My Youtube account has been banned for ‘hate speech’! Why? Because I posted a video showing fascist Israelis shouting ‘Hitler was right’ at other, Jewish, demonstrators!

Using Youtube’s bizarre ‘logic’ any film about racism is itself racist! 

Death to the Arabs March – this video has also been taken down by Youtube

 Over a decade ago I published a blog Hitler was right say Zionists showing racist Israelis, to whom the holocaust clearly means nothing, shouting at Jewish demonstrators at Sheikh Jarrar that ‘Hitler was right’ and that they should have died at Auschwitz.

In December 2019 Youtube removed this video from my channel. I immediately restored the video but until a few days ago Youtube did nothing.

There have been a number of incidents of Israelis saying exactly the same as these Israelis. The most recent being two rabbis in the Eli premilitary school who concluded that Hitler’s only fault was that he exterminated the Jews rather than the Palestinians.

According to Youtube's Moronic Censorship It is Hate Speech to Publish This Photograph of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews and the Nazis

It is part of the warped ‘logic’ of Zionism that if you are Jewish and refuse to emigrate to the ‘Jewish’ state then you deserve to be the victim of anti-Semitism. And it is one step from that to actually wanting to see anti-Semitism in order to ‘encourage’ Jewish emigration. 

Many years ago writing in the Labour newspaper Davar Abraham Shpadrong (Sharon) expressed the thinking behind this example of Zionist Anti-Semitism:

"… if I had the power, as I have the will, I would select a score of efficient young men… and I would send them to the countries where Jews are absorbed in sinful self-satisfaction. The task of these young men would be to disguise themselves as non-Jews, and plague these Jews with anti-semitic slogans, such as 'Bloody Jew,' 'Jews go to Palestine,' and similar 'intimacies.' I can vouch that the results, in terms of considerable immigration to Israel from these countries, would be ten thousand times larger than the results brought by thousands of emissaries who have been, for decades, preaching to deaf ears. [See Naim Giladi, Ben Gurion’s Scandals, p. 306]

I’ve put the video on Dropbox for the moment because not only has Google removed my Youtube channel but it has also prevented me sharing the file on Googledrive!

Another of the videos I put up was one of the recent Jerusalem Day Demonstration where slogans such as ‘Death to the Arabs’ and ‘May your villages burn’ were chanted.  As a result of removing my video channel my blog now says that the video is unavailable.

Youtube has at least left the video at CTGN up, although they remind us that CTGN is funded by the Chinese government as a way of undermining its content. However Youtube don’t attach any such label to the BBC’s channel to remind us that they too are a state-funded broadcasting organisation funded by a compulsory tax!

There are only two conclusions that I can draw from this.

i.              That to work for Youtube you have to have an IQ of less than 80.

ii.            That under the rubric of ‘hate speech’ Google now equates those who expose racism and genocide with those who perpetrate it. In other words they are following a Zionist agenda.

Of course these are not alternatives. It may be that Youtube’s Zionist censor(s) are also stupid as well as malevolent.

According to Youtube's Moronic Censors Publishing this Video of Nazi Atrocities is an example of 'hate speech'

The implications of Youtube’s decision are potentially enormous. It means that if you post a photograph of Jews disembarking from the trains at Auschwitz you are justifying the holocaust. Or if you publish a picture of Black people being lynched, they can say you are justifying lynching.

According to Youtube's racist censors Haaretz was guilty of 'hate speech' for publishing this photograph

Of course Youtube don’t do this. They confine their censorship to Zionism and Palestine. Pictures of violence against Black people, have never been subject to Youtube or Google censorship which leads me to suspect that the reason that my Youtube channel has been taken down has nothing to do with ‘hate speech’, the all purpose excuse of racists and Zionist. Rather it is deliberate censorship on behalf of the world’s only apartheid state, Israel.

On 7^th August I received this message:

Notification of Removal of Youtube Channel

7^th August 2021

Hi Tony Greenstein,

We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our Community Guidelines. Because of this, we have removed your channel from YouTube.

We know that this is probably very upsetting news, but it's our job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all. If we think that a channel severely violates our policies, we take it down to protect other users on the platform – but if you believe that we've made the wrong call, you can appeal this decision. You'll find more information about the policy in question and how to submit an appeal below.

According to Youtube's 'policies' publishing this photograph of the Warsaw Ghetto is 'hate speech'

What our policy says

Content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people is not allowed on YouTube. We also don't allow any content that encourages hatred of another person or group of people. We review educational, documentary, artistic and scientific content on a case-by-case basis. Limited exceptions are made for content with sufficient and appropriate context and where the purpose of posting is clear.

Meet Cashtiel - one of Israel's more Enlightened Rabbis

How this affects your channel

We have permanently removed your channel from YouTube. Going forward, you won't be able to access, possess or create any other YouTube channels.

What you can do next

There are steps that you can take if you want to appeal this decision:

·         Appeal here. Make sure that you fill in the appeal form as completely as possible, including your channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDeILlYsP6CZV69q1k_gC-A

 If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to us here.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

 

Appeals

I have submitted numerous appeals to Youtube but it’s like engaging in dialogue with a speaking clock. You get no response but an inane computer produced message. In my latest appeal I wrote:

I'm not sure that a human being, certainly one of average intelligence actually reads these things... However I will AGAIN ask you to restore my channel which you deleted.

You took exception to 2 particular videos.  One was a reconstruction by Forensic Architecture of the murder of a Palestinian teacher, Yaqoub Abu Al-Qia, at Umm al Hiran, a Bedouin village in Israel's Negev that the racists were demolishing in 2017. 

It had been claimed that the teacher was trying to kill the police but Forensic Architecture showed that it was a lie.  Even Netanyahu accepted that the police evidence was a lie, because of the work by FA based at University College London, yet you took exception to my video. Clearly the little racist who made this decision was badly informed!

Even worse you objected to my video 'Hitler was right' which depicted a group of Israeli settlers shouting 'Hitler was right' and other epithets at other Jewish protestors.

Clearly I wasn't endorsing what they were shouting but exposing it.  But your moderators, who must have an IQ of at least 50, saw it as 'hate speech'.  I can’t believe your moderators are so dumb and stupid.

Perhaps if I put up a photo of a lynching or Jews at Auschwitz I could be accused of supporting the Holocaust or the KKK?  In other words exposing atrocities is as bad as perpetrating them.

I can't believe your moderators are sooo stupid.  I therefore ask, no I demand, that my channel is restored.

It EXPOSES racism it doesn't CONDONE it. 

Of course if your agenda is an Apartheid Zionist one then of course you will want to prevent such things being exposed.  Is that your real agenda?

Youtube's Corporate Censorship

There is no phone number that you can engage with at Youtube.  Google is wholly unaccountable for its decisions. I have therefore reached out to Electronic Intifada and others to publicise the latest examples of Corporate Internet censorship.

My first appeal to Youtube was on 8^th August. Because they have a 1,000 character limit for any appeal, presumably they are incapable of understanding more than about 200 words, I sent the appeal below about 4 times!

Youtube Appeals

It is difficult  to appeal against your decision when you have provided no explanation of why my Youtube channel has been removed other than to say that my channel ‘ severely violates our policies’.  You then go on to say that:

‘Content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people is not allowed on YouTube. We also don't allow any content that encourages hatred of another person or group of people.’

You go on to say that ‘Limited exceptions are made for content with sufficient and appropriate context and where the purpose of posting is clear.’

Your removal of my channel on these grounds is outrageous. I have been an anti-racist and anti-fascist activist all my life.  I am Jewish and also an anti-Zionist. I suspect that that is the real reason my channel has been terminated. You don’t like criticism of the State of Israel.

NOTHING WHATEVER in my channel glorifies violence.

On the contrary my purpose in hosting videos showing violence against Palestinians is in order to build enough pressure on Israel to stop the wanton shooting of civilians, including children and the demolition of Palestinian houses. 

I suspect that whoever made this decision is a Zionist and supporter of the State of Israel.  You have therefore chosen to take sides and smear and defame anti-Zionists as ‘anti-Semitic’ and racist.

For example one video you removed showed 2 Israelis shouting ‘Hitler was right’ against Jewish protestors at Sheikh Jarrar in Jerusalem, where Palestinians have been under threat of eviction for not being Jewish. Far from glorifying their hate speech I was EXPOSING the settlers and their supporters for being racists and fascists.

Perhaps the person who made this decision is ignorant of what is happening in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

 Can I therefore suggest that they read the Report of B’Tselem, Israel’s most respect human rights organisation ‘

A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid https://tinyurl.com/w34dxye4 and

Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed - Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution https://tinyurl.com/3jbps77f

In other words you are persecuting and banning the channel of an anti-racist activist in order to defend racists and supporters of Apartheid.  Are you really happy with that?  Another video you took exception to was a Forensic Architecture Report from academics at University College London which investigated the murder of a Bedouin teacher in the village of Umm al Hiran by Israeli Police. 

A murder which even Israel’s former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu now accepts was wrong and about which the Israeli Police lied (as they always do). This Report showed why they lied.

The person who made the initial decision on my channel clearly doesn’t understand the issues.

NONE of my videos either glorifies violence or indulges in hate speech.  That is merely rhetoric.  If you want to defend racist and apartheid practices be honest about it and don’t hide behind empty phrases such as ‘encourages hatred of another person or group of people.’  I hate racism and fascism and nothing else although I do hate political censorship that you have indulged in on bogus and frankly dishonest grounds.

Tony Greenstein

 

Sent on August 23^rd

On Saturday 7th August you removed my UTube channel because it promoted hate speech

I don't know whether or not you deliberately misrepresented my videos or simply misunderstood them. I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

You have provided NO REASONS for your decision.  There were just 2 videos you objected to.  After I appealed one of them, by Forensic Architecture, which analysed the murder of a Palestinian in Umm al Hiran you reversed your decision

You didn't reverse your decision of 6 August concerning my video 'Hitler was right said right wing Zionists about anti racist Israeli Jews Idiots at Youtube removed'.

This video showed right wing settler Israelis shouting 'Hitler was right' at Israeli Jews demonstrating in Sheikh Jarrar against evictions of Palestinians.  It was clearly aimed at EXPOSING the racism of the settlers and their supporters.

What is there about this that you don't understand?  The only conclusion that can be drawn is that you support the right wing, fascist and racist settlers and are seeking to protect them. 

My video was doing the work of a journalist and showing how antisemitism pervades Zionism.  Do you object to that?

I therefore ask once again that you respond substantively and justify your decision or revoke it and apologise for your errors.

If you do neither then I shall blog on your decision which will clearly be a deliberately racist decision in support of the settlers and their lobby,

To repeat, nothing in any of my videos is racist but they EXPOSE racism.  Do you now understand?

why the hell is this appeal in Chinese.  Why the hell are u incapable of engaging in a rational argument you corporate morons?  You cant even view a video and understand context, messaging or anything else.  Read this and repeat.

A VIDEO EXPOSING RACISM IS NOT RACIST IN ITSELF.  DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Are there no minimum education standards necessary for a Youtube censor to reach?  A child of 10 could understand that a video of right-wing Israeli settlers shouting 'Hitler was right' at anti-racist Jews is not an endorsement of what they were saying but quite the opposite.

Just how stupid can you be if you don't understand this simple thing.

Now don't come back at me with a pat repeated formula about hate speech.  I don't want to hear it.  I want to hear one of you give me reasons as to why you think as you do or alternatively to reverse your decision with the apologies that should already have been made

Tony Greenstein

 

‘(It’s a) shame your family survived [the Holocaust] world can do without cunts line (sic) you'

The anti-Semitic Abuse of a Zionist Zealot

A good example of the Zionist mentality - replete with the customary sexism

Not for the first time and not for the last time either, a Zionist zealot has sent me a message wishing that my family and me had perished in the Holocaust.  It's not unusual because scratch a Zionist and you’ll find an anti-Semite.  The two go hand in hand.  When Zionists use the term 'anti-Semite' they invariably mean anti-Zionist or supporters of the Palestinians.

If the original tweet was bad enough another Zionist joins in to justify it

Barely a day goes by without another media manufactured story about ‘Labour anti-Semitism’.  No matter how far out our outlandish, the media will sniff out ‘anti-Semitism’.  Prime amongst the sniffer-outers is the paper wot supported Hitler, yes our old favourite the Daily ‘Hate’ Mail.

The collected tweets of a Zionist anti-Semite

This is a story I suspect they won’t be terribly interested in.  I responded to a one-word tweet entitled ‘racist’ from a Zionist with the suggestion that they should look in the mirror.  The next thing I knew was a response, which was posted at around 5 pm by one George Yousaf.

A Zionist intellectual is Yousaf

The tweet declared that it was a pity my family hadn’t perished in the holocaust and proceeded from racist anti-Semitism to sexism seamlessly.

Yousaf displays what other Zionists think - Jeremy Corbyn called Hitler and Hitler called Corbyn

It isn’t the first and it won’t be the last time that Zionists post similar anti-Semitic stuff.  Almost instantly another Zionist tweeted a justification for the above comment.  Spanner explained that ‘he’s thinking what we all are your family will be spinning.'  I have no doubt that Yousaf posted what other Zionists are thinking.  It goes with the territory or in the case of Zionists with other peoples' territory.

Because this is an example of Zionist anti-Semitism the chances are that it will be missed.  It is not the kind of story the Tory press or even the ‘liberal Guardian will be interested in.  It is not part of their agenda, which is to get Corbyn and the Labour Left.  Stories are only interesting if they are about Jeremy Corbyn and anyone he has ever met in the past 50 years. 

Yousaf's Twitter Home Page with picture of Corbyn as Hitler and a Zionist Federation poster

Zionists wishing that Jewish people died in the gas chambers is not quite the story that the media want at this moment.  It is not unique. I’ve received messages like this before.  Once I received 2 messages in one day.  One from a Zionist wished that Hitler had killed me and my family, the second from a fascist  told me that there hadn’t been a holocaust!

When I reported both messages to the Zionist Community Security Trust they logged the latter message as an anti-Semitic incident but not the first, because it had been sent by a Jew or more precisely a Zionist Jew.  When is an anti-semitic attack not anti-semitic? When it’s a Zionist who is beinganti-Jewish 

You don’t have to delve deep into the Zionist psyche for an explanation.  Zionism was founded on a hatred of the Jewish diaspora.  They deserved everything they got, including the gas chambers, for not having heeded the Zionists when they said that it was impossible to live in the diaspora.  Zionism was founded on contempt for most Jews.  It intended to make a new start.  Almost a new people.  Anti-Semitism could not be fought.  Only by running away, escaping and founding a state that mirrored the anti-Semitic states they had fled from would Jews be able to hold their heads up.  Those Jews who disregarded this advice deserved everything including anti-Semitism.  Zionism was creating what they called the 'new Jew'.  The racial Jew that Nazis like Baron von Mildenstein, head of the Jewish desk at the Gestapo so admired, when he visited Palestine for 6 months in 1933.  Mildenstein was the guest of the Labour Zionist movement and the Kibbutzim.  [see A Nazi Travels to Palestine]

This was best summed by Joachim Doron in his Classic zionism and modern anti-semitism: Parallels and influences (1883-1914) [Journal of Israeli History,4:2,169 — 204] who described how Pinhas Felix Rosenbliith, who later became Israel’s first Minister of Justice described Palestine "an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin."

Until WW2 Zionism was a minority movement in the Jewish diaspora.  Everywhere it was seen as a defeatist movement that accepted anti-Semitism.  It was seen as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. 

Today that racism has been transferred to the Palestinians but the same mentality operates.   Which is why on the streets of Jerusalem when confronting Jewish   demonstrators supporting the Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah against evictions chanted ‘Hitler was right’ 

Ex-Netanyahu Aide Aviv Bushinsky Calls US Ambassador ‘A Little Jew Boy’

Zionist anti-Semitism in the 'Jewish' State

Theodor Herzl - the original Jewish anti-Semite

It would be difficult to find a more anti-Semitic and derogatory remark than ‘Jew Boy’.  Possibly ‘kike’ and ‘yid’ might fit the bill.  It was what the fascists called Jews in the ‘30’s and it has all but gone out of fashion – even for fascists.  An equivalent term would be ‘paki’ or ‘nigger’.  You get the message.

Yet this was the term that a former aide to Netanyahu, Aviv Bushinsky, used against the American Ambassador, Daniel Shapiro, who had issued a mild critique of Israel observing that there were two standards of justice on the West Bank and that maybe Israeli army investigations weren’t all that they were cracked up to be.

One might think that Shapiro was somewhat stating the obvious, since it is a fact that there are two different legal systems operating on the West Bank – one for Jews and another for Palestinians.

But Aviv Bushinsky wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary.  Anti-Semitism and Zionism go together like Jonathan and David, Lennon and McCartney.  They are twins of a kind.  Zionism started from the belief that Jews do not belong in the diaspora.  Strange as it seems, anti-Semites also hold the same belief, viz. that Jews do not belong other than in ‘their’ state.

Daniel Shapiro

Zionism however was more than a wacky belief.  It was a movement intent on setting up a Jewish state and to do that it had to ally itself with one or more colonial powers.  One of its main tasks was in persuading Jews to emigrate to Palestine.  This was no easy task.  Between the middle of the 19^th Century and 1914 over 2 million Jews  emigrated as refugees from Russia, because of the anti-Semitism and pogroms there, but only about 50,000 emigrated to Palestine.  The rest of the Jews emigrated to the United States and Britain.  In other words only 2% of Russia’s Jews wanted to go to the Promised Land. 

Zionism began from the premise that the Jewish position in the diaspora was ‘unnatural’.  That anti-Semites were entitled to their own anti-Jewish nationalism.  That Jews were strangers in other peoples’ lands.  They were guests, strangers who had outlived their welcome.  Indeed they went further.   Mapam/Hashomer Hatzair the ‘Marxist’ Zionists believed that the social structure of Jews in the diaspora resembled an ‘inverted pyramid’ i.e. there were too many rich Jews and not enough working-class Jews.  In fact this was untrue.  Jews in Russia (which then included Poland and Lithuania) were overwhelmingly poor workers and they formed the General Jewish Workers Union of Russia, Poland and Lithuania otherwise known as the Bund.  The Zionists were a tiny minority.

The Zionists attitude was essentially that the anti-Semites were right about the Jews.  The founder of Political Zionism Herzl made common cause with anti-Semites.  Contrary to a popular myth, Herzl wasn’t at all disturbed by the Dreyfus Affair, quite the contrary.  He wrote that:

‘In Paris..., I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism. [Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Gollancz, London 1958 p.6].

It was but a short step from this to believing that ‘the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies. We want to emigrate as respected people’ [Diaries pp. 83/4]

Herzl kept company with non-Jews like Daudet who were opponents of Jewish emancipation and anti-Dreyfussards.  Herzl went out of his way to obtain a favourable review of his pamphlet, The Jewish State, from Eduord Drumont, the leader of the anti-Dreyfussards.

Nor was Herzl alone.  Jacob Klatzkin, editor of the Zionist paper Die Welt and later the founder of Encyclopedia Judaica, wrote that

We are in a. word naturally foreigners. We are an alien nation in your midst and we want to remain one. An unbridgeable chasm yawns between you and us. A loyal Jew can never be other than a Jewish patriot... We recognise a national unity of Diaspora Jews no matter in which land they may reside... no boundaries can restrain us in... pursuing our own Jewish policy. J Klatzkin, 'Krisis und Entscheidung in Judentum', Berlin 1921, p118

The logic was impeccable.  Klatzkin was convinced that it wasn’t the anti-Semites but the opponents of anti-Semitism who were the enemy:

The contribution of our enemies is in the continuance of Jewry in Eastern Europe. One ought- to appreciate the national service which the Pale of Settlement performed for us... we ought to be thankful to our oppressors that they closed the gates of assimilation to us and took care that our people were concentrated and not dispersed. ['Crisis' Decision^! p.62 cited in Hermann op. cit. p. 205].

Often, if you didn’t know the person was Jewish you could be mistaken for believing that the statement had been issued by an out and out anti-Semite.  For example Pinhas Rosenbluth, Israel’s first Justice Minister was of the opinion that Palestine was ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’ [Joachim Doron, p.169. Classic Zionism and modern anti-Semitism: parallels and influences’ (1883-1914), Studies in Zionism 8, Autumn 1983].

All this was encapsulated in the foundational Zionist axiom called ‘the Negation of the Diaspora’.  The Jewish Diaspora was something that should be wound up.  Jews belonged in their ‘homeland’, Israel not in the countries they’d lived in for generations.

All this meant that Zionists viewed Diaspora Jews with contempt if not hatred.  Hence the description of a Jewish Ambassador using the most anti-Semitic word that one can conjure up.  Nor was Bushinsky alone. 

Attacks against Jewish anti-Zionists and supporters of the Palestinians in Israel is often anti-Semitic.  To support the Palestinians means that you would have deserved the attentions of Adolph Hitler.  Jews who care about others have a ‘diaspora mentality’.  When Israeli Jews in Sheikh Jarrar in Jerusalem protested at yet more confiscation of Palestinian civilians’ homes, Jewish right-wingers demonstrated against them chanting ‘Hitler was right’

Zionism is and always has been a Jewish form of anti-Semitism and Bushinsky’s comments were therefore completely in line with what Zionists have previously said.

Former Netanyahu aide lambasts US ambassador in heated spat

State Department backs Daniel Shapiro after he said Israel applies law in West Bank differently to Palestinians and Israelis

The US ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, was publicly lambasted on Israeli television. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AFP/Getty Images

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem

Wednesday 20 January 2016

The US State Department has moved to back America’s ambassador to Israel in a febrile and escalating row over his remarks on Monday that Israel applied law in the occupied West Bank differently to Palestinians and Israelis.

Ambassador Daniel Shapiro’s unusually critical comments drew harsh criticism from ministers in Israel’s rightwing government – including from the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

Shapiro was also publicly lambasted on Israeli television on Tuesday by a former aide to Netanyahu who used the deeply offensive Hebrew word “yehudon” – which translates as “little Jew boy” – to disparage the ambassador. The term is used by rightwing Israelis against other Jews – particularly those in the diaspora – whom they regard as not being sufficiently Jewish or pro-Israel.

Netanyahu has described Shapiro’s comments as unacceptable and wrong, while the justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, has suggested that they were inappropriate and Shapiro should recant them.

 “We are being subjected to a terrorist onslaught that is simply unfamiliar to the United States, and to pass judgment on us in such a one-sided manner is wrong,” Shaked told Army Radio. “It would be appropriate if he corrected himself, and I hope he does that.”

As the row continued into a third day, US State Department spokesman John Kirby insisted the ambassador was reiterating US policy on Israeli settlement construction. Kirby was speaking after a private meeting between Shapiro and Netanyahu to attempt to paper over the differences.

“Our long-standing position on settlements is clear. We view Israeli settlements activity as illegitimate and counterproductive to the cause of peace. We remain deeply concerned about Israel’s current policy on settlements including construction, planning and retroactive legalisations,” he said.

The latest row comes against a backdrop of escalating tensions between Israel and various countries and international political groupings.

Last year, Netanyahu’s government reduced diplomatic contacts with EU officials following a decision to recommend that member states label products produced in illegal Israeli settlements.

The Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, has effectively been declared persona no grata in Israel after calling for an investigation into whether recent shootings of Palestinians by Israeli security forces amounted to extrajudicial executions. Israeli officials said her comments were “delirious”, while Netanyahu called them “outrageous”.

Israel also strongly condemned the decision this week by the EU foreign council to take up a new resolution strongly critical of continued Israeli settlement.

Israel finds itself facing renewed criticism from the European Union for the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a complaint that Shapiro echoed.

In remarks at a security conference on Monday – regarded as a showcase event for Israeli politicians and senior security officials – Shapiro said: “Too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities, too much vigilantism goes unchecked, and at times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians.”

Kirby explicitly rejected Israeli claims that EU labelling of settlement products amounted to a boycott of Israel. “We do not view labelling the origin of products as being from the settlements a boycott of Israel. We also do not believe that labelling the origin of products is equivalent to a boycott.”

Media pundit Aviv Bushinsky, who served as Netanyahu’s chief of staff when he was finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s government, made the remarks on an Israeli political show.

“Nobody was standing there with a hammer forcing him [Shapiro] to say it,” he said on the programme.

“I see a Jew, Dan Shapiro, saying this. I see it as a pattern – it was the same thing with [former US Middle East envoy] Dennis Ross and now with [former US ambassador to Israel] Martin Indyk saying his nonsense. It’s the behaviour of Jews who are trying to show that they are extra leftwing, more liberal and more balanced.”

Some Israeli commentators saw it as no coincidence that Shapiro’s remarks were made so soon after the lifting of sanctions against Iran and at such a high-profile forum.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Shimon Shiffer said: “Shapiro’s comments … are significant in that they suggest the Obama administration will no longer tolerate human rights violations by our decision-makers against Palestinians in the West Bank. From the perspective of the White House, ‘enough is enough’.”