How Cruella
Braverman, Britain’s Racist Home Secretary, Summoned the Far Right to London, to
Counter the Palestinian March
Million Person Palestinian March
Life is full of ironies for our ham-fisted, serially
obnoxious, racist Home Secretary, Cruella Braverman. Earlier in the week she
and the Idiot-in-Chief Sunak, sought to have the million strong Palestinian march
cancelled in order to protect the Remembrance Day Commemoration.
Since the Palestinian demonstration took place an hour after the
Remembrance Day service and well away from it this was always a dishonest
attempt to have a demonstration that they don’t like cancelled.
Aerial Footage
In the weeks before the march Braverman had attacked previous
demonstrations as ‘hate mobs’ and ‘anti-Semitic’. Braverman combines Zionism,
racism and anti-Semitism in about equalmeasure. And she uses Jews a political football and pawns for her racist politics.
Braverman is a bigot for all seasons. In September she told
the American Enterprise Institute that persecution for being gay or discrimination
as a woman shouldn’t be grounds for claiming asylum. These are the Zionists' friends.
Channel Four Report on Cruella Summoning the Far Right to London
Braverman has described
refugees arriving in Britain as an ‘invasion’, accused people crossing the
Channel of having values at
odds with the UK and “heightened
levels of criminality”, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, as well
as saying that grooming gang members were predominantly British-Pakistani men who
“hold cultural values totally at odds
with British values” when the Home Office’s own statistics contradict this.
Following her release from Gaza by Hamas, 85 year old Yosheved Lifshitz is interviewed about her experience in captivity. pic.twitter.com/MOTEJ82BmB
Because the Metropolitan Police Chief Sir Mark Rowley
refused, for once, to adhere to her instructions, Braverman bitterly complained
in The Times that the Police were discriminating against her fascist friends on
the far-Right in favour of Palestinians! Something that didn’t go down too well
even with fellow Tory MPs.
Clare Daly MEP on Israel’s Genocidal Attack on Gaza
Since Braverman didn’t bother submitting the article forNo. 10 approval loud are the calls for her to
be sacked and Sunak is rumoured to be thinking of sacking the bigot in the next
reshuffle despite sharing most of her racist views.
Despite opposing the Palestinian marches because they are ‘anti-Semitic’
Braverman has no difficulty using the term ‘cultural Marxism’which involves aconspiracy
theory whereby the Marxist adherents of the mainly Jewish Frankfurt School
conspired to undermine Western civilisation from within by taking over the
commanding heights of culture and politics.
BREAKING: Israel commits new horrible hospital massacres! Shifa hospital bombed this morning! pic.twitter.com/VrpF38Zgi5
Andrei Brevik, who massacred over 70 young members of the Norwegian
social democrats, cited
Cultural Marxism in the manifesto he released. None of this has prevented
Cruella using them despite its clear and obvious role in anti-Semitic conspiracy
theories, not least with the Nazis who forced members of the Frankfurt school
to leave Germany.
BBC Gaza Diaries
Once again we see how anti-Semitism and Zionism go hand in
hand. None of this, incidentally, prevented the Community Security Trust, a
project of Mossad, Israel’s MI6, inviting
her to their annual dinner.
There were lots of trade union banners but very few from Unite owing to its racist General Secretary Sharon Graham refusing to do anything as Gaza burns
The march against genocide in Gaza was perhaps the largest
march I have ever attended. Certainly it rivals the April 2003 march against
the forthcoming Iraq War. It was certainly the biggest ever march on Palestine that
we have seen in Britain and possibly anywhere.
Channel Four Report on Cruella Summoning the Far Right to London
Contrary to the lying
suggestions of Sunak that the Palestinian demonstrators were ‘singing antisemitic chants and brandishing
pro-Hamas signs and clothing’ the march was concerned with genocide in
Gaza, which Sunak has given his approval to. ‘Palestine Will Be Free From the River to the Sea’ is of course not
in the least anti-Semitic but envisages a free Palestine rather than the
present Israeli police state for Palestinians.
It is true that a ‘Jewish’ racial state and freedom for Palestinians
is incompatible which is why Zionism and a ‘Jewish’ state, just like Apartheid
in South Africa and the Nazi state before it, must go. However a secular
democratic state in Israel/Palestine is not anti-Semitic but simply a genocide
prevention measure.
As people can see from the aerial footage of the march the
Police estimates of 300,000 demonstrators are wildly low. My own estimate is
that it was at least a million. I know the train from Brighton, one of a number,
was packed full with Palestine demonstrators.
Although genocide doesn’t disturb the robotic leader of the Labour
Party, Keir Starmer, Sunak or Biden, most ordinary decent people take exception
to seeing hospitals bombed, patients killed, babies on incubators murdered and
a civilian population deprived of fuel, water and food.It says something about our leaders that war
crimes committed in the name of Zionism simply get them to repeat like a stuck
tape-recorder the allegation of anti-Semitism.
The suggestion that it is anti-Semitic to oppose genocide in
Gaza is itself anti-Semitic. It assumes that all Jewish people are blood
thirsty savages. Of course our war criminal leaders, regardless of religion,
have no principled objection to killing people in the global South. After all
that’s where the biggest profits are to be made.
What was encouraging was how young the demonstration was and
also how many White people took part, exploding the myth that this is only of
concern to Muslims. Keir Starmer may though have done permanent damage to
Labour’s vote amongst Black and Muslim people by his racist politics and
support for genocide.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Failure to Rebut the ‘terrorist’ label played a major part in his downfall
It
began with an interview on Channel 4 with Krishna Guru-Murphy on 13th
July 2015 when Corbyn was pressed as to why he used the term ‘friends’ in
relation to Hezbollah and Hamas. He blustered and got angry but never nailed
down the lie at the heart of the question which was that neither organisation
was a terrorist organisation. They are both Islamists and both reactionary, but
they come from the people they work among and represent. Terrorists are people
who, despairing of mass support, use violence as a substitute.
Corbyn’s
proffered and increasingly thin excuse that he was a ‘peacemaker’ which
completely evaded the question of whose side you take in what were imperialist wars
of mass destruction. Either you are on the side of the Palestinians and the Lebanese
or the Israelis.‘Peace making’
completely avoids having to take a stance. It is a coward’s way out.
It was
Lord Carrington, Margaret Thatcher’s first Foreign Secretary, who stated that ‘one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s
terrorist’. Corbyn could have thrown the whole terrorist thing back in
Murphy’s face.Hamas was the
creation of the Israeli state.Indeed so was Hezbollah, which only came about as a result of Israel’s
genocidal invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which killed 20,000 people.
Below
is a story from Mondoweiss.It is not a
story that is likely to appear in the British press any time soon because it
runs counter to the narrative that Israel fights ‘terrorism’ rather than it is
a terrorist state.Because after all our
friends couldn’t possibly be terrorists and plant bombs in the middle of cities!
Ariel Sharon (right) Israel's mass murdering Prime Minister
Yet for
two years, the Israeli Defence Forces and Mossad used a cover name, the Front
for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners, to plant dozens of bombs in
market places and public areas in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians and
injuring many more.
Front page story in the New York Times in 1983 on a terrorist bombing that killed Palestinians in Lebanon. The bombing campaign has now been confirmed as an Israeli one that claimed 100s of innocent lives.
June, 1980. Over the previous weeks Israeli
air and sea attacks on “Palestinian and leftist positions” have been “almost nightly events.” According to Christian Science
Monitor journalist
Helena Cobban, however, a “more
sinister Israeli hand is seen behind some of the increased unrest throughout
the country.” Indeed, “several
enormous car bombs have exploded here recently in locations with a heavy
concentration of Palestinian or Syrian population.” At least two were
claimed by a group calling itself the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from
Foreigners (FLLF).
The
mysterious group’s modus operandi, Cobban writes, “seem[s] to indicate the influence of some Israeli extremist groups”
like the ones behind car-bomb attacks against three Palestinian mayors in the
West Bank on June 2. To an “embittered
Palestinian scholar,” who spoke to Cobban, they also brought to mind “the terror-bombings launched against
Palestinian villages by Mr. Begin’s own Irgun extremist group” in the
1940s. “Then, the aim was to drive us out
of Palestine, and they largely succeeded… Now they want to drive us out of
Lebanon. Where can we go? The Israelis are going mad, but this time round, the
world cannot support their terror. Or can it?”
Over the
following 3 years, hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were killed,
and many more wounded, by explosive devices hidden in baskets, on bicycles or
mules, in cars or trucks. After each attack, calls to the media were placed
claiming responsibility in the name of the FLLF. Palestinian and Lebanese
officials repeatedly insisted that the FLLF was merely a fiction intended to
hide the hand of Israel and its Christian rightist allies. Israeli officials
rejected such accusations, insisting rather that the bombings were part of an
internecine war amongst rival Arab factions. Several of these bombings are
included in the RAND and START
“terrorism databases.”
In August
2012, the New Yorker published a profile of
Meir Dagan, the former head of Mossad. Dagan was known as a “ruthless
agent,” David Remnick writes, and his career was rumored to have included “operations of all kinds – car bombing,
poisoning, cyberwar.” Indeed, before Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982
Yigal Sarna and Anat Tal-Shir, two reporters for the Israeli daily Yediot
Ahronot, had investigated the possibility that Dagan had “led a secret unit across the border whose
mission was to instigate terrorist events that would justify an incursion.”
Remnick adds: “Military censors killed
the story, Sarna told me. Dagan acknowledges the censorship but denies the
thrust of the story.”
Israeli
journalist Noam Sheizaf posted Remnick’s story on his Facebook page and, as he wrote
in 972 Magazine, Sarna commented as follows: “Indeed, the censorship [on these stories] has been on for years.
Horrifying things were done there, not just planned.”
Yet another profile
of Dagan published in Haaretz in 2016 presented a more detailed
account of the story and, this time, explicitly mentioned the FLLF.
Before the
invasion of Lebanon in 1982, military correspondent Amir Oren reported, an
officer who served under Dagan “claimed
that on orders from the IDF, under cover of the Front for the Liberation of
Lebanon from Foreigners, deadly strikes were being carried out against
Palestinian targets, and the casualties included innocent civilians.” That
anonymous complaint “reached the press,”
he said, “and from there – even though
the military censor forbade publication – it reached Begin.”
The
complaint named four senior Israeli officials: Raphael
Eitan, the IDF Chief of Staff; Meir Dagan, the
commander of the South Lebanon Region; head of Northern Command Avigdor
Ben-Gal; and Shlomo Ilya,
an intelligence officer. Yehoshua Saguy, the head of Military Intelligence,
looked into the allegations and concluded that they were accurate. His
complaint led nowhere however: according to Oren, Prime Minister Menachem Begin
“didn’t want to believe it, especially on
the eve of an election.”
Ronen Bergman with his book at the Fifth Avenue Barnes and Noble in February 2018. Photo from Instagram.
This
extensively-researched book contains several pages devoted to the FLLF
operation. Based on interviews with officials involved in the operation or who
were aware of its existence at the time, it confirms that the Palestinians had
been right all along: the FLLF was indeed a creation of Israel, a fictitious
group used by senior officials to hide their country’s hand in a deadly
‘terrorist’ campaign.
The group
was created by Eitan, Ben-Gal and Dagan in 1979. In the words of David Agmon,
head of the Northern Command Staff of the IDF, the objective was to “cause chaos among the Palestinians and
Syrians in Lebanon, without leaving an Israeli fingerprint, to give them the
feeling that they were constantly under attack and to instill them with a sense
of insecurity.” Bergman makes no reference
to Shlomo Ilya, the intelligence officer mentioned in Oren’s Haaretz
article.
In its early
stage, the group used explosives “concealed
in cans of oil or preserves” that were built in a metal shop of Kibbutz
Mahanayim where Ben-Gal lived at the time. The explosives themselves were
sourced from the IDF’s bomb disposal unit so as to “minimize the chance that any connection with Israel might be revealed.”
Eitan,
Ben-Gal and Dagan were unable to keep their operation airtight however. In Rise
and Kill First, Bergman provides fascinating accounts of early (and
unsuccessful) efforts by senior officers and members of the government to push
back against such methods, accounts that confirm the accuracy of Remnick’s and
Oren’s stories.
In 1980
Yehoshua Saguy, the head of Military Intelligence, informed Deputy Defense
Minister Mordechai Zippori that Ben-Gal was conducting “rogue operations”
inside Lebanon. In one instance, a car bomb meant for PLO personnel had
detonated on a main road in southern Lebanon, killing an unspecified number of
“women and children.”
In June
1980, the month when Helena Cobban’s Christian Science Monitor story was
published, a meeting was convened in the Prime Minister’s office. Zippori
accused Ben-Gal of conducting “unauthorized actions in Lebanon” and insisted
that “women and children have been killed.”
Ben-Gal replied that this was incorrect (“Four
or five terrorists were killed. Who drives around in Lebanon in a Mercedes at 2
a.m.? Only terrorists”) and assured Menachem Begin that he had received
permission for the action. The Prime Minister accepted these assurances and,
Bergman writes, from that point on “the
top brass realized there was no point in asking the prime minister to rectify
the situation.”
The story
investigated by Yigal Sarna and Anat Tal-Shir was accurate. And Dagan’s denials
to Remnick were lies.
When the
Israeli military censor banned publication of the story, therefore, it covered
up serious state crimes that had already been committed. Even more
problematically, this decision made it possible for Israel to continue,
following Likud’s (very narrow) victory in the 1981 legislative elections, to
use the FLLF to conduct an ever deadlier, and fully covert, campaign of
“terrorism.”
On August 5,
1981, Menachem Begin picked Ariel Sharon to replace him as Defense Minister. As
Israelihistorians
have long documented, for the next 10 months the Begin government engaged in
military operations, from the air and the ground, in order to goad the
Palestinians into a military response that would be used to justify a major military
offensive into Lebanon.
As Rise
and Kill First documents in detail, the FLLF bombings were an integral part
of this Israeli strategy of provocation. Indeed, the new Defense Minister
immediately decided to “activate” the
FLLF operation and sent Eitan as his personal emissary to “keep an eye” on the clandestine operation. Remarkably, at the time
Eitan was serving as Begin’s “counterterrorism” adviser.
Sharon “hoped that these operations would provoke
Arafat into attacking Israel,” Bergman writes, “which could then respond by invading Lebanon, or atleast make the PLO retaliate against the
Phalange, whereupon Israel would be able to leap in great force to the defense
of the Christians.”
“By mid-September 1981,” he explains, “car bombs were exploding regularly in
Palestinian neighborhoods of Beirut and other Lebanese cities.”
Several of
these bombings were covered in the US press at the time.
On September
17, 1981, a car bomb exploded outside of the command center shared by the PLO
and its Lebanese leftist allies in the port city of Sidon, killing
over 20, most of them women and children who lived in nearby apartment
buildings, John Kifner reported in the New York Times.
Two days
later, another “terrorist bomb” killed
four in a crowded movie theater in West Beirut, Kifner reported. The FLLF
claimed responsibility, but Palestinian officials immediately insisted that the
group is “fictitious,” a ploy used by Israel to hide its hand in these attacks.
On October
1, a car exploded near PLO offices in a crowded street in Moslem west Beirut, killing
90, as Kifner and the UPI reported. Several other vehicles loaded with
explosives were found and defused in Beirut and Sidon “in what was intended as a devastating blitz against Palestinians and
leftist Lebanese militiamen by rightist terrorists.”
The FLLF
claimed responsibility, but a PLO official blamed Israeli agents for planting
the bomb in “sort of a secret war”
against Palestinians. Lebanese Prime Minister Chafik Wazzan agreed. Because the
cease-fire was preventing Israel from “persisting
in its acts of destruction and killing in Lebanon through its air force or
other attacks,” he
argued, it was “looking for other
tactics, the cowardly ones to which it is currently resorting either directly
or through agents.’ Israeli officials rejected such claims, insisting
instead that the bombings were part of a ‘war
among gangs which make up the PLO.”
A RAND report on ‘recent
trends in international terrorism’ published in April 1983 describes a few
of these bombings in some detail. The death toll from these few bombings adds
up to 120. By comparison, and according to the same RAND report, in 1980
and 1981 combined Palestinian ‘terrorists’ killed a grand
total of 16 people. As UPI journalist Fred Schiff wrote
at the time, over just two weeks the FLLF’s ‘wave of terror bombings’ in its
totality claimed 308 lives.
Portion of database compiled by Rand on the Front for Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners
Importantly,
at the exact same time Israeli officials were conducting an extensive public
relations (or ‘hasbara’) campaign aimed at convincing the rest of the
Western world, and especially the United States, of the seriousness of the
threat posed by “terrorism.” In this narrative, Israelis were the main victims,
and never the perpetrators, of “terrorism,” while the Palestinians were the
main perpetrators of “terrorism,” never its victims.
This
campaign was extraordinarily successful, and since the mid 1980s the American
and Israeli discourses on “terrorism” have been virtually indistinguishable. A
number of actors, from
elected officials to “terrorism experts,” played a central role in this
deeply ideological process of meaning production.
The military
censor’s decision to ban Sarna’s and Tal-Shir’s story, and thus to cover up the
fact that senior Israeli officials were, at that exact same time, conducting a
large scale campaign of “terrorism” in Lebanon, was just as central to this
process.
The censor’s
decision made it possible for Israeli leaders to insist, in June 1982, that the
invasion of Lebanon was justified in the name of fighting “terrorism.”
Remarkably, it made it possible for Ariel Sharon to take to the pages of the New
York Times in August 1982 and insist
that Israeli troops “were greeted as
liberators for driving out the terrorists who had raped and pillaged and
plundered” the country. They had followed the Jewish doctrine of tohar
haneshek, “the moral conduct of war,”
Sharon added, a policy that stood “in
vivid contrast to the P.L.O.’s practice of attacking only civilian targets.”
Ariel Sharon drinks to the death of the Palestinians of Sabra and Chatilla
When he
penned this Opinion piece, the Israeli defense minister had been personally
conducting “terrorist” attacks in Lebanon for a full year.
The FLLF
bombing campaign would continue until late 1983. Its deadliest attacks were
covered on the front pages of the New
YorkTimes
and the WashingtonPost.
The actual number of victims of this Israeli “terrorist” campaign will probably
never be known. Still, it seems quite clear that, as Lee O’Brien, a U.N.
official, wrote in MERIP in October 1983, between 1979 and 1983 the FLLF
bombs did kill at least several hundred civilians, wounding countless more.
Rise and
Kill First provides a clear picture of the inner workings of this Israeli
“terrorist” campaign. The explosives were “packed
in Ariel laundry powder bags” so as to look like “innocent goods” when going through roadblocks. Women were chosen
to drive “to reduce the likelihood of the
cars being caught” on the way to their target, and the cars themselves were
“developed in the IDF’s Special
Operations Executive.” As one Israeli intelligence officer told Bergman:
With
Sharon’s backing, terrible things were done. I am no vegetarian, and I
supported and even participated in some of the assassination operations Israel
carried out. But we are speaking here about mass killing for killing’s sake, to
sow chaos and alarm, among civilians, too. Since when do we send donkeys
carrying bombs to blow up in marketplaces?
Another one
added:
I saw from a
distance one of the cars blowing up and demolishing an entire street. We were
teaching the Lebanese how effective a car bomb could be. Everything that we saw
later with Hezbollah sprang from what they saw had happened after these
operations.
Rise and Kill
First was published in February 2018. It was very
positively reviewed in the US press. Bergman gave public talks, was
interviewed on TV news programs, and his work was praised by prominent ‘terrorism
experts.’ The book made several bestseller’s lists and was nominated for a
number of end-of-the-year awards.
And yet,
over the last 18 months Bergman’s extraordinary revelations about the FLLF
operation have
not been mentioned or discussed once in the US media. This is the case even
though, unlike Sarna and Tal-Shir, American journalists (including prominent
figures such as Thomas
Friedman, who personally covered FLLF bombings on the front page of the New
York Times in the 1980s) operate in a country where the press is free from
censorship.
Front page of the New York Times from February 6, 1983 featuring an article by on Thomas Friedman on a bombing by the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners
As a
consequence, in the United States the terms of the public debate about Israel,
the Palestinians and “terrorism” have remained unchallenged. The Palestinians
continue to be presented as the perpetrators, and never the victims, of
“terrorism.” Israelis continue to be presented as the victims, and never the
perpetrators, of “terrorism.”
This public
discussion has thus been allowed to proceed as if the FLLF bombing campaign had
never happened, as if the Palestinians had never been the victims of this
widespread campaign of “terrorism,” as if this campaign hadn’t been directed by
some of the most prominent Israeli figures of the last decades, men who
repeatedly claimed to be absolutely opposed to “terrorism,” men who defended
their country’s repeated uses of force as justified by the uniquely evil nature
of the threat posed by “terrorism.”
It is time
to break the silence surrounding Israel’s “terrorist” campaign in Lebanon.
It is time
to question the validity of a discourse
that has only led to more violence and more deaths, a discourse that could
never have emerged but for an act of state censorship.
In the name
of historical truth.
In the name
of the FLLF’s hundreds of forgotten victims.
In the name
of victims of “terrorism” everywhere, regardless of the identity of the
perpetrators.
Remi Brulin received his PhD at
La Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris) in 2011. His dissertation is a historical analysis
of the American discourse on "terrorism," and can be accessed and
downloaded here. He has taught
at New York University, George Washington University and, currently, at John
Jay College of Criminal Justice. You can follow him on Twitter here: @rbrulin.
The Community Security
Trust – Israel’s Vigilantes on the Streets of London
Seven Jewish Children - The CST have branded this play antisemitic, watch it and judge for yourself.
Caryl Churchill's brilliant 7 Jewish Children - which the CST branded as 'antisemitic'
This
is an old post updated . As Tony Lerman documented
in his essay Antisemitism Redefined
[Haymarket Book, Jewish Voice for Peace, 2017], in the 1990’s the Israeli state
moved to take over the monitoring of statistics on anti-Semitism:
I had close personal experience of the role the Mossad
played in establishing Israeli hegemony over the monitoring and combating of
antisemitism. While I was director of the Institute of Jewish Affairs (IJA) and
its successor, the 'Institute for Jewish Policy Research OPR) in the 1990s, I
founded and was principal editor of the annual Antisemitism World Report, the
first objective, independent , country-by-country survey of anti semitism
worldwide. The London Mossad representative dealing with antisemitism made it
clear to me that they were very unhappy about our independent operation and
then tried to pressure us into either ceasing publication or merging our report
with one that the then new Project for the Study of Antisemitism at Tel Aviv
University, headed by Professor Dina Porat and part-financed by the Mossad, was
beginning to produce. [On Anti-Semitism, p.12].
What
you ask is Mossad, Israel’s equivalent of MI6 or the CIA doing in charge of
monitoring statistics about anti-Semitism amongst the Jewish diaspora?What relationship does an intelligence
service have to a question of racism unless it is engaged in Black Ops?
The CST operate under the aegis of the Board of Deputies, a thoroughly Zionist organisation
The
only logical explanation for why Israel muscled in to take over something that
clearly has nothing to do with them is because the inexorable ‘rise of
anti-Semitism’ has become a Zionist theme whose counterpart is that only the
‘Jewish State’ is safe for Jews.Further
anti-Semitism is and has become a weapon in the fight against anti-Zionism, BDS
and support for the Palestinians. Indeed the irony of the current ‘anti-Semitism’
campaign is that Jews should do what the anti-Semites want – which is get the
hell out of the countries they live in. There is no other explanation.
It
is the prominence of ‘anti-Semitism’ that explains the sudden appearance from
nowhere of groups like the Campaign
Against Anti-Semitism. The CAA arose amid Operation
Protective Edge, Israel’s genocidal attack on the Gaza Strip.
When it comes to genuine anti-Semitism the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is reluctant to call out its right-wing allies
The
CST
has had the responsibility of compiling statistics of anti-Semitism in Britain.
They have been careful not to overplay their hand. That is why they reject many
complaints of anti-Semitism. This has ironically meant rejecting in practice
the IHRA definition because this would make it too obvious that they are
engaging in statistical fraud. This despite their support for the IHRA
politically, as befits a Zionist organisation. They have done this because they
know that once their statistics match the IHRA definition, i.e. that any
manifestation of anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism their statistics would lose
all credibility.
Nonetheless
the CST has massaged the figures, highlighting social media anti-Semitism
(which could be infinite since a single individual can post thousands of
‘anti-Semitic incidents) as well as providing an elastic and fuzzy definition
of what constitutes anti-Semitism.
It would be more honest to say 'protecting Israel and Zionism'
The
CST’s figures show an almost inexorable statistical increase year on year, thus
feeding into the myth of increasing anti-Semitism. They depend on
self-reporting and thus the perception of the ‘victim’. There is no way of
judging whether the reports are true or false since the vast majority never
result in prosecution or conviction. There has also been a continual and marked
divergence between their statistics and those of the Police.
Of
course the CST are not in the same league as the CAA whose venture into the field of anti-Semitism statistics bear a
distinct resemblance to the adventures of Inspector Clouseau
minus the humour. This is documented Eve Tyktyn’s ‘Exposing the Vigilantes’ in The
Anti-Semitism Wars, 2018, Skyscraper Publications, pp. 115‑138).
Tyktyn
documents how the CAA’s 2016 grandiosely titled ‘Anti-Semitism
Audit’ (which was anything but) managed to produce a 14.9% increase in ‘anti-Semitic
crimes’ yet at the same time, buried at page 6 of a 73 page document, it
reveals that there was a 44.7% drop in violent anti-Semitic attacks. Their only
explanation is that ‘It
seems that the drop in 2016
might be a correction to the
spike in 2015 and not part of a trend’ Unfortunately
or fortunately this is not true. The drop in violent anti-Semitic attacks
continued to drop into 2017. The CAA of course ruled out the most obvious explanation, which is
that there was no increase in anti-Semitic incidents and that their report was,
to put it bluntly, a load of crap.
The
CAA, since it doesn’t have access to each Police force’s statistics and since
there are no national records ‘solved’ this problem by asking each force to
conduct a key word search in their files using ‘Jew’! Northumbria force, which
described the whole exercise as a ‘fishing expedition’ warned the CAA that not
ever mention of ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’ is in connection with an anti-Semitic incident
but the CAA ploughed on regardless. The result is an ‘audit’ which has no
statistical or methodological credibility.
So
in Derbyshire there was a rise of 1050% in anti-Semitic incidents. Tykytyn asks
whether a pogrom occurred in Derbyshire that year.In fact the number of such incidents
increased from 2 to 23 and as the Police explained, the change was due to a
difference in how they record incidents.Not that this stopped the CAA from including these flawed statistics. The
same level of increase was true for Hertfordshire and West Yorkshire.
Wiltshire’s
514 Jews seem to have endured almost Nazi levels of persecution. There was a
13,900% increase in anti-Semitic incidents! Even the CAA realised that
something was amiss and decided exclude Wiltshire entirely from their ‘audit’!
However
although the CST’s use of statistics isn’t as obviously slapstick as the CAA’s
it is still deeply suspect. For example their Anti-Semitic Incidents Report 2018 show an increase of 16% from 2017, 1,652 as
opposed to 1,420 incidents last year.An
increase of 232.But 23% of these (384)
were social media posts, an increase of 59% (249) over last year. In other
words 135 of the 232 increased incidents were from social media.
This
is completely absurd.I’ve probably come
across 100 incidents alone of social media anti-Semitism or Holocaust
denial.How can you possibly measure
social media anti-Semitism and more to the point is it really comparable to
face to face verbal and physical anti-Semitism? No one has ever died from a
tweet or a Facebook post. Anti-Semitism used to be being hit over the head or
stabbed with a knife.Now it is being
offended by some idiot’s Twitter meanderings.
If
CST had any self-respect they would strip out social media anti-Semitism entirely
but that would not serve its purposes.
Like
the CAA, hidden away in their statistics is the admission that ‘CST recorded a 17 per cent decrease in the number of violent antisemitic
assaults, from 149 in 2017 to 123 in 2018. One of these violent incidents was
classified by CST as ‘Extreme Violence’, which means it involved potential
grievous bodily harm (GBH) or a threat to life.’ Yes that’s right – a 17% decrease
in violence.Now verbal abuse, however
defined is not pleasant, although it is also subjective (was it about Israel?)
but the anti-Semitism that really counts is when someone hits you over the head
with a cosh.For the previous two years
there have been NO extreme acts of
violence. This year there is one, which I guess means that statistically there
has been an infinite increase! Or to put it another way, at a time when
stabbings and killings of Asian and Muslim people are only too common, just one
Jewish person in 3 years has been the subject of a violent anti-Semitic attack.
What is interesting is that of the 1652
alleged anti-Semitic incidents, just 123 i.e. 7.44% were violent. For other
ethnic minorities violence usually forms from between a quarter and one-third
of all racial incidents yet in the case of Jews it would seem that the number
of violent attacks is shrinking as a percentage of overall incidents, down from
10.5% last year to 7.44% this year.It
would seem that the CST is extremely good at documenting false and padded out
statistics but there is one area that they cannot fake the stats and that is
where there is actual violence.
The CST
also betray their Zionist politics when they say that:
‘Also in April and May, several Palestinians
were killed and many injured in violence connected to protests at the border
between Israel and Gaza.’ This is an outrageously racist statement.Some 300 Palestinians have been killed by
Israeli snipers in Gaza.Not at the ‘border’ because there is no border between
Israel and Gaza but at the fence which separates Prison Camp Gaza from Israel. A
fence designed to keep the untermenschen from
polluting Israel proper. Thousands have been severely injured by explosive
bullets but the Zionist CST talk about violence without ever once mentioning
where the violence comes from. One wonders if 300 Jewish people had been killed
whether the CST would talk about it in such a dismissive way,
I
have done a number of posts on the CST in the past such as:
For the second year running the government is to fund the CST -
Community Security Trust, a Zionist vigilante group often referred to as the
the private militia of the Board of Deputies of British Jews[14], to
the tune of £48,869[11], last year it was also given £54,354[8], the money apparently comes from the Hate Crime Victims' Fund!
The man in
the foreground might look and act like a police officer but he's not part of
the police force, he belongs to a private police force - the CST, which takes
its orders not from the British government, but from Israels lobby in the UK - the Board
of Deputies of British Jews
Funding
According to
the charity commission[12], the
CST has an annual income of just under £6 million (2009), and has assets of
over £10 million.
CST founder
and chairman Gerald Ronson, also founder and Chief Executive of Heron
International Plc ('one of Europe’s leading property investment and development
companies'[4]), has donated nearly £400,000 over the past
three years to the CST through his foundation[5] (other
recipients of the foundation include the Jewish National Fund, United Jewish
Israel Appeal, New Israel Fund, Women`s International Zionist Organization and
a charity to help Israeli war veterans[7]).
CST chairman and convicted fraudster Gerald Ronson with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (May 2008)
Gerald
Ronson is a convicted fraudster (Guinness share-trading fraud). Interestingly
the Jewish Telegraph reports that whilst Gerald Ronson was in prison, Israel's
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was "desperate to speak to him in
prison"[3]. Now out of prison it reports he dines with
"Britain's top police chiefs".
Private Militia
The CST is
essentially, on one level, a private security contractor called upon to provide
security at all pro-Israel activities from demos, conferences, fund-raisers,
and to protecting the odd visiting Israeli war criminal. It has three offices
and employees 69 people with an additional 3,000 trained CST troops
('volunteers') on call. Apparently the CST 'mainly consists of ex-Israeli security
personnel'[19]. The CST also give combat training
(self-defence) to 12,000 Jewish youth a year(2008).
The CST has
a special relationship with the Metropolitan police, it receives its training
from them and is granted special privileges during the policing of demos, etc.
Whilst stewards and legal observers from the pro-Palestine side of a demo are
not allowed to cross the police lines to approach Zionist side, the CST which
stewards the Zionist side are free to cross the police line and approach the
pro-Palestinian side to intimidate, take photos, etc.
CST are given free reign to cross the police line and walk behind thepolice line separating the two demos, on the other side the stewards and even the legal observers were not permitted to cross the police line and had to stay on their side of the police line with threats of arrest if they approached the line! (photo from pro-Israel rally Jan 2009)
The CST has
a particularly brutish reputation, especially in dealing with anti-Israel
protesters at pro-Israel events. Their special relationship with the MET means
they have not been brought to book for their thuggery.
The Board of
Deputies of British Jews claims to be "the voice of British Jewry" -
in reality its the voice of Israel in the UK
In January
2009, during the Israeli slaughter of children in Gaza, the Board of Deputies
of British Jews who claim to be "the voice of British Jewry" - in
reality the voice of Israel in the UK, held a rally in Trafalgar Square in
support of Israel, essentially a celebration of genocide. The CST provided the
security for the event. One brave young Jewish man, Dovid Von Neumann,
interrupted the Chief Rabbi Sacks pro-Israel rant with a Jewish children's
song, highlighting how Israel has perverted a line from a Jewish children's
poem about a spinning top which were traditionally cast in lead to name their
military operation "Cast Lead" which murders Palestinian children. He
was pushed into the frozen fountain and stoned him with lumps of ice, then the
CST thugs smashed his megaphone and dragged him out of the fountain throwing
him on to the pavement. The police did nothing to arrest his assailants - the
CST, instead they incredulously detained the victim for several hours before
they were forced to release him without charge[9].
CST thugs in action silencing dissent in the Jewish community. The young Jewish man, for interrupting the Chief Rabbi's speech, was pushed into the frozen fountain and stoned with lumps of ice, then the CST thugs dragged him out of the fountain, smashed his megaphone, throwing him on to the pavement. (Jan 2009)
In December
2009 when the CST was providing security to a JNF conference, the Israeli
ambassadors speech was interrupted by two protesters. The Jewish Chronicle
reported the protesters were "punched and kicked" and dragged out of
the conference[10], again the assailants went scot-free.
On February
9th 2010 the CST provided the security for the "Israel: Blue White and
Green" seminar at the Institute of Education (IoE). The seminar attempted
to 'greenwash' the occupation, its key note speaker David Bellamy didn't turn
up after receiving many letters urging him to boycott the 'greenwash'. During
the questions session a Jewish member of the audience asked a critical question
about Israel's role in depleting Palestinian water resources, he was prevented
from finishing the question and was "carried out bodily by members of the
CST and denied re-entry". When another member of the audience, a woman
this time, wished to put a question on Israels denial of water to Palestinians
as outlined in the Amnesty 2009 report she was "physically dragged out of
the meeting by members of the CST. “I was frog-marched up the stairs”, she said
afterwards. She later telephoned the Institute of Education to complain about
the treatment she and her fellow activist had received, and received an
apology. “From the reports the IoE have received from their own staff, they
seem to feel that the level of restraint used by the CST was inappropriate for
the situation", she said. The two ejected activists are considering taking
legal advice."[18]
It seems
after every massacre the Zionists hold a celebration, like the celebration
after Gaza in 2009, in 2002 after Jenin the Israel Solidarity Committee
organised a celebration 'Stand Up For Israel'. Funded by the United Jewish
Israel Appeal(UJIA)[32], the celebration was held in Trafalgar Square
with the CST in charge of security. It was a particularly ugly event with an
elderly anti-Zionist Rabbi in the counter-demo being punched in the face whilst
police officers two metres away stood by and did nothing. After the rally
Zionist gangs roved the streets attacking Muslims with impunity, easy visible
targets being women with hijab - several were attacked. Even the Saudi
ambassadors son was attacked by a Zionist mob. Both the MET and the CST were
castigated for their roles.
CST checking Press IDs in Trafalgar Square. The CST had issued its own Press passes, without it journalists were prevented from filming in Trafalgar Square even though they had NUJ Press passes which the police are supposed to recognise. (6 May 2002)
The IHRC
report on the 'partisan' policing of the rally with eyewitness statements is
particularly damming[29]. It reveals that whilst the police prevented
Muslims from approaching the Zionist rally and even helped the CST eject any
Muslims found in Trafalgar Square, they at the same time allowed free movement
for the CST and other Zionists to approach, even walk through the counter demo
draped in Israeli flags, and ultimately attack its speaker, Rabbi Grohman,
whilst he was addressing the counter-demo. The thug was simply allowed to walk
through two police lines unchallenged to carry out his assault.
The Jewish
Chronicle reports that the Muslim Lawyers Committee complaints against the
police included charges against the CST, one, the police's 'failure to prevent
assaults against Muslims by CST officials' and two, 'the intimidation of Muslim
women by CST officials'[30][31]. The latter may be a reference to an incident
where some Muslim women in hijab were enjoying a friendly conversation with
some Arab Jews from Iraq in Trafalgar Square when suddenly they were surrounded
by 'blue caps' - CSTs, who forcefully separated the Muslims from the Jews and
with police help removed the Muslims from the Square despite protests from the
Iraqi Jews.
Eyewitness - CST 'policing' of
Israel's 60th Anniversary Parade and Rally
In June 2008 when Zionists celebrated 60 years of the ethnic cleansing of
Palestine, over 500 CST were mobilised on to the streets of London. The CST
were providing security for a parade of floats starting on Piccadilly, down
Haymarket to culminate in a rally in Trafalgar Square.
[1]The CST
in the black flak jacket and professional communications kit is in charge of a
unit of volunteer CSTs (blue caps).
[2]Member of
the Jewish Police Association with CSTs helping give out whistles during
Israels 60th anniversary parade.
[3]Moments
after this photo was taken of the police van behind the float sponsored by the
Jewish National Fund, the CST man pointed the cameraman out to the police
officer who then, accompanied with the CST, challenged the cameraman asking whether
he had a permit to film as the parade was a restricted area. When the
cameraman, looking around seeing dozens of other people freely filming and
photographing the parade at that very moment without being harassed, asked what
permit was required to film in Piccadilly?
[4]He was
shown a CST 'contractor' badge which the police officer was himself wearing
around his neck and told this is the permit that is required! When the
cameraman ridiculed this absurdity the police officer told him to wait whilst he
checked with his superior in the police van, emerging minutes later grudgingly
accepting that 'on this occasion' no permits were required to film on a public
road in London. An example of racial profiling and harassment by the police at
the behest of the CST. An important question remains - what was a MET police
officer doing wearing a CST Contractor badge around his neck - if he was not on
police duty and was contracting for the CST he shouldn't be in police uniform,
if he is on duty then he shouldn't be wearing the CST badge - who is he working
for?
[5]The other
CST badges on display on the day were the 'security' badges worn by the CST
volunteers.
[6][7]For
the rally at Trafalgar Square, the CST set up its own checkpoints (at least
four were set up). Using police barriers the CST blocked all approaches to
Trafalgar Square. They created separate gates for people entering and for
people leaving the vicinity of the Square, so for example a tourist wishing to
visit the National Gallery, which is adjacent to Trafalgar Square, would have
to go through at least one CST checkpoint.
[8]Two
police officers were positioned near each checkpoint (yellow circle)
specifically for this task. Its seems the Zionists, accustomed to building
checkpoints on other peoples land in the West Bank, are now doing the same in
London with impunity.
[9][10]Everyone entering was questioned by the
CST and their bags were checked before being allowed to pass. If the CST
weren't happy with someone they would call the police to remove them.
This cameraman,
having succeeded in circumventing the checkpoints and enter Trafalgar Square
was then hounded by CST 'minders' for the whole duration of his stay in
Trafalgar Square. On two occasions they called on the police to remove the
cameraman but this time the police were reluctant to enter the Square and drag
someone out for no reason. They would however, on CST request, prevent someone
from entering the Square. So the CST told the cameraman that the police
officers wanted a word, if he would follow them to the checkpoint where the
officers were. The cameraman declined, if the officers wanted to talk they
should come to him.
He later
found out that another cameraman had been forcibly removed from the Square,
near a checkpoint, by the police and 'stopped and searched' because he was
'caught' photographing the CST, which apparently was reason enough for the
police to act.
Next the CST
tried a different tactic, they coaxed an elderly Jewish woman to block the
camera lens of the cameraman every time he went to use it, in the hope of
eliciting a response which could be used as pretext by the police to remove
him. The old woman was so clumsy she ended up annoying the other pro-Israelis
in the crowd, nearly poking one persons eye out, hitting another's head with
her flag pole, and pushing a child dangerously from behind. After people got
upset with her the CST had to call her off.
Even after
the event, when the cameraman had left the Square to go home, the CST still
continued hounding him - pointing him out to the police officers requesting
they stop and search him. By this stage even the police had had enough and
refused.
Anti-Semitism
A major part
of the stated work of the CST is to collect, analyse and publish statistics
relating to antisemitic figures. Its annual Antisemitic Incidents Reports are
used by the media, academic bodies, law enforcement and the government as the
basis for policy making. According to the CSTs Director of Communications, Mark
Gardner, their figures on antisemitism are "acknowledged by police and
government as being more accurate than the police’s own figures."[22] Yet experts on antisemitism in the Jewish
community, like Antony Lerman who headed the Institute for Jewish Policy
Research for nine years and served on the Runnymede Trust's Commission on
Antisemitism, and interfaith activist Rabbi Herschel Gluck, have themselves
attacked the CSTs figures suggesting the CST "bumps up" the figures
on anti-Semitic attacks thereby stoking up paranoia within the community[20][21].
Is this placard antisemitic?
Cynics suggest that such paranoia helps generate
revenue for the CST, an organisation whose raison d'etre is antisemitism, which
for a charity is remarkably well funded with an annual income of around £6
million, affording to pay its top half dozen employees over £60,000 each, with
the top spot getting over double that, up to £150,000 in 2008[34].
Apart from the CST being "disingenuous in the presentation of data"[21] Antony Lerman has also critised
what the CST classifies as being antisemitic. Lerman points out that the
European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia(EUMC) working definition of
antisemitism which the CST uses to determine what is antisemitism "contains highly contentious examples
of when critical discourse on Israel is antisemitic. This is one of the
unfortunate consequences of the mistaken but commonly-held notion that
anti-Zionism is the 'new antisemitism'."[23] According to
the EUMC working definition of antisemitism "claiming
that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor" or
"drawing comparisons of contemporary
Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" can be regarded as manifestations
of antisemitism![24]
So according to the CSTs warped definition of
antisemitism this placard from a recent demo could be regarded as antisemitic
on several levels. Firstly equating Zionism with racism suggests that the "existence of a State of Israel is a
racist endeavor" hence antisemitic, secondly showing a photograph of
Jewish Defense League (JDL) graffiti "GAS
THE ARABS!" sprayed on a Palestinian home in Hebron could be construed
as "drawing comparisons of
contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" hence antisemitic.
Interestingly the graffiti itself, calling for the gassing of a semitic people
would not fall foul of CSTs definition of antisemitism (because its Arabs not
Jews who are to be gassed), but to show the photo of it - to show Zionist
racism is a problem because of its similarity to Nazi racism! Calling for a
boycott of Israel is also, according to the CST, problematic as it "leads
to antisemitism".
Lobby
The CST, under the cloak of fighting racism i.e.
anti-Semitism, also forms a formidable lobby for Israel and is wheeled out
whenever Israel is criticised. For example, the CST have attacked award-winning
principled journalist John Pilger for what they refer to as his "feverish rhetoric against Jews"[1], thereby
painting him as an anti-Semite, and they attacked the new Statesman for
publishing Pilgers articles, pressuring it to censor him, or as they put it
"moderate or edit his
rhetoric". Their claims against him are of course utter nonsense[2] - their
reasoning goes Zionism shouldn't be attacked because "large numbers of
Jews" choose to be Zionists (their word is "self-define") so "if Zionism is depicted in exclusively
hateful terms, then all Zionists will be hated" hence Pilger must be an
anti-Semite!
When the Channel 4 Dispatches programme did an
expose on the Israeli Lobby funding of the Conservative Party, the CST was
again wheeled out to condemn it, saying the programme was "playing up to antisemitic stereotypes"[6].
Caryl Churchill's 2009 acclaimed play 'Seven Jewish
Children' upset the Zionist establishment. The 10 minute play consisted of
seven short scenes marking seven moments in Israeli history from the Holocaust
via the first intifada to the present day. Having been written during Israels
attack on Gaza the play is critical of Israel, this was unacceptable. So once
again the guns of the CST were brought out. Two of its most senior employees,
Dave Rich and Mark Gardner branded the play antisemitic in a Guardian comment
piece titled "The blood libel brought up to date", saying the
play 'resonates' with antisemitism[25]. In case people didn't get the
message, the Zionist anti-boycott lobby 'Engage' within hours ran a piece
titled "When the CST say 'Seven Jewish Children' is antisemitic, it is
time to take the charge seriously"[26]. The fact that a Hebrew
production of the play ,performed in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to audiences of
hundreds of Israelis, received positive responses didn't matter[27]. Antony Lerman, who served on
the Runnymede Trust's Commission on Antisemitism, ridiculed the CST charge as
"utterly unconvincing" and stated that "the fight against
antisemitism gains nothing from trying to turn the play into an antisemitic
incident. All that's achieved is a further slide down the slippery slope
towards rendering the word antisemitism meaningless."[28]
Surveillance
At a CST fundraising dinner on 4th March 2008 David Cameron alluded to another
disturbing function of the CST[13]:
"This
dinner has a very clear purpose: to ensure that the CST can carry on protecting
the people and events that we know are potential targets. Carry on monitoring
those who would harm this community."
He went on to describe those people who would harm
the community, those who he labeled as having an "extremist mindset":
"During
protests against the conflict in Lebanon, we witnessed the nauseating sight of
well-scrubbed, middle class English people marching through central London
holding placards that read 'We are all Hizbollah'. That is the extremist mindset in action. These are
the same people who urge a boycott of Israeli goods and academics.. ..while
saying nothing about China, Iran or Zimbabwe."
In the past activists have requested the CST, under
the Data Protection Act, to release the files it holds on them[17]. The CST has rebuffed them by
insisting they provide personal details like their home address, which would
compromise their family's security, before considering the release of the
files. This contrasts sharply with CST's own practice of hiding the names of
its trustees. The Charity Commission confirms "this charity has been given a dispensation by the Charity Commission
from publishing the names of its trustees"[15], this is highly irregular for a
charity.
According to the Jewish Chronicle, in a BBC
interview in 2005, CST head Mike Whine went further than Cameron by not denying
that the CST has "undercover
intelligence agents". “You
didn’t say you didn’t have undercover agents,” pressed BBC
reporter-presenter Gerry Northam. “That’s
right,” Mr Whine responded. “I didn’t.”[21]
In July 2002
former Home Secretary David Blunkett affirmed that the CST and security
services engage in 'intelligence sharing'[33].
Demonising Muslims
The Islamic
Human Rights Commission in May 2009 published a damming report outlining how
CST publications demonise Islam and Muslims[16]. The
report is available here.
So rather
than fight racism, which the CST claim they are doing, the report shows they
are actually contributing to the racism against the Muslim community, and
ironically the government are funding it through the 'victims of hate crime
fund' for the second year running.
[14]If the Evening Standard is to be believed,
even the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, in 1984, referred to the CST as
"paramilitary groups which resemble fascist organisations", put
together by the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-23478856-anti-semitism---and-a-timely-question-for-ken.do
[19]http://www.jewdas.org/2009/11/anti-semitism-in-the-service-of-war-crimes
From an article by Tony Greenstein, it gives right of reply to CST spokesperson
Mark Gardener. In Mark Gardener's reply he raises other issues in the article
but does not challenge this assertion that the CST "mainly consisting of
ex-Israeli security personnel".
