The key question running through the debate over the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-semitism is whether or not Israel is just another liberal democratic state or whether it is suis generis. According to the IHRA‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’. The problem is that Israel is not any other country. It is in a class of its own. ![]()
Events in Afula, a Jewish-only city of around 50,000 in northern Israel, in June of this year explain why Israel is not simply a western state which happens to have racist policies but an Apartheid state for whom racism is an essential component of its identity. Afula’s Jewish residents were outraged that a property in the town had been sold to an Arab. This was a carbon copy of a similar demonstration in 2015 when many of the successful bidders for building plots were found to be Arabs. The protestors demanded the cancellation of the whole bidding process and the Nazareth District Court was happy to oblige. Similar protests and actions have been held in other towns. In Safed the Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, a paid state official, issued an edict forbidding Jews to rent property to Arabs. Eliyahu’s edict was supported by dozens of rabbis when he came in for criticism. Israel is a uniquely racist state. For McDonnell to appease the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel is a shameful capitulation to those who have been running the false anti-semitism campaign for the past three years. McDonnell appears to think that if he appeases the Zionists and gives them everything they want then they won’t continue their campaign of destabilisation. Appeasement rarely works as history demonstrates.
![]() |
| It's what used to be called Apartheid |
What McDonnell seems to have difficulty understanding is that the fake anti-semitism campaign has one overriding purpose – removing the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party, McDonnell included. The more you give the Zionists the more they will demand until there’s nothing left to give. It is a total illusion to give way to these racists in the belief that they will call off their dogs.
Uniquely in the modern world, the Israeli state owns and controls 93% of Israeli land which is reserved for the use of the ‘Jewish people.’ The Jewish National Fund, a para-state organisation set up by the JNF Law 1953 ensures that access to that land is barred to the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians. ![]()
The JNF is quite openabout the fact that ‘it should not be obliged to allocate lands in its possession to non-Jews.... Whoever seeks to prevent the allocation of JNF lands solely to Jews must confront the assertions of these laws’ referring to three land laws passed in 1960-61 which gave the JNF and the Israeli Land Administration joint responsibility for administering Israeli state land. Israeli Arabs are confined to 3% of the land. Not one new Arab town or village has been created in Israel since its formation 70 year ago despite a more than 10 fold increase in their population. This contrasts with hundreds of new Jewish towns and communities.
![]() |
| Demonstration against house sale in Afula |
In Israel land is segregated in the same way as it was in Apartheid South Africa. The only difference is that Israel sees no need to pass a Group Areas Act relying on a series of opaque laws instead.
In the wake of the NEC’s decision to endorse the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, Palestine solidarity activists fly posted bus stops in London declaring that Israel is a racist endeavour.
This was immediately denounced by McDonnell who told BBC’s Politics Live that "It is not the right thing to say.It is against the examples that we set out and linked to the IHRA definitions." In these few robotic comments we see the intellectual poverty of Labour’s political elite displayed in all its glory. Why is it wrong to call Israel a racist state? Are the protestors wrong? Are their arguments at fault? No, its because it’s against the IHRA formula which the Labour Party and Theresa May have both adopted, alongside the anti-semitic governments of Poland and Hungary.
In an equally shocking interviewwith Jewish News McDonnell elaborated on these comments, in the course of which he demonstrated just far he has moved to the right and to what lengths he is prepared to go in order to disown his own political heritage. Time was when McDonnell defended physical force Irish Republicanism against the British army’s occupation of Northern Ireland. McDonnell stated that ‘It is anti-Semitic to oppose a Jewish state, of course it is.’ Israel calls itself a Jewish state but what does that mean? Quite simply Israel is a Jewish supremacist state in the same way as South Africa was a White supremacist state and Ulster was a Protestant supremacist state.
Being Jewish in Israel means having very real and significant privileges. A Jewish state means that you constantly worry about the ‘demographic threat’ that the Arabs pose. In an article Expert confirms Jews and Arabs nearing population parity Aron Heller wrote that ‘Israel will be faced with a daunting choice between becoming a binational state or one in which Arabs and other minorities do not have equal rights.’ That is why Israel constantly encourages Jewish immigration at the same time as it takes steps to minimise the Arab population. It means politics in Israel are ethnicised at every level and in every sphere of civil and social life. The 20% of the population that are Palestinians are not represented at any level in the government, the senior civil service or the judiciary. It means segregation in most areas of life including education and housing. It also results in government supported campaigns against miscegenation, sexual relations between Jews and Arabs that are reminiscent of the Nuremberg Laws (Israel's vile anti-miscegenation squads). ![]()
What is particularly shocking is not only that McDonnell has so little historical or political awareness but that he is prepared to jettison the Palestinians for the sake of a pact with the devil. The idea of religious states died out with the French Revolution. Nationality became a function of residence in a certain territory not religion. In the wordsof Count Clermont-Tonnerre, a Deputy in the French Constituent Assembly, "Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals…." Tonnerre’s words represented the views of 18th-century rationalists and French revolutionaries toward Judaism and the Jewish question. That was why Zionism, like the Jewish Orthodoxy, hated Emancipation and the French Revolution (alongside Hitler and European fascism). In Israel being Jewish is more a question of race and nation than religion. There is no right to a Jewish state nor is it anti-semitic to oppose it. Jews are members of all nations. The idea of Jewish nationhood and thus Jewish self-determination is an anti-semitic argument that implies that Jews aren’t members of the nations amongst whom they live.
There is also no right to a Protestant or Catholic or Islamic state. A simple understanding of the fight for democratic rights and the works of people like Thomas Paine and JS Mill eludes McDonnell.
McDonnell’s also suggested that all states are racist and Israel is no different. That is a fundamental failure to understand that Israel is not just another Western state. Israel is unique in not having its own nationality. Jews are a separate nation to Arabs and there are about 130 nationalities in Israel of which only one, Jewish means anything.
Israel is a state that was founded on the basis of Jewish racial supremacy. When the Supreme Court ruled in Ka’adanthat the State could not discriminate against Arabs by refusing to sell them State land, the response of the Knesset was to pass in 2011 an Acceptance to Communities Law which allowed communities of less than 500 people to set up Admission Committees which screened potential residents on ethnic or other grounds such as colour. Imagine if, in Britain, someone Jewish was told that they could not purchase land because it was owned by the Christian National Fund. There would be an uproar but that is the situation in Israel in respect of Arabs. John McDonnell sees nothing amiss in this.
McDonnell, in his desire to appease the Labour Right is prepared to throw the Palestinians under a bus. First he suggested that Margaret Hodge’s abuse of Jeremy Corbyn should not be made the subject of a disciplinary investigation despite having said nothing about the disciplinary hearings against Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and myself. Then McDonnell called for full support for the IHRA and now he is first off the starting block in denouncing activists for saying that Israel is a racist rotweiller that guards over Western interests in the Middle East whilst systematically discriminating against its non-Jewish inhabitants.
Those who think that this will not have any effect on McDonnell’s potential role as a Labour Chancellor, should think again. McDonnell has begun travelling the same road that his famous predecessor, Sir Stafford Cripps, took. Cripps started off on Labour’s far-left, was expelled and ended up as Attlee’s Chancellor and the enforcer of austerity.
Foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy. If McDonnell bends the knee to the Zionist lobby now then he is he going to doff his cap to American foreign policy and the ‘special relationship’. We can only imagine what McDonnell’s response will be when faced with a hostile banking sector and a run on the pound. If he can’t even criticise Margaret Hodge’s vile attack on Jeremy Corbyn and support the mandatory reselection of Labour MPs then it is to be feared that McDonnell will end up as another Dennis Healey
McDonnell is even more narrow minded and blinkered because in the event that Jeremy Corbyn was overthrown he would immediately be a target. Last month when it seemed that Corbyn might be overthrown storiesbegan to appear in the press concentrating on McDonnell’s past such as sponsoring an Early Day Motion supporting the then recently formed International Jewish Anti-zionist Network. If McDonnell really thinks that Israel is no different from any other western state then he should look at the following articles on Afula. McDonnell’s failure to understand the bogus and synthetic nature of the fake anti-semitism campaign is worrying because he doesn’t recognise the scale or nature of the attack on Jeremy Corbyn.
Tony Greenstein
Former mayor joined protest: 'the residents of Afula don't want a mixed city, but rather a Jewish city, and it's their right. This is not racism'
About 150 residents of the northern city of Afula demonstrated on Wednesday afternoon against the sale of a house to an Arab family. Protesters waved Israeli flags and carried signs condemning the sale and the homeowners who sold their house to Arabs, one of which read: "Traitors against the Jews will get no rest."
Former Afula Mayor Avi
|
It's what used to be called Apartheid |
Protesters raised Israeli flags and shouted slogans against the sale of the house in the city's Yizrael neighborhood. Chairman of Joint Arab List Ayman Odeh wrote in response to the protest: “It is not a surprise that in a country that has founded 700 towns for Jews and not even one for Arabs, the idea that Arabs should be pushed aside does not shock citizens. And still, it is more than a little worrying to see how our hope for living together is crumbling due to hatred and racism fueled by the government.”
Member of Knesset Yousef Jabareen (Joint List) added that “racism ethnic superiority have become a legitimate reality under this right-wing government. This protest should rock the political system and keep up at night all those who care about equality and human dignity.”
A notice calling on residents to turn out for the demonstration made reference to “the sale of homes to those who are undesirable in the neighbourhood” and went on to say: “One transaction has already been carried out and everything needs to be done to cancel it and to put a stop to this phenomenon from the beginning. Friends, now is the time to come together. All Jews are responsible for one another! Today it's us, tomorrow, it's you.”
In response to the Afula protest, the Coalition Against Racism organization called for a halt to efforts by “those inciting the public against the possibility of living together.” The phenomenon will not stop without “clear responses by courageous public figures and political leaders,” the organization said, adding: “Now is the time for the voice of the sane majority in Afula, both politicians and the wider public, to be heard.”
About two years ago, Afula residents held a number of demonstrations objecting to a bidding process for lots in a residential neighborhood of the city in which all 43 successful bidders were Arab. Approval of the bids was rescinded by the Nazareth District Court after the court found that some of the successful bidders had engaged in improper coordination of their bids and that the minimum bid provisions were vague and misleading. ![]() |
| Jews not welcome - another Nazi practice imported into Israel |
Half of Jewish Israelis saythey wouldn’t want an Arab as a neighbor. In March, Kfar Vradim’s local council head Sivan Yehieli ordered to halt bids for selling building plots of land in his community, after 50 percent of the winners so far turned out to be Arabs. In a letter he disseminated among the community’s residents he promised that “no more land would be sold until an appropriate solution was found to ensure our ability to maintain our communal life and the special character of Kfar Vradim." The so-called nation-state bill passed the first of three Knesset calls in May in a a version that has a clause allowing the establishment of communities for Jews only. Clause 7b of this bill specifically states that “the state can allow a community composed of people of the same faith or nationality to maintain an exclusive community.”
Protests against Arab families moving into Jewish cities are a reminder that until everyone is free to choose where they want to live, the Israeli regime will remain segregationist and racist at its core.
By Suhad Bishara
![]() |
| Illustrative photo of demonstration by far-right Israelis. (Activestills.org) |
Jewish residents of the northern Israeli city of Afula protested last week against the sale of a home to an Arab family and the possibility that the city would have a mixed Jewish-Arab population. I have no doubt that every person who believes in freedom and justice will view this protest as an expression of pro-segregation racism reminiscent of South African apartheid. The protest comes just a few months after Sivan Yehieli, the head of the Kfar Vradim Municipal Council, announced that his pastoral town mustmaintain its Zionist-Jewish character after 58 Arab citizens won bids to build their homes in the town. Let’s make one thing clear: 150 protesters are not an aberration in Israel. They were simply expressing overtly the racist segregation upon which Israel’s land regime was founded. This is precisely how military rule over Israel’s Arab citizens – in effect from 1949 until 1966– functioned: “cleansing” vast swaths of land in order to settle Jews and to ensure reserves of land that would continue to exclusively serve Israeli Jews. This “cleansing” process was implemented, among other ways, via the construction of hundreds of new Jewish towns and communities, as well as through the establishment of admissions committees in kibbutzim, moshavim, and other communities. Yehieli faithfully represents the Israeli planning authorities’ policy aimed at demographically re-engineering the country. He represents an Israeli legal system that refused to allow the implementation of its own decision to allow the internally-displaced Palestinian residents of Iqrit and Bir’im to return to their villages, that gave the green light to the Admissions Committees Law, and that allows the state to uproot the residents of Umm al-Hiran in order to replace them with Jewish citizens – just like during and immediately following the Nakba. And we can expect much more of the same.# ![]() |
| Bedouin women collect their belongings from the ruins of their demolished homes in the village of Umm al-Hiran, Negev desert, January 18, 2017. (Hadas Parush/Flash90) |
Much of the criticism leveled at the racism of Afula’s residents focuses on the lack of development in Arab communities, which results in the necessity of young Arab citizens to seek housing solutions in nearby Jewish towns.
The decision of Israel's Supreme Court in Ka'adan has effectively been overturned by the Knesset and by the Supreme Court itself |
This thinking prevents envisioning a situation in which an Arab citizen of Israel has the right to choose where she/he wants to live simply because it suits her/him to live there. It buys into the paradigm of a discriminatory, racist, and apartheid-like land regime that forces them to find a circumstantial explanation for the phenomenon, rather than simply calling it by its name: racism and segregation.
Imagine a scenario in which the Israeli government takes unprecedented steps to allocate land for the development of Arab communities. Imagine that it begins developing Arab communities of all kinds — cities, villages, and agricultural communities — while also ensuring the development of industrial and commercial zones in accordance with the principles of distributive and restorative justice.
But yet, even in this scenario, it remains the right of every Arab citizen to decide where he or she wants to live — be it Kfar Vradim, Tel Aviv, or Afula.
As long as Israeli state authorities cannot or will not imagine the country’s land as open to all, we cannot talk about justice or constitutional rights. The Israeli regime will remain segregationist and racist at its core. Segregated living will remain racist, even under the guise of “separate but equal.”
Imagine protesters demonstrating against Jews buying homes in a Christian town in Europe. Israelis would declare them racists and anti-Semites, and Israel’s prime minister would surely remark that it reminds him of the dark days leading up to the Holocaust. Inside Israel, however, an almost identical scene is framed by Afula’s former mayor Avi Elkabetz as such: “The residents of Afula do not want a mixed city. They want a Jewish city — and this is their right. This isn’t racism.”
Thus racism in Israel magically becomes the “legitimate right” of the Jewish citizen.
Attorney Suhad Bishara is the Director of the Land and Planning Rights Unit, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. This article was first published in Hebrew on Haokets. Read it here. 