We live in a Dystopia where Opposing
Genocide & Attacking Arms Factories is a Crime Whereas Profiting from the
Death of Children is Lawful
Stop Starmer's Police State Webinar 30 August 2025
Last
Saturday over 200 people attended our Webinar
‘Stopping Starmer’s
Police State – Defending the Right to Protest’ to listen to six different speakers, three of
whom have been arrested under the Terrorism Acts, one of whom is the mother of
a daughter, Fatimah, who is in custody, Huda Ammori the co-founder of Palestine
Action and Franck Magennis, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers who is
presently one of the lawyers involved in seeking the deproscription of Hamas.
It says something about the nature of the Tory
Party and its far-right leader, Kemi Bad Enoch (presumably her mother had forewarning
of how she would turn out when she was named!) that its Justice Secretary
Robert Jenrick, someone who is more comfortable in the company of neo-Nazis and
asylum protesters, has branded as ‘sickening’the bid to deproscribe Hamas.
Natalie Strecker’s pre-recorded speech
Unfortunately Natalie Strecker, who has been
charged with a terrorist offence in Jersey, under laws similar but not
identical to our own, did not feel able to attend and speak in person. She did
however kindly agree to send us a video with her message and it is shown above
The
first speaker was Sukaina Rajwani, whose daughter Fatema Zainab is one of the Filton 24, who have
been incarcerated for a year now and can expect to stay in prison for another
year before even facing a trial. This is completely outrageous. They are
charged with non-terrorist offences yet they are being kept in appalling
conditions in prison as if they were terrorists.
Teuta
Hoxha has been held in prison without trial for the last nine months, and has
been on hunger strike since 11 August as a protest against the denial of her
basic rights. She says that she and her Palestine Action co-defendants are
being monitored by the Counter Extremism Unit. See Filton
24 hunger striker tells the Canary government is monitoring her under counter
extremism
It is a sad, sick comment on Starmer and
Cooper’s Britain that young women and men who are trying to stop a genocide are
treated like the worst criminals whilst arms manufacturers, who profit from the
bodies of babies torn to shredd are feted, wined and dined.
One person who should be in gaol is Lord
Dannat, a former head of the British army and a member of the House of Lords. He urged ministers to crack down on Palestine Action
at the request of the US defence company Teledyne that employs him as an
adviser.
Despite his claims of non-interference, police
transcripts in a trial disclosed internal objections to his involvement,
although a judge ultimately ruled that he had not interfered in the active
investigation.
Next up to speak was Mick Napier, Chair of
Scottish PSC who has spent most of his active life being arrested. It is ironic
that despite Scotland being ruled for most of that time by the Scottish
National Party, the SNP has given next to no support to the Palestinians who
are also fighting for their freedom from an alien occupation. Indeed the record
of the Scottish Police is as bad as those in England. See SACC
Statement on the Arrest of Mick Napier.
The next speaker was Richard Medhurst, a journalist who was
arrested by the counter-terror police at Heathrow Airport and accused of ‘expressing
an opinion or belief that is supportive of a terrorist organisation’. He was
detained for 24 hours, his electronic devices seized and he has been waiting
for over a year to see if he is going to be charged. See his account here.
Huda Ammori, the co-founder of Palestine Action was the next to
speak and as always she gave a barnstorming speech outlining the growth of the
campaign against Palestine Action’s proscription.
Next up was Franck Magennis, a prominent Irish and socialist
barrister from Garden Court Chambers. Franck is involved in the attempt to
secure de-proscription of Hamas. He has been targeted
by the Israeli government front group the so-called Campaign Against
Antisemitism for having told the racist Chief Rabbi Mirvis to shut his racist, Zionist
mouth!
The CAA have submitted not one but two complaints against
Franck.Presumably on the basis that if
one doesn’t succeed the other might! Among the things they objected to was the statement
that:
“Zionism is collapsing. Keep hammering anyone who still identifies as a
Zionist. Their apartheid state is a pariah. It’s on its way out, just like
South Africa, like Jim Crow, like the French in Algeria. Escalate!!”
Most people would agree that this is a good example of the
exercise of free speech but given that the CAA is an Israeli front group it’s
not surprising that they believe that British standards of free speech should
mirror those of Israel – where pro-Palestine speech normally results in arrest
and a beating.
I was the last speaker and I will leave you to watch to find out
what I said! Apart from, that is, taking Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Ben
Jamal to task for having done nothing to support the campaign to destroy the
proscription of Palestine Action. PSC still labourd under the illusion that
they can, by staging demonstrations in London that no one reports and writing
protest letters to MPs that no one reads, win over the British Establishment to
the Palestinian cause. Softly, softly and mainstreaming is what they call a
strategy.
After all the speakers had spoken there was a Q&A session.
The meeting was co-chaired by Esther Giles of the Socialist Labour Network and
Haim Bresheeth of Jewish Network for Palestine.
The meeting itself was sponsored by the JNP, Jewish Voice for
Labour, the SLN and Scottish PSC.
As Israel Attacks Iran, in the Name of ‘Self-Defence’, Hundreds of Delegates
in Vienna Reject Western Imperialism Mad Dog
Tony Greenstein's speech at the Anti-Zionist Jewish
Congress, Vienna 14 June 2025
The
conference which I attended from June 13-15, organised by a small Steering Committee based
in Vienna, was a truly joyous coming together of Palestine solidarity activists
the world over. There was even a delegation from Indonesia.
The
conference itself was overbooked with hundreds of people having to be turned
away. Jewish and non-Jewish people of all faiths and none were united in a
determination to see an end to the poisonous ideology of Zionism which motivated
the creation of the Israeli state.
Ilan Pappe speaking at Anti-Zionist Jewish Congress 13 June 2025
On
the eve of the conference Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, almost
certainly in co-ordination with the United States and Britain, using Iran’s
nuclear facilities as the pretext for the attack.
Tonight
we hear of a massive Iranian counter-attack which has hit Tel Aviv, the centre
of the failed state with Tel Aviv being hit particularly hard. It is small
justice for razing Gaza to rubble but welcome nonetheless. The sooner Israeli citizens
become accustomed to their own homes being bombed, the sooner they may
recognise that Palestinians have had to put up with this particular Israeli speciality
for far too long.
Ghada Karmi Francesca Albanese Rahma Zein & Rima Hassan @ Vienna AntiZionist Jewish Congress 13.6.25
Zionism
was called by one speaker, Ghada Karmi, an ideology of evil and it is entirely
appropriate.A state 47% of whose Jewish
citizens responded in a poll undertaken by Pennsylvania State University to say
they wanted to exterminate every last human being in Gaza.
The
state allegedly set up as compensation for the annihilation of Jews in the Holocaust
has become the mirror image of Nazi Germany.
Israelis
commemorate the Holocaust on 3 separate days each year and for the rest of the
year they keep their remaining holocaust survivors in poverty. The holocaust,
like anti-Semitism, has been weaponised to legitimise a state based on the same
founding principles that Nazi Germany was founded on.
There
were a range of speakers today – both on live video call and in person. The
Conference was open by veteran Israeli anti-Zionist Haim Bresheeth from Britain’s
Jewish Network for Palestine.
The
first session’s speakers were Ghada Karmi, Ilan Pappe and Rima Hassan, the
heroine of the freedom flotilla and Francesca
Albanese, the fearless UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine. The latter two appeared
by video link. Rima had intended to attend in person but because of her
kidnapping by Israel she was unable to make it. The session was moderated by
Haim Bresheeth.
We
had a special video greeting delegates from Roger Waters who Iunderstand very generously helped fund the
conference which was enormously expensive.
The
next session was moderated by Ronnie Barkan. Yakov Rabkin spoke by zoom, with Donny Gluckstein,
Haim Bresheeth and Awad Abdelfatah speaking in person.
After the evening meal the final session had the Jewish podcaster Katie
Halper, Rahma Zein, Wieland Hoban and Astrid Wagner.
Tomorrow morning starts with a session From Pride to Denial: Arab Jews and Integrating
in the Arab World with Iris Hefets,
Reuven Abergel, and Camille Levy Sarfati speaking.
After that there will be a session on Reclaiming Anti-Fascism and Fighting
the Instrumentalisation of Antisemitism at which Tony Greenstein, Stephen Kapos,
Wieland Hoban and Wilhelm Langthaler will speak.
In the afternoon there will be a session on Decolonisation and Liberation: The
Relevance of Historical Models when Ronnie Barkan, Ramzy Baroud and
Roshan Dadoo will be speaking.
The final session tomorrow Against Zionism and Imperialism: The Move to Ending
Impunity, Implementing Sanctions will include Peter Eisenstein, Haim Bresheeth, Tarkan Tek and Irina Vana as
speakers.
The Congress will continue on the Sunday with three parallel workshops
taking place over two sessions, with feedback and discussion on workshops.
The Congress represents the first visible sign of the cracks in the
previously monolithic support of diaspora Jewish communities for Zionism and Israel.
Jewish people world wide are waking up the fact that they are being used by the
imperialist elites as a moral alibi for Israel’s genocide and mass murder and
apartheid. An Israel which is occupying Lebanese and Syrian territory, and which
will threaten Jordan and Egypt in the future is attacking Iran and Yemen now.
Israel is imperialism’s mad dog run wild in the Middle East. Every time
it attacks a country it is for self-defence. Just like its bogus attacks on
people as ‘anti-Semites’ this dressing up of continual attacks on its
neighbours as ‘self-defence’ is wearing thin as shown by every poll in Western
countries, including the United States.
Today we have a situation where the elites in society everywhere
support the Zionist State of Israel but the people are increasingly expressing
theirrevulusion at a state whose
militarism is resembling that of its ideological father, Adolf Hitler.
For further details of speaker see below and for the programme see here.
At a Time of Genocide, Division and Disunity is a
Luxury We Cannot Afford
When I ‘came
out’ as an anti-Zionist Jew in 1970 it was a lonely experience. I lived in
Liverpool where my father was a rabbi in a community of about 8,000 people (now less than 2,000).
The only
other Jews I knew were in a socialist group which I joined at the age of 16 (expelled at 19!), the International
Socialists(now the SWP). It was thanks
to them that I read my first anti-Zionist pamphlet, the Class Nature of Israeli
Society, by Moshe Machover, Haim Hanegbi and Akiva Orr.
This
pamphlet, which first appeared as an article in the New Left Review, helped
me to make sense of my instinctive hostility to Zionism as a Marxist. Zionism I began to see as an
exclusivist ideology and movement whose only concern was the Jews. This was before the oppression and
dispossession of the Palestinians and the Apartheid nature of Israeli society
had become widely known.
At that
time there was no Palestine solidarity movement in Britain and much of the left
had illusions in Israel. Tony Benn and Eric Heffer, two stalwarts of the Labour
left were members of Labour Friends of Israel.
Today everything
is different. Jewish anti-Zionists are not rare. Zionism is no longer assumed to
be the natural home of Jews. Its alliance today with the far-right – the EDL,
Tommy Robinson, Bannon, Orban etc. – is well known, clear and unmistakable but half a
century ago things were different.
interview with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer
on Israel’s Channel 2 about why he calls himself a 'white Zionist'
Hasbara,
the Zionist version of propaganda still held sway. The Labour Zionists who had
formed the government of Israel from 1948-77 continuously spoke of peace whilst they waged war. As I wrote in Tribune in July 1984, there was nothing
Likud had done that Labour hadn’t done before it.
It took the
invasion of Lebanon in 1982 for the scales to fall from the Left’s eyes. Benn and Heffer resigned from LFI. For much of the left Israel had been an oasis of
socialism in the Middle East. Even Hannah Arendt was fooled into believing that the Kibbutzim were ‘perhaps the most promising of all social
experiments made in the 20th century.’[The
Jew As Pariah, p. 185.
The image of the Kibbutzim seen in the West - Zionism and Socialism - however Arabs played no part in this 'socialism'
The
kibbutzim were held to be models of socialism with their collective
organisation and their lack of private property. No one told me that they were
racially exclusive societies that banned Arabs from membership or that they had
been established over the ruins of confiscated Arab villages whose inhabitants
had been expelled. Nor had we been told that they had been established as the
most effective and economical method of colonisation and were stockade and
watchtower settlements.
Israel was
not founded for the benefit of Jews. The West does not support Israel because
it calls itself a ‘Jewish’ state. As James Baldwin notedin 1979:
Whenever
criticism of Israel is made our rulers profess to be concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’. It is the only form of racism they are concerned about. Even Donald Trump, a bigot
and racist for every season, is not only concerned about Jewish students (Zionist
Jewish students naturally) suffering from anti-Semitism on campuses but he has cut federal funding from those universities and colleges which allow
Palestine solidarity protests on campus.
This is at
the same time that he is insisting that diversity and anti-racist programmes be
ended, migrants be deported and that Confederate flags and symbols be preserved.
You would
have to be stupid (unfortunately many people are) not to see how the rich and powerful,
not least racists like Starmer, are using Jewish people and what they
call ‘anti-Semitism’ (i.e. anti-Zionism) as a means to intimidate and
frighten off support for Palestine and opposition to Zionism.
The same is
true in this country. The racist Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Mark
Rowley, has used the pretext of Jewish Sabbath Services to reroute,
ban and delay Palestinian marches on the grounds that they might cause offence to
Zionist Jews. Jewish residents of Swiss Cottage are the pretext for banning demonstrations against Israel's racist ambassador, Tzipi Hotoveli.
British and
Western support for Zionism is not because of their concern for Jews but
because of their own imperial interests. Jews constitute the moral alibi for
imperialism in the Middle East.
It is for
that reason alone that it is incumbent upon Jews who are not Zionists to say in
both words and deed that what Israel does is not in my name.
In the United
States 40% of young Jews
see Israel as an apartheid state and one suspects that that figure is far higher today in the midst of the current genocide. No one who is progressive and Jewish has
any excuse any longer for neutrality. Non-Zionism is no longer an option. It is fence sitting.
As Martin Luther
King said‘The hottest place in Hell is reserved for
those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.’
Archbishop Desmond
Tutu observed that if
you are neutral at a time of injustice you have chosen the side of the
oppressor.
Today it is
not difficult to be Jewish and anti-Zionist. On April 10, the Zionists’
propaganda organ, the Jewish Chronicle, woke
up to the fact that young Jews were turning against Zionism and carried an article ‘Who are the young Jews turning against
Israel?’ by Jane Prinsley.
Former General
Amiram Levin
Of course Jane, like all the Jewish
Chronicle’s journalists is a Zionist. If she wasn’t she wouldn’t be working for
them. The JC had started to realise that ‘Radical new groups for Jews who do
not support Zionism have formed on campuses up and down the UK’. It went on
to say that
‘radical Jewish student groups have emerged to cater to Jews who do not
support Zionism. From Leeds, Liverpool, Brighton and Birkbeck to Edinburgh,
Warwick, Cardiff, Cambridge and UCL, students have formed Jewish communities,
or kehillot.’
This followed an article by Karen Glaser
who used to be a features writer on the New Statesman where she wrote what I called the most ‘trivial, trite and superficial’ article the
NS has ever run. Its subtitle was ‘How Karen Glaser’s ex-boyfriend had a very
very narrow escape!’ The article was about how Ms Glaser had kicked her Corbyn
supporting, socialist boyfriend out of the nest at 2 am in the morning because
he doubted that Corbyn was quite the anti-Semite that his girlfriend imagined.
So the article‘I can’t discuss Israel with my anti-Zionist
kids – it’s pointless’ was on a par with Glaser’s normal output.
It described how 11 year old Talia had given her mother back the Star of David
she had been given as a baby and further that she was ‘resigning as a Jew’.
Not only that but Talia had disposed of her mother’s
big Israeli flag! Bright and intelligent child you might think. Clearly someone
to interview. Karen though thought differently:
Zionist
parents whose children are scared of being associated with Israel; youngsters
who have internalised antisemitism, in particular its political iteration,
anti-Zionism. Their parents say these young people openly loathe the Jews’
nation state. And anecdotal evidence suggests that the problem has grown
exponentially since the October pogroms.
Karen Glaser is nothing if not stupid. That after
all is why the Jewish Chronicle sought her out. It probably hadn’t occurred to
her that it isn’t internalisation of anti-Semitism but detestation of burning
children alive and bombing hospitals that is making Jewish youngsters puke at
the mere mention of the ‘Jewish’ state. Talia doesn’t sound like someone who is
intimidated.
Naturally I wrote a letter to the JC suggesting that it might have been a
good idea to interview the children concerned and find out their views. And
equally naturally the JC refused to
print it. The last thing the JC wants
to admit is that there may be good reasons why young Jewish kids detest Jewish racial
nationalism.
Shortly after these articles 36 members of the Board
of Deputies signed a letter to the
Financial Times. It was not an anti-Zionist letter. Far from it. But even hardened Zionists had begun to realise that they were defending the indefensible. A war driven by neo-Nazis in Israel's government.
Equally predictable was the reaction of the genocide
supporting President of the BOD, Phil Rosenberg, and the rest of the Board's Executive. There is no atrocity, no genocide that they cannot support. The presence of open fascists in Israel's government worries them not. They immediately suspended Harriett Goldenberg,
the Vice-Chair of its International Division and opened disciplinary proceedings
against all 36 signatories.
Moshe Yalon –
Ben Gvir & Smotrich are Mein Kamp Reversed
Being good Zionists the last thing they wanted to
see is any discussion over the rights and wrongs of the actions of what I have called ‘Hitler’s
Bastard Offspring’. The BOD is there to
support whatever Israel does, right or wrong. Jewish neo-Nazis like Itamar Ben-Gvir trouble them not. After all even Gvir and Smotrich are Jewish and Zionism is about the unity of the Jewish tribe.
Rosenberg
then issued a disingenuous statement that
proclaimed‘The Board of Deputies is a democratic organisation’ without mentioning the suspension of one officer and the disciplinary process
(in the form of a complaint) that was taken against the dissenters.
It is clear that the worm is beginning to turn. That all those who have
not become overt fascists and racists, like Rosenberg and his Executive, have
developed qualms about the genocide being conducted against 2 million Palestinians
in the name of a war against Hamas.
It is therefore incumbent upon Jewish anti-Zionists to come together and
form one united organisation like Jewish Voice for Peace in the United
States.At the moment we have a plethora
of organisations. I am in Jewish Network for Palestine,
there is Jewish Voice for Labour,
formed in the Labour Party during the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against Corbyn
and there is the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Organisation
and the newcomer on the block Na'amod, which
contains a few Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists. Na'amod is the most moderate
and probably the largest.
There is also the older Jews for Justice for Palestinians
which is a 2 states group that does very little except canvass for signatures
for its founding statement and there is also Independent Jewish Voices
which made a big splash when it was created in 2007 but which is now inactive.
Its website was last updated a year ago and its last meeting was over four
years ago.
By my estimates there are about 2,000 people who are members of the
above organisations. There are undoubted differences between people but there
is no reason why there should be so many organisations.
JfJP and IJV are not membership organisations. Clearly Na'amod, in so
far as it contains some Zionists, will not be able to join a unified anti-Zionist
organisation but there is no reason why the 3 anti-Zionist Jewish organisations
cannot come together into one single anti-Zionist Jewish organisation.
Although JVL has not explicitly declared itself as anti-Zionist, in
practice it is. There will obviously be differences over things like one or two
states though the consensus today is that two states cannot be achieved given
the number of settlers in the West Bank.
However we owe it to the Palestinians who are undergoing such terrible
massacres and pogroms to put aside minor differences in the name of not only
unity but effectiveness. A single united anti-Zionist Jewish group would be a pole of
attraction, in particular to young Jews who do not wish to have to bear the
strain and the stain of being seen to support genocide in the name of Jews.
Most Jews who have grown up with the exploitation by Zionism of the memory of
the holocaust find it strange that the most ardent supporters of Zionism today
are the neo-Nazi and far right in politics.
When Tommy Robinson, Donald Trump and Viktor Orban are on your side,
with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer declaring that he
is a White Zionist, many Jews will decide that they have had enough of Zionism and
its quest for Jewish racial purity. It is the duty of the existing anti-Zionist
groups to facilitate that journey not to erect obstacles to it.
