Zionist Community Security Trust in Dilemma over Islamaphobic Conference

When I criticised those Zionists who associated Jews with Israel's attack on Gaza (2008-9) Gardener of the CST was one of those who objected!

Gardener of the CST - Happy to associate with bigots like Richard Littlejohn

Should We Walk or Should We Stay?  Neither it would appear!!

As I have documented time and again, the primary agenda of the self-appointed, private charity headed by ultra-Zionist rightwinger, Gerald Ronson, is to paint anti-Zionist and support for the Palestinians as ‘anti-Semitic’. 

Unsurprisingly the CST, which styles itself as the defence wing of the Jewish community and is honoured as such by the Metropolitan Police and people like Michael Gove MP, is no stranger to working with Islamaphobes and anti-Muslim racists.

In particular, over the summer, it devoted its time to supplying false and misleading information to the Home Office concerning Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Northern Islamic League in Israel.  Sheikh Salah, whom the Israelis tried to murder on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, has been a thorn in the side of Israel’s leaders.  The CST’s misinformation led to the arrest and attempted deportation of Sheikh Salah before the Senior Immigration Appeal Tribunal, noting the false nature of the charges against him, ordered his release.

Community Security Trust Supplies False Information to Deport Sheikh Raed Salah
Immigration Appeal Tribunal's Racist Order to Deport Raed Salah
How the Zionist Community Security Trust and Theresa May Colluded at the Behest of Racists to Deport Raed Salah & Prevent Free Speech

Indeed it is impossible today to be a pro-Israel advocate and a Zionist without also being an Islamaphobe.  Support for Israel and anti-Arab racism are inseparable.  

It was only last week that I picked up on a tweet from Dave Rich, second-in command at the CST, who accused Professor Baruch Brent, a child refugee of nazism, of 'Antisemitism!' for daring to compare the Nazi bombing of Guernica with that of Gaza. 

What attracted Rich's attention was that I happened to mention that the CST had paid no regard to the fact that a demonstration that they had stewarded, in support of the killing of 9 activists on the Mavi Marmara, had also been supported by the EDL and some of their members.  Dave Rich wrote back furiously stating that

‘I personally (and my colleagues), have made our position on the EDL and similar Islamophobic groups very clear on the CST Blog, for example:…..
We have also done so to the wider Jewish community via the Jewish Chronicle:…..
Regarding CST's policies regarding securing demonstrations , we have stated publicly that we will not provide security for demonstrations where the EDL are present: http://blog.thecst.org.uk/?p=2556
Your allegation that CST was content for the EDL to join a pro-Israel demonstration in June 2010 is not true and is contradicted by the media reporting at the time:
http://jc-thn-ws3.thejc.com/news/uk-news/32425/hundreds-demonstrate-israel-london
…. CST has provided security advice to mosques that faced Islamophobic demonstrations and I personally act as an advisor to the Tell MAMA campaign that monitors anti-Muslim hate crime.
Regards
Dave Rich
CST

Mr Rich said it was untrue to say that they were not content for the EDL to join the pro-Israeli demonstration and that they don’t steward events where the EDL is present was contradicted at the time.  Even the overtly pro-Zionist Bob from Brockley in an article ‘The English Defence League and the Gaza Flotilla’ accepted that ‘A tiny number of English Defence League members turned up at a pro-Israel demonstration, some possibly from the semi-fictitious "Jewish Division" of the EDL (it also has a "LGBT Division" and of course prominent Sikh members).’

Dave Rich may indeed be an adviser to Tell Mama but by all accounts, this Government funded initiative is ‘Not Off to a Good Start!’  Since the government has been one of the main sources of the demonisation of Arabs and Muslims these are not particularly spectacular credentials.

But the CST demonstrated its real concerns with its campaign to deport Sheikh Salah.  It was a thoroughly racist campaign (or perhaps I have failed to notice the CST campaign to have Avigdor Liebermann deported – from memory I seem to recall that they helped guard his meetings!).

To get Raed Salah deported, the CST quoted uncritically from racist Hebrew University Professor Raphael Israeli (see e.g. The Community Security Trust cites the racist Hebrew University Professor Raphael Israeli to denounce the ‘anti-Semitism’ of Sheikh Raed Salah.

Professor Raphael Israeli makes the British National Party and National Front seem mild by comparison.  For example ‘When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems. That is a general rule, so if it applies everywhere it applies in Australia." and ‘Australia should cap Muslim immigration or risk being swamped by Indonesians.’

Sydney Morning Herald, 16.2.07. ‘Limit Muslim migration, Australia warned.  The CST's Professor Israeli was also quoted as saying that ‘Muslim immigrants had a reputation for manipulating the values of Western countries, taking advantage of their hospitality and tolerance.’ ‘"French people say they are strangers in their own country. This is a point of no return.’

It wasn’t no long ago that you could have substituted ‘Jewish’ for ‘Muslim’ to receive the approval of the owner of the Daily Express (today's owner Richard Desmond is a funder/supporter of the CST and his papers are equally defamatory and racist to Muslims as they once were to Jewish immigrants).  Yet when I phoned Mark Gardener about Professor Israeli, his only response was ‘no comment.’
The primary purpose of the CST has not been to defend the Jewish community against anti-Semitism in the normally accepted and understood sense of the term, but to categorise opposition to Israel’s actions as ‘anti-Semitic’.  There is no doubt that some people, taking Israel’s rhetoric at face value, do react to its behaviour in an anti-Semitic way.  Indeed it is an undoubted fact that the source of most anti-Semitism in the West today originates from the actions of Israel – the ‘Jewish’ state apparently set up to make them feel secure!  But irony is lost on the CST.  What matters is the anti-Semitism, not its causes.

Even worse, despite supporting the Zionist inspired European Union Monitoring Committee definition of ‘anti-Semitism’, which states that ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel’ is anti-Semitic, there is no recorded occasion when the CST has upbraided or even commented when leading Zionists and Jewish religious leaders expressed unanimous ‘Jewish’ support recently for the attack on Gaza. Unanimous UK Jewish communal organisations support for Israel over Gaza fighting

Symposium on ‘anti-Semitism’

It was therefore with some surprise that I read on Jewsansfrontieres that the CST had walked out of a symposia on ‘anti-Semitism’ at which some of the most dedicated anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigots you could hope to find were speaking.  Proud to be ashamed to be associated with islamophobes or ashamed to be proud?

By chance I had recently done a post on this exact conference, cross-posting from Tony Lerman’s Another faulty, pseudo-academic antisemitism initiative  Lerman wrote about how

‘The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism: a home for the ‘new antisemitism’ notion.  The JSA is a privately funded periodical founded four years ago. It has no institutional base and is privately published. … Even a cursory glance at the journal’s list of Board Members reveals a great preponderance of neoconservatives, Islamophobes, advocates of the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, pedlars of the ‘self-hating Jew’ accusation against Jewish critics of Israeli policies and out-and-out political propagandists.  The individuals funding the event are Daniel Pipes, Mitch Knisbacher and Jeff and Evy Diamond.
The three panellists will find much to agree on. For decades Bat Ye’or has been banging the drum about the ‘Muslim hordes’ who were about to take over Europe. Rather generously referred to as a ‘self-taught Jewish intellectual’, she now believes that Europe is dead, and in its stead ‘Eurabia’ has risen. Richard Landes, director and co-founder of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, told the Herzliya IDC conference in 2007:
European democratic civilization can fall before the Islamic challenge. Do not say that this will never happen in Europe and that Islam will not be able to take control of Europe. If Europe continues its current path, the fall will be sooner.
Winston Pickett was the director of the now non-functioning EISCA. He lavishes unreserved praise on Professor Robert Wistrich for his huge tome, Antisemitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, a book that, as its title suggests, sets out to justify the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’.
In panel 2, Mark Gardner of the CST and Robert Wistrich, who heads the Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), should feel comfortable with each other’s role in justifying and promoting the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, though it would be only fair to acknowledge that Wistrich’s influence in this regard far outstrips that of Gardner’s. Wistrich restated the classic definition of the ‘new antisemitism’ in a talk at the Hebrew University Jerusalem in June 2011 entitled ‘From blood libel to boycott: changing faces of British antisemitism’. … Gardner’s use of the ‘new antisemitism’ argument is clearly apparent in his and Dave Rich’s analysis of Caryl Churchill’s short playlet Seven Jewish Children. … http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/04/caryl-churchill-antisemitism-play

So the Jewish Chronicle article ‘Walk-outs over ‘Islamophobia’ at antisemitism symposium’ came as something of a surprise, especially as these 'walk-outs' were headed by the CST.  Maybe I had been unfair on Dave Rich after all.   According to the JC,

‘A seminar meant to highlight problems in dealing with antisemitism ran into trouble when audience members walked out — alleging Islamophobia on the part of some speakers. 
 

At the forefront were leaders of the Community Security Trust, who challenged remarks made by the Egyptian writer Bat Ye’or, and Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld, a founding member of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, which sponsored the seminar, held at London’s Wiener Library.
Bat Ye’or told the audience: “The source of antisemitism is the organisation of the Islamic corporation.”

But when Dave Rich, the CST’s deputy communications director, expressed concern that such a comment could be construed as Islamophobic, she responded: “Islam is denying the root of Judaism and Christianity with a profound belief in Jihad.”

David Hirsh, editor of anti-racist website Engage, left the room during Dr Gerstenfeld’s lecture.
He explained: “I was appalled by Gerstenfeld’s characterisation of Muslim culture as inferior. Nearly all the speakers on the day, including me, stressed that antisemitism must be understood and opposed within an anti-racist framework.

“I am as appalled by the Islamophobia which creeps into some opposition to antisemitism as I am by the way antisemitism also creeps into ostensibly anti-racist spaces.” 
But Dr Gerstenfeld said later: “I am touching upon the taboos that have to be broken, because a totally false narrative has been created in Europe.”
 
“The idea that all cultures are the same is absurd. If there is no hierarchy in culture, then Nazi culture is equivalent to democratic Western culture. There are Islamic groups which are equivalent in their language and ideology to Nazis. And I have no problem in saying that, because it is true.”
 
Mark Gardner, director of communications for CST, said after the seminar: “A minority of speakers said things about Britain, Europe and Muslims that we found to be incorrect, unacceptable and self-defeating. We made our concerns clear with a number of interventions and were correct to do so.”
 
David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute, and Philip Spencer, director of research in politics at Kingston University, also walked out in protest.
 
Mr Feldman said: “Unfortunately, the unfounded arguments of some speakers and expressions of religious prejudice from others did a disservice to Jews and others seeking to combat antisemitism.”
It was therefore appropriate that ‘At the end of the event, the former Labour MP, Denis MacShane, was given an award for his work in fighting antisemitism.’  Who better to reward this fallen pillar of Zionist hypocrisy than a bunch of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic racists?

But just consider some of these arguments. According to Dr Gerstenfeld there is a ‘hierarchy’ of cultures.  An interesting concept, one wonders how one can measure cultures?  He cites the ‘western democratic’ as opposed to the ‘Nazi’ culture.  But Nazism had no culture, unless the gentle art of book burning constitutes such – in which case Michael Ben Ari MK’s ripping up of the New Testament recently is a good example of Zionist culture.  Nazism hated culture and stood in opposition to it.  It was 'anti-cultural'.  But racism today is not primarily biological.  The campaign to repatriate Black people in Britain is recognised, even by most fascists, as a lost cause.

Racism in the biological sense has transmuted into a ‘battle of cultures’ in which Arabs and Third World refugees are seen as the bearers of ‘backward’ cultures.   That is why fascists who, 20 years ago, were engaging in 'gay bashing' now contrast the hostility of Islamic Orthodoxy to the 'backwardness' of Arabs/Muslims rather than seeing such hostility as an integral part of all orthodox religions.

When Dr Gerstenfeld says that ‘I am touching upon the taboos that have to be broken’ then he is doing no more than repeating the refrain of white racism through the ages – that there are ‘taboos’ that need to be broken, it needs to be ‘cool’ to be racist again.  It is a long-standing theme from the Daily Mail and its most virulent racist commentator, arch-Zionist Melanie Phillips.  Gert Wilders and a host of racist and chauvinistic European politicians dedicate their lives to breaking these ‘taboos’.  The hierarchy of ‘race; has been replaced by the hierarchy of ‘culture’.  Yet there is no ‘culture’ such as they speak of.

Lerman also notes that the funding sources for the symposia includes ‘Daniel Pipes, Mitch Knisbacher and Jeff and Evy Diamond. Pipes, the president of the right-wing Middle East Forum (MEF), is widely described as an ‘Islamophobe’. In 2009 his MEF established a legal defence fund for the far-right, populist, Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Pipes reportedly claimed that President Obama is a former Muslim who ‘practised Islam’. Knisbach, who is the founder and owner of 800response (America’s leading provider of shared-use 800-number services), is active in the right-wing Israel lobby AIPAC and funds Tazpit News Agency, a service set up primarily to popularize a positive view of settlement activity in the West Bank. Jeff Diamond, who heads the Jeff Diamond Law Firm, which has six offices in New Mexico and Texas, was installed in January as chair of the New Mexico Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Board of Directors.’

As Mark Elf wrote on Jewssansfrontieres ‘And here's the bit I just don't get.  Mark Gardner, David Hirsh and Dave Rich must have known about the other speakers because they were listed in the information blurb for the event.  How offended can they really have been when they only heard what they must have expected to hear? Are they proud to be ashamed to be associated with a ragbag of zionist islamophobes?  Or they are ashamed to be proud of the association?’

Actually it’s far worse, because despite the bigotry and racism of the platform speakers, as Tony Lerman points out ‘the CST officials didn’t walk out. They stayed. ‘We challenged the speeches we objected to’, they tweeted in a response to me. I then put this to them: ‘Surely u wouldn’t participate in a symposium with white racists. Why attend one with Jewish racists?’ Their response: ‘we behaved honourably and have nothing to answer to you for’.  I’m not so sure that’s such an easily defensible position.

Rich and Gardener are janus faced .  If someone had said that “The source of anti-German hatred is the organisation of the Jewish corporation.” as of course Nazis used to, then one would clearly recognise this as a staple part of the anti-Semitic diet.  The world Jewish conspiracy theory no less.  Yet when Bat Yeor says that “The source of antisemitism is the organisation of the Islamic corporation.” there is apparently a walk-out, or was it just a polite disagreement, from the session in question.  Would the CST walk out of a session at which David Duke elaborated on Jewish ‘crimes’ yet remained content to participate and even be guest speakers at other sessions of the Conference on Jewry?

According to the Jewish Chronicle David Hirsh, editor of anti-racist website Engage, left the room during Dr Gerstenfeld’s lecture.  What a noble gesture!  And what was he doing there in the first place is what those he has accused of anti-Semitism in UCU might like to know.

But if one looks at Rich and Gardener’s comments above, concerning Dr Gerstenfeld and Bat Yeor, then one notices just how lukewarm their criticism really was.

Dave Rich suggested that Bat Ye’or’s comment concerning the ‘Islamic Corporation’ ‘could be construed as Islamophobic’.  That is a strange way of putting it.  How about if someone started speaking of the ‘Jewish Corporation’ and how Jews control the world through it?  I suspect, given Rich and Gardener’s record in detecting the signs of ‘anti-Semitism’ in even pro-Jewish places like Carol Churchill’s play, that he would have been somewhat more forthright in his views.  It says a lot for the government's ‘Tell Mama’ that Dave Rich is an advisor.

Mark Gardner, director of CST communications was equally forthright:
“A minority of speakers said things about Britain, Europe and Muslims that we found to be incorrect, unacceptable and self-defeating.  We made our concerns clear with a number of interventions and were correct to do so.”

Clearly there was no walk-out, just a ‘number of interventions’.  And the virulently racist nonsense espoused?  Well this was ‘incorrect’.  So when anti-Semites (and Zionists) such as Glenn Beck go on about the Rothschilds being the source of the world’s economic crisis [see Is Glenn Beck an anti-Semite? Fox host slammed by Anti-Defmation League for attack on George Soros] he is presumably ‘incorrect’ or mistaken.

Self-Defeating

What is more telling is Gardener’s use of the term ‘self-defeating’.  What it demonstrates is that Gardener and the CST see themselves as part of one big tent, a Zionist tent, which inevitably includes the most virulent anti-Arab and Islamaphobic racists.  What they are doing is offering friendly criticism to those who share the same outlook but choose to express it differently.  It is a minor tactical difference of opinion amongst comrades.  The real game is defaming the opponents of Zionism through the use of wild allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Caroline Swords Acquitted of Attack on Zionist Goon Garfield

Anti-Israel Activist Wins Appeal’

Imagine my surprise when I read in the Jewish Chronicle that ‘Anti-Israel Activist Wins Appeal’.
According to Marcus Dysch (6.12.12.)

Harvey Garfield Fails to Frame Palestinian Activist

Garfield on the left, hand on hip, looking satisfied as the EDL are all around

‘A veteran anti-Israel campaigner has been cleared of hitting a Jewish man during a boycott protest.
Carole Swords, former chair of Tower Hamlets Respect Party, successfully appealed against a public order offence conviction which followed the pair clashing in a Tesco Metro store.
Harvey Garfield told Southwark Crown Court he had been struck in the face by Ms Swords in London’s Covent Garden in August 2011.
Mr Garfield said he had been volunteering at the store to assist staff and security guards and had worked to “protect” Israeli products from potentially being vandalised by boycott protesters who had earlier demonstrated outside the Israeli cosmetics company Ahava.
The court viewed CCTV footage which showed Ms Swords, of Bow, east London, entering the Tesco store and speaking to Mr Garfield and a security guard.
She walked down an aisle and Mr Garfield walked behind her. He told the court that Ms Swords had turned to shout: “Don’t you f***ing follow me.”
“It happened very quickly,” he said. “I turned, but before I said anything she had struck me. My glasses came off at an angle and fell to the floor.”
Ms Swords’ defence team argued that Mr Garfield had harassed and intimidated her inside Tesco, alleging that he had called her a “Nazi”, a” fishwife” and a “terrorist”. Mr Garfield repeatedly denied the accusation.
Chairing the hearing last Friday, Recorder Mukul Chawla QC said the CCTV footage showed Mr Garfield following Ms Swords in such a way that he was “virtually glued to her”.
“We are of the clear view that the appellant was entitled to demand in emphatic terms that he not follow her,” he said. “It’s clear Ms Swords raised her arm with her hand carrying a number of leaflets. What’s not clear is whether the hand or arm ever came into contact with Mr Garfield’s face. How his glasses came off we cannot say. ” The evidence meant the court “could not reasonably convict” and he allowed the appeal.(hat tip – Michael Shanahan)

Now I have a slight knowledge of Harvey Garvey myself.  Not only was he pictured dancing down Monmouth Street with his twin image Jonathan Hoffman and the EDL’s Roberta Moore, but he is even more objectionable than his twin.  This particular specimen of Zionist low-life, having no arguments of his own to make, has even tried to criticise my own views on Israel, not by reference to their own merits, but because my dead father would not have agreed with me!  Only a thorough racist, Zionist or otherwise, would buy into this old ‘kith and kin’ argument that ‘blood is thicker than water’ therefore you should turn a blind eye to injustice carried out in your name by those whose religion/race you share.

I even have knowledge of the violence of what Michael Shanahan describes as a ‘rick-shaw puller’ who masquerades as a London cabby.  At the anti-Habimah protests last year, I was taking a quiet stroll in the theatre, having appreciated how a Zionist troupe probably brought a whole new understanding to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (in fact their’s was probably one of the worst interpretations imaginable – hackneyed and timeless) when I was set upon by a group of Zionist hoodlums, including the said Harvey.  As Garfield climbed onto my back, I heard a sudden thump on the floor where the schmuck landed.  Immediately he started squealing and the Police detained me.  However I then informed London’s finest that in that case  I wanted to press charges of assault against Harvey, and hey presto, I was released inside of 5 minutes as it dawned on even the most thick Met Inspector that little ol’ me was hardly likely to want to take on 3 Zionist thugs at the same time!

Tony Greenstein

Kufr Kaddoum village in revolt forces retreat of Zionist soldiers

A Gratifying Scene of Resistance to Israel's Occupation

Israel Targets Journalists

 'The Only Democracy in the Middle East' doing its best to uphold freedom of expression

This report contains graphic scenes. Viewer discretion is advised. Watch full multipart The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza 

Community Security Trust's Dave Rich Accuses Child Refugee of Nazism of 'Antisemitism!'

Mark Gardener, main spokesman of the CST, with fellow believer in tolerance, Richard Littlejohn

Robert Wistrich, Tel Aviv Professor and Ideologue for the Belief that Islam and a 'new anti-Semitism' are partners

 Weaponising the holocaust and anti-Semitism in the cause of Israel

In an excellent post by Tony Lerman 'Another faulty, pseudo-academic antisemitism initiative' Tony Lerman,  one of the key academics in Jewish and Zionist life in Britain, who broke from Zionism (see his book 'The Making & Unmaking of a Zionist' (which I've just reviewed!), he shows how unscrupulous 'academics', whose main concern is the wielding of 'anti-Semitism' at Israel's critics, are doing their best to shut down debate.  In a comment I posted, in response to various comments, I add the following - full article underneath:

Sharon Klaff asks, all innocent and wide-eyed 'what your gripe is. Take a breath and ask yourself why you are so angry that there are people who recognize the rise again of a call for genocide of the Jews.' 

Sharon has therefore answered her own question.  When people take the term 'anti-Semitisim' and 'genocide' against the Jews and use it to falsely lable those who are anti-Zionist, , then that is the concern, which Antony Lerman has expressed very well in his excellent post above.

Richard Kuper has dealt neatly with Harvey Garfield's absurd suggestion that the slogan 'from the river to the sea' is in any way anti-Semitic.  The call for a unitary, secular state is the  most democratic and anti-racist solution to the conflict between a settler state and the indigenous people there is.  And as Richard says, the Israeli state does not recognise the Green Line so why the Palestinians should is a mystery!

And since Dennis MacShane, who was quite content to siphon off thousands of pounds of public money whilst berating 'benefit thieves' if they should earn an extra fiver to feed the kids, is being honoured with an Award of Merit, the cover of which is headed by Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionists, then Harvey needs to learn some Zionist history.  Because:
i.  The slogan of the Revisionists was the West Bank is ours and so is the East Bank too!!  (Apparently the tribe of Benjamin and one other resided there at one time)

ii.  Jabotinsky, although not a fascist himself, led a movement whose paper Daor Hayom in Palestine was edited by Abba Achimeir, who ran a column 'Diary of a Fascist'.  Achimeir wrote of how 'Yes, we Revisionists have a great admiration for Hitler. Hitler has saved Germany.  Otherwise it would have perished within four years. And if he had given up his
anti-Semitism we would go with him.'  This was expressed in the trial of Arlossoroff, the head of the Political Dept. of the Jewish Agency by the Revisionists who are widely considered to have assassinated him (for good anti-fascist reasons ironically)

In 1933 Jabotinsky wrote to Achimeir urging an end to this nonsense:  

'The articles and notices on Hitler and the Hitlerite movement appearing in Hazit Ha am are to me, and to all of us, like a knife thrust in our backs. I demand an unconditional stop to this outrage. To find in Hitlerism some feature of a  national liberation  movement is sheer ignorance. Moreover, under present circumstances, all this babbling is discrediting and paralysing my work ... I demand that the paper join, unconditionally and absolutely, not merely our campaign against Hitler Germany, but also our hunting down of Hitlerism, in the fullest sense of the term.'  Joseph Schectman, Fighter & Prophet, p.216.

Or there is the training of Jabotinsky's Beitar naval squadron at Civitavecchia in November 1934 when Mussolini was the darling of, not just the Revisionist Zionists.

It is no surprise that Mark Gardener and Dave Rich of the Community Security  Trust should throw their weight behind false accusations of 'anti-Semitism', since that is the real purpose of their organisation.  To create an image of anti-Semitism that doesn't exist and at the same time to use the 'old' anti-Semitism to frighten Jews into emigration.   One thing the CST has never done is to participate in any joint activity against anti-Semitic and racist groups like the NF/BNP/EDL.

Indeed they were quite content, as was Dave Rich, at the time of Cast Lead, for EDL members to participate in the glorification of the murders on the Mavi Marmara outside the Israeli Embassy.  Despite Rich's protestations at the time, no attempt was made to prevent EDL members attending that demonstration.  Indeed a mirror image of what occurred then happened at the pickets outside Ahava, with Zionist Federation and EDL members standing and chatting side by side.  The CST had nothing whatsoever to say.

The agenda is quite clear, as Prof. Klaff states.  Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, therefore it should be banned to protect Jewish students.  Ironically the Union of Jewish Students, which would quite like to do the same, OPPOSED no platform for fascists and racists when I was a student, in case it might be applied to them!

Brian Klug's definition, that anti-Semitism is a form of hatred and discrimination against Jews is pretty clear.  It is those who always saw anti-Semitism as a 'normal' reaction to the presence of Jewish strangers in their midst who can be considered as buying into anti-Semitism.  Yet that was the meaning of the Negation of the Diaspora.  Zionism accepted anti-Semitism as 'normal' with people like Israel's first Justice Minister Pinhas Rosenbluth going as far as to describe Palestine as an 'institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin' (Journal of Israel Studies 4, Autumn 1983).  But this is not the type of anti-Semitism Gardener and Rich are concerned about because theirs is a political campaign.

And if they ally with vehement anti-Islamic racists and fundamentalists who cares.  Manfred Gerstenfeld's article about 'anti-Semitism' in Norway is a good example.  Perhaps he would care to peruse the views of Andreis Breivich as to his attitudes to Muslims and Israel (though like the CST and the above symposia participants, he too detested Jewish 'traitors').
 
The problem for Wistrich, Klaff and the other Zionist McCarthyites, who brook no challenge to their theses or debates, is that all their efforts fall on stony ground.  Most people are quite capable of working out what anti-Semitism is and the question they ask is quite simple.  How come the Jews of all people, given their experience of racism, can indulge in the same.  It is our job to point out that Jews and Zionists are not one and the same and that in any event any group of people, given the right set of circumstances, can be victim or victimiser.
 
It says a lot about the CST's lack of anything resembling a considered thought pattern that Dave Rich can seize on the letter from Emeritus Professor Leslie Baruch Brent, which compared Israel's actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis in the bombing of Guernica.  Is Rich seriously suggesting that the Nazis were unique?  If it is right to compare US bombing in Vietnam with Nazi bombing of civilians, or that of the British in Iraq in 1920, why should Israel be given a free pass?  No one is suggesting that Israel is alone in this war crime.
 
It is somewhat ironic that Professor Brent, with whose letter I didn't totally agree, is himself a childhood survivor of the Nazis, a member of the Kindertransport.  I think he knows a little more about what it was like to flee the Nazi terror than a paid propagandist.

Tony Greenstein

Another faulty, pseudo-academic antisemitism initiative

Tony Lerman - dissident former Zionist

It was inevitable. Another Gaza offensive by Israel begins, ostensibly to stop Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel, and within a couple of days accusations of antisemitism were flying around.
 
Two particularly caught my attention. The first was the claim that Steve Bell, in his Guardian cartoon of 15 November, was ‘getting] away with using antisemitic imagery and tropes‘ because it showed Tony Blair and William Hague as puppets of Bibi Netanyahu.
 
The second was in a tweet about a letter to the Guardian from emeritus professor Leslie Baruch Brent who condemned the ‘disporportionate response of the Israeli government to the Hamas rocket attacks’ and concluded ‘Has the world learned nothing since Guernica?’  The text of the tweet read: ‘Hard to take @guardian opposition to #antisemitism seriously when they publish letter comparing #Israel to Nazis.’ 
I was especially interested in these accusations because the first was by Mark Gardner, the communications director of the Community Security Trust (CST), the private charity that acts as the defence organization of the UK Jewish community, and the second by Dave Rich, his deputy.
One of the things that is most worrying about what I believe were these false imputations of antisemitism (and I will explain my reasoning for this conclusion in my next blogpost) is that they come not simply from individuals expressing their own views, but from officials of a very influential, major registered charity, and in the case of the cartoon, writing in their capacity as officials of that organization. The view of the Community Security Trust is seen as, and is intended to be seen as, the view of the organized UK Jewish community. And yet that wider community has no means of calling the CST to account and therefore has to suffer the consequences of its officials’ doubtful and often damaging politically-motivated interventions in public debate.
 
The politicization of antisemitism research
 
The institutionalized politicization of antisemitism by bodies claiming to be non-political or academic is not new. And with regard to a charity like the CST, it is very troubling.

We saw this politicization in the now defunct Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), which was closed by the university authorities after it became clear that it was primarily an advocacy body and not a serious research institute. And it was also apparent in the now almost defunct European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (EISCA), established, it seems, with a mandate to grossly exaggerate the problem of antisemitism (the inaugural lecture given by the then Labour Europe minister Jim Murphy was entitled ‘Antisemitism: a hate that outlives all others’). There has been no activity on its website since June 2011, and that was an article by the now disgraced former Labour Party junior minister Denis MacShane, first published in the Jewish Chronicle and cross-posted on the EISCA blog.
 
While still thinking about the manipulation of antisemitism for political purposes, I received information about a symposium on antisemitism taking place on 2 December at the Wiener Library in London. Though clearly planned long before the latest Israeli offensive against Gaza, the holding of the symposium at this time is an extraordinary coincidence. And it was immediately obvious from the programme that it fell squarely into the category of an event dressed up in pseudo-academic clothes but which is, in reality, an exercise in political advocacy.
 
Although the symposium is taking place at the Wiener Library, a highly respected documentation, research and educational resource on the Holocaust and the Nazi era, it’s not mentioned anywhere on Wiener’s website. This is no doubt because the event itself is being organized exclusively under the auspices of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA), with the library’s prestigious central London premises simply hired for the occasion. Wiener’s director, Ben Barkow, is not speaking at the symposium.
 
The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism: a home for the ‘new antisemitism’ notion
 
The JSA is a privately funded periodical founded four years ago. It has no institutional base and is privately published. It describes itself as ‘ the peer-reviewed work of a select group of independent scholars’. Even a cursory glance at the journal’s list of Board Members reveals a great preponderance of neoconservatives, Islamophobes, advocates of the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, pedlars of the ‘self-hating Jew’ accusation against Jewish critics of Israeli policies and out-and-out political propagandists.
 
The individuals funding the event are Daniel Pipes, Mitch Knisbacher and Jeff and Evy Diamond. Pipes, the president of the right-wing Middle East Forum (MEF), is widely described as an ‘Islamophobe’. In 2009 his MEF established a legal defence fund for the far-right, populist, Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Pipes reportedly claimed that President Obama is a former Muslim who ‘practised Islam’. Knisbach, who is the founder and owner of 800response (America’s leading provider of shared-use 800-number services), is active in the right-wing Israel lobby AIPAC and funds Tazpit News Agency, a service set up primarily to popularize a positive view of settlement activity in the West Bank. Jeff Diamond, who heads the Jeff Diamond Law Firm, which has six offices in New Mexico and Texas, was installed in January as chair of the New Mexico Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Board of Directors.
 
The journal’s editors — Neal E. Rosenberg, a criminal lawyer, and Stephen K. Baum, a clinical psychologist — and the journal itself were mired in controversy early in 2010 when they sacked Dr Clemens Heni, a Berlin-based academic, from the editorial board for criticizing the Berlin Technical University’s centre for research on antisemitism for what he regarded as its ‘neglect of Islamic anti-Semitism and Israel’s security’ — and this was in an article Heni wrote for the journal. Various members of the board resigned in protest. The editors say they were pressured by the Berlin centre, which, a Jerusalem Post article claims, threatened to engineer the resignation of seven German members of the Board and the withdrawal of cooperation with the journal by three German antisemitism research centres. The editors soon relented, reinstated Heni and asked some of the resigning Board members to return. Some did and some didn’t.
 
Heni vigorously attacked the decision to close YIISA. In the wake of its demise, and no doubt after his experience being sacked and then reinstated to the JSA editorial board, in 2011 he set up a new German antisemitism research body, the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), the main focus of which is ‘anti-Semitism in the 21st century, particularly hatred of Israel.’
 
The symposium: a one-sided affair
 
The curious thing about this incident is that it’s quite clear that the journal’s posture is very close to the line Heni took in his attack on the Berlin centre. The programme and speakers at the forthcoming symposium demonstrate this. (A note of caution: the programme sent to me looks like the last word on who is attending and speaking, but may not be. It differs from the version of the programme on the JSA website.) Titled ‘Contemporary antisemitism in the UK’, the symposium kicks off with a panel on ‘Defining the new antisemitism’, chaired by Kenneth Marcus. The panellists are Bat Ye’or, Richard Landes and Winston Pickett.

Marcus heads the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which was founded in late 2011 and took over where YIISA left off when it was closed down. YIISA’s director, Charles Small is on the advisory board, the honorary chairman of which is Professor Irwin Cotler, former Canadian justice minister, who has probably done more than anyone else to promote the idea of the ‘new antisemitism’. Other like-minded board members, who were also YIISA supporters, include Professor Dina Porat, Professor Ruth Wisse and Professor Alvin H. Rosenfeld.
 
The three panellists will find much to agree on. For decades Bat Ye’or has been banging the drum about the ‘Muslim hordes’ who were about to take over Europe. Rather generously referred to as a ‘self-taught Jewish intellectual’, she now believes that Europe is dead, and in its stead ‘Eurabia’ has risen. Richard Landes, director and co-founder of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, told the Herzliya IDC conference in 2007:
European democratic civilization can fall before the Islamic challenge. Do not say that this will never happen in Europe and that Islam will not be able to take control of Europe.
If Europe continues its current path, the fall will be sooner.
 
Winston Pickett was the director of the now non-functioning EISCA. He lavishes unreserved praise on Professor Robert Wistrich for his huge tome, Antisemitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, a book that, as its title suggests, sets out to justify the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’.
 
Panel sessions 2 and 3 — ‘Mapping the rise of contemporary antisemitism’ and ‘Antisemitism on campus’ — present much the same picture. Both chairpersons, Manfred Gerstenfeld and Kenneth Lasson, see no real distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Gerstenfeld’s crude and wild assertions about antisemitism are legion. A recent online article about antisemitism in Norway is a good example of his continuing attempt to portray European countries as riddled with antisemitism, no matter what the data say. Lasson’s views are clearly laid out in an 80-page paper, ‘Antisemitism in the academic voice’, in which he writes that ‘Anti-Zionism . . . has evolved into antisemitism’ and reveals how ill-equipped he is to comment on this subject when he says: ‘The misnamed “occupation” allegedly began after Israel’s 1967 victory . . .’
 
In panel 2, Mark Gardner of the CST and Robert Wistrich, who heads the Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), should feel comfortable with each other’s role in justifying and promoting the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, though it would be only fair to acknowledge that Wistrich’s influence in this regard far outstrips that of Gardner’s. Wistrich restated the classic definition of the ‘new antisemitism’ in a talk at the Hebrew University Jerusalem in June 2011 entitled ‘From blood libel to boycott: changing faces of British antisemitism’. A Cif Watch post summarised his remarks: ‘efforts to boycott and delegitimize Israel (the Jewish collective) as a form of exclusion from the community of nations [are] not dissimilar from historical efforts to exclude the individual Jew from the communities where they resided.’ Gardner’s use of the ‘new antisemitism’ argument is clearly apparent in his and Dave Rich’s analysis of Caryl Churchill’s short playlet Seven Jewish Children. (My refutation of their analysis is here.) It is also unlikely that there will be much disagreement in panel 3 between Clemens Heni, Ronnie Fraser (fresh from the tribunal hearing his claim of ‘institutional antisemitism’ against the University and College Union), who runs the 
Academic Friends of Israel, and Dave Rich.
 
Some dissent at last?
 
Some serious diversity of views then appears possible when Lesley Klaff chairs a panel discussing ‘Addressing current approaches’. This would be unlikely, however, were Professor Klaff to proffer her own views. Linked to BICSA and the Brandeis Center, she has made her opinions on the connection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism perfectly clear. As she writes in the journal of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs:

University codes of conduct and UK law recognize that an important university goal is the promotion of equality of opportunity for minority students and their protection from discrimination, including harassment. Given the growing consensus that anti-Zionism is in fact anti-Semitism in a new guise, this goal is flouted with respect to Jewish students every time that anti-Zionist expression takes place on a university campus.

 So, no anti-Zionist views allowed on campus then. Period. While Günther Jikeli, co-founder of the International Institute for Education and Research on Anti-Semitism in London and Berlin, is under the false impression that the Fundamental Rights Agency of the EU endorses its predecessor’s ‘Working Definition’ of antisemitism, he, the PhD student Hagai van der Horst from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck University of London will hopefully be able to offer a stark contrast with what will have gone before. Feldman’s approach at the Pears Institute is a model of inclusiveness and variety; he creates a safe space for the expression of sharply different opinions.

Worrying about the left and boycott, and promoting the EUMC ‘Working Definition’
 
The speakers on the final panel, ‘Strategic interventions: what can be done?’, are not on record, as far as I could ascertain, as specifically subscribing to the JSA‘s line on the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The barrister Julian Hunt is described in the programme as ‘having experience defending pro-Israel activists’, which, from his July 2012 post on the Commentator blog, seems to refer to Jewish students on campus. With a title like ‘Criminalising the boycott bullies’, it seems fair to assume that he has an uncompromising attitude to anti-Zionism. Philip Spencer, an expert on the Holocaust and genocide, is director of politics and international Relations at the Helen Bamber Centre for the Study of Rights, Kingston University, and has a special interest in what he sees as the left’s less than glorious history of standing up to antisemitism. Francisco Garrett, a lawyer from Portugal, appears to have no significant track record as an antisemitism expert.
 
But there is little ambiguity in the position of the chair of this panel, L. Ruth Klein. In her 2009 report on antisemitism in Canada presented to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA), the national director of the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada refers to anti-Zionism as ‘that unholy hybrid of age-old and new-age bigotry’, calls for the criminalization of boycotts ‘against the Jewish state’ and for the adoption of the EUMC ‘Working Definition’ of antisemitism.
 
Giving the political game away
 
A spirit of free inquiry does not seems to govern these proceedings. And this view is strengthened further by the sessions of the symposium that are not panel discussions. The former chairman of EISCA, Denis MacShane MP, is given the platform to himself to speak on ‘The politics of fighting antisemitism’. I and others have drawn attention to his woeful lack of understanding of antisemitism, his propensity to exaggerate what it represents – ‘there is no greater intolerance today than neoantisemitism’ – and his readiness to vilify Muslims and pro-Palestinian activists. For a man fêted as such a friend of the Jews, his ignorance about Jews and Israel, as displayed in his book Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism, is deeply disturbing.

But having written a book with that title he will certainly be at home among the JSA‘s ’select group of independent scholars’ at Sunday’s symposium. So much so that he is being presented with ‘The Award of Merit: Righteous Persons Who Fight Antisemitism’. (Whether the organizers still think he is quite so righteous after being found guilty of fiddling his parliamentary expenses, we do not know.) At the head of the page in the programme detailing this award, and two others, is a photograph of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the right-wing, revisionist Zionist ideologue, whose ideas have inspired much of today’s ruling political elite in Israel and, so it clearly appears, the organizers of this symposium. Manfred Gerstenfeld receives the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ and Shimon T. Samuels scoops the jackpot with the ‘Jabotinsky Award’.
 
Samuels is the director for international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Paris and a long-standing promoter of the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’. In July 2011, after attending a UN meeting in Brussels titled ‘The role of Europe in advancing Palestinian statehood and achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians’, he wrote to the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon saying that the experience was akin to a ‘gangbang’. On 2 August 2012 he told the Jerusalem Post that the action of the Swiss Migros supermarket chain to label Israeli products from the West Bank was a boycott measure and must be viewed as ‘a continuation of Nazism’.
 
It shows just how far the academic study of contemporary antisemitism has become corrupted in some circles that the organizers of this symposium did not seem to feel a moment’s shame in so blatantly politicizing it by identifying so completely with the political ideology of Jabotinsky. As if this wasn’t enough to damn as bogus what’s billed as an academic event, the screening of Gloria Greenfield’s ‘documentary’, Unmasked Judeophobia, can leave no one in any doubt. The New York Times‘ reviewer Nicole Herrington wrote:

the film loses ground toward the middle, when it calls out individuals (often just by showing their images) and organizations for their passiveness or criticism of Israeli policies without giving a full account of the facts. The roster is long: the United Nations, feminists, the European news media, Alice Walker, human rights groups and American academics.

In the end the issues of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are conflated, weakening the filmmaker’s argument.

Less restrained, but equally reasonable, was this from James van Maanen’s film review blog:

I suspect there is some very good information in Gloria Greenfield’s new documentary, Unmasked Judeophobia: The Threat to Civilization (that sub-title alone should raise a red flag), but the repetitive, ham-handed manner in which it is presented is enough to make aware and thinking people — anyone, that is, who might find and be willing to admit as reprehensible some of the state of Israel’s current behavior toward its Palestinian residents — run for the exit.

This comment could equally be applied to the entire JSA symposium.
 
Anyone who disagrees with the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’ should always be prepared to discuss it with its promoters. And its promoters should always be willing to debate the notion with its critics. This is the only way that sense on antisemitism can be arrived at. By the nature and format of this symposium, the JSA has clearly shown that it has no interest whatsoever in such a dialogue, even if one or two brave souls may try to speak up for the values that underpin true academic exchange.
 
(Thanks to Ben White for drawing my attention to this symposium and for sharing information and sources.)
 
Even one of Zionism’s more vacant intellects, Deborah Lipstadt, primus inter pares among American holocaust historians, bemoaned in How To Study Anti-Semitism how Yale University’s Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism had been shut down because, in her words: ‘Too many students who take these classes find that they have entered a zone in which advocacy masquerades as scholarship.’  In other words, it’s not easy to marry propaganda and serious historical research and vigorous academic debate.  

See the Powerbase Article on the Community Security Trust


Needless to say this essay has set the cat amongst those who think of themselves as the more 'intellectual' Zionists e.g. Richard Millett, who questioned the fact that Dennis McShane was Islamaphobic as well of course as being a more general run of the mill reactionary!  See this      exchange:

1. I’m still waiting for proof from Tony Lerman that MacShane “vilifies Muslims”. Can you give a direct quote please?
• 

  Antony Lerman
  02/12/2012 at 10:08 pm | #21

  Reply | Quote

  MacShane’s book Globalising Hatred:The New Antisemitism (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2008) is a very confused book in which MacShane tries to portray himself as on the side of Muslims experiencing racism just as he is on the side of Jews experiencing antisemitism. Sadly, this is overwhelmed by the Islamophobia that suffuses the whole book. For quotes, read the book and take your pick. If you need help, try p. vii, the first page of the preface, lines 10 to 17. Or p. 163 where he writes: ‘An end to antisemitism is the beginning of a rebirth of the Arab peoples and their nations’ — tantamount to an accusation of collective guilt of all Arabs, which of course includes a very great part of the world’s Muslim population. Or read chapter 7, ‘Antisemitism or Antizionism’, which is an extended attack on one person, Tariq Ramadan, done in such a way as to vilify Muslims generally. Enough for you Richard?

Zionist McCarthyism in the University of California

Are you now or have you (or your spouse) ever been......?

Berkely's next Chancellor Nicholas Dirk questioned as to whether it is proper that his wife held pro-boycott/anti-Israeli views

Be careful with who or what you affiliate with because your past afffiliations can follow you (and your spouse) around for some time to come:

Cross post from Jewssansfrontieres

By Public Affairs, UC Berkeley | November 27, 2012
Transcript of an excerpt of a video conversation between UC Berkeley’s next chancellor, Nicholas Dirks, and Dan Mogulof of Berkeley’s Office of Public Affairs:
 

Dirks showing suitable contrition for once having signed (then denied signing) a pro-Boycott petition!

DAN MOGULOF: Floating around on the Internet is a claim that at some point in your past, you know, you signed a petition calling for Columbia to divest in all things Israel.  And there is a lot of information surrounding that, or misinformation surrounding that, and I want to give you an opportunity to  let us know exactly what happened there, what your role was and what your sort of philosophy is about sort of divestment type efforts insofar as the Middle East, or any other place in the world is concerned.

NICHOLAS DIRKS: Right. Well, when that particular petition was being circulated, I was chair of the department of anthropology and in fact, at some point, saw my name on a list and asked it to be removed. Truth is, I do not support divestment as a strategy for the university. I don’t support divestment with respect to Israel..........
    .......................................
DM: So before we move on, I want to drag you back to the divestment issue, if you will. There are also reports that at one time your wife signed a petition, a divestment petition calling on Columbia to divest in all things Israel. Do you think that’s an appropriate issue? Is that something that people should be concerned about, what your wife may or may not have done in the past?

ND: Well, first of all, let me say that my wife is a ferociously independent person. She has many views, some of which I share and some of which I don’t. We have a long history of being able to talk about things and have different perspectives and even different views. That being said, she did, back in 2002, sign one of the divestment petitions that was circulating around Columbia, before she had either thought very much about the issue or for that matter really had any sense at all of what putting her signature to that document might mean. And she has subsequently thought a great deal about this issue, and she has regretted signing this. She has changed her position completely on issues of divestment. And indeed, I think she feels that it was an unfortunate and ill-thought moment in her own life and participation in things at Columbia.

Being grilled on the 'wife' question

That being said, I need to emphasize again that she has her views. They are not germane to the kinds of things that I believe that are part of being the next chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. And I hope that she’ll be given the independence and the respect necessary for her to have her role on the faculty, as a member of the community and indeed as my partner as I move to Berkeley.

The video clip is here.

Apartheid? This checkpoint is for the passage of Israelis (i.e. Jews) only

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 01, 2012 

Israeli Street Sign in West Bank

An Israeli street sign placed in the occupied West Bank (near Bethlehem) on Road 375 going from El-Khader Junction with road 60 (Tunnel Road) to Ela Valley. The sign is placed just before crossing from the West Bank to Israel near the illegal, Jewish-only colony/settlement of Betar Illit and the Palestinian villages of Husan, Batir and Wadi Fuqeen (Betar Checkpoint, which is not on the Green Line, but rather inside the West Bank). It says in Hebrew:

"Welcome to Betar Checkpoint'
 
This checkpoint is for the passage of Israelis only. It is forbidden to pass and/or drive a person through this checkpoint, who is not Israeli!!
 
"Israeli" - a resident of Israel, a person who lives in the area and is a citizen of Israel, or a person ENTITLED TO MAKE ALIYAH TO ISRAEL ACCORDING TO THE [JEWISH] LAW OF RETURN, 1950, AS VALID IN ISRAEL" (emphasis added) 

(PHOTO CREDIT: Dudy Tzfati via Roy, TRANSLATION CREDIT: Dudy Tzfati)

...and another such sign just sent to me by a friend:

Posted by Sam Bahour at 12:15 PM

Posted by Abraham Weizfield of the Jewish Peoples' Liberation Organisation - Note:  

The grammatical logic of this Zionist sign is illogical and self-contradictory, as well. To say that Israeli Palestinians are permitted into a so-called 'Jewish' area is contradictory, unless this law means to say that Palestinian Israelis are not Israeli. By deligitimizing the presence of Palestinians in Israel they have in effect, the delegitimization of their own presence in Palestine. If they do not tolerate any national minorities then how do they tolerate themselves!

This concept also invalidates the Jewish claim to be recognized as citizens in any other State in the World. This is an invitation to Antisemitism for 2/3rds of the Jewish People. This indifference to Antisemitism is chronic to Zionism.

 The Sign also defines Israel as the "area", a Land without borders operating at the whim of the self-determination of the Zionist State of Israel or any such portion, as well. By calling Palestine the name of Israel they also forfeit the greater part of the State of Israel, since it is constructed outside of the biblical boundaries of the ancient Kingdoms of Israel or Judea.

 This display of ignorance is only matched by the neurotic rejection of the original Covenant of Abraham, the patriarch whose legacy was to live in the Land of Kana'an as well as his descendants, forever. This was a promise to all the descendants of Abraham, including the Palestinians issued from Ishmael, the first-born. This is forgotten, and then forgetting the name of the Land - Kana'an, which had 7 Nations who lived side-by-side in the Land of promise and peace. In addition, the peace treaty with the Hittite Nation that was respected by Joshua on the return to the Land from Egypt, is also forgotten. The pretensions of the religious Zionists is beyond belief and credibility when one considers that the Jewish Law of Return if it applies, is granted to even if the person is not religious or perhaps of a similar compatible religion, like Islam for instance. And if so then many of the Palestinians qualify by virtue of their ancestors who are Jewish, among a large undetermined number of Palestinians.

 Such Judeophilia is as we say here in Kébèk, 'fatigant'.

The Bund – the Mass Jewish anti-Zionist Party in Poland

As the Socialist Film Festival gears up to show Eran Torbiner’s film Bundayim next year and interest continues to grow in an organisation which, in Poland, massively outpolled the Zionists in the last Jewish Council elections, gaining 17 out of 20 seats in Warsaw to the Zionists’ one.   The Bund was a socialist and anti-Zionist party and its growth was a reflection of the fact that as the terrors of anti-Semitism grew, so Zionism offered no solution to the Jewish masses apart from the ‘dream’ of a Jewish State.  Hence when the Nazis invaded, the Zionist leaders – Begin, Hartglass, Gruenbaum all fled – whilst the Bund leaders stayed with their people.  Below is an article from the radical +972 Blog in Israel.
 
Tony Greenstein

Remember the Jewish Labor Bund?

The Bund was a Jewish socialist, revolutionary party in Eastern Europe dedicated to class struggle. It is all but forgotten in modern day Israel, but a few members are still around to tell the story.

Bundayim - Eran Torbiner's film of the Bund in Israel

By Alon Aviram

A piano played and a middle-aged woman stood in the middle of the room singing classical Yiddish songs to an attentive, seated audience of 30 or so old men and women. Every so often the music was interrupted by a hoarse laugh or some remark blurted out in Yiddish by a member of the audience. Heavy red velvet curtains blocked out the now largely gentrified old Tel Aviv neighborhood of Nahalat Binyamin. At a social gathering every fortnight, members of this Yiddish community center escape the realities of 21st century Israeli life and return to a largely bygone Yiddish-speaking era.

Yitzhak Luden stands in the Yiddish community center
(photo: Alon Aviram) 14th November 2012

As the music finished and old friends said their goodbyes, journalist Yitzhak Luden, 90, one of the last surviving members of the Jewish Labor Bund in Israel, led me down a stairwell to a Yiddish library. “The others are here for just cultural and social reasons, they’re all too young to have been members of the Bund,” shrugged Yitzhak. As he pulled out tattered leather-bound books, he began to tell his story, and that of the Jewish Labor Bund. “One hundred and fifteen years ago, the Zionists held their first congress in a casino in Basel. The Bundists on the other hand, had their first meeting in the attic of a farm near Vilnius a month before. The Zionists were bourgeois from the start!” said Yitzhak.

The Bund was a Jewish socialist, revolutionary party, dedicated to class struggle and with an internationalist agenda. It played a significant role in the Russian revolutionary period. Similarly to Zionism, it was born in the wake of widespread anti-Semitism and pogroms across Europe. While the Zionist movement turned to emigration and the founding of a Jewish nation-state as a solution, Bundism argued that a Jewish state was a form of escapism which would only replicate existing class inequalities.

Yitzhak reconciled his position as an anti-Zionist living in Israel. “I came to Israel in 1948 not as a Zionist, but as someone fleeing war-torn Europe. Poland denied Bundists the right to organize, and the few Bundists who came made clear our political position in support of Palestinians, and for a one state solution.” The Bund in 1929 for example, defended the Palestinian riots as an anti-colonial uprising, rather than as anti-Semitic, as had been depicted by Zionists.

Even before the establishment of the Bund, a Yiddish article printed in Russia in 1887 wrote that those who think that “once the Jews have their own country they will be able freely to develop social ideas and cooperate with other peoples” forget that “the origin of nations is betrayal, robbery and murder”. The Bund would later echo this political position as an anti-Zionist organization with deep roots in the Jewish working class and intelligentsia across Eastern Europe.

“The religious Jews had traditionally organized Jewish communities. The Bund came out against both this and Zionism. It began to organize worker cooperatives and the social lives of many Jews. I was at first a member of the Bundist youth organization, SKIF. And some of my friends from SKIF who stayed in Warsaw later fought in the Ghetto resistance,” said Yitzhak.

Members of the Jewish Bund with bodies of their comrades killed in Odessa during the Russian revolution of 1905
(photo: Wikimedia Commons, PD-US)

The Bund repeatedly mobilized self-defense militias which managed to successfully thwart a number of pogroms, orchestrated general strikes, built a network of cultural organizations, and later became a considerable electoral force in Poland. As it turned to electoral politics in its later years, it obtained 40 percent of the Jewish vote in council elections across large cities in Poland in 1938. “That same year in Warsaw, the Bund took 17 out of 20 council seats won by Jewish parties in the Municipal elections” Yitzhak said proudly.

Decades earlier, Vladimir Medem, a Russian Jew, became one of the Bund’s most prominent theorists. He rejected the Zionist aspiration of establishing a Jewish nation-state. Medem did not however dismiss the value of national autonomy, but sought a version which was not territorially defined. Instead, the Bund called for the creation of a ‘state of nationalities’ rather than a nation-state.

The Jewish Labor Bund’s vision of national cultural autonomy was an early form of radical multiculturalism. It opposed both those who argued in favor of forced assimilation and those who called for nationalist separation. It envisaged a socialist society that would allow communities to freely conduct their own cultural affairs while ensuring that they remained connected economically and politically in one territory. Although the political conclusions outlined by the Bund were informed by life in late 19th and early 20th century-Russia, their commitment to essentially a one state model, of bi or multi-nationalism shares similarities with certain debates regarding the future of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories today.

Despite the Bund’s influential role in early 20th century Eastern European Jewish life, it seems that they are solely remembered by specialist historians or nostalgic left-wingers. “No one imagined that the Nazis would do what they did”, said Yitzhak as he spoke of the Holocaust. As a result of the Bund’s insistence that Jews should stay and fight for socialism rather than emigrate, many were murdered by the Nazis, and to a lesser extent also by the Stalinists. Decades later, it  appears that Zionism, the prevailing dominant ideology among Jewry, has played a part in forgetting, or at least in not remembering, the narrative of its pre World War II rival. Yitzhak, himself the survivor of a Russian gulag, said “we see this all around us. Before my wife met me, she had never heard of the Bund.”