Showing posts with label Charlie Hebdo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charlie Hebdo. Show all posts

20 October 2019

The Cynicism of Twitter Who Are REFUSING to Process My Appeal

It’s Fine to Call Someone an Anti-Semite in Twitter’s Eyes But Wrong To Make Fun of These Trolls
UPDATE - VICTORY BUT...
Well today Twitter finally got back to me today, 8 days after being locked out of my account, to concede that 'We’ve reviewed again, but we couldn’t find a violation of our rules. 

But here's the strange thing.  I still can't get back into my account!  I have therefore contacted Twitter Europe to see if this pantomime is going to end.


The offending tweet





Two weeks ago Chris Williamson tweeted a picture of him giving a lecture at Nottingham University on neoliberalism, despite the attempts of the  Zionists to prevent him speaking.
The Zionist movement, aided by a Press and Establishment that waxed lyrical on freedom of speech when it came to Charlie Hebdo, the right of Salman Rushdie to write and publicise The Satanic Verses and the right of the Danish cartoonists of Mohammed to draw what they want, believes that criticism of Zionism and its adherents crosses all ethical boundaries. In the current parlance it is 'hate speech'.
In essence the defenders of Israeli apartheid and its military occupation believe they have the right to suppress freedom of speech in just the same way as they do on the West Bank.
I posted:
well done. It's good that the racist Zios and their fellow travellers on Labour's Right learnt a lesson that we won't allow freedom of speech to be shut down

Clearly the fragile flower that is Noah Cantor, having failed to stop Chris Williamson speaking decided he’d try to stop me speaking instead. Twitter however proved somewhat less robust guardians of free speech than the authorities of Nottingham University.
On the same day as my post I received a notice in my inbox:
You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.

Note the blackmail - you can wait for your appeal to be processed or get it over with and just delete the tweet
I agree.  One shouldn’t do any of the above.  However I defy anyone to explain how my Tweet promoted violence or threatened or harassed anyone on the basis of the various protected characteristics of race, ethnicity etc. I referred to ‘racist Zios’ ie Zionists and the Labour Right. As far as I’m aware being a Zionist is a political category (there are millions of Christian Zionists like  Donald Trump). A Zionist is someone who believes in a racist ethno-nationalist Jewish Supremacist state.
After 8 days Twitter is still refusing to process the appeal
Is it now an offence under Twitter’s corporate speak to criticise Zionism or its adherents? Presumably it offends their ‘Community Standards’ which is a euphemism for anything that the apparatchiks of multi-nationals take offence to.  Twitter is hardly a community despite their laughable pretensions to that effect.
This is the Twitter that gives Donald Trump a platform for his hate speech.

It is also the Twitter that refused to uphold a complaint I made against another Zio who wished that my family and I had perished in the Holocaust.
However Twitter did give me a right of appeal and acknowledged it as such on October 12th. However despite various reminders over one week later they are refusing to process that appeal.  Maybe it’s too difficult for the corporate mind to get its head around the fact that opposition to Zionists is not anti-Semitic and that defence of free speech is fundamental to a free society? Or that those who accuse people, including Jewish people, of antisemitism without just cause are the ones who should be suspended.
Protecting holocaust abuse is fine by Twitter and not against any rules
So Twitter are in default of even the pathetic rules by which they purportedly operate. Being a corporation of course they don’t have to adhere to their own rules or answer to anyone since they are a law unto themselves.
However if they had any honesty they would admit there are no rules and everything is decided on the subjective whim of whoever makes these decisions.
Which is why I’m presently locked out of an account with nearly 4,000 followers. Of course I could take the easy route that has been offered and delete the tweet.  But in that case I would lose my right of appeal.  Except that there is no right of appeal.  Catch 22.  So please follow me at tonygreenstein1 and RETWEET THIS and post on social media.

2 November 2018

Is this the most trivial, trite and superficial article that the New Statesman has ever run?

Or How Karen Glaser’s ex-boyfriend had a very very narrow escape!


On her blog we learn that Karen Glaser is an experienced journalist’ whose ‘journalism has been syndicated internationally.’ This perhaps tells us more about the standards of journalism today than the quality of Ms Glaser’s output.  Karen tells us that she writes on relationships and Jewish matters and that she has been a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle, which is not encouraging given the decline in the latter’s circulation and its role as a Zionist megaphone. She boasts that the guests on her Guardian podcasts have included David Aaronovitch and Melanie Phillips, which hardly gives us much confidence in her claim to be a left-wing British Jew. But perhaps she means a ‘left-wing’ Zionist which is an entirely different thing. In short Karen is just the kind of tame establishment journalist that The Staggers loves to indulge.
The New Statesman, which used to consider itself on the left, has been second only to the Guardian in its venomous attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and its indulgence of his Zionist critics (for example the abysmal article by the Jewish Labour Movement’s Mike Katz and Adam Langleben on why they supported the IHRA). My attention was drawn to what must count as just the most trivial article I have yet read of the anti-Corbyn genre. Ms Glaser’s Why I kicked my boyfriend out at 2am over anti-Semitism in the Labour party. It is the Zionist equivalent of Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster and bears about the same relationship to the truth.
The New Statesman's Bizarre anti-Corbyn Story
Apparently this tragic lonely heart had been in a relationship with ‘Sean’ for some 9 months before discovering his ‘anti-Semitism’. He is you understand a Corbynite and these people are nothing if not clever and devious.  Presumably he hid his anti-Semitism under the bed sheets for all of the 9 months until Karen had her epiphany.  Or perhaps he pretended he was a Tory? We have Karen’s assurance that Tories are never anti-Semitic so it’s no wonder that Karen was fooled by this dastardly swine.
Apparently Sean ‘gestured in exaggerated fashion’ to her many possessions. “Well, your life looks OK to me,” which is proof that she had been sharing her most intimate secrets with Himmler’s bastard offspring. How dare the upstart suggest that Karen’s life is a bed of roses when anyone can see that it consists of tears and strife, toil and trouble to say nothing of public self-humiliation. She had clearly been in bed with an anti-Semite if not a fully fledge Nazi. It is one of life's wonders that Karen is not suffering from PTSD.
When told that she seemed to be comfortably off Karen, sharp as a button, responded instantly that “Lots of Jews had nice apartments in 1930s Berlin,” and we all know what happened to Germany’s Jews. What an insensitive soul she had shacked up with not to realise that Corbyn’s Gestapo was about to nationalise her flat whilst putting her in ‘protective detention’ along with all those other Jewish capitalists.
Karen you understand was doing her best not to appear to be the ‘hyperbolic Jew of anti-Semitic ridicule.’  Rest assured Karen, only an anti-Semite could possibly suggest that you were exaggerating your pain, being hyperbolic or behaving like a typical JAP (Jewish American Princess).  After all, everyone knows that Momentum’s uniform includes regulation jackboots for the day when Fuhrer Corbyn takes control.

Karen Glaser - A Journalist Whose Talents Lie in Fiction Writing
Karen tells us, in one of those romantic moments that we all treasure, that ‘I really liked’ Sean.  After this public drubbing you wonder what exactly it was that she liked about him, apart from having the patience of a saint or two. You get the feeling that it might have been preferable to have had a relationship with a tarantula rather than take the risk of being Karen’s consort.
And when Sean told Karen ‘that Labour’s anti-Semitism had been massively overstated, that it was essentially a tawdry attempt to smear Corbyn’ you could have heard a pin drop. Its akin to taking communion and drinking the blood of Christ naked or even worse, eating a ham sandwich in an Orthodox synagogue (which the Jewish anarchists used to do!).
However Karen, a woman with a permanently shimmering halo,‘took a deep breath and answered him properly.’ as one should of course though one suspects that she must have considered reaching for the rolling pin.  Our Jewish heroine ‘explained to my lover that this is no laughing matter’.
Here we have an existentialist clash of love and life. When the jackboots are on the doorstep, the last thing you want is for your lover to question your fears of an imminent demise.  Karen was, in essence, a budding Jamal Khashoggi.
Karen patiently explained ‘that there is a consensus across Anglo-Jewry that there is a serious problem of anti-Semitism in Labour’.  And where there is a consensus there is eternal life and truth. Clearly this ingrate, who one assumes isn’t even Jewish, was incapable of demonstrating even the slightest empathy with Karen’t horrible predicament.
At this point I feel duty bound to point out that Israel was founded in order to stop the Karens, Beckys and Sarahs of this world bedding down with shegetzes. For those who are unacquainted with these things let me explain that the shegetz like its female counterpart, the shiksa, is derived from the Yiddish word sheketz, which roughly translated means an abomination, an unclean thing, a detested thing.  Rabbi Jack Abramowitz described it as "simply indefensible", "inherently condescending, racist and misogynistic". Nonetheless non-Jewish boyfriends are inherently risky.
This is the real racism not fake anti-Semitism
However I digress. Karen is nothing if not broadminded and despite being a Zionist had no objection to having a shegetz for a partner. One can only hope that she has learnt her lesson and that in future she keeps it in the tribe. If she were in Israel she would be known as a trollope and worse. Miscegenation is taken seriously in the Holy Land because it isn’t so much a question of religion but racial purity whereas in the diaspora these things are only too common.  50%+ of American Jews 'marry out'. 
Karen whose patience is one of the most loveable things about her, tried to explain to this non-Jewish parvenu that ‘if Tory politicians had done half the things to any other ethnic group that Corbyn has done to the Jews, leftists would be baying for blood.’
Now I know that the anti-Semites who read this blog will probably scoff and chuckle at this but Karen has a point. In fact a number of points. After all it is well known that when it comes to ‘other ethnic groups’ the Tories are a model of British tolerance and good manners. Indeed the party of the grisly May has never, as far as I am aware, ever advocated discrimination against anyone on the grounds of religion, race or sexual orientation. Enoch Powell is but a distant memory.
Yes I know that the Tory party are in alliance with a range of anti-Semitic parties (at least 3 – Swedish Democrats, Poland’s Law &; Justice and Latvia’s Fatherland and Freedom Parties) – in the European Conservative and Reform group in the European parliament.  Of course Tory MEPs voted to defend the anti-Semitic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in a vote of censure recently. But quite rightly Karen would have dismissed this as totally irrelevant.  She’s not talking old-fashioned anti-Semitism i.e. hatred of Jews she is talking Israel and hatred of Zionism.
Perhaps someone can supply the name of Jewish people killed by the Police in custody?
The Windrush scandal was merely a figment of someone’s imagination.  Hostile environment’ policy? That’s just another name for global warming.  Stop and search? That’s just the Police being helpful to Black kids who’ve lost their way in life. Black deaths in custody?  Well everyone has got to die somewhere.  Clearly Karen has got a point.  If other ethnic groups had suffered  a fraction of what Jews have had to put with under Corbyn, that pound shop British Goebbels, then us leftists would have risen up.  It could well have turned into another Peterloo such would have been our anger.
And when Sean asked, ‘as Corbynistas always do’ what Corbyn had actually done, then Karen went through her ‘grim list’.  And for the doubting Thomases here let me assure you that the list is indeed Grimm as in Grimm’s Fairy Tales. 
All of these men according to Karen Glaser have 'hook noses'
Having been provoked, beyond endurance, by her non-Jewish lover, Karen let forth: There was his absurd claim that Hamas and Hezbollah ‘are dedicated to peace and justice’ when we all know that it was Hezbollah which invaded Israel in 1982 and again in 2006.  Indeed this terror group occupied a large swathe of land in Northern Israel for years with a puppet Zionist in charge. As for Hamas, we all know what they are capable of.  They even send forth hundreds and thousands of demonstrators to the fence with Israel with strict instructions to get themselves killed, forcing the poor Israeli boys to do just that.  Because as we know ‘Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of the Jews’ (it doesn’t!) and it would seem the destruction of the Palestinians too. Then there is Corbyn’s defence of the blood libeller Raed Salah (again not true but what’s a lie between lovers?) to say nothing of his membership of Facebook groups ‘where deeply anti-Semitic posts are the norm’ (also not true) and ‘his siding with those behind the now infamous Nazi-style mural showing hook-nosed anti-Semitic caricatures, getting rich on the backs of the world’s poor.’ The latter refers to a mural of 6 bankers, 4 of whom were non-Jewish, none of whom had a hook nose. Why let a few facts come between lovers?
Of course there will be some cynics reading this who will be credulous at this point but I ask you to restrain your laughter.  This is a serious and difficult matter for Karen who ‘tried to explain to the man with whom I’d just shared my bed just how painful this all was.’ Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity will by now realise the difficulty poor Karen was in.  The conflict between her love and lust for Sean and her horror at his clear anti-Semitism posed a dilemma that no woman should have to undergo.
Karen however was nothing if not patient with her errant Sean.  She explained that in the past decade some 40,000 Jews had emigrated from France to Israel.  Of course, like all Zionist statistics this is somewhat misleading. After the murder of 4 Jews in the Hypercacher supermarket in 2015 Israel did its best to stimulate the emigration of Jews.  Netanyahu came over to Paris to tell the Jews there that their ‘real home’ was Israel but not only did they not come in the expected numbers but of those who did come ‘many of them are also returning to France in greater numbers’ according to Andy Semotiuk. Zionism’s answer to anti-Semitism has never been to fight it but to do what the anti-Semites want, which is to leave and set up their own racial state. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2014 there were 6,547 Jewish emigrants from France and in 2015, despite the Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher murders the number rose only to 6,628. In 2016, the number dropped to 4,239 and in 2017 there were only 3,157. In the first five months of 2018 there were just 759 emigrants. In short there are lies, damned lies and Karen’s statistics. Why the Expected Wave of French Immigration to Israel Never Materialized
Karen, whose patience with her shegetz, was almost superhuman, explained to the anti-Semitic misfit that ‘mocking Jews when they call out anti-Semitism, is analogous to white people telling black people they are imagining their experiences of racism.’ Well put. Read from the crib sheet with perfection. The only problem is that Jews in Britain are White not Black.  Not only White but the most privileged section of the White community in terms of socio-economic status. It was noticeable that in all her examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ none of them actually related to anything that has actually disadvantaged British Jews.  They all related to Israel. Strange that.
Even worse poor Sean then blurted out that ‘Jews have money, don’t they?’ whilst hastening to reassure Karen that he wasn’t talking about her.
By this time, you will understand that Karen Glaser had just about had enough of Sean and quite understandably she exploded. Anti-Semitism in her boudoir was really too much. Since Jews don’t have saints, one almost wonders whether Pope Francis might help out and canonise the Blessed Karen Glaser.  I realise that you have to be dead before the process of beatification begins but I’m sure that Karen, halo intact, could be made an exception. She patiently told the miscreant that:
‘the point is that anti-Semitism is never about Jews and the actual lives they lead, and one of the central tropes of anti-Semitism is the pernicious association between Jews and money. It never, ever goes away. For many on the left this means that the Jews can never be oppressed or exploited but are, in fact, the source of others’ oppression and exploitation. That’s why Corbyn couldn’t see anything wrong with that vile mural. It matched his world view.
You will understand I am sure the magnitude of young Sean’s offence. Indeed I am surprised that Karen didn’t pick up her phone, dial 999 and report him for a hate crime.  I should imagine that 6 months in the clink might be the best cure (since being deprived of Karen’s nocturnal favours probably won’t be punishment enough).
Before m’lud pronounces sentence it is probably fair to quote a couple of Jewish experts who can be witness to Sean’s anti-Semitic crimes.
The first is William Rubinstein, a past President of the Jewish Historical Society. In his book The Right, Left and the Jews, (Croom Helm, 1982) Rubinstein writes that
the rise of Western Jewry to unparalleled affluence and high status has led to the near disappearance of a Jewish proletariat of any size : indeed the Jews may become the first ethnic group in history without a working class of any size.... it has made Marxism, and other radical doctrines, irrelevant to the socio-economic bases of Western Jewry, and increasingly unattractive to most Jews.
While there have been many wealthy and powerful Jewish individuals and dynasties throughout modern history, only since the 1950s has Western Jewry as a whole risen into the upper-middle class. And the Jewish proletariat transformed itself into a near-universal Jewish bourgeoisie.’ p. 51

Perhaps we should quickly pass on since it’s obvious that this Rubinstein fellow is also anti-Semitic. How about the much more reasonable Geoffrey Alderman, who is a right-wing columnist for the Jewish Chronicle?  In his book ‘The Jewish Community in British Politics, Clarendon Press 1983, Alderman writes (p. 137)
the tendency for British Jews to be found in the higher social classes is very evident. In 1961 over 40 per cent of Anglo-Jewry was located in the upper two social classes, whereas these categories accounted for less than 20 per cent of the general population. The electoral consequences of this trend become clear when it is remembered that , at the time of the 1964 general election which Labour won, three -quarters of the top two social classes supported the conservative party.
Hmm. Maybe not. So it seems that not only is Sean right about Jews being more prosperous than the average Gentile but we have also stumbled on the real reason why so few Jews vote Labour today. Nothing to do with that left-wing Adolf Corbyn.  It would seem that it’s no longer in their interest to do so, as just about anyone who has lived in a Jewish community will tell you. They are insufferably bourgeois.  It was not for nothing that in Thatcher’s constituency of Finchley Jews constituted one of her main support bases.
The ever patient Karen, who truth be told wanted to hang on to Sean if at all possible, then got on to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. I know what some of you malcontents are going to say. That people like Geoffrey Robertson QC have slagged it off as being not fit for purpose but as Karen explained the IHRA
‘was written in response to this hatred, a definition to help European police forces and prosecutors better understand it. That’s why the Labour Party’s refusal to adopt it in full for so long caused huge hurt and pain.’
And nothing defines our Karen so much as pain.  Her article oozes the stuff. The fact that the IHRA mentions Israel more than Jews is completely irrelevant. Its sole concern is anti-Semitism. After all it’s a Working Definition on Anti-Semitism and has been for the past 14 years. What further proof do you need of its relevance than the fact that all those Tories support it? There is barely an anti-Semite in the world, Orban, Trump, Netanyahu, who doesn’t support it.
Up piped our irrepressible Sean ‘“Britain has hate speech and anti-discrimination laws.  Why do Jews need additional protection?” A good question you might think but I beg you to understand that this last, flippant comment was what we in the trade call the straw that broke the camel’s back (if comparing a Jew to a camel isn’t anti-Semitic).
The legendary Robert Fisk of The Independent
You will now understand why Sean’s insolent and brazen refusal to emphathise with his erstwhile lover led to the breakdown of a beautiful relationship. One can only imagine the pained expression on Karen as she barked ‘I think it’s time for you to leave’.
As St. Karen of Golders Green explained to The Stagger’s readership
‘Corbynistas’ standard response to Jews is that they know their claims of anti-Semitism are false and that they make them to smear the Labour leader. Of course this doesn’t explain why this woman threw her (now ex) lover out of her freshly painted flat at 2.30 am.’
Never a truer word spoken in jest.  Karen is right. Sean’s impudence doesn’t explain why ‘this woman’ behaved as she did.  I can only presume it was a product of the fact that for all her wittering about ‘anti-Semitism’ she could not explain how it was that anti-Semitism had only risen since Jeremy Corbyn had become leader of the Labour Party and why Tory links with genuine anti-Semites never seemed to get a look in.  Or indeed why, if Labour was indeed anti-Semitic  it was the papers of the Right, like the Daily Mail, the paper that supported Hitler in the 1930’s and which opposed the immigration of Jewish refugees from Nazism, who were hottest on Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’.


One of a rare breed - Robert Fisk - The Independent's Legenday Middle East correspondent

There is only one moral one can draw from this story and it is an old one.  Hell has no fury like a woman scorned. Karen Glaser deserves to be scorned and treated with complete disdain and contempt for the dishonesty of this account, from beginning to end. If it did indeed occur then we can rest assured that it is a parody of the breakdown in her relationship with ‘Sean’.  I suspect, like the odyssey of the Children of Israel in the Sinai desert it is a comfortable myth which hides more than it reveals about Karen’s personal life.
It would of course be interesting to hear Sean’s account of this fairy tale but for the New Statesman to do that would be to break a habit of a lifetime.  It would mean conceding a right of reply to someone who had been abused and traduced. Even if his name has been changed there is no doubt that there will be people who know of Karen’s ex-partner and will think worse of him as a result.
However that is as nothing when one considers that Sean should count himself extremely fortunate to be free of this hectoring, bullying, self centred and superficial woman. That she is probably typical of British journalists and the staff on the New Statesman is indeed a cause for reflection if not concern. Pundits and commentators today are little more than prostitutes doing their proprietor’s bidding. Their opinions are for sale and any journalist with an independent streak is unlikely to gain and retain employment on most newspapers.
Patrick Cockburn - part of a journalistic dynasty
I can think of just two, possibly three, journalists who retain any credibility or independence today.  Patrick Cockburn, the legendary Robert Fisk and John Pilger. The first two are employed by The Independent and Pilger has no regular paper.  Instead we have a succession of mediocrities flitting between The Guardian, New Statesman and BBC, none of whom challenges the neo-liberal view of the world that sees capitalism as a good thing and inevitable and which is incapable of marrying up things like poverty, global warming and climate change with the social and economic system that produces these phenomenon.
Perhaps I have wasted too much time on Karen Glaser, who is really just an insipid and insignificant reflection of other peoples’ thoughts. Someone who retails hasbara  as her own original thought and whose view of the world is coloured by her own perception of her ‘oppression’.  At the end of the day Karen Glaser’s article says as much about the editors at the New Statesman as it does about her.
Below is a letter I rushed off to the New Statesman. It will not of course be published.
Tony Greenstein

Attacking Jeremy Corbyn for ‘anti-Semitism’ is of far more interest than an article explaining why Donald Trump, Israel’s best friend, bears the political and moral responsibility for Pittsburgh

Or why Karen Glaser’s boyfriend should count himself extraordinarily lucky to have escaped the clutches of this stupid woman

New Statesman Limited
John Carpenter House
7 Carmelite Street
Blackfriars
London EC4Y 0BS

Dear Editor,

Are there no limits to the New Statesman's shallowness?  It seems that the Staggers is determined to plumb the depths of the sewer in order to attack Jeremy Corbyn.

Even by your abysmal standards 'Why I kicked my boyfriend out at 2am over anti-Semitism in the Labour Party' reaches new heights of absurdity.  We expect this kind of trivia from the Establishment’s Guardian but is this all the New Statesman can contribute? A sly and snide article signifying nothing other than your own miserable fury?

Simple questions such as why is it that 'antisemitism' is of such a concern in the Labour Party at a time of the ongoing Windrush scandal (i.e. real and genuine racism) are too much for you. Or how about asking why it is that the Tories’ alliance with 3 antisemitic parties in the European Parliament - the Swedish Democrats, Poland's Law & Justice Party and Latvia's Freedom and Fatherland Party - is of such little concern? 

Of course I understand that the habit of Latvia's MEP Robert Zile in marching alongside the veterans of Latvia's Waffen SS each March is not in the same league as Corbyn’s iniquities but then we have Israel to defend.

Saying that Jews have money i.e. they tend to be privileged is clearly more important than Tory MEPs voting to defend the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. After all Orban is best friends with Benjamin Netanyahu, even if Holocaust survivors picketted him when he paid homage at Israel’s Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem in July. 

The fact that Orban described the pro-Nazi ruler of Hungary during the war, Admiral Horthy, as an 'exceptional statesman.' pales into insignificance compared to Corbyn’s mural. Presiding over the deportation of half a million Jews to Auschwitz bears no comparison to meeting with Hamas and, god forbid, Hezbollah.

Let us not get hung up on the little white lies that Karen Glaser managed to insert into her article.  Raed Salah has always denied the blood libel allegation and it is interesting that the Jerusalem magistrates court acquitted him of this accusation before the higher colonial District Court overturned his acquittal. Or that the famous mural did not have any hook nosed Jews in it.  Or that Hamas has changed its Charter but that in any case when Israel commits mass murder in the name .of ‘the Jews’ it is unsurprising that they might consider their enemy ‘the Jews’.

Even stranger how these genocidalist anti-Semites condemned the murder of Jews at Pittsburgh. But why should you let facts get in the way of your campaign against Corbyn?

The New Statesman was born in the womb of Fabian imperialism.  Trusteeship rather than exploitation was its watchword.  Hence why it was an early supporter of Zionism. However under Lord Passfield and Clement Attlee Fabian imperialism demonstrated that it was no different to that of Tory imperialism. 

Karen Glaser's boyfriend should count himself extraordinarily lucky that he has managed to free himself from the clutches of this stupid woman.

Tony Greenstein
Tony Greenstein

15 July 2015

Fascist Leader Attacks Boycott of Israel

What a surprise.  First the Hitler loving leader of Christians United 4 Israel, John Hagee, hates BDS and then the leader of the French fascist party, Marine Le Pen adds her weight to the call.

Fascist Le Pen Opposes BDS
Marine Le Pen has had a little local difficulty in recent months.  She has been trying to clean up her act and pretend that the French FN are no longer anti-Semitic.  Gone are the days when her pater would talk about the gas chambers as being a ‘mere detail’ of history.  Unfortunately Jean Marie le Pen  found it difficult to keep his mouth closed, with the result that he was barred from the headquarters and expelled, only to be reinstated by a French court.
Marine's old dad, Jean, is angry that he has brought up his daughter to be a good anti-Semite and now she's pretending that she loves Jews
Marine has been trying to convince people that though the FN hates Muslims and Blacks it loves Jews.  True there are a few Jewish idiots who accept this nonsense and focus their attacks on French muslims.  But anyone with a few grey cells can see through what is happening.  After all it’s pretty transparent,.  Racists change their targets but their principles never change.

Tony Greenstein

French far-right leader slams BDS to woo Israel lobby

Ali Abunimah 14 July 2015

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far right Front National party. (Rémi Noyon/Flickr)

French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen is attempting to win the favor of Israel lobby groups for her far-right Front National party.
Trying to bury the National Front's   anti-semitic legacy
According to the website of the pro-Israel group Europe-Israël, Le Pen told the founder of the European Jewish Parliament, a communal organization based in Brussels, that “anti-Semitism has no place in the Front National.”
Enough to make a fascist wince
Le Pen also reportedly told Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Rabinovich at their meeting in the French city of Strasbourg that “she would not accept Front National members who have anti-Semitic opinions” or “who support a boycott of Israel.”

The far-right leader reportedly characterized the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights as “racist.”
Le Pen’s conflation of anti-Semitism, of which her party has a long and notorious tradition, on the one hand, and Palestine solidarity activism, on the other, converges with the strategy being pushed by the Socialist administration of President François Hollande.
Why we need BDS
The Front National’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim invective are increasingly in tune with mainstream French xenophobia, especially in the wake of the murders at the anti-Muslim magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January.

In the US, there is nothing new in prominent pro-Israel figures, such as Anti-Defamation League President Abraham Foxman, pursuing alliances with notorious anti-Semites and Islamophobes for the sake of Israel.
Omar Barghouti - one of the principal supporters of BDS in Israel
But in France, the Front National remains saddled with its history of Holocaust denial and of promoting hatred and suspicion of Jews.

Seeking the endorsement of Israel lobby groups is therefore a shrewd way for Le Pen to try to shed that baggage. In that vein, we can expect that the BDS movement will be an increasingly popular target for ambitious French politicians, just as it is for American ones.

Earlier this month, for instance, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton assured Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban of her determination to fight BDS.

Family feud
The meeting also comes amid a bitter family feud between Marine Le Pen and her father, Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. The party has moved to expel the elder Le Pen and strip him of his title of “honorary president.”

At issue is Jean-Marie Le Pen’s off-message comments minimizing the Holocaust, praising France’s wartime collaborationist Vichy regime and referring to Nazi death camps as a mere “detail” of the Second World War.

Earlier this month, a French court overturned a party ballot to dump him, ensuring that embarrassing litigation will persist in the run-up to the 2017 presidential election.

Flirtation
Marine Le Pen’s comments can be seen as a reciprocation of recent flirtations with her party by certain Israel lobby figures.

In February, Roger Cukierman, president of CRIF, the main pro-Israel umbrella group of Jewish communal organizations in France, raised eyebrows when he appeared to bless the Front National leader.

He acknowledged in a radio interview that the Front National was starting to draw Jewish voters, but said it was a very small minority.

“I think we in the Jewish world are all aware that behind Marine Le Pen, who is personally beyond criticism, there are many Holocaust deniers [and] supporters of the Vichy regime,” Cukierman said, “and therefore for us the Front National is a party to avoid.”

Cukierman’s apparent praise of Le Pen, and his attempt to distinguish her from the rest of her party, drew a sharp rebuke from Serge Klarsfeld, the French attorney and activist whose father was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz.

Splits
Similarly, Le Pen’s meeting with European Jewish Parliament founder Vadim Rabinovich has highlighted disagreements among some pro-Israel groups.

“She is not her father,” Rabinovich told JTA of Marine Le Pen. “We have had a constructive dialogue where we accepted the need to combat anti-Semitism, and I believe she is sincere about this.”
But Europe-Israël President Jean-Marc Moskowicz resigned from the European Jewish Parliament in protest over the meeting, stating that it was “not the role of the European Jewish Parliament to interfere in the relationship between French political parties and the Jewish community of France.”
Moskowicz, however, does not seem to oppose meeting Le Pen in principle. Rather, he objected on foreign policy grounds, including that “the party of Ms. Le Pen is still unclear regarding Israel.”
He cited statements of Le Pen deputy Florian Philippot “in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state without negotiations with Israel.”

Calling the meeting “more than premature,” Moskowicz said it “would have been better to wait for Marine Le Pen to take positions in support of Israel, against anti-Semitism and to fight the boycott, which she has not done for the moment.”

The implication seems to be that if Le Pen affirms pro-Israel and anti-BDS positions as a matter of party policy, Europe-Israël too might be ready to give her a second look.

Divide and rule
Le Pen’s comments underline the advantage French politicians – even those who head notoriously anti-Semitic parties – see in posing as champions in the fight against anti-Semitism.

But the approach they are taking may only deepen divisions in French society, rather than effectively addressing the problem, according to Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR).

PIR – the Party of the Indigenous Persons of the Republic – is an anti-racist and decolonial political collective that says that Black people, Arabs and Muslims still occupy an inferior place in contemporary France, just as they did in French colonies.

In March, PIR took aim at what it called “state racism” and “state philo-Semitism” that pit Jews against other segments of French society under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism.

“It is true that traditional anti-Semitism exists in France, fueled by the far-right,” PIR observes. “But there is no state anti-Semitism. Jews are not discriminated against in housing or employment, are not harassed by the police and are not subjected to large-scale anti-Semitic propaganda in national media.”
This contrasts with the condition of millions of French citizens and immigrants of Arab and African ancestry or Muslim faith.

But, PIR warns:

There is a state policy, rooted in colonial history, that is being reactivated in light of contemporary issues. This policy is based on the preferential treatment given to the fight against anti-Semitism as against other racisms. This is helping to deepen the tensions between different segments of French society, exposing Jews to the condemnation of the most disadvantaged in the hierarchy of racisms. Based on this logic, we see a racist offensive against young indigenes [people of Arab and African ancestry or Muslim religion], accusing them of being the vector of a new anti-Semitism. [The state] claims to be the protector of the Jews, all the while using them … as a baseball bat to hit Blacks and Arabs.

Since the January attacks in Paris, there has been a big leap in Islamophobic attacks in France, but little government effort to fight the phenomenon.
Many critics accuse the government itself of stigmatizing young Muslims in its fight against “radicalization.”

There has been a fivefold increase in physical attacks against persons and numerous acts of vandalism against mosques, according to a recent report from the nonprofit group Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (Collective Against Islamophobia in France).

In June, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve admitted that the number of anti-Muslim acts “is certainly underestimated because too many victims are reluctant to report them,” fearing that they would not be believed or that nothing would be done.

By contrast, President François Hollande, announcing a raft of new laws and policies aimed at fighting anti-Semitism, stated in February that anti-Jewish statements online should be treated with the same severity as child pornography.

According to PIR, this differential approach is being supported by pro-Israel organizations in the Jewish community – with the effect of further conflating Judaism and Jews, on the one hand, with Israel and Zionism, on the other.

In an expansive essay, PIR’s Houria Bouteldja writes:

Those who use the Jews for Israeli interests are indeed Zionist organizations in complicity with Official France, which attends the CRIF dinner every year and makes Zionist organizations its privileged interlocutors. This attitude of French rulers has been denounced by Jewish organizations – UFJP [French Jewish Union for Peace], IJAN [International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network] and Another Jewish Voice, who rightly see the danger for Jews all over the world. It is important to note that these activists, who previously claimed internationalist and class identities, now feel obliged to identify as Jews to distinguish themselves from those who are confiscating Jewishness for political ends.

Among those now joining in – with the apparent collusion of at least a few pro-Israel activists – is one of France’s most pernicious organizations: the Front National.


For Bouteldja, the message of recent political developments in France is clear: “If one is clearly anti-racist, and worried about the rise of the extreme right that will target first and foremost the populations of the [predominantly Arab and Black] neighborhoods; and if one is concerned about Jews who have become targets of terrorist groups, one must have the courage to attack the current forms of state racism: Islamophobia, anti-Blackness and Romaniphobia, as well as state philo-Semitism, which is a subtle and sophisticated form of anti-Semitism of the nation-state.”