Wolverhampton Trial of Palestine Action Activists Goes Into Its 6th Week as Judge Rules Out All Common Law Defences

British Judges Keep Juries in the Dark About Their Power to Decide Cases According to their Conscience and the Reasons for Direct Action

UPDATE

Judge Chambers, the ‘non-political’ reactionary voice of the Wolverhampton Judiciary, was at his finest this week. At one point he reprimanded Owen Greenhill, a barrister for one of the Defendants, for referring to Elbit’s UAV Drone Factory as a Death Factory. 

Prosecuting counsel, Deborah Gould, was most upset at this description. Silly man this Greenhill.  Doesn’t he know that Elbit’s Shenstone factory makes candy and cuddly toys for kids before their drones bombard children in Gaza, Kashmir and Burma? 

All the Common Law defences of Necessity, Justification, Human Rights and Proportionality were also ruled out. The idea that you can prevent a bigger crime, for example someone who breaks down a door to rescue someone inside a burning building, by committing a smaller crime, is not allowed. The artificial and dishonest device that British judges have employed to sustain this pretence is interesting.

The problem for the judges is that you can’t identify which engine that Shenstone manufactures goes into which drone. And then you have the problem of identifying which drone is killing which child. You see our judges want to be absolutely certain they can pinpoint the right drone and as this is not possible to ascertain, the defence cannot be employed.

The connection between the Shenstone factory and the dead child in Gaza/Kashmir/Myanamar is too ‘remote’. That is why Debbie Gould, the West Midland’s Prosecutor asked me on the witness stand why I hadn’t petitioned and written to Elbit asking them what they were producing that day on March 9 2021 when we were arrested. As if it mattered which day they manufactured their lethal output.

The irony is that a month ago 21 people were convicted at Wolverhampton Crown Court of child abuse. Yet at the same time the Crown was defending Elbit, a serial child abuse offender guilty of murdering hundreds of children.

Given that Elbit do their best to conceal the identity of many of their unsavoury customers, is it likely that they are going to hand over their production schedules and the destination of their wares to protestors?  We only know they supply the Myanamar military, which even the British government has imposed an embargo on, because they showed off their nice new gun boats to all and sundry. Is it likely that they are going to come clean to demonstrators?  Gould thinks so!

Sarah Everard - Murdered by the Metropolitan Police

March 9 was also, coincidentally, the date that PC Wayne Couzens was charged in relation to the murder of Sarah Everard. The attitude of the Police to violence against women, of which Couzens was only a symptom (he was repeatedly protected when accused of exposing himself and was even nicknamed by colleagues as ‘the rapist) is reflected in the eagerness of the Police to protect these factories of death.

Employing the ‘logic’ of Gould and the Court of Appeal one might assume that if protestors had occupied the German firm of IG Farben, which produced Zyklon B, the gas used to poison 3 million Jews and Gypsies in Auschwitz and other extermination camps, they would have been told by the British Judiciary that it was not enough that Zyklon B was used to murder hundreds of thousands of people, they must be able to identify which consignment of the gas had killed which Jews.

Tory Lord Chief Justice, Ian Burnett, friend of Alan Duncan who described Julian Assange as a 'miserable worm' -  Burnett didn't see fit to recuse himself

When it comes to hair splitting and legal gymnastics no one can outdo British judges. Soon to be retired Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett is a skilled practitioner when it comes to excusing mass murder. It was he who ordered the deportation of Julian Assange for the ‘crime’ of exposing US war crimes.

British judges have unparalleled experience in turning a blind eye to the crimes of the British Empire. ‘Remoteness’ is one of these devices. If the murder of Black and Brown people was to be excused or ignored then that was because they were too ‘remote’ from the cause of action.

The Colston Statue

After the Establishment’s rage at the acquittal by a Bristol jury of those who toppled the Colston statue, Cruella Braverman referred the decision to the Attorney General and then to the Court of Appeal. Not surprisingly the Appeal Court ruled that where there is a ‘violent’ protest then Articles 9-11 of the European Convention (freedom of conscience, opinion and assembly) are not engaged.

You have to admire the brass neck of Burnett and these apologists for murder in whigs. Any normal person, such as the Bristol jury, would have no problem in seeing that the real violence was done by those like Colston who were engaged in the slave trade. Yet to Tory supporter Burnett the only violence done was to a murderer’s statue. That Black people in Bristol were forced to look at a statue to a slave trader day in day out was of no account. After all Black people are not well heeled White people living in the suburbs.

This is because ‘violence’ is narrowly defined by the state to mean violence against property not people and because property is and always had been the main concern of the law. As Lord Denning explained in Southwark LBC v Williams in 1971

"... if hunger were once allowed to be an excuse for stealing, it would open a door through which all kinds of lawlessness and disorder would pass... if homelessness were once admitted as a defence to trespass, no one's house could be safe. Necessity would open a door which no man could shut."

Thus the relatively liberal decision of the Supreme Court in Ziegler which protected peaceful obstruction by asking whether the disruption caused was proportional to the defendant’s rights under Articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR, has been gutted by Burnett and his Tory fellows.

Let us imagine if someone were to place a statue of Hitler in Golders Green, where there are large numbers of Jews. According to Burnett toppling  or destroying the statue would be a criminal offence. Cruella Braverman only a few weeks ago attended the Community Security Trust’s Annual Dinner where she said there was

‘a culture in the police of treating antisemitism as “racism lite” was to blame for the failure to convict thugs who bully Jews.’

If a statue of Hitler went up in Golders Green the person responsible would be prosecuted under the Public Order Act and probably incitement to commit racial hatred because Jews are the pampered pets and the alibi for British foreign policy.

But when it comes to Black people, statues such as that of Colston and Rhodes are protected in the name of ‘history’ as if Hitler too isn’t a historical figure. The only conclusion one can draw from the Court of Appeal’s decision is that racism against Black people is acceptable.

It is through decisions like this that people can understand the racist nature of the British judicial system and the British judiciary.

Anti-Semitism is prioritised as a ‘hate crime’ precisely because it is no longer a form of state racism. If anti-Semitism were to be become respectable, as it was in the 30s, then a statue of Hitler in a Jewish area would also be acceptable.

Palestine Action Trial, Wolverhampton

The fifth week of the Palestine Action trial in Wolverhampton has now ended. Judge Chambers excelled himself during legal arguments the Friday before last when he misquoted Lord Hoffman, formerly of the Supreme Court, to the effect that ‘taking the law into one’s own hands’ can only lead to anarchy. This was included in directions issued to the jury. Hoffman had stated that

A tight control of the use of force is necessary to prevent society from sliding into anarchy,…

 Ordinary citizens who apprehend breaches of the law, whether affecting themselves, third parties or the community as a whole, are normally expected to call in the police and not to take the law into their own hands.

What this demonstrates is the political and historical illiteracy of the judiciary and their fear of the mob. What was Magna Carta but a rebellion of the Barons? How was Parliamentary Supremacy secured other than by Cromwell’s sacking of the Long Parliament in 1648? Trade Unionism was only established by the refusal to obey the Unlawful Oaths Act of 1797 which prevented the forming of genuine trade unions. The result of such defiance being the transportation to Australia of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

What was Chartism and the People’s Charter of May 1838 but a direct action movement aimed at obtaining universal manhood suffrage. And we know that the Suffragettes regularly took the law into their own hands as a means of fighting for the right of women to vote.

The Chief Prosecutor of Emmeline Pankhurst in 1912 could almost have been Deborah Gould in drag. In a BBC reconstruction the Prosecutor told the jury that:

Suffrage is not the issue, it is the criminal behaviour of the suffragettes and their incitement to partake in militant activity at which 54 windows were broken

Today the suffragettes have statues in Parliament Square and plaques in the House of Commons yet at the time they were called vandals, terrorists and depicted as not really women. And the last great movement of direct action was the Poll Tax when millions of Britain’s defied the law that Thatcher had passed and refused to pay the tax until it was repealed.

In fact all democratic rights owe their origin to the fact that people were prepared to take the law into their own hands. Far from ushering in anarchy they led to the limited democratic rights which today are being rolled back.

It was in recognition of this fact and the refusal of juries to convict in cases where the law was either unjust or being used in an oppressive way that Baroness Heather Hallett, a member of the Court of Appeal from 2005-2019 gave the 2017 Blackstone Lecture on the Role of the Jury in which she said:

A jury may refuse to convict in spite of the law and the evidence because it concludes that the law is an unjust law. The jury passes its verdict on the law. Secondly, it ensures that the prosecution and the judge are on trial.

These trials [Ponting and Leonard Arthur] all took place in the full glare of publicity. Here we see a specific application of the principle of open justice: the public can attend court and scrutinise what is going on. They can see the jury make its protest as to what they see as an unjust law or unjust application of the law. There is a check against arbitrary or oppressive conduct by the court…. We see as Professor [Michael] Zander has properly pointed out the jury can set aside ‘unjust laws, oppressive prosecutions and harsh sentences.’

This is on the official site of the British Judiciary but nonetheless it is forbidden to mention these issues to a jury.

We have recently had the arrest of retired social worker, Trudy Warner, for holding a placard at the jury entrance to the Inner London Crown Court on which was written ‘Jurors: You have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.’ Warner was referring to the ancient case of Bushell’s, which established the right of a jury to defy a judge. The judgment in Bushell’s is even on a plaque at the Old Bailey. It reads:

‘Near this site WILLIAM PENN and WILLIAM MEAD were tried in 1670 for preaching to an unlawful assembly in Grace Church Street This Tablet Commemorates The courage and endurance of the Jury Thos Vere Edward Bushell and 10 others who refused to give a verdict against them although locked up without food for two nights and were fined for their final Verdict of Not Guilty The case of these Jurymen was reviewed on a Writ of Habeus Corpus and Chief Justice Vaughan delivered the opinion of the Court which established the Right of Juries to give their Verdict according to their Convictions

Bushell’s jury was imprisoned for 2 days and night without food or water for refusing to convict William Penn and William Mead of unlawful assembly. It led to the independence of the jury and their freedom from coercion from the Judge Chambers of their day.

According to Judge Chambers, by breaking the law and sitting in a seat meant for a White person, Rosa Parks was ushering in anarchy

According to Hoffman and Chambers, the breaking of the law by Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on a bus to a White man, was not justified because it could have set America on the road to anarchy. Similarly the refusal by Black people to obey the pass laws in South Africa was not justified. In condemning direct action our judges merely demonstrate that they are historically illiterate, reactionary buffoons.

In fact, far from leading to anarchy, it is when people take the law into their own hands that they can rid themselves of unjust, racist and sexist laws which perpetuate the privileges of the tiny minority which rule this country and from where British judges originate. British judges are the most socially exclusive of professions, with 65% attending public school and 75% graduating from Oxbridge colleges.

No democratic freedoms have ever been won except by people taking the law into their own hands in the face of determined opposition by the Judiciary. Judges have always been the last bastion of reaction.

On May 9 our trial resumes with Judge Chambers summing up of the case, which will I am sure mention none of these things as he emphasises that his take on the law is the authorised version.

According to Judge Chambers, Sophie Scholl - executed by the Nazis for being part of the White Rose group - was 'ushering in anarchy' by defying the law

A Case of Judges Being Part of the Prosecution

I was initially accused by Deborah Gould of lying because, when responding to a police question as to where I was driving the minibus, I said that I was going for a drive! When I challenged Gould and argued that I was indeed going for a drive she backed down and agreed that my response was misleading rather than an untruth.

Judge Chambers was having none of it. Despite both myself, I was representing myself at the time, and the Prosecution agreeing that I wasn’t lying, Chambers insisted on issuing a Lucas Direction on lies, which although mitigating its seriousness nonetheless maintained that I had lied. When you have a judge who is more prosecution minded than the Prosecutor then the idea that this is a fair trial, under Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights becomes an absurdity.

In the Clive Ponting case, cited by Hallett, despite being instructed by Judge Sir Anthony McGowan to convict Ponting, the jury acquitted him. Ponting had revealed that Thatcher was lying to Parliament when she said that the General Belgrano had been sailing towards the Falklands Islands when it was torpedoed whereas the opposite was the case. McGowan told the jury that the public interest defence in the case did not apply because ‘The public interest is what the government says it is’.

Judge Silas Reid has abolished the right of defendants to defend themselves gaoling 3 Insulate Britain protesters for explaining why they took direct action

Last week I sacked my barrister and decided to take the address to the jury. After that I was put under pressure to change my mind and in the end I  decided to reinstruct Daniella Manson who mounted a factual rather than a political defence.

Amy Pritchard and Giovanna Lewis were jailed for 7 weeks for contempt of court after they defied an order not to refer to climate change as their motivation for blocking traffic in the City of London.

As the British state cracks down on Palestine Action and various environmental action groups – Just Stop Oil, Climate Action, Insulate Britain etc. are going to have to come together to rebut the attack on direct action by the state and its judicial mouthpieces. The role of defence lawyers will inevitably be less important as virtually all the common law defences have been withdrawn.

Our task will be to inform juries of their rights because of one thing we can be certain, Britain’s judges will keep them in the dark.

Keeping Juries in the Dark

The key to securing compliant juries who are willing to convict at the suggestion of judges lies in keeping them in ignorance. Until the present trial I was unaware of how this was managed or rather manipulated.

A lot of time in trials, certainly in our trial, is taken up with arguments about the law. Whenever this happens the jury is sent out so it is totally oblivious to the real arguments in a trial. When I was initially denied the right to sit in the well of the court, when I decided to sack   my barrister, I made my application to the judge to reverse his position. He immediately sent out the jury but I continued with my application in their presence.

Immediately the jury had gone Chambers threatened that if I pulled the same ‘stunt’ again I would be confined to the cells. This is how jury trials are being manipulated. I can see no reason whatsoever for juries not to be present during legal argumentation so that they can see whether or not the judge is manipulating the law in one particular political direction.

Tony Greenstein

I Have Resigned From Palestine Solidarity Campaign Because It No Longer Opposes Zionism, the Founding Ideology and Movement that created the Israeli State

In Railroading a Constitution Through Its AGM in Less Than an Hour, PSC’s Ruling Clique Demonstrated Their Contempt for the Membership 

Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry, both right-wing Zionists are invited to speak on PSC platforms - who does that benefit?

The angry, scowling face of PSC Chair Kamal Hawwash, who was determined to brush aside all opposition

In my letter of resignation I outline the reasons why Palestine Solidarity Campaign is today an obstacle to Palestine solidarity work.

Instead of educating activists as to the nature of Zionism and the Zionist movement, PSC has abandoned all opposition to Zionism. PSC is depoliticising activists in the face of constant Zionist attacks. It also reduces the question of Palestine to a human rights issue.

Of course the oppression of the Palestinians involves grave human rights abuses but if Palestine is simply a human rights issue then it is only one of many such examples. Who can doubt that the treatment of the Rohinga in Myanamar at the hands of the Burmese army, which is engaged in actual genocide, is worse than that of the Palestinians?

Zionism has systematically exploited the Holocaust through its blanket attack on all opposition to its settler colonial project as ‘anti-Semitism’. Yet instead of pointing out that Zionism represents an acceptance of anti-Semitism’s belief that Jews are aliens in the countries where they live, PSC prefers to jettison anti-Zionism.

Just 200 people participated in the Zoom session and as the day wore on it was down to less than 150

What makes Palestine different is that Israel is the only apartheid state on the planet and the only active settler colonial state in existence. Defenders of White Supremacy in South Africa were fond of pointing to human rights abuses in neighbouring countries and contrasting those states with itself.

The response of anti-imperialists was that South Africa’s regime of racial supremacy was unique. The same is true of Israeli Apartheid. Just as the South African state supported the repressive Black states surrounding it, Israel also acts as a guarantor against revolution in its neighbours. That is what the Abraham Accords are about.

PSC avoids such ‘difficult’ questions as it panders to the lowest common denominator politically. A cursory look at PSC literature would have you believe that Israel is alone in the Middle East. There is barely a mention of Israel’s strategic role in the region.

The Zionists have deliberately conflated the terms ‘Jew’ and ‘Zionist’. Support for the Palestinians has become ‘anti-Semitism’. PSC’s response has been to abandon opposition to Zionism. A search of its Annual Plan contains no mention of the word ‘Zionism’.

Those opposed to the resolution needed to obtain 25% of the vote. In the end we obtained 24.16% - just 113 people, 1.5% of PSC's total membership, voted for the new constitution

PSC AGM and the New Constitution

All of this came to a head at PSC’s recent AGM on March 19^th where any debate about a new proposed constitution was rendered impossible. One of the drawbacks of Zoom is that it enables those who set up the meeting to tightly control the proceedings and through the use of the webinar facility to atomise those taking part.

The Chat facility, which enables participants to discuss issues with each other, was disabled. The control freaks in PSC’s ruling clique, most notably its Director Ben Jamal, were determined that members who attended the AGM were not able to have any horizontal contact or communications with each other.  This is no different to the behaviour of Starmer’s apparatchiks in the Labour Party.

The Executive proposed an entirely new Constitution. Its reason was that the existing constitution had become misaligned with the Articles of Association of PSC Ltd. No proof that this was a problem was ever produced. Since 2004 PSC has been both a limited company and a campaigning organisation, which legally was an unincorporated association.

Members were lied to.  They were told that they had to approve a new constitution, unamended, because it was a Special Resolution under the 2006 Companies Act which requires 15 days of any amendment to the Articles of Association (a company’s constitution).

However there was absolutely no reason why an Extraordinary General Meeting could not have been called in 4 or 6 weeks time and amendments submitted within that time frame. Debate however was the last thing that PSC’s ruling clique wanted.

Leadership loyalist Diane Langford speaking in the constitution debate

PSC’s New Constitution Represents A Shift of Power From the Membership to PSC’s Ruling Clique

Below are a few examples of the mindset behind the proposals.

Section 4 of the old constitution was headed ‘Membership’. The new constitution has a much enlarged and prescriptive Part III ‘Membership.’ Section 6 not only requires that you agree with PSC’s Aims and Objectives but that you ‘uphold the Values of the campaign’. There is a new section 5, ‘Values’ which is as vacuous as anything New Labour produced.  PSC’e Values are a substitute for having Principles. These values include defining ‘anti-Semitism’ as a form of racism as opposed to prejudice in the former constitution.

Clause 4.6 of the 2015 Constitution specified that someone expelled from the organisation had the right of appeal to the following AGM. No such provision now exists.  Such a person merely has the right under s.10.4 to appeal ‘in line with the Appeal Process referred to in the relevant Regulation.’ Except there are no regulations and if and when they are drawn up they do not need to be approved by the membership.

Dave Chappell of Exeter PSC speaking in the debate

Under s.9.1 members must ‘support and promote the Aims, Objectives and Values of the PSC’. Given that the values are subjective this hands absolute power to the Executive Officers. There was no such stipulation in the previous constitution and no explanation as to why this is needed now.

Members must now also (s.9.2) ‘abide by the Code of Conduct and Constitution’. The Executive drew up a Code of Conduct which was a mere 25 times as long as the previous code of conduct of 98 words. It is effectively a charter for a future witchhunt. It does not need to be approved by anyone other than the Executive. Again there was no such stipulation in the previous constitution nor has there been any explanation as to why such a provision needs to be introduced now.

Clause 5.3 of the old Constitution stipulated that ‘All branches should adopt a constitution, which must contain...’ and it listed 5 non-controversial requirements such as a requirement for officers to be members of PSC nationally and to hold an AGM.

The new s.13.6. stipulates that ‘All branches shall have a constitution, approved by the Executive Committee.’ The original idea was to go further and divide members of PSC branches into two. Those who are members of national PSC and those who weren’t. The latter would have been unable to vote in elections for local officers. It was withdrawn after an outcry but it betrays the mentality of those who drew up this constitution.

What is the reason for local constitutions to be approved by national PSC?  None was given. The new 13.7.2. says that ‘all branch members shall abide by the PSC’s Aims, Objectives, Values and Code of Conduct.’ This is entirely new and hands powers to a future Executive to conduct a political witchhunt.

It is not just the wording of the new constitution but the mentality behind it. There is a new section 7 ‘Rights of Members’ but apart from the right to attend the national AGM and Branch Forum, which already existed there are no additional rights.

The new section 9 ‘Responsibilities of members’ lays out that Members ‘must’ support and promote the Aims Objectives and Values of PSC. Note the word ‘must’.

But when it comes to the Executive then the language changes. Section 18.1 says that ‘The Executive Committee shall be accountable to the membership for various tasks.’  The word ‘must’ is replaced by ‘shall’. It is in this authoritarian spirit that the whole of this verbose constitution was drawn up.

Rob Ferguson of the SWP giving loyal support to PSC's ruling clique as they remove opposition to Zionism from the Constitution

You might expect members of the Socialist Workers Party, who are nominally anti-Zionist, to have opposed this constitution, especially its proposal to remove opposition to Zionism.  Not a bit of it.  Tom Hickey and Rob Ferguson gave fulsome support to the Executive’s proposed Constitution on the grounds that we should not bother discussion constitutions. We should all just get on with campaigning!

According to the SWP we don’t need to think about things like the political aims and goals of PSC, still less its internal democracy. Given that there is no internal democracy in the SWP, the result of which was the rape crisis scandal in 2013, they couldn’t see the need for anyone else to take democracy seriously.

As Hickey and Ferguson were speaking, their Scottish comrades in Stand Up to Racism were busy welcoming Glasgow Friends of Israel and the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland onto their annual ‘anti-racism’ march complete with the Israeli flag. This meant that Muslim organisations were unable to participate in the march. This was of no concern to them. Fearful of being accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ the SWP allowed the Zionists to march with them. This was abject political cowardice and opportunism.

Louise Regan, Chair of the afternoon session and Iyas AlQasem, who chaired the committee that drew up the new constitution

The Quisling Palestinian Authority and Murder of Nizar Banat

PSC’s ruling clique also opposed a motion condemning the Quisling Palestine Authority which had murdered Palestinian resistance fighter Nizar Banat. His family personally contacted me to offer their support for the motion and sent a message, which I read out. PSC Executive were not prepared to condemn the PA, which is Israel’s military subcontractor in the West Bank.

When Donald Trump cut all funding to the Palestinians, including the PA, he made an exception as regards funding the Palestinian security forces at Israel’s special request.

The PA’s security forces work closely with the Israeli military and its secret police Shin Bet. They arrest and interrogate (i.e. torture) Palestinians when supplied with names by Shin Bet before handing the prisoners over to the Israelis. This however cut no ice with Ben Jamal, Kamal Hawwash or PSC Executive.

PSC Refuse to Say Anything About the Two State Solution

Today the main supporters of the two state solution are Zionist groups like Labour Friends of Israel. They support it because they know it will never happen but it’s a useful smokescreen and alibi for continued settlement. Unsurprisingly my motion opposing the two state solution was met with the Executive’s opposition.

The Palestine Action motion, which had been gutted by the Executive's amendment, was still opposed by a hardcore of 21 members who oppose any form of direct action, with 19 unable to decide  what they think.

Palestine Action

The best thing that has happened to the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain in the past 5 years was the creation of Palestine Action.  Through the use of direct action and community campaigns in like Oldham and Leicester Elbit actually closed their factory in Oldham because they could no longer protect it.

None of this stopped Ben Jamal waging an 18 months war of attrition against PA including the dissemination of bogus legal advice to PSC branches warning them off contributing to their funds.  He also made allegations of anti-Semitism. The details are in this paper.

Robyn Dasey of Brixton PSC speaking

PSC’s repeated boasts that it is building a mass movement that will mainstream Palestine is just that. A boast. ‘Mainstreaming’ is jargon for persuading the British Establishment to cut its ties with Israel.

The main achievement of PSC to date is to build itself into another NGO whose priority is maintaining itself. Its support for its own activists is secondary. When BDS first took off in Britain PSC opposed it. PSC today is a politically timid organisation bent on appeasing the British Establishment. That is why it has put on its platforms Zionists like Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry.

What is worse is that PSC is controlled politically by a secretive ex-Trotskyist organisation, Socialist Action which believes that China is a socialist society. It is Socialist Action’s iron grip on PSC’s leadership which is responsible for PSC failing to develop politically.

As someone who helped found PSC in 1982 I don’t take the step of resigning lightly but as long as PSC is tightly controlled by a few individuals it will never build the mass movement that it talks about.

PSC’s lack of any anti-imperialist or anti-Zionist politics means that it is helpless when faced with a concerted Zionist campaign such as that over ‘anti-Semitism’. 

In 1993 I resigned from PSC when it supported the Oslo Accords, rejoining in 2005. As I predicted at the time, the Oslo Accords, of which the Palestinian Authority is the bastard fruit, represented the greatest setback to the Palestinian struggle since the Nakba. I will continue to be a member of my local Brighton and Hove PSC.

Tony Greenstein

ZIONISM - What it is and Why it is Important? Zoom Meeting with Moshe Machover and Tony Greenstein

 Was it inevitable that Zionism would create an Apartheid monstrosity in Palestine?

To register go to

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_v7FMwt73S5iiYZP2can1fA

On Wednesday November 4^th Moshe Machover, one of the founders of Matzpen, the Socialist Organisation in Israel, and myself will try and answer the question, ‘What is Zionism’.

Why is Zionism important? Why not just focus on Palestine solidarity? In her Report on racism Shami Chakrabarti asked:

Moshe Machover

‘surely it is better to use the modern universal language of human rights, be it of dispossession, discrimination, segregation, occupation or persecution and to leave Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust out of it?

This is an attractive argument but it is also a false one and speaks to nothing more than Chakrabarti’s own abysmal ignorance.

Let us imagine if, in Apartheid South Africa, someone had said that it’s better to concentrate on human rights, discrimination, particular instances of dispossession and exploitation when someone raised the question of Apartheid. They would have been laughed out of court if not branded as an apologist for racism. 

Matzpen - Socialist Organisation in Israel

Why then the distinction between Israel and South Africa?  It is clear that because Israel calls itself a Jewish State that people, bearing in mind the holocaust, are wary of accusing it of behaving as the anti-Semites behaved towards the Jews. Imagine if 200,000 South Africa expatriates had lived in Britain during the apartheid erea and when people campaigned against Apartheid they protested that this was anti-Afrikaaner racism and that Apartheid was part of their identity.

Yet when people oppose Zionism they are told that it is anti-Semitic because the majority of British Jews identify with Israel. Of course British Jews are not expatriates but according to Zionist ideology they are aliens. Israel is the ‘real home’ of Jews. Indeed it is one of the unspoken aims of Zionism to alienate Jews from their surroundings.  Zionism has always had as one of its foundational aims the winding up of the accursed Galut (exile), their name for the Jewish diaspora. This was called the Afrikaaner British Jews Galut ‘negation of the diaspora’.

To the Zionists anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism

According to David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister:

‘[Zionism] means taking masses of uprooted, impoverished, sterile Jewish masses, living parasitically off the body of an alien, economic body and dependent on others – and introducing them to productive and creative life.’  [Shlomo Avineiri, The Making of Modern Zionism, p.200]

Lucien Wolfe

Lucien Wolfe, the Secretary of the Board of Deputies Conjoint Foreign Committee described how:

I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, when presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. They constitute a capitulation to our enemies.’ [B Destani (ed) The Zionist movement and the foundation of Israel 1839-1972 Cambridge 2004, Vol 1, p727].

Moshe Lillienblum, an early Zionist, believed that ‘aliens we are and aliens we shall remain, even if we become full to the brim with culture…’ [Lillienblum, Let Us Not Confuse the Issues, Hertzberg p. 170].

Heinrich Class of the Pan German League

The anti-Semites were grateful for the Zionist acknowledgement that what they said about Jews was true. Heinrich Class, President of the 100,000 strong Pan German League, who was made an honorary member of the Reichstag on Hitler's assumption of power, wrote that:

“... among the Jews themselves the nationalist movement called Zionism is gaining more and more adherents ... They also declare openly that a true assimilation of the Jewish aliens to the host nations would be impossible... the Zionists confirm what the enemies of the Jews... have always asserted...”  [If I Were the Kaiser:  Daniel Frymman (pseudonym).

When it comes to Israel Zionism, the racist movement and ideology that is responsible for the plight of the Palestinians, is treated as if it’s a badge of ethnic identity. There is a deliberate conflation by Zionist of the categories of Jew and Zionist.

Chakrabarti is a good example of the muddled headed thinking of social democratic apologists for Israel and Zionism: She boasts that

Notwithstanding a vibrant Palestinian solidarity tradition, of all British political parties the Labour Party has the longest and most consistent record of support for Zionism, and the Labour Government quickly moved to recognise the new state of Israel upon its formation in 1948.

The Labour Party has indeed a long and shameful record of supporting Zionism going back to the War Aims Memorandum of August 1917. Why, one might ask, should the Labour Party support Zionism in 1917 when it was a minority cult within the Jewish community and had almost no working class adherents? Zionism then was a middle class affair.  Jewish socialists shunned it as a movement of class collaboration. Poalei Zion had just a few hundred members, most of them middle-class Fabian types.

Alec, a fictional character in Simon Blumenfeld’s novel Jew Boy remarked,

I don’t see why I should change one set of exploiters for another because they are Jewish.’  [Brian Klug, Anti-Zionism in London’s Jewish East End, 1890-1948, p.6].

Why did the Labour Party support them? The reason was because Labour was as much a party of the British Empire as the Tories. They particularly supported settler colonialism, which they saw as progressive and not exploitative despite the fact that Zionism was in alliance with the British Empire. The Labour Party sought out the most right-wing Jews and turned its back on the militant Jewish working class of the East  End and later the anti-fascist struggle.

The socialist movement has become infected with the politics of identity. So instead of looking critically at the British Jewish community and how it has become embourgeoisified, they are accorded equal status to oppressed Palestinian because in the language of identity politics British Jews too are a minority community and suffer the same of Black people.

Being a ‘minority’ is in itself a virtue according to the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland.  So taking this to its logical absurdity a minority of exploiters or bankers or billionaires suddenly take on a progressive hue. The fact that Jewish identification with Israel is reactionary and that British Jews would be the first to protest if they were subject to even a fraction of the discrimination that the Palestinians experience, is considered irrelevant. Class politics have gone out of the window with much of the Left, including the Corbyn left.

Jews in Britain are White. They are privileged socio-economically and the majority define themselves in opposition to the Palestinians, although not as large a majority as the Zionist pretend.  According to the survey The Attitude of British Jews Towards Israel 59% of British Jews identify as Zionists and 31%.

The IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ is based on the supposition that Israel represents Jews collectively. This means accepting that Jews are an alienated part of British society. It is why the definition is anti-Semitic ! If your only method of understanding society is in terms of identity not class politics you have no means of differentiating between persecuting and persecuted minorities, the exploited and the exploiting.

Identity Politics nonsense from Chakrabarti - of course Jews could define themselves as Martians but that doesn't mean one has to accept the self definition!

This is why Chakrabarti wittered on about having heard a

‘rich range of self-descriptions of both Jewishness or Zionism, even within the Labour Party.

Not only did Chakrabarti equate Jews with  Zionists but she treated Zionism, not as an ideology of Jewish supremacy but as one of many choices in a take away menu. Chakrabarti advised people

Chakrabarti knew nothing about Zionism otherwise she would know that it's Zionists who use Zionism as a euphemism for Jew

to use the term "Zionist" advisedly, carefully and never euphemistically or as part of personal abuse.

What this meant was that one should not call someone a Zionist in a derogatory fashion.  Those arguing this, the Jewish Labour Movement believed the term ‘Zionism’ was something to be worn with pride rather than as a badge of shame.

So why is Zionism important?

The reason is simple. If you don’t understand the ideology that led to the creation of the Israeli state and its functioning today you won’t understand why it is an inherently racist and expansionist state.

Zionism is based on the idea that the Jews form a nation, a nation separated by 2,000 years from its birthplace in Palestine. It is a convenient myth but that is all it is. European Jews have no attachment, other than religious, to Palestine. The direct descendants of the Hebrews who lived there at the time of Christ converted first to Christianity and then Islam. If anyone can claim a direct line of descent from the ancient Hebrews it is the Palestinians, as both David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak ben Zvi admitted.

The aim of Zionism has always been to ‘redeem’ the land, that is to alienate it from the indigenous population.

The best description of this process was in the report of the Hope Simpson Inquiry of October 1930 into the causes of bloody riots the preceding year.  Chaired by Sir John Simpson it went out to Palestine to investigate for itself and it was appalled by Zionist behaviour.

Chapter 5 ss. (iii) The Effect of the Jewish Settlement on the Arab is still relevant. After describing how leases for property from the Jewish National Fund stipulated that hired labour on land bought from absentee Arab landlords must be Jewish only, the Report said that

‘Attempts are constantly being made to establish the advantage which Jewish settlement has brought to the Arab. The most lofty sentiments are ventilated at public meetings and in Zionist propaganda. At the time of the Zionist Congress in 1921 a resolution was passed which '' solemnly declared the desire of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people in relations of friendship and mutual respect’ … This resolution is frequently quoted in proof of the excellent sentiments which Zionism cherishes towards the people of Palestine.

The Report goes on to note that their actions in dispossessing the natives ‘are not compatible with those sentiments.’ It concludes that:

The effect of the Zionist colonisation policy on the Arab.— Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extraterritorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. Nor can anyone help him by purchasing the land and restoring it to common use. The land is in mortmain and inalienable. It is for this reason that Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the Zionists in view of the policy which the Zionist Organisation deliberately adopted.

When it asked the Zionist ‘trade union’ Histadrut for the reasons why Arab labour was the subject of a Boycott they were frank:

‘They pointed out that the Jewish colonies were founded and established by Jewish capital, and that the subscriptions of which this capital is composed were given with the intention that Jews should emigrate to Palestine and be settled there—that these subscriptions would never have been given had it been thought that they would be employed to support Arab labourers.’

In other words the Zionists operated a colour bar just as damaging as the colonists did in South Africa except that in this case they objected to any reemployment of Arab labour. The Arabs could go starve.

Why then is Zionism important? Well if the PLO had had an understanding of the nature of Zionism, that the Zionist settlers did not come to Palestine to share the land with the indigenous population but to expel them then they wouldn’t have agreed to the Oslo Accords, the biggest disaster for the Palestinians since the Nakba. If the PLO had understood Zionism then they would have understood that Israel could never voluntarily agree to relinquish its claim to any part of the Occupied Territories.  As the new Ambassador to Britain, religious nut Tzipi Hotoveli, then Deputy Foreign Minister, stated:

“We need to return to the basic truth of our rights to this country,” she said. “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

Various left intellectuals have, as a result of the anti-Semitism campaign, which has become an Establishment narrative, beaten a retreat. Professor David Feldman of the Pears Institute of Anti-Semitism has reversed his position from opposition to the IHRA to supporting the Weaponisation of anti-Semitism.

See Failing to see the Wood for the Trees – A Response to Brian Klug’s The Left And The Jews and How David Feldman of Birkbeck and the Pears Institute Changed His Views to Accommodate Zionist McCarthyism

Another academic is Brian Klug. Brian too has bent with the wind. His attempt to rehabilitate Zionism began with a talk he gave to the SWP in July 2017. Klug based his critique on a misreading of an article by Aurora Levins Morales, a Puerto Rican feminist in On Antisemitism produced by Jewish Voice for Peace. Aurora referred to “a three-cornered argument” between the Orthodox, Zionists and socialists/communists in her grandmother’s shtetl about the solution to the pogroms. Brian uses this to suggest that Zionism is Janus faced, an ideology of emancipation as well as oppression.

Klug is wrong and tries to rationalise post hoc Zionist colonisation by reaching back in time to a period when it was a sigh of despair of the Jewish petit bourgeoisie when faced with anti-Semitism on the one hand and socialist revolutionaries on the other. Zionism is not ‘Janus faced.’  Zionism is consistent but of course it changed during the flight from the Russian Pale of Settlement to Palestine.

When Zionism first arose it expressed the desire of Jewish intellectuals and the petit-bourgeosie for their own Promised Land, a safe haven where Jews would be free to exploit each other without the interference of the goy. The prayer ‘Next year in Jerusalem’, which is recited each day by the Orthodox, in essence meant, as Bernard Lazare observed, no more than an expression of hope that next year we will be free. The Jewish masses had no more intention of emigrating to Palestine than American Jews do today and of the 2 ½ million Jews who fled the Pale, just 1% went to Palestine.  America was their Promised Land.

If Zionism had simply remained a messianic movement like so many before it, it could have been dismissed as a sigh of the oppressed. In much the same way as Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa movement represented Black reaction, not least in its alliance with the KKK, Zionism would have been a reactionary Jewish separatist movement. Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association also preached racial segregation and racial pride.

Zionism wasn’t just a backward reaction to anti-Semitism. Its aimed to seek an alliance with imperialism and Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism, spent his whole life seeking out the various rulers of Europe, from the Ottoman Sultan to the German Kaiser.

Zionism as it developed can only be understood in the context of its alliance with British imperialism, consolidated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and all that flowed from that. Zionism was a junior partner of British imperialism from 1917 to 1945. From 1945 onwards, indeed earlier in the case of the Irgun, Zionism fought the British in just the same way as the Boers had done. It sought independence from its imperialist sponsor.

Hungarian neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka - invited guest at the Zionist Organisation of America gala dinner

Hitler of course gave the Zionist project a massive boost and that was why, when the vast majority of Jews instinctively wanted to Boycott Hitler and the Nazis the Zionists fought so strongly against Boycott. Zionism never once fought anti-Semitism although today it seeks to brand everyone and everything who disagree with it as anti-Semitic .

That is one of the ironies of the present day fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. In the United States the Zionists have allied with Trump who fought an openly anti-Semitic campaign in 2016. His final advert in that campaign featured images of prominent Jews: financier George Soros (accompanying the words “those who control the levers of power”), Fed Chair Janet Yellen (with the words “global special interests”) and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (following the “global power structure” quote). It showed Hillary Clinton saying she partnered “with these people who don’t have your good in mind.”. He has made repeated anti-Semitic comments since such as telling American Jews that their ‘real home’ is in Israel not the USA.

This didn’t stop the Zionist Organisation of America inviting Steve Bannon, Trump’s anti-Semitic Strategic Director and the neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka, another Trump adviser, as guests of honour at the ZOA’s 2016 and 2017 annual gala dinners.

Just as it doesn’t stop the Israeli state today supplying the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion with weaponry just as it did with the neo-Nazi Argentinian Junta in the 1970s and 1980s.

Zionism was unique among the very many Jewish movements that sprang up in reaction to Czarist anti-Semitism.  It accepted that Jews were aliens and therefore incapable of living amongst non-Jews. Indeed it was their very estrangement, living in an alien society that had caused the anti-social behaviour in the first place, which had resulted in anti-Semitism. The anti-Semites told the Jews that they were different and could not expect equal rights. The Zionists agreed.

Many of the things that Zionists said about the Jewish diaspora could have come from the Nazis or anti-Semites. For example Israel’s first Justice Minister, Pinhas Rosenbluth described Palestine as ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’. [Joachim Doron, Classic Zionism and modern anti-Semitism: parallels and influences’, Journal of Israeli Affairs p.169 

Jacob Klatzkin, editor of Die Welt and co-founder of Encyclopedia Judaica held that Jews were:

‘a people disfigured in both body and soul – in a word, of a horror… some sort of outlandish creature… in any case, not a pure national type... some sort of oddity among the peoples going by the name of Jew.’ [Arthur Hertzberg, the Zionist Idea, pp. 322/323]

Hitler and Rosenberg, a supporter of Zionism

Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s theoretician and head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, wrote in 1919 that

‘Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations [Francis Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, p.25].

Rosenberg ‘intended to use Zionism as a legal justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights’. He ‘sanctioned the use of the Zionist movement in the future drive to eliminate Jewish rights, Jewish influence and eventually the Jewish presence in Germany.  (Francis Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, pp. 25-26]. Rosenberg who presided over a regime of terror and mass murder in captured Soviet territories was executed as a war criminal at the Nuremburg trials in 1946. 

Sir Samuel Montagu anti-Zionist Jewish MP for Whitechapel

Sir Samuel Montagu, the MP for Whitechapel (1885-1900) asked:

 ‘Is it not... a suspicious fact that those who have no love for the Jews, and those who are pronounced anti-Semites, all seem to  welcome the Zionist proposals and aspiration.?’[Sir Samuel Montagu, The Dangers of Zionism]

Not only did the anti-Semites welcome Zionism but Zionism welcomed them. That was why, in the middle of the Dreyfus Affair Herzl could write in his diaries that

In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.

Today Zionism calls itself a ‘national liberation movement’. Colonialism is no longer in fashion or part of the zeitgeist. But when it was fashionable to be a colonialist then Zionists were open colonists. Herzl wrote on January   11^th  1902, to Cecil Rhodes, the Prime Minister of Cape Colony from 1890-1896 and after whom Rhodesia was named, saying:

Extract from Herzl's Diaries - Letter from Herzl to Cecil Rhodes

“You are being invited to help make history...it doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial… I want you ... to put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan and to make the following declaration to a few people who swear by you: I, Rhodes have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable. It is a plan full of culture, excellent for the group of people for whom it is directly designed, and quite good for England, for Greater Britain…."

Chakrabarti asked why raise the holocaust and the Nazis. One reason is because Zionism cynically and deliberately exploits the memory of the holocaust in the service of their bloody racist enterprise. It is useful to see what Zionism was actually doing whilst the holocaust was taking place. The comparison by 9 holocaust survivors of Zionist policies with that of Nazi Germany is invaluable.

Rudolf Vrba - Escaped from Auschwitz - anti-Zionist who condemned Zionist collaboration with the Nazis

Rudolph Vrba, one of only 4 Jewish escapees from Auschwitz, wrote that

“The Zionist movement of Europe played a very important role in the mass extermination of Jews. Indeed, I believe that without the cooperation of Zionists it would have been a much more difficult task….

Vrba with Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz on April 10 1944 with the intention of warning Hungarian Jewry that they were next in line for extermination. Their report, the Auschwitz Protocols was delivered to the Zionist leader from Hungary, Rudolph Kasztner, who promptly suppressed it in order that he could negotiated a separate agreement with the Nazis allowing 1,646, mainly Zionist and bourgeois Jewish leaders to escape from Hungary in a special train. In exchange Kasztner kept secret where the deportation trains were actually heading. Kasztner was accused by survivors of the Hungarian holocaust of complicity in the extermination of Jews in the Kasztner Trial in Israel from 1954-1958.  Judge Benjamin Halevi of the Jerusalem District Court ruled in 1955 that Kasztner had sold his soul to the devil. The Israeli government of Moshe Sharrett promptly collapsed because they had defended Kasztner, a member of the Israeli Labor Party Mapai.

Another reason for comparing Zionism and the Nazi is because the blood and soil ideology of Zionism bears a distinct similarity to that of the Nazis.  Both were what one might call volkish. Of course Zionism hasn’t exterminated the Palestinians though there are many Zionists now who would like to do so if it were politically feasible. But the genocidal outlook of many Israelis, over half of whom support the expulsion even of Israeli Palestinians from Israel suggests that Zionism’s belief in a Jewish state is no different from the belief of the Nazis in an Aryan ethno nationalist state.  Being Jewish has been transformed from a religious into a racial category.

All criticism of Israel is written off as ‘anti-Semitism’. But how else to explain the fact that Israel today arms and equips some of the most right-wing, racist and genocidal regimes like Myanamar.

People should not feel afraid of hurting the feelings of Zionists by making such comparisons.  If that is the only way to help them escape their indoctrination then it is all to the good!

Come and hear Moshe and myself on ‘What is Zionism’ and hopefully we can have a good debate afterwards.

Tony Greenstein