Showing posts with label Thornberry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thornberry. Show all posts

6 February 2024

Bristol University has just been found to have unfairly dismissed Professor David Miller - Yet Palestine Solidarity Campaign REFUSED to support him

We Need a New Palestine Solidarity Organisation since PSC is neither Democratic, Anti-Zionist or Politically Coherent

In 1982, just before Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Operation Peace for Galilee, a group of about 15 of us decided, at a meeting held at the University of London Union, to form Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

PSC then was anti-Zionist calling for a democratic, secular state in Palestine. This was a very different period from today. There was a radical Labour administration at the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone which gave us support.  There was the Miners’ Strike in 1984-5. PSC fitted into all of this activism.

The decay in PSC began with the Oslo Accords, the single greatest political defeat for the Palestinians since the Nakba. It led to the legitimisation of Zionism as the United Nations overturned Resolution 3379 of 10 November 1975, which stated that Zionism was a form of racism.

Caroline Lucas, Brighton's Green MP, signed a statement with Tory racists calling for David Miller to be Sacked

As a result of Oslo, on 16 November 1991 the UN passed Resolution 46/86 overturning Resolution 3379. In exchange for minor concessions the PLO agreed to recognise the Israeli state.

In 1993 PSC voted at an Emergency AGM to endorse the Oslo Accords believing that Israel was going to agree to a Palestinian state. As I predicted at the time, the Oslo Accords, with the Palestinian Authority as Israel’s military subcontractor, substituted the faces of Israeli police for Palestinian ones.

I resigned from PSC and it wasn’t until 2005 that I rejoined at the invitation of PSC’s then General Secretary, Betty Hunter.

On 6 April 2022 I resigned again when PSC removed opposition to Zionism from a new Constitution.  In August 2022 I posted an email exchange I had had with Ben Jamal, PSC’s Director concerning the reasons for my resignation.

I did not take this step lightly but I felt that to remain a member of an organisation which was politically bankrupt and which consistently tried to appease the British Establishment and the Zionists was pointless.

Imagine the Anti-Apartheid Movement confining itself to opposing human rights abuses by the South African state whilst taking no position on Apartheid itself. By refusing to oppose Zionism, PSC refuses to oppose the ideology of the Israeli state that lies at the heart of its Jewish supremacist policies and ethnic cleansing.

PSC’s Disastrous Failure to Oppose the ‘Anti-Semitism’ Attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Left

PSC’s most egregious error was to ignore the Zionist attacks on Corbyn and the newly resurgent Labour Left. Corbyn had been PSC’s main parliamentary supporter. The failure to stand up to those crying ‘anti-Semitism’ was a fatal error that led to a serious defeat for the whole Palestine solidarity movement. It stemmed from PSC’s desire to present itself to Britain’s pro-Zionist Establishment as a safe and trustworthy pair of hands.

In March 2016 I was singled out by the Jewish Labour Movement  and suspended by the Labour Party. I wrote to PSC Secretary Ben Sofa on 11 April 2016 asking why PSC had been silent over the ‘anti-Semitism’ attaacks. Ben responded on 20 April in what was a master class in complacency. He wrote that

‘I make no apology for the fact that we do not engage in every debate some would wish to involve us in.’

First I was suspended, then Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone and Marc Wadsworth. More were to follow as Corbyn buckled. Throughout this time PSC did absolutely nothing. As far as they were concerned what was happening in the Labour Party was a foreign country yet, as we have seen, the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign spread into virtually every area of society.

PSC seemed oblivious to how false allegations of anti-Semitism were being used to undermine solidarity with the Palestinians. They preferred engaging in routine activities to taking on the Zionist enemy.

When the Zionists, who at first pretended that their opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ had nothing to do with Palestine, proposed that Labour adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which conflated anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, PSC continued to do nothing. Seven of the IHRA’s 11 ‘examples’ of anti-Semitism were to do with Israel not Jews. PSC refused to even support a picket of Labour’s National Executive in September 2019 which approved the IHRA.

As Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge wrote in Defining Anti-Semitism, the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’

PSC confined themselves to writing letters to local authorities urging them not to adopt the IHRA. PSC made a written submission to the Chakrabarti Inquiry and it helped commission an Opinion on the IHRA from Hugh Tomlinson QC and that was it.

PSC’s Alliance with the Trade Union Bureaucracy

PSC’s main achievement had been in the trade union movement. Most trade unions were affiliated to it. PSC could have used these affiliations to fight back against the adoption of the IHRA by increasing numbers of civil society groups at the behest of the Jewish Labour Movement and the Israeli Embassy funded Labour Friends of Israel. The trade unions controlled the Labour Party. PSC could have supported Corbyn against his Zionist detractors but they chose not to.

When PSC held a trade union conference in October 2019 I distributed leaflets opposing the IHRA at the conference.  Prior to this I had written, as had Brighton and Hove PSC, to Ben Sofa and Ben Jamal, PSC’s Director, asking that the IHRA be placed on the agenda of the conference. What was Jamal’s response? To throw me out of the conference for not having permission to distribute the leaflets! Suffice to say the IHRA was not on the agenda.

The IHRA and the Sacking of David Miller

At a time when the IHRA was being used to attack activists and academics, PSC sat on the sidelines. Over 150 local authorities had adopted the IHRA. Big Ride for Palestine was banned by Tower Hamlets council.

One particularly outrageous case was where the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism attempted to get Rebecca Gould, an academic at Bristol University sacked, because of an article ‘Beyond Anti-Semitism’ which she had written on how the Holocaust and ‘the spectre of anti-Semitism’ is used to suppress discussion of Palestinian oppression. Even Kenneth Stern, the person who drafted the IHRA, condemned this attack as ‘McCarthy like’ and ‘chilling’.

Also at Bristol University Professor David Miller was dismissed as a result of a Zionist witchhunt. PSC refused to support David because his research was into the Zionist lobby. Instead they put out an anodyne statement which implicitly criticised him:

When addressing such issues, it is crucial to apply depth, context, and clarity, and to avoid narratives that oversimplify the interlinks between groups which oppose actions in support of Palestinian rights, and Israeli state actors. Doing so obscures our understanding of the way political actors’ function. At worst, it can risk drawing on anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power.

Whilst some have criticised Professor Miller for lacking such depth and clarity in the way he has couched his remarks, those leading the call for Professor Miller to be sacked are straightforwardly asserting that to define Zionism as a movement and political ideology that is racist is inherently anti-Semitic.

After Miller’s dismissal PSC put out another statement which instead of condemning his dismissal called it ‘deeply concerning and sets a dangerous precedent’. It also failed to call for his reinstatement.

Today David Miller has been vindicated after an Employment Tribunal ruled that he had been unfairly dismissed and that anti-Zionism was a protected belief under the Equality Act 2000.

I have written asking Caroline Lucas to Apologise for Her Previous Support for David Miller's Dismissal

Internationally the Zionist campaign to target anti-Zionists via the IHRA was proceeding apace. The Bundestag in May 2019 condemned BDS as ‘anti-Semitic’. 

Why then did PSC confine its activities to making paper submissions and writing letters? The reason was PSC didn’t want to offend the trade union leaders who had given the IHRA their support and they didn’t want to jeopardise their affiliations by going to rank and file trade union members.

One of the most despicable of Starmer's supporters Lisa Nandy, a vociferous supporter of Israel's genocide in Gaza that PSC put on its platforms

Two States or a Unitary State? A Failure to Explain What PSC Wants to Achieve

PSC accepted that Israel was an Apartheid State but it refused to draw the obvious conclusions, namely that if Israel was an apartheid, state, then it had to go. It was afraid of saying that a Jewish state was an inherently racist state.

This was not a difficult thing to do. In January 2021 B’tselem, had not only declared that Israel was an apartheid state but that there was a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Jewish Supremacy was not a phrase PSC used.

This was followed up in April 2021 by Human Rights Watch which declared ‘A Threshold Crossed - Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.’  A year later Amnesty International produced a Report, ‘Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians’.

Declaring for a unitary, democratic secular state was not difficult, except that PSC, under the control of a tiny ex-Trotskyist group Socialist Action, alongside various remnants of what had been the International Marxist Group, were unwilling to do so. 

In 2009 I pointed to the role in PSC of the secretive Socialist Action  group which with Jon Lansman had colluded in the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt in the Labour Party which the Jewish Chronicle then cited.

Btselem, which started life as a liberal Zionist group, declared that

‘More than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule.’

When Jenny Tonge Came Under Criticism From the Right-Wing Press PSC Abandoned Her

There is already a single state in Palestine but one in which half the population have no civil or political rights. PSC Executive’s pretext for refusing to declare in favour of a unitary state was that it was up to the Palestinians to decide this question but Palestinians are in no position to make any decision but it is clear that given the choice Palestinians want to live in the whole of historic Palestine.

An article for the Washington institute for Near Eastern Policy  explained that

the two-state solution (this) is no longer a popular position among Palestinians. Less than 40 percent of the Palestinian public—in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem—supports it over one-state alternatives. Support for a two-state solution has declined steadily since 2018.

Further, most Palestinians believe that a two-state solution is unlikely to emerge from the conflict. Instead, a majority of them say they prefer to reclaim all of historic Palestine, including the pre-1967 Israel. A one-state solution with Arabs and Jews holding equal rights comes in second. Similarly, recent polling from PCPSR finds support among Palestinians and Israeli Jews for a two-state solution has dropped to 43 percent and 42 percent, respectively.

But even if Palestinians did support a two-state solution then that would only be because a state in the whole of Palestine was deemed impossible to achieve. PSC is not addressing Palestinians but British people. When people ask what we would like to see we should be clear – one state with equal rights for Jews and Arabs. 

One state was the demand of the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. Only far-right White racists wanted a White state. The two-state solution in Palestine, which the West supports, is an apartheid neo-colonial solution. It leaves a racist Jewish state intact.

The real reason why PSC won’t support a one state solution is the trade unions. All Britain’s unions support 2 States. This allows them to support both the Palestinians and the Zionists. Not for the first time trade union leaders have faced both ways. On the one hand supporting Israel and on the other supporting its victims.

We saw this during the height of the false anti-Semitism campaign. Dave Prentis, the General Secretary of UNISON, pledged his support for the Palestinians and on the other hand wrote in the New Statesman ‘Why Labour must adopt the full IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.’

Why could Prentis and other union leaders do this?  Because historically the unions have been supporters of British imperialism. Instead of confronting unions with the choice of supporting an apartheid state or a democratic state, two states allows them to face both ways at the same time. They can support Israel (dressed up as opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’) and also support the Palestinians. It enables people like Prentis to work openly with the JLM.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign is a Human Rights NGO not a Political, Campaigning Organisation

Because PSC supports a two-state solution i.e. a ‘Jewish’ state and a Palestinian state, it sees its role as primarily one of opposing human rights abuses and in the current context Israel’s genocide. It allows the field to be clear for the Zionists and their ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.

Since October 7 there have been a number of very large demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in Gaza. PSC has been one of 6 organisations - CND, Stop the War Coalition, Friends of Al Aqsa, the Palestinian Forum and the Muslim Association of Britain organising the demonstrations. By itself PSC is incapable, given its past record, of mobilising more than 5,000 people. In reality the demonstrations built themselves as people spontaneously joined them, appalled as they were by the continuing genocide in Gaza.

PSC’s Strategy of ‘Mainstreaming’

Emily Thornberry at Labour Friends of Israel dinner

The strategy of PSC is to mainstream the issue of Palestine. What this means is attempting to get the British state to adopt a pro-Palestinian position by winning over the Establishment. It is doomed to failure, as we have seen over Gaza, because it fails to take account of the fact that the British state is an imperialist state. The British Establishment is committed to its financial, economic and political interests world wide. Palestinians come very far down their list of priorities.

Anti-imperialism plays no part in PSC’s politics. That is why PSC has put on its platform vile Zionists like Emily Thornberry who declared at an LFI dinner that 'Israel is a Beacon of Freedom and Democracy'  before going on to say that supporters of the Palestinians (who she called ‘anti-Semites’) should be ‘drummed out of the party.’


 

Palestine Solidarity Campaign as a Wannabee Establishment Group

PSC and its Director Ben Jamal reacted with horror when Palestine Action, which was set up about 4 years ago, began a campaign of direct action against Elbit’s arms factories and those who were trading with it. They immediately attacked it, got the Boycott National Committee to do the same and issued bogus legal advice about the dangers of PSC branches supporting Palestine Action.

However the popularity of PA amongst PSC activists led PSC’s Executive to have to accept support for PA at the 2022 conference. However PSC have done zilch to implement that policy.

When Mick Napier and I were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 before Xmas Electronic Intifada contacted them. What was their reaction?  ‘No one is available to comment’. The British State is using ‘terrorism’ against Palestine solidarity activists and PSC has nothing to say about this attack on our freedom to speak out on Palestine.

PSC Attacks Its Own Members

PSC took fright when the 7 October breakout from Gaza concentration camp happened. They demanded that Manchester PSC take down a post from its website supporting the breakout. Harry Cole, political editor of The Sun, called the Manchester post “appalling” and suggested it was a matter for the police.

Despite the branch complying with PSC’s demands, PSC decided to suspend the officers of Manchester PSC anyway. As a result Manchester PSC has formally cut ties with PSC nationally and is now an independent group.  See UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign punishes Manchester branch

PSC Refuses to Condemn the Palestinian Authority

Despite its role as Israel’s military subcontractor, arresting Palestinians and handing them over to Israel, PSC has refused to utter a word of criticism of this Quisling Authority. A third of the PA’s budget goes on security, the highest in the world. Its security forces operate on behalf of the Israeli military. The PA are used to suppress demonstrations and opposition by Palestinians to Israel’s occupation. Mahmoud Abbas, its notional ‘President’ considers cooperation between the Israeli state and the PA as ‘sacred.

The security services of the PA are a bunch of thugs who in August 2021 murdered Palestinian activist Nizar Banat. My resolution to PSC AGM condemning his murder was opposed by PSC Executive and the sheep present voted it down.

The invasion of Gaza by Israel and the resulting genocide have created a mass movement in support of the Palestinians.  That movement will not always be around although Israel’s image will have been irreparably damaged. It is important that the opportunity should be taken now, when most groups that have sprung up – from Parents for Palestine to School students groups – have no connection with PSC to take steps to form a genuine, anti-imperialist solidarity movement and not a glorified NGO. We have no time to lose.

Tony Greenstein

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18 October 2023

Israel's Denial That It Bombed Al Ahli Hospital Is As Credible As Its Denial That It Murdered Shireen Abu Akleh

After Killing 500 More Palestinians It's Time We Accepted that Israel is a Genocidal, Ethnic Cleansing, Failed Apartheid  State - We Need a Democratic not a Jewish State


Israel’s bombing of Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza

Israeli Ghoul & Liar-in-Chief  

How the Media Converted Lies Into Truth & Truth Into Lies

This was published in the Western Mail 31.7.14. in the midst of Israel's last major blitzkrieg in Gaza. See how accurate are its predictions?

The BBC and the Prostitute Media are going into overdrive to convince us that the Palestinians bombed their own hospital. They are lying through their teeth. If you want to read about the mendacity and dishonesty of the establishment press see Media Lens's The ‘Absolute Right’ To Commit War Crimes? Gaza, Israel And Labour ‘Opposition’.   

Whilst Israeli right-wingers are boasting about Israel's bombing of the hospital, its leaders are pretending that it was an own goal. Israel did exactly the same a year ago when it put out a fake video claiming that the Palestinians had killed Shireen Abu Akleh. It was only research by CNN, the NYT, Forensic Architecture, B'tselem and Bellingcat among others that forced Israel to admit that its soldiers had murdered Shireen.

Jonathan Cook, an award winning former Guardian journalist, hit the nail on the head when he said that we are in another WMD situation. We are being gaslighted. Cook declared:

It's not just unlikely that a Palestinian rocket hit the Gaza hospital. It's impossible. The media know this, they just don't dare say it 

Max Blumenthall of Grayzone in Judgment Day - The Grayzone live   methodically examines the footage of the missile hitting the hospital. This was no misfired rocket dropping from the air at a slow velocity but a high explosive supersonic missile.  But Biden and the United States will buy into any lie to exonerate its guard dog in the Middle East.

Max Blumenthall of Grayzone Examines the footage of the missile strike on Al Ahli Hospital and finds Israel's explanation woefully lacking

The BBC and Sky are happy to run with these lies because they serve the British State's interests. These are the same media outlets who tried to convince us in September 2022 that Russia bombed its own Nordstream 2 oil pipeline. They then 'forgot' to mention that Biden had declared only 7 months previously that the US would not allow the pipeline to operate.

Israel has once again resorted to putting out videos 'proving' it was a failed rocket. At least one of them is of 2022 vintage. 

Israel’s military and political echelons have developed a culture of lying. 20 years ago, Israelis expressed skepticism about official statements. Quoting from Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom:

[R]espected Israeli commentators have grown skeptical of Israeli government sources. “The state authorities, including the defense establishment and its branches,” Uzi Benziman observed in Haaretz, “have acquired for themselves a shady reputation when it comes to their credibility.” The “official communiqués published by the IDF have progressively liberated themselves from the constraints of truth,” B. Michael wrote in Yediot Ahronot, and the “heart of the power structure”—that is, the police, army, and intelligence—has been infected by a “culture of lying.” 

Sources: Uzi Benziman, “Until Proved Otherwise,” Haaretz (18 June 2006); B. Michael, “Of Liars and Hunters,” Yediot Ahronot (3 September 2005); B. Michael, “Stop the Lying!,” Yediot Ahronot (5 September 2008).  

Norman Finkelstein “HOW CAN ANYONE TRUST THE ISRAELI MILITARY?”

It is obvious to anyone with a brain cell that Hamas and Islamic Jihad do not possess a rocket with the capability of completely destroying a hospital. If they had such a capacity then they would have caused mass casualties in Ashkelon, Tel Aviv and elsewhere. This was not a rocket that fell from the sky having misfired but a high explosive missile that hit the hospital at supersonic speed.

The fact that Biden, who recently falsely claimed to have seen photos of the severed head of Israeli babies, is prepared to lie so blatantly demonstrates that the West is willing to turn a blind eye to any and every Israeli war crime. But why shouldn't Biden approve of Israel's bombing of a hospital? He is seeking the extradition of Julian Assange for revealing American war crimes in Iraq.

The fake news story of 40 babies who had been decapitated is atrocity propaganda whose purpose is to provide the justification for very real atrocities, such as are currently happening. And if false news stories don't work then don't worry. Israel's Communications Minister, Shlomo Karhi, is proposing draft regulations titled “Limiting Aid to the Enemy through Communication.”  Karhi has openly declared that their purpose is to stop Al Jazeera reporting from Israel. Karhi fully understands that the BBC and the western media can be trusted not to report the truth. 

Israel’s bombing of Al Ahli hospital in Gaza was predictable. Contrary to the lies of Mark Regev that Israel doesn’t target medical facilities, this is exactly what Israel has been doing. 

Hananya Naftali, a staffer to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted of Israel’s attack on the hospital before he realised that that was not the official line. See Israel claims Hamas blew up hospital – but Netanyahu staffer boasted Israel did it.

Israel’s Operation Barbarossa

Just 3 days ago Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer prize winning journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the US blowing up of Russia’s Nordstream 2 pipeline, wrote about The Plan To Wipe Out Hamas.

Hersh had been told by an Israeli official that Israel has been trying to convince Qatar to fund a tent city for the million Palestinian refugees waiting across the border.

The key issue for Israel’s war planners was their reluctance, despite mobilising more than 300,000 reservists, to engage in a door-to-door street battle with Hamas in Gaza City. One veteran of the IDF told Hersch that half of the Israeli Army has been engaged in the protection of the West Bank settlements. 

“The Israeli planners don’t trust their infantry…. (because of) a disastrous lack of combat experience.”

Israel's soldiers are very good when it comes to killing women, children and the elderly but they're not so great when it comes to fighting hardened guerilla fighters.

another child killed

Israel’s operational plan calls for the Air Force to destroy the remaining structures in Gaza City and elsewhere in the north. Gaza City will be no more. Israel will then begin dropping American-made 5,000-pound bombs known as “bunker busters,” or JDAMs, in the flattened areas where Hamas fighters are known to live and manufacture their missiles and other weapons underground.

The Israeli plan to raze Gaza City to the ground is not one whit different from Hitler’s intention in Operation Barbarossa to raze Moscow and Leningrad to the ground. 

The plans of Israeli strategists are, like their Nazi predecessors, also likely to meet with failure. The bombing of the Al Ahli hospital will make it more difficult for Israel’s planners to achieve their objectives given the worldwide repugnance felt to Israel's proposed carnage. The Palestinian refugees too don’t want to leave and Egypt’s regime doesn’t want them.

However the plans of Netanyahu’s war mongers, the deliberate bombing of a hospital and the open rejoicing of Israelis at the murder of 500+ Palestinians raise questions that cannot be avoided.

The Israeli state began its life with the massacre of thousands of Palestinians and the expulsion of three-quarters of a million refugees in what became known as the Nakba. Throughout the 1950s there were smaller expulsions and then the 1956 Suez War in which Israel attacked Egypt before being forced to retreat by President Eisenhower. In 1967 Israel launched another war and this time captured the Sinai, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Former Israeli Labor Party Deputy Prime Minister and Supporter of the Greater Israel Movement, Yigal Allon

From the occupation of the West Bank there grew the messianic settler and religious nationalist movement which continued the old Labour Zionist project of settlement, theft of Palestinian land and now open pogroms against the indigenous Palestinians. The founders of the Greater Israel Movement were not right-wing Zionists but some of the most revered members of the Labour Zionist movement like Yisrael Galili, Yitzhak Tabenkin and Yigal Allon, the former Deputy Prime Minister.

The goal of these settlers, as with their Labour Zionist predecessors, was to make Palestine as Jewish as possible with as few Arabs as possible. In the words of Yair Lapid, leader of Israel’s centrist Yesh Atid,

My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians.

Zionism and the Israeli state has always been a racial preservation project. Only stupid westerners fell for the oxymoronic Jewish Democratic State formula. As Rabbi Meir Kahane, the leader of the neo-Nazi Kach Party, who Ben Gvir, Israel’s Police Minister reveres to this day, explained Israel could either be a Jewish or a Democratic state but it could not be both. If Israel was democratic then Palestinian Israelis, some 20% of the population could grow into a majority and Israel would no longer be a Jewish state.

Israel is an ethno- religious state. It is a throwback to the feudal era whereby the State was identified with a particular religion. Those not of that religion were persecuted. This was the major achievement of the 1789 French Revolution which separated religion from the state.

The Christian ethno-nationalist states of Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s - Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia - were also the most anti-Semitic states whose savagery outdid that of the Nazis themselves. An ethno-religious state is inherently a racist and apartheid state.

There are a number of states that call themselves religious states – from Iran to Britain, which is nominally a Christian country. But in Iran Muslims are not privileged over Jews. If anything it is Muslims who are the most oppressed. Islam is used to justify their oppression. In Britain Jews and Muslims don’t have inferior political and civil rights to Christians. No one argues that Jews or Muslims should not be allowed to buy ‘Christian’ land.

Israel blocks humanitarian aid

But in Israel 93% of the land is in the hands of the state. Non-Jews are barred from that land, which is controlled by the Jewish National Fund and the Israeli Land Authority. As the Jewish Nation State Law  makes clear the State belongs to the Jews and no one else. Hence State land is Jewish land.

Citizenship in Israel is almost meaningless since the criteria for belonging to the national collective is not citizenship but nationality. Only Jewish nationality counts. You can be an Arab, Druze, Muslim or a hundred other nationalities but none of them carry with them any entitlements.

Massive Demonstration in Karachi

As a British Jew I have more rights under Israel’s Law of Return than Palestinians who were born there. I have the automatic right to be an Israeli citizen if I emigrate to Israel whereas Palestinian refugees have no such right. That is why Gaza’s refugees do not want to exit Gaza for Egypt because they know very well that if they do cross into Egypt they will not be returning as Israel settles the Strip with Jews.

Those who argue for Egypt to take in Gaza’s residents, for ‘humanitarian’ reasons, to escape Israel’s bombing, are encouraging the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. There is only one response to Israel’s blitzkrieg and that is to demand an immediate ceasefire.

As long as Israel is a ‘Jewish’ State it will be an apartheid state and a genocidal state. Massacres of Arabs at Israel’s hands are nothing new. In 1982 Israel murdered more than 20,000 Lebanese civilians when it invaded Lebanon. It has killed thousands of Palestinians since its founding but worse than that, as a militarised state Israel has become the weapons supplier of choice to other genocidal regimes.

Demonstrators Attack UN Building in Beirut

In Guatemala Israeli supplies of arms and training military helped the regime kill up to 200,000 Mayan Indians. In Chile Israel was to the fore in arming Pinochet. In Argentina Israel helped to arm and train the regime’s torturers and military despite them having killed up to 3,000 Argentinian Jews. As Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister explained, when there is a choice between Jews and the Jewish state, then the latter comes first.

In a speech to the Central Committee of Mapai, Israel’s Labour Party, in December 1938, after Britain agreed to admit 10,000 Jewish children from Germany Ben Gurion said:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.

The policy of the Zionist movement throughout the Holocaust was to oppose the rescue of Jews to any country bar Palestine. The Zionist movement preferred dead Jews in Europe to rescuing Jews in countries other than Palestine.

Those who believe that Israel can become a normal western democracy are either fools or knaves. Israel can no more become a democracy than a dog can become a cat. Israel is an artificial state. In the words of Akiva Orr, Israel is an unJewish State. There is nothing Jewish about Israel except racially. Israel is the antithesis of ethical Judaism. Racial Judaism and Zionism is the mirror image of the Nazis' racial creed.

Israel is also irreformable. You would have a greater chance of getting a fox to befriend, rather than eat, a chicken than getting Israel to become a democracy. War and ethnic cleansing is part of its DNA. It has always rejected any peace initiative. Netanyahu made his name through his virulent opposition to the Oslo Accords and he helped incite those who killed Yitzhak Rabin. Whenever the Palestinians or Arabs wished to negotiate, an Israeli leader, be it Ehud Barak or Netanyahu would say that they have no partner for peace.

And if Israel is irreformable then there is only one answer left. The State of Israel has to be dismantled and destroyed. I emphasise the state. Unlike fascists I distinguish between a state and those living in it. In the same way as the Nazi and South African Apartheid states were destroyed. The people of Israel, be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim or of no religion have the absolute right to live there, but as equals not with any group being racially superior.

Of course the messianic Zionists won't accept living in peace and will either emigrate or die out, but it is time that the Palestinian solidarity movement moved on from 2 states to accept that Israel as a Jewish state has to go.

Israel Posts a 2022 Video to Prove That It Didn't Bomb the Al Ahli Hospital!

Extermination & Murder Are Part of the Zionist DNA

Although Israel officially denies that they targeted the Al Ahli hospital, supporters of its government aren’t denying it. Quite the contrary these human rodents are celebrating it. Dan Cohen, an Israeli journalist, in a series of tweets quotes one member of an Israeli Telegram channel with 87,000 followers exclaiming at the sight of the dead and mutilated: ‘“Great picture, although I’m missing some ketchup and corpses.” Let no-one be under any doubt that these Judeo-Nazi sentiments aren’t just those of the 87,000 lunatics but they represent the private positions  of the majority of Israel’s coalition. This is Zionism red in tooth and claw.

Today I was sent an article The Most Horrifying of Times - And What Can We Still Do? by veteran Israeli peace campaigner, Adam Keller. Keller is one of the few genuine anti-racists who supports a two state solution. I disagree with him but he is at least sincere unlike liars like Labour Friends of Israel.

Keller writes how genocide is now an appropriate term to use about Israel’s actions. He describes how the word ‘extermination’ with all its resonance of Auschwitz has now entered the language of Israeli politics in the so-called liberal oasis of Tel Aviv.

For many years, when I saw the word "Genocide" in the statements of radical groups in Israel and abroad, I would approach the writers and comment that - however appropriate the condemnation of Israeli acts of oppression - Genocide is not among these acts. But this week Roy Sharon, a "respectable" radio and TV commentator on the main Israeli broadcasting corporation, spoke very explicitly of his desire to see “a million dead bodies in Gaza”.

And the streets of Tel Aviv are flooded with red stickers reading "Exterminate Gaza!". Not "Destroy!", not "Flatten!" – but clearly and explicitly "Exterminate Gaza!". "Le-Ha-Sh-Mid!" - "Exterminate!" Every Hebrew-speaking Jewish Israeli knows from a young age exactly what this word means. ….

There is no escaping the horrifying statement - the idea of Genocide has now entered the public agenda in the State of Israel, and there is every justification to use this terrible word and to beat all the drums and raise all the possible alarms. ….

Almost immediately with the beginning of the war, demonstrations began demanding an exchange of prisoners, which persisted even when they encountered blatant violence by the right-wing people, in some cases joined by equally violent police. The demand for an exchange of captives and prisoners, for the return of the Israelis captured by Hamas and taken to Gaza, is an important and vital humanitarian demand in itself. But it is also the best way to still try to put a brake on the escalation towards a destructive and bloody ground invasion of Gaza.

An invasion in which the army would invade and crush Gaza with all its might would most likely lead to the killing of the Israeli abductees, among all the many others who would be killed. This was expressed with characteristic bluntness and ruthlessness by the extreme right Minister Smotritz: "We need to be cruel, not to think too much of the captives". Negotiating with Hamas for a prisoner exchange deal is not compatible with a total war whose goal is to completely destroy Hamas. This was explicitly stated by Tzachi Hanegbi, head of Israel's National Security Council. The State of Israel has a choice between two courses that in practice rule out each other - either an effort to bring back the captives and abductees from Gaza, or a ground invasion that will multiply the killing and destruction already caused in the week of bombings.

The Lie that Israel Doesn't Target Medical & Health Facilities

Al Jazeera reported six days ago how Talal Taha and his team at al-Shifa, Gaza City’s largest hospital, received an emergency call and leapt into action.

Three vehicles headed to a location in the vicinity of the city’s eastern cemetery on Saturday 7 October. The team followed the sound of cries for help as the city was enveloped in darkness.

 “All of a sudden we were targeted [by an air attack] and we ran for safety,” Taha, a paramedic, told how the emergency team jumped into their cars on Salah al-Din Road and the vehicles proceeded a few metres before another air strike hit. Three of his colleagues were killed and Taha was lightly injured. “Our mission is humanitarian, we provide humanitarian service only, and we were targeted without any reason, without any excuse,” he said.

Health authorities and medical organisations in the Gaza Strip have accused Israel of deliberately bombing ambulances and health facilities in the Gaza, despite it being a war crime.

Protests in Lebanon Against Bombing

The Palestine Red Crescent Society condemned

"the intentional targeting of medical teams”, which killed “four paramedics in less than half an hour today, despite prior coordination. Targeting medical personnel is a grave breach to international humanitarian law and to humanity, PRCS demands accountability for this war crime, urging immediate investigation and justice for the victims."

Fifteen ambulances and nine health institutions have been hit, including the Ministry of Health building, the Rimal Clinic and the International Eye Center. Doctors Without Borders, (Medecins sans Frontieres) said it had counted 16 medical personnel killed since Saturday 7 October, 18 ambulances destroyed and eight medical facilities damaged either totally or partially.

Sohaib Safi, medical coordinator for MSF in Gaza, said the scale of the damage was “very clear evidence” that medical aid in the enclave was being intentionally attacked by Israeli forces. Safi told Al Jazeera

“When ambulances are trying to reach areas under fire, they are targeted as a message that no one should get inside to evacuate injured or stuck people,”.

effect of Israel’s bombing of Gaza Hospital

At al-Shifa Hospital, it is not just patients and their families seeking help. Frightened Gaza City residents, too, have found shelter at the hospital, in the hope that it will not be attacked.

But already, the neonatal unit has been partly damaged due to bombardments around the facility. Mahmoud Shalabi, senior programme manager for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) expressed concern that this may be ‘the worst humanitarian catastrophe that Palestinians have seen since 1948.”

But instead of calling out Regev, the BBC entertains this liar and doesn’t even bother to grill him over his egregious lies. This despite the Israeli army's admitted lying about these things in the past.

The BBC also had to issue a ‘correction’ not an apology, for having branded the Palestine solidarity demonstrations at the weekend as ‘pro-Hamas’ an outrageous lie but yet more proof of its Zionist bias.

Bombing of Al Ahli Hospital

During the attacks on Gaza Israel has been absolutely clear that nothing will stand in the way of its objectives – to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinians.

What other meaning can one derive from a total blockade of food, water and fuel? This is a war of genocide and yet our political leaders, from Biden to Sunak, Starmer and Emily Thornberry gave their approval for these Nazi tactics.

At the Nuremberg trials of the major Nazi war criminals in 1946-7 and subsequent trials, 10 Nazis who were responsible for war crimes were hanged. Although the International Criminal Court doesn’t have the power to execute anyone, Biden et al should be charged with aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes and together with Netanyahu and Gantz, the two Israeli leaders most responsible, should be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

The Hannibal and Dahiya Doctrines

Israel is employing both the ‘Hannibal’ and ‘Dahiya’ doctrines. The first allows for massive attacks on civilian targets in order to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces. It was introduced in 1986, after a number of abductions of IDF soldiers in Lebanon and until 2003 Israeli military censorship forbade any discussion of the subject in the press. Its basis is that " kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces."

In other words Israel is prepared to sacrifice the lives of the 250 hostages in Gaza rather than allow them to be exchanged for Palestinian hostages in Israel’s prisons. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a ‘proud homophobe’ who is also Gauleiter of the West Bank had previously said “there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation.” Smotrich urged the Israeli army to “hit Hamas brutally and not take the matter of the captives into significant consideration”.


Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says

Yasmin Porat, a 44-year-old mother of three, told how

They eliminated everyone, including the hostages. There was very, very heavy crossfire” and even tank shelling.

Porat said that prior to this she and the other civilians had been held by the Palestinians for several hours and treated “humanely.” She had fled the nearby “Nova” rave. A recording of her interview, from the radio program Haboker Hazeh hosted by Aryeh Golan on state broadcaster Kan, was reported by Electronic Intifada

Porat, who is from Kabri, a settlement near the Lebanese border, undoubtedly experienced terrible things and saw many noncombatants killed. Her own partner, Tal Katz, is among the dead.

However, her account undermines Israel’s official story of deliberate, wanton murder by the Palestinian fighters. Although it no longer appears on the Kan website, there can be little doubt about the recording’s authenticity.

At least one Hebrew-language account posted part of the interview on Twitter and accused Kan, the Israeli broadcaster, of functioning as “media in the service of Hamas.”

In other words if you tell the truth you are a ‘terrorist’.

Israel, the ‘Jewish’ State would prefer to murder its own captives rather than exchange them for Palestinians. This gives the lie to the idea that Israel cares a fig for the lives of  its own Jewish citizens. Israel is a racial preservation project not a humanitarian endeavour as its politicians pretend.

The Dahiya directive, named after a Beirut suburb that was bombarded, was explained by Israeli General Gadi Eisenkot

We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases. This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.

Both doctrines are based on committing war crimes. Attacking civilian targets to protect the military is not new. That was what the Nazis did when they invaded countries, especially in Eastern Europe.

Barnaby Raine shows up Novara Media's Michael Walker for the pompous ass and opportunist he is as he gives him a lesson in racism & colonialism

Let no one think that Israel will stop at the bombing of a hospital. ‘Defence’ Minister Yoav Gallant promised that it will be a long war. Israel gets away with this because of the support it gets, not only from the United States but the entire West. It is not just Gallant and Netanyahu who are war criminals – it is the entirety of Western politicians from Biden to Sunak to Starmer, Macron and Olaf Scholtz.

Let no one be fooled that this is about Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’. For 17 years Gaza has been under a suffocating siege. Hamas, as early as 2007, repeatedly offered Israel the opportunity of a de facto peace settlement only to be rebuffed. Israel has long wanted to clear the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and has been looking for an opportunity. Unfortunately the attack on October 7 provided them with just such an opportunity.

The silence of the British Labour Movement is deafening. Sharon Graham, the General Secretary of my own union, Unite, has been conspicuous by her deafening silence.

Skwawkbox reported that the London and Eastern branch of Unite has written to Graham deploring her and the union's lack of support for Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes, despite support for the Palestinians being union policy.

The London and Eastern regional secretary demanded immediate action to ensure the union is fully represented at next week’s pro-Palestinian demonstration and that Graham personally write to every branch of the union urging them to participate. See Unite London/Eastern slams Graham’s silence and union’s inaction over Israeli war crimes

Graham’s silence is in stark contrast to her clenched-fist posturing in front of a Ukrainian flag and she has also been exposed using proxies to order a senior union official to try and cancel a pro-Palestinian event at Labour's conference fringe last week.

Starmer is also facing a backlash over his and Evans attempt to prevent support for the Palestinians. Councillors were warned only a week ago that they may be expelled for attending Palestine solidarity demonstrations. Today Walsall Labour councillors publicly denounced Starmer’s support for war crimes.

According to Labour NEC member Luke Akehurst, Bombing Hospitals is Perfectly Acceptable 

Starmer is facing mass resignations of councillors over his support for Israeli war crimes. Starmer and his sidekick Luke Akehurst should be prime candidates for prosecution for aiding and abetting war crimes.

Can the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs Sink Any Lower?

It is difficult to know why the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs even exists given their deafening silence over Israel's genocidal attack on Gaza. John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Dianne Abbot, Bell Ribeiro Addy,  Lloyd Russell Moyle, Apsana Begum, Zarah Sultana et al. have been conspicuous  by their deafening silence. Not a peep out of these cowards.



They tabled on 17 October EDM 1685 Protecting civilians in Gaza and Israel which is about as weak as you can get. Firstly it equates civilians in Gaza and Israel when 2 million Gazans have had food, water, electricity cut off and thousands have died. Israeli civilians have suffered no such deprivations.

It fails to recognise the difference between the oppressor and the oppressed.  Instead it 'utterly condemns the massacre of Israeli civilians and taking of hostages by Hamas' yet can only manage to express 'its deep alarm at the Israeli military bombardment'. Condemnation is reserved for the Palestinians, who have been under a 17 year starvation siege, not Israelis who sat by and voted for those who kept Palestinians in the world's largest open air prison.



The only member of the SCG who has expressed solidarity with the Palestinians has been Andy McDonald. The rest of them have behaved like racist liberals genuflecting to 'Zionist without qualification' Starmer. If ever there was a reason for socialists to get out of the Labour Party this is it  

The Metropolitan Police Have Been Busy - Apart from Harassing a Doctor's Family they have Closed Down a Book Fair on Palestine 

Israel’s war crimes did not however stop the Metropolitan Police, following orders from Home Secretary Braverman, harassing the family of a doctor who went out to Gaza to help treat the victims of Israeli war crimes. These are the values of the police in London today.

This follows the suspension of a Sussex University student earlier this week. Now a student from SOAS, a college with a formerly progressive administration, has been suspended and several members of the Palestine Society warned as to their conduct for having organised a demonstration in support of the Palestinians.

PLEASE SUPPORT THE PETITION IN SUPPORT OF SOAS  STUDENTS HERE

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Y9TYWJ5

Those of us in Brighton and Hove have a local MP Peter Kyle, who is on Labour’s front bench as well as being Vice-Chair of Labour Friends of Israel. You might want to email this apologist for Israeli war crimes at peter.kyle.mp@parliament.uk.

 All over the Arab world there are mass demonstrations against the killings. In Lebanon the American Embassy has been besieged. In Jordan police fired tear gas to disperse crowds intent on attacking the Israeli Embassy. ‘Normalisation’ has, at least temporarily been halted.

Israel Tells Gazans to Leave the North & Then Bombs a Convoy of Civilian

Everywhere in the Arab world the corrupt and rotten regimes are fighting back against demands to cut off relations with Israel. It was the big mistake of the PLO that instead of calling for the overthrow of these regimes they tried to get into bed with them.

The PLO’s ambition was to become just another corrupt Arab regime. Unfortunately for it Israel had no intention of playing ball.

Today in Ramallah the Palestinian Authority is all that is left of the Oslo Accords of 1993. Mahmoud Abbas, the self-styled President of the PA is derided by Israel as the Mayor of Ramallah. He is hated by Palestinians for having become a sub-contractor to the Israeli army.

When protests broke out against the slaughter of 500+ people in Al Ahli hospital their chants quickly turned to calls for Abbas to step down. Abbas’s security forces began shooting at the protesters. The liberation of Palestine will begin with the overthrow of Abbas and his corrupt cronies. It is to the  shame of Palestine Solidarity Campaign that it refuses to even utter even one word of criticism against this Quisling regime that Israel imposed on the Palestinians.

Tony Greenstein

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