History Book on Why Israel’s Military Elite Can’t Make Peace

Postscript are a mail order company specialising in bargain books. I got their latest catalogue through the post today, and looking through it I found a book arguing that the country’s military leaders and the militaristic nature of Israeli society makes it impossible for the country to make peace. This is Fortress Israel – The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country – and Why They Can’t Make Peace by Patrick Tyler, published by Farrrar Straus Giroux. The blurb for it in the catalogue runs

Since its foundation in 1948 Israel has been torn between its ambition to be ‘a light unto nations’ and its desire to expand its borders. Drawing on declassified documents, personal archives and interviews, this epic history demonstrates how military service binds Israelis to lifelong loyalty and secrecy, making a democracy a hostage to the armed forces. A compelling study of character, rivalry, conflict and the competing impulses for war and peace in the Middle East.

This has direct relevance to a recent attempt by the Israel lobby to smear yet another left-wing Labour MP as an anti-Semite. If I recall correctly, it was Richard Burgon, who said that ‘Zionism was the enemy of peace’. This was too much for the Israel lobby, despite the fact that Burgon was not speaking about Jews, but about Zionism. As any fule kno, Zionism is political doctrine, not a race, religion or ethnic group. The largest Zionist organisation in America, for example, is Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel And anti-Zionist and Israel-critical Jewish bloggers like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, David Rosenberg and Martin Odoni, as well as anti-Zionist Jewish denominations and groups such as the Haredi and True Torah Jews, show that Judaism and Jewish identity most definitely is not synonymous with Israel, no matter how many laws Netanyahu passes declaring that Jews across the world are its citizens.

Burgon’s comment wasn’t a statement of anti-Semitic prejudice at all, but a perfectly reasonable opinion. The Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, who now teaches at Exeter University here in the UK, has argued in his books, such as Ten Myths About Israel, that Zionism always implied the removal of the indigenous Arab people. And it also presented very strong evidence that Israel, contrary to its propaganda, was a reluctant participant in its various wars. Rather the Israeli leadership actively sought war, manipulating the Arab nations into striking first through military incursions and the denial of vital water supplies in order to give a false impression of its Israeli peacefulness and non-aggression. Tyler’s book adds yet more support to the view that Israel is indeed the enemy of peace.

It also shows another danger of the Israel lobby’s campaign to silence the country’s critics as anti-Semites. Not only has this led to the appalling smearing of perfectly decent, anti-racist people – one of whom recently died of the shock at her expulsion from the Labour Party, but it is also a danger to proper historical discussion, research and argument. The Israel lobby would like to substitute pro-Israel lies and propaganda for proper, objective history.

They aren’t just an attempt to affect political decisions and opinions, but also an attack on historical fact itself.

Dictator Johnson Unites Country Against Him

On Wednesday there were demonstrations against BoJob’s proroguing of parliament the same day as he, or rather, the West Country’s answer to the Slender Man, Jacob Rees-Mogg, persuaded the Queen to sign his wretched order. Even more followed on Saturday, with people marching up and down the country holding banners and placards, making it very clear what Johnson is: a dictator.

Jeremy Corbyn spoke to protesters in Glasgow denouncing BoJob’s decision. The Labour leader also issued a tweet thanking everyone who had taken to the streets both their and across the country, and pledging the Labour party to oppose BoJob’s attack on British democracy and stop a no-deal Brexit.

In London, demonstrators marched on Buckingham palace to make their feelings very known about the Queen’s decision to give in to his demand to assume authoritarian rule. The were also demonstrations in Hereford, Staffordshire, Nottingham, Oxford, King’s Lynn, where the local radio station for West Norfolk, KLFM 967 came down to cover the demo; and in Trafalgar Square in London.

Please see Mike’s blog for the images peeps posted on Twitter of these demonstrations: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/08/31/britons-take-to-the-streets-across-the-country-to-stopthecoup/

One of the most sharply observed was the banner at the beginning of Mike’s article, showing BoJob wearing a swastika armband and Nazi officer’s cap, flanked either side by the evil clown from Stephen King’s It, with balloons above them showing his and Rees-Mogg’s heads. This bore the slogan ‘Before 1933 People Thought Hitler Was A Clown Too…’. Yes, they did. One of the characters in Bernardo Bertolucci’s cinematic classic, The Conformist, makes that exact same point. The film’s about a man, who becomes a Fascist assassin after believing he has shot and killed the paedophile, who had attempted to assault him. In one scene, one of the characters reminisces how, when he was in Germany in the 1920s, there was a man, who used to go round the beer halls making speeches and ranting. ‘We all used to laugh at him’, the character recalls, and adds that they used to throw beer glasses at him. He then sombrely concludes ‘That man was Adolf Hitler’. And before he came to power, some Germans used to go to his rallies just for the fun of seeing who he would abuse next. Presumably this was in the same manner that people used to tune in to the genuine comedy character, Alf Garnett, although Garnett was very definitely a satirical attack on racism and the bigotry of working class Conservatism. Another banner made the same comparison with the Nazi machtergreifung: ‘Wake Up, UK! Or Welcome to Germany 1933′. Again, this is another, acute pertinent comparison. Everything Hitler did was constitutional, as was Mussolini’s earlier coup in Italy. Democracy collapsed in those countries because of its weakness, not because of the Fascists’ strength. And they were helped into power by right-wing elites in the political establishment, who believed that including them in a coalition would help them break a parliamentary deadlock and smash the left.

Zelo Street also covered the demonstrations against Johnson’s attempt to become generalissimo. The Sage of Crewe noted that not only were people marching in London, and large provincial cities like Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Brighton, but they were also occurring in middle ranking towns like Shrewsbury, Bournemouth, Cirencester, Lichfield, Stroud, Colwyn Bay, Clitheroe, Oxford, Swindon, Middlesborough, Exeter, Southampton, Derby, Weston-super-Mare, Falmouth, Bangor, York, Poole, Leamington Spa. Cheltenham Spa, Chester and others. ‘Places that do not usually do protests’. And the protesters are not, whatever BoJob’s focus groups say, going to vote for him.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/08/stop-coup-people-speak.html

I doubt that the demonstrations will personally have much effect on Johnson himself. He’s a typical Tory, and so has absolutely nothing but contempt for popular protest. However, the march on Buckingham Palace may have made an impression on the genuine guardians of the British constitution. The monarchy is supposed to be one of Britain’s central institutions, like parliament. Prime ministers come and go, but the monarchy is a central pillar of the British constitution. And its guardians in the British establishment may not take kindly to Johnson dragging the Queen down with him. There may also be some hope in that it was popular demonstrations and dissatisfaction with an unjust policy – the poll tax – that culminated in the removal of Thatcher. I hope it isn’t long before BoJob goes the same way.

 

 

 

Anti-Semitism Witch-Hunter Margaret Hodge Accused of Anti-Semitism

This is a very interesting development in the anti-Semitism furore that has engulfed the Labour Party. Margaret Hodge, who so delights in accusing Corbyn supporters of anti-Semitism, and called Corbyn himself a ‘fucking anti-Semite’, has been accused herself of anti-Semitism. Her accusers is Shraga Stern, a Haredi Jew, a member and supporter of the Labour Party. Mr Stern met Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour MP Dan Carden at Portcullis House in Westminster. Where he was photographed by Hodge, who then tweeted the picture to one of Murdoch’s journalistic minions. She added the caption

Having lunch & wondering why Corbyn wants to be seen talking to an anti-LGBT activist who doesn’t represent the mainstream Jewish community yet chooses to sideline groups like Jewish Labour Movement.

Stern told the Jewish Chronicle that the picture’s appearance made him feel ‘quite intimidated’. He’s been the subject of recent claims that he’s against the LGBT community because of his activism in the area of sex education. However, Stern himself has replied to the accusation by saying that he isn’t against gays, but simply wants Orthodox children to be given their sex education at home, in accordance with their tradition. He was also offended at being described as a ‘non-mainstream Jew’. He therefore sent her an email objecting to her comments, and a formal complaint to the Labour Party. He states in his letter

The evidence proves the intention of the attack was for maintaining Jewish traditions.

It is ok, to be hurt and assaulted for simply living in the UK as a Charedi Jew? 

Is it acceptable for a party member to suffer from stress due to anti-Semitic assaults for being a Charedi Jew? 

Is it ok, for a Member of Parliament to assault a fellow Jew just for the reason that his external appearances are different? 

Last but not least, why is it wrong for Jeremy Corbyn to speak to a second-class Jew. (Your words).

In his complaint to the Labour Party, Stern complains that Hodge defamed him as an anti-LGBT activist. He states firmly that he is not, and that he is against all sex teaching in the classroom, as this should be done by the parents at home according to Charedi Jewish custom. He states that he made this clear throughout his campaign. He says

‘She is attacking me for continuing my religious Jewish tradition … This is pure religious anti-Semitism against me my religion and my rabbis.’

He also passed on a dossier of information relating to her time as leader of Islington council, which he believes indicates a negative attitude towards Orthodox Jews. This is reproduced in the Skwawkbox article about the incident. They seem to relate to the plans by West London Synagogue to redevelop the Jewish cemetery for housing and a playground. This was strongly opposed by Orthodox Jews, although the scheme was supported by the council. The protesters, however, had the support of Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, whom the Orthodox community publicly thanked for their stance.

See: https://skwawkbox.org/2019/07/23/hodge-subject-of-formal-antisemitism-complaint-by-orthodox-jewish-labour-member/

The Skwawkbox notes that there are about 67,000 Charedi Jews in the UK, who make up a quarter of the Jewish population. This is expected to increase to half within fifteen years.

Mike in his article about this says that it will test the Labour Party’s complaints team, who try to protect all party representatives like Hodge from all complaints against them. He wonders whether they will try to sweep her anti-Semitic attack – one that appears to be part of a series going back decades – under the carpet. He also observes that this shows the highly partisan nature of the lamestream media that it hasn’t been widely reported in the national press. He illustrates this point with a tweet from the Prole Star, which accurately points out that if a Corbyn ally had been accused instead, it would be on every news outlet for weeks. The tweets states

Their silence is pretty strange considering they love to talk about anti-Semitism so much. The mainstream media have proven they don’t really care about racism. It’s just a weapon to smear their opponents. Absolutely disgusting.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/07/24/witch-hunter-accused-of-anti-semitic-attack-isnt-it-odd-that-the-mass-media-

Absolutely right. The French Philosophical Feline, Guy Debord’s Cat, showed this very clearly in a post from the 7th of this month responding to Gordon Brown’s comments about the anti-Semitism accusations. Brown supported them, so the Cat pointed out the various racist incidents in the Labour Party against Blacks and Asians that Brown chose to ignore, not to mention that against Roma and other Travellers. He then went on to state, absolutely correctly, that there is a hierarchy of racism in this country and that the racism Blacks experience comes a very distant second, third or fourth place behind the anti-Semitism smears. And that even real anti-Semitic incidents are ignored instead of the smears. He showed this very clearly with a report about a Far Right terrorist, Tristan Morgan, who had been sentenced to be locked up in hospital indefinitely. Morgan had tried to burn down an 18th century synagogue in Exeter, Devon, on the 18th July 2018, a day commemorating the Holocaust. Morgan himself laughed when he committed the attack, though he was put on fire by the blast from the fire he started.

See: https://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2019/07/07/gordon-browns-selective-anti-racism/

I’m not surprised that Hodge targeted Mr Stern with this nasty sneer. Stern’s a very staunch supporter of Corbyn. I believe he was among the people, who met the Labour leader when he visited a London mosque a few months ago, whose members had been victims of a White Islamophobic terrorist attack. I also recall that he was involved with a letter sent by a number of Haredi rabbis to the papers defending Corbyn, and stating that he has been a good friend to British Jews to the papers, as well as other efforts showing that Corbyn actually has widespread support amongst British Jews. Which the Jewish Chronicle has tried its very best to invalidate through quibbles about the right of some of those, who signed to be credited as proper representatives of British Jewry. But it does seem that Diane Abbott and Corbyn are genuinely held in high regard by the Orthodox community for their support over Islington council’s plan to redevelop the community’s cemetery.

And it’s more than a little rich for Hodge to accuse Mr Stern of not being a mainstream Jew, when the Jewish Labour Movement can in truth be accurately described as a fringe organisation. Jewish bloggers have pointed out that it seems to have less than 200 members, that over half of these aren’t Jewish. Unlike Jewish Voice for Labour, which appears to be a genuinely Jewish organisation. But Jewish Voice for Labour is ignored or vilified by the lamestream media and the Jewish establishment in this country as they’re pro-Corbyn, and so don’t count as ‘proper’ Jews. Which is very definitely an anti-Semitic stance.

Hodge herself has also been massively indifferent to the rise of very real racism. When Derek Beacon and his storm troopers in the BNP got elected on Tower Hamlets council, they rewarded Hodge for her lack of efforts to oppose them by sending her a bouquet. As an MP she was so lackadaisical and unimpressive that the Jewish Chronicle was calling on her to resign. But now she’s screaming that she’s terribly concerned about anti-Semitism in the Labour party, of which she is a victim, despite all evidence to the contrary.

It will be very interesting to see how the Labour complaints team handle this, and I wish Mr Stern every success.

The Pascon Agan Arluth and Other Classic Works of Cornish Literature

As this is Good Friday, I thought I write about one of treatments of Christ’s trial and crucifixion in one of the other languages of Britain, the Celtic language of Cornwall. The Pascon Agan Arluth translates as ‘The Passion of Our Lord’ I think it was originally written in 1637 in Middle Cornish. There is a bilingual edition of the text in both Cornish and English published in the 1980s by the Cornish language publishers Dyllansow Truran. Unfortunately, I can’t say much more about it nor show a picture, because I’m afraid I’ve mislaid my copy. Dam’. But like the English mystery plays in England, its a classic of literature for Cornish, regardless of whether you’re a Christian or not.

Dyllansow Truran have also published a number of other classic works of Cornish literature, which also date from the 17th century, and which are also on religious themes. These include

Gwryans an Bys: A Medieval Cornish Drama, William Jordan 1611, translated and amended by R. Morton Nance (Mordon) and A.S.D. Smith (Caradar), ed. by E.G. Retallack Hooper (Talek) (Redruth, Cornwall: Dyllansow Truran 1986).

It was written by William Jordan of Helston, and then translated into English by John Keigwin eight decades later in 1691, at the request of the Bishop of Exeter, Sir Jonathan Trelawney. This edition follows the translation and unified spelling of the two revivalists of the Cornish language, Nance and Smith. It’s a rough retelling of the story of Genesis from God’s creation of the world, the fall of Lucifer and the rebel angels, the temptation of Adam and Eve, Cain’s murder of Abel and his subsequent life, Enoch and his translation alive into heaven, and ends with Noah and God’s revelation to him of the Enochian laws. These are four simply laws that guarantee salvation to everyone, provided that they believe in one God. This is obviously one of them. I can’t remember the other two, but another is that people are not to eat meat cut from a living animal.

It begins with the lines from God the Father

Ego sum Alpha et Omega:
hep dalleth na dewethva
pur wyr my yu:
omma a-jy dhe’n clowdys
war fas an dowr, yn-certan,
Try Person yn un Deways,
ow kesregnya bya vyken
yn mur honor ha vertu.
My ha’w Map na’n Spyrys Sans
Try yth on yn un Substans,
comprehendys yn un Dew.
I am Alpha and Omega:
without beginning ore end
right truly am I:
here within the clouds
upon the face of the water, verily,
The Persons in one Godhead,
reigning together for ever
in great honour and power.
I and my son and the Holy Spirit
Three are we in one Substance,
Comprised in one God.

And ends with the epilogue

an keth jorna-ma y de –
deh’n Tas Dew re bo grassys:
why a welas, pup degree,
lyes mater gwaryes,
ha Creasyon oll a’n bys.
Ynweth oll why a welas
an keth bys-ma Consumyes
der lyvyow a dhowr pur vras.
Ny ve un mabden sparyas
ma’s Noy, y wrek, ha’y
fleghes.
Deugh avorow a dermyn:
why a wel maters pur vras
ha redempsyon grontys.

dre vercy a dhew on Tas
dhe sawya neb us Kellys.

Mynstrels, gwreugh heny pbyba
may hyllyn warbarth donsya,
del yu an vaner ha’n gys.

This same day is ended –
to the Father God be thanks:-
you have seen, every degree,
many matters acted,
and the creation of all the world.
Also you have seen, all of you,
this same world destroyed
by very great floods of water.
No one human being was spared
except Noah, his wife, and his children.
Come in time tomorrow:

you shall see very great matters,
and redemption granted
by the mercy of God the Father,
to save whoever is lost.

Minstrels, do you pipe for us
what we may dance together,
as is the manner and the fashion.

The play continued on a second day, but William Jordan didn’t write it down, and so it’s been lost.

The Camborne Play: A Verse Translation of the Beunans Meriasek by Myrna Combellach (Redruth: Dyllansow Truran 1988)

The play’s manuscript was written in 1504, though this is just the date the play was finally written down, and it may have been composed much earlier. The manuscript itself comprises there separate plays bound together in a logical sequence, with a cast of 120, and intended to be performed in the round, probably in a natural amphitheatre. Myrna Combellach’s version of the play was produced for a performance directed by Jerry Finch of for the Cornwall Drama Association at the Cornish Eisteddfod, 1986. It was rehearsed and performed at St. Paul’s Church, Truro, in February 1986, and the performers were a mixture of amateur, student and professional actors. The play is a treatment of the life of Camborne’s patron saint, Meriasek. Hence the title in Cornish Beunans Meriasek.

The blurb on the back cover reads

Vitality and joy of life are the keynotes of this new translation of the sixteenth century Cornish language play, Beunans Meriasek. In it, Camborne’s noble patron saint, Meriasek, is sent to school, refuses marriage and all world considerations, embarking instead on a priestly career of such piety that it ends in a bishopric of immense wealth and grandeur of the kind that he had studious worked to avoid all his life. Meanwhile, in Rome eight centuries earlier, the pagan emperor Constantine is stricken with leprosy, only to be cured by the outlawed Christian pope, Silvester, resulting in the Christian conversion of an empire. A black mass takes place, an evil worm of a dragon is slain, a forest is set on fire in Brittany, the Duke of Cornwall goes to war against paganism, and a third play on a completely different theme is added for good measure.

Jewish Women’s Organisation Occupies Friends of IDF Headquarters in New York

I’ve blogged many times that, in contrast to what the Israel lobby would have everyone believe, criticism of Israel is not limited to gentiles. There are very many principled and very courageous Jews and Jewish organisations, who also speak out against Israel’s murderous dispossession of the Palestinians and their ethnic cleansing. Like the non-Jews, who criticise Israel, these people are also smeared as anti-Semitic. They are slandered as ‘self-hating’ and ‘not really Jews’. These attacks may turn into outright persecution in the case of some of the Israelis, who have attacked their country’s sordid history. Ilan Pappe, the author the book The Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians, was forced out of his post at one of the Israeli universities, and eventually forced to leave his homeland altogether due to the acute persecution he faced for showing up the atrocities the country had committed in its past. Dr Pappe now teaches, I believe, at the University of Exeter. Despite his forced exile, Dr Pappe certainly does not hate his former countrymen and women. In a talk he gave on YouTube, he said that Israelis were decent people, and described the success he had in explaining the iniquity that was being done in their name. He had opened his house to the public every Thursday night, so that people could come and hear for themselves what he believed. He stated that these gatherings, which were entirely informal, became packed with people from his home village.

Jewish Americans are also very active in opposing their country’s support for Israel’s brutality towards the Palestinians. These critics include Prof Norman Finkelstein, who is himself the son of Holocaust survivors, as well as many other less well known. Many of them were also moved to action by Israeli atrocities in Gaza. The clip below is a Democracy Now! report from two years ago – 2014 – on the occupation of the headquarters of the Friends of the Israeli Defence Force by a Jewish women’s organisation. It’s particularly moving as one of the ladies speaking is the daughter and granddaughter of women, who were fortunate enough to survive the Shoah.

Here’s the clip:

Democracy Now’s blurb for the piece on YouTube states

Protests in response to Israel’s assault on Gaza have drawn hundreds — and in some cases thousands — around the world. On Tuesday, members of Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews Say No! occupied the New York City office of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, a non-profit group that raises money in the United States to send to the Israeli military. For about an hour, activists read the names of the more than 600 Palestinians killed, and demanded the organization stop its fundraising for the military attacking Gaza. Nine were arrested when they refused to leave the premises. We get a video report from the protest.

Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians was Planned from the Start

Mike over at Vox Political has posted up an excellent article critiquing and rebutting a piece by Mark Regev, the Israeli ambassador in the Groaniad. Regev uses the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, where Communists, Jews and other Leftists saw off Oswald Mosley and his thugs in the BUF, to try to drum up support for Israel. Mike comments on the way Regev deliberately tries to confuse Jewishness, with Israel and Zionism, and his explicit claim that opposition to Israel is a form of anti-Semitism. As Mike, many of his commenters, and numerous critics of Israel, both gentile and Jewish have pointed out time and again, this is not the case. Both Mike and I have put up a number of posts reporting and commenting on opposition to Zionism and the Israel lobby from decent people, who are not anti-Semites, but simply opposed to Israel’s dispossession and persecution of the Palestinians. This includes many courageous, principled Jews and Israelis, who have been reviled and actively persecuted because of their stance. They include the academics Dr Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappe, an Israeli, who now teaches at the University of Exeter, I believe. Dr Pappe was forced out of the country of his birth through a campaign of official persecution and intimidation.

Mike makes the point that the Zionism of the late 19th and early 20th century is not the same as that today. Then the movement was, as Regev himself argues, a movement for Jewish self-determination. Today it is simply a movement for the militaristic expansion of Israel, and the ethnic cleansing of its indigenous peoples. Mike makes the point that Israel’s borders are not the same as today, despite the impression Regev’s words give, and that the hostility against Israel is due to the military expansion of its frontiers. He also makes the point that Israel’s policy aggression is not rooted in Judaism as a religion. He has a point. Zionism started as a secular movement. It remained a secular movement until Rabbi Kook made a series of prophecies in the 1960s which seeming legitimised Israel from a Jewish religious perspective. But as Sam Seder, the host of the radical news show, The Majority Report, has pointed out, Judaism has no overall religious figure determining dogma and belief like the papacy in Roman Catholicism. The traditional attitude was that it is a sin to attempt to restore the Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah, and there are plenty of texts which support that view. As the graffiti on the walls in Jerusalem says ‘Zionism and Judaism are diametrically opposed’. Religious opposition to Zionism amongst Jews is also expressed in the Neturei Karta, a group of Orthodox Jews, who are still opposed to Israel on religious grounds, and who held a mass demonstration against it New York several years ago. The anti-Zionist movement also includes other Jews from more liberal traditions. Many of them are opposed to it, because it’s persecution of the Palestinians is similar to the persecution the Jewish people have also suffered in their history, and they see their Judaism as being in solidarity with other movements for the emancipation of the whole of humanity.

MIke’s article concludes

No, he wants you to believe Israel – and the Zionists – are victims of anti-Semitism, even while they steal land that legitimately belongs to others and suppress those who would try to resist, and even though many Jews have declared their opposition to these activities.

Understand this, and it becomes clear that his claim that anti-Zionists see “the Jewish state” in the terms he describes is nonsense.

Zionism is not Judaism. Israel is not Judaism. Mark Regev is a propagandist trying to exploit and pervert the memory of a proud collaboration between Jews, the Irish, and many British groups.

Don’t let him get away with it.

Mike’s article is at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/10/06/do-not-let-mark-regev-use-the-anniversary-of-cable-street-to-lie-about-modern-zionism/ Go and read it. And read the comments many of Mike’s readers have left supporting his previous articles on this issue. Many of them come from Jewish critics of Israel, who are definitely not self-hating, or any other kind of vile slur the Israel lobby and its lackeys throw at them.

I differ from Mike in that I believe that there was always an element within Zionism from the very start that contemplated and planned the dispossession of the Palestinians. In the piece ‘Same Old Same Old’ in Robin Ramsay’s ‘View from the Bridge’ column in Lobster 58, Ramsay notes how one of his readers spotted a paragraph claiming precisely this in a review of ‘Four Books About Islamist Terrorism’ in the Sunday Telegraph for 18th June 2009. This states

Meanwhile, the founder of modern political Zionism, the Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl, had earmarked a site for the Jewish state. In June 1895, he wrote in his diary: “We must expropriate gently the private property” and “spirit the penniless population across the border”.

Ramsay lays bare what this means

Ethnic cleansing, in other words. Which is what the Israeli state has been doing since it was founded; but doing it piecemeal, slowly enough to avoid making too many waves in America.

See: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster58/lobster58.pdf and scroll down until you get to the relevant section.

Now the quote from Herzl makes clear that he did not want it done violently. But as Ilan Pappe has documented in his books and lectures, it was done with considerable violence. Massacres and forced expropriation were committed from the very foundation of Israel in the 1940s. And quite often the worst perpetrator of these crimes were Labour governments under leaders like Golda Meir.

This does not mean that all Israelis support this programme of ethnic cleansing. Indeed, as I’ve said, there are many Israelis and human rights organisations in Israel, that are deeply opposed to it. These include B’Tselem, the human rights agency. There is a political party standing up for the Palestinians, which includes both Israelis and Palestinians. Israelis have protested against the house demolitions, where rabbis have also led down in front of bulldozers to protect Palestinian homes. Members of the Israeli armed forces have also protested against their country’s oppression of the Palestinians. And a few years ago a Jewish peace organisation occupied the New York headquarters of the Friends of the IDF.

And many modern anti-Zionists aren’t opposed to the state of Israel. Most of them, including Dr. Finkelstein, want a two-state solution, in which Israel withdraws to its pre-1967 borders. But Regev in his article lies and says Israel’s opponents want the complete destruction of the country. The Israeli government, however, firmly refuses to pull back from the Occupied Territories on the grounds that this would leave the country militarily vulnerable. And so they continue to justify their dispossession and persecution of the Palestinians.

Day of Action against Benefit Sanctions on the 19th of March

Mike over at Vox Political has this story, National day of action to stop benefit sanctions – Unite the Union. It begins

More and more people are facing benefit sanctions. Over two million people have had their money stopped in the past two years, according to Unite.

That’s two million people, many of whom have been plunged into poverty, unable to heat their homes or even eat. How is this meant to help prepare people for work?

He also lists the four ways to get involved, with links. These include joining one of the events in your area, telling your story, if you’ve been sanctioned, and signing the petition against sanctions.

The article’s at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/02/28/national-day-of-action-to-stop-benefit-sanctions-unite-the-union/

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a demo in Bristol. There are, however, protests organised for further afield in Taunton, Exeter, Weymouth, Bideford and Truro further south, and Swindon further east.

Helen Maddock on the Anti-Atos Protests

Helen Maddock commented on her experience of the anti-Atos protests on my piece ‘Spite and Contempt: How Atos Weston-Super-Mare Views Disabled Protestors’. She said

I attended my local protest and met some interesting people….this is only the beginning and already we have the DWP and Atos backing off. The staff at Southend allegedly left their Atos offices and joined the protesters outside as they too are sick of being bullied by Atos+DWP mandates. The few I met at Exeter were coherent and resolute and although we were but a few we gained much comfort and sustenance from meeting each other……..I too would have loved to have seen far more people turn out but we are sick and dependent so far less likely to be able to make it….perhaps this is why we were targeted in the first place. The chattering classes are finally catching on and they are off and running so who knows…..
Are you aware of DPAC these appear to me to be the most organised and I will continue to promote their work. Best wishes from all at the Raspberry Ritz.

It’s interesting that the demonstrators were joined by Atos staff at the Southend offices. There are clearly some decent people still left there, though unfortunately they’re a minority in a crushingly callous, indifferent and cruel organisation.

There may only have been relatively small numbers of people out at protests, but it’s a start. Hopefully, this’ll keep growing.