11 June 2012

The Idiots and Fools of Neturei Karta


Ultra-Orthodox Sect Reported to Have Spoken at a Meeting of National Front Supporters

If the Jewish Chronicle are correct, Strictly Orthodox Neturei Karta's new alliance with extreme right  and there is no reason to believe otherwise, then one Rabbi Aharon Cohen from NK spoke to a meeting consisting of fascists, holocaust deniers and assorted anti-Semites.   The photograph certainly looks genuine enough and given Cohen’s previous record of attending the Tehran Conference which brought together an assorted collection of far-right freaks and holocaust deniers, then it is all too plausible.

Neturei Karta’s actions don’t just involve themselves but others with whom they demonstrate.  Whilst we cannot prevent them attending the demonstrations and counter-demonstrations we organise, the time has come when they should no longer be given a platform.  If they wish to speak alongside supporters of the Palestinians and anti-Zionists then they have to respect the wishes of others, prime amongst which is we don’t have relations or contacts with fascists, overt anti-semites or holocaust deniers.  We leave such things to the Zionist movement.

What beggars belief is that Aharon Cohen justified his action as being about warning the fascists and assorted crazies of the dangers of ‘Zionism’.  Zionism is a product of the far-right and anti-Semitism.  Without anti-Semitism there would have been no Zionism.  If Cohen had bothered to lift his head out of the Torah, Talmud and other useless sources of information and read something about the history of Zionism, then he would have come across the founder of Political Zionism Theodor Herzl proclamations in his Diaries that ‘the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies. We want to emigrate as respected people.’ pp 83/84 Diaries  Because Herzl’s attitude to anti-Semitism was quite explicit:  ‘In Paris ...I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism. ’ Diaries p.6. 

Anti-Semitism and Zionism went together like Bonnie & Clyde.  To lecture anti-Semites on the perils of Zionist libels about ‘anti-Semitism’ is to miss the point altogether.

Present at this meeting were ex-NF member Troy Southgate and friend of David Irving and Gilad Atzmon Lady Michele Renouf.

According to the Jewish Chronicle Baron wrote after the meeting that ‘While the Zionists use antisemitism as a big club to batter the goyim over their heads, for the devout Torah-true Jews it is a sign that they are doing something wrong.’

If this is accurately reported, and it’s always difficult with the JC to distinguish fact from fiction, then it just proves what a calamitous decision Neturei Karta have made.  The Zionists don’t use ‘anti-Semitism’ to batter goyim over the head but an entirely different weapon that is mislabelled ‘anti-Semitism’ is used to batter over the head people who support the Palestinians and oppose Zionism.  This does not include inveterate anti-Semites of the David Duke variety.  The ‘goyim’ that Baron refers to are Jew-haters like himself.  The mere use of the phrase ‘goyim’ is telling, since the libel of ‘anti-Semitism’ is used against Jewish as well as non-Jewish critics of Zionism.

The fact, if it is a fact, that Rabbi Cohen ‘differentiated what he said was the ancient bigotry of antisemitism with the response particularly in the Muslim world to Zionist atrocities’ is immaterial.  What matters is his audience.  And if he has been quoted correctly then Aharon Cohen is doubly stupid.  Gilbert Achcar, Brian Klug and myself have argued that what is termed ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Middle East is a reaction to Zionism and doesn’t have the same social roots as European anti-Semitism.  But Cohen wasn’t speaking to an Arab audience.  He was speaking to died-in-the-wool anti-Semites.  His decision is, to say the least, baffling.

Gerry Gable, editor of Searchlight, informs us re Rabbi Cohen that the Nazis are welcome to this quisling.  Gerry Gable is someone who would do well to keep is over-sized mouth shut.  Not only did he marry a fascist, Sonia Hochfelder, but he was caught red-handed in 1977 urging his superior at London Weekend Television Barry Cox not to give sympathetic coverage to the then Labour government deportations of Phil Agee, an ex-CIA agent and Mark Hosenball, a journalist.  Gable was acting a mouthpiece for the security services and MI5 with whom he boasted close connections, as well as the Israeli security services. Gable also planted false charges, alleging the anarchist Class-War group were working with if not a front for the National Front in the 1980’s’.  The result of these false allegations was to seriously destabilise Anti-Fascist Action.  See my article on Gable’s activities Undermining Anti-Fascists, Defending Zionism


Gable is well known as someone who trades information on the left and anti-fascist movement with the secret state.  No anti-fascist worth their salt has anything to do with someone who is a political pimp.

If anyone is a quisling it is Gable himself, having acted as an uncritical mouthpiece for Zionist collusion with fascist groups like the Lebanese Phalange and maintained silence over the close connections between the current Israeli government and far-right politicians, including neo-Nazis in Europe.

As for the Zionist Community Security Trust, having stewarded a demonstration that included EDL members outside the Israeli embassy, having refused to criticise Zionist Federation officer Jonathan Hoffman and others for demonstrating alongside the EDL and having supplied false and perjured evidence in an attempt to secure the deportation of Sheikh Raed Salah of Israel’s Northern Islamic League, its reputation is at rock-bottom.  Their comment that Neturei Karta has “played with left-wing extremists and Islamists, including the Holocaust-denying Tehran regime, Neturei Karta can now add British fascists to their list of consorts.’ says more about the CST than NK.  But then CST always had a soft spot for 'right-wing extremists' as opposed to their left-wing counterpart!

Nonetheless, despite the hypocritical cant from the CST, Gable and Harry’s Place, the fact is that NK should be hauled over the coals and told in no uncertain terms that if they want any connection with the Palestine solidarity movement then contacts, any contacts, with the anti-Semitic and fascist/holocaust denying right is unacceptable.  Period.

Below is an interesting article on the links between another nutcase, Gilad Atzmon and Alexander Baron.

Alexander Baron & Gilad Atzmon- A Mutual Admiration Society

It seems Atzmon is getting even bolder in his open anti-semitism.  In a blog post dated the 27th December  he links to a supportive article from the homophobic plagiarist Alexander Baron.

Baron is one of the lesser known figures on the far right, so a bit of background.  He’s openly antisemitic and a holocaust denier as this quote from his website shows  shows:

"I have published on the Holocaust and Holocaust Revisionism Рwhat is known pejoratively and inaccurately as Holocaust Denial. I have published a book length expos̩ of Zionist agent and sexual deviant David Irving".

He uses the traditional antisemite tactic of blaming Jews for antisemitism.  He describes the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” as: Organized Jewry’s Deadliest Weapon

Baron isn’t just a lone crank, he has operational links with the Evolian think-tank “New Right”, set up by the veteren far-right activist and founder of “National Anarchism”, Troy Southgate.  Southgate acts as secretary of the group, which has Jonathan Bowden (who used to be in the Monday Club, the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus, the Freedom Party and the BNP) as its chairman.  So, much like Southgate, this is someone with a long history of neo-fascist activism.  Another person involved with the New Right is the veteran fascist and Holocaust denier Lady Michelle Renouf.  Baron thanks her in his writing up of the 2010 conference so he obviously knows her relatively well.  Baron himself spoke at the 2005 launch of the group and the 2010 and 2011 conferences.

Considering this is all easily available on Baron’s website (which is where the article Atzmon links to is from), there is no way Atzmon won’t have seen at least some of it.

So why might Atzmon be attracted to Baron and by extension the New Right?

I’d say it’s an ideological convergence.  Despite the claims from some quarters, while Atzmon is undoubtedly on the far right, his particular allegiance isn’t to Neonazi interpretations of fascism. (The fact some are pushing this merely illustrates the lack of serious anti-fascist analysis around at the moment.  Nobody with even a basic understanding of far-right ideology would be arguing this). His is more a kind of ‘post-modern’, cultural take on far right themes.  So he’s going to be attracted to the likes of Baron who present themselves as “beyond left and right”.  And the founding statement of the New Right could come straight from Atzmon himself:

We are opposed to liberalism, democracy and egalitarianism and fight to restore the eternal tsunami that have become submerged beneath the corrosive tsunami of the modern world.

(For a more in-depth analysis of this specific strand of neofascism, see Co-opting the Counter Culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction) by Graham D. Macklin).

Some conclusions.

While it might have been previous possible to claim that, while a racist, Atzmon wasn’t a fascist, that is definitely no longer the case.  Atzmon is now openly linking to the organised far right, which makes him one of them.  As such, no platform is the correct position to take, whatever that may entail.

And those like Roy Bard/FreeThePeeps (who was behind the Indymedia coup) and Lauren Booth who are still defending Atzmon have to be treated as fascists themselves at this point.  Even if they don’t actively follow far right ideologies, they are now overtly collaborating with fascists.  At this point, it doesn’t make any difference whether this is deliberate or is the product of stupidity and wilful ignorance.  While not quite at the same level yet, Mikey Ezra of Harry’s Place also needs watching carefully.  While he may see getting his books signed by fascists as some kind of jolly public school jape, I beg to differ.

You are either anti-fascist or you are pro-fascist.  There is no middle ground and none will be accepted.

Tony Greenstein

40 comments:

  1. Crikey, what a tangled web!

    Just a few points – anti fascist scholar, Zeev Sternhell catalogued these kinds of crossovers in late 1880's -- early 20th century Europe in his study, "The Birth of Fascist Ideology".

    Zternhell's overall thesis is that elements of the extreme left and extreme right -- whilst vastly different on so many points -- overlapped and agreed on a colossal hatred for the amorality of 'cosmopolitan big business.’ And for the far right that meant, you know who (“the Jew”) and for the extreme left, whilst not anti Semitic, that still meant the leading bankers, go betweens and merchants of the day, which, in the case of Germany and Ukraine, and Poland, that often meant -- you know who. (You will have read Israel Shahak on the roles of the Jewish merchant class in Poland and Ukraine).

    Sternhell also implies the left and right met on another point -- the far right had high regard for their concepts of the ‘cosmic and sacred’ and its inherent moral order, which they believed -- you know who -- had trampled on and continued to threaten. The extreme left also had their concepts of what the worker should hold dear and hold close, anchored in ideals of deeply rooted peasant communities close to the earth and so on, (see Makhno especially on Ukrainian peasants) and they too, whilst not anti Semitic (that has to be emphasised) also considered they had been uprooted and threatened by business forces, commercial go betweens, factory owners, and, from the left, threatened even by Bolshevik forces, all of which could be interpreted as being -- you know who.

    The third point at which they converge is on their worship and celebration of extreme violence as a kind of innate revolutionary force within humanity. Georges Sorel, who did his utmost to unite extreme leftist and extreme right concepts is at the centre of such thought, and is still revered by extreme figures at both ends of the spectrum.


    So -- maybe that is the point at which all these characters meet.

    Personally, i find it all a real headache -- those on the extreme left should have the intelligence to stay far away from any one on the far right.

    The dividing line between those that stand against ALL exploitative capitalist forces on the one hand, and on the other, those that obsessively only want to focus on ONE group -- ‘you know who’ -- as personifying and embodying those evil forces ( “The eternal Jew”) is so obvious, I don’t know how anyone could be fooled by it.

    The bottom line is easy – stay away from hate. Irrespective of whether the people involved are Jews, Muslims, leftists or rightists, it really is easy enough to see which groups and movements represent that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Roy Bard/FreeThePeeps (who was behind the Indymedia coup)"

    What is the indymedia coup?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Two points -- who is Baron? Never seen his name on the radar before.

    Secondly, it's a good blog post, but isn't it stretching it a bit to imply that Renouf wannabe aristo/nut case nazi is a friend of Atzmon's and ideological co traveller? There's no real evidence of that is there, beyond the fact that the she supposedly nodded a greeting at him at some talk or other.

    ReplyDelete
  4. oho...... you got slammed again and this time by your Allies???? the Anti Zionist Neturie Karta, you and your friends built all your Agenda on your Neturie Karta partners.
    You fools what did you think !
    From the Great Neturie Karta movement that will smash the Zionist, they are now the Idiots and Fools.
    Who is next....
    You lost them all, your Jewish AZ friends, your Palestinian brothers....
    You are doomed.
    I bet who are your next partners ..........

    ReplyDelete
  5. I should add that Troy Southgate's so called 'anarchism' bears NO resemblance whatsoever to REAL leftists anarchism -- none whatsoever -- if one can bear to read the man's awful 'political literature' it becomes clear that Southgate realises that naive, earnestly seeking young people and those interested in change will never be fooled by all the ugly trappings of the far right ( eg everything from the Mosley-ite/Mitford upper class angle, to the street fighter skinhead to the suburban model of the BNP )so to re-create 'new appeal', Southgate has been though the entire far left anarchist and avant garde canon , from the 1880s onwards, and dug up every ambiguous,shady, figure possible, and then rechristened the movement 'National Anarchism' -- but rest assured, at its core, the emphasis is well and truly on NATIONALIST and not the genuine Anarchist dimension.



    Southgate has resurrected these ambiguous figures, because to the young, lost or gullible, their external initial 'romanticism' will have more appeal than the 'old boot boy and bulldog' far right image.



    So Southgate resurrects people like Evola, a figure who started out with respectable credentials as part of the Dada and Futurist art movement, and was also acknowledged as a scholar of religion -- but then Evola turned into a racially obsessed fascist elitist.

    Southgate also 'revives' figures like Ernst Junger, who was acknowledged as a very good writer/diarist who wrote an excellent book on trench warfare ( "Storm Of Steel" ) , an aristocrat, with a confused, unresolved interest in Anarchism -- but Junger was also a leading contributor to the nasty concept of 'aesthetic fascism' and at one time, venerated extreme violence as some kind of beautiful, noble rite of passage.



    Southgate also includes people like Malcolm X in his movement, and Neturei Karta, but only cherry picking the bits that he likes -- EG the parts of these men's thought that could be used to justify hating other Jews.



    The whole thing becomes a 'nudge nudge wink wink' dog whistle 'is he a fascist or is he an anarchist' game -- it goes to absurdist lengths -- there is a whole cottage industry of awful bands that has grown up around the 'scene', all of them playing the 'is he an anarchist-- or-- is he a **really** a neo nazi fascist ' game.



    They have some awful websites dedicated to the whole movement, replete with articles and write ups that alternate wildly, one week fawning over, and fetishising these creepy fascist bands and 'thinkers' as being on the cutting edge of the 'avant garde' , then the next week deriding them, and posting exposes of their 'fascist nature' -- it is bloody bonkers.



    Southgate is welcome to the whole bloody silly scene -- G_d know what Neturei Karta thought they were doing getting mixed up with these guys.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ze'ev Sternhell's thesis is not new. The petit-bourgeois, the shop-keeper, civil servant, did indeed fear cosmopolitan big business. They had an ideal of free trading, without monopolies with all their power and control of the market - a kind of ideal capitalism.

    Some on the 'left' not least the anarchist left around Proudhon bought into this.

    THe idea of peasants firmly rooted in the soil and close to the earth was the ideal of the German Nazi party and volkish ideologues. That a nation was in touch with its soil, which Zionism bought in toto.

    But I don't agree about the far right and far left meeting. On the contrary the gap is wider than anywhere else which is why anti-fascism is only effectively carried out when the far-left organises to prevent the fash mobilising.

    There are always a section of the dispossessed who, lacking power, strong unions, look for easy solutions to their problems and fascism and racism provide those 'solutions'. It is true today as ever and will always be true as long as class society continues.

    Alexander Baron is a small fish in a not very large cesspool. Dabbles in various anti-Semitic tropes and seems to have made a specialism in suing Gerry Gable.

    Anti-semitic but not of the physical/nut job variety, seeks to co-opt dissident Jews to his chariot.

    But it appears the Zionists are besides themselves with usual idiocy. Steve tells us that
    'you and your friends built all your Agenda on your Neturie Karta partners.'

    THis is what is called wishful thinking, in spades. None of our agenda was built around Neturei Karta, who oppose Zionism from a traditionally religious point of view. No one I know does this. NK were always on the right-wing of the anti-Zionist movemenet, whereas most Jewish anti-Zionists come from the left and far-left and are secular.

    Hence we have lost very little by NK being such idiots. THey provided the pageantry and the look and feel of the Jews who died in the holocaust but to Palestine solidarity they added very little apart from turning up on demonstrations. We have never co-ordinated anything with them and they operate autonomously.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  8. PS I stil have a fairly good view of NK -- they have courage and energy.

    But, one gripe I have with Neturei Karta is, their objection to occupation is, it seems, mostly theological --

    EG God says Jews can't have a homeland in Israel -- they can't have a homeland until, that is, they live according to God's edicts, and until the Messiah returns, when, one has to assume -- it will actually be ok for world jewry to move 'back' to Israel.

    So -- Jewish occupation and ownership of Israel is actually ok at some time in the future -- but,just not at the moment.

    Is that right? If I have misrepresented NK will somebody tell me and put me straight on their views?

    ReplyDelete
  9. urging his superior at London Weekend Television Barry Cox not to give sympathetic coverage to the then Labour government deportations of Phil Agee, an ex-CIA agent and Mark Hosenball, a journalist.

    I assume from the context that Gable was either urging that sympathetic coverage be given to the government, or not given to Agee.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Tonyle
    Can we take it that your Stamford Hill vanguard will no longer be welcome at psc rallys . That there will be no more photo ops as they proudly take up position to the cheers of your badly misled fellow dupes .
    Or will it all be forgotten and forgiven as a minor misunderstanding .
    As I've said so many times , the only individuals that merit ' The Tonyle treatment ' are the true stalwarts of the Palestinian cause who don't fit into Tonyles warped Judeocentric subset .
    There's no hiding from this Tonyle . It's make your mind up time . Will your exotic friends still be welcome in which case it s time for a fresh vote on those you've seen fit to assassinate .
    It really is time for you to take that Tel Aviv retirement home .

    ReplyDelete
  11. Good blog post Tony; I enjoyed it -- I agree with much of what you say, and I think these 'nation and nationalism/sense of belonging' debates are crucial, especially in the light that so many of us have, in recent years, woken up from capitalism's most recent nightmare scam, globalisation, and all the double speak and ideological double think games that that charade has involved.

    Much as I agree with you, I think one illusion you write about may be very difficult to rationally and emotionally deal with and dispel -- I speak here of (quote) 'the idea of peasants firmly rooted in the soil and close to the earth was the ideal...That a nation was in touch with its soil, which Zionism bought in toto."

    I agree that is an illusion -- I do not adhere to any one religious group, so I don't have a 'corner to support' but in its favour, religion too, has frequently tried to transcend the 'blood and soil' idea -- Islam focuses on the Umma, a one-ness that ( theoretically at least) aims to overcome limitations of race and nation, and Christianity meant ( again, in theory ) that all nations were 'chosen people', even the wretched, poor , downtrodden and pariahs, and Buddhism goes as far as saying that even personality ,person-hood, individuality and self are no more than crude illusions.

    Then, regarding academia, we have Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm (not to mention Shlomo Sand) who have reminded us that so much of our rulers’ ‘top down’ history is just 'made up' as a collection of organising jingoistic principles geared to a post industrial revolution capitalist landscape, and nations are, in many regards, simply 'imagined communities.'

    The point is though, that convincing as all that is to some of us -- that theory escapes the majority of humanity – the truth is, it is as if we are back in the late 1800s once again, and nationalism has never been so popular, from East Asia where 'race and nation' and pure race blood and soil volk are still the sacred pillars of the nations, the central altars at which the people worship, to Eastern Europe (Poland and Ukraine and Latvia and Lithuania) to Israel, where blood and race and soil and ethnic vying for space trump all other definitions of being.

    How to overcome it?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Skidmarx: In fact the memo doesn't urge anything so explicit as giving or not giving sympathetic coverage but rather an attempt to prevent such coverage. From the article that I refer to, Gable stated re Phil Kelly, then a young liberal who went on to edit Tribune and become a somewhat right-wing councillor in Islington:

    In May 1977, he wrote one of a number of reports to his superiors at LWT regarding Phil Kelly, now editor of Tribune, then active in the ABC Defence campaign. "He was also seen frequently... at the offices of the Vietnam Sollidarity Campaign. It was suggested that in either late '67 or early '68 he travelled to Cuba and was trained as was 'Carlos... in Guerilla warfare and Espionage by the KGB." In 1969, "Kelly went to Jordan, not, as he told people, to see the refugee amps... but to a proper Fatah training camp. Members of the Baader Meinhoff group also attended these camps." On a demo in London "he was seen to kick a policeman... Reports from left watchers state that he has been to Cuba, America, East Germany, Jordan, Sofia in Bulgaria...
    The arrest of Campbell, Berry and Aubrey has caused a civil rights row, but according to my top level security service sources, they inform me in the strictest confidence.. Kelly is suspected of being the KGB man who reaps the goodies...I have now given the names I have acquired to be checked out by British/French security services especially the French and German connections and the south American stuff is being checked by Geoffrey Stewart-Smith's Institute. He has strong CIA links (and links with WACL - a fascist group - TG). I may try somebody in the Israeli Foreign Office that I know for some
    checks on Kelly..." According to the New Statesman (15.2.80): "The wording of Mr Gable's memo suggests clearly that he was engaged in a 2-way transaction with his security sources... The nature of the official material received and recorded by him suggests that much of it was coloured by phone-tap info and informer reports." As Time Out remarked, the memo caused those who Gable mentioned, like Hosenball, who had previously considered Gable as a friend, to feel betrayed" (22.2.80) It is something that people in anti-fascist politics have also experienced. There is reason to believe that Campbell was also being monitored by Gable.

    I will post it as part of a larger article some time soon! But it should strip away any idea that Gable and anti-fascism are somehow related. Today they aren't even if that was true many years ago.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I’ve seen NK a few time on telly and always thought they were a bit nutty, with their heart in the right place but politically totally unsavvy and as such of no great use to us. It seems Cohen has now wondered into a cesspit-cum-minefield, eyes wide shut, as it were.

    Good riddance, I say.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "and as such of no great use to us"
    Bozo those are your only supporters..........

    ReplyDelete
  15. I'm afraid you're wrong Treg. NK have never been our supporters. They have worked by themselves and I have never even had contact with them.

    As the support of the Palestinians continues to grow, it is support we can do without unless they accept that contacts with the fascist and far-right are taboo.

    We leave working with the fascists to the Zionists, after all they are so much better at it.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I blame Richard. We’ve had some excellent anti-Zionist propagandists here, but, for reasons unknown, they were made to feel less than welcome on this excellent blog and now we’re left with the likes of these characters instead. My two all-time favorites were Tony Greenstein and the inscrutable Khalid Amayreh; and as I sit here in my Judean garden, brushing off a fly who appears to have found that grain of brown sugar carelessly dropped by my study partner, as I recline further into my chair and hark back to yesteryear, I miss them both very much.

    I too have seen Midnight in Paris and I know we many of us have a tendency to romanticize about golden ages that seemed far less enchanting at the time, but as I take that last sip of my unsweetened mint tea, I’m sure that even then they were larger than life.

    Tony courageously champions the working class struggle of Brighton, but was never too busy to write an anti-Israel blog or to get thrown out of the Merchant of Venice. Tony was only briefly active on this excellent site, but he knew how to ruffle feathers with the best of them and created a buzz, the reverberations of which are still felt.

    Khalid’s stopover on this blog was even briefer, but this Hebron-born Palestinian intellectual was famously able to compare us all to Nazis and call us Kikes all on the same page. He claimed Talmudic expertise and it is my considered opinion that he does know more than at least one rabbi’s son I know, but shall remain nameless.

    These were men among men and they gave as good as they got. They took every punch on the chin and rolled with the blows. They shared a natural charisma that caused even their harshest detractors to marvel at their talents and to excitedly await their next comment.

    I should also mention a certain Dubitante, who though never reaching the heights of either Tony or Khalid did display an enviable understanding of international law and not inconsequential literary talents. Where have they all gone? How have the mighty fallen?

    Though Dubitante was more of an enigma, both Tony and Khalid have blogs of their own and I posted on both begging them to return. Though both responded quite cordially, they declined my invitation and as nature will not tolerate a vacuum their places have sadly been filled by the likes of the Gerts and the Riches of this world – G-d help us!

    This is not really a comment, but more of an open letter to foes of days gone by to return home. It will be posted on their blogs too.

    As the youthful Gertie has said, I am an old man (apparently a Conservative too). Doesn’t this ancient Tory deserve something better in his twilight years? Have the passing of five decades and a year not entitled me to more than:

    “It is all in your head Daniel. Your head is a very crowded place, what with these imaginings and the voices and all.”

    ?

    ReplyDelete
  17. This nonsensical piece is by an unashamed and unabashed settler in his 'Judean garden'. Oblivious to the original people who have been driven out of the garden which they inhabited. But despite having 'returned' Daniel still finds himself searching for his true home and it's not in settlements of the West Bank.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hi guys! How thoughtful of Tony to introduce me.
    Well I am unabashed and unashamed, not to mention unrepentant, so I can't argue with that. You're quite wrong about my garden as nobody has ever lived in Maale Adumim (except a few monks years ago) and the only Palestinian to briefly inhabit it was our landscape gardener Magdi who charged an arm and a leg and now advertizes with a picture of my garden in the local paper almost every week – I can supply photographic evidence to back up all these claims.

    As far as searching for my true home goes, I've been to Brighton a few times and though I liked it, I had less fun off-season (1985).

    I loved the Neturei Karta thing which must have been the biggest shock you've had since Barbarossa. We keep telling you chaps not to get into bed with the bad guys, but do you listen?

    ReplyDelete
  19. This is one of Daniel’s kids messing with the family tooter, I’m guessing. Parental controls, Daniel!

    Meanwhile he was buttering up Roberta Moore:

    Daniel Marks | May 25, 2011 at 1:23 pm |
    The Marks family spent a charming few days one summer in the Golan, hosted (very reasonably priced) by Michael Ben Horin, self declared president of the State of Judea and about as extreme as they come.
    On our last night sipping on home-made something or other, Ben Horin explained to me his philosophy. The man is an aeronautical engineer and nobody’s fool. He knows he’ll never lead Israel. He explained that his job is to make the moderate Israeli Right look good. They can point to me and say, “We’d like to be more flexible, but we have the crazies like Ben Horin to consider too.
    Such is the role of the EDL and Roberta Moore, who I have learned to respect and become quite fond of in recent days. If a Zionist speaker is talking and the Left or fundamentalist Moslems think of disrupting, there should be several nasty, chunky looking tattooed gentlemen there to put the fear of (our) G-d into them. If need be, the speaker should make it clear that he never invited the EDL along and disagrees with their behavior (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). Similarly if, hypothetically, some EDL members should disrupt an anti-Semitic speaker or just wait for him outside and kick his head in (steel tipped boots are always good) such actions must be squarely condemned by all official Jewish bodies.
    I know that it sounds like a rather thankless task, but that is the best service the EDL can provide the Jewish community as well as the future of Western Civilization. Nobody is going to award anyone knighthoods for their actions, but I do believe that both my grandchildren and theirs will be extremely proud and grateful one day.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Your defence of settlement on the West Bank fools nobody. The land belongs to those who Israel is presently trying to drive out. Anecdotes about your gardener notwithstanding.

    Yes I'm sure your descendants will be proud of you for making an alliance with the EDL, whose supporters make no bones about holocaust denial. Those who believe that Jews can make alliances with fascism need their head examined.

    Of course Israel, as a far-right state can do just that and does do that. Hence the endless traipse of neo-Nazis and their adherents to pay worship at Yad Vashem, because they too realise that the holocaust for Israelis is a religion and a foundational myth rather than a reality.

    A few of course also realise that they are taking on the role that the Nazis adopted towards the Jews.

    If you think Israel will survive with your crazies then you are living in the same bubble as your previous friends in Apartheid South Africa.

    ReplyDelete
  21. ”Anecdotes about your gardener notwithstanding.”

    Ah, but you see Tony, this is where we’re all wrong. In Daniel’s mind we know nothing about the conflict because we ‘don’t know any Arabs’, whereas he, in the capacity of the jailer respective to the inmates, does.

    Daniel is certifiably bonkers.

    ReplyDelete
  22. "If you think Israel will survive with your crazies then you are living in the same bubble as your previous friends in Apartheid South Africa"
    As long as your ignorant mind compares the situation of south Africa and Israel.....
    I guess your UK a .... will be long gone as Israel will see you sink and gone...........
    Your mind is living in Lala land.
    I bet you thought also that your "god state" USSR will live forever.

    ReplyDelete
  23. What are you on about Jay? Ignorant? That is the least of it. You are a bigoted and deluded fool. A complete jerk.

    ANC activists and even ministers, especially the Jewish ones like Ronnie Kassrils, come to Israel and say its worse than Apartheid in South Africa.

    The apartheid regime killed about 300 in Soweto. Israel massacred 1,400 including 400 children in Gaza. Avigdor Lieberman has wet dreams about drowning thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea. There are 2 sets of laws for the Palestinians of the West bank. A Palestinian in Jerusalem who leaves for abroad for more than 2 years loses the right of residence, even if s/he was born there. Jews never lose such a right.

    Apartheid? Its staring you in your blinkered and blind little gum tree of a face. You can't see what's in front of you. Like the little Nazi you probably are, or their more subtle apologists, for whom Jewish persecution didn't exist, everything is rosy in the garden.

    Arabs sacked because they haven't served in the army or simply not employed in the first place? Apartheid? Racist? Perish the thought. The JNF which controls 93% of land together with the Israeli Lands Authority, bars non-Jews from living on its land. Apartheid?

    Half of all Arab villages are 'unrecognised' and like Al Arakabh, liable for demolition in order to 'judaify' the Galilee/Negev. Apartheid? No probably worse.

    But what did the Apartheid masters and their echo chambers say?

    Indeed the South African Afrikaner press asked:
    Is there any difference between the way the people of Israel are trying to maintain themselves amid the non-Jewish peoples and the way the Afrikaner is trying to remain what he is? The people of Israel base themselves upon the Old Testament to explain why they do not wish to mix with other people. The Afrikaner does this too. Henry Katzew South Africa - A Country Without Friends' Midstream Spring 1962 p. 73, RP Stevens, 'Israel & South Africa' Zionism & Racism, p. 16

    Dr Verwoerd, the prime exponent of Apartheid and South Africa’s former Prime Minister, described it thus:

    'The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In this I agree with them. Israel like South Africa is an apartheid state.' Rand Daily Mail 23. 11. 1961.

    On the conclusion of a pact between Israel and South Africa, after Vorster's visit there, the Jerusalem Post made clear how matters were viewed in April 1976:

    The Afrikaners were especially enthusiastic... seeing a similarity of interest in two 'white' nations at the head and foot of the African continent waging lonely fights for survival against overwhelming black numbers.

    As Harold Soref, former Tory MP for Ormskirk and a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews wrote: “No country in the world has done more to further the Zionist cause than South Africa… Politically they share the same enemies not least the UN.” Jewish Chronicle 25.8.78

    I couldn't put it better myself!

    ReplyDelete
  24. '"The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. "...
    You got to be joking.......
    The Jews Never ever left Israel.... while Your white brit brothers took over Africa and America........ so will your whites brother in America be also doomed, you are a joke.
    trying to build your assumptions, on a few mad minds want help you, that's why your attempts are not even considered and you few loony's are a joke.
    You are doomed.
    If you realy want to help Palestine, get some brains, as in this route, you are a joke by the Palestinians too.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Greenstein, how many whites and Blacks were in south Africa.....
    and what's the situation in Israel.....
    Do you think Israelis are stupid, they will always be the Majority, that's why you stupid assumptions are dead.
    South Africans knew that they don't have a chance with those numbers and knew it want hold for long.
    That's why this will never be the situation in Israel.
    and it will never happen, get it into your doomed mind.
    While your UK will have a Muslim Majority in the next 50 years...... Lets see what kind of shit you are going to eat as a Non Muslim brit.
    Or as your friend Uri Davis you will join your Muslim Brothers......

    ReplyDelete
  26. Jay thinks I'm joking when the architect of (South African) Apartheid said that the jews took Palestine after the Arabs had been there for a thousand years.

    There was no political presence of jews. We have no idea if there were any Jews at certain periods, but certainly not many. Those who didn't leave of their own accord became Christians or later Muslim.

    A few Orthodox jews lived in mainly Jerusalem and with the advent of colonialism increased in numbers in the 18th century and became a majority in Jerusalem by the mid-19th century, but they were vehemently opposed to Zionism, as anyone but an ignoramus like Jay would know.

    Chaim Weizmann in Trial & Error talks of the Old and New Yishuv. It is irrelevant if there were a handful of Jews living amongst Muslims or Arabs in Palestine. That doesn't justify white colonialists of the Jewish religion coming to take t he land, evict the peasants and begin creating a racially pure state on the lines of European racism.

    That was the idea of Hitler and that is why Israel is Hitler's post-humous triumph just as the growth of the German Jewish community, the fastest growing one in Europe, is his post-humous defeat.

    The only joke is you Jay. A pig-ignorant joke at that (and not a kosher pig either). The idea that armed with myth, bible and guns, white European settlers had the right, on the basis of a myth that Shlomo Sand and many others have long exploded, got the right to come to Palestine and claim it as a holy land, is no different from Hitler and Rosenberg's belief in the thousand year Reich and tales of Teutonic knights.

    What has British colonialism in Africa got to do with it? Wasn't the same British colonialism responsible for the Balfour Declaration and the sponsorship of Zionism? Why do you think I support what the British did in the Scramble for Africa or the American colonists for that matter?

    You dumb Israelis think that because the British behaved barbarically you have the right to do the same. Society advances and people like you are just stunted and backward, unable to proceed beyond your ready made myths.

    Fact is that of 2.5 million Jews who escaped the pogroms of Czarist Russia less than 2% went to Palestine. Noone wants to live in Israel unless they are compelled to do so, that is why israel has over a million emigrants living abroad. Even Jews are sick of people like you with your racial fantasies.

    Much of Jay's post is the normal Zionist abuse, because Zionism appeals to small and smaller minds, just as Apartheid in South Africa appealed to the White bigot.

    Yes the numbers are different in Israel. That means the Palestinians have to adopt different strategies. Brilliant. And why are the demographics different? Because even the Boers didn't expel the Black Africans they merely threw them off the land and reintegrated them into the mines as labour power.

    Jay asks 'Do you think Israelis are stupid'. Yes that is usually something I associate with dumb colonists like you!

    Israeli Jews think they will be the minority but the Arabs of the region are more numerous and when the Kings and Sheiks and dictators of the Arab East, supported by that friend of democracy the USA, have been overthrown, the world will seem a chillier place. Hence the rhetoric about Iran.

    The South Africans bowed to reality because of Boycott. That's why we have to build the Boycott against bigots and ignorant racists like you Jay.

    It's no wonder that you repeat a message beloved of fascists in the UK that there will be a Muslim Majority in the next 50 years. I doubt it and in Britain people, when not subject to racism, tend to become secular and irreligious. It's only racist nuts like you who think religion is important. And in Israel it is - it defines privilege. But then you are not, despite your own beliefs, part of the civilised world.

    Actually Uri Davis is a member of Fatah not the Muslim Brothers. You can't even get that right!

    ReplyDelete
  27. I've confused Jay and anonymous, but their view were pretty similar anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  28. " Uri Davis you will join your Muslim Brothers...... "

    You don't know even your own language.
    I ment your MUSLIM BROTHERS, not the "Muslim Brothers".... that's the way for you to survive in your UK do as davis did, become a Muslim...... as you think that religion dosen't matter, but who are you, the Muslims think that Religion will win and this is the issue you don't get.
    You are a joke as those like you had the same vision 50 years ago..... and look at the UK, more Muslim then ever and more fanatic as ever.
    And what about you and your way of thinking..... are the biggest joke among the Muslims, they just love your kind of racism...... we will assimilate, but we shall take over.
    LOOK AT REALITY ITs HAPPENING the UK becomes Muslim, but you are still in lala land with your racism.

    ReplyDelete
  29. "There was no political presence of jews"
    You are realy a joke...

    what a stupid argument, why not say, they did not have a banking system as a stupid excuse.
    Jews were always in Israel and will always be in Israel.
    Jews will always be the Majority and that is why they will always be in control.
    There is never going to be any boycott on Israel .
    As your mother land USSR rot, that was your last hope, you are not relvant anymore and all your attempts are pathetic, as long as a few Bozos l scream in the street, and fight with the Atzmonites for been Palestine best friends (also they hate you both), this is the only issue that will keep you alive.
    Enjoy if it gives you the Mojo.............

    ReplyDelete
  30. It should come as no surprise that so much early Zionist Nationalist mythology still sloshes around in the tiny minds of the intellectually challenged like Jay/Anon: things ‘learned’ practically at birth are difficult to ‘unlearn’.

    Zionism is bad for Palestinians but going by the likes of Jay/Anon it ain’t terrific for Jews either: entire generations of Zionist/Israeli Jews are being turned into mindless, nationalistic racist numbskulls.

    The racism of the post-colonial West vis-à-vis Arabs/Muslims, who are seen collectively as bumbling under-achievers at best and trouble makers at worst, has found extremely fertile ground in the amplifying chamber of the Zionist Entity, the decaying ‘Villa in the Jungle’.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Gert

    Why do you want to say , all I read is a Salat of words with no meaning.
    Why comment if you have nothing to say.
    Your Mantra that Zionism and Judaism is ......... and Jews are ,,,,,,, are a routine .
    If you got something to say , say it slogans are pathetic.

    ReplyDelete
  32. "It should come as no surprise that so much early Zionist Nationalist mythology still sloshes around in the tiny minds of the intellectually challenged like Jay/Anon: things ‘learned’ practically at birth are difficult to ‘unlearn’."

    Gert, 90% of the world Jewry and 99% of all The Jews in Israel, think like me.
    You and your fellow Greenstein and few others, may spew your slogans, so.......
    you you wrote your words..... and...... you are countless, better fight for your place in the PSC.

    ReplyDelete
  33. If 99% of Jews in Israel think like you anon/Jay then what more proof do you need that you are wrong? Don't follow the herd is a Talmudic saying. Having the attribute of a lemming is nothing to be proud of. I don't suppose an opinion poll of American settlers as to whether exterminating the Amerindians was the right thing to do would have produce any more different results.

    As for world Jewry, I doubt you are in any position to make such a claim, not least because you might have to ask yourself who is a Jew and things that are clearly too complicated for a simple fellow like you.

    It is clear that you are the best example of someone with nothing to say. Try explaining what Israel does, if it is right and whether achieving pure ethnic states is not a tad Nazi like?

    ReplyDelete
  34. "Don't follow the herd is a Talmudic saying"
    Atheist Greenstein the Talmud expert, can you point exactly where is it in the Talmud......
    It is written.....
    "I dwell among my own people", we go through a routine of any rule".

    I recall my number it is 99.999% of the jews in Israel think like me , onlt few from the "dead extreme left" and your brothers Neturei Karta" think differently.

    "not least because you might have to ask yourself who is a Jew" I don't ask myself those questions only racist ask those questions.....

    ReplyDelete
  35. Us atheists usually the best experts. No I couldn't be bothered working my way through such a turgid book. It's memory, not something you probably know much about anon.

    There were also little things about welcoming strangers, not a biblical injunction you bigots would know much about. And if only one out of 100,000 Israelis disagree with you then what does that say about Israel?

    The famous Jews, the Spinozas, Heine's Marxs, Freuds etc. were the dissidents. The one's who didn't follow the herd. What a daming indictment on Israeli 'democracy' that you all think alike.

    But fools think alike so why shouldn't they Mr Anonymous?

    ReplyDelete
  36. I am shocked, but hardly surprised that my last comment was brutally censored. Do you truly fear what I have to say that much?

    ReplyDelete
  37. I have no fear whatsoever of what you have to say Daniel, but this is not a blog that will accept comments glorifying the settlers.

    The settlement of the West Bank is not a trivial or joking matter. It involves people being thrown off their land, the demolition of Palestinian buildings, road blocks for Palestinians that prevent people getting to hospital, ritual humiliations, the Nazi style behaviour of Hebron settlers ('gas the Arabs' etc.), the 'price tag' attacks, burning of olive groves.

    Trivialising this into how much your gardener costs and Dina's pasta sauce is an unacceptable attempt to 'normalise' what has happened.

    That is why your comment was deleted, not because of any fear of what you said but because this is an anti-Zionist blog. I am regularly banned from posting from the Jewish Chronicle blogs (Hoffman took exception to me but not an NF blogger) as a no. of other ones too. I have banned ur comment.

    ReplyDelete
  38. It is not only Dina'a pasta sauce that you are trivializing, but no less importantly what it stands for! Shame on you.

    I have always supported your right to express your opinion on Zionist blogs and have been attacked by many for doing so. I did so not that you might behave in a similar way, but because I genuinely believe in free speech.

    All the best,



    Daniel

    ReplyDelete
  39. Attempting to turn the trivial into something serious and what is serious into something trivial is Daniel's specialty.

    ReplyDelete
  40. I wanted to make a point Daniel that is far more important than whether Zionist blogs censor me or not. Which is the way the Occupation blights the lives of those whose land it actually is.

    ReplyDelete

Please submit your comments below