The Guardian Hides the Fact that Mirvis, Trained as a Rabbi on the Settlement of Alon Shvut and supports
Israel's far-Right settlers
Not content with the regular Jonathan Freedland column peddling what Justin Schlosberg has called the ‘disinformation paradigm’ about ‘anti-Semitism’ [Many Jews want Boris Johnson out. But how can we vote for Jeremy Corbyn?] the Guardian decided that its readers deserved a second helping.
Simon Sebag 'Windbag' Montefiore
They therefore dug out a relative of the
Montefiore family, Simon Sebag
Montefiore, who I will rename Windbag, whose original offering was that ‘This
antisemitism poisons any good Labour might do’. Perhaps if Windbag had sat down and thought for a moment, before setting finger to keyboard, he might have realised that the fake 'antisemitism' campaign was designed precisely in order to stop Corbyn doing. It has no other purpose.
So
what was the ‘anti-Semitism’ that Sebag-Shaw was obsessed with? The subheadline told us that ‘It is possible to criticise Israel without
being antisemitic but Corbynists are obsessed with the country’s
destruction’.
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| The regular Freedland anti-Corbyn column |
Unfortunately
that is not true. Very few Corbyn
supporters are in favour of a de-Zionisation of the Israeli state, i.e. turning
it into a non-racist state of all its people instead of just some of them, which is what talk of 'the country's destruction' means.
There is however a better way of putting it. It’s actually very difficult to criticise Israel and also
be anti-Semitic. Criticism of the military occupation, the discriminatory laws,
the state that only claims to represent its Jewish citizens and much else
besides have nothing whatsoever to do with anti-Semitism.
However
if you are a supporter of Israel then it is difficult to support Israel without
being a racist or anti-Semite. Take the
founder of the alt-Right in the USA, Richard Spencer. He doesn’t like Jews. He organised the march in Charlottesville where
the far-Right marched to the chant of ‘the
Jews will not replace us’ (Question – why would we want to replace you?).
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| My letter in this week's Sunday Times responding to Rod Liddle's normal racist rant |
Spencer
is a 24 carat anti-Semite. He has spoken of ‘de
Judaising’ the Holocaust. In fact
this has already happened to a large extent. The Holocaust is used as an ideological prop for western
imperialism. It has already been divorced from the situation of the Jews who
were murdered. Richard Spencer proclaims that he is a proud White Zionist. His
ideal state White American state is a reflection of the Jewish state of
Israel.
Israel
defines itself in terms of its herrenvolk. It is a Jewish
Supremacist state and the Jewish Nation State Law make it clear that Israel is
a state only of its Jewish citizens. When Israeli actress, Rotem Sala, declared:
“Dear god,
there are also Arab citizens in this country, when the
hell will someone in this government convey to the public that Israel is a
state of all its citizens and that all people were created equal, and that even
the Arabs and the Druze and the LGBTs and - shock - the leftists are
human."
Benjamin
Netanyahu felt he had to correct her:
“First of all,
Israel is not a country of all its citizens. According to the nation-state law
that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish nation,” he wrote.
Likewise
our own Tommy Robinson, who hangs around with all sorts of neo-Nazis, is a
fervent admirer of the Israeli state, is never more proud that when pictured
sitting on Israeli tanks. To him the Palestinians are the Muslims of Israel.
Another
neo-Nazi is Katie Hopkins, formerly a ‘journalist’ with the Sun and Mail, who
believes that refugees are ‘cockroaches’. Katie just loves the racism she experienced in Israel,
so much so that she was a guest at the Zionist Federation dinner last year, but
when it came to the shooting of ordinary American Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue
in Pittsburgh, she believed that they had brought it on themselves by going out
of their way to support America’s refugees.
This was also the opinion of the far-Right in Israel, such as its most
popular rap artist, The Shadow.
None
of the above however disturbs Simon Windbag Montefiore. The only question that
disturbed him was Corbyn’s handling of Andrew Neil’s about a “Rothschild
Zionist… world government”. He tells us that ‘Rothschild Zionist’ ‘has a dark history as a 21st-century strain
of medieval racism.’
Windbag-Montefiore
reaches back into the darkest history of diaspora Jewry and anti-Semitism.
Evil
moneylenders with mixed loyalties inspired Edward I’s terror that culminated in
the hanging of 269 innocents, then the expulsion of all Jews in 1290.
As
if there is any comparison with Israeli, the Sparta of today, where the army is
the most venerated institution in the State. This is simply yet another example of how anti-semitism historically, including the Holocaust, is used to justify Israel's barbarities today.
In
fact there are certain comparisons between Israel and medieval anti-Semitism
but probably not the ones that Windbag-Montefiore recognises.
The
hanging of 269 innocents that he refers to bears comparison with the same
number of unarmed demonstrators who have been picked off by Israeli snipers at
the Gaza fence in the past 18 months. The expulsion of the Jews from England in
1290 bears more than a passing resemblance to the expulsion of ¾ million
Palestinians from Israel in 1948.
However I suspect that this was not what Windbag was
referring to!
Instead
Windbag gives us a detour that included Stalin’s anti-Semitism and of course a
revisiting of all Corbyn’s crimes namely the
‘mural of
hooknosed Jewish bankers, alliances with antisemitic terrorists... Corbyn
himself has met with Holocaust denier Paul Eisen.’
It’s
difficult to understand the connection with Stalin since even Windbag admits
Corbyn is not Stalin. But for the Guardian’s editors any mud will stick.
It's even harder to detect any hooknosed Jewish bankers in the Corbyn mural. This is another one of those lies that grows with the telling. There were 6 bankers, 2 of whom were Jewish, none of whom had hooked noses.
And yes Corbyn met Paul Eisen. That's because he is a constituent of his!
Hamas
and Hezbollah are neither anti-Semitic nor terrorists. They are a resistance
thrown up by their own people against the aggression of those who call
themselves the soldiers of the Jewish state. Neither group would exist but for
Israel’s murderous attacks on the Palestinian and Lebanese people.
Unsurprisingly
some of their statements aren’t politically correct. I suspect that most people would not react in
a sophisticated manner if a group of soldiers murdered your kids, dropped a
bomb on your house, beat up your friends and did it in the name of the Jews. When
the Zionist terrorist group Irgun hanged two British soldiers in Palestine in
1946, then there were anti-Jewish riots in England. Imagine if this was a daily
occurrence. In fact Palestinians are far more sophisticated in their
understanding of racism than the average Briton.
Anti-Semitism
is about myths of Jews not their actual deeds. Things like Jews poisoning wells
and baking their bread from the blood of non-Jewish children. The evil deeds of
Zionism are self-evident. They occur everyday in the West Bank where the army
looks on as settlers burn Palestinian olive groves, steal their land and water
and conduct random attacks on those farming the land. Unless Zionists are now
saying that historically anti-Semites had a just cause then there is no
comparison with Israel’s deeds as Windbag-Montefiore maintains.
It
was over 10 years ago that Bassem Naeem wrote an article Hamas
condemns the Holocaust. This was before the days when Freedland got his
claws into all aspects of the Guardian’s coverage. Naeem stated that:
‘neither Hamas
nor the Palestinian government in Gaza denies the Nazi Holocaust. The Holocaust
was not only a crime against humanity but one of the most abhorrent crimes in
modern history. We condemn it as we condemn every abuse of humanity and all
forms of discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender or nationality.’
Strangely
this article and many subsequently statements, including Hamas’s abandonment of
its original Charter, have been forgotten.
As has the role Israel played in the creation and sponsorship of Hamas.
It
is a myth that Hamas or indeed Hezbollah are anti-Semitic. Of course people can
always point to anti-Semitic statements but then we can also point to
statements by Israeli leaders about Palestinians as ‘drugged cockroaches’
‘wild beasts’ animals’ etc.
Many
Jews have visited and even lived in Gaza.
They have not been persecuted for being Jewish. It is in Israel itself that one sees
demonstrations against the sale of a house to an Arab or Arabs being barred from springs and swimming pools.
Hezbollah
was created as a result of Israel’s barbarous invasion of Lebanon in 1982 when
20,000 people were murdered. It isn’t
Hezbollah who are murderous racists and terrorists but the Israeli army. Windbag for some reason doesn’t blame the actions of the Israeli army, which proclaims
it acts on behalf of all Jews, for the increase in antisemitism.
Windbag
also supports a two state solution that will never occur. So do most Zionists
in Britain but very few where it counts, Israel. He bemoans that ‘Labour is now controlled by this thuggish
camarilla while frontbench “moderates” passively enable Corbyn.’ It is the ‘moderates’ who are so addicted to Trident and
supported the Iraq War. Perhaps supporting the annihilation of millions is the
opposite of ‘thuggish’?
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| A few of hundreds of similar columns in The Guardian |
The Guardian
In
just one year FiveFilters.org
found over 100 Guardian articles attacking Corbyn. Van Badham told us, one month before the 2017
General Election that ‘Labour
has a chance if it replaces Corbyn’.That must go down in the book of the
100 best Guardian Predictions.
And
a week before the same election Freedland was proclaiming ‘No
more excuses: Jeremy Corbyn is to blame for this meltdown’ except that I
don’t recall Freedland congratulating Corbyn on the biggest swing to Labour
since 1945. Strange that.
My
favourite though is ‘Don’t
tell me you weren’t warned about Corbyn’ by the Nostradamus of our age,
Nick Cohen. Whatever Cohen predicts you can assume that the opposite will
occur. It really is worth betting on it.
Cohen warned us 3 months before the general election that:
‘The Tories
have gone easy on Corbyn and his comrades to date for the transparently obvious
reason that they want to keep them in charge of Labour.
In an
election, they would tear them to pieces. .. Will there be 150, 125, 100 Labour
MPs by the end of the flaying? My advice is to think of a number then halve
it.’
And his
final piece of advice? ‘In my respectful
opinion, your only honourable response will be to stop being a fucking fool by
changing your fucking mind.’ Such is the intellectual sophistication of our
Nick.
Windbag
was particularly obsessed about Corbyn’s response to Andrew Neil’s question
about a Labour member who talked
about ‘Rothschilds Zionists run Israel
and world governments”. This is part of a wider methodology of associating Israel
with anti-Semitism in the past. This is what the IHRA
has described as
‘speech, writing, visual forms
and action, ... sinister stereotypes and negative character traits... mendacious,
dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or
the power of Jews as collective... the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or
of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal
institutions.
So if you
accuse the Israeli government or settlers of poisoning Palestinians with gas and
chemical weapons, which are documented facts, or poisoning their water sources
then this is a repetition of the medieval myth of Jews poisoning wells!
For
example the Guardian's David Hearst described
how in the Palestinian village of al-Amniy
Mohammed
Ahmad Jabor's water cistern has been destroyed three times this year. The last
time was by the settlers. The settler attacks come generally at night and where
they cannot destroy water cisterns they poison
them by putting chicken carcasses in them.
According to Windbag's 'logic' David Hearst was an anti-Semite for describing the actions of Israeli settlers. Even though what he described was true.
What eludes Windbag is quite simple. Israel is not a Jew
of the 13th century. Israel is not a holocaust victim. It is a mini-superpower. I suspect that if the modern Israeli were to
meet his medieval counterpart he would react in horror. Indeed if the Israeli
settlers, who claim an umbilical link to Abraham, were to meet a Hebrew
tribesman of 500 BC then I suspect he would recoil from him, see in him a Palestinian and shoot him as a terrorist!
It is
true that the Nazis and anti-Semites before them equated Jews with the Rothschild’s
family. The name Rothschild was the
symbol of greedy Jews who had profited out of the blood, sweat and tears of
those who fought and died on the battlefield and Waterloo. The Nazis even made a film about Nathan Rothschild, the founder of the British branch of the family.
However
when today people talk about ‘Rothschild Zionists’ they are trying in their own
muddled way to explain why the major powers in the world, the United States and
the European Union, including Russia and China, support Israel right or wrong. They
see in this a conspiracy rather than a manifestation of their interests,
political and military. Since Israel calls itself a Jewish state they naturally see it as a Jewish conspiracy. Is this the same as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Of course not.
What people
wrongly do is to ascribe to Israel the power of the Rothschilds, who are
insignificant today rather than to the interests of western imperialism. After
all it must have occurred, even to Windbag himself, that when the most
reactionary politicians on the planet – Trump, Orban, Bolsinaro, Duterte - to
name but a few, pay homage to and support and praise Israel that opposing Israel
has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
Trump
gives Israel $4 Billion a year, not out of love for Jews but from a naked
calculation of where America’s interests lie.
Talk of
‘Rothschilds Zionists’ is not necessarily anti-Semitic but is a pathetic and puerile attempt
to explain the power of Israel and Zionism today. In other words it is instrumental. In fact it explains nothing and is in danger
of seeing Israel, as people like Gilad Atzmon do as the product of something
inherently Jewish rather than as the offspring of western colonialism.
Ephraim Mirvis
The
Guardian though has not just been busy attacking Corbyn it has also done its
best to defend Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.
You will remember his article on November 25 What
will become of Jews in Britain if Labour forms the next government?.
What was so remarkable about it
was its gall. Mirvis wrote, presumably tongue in cheek that
‘Wherever there
is evidence of it, including in any of our political parties, it must be
swiftly rooted out. Hateful prejudice is always wrong, whoever the perpetrator,
whoever the victim.’
Is this the same
man who grew up in Apartheid South Africa and then transferred his sympathies
to the apartheid settlements in the West Bank? What none of the papers dare mention is that Mirvis received his rabbinical training in the yeshiva of Har
Etzion in the settlement of Alon Shvut. He trained among the most bigoted racists and seemingly noticed nothing. Because no one is more racist than the religious settlers. The chief rabbi of the settlers, Dov Lior is famous for his statement that a Jewish fingernail is worth more than a thousand non-Jewish lives.
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| Mirvis proclaims to be concerned about 'anti-Semitism' but not about any other form of racism |
This is the same Ephraim Mirvis who joined his predecessor Jonathan Sacks and thousands of far-Right settlers on the 2017 Jerusalem Day ‘March of Flags’. The favourite chant of the settlers was ‘Death to the Arabs.’ Mirvis had no hesitation in joining those who desire nothing more than the expulsion of the Palestinians.
Haaretz’s Bradley Burston described the March as:
an annual, gender-segregated
extreme-right, pro-occupation religious carnival of hatred, marking the
anniversary of Israel's capture of Jerusalem by humiliating the city's
Palestinian Muslims.
marchers vandalized shops in
Jerusalem's Muslim Quarter, chanted "Death to Arabs" and "The
(Jewish) Temple Will Be Built, the (Al Aqsa) Mosque will be Burned Down,"
shattered windows and door locks, and poured glue into the locks of shops
forced to close for fear of further damage.’... And they repeated Samson's
prayer in Judges 16:28: "May I avenge (the loss of) my two eyes with one
act of vengeance against the Palestinians – may their name be blotted
out!"
Sacks had extended a “personal invitation” to Diaspora Jews to join him on a trip to Israel which includes “leading” the March of the Flags on Jerusalem Day and “dancing with our brave [Israeli Defence Force] soldiers” in the settler enclave inside Hebron.
Haaretz Anna Roiser pleaded with Sacks not to attend, saying:
one of the world’s most respected rabbis sends a message of normalization and acceptance of the occupation... Many Jews in the Diaspora work hard to emphasize that being Jewish is not synonymous with supporting the Israeli government, and that supporting Israel’s right to exist is not synonymous with supporting the occupation. Rabbi Sacks’ actions risk undermining these messages.
Not only did Sacks ignore them he marched together with Ephraim Mirvis. It seems that Mirvis finds it difficult to oppose any other form of racism bar ‘anti-Semitism’. See Chief Rabbi and Lord Sacks should not back this march
Now if Jeremy
Corbyn or members of the Labour Party were to call out ‘Death to the Jews’ as
they did in pre-war Poland and Germany then Mirvis might have something to
complain about.
That is why I
sent an unpublished letter to the Guardian in the wake of Mirvis’s outburst in
The Times.
Dear Sir/Madam,
If there
is one thing guaranteed to increase anti-Semitism in this country it is the
sight of Jewish leaders attacking a Labour Party that represents the only hope
for millions of British people. Britain’s Chief Rabbis have a habit of
supporting the Conservative Party dating back to Immanuel Jakobovitz’s support for Margaret Thatcher but none have been this
blatant.
Ephraim
Mirvis’s attack on Corbyn has absolutely nothing to do with racism
or anti-Semitism. This is the same person who was singing the praise of Norman Tebbit’s cricket test not so
long ago.
Nor is Mirvis’s
instruction to Jews not to vote Labour about despair. ['It reflects the despair': chief rabbi's criticism of Labour
strikes a chord] It is part of a well co-ordinated campaign to use
‘anti-Semitism’ as a means to damage and destroy Labour’s electoral prospects.
This is
the same Ephraim Mirvis who joined his predecessor Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and thousands
of far-Right settlers on the 2017 Jerusalem Day ‘March of Flags’. The favourite
chant of the settlers on these marches is ‘Death to the Jews.’ Mirvis had no
hesitation in joining those who desire nothing more than the expulsion of the
Palestinians.
It is
because Jeremy Corbyn bought into the myth that anti-Semitism was a problem in
the Labour Party that he is now facing such problems. It is however curious
that in the thousands of stories on Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ there is a marked
absence of evidence.
Yours
faithfully,
Tony Greenstein
Unsurprisingly
it was not printed. As I wrote to the Guardian Letters Editor Rory Foster and
his deputy:
rory.foster@guardian.com, toby.chasseaud@guardian.com
Dear Rory
The Guardian, like most other
papers has seen fit not to provide any details on the far-Right Zionist
politics of the present British Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis.
Where once the letters columns
were used to widen the debate in the Guardian you now fulfil the role of
Jonathan Freedland's gatekeeper against anti-Zionist contributions or indeed
any incisive debate.
I therefore submit the following
letter knowing full well that Guardian censorship shall ensure that it is not
published.
Tony Greenstein
Letters Editor
Kings Place,
90 York Way
London N1 9GU
Dear
Sir/Madam,
Gus
John’s resignation from the Church of England’s advisory
body is welcome after Justin Welby’s endorsement of the Chief Rabbi’s attack on
Jeremy Corbyn. [Academic quits C of E body over chief rabbi's Labour
antisemitism comments, Guardian 3.12.19]
Welby has
been completely silent over such trifles as the Windrush Scandal and the
‘hostile environment’ policy. Yet when it comes to ‘anti-Semitism’ he
enthusiastically endorses an attack by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis on Jeremy
Corbyn, one of 6 Labour MPs to vote against the Immigration Act 2013.
At the
same time Welby has nothing to say about Tory Islamaphobia or Boris
Johnson’s repeated racist comments for example calling
Black people picanninies?
The British
media, the Guardian included, has elided over the background of Mirvis who lectured that ‘Wherever there is evidence’ of
racism including in any of our political parties, it must be swiftly rooted
out.’ This didn’t prevent Mirvis from endorsing Norman Tebbit’s notorious cricket test.
But
perhaps Mirvis, who grew up in Apartheid South Africa, didn’t notice the racism
of his fellows when training as a rabbi in Har Etzion yeshiva in the
settlement of Alon Shvut. The same settlers who believe that they have a god
given right to the land that they have stolen from the indigenous Palestinians.
This is
the same Ephraim Mirvis who took part in the March of the Flags on Jerusalem
Day in 2017 where the favourite chant of the settler youth is ‘Death to the
Arabs’ despite pleas from Ha’aretz’s Bradley Burston not to do
so.
Justin
Welby in endorsing Mirvis’s attacks on Corbyn is a hypocrite. But then so
too are those, the Guardian included, who have deliberately excised all details
of the background of Rabbi Mirvis.
Yours
faithfully,
Ephraim
Mirvis’s attack
on Corbyn has absolutely nothing to do with racism or anti-Semitism. This is
the same person who was singing
the praise of Norman Tebbit’s ‘cricket test’ not so long ago. The ‘cricket
test’ was devised to show that the ‘real home’ of Britain’s Asian population is
not in England but India and Pakistan.
Ironically
if the same test were applied to British Jews then it would show that many of
them belong in Israel! Which is what the
Zionists desire most of all.
Mirvis’s
instruction to Jews not to vote Labour is part of a well co-ordinated campaign
to use ‘anti-Semitism’ as a weapon to inflict damage and destroy Labour’s
electoral prospects. We see this in the Jewish Chronicle, which could be
renamed the 'Anti-Corbyn Weekly'.
In this
week's Letter to Readers, Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard writes that:
there is
just one fundamental issue for the vast majority of our community – doing what
we can to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM.
What has
made it the anti-Semitism smear campaign effective is the fact that Corbyn, instead of standing up to it from the
start and saying that Labour did not have an anti-Semitism problem, that the
allegations against it were malicious and without foundation, bought into the
narrative. Everytime Corbyn apologised he proved his critics were correct.
No one
forced Corbyn to adopt the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism originally. It
was all his own work.
If Mirvis was seriously concerned about anti-Semitism in political parties then he would have asked why the Conservative Party’s MEPs supported the anti-Semitic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in a no confidence vote in the European parliament. The reason is that Orban may not like Jews very much but he is the best friend of Israel. Likewise he could ask why Tory MEP’s sit in the same political group (ECR) in the European parliament as fascists and anti-Semites.
Tony Greenstein
