Campaign for Free Speech Rally – Saturday December 12^th

Ronnie Kassrills - former leader of the ANC military wing Umkonte we Sizwe and ANC Minister

Solidarity message from Tariq Ali:

Angela Rayner tells#JLM2020: “If I have to suspend thousands and thousands of members, we will do that. Because we cannot and we will not accept an injury to one, because an injury to one is an injury to all.”

The response to this should be: “If we have to be suspended because we support the rights of the Palestinian people to live, plough their lands, tend their olive trees, defend their children and themselves and continue the struggle for equal rights in an apartheid state and for self-determination outside it, then we will.”

Chris William, the former Labour MP driven out of the Labour Party

 Last Saturday there was a Free Speech Rally with a range of speakers. They included

• Kerry Ann Mendoza, editor of The Canary;
• Professor Moshe Machover, the founder of Matzpen who has recently been suspended,
• Tony Greenstein an expelled member,
• Chris Williamson who was unlawfully suspended as an MP,
• Steve Zeltser, a US activist,
• Kevin Bean, an expelled member of the Labour Party and Labour Against the Witchhunt,
• Jonathan Coulter from Lib Dems for Free Speech,
• Craig Murray, who is currently being hounded by the Scottish legal system and a campaigner for Julian Assange,
• Ronnie Barkan, an Israeli activist living in Berlin;
• Leah Levane from Jewish Voice for Labour,
• Rowan Gaudet (Independent Jewish Voices Canada)
• Graham Bash, Editor of Labour Briefing
• Sammi Ramadani, an Iraqi anti-war activist and academic living in Britain
• Ronnie Kassrills, former Minister in the ANC Government from 2004-2008 and ANC Executive member. 

Craig Murray - former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan before being dismissed by New Labour for speaking out about torture

Unfortunately Ilan Pappe was ill and Professor David Miller had child care commitments.

Jackie Walker and Tina Werkmann chaired the two sessions which you can also see separately.

Everyone is agreed it was an excellent and moving conference and if you haven’t already watched it (over 12,000 on Facebook have) then please do. I found Ronnie Kassrills speech particularly interesting given his background in the overthrow of the world’s previous Apartheid government.

Session 1

https://youtu.be/VpLb0NfVlIU

Session 2

https://youtu.be/9F4eCY3wuBI

Sami Ramdani - a last minute addition to the speakers

The next stage is a conference scheduled on Saturday January 23, to discuss how to build the Campaign for Free Speech in Britain and internationally. We also hope it will discuss and amend a proposed Charter for Free Speech (DRAFT document here).

It is also proposed to hold a planning meeting on Tuesday December 22 at 6pm GMT which will discuss the Draft Charter. The Zoom details are.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81991539058

Topic: CAC meeting: Campaign for Free Speech
Time: Dec 22, 2020 18:00 London

For further details go to:

Ronnie Kasrils was one of our international guests at the Free Speech Rally last weekend. Below is the speech he gave. It also appeared as an article in the Morning Star.

Ronnie was commander of the ANC’s military wing, UMkhonte we-Sizwe, and a former ANC Government Minister, as well being Jewish. When Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize it was saidthat it was the day satire died. The idea of a Jewish anti-apartheid veteran being banned by neo-Nazis for anti-Semitism is another example of the death of satire.

It says everything about the political sewer that Austria’s Green and Social Democratic Parties have climbed into, in their eagerness to appease Zionism, that they voted alongside the Austrian neo-Nazis to ban Ronnie from speaking on Council premises.

It should not be a surprise that everywhere in Europe, from neo-Nazis to social democrats, there is support for the fake IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’. This is a ruling class narrative and the Green Party is nothing if not a petit-bourgeois pro-capitalist party.

In Southern Ireland their Green Party has just joined a coalition with two conservative parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to keep out Sinn Fein.

There is no greater supporter of the IHRA is there than Donald Trump, the man who won the 2016 election campaign with an overtly anti-Semitic campaign.

Israel was the country that had the closestrelationship with Apartheid South Africa. It recognised that there was a special affinity between the two ethno-nationalist states at the tip and top of Africa. It is little wonder that racists of all stripes, from Labour Leader Keir Stürmer to Boris Johnson love it so.

The Dilemmas of Being a Zionist - Sir Keir Stürmer 

However that does not stop me having the greatest sympathy for Labour’s Sir Stürmer. You will no doubt have heard of Sir Keir’s terrible dilemma when a White Supremacist woman phoned into LBC whilst Stürmer was fielding calls. She had a complaint. We, the ‘indigenous people of Britain’ (for which read White) were in danger of becoming a minority by 2066.

The caller said this terrible prospect could be easily avoided by doing what Israel has done when it passed the Jewish Nation State Law in 2018. As the caller noted, this law only allows the ‘indigenous people’ of Israel (i.e. Jews) to have self-determination. Arabs have to be content with being able to stay there (for the time being anyway).

When Stürmer heard ‘Israel’ being praised it was quite understandable that he warmed to the woman. After all, any other reaction and he might be called ‘anti-Semitic’. It was only later that he realised that her message might be problematic back home.

Stürmer has spent the last 8 months suspending and expelling anyone who dared breathe a word against Israel. How could he criticise this woman, who was quite clearly a Zionist, or a law that Ha’aretz has termedan Apartheid law. What was he to do?

That is why Stürmer had no choice but to witter on about taking the knee whilst ignoring the woman’s advocacy of the White Replacement Theory. After all, as a ‘Zionist without qualification’ he actually supports what she is saying in Israel.

Israel has its very own Jewish Replacement Law (the Jewish Nation State Law) designed to ensure that Jews cannot become a minority in their own state. So why is it so wrong that White British people have a similar law?  After all, as another racist, ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown once said, it’s all a question of British Jobs for BritishWorkers. Quite understandably Stürmer felt that if he criticised this woman he might be called an anti-Semites!!

Rivka Brown Withdraws from a Celebration of Jewish Radicalism

You may recall my blogabout the scheduled appearance of Rivka Brown of Vashti and Novara Media, at Red Labour’s Celebrationof Jewish Radicalism rally last Tuesday. Rivka Brown had previously attacked Chris Williamson, the one honourable Labour MP who stood firm against the false anti-Semitism witchhunt, as a ‘Jew baiter’. In doing so she joined the reactionary and racist who engineered the ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks on Corbyn and anti-Zionism/Palestine solidarity supporters inside the Labour Party.

Leon Rosselson - one of Britain's greatest folk singers and a committed Jewish anti-Zionist at the Celebration of Jewish Radicalism

I wrote to Jewish Voices for Labour who were co-sponsoring the event asking them to withdraw their sponsorship. JVL had a long discussion and agreedto this. I also wrote to those appearing asking them to make their views clear, which a number of them did. It seems that Rivka Brown, under pressure from Red Labour, decided to withdraw from the event. Clearly it would not have been right for someone so lacking in an ability to understand the meaning of the word ‘solidarity’ to appear in a commemoration of Jewish radicalism. The event itself was very good and is worth watching if you haven’t already.

Tony Greenstein 

• Free Speech Rally

The international campaign; IHRA fake definition of anti-Semitism and right for free speech;

Ronnie Kasrils - 12^th December, 2020

§    Forgive me for starting on a personal note. I was banned from public speaking at the age of 23 in South Africa. My crime had been to call for a universal franchise. The apartheid government accused those like me of agitating black people in a way that threatened the safety of whites. I was banned from membership of political organisations, and attending meetings. My movements were restricted. I was fired from my job. Others faced far worse.

§    Quite recently I was invited to address a BDS event in Vienna which the city council banned. This of course has become commonplace. More recently another event I was involved in, with Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled, at San Francisco State University, was similarly banned. Attempts to have our restricted discussion broadcast via Zoom, Facebook and You-tube was obstructed.

§    The South African apartheid regime’s use of anti-communism as a blanket device to shut down opposition, is being emulated by distorting the term anti-Semitism to gag critical discourse on Israel - an umbrella formula to smear those defending the Palestinian cause.

§    Upholding Palestinian rights has been reflected in United Nations resolutions, verdicts of the international criminal court; statements by the likes of Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu, Angela Davis, ArundhatiRoy, Noam Chomsky; and back in time Jewish scholars living in Israel such as Eric Fromm and Martin Buber.

§    Apartheid claimed the ANC struggle was about sweeping the whites into the sea. This equates with Israel’s claim that recognising Palestinian rights means the extinction of the Jewish people.

§    Those on the Left articulate the same goals as we did in the struggle for South Africa’s liberation – that the struggle is about changing a system not destroying a people. Equating the overthrow of white supremacy with the destruction of the white population, is akin to equating the condemnation of Israel’s policy and practices with anti-Semitism.

§    Neither is criticising Zionism, an exclusivist ethnic-based political doctrine, anti-Semitic. We criticise Zionism not the Judaic religion. We criticise Israel not the Jewish people. We are not Holocaust deniers; which for many Jewish opponents of Israel is the reason why we oppose the inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people.

§    The anti-communism as used by apartheid South Africa, and allegations of anti-Semitism against those daring to criticise Israel, are terms of Machiavellian elasticity to throttle opposition. It is the new taboo. The untouchable holy cow shamelessly peddled in Western countries that preach democratic freedoms.

§    Its advocates should take note of the lesson of the boy who cried wolf. When the real monster of anti-Semitism strikes, they should realise that the most steadfast defenders of people against all forms of discrimination, have been found on the left of the political spectrum. Remember Cable Street, and so much more!

§    If such a threat is repeated where will such fair-weather friends be, from racists like Trump and Johnson, Christian Zionists and the yellow inquisitors of the Labour Party and BBC? History attests to who the most dependable opponents of fascism are.

§    Whilst some aspects of the IHRA are acceptable, such as denial of the Holocaust, others relating to Israel’s existence and how that issue is phrased; and how Israel’s repressive measures can be characterised; are flawed, and make it the dubious document it clearly is.

§    In 1948 when Menahem Begin visited New York to raise funds for his party – later to become Sharon and Netanyahu’s ruling Likud – Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt labelled him a “fascist”. Around that same time, after the massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin, an Israeli cabinet minister, Aharon Cissling, stated “now we have behaved like Nazis and my whole being is shaken.”

§    In terms of the IHRA guidelines those eminent Jews would be labelled anti-Semitic. Their terminology is far stronger than the criticism used by those axed by Starmer and company.

§    Corbyn’s “crime” that accusations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party have been exaggerated, pale in comparison to Einstein and Cissling’s statements.

§    Manufacturing mountains out of mole hills characterises the inquisition, hitching Labour to the Blairite anti-socialist bandwagon. Unopposed this witch-hunt will balloon, attacking popular protest wherever humanity opposes injustice.

§    There are myriad examples of criminal repressive states which routinely harass and imprison journalists and activists for their work: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Philippines…the witch-hunt will spread like the plague, aided and abetted by Western hypocrisy. 

§    To use a glorious international slogan of the left, our clarion call must be “non-pasaran”.

§    An injury to one is an injury to all – foremost the millions of Palestinians, women and children, the elderly among them, facing the batons, bullets and bombs of Israeli aggression. 

Jewish Currents refuses to print any response to Joshua Leifer’s ‘The real Corbyn Tragedy’ – finding that Corbyn should have prostrated himself to the Board of Deputies 

America’s Jewish Currents describes itself as ‘a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left.’  When Joshua Leifer penned a 5000+ word article The Tragedy of Jeremy Corbyn offering his advice as to where Corbyn had gone wrong I felt impelled to respond.

Leifer’s analysis can be summed up as saying that:

i.                   Yes there was a basis to the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign, because various tropes and remarks surfaced on social media, thus completely redefining the meaning of racism from actions such as discrimination and physical attacks to the froth and foam of Twitter.

ii.                That the problem in Britain was that there was

‘no left-wing Jewish organizational infrastructure in Britain comparable to what has recently emerged in the US…. there were few progressive Jewish voices that could meaningfully challenge them.’

In fact Jewish Voices for Labour was specifically set up to address this problem and the impact it had on the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was negligible, because it was never about Jews or anti-Semitism. They were a metonym for the determination of the Right to oust Corbyn.

iii.             Leifer quotes Matt Seaton of the New York Review of Books as saying that

“the fight between Corbyn skeptics and Corbyn fans over Jews and Israel has become a ruinous proxy for what is, in its essence, a struggle between social-democrats and socialists for the soul of the party.”

Leifer drew no conclusions from this statement regarding the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.

iv.             Leifer accepted that ‘The British Jewish establishment would brook no compromise with Corbyn’. Nonetheless he argued that:

Corbyn and the left’s initial failure to adequately address accusations of antisemitism meant that when he took a stand against the IHRA definition, he had no political room to maneuver. For his protest to have had even the slimmest chance of success, he also would have needed partners within the British Jewish community: people with public respect and Jewish bona fides who were willing to challenge the notion that opposition to the IHRA definition was beyond the pale.

v.                The problem with this is that the British Jewish Establishment in the form of the Board of Deputies has hardwired into its constitutionsupport for Israel i.e to

‘Take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel's security, welfare and standing.’

The JLM which Leifer refers to was specifically refoundedin 2015 in order to unseat Corbyn.  It is a right-wing anti-socialist group, the overseas wing of what is left of the Israeli Labour Party. In fact plenty of prominent Jews opposed the IHRA, e.g. Professor David Feldman, Sir Geoffrey Bindman, Sir Stephen Sedley and others. They too had no effect.

vi.             Leifer however had found the solution whereas those of us on the ground had completely missed it. If only Corbyn had apologised to the ‘Jewish community’ when Andrew Neil, who when Editor of the Sunday Times hiredHolocaust denier David Irving, had asked him! Leifer wrote that:

Corbyn appeared stubbornly determined to insert his foot directly into his mouth. In a 2019 pre-election interview, the BBC’s Andrew Neil asked him if he would like to apologize to the British Jewish community. … With only a few words—“yes, I’m sorry”—Corbyn might have been able to avoid bad press in a crucial stretch leading up to the election.

Anyone acquainted with the situation knows that anything Corbyn had said would have been used against Labour and apologising would have confirmed the Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ myth. Leifer’s brilliant conclusion? ‘

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Corbyn’s maladroit media appearances led, at least in part, to his defeat.

vii.          Leifer concluded his article with a series of ‘what ifs’

What if, instead of retreating into defensiveness, they had moved to reconcile sooner with the British Jewish communal institutions where reconciliation was possible? What if those communal institutions had faced internal opposition to launching an all-out campaign against Corbyn? 

What if kosher pigs could fly? I wroteto JC offering the outline of a proposed reply. You can see the outlineof my article, which was published yesterday on Mondoweiss. I was not the only person to respond to Jewish Currents.

Arielle Angel

Donna Nevel submitted a letter which Editor Arielle Angel, refused to print. Her excuse? That it was the only letter they have received which was being economical with the truth given my response. Mondoweiss publishedDonna’s letter but it should not have had to.

After waiting a week without a response I sent a follow up email and this time Arielle did replysaying that they simply did not have the ‘bandwidth’  to publish a full response article. Which begs the question why publish mediocre articles if you are not prepared to have a debate?

Peter Beinart - Editor-at-large at the Jewish Currents

I also copied the correspondence to the JC's Editor-at-large Peter Beinart, America’s premier liberal Zionist. Beinart famously broke with a Jewish State and supported a single binational state last July Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine.

Despite being someone who has criticised the totalitarian mentality of the Zionist lobby and its apologists Beinart, who is a Professor Journalism at the City University of NY, has not deigned to respond.

In my reply to Arielle Angel I asked exactly what the JC is for:

You say that you are a paper of the Jewish Left. If this article stands without a response and maybe more than 1 response, then you should amend this to say that you represent the non-socialist and the non-Marxist left.

JC says it is of the ‘left’ but is meaningless if it is a left divorced from socialism, anti-imperialism or solidarity with the oppressed.

Below is my articlein Mondoweiss

The real Corbyn ‘tragedy’ — and ‘Jewish Currents’ refusal to publish an opposing view

In a recent article on the "tragedy" of Jeremy Corbyn, Jewish Currents overlooks the rightwing bigoted records of those criticizing Corbyn because of his support for Palestinian rights.

ByTony GreensteinDecember 22, 2020

At the end of November Joshua Leifer, an Associate Editor of Jewish Currents [JC], wrote an article about the “tragedy” of Jeremy Corbyn. He did not seek the opinions of any Jewish victims of the “antisemitism” witchhunt in the Labour Party. As the first Jewish member of the party to be expelled I submitted a response.

At first I was simply ignored and after a reminder, Arielle Angel, Editor-in-chief, explained that it was a lack of resources that prevented them publishing my reply. JC“simply do not have the bandwidth to publish full response articles to articles we’ve published”. So I am publishing my response here.

Who sponsored the false ‘antisemitism’ campaign against Corbyn

The first question to ask is who was behind the campaign to root out “antisemitism” in the Labour Party? Were they genuinely concerned about antisemitism or defending Israel? Were the allegations confected?

The first article exposing Corbyn as an “antisemite” came from the Tory Daily Mail. On 7 August 2015, even before Corbyn was elected, it publishedan ‘exclusive’ revealing that Corbyn was an associate of a Holocaust denier, Paul Eisen. It was untrue but mud sticks.

This is the same Daily Mailwhich, according to Professor Tony Kushner, “has been an anti-alien newspaper since the 1900s. There’s great continuity.”The Daily Mail is the paper which supported Hitler and which had an infamous front page ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’. Nor is this ancient history.  Despite this, Leifer quoted Dan Hodges of the Daily Mailuncritically accusingLabour of being a racist party. Hodges is hardly neutral, an ex-New Labourite, right-wing and hostile. 

Just three months later the Mailemployedan ex-Sun columnist against Corbyn, Katie Hopkins who had previously described refugees as ‘cockroaches’. The whole of the British press, from the Sunto the neo-liberal Guardian, was mobilised in the cause of fighting ‘antisemitism’.

The Conservative Party and the Labour Right also joined hands in opposing Labour “antisemitism”. These were the same political forces that had supported the disastrous 2014 Immigration Act and the official policy of creating a “hostile environment” for immigrants that had led to hundreds if not thousands of Black British citizens being deported to the West Indies. Just 6 Labour MPs voted against the Act, including the “antisemitic” Corbyn. In fact, Labour’s Right was permeated with antisemitism. After a racist Labour MP Phil Woolas was removed from Parliament by the High Court in 2010 for election offences, which included running a campaign aimed at stirring up racial strife by “making the white folk angry” he was defendedby Tom Watson, who “lost sleep” over “poor Phil.” Watson later became Corbyn’s unfriendly deputy leader and led the ‘antisemitism’ witchhunt.

Historically it was the Right of the Labour Party which was antisemitic. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which claims to be the representative body of British Jewry (although in fact it represents at best 40% of British Jews), raised no objection when Sidney Webb (1859-1947), Colonial Secretary, founder of the Fabians and New Statesman, remarked that there were ‘“no Jews in the British Labour party” and that while “French, German, Russian Socialism is Jew-ridden…We, thank heaven, are free”, adding that was probably the case because there was “no money in it”. (Paul Kelemen, “The British Left and Zionism: The History of a Divorce”, Manchester University Press 2012)

Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary during World War 2, adamantly refused to admit Jewish refugees. Hundreds if not thousands died as a result. 

We see this today with Labour leader Keir Starmer. He has expressed his determination to “root out the poison” of antisemitism from the Labour Party. Yet Sir Keir, was unableto challenge a racist caller on the talk show station LBC, who stated that White people would be in a minority by 2066 and asked why Britain can’t be like Israel which

“has a state law that they are the only people in that country to have self-determination. Well why can’t I as a white British female have that same right?”

Perhaps it was the comparison with Israel that threw Keir!

Not once did Joshua Leifer ask simple questions as to why, if the Board of Deputies was concerned with Labour “antisemitism,” it had said nothing about Boris Johnson’s genuinely antisemitic and racist 2004 novel “72 Virgins” or about the fact that the Tories sat in the European Parliament in a “conservative and reformist” bloc with fascists and antisemites such as Roberts Ziles and Michal Kaminsky. When the Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees Mogg, spoke last year of the “Illuminati who are taking the powers to themselves,” in reference to two Jewish fellow MPs, there was no comment on this patently antisemitic reference.

John Bercow, the recently retired Jewish Speaker of the House of Commons, was asked in an interview if Corbyn was an antisemite. His response was that he had known Corbyn for 22 years and there wasn’t a ‘whiff’ of antisemitism about him. Bercow also recalledhow he remembered an MP saying:  

“If I had my way, Berkoff, people like you wouldn’t be allowed in this place.”On inquiring whether  his antagonist meant being lower-class or Jewish?’ the response was ‘Both’!

The idea that the Conservative Party, the party of Empire,  is opposed to racism, including antisemitism, lies in the realm of fantasy. Yet Leifer asked no questions as to the bona fides of Corbyn’s right-wing antagonists.

Almost as soon as the ‘antisemitism’ controversy raised its head I had my doubts.  Was antisemitism spontaneously arising in the Labour Party because of Corbyn’s election or were we seeing the state destabilisation of Labour?

My answer came on March 18^thwhen I was suspended. All the allegations that were put to me later were about Israel. Did I compare Israel’s marriage laws to those of Nazi Germany? My answer was yes, but so did Hannah Arendt, a refugee from Nazi Germany! Did I say that Israel was hoping that Holocaust survivors would die in order they could save on their welfare benefits?  Yes I did but so did Ha’aretz!

It takes little imagination to guess at the reaction to Corbyn’s election – from the CIA HQ at Langley Virginia, to MI5 to Israel. Corbyn was a veteran anti-imperialist, anti-nuclear and hostile to NATO. He was now leader of the second party of government in the US’s closest ally in Europe. Al Jazeera’s The Lobbygave us a snapshot of what was happening when we saw Israeli Embassy operative Shai Masot being deeply involved in Labour’s ‘antisemitism’ crisis.

The facts can be true, yet the narrative can be false

Are there antisemites in the Labour Party?  Of course there will be a few. Any party of ½ million is bound to have them. Does that mean that Labour or any other political party was overrun by them?  Of course not. Yet Leifer, instead of probing beneath the surface, declares that ‘If people are exposing a valid problem, you have to deal with it’.

But there wasn’t a problem. Leifer mentioned the infamous mural, erased in 2012, that the right-wing former Director of Labour Friends of IsraelLuciana Berger made an issue of before the 2018 local elections. It depicted six bankers, two of whom were Jewish. They had fat, not hooked noses.  Corbyn had opposed their erasure on free speech grounds. Opinions differ as to whether the mural was antisemitic but the real issue was why this had been raised 6 years later. No one had considered the matter important in 2012.

It was clear that sections of the press and others were researching everything that Corbyn had ever said and putting the worst possible interpretation on it. This was in contrast to ignoring the openly racist record of Prime Minister Boris Johnson who in 2002 spokeabout “picanninies” and Black people having “watermelon” smiles.’

Nearly half of Conservative Party members opposehaving a Muslim Prime Minister. Yet these bigoted attitudes were never problematic. Why? Because it was not antisemitism that was the real issue in Labour, but defence of Israel.

What antisemitism there is in the Labour Party is confined to social media; and much of that, such as Rothschild/banker conspiracy theories, are a way in which people try to explain what they see as the extraordinary power of the Israel lobby to bend politicians to their will.  This is a power that Israeli politicians like Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert have openly boastedof.  Israel calls itself a Jewish state and it’s unsurprising that  lacking an understanding of how imperialism works, people can ascribe American responsiveness to Israel’s demands as the bowing to Jewish power rather than the interplay between an imperialist power and its watchdog in the region. In my own experience, people who talk of the Rothschilds don’t even realise that they are Jewish.

Antisemitism is not what some idiot writes on social media bearing in mind that one person can post a million tweets. Antisemitism is what people do to Jewish people not what they tweet about. No one died from a tweet.

Who were the victims of the antisemitism witchhunt?

Leifer failed to ask basic questions such as, who were the targets of the ‘antisemitism’ witchhunt? Not only was I expelled but so was Jackie Walker, a Black Jewish women who was utterly demonised. Jackie was active in the fight against the National Front and the far-Right UKIP.

Another person expelled was Marc Wadsworth, who criticisedformer Israel lobbyist Ruth Smeeth for her assisting the Tory Daily Telegraph. Wadsworth didn’t even know Smeeth was Jewish when he criticised her at the launch of the Chakrabarti Report in June 2016 into racism in the Labour Party. In the campaign against Police racism over the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which led to the Government MacPherson Inquiry that found the Metropolitan Police institutionally racist, Wadsworth introducedthe Lawrence family to Nelson Mandela and put the campaign on the map. Then Marc was expelled because of the lies of an Israel lobbyist turned MP. Yet in Jewish Currents, Leifer stayed silent or oblivious of this context.

I spent most of my youth involved in anti-fascist work as first Secretary of the Anti-Nazi League in Brighton and then served on the Executive of Anti-Fascist Action. The Board of Deputies spent most of their time attacking us, not the fascists, because we were anti-Zionist!

The Board of Deputies has never opposed antisemitism

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle, which led the ‘antisemitism’ attacks on Corbyn, have never campaigned against genuine antisemitism. In 1936 when Moseley’s British Union of Fascists attempted to march through the East End of London the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle toldJews to keep away.  Thousands of Jews and non-Jews ignored them in what became known as the Battle of Cable Street.  After the war the 43 Group of Jewish ex-serviceman took the battle to the resurgent Union Movement and literally smashed them off the streets.  The Board vehemently opposed them.  In the 1970s and 1980s it was the same story.

As the Editor of the Searchlight anti-fascist magazine, Maurice Ludmer wrote:

“In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots… It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerunof the 1930’s, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era. ” (Issue 41, November 1978)

The first time that the Board held an ‘anti-racist’ demonstrationwas against Corbyn outside Parliament in March 2018. Who took part?  Arch Tory racist Norman Tebbit, proponent of the racist ‘cricket test’(the idea thatimmigrants who support the Indian/Pakistani cricket teams weren’t really British) and sectarian bigot, Ulster Unionist MP Ian Paisley! Even the Zionist placards were antisemitic!

Antisemitism was weaponised

‘Antisemitism’ was the chosen weapon of attack on the Labour left.  It played to their weak spot, identity politics. It was easier to attack Corbyn over ‘antisemitism’ than austerity or his anti-nuclear politics. The fact that so many Jews are being suspendedtoday over supposed antisemitism attitudes because of their criticism of Israel proves that this is not about antisemitism.  According to Jewish Voices for Labour, at least 25 Jewish members were investigated for ‘antisemitism’, and many of them suspended, in recent years, with no coverage of the purge in the mainstream media.

The British Jewish Community is not the American Jewish Community

Leifer operated under the belief that the Jewish community in Britain and the United States are comparable.  They are not. American Jewry is not centrally directed by Zionist bodies like in Britain. I am the son of an Orthodox Rabbi.  I knew the Jewish community and modern Orthodoxy pretty well. Former Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz visited my house. It is a deeply conservative and racist community (anti-Arab/Muslim). There is no comparison with the American Jewish community which is largely Reform/Conservative. The British Jewish community is far more insular.  It is a community which has for the last 50 years voted Tory by overwhelming majorities. Even under Labour’s first Jewish leader Ed Miliband, it voted by more than 3-1 for the Tories. The days of the Jewish workers in the East End joining and votingCommunist are long gone.

Leifer mentions a letter from 60 rabbis attacking Corbyn. What he doesn’t mention is the letter signed by 29 Ultra Orthodox rabbis dissociating themselves from the Board’s attacks saying they did not represent the Ultra Orthodox community, which is the fastest growing part of the British Jewish community.

Would Jewish groups like If Not Now or JVP have helped?

Leifer argues that if there had been similar Jewish groups in Britain to America’s If Not Now or Jewish Voice for Peace then things might have been different.  I don’t believe so. American Jewry is more liberal. This was why Jewish Voices for Labour was formed in Britain. But they were ignored during the antisemitism controversy because the campaign was not about either Jews or antisemitism. The proof of this lies in the fact that the Board of the Deputies and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement focused on the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism, which conflates antisemitism and anti-Zionism.  It is the same IHRA that the antisemitic Trump and the equally antisemitic Viktor Orban of Hungary have taken to heart.

The EHRC report on Labour ‘Antisemitism’

Leifer quotes uncritically the recent reportof the Equality and Human Rights Commission that concluded that “there were unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination for which the Labour Party is responsible” and identified “serious failings in leadership and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints.”  

The EHRC is hardly a reliable source. The EHRC is a state-appointed, state-funded body that has refused to investigate Tory Party Islamophobia.  It has an abysmal record on racism and has recently come in for criticismby the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. Until recently it didn’t have a single Black or Muslim Commissioner. Leifer might have mentioned the author of the report. The Anti-Semitism Report on Labour was produced by Alasdair Henderson, a supporterof fascist Roger Scruton and Douglas Murray, whose book “The Strange Death of Europe” articulates the White Replacement Theory. The EHRC is held in contempt by Black people yet Leifer said nothing about this miserable record.

Leifer quotes Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis who issueda statement attacking Corbyn during the General Election over Labour ‘antisemitism’. Leifer failed to tell his readers that Mirvis trained at a yeshiva on a West Bank settlement, Alon Shvut. Mirvis joined in and encouraged others to march, in Jerusalem’s annual March of the Flags, when thousands of settler youth parade through Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’. Mirvis marched despite appealsin the Times of Israel and Ha’aretz.

Leifer gives as examples of Labour ‘antisemitism’ former London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s assertion that the Nazis supported Zionism in the 1930’s. Even were this untrue it wouldn’t be antisemitic. But a Zionist historian, Professor Francis Nicosia, has spoken of the ‘illusory assumption’of German Zionism that Zionism “must have been well served by a Nazi victory.” Another Zionist historian, David Cesarani wrote in his book “Final Solution” that “The efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to promote emigration.” It may be inconvenient today to remember Zionism’s record during the Nazi period, but to tell the truth is never antisemitic.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism

It should be obvious that the IHRA definition of ‘antisemitism’ is about Zionism not antisemitism. What has comparing Israel to pre-war Germany got to do with antisemitism? Was the late Professor Ze’ev Sternhell, a child survivor of the Holocaust, also antisemitic for makingsuch a comparison? Was Knesset member and former deputy chief of staff Yair Golan antisemitic when he made the same comparison?

Leifer quotes uncritically the assertion of the Zionist Board of Deputies that ‘Jeremy Corbyn, simply had no right to argue with Jewish organizations over the definition of antisemitism’. Why not?  No one has a monopoly on the definition of racism.

Not once did Leifer ask why British Jews and Zionist groups had the right to define antisemitism in terms that rule out the Palestinian expression of their experience of racism.

Nor did Leifer ask, Why the need for a definition. The Oxford English Dictionary definesantisemitism as ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’Why the need for a 500+ WORD definition? My dad took part in the Battle of Cable Street. He didn’t need a definition of antisemitism! Even the principal drafter of the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, has condemned the definition’s weaponisationand chilling of free speech, yet Leifer was seemingly oblivious to the motives behind the Zionist demands to accept the IHRA.

Should Corbyn have ‘apologised’ to the Jewish community?

Quite amazingly Leifer suggests that during the election Corbyn should have apologised for Labour’s ‘antisemitism’ to the Jewish community when asked to do so by BBC interviewer Andrew Neil. The proper response would have been ‘Apologise? What for?’ However, by that time Corbyn too had accepted the false narrative of ‘antisemitism’ and the more people he expelled the more ‘proof’ there was that Labour had an ‘antisemitism’ problem.

That was the real tragedy of Corbyn, not that he put up some resistance to the narrative.

Corbyn’s failure was to refuse to go on to the offensive. When Neil, a former editor of the Murdoch Sunday Times, asked Corbyn to apologise Corbyn should have asked Neil why he was so concerned by antisemitism when he had employeda Holocaust denier, David Irving, to interpret the Goebbels Diaries! Neil as Chairman of the Spectator also agreed to keeping the openly antisemitic Taki Theodoracopulos on as a columnist. (Taki openly praisedthe Greek Nazi party Golden Dawn and described himself as a “soi-disant anti-Semite”.) Corbyn had an easy response but he was incapable of punching a paper bag. His reformist politics were the problem, not his inability to apologise.

Leifer correctly criticises Corbyn for having ‘no real strategy for pursuing a boldly anti-imperialist, pro-Palestine politics or skillfully parrying the inevitable attacks from his opponents” but the criticism is rich coming from him. His only suggestion for how Corbyn should have parried is to ask ‘What if, instead of retreating into defensiveness, they had moved to reconcile sooner with the British Jewish communal institutions’

He can’t be serious. The answer to his suggestion lies in section 3(d) of the Board of Deputies Constitution which statesthat the  Board shall

‘Take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel’s security, welfare and standing.’

The Board of Deputies is an Israel, right or wrong, group. An organisation that tweetsits support of the Israeli military when its snipers are mowing down children, is hardly likely to be won over to pro-Palestinian politics!

Appeasement is not a useful strategy. Labour’s Leaked Report makes it clear that Corbyn sincerely believed that if he offered Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and myself up as sacrificial lambs, the Board would be appeased. On page 306 it tells how

Jeremy Corbyn himself and members of his staff team requested to [the Governance and Legal Unit] that particular antisemitism cases be dealt with. In 2017 LOTO [Leader of the Opposition] staff chased for action on high-profile antisemitism cases Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth, stressing that these cases were of great concern to Jewish stakeholders and that resolving them was essential to “rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community”.

Well we were expelled but was trust reestablished?  Of course not. They simply demanded more victims like the one honourable MP Chris Williamson. You have to fight a wild animal and Corbyn was not prepared to do that. That was the problem which the ever clever Leifer wasn’t able to discern.

Corbyn’s period as leadership and his demise was indeed a tragedy, one which is now resulting in mass expulsions from the Labour Party. It is or should be crystal clear that the ‘antisemitism’ campaign was never about antisemitism and always about the threat that a party led by a socialist represented.

In 20-30 years some enterprising young journalist will no doubt use the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the names and details of who was at the centre of the anti-Corbyn campaign, orchestrating the different parts.

As for Jewish Currents, it describes itself as ‘a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left.’ I was left wondering what it means to say that you stand in the tradition of the Jewish left?  It seems for many on the passive left this comprises a mixture of romantic kitsch and schmaltzy memories.

The traditions of the Jewish left – the Bund, the Communists, Socialists and Anarchists –can be summed up in one word – solidarity. An injury to one is an injury to all. It was in solidarity with the murdered millions of Jews of Poland that Shmuel Zygielbojm, the Bund representative in the Polish Government-in-exile, committed suicide in London in 1943. This was at the same time as his Zionist counterpart Ignacy Schwarzbart, was playing down the extent of the Holocaust.

The state-sponsored attack against Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that he led is a litmus test of whether or not you are a socialist. Joshua Leifer’s article was an attack on all those who have been victims of the Right’s heresy hunt, not least the Palestinians. I therefore wrote back to the editor suggesting that if Arielle Angel was going to refuse a reply to Leifer’s article then it would be more honest for JC to declare that it represented the non-socialist and non-Marxist left. It seems that to JC being on the ‘left’ is a lifestyle statement.

I have also sent an Open Letter to Peter Beinart.

 Looking back - the Attack on Spare Rib which Prefigured Labour’s ‘Anti-Semitism’ Crisis by nearly 40 years

On June 6 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon. An estimated 20,000 civilians were killed and over 70,000 injured. The savagery of Israel’s attack gave birth to Hezbollah, the Party of God, which is the only Arab force to have defeated Israel militarily.

In 2000 the war of attrition waged by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon forced Israel to abandon its ‘Christian’ mini state in the south of Lebanon, under Major Saad Haddad and General Antoine Lahadand end its occupation of Lebanon. In 2006 Israel was forced to pull its troops out of Lebanon after another invasion.

The Lebanon war was a pivotal moment for the Palestine solidarity movement, in Britain and internationally. It convinced large sections of the left, especially in the Labour Party, that Israel was no socialist oasis in the Middle East and that its army was no citizen army but an army of genocide and occupation. An army whose major ‘victories’ had been against the indigenous population of the West Bank and Gaza.

Zionist women maintained they could be both Zionists and feminists - but only by excluding Palestinian women

Both Tony Benn and Eric Heffer resigned from Labour Friends of Israel. Tribune and even the New Statesman became hostile to Zionism and Israel. It was also when I got to know Jeremy Corbyn personally, who became an MP the following year. Corbyn spoke frequently at meetings of the Labour Committee on Palestine later Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine, which I chaired. 

A group of us met in the University of London Union in the spring of 1982, after an initial Israeli attack on Lebanon, to form Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The Zioness group in the USA, which maintains that you can be a feminist and a Zionist, borrowed the image of a Black woman (left) and whitened her for their poster!

Nothing angered the Zionist feminists of the time more than the statementby Aliza Khan, the Israeli woman in Women Speak Out Against Zionism in Spare Rib 121 of August 1982 that

 ‘if a woman calls herself feminist she should consciously call herself anti-Zionist.’

It was saying that feminism and Zionism were incompatible.

This was a red rag to Israeli and Zionist feminists (who masqueraded as representing all Jewish women). Zionist feminism was based on the idea that women should be equal participants in the oppression of the Palestinians. They had no quarrel with the racism of Zionism and its othering of Palestinians. Their only disagreements were on their subordinate role in the oppression of the Palestinians.

This racism reached absurd proportions in the United States with the ZionessGroup. As Electronic Intifada revealed [Fake feminist group Zioness used rapper’s image without her approval] the Zionesses produced a fiery picture of 3 Zionist Amazons. The woman in the middleof their poster with her arms folded was Black South African hip hop artist, Dope Saint Jude. Or at least she was until the Zionesses whitened her face! Zionists simply can’t help their racism.

DOPESAINTJUDE  makes it clear she has no ties to the racist Zionesses

The issue of Palestine and Israel had a major impact on the British women’s movement which had largely ignored questions of racism and imperialism. Racism, like sexism, was seen primarily as a question of personal interaction as in the slogan ‘the ‘Personal is Political’. Institutional racism, western colonialism and imperialism was a ‘men’s’ issue.

As Jenny Bourne wrote in Jewish Feminism and Identity Politics:

feminism allowed us to: conflate the political and the personal, the objective and the subjective, the material and the metaphysical; and escape into Identity Politics. And the New Marxism gave'it refuge. (p.4)

The personal was held to be political rather than the political being personal. What this meant was that every woman’s personal experience was equally valid. They could be fascist women, Zionist women or just very rich, they were still women, despite the fact that they participated in the oppression of Black and third world women.

There was no understanding of how women’s oppression is magnified by class and race For example abortion is easily obtainable if you are well off but if you are Black or poor then it may be impossible to obtain legally in which case you may seek a back street abortion with all the possible risks.

The real enemy for middle class feminists was patriarchy, which men had created, an overarching ideological framework which subsumed race and class. The answer of western feminists was an all-encompassing sisterhood and consciousness raising. What this left out was the fact that women can also be the exploiters and oppressors of other women. Issues such as race and class were seen as divisive, a threat to women’s unity. 

As I showed in my recent post White Women as Slave Owners and the Myth of Sisterhood – Stephanie E. Joneswomen slave owners played their full share in slavery. Under Apartheid White women were equal participants in the oppression of Black people. So too in Israel where Jewish women identify with Jewish men not Palestinian women.

In all settler-colonial societies women are part of the settler colonial population. Of course within these societies White/Jewish women were oppressed by male settlers but their demands were not for the liberation of all women but for their right to equality with men in the oppression of the indigenous population. In Israel the demand that women have an equal role with men in the army and in combat duties is used to portray Israel as an equal society. Women too can kill Palestinians with impunity.

Israeli feminists have fought to play an equal part in the oppression of the Palestinians - which is what the Jewish Feminist Groups were also fighting for

Dr Idit Shafran Gittleman of the Israeli Democracy Institute speaks of

The view that women are drafted because the IDF is a people’s army and should therefore apply the principle of equality to all segments of society remains unchallenged,

Israeli Palestinians are not drafted into the IDF. The principle of equality that Gittleman speaks of is applicable only to relations within Israeli Jewish society not to Arab Israeli women still less the Palestinians of the Territories.

The majority of the largely White British (and American) women’s movement concentrated on the oppression of Israeli Jewish women and ignored the role of Israeli women in the oppression of Palestinians and African refugees where women took a leading part in pogroms in South Tel Aviv.

Spare Rib

Black women and Women of Colour had long been unhappy with the narrowness and parochialism of Spare Rib, the magazine of the women's movement. In particular they challenged the mindset that separated off women’s oppression from all other forms of oppression and began to challenge their White sisters to change their ways.

Spare Rib had always found it difficult dealing with issues of racism, which it relegated to the personal. The problem being that racism in British society is mostly manifested through state racism and is not primarily personal. In September 1980 Spare Rib’s editorial stated that 'controversial topics have always been a problem for SR'’. With Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 it became a crisis.

This was the context for the battle that erupted in Spare Rib as a result of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The article that triggered off the crisis was ‘Women Speak Out Against Zionism’. In the words of Bernice Hausman ‘Spare Rib became an arena for the fight over the changing nature of feminism and feminist politics.’ [Anti-Semitism in Feminism: Rethinking Identity Politics]

One of the collective Linda Bellos resignedclaiming that her sense of Jewishness (although she was also Black) was offended by an article supporting Palestinian women. In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle on May 1930 1982 she supported the right of Jews to emigrate to Israel even though Palestinian refugees had no such right.

I took this photograph in the Sabra and Shatilla camps in 1979 - most of those who are featured in it would have died at the hands of the Phalange, in a Nazi-style attack that Israel's army enabled

The article caused an explosion of fury amongst Zionist feminists who claimed that support for the Palestinians and the Lebanese was ‘anti-Semitism’ (shades of Labour today!).

Roisin Boyd, an Irish member of the collective, interviewed 3 women for the article – an Israeli anti-Zionist, a Palestinian and Lebanese. Both Nidal and Randa went out of their way to distinguish between Jews and Zionism. Nidal began the interview by stating that ‘There is an enormous difference between being Jewish and being Zionist.’ She explained that the main idea behind Zionism was that Jews should gather together and form a nation (state) because they are in danger from non-Jews. Nidal’s went on to say ‘Which is so similar to the Nazi ideology that the Jews should not be with the Gentiles.’ Today that would fall foul of the IHRAdefinition of anti-Semitism.

About 40 letters were sent to Spare Rib in reply to the article, mostly from Zionist women, some of which were overtly racist. The Collective decided, given the divisions amongst them, between the White women and Women of Colour, not to print any of the letters. The cry went up of ‘anti-Semitism’ but it had nothing to do with discrimination against Jews but opposition to racism.

Outwrite - the paper of Women of Colour was formed in response to the racism of the majority of the Spare Rib collective

On one side of the Spare Rib debate there were virtually all the white members of the collective, bar Roisin Boyd and on the other side the Women of Colour. I spoke to Roisin during the affair and she confirmed to me where her sympathies lay. The divide in Spare Rib also led to the founding in 1982 of Outwritea paper written by Women of Colour which lasted until 1988. A good history of this conflict is Bernice Hausman’s Anti-Semitism in Feminism:  Rethinking Identity Politicsand Corinne Malpocher’s Sexuality, Race and Zionism - Conflict and Debates in Spare Rib, 1972-1993].

The Zionist feminists responded by trying to shift the terms of the debate from imperialism, racism and Israel’s attack on the Palestinians to Jewish feminist identity and anti-semitism within the feminist movement. If you have a sense of déjà vu that’s because the same tactics were employed in the Labour Party 15 years later when Jeremy Corbyn became leader. Instead of focusing on Labour’s abysmal record on racism and imperialism, the party became embroiled in a fake campaign around Labour ‘anti-Semitism’.

In issue 123 (September/October 1982) the London Jewish Lesbian Feminist Group responded to the Women Speak Out on Zionism article with an article ‘About Anti-Semitism’. Except that it wasn’t about anti-Semitism except in the sense that the members of the group detailed the history of their families escape from anti-Semitism in Europe as a means of constructing their Zionist identity as an oppressed group. It was a classic example of how the oppressor mobilises the memory of oppression in the service of oppression.

It is not unusual for the oppressor to use the memory of past oppression as justification for their current role. The Boers used their experience of British concentration camps in the Boer War as a justification for Apartheid and many British socialists supported them.

Professor Yehuda Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz , understood this well when he wrote an article in Ha’aretz (2.3.88.) ‘The Need to Forget. Elkana was Rector of the Central European University in Budapest which was forced out of the country by Viktor Orban, the anti-Semitic  friend of Netanyahu. Elkana wrote:

The very existence of democracy is endangered when the memory of the dead participates actively in the democratic process.  Fascist regimes understood this very well and acted on it. We understand it today, and it is no accident that many studies of Nazi Germany deal with the political mythology of the Third Reich.

What the Lesbian Zionists didn’t write about was contemporary anti-Semitism. That was hardly surprising since they would have been hard pressed to find any. The timing of the article by the Zionist feminists was more than unfortunate because on September 16 the Israeli army presided over the Sabra and Shatilla massacre.

The Zionist Feminists began by saying that ‘As Jewish feminists the focus on ‘Zionism’ seems to us in itself anti-Semitic and hardly feminist’ before going on to say that

‘The recent upsurge in ‘anti-Zionism’ while it has actively intensified our experience of anti-Semitism by legitimating Jew hating, also seriously threatens to make our experience and history completely inaudible and invisible.’

What the Zionist Feminists didn’t do was to explain why anti-Zionism  legitimised ‘Jew hating’ or eradicated their own history. It was mere assertion. These British version of the Jewish American Princesses(the spoilt, self centred brat whose world begins and ends with herself) expected to be taken on trust. To them mention of the Palestinians was a threat to their ‘Jewish’ identity, forgetting that anti-Zionism was the majority Jewish reaction to Zionism and that it was anti-Semites like Arthur Balfour who initially welcomedZionism.

Whilst all Jews are brought up in the shadow of the holocaust, some of us are able to generalise from our own history to encompass the struggles and experiences of others. Feminist Zionists were not only incapable of understanding the Palestinian experience but they resented them for raising the subject. All mention of Palestinian and Lebanese women’s oppression at the hands of the Israel was ‘anti-Semitism’ by definition.

Sabra and Shatilla Massacre

On September 16 1982, after the departure of the PLO from Beirut and in the wake of the assassination (almost certainly by Syria) of the Phalangist President of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, Israeli forces entered Beirut (another agreement broken) and surrounded the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.  They then proceeded to allow the Phalangist militia to enter the camps, knowing full well that they were seeking revenge for the assassination of Gemayel.

The war criminal who enabled the Sabra & Shatilla massacres, Ariel Sharon (right) later went on to become Israeli Prime Minister

For two days the Israeli army lit up the night sky with flares in order that the Phalange could murder with knives and guns, castrating boys and cutting off the breasts of women. Up to 3,500 defenceless refugees were massacred. The Zionist Lesbian Feminist article appeared shortly after the massacre. No attempt was made to withdraw it from publication. These ‘feminists’ knew that Israel had been in alliance with the Phalangists, named after the Spanish fascist Falange. Their founder, Pierre Gemayel, had been an admirerof Hitler’s Germany. These are the polluted waters that these Zionist sisters swam in as they weaponised anti-Semitism.

Not only did the Israeli troops fire flares to help the killers but those people, mainly children, women and the elderly, who managed to flee to the perimeter of the camps were turned back by Israel’s military. You can read the accountof Dr Swee Ang, a young doctor who was working in the camps’ Gaza hospital during the massacre.

I felt particular anguish having visited these camps 3 years earlier. I met some of the women and children in these photographs. Now I realised that they were almost certainly dead.

In the following issue (124) October 1982 an article ‘Women Against Zionism’, began by saying that

‘only the most callous and reactionary could remain unmoved by the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese during the latest Israeli invasion of Lebanon.’

The article explained that what had happened at Sabra and Shatilla was a ‘consistent feature of Zionist history’ before describing a similar massacre by the Irgun militia in the village of Deir Yassin in April 1948. Hausman was wrong to suggestthat this article‘argued that Jews should be held accountable for Israeli imperialism.’

In issue 126 of January 1983 the Editorial Collective announced that it had received a large number of letters, ‘a high percentage from Jewish feminists’ many of whom alleged anti-Semitism. The Collective posed 11 questions, many of which went to the heart of the problems that they were confronting:

1.     How do we deal with extreme differences which exist between feminists? How do we criticise but not discount or despise each other?

2.     How does the fact that many of the questions we are asking which are tied up with patriarchal power, as well as imperialism and racism, affect our involvement as women?

3.     What does Zionism mean, both historically and today?

4.     Can women be anti-Zionist and fight anti-semitism?

5.     How can SR best combat anti-semitism?

6.     How can we find a way of criticising Israel's actions in Lebanon without being anti-Semitic or fuelling antisemitism?

7.     What is a critical feminist support of Israel?

8.     What is a critical feminist support of PLO?

9.     How should European feminists support Third World, national liberation struggles?

10.   How do we define imperialism?

11.   Can any of these questions be discussed usefully without referring to the power and influence of the USA, Soviet Union, western European countries, and to the Arab states?

However they wouldn’t be answered until an article by Israeli anti-Zionist Nira Yuval-Davies in SR 146, September 1984. ‘Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the Struggle Against Racism – some reflections on a painful current debate among feminists.’ Its theme was that:

‘the struggles against Zionism, anti-Semitism and racism are complementary, rather than competing as has been assumed all too often.’

Nira also argued that the Women of Colour should not simply argue from their own experiences of oppression and the fact that they were Black, but that they should transcend those differences. She put her finger on the central problem with identity politics, namely the impossibility of distinguishing between different experiences and identities if all are equally valid. Identity politics means blurring the difference between oppressor and oppressed.

The identity of Zionist Jewish feminists is as valid as that of a Palestinian woman.  Nira wrote that:

Taking personal experience into account is an organic part of feminist philosophy and practice. ... However, it is not without its problems. If done uncritically, it can develop extreme relativisation — there is no valid criterion from which to judge between the different perspectives developed by women who have undergone different personal experiences.

On the self-definition of Black Women Nira wrote:

the definition of colour is social and historical, not biological — this is why Turks are considered white in Britain and black in Germany; why Asians are considered black in Britain but not in Africa. Moreover, victims of racism can be targetted in ways other than skin colour — it can be an accent, a way of dress or a more subtle mannerism.... But most importantly — skin colour and other 'characteristics' are not really important in themselves — they are just the means of identifying the objects of racist discrimination and oppression. Fighting against racism means first of all fighting against that discrimination and oppression rather than just the ways the victims are selected

Clearly the events of the past year had taken their toll on the Collective. They had experienced what a Zionist campaign can be like. The Zionist Lesbian Feminists were backed to the hilt by the Jewish Establishment and the Jewish Chronicle.

In Issue 130 there was a pained Editorial which revealed the refusal to print the 40 letters. It also revealed that there was no consensus on whether to publish the letters. All of the White women (bar Roisin Boyd) favoured printing some of them. In a curious phrase that gave ground to the Zionist attack the Editorial stated that:

we should confront our own anti-semitism. Part of that confrontation is recognising that anti-Zionist coverage can conceal anti-semitism. On the other hand it does not inevitably do so, and we feel that in the course of the last year's debate there have been some unjustified criticisms made with the intention/effect of immobilising support for the Palestinians.

Spare Rib was again reducing racism to the personal: ‘confronting our own anti-Semitism’ as if people walk around with a pocketful of anti-Semitism. It was coupled with an unthinking repetition of the cliché that ‘anti-Zionist coverage can conceal anti-Semitism. On the other hand it does not inevitably do so.’ The opposite is the case. It is non-Jewish Christian Zionism that is anti-Semitic.

Anti-Semitism is rare amongst supporters of the Palestinians precisely because it is an anti-racist struggle whereas overt racism is extremely common among Zionists because the whole basis of the Zionist idea is that Jews and non-Jews cannot live together.

The issue also included a 4 page article ‘We Shall Return’ from Women for Palestine. Despite the agonising, Spare Rib had in practice abandoned its previous neutrality on Zionism and the Zionist feminists effectively gave up, founding a short-lived magazine Shifra.

In issue 132 there was more than a page of letters in reply to the editorial in Issue 130. Most supported the collective and were anti-Zionist such as Shelagh who wrote that the Irish liberation struggle was the same as the Palestinian struggle. A few, including Heather Dale were pro-Zionist.

In Issue 132, July 1983, all was revealed in a hastily produced 4 page article from the Collective inserted during the printing so that it did not even feature in the contents page of the magazine.

Titled ‘Sisterhood.... is plain sailing’ the contributions were divided into 2 sections – one from the White women, who signed their contributions and a separate box from the Women of Colour. The Women of Colour’s contributions were angry and to the point whereas those of the White women were defensive, agonised and guilt-ridden. The Women of Colour took up 2/3 of a page whereas the White women’s stretched over 3 pages! The Women of Colour contributions were unsigned. Excerpts included:

‘Since when has Zionism become a feminist concept?... there has been a Black and Third World peoples’ holocaust for centuries and its still continuing... when Palestinians become an extinct race (due to annihilation) then white women will study Palestinian women and get PhDs.’

‘WHITE WOMEN CONTINUE TO REMAIN THE OPPRESSORS OF WOMEN OF COLOUR.’

‘When will the collective give time to racism in their own office before jumping every time a Zionist woman says jump?’

‘As a Black   woman I am convinced that it is pointless to explain oppression NO AMOUNT of explanation will satisfy the racists/imperialists and their allies’

‘I am amazed that you Zionist women feel that I have the power to silence you.’

The White women’s contributions began with Roisin Boyd, who was the only White woman who understood what the Women of Colour were saying. As a leading member of the National Front, the Ulster Loyalist Steven Brady once explained to me, Catholics are the Blacks of Northern Ireland!

‘As an Irish woman I feel angry that English and American feminists can so easily dismiss my experiences and those of thousands of other women, relegating us to the outer edges of the women’s movement in Britain.’

Roisin was the only one who supported the Women of Colour’s demand not to print the racist letters. Sue O’Sullivan accepted that

‘some white Jewish feminists are ignoring their own racism in their refusal to discuss white racism. Still, some of the letters should have been published.’

What did it mean to ignore one’s own racism? Once again there was a confusion of personal racism with the support of white Jewish feminists for the Israeli state. Their personal racism was immaterial.

Jan Parker who I had known, from memory she had belonged to the International Marxist Group, spoke about her identity as a lesbian ‘having been forged in the crucibles of ‘difference’. But difference was not the same as oppression. Jan wrote that Spare Rib had been experiencing ‘a withdrawal of support from the women’s movement’ accompanied by Zionist threats to their lives.’

Louise Williamson described herself as a socialist-feminist who saw Israel as ‘essentiallyimperialist’ and spoke of the

‘growing voice of Jewish feminists, who stand in various relationships to Israel, which they might want to discuss with other women.’

There was a mixed reaction to Sisterhood is Plain Sailing. In SR 134 there were 3 pages of letters. The letter from Faversham Womens Group was explicitly racist. Referring to the Inquest for Colin Roach, who died after being shot in the foyer of Hackney Police station, they wrote ‘We want news about women, not about men.’ These feminists presumably did not think that the death of a Black man had any relevance to women. In 1985 Cynthia Jarrett was murdered by the Police and in 1993 Joy Gardiner was also murdered by the Police.

What the issue of Palestine and Zionism had done was to bring the latent racism in the women’s movement to the surface.  It had always been there and people like Andrea Dworkin had been its public face. But there were other, supportive letters such as from Penny Pattenden

‘if we give imperialism a platform in what is meant to be a magazine for all women then we are in effect saying to Women of Colour you must compromise, you must put away your bad feelings because we whites need to show how tolerant we are, how fair, even to the forces of reaction.’

Magda Devas, a Jewish woman wrote that ‘Jews identifying with Jews does not have to take place in the oppressive context of Israel.’

There is no doubt that the Israel lobby and the Embassy, were supporting the Jewish Feminists alongside the Jewish Chronicle.

The issue of race and imperialism divided and nearly destroyed Spare Rib. Arguably it helped lead to its demise in 1993.

An editorial in the September 1983 Issue (134) detailed the threats that had been made by the Zionists against the Women of Color.

We have had numerous attacks on us while working at SR. We were addressed on the phone: 'Hitler', 'Foreigners go home'; pro-Zionist slogans were daubed on walls outside and a brick was thrown into the office next door.’

Curiously this abuse included a journalist from the Jewish Chronicle who ‘refused to speak with the Women of Colour. She only wanted to speak with white British born women working at Spare Rib.' Scratch a Zionist and you can usually find racism near the surface!

It was not until November 1987 that “Jewish Feminism and the Search for Identity” by Jenny Bourne of the Institute of Race Relations appeared, based on her pamphlet“Homelands of the Mind: Jewish Feminism and Identity Politics”. Bourne analysed Jewish women’s responses to anti-Zionist feminism and located that response in identity politics, which had increasingly become the dominant paradigm within feminism:

The politics of equal oppressions, in sum, is ahistorical in that it equates oppressions across the board without relating each to its specific history, and so severs racial and sexual oppression from class exploitation, divorces the black experience from the Third World experience, dismembers racism from imperialism, and attempts, by some magic alchemy of the soul, to transmute the political terrain of the material world into homelands of the mind.

Jewish feminism arose as a reaction to anti-imperialist feminism and opposition to the Zionism and the invasion of Lebanon. It had no independent existence  or material roots because anti-Semitism was not a form of state racism in Britain. The identity of the Jewish feminists was inextricably bound up with the Israeli state which is why Jewish Feminism chose as their targets Black and Palestinian women. It was this that led to the picket of a Zionist Feminist meeting by Women for Palestine in April 1983. As Hausman wrote:

‘the international conflict posed by Israel’s imperialism was transformed by Jewish feminists into an identity crisis for feminism.’

Jewish feminists responded to this perceived attack on their identity by labelling it ‘anti-Semitic’ in order to avoid having to defend Israel’s Lebanon invasion and having to acknowledge their own complicity with Israeli racism. Hausman argued that

‘Identity politics can survive as a politically progressive and useful positioning as long as we understand “identity” to signify a constructed positioning of the self within a specific historical conjuncture, and not an essentialized concept of the self that must survive at all costs.’

Identity politics by definition looks back not forwards.

A Reply to Erica Burman

The reason why what happened at Spare Rib nearly 40 years ago is relevant today is because of an article ‘Reading “That’s Funny…” now: and why it’s different from then’ on JVL’s blog by Erica Burman. In 1982 Erica was at the centre of the Zionist feminist onslaught, including producing the Zionist feminist magazine Shifra.

That’s Funny, You don’t look Antisemitic [TFYDLA]

Erica was editor and co-publisher of a booklet by Steve Cohen ‘That’s Funny, You don’t look Antisemitic.’ which has been consistently used by those like John Mann to expose ‘antisemitism’ on the left. It has since been reprinted by David Hirsh’s anti-BDS group Engage. Hirsh recently calledfor JVL to be expelled from the Labour Party.

Erica never explains why and how Steve’s pamphlet came to become the bible of the Zionists other than to claim that meanings change over time. Steve had given them permission to reprint it.

I should declare an interest. For nearly 20 years Steve and I had a polemical debate about Zionism and anti-Semitism in the pages of left wing papers such as Big Flame and The Leveller. Steve was a member of the Jewish Socialist Group but as a result of the ruction caused by his pamphlet he left the JSG, at least for a time.

TFYDLAargued that anti-Semitism was a constant in the labour movement and that the opposition of the British trade unions to Jewish immigration in 19^th century and 20^thcenturies was because of their anti-Semitism.

I would argue that it was not so much anti-Semitism as a backward political culture of the British labour movement, which rested on the crumbs of imperialism, that saw migrant labour as a threat. Steve played down the growing rapprochement between Jewish workers and non-Jewish workers and dismissed the reversal of its position by Manchester Trades Council which opposed anti-Alienist legislation from 1903 onwards.

Steve’s explanation was that instead of renouncing anti-Semitism these workers ‘concealed it behind a newly discovered economic identification with Jewish workers.’ Steve failed to understand how the interplay between workers' struggles and that of migrants can lead to the overcoming of their own political backwardness, such as racism. Racism is not fixed. Workers’ unity is the best antidote to racism.

It was as if anti-Semitism was a virus that once caught can never be cured. Steve reified anti-Semitism failing to understand the process by which workers throw off the racist ideas.

Steve’s pamphlet described the anti-Semitism of some of the founders of the British labour movement like Henry Hyndman of the Social Democratic Federation. It told us nothing new. In the 19^thcentury Jews were considered synonymous with capitalism owing to their historical role as money lenders. To therefore claim as Steve did that

‘anti-Semitism as an ideology has nothing to do with the behaviour of even one single Jew… It is a view of the world based on myths and fantasies’

begs the question, where did anti-Semitism come from? According to the Zionist fable Jews suffered from 2,000 years of continuous persecution. As Abram Leon, the Belgian Trotskyite who died in Auschwitz and to whom TFYDLA is dedicated, put it:

‘Zionism transposes modern anti-Semitism to all of history and saves itself the trouble of studying the various forms of anti-Semitism and their evolution.’ [The Jewish Question – A Marxist Interpretation]

The memory of Jews role under feudalism was weaponised in the 19^th and 20^th centuries by German nationalists and the Nazis continued to peddle these ideas long after they had any material basis.

What Steve didn’t mention was that when the Tories campaigned in the 1900 General Election around support for anti-Alienist legislation, they were supported by the English Zionist Federation who even supported their candidate in Whitechapel, David Hope-Kydd, who

‘cleverly coupled his desire for an aliens’ immigration bill with heart-rending support for the infant Zionist movement’ referring to Jewish immigrants as ‘the very scum of the unhealthiest of the Continental nations.’(Geoffrey Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics). 

Steve mentioned the proto-fascist British Brothers League without mentioning their support for Zionism. Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader and Israel’s first President defended in his autobiography Trial & Error, the leader of the BBL, William Evans-Gordon, MP for Stepney:

‘our people were rather hard on him. The Aliens Bill in England and the movement which grew around it were natural phenomenon which might have been foreseen... Sir William Evans-Gordon had no particular anti-Jewish prejudices... He acted as he thought, according to his best lights and in the most kindly way, in the interests of his country… he was sincerely ready to encourage any settlement of Jews almost anywhere in the British Empire, but he failed to see why the ghettos of London or Leeds or Whitechapel should be made into a branch of the ghettos of Warsaw and Pinsk. (my emphasis) (pp. 90-91)

Steve does not deserve to be remembered by what was a weak and ill-thought out book even if it did serve the purposes of Zionist feminism in 1982 and the Zionists around Engage.

Steve, a barrister by training, was a dedicated and committed anti-racist campaigner. Steve began his political life in the International Marxist Group however he became enmeshed in identity politics. You can read his obituary by Jenny Bourne, Dave Landau as well as my own appreciation. Steve was distancing himself from TFYDLAby the end of his life. He told me that he had made a mistake in letting Engage use it. Books such as Noone is Illegal and Deportation is Freedom should be his legacy.

I first met Steve in 2000 at the Barbed Wire Europe Conferencein Oxford. I was shocked by his appearance. Steve had contracted polio from which he was to die in 2009. From that moment on we became friends, exchanging emails frequently. We me up again in Liverpool around 2007 at a conference called to campaign against immigration controls and it was there that Steve told me that he regretted his decision to let Engage get hold of the rights to TFYDLA. We also discussed whether or not Jews had a duty to speak out on Zionism. He had previously declared that it was anti-Semitic to expect any Jew to comment on Israel and Zionism whereas my opinion was that given Israel claims all Jews as its nationals there was a duty for Jews to declare that Israel did not speak in our name. He had no answer.

Steve’s views on Zionism and Israel were in flux. When he died I went up in July 2009 to a memorial meeting in Manchester. I hadn’t intended to speak but I was so incensed by the way that Engage had tried to hijack it with copies of his pamphlet on every seat, that I spoke, explaining that Steve was no Zionist. His view on a Jewish state was that it was inevitably racist.

Erica arguedthat ‘it is completely wrongheaded’ for Zionists to use the pamphlet today when the context is not the same as it was in 1984 and that the debates about Zionism and anti-Semitism and ‘how the left engages with, or indeed exhibits either or even both of these, are quite different.’ But are they? The allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ that the Zionist Feminists alleged against Women for Palestine bear a marked similarity to today’s weaponisation of anti-Semitism.

Erica explains that the decision to publish Steve’s pamphlet was predicated on the fact that

‘Libby Lawson and I… were among those dozens of Jewish feminists whose letters of protest were refused publication. We were silenced because Spare Ribdemanded that Jewish feminists declare their position on Israel and espouse anti-Zionist credentials..’

That is simply untrue. Reinventing the past is a Zionist stratagem. The letters were rejected because they were racist and Zionist. Erica fails to grant agency to Black women in asserting themselves against privileged White Jewish feminists. Erica says that:

‘Jewish feminists demanded the publication of That’s Funny… because it helped unravel how the then dominant political narrative – including feminist and left narratives – conflated Jews and Israel:’

It wasn’t those who wrote Women Speak Out Against Zionism’who conflated Jews and Israel but their Zionist opponents. The IHRA is but the latest example of this.

Through reinventing what happened with Spare RibErica concludes that the attacks on anti-Zionists today are similar to the ‘suffering’ of Jewish feminists in 1982 writing that:

the context now is exactly the opposite. Then, our political voice was rendered conditional on adopting an anti-Zionist position, an enforced and conditional predication that, we argued, was antisemitic in its presumptions … Now, in contrast, it seems that anti-Zionist Jews are especially in the firing (or expulsion) line, and deemed especially culpable precisely as Jews.

It’s true that anti-Zionist Jews today are under attack, but it’s primarily because of their politics not their identity. Erica asserts that

‘What is also common to both contexts is that we were (in the eyes of various parties) the ‘wrong’ kind of Jews!’

No one was called the ‘wrong kind of Jew’ in 1982. It was Zionists that Black feminists objected to not the fact that some of them were Jewish. Clearly racists should have been unacceptable in any movement that fought oppression. Erica alleged that

‘Steve was always clear – and we (Libby and I, Steve’s co-editors) agreed – that the antisemitism in the women’s movement came from the left.’

If this was what Steve believed then he was wrong. But I don’t believe that he did accept that Black women, the victims of imperialism, were the cause of anti-Semitism.

Erica argued that Engage’s misuse of Steve’s pamphlet is because he

‘convinced himself that the text would speak for itself however it was framed by right wing Zionist reactionaries or left-leaning philosemitic apologists.’

This is not the whole story. The fact is that the text lent itself to such misuse. That is why it is sad that Steve is remembered for TFYDLA rather than his writings and campaigns around immigration and the impetus he gave to the idea that Noone is Illegal.

Erica says she moved from a non-Zionist to an anti-Zionist position as a result of the massacre at Sabra and Chatilla although she talks of

‘Israeli military’s support (through failing to intervene) for the Phalangists’ massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Chatilla camp had been exposed.’

Israel did not ‘fail to intervene’. It was actively complicit. It lit up the sky with flares so the fascists could kill more easily. As Uri Avnery said, if someone puts a poisonous snake in a baby’s cradle then they cannot proclaim their innocence when the baby dies.

Erica describes Steve’s self description as an anti-Zionist Zionist as

‘wilfully provocative, designed to provoke critical reflection on the part of those who would presume to be, or to know what was, Zionist or anti-Zionist.’

This is also untrue. I told Steve that it was like describing himself as an anti-racist racist! Steve saw Zionism initially, in its reaction to anti-Semitism in the diaspora as an anti-racist movement and only later as racist in the colonial context.

Steve came to this conclusion because he didn’t understand that even from its inception, Zionism had allied with anti-Semites such as Edouard Drumont and the counter-revolution in Russia. Zionism was seen by Jews as a Jewish form of anti-Semitism.

Erica also mentions that the Beyond the Pale Collective, which published Steve’s pamphlet also published Gill Seidel’s book on Holocaust Denial. Seidel’s book, which was explicitly Zionist, defended the Zionist trade agreement with the Nazis on the spurious grounds that it was intended as a means of rescuing German Jews. The book added nothing to our understanding of the holocaust/

What Steve wrote about the campaign that resulted in the Aliens Act of 1905 was neither accurate nor original. A far better work is William Fishman’s East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914. If Steve was correct about the anti-Semitism of the British working class then it would be difficult to understand why thousands of non-Jewish workers joined, on October 4 1936, Jewish workers, against the advice of the Board of Deputies and the Zionists, to stop the march of Moseley’s British Union of Fascists through the East End. Steve did not explain it. He simply ignored it. Fishman described how:

‘We were all side by side. I was moved to tears to see bearded Jews and Irish Catholic dockers standing up to stop Mosley. I shall never forget that for as long as I live, how working-class people could stand together to oppose the evil of racism.’

Fishman was an acclaimed historian. Steve was not. Steve was an expert on British immigration legislation. He understood little of the conditions facing Jewish immigrant workers in Britain and he grasped randomly at nuggets of information. E.g. he doesn’t mention that the best friend of the Zionists was the same Arthur Balfour who piloted the Aliens Act 1905 through Parliament. Erica is right to say that

‘A text is not, as Steve mistakenly thought, timeless in its meaning – a meaning controlled by the intentions of the authors. The fact is that, as Derrida says, meaning is conditioned by lines of force’

Where she is wrong is to suggest that

‘those lines of force are different now from what they were 36 years ago. Steve’s analysis was exactly the opposite of current cynical assertions of the priority, and thereby weaponisation, of antisemitism.’

The attempts to weaponise anti-Semitism then are no different from those today. Except that then they were unsuccessful. I remember being an invited speaker at a Union General Meeting at Sussex University. Some 900 students crammed into Mandela Hall, one of the largest meetings ever.

When it was proposed that I should be a guest speaker the Union of Jewish Students in the form of Nigel Savage (a sabbatical who was later no confidenced!) objected. I was an anti-Semite. The students found it difficult to accept the concept of a Jewish anti-Semite and the UJS motion was overwhelmingly defeated. The motion supporting a democratic, secular state was overwhelmingly supported.

Savage had tried to involve NUS with talesof my ‘anti-Semitism.’ In one letter he declared that I should be top of the list of ‘enemies of the NUS and the University of Sussex!’ I spoke at numerous student meetings. At all of them UJS tried and failed to bar me speaking on the grounds of anti-Semitism including their stronghold at the LSE. Their only achievement was to ensure that instead of a meeting of 20 people that I spoke to audiences of 100+! But anti-Semitism was certainly weaponised by the Zionists then as now.

Steve’s book mentions the anti-Semitism of some early British socialists. The first time I came across people like Robert Blatchford and his British Socialist Party was when the National Front issued leaflets quoting him. However Blatchford and Hyndman are in the past. It is Brexit and anti-Black racism that is the problem now.

Steve (and Erica) was wrong to say that Jews don’t have a responsibility to call out Zionism when it tries to speak in their name. Erica may today call herself an anti-Zionist but that does not mean that she is one! When she says that:

What is common to both cases, and is equally objectionable, is the demand that Jews uphold a specific, deemed ‘correct’, position because they are Jews, or in order to legitimately call themselves Jewish. This demand is antisemitic.

That is not the problem today. Rather anti-Zionist Jews are not recognised by creatures like Starmer as Jewish. We are invisible. But if someone is accused of a crime is it wrong to expect that they deny it? When Israel claims to speak on behalf of all Jews it is incumbent on Jews to dissociate themselves from such a claim. It is not anti-Semitic to expect Jewish people to say ‘not in my name’.

My main objection to what Erica wrote is that, for an academic she has committed the cardinal sin of omitting any evidence that doesn’t support her case! Nowhere does she mention that the ‘anti-Semites’ that she and her White Feminist Zionist friends confronted were the primary victims of racism in this country, Black people.

Tony Greenstein 

70% of Israelis would, if they could, have voted for Trump and just 13% of Biden! This is Israel today 

Cast your mind back to 2016 and the ‘discovery’ that in 2014, at the height of Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza, when 2,200 people, including 550 children were murdered, Naz Shah, not yet an MP, dreamedof transferring Israel to the United States realizing that Israel would finally be rid of the Palestinians and have no more excuse to engage in blood letting.

The two states get on so well, and the USA has land in abundance. It seemed an obvious solution. It would also save the USA a small fortune in military aid.

By 2016 we were in the middle of the fake Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ attack on Corbyn so Naz was forced to humiliate herself and apologise for ‘anti-Semitism’ to the ‘Jewish community’ (i.e. the Israel lobby) in order that she could stay in Parliament.  Ken Livingstone got suspended defending her and Corbyn went along with all this and ended up getting suspended himself.

However imagine what might have happened if Naz Shah’s fantasy had been acted out.  Is it a crime to fantasize? We all dream of a better world!

A brilliant idea

I have to confess I never understood this ‘anti-Semitism’ stuff.  All Naz Shah and others were suggesting was a change of scenery for Israeli Jews!  There was no hint of extermination or anything. Now today, just imagine what would have happened if that dream fantasy had been fulfilled. 

70% of Israelis supported Trump compared to just 13% for Biden.  Even Jeremy Corbyn got more Jewish voters than Biden got Israeli Jewish voters!!  Imagine what would have happened if we had put half Israel’s Jewish populace in Michigan and the other half in Pennsylvania?  Between them they had 38 electoral college votes and that would have enabled Trump to win by a slender 2 votes.

McDonnell and Owen Jones did more to destroy the Corbyn Project than Boris Johnson - this was the time to tell the Zionists the difference between satire and anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitic? Why?  There’s plenty of rustbelt land filled with abandoned factories and foreclosed land that Israel could colonise and call home. They could establish settlements galore on the ruins of rusting factories.  Indeed they could have rejuvenated them and put back life into America’s industrial economy.

Meanwhile the Palestinians could return to their own home.  Even better the Israeli settlements could be demolished, brick by brick and in that way the old Biblical scenery of the West Bank could be restored to what it was before these ugly concrete structures.

In other words everyone would benefit!

The fact that 70% of Israelis would have voted for the anti-Semitic Trump demonstrates once again that the best friend of Zionism is anti-Semitism. Trump has claimedthat Henry Ford, the legendary anti-Semite who printedthe Czarist forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his Dearborn Independent, was his ‘inspiration’. The same Henry Ford that Hitler also claimed as his inspirationand who hung a life-sized portrait of him by his desk.

This is the man that Israeli Jews would have voted for by a factor of over 5-1. So when you see someone like Keir Starmer describe themselves as a ‘Zionist without qualification’ then you know that what they mean is that they are a racist ‘without qualification’.

So loved was  Trump that West Bank mayors and settlers held a religious ceremony, complete with the blowing of the shofar (a ram’s horn) to pray for the re-election of Trump.  Unfortunately god seems not to have been listening!  If this is god’s attitude then if I were a settler I would be very worried that the great bearded one might be angry again with his people! Exile to the United States would be a fitting punishment - again!!

Below are 3 articles, two  from the Times of Israel and one from Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz.

Tony Greenstein

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday, Oct. 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

 By 70% to 13%, Israeli Jews say Trump is better candidate than Biden for Israel

Israel Democracy Institute poll also finds 42% of Israeli Jews believe the US-Israel bond will weaken if Biden is elected, with only seven percent saying it will strengthen

3 November 2020, 4:30 am  

Some 70 percent of Jewish Israelis believe a victory for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in the US presidential election would be preferable for the Jewish state, an opinion poll indicated on Monday.

The Israel Democracy Institute survey, released a day before the US election day, asked whether Republican incumbent Trump or his Democratic challenger Biden is the preferred candidate, “from the standpoint of Israel’s interests.”

Among Israeli Jews, 70% said Trump is the preferred candidate, 13% said Biden, and 17% don’t know.

Support for Trump was markedly lower among Arab Israelis, with 36% saying he was the preferred candidate, 31% saying Biden, and 33% saying they didn’t know.

Among all Israelis, 63% favor Trump, 17% Biden and 20% don’t know.

Broken down by political camp, 82% of right-wing poll respondents, 62% of centrists, and 40% percent of left-wingers said Trump is the better candidate for Israel. 

Foreign Affairs Minister of Bahrain Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, and US President Donald Trump participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords on the South Lawn of the White House on September 15, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP)

 If Biden wins the race, 42% of Israeli Jews believe the US-Israel bond will weaken, with only 7% saying it will strengthen. Among Arab Israelis, those figures were 24% and 16%, respectively.

“Presumably this pronounced preference among the Jewish public for Trump to keep serving stems to a large extent from the assessment that Biden’s election would weaken US-Israeli relations, and strengthen the relationship between Washington and the Palestinians,” IDI said. 

The survey polled 611 men and women in Hebrew and 150 in Arabic, constituting a representative national sample of the population of Israel, with a margin of error of  +/- 3.7%.

Trump has been viewed by many as one of the most pro-Israel US presidents ever. 

Marc Zell - Chair Republicans for Israel Overseas

The Trump administration has used the final months of the campaign to further seek support from pro-Israel Jewish and Evangelical Republican voters. In just this past week, the State Department updated its policy to allow US citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their country of birth on passports and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman signed an agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extending US scientific cooperation to apply as well in the West Bank — a move viewed by many as a first step toward American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the settlements.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid-Telem is pictured during an interview with AFP at his office in the Knesset, Jerusalem, on September 14, 2020. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP)

But opposition leader Yair Lapid on Monday said that whoever wins, “the next president of the United States will be a friend of Israel.”

“Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are friends of Israel, with a deep commitment to Israel and to Zionism,” Lapid said in a statement, while adding he had seen hostile “radical voices” growing stronger within the Democratic Party.

Several rabbis, including Haim Druckman, an influential former member of the National Religious Party, have urged US citizens in Israel to vote for Trump.

And on Monday evening around 150 Trump supporters waving US and Israeli flags rallied in the city of Beit Shemesh south of Jerusalem, where many Israeli-Americans live.

An Israeli supporter of the re-election of US President Donald Trump waves American and Israeli flags from a car at a rally outside of the US Embassy, in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

The Trump administration has also sought to expand the list of Arab and Muslim-majority countries to normalize relations with Israel in the final months of its current term. Last Friday, Sudan agreed to become the third country to do so in recent months. Sudan followed the lead of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain after weeks of pressure from Washington, which conditioned removing Khartoum from its blacklist of state terror sponsors on Sudan making peace with the Jewish state.

These moves follow decisions by the Trump administration to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, transfer the US embassy there, recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, scrap previous policy deeming settlements to be illegal, release a peace plan widely deemed to be the most favorable to Israel yet, take a far more combative approach toward the Palestinians than previous administrations and pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which the Netanyahu government opposed aggressively.

On the other hand, Trump’s critics point out that he has turned the issue of Israel into a political football when for decades the bipartisan nature of support for the Jewish state had been touted as something that kept Israel more secure. Polls of Jewish voters in the US show that at least two-thirds prefer Biden over Trump, many of whom blame the president for the rise in white nationalism in the US, which has seen Jews targeted in record numbers of anti-Semitic attacks.

Moreover, these more dovish voters are less supportive of the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank and tend to oppose moves the Trump administration has taken to solidify the Israeli presence there at the expense of efforts to reach a two-state solution.

Look at Trump and You'll See the Israelis

Gideon Levy

Published on 08.11.2020

Standing in line Friday in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Aviv Gimel to pick up the weekend edition of Israel Hayom, affluent residents discussed the likely defeat. “We’re screwed,” one man said sadly; his companions nodded in agreement. It’s a dark day for Israel: Donald Trump has lost the election.

No other country in the world, with the possible exception of the Philippines or Nebraska, was as saddened by his fall. A poll by Israel’s Mitvim think tank found that 70 percent of Israelis support Trump. A survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center had similar findings. Whereas 75 percent of West Europeans are fed up with the U.S. president, in Israel a large majority – including centrists and some leftists – admires him.

It can be argued, of course, that this support is a way of saying thanks for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights and withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal. But these events caused little excitement in Israel. No one jumped into a fountain in a city square to celebrate the recognition of Majdal Shams as an Israeli town, and only a few people were moved by Ambassador David Friedman’s change of address.

The explanation for Trump’s rising popularity in Israel goes much deeper; its roots are much more disturbing. Israel admires Trump not despite his many repellent shortcomings but because of them. Trump is the embodiment of everything that’s bad and ugly about Israel while normalizing and whitewashing them for us. Look at him and you’ll see ourselves. This is who we are, or who we’d like to be. Most of us, anyway.

Trump is the embodiment of Israel the unbeautiful; he could easily be elected prime minister. The vulgarity, coarseness, belligerence, ignorance, scheming and lies; the contempt for the weak, for the law, for justice, the media, science and the environment – all this fits us like a glove.

Who wouldn’t want a prime minister condescending to everyone, someone who always knows best, who will make Israel great again? Who wouldn’t want a prime minister who’s nobody’s fool, who made his fortune through guile and cunning, just the way we like it?

Who wouldn’t want a prime minister who scoffs at political correctness and will bring back the good old days of male chauvinism unhindered by feminism; who won’t bother us with all those threats to the planet and nature, who’ll also bring back racism?

Who wouldn’t want a real man like him? Who wouldn’t like someone who will scorn international institutions, human rights groups and international law, who will violate signed agreements and deride arrogant Europe and its universal liberal values, just as in the secret dreams of many Israelis? Even Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s as similar to Trump as he can be, can’t attain that level of making dreams come true.

Take the typical Israeli driver. He isn’t Trump? The Israeli road isn’t Trumplike? Cut somebody off, honk, curse, break the law, park anywhere, don’t think about anyone but yourself, yours is the biggest, strongest and fastest; look at me.

Take Israeli politics, especially politicians on the right. That isn’t Trump? They wouldn’t want to be like him?

Combine Avigdor Lieberman, Miri Regev, Osnat Mark, Miki Zohar and David Amsalem and you get Trump in Hebrew. Combine their bullying, ignorance, populism, superficiality, populism and vulgarity and you get Israeli Trumpism.

As an encore, add the way Trump humiliated the Palestinians, ignored their very existence. Their rights meant nothing to him, just as they mean nothing to most Israelis, simply because they’re weak. It’s a dream.

It’s an Israeli dream to stop aid to the weak and give it to the strong, as Trump did – from the UNRWA refugee agency to the Israeli army, from the refugees to the force that expelled them. And it’s an Israeli dream to deport asylum seekers, as Trump has, to keep hundreds of children separated from their parents and leave tens of thousands of frightened adults.

That’s Trumpian justice, and it’s Israeli justice. That’s why we’ve loved him so much. That’s why it’s such a pity that he’ll be leaving.

In shadow of patriarchs, settler leaders gather in Hebron to pray for Trump win

West Bank mayors recite psalms, hoping for four more years; cite incumbent’s recognition of Golan Heights and Jerusalem, support for Israel against threats like Iran and BDS

November 2020, 4:53 pm

Hebron spokesman Yishai Fleisher, right, and Marc Zell, the head of Republicans Overseas Israel, blow shofars to show their support for Trump November, 2, 2020. (Courtesy Har Hevron regional council spokesperson)

Settler leaders held a special prayer session Monday outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, at which they thanked US President Donald Trump for his support of the settlement movement and wished him success in Tuesday’s elections. 

Psalms and other prayers meant to aid the incumbent president to victory were recited at the Monday event, during which Har Hevron Regional Council chairman Yochai Damri and Marc Zell, the head of Republicans Overseas Israel, blew shofars to show their support for Trump.

At the event, Damri explained why the US president meant so much to the settler movement.

 “We came here today to say to President Trump thank you,” he said. 

“Thank you for your special relationship to the land of Israel, for the recognition of the Golan Heights and of the settlement enterprise. Thank you for your war against Iran and the BDS movement. Thank you for strengthening the settlement of the land of the Bible. We pray and hope that you will continue to another four years of strengthening the settlement enterprise.” 

Israeli Trump Supporter heads to Jerusalem

Marc Zell, the head of Republicans Overseas Israel at the Cave of the patriarchs, November 2, 2020. (Courtesy: Har hebron regional council spokesperson)

Kiryat Arba Local Council chairman Eliyahu Libman said, “Trump proved his friendship toward the people of Israel by moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, and recognizing our sovereignty in the Golan Heights and the right of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.”

Those moves on behalf of the settler enterprise were lauded as “tremendous and daring” by Binyamin Regional Council chairman Yisrael Gantz.

Also adding their voices to the reelect Trump prayer meeting were Gush Etzion Regional Council chairman Shlomo Ne’eman and the mayor of Hebron, Rabbi Hillel Horowitz.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs, where the prayer session took place, is sanctified by Jews and Muslims as the burial place of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Leah.

Hebron is home to approximately 1,000 settlers, who live in a series of enclaves surrounded by some 215,000 Palestinians. Large numbers of Israeli security forces protect Jewish residents in the city, which is frequently the scene of violence.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1323218530427408385

While Jews in the United States — except for the Orthodox — are expected to vote overwhelmingly for Democrat Joe Biden, Trump is a popular figure in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described him as the “greatest friend” Israel has ever had in the White House.

Many in Israel view Trump as a staunch supporter of the Jewish state, especially in the wake of the Washington-brokered Abraham Accords, which led to normalization deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan.

A poll published by Channel 12 news Friday showed 54% percent of Israelis favor Trump, compared to 21% who favor Biden and 25% who were undecided or did not know. No methodology or margin of error was provided by Channel 12 for the survey.

Settlers in particular have been outspoken supporters of Trump for his policies that appear to support Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank. In addition, he has earned accolades for his administration’s decisions to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

US ambassador to Israel David Friedman (L) with Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi in Efrat on February 20, 2020. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)

Still, many settler leaders, Damri included, rejected Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan over the fact that it included the possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state on parts of the West Bank not annexed by Israel. The reaction was reportedly met by anger in the White House.

Oded Revivi, the influential head of the Efrat settlement who was one of the settler leaders who embraced the Trump plan, said Sunday that he would not participate in the rally out of respect for the US political process.

“President Trump has proven over four years that he is a big friend of Israel and during his term ties between Israel and the US have grown stronger. However, just as we warn off foreign influences from internal debates and elections… so it is not correct for the leadership to express a stance on the US elections,”

he tweeted.

Happy New Year 2021 

AuldLang Syne

b

Let us remember Keir Stürmer and those Labour MPs who supportedthe Overseas Operations Bill granting Immunity to Torture by British Agents

There is no doubt about it. If you criticise Israel’s use of torture, Israel being the onlycountry in the world to have legalised torture, then you are an anti-Semite.

Don’t take my word for it. The IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism makes this quite clear stating that:

criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

In other words if you criticise Israel for something that other countries don’t do then you must be anti-Semitic. Since most countries don’t torture children criticism of Israeli torture is therefore automatically anti-Semitic.

When I was expelled from Labour in February 2018, at the behest of Corbyn and Laura Murray, the second of my 3 charges concerned Louise Ellman, the vile racist MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv South, Thomas Ogg, Labour’s barrister waxed furiously in his skeleton argument:

" Mr Greenstein has authored and posted articles on a blog which include comments that are offensive and derisory including but not limited to: accusing Louise Ellman MP of being a "supporter of Israeli child abuse"....

Para 56 asserted that

‘the use of the phrase "child abuse" is deliberately provocative. The phrase evokes sexual abuse, and therefore suggests that Louise Ellman MP, a prominent Jewish Labour MP, supports the same. Greenstein's summary of the conduct as "child abuse" is an attempt to shame Ms Ellman by the use of emotive language, which is contrary to the Labour Party's Social Media Policy.’

In vain did I protest that because Ellman was shameless, it was not possible to shame her!

Two parliamentary debates were held on Palestinian child prisoners in the West Bank in the past 4 years. The first Child Prisoners and Detainees: Occupied Palestinian Territories was held on 6 January 2016. The debate concerned a UNICEF Report which concluded that

“the ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized throughout the process, from the moment of arrest until the child’s prosecution and eventual conviction and sentencing”.

Ellman intervened 3 times during the debate to defend the Israeli military’s treatment of children. The late Jo Cox MP also intervened:

‘evidence from Military Court Watch suggests that 65% of children continue to report being arrested at night in what are described as terrifying raids by the military.’

Ellman intervened again to defend the Israeli military putting all the blame for violence on the children. Ellman was an officer of the Jewish Labour Movement and Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, the main organisations behind the false accusations of anti-Semitism.

The JLM has always protested that accusations of anti-Semitism have nothing to do with Zionism and Israel. Their defence of Ellman when members of her CLP sought to deselect her shows them to be liars.

Two years later, on 7^th February 2018, there was another debate Palestinian Children and Israeli Military Detentionin which Ellman spoke supporting the Israeli military. Asa Winstanley, the excellent Electronic Intifada journalist, has covered this in his recent article for Middle East Monitor Torturing children is normal for Israel.  

Asa noted that:

Ironically, Greenstein's condemnation of Ellman's defence of Israeli child abuse was considered to be "abusive language" by Labour's desiccated bureaucrats. There was plenty of evidence, even then, that Israeli practice towards Palestinian children constitutes child abuse.

So let us consider the evidence. In December 2020 Defence for Children International brought out a comprehensive 82 page report Isolated & Alonewith 108 different case studies. They make grim reading. You would not expect the JLM, the overseas wing of the Israeli Labor Party to condemn the torture of children since it was the ILP which introduced the practices. 

Out of the 108 cases, 71 (66%) involved children as young as 12 being arrested between midnight and 5.00 a.m. They are dragged out of bed, often not allowed to get dressed, 94% of the children were blindfolded and bound with particularly painful plastic handcuffs. In 77 out of 108 cases (71%), children endured some form of physical violence following arrest. They are forced to crouch on the floor of a military jeep and taken to a military base or interrogation centre. There they will be left for hours, without food or water, before being thrown in a stinking cell. 

The children are held in Israel (which is illegal under international law) in solitary confinement with no access to parents or lawyers. Section 4.3 deals with interrogations.

Unlike the children of Jewish settlers, Palestinian children have no right during interrogation to the presence of either lawyers or members of their families. There are no ‘responsible adults’ present.

In at least 102 out of the 108 cases (94 percent), the children had no access to a legal consultation prior to interrogations. 62 children (57 percent) reported that interrogators did not properly inform them of their rights before interrogation, including the right to silence.

The interrogation techniques constitute torture. Bear in mind that the children are as young as 12. The Report describes the interrogations as

‘often mentally and physically coercive, frequently incorporating a combination of intimidation, threats, verbal abuse and physical violence with a clear purpose of obtaining a confession.’

In 86 of 108 cases (80 percent), the children reported being subject to stress positions during interrogation. All their limbs were tied to a metal chair just inches above the floor for prolonged periods; a position they described as acutely painful.

During their confinement attempts are made to recruit the children as informants and when they were transferred to detention centres they were held alongside adult Palestinian informants. This too is contrary to international law.

The DCIP Report said that the isolation of Palestinian children is practiced 

solely to obtain a confession for a specific offense or to gather intelligence under interrogation. DCIP has found no evidence demonstrating a legally justifiable use of isolation of Palestinian child detainees, such as for disciplinary, protective, or medical reasons.’

 DCIP makes a number of recommendations which UNICEF and others have repeatedly made but the Israeli government refuses to adopt:

•        Detention must only be used as a last resort, and only for the shortest appropriate time;

•      Children must not be subjected to physical or psychological violence

•       Children must have access to legal consultation and parents prior to and during interrogations

•       Children must only be arrested during daylight hours

•      Children must be properly informed of their right to silence

•       Children must not be blindfolded or painfully restrained

•       Children must not be subjected to coercive force or threats

•      All interrogations must be audio-visually recorded

•      Any incriminating evidence obtained during interrogation where a child was not properly and effectively informed of his or her right to silence must be excluded by the military courts

•     Any statement made as a result of torture or ill-treatment must be excluded as evidence in any proceeding

•      The practice of using solitary confinement on children in Israeli military detention, must be stopped immediately

•      The practice of using administrative detention orders against Palestinian children must stop immediately

•     All credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment must be thoroughly and impartially investigated in accordance with international standards, and perpetrators brought promptly to justice and

•    Children must not be transferred out of the occupied West Bank in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.2.

The Report also states that the Quisling Palestinian Authority should

•    Reissue a declaration accepting the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

•    Take efforts that enhance the capacity of former child prisoners to cope with the trauma and negative impact of incarceration after the children’s release from Israeli military detention; and

DCIP recommends that The international community should:

•     Demand that Israeli authorities end the military detention and prosecution of Palestinian children;

•     Demand that Israeli authorities implement effective accountability measures to ensure all credible reports of torture and ill-treatment are properly investigated

•     Ensure that no foreign military aid or assistance is provided to Israeli military and police units where credible information exists that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights, including involvement in the arrest and detention of Palestinian children;

The DCIP Report compiled 108 case reports. I have randomly selected just 3 Reports.

Case No. 4

Name: Obada H.

Age: 15

Date of arrest: February 16, 2016

Location: Jenin

Days in isolation: 12

Around 3:30 a.m. Obada was awakened by an Israeli soldier pointing his rifle at him and telling him to get up. Israeli soldiers searched Obada and pushed him against the wall. Soldiers then tied Obada’s hands behind his back using a single plastic cord and blindfolded him. A soldier hit him twice with the barrel of his rifle while forcing Obada onto the metal floor of the jeep, beside a dog. At an unknown location, Obada was detained outside standing up and physically assaulted by soldiers. He was asked about his health and detained with another person on a bench. Around 5 p.m., Obada was transferred to another unknown location where he was photographed, before arriving at Al-Jalame interrogation and detention center. After undergoing a strip search, Obada asked to use the bathroom.

Israeli soldiers point their guns at Palestinian children as they go past

A soldier proceeded to lock Obada in a small bathroom overnight. When Obada knocked on the door to be let out, an Israeli soldier assaulted him with a taser. Obada refused to eat the meals brought to him in the bathroom so soldiers moved him into a solitary confinement cell. He refused to eat for another day, falling unconscious on the third day. When he regained consciousness, Obada found himself at a clinic where soldiers were trying to feed him through a tube, but Obada refused, demanding to know why he had been arrested. Jailers returned him to his cell for an hour or so, then took him into an interrogation room. The interrogator tied his hands and feet to the legs of a metal chair. The interrogator slapped him and shouted at him. Obada was interrogated seven times while in solitary confinement, for one or two hours each time. Failing to confess, guards transferred him to Megiddo prison for two days. There, he appeared to be exposed to informants. When he was transferred back into an isolation cell in Al-Jalame, Obada pretended to have strangled himself with a thread from the mattress. Jailers entered the cell and kicked him. They then moved him into another room where his hands and feet were tied to the bed for two days. Obada never confessed to any of the accusation

Case No. 6

Name: Khaled A.

Age: 16

Date of arrest: February 25, 2016

Location: Ramallah

Days in isolation: 21

Israeli soldiers woke Khaled from his bed at 3 a.m. and ordered him to get up. He was blindfolded and his hands were bound with a single plastic cord. A group of soldiers physically assaulted him outside, punching and kicking him, and hitting him with their rifle stocks. He was transported on the floor of a military vehicle to Al-Mascobiyya interrogation and detention center, where he was photographed, strip searched and asked general questions about his health. Khaled was then placed in a small cell which had only a mattress, blanket and toilet. Cold air flowed into the cell from the manually controlled ventilation gaps and there were no windows. While in isolation, Khaled was interrogated multiple times with severe techniques, including threats, physical violence, and being restrained in a painful stress position for five consecutive days, amounting to torture. He was also transferred to another location, Eshel prison, where he was exposed to informants. All interrogations took place without the presence of a lawyer or family member. Khaled stated that he was never informed of his rights nor shown any documents explaining them. He also was not provided the opportunity to consult with a lawyer prior to interrogation. Khaled confessed to throwing Molotov cocktails.

Case No. 9

Name: Fadel T.

Age: 17

Date of arrest: March 7, 2016

Location: Jenin

Days in isolation: 10

Around 5 a.m., Fadel woke to the sounds of Israeli soldiers breaking down the door to his family’s apartment. Masked soldiers stormed the place. Fadel was blindfolded and his hands were bound behind his back with two plastic cords. Soldiers did not provide a reason for the arrest or a warrant. Soldiers insulted and physically assaulted the boy outside, punching, slapping, and kicking him. He was transported in a military jeep to Dotan settlement, where soldiers asked Fadel questions about his health and detained him outside, still in his pajamas and blindfolded. He was not provided food or water and soldiers refused to let Fadel use the bathroom. Around 11 a.m., Israel Prison Service guards handcuffed and shackled the boy, then transported him in a closed metal cage to Al-Jalame interrogation and detention center. At Al-Jalame, a jailer strip searched Fadel and placed him in isolation. The cell conditions were poor, including 24-hour lighting which hurt the boy’s eyes and gray walls that had coarse surfaces. While in isolation, Fadel was interrogated for hours at a time in a stress position. The interrogator tied his hands and feet to a metal chair three or four inches above the floor. The interrogator informed Fadel of his rights, such as his right to remain silent. Interrogations took place without the presence of a lawyer or family member. Fadel was transferred to Megiddo prison for two days, where he was detained with informants, then returned to Al-Jalame. He confessed to throwing stones and Molotov cocktails

The treatment of Palestinian children in detention is just part of the overall picture of Israeli disdain for the lives of Palestinian childen

Ha'aretz reporter Amira Hass [Palestinian Teenagers Bashar and Yousef Join a Grim Statistic: Shot by Israeli Forces] describes how 787 West Bank Palestinians, including 155 minors, were wounded last year by either sponge-tipped or live bullets. Bashar lost an eye, Yousef has skull fractures. Both will require long convalescences

632 were wounded by sponge or rubber-tipped metal bullets, including 127 minors, while 155 were wounded by live fire, including 28 minors. That’s in addition to the 1,513 who were suffocated by tear gas and needed treatment, 195 minors.

The soldiers’ bullets hit the teenagers in the head. Bashar lost his right eye and was given a temporary prosthetic eye covered by a bandage; he’s now waiting to get his permanent prosthetic eye – maybe in Jordan, maybe in Israel. Yousef suffers from skull fractures, incessant headaches and a loss of balance.

Shackling children (not Jewish children) is a regular procedure

Each was a hairsbreadth from joining the statistics of those killed by Israeli fire in 2020 – 25.

He and his older brother attend the Al-Umma high school in the nearby town of A-Ram. They were returning from school at about 1:45 P.M. on November 17. They got off the minibus at the Qalandiyah checkpoint, which divides the road out of Ramallah into two. One branch curves to the east, while the other passes through the checkpoint and is open only to cars with Israeli license plates.

Someone in the Israel Police saw fit to send a large team from the Border Police to this spot at that specific hour. The Border Police are known for their thuggish behaviour.

A police spokesman told Haaretz that

“during enforcement operations at Kafr Aqab, Border Police forces and Jerusalem municipality inspectors seized 40 boxes of firecrackers and 250 boxes of illegally owned cigarettes, confiscated two cars with the wrong license plates and issued eight traffic tickets.”

Bashar and his brother entered the refugee camp. Bashar noticed that several policemen had entered some of the buildings at the entrance to the camp, including an UNRWA clinic, the office of the Popular Committee and a children’s-activity center. He also saw a tear gas grenade launcher mounted on one of the two police patrol cars. The Police version was that

“During the operation, disturbances of the peace broke out involving about 100 rioters, who threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the security forces .... Border Police fighters responded to the rioters, who endangered their lives, by firing riot dispersal weapons, in accordance with the regulations. There was no use of live fire.”

Moreover, they said, one member of the Border Police was “wounded in the head and taken to the hospital with severe abrasions on his face.”

‘As if my eye had left its socket’

Bashar remembers the stun grenades and tear gas fired by the Border Police as he entered the camp. “People began running away, and shop owners closed up,” he told Haddad of B’Tselem.

Then, he said, teens and young men from the camp began confronting the police. They piled up tin and other scrap metal on the road to block access to the camp and threw stones. He didn’t mention any Molotov cocktails in his detailed account to B’Tselem.

He estimated that about 30 members of the Border Police faced off with around 100 Palestinians, most of them between 15 and 17.

Bashar and his brother were caught between two groups of Border Police who had deployed at different locations. The stun grenades, tear gas, sponge-tipped bullets and rubber-coated metal bullets prevented the boys from continuing on their way home.

At around 2:30 P.M., Bashar’s brother ran toward a nearby school, while Bashar hid on the street corner next to the big mosque. Suddenly, he saw some kind of ammunition flying at him. A steel bullet? One tipped with rubber or sponge? Maybe a tear gas canister? He doesn’t know.

All he remembers is that this hard object hit the ground; then he felt something hit his eye and something explode inside it. He believes the shooter was one of the policemen deployed on rooftops at the entrance to the camp.

“I immediately felt as if my eye had left its socket. I put my hand on my wounded eye and felt how the blood was flowing. I began screaming, ‘I’ve been hit, I’ve been hit.’ I wanted to get away, but after walking a few steps, I couldn’t see anymore. I lost my balance and fell down.”

Naturally the Border Police did nothing to help him. After a long delay, caused by the road being blocked because drivers and passengers had fled their cars swathed in clouds of tear gas, fearing they would be hurt by the stun grenades, tear gas or bullets.

Israeli soldiers hold their weapons during a Palestinian protest against Jewish settlements, in Kafr Qaddum, the West Bank, November 13, 2020.Credit: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

A man Bashar didn’t know volunteered to take him in his car. Bashar sat beside him, his eye bleeding, trying to mop up the blood with the tissues that were in the car.

“I was confused and frightened,” he told Haddad. “The guy who drove me kept trying to calm me down, telling me, ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid; we’ll soon be at the hospital.’”

The main hospital in Ramallah didn’t have a unit specializing in eye injuries, so it sent Bashar and his father to an eye clinic in downtown El Bireh nearby which in turn sent him to a private hospital north of Ramallah, which also turned out not to have an ophthalmology ward.

“Only at 10 P.M. did we finally get to a place that could treat him – the hospital at An-Najah University in Nablus. He went into surgery at about 10:30.

Unfortunately the doctors were unable to save Bashar’s eye. His father described him as “one of those quiet children who study,” “He’d play a bit of soccer and then come home. I was released from prison in the mid-’90s, during a kinder time, and I hoped my children would also be able to live in such a time.

“I’ve never seen Saris, but I’m a Sarisian,” he added. “They expelled us from there. Now, in Qalandiyah as well, they don’t let us live in peace, with all their raids.”

‘I still don’t remember’

Yousef Taha of Kafr Qaddum was hit in the back on November 27, apparently by a rubber-coated steel bullet. The force of the impact made him fall on his face. Fractures were later found both around his eye and in the back of his skull.

A neighbor saw him leaving an unfinished building. As Yousef reached the stairwell, the neighbor heard a shot and saw him fall. He looked up the hill and saw seven soldiers around 15 meters from the building.

He ran toward Yousef and called an ambulance. Once Yousef was inside it, he also called the boy’s father, Abd al-Fatah, who rushed to the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus in another car.

The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit said a group of rioters had been burning tires and throwing stones there.

The force at the scene used crowd control weapons to disperse the rioters and ensure the safety of residents of the area,” it added. “We are aware of the claims about a wounded Palestinian.”

Because Kafr Qaddum’s direct road to Nablus is blocked, the ambulance, instead of driving due east, took the wounded boy west along a road that winds through the orchards. It then turned south to the village of Hajjah, went from there to the village of Al-Funduq and finally turned east toward Nablus. So instead of taking around 15 minutes, the trip to Nablus took about 40.

When Yousef’s father arrived at Rafidia Hospital, he found his son oscillating between consciousness and unconsciousness.

“One day I woke up and found myself in the hospital,” Yousef said in a faint voice. “I didn’t remember anything about what happened, and I still don’t remember.”

When he reads, he closes his right eye, which was injured in the fall. Yes, it hurts, a lot, he admitted. He takes pain relievers “moderately, so as not to get addicted,” his father said. He preferred that his son not be photographed in this condition.

Altogether, 214 residents of Kafr Qaddum have been wounded by IDF fire this year, including 36 minors. Of these, 139 suffered damage from tear gas and needed medical treatment on the spot or at a clinic, 65 were hit by rubber-coated metal bullets and five by live fire. Another was hurt by a tear gas canister that hit him directly. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which collects data about all the wounded, said its statistics don’t include the number of people traumatized by the violence they experienced.

Abd al-Fatah Taha went to Amman to finish high school immediately after Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967. He then trained to become a pilot in Morocco and joined the PLO. Later, he became a civilian pilot, and he returned with Arafat in 1994, serving as one of the eight airmen who piloted Arafat’s helicopter until the second intifada erupted in 2000.

“My children ask me why I came back, saying it would surely be better abroad,” he said. “And I tell them I always dreamed of returning, and I even was willing to live in a cave on our own plot of land, which we leased to shepherds.”

Generator Terrorism

In an editorial Ha'aretz reported how Harun Abu Aram, 24, of the West Bank village of al-Rakiz, in the South Hebron Hills, was shot in the neck at close range Friday after confronting soldiers who had seized a generator from a neighbor’s home that had been razed. He was admitted in critical condition to the hospital in Yatta before being transferred to Hebron’s Ahli Hospital.

The IDF said soldiers had been sent to the scene to stop illegal construction and that

“a violent disturbance developed involving about 150 Palestinians that included stone-throwing on a massive scale,” to which soldiers responded by “using crowd-dispersal methods and firing into the air.”

As is normally the case when video evidence is available, the Israeli army version of events is a tissue of lies. It shows Abu Aram trying to wrest the generator – the size of a medium carton – from the soldiers’ hands. In the course of the struggle Abu Aram was shot suddenly – a direct shot at his head – from point-blank range.

The  editorial states that:

If culprits are found, they are nearly certain to get off cheaply, since in Israel nothing is cheaper than Palestinian lives. But the details of this incident are particularly disturbing: How does a home demolition end with the point-blank shooting of a Palestinian man, who remains in critical condition?

The construction was ‘illegal’ because in the vast majority of cases Palestinians do not and never will receive building permits. Unlike settlers who nearly always do receive such permits. As Ha’aretz concludes:

These demolitions are not the way that local zoning law is enforced in a properly run state. This is a bloody war for control of land whose purpose is to preclude the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel is willing to go to great lengths to prevent Palestinians from living on this land, as per settlers’ demands – as far as to shoot a man who tried to prevent the confiscation of a generator in the neck.

Rejoice, Rejoice, The Witch is Gone!! - Louise Ellman, Racist MP for Liverpool Riverside Finally Gets the Hint

Time to Deselect Louise Ellman MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv North – Apologist for Israel's Occupation Forces

Palestinian Children are Caged like Animals with the support of Labour's Despicable MPs Louise Ellman and Joan Ryan

Attacked Because She is Jewish

 

Trump May be On His Way Out but America's Far Right is Here to Stay 

When I listened to Chuck Schumer and the other hypocrites talking about the invasion of the Capitol building in Washington as an attack on ‘the temple of democracy’ it was difficult not to laugh. According to Joe Biden Congress was a ‘beacon of hope and light for democracy’.This is the political centre of the United States Empire, the place that has overseen the overthrow of Allende and the attempts to overthrow Castro, Chavez and many other radical leaders. It is the centre of corporate corruption, the place where lobbyists of all stripes ply their trade, the epicenter of support for tyranny the world over.

Congress is the enabler of Apartheid Israel, the initiator of attacks on any regime brave enough to stand up to Uncle Sam.

Most sickening of all the comments was the tweet of Christian Fundamentalist Secretary of State Mike Pompei

‘violence, putting at risk the safety of others including those tasked with providing security for all of us, is intolerable both at home and abroad

Does this, I wondered, apply to assassinationslike that of Qasem Soleimani or the overthrowof the democratic President of Bolivia by a US trained and instructed military?

The right-wing Zionist who heads the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer

Of course it does have its amusing side. Trump in his determination to overturn the election result first tried to bludgeonthe hapless Georgia Secretary of State Raffsenberger into ‘finding’ him an extra 17,000 votes. In Trump’s eyes the votes of those who cast their ballots are merely chips to be traded in return for favours.

Trump is not only a narcissist and sociopath who cannot distinguish between reality and fiction, truth and lies, but he has no sense of self awareness. But that is how he made it in the first place. Life is a reality show.

Having failed to 'persuade' any state into changing its election results, despite multiple court cases, Trump fell back on his last option – to pressurisehis Vice President, the servile Christian bigot, his trained human puppy, Mike Pence, into unilaterally rejecting the decision of the electoral college. What had previously been a formality was now invested with a critical importance.

Congress members take cover

Pence, despite being a fundamentalist Christian, is not as stupid as he looks or at least not that stupid. If he had tried to abuse his position as Chair of Congress then there would have been, not only uproar in Congress but more importantly outside. It would literally have triggered a revolution and brought down the whole edifice of constitutional government in the United States.

Trump is addicted to his crooked habits of old. Everything for him is transactional and he must therefore feel a bitter sense of disappointment. Firstly the Supreme Court, a third of which he picked, didn’t return his favours by blocking Biden’s election and then Pence, who owes his position of Vice President to Trump, followed suit.

In Trump’s diseased mind, Pence owed everything to Trump. By what right did he refuse to obey Trump’s instructions?

This is the mentality of Trump but let us be clear, not only Trump. It’s how Congress operates. Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. It’s pork barrel politics writ large. Ideology counts for little in this palace of a corrupt ruling class. The only difference is that most Congressmen and women are not so blatant and obvious about what they do. A few, like the Squad, are even honest!

The invasion on Capitol Hill was certainly violent with one video showing a cop screamingin agony as he was crushed between a door and the wall.  But just imagine if this had been say a crowd of Black Lives Matter supporters.  Does anyone imagine that the riot cops would have gently pushed back? There would have been a bloodbathand Trump would have been the first to congratulate the police.

The massed ranks of robo cops would have willingly gunned down anyone got within a hundred yards of Capitol Hill. But that wasn’t possible on Wednesday since Trump delayedthe deployment of the National Guard.

Even Joe Biden accepted, having been sent a photo of soldiers guarding the Lincoln Memorial in June by his granddaughter, that

‘No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol.’

Finally we saw in the wake of Wednesday’s riots Republicans dissociating themselves from Trump, though not enough to impeach him. Those who supported his racist rhetoric against Black Congresswomen who were toldto ‘go back where you came from’, who were silent when Trump accused Mexican immigrants of being rapists, who supported his encouragement of police violence against BLM supporters, took fright when their own safety and security were endangered.

Trump, having summoned his far-Right rabble and encouragedthem to be ‘wild’ eventually toldthe assorted White Supremacists, neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, QAnons, loony tunes and fruitcakes ‘Go home. We love you, you’re very special.’

It was very different last June with Black Lives Matter

Then when he realised that he had bitten off more than he could chew he backtracked and issued a video condemnation: "Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem,"Trump said, adding,"To those who broke the law: You will pay."Lies come easily to the man who, the day before, told the mob how much he 'loved' them.

Clearly this wasn’t a voluntary statement and reports have since surfaced that he regretsissuing the video.

One suspects that it was issued on the instructions of Mike Pence who otherwise threatened to invoke the 25^th Amendment removing Trump from office on the grounds of mental instability.

But the outrage amongst America’s corrupt politicians is not shared by the people. A full 45% of Republicans, a plurality, supportedthe attack on the capitol buildings. Trump may be leaving the White House but his legacy will live on. The far-Right has felt emboldened for the past 5 years.  Trump openly sponsored neo-Nazis and white supremacists like the Proud Boys whilst demonisinganti-racists and anti-fascists.  No greater enemy did he have than Antifaand BLM. Yet the Republican Party stalwarts saw no reason to condemn his racism and the Democratic Party largely remained silent.

Trump will end his reign as the pathetic fascist he is.  His final revenge will be to try and ensure the execution of as many prisoners on the federal death row as he can manage. This at a time when support for the death penalty in America is at an all time low. But let us remember, as Lisa Montgomery chokes to death on Tuesday, the first woman for over half a century to be executed at the Federal level, that it was Barack Obama who refusedto commute her sentence and that of 61 other prisoners on death row. It was Bill Clinton who enacted the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act which widened the number of offences that could receive the death penalty and which expedited the appeal process.

They opened the door to the White Supremacists

One thing is for certain. Joe Biden will not arrest the process of widespread disdain for Congress and the corrupt politicians who inhabit Capitol Hill. Trump came to office promising to ‘drain the swamp’.  The swamp still remains, indeed it has expanded but in the absence of a strong left in the United States the drift to the Right will continue.

The growth of the Democratic Socialists of America to over 100,000 members is encouraging. Likewise the election of members of the DSA such as Ilhan Omar, Rashid Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.However they are likely to be sucked into the system unless the DSA becomes more than a loose association of well meaning social democrats. BLM has to abandon identity politics and embrace class politics and the DSA has to transform itself into a class struggle organisation that can appeal to Trump’s disenfranchised constituency, not least blue collar workers who have suffered the effects of globalisation and off shoring.

Biden will, in the wake of the pandemic, follow a policy of austerity and retrenchment. He has committed himself to vetoing a single payer, national health care system despite the fact that the pandemic has shown that the existence of a privatised health care system is contrary to the interests of capitalism.

The support of the United States for repression and violence abroad has come back home with a vengeance. Joe Biden is famous for ‘reaching across the aisle’ to the Republicans. The idea that he will restore the United States to ‘normality’ is a fantasy.

We should welcome the humiliation of Trump who was forced to promise a ‘smooth transition’ to the Biden Administration after having done his best to overturn the vote.

But there is one more thing that Wednesday’s vote has shown and that is the fact that the United States is not, even in a bourgeois sense, a democracy.  Democratic rights in the USA are a thin skin on a turbulent and poisonously militarised society.

If Joe Biden had been a radical socialist, still less a Marxist, then Wednesday would have provided ample opportunity to overturn the vote. Congress could have rejected the electoral college votes on whatever spurious basis they cared to conjure up. The certification of votes at state level would have provided more opportunities for the two capitalist parties to reject any results that they didn’t like. The US Supreme Court  demonstratedin 2000 that it is capable of ensuring the vote they want when they prevented a recount in Florida which went too late to Al Gore after Bush was declared President.

The US Constitution has checks and balances designed to obstruct the democratic will of the people. Wyoming with half a million people has two senators, the same number as California with nearly 40 million people. The Senate is at the apex of the lack of democracy in the United States’s political system. The obvious method of electing a President, counting the number of votes for each candidate was jettisoned in favour of an electoral college

They brought a gallows, the symbol of lynching, to hang the 'traitors' in Congress

The Constitution is sclerotic and it is deliberately designed to be so. Supreme Court justices, who are political nominees, are there for life. There is now a 6-3 majority to make abortion illegal despite majority support for it in America. Congressional districts are purposely gerrymandered. The Republican Party openly seeks to suppress the votes of poor and Black people through a variety of means such as ID requirements (which Boris Johnson is trying to introduce here) and stipulations in some states that ex-felons cannot vote.  Remember that one in three Black males sees the inside of the US prison estate.

Trump merely tried to step up the voter suppression by invalidating the mail-in ballots of those who, in the middle of a pandemic, wished not to risk their life in order to vote.

This is the democracy that that pathetic mannequin of a Labour Party leader , Keir Sturmer idolises. But whatever our views of the mob that attacked Capitol Hill on Wednesday, let us not pretend that they were attacking democracy.

Israel flag waving at January 6th MAGA rally, Capitol Mall

Perhaps the most exquisite images of Wednesday’s events were seeing sweaters embroided with ‘Auschwitz camp’ and 6MWE (6 million was not enough) side by side with the Israeli flag. It is no coincidence that the last defiant supporter of Trump is Netanyahu. If America’s electorate had reflected opinion in Israel then he would have won by 70% to 13%. Trump has a settlementTrump Heights named after him. It is more than fitting that Israel should pay homage to the man who has done more to enable anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and White Supremacists than any other person on Earth.

See below for two articles on collusion between the White Supremacists and the Police and the support of Zionists for the White Riot.

Tony Greenstein

Partners in Crime: The Siege of the Capitol, Police and White Supremacy

That a throng of right-wing thugs, neo-Nazis, and insurrectionists were able to barge into the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday is, to make a severe understatement, troubling. Once again, American cops have expressed support for a right-wing insurrection and, in at least three cases, have taken part in the riot themselves. The obvious contrast between Wednesday’s display and the treatment that Black Lives Matter protesters often face is so easy that it risks obfuscating the long historical connection between law enforcement and white supremacy.

The events on Wednesday didn’t occur without violence and hostilities: U.S. Capitol Police announced on Thursday that one officer, who was injured in a confrontation with protesters, later died; four protesters were killed in the chaos—one of whom was shot by Capitol police. But the links between law enforcement officers and white supremacists groups are appalling—and not surprising.

Rightwing Zionist on the right besides Confederate Flag

On Wednesday evening, former Oakland Police Officer Jurell Snyder told Joe Vazquez, a reporter with the Bay Area’s KPIX television station, that he believed it was worthwhile to break the law in order to take a stand against Democrats who, in his mind, had sold out the country.

“What do you think is worse, Joe? Storming the Capitol with a flag, or committing treason against your country?” Snyder asked rhetorically.

Worse yet, on Wednesday, New York magazine reported that David Ellis, the current police chief in Troy, New Hampshire, attended the day’s events, though it’s unclear if he directly took part in the siege on the Capitol. And, late Thursday night, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees San Antonio, Texas, announced that Lt. Roxanne Mathai is under investigation both internally and criminally for posting photographs on Facebook from the riot. Sheriff Javier Salazar told reporters Thursday that his office had forwarded the images to the FBI. San Antonio news station KSAT reported that Mathai has been on administrative leave since October due to allegations that she’d had an inappropriate relationship with an incarcerated person.

Not to be outdone, other cops announced their support for the siege on the internet. On Thursday, Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb posted a video on Facebook in which he expressed support for the rioters and said he doesn’t “know how loud we have to get before they start to listen to us.” He has since deleted the video.

Likewise, in an interview with Chicago NPR affiliate WBEZ, John Catanzara, head of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police union lodge, expressed support for the mob and spouted debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.

Congressmen fleeing the mob

“They’re individuals,” Catanzara said. “They get to do what they want. Again, they were voicing frustration. They’re entitled to voice their frustration. They clearly have been ignored and they’re still being ignored as if they’re lunatics and treasonous now, which is beyond stupid.”

A review by The Appeal shows that police forums are awash in misinformation and right-wing conspiracies about the Capitol riots. On Thee Rant, an anonymous forum for New York Police Department members, one user named “James-Bond007” claimed that “2016 was the last free and fair election that this country has seen.” Another user made the antisemitic remark that someone in the federal government had been paid off with “shekels.” On LEOAffairs, a forum popular with Florida police officers, one anonymous user in the Miami Police Department’s forum wrote that this election was “a push to start an agenda of future communism and dictatorship.”

That an angry mob of armed right-wing insurrectionists was able to so easily push itself into the U.S. Capitol is nightmarish on its face. But it may be a much darker fact to realize that quite so many people vested with the authority to kill others seem so willing to sympathize with those who dream of a violent revolt against the government.

This is, of course, a trend as old as American policing itself. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, police forces—which, in many cases, began as patrols to catch runaway slaves—counted scores of Ku Klux Klan members within their ranks. (In fact, Klansmen across the country routinely bragged about the group’s ties to law-enforcement during the terrorist group’s heyday.) In the 1920s, both Los Angeles County Sheriff William Traeger and Los Angeles Police Chief Louis D. Oaks admitted they’d been members of the so-called Invisible Empire as well. On America’s other coast, the Miami Police Department throughout the 1920s worked openly alongside Klan members to harass Black residents in the city’s segregated areas, Miami historian Paul George wrote in the 1979 journal article “Policing Miami’s Black Community, 1896-1930.”

In the years since the Klan fell from prominence, researchers and even the federal government have warned that white supremacists have continued to work closely with local cops. In 2017, The Intercept obtained documents confirming that the FBI had investigated “active links” between local law-enforcement members, white supremacists, and members of armed militia groups. Some of those “links” aren’t entirely secret: According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a worryingly large number of American sheriffs have expressed sympathies with the a group called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), a militia-adjacent group that pushes cops not to enforce gun-control laws that, in their opinion, violate the U.S. Constitution.

Indeed, CSPOA’s 2012 sheriff of the year—former Grant County, Oregon Sheriff Glenn Palmer—was known for his close ties with local militia groups. According to the SPLC, Palmer had repeatedly met with and expressed sympathies for the armed, right-wing insurrectionists led by Ammon Bundy who, in 2016, occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon.

Another CSPOA sheriff of the year, Dar Leaf of Barry County, Michigan, made headlines in October, after reporters exposed that he had shared a stage at an anti-coronavirus-lockdown rally with one of the men charged with attempting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer last year. Speaking to West Michigan’s Fox affiliate, Leaf defended the men. He said he knew two of the accused plotters, but said he thought they were good people who might have been, in his opinion, trying to perform a citizens’ arrest on the governor.

“It’s just a charge, and they say a ‘plot to kidnap’ and you got to remember that,” Leaf astoundingly said. “Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt? Because you can still in Michigan if it’s a felony, make a felony arrest.” In December, Leaf filed a lawsuit alleging voter fraud in 2020’s presidential election.

That police officers—who count massive numbers of Trump supporters in their ranks—treated a pro-Trump mob with kid gloves should surprise no one. Deeper than a question of policing, the event displayed American law enforcement’s centuries-long links to white supremacy.

At MAGA Rally, Israeli Flag and Neo-Nazis Co-Exist…Awkwardly

Richard Silverstein

If you’re Jewish (and even if you’re not) you may be wondering what the hell was going on with yesterday’s MAGA rally and Lootapalooza at the Capitol. And I’m not talking about the overall madness of hundreds of white Supremacists, neo-Nazis and Trump Kool Aid drinkers, who stormed the Capitol and made American democracy look like a beer-soaked frat party.

No, I’m talking about some closely related incidents of special interest to Jews. First, of course was the glaring presence of anti-Semites proudly bearing their “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirts or their “6MWE” (“Six million was not enough”) t-shirts. It almost goes without saying that Donald Trump’s most devoted followers are irredeemable anti-Semites. And of course, they’ve committed far worse acts against Jews in other settings than they did yesterday: like Pittsburgh, Poway and elsewhere.

But the real Twilight-Zone-stuff involved Jews who joinedin the mayhem. Jews who overlooked the inherent anti-Semitism of the MAGA movement because it fulfils some higher sense of duty.

Exhibit A is Aaron Mostofsky, prominently featured in photographs yesterday donning a coonskin fur pelt, as another protester parades past him with a Confederate flag. He looked like a cross between a stoned-out freak and a Yiddishe Daniel Boone. When questioned, Aaron proudly identified himself and his hometown, Brooklyn. This enabled his relatives and NY reporters to expose his family background: his father is Judge Shlomo “Steven” Mostofsky of Kings County Supreme Court. The elder M is a power in Democratic Borough politics and former president of National Council of Young Israel.

I am disappointed but not surprised that while many are calling for the resignations of Sens. Cruz and Hawley for their role in that days proceedings, no one in the Brooklyn political or Jewish community has called for the Judge to consider his own position and acknowledge the evil perpetrated by his son. Nor has the elder Mostofsky made any statement that I’m aware of. He’s refused to comment to reporters who’ve repeatedly sought him out.

Worth noting here is that Young Israel is on the extreme right end of the modern Orthodox movement. It not only ardently supports Israel’s right wing government and Israeli settlements, it was among the first Jewish supporters of Trump’s candidacy.  Young Israel threw a gala fundraising event honoring Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, close associates of Rudy Giuliani. Also present were Kevin McCarthy, Mike Huckabee and Giuliani.  Hebrew MAGA caps were prominently featured. Among the epithets bestowed that night on the candidate were “Trump, King of Israel.” I don’t know if Judge Mostofsky attended this shindig, but as a past National Council president he very well may have.  Only in New York Orthodox Jewish politics could someone be a leader of a Jewish group supporting Trump while being a fixture in the local Democratic Party.

Many New York Orthodox Jews live in majority minority communities in New York. Though relations have been better with local African-American and Hispanics over the past few decades, some of the most conservative of Orthodox Jews continue to mouth racist tropes regarding their neighbors. They view them in much the same way that MAGA and White supremacists view them: with fear and loathing.  That may be what fuels the hate of some Orthodox Jews like Mostofsky.

Mostofsky’s brother, Nachman, attended the rally. But he claims he did not enter the Capitol building.  Nachman is a local district leader and head of the South Brooklyn Conservative Party. In an interview, he blamed the incursion on Antifa, a concoction invented by far-right conspiracists. He is also the executive director of the political arm of Young Israel, Chovevei Zion, which is all-in for Trump and his agenda.

There was another anomalous sight at yesterday’s “festivities.” There among the fluttering flags of MAGA, ‘Trump is My President,’ and Old Glory was the Israeli flag. What was it doing in such a setting? Again, how does an American Jew fly that flag in that place and think it’s an appropriate thing to do?

To understand the answer you have to grasp several complex and contradictory ideas at once. Both anti-Semites and Zionists often make a distinction between Israel and Jews. Jews, especially those in the Diaspora, are bad. Israel is good.

How do they make such a distinction?  Anti-Semites who admire Israel, separate it from Jews. They admire Zionism not just as a form of nationalism, but as a movement that proudly boasts of its exclusiveness. Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people; just as white supremacists want a state for the white race. In this sense, race and religion become almost interchangeable.

When neo-Nazis like Richard Spencer visit Israel as he has, he marvels at the Judeo-supremacy he sees both in Israel proper and in occupied Palestine. A state offering superior rights to Jews and which has expelled huge numbers of non-Jews is music to his ears. He sees Zionism as the same fight he is mounting within American society to separate from non-whites and empower his own race by demanding sovereignty. He told an Israeli TV interviewer this:

“As an Israeli citizen, someone who understands your identify, who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me who has analogous feelings about whites.  I mean, you could say that I’m a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland that for us and ourselves just like you want a secure homeland in Israel.”

It’s no accident that Bibi Netanyahu’s closest political allies in Europe are anti-Semites: Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Andrzej Duda. It’s also no accident that almost all the Jews in these two countries were exterminated by the Nazis with varying levels of collaboration from local officials. European anti-Semites hate the Jews among them, but love Jews who emigrate to Israel. Because they live in exactly the sort of state these national-supremacists want for themselves: a sovereign state for pure Hungarians or Poles. One that excludes non natives like Roma, Jews, Muslims or African refugees.  It is, ironically, the same reason Adolf Eichmann said that if he were a Jew he too would be a Zionist.

The most troubling aspect of this increasing alliance between Israel’s dominant right-wing and its European counterparts is that Israel is rapidly becoming precisely the sort of state Germany was under the Nazis. The same fascist tendencies; the same repression of speech and individual liberty; the same impulse to eliminate enemies, both internal and external; the same readiness to make war as a means of pursuing national interests.

When you look at yesterday’s developments with these phenomena in mind what seems strange becomes clear.

The Police Enabled the Far-Right Mob That Violently Stormed the Capitol Building

Riotous Republican Lawmakers

 The Decision of the Socialist Party to Stand a Candidate, Knowing They Had no Chance of Winning was Sheer Madness

Useless right-winger Christine McAnea is narrowly elected thanks to the self-destructive sectarianism of the left

UNISON has been controlled by the right-wing ever since it was founded.  First Rodney Bickerstaffe and then the insipid Blairite clone Dave Prentis were General Secretary.  Under Prentis UNISON became a byword for political corruption when he was found to have cheated, enlisting paid union officials in London as part of his campaign.

A genuine working class activist who would have turned UNISON into the fighting union it should be

Christine McAnea, a former assistant general secretary, was narrowly backed by the National Executive polling 63,900 votes, 47.7 per cent of the vote. Paul Holmes, a genuine working class candidate who promised to do the job on a workers’ wage, received the nomination of both the South East and North West regions. Paul received 45,220 votes.

This useless lump of lard is the Regional official who investigated me - the only time I ever saw him before that was when Prentis sent him to our union meeting to argue in favour of calling off strike action

Roger McKenzie, the soft left candidate who was supported by Jeremy Corbyn, came third with 14,450 votes and Hugo Pierre of the Socialist Party was last with 10,382 votes.

It is clear that a single left candidate could have won. A combined left campaign could have made the difference. If Hugo Pierre had pulled out pressure could have been put on McKenzie to do the same. It was sheer sectarian madness, a classic case of building the party at the expense of the class, which led to Pierre to stubbornly refusing to quit despite having no chance whatsoever.

For 10 years, throughout the years of austerity of Cameron, May and Johnson, Prentis did all he could to damp down action against the Tories/Lib Dems savage cuts in local government. Workers in Southampton Council having been betrayed simply switched to Unite.

I was suspendedfor 3 years from UNISON for publicly criticising Steve Terry, a London regional official who scabbed on Stan Keable who was sacked when on a demonstration he argued, quite correctly, that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis during the war. A clear case of free speech but Terry, being a right-wing  Progress councillor on Walthamstow Council, refused to give Stan any support and even acted to prevent me representing him at an appeal hearing at Fulham and Hammersmith Council.

Despite failing to give Stan any support he easily won his Employment Tribunal case, the appeal for which is currently being heard before the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

Dave Prentis - in a competition with Keir Starmer, its difficult to know who is the more charismatic - his only talent was for running the union like a mafia boss

UNISON is a rich union with at least £100 million in reserve. It is in an excellent position to mount a fightback against the cuts in local government yet its only achievements have been to feather the nest of its unelected, unaccountable officials. When disciplinary action was first taken against me who did I deal with but a Beth Bickerstaffe, the Executive Secretary. 

It was I thought a strange coincidence that she shared the same unusual surname with the first General Secretary, Rodney Bickerstaffe.  But having inquired of her, without success, whether she was any relation, I later learnt that she was his daughter-in-law! 

I am sure that her interview was one of those equal opportunities interviews, except that she seems to have been more equal than the rest!

Either way the General Secretary election was a golden opportunity to sweep the right-wing out of the union and transform UNISON into a fighting union. Careerism and left sectarianism have ensured that the right-wing narrowly retains their hold.

There will be fresh elections in 5 years time.  I just hope that the Socialist Party has learnt its lesson and doesn’t split the vote again for narrow sectarian party building purposes. The purpose of left groups it to increase the fighting capacity of the working class not to let the right-wing of the trade union movement retain their grip.

Tony Greenstein

See

Holmes streets ahead to win endorsement of another Unison region – this time union’s biggest – in general secretary contest

Christina McAnea elected as Unison's first female leader

Why it’s the Shministim not ‘Zionists without qualification’ (Starmer) who Labour should be supporting

Last week 60 Israeli high school students issued a letter declaring that they would not serve in the Israeli army which they declared was not there to defend Israel but to ‘exercise control over a civilian population’.  

Unlike previous declarations they did not confine their objections to serving in the West Bank but declared that the Palestinians had ‘lived under violent occupation for 72 years’. This is a major political advance over all previous declarations because it recognises that the occupation of Palestine did not begin in 1967 as ‘liberal’ Zionists declare but in 1948 with the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

It takes apart the loyal Zionist opposition in Israel, represented by Meretz (and formerly Mapam) that in order to criticise the occupation you have to loyally serve in the army. They ask ‘How does it make sense that in order to protest against systemic violence and racism, we have to first be part of the very system of oppression we are criticizing?’

The army is the institution in Israel which has the highest rate of approval. These youngers relate how they ‘grew up in the shadow of the symbolic ideal of the heroic soldier’ and describe the military not merely as serving the occupation but being the occupation.  In sharp  break with the normative adulation of the military they describe it as ‘a violent, corrupt, and corrupting institution to the core’.

Quite remarkably they describe how they are ordered to put on the

‘blood stained military uniform and preserve the legacy of the Nakba and of occupation. Israeli society has been built upon these rotten roots, and it is apparent in all facets of life: in the racism, the hateful political discourse, the police brutality, and more.’

This is a narrative which breaks from the narrative of the ‘war against terrorism’  and describes how the siege of Gaza has resulted in ‘no drinkable water nor electricity in Gaza for most hours of the day’.

The military is presented as a ‘melting pot’ in Israel, the place where divisions of race and class are erased.  The Shministim argue that on the contrary the military reinforces these divisions as ‘soldiers from upper-middle class are channelled into positions with economic and civilian prospects, while soldiers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are channelled into positions which have high mental and physical risk’.

The Israeli army is presented as a bastion of (Israeli Jewish) womens equality and freedom. How, they ask ‘does it make sense that the struggle against gender inequality is achieved through the oppression of Palestinian women?’ It is a question that Zionist feminists in the West would do well   to ponder as they  try to subvert the struggle of women’s liberation into justifying imperialism and racism.

The letter ends with a call for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees thus challenging the Jewish nature of the Israeli state.  This is indeed a remarkable letter and it is one that all socialists and supporters of freedom should support.

By way of contrast we should note how the miserable automaton who leads the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, by describing himself as a ‘Zionist without qualification’ has placed himself on the side of the racists and the ethnic cleansers, the military rather than their opponents.

These young people are incredibly brave as it isolates them within Israel’s settler colonial society. They include Hallel Rabin who served 56 days in prison, Brand-Feigenbaum who will have serve 27 days in prison and  Roman Levin who has spent over 70 days in military prison.

Below are a number of articles including a letter from the parents of Yair Tal, who is also refusing to serve in the Israeli army.

Tony Greenstein

2021 Shministiyot Letter

The Full Letter

We are a group of Israeli 18-year-olds at a crossroads. The Israeli state is demanding our conscription into the military. Allegedly, a defense force which is supposed to safeguard the existence of the State of Israel. In reality, the goal of the Israeli military is not to defend itself from hostile militaries, but to exercise control over a civilian population. In other words, our conscription to the Israeli military has political context and implications. It has implications, first and foremost on the lives of the Palestinian people who have lived under violent occupation for 72 years. Indeed, the Zionist policy of brutal violence towards and expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and lands began in 1948 and has not stopped since. The occupation is also poisoning Israeli society–it is violent, militaristic, oppressive, and chauvinistic. It is our duty to oppose this destructive reality by uniting our struggles and refusing to serve these violent systems–chief among them the military. Our refusal to enlist to the military is not an act of turning our backs on Israeli society. On the contrary, our refusal is an act of taking responsibility over our actions and their repercussions.

The military is not only serving the occupation, the military is the occupation. Pilots, intelligence units, bureaucratic clerks, combat soldiers, all are executing the occupation. One does it with a keyboard and the other with a machine gun at a checkpoint. Despite all of this, we grew up in the shadow of the symbolic ideal of the heroic soldier. We prepared food baskets for him in the high holidays, we visited the tank he fought in, we pretended we were him in the pre-military programs in high school, and we revered his death on memorial day. The fact that we are all accustomed to this reality does not make it apolitical. Enlistment, no less than refusal, is a political act.

We are used to hearing that it is legitimate to criticize the occupation only if we took an active part in enforcing it. How does it make sense that in order to protest against systemic violence and racism, we have to first be part of the very system of oppression we are criticizing?

The track upon which we embark at infancy, of an education teaching violence and claims over land, reaches its peak at age 18, with the enlistment in the military. We are ordered to put on the bloodstained military uniform and preserve the legacy of the Nakba and of occupation. Israeli society has been built upon these rotten roots, and it is apparent in all facets of life: in the racism, the hateful political discourse, the police brutality, and more.

This military oppression goes hand in hand with economic oppression. While the citizens of the Occupied Palestinian Territories are impoverished, wealthy elites become richer at their expense. Palestinian workers are systematically exploited, and the weapons industry uses the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a testing ground and as a showcase to bolster its sales. When the government chooses to uphold the occupation, it is acting against our interest as citizens– large portions of taxpayer money is funding the “security” industry and the development of settlements instead of welfare, education, and health.

The military is a violent, corrupt, and corrupting institution to the core. But its worst crime is enforcing the destructive policy of the occupation of Palestine. Young people our age are required to take part in enforcing closures as a means of “collective punishment,” arresting and jailing minors, blackmailing to recruit “collaborators” and more– all of these are war crimes which are executed and covered up every day. Violent military rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is enforced through policies of apartheid entailing two different legal systems: one for Palestinians and the other for Jews. The Palestinians are constantly faced with undemocratic and violent measures, while Jewish settlers who commit violent crimes– first and foremost against Palestinians but also against soldiers- are “rewarded” by the Israeli military turning a blind eye and covering up these transgressions. The military has been enforcing a siege on Gaza for over ten years. This siege has created a massive humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and is one of the main factors which perpetuates the cycle of violence of Israel and Hamas. Because of the siege, there is no drinkable water nor electricity in Gaza for most hours of the day. Unemployment and poverty are pervasive and the healthcare system lacks the most basic means. This reality serves as the foundation on top of which the disaster of COVID-19 has only made things worse in Gaza.

It is important to emphasize that these injustices are not a one-time slippage or straying away from the path. These injustices are not a mistake or a symptom, they are the policy and the disease. The actions of the Israeli military in 2020 are nothing but a continuation and upholding of the legacy of massacre, expulsion of families, and land theft, the legacy which “enabled” the establishment of the State of Israel, as a proper democratic state, for Jews only.

Historically, the military has been seen as a tool which serves the “melting pot” policy, as an institution which crosscuts social class and gender divides in Israeli society. In reality, this could not be further from the truth. The military is enacting a clear program of ‘channeling’; soldiers from upper-middle class are channelled into positions with economic and civilian prospects, while soldiers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are channelled into positions which have high mental and physical risk and which do not provide the same head start in civil society. Simultaneously, women’s representation in violent positions such as pilots, tank commanders, combat soldiers, and intelligence officers, is being marketed as feminist achievement. How does it make sense that the struggle against gender inequality is achieved through the oppression of Palestinian women? These “achievements” sidestep solidarity with the struggle of Palestinian women. The military is cementing these power relations and the oppression of marginalized communities through a cynical co-opting of their struggles.

We are calling for high school seniors (shministiyot) our age to ask themselves: What and who are we serving when we enlist in the military? Why do we enlist? What reality do we create by serving in the military of the occupation? We want peace, and real peace requires justice. Justice requires acknowledgment of the historical and present injustices, and of the continuing Nakba. Justice requires reform in the form of the end of the occupation, the end of the siege on Gaza, and recognition of the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Justice demands solidarity, joint struggle, and refusal.

Solidarity

The letter is addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, army Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, Minister of Defense Benny Gantz and Education Minister Yoav Galant.

Please signthe letter of solidarity.

‘We’re taking responsibility’: Sixty teens announce refusal to serve in Israeli army

Dozens of Israeli teens sign public letter objecting to military service over Israel's policies of apartheid, neoliberalism, and denial of the Nakba.

By Oren ZivJanuary 6, 2021

Conscientious objectors Shahar Peretz (left) and Daniel Peldi at an anti-annexation protest in the city of Rosh Ha'ayin June 2020. (Oren Ziv)

Sixty Israeli teenagers published an open letter addressed to top Israeli officials on Tuesday morning, in which they declared their refusal to serve in the army in protest of its policies of occupation and apartheid.

The so-called “Shministim Letter” (an initiative with the Hebrew nickname given to high school seniors) decries Israel’s military control of Palestinians in the occupied territories, referring to the regime in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem as an “apartheid” system entailing “two different systems of law; one for for Palestinians and another for Jews.”

“It is our duty to oppose this destructive reality by uniting our struggles and refusing to serve these violent systems–chief among them the military,”reads the letter, which was addressed to Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Education Minister Yoav Galant, and IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi.

“Our refusal to enlist to the military is not an act of turning our backs on Israeli society,” the letter continues. “On the contrary, our refusal is an act of taking responsibility over our actions and their repercussions. Enlistment, no less than refusal, is a political act. How does it make sense that in order to protest against systemic violence and racism, we have to first be part of the very system of oppression we are criticizing?”

The public refusenik letter is the first of its kind to go beyond the occupation and refer to the expulsion of Palestinians during the 1948 war: “We are ordered to put on the bloodstained military uniform and preserve the legacy of the Nakba and of occupation. Israeli society has been built upon these rotten roots, and it is apparent in all facets of life: in the racism, the hateful political discourse, the police brutality, and more.”

The letter further emphasizes the connection between Israel’s neoliberal and military policies:

“While the citizens of the Occupied Palestinian Territories are impoverished, wealthy elites become richer at their expense. Palestinian workers are systematically exploited, and the weapons industry uses the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a testing ground and as a showcase to bolster its sales. When the government chooses to uphold the occupation, it is acting against our interest as citizens– large portions of taxpayer money is funding the “security” industry and the development of settlements instead of welfare, education, and health.”

Israeli conscientious objector Hallel Rabin, Kibbutz Harduf, Israel. (Oren Ziv)

Some of the signatories are expected to appear before the IDF conscientious objectors’ committee and be sent to military prison, while others have found ways to avoid army service. Among the signatories is Hallel Rabin, who was released from prison in November 2020 after serving 56 days behind bars. A number of the signatories also signed an open letterlast June demanding that Israel stop the annexation of the West Bank.

‘Who are we actually protecting?’

Israelis have published a number of refusal letters ever since Israel took control of the occupied territories in 1967. While for decades the letters predominantly referred to opposing service in the occupied territories specifically, the last two Shministim Letters, published in 2001 and 2005, respectively, included signatories who refused to serve in the army altogether.

“The reality is that the army commits war crimes on a daily basis — this is a reality I cannot stand behind, and I feel I must shout as loud as I can that the occupation is never justified,”

says Neve Shabtai Levin, 16, from Hod Hasharon. Levin, now in 11th grade, plans to refuse army service after graduation, even if it means going to prison.

“The desire not to enlist in the IDF is something I have been thinking about since I was eight,” Levin continues. “I did not know there was an option to refuse until around last year, when I spoke to people about not wanting to enlist, and they asked me if I was planning to refuse. I began to do some research, and that’s how I got to the letter.”

Levin adds that he signed the letter

“because I believe it can do good and hopefully reach out to teenagers who, like me, do not want to enlist but do not know about the option, or will raise questions for them.”

Shahar Peretz, 18, from Kfar Yona, is planning on refusing this summer. “For me, the letter is addressed to teenagers, to those who are going to enlist in another year or those who have already enlisted,” she says.

“The point is to reach out to those who are now wearing uniforms and are actually on the ground occupying a civilian population, and to provide them with a mirror that will make them ask questions such as ‘who am I serving? What is the result of the decision to enlist? What interests am I serving? Who are we actually protecting when we wear uniforms, hold weapons, and detain Palestinians at checkpoints, invade houses, or arrest children?’”

Conscientious objector Shahar Peretz at an anti-annexation protest in the city of Rosh Ha’ayin June 2020. (Oren Ziv)

Peretz recalls her own experiences that changed her thinking around enlistment:

“[My] encounter with Palestinians in summer camps was the first time I was personally and humanly exposed to the occupation. After meeting them, I realized that the army is a big part of this equation, in its influence over the lives of Palestinians under Israeli rule. This led me to understand that I am not prepared to take a direct or indirect part in the occupation of millions of people.”

Yael Amber, 19, from Hod Hasharon, is mindful of the difficulties her peers may encounter with such a decision.

“The letter is not a personal criticism of 18-year-old boys and girls who enlist. Refusing to enlist is very complicated, and in many ways it is a privilege. The letter is a call to action for young people prior to enlistment, but it is mainly a demand for [young people] to take a critical look at a system that requires us to take part in immoral acts toward another people.”

Amber, who was discharged from the army on medical grounds, now lives in Jerusalem and volunteers in the civil service.

“I have quite a few friends who oppose the occupation, define themselves as left-wing, and still serve in the army. This is not a criticism of people, but of a system that puts 18-year-olds in such a position, which does not leave [them] too many choices.”

While conscientious objection has historically been understood as a decision to go to prison, the signatories emphasize that there are various methods that one can refuse, and that finding ways to eschew military service can itself be considered a form of refusal. “We understand that going to jail is a price that not everyone has the privilege of paying, both on a material level, time, and criticism from one’s surroundings,” Amber says.

‘Part of the legacy of the Nakba’

The signatories note that they hope the political atmosphere created in recent months by the nationwide anti-Netanyahu protests — known as the “Balfour protests” for the street address of the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem — will allow them to talk about the occupation.

“It’s the best momentum,” says Amber. “We have the infrastructure of Balfour, the beginning of change, and this generation is proving its political potential. We thought about it a lot in the letter — there is a group that is very interested in politics, but how do you get them to think about the occupation?”

Levin also believes that it is possible to appeal to young Israelis, particularly those who go to the anti-Bibi protests.

“With all the talk about corruption and the social structure of the country, we must not forget that the foundations here are rotten. Many say the military is an important process [Israelis] go through, that it will make you feel like you are part of and contributing to the country. But it is not really any of these things. The army forces 18-year-olds to commit war crimes. The army makes people see Palestinians as enemies, as a target that should be harmed.”

As the students emphasize in the letter, the act of refusal is intended to assert their responsibility to their fellow Israelis rather than disengage from them. “It is much more convenient not to think about the occupation and the Palestinians,” says Amber.

“[But] Writing the letter and making this kind of discourse accessible is a service to my society. If I wanted to be different or did not care, I would not choose to put myself in a public position that receives a lot of criticism. We all pay a certain price because we care.”

“This is activism that comes from a place of solidarity,” echoes Daniel Paldi, 18, who plans to appear before the conscientious objectors’ committee. “Although the letter is first and foremost an act of protest against occupation, racism, and militarism, it is accessible. We want to make the refusal less taboo.” Paldi notes that if the committee rejects his request, he is willing to sit in jail.

Palestinians hold a protest against a new settlement outpost near the village of Beit Dajan, West Bank, November 27, 2020. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)

“We tried not to demonize either side, including the soldiers, who, in all of its absurdity, are our friends or people our age,” he notes. “We believe that the first step in any process is the recognition of the issues that are not discussed in Israeli society.”

The signatories of the latest Shministim Letter differed from previous versions in that they touched on one of the most sensitive subjects in Israeli history: the expulsion and flight of Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948. “The message of the letter is to take responsibility for the injustices we have committed, and to talk about the Nakba and the end of the occupation,” says Shabtai Levy. “It’s a discourse that has disappeared from the public sphere and must come back.”

“It’s impossible to talk about a peace agreement without understanding that all this is a direct result of 1948,” Levy continued. “The occupation of 1967 is part of the legacy of the Nakba. It’s all part of the same manifestations of occupation, these are not different things.”

Adding to this point, Paldi concludes:

“As long as we are the occupying side, we must not determine the narrative of what does or doesn’t constitute occupation or whether it began in 1967. In Israel, language is political. The prohibition against saying ‘Nakba’ does not refer to the word itself, but rather the erasure of history, mourning, and pain.”

‘Refusing to serve in the army is my small act of making change’

Hallel Rabin spent 56 days in military prison for refusing to serve in the IDF. Now she opens up about her time behind bars, conversations with her fellow inmates, and talking to young Israelis about the occupation.

By Oren Ziv November 27, 2020

As Hallel Rabin stood before the IDF conscientious objectors committee two weeks ago, the military body that decides whether or not she would be sent back to prison for refusing to serve in the army, she was asked the strangest of questions: “Would you agree to wear the army uniform if it were pink?”

“I don’t have an issue with the color,” she responded, “I have an issue with wearing an army uniform — regardless of the army.” A conscientious objector, Rabin was still in military prison for refusing to serve due to the army’s occupation policies. On November 20, Rabin’s fourth stint in military prison came to an end; a day later the army officially gave her the discharge she had wanted. She served a total of 56 days behind bars.

Rabin, 19, from Kibbutz Harduf in northern Israel, was first imprisoned in August after appearing before the committee to appeal for an exemption. She was tried and sentenced to two different periods of incarceration, including during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Upon her release last week, Rabin thought she would be going home for a brief stint before another sentencing. But when she turned on her phone, she received a message from her attorney, Adv. Asaf Weitzen, who informed her that the committee had accepted her request and that she was being released.

As she told Orly Noy in October, Rabin was raised by a mother who taught civics, and began asking herself questions about the reality in Israel from a young age. By the age of 15 she knew she wouldn’t be able to enlist in the army, since doing so goes “against my most basic ideals, and that I cannot support such violent policies.”

Less than a week after her release, Rabin has yet to get used to life outside prison. She wakes up every day at six, as is required on the inside, and answers the hundreds of messages she regularly receives from across the world. I met her this week in Harduf for a conversation about refusing to serve in the army, her time behind bars, and the possibility of talking to young Israelis about refusal.

How did you end up in prison? What did your refusal look like?

“On the day of my enlistment, I arrived at the conscription base knowing that I was going to jail. That was my goal, but I didn’t really understand how to go about it. I started the conscription process but did not know whom to turn to [to refuse]. I sat down on a chair and loudly proclaimed: “I need you to bring someone who will know to tell me what to do. I am a conscientious objector and I need to go to prison and I will not become a soldier.

“Finally, a nice woman took me to an office where I signed a paper saying I was refusing to serve. I found it amusing that my goal was to go to jail, and that once I was there I would be in the right place.”

Rabin was initially sentenced to seven days and was sent to the women’s ward of Prison Six, a military prison in northern Israel. “It was the longest, most exhausting day of my life,” she recounts. “It took me three days to understand what was going on, how to respond [to the prison authorities], how to get around. I learned fast.”

What was your time in jail like?

“It was a crazy experience. I was in a cell with a Border Police officer, a woman who served at a checkpoint, two women who refused to serve as surveillance monitoring operators, one woman who had attacked her commander, and a military police officer who went AWOL. We were six in total.

“The first question they asked me was ‘why are you here?’ I told them, hesitantly, ‘I am a conscientious objector.’ They immediately began asking all the well-known questions: ‘Are you a leftist? Are you pro-Palestinian?’ During my first sentence I learned how to live as a conscientious objector. Every time there was a new group of girls or I went back [to prison], the subject would stir controversy and a great deal of discussion.”

Did the soldiers and commanders in jail talk to you about your decision to refuse?

“There is not one soldier who didn’t hear my story. Even the commanders were interested. There was one officer who told me that she appreciates my decision and even praised me. That was one of the important conversations I had — someone from inside the system understood why I did what I did and had an appreciation for it.

“I didn’t fight with anyone in jail. It was practice for my ego, for my ability to have a conversation, for my ability to be socially flexible. To be in a position in which people disagree with me and in which I feel uncomfortable — almost threatened — but to be okay with that.”

Rabin was released after five days and sent home, where she spent the next 2.5 weeks. “It takes longer to get used to home. In jail there is order in everything, then all of a sudden you’re released. It’s confusing,” she says. “The hardest thing about going back home is returning to jail.”

A view of Israeli military Prison 6. (Oren Ziv)

When she returned to the conscription base in Tel Hashomer, she was sentenced to another two weeks in prison — one week for refusal to serve and another for absenteeism. Like other conscientious objectors, after each stint in prison she received another summons to the base and was repeatedly sentenced.

How did you pass the time?

“I read eight books, including ‘Feminism is for Everybody’ [by bell hooks] and ‘Nonviolence Explained to My Children’ [by Jacques Semelin]. My friends Hillel and Tamar, also conscientious objectors, told me half-jokingly that my homework was to find similarities between feminism and conscientious objection.”

Before her third stint in jail, Rabin decided to go public about her refusal with the help of Mesarvot, a grassroots network that brings together individuals and groups who refuse to enlist in the IDF in protest of the occupation. “At first, I hoped that there wouldn’t be any good reason for me to turn to the media. I had hoped to be discharged by the conscientious objectors committee. I thought it would all come to an end after my first sentence,” she explains.

Even before her enlistment date, Rabin tried to approach the conscience objectors committee, which promptly rejected her request for an exemption. During her first period of incarceration, she filed an appeal and waited for the military to return with its reasons for jailing her. When the arguments were late in coming, she decided to go to the media. After her third time in prison, Mesarvot organized a demonstration in support of Rabin outside the conscription base. She was sentenced to 25 days. Between the third and fourth incarceration periods, Rabin was scheduled to have her second hearing before the IDF conscientious objectors committee.

What was the difference between the first and second committee?

“The second time around was longer, they went deep into the details. The first committee asked me questions to try and prove that my refusal was political and based on conscientious objection rather than on pacifism [the IDF has historically made a distinction between conscripts who can prove they are “non-political pacifists,” and those who refuse to serve over what the army deems “political” reasons, such as specific opposition to the Israeli occupation. Despite the difficulties of doing so, conscripts who can prove they are the former have a higher chance of receiving exemptions].

“In the second committee hearing they asked me why I wasn’t wearing my army uniform. I explained that I had come from my home and that in any case I had refused to enlist as a conscientious objector, which is why I never received a uniform in the first place. Even if they demanded I wear it, I would never put on a uniform. They are trying to understand whether your refusal is political or driven by pacifism, how you respond to situations of violence, and what your lifestyle looks like.”

What did you say?

“I was more prepared [the second time around]. Fifty days in prison, daily conversations on the topic, and interviews with the media helped me explain myself.

“I said that I was not willing to take part in any way in a system whose very essence is based on fighting and violent oppression. I believe that this needs to change, and this is my way to make change. This is my small act. I added that I have been vegetarian my entire life, buy second-hand clothing, and am against exploitation, capitalism, and sexism.”

Did you feel that the committee understood that a pacifist objector who opposes violence will also be against the occupation?

“It upsets them. It’s hard for them. They are four members of the army and a civics professor. All of them are 50 years old or older and have dedicated their lives to reaching high positions [in the IDF], and I’m a 19-year-old girl who tells them ‘this is not okay.’ I am sure that it is personally hard for them. I would not enlist in the Swiss army, but I live here and am supposed to serve in the army that commits these acts. I oppose the occupation because it is violent, oppressive, and racist.”

During her second committee hearing, the members showed Rabin a photo of herself taking part in the Mesarvot protest outside the conscription base, which took place just before she was jailed for the third time. The photo showed her holding a sign that read “Mesarvot” [Hebrew for the feminine form of “refusers”] and “Refusing the occupation is democracy.”

“They asked me what the sign meant,” Rabin says. “I said that it is legitimate to oppose issues that have turned into taboo subjects — that opposing them is democratic.”

Activists in Mesarvot told +972 that over the past half year, the conscientious objectors committee has made it much harder to receive an exemption on conscientious grounds as well as to receive explanations when requests for discharge are denied. The organization hopes that Rabin’s discharge will bring about a change in this policy.

Do you feel it is possible to talk to teenagers about the occupation?

“It’s not about age. I don’t need to wait until half my life is behind me to fight for my principles… it is not a bad thing that I say out loud that going to the conscientious objectors committee is a legitimate option and that it is possible to think for oneself. Even prison isn’t bad. It is exhausting but I did not leave with a feeling of anxiety or wanting to die.”

What kind of responses did you receive after your release?

“A lot of people reached out from Israel and across the world. Some people cursed me. Others wrote that [my refusal] was inspirational and brings hope that there are teenagers who stand up for what they believe. Palestinians also wrote to me after [my story] was published in Turkey. Someone from Tulkarem wrote that he appreciates my act and hopes that one day we’ll drink coffee together and talk about life.”

Israeli conscientious objector sentenced to 20 days in military prison

By +972 MagazineJuly 30, 2019

Conscientious objector Maya Brand-Feigenbaum will serve another 20 days behind bars for her refusal to serve in the Israeli army due to its policies of occupation.

Israeli conscientious objector Maya Brand-Feigenbaum. ‘I am aware that we need an army to protect us against real threats. But at the same time, there is a need for people who fight for a reality free of war.’ (Ido Ramon/Mesarvot)

An IDF disciplinary body sentenced 18-year-old Israeli conscientious objector Maya Brand-Feigenbaum to 20 days in military prison on Tuesday over her refusal to serve in the military.

This is the second time Brand-Feigenbaum, from the northern town of Tivon, has been sentenced for refusing to serve since she her conscription date on July 14. Upon completing her sentence, will have spent a total of 27 days behind bars. Military conscription is mandatory for most Jewish Israelis.

“I refuse to serve in the army because I believe that this is the best and most meaningful way for me to promote my anti-war principles and help put an end to the occupation,”Brand-Feigenbaum wrote in a statement published prior to her first stint in military prison.

“The decades-long control over a nation compromises the security of the State of Israel,” continues the statement.

“As a woman who loves this country, whose landscapes and people are a part of me, I cannot take part in maintaining this situation. I am aware that in our reality we need an army to protect us against real threats, but at the same time, there is a need for people who fight for a reality free of war. Anti-war activities will benefit both the country and the world to bring long-term security. Taking action to resolve the conflict and end the occupation will benefit of all residents of the land, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian.”

Prior to her first appearance before the IDF’s conscientious objectors committee, Brand-Feigenbaum received a visit by Joint List Chairman Ayman Odeh at her home in Tivon, who called Brand-Feigenbaum and her fellow conscientious objectors a “ray of humanity that lights the way toward ending the occupation and promoting peace.”

Meanwhile, the army has yet to release 20-year-old conscientious objector Roman Levin from military prison, despite a recommendation by the conscientious objector’s committee to do so. Levin has spent over 70 days in military prison. Both Levin and Brand-Feigenbaum are supported by Mesarvot — Refusing to Serve the Occupation, a grassroots network that brings together individuals and groups who refuse to enlist in the IDF in protest at the occupation.

Conscientious objector Roman Levin. ‘My refusal is an act of protest against an occupation that has lasted more than 50 years and of solidarity with the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza.’ (Ido Ramon/Mesarvot).

Levin, from the city of Bat Yam just south of Tel Aviv, immigrated to Israel with a few members of his family from Ukraine when he was 3 years old. He initially believed his service would contribute to society and fulfill his duties as a citizen.

“I refuse to continue my military service,”Levin said. “My refusal is an act of protest against an occupation that has lasted more than 50 years and of solidarity with the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza.”

This is the fourth time Levin has been sentenced for refusing to serve in the army. He was previously jailed twice after a year and a half of service in the IDF as a truck driver.

60 High School Seniors Refuse to Serve in the Israeli Army Because of the Occupation

The group's members say in a letter their stance comes from 'taking responsibility for our actions and their implications,' and accuse the education system of ignoring the Palestinian narrative

Sixty Israelis of eligible draft age have signed a letter declaring their refusal to serve in the military because of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Departing from previous letters of this kind, the signatories call out the country’s education system for various issues, such as encouraging enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces and emphasizing the Jewish narrative in Bible and history classes.

They also draw attention to issues they say the curriculum ignores, such as the expulsion of Arabs in 1948 and the current violation of human rights in the occupied territories.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the defense and education ministries and to the IDF chief of staff, the teens wrote:

“The state demands that we enlist into an army that is ostensibly meant to ensure the existence of the state. But in practice, army operations are not directed mainly at defending against enemy armies, but at subjugating a civilian population. Thus, our mobilization has a context and implications.” They say their refusal to enlist is not an act of disengagement or turning away from Israeli society, but rather “the taking of responsibility for our actions and their implications.”

They added: “We grew up with the ideal of the heroic soldier, we sent them care packages, we visited the tanks they fought in, we dressed up as soldiers in premilitary training camps and we elevated their deaths on memorial days. The fact that this is the reality we’re all used to does not make it a-political. Enlistment is a political act, no less than refusal to do so.” The letter later refers to “the policy of apartheid as expressed in two separate legal systems, one for Palestinians and one for Jews” and “to the heritage of the Nakba [Arabic for “Catastrophe,” when more than 700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1947-49 Israeli War of Independence] and the occupation, as expressed in “societal racism, an inflammatory political discourse and police violence.”

One of the signatories, Daniel Paldi of Tel Aviv, said: “From a very young age we are raised to be soldiers. Civic classes don’t do much to change the one-directional course of the school system, its pinnacle arriving with the preparations for enlistment in high school.”

Paldi added:

“Why is refusal to enlist perceived as a political action, but school activities meant to encourage enlistment seen as self-evident? It starts with school trips to Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, in which no political contexts are discussed. We’re only told about the battles. There’s an elephant in the room that no one is talking about.”

Paldi notes that on a school trip to southern Israel, the guides warned that “If we don’t work the land, someone else will take it.”

Members of Israeli border police walk at the scene of an incident, at Qalandia checkpoint near Ramallah in the West Bank, December 7, 2020.Credit: Mohamad Torokman / Reuters

The state school curriculum does mention the issue of Palestinian refugees, but many schools prefer not to teach the subject. Paldi says:

“Until we talk about the Nakba in class, how it happened that most of the Palestinians who lived here fled or were expelled, or about the theft of their possessions, we won’t understand how much the problem remains part of our lives. This is sweeping history under the rug. When I began to understand this, I immediately started thinking about what else we were ‘sold’ in school.”

After a struggle lasting months, including spending 56 days in a military prison, one of the signatories of the letter, Hallel Rabin of Kibbutz Harduf, was awarded an exemption from military service as a conscientious objector.

Rabin says the schools only teach the Jewish narrative. In history and civics classes, they present a zero-sum game, in which the right and justification for Jews to live freely automatically denies the rights of the other population.” She adds: “Ultimately, even in schools that try to broaden the picture, in matriculation tests pupils will write what they were told to.” The present letter stems from an understanding of how much schools affect the shaping of our consciousness, she says.

Sivan Tal is with Dori Tal

As parents of a boy destined for enlistment, we decided to take responsibility and refuse to send our son to serve in the IDF.

The following letter was sent to the IDF authorities.

--------

We, the undersigned – Dori and Sivan Tal – refuse to send our son Yair Tal to serve in the IDF. Our refusal is due to reasons of conscience, as will be detailed below.

It’s commonly argued that the decision to refuse to enlist to the IDF is a political decision. We agree with this statement. Furthermore, the logical conclusion of it is that the decision to enlist to the IDF is also a political decision. It is also commonly argued that 18 is too young an age for a political decision of this importance. Here we intervene as parents and claim responsibility for the political decisions of our young son, and our decision is – NO!

Since the decision to enlist or to refuse enlisting the IDF is a political decision, it is crucial to learn the background, the historical facts, the political reality, and the different views on the topic – in order to formulate a political position for making such a decision. Unfortunately, the formal education that our son receives, like all teenagers in the Israeli education system, does not meet any criteria of responsible civic education. In fact, our son was pushed and encouraged to willingly enlist to the IDF in every step of the way. In schools, the history of the country is not truthfully told, and instead only a distorted narrative of it is built through the years to paint an imaginary reality of a peaceful state persecuted by evil-doers seeking to destroy it. All while the country itself is carrying out ethnic cleansing in order to control the land, and anti-democratically and inhumanely persecutes the opponents to the occupation and seeks to exclude and expel the native people of this country – the Palestinian people.

Our son will not be a part of the conquests of the extreme right government controlling the country. We will not allow him to die for the occupation of land and for causing the suffering of others. It is a despicable purpose to die for.

Yair is not religious, nor does he suffer from mental issues or other things that would have granted him exempt. He is healthy in his body and mind and we wish for him to stay that way. We have raised him with love, protected him, supported and educated him for 18 years to the universal values that we believe in. Serving in the IDF stands in stark contrast to these values. Yair is not the property of the state, and the state does not have a moral right to forcibly recruit him to an organization that consistently violates international human rights conventions. We believe that it is our moral duty to oppose his enlistment to the IDF. It is our responsibility as parents.

Additionally, we do not recognise the “conscience committee” of the IDF as the authority to judge in these questions of conscience and morality regarding enlistment and refusal. Our conscience is clear, and we are not asking for the validation and approval of the IDF.

We are certain in our stance that the IDF operations in Gaza and the West Bank are war crimes and crimes against humanity. They severely harm the local population and are a blatant violation of human rights, and do not meet any moral standards. Moreover, they also harm the chance for future coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. Beyond the severe harm to the Palestinian population, these operations also hurt the soldiers – at least those whose hearts are not sealed to the suffering of other human beings and are being forced to cause suffering and injustice.

Even the other operations of the IDF that do not directly deal with the occupation and control of the Palestinians, mainly deal with fighting the forces that resist the Israeli occupation. In the current political climate where the prime minister is accused in court for crimes and his actions are motivated solely by his personal considerations, there is a grave concern that the IDF is called upon to enact unnecessary military operations in order to escalate regional conflicts, taking human lives on both sides. In these conditions, we refuse to have our son be used as a pawn by a system designed to preserve conflict and dangers for political interests.

The IDF acknowledges the right of parents of a single child to refuse the enlistment of him to combat units, or in the case of bereaved families, but we claim our right to refuse the enlistment of all our children. We don’t “give our first child for free”. For the reasons we have detailed above, we claim our right and duty to protect all our children, from the eldest to the youngest.

Just as we have a responsibility towards our son in the context of criminal behaviour, we also have a responsibility towards his actions in the military context. We would not rid ourselves of responsibility if our son would commit a crime such as theft or physical violence in the civic world. This responsibility does not diminish if the crimes are committed in uniform. Political backing of the everyday crimes the IDF commits does not justify or excuse them – just the opposite. Our responsibility as parents is to say – no more. Enlistment to the IDF – not on our watch!

See also

Israeli high school students refuse to join the Israeli military citing the “continuing Nakba”

The Importance of B’Tselem’s Declaration Cannot Be Overestimated – No Longer Can It Be Claimed That Calling Zionism Racist Is Anti-Semitic

On Tuesday, B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, declaredthat

‘A regime of Jewish Supremacy (exists) from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. This is apartheid.’

The importance of this statement cannot be overestimated.

B’Tselem was founded in February 1989 during the first intifada by liberal Zionist politicians and academics. Throughout its existence it has avoided taking political positions on the nature of the Israeli state. Instead it concentrated on human rights work in the Palestinian Territories.

This has not stopped its demonisationin Israel. When Hagai el-Ad, B’tselem’s Executive Director, gave evidence to the UN Security Council advocated that it take action against Israeli settlements, he was condemned by the whole Zionist spectrum including the Israeli Labour Party. Hagai wrotethat

‘The systematic promotion of the supremacy of one group of people over another is deeply immoral and must end.’

This declaration has not come about because of some academic analysis but from the conclusions that have been drawn from 30 years of practical work on the ground. The cantonisation and segmentation of the West Bank has forced this conclusion on it. The disparity between the conditions that exist for the Palestinians and the settlers is clear to anyone with eyes to see.

It has been made even clearer in recent days by the refusal of Israel, in defiance of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to supply vaccines to the Palestinians whilst rolling them out for Jewish settlers. This discrimination is a stark illustration of Israeli apartheid.

Nor are Palestinian citizens of Israel treated equally. There has been a deliberate failure to provide information on vaccines in Arabic, a consequence of the downgrading of the Arabic language consequent on the Jewish Nation State Law. This is coupled with a lack of vaccination centres in Arab localities and a failure to provide vaccination facilities in the ‘unrecognised’ villages of the Naqab. Just 100 out of 90,000 Bedouins, 0.11% have been given the vaccine.

This has not prevented the Jewish Chronicle, which accused Labour under Jeremy Corbyn of ‘anti-Semitism’ from denying what is obvious. Seth Frantzman, Middle East Affairs analyst of the Jerusalem Post wrote:

The 139 countries that recognise the state of Palestine cannot also demand that Israel vaccinates citizens of a foreign state. Should Austria be blamed for not vaccinating the population of Slovakia?

The dishonesty of this racist propaganda is staggering. 139 countries might recognise the fictional State of Palestine, but Israel is not amongst them! The comparison between Austria and Slovakia is even more absurd.  Unless I am mistaken, Austrian troops have not occupied Slovakia since 1945!

Israel is the occupying power and Article 56 of Part IV of the Geneva Convention is quite clear:

The Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining,… public health and hygiene inthe occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.’

The good old Jewish Chronicle finds it 'sinister'that an Israeli human rights group calls Israel an Apartheid society

Pollard’s propaganda rag is desperate to immunise British Jews from the truth. In an article by the same Frantzman, B’Tselem is accused of having a ‘sinister agenda’. B’Tselem is guilty of wanting to ‘force Israelis and Palestinians into the single country that both sides have already rejected’.

What B’Tselem’s article is saying is that Israel isalready one country. Gaza is administered by Hamas, but Hamas has no control of its borders.  It is totally cut off and has been subjectfor the past 14 years to a siege by Israel.

There is no part of the West Bank, including the so-called State of Palestine, that Israel does not control. Like Gaza this ‘state’ has no control over its borders. It is less than a Bantustan. In South Africa the Bantustans had control of their borders and the South Africa army did not operate in them.

Of course Israel’s propaganda is reinforced by the stupid pretensions of the PA that it is the government of a state rather than Israel's sub-contractor.

It is no surprise that the Jewish Chronicle are  doing their best to demonise B'tselem. The only thing they haven’t done so far is to accuse them of anti-Semitism but no doubt Sir Keir Starmer can help out in that respect!

People should read B’Tselem’s statement. It is a succinct explanation of how Israel maintains an apartheid state, granting differential rights to the Palestinians whilst ensuring that Jews are at the top of the racial ladder.

But despite Israeli propaganda pretending that Israeli Palestinians are equal to Jews, always by reference to a token judge or the right to vote for parties which are not allowed to be part of Israel’s government, the mask is slipping.

Itay Milner from Israel’s consulate general in New York, explained‘Arab citizens of Israel are represented across the government, including the diplomatic corps.’ This is true. There are a few token Arabs in minor diplomatic posts but Israeli Palestinians have never been part of the government.  It is a precondition for forming an Israeli coalition that Arab parties are excluded.  Israeli Palestinians are only equal in Israeli propaganda.

B’tselem’s declaration that Israel is an Apartheid state is not context free.  There is another Israeli General Election in March.  It is expected that the Israeli Labour Party, which formed the governing coalitions in Israel for the first 30 years will disappear. The Zionist left has gone. The main opposition to Zionism and Apartheid are human rights organisations like B’tselem and a few, weak leftist organisations and of course the Arab Joint List.

Jonathan Cook is right when he saysthat B’Tselem’s position is a result of its political isolation in Israel and the fact that it’s main audience is now overseas.  Where he is wrong though is when he describes as a ‘lacuna’ the fact that B'Tselem don’t rule out a 2 state solution when they state that ‘There are various political paths to a just future.”. 

B’tselem has deliberately not set out a political map. What is more they don’t need to do so. Why? Because it is inherent in their analysis that Israel is now one state with one regime and one overriding principle - the maintenance of Jewish supremacy. If there is only one Apartheid state then it can only be remedied by one democratic secular state. There is no need for them to go one step further and make explicit that which is implicit. By saying that Jewish supremacy and with it a Jewish state has to go, the only place left is a single, non-racial state.

Tony Greenstein 

A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid

12 January 2021

More than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule. The common perception in public, political, legal and media discourse is that two separate regimes operate side by side in this area, separated by the Green Line. One regime, inside the borders of the sovereign State of Israel, is a permanent democracy with a population of about nine million, all Israeli citizens. The other regime, in the territories Israel took over in 1967, whose final status is supposed to be determined in future negotiations, is a temporary military occupation imposed on some five million Palestinian subjects.

Over time, the distinction between the two regimes has grown divorced from reality. This state of affairs has existed for more than 50 years – twice as long as the State of Israel existed without it. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers now reside in permanent settlements east of the Green Line, living as though they were west of it. East Jerusalem has been officially annexed to Israel’s sovereign territory, and the West Bank has been annexed in practice. Most importantly, the distinction obfuscates the fact that the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. All this leads to the conclusion that these are not two parallel regimes that simply happen to uphold the same principle. There is one regime governing the entire area and the people living in it, based on a single organizing principle.

When B’Tselem was founded in 1989, we limited our mandate to the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, and refrained from addressing human rights inside the State of Israel established in 1948 or from taking a comprehensive approach to the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Yet the situation has changed. The regime’s organizing principle has gained visibility in recent years, as evidenced by the Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People passed in 2018, or open talk of formally annexing parts of the West Bank in 2020. Taken together with the facts described above, this means that what happens in the Occupied Territories can no longer be treated as separate from the reality in the entire area under Israel’s control. The terms we have used in recent years to describe the situation – such as “prolonged occupation” or a “one-state reality” – are no longer adequate. To continue effectively fighting human rights violations, it is essential to examine and define the regime that governs the entire area.

This paper analyzes how the Israeli regime works to advance its goals in the entire area under its control. We do not provide a historical review or an evaluation of the Palestinian and Jewish national movements, or of the former South Africa regime. While these are important questions, they are beyond the purview of a human rights organization. Rather, this document presents the principles that guide the regime, demonstrates how it implements them and points to the conclusion that emerges from all of this as to how the regime should be defined and what that means for human rights.

Divide, separate, rule

In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. A key method in pursuing this goal is engineering space differently for each group.

Jewish citizens live as though the entire area were a single space (excluding the Gaza Strip). The Green Line means next to nothing for them: whether they live west of it, within Israel’s sovereign territory, or east of it, in settlements not formally annexed to Israel, is irrelevant to their rights or status.

Where Palestinians live, on the other hand, is crucial. The Israeli regime has divided the area into several units that it defines and governs differently, according Palestinians different rights in each. This division is relevant to Palestinians only. The geographic space, which is contiguous for Jews, is a fragmented mosaic for Palestinians:

• Palestinians who live on land defined in 1948 as Israeli sovereign territory (sometimes called Arab-Israelis) are Israeli citizens and make up 17% of the state’s citizenry. While this status affords them many rights, they do not enjoy the same rights as Jewish citizens by either law or practice – as detailed further in this paper.
   
• Roughly 350,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem, which consists of some 70,000 dunams [1 dunam = 1,000 square meters] that Israel annexed to its sovereign territory in 1967. They are defined as permanent residents of Israel a status that allows them to live and work in Israel without needing special permits, to receive social benefits and health insurance, and to vote in municipal elections. Yet permanent residency, unlike citizenship, may be revoked at any time, at the complete discretion of the Minister of the Interior. In certain circumstances, it can also expire.
• 
   
• Although Israel never formally annexed the West Bank, it treats the territory as its own. More than 2.6 million Palestinian subjects live in the West Bank, in dozens of disconnected enclaves, under rigid military rule and without political rights. In about 40% of the territory, Israel has transferred some civilian powers to the Palestinian Authority (PA). However, the PA is still subordinate to Israel and can only exercise its limited powers with Israel’s consent.
   
• The Gaza Strip is home to about two million Palestinians, also denied political rights. In 2005, Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip, dismantled the settlements it built there and abdicated any responsibility for the fate of the Palestinian population. After the Hamas takeover in 2007, Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip that is still in place. Throughout all of these years, Israel has continued to control nearly every aspect of life in Gaza from outside.

Israel accords Palestinians a different package of rights in every one of these units – all of which are inferior compared to the rights afforded to Jewish citizens. The goal of Jewish supremacy is advanced differently in every unit, and the resulting forms of injustice differ: the lived experience of Palestinians in blockaded Gaza is unlike that of Palestinian subjects in the West Bank, permanent residents in East Jerusalem or Palestinian citizens within sovereign Israeli territory. Yet these are variations on the fact that all Palestinians living under Israeli rule are treated as inferior in rights and status to Jews who live in the very same area.

Detailed below are four major methods the Israeli regime uses to advance Jewish supremacy. Two are implemented similarly throughout the entire area: restricting migration by non-Jews and taking over Palestinian land to build Jewish-only communities, while relegating Palestinians to small enclaves. The other two are implemented primarily in the Occupied Territories: draconian restrictions on the movement of non-citizen Palestinians and denial of their political rights. Control over these aspects of life lies entirely in Israel’s hands: in the entire area, Israel has sole power over the population registry, land allocation, voter rolls and the right (or denial thereof) to travel within, enter or exit any part of the area.

A. Immigration – for Jews only:

Any Jew in the world and his or her children, grandchildren and spouses are entitled to immigrate to Israel at any time and receive Israeli citizenship, with all of its associated rights. They receive this status even if they choose to live in a West Bank settlement not formally annexed to Israel’s sovereign territory.

In contrast, non-Jews have no right to legal status in Israeli-controlled areas. Granting status is at the almost complete discretion of officials – the Minister of the Interior (within sovereign Israel) or the military commander (in the Occupied Territories). Despite this official distinction, the organizing principle remains the same: Palestinians living in other countries cannot immigrate to the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, even if they, their parents or their grandparents were born and lived there. The only way Palestinians can immigrate to areas controlled by Israel is by marrying a Palestinian who already lives there – as citizen, resident or subject – as well as meeting a series of conditions and receiving Israeli approval..

Israel not only hampers Palestinian immigration but also impedes Palestinian relocation between the units, if the move – in the perception of the regime – would upgrade their status. For instance, Palestinian citizens of Israel or residents of East Jerusalem can easily relocate to the West Bank (although they risk their rights and status in doing so). Palestinians in the Occupied Territories cannot obtain Israeli citizenship and relocate to Israeli sovereign territory, except for in very rare instances, which depend on the approval of Israeli officials.

Israel’s policy on family unification illustrates this principle. For years, the regime has placed numerous obstacles before families in which each spouse lives in a different geographical unit. Over time, this has impeded and often prevented Palestinians marrying a Palestinian in another unit from acquiring status in that unit. As a result of this policy, tens of thousands of families have been unable to live together. When one spouse is a resident of the Gaza Strip , Israel allows the family to live there together, but if the other spouse is a resident of the West Bank, Israel demands they relocate permanently to Gaza. In 2003, the Knesset passed a Temporary Order (still in force) banning the issuance of Israeli citizenship or permanent residency to Palestinians from the Occupied Territories who marry Israelis – unlike citizens of other countries. In exceptional cases approved by the Minister of the Interior, Palestinians from the West Bank who marry Israelis may be granted status in Israel – yet it is only temporary and does not entitle them to social benefits.

Israel also undermines the right of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories – including East Jerusalem – to continue living where they were born. Since 1967, Israel has revoked the status of some 250,000 Palestinians in the West Bank (East Jerusalem included) and the Gaza Strip, in some cases on the grounds they had lived abroad for more than three years. This includes thousands of East Jerusalem residents who moved mere miles east of their homes to parts of the West Bank that are not officially annexed. All these individuals were robbed of the right to return to their homes and families, where they were born and raised.

B. Taking over land for Jews while crowding Palestinians in enclaves:

Israel practices a policy of “Judaizing” the area, based on the mindset that land is a resource meant almost exclusively to benefit the Jewish public. Land is used to develop and expand existing Jewish communities and build new ones, while Palestinians are dispossessed and corralled into small, crowded enclaves. This policy has been practiced with respect to land within sovereign Israeli territory since 1948 and applied to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967. In 2018, the underlying principle was entrenched in Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People, which stipulates that “the State considers the development of Jewish settlements a national value and will take action to encourage and promote the establishment and reinforcment of such settlements.”

Inside its sovereign territory, Israel has enacted discriminatory laws, most notably the Absentee Property Law , allowing it to expropriate vast tracts of Palestinian-owned land, including millions of dunams in communities whose residents were expelled or fled in 1948 and were barred from returning. Israel has also significantly reduced the areas designated for Palestinian local councils and communities, which now have access to less than 3% of the country’s total area. Most of the designated land is already saturated with construction. As a result, more than 90% of land in Israel’s sovereign territory is now under state control.

Israel has used this land to build hundreds of communities for Jewish citizens – yet not a single one for Palestinian citizens. The exception is a handful of towns and villages built to concentrate the Bedouin population , which has been stripped of most of its proprietary rights. Most of the land on which Bedouins used to live has been expropriated and registered as state land. Many Bedouin communities have been defined as ‘unrecognized’ and their residents as ‘invaders.’ On land historically occupied by Bedouins, Israel has built Jewish-only communities.

The Israeli regime severely restricts construction and development in the little remaining land in Palestinian communities within its sovereign territory. It also refrains from preparing master plans that reflect the population’s needs, and keeps these communities’ areas of jurisdiction virtually unchanged despite population growth. The result is small, crowded enclaves where residents have no choice but to build without permits .

Israel has also passed a law allowing communities with admission committees, numbering hundreds throughout the country, to reject Palestinian applicants on grounds of “cultural incompatibility.” This effectively prevents Palestinian citizens from living in communities designated for Jews. Officially, any Israeli citizen can live in any of the country’s cities ; in practice, only 10% of Palestinian citizens do. Even then, they are usually relegated to separate neighborhoods due to lack of educational, religious and other services, the prohibitive cost of purchasing a home in other parts of the city, or discriminatory practices in land and home sales.

The regime has used the same organizing principle in the West Bank since 1967 (including East Jerusalem). Hundreds of thousands of dunams, including farmland and pastureland, have been taken from Palestinian subjects on various pretexts and used, among other things, to establish and expand settlements, including residential neighborhoods, farmland and industrial zones. All settlements are closed military zones that Palestinians are forbidden from entering without a permit. So far, Israel has established more than 280 settlements in the West Bank (East Jerusalem included), which are now home to more than 600,000 Jews. More land has been taken to build hundreds of kilometers of bypass roads for settlers.

Israel has instituted a separate planning system for Palestinians in the West Bank, chiefly designed to prevent construction and development. Large swathes of land are unavailable for construction, having been declared state land, a firing zone, a nature reserve or a national park. The authorities also refrain from drafting adequate master plans reflecting the present and future needs of Palestinian communities in what little land has been spared. The separate planning system centers on demolishing structures built without permits – here, too, for lack of choice. All this has trapped Palestinians in dozens of densely-populated enclaves, with development outside them – whether for residential or public use, including infrastructure – almost completely banned.

C. Restriction of Palestinians’ freedom of movement

Israel allows its Jewish and Palestinian citizens and residents to travel freely throughout the area. Exceptions are the prohibition on entering the Gaza Strip, which it defines “hostile territory,” and the (mostly formal) prohibition on entering areas ostensibly under PA responsibility (Area A). In rare cases, Palestinian citizens or residents are permitted to enter Gaza.

Israeli citizens can also leave and reenter the country at any time. In contrast, residents of East Jerusalem do not hold Israeli passports and lengthy absence can result in revocation of status.

Israel routinely restrictsthe movement of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and generally forbids them from moving between the units. Palestinians from the West Bank who wish to enter Israel, East Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip must apply to the Israeli authorities. In the Gaza Strip, which has been blockaded since 2007, the entire population is imprisoned as Israel forbids almost any movement in or out – except in rare cases it defines humanitarian. Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza or Palestinians from other units who wish to enter it must also submit a special applicationfor a permit to the Israeli authorities. The permits are issued sparingly and can only be obtained through a strict, arbitrary mechanism, or permit regime , which lacks transparency and clear rules. Israel treats every permit issued to a Palestinian as an act of grace rather than the fulfillment of a vested right.

In the West Bank, Israel controls all the routes between the Palestinian enclaves. This allows the military to set up flying checkpoints, close off access points to villages, block roads and stop passage through checkpoints at will. Furthermore, Israel built the Separation Barrier within the West Bank and designated Palestinian land, including farmland, trapped between the barrier and the Green Line as “the seam zone .” Palestinians in the West Bank are barred from entering this zone, subject to the same permit regime.

Palestinians in the Occupied Territories also need Israeli permission to go abroad. As a rule, Israel does not allow them to use Ben Gurion International Airport, which lies inside its sovereign territory. Palestinians from the West Bank must fly through Jordan’s international airport – but can only do so if Israel allows them to cross the border into Jordan. Every year, Israel denies thousands of requests to cross this border, with no explanation. Palestinians from Gaza must go through Egyptian-controlled Rafah Crossing – provided it is open, the Egyptian authorities let them through, and they can undertake the long journey through Egyptian territory. In rare exceptions, Israel allows Gazans to travel through its sovereign territory in an escorted shuttle, in order to reach the West Bank and from there continue to Jordan and on to their destination.

D. Denial of Palestinians’ right to political participation

Like their Jewish counterparts, Palestinian citizens of Israel can take political action to further their interests, including voting and running for office. They can elect representatives, establish parties or join existing ones. That said, Palestinian elected officials are continually vilified – a sentiment propagated by key political figures – and the right of Palestinian citizens to political participation is under constant attack .

The roughly five million Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories cannot participate in the political system that governs their lives and determines their futures. Theoretically, most Palestinians are eligible to vote in the PA elections. Yet as the PA’s powers are limited, even if elections were held regularly (the last were in 2006), the Israeli regime would still rule Palestinians’ lives, as it retains major aspects of governance in the Occupied Territories. This includes control over immigration, the population registry, planning and land policies, water, communication infrastructure, import and export, and military control over land, sea and air space.

In East Jerusalem, Palestinians are caught between a rock and a hard place. As permanent residents of Israel, they can vote in municipal elections but not for parliament. On the other hand, Israel makes it difficult for them to participate in PA elections.

Political participation encompasses more than voting or running for office. Israel also denies Palestinians political rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of association. These rights enable individuals to critique regimes, protest policies, form associations to advance their ideas and generally work to promote social and political change.

A slew of legislation, such as the boycott lawand the Nakba law, has limited Israelis’ freedom to criticize policies relating to Palestinians throughout the area. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories face even harsher restrictions : they are not allowed to demonstrate; many associations have been banned; and almost any political statement is considered incitement. These restrictions are assiduously enforced by the military courts, which have imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and are a key mechanism upholding the occupation. In East Jerusalem, Israel works to prevent any social, cultural or political activity associated in any way with the PA.

The division of space also hampers a unified Palestinian struggle against Israeli policy. The variation in laws, procedures and rights among the geographical units and the draconian movement restrictions have separated the Palestinians into distinct groups. This fragmentation not only helps Israel promote Jewish supremacy, but also thwarts criticism and resistance.

No to apartheid: That is our struggle

The Israeli regime, which controls all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, seeks to advance and cement Jewish supremacy throughout the entire area. To that end, it has divided the area into several units, each with a different set of rights for Palestinians – always inferior to the rights of Jews. As part of this policy, Palestinians are denied many rights, including the right to self-determination.

This policy is advanced in several ways. Israel demographically engineers the space through laws and orders that allow any Jew in the world or their relatives to obtain Israeli citizenship, but almost completely deny Palestinians this possibility. It has physically engineered the entire area by taking over of millions of dunams of land and establishing Jewish-only communities, while driving Palestinians into small enclaves. Movement is engineered through restrictions on Palestinian subjects, and political engineering excludes millions of Palestinians from participating in the processes that determine their lives and futures while holding them under military occupation.

A regime that uses laws, practices and organized violence to cement the supremacy of one group over another is an apartheid regime. Israeli apartheid, which promotes the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians, was not born in one day or of a single speech. It is a process that has gradually grown more institutionalized and explicit, with mechanisms introduced over time in law and practice to promote Jewish supremacy. These accumulated measures, their pervasiveness in legislation and political practice, and the public and judicial support they receive – all form the basis for our conclusion that the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met.

If this regime has developed over many years, why release this paper in 2021? What has changed? Recent years have seen a rise in the motivation and willingness of Israeli officials and institutions to enshrine Jewish supremacy in law and openly state their intentions. The enactment of Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People and the declared plan to formally annex parts of the West Bank have shattered the façade Israel worked for years to maintain.

The Nation State basic law, enacted in 2018, enshrines the Jewish people’s right to self-determination to the exclusion of all others. It establishes that distinguishing Jews in Israel (and throughout the world) from non-Jews is fundamental and legitimate. Based on this distinction, the law permits institutionalized discrimination in favor of Jews in settlement, housing, land development, citizenship, language and culture. It is true that the Israeli regime largely followed these principles before. Yet Jewish supremacy has now been enshrined in basic law, making it a binding constitutional principle – unlike ordinary law or practices by authorities, which can be challenged. This signals to all state institutions that they not only can, but must, promote Jewish supremacy in the entire area under Israeli control.

Israel’s plan to formally annex parts of the West Bank also bridges the gap between the official status of the Occupied Territories, which is accompanied by empty rhetoric about negotiation of its future, and the fact that Israel actually annexed most of the West Bank long ago. Israel did not follow through on its declarations of formal annexation after July 2020, and various officials have released contradicting statements regarding the plan since. Regardless of how and when Israel advances formal annexation of one kind or another, its intention to achieve permanent control over the entire area has already been openly declared by the state’s highest officials.

The Israeli regime’s rationale, and the measures used to implement it, are reminiscent of the South African regime that sought to preserve the supremacy of white citizens, in part through partitioning the population into classes and sub-classes and ascribing different rights to each. There are, of course, differences between the regimes. For instance, the division in South Africa was based on race and skin color, while in Israel it is based on nationality and ethnicity. Segregation in South Africa was also manifested in public space, in the form of a policed, formal, public separation between people based on skin color – a degree of visibility that Israel usually avoids. Yet in public discourse and in international law, apartheid does not mean an exact copy of the former South African regime. No regime will ever be identical. ‘Apartheid’ has long been an independent term, entrenched in international conventions, referring to a regime’s organizing principle: systematically promoting the dominance of one group over another and working to cement it.

The Israeli regime does not have to declare itself an apartheid regime to be defined as such, nor is it relevant that representatives of the state broadly proclaim it a democracy. What defines apartheid is not statements but practice. While South Africa declared itself an apartheid regime in 1948, it is unreasonable to expect other states to follow suit given the historical repercussions. The response of most countries to South Africa’s apartheid is likelier to deter countries from admitting to implementing a similar regime. It is also clear that what was possible in 1948 is no longer possible today, both legally and in terms of public opinion.

As painful as it may be to look reality in the eye, it is more painful to live under a boot. The harsh reality described here may deteriorate further if new practices are introduced – with or without accompanying legislation. Nevertheless, people created this regime and people can make it worse – or work to replace it. That hope is the driving force behind this position paper. How can people fight injustice if it is unnamed? Apartheid is the organizing principle, yet recognizing this does not mean giving up. On the contrary: it is a call for change.

Fighting for a future based on human rights, liberty and justice is especially crucial now. There are various political paths to a just future here, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but all of us must first choose to say no to apartheid.

Israel has been described as an ‘apartheid regime’ – this will not come as news to ordinary Palestinians

The position paper published by B’Tselem must open up the debate around the reality of the situation in Israel/Palestine in the face of an orchestrated silencing campaign

Dr Rafeef Ziadah

“An apartheid regime” – that is the conclusion of a new position paper by Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, in summing up the impact and goal of Israeli policies and laws towards Palestinians between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.

The position paper notes that to talk of Israeli apartheid “does not mean an exact copy of the former South African regime”. This is true – Israel does not exhibit the obvious forms of petty apartheid that were present in South Africa, such as signs enforcing crude segregation in public spaces.

But that is only because Israel has perfected a far more sophisticated system of discrimination and colonisation through a matrix of regulations and infrastructures that govern every aspect of Palestinian life. The practices are no less objectionable or dehumanising than petty apartheid.

Their origins are in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinein 1947-1948 that led to the flight of more than three-quarters of the Palestinian population. This is not simply a painful historical memory; it remains an ongoing lived reality.

It is seen today in the segregation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to scattered population centres divided by Israeli settlements, military checkpoints, and Israeli-only highways. Those Palestinians who stayed on their land and became Israeli citizens are forced to live as second-class people in a state built on the destruction of their national identity. Palestinian refugees are denied the right of return, while citizenship and settlement is expedited for anyone of Jewish descent.

Maintaining this control over Palestinians and privileging the Jewish population does not happen arbitrarily; it is enshrined through law and practice. This can be seen clearly in the way the Palestinian economy is kept in a state of controlled collapse. Decades of de-development policies have destroyed the productive base of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip; military attacks destroy the infrastructures; military policies cement both geographical and economic fragmentation.

A set of barriers divide the West Bank into disconnected islands controlled by some 600 military checkpoints, gates, and other obstacles, and roads built for Israeli settlers. The Palestinian economy is bound to the Israeli one via a customs union that leaves no space for independent policies – what Palestinians have described as a captive economy.

Moreover, the authorities in Israel collect trade tax revenues on behalf of Palestinian Authority (PA), which they are meant to transfer, but withhold on a regular basis as a means of exerting pressure. Almost all Palestinian imports and exports transit via ports and crossing points of Israel, at which delays and security measures can increase costs.

Along with the loss of land and natural resources to settlement expansion in the West Bank, the economy of the Gaza Strip is in a catastrophic state. After 13 years of siege, over 80 per cent of the population is now aid-dependent and unemployment rates, especially among university-educated youth are skyrocketing.

Israeli restrictions, such as what items and technologies can freely enter the West Bank and Gaza Strip, affect all areas of Palestinian life, including the health care sector. Many experts have analysed the detrimental impact of Israeli policies when it comes to Palestinians’ ability to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, including the inequalities exposed by Israel’s vaccination programme.

The conclusion of B’Tselem’s position paper is not news to Palestinians. It is something Palestinian and South African scholars and activists have said for decades. The publication’s importance lies, however, in opening up the debate around the reality of the situation in Israel/Palestine in the face of an orchestrated silencing campaign, which attempts to foreclose debate before it even begins. In this sense, it is relevant that an Israeli human rights organisation has stated what Palestinians have been arguing for years.

Beyond naming the problem, however, the more urgent matter is how to rectify this injustice. Two decades after the Oslo Accords and much lip service paid to the idea of a two-state solution, the situation for Palestinians appears bleak. Clearly, the Trump plan had no regard for Palestinians and aimed to use economic pressure to force an acquiescence to truncated autonomy. The European Union has only helped to maintain the status quo with its silence or mealy-mouthed criticism of Israel’s human rights abuses, while pursuing generous economic and “security” partnerships.

Thus, inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement and decades of Palestinian grassroots activism, Palestinian civil society has called for international solidarity in the form of Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS). The BDS campaign enables student groups, unions, cultural and religious organisations and local communities to demonstrate a popular refusal to participate in and sustain the structures of racial discrimination and oppression. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.

An apartheid regime requires accountability – and we Palestinians cannot afford any more Israeli impunity.

Israel is losing the fight to obscure its apartheid character, Jonathan Cook

The Palestinians had no better supporter that Jenny, the rock of Portsmouth PSC, a socialist and friend of the oppressed 

Tragically Jenny Flintoft died last Monday from this accursed virus.  She was born in Rowley Regis, Staffordshire. I found it hard to believe it when I was informed that Jenny had passed away because she seemed like the rock of Gibraltar – indomitable and always there - a permanent feature of Palestine solidarity work.

I knew Jenny from joint Palestine solidarity work. We took to each other as we shared similar views about the pussyfooting diplomacy of the Executive of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

When I need someone to second a motion to PSC AGM on ditching their support for the Apartheid 2 State Solution I knew I could rely on her.  When I stood for PSC Secretary last year Jenny was only too willing to second my nomination, even if she did sometimes caution me not to be too outspoken!

Before the onset of COVID-19 Jenny would invite me every year to speak to a meeting of Portsmouth and South Downs PSC.  Many are the memories I have of trying to navigate my way around windswept Portsmouth housing estates in the bitter cold of winter before alighting on a community centre where the meeting was scheduled to start and it was always a pleasure to engage in debate and discussion with fellow comrades.

Jenny was a vivacious and outgoing person with a wicked sense of humour. It was an honour and privilege to know and meet someone who was so self-sacrificing and committed to ending the tyranny that Israel exerts over the Palestinians.

Although Jenny didn’t live to see the end of the Jewish Supremacist regime in Tel Aviv I am under no doubt that Jenny made a vital contribution to the struggle to end Zionism and its terrorist rule. Slowly, despite the vicious and mendacious accusations of anti-Semitism, the Zionist State is slowly but surely losing its legitimacy. The latest blow is the decision of Israel’s foremost human rights group, the liberal B’Tselem to describe Israel as a Jewish Supremacist state.

Jenny had no time for the time servers and apologists for Zionism who resorted to identity politics in order to defend Apartheid in Israel. I shall fondly remember Jenny Flintoft as a shining light in the darkness that Israel has cast over the Middle East and beyond.  She will always be remembered.

Below are a number of people who want to pay their respects and recall the contribution that Jenny made to a better world for all.

Tony Greenstein

From Portsmouth & South  Downs PSC

Very sadly Coronavirus claimed the life of Jenny Flintoft on 11 January.  For many years Jenny has been Secretary of the Portsmouth & South Downs PSC. Through PSDPSC she worked tirelessly for the rights of the Palestinian people, convening the monthly planning meetings, inviting speakers, helping organise demonstrations, keeping everyone up to date with events in Israel/Palestine and with local and national campaigns, and representing PSDPSC at PSC branch meetings and AGM.  It was her enthusiasm for folk music that led PSDPSC to raise funds through folk concerts, often with local artists, mostly for Medical Aid For Palestinians.  Israel’s ill-treatment of Palestinian child prisoners was perhaps the thing that angered her most.

PSDPSC supporters join with Momentum and Stand Up to Racism in saying our thoughts go out to Jenny’s husband Gerry and her family.  We send them our heartfelt condolences.

We received the terrible news about Jenny yesterday at the office. Deepest sympathies and all of our thoughts and best wishes with everyone in Portsmouth from all of us, it really is awful, shocking news.

From Palestine Solidarity Campaign:

We received the terrible news about Jenny yesterday at the office. Deepest sympathies and all of our thoughts and best wishes with everyone in Portsmouth from all of us, it really is awful, shocking news.

 Lewis Backon

Palestine Solidarity Campaign Campaigns Officer

Portsmouth & District Momentum group writes,

Last year Jenny became Vice Chair of the Portsmouth & District Group of Momentum.  She was an active member of Portsmouth Stand Up To Racism too and one of the organisers of the local Stop the War Coalition.  She was a dogged and passionate campaigner and shared information and campaigns across all the groups she was involved in.

 “She was an inspiration to all of us as she worked hard to make people aware of inequalities and oppression in the world.  We will miss her as a comrade, activist and friend.” 

In solidarity

Jackie Lederer

joint Secretary of Momentum Portsmouth and District Group.

Portsmouth Stand Up To Racism reacted

"We are shocked and saddened by the news of Jenny's death.  Jenny was a socialist and an anti-racist, who put her beliefs into action and argued for others to do the same.  People who knew Jenny will miss her tenacious spirit and her willingness to stand up against injustice." 

From Sue Castillon

I first met Jenny and Gerry in 2015 at the first of many Momentum meetings where she distributed Palestine solidarity campaign leaflets and spoke of the organisation, campaigning against the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. She organised many fundraisers for PSC. Jenny was a tireless campaigner for this cause and it is imperative that we continue her work in her memory. 

She was with us on many London and Portsmouth rallies for the NHS and anti racism for instance.

We spent a very happy evening together at the international women’s day dinner at Portsmouth Football Club and she was with us for fundraising at my house for my campaign to stand in Hilsea ward 2018.

She always supported me for various campaigns and was a clear role model for never giving up if passionate about an issue.

I will really miss her and hope Gerry receives all the care and support he needs.

From  Robb Johnson

It was a pleasure and a bit of an honour to have known Jenny Flintoft. It was also great fun, & sometimes a bit exasperating, because words like indomitable, indefatigable, strongwilled & determined don’t do her justice, & she had standards & convictions that you often felt you were unlikely to live up to. But she was also an incredibly kind & affectionate friend, & so I think she kind of overlooked most of my shortcomings. 

I met Jenny, & her partner in every sense of the word, Gerry, when they came to the Hove Folk Club. This was held in the oak-panelled room above The Poet’s Corner pub in Hove. I got the impression that they were delighted to find a Sussex Folk Club that liked political songs & hated the Tories. This was in the days when they were still driving. Jenny had a wonderful voice, that was part sweet girlish treble & sincerity, & part wise woman anger & authority, & Gerry made absolute magic come from his concertina. Jenny invariably arrived with a sheaf of lyrics & a rough idea of what she might sing. She had the sort of repertoire of songs that to me represents the very best of folk singing. She would do a hilarious song involving Father Christmas in December, & knew the best feminist version of “House of the Rising Sun” anybody has ever heard. She also modestly wrote songs too, vivid, powerful songs supporting the oppressed & savaging the oppressor. One song “He Refuses to Fight” started with an aching, understated verse about a conscientious objector in the Second World War, & then moved perfectly into a verse about as Israeli soldier also refusing to fight. The conscientious objector was her father. I wish I had carried out a plan several of us at the club toyed with: when Gerry stopped driving, they stopped coming to the club, so we thought about  going to where Jenny & Gerry lived to record them, & archive Jenny’s wonderful songs. But they found they could get to Hove by train, & so… we never did. 

When the pub became increasingly uninterested in not to say hostile towards having a folk club upstairs, I suggested we could move to the Railway Inn opposite Portslade train station. There, there was a very nice back room & a house PA. Jenny & Gerry were appalled at this development & spoke out about it with great displeasure. Nonetheless, they kept coming anyway – Portslade station was after all just over the road from the pub - & continued to complain volubly whenever they thought the PA was too loud. They also always sat at a table right in the middle, at the very front, the better to monitor the volume level & to eat the evening meal they ordered. Jenny even occasionally used the microphone & stood on the stage, but was also very happy to wave it away & sing accapella if the mike or the mike stand were being uncooperative.  Jenny & Gerry also managed to persuade fellow Labour leftist Graham Noble to come to the club, which meant they could rely on his van & his comradely kindness rather than the last Southern Rail train west. One time, Remembrance Day 2018, Jenny & Gerry turned up at a folk club gig I was doing in the middle of nowhere near Bournemouth. Gerry had been hospitalised. Jenny sprang him to go to a classical music concert in the afternoon, then on to a folk club in the middle of nowhere near Bournemouth. As the evening drew to a close it became apparent that Graham wasn’t available. Luckily we had a car, & we were going back past Portsmouth & Southampton. Jenny said we could drop them off on the A27 because they lived “just up there” & they would get a cab, at 12.30 am on a wet November night. We drove them home, & of course it wasn’t “just up there” at all. But distance didn’t seem to worry either of them. They used to drive to Greece every year, & even when Gerry couldn’t drive, they still made it to Crete, & Jenny swam in the Mediterranean. We said we like Lemnos, so one year they went there too, & thought it was awful because there was disco music on the beaches, & it was obvious they held us responsible for providing an inaccurate recommendation. We also bumped into them on the Eurostar to Paris one December; they were travelling onwards. Nothing stopped Jenny. One night at the Railway Inn she sailed as majestically as usual, & as usual half an hour before the gig was supposed to start. There was no Gerry. “No Gerry tonight?” I asked. She rolled her eyes. “He missed the train. He didn’t get on quickly enough at Havant. He’ll be along later.”& sure enough, he was. 

Jenny very kindly got me gigs – usually in dodgy pubs – raising money for the Labour Party or Palestine. In 2019, during the commemoration of the 25^thanniversary of D Day, she got me a gig singing at the anti-Trump rally in a square in Portsmouth. While I was singing, a herd of EDL turned up on their way to the nearest Wetherspoons. One of them took a particular dislike to me singing & ambled towards me. I was a bit worried about this trajectory. Jenny wasn’t.  Jenny stood in his way. He tried to get round her. She stood in his way again & again, & again, until he gave up.

One of the benefits she arranged involved all three of us meeting at Havant then taking a train somewhere else. I found out how Jenny & Gerry had met. It was at a student union event in the early 1960s. Jenny was doing English literature at University, & Gerry was doing as much science as possible. Gerry said he was the first member of his family to go to university. He hadn’t particularly wanted to go to university, but he’d noticed that if you went to University, you didn’t have to do National Service, & he was determined he didn’t want to go off to shoot people in Cyprus on behalf of British Imperialism, so he became a student, & that where, & how they met. & lived happily, I think, ever after. It is okay, I think, to talk about Jenny as part of this partnership, because it was a partnership of equals, with Jenny generally tacitly taking a leading role, & Jenny was very happy to be an equal part of that partnership. 

This remembrance has probably gone on for too long. I haven’t said enough about her energy, her delight in life & I don’t think I have done her love of singing justice, or her principled commitment to justice. One year we were going to have a Folk Club Christmas gig where everybody was supposed to sing a Bob Dylan song. Jenny had no time for Dylan because of his pro-Israel politics. She was adamant that she wouldn’t be singing a Dylan song; in fact she was adamant that Jenny & Gerry would not be in attendance that night. Well, just come & sing whatever you like, I said. They didn’t. 

I haven’t said enough, because you can never say enough, because there are never enough good words for people like Jenny Flintoft. 

It was a pleasure, & a honour, to have known her. 

IN MEMORY OF JENNY FLINTOFT - Tom Suarez

Tuesday, 12 Jan 2021: Tragically, Jenny Flintoff, well known to many of us through her selfless work for human rights, died yesterday of Covid19.

I first met Jenny in 2017 when Portsmouth & South Downs PSC invited me to speak about the British Mandate. On the day of the event, as I was on the train to Portsmouth, my mobile rang. It was Jenny. PREVENT, the UK’s notorious supposed anti-radicalisation and anti-terror unit, had closed us down, not just at the scheduled venue, but throughout the city, "due to the nature of the speaker". While no further explanation was forthcoming, this was but one incident in a long history of stifling any open debate on the Middle East.

Jenny was furious. Here we were in Britain, trying to discuss British source documents from Britain’s own archives about the British Mandate, closed down by a British institution with British tax money at the orders of individuals acting on behalf of — ironically — the pariah state the British had jump-started with the Mandate.

The Daily Mail took advantage of the ‘scandal’ of the forbidden talk to condemn, by alleged ideological association, Jeremy Corbyn. The tabloid lined Corbyn and me up with side-by-side mug shots and a slanderous headline.

Jenny would not be intimidated. She demanded to meet with the local PREVENT Coordinator, Charlie Pericleous, and I returned to Portsmouth to be present. Jenny grilled Mr. Pericleous tenaciously for two hours. Despite his steadfast refusal to provide any explanation or even clear my name of suspicion, Jenny persevered, was never intimidated, and never fell for decoy replies.

She will be terribly missed.

Jenny Flintoft, who was born on 15th February 1943 died on 11th January 2021 

 Open Letter to Stephen Pollard – Words Have Consequences - You Are an Accessory to Murder

Dear Jonathan,

In your determination to avoid the truth about Israel’s refusalto provide a vaccine for the millions of Palestinians living under Occupation, you remind me of a holocaust denier. No matter what the evidence you refuse to accept the truth.

It is an indisputable fact that in the West Bank, Israel is providing vaccines to the 600,000 Jewish settlers residing there.  It is also a fact that Israel is not providing a vaccine to the Palestinians whose territory it is and whose land the settlers have stolen. No one disputes those facts.

Jewish settlers and Palestinians inhabit the same territory yet Israel provides vaccines for one group and not for the other. It such a clear example of Apartheid that I cannot imagine why you feel the need to pretend otherwise. B’tselem spoke about Israeli Apartheid last week and this is but a vivid example of that fact.

Jonathan Pollard

At least the White Supremacist supporters of Donald Trump, who you and the Israeli state have fawned over for the past four years, have started to come clean. White supremacists are no longer denying the holocaust. Instead they are complaining that killing 6 million was not enough!  Hence their 6MWE tee shirts.  It puzzles me why you cannot be equally honest and admit that in a Jewish state Palestinians cannot hope for anything approaching equality. Hasn’t the time come to stop lying?

You commissioned two articles this past week by Seth Frantzman, the Middle East Affairs analyst for the Jerusalem Post. It’s not often that I am left speechless by Zionist dishonesty.

In the first article, after having said that ‘Israel is not responsible for the health care of the residents of the Palestinian Authority’ i.e. those living under the Occupation, Frantzman went on to declare, in his final paragraph that since 139 countries recognise the non-existent state of Palestine, then demanding that Israel fulfills its obligations under Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to provide health care to those living under occupation would be akin to demanding that Austria vaccinate the population of Slovakia!

In case it has escaped your notice Israel is not one of the 139 countries to recognise a Palestinian state. This is because there is no Palestinian state in existence. There is no Palestinian army, airport, borders etc. The Israeli government is firmly opposed to a Palestinian state or Palestinian sovereignty between the Mediterranean and the Jordan.

I may be wrong but I though the second world war had ended 76 years ago. Austria is not, to the best of my knowledge, occupying the Slovakia. In fact Austria has not had troops in Slovakia since 1945.  It is difficult to find a more crass analogy.

It is not even the case that Israel is treating its Arab citizens as equal to its Jewish citizens. Just this week Adalah, the legal centre for Arab rights in Israel, petitioned the High Court over the fact that information about vaccination and Covid-19 was only in Hebrew not Arabic. As a result of the Jewish Nation State Lawwhich you supported, Arabic was removed as a national language equal to Hebrew.

In his second article, a response to B’Tselem’s declaration that Israel was an Apartheid State, Frantzman wrotethat ‘B’Tselem's Israel 'apartheid' accusation masks its own sinister agenda’. What was this sinister agenda? Why B’Tselem ‘wants to force Israelis and Palestinians into the single country that both sides have already rejected’.

It is difficult to deal with such serial dishonesty from someone who has made the Jewish Chronicle into a propaganda rag. B’Tselem, which was a liberal Zionist human rights group when it was founded, was forced into the conclusion that Greater Israel was already a single country because of its own experiences. What is now Greater Israel has a single regime with a system of differential rights for different Palestinians, all of which are inferior to those of Jews.

The Green Line between the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel does not appear on Israeli maps and Israeli civil law operates in all the West Bank settlements. Israel has already de-facto annexed the West Bank.  Such serial dishonesty is, unfortunately typical of the man who led the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign against Jeremy Corbyn.

You are the man who went out of his way to defendanti-Semitic politicians in the European Parliament like Michal Kaminski. Your only condition for supporting anti-Semites is that they are also supporters of the Israeli state.

Your attempt to justify Israel’s policy of refusing to vaccinate Palestinians living under occupation isn’t simply a theoretical debate. It has human consequences and those consequences are that Palestinians will die. That will, of course, not trouble you in the slightest. You should be aware that though that your newspaper and your journalism makes you an accessory to murder.

I am sure that that will not cause you to lose a minute of sleep but I thought I should point it out.

Tony Greenstein

 Na'amod decides that anti-Zionism, i.e. challenging Jewish supremacy is a step too far

What declaring oneself against ‘the occupation’ means is making a distinction between the West Bank/ East Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. As B’Tselem’s statementmade clear there is but one regime over the whole territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

There are different rules and systems of administration for Palestinians, depending on where they live, but everywhere Jews have superior rights. Palestinians in pre-1967 Israel have an inferior version of Israeli citizenship but it is superior to the military regime governing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. That is why Israel has repeatedly tried to transfer Israeli Palestinians into the West Bank something that they fearis part of the Trump Plan.

Every part of Greater Israel is under one regime whose guiding principle is Jewish supremacy.  Another word for Jewish supremacy is Zionism.

I say this because there were some in the audience last Sunday who were clearly Zionists. One of them proclaimed in the chat that ‘this is biased’ to which I took objection. I explained the workings of the West Bank Mediterranean to the Jordan River Gaza Trump Plan Greater Israel 1950 Absentee Property Law, introduced by the Israeli Labor Party government, which enabled Palestinians to be dispossessed by treating them as the Orwellian ‘Present Absentees’. In other words even if they were present in the Israeli state and had not been expelled they were to be treated as absent even if they had only fled a mile or so from their village because of the fighting.

I explained that this law, which is being used to dispossess Palestinians in East Jerusalem has never been used against Jews. In other words it is a nakedly racist law. It would appear that this was too much for Naomi and her well meaning liberal Zionist friends.

Although no Zionist was removed after a short time. I found myself ‘bumped’. Thinking that maybe it was my computer I rejoined only to be thrown out again. The third time there was a notice that ‘the host has removed you’. Although Zionists of any stripe were welcome at the meeting, anti-Zionists who made their views known were not welcome.

To add insult to injury, ‘Naomi’ then wrote me a letterthanking me for my attendance at the webinar! It is clear from the letter, which mentions Yachad and Peace Now by name that Na’mod represents an affirmation of Zionism, not a break with this Jewish supremacy, by seeking to put create an artificial distinction between Israel pre-1967 and Israel post-1967.

As B’Tselem makes clear, there is no Green Line between Israel and the West Bank, neither physically nor on Israeli maps. It only exists in the minds of Zionists in the West who use the fiction of ‘two states’ in order to justify the present Occupation. If Na’amod are genuinely sincere about opposing the Occupation then they also need to abandon support for 2 states and Zionism.

2 states is supported by groups such as the Israeli Embassy front Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement, both of which refuse to condemn any aspect of military rule in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 2 states  exists solely in the minds of those who wish to perpetuate military rule over 5 million Palestinians.

As Palestinians reject the 2 states paradigm liberal Zionists cling to it ever more firmly. 2 States provides a smokescreen for continued military rule over the West Bank and the expansion of settlements.

It is of course welcome that a new group has sprung up amongst British Jews but it is not unique. Jews for Justice for Palestinians are the original 2 state group and they have made little impression as their politics have become rapidly outdated and irrelevant. JfJP have long sought, for reasons I’ve never understood, affiliation to the Board of Deputies.

Yachad actually did manage to achieve affiliation to the Board as it is an explicitly Zionist group unlike JfJP. Na’mod will have to decide where it stands on the Jewish supremacist nature of Israel, i.e. its Zionist nature.  The omens don’t seem good

Tony Greenstein

See Israel Democracy Institute uncovers shocking racism in 'apartheid state'

Letter to Na’omod

Dear Naomi,

You don't need to thank me for joining you at Sunday's webinar on Settlement Activity and Dispossession in East Jerusalem, just as I don't need to thank you for the fact that I was 'bumped' from the webinar for asking difficult questions and making certain observations about the causes of the repression that your speakers were explaining to us.

What the two speakers, Mohammed El-Kurd and Sami Ershied, were saying was very moving as was their description of their experiences which is why it is a pity that you moved to prevent any discussion of the causes of the demolitions, evictions and settler terrorism that they spoke about.

However without seeking to tackle the causes of their plight you will certainly not remedy the effects. I realise that you are too young to remember Apartheid in South Africa but it is as if you were to have condemned the brutal policies of the South Africa government in Soweto without calling into question Apartheid itself.

I should add that nothing in the history of South Africa Apartheid compares to the use by Israel of planes and missiles in bombing refugee camps and ordinary peoples’ housing in Gaza, Jenin and elsewhere. Nor is there any counterpart to the thousands of Palestinian homes which have been demolished.

However horrific South Africa Apartheid was it does not compare to the bloodshed and brutality of Zionism in Israel.

The dispossession and terror that the speakers experienced at the hands of the settlers and the Israeli state did not come out of nowhere. They are not an accident of god. They are the result of the Zionist Project which, from its very inception, sought to remove the Palestinians from first the land and then the country.

Zionism, unlike settler colonial movements in Southern Africa, dressed this up in the language of 'mutual recognition', 'self determination' and other euphemisms. Zionism was a Janus faced movement which spoke with two tongues. Out of one face it preached mutual respect, brotherhood of man and tolerance. Out of the other face it breathed transfer, expulsion, massacre and dispossession.

This tactic of Zionism, which deliberately said one thing and did another, was best summed up in the 1930 Hope-Simpson Report which the British Government commissioned as a result of the 1929 riots in Palestine.

The effect of the Zionist colonisation policy on the Arab.— Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extraterritorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. Nor can anyone help him by purchasing the land and restoring it to common use. The land is in mortmain and inalienable. It is for this reason that Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the Zionists in view of the policy which the Zionist Organisation deliberately adopted.

I understand that Na’amod is connected to If Not Now as opposed to Jewish Voice for Peace which is an explicitly anti-Zionist group. From what I understand Na'amod harbours illusions that it can persuade synagogues to break away from the Board of Deputies.

The Board represents the most reactionary section of British Jewry.  British Jews themselves have moved significantly to the right from the days, 80 years ago, when Jews formed the backbone of the left.  Ever since the 1960’s, with the temporary exception of the Blair years, British Jewry has voted overwhelmingly for the Conservatives in the past half a century.

We saw the results of this with the fake anti-Semitism attackson Labour’s most left-wing leader ever, Jeremy Corbyn.

The question is whether you are going to following the path of Yachad and try to reconcile Zionism with Justice and Peace or whether you are going to follow B’Tselem which has concluded that the Israeli state is an Apartheid State.

It is a stark and binary choice but any other decision and you will be fooling yourself and others.  Zionism has always been a Jewish Supremacist movement and Labour Zionism, its ‘left-wing’ has been the most racist of all.

The choice is yours.

Tony Greenstein

Letter from Na’mod

Thank you for joining us at Sunday's webinar on Settlement Activity and Dispossession in East Jerusalem, co-hosted with Free Jerusalem.

Free Jerusalem have contributed to this document, which provides more detailed information about the dispossession of Palestinians and settlement activity ongoing in East Jerusalem.

If you were unable to attend the event live, would like to watch it back or wish to send it on, you can find the recording here.

We were extremely grateful for the chance to hear from Mohammed El-Kurd and Sami Ershied, J.D, and for the excellent questions asked by many of the attendees. One of the questions which came up several times was, 'How can I help?'

If you are in the UK, please write to your MP and ask them to raise this issue with UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, and to attend the APPG Palestine parliamentary briefing on this issue. This is being held on Wednesday 3rd February 2-3pm, with Mohammed joined by Hagit Ofran from Peace Now's Settlement Watch. Yachad have prepared a template which you can use for this.

We have seen that international pressure can and does work: in 2011, an international campaign forced the Jewish National Fund (KKL) to delay the eviction of the Sumarin family from their home in Silwan. Under the latest evictions orders, the family are once again facing displacement from their own home and their community at the hands of the JNF.

If you are Jewish, please consider joining our movement. We are British Jews making our voices heard: the occupation must be opposed by our community with Actions not Words.

We are a grassroots movement and depend on donations from our supporters to cover our costs and continue our work. If you can support us with a donation we would be incredibly grateful.

Please look out for our next webinar, which will be held next month!

Na'amod

 Review of Benjamin Pogrund and Patrick McGuire’s Left Out and Owen Jones This Land

[PM]   Reference to book by Pogrund and McGuire

[OJ]     Reference to book by Owen Jones

There has been a marked reluctance by the Labour left to ask simple questions in the wake of Labour’s defeat at the General Election about where the Corbyn Project went wrong. They seem to fear asking the questions even more than they fear the answers.

Betrayed by Laura Pidcock and Corbyn

Take the Labour Representation Committee, whose President is John McDonnell. On 12^th January it held a meeting Learning the Lessons and Rebuilding the Labour Left. Admirable objectives. I attended and asked in the chat why the Campaign Group hadn’t opposed the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. I also asked why Laura Pidcock, one of the speakers, instead of defending Chris Williamson had asked him not to attend meetings of the CG.

You won’t be surprised to hear that despite putting my hand up first, the Chair Bisi Williams decided to call me last and then found out that as the meeting had run out of time I wouldn’t be called at all!

If the LRC are scared of holding elected Labour representatives to account then clearly they won’t learn many lessons. My letter to Chair Matt Wrack, Chair of the LRC, is here.

Since the defeat of Labour in the General Election two books have appeared which offer different explanations as to why Labour was defeated. One is by journalists from The Times and Sunday Times, Benjamin Pogrund and Patrick MacGuire, and the other is from the Guardian’slicensed radical, Owen Jones.

The analysis in both books is not substantively different. Both concentrate on the internal politics and dysfunctional state of LOTO (Leader of the Opposition’s Office) though Jones lays greater stress on the hostility that Corbyn faced, not least from the feral members of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Jones also sets out to correct the narrative that the Corbyn Project was solely defeated by sabotage within the Labour Party coupled with a vicious onslaught from a hostile media. To him the damage was done by internal conflict within the Project. [OJ3/5] What Jones doesn’t mention is that the campaign against Corbyn was led by his own newspaper, The Guardian, and that he had a hand in it.

Jones also believes that an additional cause was the failure to deal with anti-Semitism and reach out to Jews who (except for anti-Zionist Jews) had experienced a ‘collective trauma from two millennia of persecution.’ [OJ6]

I also intend to do a separate article on Jones and ‘anti-Semitism’ since Jones played a key part in spreading the idea that Labour had a problem with anti-Semitism. Jones made a significant contribution to the defeat of Corbyn when he had ‘a period of disillusionment before the general election’. [OJ8] In March 2017 he wrote an article‘Jeremy Corbyn says he’s staying. That’s not good enough’.

Tom Watson

Both books detail the treachery of Labour’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson, who when elected as Deputy Leader promised to back Corbyn 100%, saying that ‘only through unity comes the strength we need to fight the Tories’. It was one more lie from a man who had every quality of a dog except loyalty.

Watson was in league with Labour’s treacherous staff, ‘many of whom craved electoral disaster’ [OJ135]. When Sam Matthews, head of GLU was forced out, he stole hundreds of files and emails. On 27 February 2019 he met Danny Adilypour, Watson’s closest advisor, to hand over hundreds of documents. The Zionist lobby and Hodge arranged for them to obtain legal representation. It was clearly a criminal offence of theft and breach of Data Protection Regulations. [PM241] These files were the basis of the BBC Panorama hatchet job by John Ware presenting Matthews as a ‘whistleblower’.

It is some measure of the Corbyn’s inability to face down his enemies that he offered peerages to both Watson and Iain McNicol, Labour’s General Secretary who tried to prevent him standing when Owen Smith challenged him for the leadership.

Watson was only preventedfrom becoming Baron Watson by the House of Lords’s Appointment’s Commission because he sponsoredCarl Beech’s false allegations of child abuse.

Jones lays emphasis on the Leaked Labour Report and the war of attrition waged by Labour’s permanent staff whereas Pogrund and MacGuire play the issue down as might be expected from the Murdoch school of journalism. However Jones draws all the wrong conclusions about the existence of anti-Semitism in Labour.

Shortly before Labour’s 2019 Conference Jon Lansman, proposed to the NEC that the Deputy Leadership post should be abolished and with it Watson. Although it would have been better for the Left to have challenged Watson it was a reasonable proposal. Corbyn was the originator of the proposal shouting ‘I want him out of the Shadow Cabinet and I want to abolish the deputy role’. [PM235-237]. Yet, when it came to it, Corbyn backed out. It was another example of Corbyn’s spinelessness. Naturally McDonnell the Appeaser was opposed to it. [OJ266-268]

The Failure to Devise a Political Strategy

One of the most remarkable things about the Corbyn leadership was the complete lack of any political strategy. Corbyn was buffeted by the political winds and failed to take the initiative. Within a year he had been subject to a no confidence vote by Labour MPs, which he lost by 172-40. It is to his credit that Corbyn refused to be bullied by the PLP into standing down despite, in Dianne Abbot’s words, the attempts to break him as a man. [OJ84] A major reason for his clinging on and forcing Owen Smith to challenge him was the fact that Momentum calleda massive 10,000 demonstration on Parliament Green (Jones places the demo in Trafalgar Square, thus proving that he for one wasn’t there – OJ83).

Having wonagainst Smith by an even larger majority than the first time, despite the suspension of thousands of members by McNicol, Corbyn was at the height of his power. At this point Corbyn should have called on McNicol to resign. Indeed Corbyn should have accepted McNicol’s offer to resign when he was first elected.

Even after the near election victory of June 2017 when, in anticipation of a coup, McNicol had the passes of Corbyn’s staff to Southside cancelled, Corbyn failed to call for the dismissal of McNicol.[PM21] [OJ160]

The only political strategy that Corbyn had was appeasing the Right, yet it should have been obvious that a hard core of at least 50 MPs would never accept Corbyn as Prime Minister and in the event that he had won the General Election they would not have voted for him as Prime Minister.

There had to be a strategy of deselecting these MPs yet not only did Corbyn fail to embrace such a strategy but he persuaded Len McCluskey to break UNITE’s mandate in 2018 and oppose Open Selection. With Open Selection disloyal Labour MPs could have been deselected en masse. This was the key failure of Corbyn.

Corbyn had a strategic director in the form of Seamus Milne, the former Guardian Comment Editor. Milne was the son of former BBC Director-General Alisdair Milne. He came from the womb of the British Establishment. I don’t know whether or not Milne was an MI5 operative but of one thing I am sure. He could not have served British Intelligence better if he had been a paid agent.

Both books report Milne as someone whose only contribution, apart from coming late into the office with a coffee in one hand and pastries in another, was to lead Corbyn into Labour’s disastrous Brexit strategy, if one can call it that.

On the question of the fake anti-Semitism campaign, Milne had little to contribute or suggest. His failure to devise a strategy and stick to it, instead of firefighting as the latest Zionist attack was mounted, is as incomprehensible now as it was at the time.

A Dysfunctional Office

When Corbyn was elected leader they found the cupboard was bare. LOTO had been stripped of its furniture and computers. Even the keys to the door didn’t work! Not surprisingly it took some time to get everything in order.

However with the help of what is called Short money from the Treasury LOTO soon employed a considerable number of staff.  I estimate at least 30-40.

Far from getting their act together, LOTO degenerated into squabbles, personality conflicts, empire building and ego trips. Karie Murphy was brought in to sort things out as Chief of Staff but rather than ensuring a smooth running office she became part of the problem. ‘Often chaotic, under Murphy’s aegis the atmosphere of the leader’s office had become poisonous.’ [OJ271] Laura Murray, the Stakeholder, led the charge to the right over ‘anti-Semitism’.

Murphy forced Corbyn to sack the Chief Whip Rosie Winton, although Corbyn was unable to tell her outright her fate. [OJ122] But who was her replacement? Nick Brown, Gordon Brown’s boot boy, the man who is now demanding an unconditional apology in return for the restoration of the Whip. If someone like Ian Lavery had been appointed he could have removed the whip from a dozen Blairites and saved their parties the need to deselect them. It took Boris Johnson, who dispatched21 rebels at one go, to demonstrate what effective political management is about.

Murphy provoked two staff rebellions over her bullying and intimidation including hounding out Corbyn’s Asian PA Iram Chamberlain because she was held guilty over MI5’s refusal to give her a parliamentary pass. She also had the audacity to attend a meeting at MI5 HQ with Corbyn where she raised the issue of their lack of interest in the far-Right (as opposed to hounding Muslims). A close friend of hers had been murdered by neo-Nazis.

Perfectly proper issues to have raised yet Murphy became incandescent and with Milne’s agreement she was forced out. [PM157] Corbyn behaved in a spineless fashion yet again. Murphy regularly attacked female staff for not dressing appropriately like any traditional employer.

In August 2019 as the days of the Project drew to a close staff submitted a collective grievance against Murphy.[PM273] The outcome was that Murphy was effectively sacked and forced to work at Labour Party HQ with a new glorified title. As was so often the case Corbyn could not bring himself to do the deed.

Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn was perhaps the only person who was capable of gaining the magical number of PLP nominations (15%) to be elected. It was not just an accident of fate but the result of mass lobbying on social media that caused enough MPs to nominate him. I know because my 13 year old son was one of thousands furiously lobbying  MPs! Corbyn became leader as a result of a spontaneous insurgency and rebellion against the Labour Right. Unfortunately he failed to live up to the task of facing down the Right, not that you would know it from these 2 books.

Corbyn was incapable of standing up to his detractors and challenging their ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative. In interviews he simply became incoherent and angry. He was loathe to make decisions such as sacking Shadow Cabinet ministers, directing staff and taking the lead. According to Pogrund and Maguire he became a captive of his own staff, ‘protected’ by Murphy. The qualities that led to the 2017 surprise were the same ones that led to the catastrophe of 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZAn7ZEvwek

For example he was accused of supporting ‘terrorism’ by calling Hamas and Hezbollah speakers his ‘friends’ in an interview before being elected, with Krishna Guru Murphy of Channel 4. Instead of getting angry and defensive (& later apologising) he should have stuck to what he had previously said. Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t terrorists. They are the victims of terrorism, the offspring of massive Israeli violence. If terrorism means anything then it is the Israeli state violence. The problem is that Corbyn bought into an acceptance of the British state and with that comes a definition of terrorism which is that what the State does is never terrorism. It is only your enemies who are terrorists.

Corbyn and Anti-Semitism

Even the title of the chapter about anti-Semitism For the Many not the Jew, which adorned Zionist placards at the March 2018 demonstration outside the House of Commons was anti-Semitic. It assumed that all Jews were part of the few. But then Zionism and anti-Semitism have always been Siamese twins.

Pogrund and McGuire report how the Right believed that Corbyn’s support for anti-imperialism blinded him to anti-Semitism. [99] The idea that anti-imperialists are also racists is only something the press and Labour’s Right could seriously believe.

Siobhan McDonagh, one of the most stupid of right-wing MPs, believedthat because most Jews were capitalists, socialism and anti-capitalism were anti-Semitic!

The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was based on disinformation. Pogrund states that for decades the Labour Party had been ‘the natural political home of Britain’s Jews.’ [PM320] Utter nonsense, since the 1960s, with a blip during the Blair years, British Jews had voted solidly for the Tories. This kind of nonsense permeates their book.

Corbyn’s major failure was his inability  to understand the nature of the ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks. Corbyn took the attacks on him as an anti-Semite personally. For someone who had devoted his life to fighting racism it was the nastiest blow that the Zionists could make. If Corbyn had been a racist then it would not have bothered him.

One cannot imagine Tom Watson, who was a genuine racist, taking offence or losing sleep over accusations of racism. Watson, who was instrumental in the ‘anti-Semitism’ affair, played the race card in the 2004 Hodge Hill byelection, producing a leaflet which declared‘"Labour is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers."

Watson declared that he had ‘lost sleep’ over ‘poor Phil’ when the racist Labour MP Phil Woolas was ejectedfrom the House of Commons by the High Court for having lied about his opponent during the 2010 General Election. Woolas had run a campaign which was explicitly about ‘making the white folk angry’ i.e. stirring up racial discord.

It is inexplicable why Corbyn, who had been involved for 30+ years in Palestine solidarity work did not get it that ‘anti-Semitism’ is the first resort of the Zionists. When Zionists say ‘anti-Semite’ they mean ‘anti-Zionist’. That Corbyn and Milne did not get this is bewildering.

Corbyn became an automaton He went into a routine of stressing how much he opposed anti-Semitism. It was absurd as the anti-Semitism that the Zionist Board of Deputies was talking about was hatred of Israeli racism not hatred of Jews. Milne, if he had not spent all day loafing around, would have realised this.

Corbyn took to parroting the line that those who denied that Labour had a problem with anti-Semitism were ‘part of the problem’. It was called ‘denialism’. It was a form of cognitive dissonance. Corbyn did not relate the false allegations of anti-Semitism against him to the fact that other people too were falsely accused of anti-Semitism.

It should not have been difficult to understand why the charge of ‘anti-Semite’ is made at opponents of Zionism. Israel finds it difficult to justify the torture and sexual abuse of Palestinian children or the demolition of Palestinian homes. It is easier to attack the messenger than the message. This was the context of Corbyn’s failure.

When the ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis took on a momentum of its own, Corbyn should have made one or more big speeches in which he declared that of course he opposed anti-Semitism but at the same time he opposed those who weaponised anti-Semitism in order to defend Israel. Corbyn should have called out all those Labour MPs, from Ian Austin to Watson, who were so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ yet had failedto oppose the 2014 Immigration Act which had introduced the hostile environment policy and thus the Windrush Scandal. Just 6 Labour MPs had voted against the Act.

Corbyn came into the leadership determined to appease the Right. No one seems to have told him that the Right could not be appeased. They could be fought, they could be deselected, but you could no more appease Austin or John Woodcock than you could pat a rabid dog on the head and get away unscathed.

Austin openly declared ‘I want to do everything I can to stop him getting into government.’ [PM162] Likewise Mandelson ‘I work every day I some small way to bring an end to his tenure in office.’ [OJ]

Of course there were a few anti-Semites in a party of 600,000. There were also a few paedophiles.  But no one said that Labour was overrun with paedophiles. It was a wholly contrived controversy.

The IHRADefinition of Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism is hostility to or prejudice against Jews according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Yet Corbyn, of his own volition, adopted the 38 word IHRAdefinition of anti-Semitism. In September 2018 Labour’s NEC adopted the 11 examples attached to the IHRA, 7 of which refer to Israel. The IHRA definition read:

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Anti-Semitism isn’t a perception it is also a practice. And what is this certain perception? What else may it be expressed as?  This wasn’t a definition but a ramble. It is difficult to know what went through Corbyn’s mind when he adopted it but he made a rod for his own back. The definition is a model of obfuscation.  In the wordsof Professor David Feldman the IHRA was ‘bewilderingly imprecise.’ 

The sole purpose of the IHRAwas to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. When Theresa May adopted it in December 20016 Corbyn felt the need to follow suit.

Corbyn,  who had long been friends with Jewish anti-Zionists like Mike Marquesee, must have been aware of the record of the Zionist Board which has never fought anti-Semitism. In the 30s the Board advocated Jews staying at home during the Battle of Cable Street against Moseley’s fascists. During the 1970s as the National Front gained over 100,000 votes during the 1977 GLC elections the Board chose to attack the Anti-Nazi League notthe NF. As  Maurice Ludmer, editor of the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine wrote :

In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots... It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerunof the 1930's, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era."(Issue 41, November 1978)

It should have been obvious that the Board, which has support for Israel embedded in its Constitution, was concerned with Zionism not anti-Semitism. When Corbyn met the Board in April 2018 he left ‘with one request ringing louder in his ear than any other’ [PM105]. They wanted the IHRA adopted in full. To Pogrund /MGuire this was ‘relatively uncontroversial’.

Yet the same Board said nothing about Boris Johnson’s 72 Virgins book which depictsJews as controlling the media or Jacob Rees-Mogg’s references to the ‘illuminati’ – an anti-Semitic trope.

The Board of Deputies never raised the issue of Tory MEPs sittingin the Conservative Reform Group as anti-Semitic MEPs from Poland, Latvia and Sweden. The same is true with the European Council. Boris Johnson sackedLord Balfe who complained about these people. The Board remained silent. The Board also said nothing as Tory MEPs voted alongside fascists to support Hungary’s anti-Semitic Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

When Labour’s NEC endorsed an anti-Semitism code largely based on the IHRA, the Board threw a fit.  It wanted the whole IHRA adopted. Starmer weighed in to support them. [PM111]

Yet when the Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement Ivor Caplin met with Jennie Formby he agreed to the Anti-Semitism Code that amended the IHRA without any objection. [PM110-111] When the JLM Executive heard they threw a fit (Caplin was heavily defeated at the following AGM). Why? The answer was supplied by Len McCluskey in an articlefor Huff Post headed ‘Jewish Community Leaders Refuse to Take Yes for an Answer’. [123PM]

In other words the Zionist demands were not intended to be met and if they were then new ones would be made. This makes sense if your real objective is removing Corbyn.

Corbyn initially tried to woo the Zionists. At a hustings with Owen Smith Corbyn was asked what he most liked about Israel. Instead of responding that he liked their censorship of the press and their locking up and torture of Palestinian children he replied the separation of powers between Israel’s Supreme Court and the government.

The neutrality of Israel’s Supreme Court is a myth. It has totally disregarded international law and sanctioned the theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza. It has never questioned the ‘security arguments that are the favourite excuse for Israeli racism.

Intellectually Corbyn is lazy. He never once bothered to understand the racist, Jewish supremacist nature of Zionism. He was simply content to give bland support to Palestinian rights. 

The Witchhunt

What was most galling was the way Corbyn was prepared to throw his friends under the bus.  There were a whole series of people he betrayed, such as Christine Shawcroft a left wing member of the NEC who was ambushed by Labour staff when she became Chair of the Disputes Committee. Corbyn asked her personally to resign from the NEC. Chris Williamson, loyal to a fault, was suspended on the basis of a speech to Sheffield Momentum where he attacked both anti-Semitism and the making of false allegations of anti-Semitism. His words were twisted to mean their opposite.

Corbyn stated that he wished Chris Williamson would ‘shut his fucking mouth’. [OJ253] When Chris was readmitted by the NEC there was a petition of 150 Labour scabs organised by Watson calling for him to be suspended again. Corbyn’s reaction was to ‘angrily aske(d) his aides why the decision had been made; with his support, Williamson was resuspendedtwo days later.’ If true then Corbyn should hang his head in shame.

By throwing his friends overboard Corbyn guaranteed his own demise. Corbyn introduced ‘fast track’ expulsions at the 2019 Labour Party Conference to deal with ‘egregious’ cases of anti-Semitism. It has been used since then for allsuch cases, including that of Corbyn!

When Labour’s report on the treachery of full-time staff was leaked I read it very carefully. On page 306 it reported that:

Well we were all expelled. Was trust rebuilt? Of course not. The Zionists just made more demands and Formby and Corbyn rushed to fulfill them. And when they came for Corbyn there was no one left. 

Jones says that LOTO ‘was unhappy with the NCC panel’s decision to suspend Ken Livingstone for another year rather than expel him.’ Ken said nothing that could remotely be termed anti-Semitic. Likewise Marc Wadsworth who introduced Nelson Mandela to the Steve Lawrence campaign. It was sad and shameful. Corbyn brought about his own suspension by bringing Sturmer back into the Shadow Cabinet despite him having walked out in the chicken coup.

How John McDonnell Stabbed Corbyn in the Back

When John McDonnell said of Corbyn that he was his best friend in the Commons, his wife Cynthia joked that he was his only friend! [PM13] That friendship was sorely tried. From being a hard line IRA supporter who refused to adopt a budget under Ken Livingstone at the GLC, McDonnell went on to become the appeaser-in-chief.

When Margaret Hodge accused Corbyn of being a ‘fucking anti-Semite’Karie Murphy insisted on disciplinary action and Jennie Formby issued a Notice of Investigation. If any other member of the Labour Party had spoken in these terms they would have been suspended if not expelled.

I was expelled for calling Louise Ellman MP a supporter of Israel’s abuse of Palestinian children, which is documented by Defence of Children International – Palestine and UNICEF. Yet McDonnell declared that Hodge had a ‘good heart’ (OJ242). This tax-dodging, millionairess had a long record as a racist. She had even been praisedby the BNP for her support for a ‘whites only’ housing policy.

In his determination to appease the Right McDonnell betrayed Corbyn. It caused ‘the most profound breach between Corbyn and McDonnell the Project would ever experience’ [PM115] Corbyn wanted to see disciplinary action taken. According to both books it led to a complete breakdown between the two for 6 months.

McDonnell also spoke out in support of reinstating Alistair Campbell after he admitted voting Lib-Dem in the European elections.

Campbell was treated no differently to thousands of others. Campbell and Mcdonnell had ‘forged an improbable alliance’. [PM195/284]

‘The defining difference between the two [was that] McDonnell obsessed over the pursuit of power.’ [PM84] There was no right-winger that McDonnell wouldn’t appease. Not once did he consider that the more he appeased the Right the stronger they became and the less likely he’d ever sit in a ministerial limousine.

When it came to international affairs McDonnell went out of his way to ‘prove’ that he was as loyal to the British state as any jingoist. When Corbyn doubted Russian involvement in the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury, McDonnell made his disagreement clear, even going so far as to Boycott RT the Russian radio station. Presumably the BBC, with its support for British imperialism, posed fewer problems.

McDonnell was quoted as ‘tearing his hair out’ over ‘anti-Semitism’ saying that Jewish people ‘were really suffering out there’. Total drivel. It is Black and Muslim people not British Jews who were suffering. Yet this man is still President of the LRC.

BREXIT

Brexit and its fall out dominate both books. The more that Corbyn and LOTO struggled to come to terms with it the more intractable the problem became. Labour ended up with a policy which repelled both supporters of Leave and Remain. It was a struggle of Sisyphus. Corbyn bowed to pressure from Starmer and Andrew Fisher, amongst others, to accede to the demand for a second referendum but it was never clear what the Party’s position would be in that referendum.

McDonnell had bowed down to the Right and Alistair Campbell and had become a Remainer without conditions. With McDonnell, Emily Thornberry and Andrew Fisher pushing one way and Milne, Lavery, McLuskey and Murphy pushing the other way, Corbyn came to resemble nothing so much as a cork bobbing on the water.

The problem of Brexit was approached purely from an electoralist calculus. A Marxist approach would have been to ask why so many in the northern working class supported Brexit. The clear and obvious answer was that it was a consequence of deindustrialisation and the succession of working class defeats over the past 30 years symbolised by the defeat of the miners.

Those who voted for Brexit weren’t racists but they were motivated by the belief that migrant workers were responsible for taking their jobs and undermining their wages and conditions. The fact that there was no basis to these fears made no difference. ‘Taking back control’ for Johnson meant British bosses taking back control from Europe in order that they could lower wages and conditions as we can now see with the abolitionof the Working Time Directive being discussed.

It pains me to say it but Tony Blair was right when he said that Corbyn and Labour should have pressed for a referendum before an election. [PM283] As it is Johnson, against all expectations, obtained a deal and with it went on to win an election. Johnson had calculated, unlike Theresa May, that Europe and in particular German capitalism, did not want to see no deal with all the disruption. Johnson faced them down. Instead it was Burgon and Carden from the left who ‘harried their leader for an election.’ [PM291] They were turkeys urging an early Xmas, which is exactly what they got.

Thanks in no good measure to the ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis Corbyn was at the election as ‘weak, indecisive and a flip flopper.’ [OJ209]

The End

When Andrew Fisher resigned during the 2019 conference he predicted that Labour would be defeated at the forthcoming election. Internal Labour polls had forecast that Labour would do worse than at any time since 1918.  By the time of the election the Corbyn Project ‘was barely a coherent entity’.  McDonnell had ‘sowed a corrosive distrust’. [PM359]

It was no surprise that Keir Starmer became leader. He had the support of many ex-Momentum supporters like Laura Parker and Paul Mason. As Pogrund says, ‘Keir Starmer won power by embracing Corbynism rather than repudiating it.’ [360PM] It speaks volumes that Starmer’s record as Director of Public Prosecutions and his voting against an inquiry into the Iraq War were not part of the campaign against him. See the blog I wrote in February 2019 Keir Starmer is the candidate that the Deep State & the British Establishment want you to vote for

No sooner had Starmer become Leader then he gave Formby her marching orders and installed Blair’s adviser David Evans as the new General Secretary. It was a marked contrast to Corbyn who had embraced those out to destroy him.

Part of the problem with the Corbyn Project was that he was elected when the class struggle was at its lowest. That meant being honest with workers and telling them that Labour would fight neo-liberalism in the EU but at the same time the proposal to hand back control to British bosses who, like Dyson, were busy exporting their factories abroad anyway, made no sense.  Unfortunately there doesn’t ever seem to have been such a discussion and Corbyn’s Strategic Adviser Milne was incapable of framing the issue in class terms.

Owen Jones believes that McDonnell would have been a better leader. I disagree. McDonnell has already shown that he would bow down to the demands of British capitalism. The Labour Left is incapable of critiquing the British state. That is why the Left doesn’t attack Starmer the way that the Right attacked Corbyn.

The problem today is that the left in the Labour Party is incapable of analyzing where it went wrong and without that it has no chance of regaining the leadership. That is the truth that Momentum and the LRC are trying to avoid.

Tony Greenstein

 Jones description of Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ demonstrates a ‘disconnect from reality which borders on hysteria’

Michael Ellman - suspended for 'antisemitism' - the wrong sort of Jew

I have devoted a whole blog to ‘The AntiSemitism Crisis’ in Owen Jones book, because he played a key role in supporting a campaign whose sole purpose was removing Corbyn.

In years to come, the moral panic over ‘anti-Semitism’ which helped destroy the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party, will come to be seen for what it was. Utterly contrived and confected.

The Mail article which began the fake 'antisemitism' crisis

With hindsight what is not clear now will become obvious. Corbyn’s opposition to US imperialism, combined with his support for the Palestinians made him unacceptable not only to the British and American ruling elites but their racist Rottweiler, Israel.

It is no coincidence that the Daily Mail, which published the forged Zinoviev letter that led to the downfall of the first Labour government in 1924, was the paper which began Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis.

When records at the Public Records Office are opened in 30 years time people may learn the truth of how the British Establishment, the Israeli state and others scrambled to Corbyn being elected. A rogue general had already warnedthat the army might mutiny if Corbyn became Prime Minister.

Freedom of information requests in the US may provide information on the involvement of Intelligence agencies such as the CIA and background to Mike Pompeo’s warning  that the US would take action before Corbyn could get in power because

‘It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”

The idea that the Daily Mail, a pro-Hitler paper during the 1930s, with its infamous ‘hurrah for the Blackshirts’headline, was concerned about anti-Semitism beggars belief. It described‘the German Jew, Karl Marx.’ as the ‘High Priest’ of socialism.

The Daily Mail waged a campaign against the admission of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. On 20^thAugust 1938 it reportedthat:

“The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage . . .’ In these words, Mr Herbert Metcalfe, the Old Street magistrate, yesterday referred to the number of aliens entering the country through the ‘back door’ - a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed.”

When the Sun dispensedwith Katie Hopkins in September 2015, after her Nazi-likecomment that refugees were ‘cockroaches’, she was snapped up by the Mail, at almost exactly the same time as its ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign against Corbyn started.

Now it’s possible that the Mail was suffering from cognitive dissonance. As a Mail spokesman explained

“Katie’s column is a must read for people across Britain and around the globe. Even if you don’t agree with what she says, she certainly knows how to engage and entertain an audience.”

I suspect Hitler also had his lighter moments.

The elephant in the room as far as Owen Jones is concerned is the support of the far-Right for Israel and Zionism. Donald Trump, who describedthe neo-Nazis at Charlottesville as ‘fine people’ also expressed his admiration for ‘the good bloodlines’ of Henry Ford, whose portrait an admiring Hitler kept in his office.

Richard Spencer, who organised the rally at Charlottesville, where marchers chanted‘the Jews will not replace us,”idolises Israel as an ethno-nationalist state. He describes himself as a White Zionist. Tommy Robinson too is an admirer.

When White Supremacists, neo-Nazis and QAnon crazies invaded Capitol Hill on January 6 the Israeli flag flewalongside the Confederate flag. The strongest supporters of Zionism and Israel in the United States are Evangelical Christians who believe that in order to achieve Rapture millions of Jews must die.

In the Bundestag, when a resolution condemning BDS was passed, its strongest supporters were the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany who wanted to make BDS illegal. These connections between Zionism, Israel and the far-Right are not even mentioned by Jones.

Why does the anti-Semitic far-Right support Zionism and the Israeli state? It’s because they make a distinction between Israel which they love, and the Jews who they blame for ‘replacing’ them with immigrants. That was why Thomas Bowers murdered11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue.

The far-Right supports Israel for the same reasons that they supported the apartheid state in South Africa. Creating a white ethno-nationalist state is the stuff of racists’ wet dreams.

Israel is an Apartheid state as Israel’s main human rights group, B’tselem, belatedly admitted after 32 years. If proof were needed then one need look no further than Israel’s supply of COVID vaccines to Jewish settlers whilst denyingthem to 5 million Palestinians. That is what Jones, Israel’s progressive propagandist, is defending.

77% of Labour Party members believed that the ‘anti-Semitism crisis’ was about undermining Corbyn and defending Israel. They understood that there is no way Israel’s supporters can defend house demolitions, child imprisonment and torture and all the other acts of racism other than by accusing Israel’s critics of ‘anti-Semitism’!

But for Jones Labour had, for reasons unknown, been gripped by a spontaneous outbreak of anti-Semitism. The fact that the entire Tory press, not normally known for its anti-racism, was so concerned with Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ made no impression on the Guardian’s licensed radical.

In ‘The Antisemitism Crisis’ Jones simply ignored the way ‘anti-Semitism’ has been weaponised by Israel’s supporters. As Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli Education Minister noted, anti-Semitism is a ‘trick we use’ to suppress criticism of Israel.

In the wake of the holocaust support for Israel ‘became a dominant idea among Jews.’ This is true. The victory of Zionism represented the defeat of the fight against fascism and anti-Semitism. It was this that led to the creation of a state based on the same principles of ethnic cleansing and racism that motivated the Nazis. From 1933-1941 Nazi policy was to exclude not to murder Europe’s Jews.

The real lessons from the holocaust are ones we don’t hear at today’s state sponsored remembrance of the holocaust. If Britain and America had accepted Jewish refugees from Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe and the West had not supported Hitler’s regime in its earlier years, then far fewer Jews would have died.

Herbert Morrison, Labour Home Secretary during the war, set his face against the admission of Jewish refugees despite public opinion supporting their entry. In October 1942 he rejected pleas to admit 2000 Jewish children from France. The Board of Deputies made no criticism of him. Morrison was an ardentsupporter of Zionism. Another lesson might be that any people, Jews included are capable, given the right set of circumstances of becoming racists and fascists.

The Confederate flag flying on a Jerusalem house

But these are not the lessons that Jones wants us to draw. For him the lessons of the holocaust are racist ones.

Jones tells that anti-Semitism is ‘ingrained’ into European society as a result of 2,000 years of oppression: ‘Collective trauma is absolutely central to the Jewish experience’. Of course this trauma doesn’t apply to anti-Zionist Jews nor any other survivors of genocide. The idea that Israeli generals are suffering from holocaust trauma is to defile the memory of the Jewish dead of the holocaust.

This portrayal of Jews as perpetual victims is itself anti-Semitic. Jews in Britain or the United States today are not traumatized by the holocaust but by the alliances that Zionism is striking up with people like Trump. There were those who used to argue that the experience of British concentration camps in the Boer War justified Apartheid.

Every act of genocide is unique. To suggest as Jones does that the holocaust is especially unique is a racist narrative. Why was the death of 17 million in the slave trade any less traumatic than the death of 6 million Jews in the holocaust? Are Black people traumatised by the 10+ million who died in the Belgian Congo? Have Palestinians not continued to be traumatised by expulsion and massacre?

When Jackie Walker explained in a private Facebook conversation why the holocaust should be seen in the context of slavery and her Jewish heritage she was demonisedand lied about, not least by Jones.

It is a myth that Jews experienced 2,000 years of persecution. It is history written backwards. Jewish historian Salo Baron described it as the ‘lachrymose version of history’. Jews lived for long periods as oppressors of the peasants not the oppressed. Zionism writes off the Jewish diaspora as a history of suffering. If this were the case then one would have to ask why? The inevitable conclusion would be that it had something to do with the Jews themselves. Jones version of history is an anti-Semitic version of history.

Zionist Apologist

Jones talks of Israel’s ‘original socialist principles’ and the kibbutzim as ‘the incubators of a new socialist society.’ [218] The kibbutzim were racially exclusive institutions. No Arab could be a member. They were established on land from which the Arab peasants had been evicted. As the British Hope-Simpson Reportobserved:

The effect of the Zionist colonisation policy on the Arab.— Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extraterritorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. … The land is in mortmain and inalienable. It is for this reason that Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the Zionists in view of the policy which the Zionist Organisation deliberately adopted.

Jones describes the Zionist enterprise in Palestine as ‘fundamentally different’ from other projects of settler colonialism. Why? Because it was founded by ‘survivors of a genocide.’ [219] The first Zionist kibbutz Deganiawas established over 30 years before the holocaust. David HaCohen, a prominent Labour Zionist,  described how

‘I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my Trade Union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they should not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there... to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash Arab eggs they had bought... to buy dozens of dunums from an Arab is permitted but to sell God forbid one Jewish dunum to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild the incarnation of capitalismas a socialist and to name him the ‘benefactor’ – to do all that was not easy.’

Racial exclusivity was in Zionism’s DNA. The Pilgrim Fathers were also fleeing religious persecution. The leaders of the London Underground Church were repeatedly imprisoned and in 1593 three of them were executed. Did that justify what followed? The massacres of Native Americans and later slavery?

Ahad Ha'am, an early Zionist, who first visited Palestine in 1891, some 50 years before the holocaust, describedhow the Zionist settlers

deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put an end to this despicable and dangerous tendency.

99% of the 2.7 million Jews of Czarist Russia who fledthe pogroms came to Britain and the United States not Palestine.

The ‘Anti-Semitism’ Crisis

Jones begins his account with a ‘mural’ that had been erased in 2012. It depicted 6 bankers sitting on the backs of Black people. Corbyn had defended it on the grounds of free speech. It wasn’t even obvious that it was anti-Semitic. Only 2 of the bankers were Jewish. In 2018 it was raised out of the blue by Luciana Berger MP, who later defected to the ‘funny tinge’ party.

Jones never asks why the mural made an appearance 6 years later. Nor does he mention the fact that Berger was Director of Labour Friends of Israel before entering parliament in 2010.

Jones does not mention The Lobby, an undercover documentary by Al Jazeera which showed that the Israeli Embassy was deeply involved in the anti-Semitism crisis. Shai Masot, from Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, was busy trying to bring down politicians such as Alan Duncan, the Deputy Foreign Minister. Michael Rubin, former Chair of Young Labour and Parliamentary Officer for LFI was coordinating his activities with the Israeli Embassy.

The JLM was refoundedin 2015 in order to spearhead the anti-Corbyn campaign yet Laura Murray from Corbyn’s Office held bi-monthly meetings with them as part of Corbyn’s appeasement strategy. It was to no avail. In March 2019 when the JLM threatened to disaffiliate Corbyn beggedthem to stay saying he understood their ‘distress’. They responded with a vote of no confidence in him refusing to campaign for Labour at the General Election.

Instead Jones reserves his bile and vitriol for Jewish Voices for Labour [JVL] which probably has more Jewish Labour Party members in it than the JLM. The JVL was ‘an active barrier to dialogue with the wider Jewish community.’ [234]

British Jews don’t constitute one community. What Jones is saying is that the most radical and anti-racist Jews should be ignored in order to placate the racist majority. Jones admits that just 22% of British Jews voted Labour, even under the Jewish Ed Miliband.

It is as if when it came to Apartheid in South Africa Jones was to side with the White majority and attack the minority of Whites who opposed Apartheid as racists. The veterans of the struggle in South Africa such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ronnie Kasrills and Andrew Feinstein agree. Israel is an apartheid state.

Board of Deputies

Trying to win over a privileged White group was more important to Jones than solidarity with oppressed Palestinians. The Board of Deputies is the most reactionary section of British Jewry. Support for Israel is part of its Constitution. It even welcomedTrump to power.

The Board of Deputies 'anti-racist' demonstration

Not once in its history has the Board ever held a demonstration. Not against the British Union of Fascist or the National Front, Yet in March 2018 it held a demonstration against Corbyn! And who graced the demonstration with their presence? Those well known anti-racists Norman Tebbit and Ian Paisley! The slogan of the hour was the anti-Semitic ‘For the many not the Jew.’

What would have happened if White expatriates from South Africa living in Britain had also numbered ¼ million? Perhaps Jones would have argued that we have to take their ‘unique trauma’ into account.

We might have been warned not to use the term ‘Apartheid’ which simply meant separate development. Advocates of apartheid did not argue for racial supremacy. That was the interpretation of others. So too with Zionism.

Zionists also advocate for separation (Hafrada) from the Palestinians. The Israeli Labour Party supports a two state solution on the basis that Jews and Arabs can’t live together.

In supporting a two state solution Jones is arguing for a policy of apartheid, dressed up as separate development. The ideology of separate but equal has a long lineage. It was first approved by the US Supreme Court in Plessy v. Fergusonin 1896.

The decision in Plessy was overturned in the landmark civil rights case of Brown v Board of Education in 1954 where it was held that if a facility was separate it was unequal.

Despite accepting that the JLM ‘was undoubtedly overwhelmingly hostile to the Labour leadership’ this master of the empty phrase complains that Corbyn was ‘less interested in other perspectives.’

The JLM represents the Israeli state inside Labour. Poalei Zion’s [PZ] affiliated to the Labour Party in 1920 because Labour was a party of colonialism and Empire. PZ had little support among British Jews.

IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

The proof that the JLM and the Zionists concerns were about Israel not anti-Semitism was the campaign to force Labour to adopt the IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’. As Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge wrotethe IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’

The IHRA has been slammedas ‘bewilderingly imprecise.’ and ‘not fit for purpose’ by academics and legal scholars. Its 11 examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ include 7 references to Israel.Truthfully describing Israel as a racist state is now deemed anti-Semitic.

According to Owen Jones logic, these demonstrations against Trump are anti-Semitic!

Yet Jones says of the IHRA that ‘the definition itself was uncontroversial’ [236]. ‘Almost all’the 11 examples ‘were equally uncontroversial’. Palestinian opposition is simply disregarded by Jones, if he is even aware of it. The opposition of the UCU, the lecturers union is also ignored. Opposition to the way the IHRA is being used to target individuals includesthe principal drafter of the IHRA, Kenneth Stern but to Jones all this is ‘uncontroversial’.

Jones is oblivious to the company he is keeping. Donald Trump was an enthusiastic supporter of the IHRA, signingan Executive Order in 2019 imposing the IHRA on colleges. Jones also confuses Budapest with Bucharest where the IHRA Definition was first adopted!

Comparing Zionism and Israel to the Nazis

One of the IHRA examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ was ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’ To Jones that is ‘as offensive as it is manifestly untrue.’

Why shouldn’t the Israeli mobs who chant‘death to the Arabs’ not be compared to those in Germany and Poland who chanted ‘death to the Jews’? How is the principle behind Israeli ethnic cleansing any different from that of Nazi Germany?

In Israel making such comparisons is commonplace. The Times of Israel described how demonstrators calledthe Police ‘“Nazis” and “kapos,” as ‘Holocaust imagery’was used to describe police violence. Clearly these Israeli demonstrators weren’t traumatised!

Israelis such as Yair Golan, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Professors Ze’ev Sternhell, a child survivor of Premszyl ghetto and Yehuda Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz, all made comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. According to Jones their only purpose being ‘to bait Jews with the memory of their most murderous persecutors.’ Jones disregards the far more common Zionist comparisons between Palestinians and Nazis when for example Menachem Begin compared Yasir Arafat to Hitler in his bunker.

Jews aren’t quite as traumatised as Jones, trapped by his identity politics, believes. The whole point of comparing Israeli policies with Nazi Germany is to make Israelis and Zionists think about what they are doing. Jones, the supporter of settler colonialism doesn’t get it.

Jones is simply ignorant about the the Nazi holocaust which took place from 1941 to 1945.  The Nazis were in power for 12 years. Up till 1941 their policy was expulsion i.e. ethnic cleansing, not extermination. What has Israel’s consistent policy towards the Palestinians been from 1948 onwards till today?  Ethnic cleansing.

What Jones’ identity politics do is to essentialise Jews as permanent victims of oppression. Their ‘trauma’ being justification for any atrocity. Jones is employing quack political psychology. It is easier than understanding the specific dynamic of Israeli society, Zionism and the changing nature of Jewish identity. It is not merely racist. It demonstrates how shallow and vacuous Jones’ soundbite politics are.

‘Anti-Semitism has always existed on the left’[213]

One of the things I like about Owen Jones is his ability to given an opinion about things he knows nothing about. He is certain that ‘Anti-Semitism has always existed on the left.’

The Left, albeit not the soggy reformism which Jones espouses, has always fought anti-Semitism. Jones gives us the names of two 19^th century anarchists – Proudhon and Bakunin – and projects forward to today. It’s like saying that because Germans once voted for the Nazis Germans will remain Nazis forever. Jones informs us that

‘Despite his own Jewish heritage, Karl  Marx was not immune from expressing then pervasive anti-Semitic attitudes.’

Jones cites Marx’s essay On the Jewish Question which stated that money is the jealous god of Israel.’Marx’s essay was, as Jones admits, critiquing the Jewish religion not Jews. In fact Marx was debating with Bruno Bauer, a radical Hegelian, who was arguing that Jews should not be emancipated because of their religion. Marx argued that emancipation was not a religious but a social question.

Marx employed the term Judentum which was then the equivalent of ‘The Spirit of Capitalism’ and that was how Jews were then seen. If Marx’s essay was anti-Semitic then that was because it was largely based on the essay‘On the essence of money’ in 1843 by Moses Hess, the first Zionist.

What Jones has done is to transplant ‘woke’ society of the 21^stcentury back to the early 19^th century. That shows how shallow Jones is not how anti-Semitic Marx was. In 1898 the socialist Zionist Nachman Syrkin wrote that:

The mission of the Jews was to spread the monotheist idea when in reality it has been degraded to the search for financial gain.’

Bernard Lazarre, who would later launch the campaign to free Dreyfus, wrote in 1890 distinguishing between Israelites and Jews, adding ‘the latter being a species of swindlers’. The identification of Jews with money was commonplace at the time.

What marks the Left from the Right is that the Left has always fought anti-Semitism. Lenin’s speech on ‘Anti-Jewish Pogroms’ read

Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.

Whilst Revisionist Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky was making a pact with Slavinsky, the representative of Simon Petliura, the Ukrainian nationalist who had the blood of 100,000 Jews under his belt, the Bolsheviks were outlawing anti-Semitism and shooting pogromists.

In Socialism and the Jews,(p.94)Professor Robert Wistrich of Tel Aviv University, an ardent Zionist, wrote that in Germany

 ‘‘opposition to anti-Semitism had become a badge of honor for the workers movement.’

Ian Kershaw, in ‘Popular Opinion and Dissent in Nazi Germany’wrote of his

‘admiration for the courageous minority – overwhelmingly communist workers – who fought uncompromisingly against the Nazis… is boundless…the vast proportion of them workers’ were put in ‘protective custody’

Jones, in order to justify his support for Zionism  slanders and defames those who gave their lives opposing fascim & anti-Semitism.

John Hobson – Imperialism, Finance Capital & Jews [214]

Jones refers to another contrived controversy. Corbyn’s Introduction to John Hobson’s 1901 ‘Study of Imperialism’. Hobson wrote a few lines equating finance capital with Jews. Hobson’s analysis was of the role of finance capital in imperialism. His views on Jews were completely irrelevant to his analysis. As Geoffrey Alderman wrote:

 ‘In a text running to almost 400 pages there are merely a dozen or so lines which we would call anti-Semitic. There was absolutely no need for Corbyn to have drawn attention to them in his foreword.’

This affair was created by Times Associate Editor Danny Finkelstein, a far right associate of Douglas Murray and the Gatestone Society? For Jones though this proved that ‘there has never been a real reckoning with the anti-Semitism of Britain’s past’.

Jews as white [216]

Jones was worried that if Jews

‘are judged no longer to suffer systemic racism and to have become defined as ‘white’ then anti-Semitism can come to seem as less problematic than, for example, anti-black racism and Islamaphobia.’

There was a time when Jews were the victims of state racism and police violence in Britain but no longer. There is no offence of driving whilst being Jewish. Jews aren’t deported for being Jewish. Jews suffer very few physical attacks because they are Jewish. Jews are economically more privileged than the average non-Jewish white person. How do they suffer systemic racism?

Anti-Semitism is a marginal prejudice in Britain. What conclusions you draw from that politically is another matter but Jones isn’t able to think logically. He is embedded in the fog of identity politics.

William Rubinstein, former President of the Jewish Historical Society wrote in his book ‘The Left, Right and the Jews’ about

“the rise of Western Jewry to unparalleled affluence and high status  (which) has led to the near-disappearance of a Jewish proletariat of any size; indeed, the Jews may become the first ethnic group in history without a working class of any  size."

Rubinstein’s conclusion was that the change in Jews' status

has rendered obsolete... the type of anti-Semitism which has its basis in fears of the swamping of the native population" and it has made "Marxism, and other radical doctrines, irrelevant to the socio-economic bases of Western Jewry, and increasingly unattractive to most Jews.

Alderman, the historian of the Jewish community, wrote in ‘The Jewish Community and British Politics’ that by 1961,

over 40 percent of Anglo-Jewry was located in the upper two social classes, whereas these categories accounted for less than 20 percent of the general population. 

Naz Shah and the Map of Israel [223]

In 2016 at the start of the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign it was ‘discovered’ that in 2014, during Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza, that Naz Shah, not yet an MP, had indulged in political satire, namely a meme that involved transferring Israel to the United States.

Naz Shah was forced to apologise to the ‘Jewish community’ (i.e. the Israel lobby). Ken Livingstone got suspended for defending her and Corbyn went along with all this before he himself was suspended.

Jones describes Naz Shah’s public humiliation as ‘a model in rehabilitation.’  When I was interviewed about this by Vanessa Feltz on BBC London Radio her clinching argument was that Naz Shah had apologised. I pointed out that so too had the victims of Stalin’s purges. Many innocent people have been coerced into apologising.

Ken Livingstone, Hitler and Zionism [223]

For Jones what Livingstone said is another example of ‘anti-Semitism’. In hearing that Livingstone had spoken about Hitler’s support for Zionism Corbyn said ‘What the fuck has he said’ and demanded Livingstone’s suspension. If this is true then it is another example of Corbyn’s unerring ability to stab himself in the back. No more loyal supporter was there of Corbyn than Livingstone.

What Livingstone was referring to was the trade agreement (Ha’avara) between the Nazi state and the Zionist Organisation, in 1933. At the time world Jewry had launched an international Boycott of Nazi Germany. Making an agreement with the Zionists was seen by the Nazis as a way of destroying the Boycott.

This was undoubtedly collaboration with the Nazi state. Even the late Elie Wiesel, an ardent Zionist but also a survivor of Auschwitz, saidin a review of Tom Segev’s The Seventh Million that

‘Surely, Jewish Palestine... needed money to finance its development, but this brazen pragmatism went against the political philosophy of a majority of world Jewry. There developed a growing perception that instead of supporting and strengthening the boycott, Palestine was, in fact, sabotaging it.’

The suspension of Livingstone for referring to a period of history that the Zionist movement finds embarrassing meant that something can be both true and anti-Semitic! 98% of German Jews in 1933 were not Zionists. Zionists were known as the volkish Jews. Volk being a term used by the nationalist Right as a term for the German race. 

The Zionist leaders in Palestine and Germany welcomed the rise of the Nazis. Berl Katznelson, a founder of Mapai, the Israeli Labour Party and David Ben Gurion’s effective deputy, saw the rise of Hitler as “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”.[Francis Nicosia, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p.91]. Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel was even more optimistic. ‘The Nazis victory would become “a fertile force for Zionism.” [Segev, The 7^th Million p.18]

Whenever Israel is criticised the holocaust is brought into play. But during the holocaust it was a different story. The Zionists played it down. They had one objective - to create a Jewish state. The survival of Europe’s 10 million Jews was of no concern. The Zionists fought against any country offering asylum to Jewish refugees.