Email Calling for the Labour Party to Speak Up for Palestine

I got this email from Labour and Palestine asking people to sign their call to the Labour party to speak up for the Palestinians against their continued oppression and dispossession by the Israeli state, in stark contravention of international law. The email runs

‘Labour Must Speak up for Palestine – add your name!

UPDATED FOR #PALESTINEDAY 2022: Sign here // Share here // Read our article here // Retweet here

“To be an internationalist and democratic socialist party, it is the responsibility of the Labour Party to speak up for Palestine and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their fundamental rights, including to self-determination.

Recent actions by the Israeli Government have illustrated the continuing nature of Israel’s illegal occupation and the denial of the rights of Palestinian peoples with the use of militarised violence and forced displacements. The attacks on Gaza in August 2022 killed 44 Palestinians, including 15 children, and were described by the UN Special rapporteur as an act contrary to international law. The Israeli army’s killing of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh; the attacks on the Al Aqsa mosque and the outlawing of 7 NGOs who spoke up for Palestinian rights being just some examples.

The seriousness of the situation facing the people of Palestine is confirmed by the fact the International Criminal Court is holding an inquiry into abuses committed in the occupied Palestinian Territories since 2014.

The continuing de facto annexation of Palestinian land by accelerated settlement building alongside statements of Israel’s continuing intention to proceed with annexation, show it is clearer than ever that the Israeli State is intent on eliminating any prospects of Palestinian self-determination, including by trying to annex Jerusalem as its sole capital.

Major reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem have concluded that Israel is practising the crime of apartheid as defined by the UN.

Labour must build on – not step back from – its commitments to immediate recognition of the state of Palestine and an end to the blockade, occupation and settlements as outlined in the 2017 and 2019 manifestos, and in the motions overwhelmingly passed by the Party’s annual conferences in 2018, 2019 and 2021, the last  of which stated “that the Labour Party must stand on the right side of history and abide by these resolutions in its policy, communications and political strategy.”

We must support “effective measures” including sanctions, as called for by Palestinian civil society, against actions by the Israeli state that are illegal according to international law. This must include action to ensure that Israel stops the building of settlements, reverses any annexation, ends the occupation of the West Bank, ceases the blockade of Gaza, brings down the Wall and respects the right of refugees to return to their homes under international law.

We oppose measures designed to stop civil society using non-violent actions, including ethical investment policies, to try to ensure Israel complies with international law.”

* Sign here // Share here // Read our article here // Retweet here‘

I’ve signed it, as it is clearly a matter of simply justice to defend the victims of persecution regardless of the state doing it. I fear that it will probably do little good, as Starmer is ‘100 per cent Zionist’ and backs the Israeli state to the hilt, even employing a former Israeli spook to hunt down the emails and social media posts of people he can smear as anti-Semitic. But if you are a member of the Labour party or a Labour supporter and feel the same way about it I do, please consider signing this as well.

Abby Martin Hears Ordinary Israelis’ Support for Ethnic Cleansing

This is another excellent video from Tele Sur’s Empire Files. In it Abby Martin interviews ordinary Israelis on the street in Jerusalem about the Palestinians and their country. She also talks to Ronnie Barkan, an Israeli human rights activists.

The attitude expressed by these Israelis, many of whom are young people, is that Israel is rightfully theirs by virtue of it being the Jewish homeland 2,000 years ago. The Palestinians have no history there. Some feel that they should be kept separate in their own settlements because they’re a terrorist threat. Others simply feel that they have no place in the Jewish state. Two young women talk about kicking them out in Hebrew, with one telling her friend that she can’t say that. One young man proudly states that he is a member of Lehava, a Jewish organisation set up to discourage mix marriages and interracial romance between Jews and Palestinians.

Several of the speakers claim that the Palestinians are actually well treated. A few deny that they have ever existed historically, and that Palestine was empty before they arrived. They also claim that it is Jews, who have built everything in Israel and improved the land. Israeli should build more settlements and houses for its own people. One young man says that it’s fitting that the Palestinians are suffering because 1,400 years ago it was the Palestinians who threw the Jews out of the country. It wasn’t the Romans. An elderly man believes that the Nazis and the Palestinians were sent to punish the Jewish people for their sins. Some advance the religious justification for Jewish possession of Israel: that God gave it to them. The Palestinians should go back to Iraq or wherever it is they came from. Other people deny that Israel is an apartheid state, with one saying that if you go to Jnin, you won’t see a Jewish face. They also claim that international criticism of Israel and the BDS movement is anti-Semitic, stating that Turkey doesn’t face the same criticism for its settlements in Cyprus and that North Korea, a far worse state, doesn’t experience the same international condemnation. Some state that it is occupation, and that the occupation is good, while others deny that Israel is occupied territory. They argue that it isn’t, because no-one talks about America being occupied because of the English presence in North America. Some people also state that the Palestinians are treated well. They have been given Gaza, and should go back there. And the Israeli state has treated them with restraint. If it were the Russians or Americans, within three days the Palestinians would be gone. One man, who believes the occupation should be more humane, says that he is abuse as a leftist, a terrible insult in Israel, for his views.

They’re all proud of their country, and say that people should come there to see how safe it is, and how well the Palestinians are treated.

Barkan states very clearly that Israel is an apartheid state, not quite like South Africa, but it certainly fits the definition of the crime of apartheid under international law. The debate about Palestinian rights is presented as a complex issue due to Israeli self-delusion. The Israelis see themselves, or want to themselves, as liberal and progressive, and so try to convince themselves that it is far more complex than simply Israelis oppressing Palestinians. Barkan states that everyone is brought up to believe this and to be a fighter in the IDF. He believed it, until he saw through it. He also states that there isn’t a left in Israel. Instead there are left Zionists, and the real debate isn’t about whether the Palestinians should have rights, but about whether they want a large Israel with no Palestinians or a small Israel with no Palestinians. They also hide the reality of the ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1948. Some, however, will admit it, but say it’s a good thing. He also points out that it wasn’t just Palestinian land and property that was seized, but also their culture. The Israeli National Library went around seizing books from vacated Palestinian homes. There is a concerted effort to erase the Palestinians and their culture from history. Barkan certainly doesn’t believe that Israel should be exclusively a Jewish state. It isn’t a Jewish state, except in the same sense that South Africa was a White state: through force. Palestinians rights should be non-negotiable, and the Israeli apartheid system dismantled.

Everyday Israelis Express Support for Genocide to Abby Martin – YouTube

This is shocking, though it’s not surprising that so many Israelis view Palestinians as terrorists or a security threat. It is also unsurprising that so many of them claim that the land is rightfully theirs based on God’s grant of the land to the Abraham and the Jewish people in the Bible. The Zionist pioneers were secular, but as Jewish authors and activists critical of Israel have shown, they have always cited the Bible as the basis of their claim. Some of the views they advance is just Israeli propaganda. It might have been Golda Meir who started the idea that before the Jewish settlers arrived in the 1890s or so the land was vacant and unoccupied – ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’, the slogan goes. This has been long refuted using land records from the Ottoman Empire, so it’s ironic that one of the speakers wonders where the Palestinians were during the centuries of Ottoman occupation. The simple answer is: there. Despite the fact that the Israeli claim has long been disproven, you still hear from American right-wing sites. As for the Diaspora and the Jewish exile, the Palestinians definitely weren’t responsible for that. Jews under Islam were generally better treated and suffered fewer restrictions than in Christian Europe. And you could also argue that the ultimate homeland of the Jewish people is also Iraq. Before he migrated to Canaan, Abraham and his father, Terah, lived in the city of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia.

I don’t believe that all Israelis hold these views. The Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tselem and others have been very critical of the Israeli state’s increasing encroachment on Palestinian land and the dispossession of its people. But it’s clear that such attitudes are widespread. And it is these genocidal views that the British establishment and organisations like the Board of Deputies, Chief Rabbinate, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and celebrities like Rachel Riley and Tracy Ann Oberman are protecting and encouraging when they denounce even the mildest criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. I dare say that some of them may genuinely believe that they are not supporting a form of apartheid, and that the Israeli state is serious about a two-state solution. But Barkan is probably right, and this is just a form a self-delusion.

I don’t doubt that this video is very much the kind of film the Board of Deputies would like to hide, because of the unflattering exposure of the horrendous views of some of the Israeli public. As Peter Oborne’s documentary for Channel 4’s Dispatches on the Israel lobby revealed way back in 2009, the Board tries to silence any critical reporting of Israel and atrocities committed by its armed forces, no matter how factual, objective and impartial, with charges of anti-Semitism and claims that it will cause people to hate Jews. But there are also many ordinary, self-respecting Jews that are deeply critical of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. And we’ve seen in the recent Labour suspensions of Moshe Machover and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, how these thoroughly decent people are being smeared and silenced in order to give the false impression of a united Jewish community four-square behind Israel.

Which is why films like this are necessary. They need to be seen and made to expose the carefully constructed and maintained lies of the Israeli state and the British establishment. And the people genuinely working for a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians, real anti-racist Jews and gentiles, who also fight anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred in Europe and the rest of the world, need to be supported.

Tony Greenstein’s Review of Exhibition and Talks by Pro-Palestinian Arab/Israeli Artist Gil Mualem-Doron

Yesterday Tony Greenstein put up a piece about an art exhibition on the plight of the Palestinians by an Arab/Israeli artist, Dr. Gil Mualem-Doron. Titled ‘Cry the Beloved Country’ after a 1953 article in the Israeli paper Maariv by its editor, Ezriel Karlebach. This compared the new legislation then passed against the Palestinians to the infamous Nuremberg laws the Nazis passed against the Jews. The article took its title in turn from the 1948 book by the South African artist Alan Paton on the rise of that country’s apartheid regime. The exhibition also features a conversation between the Palestinian historian Dr Salman Abu Sitta, Mualem-Doron, Eitan Bronstein Aparicio, the founder of the NGO Zochrot, somebody called Decolonizer and the exhibition’s curator, Ghazaleh Zogheib. It includes photographs of some of the ‘present refugees’ – Palestinians, who fled or were forced off their land during the Nakba of 1948, and who are officially regarded as foreigners in their own country among other photographic and artistic installations. There is also a screening of the film To Gaza and Back Home, by Aparicio and Decolonizer about the Arab village of Ma’in and its destruction. It was due to open on the 2nd April, but this was impossible due to the lockdown. It’s now showing online until sometime in September, probably the 27th, when it will open at the P21 Gallery in London.

Tony’s article quotes the exhibition, which says that

“Cry, the beloved country” is a nightmarish series of room installations and photography works dealing with the links between Great Britain, Israel and Palestine and depicting the catastrophic results of this unholy conundrum.  Built as a journey into “the heart of darkness” the exhibition is intended to negate many Israelis and Zionists supporters’ view of Israel as a “villa in the jungle”.

The photographs include several of an actor dressed in KKK robes, a Jewish prayer shawl and waving an Israeli flag, saluting Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. It was taken in 2017 during the centennial celebrations of the promulgation of the Balfour Doctrine, in which Britain backed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. This was very much against the wishes of the British Jewish community, who did not want their Britishness questioned through the foundation of a state for which they had no loyalty and no desire to live in.

This is obviously an extremely provocative piece. I have no doubt that the very people and organizations, who scream ‘anti-Semitism’ at any criticism of Israel, no matter how reasonable and justified, would go berserk about this. It comes very close to one of the IHRA’s examples of anti-Semitism: the comparison of Jews to Nazis. But it is a reasonable comment on the Israeli state and its present government, composed of Likud and various parties from the Israeli religious right. Groups of settlers do launch attacks on Palestinian villages, like the Klan lynched Blacks in America. Those campaign for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians similarly claim a religious basis for their crimes, just like the Klan claimed to be defending White, Protestant Christians from Jews, Blacks, Roman Catholics and Communists. And Tony himself has shown all too often how the present Israeli government and British Zionist activists have very strong links to the real far right groups. Jonathan Hoffman, who has frequently protested and demonstrated against pro-Palestinian exhibitions and meetings over here, shouting anti-Semitism, has done so in the company of Paul Besser, the former intelligence officer of Britain First, and members of the EDL. The event’s supported by Arts Council England and the Hub Collective. I think they should be commended for supporting such an important exhibition, despite the abuse and demands for cancellation the organizers of similar events receive.

The Israelis were due to begin their annexation of 1/3 of the West Bank today, in blatant contravention of international law. The Likud regime is zealously pursuing its persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians with the active support of right-wing American Christian groups like Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. It does so against the wishes and passionate efforts of very many Jews and Jewish organisations in America, Britain and Israel itself. The latter includes the veterans’ group, Breaking the Silence, which works to reveal the atrocities in which its members have personally participated, and the Zionist humanitarian group, B’Tsalem. The supporters of this ethnic cleansing, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Chief Rabbinate, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the various ‘Friends of Israel’ groups in the political parties, are doing their best to present Israel as synonymous with Judaism. This is in breach of the IHRA’s own guidelines, which state that it is anti-Semitic to claim that Jews are more loyal to another country, or hold them responsible as a whole for Israel’s actions. As these atrocities continue, more young Jewish people are becoming critical of Israel and the Zionist organisations themselves were frightened by the British public’s disgust at the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Hence the foundation of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the revival of Paole Zion, now renamed the Jewish Labour Movement, in the Labour Party. It was all to promote public support for Israel and quash reasoned, justified criticism.

It is why exhibitions like this continue to remain important and necessary, whatever the witch-hunters do to shout them down and silence them.

For more information on the exhibition and the individual pieces, go to:

https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2020/06/visit-cry-beloved-country-palestinian.html

Priti Patel and the Shady World of Right-Wing Lobbyists and Thinktanks

Hat tip to Michelle, one of the great commenters on this blog, for letting me know about this article.

Priti Patel has finally done the decent thing, and resigned following the revelation of her highly secretive visit to Israel, where she met met leading politicians, while telling everyone she was just on a holiday. Part of the reason behind Patel’s little trip seems to have been to get the British government to divert some of the money it gives for international aid to Israel, so it can spend it on the IDF’s continuing occupation of the Golan Heights. This is territory which Israel nicked from the Syrians during the Six Day War.

Israel is already massively supported by Britain, the US and the EU, where it is treated almost as a member, despite not having formal membership. The IDF is one of the main instruments of the country’s brutal repression and ethnic cleansing of its indigenous Arab people, the Palestinians. During its independence campaign in 1948, the Israeli armed forces were responsible for a series of massacres, rapes and beatings against the Palestinians. The most notorious of these was Deir Yassin. But that was only one massacre out of many. Very many. Israeli soldiers killed people sheltering in a mosque, shot and threw handgrenades at women and children, and in one horrendous incident killed a group of Palestinians, who were coming towards them to offer them rice in the hope of getting some mercy. The IDF today enforces the brutal apartheid regime against the Palestinians, including the fouling of cisterns and wells to make the water undrinkable, and the demolition of houses and seizure of property by Israeli colonists.

I have no desire whatsoever to see my government give aid money to the IDF. And I very much doubt I’m alone.

This isn’t about anti-Semitism. I am very much aware that there is and always has been a very strong Jewish opposition to the ethnic cleansing and terror, which not only includes American and European Jews, but also Israelis such Ilan Pappe and human rights organisations such as BT’salem. Anyone, who dares to criticise Israel, is smeared and abused as an anti-Semite. But many anti-Zionist Jews, or simply Jews critical of the occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, feel that they are particularly singled out for abuse and vilification. Tony Greenstein, a veteran anti-Zionist and anti-Fascist campaigner, has quoted in his blog the left-wing comedian, Alexei Sayle. Sayle, the son of Jewish Communists, has said that it seems to him that the majority of people smeared as anti-Semites in the Labour Party were Jews.

Returning to Patel, an article by Adam Ramsay on the Open Democracy site, reveals that she has very extensive links to some very shady right-wing lobbying groups and thinktanks.

Before she was elected MP in 2010, Patel worked for the PR form Weber Shandwick, whose clients included British American Tobacco. Not only does the company produce a highly addictive and lethal drug, it also has links to the dictatorship in Myanmar and child labour. The article notes that some of the PR company’s employees were uncomfortable dealing with BAT. Not so Patel. She was perfectly relaxed.

BAT in their turn fund the right-wing think tanks the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute for Economic Affairs. In 2002, while Patel was working there, Weber Shandwick merged with the Israeli lobbyists Rimon Cohen, whose clients include the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, the illegal Migron settlement on the West Bank, and Benjamin Netanyahu. Whom Patel coincidentally met on her jaunt.

Weber Shandwick’s clients also included Bahrein, and just months after her election, the Bahreini’s flew her there to meet some of their ministers. This is a Gulf kingdom widely criticised for human rights abuses. In 2012 she went on another trip, this time to the United Arab Emirates, as part of the All Party Group, which went there. She made two return trips in 2013 and 2014. The first time she went with the World Consulting and Research Corporation, based in New Delhi. This outfit describe themselves as a brand equity and management organisation. The second trip was courtesy of Sun Mark Ltd., who are regular donors to her office. Weber Shandwick also added the Dubai firm Promoseven to its list of clients about the same time it merged with Rimon Cohen.

In 2014 she also attended a meeting in Washington, courtesy of the right-wing, and highly secretive British think tank, the Henry Jackson Society. The meeting was organised by AIPAC, the very powerful Israeli lobbying organisation in the US, about security in the Middle East. As for the Henry Jackson Society, they are so secretive about the source of their funds that they withdrew it from two parliamentary groups, rather than reveal where it comes from. Earlier this year the Charity Commission announced they were investigating it following allegations that it was being paid by the Japanese government to spread anti-Chinese propaganda.

Patel’s holiday to Israel also seems to have been sponsored by Stuart Polak, the former head and honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel. In 2009 Peter Oborne wrote a piece about the extensive influence the CFI has in the Tory party. Ramsay also notes that trips to Israel funded by the CFI and similar groups are the most consistent entry in the MPs’ and MSPs’ register of foreign interests.

The article concludes

Much has been written about the weakness of the current Conservative government, as exhibited by this scandal, Boris Johnson’s blunders, and last week’s resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon amid allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour. But here is the problem. When governments are falling apart, special interest groups run riot. Flagrant abuses usually happen at times when minor abuses are normalised. What other powerful lobby groups are pushing ministers around? How did it get to the point that Patel thought she’d get away with this?

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/brexitinc/adam-ramsay/we-cant-ignore-patels-background-in-britains-lobbying-industry

It’s a good question, though you’d have to work extremely hard to find out. The Labour MP Colin Challen wrote a piece years ago in Lobster reporting that half of Tory funding remains mysterious. As for the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, they’re extreme right-wing think tanks that provided much of the ideology of the New Right during Thatcher’s grotty rise to power and period in office. They want to privatise everything, including the NHS and schools, as well as social security. I know. I’ve got the IEA’s pamphlets about the last two. The IEA also produced another pamphlet addressing a question vital to today’s women: Liberating Women – From Feminism. Which has been the line the Daily Mail’s taken almost since it was founded.

Mike yesterday put up a piece commenting on the strange verbiage of Patel’s resignation letter, and the reply from Theresa May. Both contained passages stressing that Patel was usually open and transparent about her business. Mike commented that neither of these letters actually looked like they’d been written by the two.

Mike comments that neither May nor Patel have acted transparently and openly, and we still don’t know what Downing Street’s role in this whole affair may have been. The Jewish Chronicle suggests it’s rather more than May and Patel are telling.

He concludes

This matter has demonstrated that Theresa May’s government has no interest in transparency and openness. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The minority Prime Minister will be hoping that it will go away, following the resignation of the offending minister.

It won’t.

We need to know exactly what happened, when it was arranged, with whom, who knew about it, who was there at the time, what was said about it afterwards and to whom, and whether all the information has been made public. My guess that it hasn’t.

Recent events involving Boris Johnson have shown that ministers cannot expect to be able to lie to us and expect us to accept it. We need the facts.

And if Theresa May can’t provide the answers, it won’t be one of her ministers who’ll need to resign.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/11/08/priti-patel-resigns-resigns-doesnt-theresa-may-have-the-guts-to-sack-anyone/

And Patel’s trip to Israel is just one secretive lobbying trip, paid by some very shady people, of many.

It’s time this government was forced out, and some real transparency put in place.

Red Ken on Racism and Anti-Semitism

Just to see whether Ken Livingstone ever showed any sign of anti-Semitism when he was leader of the GLC, and so see if there was anything to the allegations of anti-Semitism, I decided to check out the great man’s 1987 book, Livingstone’s Labour: A Programme for the Nineties. In fact, Red Ken has entire chapter devoted to his determination to combat racism in the Labour party and outside it, entitled, ‘Labour Didn’t Listen to Black People’. of course, the chapter is devoted to championing Black people and improving their position, but it has this this statement about racism generally on the very first page of the chapter, 112:

Racism itself is the uniquely destructive form of reaction that characterises the twentieth century – the holocaust is an indelible reminder of that – and any party which panders to it in any form, whether it be anti-Semitism, anti-black, or anti-Irish is doomed. (My emphasis).

I also looked to see what he had to say about Israel. This is it:

There is only one other country in the world that lacks a written constitution, and that is Israel. But if they ever tried to write one the whole country would be torn apart over the proposals the religious parties would make and they might not even be able to agree on the definition of who is a Jew. (p. 69).

This is fair comment. A few years ago the right-wing parties in the Knesset laid down that only those, whose both parents were Jewish, could legally claim citizenship and settle in Israel. This was condemned as racist by the Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tsalem.

Peoples views change over the years, and this was written nearly thirty years ago. But I don’t think Livingstone’s views on race and racism have changed that much. And it also seems to me that the allegations of anti-Semitism aimed at him are politically motivated for another reason: he’s too left-wing for the Blairites. Remember how Bliar had him deselected as the Labour candidate for mayor of London? That was sent up in in a cartoon in the Independent, which showed Leninspart as a gigantic newt strapped to the London Eye being dunked in the Thames like a prisoner on the Wheel while robed Blairite inquisitors looked on. This is probably the real reason for Dugher, Mann and the rest of the howling mob demanding his dismissal: he’s not anti-Semitic. He’s a persistent left-wing pain, and a genuine popular contender against their Neo-Liberal clique.