Meet Central Synagogue’s Fascist Rabbi who the Met are using as a Pretext to Ban Protests Outside the BBC

Barry Lerer called on Lammy to Apologise for  Suspending 8% of Britain’s Arms Supplies to Israel & Blamed Palestinian Parents for Israel’s Murder of Their Children 

 

Above is an interview by Ben Jamal of PSC with Middle East Eye where he quotes extracts from sermons made at the Central Synagogue.

The synagogue's rabidly far-right Rabbi Barry Lerer and his synagogue have hosted a never ending series of right-wing figures including Michael Howard, Boris's sister Rachel Johnson and Theresa Villiers MP - as well as the mad genocidal ‘journalist’ Melanie Phillips and Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s Gideon Falter.

Fascist Lerer has as much right to his political views as Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson but this helps us understand why he has complained to the Met. He totally ignores, not just secular left-wing Jews, but religious Jews who attend the Palestine demos and who are very warmly received.

Since a Novara article this week, the synagogue has taken down the webpages of its sermons, so I have added some extracts from these sermons as footnotes to. Google has a record of all these webpages so any extracts can be confirmed.

Lerer condemns the UN, the International Court of Justice and ends up quoting the equally far right Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who was trained in a settler yeshivah, to the effect that Israel is going to extraordinary lengths to protect human life.

If after at least 200,000 deaths, including indirect deaths, the deliberate starvation of the Palestinians of Gaza, the deliberate bombing of tent encampments burning their inhabitants alive, Lerer thinks that Israel is taking care to uphold humanitarian law one can only assume that he is a fantasist, a liar or both. Or just a raving loony fascist of the type that used to stick out their right arm.

Either way this is the kind of person the Institutionally Racist Metropolitan Police is relying on to enforce their ban.

Perhaps accusing Palestinians of being ‘human animals’ as Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, did, in an echo of Himmler’s description of Jews is upholding humanitarian law?  On 9^th October Gallant declared:

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.

“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,”

Or Netanyahu’s comparison of Palestinians with Amalek whom god commanded the Israelites to wipe out to every man, woman or children.  Or Bezalel Smotrich’s saying that it is morally right to starve 2 million people.

If Netanyahu and Gallant are really upholders of humanitarian law, despite the warrants out for their arrest by the International Criminal Court then we must reassess Hitler and Goebbels. Perhaps they too have been misjudged.

The Sermons of Rabbi Barry Lerer    (before they were removed this week from Central Synagogue’s website)

The Rabbi of the synagogue that is closest to the BBC - and who the police have made clear has been one of the people saying I and my congregants feel unsafe – says that he’s twice had to put back services, to delay them, to prevent the service taking place when we're there. He's not provided any evidence that anyone's tried to go to the Central Synagogue, harass people etc.. But he said we can hear them chanting genocidal chants inside the synagogue.

What does he mean by genocidal chants. He's talking about people chanting from “The River To The Sea Palestine Will Be Free”. So the argument is: we're inside a synagogue, we can hear this in the background; we know there are people with Palestinian flags etc. - that's harassing.

It's worth saying something about this rabbi’s political positions which came to light yesterday and was covered by Novara media. He has published sermons on the synagogue's website in which he attacked Starmer, calling him 'two-tier Kier'. He said that the government effectively, and the policing it enforces, is unfairly hard on the far-right but has another rule for those on the left.[1]

Barry Lerer accused the BBC of being horrendously anti-Israel.[2] He's criticized the UN and says the International Court of Justice and the decisions made by the ICJ are lies.[3]

Most notoriously and shamefully, in a sermon he quoted Golda Meir, who notoriously said ‘We'll have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us’.[4] And he's also talked about the need to go on the attack against our enemies wherever they exist.

“It is time to go to combat our enemies, not only on the battlefield, but the hostile press, those on social media, the UN and Governments who have no desire for the truth or peace and seek the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.”[5]

What that demonstrates is the police are taking evidence from this person with egregious views [as if he’s a] good faith actor who's informing them that they have to prevent people protesting for the rights of the Palestinian people from going within any sort distance of his synagogue regardless of whether he's got a service on or not.

It is clear that Rabbi Barry Lerer is an out and out racist so it’s no surprise at all that the institutionally racist Metropolitan Police should use him as an excuse to ban protests at the BBC. But that is all they are – pretexts and excuses.

For someone to blame Palestinian parents for the deaths of their children, 20,000+ of whom have been deliberately murdered by Israel in Gaza is beyond vile.  Perhaps he would like to blame Jewish parents for the death of their parents in Nazi Germany?  Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children. Hind Rajab wasn’t killed by her parents but by deliberate Israeli tank fire.

[1] “Elon Musk has accused Kier Starmer of being two teir Keir- with the Government and policing policies having one rule for those on the right and another for those on the left. This was apparent in the heavy handed policing of the recent demonstrations here in UK …” Rabbi Lerer, Sermon, 7 August 2024. (This sermon was made just after the far right, anti-immigrant riots of last summer)

[2] “A major study published this week by Assersons, a British law firm based in Tel Aviv where my brother works is a sobering read. A dedicated team used AI to follow four months of war coverage. It identified over 1500 breaches of the BBC’s own guidelines on impartiality and accuracy. Time and again after 7^th October the BBC’s output soft-soaped Hamas’s atrocities while depicting Israel as ‘militaristic and aggressive’.

Israel was 4 times more likely to be associated with war crimes in BBC reporting than Hamas, whose entire campaign from October 7 onwards has consisted of war crimes against both Israeli and Gaza civilians. Israel was 14 times more likely to be associated with genocide and six times more likely to be associated with breaking international law.

We’re also reminded of the BBC’s stubborn refusal to call Hamas terrorists. Instead insisting on referring to 7 October as a ‘militant attack’- and how they claimed why they weren’t using the T-word by saying that they ‘don’t take sides’, and won’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly” and how they don’t talk about “terrorists”.’

But we all know that this isn’t true. The BBC has referred often to ‘far-right terrorism’ and even wondered if incels are adherents to a ‘far-right terrorist ideology’. And as for impartiality, we all know the BBC takes sides all the time – on Brexit, climate change, woke etc. As Brendan Oneill wrote– Faced with a thousand dead Jews, the Beeb finally rediscovered the importance of impartiality.” Sermon, 14 September, 2024.

[3] “This past year has been an Annis Horibilis for the Jewish Community and for the State of Israel. It feels like we have been in a boxing ring with a World Heavyweight Champion. We seem to be knocked down again and again whether it be the constant Israel bashing in the media, the threats and missiles of Hamas and Hezbollah. The sham trials in the ICJ. The demonstrations on University campuses. The constant lies being spread at the UN. Iran’s missile attack just before Pesach. The cold blooded murder of 6 of the hostages just a month or so ago. We have been broken and even shattered time and again- but we are not out.” Sermon, 2 or 3 October 2024.

Earlier in that same sermon, Rabbi Lerer said: “For anyone who has visited Israel over these 12 months they would have seen Posters and Banners all over the Holy land read Yachad Ninatzeach- together we will be victorious! And this was shown by the tens of thousands of Israelis who returned from all around the world to Israel after October 7^th to fight – because we don’t have another land….”

[4] “And of course we think of the how children have been killed on both sides of the conflict. How children have been orphaned on both sides of the conflict. We are reminded of Golda Meir’s famous quote “We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”” Sermon 3 or 4 October 2024.

[5] Sermon 28 September.

Earlier in that same sermon, Rabbi Lerer said:

“We must succeed in our mission—standing firm, striving for a better world, and embracing the truth. As one voice we stand up to antisemitism and we call on the hostages to be released. The state of Israel is also standing. Standing up against the Hezbollah bullies who have rained daily rockets since October 8th, caused many deaths (including civilians and children) and displaced over 60,000 people in the North from their homes for the past year who have been living as refugees in their own country. Israel is standing up against the world and governments and media who chose not to see or not to comment on any of those events over the past year- their eyes were too focussed on Rafah….now that Israel is finally responding they have all of a sudden woken up- condemning Israel of course and calling for a ceasefire.

The United Nations General Assembly last week voted 124 to 14 against Israel’s right to defend itself, with 43 countries abstaining, including nations like Germany, England, Australia, and Canada....” (This sermon was made just after the Israeli attack on Lebanon from 23 September.)

Earlier in another sermon, on 7 September, Rabbi Lerer said:

"In a press conference later that day Prime Minister Netanyahu also apologised “To the families of the six hostages, I ask for your forgiveness that we did not succeed in bringing them home alive. We were close, but we did not make it.”

But where were the other apologies? Where were the apologies of the USA – Hersh’s country of birth?

Where is the apology from the David Lammy the Foreign Secretary who, on the day of these funerals and while five British citizens are still being held hostage in Gaza, decided to announce the suspension of thirty arms licenses to Israel? Accusing Israel of breaching Humanitarian Law when as the Chief Rabbi says “it is in fact going to extraordinary lengths to uphold it!” As Brendan O’Neill wrote… in normal times, such a flagrant moral abandonment of our old ally of Israel would be geopolitically foolish; in the wake of the 7 October pogrom and its unleashing of a global wave of Jew hate, it feels nothing short of sickening."

See the Press Statement of Jewish Network for Palestine

Meet Jessica Elgot - the Guardian & former Jewish Chronicle 'Journalist' Whose Articles are Regurgitated Press Releases

It's a sad commentary on the Guardian which once boasted journalists like Michael Adams and David Hirst that it employs a Zionist Presstitute  

When I read anything by Jessica Elgot I am reminded of that old saying:

You cannot hope

to bribe or twist,

thank God! the

British journalist.

But, seeing what

the man will do

unbribed, there's

no occasion to

You cannot expect every journalist to have the talents of a John Pilger or Jonathan Cook.  However you do expect a certain ethical integrity, to say nothing of intelligence.  Unfortunately Jessica Elgot possesses neither.

What used to distinguish ‘journalists’ on the tabloids from the quality press was the ability to separate fact and opinion. The latter were confined to the Editorial or Comment pages. Jessica Elgot wouldn't even understand this proposition. She is a propagandist. Every piece she writes is biased against understanding. She mistakes cliches for prose from the latest press release.

Today Labour’s National Executive Committee discussed a new Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct. Apparently it has stuck to its guns and rejected the Zionist attacks. Labour NEC defies Chief Rabbi to adopt new anti-Semitism code.

I have already made it clear, as has Labour Against the Witchhunt, which picketed the meeting today, that the new Anti-Semitism Code is weak, based as it is on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.

Elgot's pathetic propaganda masquerading as journalism

The Zionist movement in this country has been waging a campaign against the Code.  After crying about 'antisemitism' for the past 3 years it is afraid that Labour might take it seriously and forget to confuse it with anti-Zionism.

Their complaint is that Labour hasn't adopted the complete IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism. Instead the most egregious examples of the conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have been either omitted or toned down.  The Zionists therefore demand that Labour adopts the whole of this Liar's Charter.

For Elgot and her Zionist compatriots this is unacceptable.  In the words of the Jewish Chronicle’s far-Right editor, Stephen Pollard, the problem with the new Code is that 

‘instead of adopting the definition as agreed by all these bodies, Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’

Lord Bracadale's Recommendation - anti-Zionism is not a hate crime

Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are two completely different things.  Don’t take my word for it. Retired Senior Scottish Judge Lord Bracadale has just completed an Independent Review of Hate Crime Legislation in Scotland.  In his review Lord Bracadale, an Establishment Judge par excellence, no radical he, concludes that you can’t make criticism of Israel and Zionism into a a Protected Characteristic and therefore a hate crime.  You hate people not states.  To make it a criminal offence to criticise Israel would be an outrageous attack on freedom of speech and contrary to Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights. 

In the words of Hugh Tomlinson QC this would have ‘a potential chilling effect’ on free speech.  Of course Zionists and Elgot aren’t in the slightest bit interested in free speech.  All they are bothered about is protecting their bastard offspring, the apartheid State of Israel.

One of the illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’ in the IHRA is describing Israel as a 'racist endeavour'.  As Ahmed  Tibi, an Arab member of Israel’s Knesset asks in Middle East Eye,  how else do you describe a state where nearly 1,000 towns and communities are Jewish only, where a Bill is before the Knesset to legalise the segregation of communities and where attempts by Arabs to buy houses in ‘Jewish towns’ are met with demonstrations by the residents wanting to keep their towns all White Jewish.  A situation where 93% of the land is national, i.e. Jewish national land.

One wonders what Elgot and the Board of Deputies would say if, in Britain, there was a Christian National Fund which owned and controlled 93% of land and refused, on principle, to sell or lease its property to Jews or non-Christians.  Ant-semitic or merely defending Christian identity?

Israel is a state where mobs chant ‘Death to the Arabs’ without any penalty whatsoever, whereas an Arab poet, Dareen Tatour is facing a lengthy prison sentence for talking about ‘resistance’ in a poem.  Racist?  You judge. 

But to the despicable Elgot, who masquerades as a journalist, none of this matters. She like her editors is devoted to one thing only – selling Israeli Apartheid as a Western Democracy.

For reasons unknown Jessica decided to block me

It is no surprise, that in the course of researching this article, I found that Ms Elgot had blocked me on Twitter even though we have never exchanged a single word.  I can’t imagine why should want to block me but I’ll take it as a compliment that I have been blocked by a racist.

The moral of the story?  As long as the Guardian employs people like Elgot no self-respecting anti-racist or socialist should buy The Guardian.

Below is a letter I have sent to the Guardian on Elgot’s latest piece.  I don’t expect it to be published!

Letter I have sent to the Guardian concerning Elgot's fake news article

Anti-Semitism and Labour: Muzzling free speech silences rightful criticism of Israel

Longstanding Knesset member Ahmad Tibi urges Labour not to change its definition of anti-Semitism at its meeting on Tuesday

The British Labour Party’s recent efforts to define anti-Semitism, and to put clear water between a racist act (which is a criminal offence) and legitimate criticism of Israel, is deeply appreciated by those who strive for truth and justice.

Conversely, the push by supporters of Israel to bully and browbeat the Labour Party into adopting a distorted definition of anti-Semitism is sad and disheartening.

“It is impossible to understand why Labour refuses to align itself with this universal definition,” complained the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the UK’s Jewish Leadership Council.

The definition’s controversial examples are not even accepted as such by the man who wrote it

The second half of this sentence is patently false. These groups’ desired definition, through politically slanted examples, is most definitely not a universally accepted test to decide which statements should be struck from the political discourse – and for good reason.

Five years ago, the Fundamental Rights Agency – the European Union body dedicated to combatting racism and discrimination – dropped the definition from its website.

In fact, the definition’s controversial examples are not even accepted as such by the man who wrote it.

As Kenneth Stern, the lawyer and lead author of the document explained in a 2016 op-ed in the New York Times, the text was only ever “intended for data collectors writing reports about anti-Semitism in Europe. It was never supposed to curtail speech”.

The fog of 'whataboutery'

Now on to the first claim, that it is “impossible to understand” why the UK Labour Party, or any body dedicated to human rights and opposed to racial hatred, would reject the definition or associated examples championed by pro-Israel groups.

Allow me, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to explain why this definition of anti-Semitism is problematic in the extreme, and why it amounts to an attempt to muzzle public discourse on the rights of Palestinian people.

Anger at the Labour Party stems not from its decision to accept the broad definition of anti-Semitism written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), but its refusal to accept four examples of anti-Semitism which relate explicitly to Israel. These are:

• “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”
• "Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations”
• “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”
• "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”

The first of these examples is just an eloquent ”whataboutery". Responding to reports about state racism, Israel’s defenders cry out: "What about Syria? What about Saudi Arabia? What about Iran?"

Of course, these aren’t honest appeals to discuss the alleged crimes of those other countries, but rather, efforts to derail discussion of Israel’s. No victim of racism should ever be required to compile lists of other equally reprehensible acts of racism, just to earn the right to describe their own suffering.

If other countries are guilty of similar or worse crimes, they should also be called out for those crimes. The responsibility to do so, however, falls on every single citizen, every political actor.

Any effort to burden those who would advocate Palestinian rights with the demand that they first lobby for the rights of every other aggrieved group in the world is nothing more than a strategy to silence them, and to ensure Israeli impunity.

Where are rights for Palestinians?

Another way Palestinians are being silenced is with the assertion that those who accuse the State of Israel of inherent racism, of being a “racist endeavour“, are really inciting hatred of Jews in general and wherever they happen to live. Founding the state was the common wish of Jewish people, say supporters of Israel: denying that wish amounts to anti-Semitism.

In fact, creating a state that would give preferential treatment to Jews over others, including over the indigenous Palestinian people, was a minority opinion among Jews around the world before Israel was established.

Since the state’s founding in 1948, admittedly, Jews who support a territory of their own in Palestine have grown in number and proportion.

Still, no right of self-determination could ever supercede the right to equal treatment of every other person living on the land. Why should support for Israel – even if such support was unanimous among Jewry around the world – absolve Israel of racism at its core? 

At the time of Israel’s creation, its founding fathers drove out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and did not permit them to return when hostilities had ended. They refuse a right of return to this day. In the seven decades that followed, there was only a single year in which Israel did not control the Palestinian masses that remained by military occupation.

Palestinians now make up a majority of the population in all the territories Israel controls, but only a quarter of those people are accorded citizenship, and even they are subject to discrimination by at least 66 state laws.

Almost 1,000 villages and towns in Israel – more than three-quarters of the total – do not permit non-Jews to live within them.

To ensure that Israel’s High Court cannot quash any of these laws that discriminate against non-Jews, the Netanyahu government is now advancing new legislation which would sanctify the superior status of Jews in Israel.

These and many more travesties of justice are not bugs of the Jewish state; they are features of it. Where then are the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination, after the State of Israel has systematically eliminated them?

The hatred against Palestinians and others

In recent years, though, the elected and appointed leaders of Israeli Jews have incited hatred against Palestinians, African refugees, non-Jews in general, even against Israeli Jews who are not sufficiently nationalist in their eyes.

It gives me no pleasure to write this, but it must be clearly stated for the record: of late, top Israeli political and religious leaders have even incited genocide against the Palestinian people. Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef ruled in March that non-Jewish people, including Palestinians, have no right to live in the country.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said in May 2015 that all Palestinian people, including mothers and babies, are enemies who must be destroyed.

Most worrisome, this racist rhetoric is increasingly influencing the Israeli public, shifting it further and further to the far right. What human rights horrors could this lead to, if left unchecked?

In May 2014, Israel’s most highly respected author, Amos Oz, used a variation on the N-word to describe the country’s Jewish supremacists. “We also have Hebrew neo-Nazi groups,” Oz said. “There is nothing the modern-day neo-Nazis in Europe do that those groups don’t do here.”

Baby  Ali Dawabsheh was burnt alive with his parents and his surviving brother when his home was firebombed by neo-Nazi settlers - at the trial this month of the perpetrators, his supporters turned up to taunt his grandfather 'Ali is dead, Ali is on the grill' - the Police chose not to intervene

Just weeks later, some of those neo-Nazis kidnapped Mohammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem, beat him, forced gasoline down his throat, and burned him to death from the inside out. In July 2015, another group of Hebrew neo-Nazis firebombed a Palestinian home in the West Bank, murdering the Dawabsheh family’s father, mother and one-year-old baby.

In recent weeks, I accompanied the baby’s grandfather to court to support him in his quest for justice. Meanwhile, my fellow deputy speaker of the Knesset, Bezalel Smotrich, accompanied to court the young Israeli men on trial for committing the murders.

Khan al Ahmar where Israeli soldiers are grapping with residents whose homes they are intending to demolish

Two years ago on Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day itself – the Israeli army’s deputy chief of staff, Major General Yair Golan, told a group of assembled soldiers: “If there's something that frightens me about Holocaust remembrance, it's the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then – 70, 80 and 90 years ago – and finding signs of them here among us today in 2016.”

Golan’s harsh observations were not divorced from reality, but rather, reflected it accurately. A Pew poll published just two months earlier found that four-fifths of Israeli Jews want the state to accord them more legal rights than Palestinian citizens of Israel, and half – half! – of Israeli Jews want to strip non-Jews of their citizenship, and to outright deport them.

Stifling free speech ensures racism continues

This state of affairs is nothing to be happy about; like other public figures, I regret to inform you of it. But I am left with no choice: unless you are made aware of these frightening facts, there is no chance that these trends can be curbed, and reversed, so that ultimately, everyone living in the land can enjoy the equal rights they are entitled to, Jew and Gentile, Israeli and Palestinian.

The Labour Party’s new statement, which slams anti-Semitism but defends criticism of Israel, is a huge improvement over the anti-Palestinian policy that preceded it, and should be praised as such.

Attempts by the Labour Party or any other body to stifle free speech about Israeli racism will only ensure that the racism continues and increases unabated.

Ahmad Tibi is the most senior Arab MK, having served since 1999. He is one of the founders of the Arab Movement for Renewal (Hatenua Ha'Aravit le Hithadshut, or Ta’al) and a member of the Joint List (Hadash, Ra'am, Balad, Ta'al). In 1993, after the signing of the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat, then-chairman of the Palestinian Authority, appointed Tibi as his special adviser. Since his election to the Knesset, Ahmad Tibi has managed to pass 12 laws, most of which focus on social, economic and consumer issues. In 2010, Tibi gave a speech about the Holocaust, which then-Speaker Reuven Rivlin called “the finest speech ever given in the history of the Knesset”.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. 

It is time that the Palestine solidarity movement recognised that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are integral to the Occupation and the Siege of Gaza

Palestinians deserve better than PA brutality

Palestinians take part in a protest demanding the lifting of Palestinian Authority sanctions on the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on 10 June. The PA used riot police and party thugs to violently suppress a similar protest on 13 June. Eyad Jadallah APA images

As the articles below from Electronic Intifada  and Middle East Eye show, the behaviour of the Palestinian Authority is shameful. The PA, which is nothing less than subcontractors for the Israeli state, violently attacked a demonstration in Ramallah in support of their brothers and sisters in Gaza.  And they did this on behalf of Israel (& the United States & Europe).

The demands of the demonstrators were simple - that the PA stop acting as a collaborator in enforcing Israel's siege of Gaza e.g. by requesting that Israel cut the amount of electricity Gaza receives to 3-4 hours a day or by itself cutting the salaries of 50,000 civil servants in Gaza.

It is  clear that the actions of Fateh thugs who, in co-ordination with the Palestinian Security Police, attacked the demonstration mean that Fateh should no longer be seen as a resistance movement and should be treated in the same way as the Village Leagues used to be treated.  Collaborators.

What is also shameful is that Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and the solidarity movement in this country has nothing to say about this. The Anti-Apartheid Movement never hesitated to condemn Inkatha under Mangosuthu Buthelezi in South Africa.  Inkatha Freedom Party was used and helped by the Apartheid regime to attack the anti-apartheid struggle and the ANC.  It was responsible for much of the appalling violence in the lead up to South Africa's independence.

I'd be interested to hear what the difference is between the PA and Inkatha.  I have moved motions in the past at PSC AGM calling the PA a quisling regime, the equivalent of the Vichy regime in France under the Nazis and calling for PSC to dissociate itself from the PA.  Always the response is that this is 'internal' to the Palestinian movement.  This is a shameful and cowardly response.  If we condemn Israel we cannot avert our eyes from those Palestinians who enforce Israel's occupation.

It should be a matter of shame that someone can say that 'It is a bizarre feeling when everyone around you is more scared of Palestinian forces than they are of the Israeli army.'

No doubt the PA feel the need to prove to Israel and Trump that they are 'reliable'.  That whatever rhetoric they indulge in they can be relied on to uphold the occupation's norms.  In Abbas's own words, security co-operation with Israel is 'sacred'.  As an article in the Jerusalem Post last year WILL ABBAS SEVER HIS ‘SACRED’ SECURITY COOPERATION WITH ISRAEL? made clear 'suspending security cooperation is one of the Palestinians’ strongest cards. If Abbas does follow through on his threat to end it, Israel’s security will be greatly affected, as Palestinian security forces have stopped many attacks in the West Bank since a wave of terrorism broke out in October 2015.'

The suggestion that the PA is 'internal' to the Palestinian movement is a lie.  It is a threat to the Palestinian resistance movement and it has never hesitated to act to control and prevent any movement growing which challenges the Israeli state.  It is part of the political incoherence and worse of PSC and its current leadership that they have nothing to say about the role of the PA.

Tony Greenstein

Abbas  - is the Palestinian equivalent of the Mangosuthu Buthelezi - the Black African collaborator with Apartheid

Palestinians deserve better than PA brutality

The Electronic Intifada 15 June 2018

Human rights workers seldom agree with Donald Trump and his entourage.

Yet this week I found myself echoing a view expressed by Jason Greenblatt, a Middle East envoy for the US president. For very different reasons to the ones he cited, I arrived at the same conclusion as Greenblatt: the Palestinian people deserve better than the Palestinian Authority.

This was evident as I observed the PA’s handling of a protest on Wednesday evening.

The protest was organized by ordinary Palestinians who object to how the PA has imposed sanctions on Gaza. It was banned by the PA on the spurious pretext of avoiding disruptions to the Eid al-Fitr holiday celebrations.

Yet the protest went ahead – without official approval – in Ramallah, a city in the occupied West Bank. Its organizers refused to be bullied into canceling a display of solidarity with their fellow Palestinians in Gaza.

During the early stages of the protest, riot police working for the PA attacked its participants. They beat protesters, taking a number of them into custody. I saw one riot police officer – his face covered by a balaclava – rolling a stun grenade towards the crowd.

After about an hour, groups of thugs and secret police dispersed among the crowd took over the task of suppressing the protest.

The thugs in question wore hats, identifying themselves as supporters of Fatah, the party dominating the PA. Some of these hats depicted a kuffiyeh, the Palestinian checkered scarf. The irony involved here was sordid: the kuffiyeh is supposed to be a symbol of liberation.

Secret police

The secret police in the crowd were easy to spot, if you looked for them. They were men with large muscles, who watched over everyone else. They could be found in groups of four.

The secret police could be seen pointing out individuals to the thugs with the Fatah hats. If individuals who had been pointed out resisted arrest by these thugs, they were dragged away and beaten. None of the thugs looked older than 25.

The thugs grabbed many protesters and placed them in headlocks. Other protesters were punched and slapped in the head. One man had his shirt completely ripped off him by the thugs before they handed him over to the riot police.

Numerous protesters were rounded up and placed in vans, which were waiting near al-Manara Square in the city center. In one case, a protester was placed in an ambulance.

I later learned that protesters who had been rounded up were driven to police stations and to the headquarters of the PA’s “preventive security” division.

While I was standing next to some protesters on Wednesday, I suddenly felt my arms being restrained. One of the secret police had forced my hands behind my back. He did not use extreme force to do so. But he was certainly asserting his control.

The man told me to come with him. He pushed me down a lane. “Don’t be scared,” he whispered. “We respect people.”

I would have laughed – if I was not worried about having my head bashed in, which the man could have done on a whim.

The secret police officer brought me near the vans full of protesters who had been arrested. He handed me over to another man, who was carrying a walkie-talkie. That man asked me – in fluent English – what I was doing at the protest. Where was I from? Was I a journalist?

I replied in Arabic that I was not a journalist.

The man took my phone and went through the photos and messages saved on it. When he handed the phone back to me, he asked me for my ID card. I told him I did not have it with me.

The man then instructed the secret police officer who had grabbed me to take me away. I was ordered to go home. As I did so, I was followed through the streets by three other secret police officers.

Police working for the Palestinian Authority are funded and trained by the European Union and the United States. A key purpose of this training is to ensure that the PA works in the interests of Israel.

The way they handled this week’s protests illustrated how the PA’s police can be similarly brutal to Israel’s forces of occupation. Palestinians surely deserve better than that.

The author is a human rights worker in Palestine. They requested anonymity as they had been instructed by their organization to remain silent on how the PA handled Wednesday’s protests.

Protests in Ramallah: Does the PA actually care about Palestinians?

#PalestineUnity

It is a bizarre feeling when everyone around you is more scared of Palestinian forces than they are of the Israeli army

Photo: Palestinian security forces stand guard in Ramallah on 13 June 2018, during a protest calling on President Mahmoud Abbas to end financial sanctions against Palestinians in Gaza (Reuters)

Tessa Fox

Saturday 16 June 2018 10:30 UTC

As I stepped out onto Rukab Street, one of the main streets in Ramallah, at once I heard the cries: "There's gas!"

Wednesday night's protest, organised by the Campaign to Lift PA Sanctions on Gaza, had only just begun, but security forces were already firing stun grenades and tear gas cannisters directly at crowds that only 20 seconds earlier had raised banners demanding that sanctions against Gaza be lifted and chanted: "In spirit, in blood, we redeem you Gaza."

Everyone seemed still for a while: many were scattered in different areas around central Ramallah. Tension lay heavy in the air as people stood frozen on footpaths and in the streets, staring at the number of government personnel present.

It seemed as if the Palestinian Authority had sent out every member of its security forces for this event, including the National Security Service, the Palestinian police (including riot police), the General Intelligence Service and the Preventive Security Service.

There was also a downright terrifying gang of Fatah party members, loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Some carried pepper spray. Each wore a white cap. All of them were prowling around the gathered protesters.

On Tuesday, the night before the demonstration, the PA called for a counter-protest. This, everyone knew, would be a recipe for disaster.

"I don't even know if there's going to be protest," a friend said to me. People's concerns were repressed before they could even be expressed.

The protesters' simple message was directed at the PA, which more than a month ago halved the salaries of approximately 50,000 government employees in Gaza, leaving workers unable to provide for their families.

Palestinian security personnel confront a protest in Ramallah on 13 June 2018 (Tessa Fox/MEE)

The cut came after the PA also stopped paying for Gaza's electricity last year, further limiting residents' access to power and crippling industry and essential public services including hospitals, schools.

The Palestinian National Council, the PA's legislative body, as well as factions within the PA have all called for the sanctions to be lifted. That's left Abbas to shoulder much of the blame, as his critics accuse him of trying to unseat Hamas from Gaza, where it rules the territory, while using Gaza's two million residents as political pawns.

It's left Gaza caught in a dire humanitarian crisis, between the Israeli blockade of the strip on one side and on the other the punitive approach of the PA, whose actions have been so extreme that residents within Ramallah itself, the PA's seat of government, have risen up against the authorities and called for sanctions to be lifted.

PA uses same tactics as Israel

Photos and captions circulating on social media suggested that thousands of people were there, although it was hard to differentiate between protesters, bystanders and undercover police.

I tried to push as close as I could to what was going on to take some pictures, even though I had been warned only half-an-hour earlier that taking photos and videos was banned.

I was also warned that the police were trying to break cameras and confiscate memory cards. To me, this is one of the first signs that a government can give to show that it is actually an oppressive regime. That night the PA did everything in its power to restrict the free flow of information.

Palestinians in Ramallah demand the lifting of sanctions against Gaza on 13 June 2018 (Reuters)

The whole scene was one of chaos. In one area, security forces threw rounds of sound bombs. Riot cops started running down yet another street to try to block any entrance to al-Manara, the main square in Ramallah. And dotted among the crowd were those white-capped members of Fatah, some of whom were undercover officers, taking matters into their own hands and beating up protesters, all under the watchful eye of the police.

A friend who works at a local Palestinian TV station told me that around 2,000 undercover forces were within the area. Someone else told me that one female protester had a gun pointed at her head by one of the undercover officers. She couldn't talk afterwards, she was in such a state of shock.

It felt as if those undercover police were mirroring the same tactics as used by the Israeli mustarabeen, the undercover unit trained to look and act like Arabs.

By deploying so many police in civilian clothes, the authorities sought not only to maximise the number of arrests but also to dismantle any network of trust among civilians and destroy the solidarity that is a necessary tool against any oppressive regime.

It's always been the goal of the Israeli occupation to break the unity of historical Palestine, including movement to and from Gaza, using the building of illegal settlements, restrictions on access to pre-1948 areas of the West Bank and the Greater Jerusalem Bill.

Now it is out in the open that the PA, as led by Fatah, is prepared to crush the Palestinian cause and unity to retain power over the Palestinian population.

Undercover forces made the majority of arrests, which numbered more than 60 by the end of the night. I saw people, including women and young girls, kicked, punched and beaten with batons. People's bodies were pulled in all directions as they were dragged away by at least five men to a fenced-off car park, where riot police stood guard, waiting for vans to pick up their latest prisoners.

Need to witness brutality

I knew I had to try and document the brutality. But less than 10 minutes after arriving at the protest I had already been sternly warned by an undercover policeman not to take photos.

Eventually I managed to climb up the roundabout at al-Manara. Standing on top of one of the lion statues, I had a clear vantage point of just how many people were in the streets and the brawls that were unfolding below.

Soon, I heard someone yell at me, then realised that multiple people were pointing and starting to run in my direction. I ran down the back of the statue while taking my memory card out of my camera and shoving it in my pants.

By the time I jumped down, civilian and uniformed police had already climbed inside the fence. I was trapped. They grabbed me by my arms while another tried to take my camera. I thought for sure they were going to break it. I just kept screaming and yelling at them, telling them to let me go and to wait so I could "prove" to them I had no photos.

They then put three women police officers onto me. One held my arm and kept telling me to be quiet and calm down. I yelled back: "How on earth can I be calm down when you're trying to arrest me and break my camera?"

The sound of the commotion began to work in my favour, as an older Palestinian woman came over and started apologising for what was happening. A man dressed in civilian clothes stepped forward and declared that he was a policeman. I replied that he should be wearing uniform.

I wanted to yell at them that they weren't true Palestinians; that all they were was part of a single faction, Fatah, and were simply government employees; that they didn't care about the Palestinians in Gaza; that they didn't care about the Palestinians in Ramallah, who they were beating up; that they didn't care about the Palestinians who had travelled all the way from Haifa by bus to protest alongside their brothers and sisters; and that the the people living under dictatorships across the Palestinian territories counted for nothing in their eyes.

Why is Palestinian Authority doing this?

Finally I was released and found my friend. She was beside herself because the undercover forces had taken her cameraman's memory card while she was doing a live broadcast criticising the PA. She thought for sure that she would be arrested the next day. She was terrified.

The problem was, the Palestinian security forces were driven by complete emotion. Couple this with them not being experienced enough to deal with such large crowds and it meant that their use of weapons was a disaster.

At one stage, a security officer, holding a sound bomb in his hand, wrestled with a protester. During the scuffle, the bomb went off. It seemed like all the actions of the security forces were driven by impulse rather than orders from their superiors.

Stories have also emerged of sexual harassment, perpetrated by the men wearing those Fatah caps. One woman was chased down a side street and sexually abused before she was rescued by people she knew.

Many of the Fatah supporters are themselves from families of martyrs or political prisoners. Other Palestinians cannot fathom how they could act this way during a protest in support of their brothers and sisters in Gaza. Are they attempting to create conflict among the factions?

Protesters and residents are still in a complete state of shock, as well as physical and mental exhaustion. The night after the protest, those who had attended were still too scared to walk the streets or go into public spaces for fear of being arrested or beaten up.

People unconnected to the protests were targeted just for being in the street. I witnessed multiple families and women with babies, who were trying to walk home, standing bewildered as they were yelled at by the presidential guard.

Why the protests will continue

Another protest is already set for Wednesday. What sort of excuse will the PA use then to repress people's freedom of expression and assembly when it is held outside of the Eid holiday? Will they find new grounds to ban and criminalise protests?

Fatah and Abbas showed their true colours to the people of Palestine this week as well as alienating some of the supporters from their own party. The protest held last Wednesday night wasn't organised to bring down the PA or to depose Abbas.

It was in support of another persecuted population of Palestinians, who may live under separate Hamas rule in Gaza but whose fate has now been crushed still further by the regime controlling the West Bank.

But if the removal of sanctions against Gaza is not achieved in good time, then do not be surprised if those living in the West Bank focus their energies on removing heads of government. On Friday, 70 civil society organisations and trade unions within Palestine called for the dismissal of Rami al-Hamdallah, the Palestinian prime minister and interior minister.

The activists are now recovering, tending their wounds, being released from prison and embracing their close support networks to nurture their emotionally drained minds.

Hopefully the organisation and unity of Palestinians will now only be strengthened even more, as their fight for their brothers and sisters in Gaza is emboldened by the brutality that the protesters in Ramallah faced.

- Tessa Fox is a freelance journalist, photographer and filmmaker focusing on war & conflict, indigenous affairs and the environment. She has had work published for Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, Al-Monitor, The Independent (UK), Holistic News (Poland), Mail & Guardian (South Africa), Knack (Belgium), Australian Broadcasting Corporation, SBS World News, New Matilda, VICE and Crikey among others. Fox was also a finalist for the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma Asia Pacific Prize and, as a correspondent, has reported from Turkey, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Russia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Australia and the EU among others.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.