Defend Professor David Miller - Defend Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom

 Bristol University’s Cowardice in Bowing to  Zionist McCarthyism and the Israel Lobby is a good example of Cancel Culture

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Professor David Miller of Bristol University has just been dismissed by Bristol University DESPITE a favourable Report from a QC that the University hired. In a statement the university admitted that:

an independent report from a leading Queen’s Counsel who considered the important issue of academic freedom of expression (and) found that Professor Miller’s comments did not constitute unlawful speech.

That should have been an end to the matter. But Bristol University was under enormous pressure to dismiss David regardless of what he had said by the Israel Lobby and its echo chambers in Parliament. Quite disgracefully Green MP Caroline Lucas, and Socialist Campaign Group MP Kim Johnson put their names to a statement  demanding that Bristol University ‘act now’ and dismiss  David Miller. It is therefore important to see what David did actually say:

‘The enemy we face here is Zionism and the imperial policies of the Israeli state... an all out onslaught by the Israeli government on the left... it is how we defeat the ideology of Zionism in practice.  How do we ensure that Zionism is ended... how we end the material reality of the jackboot of Zionism on the neck of the Palestinians...

I’ve been attacked and complained about by the head of the Bristol J Soc along with the President of the Union of Jewish Students, both of which organisations are formally members of the Zionist movement. J-Socs are part of the UJS, UJS is a member of the World UJS which is a direct member of the World Zionist Organisation. In its constitution UJS mention being pro-Israel. [David mentions similar attacks on other academics at Warwick and other universities against anyone speaking out about the Palestinians or criticising Zionism]... We have to fight back against that and the way to do that is to organise proper debate.’

David called for an end to Zionism, the ideology of the Israeli state. A state which has been conclusively found by both B’Tselem Israel’s principal human rights organisation, and Human Rights Watch to be a Jewish Supremacist, Apartheid state. A State described by its own Prime Minister, Netanyahu as being a state, not of its own citizens but of its Jewish citizens.

David also criticised the attacks of the Union of Jewish Students and the head of Bristol’s J-Soc, 'liar' Edward Isaacs on him.  David pointed out that UJS is an Israeli funded Zionist organisation that is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation. It is a body that only represents Jewish students who are also racists/Zionists.

In my blog on UJS I described how in 1986 UJS had attempted to stop me speaking at the London School of Economics by making false accusations against me. At that time my ‘anti-Semitism’ included being a member of the Executive of Anti-Fascist Action, a number of whom testified that the allegations were rubbish. When LSE’s Labour Club investigated UJS’s allegations they were found wanting. LSE J‑Soc then accused the Labour Club of ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘fascism’!

The whole story is described in the letters and Report in Beaver, paper of the LSE Student Union in its issue of 10 November 1986. James Paget described how a friend was accosted by 5-6 Zionists: ‘When he turned around he was greeted with a viciousness I have rarely seen.’ When Paget defended him he too was labelled a fascist. Paget described how his friend 

Has been a supporter of anti-fascist organisations since he was 16 and he has been a strong and fervent activist against all forms of racism. To accuse someone who has fought so clearly and consistently against racism of being a racist naturally causes great distress and I can only describe it as disgusting. My friend was apparently abused because he was involved in the Labour Club’s examination of the Tony Greenstein affair.’

The Labour Club Executive issued a statement which casts a light on what is now happening in Bristol.

Dear Editor,

Regarding the Friends of Palestine meeting with Tony Greenstein the Labour Club was approached by several members of the UJS. We contacted several national organisations for information about Tony Greenstein and as a result produced a leaflet with the two contradictory accounts of his views and activities. We distributed this outside of the meeting where a speech was made condemning the Labour Club for being racist and anti-Semitic. The members who heard this left in a distressed state after the insults and the ruthless accusations.

One of the Labour Club members who had left earlier was approached in Houghton St. by several members of the UJS who proceeded to insult him publicly, calling him a racist, anti-Semitic, fascist. He was deeply distressed and grossly insulted as he has been involved in anti-fascist groups for nearly 10 years.

We are firmly opposed to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. We utterly condemn this slanderous public intimidation of members of our club.

I also described in an article Vetting in Practice for the Guardian’s Comment is Free, the experience of Emma Clyne, the non-Zionist Chair of the J-Soc at SOAS. Emma described the ‘intense pressure’ from UJS when she tried to organise a meeting:

This led to a furious reaction from UJS which told her: “That’s not what the Jewish Society does. You can’t separate Israeli politics from Jewish identity. It is all the same.”

The antagonism reached a peak after she went to the launch of Independent Jewish Voices in 2007 and found the speakers “honest articulate and inspirational.” When she invited some of the speakers [like Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC] to a meeting at SOAS to discuss “the impact of nationalism on Jewish identity” the pressure on her increased, and she was told that UJS and the Israeli Embassy were very concerned about the meeting.

According to... Emma Clyne, posters for a meeting the society put on were repeatedly torn down. Ms Clyne told a meeting of Independent Jewish Voices on May 15 that she had to put new ones up every day.

The Chair of UJS, Mitch Simmons, said ‘"It is the view of the UJS that certain views are not acceptable under free speech." This is what UJS really stand for, then and now. You can see the full article here.

UJS is an organisation dedicated to opposing free speech on Palestine and Zionism. Bristol University has just succumbed to their pressure.  It is our job to oppose them and secure the reinstatement of David Miller. The first thing you can do is to sign this petition

Defend Professor David Miller - Defend Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom

Secondly you can attend this webinar by registering here

The Sacking of David Miller – Israel’s war on academic freedom and freedom of speech

See Rally of March 2 in Support of David Miller

 

 

 

Correcting the Guardian's Correction - When is Syrian Annexed Territory an Israeli Border?

IMAGINE IF - when Nazi Germany annexed most of Poland - Jonathan Freedland had reported that 'Germany is holding urgent talks over the threat to its Warthegau border and attacks on the Reich city of Danzig from the Polish Home Army.  Hitler called the threats to the residents of Auschwitz/ Oswiecim from Polish terrorists 'unacceptable aggression'

Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott’s Quibble over whether Illegally Annexed Territory can constitute a new  border  

  

Freedland sees himself as a foreign policy and Middle East expert.  In fact he knows little or nothing about the  Arab East or indeed Israel from the perspective of its Arab citizens.  The Guardian got rid of people like David Hirst who were knowledgeable and today it is The Independent which has the legendary Robert Fisk and people like Patrick Cockburn.  Since it was the Labour Zionists who settled the Golan Heights, Freedland doesn't encourage recollections of the Golan's legal status or the atrocities Israel carried out there.

The Guardian finally gets it half-right (& half wrong!)

Professor Moshe Machover - a long standing Israeli anti-Zionist and political opponent of all that Freedland stands for

It began as a simple correction 3 days ago from Professor Moshe Machover, an Israeli anti-Zionist and founder of Matzpen and the Socialist Organisation in Israel.  He pointed out that an article in The Guardian (Israel and Russia discuss Syrian civil war, 22 September) had referred to the Golan Heights as “bordering Syria”. Since the Golan Heights are Syrian territory illegally annexed by Israel, it takes a particular pedanticism to suggest that the Golan ‘borders’ the state of which it is a part.

When the Guardian had not published or acknowledged the correction by the following day Moshe asked why.  I then wrote to the Guardian and I received the following:  Moshe was not copied in! 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Letters" <guardianletters.mail@guardian.co.uk>
Date: 23 Sep 2015 16:05
Subject: Re: Pro-Israel guard at the Guardian?
To: "Tony Greenstein" <tonygreenstein111@gmail.com>

Thanks for this. We are aware of this and the readers' editor is looking into it.

Many thanks,

Mike

The Guardian then made the most sneaky of all corrections, by altering the original article rather than posting the clarification on the letters page.  The correction read ‘• ‘This article was amended on 23 September 2015. An earlier version said that the Golan Heights “bordered” Syrian territory. this has been corrected.’   No hint was given as to why there was a correction or the circumstances surrounding it.

Moshe Machover speaking at the Hands of People of Iran conference

 As Moshe noted:  ‘the “corrected" article still refers to Netanyahu’s fear of "Syrian and Iranian aggression in the Golan Heights,” as though Syria could be an aggressor against Israel in Syrian territory…

Moreover, the “corrected” article refers to the Golan Heights as "Syrian territory but occupied by Israel” – which avoids the fact that the territory has been illegally annexed by Israel’ i.e. stolen.

'The way the Guardian went about “correcting” its mis-reporting is clearly calculated to draw as little attention to it as possible. Very few readers are going to read online an article that is a couple of days out of date…

The question arises: what is it that the Guardian is trying not to draw attention to?’

Moshe’s conclusion was that 

'someone quite senior in it – wishes to avoid drawing attention to Israel’s illegal annexation, massive ethnic cleansing and colonization of the Syrian Golan Heights.'

Jonathan Freedland - Guardian's resident Zionist Editor, possibly one of the most mediocre of the Guardian/Observer's journalistic talents.  Supporter of the New Labour Right, is a 'liberal Zionist' who always manages to end up supporting the Zionist Right.

Ariel Sharon - the butcher of Sabra & Shatilla - Freedland claimed to oppose his version of Zionism but always managed to end up supporting Likud

Given his role in purveying the continual lie that Jeremy Corbyn associates with holocaust deniers and assorted anti-Semites, the identity of this person is not hard to work out – step forward the talentless but arrogant senior editor, Jonathan Freedland, who has made the agonies of the liberal Zionist into an art form.  His conscience is always to the fore whilst always ensuring that he comes down on the side of the Zionist Right whenever push gives way to shove.

Freedland dreamed that he was in love with a different, democratic and egalitarian Israel.  And then he woke up.

Throughout the campaign to elect a new Labour leader, Freedland has played the role of an echo chamber to the gutter accusations of 'anti-Semitism' by the editor of the Jewish Chronicle Stephen Pollard.  Now it would seem that he is continuing to regale the same lies and distortions. Friends who are enemies

Jonathan Freedland and the Zionist Establishment's Bete Noir.

ex-Editor of the Daily Express, owned by Britain's largest porn magnate Richard Desmond, now editor of the Jewish Chronicle, which he has ruined.  Supporter of the attacks on Welfare.  A cold war warrior and member of the Henry Jackson Society.  He also bears a remarkable similarity to Kaminski.  Blood brothers?

It takes a master of contortions to claim anti-racist and anti-fascist credentials whilst occupying the same bed space as Jewish Chronicle editor, Stephen Pollard.  It was Pollard who, when the Tories and Cameron were being attacked for forming the European Conservatives & Reform Group, containing the far-right in the European Parliament, defended the leader of that group, Michal Kaminski.  Kaminski it was who campaigned against an apology for the burning alive in 1941 of over 300 Jews in the village of Jedwabne by local Poles.  Kaminski insisted that it was Poland’s Jews, those 10% or less who had escaped the holocaust  who should do the apologising!  

Michal Kaminski MEP - a Zionist anti-Semite

‘‘If you are asking the Polish nation to apologise for the crime made in Jedwabne, you would require from the whole Jewish nation to apologise for what some Jewish Communists did in Eastern Poland.’ 

The logic is impeccable, at least as far as Pollard was concerned, as he managed to write an article ‘‘Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews’ without a hint or trace of irony.  Such as the friends that Freedland keeps.   

Correspondence re Guardian ‘Correction’

Dear Friend,

Today the Guardian finally published a correction http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/sep/24/corrections-and-clarifications to its erroneous description of the Syrian Golan Heights – which Israel illegally purported to annex – as “bordering Syria’.

However, ‘The “correction” still refers to "a meeting between Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, to discuss security concerns along Israel’s northern border”. This is an uncorrected residue of the original error. What is referred to here as “Israel’s northern border” is no such thing. It is the line dividing the territory illegally occupied and colonized by Israel from the rest of Syria.

Moshé Machover

  

Dear Friend,

This is an update of the story about the Guardian misreporting – see previous emails pasted below. 

You may have noticed that I changed the question mark in the Subject rubric to an exclamation mark. This is because the Guardian did something really underhand and shameful – or should I say shameless.

It did not publish my original letter (sent on 22 September).

It did not publish a correction in its Corrections and Clarifications column.

Instead, it went back to the online version of the original report and retrospectively corrected it, adding a note:

“ • This article was amended on 23 September 2015. An earlier version said that the Golan Heights “bordered” Syrian territory. this has been corrected.”

(See <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/21/netanyahu-meets-with-putin-over-concerns-of-russian-support-for-assad>)

By the way, the “corrected" article still refers to Netanyahu’s fear of  "Syrian and Iranian aggression in the Golan Heights,” as though Syria could be an aggressor against Israel in Syrian territory…

Moreover, the “corrected” article refers to the Golan Heights as "Syrian territory but occupied by Israel” – which avoids the fact that the territory has been illegally annexed by Israel. 

The way the Guardian went about “correcting” its mis-reporting is clearly calculated to draw as little attention to it as possible. Very few readers are going to read online an article that is a couple of days out of date…

The question arises: what is it that the Guardian is trying not to draw attention to?

Given that the Guardian is normally quite conscientious in correcting its own factual errors, I conclude that it – or someone quite senior in it – wished to avoid drawing attention to Israel’s illegal annexation, massive ethnic cleansing and colonization of the Syrian Golan Heights.

Moshé Machover

From: Moshé Machover <moshe.machover@kcl.ac.uk>

Subject: Re: Pro-Israel guard at the Guardian!

Date: 24 September 2015 11:38:27 BST

To: Readers' Editor <guardian.readers@theguardian.com>

Dear Chris Elliott,

It seems to me that your online correction is itself in need of correction. The Golan Heights are not merely “occupied” by Israel: unlike the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, but like the eastern part of Jerusalem, they have been illegally annexed by it. This point is germane to the conflict that is the subject of the article.

Now you are compounding the error by claiming that “[t]he annexed Golan Heights is geographically bordering Syria”. This is absurd: would you say that the British occupied part of Germany following the Second World War was “geographically bordering Germany”?

I look forward to reading a forthright printed correction in your column.

Best wishes,

Moshé Machover

On 24Sep2015, at 10:19, Readers' editor (Guardian) <guardian.readers@theguardian.com> wrote:

Dear Moshé Machover,

If you look at the terms and conditions of the readers' editor's role you will see we aim to provide a substantive response within two or three working days. We did. There wasn't room for the correction this morning so I made the change last night and we will probably run it tomorrow. I think the footnote fairly reflects how the error occurred and the action taken. The annexed Golan Heights is geographically bordering Syria although you are absolutely right to point out that it is, in fact, part of Syria's sovereign territory. The correction I have drafted slightly amplifies that point but a correction is not meant to be an essay and I can assure you, as someone who regularly has to address allegations that the Guardian is an anti Isreal newspaper, nobody would accuse us of thinking other than the Golan Heights is part of Syria.

Best wishes

Chris Elliott

_______________________________

[Sent on 23 September]

Hi,

Yesterday morning I emailed the factual correction pasted below to <guardian.letters@theguardian.com>. The Guardian has not seen fit to publish this as a letter. Nor has it published a correction in its Corrections and Clarifications column. 

Please draw your own conclusions.

M Machover

___________________________________

[Sent on 22 September]

In your report from Jerusalem (Israel and Russia discuss Syrian civil war, 22 September) you mistakenly refer to  the Golan Heights as “bordering Syria”. The Golan Heights do not “border” Syria: they are part of Syria, occupied by Israel since 1967. Israel’s annexation of that territory is illegal and not  recognized internationally. 

Sincerely,

Professor emeritus Moshé Machover

The Besting of the Guardian’s CIF and the other Bourgeois Pundits

On Monday I submitted an article to the Guardian’s Comment is Free, for which I once wrote articles before the Zionist censorship juggernaut caught up with them.

Not unnaturally I received no response from Freedland’s harlots and all the other self-opinionated pundits in what passes for a community.  Indeed it gives me no pleasure (so far the exist polls have declared) to have called the result correctly.  Whether the exit polls forecast of 316 seats for the Tories, 239 for Miliband Labour and 10 for the Lib. Dems are correct, it is highly likely that the trends are in the right (or wrong) direction.

If so, quite uniquely among commentators, my criticism of Miliband’s campaign will have turned out to be correct.

Tony Greenstein

Sleepwalking to Defeat – Miliband Labour’s

 Election Campaign

In December 1962, the US Secretary of State Dean Rusk observed that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role.  The same could be said for the British Labour Party.  British social democracy is rudderless.  There was a time when it even spoke the language of socialism but today the best it can offer is small, incremental change.

It has been part of the received wisdom of political pundits that Ed Miliband has had a good campaign.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating, in this case the results on Friday morning. 

The success or otherwise of Labour’s campaign never depended on the personality of its leader.  The attempts by Miliband to present himself as the political counterpart of Clint Eastwood, ‘hell yes I am tough’ have been risible.  Clement Attlee didn’t win because he outshone Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher was never popular.  What Miliband needed to do was to earn respect for his convictions but there is little evidence of that.

Instead of a determined stance against those who seek to blame refugees for Britain’s ills, he has highlighted control, including discrimination over benefits, as one of Labour’s 6 ‘red line’ pledges.  In the process he has lent credence to the idea that migrants claiming benefits are responsible for untold ills.  The only possible beneficiary of this is UKIP.

Even more damaging has been the way Miliband has reacted to Tory taunts that Labour would depend on SNP votes to form a government.  Instead of asserting that one of the consequences of a United Kingdom is that a Scottish presence, including the nationalists, is as valid as that of any other party and that they have a perfectly legitimate right to take part in the governance of the UK, he has echoed the claim that an SNP presence in government would hasten the break up of the UK. 

Even Lord Forsyth, the Thatcherite Peer and former MP for Sterling and Nigel Dodds of the DUP could see that Cameron’s campaign was saying that SNP votes at Westminster were illegitimate and further, that playing the English nationalist card would hasten the very thing that Cameron was purportedly opposed to – the breakup of the UK.  Yet Miliband seems incapable of doing more than echo Cameron’s rhetoric.

The only moments in the current election that have produced any excitement or interest have been the debates between the party leaders, Question Time and Paxman’s interviews.  They were the only moments that the party campaign managers couldn’t finely control.  

What has been remarkable about this election is how the major party leaders have avoided contact with the general public.  They have been determined to avoid Gordon Brown’s Gillian Duffy moment when Brown described a voter as a ‘bigot’.  Time was when Harold Wilson relished putting down hecklers.  Today a heckler wouldn’t get within a mile of Cameron, Clegg or Miliband.

Miliband has decided to blunt the Tory attack by surrendering to the forces of austerity.  He accepts that everything should be costed first as if government is simply a matter of a train with a fixed timetable.

I wonder what Clement Attlee would have done, if he had been expected to cost his proposals.  Britain was bankrupt after the second world war.  It was forced to go cap in hand to the United States for a $3 billion loan and part of the price was accepting, in the days of the sterling pool, the convertibility of sterling with other currencies. 

If Stafford Cripps, Labour’s Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1948, had been forced to ‘cost’ the new NHS and Welfare State then we would have had neither.  What Labour did was to set out its goals and priorities and then find the money to pay for it.  The timid accounting clerk mentality of Miliband and Balls stands in stark contrast to the steely determination of the 1945 Labour government.

Consider Labour’s reaction to the Tory promise to extend the right to buy to housing association properties.  Instead of promising an end to the right to buy council houses and savaging Cameron for having nothing to say about homelessness, Miliband’s response was that the Tories hadn’t costed it!   He might have pointed out that a further decline in social housing will mean Councils having to pay out more for emergency accommodation for vulnerable groups. In the words of Oscar Wilde, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

If  Cameron proposed to bring back hanging, Miliband’s reflex would be to attack him for not costing the building of the gallows and the training of a new generation of hangmen.

Buy to let is the most profitable form of investment yet it creates absolutely nothing and is heavily subsidised by housing benefit.  We have unprecedented levels of private renting but on this Labour has nothing to say.  Three year tenancies are a palliative.  Before Thatcher there was  permanent security of tenure for unfurnished tenants.  The right not to be evicted at the whim of a landlord and not having to pay disproportionate amounts of one’s income for the right to a roof over one’s head, would be popular yet we have another tepid milk and water reform . 

There are many other radical reforms that would be popular, such as the renationalisation of the railways or the scrapping of Trident.  Yet Miliband seeks refuge in consensus.  That is why, although there is an universal consensus that no party will gain an overall majority, Cameron’s Conservatives are likely to emerge as the biggest party.  It is even possible that the Conservatives could gain an outright majority.  This is the consequence of a situation whereby Miliband’s Labour is afraid of its own shadow.

Tony Greenstein