Mark Gardner of the Zionist 'charity' - the Communist Security Trust & the Southampton International Law Conference

CST's Mark Gardner Dishonestly Quotes Me to Support the Banning of Southampton International Law Conference

My attention has been drawn by Gert and Brian Robinson to the use by Mark Gardner of the Zionist ‘charity’ the Communist Security Trust of certain comments I made regarding Oren ben-Dor, the Southampton University lecturer who has helped organise the Israel and International Law Conference.

The comments which I made, some 7 years ago, were in the context of ben-Dor’s support for Gilad Atzmon. 

Oren ben-Dor

Gardner quotes selectively from a much longer post to support the decision of Southampton University to ban a conference on Israel and International Law from being held on campus.  The reason it has been banned is because of health and safety concerns, i.e. Zionist threats of violence.

When the UCU won an employment tribunal against a Zionist academic Gardner
called the Tribunal members 'sneering bastards'

I want to make it clear that there is no connection between the Conference at Southampton University and my previous criticism of Oren ben-Dor.  Mark Gardner is being his usual hypocritical and dishonest self in seeking to associate the two.  There is no connection and Oren ben-Dor is, in any event, one of four organisers of the Conference.  More pertinent has been the failure of the CST to oppose the EDL's presence on Zionist demonstrations.

In a blog post I stated that:

‘Oren Ben-Dor is an ex-Israeli and a law lecturer at the University of Southampton. He is also someone who has aligned himself with a small, anti-Semitic current on the fringes of the Palestinian movement.’ 

Having subsequently met Oren Ben-Dor I formed the opinion that he was clearly misguided regarding Atzmon but was not personally anti-Semitic.  If anything he was taken in by Atzmon’s pretentious philosophical gobbledydook, as is evident in his article The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon

Ironically the criticism by Gardner of what Oren ben-Dor writes, on the CST’s web site (the CST is supposed to be a non-political charity), echoes that which the Zionists argue.

Gardner says that ‘They [Atzmon and ben-Dor] both hold up Jewish anti-Zionists as some kind of ultimate supposed proof that Zionism can only be fundamentally understood (and more importantly opposed) as an extension of Jewishness.’  But of course Zionists too argue that Zionism and being Jewish are one and the same, and that Jewish anti-Zionists are ‘self-haters’ i.e. hate their race and nation.

Gardner confirms this when he says that ‘Most left wing anti-israel activists anxiously manufacture distance between Zionists and Jews (i.e. between anti-Zionism and antisemitism).’  In other words that there is no distance or distinction between Zionists and Jews and left-wing anti-Israel activists therefore have to manufacture such distance.  Which is exactly what Atzmon argues!

Gardner says that ben-Dor ‘goes further, suggesting that Nazi perpetrators were somehow captives of a deeper historical force that may repeat in the future.’  But this was always the Zionist attitude to the holocaust.  It was but the culmination of 2,000 years of anti-Semitism.

Despite quoting me in support of the banning of the Southampton Law Conference (which of course I oppose) Gardner proves how little distance there is between Zionist ideologues such as himself and the anti-Semitic Gilad Atzmon.

Tony Greenstein

Latest Zionist Reactions to Ronnie Fraser’s Shattering ‘anti-Semitism’ Defeat by UCU

A good example of the careful, considered and thoughtful responses we have come to expect from Mark Gardner of the misnamed Community Security Trust.

First the normal idiot Zionist approach to the Employment Tribunal judgment in Fraser v UCU. This is the kind of person who prefers to rest on cliches, standard responses whatever the question or who, if stumped for an answer cries ‘anti-Semitism’.  I’ll let you decide which category best fits Mark Gardner, the world’s most highly paid ‘fighter against anti-Semitism’ (about £130,000 pa).  Gardner is the loquacious spokesman for the Zionist Community Security Trust.  He is never lost for an answer, even if it is the same one.  As per usual, he was articulate and eloquent when giving his well reasoned response to and analysis of the employment tribunal decision.

Gardner may oppose 'anti-Semitism' but here he is, best of friends, with arch-bigot Richard Littlejohn

Not for Gardner any   legal subtleties, case law, knowledge or familiarity with the Equalities Act 2010 still less an explanation of how anti-Zionism is a breach of a protected characteristic.  Good gracious no.  As far as Gardner was concerned the tribunal was a ‘harbinger of hate’ and for good measure ‘sneering bastards’!  It is unlikely that he has ever met them, so whether they sneer or what their parentage is seems a matter of speculation, though having read the closely argued Judgment, it seems anything but sneering or hateful.  Unless telling some home truths is in itself hateful.

In an entirely different vein, an extremely interesting article from a Zionist Adam Wagner.  He will of course be ignored and in fact it is, in many ways, good that he is ignored, since what he is arguing for his both for the Zionists to take a look at themselves and for them to abandon their ‘anti-Semitism = anti-Zionism’ approach to all criticism.

Adam Wagner argues that ‘More importantly, the ‘anti-Zionism equals racism’ argument is plainly bankrupt and has no purchase in wider society. We should move on to something which might actually work.’  Therein lies the problem.  Nothing does work.  How do you justify shooting 16 year old kids dead in a West  Bank where no soldier has died for over a year?  How do you justify the recent death of a 30 year old Palestinian prisoner from torture or the eviction of ‘unrecognised’ villages as part of a Nazi style ‘Judaification’ (the Nazis operated a ‘deJewification’ policy) in the Negev and Galilee and East Jerusalem.  If you can’t shoot the message down try shooting the messenger.  Problem is.  It ain’t working!

Tony Greenstein

Legal Ruling Shines Unflattering Light on the Anti-Zionism Equals Racism Campaign

Adam Wagner - one of the more sensible Zionist lawyers

Adam Wagner" Adam (@adamwagner1) is a barrister specialising in human rights & medical law. He is founding editor of UK Human Rights Blog...."
5th April, 2013

Sometimes we need an outsider’s perspective to bring into focus uncomfortable truths about ourselves. Just before the Passover festivities, the Employment Tribunal released a 45-page judgment full of Biblical fury which did just that.

The judgment was about a legal claim  brought by a maths teacher, Ronnie Fraser, against his teaching union. He claimed that the Union had harassed him in breach of equality laws due to its handling of the Israel-Palestine debate.

The full judgment can be read herehttp://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/fraser-uni-college-union/ (PDF). If you have any interest in Jewish communal politics and in particular how the Israel-Palestine debate is handled, I highly recommend you read it. Perhaps set aside half an hour over a well-earned post-Passover sandwich – it’s worth it, I promise.

Fighting racism has never been well paid - supporting racism and Zionism is very lucrative.  Gardner claims to do the first when being paid for the latter!

I won’t try to summarise Employment Judge Snelson’s findings here, but I would like to draw out a few points. The main one is that the Claimant, represented by solicitor Anthony Julius, lost in a big way. This was a total, unqualified demolition job. As an outcome, it really was ten plagues bad.

The language of the judgment is harsh and at times sarcastic. As a lawyer, you can take it from me that it doesn’t get much worse than this. This was a “sorry saga”, the Tribunal “greatly regret that the case was ever brought”, at its heart the case was “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means”. Perhaps worst of all, the claim showed a “worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression.”

Let’s just step back for a moment. Just because a judge rules on something doesn’t mean they are right. Judgments get appealed and overturned. Reading this one, and not having been in court for the weeks of evidence, there are at least two possibilities. First, that the Tribunal has taken an irrational or perverse dislike to the claimant, his lawyers and some of his witnesses – that is a real possibility, given how scathing the judgment is. The second is, however, is that the Tribunal has got it broadly right, having listened to the extensive evidence and nonetheless dismissed the case out of hand.

As I said, I wasn’t there – this is an evidence heavy case so you really have to have sat through it to reach a proper conclusion. But assuming for the purpose of this article that the Tribunal did get it right, there is a lot here to be worried about.

Preposterous

Let’s take just a single paragraph, number 148. Here the Judge is summarising his conclusions on the claimant’s witnesses who included British Jewish luminaries such as the author Howard Jacobson. Some gave “careful, thoughtful, courteous evidence”. Others however, “seemed more disposed to score points or play to the gallery rather than providing straightforward answers to the clear questions put to them.” Again, ouch.

Particular criticism was reserved for Jeremy Newmark, the Chief Executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, a committee of community grandees:

We regret to say that we have rejected as untrue the evidence of Ms Ashworth and Mr Newmark concerning the incident at the 2008 Congress… Evidence given to us about booing, jeering and harassing of Jewish speakers at Congress debates was also false, as truthful witnesses on the Claimant’s side accepted. One painfully ill-judged example of playing to the gallery was Mr Newmark’s preposterous claim, in answer to the suggestion in cross- examination that he had attempted to push his way into the 2008 meeting, that a ‘pushy Jew’ stereotype was being applied to him. The opinions of witnesses were not, of course, our concern and in most instances they were in any event unremarkable and certainly not unreasonable. One exception was a remark of Mr Newmark in the context of the academic boycott controversy in 2007 that the union was “no longer a fit arena for free speech”, a comment which we found not only extraordinarily arrogant but also disturbing.

Wow. Here are some words you never want to hear in litigation: “untrue”, “false”, “preposterous”, “extraordinarily arrogant”, “disturbing”. To recap, this is the Chief Executive of an organisation which is arguably now the main ambassador of the Jewish Community to the wider British community. This may all be unfair and perverse, but if it is not then we should be worried about the implications.

Then came the MPs. Not just any MPs, but Denis MacShane and John Mann, both well known to the Jewish community; Mr MacShane chaired the The All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism, Mann authored the Football Association Taskforce on Tackling Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Again, it’s bad:

We did not derive assistance from the two Members of Parliament who appeared before us. Both gave glib evidence, appearing supremely confident of the rightness of their positions. For Dr MacShane, it seemed that all answers lay in the MacPherson Report (the effect of which he appeared to misunderstand). Mr Mann could manage without even that assistance. He told us that the leaders of the Respondents were at fault for the way in which they conducted debates but did not enlighten us as to what they were doing wrong or what they should be doing differently. He did not claim ever to have witnessed any Congress or other UCU meeting. And when it came to anti- Semitism in the context of debate about the Middle East, he announced, “It’s clear to me where the line is …” but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to locate it for us. Both parliamentarians clearly enjoyed making speeches. Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not to his liking.

As I said, wow. These are MPs who have been lionised by the Jewish community, and in particular the Jewish Chronicle (perhaps not incidentally, Anthony Julius chairs the JC board, a point highlighted by the Judge). "And on the topic of that Parliamentary Committee”

    157… The Respondents defended themselves courteously but robustly against treatment by the Parliamentary Committee the fairness of which was, to put it at its very lowest, open to question.

The sarcasm drips off that final sentence, doesn’t it? Ultimately, the Tribunal concluded that contrary to the claimant’s arguments, the Union’s meetings were “well-ordered and balanced” and that almost the entire case was “manifestly unmeritorious”. Most importantly, the Tribunal rejected out of hand the argument that “a belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel or any similar sentiment” can amount to a protected characteristic."

Lessons not learned

Where does this leave us? It is tempting to see this “sorry saga” as no more than an unfortunate and hubristic litigation fail, or an “act of epic folly” as the Jewish Chronicle’s ‘Ask the QC’ QC Jonathan Goldberg commented. But I think there are wider lessons here which we would ignore at our peril.

Anyone who follows Jewish communal politics and reads the JC will recognise many in the cast of characters as well as the arguments. Anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian campaigners are regularly branded as anti-Semites. Despite the good work of organisations like Yachad, this is still a regular and well-supported narrative at the centre of much of the Jewish communal response to criticism of Israel. But that approach – which really amounts to communal comfort food – has clearly failed. And yet it is still wheeled out: watch, for example, this stirring but flawed recent speech by the Chief Rabbi to AIPAC, an American pro-Israel lobby. They hate us, so they would say that. Etc.

Of course, some criticism of Israel is linked to or motivated by anti-Semitism, but isn’t it time to stop using vast resources to paint legitimate debate as racial hatred? As well as failing miserably as an pro-Israel argument, this approach also risks fatally undermining work against real anti-Semitism. Aren’t we just a little bit ashamed for major communal leaders and organisations to have backed a claim showing a “disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression”?

In a prediction of Michael Fish quality, the JC originally said of the case that unless UCU repented its “clear antisemitic behaviour”:

'we could be set for this decade’s version of the Irving trial – a specific case which acts to crystallise broader themes and issues'

Jeremy Newmark -  CEO of Jewish Leadership Council - an arrogant liar as the employment tribunal found

It certainly did crystallise broader themes and issues. But not the  ones the cheerleaders hoped for. As said above, it is possible that this Tribunal reached a perverse decision. No doubt some will say so once the recriminations begin to fly. I imagine some will even accuse the Judge of anti-Semitism. But assuming for a moment that he was right, we should, as a community, be embarrassed by this ruling. It involved not just the looney fringe but central figures in the community, who have been branded exaggerators, manipulators and arrogant liars. More importantly, the ‘anti-Zionism equals racism’ argument is plainly bankrupt and has no purchase in wider society. We should move on to something which might actually work. And that is the lesson of this sorry Passover saga.

Spiked by Spiked

The day that Brendan O'Neill decided that Free Speech was Not such a good thing

Apart from the odd article by George Monbiot in The Guardian, the existence of a web magazine called Spiked had entirely escaped my attention. That is until my attention was drawn to it by a poster on Haifa University’s Alef list, who cited an article by one Natalie Rothschild, criticising a speech I had made at a Brighton demonstration against Israel’s attack on Gaza. ‘Gaza is not Warsaw’.

Spiked is the web journal that was set up when the Revolutionary Communist Party’s [RCP] Living Marxism (LM) magazine was sued for libel and bankrupted by ITN for alleging that pictures of Bosnian Muslims in Serb concentration camps had been faked. LM’s view was that there was no genocide or massacres in Bosnia. [Joan Phillips, “Bosnia: The invention of a Holocaust”, Living Marxism, September 1992].

a

For those who remember, the RCP was the zany ultra-left group that always managed to end up on the right-side of politics supporting Neil Hamilton of the Tory Monday Club when he was under attack for corruption and attacking No Platform for Fascists.  At the same time it refused to join the Troops Out Movement setting up the Irish Freedom Movement because we wouldn't call for support for the IRA.  I suspect Brendan O'Neill and Frank Furedi no longer promote the slogan Victory to the IRA  (yes they have conveniently forgotten that one now they've become respectable!).

b

And although they don’t proclaim so openly any more they also denied that genocide took place in Rwanda. [Fiona Foster, December 1995. ‘Massacring the Truth in Rwanda.’ Living Marxism. Fiona Foster is the pen name of Fiona Fox, sister of Claire Fox, of the ‘Institute of Ideas’ and the Moral Maze. See also Undisclosed Affiliations - ‘From genocide deniers to biotech apologists’ - pt 4 (10/4/2004) and ‘Atrocity, memory, photography: imaging the concentration camps of Bosnia – the case of ITN versus Living Marxism, Part 2, David Campbell, Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 1, No. 2 (June 2002), 143–172.

Today they have a more sophisticated explanation. It isn’t that massacres didn’t occur [they avoid the use of the term ‘genocide’] but in fact it was the RPF, the organisation of the Tsutsis who were butchered.  It was Paul Kagame, now the President of Rwanda, that was responsible for what happened. The victims were responsible for their own deaths. Why? Because they allegedly shot down the plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana. It was that which triggered the genocide that followed. No matter that most people hold that it was the butchers and pogromists who carried out that act too.

Those of us who blame the French military and President Mitterand for standing by, if not aiding, the butchers get short shrift. ‘the truth is that France’s major mistake was to find itself on the wrong side of the moral parable that has been imposed by Western observers on Rwanda’s recent tragic history.’ Barrie Collins, ‘Rwanda: obscuring the truth about the genocide’ Don't you just love that? 'Moral parable'. It was all a question of biblical interpretation, what Gilad Atzmon calls the 'holocaust narrative'. Change the story change the facts. Like the Bible, you can read into the parable that which you want to understand.  Rwanda's genocide was a parable.  If you change it then you can also change the facts.

But I stray. When I got round to reading Rothschild’s article and also a couple of others - Frank Furedi’s ‘After Gaza: what’s behind 21st-century anti-Semitism?’ and Spiked’s editor, Brendan O’Neill’s, The politics of anti-Zionism it was clear that Spiked was clearly ploughing an old, Zionist furrow that can be summed up as anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism.

It is no accident that the CEO, media spokesperson etc. of the Zionist Community Security Trust, Mark Gardener, has just published an article on Spiked ‘Yesterday’s anti-Zionism is today’s anti-Semitism’.

But I knew I was on safe ground in asking for the right to reply. After all, Spiked may be a right-wing, libertarian journal masquerading as being on the left. It may spout nonsense dressed up as wars over culture, but it’s one defining feature is its absolute commitment to free speech. As it says itself: ‘spiked is endorsed by free-thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, and hated by the narrow-minded such as Torquemada and Stalin. Or it would be, if they were lucky enough to be around to read it.’ It’s hardly likely that Marx and Mill would run away from a debate on the Palestine of the day, Ireland.

As editor O’Neill makes clear, ‘If anything, the enemy of free speech today is less totalitarianism than anti-totalitarianism, the idea that strong beliefs or words are necessarily problematic.’ ‘Free speech, with the edges taken off’ So I knew that my words, by way of reply, would have to be strong, but I also knew that I could count on Brendan O’Neill’s commitment to the traditions of Marx, Voltaire and Mill, rather than Stalin and Torquemada.

After all, free speech is meaningless if all you do is listen to your own views. As Mick Hume explained, in his Times blog [he’s their ‘Marxist’ columnist!] ‘Free speech means freedom for fools, too.’ Now admittedly he was referring to the National Front and BNP but surely he can’t be in favour of free speech for fascists but opposed to free speech when it comes to anti-Zionists?

By this time I’d done a little research into Spiked and uncovered some interesting articles about it and its corporate links. Money from IBM and links with PR firms etc. Invasion of the entryists, ‘Flying Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ . But I was well aware that much of this is sourced by George Monbiot, who obviously doesn’t like the cut of Mick Hume’s suit. And Brendan O’Neill had made their position clear in an article, about being denied the right of reply, in The Independent. The Independent, Big Oil and me

I therefore sent an e-mail to Brendan O’Neill on 22nd January 2009 asking to reply both to Rothschild’s article but also O’Neill’s Politics of anti-Zionism. I wrote that ‘I disagree with your whole thesis of a conflation or morphing into or between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and I believe your hostility to comparisons between different genocides are fatuous and also have a hidden agenda.’

O’Neill wrote back the same day saying that ‘Firstly I would be interested in seeing a response from you, yes. Unfortunately, as you will probably have guessed, spiked cannot afford to pay for contributions, but we are a good place from which to kickstart a debate.’ But ‘I don’t think it will be useful to have a piece speculating on our “hidden agenda”, simply because we do not have one.’

Now I must confess that I was taken aback by the arrogance that O’Neill displayed in his ‘Politics of anti-Zionism’ article. It is the same arrogance that LM had displayed. The Left opposes ‘free speech’ because it doesn’t possess our ability to debate these issues. We are the repository of truth. His article was subtitled ‘Today’s widespread attacks on Zionism as ‘expansionist and racist’ are historically illiterate.’ Quite a big claim to make but how true was it and what were O'Neill's credentials to make such a claim? He hadn't after all penned a great deal about Zionism and Israel.

If you are going to make such a claim then one would assume there was some reasoned argument behind this statement.  In fact there was none.  Anyone with the slightest acquaintance with Zionism would be aware that racism was at the heart of the Zionist project - an exclusivist ethnic project that manifested itself in the campaigns of Jewish Labour and Jewish Produce, i.e. a Boycott of Arab Labour and Arab Produce in the 1920's and 1930's, to say nothing of their penchant for the transfer of the Arabs of Palestine from the start of the Zionist project.  These are too well documented even for O'Neil to deny, so why is he saying that it is 'historically illiterate' to say that Zionism was racist?  The expansionism of Zionist is self evident. 

I had already noticed that O’Neill’s article quoted just two books – Nathan Weinstock’s ‘Zionism: a False Messiah’ and Abram Leon’s ‘The Jewish Question – A Marxist Interpretation’. Both of these are excellent books, though it seems that O’Neill understood neither. The latter was written under war-time conditions [Leon led the resistance of the Fourth International in Belgium and died in Auschwitz] and was naturally limited in source material by the conditions of the time. Weinstock’s book is somewhat dated but an excellent introduction to the subject (though Weinstock himself has now become a Zionist and has tried to prevent it being republished or sold!). However two books does not an expert make.

Since O’Neill was happy to lecture others on political illiteracy I thought I would point out his factual mistakes about a subject that he considered himself an expert on. For example his statement that ’Herzl and other new Zionist thinkers – most notably Moses Hess and Max Nordau – assumed leadership of the early Zionist movement at the end of nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century’ suffered from a trifling problem – Hess died in 1875 and was the leader of nothing!

Likewise his statement that: ‘After the Second World War, … first Britain and later America supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.’ In fact Britain was opposed to a Jewish state and this caused major ructions between the Attlee Government and the Truman Administration. After all it can’t have escaped O’Neill's attention that the Zionist terror militias – Haganah, Irgun and Lehi had, from 1945 to 1947 waged a war against the British occupiers. Or maybe it had escaped his attention.

Those who want to read about the British attitude to the creation of the Israeli state should read an expert, such as Wm. Roger Louis's The British Empire in the Middle East 1945-1951 - Arab Nationalism, The United States, and Postwar Imperialism, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988, e.g.

Bevin’s aim was the creation of a binational sate. It may be taken as a common British aspiration of the era, though endorsed by others with greater degrees of scepticism. p.393 

or

Attlee and Bevin independently arrived at the same conclusion. They did not want to be held responsible in Arab eyes for a policy of partition. p.459.

O’Neill was none too happy about this because, as he explained: ‘Secondly, while I take you correction of my point about Hess (and we will be correcting that, thank you), I also don’t think it would be useful to have a piece that picks up on errors or on what you consider to be errors of judgements, errors of emphasis, etc.’

Well quite. Free speech has its limits, especially when it shows that Spiked's pretensions to having something to say are based on an abysmal ignorance of the subject in question. Nonetheless O'Neill was happy to carry my response and who was I to argue with that?

On 2nd February 2009 I e-mailed my article. It was somewhat long, 4,500 words, but it was replying to three articles totalling over 10,000 words. And O’Neill responded the same day, ‘Thanks Tony. I will read this very soon. Brendan.’ And that was it! Despite reminders on 12th February and again on 22nd February, when it was clear that O’Neill had clearly had second thoughts about the merits of free speech, I heard nothing. As I wrote on the latter occasion

‘I realise that it is not pleasant for any editor to be faced with the prospect of sticking to his previous promise and publishing an article which demolishes his and his co-editors musings on a subject such as Zionism but that is the consequence of jumping to an opinion before knowing anything about the subject.’

I copied it to Nathalie Rothschild and the collective but you know what? Not one of them has had the courage to respond and say why they are spiking the article.

And the moral of the story? When Spiked talks of ‘free speech’ reach for the spoons. Like The Times and the capitalist press, ‘free speech’ has a different meaning entirely from that which socialists understand. What’s free for them is often very expensive for us. Bigotry is indeed free but criticism of imperialism, capitalism and all its works is another matter entirely. Free speech means any amount of holocaust denial but it doesn’t include criticism of the fallacies and ignorance of Brendan O’Neill, Furedi and the light-weight Rothschild.