You can’t Stand Up To Racism and then March under the Apartheid Flag of Israel

Putting Anti-racism and Anti-imperialism in Separate Compartments - the SWP's popular frontism in action

Below is a statement which has been issued by the Secretary of Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign.  We, like many Palestinian supporters have been dismayed at the stance of the Scottish STUR to allow supporters of Israel, the Confederation of Friends of Israel, to take part in Saturday’s anti-racist march in Glasgow, along with the flag of Israel.

This decision makes a mockery of the purpose of the march, to oppose racism.  There can be no doubt that Israel is a racist state, in the same way that Apartheid South Africa was a racist state.  It is a state with racism at its very core and essence.  It is literally a State of the Jews, not just its own Jewish citizens even but of all Jews throughout the world.  That is why when Netanyahu paid a visit to French Jews at the time of the killing of 4 Jews in a kosher Paris supermarket, he told them that they should ‘come home’. ‘Come home!’ Israeli minister urges French Jews amid terror wave 

Palestinian refugees, driven out in 1948 in order to ensure a Jewish demographic majority in Israel are not invited ‘home’, despite they and their families having lived there for generations.  Instead of being a state of its own citizens Israel is a state of its Jewish citizens and Jews outside the state. 

The fact that a plurality of Israeli Jews support the physical expulsion of Israel’s Arab citizens bears witness to the degree of racism in Israeli society.  The chant of ‘Death to the Arabs’ is a favourite one of Israeli right-wing demonstrations.  At this very moment Israel is in the process of trying to deport 40,000 Black African refugees for the crime of not being White or Jewish.

For Stand up to racism to allow people with Israeli flags to march as part of its demonstration is a disgrace which throws into question the purpose of SUTR.  It is no secret that SUTR is a front organisation of the SWP.  It runs and controls it behind the list of sponsors.  This is how the SWP have always operated.  Nonetheless many people have supported it who are not in the SWP, like Dianne Abbot, because it does good work in opposing Islamaphobia and the Prevent Programme. 

For SUTR to allow the flag of Apartheid Israel to be present amongst its ranks negates all of this.  Of course no one objects to someone who is a Zionist participating in the march.  But to allow the flag of Israel to be present is an entirely different matter.  The Israeli flag to Palestinians is like the Apartheid South African flag was to Black Africans and the Swastika was to Jews. 

The reason for this debacle is the politics of the SWP itself.  On the one hand they claim to be anti-Zionist, albeit in an extremely crude and unworked out way.  On the other hand they prioritise racism domestically.  They seem to have a blind spot for the fact that racism in Britain is a product of Britain’s role as an imperial power and the British Empire.  Although the SWP have no problem attributing the growth of Islamaphobia to the War on Terror and the Iraqi and Afghanistan invasions they do not see that in the Middle East the bastion of Islamaphobia and unadulterated anti-Arab racism is the State of Israel and Zionism. 

Zionists hold joint demonstration with EDL (in paramilitary uniform in background) at Ahava in Covent Garden - Jonathan Hoffman, Vice Chair Zionist Federation (right), Roberta Moore of Jewish Nazi Jewish Defence League (middle) and Harvey Garfield (left)

It is precisely the viciously anti-Islamic policies of the Israeli state, which tolerates fascist attacks by Lehava on Arab males who are  believed to be in mixed relationships, and which promotes anti-Islamic racism internationally that makes Israel so attractive to the European and American far-Right.  Some of the most vehemently Islamaphobic politicians from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Heinz Christian Strache, the Vice Chancellor Austria to our own Tommy Robinson ex EDL and Britain First admire Israel for its hostility to Muslims.

This adulation of Israel by the far Right seems to have passed the SWP by.  Pictures of fascist organisations marching and  demonstrating with the flag of Israel also seem to have passed them by.  If Israeli flags appear on Saturday in SUTR’s demonstration in Glasgow the shit as they say will hit the fan.

Tony Greenstein

 

Statement of Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Organisation

I write on behalf of the Committee of Brighton & Hove PSC (BHPSC). As an organisational affiliate to Stand Up To Racism (since October 2016), BHPSC is shocked and disappointed to learn of the decision, by the organisers of Saturday’s anti-racist march in Glasgow, to allow members of the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS), to take part in the march.

In allowing representatives of an Israel advocacy group to take part (with banners and/or Israeli flags) the organisers of the Scotland march have undermined the fundamental principle upon which the march was planned – ie opposition to racism in all its forms. Moreover, they have failed to recognise that COFIS is not a group representing Jewish people, but instead an advocacy group (composed in part of evangelical Christians) for the racist and apartheid Israeli regime. COFIS has cynically manipulated the situation to normalise the image of Israel in Scotland.

EDL demonstration in Dudley

 The issue is not fundamentally one of support for the cause of Palestinian rights, or one of race hatred against Jewish people. It is about the racist nature of the Israeli regime, and the message that is conveyed to genuine campaigners against racism, and to genuine victims of racism, by allowing the visual symbols of that regime to be displayed in an allegedly anti-racist march.

We have written to Stand Up To Racism Scotland to urge them to reconsider their decision.

As affiliates to SUTR, and active supporters of the local SUTR group, we seek an assurance from SUTR that pro-Israel groups will not be allowed to take part in any overt way (and to carry pro-Israel banners and/or Israeli flags) in the London march on Saturday March 17^th. We also seek a public statement from SUTR, distancing itself from the decision in Scotland. Of course individual members of pro-Israel groups wishing to take part in a personal capacity cannot be excluded, but pro-Israel banners and/or Israeli flags have no place in the anti-racist movement.

Ben Steele

Secretary, Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Joint Palestinian-Israeli Demonstration in Tel Aviv in February 2017 against racism

Scottish PSC statement on 

Stand Up to Racism, 13 March 2018

"Palestinians have situated their struggle, the BDS movement, as part of a wider struggle against racism. Week after week Israel’s crimes escalate, fuelled by racism and genocidal discourse so malevolent that even Israeli generals, prominent journalists and Holocaust survivors have spoken out about how Israeli society develop ever more marked features resembling 1930s European fascism and Nazism."

As an anti-racist organisation, SPSC has participated over the years in Stand Up to Racism demonstrations; last year we provided a high-profile speaker, Prof Richard Falk, who co-authored the UN ESCWA report ‘Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid’ which concluded “that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole”. A year later, the active agents of that apartheid state, defenders of its crimes against humanity are to be allowed onto the march.

We understand that racism is a mortal danger to any project for a better future in Britain, threatens to hurl us backwards into the abyss and that ALL racist organisations need to be challenged and quarantined like political and social Ebola.

According to SUTR publicity, March 17th marks the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and is part of worldwide demonstrations called to combat all racism, including state-enforced racism.

How did this come to pass that an organisation that represents and works on behalf of apartheid Israel can be welcome to participate in such an occasion, in a city proud of the internationalism and solidarity that led to the naming of Mandela Place?

It is with great regret, that we have concluded that we cannot participate in Saturday’s march since SUTR in Scotland and UK-wide has let it be known that the racist Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS), will be allowed to present itself as an anti-racist group on the march with a banner and Israeli flags.

COFIS is a group that considers extreme racist Tommy Robinson to be “a colourful character”, refers to Palestinians as 'Pallys' and 'Fakestinians' and posts about Palestinians being “euthanised”. COFIS is led by a Christian fundamentalist and is closely allied with Christians United for Israel. CUFI leader, Rev. John Hagee, asserts that Hitler was chosen by God to carry out the Nazi Holocaust to drive Jews to the only place they should live, Palestine.

Ask why the extreme right across Europe and beyond fly Israeli flags and they will provide the answer; US White supremacist Richard Spencer calls himself a ‘White Zionist’ because Israel is already their model for a state built on racist principles, ethnic cleansing and permanent inferiority for the indigenous people.

Palestinians have situated their struggle, the BDS movement, as part of a wider struggle against racism. Week after week Israel’s crimes escalate, fuelled by racism and genocidal discourse so malevolent that even Israeli generals, prominent journalists and Holocaust survivors have spoken out about how Israeli society develop ever more marked features resembling 1930s European fascism and Nazism.

EDL demonstrators in Brighton, after having failed to attack PSC stall - with Israeli flag

An earthquake is sudden but it is the result of long-term movements in the earth’s crust. The shock of what happened last Saturday is the result of several factors:.

• The support for the Palestinian BDS call has been growing year on year since 2005.
• Since 2014, the Israeli government has mobilised their support through the new ‘Ministry of Strategic Affairs’, working with organisations around the world. In Scotland, that organisation is COFIS.
• The smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and the witch-hunt being conducted against his support base is having an influence, leaving activists fearful of being targeted by the campaign that secured expulsions and suspensions from the Labour Party of dedicated anti-racist, anti-Zionist Jews. Corbyn delivered a shattering defeat to the pro-war, pro-Israel Blairites to become leader of the Labour Party. He channelled the hopes of millions and spoke to tens of thousands.
• The Old Guard of the Labour Party are fighting back and the pro-Israel Labour groups are spearheading the attack by smearing Corbyn as an ‘antisemite’.
• Unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn has allowed some of his most active supporters to be expelled and suspended following demonstrably false accusations.
• The result has been increased intimidation of anti-racist, pro-Palestine voices across the unions and the wider society.

Corbyn will find that COFIS and their ilk are insatiable and will continue to come for him, for the left, and certainly for all of us concerned with ensuring a future in Palestine / Israel that is apartheid-free and based on equality, justice and freedom.

During the long agony of the Palestinian people, most of the British left openly sided with the colonisers. Groaning in a vast gulag, periodically massacred, denied minimum human rights, an entire people were violated over decades, while the Churchills and Thatchers cheered on and armed the colonisers.

But we also must acknowledge that the British Labour Party in 1944/45, in the most progressive Labour Government ever, asked the Palestinian people as a whole to move out of Palestine to make way for Jewish colonists. Only recently has the British trade union movement and most of the left begun to atone for this shameful past.

The movers of the motion to ‘unwelcome’ COFIS were informed that the decision to accept defenders of Israeli war crimes and apartheid on to the march “came from SUTR National Officers, from Diane Abbott all the way down”. The repeated reason given by SUTR for allowing COFIS onto the march was the fear of being attacked in the media as “antisemitic” if they told these uber-racists they were unwelcome.

This is a capitulation to racism in a double sense. Scottish SUTR officers agree that COFIS is a campaigning racist organisation. (“We fully agree with you about what COFIS is”). But as the letter from Scottish Jewish anti-racists makes clear, to treat COFIS as a Jewish community organisation is itself a racist position because it asserts that all Jews are in some way associated with the Apartheid State. When clear anti-racist politics are needed, when its ‘fight or flight time’, SUTR has chosen capitulation to a racist smear against Scottish Jews and has thrown the Palestinians under the bus.

We have seen that there is far to go and we have been thrown back by this rotten decision. We are even hesitant about communicating this betrayal to our friends in Palestine for we know the pain it will cause to people who gambled on our support and have been rejected by some in Scotland.

There is the danger of the retreat in the face of weaponised false antisemitism charges turning into a rout.

We pick ourselves up from defeats just as we have celebrated victories and we dedicate ourselves to a long struggle, seeking the new allies that will inevitably come to the aid of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle.

Palestinians are being occupied, murdered and dispossessed, many living in cruelly besieged Gaza under a military that uses guidance systems made in Fife to get bombs to their targets on Palestinian universities, schools, hospitals and homes. The same flag that flies over their constant humiliation in Palestine will now fly over the demonstration in Glasgow.

We have never been in such a situation before where a hard racist organisation has learned that they will be welcome on an ANTI-racist demonstration. This is salt in open Palestinian wounds and sends a message – the message COFIS and the Israeli Embassy work tirelessly to send – that resistance is futile because Palestinians under Israel’s iron heel are completely isolated. “Just look – even Scottish anti-racists are with Israel!”

What better way to spread pain and despair, for Israel’s benefit. Those progressive Palestinians and citizens across the Middle East who argue that international solidarity can contribute to their liberation and a better world have been kicked in the teeth and those elements who thrive on despair - ISIS and Al Qaeda - can put another slide in their PowerPoint.

Those Palestinians, our comrades in the fight against the Apartheid they suffer under, have reached out to join with anti-racists around the world and have been told that the flag of their torturers is welcome in Glasgow.

But everything is now out in the open for all to see. New lines must be drawn with those who oppose all racism on one side of that line, and on the other extreme racists and their partners, racist and "anti-racist" alike.

Sir Stephen Sedley, former Court of Appeal Judge, condemns the deliberate misuse of ‘anti-Semitism’ for political purposes

The Government’s Anti-Semitism Definition is Potentially Unlawful as it Contradicts Article 10 of the ECHR

Sir Stephen Sedley

Article 10 of the ECHR states that:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

Omar Barghouti - the latest victim of Israel's attack on freedom of speech - in the UK the same type of campaign is being waged by Theresa May and New Labour's useful idiots

Even the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism would have difficulty explaining how the use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism is compatible with the banning of Israel Apartheid Week at one university, Central Lancashire and the restrictions place on several others.

Professor Richard Falk - the former UN Rappoteur in Gaza who has had 2 meetings cancelled because of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism

The IHRA ‘definition’ of ‘anti-Semitism’, which was first adopted by the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Anti-Semitism last October, is almost identical to the EUMC Working Definition on Anti-Semitism which was removed from the web site of the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency in 2013. In November 2013 the Simon Wiesenthall Centre’s Shimon Samuel’s bitterly complained about this decision to the EU's Foreign Minister, Catherine Ashton

In its place the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism has been conjured up.  It has not only been warmly 

welcomed by Theresa May, a Prime Minister who is even more reactionary than Thatcher, but by Jeremy Corbyn.  [see Manufacturing Consent On ‘Anti-Semitism’]

No one should make excuses for Corbyn’s cowardice over this.  Prior to becoming party leader he had spent 30 years supporting the Palestinians.  When he became leader he immediately backtraced as a result of having himself been accused of ‘anti-Semitism’.  Instead of fighting back and saying that yes, he opposed anti-Semitism but he also opposed the political use of anti-Semitism to attack supporters of the Palestinians and anti-Zionists, he caved in.

Hugh Tomlinson QC

The result is that Labour is now further to the right on Palestine than it was under Tony Blair and Corbyn is reduced to nodding his head when Theresa May mentions the word ‘anti-Semitism’.

On the 8^th March a legal opinion was obtained from HUGH TOMLINSON QC that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and the way it is being applied is potentially unlawful and flies in the face of Article 10(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights.  In paragraph 21 of the Opinion, Tomlinson states that:

In my view any public authority which sought to apply the IHRA Definition to decisions concerning the prohibition or sanctioning of activity which was critical of the State or Government of Israel would be acting unlawfully if it did not require such activity also to manifest or incite hatred or intolerance towards Jews. If an authority applied the IHRA Definition without such a requirement it would be in breach of Article 10 of the Convention and would, therefore, be acting unlawfully under domestic law in the United Kingdom.

On 27^th March the group Free Speech on Israel held a press conference in the House of Lords at which the former Court of Appeal Judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, spoke.  Sedley is not a household name but he was the best friend that the labour movement and civil libertarians ever had on the benches of that august and conservative body, the Court of Appeal.  A number of his more liberal judgements, especially his ruling that the fiction that agency workers were not employees was not credible, were reversed by the House of Lords. [see Dacas v Brook Street Bureau]

Sedley gave a very coherent and cogent analysis of why the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism has been used, not to tackle anti-Semitism but as a means to clamp down on free speech on Israeli. 

“The purpose of this meeting is to draw attention to a growing concern about the misuse for political purposes of the concept of anti-semitism. The misuse in question is the conflation of criticism of Israel with hostility to Jews. Its political purpose is to prohibit or inhibit discourse or action inimical to the state of Israel.

There are two distinct backstories to the catch-all meaning of antisemitism with which this meeting is immediately concerned.

One is the longstanding, and largely successful, endeavour to segregate anti-semitism from racism. It has for a good many years been part of Zionist discourse to contend that racism is one thing –  based on concepts of genetic inferiority – and anti-semitism another, based on historical and theological as well as genetic factors. This is not the place to pursue the argument, save perhaps to note that anti-semites do not as a rule worry about whether their targets are observant, orthodox or secular Jews: their spleen is directed at members of a race.

The other backstory is the Zionist claim to represent all the world’s Jews – a claim welcomed by Islamic extremists. Nothing suits Islamic fundamentalism better than the idea that all Jews are equally implicated in the excesses of Zionism. The claim depoliticises Zionism and legitimises jihadist anti-semitism.[1]

Against this already dangerous backdrop, we are now looking at the no doubt well-intentioned but naïve adoption by our executive government of a protean definition of anti-semitism which is open to manipulation and capture by the background interests I have mentioned. In this regard I would go rather further than Hugh Tomlinson does in his careful and well-reasoned Opinion. The governing proposition that antisemitism is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews” carries the clear implication that it may equally be expressed in other, unspecified, ways.

As Hugh Tomlinson says, this passage is vague and confusing; but I am not sure that the critique should stop there. It seems to me that its open-ended formulation has a thought-out purpose: to bring within the pale of antisemitism perceptions of Jews – possibly but not necessarily of all Jews – which fall short of hatred. While this may legitimately cover familiar antisemitic slanders about greed, clannishness and so forth, it is also capable of embracing perceptions of Zionism which are the subject of legitimate debate and disagreement.

That this is part of the intended reach is now becoming evident. One of the adopted examples is “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour.” This passage bristles with controversial assumptions. Is there a single entity capable of being characterised as “the Jewish people”? Am I obliged to regard myself as bound by ethnicity to people like Benjamin Netanyahu? Then, assuming that there is such an ethnic entity, from where does it derive a collective right to self-determination capable of defeating the right to self-determination of other peoples, above all the Palestinian people? There have been many Jews – my father was one – who long before 1947 opposed the Zionist project on the ground that Jewish exceptionalism was exactly what antisemitism needed.

Lastly, accepting as one must that the state of Israel, whatever has been argued in the past about its right to exist, is a geopolitical ‘fact on the ground’, why are people, including many Jews, not entitled, without being branded anti-Semitic, to regard it in its present form as both a colonialist and an apartheid state? The  demand that criticism, to be legitimate, must be ‘similar to that levelled against any other country’ assumes that there are other countries which behave like Israel. There may well be, but how can this properly be a precondition of any criticism?

I will not travel over the consequential legal ground that Hugh Tomlinson so ably traverses. It is sufficient to emphasise these points:

1.                  The adoption by government of the IHRA’s “working definition” does not clothe it with any legal force. At the same time, it is not neutral: it may well influence policy both domestically and internationally.

2.                  No policy, however, can be adopted or used in defiance of the law. The Convention right of free expression, now part of our domestic law by virtue of the Human Rights Act, places both negative and positive obligations on the state which may be put at risk if the IHRA definition is unthinkingly followed. And s. 43 of the 1986 Education Act, while passed to deal with very different kinds of controversy, vouchsafes an individual right of free expression in all higher education institutions which cannot be cut back by governmental policies.

What is needed now is a principled retreat on the part of government from a stance which it has naively adopted in disregard of the sane advice given to it by the Home Affairs Select Committee.”

[1]  For my part I am critical of the ECtHR’s judgment in CICAD v Switzerland, because it failed to recognise that the offending article, with its assertion that “when Israel is exposed … it is Judaism that is exposed at the same time” was a classic attempt to taint all Jews with Israel’s violations of human rights. Its author in my view had been rightly accused of antisemitism.

Gilad Atzmon Comes Out - Now an open anti-Semite

I am not a Jew anymore.  I despise the Jew in me. I absolutely detest the Jew in you.

This blog was set up in 2007 to combat the pernicious influence of Gilad Atzmon, who operated on the fringes of the Palestine solidarity campaign.  To me and others anti-Zionist Jews it was clear that Atzmon was, without doubt, anti-Semitic.  Unfortunately this wasn’t at all clear to many others in the movement.

The Socialist Workers Party in particular couldn’t see the light and for a long time defended Atzmon.   See for example Time to say goodbye Why does the SWP not break its links withholocaust-denier Gilad Atzmon? 

The anti-Semitic Jazzman

What was decisive in breaking the influence of Atzmon over many in the Palestine solidarity movement was the joint call by Ali Abunimah, Omar Barghouti, Joseph Massad and other Palestinians for the movement to dissociate itself from Atzmon.  Granting NoQuarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of GiladAtzmon

I had many long arguments with many people who just didn’t seem to get it.  Not just common and garden fools like Roy Ratcliffe of Exeter PSC, who composed lengthy treaties proving that the Eart was flat and Atzmon was an anti-racist  but people who had a much higher intellectual calibre.

For example Richard Falk, the distinguished professor and UN representative in Gaza, provided a  blurb for Atzmon’s book The Wandering Who.  In an email to me of 18 December 2011 Richard wrote ‘I appreciate some of the points and arguments that are made. Nevertheless, having re-read Atzmon's book and his responses to comparable lines of criticism I am not prepared to alter, much less renounce, my endorsement…. Atzmon may have pushed his basic argument too far, but it seems to me a valid inquiry that can lead to debate and discussion, but is not appropriate to denounce, and to go further, and denounce those who endorsed the reading of the book.’  

I found it frustrating that people like Richard Falk could not see what was in front of their eyes, but he was not alone.  The primary reason for the difficulty in persuading people that Atzmon was an anti-Semite was because of the determined efforts of the Zionist movement to equate all support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism as anti-Semitic.  It had indeed blurred the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, such that people could no longer tell the difference between the two.

As I wrote at the height of the controversy in Seamy Side of Solidarity 'Like the boy who cried wolf, the charge of "anti-semitism" has been made so often against critics of Zionism and the Israeli state that people now have difficulty recognising the genuine article.'

Falk had written that Atzmon’s book was "A transformative story told with unflinching integrity that all (especially Jews) who care about real peace, as well as their own identity, should not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely."

Ramzy Baroud, Editor of the Palestine Chronicle wrote in the blurb of Atzmon's book, The Wandering Who that “Gilad Atzmon decided to open Pandora’s Box, and ignite a debate that has been frustratingly dormant for too long. His experiences are most authentic, views are hard-hitting, and, at times, provocative. It must be read and discussed.”  Ramzy Baroud is not stupid yet he too did not get it.

Professor John J. Mearsheimer of The Israel Lobby saw The Wandering Who as ‘Essential to an understanding of Jewish identity politics and the role they play on the world stage.’

The idiotic Dr. Samir Abed-Rabbo splutterd that Atzmon’s book was "A pioneering work that deserves to be read and Gilad Atzmon is brave to write this book!"

Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair’s brain dead sister-in-law, wrote that “It is more than an academic exercise. It is a revelation!” Booth is clearly easily satisfied!

Eric Walberg of Al Aharam Weekly believed that ‘'In his inimitable deadpan style, Atzmon identifies the abscess in the Jewish wisdom tooth – exilic tribalism – and pulls it out. Ouch!” 

Jeff Blankfort an anti-Semite from the USA who used to be on the left, described Atzmon’s  book as "A brilliant analysis that makes what appear to be contradictions in Jewish identity based political behavior not only comprehensible but predictable."

One suspects Blankfort would have difficulty predicting a restaurant menu.

And Professor James Petras, who believes that the Israeli tail wages the American dog,  wittered on about how "Atzmon has the courage - so profoundly lacking among Western intellectuals"

Karl Sabbagh wrote that ‘Atzmon’s insight into the organism created by the Zionist movement is explosive.’  Quite how a vacuum can be explosive is best left to better minds than Sabbagh.

The unknown and best forgotten academic Dr. Makram Khoury-Machool wrote that  “Having known Gilad for 25 years, I read the book in English, I heard it in Hebrew and reflected on it in Arabic. Gilad Atzmon is astonishingly courageous” Makram Khoury-Machool has the ability to speak and read in 3 languages yet he is incapable of thinking in even one of them.

To the Israeli lecturer Oren Ben Dor, for whom the Holocaust is god's just revenge on the Jews, preordained in the thicket of his academic prose, Atzmon’s book was ‘A fascinating achievement”.

To Kim Petersen of the anti-Semitic Dissident Voice “Gilad Atzmon is someone who encompasses what it means to be an intellectual.” Thus demonstrating above all that she is no intellectual.

For Dr. Kevin Barrett “Gilad Atzmon is the Moses of our time” in other words another false Messiah.

What these and other eulogies to the Atzmon's ego demonstrate is not merely the stupidity of so many academics, whose use of long words and complicated phrases is designed to mask their own superficiality, but how Atzmon managed to pull the wool over peoples’ eyes.

It was that which I found most frustrating.

David Taube of Harry's Place and Mike Ezra excuse Atzmon's anti-SemitismMany Zionists too were fascinated by Atzmon because he was repeating many of their tropes, not least that Zionism and Judaism were inextricably linked.   People like Mikey Ezra and David Taube of Harry’s Place were fascinated.  Taube described a jaunt that he and Mikey Ezra had gone on with Atzmon:

'Last week, Mikey invited me for a drink with Gilad Atzmon.  Mikey’s thoughts on Gilad and his worldview follow, below. 

‘Gilad was, I have to say, utterly charming and a delightful drinking companion....
Is Gilad Atzmon a racist? Not in the narrow sense of being preoccupied by genetic differences between people certainly. He is rather, I think, a ‘cultural essentialist’: if such a term exists.'  

You get that?  A cultural essentialist, not a racist!

But with his latest tweet, there can be no doubt about Atzmon’s anti-Semitism.

‘1.        I am not a Jew anymore.  2.  I indeed despise the Jew in me (whatever is left).  3.  I absolutely detest the Jew in you.’

Arthur Topham - holocaust denier for whom Atzmon gave 'expert' evidence - KKK leader David Duke who wanted to give evidence was refused entry  into Canada

Last November Atzmon gave expert witness testimony (!) on behalf of Arthur Topham, an anti-Semite and holocaust denier, to a Canadian court.   Despite this Topham was convicted of racial hatred and is awaiting sentence.  

I have previously posted a compendium of Atzmon’s anti-Semitic sayings.  It can be found at:  A Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazzman.  According to Atzmon, I am a Zionist because he too, like the Zionists, argues that any Jew who is politically active as a Jew must be a Zionist.

It is somewhat ironic that Atzmon is a fierce opponent of BDS.  For him it is a Jewish enterprise.  Atzmon makes a nasty, vicious attack on Omar Barghouti, who is facing the possibility of Israeli reprisals and deportation, despite being a long-standing Israeli resident.  In Omar Accomplished His Job, Omar Is Free To Go Atzmon says that 

'BDS was an Israeli controlled opposition maneuver.  For Israel, BDS presented the ideal front on which to fight. Instead of battling for a Palestinian Right Of Return, that is ethically solid and backed by UN resolutions, the solidarity movement was reduced to an internal Jewish debate over the “Right to BDS.”    

I just hope that Ramzy Baroud, Karl Sabbagh and co. have the honesty to admit that they made a mistake.

Veolia – The Growing Success of Boycott

Veolia suffering "expensive" damage due to Palestine campaigners’ publicity says financial expert

Adri Nieuwhof

Electronic Intifada -  02/19/2013

It’s always enjoyable to read good news about the Boycott!

Protest in London against Veolia’s role in the Israeli occupation
(Inminds.com)

 Tony Greenstein

For years, the French transnational Veolia has tried to downplay the effect of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns which aim to hold the company to account for its role in the Israeli occupation.

But now a top Norwegian financial advisor has boldly acknowledged the impact of the BDS movement.

Activists in many countries have pressurized local authorities, public institutions, socially responsible investors, and pension funds to do no business with Veolia as long as it is complicit in Israel’s violations of international law.

In a recent presentation [PDF], Hege Sjo said that “disasters are expensive” for businesses, mentioning Veolia as an example of a company that has experienced “reputational damage as a result of publicity and pending litigation” due to “operations in troubled regions. Involvement in infrastructure project in the occupied territories.”

(St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee members and civil rights activist Percy Green at St. Louis City Hall, protesting Veolia’s involvement in apartheid and segregation in Palestine. Photo: St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee)

Sjo spoke at a 8 February seminar, organized by Norsif, a Norwegian association which promotes responsible and sustainable investment practices in the Norwegian financial industry.

Sjo underpinned her argument by mentioning Veolia’s alleged loss of a €3.5 billion ($4.6 billion) Swedish metro contracts in January 2009.
Senior financial adviser

It is remarkable that the observation was made by a financial expert who operates in the higher circles of the investment world.

Sjo is a senior adviser to the principle manager of the largest pension fund in the the UK, Hermes Investment Management. She is also director of several publicly listed Norwegian companies. Sjo’s warning is a clear sign to companies that profiting from Israel’s occupation carries serious reputational and financial risks.

Financial watchdog BankTrack arrived at a similar conclusion in 2010 when it classified investments in Veolia as “dodgy” because the company provides public transport to the Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. BankTrack is a global network which monitors the effect of operations of commercial banks, investors, insurance companies, pension funds on people and the planet.

Veolia’s role in violations of Palestinian rights was also addressed in a report [PDF] by the recent UN fact finding mission on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The mission clearly stated that private firms have enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements.

The report lists “the provision of transport and other services to support the maintenance of settlements” as a business activity that raises particular concerns about abuses of human rights.

UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk was more explicit in his report to the UN General Assembly. He described Veolia’s role in the Jerusalem light rail project which is designed to connect West Jerusalem with Israel’s illegal settlements. Falk recommends that civil society “vigorously pursue initiatives to boycott, divest and sanction” the companies such as Veolia, until they bring their policies and practices into line with international laws and standards.

The BDS movement should continue to hold Veolia to account by increasing the pressure on pension funds, socially responsible investors and other financial institutions to exclude or divest from the company.