Esther Solomon – her lies and distortions qualify her as Israel’s Jonathan Freedland

Ha’aretz attacks Jeremy Corbyn – it may be liberal by Israel’s standards but it is still a Zionist neo-liberal paper by normal standards

Because of Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, Ha’aretz has earned a reputation for opposing Zionist racism and the horrors of Israel's military occupation.  However there is a danger that people will believe that Levy and Hass represent Ha’aretz. They don’t.

This should be read in conjunction with The Haaretz war on Jeremy Corbyn: scratch a Liberal Zionist and you find a chauvinist

Ha’aretz is politically a free market, neo-liberal newspaper hostile to any form of socialism or the working class. It is also a longstanding Zionist paper and has never questioned either Zionism or a Jewish state. It sees no contradiction between an ethno-nationalist state and democracy and it certainly isn't anti-imperialist.

Ha’aretz and its editor Aluf Benn are hostile to BDS and the Right of Return. Essentially Ha'aretz wants its cake and to eat it. A nice, non-racist Jewish Israel where Arabs know their place. It also wants to bask in the warm glow of liberal Zionism's overseas appeal (because in Israel liberal Zionism has all but disappeared with its party Meretz).

Ha'aretz has a neo-liberal Opinion Editor in Esther Solomon.  She has an interesting background in the English upper classes, St Paul's Girl's School and Cambridge.

Under her tutelage Ha’aretz has waged an ongoing campaign against Corbyn, via a series of one-sided racist opinion pieces which have acted as an echo chamber of the British press and its 'anti-Semitism' campaign.

The racists' anti-racist demonstration that even Norman Tebbit took part in

I first encountered Solomon when I responded to a piece by Alona Ferber, not a name I had encountered.  It was of a piece with hundreds of similar pieces in the British press. It was titled Corbyn’s Labour Will Never Stop Gaslighting Jews. It was not the first such piece by Ferber.  A year previously she had published 'Shame on You, anti-Semites': U.K. Jews Demand 'Zero Tolerance' From Corbyn's Labour focusing on the ‘anti-racist’ demonstration the Zionists held outside Parliament on March 27^th 2018. A demonstration which was attended by those well known anti-racists Norman Tebbit, Ian Paisley and Sajid David amongst others.

You can get some indication of Alona Ferber’s politics from the fact that she is Managing Editor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Born in Israel but living in London she is part of the neo-liberal consensus.

Back in March this year I emailed Solomon with a piece rebutting Ferber’s Gaslighting article and she responded saying she wasn’t interested. In response to Solomon’s own poisonous article I sent her a letter (below) but I haven’t yet had a response although, being optimistic, I always live in hope! 

What this shows is that however radical Ha’aretz may be on some aspects of its coverage of the Palestinians oppression and the turn of Israel to the far-Right, when it comes to Zionism and support for Israel as a Jewish state then Ha’aretz can be as racist and right-wing as the next Israeli paper.

Without doubt we would all be poorer but for the articles of Ha'aretz contributors like Gideon Levy, Daniel Blatman and Ze’ev Sternhell on Israeli racism and fascism. Ha’aretz publishes many thoughtful articles, however we should never forget that it is a Zionist paper.

This idiot Zionist finds posters telling the truth about Israel 'frightening' - and if it's frightening it must be antisemitic!

When it comes to current events and living struggles, Ha’aretz almost as a default position falls on the side of the oppressor.  Gideon Levy, who openly supports Jeremy Corbyn, is very much the exception that proves the rule.

Tony Greenstein

Luciana Berger - made a career out of faking antisemitism and making false accusations

esther.solomon@haaretz.co.il 2.11.19.

Dear Esther Solomon,

An Israeli friend and one of the founders of Matzpen, Moshe Machover, sent out your Opinion Piece on his email list, The Great British Disenfranchisement of the Jews with a warning:  ‘Read if you can stomach this poison...’.

Your article is nonsense, from start to finish.  It is also dishonest in not mentioning that Jackie Walker is herself Jewish or that other Jewish members of the Labour Party like myself have been expelled. What you are describing is not anti-Semitism but anti-Zionism and it is that which you and others object to.

It is and you know it false of you to say that before Jeremy Corbyn became leader approximately 33% of Jews supported the Labour Party.  Really?  Did you just make this up?

According to the Spectator in April 2015 How Ed Miliband lost the Jewish vote it quoted a Jewish Chronicle Survation poll that just 22% of British Jews supported the Labour Party. See also the Telegraph’s Labour’s first Jewish leader is losing the Jewish vote.

Indeed according to one newspaper The Boundaries of Ed Miliband’s Loyalty to the Jews ‘just 13 percent of Jewish voters consider Miliband a future prime minister who would be good for the Jews.’ In case you are not aware of which paper that is, perhaps I should let you in on the secret. It was the paper you write for, Ha’aretz.

But in fact it was even worse than 22%.  According to The Times of Israel’s Daniel Staetsky’s How British Jews vote and why they vote this way just 15% of British Jews voted Labour.

But unlike your superficial, inaccurate and impressionistic article, Staetsky understood that ‘In fact, even before the rise of Corbyn, support for the Labour party among British Jews was limited.’ The evidence is copious of a historic decline in Jewish support for Labour since the 1960’s.

British Jews vote overwhelmingly for the Tories not because of ‘anti-Semitism’ or Israel but because they are the most privileged and prosperous section of the White British community.  They vote primarily according to how they perceive their class interests.  The minority of Jews on the left in the Labour Party are predominantly opposed to Zionism and belong to groups like Jewish Voice for Labour.

I suspect you are aware of all this and more yet you chose to write a deliberately slanted, biased and distorted article whose purpose was to give vent to your own prejudices. You presented throughout a series of binary opposites – a genuinely anti-Semitic Right vs an anti-racist Left which is remarkably free of even a trace of anti-Semitism.

You Ms Solomon are by way of contrast a Zionist.  Zionism as Israel amply demonstrates is a form of racism. If British Jews like myself were told that we could not rent, lease or buy 93% of British land because the British Land Authority and the Christian National Fund did not rent to Jews that would be seen, quite rightly, as anti-Semitic.  Yet you are happy to tolerate such a situation in reverse in Israel whereby the JNF doesn’t rent to Arabs.

Couple this with the situation in Safed where, backed up by dozens of Israeli rabbis, the Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu has issued an edict banning the renting of Jewish homes to Arabs and the 2011 Reception Committee Law allowing Jewish communities to bar Arabs (& other undesirables) from living in their villages and you have a situation that is normally known as Apartheid.

It is this that you are defending with your attacks on Jeremy Corbyn. I have no doubt Ms Solomon that you are doing so consciously. Your suggestion that it is to do with anti-Semitism is for the birds.  If Jews in Britain experienced a tenth of the discrimination that Arabs do in Israel then I would be the first to cry ‘anti-Semitism’.

You are the Opinion Editor of Ha’aretz. Your job, as I understand it, is to publish a broad range of views on subjects, not merely your own prejudices. Repeatedly Ha’aretz has printed one-sided attacks on Jeremy Corbyn resulting in your own readers not being aware that he is the most anti-racist leader the Labour Party has ever had, arrested picketing the South Africa Embassy in Britain and a supporter of a wide range of national liberation movements including the Palestinians.

I am therefore throwing out this challenge as I have done previously. I am prepared to send you an article of equivalent length as a response to your own.  Let the readers decide who is right or wrong.  What are you scared of? Having anyone challenge your opinions? That would suggest that you are not so confident in what you write as you make out.

Let us see whether you are too frit.

Regards

Tony Greenstein

David Collier, the Zionists’ ‘Independent Researcher’ Doesn’t Consider Palestinian Refugees as Human Beings

David Collier who was used by the media to attack Corbyn called Palestinian refugees ‘Dripping Poison’

David Collier contribution to a 'debate' on 2 States hosted by far-Right Zionist group 'Campaign for Truth'

Collier sitting alongside   Tommy Robinson supporter and devotee Brian Thomas

Collier's friend Brian  Thomas is the key Zionist supporter of Tommy Robinson - they both went round Israel together in a car

You may remember David Collier was portrayed in the media just before the local elections as an ‘independent researcher’ rather than the virulent racist which he is.  Collier was a useful stick to beat Jeremy Corbyn with when he revealed that Corbyn was a member of a Facebook Group Palestine Live.  His ‘research’ into Palestine Live demonstrated, so it was claimed that the group was ‘a veritable cesspool of antisemitism’.

Brian Thomas, close Collier friend and right-wing British Zionist who runs campaign to free British fascist Tommy Robinson in Israel

According to Melanie Phillips Collier is ‘a British Jew who devotes much of his life to chronicling the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish attitudes which have become epidemic in political and intellectual life.’ Of course Phillips herself is a far-Right nutcase but her comments are no different from others in the media. Jewish News described Collier ‘a writer, researcher and activist, who goes undercover to expose online hatred and anti-Semitism.’ The neo-liberal Guardian called Collier a ‘businessman’ rather than a Zionist activist and blogger. I showed how Collier’s claims to be an independent researcher were accepted at face value not only by the right-wing press but by the Guardian too. 

A modicum of research would show that he is an Israeli, not a British Jew, with a far-Right racist agenda.  His claim  that his research ‘is fully independent. I am not affiliated with any political group or community organisation. I believe this independence is important and adds to the integrity of the work.’ is laughable given that he attempted to brand Free Speech on Israel, a group of mainly anti-Zionist Jews inside the Labour Party, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, as ‘a group of Jewish Palestine Live members, who created FSOI to deflect accusations of antisemitism.’

Our 'independent' researcher is here attacking the Labour Party's newly appointed legal counsel Gordon Nardell QC because he isn't a fully paid-up Zionist

Leaving aside that the media at no time scrutinised Collier’s claims about Palestine Live, which I understand were based on fake and manipulated images, I know for a fact that Free Speech on Israel had no connection with Palestine Live.  I happened to be at its inaugural meeting 3 years ago and can vouch for the fact that Palestine Live never even once entered the conversation.  Why should it have done since it is entirely separate from the group.

Collier with his far-Right Zionist friends

Likewise to claim as Collier does that FSOI was created to ‘to deflect accusations of antisemitism’ demonstrates where Collier is coming from. FSOI was created not to deflect but to oppose the weaponisation of anti-Semitism by people like Collier.

Collier’s conclusions in his ‘Report’ that ‘A small, but highly vocal group of Jewish anti-Zionist activists is engaged in using Jewish identity as ‘a weapon’ to deflect accusations of antisemitism.’ is another way of saying that Jews who are not Zionists reject the idea that criticism of Zionism is ‘anti-Semitic’ and are happy to assert that being Jewish does not mean you have to be a Zionist.

Collier's fake statistics are completely unsupported

Collier’s second conclusion was that ‘These Jewish anti-Zionists in turn teach their compatriots to insulate themselves from the charge of antisemitism by substituting the word ‘Zionist’ for ‘Jew’. is pure fantasy. Nowhere in his ‘Report’ was even the slightest evidence produced concerning these teaching seminars, because of course they don’t exist.  What Collier and his compatriots cannot stand is that some us make a clear distinction between being a Zionist, i.e. a racist and being Jewish.  It is a distinction that the Zionist movement, not least far-Right elements like Collier dislike.

Collier and the all-weather bigot Melanie Phillips

Collier associates with far-Right Zionists in Britain who make common cause in making a hero out of the anti-Muslim fascist prisoner Tommy Robinson, such as Brian Thomas.  It is a campaign which is popular amongst the Zionist Right at the moment. [See Ha’aretz, Esther Solomon, 30.5.18. #FreeTommy: Why Israeli Fanboys Back a U.K. Far Right anti-Muslim Campaigner

In a ‘debate’ with Melanie Phillips, Brian Thomas and others Collier gave a well received speech on the Palestinian refugees. In it he cannot even bring himself to acknowledge the refugees are human beings.  He repeatedly refers to them in the third person, ‘It’ as in ‘it was created’.  In other words the Palestinian refugees, rather than being a product of the forcible expulsion by the Zionists in 1948 onwards, are simply a creation by the Arab states designed to do Israel down.

The Guardian was as happy as the rightwing press to treat Collier as a neutral researcher

You can read an extract from Collier's speech below and also listen to the speech.

Transcript of Extract from David Collier's Speech on Palestinian Refugees 18th May 2016

 “The Palestinian refugee was forged as a weapon.  It was created as an artificial entity inside a paradigm of no to normalisation and it cannot exist outside of that paradigm.  It will do everything it can to stop any type of settlement and today, as demographics have changed in the West this weapon has taken up camp here too. 

Today it spearheads BDS yet another external movement that does not care about the well being of the people inside Gaza or the West Bank. (applause) So if not now then when.  You will never solve anything until you stop the dripping poison from entering the wound. 

Collier with his fascist friends including Paul Besser (in blue jacket) of Britain First

First the refugees then everything else. Unwrap this parcel from the outside in. This is not a 2 state solution it is about 2 stages. You tell those British girls that they are British. You tell the Jordanians that they are Jordanian You scrap the ridiculous definition of a Palestinian refugee you dismantle UNWRA and you tell Lebanon (applause) that after 70 years it is about time that it stopped abusing the human rights of those people born within its borders. Taking an addict and feeding his addiction and his delusion simply because everybody is too scared to tell them the truth.  It is abuse.  

Working to help or to solve or assist the situation of refugees in places like Lebanon is a humanitarian cause. Kicking the can down the road only ensures that the conflict continues and everyone remains trapped. Caught in a perpetual catch-22 with those on the outside working to permanently toxify the environment.  If you insist on permitting the artificially sustained and hate infested desires of those on the outside to dictate the terms of the discussions between the Jews of Jerusalem and the Arabs of Ramallah in a deteriorating environment with no type at all of any type of settlement.  So if I am asked will I support some empty worthless idea that rejects reality and simply wants to kick the can down the road my answer is simple.  No I will not. ‘