Showing posts with label Panorama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Panorama. Show all posts

19 February 2024

BBC Panorama Could Have Shown How Israel’s Main Purpose in Gaza is Ethnic Cleansing Instead It Decided to ‘Expose’ British Muslims Support for Hamas!

Instead of a Documentary on the Bombing of Every Hospital &University in Gaza the BBC Employed Islamaphobe John Ware as its Witchfinder General


You might think that at a time of genocide in Gaza Panorama might devote a programme to exposing Israeli lies about October 7 or how ethnic cleansing, not defeating Hamas, is the main reason for Israel’s Nazi-style blitzkrieg. Not a bit of it.

Today Panorama will give a helping hand to Israel’s killers by ‘exposing’ how British Muslims support Hamas. All with the aid of its favourite Islamaphobe John Ware.

In July 2019, shortly before the General Election Panorama broadcast Is Labour Anti-Semitic? It didn’t need the question mark since it had already made up its mind. It was a hatchet job on the Corbyn left and who better to front it than Ware?

Ella Rose was nominated for an Oscar for her starring role as John Ware's fake victim of antisemitism

The program attracted over 2,000 complaints yet Ofcom refused to investigate it. The British Establishment was determined to run with the ‘labour anti-Semitism’ narrative and it brooked no opposition.

If ever there was a reporter unfit to present a documentary on alleged racism in the Labour Party then it is Ware.

The programme failed to explain that the Jews interviewed all happened to be members/officers of the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement. It didn’t even give their names. Not one anti-Zionist Jew or member of Jewish Voice for Labour was interviewed.

On Monday Panorama will broadcast Hamas’s Secret Financial Empires by John Ware and producer Leo Telling. It attacks British Palestinians for funding Hamas. It relies on Israeli intelligence sources and is will be about as reliable as the Israeli allegations that Gaza’s hospitals were Hamas military bases.


Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada documents how:

As “evidence” of such “support” for “terror,” the producer cited four posts to X (formerly Twitter) by Altikriti, where he called into question some of Israel’s most high-profile atrocity propaganda about the Palestinian military assault on 7 October.

These Israeli narratives have been widely discredited and called into question across the world.

While the producer conceded that “there is currently no evidence (at least, of which we are aware) that 40 babies had been beheaded,” he claimed to have “gathered evidence” of other crimes.

Telling’s equivocal wording comes despite the fact that the “40 babies” claim has been definitively proven to be a total fabrication, and not simply an unproven claim.

 

Just one baby, Mila Cohen (10 months) was killed, by a stray bullet, 36 children in total. Compare that to the 15,000+ Palestinian children who’ve been murdered including 4 babies who were left to die by the Israeli military in Al Shifa when the ventilators were turned off.  Their bodies were left for wild animals to devour. See CNN’s Infants found dead and decomposing in evacuated hospital ICU in Gaza. Here’s what we know.


Of course every child is one too many but whereas Hamas went out of their way not to kill children there is evidence that Israeli is deliberately rounding up children like mice and then executing them.

It seems that the hatchet job that Panorama is intending will be as factually inaccurate as all Ware’s previous programmes. Winstanley describes how

Putting the program’s allegations to Altikriti, the producer described one of the campaigner’s tweets as a response to “a post by UK women.”

Yet the tweet Telling cites was actually a response to a pro-Israel lobby group, We Believe in Israel, which was spreading the Israeli propaganda about rape. The group is actually run by a man, Luke Akehurst, and the post in question does not quote women.


 The programme is going to broadcast how prominent British Palestinians like Anas Altikriti are supporting Hamas. Proof of this is their doubting of Israeli atrocity propaganda such as the story about 40 beheaded babies.

The ‘evidence’ for Ware’s accusations in the program is Israel’s Secret Police Shin Bet who are notorious for routinely using torture and abusing Palestinian children.


During Is Labour Anti-Semitic Ware described the interview by Labour Party staff member Ben Westerman of a Jewish member Helen Marks. It was witnessed by another Jewish member Rica Bird. A tape recording proved that Westerman lied when he alleged that Rica had asked if he was from Israel. She had asked what branch of the Labour Party he was from.

After having denied that Westerman lied for so long Ware finally admitted, in the Zionist journal Fathom (where else?) that ‘it cannot be ruled out that Westerman’s recollection has erred’ and that he ‘misremembered’.

This came after the BBC finally admitted that the interview with Izzy Lenga, a JLM officer, had been cut so as to suggest holocaust denial was a feature of Labour Party debate rather than her alleged experiences at University. However the admission was tucked away in Corrections & Clarifications rather than being broadcast.

The programme had two ‘expert witnesses’ Dave Rich from the Zionist Community Security Trust and the second witness was Professor Alan Johnson. Johnson is not Jewish and he has no special knowledge of anti-Semitism. He is Editor of Fathom, the journal of BICOM, the main Israeli propaganda organisation in Britain. He is a Zionist. Why was this information concealed?

The only conclusion is that Ware deliberately set out to mislead viewers. By not providing Johnson’s political and professional background Ware paraded Johnson as a neutral expert when he was nothing of the sort?

It is a testament to how dishonest Is Labour Anti-Semitic was that over 4 years later John Ware is still forced to defend it.

Arzu Merali’s documented how Ware's 2005 "A Question of Leadership" attracted over 600 complaints in just its first week protesting about its hostile and one-sided nature.

John Ware - the BBC's Go to Islamaphobe

The Muslim Council of Britain described the programme thus:

John Ware’s team have made a deeply unfair programme using deliberately garbled quotes in an attempt to malign the Muslim Council of Britain and with the barely concealed goal of drawing British Muslims away from being inspired in their political beliefs and actions by the faith of Islam. It is unfortunate that just when Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims are beginning to make progress in terms of their political participation in the mainstream, there are those who are purposefully trying to sabotage that process,’said Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.

It seems that to qualify as so-called ‘moderates’ Muslims are required to remain silent about Israeli crimes in Palestine, otherwise they are automatically labelled as ‘extremists’.

And that is the gist of it. Ware’s agenda is to defend the Israeli state at all costs. Arzu described Ware as ‘someone who has made a career out of exceptionalising Muslims.’

One senior ex-Panorama journalist described the programme as

the most disgusting Panorama that I have ever seen. The presenter was acting like a prosecuting attorney, not a journalist.

 The Guardian's Madeleine Bunting called the documentary, which dubbed all Muslims as ‘extremist’, as an example of the ‘McCarthyite absurd’. Bunting described Ware’s journalistic method as being one of ‘Branding moderates as extremists’ and gave as an example his targeting of Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the MCB. She described his behaviour as McCarthyite.

Ware doesn’t so much investigate as pillory and scapegoat, substituting his own prejudices for reporting. Ken Livingstone’s description of Hitler having supported Zionism was termed a ‘cranky’ version of history. Since when is it a presenter’s job to pass judgement on a particular view of history?

One wonders what John Ware would call the memo that the German Zionist Federation sent on 21st June 1933, to Hitler?

‘On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the fatherland is possible. Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities....’

Zionist historian, David Cesarani, wrote in The Final Solution:

‘The efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to promote emigration.’

Maybe Cesarani was also a ‘crank’? Or perhaps the crank is Ware? Ware is a relic of the days of Empire when we ‘civilised the natives’. He wrote of his

horror... that some migrants to this country had brought with them a lot more than just their possessions.

They didn’t understand democracy and dissent. One can only wonder at where they may have got it from! Britain’s former colonies were not a model of democracy.

Racism oozes out of everything Ware writes. He described Islam as an ‘ideology’ which is what Tommy Robinson and the far-Right says. Since the Chief Rabbi stated that Judaism and Zionism are intertwined does not the same apply to Judaism?

In an article for a right-wing magazine Standpoint (27.6.17) Enough is enough of terror — but also of our self-doubt Ware wrote of Western civilisation being ‘based on Christianity, which enshrines individualism and freedom.’

One can only wonder what Torquemada’s victims would have made of that. Perhaps Martin Luther’s fulmination that ‘the Jews are our misfortune’ is Ware’s idea of civilisation? This was emblazoned on the masthead of the Nazi paper Der Sturmer.

In the article for Standpoint Ware wrote that the Tory Party’s

‘family quarrel over Europe... risks letting in a Labour leader whose entire political career has been stimulated by disdain for the West, appeasement of extremism, and who would barely understand what fighting for the revival of British values is really all about.’

These bigoted remarks should have rendered Ware as unfit to comment on a greyhound race let alone the Labour Party. Yet the BBC was and is more than happy to employ him.

Ware is of the opinion that the alternative to British values ‘is a diffuse mush with nothing particularly special to defend at all.’ Islamaphobia is just ‘powerful ammunition’ for discrediting Prevent. But it is in the final paragraph that we understand Ware’s motivation when he lambasted the Tory party for

‘risk(ing) letting in a Labour leader whose entire political career has been stimulated by disdain for the West, appeasement of extremism, and who would barely understand what fighting for the revival of British values is really all about.’

This is the man who the BBC believed was the most suitable person to present a programme on ‘Labour anti-Semitism’. The MCB got it right when they described Ware as ‘an agenda-driven pro-Israeli polemicist.’  

In an article Jeremy Corbyn’s gold standard code on antisemitism is far from black and white in the Jewish Chronicle Ware demonstrated his ignorance, not only about Islam but Zionism too. He opined that

‘any suggestion that ethnic cleansing was a principle war aim by the Jews in 1948 ... is highly contested. The Jews had accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs had not.... The Arabs’ war aim was the destruction of the Jews’ emergent state fuelled by a religious Jihad. Survival was the Jews’ war aim.’

 Ware knows nothing about the Nakba. He referred to Arab war plans but the Arab armies only invaded in May 1948 as a consequence of the expulsion by then of over 300,000 Palestinian refugees. The ethnic cleansing was well under way.


Josef Weitz, Director of the Jewish National Fund’s Colonisation Department wrote in his diary in 1940, reprinted on 29.9.67 in the Israeli Labour Party daily Davar:

"Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country...We shall not achieve our goal of being an independent people with the Arabs in this small country. The only solution is a Palestine, at least Western Palestine [west of the Jordan river] without Arabs...And there is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe, should be left...Only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb the millions of our own brethren. There is no other way out."

Commenting on what he had written in his diary 27 years later Weitz wrote that:

 when the UN passed a resolution to partition Palestine into two states, the War of Independence broke out to our great good fortune; and in this war a twofold miracle happened: a territorial victory and the flight of the Arabs. In the Six Days’ War one great miracle happened: a tremendous territorial victory; but most of the inhabitants of the liberated territories remained ‘stuck’ to their places which may destroy the very foundation of our state.”

Ware cannot help but be aware of the Zionist penchant for ethnic cleansing. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you want to establish a ‘Jewish’ state in a land where two-thirds of the population are Palestinian then you have to expel them.

John Ware compliments me when he says  that ‘Greenstein must be one of the most disagreeable individuals I’ve ever set eyes on’

Ware never makes any distinction between Zionists, Israelis and Jews. He is clearly unaware of the Post-Zionist Israeli Historians such as Benny Morris or Ilan Pape otherwise he would not have written such junk.

In the same article Ware makes his own views crystal clear.

So deeply into Labour’s Left has anti-Zionism morphed into antisemitism (sic) — itself a Corbyn legacy — that Jewish Labour members are avoiding meetings.

When Ware embarked on Is Labour Anti-Semitic? his mind had long been made up. Even New Labour’s David Blunkett had savaged Panorama’s The Asylum Game and Ware, for

playing into the hands of a "Powellite anti-immigration agenda" ...

He particularly singled out for criticism the BBC1 Panorama special, the Asylum Game, and its writer and presenter, John Ware, for producing a "poorly researched and overspun documentary" which repeated unchallenged the claims of "the rightwing anti-immigration pressure group, Migration Watch".

In another article for the Jewish Chronicle in November 2016 Why the I-word has closed down debate on extremism Ware defended the notorious Islamaphobe Douglas Murray, Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society and on the board of the far-Right Gatestone Institute. Gaby Hinsliffe in a Review of Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe described how

The rightwing journalist and commentator cites Enoch Powell and wants to protect white Christian Europe from ‘outsiders.’ [33]

Ware wrote in the Jewish Chronicle that

Islamophobia — however it is defined — will abate when terrorism carried out in God’s name ceases.

Ware quoted favourably Murray’s assertion that the term “Islamophobia” was ‘a meaningless idea – a crock.” Ware explained the difference between anti-Semitism and what he termed ‘(authentic) Islamophobia’.

‘The former is entirely irrational, the latter reactive.’

Which is exactly how anti-Semitism used to be defended. Ware blamed Muslim radicals

who have brought it on their fellow Muslims — by their promotion of Islam as a political ideology.

What is surprising is that if the BBC and Panorama were seriously interested in exploring racism in British political parties, and the same is equally true for the EHRC, then there is plenty of scope for a programme about the Tory Party. More than half of Conservative Party members questioned for a poll believed Islam is a threat to British life.

In 1987 Ware tried to discredit former army intelligence officer Colin Wallace on Panorama. Paul Foot, who was a brilliant investigative journalist dismissed Ware as a shoddy reporter. As the article A long history of lies against the left explained

In 1987 Ware reported for a Panorama documentary that tried to discredit former army intelligence officer Colin Wallace.

Wallace had exposed a “dirty tricks” campaign against Labour prime minister Howard Wilson.

Ware claimed Wallace was a fantasist. But as investigative journalist Paul Foot wrote, Ware’s own report was riddled with obvious errors.

Wallace’s letter in The Spectator showed how Ware was cavalier in his approach to facts and an establishment journalist:

John Ware, the former Sun reporter who now works for the BBC, no doubt owes much of his skill and flair as a writer to his days with his old newspaper.

Ware was defending the British army against allegations of  illegal activity. As in Palestine Ware went out of his way to defend the colonial authorities. Ware is the go to ‘journalist’ whenever colonial malpractice needs defending. It’s no surprise that the BBC, the old Voice of the British Empire, should solicit his services much as someone solicits a prostitute.

As Robin Ramsay of The Lobster explained Colin Wallace, who was framed for the murder of a man in Arundel (and later cleared) was subject to a concerted attempt at discrediting him. But for Paul Foot’s investigation this would have stuck.

In 2015 Ware produced a documentary Jeremy Corbyn: Labour’s Earthquake on Corbyn’s first leadership campaign. It featured claims from right wing Labour figures that a Corbyn victory would lead to left wing “thuggery and intimidation”.

The Independent described how Panorama lied when they told Corbyn’s team that their film was about the Labour leadership campaign as a whole, including all four candidates.

‘A source in Mr Corbyn’s campaign accused the BBC of conducting "a complete hatchet job" on Mr Corbyn.’

Ware produced a number of films attacking Muslims and Palestinians. One suggested that Palestinian charity Interpal funded terrorism. Others have targeted the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend).

Interpal successfully sued the Daily Mail in 2019 and was awarded £120,000 for alleging it funded terrorism. Ware also attacked Mend accusing it of antisemitism due to its members’ criticisms of Israel.

In Panorama or Propaganda Faisal Bodi documented Ware’s Islamaphobic journalism. Arzu Merali also documented the Islamaphobia of Ware in The banality and boredom of anti-Muslim witchhunts. Or beware John Ware for Middle East Eye,

In 'It's the last chance for Panorama' Ware was quoted by James Silver as being:

“A notorious pro-Israeli Islamophobe”, “desperate to discredit Muslims” with “a track record for displaying unfairness and twisting the truth”. Panorama's leading reporter, John Ware, is not quite public enemy number one for many British Muslims - that is an accolade no doubt held by Bush or Blair - but postings such as these on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee website show he comes a close second.

It says everything about the impartiality of the BBC, with its much vaunted ‘balance’, that it has continued to employ John Ware, a bigot for all seasons, whenever it has wanted to attack either the left or Muslims. We can therefore expect no better of Ware’s expose tomorrow of British Muslims and Hamas. Ware is a known liar and that is why the BBC employs him.

Ware not only writes for the anti-Palestinian Jewish Chronicle he owns part of it. In 2020 when the JC was going bankrupt Ware was part of a consortium which put in a bid to save it.

When two members of the consortium, William Shawcross and Rabbi Jonathan Hughes were contacted by the Jewish News they said that they didn’t know who was funding the bid. Clearly Ware has a lot invested, personally and politically in supporting both Zionism and Islamaphobia. As such he is about the worst person imaginable to be producing documentaries on Muslims for the BBC. It is like asking Nick Griffin of the British National Party to produce a documentary on British Jews.

The JC, according to ABC, the media industry’s auditor, had a paid sale of only 6,371 for May/June 2023. If it was any other paper the JC would have been allowed to go to the wall but it is considered too valuable a propaganda organ by the Zionists to be allowed to die a natural death.

To say that there is a conflict of interest between Ware as owner of the JC and Ware as BBC journalist is to put it mildly. Tomorrow night we can look forward to more of the same. I suggest that people get on the phones and start making complaints to the BBC now. To make a complaint go here and to phone in a complaint ring 0843 254 8737

Tony Greenstein

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26 March 2023

After two years waiting I shall be on trial for the ‘crime’ of trying to prevent Elbit System’s continuing commission of war crimes

GMB 3 Pickets Acquitted in Brighton Magistrates Court

What is the Meaning of the Massive Opposition in Israel to Netanyahu’s Judicial Reform Plans?

John Ware Accuses Me of Being Disagreeable!


 

Those of you with long memories may recall that in the early hours of Tuesday 9 March I was arrested with 5 supporters of Palestine Action whilst driving a van to Elbit Systems Shenstone factory.

The trial, in Wolverhampton Crown Court, is due to start on Monday before Judge Chambers. I shall, of course, be pleading not guilty to the charge of intending to destroy or damage property, contrary to section 3 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971. My intent was not  to cause criminal damage but to prevent war crimes being committed.

Elbit's Hermes Drone

British justice places a premium, as it has always done, on the protection of property over people, even when that property’s sole reason for existence is to kill and maim the innocent.

The trial is scheduled to last between 2 and 3 weeks and I shall try to keep people informed as to its progress from time to time though my blog will not be appearing as regularly as before.


Picket of Brighton Magistrates Court

GMB 3 Pickets Acquitted of Obstructing the Highway

Yesterday the case against the “GMB three”, who were accused of wilful obstruction of the highway collapsed. Three GMB officers were arrested in May last year during an industrial dispute with waste management company Biffa in Wealden, East Sussex. They were found not guilty at Brighton Law Courts after the Crown put forward no evidence. Gary Palmer, one of those involved, was quoted as saying:

Picket of Brighton Magistrates Court

“This was always a political case about the rights of people during a cost-of-living crisis to win enough money to look after their families.

“Our members were taking part in lawful industrial action to win a decent pay rise.

“This was an attempt by the company and the police to restrict the right to protest,”

The 3 were arrested under the 1980 Highways Act on suspicion of “obstructing the highway” in the course of asking strike-breakers not to cross their picket line. Among the scabs was “a manager driving a vehicle who GMB and the strikers believe does not have the correct paperwork to drive the vehicle he was in.” But the Police weren’t concerned with such trifles as health and safety.

Picket of Brighton Magistrates Court

GMB senior organiser for Southern England Charles Harrity said,

“This is a serious health and safety risk for GMB members on the picket line he was crossing and the general public. The licence violation was reported to the police.”

A statement by Sussex Police read,

“Pickets or assemblies in trade disputes are not immune from criminal law and police have powers at their disposal to respond to any issues or breaches of the peace, including any offences of blocking the highway.

The Highways Act was introduced by the Thatcher government in 1980—one of its first major pieces of legislation aimed at suppressing the right to strike. It has been routinely used against pickets and protests. Under “Obstruction of highways and streets”, section 137 of the Act reads,

“Penalty for wilful obstruction (1) If a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway he is guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding £50.

“(2) A constable may arrest without warrant any person whom he sees committing an offence against this section.”

The Informed Dissent website notes,

“‘Obstruction’ includes anything that prevents passing and re-passing along the highway. To be committing this offence, you don’t have to be blocking the whole width of the highway. This is because the offence is obstructing the highway itself (and not other users of the highway). The prosecution, therefore, do not have to prove that anyone was actually obstructed, but instead that you obstructed the highway itself.”

The police attack on the refuse workers’ pickets came after the police consulted with senior Tory Party politicians. In a statement following the police operation Wealden District Council said,

“following intervention by the Police today to enforce lawful access to and from the depot, which had until now been blocked by the picket line, Biffa have been able to operate two rubbish collection rounds in the southern half of the District today.”

Simon Hester, chair of Hastings and District trades union council, told Socialist Worker,

“A number of GMB full-time workers and I were blocking vans from leaving the depot. We knew Friday would be a stand-off because the council had recalled all the vans to the Amberstone depot on Thursday.

“Vehicles were in line waiting to leave the depot, and I was in front of the trucks. They sent officers to deal with pickets. When the chief inspector arrived, he said we would be arrested for blocking a highway. 

“He also made it clear that we needed to stop blocking vans because public pressure on the council to clear the streets of rubbish was starting to mount.”  See UK: Police attack refuse workers’ picket in Wealden, England, arresting union officials

Being attacked for being disagreeable by John Ware is like being accused of sexual harassment by a rapist

Readers of this blog will be shocked to hear that Islamaphobe-in-chief John Ware, has accused me of being ‘one of the most disagreeable individuals I’ve ever set eyes on.’ Leaving aside the minor point that he has never set eyes on me, you will understand why I have to consult m’learned friends about this attack on my good character and reputation.

Coming from the man who was quoted in the Guardian as having ‘a track record for displaying unfairness and twisting the truth’ this is a case of pots and kettles.

Ware's 2005 programme "A Question of Leadership" was described by a senior ex-Panorama journalist as "the most disgusting Panorama that I have ever seen. The presenter was acting like a prosecuting attorney, not a journalist." The Guardian's Madeleine Bunting called the documentary "McCarthyite".

Ware is also on record, in the Jewish Chronicle (where else?) as saying that Islamaphobia is rational and the fault of Muslims themselves.

‘Yet there are several differences between antisemitism and (authentic) Islamophobia. The former is entirely irrational, the latter reactive.

It is surely Muslim radicals who have brought it [Islamaphobia] on their fellow Muslims — by their promotion of Islam as a political ideology, and by invoking Islamophobia to close down criticism of this ideology, pouring fat on the fire of those predisposed to blind bigotry in the first place.

Islamophobia — however it is defined — will abate when terrorism carried out in God’s name ceases.

All you have to do is substitute ‘Jew’ for ‘Muslim’ and John Ware would be the first to protest. Given the extent of Israeli terrorism the possibilities are endless. Clearly anti-Semitism is rational.

It is no surprise that Panorama has employed Ware so frequently, all in the name of that famous ‘balance’ between the right and far-right.

What is the Meaning of Israel’s Jewish Protests?

It is important to understand the nature of the massive Israeli demonstrations against the judicial reforms that Netanyahu is proposing. As Gideon Levy wrote in Ha’aretz:

To most Israelis, real democracy is tantamount to “the destruction of Israel.” They’re right. True democracy will bring an end to the Jewish supremacism they call Zionism, and an end to the state they call Jewish and democratic. Therefore the threat of democracy is the existential threat, against which all Jewish Israelis unite: Should democracy be instituted for all the state’s residents, it will bring an end to the pretend democracy.

Therefore, the leaders of the protest make sure to steer clear of any true contact with democracy, lest the entire thing collapse like a house of cards. It is not due to racism or hatred of Arabs that they don’t want Palestinian flags or protesters – they are good people, after all – but only due to the understanding that raising the question of apartheid will render their struggle ludicrous.

That is why most Israeli Palestinians have avoided the demonstrations which are about Jewish democracy only. Both Netanyahu and his opponents agree on the place of Israeli Arabs and they also agree with the repression that Palestinians face.

One of the most vociferous opponents of the ‘judical coup’ is former Defence Minister and Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, who promised to bomb Gaza ‘back to the stone ages’. It was Gantz who outlawed 6 Palestinian Human Rights organisations and it was under Gantz that Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was assassinated.

In the eyes of these Jewish demonstrators the Supreme Court represents all that is good about Israel. As the Jerusalem Post reported:

Around a hundred activists from the civil society movement Darkenu argued that the High Court of Justice protected IDF soldiers from international lawfare campaigns.

The High Court is the flak jacket of IDF soldiers, it is protection for our sons and daughters that serve in the army, from attempts to petition against IDF soldiers at the International Criminal Court in The Hague," warned Darkenu CEO and former Kulanu MK Rachel Azaria. "The Override clause and Levin's moves to weaken the justice system would hurt IDF soldiers, and hurting our soldiers is a red line.

The military fears that the war crimes that the Israeli army perpetrates would be open to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court at the Hague if the judicial reforms go through.

The demonstrations in Israel reach into the innermost parts of the secret state. Thousands of reserve soldiers, some from the elite forces, have said they would refuse to serve.

Ex-Generals, heads of Shin Bet and a raft of Judges have condemned the override clause that would enable 61 votes in the Knesset to overturn any decision of the Supreme Court. Coupled with proposals that would allow the government to choose who sits on the court this has provoked panic at the heart of the Israeli establishment.

Israeli Palestinians however have been conspicuous by their absence from the protests. Why? Because the Supreme Court has an unparalleled record of approving legal discrimination against Arabs. Not one piece of anti-Arab legislation has been disallowed.

Even the Jewish Nation State Law of 2018 which officially made Israel an Apartheid State was approved by a vote of 10-1, the sole dissent coming from the sole Arab member of the court.

Eg the Central District Court reduced the time spent on Administrative Detention for two settler suspects in the Huwara pogrom from 4 to less than 2 months and from 4 to 3 months. Administrative Detention is almost never used against Jews. It is a form of internment without trial and Palestinians are routinely given 6 months detention renewable every 6 months. In the case of these settlers they were given less than 6 months in the first place. The Supreme Court has an unparalleled record for  approving Administrative Detention for Arabs.

Little wonder that the settlers’ legal representatives from Honenu said that ‘it was precedent-setting for the court to significantly shorten an administrative detention order’ They are right. Court reduces detention without charges for 2 held over assault on Huwara

Khalil Awawdeh - Hunger Striker - Imprisoned Without Trial - Supreme Court Refused to Release Him

Yet in the case of Khalil Awawdeh, who had been on hunger strike for 170 days and was at death’s door the Supreme Court refused to intervene. As a matter of course they refused to challenge the assertions of Israel’s Shin Bet secret police. As Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and former negotiator said

“The Supreme Court rubber stamps everything that the Israeli security services put forward. It is only in very rare circumstances that we actually see that they are pushing back against what the security services are saying.”

As +972 Magazine recounted:

On Wednesday afternoon, Palestinian administrative detainee Khalil Awawdeh announced that he was ending his hunger strike, which had lasted over 170 days, after the Shin Bet agreed not to renew his detention beyond October 2. Until then, he will remain at Shamir Medical Center in central Israel, where he is currently hospitalized, in order to recover….

In recent days, photos of an emaciated Awawdeh on the brink of death flooded social media, energizing the global campaign to release the prisoner. If the Shin Bet’s policy of extending the detention and agreeing to release the hunger-striking detainee as his life hangs in the balance were not grotesque enough, it is worth remembering that only on Tuesday, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected another urgent petition for Awawdeh’s release.

So on Tuesday the Supreme Court were satisfied by Shin Bet’s evidence that Awawdeh was a dangerous terrorist and the day after Shin Bet itself agreed to end the Administrative Detention making a fool of the Supreme Court. This speaks volumes about the racism of the Court.

But if the Supreme Court is racist towards Palestinians it is liberal towards Jews and that is what has earned it the ire of the Jewish Supremacist Religious Zionism and the Orthodox Jewish parties. It has repeatedly recognised non-Orthodox conversions for the purpose of being a Jew entitled to the law of return.

It has always made clear that its version of ‘who is a Jew’ is an all encompassing one, rejecting the narrow racial purity definitions of the Israeli right. It does indeed have a liberal attitude to gay Israelis and others. But when it gets an Arab in its sight it is as racist as Ben Gvir.

So what is likely to happen? In the short-term we should not be surprised if the judicial reform plans do not go ahead, at least unreformed.

Israeli Defence Minister

‘Yova Gallant has reportedly threatened to resign his post recently over concerns for the brewing crisis in the military and fears that it could be beset by mass desertions and refusals to serve’.

The Jerusalem Post asked ‘Could senior Likud MKs force compromise on judicial reform? – analysis’. It reported that possible defectors include MKs Danny Danon, Yuli Edelstein as well as MK David Bitan and Avi Dichter, a former head of Shin Bet. The Coalition’s majority of 64-56 could easily disappear as it would only take four Likud MKs to vote against or abstain to prevent the passage of the legislation.

If this were to happen then it is almost certain that the ruling coalition would break up and Religious Zionism would defect, thus causing fresh elections. So in the short term the judicial reforms could be nixed.

ButiIn the longer term the beneficiary is likely to be Religious Zionism which already has 14 seats. Israeli Jewish society is undergoing profound changes. Until 1977 the Israeli Labor Party, which has just 4 seats in the Knesset today, formed the government in partnership with the National Religious Party.

The effect of the 1967 war and the conquest of the West Bank was to cause the NRP, which no longer exists today, to move to the right as the settler movement began, with ILP encouragement, colonising the West Bank. What was a handful of settlers in 1967 is 700,000 today.

Today Israeli politics are driven by the Jewish settlers with their messianic dreams of a Third Temple, the Return of the Messiah and eternal salvation. ‘Left’ Zionism is dead. How did this happen?  I would argue that it was inherent in Zionism itself.

Labor Zionism created the Israeli state. Most of their leaders were atheists who based their claim to Palestine on the god they denied! In order to provide their movement with legitimacy, at a time when most Orthodox Jews saw Zionism as a secular heresy, they formed a faustian pact with the minority of Orthodox Jews led by Rabbi Abraham Kook who supported Zionism. Why? Because without their backing there could be no definition of a Jew that would be accepted by religious Jews. The NRP were given control over personal affairs – birth, death and marriage. They defined who was a Jew (although the definition was different for the purposes of the Law of Return).

As Jewish nationalism and religious Zionism became intertwined, both feeding off each other, so Israel has moved further and further to the settler right. Today much of the army has been taken over. Recently we saw the active  complicity of the army in the Huwara pogrom.

The settler lobby will continue to grow, politically and numerically, until it exerts a stranglehold over Israeli politics. It knows what it wants unlike secular Israeli Jews. Although the racism of secular Jews is not fundamentally different from that of religious Zionists they do not want Israel to become a halachic state, a state ruled by Jewish law.

There is a very real prospect of Israel having the attributes of a theocratic state based on the principles of racial purity and with an open dictatorship and apartheid. The rabbis, corrupt as they are, will then rely on their own interpretation of the bible to rule. Already segregated classes in universities are accepted. The present coalition is proposing to prevent chametz, forbidden food at Passover, entering hospitals.

The old wars between the two Jewish states of Judah and Israel is more than likely to be repeated. What has held Israeli Jewish society together over the past 75 years has been a common antagonism towards the Palestinians. Today religious Zionists see no need to compromise with their secular opponents. That is what we are seeing played out today.

So although it is more than possible that the judicial reforms will be watered down in the long-terms they and more will be introduced.

Tony Greenstein

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