What the Jewish Left Doesn’t Need is Advice that It has No Responsibility for What Zionism and Israel Has Done In Their Name

 A Reply to Shaul Magid’s Argument for Jewish Indifference to Genocide and an Evasion of Responsibility

Shaul Magid is a rabbi, Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, and Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Magid is also an opponent of Jewish anti-Zionism which he argues is irrelevant. Jews opposed to Zionism should turn in on themselves and ignore what is happening in their name.

In his article What Does the Jewish Left Want?, which is reprinted by Jewish Voice for Liberation, Magid argues that the Jewish left should ‘no longer focus on opposition to a state that many in the Jewish Left no longer support.’ In my response below I explain that if it doesn’t focus primarily on Zionism and the Israeli state, then this Jewish left is not only not a genuine left but it has no real purpose.

Shaul Magid

At a time when US and Western Imperialism is using Jewish people as its human shield, its moral alibi for support of the genocide in Gaza, to pretend that solidarity with the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism should be deprioritised is to do exactly what the Zionists want us to do.

It is to argue that Jews should become the bystanders to the slaughter in Gaza. Raul Hilberg excoriated, in Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders, the ‘dull awareness’ and passive indifference of those who looked on as the Jews were exterminated in the holocaust, be they individuals or the Allied countries.

Hilberg spoke of the ‘human wall’ that bystanders had erected, of indifference and social isolation. What Magid is arguing is that Jews on the left should adopt a similar approach today. It is profoundly immoral.

Magid argued, in opposition to Jewish Voice for Peace’s statement adopting an explicitly anti-Zionist position, that they had ignored

a series of real “Zionist” possibilities where “justice and equality” were paramount.

What Magid really wants is to have his cake and eat it. His article is an exercise in self-indulgence. The real question is whether Jewish intellectuals have the courage and honesty to call Zionism out for what it is. Clearly Magid doesn’t possess that courage. Magid says

Many Jews who define themselves as anti-Zionist do not think the state of Israel should cease to exist. Rather, they contest Zionist hegemony.

If that is the case then they are not anti-Zionists and that is Magid’s problem.

For Magid the internal battle within the Jewish community takes precedence over genocide and ethnic cleansing. Is it any wonder that Palestinians get tired of this Jewish preciousness at a time when Palestinian children are being starved to death in the name of Zionism’s Jewish redemption?

If you are an anti-Zionist then Israel as a Jewish state must disappear. Not the people but the state. Israel must become normalised, like any other state. It must be a state of its own citizens, regardless of ethnicity or religion.

Magid accepts that Jewish anti-Zionists reject the idea that ‘Zionism is a requirement for legitimate Jewish identity in the twenty-first century.’’ But then he indulges in a semantic frivolity when he makes:

 ‘an important distinction... between Zionism and Israel. Israel is a country; Zionism is an ideology.’

No.  Zionism is the ideology of the Israeli state. It dictates the imperatives of Zionism, such as ethnic cleansing, Jewish racial purity, Jewish settlement at the Palestinians’ expense. This is a distinction without a difference.

What Magid demonstrates is that he rejects the special characteristic of Zionism as a settler colonial ideology whose aim was to achieve as pure a Jewish state as possible. In the words of Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid:

“My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians”

Quite amazingly Magid goes on to say, without so much as a flicker of awareness, that:

Like most countries Israel will choose how to govern according to will of its citizens, in Israel’s case, mostly, but not exclusively, its Jewish citizens (as those living under occupation have no political agency in the national polity), how to treat its minorities, how to deal with questions of justice and domination.

The whole point of anti-Zionism is that Israel is not like most countries. It is sui generis. Actually most countries don’t govern according to the will of their citizens but their elites and the capitalist ruling class. But let this pass. Magid is not a socialist.

In Israel’s case it pays no heed whatsoever to its Palestinian citizens. In Netanyahu’s words, ‘Israel is a state of its Jewish citizens not all of them’. That is why, being a Jewish state, it continues to dispossess what it calls Arab Israelis from their homes, in particular the destruction of the unrecognised villages of the Bedouin of the Negev such as Umm al-Hiran and Ras Jraba. Has Magid never heard of the policy of Judaisation of the Galilee and Negev, the Koenig Memorandum and Prawer Plan?

Does Magid think that there’s nothing of special interest in the fact that those living under occupation have no civil or political rights despite it being made clear that the West Bank will always remain part of Israel? Has he lost the ability to spell or even recognise the word Apartheid?

Magid quotes Joel Swanson’s assertion that

Historically, Zionism has never been one single concept. It has been a family of arguments, ... To say ‘Zionism’ without adjectives is already to erase its internal diversity.’

Here we really come to the crux of the argument. Shaul Magid’s illusion that there is a nice as well as a nasty Zionism. It is part of a ‘family’ that somehow along the way as it lost its focus or direction.

So let us spell it out for Shaul Magid who is blind to Zionism’s  racist reality. Zionism is what Zionism does. Zionism does not exist in the minds of a fragrant Jewish American Princess who still believes in fairy tales but in the settler attacks on Palestinian villages in the West Bank or the Death to the Arabs riots in Jerusalem each year.

Is there any difference between Herzog and Netanyahu, between Labour and Revisionist Zionism or did they merely argue about the means of achieving and maintaining a Jewish Supremacist state beholden to the West as an armed watchdog?

Magid clings to a Zionism that never existed. In fact cultural and socialist Zionism long ago disappeared in their own contradictions. Socialism is universal. Zionism is particularist. I realised that when I was 16 but Magid has yet to achieve political adolescence.

Magid points to a recent poll in which only a third of American Jews identify as Zionist whereas 88% support the concept of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Clearly there is confusion among American Jews as Israel has proven beyond doubt that it cannot be both Jewish and democratic. Always it is forced to take the former path and jettison the latter, as the Jewish Nation State Law has proved.

The reality is that this was always a dishonest slogan of the hypocritical Zionist ‘left’. When confronted with a choice Zionism always preferred the Jewish to the democratic. In the words of Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of the Knesset, Israel is Democratic for Jews and Jewish for Arabs.

It is this which has allowed Jewish neo-Nazis to become the third largest bloc in the Knesset and for Itamar Ben Gvir to become Police Minister in Israel. It is this which has led to Israeli Police acting like SS storm troopers against Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Israel is a state where torture is the norm (for Palestinians).

Yes there is massive confusion among American Jews but rather than offering clarity Magid seeks to take advantage of that confusion with his ridiculous essay.

Magid says that ‘Zionism served as an escape mechanism for Jews trying to escape a Europe collapsing around them.’ No that is absolutely not true. Haganah sent Feivel Polkes to Nazi Germany to persuade the Gestapo not to allow Jewish emigration to any place but Palestine. In exchange he offered to collaborate with them.

As a result Professor Franz Six, a senior SS official and head of Department II in the SD Main Office, who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for war crimes in April 1948 wrote:

Pressure is being exerted on the Reich Deputation of the Jews in Germany in order to compel Jews emigrating from Germany to head only to Palestine and not to any other country.” [The Secret Contacts, Zionism and Nazi Germany, 1933-1941, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 5 3/4 Spring/Summer 1976]

Ha’avara, the trade agreement between Nazi Germany and the Zionist movement, agreed in August 1933, not only broke the world-wide Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany but it worsened the position for Jews trying to escape to other countries.

The Zionist movement consistently opposed rescue to any country bar Palestine. Magid fails to understand what has been called ‘cruel Zionism.’  See my book Zionism During the Holocaust (to purchase it contact me at tonygreenstein104@gmail.com).

Magid cites Yehiam Weitz’s article, “The Positions of David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Tabenkin Vis-A-Viz the Holocaust of European Jewry” but has failed to understand it. Weitz cites Ben-Gurion on the Jewish refugee problem thus:

‘Both during the 1930s ... and during the second half of the 1940s, after the war's end - his position on this question was determined and indisputable; Ben-Gurion definitively and often crudely opposed ameliorating the position of Jewish groups by means other than their transfer to Palestine. He felt that any 'solution of the national problem outside of Eretz Israel, or ... solving the individual's distress by ignoring the national problem ... [means] undermining the foundations of Zionism and acting  as a temptation  which  every  Zionist  must  learn to  withstand completely.'

When it came to priorities Zionism and building the Jewish state came first. Weitz quotes Ben-Gurion’s notorious statement in the wake of Kristallnacht that if:

'it would be possible to save all the [Jewish] children in Germany by transferring them to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second possibility, because before us is not only the account of these children but the historical account of the Jewish people.’

In other words the interests of building the ‘Jewish’ state took precedence over saving Jewish children from Germany. Magid could also have mentioned Boas Evron’S, Jewish State or Israeli Nation and the fierce opposition to the Evian Conference, called by Eisenhower to solve the Jewish refugee question. Of course it did no such thing but the Zionist leadership were nonetheless frightened.

What Magid didn't mention was the identification with Israel of the far and even neo-Nazi right

Evron quotes the minutes of a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive of 26 June 1938. Ben-Gurion was unremittingly hostile as he declared that

No rationalizations can turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as possible.

A Russia member of the Zionist Executive Menachem Ussishkin was even more forthright

He hoped to hear in Evian that Eretz Israel remains the main venue for Jewish emigration. All other emigration countries do not interest him… The greatest danger is that attempts will be made to find other territories for Jewish emigration. [my emphasis]

These positions are quite clear in the essay he referred to yet Magid scrupulously refrains from mentioning the attitude of the Zionists to saving the Jewish refugees.

Magid asks Can the Jewish Left move beyond Zionism and anti-Zionism?’ and queries whether it can ‘no longer focus on opposition to a state that many in the Jewish Left no longer support?’

Thus missing out the whole point of why Jews on the left make opposition to Israel and Zionism a central focus of their work. Of course Magid knows the reason but refrains from spelling it out. Everything Israel does is in the name of the mythical ‘Jewish people’ and Jews. It is after all a self-proclaimed Jewish state.

It is therefore incumbent upon Jewish socialists and those who are genuinely on the Jewish left to say ‘Not in My Name’. The fact that Magid resiles from this suggests that his membership of the Jewish left is ephemeral.

Of course the Jewish left can do many other things but when being Jewish is one of the primary justifications given for imperialism’s support for Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing it is rank hypocrisy and cowardice not to make that a priority. If the Jewish left cannot focus on Zionism and its claim to represent Jews then it has no relevance.

Magid says that ‘One of the fundamental differences between liberal Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism is the exceptionalism that underlies the case of Israel’. That is of course true.  Liberal Zionists can, in theory, hold progressive positions on domestic American affairs but for Palestine there is an exception (Progressive Except Palestine). But that is increasingly untenable.

What Magid seems to be doing is providing a new way for this exceptionalism to operate by suggesting that Jews on the left simply avoid the issue altogether.

Why would Jews seek to avoid the one area where they have a contribution to make? Does he find it too uncomfortable? The difference between Magid and a self-declared Zionist is that he doesn’t openly defend the Apartheid state whereas ‘liberal’ Zionism does. Instead he makes excuses for it.

Jewish identity post-war has been forged in the crucible of Zionism. Jewish identity has changed for many a substitute religion. Without an alternative explicitly anti-Zionist Jewish identity Jewish identity become at best a self-indulgence and at worst an identity with genocide and racism.

Magid quotes Adi Ophir in his support:  “to become non-Zionist one first must become anti-Zionist.” I wonder if Magid ever thought this through? How about saying that to become a non-racist one must first become an anti-racist. Perhaps our goal is to abstain from confronting racism? This is meaningless nonsense, verbal masturbation.

The fact is that for Jews non-Zionism is, at best, a half-way house to anti-Zionism. Of course being an anti-Zionist also means taking a position against US imperialism and its use of Jews as its moral alibi.

As a final flourish Magid says that

The land between the river and the sea remains the Jewish homeland and the Palestinian homeland. But the domination of one over the other will never yield the flourishing of either.

In this Magid could not be more wrong. He equates the oppressed with their oppressors. Palestine is the home of the Palestinians. It is not a Jewish homeland. My home is where I live, Britain. The United States is the home of millions of Jews. Israel is a settler colonial state that calls itself Jewish only in the racial and ethnic sense. Israel is a state of Jewish Supremacy where Jews, not Palestinians, exercise domination.

The eventual choice that Israeli Jews face is between becoming Jewish Palestinians or leaving. That was the choice that White South Africans faced and we should not make any exception for the Zionist settlers whose crimes far exceed those of White South Africans.

Tony Greenstein

Meet Jessica Elgot - the Guardian & former Jewish Chronicle 'Journalist' Whose Articles are Regurgitated Press Releases

It's a sad commentary on the Guardian which once boasted journalists like Michael Adams and David Hirst that it employs a Zionist Presstitute  

When I read anything by Jessica Elgot I am reminded of that old saying:

You cannot hope

to bribe or twist,

thank God! the

British journalist.

But, seeing what

the man will do

unbribed, there's

no occasion to

You cannot expect every journalist to have the talents of a John Pilger or Jonathan Cook.  However you do expect a certain ethical integrity, to say nothing of intelligence.  Unfortunately Jessica Elgot possesses neither.

What used to distinguish ‘journalists’ on the tabloids from the quality press was the ability to separate fact and opinion. The latter were confined to the Editorial or Comment pages. Jessica Elgot wouldn't even understand this proposition. She is a propagandist. Every piece she writes is biased against understanding. She mistakes cliches for prose from the latest press release.

Today Labour’s National Executive Committee discussed a new Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct. Apparently it has stuck to its guns and rejected the Zionist attacks. Labour NEC defies Chief Rabbi to adopt new anti-Semitism code.

I have already made it clear, as has Labour Against the Witchhunt, which picketed the meeting today, that the new Anti-Semitism Code is weak, based as it is on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.

Elgot's pathetic propaganda masquerading as journalism

The Zionist movement in this country has been waging a campaign against the Code.  After crying about 'antisemitism' for the past 3 years it is afraid that Labour might take it seriously and forget to confuse it with anti-Zionism.

Their complaint is that Labour hasn't adopted the complete IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism. Instead the most egregious examples of the conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have been either omitted or toned down.  The Zionists therefore demand that Labour adopts the whole of this Liar's Charter.

For Elgot and her Zionist compatriots this is unacceptable.  In the words of the Jewish Chronicle’s far-Right editor, Stephen Pollard, the problem with the new Code is that 

‘instead of adopting the definition as agreed by all these bodies, Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’

Lord Bracadale's Recommendation - anti-Zionism is not a hate crime

Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are two completely different things.  Don’t take my word for it. Retired Senior Scottish Judge Lord Bracadale has just completed an Independent Review of Hate Crime Legislation in Scotland.  In his review Lord Bracadale, an Establishment Judge par excellence, no radical he, concludes that you can’t make criticism of Israel and Zionism into a a Protected Characteristic and therefore a hate crime.  You hate people not states.  To make it a criminal offence to criticise Israel would be an outrageous attack on freedom of speech and contrary to Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights. 

In the words of Hugh Tomlinson QC this would have ‘a potential chilling effect’ on free speech.  Of course Zionists and Elgot aren’t in the slightest bit interested in free speech.  All they are bothered about is protecting their bastard offspring, the apartheid State of Israel.

One of the illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’ in the IHRA is describing Israel as a 'racist endeavour'.  As Ahmed  Tibi, an Arab member of Israel’s Knesset asks in Middle East Eye,  how else do you describe a state where nearly 1,000 towns and communities are Jewish only, where a Bill is before the Knesset to legalise the segregation of communities and where attempts by Arabs to buy houses in ‘Jewish towns’ are met with demonstrations by the residents wanting to keep their towns all White Jewish.  A situation where 93% of the land is national, i.e. Jewish national land.

One wonders what Elgot and the Board of Deputies would say if, in Britain, there was a Christian National Fund which owned and controlled 93% of land and refused, on principle, to sell or lease its property to Jews or non-Christians.  Ant-semitic or merely defending Christian identity?

Israel is a state where mobs chant ‘Death to the Arabs’ without any penalty whatsoever, whereas an Arab poet, Dareen Tatour is facing a lengthy prison sentence for talking about ‘resistance’ in a poem.  Racist?  You judge. 

But to the despicable Elgot, who masquerades as a journalist, none of this matters. She like her editors is devoted to one thing only – selling Israeli Apartheid as a Western Democracy.

For reasons unknown Jessica decided to block me

It is no surprise, that in the course of researching this article, I found that Ms Elgot had blocked me on Twitter even though we have never exchanged a single word.  I can’t imagine why should want to block me but I’ll take it as a compliment that I have been blocked by a racist.

The moral of the story?  As long as the Guardian employs people like Elgot no self-respecting anti-racist or socialist should buy The Guardian.

Below is a letter I have sent to the Guardian on Elgot’s latest piece.  I don’t expect it to be published!

Letter I have sent to the Guardian concerning Elgot's fake news article

Anti-Semitism and Labour: Muzzling free speech silences rightful criticism of Israel

Longstanding Knesset member Ahmad Tibi urges Labour not to change its definition of anti-Semitism at its meeting on Tuesday

The British Labour Party’s recent efforts to define anti-Semitism, and to put clear water between a racist act (which is a criminal offence) and legitimate criticism of Israel, is deeply appreciated by those who strive for truth and justice.

Conversely, the push by supporters of Israel to bully and browbeat the Labour Party into adopting a distorted definition of anti-Semitism is sad and disheartening.

“It is impossible to understand why Labour refuses to align itself with this universal definition,” complained the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the UK’s Jewish Leadership Council.

The definition’s controversial examples are not even accepted as such by the man who wrote it

The second half of this sentence is patently false. These groups’ desired definition, through politically slanted examples, is most definitely not a universally accepted test to decide which statements should be struck from the political discourse – and for good reason.

Five years ago, the Fundamental Rights Agency – the European Union body dedicated to combatting racism and discrimination – dropped the definition from its website.

In fact, the definition’s controversial examples are not even accepted as such by the man who wrote it.

As Kenneth Stern, the lawyer and lead author of the document explained in a 2016 op-ed in the New York Times, the text was only ever “intended for data collectors writing reports about anti-Semitism in Europe. It was never supposed to curtail speech”.

The fog of 'whataboutery'

Now on to the first claim, that it is “impossible to understand” why the UK Labour Party, or any body dedicated to human rights and opposed to racial hatred, would reject the definition or associated examples championed by pro-Israel groups.

Allow me, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to explain why this definition of anti-Semitism is problematic in the extreme, and why it amounts to an attempt to muzzle public discourse on the rights of Palestinian people.

Anger at the Labour Party stems not from its decision to accept the broad definition of anti-Semitism written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), but its refusal to accept four examples of anti-Semitism which relate explicitly to Israel. These are:

• “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”
• "Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations”
• “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”
• "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”

The first of these examples is just an eloquent ”whataboutery". Responding to reports about state racism, Israel’s defenders cry out: "What about Syria? What about Saudi Arabia? What about Iran?"

Of course, these aren’t honest appeals to discuss the alleged crimes of those other countries, but rather, efforts to derail discussion of Israel’s. No victim of racism should ever be required to compile lists of other equally reprehensible acts of racism, just to earn the right to describe their own suffering.

If other countries are guilty of similar or worse crimes, they should also be called out for those crimes. The responsibility to do so, however, falls on every single citizen, every political actor.

Any effort to burden those who would advocate Palestinian rights with the demand that they first lobby for the rights of every other aggrieved group in the world is nothing more than a strategy to silence them, and to ensure Israeli impunity.

Where are rights for Palestinians?

Another way Palestinians are being silenced is with the assertion that those who accuse the State of Israel of inherent racism, of being a “racist endeavour“, are really inciting hatred of Jews in general and wherever they happen to live. Founding the state was the common wish of Jewish people, say supporters of Israel: denying that wish amounts to anti-Semitism.

In fact, creating a state that would give preferential treatment to Jews over others, including over the indigenous Palestinian people, was a minority opinion among Jews around the world before Israel was established.

Since the state’s founding in 1948, admittedly, Jews who support a territory of their own in Palestine have grown in number and proportion.

Still, no right of self-determination could ever supercede the right to equal treatment of every other person living on the land. Why should support for Israel – even if such support was unanimous among Jewry around the world – absolve Israel of racism at its core? 

At the time of Israel’s creation, its founding fathers drove out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and did not permit them to return when hostilities had ended. They refuse a right of return to this day. In the seven decades that followed, there was only a single year in which Israel did not control the Palestinian masses that remained by military occupation.

Palestinians now make up a majority of the population in all the territories Israel controls, but only a quarter of those people are accorded citizenship, and even they are subject to discrimination by at least 66 state laws.

Almost 1,000 villages and towns in Israel – more than three-quarters of the total – do not permit non-Jews to live within them.

To ensure that Israel’s High Court cannot quash any of these laws that discriminate against non-Jews, the Netanyahu government is now advancing new legislation which would sanctify the superior status of Jews in Israel.

These and many more travesties of justice are not bugs of the Jewish state; they are features of it. Where then are the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination, after the State of Israel has systematically eliminated them?

The hatred against Palestinians and others

In recent years, though, the elected and appointed leaders of Israeli Jews have incited hatred against Palestinians, African refugees, non-Jews in general, even against Israeli Jews who are not sufficiently nationalist in their eyes.

It gives me no pleasure to write this, but it must be clearly stated for the record: of late, top Israeli political and religious leaders have even incited genocide against the Palestinian people. Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef ruled in March that non-Jewish people, including Palestinians, have no right to live in the country.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said in May 2015 that all Palestinian people, including mothers and babies, are enemies who must be destroyed.

Most worrisome, this racist rhetoric is increasingly influencing the Israeli public, shifting it further and further to the far right. What human rights horrors could this lead to, if left unchecked?

In May 2014, Israel’s most highly respected author, Amos Oz, used a variation on the N-word to describe the country’s Jewish supremacists. “We also have Hebrew neo-Nazi groups,” Oz said. “There is nothing the modern-day neo-Nazis in Europe do that those groups don’t do here.”

Baby  Ali Dawabsheh was burnt alive with his parents and his surviving brother when his home was firebombed by neo-Nazi settlers - at the trial this month of the perpetrators, his supporters turned up to taunt his grandfather 'Ali is dead, Ali is on the grill' - the Police chose not to intervene

Just weeks later, some of those neo-Nazis kidnapped Mohammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem, beat him, forced gasoline down his throat, and burned him to death from the inside out. In July 2015, another group of Hebrew neo-Nazis firebombed a Palestinian home in the West Bank, murdering the Dawabsheh family’s father, mother and one-year-old baby.

In recent weeks, I accompanied the baby’s grandfather to court to support him in his quest for justice. Meanwhile, my fellow deputy speaker of the Knesset, Bezalel Smotrich, accompanied to court the young Israeli men on trial for committing the murders.

Khan al Ahmar where Israeli soldiers are grapping with residents whose homes they are intending to demolish

Two years ago on Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day itself – the Israeli army’s deputy chief of staff, Major General Yair Golan, told a group of assembled soldiers: “If there's something that frightens me about Holocaust remembrance, it's the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then – 70, 80 and 90 years ago – and finding signs of them here among us today in 2016.”

Golan’s harsh observations were not divorced from reality, but rather, reflected it accurately. A Pew poll published just two months earlier found that four-fifths of Israeli Jews want the state to accord them more legal rights than Palestinian citizens of Israel, and half – half! – of Israeli Jews want to strip non-Jews of their citizenship, and to outright deport them.

Stifling free speech ensures racism continues

This state of affairs is nothing to be happy about; like other public figures, I regret to inform you of it. But I am left with no choice: unless you are made aware of these frightening facts, there is no chance that these trends can be curbed, and reversed, so that ultimately, everyone living in the land can enjoy the equal rights they are entitled to, Jew and Gentile, Israeli and Palestinian.

The Labour Party’s new statement, which slams anti-Semitism but defends criticism of Israel, is a huge improvement over the anti-Palestinian policy that preceded it, and should be praised as such.

Attempts by the Labour Party or any other body to stifle free speech about Israeli racism will only ensure that the racism continues and increases unabated.

Ahmad Tibi is the most senior Arab MK, having served since 1999. He is one of the founders of the Arab Movement for Renewal (Hatenua Ha'Aravit le Hithadshut, or Ta’al) and a member of the Joint List (Hadash, Ra'am, Balad, Ta'al). In 1993, after the signing of the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat, then-chairman of the Palestinian Authority, appointed Tibi as his special adviser. Since his election to the Knesset, Ahmad Tibi has managed to pass 12 laws, most of which focus on social, economic and consumer issues. In 2010, Tibi gave a speech about the Holocaust, which then-Speaker Reuven Rivlin called “the finest speech ever given in the history of the Knesset”.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. 

How sick can they get? Judeo-Nazi settlers celebrate the burning alive of a Palestinian child at the trial of his killers whilst the Police stand idly by

For writing a poem calling on fellow Arabs to “resist the settlers robbery” Israeli Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour is facing gaol. Palestinians on Facebook who make any anti-Israel comment are regularly arrested for ‘incitement’ unlike Israelis who are never prosecuted. 

Similarly Sheikh Raeed Saleh, leader of the Northern Islamic League was gaoled for 9 months for ‘incitement’ and is facing further terms of imprisonment for having led the resistance to Israel’s attacks on Muslim worshippers at the Golden Dome and Al Aqsa mosque. 

No attempt was made by the Police to take down this banner and prosecute those holding it.  But a demonstration against the murder of Gaza's protestors was violently attacked in Tel Aviv

By way of contrast Israeli Jews who incite and threaten violence, including chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’ are never prosecuted.  The two rabbis, Yitzhak Shapira and Josef Elitzur, who authored Torat HaMelech, a religious handbook of when it is permitted to kill non-Jews, including children and infants, have never faced any charges. Israel’s High Court upheld the Attorney General’s decision not to prosecute the rabbis for incitement to racial hatred.

You can get the flavour of the book from the following article:

‘Many saw the book as justifying violence against Palestinians and Arabs. One chapter states that the prohibition of “Thou shalt not kill” does not apply to a Jew who kills a gentile. It also claims that it is permitted to kill an enemy during a state of war even if he poses no threat. In addition to a chapter on the spiritual inferiority of non-Jews, the authors write that even noncombatants and children, if they are non-Jewish, may be killed in war.

But when supporters of the murder of little baby Ali Dawabshe taunt his grandfather with the most obscene, Nazi-like comments about his grandson being ‘grilled’ Israel’s police stood idly by, which is a eloquent testimony to the embedded racism of Israel’s Police.

Palestinian child Ahmed Dawabsheh can be seen in hospital receiving treatment after being burnt alive by Israeli settlers [file photo]

In 2015 the home of the Dawabshehs was set alight by Molotov cocktails in the early hours of the morning.  The father and mother both died from their burns as did 18 month old Ali.  4 year old Mohammed suffered severe burns but survived. Israel’s authorities denied him ‘anti-terrorism’ compensation because the family were not Jewish.

Nonetheless after world wide outrage some of what is known as the hilltop youth were arrested and some were tortured.  Although Palestinians are regularly tortured this was a first for Jews and for once the settlers poured forth their outrage – not at torture per se of course but at the fact that Jews were tortured.

Below is an article by Jonathan Ofir, an exiled Israeli musician on these horrors.

Settlers, the 'hilltop youth' demonstrate their perverted lust

Ali is on the grill!’ Israeli settlers celebrate burning of Palestinian baby

Jonathan Ofir June 21

Hussein Dawabshe, with his grandson Ahmad, in 2016.

There’s something particularly disturbing about celebrating the burning alive of a baby.

This is precisely what Israeli Jewish settlers were doing yesterday, outside the court in Lod.“’Ali was burned, where is Ali? Ali is on the grill!”, they chanted, in reference to the 18-month old baby Ali Dawbsheh, who was burnt alive by Jewish terrorists in the West Bank town of Duma in 2015. Ali’s mother Riham and father Saad died of their wounds a few weeks later. Of the family of four, only 5-year-old Ahmad survived the arson with severe burns.

The terror-supporters were actually taunting Ali’s grandfather, Hussein Dawabshe, who was attending a preliminary hearing at which the court decided to indict one adult suspect who confessed to the murders, as well as a minor who was an accomplice. Hussein was accompanied by Palestinian-Israeli lawmakers Ayman Odeh and Ahmed Tibi. Tibi posted the video of the chanting, with policemen standing by doing nothing, and wrote:

Settler Youth demonstrate outside the court wishing that Mohammed had also died

 “Where’s Ali? There’s no Ali. Ali is burned. On the fire. Ali is on the grill” – all this was thrown at our face – including at the grandfather Dawbsheh concerning his 18-month-old grandson by the riff raff of ‘price tag’. In front of us stood policemen and officers and did nothing. No words…

The terror supporters also referred to the other family members: “Where is Ali? Where is Riham? Where is Saad? It’s too bad Ahmed didn’t burn as well.”

Death to the Arabs is never prosecuted in Israel - if Arabs were to chant 'Death to the Jews' then not only would they be prosecuted but we would have Zionist organisations the world over telling us that this terrible antisemitism is proof that the Arabs hate us

This is certainly not the first time that the burning of this baby was celebrated. In December 2015, a video showing dozens of wedding guests celebrating the arson went public via Channel 10. The guests are seen dancing with Molotov cocktails, knives and guns, and stabbing a photo of baby Ali Dawabsheh. The wedding couple was said to be “very well known in the radical right”. Following widespread public outrage, Netanyahu distanced himself from the event, saying that these were “shocking images” which “show the true face of a group that constitutes a danger”, but he also provided the “many sides” narrative:

“That is not the proud religious Zionism that contributes to the state, and whose sons serve in the elite units in the army… It is also impossible to compare the scope of that terror with Arab terror. In the last month they [Arabs] carried out hundreds of attacks against us, and we saw just a few Jewish terrorist attacks.”

A year later, 13 people from what became known as the “murder wedding” were indicted for incitement to terrorism.

Meanwhile, last month, in what was probably much less noticed, the Dawabsheh family home was torched once again:

“A group of settlers attacked my home at dawn today, breaking a window and throwing a Molotov cocktail inside before fleeing the scene,” Yasser Dawabsheh said. “We were lucky that I was able to hear them when they attacked, so I was able to evacuate all my family,” he said. “Fire crews reacted quickly and put out the fire before the whole house burnt down…”

The defense had made a central issue of the torture that was applied in the early interrogations close to the time of the arson, and this was a can of worms for the court. 

The defendants made an issue of their interrogations by Shin Bet officers, saying that they were tortured. In fact, the settlers had held a press conference to this effect at the very same hall in which the “murder wedding” was held. 

The court announced at yesterday’s preliminary hearing that confessions obtained under torture by the Shin Bet interrogators would not be admissible, but that later confessions would be admissible. Haaretz note:

“If the confessions had been declared admissible, they probably would have ended in a conviction of the two suspects, legal experts had said. The rejection is a blow to the State Prosecutor’s Office as it will now be more difficult to obtain a conviction.”

Of course, Israel and the court refer to torture with euphemisms such as “moderate physical pressure” and “special methods”. But it’s torture – and the Haaretz coverage is clear about that, and even charts out some of the torture methods. The thing is, that torture (under whatever euphemism) is legal in Israel under certain circumstances, known as the “ticking bomb” scenario – where there is knowledge of other network members at large, who are bound to perpetrate an attack. Haaretz:

“Law enforcement agencies said the interrogation was justified because the two suspects had knowledge about a group that sought to perpetrate similar attacks. In the event, there were two failed attempts to commit similar attacks.”

So is the court now saying that torture is not permissible under any circumstance?

In 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that torture was permissible under those ‘special circumstances.’ The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) slammed it, saying the ruling was interpreted by the Shin Bet as a green light to torture almost every Palestinian detainee. “Today in Israel, there is no effective barrier – not legal and certainly not ethical – that stands in the way of using torture. A secret service organization such as the GSS (Shin Bet) decides independently to use torture and, afterwards, investigates itself as to whether the use of interrogation was justified,” the committee said.

Israel has effectively been permitting torture in various modes. In 1987 the Landau commission overtly legalized torture. This prompted the outspoken scientist Yeshayahu Leibowitz to call Supreme Court judge Moshe Landau a “Judeo-Nazi”. Israel has wandered back and forth with the legality and its more or less overt modes, but the practices have continued.

Yet now the Lod court is effectively saying that confessions from such practices are simply inadmissible under any circumstances. Would this also apply to Palestinians? This is doubtfully the case. The court is only a District Court, and it is only relating to this particular case, which happens to involve Jewish – not Palestinian – terrorists.

Judge Ruth Lorach was particularly effusive in her appraisal of the “special methods.” She said, “These methods have hurt the basic rights of the defendants in a severe manner – rights concerning preservation of the wholeness of the body and soul, and they have hurt their dignity.” 

(This quote is notably only to be found in the Hebrew version of the Haaretz coverage).

So how much “dignity” are Palestinians really going to get from all this?

The virulently hateful scenes outside the court yesterday did not bode well.

Ahmed Tibi told Ynet that he asked police officers to do something about those chanting and taunting, but that they responded with indifference.

“What would have happened had the situation been reversed?”, he asked. “If 20 Arab youths were shouting about a Jewish fatality ‘he’s on the grill, he’s burning’? How many of them would have gone home with broken legs? How many would have been arrested?” Tibi wondered. “Part of the reason it was horrifying was the police’s indifference, like nothing had happened,” he explained. “They (the police) could have at least removed them from the court. (No need) to break legs. Legs are only broken to Arabs in Haifa, not to Jews. But they could have at least removed them,” he added.

Tibi notes that there were expressions of disgust from across the political spectrum, but silence at its top:

“But lo and behold—not a single minister (said anything), not Miri Regev [minister of culture], not Yisrael Katz [minister of intelligence], not Ayelet Shaked [justice minister], not Naftali Bennett [education minister] and in particular not the prime minister, who knows how to retweet awful things. He remained quiet instead of condemning this sickening phenomenon”.

See Jewish extremists taunt ‘Ali’s on the grill’ at slain toddler’s relatives