The IHRA’s Sole Purpose is to Justify Racism, Ethnic Cleansing & Genocide
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Holocaust Survivor, Stephen Kapos, Tells Owen Jones: Israel Is Committing Genocide
This Friday we will be holding a webinar on the IHRA, the misdefinition
of anti-Semitism which has been used to chill free speech on Palestine and is
now being used to justify the genocide in Gaza.
Its lead drafter, American academic Kenneth Stern testified to Congress in November 2017 that ‘The definition was not drafted, and was never intended,
as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus’. Yet this is was what happened, as Stern admits.
He then wrote an article that accused rightwing Jews of ‘weaponizing it’,
Let us not forget the 'two nice
Jewish boys' laughing & joking about exterminating Palestinians in Gaza
like the little Nazis they are. The British media and establishment pretend
this does not happen, Mark Rowley the racist Commissioner of the Met say Nazi
comparisons are offensive, yet this podcast is Israel's oldest and most popular
The IHRA has been
used on numerous occasions to restrict or close down free speech on Palestine.
That was why Gavin Williamson, the former toilet salesman who became Education
Secretary, forced universities to adopt the definition under threat of losing
their funding. Williamson was an early version of Trump and equally ignorant.
The good thing about the IHRA, at least if you are
an anti-Semite, is that it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. You can say virtually
anything you want about Jews as long as you don’t mention Israel or Zionism.
According to the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt, Elon Musk's Hitler Salute was an 'Awkward Gesture in a Moment of Enthusiasm'
You can even give a Hitler salute, safe in the
knowledge that the premiere Zionist organisation in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League, will dismiss it
as an ‘awkward gesture’. You can tell your followers, as the founder of
the Azov Battalion, Andriy Biletsky did, that ‘the
historic mission of our nation’ to
“lead the white races of the world in a final crusade for
their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led untermenschen.”
knowing that the ADL will have your
back.
The Anti-Defamation League masquerades as an anti-racist organisation but its only read concern is Defending Israel - Its Takes US Police to Israel for Training, is Hostile to Black Lives Matter and during apartheid in South Africa acted as a spy on the anti-apartheid movement for the regime
In an interview
with Andrew Srulevitch, ADL Director of European Affairs, Professor David
Fishman exonerated the Azov
Brigade and its support for the Ukrainian Insurgent
Army [UPA] and its leader Stepan Bandera, who were
responsible for
the slaughter of 300,000 Jews and Poles. Fishman said:
UPA attacks were so ferocious that Jews sought the protection
of
the German army. ‘The Banderite bands and the local nationalists raided
every night, decimating the Jews,” a survivor testified in 1948.
Jews
sheltered in the camps where Germans were stationed, fearing an attack by
Banderites. Some German soldiers were brought to protect the camps and thereby
also the Jews.
ADL carried the interview with Fishman on its website and endorsed
it in its newsletter.
The term ‘anti-Semitism’ has become
meaningless other than as a verbal insult. For example Netanyahu called the
International Criminal Court decision to investigate him for war crimes ‘pure
anti-Semitism’. Presumably Israeli politicians responsible for the deaths
of thousands of civilians, including children, are entitled to immunity from
the Genocide Convention because they are Israeli/Jewish?
As I wrote in Zionism During the Holocaust,
Zionism has never had any problems with genuine anti-Semitism. It is only
the ‘new anti-Semitism’, hostility to or opposition to Zionism and the Israeli
state that it opposes.
Even the Tories Director of Freedom of Speech Rejected the IHRA
Although the IHRA definition
states that it is a ‘non-legally binding
working definition of antisemitism’ in practice it has been
adopted by law enforcement and other agencies as a free speech code. I
discovered this when I was arrested in October last year by the Metropolitan
Police after having delivered a speech equating the Israeli state to the Nazis.
Virtually every academic and legal scholar who has read the IHRA has rejected it as inherently flawed - human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson described it as being 'not fit for purpose'
I was told when I was being
arrested that it was for a ‘racially aggravated’ offence under the Public Order
Act. After having been detained in Holborn Police Station I was bailed and six weeks
later told that the Police were pressing no charges.
I have since made a complaint to the Met and in the course of that I discovered a 17 page advice sheet Instructions about tackling the hate speech and actions by HAMAS supporters on the marches that police officers receive when policing Palestinian protests. It reeks of racist bias and malevolence.
Page 16 is titled ‘ISRAELI GOVERNMENT/NAZISM COMPARISONS.’ It begins by saying that
the comparison of either (a) the Israeli Government
or the Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu with (b) either Nazism or Hitler
(including) comparisons between the actions of the Israeli Government and the
actions of the Nazis (i.e. the holocaust) are particularly offensive as it
likens the systematic extermination of over 6 million Jews with the military
conduct of Israel in the Middle East.
This ‘advice’ could have been
written by the Zionist Federation of the UK. Presumably when Veronika Cohen, an
80 year old holocaust survivor from Budapest picketed Yad Vashem in Israel explaining
that
I don’t think we can remember our suffering
without acknowledging the suffering of Gaza, the deaths of tens of thousands of
children, the starvation that’s going on this minute, for which we are
partially responsible. It occupies the same place in my heart.
She was being
anti-Semitic. She went on to say
‘To me, when I read the stories of their
suffering in Gaza, it blends completely into how I feel about the Holocaust.’
Ruth Vleeschhouwer
Falak, 89, who survived the Nazi-occupation of the Netherlands said she was protesting
because
in the 1930s, if Germans had stood up loudly against the
Nazi party, maybe they wouldn’t have been able to do what they did to us.
Speaking up is not a choice for me.
“The saying is never again; that means never again for anybody. That’s really what we’re standing here for,” added Ilana Drukker Tokotin, 87, who spent her childhood hiding from the Nazis.
Marika Sherwood, who recently passed away,
was an anti-racist academic who was also a holocaust survivor from Budapest. In
2017 Sherwood was going to give a speech during the University of Manchester's
Israel Apartheid Week titled "You're
doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to me". The Israeli embassy contacted
the university suggesting that the title violated the IHRA. Manchester University
censored the title and put conditions on the speech.
Unfortunately Jeremy Corbyn went along with the 'antisemitism' smear campaign until he too became a victim
Stephen Kapos, another survivor
from Budapest, and many others have forcefully compared what happened to them
to the actions of the Israeli state. It is no business of racist morons like Mark
Rowley and the Met to decide what is and is not offensive to Jews. What is very clear here is that the Met has consciously decided to run with the Zionist narrative.
Of course it offends
racist (Zionist) Jews but the right to offend is an integral part of what’s
left of free speech after the Metropolitan Police have trampled on it. That was
the decision of the (Jewish) Judge Stephen Sedley in the 1999 case Redmond-Bate v DPP where
Sedley ruled that ‘“Freedom only to speak
inoffensively is not worth having.”
The Policy of Jewish Racial Purity Led to a Book on a Jewish-Arab romance being banned in schools in Israel
It is noticeable how the Met advice
sheet speaks of the ‘military conduct’
of the Israeli army. That is a strange way to describe a genocide but to Rowley
and fellow racists, the slaughter of an indigenous people is ‘military
conduct’.
Presumably Mark Rowley doesn't think that Israel Starving a Civilian Population to Death is Comparable to the Nazis' Starving People to Death - or Else Mark Rowley & Fellow Officers are just Ignorant Racist Pigs
The advice sheet says that references to the Nazis means the holocaust. This is wrong. The holocaust took place from 1941-45 whereas the Nazis ruled from 1933-1945.
Virtually the only group to support the IHRA is the right-wing 'Trotskyist' Alliance for Workers' Liberty
It is noticeable that the title of
the Advice Sheet is ‘Hamas Supporters’ rather than Palestine solidarity
marchers.
In December 2019 Donald Trump issued
an Executive Order under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act 1964 preventing those
guilty of anti-Semitism from receiving federal funding. What was the definition of anti-Semitism that
was used? The IHRA. In his Order Trump
stated that
My
Administration is committed to combating the rise of anti-Semitism and
anti-Semitic incidents in the United States and around the world.
It's worth remembering that Corbyn voluntarily adopted the 38 word IHRA definition in order to impress the Zionists - and paid the price
Trump has recently, in his attempt
to force American universities to repress Palestine protests on campus,
threatened the funding of universities. Harvard has lost over
$2 billion. Columbia University when faced with the loss of $400 million
promptly caved
in.
Yet no mainstream newspaper or
media group has ever once asked what should be a simple question. Why should an
all-purpose bigot like Trump be concerned about anti-Semitism? Trump calls
Mexicans rapists, drug dealers and criminals and African countries ‘shit
holes’. He banned
nationals from 7 Muslim countries from entering the US and his first act when re-elected
was to target
trans people. He supports
the display of the Confederate flag, but calls Black Lives Matter a ‘symbol
of hate’. Yet we are to believe that when it comes to anti-Semitism Trump has
suddenly become an anti-racist.
A Search of the IHRA website revealed that they had nothing there on the Genocide of Africans by Germany at the beginning of the 20th Century - Anything from the Nazi Holocaust is of no interest to them
It makes no sense unless opposition
to ‘anti-Semitism’ is merely a way to disguise his support for an
Apartheid state by invoking the memory of when Jews were oppressed. Even
Trump’s ‘America First’ slogan is borrowed
from the name of an American pro-Nazi organisation in the 30s.
A letter that I co-ordinated in 2016 to the Guardian
Trump is a genuine anti-Semite.
He said
Jews who voted for the Democrats hated Israel and their religion. He told
American Jews that Israel is ‘your
country’ and also told
them that Netanyahu was ‘your Prime
Minister’. In the words
of the Washington Post’s Dana Millbank ‘Anti-Semitism
is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody.’
The New Labour Mayor of Tower Hamlets Banned the Big Ride from Meeting in a park under the IHRA
Trump is typical of anti-Semites
like Tommy Robinson or Richard
Spencer – the neo-Nazi founder of the Alt-Right who describes
himself as a ‘White Zionist’.
It is little wonder that Israeli
politicians, seeing where their most enthusiastic support comes from, have
embraced White nationalists and supremacists, including neo-Nazis, in Europe.
The Israeli Government Conference on
Anti-Semitism that Welcomed Anti-Semites!
When Israel’s Minister
of Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli, organised,
last March, an International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in
Jerusalem, he decided to invite a wide variety
of Europe’s anti-Semites to speak. There is a certain logic to this. If you are
going to hold a conference on anti-Semitism, who better to invite than genuine anti-Semites?
Indeed so many anti-Semites were
invited that even the ADL, after much pressure, decided to withdraw
as did Britain’s racist Chief Rabbi Ephraim
Mirvis.
As Ha’aretz observed this was
‘the first time in history that
leaders and representatives of far-right political parties in Europe had been
invited to attend an official event hosted by the government of Israel.’
The mask is off, the pretence is gone. Zionism and
the Israeli government are now in bed with the West's far right parties. Zionism
has come full circle. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is a taunt now reserved exclusively for
the Left and those who support the Palestinians.
Not only was Jordan Bardella,
leader of France's far-right National Rally invited, but so was Marion
Maréchal, the granddaughter of France's National Front founder, Holocaust
denier Jean-Marie Le Pen. Other speakers included European
Parliament members Hermann Tertsch of Spain's Vox party, Charlie Weimers of the far-right Sweden
Democrats party; and Kinga Gál, of
Hungary's ruling Fidesz party.
Chikli also announced that he
might lift Israel's boycott on relations with Germany’s AFD
party. The AfD is riddled with neo-Nazis and
holocaust deniers.
It's an interesting party. ‘When
it comes to understanding the threat of radical Islam, I think they get it.
They get it very well. I've been following the history of the party.’
Chikli, has become the Israeli government's
unofficial ambassador to
Europe’s neo-Nazi and far-right parties. He stated that the group's co-leader, Alice
Weidel, is ‘easy to connect with,’ describing her worldview as representing
"a healthy liberal patriotism,
responsible immigration policies, and a clear-eyed view of the dangers of
radical Islam."
Chikli is following in the footsteps of his
predecessors in the Zionist movement, Ben-Gurion, Berl Katznelson and Chaim
Weizmann who also found the Nazi party ‘interesting’.
In early February Likud became an observer member of
Patriots for Europe – a European alliance of far-right nationalist parties. As
David Issacharroff observed:
The
move comes amid a broader shift by the Israeli government toward establishing
ties with far-right European parties that have long been boycotted by Israel
due to their history of antisemitism
and neo-Nazi
affiliations.
Issacharoff speculated about Israel's ‘evolving
stance’ toward Austria's Freedom Party,
a member of the Patriots bloc, founded by a former SS general. The AfD is
deeply rooted in neo-Nazi
culture, and Germany's Jewish community
describes it having a "blatantly
antisemitic
ideology." Antisemitic and neo-Nazi incidents
occur with great
regularity in its ranks. It has been
described as "antisemitic
to its core."
When the Patriots
for Europe held their inaugural conference in Madrid in February Likud was
represented by Ariel Bulshtein, an adviser to Netanyahu and head of Likud's
foreign affairs department. Here he is seen with Harald Vilimsky, head of the
Freedom Party's delegation in the European Parliament.
Also represented at the Jerusalem conference were
the Swedish Democrats who were founded in 1988 by members of Sweden's neo-Nazi
and skinhead movements, and Spain’s Vox which has allowed Holocaust
deniers to run for office on its behalf. In another
sign of the old Nazi-Zionist alliance. Issacharoff wrote that:
For
Austria's Freedom Party, Likud's entry into the Patriots was a long-pursued
stamp of legitimacy from the Jewish state and its prime minister. The party's
European delegation leader Vilimsky called Likud's entry into the Patriots a
"paradigm shift" that gives Austria's far right "a new boost in
international significance and acceptance."
And that is the role of the Israeli state and Zionism today. To kosher neo-Nazis and anti-Semites. See
Israel's Lost Taboo: How Netanyahu's Party Is Officially Embracing Europe's Far-right Extremists, Austria's Far-right Freedom Party Is 'Antisemitic to Its Core.' And It Could Win Sunday's Election,
The Mossad roots of the bogus IHRA anti-Semitism definition
The IHRA
The IHRA owes its
origins to Dina Porat and Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute.
The
IHRA ‘Definition’ of Anti-Semitism is a good example of Marx’s observation that ‘The
ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas’. So inconsistent and contradictory is the wording
of the IHRA that it is highly likely that those who drafted it deliberately wanted
to ensure that it lacked clarity.
Hugh Tomlinson QC, who
gave an Opinion on the IHRA wrote about
an
obvious problem with the wording of the IHRA Definition. The use of language is
unusual and therefore potentially confusing. The phrase “a certain perception”
is vague and unclear in the context of a definition. The use of the word “may”
is also confusing. If it is understood in its usual sense of “possibility” then
the definition is of little value: antisemitism “may be expressed as hatred
towards Jews but may also be expressed in other (unspecified) ways”. This does
not work as a definition.
The IHRA consists of a short 38 word definition and
then a series of 11 examples of conduct which ‘could, taking into account the overall context’ be anti-Semitic. In
practice these qualifying clauses have been disregarded. But this is clearly
not a definition.
The actual definition itself is so vague and
unclear, that in practice it is never used. The 11 illustrations are used to
define what is and is not anti-Semitic. The definition states:
Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which
may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations
of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or
their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
Is anti-Semitism just a perception inside someone’s head? If it may be expressed as hatred, what else may it be expressed as? If it’s directed at Jews and non-Jews that means that everyone suffers from anti-Semitism. If it applies to everyone it applies to no one. This quite useless since it isn’t even a definition.
Seven of the eleven examples
refer specifically to Israel yet even the other four examples are designed to
demonise anti-Zionism.
The definition talks about the
Israeli state being ‘conceived
as a Jewish collectivity’ yet in the same breath the sixth example
says that ‘Accusing Jewish citizens of
being more loyal to Israel... than to the interests of their own nations.’
is anti-Semitic. The final example says that ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of
Israel.’ is anti-Semitic. Yet if Israel is a ‘Jewish collectivity’ then
it’s quite reasonable to hold Jews collectively responsible for it.
The 9th illustration states that it is
anti-Semitic to use
the
symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism... to characterize
Israel or Israelis.’
At first sight this seems innocuous but is it?
One of the myths of classic anti-Semitism is that
Jews poisoned the wells of non-Jews. So Israel has said that to accuse it of
doing the same to the Palestinians is anti-Semitic. The only problem is that
it’s true.
Israel’s biological warfare campaign in 1948
consisted of infecting the water supply of Acre/Akko with dystentery
bacteria. This is the subject of a long
article Place the Material in the Wells’: Docs Point to
Israeli Army’s 1948 Biological Warfare, subtitled ‘For decades, rumors and testimonies swirled
about Jewish troops sent to poison wells in Arab villages. Now, researchers
have located official documentation of the ‘Cast Thy Bread’ operation’.
Ofer Aderert writes about how
The
disturbing story behind them was recently uncovered by historian Benny Morris
and historian and Israel Prize laureate Benjamin Z. Kedar following extensive
archival research.
In the West Bank we see the Israeli army and
settlers regularly destroy the water sources of the Palestinians. Yet according
to the IHRA, to make such an allegation about Israel is anti-Semitic. In other
words anti-Semitism is now based on true facts!
Likewise the 10th illustration of
‘anti-Semitism’ in the IHRA ‘definition’
states that ‘Drawing comparisons of
contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’. Can anyone doubt, after
the genocide in Gaza, that the comparisons stare right at you?
The question which faces us at this webinar is how
best can we roll back the IHRA, especially in the universities.
Tony Greenstein
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