Galloway’s Victory Produced Panic & Fear in the Establishment Because Their Lies Are Increasingly Seen As An Attempt To Justify Their System of Legalised Theft

When A Ruling Class Is Seen As Morally and Politically Bankrupt Then That is When It is Both Weakest & Most Vicious

Victory Speech

The reaction of Rishi Sunak to Galloway’s election victory last Friday morning was a sight to behold. He slithered out of 10 Downing Street to spew his venom at an audience that was no longer listening,bar the media circus that is little more than an echo chamber.

Sunak is an empty suit, a bundle of clichés, spewing racism and threats of state violence under the pretext that he is combating ‘extremist disruption and criminality’. What he meant of course was the mass demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza that he is encouraging and which 76% of the population support.

It is one of the hallmarks of the political dishonesty of our politicians that opposition to genocide is violence and support for genocide is making peace.

Sunak is the least impressive Prime Minister since the last one,  Liz Truss, whose reign was less than the lifespan of a lettuce.

Sunak’s speech

Sunak demonstrated the moral and political turpitude of an elite that has systematically transferred the wealth of the UK from the poorest to the richest. Sunak himself is the richest man in parliament and he is married to the tax-dodging daughter of a billionaire.

Comedian Tez with voting advice to British Muslims pic.twitter.com/ZgqmXWXrej

— Andrew Feinstein (@andrewfeinstein) March 5, 2024

Every action of the government is designed to impoverish the vast majority of people. The NHS is in chaos and underfunded, schools are being privatised, welfare benefits have been systematically cut, Brexit has reduced the volume of trade and yet according to Sunak and Braverman the greatest threat to Britain comes from refugees. Racism and divide and rule  are the order of the day.

Yet it is over Gaza that their moral depravity shines out. In his speech Sunak mentioned October 7, when Palestinian fighters killed 1,139 Israelis, a third of whom were military and police and half the remainder were killed by Israel under the Hannibal Doctrine, which stipulates that in the event of an Israeli being captured it is better to kill both captor and captive than allow the latter to be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners at a later date. A fact carefully hidden by a compliant media.

Galloway Interview with Sky TV

When genocide stalks Gaza, when Israel perpetrates the flour massacre, Sunak says nothing. One Israeli Jewish life is worth more than 100 Palestinian lives. Which is exactly the ratio of hostages killed that the Nazis exacted  when one of them were killed.

Israel is armed to the teeth by Sunak and the US government and soldiers opening fire on starving people waiting for food does not disturb Sunak, Starmer or our political elite in the slightest. Of course if Russia had committed such an atrocity it would have filled the airwaves. Instead Sunak condemned a non-existent violence on the streets of Britain as a pretext for removing yet more of our rights to protest.

Aaron Bushnell’s Brave Sacrifice to Stop Biden’s Genocide

Rochdale is a constituency which has been held by all 3 major parties and was for much of the 19^th century a stronghold of radicalism and the supporters of free trade and opponents of the Corn Laws, notably Richard Cobden. So it is not altogether a surprise that the voters of Rochdale have elected in George Galloway another radical.

There was one issue above all other that dominated the election and that was Gaza. As Galloway said in his victory speech, ‘Keir Starmer this is for Gaza.’

Sunak leads an openly racist party. 58% of whose members say that Islam poses a threat to this country. 43% of members don’t want a Muslim Prime Minister, a survey by YouGov found. Substitute Judaism/Jewish for Islam/Muslim and you get a flavour of the state of the Tory party.

The same study found 45% believe there are “areas in Britain in which non-Muslims are not able to enter” and 67% believe there are areas “that operate under Sharia law”. Conspiracy theories are rife in this racist party yet Sunak’s only concern was the false claim that Jewish school students are fearful’ to wear their uniforms ‘lest it reveal their identity.’

Sunak’s concern for British Jews, almost all whom are White, economically prosperous  and not subject to state repression or discrimination is touching but what he is doing is using Jews as a moral alibi for his support for Israel as a ‘Jewish’ State. When you are enabling genocide it helps to point to distract people’s attention by pointing to a non-existent problem.

Sunak declared that:

It is beyond alarming that last night the Rochdale by-election returned a candidate who dismisses the horror of what happened on October 7^th, who endorses Hezbollah and is endorsed by Nick Griffin, the racist leader of the BNP... you cannot use that to call for the eradication of a state or any kind of hatred or anti-Semitism.... It is the public’s expectation that they [the Police] will not only manage these protests but police them.

We have had 30,000 killed and 70,000 injured in Gaza and rising but this is not enough for Sunak who had nothing to say about Palestinian deaths and injuries.

Calling for the dismantlement of the Apartheid State of Israel is anti-Semitic. Was the destruction of the Nazi and South African states also racist? 

Galloway at University Debate Destroys Zionist Claims That He is Anti-Semitic 

Sunak’s real agenda was left to last. Unable to ban the mass demonstrations outright like Braverman wanted, he called for wholly peaceful mass protests not only to be managed by the police but to be ‘policed’ by them. Which is code for coercion, violence and harassment of marchers by arresting them for chanting things and holding placards he doesn’t like. 

Police repression is Sunak’s response to the political crisis and the mass movement that has arisen since October 7. No doubt the Met, a byword for corruption, racism and misogyny will step up their harassment of protestors and if violence breaks out it will of course be the fault of those who were harassed.

The irony of Sunak talking about racism is breathtaking. He has been forced to suspend the former Vice-Chair of the Tory Party Lee Anderson whom he appointed in the first place because he was a racist. Yet two-thirds of Tory members support him and Sunak himself refuses to call his attack on Sadiq Khan for being in the grip of Islamists Islamaphobic.

Not surprisingly Starmer echoes every word Sunak says. There was a time when the Labour Party was an Opposition party but today we have a choice of identikit politicians whose only interest is in scapegoating minorities.

Starmer has pursued a consistently racist and Islamaphobic policy in the Labour Party, all in the name of opposing ‘anti-Semitism’. Both party leaders are committed to Zionism and support genocide in Israel.

Galloway condemned the SNP for supporting the protesters

The victory of George Galloway should be welcomed by all those on the left who want change. Of course Galloway is not the perfect socialist. His views on refugees leave a lot to be desired as does his attitude to social oppressions and abortion. But where he is right is in stressing the importance of class as opposed to identity politics.

Most people on the left realised that Genocide in Gaza was the main issue in Rochdale and supported Galloway. The SWP did not.

Nine days before the election the headline in Socialist Worker was ‘Galloway is not the answer for Rochdale - We need a better expression of Palestinian liberation than George Galloway’s party.

Presumably the SWP’s decision to march with Glasgow Friends of Israel on March 16 to mark UN anti-racism day is what they mean by a better expression of Palestinian liberation! Supporters of Israel’s genocide will be taking part in an ‘anti-racist’ march.

10 days later the SWP headline was ‘The Rochdale by-election was a referendum on Rishi Sunak’s and Keir Starmer’s support for Israel’s genocide.’ which rather begs the question why, in that case the SWP did not support him!

Azhar Ali

The claims of Starmer that Labour would have won if they had not suspended their candidate Azhar Ali is more Starmer’s lies. Nothing that Ali said was anti-Semitic. Given the warning Israel had over October 7 it is quite reasonable to believe that it might have let it happen. It certainly is not anti-Semitic to propound such a theory.

The  truth as everyone knows is that Ali was suspended because Starmer knew he was going to lose and he decided that it was preferable to sack him than lose to Galloway.

Never has it been so obvious that whatever else Britain, America, Germany and the West is they are not democracies. Majorities in every European country see Israel’s attack on Gaza as unjustified. Even in Germany 44% oppose Israel’s attack to 35% who support it.

Even in the US 68% support a ceasefire and 43% oppose sending Israel weapons compared to 31% supporting it. Yet the governments of nearly all the countries chose to ignore public opinion. And when, as in the UK, the public is resolutely opposed to the government’s policy the government attacks the marches as ‘hate marches’ and seeks to restrict them.

Even the Economist is not impressed with Sunak's attack on the right to protest

Rochdale indicates that we face a profound political crisis with both government and opposition in lockstep. You could not put a piece of paper between Sunak and Starmer which is one reason why in Rochdale the two main parties got just 20% between them. No wonder Sunak was so furious.

The question for the left is whether they can get their act together to pose a unified challenge in the next election when the main task will not be defeating Sunak so much as ensuring the defeat of Starmer.

We should be under no illusions that Starmer is the main enemy. He stands for the continuation of the Tory attacks on the working class and poor. There isn’t even one promise that he hasn’t broken. Not one of his 10 pledges that secured his election as leader that he hasn’t torn up.

The call by Andrew Feinstein for a unified left, the Collective, is welcome. What would be even more welcome would be if Jeremy Corbyn, together with those MPs who Starmer has removed the whip from, were to seize this opportunity to give a lead rather than cowering in the shadows. Corbyn hasn’t even declared whether he will restand for parliament. One can only wonder what is keeping him.

Dianne Feinstein – Fighting Against Free Speech for Palestinians

Dianne Feinstein and Arms Trading Husband Seek to Expel Students Who Criticise Israel

The world through Zionist spectacles

Dianne Feinstein is a Senator and a pillar of the US Democratic establishment.  Fiercely Zionist she and her war profteering husband, Richard Blum have been exerting heavy pressure on the University of California to suppress free speech for Palestinian supporters.  The pretext?  You guessed it.  Anti-Semitism of course.

Berkley Campus UC campus

It is based on the State Department’s 2010 definition of anti-Semitism whch means: 

State Department Definition of anti-Semitism

State Department Definition of anti-Semitism relative to Israel

(1) “Demonizing Israel” by “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”

Presumably blowing people up or burning them alive inside their homes was not something Nazi Germany did?  Or was turning whole areas into ghettos not a Nazi mode of operaton?

“blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions”;

It is a matter of fact that the leaders of Israel have deliberately set out to destablilise their neighbours on religious/confessionalist lines.  In Liviah Rokach’s book Sacred Terrorism, she quotes 

‘The Chief of Staff [Dayan] supports a plan to hire a [Lebanese] officer who will agree to serve as a puppet so that the Israeli army may appear as responding to his appeal to liberate Lebanon from its Muslim oppressors...’ (5/28/54; 1024). 

The latter, of course, came about with the creation of the ‘security zone’ in Lebanon from 1979-1990.’ 

One of 10 UC campuses, Royston Hall, Los Angeles

And she quotes him again in May 1955 as saying that Israel ‘must—invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation- and-revenge… And above all—let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.”

What ‘space’ was Dayan referring to if not ‘living space’ lebensraum?

(2) Espousing a “Double standard for Israel” by “requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”

It’s difficult to know why the State department believes that evicting Palestinians who’ve lived in their homes for generations in order to make way for Jewish settlers isn’t something one would expect of any half-decent toilet trained western state?  Or perhaps torturing and killing children as young as 12 is acceptable in the European Union now?  Or is criticising the confiscation of land, water and  natural resources for the benefit of the Untermenschen anti-Semitic?  Perhaps condemning the burning alive of the Dawabsheh family in  Duma village was also anti-Semitic?  And how about the refusal to pay them anti-terrorism compensation, which Jewish settlers receive?  Is that anti-Semitic?

Feinstein - Police State Democrat

or “multilateral organizations focusing on Israel only for peace or human rights investigations”; or 

Would Israel feel happier if it was in the company of Saudi Arabia and Quatar or China?  Does this double standard apply to organisations that focus only on Tibet or the Syrian Kurds or any other minority people?  What has this to do with racism?  What about anti-Apartheid groups?  Were they anti-White as the Afrikaaners used to claim?

(3) “Delegitimize Israel” by “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist.”

This is the clincher.  Delegitimising Israel.  Questioning its ‘right to exist’.  But some of us would have questioned ‘the right to exist’ of Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, the Protestant state of Ulster and any other settler state.  What has this to do with racism as opposed to anti-racism?

And what’s this about the ‘right to self-determination’ of the Jewish people?  It used to be the case that those who asserted there was one Jewish people were considered anti-Semitic.  After all the unbroken links between Jews, wherever they lived, formed the basis of the world Jewish conspiracy.  Jews are part of the countries they live in.  They are not a separate people.

Thus is the dishonesty of the ruling class attempt to police free speech demonstrated.  In fact this whole definition rests on the idea that you can be racist against a state.  You can’t.  A state is a human construct, it is inanimate, it has no feelings, it doesn’t live.  Racism is meaningless against anyone bar human beings.

Tony Greenstein

The Greatest Threat to Campus Free Speech is Coming From Dianne Feinstein and her Military-Contractor Husband

Glenn Greenwald

Sep. 25 2015, 8:47 p.m.

There is no shortage of American pundits who love to denounce “PC” speech codes that restrict and punish the expression of certain ideas on college campuses. What these self-styled campus-free-speech crusaders typically — and quite tellingly — fail to mention is that the most potent such campaigns are often devoted to outlawing or otherwise punishing criticisms of Israel. The firing by the University of Illinois of Professor Steven Salatia for his “uncivil” denunciations of the Israeli war on Gaza — a termination that was privately condoned by Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin — is merely illustrative of this long–growing trend.

One of the most dangerous threats to campus free speech has been emerging at the highest levels of the University of California system, the sprawling collection of 10 campuses that includes UCLA and UC Berkeley. The university’s governing Board of Regents, with the support of University President Janet Napolitano and egged on by the state’s legislature, has been attempting to adopt new speech codes that — in the name of combating “anti-Semitism” — would formally ban various forms of Israel criticism and anti-Israel activism.

Under the most stringent such regulations, students found to be in violation of these codes would face suspension or expulsion. In July, it appeared that the Regents were poised to enact the most extreme version, but decided instead to push the decision off until September, when they instead would adopt non-binding guidelines to define “hate speech” and “intolerance.”

One of the Regents most vocally advocating for the most stringent version of the speech code is Richard Blum, the multi-millionaire defense contractor who is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. At a Regents meeting last week, reported the Los Angeles Times, Blum expressly threatened that Feinstein would publicly denounce the university if it failed to adopt far more stringent standards than the ones it appeared to be considering, and specifically demanded they be binding and contain punishments for students found to be in violation.

The San Francisco Chronicle put it this way: “Regent Dick Blum said his wife, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ‘is prepared to be critical of this university’ unless UC not only tackles anti-Jewish bigotry but also makes clear that perpetrators will be punished.” The lawyer Ken White wrote that “Blum threatened that his wife … would interfere and make trouble if the Regents didn’t commit to punish people for prohibited speech.” As campus First Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn put it the following day, “Feinstein and her husband think college students should be expelled for protected free speech.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., left, and her husband, Richard Blum, in the audience prior to a debate between California gubernatorial candidates at Dominican University of California in San Rafael, Calif., Oct. 12, 2010.  

Photo: Paul Sakuma/AP

Blum’s verbatim comments at the Regents meeting are even creepier than that reporting suggests:

'I should add that over the weekend my wife, your senior Senator, and I talked about this issue at length. She wants to stay out of the conversation publicly but if we do not do the right thing she will engage publicly and is prepared to be critical of this university if we don’t have the kind of not only statement but penalties for those who commit what you can call them crimes, call them whatever you want. Students that do the things that have been cited here today probably ought to have a dismissal or a suspension from school. I don’t know how many of you feel strongly that way but my wife does and so do I.'

Sarah McLaughlin of the campus free-speech group FIRE wrote: “Yes, a UC Regent flatly threatened the university with political consequences if it failed to craft a ‘tolerance’ policy that would punish — and even expel — its violators.”

In response to inquiries from The Intercept, Feinstein refused to say whether her husband was authorized to make such threats on her behalf, but she refused to distance herself from them. “This is a matter before the University of California and Senator Feinstein has no comment at this time,” her Press Secretary said.

The specific UC controversy is two-fold: whether, in combating “anti-semitism,” the university should adopt the State Department’s controversial 2010 definition of that term, and separately, whether students who express ideas that fall within that definition should be formally punished up to and including permanent expulsion. What makes the State Department definition so controversial — particularly for an academic setting — is that alongside uncontroversial and obvious examples of classic bigotry (e.g., expressing hateful or derogatory sentiments toward Jews generally), that definition includes a discussion of what it calls “Anti-Semitism Relative to Israel.”

How does speech about Israel become “anti-Semitic”? According to the State Department, “anti-Semitism” includes those who (1) “Demonize Israel” by “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” or “blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions”; (2) espouse a “Double standard for Israel” by “requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” or “multilateral organizations focusing on Israel only for peace or human rights investigations”; or (3) “Delegitimize Israel” by “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist.” The State Department generously adds this caveat at the end: “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.”

The ironies of this definition are overwhelming. First, it warns against advocating a “double standard for Israel” — at exactly the same time that it promulgates a standard that applies only to Israel. Would the State Department ever formally condemn what it regards as excessive or one-sided criticism of any other government, such as Russia or Iran? Why isn’t the State Department also accusing people of bigotry who create “double standards” for Iran by obsessing over the anti-gay behavior of Iran while ignoring the same or worse abuses in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Uganda? The State Department is purporting to regulate the discourse surrounding just one country — Israel — while at the same time condemning “double standards.”

Worse, this State Department definition explicitly equates certain forms of criticism of Israel or activism against Israeli government policies with “anti-Semitism.” In other words, the State Department embraces the twisted premise that a defining attribute of “Jews” everywhere is the actions of the Israeli government, which is itself a longstanding anti-Semitic trope.

But most important of all, whatever you think of this State Department definition, it has no place whatsoever regulating which ideas can and cannot be expressed in an academic institution, particularly one that is run by the state (such as the University of California). Adoption of this “anti-Semitism” definition clearly would function to prohibit the advocacy of, say, a one-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict, or even the questioning of a state’s right to exist as a non-secular entity. How can anyone think it’s appropriate to declare such ideas off limits in academic classrooms or outlaw them as part of campus activism?

To ban the expression of any political ideas in such a setting would not only be wildly anti-intellectual but also patently unconstitutional. As UC Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky put it today in an LA Times op-ed: “There unquestionably is a 1st Amendment right to argue against (or for) the existence of Israel or to contend that it should meet (or not have to meet) higher standards of human rights than other nations.” Even the now-retired Executive Director of the Anti-Defamation League Abraham Foxman — while arguing that “the effort to support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, is sinister and malicious and is having a negative effect on Jewish students on some campuses and on the wider Jewish community” — acknowledged in May that such bans would be clearly unconstitutional:

Legislation that bars BDS activity by private groups, whether corporations or universities, strikes at the heart of First Amendment-protected free speech, will be challenged in the courts and is likely to be struck down. A decision by a private body to boycott Israel, as despicable as it may be, is protected by our Constitution. Perhaps in Europe, where hate speech laws exist and are acceptable within their own legal frameworks, such bills could be sustained. But not here in America.

But none of that seems to matter to Dianne Feinstein and her war-profiteering husband, Richard Blum. Not only is Blum demanding adoption of the State Department definition, despite the fact that (more accurately: because) it would encompass some forms of BDS activism and even criticisms of Israel. But, worse, he’s also insisting that it be binding and that students who express the ideas that fall within the State Department definition be suspended from school or expelled. And he’s overtly threatening that if he does not get his way, then his wife 0- “Your Senior Senator” — will get very upset and start publicly attacking the university, a threat that public school administrators who rely on the government for their budgets take very seriously.

This behavior is as adolescent as it is despotic. Does anyone believe that college and post-graduate students should be able to express only those ideas about Israel that Dianne Feinstein and her war-profiteering husband deem acceptable?

It’s no mystery what this is really about. The Israeli government and its most devoted advocates around the world are petrified at the growing strength of the movement to boycott Israeli goods in protest of the almost five-decade occupation. As Foxman conceded, the boycott idea “seems to be picking up steam, particularly on college campuses across the United States. While no universities have yet adopted or implemented BDS, there are a growing number of campuses — now up to 29 — where student organizations have held votes to determine whether they support BDS.” Just this week, the City Council of Reykjavik, the largest city in Iceland, voted to boycott all Israeli goods as long as the occupation persists (days later, the City quickly retracted the vote, citing the unexpectedly intense “backlash” from Israel).

After the horrific massacre they committed in Gaza last summer, followed by its devastating defeat on the Iran Deal, the Israeli government is rapidly losing the PR battle around the world, and they know it. The boycott movement scares them above all else because it is predicated on the truth that they are most eager to suppress: the similarities between what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and the apartheid policies of South Africa (which were undermined by a global boycott movement and which the world now universally regards as evil).

Since they are losing the debate about this movement, the Israeli government and its loyalists are instead seeking to suppress it altogether, to literally outlaw it. Recall that in May, the right-wing Canadian government threatened hate speech charges against those who advocate a boycott of Israel; the country’s Liberal Leader, Justin Trudeau, decreed via Twitter that “the BDS movement, like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses.” Back in 2013, the ADL took out a full-page ad in the New York Times announcing that “the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel — known as BDS — is anti-Semitic hate speech.”

The effort to formally re-define “anti-Semitism” to include certain criticisms of and activism against the Israeli government has been coordinated and deliberate. That history is laid out with ample evidence here by the non-profit group Palestine Legal; here by Ali Abunimah’s book The Battle for Justice in Palestine, the relevant portion of which was published by The Intercept; and here by the writer and activist Ben White. In essence, this re-definition was first promulgated by Israeli lobbyists and academics, imposed with varying degrees of success on the EU, and then successfully imported into the Clinton-led State Department.

It’s one thing to apply political pressure to induce governments to adopt speech-repressive definitions of “anti-Semitism” that are non-binding. It’s another thing entirely to try to import them onto state-run college campuses where they are used to outlaw the expression of certain forms of criticisms of the Israeli government. And it’s another thing entirely for a prominent public official like Dianne Feinstein to have her husband throw their ample financial and political weight around in order to threaten and bully school administrators to ban ideas that this power couple dislike and punish the students who express them.

The obvious goal with this UC battle is to institutionalize the notion on American college campuses that activism against the Israeli government is not merely wrong but is actually “hate speech” that should subject its student advocates (or professors) to severe punishment. If this menacing censorship is allowed to take hold in an academic system as large and influential as the University of California, then it’s much easier for the censors to point to it in the future as a model, in order to infect other academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world. That’s all the more reason to vehemently oppose it in this instance. If defenders of Israel are determined to defeat the boycott movement, they’ll have to find other ways to do it besides rendering its advocacy illegal and, in the process, destroying the long-cherished precept of free speech in academia.

Contact the author:

glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com @ggreenwald