The Balfour Declaration – The Tragedy of a Single Letter

I came up to London on the NHS March train and it was a difficult decision – to go on the march or go to a conference at University College London entitled ‘Balfour – 1 Letter 100 Years Later.’  I decided that on balance the march would probably suffer less from my absence than the conference would gain from my presence!

Unfortunately I missed the opening speech from Avi Shlaim, a former Israeli Jew from Iraq and Emeritus Professor of International Relations at St Anthony’s College, Oxford University.  I did however catch the speech of Karl Sabbagh, a former BBC producer and author.  It was not a fair exchnge.

Sabbagh was one of those inflated egos who gave credibility to a man caused Gilad Atzmon some years ago.  Atzmon’s brilliant thesis was that Zionism was not a settler colonial project and Israel was not a settler colonial state.  Good gracious no.  Israel was the product of some mysterious but long lasting elixir called ‘Jewishness’.  Jewishness explained the Holocaust and the same terrible personality defect that the Jews possessed (all except Atzmon that is) that caused the Nazis to murder them was on display once more in Israel where the Jews, once again, were behaving badly.

It would be churlish to ask whether Gays, Russian POWs, Poles, Gypsies etc. were also guilty of bad behaviour since they too suffered large casualties at the hands of the Nazis in WW2.  But for crusty reactionaries who find nothing wrong with imperialism per se but don’t go a bundle on Jews, then Atzmon is just for you.  So Sabbagh in the Q&A session made the stupid comment that since Israel is a Jewish state, then if we criticise Russians for what Russia does then why not blame the Jews for what Israel does.

I managed to get in to try and explain to the buffoon why the analogy didn’t fit.  Russians were those who lived within the borders of Russia, regardless of religion.  Not that it is a good idea to blame all Russians for the crimes of Putin but at least he is their President.  Israel is a Jewish state, in so far as being Jewish mean possessing privileges over and above the Palestinians.  It is a racist state and a state of racial supremacy.  But although it is part of the Zionist creed that Israel is a state of all Jews, including those who live in the diaspora, this is not something which is accepted by Jews outside Israel. 

When Netanyahu went to speak to the American Congress as Prime Minister he claimed to speak on behalf of American Jewry, this was not a claim accepted by most American Jews.  Only Zionists and not all of them either accept this canard.  And when he went to France after the killing of 4 Jews at a kosher supermarket he claimed to speak on behalf of French Jews.  This was not accepted by French Jews either.

As Anshel Pfeffer reported, Netanyahu statedthat:

It’s not a claim that either American or French Jews accept.  It is, however one more racist Zionist trope, that Israel is the state of all Jews  It is not a minor matter either since the claim to be a Jewish state as opposed to a state of its own citizens rests upon this trope and that is fundamental to the Apartheid state of Israel.  Of course it has no legal or political basis.  No Jews outside Israel voted for the Israeli Prime Minister.  But it is an essential component of Israel and Zionism’s racist ideological superstructure.  It is therefore sad that Karl Sabbagh should effectively adopt one of Zionism’s foundational ideas and then use it for what is a cheap anti-Semitic jibe.  One would have hoped that Sabbagh would have learnt something from the stirring declaration of Ali Abunimah Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon, but as the saying goes it is difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.

What Sabbagh had to say about the duplicity of the British in the promises they made and broke and their imperial cynicism was interesting, which is why it is a great pity that he can’t understand the poisonous and reactionary character of much of what Atzmon stands for.  However it is also a question of his wider bourgeois politics.

Ghada Karmi, who was on the same panel, spoke movingly about the attachment of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland and how many of them still possess keys to the houses they were evicted from.  Her daughter Salma Karmi-Ayyoub, who is co-chair of the Palestine Lawyers Association, spoke on Palestine and international law.

Miko Peled, the son of General Mattiyahu Peled, a dissident Israeli General, gave a speech that can only be described as a tour de force.  He was quite clear that Israel has no right to exist as a racist state and that its desire to claim this ‘right’ was a product of its colonial mentality.

In the final session Jonathan Rosenhead spoke from Free Speech on Israel.  Jonathan outline the threat that the new IHRA definition of anti-Semitism poses to free speech, with the University of Central Lancashire having banned Israel Apartheid Week because of a misinterpretation of the law but in any event this definition poses a threat to the right to organise around Palestine.  NUS President Malia Bouattia spoke about the fight inside NUS which faced a disaffiliation campaign from the Israeli funded Union of Jewish Students, for BDS.

In all a surprisingly good conference, marred only by Sabbagh’s stupidity.  I did approach him in the interval to try and talk to him but he steamed off in a huff.  Clearly not a man who takes a rebuke lightly!

Tony Greenstein