Supporting Israeli Apartheid and the Palestinians
is not compatible
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| Its difficult to know who could possibly think Jones is a racist stooge - his mum? |
The eviction less than
a month ago of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in Israel’s Negev desert should
have told even the most obtuse supporter of Zionism that Israel is a settler colonial state. Yes some, a few, cities are
mixed. No there is no forced segregation
as in South Africa or the Deep South, but the structures of Apartheid are
present in Israel.
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| Owen Jones Speaks to Racist Israeli Labour's British Wing |
Apartheid is never more obvious than when it comes to
land. When the High Court in Kadan ruled
that the Jewish National Fund could not bar Israeli Palestinians
from 93% of Israeli land, the then Knesset, including its Labor members, fell
over themselves to enact a law which said that retaining land for Jewish use
only was not discrimination. In other words
it was a law which said that Black=White.
 |
| The fragrant Ella Rose will be responsible for your tickets |
The Law eventually became the Access to Communities Law. It allowed existing residents to bar those wishing to live in the area and naturally existing Jewish communities barred Arabs.
People make excuses for Israel’s behaviour in the
West Bank, which is under Occupation, where the settlements are Jewish only,
because all the arrangements the fiction is that they are only interim ones pending a final
solution and two states. But in Israel Arabs
are supposed to be equal citizens yet half the villages they live in, like Umm
al Hiran are ‘unrecognised’. What this
means is that they are not connected to the electricity grid, they don’t have
mains water or sewerage or any of the other essentials of modern life. The villagers of Umm al Hiran were moved in
1956, as a result of the Suez war and dumped where they are, or were. Some 60 years ago.
But there is a plan, the Prawer Plan,
whose purpose it is to displace existing Bedouin communities and concentrate them
in townships. Much like South Africa under
Apartheid. In their stead will come Jewish
towns. In Israel, despite the ten fold increase in the Arab population since
1948, not one single Arab town has been
built. Zoning and planning law
are an essential accompaniment to Zionist Apartheid and they have been used to
confine Israel’s Arab population into tighter and more densely packed
communities.
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| IDS nodding off during Jones speech on Question Time |
So when Israel demolished
the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran it immediately began work on building the Jewish
town of Hiran. In normal language this
is called Apartheid. In order to
demolish Umm al-Hiran hundreds of Israeli Border police were despatched to the
village to protect the bulldozers. They
came with all the paraphernalia of riot squads – tear gas, rubber bullets etc.
and they immediately fired two bullets at Aymen Odeh, leader of the Arab-Jewish
llist in the Knesset.
They also opened fire
on a car driven by an Arab resident. The
result was that he lost control of the car which then ploughed into some
policemen, killing one and injuring another.
Netanyahu and his fascist Interior Minister Gilad Erdan promptly took up
police lies and branded, without a shred of evidence, the dead Palestinian as
an ISIS member.
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| Apparently the stool -pigeon didn't like Jonathan Cook's article |
It is worth noting that unlike Palestinian demonstrations,
at Jewish demonstrations such as that at the illegal Ammona settlement last
week, despite throwing stones and missiles, the Police did not open fire. That is because the Israeli police never
open fire on Jewish demonstrations. But
they have no hesitation in attacking with gun fire Arab demonstrations.
Which brings me to Owen Jones, the former socialist who it has
just been announced will speak on the platform of the Jewish Labour Movement on
April 2nd. In a sympathetic
article in the far-Right Jewish News, Jones
whines about being ‘branded
‘an Israeli stooge’ for agreeing to speak at JLM.
The JLM is the British branch of the Israeli Labour
Party, which was the original party of ethnic cleansing. It is in the Knesset as the Zionist Union and
has, unsurprisingly, failed to speak out against the evictions at Umm al Hiran
because it itself followed a policy of Judaisation of the Galilee when they
were in government. It was called the Koenig Plan at the
time.
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| Jones when he was still on the left speaks at Question Time |
In 2012, having watched Owen Jones searing critique
of Israel’s attack on Gaza on Question Time, I had no hesitation in praising
the way he had spoken out in support of the Palestinians. Jones distinguished himself when the rest of
the Panel, including Charles Kennedy and IDS, had trotted out the usual ‘Israel
has the right to self-defence’.
However Jones, like much of the Labour left, Jones has
rowed back ever since. For many
socialists it is a kind of ritual. You
start on the Left and as your career progresses you move further and further to
the Right. That was why I p predicted that
Jones would follow his mentor, Nick Cohen, into becoming a sage of the Right.
Jones has written 3 mundane articles on ‘anti-Semitism’
for the Guardian. [Owen Jones’ Obsession with ‘anti-Semitism’]. None of them had anything to do with anti-Semitism,
but everything to do with the response of Zionism to Israel’s murderous attacks
on Gaza. When defenders of Israel squealed
‘anti-Semitism’ Owen Jones was there to hawk his conscience around the columns
of the Guardian and tell us how bad he felt.
In August 2014, at the time of
Operation Protective Edge, when Israel slaughtered over 2000 Palestinians in
Gaza and murdered 551 children, what was Jones writing in the Guardian? Anti-Jewish
hatred is rising – we must see it for what it is To say that it was a badly
written, meandering article, full of fury signifying nothing would be an
understatement. In large parts it was
incoherent. But at least Jones accepted
that when he ‘encountered sentiments that conflate the Jewish people and the
Israeli government’ that ‘this is echoed
by some staunch Zionists, and is no less antisemitic in implication.’
Today he seems incapable of even
that. In August 2014 as well as Jones
writing about anti-Semitism, the bogus charity, the Campaign Against
Anti-Semitism was setup with the purpose of libelling the opposition to the
Gaza war as ‘anti-Semitic’. It is clear
now that there was a concerted campaign by the Zionist movement to tar anti-Zionism
and support for the Palestinians as anti-Semitic. No group has been more assiduous in doing
this than the Jewish Labour Movement and its ugly sister, the Labour Friends of
Israel.
When Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader
of the Labour Party it produced something close to panic among the Zionists at
the prospect of a supporter of the Palestinians becoming leader of the Labour
Party. From the start of Corbyn’s leadership
Jones has been a lukewarm supporter making plain his dissatisfaction at the
fact that he wasn’t at the centre of things.[Owen Jones – the Nick Cohen of Tomorrow]
He has given consistent support to
Jon Lansman in Momentum writing a nasty little red-baiting article shortly
before Lansman’s coup. Momentum
is a beacon of hope. It must be saved from the saboteurs Jones has also made it increasingly clear that
his support for Corbyn has disappeared.
It was therefore no great surprise when
it was announced in the Zionist press that Jones was to speak at a JLM event on
April 2nd . According to the Jewish
News ‘Leading Guardian columnist to
speak at inaugural event in memory of Jewish Labour Movement stalwart’. It is titled the Henry
Smith Memorial Lecture no less.
The JLM has done its best over the past year to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. It has proposed a rule change for the Labour
Party which deprecates the ‘abusive’ use of the term ‘Zionism’. Well Zionism is what happened in Umm al-Hiran
and one thing you won’t hear is the JLMM
opposing what happened. Nor will you
find the JLM supporting the refusenik young Israelis who refuse to serve in an
army of occupation because the JLM despite
its vaunted 2 states position supports the occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza.
For Jones to speak on a JLM platform,
whatever the pretext about an old friend, is no different from a member of the Labour
Party having spoken on the platform of the Apartheid State of South Africa. We should in future treat Owen Jones as he we
should have done long ago – a snivelling identity politics columnist who in
line with identity politics believes that Jewish identity is bound up with
supporting the actions of Israel and that opposing such is ‘anti-Semitic’. In speaking on the platform of the JLM Jones should
be ostracised by the Left and allowed to gravitate to his natural home on the
Right.
15
February 2017
I have
never been overly sold on Owen Jones. From his platform at the Guardian, he has
spent far too much time whining about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his
failure to reach out to voters rather than using his rare spot in the
mainstream media to help him to do precisely that.
But this
news has knocked me sideways. It was announced yesterday that Jones is lined up to give a
memorial lecture in April on behalf of the Jewish Labour Movement – the
same group implicated in the recent efforts of the Israeli embassy to damage a
Corbyn-led Labour party with confected allegations of anti-semitism. All of this
was exposed last month in an undercover Al Jazeera
investigation.
The
Jewish Labour Movement was effectively shown to be acting as a front for the
Israeli government’s efforts to oust Corbyn over a supposed anti-semitism
crisis in the party. Israel hates Corbyn because of his long-standing position
in support of Palestinian rights.
The
announcement of Jones’ lecture was written by Ella Rose, the former
Israeli embassy official who tried to conceal her past after she became the
director of the Jewish Labour Movement.
She was
one of those caught on Al Jazeera’s hidden cameras – in her case threatening to beat up black-Jewish Labour party activist
Jackie Walker, who has been the prime target of these phoney anti-semitism
allegations. None of this is secret history. I first wrote about the Jewish Labour Movement’s role in
trying to subvert Corbyn back in September.
It is not
even as though we can credit Jones with some kind of live-and-let-live attitude
to free speech. Remember back in 2013 he pulled out at the last minute, and
without warning, as a speaker at an important Stop the War rally to prevent
British military intervention in Syria. His grounds? He had come under fire
from the armchair interventionists because he was to speak alongside Mothers
Agnes, a Syrian-based nun who was seen as being too pro-Assad. (The
reasons Syrian Christians like Mother Agnes might support Bashar
Assad were pretty obvious even then, but are blindingly so now.)
Mother
Agnes pulled out of the rally to try to salvage it, but Jones continued to
refuse to take part.
I criticised Jones then over his cowardly and irresponsible
behaviour. Now he needs to explain how the principles that drove him away from
the Stop the War rally can allow him to support a group, the Jewish Labour
Movement, that is so clearly and maliciously attempting to subvert the elected
leader of the Labour party.
UPDATE:
Owen
Jones has responded to this blog post both on Twitter, calling
it “tedious nonsense” in his usual, dismissive style, and with a
post here that tries to deflect attention from my argument
with a straw man: that a conspiracy theory is painting him
as a stooge of the Israeli government.
No
conspiracy is being posited here – only very, very poor judgment. I
have also not accused him of working on behalf of the Israeli government.
Only of assisting, presumably thoughtlessly, those who are working on behalf of
the Israeli government inside the Jewish Labour Movement, including most
definitely its current director, Ella Rose.
Sadly,
though predictably, he has avoided addressing the point
of my criticism.
It is
great that he wants to pay his respects to a friend’s late father, and I am
sure there are responsible ways he can do that. But one of them is
certainly not by adding his name and credibility to an organisation that
was recently exposed by an undercover investigation to have been acting as
a front for Israeli government efforts to subvert the elected leadership of
Jeremy Corbyn.
The
Jewish Labour Movement has been working to confect allegations of
anti-semitism against other Labour party members. That is a serious form of
verbal violence against members of Jones’ own party that has the
power to do its victims great harm, personally and professionally.
Let’s not
also forget, as I pointed out, that Ella Rose, who will be hosting Owen Jones’
lecture, was filmed threatening physical violence against a fellow Labour
party member, Jackie Walker.
I was
astounded that Jones accepted this offer from the Jewish Labour Movement. I am
even more astonished that he is so casually dismissive of the very
real harm caused by the actions of this organisation and its leaders.
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