EXCLUSIVE Iain McNicol’s Dirty Tricks Brigade Infiltrates Labour Against the Witchhunt Meeting

Brighton Councillor Caroline Penn Makes Bogus Accusations of Harassment in bid to Help McNicol’s Court Case

Right-wing Brighton Caroline Penn's bogus complaints of harassment, which the Police have refused to act upon, is now being used to try and prevent the disclosure of documents in my application under the Data Protection Act.  In Penn's world an accusation is tantamount to guilt - and it is guilty until proven innocent

 On March 18^th 2016 I was suspended from the Labour Party. I was given no details of what I was accused of and the first time I learnt about the charges was when those Labour supporting papers, The Telegraph and The Times printed spurious articles stating that I had been caught up in what had become Labour’s false anti-Semitism campaign, the latest victim of which is Israeli Professor Moshe Machover.  Both papers later retracted their allegations.

On May 30^th 2016 I was interviewed by Harry Gregson, Labour’s Regional Organiser as part of the ‘investigation’. The meeting was recorded and a transcript can be viewed here.

McNicol claims to have 'lost' this document - clearly it's not just the identity of the sender or  recipient that has been 

Soon after I submitted a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act 1998 for all the documentation they had one me.  On July 15^th, 20 days late, the Labour Party responded with a bundle of over 350 pages.  The identities of most correspondents were blacked out and some pages were entirely blacked out.

In March of this year I filed an application with Brighton County Court to force Iain McNicol and the Labour Party to unredact the documents under s.7(9) of the DPA.  A date was set for the hearing on August 8^th.  Unbeknown to me, the fools at Labour Party headquarters had forgotten that they had responded to my original SAR on July 15^th and they decided to send me a second bundle on November 10^th.  Not only that but they sent it to an address I hadn’t lived at for 14 years, so I didn’t receive it!

Caroline Penn has sent the  solicitor for Iain McNicol an email as part of an attempt to help keep secret the dealings of the Compliance Unit - I have redacted Penn's phone number

On the day before the hearing it dawned on me that we were talking about two different sets of documents.  McNicol’s legal team were unaware of the bundle of documents sent in July.  In some ways this has been a very useful exercise because it has been interesting to compare the two sets of documents.  On the retirement of Mike Creighton, who had been with the Labour Party for 23 years, a new set of bureaucrats had taken over who clearly had less scruples than Mike. 

They didn’t send me so many redacted documents because they decided not to send them at all.  Anyone applying for a SAR is to some extent reliant on the honesty of the Data Controller.  If they are dishonest and simply don’t reveal the existence of the documents there is little you can do unless you can persuade a court that a search warrant should be issued ex parte.  The Information Commissioner has done this on occasion but it is extremely rare.

This Twitter exchange is apparently proof of abuse - Poison Penn asks if I have a problem with Jewish people - a strange question from a non-Jewish Zionist and my response is no, just with racists like her

The result was that the hearing had to be postponed until next Monday 30^th October.  [see Don’t Ever Underestimate the Stupidity of McNicol’s Witch-hunters]  They had put in for £7,000 costs but I persuaded the Judge that they should be disallowed any costs for the last hearing. 

Given their duplicity it is clear that McNicol’s minions are feeling the heat.  There is clearly information in the documents that they will move heaven and earth to ensure isn’t revealed.  When all else fails it seems it’s time to bring in McNicol’s dirty tricks brigade.

Last Saturday the inaugural meeting of Labour Against the Witch-hunt held its first meeting.  An Executive of 4, including myself were elected.  Amongst our first tasks was the setting up of a Facebook group. [see Labour Against the Witchhunt Forms in Response to Expulsion of Moshe Machover – Join Us]

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from McNicol’s solicitor, Jai Sharda today.  Perhaps he wanted to agree to a settlement?  Unfortunately not.  He told me that he had received an email yesterday from a person whose identity had been redacted ‘for obvious reasons’ warning me that ‘your actions of intimidation and harassment are continuing to cause considerable distress. You are requested, once again, to immediately refrain from any engaging in further such conduct.’

Pretty serious allegations, if true.  Indeed I wondered why this person hadn’t contacted the Police to have me arrested.  The problem was, of course that she had contacted the Police and they had sent her away with a flea in hear ear.  I am referring to Brighton Councillor Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn.  This blushing violet had made two complaints to the local constabulary. 

Caroline Penn, like Jeremy Newmark and all the Labour Party’s other witch hunters operate under the belief that if an accusation is made against the Left or anti-Zionists it must be believed.An accusation is itself proof of guilt.  The Jewish Labour Movement  even proposed a Rule Change to the last Labour Party conference to that effect.  The ‘victim’ is always right even when they aren’t a victim.

Here we seen 'Poison' Penn attacking people like Mel Melvin and Greg Hadfield who have been expelled or suspended.  She taunts Greg because he has been suspended twice -  'once in 2014 for intimidating behaviour'  yes but the allegation was dropped.  According to Penn, you are guilty of whatever she accuses you of until proven innocent.  The Compliance Unit however never clears someone they just drop the charges.  

Unfortunately for the JLM Shami Chakrabarti had to remind Jeremy Newmark that even bourgeois justice demands something in the way of evidence before you convict someone.  This isn’t Israel.  Labour can't implement the equivalent of Israel's Administrative Detention whereby someone can be detained for years on end without a trial on the basis of a secret policeman’s say so.

The Compliance Unit leaked the details of my suspension whilst refusing to tell me anything - below are the retractions of both papers

Of course it’s quite understandable why Penn and people like Brighton Council leader Warren Morgan are confused. When Brighton Labour Party was suspended on July 2^nd 2016 after the Left had won a majority of the officer posts, Warren Morgan, backed up by Penn made false allegations of spitting.  Immediately McNicol and his lackeys suspended the party, cancelled the elections and handed power back to the defeated candidates!

So it is no surprise that  Caroline Penn has sent an email alleging she is suffering ‘enormous distress’ that she has received ‘further abuse’ and is now concerned about her ‘personal safety and of others that have also complained about Mr Greenstein.’ She also finds it strange that I have not already been expelled.  The amazing thing is that this email says absolutely nothing about what this abuse constitutes.  It is totally vacuous, like its writer.

What is however interesting is that the email is accompanied by the minutes of Labour Against the Witch-hunt of last Saturday.  These minutes were only distributed to members of the Labour Against the Witch hunt Facebook group.  It is therefore clear that someone on the Labour Right, with whom Penn is in contact with, has taken it upon themselves to infiltrate LAW under false pretences.  There is nothing in the minutes that is at all damning and nor is there anything in a screenprint containing dialogue between members of the group.

In other words by her own admission Caroline Penn is party to the infiltration of a group set up to fight expulsions and suspension in the Party by someone who has been operating under false pretences.  And yet she has the audacity to complain of ‘abuse’ and ‘intimidation’.  If  you go to the Police Information Notice that I was issued with you can find out what her complaints are:

Poison Penn's Complains

1.      I have used social media to make contact with Ms Penn – well yes but she has also contacted me on social media.  That’s the nature of Twitter and isn’t in itself an offence.

2.      I have encouraged other people to send abusive messages to her.  What she means is I have tweeted responses to her Zionist nonsense and encouraged others to do so.  On no occasion have I asked anyone to be abusive to her.

3.      I have also ‘used anti-Semitic abuse towards her.’  This is a difficult one.  She is not Jewish unlike me.  How can I be anti-Semitic towards someone who is not Jewish?  There is something called associative discrimination which is where you believe someone to be Jewish when they are not.  For example in Israel there have been a number of times when Jews who look like Arabs have been attacked by those who believed them to be Arabs.  That is an example of anti-Arab racism.

Police Information Notice Detailing the Allegations Against Me but taking no view of the merits of the allegations

      However I have encouraged no one to consider Poison Penn Jewish!  She is without doubt a racist non-Jew a Zionist and an anti-Semite!

4.      Its true I have used the term Zio which is short for Zionist.  Many Zionists are non-Jewish, like Penn and many Jews are not Zionists like me. 

5.      It is true I have called her a racist since she is a member of the JLM.

6.      It is not true I have said she is a Nazi or a member of the BNP.  

      

      I don’t for one moment believe that the email in question was the work of Caroline Penn herself.  To put it bluntly she is not the brightest tool in the box.  Someone in Labour Party HQ realising how weak their case is, has decided to try and use Penn’s already existing false complaints against me to the Police despite the Police themselves turning them down.

[see Racist Labour Councillor, Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn, Complains of ‘Harassment’ on @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops and Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops Complains Again

These two emails are from the Jewish Labour Movement, almost certainly Israeli state agent Jeremy Newmark, whining 'is it acceptable to publish a full transcript of a post-suspension interview in this manner?'  Newmark doesn't say what manner would be acceptable.

Labour Against the Witchhunt Forms in Response to Expulsion of Moshe Machover – Join Us

The Compliance Unit and Iain McNicol Are The Last Bastion of the Right

prescient

See the Labour Against the Witchhunt Facebook Page

The time has come to fight back.  The Left simply cannot allow the Right to continue with expelling those they don’t like.  The Momentum leadership under Lansman, which should have taken on the fight against the witch hunt has, instead, got into bed with the witch hunters.  It was Lansman and his friends who laid the basis for Jackie Walker’s suspension from the Labour Party by removing Jackie from her position as Vice Chair of Momentum.  If people really want to see a radical and socialist government under Jeremy Corbyn we have to stop the witch hunt in its tracks.  Indeed we need to be rooting out the Blairite bureaucracy.

Iain McNicol - received a hero's welcome at Labour Friends of Israel - mastermind of the anti-Corbyn witch hunt

Labour Against the Witch hunt was formed on Saturday and we have a few simple positions;

• 1.      No auto exclusions  Everyone has the right to a hearing.  The Chakrabarti Report found that Labour’s disciplinary and complaints procedures “... lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise” and failed to observe “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”.
• 
  
• 2.      It is unacceptable that there are differing definitions of anti-Semitism.  Anti-Semitism isn’t a difficult thing to define.  It is hostility or hatred of Jews.  You don’t need a 450 word definition unless your purpose is to conflate opposition to Zionism, the ideology that led to the foundation of the Israeli state and genuine anti-Semitism.

Corbyn has adopted the short, two sentence International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The AWL's 'Stop the Purge' supports the purge of Ken Livingstone

This definition is itself too imprecise, open ended and uncertain.  What makes it unacceptable is that it introduces and lays the basis for 11 ‘examples’ of anti-Semitism, 7 of which relate to Israel.  In other words the whole purpose of the definition is to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.  Whilst Corbyn has not adopted these 11 examples the Labour bureaucracy has.  We have therefore adopted the definition first espoused by Professor Brian Klug of Oxford University in his lecture ‘Echoes of Shattering Glass’ delivered in his 2014 lecture in Berlin’s Jewish Museum on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. 

‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’

The article that triggered the  expulsion of Moshe Machover

 3.      Thirdly our demand is that the Compliance Unit is abolished.  It is completely undemocratic and unaccountable.  Instead all disciplinary action is to be taken by elected bodies in future.

It is important that LAW builds itself quickly in the coming months and engages in a series of activities, such as a picket of the NEC to demand the reinstatement of Moshe Machover to holding meetings and a conference.

A four person Executive Committee was elected – Jackie Walker, Stan Keable, Pete Firmin and Tony Greenstein.

Political Background

The Labour Party Conference just gone was a dismal and dispiriting time for Jeremy Newmark, Mike Katz and the Jewish Labour Movement/Labour Friends of Israel.

When Naomi Wimborne Iddrissi and Leah Levane got up to decry the false anti-Semitism smears of both organisations there was rapturous applause and even standing ovations.  When Jeremy Corbyn mentioned Palestine the audience got to their feet.  Nothing was guaranteed to elicit a cheer more than mention of Palestine.

I realise dear reader that you are unlike to be too sympathetic to Newmark and Katz but I ask you not to be too cold hearted either.  For two years they have campaigned incessantly to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.  They have secured the suspension of Jackie Walker (twice) myself and even some non-Jews for ‘anti-Semitism’.  They have lobbied, pressurised, campaigned and of course briefed their friends in the Tory press.  It’s almost as if no one reads the Daily Mail in the Labour Party.

And then what?  None of it has made a blind bit of difference because the Labour Party conference swung to the Left.  What was the point of that £1m slush fund for Joan Ryan MP if nothing has changed?  Why Newmark even overcame his distaste for the Left and befriended and flattered Jon Lansman, the property millionaire owner of Momentum.  Ok he’s not that much to the left for you and me but to Newmark he is a raving communist. 

Newmark even fooled Lansman into thinking he was a socialist-Zionist of the Mapam stripe. (for those who don’t know Mapam, although Zionists, have tended to support certain basic civil liberties for Arabs in Israel – today they are part of Meretz and clinging onto a presence in the Knesset).  In fact Newmark goes along with the Occupation, house demolitions the lot.

To make matters even worse, first Free Speech on Israel held a meeting at Monday lunch time which was packed to the rafters and then Jewish Voices for Labour, despite being wet and woolly, held its inaugural rally on Monday evening, also packed to the rafters.  Even worse still two union bosses including Len McLuskey from Unite, attend pledging support.

LRC meeting in Brighton with Jackie Walker

And as if to make this really the Conference from hell, Jeremy Corbyn became the first Labour leader to snub the Labour Friends of Israel fringe meeting in 20 years.  Emily Thornberry, bless her heart, tried to comfort the assembled big wigs, Mark Regev and assorted Zionist nobodies with a tale of Corbyn being hard at work on his speech.  However he was caught on camera having a good time at the Daily Mirror piss up!  When Joan Ryan, Labour’s Tory MP for Enfield North read out a message from Corbyn there were cries of ‘where is he’ ‘why is he not here?’.  You see LFI expects Corbyn to attend to demonstrate they are still a force to be reckoned with.

It was reported that Iain McNicol, Labour’s crooked General Secretary, was given a hero’s reception and quite right too. When all is lost McNicol has always been steady as a rock.  He has been so reliable that it is hard to imagine he doesn’t have a formal relationship with the Israeli and US Embassies.  Paid or unpaid is anyone’s guess.

Rhea Wolfson on Labour's NEC, an AWL sympathiser supported Jackie Walker's referral to the National Constitutional Committee - spoke at the Stop the Purge meeting at LP Conference

Sure enough, when all else fails, then you have to fall back on that tried and trusted weapon, ‘Anti-Semitism’. So it was that Naomi was made the subject of a complaint because she had accused the JLM of running to the Telegraph and Mail.  How dare she say such a thing?  She mentioned Jews, well Zionists, in the same sentence as the press.  That is an ‘anti-Semitic trope’.  As Jamie Stern-Weiner points out the old anti-Semitic myth revolved around Jewish ownership and control of the media not briefing the press, but such a distinction really is being pedantic.  That means she is an anti-Semite and should be suspended if not expelled for her disgraceful speech.  Indeed everyone who stood and applauded her should be expelled for giving their approval although I accept that it might be difficult knowing who stood up and who didn’t (this can be solved by expelling all the conference delegates bar Progress supporters).

At the Free Speech on Israel meeting the Israeli speaker, Miko Peled argued in favour of free speech on Israel and all political issues.  He even mentioned ‘Holocaust yes or no’.  This was enough for the press to invent an allegation that Holocaust denial was the main topic of the meeting!  And because Tony Greenstein was present at the meeting Brighton and Hove Council’s Progress Leader Councillor Warren Morgan called for me to be expelled alongside saying that he wouldn’t invite Labour to hold a conference in Brighton again.  Kinda logical that.  Clearly both of us being Jewish we share equal responsibility for what each of us said in the meeting!  Eat your heart out Uncle Joe!

Tory Guido Fawkes is in full support of the JLM Witchhunt

And the coup de grace?  Well the JLM had been particularly annoyed by a paper that Labour Party Marxists had distributed at conference.  It contained an article by Professor Moshe Machover, an Israeli anti-Zionist and founder of Matzpen, a socialist organisation of Israelis and Arabs.  The article had the temerity to quote the Deputy Chief of the SS, Reinhard Heydrich in 1935 saying how much the Nazis favoured the Zionists as opposed to the ‘assimilationists’ in the German Jewish community.  Now it is irrelevant that this quote can be found in the book of Zionist Professor of Holocaust Studies, Francis Nicosia.  The fact that it is true is also irrelevant.  To repeat such things today is clearly anti-Semitic!  Moshe also mentioned the welcome that the Zionists gave to the Nuremburg Laws of 1935.  Again he refused to understand that things look so very different 80 years later.

So Iain McNicol and his monkey, Sam Matthews hit on the bright idea of expelling Moshe.  Because he is a professor he might cause trouble.  So they ‘auto excluded’ him, which saves the trouble of a hearing, evidence etc.  and after having to write him two expulsion letters, because the first was not clear enough they explained that it was his links with LPM and the Communist Party of Great Britain that was the real reason for the expulsion.

The Demolition of an Israeli Arab village is why Israel is an Apartheid State & why a racist state has no ‘right to exist’

Raba Abu al-Kiyan, the widow of Yakub, next to the rubble of their home in Umm al-Hiran. Alex Levac

If you want to know why Israel is a racist state, with racism embedded in its DNA, then read the following stories.  It is also why Israel is not a 'normal' Western bourgeois democratic state.  Only a settler colonial state demolishes whole villages belonging to a particular ethnicity in order to build on top of it a town belonging to the colonial elite, in this case Jews.  And of course, unlike the Arab village of Umm al-Hiran, the Jewish town of Hiran will have running water, electricity, be connected to the sewerage etc.  Such things are taken for granted in Jewish towns but not in 'unrecognised' Arab villages.

A Bedouin village, Umm al-Hiran in Israel’s Negev desert (not the Occupied West  Bank or Gaza) which, after over 60 years, was demolished in order to make way for the ‘Jewish’ town of Hiran.

The Negev is largely unoccupied.  Few Jews want to live there.  It would have been easy to  build a Jewish town next to Umm al Hiran but that would have defeated another racist master plan, the Prawer Plan.  It is an article of faith amongst Israel’s planners and demographers that the Negev must be Judified.  In other words Arabs must be confined to their own shanty towns at the disposal of Israeli industry.  The High Court when allowing the demolition was told that the new town of Hiran would include Arabs but now they have been told that only religious Jews will be allowed to join.  The High Court, having willingly been deceived, is not likely to overturn its original judgement.  Today Israel’s High Court, which has always been complicit in Zionist colonisation and ethnic cleansing, is being cleansed of any Judge who is seen as concerned about human rights.  The Court is both being stuffed with right-wing settler justices and it is under attack because it isn’t racist enough.

Tony Greenstein

Gideon Levy: A Southern Israeli Village's Fate: Bedouin Out, Jews In

Eight months ago, Yakub Abu al-Kiyan was killed by police during a protest against the demolition of Bedouin houses to make way for Jewish ones; his widow and 10 kids are living in a tent next to the rubble of their home

Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Sep 08, 2017 8:13 PM

Wearing black, she emerges from her tent, a beautiful, smiling woman whose face is etched with the lines of life’s ordeals. Raba Abu al-Kiyan, the widow of Yakub – the teacher who was shot to death on January 18 by the Israel Police, who in a snap decision concluded that he was trying to run them over – lives in a tent next to the ruins of her home in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev.

When we visited here a few days after the incident, Raba repeatedly circled the rubble, mutely. Her nephew Akram, a medical student in Moldova, told us at the time that she was reconstructing her last moments with Yakub. This week she stood at the entrance to the large tent that is her home and that of her 10 children and one grandchild, and, in the late-summer heat, bottle of water in hand, agreed to talk.

For eight months – through winter, spring, summer and now with the onset of autumn – the bereaved family has called this tent home. The heaps of rubble nearby have lain untouched since that fateful, early January morning, the morning of the killing and destruction in Umm al-Hiran. The ruins of the parents’ house, the children’s house, the animal pen – all are just as they were. People don’t clear away the rubble in Umm al-Hiran, because they understand that in any event they’re living on borrowed time here.

On July 18, the bulldozers returned and started to prepare the ground for the religious-Jewish community of Hiran, which is to be built on the ruins of the Bedouin village. The work is going on just steps away from the tent where Raba and her children live. They probably won’t be able to stay here much longer.

Her father called her Raba ("four," because she was the fourth child) and her mother called her Najah, which means “success.” Raba-Najah was born 46 years ago on this now rubble-strewn soil. Her husband Yakub’s second wife, Amal, had gone to visit her parents the day we visited. Amal is the widow of his deceased brother; Yakub married her after his brother died, according to tradition.

A pall of despair seems to have descended on Umm al-Hiran. No one is expanding his house, no one is renovating or fixing anything – neglect is rampant. The mounds of ruins have become street furniture, the meager plantings have wilted, there’s no reason to cultivate anything. The generators, the black water containers, the satellite dishes and the solar panels – all are now signs of transience here, scattered about on the ground, after dozens of years of habitation. Only the access road to the community, formerly scarred and pot-holed, was miraculously repaired and repaved recently. After all, it’s going to serve Jewish residents soon.

An uneasy silence hovered over Umm al-Hiran under a blazing noontime sun, penetrated occasionally by the bleating of a lamb or the crying of an infant. Everyone understands that the fate of the village is sealed: Bedouin out, Jews in. And not just any Jews – according to the charter of the new community that will be built here, its land will be sold exclusively to “observers of the Torah and the precepts according to the values of Orthodox Judaism.” The core settler group is already waiting, living in mobile homes, in the nearby Yattir Forest.

Two weeks ago, the district planning and building committee approved a plan for the evacuees of the Bedouin village to be moved to a provisional site for 15 years, in Hura in the southern Negev. In the entire expanse of this vast desert, only here in Umm al-Hiran was a place found for Jews to settle in, on the site of yet another demolished village.

Residents look at the remains of homes demolished in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in southern Israel, January 25, 2017.Alex Levac

Strewn about, across from Raba’s tent, the double mattress she shared with her husband lies amid solar panels; their personal effects remain trapped under concrete beams. Iron rods, kitchen cupboards, a basin. Of the small olive grove that Yakub tended, the wreckers left only one ornamental tree, which thrusts up from the ruins.

“They thought that was their tree, a tree that we didn’t plant, so they let it be,” Raba says, “but it’s a tree that Yakub planted.” The sheep Yakub raised as a hobby, which were the apple of his eye, also survived and now lie, reeling from the heat, in a small new pen that was built for them. Two mangy stray dogs have found shelter under the wreckage of a car.

Along the sloping dirt road on which Yakub drove slowly to his death, exactly at the place where he was shot by the police, a modest monument of stones in his memory has been erected, surrounded by used tires. Before leaving his house in his jeep, he told Raba and the children to stay clear. “It’s dangerous here,” Yakub said. His family never saw him again.

Last weekend, on Id al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, Raba prepared two holiday meals, one “a meal for Yakub,” the other for guests. She took the meal for her late husband to the mosque and donated it to the needy.

The couple’s eldest son, Hussam, 25, completed medical school in Odessa and is now preparing for the Israeli certification examinations. Unable to study in the hot, crowded tent, he travels to Be’er Sheva every day, to the library of Ben-Gurion University; his father had a master’s degree in computer engineering from BGU.

Daughter Maryam, 21, emerges from the tent and joins the conversation. Smiling and exuding charm, she’s a student at Kaye Academic College of Education in Be’er Sheva. At the time of her father’s death, she was doing a trial week as a kindergarten teacher. Three weeks later, she sat for exams. She says she was unhappy with the grades she attained, in the shadow of the trauma.

A memorial for Yakub Abu al-Kiyan in Umm al-Hiran. Alex Levac

When her mother stumbles while speaking Hebrew, Maryam helps her out. Her teacher-training studies haven’t yet resumed for the fall, so she’s helping out in the tent. There are no toilet facilities, and the only electric power they have is generated by a solar device.

Everyone in the village has been living in the shadow of fear since January, Maryam says, especially the children.

“I am in a constant state of worry,” she says. “Maybe they will come back again to demolish. Maybe we will leave home in the morning and won’t be able to come back in the afternoon because everything will be blocked and they will level the rest of the houses. If they destroy my home, they will destroy all the memories that it contains for me.”

In the meantime, other than a widow’s allowance from social security, Raba hasn’t received anything from the state, whose leaders lost no time calling her husband – a revered teacher – a “wicked terrorist,” in the words of Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich. Later they half-retracted what they had said, without apologizing. Nor is the Justice Ministry department that investigates the police in any hurry to help out. Following reports that the department's investigators had found a “grave operational failure” in the conduct of the police on January 18, and that “there was probably no terrorist event” – an oppressive, prolonged silence has prevailed, as though the case has been closed.

At the other end of the village, Yakub’s nephew, Raad Abu al-Kiyan, continues to wage a struggle for the community’s survival. Forty years old, polished and articulate, he’s the chairman of the village committee and he sets forth his views again, tirelessly. His wife, Maryam, who has a master’s in public policy management from BGU, is the chairwoman of a local women’s group.

Raad works in the realm of environmental quality, but won’t say where.

“They killed Yaakov and Musa,” he says, referring to his uncle and to his grandfather, Musa, Yakub’s father, who died 21 days after his son was killed, possibly from heartbreak.

“We’ve lived here for 62 years without getting a thing from state, which settled us here. And now the state rewards us with murder – a state that employs all its force against its citizens,” Raad says. “We asked for a partner who would come and talk with us. Who would bring a real offer. But they don’t want an agreed-upon solution. They want to do things by force. Why is there only an enforcement unit that operates against the Bedouin, the [Israel Police’s] Yoav Unit? Is there a unit against people from the Caucasus? Against the Russians? The Ethiopians? Why is there an enforcement unit only against us?

“We suggested that we live together, one next to the other,” he continues. “But the Hiran charter states that the community will be only for Orthodox Jews. Why did Yakub and Musa have to be killed in order to bring Yaakov and Moshe instead? It’s no small thing, what happened on January 18. The world knows what happened here. Now they want to do things by force again, but without anyone noticing. To remove Umm al-Hiran from the ‘front,’ to soften things, so it’s not felt – and then to expel us. We don’t know what to expect, but we haven’t lost hope. A hope that’s 2,000 years old.”

Adds Raba: “Aren’t we citizens? I tell my friends from Hebron: You live better than us. You have land. We don’t even have that.”

Her daughter, Maryam, points to the concrete ceiling that lies crushed on the ground. “This is where we did our homework, and here’s where we played, so we wouldn’t bother Dad, who liked quiet.”

Every month Raba visits Yakub’s grave, at nearby Tel Shoket. She was there early this week, too, with two of her children. What do you tell her husband in his grave? “That God will help.”

Israel Moves Another Step Nearer Being a Police State – Even for Jews

Plan to Outlaw ‘Breaking the Silence’ the group which reveals Israel's war crimes

The reality of the most benign occupation in the world

Settler colonial societies, be it Israel, Algeria or South Africa, always created a certain democratic space for the settler population.  The indigenous population were always faced with a racist police state but Whites South Africans, French colons or Israeli Jews were always granted freedoms that resemble those that exist in Western bourgeois societies.

However the very nature of a settler colonial society leads to a situation where those members of the settler community who sympathise with and support the oppressed native population find that their democratic space is constantly being encroached upon.  So it was in South Africa that White opponents of Apartheid were also banned, detained, framed and deported.  So too in Israel, anti-Zionist Jews are increasingly coming under pressure, political and physical.  Not just anti-Zionist Jews but even those Zionists who are human rights activists and oppose the war crimes of the settler state.

How the Right see it - revealing human rights violations is a distortion of reality

I have had an argument with a good Israeli comrade, Ronnie Barkan, who tells me that ‘Breaking the Silence’ is no better than the rest of the Zionist population.  I disagree with him.  Although they, like Btselem, are undoubtedly liberal Zionists the fact is that the work they do is seen, rightly, as a threat by the Zionist regime – and not just the regime but most of the Zionist opposition too.  The 'centrist' Yesh Atid led by Yair Lapid has been one of the most hostile parties.

Israeli NGOs have already been the target of hostile legislation.  Last year they were forced to reveal prominently in their literature if they received more than half their funding from abroad.  [Israel passes law to force NGOs to reveal foreign funding]  The reason for this was in order to demonstrate that human rights activists are really traitors, who received their money from foreign governments.  Of course there was no obligation on other mainly right-wing groups or e.g. the most popular news paper Israel Hayom which is funded by US billionaire to reveal its funding.

Breaking the Silence speak out in Berlin

The aim of the new law is to ban organisations which seek to harm Israeli soldiers, whatever that means and which seek to put them on trial in international courts.  BTS which collects testimony from soldiers on the human rights violations of Israeli soldiers would be caught by this.

Yair Lapid of the 'centrist' Yesh Atid attacks Breaking the Silence alongside Israeli army officers

Netanyahu pushes for bill to ban Breaking the Silence, BDS NGOs

By Lahav Harkov,  Jerusalem Post, October 17, 2017 13:29

The bill would shut down Israeli groups that try to put IDF soldiers on trial in international courts.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pauses while addressing attendees during the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, October 1, 2015. . (photo credit:CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS)

New legislation supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would shut down any organization that seeks to harm IDF soldiers or try IDF soldiers in international courts.
The bill would also ban NGOs that promote a boycott of Israel or any area in its controls, meaning that it would apply to settlement boycotts, Channel 2 reported on Monday night.

The new details followed Sunday’s unanimous decision by the coalition to launch a two-pronged attack on foreign funding of political NGOs, consisting of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into “the involvement of foreign governments in the funding of political organizations and activities to harm IDF soldiers,” and legislation that will be more stringent than the current laws requiring organizations to report foreign funding and announce it publicly if more than half of their budget comes from a foreign political entity.

Israeli soldier poses with detainees

The vast majority of organizations that are mostly funded by foreign governments  – 25 of 27 NGOs listed by the Justice Ministry in 2016 – are left-wing.

Earlier this year, Netanyahu appointed Tourism Minister Yariv Levin to come up with a new bill on the topic, because he thought the existing laws are too permissive.

Closing Breaking the Silence, which collects testimony from former IDF soldiers claiming war crimes and airs them around the world, was reportedly specifically mentioned in discussions of what the legislation should entail.

Breaking the Silence Exhibition - Netanyahu wants to clamp down on such embarrassments

Breaking the Silence’s executive director Avner Gvaryahu said his organization “is here to stay, now and after Netanyahu,” and argued that the “persecution” of his NGO is a distraction from the investigations into alleged corruption by Netanyahu.

“This is yet another pitiful witch-hunt from a right-wing government that knows its days are numbered,” he stated. “Yet again, Netanyahu chooses to use IDF soldiers, who have broken the silence and oppose the occupation, as a human shield, deflecting the consequences of his own criminal entanglements. Neither a commission of inquiry nor legislation will deter us. There is only one way to stop Breaking the Silence: end the occupation."

Opinion The Right-wing Assault on Israeli Democracy

A plan to outlaw Breaking the Silence is part of a campaign that aims to erase the liberal democracy that Israel once aspired to be

Chemi Shalev Haaretz, Oct 17, 2017 5:45 PM

The reported plan to declare the anti-occupation NGO Breaking the Silence illegal is an indication of Israel’s heavy-handed government and of its weakened democracy. It would be considered breaking news were it not for the fact that it is actually more of the same. The blacklisting of Breaking the Silence, which would surely serve as a gateway to banning more dissent, is part of the overall right-wing assault on the liberal democracy that Israel once aspired to be. Like the (apparently false) claim that a frog will tolerate water being heated up until it’s boiled to death, Israeli public opinion, including the part that was supposed to offer resistance, has adapted to the dismantlement in stages of the country’s democracy. If and when the public wakes up, it might very well be too late.

The onslaught is being executed on many fronts. It is a calculated and integrated campaign. To allow the government to enact anti-democratic laws as it sees fit, it must first revoke the authority of the High Court of Justice to nullify Knesset legislation. To diminish the stature of the court, the justice minister tries to clip its wings through legislation while her fellow coalition members delegitimize the High Court’s decisions and makeup. Without the threat of High Court nullification, right-wing lawmakers can start dreaming about remaking Israeli democracy into the Jewish ethnocracy they desire. To justify the required curtailment of equality and civil rights, Israeli Arabs are portrayed as a Fifth Column, opponents of the occupation become terrorist collaborators and demonstrators for the rule of law are dubbed anarchists and harassers. All the while, the government’s education commissar tries to edit academic freedom to make it conform to government policy and its culture czar threatens the livelihood of artists who challenge dogma and buck right-wing convention.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to save himself from what increasingly look like likely indictments only add fuel to the fire already consuming Israeli democracy. A frantic and haunted prime minister waging a personal vendetta against the media and the legal system for his own survival is a crucial element in the anti-democratic revolution. So the coalition stays silent when Netanyahu attacks the police just as they will look the other way when he will try to intimidate his potential Justice Ministry prosecutors, not to mention the ecstasy that engulfs right wingers whenever Netanyahu tries to torment the media. He launches bitter personal attacks on journalists, like Donald Trump on steroids, opens and closes public broadcasting stations, like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, enforces regulations or relaxes the rules to send a message to reporters – but mainly to those who pay their salaries – that investigative exposés and biting criticism might not be the shortest avenue to fame and fortune.

The breaking and smashing frenzy, which is slated to peak in the Knesset’s upcoming winter session, is shared by cynical politicians and true fanatics. The former are looking for headlines that will grab their incited voters but the latter represent a comprehensive world view that derides Western and liberal values and seeks to replace them with an authoritarian regime in which Jews reign supreme. They want to discriminate between Jews and Arabs without knee-jerk liberals getting in their way, to grab Palestinian land while the High Court cowers in the corner, and to continue managing the occupation in darkness, without the rays of disinfecting sunlight occasionally shed by NGOs such as Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem.

This aggressive campaign is fed by the right wing’s perpetual self-victimization, orchestrated and conducted by Netanyahu himself, and by the arrogance of Likud politicians – and those from the national-religious Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) Party even more so – who show no compunction about undermining the values that made Israel what it is today. Maybe their amok is a function of an urge to erase the last remnants of the Israel in whose creation and consolidation their political movements played only a minor role. After the mission is accomplished, the internal destroyers and demolishers of the Zionist revolution that created the state can continue pretending that they are its children and successors.