Hundreds of Israelis Demonstrated in Afula Against the Sale of a House to an Arab

This is why Israeli Apartheid is Unique and why John McDonnell’s defence of Zionism and the Israeli state was so wrong

In the wake of Labour's NEC decision on September 4^th to endorse the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, Palestine solidarity activists fly posted bus stops in London declaring that Israel is a racist endeavour.

This was immediately denounced by John McDonnell who told BBC’s Politics Live that "It is not the right thing to say. It is against the examples that we set out and linked to the IHRA definitions."

In a further interview with Jewish News McDonnell elaborated on these comments, stating that ‘It is anti-Semitic to oppose a Jewish state, of course it is.’ Israel calls itself a Jewish state but what does that mean?  The demonstrations in Afula last June against the sale of a house to an Arab give us a clue.

As people may be aware, I am currently bringing an action for defamation against the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism for calling me a ‘notorious anti-Semite’. They are defending this on 4 grounds, one of which, is that “The Claimant lied when he claimed in The Guardian newspaper that the International Definition of Anti-Semitism prevents criticism of Israel.”

Letter from 62 Jewish people criticising the IHRA - handed over to Peter Kyle MP for Hove

In fact what I and the other 61 signatories wrote was somewhat more nuanced, viz. that ‘The new definition has nothing to do with opposing antisemitism, it is merely designed to silence public debate on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.”

At first sight the CAA is right. The IHRA states that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’. 

The Home Affairs Select Committee, whose Report in October 2016 triggered Theresa May’s acceptance of the IHRA definition also stated that: ‘It is not antisemitic to hold the Israeli Government to the same standards as other liberal democracies...’ (paragraph 24)

The key question running through the debate over the IHRA definition of anti-semitism is whether or not the Israeli state is just another liberal democratic state, or whether it is suis generis.

It is my contention that Israel is unlike any other country because it is, uniquely, an ethno-nationalist state. Hitler’s Germany after the 1935 Nuremburg Laws was a state not of its own citizens but the German Volk. Germany claimed that Germans, wherever they lived formed part of the German Volk/nation and this led in 1938 to the crisis over Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland, where ethnic Germans lived, and in turn to the Munich Agreement.

Likewise Israel claims that it is the nation state, not of its own citizens but all Jews, wherever they live in the world. It has just passed a Jewish Nation State Law to make this explicit. Israel’s definition of itself as a Jewish State is not at all similar to Britain’s definition of itself as a Christian state.  My rights as a Jewish inhabitant of England have no relationship to my religion, if any.  Political and civil rights in the UK are not dependent on one’s religious affiliation. That is because religion in Britain has no relationship to nationality or citizenship.  However in Israel being Jewish is primarily a national/racial question, not simply a matter of religion. 

At first sight the CAA is right. The IHRA states that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’.  

The Home Affairs Select Committee, whose Report in October 2016 triggered Theresa May’s acceptance of the IHRA definition also stated that: ‘It is not antisemitic to hold the Israeli Government to the same standards as other liberal democracies...’ (paragraph 24)

The key question running through the debate over the IHRA definition of anti-semitism is whether or not the Israeli state is just another liberal democratic state, or whether it is suis generis.

It is my contention that Israel is unlike any other country because it is, uniquely, an ethno-nationalist state. Hitler’s Germany after the 1935 Nuremburg Laws was likewise a state not of its own citizens but the German Volk. Germany claimed that Germans, wherever they lived formed part of the German Volk/nation and this led in 1938 to the crisis over Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland, where ethnic Germans lived, and in turn to the Munich Agreement.

 Israel claims that it is the nation state, not of its own citizens but all Jews, wherever they live in the world. It has just passed a Jewish Nation State Law to make this explicit. Israel’s definition of itself as a Jewish State is not at all similar to Britain’s definition of itself as a Christian state.  My rights as a Jewish inhabitant of England have no relationship to my religion, if any.  Political and civil rights in the UK are not dependent on one’s religious affiliation. That is because religion in Britain is distinct from nationality or citizenship.  However in Israel being Jewish is primarily a national/racial question, not simply a matter of religion.

This was demonstrated most clearly in Afula, a Jewish-only city of around 50,000 in northern Israel, in June of this year. Afula’s Jewish residents were outraged that a property in the town had been sold to an Arab. This was a carbon copy of a similar demonstration in 2015 when many of the successful bidders for building plots were found to be Arabs. The protestors demanded the cancellation of the whole bidding process and the Nazareth District Court was happy to oblige. Similar protests and actions have been held in other towns. 

In 2011 in Safed the Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, a paid state official, issued an edict forbidding Jews to rent property to Arabs. Eliyahu’s edict was supported by dozens of rabbis. To this day he remains a salaried official of the Israeli state.

All Western states are racist but Israel is uniquely so. Racism and segregation form the core of its identity as a Jewish state. Racism is not simply a policy that can be changed but inherent to Israeli society. Another word for it is Zionism.  

If I want to rent a property in the UK my religion is irrelevant. I would not expect a landlord or letting agent to even ask me what my religious identity is but in Israel religion is crucial in determining whether someone is part of the volk, the national community. It is written on everyone’s ID car.

demonstration by far Right Israelis

Israel is a ‘Jewish state’ or more accurately a state of the Jewish nation. What Israel is not is a state of its own citizens. Recent attempts to even debate such a proposal in the Knesset were blocked.  Knesset Council Bans Bill to Define Israel as State for All Its Citizens

Uniquely in the modern world, the Israeli state owns and controls 93% of Israeli land which is reserved for the use of the ‘Jewish people.’ The Jewish National Fund, a para-state organisation set up by the JNF Law 1953 ensures that access to that land is barred to the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians. 

The JNF is quite open about the fact that ‘it should not be obliged to allocate lands in its possession to non-Jews.... Whoever seeks to prevent the allocation of JNF lands solely to Jews must confront the assertions of these laws’ referring to three land laws passed in 1960-61 which gave the JNF and the Israeli Land Administration joint responsibility for administering Israeli state land.

Israeli Arabs are confined to 3% of the land.  Not one new Arab town or village has been created in Israel since its formation 70 year ago despite a more than 10 fold increase in their population. This contrasts with hundreds of new Jewish towns and communities.

In Israel land is segregated in the same way as it was in Apartheid South Africa.  The only difference is that Israel sees no need to pass a Group Areas Act relying on a series of opaque laws, regulations and administrative practices instead.

Being Jewish in Israel means having very real and significant privileges. A Jewish state means that you constantly worry about the ‘demographic threat’ that the Arabs pose. In Expert confirms Jews and Arabs nearing population parity Aron Heller wrote that ‘Israel will be faced with a daunting choice between becoming a binational state or one in which Arabs and other minorities do not have equal rights.’

That is why Israel constantly encourages Jewish immigration at the same time as it takes steps to minimise the Arab population.  Politics in Israel are ethnicised at every level and in every sphere of civil and social life.  The 20% of the population that are Palestinians are not represented at any level in the government, the senior civil service or the judiciary. It means segregation in most areas of life including education and housing. It also results in government supported campaigns against miscegenation, sexual relations between Jews and Arabs that are reminiscent of the Nuremberg Laws (Israel's vile anti-miscegenation squads).

What is particularly shocking is not only that McDonnell has so little historical or political awareness but that he is prepared to jettison the Palestinians for the sake of a pact with the devil, in the form of the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement.

The idea of religious states died out with the French Revolution. Nationality became a function of residence in a certain territory not religion.  In the words of Count Clermont-Tonnerre, a Deputy in the French Constituent Assembly, "Jews should be denied everything as a nation, but granted everything as individuals…." Tonnerre’s words represented the views of 18^th-century rationalists and French revolutionaries toward Judaism and the Jewish question. That was why Zionism, like the Jewish Orthodoxy, hated Emancipation and the French Revolution (alongside Hitler and European fascism).

Signs in Nazi Germany saying 'Jews not welcome here'

In Israel being Jewish signifies one’s race and nation not simply religion. The idea that Jews form a separate nation and thus Jewish self-determination, which the IHRA refers to, is an anti-semitic argument that implies that Jews aren’t members of the nations amongst whom they  live.

There is also no right to a Protestant or Catholic or Islamic state.  A simple understanding of the fight for democratic rights and the works of people like Thomas Paine and JS Mill eludes McDonnell. It is a sign of the intellectual poverty of debate in the Labour Party that people actually buy into the argument that Jews only have one state in the world.  No religion should have any state.

There are those that argue that there are Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is true but they are not ethno nationalist states.  In both countries being a Muslim is not a privilege.  On the contrary Islam is used to justify the regime’s tyranny and oppression of Muslims.

It needs emphasising that Israel is not just another Western state. Israel is unique in not having its own nationality. Jews are a separate nationality to that of Arabs and there are about 130 nationalities in Israel of which only one, Jewish, confers rights.

Israel is a state that was founded on the basis of Jewish racial supremacy. When the Supreme Court ruled in Ka’adan that the State could not discriminate against Arabs by refusing to sell them State land, the response of the Knesset was to pass in 2011 an Acceptance to Communities Law which allowed communities of less than 500 people to set up Admission Committees which screened potential residents on ethnic or other grounds such as colour. 

Imagine if, in Britain, someone who was Jewish was told that they could not purchase land because it was owned by the Christian National Fund.  There would be an uproar but that is the situation in Israel in respect of Arabs.

McDonnell’s desire to appease the Labour Right is worrying. First he suggested that Margaret Hodge’s abuse of Jeremy Corbyn should not be made the subject of a disciplinary investigation despite having said nothing about the disciplinary proceedings against Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and myself. Then McDonnell called for full support for the IHRA and now he is denouncing activists for saying that Israel is a racist rotweiller that guards over Western interests in the Middle East.

Those who think that this will not have any effect on McDonnell as Labour Chancellor should think again. McDonnell has begun travelling the same road that his famous predecessor, Sir Stafford Cripps, took.  Cripps started off on Labour’s far-left, got expelled and ended up as Attlee’s Chancellor and the enforcer of austerity.

Foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy. If McDonnell bends the knee to the Zionists now then he is he going to doff his cap to American foreign policy and the ‘special relationship’ later. We can only imagine what McDonnell’s response will be when faced with a hostile banking sector and a run on the pound. If he can’t criticise Margaret Hodge’s vile attack on Jeremy Corbyn and support the mandatory reselection of Labour MPs then it is to be feared that McDonnell will end up as another Dennis Healey

If Jeremy Corbyn fell under the proverbial bus McDonnell would immediately be a target. When it seemed that Corbyn might be overthrown stories began to appear in the press concentrating on McDonnell’s past such as sponsoring an Early Day Motion supporting the International Jewish Anti-zionist Network.

If McDonnell really thinks that Israel is no different from any other western state then he should look at the following articles on Afula. 

Tony Greenstein

Hundreds of Israelis Demonstrate Against Home Sale to Arab Family

Former mayor joined protest: 'the residents of Afula don't want a mixed city, but rather a Jewish city, and it's their right. This is not racism'

Ha’aretz Jun 14, 2018

About 150 residents of the northern city of Afula demonstrated on Wednesday afternoon against the sale of a house to an Arab family. Protesters waved Israeli flags and carried signs condemning the sale and the homeowners who sold their house to Arabs, one of which read: "Traitors against the Jews will get no rest."

Former Afula Mayor Avi

It's what used to be called Apartheid

Protesters raised Israeli flags and shouted slogans against the sale of the house in the city's Yizrael neighborhood. Chairman of Joint Arab List Ayman Odeh wrote in response to the protest:

“It is not a surprise that in a country that has founded 700 towns for Jews and not even one for Arabs, the idea that Arabs should be pushed aside does not shock citizens. And still, it is more than a little worrying to see how our hope for living together is crumbling due to hatred and racism fueled by the government.”

Member of Knesset Yousef Jabareen (Joint List) added that

“racism ethnic superiority have become a legitimate reality under this right-wing government. This protest should rock the political system and keep up at night all those who care about equality and human dignity.”

Ayelet Shaked of Jewish Home and ardent advocate of  annexing the West Bank

A notice calling on residents to turn out for the demonstration made reference to “the sale of homes to those who are undesirable in the neighbourhood” and went on to say: “One transaction has already been carried out and everything needs to be done to cancel it and to put a stop to this phenomenon from the beginning. Friends, now is the time to come together. All Jews are responsible for one another! Today it's us, tomorrow, it's you.”

In response to the Afula protest, the Coalition Against Racism organization called for a halt to efforts by “those inciting the public against the possibility of living together.” The phenomenon will not stop without “clear responses by courageous public figures and political leaders,” the organization said, adding: “Now is the time for the voice of the sane majority in Afula, both politicians and the wider public, to be heard.”

About two years ago, Afula residents held a number of demonstrations objecting to a bidding process for lots in a residential neighborhood of the city in which all 43 successful bidders were Arab. Approval of the bids was rescinded by the Nazareth District Court after the court found that some of the successful bidders had engaged in improper coordination of their bids and that the minimum bid provisions were vague and misleading.

Jews not welcome - another Nazi practice imported into Israel

Half of Jewish Israelis say they wouldn’t want an Arab as a neighbor. In March, Kfar Vradim’s local council head Sivan Yehieli ordered to halt bids for selling building plots of land in his community, after 50 percent of the winners so far turned out to be Arabs. In a letter he disseminated among the community’s residents he promised that “no more land would be sold until an appropriate solution was found to ensure our ability to maintain our communal life and the special character of Kfar Vradim."

The so-called nation-state bill passed the first of three Knesset calls in May in a version that has a clause allowing the establishment of communities for Jews only. Clause 7b of this bill specifically states that “the state can allow a community composed of people of the same faith or nationality to maintain an exclusive community.”

Umm al Hiran - a village demolished in January 2017 to make way for Jewsh settlers

When racism and segregation are perceived as 'legitimate rights'

Protests against Arab families moving into Jewish cities are a reminder that until everyone is free to choose where they want to live, the Israeli regime will remain segregationist and racist at its core.

+972 Magazine, Suhad Bishara 21 June 2018

Illustrative photo of demonstration by far-right Israelis. (Activestills.org)

The protest comes just a few months after Sivan Yehieli, the head of the Kfar Vradim Municipal Council, announced that his pastoral town must maintain its Zionist-Jewish character after 58 Arab citizens won bids to build their homes in the town.

Let’s make one thing clear: 150 protesters are not an aberration in Israel. They were simply expressing overtly the racist segregation upon which Israel’s land regime was founded. This is precisely how military rule over Israel’s Arab citizens – in effect from 1949 until 1966 – functioned: “cleansing” vast swaths of land in order to settle Jews and to ensure reserves of land that would continue to exclusively serve Israeli Jews.

This “cleansing” process was implemented, among other ways, via the construction of hundreds of new Jewish towns and communities, as well as through the establishment of admissions committees in kibbutzim, moshavim, and other communities.

Yehieli faithfully represents the Israeli planning authorities’ policy aimed at demographically re-engineering the country. He represents an Israeli legal system that refused to allow the implementation of its own decision to allow the internally-displaced Palestinian residents of Iqrit and Bir’im to return to their villages, that gave the green light to the Admissions Committees Law, and that allows the state to uproot the residents of Umm al-Hiran in order to replace them with Jewish citizens – just like during and immediately following the Nakba. And we can expect much more of the same.

Bedouin women collect their belongings from the ruins of their demolished homes in the village of Umm al-Hiran, Negev desert, January 18, 2017. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Much of the criticism leveled at the racism of Afula’s residents focuses on the lack of development in Arab communities, which results in the necessity of young Arab citizens to seek housing solutions in nearby Jewish towns.

The Supreme Court ruled that Arabs cannot be barred from 'Jewish' towns and communities

The decision of Israel's Supreme Court in Ka'adan has effectively been overturned by the Knesset and by the Supreme Court itself

This thinking prevents envisioning a situation in which an Arab citizen of Israel has the right to choose where she/he wants to live simply because it suits her/him to live there. It buys into the paradigm of a discriminatory, racist, and apartheid-like land regime that forces them to find a circumstantial explanation for the phenomenon, rather than simply calling it by its name: racism and segregation.

Imagine a scenario in which the Israeli government takes unprecedented steps to allocate land for the development of Arab communities. Imagine that it begins developing Arab communities of all kinds — cities, villages, and agricultural communities — while also ensuring the development of industrial and commercial zones in accordance with the principles of distributive and restorative justice.

But yet, even in this scenario, it remains the right of every Arab citizen to decide where he or she wants to live — be it Kfar Vradim, Tel Aviv, or Afula.

As long as Israeli state authorities cannot or will not imagine the country’s land as open to all, we cannot talk about justice or constitutional rights. The Israeli regime will remain segregationist and racist at its core. Segregated living will remain racist, even under the guise of “separate but equal.”

Imagine protesters demonstrating against Jews buying homes in a Christian town in Europe. Israelis would declare them racists and anti-Semites, and Israel’s prime minister would surely remark that it reminds him of the dark days leading up to the Holocaust. Inside Israel, however, an almost identical scene is framed by Afula’s former mayor Avi Elkabetz as such: “The residents of Afula do not want a mixed city. They want a Jewish city — and this is their right. This isn’t racism.”

Thus racism in Israel magically becomes the “legitimate right” of the Jewish citizen.

Attorney Suhad Bishara is the Director of the Land and Planning Rights Unit, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. This article was first published in Hebrew on Haokets. Read it here.

Satire by Israeli TV Host Assaf Harel on Channel 10

‘Of course Israel is an Apartheid society'

In the current climate, this is a must watch film.  In it Israeli TV host, in a satirical programme say that of course Israel is an Apartheid society.

In Britain, in the current climate it is now – thanks to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism – anti-Semitic to call Israel an Apartheid state.  This ethno-supremacist state is treated as a ‘liberal democracy’ according to the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Anti-Semitism which first recommended adoption of a definition of anti-Semitism which conflates anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

It says:

‘23.      It is clear that where criticism of the Israeli Government is concerned, context is vital. Israel is an ally of the UK Government and is generally regarded as a liberal democracy, in which the actions of the Government are openly debated and critiqued by its citizens.
It goes on to say that:24.   
•           It is not antisemitic to hold the Israeli Government to the same standards
as other liberal democracies,

In other words if you don’t treat Israel as a liberal democracy then that is anti-Semitic. 

WATCH In Last Monologue, Israeli Comedy Show Host Implores Israelis to Wake Up and Smell the Apartheid

Assaf Harel's scathing indictment of Israeli society has gone viral.

An Israeli comedy show host's searing indictment of Israeli society has gone viral on social media, raking in over 5,000 shares in the two days since it was posted on the show's Facebook page on Monday.

In the video, Assaf Harel of "Good Night With Asaf Harel" castigates Israelis for ignoring the occupation and claims that Israel is an apartheid state.

"Good Night," which was aired by Channel 10, was one of Israel's most controversial shows on mainstream television in recent years. In one instance, the show was fined after Harel ridiculed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for exploiting his brother's death for political gain.

The episode was "Good Night's" last, as the show was not renewed for another season due to poor ratings, even though the show has gained a strong following on social media.

Professor David Feldman – Chakrabarti’s Liberal Bares his Teeth

Feldman Joins the Zionists Racist Attack on Momentum Black Activist Jackie Walker

Professor David Feldman is the classic Establishment Liberal.  Full of fine principles but none of them so sacrosanct that they cannot be sacrificed when needs must.  Feldman is Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of anti-Semitism at Birkbeck University, which is funded by the Pears Family Trust, a liberal Jewish Trust itself financed by a family web of property companies. 

Professor Feldman holding forth with the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

If the Jewish Labour Movement's Jeremy Newmark, who perjured himself at the Fraser v UCU Employment Tribunal, is telling the truth for once, then Feldman made a gratuitous attack on Jackie Walker for the sake of pleasing his listeners, having not bothered to ascertain her actual views

When Feldman was announced as Vice-Chair of the Chakrabarti Inquiry, he was immediately attacked by the Zionists.  David Hirsh, whose Engage led the unsuccessful opposition to a Boycott in the University College Union wrote that Feldman was a signatory to ‘Jewish antisemitism-denying groups, such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians and Independent Jewish Voices’. 

Another line of attack on Feldman was the statement by IJV that the Zionist campaign around ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party was “baseless and disingenuous” Feldman was leaned upon to disown the statement, which he quickly did.  Two members of Free Speech on Israel met with Feldman during the course of the Chakrabarti Inquiry and found him sympathetic in contrast to Baroness Janet Royall, the other Vice-Chair of the Chakrabarti Inquiry, who led her own inquiry, into Zionist allegations of anti-Semitism at Oxford University Labour Club.  Bizarrely Royall later let it be known in a blog article for the Jewish Labour Movement, that 

‘I know that you will share my disappointment and frustration that the main headline coming out of my inquiry is that there is no institutional Antisemitism in Oxford University Labour Club.’ 

David Feldman heads the liberal Pears Institute at Birkbeck College, London University

Feldman had previously compiled a ‘sub-report’ for John Mann’s Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism.  Reading back over this Report, it is clear that the seeds of Feldman’s current position had already been sown, when he implied that giving offence to the Jewish community, however defined, is tantamount to a form of anti-Semitism.  Like many academics he is reluctant to be explicit and say what he actually means.  In Section 3 of the Report, Feldman argued that:

‘we should acknowledge the sense of offence felt by many British Jews last summer and autumn in the face of some or all of the criticism directed at Israel and their perception that this criticism was, in fact, anti-Semitic.’

Feldman, like many Zionist academics, is difficult to pin down.  What concretely does he mean by acknowledging the sense of offence felt by many British Jews?  Is he suggesting that Operation Protective Edge, to which he was referring, when over two thousand Palestinians, including 551 children, were killed, should not have been the subject of protests and demonstrations?  He says that there was a ‘perception’ that this criticism was ‘in fact, anti-Semitic’.  What Feldman doesn’t do is say what his opinion is or indeed why there is this perception and where it has come from.  Instead what he does is to drop heavy hints, signalling the direction which he wants you to travel in, whilst ensuring that he has prepared enough escape clauses.

Feldman mentions in the Report one person who, apparently, had a ‘Hitler was right’ placard.  It is of course possible, that such a person existed, although no evidence was provided.  A similar allegation was made by Jonathan Arkush to the Home Affairs Select Committee, again without anything resembling evidence. Arkush alleged (p.40 HASC Report) that during 'one of the Gaza campaigns, there were “huge marches” in London at which people held placards that read “Hitler was right.” Such was the contrived nature of HASC's Report, in reality an excuse for an attack on Corbyn, that it never even occurred to them to ask Arkush to back up his allegation with anything in the way of evidence. To this day no one has ever produced photographs of these Hitler placards.

What Feldman doesn’t mention are the demonstrations outside Ahava and the Israeli Embassy, to name but two, where Zionists stood side by side with Holocaust denying anti-Semites of the English Defence League and other fascist groups.  Far-right support for Zionism is the subject whose name Feldman dares not speak.  The support of the Andrei Breiviks and Geert Wilders for Zionism is something that the good professor Feldman does not to mention.

In America by way of contrast, liberal Zionists such as the Jewish Forward and its columnists have been forced to confront the fact that supporters of Zionism are more than happy to hold hand with open anti-Semites such as Breitbart’s Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s Strategic Advisor.  In his article of December 23^rd in the Guardian, Will Britain’s new definition of antisemitism help Jewish people? I’m sceptical Feldman refers to Trump as a ‘US president whose noisome electoral campaign was sustained by nods and winks to anti-Jewish prejudice’ but he draws no conclusion from these nods and winks.  In fact they were far more than nods and winks, as Bannon’s appointment demonstrated.

The Jewish Forward, a liberal Zionist paper seemed shell-shocked, not only by Trump’s victory and the open anti-Semitism of his supporters, but at the welcome they received from the Israeli government and the Zionist movement.  In what seemed to be a journey of self-discovery How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel — and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time, the Forward’s Naomi Zeveloff declared that:

‘though it would seem impossible to hate Jews but love the Jewish state, these two viewpoints are not as contradictory as they appear.

Zeveloff cited Steven Cohen, a sociologist at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion that there is “little correlation” between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and that “Many people who dislike Jews like Israel and many people who are critical toward Israel are affectionate toward Jews.”

This might seem like bread and butter to some of us, a statement of the obvious, but to those who have been brought up on anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism propaganda, it is indeed like the second coming.  Revelations on stereoids!

Zeveloff was genuinely shocked by the fact that although Trump 'has professed an ultra-right view of Israel... many of Trump’s followers spout anti-Semitism.'  Zeveloff cites Yael Sternhell, a Tel Aviv University professor of history and American studies, that "As long as Jews are in Israel fighting the ‘good fight’ with the Arab world as a bastion of American ideals and values in the Middle East, then they are very useful and admirable allies,” but “Once they are home demanding a multi-cultural democracy, demanding that the country accommodate their religion, their belief and their custom that is a different story.”

All this has involved a very steep learning curve.  Zeveloff and those around her at Jewish Forward concluded that Israel is a “model for white nationalism and/or Christianism,” and that 'Some also see Jewish immigration to Israel as helping their cause of a Jew-free white America.'  She quotes Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University sociologist and cultural commentator that  the coexistence of anti-Semitism and right-Wing Zionism “in Trump’s world make sense,” and that “Anti-Semitism and right-wing Zionism are varieties of ultra nationalism, or, to put it more pejoratively (as it deserves to be put) tribalism. They both presume that the embattled righteous ones need to bristle at, wall off, and punish the damned outsiders. They hate and fear cosmopolitan mixtures. They make a fetish of purity. They have the same soul. They rhyme.”

In the maelstrom in American politics that Trump's election has caused, where anti-Semitism is no longer confined to private golf clubs but public discourse, liberal Zionists have been forced into an understanding that Zionism is the other side of the coin to racial nationalism and white supremacism. It remains to be seen whether they also see that those young Jews who have been active in the BDS campaign aren't 'self haters' or closet anti-Semites, but anti-racists who drew these lessons at a far earlier stage of their lives.

However these are topics that David Feldman prefers to avoid.  To the good professor, Britain is an island.  The alliance with the Right of the Tory Party with people like Eric Pickles goes unmentioned, even though Pickles defended the Tories line-up with anti-Semites in the European Conservative & Reform Group in the European Parliament in 2009, a topic I've covered previously. The fact that Zionism is an international movement is disregarded.  Instead in his article, whilst purportedly casting doubt on the International Holocaust Remembrance Authority’s definition of anti-Semitism, he give credibility to the 'demons' which it is attempting to cast out.

The policies Feldman is now arguing for, including his gratuitous attack on Jackie Walker, the Momentum Black activist who Jon Lansman set up for suspension by removing her as Vice Chair of Momentum, are consistent with the political weaknesses of Chakrabarti.  Others, including Free Speech on Israel saw Feldman and by extension Chakrabarti in a more benign light.  The attack on Walker is likely to come as a shock to them since their majority greeted Chakrabarti's Reports as if it was the Sermon on the Mount.  Indeed it was only after a great deal of internal agonising that they agreed to publish my critical Chakrabarti – A Missed Opportunity to Develop an Anti-Racist Policy for Labour

I copy below a letter I have sent to David Feldman outlining why I think his Guardian article is superficial and tendentious, a Zionist rendering of a quite familiar theme tune.

Tony Greenstein

Feldman's article in the Guardian - a particularly stupid headline - Can redefining anti-Zionism be of help to Jewish people? might have been more honest!

Dear Professor Feldman, d.feldman@bbk.ac.uk

I write regarding your article in the Guardian Will Britain’s new definition of antisemitism help Jewish people? I’m sceptical.  It seems that the flak that you have experienced as Vice-Chair of the Chakrabarti Inquiry from the Jewish Chronicle and other Zionist critics, has taken its toll on your ability to discern the differences between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.  Like many academics before you, your judgement has succumbed to the prevailing McCarthyite atmosphere in British politics.

In your talk Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in Britain to the Conference on “Antisemitism in Europe Today” in November 2013, organized by the Jewish Museum Berlin, you wrote that:

For the fifty years following the Balfour Declaration, Labour party support for Zionism did not stem from an appreciation of the necessity of Zionism for the Jews. Rather, Labour support for Zionism was based on the fact that Zionists were European colonists who, it was believed, brought a higher level of civilization to a part of the world that remained locked in medieval backwardness in its level of economic development, in its political organisation, its religious practices and in its social organisation. The fact that the Zionists appeared to combine technological progress with socialist organisation, both on the kibbutzim and in the trade unions, rendered made them especially attractive allies in Britain’s global mission.

It would be difficult to disagree with this analysis.  Labour’s support for Zionism was part and parcel of its wider support for the British Empire.  Unlike the Conservatives, who defended imperialism as the source of Britain’s wealth and power, Labour’s support was dressed up in the rhetoric of Trusteeship.  This ‘liberal’ imperialism which, during the Attlee government, resulted in the super-exploitation of our African colonies and Malaya reached its dénouement in the Blair doctrine of liberal interventionism in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What you fail to understand in the current crisis is that opposition from the Left to Israel and Zionism still stems from the Zionist colonisation.  Zionism did not stop being a colonisatory movement in 1948.  Organisations such as the JNF, which pioneered the colonisation of Palestine in the Mandate period, have continued their work of ethnic cleansing to this day.  You must surely be aware of the proposed demolition of Umm al-Hiran village and the repeated demolitions of Al-Arakhib in the Negev today as part of the process of Judaisation of the Negev?  What has this to do with anti-Semitism?

It is the settler-colonial nature of Israel which results in nearly half Israel’s Jews supporting the physical expulsion of Israeli Palestinians.  This hideous racism expresses itself in a multiplicity of ways on a daily basis. 

In your report to the parliamentary committee against antisemitism’ of 1 January 2015 you cited Brian Klug’s definition of anti-Semitism as ‘a form of hostility  towards Jews as Jews, in which Jews are perceived as something other than what they are’, which Brian refined to read as ‘hostility towards Jews as ‘Jews’ or ‘hostility towards Jews as not Jews.’

Anti-Semitism can incidentally also encompass not just hostility but envy and admiration i.e. philo-semitism.  So when Owen Smith was asked during a debate with Corbyn what he admired most about Jews, he said they were “a very entrepreneurial set of people.,” a classic anti-Semitic trope. Ironic since Smith based his campaign on opposition to ‘anti-Semitism! 

Your article begins by saying that ‘Everyone is against antisemitism: we just can’t agree on how to recognise it.’  This is logically absurd.  If people cannot agree how to recognise anti-Semitism, how can they be against it?  What is it that they are against?

You state that anti-Semitism, which historically meant ‘discrimination, violence and genocide’ against Jews now ‘operates in a context created both by the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the consequence of its military victory in 1967.’  What you don’t say is who has placed it in that context and why.  Surely that is important?

You also accept that Palestinians are subject to ‘discrimination and occupation, annexation and expropriation’ yet you go on to say, without comment, that critics of the above ‘are now denounced as antisemitic by Israel’s leaders and by their supporters around the world.’

The obvious conclusion to draw would be that defenders of Israel and Zionism are abusing the memory of anti-Semitism , including the memory of the Holocaust, in order to defend Israel’s racist and murderous practices today.  It would not be a difficult conclusion to draw since Holocaust and Nazi abuse is standard in Israel.  For example shortly before Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing crowds which included effigies of Rabin in SS uniform. 

Instead you say that anti-Semitism ‘does service both as a defence of minority rights, and in the context of support for a discriminatory and illiberal state power.’   How can it be anti-Semitic to oppose racism and discrimination?   Your silence speaks volumes.

The Zionist use of the charge of racism against anti-racists is not exactly unknown.  Defenders of the Apartheid used to dress up their arguments for White supremacy as being about defence of the White population.  British fascist groups like the BNP campaigned around ‘rights for whites’ and accused opponents of being anti-White racists.  The Zionist use of ‘anti-Semitism’ as a defence of anti-Palestinian racism is not exactly unknown.

You acknowledge that Trump’s election campaign ‘was sustained by nods and winks to anti-Jewish prejudice’ yet you avoid drawing any conclusions from the welcome he received, not only from the Zionist Right but Yair Lapid and Isaac Herzog of the Israeli Labour Party.  You seem oblivious to the fact that the Breitbart alt-Right as represented by Steve Bannon combines support for Zionism and anti-Semitism.  I could mention for example the President of the Zionist Organisation of America, Mort Klein who quite happily invited Bannon to the ZOA’s annual gala dinner whilst denouncing Obama as a ‘Jew hating anti-Semite’!

The conclusions to be drawn from the above are obvious. Antisemitism has been weaponised by those whose concerns are not hatred of Jews but defence of Israel/Zionism.  Yet you state that ‘antisemitism has been a surrogate for another quarrel: whether the Labour party should be a comfortable place for Zionists.’  Your conclusions are bizarre, a classic example of a non-sequitur. 

In case it has escaped your attention it is not Zionists who have been suspended and expelled in the anti-Semitism witch-hunt of recent months.  It is ironically Jewish opponents of Zionism and the Israeli state like Jackie Walker and myself.  That was why the Chakrabarti Inquiry was set up. 

You say that ‘in parts of the left the terms “Zionism” and “Zio” have become part of the lexicon of invective.’  This is a false narrative.  The controversy over ‘Zio’ first surfaced with the resignation of Alex Chalmers as Chair of Oxford University Labour Club.  As was later revealed, far from being an innocent student he was an ex-intern for BICOM, the Israeli propaganda group.

You stated that ‘Zionism and anti-Zionism encompass a range of positions’.  Perhaps but it is untrue to then say that ‘Zionists are at the forefront of protest against Israel’s policies’. This is fantasy.  Nor is it true that ‘Many... anti-Zionists accept the state’s right to exist’.  Opposition to a Jewish supremacist state is the sine qua non of anti-Zionism. 

You speak of ‘the well of support that exists for people who reveal prejudice or callous insensitivity towards Jews. The last year has been punctuated by a handful of headline-grabbing incidents of this sort’.  What is this ‘proven incidence of anti-Semitism’ based on?  What is amazing is that despite the repeated references to anti-Semitism in the Labour Party over the past year, there have been virtually no proven incidents of anti-Semitism.

As someone suspended for over 9  months, with no charge drawn up and subject to rumour and innuendo, not least via leaks to the national press, I challenge you to substantiate this or withdraw it.  I also suggest you read the transcript of my interrogation.

Perhaps you were referring to Jackie Walker who has been traduced by Zionism’s professional racists and propagandists.  It would appear that you have aligned yourself with this campaign.  I refer to the Tweet by Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement: ‘Prof David Feldman, Vice chair of the Chakrabarti Inquiry tells #Limmud Jaqui Walker's views are in "tradition of anti-Jewish thinking" ‘

Perhaps you would confirm whether the above comment represents your considered viewpoint?  Perhaps you have spoken with Jackie?  It would appear that you are in agreement with the racist campaign against Jackie Walker – the vicious and libellous newspaper articles, the racist tweets and other gratuitously offensive remarks by the Newmarks of this world.  Perhaps you would like to explain why you think that someone who has a long-standing reputation as an anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigner is in the tradition of anti-Jewish thinking?  Is a discussion of the involvement of her Jewish ancestors in the enslavement of the Black side of her family anti-Jewish?  The involvement of Jews in the slave trade has been the subject of extensive academic debate for the past two decades.  I suggest you read The lynching of Jackie Walker before making any further comment.

You suggest that racism isn’t simply about power relations, that it can also be directed at white middle class groups such as Jews.  Possibly but your suggestion that most Jews ‘feel attached to the strongest power in the Middle East’ suggests a hidden agenda.  It is also both wrong and irrelevant.  Wrong because British Jews feel less attached to Israel today than in previous decades.  Just 59% now call themselves Zionist compared to 71% five years ago.  31% say they aren’t Zionist.  Challenging group identity or political prejudice dressed up in religious clothes has nothing to do with racism.  Perhaps you have forgotten Salman Rushdie and the Satanic Verses?  Just as challenging FGM or the Burka has nothing to do with racism.

You conclude by saying that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is ‘bewilderingly imprecise’ and that the Home Affairs Select Committee’s abysmal report has been ignored regarding guaranteeing the right to freedom of speech on Israel.  Unfortunately you have misread the latter.  It recommended that the ‘accusatory or abusive’ use of the term Zionism be criminalised as an offence of hate speech.

You are right that the IRHA definition of anti-Semitism ‘spurn(s) solidarity with other groups who are the targets of bigotry and hatred.’  What else would you expect of a definition of anti-Semitism whose purpose is to neutralise criticism of a state that allows you and me to ‘return’ to it whilst forbidding the return of the Palestinian refugees?  Racism rarely begets tolerance.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein