What kind of state is it whose Ministers Urge Other Countries not to fund their human rights groups? a Zionist state

Louise Ellman's War Against Palestinian Children

Sometimes I feel like my favourite comedian, Frankie Howerd, whose catchphrase in the immortal Up Pompei was ‘infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.’ [although, as a reader has pointed out Kenneth Williams was the originator of the line, judged as the funniest one liner ever] Almost every week I seem to provide copy for the Jewish News. I’m not quite sure what I’ve done to deserve it. It’s getting to the stage where, if I catch a cold, the headline in the Jewish News will be something like:

‘Tony Greenstein who was expelled from (insert your favourite organisation) claimed he caught a cold this week. However we have good reason to believe he was just trying to avoid getting expelled from the local chess club.’

The Jewish News Political Editor and according to his own description a 'so-called journalist'

Jack Mendel, the 'so-called journalist' took pride in reporting me to Twitter for having dared to disagree with him and boasted that I had been removed - however he kept silent when I overturned the ban!

First it was their ‘so-called journalist’ (his description not mine) Jack Mendel @mendelpol. Jack had called Israel the victim of Hamas aggression on Twitter when we all know that the Israeli state has been playing the innocent victim for the past 70 years. When I explained that when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 it too had claimed victim status Mendelpol saw red (or blue).

This headline is like saying the Pope is a Catholic - perhaps I should have said that the anti-Semitism witchhunt was about genuine antisemitism?

Unable to muster a reply he cried ‘hate speech, anti-Semitism’ etc. and complained to Twitter, who promptly banned me. We then had the spectacle of a ‘journalist’ boasting he had managed to censor an opponent. However he who laughs last laughs longest. As a result of a sustained campaign with help from Canary, Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada Twitter agreed to reverse their decision. @Mendelpol has been very quiet ever since!

Spot the difference between the Jewish Chronicle headline above and the Jewish News one below

Like its sister paper, the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish News was pleased that my account had been taken down by Medium over a post correctly linking North West Friends of Israel to Tommy Robinson supporters - Free Speech and Zionism being a contradiction in terms

I'm worried that if I blow my nose in public there may be a Jewish News reporter lurking in the bushes

The JN’s latest headline concerns my decision to stand for Secretary of Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Entitled Expelled Labour activist Tony Greenstein standing to be Secretary of PSC (because it is essential that the JN’s readers are reminded that the Fake Anti-Semitism Campaign Managed to Catch At Least One Jew) readers are also told that ‘

According to this headline I've been suspended from UNISON, according to a later article I've been 'booted out' - the problem with Internet Newspapers is that they have no standards

‘Jewish anti-Zionist, who has also been booted out of Unison trade union too, launches a bid to become the secretary of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.’

Of course I sympathise with the author of the article, one Joe Millis. It must be terribly difficult remembering an article which your paper carried all of two months previously Notorious anti-Zionist Tony Greenstein is suspended from Unison union for three years Still, if one week is a long time in politics, as Harold Wilson observed, then two months must be an eternity for ‘journalists’ like Millis.

One of many shock horror headlines from the Jewish News - anyone expelled from the Labour Party is an untouchable according to the Zionists

Any cub journalist knows that it’s a cardinal rule of journalism not to mix fact and opinion. That’is how you tell the quality press from the tabloids. Except that all the quality papers, bar the Torygraph, are tabloids these days! The phrase ‘notorious anti-Zionist’ might just suggest a certain bias unless the word ‘anti-Zionist’ is a synonym for notoriety.

Another pathetic Jewish News headline - Momentum is criticised because I hold one of its banners - Momentum isn't the Nazi Party - it can't control its grassroots - this non-story quotes the JLM saying Momentum should 'abide by the party's decisions' - I wasn't aware the Party had decided I was banned from holding a Momentum banner!!

And then there is the other difficulty Millis faced and it is indeed perplexing. How to include all the organisations I have been excluded from. I was expelled from the SWP’s previous incarnation, the International Socialists in 1973 and if they really want to go back far enough then I was expelled from the King David High School in Liverpool in 1972. It has been a career of expulsions. The only institution that I can think of that didn’t expel me was Brighton Polytechnic. But although they didn’t expel me (I was Student Union Vice-President for 2 years) they did blacklist me because I’d organised one too many occupations.

Quite when I made the transition from a 'controversial' Jewish anti-Zionist to a 'notorious' one is not known

We only found this out when we occupied Assistant Director, Robin Plummer’s office in the Art College. When we opened his filing cabinets (his secretary had helpfully left the keys in the desks) we found a memo from Director, Geoffrey Hall asking that any attempt by me to enrol on a course to be referred to him! Oh and I haven’t been expelled, not yet anyway, from the National Autistic Society!

That was why I became the only Jewish student at the Roman Catholic Teacher Training College of St Mary’s College in Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. The person who interviewed me, Father Michael Prior, was both a supporter of liberation theology and the Palestinians (he founded Living Stones). I guess these days Michael would also be considered an anti-Semite.

I was, as I’ve already written, suspended last October for 3 years from UNISON for protesting the refusal of London Regional Organiser, Cllr. Steve Terry, to defend a member who had been sacked for saying that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, which is a matter of record. Sacking someone for exercising the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights was outrageous enough, failing to defend their member was even worse and I pulled no punches in describing Terry’s scabby behaviour for what it was.

But strangely enough in Unison until your appeal is heard you are still a full member. For over 2 months I have heard nothing which means I am still a full member of Unison. So naturally I penned a letter to the Jewish News explaining their errors. However since the Zionist rag doesn’t have a letters page I suspect that it will be disappear into the ether. However you can read it here.

QUESTION: In what state are Human Rights groups Seen As The Enemy? ANSWER: Emily Thornberry’s Beacon of Freedom – ISRAEL

Emily Thornberry and other apologists for Israel pretend that Israel is a beacon of light and freedom in the Middle East. Thornberry wittered in a visit to Israel about how ‘I love the liberal democracy that is Israel. And it’s in contrast to many other countries around it.’ In a grovelling address at Labour Friends of Israel annual dinner’ in November 2017, Thornberry declared that

‘even today... modern Israel stands out as a beacon of freedom, equality and democracy, particularly in respect of women and LGBT communities.’

And she sent on to declare that BDS was ‘bigotry against the Israeli nation.’ The irony of that remark, which betrays Thornberry’s fawning ignorance, is that there is no Israeli nation. That is why Israel is an apartheid state. Israel is not a state of its own inhabitants but a state of its Jewish citizens. There is, in Zionist mythology, a Jewish nation, of which Israeli Jews are a part, but unlike all other states Israeli citizenship is not coterminous with nationality. Israel is different from most other countries – it has no common nationality for all of its citizens.

Another way in which Israel differs from all democratic states is that Israeli ministers, including the Prime Minister, on their trips abroad lobby other governments not to support Israeli human rights organisations, in particular B’tselem and Breaking the Silence. Thus in a visit in October Netanyahu gave Angela Merkel a letter which

lamented the federal funding given by Germany to dozens of organizations, including political foundations and aid groups operating in Palestinian territories.

Amongst the organisations that the Israeli government was targeting was

the leftist Israeli political magazine +972, whose authors “regularly accuse Israel of apartheid”; the Evangelical relief organization Bread for the World that supports initiatives such as the Coalition of Women for Peace, which supported boycott campaigns against Israel; and the international film festival Berlinale, which allegedly regularly welcomed supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as guests.

Not content with this list of organisations, the letter went on to single out a particular target viz. the Jewish Museum in Berlin which had the audacity to show a special exhibit on Jerusalem that reflected "largely the Muslim-Palestinian view". It is also claimed that the state-funded Berlin Jewish Museum ‘regularly organizes events and discussions with prominent BDS supporters.’ Israel is used to organisations in the Jewish diaspora faithfully following the line laid down by Israel. So you can understand the anger felt by Netanyahu that some countries take freedom of speech seriously.

Israeli Government Foreign Minister Hotoveli went to Switzerland to Lobby Against an Israeli Human Rights Group Breaking the Silence

Netanyahu is not the only one. In June 2015 the Jerusalem Post reported that

‘Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely declared war on the left-wing Breaking the Silence NGO on Tuesday, calling for an “urgent meeting” in the ministry to come up with steps to counter the group’s actions in Switzerland.’

Hotoveli, who is a religious nutcase, was particularly worked up by an exhibition by the soldiers’ group Breaking the Silence which reveals the atrocities and war crimes committed by the army. ‘She said she had also directed Israel’s embassy in Switzerland to immediately consider ways of working against the exhibition.’

This is the ‘democratic’ state that Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary believes is a ‘beacon’ in the Middle East. Apart from demonising human rights groups, Israel is a state that uniquely has made torture legal, which uses imprisonment without trial, not just in the Occupied Territories but in Israel itself against Palestinian Israelis, has an all pervasive censorship and of course does little things like confining Palestinians to 3.5% of Israeli land because 93% of land is ‘national’ i.e. Jewish national land.

Naturally Thornberry in her speech to LFI trotted out such things as womens’ equality and LGBT since pinkwashing is an Israeli speciality.

What Thornberry didn’t say was that Israel’s love of gays is strictly for foreign consumption. Within Israel it is a different story. Most Israelis are hostile to gays, especially the Orthodox. In Jerusalem, in 2016 16 year old Shira Banki was stabbed to death and 5 others injured by an Orthodox Jewish assailant who went wild with a knife. Police had allowed him access to the demonstration despite his having only recently been released from prison for similar stabbins at a previous Gay Pride demonstration.

Israel also refuses to accept the idea of gay marriage because it would cut across the hostility felt across the Zionist spectrum to miscegenation, sex across racial borders. Gay marriage would not fit in with the existing separation of the population. Likewise surrogacy rights for gay couples have been rejected by the Knesset.

Strangely enough, neither the Jewish News or the JLM commented on Netanyahu's embrace of Brazil's new fascist President - clearly it's a match made in heaven

Of course when Netanyahu recently visited Brazil for a 5 day visit, Israel’s pinkwashing went out the window altogether. As the Jerusalem Post reported

‘Netanyahu steered clear, as he did throughout his five-day visit to Brazil last week, of any reservations regarding the president’s controversial positions – opponents accuse him of an authoritarian streak – or disparaging comments Bolsonaro has made in the past about gays, women and minorities.’

In fact this report in itself is a bit, how should we say, underwhelming. Bolsonaro hasn’t merely made ‘disparaging comments’ he stated explicitly that if he saw 2 men kissing in the street he would hit them, which is a green light for anti-gay violence. None of this disturbed Netanyahu who was certainly not going to allow gay rights to get in the way of a warm relationship with the new fascist kid on the bloc. Among Bolsinaro’s more repulsive comments were his statement that

It is difficult to think of a single repressive regime that Israel doesn't embrace - because Netanyahu is only following in the footsteps of Israeli Labour governments

"I would prefer my son to die in an accident than show up with a mustachioed man,"

Israel is nonetheless a beacon of light in Emily Thornberry’s eyes. Thornberry is a woman who is being tipped as a replacement when Jeremy Corbyn stand down or is pushed.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli artists urge Germany to reject funding cuts to groups critical of Israel

Israel accused HRW director of supporting BDS

Written by Polina Garaev

Israel accused Human Rights Watch's local director of supporting the campaign to boycott the country

THOMAS COEX (AFP/File)

Israel reportedly made the demand of Germany in October

BERLIN -- Israeli artists are urging German authorities to reject Jerusalem’s demand to cut funding to institutions critical of Israel, including Berlin’s Jewish Museum and the city’s world-famous film festival.

According to German media, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself conveyed the request to Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit in October.

The demand was passed on in the form of an unsigned seven-page letter from the Israeli government, which was first published in December in the German left-leaning daily Taz. The letter lamented the federal funding given by Germany to dozens of organizations, including political foundations and aid groups operating in Palestinian territories.

Among the organizations mentioned in the letter are the Israeli political magazine +972, whose authors “regularly accuse Israel of apartheid”; the Evangelical relief organization Bread for the World that supports initiatives such as the Coalition of Women for Peace, which supported boycott campaigns against Israel; and the international film festival Berlinale, which allegedly regularly welcomed supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as guests.

The letter also criticized the Jewish Museum in Berlin, now showing a special exhibit on Jerusalem that reflects "largely the Muslim-Palestinian view". It is also claimed that the state-funded museum, which is not affiliated with the local Jewish community, regularly organizes events and discussions with prominent BDS supporters.

Jerusalem exhibition in Berlin's Jewish Museum

i24NEWS, Polina Garaev

“The German support of non-governmental organizations that intervene in Israel's internal affairs or promote anti-Israel activities, is unique,” read the Israeli letter. “We would like to see the Federal Government tie its further financial support to the complete stop of such activities.”

The German daily FAZ later reported that the letter was handed by Netanyahu directly to Merkel during the intergovernmental consultations that took place in Jerusalem in October. The newspaper also noted that the German Foreign Ministry demanded a high-level meeting in Berlin, to clarify the letter, but that was canceled by the Israeli side.

The request stirred significant controversy, also among Israeli artists. On Sunday, 63 of them – including film director Udi Aloni, whose work has been featured in the Berlinale on multiple occasions – published an open letter in the Taz, proclaiming their support for Berlin’s Jewish museum and calling the Israeli demand “shocking.”

“We reject these attempts to curtail the freedom of cultural expression, which are part of a larger campaign by populist and ultra-rightwing governments worldwide to limit the scope of critical thought – and, where possible silence it altogether,” read their letter.

“We therefore call on the German government, its parliament, its media, and the broad public to resist this specious demand, and, more broadly to beware of the attempts by the Israeli government and its anti-liberal allies to export this damaging culture of fear and censorship to other democratic domains.”

In a previous statement, the museum rejected the accusations of the Israeli government.

“We believe that an open discussion involving sometimes controversial views is essential to enable our visitors to form their own, differentiated judgment,” stated a spokeswoman for the museum.

She also stressed that all speakers participating in its events represent their own private opinions.

Polina Garaev is i24NEWS's correspondent in Germany.

The Jewish Labour Movements Cruella

Dame Louise Ellman MP’s War Against Palestinian Children

How despicable can one get? Louise Ellman MP, together with Tory and even a DUP MP, is seeking to cut the funding for the education of Palestinian children

You have to hand it to Louise Ellman the Zionist MP for Tel Aviv South (& occasionally Liverpool Riverside). She really doesn’t like Palestinian children.

When Sarah Champion introduced a debate on January 16th 2016 condemning Israel’s horrific treatment of Palestinian children – torture, beatings, night-time arrests etc. there was Louise Ellman on her feet justifying everything the Israeli army was doing – all in the name of ‘security’ of course – See for example Two-thirds of Palestinian Minors Testify to Abuse in Israeli Detention

Louise Ellman has gone out of her way to defend this - any party that considered itself progressive let alone socialist would have removed her long ago

For the past 70 years Israel has specialised in using ‘security’ as the excuse for ethnic cleansing, demolition of homes and villages, torture, arbitrary detention without trial etc. Ellman is well versed in the black arts of using ‘security’ to explain human rights abuses. See Louise Ellman - Supporter of Israeli Child Abuse - Night Time Arrests, Beatings and Incarceration of Palestinian Children and Palestinian Children are Caged like Animals with the support of Labour's Despicable MPs Louise Ellman and Joan Ryan

Now this despicable woman has gone one step further. She’s trying to cut off funding for Palestinian schools on the grounds that their curriculum teaches them to ‘hate’ those who fire tear gas at them as they are going to school, who invade their houses night and day, beat up their parents, confiscate their land and keep them in poverty. Ellman operates on the theory that if it wasn’t for the ‘inciters’ of the Palestinian Authority (Netanyahu’s collaborators) then Palestinians in the West Bank would come to love their occupiers. Even the Nazis didn’t pretend that those whose countries they occupied would come to love them.

In fact the exact opposite is true. It is Israeli schools which teach their children to hate Arabs through their portrayal of Arabs as terrorists and ‘baddies’. There are no good role models of Palestinians in the Israeli curriculum. See for example Biased new study skirts around racism in Israeli school books by Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan of Tel Aviv University.

Thus it was that in a debate last week on a motion International Development Assistance (Palestinian National Authority Schools) moved by Louise Ellman and 11 other MPs she began:

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit international development assistance to schools operated by the Palestinian National Authority that do not promote values endorsed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization;

This is incidentally the same UNESCO that Israel has left because it refuses to accept that Jerusalem belongs to the Zionists only. It isn’t as if the West Bank isn’t poverty stricken enough as it is, with the withdrawal of all aid to UNWRA by Trump. Louise Ellman of the Jewish Labour Movement is trying to do her little bit to make it even more poverty stricken whilst helping the occupation too.

In fairness Ellman wasn’t alone. Her accomplices in this vile attack on Palestinian children were

Joan Ryan, joan.ryan.mp@parliament.uk, joan@joanryan.org.uk, @joanryanenfield,

Ian Austin, austini@parliament.uk, @ianaustinmp,

Theresa Villiers, theresa@theresavilliers.co.uk,

Stephen Crabb, stephen.crabb.mp@parliament.uk, @scrabbmp,

Jim Shannon, jim.shannon.mp@parliament.uk, @jimshannonmp, Rachel Reeves, rachel.reeves.mp@parliament.uk, @rachelreevesmp, John Howell, howelljm@parliament.uk,

John Spellar, john.spellar.mp@parliament.uk, john.spellar@btconnect.com; @spellar,

Andrew Percy, andrew.percy.mp@parliament.uk,

Guto Bebb guto.bebb.mp@parliament.uk, @gutobebb

and Bob Blackman, bob.blackman.mp@parliament.uk.