Showing posts with label Karl Sabbagh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karl Sabbagh. Show all posts

1 December 2018

The AntiSemitism Wars – how the British media failed their public – Karl Sabbagh, Skyscraper Publications, 2018

The First Book on the Zionists' Fake Anti-Semitism Witchhunt which followed Corbyn’s Election as Labour Leader

The False Anti-Semitism Wars have been waged ever since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader in the summer of 2015. Today their target is the wider Palestine solidarity movement.
It’s not easy to review a book in which you are a contributor! What I set out to do was give was a potted history of how ‘anti-Semitism’ was deployed as a propaganda weapon against Corbyn and the Left by oth the Zionist movement, the right-wing of the Labour Party and their accomplices in the prostitute press, not least the Guardian.
The first chapter by Karl Sabbagh, ‘the summer of anti-Semitism’ set the scene with Gordon Brown’s speech urging Labour to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. Sabbagh caustically remarks that newspapers used to report the news. Brown’s speech ‘was as newsworthy as a speech by the Pope’ praising Roman Catholicism.’
Just a small sample of the vitriol thrown at the Labour Party by the bourgeois press
Sabbagh takes issue with former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks comments in which he asks ‘is this country safe to bring up our (Jewish) children’ and contrasts the position today with when Oswald Moseley and the British Union of Fascists organised in the East End of London. My own father, who was at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, told me how certain streets were too dangerous for Jews to walk down. 
What was the cause of this nonsense? Jeremy Corbyn telling 2 Zionist misfits, Jonathan Hoffman and Richard Millett, that despite having lived in Britain for most if not all of their lives, they lacked an understanding of British irony. Why? Because of ‘their hostile reactions to a rather witty speech by the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK’ who wasn’t native to these shores. Nothing racist about that.
The Guardian's pretentious and pompous Rafael Behr
Sabbagh points to the central contradiction of the ‘anti-Semitism allegations – they are based on the oppression of Palestinians:
‘Much of the attack on Labour has been in the name of racism, with Jews as one target. But many Zionists... seem only concerned with anti-Semitism, while expressing support for bigoted views about other groups, notably the Palestinians.’
The most vicious of the Zionist groups, the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism [CAA] even claimed that ‘more than half of British Jews felt that anti-Semitism today echoed that of the 1930’s.’ Ha’aretz’s Anshel Pfeffer suggested that this
‘showed a disconnect bordering on hysteria... not only are they woefully ignorant of recent Jewish history but have little concept of what real anti-Semitism is.’
Sabbagh also points to the hypocrisy of the so-called intellectual Jonathan Sacks, a man whose trade is in bigotry dressed up as profundity.  What could be more ludicrous than his comparison of Jeremy Corbyn to Enoch Powell.  This is the same Sacks who wrote, in 2017, that arch racist Douglas Murray had written one of the ‘best books of the year’  [The Strange Death of Europe] in which he had quoted Powell’s infamous 1968 Rivers of Blood speech favourably and who said that the consequence of Muslim immigration would be to destroy White, Christian Europe. This is also the same Sacks who encouraged Jews to join the annual pogrom that goes by the name of Jerusalem Day. [Chief Rabbi and Lord Sacks should not back this march], Nina Morris-Evans in the Jewish News (25.5.17.) described how
This march has come to be associated with growing levels of hate speech and racist violence, including shouts of “Death to Arabs” and vandalism to Palestinian property.’
My article takes readers through the history of the anti-Semitism witchhunt beginning with my own suspension in March 2016. I place the anti-Corbyn campaign in the context of what is and was concerted state destabilisation. Corbyn is seen by the British, American and Israeli authorities as a threat. I refer people to the book which Phil Agee, a former CIA agent, wrote, over 40 years ago Inside the Company about CIA destabilisation in South America.
I suggest that the media blitz has not been spontaneous.  It shows every sign of having been co-ordinated with the British state in conjunction with the Guardian and Jonathan Freedland. This has been brilliantly highlighted by fivefilters who have produced a series of the Guardian’s most abysmal anti-Corbyn headlines. See also The Guardian and Jonathan Freedland's tedious Campaign against Corbyn. My favourite Guardian headline is by the terminally boring Roy Greenslade’s ‘Yes Jeremy Corbyn has suffered a bad press but where’s the harm?’ If Greenslade is incapable of answering that question then he has no business calling himself a journalist. Nick Cohen’s Don’t tell me you weren’t warned about Corbyn which called his readers ‘fucking fools’ runs him a close second along with Freedland’s I’ve felt the Bern. And Jeremy Corbyn, you’re no Senator Sanders. Guardian writers love pretending that they are attacking Corbyn because they are the genuine radicals!
Of course some people will laugh at my suggestion that the Deep State has been influencing the press and people like Freedland who also writes for the Jewish Chronicle. Peoples’ memories are short. It wasn’t so long ago that BBC journalist John Tusa fronted a CIA sponsored News Agency Forum World Features.
The false anti-Semitism campaign began with Corbyn’s alleged association with a holocaust denier, Paul Eisen, progressed to Gerald Kaufmann’s allegations about ‘Jewish money’ and the allegations that the Labour Club at Oxford University was riddled with anti-Semitism and the Royall Inquiry. Then there was Naz Shah and a humourous meme about Israel moving to the United States, Ken Livingstone and Hitler’s support for Zionism, the Chakrabarti Report and Ruth Smeeth’s contrived allegations of anti-Semitism against Mark Wadsworth until the present day when the IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ was foisted on the Labour Party after Luciana Berger had produced a long forgotten mural out of her hat.  Not forgetting of course my own expulsion and Jackie Walker’s suspension.
I point to the role that the poisonous CAA, a ‘charity’ no less, has played in the anti-Semitism affair with its hysterical denunciations. Also prominent in the campaign was the overseas wing of the racist Israeli Labour Party, the Jewish Labour Movement. When the General Secretary of the Labour Party, Iain McNicol gave them permission to give ‘anti-Semitism training’ I remarked that it was like asking Harold Shipman to give a course on medical ethics.
The attacks on Ken Livingstone for having dared to say that the Zionist Emperor had no clothes and that he had been found in a compromising position with the Nazis, engaging in a profitable trade, marked a new stage in the anti-Semitism witchhunt.
All of this was a precursor to a renewal of the fake anti-Semitism attacks in March this year with a long erased mural of bankers that Luciana Berger suddenly found at the bottom of her handbag. This helped build up the pressure which resulted in Labour’s National Executive Committee adopting the IHRA.
I spent the first few days of my holiday in Catalonia working on this chapter, whilst ignoring my fellow travelling companions Fiona and Bill North as well as my eldest son Daniel. 
My article was the first of four from people on the receiving end. The second article was from Karl Sabbagh and told the story of how, when he was the director of the MSD foundation, he also contributed a monthly column, as a freelance journalist to the magazine World Medicine.  Karl chose to write an article in September 1981 about the massacre at Deir Yassin in April 1948 when the Zionist  terror gangs, Irgun and Lehi, massacred 254 people.  Women, children and old people were brutally murdered with knives and grenades and the surviving men were paraded through Jerusalem prior to being shot. The Deir Yassin massacre led to the flight of the Arabs and the Nakba.
Sabbagh wrote the article as a group of doctors prepared to fly out to Israel for the ‘Medical Olympics’. It was an Open Letter to these doctors warning them that they may be invited to the Government Hospital for Mental Diseases at Kfar Shaul, some of whose patients reside in a group of buildings which were the scene of the massacre.
Suffice to say the heavens opened up and the journal was deluged with protests. It‘set in train a series of events which showed in its most naked form the way in which a pressure group tries to curtail press freedom, when it comes to criticising Israel and Zionism.’  You might think that nothing much has changed in the intervening years.
The Israeli Medical Association went on the offensive asking advertisers to withdraw advertising until the magazine promised never to publish ‘PLO propaganda’. Several pharmaceutical companies wrote to World Medicine threatening reprisals. The IMA also wrote to the Governors of the MSD Foundation suggesting they distance themselves from Sabbagh’s article even though it had been written in his private capacity. Jewish doctors wrote letters to the editor expressing their distress and annoyance that the article had been published. They also wrote to Merck, Sharp and Dohme, the company which funded the foundation, saying they would no longer prescribe that company’s drugs. The IMA wrote to the Governors of the Foundation, asking for reassurance that Sabbagh would not write similar things in the future, although there was no connection between MSF and World Medicine. The Governors of the MSD Foundation passed a motion criticising Sabbagh for a serious error of judgement.
Karl remarked that it was ‘entirely understandable’ that the IMA didn’t want to be reminded of Israel’s dark history but ‘what is odd is that they were able to influence intelligent, sophisticated British doctors’ who ‘failed to see how they were being manipulated.’
A Dr Mann of Bolton was typical when he wrote to express his disgust at the article and then added ‘Incidentally whether or not Mr Sabbagh’s remarks are based on fact, I cannot say.’
In fact even David Ben Gurion, the future Prime Minister of Israel, condemned the Deir Yassin massacre. A hundred anonymous letters, full of venom were sent to the home address of the editor of World Medicine, including to his children.  This was just months before Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Sabbagh draws the conclusion that ‘for many Jews the facts about Israeli actions are irrelevant. Anyone criticising Israeli action is clearly motivated by anti-Semitism.’ This is unfortunately true but the question is why Zionist Jews and it may not just have been Jewish doctors, had this power of persuasion, which itself comes down to the question of what gives the Zionist lobby its power. Sabbagh never provides an answer and one is left with the idea that it is simply because they are Jewish rather than the fact that they support Israel a hegemon in imperialist politics. Sabbagh concluded that these ‘sad offerings’ were from ‘very angry doctors’ most of whom did not want what he had said to be true.
Sabbagh is right say that it is ‘a function of Zionism to prevent discussion of the past in case people realise that the Palestinians have a case.’ Sabbagh notes that ‘these Princes of the profession’ would say that ‘the Jewish lobby is very powerful.’ and he complains that they never asked why this was so. Unfortunately this is the wrong question. Although members of the Zionist lobby might describe themselves as Jewish the fact is that they were acting as part of the Israel/Zionist lobby. That is where their power derives, not from the fact that they are Jewish.
What happened to Sabbagh over his article in World Medicine has been repeated a thousand fold. The Zionist lobby does its best to suppress freedom of speech but the reasons why it is able to do this is because its power derives from the role that Israel plays in the Middle East. That is why people like Trump and Steve Bannon combine ardent Zionism with anti-Semitism. Sabbagh looks at this only in terms of the self-identification of many of these doctors.
Sabbagh asks ‘why did some uncommitted non-Jewish doctors, some of them quite senior figures, respond so readily to the blatantly organised lobby?’ I suggest that the reason lies in the conservative politics of these doctors.  World Medicine soon closed down under the pressure and one of the main figures in this affair became Sir Donald Irvine before becoming President of the General Medical Council.
In 2008 what happened to Sabbagh repeated itself after the British Medical Journal published an article by Dr Derek Summerfield about the effects of Israel’s actions in Gaza.  Again there was a similar Zionist campaign and a flurry of emails. Many of the barely literate and abusive emails came from the USA. This time the campaign was co-ordinated by a Zionist lobby group HonestReporting’. The emails that were sent were full of spelling mistakes, abuse and the normal assertions that Derek ‘hates the Jews because their have more in their little finge than he has in his whole brain.’  Presumably in their anger and outrage grammar took a hit. Appendix 2 devotes 4 pages to these illiterate, abusive emails. My favourite one is ‘I hope you die of HIV like Yasser Arafat’ who of course did no such thing.
None of this should be any surprise.  Unfortunately Karl has drawn the wrong conclusions. The majority of people involved in this kind of campaign might be Jewish but the question is why many Jews today have allowed themselves to be co-opted by Israel.
The third article is by Cyril Chilson. Cyril was born in Israel to the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. He was a member of Oxford Labour Party and because he is also an anti-Zionist (& a convert to Catholicism) he is subject to the normal accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’.
Labour First Witchfinder General Maggi Cosin with Blairite Liz Kendall
His mistake was to tweet anti-Israel comments. As with the complaints against me, the identity of one’s accusers was never disclosed. As I had a law degree I offered to be Cyril’s legal representative but it would appear that the Chair of the National Constitutional (Kangaroo) Committee Maggi Cosin nearly choked.  Cyril’s choice of me was held by the Prosecutor Dan Hogan to be proof of his wickedness: ‘Mr Chilson’ announced Hogan in dramatic pathos, ‘wanted to be represented by Tony Greenstein.... One wonders why.’  In any normal court of law comments on the accused’s choice of representative would be contempt of court. A professional offence.
Cyril’s description of the proceedings with Cosin in charge, makes the proceedings a mixture of Alice Through the Looking Glass and Hanging Judge Jeffries. On more than one occasion Cyril was threatened with being thrown out of his own hearing.
Douglas Fairbairn, the misogynist abuser on Labour's NCC who sat in judgement of others for abuse
In any fair system, Douglas Fairbairn would be appearing in front of the NCC not sitting in judgement of others

Cosin, ably aided by a silent Douglas Fairbairn from the right-wing Community Union, repeatedly interrupted Cyril and refused to allow him to challenge Hogan. It is ironic that people accused of ‘abuse’ in the Labour Party had their cases heard by a Committee whose membership includef Fairbairn, who is notorious for his sexist and misogynist comments on Twitter.  If it was anyone else they would have been suspended for comments such as ‘@britneyspears what a bitch’ or ‘Go to bed you silly woman’.
Cyril used to tweet headlines concerning Israeli atrocities and then ask rhetorically ‘Is reporting this anti-Semitic?’Hogan, who prided himself on having become the sorcerer’s apprentice, claimed that such a question ‘denied Jewish people the language to describe their persecution’. One feels like saying, ‘no you idiot, he’s taking the piss out of those who would label support for the Palestinians as anti-Semitic.’ Hogan asked Cyril questions such as ‘Can you understand that your tweets come across as offensive.’ Apparently it is a crime to offend racists.
The wit and wisdom of the NCC's misogynist Fairbairn
Just as in my hearing, Cosin turned round at the end and asked ‘Do you think your hearing was a fair one’. I simply replied ‘No’, which caused her some surprise. Cyril was  more diplomatic: ‘I think the question is unfair. I do have some misgivings about what went on here today but I hope to be proven wrong.’  After 30 minutes all 3 charges were found proven (Cosin has a 100% record for finding those hauled before her guilty). I should also add that Emina Ibrahim, Jon Lansman’s tame Vice-Chair of Momentum was a member of both panels and she went along with the verdicts).
On hearing the verdict Cyril and his wife departed: ‘This was a colossal waste of time. Goodbye’.  ‘Hang on! Don’t go! We haven’t reached a decision yet!’ Cosin shouted ‘in a last attempt to keep a facade of fairness.’ Cyril and his wife kept walking and in the post arrived the sentence – 2 years expulsion. He was lucky, I got 5!
The final story was about Tom Suarez. Suarez wrote a book, a very good book, in October 2016 State of  Terror: how terrorism created modern Israel. Based on original research Tom produced some excellent material about the Zionist terror campaign against the Palestinians pre-1948 when hundreds of Palestinian civilians died at the hands of the Irgun and Lehi.
Suarez’s book tour was subject to concerted attacks by a group of Zionists determined that he would not be able to speak. At SOAS David Collier, a so-called researcher, and Jonathan Hoffman disrupted the event. The same two had been active in stopping American Jewish Professor and UN Rapporteur Richard Falk speaking on campus. In this they were aided by the Daily Mail whose report wasn’t about the threat to free speech, which would be the case if it had been left-wingers disrupting a speaker. It led with ‘Israeli Embassy’s fury after anti-Semitic hate speaker gives talk at a top London university.’ Suarez isn’t anti-Semitic and what business is it of the Israeli Embassy who speaks on campuses? Is it the function of an Embassy to object to speakers they don’t like? Imagine if the German Embassy in the 1930’s had objected to anti-fascist speakers. As Suarez puts it ‘In today’s climate, the charge of anti-Semitism is its own proof. Like the McCarthyism of 1950s United States, being identified as an anti-Semite is akin to having the plague.’
In this article Cohen warns that Labour might get as low as 75 seats - he called Corbyn supporters 'fucking fools' - since I was one of the few to call the result correctly I offered Kath Viner, the Guardian's Editor the chance of hiring me instead of Cohen at half the salary but I'm still waiting for a reply!
As Suarez notes ‘the actual scale of destruction is far greater than the paper trail’ since there is no way to know how many people were intimidated by the Daily Mail from even inviting him. Hoffman and Collier complained to SOAS and ‘simply lodging the complaint enabled them to ‘corroborate’ it with their own headline in the Jewish News.’ When Zionists assert something that is news.  When anti-Zionists say something it is either ignored or derided.
When Suarez was due to speak at a Cambridge PSC meeting at Jesus Lane, Quaker Meeting House it was the Board of Deputies who objected. The Board tried the same with the Quaker Meeting House in Brighton when Jackie Walker spoke but they failed. Jesus Lane, under pressure of time and lacking information, cancelled the meeting. PSC Cambridge found another venue and kept it confidential.
At this meeting some Jesus Lane Friends were in attendance and saw for themselves that nothing anti-Semitic was said. Not only did the Jewish Chronicle refuse to correct misstatements about the Quakers but the original cancellation ‘was seized upon as a self-corroboration prize.’ In the end the Quakers were forced to put out a statement about ‘the continuing misrepresentation by Jonathan Hoffman and others.’ They confirmed that the Friends ‘have no reservations about Tom Suarez or his work.’
The moral of this story is that it is easier to spread a lie than to counteract it. When the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution refused the Board’s demands to cancel Tom’s talk the BOD used a new Jewish Chronicle piece ‘to further embellish the inventions about me and about Jesus Lane that it had already refused to correct the year before.’
The Jewish Chronicle under tabloid editor Stephen Pollard is a Zionist propaganda rag.  The truth of a report is secondary to its political utility.  The BOD simply functions as a Zionist pressure group. 
Finally, after the lies in the JC had been accompanied by a refusal to allow any right of reply Tom contacted press regulator IPSOS. The JC's only defence was that its views were ‘shared by many JC readers.’ Which is not surprising as they only have their misreporting to go by!
In Portsmouth the Council’s Prevent officer, Charlie Pericleous, secured the banning of Tom’s talk from all public venues. When challenged he refused to say what his evidence was. At the University of Massachusetts 3 Zionist professors organised a letter writing campaign however the President of the University stood firm. The American press were little different from the Zionist press in Britain.  However a solitary exception was when an article headlined ‘Hate does have a home at UMass’  appeared in the Amherst Wire. On being presented with a tape of the talk the online article was removed. At some universities Suarez spoke without incident. One of the most avid distributors of the original Daily Mail piece was music critic Norman Lebrecht who nearly bust a blood vessel in the Sunday Telegraph when we disrupted the Jerusalem Quartet concert in London a few years ago!  Some disruptions are kosher it would seem.
The third section of the book contains a raft of documents which give substance to our allegations that there has been a concerted campaign of false allegations of anti-Semitism. The introduction cites the Al Jazeera Programmes which have finally been leaked in the United States which cite Eric Gallagher, the development director of The Israel Project who boasted of how they got a Black Lives Matters event cancelled by getting a donor to put in a call to the venue. This is how the Zionist movement lives up to the anti-Semitic caricature of rich Jews using money in order to purchase influence.
Included is an article by the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge Sir Stephen Sedley Defining Anti-Semitism in the May 2017 London Review of Books. Geoffrey Robertson QC produced an Opinion on the IHRA which found that it was ‘unfit for purpose’.
In Chapter 7, Eve Mykytun has an article ‘Exposed! How Britain’s Anti-Semitism scaremongers operate.’ It contains a lot of useful information about the CAA. It describes how in 2006 the Chair of the CAA, Gideon Falter, fitted up a civil servant Rowan Laxton who he alleged had said ‘fucking Jews’ when hearing about the Israeli massacres in Gaza. At the magistrates court Laxton was found guilty of using threatening behaviour and he was fined and removed from his Foreign Office position. The Hitler loving Daily Mail played its part in ensuring that the case got national attention but surprisingly failed to publicise Laxton’s successful appeal to the Crown Court where he was found not guilty. Not for the first time Faltier had lied. Eight years later Falter formed the CAA, which has developed lying into a fine art. Unfortunately Mykytun herself generalises about Jews:
In contrast to the downtrodden, Jews, as a group have been extraordinarily successful at utilising the media and the courts and obtaining the power to ‘hold the feet of the government to the fire.’
Jews do not act as a group unlike Zionists. Unfortunately Mykytun spoils her argument with a failure to distinguish between Jews and Zionists. It is no surprise that this article was sourced from Redress.
Nonetheless the article is a very serious analysis of the fraudulent use of statistics by the CAA in order to generate headlines in a gullible press. Their 2016 annual audit of anti-Semitism reports a 14.9% increase in crimes ‘targeting Jews’ yet violent anti-Semitic crimes fell by 44.7%.  The CAA admits it can’t find an explanation for this anomaly although the obvious one is that the 14.9% increase is bogus.
Mykytun proves that the CAA is utterly dishonest in the way that it uses statistics. Because many police forces don’t keep records the CAA ask them to conduct a keyword search for the word ‘Jew’ despite being warned that not all such occurrences are in relation to anti-Semitic incidents. Northumbria Police described CAA’s attempts at finding the level of anti-Semitic incidents as a ‘fishing expedition’.
The CAA’s primary concern is in producing headlines that can frighten Jews into believing there is an upsurge in anti-Semitism. In 2017 they concluded that:
·       One third of British Jews were considering emigrating
·       80% of Jews saw anti-Semitism disguised as comments about Israel
·       80% saw Labour as anti-Semitic
·       50% of Jews didn’t trust the Crown Prosecution Service
These conclusions were obtained on the basis of a self-selecting survey on the Internet.  Anyone could fill it in, there was no control mechanism or sampling.
The absurdity of the CAA’s figures were demonstrated by the results in Derbyshire where there was a 1050% increase in non-criminal anti-Semitic incidents (from 2 to 34). In Hertfordshire there was a 400% increase in anti-Semitic crime and a surge of 800% in non-criminal anti-Semitic incidents. In West Yorkshire the CAA were informed that the increase was due to administrative changes in the recording process. This didn’t stop the CAA from including the figures!
In Wiltshire there was a 13,900% increase in anti-Semitic incidents. This was too much, even for the CAA, and they disregarded Wiltshire’s 540 Jews altogether but on what methodological basis did they discard these figures and not others other than the fact that the figures were an obvious nonsense?  The CAA doesn’t say.
Jeremy Bedford-Turner, sentenced to 1 years imprisonment for incitement to racial hatred - believed all Jews should be deported from Britain
Mykytun covers two cases where the CAA forced the CPS to prosecute. One was a Jeremy Bedford Turner who was convicted of incitement to racial hatred and sentenced to a year imprisonment. He expressed the view that Jews should be deported.  I can’t say I feel too much sympathy with him!
The other case, Alison Chabloz, is more disturbing. Ms Chabloz is a holocaust denier. She has produced an extraordinarily offensive video ‘Survivors’ mocking the victims of the Hungarian Holocaust. However Holocaust denial is not illegal in Britain.  Nor should it be. It is illegal in Germany and Austria, both of which have neo-Nazis in their Parliament. Indeed in Austria the Freedom Party of Heinz

Christian Strache is part of the governing coalition. Making Holocaust denial does not seem to have had much effect.

Alison Chabloz, who is clearly mentally unwell, sentenced to a suspended sentence for holocaust denial - a dubious conviction
A distinction should be made between incitement, as per Bedford-Turner and holding an opinion, however offensive. In my view Chabloz should not have been convicted. I also take the view of Raul Hilberg the most distinguished of all Holocaust historians that even holocaust deniers make us question our knowledge of the Holocaust.
Gilad Atzmon also makes an appearance in Mykytun’s article. I have crossed swords with Atzmon on many occasions. Atzmon argues that if Israel calls itself a Jewish State then one must look at what Jewishness means.  In other words he explains Israel by looking at the Jews rather than seeing Israel as a colonial settler state.
Atzmon is also careless. In response to the Jeremy Bedford-Turner prosecution Atzmon accused Falter of making his living ‘manufacturing anti-Semitic incidents.’ There is no doubt that Falter manufactures anti-Semitism. The CAA is devoted to nothing else but Atzmon went one step further and accused Falter of making a living out of it.  I am quite prepared to believe he is an altruistic liar!
Mykytun too employs a scattergun to deal with threats to free speech.  Her analytical abilities leave a lot to be desired politically but she makes a valid point when she questions whether ‘the CAA intensifies anti-Semitism by urging Jews to find anti-Semitism everywhere.’ One suspects the CAA would be exceedingly disappointed if they could not find anti-Semitism but given their inventiveness that scenario is unlikely to occur.
Chapter 8 consists of the transcripts of the Al Jazeera programme, The Lobby which exposed Israeli agent Shai Masot and his attempts to take down British politicians. It was a classic series with Joan Ryan MP, Chair of the Labour Friends of Israel shown manufacturing a false anti-Semitism incident against Labour delegate Jean Fitzpatrick.
One of the book’s highlights is Chapter 9 where the Editor of Canary, Kerry Ann-Mendoza, interviews Stephen Oryszczuk, Foreign Editor of Jewish News. On 25th July three Zionist papers, including his own, all carried the same front page describing Jeremy Corbyn as an ‘existentialist threat’ to British Jews. This kind of borderline paranoia is a sad commentary on what passes for the Jewish press in England.  Stephen disagreed. He described phrases like ‘Corbynite contempt for Jews’ as ‘vicious’ and ‘repulsive.’ ‘The rhetoric doesn’t match the reality.’ Clearly it is a case of a good man fallen amongst rogues. Not surprisingly Stephen took leave soon afterwards. Zionism doesn’t do dissent. Today the Zionist movement has united around the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism whereas Oryszczuk is of the opinion, as is most legal and academic opinion that ‘the core definition itself is appalling. To call it woolly and vague is an understatement.’ There are no prizes for the boy who declares that the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. I suspect Oryszczuk will be looking for a new career!
Chapter 10 consists of the Report of the Committee for Privileges and Conduct of the House of Lords. A complaint had been made against Baroness Jenny Tonge when she chaired a meeting of the Palestine Return Centre as part of the Balfour Apology Campaign. At the meeting a Rabbi had ascribed the Holocaust to the behaviour of an American Zionist Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise whose support for a Boycott of Nazi Germany had driven Hitler mad. 
It was junk history but it is a fact that many Orthodox Rabbis hold God is responsible for everything, Holocaust included. The idea that the sins of the Jews brought forth the Holocaust is common.  The late Ovadia Yosef, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel. argued just this. If what was said at the meeting was anti-Semitic then half the world’s Orthodox Rabbis are anti-Semitic.
Suffice to say nearly all the bogus Zionist complaints against Jenny were rejected the allegations despite articles such as The Times ‘Jews blamed for Holocaust at ‘shameful House of Lords event.’
6 Lords, Zionists all –Lords Beecham, Deech and Stunell – complained that the meeting was ‘host to appalling anti-Semitic comments and Holocaust denial by audience members.’ They were all send the transcript of the actual meeting and asked to substantiate their allegations. They couldn’t.  All they could complain of was that Jenny Tonge hadn’t shut the Rabbi up!!
Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, the Commissioner for Standards rejected the allegations of Holocaust revisionism made against Jenny. Karl Sabbagh sums up the current state of affairs as this:
‘Zionists and supporters of Israel have reached a stage where not only critical comments about Jews are anti-Semitic, not only criticisms of Israel are anti-Semitic but even discussion of anti-Semitism is anti-Semitic.’
Appendix 1 consists of a number of statements by prominent Zionists which, if used about Jews, would be anti-Semitic.  For example the statement by Rabbi Yaacov Perrin of 27.2.1994 in the NYR that ‘One million Palestinians are not worth a Jewish fingernail’ (there is a misprint which says ‘Arab fingernail’. It is reminiscent of Rabbi Dov Lior, who proclaimed that‘A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.’
Appendix 3 consists of an extract Labour, Anti-Semitism and the News from the Media Reform Coalition Report.
There is an amazing amount of information packed into this book.  It is an extremely handy reference to the false anti-Semitism campaign and all activists should possess one.
You can also purchase this book for £10 (p&p) which is £2 less than the recommended price. Not only that but £2 of that goes to Labour Against the Witchhunt. Send the money to my PayPal account at tonygreenstein111@gmail.com


5 March 2017

The Balfour Declaration – The Tragedy of a Single Letter

The idiocies of Karl Sabbagh

This was a meeting to launch Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who? book which I reviewed.  Karl Sabbagh was one of the speakers

Karl Sabbagh
 Karl Sabbagh is a living example of the saying that there’s no fool like an old fool.

I came up to London on the NHS March train and it was a difficult decision – to go on the march or go to a conference at University College London entitled ‘Balfour – 1 Letter 100 Years Later.’  I decided that on balance the march would probably suffer less from my absence than the conference would gain from my presence!
Atzmon's book
Unfortunately I missed the opening speech from Avi Shlaim, a former Israeli Jew from Iraq and Emeritus Professor of International Relations at St Anthony’s College, Oxford University.  I did however catch the speech of Karl Sabbagh, a former BBC producer and author.  It was not a fair exchnge.
Gilad Atzmon - anti-Semitic ex-Israeli - was once on the periphery of the Palestine solidarity movement
Sabbagh was one of those inflated egos who gave credibility to a man caused Gilad Atzmon some years ago.  Atzmon’s brilliant thesis was that Zionism was not a settler colonial project and Israel was not a settler colonial state.  Good gracious no.  Israel was the product of some mysterious but long lasting elixir called ‘Jewishness’.  Jewishness explained the Holocaust and the same terrible personality defect that the Jews possessed (all except Atzmon that is) that caused the Nazis to murder them was on display once more in Israel where the Jews, once again, were behaving badly.

It would be churlish to ask whether Gays, Russian POWs, Poles, Gypsies etc. were also guilty of bad behaviour since they too suffered large casualties at the hands of the Nazis in WW2.  But for crusty reactionaries who find nothing wrong with imperialism per se but don’t go a bundle on Jews, then Atzmon is just for you.  So Sabbagh in the Q&A session made the stupid comment that since Israel is a Jewish state, then if we criticise Russians for what Russia does then why not blame the Jews for what Israel does.
I managed to get in to try and explain to the buffoon why the analogy didn’t fit.  Russians were those who lived within the borders of Russia, regardless of religion.  Not that it is a good idea to blame all Russians for the crimes of Putin but at least he is their President.  Israel is a Jewish state, in so far as being Jewish mean possessing privileges over and above the Palestinians.  It is a racist state and a state of racial supremacy.  But although it is part of the Zionist creed that Israel is a state of all Jews, including those who live in the diaspora, this is not something which is accepted by Jews outside Israel. 
When Netanyahu went to speak to the American Congress as Prime Minister he claimed to speak on behalf of American Jewry, this was not a claim accepted by most American Jews.  Only Zionists and not all of them either accept this canard.  And when he went to France after the killing of 4 Jews at a kosher supermarket he claimed to speak on behalf of French Jews.  This was not accepted by French Jews either.

As Anshel Pfeffer reported, Netanyahu stated that:
“I went to Paris not just as the prime minister of Israel but as a representative of the entire Jewish people.”
This bald statement by Benjamin Netanyahu, at a gathering of French-speaking Likud supporters in Jerusalem on Sunday, should be astonishing. He was saying that when he insisted on taking part in last month’s solidarity march of world leaders in Paris, against the wishes of French President Francois Hollande, he was acting on behalf of French Jews. He is now planning to do the same in Washington: “Just as I went to Paris, so I will go anyplace I’m invited to convey the Israeli position against those who want to kill us.”
Sabbagh's vacuous blurb
It’s not a claim that either American or French Jews accept.  It is, however one more racist Zionist trope, that Israel is the state of all Jews  It is not a minor matter either since the claim to be a Jewish state as opposed to a state of its own citizens rests upon this trope and that is fundamental to the Apartheid state of Israel.  Of course it has no legal or political basis.  No Jews outside Israel voted for the Israeli Prime Minister.  But it is an essential component of Israel and Zionism’s racist ideological superstructure.  It is therefore sad that Karl Sabbagh should effectively adopt one of Zionism’s foundational ideas and then use it for what is a cheap anti-Semitic jibe.  One would have hoped that Sabbagh would have learnt something from the stirring declaration of Ali Abunimah Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon, but as the saying goes it is difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.
Miko Peled
What Sabbagh had to say about the duplicity of the British in the promises they made and broke and their imperial cynicism was interesting, which is why it is a great pity that he can’t understand the poisonous and reactionary character of much of what Atzmon stands for.  However it is also a question of his wider bourgeois politics.

Ghada Karmi, who was on the same panel, spoke movingly about the attachment of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland and how many of them still possess keys to the houses they were evicted from.  Her daughter Salma Karmi-Ayyoub, who is co-chair of the Palestine Lawyers Association, spoke on Palestine and international law.
Leanne Mohammad
In the afternoon the session opened with the 16 year old star of the Jack Petchie world debating competition, who won her regional contest with a speech entitled ‘Birds not Bombs’ but then was subject to the normal vicious tweets from Zionists who abused her as ‘Miss ISIS’.  Leanne is a remarkable young woman, highly eloquent but with an excellent grasp of the difference between being Jewish and Zionist.  It’s a pity that Sabbagh isn’t able to grasp what a 16 year old takes in her stride.
Miko Peled
Miko Peled, the son of General Mattiyahu Peled, a dissident Israeli General, gave a speech that can only be described as a tour de force.  He was quite clear that Israel has no right to exist as a racist state and that its desire to claim this ‘right’ was a product of its colonial mentality.
Malia Bouattia speaking and Jonathan Rosenhead to her right
In the final session Jonathan Rosenhead spoke from Free Speech on Israel.  Jonathan outline the threat that the new IHRA definition of anti-Semitism poses to free speech, with the University of Central Lancashire having banned Israel Apartheid Week because of a misinterpretation of the law but in any event this definition poses a threat to the right to organise around Palestine.  NUS President Malia Bouattia spoke about the fight inside NUS which faced a disaffiliation campaign from the Israeli funded Union of Jewish Students, for BDS.

In all a surprisingly good conference, marred only by Sabbagh’s stupidity.  I did approach him in the interval to try and talk to him but he steamed off in a huff.  Clearly not a man who takes a rebuke lightly!


Tony Greenstein 

7 April 2016

Gilad Atzmon Comes Out - Now an open anti-Semite

I am not a Jew anymore.  I despise the Jew in me. I absolutely detest the Jew in you.

This blog was set up in 2007 to combat the pernicious influence of Gilad Atzmon, who operated on the fringes of the Palestine solidarity campaign.  To me and others anti-Zionist Jews it was clear that Atzmon was, without doubt, anti-Semitic.  Unfortunately this wasn’t at all clear to many others in the movement.

The Socialist Workers Party in particular couldn’t see the light and for a long time defended Atzmon.   See for example Time to say goodbye Why does the SWP not break its links withholocaust-denier Gilad Atzmon? 

The anti-Semitic Jazzman

What was decisive in breaking the influence of Atzmon over many in the Palestine solidarity movement was the joint call by Ali Abunimah, Omar Barghouti, Joseph Massad and other Palestinians for the movement to dissociate itself from Atzmon.  Granting NoQuarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of GiladAtzmon

I had many long arguments with many people who just didn’t seem to get it.  Not just common and garden fools like Roy Ratcliffe of Exeter PSC, who composed lengthy treaties proving that the Eart was flat and Atzmon was an anti-racist  but people who had a much higher intellectual calibre.

For example Richard Falk, the distinguished professor and UN representative in Gaza, provided a  blurb for Atzmon’s book The Wandering Who.  In an email to me of 18 December 2011 Richard wrote ‘I appreciate some of the points and arguments that are made. Nevertheless, having re-read Atzmon's book and his responses to comparable lines of criticism I am not prepared to alter, much less renounce, my endorsement…. Atzmon may have pushed his basic argument too far, but it seems to me a valid inquiry that can lead to debate and discussion, but is not appropriate to denounce, and to go further, and denounce those who endorsed the reading of the book.’  

I found it frustrating that people like Richard Falk could not see what was in front of their eyes, but he was not alone.  The primary reason for the difficulty in persuading people that Atzmon was an anti-Semite was because of the determined efforts of the Zionist movement to equate all support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism as anti-Semitic.  It had indeed blurred the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, such that people could no longer tell the difference between the two.

As I wrote at the height of the controversy in Seamy Side of Solidarity 'Like the boy who cried wolf, the charge of "anti-semitism" has been made so often against critics of Zionism and the Israeli state that people now have difficulty recognising the genuine article.'

Falk had written that Atzmon’s book was "A transformative story told with unflinching integrity that all (especially Jews) who care about real peace, as well as their own identity, should not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely."

Ramzy Baroud, Editor of the Palestine Chronicle wrote in the blurb of Atzmon's book, The Wandering Who that “Gilad Atzmon decided to open Pandora’s Box, and ignite a debate that has been frustratingly dormant for too long. His experiences are most authentic, views are hard-hitting, and, at times, provocative. It must be read and discussed.”  Ramzy Baroud is not stupid yet he too did not get it.

Professor John J. Mearsheimer of The Israel Lobby saw The Wandering Who as Essential to an understanding of Jewish identity politics and the role they play on the world stage.

The idiotic Dr. Samir Abed-Rabbo splutterd that Atzmon’s book was "A pioneering work that deserves to be read and Gilad Atzmon is brave to write this book!"

Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair’s brain dead sister-in-law, wrote that It is more than an academic exercise. It is a revelation!” Booth is clearly easily satisfied!

Eric Walberg of Al Aharam Weekly believed that ‘'In his inimitable deadpan style, Atzmon identifies the abscess in the Jewish wisdom tooth – exilic tribalism – and pulls it out. Ouch!” 

Jeff Blankfort an anti-Semite from the USA who used to be on the left, described Atzmon’s  book as "A brilliant analysis that makes what appear to be contradictions in Jewish identity based political behavior not only comprehensible but predictable."
One suspects Blankfort would have difficulty predicting a restaurant menu.

And Professor James Petras, who believes that the Israeli tail wages the American dog,  wittered on about how "Atzmon has the courage - so profoundly lacking among Western intellectuals"

Karl Sabbagh wrote that Atzmon’s insight into the organism created by the Zionist movement is explosive.  Quite how a vacuum can be explosive is best left to better minds than Sabbagh.

The unknown and best forgotten academic Dr. Makram Khoury-Machool wrote that  “Having known Gilad for 25 years, I read the book in English, I heard it in Hebrew and reflected on it in Arabic. Gilad Atzmon is astonishingly courageous” Makram Khoury-Machool has the ability to speak and read in 3 languages yet he is incapable of thinking in even one of them.

To the Israeli lecturer Oren Ben Dor, for whom the Holocaust is god's just revenge on the Jews, preordained in the thicket of his academic prose, Atzmon’s book was ‘A fascinating achievement”.
To Kim Petersen of the anti-Semitic Dissident VoiceGilad Atzmon is someone who encompasses what it means to be an intellectual.” Thus demonstrating above all that she is no intellectual.

For Dr. Kevin BarrettGilad Atzmon is the Moses of our time” in other words another false Messiah.

What these and other eulogies to the Atzmon's ego demonstrate is not merely the stupidity of so many academics, whose use of long words and complicated phrases is designed to mask their own superficiality, but how Atzmon managed to pull the wool over peoples’ eyes.

It was that which I found most frustrating.
David Taube of Harry's Place and Mike Ezra excuse Atzmon's anti-SemitismMany Zionists too were fascinated by Atzmon because he was repeating many of their tropes, not least that Zionism and Judaism were inextricably linked.   People like Mikey Ezra and David Taube of Harry’s Place were fascinated.  Taube described a jaunt that he and Mikey Ezra had gone on with Atzmon:
'Last week, Mikey invited me for a drink with Gilad Atzmon.  Mikey’s thoughts on Gilad and his worldview follow, below. 
Gilad was, I have to say, utterly charming and a delightful drinking companion....
Is Gilad Atzmon a racist? Not in the narrow sense of being preoccupied by genetic differences between people certainly. He is rather, I think, a ‘cultural essentialist’: if such a term exists.'  
You get that?  A cultural essentialist, not a racist!

But with his latest tweet, there can be no doubt about Atzmon’s anti-Semitism.
‘1.        I am not a Jew anymore.  2.  I indeed despise the Jew in me (whatever is left).  3.  I absolutely detest the Jew in you.’
Arthur Topham - holocaust denier for whom Atzmon gave 'expert' evidence - KKK leader David Duke who wanted to give evidence was refused entry  into Canada
Last November Atzmon gave expert witness testimony (!) on behalf of Arthur Topham, an anti-Semite and holocaust denier, to a Canadian court.   Despite this Topham was convicted of racial hatred and is awaiting sentence.  

I have previously posted a compendium of Atzmon’s anti-Semitic sayings.  It can be found at:  A Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazzmanAccording to Atzmon, I am a Zionist because he too, like the Zionists, argues that any Jew who is politically active as a Jew must be a Zionist.

It is somewhat ironic that Atzmon is a fierce opponent of BDS.  For him it is a Jewish enterprise.  Atzmon makes a nasty, vicious attack on Omar Barghouti, who is facing the possibility of Israeli reprisals and deportation, despite being a long-standing Israeli resident.  In Omar Accomplished His Job, Omar Is Free To Go Atzmon says that 

'BDS was an Israeli controlled opposition maneuver.  For Israel, BDS presented the ideal front on which to fight. Instead of battling for a Palestinian Right Of Return, that is ethically solid and backed by UN resolutions, the solidarity movement was reduced to an internal Jewish debate over the “Right to BDS.”    

I just hope that Ramzy Baroud, Karl Sabbagh and co. have the honesty to admit that they made a mistake.