UK’s Labour Antisemitism Split
Just what the Doctor Prescribed
By Ian Fantom • Unz Review • March 21, 2019
Since the election in 2015 of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of Britain’s Labour Party there has been a crescendo of ‘antisemitism’ talk in the party, and talk of Jeremy Corbyn “not doing enough to combat antisemitism”. There has been constant talk in the mainstream media of a resurgence of antisemitism throughout Britain, with particular attention being focussed on the Labour Party. There were reports of members being targeted for apparently innocuous comments, such as Naz Shah, who was forced to apologise for retweeting a satirical cartoon by Norman Finkelstein about relocating Israel to the United States, and former Lord Mayor of London Ken Livingston, who, in defending her, stated, “When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”. Ken Livingstone was suspended, and in his own defence he asked, “how can the truth be an offence?”. He stated that there was a “well-orchestrated campaign by the Israel lobby to smear anybody who criticises Israeli policy as antisemitic”.
Later, during a pro-Corbyn counter-demonstration in Parliament Square, organised by the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Labour, Labour Party member Stan Keable was secretly filmed by the BBC saying that the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazi regime – “a well documented if shameful historical fact”, he wrote later. For this he lost his job with a Labour-controlled London council, and his union refused to support him. He told me he was also expelled from the party. A few months earlier a new group had been set up under the name ‘Labour Against the Witch-hunt’, and their website campaigns for the reinstatement of the growing number of members who have been suspended or expelled from the party. Stan Keable is their honorary secretary.
There has been constant pressure on Jeremy Corbyn from Zionists in the party to include the new ‘Internationally Accepted Definition of Antisemitism’ in the party’s code of conduct. By this they are referring to the ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism’, adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Eventually this was passed by the National Executive Committee and by the Parliamentary Labour Party, with just eight Members of Parliament voting against. According to this new definition, it would be considered ‘antisemitic’ to criticise Israel or Zionism. A Scottish member of the Labour Party and shop steward in the massive GMB union, Peter Gregson, was expelled from his union for campaigning against that new definition being adopted by the union. He was defended by an orthodox rabbi. He appealed and defended himself at the London headquarters of the GMB on 4 March 2019. He was unsuccessful, but by this time had 1 560 signatures of Labour Party members declaring, “Israel is a racist endeavour”, “brazenly breaking the IHRA rule”, he states. He is currently ‘under investigation’ by the Labour Party. His own write-up of the case appears at Change.org. A different slant was put on the case by the Jewish News and the Trotskyist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, though the Revolutionary Communist Group supported him.
I took advantage of his trip to London for his appeal at the union’s headquarters on 5 March, 2019, by inviting him to talk at a group whose meetings I organise each month, which we call Keep Talking. A colleague and I set up that group in 2010 to take over from the declining 9/11 Truth movement in London, which some of us believed to have been sabotaged from within.
The focus of our group had not been on Israel, or Zionism, and we tacitly agreed amongst ourselves not to deal with the Holocaust issue, because that was so taboo in the UK that any onslaught from the Zionist lobby could completely derail us from our main topic, which was false-flag terrorism and causes of wars. In fact, my colleague, Dr Nick Kollerstrom, author of many investigative books, including ‘Terror on the Tube’, had been targeted in a witch-hunt for a literature review he wrote on ‘The Auschwitz “Gas Chamber” Illusion’ and a comment about a swimming pool at Auschwitz, since deleted. I defended Nick Kollerstrom’s right to investigate that topic, and to write about it freely, though I myself had no knowledge of the topic, and so no views on it. That was the seminal incident that led to Keep Talking being set up.
Even so, our Keep Talking group wasn’t spared. In November 2016 our guest speaker was physicist and long-term weather forecaster Piers Corbyn, who explained his model of climate change and why he rejected the theory of the greenhouse effect for global warming. At the end of the talk he was asked by a newcomer, sitting on the front row, for his views on the Holocaust, to which he replied, “On some things it’s best not to have views”. Piers Corbyn had stated right at the beginning of his talk that if the press were to attack him it would be to get at his brother, Jeremy Corbyn, and indeed, it turned out that the newcomer on the front row was a journalist from The Daily Mail, who subsequently wrote up a story based on a book on the bookstall, ‘Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust, Myth and Reality’ by Nick Kollerstrom. I managed to get that article pulled in the paper edition, but nevertheless it appeared in the Internet pages of Mail Online. Subsequently, three of our meetings had to be called off, the first one because of an aggressive mob outside the venue, whilst the police stood idly by, even when a 74-year-old colleague of mine was thrown to the ground. The second was called off “on police advice” by the venue, when Jewish News put out a fabrication that we were about to discuss Mossad’s role in the death of Princess Diana, in the knowledge that we had stated that none of us had any knowledge or views on any involvement from Mossad. I have been persuing that under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act. The third was called off when the board of the Conway Hall Ethical Society in London, which has hosted meetings on ‘conspiracy theories’ in the past, cancelled our bookings. None of these Keep Talking meetings was about Israel or Zionism. These incidents did, however, set me off investigating the groups and individuals involved. Such events were becoming widespread in the country, even resulting in the cancellation of jazz concerts by Unz contributor Gilad Atzmon, who has twice been a speaker at Keep Talking.
In the meantime, several ‘moderate’ Labour Party Members of Parliament have resigned from the party, to form a new parliamentary grouping, the Independent Group, to be joined by some who then resigned from the Conservative Party. They all resigned because of disagreements with their parties over Brexit, and they are generally regarded as ‘Remainers’, but the former Labour Party members conflate this with ‘antisemitism’ in the party. Since then, many have been saying in the mainstream media that Brexit is being sabotaged. And now, Remainer Jess Philips, MP, who is a member of Labour Friends of Israel, is emerging as the Establishment candidate to challenge Jeremy Corbyn, saying that Corbyn “won’t admit he’s a sexist antisemite”.
In Keep Talking we eventually decided to tackle this issue head on. In my investigations, tracing the organisations and people back in time, I came across the complete diaries of Theodor Herzl. A study of his writings reveals a lot about his plans that was for many years kept from the public, and even now is little understood amongst the public. Yet these writings explain the current resurgence in ‘antisemitism’, and why this should have been expected when the Labour Party voted for a leader whose wish was to return the party to its Socialist roots.
The Doctor’s Diaries
Dr Theodor Herzl was a Viennese journalist and playwright, and, according to the dust cover of Marvin Lowenthal’s 1956 ‘The Diaries of Theodor Herzl’, was “the father of the State of Israel, a heroic and legendary figure, beloved and revered by countless followers”. Undoubtedly, many present-day Zionists will be using Herzl as a role-model. Yet until 1960 only sanitised versions of his diaries were published. Herzl specifically requested this in Book 1 of his diaries: [page 55]
When this book is published, the prescriptions for the organization of the government will be omitted. The people must be guided to the good according to principles unknown to them. Therefore the editors of the book – if I am no longer alive – shall extract the administrative maxims and keep them in the secret State Archives. Only the Doge and the Chancellor may read them. To be omitted are also those remarks which could annoy foreign governments. But the course the negotiations took shall be retained, so that our people may see how I led the Jews home.
Medical doctors in the UK used to hide their prescriptions by writing them in Latin; Dr Herzl has other means. So what was Dr Herzl’s prescription that he was hiding from the public? The present generation is allowed to know, because Herzl wrote at the end of his Book 1: “after we have done everything that is necessary to carry out our plan inexpensively, we shall make our entire program public”.
In 1960 ‘The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl’ was published. The Preface states: “Hundreds of passages, a number covering several pages, were omitted because of political or personal considerations”, adding that the diaries “belong to history, and not only can, but should be made public”. A colleague of mine, who had handed me a list of quotations from the diaries, told me: “There are many versions of the diaries – I have 6 different releases but only one is complete and no surprise the incomplete ones don’t contain the interesting parts. It took me 2 years to locate a physical source and eventually got all 5 volumes from a book dealer in Jerusalem at a cost of over £250. The complete one is by The Herzl Press in 1960 edited by Raphael Patai and translated by Harry Zohn”. It seems that the complete diaries were eventually published in order to be hidden in plain sight. The volumes were later scanned and posted on the Internet, but I was warned that I should download them quickly before they disappear.
Rich Jews and Poor Jews
Theodor Herzl. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Herzl wrote: “I wanted in particular to contrast the suffering, despised, and decent mass of poor Jews with the rich ones. The latter experience nothing of anti-Semitism which they are actually and mainly responsible for”. So he has defined the problem as having been caused mainly by the ‘rich Jews’, for which the ‘poor Jews’ were paying the price. He told a colleague at the Neue Freie Presse, “I understand what anti-Semitism is about. We Jews have maintanied ourselves, even if through no fault of our own, as a foreign body among the various nations. In the ghetto we have taken on a number of anti-social qualities. Our character has been corrupted by oppression, and it must be restored through some other kind of pressure. Actually, anti-Semitism is a consequence of the emancipation of the Jews. … They do not realize that we are what we are because they have made us that way amidst tortures, because the Church made usury dishonorable for Christians, and because the rulers forced us to deal in money”. So now he’s blaming the Christian Churches for banning usury, almost as if that were an antisemitic act. Herzl is making it clear that the root of antisemitism is the usury brought about by the ‘rich Jews’, for which the ‘poor Jews’ are made to suffer. Yet he doesn’t attempt to tackle that problem, but replaces it by another. “Throughout our two thousand years of dispersion, we have been without unified political leadership. I regard this as our chief misfortune”, he states. “Now, if we had a united political leadership, the necessity for which I need not demonstrate further and which should by no means constitute a secret society – if we had such leadership, we could tackle the solution of the Jewish question – from above, from below, from all sides”. In other words, it’s a power grab, in which the ‘rich Jews’ will control the minds of the ‘poor Jews’. Herzl takes this further by declaring, “It is a military campaign”.
Planning a War
“The exodus to the Promised Land constitutes in practical terms an enormous job of transportation, unprecedented in the modern world”, he stated then asked himself, “Did I say “transportation’?” Yes, he did, and people have been suspended from the Labour party in the present era for mentioning the ‘transportation agreement’ between the Zionists and the National Socialists. Yet mass transportation is exactly what was in Herzl’s mind. He talks of a “proletariat of intellectuals”, saying, “I shall form the general staff and the cadres of the army which is to seek, discover, and take over the land.
Earlier in his diaries [p 17] he wrote to Baron von Hirsch, a rich Jew who had been funding the resettlement of refugee Jews in Argentina, asking for a meeting. He included the first draft of his letter, saying he may have made some changes, and adding, “But in substance, those were its contents, and again the only fear I had was that Hirsch or some third party looking over his shoulder might take me for a money-seeker”. That meeting took place on Whit Monday, 1895. He “dressed himself with discreet care”, explaining: “One must not show rich people too much deference”. In fact, he was extremely arrogant when he got to the meeting. Later the same day, he wrote to Baron Hirsch: “On returning home I found that I had stopped on page 6 [of his notes], and yet I had 22 pages. Due to your impatience you heard only the beginning; where and how my idea begins to blossom you did not get to hear”. After about three pages in his diary he comes to the point:
I spoke of an army, and you already interrupted me when I began to speak of the (moral) training necessary for its march. I let myself be interrupted. And yet I have already drawn up the further details, the entire plan. I know all the things it involves; Money, money, and more money; means of transportation; the provisioning of great multitudes (which does not mean just food and drink, as in the simple days of Moses); the maintenance of manly discipline; the organization of departments; emigration treaties with the heads of some states, transit treaties with others, formal guarantees from all of them; the construction of new, splendid dwelling places. Beforehand tremendous propaganda, tremendous propaganda, the popularizition of the idea through newspapers, books, pamphlets, talks by travelling lecturers, pictures, songs. Everything directed from one center with sureness of purpose and with vision. But I would have had to tell you eventually what flag I will unfurl and how. And then you would have asked mockingly: A flag, what is that? A stick with a rag on it? – No, sir, a flag is more than that. With a flag one can lead men wherever one wants to, even into the Promised Land.
He is clearly preparing for a military campaign, and the two basic ingredients for any war of aggression are money and propaganda. He called it ‘education’ in the meeting with Hirsch, and Hirsch was having none of it.
Project Fear
In his conversation with a colleague at the Neue Freie Presse, Ludwig Speidel, he reports himself on page 10 as saying: “However, anti-Semitism, which is a strong and unconscious force among the masses, will not harm the Jews. I consider it to be a movement useful to the Jewish character. It represents the education of a group by the masses, and will perhaps lead to its being absorbed. Education is accomplished only through hard knocks”. He refers to the “education of our people” in his subsequent conversation with Hirsch on page 20, saying, “There are two possible aims: either we stay where we are or we emigrate somewhere else. … At any rate, in the meantime new generations will arise whom we must educate for our purposes”. He continues: “Now, with regard to education, I propose to employ, from the outset, methods quite different from those which you are using”, but before he has explained what they are he says some things about Hirsch’s methods, which Hirsch contests. Then Herzl continues: “To attract Jews to rural areas you would have to tell them some fairy-tale about how they may strike gold there”. In his third letter to Baron Hirsch he writes: “There are, ultimately and above all, the Jewish masses, and I shall know how to get across to them”. “After ten years”, Herzl writes on page 51, dated 6 June 1895, “the movement will be irresistible, and the Jews will come running to us barefoot through fog and darkness. Nothing will he able to stop them, at least not in the countries in which they are free to move. If there should then be attempts to impede the free passage of the Jews, we shall know how to mobilise the public opinion of the world (liberals, socialists, anti-Semites) against the imprisonment of the Jews. Then, too, our diplomats will be at work (we shall make financial concessions in the form of loans and special gifts). Once we are outside, we shall put our trust in our army, our purchased friendships, and a Europe weakened and divided by militarism and socialism. This is Jewish emancipation”. Then on page 56, dated 9 June, he writes, “In the beginning we shall be supported by the anti-Semites through a recrudescence of persecution”. According to a translator’s note, he writes ‘recrudescence’ in French. It’s an English medical term, too. It means a fresh outbreak, or a resurgence, of a condition. So he is planning a resurgence of antisemitism, in order to get his plans off the ground. That could explain how in different generations they can claim that antisemitism is getting worse.
On 12 June he describes plans for persuading governments to co-operate in the transfer of Jews, and on page 83 he writes: “It would be an excellent idea to call in respectable, acredited anti-Semites as liquidators of property. … At first they must not be given large fees for this; otherwise we shall spoil our instruments and them make despicable as ‘Stooges of the Jews’. Later their fees will increase, and in the end we shall have only Gentile officials in the countries from which we will have emigrated”. He continues on the next page: “The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends; the anti-Semitic countries our allies”.
Still on 12 June, but now on page 96, he expresses the same sentiments without using the word ‘antisemitic’: “Today the thought arises in me that I may be solving more more than the ]ewish Question. Namely, tout bonnement [Very neatly], the social question! I don’t know, I doubt it, because in all these matters I have the creation of new conditions in mind; and the difficulty in the social question is precisely that everywhere men are bogged down in ancient abuses, lengthy stagnation, and inherited or acquired wrong. Whereas I presuppose a virginal soil. But if it turns out to be true, what a gift of God to the Jews!”
Two days later, on page 143, he says in an imagined speech to the Rothschilds’ Family Council: “I have already told you that we want to let respectable anti-Semites participate in our project, respecting their independence, which is valuable to us – as a sort of people’s control authority”. In another imagined address to the Rothschilds’ Family Council, he writes on 15 June, page 152: “Any person of discernment must see the development clearly even now. But no great exertion will be necessary to stimulate the migration movement. The anti-Semites are already taking care of this for us. As soon as our institution becomes known, the anti-Semites will agitate for the Society in the government, in parliament, at rallies, and in the papers. Good for the Jews who are going with us. Woe to them who will let themselves be forced out only by brutal arguments”.
Clearly, the plan was to use the ‘antisemites’ to instil fear amongst the ‘poor Jews’, in order to get them to move ‘voluntarily’, and those ‘poor Jews’ who don’t go along with the plan will suffer the consequences. Later, in the same imagined address, now on page 180, he writes that “the legal equality of the Jews, where it exists, can no longer be abolished”, and that “that would immediately drive all Jews, poor and rich alike, into the arms of the revolutionary parties”. “Therefore, no effective measures can actually be taken against us”, Herzl writes, “And yet, anti-Semitism increases among the nations every day, every hour, and must continue to grow, because the causes have not been and cannot be removed”. Yet he has already told Speidel about the fundamental cause of antisemitism being to do with usury, or the perception on usury, and Speidel agreed. He is clearly not trying to solve a problem, but to create one.
An honorary anti-Semite
Herzl envisaged that full disclosure of his project would eventually appear in his newspaper, to which he owed a debt of gratitude. However, in Book 2 of the diaries it becomes clear that the newspaper wanted to publicly distance itself from Zionism. An appendix at the end of Marvin Lowenthal’s 1956 Diaries, in an entry for ‘Neue Freie Presse’, states that a colleague of Herzl’s commented: “This leading Austrian newspaper was apprehensive of being identified with a movement which was, after all, only the private concern of one of its most eminent contributors. It sought rather to identify itself with German-Austrian liberalism. In Zionism it saw a kind of Jewish edition of anti-Semitism”.
The appendix also includes an entry on the publisher of the newspaper, Eduard Bacher, stating: “In the Jewish question, Bacher’s liberalism was equivalent to anti-Zionism. … In December 1899, it looked as though Bacher was prepared to sell out his interests in the ‘Neue Freie Presse’, and Herzl, with the financial backing of his family, offered to buy them. Days of exciting scenes ensued, with the negotiations spiced by quarrels and reconciliations. Eventually Bacher did not sell, and Herzl was given the highest salary on the paper and put in complete charge of its literary department”.
This power struggle constitutes much of Book 2 of his diaries. Herzl states, modestly, on page 99, “What an example I am to the poor, aspiring Jews, such as I used to be myself!”. So he was poor, but now he, supposedly with family connections, has the financial backing to purchase Vienna’s leading newspaper. Perhaps the key to understanding this lies in interpreting his subsequent mind-bending sentence: “If my object had been money, I should never have been able to come face to face with the biggest financial power on earth, the Rothschilds, the way I am going to do”. That sentence might make sense if it had ended with “the way I have done”. So how did he come into the money?
As Herzl nears the end of his Book 1, he further demonstrates his “kind of Jewish edition of anti-Semitism”, with: “The anti-Semites will have carried the day. Let them have this satisfaction, for we too shall be happy. They will have turned out to be right because they are right”. Indeed, Herzl later wrote, in Book 2, on page 266: “Bacher joked: ‘The Jews will listen to you more peevishly than the Gentiles. You will become an honorary anti-Semite’”. I doubt whether Bacher was joking.
Recrudescences
So how does one bring about a Herzlian recrudescence, as prescribed by our doctor, when he stated: “In the beginning we shall be supported by the anti-Semites through a recrudescence of persecution”?
We are clearly now in the grip of another Herzlian recrudescence. In December 2018 The Times of Israel reported “Unprecedented EU poll finds 90% of European Jews feel anti-Semitism increasing: Anti-Semitism ‘disturbingly normalized,’ says EU rights chief, after massive survey of 12 EU states finds 85% of Jews rate it the biggest social problem in their countries”. Only at the end of the article do they point out that the survey measured Jews’ “perceptions of anti-Semitism”, rather than actual antisemitism, and publish a quote saying: “We can clearly see that they feel anxious – and indeed, more anxious than they did five years ago in most instances – and whilst these are valuable indicators, genuine threat levels are much more objectively and accurately measured by security services than these types of surveys”.
Neither the article nor the survey itself states which definition of ‘antisemitism’ is being used. Since the previous survey several EU countries had adopted the new ‘IHRA’s working definition of anti-Semitism’, but the organisation that ran the poll, together with IPSOS, and published the poll, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), had not adopted that definition. One major change has been the interpretation of criticism of Israel as being antisemitic, and the survey implies that definition when, for instance, they state: “The most common anti-Semitic statements Jews come across regularly, according to the survey, are comparisons between Israelis and the Nazis with regard to the Palestinians”. ‘Antisemitism’ used to mean prejudice or hatred of Jews as Jews. If this is anti-Semitic, in the sense of anti-Jewish then it is also anti-Teutonic. But under the new Zionists definiton of ‘antisemitism’, the word is as remote as ever from the meaning of ‘anti-Jewish’. The Times of Israel report also states, “Suggestions that Jews have too much power and ‘exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own purposes’ also ranked highly”. Again, does that really suggest prejudice against Jews or hatred of Jews as Jews? The main proponent of the idea of Holocaust victimhood was Norman Finkelstein, in his book ‘The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering’.
The FRA’s director, Michael O’Flaherty, called on EU states to “take note and step up their efforts to prevent and combat anti-Semitism”. There seems to be a lack of separation between objective polling and campaigning on the basis of the results, which were not on ‘anti-Semitism’ but on perceptions of ‘anti-Semitism’. The launch of the survey was streamed, and within seconds it was announced that the survey was part of the fight against antisemitism. There is clearly an agenda in this project. The survey was carried out online, and Jews were notified via their organisations. The survey report admits: “Unaffiliated Jews are difficult to reach for surveys in the absence of the sampling frames, and it can be assumed that they are underrepresented in the current sample”. That would especially be relevant when we are talking merely about perceptions.
A clear example of Herzl’s plans to frighten the ‘poor Jews’, or the ‘little Jews’ as he sometimes called them, was Benjamin Netanyahu’s appeal to French Jews to relocate to Israel, following the Charlie Hebdo outrage. “To all Jews of France, all Jews of Europe”, he tweeted, “Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home”, the Independent reported. Later he gave a speech in France, saying: “These days we are blessed with another privilege, a privilege that didn’t exist for generations of Jews – the privilege to join their brothers and sisters in their historic homeland of Israel”. He spoke, not for the first time, of every French Jew being welcomed to Israel “with open arms”.
Was Netanyahu really saying that Jews would be safer in war-torn Israel than in France? That’s the message that was coming across. To me, this is reminiscent of the Dreyfuss Affair in Herzl’s time. Herzl later put it about that he had been motivated to write ‘The Jewish State’ by the Dreyfus Affair, “in order to promote the Zionist cause among non-Jewish Americans”, according to Herzl’s biographer, Shlomo Avineri. Yet the timing does not support this idea, and there is no mention of the Dreyfus Affair in Book 1 of Herzl’s diaries. That was used retrospectively to as a scare tactic.
Then on 21 February 2019 The Times of Israel announced: ‘Anti-Semitism worst since WWII, Macron tells French Jewish group: President vows to ban racist groups and recognize anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism after spate of recent incidents targeting Jews’. Macron used the word ‘resurgence’ rather than ‘recrudescence’, but it means the same. The Times of Israel then gives the game away by refering to the Dreyfus Affair, which Herzl had claimed to have led him to Zionism. “Anti-Semitism has a long history in France where society was deeply split at the end of the 19th century by the Alfred Dreyfus affair over a Jewish army captain wrongly convicted of treason”, the article states. The article also stated: “Macron announced measures including legislation to fight hate speech on the internet, to be introduced by May”. I like the beautiful ambiguity of that statement. I think May would be in dire difficulties if she tried the same thing on in Westminster, which would be akin to her failed attempt to introduce a ‘Counter-Extremism Bill’ which, if it had gone into law, would have enabled any critics of the state whom the state deemed to be ‘extremists’ to be arrested and probably imprisoned.
Zionism versus Socialism
So why should this Herzlian recrudescence be targeting Jermy Corbyn’s Labour Party in particular? I think Jeremy Corbyn is the least likely person I’ve ever met to advance ‘racist’ sentiments, whether they be anti-Jewish or anti-any-other-ethnic-group. Yet the Times of Israel article states: “The UK results [of the survey], experts suggest, may point to a ‘Corbyn factor’ connected to the ongoing row over anti-Semitism in the British Labour party”.
The former Labour Party MPs, who quit to form the Independent Group, seem to be conflating Brexit with antisemitism in the Labour Party. Yet the timing, and the coordinated resignations shortly afterwards from the Conservative Party, citing Brexit, but not antisemitism in the Conservative Party, makes it clear that the issue was Brexit, and that antisemitism had been weaponised. Jonathan Cook, writing in Middle East Eye on 27 December last year, presented an analysis of the antisemitism witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn, headed ‘Labour and anti-semitism in 2018: The truth behind the relentless smear campaign against Corbyn’. “Bombarded by disinformation campaigns, many British Jews are being misled into seeing Corbyn as a threat rather than as the best hope of inoculating Britain against the resurgence of right-wing anti-semitism menace”, he writes. He reports on the above survey, as well as other surveys and supposed antisemitic incidents. “The Guardian has been at the forefront of framing Corbyn as either indifferent to, or actively assisting in, the supposed rise of anti-semitism in Labour”, he writes. In fact, he writes, “Other surveys show that, when measured by objective criteria, the Labour party scores relatively well: The percentage of members holding anti-Semitic views is substantially lower than in the ruling Conservative party and much the same as in Britain’s third party, the Liberal Democrats”.
But why would Jeremy Corbyn be especially targeted? Jonathan Cook writes: “Israeli politicians loathe Corbyn because he has made support for the Palestinian people a key part of his platform”. That is a commonly held view, and is undoubtedly true. However, a study of Herzl’s complete diaries will show that the problem has much deeper foundations than that.
Herzl makes it clear that he is against democracy. He writes (page 169): “I am against democracy because it is extreme in its approval and disapproval, tends to idle parliamentary babble, and produces that base class of men, and professional politicians. Nor are present-day nations really suited to the democratic form of government; and I believe they will become less and less suited to it. … Politics must work from the top down”. He envisages an ‘aristocratic republic’. “Our people, to whom we are presenting the new country, will gradually accept the new Constitution that we give it. But wherever opposition may appear, we shall break it down. Everywhere we shall try it with friendly persuasion, but if need be we shall push it through by brutal force. … We shall impose extensive but firm limits on public opinion”. That sounds to me like a good description of where British politics is heading at the moment, especially when Herzl states in the same context, “Government by referendum does not make sense in my opinion, because in politics there are no simple questions which can be answered merely by Yes or No”. The eighth Labour MP to resign on the basis of Brexit and antisemitism was Joan Ryan, leader of Labour Friends of Israel, who had been featured in Al Jazeera’s The Lobby programme as one of the main players in the undermining of Jeremy Corbyn.
Herzl makes many references to Socialism and Socialists, and is clearly not in favour.
“You talk like a Socialist”, he told Baron Hirsch when he first met him (page 24). In an imagined speech to the Rothschild’s Family Council he states: “My view is that Socialism is a purely technological problem. The distribution of Nature’s forces through electricity will eliminate it” (page 45). In his first letter to Bismarck, he states that he is not a Social Democrat (page 119), and two pages later, in discussing the consequences that would arise if Jews were to be deprived of equal citizenship, he states, “Immediately all Jews … would join the Socialist Party, with all their resources”. In another imagined address to the Family Council, he states (page 157): “the moneyed Jews are driven to pure speculation by the persecution of capital by the Socialists and anti-Semites”. On July 15, 1895, he asked a friend what he thought of the anti-Jewish riots in Vienna. “’The Jews must turn Socialist’, the friend replied, obstinately”, wrote Herzl (page 202). Ten days later (page 214) he writes that he asked a local friend what his solution was. “The Jews have to join the Socialist movement!”, the friend replied. Herzl wrote, “In my opinion, that would be as nonsensical as Socialism itself”. It is clear that Herzl regards Socialism as a rival to Zionism, especially when he writes: “I hear that he [Birnbaum] has turned away from Zionism and gone over to Socialism when my appearance led him back to Zionism again”.
In Volume 2 Herzl makes this rivalry between Zionism and Socialism even more evident. He wrote on March 17, 1897, about the first Zionist meeting to take place in Vienna, which had taken place the previous day. “A few Socialists spoke in opposition to Zionism, using old arguments”, he wrote, “The Zionist resolution was carried, with only 50 voting against it. Then the Socialists intoned the ‘Lied der Arbeit’ [Hymn of Labour], whereupon our people responded with the ‘Bundeslied’ [Song of the Covenant], which deeply moved everyone”. In September 1897 he relates a conversation with Count von Bülow, who was about to become German Foreign Minister. “The anti-Socialist aspects of Zionism was gone into in the greatest detail”, he reported (page 666). On the next page Herzl stated: “I made my position clear – that it was folly on the part of the Jews to join the Socialist Party, which would soon rid itself of them”. And on the next page, he wrote, “With regard to the Socialist aspects of the problem, at any rate, we saw eye to eye. He was impressed when I mentioned the fact that at the University of Vienna we have taken students away from Socialism”. On page 700 he talked of “the most effective propaganda against the Socialists”.
Quod Erat Demonstrandum
I think it’s very clear from this that Hezl was against Socialism. This, together with the methods advocated by Herzl, will explain why the Labour Party, as soon as it returned to a Socialist leadership, had a problem with the recrudescence of ‘antisemitism’. If criticism of Zionism is deemed ‘antisemitic’, then criticism of Zionism’s iconic figure, “the father of the State of Israel, a heroic and legendary figure, beloved and revered by countless followers”, and undoubtedly a role-model for many Zionists, will undoubtedly be deemed ‘antisemitic’. But the Labour Party is not anti-Jewish, nor is there a problem of anti-Jewish sentiment in the Labour Party. The problem is that Zionism is endemically anti-Socialist, and that in order to combat Socialism in the Labour Party the present-day Zionists are doing just what the doctor prescribed.
Jason Greenblatt should abandon his one-eyed approach towards the Palestinians
By Motasem A Dalloul | MEMO | March 19, 2019
Last week, the US Special Envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, took to Twitter to attack the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas, the de facto government of the Gaza Strip — for dispersing violent protesters in Deir Al-Balah and Jabalia. The protesters — some of whom were rioters — claimed that they were demonstrating against high taxes imposed by the government which, they alleged, had led to price hikes.
“Hamas continues to exploit the Palestinians of Gaza and to rule by brute force,” claimed Greenblatt. “Hamas abuses the money belonging to the people of Gaza, using these funds for terrorism & other illicit activities to devastating effect, instead of rebuilding Gaza and helping its people.” His words could have been written by the Israeli Ministry of Propaganda.
The less than objective or neutral Greenblatt then tweeted: “Hamas violently suppresses its own people demonstrating against Hamas’ rule & failures today and NOW fires rockets at cities in Israel. OUTRAGEOUS! This is what prevents the world from helping the people of Gaza! We strongly support Israel in defence of its citizens. Always!”
In a third tweet, he wrote: “My words now: So true. So sad. So awful. So scary. Hamas, PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] etc. is this what you want for your people? You’re the cause of this misery. You choose violence. You’re ruining lives day after day after day. No one else. Time to choose something else!”
Without making any apparent effort to check the facts about the disturbances in Gaza, Greenblatt took aim indiscriminately at the Palestinian factions in the besieged territory. The Israeli-led siege and occupation did not figure in his calculations, of course. Not only did he criticise Hamas, but he also targeted Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, even though both factions are themselves critical of the movement. This suggests very strongly that the “Special Envoy” — for which read “there to advance Israel’s interests only” — was not concerned about the Palestinians or the alleged “violence” inflicted upon them by Hamas; that his sole aim was to demonise the Palestinian resistance factions, including Hamas, because they oppose the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The demonstrations in Gaza are not actually against price hikes or high taxes, as was also claimed by Fatah spokesman Usama Al-Qawasmi in the occupied West Bank. The people on the streets are rioters ordered and paid to be there by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his intelligence chief Majed Faraj, who could find no other excuse for their action against Hamas. Israel’s support for the violent protests was obvious, with Ofir Gendelman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson for the Arab media, involved openly on social media backing the riots. Israel’s ambassador to the UK Mark Regev, who is well-known for trying to justify the unjustifiable, was also involved.
The clearest proof that these riots were intended to destabilise Gaza in order to topple the de facto government is that Hamas has actually reduced more than 50 per cent of the taxes imposed by the PA, and prices, when compared with the West Bank, are much lower. The price of one falafel sandwich in the West Bank, for example, is around $2, while in Gaza it is just 25 cents. If you have your hair cut in the West Bank, it will cost you $15, but in Gaza, you pay only $1.50. The rioters were calling for their salaries to be restored and for the siege to be lifted; given that it is the PA which has cut the salaries of civil servants in Gaza, their anger should have been directed at Abbas and the administration in the occupied West Bank as well as the Israeli occupation, not Hamas which has been fighting to lift the siege and get their salaries back to normal levels.
As far as Greenblatt’s accusation that Hamas “exploits” the Palestinians and rules “by brute force” is concerned, as a senior US official he should not forget that the movement won an overwhelming majority on the last occasion — in 2006 — when Palestinians were allowed a “free and fair” election. The result was not accepted by Washington, Israel and the PA in Ramallah, and the siege was imposed. Why? Because Hamas sticks to the struggle for legitimate Palestinian rights and principles, whereas Abbas and Fatah, which controls the PA in Ramallah, is more easily bought.
Greenblatt’s claim that Hamas uses Palestinian money to fund terrorism and other illegal activities instead of rebuilding Gaza and helping the people is pathetic. Resistance to a military occupation is a right guaranteed by international laws and conventions. Instead of asking why Hamas does not rebuild Gaza, he should ask himself who destroyed Gaza in the first place, and who replenished its stocks of arms and ammunition to do so. If he is honest — a big if — he would tell the world that it was Israel and Washington, using US taxpayers’ money, not Hamas.
Even though reports in the Palestinian media run by opposition factions, as well as the Israeli and Arab media, claimed that Hamas used violence to suppress “its own people”, there were actually some incidents where the Palestinian police, not Hamas, dealt harshly with the rioters, very few of whom required hospital treatment. It is alleged that images from Iraq and old videos were used to depict the “beatings by Hamas” in Gaza.
Even Haaretz reported that one of the videos which went viral on social media was not related to the riots. “Viral video of Palestinian man setting himself on fire not connected to current protest, human rights activists say,” the Israeli newspaper pointed out. Not all of the videos were fake, but the depiction of the way that the rioters were treated was not as claimed on social and other media.
My advice to Mr Greenblatt, therefore, is to abandon his one-eyed approach towards the Palestinians; he should not turn a blind eye to Israeli atrocities or the injustices of the US-backed Abbas and PA. “For every Palestinian rocket, Israel commits thousands of crimes,” wrote Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent in the occupied territories, on Sunday. She pointed an accusatory finger at the Israeli officials who demolish the houses of the Palestinians, who demolish water networks and who prevent Palestinians from having water.
The reality of the situation in Israel-Palestine requires a far more nuanced discourse than posts on Twitter can ever convey. US Special Envoy Jason Greenblatt should open both eyes if he wants to have any credibility whatsoever in his role.
Israel, Greece to Build Radar on Crete Amid Rapprochement– Reports
Sputnik – March 19, 2019
The Long Horizon marine radar system will be built by Israel and Greece in eastern Crete, the Greek newspaper Kathimerini reports. The enhanced coverage of the radar will allow both countries to monitor the Eastern Mediterranean basin. The daily has not disclosed the cost of the project, saying only that it is “not insignificant,” especially taking into account Greece’s reduced military budget.
According to the outlet, Athens and Tel Aviv have been drifting together recently, boosting their military ties among other things. Greece has recently agreed with Israel to share know-how for its navy, which has begun to develop. According to the outlet, 40 Israeli probationers will be carried by a Greek transporter from Haifa to Crete, without any stops in Cyprus, by the end of the month. The Israelis will join the Greek forces during upcoming drills and then return to Haifa after a stop in Milos and Rhodes.
On the other hand, Athens has been open to the possibility of bolstering its arms gaps with the help of Israel, as Kathimerini noted. Among other things, Greece has rented seven drones from Israel for search and rescue operations.
Israel’s Haaretz reports that Cyprus also shares the Israeli interests in the region. The list of common interests includes a stance on the situation in Syria and Lebanon as well as uneasy relations with Turkey.
Apart from military and political cooperation, which is to be confirmed during an upcoming trilateral Greek-Israeli-Cypriot summit with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the three countries are developing a major economic project — the undersea East Med pipeline, designed to deliver natural gas from the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe via Greece and Cyprus. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades are expected to sign the grand deal, agreed upon in 2018, within the month, as the Greek media earlier reported.
The 2,000-kilometre underwater pipeline is intended to have a capacity of 12 billion cubic metres of gas annually, delivering fuel from Israel’s Leviathan, named one of the largest young gas reserves in the world, and the Aphrodite offshore gas fields. Additionally, the venture was boosted in February when it was announced that large gas deposits had been discovered in Cyprus.
The line, which is almost twice as long as Russia’s Turk Stream pipeline, is estimated to cost $8 billion and is said to be the world’s deepest underwater gas pipeline. Egypt, the only Muslim nation besides Jordan that has a peace treaty with Israel, is also seeking to export its newly discovered gas reserves, and has expressed interest in joining the project.
AIPAC Is Coming to Town – Again!
And the Israelis are having an election
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • March 19, 2019
The Trump Administration has delivered yet another concession to Israel’s embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the eve of parliamentary elections: the Israeli military occupation of much of the Palestinian West Bank and of the Golan Heights will no longer be referred to in official U.S. government documents as an occupation. America’s so-called Ambassador to Israel is a former Trump lawyer named David Friedman who is more involved in serving Israel than the United States. He personally supports the view that the illegal Jewish settlements are legitimately part of Israel, choosing to ignore their growth even though it has long been U.S. policy to oppose them. He has also long sought to change the State Department’s language on the Israeli control of the West Bank and Golan Heights, being particularly concerned about the expression “occupied,” which has legal implications. Now he appears to have won that fight, to the delight of the Netanyahu government.
And the expunging of “occupied” might be only the first of many gifts intended to bolster Netanyahu’s chances. Senator Lindsey Graham, who also boasts of his close ties to the Israeli Prime Minister, intends to initiate legislative action to go one step further and compel the United States to actually recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the Syrian territory that was annexed after fighting in 1967, but which has not been recognized as part of Israel by any other country or international body. If a vote on the bill is pushed forward and goes as expected virtually unanimously as the subject before congress is Israel, it would hugely benefit Bibi. Some sources are also predicting that recognition of the Golan Heights could easily lead to U.S. government recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over much of the West Bank.
Israel’s election is scheduled for April 9th, so there is still plenty of time for additional mischief. There have even been suggestions in the Israeli media that Netanyahu just might escalate fighting with any one or more of a number of its neighbors to enhance his wartime leader credentials. That Gaza will be pummeled is a certainty and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria is probably also in the gun-sights. An uncorroborated report last week out of Israel claimed that Hezbollah is operating a “terror cell” in Syria close to the border with Israel. It would serve as a pretext for a bit of military action and America’s own congress-critters would immediately be jumping up and down expressing their support for Israel’s right to “defend itself.” The big prize for Netanyahu would, of course, be success at getting the United States to attack Iran and one can bet that Mossad is cranking up “false flag” plans to bring about such an eventuality while also making it look like the Mullahs were at fault.
Netanyahu, bedeviled by corruption charges against him, is otherwise sinking into his usual pre-election mode, which is to outflank nearly everyone on the intransigent right of Israeli politics. He has entered into a coalition with the openly racist Kahanist party Otzma Yehudit, which most Israelis consider to be close to a Jewish version of fascism as it advocates, among other policies, the forceful expulsion of all Arabs.
Benjamin Netanyahu is also looking for a boost through his attendance at the annual American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) summit, which is being held in Washington from March 24-26. The theme of the conference is, unfortunately, “Connected for Good,” which is clearly a boast by AIPAC rather than an admission of the shameful reality that has been delivered to the American people by a groveling and subservient congress and White House. Co-opting the United States is what it is all about, with the promotional material promising an “UNFORGETTABLE EXPERIENCE : The AIPAC Policy Conference is the largest gathering of America’s pro-Israel community. The conference is a celebration of the U.S.-Israel partnership and the premier opportunity for every attendee to lobby their Congressional office to advance the U.S.-Israel relationship. The Policy Conference is also a rich educational experience and inspirational booster shot. Attendees will hear keynote speeches by American and Israeli leaders, attend intimate educational sessions, and be wowed by moving stories of U.S.-Israel partnerships, Israeli heroism, and groundbreaking Israeli innovations that are changing our world.”
AIPAC is a seriously threatening organization with income of more than $100 million per annum, nearly 400 employees, 100,000 members, seventeen regional offices, and a “vast pool of donors.” It clearly includes a lot of smart and savvy folks who know a lot about what is going on in the Middle East, but its panels will not include a single word about shooting unarmed protesters, declaring Israel to be a “nation state for Jews alone,” its own acceptance of laws attacking freedom of speech, or its use of Jewish donated money to corrupt the American political system encouraging “allegiance to a foreign country” on the part of U.S. citizens. Bibi will undoubtedly pick up on AIPAC’s cozy theme of inclusiveness by taking the opportunity to burnish his credentials as the leader who can continue to deliver on unlimited and uncritical support from the United States. He will almost certainly meet with President Donald Trump and the two will undoubtedly mention the terrible wave of anti-Semitism that is sweeping the globe, justifying still more ethnic cleansing of the diminishing number of Arabs living in Greater Israel and the bombing of Iran.
Other leading American politicians who will be at AIPAC in supporting rolls include the slimy Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the despicable former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. It will also include numerous other congressmen, administration officials and the usual scumbags who gravitate to these events, including pardoned criminal Elliott Abrams and unindicted felon Senator Robert Menendez. Abrams, who believes that Jews and gentiles should not intermarry, is currently engaged in destroying Venezuela and just might be otherwise occupied.
A number of the “American” government attendees at the event are actually Israeli citizens. Sigal Mandelker, a committed Zionist who holds the perpetually Jewish position of Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in the United States Department of Treasury, is an Israeli by birth and it is widely believed that a number of Jewish congressmen and government officials who will be attending the AIPAC conference have dual citizenship. On the conference website’s roster of attendees, it is amusing to see the official photos in which the U.S. legislators and officials are standing in front of the American flag, seemingly disinterested in the irony that what AIPAC is doing is destructive of democracy in America and a sell-out to Israeli interests, undermining those of the United States.
Netanyahu’s most serious opposition in the election appears to be a centrist coalition headed by former Israeli Defense Force chief General Benny Gantz, who has spoken of his pride in killing 1,364 “terrorists” in Gaza, and former Finance Minister Yair Lapid. It is the principal challenge to incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election hopes. Israeli courts have also meanwhile banned several Arab parties while allowing extreme right-wing Jewish parties to appear on the ballot.
Whatever the outcome, the United States will be on the receiving end of what Israel decides to do post-election as Trump and company as well as the Democrats in opposition also have an election coming up next year and will want to receive the Israeli seal of approval. And AIPAC will be right there to make sure that Israel in return gets everything that it so richly deserves. Goodnight America.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
The Zionists’ Fight Extends Beyond Palestine
By Miko Peled | Mint Press News | March 14, 2019
The Zionists’ suppression of freedoms extends beyond Palestine, particularly when it comes to freedom of speech about Israel. Zionist agents, planted in centers of power around the world, are busy silencing those who would criticize Israel. Using an array of highly effective methods, they have been successful at getting laws passed by legislators, getting major political figures falsely accused of making anti-Semitic statements, and establishing a new, Zionist-manufactured definition of what it means to be anti-Semitic.
Earlier this year the United States Senate passed Resolution S-1 that gives the federal government the right to penalize anyone calling to boycott Israel. Then — being a black, Muslim woman who dared to challenge the patriarchy, white supremacy, and Zionism and thus alienate the Washington establishment — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was targeted and accused of anti-Semitism.
As I had reported in 2017 and again in 2018, this disturbing political witch hunt is not limited to the U.S. In the U.K., members of the Labor Party, including the leader Jeremy Corbyn, have been under attack for several years, with the latest targets being MP Chris Williamson of the U.K. Labour Party and journalist Asa Winstanley. They are latest of a long list of members of the party who have been suspended from the party because of bogus accusations of anti-Semitism.
A campaign to bring down Corbyn
Israel is terrified of a Corbyn government in the U.K. and we can expect that it will stop at nothing in order to bring him down. The campaign to undermine him includes the office of the Israeli prime minister. This was made evident in August of 2018 when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that Corbyn receive “unequivocal condemnation” for attending “a memorial service for the Munich massacre terrorists.” Corbyn attended no such memorial, as I was able to demonstrate in a piece published by MintPress News at the time.
The Zionist fear of Corbyn is a result of his lifelong commitment to justice and his unwavering support for all oppressed people, including the Palestinians. He has said on more than one occasion, and as recently as this month, that the U.K. must freeze its arms sales to Israel. However, attacks aimed directly at Corbyn are not enough to get the job done. Israel and its agents around the U.K. have been engaged in a campaign of lies and smears, the results of which are shown in this report that was put out by the Labour Party and published by the BBC.
The report points out, among other things:
- 673 complaints of anti-Semitism by Labour Party members were received — a Labour spokesman said this represented about 0.1 percent of the membership;
- 96 members were immediately suspended after complaints were made, and a further 211 were told they would be investigated;
- 146 members received a first warning, and 220 cases did not have sufficient evidence of a breach of party rules for an investigation;
- Of the 307 who were suspended or notified of an investigation, 44 members left the party.
These are complaints that pertain to members of the party. An additional 433 complaints were received by the party that were not about Labour Party members. Clearly, the campaign by the pro-Israel groups aims to overwhelm the Labour Party into submission and bring about the fall of Corbyn by using a barrage of anti-Semitism accusations.
Jeremy Corbyn is a man who has stood against racism and injustice his entire career. His leadership has energized the party, which has gained more than half a million new members over that span. However, one has to wonder if there is an argument being made somewhere that Corbyn is the reason for this sudden outbreak of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Again, one can only guess that the Zionist goal is to bring the Labour Party to exhaustion, and to the conclusion that Corbyn is too much trouble for his worth and thus must be replaced for the good of the party.
Chris Williamson
Slated to be Corbyn’s number-two man, at least in the minds of Corbyn supporters, Williamson is no less principled and no less a fighter than Corbyn himself. He is charismatic and he and Corbyn could make a powerful progressive leadership team, which is why he had to be taken down.
The hope, one assumes, on the pro-Israel flank of the Labour Party is that Corbyn’s current deputy, Tom Watson — who is an avid Zionist and not at all a Corbyn supporter — will take over once Corbyn steps down, or rather, once Corbyn is taken down by Zionist agencies working for Israel. Watson, for his part, is already rallying supporters behind him in a new group he formed within the Labour Party, called “Future Britain.”
Williamson, like Corbyn, is dedicated to the idea of democratizing the Labour Party, which means taking control from the party establishment and giving it to the members. Combine that with his pro-Palestine views and he is the perfect target for an anti-Semitism smear.
Asa Winstanley
According to a report in the Electronic Intifada, a publication for which Asa Winstanley writes, the Labour Party has initiated disciplinary proceedings against Winstanley, who is also a member of the party. This was first published by a journalist from the Jewish Chronicle — which is a Zionist, anti-Palestinian publication. Winstanley is a journalist whose views on Palestine are clear, uncompromising and precise [he insisted on shunning Gilad Atzmon as ‘antisemitic’]. No doubt he was placed on the list of members to be smeared and suspended because of his honest writing on Palestine.
Zionist oppression and brutal tactics against the people of Palestine, and the attempts to silence their supporters around the world, are not going to end on their own. People of conscience must stand for Palestine; people whose right to free speech is being denied must stand up and stand together; steps must be taken to end the dominant influence and automatic legitimacy that Zionism and its agents enjoy around the world.
Bolton blasts Turkey for maintaining ‘very bad’ relations with Israel
Press TV – March 18, 2019
US National Security Adviser John Bolton has not ruled out that Turkey is a “foe” of the United States, blasting Ankara for maintaining a “very bad” relationship with Washington’s close ally Israel.
When asked by AM 970 radio host John Catsimatidis on Sunday whether Turkey was a “friend or foe” to the US, Bolton refused to give a straight answer and instead cited several major stumbling blocks in ties.
“Well you know they’re still a NATO ally; we’re trying to work with them, but they’ve got a very bad relationship with our close friends in Israel. That’s something we need to look out on,” Bolton said.
A war of words began between Turkey and Israel recently, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau said the occupied territories only belong to the Jewish people and not all citizens.
Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin strongly condemned Netanyahu’s “blatant racism and discrimination.”
In response, the Israeli premier called Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a “dictator” who jails journalists and judges.
Erdogan, however, called Netanyahu a “thief” and a “tyrant who massacred seven-year-old Palestinian children.”
The war of words continued Friday when the Turkish president rebuked Netanyahu’s son for suggesting the city of Istanbul was under “Turkish occupation”.
“You occupied the whole of Palestine!” Erdogan fired back at Netanyahu’s son, saying it is actually the Tel Aviv regime which has occupied the entire Palestinian land.
Elsewhere in his Sunday comments Bolton said that disagreements “with respect to the conflict in Syria” were another issue affecting bilateral ties between the US and Turkey.
He said US President Donald Trump “would like to have a good relationship with Turkey; he’d like to see US trade with Turkey increase, but we need them to help us out in some of these other problems in Syria and elsewhere in the region.”
US support for YPG militants, whom Ankara views as terrorists and their group an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has angered Turkey.
The US has been arming and training Kurdish militants under the banner of helping them fight Daesh, but Syria and several other countries see ulterior motives behind the deployment.
President Trump’s decision last year to leave Syria has exposed the Kurdish group to possible Turkish attacks.
Fears of a Turkish assault have led the Kurds to strike an agreement with the Syrian government to leave Manbij in exchange for military support in case they come under attack from Turkey.
Turkey, a key US ally in the region, has repeatedly questioned Washington’s deployment of heavy weapons in Syria despite the defeat of Daesh in much of the Arab country.
Bolton slams Turkey over S-400 deal
In his talks to AM 970 radio, Bolton further blasted Turkey for refusing to abandon a deal to purchase S-400 air defense missile systems from Russia, a major obstacle to US-Turkish relations.
“We’re concerned about their purchase of the Russian air defense system called the S-400 – that’s a big problem,” Bolton said.
The United States has warned Turkey of “grave consequences” if Ankara goes ahead with the plan to purchase Russian S-400 missile systems.
Moscow and Ankara finalized an agreement on the delivery of the S-400 missile systems in December 2017.
Last April, Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin said in Ankara that they had agreed to expedite the delivery which could be made between late 2019 and early 2020.
Washington has reportedly proposed to deliver one US-made Patriot missile battery by the end of 2019, on the condition that Ankara abandons the deal with Moscow.
The S-400 is an advanced Russian missile system designed to detect, track, and destroy planes, drones, or missiles as far as 402 kilometers away. It has previously been sold only to China and India.
Turkey is striving to boost its air defense, particularly after Washington decided in 2015 to withdraw its Patriot surface-to-air missile system from Turkey’s border with Syria, a move that weakened Turkey’s air defense.
Israel military censor banned, partially redacted more than 3,000 news items in 2018
MEMO | March 18, 2019
Israel’s military censor “prohibited the publication of 363 news articles in 2018” in addition to “partially or fully redacting a total of 2,712 news items submitted to it for prior review”, reported +972 Magazine, a significant spike in “censor intervention”.
According to the news site, “the censor barred more news stories from publication in 2018 than in almost any other year this decade”. With respect to articles published after partial redaction, only 2014 saw “similarly substantial censorship of the press”.
+972 Magazine reported that “the spike in censorship compared to 2017 is significant: in the last year, the IDF Censor prevented the publication of 92 more articles than it did in the year prior, while it partially or fully redacted an additional 625 stories.”
Overall, “over the past eight years, the censor has prohibited a total of 2,661 news stories from seeing the light of day,” the article added.
As +972 Magazine explained, “all media outlets in Israel are required to submit articles relating to security and foreign relations to the IDF Censor for review prior to publication.”
Israel is unique in the so-called “democratic world” in compelling journalists and publications to “submit their reporting for review prior to publication”, and the only country “where that censorship can be criminally enforced”.
In addition, “the Israeli military censor’s powers extend beyond news outlets to include authority to review before publication and censor books and items in the State Archives.”
The Shame of It!
The UK failed to back a UN investigation into Israel’s shoot-to-kill-or-cripple policy against Gaza’s caged civilians. Will the Foreign Office also fail to adopt its findings?
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | March 17, 2019
Open letter to Alister Jack, MP for Dumfries & Galloway
cc Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs
Dear Alister,
Here’s something to take your mind off Brexit.
You’ll have heard of Dr Swee Ang. She is the first female Orthopaedic Consultant appointed to St Bartholomew (‘Barts’) and the Royal London Hospitals.
In the 1980s and 1990s Dr Swee worked as trauma and orthopaedics consultant in the refugee camps of Lebanon and later for the United Nations in Gaza, and the World Health Organisation in the West Bank and Gaza. She is Founder and Patron of the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).
She also treated the victims of the Pakistan (Kashmir) earthquake, and as consultant trauma and orthopaedic surgeon operated on and looked after the victims of the 7 July 2005 suicide bombing at the Royal London Hospital.
Dr Swee is co-author of War Surgery and Acute Care of the War Wounded; she also wrote From Beirut to Jerusalem documenting her experience in the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon and Gaza.
Last summer she was aboard the Al-Awda sailing to Gaza with urgently medical supplies when the vessel was violently assaulted and hijacked in international waters by our so-called friend and ally which, we’re repeatedly told, shares our values and whose enemies are our enemies. The Al-Awda was dragged to an Israeli port and her passengers and crew were roughed up (some seriously injured) and abused, thrown in an Israeli jail and had their possessions and money stolen. The precious cargo, as far as we can ascertain, never reached the desperate wounded.
Dr Swee has just emailed:
“The UN Commission for Human Rights will be concluding its investigation on the shooting of thousands of Palestinian civilians demonstrating within the borders of Gaza. At least 189 were killed (more now) and thousands shot with live ammunitions – with loss of limbs and still needing multiple surgeries if they were to keep their legs and arms. It is estimated that with conventional limb salvaging surgeries at least £39 million has to be found to prevent further amputations (figures put out by MAP).
“Last year the UK abstained from supporting the UN conducting such an investigation. However it went ahead and I was fortunate enough to attend the meeting at Amnesty International two days ago to hear the personal testimonies of Dr Tarek Loubani who was shot on 14 May 2018, and Dr Mahmoud Matar the head of the Limb Reconstruction Service in Gaza. They will be testifying to the UN Commissioner coming Monday in Geneva. There is an urgent request for us to write to Jeremy Hunt [Foreign Secretary] with copy to our local MP asking the UK Government to adopt the findings and recommendations of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights. In fact the concern is that UK might vote against it since last year we abstained.
“Please do so urgently. This is something we all can do. Email for Jeremy Hunt is:
jeremy.hunt@fco.gov.uk / juntj@parliament.uk
Even if you are not a UK national but are Palestinians you have the right to email him on behalf of your people. Please also ask your friends to support the UN Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Thank you all and God bless, Swee.”
Wounds “the size of a fist” causing lifelong disability
According to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) who operate in Gaza, the Israelis have been using ‘dum-dum’ type rounds that cause wounds of “unusual severity”. This sort of ammunition is understood to be outlawed in warfare. Last year MSF surgeons in Gaza reported “devastating gunshot wounds” among hundreds of people injured during the protests, the huge majority – mainly young men, but also some women and children – having unusually severe wounds to the lower extremities.
MSF medical teams note the injuries include an extreme level of destruction to bones and soft tissue, and large exit wounds that can be the size of a fist. “Half of the more than 500 patients we have admitted in our clinics have injuries where the bullet has literally destroyed tissue after having pulverized the bone,” said Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, Head of Mission of MSF in Palestine. “These patients will need to have very complex surgical operations and most of them will have disabilities for life.”
She hadn’t seen these kinds of injuries before. The wounds appeared to be caused by ammunition with an expanding ‘butterfly’ effect. “Mass lifelong disability is now the prospect for young Gazans who merely gathered in unarmed protest”
Writing in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) the Head of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in Gaza, Dr Nafiz Abu-Shaban, said that the hundreds of high energy compound tibial fractures from Israeli live fire are the most difficult of all open fractures to treat. They may require between 5 and 7 surgical procedures, each operation taking 3-6 hours. “Even with state-of-the-art reconstruction, healing takes 1-2 years. Most of these patients will develop osteomyelitis. A steadily increasing toll of secondary amputations is inevitable. They will also need intensive rehabilitation, but the only rehabilitation hospital in Gaza was destroyed by Israeli bombing in 2014….”
UK favours “whitewash toolkit” instead
The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted a resolution to set up an independent, international Commission of Inquiry to investigate all violations of humanitarian and international human rights law in the occupied Palestinian territory, with particular focus on recent events in Gaza. The resolution was passed with only two states opposing (the USA and another of Israel’s poodles, Australia), 29 in favour and 14 abstentions. The UK was among the abstainers.
Trying to explain its pathetic stance, the UK Mission in Geneva called the resolution “partial and unhelpfully unbalanced” for not explicitly demanding an investigation into the action of non-state actors such as Hamas. But why should it? Hamas is not the invader, illegal occupier, aggressor and blockader. It governs the besieged Gaza Strip as best it can after being democratically elected in 2006. The UK Government then called on Israel to “make clear its intentions and carry out what must be a transparent inquiry into the IDF’s conduct at the border fence and to demonstrate how this will achieve a sufficient level of independence.” In other words, investigate itself.
However, Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem condemned the already-announced internal Israeli military probe as “part of the whitewashing toolkit”. The British Government was criticised in parliament for its limp-wristed attitude and reminded of Israel’s self-exoneration over the killing of four boys playing on a beach during its 2014 military offensive on Gaza.
The preamble to the UNHRC resolution states the reasons for a proper investigation brilliantly. It’s worth repeating here….
- Convinced that the lack of accountability for violations of international law reinforces a culture of impunity, leading to a recurrence of violations and seriously endangering international peace,
- Noting the systematic failure by Israel to carry out genuine investigations in an impartial, independent, prompt and effective way, as required by international law, into the violence and offences against Palestinians by the occupying forces, and to establish judicial accountability for its actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,
- Emphasizing the obligations of Israel as the occupying Power to ensure the safety, well-being and protection of the Palestinian civilian population under its occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,
- Emphasizing also that the intentional targeting of civilians and other protected persons in situations of armed conflict, including foreign occupation, constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and poses a threat to international peace and security,
- Recognizing the importance of the right to life and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association to the full enjoyment of all human rights…
Despite all that, Theresa May and Boris Johnson (Foreign Secretary at the time) still couldn’t bring themselves to back the UN resolution.
In recent years this country has so abandoned it moral compass that failing to support a perfectly legitimate investigation into the Israeli military’s brutal behaviour towards the Palestinians they have robbed and abused and murdered for 70 years — a scenario we engineered — is unsurprising.
But many see no difference between the racist thugs who command the Israeli army and the degenerate responsible for the New Zealand mosque massacre. Let us hope Her Majesty’s Government eventually discovers its backbone and adopts the report and findings of the UN Human Rights Council lest we all die of shame.
Kindest regards,
Your constituent Stuart Littlewood
Palestinian Resistance Groups in Gaza All Deny Firing Shells Toward Israel
By Celine Hagbard | IMEMC | March 15, 2019
After two nights of wide-scale bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces in which dozens of bombs were dropped on the crowded coastal enclave, someone in Gaza apparently attempted to retaliate Thursday night by firing several shells toward Israel.
But the Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza, usually quick to claim credit for actions they take, all denied involvement in this attack.
Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees all issued separate statements officially denying any involvement in relation to the firing of the missiles.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said in a brief statement that the timing of these missiles being fired is suspicious, as it came while Hamas leaders were meeting with an Egyptian security team, discussing arrangements to maintain calm in the coastal region.
In addition, Daoud Shehab, the spokesperson of the Islamic Jihad, denied Israel’s allegation that the Islamic Jihad movement was the one that fired the missiles toward Tel Aviv.
The Salaheddin Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Committees, also issued a statement denying any connection with the missiles.
It is worth mentioning that, from time to time, some unknown smaller group, tries to fire missiles largely into open areas in Israel, which to many observers looks like an act that is meant to create tension, and drag the region into a new wave of military escalation.
For its part, the Ministry In Interior and National Security In Gaza said that the firing of the missile violated the agreement between the resistance factions in Gaza, and the national consensus regarding avoiding military escalation with Tel Aviv. It added that it will conducted all needed measures to find the individuals who are responsible for firing the missiles.
Israel embassy to UK erases West Bank, Gaza in election video
![Screenshot of a video released by the Israeli embassy to the UK has erased the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), showing the whole of historic Palestine as Israel [Twitter]](https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/tW.png?resize=1200%2C800&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
Screenshot of a video released by the Israeli embassy to the UK has erased the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), showing the whole of historic Palestine as Israel [Twitter]
MEMO | March 15, 2019
A video released by the Israeli embassy to the UK has erased the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), showing the whole of historic Palestine as Israel.
The video – created by the Israeli embassy in London and shared on its official Twitter account on Wednesday – sets out to explain the upcoming Israeli general election on 9 April. The video addresses “frequently asked questions” about the Israeli electoral system, such as “what is the Knesset” and “who do people vote for”.
Answering the question “do they [Israelis] vote for representatives of their city or district,” the video explains: “Israel is very small, so the whole country is a single constituency,” while a graphic draws the outline of historic Palestine and shades in the whole space, erasing the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip.
Though the outline of the West Bank can be seen beneath the shading, the video still shows the territory as part of the “single constituency” of Israel. The Gaza Strip, on the other hand, is not demarcated at all.
Though MEMO contacted the Israeli embassy for comment, at the time of publication no answer had been received.
The video will be seen as further evidence of Israel’s attempt to normalise its narrative of “sovereignty”, which ignores Palestinians living under occupation and increasingly seeks to annex the Palestinian territories.
This narrative has taken centre stage in election campaigning in recent weeks, with a number of parties promising to annex all or parts of the West Bank and increase Israel’s illegal settlement there. The New Right (Hayemin Hehadash) party – which was formed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked after they broke away from the Jewish Home party – has vowed to annex “Area C”, which makes up 61 per cent of the occupied West Bank.
The New Right explained that, under this plan, it would give Israeli citizenship to the “80,000 Arabs” it estimates live there. However, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHAoPt), some 297,000 Palestinians are known to live in Area C, raising questions as to their fate should the New Right join the ruling coalition after 9 April.
Even centrist political parties have made partial annexation of the West Bank a key campaign promise. The Blue and White alliance – comprised of Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience (Hosen L’Yisrael) party and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party and now polling as the main challenger to incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party – has vowed that the Jordan Valley, which lies deep in the West Bank, will be Israel’s border.
Blue and White has also promised to maintain Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, with the alliance’s number three Moshe Ya’alon criticising the “land for peace” model. This model would see Israel dismantle its occupation in return for peace agreements, following the precedent set by the 1979 Camp David Accords under which Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in return for a peace treaty with Egypt.
The Israeli embassy’s video also came on the same day the US State Department dropped its usual description of the Golan Heights as “Israeli-occupied”, changing the designation to “Israeli-controlled”. The State Department’s annual global human rights report also failed to mention the words “occupied” or “occupation” in a separate section about the West Bank and Gaza.
Though a State Department official said “[US] policy on the status of the territories has not changed,” the move has been interpreted as indication of US support for Israel’s efforts to gain international recognition of the territories it controls. Palestinian officials slammed the move, with the spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, saying: “These American titles will not change the fact that the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 and the occupied Arab Golan are territories under Israeli occupation in accordance with UN resolutions and international law.”
During the Six Day War of 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. With the exception of the Sinai, it has thus far refused to hand back these territories and has transferred its civilian population into the areas, in contravention of international law.
US Threatens Anyone Behind ICC Probe Into Its Staff With Visa Restrictions
Sputnik – 15.03.2019
The US is determined not to issue visas to individuals who are behind any the International Criminal Court investigation of US personnel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday.
The new visa restrictions will not terminate Washington’s previous measures, and new economic sanctions may follow if the International Criminal Court (ICC) fails to change its course, Pompeo said during the briefing.
“I’m announcing a policy of US visa restrictions on those individuals directly responsible for any ICC investigation of US personnel,” Pompeo said. “This includes persons who take or have taken action to request or further such an investigation. These visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel, including Israelis.”
The remark comes after Pompeo issued the warning after announcing that the US would impose visa restrictions on individuals linked to the ICC’s prospective investigation into alleged war crimes committed by US personnel in Afghanistan.
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Film Review
We refuse to be silenced’: Gaza film producers blast BBC at BAFTAs
Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2026
The producers of the documentary “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” used their BAFTA TV Awards win on Sunday to publicly denounce the BBC for refusing to air the film, accusing the network of censoring coverage of “Israel’s” genocidal assault on Gaza and silencing voices that document the atrocities committed against Palestinian medical workers.
The documentary, originally commissioned by the BBC but never broadcast due to what the network called “concerns about impartiality” towards “Israel,” won in the current affairs category at the BAFTA ceremony in London. The film was eventually aired by Channel 4 and investigates the systematic targeting of medical personnel and healthcare infrastructure in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.
Journalist Ramita Navai delivered a speech while accepting the award, in which she stated that the occupation has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and deliberately targeted hospitals and medical workers. According to the documentary’s investigation, more than 1,700 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and over 400 have been abducted by Israeli forces.
Citing United Nations language, Navai described “Israel’s” attacks against Gaza’s medical infrastructure and personnel as “medicide.” She concluded her remarks with a defiant message: “We refuse to be silenced and censored.” … continue
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