What Kind of State Demolishes Schools? Israel

School Could Be Out Forever for These Bedouin Kids in the West Bank

The Zionists International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ says that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’ with the clear implication that other criticism is anti-Semitic. 

The problem is of course that Israel is not ‘any other country’.  It is unlike all other countries being a settler colonial state.  In what other liberal democracy, which is what Israel claims to be, would you have whole villages of an ethnic minority demolished in order that a racially exclusive town could be built on top of it?  That is what is happening to Bedouin villages in Israel’s Negev.

What other country would have a segregated education system and a situation where Arabs and Jews live apart?  But this is only inside Israel.  In the West Bank there are two separate legal systems. One for Jewish settlers and one for the Palestinians.  Apartheid?  Perish the thought.  That is why Israel demolishes Palestinian schools.  

They have no permission to be built because in Area C, 60% of the West Bank, permits to build aren’t given to Palestinians unlike of course Jewish settlers.  So t his is why school could be out forever in parts of the West Bank?  Is it anti-Semitic to criticise that?  I will leave that up to you.

Tony Greenstein

Israel wants to demolish the school in Al Muntar, with alternatives located too far away for the children to attend. Residents believe they face expulsion because of expansion plans for an adjacent settlement

By

Amira Hass

Feb 06, 2018

First- to sixth-graders from the Bedouin community of Al Muntar have received a three-week reprieve. During this time, they’ll be able to study without fear that bulldozers could show up at any moment and raze their West Bank school to the ground, turning it into a pile of bricks and timber.

The reprieve – an interim injunction that freezes demolition orders previously issued by the Civil Administration – was handed down by Supreme Court Justice Uzi Vogelman last Wednesday, less than 24 hours before the demolition was scheduled to take place.

What will happen after these three weeks elapse? Everything is in the hands of Allah, says Umm Ayish, a 55-year-old grandmother whose children and grandchildren dropped out of school because the only institutions were sited several hours away on foot or by donkey, accessible only via slippery and steep paths.

In addition to Allah, the fate of the school also lies in the hands of the High Court of Justice, the Civil Administration and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. Will they be persuaded that even the children of this Bedouin community in the Judean Desert are entitled to regular studies under reasonable conditions – without reaching school tired after an early wake-up call and a long journey on steep paths; and without having to return home after dark with no power to generate the light by which they might do homework?

On Wednesday morning, hours before the reprieve was announced, pupils’ voices could be heard coming through the windows of the condemned school as some of their fathers and brothers sat on a nearby hill, reminiscing about the hardships they underwent trying to get an education. Most of them dropped out due to the difficulties of getting to the elementary school located in Wadi Abu Hindi, a community situated 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) to the north, and the high school in Al Sawahra, some 15 kilometers to the west.

Two Bedouin children walking home from school in the West Bank village of Al Muntar, January 2018. \ Moti Milrod

The students sounded happy and carefree. However, according to the community’s mukhtar (elder), Abu Hassan (Mohammed Hassan al-Hadliyeh), the children are well aware of the situation. “They ask me, ‘Will the school be demolished tomorrow?’ And then they tell me, ‘If so, we’ll go to sleep and that’s that,’” he relates, adding that “if the school is torn down, their future will be destroyed. Our girls will stop going to school. In the past, the Bedouin didn’t send their girls to school, but we’ve changed. In Saudi Arabia they let women drive now, and we understand that we must allow girls to study.” They recognize the value of an education not only at elementary-school level but also in high school and university too.

Dahoud is 45 and regrets having dropped out of school. “True, we learn from experience and from nature, and know things others don’t. But nowadays people don’t care what’s inside of you, every employer wants to know what diploma you have,” he says.

Abdallah, 39, wears a hippie-esque green kaffiyeh over his curly hair and says he’s a tour guide. 

“There’s a school in [the nearby settlement of] Ma’aleh Adumim, a place to get an education,” he says in fluent Hebrew. “All we’re asking is that we have a kindergarten and school as well. If you had a 6-year-old child who had to walk 6 kilometers both ways to get to school, wouldn’t you be concerned and want to change that? This applies to winter and summer, with the risk of slipping in the rain or dehydration while going to school. We’re asking, with respect and love, to get what everyone else has. We’re not asking for the moon.”

FILE PHOTO: Students at the only school in the Bedouin village of Al Muntar in the West Bank, January 2018. \ Moti Milrod

Due to the hardships involved in accessing school premises and the high dropout rates – a third of the hundred children of school age – the village of Al Muntar, along with Al Sawahra, decided to build a school in the heart of the community. In 2013, they built some shacks for a kindergarten. This led to a change in the local people’s aspirations and needs, with parents preferring that their small children play together, supervised, in the mornings.

According to documents at the Al Sawahra council, the area allocated for the school and kindergarten is owned by one of the village’s residents. In contrast to the school in Wadi Abu Hindi, situated in a ravine where rainwater congregates, the new area is on a plain. The European Union provided funds and the Al Sawahra council handled construction.

A desk and chairs outside the only school in the village of Al Muntar in the West Bank. Bedouin attitudes to education have changed in recent times, especially in relation to girls. \ Moti Milrod

The Palestinian Authority’s Education Ministry appointed a principal and teachers, who travel in together daily on a pickup truck that trundles along the rocky and unpaved road. It was also decided to dedicate one of the rooms to a permanent clinic. Currently, the community has a mobile clinic that visits only twice a month.

However, like all Bedouin communities in the area, the village of Al Muntar is not recognized by the Civil Administration. Some of its residents, hailing from the Al Sawahra area, have been living here since before Israel was established. Most of the village’s residents belong to the Jahalin tribe, which was expelled from Tel Arad in 1948, subsequently settling on the edge of the Judean Desert in the early 1950s. Abu Hassan was born in Al Muntar in 1968 and is a son of these refugees. When he was 7, he witnessed the start of construction in Ma’aleh Adumim.

The years passed and Ma’aleh Adumim expanded, leading to further waves of expulsion. In 1990, the settlement of Kedar sprang up right across from Al Muntar. The area had already been declared a closed military zone, though no military exercises are conducted there. The structures and sheep pens in Al Muntar have been torn down several times and the flocks confiscated. But the residents were determined to remain in the place that has been their home since the ’50s. A few years ago, they negotiated with the Civil Administration to try to find a way of staying; it was agreed they would not be evacuated. However, any construction – including public buildings such as schools or clinics – remains prohibited.

Bedouin schoolchildren walking home in the village of Al Muntar. \ Moti Milrod

In December 2016, inspectors from the Civil Administration placed stop-work orders on the kindergarten (which was already operating) and a school being constructed. This led to the standard legal-bureaucratic process of a request being filed for a building permit, this request being denied, an appeal being lodged, the appeal being denied and then, last July, a petition being filed at the High Court of Justice. The school and Bedouin community are represented by lawyer Yotam Ben-Hillel. In the petition, he argued that “in several Jewish settlements and outposts, there are schools and kindergartens that violate planning and construction laws. In many cases, these schools operate with the approval of Israel’s Education Ministry, which funds them and pays for their teachers. The [petition’s] respondents have no intention of demolishing these [buildings] for the sake of maintaining public order,” he wrote.

Following the filing of the petition, the High Court ordered a demolition freeze on condition that construction was stopped. On December 27, justices Yoram Danziger, Neal Hendel and Yael Willner accepted the state’s arguments and denied the petition. They argued that the school was on state land and that the petitioners had continued building despite the court’s prior instructions. The judges wrote: “This is a place that served as a school, but that does not justify the means used or the taking of the law into one’s own hands. One action could create new needs, and so on, with everyone building as they please. The right thing is for the entire issue to be regulated through the legal system.”

The judges did not refer to Ben-Hillel’s claims of inequality – both in regard to planning and building opportunities given to Jews, in contrast to building prohibitions on the Palestinians; and the presence of unauthorized educational structures in the settlements and outposts that operate unhindered and are not threatened with demolition.

The Bedouin village of Al Muntar, with the settlement of Kedar in the near distance. \ Moti Milrod

Even before the ruling, Israel announced that the kindergarten would not be demolished. Regarding the school, the court gave the petitioners until February 1 to vacate the premises. In one final, desperate attempt to save it, the residents asked the Civil Administration to allocate the 2 dunams (0.5 acres) on which the school stands to them, in order to meet the public need for establishing educational institutions. They also asked to be excluded from the firing zone. They also presented a detailed plan for the school structure and asked for the demolition order to be frozen. They received no reply, whereupon Ben-Hillel filed a second petition last Wednesday morning. Justice Vogelman has instructed the state to reply within three weeks.

Construction at the school has stopped. The yard remains unpaved and no stairs have been built to the classrooms. In the meantime, only 33 students – mainly girls – attend the unfinished school.

Several fifth- and sixth-grade girls said that “the Jews want to demolish the school in order to evict us from here.” Abu Hassan, meanwhile, concludes that “they want our land in order to expand Kedar. Sometimes the inspectors come and tell us to go to Azzariyeh [near East Jerusalem]; sometimes they mention Nu’eima, north of Jericho; sometimes they say Al-Jibal, near the Abu Dis garbage dump. They say it’s for our own good. But I know what’s good for me: It’s to live where I was born and where we’ve been living for almost 70 years.”

Open Letter to SNP MPs – Why do you join hands with the bigots of the DUP in support of Israel, the world’s most racist state?

SNP MPs sign John Mann's EDM defining support for the Palestinians as 'anti-Semitism'

The SNP's new flag

When I first went youth hostelling in the Scottish Highlands I got talking to a man in my dorm who was wearing a kilt.  I asked him if he was a supporter of the Scottish National Party.  ‘Och no’ he replied.  ‘They’re a bunch of Tartan Tories.’  I mention this because today the SNP tries to give the impression that it is a progressive, left-wing nationalist party, which is opposed to all things Tory.  In 2015 it attacked the Labour Party in the General Election and the execrable Blairite leader of Scottish Labour, Jim Murphy, as ‘red Tories’. 

Angus Robertson, the defeated leader of the SNP in London, was a strong supporter of Israel and the new IHRA

You would therefore expect a party that represents what, in their eyes, is an oppressed nation, the Scottish, to sympathise with and support the Palestinians.  It’s a no brainer.  Just as Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist party which represents the Catholics of Northern Ireland, have always supported the Palestinians and opposed Zionism. 

Hungary's Admiral Horthy with Hitler.  Horthy presided over the deportation of 437,000 Jews to Auschwitz in 1944.  Viktor Orban, Hungary's Prime Minister a strong supporter of the IHRA and Israel, is leading the campaign to rehabilitate Horthy as a nationalist symbol of Hungary's fascist past

As Ronald Storrs, the first Military Governor of Jerusalem wrote in his autobiography, Orientations, ‘‘A Jewish State will be for England a little, loyal Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.’

Alex Salmond managed to combine verbal support for the Palestinians with backing Zionist Apartheid - a consummate bourgeois politician

It is therefore curious that the SNP gives every appearance, apart from the odd photo opportunity, of signing up to support Zionism and the Israeli state one hundred per cent.  In January John Mann MP, a rent a mouth thuggish Blairite who is fiercely hostile to Corbyn put down an Early Day Motion in support of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. 

Wes Streeting another anti-Corbyn Labour MP who just loves the IHRA definition of 'anti-semitism'

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism consists of over 420 words and has a deliberately ambiguous and deceptive introduction which relies on 11 ‘examples’ of what anti-Semitism might be.   There is of course a very simple definition drawn up by a Fellow of Oxford University and a Jewish academic, Dr Brian Klug.  It is 21 words, doesn't mention Israel.

‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’ 

The only problem with Klug's definition is that it doesn't mention Israel!

Another signatory to Mann's EDM is the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, expenses champion Joan Ryan.  She made it clear at the General Election that she prefers Theresa May to Corbyn

Despite calling itself a ‘non-legal’ definition the IHRA is increasingly being used to shut down anti-Zionist and anti-Israel Apartheid events, to ban speakers and to infringe on free speech.

There are two very excellent analyses of the IHRA and its deficiencies by Hugh Tomlinson QC and by former Court of Appeal Judge Sir Stephen Sedley, who is himself Jewish.  Sedley wrote an article Defining Anti-Semitism in May’s London Review of Books on the IHRA.  It is well worth reading.  Sedley’s opening paragraph sums up our criticisms very well:

Ruth Smeeth the Blairite MP who disrupted the Chakrabarti press conference last year, portraying herself as a victim of 'anti-semitism'

Shorn of philosophical and political refinements, anti-Semitism is hostility towards Jews as Jews. Where it manifests itself in discriminatory acts or inflammatory speech it is generally illegal, lying beyond the bounds of freedom of speech and of action. By contrast, criticism (and equally defence) of Israel or of Zionism is not only generally lawful: it is affirmatively protected by law. Endeavours to conflate the two by characterising everything other than anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic are not new. What is new is the adoption by the UK government (and the Labour Party) of a definition of anti-Semitism which endorses the conflation

It is therefore bizarre that the SNP, which purports to be a progressive party should be allying itself with the DUP, the most bigoted, racist, homophobic and chauvinist party in the House of Commons.  Of the 59  MPs who signed John Mann’s January 2017 EDM, 10 were from the SNP and 5 from the DUP.  They included Angus Robertson, who sat on the Home Affairs Select Committee which originally endorsed the IHRA last October and Alex Salmond, who has made a career speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

Arlene Foster - the SNP's new Loyalist friend - hates gays, abortion and Catholics but just loves Israel and Zionism

John Mann reissued another EDM on 21^st June in support of the IHRA.  It has already garnered 5 signatures .  Apart from Mann himself and uber Blairite Wes Streeting, there is Jim Shannon of the DUP and Christopher Stephens of the SNP. 

A short sample of Joan Ryan's expenses list

There have been repeated attempts to prosecute Scottish Palestine solidarity activists for the crime of racially aggravated hate.  In April 2010 5 activists were cleared by Sheriff James Scott [Activists who heckled Israeli quartet cleared of racism charge] who said on that occasion:

"If persons on a march designed to protest against and publicise alleged crimes committed by a state and its army are afraid to name that state for fear of being charged with racially aggravated behaviour, that would render worthless their Article 10 rights," he said

In August 2016 an Aberdeen Palestine solidarity supporter, Alister Coutts, was prosecuted for shouting ‘Viva Palestina’.  All the cases so far have led to acquittals but there is another case which is pending.  In Scotland, which has its own legal system, justice is a devolved matter.  It is the SNP who are in essence presiding over this legal witch hunt of Palestine supporters.

It would seem that when you scratch the SNP what you find is the old Tartan Tories.  Perhaps that is why in the last election, Scottish voters decided to vote for the genuine article in 13 constituencies?

Below is an open letter I wrote to the SNP MPs.

Tony Greenstein

John Mann haranguing Ken Livingstone last year for telling the truth that the Nazis supported Zionism up and until they started deporting Jews in 1941

Dear Member of Parliament,

In January 2017, John Mann put down an Early Day Motion in support of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of 'anti-semitism.  Today he is touting for signatures to a new EDM supporting the IHRA. I am asking you, as a Jewish supporter of the Palestinians not to sign it and I hope that Christopher Stephens will withdraw his signature.

Out of the 59 signatures who signed last time around, 10 of them were from the SNP.  Another 5 were from those dedicated opponents of racism, the Democratic Unionist Party.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the SNP today considers itself a progressive if not left nationalist party as opposed to the Tartan Tories of old?  Why then are you getting into bed with the bigots of the DUP and Blairite MPs like John Mann, Wes Streeting, Ruth Smeeth, Stephen Twigg, and of course the saintly Keith Vaz?  To say nothing of Joan Ryan, Blairite Chair of Labour Friends of Israel who holds the record for claiming parliamentary expenses and Louise Ellman, the Zionist MP who defended the Israeli military’s incarceration and beating of Palestinian children. 

John Mann is a non-Jewish MP who does very well out of 'anti-Semitism'.  Strangely enough he never raises his voice about any other forms of racism.  Perhaps it’s not as profitable. 

The IHRA definition of 'anti-Semitism' is a mere 420+ words.  It gives 11 examples of 'anti-Semitism', 7 of which relate to Israel, not Jews.  Israel is a state.  You can't be racist against a state.  The fact that a state calls itself Jewish doesn’t make it racist to criticise it anymore than it was racist to criticise Apartheid South Africa which called itself ‘Christian’.

States based on religion disappeared from Europe with the French Revolution over 200 years ago.  In its place the idea of separation of state from religion took root.  Israel is a throwback to medieval times.  As a colonial settler state it is the world’s most racist state. 

There is a very simple definition drawn up by a Fellow of Oxford University and a Jewish academic, Dr Brian Klug.  It is 21 words, doesn't mention Israel and is clear and simple.

‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’

If you are genuinely opposed to anti-Semitism, the kind that fascists and holocaust deniers propagate, then you will understand that conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is immensely helpful to those who really do hate Jews, because it enables them to hide behind supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of Israeli Apartheid.  Equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism confuses people as to what anti-Semitism actually is.  It is the ‘boy cried wolf’ syndrome.  Shout ‘anti-Semitism’ everytime Israel is criticised and eventually people will be unable to discern genuine examples of anti-Semitism.

The IHRA is an alliance of 31 governments including the racist governments of Poland and Hungary.  Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a strong supporter of both Israel and the IHRA definition. He is also a well known racist.  Today’s Times of Israel contains an article Jewish groups critical of Hungarian praise for Hitler ally.  Orban is currently trying to rehabilitate the war-time leader of Hungary, Admiral Horthy, who not only allied himself with Hitler throughout the war, but presided over the deportation to Auschwitz of some 437,000 Hungarian Jews.

Anti-Semites supporting Zionism is nothing new because both believe that the place of Jews is in Palestine, not the countries where they live.  That is why Orban supports the IHRA.  If you are genuinely opposed to anti-Semitism you will join the University College Union whose Conference has just come out in opposition to the IHRA and Caroline Lucas, who signed Mann’s original EDM.  She has changed her mind and now rejects this bogus definition of anti-Semitism.

Kind regards

Tony Greenstein

See my articles on Comment is Free Stop conflating anti-Zionism and anti-semitism

The seamy side of solidarity

John Mann Attempts to Rekindle Labour’s False Anti-Semitism Campaign

Early Day Motion Supporting IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism Means Supporting Israeli Apartheid

Write to your MP asking them not to sign it 

Model Letter Below

This is what Joan Ryan MP's idea of loyalty to the Labour Party amounted to 

It was only a few days ago that I wrote about the disappointment of Labour Friends of Israel and Labour’s Zionist lobby at the fact that Jeremy Corbyn did so well in the election. [Labour Friends of Israel & the Zionists are Set to Relaunch False ‘Anti-Semitism’ Campaign].  Joan Ryan, Chair of Labour Friends of Israel and one of the most corrupt MPs, issued a letter to her constituents in which she compared Corbyn unfavourably to Theresa May:

John Mann - the leader of the false 'anti-Semitism' witch hunt

“I know from speaking to people around here that many who have previously voted Labour are thinking hard this time because, they tell me, they have more confidence in Theresa May as prime minister than they would have in Jeremy Corbyn.

“The polls are all saying that the Conservative party will win a large majority, possibly with more MPs than they have ever had before. Realistically, no one thinks Theresa May will not be prime minister or that she will not have the majority she needs to negotiate Brexit.”

This blog forced John Mann to delete the above FB page

The latest effort to restart the false 'anti-Semitism' campaign is an Early Day Motion, in essence a parliamentary petition which MPs sign, as an indication for the support a topic has.  John Mann has put a second EDM down this year supporting the International Holocaust Definition of anti-Semitism.  The IHRA, which is essentially the same as the old Working Definition on Anti-Semitism that the European Union's Fundamental Rights Agency junked 4 years, has just been rejected by the University Colleges Union (UCU).

Fraser -v- UCU Employment Tribunal was scathing about the quality of Mann's evidence

Whereas some on the Right, like Owen Smith, have accepted that they were wrong and are apparently reformed sinners, others such as John Mann, Ryan, Streeting and Woodcock are determined to continue the fight against Corbyn and the Left. For them, the main enemy is Corbyn not the Conservatives.

Ken Livingstone being harangued by a bore

Ryan and Mann’s priorities are stopping Corbyn not achieving a Labour government.  After all no one is more supportive of Israel than Theresa May. She is the lesser evil. Mann campaigned furiously in the summer of 2015 to have the ballot called off when it appeared that Corbyn would win the leadership. A rekindling of the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is seen by Mann, Ryan and co. as the best way of undermining Corbyn.

Joan Ryan MP for Tel Aviv North attack on Corbyn is exploited by Daily Mail to attack Corbyn in election

Mann last year stage managed an attack on Ken Livingstone in conjunction with the Murdoch media for speaking the truth when he said that the Nazis had supported Zionism.  Mann as Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism has fought a long- campaign alleging that the Labour Party is overrun with ‘anti-Semitism’ and pillorying Corbyn for not rooting out fake ‘anti-Semitism’.  He has called for both myself and Jackie Walker to be expelled.

Mann has fought tirelessly to conflate criticism of the Israeli state with ‘anti-Semitism’.  That is why he supports the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.  It contains a short, confusing and ambiguous definition of anti-Semitism and then 11 examples which might be anti-Semitic, 7 of which relate to Israel. Despite stating explicitly that it is a ‘non-legal definition’ the IHRA has been used to attack free speech, Israel Apartheid week and Palestine events up and down the country.

Letter from Joan Ryan to her constituents attacking Jeremy Corbyn - 

A legal opinion from Hugh Tomlinson QC was recently obtained which holds that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is vague and unclear.  He concludes that ‘A public authority which sought to apply the IHRA Definition to prohibit or sanction such activities [e.g. calling Israel a racist endeavour or an Apartheid state] would be acting unlawfully.’

Sir Stephen Sedley, the most radical civil liberties minded Judge to have sat on the Court of Appeal, who is himself Jewish, was even more coruscating.  He spoke of:

The only thing Joan Ryan didn't claim for was her toilet paper (wait - I'll check!)

‘a protean definition of anti-semitism which is open to manipulation and capture by the background interests I have mentioned. In this regard I would go rather further than Hugh Tomlinson does in his careful and well-reasoned Opinion. The governing proposition that antisemitism is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews” carries the clear implication that it may equally be expressed in other, unspecified, ways.

As Hugh Tomlinson says, this passage is vague and confusing; but I am not sure that the critique should stop there. It seems to me that its open-ended formulation has a thought-out purpose: to bring within the pale of antisemitism perceptions of Jews — possibly but not necessarily of all Jews — which fall short of hatred. While this may legitimately cover familiar antisemitic slanders about greed, clannishness and so forth, it is also capable of embracing perceptions of Zionism which are the subject of legitimate debate and disagreement.

That this is part of the intended reach is now becoming evident. One of the adopted examples is “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour.” This passage bristles with controversial assumptions. Is there a single entity capable of being characterised as “the Jewish people”? Am I obliged to regard myself as bound by ethnicity to people like Benjamin Netanyahu? Then, assuming that there is such an ethnic entity, from where does it derive a collective right to self-determination capable of defeating the right to self-determination of other peoples, above all the Palestinian people? There have been many Jews — my father was one — who long before 1947 opposed the Zionist project on the ground that Jewish exceptionalism was exactly what antisemitism needed.

.... why are people, including many Jews, not entitled, without being branded anti-Semitic, to regard it [Israel] in its present form as both a colonialist and an apartheid state? The demand that criticism, to be legitimate, must be ‘similar to that levelled against any other country’ assumes that there are other countries which behave like Israel. There may well be, but how can this properly be a precondition of any criticism?’[my emphasis]

The IHRA definition has but one purpose.  By defining anti-Semitism as loosely and vaguely as possible, it can brand virtually all opposition to Zionism and Israel as ‘anti-Semitic’.  The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is over 420 words because it needs to be lengthy in order to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.  There is a much shorter, 21 word definition drawn up by Brian Klug in his lecture to the Jewish Museum in Berlin 'What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Antisemitsm’?  Echoes of shattering glass' in November 2014. Klug is a lecturer at Oxford University and an academic expert in anti-Semitism. The problem for the Zionists is that it doesn't mention Israel.  

‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’

The IHRA is a group of 31 countries who have adopted a definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ which accords with western support for Israel. It is an imperialist definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ and has nothing whatsoever to do with hatred of Jewish people.

Amongst these 31 countries is Hungary, whose Prime Minister Victor Orban is a racist whose attitude to refugees needs no elaborating.  Orban is set on rehabilitating Admiral Horthy who presided over the deportation of nearly ½m Jews to Auschwitz from March 19th to July 9th 1944.  [The Reinterment and Political Rehabilitation of Miklós Horthy, Randolph Braham].  Like the anti-Semites in Trump’s administration, Orban is ardently pro-Zionist.  Another member state of the IHRA is Poland whose Law & Justice party government is sympathetic to anti-Semitism. 

Theresa May’s government has warmly welcomed the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, yet the Tory Party is part of the European Conservative and Reform group in the European parliament.  This group includes Poland’s Law & Justice Party as well as Latvia’s Robert Zile of the Fatherland & Freedom/LNNK. Zile spends every March going on a demonstration with the veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS who participated in the extermination of Latvia’s Jews.

The IHRA is an inter-governmental definition of anti-Semitism whose purpose is to brand opponents of Israel as ‘anti-Semitic’.  It has nothing to do with the traditional understanding of anti-Semitism as hatred or hostility to Jews.

In January John Mann, who I exposed on this blog as a liar for denigrating a 90 year old Jewish doctor who had criticised him, put down an EDM supporting the IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’.  Mann is now up to his old tricks again and has proposed the following EDM. I suggest that people write to their MP and also those MPs who signed the EDM last time, urging them not to sign it this time.  It would be a waste of time emailing the DUP MPs as they are all Christian Zionist bigots. Caroline Lucas has already stated that she no longer supports the IHRA.

The MPs who signed the last EDM and who were re-elected recently are:

Blackman, Bob	Conservative Party	Harrow East	19.01.2017
Bottomley, Peter	Conservative Party	Worthing West	24.01.2017
Brake, Tom	Liberal Democrats	Carshalton and Wallington	02.02.2017
Brown, Alan	Scottish National Party	Kilmarnock and Loudoun	23.01.2017
Cameron, Lisa	Scottish National Party	East Kilbride Strathaven and Lesmahagow	02.02.2017
Cooper, Rosie	Labour Party	West Lancashire	25.01.2017
Crausby, David	Labour Party	Bolton North East	31.01.2017
Day, Martyn	Scottish National Party	Linlithgow and East Falkirk	25.01.2017
Dodds, Nigel	Democratic Unionist Party	Belfast North	02.02.2017
Ellman, Louise	Labour Party	Liverpool Riverside	03.02.2017
Fellows, Marion	Scottish National Party	Motherwell and Wishaw	20.01.2017
Flint, Caroline	Labour Party	Don Valley	03.02.2017
Gapes, Mike	Labour Party	Ilford South	24.01.2017
Gethins, Stephen	Scottish National Party	North East Fife	02.03.2017
Gibson, Patricia	Scottish National Party	North Ayrshire and Arran	25.01.2017
Green, Kate	Labour Party	Stretford and Urmston	03.02.2017
Hendry, Drew	Scottish National Party	Inverness Nairn Badenoch and Strathspey	20.01.2017
Hermon, Lady	INDEPENDENT	North Down	30.01.2017
Hodge, Margaret	Labour Party	Barking	20.01.2017
Hopkins, Kelvin	Labour Party	Luton North	19.01.2017
Howarth, George	Labour Party	Knowsley	25.01.2017
Law, Chris	Scottish National Party	Dundee West	24.01.2017
Lewis, Julian	Conservative Party	New Forest East	30.01.2017
Lucas, Caroline	Green Party	Brighton Pavilion	26.01.2017
Mann, John	Labour Party	Bassetlaw	18.01.2017
Maskell, Rachael	Labour Party	York Central	30.03.2017
Matheson, Chris	Labour Party	City of Chester	20.01.2017
McGinn, Conor	Labour Party	St Helens North	30.01.2017
McNally, John	Scottish National Party	Falkirk	25.01.2017
Nandy, Lisa	Labour Party	Wigan	02.02.2017
Paisley, Ian Jnr	Democratic Unionist Party	North Antrim	25.01.2017
Rimmer, Marie	Labour Party	St Helens South and Whiston	02.02.2017
Robinson, Gavin	Democratic Unionist Party	Belfast East	23.01.2017
Robinson, Geoffrey	Labour Party	Coventry North West	02.02.2017
Ryan, Joan	Labour Party	Enfield North	02.02.2017
Saville Roberts, Liz	Plaid Cymru	Dwyfor Meirionnydd	24.01.2017
Shannon, Jim	Democratic Unionist Party	Strangford	19.01.2017
Simpson, David	Democratic Unionist Party	Upper Bann	25.01.2017
Smeeth, Ruth	Labour Party	Stoke-on-Trent North	02.02.2017
Stephens, Christopher	Scottish National Party	Glasgow South West	23.01.2017
Streeting, Wes	Labour Party	Ilford North	02.02.2017
Stringer, Graham	Labour Party	Blackley and Broughton	22.02.2017
Twigg, Stephen	Labour Party	Liverpool West Derby	03.02.2017
Vaz, Keith	Labour Party	Leicester East	27.01.2017

 The e-contacts for the above are:

bob.blackman.mp@parliament.uk, alan.brown.mp@parliament.uk, lisa.cameron.mp@parliament.uk, rosie@rosiecooper.net, crausbyd@parliament.uk, martyn.day.mp@parliament.uk, louise.ellman.mp@parliament.uk, marion.fellows.mp@parliament.uk, caroline.flint.mp@parliament.uk, mike.gapes.mp@parliament.uk, stephen.gethins.mp@parliament.uk, patricia.gibson.mp@parliament.uk, kate.green.mp@parliament.uk, drew.hendry.mp@parliament.uk, sylvia.hermon.mp@parliament.uk, hodgem@parliament.uk, hopkinsk@parliament.uk

george.howarth.mp@parliament.uk, chris.law.mp@parliament.uk, caroline.lucas.mp@parliament.uk, john.mann.mp@parliament.uk, rachael.maskell.mp@parliament.uk, chris.matheson.mp@parliament.uk, chris.matheson.mp@parliament.uk, john.mcnally.mp@parliament.uk, lisa.nandy.mp@parliament.uk, marie.rimmer.mp@parliament.uk, robinsong@parliament.uk, joan.ryan.mp@parliament.uk, liz.savilleroberts.mp@parliament.uk, ruth.smeeth.mp@parliament.uk, chris.stephens.mp@parliament.uk, wes.streeting.mp@parliament.uk, graham.stringer.mp@parliament.uk, stephen.twigg.mp@parliament.uk, vazk@parliament.uk, 

This is the EDM that Mann put down on 21^st June.  So far it has one signatory.

EDM 7: IHRA DEFINITION - Session: 2017-19 Date tabled: 21.06.2017 Primary sponsor: Mann, John   

That this House welcomes the adoption of a formal definition of anti-Semitism by the Government in response to the work of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA); further welcomes the agreed cross-party support for the definition, including from the Leader of the Opposition and hon. members of all political parties represented in the House in the previous Parliament; congratulates the IHRA and its 31 member countries for adopting the definition; notes that the definition has been officially adopted by the Government, the Labour Party, the UK Police College, the Crown Prosecution Service, the National Union of Students, Universities UK, the London Assembly, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and a number of local councils; welcomes the Government's update report on anti-Semitism, including progress made in ensuring wider adoption of the definition; and calls on all other political parties, universities, councils and other public bodies and organisations to continue to adopt the definition and use it to better understand and act against anti-Jewish hatred.

Below is a model letter to your MP, which you might like to amend according to circumstances and send them:

Dear Member of Parliament,

I am writing to you because you were one of 59 MPs who supported an Early Day Motion, sponsored by John Mann, in January 2017 welcoming the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. Mann has put down a new EDM on the same topic.  The IHRA conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.  If you are genuinely opposed to anti-Semitism then accusing people who are not racists of anti-Semitism is the best way of giving succour and support to genuine anti-Semites.  That is one reason why the Christian bigots of the DUP have all signed up to it.

The accusation that opposition to Zionism, the movement that led to the creation of a ‘Jewish’ state, is anti-Semitic has a long pedigree. This is unsurprising since it is easier to question the motives of Israel’s critics than to defend its policies. 

The IHRA suggests that it is anti-Semitic to describe Israel as a racist endeavour.  How else is one to describe a situation in which Israel rules over 5 million people, who have no civil or political rights and has done so for 50 years?  A situation in which those living under occupation co-exist with settlers who have stolen their land and who are subject to an entirely different legal system? 

Nothing demonstrates the apartheid nature of Israel’s military occupation better than the disparity of treatment between Jewish and Palestinian children.  Israeli children cannot be detained under the age of 14.  In just one month (March/April) five Palestinian children were killed by Israel’s army. Palestinian children as young as 12 can be detained. There are repeated reports of the use of solitary confinement, shackling and torture of (Palestinian) children.  Yet according to the IHRA describing this as apartheid is being ‘anti-Semitic’.

The IHRA is being pushed by Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement, the ‘sister’ party of the Israeli Labour Party which, in 1948, expelled nearly a million Palestinians in order to create a ‘Jewish’ state.  It has not changed. Isaac Herzog, its present leader, recently declared that his nightmare was waking up to find that Israel had a Palestinian Prime Minister and 61 Palestinian Members of the Knesset.  Herzog also declared that he wanted to dispel the false impression that the ILP were ‘Arab Lovers’ 

Herzog slammed for remark about ‘Arab lovers’.  If you doubt that these remarks are racist then what would your reaction be if someone said their nightmare was to wake up and find Britain had a Jewish Prime Minister or that the Labour Party should not be a ‘Jew lovers’ party?

Ever since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour Party there has been a false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign, waged by LFI and the JLM.  In May 2017 Sir Stephen Sedley, the most radical Judge to have sat on the Court of Appeal, and himself Jewish, wrote an article, Defining Anti-Semitism for London Review of Books.

Shorn of philosophical and political refinements, anti-Semitism is hostility towards Jews as Jews.... By contrast, criticism (and equally defence) of Israel or of Zionism is not only generally lawful: it is affirmatively protected by law. Endeavours to conflate the two by characterising everything other than anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic are not new. What is new is the adoption by the UK government (and the Labour Party) of a definition of anti-Semitism which endorses the conflation.

The IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ is over 420 words.  By way of contrast there is a much shorter, 21 word definition drawn up by Brian Klug of Oxford University, in his lecture to the Jewish Museum in Berlin 'What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Antisemitsm’?  Echoes of shattering glass': 

‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism gives 11 examples of ‘anti-Semitism’, 7 of which relate to Israel.  It is clear that the IHRA’s main concern is with using ‘anti-Semitism’ as a weapon against supporters of the Palestinians not in opposing anti-Semitism per se.  It is an attempt to stifle and curb free speech on Israel and Palestine.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is an alliance of 31 countries.  It includes for example Hungary, whose Prime Minister is Viktor Orban.  Orban is not only an open racist he is seeking to rehabilitate Admiral Horthy who presided over the deportation of nearly ½ million Jews to Auschwitz between March 19th and July 9th 1944.  [The Reinterment and Political Rehabilitation of Miklós Horthy, Randolph Braham].  Orban has no difficulty signing up to the IHRA because, like many anti-Semites, he is ardently pro-Zionist.  The Law & Justice government of Poland is also riddled with anti-Semitism and it too has no problems with the IHRA. 

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism holds (Point 7) that one example of anti-Semitism is ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.’

Joan Ryan's Wiki entry on her expenses and attempts to cover her claims up

The idea that there is a single Jewish people or nation has always been an anti-Semitic idea.  It is the basis of the world Jewish conspiracy theory. The fact that Zionism adopted this belief merely proves that Zionism and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same racist coin.  Sir Edwin Montagu, who became Secretary of State for India, was the only Jewish member of the Lloyd George War Cabinet and the only member to oppose the 1917 Balfour Declaration.  In ‘Memorandum of Edwin Montagu on the Anti-Semitism of the Present (British) Government of August 1917.  He wrote:

I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion. It is no more true to say that a Jewish Englishman and a Jewish Moor are of the same nation than it is to say that a Christian Englishman and a Christian Frenchman are of the same nation:...

When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, ...’

According to the IHRA definition, the above passage is anti-Semitic.

Other examples of the pernicious nature of the IHRA include equating anti-Semitism with ‘Applying double standards by requiring of it [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.’  This assumes that Israel is like any other democratic nation. 

In which other democratic nation would the village of a minority group be demolished to make way for the majority?  In January the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev was demolished in order to make way for a Jewish town, Hiran. [Opinion Umm al-Hiran: A Cautionary Tale of an Israeli Government Emboldened by Trump]. Umm al Hiran is one of a number of Bedouin villages under threat of demolition because of a policy of Judification of the Negev. Half of Israel’s Arab villages are ‘unrecognised’ which means they are liable to demolition at any time. No Jewish settlement has ever been demolished to make way for an Arab village.  Criticism of this is, according to the IHRA, ‘anti-Semitic’.

Despite the Negev being a thinly populated desert area, Israel refused to build a Jewish town alongside Umm al-Hiran. Like good colonialists, Israel sought to remove the indigenous population entirely.  It is practices such as this which the IHRA is seeking to protect under the rubric of ‘anti-Semitism’.

The State of Israel defines itself as a Jewish state.  In Europe religious states went out of fashion with the French Revolution in 1789.  It is inevitable that those who are not Jewish in Israel are seen as strangers and interlopers.  The idea that religion and nationality are coterminous is a backward and reactionary idea.  According to the Pew Research Centre’s Report Israel’s Religiously Divided Society a plurality, 48% of Israeli Jews, want the physical expulsion of Israeli Arabs. 

Israel today is a society which is rapidly moving to the Right.  In the past year legislation has been passed allowing for the expulsion of Arab members of the Knesset, a Jewish State Bill which removes Arabic as an official language, a bill barring anyone who supports BDS from Israel and the Muezzin Bill restricting the use of outside speakers by Muslim (but not Jewish) religious institutions.  The latest legislative proposals include the banning of all foreign funding of human rights NGO’s such as B’tselem and Breaking the Silence. 

Those who sign John Mann’s EDM conflating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are aligning themselves with Israel’s far Right and its attacks on Israel’s remaining democratic rights.  You will be supporting a state where demonstrations chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’ are now commonplace.

I hope that you will think seriously about whether or not you wish to add your name to an EDM whose sole purpose is to legitimise Israeli racism under the banner of fighting ‘anti-Semitism’.

Yours sincerely