Showing posts with label Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland. Show all posts

19 February 2019

Why is Stand Up To Racism and the SWP Welcoming Racist Zionist Groups onto an anti-racist march?

A simple message to the SWP/SUTR You cannot Oppose Racism & Allow Racists on an anti-Racist march

Update - Scottish Muslim Council for Britain has decided to Boycott the SUTR March



You couldn't make it up. The Socialist Workers Party and their SUTR front group are holding a march against racism and they are allowing overtly racist groups, Glasgow Friends of Israel and Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland to participate.

40 years ago when the neo-Nazi National Front was kicking its way into the headlines and threatening to become Britain’s fourth major party, the Anti-Nazi League and the anti-fascist movement invited Jewish organisations which were also Zionists, to work with them. They refused and the Board of Deputies of British Jews and their allies launched a vicious attack on the ANL alleging it that it was more dangerous than the fascists.

I described what happened in Return No. 5, December 1990, in REDEFINING ANTI-SEMITISM - The False Anti-Racism of the Right,
          ‘the anti-Zionism of the SWP and Peter Hain, who formed part of the leadership of the Anti-Nazi League was treated as more important than the growth of a fascist party. Zionists who did participate, like Miriam Karlin, faced extreme hostility: "I'm branded a leftist extremist for being on the steering committee of the ANL, which seems to be the only group standing up against racism.. It really hurts when people I thought knew better accuse me of disloyalty. '  [Jewish Chronicle 14.8.81.] 

      When the ANL was formed, almost immediately a right-wing Zionist Labour MP, Maurice Orbach withdrew as a sponsor. Orbach "felt that the appointment of Mr Peter Hain as Press Officer of the League was questionable in view of Mr Hain's known support for the Palestinians and anti-Zionist causes. " [JC 18.11.77.] And in reply to a letter from Hain, the SWP's Paul Holborow and Neil Kinnock MP (!) argued for the overriding importance of anti-fascist unity, [JC 25.11.77.]  Orbach wrote that "/ still believe that the blackest day since Hitler was the appearance at the UN of Yassir Arafat. " [JC 2.12.77.]  Searchlight anti-fascist magazine, observed that "In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots... It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930's, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era. " Searchlight 41, November 1978.
The racists of GFoI, fresh from working with open holocaust deniers and fascists are 'looking forward' to working with SUTR - you couldn't make it up
The disgrace of SUTR and SWP that open racists boast that it 'was nice to chat'
     Searchlight, then edited by Maurice Ludmer and the widely accepted journal of the anti-fascist movement, attacked the Board of Deputies in no uncertain terms.  Unfortunately Ludmer died prematurely and it was taken over by Gerry Gable, an overt Zionist.

in the film above NW Friends of Israel openly works with the fascist English Defence League when Palestinian supporters picketed the Israeli Kedem shop
Today however the situation is entirely different. The Zionist movement is unashamedly on the far-Right. Zionist organisations, especially those who call themselves ‘Friends of Israel Groups’ work with fascist groups and individuals, e.g. Manchester Friends of Israel has worked openly with the EDL. Sussex Friends of Israel demonstrate with far-Right Christian Zionists and work with the Jewish Defence League (it was the EDL's Jewish wing). 

People like Jonathan Hoffman, former Deputy Chair of the Zionist Federation openly work with fascists to the extent that we saw him standing side by side, outside Palestine Expo 2017 with the former Intelligence Officer of Britain First, Paul Besser.
Paul Besser (with flat cap) with Jonathan Hoffman to this left and Gemma Sheridan of the neo-Nazi JDL stuck in between
The Politics of Genocide on GFOI FB page
Todays Zionists do not bother to hide their far-Right affiliations and open racism. On the front of their Facebook Page SFOI have a photo starkly saying ‘There is no such thing as the Palestinians.’ This is the politics of genocide. First you deny that there is a people then if you wipe them out they never existed in the first place.
Zionism today represents the most visceral and atavistic racism. Yet the SWP, for whom nothing changes and which claims, at least on paper, to be anti-Zionist, are totally unable to make the connection between the racism of Zionism in Israel and the racism of Zionism in Britain. Anti-racism at home and abroad just never meet up.  The racist of Empire doesn't seem to have any connection with racism in Britain. It was said of the late President Ford of the United States that he couldn't chew gum and walk at the same time.  The SWP also find it difficult integrating more than one campaign into their overall analysis.
An uncomfortable conversation between Matisyahu Berlow of Glasgow FOI and Hope not Hate about the fascists and antisemites that they attract to their stall 
One of the reasons for this is that the SWP believe that that all but a handful of British Jews are Zionists and therefore to connect with British Jews one must work with Zionist organisations. Instead of working with those Jews who are anti-Zionist the SWP believes that something is to be gained by working with bourgeois Zionist groups. The actions of the SWP, because that is what Stand up to Racism really is, is thus to reinforce the claim of Zionism to speak on behalf of all Jews and that anti-Zionism is therefore a form of anti-Semitism.
Donald Trump has cut off aid to UNWRA which helped feed the Palestinian refugees - GFOI openly applaud this and call it 'terrorism' and the refugees 'fake' - this is what the SWP's support for Palestine amounts to. In essence the SWP are capitulating to social chauvinism and imperialism
40 years ago was a time when many people were not clued up about Zionism and when the Zionists themselves were often on the Left (for example MPs  Tony Benn, Eric Heffer, Ian Mikado and Jo Richardson were members of Labour Friends of Israel). Those days have gone.  Today the Zionists are openly racist, open supporters of the Israeli Right and far-Right and in the Labour Party they are almost exclusively to be found in opposition to Corbyn.
The instances of open collaboration between the Zionist movement in Britain, the fascist Right and supporters of Tommy Robinson are legion, as this blog has repeatedly documented.
That is why Palestine solidarity supporters everywhere condemned the SWP and Scottish SUTR when last year they refused to bar the Confederation of Friends of Israel in Scotland (COFIS) from taking part in their annual anti-racism march virtually welcoming them. Unfortunately for the SWP/SUTR Scottish anti-racists refused to accept the dictat of the SWP’s Central Committee and they ensured that COFIS were unable to march.   
The SWP were widely condemned for their behaviour by the Left in the labour movement, for example by the Morning Star.
Max Dunbar ex-BNP (left) and Sammy Stein Chair of Glasgow Friends of Israel harass Scottish PSC stall
Sammy Stein, Chair of Glasgow Friends of Israel, made an appearance at the Scottish PSC stall in Glasgow in January together with Max Dunbar, ex-Treasurer of the British National Party in Glasgow and now Treasurer of Brittanica.
It is only when Scottish PSC pointed out who their fascist friends were that GFOI dissociated themselves from the fascists - the real question is why the Zionists and GFOI are so attractive to fascists and anti-semites in the first place
Sammy Stein, who defends every Israeli massacre and Israeli Army abuse of Palestinian children, came to an SPSC stall on Buchanan Street to lounge with his camera pointed at the stall. Dunbar had earlier sidled up to the SPSC stall to request a leaflet, then walked away saying "I am pro-Israel". As Mick Napier said

it is ‘time for SUTR to repudiate the repeated declarations by the degenerate Glasgow Friends of Israel of their alliance with SUTR. Silence in the face of a public claim will be widely understood to be acceptance of that claim.

According to Hope not Hate Dunbar was Treasurer of Glasgow BNP and is now Treasurer of Britannica, a tiny new far-right party, first registered in August 2011. They comprise ex-members of Glasgow BNP. The party is essentially the core of the BNP Glasgow branch under a new name. According to their Leader, Charlie Baillie, “the recent decade of mass immigration…..damaged the identity and integrity of the British”. He objected to “persons who come from Africa” and claimed that “..the term racist is a meaningless word”. Dunbar has stood as a BNP candidate on many occasions over the years within the Glasgow area also attending English Defence League demonstrations. Hope not Hate on Dunbar and Glasgow Friends of Israel

This was reported by the Ferret as ‘Pro-Israel group ‘disassociates’ itself from former BNP member Jan 24 2019.’  The National reported that ‘Former BNP member infiltrates Glasgow Friends of Israel group’. Dunbar is also a regular at events organised by A Force For Good, run by Alistair McConnachie, a former Ukip candidate who believes there is no evidence the Nazis used gas chambers to murder Jewish people.’
Scottish PSC sent an Open Letter to SUTR about what had been happening but all the indications are that the SWP, just as over the rape crisis affair in their organisation four years ago, are once again intent on ignoring the views of everyone but themselves.
Racist filth Friends of Israel are Importing into SUTR
Dear SUTR
Last year Glasgow Friends of Israel (GFI) and Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS) joined the Stand Up To Racism organised march in Glasgow. This demonstrates incredible audacity considering their sole purpose is to support and promote an apartheid state (Israel) that has more than 40 racist discriminatory laws on its statute. Many individuals and organisations made their opposition to GFI/COFIS participation known to you. You state that it was not your policy to invite or authorise the participation of specific unaffiliated groups and you stated that you were not in dialogue with these groups. This year (2019) according to GFI they are in dialogue directly with you. GFI have stated “we would like to thank members of the SUTR committee for once again confirming our participation”.
Maybe you are unaware of the nature of the material that this organisation publishes and how they demonise certain ethnicities and belittle the plight of refugees. Sometimes they claim to be a secular organisation and at other times they imply that they are being targeted because they are a Jewish organisation. How strange then that they should publish a vile anti-Semitic tweet about the ex Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Katie  Hopkins, was a guest at the last Zionist Federation dinner. The Zionists seem all over her like a rash

Your organisation has enjoyed long standing support from the labour leadership especially the current leader Jeremy Corbyn. Maybe you are unaware of the relentless and libellous abusive campaigning that GFI have carried out online against Jeremy Corbyn. Here are a few examples of their online abuse:

Are you really welcoming an organisation which promotes Katie Hopkins?
[The term 'Pally' for Palestinian is the equivalent of 'Paki' and Nigger.  It is a vile racist term and the fact that the SWP/SUTR work with these virulent racists is or should be a source of shame - TG].

In June 2018 a tragedy unfolded in Gaza when a young 21 year old nurse called Razan al-Najjar was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as she attended to the wounded on the Great March of Return in support of Gaza refugees right of return.
SUTR and its supporters are well known for their humanity and compassion for the rights of refugees. Below we see how the organisation you are now linked with dismissed the death of this young woman as somehow fake news.
Glasgow Friends of Israel’s next tactic on this proved to be much more vile and sordid. They pinned a tweet suggesting that the young girl Razan was raped and coerced into being at the Great March of Return for refugees.
If you think this coverage of the death of civilians is morally corrupt, GFI decided to plumb the depths even further by injecting humour into their coverage of the deaths of Palestinians. ‘Pallywood’ is the concept invented by Israel supporters to suggest that the journalistic coverage of human rights abuses carried out by Israel on Palestinians is all fake.

Social media was ‘set alight’ when the young Palestinian girl Ahed Tamimi was arrested for slapping an Israeli soldier who was on her family property. She was sentenced to jail by the world’s only military court for children (non-Jewish children) in the occupied West Bank. Again the GFI went to work in order to de-humanise this young girl by portraying her as a terrorist. Here they make a slap into a terrorist offence, juxtaposed to their jokey off-hand dismissal of the killing of civilian Palestinians.
When a group of young Jewish people were threatened by a thug and abused for holding a religious ceremony outside the House of Commons for people killed in Gaza, the GFI thought the assault was hilarious.
GFI have an ongoing smear campaign against ordinary folk who campaign for the plight of the Palestinian people. Dismissing them as benefit scroungers, mental health patients, racists and Jew haters.
Here we see an example of what they think of campaigners against the arms trade.
As for the plight of refugees GFI are campaigning in support of Donald Trump’s racist policies to end UN support for Palestinian refugees.

In light of these examples from GFI and COFIS does SUTR really think that they are suitable organisations to be working with on an anti-racist march. Organisations that exhibit anti-Semitism, trash the image of a young Muslim nurse killed by soldiers, dismiss refugees as fake and who think that the killing of Palestinians is “funny” will surely de-legitimise the anti-racist movement in Scotland and the UK.
Gerry Coutts
Glasgow
5th February 2019

It might be understandable that a Jewish organisation which whose main concern is for example Holocaust remembrance but is nonetheless a liberal Zionist group might be welcome on an anti-racist demonstration. For example we would not object to the Jews who said Kaddish, the prayer for the dead for the victims of Israel’s murder of Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza and who were roundly abused for so doing. They are politically misguided but they aren’t fascists or open racists.
COFIS/Glasgow Friends of Israel however have absolutely nothing to do with anti-racism.  Their sole reason for existence is to support Israeli and Zionist racism of the most vile concern.
COFIS/GFOI are thoroughly reactionary organisations which make the most vile accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party.  What twisted form of 'Marxist' politics are the SWP engaging in that they think that an alliance with these racist vultures has anything to do with fighting racism in Britain?
If SUTR again give the green light to COFIS/GFI to march this year, people from England and Wales should join our comrades in Glasgow to ensure that once again the Zionists are kept away from the march.  NO PASARAN
I also urge members of SUTR and anti-racists in England to make it plain that the decision of Scottish SUTR, backed as it is by the SWP nationally, is condemned as being unacceptable.

See also Who are Friends of Israel by Richard Haley of Scotland Against Criminalising Communities

Tony Greenstein

UPDATE

The SWP are obviously finding the criticism hard to take because Scottish SWP have put up on their Facebook page a long and pathetic justification entitled '**Building the anti-racist movement in Scotland**

I therefore submitted a reply in the normal comradely traditions of debate, the SWP immediately took it down.  I have therefore got a friend to repost it - no doubt the SWP will take it down again because they are unable to respond to the points I make so what other course of action is open to them but censorship?




9 March 2018

Stand Up To Racism – End Your Collaboration with Apartheid Israel



 Scottish PSC calls on SUTR to withdraw its invitation to an Israel Apartheid group to join their anti-racist march in Glasgow



I am posting this in solidarity with the statement put out by Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
At a demonstration organised in Glasgow next Saturday March 17th amongst those invited to participate in the demonstration is the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland.  There is absolutely no excuse for marching alongside the supporters of Apartheid and the invitation must be withdrawn. 

There was a time when people on the Left like the Socialist Workers Party, whose initiative SUTR is, were ignorant of the racist and apartheid nature of Israel. That is no longer true.  There was a time when ‘socialist’ Zionists formed the main segment of the Zionist movement and were in government in Israel and people were deceived as to their true record but they spoke the language of the Left whilst engaging in ethnic cleansing.  This is no longer true either.

Support for Israel today means support for the gaoling of 17 year old Ahed Tamimi.  It means support for house demolition, imprisonment without trial,  the theft of land and water, the use of torture and a Jewish state which inherently and institutionally discriminates against Palestinians and non-Jews.  It means support at this very time for the deportation of 40,000 Black African refugees from Israel because they are Black and not Jewish.  This is unacceptable.

This invitation by SUTR to a pro-Israeli group is a consequence of the inability of the SWP to reconcile its anti-racism domestically with support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism.  The two exist in separate and ideologically watertight compartments. They should ask themselves why groups like the BNP  manage to combine anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial with adulation of Israel and Zionism. The SWP is out of date.  Virtually no fascist groups in Britain bar the National Front now pretend to support the Palestinians.
Zionism is supported by the far-Right internationally.  Indeed it is itself increasingly becoming part of that far-Right.  It is no accident that far-Right governments throughout Europe – from Viktor Orban in Hungary to Poland to Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz Christian Strache – combined anti-Semitism and fascism with support for the Israeli state.  We have the leaders of the alt-Right in the United States, from Steve Bannon to neo-Nazi Richard Spencer declaring that they are White Zionists.
Fascists and racists today love the Israeli state because it is the very ethno-nationalist state that they want to set up.  Britain First, whose two leaders – Paul Golding and Jayda Franzen – were yesterday gaoled for racial harassment are overtly pro-Israel and pro-Zionist.  Israel is seen by fascist and neo-Nazi groups in Europe as the ideal anti-Muslim state. After all what is there not to like about Israel if you are a White Supremacist?

This decision, as Mick Napier says on the video, to march with this Zionist group is an outrage.  It is utterly shameful. If SUTR persists in this folly then the Palestine Solidarity groups will be forced to reconsider their links with them.  In Brighton PSC is affiliated to the group. 
The fascist Britain First group combines virulent racism with support for Zionism
What is particularly shameful is that this march is in commemoration of the massacre of Black people protesting against the pass system in South Africa in Sharpeville on March 21st 1960.  Palestinians in the Occupied Territories face a far more sophisticated and obtrusive pass system operated by Israel with hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank with one entrance for Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers.  As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize stated:
"I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government."  Jerusalem Post 10 March 2014.
What part of the above statement does Stand Up to Racism not understand?  Or is it only racism in Britain that they are opposed to?

Tony Greenstein


On International Women's Day Scottish PSC received the following message from Nelson Mandela's daughter-in-law, Rayne Rose Mandela, and her daughter Nodiyala, Nelson Mandela's granddaughter, from Eastern Cape.

Message, 8 March 2018:

Greetings to those opposing racism in Scotland and around the world. The worldwide demonstrations on the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre should oppose all racism that blight our planet, especially the brutal apartheid system that still holds sway in Israel/Palestine.

International solidarity against the racist regime in South Africa played a part in our struggle for liberation and we have a duty on this anniversary to build another example of successful international solidarity for the long-suffering Palestinian people.

Amandla!

Scottish PSC spokesperson, Mick Napier
Introduction & addition, 8th March 2018
"We say that the organisers have no mandate to violate and corrupt this international commemoration. Scotland must not be the back door for supporters of Israeli Apartheid to promote their racist segregation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Were this effort to be successful it would shame Scotland internationally and make Mandela Place a meaningless relic."
No place for organised supporters of apartheid on a demonstration against apartheid and racism

The demonstration organised for Glasgow on March 17th is one small part of a UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination established to commemorate the massacre on 21st March 1960 of 69 peaceful demonstrators protesting against apartheid in Sharpeville, South Africa. The UN states the commemoration is to demonstrate “solidarity with the peoples struggling against racism and racial discrimination”.

The Palestinian people suffer under an Israel apartheid system much worse than the South African version.

Some organisers of the Glasgow demonstration on March 17th, which is promoted as part of the UN day of solidarity, are determined to allow onto this march a group called Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland set up to defend and support Israel’s apartheid system and its frequent massacres of Palestinians.

We are expected to commemorate the heroes and martyrs of the struggle against South African apartheid by marching alongside the banners and flags of the defenders of Israeli apartheid. Desmond Tutu and other South Africans have declared that the horrors of South African apartheid were “a picnic” compared to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians today.
Ronnie Kasrils is a Jewish veteran of the ANC and was a Minister in the South African Government from 2004-2008. At SPSC meetings in Scotland he developed his view that “Any South African who goes to Palestine today and visits the West Bank and Gaza, or Palestinians living in the State of Israel, come away shocked and, shaking their heads saying ‘This is far worse than the apartheid we knew’."

(Jewish) co-author of the latest UN-commissioned report identifying Israel as an apartheid state, Prof. Richard Falk, spoke at the 2017 SUTR demonstration on behalf of SPSC and was warmly received. Now we are expected to welcome defenders of the apartheid State on the 2018 demonstration.

We say that the organisers have no mandate to violate and corrupt this international commemoration. Scotland must not be the back door for supporters of Israeli Apartheid to promote their racist segregation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Were this effort to be successful it would shame Scotland internationally and make Mandela Place a meaningless relic.

Statement from Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign on forthcoming anti-racism demonstration, 19 February 2018
.
The Confederation of Friends of Israel in Scotland (COFIS) joined the 2017 Stand Up to Racism demonstration in Glasgow and a clutch of members marched for some distance as part of that demonstration. They carried a banner of their racist organisation and Israeli flags, causing offence and consternation to many of those on the march.

COFIS works closely with the Israeli Embassy to close down public discussion of Israeli crimes and to impede organising for the Palestinian-led BDS movement, the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel until the crimes against the Palestinian people are ended.
COFIS opposes the demands of the Palestinian BDS Call: for Israel to

1. end the occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantle the Wall
2. recognise the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality
3. respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

COFIS defends and supports every Israeli war crime and crime against humanity, including Israel's Operation Protective Edge of summer 2014 which slaughtered over 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza. That indiscrinate mass killing led the Scottish Government to call for an arms embargo againt Israel.

COFIS works to smear Palestine solidarity activists as racists for opposition to the apartheid State of Israel, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the theft of Palestinian land and water resources, the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes, mass arrests and the killing of Palestinians purely on the basis of their nationality.

Yet some continue to defend the right of COFIS to participate in anti-racist marches despite COFIS' active defence of the state-enforced racism, i.e. apartheid, under which the Palestinian people suffer.
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign considers that this policy is inherently wrong, but also that, if unopposed, it would greatly weaken the struggle against the racism that blights Scottish society.
On any political demonstration it is never clear how many of those positioned behind a specific banner are associated with it. Throughout the world an Israeli flag is seen as a symbol of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and the genocidal siege of the people of Gaza. Flying such a symbol of apartheid on a demonstration makes it impossible for most Palestinians and Lebanese, as well as many Scots to participate, for how can Palestinians be expected to march behind the flag of the settlements which steal their land, the military outposts which fire on their family and friends, the checkpoints that creatively make their lives miserable, the symbol of a government which is openly committed to completing their disposession and copper-fastening their inferior status throughout the whole of Palestine.

Our solidarity with the Palestinian people and our opposition to the forces that work to violate them has to extend to the streets of Scotland. A people who suffer ritual humiliation from a rabble of Israeli soldiery at the checkpoints that blight their lives should not be further humiliated in Scotland by asking them to march alongside their violators and the repugnant symbol of their violators.
Seeing the parallels between their own oppression and that of the Palestinian people, anti-racist movements around the world such as Black Lives Matter in the United States have enthusiastically integrated support for the Palestinian freedom struggle into their official aims. Anti-racists in Scotland should do no less.

Some few are afraid of being labelled 'anti-semtic' if they bar an active campaign for Israeli apartheid from an anti-racist march, but this is itself a racist position because it implies that all Jews are complicit in the crimes of the State of Israel. SPSC rejects any notion of collective guilt and insists that Scottish Jews are not to be held responsible for the crimes of the State of Israel.
In any case, anyone who becomes actively involved in the struggle for Palestinian freedom understands that malicious and false accusations of anti-semitism follow as night follows day, and that the only way to avoid such politically-driven smears is to scale down support for the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid.

Israeli flags commonly fly in the ranks of fascist marches in Scotland and elsewhere; are we to have Israeli flags flying on both sides of racist and anti-racist mobilisations? The proposal would be very strange.

Permitting Israeli flags and an active campaign on behalf of Israeli apartheid onto anti-racism initiatives will divide and weaken any struggle against racism.

We call upon SUTR and its affiliates to bar any group that exists to defend state-enforced racism in Israel/Palestine as having no place among anti-racist campaigns.
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

19th February 2018
campaigns@scottishpsc.org.uk