Brighton’s Pride of Place in Israeli Embassy’s War-plan

Israeli Embassy targets ‘Enemy Territory’ in Britain on giant Map

Brighton's Sodastream - a shop that existed without any customers!

Sodastream attempted to catch on to  Brighton's green reputation - but people weren't so easily fooled!  They even called their shop 'Ecostream'!

Even Scarlett Johansson couldn't prettify Apartheid

In a report Grim days mapped out for the arrival of Israeli mouthpiece Regev in the Middle East Monitor  we learn of a giant map in the Israeli Embassy, a kind of war-plan, in which ‘enemy territory’ is staked out.  Pride of place goes to Scotland but Brighton gets an honourable mention in dispatches.  The article states that:

The mass pickets outside Sodastream convinced it that Brighton wasn't such a good place to do apartheid business

John Lewis stopped selling Sodastream stuff as a result of the campaign

Another hotspot on the embassy map is Brighton, where pro-Palestine activists are well-known supporters of BDS. Back in 2012, the then settlement-based company SodaStream failed in its attempt to open and run a flagship store – EcoStream – in the seaside town to sell home carbonated drinks machines and accessories. This was targeted immediately by activists from Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) who staged noisy protests every Saturday outside the shop, running a gauntlet of Sussex area pro-Israel activists to do so. EcoStream soon closed and its demise was followed by an announcement from one of Britain’s biggest retail stores, the John Lewis Partnership, that it would remove SodaStream products from its shelves.

One of the Zionists not so luvvable Christian fundamentalists

Zionists Perjure Themselves to Secure Conviction of Palestinian Activist

Sussex Friends of Israel  - A Policy of Perjury

Last Thursday the prosecution case against a Brighton member of PSC collapsed, when the District Judge accepted that the two Zionist witnesses had been discredited, after their evidence had been completely contradicted by video footage. There was therefore no case to answer, and the activist was therefore acquitted.

Palestinian activist protesting peacably

Brighton PSC makes a particular point of videoing and archiving evidence such as this, knowing full well that the Zionists do not hesitate to falsify evidence and perjure themselves.  It is, after all, what they do in Palestine.  The defence barrister made the point that it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to challenge the credibility of the prosecution witnesses without this footage being available.

Background

On the 17th of May 2014, two Zionist protesters made a formal complaint to the police that, during the demo outside Ecostream, that they had not only been called Nazis, but it had been done in a personally threatening and abusive way that caused them deep alarm and distress 'as Jewish women'. They alleged that he had come over to where they were positioned, called them both 'fucking nazis' and shook his finger at them 'within two inches' of their faces in a menacing way.

Zionist activist shouting in activist's ear, later complains of being 'harassed'

- This led to a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to charge the activist with a racially/religiously aggravated public order offence under Section 5, and to proceed to prosecution.

The prosecution case was based entirely on the witness statements of the two Zionist counter-protesters, Sandra Gross and Fiona Sharpe, who are both prominent members of Sussex Friends of Israel. At the start of the trial in February, both witnesses in open court re-stated the accusations they had made last May in interview and in writing.

In February, the court was shown video footage from the day in question - our own, as well as CCTV footage from inside the Ecostream shop. This footage had not been disclosed to the prosecution in advance of the trial (there was no requirement to do so). The footage clearly showed that, throughout the period of time in question, The activist was standing several yards from the 'victims'. At no point did he stand anywhere near them. He was heard to say 'You're all nazis - all the Zionists are nazis' which may be a slight exaggeration, but not in the case of Sussex Friends of Israel, a number of whose members are linked to the Nazi Jewish Defence League and work with the EDL.

The prosecution accepted that this video evidence captured the entirety of the alleged offence.

The magistrate therefore judged that the evidence of the two witnesses had been discredited, that the activist's behaviour had not been threatening, that his words were not personally directed at the witnesses, that his words alone in this context had not caused alarm or distress, and that the video footage showed that no one else at the demo had taken any notice of what he said - let alone been distressed. Therefore: 'No case to answer'.

Most people who attended the trial felt that the outcome only deserved two cheers. In particular:

A time-consuming and costly prosecution was approved and conducted solely on the basis of two witness statements by Zionists, who have a clear policy of making untruthful statements in evidence. That the Prosecution could take place on such flimsy evidence, when the police were aware of the racist, sexist and homophobic abuse of pro-Palestinian demonstrators by the Zionists throughout the Ecostream campaign, shows how completely one-sided the policing of the protest was, and how in thrall to the Zionists is the entire criminal justice system.

We now know that their evidence was completely fabricated - that is, they lied to the police and they lied in court. This is a criminal offence. And yet the chances of them being charged with perjury are remote.

The activist's barrister argued that, in the context of a 'heated political demonstration', the words used were political rather than racial. He argued further that the term 'nazi' is quite wide-ranging in contemporary English, to mean 'authoritarian', and is not used exclusively to refer to the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era. The magistrate in her summing up rejected these arguments, and ruled that the use of the word 'nazi' could still potentially be abusive, and that by using the term in a situation where the activist knew many of the Zionists were Jews, it was 'possible that hostility directed to the Jewish race had been intended and achieved'.

Prosecution of local Palestinian demonstrator collapses as zionist witnesses are discredited

Brighton, 9 April 2015

The prosecution case against a local Palestinian activist collapsed this morning, when the presiding judge acknowledged that the evidence of the two witnesses for the prosecution had been completely contradicted by video footage. There was therefore no case to answer. The wrongly-accused defendant was exonerated, and excused from the court without conditions.

The trial related to an incident alleged to have taken place during a demonstration outside the Ecostream store in Western Road on the 17th of May 2014 – part of a two-year campaign protesting against the complicity of Ecostream in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. On the day, two pro-Israel counter-protesters made a formal complaint to the police. They accused one of our number of calling them ‘nazis’, and of doing so in a personally threatening and abusive way that caused them deep alarm and distress ‘as jewish women’. They alleged that he had come over to where they were positioned, called them both ‘fucking nazis’ and shook his finger at them ‘within two inches of their faces’ in a menacing way.

This led to a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to charge our comrade with a racially/religiously aggravated public order offence under Section 5, and to proceed to prosecution.

The prosecution case was based entirely on the witness statements of the two zionist counter-protesters – both of whom are prominent members of Sussex Friends of Israel (one the Co-Chair). At the start of the trial in February, both witnesses re-stated in open court the accusations they had made last May in interview and in writing.

In February, the court was shown video footage from the day in question – including CCTV footage from inside the Ecostream shop. The footage clearly showed that, throughout the period of time in question, our comrade was standing several yards from the ‘victims’. At no point did he stand anywhere near them. On the video he was heard to say ‘You’re all nazis – all the zionists are nazis’.

The prosecution accepted that this video evidence captured the entirety of the alleged offence. With the witness statements directly contradicted by video evidence, the prosecution case collapsed.

The judge therefore ruled that our comrade’s behaviour had not been threatening, that his words were not personally directed at the witnesses, that his words alone in this context had not caused alarm or distress, and that the video footage showed that no one else at the demo had taken any notice of what he said – let alone been distressed. Therefore: ‘No case to answer’.

We’re naturally pleased that this case has collapsed and that the zionist witnesses have been completely discredited. But the trial leaves several important questions unanswered:

Why was this time-consuming and costly prosecution approved and conducted, when it was based solely on flimsy and invented witness statements by two politically-motivated zionists? This is especially shocking when the police were aware throughout the Ecostream campaign of the genuinely racist, sexist and homophobic abuse of pro-Palestinian demonstrators by the zionists.

We now know that the zionists’ evidence was completely fabricated – they lied to the police and they lied in court in an attempt to get one of our number convicted of a hate crime. Video footage from Sussex Friends of Israel’s own Facebook page, played in open court, showed that this had been their deliberate and conspiratorial intention on the day. This is a criminal offence. Will they be charged with perjury?

Simon Cobb's Protection Racket Rumbled

On another, more amusing, note, there is a blog post from an erstwhile comrade of the main organiser of Sussex Friends of Israel concerning Simon Cobbs.  Cobbs, who has featured a number of times on this blog, as well as being a close associate of the JDL and EDL, has been absent from recent protests and is reported to be ill.  I won't return the compliment of a number of SFI members, who have wished me an early death, on Mr Cobbs.  I just hope that he has time to reflect on his ways.

I have no idea who it is who is writing this but obviously he has the measure of Cobbs and Sussex Friends of Israel, most of whom it should be added are racist fundamentalist Christians who want to hasten the days of Armageddon, when most Jews will be consumed with fire, so the elect can teleport their way to heaven.

With friends like this....

Tony Greenstein

How Simon Cobbs Graduated From Fraud To Running a Protection Racket + fiona sharpe, notorious perjurer

Simon Cobbs in happier days

April 8, 2015

The harassing of the poor Board of Deputies, and the trolling of its constituent organisations and individual deputies, by Sussex Friends of Israel (hereafter SFI), has come to a sudden and emphatic halt.

The reason for this is not complcated

Money

An understanding of SFI, and its relationship with the Board is essential to an understanding of how the Southampton conference was lost. But that is a whole story in itself. For the moment, suffice it to say, the whole thing reeks of Jonathan Arkush.

Not one of nature's shrinking violets

The latest Israeli atrocities in Gaza brought sharply into focus a phenomenon that has come to be known as the ” Jewish Grass Roots”. The grass roots is made up of kahanist type ultra right wing Jewish ” activists” ( and some not so Jewish ), who regard their role as standing up for Israel on the streets. One, North West Friends of Israel, has a penchant for hanging out with members and officers of the the ultra right wing racist Henry Jackson Society, not least with Douglas ”  things have to be made harder for Muslims all round” Murray. It is notorious for its EDL associations, which are  based on a mutual hatred of Muslims, as acknowledged by committee member Natan Levinson. See here

After the Jewish establishment organisations ( in a self protection exercise ) announced increased funding for the grass roots, the number of grass roots organisations increased at an exponential rate. Every Jewish n’er do well wanted a slice of the cake.

The inspiration for the grass roots phenomenon is said to be SFI. This is puzzling because SFI’s only success to date is to get the Israeli company, Ecostream, shut down in Brighton.
SFI consists of its founder, Simon Cobbs, a handful of  Jewish Zionist loons and a few swivel eyed Christian Zionists. They number a dozen at the very most, though these numbers were swelled in the Ecostream days by a few  occasionals.

Simon is a case and three quarters. You can  see SFI at its glorious best here

Simon is a fraudster who served nine months of an eighteen month sentence in Her Majesty’s Slammer, Exeter, for the said frauds. Now, everyone is entitled make a mistake, take the consequences and then move on. But Simon doesn’t want to move on. He likes it where he is. Essentially, Simon has, and always will have, a criminal mind.

Nor is Simon SFI’s only  criminal mind. Meet Fiona Sharpe, SFI co-chair, notorious perjurer, and the Board and the Jewish Chronicle’s favoured candidate for” acceptable face”. Here.

So, out of a dozen or less, SFI have three proven, shameless criminals, and that’s just we ones we know about.

(North West Friends of Israel are not without criminal minds either but that’s for another day).

Simon is a self confessed junkie.

A while back, Simon, ever the conman, decided it would be a good idea to be Jewish. Unfortunately, not content to be any old Jew, he decided to be an Orthodox Jew, with all the pitfalls that that entails.
He quit typing ” God ” and started to type ” G-d”. A year later he discovered pesach. Six more months down the road he had mastered a few Hebrew phrases and colloquialisms. He still, however, has difficulty in spelling ” schmuck”.

Mid way through the Ecostream business he expressed a concern about what he was going to do on a Saturday when it was all over. Make what you will of an Orthodox Jew that can’t figure out what to do on a Saturday.

This Orthodox Jew carries on trolling on the internet right though every Shabbat, and every Jewish holiday.

Late last year Simon declared that an alleged indiscretion By Brighton BDS had ” made my Christmas”. This was on the second day of Chanukah when you would have thought that an Orthodox Jew would have been much more conscious of Chanukah than Christmas, and would have said ” made my Chanukah”.

It is all rounded off by a claim to have spent several years on a Kibbutz. If you can imagine Simon slaving all day under a blazing sun in the orange groves, and spending his evenings strumming his guitar by the camp fire, under a starry starry sky, you have a better imagination than we.
Simon’s grasp of what is going on in the world is extremely tenuous.

For example, when the Malaysian air liner was shot down by separatists over Ukraine, he wanted to picket the Ukrainian embassy.

He wants the LibDems to do something about Baroness Warsi.

When Yachad failed to get past the threshold, and get a Knesset seat in the Israeli elections, he told Yachad UK that the Israeli people had rejected their ideas.

Obviously the education department at Exeter slammer is not everything it is cracked up to be.

The Board of Deputies are terrified of the grass roots. They are particularly terrified of SFI.

Following last year’s Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the grass roots launched a whole series of vitriolic assaults on the Jewish establishment, and on the Board in particular. The essence was that they were not doing enough on behalf of Israel, in the prevailing climate. It went on day, after day, after day. This at a time when the Board were feeling particularly vulnerable. They were being turned on one flank by the JLC, who are sitting quietly and patiently to take them ( the Board) over,  and now on the other flank, by the grass roots. Total and permanent irrelevance was, and is, their lot. The JLC  took a lot of stick too. but they have the self confidence to just roll with it. Not so the Board, whose response was craven and embarrassing appeasement.

Steven Jaffe’s job title was changed from Community Engagement Advisor to Grass Roots Advisor. They tweaked their web site so as to describe themselves as a ” grass roots organisation” They backed the embarrassing grass roots initiative, Israction Day, which introduced a whole new style of Jewish” philanthropy”. They sucked up to the grass roots at every opportunity. All to no avail. The grass roots simply pocketed each gesture without so much as a thank you, and came back at them.

In desperation, the Board played their trump card. They decided to buy them off.

So it is that the Board now fund their tormentors, in the form of both cash and ” practical support”.  The Board and Simon have a deal. The Board will keep handing out the dosh, and Simon will quit being horrible to them, This deal is to be formalised, in that SFI are to sign up to a code of conduct. Item number one is that SFI will stop harassing the Board and, instead, talk about what has been achieved(?), and can be achieved, by ” working together”. Then there will be a list of  conduct undertakings, designed to keep the embarrassing of the Board to a minimum. Good luck with that one.The first draft does not include an undertaking to stop perjuring themselves in Brighton courts of law. But to be fair they have been caught on the hop on this one. We are sure the final draft will include such an undertaking.

This code is already in place informally. There is no more threatening the Board’s constituent organisations with violence. It will be remembered that Simon had a twitter account shut down for threatening Hannah Weisfeld. There is no more trolling liberal Jews. All this has abruptly stopped. Now it is all #workingtogether.

In effect, this money has been obtained by SFI, by extortion. They profess undying love for Israel. They declare the Board to be irrelevant and counter productive.They declare the Board a bunch of kapos and worse. But  obviously they  are not prepared to let any of this get in the way of nice little earners.

Let us be perfectly clear what is happening here.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is taking money from the Jewish community, given to fund their “work”. They are then handing over this money to a handful of histrionic, narcissistic loons, littered with fraudsters and perjurers, that have mercilessly insulted them over many months. Loons that have threatened the Boards constituent organisations. Loons that have equally mercilessly insulted a member of the Board’s executiv, who is not to their liking. Loons that troll individual deputies, particularly those that are of a liberal persuasion.

Just how desperate and pathetic can it get.

Sodastream walks into a boycott

Sodastream's Failed Campaign in Brighton.

A Xmas Boycott

The Brighton Boycott

Boycott has spread internationally

Goods plastered

When Sodastream opened its first and only so-called flagship eco-store in Brighton last year, there was talk in the local press about this shop being the first of many in the UK. Brighton had been chosen because of our 'green' image and the fact that we have the only Green MP, Caroline Lucas (who has supported the demonstrators outside  the shop).

Our impression at the time was that they were going to assess its success in Brighton and, assuming reasonable profits (or market share, or penetration, or whatever the business-speak term is) they would then roll out similar so-called eco stores across the UK. 

Our understanding is that they have radically but quietly revised their plans and in essence concentrated on getting their products into other stores like Argos.   Sodastream (renamed Ecostream in Brighton) have in effect abandoned the expansion project (unusual for Israelis, I know) due in large part to the noisy reception they received in Brighton. 

I've emailed their customer services, using a couple of (erm) useful email addresses, to say how envious we are here in (eg) Sheffield that Brighton has such a fantastic eco-shopping place, and when are they going to open one here so all us greenies can re-fill our bottles? All the replies say the same thing - "no plans to open a shop near you, I'm afraid". This suggests that the original Sodasstream project has been abandoned.  

Tony Greenstein

Picket of Brighton's Sodastream Shop Takes Zionists By Surprise

A Xmas Surprise for Sodastream

 

For the past year, Palestine Solidarity Campaign have been mounting a regular weekly picket, accompanied by 'pop' pickets outside the Sodastream shop in Brighton

Cobb's cry for help went unheeded - how touching

Not a shopper in sight

A group of far-Right Zionists, including EDL supporter Simon Cobbs, have attempted to disrupt and stop the picket - but to no good effect.  Their main chants when I'm there are 'traitor - presumably a loyal Jew is a racist Jew according to this 'logic'.

The campaign in Brighton has not only been successful in its own terms but it has sparked a world-wide boycott of Sodastream, a company based on confiscated land on the Mishor Adumim industrial estate between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim (an Israeli settlement).  Palestinians, of course work there (a favourite Zionist argument) just as they did in South Africa's gold and diamond mines.  Not out of choice but necessity.

Simon Cobbs, leader of the Zionist contingent, looking non too pleased

However what expense-paid journalists like Simon Keenan of the Argus appear not to have noticed is that anyone who joins a trade union is a ' trouble maker' and instantly fired.

I am pleased to say that during the entire period of our picket, from 5-6 pm, in freezing weather, not a single customer entered the shop and when I went back an hour later the same situation applied.  I'd lost count of people who, when taking our leaflets, said they had heard of our campaign.  Likewise the number of Jewish people who come up to me and say that the actions of Israel are no different from the traditional anti-Jewish racists.

Shop acts as a loss leader - most of the time it is empty

But as the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl wrote in his Diaries (p.6)
‘In Paris ...I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.’

 Corporate Watch Investigation into Sodastream

Xmas picket of Sodastream

 Sodastream, a carbonated beverage manufacturer is based in the Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone. Mishor Adumim is an industrial are attached to the residential settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, East of Jerusalem in the Israeli occupied West Bank.

Xmas picket at 'Eco' Stream

Israeli company Soda Club, which owns the Sodastream brandname, has opened a new store called Ecostream on Western Road in Brighton.

Sodastream, a carbonated beverage manufacturer is based in the Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone. Mishor Adumim is an industrial area attached to the residential settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, East of Jerusalem in the Israeli occupied West Bank.

Corporate Watch contacted Steve Bannatyne, who has been employed by Sodastream to open the store in Brighton.

Bannatyne said that the store was a place where people could buy refillable bottles for Sodastream syrups and detergents and would be branching out into food products too. The store stocks a range of Sodastream products.

The eco-concept store, which is owned on a lease, is Sodastream's only store in the UK. The company chose Brighton because of the strong green movement in the city.

3 prize Zionist fools - man in centre is an admirer of Omar Barghouti - spokesperson for Boycott National Committee

Last month Corporate Watch spoke to a woman who had attended an interview to work at Ecostream but had decided to withdraw her application after she became aware that Sodastream profit from ?from the Israeli occupation and human rights abuses?.

Bannatyne said he had passed the concerns on to the company and they had responded but that he felt he was not qualified to comment on behalf of the business?

The expansion of Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone, where the main Sodastream factory is based, is encroaching on the land of the Jahalin bedouin, who are being forcibly relocated to a reservation in Abu Dis, next to the Jerusalem Municipal rubbish dump.

Bannatyne told Corporate Watch that he had been taken on a short visit to Israel by Sodastream where he was taken to two of the company's factories. He was taken to the company's Ashkelon factory, inside 1948 Israel, where syrup is manufactured and to the Mishor factory which manufactures 'machinery'. He said he was 'pleasantly surprised' by the conditions at the factories and that he was told that 'the workers were paid more than in the neighbouring villages'.

However, Palestinians living in the villages around Mishor Adumim are prevented from building any permanent structure under Israeli military orders. Their tents and huts, and even a primary school at Khan-al-Ahmar, are subject to demolition by the army (more details see)

'Ecostream is not Green' appeals to people

These building restrictions prevent the establishment of any Palestinian businesses, meaning that local Palestinians are forced to work in the settlements. Palestinian agriculture is limited by the settlements monopoly on land and the restrictions placed on the grazing of cattle, often leading to the seizure of cattle by the army see).

Palestinians working for Sodastream in Mishor Adumim are working in the context of the occupation. In January 2012 activists from Stop Sodastream Italy made the following statement in response to claims by the company that its workers were well treated: ?the fact remains that, as subjects of an occupation regime, these workers do not enjoy civil rights (including the right of workers to organize) and are under constant threat of having their permits to work in the settlement revoked by the company at any moment.?

"Palestinian workers often have no choice but to work in the settlements, with high unemployment rates that are a direct result of the Israeli occupation. The 2011 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report explicitly links the decline in Palestinian agricultural and industrial sectors and the dire humanitarian conditions with Israeli government policies, in particular the confiscation of land and natural resources, restrictions on movement of people and goods, and isolation from international markets. Only a colonial mindset could claim to provide jobs to the very same people whose land and freedom have been stolen."

The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions urges a boycott of all Israeli companies until Israel complies with international humanitarian law, recognizes the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, the rights of return of refugees and ends the siege of Gaza and the occupation of all lands occupied in 1967.

Sodastream products are sold in the UK at Robert Dyas, John Lewis, Argos, Comet, Lakeland and some Sainsbury and Asda stores.

For more information on Soda Club see  pages 96-102 and here
Sodastream’s reply fails to convince

Sodastream Picket continues into 6th Month - 9.3.13.

Proposal to Turn Sodastream Shop into Library Quiet Room

So quiet has the Sodastream shop become, that serious proposals are being made that it be turned into an extension of the local library as a quiet reading room.  Given the level of noise in libraries these days, it cannot help but be an improvement!

Passers by determined to ignore Zionist supporters

When I went back an hour after the picket had ended there was still not a soul in the shop.  I suspect that our demonstrations have done the trick anyway and turned Sodastream and its products into toxic products.

The picket of Brighton’s ‘Ecostream’ i.e. Sodastream shop enters its 6th month as Palestine protestors demonstrate and distribute leaflets outside the shop and the pro-Zionist counterdemonstrators do the same on the opposite side of the road.

Leader of the Zionists, the EDL/JDL supporting Simon Cobbs, was once again missing.  Is his proclivity to cuddle up to the most extreme Zionist racists – so extreme that they are kept at arms lengths by all mainstream Zionist groups – coupled with his foul mouth and twitter comments (some of which he is forced to delete but to late to escape us!) led to a ‘recommendation’ to keep a low profile?  Or is he so unwell that even throwing peanuts at other patients is now beyond him?

Missing Simon Cobbs, the Zionists try to stir up apathy

A number of his fouler tweets of late have been captured as screenprints before he was told to delete them and they will be printed soon.  Compare this with the allegation that it was us who were being abusive.  We had the usual small group of Zionists, Christian fundamentalists and a gay Zionist waving his flag.  I'm not sure what the Christians, who believe homosexuality caused Sodom and Gomorra, make of this development!

A gay Zionist with a poster saying that Hamas kills gays standing with Christian Zionists who'd also like to kill gays!

Either way with the pickets on our side of the road there was one WPC, whose boredom was self-evident.  Our usual PC was absent on another protest I understand.  It all makes a mockery of the Jewish Chronicle leader ‘Mob Rule’ and the allegations of ‘Hate Protests’ and the massive anti-Semitism that has been stirred up.  Especially when Jewish people continually approach us to say how ashamed they are of what Israel is doing and when up to 20% of the Sodastream picket consists in any case of people of Jewish origin.

I say this in the context of the fact that after the Jewish Chronicle began plying their lying headlines and articles, I wrote a letter to them on behalf of PSC.  Needless to say it was not printed.  Indeed at no stage has the Jewish Chronicle even attempted to speak to the Boycott demonstrators.  Whilst, in view of its record,  I have little confidence in the Press Complaints Commission, a complaint has been lodge with them in respect of the Pravda style behaviour of the Jewish Chronicle and its Daily Express editor, Stephen Pollard.  Pollard it seems is happier to host a BNP blogger for 3 months than print an anti-Zionist letter.   How strange!

I post the videos below to show just how violent and anti-Semitic our protest is.

Tony Greenstein

 

poster that says it all

Ecostream closed down for the morning as campaign builds strength

March against Israel’s Attack Against Gaza and another demoralising day for the supporters of genocide

Unsurprisingly Israel’s murderous attack on civilians in Gaza and the increasing toll of children and infant casualties hasn’t made the Zionists very popular.  The Zionists were heavily outnumbered and less than the usual number of Christians for Genocide, including the mad Jill Young from the Church of Christ the King turned up.

Lest they forget - this was the coin the Nazis struck to commemorate the visit of the Head of the Gestapo's Jewish Desk, Baron von Mildenstein to Palestine.  Invited by Kurt Tuckler of the German Zionist Federation he spent 3 months there from March 1933 onwards and wrote a series of articles praising Zionism in Goebbel's Der Angriff in the summer/autumn of 1934.  This was the beginning of close collaboration between German Zionism and Hitler

Zionists on the left looking particularly dejected

a bearded Christian fundie waves a banner - hoping for a Revelations style immolation of Jews in Palestine

Jill Young - mad Christian Fundie - seems to have cut out her even madder photo of Tony G this week!

Jill Young holds a banner asking if we know what BDSM is - yes Madam but we bow to your expertise on the matter!

 

Simon Cobb (with peaked cap) - leader of the Zionists and alleged to have links with EDL

A demonstration, which unfortunately I missed, went from Victoria Gardens to Sodastream and the shop itself didn’t open till gone midday as an activist had locked himself on to the front handles of the shop, necessitating them having to remove the handle!  Well done, even if he was arrested.
S
Another activist was assaulted by the ‘peaceful’ leader of the Zionists, one Simon Cobb, who tried the same thing on on me a few weeks ago.  Cobb is rumoured to be friendly with the English Defence League which isn’t surprising.  He also shouts, I thought ironically at first, ‘Jews Out’ but it is clear that he actually means it.  He is of course following in a long line of Zionist anti-Semitism.

Historically if someone argued that Jews didn’t belong in the countries they lived but in Palestine/Israel, they were either anti-Semites or Zionists.  Not for nothing did Israel’s first Minister of ‘Justice’, Pinhas Rosen (Rosenbluth) exclaim that Palestine was ‘“an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin” [Joachim Doron, Classic Zionism and Modern Anti-Semitism: Parallels and Influences (1883-1914), Studies in Zionism (Journal of Israeli History, 8, Autumn 1983].  There are many similar quotations from Zionists which could have been taken straight from the mouth of anti-Semites and Simon Cobb therefore stands in a proud Zionist tradition.

I stationed myself, much to the annoyance of the Zionists on the same side as them and, with a couple of honourable exceptions (an old Irish Jew and a long-time sparring partner in the columns of the local Argus, Gerald Oberman) they tried to be their normal obnoxious selves.

Indeed it becomes boring when I’m accused of being a self-hater (standard response being ‘no I hate you!') or a ‘traitor’ (response – 'I never owed you or you racist scumbags any loyalty') or 'Jews like you are in a tiny minority' (response – so was Spinoza and Heinrich Heine and anyway more and more Jews are dissociating themselves from those who worship a state) or I am an outcast (response – 'read Hannah Arendt’s ‘Jew as a Pariah' -  Jews have always been outcasts!) or of course that I am an anti-Semite (yes they are very inventive.

My response, given I've written a history of the fight against fascism in Brighton and on the South Coast, having been an anti-fascist activist for over 30 years, so far is to ask if they recall the Kasztner Trial in Israel where it was held by the Jerusalem District Court that the leader of Hungarian Zionism, the representative of the Jewish Agency in Hungary, had in exchange for a train of the Zionist elite (1684 persons in total) kept news of Auschwitz secret [2 Jewish escapees, Vrba and Wetzler, had disclosed in minute detail, that Auschwitz/Birkenau was the largest killing centre of all] and actually misinformed Jews that they were going to be ‘resettled’ in a nice place called Kenyermeze.  Or if I’m feeling particularly vicious then I recall the welcoming memorandum of the Zionist Federation of Germany to Hitler when the Nazis were put in power.

‘an answer to the Jewish Question truly satisfying to the national state can be brought about only with the collaboration of the Jewish move-ment that aims at a social, cultural and moral renewal of Jewry... Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we too, are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group.’  

 The complete memo can be found in Lucy Dawidowicz’s A Holocaust Reader.  Dawidowicz was a right-wing Zionist historian.  To say nothing of the welcome that the Zionists gave to the Nuremburg Laws of 1935.  Or if I'm feeling particularly cruel, then I remind them that it was the Zionists who welcomed the Nuremburg Laws:

‘If the Jews had a state of their own in which the bulk of their people were at home, the Jewish Question could already be considered solved today, even for the Jews themselves. The ardent Zionists of all people have objected least of all to the basic ideas of the Nuremburg Laws because they know that these laws are the only correct solution for the Jewish people too.’ 

It can be found in Machover/Offenberg’s ‘Zionism and its Scarecrows, Khamsin 6 and a slightly slightly different version in Francis Nicosia’s ‘The Third Reich and the Palestine Question’.
Indeed when I pointed out the sympathy of Himmler to one particularly thick Zionist woman she asked whether he was Jewish!  ‘no madam, he was the head of the SS'.

Don't you just love them!!  But what was gratifying was that a number of passers-by who expressed support for the Palestinians (and nearly everyone does) were themselves Jewish.





Tony Greenstein