Israel Bans Palestinian Human Rights Groups Yet It Still Calls Itself a Democracy
Interview with Tony
Greenstein about Labour's Witch Hunt
Two years
ago, when the Zionists were doing their best to close down free speech in Brighton
and elsewhere, we held a series of cultural and political events at Brighton’s
Rialto Theatre. The Zionists had been intimidating and harassing venues in Brighton
to cancel meetings with people like Chris Williamson on the grounds that they
were ‘anti-Semitic’. The Brighthelm
Centre had received a letter from local Zionist MP Peter Kyle and immediately
obeyed his ‘advice’. The local Quakers Friends Meeting House also gave in as
did the Holiday Inn.
The lies that Fiona Sharpe - the racist at the heart of Brighton & Hove Council's 'anti-racist' strategy tells - free speech at the Rialto had no negative community impact unless Fiona is implying Jews don't like freedom of speech!
The Rialto
Theatre was run by someone who had had experience supporting the Kent Miners
over 30 years previously and was made of sterner stuff. The bombardment of
tweets, social media abuse etc. from Zionists like Fiona Sharpe
had no effect so that this year there was nothing. The Zionists gave up because they had met
resistance. If only the quaking Quakers had
stuck to their principles and not retreated at the first sign of grapeshot then
all would have been well. Free Speech is worth preserving and fighting for but
these religious souls took fright and emboldened the racists and imperialists.
So when the
book launch for Bad News for Labour
was cancelled at the last minute by Waterstones Bookshop, because the head
office was also put under pressure (the local store staff wanted to continue
with the event), we put it on literally at the last minute. Instead of 30
people attending over 100 did, including Ken Loach.
Two
years ago we could only put on a 2 day event because we had only booked the
venue late in the day. This year we had plenty of time to prepare and we booked
it from September 26 to 29, for
3½ days. We put on a whole series of political and cultural events called Resist
at the Rialto. You can see them all here.
There were 11 events in all:
The events were
Why alternative media is
important to the left chaired by Greg
Hadfield, who was expelled
for putting on the 3 day events. It’s a sad state of affairs in the Labour
Party when you can be expelled for putting on 3 days of socialist politics and
culture. Former Telegraph political editor Peter Oborne, Asa Winstanley from
Electronic Intifada and the irrepressible Lowkey participated.
Municipal Socialism - the
left in local government with Roger Silverman, Carol Buxton and Greg
Hadfield chaired by Chris Williamson.
The Great NHS Heist chaired by Esther Giles, Treasurer of the Socialist
Health Association with Dr Bob Gill, the producer of the Great NHS Heist.
Wikileaks and the torture of
Julian Assange chaired by Dr Deepa Driver of the Labour Campaign
for Free Speech and Chair of Camden Momentum with Matt Kennard , Lauri Love and
Bjartmar Alexandersson
Starmer surrounded by the butcher's apron
Purge III: McCarthyism and
Starmer’s Labour Party chaired by Esther Giles with Dr Neil Todd, Senior
Research Fellow of the University of South Wales
Socialists, republicanism
and PR chaired by Larry Hyett with Steve Freeman, Tina
Werkmann and Dr Kevin Bean
Labour, the antisemitism
crisis and the destroying of an MP is the title of a book by Lee Garratt, a man
who has had a very varied life including being a left-wing policeman in the
Metropolitan Police! He is now a teacher. It was chaired by Chris Williamson.
Can Modern Monetary Theory
solve the crisis of capitalism? chaired by Esther Giles with Professor Bill
Mitchell, Carlos García Hernández and Michael Roberts, a former City economist.
This is how Zionist racists like Fiona Sharpe operate - they use the Jewish community like pawns in their attempt to close down free speech
The Palestinian
resistance – and the need for international solidarity chaired by Anne Mitchell, Secretary of BHPSC,
with Asa Winstanley, Huda Ammori of Palestine Action, Natalie Strecker a former
human rights activist in Hebron, and Issa Amro, a
Hebron-based human rights defender recognised by the UN as an anti-occupation
and anti-apartheid activist. This was one of my favourite sessions.
Fiona Sharpe of Sussex Friends of Israel reveals what her real agenda is - protecting Apartheid
The Weaponisation of Racism was chaired by Tina Werkmann with Jackie Walker and
Tony Greenstein.
The threat to
academic freedom chaired
by Dr Deepa Driver of Reading University with Dr Kevin Bean, lecturer
in Irish politics at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool
and Mike Cushman, Chair of Free Speech on Israel and a member of BRICUP’s
Organising Committee.
The final event was Robb Johnson and friends,
including Brighton’s own Professor Dave Hill.
But the event which crowned the 3 days and was a pure piece of political
theatre was the Not
the Forde Inquiry.
You will remember when Labour’s
Leaked Report was issued detailing the racist and misogynist abuse, by
senior Labour Party staff like John Stolliday of Corbyn supporters. Senior employees
of the Labour Party did their best to sabotage the 2017 election campaign. They
openly supported the Tories. This Report had been compiled at the behest of
Jennie Formby for submission to the EHRC.
When Starmer came in the Report, all 831
pages, was leaked. Starmer’s anger was not at the revelations of the racist
abuse of Dianne Abbot or the treachery and deception of Stolliday, Emily Oldknow
(both of whom have gone to UNISON) or Sam Matthews. His anger was directed at
who leaked the Report. Starmer was forced to set up an Inquiry under Martin
Forde QC. It was packed with right-wing Labour supporters but nonetheless
Starmer has refused to release the Report using ‘confidentiality’ and the
ongoing work of the Information Commissioner as his excuse. Because it is
unlikely that the Forde Report will ever be issued, Resist at the Rialto
decided to put on this production.
It was compared by Dorothy Walker, the late
mother of Jackie Walker who had kindly agreed to come back to life to help us
ward off the latest bout of McCarthyism, something which forced her to flee to
London from the United States with Jackie in the 1950s.
Sir Norman Licky QC aka Paddy O'Keefe
The Cross-examiners in chief were Ken Loach
and Graham Bash of Labour Briefing/LRC.
The Prosecutor for the Labour Party was Sir
Norman Licky QC otherwise known as Paddy Keefe, an expelled member of the Brighton
Labour Party and a professional actor. Witnesses were:
Becky Massey, Esther Giles and Roger Silverman
Esther Giles,
suspended secretary of Bristol North-West CLP,
Becky Massey,
expelled member of Hove CLP,
Roger Silverman,
expelled member of West Ham CLP, son of the late Julian Silverman, a Jewish MP responsible
more than anyone else for the ending of capital punishment in Great Britain
Leah Levane, Chris Williamson and Greg Hadfield
Leah Levane,
co-chair of Jewish Voices for Labour and a former Hastings Councillor, who was
expelled at the Labour Party Conference itself for attending a rally against
the witchhunt!
Chris Williamson,
the only socialist Labour MP, who was disgracefully suspended by Jennie Formby under
Jeremy Corbyn.
Greg Hadfield,
newly expelled member of Brighton Pavilion Labour Party had been suspended 3
times. When he was elected Secretary of the Brighton and Hove District Labour
Party by a massive majority at the largest ever meeting of over 600 people, he
was removed by the simple device of suspending him 2 days later.
I hope you are able to watch all these events
but especially the Not the Forde Report.
Tony Greenstein & Stan Heller of The Struggle
Interview of Tony Greenstein by Stan Heller
On October 5th I was interviewed by
Stan Heller of the United States’s Struggle Video Media about the Labour Party witchhunt
and you can watch it here
6 Palestine Human Rights Groups Declared ‘Terrorist’ Groups by Israel
Children as young as 12 (as long as they are
not Jewish of course) are subject to arrest in the early hours of the
morning. They are blindfolded, beaten,
often sexually
abused, not allowed to see their parents or a lawyer and forced to sign
confessions in a language, Hebrew, that they don’t even understand.
Their plight has been taken up by Defend Children International – Palestine.
A few weeks ago their offices were raided
in Ramallah, their records, computers and other information was seized. Today
they and five other organisations have been declared terrorist organisations
and banned.
These are the actions of an authoritarian
state, not a democracy as Israel likes to claim to be. The new Israeli government
was supposed to be an alternative to the bad old Benjamin Netanyahu. It
contains the so-called left Zionists of the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz and
even includes, on the outside the conservative Arab Party Ram.
Yesterday the Defence Minister and former
Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, a veteran war criminal, formally banned the
organisations without a squeak out of the above named parties, thus proving what
I have always said. That there is no
fundamental difference between the different shades of Zionism.
The
groups are
Al-Haq, a human rights group founded in 1979, Addameer, Defence for Children
International – Palestine, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the
Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work
Committees.
The
pretext is that they are linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
in other words guilt by association. The PFLP is a legitimate left-wing Palestinian
group and even if there were a grain of truth in the allegations it would be no
justification for the banning.
Israel’s
B’Tselem organisation, which itself declared
in January that Israel was an Apartheid and Jewish Supremacist state, issued
the following statement:
“Israel’s
‘change’ government’s designation, earlier today, of Palestinian human rights
organizations as ‘terror organizations’ is not merely declarative. It is an act
characteristic of totalitarian regimes, with the clear purpose of shutting down
these organizations,” B’Tselem said in a statement, accusing Israel’s new
government of trying to perpetuate a “violent apartheid regime.”
Even
South Africa at the height of Apartheid did not ban human rights organisations.
The decision of the Naftali Bennett government gives the lie to the idea that
the Israeli state is at all interested in peace. Repression is the only game
they understand. It is even more of a reason to support the Boycott Divestment
and Sanctions movement.
Human
Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who work closely with many of these
groups, issued
the following joint statement:
“This
appalling and unjust decision is an attack by the Israeli government on the
international human rights movement. For decades, Israeli authorities have
systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring and punish those who
criticize its repressive rule over Palestinians. While staff members of our
organizations have faced deportation and travel bans, Palestinian human rights
defenders have always borne the brunt of the repression. This decision is an
alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most
prominent civil society organizations. The decades-long failure of the
international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and
impose meaningful consequences for them has emboldened Israeli authorities to
act in this brazen manner.
How the
international community responds will be a true test of its resolve to protect
human rights defenders. We are proud to work with our Palestinian partners and
have been doing so for decades. They represent the best of global civil
society. We stand with them in challenging this outrageous decision.”
