Okay, here’s a bit of politics and it’s going to be highly controversial. Norman Finkelstein is a Jewish-American scholar and critic of Israel and its slow motion ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. In this video from YouTube, he gives his perspective as a Jew on Israel. He states very clearly that it isn’t a Jewish state, but a lunatic state. A type that goes against everything he believes is Jewish. He points to how proud Jews were that four of the leading intellectuals that created the modern world were Jewish – Einstein, Marx, Freud, and some would say Jesus – were all Jews. Jews surged with pride at this fact. The life of the mind loomed large for Jews. Standing behind a perimeter fence to target double amputees has nothing to do with a Jew or Jews. This is why he doesn’t believe that Israel constitutes a Jewish states according to what he grew up to understand as a Jew.
He’s not alone. This is why many Jews have taken part in the protest marches waving placards with the slogan ‘Not In My Name’ and ‘Not Again For Anyone’. Among those attacking Netanyahu for his war crimes are Holocaust survivors, who clearly deserve to be listened to because of their experience of genocide. Not that you would know this from right-wing news organisations like GB News and various internet commenters, who want you to believe that the only people marching against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza are fanatical Muslims with a genocidal hatred of the Jews and the desire to turn Britain into a Muslim state under sharia law.
This is a video from Double Down News, one of the left-wing internet news channels that got our right-wing, establishment media so rattled. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is the head of the Jewish Voice for Labour, and another victim of the anti-Semitism smears and witch-hunts. I think she has been purged from the Labour party because she dared to criticise Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. She states here quite clearly that she is the wrong type of Jew, the Jews who aren’t shown on the media giving their support to the Palestinians despite the fact that there are thousands of them and more across the world. Instead the media goes to the Chief Rabbis, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and, heaven forfend, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, all of whom have support for Israel written into their DNA, instead of talking to anti-Zionist Jews like herself. The media presents Jews as the frightened victims of the police guarding Jewish no-go zones. Instead, the opposite is almost true. Jews are demonstrating for Palestine like other, reasonable people. They include Holocaust survivors and the children of Holocaust survivors, concerned that what was done to them will not be inflicted on another people. As for being scared and frightened, she is scared and frightened because she, and people like her, have been abused and silenced. But what is going on in Gaza is not religious, it is an attack on people by settler-colonialism, which is perpetrating human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing and plausible genocide. As for the chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ she states that this is about Palestinians being between those borders, with the implication that this does not mean the extermination of the Israelis.
She is given hope by the many people marching and demonstrating for Gaza across the world, including America, and trying to shut down arms factories. Many of them are Jewish, such as the young man she met today. He had family in Israel, and it was the first demonstration he’d been on, but it was the first time he felt empowered to do so.
The video concludes with her appealing to people to support Double Down News as a way of avoiding right-wing media bias.
The video shows Jewish demonstrators, including Holocaust survivors, marching and holding placards making their opposition to the genocide in Gaza very clear.
I’ve resigned from the Labour party, but Richard Burgon is still one of the few Labour MPs I respect. Considering the ongoing barbarity of the Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza, I have absolutely no hesitation in putting up the notice for this event.
‘Dear Friend
Please join me, the Palestinian Ambassador and others for a May Day Rally for Palestine. We must continue the urgent call for an immediate ceasefire and to stop arms sales to Israel.
The rally is taking place online on Wednesday, May 1st at 6.30PM.
Register your attendance for the rally by clicking here.
I hope you can join me in showing solidarity with Palestine at this critical time for the Palestinian people this May Day.
We have been able to use today’s announcement as an opportunity to spread the message, with Johnbosco on BBC Radio Sussex and Times Radio.
YOU can quite rightly feel pleased and proud of these victories but there’s still work to do!
Labour is not planning to create a publicly owned ROSCO (ROlling Stock COmpany) to take on new fleets when needed. Currently, private rolling stock companies are extracting hundreds of million per year from our railway. Read our blog ‘Riding the ROSCO gravy train’ on our website.
YOUR campaigning can continue to make a difference.
The cost of travelling by rail has increased substantially in real terms since privatisation. And it’s no wonder: over £30 billion has leaked out of the system in the last 3 decades, mostly going to line shareholders’ pockets.
Under public ownership, we could be saving enough to bring down bills by 18% instead of hiking them every year.
YOU are passionate about public ownership, not only of public transport, but also water, NHS, energy, Royal Mail – and other public services. Public services should be run for people not profit.
So THANK YOU SO MUCH for all you do to fight for public services in public ownership. Whether you donate or not, every action you take adds strength to our movement. Together we can win so much more.
Public ownership is talked about as a solution much more these days: YOU DID THAT!
In solidarity,
Cat, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate, Imogen and John – the We Own It team.’
Starmer’s announcement is welcome, but I’m not entirely convinced. He’s still convinced, like all Thatcherites, that private enterprise is the solution for everything and state ownership and management is utterly dreadful and inefficient. I’m not surprised that he’s said that he isn’t going to create a state-owned rolling stock company, as nationalising anything runs very much against his grain. And I really don’t trust him to honour his promise, not after he’s broken so many in the past. But it’s a start.
Related to this, the Groaniad has put up a piece with a headline that was is needed is complete rail nationalisation. Exactly. And we could have had that, along with the nationalisation of the other utilities and the NHS, and so much more, if Jeremy Corbyn had got into No. 10. And the reason he didn’t was partly because the left-wing press joined the confected lies and smears of the right-wing press that Jezza was a terrible anti-Semite for not backing the Israeli state’s brutal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Over the past few years the Groan has published a number articles supporting policies that were very much part of the Corbynist platform. It’s too bad they didn’t do it when he was head of the Labour party.
Also related: the Torygraph has also, apparently, published an article with a headline quoting Starmer as saying that if he loses his seat, he’ll work in a Kentish Town bookshop. I don’t know which bookshop he means, as I didn’t read the article, but I look forward to him serving customers behind the counter.
Rather than high-tailing it into the House of Lords which is where failed politicos and their donors usually end up.
A day or so ago pro-Palestinian protesters painted graffiti over the Labour party’s headquarters, doubtless in protest at Starmer’s continuing support for the Israeli state and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. GB News has posted a video about this, and the response of Lord Walney. Walney has blamed the far left, of course, and according to the blurb for the video said it shouldn’t be allowed. I haven’t watched the video, but I was struck by its thumbnail. This had the line ‘Democracy has failed!’ Well, I always had the suspicion that GB News didn’t believe in democracy. This is the broadcaster that flouts Ofcom regulations against employing politicians as news presenters. And it has been described by one Labour MP as having two points of view: right, and far right. With this latest headline from them, I’m left wondering if they’ve got a portrait of Oswald Mosley down in the basement. I suppose it’s a good thing that there’s no longer a TV closedown, as there was when I was growing up in the 1970s. The TV companies went off at about 10.30 or so. Just before then, there was the Epilogue, which I think consisted of a clergyman or other spiritual person giving us his thought for the day. Then I think you had the national anthem and that was it. Programmes are over, it’s time for bed. If GB News ended its broadcasting like that, I wonder if instead of ‘God Save the King’, we’d have the Nazi anthem, the Horst Wessel Song, and a photo of Mussolini.
But I think they have a point – democracy has failed. It’s failed because the three main parties don’t believe in it. Leaving aside the controversy over Scotland’s hate crime laws for a moment, neither Labour nor the Tories actually want to give the British public what they want. Poll after poll shows that severely normal Brits want a fully nationalised NHS and trains and the public utilities taken back into public ownership. A majority of Brits also want arms sales to Israel to stop. But neither party wants to enact such policies. Despite the massive profiteering of Thames Water, one of the Tory ministers appeared on TV the other day to say that nationalisation wasn’t the answer. Well, of course not. It would prevent their corporate chums from screwing their customers and then screwing the British taxpayer to bail them out. The Tories have been passing legislation after legislation to make public protests and demonstrations difficult, and both Blair and the Tories also set the legal foundations for secret courts. These are tribunals where, if it is deemed in the interest of national security, the trial may be held behind closed doors with the defendant not informed who his accuser is or the evidence against him.
Democracy is being stifled thanks to Labour and the Tories. It’s time to consider voting for the other parties, like the Greens and Independents, who may offer the voting public what they really want and need.
Here’s another little item from Scotland, though not nearly as entertaining as the spoof documentaries from the Haggis Wildlife Foundation. This comes from the Silver Fox Hot Takes channel on Youtube. The Silver Fox of the title appears to be a Conservative, and the channel is very much devoted to attacking the SNP for its alleged corruption and wokery. He put one video up a week or so ago wondering if the Scottish Greens and SNP were planning massive purges of Greens and Tories from the country. This was after a Green MP had declared that she wanted to make Scotland a ‘Zionist-free zone’ and someone from Sturgeon’s merry band said something similar about ridding the country of Conservatives. Of course, the problem with shouting ‘anti-Semitism’ about criticisms and denunciations of Zionism, is that Zionism is an ideology. Not every Jewish person believes in it, and some, like Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, actively oppose it. It was originally a gentile, Christian doctrine aimed at hastening Christ’s return, or simply cleansing Europe of Jews. The biggest Zionist organisation in America is Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. And apart from that, some of us can still remember Thatcher ranting that she was going to destroy socialism, and the fear that she really did intend to put leftists in concentration camps.
The Silver Fox has also moved on to criticising the Scottish Labour party, no doubt because certain polls have suggested that they will take over from the SNP as the majority party in Scotland at the next election. The right are as alarmed by this as they are of the SNP continuing in government, as Labour is apparently just as woke as the Scots Nationalists. But there are other, left-wing reasons why people should be wary of giving Labour their vote. In this short video, the Silver Fox takes very good aim at the man, John Grady, whom Glasgow East has selected as their prospective candidate at this year’s elections. According to the Fox, Grady is a lawyer who successfully fought for the cap on electricity bills to be raised, thus doing his bit to make the country poorer. I find this all too credible. Scottish Labour was as Blairite as the rest of the Labour party under the rule of Tony, Gordon and Miliband. Many Scots were massively unimpressed by its leader, Jim Murphy, who followed the British Labour party generally in capitulating to the attacks on the welfare state. Jeremy Corbyn challenged the grip of the Blairites and lost thanks to a massive smear campaign, and now we have Kier Starmer, a very definite, loud Blairite. And so it seems the Blairites are back in Scotland, selecting their Thatcherite candidates and activists while telling the rest of us that somehow they represent working people and everything will be better under them.
Be very careful who you vote for this election. If there’s an alternative candidate you prefer, no matter how small their party, vote for them. We need to show the big beasts they can’t take our vote for granted.
Defy this Rotten Rotten Government – Free Palestine 🗣️🇵🇸
“There is a form of extremism in the centre of the main party that is accusing everybody else.” Michael Mansfield KC
This week the government has, once again, been exposed as the extremists we know them to be. As Michael Gove attempted to create a shadowy confusion around the definition of extremism, in the process targeting our Muslim sisters and brothers, the government were found to be receiving millions of pounds from a racist who thinks Diane Abbott MP “should be shot”.
Abbott, who was due to speak at our public meeting on the right to protest on the same evening the vile comments came to light, received a vote of confidence from the meeting and sent an excellent statement on the issues. She said:
“All of us who have gone on all the Gaza demos calling for peace, should wear the attacks on us as a badge of honour. We are standing in a long line of brave campaigners who stood up for what is right.”
Following Gove’s speech in Parliament, we released a joint statement with the other groups responsible for organising the recent, unprecedented series of demonstrations for Palestine which concluded:
“We call upon all political parties to condemn Gove’s statement and resist the government’s plans. We are united as a coalition and will not allow Gove’s intervention to distract us from standing in solidarity with a people confronting genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid. We call upon all of those who support us in these aims, and uphold the right to protest, to join us in our next national march in London on 30 March.”
In particular we’d like to send our solidarity and support to the Muslim Association of Britain who were named by Gove and have been partners of ours for many years. We find these vindictive government attacks abhorrent.
The March Against Racism tomorrow is a very important opportunity to show that we won’t allow racism and hatred to divide us. Our Convenor, Lindsey German, will be speaking at the march – please join if you can.
Last Saturday’s tremendous demonstration proved once again the phenomenal resilience of this movement. Nearly half a million people took to the streets in the tenth national demonstration calling for the ceasefire that our politicians still refuse to countenance.
We have to continue to resist the attacks from this rotten government and, more importantly, show our unrelenting commitment to the cause of a free Palestine. We urge all our groups and supporters to start building now for another massive march on Saturday 30 March – Palestine Land Day.
Defend the Right to Protest: Palestine, Islamophobia & Civil Liberties
Watch or listen back via our new Spotify Podcast Channel to Tuesday’s meeting at the Human Rights Action Centre with Michael Mansfield KC, Jude Lanchin, Jan Nielsen, Raghad Altikriti, Ben Jamal, Chris Nineham, Jun Pang and Liz Fekete – discussing how to defend our rights at this dangerous moment.
Right before our eyes, the UK is becoming a place where dissent is not permitted. We’ve been warning of this creeping trend for years now, as various new laws (the Policing Act, the Public Order Act, the Online Safety Bill, etc) have broadened the government’s crackdown on democratic debate and increased the state’s power to spy and censor. Ideological adversaries of the government – those who voice dissent on everything from public sector pay to climate action to foreign policy to social issues – are being silenced by draconian laws and authoritarian decrees.
The latest rowover the definition of “extremism” appears to be yet another example. While it’s obviously right to tackle genuine extremism and target real threats to national security, Communities Secretary Michael Gove is weaponising the definition to silence some well-intentioned and well-known civil society organisations. And, ironically, his announcement may well define his own government as radical extremists.
Gove’s new definition refers to extremism as the “promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to:
negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or
undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or
intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2).”
At first, that might sound perfectly reasonable. But two problems quickly emerge.
Firstly, the list of condemned organisations that fall under that definition published today is a hodge-podge of different groups that do not belong in the same category. White supremacist Neo-Nazi groups like Patriotic Alternative and the British National Socialist Movement – which quite literally endorse ethnic cleansing – were placed alongside advocacy organisations like MEND (a civic engagement NGO focused on tackling islamophobia) and CAGE (which campaigns against the illegal incarceration and torture of terror suspects). This announcement was more political than practical.
Secondly, by its own definition, this government is itself extremist. Was Boris Johnson not “undermining liberal Parliamentary democracy” when he illegally prorogued Parliament in 2019? What about when Dominic Raab tried to take away fundamental human rights in 2022 by ditching the HRA – or when Conservatives routinely slag off the ECHR? All of the exclusionary and anti-democratic policies blocking certain voters from the polls and neutering the Electoral Commission? What about former Conservative PMs endorsing Donald Trump, who just three years ago tried to illegally overturn an election when he didn’t win it? I could go on.
When extremists gain power, they force their radical minority beliefs on everyone else, cracking down on anyone who dares voice opposition. They resort to cruel and oppressive measures to ensure that no one else gets to have their voice heard. Michael Gove isn’t protecting us from extremism – he is showing us what happens when extremism gets the upper hand.
Despite all of us in the democracy and civil liberties sectors raising the alarm, the British public continues to sleepwalk into a terrifying Orwellian future. We’re running out of time to stop it. This country needs democratic renewal right now, and we’ve got a plan to get it done. Please help us fight back before it’s too late.
One of the features of the decolonisation movement that most bothers me is how close its rhetoric comes to that of murderous racism. A few years ago there was controversy in the American right-wing media and internet about various academics and publishers who made jokes about wanting a White genocide. One man, the publisher behind Blacklicious Books, was actually serious. He was filmed at a Black conference urging the mass murder of Whites, or else Whites would murder Blacks. And the right has claimed for a long time now that there is a White genocide currently going on in South Africa with the invasion of White farms and the murders and rapes of the farmers, their family and womenfolk. Elon Musk caused a storm of controversy a few weeks ago by claiming that the White genocide was a reality, and more recently there have been anxieties about the veteran ANC politician, Julius Malema, singing old party songs about killing Boers.
There is a considerable amount of online literature denying that such a genocide is actually occurring, and I don’t doubt it’s correct. However, I did find an article in the Mauritius Times by Nita Nicooree-Mercier from 2018, ‘Ethnic Cleansing – What Future for Whites in South Africa’, which examines this issue as well as reporting violence against other ethnic groups, including South Asians. It also states than in 1991 there was an abortive plan, ‘Operation Rainy Day’, by the Communist Party to stage such a massacre. The passage reads:
‘In the early 1990s, the apparently new phenomenon mentioned in a Time magazine article regarding young African National Congress (ANC) supporters killing white people, and leaving a note behind ‘We kill only Whites’, sounded like random acts perpetrated by angry black men.
But over the years, along with politically-motivated people violent rival gangs not only perpetrate violence against other gangs but make white men their prime target.
The building of a “Rainbow Nation” dreamt by Nelson Madela, a myth of successful black leadership anticipated by Leftists and liberal international media, and promoted by the media coverage of the Obama couple as a future great achievement, has been going down the tube over the years.
Yet, many clung to the myth and refused to let it die. ‘Disgrace’, a 2010 film based on the novel written by South African Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee in 1999, a story taking place on a white-owned farm, looks like a premonitory sign of the fate of whites today.
“Already during Mandela’s rule, the South African Communist Party planned to carry out large-scale attacks on whites after Mandela’s death. Between 1991 and 2001, more than 800,000 white South Africans moved overseas, mainly to Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
However, the large-scale plan for anti-white pogroms called ‘Operation Rainy Day’ with thousands of black men transported to Johannesburg to take over fuel points, kill whites and stage a political coup, did not happen.
Nonetheless, the toll on white lives started to increase dramatically…” Already during Mandela’s rule, the South African Communist Party planned to carry out large-scale attacks on whites after Mandela’s death. Between 1991 and 2001, more than 800,000 white South Africans moved overseas, mainly to Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
However, the large-scale plan for anti-white pogroms called ‘Operation Rainy Day’ with thousands of black men transported to Johannesburg to take over fuel points, kill whites and stage a political coup, did not happen.
Nonetheless, the toll on white lives started to increase dramatically. President Mbeki’s condemnation of racially-motivated crimes cut little ice. Recent videos tell a grim story of white farmers. Men and their children are hacked to death, and their wives raped and tortured.
In the course of time, while the younger generation of whites migrate to English-speaking countries, mainly Britain, their parents stay behind. 75-year old women are shown with signs of torture on their bodies, others are killed and their bodies dumped in woodlands.
Searching for their relatives’ bodies in the middle of the night with the help of policemen has become a regular happening in white communities. Old couples travelling in their cars are randomly stopped by gangs and killed on the spot.
Their story is generally ignored by the mainstream media who have been geared to portray only non-whites as victims in many countries. Reports on the plight of whites come from their own initiative to inform the world about their plight. Camera videos show groups of young armed black men sneaking into white-owned farms in the middle of the night.
Colonisation and apartheid, even during the 1976 uprising in Soweto, resulted in fewer killings in the black population, compared to the alarming high figure of white victims in the post-apartheid period since the ANC government took over.
The Mandela rule failed to cope with widespread lack of education, unemployment, squalor and increasing poverty which ended up hitting even whites. As early as the 2000s, rising xenophobia targeted foreign nationals.
Migrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other countries are terrorized as well. They settled in South Africa with an entrepreneurial spirit and set up trades.
Shops are routinely destroyed, shop owners murdered, and businesses shut. Most of the attacks are perpetrated by South African Zulus. Prevalent and vicious gang members kidnapped and threatened Asian businessmen for ransom.
Middle-Easterners and Indians are not liked either. Things got worse for whites during President Zuma’s rule. Labour policies shut whites out of the labour pool.
The economic freedom fighters’ credo of land redistribution that would address racial disparities in land ownership seems to follow Zimbabwean’s line of brutal confiscation, with no clear long-term strategy involving skilled farm work and technical know-how to maintain productivity.’
As far as I can see, the demands for land redistribution haven’t been implemented, even though there are still demands for it. If it was carried into practice as described here, it’s certain that the same would happen in South Africa as happened when Mugabe did it in Zimbabwe: production would collapse and economic decline and starvation follow.
While there isn’t a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, the fact that the Communist Party was preparing one as well as the violence towards Whites, migrants from other parts of Africa, Asia and India makes such predictions all too plausible. And I don’t know what the South African government is going or can do to end this continued racial violence against ethnic minorities in the country.
Well, George Galloway won the by-election in Rochdale yesterday, and the pro-Israel establishment and media have had a meltdown. I came across a headline today from one of the right-wing news and comments channels on YouTube proclaiming that it was a ‘black day for British Jews’. No, I really don’t think so. But it was a black day for the Israel lobby.
The right has tried to frame the current war in Gaza as a justified reprisal by Israel, which has a natural right to defend itself, against evil anti-Semitic Muslims. And the protests held up and down Britain in protest at the mass killing and displacement of Gazans by the IDF, which according to the Palestinian authorities, has now reached 30,000, have similarly been denounced as anti-Semitic and the marchers ‘Islamists’. Israel does have a right to defend itself, and Hamas’ brutal murder of 4,000 people at a music festival is a terrorist atrocity. But Israel’s reprisal has massively exceeded the number of Israelis killed, just as Operation Cast Lead in 2012 was massively disproportionate to any terrorist incident or mass protest that provoked it. Douglas Murray has appeared on Jewish YouTube channels denying that the IDF’s invasion of Gaza is ethnic cleansing. Well, in the words of Christine Keeler, ‘he would, wouldn’t he’. News channels like Middle East Eye have dug out comments and speeches from the Israeli leadership, including, I believe, Prime Minister Isaac Herzog, stating openly that ethnic cleansing is exactly what they’re doing. It has also been reported that that the IDF plan, or planned, to expel the Gazans firstly to refugee camps in Egypt, and then to Europe.
The pro-Palestine marches have been composed of Brits from a variety of backgrounds. Very many, possibly the majority, are Muslims deeply concerned about the treatment of their co-religionists in the Holy Land. A minority of these may justly be called Islamist, because of their shouts of ‘Jihad’ including one group who filmed waving its black flag while lying to everyone else that it was really the shahada, the Muslim creed. But many are White, including Jews, who have said how welcome they felt among the demonstrators, including the Muslims.
There are points of concern with the process of the election up in Rochdale. Starmer, who has declared himself to be ‘100 per cent Zionist’, withdrew the whip from the Labour candidate because he repeated what the Egyptians said about the Israelis not responding to their warning of an impending attack, with the addition of a bit of speculation of his own. Such as why was the music festival actually moved further towards Gaza, and why was it that the placed was ringed by IDF bases only four miles away, but it took eight hours for the troopers to respond to the atrocity? Stalin and his faction immediately accused the Labour guy of making anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and so imply that somehow asking these questions was tantamount to spreading the lunatic and genuinely vile smears that Jews secretly control the world and are plotting the destruction of Whites, Muslims, Blacks or whoever else is claimed to be their victims. But Israel does have a genuine history of staging false flag attacks. The most notorious of these was the attack on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War. It was stationed off the coast monitoring the conflict. This alarmed the Israelis, who were afraid they’d pass on its intelligence to Egypt, and so Israeli troops boarded the ship and slaughtered its crew. There is genuine, and genuinely revolting anti-Semitism in the Arab world. You can buy the infamous Tsarist forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Egypt, and a few years ago it was serialised on Egyptian television. But the Labour party’s candidate’s question actually seem reasonable. They aren’t about Jews, but about the Israeli state and military, who do have a record of lying.
In these circumstances, and with Starmer’s refusal to back a ceasefire until he started losing Muslim votes, it was almost inevitable that Galloway would win. Galloway has a long record of supporting Arab nations. I’ve heard he converted to Islam, and that his first wife was Palestinian. He is not, however, an anti-Semite. The News of the Screws journo who used to go around posing as an Arab sheikh in order to entrap the great, the good and the not-so-good into saying or doing something indiscreet or criminal tried it with Galloway over the Holocaust. The Fake Sheikh arranged to meet him for lunch at a London restaurant. On his way in, Galloway recognised the hack’s minder, nicknamed Jaws. Like the Bond villain, this guy was approaching seven feet tall and had a mass of gold teeth resembling the character’s steel gnashers. Galloway was put on alert, which was justified when the Fake Sheikh asked him if he thought the Holocaust was a good thing. Galloway responded as any decent person would, and said it was an horrific crime against humanity, and the hack went back to his office disappointed. Galloway, as far as I’m aware, isn’t an anti-Semite by any stretch. He’s just critical of Israel’s treatment of its indigenous Arabs. As many proud and self-respecting Jews and Israelis are also. There have been mass protests against the Gazan genocide by Israelis and also by Jewish Americans.
Britain’s Jewish community has been worried about its waning social and political influence for a number of years now. About half a decade or so ago there were reports that the community was worried that it was losing the concern of the British public for its issues and history of persecution in favour of other ethnic groups. Hence there were a series of events intended to celebrate Jewish achievement to British society and culture. These naturally included festivals about Jewish comedians and literature. The last was featured on the One Show. A lady speaking for the festival said you didn’t have to be Jewish to go to it. Galloway’s victory does show the strength of Britain’s Muslim electorate and its concern for Palestine, and in this sense it shows that the Israel lobby, which identifies itself with the Jewish community, has lost ground. But as the mighty Tony Greenstein has pointed out, Judaism and Jewishness does not equal Israel. Zionism was a minority movement among European and American Jews before the War. In America this lack of interest continued until the late ’60s and ’70s. It ended with the rise of Neo-Cons, and their identification of Israeli values with American Christian values. Now the pendulum’s swinging back, American Jews are turning away from Israel, and most of the country’s support now comes from bonkers right-wing Christian organisations like Jack Hagee’s Christians United For Israel. Just don’t tell ’em Palestinians are also Christians, and they’ve also been subjected to abuse and violence by the Israeli state and right-wing settlers.
I think much the same thing is happening in Britain’s Jewish community, despite the oft-touted statistic that 70 per cent or more of Britain’s Jews believe that Israel is very important to their identity. Tony critiqued that stat a few years ago, showing that the true figure was probably rather less. The campaign in the Jewish community to unseat Corbyn as leader of the Labour party because of his pro-Palestinian, but not anti-Semitic views, was chiefly led by the United Synagogue. This is only one sect amongst the diverse variety of Jewish denominations and political and religious tendencies, as well as organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which seems spectacularly unconcerned about real anti-Semitism in Britain, but terribly worried about any criticism of Israel. A fair number of the victims of the Labour party’s anti-Semitism witch hunt were Jewish critics of Israel. Some of these men and women have received abuse, violence and threats after the pro-Israel organisations smeared them because of their views. One of these was a lady in Devon, who had her car firebombed after one of these gutter hatemongers put her location on a map.
Galloway is an avowed anti-racist and definitely not an anti-Semite. The pro-Palestine marchers are also, in the majority, simply that: pro-Palestine. Whatever may be said about the genocidal implications of the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ – and remember, Likud also uses this as part of its foundational ideology, the vast majority of these people certainly do not want the persecution and annihilation of the Jewish people.
His victory is not a black day for Jewish Brits. But it is a crack in the political grip of the Israel lobby.
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