Posted: 6.49pm Tuesday 17 April 2007
Debate and Comment
Recent moves to define criticism of Israel as antisemitic have their roots in the growing questioning of the state among Jews, writes John Rose
An angry debate at the recent conference of the National Union of Students (NUS) failed to stop delegates adopting a dangerously misleading definition of antisemitism promoted by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC).
The part of the EUMC definition that declares antisemitism as the expression of hatred towards Jews, their property and Jewish community institutions and religious facilities was not in question.
The problem was with the EUMC’s inclusion that “such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”.
This decision follows a similar one by the authors of the re cent All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism.
MPs here also used an EUMC definition of antisemitism which includes the clause, “Denying Jewish people their right to self determination, by claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavour.”
Ruqayyah Collector, the NUS black students’ officer, told the Guardian that she was worried now that real debate would be stifled. She may be right.
These “legalistic” and authoritarian manoeuvres need to be understood in the context of the mounting crisis of legitimacy for the Israeli state.
Its defeat by Hizbollah in Lebanon last summer has shaken to the core Israeli public confidence in its army.
In addition, because the cynical encouragement of Israeli terror in Lebanon by George Bush and Tony Blair was given such unusually stark media exposure, Israel’s role as a militaristic tool of Western interests is far more widely understood.
At the same time, even Israel’s traditional liberal supporters doubt its seriousness to conclude a lasting and just peace with the Palestinians.
A book by former US president Jimmy Carter attacking Israel’s increasingly “apartheid” style regime is a bestseller in the US.
International financier George Soros is part of an independent, high-powered US initiative calling for pressure to force Israel to start proper talks with the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
Serious splits are opening up in the Jewish communities. In Britain, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) is backed by some of Britain’s top intellectuals and artists, such as Eric Hobsbawm and Harold Pinter.
The IJV is challenging the traditional leadership of the Jewish community, the Board of Deputies, and its craven support for Israel.
In the last two weeks a very public brawl has broken out between the Jewish Chronicle newspaper’s top columnists, Jonathan Freedland and the ultra-neoconservative Melanie Phillips.
Freedland has launched a blistering and well deserved attack on Phillips for renaming the IJV group as “Jews for Genocide” and her remark that while “individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project”.
The Union of Jewish Students may have put on a brave united front over Israel at the NUS conference, but the disarray among young Jews is, if anything, even greater.
I was recently a guest speaker at a brilliant event, organised in disused rail tunnels underneath London Bridge station by Jewdas, in their words a “rootless cosmopolitan youth movement”.
Jewdas first hit the headlines when Jewish community leaders called the police to remove them from Trafalgar Square during a recent “Celebrate Israel” rally!
The problem for the Zionists (supporters of Israel) is that far too much truth is now in the public arena and they have to resort to illiberal means to stop it.
The recent publication of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé, Israel’s leading anti-Zionist scholar, illustrates this point.
Pappé documents, Arab village by Arab village, the extreme violence used by Zionist militias in 1948 to “cleanse” the new Israeli state of its Palestinian Arab majority.
Pappé’s concluding argument is that peace in the region depends upon Israelis confronting the racist roots of their state. But the pro-Israeli Jewish community leaderships are concluding instead that laws must be used, and changed if necessary, to silence critics like Pappé.
Traditions of honest and democratic debate demand that those independent Jewish voices such as the radical US Jewish theologian Marc Ellis continue to speak out.
Ellis has written of a “civil war of conscience” over Israel, simmering under the apparent smooth surface of Jewish communities. As the surface breaks, the left must intervene.
Particularly on the campuses, we should not assume that the view of Israel held by leadership of the Union of Jewish Students is dominant among all Jewish students. It is not.
Many if not most of the thousands of Jewish students start their first year in university with very confused attitudes about Israel. What is required is a sensitive but sustained strategy of political and intellectual engagement with these students.
In every generation, a minority of Jews questions the narrow, pessimistic and bleak conservatism of the organised community’s leadership. We need to provide answers to those questions.
John Rose is the author of The Myths of Zionism, available at Bookmarks, the socialist bookshop. Phone 020 7637 1848 or go to www.bookmarks.uk.com
Showing posts with label 'ANTI-SEMITISM'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'ANTI-SEMITISM'. Show all posts
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
AMCHA files to join AIPAC case
This group and the defense are attempting blackmail. Under the pretense of free speech, the effort is to get the courtroom open so the defense can threaten to divulge state secrets, thereby hamstringing the prosecutors.
Another angle this slimy group is pursuing is the State is being anti-semetic. Putrid and disgusting, but typical of the Israel Lobby.
Related
Amcha: Secrecy May Turn Aipac Case Into Modern-Day Dreyfus Affair
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JTA
Another angle this slimy group is pursuing is the State is being anti-semetic. Putrid and disgusting, but typical of the Israel Lobby.
Related
Amcha: Secrecy May Turn Aipac Case Into Modern-Day Dreyfus Affair
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JTA
A Jewish organization has for the first time formally joined in a motion friendly to the defense of two former AIPAC staffers facing classified information leak charges.
A Jewish organization has for the first time formally joined in a motion friendly to the defense of two former AIPAC staffers facing classified information leak charges. AMCHA, headed by activist Rabbi Avi Weiss, filed a motion Wednesday to join a friend of the court brief by a number of large media groups seeking to keep the prosecution from concealing from the public evidence presented to the jury. Much of the evidence in the case against Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, has been gathered through eavesdropping; the two-year delay in the trial, set now to begin June 4, is due in large part to sorting through which evidence may be declassified as evidence. Judge T.S. Ellis III's tendency to favor the defense in some instances has led the prosecution to ask for evidence to be obscured from the public, if not the jury. A number of major media outlets, including ABC, the Associated Press and the Washington Post, and First Amendment defense groups have joined the defense in challenging the prosecution's request. "The American Jewish community has a special and compelling interest in ensuring that all of the evidence presented in the trial against Messrs. Rosen and Weissman be available to the public for review and scrutiny," says the AMCHA filing. Ellis will hear arguments Monday. |
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Stop conflating anti-Zionism and anti-semitism
Our politicians are using semantics to outlaw criticism of US and British foreign policy.
April 12, 2007 12:30 PM
Tony Greenstein
Tony Greenstein
When the incitement to religious hatred bill was laid before parliament two years ago, numerous figures from the media and entertainment industries, as well as the human rights, humanist and civil liberties lobbies, condemned the legislation as an attack on free speech. In the words of the actor Stephen Fry, the legislation was "a sop to the Muslim community", whose problems really centred around race, not religion.
Yet barely a murmur has greeted the report of the all parliamentary inquiry into anti-semitism, chaired by the rightwing Labour MP Denis MacShane, who in a previous life as a junior Foreign Office minister greeted the CIA coup that temporarily overthrew Hugo Chávez of Venezuela by denouncing the latter as "a ranting, populist demagogue" (Hugh O'Shaughnessy, March 12 2007).
The committee itself had no status when it drew up the report. It was self-selecting, and not one of the 14 members of the inquiry voted against the war in Iraq on March 18 2003. In other words, they came to the question of anti-semitism from a rightwing political perspective.
Yet the report on anti-semitism, which the government has accepted by upgrading the committee's status to that of a select committee (Jewish Chronicle, March 30 2007: "Police told to focus on hate crime"), is deeply disturbing in its cavalier approach to the definition of anti-semitism, which it conflates throughout with anti-Zionism.
Even the basis for the report itself is hyped and unconvincing. By the reports own' admission (paragraph 29), the year 2005 saw a fall of 14% in recorded anti-semitic incidents compared with the previous year. Of course each and every incident is to be condemned, but where, one might ask, is the all-parliamentary committee on incidents of anti-Muslim abuse; and what, one wonders, would be the level of recorded incidents?
What is more worrying is how anti-semitic incidents are defined. In Brighton and Hove there were two demonstrations against the Lebanon war last summer. Police from Sussex and Surrey swamped the second demonstration, alleging a "serious racial incident" had occurred.
The incident concerned a motorist who had yelled "terrorist" at an Arab demonstrator on the previous march and got into a verbal altercation as a result. Despite a number of eyewitnesses, the police made no attempt to investigate the alleged crime. Instead, it was used as a pretext for some of the heaviest policing of a demonstration, including the use of racial profiling against Arabs, that I have ever seen. It has taken a six-month campaign for Brighton police to accept that the right to demonstrate is not a privilege handed down from on high.
In the course of a conversation I secretly recorded, Brighton's chief of police, Kevin Moore, admitted that before the demonstration, "We made contact with the local Jewish community leaders within the synagogues." In other words, it was the police who made the association between the bombing of Lebanon and the local Jewish community. And in an equally revealing remark, Moore let slip that the police had received a single complaint about the march and, because a "racially motivated incident is one which is declared by any person to be racially motivated", had therefore classified the march as anti-semitic!
The inquiry report is part of a continuum that began with the creation of an offence of "glorifying" terrorism and is continuing with the suggestion that anti-Zionism - that is, opposition to the Israeli state and the movement it created - is anti-semitic. Ironically, it is repeating one of the oldest anti-semitic myths: adopting the EU's working definition of anti-semitism, the report states that anti-semitism includes "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour".
Yet it has long been an article of faith among anti-semites that Jews, wherever they lived and whatever they did, formed a nation separate from those they lived among. The major difference between modern and feudal anti-semitism was that the Jews were seen not as a religion but as a race or nation. It is one of the hallmarks of New Labour that contested political arguments are now being resolved by the criminal law.
And then there is the suggestion that to criticise the nature of the Israeli state, which is unique in defining itself as a state not of its own citizens but of Jews worldwide, is to apply "double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation". This is the argument that supporters of apartheid in South Africa used to make. States that accord privileges based on racial/ethnic criteria are indeed unique.
It is argued that "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" is in itself anti-semitic. Now, it might arguably be offensive, but why anti-semitic? In her book The War Against the Jews, Lucy Dawidowicz reports that it was the position of the SS that "the Zionists adhere to a strict racial position, and by emigrating to Palestine they are helping to build their own Jewish state". Is it anti-semitic to point out that "ethnic cleansing" and the transfer or forced migration of civilian populations was also Nazi policy; or that only in Israel and Nazi Germany were Jews barred from marrying non-Jews?
And it is supporters of the Israeli state itself who have regularly made comparisons between the Palestinians and the Nazis. Who can forget when in 1982 the Israeli premier Menachem Begin compared Arafat in the siege of Beirut to Hitler in his bunker? How many times has the Holocaust been used to justify the Israeli state?
The report defines anti-semitism as "holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel". Agreed. But is it any wonder that there are some misguided people who criticise the Board of Deputies of British Jews when it holds rallies in the name of the Jewish community in support of Israel's bombing of Lebanon?
This report has nothing to do with anti-semitism and everything to do with creating a rightwing political agenda whereby opposition to British and US foreign policy is deemed anti-semitic. If Israel is the west's principal strategic partner in the Middle East and you question the whole basis of that partnership, then you will inevitably be criticised as anti-semitic. In the United States, it has even been argued that if you oppose the majority positions of the Jewish community in favour of the Iraq war, that makes you anti-semitic.
The all-party parliamentary inquiry made no attempt to interview a broad cross-section of Jews, including anti-Zionists; it played softball with the Jewish establishment. Nor did it seek the views of Jews who have been active in the fight against the BNP and National Front apart from those of the pro-Zionist Searchlight magazine. Instead what it has done is produce a report whose only purpose is to try and criminalise political debate in the name of "anti-semitism".
Tony Greenstein is a founding member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a member of Jews Against Zionism.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Allegations that Lord Levy is suffering anti-semitism divide British Jews
Related
Top U.K. official was buying influence, honours, and key government positions in return for generous donations from his lobby group, the Labour Friends of Israel.
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Susannah Tarbush Al-Hayat - 31/03/07//
The "cash for honours" scandal has taken an ugly turn with allegations from some leading British Jews that a central figure in the scandal, the Labour Party's chief fundraiser Lord Michael Levy, is being targeted because he is a prominent Jew - in other words, that Lord Levy is suffering anti-semitism. But some other Jews strongly reject suggestions that anti-semitism is involved.
In addition to his fundraising role, the unelected Levy is also Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal envoy to the Middle East. He has been arrested twice in the year-long police investigations into whether there was an attempt to "sell" honours in return for secret loans to the Labour Party, and whether some of Blair's staff in Downing Street have tried to cover this up, thereby perverting the course of justice.
Four businessmen who loaned Labour more than £5 million for the 2005 election campaign were nominated for peerages (ie membership of the House of Lords). In all, Labour secretly raised £14 million in secret loans from 12 rich businessmen. Blair himself has been interviewed twice by police, but is thought unlikely to face charges himself.
Matters have grown particularly serious for Lord Levy following the leaking of a document from Blair's director of government relations Ruth Turner, addressed to Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell. In the document Turner complains that Lord Levy had asked her to "lie" for him in the police investigations. Like Lord Levy, Turner has been arrested twice during the police investigations. According to the Sunday Times, Lord Levy asked Blair's senior staff in Downing Street to lie to police by saying he had no involvement in the honours system.
Lord Levy issued a statement through his lawyers vehemently denying he has done anything wrong and saying that media reports "which are said to be based on leaked material under consideration by the police are partial, contradictory, confused and inaccurate." It is known that Lord Levy feels betrayed by the Labour Party and by those who are leaking negative material about him.
Lord Levy's rabbi, Yitzchak Schochet, told Channel 4 news: "I know the Jewish community is becoming increasingly more sensitive that there's one Jew seemingly being hung out to dry here." Schochet, who is rabbi at the north London synagogue Lord Levy attends, told the Daily Telegraph that "anti-semitic forces" are out to "get" Levy.
The editor of the weekly Jewish Chronicle newspaper, David Rowan, compares Levy to the fictional financier Augustus Melmotte in the novel "The Way We Live Now" by the 19th century novelist Anthony Trollope. Melmotte funds politics and rises high within the political establishment and high society, but after his downfall he is ostracised and cast aside by his former friends and poisons himself. But Rowan points out that unlike Lord Levy, Melmotte was a swindler.
Rowan told BBC Radio Four's Today programme that the readers of the Jewish Chronicle are concerned that media coverage of Lord Levy seems to "glorify" in aspects of the case that are Jewish. "A reader yesterday wanted to know why some of the newspapers, the Daily Mail in particular, had to inform us that his middle name is Abraham, his parents were devout Jews, and that he first met the prime minister at a party thrown by the Israel Embassy, when we hear nothing about Ruth Turner or Jonathan Powell's middle names or their religious affiliation."
The readers of the Jewish Chronicle are also concerned that for those inside Downing Street, in whose interest it is to distance themselves from Lord Levy, it is all very convenient to play into this "traditional narrative of the Jewish moneyman who comes in from outside and makes a convenient scapegoat." There is "a very convenient, neat little pattern to push Lord Levy into".
Rowan mentioned in this respect Sir Eric Miller, the property developer who helped run the office of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and who "committed suicide one day of atonement" and Joseph Kagan, the industrialist who manufactured the Gannex raincoats Wilson wore, and was made a Lord by Wilson. (At the time of his suicide in 1977 Miller was under police investigation for corruption, while Lord Kagan was sent to prison for 10 months in 1980 for stealing from his own companies).
The Guardian newspaper columnist Jonathan Freedland has written that many in Britain's Jewish community have long detected "old fashioned prejudice" in the media descriptions of Lord Levy as a "flamboyant, north London businessman".
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the community's main representative body, has also sought to defend Lord Levy. The board's chief executive, Jon Benjamin, issued a press release saying that the media should "exercise extreme caution in order to make sure that anti-Semitic stereotypes do not creep into characterisation of Jewish public figures, especially where money is concerned." Journalists should show "the same care in portraying prominent Jews" as they do in covering public figures from other minorities.
But certain other prominent Jews, including some who repeatedly warn of a rise in anti-Semitism in Britain, are highly critical of claims that Lord Levy is being subjected to anti-Semitism. A former president of the Board of Deputies, Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, attacked the board's press release. He told the Jewish Chronicle: "There was no need to issue any such statement because there is no Jewish issue here whatsoever. Why did they send one out?"
The columnist, broadcaster and author Melanie Phillips, who is one of the most vocal British supporters of Israel, wrote in her online diary: "It is to be hoped that this weekend the congregants of Mill Hill synagogue in London will sit on their rabbi Yitzhak Schochet, and wind several yards of tape around the area between his nose and his chin." She added that to say Lord Levy is "the victim of 'anti-semitism' when he is at the centre of an ongoing police investigation in which he has been arrested and bailed is simply outrageous. There is not a shred of evidence to support such an allegation. If Lord Levy is in trouble, this has nothing to do with his ethnic identity."
Phillips warned that the implication that the Jewish community is "circling the wagons" to protect one of their own who is under investigation by the police is "simply appalling. It could also not be more damaging. Have these people really no brain at all? Don't they understand the harm they have done?"
She added: "At a time when there is not only an upsurge of real anti-Jewish prejudice, but the odious claim is made that any Jew who draws attention to it is crying wolf in an attempt to manipulate the agenda to their advantage, for the community to be seen to be doing just that over Lord Levy makes a bad situation even more difficult and leaves British Jews even more exposed than ever."
The columnist and comment editor of the Times newspaper, Daniel Finkelstein, wrote that Rabbi Schochet was making "a terrible error. If you start hinting at anti-Semitism whenever a Jew is in trouble you undermine the very idea. You make people wary of real claims, ones justified by the evidence." Finkelstein asked whether Lord Levy is in the spotlight because he is a Jew, "hung out to dry" because he is the only Jew involved, and whether anti-semitism is the position he finds himself in. Finkelstein answered "no no no no no no no" (seven times in all), adding: "There's enough genuine anti-Semitism about. And it is difficult enough to make people take it seriously."
The commentator Stephen Pollard wrote on his blog: "I screamed 'shut up' when I heard the rabbi. Yes, there have been some traces of anti-Semitism in some of the coverage." However, the basis of the affair is alleged corruption and alleged interference with the investigation into that corruption.
Pollard adds: "It happens that one of the people arrested is Jewish. If the Rabbi thinks Lord Levy would not have been arrested if he was an Anglican, or was only arrested because he is Jewish, then he is living in a parallel universe." He warned that when people throw the label anti-Semitic around without any basis "in fact they play into the hands of those real anti-Semites."
Certainly the alleged growth of anti-semitism in Britain is currently a highly sensitive issue. It is not uncommon for critics of Israeli policies to be accused of anti-semitism. Last September a group of prominent MPs presented to Blair at a meeting at Downing Street the report on their 10-month inquiry into anti-semitism in Britain. The report noted an increase in physical and verbal abuse against Jews in Britain, and alleged that "rage" over Israeli policies had sometimes "provided a pretext" for anti-semitism. It condemned moves by academics and others to boycott links with Israel.
It is often said that the British, for example the "chattering classes" at dinner parties, indulge in a particular form of anti-semitism which is difficult to prove and takes the form of "a nudge and a wink".
The then longest-serving Labour MP in the House of Commons Tam Dalyell caused outrage in May 2003 with his statement in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine that Blair is "unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers" including Lord Levy, Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw (the latter two do not consider themselves Jewish although they have some Jewish ancestry). Dalyell denied he was anti-semitic, but his statement is often cited as an example of anti-semitism in Britain.
Much of the media, including the BBC, has taken the allegations of anti-semitism against Lord Levy seriously and have reported and investigated them. BBC Radio Four's Today programme interviewed at length a friend of Lord Levy's, the Jewish businessman Sir Alan Sugar.
Sugar said Levy was a scapegoat who has "been set up as a bad guy" in the cash for honours affair. He spoke of Levy's "blind devotion for Tony Blair who he claims is his friend , and looking at the newspaper and television reports at the moment, with friends like him [Blair] you don't need any enemies." Sir Alan said he has a lot of respect for Blair and thinks he has been a "great prime minister and a decent man", but Blair will "go down in my estimation if he allows this nonsense to continue in respect to Levy, because Levy raised a lot of money for his party and assisted him to get elected."
Asked whether there is an anti-semitic angle to some of the media coverage of Lord Levy, Sir Alan said: "The major newspaper that has continually 'hounded' Levy is the Daily Mail. It's a paper which has been accused in the past of being tough on ethnic minorities such as the Jews or the Asians. "
But rather than agreeing that Lord Levy is being subjected to anti-semitism, Sugar said: "personally, I would steer away from the anti-semitism thing. "
Top U.K. official was buying influence, honours, and key government positions in return for generous donations from his lobby group, the Labour Friends of Israel.
---
Susannah Tarbush Al-Hayat - 31/03/07//
The "cash for honours" scandal has taken an ugly turn with allegations from some leading British Jews that a central figure in the scandal, the Labour Party's chief fundraiser Lord Michael Levy, is being targeted because he is a prominent Jew - in other words, that Lord Levy is suffering anti-semitism. But some other Jews strongly reject suggestions that anti-semitism is involved.
In addition to his fundraising role, the unelected Levy is also Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal envoy to the Middle East. He has been arrested twice in the year-long police investigations into whether there was an attempt to "sell" honours in return for secret loans to the Labour Party, and whether some of Blair's staff in Downing Street have tried to cover this up, thereby perverting the course of justice.
Four businessmen who loaned Labour more than £5 million for the 2005 election campaign were nominated for peerages (ie membership of the House of Lords). In all, Labour secretly raised £14 million in secret loans from 12 rich businessmen. Blair himself has been interviewed twice by police, but is thought unlikely to face charges himself.
Matters have grown particularly serious for Lord Levy following the leaking of a document from Blair's director of government relations Ruth Turner, addressed to Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell. In the document Turner complains that Lord Levy had asked her to "lie" for him in the police investigations. Like Lord Levy, Turner has been arrested twice during the police investigations. According to the Sunday Times, Lord Levy asked Blair's senior staff in Downing Street to lie to police by saying he had no involvement in the honours system.
Lord Levy issued a statement through his lawyers vehemently denying he has done anything wrong and saying that media reports "which are said to be based on leaked material under consideration by the police are partial, contradictory, confused and inaccurate." It is known that Lord Levy feels betrayed by the Labour Party and by those who are leaking negative material about him.
Lord Levy's rabbi, Yitzchak Schochet, told Channel 4 news: "I know the Jewish community is becoming increasingly more sensitive that there's one Jew seemingly being hung out to dry here." Schochet, who is rabbi at the north London synagogue Lord Levy attends, told the Daily Telegraph that "anti-semitic forces" are out to "get" Levy.
The editor of the weekly Jewish Chronicle newspaper, David Rowan, compares Levy to the fictional financier Augustus Melmotte in the novel "The Way We Live Now" by the 19th century novelist Anthony Trollope. Melmotte funds politics and rises high within the political establishment and high society, but after his downfall he is ostracised and cast aside by his former friends and poisons himself. But Rowan points out that unlike Lord Levy, Melmotte was a swindler.
Rowan told BBC Radio Four's Today programme that the readers of the Jewish Chronicle are concerned that media coverage of Lord Levy seems to "glorify" in aspects of the case that are Jewish. "A reader yesterday wanted to know why some of the newspapers, the Daily Mail in particular, had to inform us that his middle name is Abraham, his parents were devout Jews, and that he first met the prime minister at a party thrown by the Israel Embassy, when we hear nothing about Ruth Turner or Jonathan Powell's middle names or their religious affiliation."
The readers of the Jewish Chronicle are also concerned that for those inside Downing Street, in whose interest it is to distance themselves from Lord Levy, it is all very convenient to play into this "traditional narrative of the Jewish moneyman who comes in from outside and makes a convenient scapegoat." There is "a very convenient, neat little pattern to push Lord Levy into".
Rowan mentioned in this respect Sir Eric Miller, the property developer who helped run the office of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and who "committed suicide one day of atonement" and Joseph Kagan, the industrialist who manufactured the Gannex raincoats Wilson wore, and was made a Lord by Wilson. (At the time of his suicide in 1977 Miller was under police investigation for corruption, while Lord Kagan was sent to prison for 10 months in 1980 for stealing from his own companies).
The Guardian newspaper columnist Jonathan Freedland has written that many in Britain's Jewish community have long detected "old fashioned prejudice" in the media descriptions of Lord Levy as a "flamboyant, north London businessman".
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the community's main representative body, has also sought to defend Lord Levy. The board's chief executive, Jon Benjamin, issued a press release saying that the media should "exercise extreme caution in order to make sure that anti-Semitic stereotypes do not creep into characterisation of Jewish public figures, especially where money is concerned." Journalists should show "the same care in portraying prominent Jews" as they do in covering public figures from other minorities.
But certain other prominent Jews, including some who repeatedly warn of a rise in anti-Semitism in Britain, are highly critical of claims that Lord Levy is being subjected to anti-Semitism. A former president of the Board of Deputies, Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, attacked the board's press release. He told the Jewish Chronicle: "There was no need to issue any such statement because there is no Jewish issue here whatsoever. Why did they send one out?"
The columnist, broadcaster and author Melanie Phillips, who is one of the most vocal British supporters of Israel, wrote in her online diary: "It is to be hoped that this weekend the congregants of Mill Hill synagogue in London will sit on their rabbi Yitzhak Schochet, and wind several yards of tape around the area between his nose and his chin." She added that to say Lord Levy is "the victim of 'anti-semitism' when he is at the centre of an ongoing police investigation in which he has been arrested and bailed is simply outrageous. There is not a shred of evidence to support such an allegation. If Lord Levy is in trouble, this has nothing to do with his ethnic identity."
Phillips warned that the implication that the Jewish community is "circling the wagons" to protect one of their own who is under investigation by the police is "simply appalling. It could also not be more damaging. Have these people really no brain at all? Don't they understand the harm they have done?"
She added: "At a time when there is not only an upsurge of real anti-Jewish prejudice, but the odious claim is made that any Jew who draws attention to it is crying wolf in an attempt to manipulate the agenda to their advantage, for the community to be seen to be doing just that over Lord Levy makes a bad situation even more difficult and leaves British Jews even more exposed than ever."
The columnist and comment editor of the Times newspaper, Daniel Finkelstein, wrote that Rabbi Schochet was making "a terrible error. If you start hinting at anti-Semitism whenever a Jew is in trouble you undermine the very idea. You make people wary of real claims, ones justified by the evidence." Finkelstein asked whether Lord Levy is in the spotlight because he is a Jew, "hung out to dry" because he is the only Jew involved, and whether anti-semitism is the position he finds himself in. Finkelstein answered "no no no no no no no" (seven times in all), adding: "There's enough genuine anti-Semitism about. And it is difficult enough to make people take it seriously."
The commentator Stephen Pollard wrote on his blog: "I screamed 'shut up' when I heard the rabbi. Yes, there have been some traces of anti-Semitism in some of the coverage." However, the basis of the affair is alleged corruption and alleged interference with the investigation into that corruption.
Pollard adds: "It happens that one of the people arrested is Jewish. If the Rabbi thinks Lord Levy would not have been arrested if he was an Anglican, or was only arrested because he is Jewish, then he is living in a parallel universe." He warned that when people throw the label anti-Semitic around without any basis "in fact they play into the hands of those real anti-Semites."
Certainly the alleged growth of anti-semitism in Britain is currently a highly sensitive issue. It is not uncommon for critics of Israeli policies to be accused of anti-semitism. Last September a group of prominent MPs presented to Blair at a meeting at Downing Street the report on their 10-month inquiry into anti-semitism in Britain. The report noted an increase in physical and verbal abuse against Jews in Britain, and alleged that "rage" over Israeli policies had sometimes "provided a pretext" for anti-semitism. It condemned moves by academics and others to boycott links with Israel.
It is often said that the British, for example the "chattering classes" at dinner parties, indulge in a particular form of anti-semitism which is difficult to prove and takes the form of "a nudge and a wink".
The then longest-serving Labour MP in the House of Commons Tam Dalyell caused outrage in May 2003 with his statement in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine that Blair is "unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers" including Lord Levy, Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw (the latter two do not consider themselves Jewish although they have some Jewish ancestry). Dalyell denied he was anti-semitic, but his statement is often cited as an example of anti-semitism in Britain.
Much of the media, including the BBC, has taken the allegations of anti-semitism against Lord Levy seriously and have reported and investigated them. BBC Radio Four's Today programme interviewed at length a friend of Lord Levy's, the Jewish businessman Sir Alan Sugar.
Sugar said Levy was a scapegoat who has "been set up as a bad guy" in the cash for honours affair. He spoke of Levy's "blind devotion for Tony Blair who he claims is his friend , and looking at the newspaper and television reports at the moment, with friends like him [Blair] you don't need any enemies." Sir Alan said he has a lot of respect for Blair and thinks he has been a "great prime minister and a decent man", but Blair will "go down in my estimation if he allows this nonsense to continue in respect to Levy, because Levy raised a lot of money for his party and assisted him to get elected."
Asked whether there is an anti-semitic angle to some of the media coverage of Lord Levy, Sir Alan said: "The major newspaper that has continually 'hounded' Levy is the Daily Mail. It's a paper which has been accused in the past of being tough on ethnic minorities such as the Jews or the Asians. "
But rather than agreeing that Lord Levy is being subjected to anti-semitism, Sugar said: "personally, I would steer away from the anti-semitism thing. "
Friday, March 23, 2007
Woolsey Watch: Oil and Anti-Semitism
Related
AIPAC conference speeches (video): Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh and Former CIA Director James Woolsey
James Woolsey Should Lose Security Clearance
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March 23, 2007
AIPAC conference speeches (video): Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh and Former CIA Director James Woolsey
James Woolsey Should Lose Security Clearance
---
March 23, 2007
Former CIA Director James Woolsey is speaking at Yale University next Thursday afternoon. If you are nearby, you should go.
Woolsey will be speaking for he Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism on Thursday, 29 March, at 4:15 pm in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 101, 63 High Street in New Haven.
His topic: "Energy, Security and the Long War of the 21st Century."
I think Jim Woolsey's work to support greater energy independence in the U.S. is laudable -- while I have strong disagreements with him on how he has positioned himself as a financial winner in this war on terror while so many American men and women are paying with their lives, family emotional and financial security, and careers for a war he has helped flame as a pundit. I also strongly disagree with the former CIA Director's advocacy of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard's release.
That said, it would be interesting to hear Woolsey talk about the "long war."
Ask him where the best opportunities are for profiteers in this long war we face. Where is putting his money? He'll probably say "Toyota stock" -- but press him.
Seriously though, I think anti-semitism as a trend is important and worthy of study. Years ago, I helped the Pacific Rim Institute of the American Jewish Committee get access to high-level Japanese political and cultural leaders for discussions to help stem what was a rising tide of anti-semitic literature in Japan. The material that some Japanese cults were producing was really disgusting and needed a response.
I just don't know what Jim Woolsey's energy concerns have to do with anti-semitism studies -- unless in his remarks (that I hope someone reports on) he is going to paint a broad brush stroke alleging anti-semitism against all the Middle East regimes that sit on oil -- even those regimes that are trying to propose a final peace solution with Israel. That would be a sad outcome of Woolsey's appearance at Yale. Let's hope he proves my suspicions unfounded.
Charles Small, the Yale program director, is an accomplished academic and may just be bringing in someone like Woolsey because of the cache of having a former CIA Director. It wouldn't matter to Small perhaps what Woolsey was speaking about -- even if it was something like Eastern shore birdwatching.
But I suspect that Woolsey has been invited in part because of his overdrive activities advocating Jonathan Pollard's release or as a tireless advocate of another war in the Middle East.
Perhaps I'm just being cynical, but it would be useful to hear from any Yale attendees on how much hyperbole Woolsey engages in next Thursday.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Losing Focus: Peace and Justice Movement in Britain at Crossroad
By RAMZY BAROUD
Growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, it was a very familiar encounter: Israeli soldiers storming our house accompanied by shouts of terror and a barrage of insults. Such recollections make me shudder to this day.
Just the mere summoning of those memories of my childhood in the Nuseirat refugee camp haunting me not only in childhood but in my adulthood as well, shall most likely accompany me for the rest of my life - almost instantaneously forcing me to relive my mother’s agonizing cries, my father’s pleas for the welfare of his children, my brothers and I clutching to each other as the soldiers try to break us a part, the physical degradation, the verbal abuse, then the utter silence when the soldiers finally leave, the sounds of the engines fading away into the camp’s darkened roads, followed by far away screams from some other family in some other place, as the tragic scenario faithfully repeats itself.
My family’s house was positioned in a location that was simply a nightmare, since it stood at the helm of the camp’s main square, often referred to as Red Square by locals, remembering the many Palestinians killed in and around it while protesting the occupation during the uprising or Intifada of 1987. Israeli soldiers began their nightly hunts for terrorists, i.e. stone throwing kids, from that central point. My house was often the first in the soldiers’ route: it was there where they initiated their formidable mission. As horrifying as it was, it was a most predictable routine: we would turn all lights off in anticipation, my parents would take their positions to open the door as quickly as possible once the loud banging at the door commenced; once the Israeli jeeps’ engines were turned off, it was the matter of a few seconds before it all began: a fury of pounding at the door; “who is it?” my dad would ask, as if he suspected anyone else but the tormenting soldiers: their reply was always the same, always as confident as it was terrifying; “Yahoud”, they would reply.
I grew up making the association between “Yahoud”, the Arabic word for “Jews”, and the horror my family and had experienced. When my cousin Wael was shot dead in his teenage years, while on his way to study with me- it was the “Yahoud” who killed him. When my childhood friend Raed Munis was shot repeatedly as he dug a grave for a neighbor of ours, shot just an hour earlier, he was killed by the “Yahoud”. When my mother was struck in the chest repeatedly by the butt of an Israeli soldier’s machine gun, a beating that led to her untimely death 50 days later, that too was carried out by the “Yahoud”.
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories ascribe all of these practices to the “Yahoud”, simply because this is how Israel wishes to define itself, a Jewish state. As a child, in my many many terrifying encounters with the army, this is, without exception, how they chose to address themselves. Thus, every inch of land that was stolen from Palestinians in the last 40 years of occupation was done in the name of the “Yahoud” and their security; every settlement erected on a poor Palestinian farmer’s orchard, every life that was taken, every brick of every wall that was built and continues to be constructed over confiscated Palestinian land in defiance of international law was also done in the name of the “Yahoud”. Palestinians, thus - most Arabs and Muslims and others as well - hold the “Yahoud” responsible for their plight, not out of their ingrained and inherent anti-Semitism, as some so shrewdly or naively choose to believe, but because on the basis of its Jewishness Israel excused all of its inexcusable actions. If someone is to blame for this, it is Israel, not its detractors. It’s as simple as that.
But, of course, it’s not always as simple as that. When I moved to the US, I realized, correctly that the term “Yahoud” is not befitting, for the old connotations of the name cannot be accepted in Western societies where Jews have historically been a recurring victim, and where a large number of activists and fellow writers, of which many became close friends of mine are also Jewish. A distinction between a Jew and a Zionist was indeed an imperative, though not always easy, for Israel extorts much needed financial, political, moral and other forms of support relying primarily on Jewish constituents in North America and Western Europe. Many of the latter demonstrate their allegiance to Israel in more ways than one can recall. Unfortunately, in the minds of many, being Jewish requires one to unquestionably support the “Jewish State”. Most publications that define themselves as Jewish in the Western hemisphere seem more absorbed by Israeli politics, Israel’s security, and so forth, than engaged in their own political and cultural realms. The relationship has in fact become so blurred that it’s becoming nearly impossible and most confounding to set apart the anti-occupation activist from the anti-Zionist from the anti-Semitic. Naturally Israel and its supporters embrace, if not contribute to this confusion in most underhanded ways: labeling at a whim whomever is critical of the Israeli occupation, be it a respected Harvard Professor or a former President as anti-Semitic. Israel’s crowd hurl such designations so very often that many people prefer to steer clear from the whole matter, failing to take a moral stance on an issue that has for long irked the conscience of humanity and has contributed to global instability in countless ways.
However, instead of confronting the Zionist scheme that has brought such untold harm to the image of one of the greatest and oldest monotheistic faiths by holding Israel and its associates to account, there is a growing an alarming trend where members of the peace and justice movement have themselves fallen into the ominous trap: engaging in most ruinous and consuming scuffles, isolating members and entire groups for allegedly being anti-Semitic. While taking a moral stance against racism in all of its forms is a requisite to for any genuine peace and justice activist, the intense debate in some instances is reaching such grievous points that is threatening to tear apart the peace and justice movement.
A most notable example is the quarrel in the United Kingdom between members of Jews against Zionism and those of Deir Yassin Remembered; the former, accusing members of the latter of anti-Semitism, is endorsing a motion at an upcoming conference of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign that would ostracize the Deir Yassin group from the peace and justice movement. Members of both groups have spoken out strongly against the maltreatment of Palestinians in the past and both have a lot to offer PSC and its various activities. However, the motion, but the entire episode is a continuation of an alarming trend that began in the US several years ago, and has consumed activists, distracting them from the real fight. Moreover, it is dangerously compromising constructive dialogue and freedom of speech, the lack thereof has historically sidelined the pro Palestinian voice for decades. If members of both groups are unable to work jointly and sort out their differences through dialogue, then they should refrain from taking their fights to the public, as has been the case in Britain, in ways that are demoralizing the entire movement. It also ought to be noted that as far as Israel is concerned, any criticism of its occupation of the West Bank, no matter how polite or subtle, is an unforgivable form of anti-Semitism; thus there is no need for any member of the peace and justice movement to exasperate the Israeli witch hunt. Indeed, Israel is more than capable of prolonging such campaigns on its own.
There are many Palestinian children who are still huddling inside their homes in fear of the encroaching tanks and the hordes of unforgiving soldiers, who continue to commit untold atrocities in the name of the “Jewish State”; it’s those depraved individuals and the government that has assigned them to their vile mission, who deserve to be isolated and labeled; it’s Israel who must be held to account, by Jewish and non Jewish individuals and groups alike, to end its exploitation of the Jewish people and their religion.
I believe that the action of a true peace and justice activist must stem from concern for humanity, not from racism and prejudice; however, to suppress freedom of expression, settle personal grievances at the expense of a most colorful and ideologically diverse movement, thus the honorable cause it stands for, is to do an immense disservice to all of us concerned with bringing to a halt a most bloody and raging conflict in the Middle East
According to the World Food Program (WFP) forty-six percent of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are food insecure; the Israeli wall is snaking around the West Bank at an astonishing speed; human rights violations are committed against vulnerable Palestinians with impunity in broad day light with tacit or explicit support from various Western countries led by the United States; there is no time to be wasted: all energies must be channeled in so prudent a way to stop Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians and end the occupation. I plead to all of you, to work for peace, to redress injustice or at least to do nothing that would jeopardize the work of the peace and justice movement, neither in Britain, nor anywhere else.
-Ramzy Baroud’s latest book: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronology of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is now available at Amazon.com.
Growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, it was a very familiar encounter: Israeli soldiers storming our house accompanied by shouts of terror and a barrage of insults. Such recollections make me shudder to this day.
Just the mere summoning of those memories of my childhood in the Nuseirat refugee camp haunting me not only in childhood but in my adulthood as well, shall most likely accompany me for the rest of my life - almost instantaneously forcing me to relive my mother’s agonizing cries, my father’s pleas for the welfare of his children, my brothers and I clutching to each other as the soldiers try to break us a part, the physical degradation, the verbal abuse, then the utter silence when the soldiers finally leave, the sounds of the engines fading away into the camp’s darkened roads, followed by far away screams from some other family in some other place, as the tragic scenario faithfully repeats itself.
My family’s house was positioned in a location that was simply a nightmare, since it stood at the helm of the camp’s main square, often referred to as Red Square by locals, remembering the many Palestinians killed in and around it while protesting the occupation during the uprising or Intifada of 1987. Israeli soldiers began their nightly hunts for terrorists, i.e. stone throwing kids, from that central point. My house was often the first in the soldiers’ route: it was there where they initiated their formidable mission. As horrifying as it was, it was a most predictable routine: we would turn all lights off in anticipation, my parents would take their positions to open the door as quickly as possible once the loud banging at the door commenced; once the Israeli jeeps’ engines were turned off, it was the matter of a few seconds before it all began: a fury of pounding at the door; “who is it?” my dad would ask, as if he suspected anyone else but the tormenting soldiers: their reply was always the same, always as confident as it was terrifying; “Yahoud”, they would reply.
I grew up making the association between “Yahoud”, the Arabic word for “Jews”, and the horror my family and had experienced. When my cousin Wael was shot dead in his teenage years, while on his way to study with me- it was the “Yahoud” who killed him. When my childhood friend Raed Munis was shot repeatedly as he dug a grave for a neighbor of ours, shot just an hour earlier, he was killed by the “Yahoud”. When my mother was struck in the chest repeatedly by the butt of an Israeli soldier’s machine gun, a beating that led to her untimely death 50 days later, that too was carried out by the “Yahoud”.
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories ascribe all of these practices to the “Yahoud”, simply because this is how Israel wishes to define itself, a Jewish state. As a child, in my many many terrifying encounters with the army, this is, without exception, how they chose to address themselves. Thus, every inch of land that was stolen from Palestinians in the last 40 years of occupation was done in the name of the “Yahoud” and their security; every settlement erected on a poor Palestinian farmer’s orchard, every life that was taken, every brick of every wall that was built and continues to be constructed over confiscated Palestinian land in defiance of international law was also done in the name of the “Yahoud”. Palestinians, thus - most Arabs and Muslims and others as well - hold the “Yahoud” responsible for their plight, not out of their ingrained and inherent anti-Semitism, as some so shrewdly or naively choose to believe, but because on the basis of its Jewishness Israel excused all of its inexcusable actions. If someone is to blame for this, it is Israel, not its detractors. It’s as simple as that.
But, of course, it’s not always as simple as that. When I moved to the US, I realized, correctly that the term “Yahoud” is not befitting, for the old connotations of the name cannot be accepted in Western societies where Jews have historically been a recurring victim, and where a large number of activists and fellow writers, of which many became close friends of mine are also Jewish. A distinction between a Jew and a Zionist was indeed an imperative, though not always easy, for Israel extorts much needed financial, political, moral and other forms of support relying primarily on Jewish constituents in North America and Western Europe. Many of the latter demonstrate their allegiance to Israel in more ways than one can recall. Unfortunately, in the minds of many, being Jewish requires one to unquestionably support the “Jewish State”. Most publications that define themselves as Jewish in the Western hemisphere seem more absorbed by Israeli politics, Israel’s security, and so forth, than engaged in their own political and cultural realms. The relationship has in fact become so blurred that it’s becoming nearly impossible and most confounding to set apart the anti-occupation activist from the anti-Zionist from the anti-Semitic. Naturally Israel and its supporters embrace, if not contribute to this confusion in most underhanded ways: labeling at a whim whomever is critical of the Israeli occupation, be it a respected Harvard Professor or a former President as anti-Semitic. Israel’s crowd hurl such designations so very often that many people prefer to steer clear from the whole matter, failing to take a moral stance on an issue that has for long irked the conscience of humanity and has contributed to global instability in countless ways.
However, instead of confronting the Zionist scheme that has brought such untold harm to the image of one of the greatest and oldest monotheistic faiths by holding Israel and its associates to account, there is a growing an alarming trend where members of the peace and justice movement have themselves fallen into the ominous trap: engaging in most ruinous and consuming scuffles, isolating members and entire groups for allegedly being anti-Semitic. While taking a moral stance against racism in all of its forms is a requisite to for any genuine peace and justice activist, the intense debate in some instances is reaching such grievous points that is threatening to tear apart the peace and justice movement.
A most notable example is the quarrel in the United Kingdom between members of Jews against Zionism and those of Deir Yassin Remembered; the former, accusing members of the latter of anti-Semitism, is endorsing a motion at an upcoming conference of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign that would ostracize the Deir Yassin group from the peace and justice movement. Members of both groups have spoken out strongly against the maltreatment of Palestinians in the past and both have a lot to offer PSC and its various activities. However, the motion, but the entire episode is a continuation of an alarming trend that began in the US several years ago, and has consumed activists, distracting them from the real fight. Moreover, it is dangerously compromising constructive dialogue and freedom of speech, the lack thereof has historically sidelined the pro Palestinian voice for decades. If members of both groups are unable to work jointly and sort out their differences through dialogue, then they should refrain from taking their fights to the public, as has been the case in Britain, in ways that are demoralizing the entire movement. It also ought to be noted that as far as Israel is concerned, any criticism of its occupation of the West Bank, no matter how polite or subtle, is an unforgivable form of anti-Semitism; thus there is no need for any member of the peace and justice movement to exasperate the Israeli witch hunt. Indeed, Israel is more than capable of prolonging such campaigns on its own.
There are many Palestinian children who are still huddling inside their homes in fear of the encroaching tanks and the hordes of unforgiving soldiers, who continue to commit untold atrocities in the name of the “Jewish State”; it’s those depraved individuals and the government that has assigned them to their vile mission, who deserve to be isolated and labeled; it’s Israel who must be held to account, by Jewish and non Jewish individuals and groups alike, to end its exploitation of the Jewish people and their religion.
I believe that the action of a true peace and justice activist must stem from concern for humanity, not from racism and prejudice; however, to suppress freedom of expression, settle personal grievances at the expense of a most colorful and ideologically diverse movement, thus the honorable cause it stands for, is to do an immense disservice to all of us concerned with bringing to a halt a most bloody and raging conflict in the Middle East
According to the World Food Program (WFP) forty-six percent of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are food insecure; the Israeli wall is snaking around the West Bank at an astonishing speed; human rights violations are committed against vulnerable Palestinians with impunity in broad day light with tacit or explicit support from various Western countries led by the United States; there is no time to be wasted: all energies must be channeled in so prudent a way to stop Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians and end the occupation. I plead to all of you, to work for peace, to redress injustice or at least to do nothing that would jeopardize the work of the peace and justice movement, neither in Britain, nor anywhere else.
-Ramzy Baroud’s latest book: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronology of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is now available at Amazon.com.
Enough is Enough
March 8, 2007
By Gilad Atzmon
The short piece that follows has very little to do with Palestine, it is not about the starvation in Gaza, it tells nothing about Israeli road blocks, it is not about the right of return. It will have zero effect on Palestine or the enormous Palestinian suffering. It is about a tiny group of Jewish activists who made solidarity into an ongoing nightmare. This piece is written with some severe pangs of conscience. I wanted to believe that we would never have to get there.
This small piece is dedicated in particular to Mr. Tony Greenstein, a Palestinian Solidarity activist who is engaged solely in smearing and throwing mud on other activists, especially intellectuals with some continental appetite.
Two years ago, I had come across his name for the first time. It happened after I performed in a very moving event in remembrance of the Deir Yassin massacre. The event was organized by DYR and it was by far the biggest Palestinian event and gathering of Palestinians I have ever come across in the UK. I was shocked to find out a few days later that a group of Jewish activists who call themselves ‘anti-Zionists’, for some peculiar reason, were investing some enormous energy in destroying DYR.
Bewildered by their viciousness, I then started to monitor what is known as the Palestinian solidarity activity of the Jewish people in the UK. For the first time in my life I confronted the real meaning of Diaspora Jewish identity, for the first time I learned what segregation and Goy hating is all about. For the first time in my life I realized how devastating Jewish lobbying is. I summarized my impression in a satirical piece that was comprised of genuine quotes made by those very few JAZ (Jewish anti-Zionists). I called it ‘The Protocols of The Elders of London’. The piece was circulated vastly. I was convinced at the time that the piece would have a positive impact in increasing some self-awareness amongst those activists. Indeed, some left the group known as Just Peace UK, where the quotes themselves came from, some admitted to being Zionists and joined Engage, some just disappeared but a very few were left to retaliate. This was indeed a beginning of a world war.
It didn’t take long before Tony Greenstein, one of those quoted, found an opportunity to hit back. The next time I learned about him was when he organized a picket against me outside a London Marxist bookshop (Bookmarks). As a result of my circulating a piece written by Paul Eisen, whom he regards as a NASHD&M (‘Nazi’, ‘Anti-Semite’, ‘Holocaust Denier’ and a ‘maggot’), Greenstein tried to stop one of my readings, blaming the SWP for ‘giving a platform’ to guess what: an ‘Anti-Semite’, ‘Racist’, a ‘Nazi’ and a ‘holocaust denier’. Yes Greenstein and his friends are not economical with expressions. Needless to say, that the SWP ignored them completely.
As time went by, I saw Greenstein tossing accusations in almost every possible direction, but then something rather unusual happened. A week ago Greenstein published a piece on the Guardian’s CIF, once again he was campaigning against DYR, blaming its Directors for nothing else but being Holocaust Deniers and Anti-Semites. This time Greenstein & Co wanted the UK Palestinian Solidarity campaign (PSC) to shun DYR. He did it in spite of the fact that DYR memorials are probably the biggest and most successful Palestinian gatherings in Britain.
Within the first few hours after publication, the Guardian blog filled up with the usual meaningless Zio-centric comments, yet one was made by an unknown character with the nickname of Sachman who was referring to Greenstein’s past:
"Is this the same Tony Greenstein who was banned from National Union Of Students Conferences in the 1980's for hitting a Jewish student?" (CIF)
Some red lights started to flash. I asked myself whether it was possible that the same Greenstein who picketed against me, calling me an anti-Semite was himself involved in some violent acts against Jews. I may admit that I myself have never been involved in any violent incident, either against Jews or anyone else and this includes the 3 years I had wasted in the IDF. I asked myself, is it the same Greenstein who accuses my friend, activist Paul Eisen, the most peaceful person I have ever come across, of being a racist?
At that stage I was totally convinced that the accusations against Greenstein were nothing but trash from a Zionist plant. I raised the question at the Peacepalestine blog. It didn’t take too long before some devastating information about Greenstein’s past started to flood in.
Apparently, Greenstein has a lot to hide, his personal history is tainted with some unsavory unlawful activity. Yet, this is not the issue here. I do not care much about people’s past. Nevertheless, Greenstein is famous for passing ethical judgments on others. I tend to believe that people who are engaged in righteous preaching should themselves stand as an example of moral clarity. Moreover, though I do not hold Greenstein’s past against his present activity, I do believe that a politician who runs some deadly defamation campaigns and motions against an international Palestinian solidarity group and solidarity activists should be prepared to have his own past exposed.
David Cameron, the Tory leader, had to confront the resurfacing of his juvenile affair with cannabis. Blair and Clinton had to face the music (both on guitar and on saxophone) of their old crimes that were exposed to the public in their first electoral campaigns. In case you decide to live a political life, you have to bear in mind that your past becomes public property.
Greenstein couldn’t agree less. Once he realized that more than a few of us were starting to learn about his rather serious unlawful past, a new measure of threatening tactics were put into place.
Indeed, the British law allows convicted criminals to lie about their past after the period of spent conviction. The law is indeed morally correct. It allows the convicted person to open a new page. The British law allows Mr Greenstein to lie about his past, yet it doesn’t necessarily mean that the rest of the world should do the same.
However, whether people do or do not lie about their past is neither my concern nor my business. Nevertheless, when a politician tries to impose a lie on me I have to stand up against that. When a person with such a past insists upon dictating the ethical ground of the Palestinian solidarity agenda, I just go for a war.
But there are some wider ethical and ideological implications that should be explored. Interestingly enough, Greenstein presents himself as a Shoah historian. Not that he has written any book or produced any body of substantial work about the subject. However, he is obsessed with the issue of Holocaust denial and historical revisionism. Thus, it is rather amusing that Greenstein has such little respect for historicity when it comes to his own past.
One categorical question to do with Greenstein’s double standards is left open. If Greenstein is indeed convinced that he is legally entitled to lie about his past due to his ‘spent convictions’, what exactly gives him the right to confront the Israelis about their 1948 crimes? If that is the case, wouldn’t it be better to just forget it all? Is there some point where law takes priority over truth, where the loopholes that exist should be taken advantage of to promote a personal cause or even to cover up something unpleasant or even criminal? Using that reasoning, if Greenstein adopts the rehabilitation law so enthusiastically, would he have something to say by analogy and about just how much one can mention the Nazi crimes. Wouldn’t the Nazis deserve the same measures of spent convictions, if we are taking the ethical stance of Greenstein at face value? Or is there a mobile moral compass that he is aware of that the rest of us still haven’t grasped?
Actually, I am not interested in Greenstein’s answer to those questions. I believe in forgiveness, in grace and in love. I believe that to understand the Holocaust is to understand its meaning rather than its historicity. I believe that to understand the Nakba is to understand its meaning. If Greenstein would understand the meaning of his own past in terms of abuse of others, he may stop being a bully and a self-appointed inquisitor. I can easily live with Greenstein’s past as long as he presents me with an image of an empathic future.
I do feel guilty for writing this piece. I do feel guilty for being personal and referring to the conduct of an old man who may as well be a good man with a genuine positive will. But I am afraid that by avoiding it I would betray my beliefs. The smearing and the defamation must be stopped. I believe that Solidarity with Palestine must be based on an ethical thinking, on empathy and on love between people. I am tired of those hateful campaigns run by Greenstein and his friends, I am tired of people being labeled Nazis, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. Enough is enough.
I would never suggest banning Greenstein and his friends, though this is exactly what they suggest doing to others. All I ask for is a free discourse. A dialogue that allows different people to think differently. I have written this piece with regret. I was always hoping that we would never have to get there. The solidarity movement should move forward, it is all about Palestine rather than about the four or five UK Marxist Jews who care solely about anti-Semitism. Palestine solidarity is about Palestine. It is not about Jews being anti-Zionists. It is about people who protest against the inhuman crimes committed by the Jewish state.
An Israeli born Jew who served in the Israeli army, currently living in London. He is a top professional jazz musician playing saxophone and clarinet.
By Gilad Atzmon
The short piece that follows has very little to do with Palestine, it is not about the starvation in Gaza, it tells nothing about Israeli road blocks, it is not about the right of return. It will have zero effect on Palestine or the enormous Palestinian suffering. It is about a tiny group of Jewish activists who made solidarity into an ongoing nightmare. This piece is written with some severe pangs of conscience. I wanted to believe that we would never have to get there.
This small piece is dedicated in particular to Mr. Tony Greenstein, a Palestinian Solidarity activist who is engaged solely in smearing and throwing mud on other activists, especially intellectuals with some continental appetite.
Two years ago, I had come across his name for the first time. It happened after I performed in a very moving event in remembrance of the Deir Yassin massacre. The event was organized by DYR and it was by far the biggest Palestinian event and gathering of Palestinians I have ever come across in the UK. I was shocked to find out a few days later that a group of Jewish activists who call themselves ‘anti-Zionists’, for some peculiar reason, were investing some enormous energy in destroying DYR.
Bewildered by their viciousness, I then started to monitor what is known as the Palestinian solidarity activity of the Jewish people in the UK. For the first time in my life I confronted the real meaning of Diaspora Jewish identity, for the first time I learned what segregation and Goy hating is all about. For the first time in my life I realized how devastating Jewish lobbying is. I summarized my impression in a satirical piece that was comprised of genuine quotes made by those very few JAZ (Jewish anti-Zionists). I called it ‘The Protocols of The Elders of London’. The piece was circulated vastly. I was convinced at the time that the piece would have a positive impact in increasing some self-awareness amongst those activists. Indeed, some left the group known as Just Peace UK, where the quotes themselves came from, some admitted to being Zionists and joined Engage, some just disappeared but a very few were left to retaliate. This was indeed a beginning of a world war.
It didn’t take long before Tony Greenstein, one of those quoted, found an opportunity to hit back. The next time I learned about him was when he organized a picket against me outside a London Marxist bookshop (Bookmarks). As a result of my circulating a piece written by Paul Eisen, whom he regards as a NASHD&M (‘Nazi’, ‘Anti-Semite’, ‘Holocaust Denier’ and a ‘maggot’), Greenstein tried to stop one of my readings, blaming the SWP for ‘giving a platform’ to guess what: an ‘Anti-Semite’, ‘Racist’, a ‘Nazi’ and a ‘holocaust denier’. Yes Greenstein and his friends are not economical with expressions. Needless to say, that the SWP ignored them completely.
As time went by, I saw Greenstein tossing accusations in almost every possible direction, but then something rather unusual happened. A week ago Greenstein published a piece on the Guardian’s CIF, once again he was campaigning against DYR, blaming its Directors for nothing else but being Holocaust Deniers and Anti-Semites. This time Greenstein & Co wanted the UK Palestinian Solidarity campaign (PSC) to shun DYR. He did it in spite of the fact that DYR memorials are probably the biggest and most successful Palestinian gatherings in Britain.
Within the first few hours after publication, the Guardian blog filled up with the usual meaningless Zio-centric comments, yet one was made by an unknown character with the nickname of Sachman who was referring to Greenstein’s past:
"Is this the same Tony Greenstein who was banned from National Union Of Students Conferences in the 1980's for hitting a Jewish student?" (CIF)
Some red lights started to flash. I asked myself whether it was possible that the same Greenstein who picketed against me, calling me an anti-Semite was himself involved in some violent acts against Jews. I may admit that I myself have never been involved in any violent incident, either against Jews or anyone else and this includes the 3 years I had wasted in the IDF. I asked myself, is it the same Greenstein who accuses my friend, activist Paul Eisen, the most peaceful person I have ever come across, of being a racist?
At that stage I was totally convinced that the accusations against Greenstein were nothing but trash from a Zionist plant. I raised the question at the Peacepalestine blog. It didn’t take too long before some devastating information about Greenstein’s past started to flood in.
Apparently, Greenstein has a lot to hide, his personal history is tainted with some unsavory unlawful activity. Yet, this is not the issue here. I do not care much about people’s past. Nevertheless, Greenstein is famous for passing ethical judgments on others. I tend to believe that people who are engaged in righteous preaching should themselves stand as an example of moral clarity. Moreover, though I do not hold Greenstein’s past against his present activity, I do believe that a politician who runs some deadly defamation campaigns and motions against an international Palestinian solidarity group and solidarity activists should be prepared to have his own past exposed.
David Cameron, the Tory leader, had to confront the resurfacing of his juvenile affair with cannabis. Blair and Clinton had to face the music (both on guitar and on saxophone) of their old crimes that were exposed to the public in their first electoral campaigns. In case you decide to live a political life, you have to bear in mind that your past becomes public property.
Greenstein couldn’t agree less. Once he realized that more than a few of us were starting to learn about his rather serious unlawful past, a new measure of threatening tactics were put into place.
Indeed, the British law allows convicted criminals to lie about their past after the period of spent conviction. The law is indeed morally correct. It allows the convicted person to open a new page. The British law allows Mr Greenstein to lie about his past, yet it doesn’t necessarily mean that the rest of the world should do the same.
However, whether people do or do not lie about their past is neither my concern nor my business. Nevertheless, when a politician tries to impose a lie on me I have to stand up against that. When a person with such a past insists upon dictating the ethical ground of the Palestinian solidarity agenda, I just go for a war.
But there are some wider ethical and ideological implications that should be explored. Interestingly enough, Greenstein presents himself as a Shoah historian. Not that he has written any book or produced any body of substantial work about the subject. However, he is obsessed with the issue of Holocaust denial and historical revisionism. Thus, it is rather amusing that Greenstein has such little respect for historicity when it comes to his own past.
One categorical question to do with Greenstein’s double standards is left open. If Greenstein is indeed convinced that he is legally entitled to lie about his past due to his ‘spent convictions’, what exactly gives him the right to confront the Israelis about their 1948 crimes? If that is the case, wouldn’t it be better to just forget it all? Is there some point where law takes priority over truth, where the loopholes that exist should be taken advantage of to promote a personal cause or even to cover up something unpleasant or even criminal? Using that reasoning, if Greenstein adopts the rehabilitation law so enthusiastically, would he have something to say by analogy and about just how much one can mention the Nazi crimes. Wouldn’t the Nazis deserve the same measures of spent convictions, if we are taking the ethical stance of Greenstein at face value? Or is there a mobile moral compass that he is aware of that the rest of us still haven’t grasped?
Actually, I am not interested in Greenstein’s answer to those questions. I believe in forgiveness, in grace and in love. I believe that to understand the Holocaust is to understand its meaning rather than its historicity. I believe that to understand the Nakba is to understand its meaning. If Greenstein would understand the meaning of his own past in terms of abuse of others, he may stop being a bully and a self-appointed inquisitor. I can easily live with Greenstein’s past as long as he presents me with an image of an empathic future.
I do feel guilty for writing this piece. I do feel guilty for being personal and referring to the conduct of an old man who may as well be a good man with a genuine positive will. But I am afraid that by avoiding it I would betray my beliefs. The smearing and the defamation must be stopped. I believe that Solidarity with Palestine must be based on an ethical thinking, on empathy and on love between people. I am tired of those hateful campaigns run by Greenstein and his friends, I am tired of people being labeled Nazis, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. Enough is enough.
I would never suggest banning Greenstein and his friends, though this is exactly what they suggest doing to others. All I ask for is a free discourse. A dialogue that allows different people to think differently. I have written this piece with regret. I was always hoping that we would never have to get there. The solidarity movement should move forward, it is all about Palestine rather than about the four or five UK Marxist Jews who care solely about anti-Semitism. Palestine solidarity is about Palestine. It is not about Jews being anti-Zionists. It is about people who protest against the inhuman crimes committed by the Jewish state.
An Israeli born Jew who served in the Israeli army, currently living in London. He is a top professional jazz musician playing saxophone and clarinet.
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