When Jean Calder joined with the supporters of genocide in Gaza to oppose ‘anti-Semitism’, she symbolised the problems of Western feminism

Braverman’s dream (& apparently Jean Calder’s)

This blog is a follow up to Anita Patel’s Women’s Place UK : Whitewashing Zionism. When you’ve been friends with someone for 40 years it comes as a shock to realise that they have become an ageing reactionary, an Islamaphobe in particular. All in the name of second wave feminism.

I don’t often write blogs about those I know personally and I’m doing it now because, as the old saying used to go, the personal is political or at least it can be.

Jean was elected to Brighton Borough Council for the Labour Party in 1987. Her husband, Andy Winter was elected in the following year. At that time she was a socialist. I can remember her speaking vehemently in opposition to the Gulf War in 1991 and Tony Benn praising the speech. I accompanied her on a fact finding trip to Northern Ireland. She was a strong supporter of the Republican movement.

Although not actively involved in the Palestine solidarity movement she was always opposed to Zionism and the oppression of the Palestinians.

When six Labour Councillors were suspended at the beginning of the 90’s for refusing to implement the Poll tax she and Andy were amongst them. 30 years though is a long time in politics.

Israeli teens tik tok video mocks the lack of drinking water in Gaza - Jean Calder & Andy Winter have no problem with these neo-Nazi videos

Over the years Jean’s feminism, increasingly framed by the belief that Islam was uniquely misogynist, seemed to drive her to the right and like Fay Weldon and other feminists Jean became increasingly Islamaphobic. I can remember her support for the banning by France of face covering by Muslim women. When I pointed out that this was an invitation to racist and sexual attacks by men on women she seemed unperturbed.

We also had disagreements on transgender people. Although I accept that you can’t just say that a transwoman is a woman biologically, clearly people can identify gender wise with the opposite sex. Jean had difficulties accepting that there were many people who genuinely felt that they had been born in the wrong body and that transgender people were a vulnerable minority who were being targeted by the Right and far-Right.

Jean is not alone in this. There are many feminists who see transgender women as their enemy. This was brought home to me at the picket of the drag queen Aida H Dee at Brighton & Hove libraries in 2022 when feminists joined fascists in trying to prevent parents taking their children to listen to story telling.

When Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour leader in 2015 I expected Jean to welcome it. Not a bit of it. She had some grudge against Corbyn over child abuse in Islington children’s homes although this was the responsibility of the Council leader Margaret Hodge, who engaged in a cover up. She was then rewarded by being made Children’s Minister by Tony Blair.

There were other things that disturbed me such as a hostility to refugees because Jean saw them as single men. I pointed out that when Jews came to Britain from Czarist Russia in the 19^th and 20^th centuries the men usually came first and when settled brought their families over.

It all came to a head when we were having coffee in the Pavilion Gardens with friends when Jean started joking about Suella Braverman, who lost her job as Home Secretary trying to prevent the demonstrations against genocide in Gaza. All in the name of anti-Semitism of course.

I turned round and said that as far as I was concerned Braverman was a ‘racist bitch’. True it was sexist but if you find racism amusing then you can hardly protest against sexism. That was the last time we talked or met.

I then discovered that Jean had been busy writing articles for Brighton & Hove News, an anti-Palestinian and racist Internet rag as well as on her own blog.

Israeli Teens Get Their Kicks from Palestinian suffering

The article Jean wrote The vital light from candles in the heart of Hove (on her own blog The Canary in the Coalmine), a cliché from Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian’s Zionist gatekeeper. Her articles were an exercise in superficiality. In Yiddish schmaltz– an exaggerated sentimentality. Fat but no meat.

Apparently Jews have a most sensitive antennae when it comes to racism and anti-Semitism is the most dangerous of all forms of racism. A virus no less. Freedland coined this reactionary metaphor when he fronted the fake anti-Semitism narrative against the left when Corbyn was elected labour leader.

It is reactionary because it divorces racism from society. Instead of poverty, housing shortages, pervasive driving racism we have instead a virus that persists regardless of the political and social climate. And if anti-Semitism is a virus then presumably its target is also pathological. Eternal anti-Semitism was the handmaiden of the Eternal Jew, (Der ewige Jude) which the Nazis produced.

As Leon Pinsker, one of the earliest Zionists wrote:

‘Judeophobia is a mental disease. As a mental disease it is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable.

This was the basis for the Zionist belief that anti-Semitism could not be fought. If anti-Semitism was incurable or a virus, then there was no point fighting it. Zionism accepted anti-Semitism as the norm, the constant in the relationship between non-Jews and Jews and this laid the basis for the Zionist solution which was to escape from anti-Semitism not fight it.

The vast majority of Jews in Czarist Russia disagreed and fought anti-Semitism which was why so many became revolutionaries. Zionism appealed to the most reactionary Jews and it is with them that Jean Calder has found a political home.

Anti-Semitism today has changed. Now it is the false anti-racism of the Right, having been redefined, not as hostility to Jews but as hostility to Zionism. It is not surprising that this ‘anti-Semitism’ is the only form of racism that Jean’s hero Suella Braverman was concerned about. The woman who said it was her dream to see asylum seekers deported to Rwanda was apparently concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ when it came to marches against Israel’s genocide.

Braverman was treading a well worn path. Even Donald Trump, when not accusing Jews of being disloyal to ‘their country’ (Israel not America!) was concerned about anti-Semitism. Even Steve Bannon, when not fretting about his daughter going to school with Jews, was opposed to anti-Semitism.

In her article Jean was moved to tears that a small group of Zionists had set up a memorial to remember the Jewish victims of October 7. Not once did she ask why it was that there were no candles or words of sympathy for the thousands of children that Israel has murdered in its genocidal attack on Gaza.

If Calder had retained any of her previous critical faculties she might have questioned the sincerity of these mourners. After all if they were really concerned about Israel’s captives in Gaza then they would have joined us in calling for a ceasefire.

The families of these captives have been unanimous in expressing their fear that it is Israeli bombs, not Hamas, that will kill them. In an article Renewed strikes on Gaza bring fear to families of Israeli hostages the Guardian told how

‘The family of Tal Haimi, who is being held hostage by Hamas, fear that he could be injured or killed by Israeli airstrikes’.

The Zionists that Calder embraced are the most vociferous supporters of the Israeli war on Gaza. Whenever BHPSC has demonstrated in favour of a ceasefire they have opposed us.

CNN reported that

Many, including the families of those hostages still held by Hamas, direct their anger toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who dismissed the terms of a ceasefire and hostage deal put forward by Hamas in forthright terms.

Israel admits to killing its own citizens on October 7

"Mass Hannibal"— We killed Israelis on 7 October, says Israeli air force colonel

These Zionists no doubt included Jewish Chronicle columnist Heidi Bachram who described events in solidarity with the people of Gaza as ‘chilling and threatening’ and the chant ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ as ‘genocidal’. Bachram boasted of having reported me to the police for a speech outside Hove town hall.  Free speech and Zionists don’t go together. Calder said that she

lit a candle and listened as a man said Kaddish for the dead. ... I realised that not since I was a child had I prayed for the Jewish people. I didn’t think I still needed to. I grew up among racists in Apartheid South Africa.

And therein lies the irony. Although Calder left Apartheid, Apartheid has not left her. She says that

Individual Jewish people are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, yet they are being condemned as if they are.

Perhaps the reason that a few people wrongly blame Jews for what Israel does is because her Zionist friends insist that Israel is a Jewish state. Every time Zionists defend the actions of Israel in the name of British Jews that cannot help but reinforce the notion that Jews are responsible for what is happening in Gaza.

Washington Post plans hit piece over EI's accurate reporting about 7 October, with Ali Abunimah

Hamas

Calder said that

We also need to question why there have been so few public statements of solidarity in response to the Hamas attack. Faced with the horror of Palestinian casualties in Gaza, many non-Jewish progressives have focused on that, preferring to forget the events of 7th October.

Calder’s article on 22 December was over two months after October 7, when over 20,000 Palestinian civilians had already been murdered. Why I wondered was she more concerned about less than 1200 Israeli dead, a third of them soldiers, than over 20 times that number of Palestinian civilians? People living under occupation are entitled to resist their oppressors.

An Israeli soldier publishes an advertisement for his barber shop from Gaza next to executed Palestinian civilians in Gaza, attaching it to a viral Israeli music comparing Palestinians to animals and "Amalek."pic.twitter.com/GYiwxB4tsZ

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) February 6, 2024

The final tally of Israeli dead shows that 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners died, giving a total of 1,139. This figure is dwarfed by the numbers killed by Israel, 27,000+ in Gaza today plus at least 10,000 under the rubble. Yet Calder has nothing to say about dead Palestinians. 37 Israeli children compared to over 11,000 Palestinian children died. Even the Nazis only shot 100 hostages in reprisal for 1 dead soldier. Calder writes that:

The cruelty of the Hamas atrocities was live-streamed and publicised by mocking perpetrators. Even for me, a non-Jew, the assaults brought back terrible images of anti-semitic atrocities of the 1930s and 1940s, many filmed by nazi bureaucrats.

How Israeli army ordered troops to fire on Israelis on 7 October, with Asa Winstanley

This is untrue. The Nazis killed Jews because they were Jews. Hamas killed Israelis, not because they were Jews but because they were their oppressors having occupied Gaza for over half a century. In fact Israeli Palestinians and Thai workers also died on October 7 so Calder’s assertion is simply a lie.

The Lying Israeli Narrative of October 7 that Calder & Winter Have Accepted

There is no doubt that some Israeli civilians were killed by Hamas and other groups, including freelancers. Any murder of civilians is to be condemned but the breakout from Gaza, the international law right of resistance should not be condemned.

Just as we would support the slave revolts in Haiti in 1791 despite the fact that every single French person was killed, so too with October 7. But it is now becoming increasingly clear that most Israeli civilians were killed by the Israeli military.

What we’re now learning about 7 October, with Ali Abunimah

According to Israel’s own statistics of the 1,139 people killed by Palestinian militants, one third – 373 – were soldiers. These were clearly legitimate targets. The question is who killed the 695 Israeli civilians and 71 foreigners?

On 18 November Haaretzreported that Israeli police were conducting an investigation into the attack on the Nova music festival and that an Israeli attack helicopter killed some of the attendees See Israel admits it killed its own at Nova music festival. In a follow up on 12 January 2024 The Cradle shows how Israeli forces trapped and killed ravers at the Nova Festival.

At 6:42 am, a mere 12 minutes after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was launched, the Southern District Commander of the Israeli Police, Amir Cohen, gave an order code-named “Philistine Horseman,” sending police officers and Border Police who were on alert to the sites of various battles.

Tank fires on Israeli civilian home in Kibbutz Be'eri, 7 October 2023

This included members of the Yamam, and Tequila commando units that have no police duties but conduct military and counter-terrorism operations, including undercover assassinations in the Gaza Strip and occupied-West Bank. 

According to a senior Israeli officer speaking with the New York Times, the first formal reinforcements to southern Israel came from commandos that arrived by helicopter.

Israeli teen ”burned completely” by Israeli tank fire at kibbutz

Sagi Abitbol, a policeman working as a security guard at the festival, was among the first to confront Hamas fighters near Nova, and witnessed the early arrival of these helicopters. 

During the fighting, 59 Israeli police officers were killed, including at least 17 at the Nova festival. 

Israel admits to "immense" amount of "friendly fire" on 7 October, with Asa Winstanley

There is a very detailed article in Electronic Intifada of 20 January which suggests that some of the civilians were actually plain clothes members of Shin Bet, 10 of whom were killed. Winstanley tells how the military

“instructed all its fighting units to perform the Hannibal Directive in practice, although it did so without stating that name explicitly,”

Kibbutz Be'eri homes that Israeli tanks fired shells at killing all inside, Israelis included

The Hannibal Directive states that in the event of Israelis being taken captive, both they and their captors should be killed. The revelations came in a new investigative article by Ronen Bergman and Yoav Zitun, two journalists with extensive sources inside Israel’s military and intelligence establishment.

They also revealed that “some 70 vehicles” driven by Palestinian fighters returning to Gaza were blown up by Israeli helicopter gunships, drones or tanks.

Mother and daughter detail Hamas’ humane treatment during the time they were held

Hamas explicitly instructed its operatives not to kill women, children and the elderly. You can hear this at approximately 3:04. Confirmation of this comes from the Times of Israel of 9 October which quoted the mother of two children.

At 8:20 a.m., terrorists entered Dvir’s home, he lunged at them with an axe, tried to protect my two kids who were with him, and was murdered in front of their eyes,” she posted. “His partner Stav also tried to protect them, but was murdered as well. The terrorist calmed down my Daria and Lavi, covered them in a blanket, took lipstick and wrote on the wall: ‘The al-Qassam [Brigades] people don’t murder children.

All Britain's Prostitute Press ran with the '40 Babies Lie' - Not one has retracted the story or apologise - the myth therefore continues

Yet the Israeli government has painted a narrative that says Hamas deliberately killed children. At first there was the story of the 40 beheaded babies. Almost all the British media published this fake story and variations on it. It was all a lie.

Jo Biden even said that he had personally seen the pictures until it was walked back by his own spokespersons. Yet what was Calder’s response over 2.5 months into Israel’s genocide:

Since 7th October I have expected some form of public statement of solidarity from churches and faith leaders, an expression of grief or horror at what happened that day.

See Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says

Solidarity with whom? Those perpetrating a genocide? Yes there certainly should have been a public statement from Calder’s Church of England  but Justin Welby has refused to condemn Israel’s genocide. Coming from a man who has previously covered for child abuser John Smyth who was described by Welby in 2017 as "charming" and "delightful." that is not altogether surprising.

Max Blumenthal: NYT SINKS Hamas Rape 'Daily' Episode Over Internal Roil on Reporting

Calder’s entire focus is on October 7. Like the good ‘Christian’ that she is, she dismisses support for those being starved to death or murdered as ‘worthy and necessary.’ but a distraction.

Israeli Teens Mocking Palestinian Children's suffering

Calder pays lip service to Palestinian suffering, including 75 years of occupation, dispossession and forcible exile of Palestinian refugees. According to her ‘nothing the Israeli state has done provides justification for the atrocities of that day.’

A 17 year  siege of Gaza, where nothing could enter or leave without Israel’s permission, where Israeli leaders used the phrase ‘mowing the lawn’ to describe their periodic attacks on Gaza – Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9 when 1400 Palestinians including 300 children were killed, Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012 when 174 civilians died and Operation Protective Edge in 2014 when 2,200 civilians including 551 children died. 

In the past 15 years, until the latest conflict 6407 Palestinians and 308 Israelis have died. Calder might think the attack on October 7 wasn’t justified but most people would say that the continuing murder of Palestinians, is justification in itself.

During the Great Return protests beginning in March 30 2018 some 234 Palestinians were killed by Israeli snipers and more than 33,000 were wounded. Orly Noy wrote about Razan al-Najar, the 21 year old medic who became a symbol of Israeli atrocities when she was gunned down by a sniper:

Razan a-Najjar died about two-and-a-half years ago, but I can still clearly see her in my mind’s eye. The 21-year-old paramedic was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers during one of the Great Return March protests in Gaza on June 1, 2018. Witnesses say she was shot as she made her way toward the fence that separates Israel and the Gaza Strip to tend to the wounded, donning a white medical coat.

The Guardian refused to print this cartoon by Steve Bell - it was anti-Semitic because the hearth might remind people of Auschwitz furnaces!!

Israel’s B’tselem, in a Report ‘Unwilling and Unable: Israel’s Whitewashed Investigations of the Great March of Return wrote that ‘not a single Israeli soldier or civilian was killed in the Great March of Return protests’. Peaceful demonstrators had been murdered by Israeli snipers in dug outs.

In the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa, which reverberated around the world after police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, 69 people were killed and 180 injured. Yet Calder believes that the thousands of Palestinians murdered by Israel up till October 7 provided no justification. Why this disparity? Because ‘anti-Semitism’ and the Holocaust justifies every barbarity. Over 30,000 have been murdered but still Calder believes that we should focus on October 7.

I know this because I have WhatsApped her but she has not responded. Andy Winter, also a South African exile, was no better. He wrote an article‘The terrible cycle of violence upon violence... continues in Israel and Gaza’. The cliché ‘cycle of violence’ is designed to obliterate the causes of that violence which is the Zionist nature of the Israeli State. As B’tselem found in its Report there is ‘A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea’. Winter condemns

The appalling terrorist attacks on men, women and children in southern Israel a week last Saturday, followed by the unfolding humanitarian crisis and the killing of men, women and children in northern Gaza almost defy words

Although condemning what he calls ‘terrorists’ Winter calls the        genocide an ‘unfolding humanitarian crisis’. Presumably this has been caused by an Act of God or some other natural disaster, Having failed to call out genocide and ethnic cleansing for what it is he lays into the BBC, the Voice of Israel:

But there are words. Terrorism is just one, a word that the BBC shamefully refuses to use when describing the attacks and murders on October 7.

This article appeared first in the Argus.

We have two White South Africans failing to recognise what is obvious to Black S Africans and Palestinians. That not only is Israel an apartheid state but it is far worse than S Africa ever was. The Apartheid regime there did not murder Black South Africans by the thousand. It did not bomb the shanty towns from the air. It did not have the exterminationist mentality of Israel.

As Andrew Feinstein, the former Jewish ANC MP said‘Israeli Apartheid is far more brutal than anything we saw in South Africa’. Navi Pillay, a former UN human rights chief said the same as did Israel’s most famous poet Yitzhak Laor who remarked that ‘the system preserving this apartheid is more ruthless as it is equipped with the lie of being 'temporary.' So too did Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla Mandela.

Torture is rampant - Israel doesn't even bother to hide its brutality

Archbishop Desmond Tutu told one activist that

Israel’s apartheid is even worse than South Africa’s. We never had F-16s bomb our Bantustans killing hundreds of children. Remember that.

The reasons for this lie in the different political economies of the two states. S Africa needed Black people in order to exploit their labour. Israel as a Jewish state aimed to be as Jewish as was possible, hence its policy was not exploitation but ethnic cleansing.

Israeli children sing song of annihilation on Israel's national broadcaster Kan

Israel’s Exterminationist Mentality

Despite its many problems today South Africa demonstrates that the legacy of the struggle against apartheid lives on. It was South Africa not any of the miserable Arab regimes which took Israel to the International Court of Justice.

Perhaps the most iniquitous of the 11 examples in the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism is the 10^th which states that

‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ is anti-Semitic.’

The rationale being that a Jewish state can’t behave like the Nazi state and that it is offensive to accuse Jews of behaving like Nazis. It is testimony to the intellectual poverty of both the political class and academia that this illustration has attracted so little attention and has been given a free pass.

Nazism was neither original nor ideologically coherent. Racial hygiene, rassenhygiene formed the basis of its racial politics and was based on social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest between species was applied to racial differences within humanity.

Eugenics, as Hitler readily acknowledged came from the United States where laws providing for compulsory sterilisation were passed in over 30 states.

What happened in Germany could, given the right set of circumstances, happen in any state. To suggest Jews are immune from this is to suggest that racism is biologically inherited and that some people are immune from this by virtue of their racial inheritance. This in itself is racist.

Extermination and genocide has been only too prevalent in the 20^th century beginning with the Herero/Nama people in Namibia to the Armenian genocide, the extermination in Cambodia, Rwanda and now genocide in Gaza. Anyone who believes that Israeli Jews are exempt from the social, economic and political laws governing every other society is by definition a racist.

The warnings have been flashing in Israel for a long time. Opinion polls have long shown that a majority of Israeli Jews favour the deportation of Israel’s Arab citizens. Mobs, led by Israel’s current Police Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, march through Jerusalem each year chanting‘Death to the Arabs’. Mobs in Germany and Poland used to chant ‘Death to the Jews’.

In January 2018 Ze’ev Sternhell, a child survivor of the Nazi ghetto of Przemyśl  in Poland  wrote an article for Ha’aretz In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism.Maybe the racists who compiled the IHRA would call the late Sternhell an anti-Semite too?

The Nazi and Genocidal Statements of Israel’s Zionist Leaders

The South African Application to the ICJ gives the lie to those who claim it is ‘anti-Semitic’ to say that Israeli leaders cannot be compared to the Nazis.

On 9 October Defence Minister Yoav Gallant described the Palestinians as ‘human animals’. On October 4 1943 Himmler, the Head of the SS in a speech to senior SS officers justifying the Holocaust called the Jews ‘human animals.’

On 16 October 2023, Netanyahu described the attack on Gaza as a “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.’

On 28 October 2023 Netanyahu invoked the Biblical story of the Amalek:

“you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”

The ancient Israelites wiped out every man, woman, child and suckling infant. Its Hitlerite nature is crystal clear. On 10 November 2023, Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Police Minister stated that:

“when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy — they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.”

On 1 November 2023, Amichai Eliyahu, Israel’s Heritage Minister posted on Facebook:

“The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes.’

Haaretz: Israeli Army directly involved in publicising its brutal treatment of Palestinians. No other army in the world publicises its atrocities. The aim is to terrorise Palestinians certain of the West"s complicity, unafraid of US&EU public opinionhttps://t.co/RH3JRefeoK

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) February 5, 2024

Nissim Vaturi, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset ‘tweeted’ on 7 October 2023 that:

“[n]ow we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Those who are unable will be replaced.’

Giora Eiland, a Reservist Major General, former Head of the National Security Council, and adviser to the Defence Ministerwrote:

Israel should not allow any economic assistance. The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people will perish in Gaza, this is their choice.

“These animals can no longer live.”

Ezra Yachin, a 95-year-old Israeli army reservist, is seen inciting “every Jew with a weapon” to kill Palestinians and “erase the memory of them” pic.twitter.com/LUQs0XoR5U

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 13, 2023

On 11 October 2023, 95-year old Israeli army reservist Ezra Yachin — a veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948 —was called up for reserve duty to “boost morale” amongst Israeli troops ahead of the ground invasion.  His message was broadcast on social media inciting other soldiers to genocide while being driven around in an Israeli army vehicle:

“Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live . . . Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don't wait, go to his home and shoot him . . . We want to invade, not like before, we want to enter and destroy what’s in front of us, and destroy houses, then destroy the one after it. With all of our forces, complete destruction, enter and destroy. As you can see, we will witness things we’ve never dreamed of. Let them drop bombs on them and erase them.

When I said that Israel was ‘Hitler’s bastard offspring’, much to the Jewish Chronicle’s chagrin, I was not exaggerating.

🚨 Urgent: The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance was discovered bombed the Tal al-Hawa area of #Gaza City, resulting in the killing of crew members Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun, who had been missing since a rescue mission for the child Hind Rajab 12 days ago.#NotATarget❌… pic.twitter.com/dCgfeevTd8

— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) February 10, 2024

Because Zionism draws no universal lessons from the Holocaust Israelis now see themselves in the position of the Nazis. Only pathetic white liberals like Calder and Winter, cannot or will not see it. Israel has absorbed the lessons of the holocaust but not the ones anti-racists might wish.

Professor Yehuda Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz, wrote in an article for Ha’aretz in March 1988:

a profound existential “Angst” fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the holocaust … that we are the eternal victim. In this ancient belief… I see the tragic and paradoxical victory of Hitler. Two nations, metaphorically speaking, emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz: a minority who assert, “this must never happen again,” and a frightened and haunted majority who assert, “this must never happen to us again.”[‘The Need to Forget,’Ha’aretz, 2.3.88]

When Hitler came to power his programme was not to exterminate the Jews but to expel them. It was only when he couldn’t expel them that the Nazis turned to extermination. So it is with Israel today.

Adam Keller, an Israeli peace activist wrote describing how ‘the word ‘extermination’ with all its resonance of Auschwitz has entered the language of Israeli politics.’ Keller described how the streets of Tel Aviv were flooded with red stickers reading

"Exterminate Gaza!". Not "Destroy!", not "Flatten!"– but clearly and explicitly "Exterminate Gaza!". "Le-Ha-Sh-Mid!" - "Exterminate!" Every Jewish Israeli knows from a young age exactly what this word means. …. 

Roy Sharon, a radio and TV commentator on the main Israeli broadcasting corporation, spoke very explicitly of his desire to see “a million dead bodies in Gaza”.

Israel’s Ambassador in London Tzipi Hotoveli described all Palestinians as Nazis and compared what Israel was doing to the British bombing of Dresden and Hamburg where 600,000 were killed. She wanted to murder a similar number of Palestinians.

Yet these white liberal racists can only mouth ‘anti-Semitism’ as if they can only hold one idea at a time in their heads. British Jews are not victims of racism. They are privileged and White. Racism operates at the level of the state. Anti-Semitism in Britain is a prejudice, it has no power behind it.

Israeli Teens Get Their Kicks from Palestinian suffering

I would go further. British Jews are probably the most racist section of the White population. Islamaphobia and anti-Arab racism is extremely high amongst them.

It may be uncomfortable for someone who is Jewish to be confronted with anti-Semitic stereotypes but we should remember that one of the reasons that there has been an increase in anti-Semitism is precisely because it is a ‘Jewish’ state that is committing these atrocities. That is why Jewish people have a duty to proclaim that what is happening is ‘not in our name’ as the Jewish Bloc chanted on the demonstrations in London.

When white liberals like Winter and Calder equate anti-Semitism in Britain with the genocidal racism of the Israeli state they are effectively condoning this genocide. British Jews do not suffer economic discrimination, state violence, deportations, attacks on the streets or police stop and search.

The inability of white liberals to recognise Zionism for what it is, a genocidal ideology and movement, and their recourse to ‘anti-Semitism’ as a justification for their position demonstrates that when you scratch a liberal you get the same old racism.

Calder’s feminism has racism embedded in it. I can only recommend that Calder and other White feminists, steeped as they are in the sisterhood of imperialism, read Nesrine Malik’s excellent article on the war against women in Gaza. Malik quotes the charity Care on the conditions women in Gaza face:

“There is no doctor, midwife or nurse to support women during labour. There is no pain medication, anaesthesia or hygiene material when women give birth.” Babies are born on the ground in the wilderness, umbilical cords cut with whatever sharp object there is to hand, and tins filled with hot water keep the newborn warm. C-sections, painful in the aftermath even when drugs are plentiful, are being performed without any anaesthesia at all, by surgeons who do not have any water to wash their hands, let alone sterilise them, and no antibiotics for any resulting infections. In some cases, according to Washington Post reporting, C-sections were performed on women postmortem.

Women captives in foreground

Neither Calder nor Winter allowed the word ‘genocide’ to pollute their articles. Not once did Calder refer to women in Gaza. Her concern was with sentimental mush on a Hove lawn.

Fahya Falash in Palestine Chronicle:  ‘Transported in Cages’ – Shocking Details of How Israel Treats Female Gaza Prisoners quotes Palestinian lawyer Hassan al-Abadi as saying that he was particularly disturbed by the way Israeli forces transported the female detainees from Gaza to the prisons.  According to Abadi, they were placed in trucks carrying cages similar to those used for animal transport. 

“This detail particularly hurt me: these women have been transported in animal trucks. They have been tied, blindfolded and stripped of their head covering, as a way to humiliate them,” al-Abadi said.

Since Calder is so fond of reminiscing about the Holocaust she might care to remember that when Jews were deported to Auschwitz they too were transported in animal trucks.

Abadi also said that when the female detainees arrived at the prison, their clothes were stained with blood. Most of them were also bleeding from their hands, as the plastic chains had been tightly tied around their wrists for days.

Murdoch's Times has not retracted its 40 Babies Beheaded Story - instead it continues with fake news - only one baby died on October 7, killed by Israel!

Upon their arrival, they were distributed into three rooms, each containing six iron beds. Most of them were reportedly forced to sleep on the floor without pillows or mattresses.

“The prisoners told me that the food is also very bad and that the Israeli guards deliberately leave it on their cells’ doors for hours, until it turns cold. The water has a rusty taste as well,”

According to al-Abadi, these women not only suffer due to the extremely cruel conditions of their detention but because they are constantly concerned about their families. They do not know the fate of their children as Israel relentlessly bombards Gaza.

They are not allowed to hear the news or follow what is happening in any way. They are isolated from the outside world and don’t know anything

But there are other forms of violation carried out by Israeli authorities. Al-Abadi told how the prison administration prevents these women from bringing along sanitary pads 

Therefore during their period they are forced to wash their clothes daily and wear them when they are still wet, as the prison administration does not provide them with additional clothes. They only have what they were wearing when arrested.

Rimal Neighborhood, Gaza city |

Israeli soldier Yosee Gamzoo publish a picture showing him torturing a Palestinian civilian in West Gaza city.

I blurred the gunshot on his leg. He is handcuffed and undressed. pic.twitter.com/A4urfpU6Sf

— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) February 4, 2024

Israel doesn’t consider men and women detained in the Gaza Strip to be prisoners of war under the so-called “unlawful combatants” law. Therefore, it prevents them from having contact with lawyers and human rights institutions.

“The female detainees from Gaza are even forbidden from talking to the rest of the prisoners and they have to communicate in secret.”

Winter and Calder, comfortable as they are with their hackneyed clichés about canaries might cast a glance at Yuval Abraham’s article in Israel’s +972 Magazine ‘Inside Israel’s torture camp for Gaza detainees’ before setting pen to paper.

On February 4 in Israeli Army Admits Running Unauthorized Graphic Gaza Influence Op Ha’aretz revealed that a Telegram Channel displaying the vilest videos and stills of the abuse of Palestinians was distributed by them, after having originally denied it.

They uploaded thousands of videos and still images of the killing of terrorists and destruction in the Strip, and encouraged the channel's followers to share the content so that "everyone can see we're screwing them."

An October 11 post read: "Burning their mother… You won't believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch. We'll post it right away, get ready." Photos of Palestinian men captured by the IDF in the Strip and the bodies of terrorists were captioned: "Exterminating the roaches… exterminating the Hamas rats… Share this beauty." A video of a soldier allegedly dipping machine gun bullets in pork fat is captioned: "What a man!!!!! Greases bullets with lard. You won't get your virgins." Another caption was: "Garbage juice!!!! Another dead terrorist!! You have to watch it with the sound, you'll die laughing."

On October 14, alongside the caption "Exclusive video of a good night, don't forget to share and repost" was a video of an Israeli vehicle repeatedly driving over the body of a Palestinian. "Very good, Gershon!!! Run him over run him over!!!! Screw the bastards! Flatten them,"the accompanying text read.

Hamas published yesterday an 18-minute long pre-recorded press conference in English about their side of the story.

This has received zero media attention anywhere in the western press.

So in the interest of full transparency, here is the entire press conference. pic.twitter.com/Cd5SyYjImJ

— روني الدنماركي (@Aldanmarki) October 13, 2023

Jordanian Medial Syndicate member Dr Bilal Azzam who visited Gaza, says Palestinian doctors were tortured and abused by israeli troops pic.twitter.com/2qyPi3d805

— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) February 8, 2024

This is an official production of the Israeli army. The abuses described, which appeal to the sadistic appetite of the average Israeli, are not the work of lone rangers or odd balls.  They represent the official mindset of the army which sought deniability but was forced to admit to its ownership of the contents when it was shown that the information could only have come from official sources.

This demonstrates that the abuses, the tortures, the humiliations are official Israeli policy.

It is easy to virtue signal about ‘anti-Semitism’. Starmer and Sunak do it all the time. Israel is gearing up to perpetrate its biggest ever massacre in Rafah where Israel’s plans to transfer over a million Palestinians into Egypt. Yet all this pair of mediocrities do is harp on about how terrible October 7 was.

There was a time when Andy Winter and Jean Calder were dissonant anti-establishment voices. Those times have long gone. Today they write for local right-wing rags reflecting the views of the British Establishment in all its murderous glory as it extinguishes ancient liberties and freedom of speech.

Anti-Semitism is the false anti-racism of the Right and those who hark back to a past genocide do so in order to justify another genocide. A false memory of the past is used to shape the present and manipulate the future.

As to the question in the title of this essay the answer is simple. You can’t be friends with people who are proud to be racists. We no longer have anything in common.

Tony Greenstein

An open letter to Israelis from Israelis: We deserve the truth about October 7