I’ve put up many posts about the Ha’avara Agreement between the German Zionists and the Nazis in which Hitler pledged to help German Jews emigrate to Palestine, then under the British Mandate. This was the reality behind the anti-Semitism charge hurled at ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone because he said, quite correctly, that Hitler initially supported Zionism. Hitler did. This is documented, historical fact, and there is an entry about it on the website of the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem in Israel. Hitler was, however, not a Zionist and the Agreement was short lived. But mentioning it at all is an anti-Semitic crime in the eyes of the fanatical defenders of Israel and Zionism. Mike was accused of anti-Semitism simply for publishing a document in support of Livingstone, pointing out that he was, in that instance, historically correct. And I’ve also said countless times that real anti-Semites and Nazis were in favour of giving the Jews their own homeland, not because they supported them, but because they wanted to clear them out of their own countries. Richard Wagner was one of these, urging that the Jews should be resettled in Palestine. Before the Second World War there was also a plan, supported by some British Fascists, to resettle the Jews in a new homeland in Madagascar.
Charles W. Gore, a vicious anti-Semite who fully believed in the blood libel of the Jewish ritual sacrifice of Christian children and an influence on Arnold Leese of the Imperial Fascist League, was one of these. He sent a copy of his unpublished book, The Island of Madagascar as a National State for the Jewish People And Why to Lord Rothschild, who then forwarded it to the Board of Deputies of British Jews. See Thurlow, British Fascist – A History, 1918-1985, p.73.
Perhaps this is another incident in the vile history of anti-Semitism and Nazism that the Campaign for Anti-Semitism will want censored, even though I don’t think either Rothschild nor the Board were impressed?
This should blow a few Zionist minds, ’cause it certainly boggled mine. I found this video on the Rex’s Hanger channel on YouTube. This is about the history of aviation and some of the remarkable planes in it. And it’s about how the Israeli air force started out during the 1948 war against the British and Arabs with a variant of the German Messerschmidt 109 used in the Second World War. This was the Avia S.199. It was created by the Czechoslovaks in the Avia works, which had been used by the Nazis to produce Messerschmidts during the country’s occupation.
Czechoslovakia had a tradition of technical excellence and the Nazis had been particularly keen to control the Skoda works. The country had the strategic advantage of being out of range of allied aircraft, and so some arms production was relocated there. Messerschmidts and Messerschmidt variants were continued to be made under license after the War. Unfortunately the aircraft’s engines were destroyed during a fire, leaving Avia with only the airframes. Faced with scrapping those or trying to salvage something from the wreckage, Avia responded by giving them the only engines they had available, which were for Heinkel bombers. These were too powerful for the planes. There was a marked tendency to veer left, and planes frequently flipped over, so that the ground crew tasked with retrieving them frequently carried long poles with which to flip them back onto their undercarriage. One pilot, demonstrating the aircraft, narrowly avoided colliding with the works’ buildings and surrounding fence when his plane veered towards them while taxiing. He managed to get it to jump the fence to the amazement of onlookers.
When Israel rebelled against the British mandate in 1948, they were desperate to acquire planes. The Americans had a policy of strict neutrality, while the British were supplying the Arabs with surplus Spitfires. The Israelis were forced to turn to the Czechoslovaks, who drove a very hard bargain. The video says that they were charged $144,000 for each aircraft, a piece of massive overpricing when a surplus Spitfire could be had for $6,000. The aircraft also needed to be straightened out and their technical problems solved and the Israeli pilots properly trained. But there was no time. The war broke out before this could be done, and so the planes and their half-trained crew had to go to Israel. Many Israelis were naturally uncomfortable with using planes based on Nazi aircraft, but they really didn’t have any choice. The technical problems continued resulting in poor performance against the Arabs. Two aircraft were lost, probably due to the cowl mounted guns not being properly synchronised with the propellers, so that instead of shooting through them, the pilots shot them off instead. As a result the pilots only used the wing cannons. However, the aircraft began to make headway against the Arabs and bought the Israelis time to get better aircraft, and help turn the tide against the Arabs.
There’s an irony here. Despite the lies of official Israeli history, the Israeli revolt resulted in the massacres of Arab communities up and down Palestine. This included worshippers sheltering in mosques, and women bringing out peace gifts of baskets of rice. Israeli policy towards the country’s indigenous Arabs since then has been one of segregation and ethnic cleansing. But you’re an evil anti-Semite if you dare to mention this, let alone protest against it. Even if, or especially if, you’re Jewish. This is despite one Israeli general rhetorically asking why it should only be the Jews, who suffered genocides.
Under the I.H.R.A. definition, it is anti-Semitic to call a Jew a Nazi. In the normal run of things, I’d say that was right. It is at least grossly tasteless and offensive. But the Israeli state’s policy towards the Arabs, as Tony Greenstein has pointed out, strongly resembles the Nazi persecution of the Jews up to 1942. And I believe it also resembles the Nazi occupation of Poland, Ukraine and Russia, and the Italian Fascist colonisation of Tripolitania.
There is therefor a certain symbolic irony that these comparisons are explicit in the Israeli air forces use of what was basically a Nazi warplane.
Here’s another revolting development, as it would be described by Marvel Comics’ ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing, the idol o’ millions and butt of the Yancey Street gangs’ pranks. On Tuesday Mike reported that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission had decided not to go ahead with an investigation into islamophobia in the Tory party. It considered that this would not be ‘proportionate’ after seeing the Tories’ own plans and terms of reference for its own investigation, which included specific reference to islamophobia.
The Muslim Council of Britain declared that these terms were a ‘facade’ and that the investigation was too narrow compared to Labour’s Chakrabarti investigation into anti-Semitism. They went on to say that the investigation would hide the hundreds of incidents of bigotry in the Tory party, which they had uncovered.
Mike in his article makes the very valid point that it doesn’t matter what the EHRC says about ant-Semitism in the Labour party. It has shown it cannot treat the two parties equally. Indeed, BoJob’s own behaviour provides a prima facie case for investigation. Mike concludes
If the EHRC can’t see that, then no decision it makes about the Labour Party can have any weight at all.
I recommend that it be disbanded and replaced by an organisation staffed by people who can do the job properly.
Of course, Mike’s right. There’s Johnson’s wretched book 72 Virgins, a wish-fulfillment fantasy if ever there was one, about a bike-riding Prime Minister foiling an evil Islamist plot to bomb parliament. This also included racist comments about other ethnic groups as well, including a Black character, who is described as a stupid coon, and a shady Jewish businessman who makes his money by exploiting migrant workers. This nasty anti-Semitic stereotype was accompanied by the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about the Jews controlling the media. And then, of course, there’s Johnson’s vile newspaper column in which he compared women in burqas to bin bags and letter boxes. Despite all the bluster about how he was merely being un-PC and it was an act of free speech, nothing more, Johnson’s rhetoric did lead to a spike in islamophobic assaults, especially against women clad in that way.
Zelo Street and other left-wing bloggers have also put up articles about the numerous supporters of BoJob and Rees-Mogg revealed by the internet activist Jacobsmates, who posted viciously islamophobic and anti-Semitic comments on Twitter. Like the various Conservative politicos Mike and Zelo Street also reported were suspended by the Tories for their islamophobic conduct. In their posts they had declared that Sadiq Khan and other Muslim and ethnic minority politicos, like Diane Abbott, should be killed, ranted about how Muslims were plotting to destroy the country and were responsible for rape and terrorism and supported the old anti-Semitic conspiracy libel that Muslims and non-White immigrants were being imported into Europe and the West by the Jews with the intention of destroying the White race.
And the Equalities and Human Rights Commission is grossly disproportionate itself in the importance it gives to the allegations of anti-Semitism in Labour on the one hand and islamophobia in the Tories in another.
The reality is that there was far less anti-Semitism in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn than in wider British society, and that the vast majority of it comes from the right, and especially the far right. What those screaming about Labour anti-Semitism really objected to was anti-Zionism and support for the Palestinians. This is why Corbyn was viciously denounced as an anti-Semite for attending a speech by a Holocaust survivor, who compared Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians to the Nazis’ persecution of himself and other Jews, while the same witch-hunters had nothing to say about Tweezer and Rachel Reeve singing the praises of Nancy Astor, a real anti-Semite and supporter of Hitler. Part of the motivation for the anti-Semitism smears against Labour was pure partisanship. It was a convenient stick for the Tory establishment, including the Thatcherites within the Labour party, to beat Corbyn and try to oust him or prevent the party from ever coming to power. It didn’t matter whether they were true or not. And western geopolitical interests were involved. Israel is one of the pillars of British Middle Eastern policy, along with Saudi Arabia. Tony Greenstein among other bloggers and activists has put up a number of quotes from British officials showing that it always was regarded as a centre of western influence in the region from the days of the British Mandate in Palestine, comparable to Ulster in Ireland.
The anti-Semitism smears had nothing to do with real anti-Jewish hatred. It was purely about defending Israel and preventing a genuine the formation of a socialist, genuinely Labour government.
The EHRC’s decision not to investigate Tory islamophobia may also be connected to the anti-Muslim prejudices of its leader, Trevor Philips. He is, or was, a member of the Labour party, but was suspended a little while ago by General Secretary Jennie Formby for islamophobia. He had accused Muslims of forming a ‘nation within a nation’ and stated that the members of the Asian grooming gangs, who abused White girls, committed their horrendous crimes because ‘Muslims see the world differently’. He seems to regard Muslims as fundamentally different and Other to the rest of British society, stating that they ‘are not like us’. He also chaired a Tory conference on ‘Challenging Islamophobia’, in which he and several of the others attending even blamed Muslims themselves for the terrorist attacks on the mosques in New Zealand and Finsbury Park. They were, Phillips and the others declared, a natural response to Muslim terrorism. In 2006 Ken Livingstone, then mayor of the London Assembly, accused Phillips, who was chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, as the EHRC then was, of pandering to the right and turning it into a huge press department while at the same time winding down its legal work. Six of the EHRC’s commissioners also resigned in protest at Phillips’ leadership. Phillips has also presented programmes for Channel 4 which accused Blacks of being far more inclined towards criminality than Whites, and that a significant number of British Muslims had terrorist sympathies among other accusations. Both of these were misleading. In fact, the number of British Muslims, who had terrorist sympathies was s1-3 per cent, rather than the nearly quarter that has been claimed.
Tony Greenstein has put up a long piece including several other articles, which extensively discusses Phillips’ islamophobia and shabby career and critiques and demolishes the two programmes he presented. Greenstein states that when he was active in student politics in the 1970s, he came across Phillips politically. It struck him then that Phillips really had nothing to say about racism, and was only using the fact of his colour for political advancement.
And its very noticeable that, as Greenstein describes in the above article, Phillips has received glowing support from a series of notorious racists and islamophobes like Tommy Robinson. Phillips is also another Labour rightist, who has weaponised the anti-Semitism smears for his own benefit. When he was suspended for islamophobia, he claimed that it was really because he had spoken out about Labour anti-Semitism. Which is purest twaddle.
With someone creditably accused of islamophobia himself in charge of the EHRC, it’s not surprising that it has decided not to pursue anti-Muslim prejudice in the Tories.
And this sorry episode also illustrates another point Quentin Letts has made about race relations in this country. In his book, Bog-Standard Britain, the Tory journo argued that there was a racial hierarchy of power and influence amongst ethnic and other minorities. Jews were at, or near the top. Blacks and Muslims were much lower down. I think Muslims may well have been at the bottom.
There’s much truth in this, as Sayeeda Warsi herself has complained that people are able to say things about Muslims with impunity, for which they would be immediately attacked if they said them about Jews.
Tony’s article also reports that Richard Littlejohn, another scummy right-wing hack, has even claimed that Phillips only agreed to chair the EHRC in order to close it down.
Perhaps this would now be the right action to take. Mike’s right in that at present it seems utterly unfit for purpose.
A week or so ago, Zelo Street put up a piece reporting that Audrey White, a Labour activist from Liverpool, had successfully sued the Jewish Chronicle for libel. The paper had smeared her as an anti-Semite, and accused her of a number of things, none of which were true, such as undermining the Jewish Labour MP Louise Ellman. Private Eye have also covered the case in their latest issue, for 6th to 19th March 2020. And that’s interesting, not just for what it says about the case itself, but about the Eye’s own attitude to the anti-Semitism witch hunt, in which the Eye has itself been an enthusiastic participant. The item, in the magazine’s ‘Street of Shame’ column, reads
Whatever the true level of anti-Semitism within the Labour party, there has been no shortage of media interest in the subject. Foremost among publications to have taken up the cudgels against labour over the issue has been the Jewish Chronicle (JC).
Curiously, though, the media appear to have ignored the recent settlement of a libel case involving the JC and Audrey White, a Labour party activist in Liverpool. White successfully complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) that the JC had breached the editors’ code of practice in four articles it published in February and March last year.
The JC alleged that White had actively undermined Louise Ellman, the former Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, who quit the party in October last year. Finding in favour of White, the IPSO ruled the JC articles to be “significantly misleading” and castigated the paper for having resorted to “unacceptable” obstruction during IPSO’s investigation. The JC agreed to apologise to White, and pay her substantial libel damages and costs.
What is a mystery is why the JC didn’t realise its treatment of White, which could be construed as a witch-hunt, was akin to the very type of behaviour in the Labour Party it would rightly condemn.
Firstly, while it’s great the Eye is reporting this when the rest of the media isn’t, it isn’t innocent of pushing the anti-Semitism smears itself. Like the rest of the press and broadcasting, it accepted uncritically the claims of the Zionist Jewish establishment and the Blairites in the Labour party that Labour was a seething cauldron of Jew hatred. In fact, while anti-Semitism unfortunately does exist, it’s at a much lower level than in the parties further to the right. And as left-wing bloggers and Israel-critical Jewish bloggers and activists have pointed out, the vast majority of anti-Semitism comes from the far right. People have written letters to the Eye trying to point this out, but the smears continued. And the Eye’s response to one such letter was to cite Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentum, who certainly believed the allegations. The article begins with a note of doubt about the true extent of anti-Semitism in Labour – you’ll note the phrase ‘Whatever the true level of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party’ – but at the time the magazine made it clear that it had no doubt that the claims were true. This seems more than a bit contradictory, even hypocritical. But then, the election has come and gone, and Boris is in with a huge majority, Corbyn is stepping down as leader and all the candidates for the leadership have signed the Board of Deputies wretched pledges. So the smears aren’t needed any more. But don’t worry, I’m sure that they’ll be revived the moment the Tory establishment gets frightened and the Israel lobby finds it expedient.
And Audrey White isn’t the only person by any means the Jewish Chronicle and others have libeled as anti-Semites. It did it to Mike, along with the Sunset Times, the Depress and the Scum, if I remember correctly, when these rags told the world Mike was an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier. Mike complained to IPSO, and the rags were forced to issue retractions. It was settled before Mike could begin libel proceedings, and so these, ahem, alleged newspapers, were spared the humiliation of a court judgement.
I’ve blogged several times complaining that, while the Eye and the rest of the press must know that the majority of anti-Semitism accusations are false – one Labour insider recently told the Canary or Novara Media that a third of them all came from the same person – the press, including the Eye, has resolutely refused to interview or profile any of the victims. It’s been a true witch hunt in that, like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the mere accusation is taken as proof, an assumption that the Board of Deputies has malignly incorporated into their wretched pledges. No-one in the establishment media has interviewed or defended victims like Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Tony Greenstein, Cyril Chilson, Martin Odoni, Mike, Asa Winstanley or any of the others. That would be going too far, as it would effectively disprove the anti-Semitism smears. And as the left-wing critics of Israel like Greenstein, Odoni, Walker and Winstanley are well able to show that is the Israeli state that is profoundly and aggressively racist, any interview or defence of them would also not only undermine the position of the Israel lobby and the Zionist Jewish establishment, it could also embarrass Britain’s own foreign policy in the Middle East. Greenstein and historians like Ilan Pappe and John Newsinger have shown just how deeply entwined Zionism and Israel have been with British colonial goals since the British Mandate.
As for the Eye’s statement at the end that the Jewish Chronicle would otherwise be against any form of witch hunt, this is the complete opposite of the truth. The Jewish Chronicle has been one of the main instigators of the witch hunt in and against the Labour Party. Possibly the Eye means that it would be against any anti-Semitic witch-hunt, but even this is highly doubtful. Many of the victims – Tony, Jackie, Cyril, Martin and others – are self-respecting, decent Jews. But they’re vilified and smeared as anti-Semitic and self-hating simply because they’re anti-Zionist, or have otherwise criticised Israel. And the abuse they have consequently suffered would be unequivocally condemned as anti-Semitic if it came from gentiles.
And the Jewish Chronicle gives every sign or wishing to continue its persecution. A week or so ago, Tony Greenstein on his blog reported that the Chronicle’s gentile editor, goysplainer Stephen Pollard, had sent one of its contributors, Geoffrey Alderman, a letter giving him the heave-ho. Alderman’s a very respected historian of the British Jewish community, and a true-blue Tory. The letter didn’t explain why Pollard was letting him go, but the reason seems obvious: Alderman committed the unforgivable sin of writing a piece in the Spectator declaring that Corbyn wasn’t an anti-Semite. And this show of integrity against lies and smears couldn’t be tolerated.
It’s very welcome that the Eye has finally decided to report White’s victory against the lies and smears of the Israel lobby. But this is just one incident a long line which the magazine, like the rest of the media, has very conveniently chose to ignore.
But this may well change. Mike is taking the Labour Party to court for breach of contract over the wrongful decision to expel and smear him as an anti-Semite. His case is solid. When I went to court to support him the other month, the judge express surprise that, given the importance of the case, the press wasn’t present.
I don’t doubt it will be there next time. And that will be very embarrassing for those responsible for the smears.
John Newsinger, The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire (London: Bookmarks Publications 2006).
John Newsinger is the senior lecturer in Bath Spa University College’s school of History and Cultural Studies. He’s also a long-time contributor to the conspiracy/ parapolitics magazine Lobster. The book was written nearly a decade and a half ago as a rejoinder to the type of history the Tories would like taught in schools again, and which you see endless recited by the right-wing voices on the web, like ‘the Britisher’, that the British Empire was fundamentally a force for good, spreading peace, prosperity and sound government around the world. The book’s blurb runs
George Bush’s “war on terror” has inspired a forest of books about US imperialism. But what about Britain’s role in the world? The Blood Never Dried challenges the chorus of claims that British Empire was a kinder, gentler force in the world.
George Orwell once wrote that imperialism consists of the policeman and soldier holding the “native” down while the businessman goes through his pockets. But the violence of the empire has also been met by the struggle for freedom, from slaves in Jamaica to the war for independence in Kenya.
John Newsinger sets out to uncover this neglected history of repression and resistance at the heart of the British Empire. He also looks at why the declining British Empire has looked to an alliance with US imperialism. To the boast that “the sun never set on the British Empire”, the Chartist Ernest Jones replied, “And the blood never dried”.
One of the new imperialists to whom Newsinger takes particular exception is the right-wing historian Niall Ferguson. Newsinger begins the book’s introduction by criticising Ferguson’s 2003 book, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, and its successor, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Newsinger views these books as a celebration of imperialism as a duty that the powerful nations owe to their weaker brethren. One of the problem with these apologists for imperialism, he states, is their reluctance to acknowledge the extent that the empires they laud rested on the use of force and the perpetration of atrocities. Ferguson part an idyllic childhood, or part of it, in newly independent Kenya. But nowhere does he mention that the peace and security he enjoyed were created through the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau. He states that imperialism has two dimensions – one with the other, competing imperial powers, which have driven imperial expansion, two World Wars and a Cold War, and cost countless lives. And another with the peoples who are conquered and subjugated. It is this second relationship he is determined to explore. He sums up that relationship in the quote from Orwell’s Burmese Days.
Newsinger goes on to state that
It is the contention here that imperial occupation inevitably involved the use of violence and that, far from this being a glorious affair, it involved considerable brutality against people who were often virtually defenceless.
The 1964 film Zulu is a particular example of the type of imperial history that has been taught for too long. It celebrates the victory of a small group of British soldiers at Rourke’s Drift, but does not mention the mass slaughter of hundreds of Zulus afterwards. This was the reality of imperial warfare, of which Bush’s doctrine of ‘shock and awe’ is just a continuation. He makes the point that during the 19th and 20th centuries the British attacked, shelled and bombed city after city, leaving hundreds of casualties. These bombardments are no longer remembered, a fate exemplified by the Indonesian city of Surabaya, which we shelled in 1945. He contrasts this amnesia with what would have happened instead if it had been British cities attacked and destroyed.
He makes it clear that he is also concerned to celebrate and ‘glorify’ resistance to empire, from the slaves in the Caribbean, Indian rebels in the 1850s, the Irish republicans of the First World War, the Palestinian peasants fighting the British and the Zionist settlers in the 1930s, the Mau Mau in the 1950s and the Iraqi resistance today. He also describes how radicals and socialists in Britain protested in solidarity with these resistance movements. The Stop the War Coalition stands in this honourable tradition, and points to the comment, quoted in the above blurb, by the Chartist and Socialist Ernest Jones in the 1850s. Newsinger states ‘Anti-imperialists today stand in the tradition of Ernest Jones and William Morris, another socialist and fierce critic of the empire – a tradition to be proud of.’
As for the supporters of imperialism, they have to be asked how they would react if other countries had done to us what we did to them, such as Britain’s conduct during the Opium War? He writes
The British Empire, it is argued here, is indefensible, except on the premise that the conquered peoples were somehow lesser being than the British. What British people would regard as crimes if done to them, are somehow justified by supporters of the empire when done to others, indeed were actually done for their own good. This attitude is at the very best implicitly racist, and, of course, often explicitly so.
He also attacks the Labour party for its complicity in imperialism. There have been many individual anti-imperialist members of the Labour party, and although Blair dumped just about everything the Labour party stood for domestically, they were very much in the party’s tradition in their support for imperialism and the Iraq invasion. The Labour party’s supposed anti-imperialist tradition is, he states, a myth invented for the consumption of its members.
He also makes it clear that the book is also concerned with exploring Britain’s subordination to American imperialism. While he has very harsh words for Blair, describing his style as a combination of sincerity and dishonesty, the cabinet as ‘supine’ and Labour MPs as the most contemptible in the party’s history, this subordination isn’t actually his. It is institutional and systemic, and has been practised by both Tory and Labour governments despite early concerns by the British to maintain some kind of parity with the Americans. He then goes on to say that by opposing our own government, we are participating in the global fight against American imperialism. And the struggle against imperialism will go on as long as it and capitalism are with us.
This is controversial stuff. When Labour announced that they wanted to include the British empire in the school history curriculum, Sargon of Gasbag, the man who wrecked UKIP, produced a video attacking it. He claimed that Labour wanted to teach British children to hate themselves. The photo used as the book’s cover is also somewhat controversial, because it’s of a group of demonstrators surrounding the shot where Bernard McGuigan died. McGuigan was one of the 14 peaceful protesters shot dead by British soldiers in Derry/London Derry in Bloody Sunday in 1972. But no matter how controversial some might find it, it is a necessary corrective to the glorification of empire most Brits have been subjected to since childhood, and which the Tories and their corporate backers would like us to return.
The book has the following contents:
The Jamaican Rebellion and the Overthrow of Slavery, with individual sections on the sugar empire, years of revolution, overthrow of slavery, abolition and the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865.
The Irish Famine, the great hunger, evictions, John Mitchel and the famine, 1848 in Ireland, and Irish republicanism.
The Opium Wars, the trade in opium, the First Opium War, the Taiping rebellion and its suppression, the Second Opium War, and the Third Opium War.
The Great Indian Rebellion, 1857-58, the conquest of India, company rule, the rebellion, war and repression. The war at home, and the rebellion’s aftermath.
The Invasion of Egypt, 1882, Khedive Ismail and the bankers, demand for Egyptian self-rule, the Liberal response, the vast numbers of Egyptians killed, the Mahdi’s rebellion in the Sudan, and the reconquest of Egypt.
The Post-War Crisis, 1916-26, the Irish rebellion, 1919 Egyptian revolt, military rule in India, War in Iraq, and the 1925 Chinese revolution.
The Palestine Revolt, Zionism and imperialism, the British Mandate, the road to revolt, the great revolt, and the defeat and aftermath.
Quit India, India and the Labour Party, towards ‘Quit India’, the demand for the British to leave, the final judgement on British rule in India and the end of British rule.
The Suez Invasion: Losing the Middle East, Iranian oil, Egypt and the canal zone, Nasser and the road to war, collusion and invasion, aftermath, the Iraqi endgame.
Crushing the Mau Mau in Kenya, pacification, the Mau Mau revolt, war, repression, independence, the other rebellion: Southern Rhodesia.
Malaya and the Far East, the First Vietnam War, Indonesia 1945-6 – a forgotten intervention, the reoccupation of Malaya, the emergency and confrontation.
Britain and the American Empire, Labour and the American alliance, from Suez to Vietnam, British Gaullism, New Labour, and the Iraq invasion.
Here’s a story from Mike’s blog that, as he points out, you won’t find in the mainstream press. A leading rabbi for the Haredi Jewish organisation, United European Jews, Mayer Weinberger, has written a letter on behalf of his organisation’s Executive Board condemning Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’ attack on Jeremy Corbyn. Not only does Rabbi Weinberger defend Corbyn for his support of the British Jewish community, but actually thanks him.
Mike makes the point that this shouldn’t be too surprising, as the organisation comes from the True Torah Jews, which thoroughly rejects Zionism. True Torah and Haredi Jews believe that the Jewish people should stay in exile until – and only until – the coming of the Messiah. Only he has the divine right to restore the Jewish people to their ancient homeland. Until then they are to remain and, in the words of the Hebrew Bible, ‘pray for the health of the city’. That is, they are to live as members of the nations in which they live, working and praying for their common good.
R. Weinberger writes
I write to you on behalf of the Executive Board of the United European Jews organisation regarding an unusually disturbing declaration that was … reported in the media claiming that the overwhelming majority of British Jews are “gripped by anxiety” at the prospect of a Labour victory in the forthcoming general election.
Please not that we totally reject and condemn in no uncertain terms these remarks, which [do] not represent the views of the mainstream chareidi Jews that live in the UK.
We believe that such assertions are due to propaganda with a political and ideological agenda. An agenda which, I might add, is diametrically opposed to fundamental Jewish values as well as the opinions of tens of thousands of Jews in our community.
At this time, we also relay our gratefulness for your numerous acts of solidarity with the Jewish community over many years and also welcome your assurances that Labour will do everything necessary to defend the Jewish way of life and protect our rights to practise our religion.
For all this, we take this opportunity to say: Thank you! Mr Corbyn.
R. Weinberger is quite right when says that the Chief Rabbi’s remarks are propaganda based on a political and ideological agenda. The Chief Rabbi is a Zionist, as many Chief Rabbis before him have been. He is a friend of Netanyahu and Boris Johnson, and has made comments in the past supporting the bombing of Palestinians.
Mike reminds us in his post about the letter that this should show that R. Mirvis’ claims about the opinion of British Jews towards the Labour leader are not as conclusive as the Chief Rabbi claims.
Many Jews from all walks of life and all shades of religious opinion – from secular people to members of the clergy – have written or taken to social media to express their support for Jeremy Corbyn. Earlier today Mike put up a piece on his blog about the messages of support for Corbyn and anger and condemnation Jewish Labour supporters had posted against Chief Rabbi Mirvis’ comments.
And it is a mistake to assume that the Jews have a monolithic cultural or religious identity. The Talmud is full of the debates between the great rabbis of the past regarding the interpretation of Scripture and the Law. Even minority opinions are preserved, and many of these accounts end with no conclusion having been reached. The text simply says, ‘And so they disagreed’. And I think the Jewish people also see themselves as being particularly disputatious. There’s a Jewish saying, ‘Two Jews, three opinions’. I got the impression that debate is a vital part of the teaching at the yeshivas, the rabbinical colleges, so that the students can properly learn how to interpret scripture and form correct, reasonable opinions on its observance. The I stated in its coverage of Mirvis’ comments that he represents the United Synagogue, which they claimed was the largest Jewish denomination in Britain. That may be so, but the Jewish community also includes secular Jews, who obviously aren’t represented because they don’t attend synagogue, nor Orthodox Jews. And even within the United Synagogue you can wonder how many people he really speaks for. As Tony Greenstein and other Jewish critics have pointed out in their rebuttals to the Board of Deputies’ attacks on Corbyn, not all synagogues allow women to vote or stand for election as deputies, and some haven’t changed their deputies for years. Which means that even here, Mirvis may only be speaking for a Zionist, Tory clique.
However, the British media is determined not to show Jewish support for Corbyn and the Labour party. Some of the newspapers, including supposedly left-wing journals like the Observer, have refused to publish letters from Corbyn’s Jewish supporters. There is also a similar reluctance to cover anti-Zionist, or Israel-critical Jewish opinion generally. A few years ago I put up a video on this blog of a public meeting in New York of ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist Jews. I believe they were members of ‘True Torah’. The video claimed there were 30,000 people there. I don’t know if that’s true, but it was very clear that there were very many and the meeting was huge. But it received no press or media coverage, from what the video said.
I believe this also points to one of the underlying reasons why the British and American political and media establishments have been so keen to smear Corbyn on this side of the Atlantic as an anti-Semites, and left-wing Democrats, including supporters and staffers working for Bernie Sanders. Who is himself Jewish. It is not simply a profoundly Conservative establishment trying to discredit left-wing threats to its continued dominance. It is not only because of the power of the Israel lobby in our two countries. I think it is also because Israel has played a vital part in Western great power policy in the Middle East since the days of the British Mandate. Geopolitical considerations demand that Britain supports Israel in the Middle East as a way of maintaining power and influence in the region.
And to the supporters of this policy, Corbyn is a real threat. Not because he wants the destruction of Israel, but simply because he wants an end to Israeli apartheid and a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians. A policy supported by many Jews, who feel that to be Jewish means always identifying with the oppressed, never the oppressor.
And that means making sure that the Jewish voices supporting Labour must not be allowed real coverage by our Tory press and media.
I found this description of the apartheid and maltreatment inflicted on the Palestinian Arabs by the Zionist settlers in History of the World: The Last Five Hundred Years, general editor Esmond Wright (Feltham: Hamlyn/W.H. Smith 1984), page 629.
The most serious long-term problem bequeathed by Britain’s devious wartime diplomacy in the Middle East arose from its promise to the Jews. The terms of Britain’s mandate in Palestine made it responsible for putting this promise into effect by the establishment in Palestine of a ‘national home from the Jewish people.’ The Arabs, who made up more than ninety percent of the Palestinian population, were at once assured by Britain that the Jewish national home would not become a Jewish national state and that their ‘civil and religious rights’ would be respected. A national state, however, was precisely what the Zionist movement (which was responsible for the idea of a ‘national home’ in Palestine) intended to achieve – a state which, in the words of Dr. Weizmann, its leader, would be ‘as Jewish and England is English’.
As a first step towards this goal, Zionists insisted on the strict separation of Arab and Jewish communities. Jewish parents refused to send their children to mixed government schools. Arab tenants and farm workers were evicted from all land bought by the Jewish National Fund. David Ben-Gurion, later the first prime minister of the state of Israel, organised a series of strikes against Jewish employers of Arab labour. The Jewish Agency, which coordinated Jewish settlement in Palestine, sought, with some success, to make itself a state within a state. Until the First World War the Arabs had been the only people living in contact with the Jews who had never persecuted them. The birth of Arab anti-Semitism between the wars was the work not of Adolf Hitler but of the Zionists.
This last statement has to be revised somewhat, as the Nazis sought to exploit Arab resentment against the Zionist settler through the creation of a vicious conspiracy theory tailored towards Islam similar to their own monstrous delusions about the Jews being responsible for the exploitation and enslavement of White Aryans. In their spurious history, the Jews had been conspiring against Islam and the Arab people since the days of Mohammed. It’s completely bogus, but because of the establishment of the state of Israel and its seven-decades long persecution of its indigenous Arabs, has understandably become widespread in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
This page also mentions the way the British tried to contain some of the pressures by limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine by imposing a quota and turning away emigrant boats. This meant returning Jews fleeing Nazi persecution back to their deaths in Germany and occupied Europe. Apparently the policy was to take any illegal prospective settlers to Jerusalem, so they could see it, before returning them to their boats and sending them away. I’ve known elderly members of my church, who were young sailors in the British navy at this time, and they very much did not like what they had been ordered in turn to do to the Jewish immigrants. And in particular this was the use of tear gas against refugees from the Nazi gas chambers. This left them very upset as they spoke about it nearly seventy or so years later.
This whole, shabby affair is another blot on the history of the British Empire.
But the Zionist lobby automatically smears and reviles anyone, who suggests that Israel is an apartheid, racist state which persecutes the Arabs as anti-Semitic. So I’ll guess they’re going to have to smear W.H. Smith now, for what they rightly published back in the 1980s.
This is a very short video from the Iranian state news service, Press TV. It’s about a couple of minutes long. It was put up on the 2nd of November 2017, just a couple of weeks ago, and reports the call by the Palestinian authority for Britain to apologise for the Balfour Declaration, and recognise an independent Palestinian state.
It was the Balfour Declaration that pledged Britain to support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine ‘without prejudice to the Arabs’. This part of the Declaration was soon broken, and while Britain tried to give at least the appearance that it was maintaining an even hand between the Jewish settlers and indigenous Arabs, in fact it favoured the European Jewish colonialists.
In fact the British government has refused to apologise for the Declaration, and said that it was ‘proud of it’. This little bit is accompanied by everyone’s favourite braggart, Old Etonian, and lethally incompetent ego maniac, Boris Johnson. He’s shown chuntering away, but it’s silent so normal folks don’t have to put up with his god-awful braying, blustering voice.
The clip also includes a brief interview with Richard Silverstein in Seattle, who notes how the Declaration led to the disinheritance of the Palestinians, and describes the recognition of an independent Palestine as ‘a no-brainer’. He believes that the importance of the Balfour Declaration was overstated, and says that there isn’t much of a case for paying reparations to the Palestinians, as Britain didn’t pay the Israelis for what they had suffered under the Mandate either. He also puts Palestine into the wider context of colonial politics and oppression, saying that Britain treated the Arabs in Palestine the same way it treated its other colonial possessions in India, across the Middle East and Africa.
Political and Corporate Corruption in Iran
I’ve previously refrained from putting material up from Press TV, because I heartily despise the Iranian government. It’s an extremely authoritarian state, which oppresses ordinary working people and its constituent ethnic minorities for the benefit of the mullah-merchant princes. These are members of the ulema, who also have extensive links to the merchants of Tehran bazaar and their own business interests. There’s a special term in Farsi, the ancient language of Persia, for the merchant-mullahs, and the ulema currently running the country definitely don’t like. I think they had the last journo or political dissident jailed for using it. There is also a massive underground Christian church in Iran, which, unlike its Chinese counterpart, is very much unknown in the West. It’s very heavily persecuted, contrary to various Hadith and passages in the Qu’ran, where Islam’s Prophet states that ‘there should be no compulsion in religion’. And I shall blog about that little injustice further, as it says as much about the cynical use of religion by the American military-industrial complex to advance their interests.
Iran Diverse and More Tolerant than Expected
I am also very much aware of the bloodcurdling nature of the Iranian rhetoric about Israel, and how former president Ahmedinejad’s speeches have been very plausibly interpreted as advocating the complete destruction of the state of Israel. However, Iran’s remaining Jewish community is quite well treated. I also understand that the country’s ancient Zoroastrian community, who were the country’s official religion under the Persian Empire, is also tolerated and respected. About three per cent of the Iranian population are Armenian Christians, who historically took refuge in Iran to escape persecution elsewhere in the Middle East.
It’s a very diverse country ethnically. Only 51 per cent of the country speaks the official language, Farsi. Other ethnic groups include Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Reshtchis and various tribes speaking languages related to Turkish. The Iranians I’ve met have been very relaxed and matter of fact about the different religious monuments and places of worship that are scattered across their ancient nation. I was asked a few years ago by a Shi’a Muslim Iranian friend if I’d ever seen the Christian churches, that had been built around the Black Sea. There is an Anglican church, whose membership is composed of indigenous Iranians in Tehran, and I personally know people, who have been sent Christmas by Muslim friends, which they purchased in this church.
In short, whatever I think of the mullocracy, the country itself has always struck me as modern, tolerant and cultured. The last should come as no surprise. This is the nation that produced the great poets Firdowsi, who composed the epic history of the Iranian nation, the Shah-Name, and Saadi. Looking through the library, I found an English translation of the latter illustrated by none other than Private Eye’s Willie Rushton. Iran’s government are not its people.
The Balfour Declaration against Wishes Diaspora Jews
But I’ve decided to reblog this piece, because what it has to say about the Balfour Declaration is important. With the Declaration, Britain gave away land, which was not ours to give, and which we had absolutely no right to give away. I’ve already blogged about the way the majority of Britain’s Jewish community at the time were dead against the Declaration. They had absolutely no wish to move once again to another foreign country. They wanted to be accepted for what they were – Brits, like everyone else. The only difference is that they were of a different religion, Judaism.
I’ve also read the same thing about Hungarian Jewry, in a book I borrowed on the history of Judaism a couple of decades ago from one of my aunts. The book’s author, if I recall correctly, was a Christian priest, who admired the Jews and hated anti-Semitism. It stated there that most Hungarian Jews in the late 19th and early 20th century considered themselves ‘Magyars of the Israelitish religion’. You can see that by the way Stephen Fry talks about his Jewish grandfather. He was a Hungarian Jew, but Fry always talks about him as a ‘Magyar’ – the ethnic Hungarians’ term for themselves. Georgy Ligeti, the avant-garde composer, whose weird pieces Lux Aeterna and Atmospheres formed part of the sound track to Stanley Kubrick’s epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, is also of Hungarian Jewish heritage. He has said in an interview that his family’s surname was originally something very German or Yiddish, but that they changed it to a Hungarian equivalent out of patriotism and national pride. Which disproves so much of that awful, vile bilge Viktor Orban and his wretched Fidesz party are either claiming or insinuating about the country’s remaining Jewish population.
And I’ve blogged before about how Tony Greenstein, one of Zionism’s greatest critics, has pointed out that the Yiddish-speaking Jewish masses in pre-War Poland supported the Socialist Bund, and wanted to be accepted as equal citizens with the same rights as their gentile Polish compatriots. Britain’s Jews were not isolated in wishing to remain in their ancestral European countries. They were part of the mainstream. A mainstream that the Israel lobby in the Tories, the mainstream media, and spurious anti-racism groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the squalid, malicious libellers of the Jewish Labour Movement in the Labour Party, are desperately trying to conceal and obscure. Heaven forfend if you try to mention this, or that the Zionists occasionally collaborated with Nazis and their fellow-travellers to persecute diaspora Jewry. They get terribly upset and start ranting that you’re an anti-Semite.
Suppression of Alternative Media by Western Neoliberal Elite
I also reblogged this because it was from Press TV. I despise the Iranian government, but I also heartily despise the way the American political-military-industrial caste is now trying to suppress alternative news sources. This means going after RT, because, er, they actually do their job as journos and cover issues like racism, growing poverty, the crimes of empire and the exploitative nature of capitalism. And so they’ve created another Red Scare, in which RT is the secret hand of Vladimir Putin corrupting American politics. And the Tories over here are doing exactly the same.
The Censorship of Alex Salmond by the Beeb
Alex Salmond now has his own show on RT in Britain. I can’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t, and at least one good reason why he should: the Beeb heavily censored and deliberately misquoted and then edited out his own words at the Scots independence referendum t’other year. Nick ‘Macclesfield Goebbels’ Robinson asked Salmond if he was worried that the big financial houses would leave Edinburgh for London if Scotland got its independence. Salmond gave him a full answer, stating that he was not worried, and was confident that this would not happen. He quoted various sources from within the financial sector.
Oops! Salmond wasn’t supposed to do that. So over the course of the day, the footage was carefully edited down so that it first appeared that Salmond gave only a cursory reply without much substance. Then it was edited out completely, and ‘Goebbels’ Robinson blithely told the camera that Salmond had not answered his question.
Which was a sheer, blatant, unashamed lie.
Apart from this, Salmond as the former leader of the Scots Nats is in a particularly good position to take up a job for RT. Scotland has always had particularly strong links with Russia. I can remember attending an academic seminar on this when I was hoping to do a degree in Russian at one of the unis in Birmingham. That went by ’cause I didn’t get the grades. I can also remember being told by an aunt, whose husband was Scottish, and who had very pro-Soviet opinions, that the Russians were particularly keen on the works of Rabbie Burns. It was part of the curriculum when they learned English.
This has not stopped Theresa May urging Salmond not to take up the job. Which just follows all the Tories, like Boris Johnson’s equally demented father, who criticised the Labour party because some of their MPs and activists appeared on RT. While conveniently ignoring the various Tories, who had.
So more hypocrisy and scaremongering. No change, there then!
Galloway and Press TV
George Galloway also has, or had, his own show in Press TV, and is an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights. I’ve been wary about him ever since he launched the Respect party, and the way the media monstered him when he saluted Saddam Hussein for his indefatigueability. But I’ve developed a considerable respect for him since then, because so much of what I’ve heard him say about the neoliberal elites and their warmongering attempts to start a conflict with Russia is absolutely correct.
The Anti-Muslim Right and al-Jazeera
The Republicans in America and the anti-Islamic right also hated Al-Jazeera. The Qatar-based broadcaster is supposed to be another source of evil propaganda and disinformation, this time covering for ‘radical Islam’. I think this might be because Al-Jazeera, like RT and Press TV, are showing us in the West what we are doing in the Middle East. Like the hundreds of thousands our bombs are killing, and the millions, who are being thrown out of their homes and forced into refugee camps and exile. The masses, who don’t have food, water, electricity and medical care, because the secular welfare states that have provided this have been destroyed in pursuit of big profits by the multinationals. Just like their people are being persecuted and butchered by sectarian killers, and their women and children enslaved by those savages in ISIS as Daesh tries to roll back the gains they have made. And yes, there has been a Muslim Feminist movement. Just like there has been one in Christianity and Judaism. But you count on Tommy Robinson and the English Defence League not to tell you that. Just as you can count on ISIS, with the backing of the Saudis, in trying to destroy it. Or at least leave it severely restricted.
The War on Domestic Alternative News
And once the elite have finished with the alternative news networks, they’ll try and finish off domestic American and British alternative news sources. Like The Young Turks, the Jimmy Dore Show, the David Pakman Show, Sam Seder’s Minority Report and Democracy Now! in the US. As well as the alternative, left-wing bloggers and vloggers, Google and Facebook are trying to marginalise as ‘fake news’. They’ve even developed algorithms to take traffic away from these sites. I’ve a very strong suspicious Mike’s been hit with it over here, as have several other bloggers. If I remember correctly, they’ve even tried to censor Tom Pride of Pride’s Purge, claiming he wasn’t suitable for children as his material was ‘adult’. It was, but only in the sense that you had to be a mature adult, who actually thought about the issues, to read it.
And once the people at the margins are suppressed, the elite are going to go for the mainstream.
And all we can expect from the mainstream broadcasters is more propaganda denying the reality of poverty, of climate change, of the misery created by the destruction of the welfare, the privatisation of the NHS over here and the refusal to implement single-payer in America, and the sheer, catastrophic lies about how climate change isn’t really occurring.
And as the media gets censored, the brutality of the police and the military will get worse. Black Lives Matter has raised the issue of the cavalier way some cops kill Blacks for the slightest of reasons. But recent arrests and brutalisation of White protesters have also demonstrated that this casual thuggery is also moving towards the White population as well. Counterpunch a few weeks ago put up a piece about a secret US forces report, which predicted that in the next couple of decades, US policing would become more militarised. The army would be used to quell the riots and disturbance that would break out thanks to poverty and increased racial friction.
Orwell’s going to be proved right. In 1984 he asks what the future will be like. The chilling, famous reply is: a jackboot stamping on a human face. Forever.
Without any alternative media to protest, because they’re all in jail or hiding on trumped up charges of treason.
Instead, we’re going to be treated to the lies of shills and hacks like ‘Goebbels’ Robinson and ‘Arnalda Mussolini’ Kuenssberg. And fed racist, Tory drivel by the Murdoch media, the Weirdo Barclay Twins and Paul Dacre.
Well, not the real Sargon of Akkad, one of the great founders of Assyrian civilisation in ancient Mesopotamia, obviously. He’s been dead for about 3,000 years.
No, this Sargon of Akkad is a British vlogger from Swindon, real name Carl Benjamin, who was a major figure in the internet sceptics’ movement. Unfortunately, he moved from simply vlogging on subjects like atheism and scepticism, to becoming a mouthpiece for all manner of extreme right-wing views. I have a feeling he’s one of those people, who consider themselves politically moderate, while pushing all manner of racist, misogynist and generally politically extremely illiberal bilge. I think he’s turned up recently to at least one Alt Right or manospherian conferences.
In this very short little video, Kevin Logan calls him out for his defence of some truly astonishingly horrific comments by another right-wing blogger, Mouthy Buddha. Mouthy Buddha claimed that Hitler was very lenient with the Jews in the Holocaust, and ‘was a decent man’. And, oh yes, that the Jews got what they wanted after the war – a Jewish homeland – because of the Shoah.
Sargon goes on to say that Mouthy Buddha ‘did nothing wrong’ and that he was ‘steel-manning’ the argument for the Holocaust. Ominously, he goes on to say that he intends to do a series on ‘the Jewish question’.
Logan has responded by intercutting Sargon’s comments with footage from Mouthy Buddha himself, and a film clip of a bloke on a train saying exactly what these views about the Holocaust are: ‘Bullsh*t’.
He ends by putting up in front of Sargon’s face the words ‘You F***ing Pr*ck!’
Sorry for the language, peeps, but I think that the obscenity is entirely justified in the context of rebutting an obscene view. And the attitude that Hitler was somehow humane in his maltreatment of the Jews is far more obscene than any foul language or profanity.
The ‘steel-manning’ Sargon refers to is supposedly a rhetorical device in which one tries to undermine one’s opponent’s argument by putting in even stronger terms, as opposed to ‘straw-manning’, which is deliberately misstating it in far weaker terms. I hadn’t heard of ‘steel-manning’ before, and I don’t think many other people have either. One of the commenters on Logan’s video on YouTube states that it was thunk up by an internet group, and isn’t recognised by professional philosophers and scholars of logic and rhetoric.
There was nothing humane or restrained about the Nazis’ brutalisation of the Jews. Nothing at all. And the evidence for their extreme cruelty is so widespread and well-known that it isn’t necessary to provide any sources for it. All you have to do is go and look at any of the books on the Third Reich or the Holocaust by a mainstream publisher to see for yourself how horrific the Holocaust was.
As for the ‘Jews’ getting what they wanted from the Holocaust in the foundation of Israel as an independent state three years after Nazi Germany’s defeat, in 1948, it’s true that some Zionist groups and organisations were certainly more than happy to collaborate with the Nazis in the hope of creating further Jewish emigration to Palestine, such as during the brief Ha’avara agreement and the Sterngang. That’s established historical fact. It’s acknowledge by Zionist historians, like David Cesarani. It is only apparently denied by some Zionist groups, who attempt to defend themselves from the charge of collaboration by smearing those, who raise the issue of ‘anti-Semites’.
However, the Zionists were only one section of the Jewish community. The vast majority of Jews wanted to remain in the countries of their birth, as fellow citizens with the same rights and privileges as their gentile fellow countrymen. And they fought hard and bitterly against the Nazis and the other Fascist, anti-Semitic regimes. Those Zionists, who collaborated with the Nazis are entirely unrepresentative of the Jewish people as a whole. This has been pointed out again and again by anti-Zionists, including self-respecting Jewish scholars and activists like Tony Greenstein.
But Israel as a settler colony for European Jews was founded before the Holocaust, after Britain obtained control of Palestine during the period of the Mandate granted by the League of Nations. The followed the Balfour Declaration, in which the British Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, pledged that the British Empire would support a Jewish state in the area.
So Mouthy Buddha’s very, very wrong there. Norman Finkelstein and other anti-Zionist writers have pointed out how the Holocaust has been exploited by Israel and its supporters to garner international support, and that, quite understandably, Jewish emigration to Palestine did increase after the War. But reputable historians have also pointed out that during the War comparatively few Jews went to Palestine. The majority fled elsewhere, particularly to America.
As for writing blog posts about ‘the Jewish Question’, there is no question at all about the Holocaust. I’ve already blogged about how an American judge in California officially ruled that the evidence for the Holocaust was so plentiful that it could not reasonably be doubted. The same should go for the brutality of the Nazis and their collaborators, who instituted and conducted it.
It is, however, entirely fair and reasonable to discuss the historical complicity of various Zionist groups and individual Zionists, who hoped to exploit Nazi and anti-Semitic persecution generally to support their political goals of an independent Jewish homeland in Palestine, but this is very different from claiming that the Jews as a whole were somehow complicit in their own persecution. And it is this latter claim Mouthy Buddha has apparently made here, and it can rightly be attacked as anti-Semitic.
I am absolutely astonished that anyone outside of the various Nazi groups and their own twisted, ahistorical worldview, could ever make those comments, and if they were intended as a rhetorical tactic, it was certainly a poor one. Not least because of the way such comments and will be used by the extreme Right to encourage support. But that’s if Mouthy Buddha’s remarks were simply a piece of ill-judged rhetoric as Sargon says. But from the looks of it, it doesn’t seem that it was. Either way, Sargon is wrong about Mouthy Buddha having done nothing wrong. His comments were abhorrent and dangerous, and he should never have made them. The Alt Right have risen to prominence through their use of the internet. They and their vile views should be attacked and refuted at every turn, not given more ammunition to assault democracy and decency.
On Wednesday Counterpunch published a very interesting article by Jonathan Cook about the way Israel’s attempts to promote its image to Jewish American youngsters, and encourage them to settle there, is backfiring spectacularly. He discusses the various books that have been written to deny the very existence in history of the Palestinians and their connection with the land. These included the book, From Time Immemorial, which claimed that the Palestinians were recent immigrants from the Ottoman Empire. Norman Finkelstein, one of the great Jewish American critics of Zionism and Israel, tore that one to shreds when he was a doctoral student.
Now Brand Israel, an Israeli PR group, has found that many young people taking up the heritage tours offered by Israel to American Jews have taken the opportunity to make their own, unscheduled and decidedly unapproved tours of the occupied West Bank. And they are very definitely not impressed with what they’ve seen of the Israeli treatment of the indigenous population.
Cook writes
One can understand why making the Palestinians invisible is the tactic of choice for Israel’s supporters. But a new report suggests that it would be wise for them to keep Israel in the shadows too.
The Brand Israel Group found that the more US college students knew about Israel, the less they liked it. In the six years to 2016, support for Israel among the next generation of Jewish leaders dropped precipitously, by 27 percentage points.
Traditionally, Israel has nurtured bonds to overseas Jews. Over the past 20 years the Birthright programme has brought half a million young American Jews on free summer trips to Israel for an intensive course of indoctrination.
The students are supposed to leave fervent ambassadors for Israel – or better still, devotees who will immigrate to help in a demographic war against the Palestinians.
But organisers are aware that a growing number sneak off afterwards into the occupied territories to discover first-hand a history their elders have kept from them. It can have a profound effect. Many get involved in protests in the occupied territories or become leaders of boycott activism against Israel on campuses back home.
He also notes that when Israel passed a resolution saying that those who supported the Boycott movement against Israel wouldn’t be allowed in, hundreds of youngsters due to go on an upcoming Birthright tour signed a petition asking if that included them.
Cook also discusses the Sumud Freedom Camp, a joint project in the West Bank between anti-racist Israelis, foreign Jews and the Palestinians, to protest nonviolently against Israel’s maltreatment of the Palestinians. The camp has been repeatedly torn down by the Israeli armed forces, and this has further reinforced the negative opinion the Jews working at the camp have of the Israeli military. One American Jewish woman wrote a piece in the Israeli media about how her experience with the armed forces had shown her that they weren’t superheroes who’d protect her from harm.
Cook concludes
Increasingly, American Jewry is becoming polarised, between an older generation whose ignorance allows them to advocate unthinkingly for Israel and a young generation whose greater knowledge has brought with it a sense of responsibility. In an ever-more globalised world, this trend is going to intensify.
Young American Jews will have to choose. Will they conspire, if only through their silence, in the erasure of the Palestinians carried out by Israel in their name? Or will they stand and fight, in the occupied territories, on campus, in their communities and, soon enough, in the corridors of power in Washington?
Norman Finkelstein has also predicted that the links between American Jews and Israel will gradually wither away. He and other Jewish critics of Zionism have pointed out that Israel only became important to American Jews, and was only supported by American Conservatives, after it successfully fought of the Arabs during the Six Day War. Before then, Israel was very much peripheral to American Jewish concerns.
Tony Greenstein, whose blog regularly tears into racists, Zionists, Fascists and Conservatives, also covered this issue. He wrote
It’s an ill wind that blows no good. Despite the adoption of the new fake definition of anti-Semitism and the attempt to depict anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic, the truth has a way of getting through. The American Jewish community is the most valuable to Israel, since it does its diplomatic bidding as well as helping to fund the pariah state.
What a surprise it must therefore be to Israel’s veteran propagandists, the Hasbarists who cry ‘anti-Semitism’ at the drop of a hat, that young American Jews no longer feel an affinity with Zionism and Israel’s racial nationalism. Settling other people’s land, seeing the vast disparity between poor Palestinian peasants and the rich and lush settlements isn’t a winner amongst progressive young Jews.
The far-Right messianism that believes in a racially pure Israel and building a 3rd temple as the way to encourage the return of the Messiah doesn’t hold too much attraction to secular Jewish kids.
The alliance with the anti-Semitic Christian fundamentalists like Pastor John Hagee of Christian United for Israel isn’t a vote winner either.
As for the Israeli armed forces not being the gallant heroes ready to defend Jews the world over against oppression and genocide, Mr Greenstein has published very many articles on his blog showing that Zionists have many times shown themselves to be completely indifferent to Jewish suffering, unless the Jews being victimised are prepared to immigrate to Israel. In one essay on the heroic resistance against the Nazis of the Warsaw Uprising, he stated that most of the real resistance was done by the Jewish Socialist party and groups, who wished to defend the right of ordinary, working class, Yiddish-speaking Jews to live in what they saw as their historic homeland, Poland. This pieces is particularly interesting, as he quotes one of the heroes of the Uprising, Marek Edelman, who took over its leadership. Edelman’s part in the resistance against the Nazis has been downplayed, because he wasn’t impressed with the way Israel treats the Palestinians and said so. A few years ago he stated that the Palestinian Intifada showed the same spirit as the fighters in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw.
It’s not hard to see how that might upset patriotic Zionists like Netanyahu’s crew.
Moreover, the early European Jewish colonists in Palestine were quite prepared to use deadly force against other Jews, if it would serve their ends. In one of his other posts, he describes the destruction of a British transport ship carrying Jewish refugees to Israel by the Zionist authorities during the War. The ship was due to arrive in Israel, but the British authorities in the Mandate decided that they should be taken to Mauritius instead. So the Zionists deliberately targeted and sank the boat, killing its passengers, to show their anger at being denied fresh colonists.
It struck me reading that, and other accounts of the brutality inflicted by the Zionists on non-Zionist Jews, that there is an entire book to be written there. The Israeli lobby has worked hard to make sure that their bogus definition of anti-Semitism, which includes criticism of the state of Israel, is the only one accepted. But as they have vilified and attacked other Jews, who do not share their support for Israel to the point, where many Jews feel that they particularly attack Jewish critics, it could be argued that they are also guilty of what they so frequently accuse genuinely anti-racist critics of Israel.
As for Brand Israel, I suspect that many young people, Jews, gentiles or whatever, would become even more sceptical towards Israel if they found out how the authorities were trying to use PR to raise its image. A certain section of the left, and the public generally, has always been against spin and PR. Way back in the 1990s the American comedian, Bill Hicks, joked about the way the PR industry really couldn’t understand him or people like him. Instead of realising that he was genuinely against the right-wing politics of Reagan’s America, and the power of big corporations, he joked that they really believed that he was trying to tap into some demographic as a sales strategy. That was nearly 30 years ago.
And if anything, people have become more cynical since. One of the reasons why the British public became increasingly hostile to New Labour was because the very high profile it gave to spin and PR, at the expense of actually listening to what the public really wanted. Everything had to be carefully scripted and micro-managed to make sure that people were ‘on message’.
And I dare say something similar has happened in America. It’s why many Americans voted for Trump over Killary, as Trump appeared to be more authentic, and more sympathetic to the needs and fears of ordinary Americans. They were wrong. He wasn’t, and isn’t. And the results are disastrous for the American working and middle classes. But for a moment he appeared different from the crafted spin of an increasingly distant political class, whether Democrat or Republican.
The mass surge in support for Bernie Sanders in America and Jeremy Corbyn here in Britain is partly due to the fact that they are genuine in their desire to improve conditions for ordinary working people. They aren’t the smooth-talking products of spin merchants, desperate to appear to be doing something for the public, but who are really deeply opposed to doing anything that will threaten the neoliberal status quo and alienate their parties’ corporate donors.
I suspect that if more people, who are currently pro-, or just indifferent to Israel, were to find out that the country is deliberately using PR to mould the public’s impressions of the country, and counter negative publicity, like the footage of the Israeli armed forces killing innocent civilians in Gaza, they’d also become sceptical of the country. If only in the sense that they wouldn’t automatically take anything its politicians and spokespeople said for granted.
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