Why I Support George
Galloway as the best placed Left Candidate to Defeat Starmer Labour on July 1st
This
is what Starmer Supports When He Says
he is a Zionist ‘Without Qualification’
Today the Labour Campaign for Free Speech Steering Committee
unanimously issued the following statement:
The
statement from a ‘senior Labour source’ during the Batley & Spen
by-election that Labour was “haemorrhaging” Muslims voters, because of “what
Keir has been doing on antisemitism” implies that Muslims are antisemitic –
when in fact many voters oppose Starmer’s Labour, because he is bowing to the
Israeli government and refuses to support the Palestinian struggle. That is not
antisemitism, it is anti-Zionism.
That this statement was issued has not been
denied by Angela Rayner and the suspicion must be that it emanates from
Starmer’s office if not Starmer himself. In the forthcoming Batley & Spen
by-election, we refuse to support the Labour candidate, an incredible
apolitical and nondescript candidate who was chosen by Keir Starmer directly.
There
is no doubt that Starmer and his apparatchiks have been suspending and
expelling people for supporting the Boycott of Israel and anything that is seen
as critical of Israel. Calling Israel a racist state is guaranteed to get you
expelled even though it’s true.
In
the Daily Mail of 19th June, Dan Hodges quoted
a ‘senior Labour source’ as saying that:
'We're haemorrhaging votes among Muslim voters, and the reason for that
is what Keir has been doing on antisemitism. Nobody really wants to talk about
it, but that's the main factor. He challenged Corbyn on it, and there's been a
backlash among certain sections of the community.'
The implication is clear. Muslims are anti-Semites who
resent Starmer’s promise to ‘root out anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party.
Except of course that Starmer has done no such thing. There is no anti-Semitism
to root out. He has been ‘rooting out’
supporters of Palestine and anti-Zionists and he has been doing so at the
behest of the Israeli state and its local pawns, the Board of Deputies.
If Starmer was seriously concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’
in the Labour Party he wouldn’t have suspended and expelled dozens of Jewish members
of the Party or in my case welcomed
my expulsion (which was the first time that this apology for a mannequin came
to my attention!). In an interview
with the Times of Israel Starmer gave
away his real motives, namely that he is a ‘Zionist
without qualification’. In other
words a racist without qualification.
The reasons are clear as to why Labour is going to
lose another Red Wall seat. To all intents and purposes, the Labour Right acts like
it is on a suicide mission. They lost working class Scottish voters under Ed
Miliband, they forfeited much of the support of the Northern working class at
the last election and now Starmer is determined to say goodbye to the votes of Britain’s
3.3 million Muslims.
At first glance it might seem as if Starmer is more
concerned with the 300,000 Jews in Britain than a Muslim population over 10
times as big. However that would be a misreading. The Labour Right’s concern is
not with the Jewish vote, not least because for 60 years (with the temporary exception
of 1997 and 2001) the Jewish community has voted heavily for the Tories.
The real reason is that New Labour is wedded to
slavishly following US foreign policy which is to support Israel as imperialism’s
armed watchdog in the Middle East. Batley & Spen is the price they are
going to pay for Starmer’s craven submission to imperialism.
police beat man
In addition, at the very beginning of his
misleadership, Starmer tore
up Labour’s policy to support Kashmiri independence. He preferred to cuddle
up to Hindu racists who, like the Zionists, wish to colonise Kashmir and who
have put it
under martial law for the past two years. Starmer was more interested in supporting
the communalist government of Narendra Modi of the BJP than supporting self-determination
for the Kashmiris.
In
the forthcoming Batley & Spen by-election, we are taking a leaf out of the Jewish
Labour Movement’s book. The JLM refused to support Labour candidates who were
seen to be pro-Jeremy Corbyn. They were supported in that by the Labour Right
so they can’t complain now the boot is on the other foot.
Angela
Rayner did not deny that the statement emanaged from the Labour Party. Indeed
she all but admitted
that the comments were genuine when she said that
“I will be
ensuring that the party investigates this reported comment in line with our
party’s rules and processes. Anybody who has made these comments should and
will be dealt with in line with our independent disciplinary procedures, which
I have no role in as deputy leader.””
However
there is no need for an investigation. Dan Hodges is on good terms with Starmer
and the Labour leadership. A ‘senior
Labour source’ is code for either Keir Starmer himself or his advisers.
Perhaps the hapless Rayner could have a quiet word with Sir Keir?
As
the Guardian reported
Labour’s candidate Kim Leadbeater,
received
a hostile reception from voters who are unhappy with the party’s stance on
foreign policy issues such as Palestine and Kashmir, amid a perception that the
party takes some forms of racism more seriously than others.
The accusation “you’ve taken our
votes for granted” was repeatedly levelled at Leadbeater and Lisa Nandy,
the shadow foreign secretary and Wigan MP, who joined her on the campaign
trail.
Perhaps the final straw was Starmer pulling out of a
virtual Iftar event on the last night of Ramadan. The Jewish Chronicle had
engaged in its usual Islamaphobic witchhunting. It reported
that the CEO of the Muslim group which had organised the event, Omar Salha,
supported the prisoner support group CAGE. Even worse, he had supported a boycott
of Israeli dates!
In Starmer and the Board of Deputies view, boycotting Israeli
Apartheid is anti-Semitic. Presumably boycotting the produce of South African
Apartheid was also racist?He might be a
QC but Starmer is an intellectual lightweight.
Starmer and the Labour Right simply expected Muslims
to take these insults on the chin and still
support the Labour Party at the ballot box. They are in for a rude shock.
When a couple of idiots shouted anti-Semitic slogans,
allegedly, in North London, Starmer rushed
to condemn it in a joint statement with Boris Johnson and yet he had
nothing to say about the hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza,
including 67 children, the pogroms against Palestinians in Israel itself and
the massive
Israeli Police violence in Jerusalem against worshippers.To say nothing of the ethnic cleansing of
Sheikh Jarrar and East Jerusalem.
As a group of prominent Palestinians in the Labour
Party wrote:
“The leader is practically treating the whole
community as outcasts and is refusing to meet or even respond. We cannot
separate this from the alarming shift in Labour’s approach to issues of race,
or the shift in Labour’s position on Palestine.
“The message is loud and clear: I don’t care about you
or your issues.”
Labour has elected not only a liar but an open racist
in StarmerA man who hid
the funders of his leadership election campaign until it was over. Starmer
received hundreds of thousands of pounds from rich businessmen including £50,000
from Trevor Chinn, a prominent Zionist. Labour simply doesn’t deserve to be supported
as and until Starmer and Rayner are removed from the leadership and the posts are
occupied by socialists.
I support George Galloway but not without criticisms.
George has without doubt capitulated to a backward political consciousness
amongst the white working class with his attack on ‘woke’ politics. His opposition
to free movement of labour and his support for Brexit is a capitulation to British
chauvinism.In particular his previous support
for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.
Nonetheless George has been a staunch opponent of the
Iraq War, US imperialism in the Middle East and above all a supporter of the Palestinians.
Weighing all this in the balance I have no doubt that George Galloway, who let
it not be forgot was expelled by Tony Blair, would make a good MP in comparison
with the appalling Leadbetter. I also share his detestation of identity
politics which alienate working class voters.
I have no hesitation in supporting George Galloway and
I hope anyone living in Batley & Spen reading this does likewise.
The Zionist 'Left' Joins Hands with the pro-Transfer Far-Right in Israel's New Government
The following article first appeared in Weekly Worker 10 June 2021 as House Built on Sand
On Sunday, assuming the coalition of eight parties
holds together and there are no defections, the hardline, former settler
leader, Naftali Bennett, will be sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Israel. However
if anyone believes that this coalition will put an end to the run of four
General Elections in two years, then they are likely to be disappointed. It
would be a brave person who gave this government even a year before it breaks
up.
Netanyahu doing his best to play the Arab card with the inclusion of the conservative Ra'am Party in the new coalition
Netanyahu, the original Donald Trump, whose incitement
is widely believed to have led to the assassination of Israeli Labor Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin, is not going quietly. With his imminent departure from
office, Netanyahu can hear the sound of prison doors clanging behind him.
Currently he is facing
3 charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
On June 3 Netanyahu tweeted
that ‘Bennett sold
the Negev to RAAM! All right-wing Knesset members must oppose this dangerous
left-wing government.’ RAAM is a reference to the one Arab party in the
coalition, the United Arab List, a conservative Islamist party headed by
Mansour Abbas, which broke away from the left wing and nationalist Joint List
dominated by Hadash, the Israeli Communist Party.
Speaking to the right-wing Channel 20 Netanyahu calledBennett “a habitual liar” and that the emergent
government was “more dangerous than the
[2005 Gaza] Disengagement and Oslo [Accords].” For Netanyahu to call anyone
‘a liar’ is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Mansour Abbas and Netanyahu with whom he had previously been negotiating
Netanyahu accused Bennett of engaging
in a “liquidation sale” of the
country and claimed the incoming government was in league with the so-called
“deep state.” All the paranoid racism and conspiracy theories of Trump rolled
into one by the master thief himself.
When his back is against the wall then Netanyahu has
no hesitation in playing the ‘Arab card’ as he did six years ago when on his
Facebook page he warned, in
a video
that
“The
right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling
stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.”
None of it was true and in fact the turnout by Jews
was higher than that by Arabs but it did the trick. Right-wing voters did come
out in droves and they voted for Likud.
Bennett has responded by asserting that the government
he hopes to lead “is
10 degrees to the right of the current one” whilst
appealing to Netanyahu to “let go”
that “People are allowed to vote for a
government even if you do not lead it.” Netanyahu, is Israel’s longest
serving Prime Minister at more than 15 years.
Israel is a Jewish Supremacist state and it is natural
for political leaders to argue as to who is the most anti-Arab. In is this is
what right-wing means. All parties, including the Israeli Labour Party do
it.Isaac Herzog, the new President of
Israel, when leader of the ILP was a past master at dog whistling. He told
Labour MKs that
“A false
impression exists that we take the needs of Palestinians into account before
the needs of the State of Israel,”
He also told Labor activists that
“his faction’s
MKs needed to correct an impression that they are always “Arab lovers…. God
forbid, and without giving the impression – from what I have heard after
meeting with the Israel public – that we always like Arabs.”
Of course this was true. The Israeli Labour Party was
the original party of anti-Arab incitement and the Nakba, the expulsion of ¾
million Palestinians in 1947/8. The ILP was the party that instituted military
rule over Israeli Palestinians until 1966.
But what is the truth? Is Bennett about to lead the
Tel Aviv Soviet? Is he preparing to storm Israel’s equivalent of the Winter
Palace?
The new Israeli government, if it comes to power, is
no less right-wing than Netanyahu’s putative coalition government with the
exception of the neo-Nazi Jewish Power led by Itamar ben
Gvir, a disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who believed in the expulsion of all
Palestinians from Israel and the Occupied Territories.
What has infuriated Netanyahu and the Israeli Right is
that, for the first time in its history, an Arab party is a formal part of a
government coalition, albeit that it won’t be taking ministerial posts. The
irony is that Netanyahu also held talks with Mansour Abbas,
in order to persuade him to support his coalition whilst remaining outside the
government. This however was vetoed by Bezalel Smotrich,
leader of the Religious Zionism bloc which includes Jewish Power. They refused
to have ‘terrorists’ (for which read Arabs) associated with the government.
Bezalel Smotrich - leader of Jewish Zionism
Netanyahu and Likud have therefore focussed on
‘persuading’ individual MKs from Yamina, the party that Bennett heads, to
refuse to support the new government. For Netanyahu, ‘persuasion’ should be
interpreted in the same sense as the mafia would use the term when convincing
their clients to had over ‘protection money’.
Bennett has already been depicted
in a kaffiyeh and with a swastika and his picture has been burned. Social media
is full of death threats against him and his family. He is being called a
traitor and a court Jew. At least 4 members of Yamina have been provided with
extra security by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.
Protests outside Yamina MK Orbach
Idit Silman MK can’t even send her son to school
because of the threats. Six leading religious-Zionist rabbis, led by Chaim
Druckmanissued
a letter on Saturday calling on the public to do everything in their power to
prevent the new government taking power as the religious right and the
Ultra-Orthodox parties – Shas and United Torah Judaism - try to come to terms
with the fact that they will not be in government for the first time in a
generation.
Yitzhak Rabin is widely believed to have been assassinated as a result of his decision to rely on the support of an Arab Party
‘Everything
in their power’ should be interpreted as meaning just that. There is
no doubt that Yigal Amir, Rabin’s assassin had received authorisation from
unnamed rabbis, as well as the declaration
that he was a din rodef, a traitor.
Silman complained that a car with a loudspeaker on the roof
followed her vehicle around town. The Army Radio reported that her children had
been “banned” from attending their youth movements. In Zionism attacking
children is seen as a legitimate way of getting at their parents. Not for
nothing is Israel known as ‘the only democracy
in the Middle East.’
Silman and Orbach MKs Yamina
Those who
think I am exaggerating should recall Richard Goldstone, the South Africa
Jewish Judge who chaired the UN Inquiry which issued a Report accusing Israel
of war crimes in Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9 was banned from attending his grandson’s bar mitveh. It was only after an outcry
that South Africa’s Zionists backed off and Goldstone was allowed to attend. But one
result of the attacks was that Goldstone attempted to have the Report withdrawn
although the other two members of the Inquiry refused to support him.
The head of
Shin Bet, Nadav Argaman, issued a rare warning this week that Netanyahu’s campaign
of incitement could lead to political violence.
“This discourse may be interpreted among certain
groups or individuals as one that allows violent and illegal activity and could
even lead to harm to individuals,”
It is a
measure of how far to the racist right the Israeli state has gone that what is
in effect a choice between two far-right coalitions is subject to such tactics.
The proposed coalition government consists of
right wing settlers in Jeruslem
Yamina, a
religious settler party which has 6 seats, one MK Amichai Chikli having already
defected. Bennett was former head of the Yesha Settlers’
Council. When it comes to anti-Arab comments Bennett can outdo anything that
Netanyahu has to offer.
In 2013 he said
that Palestinian “terrorists should be
killed, not released”, and in 2018 – the same year Israeli snipers were murdering
unarmed Palestinian demonstrators at the Gaza fence – Bennett said
Israeli troops should have a “shoot to kill” policy, including for minors.
Asked about the army targeting children, he replied: “They are not children. They are terrorists. We are fooling ourselves.”
Bennett is also famous for saying ‘I’ve Killed Lots Of Arabs In My Life And There’s No
Problem With That”
Gideon
Saar’s New Hope, a breakaway from
Likud has 6 seats and is to the right of Netanyahu.
Avigdor
Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu has 7 seats. A
secular party of the far-Right, it depends mainly on Russian voters. Lieberman can
only be described as a fascist who is on record as saying that Israeli Palestinians
who don’t take a loyalty oath should be either
expelled or beheaded. He has also said that it
would be better to drown thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea if
possible, ‘since that’s the lowest point
in the world.’
Yesh Atid with 17 votes is headed by Yair Lapid. In Israeli terms it is described
as a ‘centrist’ party but in Britain it would be on the Tory Right.Lapid is, in the unlikely event that the
coalition lasts, scheduled to take over as Prime Minister in two years time.
However that is highly unlikely.
Benny Gantz, leader of what
is left of Blue and White with 8 seats, entered the last government as
Defence Minister with Netanyahu. He was supposed to become Prime Minister by rotation
but Netanyahu outwitted him. He is supporting the new government and will
retain his position as Defence Minister.
The Zionist Left, or what’s
left of it, has had no compunction in entering the coalition with the sole
purpose of removing Netanyahu. The Israeli Labor Party, led by Merav Michaeli, the grand daughter
of the famous Zionist collaborator with the Nazis in Hungary, Rudolf Kasztner, has 7 seats.
Meretz, led by Nitzan Horowitz, which in Zionist terms is
seen as far-left but in Britain would be seen as right-wing Labour, at best,
has 6 seats. It too has agreed to go into coalition even though gay rights are supposed to be its hot
issue and the coalition includes anti-gay parties.
It says everything about the
Zionist ‘left’ that it is prepared to enter a coalition of the far-Right under
a hard right former settler leader who has no intention of agreeing to any
peace deal with the Palestinians and who is on record as favouring the
annexation of the West Bank.
Mansour Abbas, who just
scraped into the Knesset with 4 seats, has signed the coalition agreement but he is effectively supporting the government
from the outside. It is after all too much to expect an Israeli Arab party to
actually hold ministerial posts.Abbas
will instead accept the Chairmanship of two Knesset Committees.
What Abbas hopes to gain is
extra funding for Israel’s Palestinian communities, the recognition of three
‘unrecognised’ Bedouin villages in the Negev, which means they will then
receive basic facilities such as electricity, schools and running water, and a
repeal of a law which heavily penalises illegal construction in Arab towns.
Since land is so scarce in Palestinian Israeli towns, and since building
permits are hard to come by, people build homes regardless and the authorities
regularly demolish them. Whether or not he manages to secure these concessions
remains to be seen.
I have little doubt that if
Bennett manages to survive to the weekend and no further Yamina MKs are peeled
off that the government is not likely to last. The pressure from those even further
to the right will be immense. Abbas too is likely to come under massive
pressure from Israeli Palestinians, especially if there are further attacks on
the Al Aqsa mosque and worshippers.
Already Netanyahu has
supported a new March of the Flags by thousands of settler youth through Arab
East Jerusalem. The march has been rerouted away fromthe Arab quarter for the time being but there
will be pressure for the right to demonstrate that they have every right to hold
a pogrom in Arab Jerusalem.
Also the question of the
evictions at Sheikh Jarrar is looming. Already Attorney General Mendelbit has announced that the government will not be opposing the evictions as the racist
laws which allow the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem are quite clear. Which
is true. Jews can reclaim houses they once owned in East Jerusalem before
Jerusalem was partitioned between East and West in 1948. However Palestinians
are not able to reclaim homes they abandoned in West Jerusalem.
The justice of evicting
Arabs for the crime of not being Jewish poses no problem to Israel’s Supreme
Court. Whether the new governing coalition will step in seems doubtful but if
Jerusalem explodes as a result, then Abbas may yet be forced to pull his
support for the coalition.
Who does the Sunday Times and the popular press
accuse of anti-Semitism? The Palestinian demonstration!!
The Largest Ever Palestinian Demonstration in Britain
The demonstration last Saturday was the
largest Palestinian that has ever been held in Britain.Some 200,000 people took part. The mass media
looked desperately for signs of anti-Semitism. According to The
Standard the rally was ‘hijacked by anti-Semitic protesters’. I have to confess that I didn’t see any sign of the stormtroopers!
Jewish Bloc on Palestinian demonstration - there were hundreds of Jews on the Palestinian demonstration - there were no Muslims or Arabs on the Zionist demonstration yet the Sunday Times accuses us of racism!!
Why this concern over ‘anti-Semitism’? The mass media are desperate to discredit supporters of the Palestinians. What was this 'antisemitism'? Protestorswho ‘held placards displaying swastikas and
references to Nazis.’ The
inference from the headlines was that some of the demonstration were proudly displaying
the swastika.
There is NOTHING anti-Semitic in these posters - they are not saying Hitler was right but that Hitler like the Zionists are evil
Did the placards say ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘Jews to the gas chambers’? According to The Sunday Times those placards read ‘Stop doing what Hitler
did to you.’ Another read “Israel, the new Nazi state”. One placard referred to ‘Holocaust party 2’. Now these
demonstrators might be accused of hyperbole or exaggeration but they were not in the slightest
anti-Semitic. They were comparing the evils of Hitler to the evils of Zionism.
Saying ‘Stop doing what Hitler did to
you’ is what holocaust
survivors have said. Is that anti-Semitic? The Murdoch Press and the Mail were desperate
to find ‘anti-Semitism’.
However the next day at the Israel Genocide
demonstration, racism was certainly on display. Tommy Robinson, the
Islamaphobic bigot, former member of the holocaust denying BNP and associate
of neo-Nazis was welcomed onto the demonstration, which was less
than a thousand strong. Britain’s Jewish community had given this celebration
of genocide a big no.
My letter to the Sunday Times pointing out their hypocrisy over racism
Despite the attempts
of the major Zionist organisations to pretend that Robinson was not welcome it
is clear from the film that the Zionist rank and file welcomed him with open arms. The Community
Security Trust which stewards these demonstrations has never hesitated to
manhandle anti-Zionist protestors. How come it allowed Robinson to participate?
The Jewish
News exposed the problem of Zionist
support for Tommy Robinson when it quoted a number of Zionists:
One pro-Israel activist, who goes under the pseudonym
Nick from Enfield, and who attended the demo tweeted: “Tommy was invited … he
came was polite he was supportive he was great unlike the disgusting supporters
of palestinians who were chasing Jews around the streets.'
“We need all the friends we can get as Jews we are
outnumbered and we welcome TR.”
Another demo attendee posted: “Thanks Tommy – how
times change.”
One leading Jewish community Facebook page took
down discussion about Robinson’s presence at the demo.
According to the Campaign Against Antisemitism Tommy Robinson too is fighting 'antisemitism'!!
It is clear that support for Tommy Robinson
and his Islamaphobia is strong amongst British Zionists as I have said
for many years.
The Twickenham Springbok Demonstration I attended as a school student
The
Tectonic Plates of Zionism are Shifting
In 1969, when I took part in my first
demonstration against the South African Springbok Rugby
Tour, little did I realise that 25
years later we would see the first Black majority rule government.
A protest in Be'er Sheva in the Negev - right-wing thugs circulated messages calling on members to attack Arabs as the police stand by
The year 2021, a year which saw the
election of a bona fide Jewish Nazi, Itamar ben-Gvir
to Israel’s Knesset, may well be the beginning of the end for the Apartheid regime
in Tel Aviv. Zionism has become more and more atavistic as it reverts to the
most primitive and barbaric forms of colonialism.
Unprovoked police violence against a Palestinian in Umm el Fahm - will these bastards be prosecuted? Of course not. Violence against Palestinians is not a crime in Israel
pogrom in Bat Yam - which the Israeli police allowed to happen
After having boasted for years that
Israeli Arabs were equal citizens in Israel we now see the true mentality of Zionism.
As Israeli Palestinians took part in demonstrations and protests against the
threatened eviction of the inhabitants of Sheikh Jarrar and against the
invasion by Israel’s military of Al Aqsa mosque, Jewish vigilante groups and
settlers, aided by the police, began a series of pogroms in mixed cities such
as Bat Yam and Lydd.
Today the
Israeli Police are rounding up hundreds of Palestinians in Israel for having
attacked Jews whilstconspicuously
ignoring the far greater attacks by the settlers. The Times of Israel reports
that 70% of those arrested are Arabs but Aida
Touma-Sliman a Joint List MK estimated it was closer to 90 percent.
New York's Huge Demonstration on Palestine
When Palestinian students at Ben Gurion
University in the Negev tried to hold a demonstration against the bombing of
Gaza they were first attacked
by the Police and then subject to a pogrom by fellow Israeli Jewish students
chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’. Many of them have fled back home in fear of
their lives. Noone has been arrested.
The Colombian contingent on Palestinian demonstration was loud and enthusiastic - they too are victims of American imperialism
Electronic Intifada reports
that these attacks on Palestinians were coordinated via social media groups. One Telegram user wrote
People from Holon, Bat Yam and Rishon Lezion go out
to bring war. We are no longer Jews today. Today we are Nazis.
Israel is a leftover from the days of
European fascism. The settlers claim a ‘god given right’ to expel Palestinians
because god gave them the land. Such a claim, like fascist ideology, is irrational.
Rights derive from the societies which people belong to. These people claim
their ‘rights’ from a mythical past and a god whose word is unchallengeable. As
Thomas Jefferson wrote,
democracy and
worship of the past are incompatible.
Brave demonstrators at Elbit's Leicester factory - Palestine Solidarity Campaign refuse to support them out of political cowardice
Sometimes time appears to stand still.
Nothing seems to change. At other times years pass in minutes. Today we seem to
be entering the latter phase. We are living in a time of great social and
political movements even if it is hard to gauge their importance at the time.
Itamar Gvir - the Judeo-Nazi who has been elected to the Israeli Knesset and is now part of the government coalition
The murder of George Floyd last year unleashed
the largest
political movement in the history of the
USA. Over 25 million people marched for racial justice and against White
Supremacy. It was inevitable that the Black Lives Matter movement and the
movement for justice in Palestine would coincide. At root the
causes are the same, just as they were half a century ago when the fight of the
Black Panthers reflected the fight against White Supremacy in South Africa.
Jack Mendel, the Jewish News Political Correspondent speaks of non-existent antisemitism at the Palestinian rally but admits shame that neo-Nazi Robinson attended the Israeli demonstration. He should now ask why.
The connections between White Supremacy
in the USA and Jewish Supremacy in Israel are particularly close. The Israeli
Police have been teaching
their American counterparts the finer arts of how to kill, choke and strangle for
years. The majority of such training is organised
by the Zionist Anti-Defamation League, which portrays itself an anti-racist
group but which last year was subject to a successful
boycott when it sought to train Starbucks
staff. ADL previously has infiltrated and spied on the left and anti-racists going
so far as to act
on behalf of the South Africa
secret police BOSS.
The Lies of the Sunday Times - whose Stupid Reporters Can't Even Recognise the Difference Between Support & Opposition to Antisemitism
Despite the fulminations and tantrums
of Donald Trump and his supporters, with his violent attacks on Antifa and
anti-racist protestors in Portland, Washington and other cities, including the
killing of at least 3 anti-fascists, Joe Biden swept to power on the coat tails
of BLM. But for the death of George Floyd it is likely that Trump would be in
his second term now.
Why the Delegitimisation of Israel is a Palestinian priority
In 2010 in response to the growing
success of BDS, the Reut
Report was commissioned by the Reut
Institute and ADL. It described ‘delegitimisation’ as an existentialist threat
to the Israeli state. Point 9 of the Report stated
that:
A tipping point in this context would be a paradigm shift
from the Two-State Solution to the One-State Solution as the consensual
framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Trafalgar Square - a carnival of multiracism unlike the Whites only Zionist demonstration
The Two State Solution is the Apartheid
solution - Bantustanisation. Point 11 envisaged that
‘The issue of Israel's Arab citizens may
become the next ‘outstanding issue' driving delegitimization in the event that
an Israeli-Palestinian Permanent Status Agreement is secured
Electronic
Intifada provides a useful analysis of the Report.
What then
is meant by delegitimisation? The main fear of Zionism and the defenders of
Israel is not criticism of particular policies, it is criticism which
challenges the Jewish supremacist nature of the Israeli state, Zionism. The
Israeli state in its settlement drive, house demolitions and ethnic
cleansing has demonstrated why, despite the best hasbara, Israel is a settler colonial state.
The
strategy of fighting delegitimisation found its expression in the IHRA Misdefinition of Anti-Semitism. The IHRA had no problem with ‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other
country’.What the IHRA called anti-Semitism was ‘requiring of it [Israel] a behavior not
expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.’ This was of course disingenuous
since there are no ethno-religious democratic states.
Israel’s headlong rush to the Zionist right,
which unlike the Zionist left at least has the merit of honesty, signals that Zionism
is no longer concerned to hide the reality of a Jewish state. The leader of
Religious Zionism group, Bezalel Smotrich spelt it out when stated that
“Arabs are citizens of Israel, for now, at
least. They have representatives, MKs, for now at least.’
One of the most remarkable aspects of the war
on Gaza was that Palestinian Israelis came out en masse for the first time. The attacks on Al Aqsa mosque by
Israeli police struck a raw nerve. Al Aqsa and the Golden Dome are as much
political as religious symbols.
What this has done is expose ‘co-existence’ in
Israel for the sham it is. Israeli Palestinians have been accepted into a
‘Jewish’ state only as long as they accepted their guest status. The minute
that they demand equality they are attacked with the full force of the
Israeli state. Last week, for the first time since 1936 there was an Arab
General Strike that encompassed the West Bank and Israel.
What is happening in Israel today is a problem
for its defenders in the West. The old days when apologists for Zionist
Apartheid like Emily Thornberry could proclaim that ‘Israel
stands out as a beacon of freedom and democracy’ are over.
Palestine
is NOT a human rights issue
The approach of many supporters of the
Palestinians is to believe that it is simply a human rights issue. People like
Caroline Lucas MP raise questions of Israel’s human rights abuses
whilst supporting a Jewish state. We have to be clear. Our opposition to Israel
is not simply about its human rights record. There are worse countries in the
world when it comes to human rights such as Burma and now India.
Israel like South Africa is a state based
on racial supremacy. That was what set Nazi Germany apart, long before the holocaust.
The colour of your skin or your religious affiliation dictates your rights and
privileges. As Albert Luthuli, the founder of the ANC said, you can change your
politics but not the colour of your skin.
What Zionism fears is not a challenge
to individual Israeli policies but to its existence as a Jewish Supremacist
State. Any organisation claiming to support Palestine solidarity cannot avoid
the Jewish nature of the Israeli state. It would be like opposing, 50 years ago, human
rights abuses in South Africa whilst supporting Apartheid.
To be a supporter of the Palestinians you
must also oppose Zionism, the ideology of that state. It is the myth that Zionism
is an integral part of being Jewish or part of Jewish identity that we have to
explode. Zionism is not an inherent part of being Jewish. The first Zionists
weren’t Jewish but Christian Evangelists or Dispensationists.
2021 is the Year of Challenging the
Legitimacy of the Israeli State and Zionism
One cannot live a single
day in Israel-Palestine without the sense that this place is constantly being
engineered to privilege one people, and one people only: the Jewish
people.
The game is up for Zionism and its
bastard child, Israel. For as long as the Israeli Labour Party was in charge of
the Israeli state it was able to hide Israel’s apartheid character. The
kibbutzim were even seen as a radical social experiment rather than ethnic cleansers. But the advent of Likud dictated that politics and Israeli reality
would sooner or later come into line.
The
first shock to Israel’s left wing supporters was the Lebanon invasion in 1982
when Tony Benn and Eric Heffer resigned from Labour Friends of Israel. Today
Netanyahu has personally acted as the midwife to the election of Religious
Zionism, a Judeo-Nazi party. The illusion that Israel is a democracy has
disappeared. Only Keir Starmer and the Tories still cling to it.
The far-right 'charity' Campaign Against Antisemitism cries 'antisemitism' whilst ignoring the welcome given to Tommy Robinson by the Zionist demonstrators
Israel’s Fightback
No one of sound mind
can today pretend that Israel is a democratic state. Even John McDonell, who
went along with the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign inside the Labour Party, now supports
BDS and calls Israel an apartheid state. The campaign against Corbyn
temporarily rehabilitated the Israeli state but the recent attacks on
worshippers in Al Aqsa mosque and the proposed ethnic cleansing of Sheikh
Jarrar and then the blitzkrieg on Gaza have undone all of that.
We are at a turning point
Jonathan Freedland has fronted the fake
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign for the past 5 years, turning the Guardian into a Zionist rag. He has been their Zionist gatekeeper. Freedland, an archetypal
liberal Zionist has recently been fretting about the state of affairs in
Israel. In his Jewish Chronicle column he objected
to the nomination of an open racist, former Israeli General Effi Eitam, as the
next Chair of Yad Vashem, Israel’s holocaust propaganda museum.
Eitam is on record as supporting the
completion of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian population. He also
presided over the beating to death of a Palestinian prisoner.As such you would have thought he was
eminently suitable to chair Yad Vashem, which has welcomed all manner of
fascists and anti-Semites through its doors. Freedland wrote,
quotinga petition against Eitam that:
appointing Eitam, given his history of “hateful rhetoric,”
would make Yad Vashem an object of “mockery and a disgrace.” It would be an act
of reckless self-harm, turning an institution that currently enjoys deep
international respect into a prime target for protest and boycott.
Freedland has also been worrying
recently that the fiction of Israeli Jewish-Arab coexistence is dead. People
often forget that settler colonial states are usually ruled by stupid and brutal politicians whose only answer to a crisis is repression. That was
true in South Africa and it is true in Israel today. That is why the situation
is not going to return to what Freedland terms ‘normal’. Today's politicians in Israel are as thick as their Afrikaaner counterparts were.
Freedland, who dishonestly ran the Guardian
campaign attacking Corbyn for Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ because anti-Zionism
challenged the pro-Israel identity of most British Jews, has now, it would
appear woken up to the monster he has been defending. In what for him was an
unusually perceptive article, he noted that Israel
should take note: the weight of opinion is turning against it.
Therein lies the problem.
Despite the use of the IHRA to outlaw
the idea that Israel is an Apartheid State, it is fast becoming an accepted truth.
The recent Gaza attack by Israel was, in his view, a ‘strategic
disaster’. The demands of
Black Lives Matter have crossed over to the Palestine solidarity movement with
placards proclaiming that Palestine Lives Matter and Palestine Can’t Breathe.
Freedland is a ‘liberal’ Zionist who is
prepared to put up with any iniquity on behalf of his beloved 'Jewish' State. The only
problem is that others aren’t. As he sees it the writing is already on the wall
for Israel.It cannot continue along the
path to the far-right because it won’t survive another attempt to
ethnically cleanse the Palestinians.
You can’t stop
colonisation half-way. Its either all or nothing. Sheikh Jarrar is part of the
Master Plan to ‘Judaise’ Jerusalem. That is how Israel has always behaved. Zionism without ethnic cleansing is like trying to play cricket without a ball!
What worries Freedland is that the
ground is moving underneath the feet of the Zionists. In the United States, a
bastion of bipartisan support for Israel, things are changing. He writes
that
‘No less striking than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez branding
Israel an “apartheid
state” was this week’s move by
longtime pro-Israel Democrats in Congress to delay
the transfer of an arms
package to Israel.
Ha’aretz, the liberal
Zionist Israeli paper is also worried
that Israel is becoming a new Yugoslavia. The New York Times, long seen as the
bastion of Zionism is also slowly changing. First they got
rid of Bari Weiss, the Opinion Editor and Zionist gatekeeper and then four
days ago they finally printed a piece Life
Under Occupation: The Misery at the Heart of the Conflict which describes
what life is like for Palestinians under occupation.
Liberal Zionists face
the choice of either digging in, like Freedland, or moving to the left like
Peter Beinart, who has disowned a Jewish State. As
Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Jewish Nazi explained years ago,
Israel can either be a Jewish state or a Democratic state.It cannot be both.And that is the dilemma that faces liberal
Zionists.
For Freedland a Jewish
State must survive at any price, even at the cost of apartheid. For
Beinart this is unacceptable. It is our job in the solidarity movement to widen
these fissures not help our opponents as Palestine Solidarity Campaign does.
Tony Greenstein
Below are more pictures of the huge London demonstration
