Looking Back at 2024 - Some Of The Interviews I Gave & the Speeches I Made

 For those who don’t like to compare Israel & Nazi Germany my message is ‘Compare, Compare, Compare’ – At A Time Of Extermination it's Important to Understand Just What Kind of State Israel Is

Demonstration Outside Westminster Magistrates Court

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv2lxMBpW-0&t=235s

Crispin Flintoff & Tony Greenstein Outside Westminster Magistrates Court

2024 has been a very busy year for me and below are some of the things that I did.  I had a tour of Scotland and speaking engagements in Ireland and the Netherlands as well as speaking at demonstrations in Glasgow, Liverpool and my home town Brighton.

I continued to promote my book which came out at the end of 2022. Quite remarkably sales were higher by far in the first half of 2024 than in the first half of 2023. You don’t get to learn of the sales figures until about 3 months after the end of the half year but I expect they will have increased again.

I did a wide range of interviews and talks, only some of which are below with audiences in the United States, South Africa and Australia. The theme of my book can be summed up in that Jewish Chronicle headline ‘Infamous anti-Israel activist Tony Greenstein called Jewish state 'Hitler's bastard offspring’. Israel has demonstrated that the only thing it learnt from Nazi Germany was how to emulate them.

On 21^st December Katie Halper and I finally managed to arrange an interview. Katie was a stand-up comedian before taking to podcasts and political commentary. She runs her own Katie Halper Show and is co-host of the podcast Useful Idiots with Aaron Maté.

Katie was a very challenging interviewer and I was pleased with the outcome. Recorded separately were interviews with Jenny Manson, the co-chair of Jewish Voices for Labour and Rabbi Herschel Gluck.

On November 7 I was invited to Cork in Ireland to speak. The atmosphere in Ireland is totally different from that in Britain where the State is breathing down our necks and harassing our marches. Ireland doesn’t have a genocidal supporting government supplying Israel with more weaponry to murder civilians and destroy hospitals.

I spoke in a hotel on the evening of the November 7 and the room was packed and I nearly sold out of books. At the end of the meeting I was taken aback when I was given a standing ovation. It shows the enthusiasm and solidarity of the Irish with the Palestinians.

On the Friday night I spoke at a bar in a small town in West Cork, Skibbereen. I’d never heard of the place before but again the room was packed to the rafters. The following day I took part in a march in the town and afterwards spoke at the rally.

This was in the middle of the Irish General Election. There were sarcastic comments about the Social Democrats taking part in the march having never done previously! The experience of British colonialism has ensured that the Irish understand what is happening and it is no surprise that Israel has closed its Embassy in Ireland.

My relationship with Electronic Intifada has been for over 15 years. It has been a very productive and comradely one. EI first asked me to write an article Histadrut: Israel's racist "trade union" in March 2009. I have since written a number of articles. Their podcast How Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, in conversation with Tony Greenstein has gained over 320K views and is one of their most highly viewed. Asa Winstanley also reviewed my book under the title How Zionism helped the Nazis perpetrate the Holocaust.

Asa himself has recently written the most comprehensive account of anyone of the anti-Semitism smear campaign under Jeremy Corbyn, Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn.

I was therefore pleased to be invited to an interview with EI on my birthday, 30 December! It was a very useful and productive interview. Electronic Intifada is the premiere Palestine Solidarity website. Having written for many papers, journals and sites I have to say that no one gives you such a hard time as EI! They check virtually every word and quote to see that you can back it up.  Nothing escapes the scrutiny of their fact checkers. Would that the British tabloids or Elon Musk had to undergo the same level of scrutiny!

Another interview, in fact two interviews was with Rania Khalek, a young Lebanese woman who runs Breakthrough News. Rania is a feisty interviewer who clearly feels the pain of what has happened in Lebanon with Israel’s savage bombing of its civilian population.

Rania first interviewed me in Budapest on 10 April, where I had gone for dental implant surgery.  However the Internet connection was not good and my computer had problems so we completed the interview on 15 April back in Brighton. This is the full interview and this is the cut down version.

 

On 14 June Rania interviewed me about my book and this time it was completed in one session. I found it a fascinating interview and thanks to Rania for the time she took over this. Subsequently Rania was invited to speak at a meeting of the Socialist Labour Network and Jewish Network for Palestine on a Jewish or a Democratic State and on January 27 she will speak at our Holocaust Memorial Day meeting. You can go here for the full length interview.

I have never been attracted to the idea of an autobiography or even a biography. Life is too short to waste time describing what you have done with your life and its bound to be partial and self-exculpatory. However I was happy to work with Helen Aksentijevic to produce a short, half hour film summarising some of the things I’ve tried to do.

Helen has produced similar films on other Jewish anti-Zionist  such as Moshe Machover, Haim Bresheeth and Sabby Sagall so I was very flattered to be asked.

Tony Greenstein - An Ordinary Rebel plus Question & Answer Session at the P21

At the end of October I was invited to the wedding of an old friend, a long standing Palestine solidarity activist, Susan  Blackwell.  She lives in the Netherlands and so I said that I would be happy to do a meeting whilst there.

Sue got in touch with students at the main technical university in the Netherlands, Delft University, and I was invited to speak to a meeting. The only problem was that the university, which was happy to invite Admiral Ellis, a representative of US arms company Lockheed Martin to campus and a ghoul of many US wars, they didn’t want me to speak because I might hurt the feelings of those students who supported the genocide in Gaza.

Of course when you contrast the hurt feelings of Zionists with the dead bodies of Palestinian children there is no contest.  So I wrote to the Rector His Magnificus (yes that’s his title) Timothy van der Hagen suggesting that freedom of speech is worth preserving. After all Hagen had written on the university website that

‘The most important task of TU Delft is to make a contribution towards building a better society’.

Yet Magnificus Hagen’s idea of a better society and mine were not the same. Hagen is just another ruling class hypocrite.

However the students had other ideas. Although I was banned from campus I turned up anyway and with just 2 hours notice over 100 students gathered to listen to me on the steps of the library. Not only had the stupid Magnificus built my meeting for me but by his own actions he had ensured that my message went out to thousands.

The Rector of Delft University - the Magnificus Timothy van der Hagen

The security, although watching, did not intervene.  A magnificus victory! I did write to Magnificus Hagen afterwards but he seems to be a man of few words and even fewer thoughts!

Tony Greenstein's Speech at Delft University Which the Administration Tried to Ban

As readers of this blog will know I was arrested a year ago on ‘terrorism’ charges and my last court appearance was on 19 December at Westminster magistrates court. There was a demonstration outside and I will be next appearing at the Old Bailey on 31 January where I hope people will also demonstrate their opposition to the use of terrorism legislation to silence Palestine solidarity activists.

Tony Greenstein's speech outside Westminster Magistrates Court

On the 4 August  I came back from my holiday in the Outer Hebrides and stopped off in Liverpool, where I spent my childhood, to speak to the Palestine demonstration outside the Roman Catholic Cathedral. I always enjoy going back to Liverpool with its magnificent waterfront and city buildings.

On 3 December I spoke on behalf of Jewish Network for Palestine at a seminar organised by the Open University Palestine group. Other speakers were Tony Lerman, an expert in anti-Semitism and former Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research, Barnaby Raine, a Ph D student and young firebrand and Michael Richmond who spoke about philosemitism, the other side of the anti-Semitism coin. The title was ‘How anti-Semitism has complemented Zionism’.

How antisemitism has complemented Zionism – Tony Greenstein

(for the full video go to here)

The JNP and SLN organised a seminar on the 12 November in the wake of my review of Jonathan Freedland’s dishonest biography of Rudolf Vrba, The Escape Artist, about the anti-Zionist Jewish hero who escaped, with Alfred Wetzler, from Auschwitz in order to warn Hungarian Jews of preparations being made to exterminate them.

Speakers included Stephen Kapos, a survivor of the Hungarian holocaust, Haim Bresheeth, an anti-Zionist Israeli and member of JNP and Tom Suarez, author Palestine Hijacked and State of Terror. Below is my contribution. A comprehensive website on Vrba has been set up by Alan Twigg, a journalist who knew him.

Zionism & the Holocaust – Tony Greenstein

The Complete Seminar – Rewriting the Holocaust

To commemorate the one year anniversary of October 7, the SLN and JNP organised a seminar to discuss the Gaza holocaust. Speakers included Ghada Karmi, a refugee from 1948, Rania Khalek, Haim Bresheeth and myself. Below is my speech but people can go to the SLN’s Youtube channel to listen to the complete seminar, ‘A Jewish State or a Democratic State’. Most most people agree that it was an extremely good seminar and I highly recommend listening to the whole seminar as I do the previous one on Vrba.

For One Democratic State

In the wake of Starmer’s election, the SLN organised a star studded panel including myself! Speakers included Ian Hodson, General Secretary of the Bakers Union,  Graham Bash – founding editor of National Labour Briefing, David Miller – who was sacked for his anti-Zionist views by Bristol University and who later won a landmark employment tribunal, Chris Williamson, the former Labour MP who was forced out of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and Crispin Flintoff, presenter of the Not the Andrew Marr show and latterly the Crispin Flintoff show which has a regular attendance of 500 every Sunday morning. You can hear the full video on the SLN Youtube channel here.

SLN Tony Greenstein – Where to for the Left 12 07 24

Every year for the past 2 years the SLN and the JNP have organised a meeting on Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27. As the Zionists weaponise the holocaust we have to be prepared to stand up and say ‘Never Again Means Never Again for Everyone’. For the Zionists of course, Never Again means never again only for Jews, or the right kind of Jew.

On January 27 2024 we had an excellent line up including Professor Ilan Pappe, Ghada Karmi, Ronnie Kasrills – the former head of Umkonte We Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing as well as former South African Police Minister , Stephen Kapos – a child holocaust survivor from Budapest, Suzanne Weiss – a child survivor from France and myself. Again a remarkable meeting. For the full meeting go here or here.

When Israel had been a month into the genocide in Gaza the JNP and SLN organised a webinar on the theme of stopping Israel’s onslaught. Speakers included Huda Ammori from Palestine Action, Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada, Stephen Kapos, Ronnie Barkan – an Israeli anti-Zionist activist and Tony Greenstein. You can watch the complete video here.

Stop the Genocide in Gaza 10.11.23

Last January I undertook a tour of Scotland at the invitation of Scottish PSC. I spoke in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. I also spoke at a large demonstration in Glasgow city centre.

Tony Greenstein speaking at Palestine Demonstration in Glasgow January 6 2024

Two months later I was back in Glasgow. It was March 16, UN Anti-Racism Day and the SWP’s  Stand Up to Racism were also holding a march. On the tiny SUTR march was none other than Glasgow Friends of Israel. Ever since 2017 the SWP/SUTR have insisted on marching with Zionists against racism! It’s like campaigning against rape alongside rapists.

This has been the subject of heated controversy in Scotland and the Police were always willing to lend a helping hand to ensure that the Zionists could march. This year, at a time of genocide in Palestine, the SWP’s decision to march with Zionists was particularly disgraceful.

Tony Greenstein speaking at the Anti-Racism Demonstration in Glasgow March 16 2024

On October 4^th, the 88^th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, when the Police unsuccessfully tried to batter a way through the East End of London for the British Union of Fascists. The same Metropolitan Police arrested me after a picket of racist Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli for comparing Israel’s genocide in Gaza to the Nazi holocaust. Their pretext was that I had committed a ‘racially aggravated offence’ under the Public Order Act. After being held for 7 hours I was released from  Holborn Police Station. A few weeks later I was informed that I would not be charged with any offence.  This is the speech that so annoyed the Met!

Tony Greenstein Speech Which Led to his Arrrest at Picket of Tzipi Hotoveli 4 Oct 2024

At 8 a.m. on the 26 November 2024 I gave a talk to listeners in Australia about my book, Zionism During the Holocaust. It was 7 pm there!

In this interview with Crispin Flintoff I tried to explain why people believe I’m outspoken and what motivates me

Interview Tony Greenstein on the Crispin Flintoff Show - Why I'm Outspoken

On 23 November 2023 I spoke to a meeting of the Labour Left Alliance in the wake of October 7. There was then an extensive Question & Answer session.

LLA meeting 23 November 2023

On 15 November I spoke at a demonstration organised by the Trades Council outside Hove Town Hall

And finally the one time I appeared on Question Time at Sussex University’s Gardener Centre. It was when Norman Tebbit, the Chingford skinhead was on the panel. I spoke from the audience attacking him for his racist cricket test directed against immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. Also on the panel was Clare Short. Peter Sissons was in the Chair. I don’t think I would have got away with it with today’s far-right Fiona Bruce!

Tony Greenstein on Question Time

Helen Aksentijevic interviews veteran anti-Zionist Moshe Machover, one of the founders of Matzpen, the Socialist Organisation in Israel

 Machover looks back on life since his childhood under the Palestine Mandate and describes both his own family and political background

There are not many people who can justly be described as legends in their own lifetime but Moshe Machover is one such person. An indefatigable optimist he was the ‘one who got away’. Targeted by the Zionists and expelled summarily by the Labour Party’s discredited Sam Mathews, there was such a groundswell of opposition both within and without the Labour Party, that Moshe was reinstated within a month after Corbyn’s office had been forced to intervene with the Compliance Unit.

Unlike the cowards of the Socialist Campaign Group, Dianne Abbot et al, Moshe was proud to appear in Zoom meetings alongside expelled members like myself and Chris Williamson, the only MP who did not subscribe to the false 'antisemitism' narrative

Moshe has subsequently been suspended by Starmer as part of his purge of anti-Zionist Jews (its official name, as befitting such doublethink,  is ‘rooting out anti-Semitism’).

Helen Aksentijevic is a filmmaker who decided to make a series of films about supporters of Palestine including Moshe. See Enlightenment and Pure Joy. Helen can best be described as a travelling protest photographer.

The first pamphlet that I read, at the age of 18 when I was coming out as an anti-Zionist, was by Moshe Machover and two fellow members of Matzpen, Akiva Orr and Haim Hanegbi. Up to then my opposition to Zionism was largely instinctive rather than theoretically worked out. This was a time when the very word ‘Palestinian’ was disputed. I had been brought up to consider Palestinians as just ‘Arabs’. It is as if Romanians or Swiss nationals were referred to as Europeans. Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister famously declared that there was no such thing as the Palestinians.

Moshe as a child

‘The Class Nature of Israeli society’ was published by New Left Review in January/February 1971 although I read it in a pamphlet published by the International Socialists (SWP). It helped me to clarify my intuitive feelings about Zionism, that it was an exclusivist and chauvinist project that rejected the basic ideas of Socialism. The pamphlet helped me to jettison many of the ideas that I had grown up with in a Zionist environment.

A Young Moshe Machover & Jabra Nicola

Matzpen (Compass), which Moshe helped form in 1962, was the first Israeli anti-Zionist organisation. In the film Moshe describes briefly the origins of the organisation and the influence of the Palestinian Marxist Jabra Nicola over him and others. Nicola saw the solution to the dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians as being a regional one involving workers and peasants struggle in the Arab East to overthrow the corrupt and repressive regimes which dot the landscape.

The Israeli Communist Party, from which Matzpen broke, never rejected Zionism. Indeed it has never had any analysis of Zionism worthy of the name. It sees Zionism as largely irrelevant and doesn’t see the Israeli working class as a settler working class.

The Irgun, a terrorist militia which perpetrated the massacre at Deir Yassin in April 1948 before the declaration of independence

By way of contrast Matzpen developed an understanding of Zionism and Israel as a settler-colonial ideology and movement or what Moshe describes, using Kautsky’s terminology a ‘work’ or ‘exclusion’ colony as opposed to an ‘exploitation colony’.

In my view these categories are too rigid, as some colonies like South Africa could be both exploitation and exclusion colonies. Hence South Africa’s Bantustan policy.

Jabra Nicola

Rakah, the Israeli Communist  Party believed and still believes that the Israeli state can be reformed and that Israeli Palestinians can achieve equality within it. They never understood that it was Zionism which ensured that Israel could never become a state of its own citizens. Rakah was a Stalinist party that went along in 1948 with Stalin’s support for the establishment of a ‘Jewish’ state, a policy which all but destroyed the Arab Communist Parties in the region.

The idealised image of the Kibbutzim and Jewish Labour - what wasn't shown were the evictions of Arab peasants with the help of the British army to make way for the Kibbutzim

Today the Palestine solidarity movement and academia takes it for granted that Israel is a settler colonial state, but for many years people saw Israel as either a liberal democracy or a social democratic, if not socialist society, with the Kibbutzim as their idea of socialism in practice. The idea 60 years ago that Israel was a settler colonial state was ground breaking.

I freely confess that Moshe has been an enormous influence over my own political development although, as often happens with one’s mentors, we disagree on certain issues. I don’t for example accept Moshe’s belief that the Israeli or Hebrew people constitute a nation in their own right with a right to self-determination as a Hebrew state in the future. In my view such a state would inevitably contain within it forces seeking to reconstitute themselves as a Zionist and Jewish Supremacist state with all that entails. Hebrew culture in Israel is inevitably a culture of oppression.

Zionist 'socialism' was a strictly Jewish only affair and thus it negated the basic principle of socialism, the unity of the working class whatever its ethnic or religious origins. Today that has played out in the presence in a far-right coalition of the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz

Unlike Moshe I also believe that the idea or concept of a unitary democratic secular state is one that the Palestine solidarity movement should adopt. Why? Firstly because it negates the concept of a Jewish State, which the two state solution does nothing to challenge. But also because a solidarity movement that is unable to present a vision of what it is striving for will in the end succumb to partial solutions such as a repartition. How such a goal will be achieved is a separate question.

I also have less faith in the future potential of the Israeli working class than Moshe because experience has shown that in settler colonial states, be it South Africa or Ireland, the settler working class is to the right of its own bourgeoisie. Their support for an ethno-supremacist state means that they are incapable of acting as a class for itself.

The ethnic cleansing of Jaffa - the only people driven into the sea were the Palestinians

I see no progressive or socialist potential in the Israeli Jewish working class because its identity wrapped up in the super oppression of the Palestinian working class.

Today the idea of Israel as an Apartheid State has become widely accepted. This idea, that Israel is a state in which racial oppression is not a side effect or by-product of its other policies but inbuilt into the state itself, has gradually taken hold. Ideologically Israel and its defenders are in a weaker position now than they have ever been.

The flight of the Palestinians was necessary to create an artificial Jewish majority in Israel

This development has taken place at the same time as Israel is militarily and economically stronger than it has ever been although still dependant on its benefactor, the United States.

Where I agree with Moshe is that the Question of Zionism or Palestine cannot be solved within the borders of Palestine. The great mistake of the Palestinian leadership, the PLO, was to believe that they could become yet another corrupt Arab leadership in a Palestinian state of their own side by side with the Israeli state. The PLO leaders desired nothing more than the right to oppress their own people, as the Palestinian Authority today demonstrates.

Tel Aviv, a Jewish only city in its early days in British Palestine

It was this that led to the disaster that is the 1993 Oslo Accords. At the time those of us who opposed Oslo were very much in a minority. Fateh activists were enthusiastic about its prospects and their prospects. This enthusiasm derived from the belief that Zionism could be confined within pre-1948 borders and could live alongside a Palestinian state. Unfortunately the Palestinian leadership never understood the nature of Zionism and how it is an inherently expansionist and colonisatory project. Or if they did understand it rhetorically they never incorporated it in their theory and practice. Today it is very clear that the Israeli state cannot be reformed and Zionism cannot change its spots.

An artist's view of Tel Aviv

The other mistake of the PLO was, in exchange for subsidies to finance their operations, to establish uncritical relationships with the very Arab regimes which oppressed their own people. These regimes paid lip service to the Palestinian cause whilst in practice abandoning them. Today we can see this clearly with the Abraham Accords, which follow on from the 1978 Camp David Accords whereby Egypt recognised Israel. Following Oslo, Jordan also established diplomatic relations with Israel.

The Arab regimes fear, despise and oppress their own peoples. They are the junior allies of imperialism. Regimes such as that in Saudi Arabia and Egypt are some of the most brutal on the planet. They are jealously guarded by the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv yet the Palestinian movement has largely been uncritical of these regimes. The role of Israel is to ensure that radical Arab nationalism never triumphs in the region.

Where I disagree with Moshe is that I don’t accept that it is necessary for a socialist revolution to take hold in the Arab world before Zionism can be overthrown. If only because the establishment of socialism has proved rather more difficult than Marx and the early socialists envisaged. I think it is possible for nationalist revolutions to overthrow the ancien regimes in the Arab world and in that way to threaten the very imperialist interests that Israel is paid to watch over.

The original advert  in Ha'aretz

Moshe has lived through the entire period of the Israeli state. He recalls how, in September 1967, Matzpen was the first group to place an advert in Ha’aretz decrying the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank which an Israeli Labor not Likud Government, presided over. Moshe also recalls the hostility and calls of ‘traitor’ that greeted this advert. The advert met with unbridled hostility and threats to the individual signatories.

Moshe tells how, at the age of 3, his first definite memory was the day that World War 2 broke out. He describes the bombing of Tel Aviv by the Italian airforce and says that by 1944 it was clear that something horrendous had taken place in Europe in respect of the Jews.

This is in itself instructive because the Zionist leadership in Palestine were well aware that the Holocaust was taking place from at least mid-1942 if not earlier but they did their best to play such reports down. The Hebrew press even whilst it reported on what was happening in Europe also cast doubt on its own reports. Zionism, which has fashioned the Holocaust into an ideological weapon, was at that time more concerned with state building than rescuing Jewish refugees.

Moshe emigrated to Britain in 1968. Many others in Matzpen also emigrated to the West because life was made very difficult for those who were seen as traitors to Zionism. Moshe became a Professor of Mathematical Logic and Philosophy at King’s College in London. Far from being a democratic society Israel has always been extremely intolerant of Jews who dissent from the Zionist narrative.

Moshe describes in some detail how, in the wake of the Nakba between 1947 and 1949, he and other children would hike into the Galilee and see the ruins of the Arab villages. They saw the artifacts and belongings left after the Zionist militias had looted much of what remained when the original owners had been forced to flee from Palestine. The Zionist myth that people like Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli still propagate is that the Palestinians voluntarily left.

It was the Israeli Labor Party that presided over the 6 Day War and the conquest of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan Heights. I remember very well how Israeli propaganda portrayed the situation as a possible new holocaust. We really believed that Israel might well suffer defeat and that the Jews would be driven into the sea. Of course this was a lie meant to fool not only Israeli Jews but the wider Jewish communities world-wide. We now know that this was, as Moshe says, ‘poppycock’.

The ILP was also responsible for the establishment of the first settlements. It was an Israeli Labor Government which launched a pre-emptive war on Syria, Jordan and Egypt with the intention of completing what was they considered unfinished business in 1947-9, namely the conquest of the whole of what was Palestine under the British Mandate. In 1956 Israel had launched the Suez War, in conjunction with Britain and France, against Egypt following Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal. At that time Israel had been forced to withdraw after the US Administration of Eisenhower had made its displeasure clear.

The remains of the Arab villages after they had been looted and their inhabitants expelled or massacred

Moshe explains how one of the cardinal beliefs of the Zionists is that Jews don’t merely constitute a religious community but a nation in its own right. That is integral to the Zionist claim on what they call Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel). The basis of this claim is that God gave the land to the Jews. Given that the early Zionists were atheists, we have the absurdity that Zionism based its claim to Palestine on the promise of a god who doesn’t exist!

I hope you find this interview as illuminating and interesting as I did.

Tony Greenstein