Festive Greetings to My Readers but Spare a Thought for the People of Gaza Who Face a Bleak Xmas & New Year Because of Israeli & US War Criminals

Thank you for the Solidarity you have Shown to Mick Napier and Myself as Britain’s Police Try to Criminalise Palestinian Solidarity

If the Rotten & Corrupt Arab Regimes Followed the Example of the Houthis in Yemen & Cut Off the Oil then Israel’s Genocide Would Be Stopped Instantly

Christmas Has Been Shot

Benjamin Zephania

Christmas has been shot away this year,
There are too many choppers chopping up the sky
Too many bullets in the air for good tidings,
There will be no Christ and no mass
And darkness has fallen upon the land.
No one shall make a joyful noise unto the Lord
Or serve the Lord with gladness,
No one shall come before his presence with singing,
And Palestinian Christians who want to declare
The name of the Lord in Jerusalem
Or glorify the boy in Bethlehem
Have been told to piss off to Jordan,
Syria or Iraq.

All the saints have been told
To wait for the resumption of peace talks
And the angels of the Lord have been told
To wait until the Americans are ready
Because Zion means something else now,
And yes it was written that the truth shall flow
From the mouths of babe and suckling,
But babes and sucklings beware
The soldiers have orders to kill,
And the spirit of King Herod is alive.
They’re not doing Christmas this year,
It has been shot away
‘And anyway
Christ is no messiah,’ said the soldier
‘This is our Promised Land.’

What we see over Bethlehem this year
Is a spineless, skeleton of a Christmas,
A Christmas that has been occupied, strangled
And driven to tears, crying tear gas and burning,
It’s a Christmas that has no songs or sermons
Except the song of the bomber;
As loud as dying
As quiet as death.
Welcome to the birthplace of his holiness
Welcome to the humiliation of the natives,
Here even flowers are shot down
If they fly the local flag,
You will not hear the bells of Christmas
And you will not hear the women sing.
‘And let me tell you something else,’ said the soldier
‘No virgin gave birth here – we wouldn’t allow it.’

Sorry gentiles
It looks like it’s gonna be a cold Christmas,
Ain’t no spirit of the Lord moving over the manger
Just a nuclear power
Flying in from Tel Aviv via Washington DC.
The power of the almighty has come for sure
To suck Christmas dry
And to blow Christmas away.
There will be no mercy
And no rejoicing
And no worshipping any little Black Palestinian boy,
And no crosses
And no three wise women or men
And no Arab shepherds,
Because Christmas has been done in
Christmas is coughing and choking
Christmas has been hit by bullets from the west,
So if you want to do Christmas this year
Take a bible,
Sit indoors,
And do your own thing,
Just don’t do it in Bethlehem.    

One thing is for sure. Nothing will ever be the same after the October 7^th break-out from Gaza Concentration camp. ‘Normalisation’ by Saudi Arabia is off the agenda.

The venom attached to the death of 1,200 (but probably lower) number of Israeli deaths is in marked contrast to the indifference if not delight at the genocidal murder of Palestinians in Gaza.

Yesterday anti-Zionist Jewish activist Tony Greenstein was arrested at his home by British anti-terror police for a tweet (below).

Police seized his phone and laptop and held him for nine hours. His electronics were not returned on his release. pic.twitter.com/bpbDP20cfW

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) December 21, 2023

There has been an adamant refusal by the mass media to publish the fact that one-third of the casualties were Israeli soldiers whom it was perfectly reasonable for Hamas to attack. International law recognises the right of an oppressed people to wage war on their oppressor.

Nor has there been an inkling of recognition that, as Israeli survivors like Jasmine Porat have testified, a majority of the remaining civilian deaths were caused by Israeli firepower.

One of the main purveyors of false stories of rape is ex-IDF spokesperson Cochav Elkayam-Levy whom the BBC naturally took to their bosom

Instead we have had fake stories of rape and torture of Israelis and 40 beheaded babies spread far and wide. The death of premature babies in Al Shifa hospital, directly caused by Israel, hasn’t merited so much as a response.

Israeli Anger Over the Truth of How Hamas Treats Its Prisoners Led to the Dismissal of the Hospital Employee Who Facilitated a Press Conference that Yochev Lifshitz Spoke At

The fact is that numerous Israeli hostages testified to their humane treatment by Hamas in marked contrast to the reports of summary execution of civilians by Israel and widespread torture of prisoners.

As Peter Oborne so rightly says, if Jesus was alive today his days would be numbered at the hands of the Zionist military. Gaza has definitively  proved that the ‘human rights’ concerns of Western leaders when it comes to the Uighars of China and women in Iran are utter hypocrisy.

Every abomination from attacks on residential homes to the murder of over 100 journalists to mass torture, murder of doctors and the bombing of ambulances and schools has been applauded by Genocide Joe Biden and his pet puppets Sunak & Starmer.

The outpouring of rage over Russia’s sorely provoked invasion of Ukraine stands in marked contrast to the silence of western leaders over the slaughter of 10,000+ Palestinian children.

If there is one conclusion that cannot be avoided now it is that the ‘Jewish’ State of Israel, as an apartheid, genocidal state has got to go. Reform is impossible. Racism and murder is part of Israel’s DNA.

This should have been obvious all along. A Jewish ethno-nationalist state is, like all ethno-nationalist states, inherently racist. Zionism with its goal of a Greater Israel was never going to be content to stay within the 1948 Armistice Lines.

What is also clear is that the different wings of Zionism, from ‘left’ to ‘right’ are artificial. From Meretz to Otzmah Yehudit there is a consensus that the Arabs are outsiders in Israel.  Ben Gvir wants ‘radical’ solutions such as expulsion but that was also the recipe of the Labour Zionists in 1948.

The difference this time around is that the whole world is watching. After 1948 the Zionists concocted a fiction that the Palestinian refugees left voluntarily because of the orders of Arab rulers despite being begged to stay. This time there can be no pretence as the United States and European powers turn a blind eye to Zionist desires to rid Gaza of its population.

The war against the Palestinians of Gaza has also brought into being a mass movement in support of the Palestinians. Despite the best attempts of the state to repress the movement and ban its marches, it has succeeded in mobilising over a million people in Britain.

We have to capitalise on this and ensure that the movement in support of the Palestinians and in opposition to Zionism grows in the coming months. Just as the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa 30 years ago created a mass movement so must the struggle against Zionism in Israel.

What is also clear is that we must create a national solidarity movement. Palestine Solidarity Campaign is not fit for purpose. It has jettisoned anti-Zionism and tried to appeal to the ‘mainstream’ of British politics. In that it has been wholly unsuccessful. Its refusal to say what it stands for, its failure to condemn the discredited two-state solution has mean that it has nothing to say on the ‘right to exist’ of the Israeli state. PSC has also refused to condemn the Vichy-style Palestinian Authority that the West supports.

PSC’s failure to call-out the fake anti-Semitism smear campaign has meant that its affiliated trade unions have faced two-ways. Supporting the Palestinians whilst also support Israel’s ‘right to exist.’

As you know Mick Napier and I have been arrested on ‘suspicion’ of supporting Hamas, which is proscribed as a ‘terrorist’ organisation on the say so of one man, Home Secretary Sajid David in 2021. We have since learnt of other arrests for the same ‘crime’.

So I want to make my position crystal clear. Although I don’t and never have supported Hamas politically, I support their and all Palestinians’ right to resist the Israeli military occupation and I hope that as many Israeli soldiers in Gaza are killed as possible.

I also reject the designation of Hamas as a ‘terrorist’ group. It is nothing of the sort. This designation is political and is not based on anything so much as factual evidence.

The Nazification of Israel proceeds apace. Gaza today is little more than a death camp where 2 million people are being subject to slow starvation, where water is not allowed in and where all civilian infrastructure is being destroyed on the presence that it contains Hamas headquarters.

A few days ago Israel even invaded a Christian church killing two worshippers, meriting a rare rebuke from the Pope.

Israel today has learnt the lessons of the Holocaust well. Exterminating people is not wrong per se as long as it’s not Jews who are dying. The level of racism in Israeli society today is far, far higher than in Nazi Germany where anti-Semitism was always confined to a minority, certainly before 1933.

Happy Yuletide and New Year

Tony Greenstein 

Xmas Appeal for Jenin’s Al Tafawk Children’s Centre

 18 Months Ago, During the Bombing Of Gaza, Israel’s Military Destroyed the Centre. They Even Tore Up Children’s Books

Please donate to our Xmas Fundraiser

https://gofund.me/c73095a6

In May 2021, whilst Israel was bombing Gaza and killing another 60 children the Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces were busy at work in Jenin. Having nothing better to do they raided the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre ‘looking for arms’.

And just to be sure that they weren’t hidden anywhere they took door handles off doors, destroyed the stairs, smashed up the water pipes and as the icing on the cake one Jewish Nazi tore up the children’s books.  All you understand as part of a search for arms because where better to find a revolver than between the pages of nursery rhymes?

The reason given for this last act of destruction was that the children would only grow up to be ‘murderers’ and so there really was no need to read.  Those with an eye to history will remember the speech of Heinrich Himmler on October 6 in Posen, Poland to the Higher SS Police commanders when he explained why Jewish children also had to die.  It was because they too would become murderers and avenge their parent’s deaths.

Only two days ago 3 Palestinians were murdered and 8 injured when the Israeli military shot up a car. This continuous wave of attacks, meant to stem the growing Palestinian resistance has made Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, Israel’s prime target alongside Nablus.

Mahmoud - a child murdered with impunity by Israeli soldiers earlier this year

The Al Tafawk Children’s Centre plays a key part in ensuring that the children of the Jenin refugee camp have somewhere to go, a place of safety. Yet even here tear gas wafts in as bored Israeli soldiers fire off a few volleys at the Centre. Their outside garden has been trampled on by the military and there is a constant threat to the children as the military eyes the Centre from outside.

The Al Tafawk Centre offers a place for children to play in relative safety

The reason is clear.  Any Palestinian civil organisation is a threat to Israel’s desire to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. As Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the moderate you will remember, said – Israel’s goal is ‘maximum land and maximum Jews’.

With openly fascist Ministers now in charge of the military administration in the West Bank we can expect even worse to come.

Many of the children have seen their parents hurt or injured and one of the 3 Palestinians killed 2 days ago was the father of one of the children using the Centre.

I have a simple request to make of you.  We can celebrate Xmas in peace knowing that our children are not likely to be shot ‘by accident’ by  the British army, or at least not yet. But in Jenin it is different.  Israel has thought nothing of shooting live bullets at the vehicle which brings children to the Centre each day.

No doubt if one of the children is killed then Luke Akehurst of          We Believe in Israel will justify it, claiming that it was all a ‘tragic accident’.  This is the Israeli army’s last defence when their excuses have run out as with the murder of the 4 children playing on  Gaza’s beach in 2014.

The Israeli military thought nothing of firing at the car taking the children to the Centre

I have a simple request to make.  The Centre provides what is often the only meal of the day for over 150 children. It provides a place to play and it employs teachers to teach them. Every other month we pledge to give at least £1,000 from the Brighton Trust.  However we can only do this if people are willing to contribute to our Crowdfunder. Please help us.

So I am asking you, as the festive season approaches to dig deep and make a donation, however big or small, to our Crowdfunder.

Many thanks

Tony Greenstein

My New Year’s Wish is for a new Leader of the Labour Party Who Can Tell the Truth, Respects Democracy and Isn’t a Zionist or a Racist

Happy New Year 2021 

AuldLang Syne

 

I wish you, and those you love and care for  a very happy New Year and let’s hope it is a better one than 2020 for the both us and the Palestinians

       

 

b

Xmas Under Occupation in Ramallah

Israel Appears to be Promoting the Xmas Celebrations in Bethlehem this Year as part of normalisation of the Occupation

Hence why it appeared on the BBC - however they still can't erase the Apartheid Wall 

Christmas in Bethlehem Behind the Apartheid Wall

Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign reminds people that in the birthplace of Christ, Xmas has to be celebrated under military occupation – this is what Israel calls ‘freedom of worship’ 

See A Palestinian Christian explains what it feels to celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem today.

Not a Happy Xmas from Palestine and Apartheid Israel

Xmas Banned in Upper Nazareth

·          Dec 23rd, 2010

The mayor of a Jewish suburb of Nazareth sparked outrage yesterday after  he refused to allow Christmas trees to be placed in town squares, calling them "provocative".

Predominantly Jewish Nazareth Illit, or Upper Nazareth, is next to the old town of Nazareth, where Jesus is believed to have spent much of his life. It has a sizable Arab Christian minority, as does mostly Muslim Nazareth itself. "The request of the Arabs to put Christmas trees in the squares in the Arab quarter of Nazareth Illit is provocative," Mayor Shimon Gapso told AFP.

"Nazareth Illit is a Jewish city and it will not happen -- not this year and not next year, so long as I am a mayor," he said. 

His decision  has angered the town's Arab and Christian minority, who accused him of racism.

"The racism of not putting a tree up is nothing compared to the real racism that we experience here," said Aziz Dahdal, a 35-year-old Christian resident of Nazareth Illit.

"When we asked the mayor to put up a Christmas tree in the Arab neighborhoods of Nazareth Illit he said this is a Jewish town, not a mixed town," said Shukri Awawdeh, a Muslim Arab member of the town council. Awawdeh said there were 10,000 Arabs, most of them Christian in the town and there was also a large community of Christian Russian immigrants. "We told him that decorating a tree is just to share the happiness and cheer with other people in the town," said Awawdeh.

"People here, Jews, Christians and Muslims live in harmony, but when the mayor does something like that, it does not make things better."

A spokesman from the Mayor of Camden's office in North London said: "I've never thought Christmas trees were a religious symbol. I'm an atheist but we have one at home. They brighten up what is the darkest time of the year. In Camden we have many Muslims, Hindus and people of other faiths  as well as Christians. Many of our streets and of course all our shops are decorated with lights and trees."

Ali Abunimah 25 December 2012

In his Christmas greeting video, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of Israel’s supposed religious tolerance.

“Today Christian communities around the Middle East are shrinking and in danger. This is of course not true in Israel. Here there’s a strong, growing Christian community that participates fully in the life of our country,” Netanyahu said.

A Xmas reminder in Brighton town centre

Vowing to “continue to protect freedom of religion and thought,” Netanyahu also promised “to safeguard Christian places of worship throughout our country” and not to “tolerate any acts of violence or discrimination against any place of worship.”

Making a pitch for Christian Zionist tourism he urged listeners to “Come see our ancient land with your own eyes. Visit Nazareth and Bethlehem, wade in the Jordan River, stand on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and next year come visit our eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

His inclusion of Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, as well as the banks of the Jordan River, can be taken as another affirmation that Israel, despite its rhetoric, has no interest in a “two-state solution” and intends to absorb all of historic Palestine as an exclusively “Jewish state.”

Disappearing Christmas trees

Netanyahu’s professions of tolerance would have come as news to Palestinian Christian students at Safad Academic College in the Galilee. There, students who could not get home for the holidays bought a Christmas tree and set it up outside their dorm.

Nazareth - the Fountain of the Virgin (1894)

But in the evening when they got back from class, they found the tree was gone, Israel’s Walla! News reported.

“This is the saddest Christmas,” said Gabriel Mansour, 24, a third-year political science student, identified by Walla! as a representative of Arab students. “All we wanted to do was provide some good cheer for all the students who remained alone in the dorms, and who were unable to go home to their families.”

When Mansour investigated, he was told by college officials that the tree had been hidden lest it spark riots among the Jewish students.

“I was angry to hear this,” said Mansour of the claim that the tree might spark riots among Jewish students and residents of Safad. “Unfortunately they don’t respect our holidays. We fully respect all Israeli holidays. Why can no one respect our traditions? Why can’t we put up a Christmas tree?”

“I do not think Christmas should be marked with such ostentation,” Walla! quoted an unnamed Jewish student saying. “The college has a distinctly Jewish character. It’s not healthy for anyone to be able to do whatever he wants.”

Caught with a Christmas tree

Yair Netanyahu in flagrante with Christmas tree  Facebook

And there was a mini-scandal when the girlfriend of Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli prime minister, posted a photo of the youth wearing a Santa hat and posing next to a Christmas tree, on Facebook. Under the photo was the caption “My Christian boy.”

The prime minister’s office was forced to issue a statement that the image was a joke and that Yair had been attending a party hosted by “Christian Zionists who love Israel, and whose children served in the IDF,” Israel’s Channel 2 reported. Nevertheless the photo was removed from Facebook.

State rabbis order bans on Christmas

The ban on Christmas at Safad college is no isolated incident. For several years, Shimon Gapso, the notoriously racist mayor of the Israeli settlement of “Upper Nazareth” in the Galilee, has banned Christmas trees, calling them a provocation. “Nazareth Illit [Upper Nazareth] is a Jewish city and it will not happen – not this year and not next year, so long as I am a mayor,” Gapso said.

According to journalist Jonathan Cook in Nazareth, such bans continue and are widespread this year with Israel’s state-financed rabbis warning hotels and restaurants that they will lose their kosher certifications if they put up trees or other Christmas decorations or hold Christmas events.

“In other words,” Cook says, “the rabbinate has been quietly terrorising Israeli hotel owners into ignoring Christmas by threatening to use its powers to put them out of business. Denying a hotel its kashrut (kosher) certificate would lose it most of its Israeli and foreign Jewish clientele.”

Publicly visible Christmas tree could “injure the souls of Jews”

When the Israeli occupation municipality in Jerusalem this year put up a small Christmas tree near the Jaffa Gate, there were strong protests from rabbis. Occupation municipality city council member Rabbi Shmuel Yitzhaki told settler news website Arutz 7 that the display was a “desecration” and a “grave offense against the Jewish people” and that it was “inconceivable” that a Christmas tree should be allowed in a “public place” where it might be seen by Jews on their way to pray at the Western Wall in eastern occupied Jerusalem.

Mina Fenton, a former city council member, said, “There’s a Christian Quarter. They can put it [the tree] up there,” where it couldn’t “injure the souls of Jews.”

Christmas trees as propaganda for ethnic cleansing group JNF

While Israel’s official rabbis, colleges and municipalities discourage or ban displays of Christmas trees, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the racist state-backed agency actively engaged in ethnically cleansing Palestinians and stealing their land for exclusive use by Jews, has found a way to use Christmas trees to paint a false image of itself as a promoter of multicultural harmony.

The JNF, which misrepresents itself as an environmental charity, now gives away some trees and felled branches particularly to foreign embassies, for use as Christmas trees in private homes, and markets the initiative as outreach to maintain “good relations between religions.” Against the background of the JNF’s true activities, such cynical propaganda should convince no one. But it might be useful in raising donations from Christian Zionists.

Discrimination against Christianity inherent in Israel’s “Law of Return”

The efforts by Netanyahu and the JNF to present Israel as tolerant and friendly to Christians are important to maintain external, especially Christian Zionist support, and to hide a much uglier reality.

Israel claims to be a “Jewish state.” Its blatantly discriminatory “Law of Return” grants the automatic right to those it recognizes as Jews from anywhere in the world to immigrate and receive citizenship even if they have no connection to the country. At the same time, Israel prevents indigenous Palestinian refugees, including those born there, from returning home just because they are not Jews.

But according to the US State Department in its 2011 report on religious freedom around the world, Israel specifically applies a blatantly anti-Christian test in applying this bigoted law:

The question of whether one believes Jesus is the Jewish Messiah has been used to determine whether a Jew was qualified to immigrate. The [Israeli] Supreme Court repeatedly has upheld the right, however, of Israeli Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah to retain their citizenship. The immigration exclusion was routinely applied only against Messianic Jews, whereas Jews who were atheists were accepted, and Jews who chose to believe in other religions, including Hindus and Buddhists, were not screened out.

In other words a “Jew” can be an atheist, Hindu, or Buddhist – anything at all – and be granted citizenship by Israeli authorities. It is only a belief in Jesus that disqualifies them.

Attacks on Christian holy sites

As for Netanyahu’s promise that Christian holy sites would be protected, he failed to mention that in recent months, Israeli settlers, acting with the collusion of Israeli authorities, have stepped up so-called “price tag” attacks on Christian holy sites.

Meanwhile, Christmas celebrations proceeded this year in Gaza and in Iran, where municipal authorities in Tehran have in recent years put up banners celebrating the birth of Jesus on many main streets. Both Iran and Gaza are Muslim-majority places that Israeli propaganda loves to paint as particularly intolerant of religious minorities.

Few countries live up to their own claims about religious freedom and tolerance and many must do better. But selling Israel in particular, whose whole raison d’être is to privilege Jews qua Jews over the indigenous Palestinian population of any religion, as a paragon of tolerance and pluralism is patently absurd.

Merry Christmas!