ERICLEVY - A LIFE DEDICATED TO THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE
1928-2022
Below I’m happy to publish a passionate tribute to Eric Levy, a Jewish
anti-Zionist who has just died aged 94, by Abbas Ali on behalf of In Minds, the Human Rights Group.
Eric was
very active in many causes. He was active in Revolutionary Communist Group
circles and took part in the non-stop picket outside South Africa House during the
apartheid era. This was the picket which so annoyed the Met Police that they arrested Jeremy
Corbyn. Eric was also a teacher and his photo was plastered on the
cover of a tabloid because in class he showed support for the Irish republican
movement. Eric was active in the civil rights movement and apparently he was
friends with Paul Robeson and Claudia Jones.
A truly remarkable life. Below this is an article which appeared
in Camden’s New Journal in January 2021 which details his arrest outside
Westminster Magistrates Court because he ‘breached’ COVID regulations. The same
regulations that Boris Johnson breached but which the Met refused to
investigate until faced with court proceedings and even then didn’t issue him
with questionnaires for most of the parties he attended. Thus it ever was.
Tony
Greenstein
ERICLEVY - A LIFE DEDICATED TO THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE
1928-2022
We
are honoured to call EricLevy our
brother, our comrade. We knew him as a passionate campaigner for justice. He
played a prominent part in our campaigns since 2014.
As
an ardent anti-Zionist Jew he was particularly dedicated to the cause of
Palestine. He had visited Palestine and seen first-hand how Israeli apartheid
was destroying Palestinian lives, how the indigenous Palestinians were being ethnically
cleansed from their land to make way for white European colonists.
He
was at the forefront of our campaigns for Palestinian rights, including
campaigns against G4S and HP for complicity in torture of children; Addidas and
Puma for complicity in ethnic cleansing and illegal settlements; De Beers for
peddling Israeli blood diamonds; and the campaign for the release of
Palestinian political prisoners tortured in Israeli dungeons.
But
he was not limited to one cause. Wherever he saw injustice, he threw himself in
to the struggle on the side of the oppressed. He opposed the invasion of Iraq
and travelled to Iraq as a 'Human Shield'. He opposed the Saudi genocidal war
in Yemen; and campaigned for the release of Bahraini political prisoners; and
for the release of Sheikh Zakzaky caged by the brutal Nigerian regime; and
perhaps what he is best remembered for - he ardently campaigned for the release
of the journalist Julian Assange in the UK.
Mindful
of his age and frailty we purposely didn't invite him to guerrilla projections,
but there was no stopping him attend the Malcolm X remembrance projection in
Brixton on a bitterly cold February night. He had particular affinity to the
cause of black liberation.
Eric
was arrested several times, both for blocking Israeli armaments, and for
protesting Assange's unfair extradition hearings. We were awed and inspired by
his bravery, and dedication.
Eric
was a person with no ego, his only focus was the struggle. For many years, he
wouldn't even tell us his age, in case it might lead to preferential treatment.
Although he was a person of very modest means, yet he would refuse even the
smallest of gifts, unless everyone was receiving it. He was a very caring
person, always looking out for the more vulnerable members. Eric
was particularly mindful that indigenous voices in the struggle were allowed to
flourish.
We
were truly privileged to have known Eric.
His
dream was to continue the struggle for justice till his last breath. In
fulfilling his dream, in his death at age 94, he has shown us how to live, how
to live a life worth living. An inspiration for generations to come. We will
miss you Eric.
THIS
extraordinary picture of a little stumbling gaunt-faced elderly man being
arrested by several police officers at a demonstration outside Westminster
Magistrates’ Court is haunting. On the soundtrack from a mobile video snapped
by, presumably, one of the demonstrators one can hear someone shouting: “He is
92… he will die… what are you doing?”
I was not at
the demonstration that was held at a bail application by the jailed journalist
Julian Assange outside the court on January 6. Assange was refused bail and is
still held at the high security jail Belmarsh in south London while lawyers
continue to argue for his extradition to the US on the ground that he committed
espionage by releasing secret tapes.
I can
confirm that the man in the picture is actually 92 and lives in the Camden Town
area. I have seen him several times over the years as he is a regular presence
at protest meetings and know him as Eric Levy.
He clearly
has strong radical views that draw him to various causes. In the Iraq war – 17
years ago – he was among several “peace” campaigners who travelled to Baghdad
and set up camp in various public buildings, such as electricity stations, to
“warn” off US air attacks. But, surely, there was no need to arrest this frail
old man – and the fact that so many police officers could waste their time
doing so illustrates poor judgment or an unfair sense of persecution.
Oddly
enough, I saw another side to Eric Levy many years ago at one of the regular
evening poetry sessions that used to be run in a small community centre in Torriano
Avenue, Kentish Town, by the late artist John Rety. These gatherings were
usually exotic affairs where someone in the crowded small room would stand up
and recite one of their new poems – and very good they often were.
In a crowded
room, one session produced new poems by the great poet Dannie Abse and the
avant garde poet and publisher John Calder, both of whom had suddenly appeared,
to my delight, in the audience.
It was on
this particular evening that suddenly Eric Levy, sitting at the back, suddenly
stood up and wondered whether he could recite the Ode to Joy by the German poet
Friedrich Schiller set to the melody of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.
I wondered
what was going to emerge – and, then incredibly, this little man stilled the
audience as his rich baritone voice rang out the beautiful poem that sounded so
haunting in its native language.
Thus, there
are many sides to a person, I discovered. And as I looked at the image of this
harmless elderly man being hustled away by police officers, I wondered whether
he serenaded them in the cells with the Ode to Joy – it would have given them
food for thought.
• According
to a Met Police statement issued yesterday (Wednesday), eight people were
detained “for breaching coronavirus regulations” outside Westminster
Magistrates’ Court on January 6. “They were later reported for consideration of
a fixed penalty notice and ordered to leave the area,” said the Met. Presumably
Eric Levy was one of them.
If the West is opposed to bombing schools, clinics and peoples’ homes why
is it that Palestine Action activists are on bail for trying to stop Elbit
Systems making killer drones for use in Gaza and Yemen?
John Mersheimer and Ray
McGovern
Last year
I was one of 6 Palestine Action activists who were detained by Police on the
way to Elbit’s Shenstone Factory which produces drones, missiles and cluster
ammunition (although they deny it). The Jewish Chronicle gleefully reported
that ‘Greenstein charged with 'possessing
an article with the intent to destroy property'.
Elbit funded a book which claims that Bulgaria’s army saved the country’s Jews from deportation.
In fact Bulgaria’s army deported 11,000 Jews from Thrace & Macedonia to
Auschwitz. It was the strength of the Left and the Church which prevented the
deportation of Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews. But Elbit is more concerned about arms
contracts with Bulgaria. Who cares if it falsifies the history of the Holocaust.
There was
of course no mention as to whether I was about to vandalise a car or a door to
someone’s home. No mention was made of the target being Israel’s Elbit arms
factory. It was left to readers to speculate. All that mattered was that I had intended
to destroy property, which in the Jewish Chronicle’s eyes is far more reprehensible
than killing a few Palestinian children. Given that the article was written by ‘Liar’
Lee Harpin it’s surprising that he even managed to spell my name right!
Of course
the JC could have reported why the van that I was driving contained red paint
to symbolise the blood of those whose lives have been taken by Elbit Systems
but given the psychopathic politics of Editor Stephen Pollard that was never
very likely.
That ordinary
people are horrified by what is happening is in Ukraine is understandable. The
destruction and loss of life is horrific.
Putin has
fallen into the trap that Biden and the architects of the United States’s
policy towards Ukraine laid for him. No one is likely to be happier at how
events have turned out than Biden, Blinken and the rest of the Masters of War
in Washington. Not that Putin is any angel. His horrific war in Chechniya and
his merciless bombing of civilian populations in Syria (which of course the US
was also doing) demonstrates that he is no progressive.
Russia should
withdraw its forces immediately from Ukraine before there is even worse
carnage. Russia had the right to defend the two breakaway republics of Donetsk
and Luhansk. It had no right to invade and try to take over the rest of
Ukraine. Unfortunately the result of Putin’s actions is that NATO will be
strengthened.
Those who
want a background to Russia’s invasion should watch John Mearsheimer’s lecture to King’s
College students.
He
predicted that Russia would not invade Ukraine based on what is rationale, because
Mearsheimer comes from the ‘realist’ school of political science. However our
leaders are rarely rational.
The anger
of Russia against the encroachment of NATO is understandable and the double
dealing of the West, including the arming of neo-Nazi militias and their
integration into the Ukrainian military, should be a wake up call for everyone.
Ukraine on Fire
The
overthrow, in what was a fascist coup, in 2014 of the democratically elected
President, Viktor Yanukovych (See Oliver Stone’s Ukraine on Fire provides
the background.
The
hypocrisy surrounding Russia’s invasion is nauseating. NATO has condemned
Russia’s use of cluster munitions. But here’s a strange thing. Neither the United
States nor Ukraine (Israel and Russia) have signed the Convention on
Cluster Munitions. Clearly NATO has no principled objection to their use.
Ilan
Pappe has written an excellent article on what he terms the Four Lessons from Ukraine. They can be
summed up as:
i.White Refugees are Welcome; Others Less So.
In Israel this is not true. They
are doing their best to deter Ukrainian Jews from even coming to Israel but its
not going according to plan. Too many of the ‘wrong sort’ i.e. non-Jews have
continued coming, probably unaware that in a ‘Jewish’ racial state they are not
welcome.
Israel’s Interior Minister Ayelet
Shaked, who Moshe Machover in another excellent article Hypocrisy
all round describes as ‘Israel’s
double-plus version of Priti Patel’ has been wailing
that ‘90% of Ukrainian Refugees Arriving Are non-Jews, Situation 'Cannot Go On'.
You can see Ayelet’s point. The whole point of Israel that it
is a state for Jews, not non-Jews. Israel’s
Immigration Policy Center likened
the current situation to the case of infiltrators [this was a term originally
deployed for Palestinian refugees in the 50s who were trying to return by
sneaking over the border. Today it is used to refer to asylum seekers from
Africa].
The center warned
of a "ticking demographic time bomb".
It is important for the Jewish ethnic state to maintain a healthy majority over
non-Jews. If 90% of Ukrainian refugees are non-Jews then we might end up with a
non-Jewish state. God forbid! Concern for demography is integral to all Zionist
parties. That is why a Jewish State is inherently racist. Israeli politicians’ worst
nightmare is that one day Israel has a non-Jewish majority (which if Palestinians
under occupation were allowed to vote would already exist).
It is therefore perfectly understandable
that Israel should balk at taking non-Jewish refugees and diluting the racial
gene pool. Shaked therefore came up with a brilliant idea. Those entering with
the wrong bloodline would have to pay a 10,000 shekel deposit (£2,500) to
guarantee that they wouldn’t outstay their welcome (1 month). Zelensky, despite
being a Zionist (he is an Israeli citizen), objected.
ii.The second lesson is that ‘You Can Invade Iraq but not the Ukraine’.
This should be obvious. Only the United States has the right to invade
countries to engage in regime change. What the hell does Putin think he is
doing in challenging Biden’s monopoly on this kind of thing?
iii.Lesson 3 is particularly important for you to
understand. Although none of us like neo-Nazis there are times when Neo-Nazism
Can Be Tolerated. In 2014 neo-Nazi militia such as the Azov
Battalion were essential to overthrowing a pro-Russian President Yanukovych. That is why the United States,
Britain and Israel
have been arming them and training them.
The CIA
has been secretly
training forces for Ukraine since 2015. According to Nation
magazine in July 2015 Congressmen John Conyers and Ted Yoho drew up
an amendment to the House Defense Appropriations bill that “limits arms,
training, and other assistance to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia, the Azov
Battalion.” Yet by the end of 2015, under pressure from the Pentagon, Congress
removed a ban on funding the Azov Battalion from its spending bill.
It’s like Al Qaeda. They are our enemy but if they
are also the enemy of our enemy they can become our friend. So in the battle to
overthrow Assad in Syria Israel under the ‘Good Neighbour’ programme began funding
and arming the Al Qaeda front, al Nusra. Israel even provided hospital
facilities for their wounded fighters.
Of course Israel is not overkeen on neo-Nazis, despite
having a few in the Knesset, but in the world of realpolitik one can’t be too choosy. And they are certainly preferable
to communists since these days their main target is Arabs and Muslims (and now
Russians) not Jews. Neo-Nazis are now integrated
into the Ukrainian National Guard and armed forces, all courtesy of ‘Jewish’
President Zelensky.
iv.The fourth and most
important lesson is that Hitting High-rise flats is only a War Crime in Europe.
So we had the ludicrous situation that clips and images circulating about
Russian missile strikes were shown by USA Today and others to have been Israeli
attacks in Gaza! As Pappe wrote:
USA Today reported that a photo that
went viral about a high-rise in the Ukraine being hit by Russian bombing turned
out to be a high-rise from the Gaza Strip, demolished
by the Israeli Air Force in May 2021. A few days before that, the Ukrainian
Foreign Minister complained to the Israeli ambassador in Kiev that “you’re treating us like Gaza” (Haaretz,
February 17, 2022)
‘While the photo in the post
is real, it wasn't taken in Ukraine. Agence-France Presse photographer Mahmud
Hamsimage took the photo May 10, 2021, in the Gaza Strip.
It is an understandable mistake because
the Western media has never had a problem with Israeli air strikes on Gaza’s
high rise flats. Even scenes from video games have been passed off as being
from Ukraine (see here).
The reaction to Russian excuses for their actions are in
themselves noteworthy. Last year Israeli airstrikes in Gaza damaged six
hospitals, nine primary health care centres, and a desalination plant that
supplies clean water to 250 000 people according to the British
Medical Journal, quoting the United Nations. Israel justified this by claiming
that Hamas was operating there. Naturally the BBC treats this explanation deferentially.
When Israel announces that Hamas is using civilians as ‘human
shields’ Western leaders parrot this nonsense. Presumably this was why Israel used
White Phosphorous on schools and civilian targets. And The Hill, which boasts that it is ‘read by the White House and more lawmakers
than any other site’ carried an article,
not on Israel’s targeting of Palestinian civilians but on How Congress can fight Hamas's use of human shields’ thus buying
into Israel’s lying propaganda 100%.
When Russia uses the same excuses then
the BBC treats his explanation with the derision they deserve. Double standards
are normal BBC fare.
It shouldn’t need repeating but I
will for the benefit of those fools who believe that criticism of NATO means
that one is a ‘Putin’ supporter. These are the arguments of McCarthyists
through the ages. If you criticise any facet of American capitalism then you
are a communist or a Russian agent.
There are those who have imbibed
this logic with their mother’s milk. They stay glued to the BBC and in case
their minds should wander Boris Johnson, at the urging of Starmer, has ensured
that there is no alternative news outlet such as RT. Although we are in favour
of competition economically, it must never be though that this competition
extends to different narratives at the time of war.
We should be grateful to Israel, which
at least has had the decency not to condemn Russia too strongly. As Ha’aretz explained
there are Three
Reasons Why Israel Is Hesitant to Condemn Putin Over Ukraine most notably Israel’s
co-ordination with Russia over the bombing of Syria. I imagine that condemning
Russia’s attacks on civilians might seem a little like chutzpah, even for Israel’s cynical leaders.
There is also another irony as Pappe
pointed
out ‘The Ukrainian establishment does
not only have a connection with these neo-Nazi groups and armies, it is also
disturbingly and embarrassingly pro-Israeli.’
One of Zelensky’s first acts as
President was to withdraw Ukraine from the UN Committee on the Exercise of the
Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People – the only international tribunal
that makes sure the Nakba is not forgotten.
Zelensky had no sympathy for the Palestinian
refugees, nor did he consider them to be victims of any crime. In interviews
after the last Israeli bombardment of Gaza in May 2021, he stated that
the only tragedy in Gaza was the one suffered by the Israelis.
As Pappe commented, if what
Zelensky says is true then ‘it is only
the Russians who suffer in the Ukraine.’ But this too is out of Israel’s
playbook of ‘shooting and crying’. Even when Israel murders Palestinians they
are the real victims. As Golda Meir said:
“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive
them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the
Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”
I decided to send a letter to the
Guardian. Given its letters page is Freedlandised (after Jonathan Freedland,
its Zionist gatekeeper) it won’t appear but it’s good to give it the
opportunity to print the truth occasionally.
The stench of hypocrisy
surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is overpowering.
Over two dozen of us are
presently on bail for the ‘crime’ of trying to prevent Elbit Systems Ltd., an
Israeli arms manufacturer, from producing drones and missiles that are then
used by Israel, Saudi Arabia and other regimes to murder civilians.
Indeed one of Elbit’s proud
boasts to potential buyers is that its weapons are ‘battle tested’ against
civilians.
Since we are all now agreed that
bombing civilians, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure is a war crime
perhaps I could ask whether this only applies in Europe? Are non-European
peoples excepted from the protection of international law?
When Israel ‘mows the lawn’ in
Gaza, it has no hesitation in attacking health facilities and high rise tower
blocks. The excuse given is that Hamas is located in the facility or that
civilians are being used as human shields. The BBC takes these explanations
seriously but when it comes to Russia these same excuses are treated with
derision. Why?
USA Today revealed
on February 24 that a widely circulated image on social media of the bombing of
Kharkhiv was in fact the bombing of Gaza. USA Today also revealed
that a Facebook post that went viral showing a brave Ukrainian girl confronting
armed Russiansoldiers was in fact a
Palestinian girl, Ahed Tamimi, who in 2017 was gaoled for 8 months for slapping
a heavily armed soldier who had just shot her cousin in the head.
And isn’t the continued
incarceration of Julian Assange for exposing United States attacks on Iraqi
civilians an outrage too far?Or is
there something I have missed?
The fact that Putin is trying to justify the unjustifiable in
Ukraine does not mean we must ignore the U.S. actions that fuel his narrative.
In recent
days, U.S. and NATO officials have highlighted Russia’s use of banned weapons,
including cluster munitions, and have said their use constitutes violations of
international law. This is indisputably true. What goes virtually unmentioned
in much of the reporting on this topic is that the U.S., like both Russia and
Ukraine, refuses
to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
The U.S.
has repeatedly used cluster bombs, going back to the war in Vietnam and the “secret”
bombings of Cambodia. In the modern era, both Presidents Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush used them. President Barack Obama used
cluster bombs in a 2009
attack in Yemen that killed some 55 people, the majority of them women and
children. Despite the ban,
which was finalized in 2008 and went into effect in 2010, the U.S. continued
to sell cluster bombs to nations like Saudi Arabia, which regularly used
them in its attacks in Yemen. In 2017, President Donald Trump reversed an
internal U.S. policy
aimed at limiting the use of certain types of cluster munitions, a move which a
Human Rights Watch expert warned
“could embolden others to use cluster
munitions that have caused so much human suffering.”
Moscow’s
argument is that the U.S. and NATO, under the “pretext” of “humanitarian
intervention,” and with no United Nations authorization, unilaterally bombed
Serbia for more than two months in 1999 followed by a ground incursion into
Kosovo. In February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested, in
remarks at the U.N., that the U.S. had set a precedent with the Kosovo war and
that this negated the value of Western critiques of Russia’s plans to
attack Ukraine. “I have to recall these facts, because some Western
colleagues prefer to forget them,” Putin said
in his February 24 speech. “When we
mentioned the [Kosovo war], they prefer to avoid speaking about
international law.”
On
March 24, 1999, ignoring opposition from the U.N. and a sizable number of U.S.
lawmakers, the U.S. began what would become a 78-day NATO bombing campaign
against Serbia and Montenegro that saw civilian targets regularly struck, 16
media workers killed when a TV station was bombed, and internationally
banned cluster bombs used, including on a crowded market, in attacks
that killed between 90 and 150 civilians. The U.S. also bombed the Chinese
Embassy in Belgrade, killing three journalists.
While
Biden and his allies claimed that the war was necessary to prevent ethnic
cleansing and mass killing operations, the overwhelming
majority of Kosovo Albanians killed by Serbian forces were killed after the
NATO bombing began. Milošević responded to the airstrikes by unleashing his
forces and deploying great numbers of both conventional and special units as
well as vicious paramilitaries in a “systematic
and deliberately organized” mass killing and forced displacement operation.
During the bombing, an estimated 700,000 Kosovo Albanians were forcibly
displaced. “The NATO air campaign did not
provoke the attacks on the civilian Kosovar population but the bombing created
an environment that made such an operation feasible,” a U.N. commission on
the war concluded.
It
should also be pointed out that the condemnation of Russia for its use of
horrific thermobaric weapons and cluster bombs would be a tad more convincing
if Britain and the United States hadn’t used them in Syria and Afghanistan.
It
never ceases to amaze me how many fools are taken in by Western propaganda like
for example the detestable Kay
Burley.
