I don’t share Secular Talk’s religious views. I’m neither a secularist nor an atheist, but when host Kyle Kulinski talks about politics, I believe he’s correct. In this video from the 16th September 2019, he talks about the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, and predicts the media’s and American government’s response.
He believes that, although the Houthi rebels in Yemen have claimed responsibility, Trump and the media, and even the Democrats, will claim that the strikes are solely the responsibility of Iran. And they will not supply any context for the attacks. Like actually telling them it’s in response to the Saudi war against them. Saudi Arabia attacked Yemen after the Houthis overthrew the Sunni Muslim government and installed a Shi’a regime. Saudi Arabia is Wahhabi, and militantly anti-Shi’a. They responded by invading and waging a genocidal war. They have deliberately targeted schools, hospitals and mosques. Thanks to them, the country is gripped by a famine and cholera epidemic. One has affected 85,000, the other perhaps a million. But despite the fact that the Houthis have claimed responsibility, all the lamestream news channels, Kulinski predicts, will claim that the strikes were unprovoked. And those lying news agencies include the Beeb.
He also notes that some in the Iranian regime have also claimed responsibility for the attacks and celebrated them. He doesn’t deny that it is entirely possible that the Iranians did give the Yemenis weapons and assistance. But the media, he claims, and Trump’s government will claim that the Iranians are solely responsible and a demand a war with Iran. Netanyahu wants a war with Iran. Saudi Arabia wants a war with Iran. Trump’s adviser, John Bolton, wants war with Iran. Even though he’s now gone, it looks like he’ll get his wish. The Democrats have said they’ll back a war with Iran. And Trump will want a war with Iran, because he doesn’t want to look weak. He’s said previously that Saudi Arabia should fight its own wars and that they were responsible for 9/11, but this won’t matter after these attacks. Kulinski concludes that we are the closest to war with Iran as we have ever been, but he doesn’t trust any of the actors to deescalate.
I don’t know if he’s right about the mainstream media not providing any context for this or not. I’ve been avoiding the mainstream news recently because I don’t trust them to report anything objectively. It could be that they have provided some context. But there are powerful forces at work demanding that we go in and attack Iran. Iran’s been on the Neocons’ list of countries, whose governments they want overthrown since 1995. I don’t know what’ll happen in Israel, because of the way the elections resulted in a tie between Netanyahu’s murderous coalition and their equally nationalistic rivals. But Netanyahu and the Israeli right have also pushed for war with Iran, because Iran backs the Palestinians and wants to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. And America backs Israel, despite opposition from pro-Palestinian groups, including a sizable and growing number of Jewish Americans.
An Iranian gent, Reza Cage, left this comment pleading for peace on the YouTube page for this video. Here it is.
I am an Iranian living in Tehran, this terrifies me. For you guys it’a not big deal because your families and children will be safe not our.. most iranian just want peace we are not that different from you.. Edit: thank you my brothers and sisters for your support, I am overwhelmed by your (mostly) kind messages it gives me a tiny bit of hope in this time of chaos.I know our government in Iran is not good they are a minority with guns and weapons controlling a country mostly youth who are pro west and liberal to stay in power. That being said everything was peaceful under the nuclear agreement even American navy members were captured and immediately released this Trump has ruined this and our already right wing government has become aggressive. I want change in our country but it must happen from the inside not through war and killing this will only make majority of youth on your side despise you because no doubt their lives will be ruined.
His thanks to the other commenters for their replies is due to them having posted something like 355 replies when last I looked, mostly supporting him. And I don’t doubt that Agha Cage is right. There are right-wing hawks in the Iranian government, who’d love to push the country even further to the right by engaging in a war with America and the West. And of course, if we did invade, most of the Iranian young people would hate us. Because however much they hate their government, they, like everyone else, loves their country. The late Corinne Souza, whose father was an Iraqi dissident, said pretty much the same about our invasion of her father’s country. Before we invaded, there were Iraqis willing to work with us to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime. But this stopped after we invaded, because we were the aggressors. And it’ll happen again if we invade Iran, along with all the other horrors we’ve seen in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.
I’ve made it very clear that I have little time or sympathy for the Iranian government. They are oppressive theocrats, impoverishing their people and plundering their country to enrich themselves. But the Islamic revolution which installed the current regime came about because we oppressed and exploited them. We overthrew the last of the Qajar shahs in the early 20th century and installed the Pahlavis as the Qajars couldn’t repay the loans we’d given them to modernise the country. When Mossadeq nationalised the Iranian oil industry in the 1950s, we arranged a coup to overthrow him as Prime Minister. This led to the Shah’s ‘White Revolution’ in which the monarchy seized absolute power, ruling through torture and fear. I’ve met Iranians over here, whose friends vanished, thanks to the Shah’s murderous secret police. Florence, one of the great commenters on this blog, was active in the British protests in the 1970s against Britain’s support for murderous Fascistic tyrants like the Shah. If we join the Americans in an invasion of Iran, it won’t be to liberate the Iranian people. It’ll just be like the Gulf War over again – done so that the Saudis can seize their oil reserves, the Neocons can remove another enemy of Israel, and western multinationals can loot the country and its state enterprises.
We got no business sending our courageous young women and men to lose life and limb in the Middle East again, murdering people who’ve never invaded us, simply to make the likes of Boris, Trump and the Bush family even more obscene amounts of money.
Israel is very strongly supported financially by America. I don’t know the precise figures, but annually tens, if not hundreds of millions of US dollars goes in aid to it. And the Iron Dome anti-missile shield was actually given to the Israelis by Obama’s regime. But the Israel lobby in America, AIPAC and the other organisations, continually press for more money and continued financial support. And I have heard of incidents where the suggestion that aid money to Israel must be scaled down is greeted within Israel by angry protests and cries of ‘anti-Semitism!’
But Israel isn’t the first colonial state founded as a refuge for persecuted minorities in the West. The first modern such states were Liberia and Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone was established in the late 18th century by British abolitionists as a homeland from freed slaves. Like Israel, there was also a utopian element in the scheme. Sierra Leone was to be self-governing, and non-feudal, based on contemporary liberal English historians’ conception of Anglo-Saxon English society and government before the Norman Conquest. Many of the Black colonists sent there were literate, and they were joined by a number of poor Whites, who also wanted to set up a new home in the Continent.
In fact, the colony was troubled almost from the outset. It was beset with agricultural problems, disease and sickness were rife, and there was conflict with the indigenous peoples, from whom the Abolitionists had purchased or leased the land. It eventually passed under the control of a colonial company and thence became a British colonial possession. Due to friction with the colonial authorities, the Black colonists rebelled. This was quashed with the arrival of a number of Maroon – free Black – soldiers from Jamaica.
After the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, Sierra Leone became the centre of one of the naval courts in West Africa, that judged whether or not captured ships were slavers. The enslaved people in these vessels were also settled there, after they were given their freedom. It also became a major centre of Creole – Western Black – learning and culture. Much of what we know about the culture and languages of West Africa comes from Sierra Leonean travellers and missionaries. It was through working in Sierra Leone that two non-conformist missionaries presented evidence to British parliamentary committees that Black African children were not just as intelligent as White European kids, but at certain stages seemed to be more advanced. This is obviously very controversial, but it is true that Black babies tend to be more alert earlier than Whites. There is also a connection to the world of British classical music. The father of the 19th century British composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (not to be confused with the poet of almost the same name) came from Sierra Leone. Coleridge-Taylor was the composer, amongst other things, of a Clarinet Quintet, and a cantata based on Longfellow’s Hiawatha. This is still performed today by British choral societies.
America also founded a similar colony for its freed slaves in the same part of West Africa. This was Liberia. The American abolitionists, who founded the colony, were proud of the achievements of the Black colonists, their political involvement and the colonies’ economic development. They praised, for example, the growth of craft and artisan industries and the colonists’ manufactures, and predicted it would be a major centre of civilisation in Africa.
Sadly, this has not been the case, either in Sierra Leon or Liberia. Both remain impoverished developing nations, dominated by kleptocratic elites. Sierra Leone was rent by a devastating civil war in the 1990s over control of its vast diamond reserves. In Liberia, the descendants of the Western Black Colonists dominate and oppress the indigenous peoples. When one of the Afro-American presidents deigned to make a tour of the indigenous peoples and their lands in the 1960s, this was hailed as a major democratic move.
Western settlers dominating the indigenous people, in a country founded so that the settlers could be free from persecution in the West – that also sounds very much like Israel.
Critics of Zionism have pointed out that many of the gentile supporters of Zionism were anti-Semites with their own reasons for supporting a Jewish homeland. Quite simply, many of them simply wanted to clear Jews out of Britain, and dump them somewhere else in the world. Jewish Zionism was also predated by Christian Zionism, which wanted to re-establish the ancient kingdom of Israel in preparation for the End Times predicted in the Book of Revelation.
And one of the reasons for the foundation of Sierra Leone and Liberia was the belief that Whites and Blacks would never mix in Europe and America. There would always be prejudice against Blacks. And many of the supporters of the scheme, at least for Sierra Leone, also wanted a place to put British Blacks and clear them out of England.
Israel is a prosperous country, and is now supporting itself through its arms trade. But recently it has been hit with a massive corruption scandal surrounding Binyamin Netanyahu. It therefore seems to me that, for all the promotion of Israel and its undoubted achievements in the West, if it wasn’t so heavily supported by America and the Europeans, it would decline very swiftly to the same level as Sierra Leone and Liberia: dominated by kleptocrats and brutal, corrupt dictators, which oppressing the indigenous peoples. Which the Israelis are doing already to the Palestinians.
Here’s another snippet of information, which might help to explain the latest vicious anti-Semitism smears against the Labour left and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Binyamin Netanyahu is mired in a massive corruption scandal in Israel, so massive that it’s starting to worry their security establishment. Last Wednesday, the I reported that two former Mossad chiefs had stated that the corruption was so great that it was a threat to Israel itself. One of them said that Netanyahu had been neglecting finding a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem. This would end with the Palestinians becoming citizens of Israel, which would destroy the country’s character as a Jewish ethno-state.
That in itself shows the racism at the heart of the Israeli state. Israel was founded as the Jewish state, and the Law of Return states that Jews anywhere in the world may immigrate to Israel. But such freedom of movement does not extend to the Palestinians displaced by the emergence of Israel and its massacres in 1948. Displaced Palestinians have repeatedly asked to be able to return to their former homelands, only to be told very firmly ‘No’. The reason? It would destroy Israel as a Jewish state. That’s what they’ve been told, repeatedly. Jewish supporters of the Palestinian’s struggle for equality and freedom are very critical about this. You can find pictures of them with Palestinian friends, making the point that its ridiculous that they can go to a state they’ve never seen or had any connection to, while the country’s indigenous people are forbidden from entering the country from which they or their parents were expelled.
And it’s because Israel is an ethno-state intended for one racial group only, that the White Supremacists in the Alt Right admire it. Richard Spencer, the leader and founder of the Alt Right, has declared himself to be a ‘White Zionist’ and stated in interviews that he views Israel as the model for the White ethno-state he and his fellow Nazis wish to create in the USA, cleansed of Asians, Latins and Black people, of course.
The two state solution to the problem of Palestinians, as far as I can tell, seems to be just verbiage. It’s just propaganda. It sounds nice and liberal, but in practice while the Israelis are talking about it, the Israeli state and its settlers are seizing more land from the Palestinians, and continuing with their policies of making like intolerable for the country’s indigenous Arabs in the hope that they’ll leave. It’s ideological camouflage designed to act as a fig leaf to cover the reality of persecution and ethnic cleansing.
The comments from the Mossad chief show that he, at least, and no doubt many others senior members of the Israeli military and political establishment are worried that Netanyahu’s corruption will undo the decades-long project of creating an ethnically uniform Jewish state. And over here, the Israel lobby hate and despise Jeremy Corbyn, not because he is an anti-Semite or is an opponent of Israel – he isn’t – but because he genuinely supports the Palestinians. It therefore seems to me that there’s now a powerful feeling of vulnerability amongst the Israel lobby. And so they’ve returned to libelling and smearing decent, anti-racist people, including self-respecting Jews, as anti-Semites in order to protect Israel from criticism and try and preserve it as an exclusively Jewish state.
The accusation that Ken Livingstone is a anti-Semite is partly based on his historically accurate statement that there was initially an agreement between the Zionists, or at least, some of them, and the Nazi party, to take Jews out of Nazi Germany and smuggle them into Palestine, then under the British Mandate. This was when sections of the Nazis didn’t care where Jews went, so long as they weren’t in Germany. It’s the Haavara agreement, and is recorded fact. There is an entry for it on the website of the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Israel. The agreement didn’t last very long. Nevertheless, it existed. And at the end of last year, Uri Avnery, an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom, wrote a piece in Counterpunch describing other collaborations between Zionists and anti-Semites.
His article was a response to Netanyahu’s reaction to a UN motion condemning Israel for its expansionism and maltreatment of the Palestinians. The UN had attempted to have similar motions passed many times before, but had been blocked by the US, using its veto. This time Barack Obama had not blocked it, and the motion had passed.
Netanyahu was furious. He withdrew Israeli ambassadors from Senegal and New Zealand, nations that have always been friend to Israel, called in foreign ambassadors to upbraid them, and generally ranted and raved.
Avnery states that while it was monumentally stupid on a diplomatic level, it was a very astute move domestically. It allowed Netanyahu to present himself as the virtuous defender of his nation, another David pitted against the Goliath of the UN. He makes the point that Jews and Israelis have taken a perverse satisfaction from the rest of the world’s opposition to them. In his view
For some reason, Jews derive satisfaction from a world-wide condemnation. It affirms what we have known all the time: that all the nations of the world hate us. It shows how special and superior we are. It has nothing to do with our own behavior, God forbid. It is just pure anti-Semitism.
As an example of this bizarre mentality, back in the days of Golda Meir one of the Israeli army’s dance band used to play a tune with the lyrics ‘The whole world is against us/ But we don’t give a damn…’
He goes on to say that the establishment of the state of Israel was supposed to put an end to this, by making Israel a normal country. But it hasn’t. He goes on to observe how Donald Trump has sent a rabidly right-wing Jewish American to Israel as his representative, a man so right-wing he makes Netanyahu seem liberal, while also appointing as one of his closest aides an anti-Semitic White racist. He states that Trump can support both anti-Semites and Zionists simultaneously as both have the same goal of taking Jews out of their historic homelands and relocating them in Israel.
He states that Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, tried the same tactic with the anti-Semites of Tsarist Russia. Herzl offered to persuade the Jews to emigrate, if the Russians helped them. This was during the horrific pogroms of the late 19th century. it didn’t quite work as Herzl wanted, as the Jewish emigrants largely went to America, not Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire.
He also gives as an example of such anti-Semitic Zionism the British and American evangelicals, who preached that the Jews should return to Israel. This was before the foundation of the Zionist movement proper, though he suggests it may have served as one of the inspirations for it. These evangelicals did so in the belief that the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland would result in the Second Coming of Christ. This would be followed by the conversion of a minority of Jews to Christianity. Those, who did not convert, would be destroyed.
Later other members of the Zionist movement cooperated with anti-Semites in Poland and Nazi-occupied Europe. 1939 the extreme Zionist leader, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky approached the anti-Semitic commanders of the Polish army with a similar deal to the Haavara Agreement. If they took on and trained Jews, the Zionists would send them to Palestine to liberate the country from the British, and the Jews would then leave Poland to emigrate there. This plan collapsed after the Nazi invasion.
During the War, but before the Holocaust, Abraham Stern, the founder of the Irgun, approached Adolf Hitler through an intermediary in neutral Turkey, offering to aid the Nazis against the British. Hitler didn’t reply.
Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz also attempted to make a number of deals with the Zionists. Eichmann approached Israel Kastner and his group in Budapest. If the allies gave the Nazis a thousand trucks, he would halt the deportations. As a good will gesture, he allowed a few hundred Jews to escape to Switzerland. Kastner sent Yoel Brand as his messenger to the Zionist leadership in Jerusalem. However, he caught by the British and so the deportation and extermination of Hungarian Jews continued.
Netanyahu’s right-wing minister of defence, Avigdor Lieberman, also went berserk at the French plan to convene a meeting to secure a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in Paris. Avnery notes that the French plan was almost identical with one he and his friend published in 1957. Lieberman, however, went off ranting that it was the notorious Dreyfus Affair all over again, referring to the case in which a Jewish officer in the French army was court-martialed and sent to Devil’s Island on trumped up charges motivated by his accuser’s anti-Semitism.
Despite the French offer of a peaceful settlement, the Israelis still want Trump, with the Zionists and anti-Semites in his administration, to support them.
Yoav Litvin, one of the long time contributors to Counterpunch, has written an excellent article, ‘To Oppose Trump, Jews Must Join the Fight Against Fascism and Zionism’. Litvin notes the rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incidents under Trump, and the presence of anti-Semites and Nazis like Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer amongst Trump’s supporters and his cabinet. He also shows how, despite this, Israel is doing little or nothing to criticise Trump, because Trump is a very vocal supporter of Israel.
He notes the similarity between the White racism of Trump and his Fascist supporters in the Alt-Right, and the ethno-nationalism behind Zionism. He also comments on the way Zionists and the Israel lobby, particularly Alan Dershowitz, have particularly smeared as anti-Semites liberal Jews, with traditional cosmopolitan values who oppose Zionism as another form of racism. As for Trump, he and his allies hide behind the specious argument that because they have Jewish friends, they can’t be anti-Semites. Mr Litvin writes
One would logically expect the American Jewish community to unite around vocal opposition and resistance as a response to the new Republican administration’s fascist tendencies and ties to White nationalists and neo-Nazis. Though some rabbis have come out in protest over Trump’s Muslim travel ban, the American Jewish community’s response to the new administration has been weak and split, with one main reason – Israel. Trump and his gang have capitalized on the inherent contradiction between liberal cosmopolitan Jewish values and an ethical emphasis on human rights, and the unjust nationalist policies of Israel towards indigenous Palestinians.
This contradiction was highlighted in a recent debate between Rabbi Matt Rosenberg and Richard Spencer, in which the latter justified the creation of a white “ethno-state” by using the example of the exclusionary Zionist ideology and practices of the state of Israel. The rabbi was left speechless. Accordingly, the term “white Zionism” has been used to describe “alt-right” ideology.
In line with widespread support for Trump in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has been very favorable, even jovial at the prospects of the new Republican administration. With Donald Trump as their champion, the Tea Party represents tribal, misogynist and nationalistic attitudes that are championed by Jewish right-wing Zionists like Netanyahu. In fact, the very idea for the “alt-right” Breitbart news website was conceived in Israel and it has faithfully served as an outlet for the Tea Party, anti-Semitic and Zionist agendas. On a personal level, Trump and Netanyahu are mirror images of each other in their corruption, extravagance and talent in manipulating the press.
But this is nothing new. Zionists and anti-Semites have historically shared mutual interests. While anti-Semites have wanted to get rid of Jews, Zionists have concentrated their efforts on attracting them to Israel’s shores, i.e. Judaizing Israel as a means to fight the “demographic threat” posed by native Palestinians.
Litvin states that there are positive aspects to Israel and Zionism. The country has served as a model for nation-building, revived Hebrew as a living language and created a new, confident Jewish people, who fight for their rights, work the land and have pride in themselves. But these achievements are offset by the terrible suffering and persecution inflicted on indigenous Palestinians:
However, as with all settler-colonialist and exclusivist projects, the indigenous population has paid the price. As a result of political Zionism and Israeli policies, Palestinians have undergone a process of ethnic cleansing and genocide to make room for non-native Jewish settlers.
As the blooming relationship between the Trump administration and Israeli politicians and apologists shows, the ethno-centric character of Israel shares many attributes with- and has been a source of inspiration for- American White nationalism, now embodied in Trump’s administration.
In order to effectively fight this new administration and protect community members against the growing tide of anti-Semitism, American Jews need to recognize these parallels, come to terms with the failure of political Zionism and renounce collaborators such as Alan Dershowitz and David Friedman.
To counter Trump it is essential that American Jews fight against all ethno-centric, exclusivist forces, including fascism, White supremacy and Zionism. The long history of trauma and persecution must guide Jews in a quest to vanquish these forces alike toward a vision of justice, freedom and equality for all.
Litvin’s precisely right, and this is the crime for which left-wing Labour members like Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker and Naz Shah were smeared as anti-Semites by the Israel lobby: they did treat Zionism as another form of racism. None of them were anti-Semites. Livingstone in his book Livingstone’s Labour denounced anti-Semitism as another form of racism, along with anti-Black racism and hatred of the Irish. He also specifically discusses in the book the way Nazis responsible for horrific crimes against the Jewish people and humanity generally were recruited by the Allies after the War as part of the global campaign against Communism.
But he was smeared because he dared to make the historically accurate point that the Zionists had collaborated with the Nazis over immigration to Israel. It’s the same point Litvin makes in his article.
And many members of the anti-Zionist movement are Torah-observant Jews and people of Jewish heritage. Jackie Walker’s father was a Russian Jew, her partner’s Jewish, and her daughter goes to a Jewish school. Both she and her parents were and are very active campaigners against racism, including anti-Semitism. But this made no difference. She had placed the Holocaust, as terrible as it was, in context as one genocide amongst the others that have disgraced human history down the aeons, including Black slavery. She also stood up for the rights of the Palestinian people, and discussed how Jewish merchants had also been involved in the slave trade, even though the overall responsibility lay with the Christian empires in which they lived and whose monarchs they served. This was a perfectly reasonable point, which is discussed by Jewish historians.
But the Zionists saw it as a terrible threat to their own interests, and so they smeared her.
I think Litvin’s right in that Israel and Zionist lobby’s silence over the genuine anti-Semites behind Trump should lead to more Jews becoming aware of the racism at the heart of modern Zionism, as well as discrediting Zionism amongst decent Americans generally.
After all, Trump’s friendly relationship with Israel and Netanyahu, despite, or because of the Nazis in his cabinet, blatantly and flagrantly bear out what Walker, Livingstone and the others are saying about Zionism as another form of Fascism.
In his chapter ‘The Denial of Known Genocides’ in the book Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review vol. 2 (London: Mansell 1991), Israel W. Charny, the book’s editor, discusses instances where the survivors of genocides are perfectly prepared to tolerate and approve of massacres and atrocities against others, despite having been the victims of such crimes themselves. Charny discusses the findings of research done in Israel, including with Holocaust survivors and medical students, as well as the general public. This found that a disturbingly high number of Israelis, and especially those, who had survived the horrors of the Nazi camps and student medical professionals, were more than willing to tolerate and even approve the mass murder of other human beings.
Charny writes:
Another sense in which victims can be said to be engaging in denial is that, despite their profound awareness of the extent of man’s inhumanity to man, many survivors themselves have not learned to make a commitment to protecting the lives of all other human beings. Charny and his associates have conducted a series of studies of the readiness of Holocaust survivors to approve or recommend or themselves be prepared to do evil to others. In the one study referred to early (Charny and Fromer, submitted for publication), where Jewish/Israelis who were going to see Lanzmann’s film Shoah were interviewed, the subjects were asked their opinions about a soldier who had been convicted for massacre of innocent Arabs who said years later that he would do it again – that he was only following orders, and would serve his country’s needs the same way under similar circumstances. Overall 38% of the subjects approved of the soldier’s position; among Holocaust survivors, children of survivors and an extended group of the subjects who had expressed themselves as strongly involved with the Holocaust, the approval rate was 46% as compared to 26% among non-survivors (a difference that was statistically significant).
In another experiment, Charny and Fromer (in press) and Fromer and Charny (submitted for publication) studied Jewish/Israeli students in medicine, psychology and social work as to their readiness to harm and even kill patients. The subjects were presented with a situation in which they were to imagine themselves in the future working in a developing country in Africa. As condition in the country worsen seriously and resources dwindle, the health authorities undertake to eliminate treatment and maintenance for the most severe cases, and to undertake involuntary mass euthanasia; 34% of the subjects agreed to the former step, and 17% to the latter. When the subjects were then told that the Ministry of Health determined that the involuntary euthanasia would be executed more humanely if done by professionals, and the subjects were asked who of themselves would be prepared to kill the patients, 11% agreed. In a continuation of the same experiment (Charny and Fromer – in press, and Fromer and Charny, submitted for publication), the subjects were also asked to think of themselves as having been called up to national service by an extreme right-wing Israeli government and they are ordered to classify all Arab citizens of Israel in connection with the government’s program for a forced migration of the Arabs from Israel. The rates of compliance varied between 21% and 34% (or one out of five to one out of three). The seriousness of the behaviours in all of the above cases was underscored by an addition survey the authors made of 30 supervisors-trainers in medicine, psychology and social work, 60% of whom, and in some cases many more, indicated they would expel any student from their clinical training programme who would agree to participate in such activities.
Charny and Sarid (in process) have studied the opinions of Israelis of the desirability of the Israeli government maintaining political, economic and security-interest relationships with each of three governments who were described as persecuting a minority people in their land. Although the situations described were presented as fictional, each actually was patterned after a specific real scenario – (a) South Africa; (b) Nazi Germany preceding the Holocaust or Turkish-Armenian relationships leading up to the Armenian genocide; and (c) the Holocaust. These responses were also analyzed for differences between Holocaust survivors and others. 78% of the survivors opposed the Israeli government maintaining relationships with the government that was described as persecuting its targeted minority in a way that was similar to what happened in the Holocaust, while 64.5% of non-survivors took this position. However, with respect to the two other persecutory governments who were oppressing their minorities differently, 56% of survivors and 39 to 52% (in different situations) of non-survivors took this position. The implication of these findings is that both Holocaust survivors specifically as well as other Israelis tend to have “learned” much more how to oppose evils which resemble the ones they endured against other peoples, but continue to deny or not react as strongly to the dangers of other “faces of evil” to which they do not generalize a full measure of moral outrage.
Altogether, these studies record a disappointing degree of callousness and obtuseness to genocidal massacre and threat of massacre towards peoples by substantial numbers of actual Holocaust survivors as well as, overall, on the part of the people of the survivors of the Holocaust, namely Jewish/Israelis. It should rightly be noted that research date from other peoples often show even higher rates of identification with and justification of genocidal massacres (e.g. Kelman and Hamilton, 1989; see also the extensive discussions of these issues in Charny and Fromer in press – a and b, and submitted for publication); but from an ideal ethical point of view, one would wish that all survivors of the Holocaust, and all Jewish/Israelis, would manifest an unerring sensitivity to the plights of all other peoples. (Pp. 7-8, my emphasis).
These figures are disturbing and disappointing because of the expectation many people have that the Jews, as a people, who have suffered horrendous persecution during much of their history, and particularly Holocaust survivors, who have been through what can only be described as a living hell – should be uniquely placed to have a greater hostility to the perpetration of such crimes.
Please Note: I am not suggesting for a single moment that Jews or Israelis are any more intolerant or ready to commit genocide and massacre than any other people. Indeed, Charny’s article passage reproduced here makes it clear that other nations may be even more disposed to do so. I think it’s highly likely that if a comparable test of British people were performed, the same numbers would also show themselves willing to tolerate or commit genocidal acts.
I am also very much aware of the number of courageous Jews, Israelis and people of Jewish heritage, who are very much opposed to their society’s ethnic cleansing and oppression of the Palestinians. Indeed, the above passage also makes it very clear that there are very many Israelis, who are profoundly opposed to the murder of Palestinian and Arab innocents, and the forced expulsions of the Palestinians from their native land. Israelis and Jews from America, Britain and across the world have protested against the massacres, the house demolitions and the creation of an apartheid state in Israel, including rabbis. They are extremely courageous individuals, as just as gentiles are accused of being anti-Semitic if they dare oppose or criticise Israel, so they run risk of being denounced as ‘self-hating’ and ‘un-Jewish’. Many of those, who have been libelled as anti-Semites and suspended from the Labour party, are Jews or people of Jewish heritage, who have a distinguished personal history of combatting and confronting racism and anti-Semitism. Like Jackie Walker, the vice-chair of Momentum, amongst too many others.
Reading this, I got the impression that Binyamin Netanyahu and his fellow nationalist extremists in the Likud party and the other members of the governing right-wing coalition had also read this research, and drawn the wrong conclusions. While Charny and his academic colleagues were dismayed by these results, Netanyahu and his stormtroopers were delighted, and drew the wrong conclusions. Charny and the other authors collected in the above book were concerned to place the Holocaust in its context as one genocide amongst so many others, and wish to make people aware of genocide and concerned to oppose and prevent it, no matter wherever and against whomever it may occur. Netanyahu and his colleagues have found that, despite the experience of the Holocaust, a sizable proportion of the Israeli population were prepared to tolerate the massacre and ethnic cleansing of the country’s indigenous Arabs.
It also shows why the Neocons and Likudniks are so keen to insist that the Holocaust is a unique event, and should not be coupled with concern for other victims of genocides, as has been done by most mainstream Jewish organisations. And why, despite its claim to include other victims of genocide, in fact the focus in Holocaust Memorial Day is very much on the Jewish experience to the exclusion of other groups.
Jackie Walker was quite right to question that exclusive focus. If we allow it to go ahead, and do not rightly commemorate the victims of other crimes against humanity, then we do run the risk, as she stated very clearly in her explanation of the previous set of remarks that led to her libelling as an anti-Semite, of creating a hierarchy of suffering which ignores the pain of other races and groups. And which could perilously lead to complacency about such other crimes, particularly those against the Palestinians, which the Israel lobby are very keen to deny, or rebut through accusing their critics of being anti-Semitic.
We very much need not just to commemorate the victims of the Shoah, but all the victims of genocide. And perhaps it’s time to ask another awkward, embarrassing question: the Palestinians have been the victims of ethnic cleansing for decades. Isn’t it about time their suffering was officially memorialised in Holocaust Memorial Day?
Mike’s put up a number of excellent articles today commenting on some of the truly horrendous policies now coming out of the Tories. These include Jeremy Hunt’s continuing campaign to destroy the NHS, the Beeb’s report that they and the thinktank, The Institute of Fiscal Studies, now want to stab the pensioners in the back over benefits, and May’s continuing problems with the EU over Brexit. Not to mention it’s eighty years since the Battle of Cable Street, when Jews and Communists beat the living daylights out of Oswald Mosley and his stormtroopers when he and the rest of his Fascist thugs goose-stepped into London’s east end once too many.
But one of the main stories today has been the decision of Momentum’s steering committee to sack Jackie Walker as vice-chair due to the latest anti-Semitism smears against her. The committee voted seven to three to remove her, commenting that her remarks on the Holocaust Memorial training day were ‘ill-judged and offensive’. They also remark that they also consider her irresponsible, due to her inability to understand the concern her remarks have made. They state that she should have done more herself to explain her comments and to mitigate the upset they have caused. However, they recognise that taken individually, what she has said is not anti-Semitic, and applaud her record as an anti-racist.
Mike asks in the very title of his piece commenting on Mrs Walker’s sacking who was upset. He makes the point that her trust was betrayed by the event’s organisers, the Jewish Labour Movement. She questioned the definition of anti-Semitism the organisers declared they were working from. Her remarks were secretly recorded, and then leaked to the press. This was in a ‘safe space’, in which people were supposed to be able to speak freely on the issues for discussion. He also notes she also questioned why Holocaust Memorial Day was not open to all peoples, who have suffered similar genocides, and questioned the need for such high security for Jewish organisations, such as her daughter’s school. Mike states that in his opinion, the last question has not been satisfactorily answered.
Unfortunately, this incident has had a chilling effect. Two members of the Labour party Mike has been speaking to on Facebook told him that they would not attend any more training days as they could not trust the claim that they were ‘safe spaces’. And Mike himself makes the point that Mrs Walker did not cause the upset she is alleged, as she did not intend her comments to be made public.
Mike goes on to say
In any case, who has said they were upset? Were they genuinely upset or did they have an ulterior motive? This whole situation seems to be a deliberate attack on Ms Walker, to me.
He also asks
Why aren’t we asking the JLM what its intention was in allowing that recording to get out? Why aren’t we accusing that organisation of irresponsibility?
Mike applauds Momentum’s recognition that she hasn’t said anything anti-Semitic, and should not be expelled from the party. But he concludes that they have been talking to the wrong people.
I have to say that I agree with Mike. This whole affairs looks very much like a set-up to trap and discredit Mrs Walker. It’s been done through the connivance of the Blairite’s friends in the Israel Lobby. The event’s organisers, the Jewish Labour Movement, were using a definition of anti-Semitism that deliberately conflates the Jewish people with Zionism. As I have attempted to show over the past few days, that definition is wrong. Many Jews are Zionists, but many others aren’t, and it is not anti-Semitic to oppose either Zionism or simply Israel’s long oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
I can see why Momentum have sacked Jackie Walker. This is the second time the Likudniks of the Israel lobby have attacked her as an anti-Semite, despite the fact that she is Jewish herself. They probably thought she was too great a liability, and that her continued position as Vice-Chair of Momentum would lead to further attacks on her and the organisation. I think they’re probably right on that as well. But sacking her won’t stop the attacks either on Momentum, or Jewish members of the party opposed to Israel or its racist policies. Rather I think the attacks will now be stepped up. Netanyahu’s baying thugs have a scalp, and have tasted success. This will just encourage them to attack others, including, obviously, those in much weaker positions without power, influence, or the ability to answer back.
I am very disappointed that Momentum have caved to the pressure placed on them by such vile people, and call on them to adopt a more robust attitude to responding to the lies and bullying of the Israel lobby against decent, anti-racist women and men, like Mrs Walker. This is a disgrace, and shows how squalid and shabby an organisation the Jewish Labour Movement is, as well as the grotty opportunism of the right-wing media.
In my last blog post, I discussed Mike’s article arguing that the real reason why Jackie Walker has been accused of anti-Semitism again, is not because she is a Jew-hater, but because she is an anti-Zionist Jew, and therefore represented a threat to the Israel lobby and the organisation that set up the Holocaust Memorial Day training event, the Jewish Labour Movement. This defines itself as a Zionist socialist movement, and boasts about its affiliation to the main Zionist organisations.
Mike has received a number of very supportive comments from his Jewish and non-Jewish readers. They also make clear the distinction between Judaism and Zionism. One of those supporting Mike is a gentleman, who has completed an MA in Holocaust Studies, and lost 14 members of his family in the Shoah.
I’ve blogged several times about the opposition to Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians by Jews and liberal Israelis, and the immense courage these people show as they are not only reviled as anti-Semites, but also as ‘self-hating’, and ‘not real Jews’. In a poll conducted a few years ago, a majority of Israelis responded that they believed that Israelis who sided with the Palestinians should be stripped of their civil rights.
In this interview from Democracy Now, the news programme’s anchor, Amy Goodson, talks to Rae Abileah, a young American Jewish woman, who was tackled and physically assaulted when she heckled Binyamin Netanyahu when he made a speech to Congress four years ago in 2012. Abileah is a member of Code Pink, and the daughter of an Israeli father. She states that she travelled to Israel, and saw for herself the oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including the Jews-only roads. She returned to America determined to speak out against it.
Netanyahu was given 29 standing ovations when he spoke to Congress, four more than Barack Obama. Abileah heckled him, shouting demands to end the occupation and persecution. She was wrestled to the ground by members of AIPAC, the American Israel lobbying organisation. This was so violent, that she had to be taken to a hospital to be treated for a shoulder and neck injury.
In the interview she not only discusses the incident, and her motivation in her personal experience of the persecution of the Palestinians, but also about the reluctance to speak out against it in many Jewish communities. She says that there is a ‘culture of fear’ that prevents many Jews from doing as she does. She states that Jews must get beyond the religious narrative, which supports Israel. This is not because she herself is an atheist or anti-religious. She says that she believes that Israel and its policies violate the fundamental tenets of Judaism as written in its sacred texts, and particularly Israel’s mission of tekunah olam, healing the world.
The description of the clip put up by the channel’s owner on YouTube, Ben Silverstein, states
Rae Abileah, a 28-year old Jewish daughter of an Israeli, is a member of Code Pink, a pacifist organization. She told Ynet that she had disrupted another speech by Netanyahu at the Jewish Federations General Assembly in New Orleans in November.
“We are a young generation of Jews who don’t intend to sit by in silence and allow prime ministers who commit crimes against humanity speak,” she said. “As far as we’re concerned he can speak at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.”
Abileah says she used a card procured by a friend to sneak into the House of Representatives. “When Netanyahu began to speak about Israel and democracy a got up to speak against its anti-democratic operations,” she said.
“I yelled, ‘Stop the occupation, stop Israeli war crimes’ and I called out for equal rights for Palestinians.”
Abileah claims that immediately after her protest she was attacked by activists belonging to the Jewish lobby.
“They assaulted me and I fell on the floor. The activists strangled me and beat me. Then I was dragged out by police who arrested me,” she recounted. She claims she sustained injuries to the neck and shoulders which required hospitalization.
After she was released from the hospital she was detained for a few hours by police.
Abileah says she visited Gaza a year ago and witnessed the destruction caused by Operation Cast Lead, afterwards deciding to devote her life to countering “Israel’s war crimes”.
Palestinians face home demolitions leaving tens of thousands homeless. Checkpoints within the West Bank humiliate Palestinians who have to wait for hours. They are not for “security” and are placed between Palestinian cities.
The apartheid wall is a giant concrete wall that dwarfs the Berlin Wall. The wal is not on the border, but 90% of it runs inside the West Bank, separating villages, and destroying homes and Palestinian farmland in the way of its construction
650,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in illegal settlements(colonies) on Palestinian land, destroying Palestinian homes and leaving innocent families and children homeless.
4.7 million Palestinians are classified by the U.N as refugees that were displaced from their homes by Israel.
The Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela as well as other South African leaders have reported that the Israeli apartheid is worse than in South Africa.
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” – Nelson Mandela
Please spread the movement!!!!!!! It worked for South Africa, and it will work to free Palestine from Israeli apartheid.
I’ve had a couple of very fascinating comments to my posts attacking the anti-Semitism smears, whose latest victim is yet against Jackie Walker. One of the pieces I put up about this issue earlier today was from a commenter, NoToLikudExtremism, who argued that the problem isn’t Zionism per se, but Likud and its coalition partners in the Israeli extreme right. They pointed out that Jeremy Corbyn also believes in a two-state solution, and recommends targeting Likud and the racist right for specific attack on this issue, as this would not alienate liberal Israelis and the many Jews, who also support Israel, but not its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Mohandeer has posted a similar comment on my piece announcing the launch of Mike’s book against the anti-Semitism smears. She writes
If you really want to know what’s going on in Israel and how decent Jews there feel about the right wing apartheid parties who promote the apartheid movement visit BT’selem or Mondoweiss and have them subscribe to them and have their publications in your daily In box “Newsfeed”. Jewishness cannot be defined by identifying with Israel only, it is a faith like any other which has it’s traditional basis in the Talmud or Torah and inherited status from ancestral tradition. Jewish Voices for Peace or JVP and J Street discuss the views of US Jews and PSC (Palestinian Solidarity Campaign also has many Jewish representatives as does Ray Hanania of the Arab Daily news (a Palestinian, American Arab and Christian, Hanania’s parents originate from Jerusalem and Bethlehem). The Jewish Forward has come under criticism sometimes but overall it is a decent read because it offers an insight into the daily struggle Jews have in deciding which side of the line they want to come down on, though with a tendancy towards identifying with Israel it is not exclusively pro Israeli at all.
This accusation some of the Zionist wing of JLM are promoting is nothing to do with being Jewish but anti Corbyn and must be recognized as being distinct from being Jewish and being political. The fact that they are using anti Semitism as a basis for their attacks is nothing to do with being Jewish and everything to do with opposition to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and his left wing leaning and those arguments they use to attack Momentum must be seen in the light of what they really are, politically motivated and demeaning Jewishness as a tool in the process. They should be ashamed, but politics is a powerful motivator.
Many of these groups are new to me. I have heard Dr Norman Finkelstein criticise J Street as not being really interested in protecting the Palestinians, but it is a liberal Jewish organisation and clearly, not everyone involved in the issue shares Dr Finkelstein’s opinion of it.
I agree absolutely with Mohandeer’s statement that these accusations against Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and the Labour Left, including his supporters in Moment are politically motivated, and demean Jewish identity.
I have heard of BT’selem. They are an Israeli human rights organisation. One of their leaders recently gave an internet talk on the occupation of the Palestinian territories to a left-wing internet group concerned with the revival of British democracy. Their work in documenting and tackling human rights violations in Israel has been cited by Counterpunch, amongst doubtless other left-wing organisations.
The people in these organisations are immensely courageous, as Likud and their fellow apartheid supporters are trying to marginalise and silence these people as being self-hating, and not real Jews. That’s why I put up the piece from the Majority Report yesterday, in which Sam Seder expertly takes apart that claim by an American Conservative rabbi. A poll carried out in the 1990s in Israel found that a majority of Israelis believed that those Israelis, who supported the Palestinians, should be stripped of their civil rights. I’ve put up several pieces before commenting on the Israelis, including rabbis, who’ve protested and put their lives on the line to prevent the house demolitions in Israel. And in the first years of this century there was a ‘Tea and Cake’ demonstration, jointly held by Israelis and Palestinians, protesting against the inability of their countries’ leaders to find a just and peaceful solution to the conflict.
I am thus very happy to put up here Mohandeer’s very informative comment, and to give these organisations a little bit more publicity in their campaign for peace and justice against Netanyahu and his thugs.
On Thursday I put up a piece commenting on the political motivations behind yet another smear by the Israel lobby against Jackie Walker, the vice-chair of Momentum, at a study day on Holocaust Memorial Day. Mrs Walker was accused of anti-Semitism and insensitivity yet again for challenging the definition of anti-Semitism used by the Jewish Labour Movement, suggesting that the Memorial Day should be open to all the peoples, who have suffered genocide, and questioning the need for high security around Jewish organisations, including schools. In fairness, Holocaust Memorial Day does commemorate the victims of other genocides, but does not do so for events before 1945. This was of concern to Mrs Walker, who, like many Black activists, considers the slave trade and slavery a Holocaust against Black Africans. She rejected the organiser’s definition of Zionism, because it equates Judaism with Zionism, which as I’ve pointed out, is highly questionable. She was previously accused of anti-Semitism several months ago because of a post she put up during a conversation of Facebook criticising Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
I’ve made it very clear that these accusations are cynical, politically-motivated smears. Mrs Walker is the daughter of Black mother, who was a civil rights activist, and a Russian Jewish father. She has dedicated her life to tackling racism and anti-Semitism. It is grotesque that she, and the other victims of the smears, have had their character so slandered and defamed.
I received this interesting comment from NoToLikudExtremism, who argues that a distinction should be made between attacking Zionism and Israel, and the Likud party. They make the point that many Israelis and Jews elsewhere in the world despise Likud, while supporting Israel’s right to exist. He writes
Considering that Corbyn is a declared (two-state) zionist, and that there are many reasonable left zionists around, and that zionism is partially confused (sometimes wilfully) with jewishness and even judaism, attacking zionism is not a wonderful strategy.
The real problem is the far-right extremism of Likud, of people like Netanyahu (and Liebermann). And Likud offends many israelis and jews around the world by trying to identify zionism and even jewishness in general with itself, and therefore that criticizing “Israel” or “zionism” is anti-semitic, that has purchase even if it is a notion rejected by so many israelis and jews around the world.
Attacking the far-right extremism of Likud-style politics means rising above the issues about the connections between zionism and jewishness, any ethnic or religious issues, playing into the hands of the likudniks who have infiltrated even many jewish organizations outside Israel, turning them into party-propaganda platforms.
Attacking Likud-style far-right extremism as Corbyn does is a pure political struggle that can be supported by more than half of israeli and probably a large majority of jews around the world. That should be the priority. Likud is the bigger problem.
NoToLikudExtremism is right in that many Jews and Israelis have taken a stand against Likud and the Israeli extreme right. Rabbis have led protests and laid down in front of the bulldozers against the house demolitions, and the persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. About ten years ago there was a movement amongst young people in Israel against the failure of their country’s leaders to find a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Arabs. They held a ‘Tea and Cake Party’ with their Palestinians friends, to demand symbolically the return of the British to take over the country’s government. Of course, they really wanted no such thing. And much of the problems and conflict in the Middle East today can be traced back to the annexation of the area by the great powers following the First World War, and the way they divided the region for their own imperial benefit, rather than those of its indigenous peoples. They just want to make the point that, however, grotty, squalid and incompetent the British Mandate was, the incompetence and bigotry of the present leaders of Israel and Palestine is worse.
Israel also has two political parties to defend the rights of the Arab minority. One is a purely Arab organisation. The other is open to both Jews and Arabs. There are also Israeli human rights organisations – in particular Beth Tselem, that have criticised the occupation of the West Bank. These Israelis are very courageous, as Likud and its coalition partners have also targeted them for hatred as subversive and anti-Israel. In one opinion poll taken in the 1990s, a significant number of Israelis responded ‘Yes’, to a question asking them if they agreed that their pro-Palestinian fellow countrymen should be deprived of their civil rights.
I think it’s entirely fair to criticise Israel for its historic crimes against the Palestinians, just as it is to criticise other countries, like Britain, for their past atrocities, and make the point that Judaism and Zionism are not synonymous. Though I also recognise that another poll of British Jews found that 75 per cent of them felt that Israel was an important part of their identity. I also understand that according to polls, most American Jews also want there to be a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue. I therefore take this commenter’s point about attacking Netanyahu and Likud, and recognising the opposition to his dreadful administration by many patriotic Israelis, who wish Israelis and Palestinians to co-exist in friendship and peace.
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