Since BLM describe Israel as a Genocidal Apartheid State and Support BDS – is Starmer is going to expel
them for ‘anti-Semitism’?
When I saw ‘Sir’ Keir, the pin-up of George Osborne and the British
Establishment take the knee I could not help but
smell the sulphurous stench of hypocrisy. Black Lives Matter are, according to
the IHRA and the 10 Commandments anti-Semitic.
By supporting BDS they single out
Israel from all other countries. In addition they call it a genocidal,
apartheid state. Starmer should be giving BLM the boot not offering them his
carefully tailored knee.
The Telegraph, in what even for it
was a particularly stupid and bizarre article Why Black Lives Matter protests
are a catalyst for anti-Semitism argued that ‘extreme anti-racism’ causes anti-Semitism. This is where the fake
anti-Semitism campaign leads. Anti-racism equals anti-Semitism. Classic double
think.
Leaving to one side whether you can
have ‘extreme’ as opposed to ‘moderate’ anti-Semitism, what it is saying is
that its definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ (anti-Zionism) is a form of anti-racism!
I agree but that’s why it’s not anti-Semitism!
 |
| Israel's policy towards Black refugees is worse even than that of Donald Trump |
Please Spare a Thought for
the Zionists’ Dilemma!
It’s not often that I ask readers of
this blog to put themselves in the shoes of the Zionists. However I am going to
ask you to make the effort in the case of BLM. I am asking you to empathise
with them. As Ali Abunimah says
‘Israel lobby
groups have long seen the Black Lives Matter movement as a threat and have
tried both to disrupt and co-opt it.’
In 2018, Al Jazeera’s leaked
undercover documentary The Lobby–USA revealed how the Israeli
government and its lobby worked
to disrupt the BLM movement. Undercover footage showed an Israeli official
complaining about the BLM “problem.”
It also revealed how The Israel
Project, a now defunct
organization, pulled strings behind the scenes to get a BLM fundraiser in a New
York City nightclub cancelled.
 |
| Britain's Zionists attacking BLM as 'anti-semitic' |
The problem that the Zionists face
is how to deal with the threat that BLM represents. For some Zionists BLM should
be confronted head on. However those Zionists who are not head bangers realise
that if they do this, whilst they may win the plaudits of the White
Supermacists they will lose the majority of Jewish youth and the Democratic
Party. They are caught on the horns of a dilemma and it is interesting to see
how they are wriggling!
For
nearly 6 years all wings of the
Zionist movement criticised and attacked BLM. Liberal Zionists said that they
supported the demands of BLM but they were pained by their description of
Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, as a genocidal, Apartheid state.
Sure
Israel provided training in the latest techniques of repression for most US police
forces. And yes it’s true that the neck hold is an Israeli invention. However
they wish that BLM wouldn’t involve itself in international matters and confine
itself to the United States.
 |
| The hypocrisy of AIPAC knows no bounds |
Aipac, ADL and Police Training
Right-wing
Zionists never liked BLM, regardless of its attitude to Israel. Zionism and
anti-racism made strange bedfellows to the Zionist
Organisation of America and its Chairman Mort Klein.
Even AIPAC, the pro-Republican Israel
lobby group must have found it painful to have to condemn George
Floyd’s murder writing that:
On the eve of
George Floyd’s funeral, we join with millions of Americans who continue to
mourn his murder. His death is a shattering reminder of the injustice &
inequities that Black Americans still endure in our society. The scourge of
racism, intolerance & inequality must end.
 |
| Palestinians identify with George Floyd |
Of course if George Floyd had been
a Palestinian then AIPAC would have been calling him a ‘terrorist’.
Naturally Sussex Friends of Israel, which was
founded by Fiona Sharpe of Labour Against
Anti-Semitism, attacked
BLM as ‘anti-Semitic’. To SFI any form of anti-racism is ‘anti-Semitism’.
 |
| Sussex Friends of Israel, of which former Brighton Councillors Emma Daniels and Julie Cattell and ex-leader Cllr. Daniel Yates are members calls BLM 'antisemitic' |
The
Anti-Defamation
League, which funded and provided Police training, bringing
US police on junkets to Israel for “counterterrorism” and other kinds of joint
training.was also unhappy with BLM but it preferred not to cut off its nose
to spite its face.
Between
5 and 13 September 2015 the ADL held
a National Counter-Terrorism Seminar in Israel. ADL plays a key role in the
relationship between Israeli and US police whilst, at the same time, decrying
police violence in the US. No one is suggesting that US police racism is a consequence
of this training, but the fact that ADL is involved in training and refining
their techniques of oppression, should give the lie to the ADL’s profession of
support to the Black struggle.
 |
| The purest hypocrisy - ADL was training the killers |
The Militarisation of the United States Police
In August
2018 Jewish Voice for Peace determined
that three years previously Peter Edge, who was promoted to Acting Deputy
Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President
Trump, attended a training in Israel, as part of the Anti-Defamation
League’s 2015 National Counter Terrorism Institute Seminar. ICE are the
thugs who deport and brutalise migrant families and children.
An article The
US-Israel Military Relationship and the US-Mexico Border revealed that
Homeland Security Director Kirjsten
Nielsen’s recent trip to Israel included a visit to the “hi-tech” fences
blockading Gaza. Israeli Security Minister Gilad Erdan ‘reckons’ that some of what Nielson saw and learned in Israel “will certainly be implemented in what the
United States is setting up on its border with Mexico.”
Trump
and Netanyahu have continuously praised one another for their border
militarisation policies and walls. In an interview
with Fox News, Trump called a wall on the US’s southern border
“good for the heart of the nation in a certain way,
because people want protection, and a wall protects. All you’ve got to do is
ask Israel. They were having a total disaster coming across, and they had a
wall. It’s 99.9 percent stoppage.
In response
Netanyahu wrote
“I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It
stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea.”
Using Israel as a reason not to support BLM
Maayan
Belding-Zidon wrote on the 10 June 2020 telling fellow Zionists ‘Stop
using Israel as an excuse not to support Black Lives Matter’. Belding-Zidon
highlighted the fact that in 2016,
‘Jewish
voices from across the U.S. political spectrum came out in opposition to the platform of the
Movement for Black Lives, which claimed that U.S. military aid to Israel
makes the U.S. complicit in “the genocide taking place against the Palestinian
people.” Many progressive Jewish organizations denounced only this section and
endorsed the rest of the platform, calling for an end to mass incarceration,
demilitarization of the police, etc.
However other, more conservative Zionists, used this
as an excuse to ‘distance
themselves from Black Lives Matter as a whole.’ The description of
Israel as an Apartheid state proved BLM was ‘a
threat to the assimilation of Jews into undifferentiated American whiteness.’
This debate took on a heightened form with the current
upsurge in BLM over the murder of George Floyd. It was clear to all except the atavistic
Zionist Organisation of America that they were facing a mass movement of
millions. It was simply not possible for the Zionists, much as they wanted to,
to attack BLM as ‘anti-Semitic’.
Thousands of young Jewish kids, who are already skeptical
towards an Israel that is admired
by white supremacists and anti-Semites identify with BLM. They realize that the
racism that lay behind Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd is the same racism
that led to the murder
of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
 |
| Dianne Lob |
Zionist Organisation of America and HIAS
It was only two months ago that the ZOA objected
vehemently to nomination of Dianne Lob, as the next Chair of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations [CPMAJO]. Why? Because she
was a past Chair of the Hebrew Immigrant Advisory Society.
‘ZOA charged that HIAS was part of an “unholy
consortium of Jewish and anti-Israel groups” fighting Trump’s immigration
policies.’
Historically HIAS provided support for Jewish refugees from Europe but
today Jews are not refugees. So it is mainly Black and Muslim people who receive
its aid. In the eyes of ZOA that is a crime.
 |
| Anti-Muslim Bigot Frank Gaffney piles in against Lob |
Dianne Lob is as committed a Zionist as the rest of the 50 strong
Committee. She described
herself
“as someone deeply devoted to Jewish values
and to the importance of safeguarding the special U.S.-Israel relationship”.
What the Zionist right mean when they called her ‘anti-Zionist’ is anyone who is that she isn’t a 100% racist. Lob
is a corporate Democrat and head of global business development for
international investment management firm AllianceBernstein.
The objections of the ZOA were partly
successful. Instead of taking over as Chair at the beginning of June 2020,
she will have to wait until April 2021. Even this compromise was only agreed
after a 31-8 vote with 5 abstentions. As the Times of Israel reported
‘Leading the charge was Morton Klein’s Zionist
Organization of America, which has strongly opposed efforts to resettle Muslim
refugees from Arab countries in the United States and Europe — something that
has topped the HIAS agenda in recent years because of unrest in the Muslim
world.
In other words the objections were based on pure racism.
The ZOA is the oldest
Zionist organisation in America, being founded in 1897, the year of the first
Zionist Congress. It is funded by Trump backer, Sheldon Adelson and fiercely
supports his White Supremacist agenda.
 |
| The ZOA is proving embarrassing to the more astute Zionists |
The target of HIAS is interesting itself. Robert
Bowers, the fascist who murdered worshippers
at the Tree of Life synagogue was obsessed
with HIAS and the supposed role of Jews in bringing immigrants into the USA.
This was at the time of the Congressional elections and Trump was lambasting
the refugee caravan in Central America and threatening to set the military on
them.
Bowers subscribed to the far-right theme that ‘the
Jews’ were working to subvert the White nations by welcoming Black people into
their country. That is what lay behind the slogan of Trump’s ‘fine people’ at
Charlottesville who chanted
‘the Jews will not replace us’.
The Tree of Life was a liberal synagogue that had agreed
to help fundraise for HIAS. Like the majority of American Jews they were the
most liberal section of the White population (unlike Britain where Jews are the
most reactionary section!).
This enraged Bowers. He posted
on social media, just hours before opening fire that:
‘“HIAS likes to
bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get
slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Two
and a half weeks earlier, he had written,
“Why hello there HIAS!
You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us?”
Another
post read,
“Open you Eyes! It’s the
filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL
Muslims into the Country!!”
 |
| BLM is a racist, Soros funded organisation - and the ZOA dares to say its BLM which is antisemitic! |
The Zionist Organisation of America
If the CPMAJO had any morals or scruples then the ZOA and its racist
supporters would have been kicked out years ago.
The ZOA, like most Zionist groups, love to accuse anti-Zionists of ‘anti-Semitism’ and even liberal Zionists
of the same sin. The reality however is that they are guilty of what they
accuse others of.
In 2016, after Trump’s election who did they invite
as a guest of honour to address their annual Gala dinner? None other than Steve
Bannon, who was Trump’s Strategic Advisor. The same Bannon whose wife testified
in their 2007 divorce that
‘the biggest problem he had
with Archer [an elite private school for girls] is the number of Jews that
attend.’
Bannon did a no show
because of a large demonstration by Jewish groups, IfnotNow and Jewish Voice
for Peace.
 |
| Hungarian neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka was guest of honour at the ZOA's 2017 Gala Dinner - seen wearing the Vitezi Rend medal |
The ZOA invited
him again in 2017 and this time they also invited
Sebastian Gorka, a fully paid–up fascist nut. At Trump’s inauguration ball he
decided to wear
the Vitezi Rend, a medal issued by the Hungarian Order of Heroes, which
collaborated with Hungary’s Nazi government during the World War II.
Up till now the ZOA has been a member of the CPMAJO. Their anti-Muslim
bigotry, their dalliance with anti-Semites, their love of Trump and their
mutual hostility to HIAS, were of no consequence.
Yet when the ZOA decided to attack Black Lives Matter there were loud
calls for their removal. The Jerusalem Post reported
that
Progressive Jewish groups have accused Morton Klein,
president of the Zionist Organization of America of 'bigotry' and 'hatred' for
his opposition of Black Lives Matter.
 |
| Steve Bannon - ex-Trump advisor and ex-Editor Breitbart |
The
statement was issued by the New Israel Fund and other ‘liberal’ Zionists. Why now? According to their statement:
“The continued presence of Klein and the ZOA in
important umbrella groups is an affront to Jews of color and all people of
color, and to the overwhelming majority of all American Jews. It undermines any pro-Israel, pro-peace
advocacy and damages the collective reputation of our community.” (my
emphasis)
The Murder of Iyad Hallak
The clue
lies in the last sentence. These hypocrites, who have never once spoken out
about Zionist racism, Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians or even the murder
5 days after George Floyd of Iyad Hallak, an autistic Palestinian, are worried
that a full frontal attack by Zionists on BLM will backfire and undermine their
‘pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy’.
 |
| Sebastian Gorka - the ZOA's neo-Nazi dinner guest |
If there
was even an ounce of sincerity amongst these liberal Zionists then they would have
condemned the murder of Iyad. Already wounded, trapped in a garbage hut and with
his carer screaming
that he was autistic they pumped the final 3 bullets into his body.
Unlike in
Minneapolis no Policemen have been arrested, still less charged. There is an
‘investigation’ but Israeli police investigations never result in charges of
murder. Netanyahu could not even bring himself to condemn the murder because Israel’s
finest thought they were dealing with a ‘terrorist’ and since Iyad was a
Palestinian they had every right to think that.
 |
| Unbelievably the ZOA deals in the same tropes about Soros as the Jewish financial puppet master as America's neo-Nazis |
Mort
Klein’s offence is to say
what Zionist liberals believe but won’t say openly, namely that Black Lives
Matter
is a Jew hating, White hating, Israel hating,
conservative Black hating, violence promoting, dangerous Soros funded extremist
group of haters,”
Mort Klein has no tactical
sense. He doesn’t know when to shut up.
His colleagues know that now is not the time to attack BLM, not least because
it will damage the reputation of Israel in the eyes of Jewish youth who are
already cynical about Israel, witness the growth of groups like Jewish
Voice for Peace and Ifnotnow.
That and only that is the reason why
other Zionist groups have called
for the expulsion of the ZOA from the CPMAJO. The Times of Israel reported
that the
Tweet by Mort
Klein vilifying Black Lives Matter seen as galvanizing liberal support to
remove Zionist Organization of America from Conference of Presidents
We should
be under no illusions that there is any major difference of principle between
Mort Klein and Diane Lob and her supporters.
Israel Hayom and Conspiracy Theories
The
Zionists have been working overtime to blunt and subvert the message of BLM.
According to Sheldon Adelson’s Israel
Hayom what is happening is Co-opting
Black Lives Matter to target Israel. This is up with all those other
conspiracy theories. We are told that
‘Efforts to link police brutality
in the United States with the Israel Defense Forces maintaining security
against Palestinian attacks have flooded the internet.
If it wasn’t for White people
manipulating Black Lives Matter they would never have worked out for themselves
that Israel has been training US police forces into becoming even more deadly
than they already are. This kind of conspiracy theory is strangely reminiscent
of the theory that Jews manipulate Blacks and Muslims in order to destroy the
White nations. It goes by the name Replacement
Theory.
Groups on the far-Right and far-Left,
including pro-Palestinian organizations with links to terrorism, have been
engaged in a campaign to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement to target and
delegitimize Israel.
"The cynical use of the Black
Lives Matter by groups backed and controlled by foreign terror movements is
nothing less than a repeat of the many other times that terror groups have used
human shields to push their violence and hate," Mark Greendorfer,
president of the Zachor Legal Group, told JNS.
A "civil-rights movement (Black
Lives Matter) has been hijacked by extremists to push an agenda focused on
promoting hate, in the form of anti-Semitism, rather than seeking
justice," he said.
Exchanging
Support for Israel for Support for BLM
Back in April 2016 Sam Kestenbaum explained
that the problem
was ‘a ‘new platform’ [the
link doesn’t work now!] of BLM ‘that describes Israel as an “apartheid state”
committing “genocide” against the Palestinian people’.’ Kestenbaum
explained
that since the beginning of BLM in 2013, in the wake of the Police murder of
Michael Brown
‘Jewish
groups across the country have struggled to strike the right tone in their
responses to the movement. Activists aligned with Black Lives Matter have
frequently visited the occupied Palestinian West Bank in what some call
“solidarity tours,” as recently as July 30
Henn Mazzig in When Jews Attack Black Lives Matter, It Only
Fuels Anti-Semitism wrote
that Zionists who believe that they can trade off support for Israel in
exchange for support for BLM is not working:
The message black people are
getting today from some in the Jewish community is that they think black lives
don’t matter. Would you think otherwise if a video emerged of a Jew being
choked to death by a cop and non-Jews said they couldn’t support our movement
because, say, the Anti-Defamation League said something they don’t like? ...
Why were these (3) women able to
impart their anti-Israel policies on the Black Lives Matter platform? They were
deeply committed to the movement. Pro-Israel voices, like the ones in my
replies, were not.
Attacking Black Lives Matter only
fuels anti-Semitism [i.e. anti-Zionism], making it easier to paint Jews as
racists...
Although countless Jews and
Zionists support Black Lives Matter... these voices railing against the
movement undo some of that unifying work. Another was Rachel Gilmer of Dream
Defenders, a Jewish anti-Zionist.
If you want to change Black Lives
Matter Israel agenda, you need to show up for them. Because by showing up for
racial justice, we are actually showing up for ourselves....
When I posted Black Lives Matter
online, the responses from Jews in America were shocking.
Some started bombarding me with
replies that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an anti-Israel cabal. That they are
not protestors but looters and criminals. ... A few people claimed it was all “George Soros’s doing.” I pointed out
that anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists like former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard
David Duke were employing the same rhetoric. One American Jew replied, “Well,
he is right about Soros.”
There is a
serious debate taking place in the Zionist movement in the United States which sees
the antics of those like Mort Klein as damaging support for Israel. Behind
closed doors they agree with most of what he says. Their disagreement is with
the way he says it.
Rabbi Ari
Hart, of the Bayit Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, wrote on his public Facebook
page that he was “struggling with
#BlackLivesMatter but I believe black lives matter,”
Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council issued a statement
“We cannot and will not align ourselves with
organizations that falsely and maliciously assert that Israel is committing
‘genocide.We reject participation in any coalition that seeks to isolate and
demonize Israel.”
The platform of the “Movement for Black Lives,” was
BLM’s “first comprehensive document”. The
section on foreign policy (“Invest-Divest”) criticizes American military aid to
Israel. Israel is
“a
state that practices systematic discrimination and has maintained a military
occupation of Palestine for decades,”
It calls on activists to “build invest/divestment campaigns” to end “US Aid to Israel’s military industrial complex” and credits Adalah, an advocacy group for Arab rights,
among its “authors & contributors.”
As Ha’aretz notes
‘Right-wing Jewish groups, including the
Zionist Organization of America have condemned Black Lives Matter since the
movement’s early days.’
The Anti-Defamation League
Ha’aretz quotes
the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt as saying that racial justice for African
Americans is one of “the struggles of our
time.”
This is the purest hypocrisy. It is a wonder that
Greenblatt’s nose isn’t six foot long! In August 2016 the Tablet quoted
Greenblatt as saying of BLM’s Platform that:
it’s repellent and completely inaccurate to label
Israel’s policy as “genocide.” (it) completely ignores incitement and violence
perpetrated against Israelis by some Palestinians, including terror inside the
country and rocket attacks lobbed from Gaza.
The article also informed readers that ‘The ADL’s extensive material on Black Lives Matter, including school
lesson plans, has now been quietly removed from its website.
Liberal Zionist Peter Beinart described
BLM’s Platform as ‘stupid’ for talking of Israeli genocide. BLM’s Platform did
not go over well with the what The Tablet called ‘some of Black Lives Matter’s hitherto staunch progressive allies.’
Greenblatt tweeted that ‘We
need justice for everyone who has been a victim of racist policing &
violence.’ Which sounds very much like ‘All Lives Matter’ the racist response
to the specific violence against Black people.
This
is the same ADL who said
that
‘An influx of
millions of Palestinians into Israel would pose a threat to its national
security and upset the country’s demographic makeup.’
Isn’t that
Trump’s agenda? Sure he puts it a bit
more crudely, in terms of Mexican rapists and shithole countries in Africa, but
isn’t he too trying to preserve American culture and demographic make-up?
The Tablet had
nothing to say about the Occupation, land confiscation, the ethnic cleansing of
Jerusalem etc. Even liberal Zionist groups are PEPs – Progressive Except for
Palestine.
 |
| Unbelievably the Zionist Tablet gives a soft-ball interview to America's leading academic holocaust denier, Kevin MacDonald |
The Tablet may
lambast the ‘bigotry’ of BLM but it’s not above indulging in some of its
own. Quite amazingly in its current
issue it contains a full length interview with Professor Kevin MacDonald,
the foremost academic supporter of White nationalism and Holocaust denial in
the USA. As the introduction to the interview explains:
The specifics of the Jewish [evolutionary] strategy on American soil...
include encouraging mass immigration and promoting cultural relativism and
multiculturalism—which he describes as ideological tools that Jews use to
fracture the organic cohesion of their white Christian host culture.
MacDonald’s theories and writing inspired the slogan “the Jews will not replace us” which energized the 2017 “Unite the
Right” rally in Charlottesville.
In other
words Jews act as one and their behaviour is genetically and biologically
programmed. Stripped of its academic jargon this rhetoric is part of the old
Nazi idea that Jews subvert the Gentile nations in order to rule over them. Yet
a prominent Zionist journal prints an interview with an open neo-Nazi.
The ADL and Spying for Apartheid South Africa
We should
not forget the lawsuit begun in 1992 accusing
the ADL of spying on behalf of the Apartheid regime in South Africa (not
Israel!). It was settled for $178,000.
Israel was then an ally of South
Africa's white- supremacist government, and the ADL's chief
intelligence-gatherer in the Bay Area, Roy
Bullock, later admitted he was being paid by South Africa.
The suit claimed that the ADL was
working to suppress domestic criticism of Israel by compiling dossiers that it
shared with police, the Israeli government and its own supporters. The ADL said
it was legally monitoring hate groups and political extremists.
After Bullock and a San Francisco
police inspector were seen talking to South African agents in 1992 police
seized more than 10,000 files from the two men and ADL offices in San Francisco
and Los Angeles. See: Jewish
defense group settles S.F. spying suit
ADL
and Starbucks
The balancing act that ADL perform,
training the US Police whilst professing horror at the death of Black men at
their hands fools noone. When Starbucks staff called the Police because two
Black men were ‘loitering’
in their coffee house it provoked national outrage.
Starbucks set aside a day when their
premises were closed for ‘anti-bias training.
Who was called upon to provide it?
The ADL! This caused an uproar among
Black and left-wing activists. As a result Starbucks were
forced to drop the ADL from their training plans.
None of this prevented Liel Leibovitz
from denouncing Starbucks for ‘giving in
to bigotry’ in The
Tablet. In The
ADL Kicked Out of Leading Starbucks’ Diversity Training Leibovitz wrote:
Considering the fact that Jews are, by far, the most
prominent targets of hate crimes in America these days, giving in to
anti-Semites and removing the ADL from a diversity training initiative of a
major American corporation is particularly heinous.
America’s
Jews are obviously not the ‘most
prominent targets’ of racist attacks. Secondly calling BLM ‘anti-Semites’ betrays
the real agenda.
Leibovitz blamed the decision on
Tamika Mallory, ‘a leader of the Women’s
March and vocal supporter of Louis Farrakhan’ who tweeted
that the ADL was an organization dedicated to “constantly attacking black and brown people.” Another example of
Zionist guilt-by-association which avoids what she said. Whether Tamika is or
is not a member of the Nation of Islam is neither here nor there.
ADL and Police Training
US police forces have been trained courtesy
of the ADL in the latest techniques of repression, including neck holds.
Israel’s police have so much more ‘on
hands’ or ‘on neck’ experience of
repression. In
Partnering with Law Enforcement the ADL boast
that
ADL works with every major
federal, state and local law enforcement agency, from the Federal Bureau
of Investigation to major city police departments, state police, highway
patrol and sheriffs’ departments. Over the past decade, we have trained 150,000
law enforcement personnel—at no cost to taxpayers. This work is designed to
protect people and communities from hate, extremism and terrorism.
The
‘problem’ that the Zionists faced was described in 2017 in a leaked
report written by the ADL and the Reut Institute.
It bemoaned how campaigners had successfully been
able
to frame the Palestinian struggle against Israel as part of the struggle of
other disempowered minorities, such as African Americans.
The report warned that
intersectionality “undermines Jewish
communities’ agendas, including support for the State of Israel.” The
Israel lobby and Zionist hasbara were happy with identity politics because it
was simple to define Jewishness in terms of Zionism and Israel. Jews were just
one more equally oppressed group.
But intersectionality asked more
difficult questions such as where the source of inequality comes from. Intersectionality
argued that oppression is not one dimensional. American Jews don’t suffer from
police violence, disproportionate imprisonment or economic discrimination. To
say that being Jewish is equivalent of being Black is to negate the oppression
of the latter. Oppression has many causes – economic, class, race, imperialism
etc.
Starmer’s
Racist Hypocrisy
Was there anything more sickening
than seeing Starmer and Rayner taking a knee in an empty conference room, on a
plush carpet? This is the same Starmer who is busy expelling anyone ‘guilty’ of
opposing Israeli Apartheid or Zionism.
Starmer’s racist witch-hunt is
netting hundreds of Black and Jewish members of the Labour Party. All in the
service of Tel Aviv and Netanyahu’s coalition with the Israeli Labor Party.
Because the organisation driving the witch-hunt is none other than the British
wing of the almost dead ILP, the Jewish
Labour Movement.
Instead of taking the knee,
Keir Starmer should be expelling BLM members for supporting BDS and calling
Israel a Genocidal, Apartheid State!
Black members of the Labour Party understand
Starmer’s hypocrisy which is why he is expelling so many of them. Most are not
collaborators like the David
Lammy, who abstained in the vote on the ‘hostile environment’ 2014
Immigration Act, as did all but one of Labour’s useless Black MPs. Lammy is a paid up supporter
of Labour Friends of Israel.
In Black
lives do not matter in Israel David Sheen wrote of how, on March
17, one of Israel's two chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef, called black people "monkeys" and
the Hebrew equivalent of the N-word in his weekly sermon. He said the same two
years previously that all non-Jews - Africans, Arabs, or otherwise - could only
live in Israel if they agree to serve the country's Jewish population.
Israel's other chief rabbi,
Yisrael Lau, used the N-word to describe Black athletes on his very
first day in office in July 2013. In 2010 dozens of Israeli rabbis, led by
Safed’s Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, a paid official of the Israeli state,
issued an edict forbidding Jews to rent their homes to non-Jews. As Ha'aretz explained:
Dozens
of Israel's municipal chief rabbis have signed on to a new religious ruling
that would forbid the rental of homes to gentiles in a move particularly aimed
against Arabs
When Lammy and Starmer support Israel
and demonise its opponents as ‘anti-Semitic’ they are actively supporting this
racism. Below are extracts from an important article
by Ramzy Baroud on the role of Israel in militarizing the United States police.
The
‘Palestinian Chair’: Exposing Israel’s Direct Role in US Violence
The
militarization of the US police and its use of deadly violence against
suspected petty criminals, or even non criminals, is a relatively new
phenomenon that has been largely imported from Israel.
Israeli torture
tactics, including the infamous ‘Palestinian Chair’, became the crown jewel of
the American military’s systematic violence used in America’s immoral wars from
Iraq to Afghanistan, to elsewhere.
Writing in the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2016, Rachel Stroumsa argued
that the ‘Palestinian Chair’ is “but one
of many examples of ties and seepages between the security practices of Israel
and America,” adding that “the CIA
explicitly justified its use of torture in depositions to the Senate
Intelligence Committee by citing High Court of Justice rulings.”
The fact that
thousands of American police officers have been trained by Israelis, thus the
burgeoning of violent military-like tactics used against ordinary Americans, is
only one link in a long chain of ‘deadly
exchanges’ between the two countries.
The US-Israel Military
Relationship and the US-Mexico Border
The horrific impacts of border
militarization and the practices of racist agencies like Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) on border communities,
immigrants, and people of color across the US have been well documented for
years.
Feeding into US imperialist policy,
Israel has been an important partner and supporter of the militarization of the
border and border agencies in a number of ways:
US-Israel law enforcement
exchange programs
Many
of these exchanges are sponsored by US-based organizations, including
AIPAC, ADL, GILEE, JINSA, and the Jewish United Fund.
The growing Israeli role in
shaping the American security state allowed Israel to push its political
priorities past its traditional stronghold over the US Congress to individual
states and, eventually, to city councils across the country
Black
Lives Matter platform author defends Israel ‘genocide’ claim Times of Israel 10.8.16.
NEW YORK (JTA) — The co-author of the Black Lives
Matter platform passage accusing Israel of “genocide” defended the term, saying
Israel’s actions fit in its wider definition.
Ben Ndugga-Kabuye co-authored the statement along with
Rachel Gilmer, the former board member of a Zionist youth group. Ndugga-Kabuye
told JTA he understood why Jewish groups disagree with the statement, but was
perplexed that it has received so much attention.
He compared it with the accusations of genocide that
black activists have leveled at the United States and called the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict one of many international conflicts US black
activists feel connected to.
“The way we
look at it is, we take strong stances,” Ndugga-Kabuye, a New York City
organizer for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, told JTA. “The demand
we’re making is we’re against the US continuing funding and military aid to the
government of Israel. These are all things that are going to be in debate.”
The platform, released August 2 by The Movement for
Black Lives coalition, is largely a statement of the goals of a movement that
coalesced around police violence directed against black people in the United
States, mass incarceration of African-Americans and other domestic issues.
But it also calls for ending US military aid to Israel
and accuses Israel of being an apartheid state. The platform includes a link to
a website promoting the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel called
BDS.
“The
US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel
and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people”
reads the “Invest/Divest” section of “A Vision for Black Lives.”
A string of Jewish organizations, from the
Anti-Defamation League to the Reform movement and National Council of Jewish
Women, has condemned the genocide and apartheid language as well as the BDS
endorsement. T’ruah, a rabbis’ human rights group that opposes Israel’s West
Bank occupation, also criticized the document.
Most of the organizations took pains to note that they
are sympathetic to other parts of the platform, many of which jibe with liberal
Jewish positions on the criminal justice system, economic justice and
immigration.
“While
we are deeply concerned about the ongoing violence and the human rights
violations directed at both Israelis and Palestinians, we believe the terms
genocide and apartheid are inaccurate and inappropriate to describe the
situation,”
NCJW wrote in a statement. “Further, BDS is too often used to de-legitimize Israel’s right to
exist.”
Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports BDS, was the rare Jewish group
that endorsed the platform in its entirety.
On Tues., Dec. 15, more than
300 Jewish activists in Boston marched for the Black Lives Matter movement,
including members of Jewish Voice for Peace (photo credit: Ignacio
Laguarda/Wicked Local)
Ndugga-Kabuye said state actions don’t need to rise to
the level of the Holocaust or other historical genocides to deserve the term,
which he said could connote unjust state killing of a disadvantaged group. He
compared his usage of the word to We Charge Genocide, a group that opposes
police violence in Chicago.
“We’re talking about a
structure of violent deaths that are state sanctioned, that are without
accountability, and that are ongoing,”
he told JTA.
“We
can say this is what’s happening in Palestine and not equate it with what’s
happening in South America. It doesn’t say it’s the same number of people being
killed or the [same] manner of people being killed.”
T
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