Jenny Flintoft R.I.P. – Comrades Remember a Tireless Fighter Against Racism and Bigotry

The Palestinians had no better supporter than Jenny, the rock of Portsmouth PSC, a socialist and friend of the oppressed 

UPDATE

Jenny's funeral was held today, Friday 29th January. I attended by video link as only a handful of close friends and relatives were able to be present. It is sad not to be able to pay one's respects in person but that is what the virus that killed Jenny has done to us.

In her last words to those assembled the person officiating quoted the subtitle of this blog:

'The Palestinians had no better friend than Jenny, the rock of Portsmouth PSC, a socialist and a friend to the oppressed.' I found that very humbling. The crematorium will be posting in 3 days a video of the service and if possible I will post it here.

Tony Greenstein

Tragically Jenny Flintoft died last Monday from this accursed virus.  She was born in Rowley Regis, Staffordshire. I found it hard to believe it when I was informed that Jenny had passed away because she seemed like the rock of Gibraltar – indomitable and always there - a permanent feature of Palestine solidarity work.

I knew Jenny from joint Palestine solidarity work. We took to each other as we shared similar views about the pussyfooting diplomacy of the Executive of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

When I need someone to second a motion to PSC AGM on ditching their support for the Apartheid 2 State Solution I knew I could rely on her.  When I stood for PSC Secretary last year Jenny was only too willing to second my nomination, even if she did sometimes caution me not to be too outspoken!

Before the onset of COVID-19 Jenny would invite me every year to speak to a meeting of Portsmouth and South Downs PSC.  Many are the memories I have of trying to navigate my way around windswept Portsmouth housing estates in the bitter cold of winter before alighting on a community centre where the meeting was scheduled to start and it was always a pleasure to engage in debate and discussion with fellow comrades.

Jenny was a vivacious and outgoing person with a wicked sense of humour. It was an honour and privilege to know and meet someone who was so self-sacrificing and committed to ending the tyranny that Israel exerts over the Palestinians.

Although Jenny didn’t live to see the end of the Jewish Supremacist regime in Tel Aviv I am under no doubt that Jenny made a vital contribution to the struggle to end Zionism and its terrorist rule. Slowly, despite the vicious and mendacious accusations of anti-Semitism, the Zionist State is slowly but surely losing its legitimacy. The latest blow is the decision of Israel’s foremost human rights group, the liberal B’Tselem to describe Israel as a Jewish Supremacist state.

Jenny had no time for the time servers and apologists for Zionism who resorted to identity politics in order to defend Apartheid in Israel. I shall fondly remember Jenny Flintoft as a shining light in the darkness that Israel has cast over the Middle East and beyond.  She will always be remembered.

Below are a number of people who want to pay their respects and recall the contribution that Jenny made to a better world for all.

Tony Greenstein

From Portsmouth & South  Downs PSC

Very sadly Coronavirus claimed the life of Jenny Flintoft on 11 January.  For many years Jenny has been Secretary of the Portsmouth & South Downs PSC. Through PSDPSC she worked tirelessly for the rights of the Palestinian people, convening the monthly planning meetings, inviting speakers, helping organise demonstrations, keeping everyone up to date with events in Israel/Palestine and with local and national campaigns, and representing PSDPSC at PSC branch meetings and AGM.  It was her enthusiasm for folk music that led PSDPSC to raise funds through folk concerts, often with local artists, mostly for Medical Aid For Palestinians.  Israel’s ill-treatment of Palestinian child prisoners was perhaps the thing that angered her most.

PSDPSC supporters join with Momentum and Stand Up to Racism in saying our thoughts go out to Jenny’s husband Gerry and her family.  We send them our heartfelt condolences.

We received the terrible news about Jenny yesterday at the office. Deepest sympathies and all of our thoughts and best wishes with everyone in Portsmouth from all of us, it really is awful, shocking news.

From Palestine Solidarity Campaign:

We received the terrible news about Jenny yesterday at the office. Deepest sympathies and all of our thoughts and best wishes with everyone in Portsmouth from all of us, it really is awful, shocking news.

 Lewis Backon

Palestine Solidarity Campaign Campaigns Officer

Portsmouth & District Momentum group writes,

Last year Jenny became Vice Chair of the Portsmouth & District Group of Momentum.  She was an active member of Portsmouth Stand Up To Racism too and one of the organisers of the local Stop the War Coalition.  She was a dogged and passionate campaigner and shared information and campaigns across all the groups she was involved in.

 “She was an inspiration to all of us as she worked hard to make people aware of inequalities and oppression in the world.  We will miss her as a comrade, activist and friend.” 

In solidarity

Jackie Lederer

joint Secretary of Momentum Portsmouth and District Group.

Portsmouth Stand Up To Racism reacted

"We are shocked and saddened by the news of Jenny's death.  Jenny was a socialist and an anti-racist, who put her beliefs into action and argued for others to do the same.  People who knew Jenny will miss her tenacious spirit and her willingness to stand up against injustice." 

From Sue Castillon

I first met Jenny and Gerry in 2015 at the first of many Momentum meetings where she distributed Palestine solidarity campaign leaflets and spoke of the organisation, campaigning against the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. She organised many fundraisers for PSC. Jenny was a tireless campaigner for this cause and it is imperative that we continue her work in her memory. 

She was with us on many London and Portsmouth rallies for the NHS and anti racism for instance.

We spent a very happy evening together at the international women’s day dinner at Portsmouth Football Club and she was with us for fundraising at my house for my campaign to stand in Hilsea ward 2018.

She always supported me for various campaigns and was a clear role model for never giving up if passionate about an issue.

I will really miss her and hope Gerry receives all the care and support he needs.

From  Robb Johnson

It was a pleasure and a bit of an honour to have known Jenny Flintoft. It was also great fun, & sometimes a bit exasperating, because words like indomitable, indefatigable, strongwilled & determined don’t do her justice, & she had standards & convictions that you often felt you were unlikely to live up to. But she was also an incredibly kind & affectionate friend, & so I think she kind of overlooked most of my shortcomings. 

I met Jenny, & her partner in every sense of the word, Gerry, when they came to the Hove Folk Club. This was held in the oak-panelled room above The Poet’s Corner pub in Hove. I got the impression that they were delighted to find a Sussex Folk Club that liked political songs & hated the Tories. This was in the days when they were still driving. Jenny had a wonderful voice, that was part sweet girlish treble & sincerity, & part wise woman anger & authority, & Gerry made absolute magic come from his concertina. Jenny invariably arrived with a sheaf of lyrics & a rough idea of what she might sing. She had the sort of repertoire of songs that to me represents the very best of folk singing. She would do a hilarious song involving Father Christmas in December, & knew the best feminist version of “House of the Rising Sun” anybody has ever heard. She also modestly wrote songs too, vivid, powerful songs supporting the oppressed & savaging the oppressor. One song “He Refuses to Fight” started with an aching, understated verse about a conscientious objector in the Second World War, & then moved perfectly into a verse about as Israeli soldier also refusing to fight. The conscientious objector was her father. I wish I had carried out a plan several of us at the club toyed with: when Gerry stopped driving, they stopped coming to the club, so we thought about  going to where Jenny & Gerry lived to record them, & archive Jenny’s wonderful songs. But they found they could get to Hove by train, & so… we never did. 

When the pub became increasingly uninterested in not to say hostile towards having a folk club upstairs, I suggested we could move to the Railway Inn opposite Portslade train station. There, there was a very nice back room & a house PA. Jenny & Gerry were appalled at this development & spoke out about it with great displeasure. Nonetheless, they kept coming anyway – Portslade station was after all just over the road from the pub - & continued to complain volubly whenever they thought the PA was too loud. They also always sat at a table right in the middle, at the very front, the better to monitor the volume level & to eat the evening meal they ordered. Jenny even occasionally used the microphone & stood on the stage, but was also very happy to wave it away & sing accapella if the mike or the mike stand were being uncooperative.  Jenny & Gerry also managed to persuade fellow Labour leftist Graham Noble to come to the club, which meant they could rely on his van & his comradely kindness rather than the last Southern Rail train west. One time, Remembrance Day 2018, Jenny & Gerry turned up at a folk club gig I was doing in the middle of nowhere near Bournemouth. Gerry had been hospitalised. Jenny sprang him to go to a classical music concert in the afternoon, then on to a folk club in the middle of nowhere near Bournemouth. As the evening drew to a close it became apparent that Graham wasn’t available. Luckily we had a car, & we were going back past Portsmouth & Southampton. Jenny said we could drop them off on the A27 because they lived “just up there” & they would get a cab, at 12.30 am on a wet November night. We drove them home, & of course it wasn’t “just up there” at all. But distance didn’t seem to worry either of them. They used to drive to Greece every year, & even when Gerry couldn’t drive, they still made it to Crete, & Jenny swam in the Mediterranean. We said we like Lemnos, so one year they went there too, & thought it was awful because there was disco music on the beaches, & it was obvious they held us responsible for providing an inaccurate recommendation. We also bumped into them on the Eurostar to Paris one December; they were travelling onwards. Nothing stopped Jenny. One night at the Railway Inn she sailed as majestically as usual, & as usual half an hour before the gig was supposed to start. There was no Gerry. “No Gerry tonight?” I asked. She rolled her eyes. “He missed the train. He didn’t get on quickly enough at Havant. He’ll be along later.” & sure enough, he was. 

Jenny very kindly got me gigs – usually in dodgy pubs – raising money for the Labour Party or Palestine. In 2019, during the commemoration of the 25^th anniversary of D Day, she got me a gig singing at the anti-Trump rally in a square in Portsmouth. While I was singing, a herd of EDL turned up on their way to the nearest Wetherspoons. One of them took a particular dislike to me singing & ambled towards me. I was a bit worried about this trajectory. Jenny wasn’t.  Jenny stood in his way. He tried to get round her. She stood in his way again & again, & again, until he gave up.

One of the benefits she arranged involved all three of us meeting at Havant then taking a train somewhere else. I found out how Jenny & Gerry had met. It was at a student union event in the early 1960s. Jenny was doing English literature at University, & Gerry was doing as much science as possible. Gerry said he was the first member of his family to go to university. He hadn’t particularly wanted to go to university, but he’d noticed that if you went to University, you didn’t have to do National Service, & he was determined he didn’t want to go off to shoot people in Cyprus on behalf of British Imperialism, so he became a student, & that where, & how they met. & lived happily, I think, ever after. It is okay, I think, to talk about Jenny as part of this partnership, because it was a partnership of equals, with Jenny generally tacitly taking a leading role, & Jenny was very happy to be an equal part of that partnership. 

This remembrance has probably gone on for too long. I haven’t said enough about her energy, her delight in life & I don’t think I have done her love of singing justice, or her principled commitment to justice. One year we were going to have a Folk Club Christmas gig where everybody was supposed to sing a Bob Dylan song. Jenny had no time for Dylan because of his pro-Israel politics. She was adamant that she wouldn’t be singing a Dylan song; in fact she was adamant that Jenny & Gerry would not be in attendance that night. Well, just come & sing whatever you like, I said. They didn’t. 

I haven’t said enough, because you can never say enough, because there are never enough good words for people like Jenny Flintoft. 

It was a pleasure, & a honour, to have known her. 

IN MEMORY OF JENNY FLINTOFT - Tom Suarez

Tuesday, 12 Jan 2021: Tragically, Jenny Flintoff, well known to many of us through her selfless work for human rights, died yesterday of Covid19.

I first met Jenny in 2017 when Portsmouth & South Downs PSC invited me to speak about the British Mandate. On the day of the event, as I was on the train to Portsmouth, my mobile rang. It was Jenny. PREVENT, the UK’s notorious supposed anti-radicalisation and anti-terror unit, had closed us down, not just at the scheduled venue, but throughout the city, "due to the nature of the speaker". While no further explanation was forthcoming, this was but one incident in a long history of stifling any open debate on the Middle East.

Jenny was furious. Here we were in Britain, trying to discuss British source documents from Britain’s own archives about the British Mandate, closed down by a British institution with British tax money at the orders of individuals acting on behalf of — ironically — the pariah state the British had jump-started with the Mandate.

The Daily Mail took advantage of the ‘scandal’ of the forbidden talk to condemn, by alleged ideological association, Jeremy Corbyn. The tabloid lined Corbyn and me up with side-by-side mug shots and a slanderous headline.

Jenny would not be intimidated. She demanded to meet with the local PREVENT Coordinator, Charlie Pericleous, and I returned to Portsmouth to be present. Jenny grilled Mr. Pericleous tenaciously for two hours. Despite his steadfast refusal to provide any explanation or even clear my name of suspicion, Jenny persevered, was never intimidated, and never fell for decoy replies.

She will be terribly missed.

Jenny Flintoft, who was born on 15th February 1943 died on 11th January 2021 

Why I am standing for the post of Secretary of Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Self congratulation, timidity and caution bordering on obsequiousness is not the stuff of a solidarity campaign!

Introduction

Why you may ask, after having co-founded PSC 37 years ago, have I decided now to stand for the position of Secretary? I was a member of the Executive for the first decade of PSC’s existence. At my time of life I have better things to do and if I have any ambition left the position of Secretary of PSC is not one of them.

My reasons are that I feel a responsibility to an organisation which could do so much and yet is trapped by a cautious conservatism in its desire to become part of the political establishment. PSC is an organisation which makes a fetish of routinism but which has few response mechanisms. Every year the Executive presents much the same Annual Report to the AGM which dutifully passes it, because it is unheard of for the AGM to hold the Executive to account. Then another year passes by in which PSC is conspicuous by its absence from the political attacks which the Palestine solidarity movement is living with.

Above all I want to stimulate a debate about where the Palestine solidarity movement in this country is going. We should not be afraid of having such a discussion if we are serious about building towards the day when Israel goes the same way as apartheid South Africa. Nonetheless I have no doubt that the Executive will resent the fact that I have decided to raise these issues and stimulate a wider debate.

This is the first time in living memory that there has been a contest for an officer post, yet I am allowed only 100 words to explain my reasons why. I will be allowed 1 minute to speak from Conference floor. Ideally each candidate should be allowed 5 minutes with questions and answers. Instead we have what is in effect a beauty contest. Hence why I am presenting this manifesto.

The Zionist ‘Anti-Semitism’ Campaign

For over 3 years we have seen an unprecedented wave of attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement and BDS with false allegations of anti-Semitism being the main weapon of attack. Israel’s supporters have been joined in this enterprise by the opponents of Jeremy Corbyn. This is not just a British phenomenon but Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party has enhanced this phenomenon.

And whereas once support for Zionism and Israel was more evident on the Labour left today support for the Palestinians is found almost wholly on the left of the political spectrum. 80% of Tory MPs are members of Conservative Friends of Israel. The Lib-Dems ditched the 2 parliamentarians who supporter the Palestinians – David Ward and Jenny Tonge.

False accusations of ‘Anti-Semitism’ have become the weapon of choice for a whole range of right-wing, Islamaphobic, reactionary and even anti-Semitic politicians. The press, including the Guardian, sings the same Zionist theme tunes. We have the absurdity that non-Jews, often themselves anti-Semitic, can attack Jewish anti- Zionists as ‘anti-Semitic’ because they reject the idea of a Jewish supremacist state. A list of far-Right luminaries from Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins, Steve Bannon. and even the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right Richard Spencer, all combine Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism but are nonetheless described as ‘friends of the Jews’ by the Zionists.

Until 2015 a regular feature at PSC AGMs was the attendance of Jeremy Corbyn, who was our main parliamentary sponsor. His election as leader of the Labour Party should have been the occasion for great rejoicing. Instead Jeremy has been forced repeatedly onto the backfoot by the onslaught against him. Unlike Stop the War Coalition the voice of PSC was silent at this time as the campaign against him gathered steam.

When the attacks on anti-Zionists in the Labour Party – Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone and myself – were at their height, PSC was nowhere to be seen. Even though the Israeli Embassy was up to its ears in what was happening, as Al Jazeera’s documentary The Lobby demonstrated, PSC chose to see, say and hear nothing.

A need for debate and reflection

In the wake of the 2005 call for BDS the Zionist movement engaged in a period of internal debate and reflection. The time is long overdue when we need to begin engaging in serious debate about where we are going and how we meet the ideological attacks upon us rather than having puffed up reports whose only purpose is self-congratulation. Is our propaganda as effective as it could be?  Is PSC for example simply concentrating on Israeli human rights abuses to the exclusion of saying anything about what its vision is for a non-racist Palestine?

I have never seen a Report to PSC Conference which said what had gone wrong or which analysed their mistakes. Everything is always rosy in the PSC garden.

Palestine solidarity is not simply a human rights but a political campaign. If all we are concerned about is human rights then what is happening in Burma and Yemen far exceeds the suffering of Palestine. Israel is different because Apartheid and settler colonialism are different. In the words of Albert Luthuli, the President of the ANC and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, you can change your politics but never the colour of your skin. That is the essence of our case against Israel.

On 9^th December and again on 31^st December (repeated in the Annual Report) PSC boasted that ‘In November we had our biggest Parliamentary Lobby Day ever’ with nearly 3000 PSC members and supporters contacting 600 MPs’ on the question of arms sales and the treatment of Palestinian children. Undoubtedly this is a good thing but if this is all we say then it will be futile. There is no point in simply concentrating on human rights abuses to the exclusion of having anything to say about the state that perpetrates those abuses. We also have to emphasise that these atrocities stem from the nature of the Israeli state itself as a Zionist and Jewish supremacist state.

Quality is more important than quantity. What is the purpose of lobbying if we don’t aim to build a core group of MP’s who support the aim of a non-racial Israel/Palestine? All but 8 Labour MPs endorsed the IHRA definition without even a free speech caveat.

We should also be having a lobby over the question of a full-scale boycott of settlement produce and sanctions on Israel itself in the wake of the Jewish Nation State Law. The cry we should be taking up is why are sanctions on Iran and Russia ok but it is anti-Semitic if Israel is the target?

ZIONISM

It is not enough to be supporters of Palestinian rights if we are not also opponents of the state that took away those rights. ZIONISM is the official ideology of the Israeli state. It says that when the choice in Israel is between a Jew and a non-Jew then the former has priority. That was the meaning of the Jewish Nation State Law. Discrimination is carried out in the name of the Zionist ideals. Yet Zionism is a word that PSC Executive avoids like the plague. If you go through the whole agenda for the forthcoming PSC AGM, the word is used 4 times – twice in the resolutions and twice in my own 100 words! PSC Executive recoil from describing Israel as it is – Israel Apartheid is a consequence of Zionism. Zionism began from the basis of ‘a land without a people for a people without a land.’ Israel is a Jewish supremacist state just as South Africa was a White Supremacist state and Northern Ireland was a Protestant Supremacist statelet. The Zionists don’t like the term ‘Zionist’.  They say it is a word of abuse.  We should say, ‘yes, Zionism is abusive.’

Without understanding Zionism you cannot understand why Israel does what it does. It is the fact that Israel is a state, not of its own inhabitants but the mythical Jewish People that makes it racist.

Partners

But if PSC Executive are loathe to use the word Zionism, despite there being a World Zionist Organisation and a Zionist Union, they are more than happy to use the word partner.  It occurs no less than 33 times in the Reports. Not once are we told what this partnership entails and whether these are alliances of convenience or genuine partnerships.

I am reminded of Sir Roy Welensky, the Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) who described his ‘partnership between the Whites and Africans as being between the rider and his horse.

We are told that one of the ‘partners’ is Jewish Voice for Labour. If that is so why did PSC not support the counter-demonstration to the Zionist ‘Enough is Enough’ demonstration on March 26^th outside Parliament when the false anti-Semitism campaign was in full swing? A demonstration attended by Norman Tebbit and Ian Paisley. JVL, supported by Labour Against the Witchhunt called a counter demonstration but PSC was nowhere to be seen.

PSC claims that it worked ‘with partners to secure the passing of a motion at Liberty’s AGM condemning the IHRA.’  This is not true.  One individual in JVL was responsible for this motion passing and if it were true why has there been no follow-up with these self same partners to ensure that Liberty’s Executive acts on this motion? Liberty has done absolutely nothing about this policy at a time when the IHRA has been used to attack our freedom of speech.

As for the trade union ‘partners’.  Has PSC ever, even once, raised with them the idea that they should oppose the IHRA. In the words of Sir Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal judge, the IHRA terms anti-Semitic all except anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism

There has been a concerted attack this year on any criticism of Israel that questions its fundamentally racist nature. The IHRA has been adopted, not only by the Labour Party National Executive but by over 150 local Councils.  At a national level the voice of PSC has been almost wholly absent and it is simply dishonest to pretend otherwise.

When JVL and LAW called a large demonstration outside the Labour Party National Executive Committee meeting on September 4^th where was PSC? There were around 300 people on the demonstration and a variety of Momentum and trade union banners but there wasn’t even one PSC banner. Nationally PSC made no attempts to mobilise support for the lobby. It is as if the IHRA was irrelevant.

The IHRA conflates support for the Palestinians with anti-Semitism. Calling Israel a racist state has already led to workers and trade unionists being victimised yet PSC has remained silent.

Most major trade unions are affiliated to PSC.  What attempts did PSC make with UNISON and UNITE to persuade them not to support the IHRA? UNISON’s Dave Prentis has gone out of his way to be friendly to the Jewish Labour Movement. They have a great deal of influence in the Labour Party yet virtually all of them supported the IHRA.

There is no evidence that PSC even raised the IHRA with the trade unions. It is of course good that UNISON has given support to the campaign over child prisoners and pensions but what use is this if UNISON also gives support to a Zionist campaign that alleges opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is anti-Semitic?

The IHRA is part of an international effort to restrict Palestine solidarity.  In the USA it takes the form of direct attacks on those who support BDS. In France BDS has been all but outlawed. We ignore it at our peril.

Israeli Apartheid

It is good that PSC calls Israel an Apartheid state but if we are serious we need to respond to the Zionist argument that Israel is the world’s only Jewish state. We should be clear that we are opposed, in principle, to any religious state especially those which define ethnicity and nationality in terms of religion because from this flows rights and privileges which are accorded to members of that ethnicity. This is what makes Israel different from Iran and Saudi Arabia and for that matter Britain which is also nominally a Christian state.

We should be explicit - Jews are members of all nations. They are not a separate nationality. This is an anti-Semitic and racist idea. One Jewish state is one too many. A Jewish settler-colonial state i cannot be other than an ethno-nationalist i.e. apartheid state.

What is PSC For?

We have to balance actions and campaigns with politics. I say that as someone who has always been an activist. Support for Israel in the West is primarily political, in a way that it wasn’t with South Africa. South Africa had greater resources in terms of mineral wealth than Israel. Israel is more economically vulnerable.

My first actions as a political activist were with the Boycott of the South African Springbok Rugby team in 1970. We didn’t though face a significant pro-Apartheid lobby in Britain. Ministers didn’t fall over themselves to laud South Africa as the ‘only democracy in Africa.’ Israel does possess a powerful lobby. Crucial to destroying support for Israel is destroying the myth that Israel is a democratic state.

We should also recognise where our strengths and weaknesses lie. The majority of British people support the Palestinians. The majority of the elites support Zionism. We should proceed on that basis.

What are we fighting for?

One difference between South Africa and Palestine is that the former possessed a unified national liberation movement. The Palestinians don’t. The PLO is a shell. There is no one organisation we can take a lead from. We have to listen to grassroots Palestinians who tell us that the two state dream is dead (if it ever was alive).

The growing international support for one-state in Israel/Palestine has passed PSC by. It has become obvious that Israel has no intention, if it ever did, of relinquishing control over the Occupied Territories. The Occupation is there to stay. Those who perpetuate the illusion of a two state solution are effectively condoning the continuance of apartheid.

It is extremely welcome that the new American-Palestinian Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, has come out in support of a one-state solution. Is it too much to ask that PSC now has the same courage?

Our role as a solidarity organisation is to convince people that we have a vision. It is not enough simply to oppose what Israel does. What do we want to see is a question that people ask of us.

If Rashida can do it so can PSC

It is time for PSC to stop using the weakness of the Palestinians as an excuse to say nothing, a lamppost to lean on and say loud and clear that we support a single, unitary, democratic state in the whole of Palestine. 2 States is dead.

Today it is the Zionists who support the two state solution. Why? Because they know it will never happen. 2 States means a Palestinian Bantustan. Labour Friends of Israel proudly proclaim that they support an two state solution. If we believe that Israel is an Apartheid state why would we want it to continue?

Israel is NOT a democratic state – that should be our message

In the bulletin sent out on 9^th December headed ‘An incredible month for the Palestinian solidarity movement.’ there was a photograph of a PSC meeting in the House of Commons with Emily Thornberry, Shadow Foreign Secretary addressing the meeting. This is the same Emily Thornberry who is quoted as stating that

‘People who believe Israel does not have the right to exist should be drummed out of the Labour Party.’

Far from challenging Thornberry to disavow her support for Labour Friends of Israel PSC uncritically gives her a platform. In an interview with The Standard she boasted that “I joined Labour Friends of Israel when I became an MP in 2005. I support the Palestinians’ right to have a state and I support the state of Israel.’

Emily Thornberry supports both the oppressor and the oppressed. At the UK Israel Conference 2017’ organised by the main Israel lobby group in this country, BICOM Thornberry gushed:

‘Let me start by thanking BICOM and the Jewish News for inviting me to today’s historic event and once again for giving me the opportunity to emphasise the Labour Party’s long-standing, unstinting and unequivocal support for the State of Israel’ ‘and continued

 ‘even today despite the challenges that we must address in respect of relations and rights of the Palestinian people modern Israel stands out as a beacon of freedom, equality and democracy... in a region where oppression, discrimination and inequality are too often the norm.’

Electronic Intifada described her speech thus:

The UK Labour Party’s shadow foreign minister Emily Thornberry gave a speech last month that could have been written by a pro-Israel lobbyist.

In a groveling address in front of the Israeli ambassador at the Labour Friends of Israel annual dinner, Thornberry attacked BDS, the Palestinian-led boycott divestment and sanctions campaign.

She claimed BDS was “bigotry against the Israeli nation [that] has never been justified.” She said that “boycott of its products, its culture or its academics” was akin to “hatred of the nation and its people.

Instead of appeasing our enemies perhaps PSC could organise a lobby of parliament on the theme ‘it’s time to Boycott the State of Israel’.

The Palestinian Authority – A Quisling Authority

When the Apartheid regime in South Africa sponsored the Inkatha Freedom Party, under Mangosuthu Buthelezi , in order to portray the anti-Apartheid struggle as riven by Black on Black violence, the Anti-Apartheid Movement denounced this apartheid stooge.

Abbas's security forces prevent demonstrations in Ramallah

In Palestine today we have what Electronic Intifada has described as a Vichy regime. The PA openly collaborates with Israeli security forces, something which Mahmoud Abbas has described as ‘sacred’. The PA is an enemy of the Palestinian people yet PSC has never uttered even one word of criticism. On the contrary it maintains close relations with the Palestinian ‘Embassy’ in London. It is no accident that whilst Trump has withdrawn all funding from UNRWA and Palestinian education he has ring-fenced money for the PA’s security forces. Why are we silent? Is the torture of Palestinians by Abbas’s collaborators more acceptable than their torture by Israel’s Shin Bet?

Debate on Oslo Accords in London Labour Briefing October 1993 (date on article is wrong)

In 1993 I published an article on the Oslo Accords. Virtually everything I wrote in the article has come true.  The faces of Israeli police have been replaced by Palestinians. The PA’s primary role is suppressing the Palestinian struggle.  PSC’s purpose is to support the Palestinian struggle, regardless of whether their enemy comes in the guise of a Zionist or a Palestinian.

The need for a Strategy for the Palestinian solidarity movement

Anyone reading the latest Report from PSC Executive to Annual Conference 2019 would think that the movement goes onwards and upwards.  All we need to do is to work a little harder.

There is no sense that the struggle for Palestine liberation is, above all, a political one. Every victory, be it against HSBC or Veolia is of course welcome but the road is going to be a long and hard one. PSC should also stop trying to claim credit for victories like HSBC when it is clear that  War on Want did the original research that laid the basis for our triumph.

We need to soberly assess our strengths and weaknesses and also our opponents’ strengths and weak points. Self-congratulation and pretending that everything is right are the hall marks of a political sect not a genuine solidarity organisation.

PSC should be encouraging its branches to have programmes of internal political education. Most peoples’ knowledge of the history of Zionism and for example Mandate Palestine under the British is poor. Apart from anything else it would be the most effective means of dealing with tropes about ‘Rothschild Zionism’ and other anti-Semitic nonsense that people come out with. For example how many people know that the origins of Zionism are Christian not Jewish? A series of educational fact sheets would not go amiss.

PSC has barely if at all grown in the past decade. It was 5,000 a decade ago. We are told that growth in membership for the past year has been 31% which would be impressive if we had been told the membership figures a year ago!

We could begin by assessing our own strength.  In most branches national PSC members constitute a minority. It would be useful to know the membership of each branch and for that matter how many branches are genuinely active.

Branch development should be at the forefront of PSC’s activities. There should be a branch membership officer. PSC should be more than the sum of its branches.  At the moment the opposite is true.

Civil Liberties for Palestinian supporters are under attack

In the past year or so there have been frequent attacks and disruptions of Palestine meetings. Speakers such as Tom Suarez and Jackie Walker have had meetings either disrupted or banned altogether. There is a concerted campaign, led by the Board of Deputies and the CAA to try and close down our activities. We even had a group of about 30 or so Zionists halting the Balfour Day march last year.

We should launch a national campaign around free speech on Palestine specifically designed to halt the attempts to close down meetings on Palestine/ Zionism under the pretext of ‘anti-Semitism’. We should approach other organisations such as the Quakers and Liberty to highlight the Zionist attempt to suppress Free Speech on Palestine. We could do worse than having a printed leaflet ready for groups and branches facing attempts to prevent them holding meetings.

PSC has so far done nothing about the group of Zionist fascists who I’ve named and shamed on my blog. This should end. We should be devising a strategy to put an end to these disruptions. We should consider forming a stewards group in London to prevent physical attacks on meetings and we should also be working with groups like the Islamic Human Rights Commission whose own Al Quds demonstration has come under attack by a combination of far-Right Zionists and Tommy Robinson supporters this year.

We should give critical support to this demonstration and rebut the suggestion that Hamas or Hizbollah are terrorists. The political use of the ‘terrorist’ label should be opposed. Terrorism means the use of violence against civilian targets and there is none more guilty of terrorism than Israel.

We should also work with and encourage groups of activists like Inminds.  PSC should stop being sectarian.

PSC Executive

The Executive needs a shakeup. It resembles a clique, a self-perpetuating group of friends. We need to open up the Executive to activists in the branches. The Constitution makes provision for 5 Regional representatives but the Executive has ignored this provision. Their election should be a priority in the coming year.

Tony Greenstein

Caroline Lucas MP - A response to my blog

Caroline Lucas - Did she resign as a patron of StWC under pressure or was it all a coincidence?

Three days ago I posted a blog on Caroline Lucas's decision to resign as patron of the Stop the War Coalition.  In it I made it clear that in my view this decision was as a result of the political atmosphere and pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to dissociate himself from StWC.  That is still my view.  Caroline disagrees and she sent me an email in response.  I post it below and leave readers to judge accordingly.

Tony Greenstein

Jeremy Corby -- right in 2003 and right now

'My decision (to resign as patron of StWC) was not the result of me being put under pressure'  Caroline Lucas

On 9 Dec 2015, at 19:19, Tony Greenstein wrote:

If Corbyn had been a guest speaker at a British arms manufacturer's dinner the Labour right would have applauded

19:01 

Dear Caroline,

as someone who voted for you in the last election and as someone who has always respected you, I am astounded at your decision to resign from the Stop the War Coalition. 

There has been a barrage of attacks on opponents of war in the past week.  MPs who resent being held accountable, false tales of mobs besieging an MP Stella Creasy's home, Tom Watson shooting from the mouth and then having to recant. 

The Daily Mail doesn't like saying that the French state bore any responsibility for Isis's murder rampage in Paris.  It is like blaming the Jews for Hitler.  The Mail obviously forgets the time when it attacked Jewish refugees and asylum seekers and praised Hitler!

The anti-Labour Daily Mail just loves John Woodcocks asinine comment

Stop the War Coalition is the major anti-war group in this country.  Not surprisingly, given Jeremy Corbyn's links to the group, it has come under heavy attack including for a post re the Paris massacre when it said that France had reaped the whirlwind of its actions in Lebanon.

It is clear and obvious that StWC did not support the actions of ISIS in any form and whether its choice of words was clumsy or not is a matter for debate.

None of this excuses a decision to withdraw support for them at this point.  It is an act of cowardice.  Now is the time to give them support not to withdraw under fire.  I have previously written to you about the support for Israel and Zionism by the  Green Party in Germany and in particular its racist Bundestag member Volker Beck.  I'm not aware of you having  issued any statement concerning this.

I truly hope you reconsider your action, and reverse what you have done.  When the anti-war movement is under attack that is not the time to run away.  Either you identify with the allies of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the other butchers, which is what those who voted for war last week did or you identify with the anti-war movement, which in this country is represented by StWC.  There is no other choice.

I am deeply disappointed by your actions and hope you are brave enough to recant.

Regards

          Tony Greenstein

Unfortunately progressives covers a multitude of sins

Jeremy Corbyn speaking on the StWC platform and defying the Labour warmongers' demands to resign

On 10 December 2015 at 14:44, LUCAS, Caroline <caroline.lucas.mp@parliament.uk> wrote:

Dear Tony,

Thank you for making me aware of your concerns about my resignation as a patron of Stop the War Coalition.

You raise a number of points in your email thread, many of which are about wider foreign policy issues. We may not always agree on the details, but I am surprised that you are questioning my commitment to opposing military strikes on Syria. Have you read my contribution to the parliamentary debate? You can do so here:  I think it’s important that such decisions are evidence based and that includes evidence about the West’s motivation, their historical role in the Middle East and the impact on their ongoing decisions.

I see from your blog that you have read my statement about the decision to resign as a patron and am unclear why you have taken that to assume anything more than it says. I stood down a month ago and very much regret the way this information was put into the public domain. It didn’t come from me and, indeed, I very deliberately didn’t publicise it because I knew detractors would seek to use it to attack both StWC and Jeremy Corbyn. I have spoken on StWC platforms since my resignation and want to assure you the decision was not the result of me being put under pressure. On the contrary, it was a considered move that genuinely reflects the demands I have on my time and a long standing principle that, if I am going to take on such roles, I should do so only if I have time to be actively engaged in the workings and decisions of the organisation in question.

The right wing media have misrepresented this decision and I am saddened that you have fallen for that- not least because it means you have become party to their narrative - and not taken the time to confirm the facts before writing your blog.

Best wishes, Caroline

Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion

House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

Tel: 020 7219 7025
Email: caroline.lucas.mp@parliament.uk

Web www.carolinelucas.com

Facebook /carolinelucas.page  

Twitter @carolinelucas

On 10 December 2015 at 17:57, Tony Greenstein wrote:

Dear Caroline,

thank you for this clarification.  I have not doubted your opposition to the bombing of Syria but I have criticised the arguments you used for coming to this decision.  Namely that you haven't seen evidence to suggest it would achieve its objects, which does tend to suggest that if there had been such evidence available then you might have voted differently.

This isn't a question of hairsplitting.  Your argument assumes that the West has an inherent right to intervene even if, in this instance it shouldn't.  I am arguing that there is no such right.  The very presence of the West militarily in the Middle East is the problem.  Everywhere it goes it supports and upholds tyranny and sectarianism and confessionalism.  Its only duty is to get out of the area and if it is so concerned about Isis, which I doubt very much given the nature of its alliances, then it can supply weaponry to progressive groups like the Kurds.

I am happy to take on board your assurances that you weren't responsible for the leaking of your decision to quit as a patron and that you are still speaking on its platforms and regret any suggestion to the contrary.

If you have no objections I will put on my blog your letter and my response.

Best wishes

tony

December 12th 2015

Dear Caroline,

Further to my previous email, I would like to make some additional points.

I will also assume, in view of your non-response to my previous letter, that you have no objection to my posting your response on my blog.

1.    I have never doubted your opposition to the bombing of Syria but what I do question are the grounds that you base this on.  Your opposition to the bombing is not based on the principle of non-interference by the West in the affairs of the Middle East and Syria in particular, but on the particular merits of whether to bomb in this case.  In other words they are not based on anti-imperialism.

2.  I watched much of the debate and saw you speak so I don't need to delve into Hansard!

3.  I agree that we can't disregard evidence but that evidence is damning.  We are allied with Saudi Arabia, the largest funder of Jihadist groups and with Turkey, which is guilty of genocide against the Turks, both in the past and today, as well as act ing as Isis's rear supply base and conduit for its oil trade.  Coupled with recently released Defence Intelligence Agency memos in the USA, this would suggest that there is  far more at stake than simply the defeat of Isis. 

4.  Re your decision to stand down as a patron of StWC.  I accept that you have spoken on their platforms since your decision to stand down as a patron and I hope you continue to do so, but given that there has been a consistent campaign, far longer than a month, to pressurise Jeremy Corbyn to dissociate himself from StWC then I still find your decision inexplicable.  It cannot be seen as anything other than a concession to these same pressures.  My understanding is that it related to two articles, both of which were taken down on the StWC web site as well as the question of whether Syrians who supported the bombing should speak at the House of Commons.

I have reposted one of the articles Age of Despair: Reaping the Whirlwind of Western Support for Extremist Violence  on my blog.  I can see nothing wrong with its analysis.  Chris Floyd states the obvious which is that attacks in the West and Paris in particular are a consequence of our activity in the Middle East, not least the creation of Isis.  I don't know whether you actually read the article, but Chris Floyd say that:

'I write in despair. Despair of course at the depravity displayed by the murderers of innocents in Paris tonight; but an even deeper despair at the depravity of the egregious murderers who have brought us to this ghastly place in human history'.  I cannot see anything wrong with this.

Apparently there was another article which compared Isis to those who believe in international solidarity.  If true this is crass and absurd and of course the article should have been taken down but it wasn't written on behalf of StWC.

The proper response would have been to point the finger at those who criticise StWC and who are entertained, wined and dined by the arms lobby in this country.

5.  Yes the right-wing media have used your decision for their own purposes.  That was eminently forseeable.  Regardless of the reasons for your decision and only you know what they are, it should have been obvious to you, coming at the time that it did, that your decision would be used to put pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to break his links with StWC.  You are not a political virgin.  You have been an MEP and now an MP for 16 years.  You must have known that your decision would leak out.  How could it have been otherwise?

I therefore don't accept that I have become a party to the right-wing's narrative.  What I have tried to do is to ensure that that narrative doesn't go unchallenged.  I am not aware that you have challenged it.

I think it is incumbent upon you to make it clear, publicly, that regardless of any  political differences with the leadership of StWC, that you support what is the major anti-war organisation in this country.

Best wishes

Tony