What kind of state is it whose Ministers Urge Other Countries not to fund their human rights groups? a Zionist state
Louise Ellman's War Against Palestinian Children
Sometimes
I feel like my favourite comedian, Frankie Howerd, whose
catchphrase in the immortal Up
Pompei was ‘infamy, infamy, they’ve
all got it in for me.’ [although, as a reader has pointed out Kenneth Williams was the originator of the line, judged as the funniest one liner ever] Almost every
week I seem to provide copy for the Jewish
News. I’m not quite sure what I’ve done to deserve it. It’s getting to the
stage where, if I catch a cold, the headline in the Jewish News will be something like:
‘Tony Greenstein who was expelled from
(insert your favourite organisation) claimed he caught a cold this week.
However we have good reason to believe he was just trying to avoid getting
expelled from the local chess club.’
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| The Jewish News Political Editor and according to his own description a 'so-called journalist' |
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| Jack Mendel, the 'so-called journalist' took pride in reporting me to Twitter for having dared to disagree with him and boasted that I had been removed - however he kept silent when I overturned the ban! |
First
it was their ‘so-called journalist’ (his
description not mine) Jack Mendel @mendelpol. Jack had called Israel the victim
of Hamas aggression on Twitter when we all know that the Israeli state has been
playing the innocent victim for the past 70 years. When I explained that when Nazi
Germany invaded Poland in 1939 it too had claimed victim status Mendelpol saw
red (or blue).
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| This headline is like saying the Pope is a Catholic - perhaps I should have said that the anti-Semitism witchhunt was about genuine antisemitism? |
Unable
to muster a reply he cried ‘hate speech,
anti-Semitism’ etc. and complained to
Twitter, who promptly banned me. We then had the spectacle of a ‘journalist’
boasting he had managed to censor an opponent. However he who laughs last
laughs longest. As a result of a sustained campaign with help from Canary, Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada Twitter agreed to
reverse their decision. @Mendelpol has been very quiet ever since!
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| Spot the difference between the Jewish Chronicle headline above and the Jewish News one below |
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| Like its sister paper, the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish News was pleased that my account had been taken down by Medium over a post correctly linking North West Friends of Israel to Tommy Robinson supporters - Free Speech and Zionism being a contradiction in terms |
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| I'm worried that if I blow my nose in public there may be a Jewish News reporter lurking in the bushes |
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| According to this headline I've been suspended from UNISON, according to a later article I've been 'booted out' - the problem with Internet Newspapers is that they have no standards |
‘Jewish anti-Zionist, who has also been booted out
of Unison trade union too, launches a bid to become the secretary of Palestine
Solidarity Campaign.’
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| One of many shock horror headlines from the Jewish News - anyone expelled from the Labour Party is an untouchable according to the Zionists |
Any cub
journalist knows that it’s a cardinal rule of journalism not to mix fact and
opinion. That’is how you tell the quality press from the tabloids. Except that
all the quality papers, bar the Torygraph, are tabloids these days! The phrase ‘notorious anti-Zionist’ might just suggest
a certain bias unless the word ‘anti-Zionist’ is a synonym for notoriety.
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| Another pathetic Jewish News headline - Momentum is criticised because I hold one of its banners - Momentum isn't the Nazi Party - it can't control its grassroots - this non-story quotes the JLM saying Momentum should 'abide by the party's decisions' - I wasn't aware the Party had decided I was banned from holding a Momentum banner!! |
And
then there is the other difficulty Millis faced and it is indeed perplexing.
How to include all the organisations I have been excluded from. I was expelled from the SWP’s previous
incarnation, the International Socialists in 1973 and if they really want to go
back far enough then I was expelled from the King David High School in Liverpool
in 1972. It has been a career of expulsions. The only institution that I can
think of that didn’t expel me was Brighton Polytechnic. But although they didn’t expel me (I was Student
Union Vice-President for 2 years) they did blacklist me because I’d organised
one too many occupations.
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| Quite when I made the transition from a 'controversial' Jewish anti-Zionist to a 'notorious' one is not known |
We
only found this out when we occupied Assistant Director, Robin Plummer’s
office in the Art College. When we opened his filing cabinets (his secretary
had helpfully left the keys in the desks) we found a memo from Director, Geoffrey
Hall asking that any attempt by me to enrol on a course to be referred to
him! Oh and I haven’t been expelled, not yet anyway, from the National Autistic
Society!
That
was why I became the only Jewish student at the Roman Catholic Teacher Training
College of St Mary’s College in Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. The person who
interviewed me, Father
Michael Prior, was both a supporter of liberation theology and the Palestinians
(he founded Living Stones).
I guess these days Michael would also be considered an anti-Semite.
I
was, as I’ve already written,
suspended last October for 3 years from UNISON for protesting the refusal of London
Regional Organiser, Cllr. Steve Terry, to defend a member who had been sacked
for saying that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, which is a matter of record.
Sacking someone for exercising the right to freedom of expression under Article
10 of the European Convention of Human Rights was outrageous enough, failing to
defend their member was even worse and I pulled no punches in describing Terry’s
scabby behaviour for what it was.
But
strangely enough in Unison until your appeal is heard you are still a full
member. For over 2 months I have heard nothing which means I am still a full
member of Unison. So naturally I penned a letter to the Jewish News explaining
their errors. However since the Zionist rag doesn’t have a letters page I
suspect that it will be disappear into the ether. However you can read it here.
QUESTION: In what state are
Human Rights groups Seen As The Enemy? ANSWER: Emily Thornberry’s Beacon of Freedom – ISRAEL
Emily
Thornberry and other apologists for Israel pretend that Israel is a beacon of light
and freedom in the Middle East. Thornberry
wittered
in a visit to Israel about how ‘I love
the liberal democracy that is Israel. And it’s in contrast to many other
countries around it.’ In a grovelling
address at Labour Friends
of Israel annual dinner’ in November 2017, Thornberry declared that
‘even
today... modern Israel stands out as a beacon of freedom, equality and
democracy, particularly in respect of women and LGBT communities.’
And
she sent on to declare that BDS was ‘bigotry
against the Israeli nation.’ The irony of that remark, which betrays
Thornberry’s fawning ignorance, is that there is no Israeli nation. That is why Israel is an apartheid state. Israel
is not a state of its own inhabitants but a state of its Jewish citizens. There
is, in Zionist mythology, a Jewish nation, of which Israeli Jews are a part, but
unlike all other states Israeli citizenship is not coterminous with nationality.
Israel is different from most other
countries – it has no common nationality for all of its citizens.
Another
way in which Israel differs from all democratic states is that Israeli
ministers, including the Prime Minister, on their trips abroad lobby other
governments not to support Israeli
human rights organisations, in particular B’tselem
and Breaking the Silence. Thus in a visit in October Netanyahu gave
Angela Merkel a letter which
lamented the federal funding
given by Germany to dozens of organizations, including political foundations
and aid groups operating in Palestinian territories.
Amongst the organisations that the
Israeli government was targeting was
the leftist Israeli
political magazine +972, whose authors “regularly
accuse Israel of apartheid”; the Evangelical relief organization Bread for the
World that supports initiatives such as the Coalition of Women for Peace, which
supported boycott campaigns against Israel; and the international film festival
Berlinale, which allegedly regularly welcomed supporters of the Boycott, Divestment,
Sanctions (BDS) movement as guests.
Not content with this list of
organisations, the letter went on to single out a particular target viz. the
Jewish Museum in Berlin which had the audacity to show a special exhibit on Jerusalem that reflected "largely the Muslim-Palestinian view".
It is also claimed that the state-funded Berlin Jewish Museum ‘regularly organizes events and discussions with prominent BDS supporters.’ Israel is used to organisations
in the Jewish diaspora faithfully following the line laid down by Israel. So you can understand the anger felt by
Netanyahu that some countries take freedom of speech seriously.
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| Israeli Government Foreign Minister Hotoveli went to Switzerland to Lobby Against an Israeli Human Rights Group Breaking the Silence |
Netanyahu is not the only one. In
June 2015 the Jerusalem Post reported
that
‘Deputy Foreign Minister
Tzipi Hotovely declared war on the left-wing Breaking the Silence NGO on
Tuesday, calling for an “urgent meeting” in the ministry to come up with steps
to counter the group’s actions in Switzerland.’
Hotoveli, who is a religious nutcase,
was particularly worked up by an exhibition by the soldiers’ group Breaking the Silence which reveals the atrocities
and war crimes committed by the army. ‘She
said she had also directed Israel’s embassy in Switzerland to immediately
consider ways of working against the exhibition.’
This is the ‘democratic’ state that
Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary believes is a ‘beacon’ in the Middle East. Apart
from demonising human rights groups, Israel is a state that uniquely has made
torture legal, which uses imprisonment without trial, not just in the Occupied
Territories but in Israel itself against Palestinian Israelis, has an all
pervasive censorship and of course does little things like confining
Palestinians to 3.5% of Israeli land because 93% of land is ‘national’ i.e.
Jewish national land.
Naturally
Thornberry in her speech to LFI trotted out such things as womens’ equality and
LGBT since pinkwashing is an Israeli speciality.
What
Thornberry didn’t say was that Israel’s love of gays is strictly for foreign
consumption. Within Israel it is a different story. Most Israelis are hostile to
gays, especially the Orthodox. In Jerusalem, in 2016 16 year old Shira
Banki was stabbed to death and 5 others injured by an Orthodox Jewish
assailant who went wild with a knife. Police
had allowed him access to the demonstration despite his having only recently
been released from prison for similar stabbins at a previous Gay Pride
demonstration.
Israel
also refuses to accept the idea of gay marriage because it would cut across the
hostility felt across the Zionist spectrum to miscegenation, sex across racial
borders. Gay marriage would not fit in with the existing separation of the
population. Likewise surrogacy rights for gay couples have been rejected by the Knesset.
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| Strangely enough, neither the Jewish News or the JLM commented on Netanyahu's embrace of Brazil's new fascist President - clearly it's a match made in heaven |
Of
course when Netanyahu recently visited Brazil for a 5 day visit, Israel’s
pinkwashing went out the window altogether. As the Jerusalem Post reported
‘Netanyahu steered clear, as he did
throughout his five-day visit to Brazil last week, of any reservations
regarding the president’s controversial positions – opponents accuse him of an
authoritarian streak – or disparaging comments Bolsonaro has made in the past
about gays, women and minorities.’
In
fact this report in itself is a bit, how should we say, underwhelming. Bolsonaro
hasn’t merely made ‘disparaging comments’
he stated explicitly that if he saw 2 men kissing in the street he would hit
them, which is a green light for anti-gay violence. None of this disturbed Netanyahu who was
certainly not going to allow gay rights to get in the way of a warm
relationship with the new fascist kid on the bloc. Among Bolsinaro’s more repulsive comments
were his statement
that
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| It is difficult to think of a single repressive regime that Israel doesn't embrace - because Netanyahu is only following in the footsteps of Israeli Labour governments |
"I would prefer my son to die in an accident
than show up with a mustachioed man,"
Israel is nonetheless a beacon of
light in Emily Thornberry’s eyes. Thornberry is a woman who is being tipped as
a replacement when Jeremy Corbyn stand down or is pushed.
Tony Greenstein
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| Israel accused HRW director of supporting BDS |
Written by Polina Garaev
Israel
accused Human Rights Watch's local director of supporting the campaign to
boycott the country
THOMAS COEX (AFP/File)
Israel reportedly made the
demand of Germany in October
BERLIN -- Israeli artists are urging German
authorities to reject Jerusalem’s demand to cut funding to institutions
critical of Israel, including Berlin’s Jewish Museum and the city’s
world-famous film festival.
According to German media, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu himself conveyed the request to Chancellor Angela Merkel during her
visit in October.
The demand was passed on in the form of an unsigned
seven-page letter from the Israeli government, which was first published in
December in the German left-leaning daily Taz. The letter
lamented the federal funding given by Germany to dozens of organizations,
including political foundations and aid groups operating in Palestinian
territories.
Among the organizations mentioned in the letter are
the Israeli political magazine +972, whose authors “regularly
accuse Israel of apartheid”; the Evangelical relief organization Bread for the
World that supports initiatives such as the Coalition of Women for Peace, which
supported boycott campaigns against Israel; and the international film festival
Berlinale, which allegedly regularly welcomed supporters of the Boycott,
Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as guests.
The letter also criticized the Jewish Museum in
Berlin, now showing a special exhibit on Jerusalem that reflects "largely
the Muslim-Palestinian view". It is also claimed that the state-funded
museum, which is not affiliated with the local Jewish community, regularly
organizes events and discussions with prominent BDS supporters.
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Jerusalem exhibition in Berlin's Jewish Museum
|
i24NEWS, Polina Garaev
“The German support of non-governmental organizations
that intervene in Israel's internal affairs or promote anti-Israel activities,
is unique,” read the Israeli letter. “We would like to see the Federal
Government tie its further financial support to the complete stop of such
activities.”
The German daily FAZ later
reported that the letter was handed by Netanyahu directly to Merkel during the
intergovernmental consultations that took place in Jerusalem in October. The
newspaper also noted that the German Foreign Ministry demanded a high-level
meeting in Berlin, to clarify the letter, but that was canceled by the Israeli
side.
The request stirred significant controversy, also
among Israeli artists. On Sunday, 63 of them – including film director Udi
Aloni, whose work has been featured in the Berlinale on multiple occasions –
published an open letter in the Taz, proclaiming their support for
Berlin’s Jewish museum and calling the Israeli demand “shocking.”
“We reject these attempts to curtail the freedom of
cultural expression, which are part of a larger campaign by populist and
ultra-rightwing governments worldwide to limit the scope of critical thought –
and, where possible silence it altogether,” read their letter.
“We therefore call on the German government, its
parliament, its media, and the broad public to resist this specious demand,
and, more broadly to beware of the attempts by the Israeli government and its
anti-liberal allies to export this damaging culture of fear and censorship to
other democratic domains.”
In a previous statement, the museum rejected the
accusations of the Israeli government.
“We believe that an open discussion involving
sometimes controversial views is essential to enable our visitors to form their
own, differentiated judgment,” stated a spokeswoman for the museum.
She also stressed that all speakers participating in its
events represent their own private opinions.
Polina Garaev is i24NEWS's correspondent in Germany.
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| The Jewish Labour Movements Cruella |
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| How despicable can one get? Louise Ellman MP, together with Tory and even a DUP MP, is seeking to cut the funding for the education of Palestinian children |
You
have to hand it to Louise Ellman the Zionist MP for Tel Aviv South (&
occasionally Liverpool Riverside). She really doesn’t like Palestinian
children.
When
Sarah Champion introduced a debate
on January 16th 2016 condemning Israel’s horrific treatment of Palestinian
children – torture, beatings, night-time arrests etc. there was Louise Ellman
on her feet justifying everything the Israeli army was doing – all in the name
of ‘security’ of course – See for example Two-thirds
of Palestinian Minors Testify to Abuse in Israeli Detention
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| Louise Ellman has gone out of her way to defend this - any party that considered itself progressive let alone socialist would have removed her long ago |
Now
this despicable woman has gone one step further. She’s trying to cut off funding for
Palestinian schools on the grounds that their curriculum teaches them to ‘hate’
those who fire tear gas at them as they are going to school, who invade their
houses night and day, beat up their parents, confiscate their land and keep
them in poverty. Ellman operates on the
theory that if it wasn’t for the ‘inciters’ of the Palestinian Authority
(Netanyahu’s collaborators) then Palestinians in the West Bank would come to
love their occupiers. Even the Nazis
didn’t pretend that those whose countries they occupied would come to love
them.
In
fact the exact opposite is true. It is
Israeli schools which teach their children to hate Arabs through their
portrayal of Arabs as terrorists and ‘baddies’. There are no good role models
of Palestinians in the Israeli curriculum. See for example Biased
new study skirts around racism in Israeli school books
by Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan of Tel Aviv University.
Thus
it was that in a debate
last week on a motion International Development Assistance
(Palestinian National Authority Schools) moved by Louise Ellman and 11 other MPs
she began:
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in
a Bill to prohibit international development assistance to schools operated by
the Palestinian National Authority that do not promote values endorsed by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization;
This
is incidentally the same UNESCO that Israel has left
because it refuses to accept that Jerusalem belongs to the Zionists only. It
isn’t as if the West Bank isn’t poverty stricken enough as it is, with the
withdrawal of all aid to UNWRA by Trump.
Louise Ellman of the Jewish Labour Movement is trying to do her little
bit to make it even more poverty stricken whilst helping the occupation too.
In
fairness Ellman wasn’t alone. Her
accomplices in this vile attack on Palestinian children were
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| Guto Bebb, a nasty right-wing Tory MP didn't like being challenged over why he wants to cut the funding for Palestinian education |
You may wish to contact them to let them
know your feelings. Do be polite to these creatures.
