Who does the Sunday Times and the popular press
accuse of anti-Semitism? The Palestinian demonstration!!
The demonstration last Saturday was the
largest Palestinian that has ever been held in Britain. Some 200,000 people took part. The mass media
looked desperately for signs of anti-Semitism. According to The
Standard the rally was ‘hijacked by anti-Semitic protesters’. I have to confess that I didn’t see any sign of the stormtroopers!
Why this concern over ‘anti-Semitism’? The mass media are desperate to discredit supporters of the Palestinians. What was this 'antisemitism'? Protestors who ‘held placards displaying swastikas and references to Nazis.’ The inference from the headlines was that some of the demonstration were proudly displaying the swastika.
There is NOTHING anti-Semitic in these posters - they are not saying Hitler was right but that Hitler like the Zionists are evil
Did the placards say ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘Jews to the gas chambers’? According to The Sunday Times those placards read ‘Stop doing what Hitler
did to you.’ Another read “Israel, the new Nazi state”. One placard referred to ‘Holocaust party 2’. Now these
demonstrators might be accused of hyperbole or exaggeration but they were not in the slightest
anti-Semitic. They were comparing the evils of Hitler to the evils of Zionism.
Saying ‘Stop doing what Hitler did to
you’ is what holocaust
survivors have said. Is that anti-Semitic? The Murdoch Press and the Mail were desperate
to find ‘anti-Semitism’.
However the next day at the Israel Genocide
demonstration, racism was certainly on display. Tommy Robinson, the
Islamaphobic bigot, former member of the holocaust denying BNP and associate
of neo-Nazis was welcomed onto the demonstration, which was less
than a thousand strong. Britain’s Jewish community had given this celebration
of genocide a big no.
My letter to the Sunday Times pointing out their hypocrisy over racism
Despite the attempts of the major Zionist organisations to pretend that Robinson was not welcome it is clear from the film that the Zionist rank and file welcomed him with open arms. The Community Security Trust which stewards these demonstrations has never hesitated to manhandle anti-Zionist protestors. How come it allowed Robinson to participate?
The Jewish News exposed the problem of Zionist support for Tommy Robinson when it quoted a number of Zionists:
One pro-Israel activist, who goes under the pseudonym
Nick from Enfield, and who attended the demo tweeted: “Tommy was invited … he
came was polite he was supportive he was great unlike the disgusting supporters
of palestinians who were chasing Jews around the streets.'
“We need all the friends we can get as Jews we are
outnumbered and we welcome TR.”
Another demo attendee posted: “Thanks Tommy – how
times change.”
One leading Jewish community Facebook page took
down discussion about Robinson’s presence at the demo.
According to the Campaign Against Antisemitism Tommy Robinson too is fighting 'antisemitism'!!
It is clear that support for Tommy Robinson
and his Islamaphobia is strong amongst British Zionists as I have said
for many years.
The Twickenham Springbok Demonstration I attended as a school student
The Tectonic Plates of Zionism are Shifting
In 1969, when I took part in my first
demonstration against the South African Springbok Rugby
Tour, little did I realise that 25
years later we would see the first Black majority rule government.
A protest in Be'er Sheva in the Negev - right-wing thugs circulated messages calling on members to attack Arabs as the police stand by
The year 2021, a year which saw the
election of a bona fide Jewish Nazi, Itamar ben-Gvir
to Israel’s Knesset, may well be the beginning of the end for the Apartheid regime
in Tel Aviv. Zionism has become more and more atavistic as it reverts to the
most primitive and barbaric forms of colonialism.
Unprovoked police violence against a Palestinian in Umm el Fahm - will these bastards be prosecuted? Of course not. Violence against Palestinians is not a crime in Israel
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pogrom in Bat Yam - which the Israeli police allowed to happen
After having boasted for years that
Israeli Arabs were equal citizens in Israel we now see the true mentality of Zionism.
As Israeli Palestinians took part in demonstrations and protests against the
threatened eviction of the inhabitants of Sheikh Jarrar and against the
invasion by Israel’s military of Al Aqsa mosque, Jewish vigilante groups and
settlers, aided by the police, began a series of pogroms in mixed cities such
as Bat Yam and Lydd.
Today the
Israeli Police are rounding up hundreds of Palestinians in Israel for having
attacked Jews whilst conspicuously
ignoring the far greater attacks by the settlers. The Times of Israel reports
that 70% of those arrested are Arabs but Aida
Touma-Sliman a Joint List MK estimated it was closer to 90 percent.
New York's Huge Demonstration on Palestine
When Palestinian students at Ben Gurion
University in the Negev tried to hold a demonstration against the bombing of
Gaza they were first attacked
by the Police and then subject to a pogrom by fellow Israeli Jewish students
chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’. Many of them have fled back home in fear of
their lives. Noone has been arrested.
The Colombian contingent on Palestinian demonstration was loud and enthusiastic - they too are victims of American imperialism
Electronic Intifada reports
that these attacks on Palestinians were coordinated via social media groups. One Telegram user wrote
People from Holon, Bat Yam and Rishon Lezion go out
to bring war. We are no longer Jews today. Today we are Nazis.
Israel is a leftover from the days of
European fascism. The settlers claim a ‘god given right’ to expel Palestinians
because god gave them the land. Such a claim, like fascist ideology, is irrational.
Rights derive from the societies which people belong to. These people claim
their ‘rights’ from a mythical past and a god whose word is unchallengeable. As
Thomas Jefferson wrote,
democracy and
worship of the past are incompatible.
Brave demonstrators at Elbit's Leicester factory - Palestine Solidarity Campaign refuse to support them out of political cowardice
Sometimes time appears to stand still.
Nothing seems to change. At other times years pass in minutes. Today we seem to
be entering the latter phase. We are living in a time of great social and
political movements even if it is hard to gauge their importance at the time.
Itamar Gvir - the Judeo-Nazi who has been elected to the Israeli Knesset and is now part of the government coalition
The murder of George Floyd last year unleashed the largest political movement in the history of the USA. Over 25 million people marched for racial justice and against White Supremacy. It was inevitable that the Black Lives Matter movement and the movement for justice in Palestine would coincide. At root the causes are the same, just as they were half a century ago when the fight of the Black Panthers reflected the fight against White Supremacy in South Africa.
Jack Mendel, the Jewish News Political Correspondent speaks of non-existent antisemitism at the Palestinian rally but admits shame that neo-Nazi Robinson attended the Israeli demonstration. He should now ask why.
The connections between White Supremacy
in the USA and Jewish Supremacy in Israel are particularly close. The Israeli
Police have been teaching
their American counterparts the finer arts of how to kill, choke and strangle for
years. The majority of such training is organised
by the Zionist Anti-Defamation League, which portrays itself an anti-racist
group but which last year was subject to a successful
boycott when it sought to train Starbucks
staff. ADL previously has infiltrated and spied on the left and anti-racists going
so far as to act
on behalf of the South Africa
secret police BOSS.
The Lies of the Sunday Times - whose Stupid Reporters Can't Even Recognise the Difference Between Support & Opposition to Antisemitism
Despite the fulminations and tantrums
of Donald Trump and his supporters, with his violent attacks on Antifa and
anti-racist protestors in Portland, Washington and other cities, including the
killing of at least 3 anti-fascists, Joe Biden swept to power on the coat tails
of BLM. But for the death of George Floyd it is likely that Trump would be in
his second term now.
Why the Delegitimisation of Israel is a Palestinian priority
In 2010 in response to the growing
success of BDS, the Reut
Report was commissioned by the Reut
Institute and ADL. It described ‘delegitimisation’ as an existentialist threat
to the Israeli state. Point 9 of the Report stated
that:
A tipping point in this context would be a paradigm shift
from the Two-State Solution to the One-State Solution as the consensual
framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Trafalgar Square - a carnival of multiracism unlike the Whites only Zionist demonstration
The Two State Solution is the Apartheid
solution - Bantustanisation. Point 11 envisaged that
‘The issue of Israel's Arab citizens may become the next ‘outstanding issue' driving delegitimization in the event that an Israeli-Palestinian Permanent Status Agreement is secured
Electronic
Intifada provides a useful analysis of the Report.
What then
is meant by delegitimisation? The main fear of Zionism and the defenders of
Israel is not criticism of particular policies, it is criticism which
challenges the Jewish supremacist nature of the Israeli state, Zionism. The
Israeli state in its settlement drive, house demolitions and ethnic
cleansing has demonstrated why, despite the best hasbara, Israel is a settler colonial state.
The
strategy of fighting delegitimisation found its expression in the IHRA Misdefinition of Anti-Semitism. The IHRA had no problem with ‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other
country’. What the IHRA called anti-Semitism was ‘requiring of it [Israel] a behavior not
expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.’ This was of course disingenuous
since there are no ethno-religious democratic states.
Israel’s headlong rush to the Zionist right,
which unlike the Zionist left at least has the merit of honesty, signals that Zionism
is no longer concerned to hide the reality of a Jewish state. The leader of
Religious Zionism group, Bezalel Smotrich spelt it out when stated that
“Arabs are citizens of Israel, for now, at
least. They have representatives, MKs, for now at least.’
One of the most remarkable aspects of the war
on Gaza was that Palestinian Israelis came out en masse for the first time. The attacks on Al Aqsa mosque by
Israeli police struck a raw nerve. Al Aqsa and the Golden Dome are as much
political as religious symbols.
What this has done is expose ‘co-existence’ in
Israel for the sham it is. Israeli Palestinians have been accepted into a
‘Jewish’ state only as long as they accepted their guest status. The minute
that they demand equality they are attacked with the full force of the
Israeli state. Last week, for the first time since 1936 there was an Arab
General Strike that encompassed the West Bank and Israel.
What is happening in Israel today is a problem
for its defenders in the West. The old days when apologists for Zionist
Apartheid like Emily Thornberry could proclaim that ‘Israel
stands out as a beacon of freedom and democracy’ are over.
Palestine
is NOT a human rights issue
The approach of many supporters of the
Palestinians is to believe that it is simply a human rights issue. People like
Caroline Lucas MP raise questions of Israel’s human rights abuses
whilst supporting a Jewish state. We have to be clear. Our opposition to Israel
is not simply about its human rights record. There are worse countries in the
world when it comes to human rights such as Burma and now India.
Israel like South Africa is a state based
on racial supremacy. That was what set Nazi Germany apart, long before the holocaust.
The colour of your skin or your religious affiliation dictates your rights and
privileges. As Albert Luthuli, the founder of the ANC said, you can change your
politics but not the colour of your skin.
What Zionism fears is not a challenge
to individual Israeli policies but to its existence as a Jewish Supremacist
State. Any organisation claiming to support Palestine solidarity cannot avoid
the Jewish nature of the Israeli state. It would be like opposing, 50 years ago, human
rights abuses in South Africa whilst supporting Apartheid.
To be a supporter of the Palestinians you
must also oppose Zionism, the ideology of that state. It is the myth that Zionism
is an integral part of being Jewish or part of Jewish identity that we have to
explode. Zionism is not an inherent part of being Jewish. The first Zionists
weren’t Jewish but Christian Evangelists or Dispensationists.
2021 is the Year of Challenging the
Legitimacy of the Israeli State and Zionism
In January of this year the largest Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem issued a report This is Apartheid: A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Allegations that Israel was an Apartheid State were once confined to the outer fringes of political debate. B’Tselem’s Report has brought this into the mainstream. As its Director, Hagai el-Ad wrote
One cannot live a single
day in Israel-Palestine without the sense that this place is constantly being
engineered to privilege one people, and one people only: the Jewish
people.
At the end of April Human Rights Watch issued
a 231 page report which was even more damning - A
Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and
Persecution. This time the mass
media could not ignore the story. I
understand a third report along the same lines is due to be issued by Amnesty
International.
The game is up for Zionism and its
bastard child, Israel. For as long as the Israeli Labour Party was in charge of
the Israeli state it was able to hide Israel’s apartheid character. The
kibbutzim were even seen as a radical social experiment rather than ethnic cleansers. But the advent of Likud dictated that politics and Israeli reality
would sooner or later come into line.
The
first shock to Israel’s left wing supporters was the Lebanon invasion in 1982
when Tony Benn and Eric Heffer resigned from Labour Friends of Israel. Today
Netanyahu has personally acted as the midwife to the election of Religious
Zionism, a Judeo-Nazi party. The illusion that Israel is a democracy has
disappeared. Only Keir Starmer and the Tories still cling to it.
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The far-right 'charity' Campaign Against Antisemitism cries 'antisemitism' whilst ignoring the welcome given to Tommy Robinson by the Zionist demonstrators
Israel’s Fightback
No one of sound mind
can today pretend that Israel is a democratic state. Even John McDonell, who
went along with the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign inside the Labour Party, now supports
BDS and calls Israel an apartheid state. The campaign against Corbyn
temporarily rehabilitated the Israeli state but the recent attacks on
worshippers in Al Aqsa mosque and the proposed ethnic cleansing of Sheikh
Jarrar and then the blitzkrieg on Gaza have undone all of that.
We are at a turning point
Jonathan Freedland has fronted the fake
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign for the past 5 years, turning the Guardian into a Zionist rag. He has been their Zionist gatekeeper. Freedland, an archetypal
liberal Zionist has recently been fretting about the state of affairs in
Israel. In his Jewish Chronicle column he objected
to the nomination of an open racist, former Israeli General Effi Eitam, as the
next Chair of Yad Vashem, Israel’s holocaust propaganda museum.
Eitam is on record as supporting the completion of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian population. He also presided over the beating to death of a Palestinian prisoner. As such you would have thought he was eminently suitable to chair Yad Vashem, which has welcomed all manner of fascists and anti-Semites through its doors. Freedland wrote, quoting a petition against Eitam that:
appointing Eitam, given his history of “hateful rhetoric,”
would make Yad Vashem an object of “mockery and a disgrace.” It would be an act
of reckless self-harm, turning an institution that currently enjoys deep
international respect into a prime target for protest and boycott.
Freedland has also been worrying
recently that the fiction of Israeli Jewish-Arab coexistence is dead. People
often forget that settler colonial states are usually ruled by stupid and brutal politicians whose only answer to a crisis is repression. That was
true in South Africa and it is true in Israel today. That is why the situation
is not going to return to what Freedland terms ‘normal’. Today's politicians in Israel are as thick as their Afrikaaner counterparts were.
Freedland, who dishonestly ran the Guardian
campaign attacking Corbyn for Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ because anti-Zionism
challenged the pro-Israel identity of most British Jews, has now, it would
appear woken up to the monster he has been defending. In what for him was an
unusually perceptive article, he noted that Israel
should take note: the weight of opinion is turning against it.
Therein lies the problem.
Despite the use of the IHRA to outlaw
the idea that Israel is an Apartheid State, it is fast becoming an accepted truth.
The recent Gaza attack by Israel was, in his view, a ‘strategic
disaster’. The demands of
Black Lives Matter have crossed over to the Palestine solidarity movement with
placards proclaiming that Palestine Lives Matter and Palestine Can’t Breathe.
Freedland is a ‘liberal’ Zionist who is
prepared to put up with any iniquity on behalf of his beloved 'Jewish' State. The only
problem is that others aren’t. As he sees it the writing is already on the wall
for Israel. It cannot continue along the
path to the far-right because it won’t survive another attempt to
ethnically cleanse the Palestinians.
You can’t stop
colonisation half-way. Its either all or nothing. Sheikh Jarrar is part of the
Master Plan to ‘Judaise’ Jerusalem. That is how Israel has always behaved. Zionism without ethnic cleansing is like trying to play cricket without a ball!
What worries Freedland is that the
ground is moving underneath the feet of the Zionists. In the United States, a
bastion of bipartisan support for Israel, things are changing. He writes
that
‘No less striking than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez branding
Israel an “apartheid
state” was this week’s move by
longtime pro-Israel Democrats in Congress to delay
the transfer of an arms
package to Israel.
It is this which explains the new willingness of the
Guardian to carry articles that it wouldn’t have a year ago. Chris McGreal, who
authored two long pieces in the Guardian Worlds
apart and Brothers
in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria, both of which outraged the Zionists
15 years ago has now come back to remind people that Boycotts
and sanctions helped rid South Africa of apartheid – is Israel next in line?
There is also Nesrine Malik’s article
2 days ago. Whether this represents a genuine change by the Guardian or it is
simply adapting to a changing political climate remains to be seen.
Ha’aretz, the liberal
Zionist Israeli paper is also worried
that Israel is becoming a new Yugoslavia. The New York Times, long seen as the
bastion of Zionism is also slowly changing. First they got
rid of Bari Weiss, the Opinion Editor and Zionist gatekeeper and then four
days ago they finally printed a piece Life
Under Occupation: The Misery at the Heart of the Conflict which describes
what life is like for Palestinians under occupation.
Liberal Zionists face
the choice of either digging in, like Freedland, or moving to the left like
Peter Beinart, who has disowned a Jewish State. As
Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Jewish Nazi explained years ago,
Israel can either be a Jewish state or a Democratic state. It cannot be both. And that is the dilemma that faces liberal
Zionists.
For Freedland a Jewish
State must survive at any price, even at the cost of apartheid. For
Beinart this is unacceptable. It is our job in the solidarity movement to widen
these fissures not help our opponents as Palestine Solidarity Campaign does.
Tony Greenstein
Below are more pictures of the huge London demonstration
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