Jewish Community Defies Zionists to Support Malia Bouattia

Anti-racist Jews for Justice Speak Out in Support of Malia

In the past week, the Tory press, New Labour and various racist Zionists, especially the Union of Jewish Students, have been foaming at the mouth attacking the radical new President of the National Union of Students, Malia Bouattia.  Malia, who is the first Black woman President of NUS is in reality the first Black President as well.  As someone who was a student union officer and member of NUS's Polytechnics Committee when Trevor Phillips was President.  He even threatened never to join the Labour Party when the National Organisation of Labour Students, under Tommy Shepherd (now an SNP MP!) voted to support No Platform for Fascists.  Trevor Phillips was all in favour of fascists organising on campus.

Phillips it was who fronted the recent Islamaphobic Channel 4 programme on Muslim attitudes to Jews.  He probably never thought to ask why there was no survey of Jewish attitudes to Muslims.  An Uncle Tom.

The attacks on Malia come from a small minority of Zionist activists.  They rely on the right-wing media to trumpet their groundless claims.  They claim Jews and Zionists are one and the same yet they also hold that to blame Jews for the actions of Zionism is anti-Semitic.  Try working that one out!

Tony Greenstein

I digress though.  In the Guardian there are letters from Mike Cushman on behalf of Jews for  Boycotting Israeli Goods, Tony Greenstein on behalf of Jews for Jeremy and a list of anti-Zionist and anti-racist Jews who have signed a joint letter in The Independent supporting Malia and welcoming her.  Of course the young Zionist racists of  the Union of Jewish Students, who imagine that they are oppressed by anti-Semitism because people object to the treatment of Palestinians, have led the attack on Malia and Black students in NUS.

These white racists should be treated with the contempt they deserve.  Jewish students are NOT oppressed.  They suffer no economic discrimination, quite the contrary, they are members of a community that is anything but economically deprived.  They suffer no racism and at worst a form of prejudice.  Most anti-Semitism, if it can be described as that, comes from comments directed at Jews as a result of the association of Jews with Israel's actions.  And who associates Jews with Israel?  The Zionists and organisations like the Board of Deputies of British Jews which organise rallies in support of Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

"then each took the hand of the other and then they were seen no more"

A powerful and moving song by Leon Rosselson, Britain’s foremost protest folk singer.  Leon Rosselson is a socialist who has devoted his musical talents to supporting the oppressed.  He has signed many letters to the newspapers attacking Israel’s murderous policies and he is both an anti-Zionist and a member of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods.

The song below will be ‘controversial’ only to those whose eyes are blind to the parallels between Nazism 80 years ago and its bastard offspring, Zionism.

It is precisely because Zionism wishes to exonerate the Nazis that Netanyahu (& he wasn’t alone) put forward the thesis at the last World Zionist Organisation Congress that the responsibility for the holocaust of European Jews was not that of Hitler but the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem.

Leon Rosselson

For Zionism today, any opposition to racism, even of the Nazi kind is embarrassing and does not fit with its war against the Palestinians.  Hence the desire to draw an equals sign between the Palestinians and the Nazis whereas the correct designation is that of Leon Rosselson, between Zionism and the Nazis.

Tony Greenstein

I was watching the news from Gaza

And I fell asleep on my chair

And when I woke up from my slumber

A young girl was standing there.

She said, My name is Rivka

They killed me because I’m a Jew

I died in the ghetto of Vilna

In nineteen forty two.

The ghetto was like a prison

They wouldn’t allow us to leave

Some said they were going to kill us all

We didn’t know what to believe.

That day I wore my new red dress

My bubbe had made for me

And in that crowded ghetto

It made me feel proud and free.

I looked up at the soldier

I looked him in the eye

I forgot to bow my head down

And so I had to die.

He smashed my head with his rifle

Because I was too bold

I was killed in the Vilna ghetto

When I was seven years old.

And then out of the darkness

A young boy’s gaze met mine

He said, My name is Mohammed

My country is Palestine.

I’ve lived all my life in Gaza

And the only time I feel free

Is when I go down to the harbour

And feel the wind from the sea.

That day I went with my cousins

We ran down to the beach to play

Then the soldier fired a shell at me

And blew my life away.

They want to crush our spirits

They want us to be afraid

Locked up in the prison of Gaza

The prison that they have made.

To them our lives don’t matter

They force us to live in a cage

I was killed on the beach in Gaza

At eleven years of age.

They don’t think that we deserve freedom

Or belong to the human race.

Mohammed, my brother, said Rivka,

This world is a cold, cold place.

Mohammed, my friend, my brother,

Let us leave this world of war.

Then each took the hand of the other

And then they were seen no more.

But I saw spokesmen and politicians

Lining up to speechify

And every word was a hypocrite

And every word was a lie.

I saw children still being slaughtered

The monster must have its fill

While the people with power sat on their hands 

And supplied the weapons that kill.

I weep for the people of Gaza

And they are weeping still

And I curse the ones who do nothing

And encourage the monster to kill. 

Comparing Nazis to Jews? Leon Rosselson explains‘The Ballad of Rivka & Mohammed’

February 17, 2016 by Robert A. H. Cohen 

It’s shocking.

But that’s the point.

You’re not supposed to do this. But he has.

Songwriters have creative licence but has Leon Rosselson gone too far?

A Nazi soldier smashes the head of Rivka, a seven year old girl wearing her new red dress in the Vilna ghetto in 1942. An Israeli soldier fires a shell onto a Gaza beach and kills Mohammed, an eleven year old boy playing football with his cousins in 2014. In the songwriter’s dream, Mohammed and Rivka take each other’s hand and “leave this world of war” – together.

The Polish ghetto has been twinned with the Gaza Strip.

Nazis are on a parallel with Israelis.

And in life and in death, Rivka and Mohammed are together and equal.

Leon Rosselson has given us a new song that will outrage some but bring many more to tears.

But is the comparison of Rivka and Mohammed fair? Isn’t such a coupling of victims a dishonest slur against the state of Israel, a gross exaggeration, and an offence to the memory of the six million?

Hold those questions in your head while I introduce you to Leon Rosselson, England’s finest radical songwriter.

Radical songwriter/Compassionate heart

At the age of 81 Rosselson has just announced that his new album ‘Where are the barricades?’, will be his last.

It marks the end of more than fifty years of recordings that have charted the struggles between the left and the right, the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak. And, in more recent years, the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, Zionists and anti-Zionists, and between Jews and Jews.

Leon Rosselson gained national recognition in the early 1960s through appearances on David Frost’s BBC satire show That Was The Week That Was (TW3). Over the years he’s sung with many of the greats of the 1960s and 70s English folk music scene including Martin Carthy, Roy Bailey and Sandra Kerr.

I first discovered Rosselson’s music in the early 1980s through a passionate Billy Bragg rendering of probably his most well known song ‘The World Turned Upside Down’. The song tells the doomed story of a community of 17th century English radicals called the Diggers whose attempt to ‘build a common treasury for all’ is violently crushed. Rosselson succeeds in turning the story of their defeat into a song of inspiration and hope.

Invariably Leon Rosselson delivers his songs with wit, humanity and a great deal of compassion. His best songwriting tells stories or describes emotionally charged encounters. He chooses his words with great care and sings them as a concerned, committed, chronicler of our times rather than an angry revolutionary. In fact, it’s hard to imagine this Jewish son born into a communist household in North London ever climbing barricades or storming the citadels of power. That would have been a waste of his talents anyway.

Not a nation, not a religion

If you want to understand how Rosselson’s Jewish and communist roots have informed his songwriting you can find it beautifully set out in a song called ‘My Father’s Jewish World‘.  Rosselson’s take on the Judaism he inherited from his parents is summed up in the chorus:

It’s not a nation

Not a religion

This Jewish Spirit is still unbroken

It’s like the candle that mocks the darkness

It’s like the song that shatters the silence

It’s like the fool that laughs at the dragon

It’s like the spark that signals rebellion

It’s like the dance that circles unending

All of this needs to be understood as we return to ‘The Ballad of Rivka & Mohammed‘.

Rivka & Mohammed

Rosselson wrote the song while Israel’s 2014 Gaza assault was still underway. Mohammed was one of the more than 500 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces during that summer. Before the new album version was recorded, Rosselson put this front room performance on YouTube:

On first hearing ‘Rivka & Mohammed’ it struck me how many political taboos Rosselson was breaking.

Through his story-telling/song-writing we see the two characters not as representatives of Jews or Palestinians but as children killed because of hatred, cruelty and the ability of human beings to dehumanise each other.

The Levellers

Rosselson universalises their situation refusing to allow politics and nationalism to create a divide of righteous and unrighteous dead. The point is that Jews cannot forever been seen as only and always the ‘victims’. We have shown our ability to be bringers of pain, suffering and death. In such circumstances, where should a Jew, still filled with the Jewish Spirit of our ancestors, choose to stand?

Rosselson’s song succeeds in ‘shattering the silence’ and it would be good to think that Rivka and Mohammed could ‘signal a rebellion’ against the collective denial about Israel that still grips most Jews.

It’s wrong to equate Israel with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust  in my view. Such attempts at direct historical comparisons are poor history and invariably lead to a row about anti-Semitism rather than current oppression and suffering. But if the question is: Can the hatred, intolerance and violence seen perpetrated by Nazis against Jews been seen in the behaviour of Jews towards Palestinians (with the Jewish state itself as a protagonist) then the answer is ‘yes it can’.

The essential truth is that any people in any place can become afflicted with Nazi behaviour if the circumstances are right. That ought to be the real lesson of the Holocaust. The tragedy for both Jews and Palestinians is that Zionism has created those circumstances in Israel/Palestine.

So what does Rosselson himself have to say about the song? I’m grateful to Leon for agreeing to answer my questions.

An interview with Leon Rosselson

Leon Rosselson

Cohen: Your song about Rivka & Mohammed draws an equivalence between Gaza today and the Vilna ghetto in 1942. Is it the individual suffering or the political circumstances that you’re  comparing, or both?

Rosselson: I am not the only one to see parallels between Jews in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vilna and Palestinians in the ghetto of Gaza.  There’s a youtube video of photos of the destruction in the Warsaw Ghetto alongside photos of the destruction in Gaza with Paul Robeson singing the Vilna Ghetto song & a quote from a Nazi chief-of-staff to the effect that ‘Jewish terrorists’ are to blame for the death & destruction in the Warsaw ghetto alongside a quote from an Israeli functionary that ‘Hamas terrorists’ are to blame for the destruction in Gaza.

The racism of the Nazis, dehumanising Jews (and so making them disposable), is matched by the racism of prominent Israelis and government spokesman dehumanising Palestinians, calling them ‘little snakes’, ‘two-legged beasts’, ‘drugged cockroaches’ and suggesting – as in an article in The Times of Israel – that there are times when genocide is permissible.

That’s the background. But the song is a story about two children who share a common humanity and a common fate. The key line, for me, is ‘Then each took the hand of the other’.  Given the contempt in which Zionism and Israelis hold the Jews of Eastern Europe for going passively into the gas chambers (as the myth has it), it’s not a stretch to show that this Jewish child sees – not an Israeli child – but this Palestinian child as her friend, her brother.

So the song is both personal and political.

Cohen: You must have known the song would be provocative and controversial, even outrageous, for some listeners. Was that your intention from the start or just where the creative process took you?

Rosselson: I don’t write songs to be controversial or provocative.  Any song that implies criticism of Israel is going to be seen by Israeli supporters as provocative so that really doesn’t enter my consciousness.

I wanted to express my anger and dismay at what Israel was doing in this attack on Gaza, what those who called themselves Jewish were doing to another people. I don’t think that saying directly what I think, what I feel makes for a very good song so I looked for a story that would carry what I wanted to say.  When I’d calmed down a bit, I changed the ending, omitting the curse.

Cohen: Does the ‘monster’ only represent Israel?

Rosselson: It seemed to me that it was an appropriate word for a state that uses its immense military power to crush a defenceless people. Doubtless there are other monsters in the world.

Cohen: What reactions have you had to the song as a recording and in performance?

Rosselson: I haven’t so far had any hostile response, probably because Jewish supporters of Israel don’t usually come to my concerts. Sometimes they do, particularly in America. Mostly audiences are moved by the song.  My daughter can’t listen to it without crying and it took me time to be able to sing it without openly showing emotion. It is, after all, desperately sad.

Cohen: What for you would be a good outcome for Israel/Palestine?

Rosselson: I think now there is no 2-state solution however desirable some, like Uri Avnery and, of course, mainstream politicians think it would be. It’s not going to happen. It wouldn’t anyway solve the problem (the ‘demographic’ problem, as Israelis see it) of what rights Palestinians – 1 in 5 of the population – would have in a Jewish state.

I’m against a Jewish state as I’m against an Islamic state or any state that excludes, by definition, a minority of its population. So one state with equal rights for all its citizens would be the best solution. So no Palestinian state either. Until that happens,far off into the future, the conflict will continue.

‘The Ballad of Rivka & Mohammed’ can be found on Rosselson’s final album ‘Where are the Barricades’. You can buy from his website or on iTunes. For more of his songs with an Israel/Palestine theme ‘The Last Chance’ is the album to buy.

Boycott Goes International

Britain's main Jewish Boycott Group

 Boycott goes prime-time in Israel

As people can see Boycott is going international with campaigns springing up across Europe and even causing ructions in the Italian Jewish community. Also Israel’s most popular Channel 2 Channel devoted a whole programme to it.

Israelis are worried.  What 'degitimisation' means is a  refusal to accept a Jewish State.   That is what worries them

Tony Greenstein

From Israel’s +972 Magazine



The country’s number-one news show runs lengthy piece on the growing movement – and blames it not on anti-Semitism or Israel-bashing, but on settlements.

Stock photo boycott activists in France. (Photo: Olga Besnard / Shutterstock.com)

On Saturday night the boycott of Israel gained an impressive new level of mainstream recognition in this country. Channel 2 News, easily the most watched, most influential news show here, ran a heavily-promoted, 16-minute piece on the boycott in its 8 p.m. prime-time program. The piece was remarkable not only for its length and prominence, but even more so because it did not demonize the boycott movement, it didn’t blame the boycott on anti-Semitism or Israel-bashing. Instead, top-drawer reporter Dana Weiss treated the boycott as an established, rapidly growing presence that sprang up because of Israel’s settlement policy and whose only remedy is that policy’s reversal.



Canada's largest church supports boycott

In her narration, Weiss ridicules the settlers and the government’s head-in-the-sand reaction to the rising tide. The segment from the West Bank’s Barkan Industrial Park opens against a background of twangy guitar music like from a Western. "To the world it’s a black mark, a symbol of the occupation," she reads. "But here they insist it’s actually a point of light in the area, an island of coexistence that continues to flourish despite efforts to erase it from the map." A factory owner who moved his business to Barkan from the other side of the Green Line makes a fool of himself by saying, "If the state would only assist us by boycotting the Europeans and other countries causing us trouble …" The Barkan segment ends with the manager of Shamir Salads saying that between the European and Palestinian boycott, he’s losing about $115,000 to $143,000 a month in sales. "In my view," he says, "it will spread from [the West Bank] to other places in Israel that have no connection to the territories."


Weiss likewise ridicules Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, who runs the government’s "hasbara war," as he puts it. Weiss: "Yes, in the Foreign Ministry they are for the time being sticking to the old conception: it’s all a question of hasbara." This week the campaign’s new weapon, developed with the contributions of world Jewry: (Pause) Another hasbara agency, this time with the original name ‘Face To Israel.’" She quotes the co-owner of Psagot Winery saying the boycott is "nothing to get excited about," that people have been boycotting Jews for 2,000 years, and concluding, "If you ask me, in the last 2,000 years, our situation today is the best it’s ever been." That final phrase, along with what Weiss describes as Elkin’s "conceptzia," are the same infamous words that Israelis associate with the fatal complacency that preceded the surprise Yom Kippur War.


The Channel 2 piece features abortive telephone calls with boycott "victims" who didn’t want to be interviewed for fear of bad publicity. The most dramatic testimony comes from Daniel Reisner, an attorney with the blue-chip law firm Herzog Fox Neeman who advises such clients. He explains:

Most of the companies victimized by the boycott behave like rape victims. They don’t want to tell anybody. It’s as if they’ve contracted some sort of disease and they don’t want anyone to know.

More and more companies are coming to us for advice – quietly, in the evening, where no one can hear them – and they say: ‘I’ve gotten into this or that situation; is there something you can do to help?’"


Without giving the names of his clients or the extent of their losses, Reisner says the boycott is causing Israeli businesses to lose foreign contracts and investors. "My fear is of a snowball effect," he says. Prof. Shai Arkin, vice president for R&D at Hebrew University, says there are many cases of Israeli candidates for research fellowships at foreign universities being turned down because their resumes include service in the Israeli army.


Advice from a friend abroad comes from Matthew Gould, the British ambassador to Israel: "I love Israel. And I’m worried that in another five years Israel will wake up and find that it doesn’t have enough friends."


Weiss asks the EU ambassador here, Lars Faaborg-Andersen: "If Israel would change its policy, all this would go away?" The ambassador replies: "Yes. It is about Israeli policies. If the settlement business continue[s] to expand, Israel will be facing increasing isolation."


The piece presents Tzipi Livni as the country’s would-be savior. She says the current negotiations with the Palestinians (in which she represents Israel, along with Netanyahu confidant Isaac Molho) are holding back the boycott’s expansion, but that "if there is a crisis [in the talks], everything will break loose." She says she is "shouting at people to wake up."


Weiss: "What does this all mean? What is it going to be like here? South Africa?"


Livni: "Yes. I spoke with some of the Jews who are living n South Africa now. They say, ‘We thought we had time. We thought we could deal with this. We thought we didn’t need the world so much for everything. And it happens all at once.’"


Sixteen minutes of prime time on Israel’s all-popular TV news show on Saturday night, the end of the week in this country. Bracing stuff. A wrench thrown into the national denial machine – and by Channel 2. Definitely a sign of progress – and of life. Another reminder of why this country is worth fighting for – which, for many of us Israeli boycott-supporters, if not necessarily most of us, is what the boycott, strange as it may sound, is all about.


(Watch the segment here. The English-language segments, interviews with UK Ambassador Matthew Gould and EU Ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen, can be seen at 08:11 and 14:05, respectively.)

Pressure on Israeli banks from investors intensifies

Financial Times, January 19, 2014 5:33 amBy Madison Marriage

ABP, the world’s third-largest pension fund, and two major European investors are reviewing their holdings in Israeli banks over concerns that the banks finance illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian-occupied territories.


As well as ABP, the Dutch pension fund with €300bn of assets under management, the investors include Nordea  Investment Management, a €130bn Scandinavian fund house, and DNB  Asset Management, a €60bn Norwegian fund group.
 
All three want more information from the Israeli banks about their involvement in financing the settlements, which contravene international human rights laws established under the Fourth Geneva Convention in 2004.


A spokesperson for KLP, one of the biggest Norwegian pension funds, with €45bn of assets, also confirmed that "dilemmas linked to financing [of Israeli settlements] will be discussed at KLP".

Palestinians see the settlements as an obstacle to achieving a viable state, and most countries consider the settlements illegal.


The reviews come after PGGM, the second-largest Dutch pension fund, two weeks ago became the first big investor to dump its holdings  in five large Israeli banks: Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank and Mizrahi Tefahot.


PGGM said in a statement: "Given the day-to-day reality and domestic legal framework they operate in, the banks have limited to no possibilities to end their involvement in the financing of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"Therefore it was concluded that engagement as a tool to bring about change will not be effective in this case."


ABP has held talks with three of the banks over the settlement issue for a year. The pension fund might exclude the stocks "as a last resort" if the banks fail to act on ABP’s complaints, a spokesperson said.


Nordea Investment Management has sent letters to Leumi and Mizrahi "regarding concerns about the violation of international norms", Sasja Beslik, Nordea’s head of responsible investment, told FTfm.

The Scandinavian fund house plans to meet these banks in March before taking a decision on whether to withdraw their investment at a committee meeting in May.


DNB Asset Management’s external consultancy GES is engaging with several Israeli banks on this issue.


Israel Discount Bank declined to comment. Banks Hapoalim and Leumi did not respond to requests for comment.


Mr Beslik expects other large investors to start looking at their investment policies on the Israeli settlement matter shortly.


He said: "Very few asset managers have a policy [on this issue], which means that the banks are not under pressure regarding these violations. The pressure on asset owners to live up to their values when it comes to these issues will increase, I am certain about that."

ING Investment Management, the fund arm of Dutch Bank ING, said that it has requested research on the settlement issue from an independent third party.

Latest

Germany, Israel’s best friend in Europe is increasingly imposing sanctions on companies trading across the Green Line

from Electronic Intifada

Senior Israel officials, including justice minister Tzipi Livni and finance minister Yair Lapid, have in recent weeks sounded increasingly desperate warnings about the dire effects growing BDS campaigns were likely to have on Israel.

Italian Jews Grapple With J Street-Style Rift on Israel

Disruption of Critical Meeting Sparks Rethink

Special meetings are being held this week to discuss increasingly sharp political tensions within the Italian Jewish community centered on differing attitudes toward Israel and the Middle East.



Italian act
or Moni Ovadia resigns from Milanese Jewish community

The meetings were called in the wake of an incident on Jan. 14, in which Jewish protesters disrupted a panel discussion of a book on the left wing and Israel, "The Left and Israel: The Moral Frontier of the West." The event was organized at a Rome Jewish center by the leftist Jewish group J-Call – which is modeled on the American J-Space, and the Hans Jonas Association Jewish cultural organization.


Amid what a report in the local Jewish media called "heavy intimidation," the protesters prevented J-Call spokesman Giorgio Gomel, from speakinTzg, and Gomel and another organizer had to be escorted from the premises by Jewish community security.


Gomel, who has been vocal in his criticism of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians, has frequently come under fire from opposing Jewish factions. Reports said protesters on Jan. 14 unfurled a banner saying "Gomel, go back to Gaza."


Expressing "alarm and concern," Renzo Gattegna, the president of Italy’s umbrella Jewish organization, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, called an extraordinary meeting of the organization’s council to clarify the "limits, procedures and rules" to be followed at Jewish community venues.


At the same time, the leadership of the Rome Jewish community convened an urgent meeting open to all members of the community. "Beyond the image of Italian Jewry as a whole, what is at play is the security of our members," Rome Jewish community President Riccardo Pacifici was quoted as saying by the Jewish media.


Italian actor Moni Ovadia last year resigned from the Milan Jewish community with accusations that it is a "propaganda office" of the Israeli government.　

The Backlash Against Zionist McCarthyism

Jewish People Say Gerald Scarfe’s cartoon is NOT anti-Semitic

Today's Independent highlighted a letter from 28 Jewish people entitled Zionist Claims of anti-Semitism.  In fact the Zionist zealots are having trouble convincing most British Jews of how terrible the 'blood libel' cartoon of Scarfe really is!