Green Party Witchhunt Against Shahrar Ali, its former Deputy Leader at the behest of the Islamaphobes of the Campaign Against Antisemitism

 As the Zionists Wage Their ‘Anti-Semitism’ Wars, Caroline Lucas and the Green Party Leadership Have Abandoned Support for the Palestinians and BDS

Who would have thought, that in the fight against ‘anti-Semitism’ that Caroline Lucas and the Green Party Executive would get into bed with the overtly racist, far-Right Campaign Against Antisemitism which is almost certainly funded by the Israeli government’s dirty tricks Ministry of Strategic Affairs under Gilad Erdan

I remember back in 2005 when I stood for Brighton Pavilion on behalf of the Alliance for Green Socialists. I did a hustings with Keith Taylor the Green Party candidate (who later became MEP for the South East).

I asked Keith why did he think that Greens everywhere move to the Right when. I cited the fact that the first war that Germany had fought in post-1945 was in Afghanistan under the Green’s Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer. Why in Ireland did the Green Party enter a coalition with Fine Gael to introduce austerity, which resulted in them being decimated at the next elections?

Why you might ask did the Greens, when they controlled Brighton Council, ally with the Tories to finance, the hideous i-360 (called the eyesore locally) a speculative venture to put a tower into the sky which is losing money hand over fist.  Or why indeed did the Green Party councillors ally with the Tories and New Labour last year in Brighton & Hove to support the IHRA?

Why indeed have the Green Party in Austria just formed an alliance with the racist Conservative Peoples’ Party?  A coalition agreement which will mean an immediate attack on Muslims including a ban on headscarves in schools, attacks on immigrants and a succumbing to Prime Minister Kurz’s racist agenda.

The answer is simple. The Green Party is a classic petit-bourgeois party that moves left when it is opportune and to the right when the winds are blowing in that direction.  It is a party entirely devoid of class politics and principle. It aims to green capitalism without understanding that production for profit and environmentalism don’t make for easy bedfellows.

I copy below an edited article by Les Levidow, a longstanding Jewish anti-Zionist in Green Left Blog. It shows how the leadership of the Green Party [GP], including Caroline Lucas (& Peter Tatchell) have done their best to get the GP to support the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism, a definition pioneered by Dina Porat, a Zionist ideologue at the Tel Aviv Kantor Centre, whose aim was explicitly to render criticism of Zionism/Israel ‘anti-Semitic’.

At the November 2018 GP conference, Shahrar Ali, its Home Affairs Spokesperson, successfully proposed that the conference not support an Executive motion in support of the IHRA. 

This was in the days before Caroline Lucas became an MP. Today the alliance with Jo Swinson and the other 'antisemitism' merchants has moved her to the Right

Instead the GP leadership has behaved as undemocratically as all other major political parties. So much for their talk of a different way of organising politically. When the far-Right, openly racist, Campaign Against Antisemitism [CAA] targeted Shahrer Ali with a bogus complaint of ‘anti-Semitism’, instead of dismissing it, the GP instituted a disciplinary inquiry.

Shahrar Ali (on the right)

The CAA in its Report British Muslims and Antisemitism stated that:

the gradual buildup of understanding and friendship between Britain’s Jews and Muslims has been utterly eclipsed by growing antisemitism amongst British Muslims.

On every single count, British Muslims were more likely by far than the general British population to hold deeply antisemitic views.... many British Muslims reserve a special hatred for British Jews, rating Jews much less favourably than people of other religions or no religion, yet astonishingly British Muslims largely do not recognise antisemitism as a major problem.

It has long been suspected that sections of the British Muslim population harboured hatred towards British Jews. This survey... shows that the prejudice is horrifyingly widespread.

The report included a racist full colour profile of the ‘typical’ Muslim. It was taken down after protests and replaced by a black and white version. The image was accompanied by a strap line ‘More likely to be’ and then there were a series of bubbles:

Male, In Social Housing, Older than 35, Working, Living in Scotland or in England South of the Midlands, Sympathetic to Terrorism, Extremism or violence, First Generation Immigrant. 

Just imagine the outcry if a Muslim group posted a similar image of the ‘typical Jew’. The CAA used on its front cover a picture of a Black person holding a ‘Hitler was Right’ poster. The message being that most Muslims are supporters of the Holocaust.

Yet the GP Executive have accepted a complaint against Shahrer Ali from the CAA, which is chaired by Gideon Falter. Falter is Vice Chairman of JNF UK and a trustee for the JNF Charitable Trust. The JNF is a pillar of Israeli apartheid. It controls 93% of Israeli land from which Arabs are barred. The JNF portrays itself as a ‘green’ charity because it plants forests and parks on the ruins of razed Palestinian villages thus participating in their ethnic cleansing. 

Caroline Lucas and the Green Party are happy working with the Vice Chair of this overtly racist organisation 

On 3^rd August 2007 the Jewish Chronicle staged a debate, in the wake of the Kadan case in Israel where the Supreme Court ruled that the practice of allocating land only to Jews was illegal. The article was entitled ‘Is it racist to set aside Israeli land for Jews only’. To most people it’s a no brainer that it is racist but not for Falter.

In its submission to Israel’s Supreme Court the JNF pleaded that:

JNF lands are not state lands.... JNF ownership of JNF lands is total, private, and separate from the state. The JNF purchased all of the land in its possession from previous owners by means of funds donated incrementally by Jews from all over the world for the purpose of purchasing land in Eretz Israel to be held and developed on behalf of the Jewish people. JNF trusteeship is not and cannot be given or granted to the entire Israeli public. JNF trusteeship is preserved solely for the Jewish people, on whose behalf it was founded and acts.

Peter Tatchell also used to be on the left - today he embraces the same IHRA as Eric Pickles and Donald Trump

The Knesset overturned this ruling in 2011 with the Reception Committees Law. On its website the JNF proclaimed that

over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than a state of its own citizens.’

Yet Caroline Lucas, Peter Tatchell and co-leader Sian Berry, joined forces with the CAA against a Black member of their own party.

Caroline Lucas – A Tale of Absorption into the British  Political Establishment

I have had a lengthy correspondence with Caroline Lucas [CL]over the IHRA. Our conversation traces how she has never been able to defend the supporting the IHRA.

On 28^th May 2017 I wrote to CL saying that

‘I was surprised to find out that you supported a definition of anti-Semitism that is being used to restrict free speech by defining opposition to Zionism and Israel as anti-Semitic. It is to be hoped that you rethink this position. The IHRA is a creature of the Right and people like Eric Pickles’

CL responded on 30 May stating that

‘There has been considerable debate about this in the Green Party and the Executive Committee recently adopted a position that notes the IHRA definition and the importance of not conflating criticism of Israel with genuine anti-Jewish racism. It also stressed its commitment to working across the Green Party to advance understanding of and protect against antisemitism, drawing where helpful on the IHRA definition, at the same time as protecting freedom of speech and promoting Green Party policy on Israel and Palestine.’

This is what is called having your cake and eating it or supporting two fundamentally contradictory things.  You can support the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism or you can support freedom of speech.  What you cannot do is support both. CL told me that:

I have taken on the various concerns raised with me about the IHRA definition and have noted the position of Green MEPs. If you are aware of any more helpful definitions, particularly when it comes to illustrative examples, I’d be interested to see them and raise with the Green Party for our ongoing work. My support for the IHRA definition is on record because I signed an Early Day Motion. At the moment I am not able to remove my name but shall enquire whether that’s possible if I am re-elected to Parliament on June 8.

What CL was saying was that she wanted to withdraw her support for the IHRA EDM but that she wasn’t allowed to do so. She added that:

 ‘Please be assured that, as a passionate and long standing advocate of Palestinian rights, I reject any idea that support for Palestine equates with antisemitism and share your concern about any attempts to prevent activities or silence voices designed to highlight the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the Israeli authorities' complicity in human rights and other abuses.’

Of course I did know of another definition of anti-Semitism. It is the Oxford English Dictionary Definition of anti-Semitism which unlike the IHRA doesn’t take over 500. It states that ‘Anti-Semitism is hostility to or discrimination against Jews.’ 6 words.

I wrote back on 31 May 2017 stating that:

Reading between the lines I am taking it that you have now had second thoughts about the IHRA definition.  That is extremely welcome. You  may not know it but the University College Union at its annual conference last week voted to reject the IHRA definition as lecturers know how this definition is being misused on campuses.

I agree that we must always be vigilant concerning anti-Semitism.  Only last week members of PSC in Brighton were amongst those who picketed an attempt by the Front Nationale to hold a meeting at the King & Queen pub.  It is the supporters of Israel who are aligning themselves with the far-Right.’  

I continued:

‘You asked me whether there are any more helpful definitions of anti-Semitism.  I do not understand this quest for definitions of anti-Semitism.  Racism is hatred of the other and it takes the form of discrimination, violence, abuse and stereotyping.... This obsession with defining anti-Semitism only comes about because of the desire to find a definition which includes opposition to Israel and Zionism.... I don’t need a definition to know when someone is being anti-Semitic!  But you can’t be racist against a state and that is what the IHRA is about...’

When my dad joined 100,000 others in stopping Oswald Moseley’s British  Union of Fascists marching through the East End in 1936 he didn’t need a definition of anti-Semitism to know what it was.

On 16^th October 2018 CL wrote to me again.

You make lots of arguments but for me this essentially comes down to one key point, namely that I disagree with you as to whether the IHRA definition prevents criticism of the Israeli government and its actions by automatically labelling it antisemitism.

I don’t agree that the definition means criticism of Israel is automatically antisemitic. Rather, it makes clear that there has to be some kind of manifestation of hatred towards Jews for that to be the case.  I recognise the definition is being used to try to shut down criticism and debate in some contexts, but I think that’s a misuse of the definition and will continue to say as much. I therefore advocate its adoption – with the very helpful clarifying amendments from the cross party Home Affairs Select Committee on this specific point.

My response on 17 October 2018 was that:

I don’t doubt that you support the Palestinians but unfortunately you support a definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ whose sole purpose it is to equate that support with hatred against Jews....

It is as if 42 years ago you had criticised the South Africa government for its policies of shooting the inhabitants of Soweto but drawn the line at criticising Apartheid.

You accept that the definition is being used to shut down criticism of Israel but then you say that this is a misuse of it.  I disagree. Such ‘misuse’ is inherent in the definition itself. When Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge says, that:

Endeavours to conflate the two (anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism) by characterising everything other than anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic are not new. What is new is the adoption... of a definition of anti-Semitism which endorses the conflation.

Is he wrong?  Why? Hugh Tomlinson QC stated that

‘there is likely to be lack of consistency in its application and a potential chilling effect on public bodies which, in the absence of definitional clarity, may seek to sanction or prohibit any conduct which has been labelled by third parties as antisemitic without applying any clear criterion of assessment.

Is that also wrong? Geoffrey Robertson QC argued that 

the looseness of the definition is liable to chill legitimate criticisms of the state of Israel and coverage of human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Stephen Sedley went further stating that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’ I am leaving to one side the incoherence of a definition which says that Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel are anti-Semitic. If Israel is the fulfilment of Jewish self-determination, i.e. the Jews are a nation, then it is obviously correct to hold them responsible for Israel’s actions. Likewise if Israel is the Jewish national state then why shouldn’t someone accuse Jews of being more loyal to Israel? Is it racist to accuse British people of being more loyal to Britain than France?

The question that puzzles me is why the hell would you want to use a definition of anti-Semitism that is so politically incoherent and which lends itself to the suppression of free speech? What is it about the definition that, despite all these flaws, makes it so attractive?

The only conclusion I can reach is that you are unwilling to go against the Establishment consensus. That you value your position as a member of the British Establishment, albeit its radical green fringe. I am referring to a consensus forged by the State Department in Washington which first adopted the IHRA definition (in its previous EUMC guise). The IHRA is a definition of anti-Semitism which chimes with America’s foreign policy interest in supporting Israel, right or wrong.  

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that ‘man cannot serve two masters’. I would say that you cannot both support the Palestinians and a definition of anti-Semitism that renders such support anti-Semitic.’

Surprising as it might seem I never received a reply!

Tony Greenstein 

Les Levidow, a Jewish member of the Green Party wrote on the Green Left Blog:

Since 2016 a systematic campaign has been weaponizing alleged antisemitism in order to protect the racist Israeli regime from criticism, especially from the global campaign of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).  This has been conflated with antisemitism through the so-called ‘IHRA definition of antisemitism’, which serves a racist agenda.  The GP leadership has colluded with this agenda in several ways – by concealing official support for the BDS campaign, promoting the IHRA definition within the GP and abusing its disciplinary procedure to retaliate against a prominent critic.   A pro-Palestine re-orientation will depend on members holding the leadership accountable for its collusion and pushing it instead to promote BDS as anti-racist.   

The 2005 Palestinian call for BDS has been the focus of the global movement of Palestine solidarity. Its many supporters include the GP. It has voted for ‘active participation’ in the BDS campaign, e.g. conference motions in spring 2008 and autumn 2014.  BDS was featured in the Green Party GP’s magazine and was promoted by its former Leader Natalie Bennett.  Some members established a BDS Facebook page.  

Yet the GP’s pro-BDS policy has nearly disappeared. It is absent from the International Policy webpage, hidden in the autumn 2014 motion on Israel’s Ground Invasion, and absent from 2019 election statements, which have been deceptive in this regard. Meanwhile the leadership has been accommodating the pro-Israel lobby which has been falsely accusing Israel’s critics of antisemitism. 

Since 2017 the GP leadership has been promoting the IHRA definition.  Moreover, a prominent member has sponsored a complaint from a racist pro-Israel campaign group against another member who led opposition to the IHRA definition.  By undermining the Green Party’s pro-Palestine policies, the leadership has provoked internal unease and revolt. GP

Not coincidentally, the smear campaign escalated shortly after the Labour Party elected a new Left-wing, anti-imperialist leadership in 2015.  Pro-Israel activists trawled members’ social media posts going back several years, including anti-Israel comments.

Weaponizing alleged antisemitism is psychological warfare protecting the UK’s alliance with the Israeli regime.  This agenda generates fear that a unitary ‘Jewish community’ faces an ‘existential threat’ from pro-Palestine policies and politicians. The UK government encourages and exploits this fear to justify the UK’s pro-Israel policies as necessary for ‘social cohesion’. 

Green Party autumn 2018 conference: members revolt against pro-IHRA leadership

After the  Tory government adopted the IHRA full definition in December 2016, many politicians did likewise. Having slandered Ken Livingstone as antisemitic, John Mann MP sponsored an EDM supporting the IHRA definition; signatories included Caroline Lucas MP. When local authorities voted for motions supporting the IHRA definition, they were supported by GP politicians such as Caroline Russell and Sian Berry (co-Leader).  

Jewish members of the GP sent email messages denouncing those politicians’ actions and encouraged other members to do likewise.  The politicians gave scant responses, denying any contradiction with BDS or anti-Israel criticism.  

The GP’s internal conflict eventually erupted at the autumn 2018 conference.  Prominent politicians endorsed a pro-IHRA motion.  It was countered by an anti-IHRA motion, led by Shahrar Ali, who has been a Home Affairs spokesperson, Deputy Leader and frequent candidate of the GP. 

The pro-IHRA leadership was unnerved by this revolt.  A new procedural motion proposed to remit the original ones, apparently for fear that the pro-IHRA motion would be defeated.  Conference voted to remit both.  

Caroline Lucas and the Green Party have sacrified BDS as the price of entry to the British Foreign Policy Establishment

The pro-Israel Jewish Chronicle reported the outcome as a ‘failure’, implying that the obstacle was antisemitism.  It reproduced the title of my Green Left magazine article, ‘Palestine solidarity under racist attack’.  My article included a cartoon (below) mocking the racist agenda of false allegations; strangely, this too was reproduced by the Jewish Chronicle

When an anti-IHRA motion was put forward for the subsequent conference, the Standing Orders Committee ruled that the IHRA definition may come up again only if the two contrary motions were reconciled in a single motion – obviously impossible.  This ruling protects the pro-IHRA leadership from further debate, defeat and embarrassment.  As a substitute for political debate, the leadership has abused the disciplinary procedure, as explained next.  

Leadership retaliates against Shahrar Ali, members again push back

In retaliating against Shahrar Ali, the leadership instrumentalised the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism which has been promoting a racist Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian agenda.  The CAA has made false allegations of antisemitism against many of Israel’s critics, especially Labour Party members, including many Muslims and Jews.  Indeed, it throws such allegations at Jewish pro-Palestine groups who criticise pro-Israel groups for weaponising alleged antisemitism (as in this article).  One Jewish target of its false allegations, Tony Greenstein, led a petition asking the Charities Commission to deregister the CAA as a Right-wing lobby group with no charitable aims.

The CAA also promotes Islamophobic stereotypes, featuring a scary dehumanised image of ‘antisemitic Muslim males’ (2016 report, page 8).  They ‘are more likely to sympathise with terrorism, violence and extremism’; those terms are left undefined.  In the UK political context, so-called ‘extremism’ encompasses anyone opposing the racist Prevent programme or supporting resistance to the Israeli regime.  

Eventually the CAA launched false allegations against a prominent GP member, Shahrar Ali.  They cited his denunciation of Israel’s attack on Gaza at a 2009 rally outside the BBC, as well as his speech opposing the Party’s adoption of the IHRA definition at the 2018 Autumn conference. Under pressure from pro-Palestine members, the GP Regional Council (GPRC) refuted the false allegations, followed by a similar 2018 press release.

In 2019 the CAA escalated the attack by sending the GP a formal complaint about allegedly antisemitic comments by Shahrar Ali. The complaint was sponsored by a prominent GP member who has chosen to remain anonymous.  The Disciplinary Committee could have simply rejected the complaint on numerous grounds, especially its racist agenda.  Instead it initiated an investigation, asking Shahrar Ali for a response to the allegations.

In October 2019 his supporters launched a petition which quickly gained over a hundred signatories from GP members including many elected officers, local candidates and Councillors.  It said, ‘To take up this complaint would be to collude in an anti-Palestinian agenda that would also discredit the GP. It is astonishing that the Party could fall for such a tactic, unwittingly or through lack of political courage.’  The petition concluded with these demands:

We call upon the Green Party to withdraw this politically motivated and internally damaging complaint and to work alongside Shahrar Ali to respond, as appropriate, to politically motivated attacks in the best tradition of the Green Party.

The GP must also, as a matter of urgency, instead investigate the hostile environment which misuse and abuse of process risks engendering internally.

Some members of the GP Executive Committee (GPEx) received, circulated or signed the petition.  Some proposed that its next meeting discuss the conflict, possibly to suspend the disciplinary procedure against Shahrar Ali.  But the meeting declined to add such an agenda item, on the spurious grounds that GPEx does not consider individual cases. The leadership evaded the generic issue of the racist accuser and its false allegations, thus colluding with them.

The Disciplinary Committee decided instead to take up a subsequent complaint that Shahrar Ali allegedly brought the GP into disrepute for publicly sharing the petition supporting him. Again the complainant chose to remain anonymous.  Thus the disciplinary procedure escalated the leadership’s retaliation for Shahrar Ali’s prominent role against the IHRA definition.  The complaint inverts reality, namely: that the leadership has been discrediting the GP by colluding with a racist agenda and then bureaucratically persecuting an anti-racist critic, while evading political debate over its shameful role.  

General Election 2019: Green Party leadership promotes IHRA definition, while members again push back

In the 2019 General Election, the GP’s pro-Palestine policy was again softened and concealed.  The Manifesto’s section on global justice says: ‘Seek resolution in line with international law and the principles of self-determination to long running conflicts, illegal occupations and human rights violations.’  Indeed, that has been a key aim of the GP supporting ‘active participation’ in the BDS campaign –absent from the manifesto.

The leadership further colluded with the Board of Deputies of British Jews and its racist agenda.  As political background, the Board has consistently supported Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, especially its Gaza massacres in 2008-09 and 2014.  After Israel killed numerous civilians at the Gaza border in 2018, the Board’s statement blamed Hamas; in response, hundreds of Jews denounced the Board for placing no responsibility on Israel. 

Jeremy Corbyn criticised Britain’s failure to call for an independent investigation as ‘morally indefensible’.  In response, the Board pleaded self-defence by Israel, as grounds to denounce his modest demand for an investigation.  The Board also has led false allegations of antisemitism.  This consistently racist pro-Israel agenda indicates its political aims when intervening in the 2019 general election.  

The Board sent political parties ‘10 commitments for GE2019’, especially to ‘Adopt, promote and implement the full IHRA Definition of Antisemitism’. An honest response from the GP might have read as follows:  ‘Our autumn 2018 conference debated the IHRA definition, ultimately voting to remit both the pro-IHRA and anti-IHRA definitions for future consideration’.  Instead its response said, ‘The GP is likely to consider adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism at a policymaking session of its party conference in the future’.

The GP’s response was circulated to Parliamentary candidates as guidance with this encouragement: ‘Candidates who sign the [IHRA] definition are welcome to promote this on social media, as some already have.’  By anticipating its future adoption and omitting BDS, the guidance misled candidates about the GP’s policies and debates.  Some candidates expressed unease to other members, thus alerting them to the deception.  

Soon dissenters consulted numerous members.  Together they drafted more honest responses to several questions from the Board of Deputies.  This alternative version deleted the prediction that a future conference would consider the IHRA definition; and it added a link to the GP’s policies strongly criticising Israel.   But the leadership’s response was unsatisfactory.

Its strong support for the IHRA definition facilitated yet more ‘antisemitism’ allegations.  In November 2019 the CAA announced the results of trawling social media posts.  The CAA denounced several Parliamentary candidates of the GP (again Shahrar Ali) for statements contravening the IHRA as grounds to demand their expulsion. As reported in the Jewish Chronicle,  several candidates had drawn analogies between Nazi Germany and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, or they suggested that ‘complaints of antisemitism were being used to defend Israel’.  

A Green Left statement countered the false allegations against GP candidates.  It reiterated previous criticism of the IHRA’s Israel examples as an invalid basis for identifying real antisemitism.  By contrast, the GP leadership may have difficulty in defending its candidates while supporting the IHRA definition.

In parallel Palestine Solidarity Campaign had sent all Parliamentary candidates a questionnaire. Of 290 candidate responses across all parties, 138 of them were from the GPEW.  This had the highest response rate, giving pro-Palestine answers to nearly all the questions.   The questionnaire was not mentioned in the GP’s email briefings to candidates.   

Conclusion: hold the leadership accountable

Since 2017 the GP’s leadership has been undermining its pro-Palestine policy.  It has been concealing support for BDS and promoting the IHRA definition, a key weapon against BDS. The leadership has colluded with a wider racist agenda, especially from the Board of Deputies and the CAA  

Given these higher stakes for the BDS campaign, how will the GP leadership respond?  By further colluding with a racist agenda and retaliating against anti-racist critics? Or else by defending its pro-Palestine policies?  A pro-Palestine re-orientation will depend on members holding the leadership accountable for its collusion and pushing it instead to promote the GP’s BDS policy.

Les Levidow  is a Member of Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW), Camden branch and Member of Steering Group, Jewish Network for Palestine (JNP). He is a member of Camden Green party and a Green Left supporter.

For Email correspondence between Tony Greenstein and Caroline Lucas see here

Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s silence over the Zionist ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is as deafening as it’s embarrassing

Like the 3 wise monkeys, PSC Executive neither sees, hears nor speaks of anything going wrong

PSC Executive's attitude to the anti-Semitism tsunami  

One of the problems with the leadership of PSC is that they are sometimes intoxicated by their own rhetoric.  They are convinced that, under their brilliant leadership and following the guidance of their own small political organisations, the Palestine solidarity movement is going from strength to strength in an inexorable and unstoppable wave upwards.  In their view there are no setbacks, nothing to be worried about.  Everything can only get better.

In the past year, the Zionist movement, in conjunction with the Labour Right and the establishment media, especially the Guardian, has waged a war against Jeremy Corbyn using ‘anti-Semitism’ as its chosen weapon.  The lack of any evidence of ‘anti-Semitism’ has not been a hindrance to an Establishment consensus that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has grown like the weeds in an untended garden.

Brighton PSC demonstrator againt BBC coverage of Palestine

There has also been a rebellion in the Zionist ranks in Britain which has completely bypassed PSC Executive.  Previously the staid Board of Deputies, a bourgeois organisation dating back to George III in 1760, mounted the odd demonstration in support of Israel but did very little to combat what was seen by Zionist activists as an assertive and growing Palestine solidarity movement.  The first signs of a rebellion was when Jonathan Hoffman was elected as co-Chair of the Zionist Federation in or around 2009.  Hoffman was not a particularly bright chap and he accused the Chair of the Jewish Leadership Councillors, Sir Micky Davies, of various misdemeanours including being hostile to Israel.  Davies doesn’t tolerate fools or upstarts easily and he threatened a libel action before Hoffman made a grovelling apology.  This resulted, in 2012, in Hoffman being removed from office in the Zionist Federation but his advocacy of opposing Palestine solidarity activists on the street took root.  An example of the debate within the Zionist movement is contained in the newssheet of the Jewish Israel News Network In support of the Zionist Federation Vice Chairman and other activists

In 2014 during Operation Protective Edge, when Israel murdered 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza, including 551 children, the Board of Deputies mounted what was considered a feeble response.  Its demonstration in London barely mustered a couple of thousand people in comparison with the time when they got 25,000 on the streets.  In reaction the Young Turks, grouped around the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism mounted a demonstration against ‘anti-Semitism’ outside the Royal Courts of Justice.  Board of Deputies speakers were booed for what was considered their inactivity.  Thousands turn out for London rally against antisemitism Around the same time there was formed activist Zionist groups such as Sussex and North-West Friends of Israel, both consisting of the Zionist far-Right.  Sussex FOI were formed in reaction to the campaign against the Sodastream shop in Brighton.  They were determined to prevent a repeat of what happened in London when Palestine solidarity activists closed down Ahava in Covent Garden, which traded in stolen Palestinian beauty products.  Nonetheless the Sodastream shop, in a major victory, was shut down, but Brighton PSC received little help from PSC nationally in mounting weekly demonstrations which came under sustained and vitriolic abuse and which faced a hostile Police presence.

Demonstrators on a PSC demonstration

The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign in the Labour Party first began with Jeremy Corbyn himself when it was alleged, by the Daily Mail and the Jewish Chronicle, that he kept the company of anti-Semites.  It then resurfaced with a vengeance this January with the bogus allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ at Oxford University Labour Club.  Its Chair, Alex Chalmers, a former intern for the Israeli propaganda organisation, BICOM, resigned claiming anti-Semitism because the Labour Club had decided to support Israel Apartheid Week.  In March I was suspended, although given no reasons it was leaked to the Telegraph and Times, that the reasons were ‘anti-Semitism’.  In May Jackie Walker was suspended and, having been cleared of the allegation that she blamed the Jews for causing the slave trade, she was again suspended this month for remarks made in a Jewish Labour Movement ‘training event’ at Labour Party Conference..  In between Ken Livingstone was suspended for having remarked that Hitler supported Zionism.

In between we had the Chakrabarti Report which the Zionists at first welcomed but, as part of their campaign against Corbyn, later denigrated.  Coupled with that was the fake incident of ‘anti-Semitism’ at the Chakrabarti press conference with Ruth Smeeth MP weeping crocodile tears.  The latest event in the false anti-Semitism campaign has been the Report of the Home Affairs Select Committee on anti-Semitism.  The Report consciously confuses anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.  By redefining anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism it seeks to criminalise opposition to Zionism by saying that using Zionism in an ‘accusatory’ or ‘abusive’ manner should be a matter for the criminal law. See Manufacturing Consent On ‘Anti-Semitism’

Over 100 people came to a talk I gave on anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.  A number of Zionists were able to speak and put their view across including Lara Gantz below.  This is unlike Zionist meetings where dissenters are physically ejected or shouted down, but holding such a discussion was 'anti-Semitic' according to Ms Gantz

What has been remarkable throughout this bogus campaign, manufactured to order in the Israeli and US Embassies, is that the Executive of Palestine Solidarity Campaign has behaved like the 3 wise monkeys – they have neither seen, heard nor spoken out about what is happening.  They act like an alcoholic in denial.  The opening paragraph in the notice that has gone out about the forthcoming PSC AGM in January 2017 reads:

‘Thank you for your support over the past year. We have had a hugely successful year with actions and events across the country highlighting the situation Palestinians face. But there is still so much more we can do and our AGM is a key time for you, our members, to feed into our plans for the year.’

PSC Demonstration in London

One is reminded of what Bob Dylan wrote in Love Minus Zero/No Limit:  ‘There’s no success like failure and failure’s no success at all’.  The worse things get for PSC Executive the better they are. The statement unconsciously gives witness to the problem.  The AGM is a key time 'for you, our members, to feed into OUR plans for the year.'  The role of the membership is to serve the Executive and its plans.  It has no active role in determining what the priorities are.

There are a number of reasons for this but in my view it is primarily because of the politics of what has become a self-perpetuating clique that runs the Executive.  They have depoliticised the struggle of the Palestinians and turned what is a political struggle into one of human rights.

There are many campaigns in the world over human rights.  The struggle of the Palestinians is not exceptional in that regard.  However bad the plight of the Palestinians is there are many countries where the situation is far more dire – Syria, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.  What makes the Palestine struggle unique is that Israel is the world’s only active settler colonial state.  It is the world’s only apartheid state.  It is a state that is at the centre of the West’s military ad strategic presence in the Middle East.

In response to the decision of the Israeli High Court that the Jewish National Fund could not refuse to rent or lease land to Israeli Palestinians, the JNF put on its website a statement that 70% of Israeli Jews opposed this decision and that 80% of Israeli Jews prefer a Jewish state to a state of all of its citizens.  Could it be any clearer?

PSC is an organisation that supports BDS and the struggle for Palestinian rights but it is not an explicitly anti-Zionist organisation.  It has no critique of the Israeli state as an inherently racist, Jewish supremacist state which is based on the racial subjugation of the Palestinians.  Indeed its support for a 2 State solution effectively means it supports the continued existence of a ‘Jewish’ state within the 1948 armistice borders.  It supports the quisling Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, whose ‘President,  Mahmoud Abbas believes that repressing the Palestinian resistance and supporting the Israeli security forces and providing them with intelligence is ‘sacred’.  This is a regime which acted last year to actively prevent a third intifada, which brutally attacks all resistance demonstrations and activities, which uses torture as a matter of course and arrests and hands over to the Israeli military Palestinian activists.  PSC says nothing about this regime, whereas the Anti-Apartheid Movement never had any problem in criticising the leadership of the Bantustans or Buthulezi, the client Zulu leader.

It is because PSC has no analysis or understanding of Zionism, the ideology and movement which gave birth to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and the refugee problemthat they have no answer to the attacks by the media and the Zionists on ‘anti-Semitism’ other than to say that supporting the Palestinians is not anti-Semitic.  They have precious little to say about the racism that Israeli Palestinians experience either.

There is a belief in PSC that the false and fake ‘anti-Semitism’  campaign is an internal Labour Party matter in which they should not get involved.  This is utterly myopic.  The Israeli Embassy, which has effectively seconded one of their staff members to be Director of the Jewish Labour Movement certainly doesn’t take the same attitude.  It intervenes in every area where there is anti-Zionist or Palestine solidarity campaigning.  What is happening in the Labour Party is not confined to the Labour Party.  The affair at Oxford University was about supporting an Israel Apartheid Week.  The suspension of Labour Party activists has been on account of their criticism of Israel and Zionism.  The Home Affairs Select Committee Report which is recommending the criminalisation of criticism of Zionism is an alliance of the Labour Right and Conservative MPs.  We are heading for a situation as in France where BDS is all but illegal.  In Scotland a Palestine solidarity activist was prosecuted for shouting ‘Viva Palestina.’   To treat what is happening in the Labour Party as an internal matter is an illustration of the political weaknesses of the current PSC leadership.

The other political weakness of PSC which is allied to its lack of a clear anti-Zionist politics, is its support for 2 States.  It’s Boycott activities relate primarily to settlement goods.  It plays down a Boycott of Israel itself even though the settlements in the West Bank only exist because Israel ‘proper’ supports them.  Indeed PSC is about the only organisation to recognise the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank.  Israel certainly make no such distinction.  A 2 States solution today is a position supported by all Zionist organisations in Britain – from the Board of Deputies of British Jews to the Labour Friends of Israel and Tory politicians.  Why?  Because the Zionists know that a Palestinian state will never be formed.  They can therefore afford to support it.

The Peace Process is a war process.  It provides the cover for the continuing expansion of the settlements at the same time as it provides a pretext for the denial of any civil or political rights to the Palestinians.  Israel is today a single state, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, but if it gave the vote and full civil and political rights to the Palestinians under occupation the Jewish state would be faced with a position in which Palestinians were in the majority.  So Israel has to maintain the present Apartheid situation which is why it prefers to maintain the fiction of 2 states.

If we contrast Stop the War Committee with PSC we see where the lethargy and inactivity of PSC have led us.  The former have kept close to Corbyn and not allowed him to water down his anti-nuclear weapons positions.  Corbyn was also a PSC patron.  He has attended virtually every PSC Conference in the past decade, or at least up to his election as Leader of the Labour Party.  Since then?  The words ‘Palestine’ have barely crossed his lips. 

But Corbyn has patronised Labour Friends of Israel and attended its fringe meetings two years in a row.  This year, by all accounts, Corbyn’s presence at the LFI meeting was marked by his friendliness to Israel’s uncritical apologists for all things Israeli.  Luke Akehurst, an unsuccessful candidate for Labour’s National Executive Committee wrote in the Times of Israel that Corbyn ‘at the LFI reception surprised everyone with a carefully worded and balanced speech on both Israel and antisemitism, in sharp contrast to the car crash last year where he would not even say the word “Israel”.’

Corbyn has also spent the year denouncing anti-Semitism without ever once condemning the use of anti-Semitism as a weapon which has been deployed against the Left and supporters of Palestine.

Internal Problems on PSC Executive

In addition PSC has been going through a number of problems, all of which it has tried to hide from its members.  I am reliably told that Hugh Lanning, Chair of PSC resigned earlier this year and was reluctantly persuaded to withdraw his resignation.

On 23 May 2016 Lanning resigned as Chair of PSC with immediate effect in an e-mail which he sent to the vice-chair and copied to all PSC Exec members and the staff in the PSC Office.  The resignation came without any prior warning and the Exec decided to ask him to revoke his resignation.  Lanning did retract his resignation but only some 3 weeks later.  At no point have the branches been informed of these problems which come in addition to the problematic resignation of Sara Colborne, the previous Director of PSC. 

I am told that the reason Lanning resigned was that he felt the atmosphere on the Executive was negative and not supportive enough of him as Chair.   By all accounts the Executive was shocked at the way he resigned not least because of the timing which was right in the middle of the anti-semitism attacks on the whole movement when PSC should have been trying to push back on the attacks. Lanning has been on the 'let's keep our heads down and hope it will all go away' faction on the  Exec.  The PSC Executive is worried that Lanning will bale out again when he thinks the going gets tough. Apparently PSC Executive took weeks to decide he should come back but it is not clear under what terms . I have a copy of the resignation but I am not making it public at this time.

On April 11^th of this year I wrote an Open Letter to the National Secretary of PSC, Ben Soffa.  I detailed the Zionist attacks on supporters of the Palestinians and anti-Zionists, including my own suspension.   

I wrote that PSC prided itself on being the largest solidarity organisation in Britain and that it had boasted in its Annual Report that it had contacted 1,042 candidates at the General Election, yet it hasn’t seen fit to contact any Labour parliamentarians to speak up against the attacks of the Zionists and MPs like John Mann and Louise Ellman.  I asked why it hadn’t organized any public meetings with people like Ken Livingstone (who of course was later suspended himself) or called press conferences, written articles etc.  I wrote that ‘PSC is renowned for its caution and timidity but there must be some limits to this.’  Unfortunately I was wrong.  There were no limits.  I pointed out that PSC had resources that other groups did not.  It has paid staff, media contacts, contacts with MPs etc. and that it was ‘inexcusable that it has done absolutely nothing to respond to the Zionists daily attacks.’   Whereas I and others had organised joint letters from Jewish groups to the Guardian and Independent and complained about the biased BBC coverage,  PSC had simply ignored what was happening. 

I wrote that ‘The ceaseless political attack by the Zionists on support for the Palestinians in the LP cannot simply be ignored.  They will not go away because their campaign is linked with the determination of the Right in the LP to remove Corbyn.  ‘Anti-Semitism’ is their weapon of choice.’  It pains me to say that I have been proved right.  I also predicted that ‘Until Jeremy Corbyn firmly rebuts his critics he will continue to come under attack.  Appeasement rarely works.  It is no use Corbyn saying that he opposes anti-Semitism because what he means by anti-Semitism and the Zionists mean by it are two different things.  Their ‘anti-Semitism’ is, as they freely admit, anti-Zionism.  Until Corbyn speaks out saying that yes he opposes anti-Semitism but yes he supports the Palestinians, including the Boycott of Israel, giving chapter and verse on why Israel is a racist and apartheid state, then the attacks will continue.’

On 20^th April Ben Soffa responded to my letter.  The gist of his reply was contained in the following paragraph:

“Many recent attacks reflect the strategy set out by the Israeli strategic thinktank the Reut Institute in their 2010 report, which because of our successes, largely focused on PSC: 

"A central objective is to change this situation by forcing them to 'play defense'.  This means systematically exposing information about delegitimizers, their activities, and the organizations that they operate out of. The goal is to eventually frame them, depending on their agendas, as anti-peace, anti-Semitic, dishonest purveyors of double standards."

Although Ben accepted that ‘the upsurge in attempts to link support for the rights of the Palestinian people with anti-Semitism requires a new a concerted response’ referring me to a recent branch forum in Birmingham in March and promising to ‘significantly increase the priority and resources devoted to this area’ in practice  nothing at all has happened. 

The reason is clear.  PSC Executive’s idea of a response was to inform me that ‘we will shortly be launching an initiative proudly declaring not only the legitimacy of campaigning for Palestinian freedom, but our urgent duty to speak out against the onslaught faced by those living with occupation, siege and exile. This will include national press advertising, online publicity and other political initiatives.  Prominent within this will be an assertion of the right to boycott. We will be explicitly refuting the absurd allegation that refusing to buy, or declining to invest in goods, arms or services from entities due to their complicity in breaches of international law is in any way racist.’  Ben further informed me that ‘We have already begun discussions with partner organisation how we can better co-ordinate our work challenging the attempts to smear our movement. We will be seeking to bring together a co-ordinating group of organisations working in this area in the very near future.’

Ben concluded by adding that ‘I make no apology for the fact that we do not engage in every debate some would wish to involve us in. As the Reut Institute set out, there is a plan to force us to 'play defence' on the terrain chosen by those wishing to preserve the status quo in Palestine. We must not fall into the trap of allowing our opponents to set our agenda, which is precisely why PSC chooses to make the intervention we feel are most helpful to the situation, rather than seeking to make every intervention which might be possible.’

There are a number of glaring problems with this.  In the first place, just because your opponents threaten to put you on the defensive, it is no reason to therefore ignore them.   If someone attacks you then sometimes you have to respond.  How you respond is a different question. The fact is that the Zionists have mounted a very concerted and successful campaign in the past few months.  The Vice Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement Mike Katz got a standing ovation at Labour Party Conference.  The reason for this is because the Zionists have launched their attacks in conjunction with the Labour Right, backed up by the Tory Party and the organs of the state. 

Whereas previously the Zionist organisations in the Labour Party and in particular Poalei Zion/JLM were largely defunct, they have recently been revived.  To ignore the Zionists in this situation is to do nothing about their attacks.  It is in essence to adopt a position of pacifism.  Not responding is tantamount to retreating.

The second problem with this is that it ignores the central thrust of the Zionist attack.  Simply declaring the ‘legitimacy of campaigning for Palestinian freedom’ is not enough.  It is effectively to ignore the thrust of the Zionist campaign.  The Zionists aren’t saying that you can’t campaign for Palestine.  On the contrary they say they support 2 states and an end to the Occupation (which of course is a lie but that is what they say).  What they are doing however is to use ‘anti-Semitism’ as a specific weapon to attack the anti-Zionist Left.  They have therefore taken out people like Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Charley Allan and myself.  They have made a particular target of Jewish anti-Zionists.  In such a situation to simply say nothing other than to repeat that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism is politically negligent if not worse.

As for holding discussion with partner organizations and ‘seeking to bring together a co-ordinating group of organisations working in this area in the very near future’ this is and was mere words.  Nothing whatsoever has been done.  The main group which has fought the ‘anti-Semitism’ attack has been Free Speech on Israel.  It has not been contacted by PSC.  Whereas FSOI has been consistently hamstrung by lack of funds and resources, PSC has these in abundance.

FSOI consists mainly, though not entirely, of Jewish anti-Zionists who have played a prominent part in rebutting the claim that opposition to Zionism is anti-Semitic.  On October 2^nd I posted a short message on the Boycott Israel Network:

‘ Corbyn has backtracked on BDS and PSC has said absolutely nothing the whole past year on the anti-Semitism attack by the Zionists.  PSC's behaviour is outrageous as they have made no attempt to keep Corbyn in line’.  I referred people to an article I’d written on how Corbyn had effectively abandoned 30 years of support for the Palestinians.  Someone by the name of Salim replied taking issue with my statement:

 ‘Tony, You say ‘PSC has said absolutely nothing the whole past year on the anti-Semitism attack by the Zionists’ .  In fact the following was issued by PSC on 3 May 2016 and publicised.’

It is true that PSC issued a statement.  The problem is that this was all that they did.

Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, who is an activist with both FSOI and also Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods responded thus:

‘I am a PSC member, and I have seen nothing in their postings that isn’t just a routine and uninspired recital of assurances that PSC, and the solidarity movement is anti-racist and certainly not anti-Semitic.

 Meanwhile a firestorm has been raging, alleging rampant antisemitism in the Labour Party in an attempt to unset Jeremy Corbyn. PSC has nothing to say about this?! Corbyn has been an excellent and committed friend of Palestine over decades. The attack on him is at least partly (ie the Zionist part) precisely because of this.

 None of the many pro-Israel Jewish Community organisations is holding back – from attacking him. They have funding, offices, staffing, media contacts. PSC is the only Palestine support organisation that has these assets, but does nothing with them. It leaves the defence against hyped and invented claims of antisemitism to be contested by voluntary organisations – BIN, Free Speech on Israel, Jewish Socialist Group – which have nothing but their enthusiasm and energy to throw into the breach.

Jonathan

And in these 3 paragraphs Jonathan Rosenhead set out eloquently the case against the passivity and inertia, indeed paralysis of PSC Executive.

Another activist in FSOI and J-Big, Les Levidow, also responded and again I quote what he wrote in toto:

After Salim's message there was little response on this list. Why? Perhaps because most of us have given up on PSC doing anything more than ritual repetition, so why bother complaining?  Anyway this problem should be made more explicit.  Let us review the recent history.

With the Oxford Union Labour Club conflict, the 'antisemitism' smear campaign began in February and soon escalated.  Spearheaded by the Jewish Labour Movement, all the pro-Israel forces were throwing their resources into intervening in the Labour Party. Regardless of whether we are members, we all recognised the necessity of a coherent counter-strategy, especially against the JLM and its allies.  We set up FSOI to do so. 

Some of us also asked PSC to deploy its significant resources for such a counter-campaign.  After several weeks delay, PSC issued the 3rd May statement below.  This does not even name the smear campaign.  It could have been the start of a counter-campaign, but instead it was a perfunctory gesture: end of story. 

When Bernard Regan was a speaker at a Haringey public event (probably in May), I distributed the FSOI flyer and spoke from the floor, asking everyone to help counter the smear campaign.  His reply was basically, "They want us to stop talking about Palestine, so we will continue raising the issue."  Some PSC people said to me that we need not (or even should not)  involve ourselves 'in internal disputes within the Labour Party'.  This response mis-recognised the enemy attack in several respects, thus justifying no change in PSC's activities and targets.

With our scant resources, FSOI has tried to oppose the JLM agenda in many ways. We have regularly sent letters to the press, but only a few get published.  We have tried to contact, defend and link LP members who were suspended for supposedly antisemitic comments.  We organised interventions against the smear campaign at the Liverpool LP conference. Given PSC's much greater resources and paid staff, what has been its contribution?

As a symptom of a deeper problem, we have just seen a Zionist press report on pro-Palestine fringe meetings during the LP conference.

The pro-Palestinian fringe meetings were downbeat, focused only on settlements, not on any broader agenda. The MPs who spoke from the platform at these events took a moderate and considered line. In fact, most of them are people who spent the summer trying to unseat Corbyn as leader.

Judging from this and other reports, such events gave anti-Corbyn, LFI-affiliated MPs a convenient cover, e.g. by merely criticising settlements, supporting official recognition of Palestine, advocating a 2-state solution, etc.  Apparently little or nothing was said about BDS, much less the colonial-settler character of Israel (except by Manuel Hassassian).  So MPs can be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine at the same time! The Zionist lobby had little to fear from such events.

Those events symptomise a general political approach which weakens the solidarity movement.  A minimalist agenda helps our enemies to distinguish between 'legitimate criticism of Israel' (e.g. settlements) and 'antisemitism', e.g. opposition to Zionism.  What was PSC's role in influencing those fringe events?  How it will try to correct the above problem?

Les

Despite talk of 'partner organisations' PSC Executive is highly sectarian.  It works with virtually nobody.  It hasn't even bothered to contact FSOI about how it might help.  It opposed last year working with 'Together Against Prevent'.  This has to change.

What Can Be Done?

The key figures on PSC Executive belong to a secretive political group, Socialist Action or associated splinters from the old International Marxist Group.  They are uncritical of bourgeois nationalism and reject direct action or much political activism.  Hence PSC has been completely uncritical of Mahmoud Abbas’s quisling Palestinian Authority, even though it is a sub-contractor for the Israeli Defence Forces.  This is in contrast say to Electronic Intifada which hasn’t hesitated to criticise what it terms the Vichy administration in Ramallah. See for example The Palestinian Authority stands in the way of the Palestinian struggle

PSC has become an organisation which simply engages in routinism – an annual lobby of Parliament, a week around the Nakba or the Hewlett Packard  boycott, worthy in themselves but they are incapable of adapting to what is a changed political climate.  In a situation where the Zionist movement is on the attack, simply confining oneself to routine activities represents an abandonment of politics. 

At the forthcoming PSC AGM it is essential that a number of people from the branches stand for election to the Executive.  There urgently needs to be some new blood and new ideas on the Executive.  I am myself prepared to stand for election although I had hoped that having served in the formative period of PSC in the 1980’s that I wouldn’t have to stand again.

In addition there is a need for a serious review of the way PSC operates.  It has a number of paid staff but they don’t seem to be used in a particularly productive way.  PSC rests on the activity of its branches but the organisation as a whole is less than the sum of its parts.  Although the constitution (which is no longer available on-line)  makes provision for regional representatives on PSC Executive, the Executive has in the past consciously sought not to implement this clause.

There is an urgent need for a dedicated Branch Development Officer to encourage the growth of new branches and to consolidate and help existing branches and indeed to try to co-ordinate things like speakers’ tours.

It is clear with the attacks on the new President of NUS that there is an urgent need for some co-ordination and support for existing Palestine societies, given the amount of support and funding that goes to the Union of Jewish Students, which is a wholly Zionist outfit.

I want to suggest a Review of PSC is immediately set up from this Conference consisting of 6 people, including the National Secretary and one other Executive member, which can make proposals for the future operation of PSC.  It is long overdue when there was a systematic investigation into how PSC is working, its faults, failures but also successes and how things can be improved.

Such a review would look at existing fundraising and improving it, the deployment of staff and any other matter that can lead to an improved and functional PSC.

It is also crucial that the Executive consist primarily of activists and not those whose days of activity have long since gone.  It is crucial that within the next year, a regional structure of PSC is implemented and that regional representatives, elected by the branches, take their position on PSC Executive.  The days when PSC Executive is seen as the monopoly of one or other political grouping must end.  This is crippling PSC’s effectiveness.  This doesn’t mean a witch hunt of any political group  but a recognition that PSC belongs to its members.

The most crucial problem with PSC is not organisational but political.  I suggest a number of things:

i.               It is long overdue that PSC junked its 2 state position and came out clearly in favour of a democratic and secular unitary state.  Israel today is a single state, there is no green line, but it is a state where half the population – the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza – have no civil or political rights. 

No doubt this will need fighting for in the trade union and labour movement but we cannot avoid this fight.  Yes people are comfortable with the idea of 2 states.  It sounds as if it will satisfy everybody but in practice it satisfies only one side – the Zionists. 

ii.             A 2 state solution omits the question of Zionism.  Zionism, the movement which established the Israeli state does not and never has recognised a shared sovereignty over what it terms the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael).  No member of the Israeli government supports a 2 state solution but Netanyahu is happy to pay lip service to the idea, despite rejecting it at the 2015 Israeli general election because he knows and the Americans know, that verbal acknowledgment of 2 states allows settlement building to proceed apace.  Further it allows Israel to maintain a situation of apartheid whereby for another 50 years, Palestinians will live under a separate system of laws and military rule.

Tzipi Hotoveli - Israel's religious nutcase of a Deputy Foreign Minister

When Tzipi Hotoveli, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Secretary said ‘This land is ours. All of it is ours. We expect as a matter of principle of the international community to recognize Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere.”  We should believe her.  Even if a 2 state solution were desirable, which I don’t accept, it is no longer feasible.  That is why all Britain’s Zionist organizations, from the Jewish Labour Movement to the Board of Deputies support it!  PSC at present is utterly stupid for not being able to recognize reality. 

iii.           We should also explicitly reject the idea of a Jewish state.  A Jewish state in the context of a settler colonial state can only mean that the state is inherently racist.  Being Jewish means possessing apartheid-style privileges.  PSC should be an explicitly anti-Zionist organisation.  If we are sincere in saying that Israel is an apartheid state we have to oppose the ideology of that state, Zionism.

iv.           PSC needs to recognize that the outcome of the Oslo Accords in 1993, when the PLO and Israel reached an agreement, is that Israel has been able to subcontract out, a considerable part of the repressive activities of the Israeli state to the Palestinian Authority.  The PA quite consciously acts as the arms of the Israeli Defence Forces.  For this it receives aid money.  We should be quite clear about the nature of the PA.

These are just a few proposals as to resolutions to PSC Conference.

Tony Greenstein