was not simply a replication of the tabloid press, perhaps I was wrong. Birrell’s article is a model of journalistic dishonesty.

i. Birrell complains that Jewish MPs have been targeted for disciplinary action, failing to mention that thousands of Labour Party members, myself included, have also been so targeted without any campaign against the abuse of our democratic rights.

ii. Birrell says that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism ‘supposedly stymies criticism of Israel.’ At no stage does Birrell stoop to explain why this criticism might be wrong although he infers that the criticism is unfounded.

iii. Birrell writes off Corbyn’s parliamentary career in a sneering and condescending fashion: his ‘biggest decision’ being what vegetables to grow ‘while he spent those long years fighting loss causes as a backbencher’. Birrell doesn’t give us the benefit of his inside knowledge as to what these lost causes might be. Apartheid in South Africa?

iv. Birrell tells us that ‘Corbyn’s view on Israel goes to the very core of his political personality.’ having been formed in the context of anti-colonial struggle. And that is it. We are not told why his views are wrong, what those views are in substance still less what the relevance of it is to anti-Semitism.

v. Apparently though Corbyn’s support for ‘murderous terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah’ was the reason for Corbyn’s anti-Semitism. This is a good example of the imperialist mindset, the ingrained racist ignorance that informs Birrell’s world view. There is no evidence that Birrell knows anything about either of these two groups.

a. If Birrell were to consult more knowledgeable colleagues such as Robert Fisk or Patrick Coburn, he would learn that Hamas was virtually a creation of Israel. He could break the habit of a lifetime and actually learn something about the subject he is writing about. For example he could take time out to watch Mehdi Hassan’s Blowback: How Israel Helped Create Hamas.

b. Hezbollah was a consequence of Israel’s genocidal invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Hezbollah was to Lebanon what the Maquis was to France in the second world war. They led the resistance to Israel’s attempt at colonising the south and in that they were successfull.

Birrell’s journalism is typical of those who explain nothing and assert everything, who chose to echo received wisdom as to who the baddies in any situation are. It is a form of journalism which is both childish and demonising.

vi. It is in his reference to the Holocaust Memorial Day meeting in 2010, which Corbyn chaired, that Birrell’s dishonest and devious methodology is best evinced. He states that Corbyn ‘hosted an event on Holocaust Day at which someone compared Israel to Nazism, then turned on Jewish dissenters.’ The dishonesty is breathtaking and if the ‘i’ has any sense of ethical journalism then Birrell should be barred from ever writing another article.

The ‘someone’ referred to above happened to be Hajo Meyer, a survivor of Auschwitz who also happens to be Jewish. The ‘Jewish dissenters’ happened to be regular disruptors of Palestinian meetings. I was there, Birrell wasn’t. Hajo happened to believe that his own experiences of fascism gave him a unique insight into an apartheid state which relegates its Arab citizens to the margins of society. Hajo was perfectly entitled to compare features of Israeli society to Nazi Germany as do many Israelis and Jews. Comparisons don’t therefore mean that Israel is the same as Nazi Germany.

vii. The suggestion that Corbyn’s ‘tribalism’ has clouded his judgement and that his opponents are waging an anti-racist struggle on behalf of Britain’s Jews is laughable. No one has yet pointed to any substantive evidence of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Corbyn’s opponents are the same people who supported Theresa May’s 2014 Immigration Act, whose ‘hostile environment’ policy led to the Windrush Scandal.

Birrell’s article is a disgrace and I would therefore like to request equal space in order to rebut the hackneyed and repetitious nonsense that constituted his article. Nonsense that can be found in virtually every other British newspaper today.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

8^th August 2018

To: Oliver Duff, Oliver.Duff@inews.co.uk, @olyduff

Editor

The 'i' Newspaper

Dear Duff,

Although the 'i' was taken over by the predatory Johnson Press Group, whose only concern is its balance sheet, the 'i' traces its antecedents back to The Independent. Indeed it still shares the same switchboard and correspondents with The Independent including Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk.

Unfortunately the ethical and insightful journalism of Fisk and Coburn, the idea that what you write might bear some relationship to what is actually happening around you, that you don't mind offending those in power with uncomfortable truths which they'd rather not hear, doesn't t seem to have rubbed off on you as the editor of the 'i'. You have all the charm and morals of a toothless rattlesnake deprived of its venom.

The present 'antisemitism' campaign of the mainstream media, which is as good an example of fake news as any, is a narrative that bears no relationship to reality. Its talk of 'antisemitism' in the Labour Party does not square with actual experiences of Jewish members of the party. Nobody, as far as I know, has been subject to racial epithets, violence or other classical examples of anti-Semitism.

The only people who talk of 'antisemitism' are those, such as members of the Jewish Labour Movement, who are affiliated to the racist Israeli Labour Party. In other words people whose main concern is defence of Israel.

The fake anti-Semitism campaign is an Orwellian campaign mounted by vested interests in support of Britain's foreign policy objectives. Its primary objective is the removal of Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party because he is not seen as someone who can be trusted with safeguarding the special relationship with the USA. He is unreliable in respect of NATO and Trident. In particular even now he is too critical of the West's rabid, racist rottweiler in the Middle East, the apartheid State of Israel.

Despite attempts to row back on his previous anti-Zionist politics, Corbyn is still seen as too supportive of the Palestinians. That is why there is a widespread consensus - from The Sun to The Guardian that Corbyn has to go. That is why there has been wall to wall sympathetic coverage of the Blessed Margaret Hodge, expletives and child abuse included, when she accused Corbyn of 'antisemitism'. Imagine if someone on the Left had assailed the war criminal Tony Blair in similar terms. It is barely conceivable that they would have been a hero to the BBC and British Press.

This Orwellian campaign, where anti-racism has become its opposite, has manifested itself in the same boring, repetitious articles in the British press. Most of these articles are so similar in content and tone that they could, to quote Hannah Arendt, have come out of a mimeographic machine.

I wrote to you two days ago concerning two such articles in the 'i' by Simon Kelner and Ian Birrell. I suggested that you might want to break with the habit of a lifetime and allow a challenge to their repetitious nonsense. Let’s see if their monologues could stand up to scrutiny. Given your failure to respond I assume that you didn’t have any confidence in such an outcome. It is a cowardice born of political weakness. For all their bluster you are not prepared to see their fine bigoted phrases subject to challenge?

Kelner, who makes even Melanie Philips seem thoughtful, repeated the same trite clichés that ' the Labour Party presumes itself more qualified to define anti-Semitism than the Jewish community.' If this idiot stopped to think for even one moment then he would realise that there is no homogenous Jewish community, still less with one viewpoint. If ever there was an example of antisemitism then that is it but Kelner is too dim to understand why his article attacking ‘anti-Semitism’ is anti-Semitic.

Birrell, in a particularly loathsome article replete with all the clichés one would expect of someone who seems incapable of original thought, attacked Corbyn for hosting a meeting 8 years ago where Hajo Meyer, an anti-Zionist Jewish survivor from Auschwitz spoke. How was this written up by this worthless ‘journalist’? Corbyn ‘hosted an event on Holocaust Day at which someone compared Israel to Nazism, then turned on Jewish dissenters.’

I doubt if even Josef Goebbels or the Prince of Darkness himself, Peter Mandelson, could have bettered this description. The dishonesty is a wonder to behold. The 'someone' just happened to be a person who survived an extermination camp whereas the 'Jewish dissenters' were well known for disrupting Palestinian and anti-Zionist meetings across London.

Your behaviour reminds me of Stanley Baldwin's comparison of journalists and their masters to prostitutes because no one should think you are a free agent:

“They are engines of propaganda ... Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker's meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context...What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

Written nearly 90 years ago as a description of your editorship it is difficult to better.

Kind regards

Tony Greenstein

↧

Banned by Amnesty International for Harassment - How the BBC turned Zionist Thug Richard Millett from a Zero into a Hero

August 28, 2018, 1:05 am

≫ Next: If Anyone Resembles Enoch Powell it’s Rabbi Sacks NOT Jeremy Corbyn

≪ Previous: Duff by name and Duff by nature –The Editor of the ‘i’ is a Good Example of how the Press Prostitutes itself to the Establishment

Without a trace of shame - The Times, which refused to criticise Hitler, calls for Corbyn's Resignation for 'anti-Semitism'!

A Summary of Corbyn's Anti-semitic Attack on Zionist Thug Richard Millett

“-- Did you hear that Jeremy Corbyn, in a speech in 2013, said that British Jews weren't really British even if they were born there?

-- Really? He said that?

-- Well, he intimated that British Jews couldn't grasp British irony and didn't understand history."

-- Really? He was referring to Jews?

-- Well, he didn't SAY Jews, but he said that about UK Zionists, which is a leftwing code term for British Jews.

-- Hang on, he made a reference to UK Zionists as a group?

-- Well, not exactly. Actually, he was referring to some pro-Israel members of the audience who came up and started arguing with the Palestinian ambassador who had presented the history of Palestine and used irony, which Corbyn thought these guys didn't get. He specifically referred to "the Zionists in the audience."

-- So, you mean to say he did not refer to British Zionists as a whole, but he was saying that the Palestinian ambassador, who is Armenian Palestinian, had a greater grasp of British irony, than these Brits who had lived their all their lives?

-- Yes, that's about it.

-- So, in effect, he accused pro-Israeli members of the audience, whom he referred to as "Zionists", which they are, and who argued with the Palestinian ambassador, with being humorless and misunderstanding history, compared with the Palestinian ambassador.

Yep.

-- Well, that makes the man clearly an anti-Semite, doesn't it?”

Last week Richard Millet became the hero of the BBC and the media ratpack in their war against Jeremy Corbyn. Millett appeared on the BBC’s 6 O’Clock News last Friday as a victim of ‘anti-Semitism’. Millett was even the cause of a splutteringly dishonest Leader in The Times last Saturday ‘Labour’s Moral Vacuum’.

What was the cause of this rise to media prominence? At a Palestine meeting in Parliament in 2013, which he tried to disrupt, Millett was told by Jeremy Corbyn that he should study some history and for good measure get a grip on English irony. For these mild comments, The Times attacked Corbyn as ‘straightforwardly antisemitic’. '

Satire is almost redundant when The Times begins to give Jeremy Corbyn lectures on antisemitism

According to The Times Corbyn ‘used the word “Zionists” as a synonym for “Jews” and as a term of casual abuse.’ which is a good example of how the sins of the British press are visited on their victims. It is The Times and the rest of the yellow press which can’t distinguish between ‘Jew’ and ‘Zionist’. The Jewish Chronicle’s far-Right editor, Stephen Pollard also assertedthat ‘the Labour leader 'used the word "Zionist" obviously to mean "Jews". There is nothing obvious about this at all of course. Corbyn was careful to distinguish between Jews and Zionists, unlike the Jewish Chronicle.

Corbyn's innocent remarks made five years ago make Luciana Berger feel unwelcome in the Labour Party - what makes her feel unwelcome is a socialist leader!

Richard Millett is one of the best known Zionist thugs and bully boys amongst a group of Zionists whose sole purpose is to disrupt Palestinian and anti-Zionist meetings in London. In December 2017 I did a featureon 31 of these Zionist fascists, misfits and assorted thugs.

Richard Millett was number 13 on the list and the piece on him was accompanied by a picture of him with Paul Besser, former Intelligence Officer for the neo-Nazi Britain First group. So much for his opposition to anti-Semitism! Absurdly the Times articlequotes Millett as claiming that he was frightened of recriminations if Corbyn was toppled as a result of the row. “I don’t know what will happen,” he said. “I am scared on a physical level and the Jewish community is upset about what they see is happening. I think we are all scared.” Likewise the Mail claimedthat Millett and the Jewish community was 'scared on a physical level' because of the false accusations of Labour anti-Semitism.

Millett and fellow Zionist thugs and fascists demonstratedwith Tommy Robinson’s Football Lads Alliance at the Al Quds demonstration last June yet they have the chutzpah to claim they are physically frightened of their opponents! It is a sign of the degeneration of the British press and the BBC that they take these claims at face value without even doing a cursory investigation into their background.

On Millett’s blog there is a piece about him being evicted from the Commons in April last year. Both Millett and the Daily Mail’s reporter Jake Wallis-Simons lied, stating that Millett was evicted by "armed police". This is untrue. According to a witness I have spoken to the following was actually what happened:

The incident happened just a few weeks after a policeman was murdered at the House of Commons. There was an increased armed police presence.Mark Hendricks MP called the police (he did not ask for "armed police" as Millet implies. Because of the increase security immediately after the murder an armed police detail was closest and first to arrive. However, and this is what is important, the armed police explained that they would not remove the disrupters and called for regular police to deal with the situation. I was there and clearly heard all this as Millet also did.

In the original Mail on-line story by Jake Wallis Simons last Thursday Corbyn is quoted as saying that

'[British Zionists] clearly have two problems. One is they don't want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don't understand English irony either.'

This apparently is anti-Semitic according to the paper which supported Hitler before the war! Clearly Zionists don’t want to study so much as rewrite history and their appreciation of any form of irony is close to zero.

Blumenthall and solicitor Mark Lewis were recently on the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme explaining how 'antisemitism' was forcing them to emigrate to Israel. Even a cursory investigation would show that she is a leading Zionist, a member of Herut . The whole basis of Zionism is that Jews don't belong in this country and should emigrate to Israel.

Although the Mail does not mention Millett the video link is from Millets blog where he is seen and heard shouting throughout. The DM journalist, Jake Wallis Simons, is a virulent Zionist who is close to Mandy Blumenthal, organiser for the far-Right semi-fascist Herut group who featured at Number 28 on my list of Zionist fascists. Wallis-Simons is the go-to guy for Blumenthal whenever she or the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism want publicity about emigrating to Israel, anti-Semitism etc.

Millett harassing visitors to Amnesty events

What the BBC, the Mail and The Times didn’t tell their readers was that Millett has been banned, along with Jonathan Hoffman, for harassing people at Amnesty International events as the 3 videos I am putting up show. Millett is clearly no shy and fearful Jew in these videos, rather a loud mouthed bully.

Although Millett claims his concern is with anti-Semitism he has demonstrated, like most Zionists, that he has no objection whatsoever to anti-Semites who are pro-Israel and pro-Zionist. Millett is like Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard, who once wrote that Polish anti-semite Michal Kaminski MEP was 'one of the greatest friends to the Jews '

Eight years ago there was a campaign in London against a shop Ahava in Covent Garden. It sold stolen products from the West Bank. We picketed it every other week and eventually they were evicted from the premises because fellow shop owners were fed up with the constant pickets.

here is Millett excusing overtly anti-semitic comments about Jews being Christ Killers yet he objects to references to English irony - you couldn't make it up except that that is exactly what the BBC and Britain's venomous press does every day

Israeli shop assistant accuses demonstrators of Killing Jesus to Millett's approval

Millett was active, with Jonathan Hoffman in supporting the shop. In the course of a demonstration one day, a staff member at the shop accused Jewish protestors against the shop of being ‘Christ killers’ and when asked to explain this remark she said that it was 'because you are Jewish’. What was the reaction of Richard Millett to this vile anti-Semitic trope, an accusation that has led to thousands of Jewish dead in Easter pogroms? An accusation which was at the heart of Christian anti-Semitism for centuries?

Did Millett demand that the woman be sacked for antisemitism from what is after all an Israeli shop? We are always told that Israel and Jews are one and the same! Not a bit of it. In a blog Ahava’s female staff suffer continued bullying Millett’s concern was about the ‘bullying’ of the anti-Semitic shop assistant. In fact this like much else that Millett says was a lie. The staff were never targeted. It was the shop which was the object of the demonstrations notthe staff who worked there. Millett told his readers that:

As you can see at the beginning of the video the woman is angry that the activists are now specifically targeting her!

Her apparent remark about Jews killing Jesus (although, no where in the footage do we actually hear her say that) is a remark to a male, Jewish activist who spends large proportions of his sad life hanging around outside the Ahava shop.

This is disingenuous as we can clearly hear in the video a Jewish demonstrator asking why she had called them 'Christ killers'. She didn’t deny it. Her response was ‘Because you are Jewish’ thereby accepting that this was what she said. There was therefore nothing ‘apparent’ about the remark. Millett clearly has no problem with anti-semitism when it is directed at the 'wrong sort of Jew'.

I don’t blame her for an off-the-cuff remark when confronted by a group of bullies.

It was an 'off the cuff remark'as was Jeremy Corbyn's suggestion that he brush up on his history and English irony. However Corbyn is the worst anti-Semite since Adolf himself according to Millett and the Zionist chorus in the press.

Thus we see that the only concern of Millett is to protect an Israeli shop, trading in the stolen minerals of Palestine, from being closed down. Anti-Semitism is only a useful propaganda tool for this racist thug.

In my post of this incident Zionists Defend Ahava Staff Who Accuses Jews of Being ‘Christ Killers’I noted that the accusation of being a Christ Killer was at the heart of some of the most bloody pogroms and violence against Jews. Norman Cohn in Pursuit of the Millenium wrote that:

‘For generations the laity had been accustomed to hear the Jews bitterly condemned from the pulpit - as perverse, stubborn and ungrateful, as bearers also of a monstrous hereditary guilt for the murder of Christ.’ p.77 (my emphasis)

Abe Foxman as ardent a Zionist as anyone was quite clear about the implications of accusing Jews of being Christ Killers. In his talk,‘Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ:" Could It Trigger Anti-Semitism?’ Foxman, speaking as the National Director of the ADL on February 6, 2004 at Palm Beach, Florida stated that:

‘For almost 2,000 years in Western civilization, four words legitimized, rationalized, and fueled anti-Semitism: "The Jews killed Christ….

For hundreds of years those four words - acted out, spoken out, sermonized out - inspired and legitimized pogroms, inquisitions and expulsions.

Hitler, in 1934, visited the Oberammergau Passion Play, and when he left, he proclaimed (and I paraphrase): "The whole world needs to see this Passion Play, for then they will understand why I despise the Jewish people."

Many during the Holocaust who killed Jews from Monday to Friday went to church on Sunday and there was no disconnect for them, because, after all, all they were doing was killing "Christ killers."

So when the press report that Millett was upset by Corbyn's 'antisemitism' we should take this with a very large dose of salt.

The concern of the Daily Mail and The Times about anti-Semitism contrasts with their indifference to racist violence against Muslims, Gypsies and other minorities in this country. The same Daily Mail which employedKatie Hopkins who described migrants as “cockroaches”is apparently concerned with ‘anti-Semitism.

The Mail's concern didn’t extend to anti-Semitic attacks on Ed Miliband, Labour’s Jewish leader, because of his Marxist father, Ralph Miliband or his inability to eat a bacon sandwich, stands in contrast to their record in the Hitler era. The Daily Mail’s support for the British Union of Fascists, Hitler and its opposition to the immigration of Jews from Nazi Germany is well known. See for example When the Daily 'Hate' Mail Supported Hitler

What is less well known is that The Times, throughout the period from 1933-39 was not only an advocate of appeasement of the Hitler regime but that its editor Geoffrey Dawson adamantly refused to cover the growing persecution of Jews in Germany. Dawson was a memberof the pro-Hitler Anglo-German Fellowship which was a Tory pressure group formed by influential personalities in British society, among them the banker and industrialist Ernest Tennant, a ‘personal friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop, then ambassador of the Third Reich in the United Kingdom.’ In 1946 Ribbentrop was hanged at Nuremburg having been found guilty of war crimes. Amongst other things The Times supported Himmler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia as part of the appeasement of Hitler.

Will Wainewright, in his book Reporting on Hitler: Rothay Reynolds and the British Press in Nazi Germany described how Times reporter Norman Ebbutt struggled with his editor, Geoffrey Dawson, ‘who agreed with his chums in clubland that Britain had to be at peace with Hitler’. Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Churchill wrote in Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 850 how Dawson explained to Lord Lothian on 23 May 1937:

"I should like to get going with the Germans. I simply cannot understand why they should apparently be so much annoyed with The Times at this moment. I spend my nights in taking out anything which I think will hurt their susceptibilities and in dropping little things which are intended to soothe them

So when we hear The Times or the Mail today telling us how aghast they are the ‘anti-Semitism’ of Jeremy Corbyn, when we know that their attitude to the Roma, Muslims and refugees has not changed one iota, it is fair to draw the conclusion that what they are concerned with is not racism against Jews but opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel.

See also Skwawkbox's article Two ‘zionists’ criticised by Corbyn called ‘rude yobs’ – by RIGHT-wing, pro-Israel Streeting on the time when right-wing MP Wes Streeting called Millett and Hoffman 'rude yobs' for trying to disrupt a meeting he was chairing on Palestinian human rights.

See below the full review of Will Wainewright’s book on Hitler and the British press.

Reporting on Hitler: Rothay Reynolds and the British Press in Nazi Germany by Will Wainewright

Reviewed by Roger Boyes, February 18 2017 The Times

Norman Ebbutt, The Times’s well-respected correspondentJAY WILLIAMS

Put foreign correspondents together, beer in hand, and chatter will soon shift from the news of the day towards the casual brutality of editors; their failure to spot the significance of a story, their talent for inserting precisely the wrong word in a crafted text. Editors, eh, don’t you just love them.

In the 1930s a remarkable bunch of aggrieved reporters met at a Berlin Stammtisch — a pub table reserved for regulars. The men from the Daily Express and Daily Mail were saddled with intrusive proprietors who thought Adolf Hitler was exactly what Germany needed. The reporter from The Times

struggled with an editor, the Yorkshireman Geoffrey Dawson, who agreed with his chums in clubland that Britain had to be at peace with Hitler. The Manchester Guardian correspondent had no problems persuading his boss to publish accounts of Nazi persecution, but try as he might could not talk him into an editorial policy in favour of arming up for a war against the Third Reich.

The reporters saw what was going on around them in Germany — the Jews humiliated and beaten on the street, the persecuted churchmen and communists, the opening of the first concentration camps, the histrionic rallies — and choked back their frustration.

It did not help that Gestapo snitches sat next to their Stammtisch. Or when the Nazi foreign ministry sent a smooth official to their table to give a positive spin on new restrictions on Jews.“There are, I think, times when a correspondent should be a diplomat,” the official told them.

Soon enough there wasn’t any need for these ghoulish visits. The Nazis could count on the likes of Lord Rothermere. By the time Hitler came to power, the Daily Mail proprietor had been running the paper for more than a decade. One new sub-editor taken on in the late 1920s noted: “The day-to-day production of the paper was carried on under the system of bullying and insult.”

The Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere's paen of praise to Hitler and the Nazis

Rothermere travelled to Germany in July 1933 and was entranced, writing an editorial headlined “Youth Triumphant”. There was an unfettered national spirit, soon Germany would rival Mussolini’s Italy as the best-governed country in Europe. He struck up what he considered a friendship with Hitler.

Imagine then how the Mail’s Berlin correspondent, Rothay Reynolds, must have squirmed. Will Wainewright tells his story in this fascinating book, a short study in conscience denied. Reynolds is a distant relative and Wainewright stumbled on a letter written by him after the outbreak of the Second World War, by which time he was both safely out of Nazi Germany and the Mail.

The story that emerges after a bit of digging is of a devout man, an Anglo-Catholic who took Holy Orders, was sent as a young assistant chaplain to the British community in St Petersburg, and after a while chose to become a Roman Catholic. That meant leaving his job and since he was 33, good at languages and Russia in 1905 was in ferment, he decided to become a stringer for the Daily News. While there he befriended Hector Hugh Munro, the writer Saki.

By the time he landed the job of Daily Mail reporter in Germany in the 1920s, Reynolds had done some war work, writing propaganda fake news for MI7, the disinformation wing of the Secret Service. The full scope of Wainewright’s problem as a biographer becomes clear by this stage: Reynolds arrived in Germany as a middle-aged man having, it appears, chosen to be a foreign correspondent because it suited his solitary nature. We find out almost nothing about him. There is a girl called Jane whose hand he touches, but nothing comes of it. He may or may not have had dealings with the Secret Service in Berlin. Faced with some of the most dramatic unfurling events in 20th-century history, he fails to find a journalistic voice.

And while, in hindsight, he can blame his lame texts on the bias of Rothermere, it is also clear that he was a pretty duff reporter. When Hitler launched a bloody purge of his brown-shirted colleagues in 1934, the Night of the Long Knives, he swallowed the official version. “We were told for instance, that General von Schleicher, revolver in hand, had tried to resist arrest and had therefore been shot down,”Reynolds said years later after leaving the Mail. “In fact, the former chancellor and his wife had been murdered in cold blood.” His piece in the Mail did not so much pull its punches as give an ovation: “Swiftly and with inexorable severity Hitler has delivered Germany from men who had become a danger to the unity of the German people and to order in the state.”

Rothermere’s Führer-love bought access to Hitler, but he did neither his newspaper nor his country any good. Had Reynolds been more gifted he might have been able to find himself a niche between an overbearing proprietor and an evil regime. Instead, he made some token acts of solidarity, publicly reciting the rosary in the street, for example, but he did not distinguish himself.

Almost everyone seems to stand out more strongly than Reynolds By contrast Sefton Delmer, of the appeasement-supporting Daily Express, demonstrated some rat-like cunning. Delmer arrives at the Reichstag after it has been set ablaze before Reynolds, but after a reporter for The Times, Douglas Reed, who has just been kicked out of the building by Hermann Goering. Delmer sees Hitler’s Mercedes approach and enters parliament in the Führer’s slipstream, landing a suspiciously long and coherent quote from him about setting the whole continent ablaze.

Around the Stammtisch, almost everyone seems to stand out more strongly than Reynolds. Eric Gedye of the Daily Telegraph, visiting from Vienna, had few illusions about the Nazis. After his expulsion from Austria he started work on a fiercely anti-appeasement book, promising the unvarnished truth. The Telegraph, upset that he was going to criticise the paper (though it rar ely interfered with his copy), sacked him. The paper said he had left by mutual consent. “That is correct,” said Gedye. “It is equally correct that Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia by ‘mutual arrangement’.”

Reynolds’s real admiration was for The Times’s correspondent Norman Ebbutt. The wrestling between correspondents, Dawson and some of the leader writers about appeasement has already been well chronicled. Yet the author has dug deep in The Times’s archives and come up with some blistering reports.

Here’s Ebbutt on the 1936 “election” held just after Hitler had sent his troops into the Rhineland, in breach of the Versailles Treaty. The work of the Hitler regime, he said, had “been done at the expense of freedom, truth and justice as these are conceived in the western world, and some who feel bound to support the Führer tomorrow on the patriotic issue will do so in fear and trembling that they are delivering Germany over to a new wave of National Socialist fanaticism”.

That’s telling it as it was, even if that day’s leader struck a rather more emollient note. Ebbutt was thrown out in the summer of 1937 (“By far the best correspondent here left this evening,” wrote the American reporter William Shirer) and he was seen off at the station by 50 correspondents who knew that their days were also numbered. Wainewright doesn’t know if Reynolds was there. The Nazis had warned the reporters not to give Ebbutt a send-off so perhaps Reynolds decided that discretion was the better part of valour. That seems to have been his watchword.

↧

If Anyone Resembles Enoch Powell it’s Rabbi Sacks NOT Jeremy Corbyn

August 29, 2018, 12:57 am

≫ Next: Debating with Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic Jazzman

≪ Previous: Banned by Amnesty International for Harassment - How the BBC turned Zionist Thug Richard Millett from a Zero into a Hero

In 2017 Rabbi Sacks marched with thousands of settler racists through Arab East Jerusalem chanting 'Death to the Arabs'

The Daily Mail in its pro-Hitler days warns against Jewish refugees entering 'through the back door'

In an interviewwith the New Statesman, the house journal of the Labour Right and the anti-Corbyn campaign, former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks engaged in a piece of vitriol worthy of Goebbels himself. Not surprisingly, the Daily Mail, which in the 1930’s campaigned against the entry of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to Britain and which latterly employed Katie Hopkins as its columnist, cheered him to the rafters.

The Mail quoted Sacks as saying that Corbyn’s criticism of Richard Millett, an open fascist, ‘was the most offensive remark by a British politician since Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech in 1968.’ Outrageous and absurd hyperbole seems to be the Zionist substitute for anything approximating to rational thought and polemic. Less than a month ago, Britain’s 3 Zionist papers published a joint editorial which spoke of ‘ the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government’ with barely a murmur from rational people.

An existential threat literally means a threat to someone’s life. What these 3 propaganda rags were saying was that Corbyn was literally a threat to the Jewish community along the lines of Adolf Hitler. Presumably under a Jeremy Corbyn administration the British version of Auschwitz would be opening its doors for business. And then these Zionists complain about comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany and via the IHRA denounce those who make such a campaign as ‘anti-Semites’.

The Daily Mail, which backed Enoch Powell in 1968, now has the audacity to compare Corbyn with its erstwhile hero

Of course given that the Blessed Margaret Hodge of child abuse fame compared the threat of disciplinary proceedings to the experiences of her father who fled the Nazis, it would seem that exaggeration and hyperbole are the main fare of Zionism these days.

It would seem that in their defence of the State of Israel, British Zionists have lost all sense of proportion. The idea that someone who was arrested outside South Africa House protesting against Apartheid has now become an SA stormtrooper is too silly for words. However this is understandable. How else do you defend a state where Arab life is cheap, where Arab homes are demolished to make way for Jewish homes and where Arab and Jewish are segregated in maternity wards if not by demonising your opponents and engaging in the type of abuse that would be better suited to Smithfields market? It says a great deal about Zionist intellectuals that they have to get down into the gutter in order to defend the racist Rottweiler that is the Israeli state.

This is the reason for Jonathan Sack's libellous attack on Corbyn - how else do you defend Israeli Police helping the bulldozers to demolish a Palestinian village unless you attack your opponents as 'antisemitic'?

Sack’s remarks remind me of the response of Ha’aretz’s Anshel Pfeffer to the virulently anti-Corbyn Campaign Against Antisemitism which claimed that in an opinion poll more than half of British Jews felt that anti-Semitism today echoed that of the 1930s. Pfeffer witheringly observed that if the CAA and British Jews “actually believe that, then it’s hard to take anything they say about contemporary anti-Semitism in their home country seriously.”

Pfeffer added that such a belief showed “a disconnect bordering on hysteria … not only are they woefully ignorant of recent Jewish history but have little concept of what real anti-Semitism is.” Which just about sums up Jonathan Sacks too.

Jonathan Sack’s comparison of Corbyn with Enoch Powell is not only extraordinarily offensive but it is in itself anti-Semitic. What he and the rest of the empty chorus of Zionist propagandists are doing is to belittle and minimise the experience of Jews who in the past faced real anti-Semitism. To compare opposition to Zionism and Israeli Apartheid with anti-Semitism simply minimises and trivialises the bloody pogroms of Czarist Russia to say nothing of the tribulations of German and European Jewry under Nazi occupation. It is somewhat ironic that the Zionist movement which never fought anti-Semitism and in the case of Nazi Germany actively collaborated with it now dons the mantle of the opponents of anti-Semitism.

My dad fought in the Battle of Cable Street, a battle that the Board of Deputies explicitly told British Jews to stay away from. They and the English Zionists told Jews to avoid the fascists and keep their heads down. They repeated this in the 1970’s in the fight against the National Front. The reason Zionism has never fought fascism or anti-Semitism is because it shares too much in common with anti-Semitism to ever fight it. As one of Israel’s foremost novelists and poets, A B Yehoshua observed‘even today a real anti-Semite must also be a Zionist.’ Both agree that Jews ‘real home’ is not where they are living but in Israel.

Sacks’s argument, such as it was, was that at a speech in 2013, Corbyn said of a group of British “Zionists”:“They clearly have two problems. One is they don’t want to study history and, secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.”

Sacks then drew the conclusion from these throwaway remarks that Corbyn had threatened ‘the existence of an entire group of British citizens by depicting them as essentially alien.’ Now Sacks is an erudite fellow with a clutch of degrees. For him to make cheap and populist remarks like this, in order to gain the plaudits of the right-wing anti-immigrant British press (and the BBC of course) is a measure of how Zionist intellectuals will prostitute their talents for the sake of Zionism and petty nationalism. This is a measure of how far Zionism will go as it debases the currency of political debate.

Jeremy Corbyn was referring to a couple of far-Right British Zionists notJews. He never mentioned their religion. It was entirely irrelevant to him. The whole of Sack’s intellectual edifice is based on this assumption, an assumption that is the staple diet of Zionism, that being Jewish means being a Zionist. Corbyn however made his position quite clear. In a statement to the Guardian Corbyn said he had used the term Zionists “in the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people”. He also added: “I am now more careful with how I might use the term ‘Zionist’ because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by anti-Semites as code for Jews.” On this Corbyn is wrong Anti-Semites tend to do this less and less now. It is Zionists who insist on conflating Jew with Zionist and then drawing the conclusion that to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

It is not for nothing that the most virulent anti-Semites, like the neo-Nazi founder of America’s alt-Right, Richard Spencer, defines himself as a White Zionist. Nor is Spencer alone. Think of any major far-Right or neo-Nazi political leader or movement in Europe today and almost without exception they are pro-Israel and pro-Zionist. Le Pen, Strache, Geert Wilders, Alternative for Germany, Matteo Salvini – today’s far Right are focused on Muslims and in the process they too have become philo-Semitic.

Sacks is one of the few erudite rabbis in Britain, certainly in comparison with his almost embarrassing successor, Ephraim Mirvis. It is a sad commentary on the corrosive effects of Zionist nationalism that it makes Philistines out of otherwise learned Jews! Nothing is more contemptible than seeing an intellectual like Jonathan Sacks lower himself in order to make cheap and demagogic points and play to the populist crowd. That is precisely what Enoch Powell, a classics scholar did with his Rivers of Blood speech. Ironically if anyone resembles Enoch Powell it is Rabbi Jonathan Sacks himself.

Tony Greenstein

Rabbi Sacks, Why Are You Cheerleading for anti-Palestinian Provocateurs?

As a key modern Orthodox leader, think again about joining Jerusalem Day marchers who scream ‘Death to Arabs’, promoting one of the most contentious of all Israeli settlements, and the consequences for Diaspora Jews

Anna Roiser

May 17, 2017 5:07 pm

Growing up in Bnei Akiva in the UK in the 80s and 90s I was entirely ignorant of the occupation. There were no dotted lines on our maps of Israel, no Palestinians seeking self-determination, only millions of hostile Arabs wanting our land. Supporting Israel meant supporting Israel’s control of the whole land; I knew of no other option.

Israeli authorities order Palestinian businesses to close for the Jerusalem Day "March of Flags" through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem. May 6, 2016 Olivier Fitoussi

Through such education the occupation was normalized for many Orthodox British Jews of my generation. It is common even now in both formal and informal settings to reject the use of that word to describe the situation in the West Bank.

This environment enables Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, member of the House of Lords, a high-profile member of both Yeshiva University and New York University’s faculty, and one of the most eminent modern Orthodox rabbis of his generation, to extend a “personal invitation” to Diaspora Jews to join him on a trip to Israel which includes “leading” the March of the Flags on Jerusalem Day and “dancing with our brave IDF soldiers” in the radical settler enclave inside the city of Hebron. The trip, marking the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, is run by Mizrachi Olami, the parent organisation of Bnei Akiva.

The March of the Flags, which celebrates the reunification of Jerusalem, passes through the Old City’s Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem and proceeds through the Muslim quarter. In his promotional video for the trip Rabbi Sacks quotes Psalms: “Jerusalem is rebuilt like a city that is compact together” and goes on to say, “of course that’s what we see each time we visit Jerusalem today”.

The Israeli authorities enable this wilful blindness to the reality of a divided city by issuing closure orders to Palestinian businesses along the route, and preventing Palestinian residents from being on the streets.

The march, largely attended by bussed in yeshiva students, is associated with hate speech and violence. Haaretz’s Bradley Burston describes it as “an annual, gender-segregated extreme-right, pro-occupation religious carnival of hatred, marking the anniversary of Israel's capture of Jerusalem by humiliating the city's Palestinian Muslims marchers vandalized shops in Jerusalem's Muslim Quarter, chanted "Death to Arabs" and "The (Jewish) Temple Will Be Built, the (Al Aqsa) Mosque will be Burned Down," shattered windows and door locks, and poured glue into the locks of shops forced to close for fear of further damage.”

On their trip to Hebron, as well as praying at the Cave of the Patriarchs, the group will visit one of the most contentious of all the settlements. It comprises a few hundred Jews in the centre of a city of 150,000 Palestinians, heavily guarded by the Israeli army and causing huge ongoing disruption to the Palestinian population. ‘Dancing with soldiers’ in the streets of this settlement enclave is an unequivocal show of support for the settlers’ presence there, and of disregard to local Palestinians living under a form of perpetual siege.

Residents clean a Palestinian house that was attacked by Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron, December 5, 2008.REUTERS

The Western Wall and the Cave of the Patriarchs were inaccessible to Jews between 1948 and 1967. Celebrating renewed Jewish access and praying at these holy places is understandable; however Mizrachi’s planned activities venture beyond celebration into highly contentious territory and provocation, mixing political acts with religious celebrations. The trip aims to tacitly reinforce the same lesson I was taught in my youth: that supporting Israel’s presence in the entire land is an intrinsic and necessary part of supporting Israel.

It is surprising that Rabbi Sacks is promoting this trip. His most recent book, Not in God’s Name, discusses the importance of interpreting religious texts and obligations in a way that is consistent with peace and tolerance. He has earned a reputation for being thoughtful, measured and conciliatory. Last year he won the prestigious Templeton Prize in recognition of his appreciation and respect towards all faiths, for promoting the importance of recognizing the values of each of them, and for his inter-faith work.

In a 2002 interview Rabbi Sacks expressed serious concerns about the occupation, remarks for which he was much criticised by some in the Orthodox community.

For Rabbi Sacks and other religious leaders to endorse the message that to support Israel must require supporting the occupation, and some of its most radical settlers, has serious consequences. Many in the Diaspora accept this message, impeding real dialogue about how we can best support Israel, and about the plurality of views. Others see how Judaism, Zionism and the occupation are being presented as an indivisible whole and reject the former as well as the latter, at great cost to our community.

Jerusalem Day at Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem on May 20, 2012.Olivier Fitoussi

To the wider communities in which we live, the promotion of these events by one of the world’s most respected rabbis sends a message of normalization and acceptance of the occupation by the mainstream Jewish community. Many Jews in the Diaspora work hard to emphasize that being Jewish is not synonymous with supporting the Israeli government, and that supporting Israel’s right to exist is not synonymous with supporting the occupation. Rabbi Sacks’ actions risk undermining these messages.

A group of British Jews currently living in Jerusalem has prepared an open letter to Rabbi Sacks, expressing our concern at the implications of his trip on Diaspora communities, and asking that he reconsider his involvement in these events. We hope that together we can work towards a more honest dialogue about Israel, one in which we directly engage with the occupation rather than airbrushing it out.

Anna Roiser is a British lawyer and a New Israel Fund New Gen Activism Fellow for 2017/2018 currently living in Jerusalem. Follow her on Twitter: @12AnnaBanana

Israel youth walk during Jerusalem Day March held by Israeli nationalists that celebrate 48 years for the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, in Jerusalem’s old city, May 17, 2015. The march is termed by the nationalists the Flag March. Activestills.org

Jerusalem Day is approaching, and with it my anxiety. Since I was a young boy, Jerusalem Day, in which Israelis mark what they call the “reunification” of West and East Jerusalem, is a difficult and strange day for me. A day of rage, grief, and lack of security.

In my childhood I witnessed right-wing Israelis violently rampaging through the Old City, and especially in the Muslim Quarter where I lived. These rampaged only intensified over the years, due to the security situation as well as the leniency of the authorities. Those who celebrate Jerusalem Day know full well that these kinds of actions are an outright provocation toward the city’s Muslim inhabitants. This is especially felt in the Muslim Quarter.

Take the day off

The violence usually takes place right under the nose of Israeli security forces. Right-wing extremists provoke us by aggressively banging on our doors and target young Arabs. The reason is simply: they know that the young are easily riled up. And if anyone dare think of responding, we all know who the police will believe. The rampages end with a giant march through Damascus Gate, during which Israelis are accompanied by a large police presence. The truth is they don’t need the police; most of them are armed with automatic rifles, and can eliminate any threat. After all, they already have permission to do so.

My parents would forbid me from leaving the house on Jerusalem Day. They told me that the intense heat could give me heat stroke. I do not know how my mother thought that this was going to convince a child like myself; after all, it was clear to me as a young kid that the weather was perfect for, say, a family outing. I know that there was something wrong with their claim, and the Hebrew songs being sung under our home, along with a dramatic increase in traffic in our neighborhood, was enough of a reason to understand that this was far more serious that a “hot day.” Over time I understood that my family forbade me from going outside because they wanted us to protect our home. It was no coincidence that my father took a day off on Jerusalem Day, spending all day in front of the television and the window with a newspaper and cup of coffee.

Today I try to avoid Jerusalem on this day. I do my best to go places that can help me forget the fact that I live in Jerusalem. Two years ago, I spent the day with a Hebrew book on the beach, reading and translating all the new words I was learning. But now I developed a new habit that has changed my life: I take my computer, go to the beach, and write every thought that comes to mind.

Like a cancer

Israeli policemen arrest as Palestinian youth, outside Jerusalem’s old city, as Palestinians protest against the flags march, May 17, 2015. The march marks 48 years for the occupation of East Jerusalem.

I know that the demonstrations, the racist marches, the anti-Arab slogans (“Jews have a soul, Arabs are sons of bitches”) will never end on this day. The police is not interested in confronting the extremists, meanwhile the government doesn’t want to be seen as sympathetic to Arabs. Thus, no one takes any proactive steps to stop the incitement, which only causes the situation to worsen. In fact, at the end of Jerusalem Day, the police set up a giant, blue human wall to prevent confrontations between Palestinian residents and the celebrants, who paralyze an entire city to celebrate this day.
On Jerusalem Day, you will be able to hear politicians on both the right and the left who pretend to celebrate this day, emphasizing that Jerusalem is a special city, despite those who don’t see it as a unified city. I, on the other hand, invite all these politicians to take a short tour of Jerusalem to show them the obvious: that Jerusalem is not unified — it is shattered to pieces. One side enjoys modernization, while the other is the victim of deliberate policies of neglect, poverty, and crime that take over the Arab neighborhoods like a cancer in the body.

Suleiman Maswadeh is an activist who studies political science and communications. This article was originally published in Hebrew on Local Call.

Why Rabbi Sacks Is Wrong: Palestinians Don’t Have to Be anti-Semites to Be anti-Zionists

The former British chief rabbi is a wise and brilliant man, but his recent essay does to Palestinians what anti-Semitism does to Jews: it dehumanizes them.

Peter Beinart

Apr 06, 2016 1:46 PM

I often meet Jonathan Sacks, the former British chief rabbi, for lunch. He just doesn’t know it.

I eat at my desk while watching one of his ten-minute lectures on the weekly Parsha on YouTube. Sacks’ erudition—not just about Jewish texts but also about Western history, philosophy and literature—is extraordinary. Once, sitting in a synagogue in London, I came across an essay in which he employed the African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr’s work on Br’er Rabbit, the wily trickster from Southern folk tales, to understand the Biblical Jacob. I was amazed. How many Orthodox rabbis read African-American literary criticism? And even if they did, how many would dare use it to analyze one of the Patriarchs?

Like many English-speaking Jews, I owe Sacks a debt. I daven from his siddur. I’ve led Seders from his Haggadah. He’s a wise and brilliant man. Which is why his recent essay declaring that, “Anti-Zionism is the new Anti-Semitism,” is so disappointing.

In it, Sacks argues that anti-Semitism is “a virus that survives by mutating.” In every age, it latches on “to the highest source of authority available within the culture. In the Middle Ages, it was religion. In post-Enlightenment Europe it was science. Today it is human rights.” Thus, Sacks argues, today’s anti-Zionism—which on human rights grounds challenges not merely Israel’s policies, but its very existence as a Jewish state—is merely anti-Semitism in a new guise.

It’s an elegant formulation. But there’s a problem. The claim that medieval Jews deserved blame for the murder of Christ, or that nineteenth century Jews were genetically inferior, had no rational basis. To believe it, you had to be an anti-Semite. It’s not irrational, however, to believe that Israel is seriously abusing Palestinian human rights. Anti-Semites may exploit those abuses to vilify Jews. But you don’t have to be anti-Semite to find them profoundly troubling. In the film The Gatekeepers, one former Shin Bet head, Avraham Shalom, says that in the West Bank, Israel has become “a brutal occupation force.” Another, Carmi Gillon, says “We are making the lives of millions unbearable.” There’s no place in Sacks’ historical schema for them.

Sacks dismisses Israeli human rights abuses in one phrase: Israel is “the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary.” But in the West Bank, Israel is none of those things. The vast majority of people in the West Bank are Palestinians who cannot vote for the state that controls their lives. They are not citizens of the country in which they live. Their Jewish neighbors enjoy a free press and an independent judiciary. But West Bank Palestinians live under military law, which, among other things, forbids ten or more of them from gathering for a political purpose without prior approval from the Israeli military, even if they gather in someone’s home.

In his essay, Sacks only mentions the word “Palestinians” once. But it’s impossible to understand contemporary anti-Zionism without them. Palestinians didn’t become anti-Zionists because they needed a rationale for hating Jews and found the old ones outdated. They become anti-Zionists because their experience with Zionism was extremely rough.

In the early twentieth century, Palestinians constituted the vast majority of people in British mandatory Palestine. Like colonized peoples around the world, they began developing a national consciousness and a national movement aimed at securing their independence. As Jews began migrating to Palestine in large numbers, the Zionist movement—which sought a Jewish state—became an obstacle to their national desires.

Yes, Palestinian nationalists made mistakes (for instance, their rejection of the 1947 partition plan) and committed crimes (for instance, the 1929 Hebron massacre). But you don’t have to consider Palestinians blameless to understand why they might view Zionism in a negative light. After all, it was a Zionist army that displaced roughly 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 and would not let them return. A Zionist army controls the Palestinians who live without basic rights in the West Bank. A Zionist army oversees Israel’s partial blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Some Palestinians accept the two state solution on pragmatic grounds. But the vast, vast majority of Palestinians are anti-Zionist. Even most Palestinian citizens of Israel (often called “Arab Israelis”) vote for parties that seek to turn Israel into something other than a Jewish state.

The growing anti-Zionism that Sacks decries is a Palestinian export. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement began with a call from Palestinian civil society groups in 2005. Since then, BDS—and the anti-Zionism that undergirds it—has grown in direct proportion to Israeli policy. When Zionism, as practiced by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, means entrenching Israel’s undemocratic control over millions of stateless Palestinians in the West Bank, converting people to anti-Zionism becomes easier. As BDS leader Omar Barghouti declared in 2014, “We’ve got to give credit to Netanyahu. Without him we could not have reached this far.”

Yes, some anti-Zionists are anti-Semites. And yes, of course, some Palestinian anti-Zionists are anti-Semites. But equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism means claiming that virtually all Palestinians are anti-Semites, even Palestinians like Knesset Member Ayman Oudeh, whose political party, Hadash, includes Jews, or intellectuals like Ahmad Khalidi and commentators like Rula Jebreal, who have Jewish spouses.

Equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism turns Palestinians into Amalekites. By denying that they might have any reason besides bigotry to dislike Zionism, it denies their historical experience and turns them into mere vessels for Jew-hatred. Thus, it does to Palestinians what anti-Semitism does to Jews. It dehumanizes them.

Like Sacks, I am a Zionist. Like him, I oppose the BDS movement. But one can be a Zionist, and celebrate the miraculous rebirth of Jewish statehood in the land of Israel, yet also recognize why Palestinians—even Palestinians who don’t hate Jews—might see our blessing as their curse. One might even call that recognition, to borrow the words of a great man, the “dignity of difference.”

↧

Debating with Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic Jazzman

August 31, 2018, 4:17 am

≫ Next: The Zionists admit that the IHRA is about defending Israel NOT Jews

≪ Previous: If Anyone Resembles Enoch Powell it’s Rabbi Sacks NOT Jeremy Corbyn

For both anti-Semites and Zionists, to be a Jew is to be a Zionist

Just because 99% of supporters of the Palestinians are anti-racist it doesn’t mean that occasionally a supporter of the Palestinians is found to be anti-Semitic. Gilad Atzmon, a former Israeli Jew is one such person. My first encounter with him was way back in 2005 when he wrote informing me Paul Eisen, that a Holocaust Denier, had written a ‘great text’entitled Jewish Power and describing a Swedish fascist and resident of Israel, Israel Shamir, as a ‘unique and advanced thinker.’

Eisen, the British director of the now-defunct Deir Yassin Remembered, went on to publish such insightful essays as Why I Call Myself a Holocaust Denier. Shamir has gone one better. In Who Needs Holocaust?he described Auschwitz as an 'internment facility, attended by the Red Cross’. Lest this be thought of as guilt-by-association Atzmon has also questioned whether the Holocaust has occurred'

Pictured here is Israeli Marxist Moshe Machover - Atzmon has developed a unique concept of Jewish as opposed to non-Jewish Marxism!

In Truth, History and Integrity Atzmon described how

‘It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense. ... If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war? I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators? I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative... We should strip the holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status and treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time and place.’

Atzmon went on to ask

‘65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should reclaim our history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their troubled history?’

When I challenged him on this passage Atzmon retortedthat this essay had been integrated into his book The Wandering Who and if it had suggested Holocaust denial then ‘the book would’ve been banned and I’d have been arrested” when he set foot in Germany since Holocaust denial is illegal there. What Atzmon omitted to say was that everything before ‘65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz..’ had been omitted from the book!

Blowing his own trumpet

In 2005 Jews Against Zionism helda picket outside the SWP’s Bookmarx shop when Atzmon was invited to speak to the collective faithful. I have published a number of articles on Atzmon such as Guide to the Sayings of Gilad AtzmonandTime to say goodbye.

In mid-July Tony Gosling, who hosts a community radio station in Bristol invited me to debate Atzmon for the first time on a programme. Despite finding it difficult at times to hear everything he said, it was clear why Ali Abunimah, Omar Barghouti, Professor Joseph Massad and many other Palestinians had issued a joint statement Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon six years ago. (see below for statement).

From the Palestinian Ali Abunimah to the Zionist Alan Dershowitz everyone is out to get Atzmon

Atzmon’s paints all those who are what he calls politically Jewish as one and the same. To him, regardless of whether your are an anti-Zionist or a Zionist if you are what he terms politically Jewish you are all the same. He takes particular exception to Jewish groups which are formed to oppose Zionism. This is apparently a specific example of Jewish supremacy.

Atzmon is one of those few anti-Semites who opposes Israel, not because it is a settler-colonial state but because it is Jewish. Historically most anti-Semites supported the idea of a Jewish state as it was an ideal place to send all their unwanted Jews.

Throughout the debate Atzmon insisted that he cannot be anti-Semitic because he never mentions the word 'race', even though he consistently accuses anti-Zionist Jews of being 'racially oriented.' It is clear to me that if you assert that all Jews are Zionists, i.e. politically the same, because they are Jewish, then you are invoking an anti-Semitic stereotype which says that all Jews share the same beliefs and opinions because they are Jewish. It is clearly as assertion of race by any other name.

In Not in My Name Atzmon declares that

By contrast, I really do not understand those who fight Zionism in the name of their secular Jewish identity. I have never understood them. I have never really understood what secularism means for the Jewish people.... To demand that Jews disapprove of Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity is to accept the Zionist philosophy. To resist Zionism as a secular Jew involves an acceptance of basic Zionist terminology, that is to say, a surrendering to Jewish racist and nationalist philosophy.

As Atzmon conceded in the debate, Jewish identity is not and never has been fixed. The idea that Jewish identity can only take the form of Zionism or Orthodox Judaism is an essentialist view of what it is to be Jewish. In stating that to be Jewish is to be a Zionist Atzmon mirrors what Zionist ideologues themselves say. To say, as Atzmon says above that to oppose Zionism as a Jew is to accept basic Zionist terminology only makes sense if you accept that being Jewish and Zionist are interchangeable.

In Saying NO to the Hunters of Goliath Atzmon repeats a theme that he is particularly fond of. The Jews were exterminated by the Nazis because they were ‘unpopular’. Nothing to do with fascism, racism, the need for a scapegoat. And now Israel is ‘at least as unpopular in the Middle East as their grandparents were in Europe just six decades ago.’ In other words it not because Israel is a settler colonial state, rather Jews behave badly wherever they are. After all Israel is a Jewish state and being Jewish is a timeless quality. Atzmon wrote that:

Jews are now more than welcome in Germany and in Europe, yet, the Jewish state and the sons of Israel are at least as unpopular in the Middle East as their grandparents were in Europe just six decades ago. Seemingly, it is the personification of WW2 and the Holocaust that blinded the Israelis and their supporters from internalising the real meaning of the conditions and the events that led towards their destruction in the first place.

In the present climate when false accusations are the principal weapon of the Labour Right and the Zionists in their attempt to remove Jeremy Corbyn from the leadership of the Labour Party, then people like Atzmon can point to what is happening as an example of what he calls ‘Jewish Power.’

Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon

For many years now, Gilad Atzmon, a musician born in Israel and currently living in the United Kingdom, has taken on the self-appointed task of defining for the Palestinian movement the nature of our struggle, and the philosophy underpinning it. He has done so through his various blogs and Internet outlets, in speeches, and in articles. He is currently on tour in the United States promoting his most recent book, entitled, ‘The Wandering Who.’

With this letter, we call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions.

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

Palestinians have faced two centuries of orientalist, colonialist and imperialist domination of our native lands. And so as Palestinians, we see such language as immoral and completely outside the core foundations of humanism, equality and justice, on which the struggle for Palestine and its national movement rests. As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.

We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.

Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism. In addition to its immorality, this language obscures the fundamental role of imperialism and colonialism in destroying our homeland, expelling its people, and sustaining the systems and ideologies of oppression, apartheid and occupation. It leaves one squarely outside true solidarity with Palestine and its people.

The goal of the Palestinian people has always been clear: self determination. And we can only exercise that inalienable right through liberation, the return of our refugees (the absolute majority of our people) and achieving equal rights to all through decolonization. As such, we stand with all and any movements that call for justice, human dignity, equality, and social, economic, cultural and political rights. We will never compromise the principles and spirit of our liberation struggle. We will not allow a false sense of expediency to drive us into alliance with those who attack, malign, or otherwise attempt to target our political fraternity with all liberation struggles and movements for justice.

As Palestinians, it is our collective responsibility, whether we are in Palestine or in exile, to assert our guidance of our grassroots liberation struggle. We must protect the integrity of our movement, and to do so we must continue to remain vigilant that those for whom we provide platforms actually speak to its principles.

When the Palestinian people call for self-determination and decolonization of our homeland, we do so in the promise and hope of a community founded on justice, where all are free, all are equal and all are welcome.

Until liberation and return.

Signed:

Ali Abunimah

Naseer Aruri, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Omar Barghouti, human rights activist

Hatem Bazian, Chair, American Muslims for Palestine

Andrew Dalack, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network

Haidar Eid, Gaza

Nada Elia, US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Toufic Haddad

Kathryn Hamoudah

Adam Hanieh, Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London

Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon! Canada

Monadel Herzallah, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network

Nadia Hijab, author and human rights advocate

Andrew Kadi

Hanna Kawas, Chair person, Canada Palestine Association and Co-Host Voice of Palestine

Abir Kobty, Palestinian blogger and activist

Joseph Massad, Professor, Columbia University, NY

Danya Mustafa, Israeli Apartheid Week US National Co-Coordinator & Students for Justice in Palestine- University of New Mexico

Dina Omar, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine

Haitham Salawdeh, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network

Sobhi Samour, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London

Khaled Ziada, SOAS Palestine Society, London

Rafeef Ziadah, poet and human rights advocate

↧

The Zionists admit that the IHRA is about defending Israel NOT Jews

September 2, 2018, 2:06 pm

≫ Next: By Supporting the IHRA Labour’s NEC has chosen to support Racist Zionists over Anti-racist Jews and Palestinians

≪ Previous: Debating with Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic Jazzman

The Labour Party is in danger of adopting a definition of anti-Semitism that is anti-Semitic and which has no legal, academic or logical rationale

Today we have had another blast from the media on the theme of Labour 'antisemitism' and a contribution at the Jewish Labour Movement [JLM] Conference from Gordon Brown calling on Labour to adopt the IHRA and remove the 'stain'of antisemitism from the Party. This is the same Gordon Brown who proclaimed that his programme was British Jobs for British Workers, the same slogan as that of the British National Party. Gordon Brown defends 'British jobs for British worker' phrase.

In today's Sunday Times the Blessed Margaret Hodge is quoted as saying that Labour is 'consumed by a hatred of Jews.'. The answer to this hatred was to 'engage with Israel.' At least there is no pretence any longer that the campaign over anti-semitism is really about Israel.

It's a funny form of racism though to which the solution is to engage with the only Apartheid state in the world. Hodge was also at the JLM Conference. The JLM is the British branch of the Israeli Labour Party, the original party of the Nakba, the expulsion of the Palestinian refugees. The ILP, which is Likud-lite has given its fulsome support for Netanyahu's attempt to expel Israel's 40,000 Black refugees for the crime of being Black and not being Jewish. It is a thoroughly racist party but this is where the critics of 'antisemitism' choose to make their feelings known.

Gideon Falter of the McCarthCampaign Against Antisemitism which is the Campaign Against the Palestinians - a McCarthyite organisation

One of the most remarkable aspects of the controversy about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Definition of Anti-Semitism is that its defenders cannot defend it other than on grounds of expediency.

For example Adam Langleben, Campaigns Officer of the Jewish Labour Movement, doesn’t argue for the IHRA on its merits but because it will ‘rebuild trust’ with the Jewish community. [Jewish Labour Movement: There is no trust left] Zionist arguments for the IHRA are little more than emotional blackmail. ‘Do what we say or the Jewish community will have no confidence in the Labour Party.’ Even were this true then it would be irrelevant. Pandering to the fictional notion of a monolithic Jewish community is no argument for adopting a definition of anti-Semitism which would have deleterious consequences for free speech.

Exactly the same arguments used against Corbyn were also used against Ed Milband, the Party’s first Jewish leader. In October 2014 we were told that Maureen Lipman was dropping her ‘longstanding support for the Labour Party’ because Miliband had recognised a Palestinian state. Over three years later Lipman was once again leaving Labour, claiming that Corbyn had made her a Tory! The Times of Israel claimed in August 2014 that Miliband had a very Jewish problem. A few months later The Telegraph was telling us that Labour’s first Jewish leader is losing the Jewish vote. So we have been here before. In fact the Jewish community deserted Labour long before either Miliband or Corbyn became leaders.

The difference between Corbyn and Miliband is the vehemence of the campaign to ‘prove’ that the Labour Party is anti-Semitic. At first the targets were people like Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and myself. We were however metonyms for Jeremy Corbyn, collateral damage. What is different about the current situation, from the ‘mural affair’ in March onwards is how the focus has shifted to Corbyn himself. In a joint editorial between 3 Zionist papers, it was claimed that a Corbyn led government would pose an ‘existential threat to Jewish life in this country.’

One of the most dishonest advocates for the idea that Labour is anti-Semitic is Jonathan Freedland, gatekeeper at The Guardian. I say dishonest because he deliberately misinterprets what the IHRA says.

Frank Field and right-wing Labour MPs have been busy today attacking Jeremy and the left in the Tory press - but it is not only Frank Field and Margaret Hodge but Lansman too

According to Freedland‘the only pro-Palestinian who needs to fear the IHRA is the one who wants to say Jews are disloyal to their own countries, that Jews are Nazis and that the very idea of Jews having a homeland of their own is “a racist endeavour”.’

Freedland is wrong on all three. The idea that Jews are disloyal to their country comes from the Zionist movement which claims that Israel is a state which represents all Jews, wherever they live and therefore all Jews owe Israel their loyalty. Five years ago the Israeli Foreign and Immigrant Absorption Ministries distributed questionnaires to tens of thousands of American Jews asking them‘to indicate where their allegiance would lie in the case of a crisis between the two countries.’

Dual loyalty is integral to Zionism, hence why anti-Zionist Jews are regularly accused of being ‘traitors’. Our opposition to the IHRA has nothing to do with support for dual loyalty.

This is what Lansman effectively supports

Freedland claimed that you can say anything about theState of Israel All it prohibits is branding as a racist endeavour “a state of Israel” Again this is dishonest. It is clear that the reference in the IHRA is to the existing State of Israel. This is confirmed by the succeeding example, ‘Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’. Clearly this refers to the actual existing Israeli state not some abstract version.

It is also clear from this last example that criticism of Israel is indeed circumscribed because Israel is unlike any other nation. It is an ethno-nationalist state in which Arabs are denied equal rights based on their ethnicity. That is the very antithesis of democracy.

Freedland is also guilty of caricaturing his opponents. No one is defending the right to say that Jews collectively are Nazis (although undoubtedly there are plenty of Zionist Nazis). The IHRA defines as anti-Semitic ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ so the IHRA forbids a comparison between Israeli or Zionist policies with the Nazi state. Clearly Freedland is in need of a visit to Specsavers.

In an article by Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard brandingthe Labour Party as ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ he let the cat out of the bag. It is not ‘anti-Semitism’ that concerned him but that ‘Labour has excised the parts [of the IHRA definition] which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’

That is why there is a necessity to examine the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to see why it has been criticised by virtually all academics and legal professionals who have commented on it. The actual definition itself is 38 words (minus 11 illustrations).

‘Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.’

The second sentence is completely unnecessary. Why mention non-Jewish individuals or indeed Jewish community institutions? Is anti-Semitism just a perception and if it ‘may be’ expressed as hatred towards Jews what else might it be expressed as? What is a ‘certain perception’ and in whose eyes? It is little wonder that the following academics or lawyers make profound criticisms of the IHRA:

Professor David Feldman, who was Vice-Chair of the Chakrabarti Inquiry and Director of the Sears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism describedthe definition as ‘bewilderingly imprecise.’

Sir Stephen Sedley, who sat in the Court of Appeal is also Jewish. In Defining Anti-Semitism he wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’ In what is the most concise critique of the IHRA, Sedley took it apart.

Hugh Tomlinson QC in an Opiniondeclared, as did all other lawyers, that the IHRA had

a potential chilling effect on public bodies which, in the absence of definitional clarity, may seek to sanction or prohibit any conduct which has been labelled by third parties as antisemitic without applying any clear criterion of assessment.

Geoffrey Robertson QC is a renowned human rights lawyer whose opinion is similar. Robertson describesthe IHRA as

likely to chill criticism of action by the Government of Israel and advocacy of sanctions as a means to deter human rights abuses in Gaza and elsewhere.

Interestingly he finds that when it comes to genuine anti-Semitism, the IHRA is actually very weak.

By pivoting upon racial hatred ... it fails to catch those who exhibit hostility and prejudice – or apply discrimination – against Jewish people for no reason other than that they are Jewish.

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of anti-Semitism: ‘Hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ catches attitudes that fall short of hatred. So someone who says that he doesn’t hate Jews but he doesn’t want to live in close proximity to them or have his daughter marry a Jew is not, by the IHRA definition, anti-Semitic.

Robertson also conducted an analysisof all 11 illustrations of the IHRA. The IHRA consists of an introductory paragraph, the actual definition itself in bold and boxed and then the eleven illustrations preceded by an introduction which states that ‘Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.’ Not only is this assertion tendentious but it could equally be said that manifestations of anti-Semitism include support for the State of Israel! Most anti-semites today support the State of Israel. Anti-Semites such as the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right Richard Spencer, who declared that he was a White Zionist, hide their anti-Semitism behind support for Israel.

Kenneth Stern is the principal author of the IHRA. In written testimony to the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee he wrote that:

Stern gives as an example of such misuse the way the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism targeteda Bristol University lecturer Rebecca Gould.

‘Dr Rebecca Gould, a lecturer at the University of Bristol, has been caught red-handed having written a sickening article about antisemitism.’

What you might ask was Ms Gould’s offence? Did she argue in favour of discrimination against Jews or that Jews were mean or greedy? No, her 'offence' was to claim that the Holocaust has been manipulated by government elites and that its primary victims are the Palestinian people. Why is this anti-Semitic? Because ‘According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is antisemitic.’

The CAA boasted that they had written to the University of Bristol demanding that Ms Gould be suspended. Here we can see how the IHRA is a threat to academic discourse. The CAA is a charity that is currently engaged in a campaignto oust Jeremy Corbyn.

Compare what Ms Gould wrote to what Edith Zertal, an Israeli Professor of Political Science and History, wrote in her book Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood.

‘The transference of the Holocaust situation on to the Middle East reality… not only created a false sense of the imminent danger of mass destruction. It also immensely distorted the image of the Holocaust, dwarfed the magnitude of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, trivializing the unique agony of the victims and the survivors, and utterly demonizing the Arabs and their leaders. (p.100)

Zertal went on to state that there hasn’t been a war ‘that has not been perceived, defined, and conceptualized in terms of the Holocaust.’ Israel has mobilised the Holocaust ‘in the service of Israeli politics.’ Clearly according to the CAA both Zertal and Gould are anti-Semitic.

In fact the 11 examples of anti-Semitism in the IHRA are prefaced by an introduction which 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…’

However the IHRA lends itself to just the kind of distortion that the CAA employs because none of these examples was intended to be used as a definition of anti-Semitism but as an aid to data collection.

The IHRA’s 11 examples of ‘Anti-Semitism’

Any definition that requires 11 illustrations to illustrate it is not much of a definition. The whole purpose of a definition is that it stands alone. Because the IHRA definition defines anti-Semitism in terms of ‘hatred’ then its 11 examples must also be evidence of hatred.

Example 1: Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

Obviously calling for the killing or harming of Jews is anti-Semitic, but why does it need to be ‘in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion’? Would it be acceptable if the ideology was a conservative or socialist one? This suggests that Islam is the real target.

Example 2: Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

In itself there is nothing exceptional about this other than the fact that the reference to ‘Jews as collective’ elsewhere in the definition refers to the Israeli state itself. As Geoffrey Robertson notes, AIPAC, the Board of Deputies and similar Zionist groups define themselves as Jewish. These bodies not only exercise power but they boast of so doing. AIPAC is always talking up its achievements and boasting of how influential it is.

Example 3: Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.

Again, as Geoffrey Robertson says, this is unexceptional but the OED definition more than adequately covers instances of scapegoating.

Example 4: Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).

30 years ago, when the National Front’s Richard Harwood (Verall) wrote Did 6 Million Really Die then there was no doubt that holocaust denial was a neo-Nazi phenomenon. That isn’t true today. Large numbers of people in the third world doubt the Holocaust. In 2014 a survey of 53,000 people world-wide foundthat only 8% of people in the Middle East or North Africa believed that descriptions of the Holocaust were accurate and the corresponding figure in sub-Saharan Africa is 12% and and 23 percent in Asia. Just over half of Middle Easterners and a third of Asians and Africans think the numbers of dead have been exaggerated.

Is this an example of hatred of Jews? There is no evidence to believe this. Doubt about the Holocaust is directly related to Israel’s use of the Holocaust for propaganda purposes. Because Israel uses the Holocaust to justify its existence as a racist state many people deny it. That was the position of Iran’s President Ahmedinajad. It is a form of instrumentalism. Hindus are the religious group most like to believe that the numbers who died in the Holocaust have been exaggerated.

So today we have large numbers of people who are conspiracy theorists or just plain ignorant who deny the Holocaust. For that achievement we have the Israeli state propagandists and Zionism to blame.

Example 5: Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

This is essentially a repetition of the previous example and it is framed to include Israel and the‘Jewish people’ thus accepting that Jews constitute one people. I’ve never heard Israel as a state being accused of exaggerating the Holocaust. Another attempt to insert Israel into a definition supposedly about antisemitism.

Example 6: Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

This could be called the ‘chutzpah’ example. It is Zionism which states that Israel is the nation state of the Jews. If Jewish people are all nationals of the Israeli state then that means they owe it loyalty. It is Zionism that is guilty of accusing Jews of dual loyalty. That is why anti-Zionist Jews are accused of being ‘traitors.’ It is also why the Israeli state surveyed American Jews to find out what they would do if there was a crisis in relations between the two states.

Example 7: Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

This is an example of just how sloppy the IHRA is. There is no correspondence between Jewish ‘self-determination’ and claiming Israel is a racist endeavour. It is a non-sequitur. It is perfectly possible to support Jewish national self-determination and at the same timebelieve that Israel is a racist state.

Historically the idea that Jews are one nation, wherever they live, thus implying that British Jews are not really British, was seen as an anti-Semitic idea and that is why Zionism was a distinct minority of Jews before World War 2. What the Zionists were saying echoed that which the anti-Semites said.

Lucien Wolfe, the Chair of the Conjoint Committee, effectively the Board of Deputies Foreign Committee wrote of the Zionist belief in Jews being a nation that:

I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, when presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. They constitute a capitulation to our enemies...B Destani (ed) The Zionist movement and the foundation of Israel 1839-1972 Cambridge

As Geoffrey Robertson says, the IHRA ‘brands’ as anti-Semitic what is a political opinion.

Example 8: Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

It is difficult to know how this is an example of hatred of Jews. Apologists for Apartheid South Africa used to ask why we were operating double standards. Why not criticize other Black African states, they said and the answer is the same. States that discriminate on the basis of race and unalterable characteristics are in a class of their own. The IHRA assumes that people are guilty of ‘double standards’ if they single out Israel. Another instance of this definition’s sloppiness is that it talks of a democratic nation, which is a racist concept as it implies that some nations are not democratic. It is in essence a form of special pleading dressed up as anti-Semitism.

Example 9: Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

If one accuses Jews of killing Jesus it is anti-Semitic. But this example brings Israel and Israelis into the equation thus making clear that the purpose of this definition is defence of Israel not Jews.

Example 10: Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Netanyahu has just compared Iran’s Ayatollah Khameini to Hitler. As Israel’s Ynetnoted ‘Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Sunday the Iranian regime to Nazi Germany.’ Margaret Hodge also compared the threat of disciplinary proceedings to that of refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany. Because Israel claims that the Holocaust is what gives it its moral foundations then it is appropriate to see whether Israel is living up to that claim. Regardless there is no reason to believe that people make such a comparison do so because they hate Jews, which is the core of the IHRA.

Example 11: Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

I agree that holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s actions is anti-Semitic but it is the Zionist organisations such as the Board of Deputies who claim that British Jews support Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. The Board of Deputies organized demonstrations to support Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Israel calls itself the nation state of Jews, all Jews. Presumably then British Zionist organisations are anti-Semitic!

It is therefore understandable that the Board of Deputies and Zionist Federation don’t want a debate to open up on the IHRA. Instead they want the IHRA to be adopted without debate because they know that is intellectually and politically unsustainable.

Tony Greenstein

↧

By Supporting the IHRA Labour’s NEC has chosen to support Racist Zionists over Anti-racist Jews and Palestinians

September 4, 2018, 8:58 pm

≫ Next: As Israel Prepares to Demolish the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar Labour’s racist MPs vote to support the IHRA

≪ Previous: The Zionists admit that the IHRA is about defending Israel NOT Jews

If there is one lesson Corbyn must learn it is that you cannot appease Zionists or Racists

Why the IHRA removes Palestinian from history - again

UPDATE

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this report in today's Times but if it is true then the behaviour of the majority of the NEC yesterday was shameful. This is particularly true of Lansman because in his article Labour’s antisemitism code is the gold standard for political parties Lansman wrote defending the notion that people should be able to criticise Israel as a racist state without being accused of antisemitism. Lansman wrote:

The only part of the IHRA working examples that is not explicitly referenced relates to claims about the state of Israel being a racist endeavour (this is a subset of an example, not a standalone one). Of all the elements in the IHRA examples, this is the one that runs the greatest risk of prohibiting legitimate criticism of Israel. It cannot possibly be antisemitic to point out that some of the key policies of the Israeli state, observed since its founding days, have an effect that discriminates on the basis of race and ethnicity....

If legitimate criticism of Israel were to be curbed, that would infringe on the rights of other oppressed groups, who have suffered at the hands of discriminatory Israeli state policies. The Palestinians have experienced decades of occupation, gross human rights violations, and war crimes. The Bedouins have had their homes destroyed, the latest example being the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar. And ethnic minorities within Israel have been treated appallingly, such as the Sudanese and Eritrean refugees who have been detained and deported, and questions over the treatment of Ethiopian women, including allegations they were given birth control without their consent.

I’ve just been in Israel, where I met people from all different backgrounds, organisations and political persuasions. Those I met, Jewish as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel, spoke about racist state policies, not just in relation to the occupation and settlements, but also within Israel itself – the segregation of housing, education, employment, and systematic economic disadvantage. The Palestinian minority within Israel is as entitled as Jews in Britain to define the discrimination they have experienced as racism. Such criticisms cannot, and must not, be silenced.

It cannot be right that one vaguely worded subset of one IHRA example can deny other oppressed groups their right to speak about their own oppression. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t contexts in which claims about Israel being a racist endeavour are antisemitic or made with antisemitic intent. But the IHRA’s wording is not sufficiently clear. Labour’s code of conduct provides the necessary explanation to ensure that legitimate criticism of Israeli policies is not silenced, while not tolerating comments which deny Jewish people the right to self-determination or hold Israel to unfair standards not expected of other states.

To now refuse to have supported Corbyn's mild statement when he agreed with it in order to appease the Zionist lobby is truly shameful. And the same goes for all other members of the NEC.

It is clear that given the failure of Lansman to back up his own words and the failure of the Left on the NEC to stick by their principles that we have to campaign around the principle that 'Israel is a racist state.'

Tony Greenstein

The decision of Labour’s National Executive Committee to back the full IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, a document whose only purpose is to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, is a gift to the Zionists and the Right in party. It is another example of the political confusion at the heart of the Corbyn project and the treacherous role of Momentum's Chair Jon Lansman who lobbied for the adoption of the IHRA.

Noone has yet explained why there is a need for a 500+ word definition of 'antisemitism' when the Oxford English dictionary definition - 'hostility to or prejudice against Jews'consists of just 6 words. Why should a definition described as 'bewilderingly perplexing'by Professor David Feldman an expert in Antisemitism be adopted? Why does support for Israel have anything to do with anti-semitism?

The IHRA has been slammedby Hugh Tomlinson QC, Geoffrey Robertson QC, Professor David Feldman and SirStephen Sedley amongst others, yet despite these criticisms, the NEC took its decision today to adopt the whole of the IHRA. A definition of 'antisemitism' that the antisemitic Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, and the antisemitic government of Poland have no difficulty accepting.

In do doing the NEC flew in the face of all evidence. For wholly unprincipled reasons – they thought they could buy off their Zionist detractors. In the years ahead they will learn just how wrong they were. The more you pay a blackmailer the higher the ransom.

There is no doubt that this whole anti-Semitism farrago of nonsense has been state directed and driven by the needs of British foreign policy. Jews are the alibi not the cause. The fears, which have been deliberately stoked, of British Jews, are being used as a political prop in the war against Corbyn.

Paul Besser with Paul Golding, Britain First Fuhrer holding a cross. Despite being a member of a holocaust denial group Besser is happy to join a group of Zionists protesting about 'antisemitism'

Paul Besser with his friend Jayda Fransen, Deputy Fuhrer of Britain First - a loyal Zionist

Jonathan Hoffman, ex-Vice Chair Zionist Federation, removed from office for offensive behaviour to his social superiors - his sign talks of Jews as one monolithic entity - a racist concept in itself - his main chant throughout was that he represented 95% of Jews (down from 99% a few months ago!)

Harry Markham in hat leaning on the barriers accuses us of racism whilst demonstrating with members of different fascist groups - Besser in the blue cap

The Zionist counter-demonstration - The person in the blue baseball cap is Paul Besser, former Intelligence Officer for Britain First, a neo-Nazi group

Anti-Semitism was the weapon that the Right chose to wield. It is ostensibly an appeal to people who are progressive. Of course they could have chosen to attack Corbyn for his opposition to the bedroom tax or cuts in the NHS but I suspect they would not have achieved the same resonance as fake 'anti-semitism. ‘Anti-Semitism’ makes the Right appear radical.

The decision by the NEC to add a rider saying that their adoption of the IHRA will not impair freedom of speech in the Party is a nonsense when the whole purpose of the IHRA, as even its author Kenneth Stern admits, is to chill free speech.

This summed up the demonstration - no to the IHRA yes to a Boycott of Israel

A group of Orthodox Jews also joined us for the protest

The IHRA has no reason to exist other than to inhibit free speech and to make people think twice before they open their mouths. That is why the reaction to today’s decision by Labour Friends of Israel’s Director Jennifer Gerber is completely predictable. Gerber claimedthat the NEC’s decision was “appalling” ‘ and that the “freedom of expression" clause “totally undermines the other examples the party has supposedly just adopted”.

The Times of Israelquoted LFI as saying that Corbyn‘totally undermines’ the decision to accept the full definition by including ‘unnecessary’ clarification.

Gerber has a point of course. What is the point of adopting a definition of anti-Semitism which seeks to outlaw free speech on Palestine and Israel if you then say that nothing in that definition will be allowed to infringe on free speech? It is the politics of the madhouse.

Naomi Wimborne-Iddrissi speaking from Jewish Voice for Labour

Unfortunately instead of standing up to the supporters of Apartheid Israel and the Zionist movement, Corbyn and Jon Lansman in particular have equivocated throughout and lent credence to the idea that anti-Semitism is a problem in the Labour Party.

Jeremy Corbyn had a very simple choice when these allegations first arose and that was to say two things:

i. That he condemned anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, not least that which is enshrined in the Zionist nature of the Israeli state in the form of Jewish supremacism

ii. That he opposes the weaponisation of anti-Semitism by supporters of Israel. He could have even said that accusations of 'antisemitism' are the standard retort by Israeli apologists to criticism of their state .

The Zionists really don't understand why free speech on Palestine is necessary - after all support for the Palestinians is automatically 'antisemitic'

It was only a day ago that we won a great victory. All 9 left candidates were elected to the NEC (if you count Lansman as on the left). Despite the best efforts of Lansman and his aide, Laura Parker, who messaged Momentum members on their famous victory, ‘forgetting’ to mention that Pete Willsman had also been victorious. This victory proves that the Left in the Labour Party remains strong. Yet instead of seeking to shore up the Left Corbyn and his advisers continue to believe that they can appease the Right when experience demonstrates that whatever concession is made they will take it as a sign of weakness.

John McDonnell’s stupid and cowardly statement that Labour should adoptthe IHRAin its entirety in order to put the false anti-Semitism campaign to bed beggars belief. It is cowardly because instead of defending Palestinian rights McDonnell chooses to appease the Zionists, the oppressor, and to prioritise the views of racist settlers over their victims.

It is stupid because the Zionists are not going to call off the attacks until Corbyn is gone and if McDonnell thinks they are going to let him slide into power he is very much mistaken. They are already gearing up to demonise him too in terms of what he has said in the past. See for example the Jewish Chronicle article at the end of July. Revealed: John McDonnell signed Early Day Motion welcoming launch of extreme anti-Zionist group

What both McDonnell and Corbyn don’t get is that the aim of the false anti-Semitism campaign is to effectthe removal of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. It has no other purpose. The demand from former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown that the IHRA be adopted in full is part of this campaign. Does anyone seriously think that Brown, who campaigned on the slogan‘British Jobs 4 British Workers’, the exact same slogan of the BNP and National Front, is seriously concerned with combating any form of racism?

Margaret Hodge genuinely doesn't understand why there is any need for free speech on Palestine - quite understandable in the circumstances

This is confirmed by Margaret Hodge. She made it crystal clear that the anti-Semitism campaign would continue as long as Corbyn is leader. What is it that McDonnell or Lansman for that matter don’t get. As the Guardian noted:

‘Margaret Hodge has signalled that Labour MPs critical of Jeremy Corbyn are digging in for a long struggle against his leadership as she suggested that the antisemitism row would only end if he stood aside.

It is time to take a principled stance. Labour’s Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct is not only dead in the water but it is also completely inadequate resting as it does on nearly all the IHRA examples as Brian Klug demontratedf

On a brighter note the joint demonstration today by Jewish Voice for Labour, Labour Against the Witchhunt and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network was magnificent. Over 400 people turned up to show their opposition to the IHRA and to demonstrate their anger at the false accusations of anti-Semitism. A number of Momentum groups were present as Lansman slunk in without saying a word.

There was a small Zionist counter demonstration of about 10 people. Quite amazingly it consisted entirely of the Zionist fascists that I have documented here, hereand herethus proving that Zionism is today moving further and further to the far Right. Prime amongst those in attendance was the former Intelligence Officer for Britain First Paul Besser. Others in attendance like Jonathan Hoffman and Mel Gharia are Tommy Robinson supporters. Despite this these fascists had the cheek to call Labour a fascist party. Hoffman, who isn’t even a Labour Party member is also active in the so-called Labour Against Anti-Semitism.

Britain First's Paul Bessser giving the V sign at the back and Mad Mel Gharia at the front - her main claim to fame, apart from being an ex-page 3 Sun model is her tongue

Gary Benjamin (back left), Paul Besser with camera in blue cap

A new group - Fascists Against Antisemitism

This is the Zionist counter-demonstration - consisting of members of different fascist groups such as Britain First, Jewish Defence League and Pegida including the notorious Jonathan Hoffman (with megaphone)

It was good to see so many Momentum banners – Brent, Newham and of course Brighton and Hove. In Brighton we had quite a tussle between Lansman’s supporters and his opponents before we finally secured the right to take the banner.

One difference of opinion that I feared beforehand, between those opposed to Labour’s Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct and those supporting it did not manifest itself on the demonstration. We were all opposed to the IHRA which of course was what the NEC was discussing.

One thing is for certain. The IHRA will not stop the fake anti-Semitism campaign. On the contrary the NEC’s decision will give it renewed strength. That is why we must redouble our efforts to go back to an anti-racist position. Anti-Semitism is not a problem in either the Labour Party or indeed British society. It is Islamapobia, anti-Roma racism and anti-Black racism which should be our key priority. It isn’t Jews who are being deported, it is Black people. It isn’t synagogues which are being firebombed it is mosques. It isn’t Jews who experience police stop and search or deaths in custody. It is about time that the Labour Party, if it means what it says about racism, stops pandering to a small but vocal group of people whose only concern is the State of Israel.

When Labour Friends of Israel say that the free speech addition to the adoption of the IHRA is an ‘unnecesary’ clarification we should respond that far from being unnecessary, free speech is integral to what we believe in and stand for. Free speech may not exist for Palestinians in Israel but we are not going to introduce Israeli ‘democracy’ inside the Labour Party.

Tony Greenstein

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As Israel Prepares to Demolish the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar Labour’s racist MPs vote to support the IHRA

September 8, 2018, 3:29 pm

≫ Next: Hundreds of Israelis Demonstrated in Afula last June Against the Sale of a House to an Arab

≪ Previous: By Supporting the IHRA Labour’s NEC has chosen to support Racist Zionists over Anti-racist Jews and Palestinians

**Labour’s Shameful Betrayal of the Palestinians was led by Jon Lansman and John McDonnell the time has come to fight back**

As Labour MPs voted to adopt, by 205-8 with 12 abstentions, the full IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism,’ without even a nod to such concepts as free speech, Israel’s colonial High Court gave the go ahead for the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar, the West Bank village between Jerusalem and the settlement of Maaleh Adumim, to proceed.

Jeremy Corbyn's addition to the adoption of the IHRA would have ensured that support for the Palestinians was not characterised as antisemitism - Lansman had other ideas

In place of Khan al-Ahmar, which has only been there for nearly 70 years, will be Jewish only settlements. By what definition of racism is this not racist? If Jews in Britain were evicted to make way for non-Jews would that not be anti-Semitic? Only a racist can pretend that Israel is not an inherently racist state yet this is what 205 Labour MPs did.

True most of Labour's MPs were simply ignorant fools, but not all of them were. Hypocrites like Wes Streeting and Stephen Kinnock condemned Israel 2 months ago for its threatened demolition of Khan al-Ahmar but the moment someone asks why the Israeli state repeatedly destroys Arab villages and homes for the benefit of Israeli Jews then the cry of 'antisemitism' goes up. The answer of course lies in one word 'Zionism' or Jewish supremacy.

Two months ago, Khan al-Ahmar’s demolition was only stopped after a world wide storm erupted. This was because if Khan al-Ahmar is demolished there can be no pretence that a 2 state solution is feasible any longer.

The reaction to Labour's IHRA decision was to fly post London bus stops - an act that met with condemnation by the rapidly rightward moving John McDonnell

Labour MPs voted to endorse the IHRA without even the slightest caveat about free speech. This follows the NEC vote which endorsed the IHRA in totality, effectively rejecting a statement from Jeremy Corbyn which would have allowed members to call the founding of the Israeli state racist.

It should be noted that Corbyn’s statement was extremely weak. Nonetheless it did accept that people had the right to argue Israel’s founding was racist and it also accepted the existence of non-Zionist Jews. Instead the NEC agreed a weak free speech caveat.

According to the IHRA comparing Israel to the Nazi regime is anti-semitic - it doesn't however apply to Zionists who compare their opponents to Nazis

However for the Zionists all talk of free speech is a red rag to a bull. Jennifer Gerber of Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel ‘claimedthe “freedom of expression" clause “totally undermines the other examples the party has supposedly just adopted”. The Jewish Labour Movement statedthat ‘The only speech that IHRA definition seeks to limit is antisemitism.’

The bigger the lie the more often these racists repeat it. It is as if the JLM and Gerber have a photo of Goebbels on their wall, such is their devotion to his propaganda techniques.

Tony Greenstein

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Hundreds of Israelis Demonstrated in Afula last June Against the Sale of a House to an Arab

September 9, 2018, 5:31 pm

≫ Next: 29 Rabbis of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations issue statement supporting Jeremy Corbyn – for some reason it is ignored by the BBC and the MSM!

≪ Previous: As Israel Prepares to Demolish the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar Labour’s racist MPs vote to support the IHRA

This is why Israeli Apartheid is Unique and why John McDonnell’s defence of Zionism is so shameful

The key question running through the debate over the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-semitism is whether or not Israel is just another liberal democratic state or whether it is suis generis. According to the IHRA‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’. The problem is that Israel is not any other country. It is in a class of its own.

Events in Afula, a Jewish-only city of around 50,000 in northern Israel, in June of this year explain why Israel is not simply a western state which happens to have racist policies but an Apartheid state for whom racism is an essential component of its identity. Afula’s Jewish residents were outraged that a property in the town had been sold to an Arab. This was a carbon copy of a similar demonstration in 2015 when many of the successful bidders for building plots were found to be Arabs. The protestors demanded the cancellation of the whole bidding process and the Nazareth District Court was happy to oblige. Similar protests and actions have been held in other towns.

In Safed the Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, a paid state official, issued an edict forbidding Jews to rent property to Arabs. Eliyahu’s edict was supported by dozens of rabbis when he came in for criticism.

Israel is a uniquely racist state. For McDonnell to appease the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel is a shameful capitulation to those who have been running the false anti-semitism campaign for the past three years. McDonnell appears to think that if he appeases the Zionists and gives them everything they want then they won’t continue their campaign of destabilisation. Appeasement rarely works as history demonstrates.

It's what used to be called Apartheid

What McDonnell seems to have difficulty understanding is that the fake anti-semitism campaign has one overriding purpose – removing the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party, McDonnell included. The more you give the Zionists the more they will demand until there’s nothing left to give. It is a total illusion to give way to these racists in the belief that they will call off their dogs.

Israel is a ‘Jewish state’ or more accurately a state of the Jewish nation. What Israel is not is a state of its own citizens. Recent attempts even to debate such a proposal in the Knesset were blocked. Knesset Council Bans Bill to Define Israel as State for All Its Citizens

Uniquely in the modern world, the Israeli state owns and controls 93% of Israeli land which is reserved for the use of the ‘Jewish people.’ The Jewish National Fund, a para-state organisation set up by the JNF Law 1953 ensures that access to that land is barred to the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians.

The JNF is quite openabout the fact that ‘it should not be obliged to allocate lands in its possession to non-Jews.... Whoever seeks to prevent the allocation of JNF lands solely to Jews must confront the assertions of these laws’ referring to three land laws passed in 1960-61 which gave the JNF and the Israeli Land Administration joint responsibility for administering Israeli state land.

Israeli Arabs are confined to 3% of the land. Not one new Arab town or village has been created in Israel since its formation 70 year ago despite a more than 10 fold increase in their population. This contrasts with hundreds of new Jewish towns and communities.

Demonstration against house sale in Afula

In Israel land is segregated in the same way as it was in Apartheid South Africa. The only difference is that Israel sees no need to pass a Group Areas Act relying on a series of opaque laws instead.

In the wake of the NEC’s decision to endorse the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, Palestine solidarity activists fly posted bus stops in London declaring that Israel is a racist endeavour.

This was immediately denounced by McDonnell who told BBC’s Politics Live that "It is not the right thing to say.It is against the examples that we set out and linked to the IHRA definitions."

In these few robotic comments we see the intellectual poverty of Labour’s political elite displayed in all its glory. Why is it wrong to call Israel a racist state? Are the protestors wrong? Are their arguments at fault? No, its because it’s against the IHRA formula which the Labour Party and Theresa May have both adopted, alongside the anti-semitic governments of Poland and Hungary.

In an equally shocking interviewwith Jewish News McDonnell elaborated on these comments, in the course of which he demonstrated just far he has moved to the right and to what lengths he is prepared to go in order to disown his own political heritage. Time was when McDonnell defended physical force Irish Republicanism against the British army’s occupation of Northern Ireland.

McDonnell stated that ‘It is anti-Semitic to oppose a Jewish state, of course it is.’ Israel calls itself a Jewish state but what does that mean? Quite simply Israel is a Jewish supremacist state in the same way as South Africa was a White supremacist state and Ulster was a Protestant supremacist state.

Being Jewish in Israel means having very real and significant privileges. A Jewish state means that you constantly worry about the ‘demographic threat’ that the Arabs pose. In an article Expert confirms Jews and Arabs nearing population parity Aron Heller wrote that ‘Israel will be faced with a daunting choice between becoming a binational state or one in which Arabs and other minorities do not have equal rights.’

That is why Israel constantly encourages Jewish immigration at the same time as it takes steps to minimise the Arab population. It means politics in Israel are ethnicised at every level and in every sphere of civil and social life. The 20% of the population that are Palestinians are not represented at any level in the government, the senior civil service or the judiciary. It means segregation in most areas of life including education and housing. It also results in government supported campaigns against miscegenation, sexual relations between Jews and Arabs that are reminiscent of the Nuremberg Laws (Israel's vile anti-miscegenation squads).

What is particularly shocking is not only that McDonnell has so little historical or political awareness but that he is prepared to jettison the Palestinians for the sake of a pact with the devil. The idea of religious states died out with the French Revolution. Nationality became a function of residence in a certain territory not religion. In the wordsof Count Clermont-Tonnerre, a Deputy in the French Constituent Assembly, "Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals…." Tonnerre’s words represented the views of 18^th-century rationalists and French revolutionaries toward Judaism and the Jewish question. That was why Zionism, like the Jewish Orthodoxy, hated Emancipation and the French Revolution (alongside Hitler and European fascism).

In Israel being Jewish is more a question of race and nation than religion. There is no right to a Jewish state nor is it anti-semitic to oppose it. Jews are members of all nations. The idea of Jewish nationhood and thus Jewish self-determination is an anti-semitic argument that implies that Jews aren’t members of the nations amongst whom they live.

There is also no right to a Protestant or Catholic or Islamic state. A simple understanding of the fight for democratic rights and the works of people like Thomas Paine and JS Mill eludes McDonnell.

McDonnell’s also suggested that all states are racist and Israel is no different. That is a fundamental failure to understand that Israel is not just another Western state. Israel is unique in not having its own nationality. Jews are a separate nation to Arabs and there are about 130 nationalities in Israel of which only one, Jewish means anything.

Israel is a state that was founded on the basis of Jewish racial supremacy. When the Supreme Court ruled in Ka’adanthat the State could not discriminate against Arabs by refusing to sell them State land, the response of the Knesset was to pass in 2011 an Acceptance to Communities Law which allowed communities of less than 500 people to set up Admission Committees which screened potential residents on ethnic or other grounds such as colour.

Imagine if, in Britain, someone Jewish was told that they could not purchase land because it was owned by the Christian National Fund. There would be an uproar but that is the situation in Israel in respect of Arabs. John McDonnell sees nothing amiss in this.

McDonnell, in his desire to appease the Labour Right is prepared to throw the Palestinians under a bus. First he suggested that Margaret Hodge’s abuse of Jeremy Corbyn should not be made the subject of a disciplinary investigation despite having said nothing about the disciplinary hearings against Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and myself. Then McDonnell called for full support for the IHRA and now he is first off the starting block in denouncing activists for saying that Israel is a racist rotweiller that guards over Western interests in the Middle East whilst systematically discriminating against its non-Jewish inhabitants.

Those who think that this will not have any effect on McDonnell’s potential role as a Labour Chancellor, should think again. McDonnell has begun travelling the same road that his famous predecessor, Sir Stafford Cripps, took. Cripps started off on Labour’s far-left, was expelled and ended up as Attlee’s Chancellor and the enforcer of austerity.

Foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy. If McDonnell bends the knee to the Zionist lobby now then he is he going to doff his cap to American foreign policy and the ‘special relationship’. We can only imagine what McDonnell’s response will be when faced with a hostile banking sector and a run on the pound. If he can’t even criticise Margaret Hodge’s vile attack on Jeremy Corbyn and support the mandatory reselection of Labour MPs then it is to be feared that McDonnell will end up as another Dennis Healey

McDonnell is even more narrow minded and blinkered because in the event that Jeremy Corbyn was overthrown he would immediately be a target. Last month when it seemed that Corbyn might be overthrown storiesbegan to appear in the press concentrating on McDonnell’s past such as sponsoring an Early Day Motion supporting the then recently formed International Jewish Anti-zionist Network.

If McDonnell really thinks that Israel is no different from any other western state then he should look at the following articles on Afula. McDonnell’s failure to understand the bogus and synthetic nature of the fake anti-semitism campaign is worrying because he doesn’t recognise the scale or nature of the attack on Jeremy Corbyn.

Tony Greenstein

Hundreds of Israelis Demonstrate Against Home Sale to Arab Family

Former mayor joined protest: 'the residents of Afula don't want a mixed city, but rather a Jewish city, and it's their right. This is not racism'

About 150 residents of the northern city of Afula demonstrated on Wednesday afternoon against the sale of a house to an Arab family. Protesters waved Israeli flags and carried signs condemning the sale and the homeowners who sold their house to Arabs, one of which read: "Traitors against the Jews will get no rest."

Former Afula Mayor Avi

It's what used to be called Apartheid

Protesters raised Israeli flags and shouted slogans against the sale of the house in the city's Yizrael neighborhood. Chairman of Joint Arab List Ayman Odeh wrote in response to the protest: “It is not a surprise that in a country that has founded 700 towns for Jews and not even one for Arabs, the idea that Arabs should be pushed aside does not shock citizens. And still, it is more than a little worrying to see how our hope for living together is crumbling due to hatred and racism fueled by the government.”

Member of Knesset Yousef Jabareen (Joint List) added that “racism ethnic superiority have become a legitimate reality under this right-wing government. This protest should rock the political system and keep up at night all those who care about equality and human dignity.”

A notice calling on residents to turn out for the demonstration made reference to “the sale of homes to those who are undesirable in the neighbourhood” and went on to say: “One transaction has already been carried out and everything needs to be done to cancel it and to put a stop to this phenomenon from the beginning. Friends, now is the time to come together. All Jews are responsible for one another! Today it's us, tomorrow, it's you.”

In response to the Afula protest, the Coalition Against Racism organization called for a halt to efforts by “those inciting the public against the possibility of living together.” The phenomenon will not stop without “clear responses by courageous public figures and political leaders,” the organization said, adding: “Now is the time for the voice of the sane majority in Afula, both politicians and the wider public, to be heard.”

About two years ago, Afula residents held a number of demonstrations objecting to a bidding process for lots in a residential neighborhood of the city in which all 43 successful bidders were Arab. Approval of the bids was rescinded by the Nazareth District Court after the court found that some of the successful bidders had engaged in improper coordination of their bids and that the minimum bid provisions were vague and misleading.

Jews not welcome - another Nazi practice imported into Israel

Half of Jewish Israelis saythey wouldn’t want an Arab as a neighbor. In March, Kfar Vradim’s local council head Sivan Yehieli ordered to halt bids for selling building plots of land in his community, after 50 percent of the winners so far turned out to be Arabs. In a letter he disseminated among the community’s residents he promised that “no more land would be sold until an appropriate solution was found to ensure our ability to maintain our communal life and the special character of Kfar Vradim."

The so-called nation-state bill passed the first of three Knesset calls in May in a a version that has a clause allowing the establishment of communities for Jews only. Clause 7b of this bill specifically states that “the state can allow a community composed of people of the same faith or nationality to maintain an exclusive community.”

When racism and segregation are perceived as 'legitimate rights'

Protests against Arab families moving into Jewish cities are a reminder that until everyone is free to choose where they want to live, the Israeli regime will remain segregationist and racist at its core.

By Suhad Bishara

Illustrative photo of demonstration by far-right Israelis. (Activestills.org)

Jewish residents of the northern Israeli city of Afula protested last week against the sale of a home to an Arab family and the possibility that the city would have a mixed Jewish-Arab population. I have no doubt that every person who believes in freedom and justice will view this protest as an expression of pro-segregation racism reminiscent of South African apartheid.

The protest comes just a few months after Sivan Yehieli, the head of the Kfar Vradim Municipal Council, announced that his pastoral town mustmaintain its Zionist-Jewish character after 58 Arab citizens won bids to build their homes in the town.

Let’s make one thing clear: 150 protesters are not an aberration in Israel. They were simply expressing overtly the racist segregation upon which Israel’s land regime was founded. This is precisely how military rule over Israel’s Arab citizens – in effect from 1949 until 1966– functioned: “cleansing” vast swaths of land in order to settle Jews and to ensure reserves of land that would continue to exclusively serve Israeli Jews.

This “cleansing” process was implemented, among other ways, via the construction of hundreds of new Jewish towns and communities, as well as through the establishment of admissions committees in kibbutzim, moshavim, and other communities.

Yehieli faithfully represents the Israeli planning authorities’ policy aimed at demographically re-engineering the country. He represents an Israeli legal system that refused to allow the implementation of its own decision to allow the internally-displaced Palestinian residents of Iqrit and Bir’im to return to their villages, that gave the green light to the Admissions Committees Law, and that allows the state to uproot the residents of Umm al-Hiran in order to replace them with Jewish citizens – just like during and immediately following the Nakba. And we can expect much more of the same.#

Bedouin women collect their belongings from the ruins of their demolished homes in the village of Umm al-Hiran, Negev desert, January 18, 2017. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Much of the criticism leveled at the racism of Afula’s residents focuses on the lack of development in Arab communities, which results in the necessity of young Arab citizens to seek housing solutions in nearby Jewish towns.

The decision of Israel's Supreme Court in Ka'adan has effectively been overturned by the Knesset and by the Supreme Court itself

This thinking prevents envisioning a situation in which an Arab citizen of Israel has the right to choose where she/he wants to live simply because it suits her/him to live there. It buys into the paradigm of a discriminatory, racist, and apartheid-like land regime that forces them to find a circumstantial explanation for the phenomenon, rather than simply calling it by its name: racism and segregation.

Imagine a scenario in which the Israeli government takes unprecedented steps to allocate land for the development of Arab communities. Imagine that it begins developing Arab communities of all kinds — cities, villages, and agricultural communities — while also ensuring the development of industrial and commercial zones in accordance with the principles of distributive and restorative justice.

But yet, even in this scenario, it remains the right of every Arab citizen to decide where he or she wants to live — be it Kfar Vradim, Tel Aviv, or Afula.

As long as Israeli state authorities cannot or will not imagine the country’s land as open to all, we cannot talk about justice or constitutional rights. The Israeli regime will remain segregationist and racist at its core. Segregated living will remain racist, even under the guise of “separate but equal.”

Imagine protesters demonstrating against Jews buying homes in a Christian town in Europe. Israelis would declare them racists and anti-Semites, and Israel’s prime minister would surely remark that it reminds him of the dark days leading up to the Holocaust. Inside Israel, however, an almost identical scene is framed by Afula’s former mayor Avi Elkabetz as such: “The residents of Afula do not want a mixed city. They want a Jewish city — and this is their right. This isn’t racism.”

Thus racism in Israel magically becomes the “legitimate right” of the Jewish citizen.

Attorney Suhad Bishara is the Director of the Land and Planning Rights Unit, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. This article was first published in Hebrew on Haokets. Read it here.

↧

29 Rabbis of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations issue statement supporting Jeremy Corbyn – for some reason it is ignored by the BBC and the MSM!

September 11, 2018, 4:44 pm

≫ Next: Open Letter: No, Jennie Forby, we will not be informers! These are the methods of the Gestapo and the Stasi!

≪ Previous: Hundreds of Israelis Demonstrated in Afula last June Against the Sale of a House to an Arab

Please watch this excellent video from Rabbi Shapiro of True Torah Jews on how the Jewish Nation State Law will increase Anti-semitism

Statement by 29 Rabbis defending Jeremy Corbyn - for some reason the BBC has not yet publicised it!!

The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations is an umbrella organisation of Haredi Jewish communities in London and has an estimated membership of over 6,000. It was founded in 1926 "to protect traditional Judaism" and it has over a hundred synagogues and educational institutions affiliated to it. It caters for all aspects of Haredi Jewish life in London.

The UOHC have issued a statement supporting Jeremy Corbyn and condemning the ‘irresponsible remarks’ of Ephraim Mirvis and Jonathan Sacks calling him an anti-semite. The UOHC do not recognise the post of Chief Rabbi and nor do they recognise as Chief or former Chief Rabbis Mirvis or Sacks. The UOHC represents traditional Orthodox and Hasidic Jews as opposed to Jews who define their Judaism by reference to Israeli Apartheid and Zionism.

Original statement in Hebrew

You will be surprised to hear that neither the BBC nor the mainstream press, the Guardian included, have seen fit to give this statement any publicity. Clearly it is a message that is not welcome to supporters of British imperialism and its racist rottweiler in the Middle East but it is also clear that the activities of the Zionist rabbis, in claiming to speak on behalf of all Jews, have riled the Orthodox sections of British Jewry. In particular their attempt to conflate British Jews and the actions of the Israeli state, which is an example of anti-semitism, has particular annoyed Orthodox Jewry. Given the media blackout, I am happy to give this publicity. Please share.

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro - explaining why the Jewish Nation State Bill is anti-semitic and dictatorial

I also copy here a video from Rabbi Shapira of True Torah Jews on why Israel’s recently passed Jewish Nation State Law is bad for Jews. Zionism claims that Israel is the nation state of all Jews, not simply those who reside there. This is a claim that Israel has no right to make and it is symptomatic of the dictatorship that Israel is underneath its veneer of democracy. British Jews first loyalty is to Britain not Israel and to claim otherwise is anti-semitic. It is ironic that the Zionists’ International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-semitism claims that accusing Jews of a dual loyalty is anti-semitic when it is Zionism which does just that.

Rabbi Ephraim Padwa - the lead signatory

The Jewish Nation State Law, which says that I am a Jewish national irrespective of my wishes and therefore a subject of Israel, does not accept that Israel’s 2 million Palestinians are its nationals. It is thus both racist towards Palestinians and anti-semitic towards Jews.

Tony Greenstein

↧

Jews are NOT an oppressed minority – Jews do not fear being deported

Anti-racists and Anti-fascists should cut their links with Hate not Hope - You can’t fight fascism with racism

A Vote for Jon Lansman is a Vote for the Right

By Michael Sfard By +972 Magazine

It is Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement who should apologise for:

I wrote this before I left for on vacation! I'm pleased to hear that in my absence Corbyn may finally be starting to understand that you don't respond to attacks by mad dogs and Zionists by apologising but by going on the attack.

Is Labour’s Jon Lansman capitulating to the Israel lobby?, Asa Winstanley

Israel Is The Real Problem, Media Lens

A Shameful Outburst

Trashing A Dedicated Anti-Racist

How did Labour lose the trust of Britain’s Jews?New Statesman

Law will ‘reveal ugly face of ultranationalist Israel in all its repugnance’, professor says

The Zionist war against Corbyn could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and INCREASE anti-Semitism

Instead of adopting the full IHRA definition, they are planning to insert a new clause which opens the door to criticism of the state of Israel as a “racist endeavour”.

And if there were any doubt about their agenda, Pollard complained that:

All over Israel towns and cities are segregated and there are nearly a thousand all-Jewish communities with the powers to reject Arab applicants under the Reception Committees Law. Suggestions that this is racist would clearly be anti-Semitic.

Last week we saw a meeting packed to over flowing in Conway Hall dedicated to opposing the latest coup attempt. The fightback is on: hundreds rally behind Corbyn in London

Israel running campaign against Jeremy Corbyn,

Asa Winstanley

Hijacking Victimhood and Demonizing Dissent, Media Lens

Without a trace of shame - The Times, which refused to criticise Hitler, calls for Corbyn's Resignation for 'anti-Semitism'!

In 2017 Rabbi Sacks marched with thousands of settler racists through Arab East Jerusalem chanting 'Death to the Arabs'

Take the day off

Like a cancer

For both anti-Semites and Zionists, to be a Jew is to be a Zionist

The Labour Party is in danger of adopting a definition of anti-Semitism that is anti-Semitic and which has no legal, academic or logical rationale

Labour’s Shameful Betrayal of the Palestinians was led by Jon Lansman and John McDonnell the time has come to fight back

This is why Israeli Apartheid is Unique and why John McDonnell’s defence of Zionism is so shameful

Please watch this excellent video from Rabbi Shapiro of True Torah Jews on how the Jewish Nation State Law will increase Anti-semitism

**Anti-racists and Anti-fascists should cut their links with Hate not Hope - You can’t fight fascism with racism**

**Labour’s Shameful Betrayal of the Palestinians was led by Jon Lansman and John McDonnell the time has come to fight back**