This is
what Tom Watson, Owen Jones, Lansman, Luciana Berger & the JLM Defend When They Cry ‘Anti-Semitism’
Can
you think of anything more despicable or disgusting than deliberately beating
up someone who is blind, suffers from diabetes and undergoes kidney dialysis? Yet this is what Israeli troops did to Munzer
Mizhar. All with utter impunity. Israeli
troops are a law unto themselves. The chances that they will serve time or the
family will be given compensation is zero.
Palestinians in the West Bank live under a military dictatorship and in
an apartheid society.
Jeremy
Corbyn has always supported Palestinian human rights even if he was fuzzy about
Zionism, the movement for Jewish supremacy in Palestine which caused those
human rights to be abused. That is the
sole reason why he has been attacked as ‘anti-Semitic’. Nothing he has ever
said is remotely anti-Semitic.
All
those – from Tom Watson, Jon Lansman, Owen Jones, Louise Ellman, Luciana Berger
and Adam Langleben and of course Labour Friends of Israel and Jewish Labour
Movement who cry ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party are equally as guilty as
the soldiers who used brass knuckle dusters to hurt and injure a totally
defenceless man.
It
is because Israel’s supporters cannot defend its actions that they cry ‘anti-Semitism’.
Most people understand this very well. The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is a ruling
class campaign. Most ordinary people are
left completely unmoved by it.
Tom
Watson, who has sung
the settlers’ song Am Yisrael Chai (the
people of Israel live which means the Palestinians die) has run with ‘anti-Semitism’
allegations. To him they are a means of
attacking the Left.
Unfortunately
much of the Left has been too cowardly to call this out for what it is. Whether it is Jon Lansman, for whom a
harmless nutcase like David Icke and his lizards are more important than the Tommy
Robinson or the so-called Alliance for Workers Liberty whose open
letter to Jeremy Corbyn is nothing less than a signal that the AWL is in
bed with the Labour Right.
But
not only Lansman. Owen Jones is equally
guilty. Jones has consorted with and
spoken on the platforms of the Jewish Labour Movement, the British wing of the Israeli
Labor Party. The ILP has supported every single Israeli war and even supported
the deportation of Israel’s 40,000 African refugees because they are Black and
not Jewish.
We
know what Tom Watson and Diva Luciana Berger are about. Anti-Semitism to them is merely a weapon to
attack supporters of the Palestinians with but how to explain people like John
McDonnell who should know better?
The
beating up of a blind man by Israeli troops is not an aberration. It is the product of a process of
dehumanisation but this is the Israel of the JLM and LFI, Tom Watson, Owen
Jones and Jon Lansman.
The
purported concern of Watson and the Labour Right about racism is one long lie. Not
once has Tom Watson, Berger or Ellman explained their support in 2014 for an Immigration
Act which led to the deportation of hundreds of Black British people, the
Windrush generation, back to the West Indies.
 |
| John Mann, describes Gypsies as a 'social problem' in his helpful booklet |
Genuine
racism is something that the Labour Right, obsessed with fake ‘anti-Semitism’
doesn’t even mention because they are up to their necks in it. In 2011 Labour
MP Phil Woolas, a former Labour Immigration Minister, defended to the hilt by
John Mann, was convicted of electoral fraud because he had lied about his
Liberal Democrat opponent supporting Muslim immigrants. His campaign was found to have deliberately
tried to stir up ‘white anger’. When
it comes to real genuine racism the Labour Right are past masters at inciting
racial hatred.
 |
| Phil Woolas's racist leaflet |
Even
by the standards of Israel’s military this attack on a blind man is
disgusting. But when you think of cancer
patients being turned back at the Gaza fence, Israel’s bombing of water
purification plants, the invasion of hospitals, the bombing of UN schools with
white phosphorous and of course the attaching of electrodes to the genitals of
young children then there is quite a menu to choose from. All of it invisible
to Tom Watson and his friends.
 |
| Racist Phil Woolas received support from John Mann and other fighters against 'antisemitism' |
Yet
this is what Lansman, Owen Jones, Watson and Berger are all signed up to. Because according to the above named if you
criticise Zionism, the ideology that created the Israeli state as an
ethno-nationalist Jewish state then you are ‘anti-Semitic’.
Tony
Greenstein
Gideon Levy
Israeli
soldiers invaded the home of a Palestinian family at night, and battered a man
in the face in front of his wife and children. He’s 47, blind and on dialysis,
and his toes have been amputated because of diabetes
Feb 28, 2019
10:51 PM
He’s lying on the living room sofa, next to the gas stove, trying to
warm his broken body. When we visited him this week, he had just returned from
the hospital and was worn out from the dialysis treatment he has been
undergoing three times a week for the 11 years since his kidneys stopped
functioning, as a consequence of severe diabetes.
Before that, 15 years ago, he started to lose his sight, and for the
past few years he has been completely blind. Also, over the course of the last
six years, he has gradually had to have toes amputated, operation after
operation. His face is sallow from the dialysis.
 |
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Physically shattered, he lies there, barely able to move. He needs help
getting up; he’s incapable of doing anything on his own. Every few months, he
travels to Jordan for the catheterization of the blood vessels in his legs,
which are becoming blocked.
So yes, Munzer Mizhar, 47, is a very sick man. Still, last week, that
didn’t stop Israeli
soldiers from pummeling him mercilessly, even after the neighbors had
warned them that he was sick. Nor was his wife, an eyewitness to the attack,
able to prevent the abuse of her husband despite her shouts that he was blind,
too.
 |
| Momentum's racist dictator Jon Lansman has fought the trivial trope about the Rothschilds whilst ignoring state racism that New Labour sponsored |
Nothing helped. The fists landed on his face – the blue marks are still
visible, particularly below his dead eyes, now blood-red. He also has wounds on
his shoulders and both hands – from his attempts to ward off the brutal
assault.
It all happened while he was in his bed after 4 A.M. on February 20.
A medical technician, Mizhar was employed in a laboratory belonging to
the Palestinian Authority but had to take early retirement because of his
deteriorating health. He speaks good English. He and his wife Iman have four
sons, the oldest 18 and triplets of 16. Iman, who is 45, has cancer, for which
she’s treated at Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, and in Jordan.
Her condition is good. She joined the conversation in their house this
week but grew pale as it proceeded and had to lie down several times, eyes
closed, tears welling up. The trauma of her husband’s beating is still vivid,
painful and hard for her to bear, perhaps even more than for him. Family
members say she cowers in fright whenever the horrors of that night are
recalled. They live in a well-kept home in the town of Dawha near Bethlehem.
That Wednesday, Munzer was awakened at about 4:45 A.M. by the sound of
footsteps in the house. He woke his wife. He thought that maybe his sons were
wandering about in the dark.
His wife opened her eyes and screamed. He didn’t understand what was
going on. At first they thought burglars had broken in. But Iman saw shadowy
figures who had entered their room, while red laser beams sliced through the
darkness toward their bed.
The specters moved without sound. Later it would emerge that the troops
had silently broken down the door. After an instant, Iman realized that the
intruders were soldiers. They were masked, five or six of them in the bedroom,
aiming their rifles at the couple. More troops waited outside.
Iman got out of the bed, her hair exposed to the eyes of the men who had
invaded her room – a very sensitive matter for them, which Munzer refers to
with pain. One soldier approached the bed and without a word punched Munzer in
the face. Munzer is convinced that the assailant wore brass knuckles. His face
began to bleed, with a lot of blood streaming from his nose, as well as from
the wounds on his hands, which ultimately failed to protect his face. He saw
nothing, of course.
 |
| The West Bank town of Dawha, near Bethlehem. Alex Levac |
Iman, standing next to the bed, went on shouting, but the soldiers
blocked her from defending her husband. She tried to explain that he was blind
and sick, but it was useless. Probably none of the soldiers understood Arabic.
The soldier held Munzer’s head with one hand and hit him relentlessly with the
other, she says. The others just stood there. The beating went on for at least
five minutes.
A light in the bathroom scattered a little light into the room. Outside
it was still dark, and the soldiers didn’t turn on the lights inside. Maybe
that’s why they didn’t notice that the person being abused was helpless, blind
and sick. Munzer asked the soldiers who they were. He got no reply. Iman told
them she wanted to talk with the officer in charge. No one responded. Finally
the blows ceased.
Iman sat Munzer up in the bed. He asked her where the children were.
Then she helped him get up and led him toward a chair in the room. At first the
soldiers wouldn’t allow Munzer, his face streaked with blood, to sit down. They
didn’t ask him to identify himself and didn’t say who they were looking for.
Before this his eldest son, Talal, had awoken and heard his parents
shouting that there were burglars in the house. Then, from the doorway, he saw
his father bleeding. His brothers also woke up. The soldiers refused to let
them enter their parents’ room and ordered them to raise their hands. One of
the sons was overcome with dizziness and fell to the floor.
The soldiers were in the house for about 20 minutes. They didn’t search
for anything. None of them thought to offer the wounded Munzer medical
attention. Munzer says the worst thing is that a blind person doesn’t know when
the next blow is coming.
Why did they hit him?
“You don’t know why?” his sister Maysoun, a bitter smile on her lips,
asks us. “I’m afraid to talk because you’re Jews. They beat us all. The
occupation beats us all. We are under occupation. This isn’t the first time
they beat someone for no reason, and it’s not the last. What’s new about it is
that this time they beat a blind person.”
One of the boys suggests a different explanation: Maybe they struck his
father because he has a beard? True, not a full beard, but still a small beard
that raises suspicion.
 |
| Munzer Mizhar with his wife, Iman, and his sister, at home in the West Bank town of Dawha. Alex Levac |
Maysoun is concerned that now her brother won’t be allowed to travel to
Jordan in June for his regular medical treatments. We tried to reassure her –
after all, he didn’t do anything.
In any case, back on that Wednesday morning, the soldiers ordered the
four boys to get on their knees, faces pressed to the floor, and not to move.
Then they left the house.
Munzer was taken to Hussein Hospital in Beit Jala. Since the event, he
has suffered from pains in his jaw and has difficulty eating solid food. To see
him lying on the sofa totally helpless, trying to find a comfortable position,
the remnants of his feet bandaged, occasionally closing his eyes, is to
understand what the soldiers wrought.
The next day the family learned that the soldiers had been looking for
Fadi Hilweh, 20, who’s wanted by the army and the Shin Bet security service,
though it’s not clear why. He lives on the floor above. The soldiers went there
first, and when they didn’t find him, a Shin Bet agent known as “Capt. Nidal”
ordered Hilweh’s mother to contact him and have him come home.
In the meantime, the soldiers went downstairs to the Mizhars. The
neighbors say that they too warned the soldiers that Munzer was blind and sick,
but no one was interested. Munzer wants to know why they didn’t knock on the
door instead of invading the house. He would have opened the door and they
could have seen for themselves that Hilweh wasn’t there.
Hilweh eventually came home and was arrested. Did the soldiers think
that Munzer was the wanted person, so they beat him? Even in the dark, no one
could mistake a sick, blind man of 47 for a 20-year-old. “Maybe they thought
[the wanted man] was Munzer, and maybe they’re just violent criminals,” Maysoun
says. Musa Abu Hashhash, a field researcher for the B’Tselem human rights
group, says quietly, “This is the most shocking case I’ve ever documented.”
The IDF Spokesman’s Office made the following statement to Haaretz:
“During an operation to apprehend a wanted individual in Bethlehem, information
was received that the wanted person was inside a particular building, and a
search was undertaken there. During the search, a Palestinian woman tried to
prevent one of the fighters from reaching a Palestinian man in the room that
the fighter wanted to inspect. The fighter tried to check the Palestinian man,
who reacted by grabbing at his body and his weapon, and shouted and acted
disruptively. The fighter pushed the Palestinian aggressively, trying to get
him under control, and as a result the man was injured. At this stage the
fighter realized that the man was blind, and was not the wanted person, and
tried to calm him down while allowing the man’s wife to attend to him
immediately. The incident was investigated and appropriate conclusions were
drawn.”
Iman has been in a state of depression and constant fear since that
night. The boys ask whether the soldiers will come back. The family has added
an extra lock to the front door. Munzer can only focus on his illness and his
pain. He wakes up each every night imagining that he hears footsteps in the
dark. He’s certain that the soldiers are returning to give him another thrashing.
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