Jenin Under Attack from the Israeli Army as Reprisal for the Death of 3 Israelis in Tel Aviv

 As part of Israel’s collective punishment, the Israeli military shoot a child, blinding him in one eye

Israel's military shoot child today, blinding him in one eye 

Israeli Military Raids Today  - Soldiers Drag the Body of a Man as If he was an Animal

Following the shooting dead of 3 Israelis in a Tel Aviv bar last week and the recent killing of 11 Israelis, including 3 police officers, by Palestinians, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has condoned settler attacks on Palestinians, stated that

‘We are granting full freedom of action to the army, the Shin Bet and all security forces in order to defeat the terror. There are not and will not be limits for this war.”

Today a child in Jenin paid the price of this all-out war. At least one Palestinian has been killed by the Israeli military in Jenin today. When the 3 Israelis were killed, Al Jazeera reported that

United States and European envoys to Israel condemned Thursday’s shooting. In a statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was “closely following developments” and was in “regular contact with our Israeli partners, with whom we stand resolutely in the face of senseless terrorism and violence.”

We await the US and European envoys condemnation of Israeli killings in Jenin and elsewhere in the West Bank. Of course if the Palestinian gunman had been Ukrainian then he would have been feted as a resistance fighter not a terrorist.

I have helped fundraise in the past few years for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre, which is in the centre of Jenin Refugee Camp. Today a worker from the Centre messaged me.

Dear Tony

JENIN IS suffering now , Israel closed it we are not allowed to go out or any one gets into ! The news doesn't show what is going on here, Today the solders attack our home while we were  sleeping , And went up on roof to shot any one who move... here  some videos  this morning ... you are the only one who can make our voice heard .. We are not ok

I then got a second message later in the day and two pictures. It simply said:

A child from the center lost his eye today

Children are not immune from Israeli actions because they too are seen as part of a population that has the temerity to resist the occupation. The right of resistance accorded to Ukranians does not apply to Palestinians.

There is also Jewish religious justification that has grown up in Israel for killing and hurting Palestinian children.

The Israeli army today has a large component of religious nationalists in it who adhere to the belief that non-Jewish life is less valuable than that of Jews.  Indeed it goes far wider than just religious nationalists.

In 2009 two Lubavitch rabbis, Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzure penned a book ‘Torat Hamelech’ that sanctioned the killing of non-Jewish, that is Palestinian, children and infants. According to the authors the prohibition 'Thou Shalt Not Murder' applies only 'to a Jew who kills a Jew.' According to the Jerusalem Post, the authors argued that:

‘it is permitted to kill minors as well, even if they are innocent, when they are situated in a place that blocks the saving of Jews' lives. Shapira and Elitzur refer to these minors as "blockers of rescue"

"Little children are often situated in this way," they write. "They block the rescue of Jews and they do this against their will. Even so, it is permitted to kill them because their very presence facilitates the killing [of Jews]."

The authors also advocate the killing of young children if it is foreseeable that these children will grow up to be enemies of the Jews. " [which was the justification that Himmler gave in a talk to SS Higher Police Leaders in October 1943 in Posen, Poland  - TG].

There is an argument for killing the very young if it is clear that they will grow up to hurt us [Jews]. And in this situation the attack should be directed at them and not just indirectly while attacking adults," write Shapira and Elitzur. "It is also permitted to kill the children of the [evil] leader [of the enemy] in order to put pressure on him, if hurting the children will prevent the evil king from acting out his evilness."

This is being played out in Jenin and the West Bank today. Last year 79 Palestinian children, including 67 in Gaza, were murdered by the Israeli military. Since 2000 at least 2,200 children have been killed by Israel.

What You Can Do

What you can do is to contact your MPs with messages demanding that Israel lifts the siege of Jenin and write to the press. Collective punishment is outlawed under the Geneva Convention. In other words it is a war crime. Although as we know the mass media is only concerned with Russian war crimes its worth bombarding the BBC and asking why it is selective about which war crimes it reports.

Finally, one of the only places of refuge for children in Jenin refugee camp is the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre which Israeli troops wrecked last May.  In their demonic hatred they even ripped up children’s story books.

So please, if you can afford it, please donate to our Crowdfunder to support the Centre.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli citizens are barred from entering the Palestinian city, whose economy relies heavily on Israeli Arabs

Yaniv Kubovich

Jack Khoury

Apr. 9, 2022 8:37 PM

Israeli citizens are now barred from entering the West Bank city of Jenin, the Defense Ministry announced Saturday, in a series of sanctions on the hometown of the Palestinian shooter who killed three people in an attack in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories announced several restrictions on the Jenin area, in the West Bank's north, including blocking local merchants and some businesspeople from entering Israel and preventing Jenin residents from visiting family in Israel, thereby revoking 5000 permits Israel issued for Jenin residents for the holy Muslim month of Ramadan which takes place in April.

Residents of the Jenin area with work permits in Israel will still be allowed to go there, but will face more stringent security inspections at checkpoints, the statement said.

The restrictions are expected to deal a hard blow to the local economy. Arabs from Israel who frequent Jenin constitute about 75 percent of the city's purchasing power.

Students at the Arab American University in Jenin who are Israeli citizens are exempt from the latest travel restrictions.

Combatants for Peace, an Israeli-Palestinian group, condemned the restrictions and called the defense minister to revoke them, saying that "hurting Palestinian citizens of Israel and collectively punishing all of Jenin's residents is not the solution, and will only deteriorate the situation."

Knesset member Sami Abu Shehadeh of the Joint List joined the condemnation, saying that "collective punishment, crimes carried out by the occupation army and a continuous abuse of the Palestinian people will certainly not be a solution to the current crisis."

He added that "only a diplomatic solution and an end to the occupation are the guarantee for a safer future for all of us."

On Saturday, a Palestinian militant was killed and a dozen others were wounded in Jenin in a fire exchange with the Israeli military who were raiding the house Raad Hazem, the mas who killed three people and wounded 10 others in a shooting attack in central Tel Aviv on Thursday.

Diaa Hamarsheh who killed five people in a shooting attack in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak was also from the Jenin area – where security forces are now concentrating their efforts, since three of the last five attacks were carried out by people from there, including  Saib Abahra, who was killed with two other Palestinians by Israeli forces last Friday.

According to Israeli security forces, the three were responsible for a recent shooting attack near the city of Tul Karm in the West Bank, and planned to carry out further attacks.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Friday that Israeli forces were continuing to act with great forces against terrorism, adding that "we have already made 200 arrests, if needed we will make thousands."

Israeli forces kill Palestinian fighter in large-scale raid on Jenin camp

 Israeli forces kill Palestinian fighter in large-scale raid on Jenin camp 

Palestinian fighters respond to the raid with gunfire, leading to heavy street clashes with Israeli troops 

By Shatha Hanaysha in Jenin refugee camp 

Published date: 9 April 2022 

One Palestinian was killed and 13 more wounded on Saturday morning as a large Israeli force raided the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The raid began at around 9:30am local time when Israeli special forces entered the camp and headed to the family home of Raad Hazem, a 28-year-old who carried out a shooting at a bar in Tel Aviv on Thursday, killing three Israelis.

Reinforcements followed, and Israeli troops raided the camp from all entrances, to be met by Palestinian fighters residing in the camp who began firing at troops in several locations.

A local source told Middle East Eye that Palestinian fighters also used an explosive device in the heavy street fights, which lasted for nearly three hours before Israeli forces withdrew from the city.

One Palestinian, identified as Ahmad al-Saadi, 23, was killed in the gunfight, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Al-Quds Brigades (Saraya al-Quds), the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, said he was a commander in its Jenin unit.

At least 13 more Palestinians sustained bullet wounds, including a 19-year-old woman, with two in critical condition. Two more were wounded in the shoot-outs and detained by the Israeli army.

Israeli forces kill Palestinian fighter in raid on Jenin refugee camp

An eyewitness, who preferred to remain anonymous, told MEE that Israeli snipers stationed on rooftops during the raid were shooting at passers-by, including his friend, who was wounded by a live bullet while walking on the street.

The Israeli army said in a statement early in the morning that military forces entered Jenin and operated in the refugee camp, without giving more details. No Israeli casualties were reported.

While surrounding Hazem's family home, Israeli forces took measurements of the house ahead of a potential demolition, Israeli media reported.

Israel often demolishes family homes of those accused of carrying out attacks against Israeli targets, in a policy condemned by rights groups as a form of collective punishment.  

Israeli forces also attempted to arrest Fathi Hazem, Raad's father, but he refused to turn himself in and the troops left without detaining him, an eyewitness told MEE.

Young Palestinians throwing stones at an IDF vehicle in Jenin, on Saturday.Credit: JAAFAR ASHTIYEH - AFP

Jenin camp fighters

The northern West Bank city, particularly its central refugee camp, is known as a stronghold for a reemerging Palestinian armed resistance movement. Since late last year, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have made several attempts to contain the growing number of armed fighters in the city.

In late December, Israeli armed forces chief of staff Aviv Kochavi said in an interview with Channel 12 that Israel was on the cusp of launching a major operation in Jenin three months earlier, before they called the PA into action. Last week, Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinians in a pre-dawn ambush in Jenin as residents marked the 20th anniversary of a brutal Israeli assault on the city's refugee camp that has become emblematic of Israel's occupation.

The Saturday raid comes at a time of heightened tensions in Israel and Palestine.  Fourteen Israelis have been killed in the past three weeks in shooting and stabbing attacks carried out by Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and inside Israel.

At least six Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the same period in the West Bank, including one  shot by a settler.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli police have carried out a nightly crackdown on Palestinians celebrating Ramadan at Damascus Gate since the start of the holy month on 2 April.

More than 30 people were arrested, including minors, and dozens were wounded in the assaults.

Is Jonathan Freedland the most dishonest journalist in Britain?

The Upper Immigration Tribunal overturned Theresa May’s Deportation Order yet Freedland still accuses Raed Salah of ‘anti-Semitism’

I was wondering, when writing this article, whether a new verb might be in order. To Freedland trans: to deliberately distort or falsify an argument e.g. through concealment of evidence esp. by a journalist

When writing a letter to Jonathan Freedland regarding his latest attack on Corbyn I asked myself – is this the most dishonest journalist in Britain? Admittedly the competition is strong but given the Guardian’s reputation as a left-liberal paper it would seem to me that Freedland is head and shoulders above the competition.

John Bercow has failed to detect the anti-semitism in Corbyn that Freedland detects a plenty

Freedland’s attack on Corbyn as anti-Semitic is tawdry, even by his standards. He cobbles together 3 examples of Corbyn's 'antisemitism' and ignores the testimony of the Jewish Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, that there is not a ‘whiff’ of anti-Semitism about Corbyn. 

He ignores Corbyn’s record as an MP and the defence of Corbyn by the foremost historian of the Jewish community, Professor Geoffrey Alderman and instead attacks him for associating with a Palestinian cleric.

It is worth examining this.  In 2011 Raed Salah, leader of Israel’s Northern Islamic Leagues came to Britain. He was the subject of a banning order but Theresa May’s Home Office was incompetent enough not to have told anyone. See Theresa May's haste to ban Raed Salah will be repented at leisure 

Smugness and superciliousness is written all over this ex-public schoolboy's face

Raed Salah sailed through Britain's immigration controls and addressed a meeting at the House of Commons.  The next day he was arrested and the First Immigration Tribunal upheld May’s decision. However in 2012 the Upper Immigration Tribunal overturned it, partly because the evidence relied on by the First Tribunal was a poem of Salah’s which had been doctored by the Zionist Community Security Trust which had supplied the evidence against Salah to the Home Office. The Zionists had included the phrase ‘we Jews’ in his poem.

How did Freedland report this in his Guardian article?

when a Palestinian Islamist preacher was found by a British tribunal to have peddled the medieval and lethal myth of Jews feasting on the blood of gentile children, Corbyn declared that man a very “honoured citizen”, and invited him for tea in the House of Commons.

What did the Upper Tribunal find about this allegation of support for the allegation of a blood libel? I quote:

First, and as pointed out by Professor Pappe, there is no reliable evidence of the appellant using words carrying a reference to the blood libel save in the single passage in a sermon delivered five years ago. Similarly, the reliable evidence relating to calls to martyrdom is confined to the same occasion. The absence of other evidence is striking, for at least two reasons. The appellant is a prominent public figure and a prolific speaker. The first indictment shows that his speeches are of interest to the authorities in Israel. In these circumstances we think it can fairly be said that the evidence before us is not a sample, or ‘the tip of the iceberg’: it is simply all the evidence that there is

In other words there is no reference nor was there to Jews feasting on the blood of gentile children. This phrase is entirely fictional, a creation of Freedland's fertile mind. In short it is a lie.  Indeed Salah didn’t even mention Jews.  He made an allegorical reference to the blood of children. Salah stated

“We have never allowed ourselves, and listen well, we have never allowed ourselves to knead the bread for the breaking of the fast during the blessed month of Ramadan with the blood of children. And if someone wants a wider explanation, you should ask what used to happen to some of the children of Europe, whose blood would be mixed in the dough of the holy bread. God Almighty, is this religion? Is this what God wants? God will confront you for what you are doing”.

You could argue that the reference was ambiguous. Salah argued it was a reference to the Spanish Inquisition. Possibly he got carried away by his rhetoric but this was a speech made in 2007, five years' previously.  It was only in 2012, as a result of the proceedings in the British courts that the Israeli authorities prosecuted him. In fact the first court, the Jerusalem magistrates court acquitted him of racial incitement in 2013 but the prosecution appealed and in November 2014 he was convicted and sentenced to 9 months.

The fact that both these cases, relating to events in 2007, were only prosecuted after the events in Britain demonstrates the artificial political nature of the proceedings. Israel's courts are, for Palestinians, colonial courts.

No Israeli Jew, ever, has been prosecuted for chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’. The authors of a book Torat Hamelech which justified the murder of non-Jewish children and infants were not prosecuted.

Rabbi Dov Lior - his view is that one Jewish fingernail is worth a thousand non-Jewish lives

According to the Jerusalem Post the book, published in 2009 and written by Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, was 'an analysis of the Jewish laws of the permissibility of killing non-Jews during times of war and peace.' This wasn't some academic tome, it relates to the rulings of military rabbis during the attacks on Gaza and Lebanon who encourage the killing of civilians, including children in 'war'.  Yet this kind of racism goes unremarked by Jonathan Freedland.  His writings are effectively an accompaniment to Israel's targeting of Palestinian civilians. 

In other words Jonathan Freedland deliberately lied and distorted the facts about someone that the Israelis tried to murder on the Mava Marmara but got the wrong man.  Raed Salah is a dignified man who has been subject to the most horrendous persecution in Israel yet Freedland, in order to bolster his attacks on Corbyn, uses the victim of Zionist racism as a tool in his armoury.  Disgusting or what?

In my letter to him I quoted an old saying. It bears repeating:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist
(thank God!) the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there’s no occasion to.

I am sure that Freedland is unbribed but I’m equally sure that what he does is in conjunction with state actors both in Israel and Britain.

Tony Greenstein

Open Letter to Jonathan Freedland – Why do you feel the need to lie about those who cannot answer back?

To: jonathan.freedland@guardian.co.uk

Dear Jonathan

Your latest anti-Corbyn screed is possibly the most dishonest of all those you have penned since Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party. It is, of course, timed to do most damage to Labour’s election campaign. However your objective is so transparent that it is unlikely to achieve its objective, other than confirming that the Guardian has gone to rack and ruin.

As Gary Younge, one of the few good journalists left departs for pastures anew what are you left with?  A bunch of ageing hacks without an original thought between them – Rafael Behr, whose pomposity is his only attribute, Suzanne Moore, whose acid pen is directed only at people like Julian Assange and Polly Toynbee who is fading fast. 

Where are people like Jonathan Steele, Hugo Young, John Palmer, David Hirst, Michael Adams, Richard Gott, Victor Zorza (who you won’t remember)? You would do well to recruit the only decent Tory columnist on the market, now that the Mail has released him. I refer to Peter Oborne but I suspect that even he is too radical for you.

I digress. Your connections with the British state and Chatham House are a matter of record. I have no doubt that your article was in accord with the consensus amongst your friends that Corbyn, with his opposition to US imperialism would be harmful and dangerous to Western interests. It is that and that only which explains your concern with ‘anti-Semitism’.

If you were seriously concerned about anti-Semitism then you would have written something about a Tory party whose MEPs are members of the same political group in the European parliament, the ECR, as the representative of fascist and anti-Semitic parties.

10 years ago you wrote about this very subject. Your article Once no self-respecting politician would have gone near people such as Kaminski’ was immediately responded to by the leader of today’s ‘Corbyn is an anti-Semite campaign’, Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle. Pollard wrote that ‘Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews’. And historically he was right. Anti-Semites have always been friends to Zionism.

 In the scale of things, sitting down with Latvian MEP Roberts Zile, who marches each year with the veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS, is somewhat greater in the order of things than accusing someone of failing to understand British irony. As Monica Lowenberg wrote in an open letter to the Latvian government, her uncle Paul was murdered by these same thugs, including the 15^th SS Division, the most decorated of all SS Divisions, in the Riga Ghetto.

Yet despite your obsession with Corbyn you have not written for over a decade about the Tories’ links with Ziles or Kaminski, the Polish MEP who told the remnants of Polish Jewry to apologise to those who had burnt their fellows alive in Jedwabne.

Instead you construct a nest of lies and half-truths in order to substantiate your accusations against Corbyn. This despite the fact that the Jewish former Speaker John Bercow testified that there is not a whiff of anti-Semitism in Corbyn, having known him for 22 years. Similarly the foremost historian of the Jewish community, Professor Geoffrey Alderman, a right-wing Zionist like yourself, wrote that Corbyn has devoted himself to supporting Jewish causes in Islington including the preservation of the West London Jewish cemetery in the face of plans by Margaret Hodge’s council to demolish it.

Instead you rely on 3 bogus and dishonest examples of Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’. A mural that Corbyn defended on free speech grounds, which contained 2 (not 6 as you implied) Jewish bankers. Nor were they hook nosed. The example of British irony not being appreciated by 2 Zionists born in this country was a contrast with a Palestinian speaker who was not born here.  Nothing anti-Semitic about that. 

Not forgetting your demonization of a Palestinian preacher, Raed Salah. You ‘forgot’ to mention that the Upper Immigration Tribunal had overturned Theresa May’s deportation order because his poem, upon which the prosecution relied, had been doctored. The Tribunal did not find that Salah was a believer in the medieval Jewish blood libel myth and indeed Salah himself made that clear in the pages of the Guardian.

We are left therefore with the conclusion that your only concern was to defend the most racist state in the world. Your concern with ‘anti-Semitism’ might be taken seriously if you devoted the same time to protesting the racist actions of Israel, the ‘Jewish’ State.

Imagine that the Bishop of Manchester decreed that non-Jews should not rent their homes to Jews?  Yet that is exactly what the Chief Rabbi of Safed did in 2011 when he ruled that Jews should not let their homes to Arabs.  He was supported by dozens of Israeli rabbis yet he is a paid state employee.

Imagine that hundreds of British Christians demonstrated against the sale of a house to a Jew? Yet in Afula, a northern Israeli city, such demonstrations have occurred in the past two years. Your silence on these and other manifestations of the racism of Zionism is revealing.

If British Jews experienced even a fraction of the discrimination that Palestinians citizens of Israel experience then your charge of anti-Semitism would be justified.  As it is you are a dishonest scribe, a paid propagandist, with an agenda that has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.  If as you claim 87% of British Jews believe that Corbyn is an anti-Semite then it is because of dishonest journalists like you.

I have submitted a response to the Comment pages but since you are the Editor I am sure it will not see the light of day.  It is such a pity that the brainchild of the late Georgina Henry is now in the hands of Chatham House’s servant. As the old saying goes:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist
(thank God!) the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there’s no occasion to.

Yours as ever,

Tony Greenstein

The Threat to Freedom of Speech from Brighton Council Leader Nancy Platts - all in the name of 'anti-Semitism'

 Like Trump Platts Professes Concern About 'Antisemitism' when the real concern is to prevent criticsm of Israel 

When Trump told four Black Congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna S. Pressley to ‘go back home’ (despite 3 of them being born in the USA), he also added for good measure that they 'hate America and hate Israel.'

Trump’s concerns are understandable because the one country in the world where Trump is more popular than unpopular is the apartheid State of Israel. [See Support for Trump higher in Israel than almost any other nation: poll]

Like the Tories and Labour’s Right, Trump cannot distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Which is why, at the very time he was condemning 'anti-Semitism' he was also accusing America’s Jews, 80% of whom vote Democrat, of disloyalty to both himself and the State of Israel. Like his former adviser Steve Bann, Trump uses support for Israel as a stick to beat America’s Jews with!

examples of the abuse that Jackie Walker, one of Platt's targets received -  this is the abuse that anti-Zionists regularly receive but which, unlike that of Zionist prima donnas like Ruth Smeeth is never mentioned

According to Trump Israel is the ‘real home’ of America’s Jews. This is a Zionist doctrine, although many Zionists prefer to maintain a state of political schizophrenia. As Peter Beinart, one of the few genuinely thoughtful Zionists around, whose opinion pieces are always worth reading (perhaps because he’s a Professor of Journalism!) remarked ‘in the past, Trump has repeatedly spoken about American Jews as if they were Israelis.’

And this is equally true of Platts and Kyle.  It is now part of Labour Party culture (if such a term is not an oxymoron) to equate criticism of Israel with criticism of Jews i.e. anti-Semitism. Israel has become the collective Jew. 

That was the purpose and function of the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism that Brighton and Hove council adopted last October and for which Nancy Platts voted. So when meetings are held which criticise Israel or Zionism, idiots like Platts (who to be fair has a limited comprehension of such matters) equate such criticism with hostility to Jews).  And those of us who are Jewish anti-Zionists are merely the ‘wrong sort of Jew’ or to use the Nazi term beloved of Zionists, ‘self-haters’ (because if you hate your race you hate yourself).

As Beinart noted 

‘In an April speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he called Benjamin Netanyahu “your prime minister” and warned that a Democratic victory in 2020 “could leave Israel out there all by yourselves.”

At the White House Hanukkah Party last December, he told the mostly Jewish audience that Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, “love your country. And they love this country.”

When Kyle, Platts and friends conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism what they are doing is saying that the murderous actions of Israel are carried out on behalf of Jews, wherever they live. That is the logic of equating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. After all Israel is a ‘Jewish state’. 

Trump being a white supremacist says out aloud what Kyle and Platts can only whisper, viz. that Jewish allegiance is to Israel.  In the meantime these ciphers do their best to introduce Israeli ‘democracy’ into Britain by closing down meetings they disagree with.

Merely by talking about 'resistance' Israeli Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was gaoled whereas people who chant 'Death to the Arabs' are never even prosecuted

After all Israel is the self-declared ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ albeit a democracy which sent to prison an Israel Arab poet, Dareen Tatour, for expressing support for Palestinian resistance. No amount of racist abuse from Jews in Israel has ever resulted in imprisonment, even in the case of the two rabbis who wrote a book in 2011, Torat HaMelech (the King's Torah) explaining how, according to Jewish law, it was legally possible in war to kill Palestinian children and infants. But this is the type of racism that Platts and her claque ignore.

The Israeli prosecutors found there was 'no basis' to indict the authors of a book who explain why its lawful to kill Arab children

None of this should be any surprise.  At the heart of Zionist theology is the belief that Jews are aliens in the countries they reside in. Israel is the Jewish state and it openly proclaims that it is the state of all Jews. That is why every Jew has the ‘right of return’ to Israel, regardless of whether they have ever been there, whereas Palestinians who were born and lived there for generations have no such right. Racism is inseparable from Zionism and the Kyles and the Platts of Labour's Right are its defenders. 

Yet when it comes to the Windrush Scandal, stop and search and other, genuine examples of racism, Kyle and Platts are silent. Only racism against a section of White people concern them.

As the Jewish Democratic Council of America put it, Trump has ‘"weaponise(d) and politicise(d) anti-Semitism" for political gain.’  And that is exactly what Nancy Platts and Peter Kyle, with their allegations of ‘Jew’ hate/baiting also do.

There is virtually no anti-Semitism in Brighton and Hove.  Jews are a privileged, white community. I know of no anti-Semitic attacks in Brighton. The statement by Platts that ‘I am concerned to hear that there may be any events in or around Labour Party Conference where Jewish people would not feel welcome.’ is disingenuous.  As the meeting with Chris Williamson demonstrated when Jewish people came to stand with him, Jewish people have always been welcome at Palestinian and anti-Zionist meetings.

There are no events where Jews are not welcome. Of course racists, whether they are Jewish or non-Jewish are not welcome at anti-racist events. So members of Sussex Friends of Israel, who did their best to intimidate venues into cancelling the talk by Chris Williamson 2 weeks ago are not welcome. They include people like Simon Cobbs who has demonstrated alongside the English Defence League.  But that is because Cobbs is a racist not because he is Jewish.

There was a complete and total failure to support a family under attack by racists - no comparable case has ever affected a Jewish family

There is and always has been a problem of anti-Muslim racism in Brighton and about that Kyle and Platts are silent. That was particularly true in the case of the Deghayes family, three of whose sons went to fight for Jihadis in Syria after the Police’s failure to tackle the racism they experienced. As the Guardian noted:

Racist incidents increased in 2007 when the boy’s uncle, Omar Deghayes, was released from Guantánamo Bay after being held for five years after his arrest in Pakistan. His return to Brighton led to an angry backlash locally where far-right groups reportedly whipped up anger. Graffiti reading “Behead all Muslims” was daubed near their home and when it was attacked by a mob, police installed CCTV.

Social workers reported that it became increasingly difficult dealing with the family who felt their complaints were not dealt with adequately.

As the boys’ behaviour deteriorated further, youth and social workers expressed their “helplessness” at having no solutions. They expressed “shock and disbelief” when it was discovered the brothers had gone to Syria. “This possibility had never been identified and there was also no recognition that the siblings were vulnerable to radicalisation, travel or participation in conflict.”

The failure to deal with racist attacks on the family led directly to the alienation (‘radicalisation’) of their three sons. Nancy Platts kept her mouth shut during all of this and other failures, such as the murder of Jay Abatan, which Brighton Police force also failed to deal with. But when it comes to non-existent anti-Semitism she is willing to bare her soul to a Zionist publication which has called Jeremy Corbyn an ‘anti-Semite’.

I therefore wrote Platts a letter last night and sent the letter to every Labour and Green Councillor on Brighton and Hove Council.

We know of course what this is about and it has nothing to do with ‘anti-Semitism’ and everything to do with Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone speaking at the fringe of the Labour Party conference in one month.

We expect that the Zionist movement will object. In Israel the Police would simply ban such meetings. In Brighton the Zionists are expecting their faithful poodles Platts and Kyle to do their dirty work. We have news for them.  Chris Williamson and others will speak in Brighton next month regardless of the grandstanding of New Labour's racists.

Below is a letter I wrote to Nancy Platts.  I suspect I won't be receiving a reply!!

Tony Greenstein

Councillor Nancy Platts

Leader Brighton and Hove City Council,

Brighton Town Hall

BN1 1JW

Email to:          nancy.platts@brighton-hove.gov.uk

Dear Nancy,

I have just read your interview with Jewish News, a paper which only a year ago spoke of ‘the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.’

An ‘existential threat’ means a threat to one’s very existence. In other words a Corbyn government would represent a mortal danger to Jews. This is the paper which you chose to confide in.

You used to work in Corbyn’s office. I don’t know whether or not you still support him or if, in your new role as Leader of the Labour Group, you are seeking to follow in the footsteps of your predecessors, Warren Morgan and Daniel Yates, both of whom are members of the Jewish Labour Movement.

The title of your interview ‘‘I want Jewish people to feel welcome in Brighton’ is highly offensive. It is no different in tone to the remarks of Warren Morgan two years ago which led to his resignation. You clearly imply that Jewish people are not welcome in Brighton. What evidence do you have for this? Perhaps you could explain why you have singled out Jews as opposed to Muslims or Black people?

I have lived in Brighton for over 40 years and have rarely encountered anti-Semitism other than from fascist and neo-Nazi groups. I am the author of the only book detailing the history of the fight against fascism in Brighton and the South Coast. A book which was reviewed by the Argus in 2012. I think I know a little more about anti-Semitism than you.

In 2012 Brighton anti-fascists scored a historic victory against a Police force which was intent on forcing an English Defence League march through the city. I must confess that I don’t remember either you or any of the other exponents of  Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ of having played any part in either that or any other anti-fascist activity.

You state in your interview that you are ‘concerned to hear that there may be any events in or around Labour Party Conference where Jewish people would not feel welcome.’ Well we all would be concerned if there was any truth to such a story.  However it is a lie peddled by your Zionist friends to drum up sympathy.

Two weeks ago there was an attempt to prevent a meeting by Chris Williamson MP in Brighton. Peter Kyle MP called him a ‘Jew baiter’ a charge that is nothing less than a form of political terrorism. Kyle’s real objection was that Chris had opposed the witchhunt in the Labour Party and called for open selection of Labour MPs. In other words Jews were being used as a stick to beat the Left with.

Instead of speaking up in support of free speech and the rights of peaceful assembly, rights guaranteed under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights you have chosen to stand with the McCarthyists and those who would destroy free speech on Israel and Palestine. You have done this at the behest of supporters of Israeli apartheid.

Allegations of anti-Semitism by the Right, and I include you in that, are nothing more than a convenient smokescreen for those who wish to avoid a debate over Israel and Zionism. You can rest assured that just as we ensured that Chris defied the threats of violence from those who tried to prevent him speaking two weeks ago we will do the same again.

We are determined to ensure that Chris Williamson, Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker are able to speak freely at the Labour Party conference fringe, your McCarthyist friends notwithstanding.

Jackie Walker in particular has suffered vile racist abuse  from your Zionist friends. I am copying some of them here so that you cannot plead ignorance. In Israel Zionists march to chant of ‘death to the Arabs’. In this country they complain of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Racism against Black people is an integral part of Zionism. In Israel Black Jews are not considered fully Jewish and currently there is an attempt to forcibly deport 40,000 Black African refugees who in the words of Netanyahu ‘threaten Israel’s Jewish identity. The Israeli Labour Party too supports deporting these refugees. The same Israeli Labour Party that the Jewish Labour Movement is affiliated to.

I doubt if there is a single Palestine solidarity activist in this country, including Jewish anti-Zionists, who has not been called an anti-Semite. The fact that people like you have been taken in by this nonsense speaks volumes about your commitment to anti-racism.

It was little more than a year ago that you were on the platform speaking alongside Chris Williamson. It seems that having fulfilled your political ambitions you are travelling a well worn path to the right that people before you have taken.

The weaponisation of anti-Semitism is not confined to Britain or the Labour Party. In the United States Donald Trump has combined vociferous support for Israel with praise for neo-Nazis. When telling 4 Black Congresswomen to ‘go home’ he also attacked  them because they "hate Israel & all Jewish people.’

I’m sorry to see that you have joined with those who use bogus charges of ‘anti-Semitism’ to deflect support for the Palestinians. You should be ashamed of yourself. If Jews in this country experienced even a tenth of the discrimination that Palestinians endure in Israel then they would indeed have cause to complain about anti-Semitism.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Letter I wrote to Nancy Platts