30 May 2016

Uncensor British Palestinian Award Winning Schoolgirl!

Sign & Share the Petition Against These Racist Zionist Bigots Who Have Sent Hate Mail to a Young Girl


Just when I thought that the defenders of Apartheid Israel and racist Zionists couldn’t go any lower along comes the affair of Leanne Muhamad.  Leanne, who is a 15 year old school girl, a British Palestinian whose relatives are still in Gaza, spoke impassionately at the Speak Out challenge run by the Jack Petchey Foundation about her experiences.  For a 15 year old girl it was a magnificent speech.  It clearly came from the heart.  She described how her baby cousin had died of heart problems in Gaza because of Israel’s Nazi style blockade of the territory.
The main challenge seems to be how to avoid being censored by the Jack Petchey Foundation
Leanne spoke of her hopes and dreams and spoke of how terrorism had no religion.  Watch it and see for yourself.  The audience enthusiastically applauded her and she won this particular stage.  But then the censors moved in.  A particularly racist Zionist @EdgarDavidson81 complained.  The Jewish Chronicle, which is edited by the cold-war -hawk and apologist for pro-Israel anti-Semites, former Daily Express editor Stephen  Pollard, stepped into the fray.
They should add a rider - 'as long as you don't offend racists and Zionists'
Leanne has been deluged with hate mail from Zionists as a result.  Please sign the petition below and share with others so that the Jack Petchey Foundation and Wansted High School know that the overwhelming majority of British people reject Zionist censorship.
If the lies above are to be believed, the video of Leanne's speech was removed from the Jack Petchey site in order to protect her!
Leanne should go onto the finals of the speaking competition as was originally intended before the censors stepped in.

No to Zionist and Racists’ Censorship – Yes to Free Speech on Palestine

Leanne Receiving her Award - This Didn't Happen as the Jack Petchie Foundation has deleted it from its website - all in her interests as they said today
Sign the Petition in support of Leanne
Can anyone think of anything else to add?  'Don't annoy any Zios?'
Leanne Muhamad of Wansted High School won the "Speak out" challenge after giving an impressive performance to enthusiastic applause. However one day later, following complaints from the racist anti-Palestinian blogger @EdgarDavidson81 to the Speakers Trust (the charity that trains the students to take part in the Speak Out Challenge) the Jack Petchey Foundation and Wanstead High School, the judging panel have now decided “unanimously” against sending Leanne Mohamad through to the final rounds of the competition.
Leanne Muhamad
Julie Holness, CEO of the Speakers Trust, alleged that Ms Mohamad had breached 
"two fundamental rules that are made explicit during the training”. 

She said: 

There are two fundamental rules that are made explicit during the training: the speech must have a positive and uplifting message - in fact this is one of the core terms of the agreement with the Jack Petchey Foundation [and] a speaker should never inflame or offend the audience or insult others and this, by definition, means that propaganda is ruled out absolutely from the outset.’

Given that the so-called "two fundamantal rules" are not written as Ms Holness shared them - and also were taken out of context - it is not stated anywhere about an "uplifting message" nor is it stated anywhere about "insulting others" nor any reference to "propaganda" in the topics recommended: Topics (note not rules) should be presented in a positive/constructive manner even if the subject is of a more serious or hard-hitting nature.

How Leanne was supposed to raise the death of her baby cousin who was trapped in Gaza and lacked basic medical aid due to the Apartheid blockade, positive and uplifting is macabre. She did manage to make it a part of her plea for peace and his passing has since been used against her in a cruel and malign fashion. This young person is still a minor and her cousin's death has been very upsetting and yet there are those who believe it is acceptable to slaughter thousands of children, imprison thousands more and in Britain at least censor a young person from speaking out about it in an event designed specifically for young people to speak out!

However controversial the subject, speakers are warned never to offend the audience. Given that the audience gave her a standing ovation and rousing standing ovation at that - there was no signal of offence reported or given, and given that she asked for Birds of Peace instead of Bombs and an uplifting message to free her people; as well as summarizing the traumatic past from which she at her young age has escaped; there is nothing to offend a normal audience, and nowhere is the term "others' mentioned. Also given that the speech was previously, marked voted on and won in another heat - by another panel of judges, and coached by teachers from Speakers Trust - all with no comments or remarks about its eligibility - as there was no offence and they thought it was constructive and positive - it is curious that a new panel voted against it, effectively silencing and deleting the previous panel's decision and also silencing a schoolgirl's story and plea for peace and freedom.

This petition will be delivered to:
  • Trudy Kilcullen - Chief Executive Officer
    Jack Petchey Foundation
  • Councillor Wanstead Council
    sheila bain
  • Bob Hamlyn
    Wanstead Highschool, london


UPDATED: The Jewish Chronicle erroneously reported that “Following complaints by blogger Edgar Davidson to the Speakers Trust” the decision was taken not to put her through to the grand finals. They had already taken the decision to censor her.

A British Palestinian school girl, Leanne Mohamad of Wanstead High School, won the “Speak Out” challenge after giving this impressive performance to enthusiastic applause. But a day later, Speakers Trust decided Leanne will no longer be sent through to the grand final of the public speaking competition. It seems that giving a personal account of the Nakba and a plea for an end to discrimination against Palestinians is not acceptable in the UK in 2016.

Competition organisers Speakers Trust have removed the video from their website, Speak Out Challenge, and their YouTube channel. Copy below.

The Speak Out challenge is described thus: “In each one-day workshop, students take part in games and exercises to encourage them to think on their feet in a fun, interactive and safe environment. The day culminates in a ‘Speak Out’ speech contest where students can speak on any topic they feel strongly about ­– using only their voices, their words and their passion. Notes are not allowed; they must use the techniques from the training.”

The Free Speech on Israel network object to the undue influence that was imposed on Speakers Trust; 15 year old Leanne Mohamad should have been allowed to go through to the final.

29 May 2016

Hiding Zionism's Racism Behind an ‘Anti-Semitic’ Mask


A Response to Rabbi Elli Sarah
Rabbi Elli Sara
Rabbi Elli Sarah is a Liberal rabbi in Brighton and Hove.  Liberal Judaism is supposed to be the most progressive form of Judaism, however Zionism has dragged it to the Right.  Reform Judaism, of which Liberal Judaism is a variant, wished to update Judaism in the 19th century in line with modern capitalism.  It was to Orthodoxy what Protestantism was to Catholicism.  Reform Judaism's reaction to Zionism when it first emerged was hostility.  It rejected outright the idea that the Jews were a separate nation.  That was the view of the anti-Semites and Reform Judaism wanted nothing to do with those who would reverse the tide of Emancipation. 
In one of the more amusing incidents of the social calendar, Rabbi Elli Sarah invited Julie Burchill, the non-Jewish Zionist Islamaphobe into her house and was dissed for it.  Elli Sarah doesn't see the irony that the Palestinians invited the Jews in their homeland and were expelled by way of gratitude.
Elli Sarah herself achieved a measure of notoriety a few years ago, because she is an openly lesbian rabbi.  My father was an Orthodox Rabbi.  If he and his fellow rabbis had their way Elli Sarah would have gone the way of Lot’s wife – turned into  a pillar of salt!  But Elli Sarah has, along with many political gays, moved to the Right. 

Elli Sarah has written an essay entitled ‘WhyAnti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism – but criticising Israel isn’t’   Her essay is a good example of how people can genuinely believe that what they write is profound and original, even though it is little more than an echo chamber for the received wisdom of establishment politicians and their media outlets.  Clichés and hackneyed phrases are dressed up as original. 
Elli Sarah has no criticism of the Zionist record vs the Nazi state - the above quote from Ben Gurion's official biography by Shabtai Teveth - the Burning Ground - suggests otherwise.  It would have been better to save half Germany's Jewish children in Palestine than all of them in England
Elli Sarah’s thesis is that anti-Semitism equals anti-Zionism.  It is a rather common theme.  Abe Foxman of America's right-wing Anti-Defamation League said, ‘Anti-Zionism 99 percent of the time is a euphemism for anti-Semitism.’  Elli Sarah is not being new or innovative in her thesis.  All that she is missing from her essay is a description of Jewish anti-Zionists as self-haters’ and traitors.
Even today Zionist groups work with anti-Semites
I have a different take.  Anti-Zionism is never anti-Semitism.  They are polar opposites.  If anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic then it isn’t anti-Zionism.  Anti-Zionists as individuals may, rarely, be anti-Semitic but anti-Zionism is a political ideology that is as different from anti-Semitism as chalk from cheese.

Rabbi Sarah has a saying on her website ‘At its heart, Judaism is about… trouble-making.’ Unfortunately this is not true, and Rabbi Sarah is the best example of why Judaism today is a religion of conformity, obedience and racist apologetics.  Judaism has not had had the equivalent of the Catholic’s liberation theology or even the Protestant Reformation.

When Jewish refugees from the pogroms in Czarist Russia came to these shores, they were met with open hostility by the Rabbinate.  Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler described the immigrants as “criminals... mentally or physically afflicted.’ [Geoffrey Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics, p.187, Clarendon Press]

One would have to go back to the prophets to find religious figures prepared to admonish the false priests and the worshippers of the golden calf.  That is why the Zionist movement is more happy with the Book of Genocide (Joshua) than the Book of Prophets.

The ability to cloak superficiality in the clothes of profundity is a useful skill.  It’s how people like Andrew Neil and David Aaronovitch make a living.  However it only serves to reinforce peoples’ prejudices whilst turning most people off politics altogether.  Its trade is in cynicism. 

Ms Sarah’s essay asserts that which it tries to prove.  The theme that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism is the constant of every gutter Zionist and rabid nationalist.  The kind of people who march with their blue and white flags wrapped around them shouting ‘Israel lives’.  They proclaim their righteous nationalism in Palestinian blood. 

Ms Sarah graciously allow us the right to criticise the policies of Israel (but not too many of them) but we are forbidden to question where these policies and practices originate.  We can condemn the sinner but not the original sin. 

I began to consider my response to Elli Sarah after having written a tribute to one of the most remarkable Jewish women in the past half century, the late Hedi Epstein, who died last Thursday aged 91.  Hedi was on the Kindertransport that took nearly 10,000 Jewish children out of Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to London in 1938-39.  Her parents and most of her family died in Auschwitz.  At the time the Zionist Organisation opposed the Kindertransport.  David Ben-Gurion, the then Chairman of the ZO wrote that:

“If Jews will have to choose between the refugees, saving Jews from concentration camps and assisting a national homeland in Palestine, mercy will have the upper hand and the whole energy of the people will be channelled into saving Jews from various countries. Zionism will be struck off the agenda not only in world public opinion, in Britain and the United States, but elsewhere in Jewish public opinion. If we allow a separation between the refugee problem and the Palestinian problem, we are risking the existence of Zionism.”

(Ari Bober (ed.), The Other Israel, p.171 quoted in Lenni Brenner Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, see also official biography of Ben Gurion 'The Burning Ground 1886-1948' Shabtai Teveth, p. 855)

Elli Sarah doesn't have a clue why Ben Gurion wrote this or if she does she won't be letting on because it would mean admitting that on the even of the holocaust the Zionist moving was desperately trying to prevent German Jews reaching any other refuge than Palestine, which the British had all but closed to new immigration.  The Zionist response to the Evian Conference which Roosevelt had called in 1938, on the even of war, was one of unmitigated hostility.  In the fairy tale history that is now painted of that period the idea that, as Ben Gurion said, it would be better for the refugees to die than go anywhere other than Palestine is not one that is admitted to.
Hedy Epstein who has just died.  A holocaust survivor who escaped on the kindertransport, Hedi was a Jewish saint - according to Rabbi Elli Sarah she was also anti-Semitic.  If the Zionist movement had had its way, she too would have died at Auschwitz rather 
Hedi Epstein became, like a number of holocaust survivors a Jewish anti-Zionist.  In her case this was because of the massacre of some two thousand Palestinians in 1982 in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps.  The massacres were carried out by Israel’s allies, the Lebanese Phalangist militia.  Israel had invaded Lebanon in 1982, killing some 20,000 people.  The PLO fighters had evacuated the camps shortly beforehand and they contained mostly old people, women and children.  Israeli troops lit up the night sky as the Phalangists went about their work, which included disembowelling and cutting off the breasts of women and castrating young boys.  The Phalange were named after Franco’s fascist Falange, and the alliance had been pioneered by the Israeli Labour Party.
According to Elli Sarah 'there is no historical evidence that Hitler supported Zionism.  If we take 'Hitler' to mean the Nazi State then there is a lot of evidence - see Lucy Dawidowicz's 'War Against the Jews' above.'  Heydrich, the 'engineer of the final solution' (Reitlinger) was explicitly pro-Zionist
Hedy Epstein was arrested at Fergusson Missouri aged 90 protesting the racist murder of a Black teenager, Michael Brown.  According to Elli Sarah, Hedi Epstein was an anti-Semite.  Indeed not only Hedi Epstein.  In 1938 the anti-Zionist Bund gained 17 out of the 20 Jewish Council seats in Warsaw and 61% of the Jewish vote in Poland.  It formed together with the Polish Socialist Party the ruling bloc in Warsaw and Poland’s major cities.  The Zionists gained precisely 1 seat in Warsaw.  According to Rabbi Sarah, the vast majority of Polish Jewry, 90% of whom were exterminated, were also anti-Semites. 
The 'equation of Nazism with Zionism' is anti-Semitic.  Presumably Hannah Arendt (above) was anti-Semitic too?
Far from anti-Zionists being anti-Semitic it is Elli Sarah who comes closest to this.  She has contempt for the Jews who died in the holocaust even though she is happy to use them as the alibi for a state that is modelled on the same principles as the European fascist countries, Nazi Germany included.  Hannah Arendt pointed out, in her book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ how ironic it was that the Nazis Nuremberg Laws were denounced during the Eichmann trial when in Israel too it was impossible for a Jew and a non-Jew to marry.
From 'War Against the Jews' the Zionists were not to be treated with the strictness that the non-Zionist Jews merited
Elli Sarah’s essay is completely divorced from the reality of Israel today.  A demonstration of thousand Jews in Tel Aviv 3 weeks ago supported the soldier who executed a severely wounded Palestinian in the head.  Some 60% of Israeli Jews supported his action.  The demonstration was held under a banner ‘Kill them all’ and the chant went up ‘Death to the Arabs’.  One Jewish journalist, David Sheen, who was though to be from the human rights organisation Bt'selem, was beaten up.  Because human rights NGO's have been targeted by the Netanyahu coalition.  Indeed one banner said ‘My loyalty is my honour’ the slogan of the SS!

Just 8% of Israelis define themselves as leftists.  We have as Israel’s new Defence Minister a man, Avigdor Lieberman, who has spoken of beheading Israeli Arabs and drowning thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea.  His Deputy Eli Dahan describes Palestinians as beasts and remarked that ‘“A Jew always has a much higher soul than agentile, even if he is a homosexual.” I guess that his concession on gays is some progress. 

Nor are Dahan and Lieberman unusual.  According to Pew’s Israel’s Religiously Divided Society  a plurality of Israeli Jewish voters want to expel Arabs and 79% believe Jews should receive preferential treatment.  Israel is an apartheid society.  It is a state, not of its own citizens – Jewish and non-Jewish - but of all Jews, wherever they live.

Why should Elli Sarah and me have the right to ‘return’ to a country we have no attachment to when Palestinian refugees, who were expelled in 1947-8 have no such right?  Why should Jews have the right to lease 93% of Israeli land when Arabs have no such right?  Does the fact that a book, Borderlife, was banned by Israel’s Education Ministry from high school English syllabuses because it depicted a relationship between Jewish and Arab teenagers and thus threatened Jewish ‘national identity’ not have eery echoes of the 1930’s?  Does not the refusal to admit refugees, because of Israel’s Jewish ‘national identiy’ not give her pause for thought?  Or do examples of Israel’s racism cause Elli Sarah’s brain to go on vacation?

Borderlife  was banned for the same reasons that the Nazi Nuremberg Laws banned miscegenation, an ugly word that was first used in relation to the Deep South of America, i.e. sexual relations between Jew and non-Jew.  The Israeli government funds an openly fascist organisation Lehava which campaigns against mixed Jewish-Arab relationships and whose leader Benzi Gopstein openly callsfor the burning of mosques and churches.

If British Jews were treated in the same way as the Palestinians Ms Sarah would be the first to shout ‘anti-Semitism’.  Elli Sarah knows that she can’t defend the indefensible.  She therefore resorts to the same defence that supporters of apartheid South Africa use:  ‘why don’t you protest the Black African statesTheir human rights record is worse than ours.’  The answer then and now is that Apartheid is a particularly unique evil.

The suggestion that we single out Israel amongst all the other countries for reasons of ‘anti-Semitism’ is risible.  Israel is 'singled out' because it singles itself out.  It says it is the Middle East’s only democracy.  It receives the highest US aid of any country in the world.  Motions condemning its settlement activities are routinely vetoed by the USA in the UN Security Council.  Israel receives favoured nation trading status in the EU.  It even competes in the Eurovision despite being in the Middle East.  Israel likes to portray itself as a western country but its chorus of apologists complain when we hold it to its self-proclaimed standards.

Israel is a democracy for Jews and a Jewish state for Palestinians.  Its democracy is but skin deep.  It has rigorous military censorship, administrative detention (internment without trial), it holds secret trials where even the name of the defendant cannot be mentioned, it uses torture regularly against Palestinian detainees (and recently when Jewish terrorists were tortured there was a mighty uproar).  It maintains two legal systems in the West Bank (military courts for Palestinians and civil courts for Jews) which is as good a definition of apartheid as it gets.

If the ‘Jewish’ state was Jewish in the same way Britain is Christian, i.e. a constitutional adornment, then there could be little complaint.  If Israel was simply a place of refuge for Jews suffering persecution, that too would be acceptable.  However Israel isn’t even that.  When the only post-war neo-Nazi government came to power, under the military junta in Argentina (1976-83), when up to 12% [3,000] of those who disappeared [i.e. died under torture] were Jewish, Israel turned its back.  As the late Yossi Sarid MK of the left-Zionist Meretz observed, ‘‘the government of Israel never once lifted a finger and co-operated with the Argentine murderers because of their interest in arms deals….In Argentina, Israel sold even the Jews for the price of its immediate interests.’ “Yes, I Accuse,” Ha'aretz, 31 August 1989.

I suspect Elli Sarah has never read Jacobo Timmerman's book 'Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number' of his experiences in prison in Argentina.  He was a prominent editor and a left-Zionist (or at least he was until he went to live in Israel!).

In her attempt to prove ‘anti-Semitism’ Elli Sarah focuses on Naz Shah’s facetious joke about transplanting Israel to the United States.  In fact the map she used came from the Jewish Virtual Library!  The remark came about during Israel’s attack on Gaza when over two thousand people, including 551 ‘terrorist’ children were murdered.  Perhaps Ms Sarah has forgotten the chant of the Israeli mob 'There's No School In Gaza,There Are No More Kids Left'  This at a time when Israelis moved armchairs and a coffee machine to a hill overlooking Gaza so they could enjoy the bombing.

The hypocrisy of these holocaust mongers is best demonstrated by the fact that they pick up on Naz Shah's reference to the 'transportation costs' of moving Israel to the United States (note that it is automatically assumed that it is only the Jews of Israel who are involved).  'Transportation' symbolises death trains to Auschwitz.  It is as if Jews never use the word transport, still less trains for fear that they might be carted off to an extermination camp!  What utter hypocritical rubbish.  Unfortunately Naz Shah was intimidated, like the defendants in Stalin's purge trials, into admitting her guilt.

Elli Sarah speaks about the Holocaust survivors who found refuge in Israel.  In fact most of them wanted to go to the United States not Israel but their path was blocked by the opposition of the Zionist movement in the USA.  They have become the alibi for the Israeli state but Israel’s use of the holocaust as a propaganda weapon is in stark contrast to their treatment in Israel.  As Ha’aretz (6.2.13) noted,Israel Is Waiting for Its Holocaust Survivors to Die’ as it then won’t have to pay them the meagre benefits they receive.

Ms Sarah refers to the kibbutz movement as an ‘ideal way of living as a Jew’.   She omits to mention that they were institutions founded on land from which the Arab peasants had been evicted and of which only Jews could be members.  In other words they were racially exclusive clubs, stockade and watchtower settlements.

Elli Sarah states that there is no historical evidence that Hitler supported Zionism.  In fact there is a lot of evidence that the Nazis favoured the Zionist movement over and above all other Jewish groups before and even after 1941.  There is the Kasztner trial in Israel when survivors of the Hungarian holocaust accused the Jewish Agency and its representative Kasztner of collaborating in the round-up and entrainment of the Jews.  The verdict of the Jerusalem District Court  brought the second Israeli government of Moshe Sharrett down in 1955.
Zionism was a movement of settler colonialism not self-determination as Elli Sarah maintains - above is from the founder of Political Zionism Theodor Herz, making overtures to mass murder and white settler leader Cecil Rhodes
Elli Sarah describes Zionism as ‘a movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people, in response to virulent anti-Semitism.’.  In fact the founders of Zionism were clear that their model was that of Cecil Rhodes, the settler leader after whom Rhodesia was named, not Garibaldi or the leaders of the French Revolution.  Zionism was indeed a response to anti-Semitism but one that accepted the anti-Semitic framework that Jews did not belong in the societies they lived in.  Ms Sara to accepts the thesis of the anti-Semites when she says that Jews had been ‘living a marginal existence in other peoples’ lands for most of our 4000 year history.’
Herzl's fruitless approach to Cecil Rhodes, whom the Zionists much admired
This isn't so.  Elli Sarah and I live in Britain as full citizens.  It is as much our country as anyone else’s.  Only anti-Semites and Zionist proclaim otherwise.  When Ms Sarah proclaims that ‘One of the main objectives of the early Zionists was the ‘normalisation’ of the Jewish people.’ She is accepting the anti-Semitic trope that Jews were abnormal.  It is somewhat ironic that Rabbi Sarah then goes on to accuse others of ‘anti-Semitism’!

On June 4th Brighton will see an attempted march by a fascist and anti-Semitic group of neo-Nazis.  Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been busy helping to organise the counter-mobilisation, as we did in 2012 when the March for England was halted in its tracks.  EDL/MFE - We Won the Day 
Once thing is for certain.  Elli Sarah and all the rest of the Zionist claque will play no part in opposing the real neo-Nazis who will try and march in the streets of Brighton. Zionism never has opposed anti-Semitism.  It is far more interesting in painting the opponents of anti-Semitism as anti-Semitic.  Zionists have no interest in opposing anti-Semitism except where defence of the State of Israel is concerned.  That is the lie at the heart of Rabbi Elli Sarah’s thesis.

Tony Greenstein

The Labour Right’s Anti-Semitism Heresy Hunt

Learning from Galileo and the Inquisition
In 1633 Galileo was convicted for Heresy by the Inquisition for arguing in support of the Copernican belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun.  This was despite the fact that most of the scientists and philosophers at the time were convinced that the Aristotelian concept of a stationery Earth, around which the Sun and planets moved, was false.
Galileo faced the Inquisition for daring to challenge accepted orthodoxies
Galileo’s problem was that scientific evidence, logic and observation conflicted with the ideological needs of the system he lived under.  A reordering of the heavens challenged the very basis of the theological precepts by which Papal rule was maintained.
The Political Equivalent of the Copernican Theory is now a Heresy in Labour
Galileo wrote to the German mathematician Johannes Kepler ‘"what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope?  What shall we make of this?  Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?"

I am reminded of Galileo’s travails since the heresy hunt in the Labour Party makes it an expulsion offence to even hint that Zionism is racist or to compare Israel in any way with the Nazis.  Indeed even to pretend that Israel is anything other than a fine, democratic example to the rest of the world, a beacon of freedom, is not only reason enough for suspension but prima facie evidence of ‘anti-Semitism’. 
Like Aristotle's Theory, the idea that Zionism is a wonderful movement opposed to all forms of racism is the New Labour orthodoxy
In the Labour Party today there is a similar refusal to look through the telescope or perhaps it is the turning of a Nelsonian blind eye to the Israeli state as it actually exists.  Israel is a state which permanently rules over four and a half million Palestinians, who cannot be granted the vote or any measure of civil rights, because that is incompatible with a ‘Jewish State’.  It is a situation whereby there are two different systems of law– one for Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers.  Even within the non-existent Green Line, Israel’s own Arab citizens are there on sufferance, with a plurality of Jewish voters wanting them expelled.  Apartheid may not be officially declared, but it is practical politics. 
Torquemada's agent Harry Gregson, Labour's SE Regional Organiser
The Labour Party now exists in a parallel universe whereby black is white and truth is false.  The laws of logic have been suspended.  How else can one describe a situation whereby those who support the world’s only apartheid state are the ones defining what is and is not racism?

In recent weeks, Ken Livingstone has been suspended for mentioning the relationship of the Nazis to the Zionists, David Watson has been suspended for claiming that Zionism is racist and I have been suspended for, among other things, claiming that Zionism is a Jewish form of anti-Semitism. 
When Peter Kyle MP won a seat in Hove against the Conservatives it was said that the most right-wing candidate had won!  Calling for the deselection of this arch-privatiser is now a disciplinary offence
The latter is a question of fact.  Although Zionist supporters today claim to oppose anti-Semitism, no historian of Zionism can be unaware that both anti-Semites and Zionists shared the same prejudices against diaspora Jewry.  As Jacques Doron notes in Classic Zionism and Modern Anti-semitism: Parallels and influences (1883-1914) (Journal of Israeli History, no. 8, 1.9.83., p.171)
‘It cannot be denied that the Jewish self-criticism so widespread among the German Zionist intelligentsia often seemed dangerously similar to the plaints of the German anti-Semites.’
Tomás de Torquemada -  Hero of Labour's Blairite civil service
There is a universal consensus in the media, that extends from the Guardian to the Daily Mail, that anyone who criticises Zionism is anti-Semitic.  The mere suggestion however that Israel is anything other than the purest form of Athenian democracy is like to result in Labour’s Inquisition bearing down on them, presided over by Torquemada in the form of John Mann MP. Events however have a habit of defying even the most prosaic of ideologues.
John Stolliday - the hatchetman in charge of the leaky Compliance Unit
In the past week alone Israel’s Deputy Chief of Staff, General Yair Golan has compared developments in Europe, particularly Germany in the 1930’s to Israel today. [IDF general in bombshell speech: Israeltoday shows signs of 1930s Germany, Jerusalem Post, 4.5.16.]  Yair’s speech at a ceremony remembering the Holocaust led to a series of events which culminated in the removal of Moshe Yalon as Israel’s Defence Minister.  

Yalon was no slouch when it came to killing Palestinians but his replacement, Avigdor Lieberman is the Israeli equivalent of Isis.  Lieberman has previously called for the beheading of ‘disloyal’ Israeli Arabs.  [Lieberman: Disloyal Israeli Arabs Should Be Beheaded and the drowning of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead SeaLieberman Blasted for Suggesting Drowning Palestinian Prisoners]

Lieberman agreed to join Netanyahu’s Likud coalition on the basis that he could introduce the death penalty.  Naturally the death penalty will only apply to Palestinians since only Military Courts, which have a conviction rate of some 99.7%, will have the power to impose it.  Jewish settler terrorists are tried in civil courts.
Having the Jewish Labour Movement presiding over 'anti-racism' training is like having Britain's biggest mass murderer, Dr Harold Shipman, in charge of developing a policy on medical ethics
We have an Alice in Wonderland situation in the Labour Party whereby the Jewish Labour Movement, which supports the Israeli state and its founding ideology, Zionism, is to be put in charge of anti-racism training by Baroness Royall, who investigated ‘anti-Semitism’ at Oxford University Labour Club.  Its akin to having the late Dr Shipman given responsibility for developing a course in medical ethics.  The JLM is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation, which is responsible for the funding and development of settlements in the West Bank.  Its institutions are key to the maintenance of Israeli Apartheid, both in Israel itself and the Occupied Territories.  Since the JLM excludes from membership anyone who is not a Zionist or supporter of the Israeli state, it would be more honest to call it the Zionist Labour Movement.

It is part of the new political gospel that the Labour Party is being submerged in a tsunami of anti-Semitism.  What we are witnessing is the manufacturing of consent that flies in the face of all the evidence.  It is the perfect example of Marx’s dictum that the ruling ideas in any society are the ideas of the ruling class.  The existence of ‘anti-Semitism’ is assumed as a given.  It is above and beyond challenge in the mainstream press and media, despite the lack of any evidence for it.  How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’santi-Semitism crisis

Almost everyday people who criticises Zionism, the movement which founded the Israeli state, are being suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’.  Although it is anti-Semitic to equate Jews and Zionism, anyone who criticises the latter is deemed anti-Semitic!

Jackie Walker, the Vice-Chair of Momentum, has been suspended for mentioning the involvement of Jews in financing the slave trade.  She is herself both Black and Jewish. [Jackie has since been reinstated] It is one of Zionism’s myths that anti-Semitism is a seamless continuum of Jewish oppression for two thousand years.  Jews were always victims never perpetrators. It was this, the ‘lachrymose version of Jewish history’ that Salo Baron, perhaps the greatest Jewish historian of the 20th century railed against.

I was myself suspended on March 18th for having made comments, the details of which Labour’s Compliance Unit initially refused to give me, despite leaking them to The Telegraph which printed them on 2nd April. [Activist who derides critics as 'Zionist scum' admitted to Labour in latest anti-Semitism scandal to hit Party]

I will shortly be appearing before an investigation meeting.  It would appear that the Acting Regional Organiser for the South-East Harry Gregson, has gone into overdrive trying to find some incriminating evidence against me.  It is a strange process whereby you first suspend someone and then begin trying to find the evidence to justify the suspension.

One of the charges against me is that I wrote a blog post entitled ‘Israeli Policy is to wait for the remaining Holocaust survivors to die’  This was deemed such a terrible accusation by Gregson that it must be anti-Semitic.

It is of course a terrible accusation but exactly the same charge is made in an article in Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper! Israel Is Waiting for Its Holocaust Survivors to Die 

It is beyond dispute that Israel is parsimonious in the extreme in withholding benefits from holocaust survivors.  Thousands of holocaust survivors in Israel live in dire poverty, forced to choose between heat and food.

Israel has received billions of shekels in reparations from the German state.  It has preferred to spend them on holocaust memorials and holocaust ‘education’, to say nothing of weaponry rather than on the holocaust survivors themselves. 

The true reason for my suspension though may lie in one other charge that I am facing, namely that I have called for the deselection of Peter Kyle, the New Labour MP for Hove.  Kyle is someone who believes fervently in private involvement in the NHS.  He voted for bombing Syria and is a darling of the Progress wing of Labour. 

The anti-Semitism witch-hunt in the Labour Party has one overriding purpose.  It is not just about sanitising Israel.  Its primary purpose is the removal of the Jeremy Corbyn leadership of the Party.  Co’s appeasement of the Right in the Labour Party is a recipe for defeat.  Its only effect is to whet the appetite of Labour’s McCarthyists.

Tony Greenstein 

28 May 2016

Hedy Epstein – a Woman who was a Saint in her Lifetime

Hedy Epstein - Childhood Survivor of the Holocaust and Jewish anti-Zionist RIP

In the Roman Catholic Church you have to wait until you are dead before they canonise you and make you into a saint.  Hedy Epstein was one of the few people who became a saint during their lifetime. A holocaust survivor, she became an implacable opponent of injustice.

Because she was Jewish she, like so many of us, felt a particular need to speak up against racism perpetrated in the name of Jews.

But Hedy was to be found wherever injustice showed its head.  She went on the boat to Gaza and was arrested in Ferguson, Missouri.

Above all Hedy learnt the lesson that the Zionists could never hope to understand.  The Holocaust should have been the reason to oppose all racism, not to justify or condone Jewish racism.

Hedy, I salute you.  You will be missed.

Tony Greenstein

Hedy Epstein (Photo: Humans of St. Louis/Lindy Drew)
The following obituary for Hedy Epstein was sent to us by Dianne Lee. Epstein was a friend and mentor to us at Mondoweiss, and she will be sorely missed. 

Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, 91, died at her home in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, on May 26, 2016. An internationally renowned, respected and admired advocate for human and civil rights, Hedy was encircled by friends who lovingly cared for her at home.

Born August 15, 1924, in the Baden-Württemberg region of Germany, her lifelong commitment to human rights was formed by the horrific experiences she and her family endured under the repressive Nazi regime.

Unable to secure travel documents for themselves, Hedy’s parents, Hugo and Ella (Eichel) Wachenheimer, arranged for 14-year-old Hedy to leave Germany on a Kindertransport. Hedy credited her parents with giving her life a second time when they sent her to England to live with kind-hearted strangers. Hedy’s parents, grandparents, and most of her aunts, uncles and cousins did not survive the Holocaust. Hedy remained in England until 1945 when she returned to Germany to work for the United States Civil Service. She joined the Nuremberg Doctors Trial prosecution in 1946 as a research analyst.
Hedy immigrated to the United States in 1948. She and her husband moved to St. Louis in the early 1960s, and shortly thereafter Hedy began working as a volunteer with the Freedom of Residence, Greater St. Louis Committee, a nonprofit organization dedicated to housing integration and advocacy for fair housing laws. Hedy worked for many years as a volunteer and board member, and ultimately served as the organization’s executive director during the mid-1970s.

During the 1980s, Hedy worked as a paralegal for Chackes and Hoare, a law firm that represented individuals in employment discrimination cases. As an advocate for equality and human rights, Hedy spoke out against the war in Vietnam, the bombing of Cambodia, and overly restrictive U.S. immigration policies. She spoke and acted in support of the Haitian boat people and women’s reproductive rights, and, following the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila, Hedy began her courageous and visionary work for peace and justice in Israel and Palestine.

During her later years, Hedy continued to advocate for a more peaceful world, and in 2002 was a founding member of the St. Louis Instead of War Coalition. Much of her later activism centered on efforts to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine. She founded the St. Louis chapter of Women in Black and co-founded the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee and the St. Louis chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. She traveled to the West Bank several times, first as a volunteer with the nonviolent International Solidarity Movement and repeatedly as a witness to advocate for Palestinian human rights. She attempted several times to go to Gaza as a passenger with the Freedom Flotilla, including as a passenger on the Audacity of Hope, and once with the Gaza Freedom March. Hedy addressed numerous groups and organizations throughout Europe and returned to Germany and her native village of Kippenheim many times.

Three days after her 90th birthday, Hedy was arrested for “failure to disperse.” She was attempting to enter Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s St. Louis office to ask for deescalation of police and National Guard tactics which had turned violent in response to protests following the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Hedy was a member of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center’s speakers’ bureau and gave countless talks at schools and community events. She shared her Holocaust experiences with thousands of Missouri youth as a featured speaker at the Missouri Scholars Academy for more than twenty years. She ended every talk with three requests: remember the past, don’t hate, and don’t be a bystander. Through the years, Hedy received numerous awards and honors for her compassionate service and relentless pursuit of justice.

Hedy is survived by son Howard (Terry) Epstein, and granddaughters Courtney and Kelly. She was beloved and will be truly missed by countless friends in St. Louis and around the world.
Hedy often shared her philosophy of service with these words: “If we don’t try to make a difference, if we don’t speak up, if we don’t try to right the wrong that we see, we become complicit. I don’t want to be guilty of not trying my best to make a difference.”

Hedy always did her best, and the difference she made is evident in the commitment and passion of those called to continue her work. Her friends and admirers honor and salute her deep and lifelong dedication to tikkun olam, the just re-ordering of the world and promise to remember, to stay human, and to never be bystanders.

A memorial service will be held in Forest Park at a date and time to be determined. Donations in Hedy’s name may be made to Forest Park Forever to establish a permanent tribute, 5595 Grand Drive in Forest Park, St. Louis, MO 63112; American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102; American Civil Liberties Union, 125 Broad St. 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004; and/or American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri Foundation, 454 Whittier St., St. Louis, MO 63108.


Much of her activism was focused on advocating for Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

Michael McLaughlin Reporter, The Huffington Post

Hedy Epstein fled Germany during the Holocaust and later protested injustice in the U.S. and abroad.

Hedy Epstein, who fled the Nazis as a child in Germany and later protested what she saw as injustice in the Middle East and near her home in St. Louis, died Thursday, her friend Dianne Lee told The Huffington Post. She was 91. 

Epstein’s long career in activist circles began when she was a teenager and continued for the rest of her life. At 90, she was arrested in St. Louis for “failure to disperse” while protesting Gov. Jay Nixon’s deployment of the National Guard to quell protests in Ferguson, Missouri. 

“I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager. I didn’t think I would have to do it when I was 90,” 
Epstein told The Nation. “We need to stand up today so that people won’t have to do this when they’re 90.”

Thank you for fighting for Justice, @hedyepstein! From the Holocaust to #Ferguson, Hedy fought for Peace! RIP pic.twitter.com/bLgq7UQo5M
— MariaChappelleNadal (@MariaChappelleN) May 26, 2016

Advocating for Palestinians under Israeli occupation was one of her core commitments. She traveled to the West Bank and attempted several times to sail to Gaza in recent years to protest Israel’s blockade of the area, according to an obituary that Lee wrote

Along with dozens of other Americans, Epstein boarded the Audacity of Hope in 2011 on one of her trips to the region. The boat departed from Greece in an attempt to join a flotilla trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. 

Greek authorities quickly stopped the vessel and returned it to port, but Epstein tweeted about the experience.  

Our wonderful captain negotiated with them. We were in a holding pattern for probably 3 hours when the commandos arrived with drawn weapons.
— Hedy Epstein (@hedyepstein) July 1, 2011
I’m below deck surrounded by a doctor and a nurse and wonderful other people. Our spirits are high. I’m calm, unafraid, hopeful.
— Hedy Epstein (@hedyepstein) July 1, 2011
Epstein was born in the Bavarian region of Germany in 1924 as Hedy Wachenheimer. Her parents sent her to England at age 14 to escape the rule of Adolf Hitler, according to Epstein’s personal webpage. Most of her Jewish family, including her parents, did not survive the Holocaust.

In 1945, she returned to Germany to work for the occupying U.S. forces, and the following year she became a researcher for Nuremberg prosecutors in the war crimes trials of German doctors. 

Epstein immigrated to the United States in 1948 and eventually settled in St. Louis in the 1960s. In that city, she volunteered with the Freedom of Residence, an organization demanding fair housing laws and an end to segregation. In the 1970s, she became executive director of the group’s St. Louis chapter. 

According to Lee’s obituary, Epstein’s advocacy knew no limits. She took a stand against the Vietnam War, spoke up for the plight of Haitian boat people, and demanded women’s reproductive rights. 

Epstein often spoke to young people about her life through the Missouri Scholars Academy. She ended each talk with the same advice, according to Lee.

“Remember the past, don’t hate, and don’t be a bystander,” Epstein often said. 
Epstein is survived by her son Howard “Terry” Epstein and granddaughters Courtney and Kelly.