What the Jewish Left Doesn’t Need is Advice that It has No Responsibility for What Zionism and Israel Has Done In Their Name

 A Reply to Shaul Magid’s Argument for Jewish Indifference to Genocide and an Evasion of Responsibility

Shaul Magid is a rabbi, Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, and Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Magid is also an opponent of Jewish anti-Zionism which he argues is irrelevant. Jews opposed to Zionism should turn in on themselves and ignore what is happening in their name.

In his article What Does the Jewish Left Want?, which is reprinted by Jewish Voice for Liberation, Magid argues that the Jewish left should ‘no longer focus on opposition to a state that many in the Jewish Left no longer support.’ In my response below I explain that if it doesn’t focus primarily on Zionism and the Israeli state, then this Jewish left is not only not a genuine left but it has no real purpose.

Shaul Magid

At a time when US and Western Imperialism is using Jewish people as its human shield, its moral alibi for support of the genocide in Gaza, to pretend that solidarity with the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism should be deprioritised is to do exactly what the Zionists want us to do.

It is to argue that Jews should become the bystanders to the slaughter in Gaza. Raul Hilberg excoriated, in Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders, the ‘dull awareness’ and passive indifference of those who looked on as the Jews were exterminated in the holocaust, be they individuals or the Allied countries.

Hilberg spoke of the ‘human wall’ that bystanders had erected, of indifference and social isolation. What Magid is arguing is that Jews on the left should adopt a similar approach today. It is profoundly immoral.

Magid argued, in opposition to Jewish Voice for Peace’s statement adopting an explicitly anti-Zionist position, that they had ignored

a series of real “Zionist” possibilities where “justice and equality” were paramount.

What Magid really wants is to have his cake and eat it. His article is an exercise in self-indulgence. The real question is whether Jewish intellectuals have the courage and honesty to call Zionism out for what it is. Clearly Magid doesn’t possess that courage. Magid says

Many Jews who define themselves as anti-Zionist do not think the state of Israel should cease to exist. Rather, they contest Zionist hegemony.

If that is the case then they are not anti-Zionists and that is Magid’s problem.

For Magid the internal battle within the Jewish community takes precedence over genocide and ethnic cleansing. Is it any wonder that Palestinians get tired of this Jewish preciousness at a time when Palestinian children are being starved to death in the name of Zionism’s Jewish redemption?

If you are an anti-Zionist then Israel as a Jewish state must disappear. Not the people but the state. Israel must become normalised, like any other state. It must be a state of its own citizens, regardless of ethnicity or religion.

Magid accepts that Jewish anti-Zionists reject the idea that ‘Zionism is a requirement for legitimate Jewish identity in the twenty-first century.’’ But then he indulges in a semantic frivolity when he makes:

 ‘an important distinction... between Zionism and Israel. Israel is a country; Zionism is an ideology.’

No.  Zionism is the ideology of the Israeli state. It dictates the imperatives of Zionism, such as ethnic cleansing, Jewish racial purity, Jewish settlement at the Palestinians’ expense. This is a distinction without a difference.

What Magid demonstrates is that he rejects the special characteristic of Zionism as a settler colonial ideology whose aim was to achieve as pure a Jewish state as possible. In the words of Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid:

“My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians”

Quite amazingly Magid goes on to say, without so much as a flicker of awareness, that:

Like most countries Israel will choose how to govern according to will of its citizens, in Israel’s case, mostly, but not exclusively, its Jewish citizens (as those living under occupation have no political agency in the national polity), how to treat its minorities, how to deal with questions of justice and domination.

The whole point of anti-Zionism is that Israel is not like most countries. It is sui generis. Actually most countries don’t govern according to the will of their citizens but their elites and the capitalist ruling class. But let this pass. Magid is not a socialist.

In Israel’s case it pays no heed whatsoever to its Palestinian citizens. In Netanyahu’s words, ‘Israel is a state of its Jewish citizens not all of them’. That is why, being a Jewish state, it continues to dispossess what it calls Arab Israelis from their homes, in particular the destruction of the unrecognised villages of the Bedouin of the Negev such as Umm al-Hiran and Ras Jraba. Has Magid never heard of the policy of Judaisation of the Galilee and Negev, the Koenig Memorandum and Prawer Plan?

Does Magid think that there’s nothing of special interest in the fact that those living under occupation have no civil or political rights despite it being made clear that the West Bank will always remain part of Israel? Has he lost the ability to spell or even recognise the word Apartheid?

Magid quotes Joel Swanson’s assertion that

Historically, Zionism has never been one single concept. It has been a family of arguments, ... To say ‘Zionism’ without adjectives is already to erase its internal diversity.’

Here we really come to the crux of the argument. Shaul Magid’s illusion that there is a nice as well as a nasty Zionism. It is part of a ‘family’ that somehow along the way as it lost its focus or direction.

So let us spell it out for Shaul Magid who is blind to Zionism’s  racist reality. Zionism is what Zionism does. Zionism does not exist in the minds of a fragrant Jewish American Princess who still believes in fairy tales but in the settler attacks on Palestinian villages in the West Bank or the Death to the Arabs riots in Jerusalem each year.

Is there any difference between Herzog and Netanyahu, between Labour and Revisionist Zionism or did they merely argue about the means of achieving and maintaining a Jewish Supremacist state beholden to the West as an armed watchdog?

Magid clings to a Zionism that never existed. In fact cultural and socialist Zionism long ago disappeared in their own contradictions. Socialism is universal. Zionism is particularist. I realised that when I was 16 but Magid has yet to achieve political adolescence.

Magid points to a recent poll in which only a third of American Jews identify as Zionist whereas 88% support the concept of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Clearly there is confusion among American Jews as Israel has proven beyond doubt that it cannot be both Jewish and democratic. Always it is forced to take the former path and jettison the latter, as the Jewish Nation State Law has proved.

The reality is that this was always a dishonest slogan of the hypocritical Zionist ‘left’. When confronted with a choice Zionism always preferred the Jewish to the democratic. In the words of Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of the Knesset, Israel is Democratic for Jews and Jewish for Arabs.

It is this which has allowed Jewish neo-Nazis to become the third largest bloc in the Knesset and for Itamar Ben Gvir to become Police Minister in Israel. It is this which has led to Israeli Police acting like SS storm troopers against Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Israel is a state where torture is the norm (for Palestinians).

Yes there is massive confusion among American Jews but rather than offering clarity Magid seeks to take advantage of that confusion with his ridiculous essay.

Magid says that ‘Zionism served as an escape mechanism for Jews trying to escape a Europe collapsing around them.’ No that is absolutely not true. Haganah sent Feivel Polkes to Nazi Germany to persuade the Gestapo not to allow Jewish emigration to any place but Palestine. In exchange he offered to collaborate with them.

As a result Professor Franz Six, a senior SS official and head of Department II in the SD Main Office, who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for war crimes in April 1948 wrote:

Pressure is being exerted on the Reich Deputation of the Jews in Germany in order to compel Jews emigrating from Germany to head only to Palestine and not to any other country.” [The Secret Contacts, Zionism and Nazi Germany, 1933-1941, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 5 3/4 Spring/Summer 1976]

Ha’avara, the trade agreement between Nazi Germany and the Zionist movement, agreed in August 1933, not only broke the world-wide Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany but it worsened the position for Jews trying to escape to other countries.

The Zionist movement consistently opposed rescue to any country bar Palestine. Magid fails to understand what has been called ‘cruel Zionism.’  See my book Zionism During the Holocaust (to purchase it contact me at tonygreenstein104@gmail.com).

Magid cites Yehiam Weitz’s article, “The Positions of David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Tabenkin Vis-A-Viz the Holocaust of European Jewry” but has failed to understand it. Weitz cites Ben-Gurion on the Jewish refugee problem thus:

‘Both during the 1930s ... and during the second half of the 1940s, after the war's end - his position on this question was determined and indisputable; Ben-Gurion definitively and often crudely opposed ameliorating the position of Jewish groups by means other than their transfer to Palestine. He felt that any 'solution of the national problem outside of Eretz Israel, or ... solving the individual's distress by ignoring the national problem ... [means] undermining the foundations of Zionism and acting  as a temptation  which  every  Zionist  must  learn to  withstand completely.'

When it came to priorities Zionism and building the Jewish state came first. Weitz quotes Ben-Gurion’s notorious statement in the wake of Kristallnacht that if:

'it would be possible to save all the [Jewish] children in Germany by transferring them to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second possibility, because before us is not only the account of these children but the historical account of the Jewish people.’

In other words the interests of building the ‘Jewish’ state took precedence over saving Jewish children from Germany. Magid could also have mentioned Boas Evron’S, Jewish State or Israeli Nation and the fierce opposition to the Evian Conference, called by Eisenhower to solve the Jewish refugee question. Of course it did no such thing but the Zionist leadership were nonetheless frightened.

What Magid didn't mention was the identification with Israel of the far and even neo-Nazi right

Evron quotes the minutes of a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive of 26 June 1938. Ben-Gurion was unremittingly hostile as he declared that

No rationalizations can turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as possible.

A Russia member of the Zionist Executive Menachem Ussishkin was even more forthright

He hoped to hear in Evian that Eretz Israel remains the main venue for Jewish emigration. All other emigration countries do not interest him… The greatest danger is that attempts will be made to find other territories for Jewish emigration. [my emphasis]

These positions are quite clear in the essay he referred to yet Magid scrupulously refrains from mentioning the attitude of the Zionists to saving the Jewish refugees.

Magid asks Can the Jewish Left move beyond Zionism and anti-Zionism?’ and queries whether it can ‘no longer focus on opposition to a state that many in the Jewish Left no longer support?’

Thus missing out the whole point of why Jews on the left make opposition to Israel and Zionism a central focus of their work. Of course Magid knows the reason but refrains from spelling it out. Everything Israel does is in the name of the mythical ‘Jewish people’ and Jews. It is after all a self-proclaimed Jewish state.

It is therefore incumbent upon Jewish socialists and those who are genuinely on the Jewish left to say ‘Not in My Name’. The fact that Magid resiles from this suggests that his membership of the Jewish left is ephemeral.

Of course the Jewish left can do many other things but when being Jewish is one of the primary justifications given for imperialism’s support for Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing it is rank hypocrisy and cowardice not to make that a priority. If the Jewish left cannot focus on Zionism and its claim to represent Jews then it has no relevance.

Magid says that ‘One of the fundamental differences between liberal Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism is the exceptionalism that underlies the case of Israel’. That is of course true.  Liberal Zionists can, in theory, hold progressive positions on domestic American affairs but for Palestine there is an exception (Progressive Except Palestine). But that is increasingly untenable.

What Magid seems to be doing is providing a new way for this exceptionalism to operate by suggesting that Jews on the left simply avoid the issue altogether.

Why would Jews seek to avoid the one area where they have a contribution to make? Does he find it too uncomfortable? The difference between Magid and a self-declared Zionist is that he doesn’t openly defend the Apartheid state whereas ‘liberal’ Zionism does. Instead he makes excuses for it.

Jewish identity post-war has been forged in the crucible of Zionism. Jewish identity has changed for many a substitute religion. Without an alternative explicitly anti-Zionist Jewish identity Jewish identity become at best a self-indulgence and at worst an identity with genocide and racism.

Magid quotes Adi Ophir in his support:  “to become non-Zionist one first must become anti-Zionist.” I wonder if Magid ever thought this through? How about saying that to become a non-racist one must first become an anti-racist. Perhaps our goal is to abstain from confronting racism? This is meaningless nonsense, verbal masturbation.

The fact is that for Jews non-Zionism is, at best, a half-way house to anti-Zionism. Of course being an anti-Zionist also means taking a position against US imperialism and its use of Jews as its moral alibi.

As a final flourish Magid says that

The land between the river and the sea remains the Jewish homeland and the Palestinian homeland. But the domination of one over the other will never yield the flourishing of either.

In this Magid could not be more wrong. He equates the oppressed with their oppressors. Palestine is the home of the Palestinians. It is not a Jewish homeland. My home is where I live, Britain. The United States is the home of millions of Jews. Israel is a settler colonial state that calls itself Jewish only in the racial and ethnic sense. Israel is a state of Jewish Supremacy where Jews, not Palestinians, exercise domination.

The eventual choice that Israeli Jews face is between becoming Jewish Palestinians or leaving. That was the choice that White South Africans faced and we should not make any exception for the Zionist settlers whose crimes far exceed those of White South Africans.

Tony Greenstein

The Time Has Come for Britain’s Anti-Zionist Jewish Groups to Unite

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 20^th 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 noted in 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.

Jews in America, for a number of reasons have been in advance of British Jews. From May 1-4 over 2,000 members of Jewish Voice for Peace gathered in Baltimore for a member’s conference (see Massive JVP member meeting vows to fight Zionism, fascism, and the weaponization of antisemitism).

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.

Tony Greenstein

For 6 years Black Lives Matter Were Attacked as ‘anti-Semites’ by the Zionists – Today they suffer from amnesia

Since BLM describe Israel as a Genocidal Apartheid State and Support BDS – is Starmer is going to expel them for ‘anti-Semitism’?

When I saw ‘Sir’ Keir, the pin-up of George Osborne and the British Establishment take the knee I could not help but smell the sulphurous stench of hypocrisy. Black Lives Matter are, according to the IHRA and the 10 Commandments anti-Semitic.

By supporting BDS they single out Israel from all other countries. In addition they call it a genocidal, apartheid state. Starmer should be giving BLM the boot not offering them his carefully tailored knee.

The Telegraph, in what even for it was a particularly stupid and bizarre article Why Black Lives Matter protests are a catalyst for anti-Semitism argued that ‘extreme anti-racism’ causes anti-Semitism. This is where the fake anti-Semitism campaign leads. Anti-racism equals anti-Semitism. Classic double think.

Leaving to one side whether you can have ‘extreme’ as opposed to ‘moderate’ anti-Semitism, what it is saying is that its definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ (anti-Zionism) is a form of anti-racism! I agree but that’s why it’s not anti-Semitism!

Israel's policy towards Black refugees is worse even than that of Donald Trump

Please Spare a Thought for the Zionists’ Dilemma!

It’s not often that I ask readers of this blog to put themselves in the shoes of the Zionists. However I am going to ask you to make the effort in the case of BLM. I am asking you to empathise with them. As Ali Abunimah says

‘Israel lobby groups have long seen the Black Lives Matter movement as a threat and have tried both to disrupt and co-opt it.’

In 2018, Al Jazeera’s leaked undercover documentary The Lobby–USA revealed how the Israeli government and its lobby worked to disrupt the BLM movement. Undercover footage showed an Israeli official complaining about the BLM “problem.”

It also revealed how The Israel Project, a now defunct organization, pulled strings behind the scenes to get a BLM fundraiser in a New York City nightclub cancelled.

Britain's Zionists attacking BLM as 'anti-semitic'

The problem that the Zionists face is how to deal with the threat that BLM represents. For some Zionists BLM should be confronted head on. However those Zionists who are not head bangers realise that if they do this, whilst they may win the plaudits of the White Supermacists they will lose the majority of Jewish youth and the Democratic Party. They are caught on the horns of a dilemma and it is interesting to see how they are wriggling!

For nearly 6 years all wings of the Zionist movement criticised and attacked BLM. Liberal Zionists said that they supported the demands of BLM but they were pained by their description of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, as a genocidal, Apartheid state.

Sure Israel provided training in the latest techniques of repression for most US police forces. And yes it’s true that the neck hold is an Israeli invention. However they wish that BLM wouldn’t involve itself in international matters and confine itself to the United States.

The hypocrisy of AIPAC knows no bounds

Aipac, ADL and Police Training

Right-wing Zionists never liked BLM, regardless of its attitude to Israel. Zionism and anti-racism made strange bedfellows to the Zionist Organisation of America and its Chairman Mort Klein.

Even AIPAC, the pro-Republican Israel lobby group must have found it painful to have to condemn George Floyd’s murder writing that:

On the eve of George Floyd’s funeral, we join with millions of Americans who continue to mourn his murder. His death is a shattering reminder of the injustice & inequities that Black Americans still endure in our society. The scourge of racism, intolerance & inequality must end.

Palestinians identify with George Floyd

Of course if George Floyd had been a Palestinian then AIPAC would have been calling him a ‘terrorist’. Naturally Sussex Friends of Israel, which was founded by Fiona Sharpe of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, attacked BLM as ‘anti-Semitic’. To SFI any form of anti-racism is ‘anti-Semitism’.

Sussex Friends of Israel, of which former Brighton Councillors Emma Daniels and Julie Cattell and ex-leader Cllr. Daniel Yates are members calls BLM 'antisemitic'

The Anti-Defamation League, which funded and provided Police training, bringing US police on junkets to Israel for “counterterrorism” and other kinds of joint training.was also unhappy with BLM but it preferred not to cut off its nose to spite its face.

Between 5 and 13 September 2015 the ADL held a National Counter-Terrorism Seminar in Israel. ADL plays a key role in the relationship between Israeli and US police whilst, at the same time, decrying police violence in the US. No one is suggesting that US police racism is a consequence of this training, but the fact that ADL is involved in training and refining their techniques of oppression, should give the lie to the ADL’s profession of support to the Black struggle.

The purest hypocrisy - ADL was training the killers

The Militarisation of the United States Police

In August 2018 Jewish Voice for Peace determined that three years previously Peter Edge, who was promoted to Acting Deputy Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Trump, attended a training in Israel, as part of the Anti-Defamation League’s 2015 National Counter Terrorism Institute Seminar. ICE are the thugs who deport and brutalise migrant families and children.

An article The US-Israel Military Relationship and the US-Mexico Border revealed that Homeland Security Director Kirjsten Nielsen’s recent trip to Israel included a visit to the “hi-tech” fences blockading Gaza. Israeli Security Minister Gilad Erdan ‘reckons’ that some of what Nielson saw and learned in Israel “will certainly be implemented in what the United States is setting up on its border with Mexico.”

Trump and Netanyahu have continuously praised one another for their border militarisation policies and walls. In an interview with Fox News, Trump called a wall on the US’s southern border

“good for the heart of the nation in a certain way, because people want protection, and a wall protects. All you’ve got to do is ask Israel. They were having a total disaster coming across, and they had a wall. It’s 99.9 percent stoppage.

In response Netanyahu wrote

“I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea.”

Using Israel as a reason not to support BLM

Maayan Belding-Zidon wrote on the 10 June 2020 telling fellow Zionists ‘Stop using Israel as an excuse not to support Black Lives Matter’. Belding-Zidon highlighted the fact that in 2016,

‘Jewish voices from across the U.S. political spectrum came out in opposition to the platform of the Movement for Black Lives, which claimed that U.S. military aid to Israel makes the U.S. complicit in “the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.” Many progressive Jewish organizations denounced only this section and endorsed the rest of the platform, calling for an end to mass incarceration, demilitarization of the police, etc.

However other, more conservative Zionists, used this as an excuse to ‘distance themselves from Black Lives Matter as a whole.’ The description of Israel as an Apartheid state proved BLM was ‘a threat to the assimilation of Jews into undifferentiated American whiteness.’

This debate took on a heightened form with the current upsurge in BLM over the murder of George Floyd. It was clear to all except the atavistic Zionist Organisation of America that they were facing a mass movement of millions. It was simply not possible for the Zionists, much as they wanted to, to attack BLM as ‘anti-Semitic’.

Thousands of young Jewish kids, who are already skeptical towards an Israel that is admired by white supremacists and anti-Semites identify with BLM. They realize that the racism that lay behind Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd is the same racism that led to the murder of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Dianne Lob

Zionist Organisation of America and HIAS

It was only two months ago that the ZOA objected vehemently to nomination of Dianne Lob, as the next Chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations [CPMAJO]. Why? Because she was a past Chair of the Hebrew Immigrant Advisory Society.

‘ZOA charged that HIAS was part of an “unholy consortium of Jewish and anti-Israel groups” fighting Trump’s immigration policies.’

Historically HIAS provided support for Jewish refugees from Europe but today Jews are not refugees. So it is mainly Black and Muslim people who receive its aid. In the eyes of ZOA that is a crime.

Anti-Muslim Bigot Frank Gaffney piles in against Lob

Dianne Lob is as committed a Zionist as the rest of the 50 strong Committee. She described herself

“as someone deeply devoted to Jewish values and to the importance of safeguarding the special U.S.-Israel relationship”.

What the Zionist right mean when they called her ‘anti-Zionist’ is anyone who is that she isn’t a 100% racist. Lob is a corporate Democrat and head of global business development for international investment management firm AllianceBernstein.

The objections of the ZOA were partly successful. Instead of taking over as Chair at the beginning of June 2020, she will have to wait until April 2021. Even this compromise was only agreed after a 31-8 vote with 5 abstentions. As the Times of Israel reported

 ‘Leading the charge was Morton Klein’s Zionist Organization of America, which has strongly opposed efforts to resettle Muslim refugees from Arab countries in the United States and Europe — something that has topped the HIAS agenda in recent years because of unrest in the Muslim world.

In other words the objections were based on pure racism. The ZOA is the oldest Zionist organisation in America, being founded in 1897, the year of the first Zionist Congress. It is funded by Trump backer, Sheldon Adelson and fiercely supports his White Supremacist agenda.

The ZOA is proving embarrassing to the more astute Zionists

The target of HIAS is interesting itself. Robert Bowers, the fascist who murdered worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue was obsessed with HIAS and the supposed role of Jews in bringing immigrants into the USA. This was at the time of the Congressional elections and Trump was lambasting the refugee caravan in Central America and threatening to set the military on them. 

Bowers subscribed to the far-right theme that ‘the Jews’ were working to subvert the White nations by welcoming Black people into their country. That is what lay behind the slogan of Trump’s ‘fine people’ at Charlottesville who chanted ‘the Jews will not replace us’.

The Tree of Life was a liberal synagogue that had agreed to help fundraise for HIAS. Like the majority of American Jews they were the most liberal section of the White population (unlike Britain where Jews are the most reactionary section!).

This enraged Bowers. He posted on social media, just hours before opening fire that:

‘“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

Two and a half weeks earlier, he had written,

“Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us?”

Another post read,

“Open you Eyes! It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Country!!”

BLM is a racist, Soros funded organisation - and the ZOA dares to say its BLM which is antisemitic!

The Zionist Organisation of America

If the CPMAJO had any morals or scruples then the ZOA and its racist supporters would have been kicked out years ago.

The ZOA, like most Zionist groups, love to accuse anti-Zionists of ‘anti-Semitism’ and even liberal Zionists of the same sin. The reality however is that they are guilty of what they accuse others of.

In 2016, after Trump’s election who did they invite as a guest of honour to address their annual Gala dinner? None other than Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s Strategic Advisor. The same Bannon whose wife testified in their 2007 divorce that

‘the biggest problem he had with Archer [an elite private school for girls] is the number of Jews that attend.’

Bannon did a no show because of a large demonstration by Jewish groups, IfnotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.

Hungarian neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka was  guest of honour at the ZOA's 2017 Gala Dinner - seen wearing the Vitezi Rend medal

The ZOA invited him again in 2017 and this time they also invited Sebastian Gorka, a fully paid–up fascist nut. At Trump’s inauguration ball he decided to wear the Vitezi Rend, a medal issued by the Hungarian Order of Heroes, which collaborated with Hungary’s Nazi government during the World War II.

Up till now the ZOA has been a member of the CPMAJO. Their anti-Muslim bigotry, their dalliance with anti-Semites, their love of Trump and their mutual hostility to HIAS, were of no consequence.

Yet when the ZOA decided to attack Black Lives Matter there were loud calls for their removal. The Jerusalem Post reported that

Progressive Jewish groups have accused Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America of 'bigotry' and 'hatred' for his opposition of Black Lives Matter.

Steve Bannon - ex-Trump advisor and ex-Editor Breitbart

The statement was issued by the New Israel Fund and other ‘liberal’ Zionists.  Why now? According to their statement:

“The continued presence of Klein and the ZOA in important umbrella groups is an affront to Jews of color and all people of color, and to the overwhelming majority of all American Jews. It undermines any pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy and damages the collective reputation of our community.” (my emphasis)

The Murder of Iyad Hallak

The clue lies in the last sentence. These hypocrites, who have never once spoken out about Zionist racism, Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians or even the murder 5 days after George Floyd of Iyad Hallak, an autistic Palestinian, are worried that a full frontal attack by Zionists on BLM will backfire and undermine their ‘pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy’.

Sebastian Gorka - the ZOA's neo-Nazi dinner guest

If there was even an ounce of sincerity amongst these liberal Zionists then they would have condemned the murder of Iyad. Already wounded, trapped in a garbage hut and with his carer screaming that he was autistic they pumped the final 3 bullets into his body.

Unlike in Minneapolis no Policemen have been arrested, still less charged. There is an ‘investigation’ but Israeli police investigations never result in charges of murder. Netanyahu could not even bring himself to condemn the murder because Israel’s finest thought they were dealing with a ‘terrorist’ and since Iyad was a Palestinian they had every right to think that.

Unbelievably the ZOA deals in the same tropes about Soros as the Jewish financial puppet master as America's neo-Nazis

Mort Klein’s offence is to say what Zionist liberals believe but won’t say openly, namely that Black Lives Matter

is a Jew hating, White hating, Israel hating, conservative Black hating, violence promoting, dangerous Soros funded extremist group of haters,”

Mort Klein has no tactical sense.  He doesn’t know when to shut up. His colleagues know that now is not the time to attack BLM, not least because it will damage the reputation of Israel in the eyes of Jewish youth who are already cynical about Israel, witness the growth of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Ifnotnow. 

That and only that is the reason why other Zionist groups have called for the expulsion of the ZOA from the CPMAJO. The Times of Israel reported that the

Tweet by Mort Klein vilifying Black Lives Matter seen as galvanizing liberal support to remove Zionist Organization of America from Conference of Presidents

We should be under no illusions that there is any major difference of principle between Mort Klein and Diane Lob and her supporters.

Israel Hayom and Conspiracy Theories

The Zionists have been working overtime to blunt and subvert the message of BLM. According to Sheldon Adelson’s Israel Hayom what is happening is Co-opting Black Lives Matter to target Israel. This is up with all those other conspiracy theories.  We are told that

‘Efforts to link police brutality in the United States with the Israel Defense Forces maintaining security against Palestinian attacks have flooded the internet.

If it wasn’t for White people manipulating Black Lives Matter they would never have worked out for themselves that Israel has been training US police forces into becoming even more deadly than they already are. This kind of conspiracy theory is strangely reminiscent of the theory that Jews manipulate Blacks and Muslims in order to destroy the White nations. It goes by the name Replacement Theory.

Groups on the far-Right and far-Left, including pro-Palestinian organizations with links to terrorism, have been engaged in a campaign to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement to target and delegitimize Israel.

"The cynical use of the Black Lives Matter by groups backed and controlled by foreign terror movements is nothing less than a repeat of the many other times that terror groups have used human shields to push their violence and hate," Mark Greendorfer, president of the Zachor Legal Group, told JNS.

A "civil-rights movement (Black Lives Matter) has been hijacked by extremists to push an agenda focused on promoting hate, in the form of anti-Semitism, rather than seeking justice," he said.

Exchanging Support for Israel for Support for BLM

Back in April 2016 Sam Kestenbaum explained that the problem was ‘a ‘new platform’ [the link doesn’t work now!] of BLM ‘that describes Israel as an “apartheid state” committing “genocide” against the Palestinian people’.’ Kestenbaum explained that since the beginning of BLM in 2013, in the wake of the Police murder of Michael Brown

‘Jewish groups across the country have struggled to strike the right tone in their responses to the movement. Activists aligned with Black Lives Matter have frequently visited the occupied Palestinian West Bank in what some call “solidarity tours,” as recently as July 30

Henn Mazzig in When Jews Attack Black Lives Matter, It Only Fuels Anti-Semitism wrote that Zionists who believe that they can trade off support for Israel in exchange for support for BLM is not working:

The message black people are getting today from some in the Jewish community is that they think black lives don’t matter. Would you think otherwise if a video emerged of a Jew being choked to death by a cop and non-Jews said they couldn’t support our movement because, say, the Anti-Defamation League said something they don’t like? ...

Why were these (3) women able to impart their anti-Israel policies on the Black Lives Matter platform? They were deeply committed to the movement. Pro-Israel voices, like the ones in my replies, were not.

Attacking Black Lives Matter only fuels anti-Semitism [i.e. anti-Zionism], making it easier to paint Jews as racists...

Although countless Jews and Zionists support Black Lives Matter... these voices railing against the movement undo some of that unifying work. Another was Rachel Gilmer of Dream Defenders, a Jewish anti-Zionist.

If you want to change Black Lives Matter Israel agenda, you need to show up for them. Because by showing up for racial justice, we are actually showing up for ourselves....

When I posted Black Lives Matter online, the responses from Jews in America were shocking.

Some started bombarding me with replies that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an anti-Israel cabal. That they are not protestors but looters and criminals. ... A few people claimed it was all “George Soros’s doing.” I pointed out that anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists like former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke were employing the same rhetoric. One American Jew replied, “Well, he is right about Soros.”

There is a serious debate taking place in the Zionist movement in the United States which sees the antics of those like Mort Klein as damaging support for Israel. Behind closed doors they agree with most of what he says. Their disagreement is with the way he says it.

Rabbi Ari Hart, of the Bayit Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, wrote on his public Facebook page that he was “struggling with #BlackLivesMatter but I believe black lives matter,”

Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council issued a statement

“We cannot and will not align ourselves with organizations that falsely and maliciously assert that Israel is committing ‘genocide.We reject participation in any coalition that seeks to isolate and demonize Israel.”

The platform of the “Movement for Black Lives,” was BLM’s “first comprehensive document”. The section on foreign policy (“Invest-Divest”) criticizes American military aid to Israel. Israel is

“a state that practices systematic discrimination and has maintained a military occupation of Palestine for decades,”

It calls on activists to “build invest/divestment campaigns” to end “US Aid to Israel’s military industrial complex” and credits Adalah, an advocacy group for Arab rights, among its “authors & contributors.”

As Ha’aretz notes

‘Right-wing Jewish groups, including the Zionist Organization of America have condemned Black Lives Matter since the movement’s early days.’

The Anti-Defamation League

Ha’aretz quotes the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt as saying that racial justice for African Americans is one of “the struggles of our time.”

This is the purest hypocrisy. It is a wonder that Greenblatt’s nose isn’t six foot long! In August 2016 the Tablet quoted Greenblatt as saying of BLM’s Platform that:

it’s repellent and completely inaccurate to label Israel’s policy as “genocide.” (it) completely ignores incitement and violence perpetrated against Israelis by some Palestinians, including terror inside the country and rocket attacks lobbed from Gaza.

The article also informed readers that ‘The ADL’s extensive material on Black Lives Matter, including school lesson plans, has now been quietly removed from its website.

Liberal Zionist Peter Beinart described BLM’s Platform as ‘stupid’ for talking of Israeli genocide. BLM’s Platform did not go over well with the what The Tablet called ‘some of Black Lives Matter’s hitherto staunch progressive allies.’

Greenblatt tweeted that ‘We need justice for everyone who has been a victim of racist policing & violence.’  Which sounds very much like ‘All Lives Matter’ the racist response to the specific violence against Black people.

This is the same ADL who said that

‘An influx of millions of Palestinians into Israel would pose a threat to its national security and upset the country’s demographic makeup.’

Isn’t that Trump’s agenda?  Sure he puts it a bit more crudely, in terms of Mexican rapists and shithole countries in Africa, but isn’t he too trying to preserve American culture and demographic make-up?

The Tablet had nothing to say about the Occupation, land confiscation, the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem etc. Even liberal Zionist groups are PEPs – Progressive Except for Palestine.

Unbelievably the Zionist Tablet gives a soft-ball interview to America's leading academic holocaust denier, Kevin MacDonald

The Tablet may lambast the ‘bigotry’ of BLM but it’s not above indulging in some of its own.  Quite amazingly in its current issue it contains a full length interview with Professor Kevin MacDonald, the foremost academic supporter of White nationalism and Holocaust denial in the USA. As the introduction to the interview explains:

The specifics of the Jewish [evolutionary] strategy on American soil... include encouraging mass immigration and promoting cultural relativism and multiculturalism—which he describes as ideological tools that Jews use to fracture the organic cohesion of their white Christian host culture. MacDonald’s theories and writing inspired the slogan “the Jews will not replace us” which energized the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.

In other words Jews act as one and their behaviour is genetically and biologically programmed. Stripped of its academic jargon this rhetoric is part of the old Nazi idea that Jews subvert the Gentile nations in order to rule over them. Yet a prominent Zionist journal prints an interview with an open neo-Nazi.

The ADL and Spying for Apartheid South Africa

We should not forget the lawsuit begun in 1992 accusing the ADL of spying on behalf of the Apartheid regime in South Africa (not Israel!). It was settled for $178,000.

Israel was then an ally of South Africa's white- supremacist government, and the ADL's chief intelligence-gatherer in the Bay Area, Roy Bullock, later admitted he was being paid by South Africa.

The suit claimed that the ADL was working to suppress domestic criticism of Israel by compiling dossiers that it shared with police, the Israeli government and its own supporters. The ADL said it was legally monitoring hate groups and political extremists.

After Bullock and a San Francisco police inspector were seen talking to South African agents in 1992 police seized more than 10,000 files from the two men and ADL offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. See: Jewish defense group settles S.F. spying suit

ADL and Starbucks

The balancing act that ADL perform, training the US Police whilst professing horror at the death of Black men at their hands fools noone. When Starbucks staff called the Police because two Black men were ‘loitering’ in their coffee house it provoked national outrage.

Starbucks set aside a day when their premises were closed for ‘anti-bias training.  Who was called upon to provide it?  The ADL! This caused an uproar among  Black and left-wing activists. As a result Starbucks were forced to drop the ADL from their training plans.

None of this prevented Liel Leibovitz from denouncing Starbucks for ‘giving in to bigotry’ in The Tablet. In The ADL Kicked Out of Leading Starbucks’ Diversity Training Leibovitz wrote:

Considering the fact that Jews are, by far, the most prominent targets of hate crimes in America these days, giving in to anti-Semites and removing the ADL from a diversity training initiative of a major American corporation is particularly heinous.

America’s Jews are obviously not the ‘most prominent targets’ of racist attacks. Secondly calling BLM ‘anti-Semites’ betrays the real agenda.

Leibovitz blamed the decision on Tamika Mallory, ‘a leader of the Women’s March and vocal supporter of Louis Farrakhan’ who tweeted that the ADL was an organization dedicated to “constantly attacking black and brown people.” Another example of Zionist guilt-by-association which avoids what she said. Whether Tamika is or is not a member of the Nation of Islam is neither here nor there.

ADL and Police Training

US police forces have been trained courtesy of the ADL in the latest techniques of repression, including neck holds. Israel’s police have so much more ‘on hands’ or ‘on neck’ experience of repression. In Partnering with Law Enforcement the ADL boast that

ADL works with every major federal, state and local law enforcement agency, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to major city police departments, state police, highway patrol and sheriffs’ departments. Over the past decade, we have trained 150,000 law enforcement personnel—at no cost to taxpayers. This work is designed to protect people and communities from hate, extremism and terrorism.

The ‘problem’ that the Zionists faced was described in 2017 in a leaked report written by the ADL and the Reut Institute. It bemoaned how campaigners had successfully been

able to frame the Palestinian struggle against Israel as part of the struggle of other disempowered minorities, such as African Americans.

The report warned that intersectionality “undermines Jewish communities’ agendas, including support for the State of Israel.” The Israel lobby and Zionist hasbara were happy with identity politics because it was simple to define Jewishness in terms of Zionism and Israel. Jews were just one more equally oppressed group.

But intersectionality asked more difficult questions such as where the source of inequality comes from. Intersectionality argued that oppression is not one dimensional. American Jews don’t suffer from police violence, disproportionate imprisonment or economic discrimination. To say that being Jewish is equivalent of being Black is to negate the oppression of the latter. Oppression has many causes – economic, class, race, imperialism etc.

Starmer’s Racist Hypocrisy

Was there anything more sickening than seeing Starmer and Rayner taking a knee in an empty conference room, on a plush carpet? This is the same Starmer who is busy expelling anyone ‘guilty’ of opposing Israeli Apartheid or Zionism.

Starmer’s racist witch-hunt is netting hundreds of Black and Jewish members of the Labour Party. All in the service of Tel Aviv and Netanyahu’s coalition with the Israeli Labor Party. Because the organisation driving the witch-hunt is none other than the British wing of the almost dead ILP, the Jewish Labour Movement.

Instead of taking the knee, Keir Starmer should be expelling BLM members for supporting BDS and calling Israel a Genocidal, Apartheid State!

Black members of the Labour Party understand Starmer’s hypocrisy which is why he is expelling so many of them. Most are not collaborators like the David Lammy, who abstained in the vote on the ‘hostile environment’ 2014 Immigration Act, as did all but one of Labour’s useless Black MPs. Lammy is a paid up supporter of Labour Friends of Israel.

In Black lives do not matter in Israel David Sheen wrote of how, on March 17, one of Israel's two chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef, called black people "monkeys" and the Hebrew equivalent of the N-word in his weekly sermon. He said the same two years previously that all non-Jews - Africans, Arabs, or otherwise - could only live in Israel if they agree to serve the country's Jewish population.

Israel's other chief rabbi, Yisrael Lau, used the N-word to describe Black athletes on his very first day in office in July 2013. In 2010 dozens of Israeli rabbis, led by Safed’s Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, a paid official of the Israeli state, issued an edict forbidding Jews to rent their homes to non-Jews. As Ha'aretz explained:

Dozens of Israel's municipal chief rabbis have signed on to a new religious ruling that would forbid the rental of homes to gentiles in a move particularly aimed against Arabs

When Lammy and Starmer support Israel and demonise its opponents as ‘anti-Semitic’ they are actively supporting this racism. Below are extracts from an important article by Ramzy Baroud on the role of Israel in militarizing the United States police.

 The ‘Palestinian Chair’: Exposing Israel’s Direct Role in US Violence

The militarization of the US police and its use of deadly violence against suspected petty criminals, or even non criminals, is a relatively new phenomenon that has been largely imported from Israel.

Israeli torture tactics, including the infamous ‘Palestinian Chair’, became the crown jewel of the American military’s systematic violence used in America’s immoral wars from Iraq to Afghanistan, to elsewhere.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2016, Rachel Stroumsa argued that the ‘Palestinian Chair’ is “but one of many examples of ties and seepages between the security practices of Israel and America,” adding that “the CIA explicitly justified its use of torture in depositions to the Senate Intelligence Committee by citing High Court of Justice rulings.”

The fact that thousands of American police officers have been trained by Israelis, thus the burgeoning of violent military-like tactics used against ordinary Americans, is only one link in a long chain of ‘deadly exchanges’ between the two countries.

The US-Israel Military Relationship and the US-Mexico Border

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Deadly Exchange explains how

The horrific impacts of border militarization and the practices of racist agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) on border communities, immigrants, and people of color across the US have been well documented for years.

Feeding into US imperialist policy, Israel has been an important partner and supporter of the militarization of the border and border agencies in a number of ways:

US-Israel law enforcement exchange programs

Many of these exchanges are sponsored by US-based organizations, including AIPAC, ADL, GILEE, JINSA, and the Jewish United Fund.

The growing Israeli role in shaping the American security state allowed Israel to push its political priorities past its traditional stronghold over the US Congress to individual states and, eventually, to city councils across the country

Black Lives Matter platform author defends Israel ‘genocide’ claim Times of Israel 10.8.16.

NEW YORK (JTA) — The co-author of the Black Lives Matter platform passage accusing Israel of “genocide” defended the term, saying Israel’s actions fit in its wider definition.

Ben Ndugga-Kabuye co-authored the statement along with Rachel Gilmer, the former board member of a Zionist youth group. Ndugga-Kabuye told JTA he understood why Jewish groups disagree with the statement, but was perplexed that it has received so much attention.

He compared it with the accusations of genocide that black activists have leveled at the United States and called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one of many international conflicts US black activists feel connected to.

 “The way we look at it is, we take strong stances,” Ndugga-Kabuye, a New York City organizer for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, told JTA. “The demand we’re making is we’re against the US continuing funding and military aid to the government of Israel. These are all things that are going to be in debate.”

The platform, released August 2 by The Movement for Black Lives coalition, is largely a statement of the goals of a movement that coalesced around police violence directed against black people in the United States, mass incarceration of African-Americans and other domestic issues.

But it also calls for ending US military aid to Israel and accuses Israel of being an apartheid state. The platform includes a link to a website promoting the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel called BDS.

“The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people” reads the “Invest/Divest” section of “A Vision for Black Lives.”

A string of Jewish organizations, from the Anti-Defamation League to the Reform movement and National Council of Jewish Women, has condemned the genocide and apartheid language as well as the BDS endorsement. T’ruah, a rabbis’ human rights group that opposes Israel’s West Bank occupation, also criticized the document.

Most of the organizations took pains to note that they are sympathetic to other parts of the platform, many of which jibe with liberal Jewish positions on the criminal justice system, economic justice and immigration.

“While we are deeply concerned about the ongoing violence and the human rights violations directed at both Israelis and Palestinians, we believe the terms genocide and apartheid are inaccurate and inappropriate to describe the situation,”

NCJW wrote in a statement. “Further, BDS is too often used to de-legitimize Israel’s right to exist.”

Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports BDS, was the rare Jewish group that endorsed the platform in its entirety.

On Tues., Dec. 15, more than 300 Jewish activists in Boston marched for the Black Lives Matter movement, including members of Jewish Voice for Peace (photo credit: Ignacio Laguarda/Wicked Local)

Ndugga-Kabuye said state actions don’t need to rise to the level of the Holocaust or other historical genocides to deserve the term, which he said could connote unjust state killing of a disadvantaged group. He compared his usage of the word to We Charge Genocide, a group that opposes police violence in Chicago.

“We’re talking about a structure of violent deaths that are state sanctioned, that are without accountability, and that are ongoing,”

he told JTA.

“We can say this is what’s happening in Palestine and not equate it with what’s happening in South America. It doesn’t say it’s the same number of people being killed or the [same] manner of people being killed.”

T