How I Got Fired
Exposing Jewish power in America has real consequences
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 3, 2017
Two weeks ago, I wrote for Unz.com an article entitled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars.” It sought to make several points concerning the consequences of Jewish political power vis-à-vis some aspects of U.S. foreign policy. It noted that some individual American Jews and organizations with close ties to Israel, whom I named and identified, are greatly disproportionately represented in the government, media, foundations, think tanks and lobbying that is part and parcel of the deliberations that lead to formulation of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Inevitably, those policies are skewed to represent Israeli interests and do serious damage to genuine American equities in the region. This tilt should not necessarily surprise anyone who has been paying attention and was noted by Nathan Glazer, among others, as long ago as 1976.
The end result of Israel centric policymaking in Washington is to produce negotiators like Dennis Ross, who consistently supported Israeli positions in peace talks, so much so that he was referred to as “Israel’s lawyer.” It also can result in wars, which is of particular concern given the current level of hostility being generated by these same individuals and organizations relating to Iran. This group of Israel advocates is as responsible as any other body in the United States for the deaths of thousands of Americans and literally millions of mostly Muslim foreigners in unnecessary wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. It has also turned the U.S. into an active accomplice in the brutal suppression of the Palestinians. That they have never expressed any remorse or regret and the fact that the deaths and suffering don’t seem to matter to them are clear indictments of the sheer inhumanity of the positions they embrace.
The claims that America’s Middle Eastern wars have been fought for Israel are not an anti-Semitic delusion. Some observers, including former high government official Philip Zelikow, believe that Iraq was attacked by the U.S. in 2003 to protect Israel. On April 3rd, just as the war was starting, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz headlined “The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history.” It then went on to describe how “In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in [Washington]: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another.”
And the deference to a Jewish proprietary interest in Middle Eastern policy produces U.S. Ambassadors to Israel who are more comfortable explaining Israeli positions than in supporting American interests. David Friedman, the current Ambassador, spoke last week defending illegal Israeli settlements, which are contrary to official U.S. policy, arguing that they represented only 2% of the West Bank. He did not mention that the land controlled by Israel, to include a security zone, actually represents 60% of the total area.
My suggestion for countering the over-representation of a special interest in policy formulation was to avoid putting Jewish government officials in that position by, insofar as possible, not giving them assignments relating to policy in the Middle East. As I noted in my article, that was, in fact, the norm regarding Ambassadors and senior foreign service assignments to Israel prior to 1995, when Bill Clinton broke precedent by appointing Australian citizen Martin Indyk to the position. I think, on balance, it is eminently sensible to avoid putting people in jobs where they will likely have conflicts of interest.
Another solution that I suggested for American Jews who are strongly attached to Israel and find themselves in a position that considers policy for that country and its neighbors would be to recuse themselves from the deliberations, just as a judge who finds himself personally involved in a judicial proceeding might withdraw. It would seem to me that, depending on the official’s actual relationship with Israel, it would be a clear conflict of interest to do otherwise.
The argument that such an individual could protect American interests while also having a high level of concern for a foreign nation with contrary interests is at best questionable. As George Washington observed in his farewell address,
“… a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification…”
My article proved to be quite popular, particularly after former CIA officer Valerie Plame tweeted her approval of it and was viciously and repeatedly attacked, resulting in a string of abject apologies on her part. As a reasonably well-known public figure, Plame attracted a torrent of negative press, in which I, as the author of the piece being tweeted, was also identified and excoriated. In every corner of the mainstream media I was called “a well-known anti-Semite,” “a long time anti-Israel fanatic,” and, ironically, “a somewhat obscure character.”
The widespread criticism actually proved to be excellent in terms of generating real interest in my article. Many people apparently wanted to read it even though some of the attacks against me and Plame deliberately did not provide a link to it to discourage such activity. As of this writing, it has been opened and viewed 130,000 times and commented on 1,250 times. Most of the comments were favorable. Some of my older pieces, including The Dancing Israelis and Why I Still Dislike Israel have also found a new and significant readership as a result of the furor.
One of the implications of my original article was that Jewish advocacy groups in the United States are disproportionately powerful, capable of using easy access to the media and to compliant politicians to shape policies that are driven by tribal considerations and not necessarily by the interests of most of the American people. Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, in their groundbreaking book “The Israel Lobby”, observed how the billions of dollars given to Israel annually “cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds… [and] is due largely to the activities of the Israel lobby—a loose coalition of individuals and organizations who openly work to push U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.”
Those same powerful interests are systematically protected from criticism or reprisal by constantly renewed claims of historic and seemingly perpetual victimhood. But within the Jewish community and media, that same Jewish power is frequently exalted. It manifests itself in boasting about the many Jews who have obtained high office or who have achieved notoriety in the professions and in business. In a recent speech, Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz put it this way, “People say Jews are too powerful, too strong, too rich, we control the media, we’ve too much this, too much that and we often apologetically deny our strength and our power. Don’t do that! We have earned the right to influence public debate, we have earned the right to be heard, we have contributed disproportionately to success of this country.” He has also discussed punishing critics of Israel, “Anyone that does [that] has to be treated with economic consequences. We have to hit them in the pocketbook. Don’t ever, ever be embarrassed about using Jewish power. Jewish power, whether it be intellectual, academic, economic, political– in the interest of justice is the right thing to do.”
My article, in fact, began with an explanation of that one aspect of Jewish power, its ability to promote Israeli interests freely and even openly while simultaneously silencing critics. I described how any individual or “any organization that aspires to be heard on foreign policy knows that to touch the live wire of Israel and American Jews guarantees a quick trip to obscurity. Jewish groups and deep pocket individual donors not only control the politicians, they own and run the media and entertainment industries, meaning that no one will hear about or from the offending party ever again.”
With that in mind, I should have expected that there would be a move made to “silence” me. It came three days after my article appeared. The Editor of The American Conservative (TAC) magazine and website, where I have been a regular and highly rated contributor for nearly 15 years, called me and abruptly announced that even though my article had appeared on another site, it had been deemed unacceptable and TAC would have to sever its relationship with me. I called him a coward and he replied that he was not.
I do not know exactly who on the TAC board decided to go after me. Several board members who are good friends apparently were not even informed about what was going on when firing me was under consideration. I do not know whether someone coming from outside the board applied pressure in any way, but there is certainly a long history of friends of Israel being able to remove individuals who have offended against the established narrative, recently exemplified by the hounding of now-ex-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel who had the temerity to state that “the Jewish lobby intimidates lots of people” in Washington. As Gilad Atzmon has observed one of the most notable features of Jewish power is the ability to stifle any discussion of Jewish power by gentiles.
But the defenestration by TAC, which I will survive, also contains a certain irony. The magazine was co-founded in 2002 by Pat Buchanan and the article by him that effectively launched the publication in the following year was something called “Whose War?” Buchanan’s initial paragraphs tell the tale:
“The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: ‘Can you assure American viewers … that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?’ Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so. Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these ‘Buchananites toss around neoconservative—and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen—it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is ‘Jewish conservative.’ Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a ‘key tenet of neoconservatism.’ He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush ‘sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.’ (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.)”
Pat is right on the money. He was pretty much describing the same group that I have written about and raising the same concern, i.e. that the process had led to an unnecessary war and will lead to more unless it is stopped by exposing and marginalizing those behind it. Pat was, like me, called an anti-Semite and even worse for his candor. And guess what? The group that started the war that has since been deemed the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history is still around and they are singing the same old song.
And TAC has not always been so sensitive to certain apparently unacceptable viewpoints, even in my case. I write frequently about Israel because I believe it and its supporters to be a malign influence on the United States and a threat to national security. In June 2008, I wrote a piece called “The Spy Who Loves Us” about Israeli espionage against the U.S. It was featured on the cover of the magazine and it included a comment about the tribal instincts of some American Jews: “In 1996, ten years after the agreement that concluded the [Jonathan] Pollard [Israeli spying] affair, the Pentagon’s Defense Investigative Service warned defense contractors that Israel had ‘espionage intentions and capabilities’ here and was aggressively trying to steal military and intelligence secrets. It also cited a security threat posed by individuals who have ‘strong ethnic ties’ to Israel, stating that ‘Placing Israeli nationals in key industries is a technique utilized with great success.’”
Three days later, another shoe dropped. I was supposed to speak at a panel discussion critical of Saudi Arabia on October 2nd. The organizer, the Frontiers of Freedom foundation, emailed me to say my services would no longer be required because “the conference will not be a success if we get sidetracked into debating, discussing, or defending the substance of your writings on Israel.”
Last Saturday morning, Facebook blocked access to my article for a time because it “contained a banned word.” I can safely assume that such blockages will continue and that invitations to speak at anti-war or foreign policy events will be in short supply from now on as fearful organizers avoid any possible confrontation with Israel’s many friends.
Would I do something different if I were to write my article again today? Yes. I would have made clearer that I was not writing about all or most American Jews, many of whom are active in the peace movement and, like my good friend Jeff Blankfort and Glenn Greenwald, even figure among the leading critics of Israel. My target was the individuals and Jewish “establishment” groups I specifically named, that I consider to be the activists for war. And I refer to them as “Jews” rather than neoconservatives or Zionists as some of them don’t identify by those political labels while to blame developments on Zios or neocons is a bit of an evasion in any event. Writing “neoconservatives” suggests some kind of fringe or marginal group, but we are actually talking about nearly all major Jewish organizations and many community leaders.
Many, possibly even most, Jewish organizations in the United States openly state that they represent the interests of the state of Israel. The crowd stoking fear of Iran is largely Jewish and is, without exception, responsive to the frequently expressed desires of the self-defined Jewish state to have the United States initiate hostilities. This often means supporting the false claim that Tehran poses a serious threat against the U.S. as a pretext for armed conflict. Shouldn’t that “Jewish” reality be on the table for consideration when one is discussing the issue of war versus peace in America?
When all is said and done the punishment that has been meted out to me and Valerie Plame proves my point. The friends of Israel rule by coercion, intimidation and through fear. If we suffer through a catastrophic war with Iran fought to placate Benjamin Netanyahu many people might begin to ask “Why?” But identifying the real cause would involve criticism of what some American Jews have been doing, which is not only fraught with consequences, but is something that also will possibly become illegal thanks to Congressional attempts to criminalize such activity. We Americans will stand by mutely as we begin to wonder what has happened to our country. And some who are more perceptive will even begin to ask why a tiny client state has been allowed to manipulate and bring ruin on the world’s only super power. Unfortunately, at that point, it will be too late to do anything about it.
Israel offers privileges to settlement companies affected by Boycott
Palestine Information Center – October 2, 2017
NAZARETH – Israeli Economy Minister Eli Cohen decided to offer special privileges to Israeli companies working in settlements in defiance to international boycott resolutions.
Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reported that the decision stipulates offering aid in form of tax privileges in the exportation field for the factories affected by the boycott in order to guarantee continuing work in settlements.
The UN Human Rights Council decided to publish a blacklist including the names of factories and companies working in settlements in order to support the boycott and pressure these firms to stop working in the settlements as well as to urge international companies to stop dealing with Israel.
What Did Washington Achieve in its Six Year War on Syria?
By Ron Paul | October 2, 2017
Now that the defeat of ISIS in Syria appears imminent, with the Syrian army clearing out some of the last ISIS strongholds in the east, Washington’s interventionists are searching for new excuses to maintain the illegal US military presence in the country. Their original rationale for intervention has long been exposed as another lie.
Remember that President Obama initially involved the US military in Iraq and Syria to “prevent genocide” of the Yazidis and promised the operation would not drift into US “boots on the ground.” That was three years ago and the US military became steadily more involved while Congress continued to dodge its Constitutional obligations. The US even built military bases in Syria despite having no permission to do so! Imagine if Syria started building military bases here in the US against our wishes.
After six years of war the Syrian government has nearly defeated ISIS and al-Qaeda and the US-backed “moderates” turned out to be either Islamist extremists or Kurdish soldiers for hire. According to a recent report, the US has shipped two billion dollars worth of weapons to fighters in Syria via eastern Europe. Much of these weapons ended up in the hands of ISIS directly, or indirectly through “moderates” taking their weapons with them while joining ISIS or al-Qaeda.
“Assad must go,” proclaimed President Obama back in 2011, as he claimed that the Syrian leader was committing genocide against his own people and that regime change was the only way to save Syrians. Then earlier this year, when eastern Aleppo was about to be liberated by the Syrian government, the neocons warned that Assad would move in and kill all the inhabitants. They warned that the population of eastern Aleppo would flee from the Syrian army. But something very different happened. According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, 600,000 refugees returned to Syria by August. Half of the returnees went back to Aleppo, where we were told Assad was waiting to kill them.
What happened? The neocons and “humanitarian interventionists” lied. Just as they lied about Libya, Iraq, and so on.
While it was mostly ignored by the mainstream media, just this week a Christian was elected speaker of the Syrian parliament. The new speaker is a 58-year-old Orthodox Christian law graduate and member of President Assad’s Baath party.
How many Christians does our “ally” Saudi Arabia have in its parliament? Oh I forgot, Saudi Arabia has no elected parliament.
Why does it seem that US policy in the Middle East always hurts Christians the most? In Iraq, Christians suffered disproportionately from the 2003 US invasion. In fact there are hardly any Christians left. Why aren’t more US Christian groups demanding that the US get out of the Middle East?
The US is not about to leave on its own. With ISIS all but defeated in Syria, many in Washington are calling for the US military to continue its illegal occupation of parts of the country to protect against Iranian influence! Of course before the US military actions in Iraq and Syria there was far less Iranian influence in the region! So US foreign interventionism is producing new problems that can only be solved by more US interventionism? The military industrial complex could not have dreamed of a better scheme to rob the American people while enriching themselves!
What have we achieved in Syria? Nothing good.
Erasing academic freedom in America by Congressional legislation
By William Cook | MEMO | October 1, 2017
Senator Chuck Schumer’s plaintive lament before the US Senate decrying the supposedly despicable practice of criticising Israel under the guise of anti-Zionism moves inexorably closer to fulfilment. The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act has passed through the Senate unanimously. Shumer’s presentation of his case is classic Hasbara; propaganda disguised as empathy. His emotional appeal casts the Jews as victims of anti-Semitism even when critics of Israel target Zionism and not Jews per se. “Anti-Semitism… has been used throughout history when Jewish people are judged and measured by one standard and the rest by another,” he explains.
As an example of historic anti-Semitism, Schumer claims that Jews could not farm “when everyone else was allowed to.” When, though, were the Jews not allowed to farm? According to Steven Landsburg, “… for well over a millennium … Jews had not been farmers – not in Palestine, not in the Muslim empire, not in Western Europe, not in Eastern Europe, not anywhere in the world.” Indeed, the economist pointed out in a 2003 article (“Why Jews don’t farm”) that you have to go back almost 2,000 years to find a time when Jews, like virtually every other identifiable group, were primarily an agricultural people. “Around AD 200, Jews began to quit the land. By the seventh century, Jews had left their farms in large numbers to become craftsmen, artisans, merchants and moneylenders—the only group to have given up on agriculture. Jewish participation in farming fell to about 10 per cent through most of the world; even in Palestine it was only about 25 per cent. Everyone else stayed on the farms.”
That Jews don’t farm has nothing to do with anti-Semitism yet it becomes an emotionally charged condemnation of those who criticise the state of Israel by citing the truth about its founding ideology, Zionism. From its founding in the late 1800s to the present day, political Zionism has been an ideology determined to bring into existence a nation state for the Jewish people. Prior to World War One, the Zionists argued their right to a homeland, but until the opportunity arose to edge their way into an agreement with a failing Britain for fiscal support through the Balfour Declaration, the possibility of creating that state in Palestine did not exist. (See The Balfour Declaration 1917—2017: 100 years of Deceit, Devastation and Genocide, AHT, 30 March 2017, William A. Cook)
Ralph Schoenman provides a detailed analysis of Zionism in his classic work The Four Myths. Chapter 2 outlines the Zionist Objectives. Nothing so epitomises the reality of Zionism as Vladimir Jabotinsky’s writings on what it asserts and how it must achieve its goals. “We cannot give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to other Arabs,” insisted the revisionist Zionist leader. “Therefore, a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonisation, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the local population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy… To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer, absolutely untrue. This is our ethic. There is no other ethic.”
This is Zionism, raw and vicious. Today, Zionism is still racist, militaristic and unethical. It is inherently anti-democratic yet proclaims to be democratic; it proclaims victimhood yet it is merciless in its occupation and oppression of the Palestinians; and it proclaims friendship with the people of the United States yet continues to take billions of dollars from its ally caring nothing for the people of America who must shoulder $20 trillion of debt, even though Israel is one of the wealthiest nations in the world.
How can the US Congress justify protecting Israel and Zionism by erasing the first amendment to the Constitution regarding freedom of speech, with the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act”? How can Senators justify silencing critics of this racist, Zionist state when it is clear to the people of the world at large that its ideology openly defies international law, damns as irrelevant the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and claims an ethical code that supersedes the law? That is what Senators are about to do by “criminalising critics of Israel”. (see “Congress Considers Sweeping Bills to Fine and Jail Backers of BDS”. Democracy Now!, July 17, 2017).
Since the US Congress and Israel have been unable to find a solution, it seems logical to look elsewhere. Consider this fifteen-month collaborative study from South Africa which set out to examine legally the following question: Do Israel’s practices in occupied Palestinian territory, namely the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, amount to the crimes of colonialism and apartheid under international law?
Apartheid is defined as an institutionalised form of racism in which states enact laws which function as the apparatus to commit inhuman acts for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them. Apartheid regimes rely on three “Pillars of Apartheid” to maintain their domination:
- The state codifies into law a preferred identity: (See full report for evidence)
- The state segregates the population into geographic areas based on their identity.
- The state establishes security laws and policies designed to suppress any opposition to the regime.
Using these criteria, the May 2009 South African study found that, “Israel, since 1967, is the belligerent Occupying Power in occupied Palestinian territory, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.”
Despite claims to being a democracy, in practice, Israel’s preferred identity is Jewish, and its separate system gives Jews privileges over non-Jewish citizens. Israel’s domestic law establishes that collective rights extend to Jews only. All other people lack the right to a national life anywhere in Israel proper or in occupied Palestinian territory.
For example, Israel’s state resources, including land in occupied Palestinian territory which Israel has declared “state land”, are specified as being for the exclusive benefit of Jews, administered under the World Zionist Organisation, Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund. Since 1967, when Israel completed its occupation of historical Palestine, it supplanted existing laws governing Palestinian territory with two separate sets of law: Israeli domestic law applies to Jewish settlers and Israeli military law applies to Palestinians.
Israel denies Palestinians the right to an education through indirect measures such as creating obstacles to movement so Palestinian students cannot get to their schools and universities; repeated closure of Palestinian schools; military attacks on schools and students; destroying educational infrastructure; and denying Palestinian students exit permits preventing them from studying abroad.
What Israel does to the Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip is cruel and inhumane. From 2000 to 2004, Israel demolished over 2,500 homes in the Gaza Strip leaving 16,000 Palestinians homeless. According to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD), an estimated 24,813 “Palestinian structures” have been demolished in the occupied territories since 1967. This excludes the destruction caused by Israel’s frequent military offensives.
Under international law, the State of Israel has the duty to:
- Cease its unlawful activity.
- Dismantle the structures of colonialism and apartheid.
- Promote full rights and expression of the Palestinian people.
- Pay reparations and damages to the Palestinians people.
Furthermore, third party states are obligated to:
- Not recognise the illegal situation as lawful.
- Not render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation.
- Cooperate to bring the illegal situation to an end.
- Not become complicit in the crimes by failing to fulfil the first three obligations.
As a next step the report recommends that states take action to meet their legal obligations under international law and urgently request the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on the question of Israel’s practices in occupied Palestinian territory.
I am a Professor Emeritus at an American university; a scholar and researcher; a mentor of a Fulbright Scholar from Morocco; a professional academic administrator at four institutions in four different states, public and private; and a full-time tenured professor at a private university for the past 14 years. I also have an aggregate of 52 years of experience from Instructor to Vice President for Academic Affairs. I believe, therefore, that I can speak with some authority relative to academic freedom, tenure, ethics and values appropriate to this profession.
The action threatened by Representatives Peter Roskam and Dan Lipinski through their HR 4009 proposal seeks to curtail not only freedom of expression voiced against a political entity, the state of Israel, for perceived crimes against humanity in its destructive actions against Palestinian educational institutions and their students, but also presents the American people, most particularly the faculty and administrators at American institutions, with obligations to support a state that has been found guilty of apartheid actions that require international legal action. This could, at some time in the future, result in a finding that convicts this nation and its people themselves of crimes against humanity. The evidence presented in truncated form in this article damns the state of Israel for crimes that are intolerable by any intellectual measure, crimes that cannot be supported by those committed to justice, human dignity and respect for the rights inherent in all humans under the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Accords, most especially the definition of genocide as expressed in the UN charter.
![Israeli forces brutally arresting a Palestinian youth [File photo]](https://i1.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/images/article_images/middle-east/Palestinian-youth-arrested-by-Israeli-soldiers.jpg?resize=933.5%2C622&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
Israeli forces brutally arresting a Palestinian youth [File photo]
It would be better for these two Congressmen and their peers to offer the American people a gift of peace. They could begin with the withholding of the $8 million per day provided to Israel so that it can maintain the horrendous conditions it imposes on those living under its military occupation. They could also suggest that Israel’s institutions of higher learning demand of their government a commitment to open the gates of the walled-in State of Israel to all people of goodwill, beginning with an interscholastic dialogue on equity for all – the citizens of Israel as well as the citizens entrusted to their care under international law as occupiers – that all may share the gifts of thoughtful interchange as citizens of the world.
After all, the purpose of higher education is to enhance the intellect and promote the expansion of its capabilities; to recognise that all things, both living and non-living, infuse the possibilities of life by providing richness in artistic expression; to nurture compassion in the understanding of differences and creativity in technical advancement for the benefit of all; to seek, in the realm of the unknown, what enriches us and lifts us beyond our limited selves, because we see the joy of fulfilment in the multitude of faces among whom we live, play, work and pray. The great wonder of higher education is in its freedom of thought and expression; its openness to ideas and explorations of the mind; its quest to know, to seek answers, to thrive on speculation, to entertain paradoxes, mystery, fantasy and intuition, and yet know that all accept that journey of the mind and do so without threat to another, without fear of another, without anxiety or anger or hate.
There is no place in that purpose to criticise with vitriol; to lash out at perceived ignorance; to mock others; to devise weapons of destruction whether of the military kind or mental; or to hate and create “exceptionalism” which blossoms against and excludes others to enhance a few. All of these are anathema to learning. We must all learn from this exercise that the criminals in the US Congress should not be the ones responsible for dictating how academia responds to its purpose.
Read also: Opposing Zionism is not racism
‘Collective punishment’ enacted on West Bank Palestinians for 6th day running
Ma’an – October 1, 2017
RAMALLAH – Israeli forces imposed a general closure on a cluster of villages in the central occupied West Bank northwest of Jerusalem for the sixth consecutive day on Sunday, in what Israeli human rights group B’Tselem denounced as an act of “collective punishment” on tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.
Locals have been largely trapped inside the villages as a result of military roadblocks and strict security checks, since Sept. 26, when 37-year-old Nimr Jamal from Beit Surik carried out a shooting attack outside of the adjacent illegal Har Adar settlement, leaving an Israeli border police officer and two Israeli security guards killed.
The Israeli army said only “humanitarian cases” would be allowed passage in and out of Beit Surik, Biddu, and up to nine other neighboring localities.
On Sunday, locals told Ma’an that the area had been turned into an “open-air prison,” and “threatened to trigger a humanitarian catastrophe” as the entry of food supplies to these villages has been impeded.
B’Tselem emphasized that the Israeli military sealed off all entries and exits in Beit Surik itself, where soldiers have also taken over seven rooftops, kicking residents out. In Biddu, Israeli forces took over eight rooftops having turned out the residents. Several other homes have been raided and in some cases property has been destroyed.
Raids in Beit Surik and Bidda have sparked clashes, with Israeli forces violently suppressing protesters with live bullets, rubber-coated steel bullets, and tear gas, forcing schools in both villages to shut down, according to B’Tselem.
The siege has also caused severe gridlock in the area, as long lines of cars pile up behind checkpoints and crowd through detour routes.
At at least one roadblock near Biddu and another at the entrance to Beit Anan, Israeli soldiers started denying passage to anyone under 40 years old, and anyone who is not a resident.
Israeli forces have taken measurements of Jamal’s family’s house in preparation to punitively demolish it, interrogated and detained several members of his family including two of his brothers, and revoked revoked all of his family members’ permits to enter Israel for work.
According to B’Tselem, five demolition orders and 15 stop-work orders have also been issued in Beit Surik, all under the pretext of “illegal construction,” and where some 30 cars have also been confiscated. In Biddu, 25 cars have been confiscated.
B’Tselem estimated that some 40,000 Palestinians were being collectively punished as a result of the ongoing security measures.
“Disrupting the lives of tens of thousands of people, who have done nothing wrong and are not suspected of any wronging in such a severe manner is completely unjustifiable. This violence against the population is an exploitation of the military’s power and authority in aid of wanton abuse of civilians without any accountability,” “B’Tselem said.
US & Israel back to plot to carve-up region after ‘failure of ISIS project’ – Hezbollah leader
RT | October 1, 2017
The leader of the Lebanese based Hezbollah has said that Israel and its allies are worried over the imminent defeat of the Islamic State terrorist “project,” and are back on course to plunge the region into chaos by sowing division, starting with Iraqi Kurdistan.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned against the partitioning of Iraq in the wake of this week’s Kurdish independence referendum, arguing that its secession from Iraq will set off a chain reaction and lead to more endless wars in the region.
“It will open the door to partition, partition, partition,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah emphasized, according to Reuters. He added that “partition means taking the region to internal wars whose end and the time frame is known only to God.”
On Monday, the Iraqi Kurdistan region held a non-binding referendum, where some 3.45 million ballots were cast. Over 92 percent of those who voted opted in favor of independence, according to local authorities.
The Iraqi parliament condemned the vote and has imposed a number of trade and economic restrictions on the region. Neighboring Turkey, Iran and Syria also oppose the creation of an independent Kurdistan, mainly over concerns that it may spur separatist sentiment in their own Kurdish-populated areas.
On Saturday, the Hezbollah chief warned that the Kurds’ independence drive is a threat to the whole region. Nasrallah called the September 25 referendum a part of the US-Israeli plot to carve up the region, a policy, which according to Nasrallah, is driven by arms companies.
“We say to our beloved Kurds that the issue is not about deciding your fate, but about dividing the region according to sectarian and ethnic belonging,” the Hezbollah leader noted, according to Almanar news.
“After the failure of the ISIS project, it’s now back to the project of dividing up the region, first from the area of Kurdish Iraq,” he added, according to the Jerusalem Post.
The leader of the militant organization, designated as a terrorist group by Israel and the US, believes the threat of partitioning the region increases with the looming defeat of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL terrorist group).
“Daesh is at its end. It is a matter of time in Iraq and Syria,” Nasrallah, whose Hezbollah forces are actively fighting ISIS in Syria said. “ISIL is incapable of regaining territory. The group is trying to exhaust the Syrian army in order to delay its end. However, this plan is ineffective because the decision to wipe out ISIL has been taken.”
At the same time, he called on all people of the region to confront any efforts to sow the seeds of division.
“The people of this region bear the responsibility of confronting this scheme of the division,” Nasrallah noted. “There should not be an ethnic bias between Arabs, Kurds or Iranians, the problem is not with Kurds, it’s political one.”
Most world powers have criticized Monday’s referendum. Moscow said it respects the desire of Kurds to have a national state but underlined that autonomy should be pursued only through peaceful dialogue and within a unified Iraqi state.
Washington, which has been reliant on Kurdish forces fighting against IS and other terrorist groups both in Iraq and Syria, has called on Iraq to maintain its territorial integrity.
“The United States does not recognize the Kurdistan Regional Government’s unilateral referendum held on Monday. The vote and the results lack legitimacy and we continue to support a united, federal, democratic and prosperous Iraq,” US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson said Friday.
British Labour is also a victim of the Zionist lobby
British Prime minister Theresa May (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) on the steps of No.10 Downing street, London, UK on Feb. 6, 2017. ( Kate Green – Anadolu )
By Hanin Zoabi | Arab48 | September 29, 2017
It seems that the international meetings I am participating in for the 30th time and the ninth series of lectures in Britain specifically are taking up the lion’s share of my visits. This is due to the fact that solidarity campaigns with the Palestinian people in Britain are considered to be the strongest and most active in the world. Time after time, we try to expand the discourse related to solidarity with the Palestinians in order for it to go beyond confronting the occupation and blockade, i.e. “bad Israel” and to including the concept of “good Israel” that Israel is trying to convince the world exists. Does “good Israel” really exist? Could the “Zionist dream” with its ideal conditions and without being subject to resistance from the victim or any international opposition, constitute a normal human life?
The answer to this question is not derived from the reality of the conflict, but the reality of the state, i.e. the routine practices of the Zionist project, not only from its bloody crimes. The basic routine produced by this project is the Jewish State itself, as well as its institutions, its legal system, and the values it produces and raises its generations with on a daily basis. This is the routine that embodies the “Zionist dream”, and this routine is what produces one violation after another and one crime after another.
This is the main claim we can present to the international solidarity movements, and by doing so we can confirm that the problem is with the dream (the Jewish state) and that the crimes committed by this state are the same tools it uses to define itself as a Jewish state. This also confirms that the state cannot exist, even within its basic daily routine, without committing ethnic cleansing, uprooting and the physical and symbolic liquidation of the Palestinian presence, i.e. the crimes are not outside of the Israeli routine, but rather are what form the routing within the system itself. It translates the plans for uprooting, liquidation and ethnic cleansing into legal tools and local administration systems.
We cannot continue to talk about a solution that is merely a “Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel”, a motto even some of our own central political forces still promote. Those who want to combat Israel’s crimes cannot be satisfied with removing Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip alone. They must remove Zionism from the legal and political system of the state, because the plans for uprooting, displacement and liquidation are plans that govern Israel’s relationship with the Palestinian presence in all its forms. Citizenship was never protection for the Palestinians from Zionism and its plans, but it has always been a tool of control and a means to implement its plans against us.
As for the “diplomatic” significance of this claim, along with its political significance, it refutes Israel’s defence discourse to the Europeans, which is based on Israel’s spilt personality. There is good/real Israel, which, if left alone by the world, would prove its moral superiority, and there is Israel that is dragged into war, which if forced, possibly, may commit some unintentional or forced violations but only in self-defence.
The importance of stating that liquidations, displacement and cleansing are crimes established in Israel’s routine and are at the core of the Zionist project, is that it refutes Israel’s claims of moral superiority and legitimacy which it is trying to rely on.
If Israel can silence the world with claims of “Islamic terrorism” in Gaza or “defence of its democracy” in the West Bank, then what will its answer be if asked about the reason for prohibiting Arabs from living in over 500 towns, the law of Jewish neighbourhoods receiving larger budgets, the Prawer Plan, the citizenship law, the law to withdraw parliamentary representation, the law prohibiting the commemoration of the Nakba, the law to reduce the sound of the call to prayer, or the law restricting participation in political parties? What will Israel say about physical, political and symbolic liquidation laws? Especially since its typical answer of “self-defence” won’t hold up here. What will it say if the claims of “some violations it was forced to commit” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were legitimate in order to protect Israel, the democratic state that promotes the West’s democratic values are not accepted?
What would happen if we reveal that the “good” that Israel willingly chooses is no less evil than the evil that it is forced to commit in the West Bank and Gaza?
Such exposure is exactly what Israel fears. It is afraid that the world will discover that the “perfect” Jewish state has committed crimes that are no less of a crime than the war crimes it “forcibly” committed because people have not yet understood the pureness and morality of what Israel wants. They fear that the world will realise the problem isn’t only the brutal crimes but also lies in the daily routine. They are afraid the world will realise that the main problem is not in the missiles and siege that will end if the Palestinians surrender, nor is it in the confiscation of the land, which will stop if the Palestinians voluntarily surrender their land, but the problem is what Israel wants, even if we do not resist. The problem is the laws, culture and intellect that considers your existence terrorism.
Perhaps it is because of Israel’s fear of this that the Zionist lobby is forced to tighten its control in order keep up with the growing solidarity with the Palestinians that not only stems from the ugliness of Israel’s crimes but from a deeper understanding of the concept of the Jewish state itself.
Confronting the nature of the Jewish state requires the Europeans to first liberate themselves from the continuous oppression and extortion that they are constantly subjected to, that undeniably succeeds in controlling the political scene they are living in. It isn’t only the Palestinians who have lost control of their reality, but the Brits as well, or more accurately, those who want to express their views on the Palestinian cause freely. Although they are in remission, their inability to express their opinions freely enough regarding the Palestinian cause indicates their sense of losing control or helplessness. If an embassy and lobby are controlling the freedom of thousands in a certain country, it is not a typical scene and cause for surprise, followed by resentment and anger.
Perhaps the anger felt by dozens of these activists at the fact that a foreign lobby is controlling them is greater than the anger provoked by the violation of Palestinians’ freedom and dignity by the Zionist project, not because the latter’s suffering is less, as the suffering of Palestinians is too deep to compare, but because of Zionism’s success in oppressing British citizens. This gives it more confidence and reassurance in oppressing the Palestinians; is it possible for Israel to succeed in Britain but fail with the Palestinians?
The answer is yes, it is possible for Israel to succeed in suppressing the freedom of expression of activists in solidarity with Palestine who are from strong and sovereign nations and fail with the victim. This is because it has already taken over all means of its victims’ material and symbolic life, leaving them with very little to lose. Sometimes, strength is one’s weakness, while confinement within narrow limits means you will only lose narrowness.
In the past two years, the British have voiced their resentment, their fear of the Zionist lobby and, most importantly, its success in silencing them more than ever. The Zionist lobby has intensified its campaigns, relations and means of pressure, this time in coordination with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Israeli ambassador in London. Everyone will attest to his unprecedented means of intimidation, which no other ambassador has ever used. This is despite the fact that the British, and other countries’ laws do not permit local lobbies to receive guidance, instructions or funding from any foreign embassy in the country in which it operates, as this constitutes an interference in the internal affairs of the state, which is prohibited by the norms and rules of international diplomacy.
Al Jazeera’s investigation revealed how the Zionist lobby infiltrated and penetrated not only the corridors of British politics, but also the corridors of the personal life of British officials. They even went as far as trying fabricate a scandal for one of the conservative ministers as punishment for his rejection of settlements. Despite the discovery of such actions and plots, no punishment or measure have been taken in accordance with the diplomatic standards.
The peak Zionist lobby’s success is embodied by the British government’s adoption of the new definition of anti-Semitism, which considers any unconventional criticism against Israel anti-Semitic. This new change must not be underestimated. This change occurred in late 2016 when British Prime Minister Theresa May promised to issue a government resolution to adopt a definition recently formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, known as the IHRA, which stated that “anti-Semitism could include criticism of Israel as a Jewish state”. This means anyone who dares to criticise Israel will “put themselves at risk” of being labelled as anti-Semitic.
Not only did the Zionist lobby succeed in making Theresa May adopt this definition, but the harshest blow came in the form of Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, known for his unprecedented support in the British political arena for the legitimate rights of the Palestinians and his full awareness of the essence of the Zionist project, agreeing to adopt this new definition of anti-Semitism.
Hence, it seems that the Zionist lobby in Britain pre-empted the “benefits” the Palestinians would gain from electing their “friend” Corbyn as head of the Labour party by adding new restrictions to the British political scene. They have made the Zionist definition of anti-Semitism most in control of the limits of what is permissible and prohibited in terms of supporting Palestinians and opposing colonialism, settlement, apartheid and Israeli oppression in the British political scene.
This may suggest that supporting Zionism is a condition for the freedom of expression in Britain (similar procedures and laws were approved recently in other European countries including France and Spain), in a clear example of McCarthyism that puts anyone who criticises Israel on a blacklist.
Dozens of members of the Labour party have revealed their membership has been frozen for months after the Zionist lobby filed complaints against them, accusing them of anti-Semitism. They all noted that the number of those who believe they were punished for this accusation by freezing their membership reached thousands, while others said the number is tens of thousands of people. In some cases, people’s memberships were frozen without their knowledge, and without any formal procedure or without allowing them to air their side of the story.
Some of us overlook the fact that the efforts to eliminate thousands of Labour party activists is not only a personal attack on these individuals, but also reflect attempts by the Zionist lobby to manipulate the internal influence of the Labour party, known for its member’s support for Corbyn’s left-wing pro-Palestinian positions, but not known to support the official bodies in the party and the senior officials who are known for their hostility toward Corbyn and their relentless fight against his influence. This indicates some mechanisms of the Zionist lobby in combatting Corbyn and influencing the internal elections of the British parties.
These new developments are what allow us to confirm that there are motives for the Brits’ solidarity with the Palestinian that go beyond their support for their just cause. They are also standing in solidarity against the Zionist lobby’s attempts at political intimidation and with their right to think, express and speak freely in their country. The Zionist lobby’s success in oppressing the freedom of expression of other nations would be the greatest indicator of the credibility of the Palestinians’ claims, not to mention the fact that the Zionist lobby is forced to exaggerate its means of pressure and repression in an attempt to keep up with the increased solidarity with the Palestinians.
In the past two years, Britain has been criticising the Zionist lobby, not in defence of the Palestinians’ rights but in defence of the British people’s rights. Petitions signed by 200 lawyers and academics confirmed that the restrictions imposed by British policy against the international boycott of Israel, in addition to the government’s adoption of the Zionist definition of anti-Semitism are a violation of human rights in Britain.
The suppression against British citizens by foreign parties in their own country does not stop at the suppression of freedom of expression. Just as the Palestinians experience this, the Zionist lobby in all European countries threaten those who rent out their halls for conferences and forums organised by solidarity campaigns. The surrender of many is not because they are afraid of punishment, but most of the time it is to reduce harassment and headache they are subjected to. Other fears faced by the British people causing them to surrender to the pressure of the lobby are related to their fear of losing sources of funding or defamation in the media and social networking sites under the control and influence of the Zionist lobby.
Despite all this, I must note that although the Palestinian cause has lost some of its international political presence due to the Arab revolutions and their consequences, as well as the fact that the cause has been liquidated as a liberation cause and is being dealt with as a diplomatic issue by the PA, it has not lost its moral presence globally, and is still a symbol of justice and the fight against domination.
The Palestinians still do not require much effort to convince any European of the justice of their cause, and the Zionist lobby is still forced to redouble its efforts, funds and intimidation to keep pace with the popular support given instinctively to the Palestinians without much effort. However, this requires us to focus our efforts and to emphasise that the definition, principles and laws of the Jewish state itself eliminate any possibility of the existence of an “innocent Israel” and that Israel’s daily practices represented by its legal, political and educational system should be subject to international scrutiny and accountability, and not only its crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. The former carries as much crime as the latter. The second thing we must emphasise is the extent to which Zionism has become an international movement against freedom in the world.
Translation by MEMO
Israeli embassy accused of pressuring UK university to censor free speech
MEMO | September 29, 2017
A UK university has been accused by students of bowing to Israeli pressure and censoring free speech following revelations of a meeting between university officials and the Israeli ambassador days before an event during Israel Apartheid Week.
Email correspondence obtained through a freedom of information request, seen by MEMO, reveals details of a meeting between Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev and senior staff at the University of Manchester (UoM) prior to an event during Israel Apartheid Week last March.
The documents were obtained from UoM after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – the body regulating data protection in the UK – found UoM to be in breach of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by not disclosing information requested by a student activist over its relations with controversial Israeli institutions.
Manchester University student, Huda Ammori, lodged the complaint against UoM after an unsuccessful bid to obtain details about the nature of the university’s relations with Israeli organisations. In August, the ICO stepped in and instructed UoM to provide a response to the request within 35 days, in accordance with its obligations under the FOIA.
In one correspondence obtained by Ammori, the Israeli embassy thanked Dr Tim Westlake, director of student experience at UoM, for “hosting” the Israeli ambassador and “discussing openly some of the difficult issues that [we] face”. The embassy also discussed ways to “increase take up of the Erasmus Programme”, which is a European Union student exchange programme.
The email correspondence includes details of the meeting between UoM and the Israeli embassy, in particular, their concerns over two events organised by the university’s Action Palestine and BDS societies, during Israeli Apartheid Week. In its email the embassy said: “These are just two events of many that they are running in their so called and offensively titled ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’.”
Israeli embassy staff accused the speakers, including Holocaust survivor and historian Marika Sherwood, of anti-Semitism. They said that the speakers had “cross[ed] the line into hate speech” and that their talk was not “legitimate criticism” of Israel. The officials were especially keen to stress their disapproval of the talk by Sherwood, which was going to compare her experience as a child surviving Nazi brutality and the injustices committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians.
In her response to the accusations, Sherwood told MEMO:
I am not an anti-Semitic Jew! I am an anti-Israeli Jew! The two are not the same. And yes, to me the way Israelis behave towards the Palestinians, whose land/property they have claimed/confiscated/overtaken is as the Nazis behaved towards me and my fellow Jews in Hungary WWII.
“We cant all go back to where our ancestors lived thousands, even hundreds, of years ago,” Sherwood reasoned. “Can you imagine all the Brits who settled in the Americas, in Australia, NZ, South Africa, coming back to claim the UK?”
Organisers, unaware that senior UoM officials had met with the Israeli embassy days before the event, were pressured to meet a number of demands before the university granted permission to hold the event: Academics chosen to chair the meetings were replaced by university appointees, publicity was limited to students and staff, the organisers were told talks would be recorded and the title of Sherwood’s talk had to be changed because “of its unduly provocative nature”.
MEMO contacted UoM over the allegation that they censored free speech, their reasons for putting pressure on the students and if it was in the habit of senior staff to host foreign embassy delegations to discuss internal university matters.
In response, UoM spokesperson said: “Events held on campus are reviewed under the University’s Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech if they concern potentially controversial topics and whenever they involve external speakers. This includes events organised through and in the University of Manchester Students’ Union. In deciding whether or not an event should go ahead, the University pays due regard to all relevant legislation, including the Equality Act 2010.”
“However, such legislation does not act to prohibit completely the expression of controversial views. In this case the University allowed the events to proceed in line with the requirements of the Act and our commitment to principles of freedom of speech and expression.”
While the university refuses to admit any outside coercion, the Israeli embassy has previously been found to have exerted undue influence on British institutions. Earlier this year an Al Jazeera documentary made the sensational revelation concerning a senior Israeli diplomat, Shai Masot, who was captured on video conspiring to “take down” certain UK government ministers such as Sir Alan Duncan for speaking out against Israeli policy and sympathising with the plight of the Palestinians.
The scoop also revealed that the Israeli embassy was providing covert assistance to supposedly independent groups within the Labour party; jobs at the embassy were being offered to groom young Labour activists; and how concerned the embassy was with removing not just Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan, but also Crispin Blunt MP, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (both of whom are Conservative MPs), as well as Jeremy Corbyn MP, the leader of the Labour party.
Read also: Manchester University must reveal its relations with Israeli institutions
Palestinian youth activist ordered to six months in administrative detention; Israeli occupation terror continues in Dheisheh
Photo: Saleh al-Jaidi
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | September 28, 2017
Palestinian youth activist Saleh al-Jaidi, from the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, was ordered on Thursday, 28 September to six months’ imprisonment without charge or trial under an administrative detention order.
He was seized on Friday, 22 September by Israeli occupation forces who invaded and ransacked his family home in a pre-dawn raid. He was previously imprisoned three times, twice before in administrative detention in 2010 and 2015. He was jailed for three years after another arrest by occupation forces in 2011.
Al-Jaidi is a well-known youth activist in the camp; his brother, Yazan, is also imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces.
Meanwhile, the infamous “Captain Nidal,” the pseudonym used by an as-yet-unnamed Israeli occupation military commander, has continued to be the name under which the Israeli occupation carries out its ongoing campaign of terror and destruction in Dheisheh.
“Nidal” is known for calling multiple youth in Dheisheh and threatening to make “all of you disabled” – followed by repeated serious injuries caused by Israeli occupation forces shooting camp youth in the legs during protests or night-time “arrest raids.” He also threatened Raed al-Salhi to “shoot him in front of [his] mother,” shortly before al-Salhi was shot by occupation forces in Dheisheh camp on 9 August. Salhi, 22, an active youth in the camp known for both his political dedication to the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and his community-minded volunteer spirit, died from his injuries on 3 September.
“Nidal” is now calling the family members of Akram al-Atrash, a youth from the camp who was shot in the arm and the chest with live fire by Israeli occupation forces when they invaded the camp on 4 April. He remains injured and currently faces several dangerous operations that imperil his life. “Nidal’s” phone calls are threatening his family members that if they allow Akram in their homes, the occupation will attack them, kill him and demolish their homes. The family issued an appeal through the Dheisheh al-Hadath facebook page urging international attention to the ongoing occupation reign of terror in Dheisheh. While the pseudonym is used to deliver these threats, they are not an individual effort; instead, they reflect an institutionalized campaign of the Israeli military to suppress the active youth of the camp through killing, maiming, imprisonment and threats.
Photo: Akram Al-Atrash, via Dheisheh al-Hadath
These threatening phone calls came two days after occupation forces attacked several homes of the al-Atrash family in the camp’s al-Walaja neighborhood and held his cousin, Rami, for several hours. So-called “Captain Nidal” threatened to hold him as a hostage until Akram surrendered; however, Rami was released several hours later and the attacks on the al-Atrash family are continuing.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network reiterates its demand for the immediate release of Saleh al-Jaidi, demands an end to the attacks on the al-Atrash family and Palestinian youth in Dheisheh, and urges greater international mobilization against the ongoing invasions, attacks and arrests directed at Palestinian youth. We urge the freedom of all 6,200 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and we demand that “Captain Nidal,” as well as the Israeli occupation commanders and officials that authorize his threats and terror against the youth of Dheisheh be held accountable and prosecuted for his crimes.
Labour Party Conference and the Great Antisemitism Stitch-Up
By John Wight | CounterPunch | September 29, 2017
This year’s Labour Party conference, held in the seaside resort town of Brighton on the south coast of England, left no doubt that after decades spent in a neoliberal, free market wilderness the Labour Party has been returned to its founding values as a mass party of the working class, advocating an unalterable shift in power in British society from those who own the nation’s wealth to those who produce it.
Jeremy Corbyn entered the conference as the man of the moment, his every appearance and utterance greeted with rapturous applause, accompanied by the now ubiquitous chant of “Oh-oh Jeremy Corbyn! Oh-oh Jeremy Corbyn!” Considering where things were a year ago, when Corbyn entered the same conference as the party’s leader in name only, regarded as an impostor in the eyes of most of its MPs, who were actively engaged undermining and destabilizing his leadership, his popularity now is staggering to behold.
What a difference a year makes, especially one that includes a general election out of which Corbyn emerged the clear moral if not political victor. From then to now he has driven the political agenda, scoring blow after blow against a Tory government that continues to be mired in a Brexit swamp.
What has not changed over the past year, however, is the attempt to associate Corbyn’s Labour Party with antisemitism.
The latest salvo in what has been a ceaseless campaign of smear and character assassination waged by apologists and supporters of the world’s favorite apartheid state, came in response to a fringe meeting that was held at the Labour Party conference on Palestine, at which guest speaker Miko Peled said that the Holocaust should be open to discussion on the grounds of free speech, leading to him being splashed across the UK media as a Holocaust denier.
Peled, it should be pointed out, is an Israeli-born Jew and son of a former general in the IDF. He himself was a member of the Israeli Special Forces until Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 left him disgusted, whereupon he turned his back on Israel and became a champion of Palestinian human rights, travelling the world to make the case in support of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) against the State of Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians.
The notion that such a man could be smeared as a Holocaust denier is about as absurd as it gets – though as most with experience of such people know well enough by now, when it comes to this rotten pro-Israel apartheid crew, nothing is off limits.
The danger with the campaign to delegitimise supporters of the Palestinian cause in the West is not so much over whether it succeeds or not but more with the fact it distracts from the actual suffering of the Palestinians themselves. It reduces the issue to the credibility of supporters of the Palestinian cause, such as Peled, who can easily find themselves being bogged down in defending themselves against such spurious charges of Holocaust denial instead of championing the inarguable rights of a people struggling to maintain a semblance of humanity and dignity in the face of the most prolonged and systematic system of apartheid, military occupation, and ethnic cleansing of any in modern history.
Miko Peled: “There is no Palestine; there are no Palestinians in Israeli consciousness. It’s the land of Israel. As long as we kill more of them than they kill of us, we’re going to be fine. There is no vision beyond that.”
Former Labour mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who has been a member of the party for over four decades, is still under suspension over allegations of antisemitism concerning remarks he made in 2016 on the history of collaboration between German Zionists and the Nazis in the 1930s, while Jackie Walker was expelled from the Labour Party on the same basis over comments she made concerning Holocaust Memorial Day, again last year.
Returning to this year’s Labour Party Conference, lifelong socialist and critically acclaimed British filmmaker, Ken Loach, also incurred the wrath of the antisemitism police, when during a BBC TV interview he dared opine that the attempt to smear the party with antisemitism is part of an attempt to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
The wrath directed at Loach over his remarks came most prominently from Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, doughty and dependable defender of the apartheid state, in his column titled, ‘Labour’s denial of antisemitism in its ranks leaves the party in a dark place.’
Freedland’s main line of attack was over the issue of who has the right to decide what constitutes antisemitism and who does not, claiming that only people of Jewish persuasion have this right and that people such as Loach, in denying that antisemitism exists within the Labour Party, are akin to men denying that bias against women exists within the party, or straight people denying that bias against LGBT people exists within the party.
Here Mr Freedland conveniently overlooks the open letter to his own newspaper, The Guardian, written and signed by Jewish members of Labour in 2016, denying the party had a problem with antisemitism while alleging that the claim is part of an attempt to undermine Corbyn’s leadership, as Loach maintained in his BBC interview.
But no one should be under any illusions when it comes to Jonathan Freedland. As Ben White wrote in a 2014 article, “Liberal Zionists [such as Freedland] and their sympathisers obstruct the growth of Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaigns, and often try to define the boundaries of acceptable discourse.”
Fifty years into the illegal occupation of their land, defense of the apartheid State of Israel cannot possibly be supported on moral, legal, or ethical grounds. To not only defend this system of injustice but also attempt to smear those who dare raise their voices against the brutal oppression endured by the Palestinians, this is a species of mendacity for which history will not be kind.
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