Just as Supporters of Black Liberation in South Africa Opposed Apartheid, Supporters of the Palestinians Must Oppose Zionism and Israel as a ‘Jewish’ State
This
is the logic of Zionism – if you believe in universal values then you are no
better than the Jews who perished in the gas chamber – indeed it is a pity that
you weren’t among them
I have written many hundreds of articles,
thousands if you count my blogs, but my article in today’s Electronic Intifada Only
anti-Zionists are real supporters of Palestineis one of the
most important, I have written.
I have long grappled with the question as to
why it was that those who purported to support the Palestinians in the Labour
Party, gave their support to an ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign, whose sole
purpose was to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader because of his support for the Palestinians.
On 11 April 2016, I wrote to Ben Soffa, Secretary of Palestine
Solidarity Campaign about the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign.
Rereading it today it seems prescient.
Despite
initiatives from a number of Jewish groups… to stem the [anti-Semitism] attacks
from the Board of Deputies, the BBC and the Guardian in particular, there has
been complete silence from PSC. PSC prides itself on being the largest
solidarity organisation in Britain. The Executive boasted in its Annual Report
that it had contacted 1,042 candidates at the General Election, yet it hasn’t
seen fit to contact any Labour parliamentarians to speak up against the attacks
of the Zionists and the Labour Right…
Why haven’t you
for example organised a large public meeting on the issue with say Ken
Livingstone and a sympathetic MP as speakers or issued press releases, produced
leaflets, called press conferences, pressed for articles in the Opinion columns
of the quality press etc? I know that
PSC is renowned for its caution and timidity but there must be some limits to
this….
PSC has
resources that other groups do not…. It is inexcusable that it has done absolutely
nothing to respond to the Zionists daily attacks. …
… Part of the
problem is undoubtedly the political weakness of PSC, which supports the
Palestinians whilst not opposing Zionism. Historically PSC has prefered to act
as a campaigning group around human rights whilst avoiding thorny issues such
as Zionism and anti-Semitism.
The ceaseless
political attack by the Zionists on support for the Palestinians in the LP
cannot simply be ignored. They will not
go away because their campaign is linked with the determination of the Right in
the LP to remove Corbyn. ‘Anti-Semitism’
is their weapon of choice….
Until
Jeremy Corbyn firmly rebuts his critics he will continue to come under attack. Appeasement rarely works. It is no use Corbyn saying that he opposes
anti-Semitism because what he means by anti-Semitism and the Zionists mean by
it are two different things.… Until Corbyn speaks out saying that yes he
opposes anti-Semitism but yes he supports the Palestinians, including the
Boycott of Israel, giving chapter and verse on why Israel is a racist and
apartheid state, then the attacks will continue.
Ben Soffa’s response oozed complacency. He began
his letter to me of 20 April 2016 by quoting the 2010 Report
of the Reut Institute.
A central objective is to change this situation by
forcing them [Palestine solidarity organisations] to 'play defense'.
This means systematically exposing information
about delegitimizers, their activities, and the organizations that they operate
out of. The goal is to eventually frame them, depending on their agendas, as
anti-peace, anti-Semitic, dishonest purveyors of double standards.
Despite saying that ‘It is clear that the upsurge in attempts to link support for the rights
of the Palestinian people with anti-Semitism requires a new a concerted
response.’ Soffa went on to say that
…
I make no apology for the fact that we do not engage in every debate some would
wish to involve us in. As the Reut Institute set out, there is a plan to force
us to 'play defence' on the terrain chosen by those wishing to preserve the
status quo in Palestine. We must not fall into the trap of allowing our
opponents to set our agenda, which is precisely why PSC chooses to make the
intervention we feel are most helpful to the situation, rather than seeking to
make every intervention which might be possible…
There is much work to be done, but it
is also not necessarily most effective for PSC to be the organisation leading
on all aspects of this.
The problem with not engaging with the
‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign was that it didn’t then go away. What it did
mean was Britain’s largest Palestine solidarity group was absent from the fight
against the Zionist lobby and their allies, the Labour Right.
There is good reason to believe that PSC did
not want to align itself with the Corbyn left since their strategy involved
aligning and working with those bitterly opposed to Corbyn. The problem with
this was that the Labour Right, even those like Nisa Nandy who professed to
support the Palestinians, would willingly throw the Palestinians under the bus
to get rid of Corbyn.
Almost all the trade unions affiliated to Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who
proudly use their affiliation as ‘proof’ that they support the Palestinians, were
at one and the same time supporting the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism and
the Jewish Labour Movement. The IHRA’s sole purpose was to label supporters of
the Palestinians as anti-Semitic.
Lisa Nandy's Concern for Palestinian Children's Rights Didn't Prevent Her 'Barnstorming' Speech to Labour Friends of Israel - PSC was happy to provide a Platform for these Creatures
In some unions like the GMB, the IHRA has been
used to expel genuine supporters of the Palestinians like Bert
Schouwenburg.
Even the most stupid trade union leaders, like
Gary Smith or Sharon Graham, understand the purpose behind the IHRA. Nearly all
of the IHRA’s examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ involved opposition to Israel and Zionism.
It completely ignored the genuine anti-Semitism of the far-right, yet PSC took
a conscious decision not to raise the IHRA with its trade union
affiliates.
Since PSC never asked anything of Nandy, Thornberry et al. they got nothing back except platitudes
When PSC held a trade union conference in 2019
Director Ben Jamal asked me to leave because I had distributed leaflets
opposing the IHRA. Why is it that PSC is so reluctant to raise ‘difficult
issues’ like the weaponisation of anti-Semitism with trade unions? Why does PSC
value affiliations which are politically worthless?
First She was Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine
The conclusions I reached don’t make for easy
reading but we have to face up to unpleasant truths. The trade unions, with the
support of PSC, were able to proclaim their support for the Palestinians at one
and the same time as they supported a Jewish Supremacist state.
and then a regular on PSC Platforms
As Jesus wisely observed you cannot serve two
masters, God and Mammon. You have to make a choice between opposition to
Israeli settler colonialism and support for the Palestinians or support for
Israel as a Jewish State.
and then the JLM's preferred candidate for leader
PSC has chosen to ride two horses which is why it is ineffectual
politically. On the one hand it supports the Palestinians and on the other it
refuses to challenge the imperialist neo-colonial narrative of support for the
two state solution. It doesn’t even challenge the anti-Semitism narrative that
says Jews are an oppressed group still less argue that Israel as a ‘Jewish’
state must inevitably be a racist state.
PSC has failed to master the art of riding 2 horses at the same time
The result is that PSC’s narrative is entirely
incoherent and all that it can do is point to Israel’s human rights abuses.
That of course is fine but how is PSC different from a human rights NGO such as
War on Want? In many ways PSC is less
effective than WOW.
When it came to supporting Corbyn against the
Zionists PSC was conspicuous by its absence. PSC put up no opposition to the Zionists’
anti-Corbyn campaign for fear of upsetting trade union leaders and the Labour
Right. PSC abandoned Palestinian supporters inside the Labour Party. They left
the field clear to the Zionists.
Anyone claiming to support both Black people
in South Africa and Apartheid would have been ridiculed yet today you have
large numbers of people who claim to both support the Palestinians and the
Israeli state. Quite simply you cannot support the Executioner and the
Condemned Man – politics is about making choices not compromises.
No one was too opportunistic or right-wing to go on PSC's platforms
Today supporters of a two state solution are
in reality supporters of an Apartheid Solution in Palestine. They are
supporting the continuing existence of a state based on ethnic cleansing whilst
at the same time supporting their victims. The time has come for genuine
supporters of the Palestinians to say to groups like PSC that you have to make
a choice. You cannot continue to try and ride two horses.
I resigned from PSC in 2021 when it adopted a
Constitution which abandoned opposition to Zionism. PSC did this with the
support of the Socialist Workers Party and others who claim to be on the left.
I hope that my article stimulates the discussion
that is necessary if we are going to see a strategic change of direction for
the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain. PSC’s ‘strategy’ of
‘mainstreaming’ is dead in the water. The British Establishment is wedded to
support for Zionism, as it has been for over a century. No amount of rational
argument will change the minds of racists
like Robert Jenrick.
I am grateful to Electronic Intifada, the most
important Palestinian news site there is, for carrying my article.
Tony Greenstein
Only
anti-Zionists are real supporters of Palestine
Tony GreensteinThe
Electronic Intifada 3 October 2023
Britain’s
Palestine solidarity movement is at a crossroads. Loredana
SangiulianoZUMA Press
The
statement that you can’t be a supporter of the Palestinians unless you are an
anti-Zionist may seem dogmatic, even sectarian to some.
But it is
the failure of Britain’s Palestine solidarity movement to understand this
simple truth which is responsible for so many of our recent setbacks. It is
this which has enabled the successful weaponization
of anti-Semitism.
Subjectively
speaking, it is perfectly possible to support the Palestinians and the “right
of Israel to exist” at the same time. In theory, there was no reason at all why
good men and women could not sit down and draw the boundaries of a two-state
solution equitable to all.
There was
only one problem. Such a solution failed to take into account the dynamics of
settler-colonialism and of Zionism in particular.
Many
supporters of the British Empire, liberal imperialists such as Thomas
MacCaulay and the Labour Party Fabians, really did believe that there could
be a benevolent imperialism that was compatible with supporting the rights of
the colonized. It was called“trusteeship.”
Moving from PSC to Labour Friends of Israel is effortless for Emily Thornberry because PSC asks so little of its speakers
Many honest
people believed that the colonies were the “White Man’s Burden,” as the British
novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling infamously
put it, and that we were only in India and Africa out of the goodness of
our hearts.
The Church
Missionary Society and people like John Philip would
have been aghast if you had accused them of supporting white supremacy. Yet
that is what they did.
Thornberry repays PSC's invitation by attacking BDS to Israeli Embassy Group Labour Friends of Israel
Holding
contradictory ideas inside one’s head is what most people do, for much of the
time. It’s called “cognitive dissonance” or as George Orwell termed it,
“doublethink.”
However, for
a solidarity organization to do the same renders its task impossible. Sooner or
later a choice has to be made.
Solidarity
with the Palestinians, although it involves opposing many egregious abuses of
human rights, is not at bottom a question of human rights. Just as apartheid in
South Africa was not primarily about human rights but Black liberation from
white minority rule, so too is the Palestinian question primarily about
liberation from Zionism and a state
of Jewish supremacy.
PSC climbdown
In
2022 I resigned, for the second time, from the organization I had helped
found, the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign, because it had adopted in March of that year a new
constitution which eliminated its previous opposition to Zionism. If the truth
be told, opposition to Zionism had long been abandoned by PSC. But by removing
this from its constitution PSC made explicit what before had been implicit.
Prior to its
March 2022 annual general meeting (when the
PSC executive railroaded through the changes) the PSC’s old
constitution had included an unambiguous clause stating that one of the
group’s objectives was “opposition to racism, including … the apartheid and
Zionist nature of the Israeli state.”
The new
constitution has watered this down significantly, stating only that Israel’s
system of apartheid and settler colonialism is “motivated by Zionism,” without
explaining PSC’s position on Zionism. The argument privately used by the PSC to
“justify” this change was that Zionism means different things to different
people.
Zionism is the
racist creed and movement which led to the dispossession and expulsion of the
Palestinians.
It was the
failure of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and much of the Labour left to
combine support for the Palestinians with opposition to Zionism that was their
Achilles’ heel. It was no surprise that the Jewish Labour
Movement and its faithful
poodle Jon Lansman
wanted to abolish
any mention of Zionism.
Their
reasoning was that some people used the term “Zionist” when they really meant
“Jew.” But it was the Zionists themselves who had deliberately sought to
confuse the distinction in the minds of people.
Their other
argument was that “Zionism” covered a multitude of sins – from left to right,
obscuring the fact that all wings of Zionism agreed on establishing a Jewish
state with a large majority of Jews.
Corbyn was
undoubtedly a supporter of the Palestinians but he had no understanding of
Zionism and could not therefore explain why or how the Palestinians had become
marginalized and oppressed in Israel.
Appeasement
When the
“anti-Semitism” campaign first began, Corbyn effectively became a Zionist.
He supported
a Palestinian state but also recognized
the legitimacy of the Jewish Labour Movement’s claim to represent Jews in
the Labour Party. Instead of seeing the JLM as a lobby
group, the primary purpose of which was support for the Israeli state and
therefore the oppression of the Palestinians, Corbyn accepted that the group’s
purported concerns about anti-Semitism were genuine.
There was
absolutely no excuse for Corbyn’s pathetic response to the JLM and the Board of
Deputies of British Jews (another pro-Israel
group which led the “anti-Semitism” campaign against him).
Having spent
30 years as a campaigner for Palestinian rights, Corbyn above all was familiar
with the Zionist accusation of “anti-Semitism.” Yet when he became leader he
forgot all of this.
Support for
the two-state solution enabled Corbyn to both support the Zionists and support
the Palestinians. Saying, as
he did, that there was a place for both Zionists and anti-Zionists in
Labour was in effect saying there was a place for both racists and anti-racists
in the party.
Corbyn’s
human rights concerns disappeared as he lent his support to the very
organization, the JLM, which was formed
to remove him.
Those who
accept Israel’s
“right to exist” accept the legitimacy of Zionism. They fail to understand
that a “Jewish” state, as an expansionist ethno-nationalist settler-colonial
state, could never accept anything more than a set of mini bantustans.
When Corbyn
decided to commission the Chakrabarti
inquiry he set the seal on this process. He accepted that there was a
problem of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
Having
appeased the Zionists once, Corbyn went
on to appease them repeatedly until he
himself became a victim.
The
resulting report, authored
in 2016 by human rights lawyer Shami Chakrabarti, found no evidence that
Labour was dominated by anti-Semitism as was being claimed at the time.
Nevertheless, it made some key concessions to this false narrative.
Chakrabarti defined
Zionism not as a political creed or movement but as a form of Jewish
identity. In so doing she completely failed to understand where the accusations
of anti-Semitism were coming from.
She wrote in
the report that:
A further complexity comes from left-wing British
Jewry, including, but not exclusively, young people becoming increasingly
critical of, and disenchanted with, Israeli government policy in relation to
settlements in the West Bank and the bombardment of Gaza in particular. This
has led to some people personally redefining their Zionism in ways that appear
to grant less support to the state of Israel and more solidarity to fellow
Jewish people the world over … It seems to me that it is for all people to
self-define their political beliefs and I cannot hope to do justice to the rich
range of self-descriptions of both Jewishness or Zionism, even within the
Labour Party, that I have heard.
Of course,
anyone can self-define their political beliefs and what they understand Zionism
means. However, there is no obligation on anyone else to accept such an
identity.
The only
meaning of Zionism that counts is that of those who suffer its ill effects –
the Palestinians. People who define themselves as Zionists tell us nothing
other than what is going on in their heads.
Confusion as a badge of honor
The ability
to combine both support for the Palestinians with support for Zionism enabled political
charlatans like the lawmaker Lisa Nandy to chair Labour Friends of
Palestine whilst denouncing opposition to Zionism as anti-Semitic.
Just imagine
that someone had said that although they supported the rights of Black South
Africans they refused to oppose apartheid. They would have been ridiculed, yet
that is precisely what is happening when people claim to support the
Palestinians yet refuse to identify as anti-Zionists.
This is why
I term support for a two-state solution, with its assumption that a racist
“Jewish” state could co-exist alongside a Palestinian state, as support for the
continued oppression of the Palestinians.
Jeremy
Corbyn, with his support of the two-state solution, made his own political
confusion over Palestine into a badge of honor. He also disarmed his supporters
and gave confidence to his detractors.
By
supporting the state of Israel, Corbyn also supported the idea that Israel was
the nation state of the Jews.
If this was
the case, and if Jews were indeed a nation, despite living in most of the
world’s countries, then clearly Jews have the right to self-determination. Ipso
facto, one must welcome Israel’s new neo-Nazi police minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Theirs is
the monstrosity that is called Israel.
Instead of
calling out the Jewish Labour Movement as supporters of a racist,
settler-colonial state, Corbyn bought into the idea that Israel was guilty of
nothing more than Jewish nationalism and its opponents were guilty of
anti-Semitism. The tragedy was that the Palestinians themselves, in the form of
the Palestine Liberation Organization, had abandoned their own anti-Zionism in
the belief that Zionism could be confined within only part of historic
Palestine – what the Zionists term Eretz Yisrael (Hebrew for the land of
Israel).
To say you
support the Palestinians while refusing to oppose Zionism, the movement with a
primary goal not of fighting anti-Semitism but fighting the native Arab
Palestinians, is to accept the left-Zionist narrative of a “conflict” between
two peoples, a clash of right vs right. It renders any solution, other than a
neo-colonial one, impossible and in practice it means surrendering to the
existing power structure in Palestine.
Nowhere is
this clearer than in Britain’s trade unions.
Nearly all
major trade unions are affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. All of
them claim to support the Palestinians.
Yet Gail Cartmail,
the assistant general secretary of Unite – which calls
itself Britain’s leading union – justified
banning the film Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie and a talk by Asa Winstanley
covering his new
bookWeaponising Anti-Semitism (which documents the fake
“anti-Semitism” campaign) all on the grounds that Jews have been hurt and even
made afraid by journalism that seeks to tell the truth.
The reality
is that by adopting Israel’s
twisted definition of anti-Semitism, British unions are facing both ways at
the same time. They support the Palestinians yet also support the Jewish Labour
Movement and those who took down Corbyn.
The trade
unions can only get away with this because supporters of the Palestinians in
the Labour Party, including Corbyn, fail to understand how anti-Semitism has
been weaponized in the service of state and nation.
Tony
Greenstein is the author ofZionism
During the Holocaust.