Also on TV next Wednesday, 19th January 2021, at 9.00 pm in the evening, is a programme on BBC 4 on the support for Israel amongst American Evangelical Christians and their influence on Donald Trump’s administration, ‘Til Kingdom Come: Trump, Faith and Money. The blurb for this on page 89 of the Radio Times runs
Documentary exploring the relationship between American evangelicals and Israel’s foremost philanthropic institution, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and its influence on both nations’ foreign policies.
There’s an additional few paragraphs about the programme by Jack Searle on page 87, which states
This seems at first to be telling a small, local story: we’re in woodland in Kentucky, where a man loading an assault rifle in preparation for some target practice explains how Donald Trump, he feels, spoke up for ordinary folk like him. But he isn’t just a regular Republican voter. He’s an evangelical pastor whose calling in life is to raise money for Israel.
Maya Zinshtein’s film explores the global significance of US Christians, who believe Israel is the key to the Second Coming, and ow that partly explains Trump’s highly controversial relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem. It forms a spiky fable about what happens when politics and rigid religious dogma interact.
Apocalypticism and the desire to hasten Christ’s return has been a very important strand in Christian Zionism since the 19th century. Historians and activists critical of Israel and its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians, like Ilan Pappe and Tony Greenstein, have pointed out that Zionism first emerged amongst Christians in the 19th century. They wished to see the Jews return to Israel in order to fulfil, as they saw it, the prophecies in the Book of Revelation. Support for Israel in America is now strongest amongst Christian evangelicals. The largest Zionist organisation in America by sheer numbers of members is Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. Jewish support for Israel is waning, especially among the young. American Jews were like their European coreligionists before the rise of the Nazis. They wished to stay in the countries in which they were born, and this attitude continued at least up to 1969. One of the Jewish magazines ran an article that year lamenting the lack of interest in Israel among Jewish Americans. The Neo-Conservative movement, founded by William Krystol, had its origins as an attempt to raise support for Israel amongst Americans. Young Jewish Americans are increasingly losing interest in Israel or actually becoming opposed to it, because of its treatment of its indigenous Arab population. The numbers of school leavers taking up the heritage tours of the country, sponsored by the Israel state as a way of gaining their support, is falling. Many Jewish young people have joined the BDS movement against goods produced in the occupied territories. As a result, Israel is shifting its efforts to muster support to American Christians.
I do wonder how many of those evangelical Christians would still be vocal in their support for Israel, if they knew that Israel pulls down monasteries and churches as well as mosques and that some of the extreme right-wing rabbis in Netanyahu’s coalition have said that they’d like to see every church in Israel pulled down as a place of idolatry. Or that the European founders of Israel really didn’t want Arabic Jews, the Mizrahim, settling in the country, and only accepted them because they needed their labour while also heavily discriminating against them. Possibly some might find this troublesome, but I’ve no doubt others would find some way to justify it and their continued support for the country.
This is a kind of addendum to the post I put up yesterday, which asked who decided that the United Synagogue represented all of British Jewry. I did this because so many of those accusing Corbyn and his supporters of anti-Semitism were its members or representatives, such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the late former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, and various hack journos writing for the I and other newspapers.
Now it seems that my suspicion is confirmed. I went and looked up ‘United Synagogue’ in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, ed. John Bowker (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997). This says on page 1005
Association of Ashkenazi Jewish congregations in Great Britain. The organisation was established by Act of Parliament in 1870. It supports the British Chief Rabbinate, the London Bet Din and all the synagogues which accept the authority of the Chief Rabbi.
The Ashkenazi are eastern European Jews, who traditionally spoke Yiddish. The other branches of Judaism are the Sephardim, who are descended from Spanish Jews, whose traditional language was Ladino, a form of Old Spanish, and the Mizrahim, Arabicised Jews from the Middle East. Left-wing Jewish supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have also pointed out that the Board of Deputies really only represents the Board of Deputies, and that the Chief Rabbinate conflicts with the traditional Jewish view of rabbinical authority. This states that no rabbi has more authority than any other. This means that while Chief Rabbis like Sacks and his successor, Ephraim Mirvis, can bluster and pontificate about how critics of Israel are terrible anti-Semites, other rabbis and their congregations are under no obligation to believe them.
The Jewish establishment and its institutions, which claim to speak for all Britain’s Jews, really just seem to be the United Synagogue and its inmates trying to present themselves as the sole legitimate representatives of Britain’s Jews. Hence the rage at Jeremy Corbyn for daring to spend a Passover Seder with the left-wing, socialist Jews of Jewdas. Well, they obviously invited him, unlike the true-blue Tories of the Board and Chief Rabbinate, who didn’t and instead sent glowing congratulations to Tories like Tweezer when she slithered into No. 10.
I feel that the next time someone from the Board or Chief Rabbi turns up to tell us all that Corbyn is a terrible anti-Semite and an existential threat to British Jews, they should be accompanied by an explanatory warning caption at the bottom of the screen. Like those that accompany adverts, or the statements the Beeb makes when it has to mention a specific product. This caption should go
‘The Board/ Chief Rabbinate/other pompous smear merchant is a fully-owned subsidiary of the United Synagogue. Contains parts manufactured in Israel. Other forms of Judaism are available. ‘
Tomorrow, UK Gold is set to begin screening the first of its recreations of three episodes of the classic comedy, Dad’s Army. As you’ve probably seen from the adverts and the splash page about it in the Radio Times, as well as a piece about it on The One Show, the actual episodes were lost years ago. They were recorded on videotape, which was then re-used for another show. The scripts, however, has survived, and so they’ve decided to re-shoot them using other actors to replace the original cast. Along with other, younger actors, whose names I don’t recognise, is veteran thesp Timothy West, playing Sergeant Godfrey. It looks great, the actors look and sound like their brilliant predecessors, more or less, and have the right attitude. They say they can’t replace the original team, and are just being their understudies.
But there’s one thing that stops me from watching it. They’ve cast Tracey Ann Oberman as Pike’s mother.
Tracey Ann Oberman is Rachel Riley’s best mate in her persecution of bloggers, who support Jeremy Corbyn. Like Riley, she also likes to throw accusations of anti-Semitism around willy-nilly, insulting and smearing decent people simply because they’re Socialists, left-wing Labour party members and/or simply critics of Israel. And if anyone makes a few acute observations about her, she threatens them with a libel suit.
She’s been a firm supporter of Riley in her prosecution of the 17 people, who blogged about Riley’s bullying of a 16-year old girl with anxiety issues. Riley, amongst other things, declared that she wanted to ‘re-educate’ the poor girl, a term I’ve only used in the context of totalitarian brainwashing. When the child refused, Riley smeared her as an anti-Semite and managed to whip up a troll army into bullying and harassing the girl online. When Mike and 16 others blogged about this, Riley claimed that it was libel and initiated legal proceedings.
But when Mike challenged Riley to state what was libelous when she initially complained, neither she nor Oberman could explain why or how. They also haven’t challenged the facts of the case. This seems to me to be another SLAPP suit, in which the forces of the right attempt to shut down criticism through vexatious legal action. Action they know their opponents won’t be able to afford to defend themselves against.
Oberman herself was threatening to do something similar to Ash Sarkar, the head of Novara Media a few weeks ago. She was accusing Sarkar of being anti-Semitic, again based on no evidence or reason whatsoever, except that Sarkar and Novara have supported Corbyn and criticise Israel and the Israel lobby for the country’s maltreatment of the Palestinians. When Sarkar made a few pointed remarks about Oberman’s privileged background, Oberman whined that she was a ‘jobbing actor’, and that these remarks put her career at risk. She also claimed that she was ‘as White’ as Sarkar is. Sarkar is very definitely a dark complexioned Asian, while Oberman is definitely White. Of course, Oberman meant that she couldn’t be White, because Nazis and racists don’t regard Jews as White. Sarkar saw through that subtext, and said that she was not disputing that Jews didn’t suffer victimisation. They do, and horrendously, it’s growing. But as Tony Greenstein, Buddy Hell and many others have pointed out, Blacks, Asians and Travellers suffer far greater levels of racism. And some of this is perpetrated by the right-wing individuals, who are making so much fuss about the supposed anti-Semitism in the Labour party. And Oberman, as an ardent right-wing Zionist, should herself be very much aware that the original Jewish settlers in Palestine were Whites from eastern Europe, who despised the Misrahim, the indigenous Arabicised Jews, or Jewish Arabs, of Palestine and the Middle East. And there is also massive prejudice in Israel against Blacks and Black African Jews, such as those from Ethiopia. And Nazi racism is utter, murderous rubbish, so no-one should believe the bilge about Jews not being proper Europeans. Including spurious racist sputterings that they can’t be as White as they’re European compatriots.
I also know drama graduates and real jobbing actors. They’re immensely talented people, who work hard trying just to get bit parts in TV and other shows, simply because of the intense competition and uncertainty of the profession. They are most definitely not like Oberman, who was boasting a few weeks ago that every time someone criticises her, she gets another job offer.
So the news that the wretched Oberman is going to be in it puts me in a bit of a quandary. I’d like to watch it, but I don’t want to give any support to Oberman. At the same time, I don’t want to deny the other actors their chance to shine. Perhaps one way round this is to put in the equivalence of a swear box. If I watch anything with Oberman in, then I have to give money to help Mike’s defence fund against Riley’s fake libel action. That might do the trick and salve my conscience.
I found this video from RT which was posted yesterday, Wednesday 21st November 2018 on YouTube. It reports that the Quakers have banned investing in companies which profit through Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The Quakers stated that
Our long history of working for a just peace in Palestine and Israel has opened our eyes to the many injustices and violations of international law arising from the military occupation of Palestine by the Israeli government.
With the occupation now in its 51st year, and with no end in sight, we believe we have a moral duty to state publicly that we will not invest in any company profiting from the occupation.
This is, apparently, the first time a British church had made such a move, and the Quakers have been criticized by Jewish groups, which claim that it is a reference to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement. the Board of Deputies of British Jews called the Quakers decision ‘appalling’ and said that it must be reversed. Quaker leaders, however, state that the decision recalls protests against apartheid South Africa and the slave trade.
The video then moves into a discussion about the decision with Les Levido from Jews For Boycotting Israeli Goods and Rafi Bloom, co-chair of Northwest Friends of Israel.
The Quakers are, of course, absolutely right. Israel is an apartheid state, and the West Bank is under military occupation. The Quakers are rightly famous for their pacifism. One of our aunts was a member of CND in the 1980s, and I got the impression that among the religious groups supporting the movement were the Quakers and Roman Catholic Franciscan friars. As for the Slave Trade, they were one of the main groups behind the Abolitionist movement when it first appeared in the 17th and 18th centuries. One of the great Quaker campaigners against it in the British Caribbean was Woolmer, a hunchbacked dwarf, who used to carry around with him a hollowed-out Bible filled with blood. When he saw a planter approaching, he used to stab the knife into the Bible, sending the blood spattering as a visual protest of the blood spilt through the infamous trade. Philadelphia, the city founded by another Quaker, William Penn, was also the home of many of the American Quaker campaigners against the slave trade. Later on they were joined by the Methodists and the evangelical wing of the Anglican church in Britain. I’ve also got a feeling that many Quakers may also have been involved in the legalization of homosexuality in Britain. Gerard Hoffnung, the musician and cartoonist, was a Quaker and a supporter of this movement to end the persecution of gays.
It’s to be expected that Jewish groups like the Board of Deputies of British Jews were going to be outraged at the church’s decision, but I note that the reporter does not say that they denounced them as anti-Semites. As the Quaker’s have always promoted peace and tolerance, such an accusation simply wouldn’t be credible.
I haven’t watched the debate, however, because I’ve no respect for the North West Friends of Israel. From reading Bookburnersrus, Martin Odoni’s and Tony Greenstein’s blogs, it’s very clear that they’re another bunch of thuggish bully-boys. Martin describes a meeting at a Quaker meeting house in Manchester, when the Jewish American reporter and activist Max Blumenthal was speaking about his latest book on Israel and its crimes. The Zionist activists there first tried to stop him entering, and then loudly heckled, sneered and guffawed throughout his talk until they were finally turfed out by the rozzers. And of course, they made the ridiculous claim that they were being silenced because they were Jews, when in fact they were thrown out because they were just there to disrupt and prevent other Jews talking and hearing about what was really going on.
Tony Greenstein described some of their members in one of his blogs. At least two were failed businessmen, one of whom was a lawyer, who’d been struck off. Quite apart from the usual contingent of Islamophobes and supporters of the EDL. They’re in no position to lecture the Quakers or the Jewish Israel-critical peeps, who have to suffer their anti-Semitic abuse, about morality.
The day before that report, the 21st, RT posted another piece discussing Airbnb’s decision not to list homes in the occupied West Bank, which also enraged the Israeli state. The company’s press room stated
We concluded that we should remove listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.
About 200 homes were to be removed from the list. The Palestinian authority welcomed the move, as they had previously requested the company to remove such listings. The Israelis, however, condemned it, and used the time-worn tactic of screaming racism.
Yariv Levin, the Israeli tourism minister, declared
This decision is completely unacceptable. This is pure discrimination, something that is taken only against Jews that are living in Judaea and Samaria. This is actually a racist decision – and more than that, I do believe that it is a double standard that is taken only against Israel, against Jews that are living here in Israel.
The anchorwoman then goes on to talk to Mustafa Barghouti, the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, about the issue, as well as a former commander in the Israeli air force. Barghouti states that the UN resolutions say that the settlements in the West Bank are completely illegal, they are discriminatory, as they are built on land stolen from the Palestinians, and any relationship with these illegal settlements are a violation of international law. He says that Airbnb has taken the right decision, as they stood to lose a lot due to the boycott against them. And what is really racist and discriminatory is the apartheid system the Israelis have created, which favours Israelis over Palestinians.
The Israeli spokesman, Reuven Berko, cited simply as ‘Middle East expert’, rants about Airbnb being ‘cowards to Islamic terrorists, I don’t know what’, accuses them of anti-Semitism and ignoring the right of the Jews to their homeland in Judea and Samaria and asks how many Christians are angry about this. He states that this is an awful step against history, against fate.
It’s the usual specious rubbish. The Biblical state of Israel certainly existed, and was the homeland of the Jewish people in antiquity. But it has not existed for centuries. For many Jews, their real homeland was the country in which they and their forebears had lived in the Diaspora. And the Bund, the Jewish Socialist movement, made that very clear in their slogan ‘Wherever we live, that’s our homeland’. And many Orthodox Jews feel that Israel cannot be restored except by the hand of the Almighty and the Messiah. Until that happens, modern Israel is to them nothing but a blasphemy.
As for appealing to Christian anger about this, the lead Christian Zionist movements, like Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, are millennialists, who believe that the restoration of Israel will usher in the End Times and Christ’s Second Coming, along with the destruction of those Jews, who won’t convert to Christianity. In fact, the indigenous Christians of Palestine have almost been completely cleansed from Israel. The Christian population before 1948 was 25 per cent. Now it’s only one per cent. American Zionist Christians put this down wholly to persecution from Muslims. Now Muslim Palestinians have persecuted their Christian fellow countrymen, whom they see as collaborators. But Palestinian Christians have also and are being persecuted by the Israeli state and the settlers. The Israelis have closed churches as well as mosques, and both churches and mosques have been attacked and desecrated by mobs of Israeli settlers.
In my somewhat limited experience, Muslim Brits are better informed about this than British Christians. I studied Islam when I was at College as part of my Religious Studies minor degree. I can remember reading the equivalent of the parish magazine from one of the British mosques. It contained an article attacking the closure of one of the mosques in Palestine and its conversion into a disco. The article also noted that a nearby Christian church had also been closed by the Israelis.
A few years ago Channel 4 also screened a programme about the relationship between Christianity and other faiths, in which the presenter travelled to Israel. There he encountered an Israeli ‘shock jock’ radio host, who ranted about Christians. The programme also covered a march of militant Israelis on a church used by Messianic Jews. These are Jews, who have accepted Christ as the messiah, but still observe the Mosaic Law. This is my opinion, but I think they’re very similar to the Christian community of which the Gospel writer St. Matthew was a part, as this is traditionally regarded as the Jewish Gospel, and St. Matthew is concerned to assimilate Christ’s teaching to that of the Jewish sages. The settlers were stopped at the church entrance by the Muslim doorman. And apparently, it was actually quite common to have Muslims at the door of Christian churches protecting the worshippers from religious violence from outside.
And if we are going to talk about racism and discrimination, a friend of mine, who studied Judaism at College also told me that in the 1960s the Israelis threw out tens of thousands of indigenous Jewish Palestinians, because they were culturally Arab. There have been articles in Counterpunch by the magazine’s Jewish contributors, which have pointed out that Israel is a European/American Jewish colony, whose founders had a despicable racist contempt for the Mizrahim, Jewish Arabs, or Arabicized Jews.
The Quakers and Airbnb are right to boycott Israel’s occupation of Palestine. And the real racism and apartheid is by Israel against the indigenous Arabs, who have been Jewish, Christian and Muslim, and have suffered discrimination, persecution and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli state.
Mike published this very important article today, which throws the witch-hunt against the critics of Israel and the Israel lobby in the Labour party in a very harsh light. The Disability News Service revealed over a month ago in December that the Department of Health had refused to recognise that disabled benefit claimants were one of the groups at high risk of committing suicide. When this was pointed out to the Samaritans, the charity flatly refused to condemn the government.
Now the charity is facing controversy, not only for its failure to do so, but because of the probable reason why. Its board of management is stuffed full of Tories. Seven of its eleven members belong to the wretched party.
And it’s very likely the board of the faux anti-racist organisation, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, is the same. He hasn’t been able to find out who their board members are, but their patrons include the following true blue members of the corporate elite anti-working class hate squad: Eric Pickles, Matthew Offord, Mike Freer, Bob Blackman and Baron Ahmad. The others include a couple of Labour members and a crossbench peer.
This explains, no doubt, why the woefully misnamed organisation has attacked 40 Labour MPs, and only two Tories.
And Mike goes on to ask the question how many other charities have been similarly infiltrated by the Nasty Party. This is going to be a problem, as for an organisation to have charitable status, it has to be apolitical. And the Samaritans and the Campaign Against Anti-Israelism, sorry, Anti-Semitism, are all too political with the make-up of their governing organs.
This issue – of Tory, or corporate domination of charities, has been raised before. A few years ago Johnny Void posted on his blog how one mental health charity was vigorously promoting the mendacious, unscientific rubbish that work is good for those with psychological problems – take the advice of someone who’s been there: it ain’t – not least because their directors included a corporate shill, who was behind the policy and who looked forward to the charity getting lots of government contracts to administer their scheme.
It doesn’t surprise me one iota that the Tories dominate the Samaritans. I dare say that the gentlemen involved genuinely wish to stop people taking their own lives. As do very many others not connected with the Tory party. But they get on the board, because they’re the establishment, and establishment contacts are always good for private organisations, whether industry or charities.
Way back in the 1990s I worked for a few weeks for a charity for elderly in Bristol as a voluntary worker. I walked out one Wednesday evening and handed in my resignation because I didn’t like the way my supervisor spoke to me as if I was a mere underling and incompetent. I was later told by a friend that a lot of ordinary charity workers were doing exactly what I did. The charities have a policy of recruiting their management from industry. And these managers are used to kicking around paid staff. They don’t know how to treat ordinary people, who are devoting their time and energy gratis. And so they have a high staff turnover, because people are sick of getting abuse from management for work they’re doing literally out of the kindness of their hearts.
As for the Campaign Against Anti-Israelism, sorry, Ant-Semitism, this has never been against anti-Semitism per se. As Mike’s pointed out very many times on his blog, citing Jewish academic experts on anti-Semitism, that it is about hatred of Jews as Jews. That’s how the ant-Semites, who coined the word themselves defined it in the 19th century. The word was invented by Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the Bund Antisemiten in late 19th century Germany. And he made it clear it was hatred of Jews for biological, racial reasons. It didn’t matter to him whether they were observant, religious Jews, or members of another faith, or whatever. What mattered to these proto-Nazis was that they were racially Jews.
But it does matter to the Israelis and their supporters and puppets in fake organisations against anti-Semitism, like the Campaign and the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion. They’ve tried to expand the definition of anti-Semitism so that it specifically includes criticism of Israel. In the case of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, it’s because the charity was set up in 2014 after its founder was shocked to discover that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza was reviled and condemned by the majority of severely normal Brits. The standard Israeli response ever since the 1970s and no doubt many decades before that, is to smear any critic of Israel as an anti-Semite. They have to be, ’cause it’s the only Jewish state. Thus very decent gentiles have been smeared, who have campaign ardently against racism, including the abuse and maltreatment of Jews. And Jews have been particularly singled out for such smears, in terms which would be anti-Semitic themselves if they were uttered by non-Jews. It’s because Zionism was always a minority position amongst most Jews, and the last thing these bigots and race hucksters want is for more people to wake up and see that an increasing number of Jews, including young people, who’ve suffered anti-Semitic abuse and violence themselves, despise Israel for its maltreatment and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
The Blairites were keen to make those accusations, because Tony Blair received much of his funding from the Israel lobby through Lord Levy. They’re now worried because Momentum and the real Labour moderates are in the ascendant, and so are trying to use any stick to beat them. And the Tories have been madly pro-Israel since Thatcher.
Lurking somewhere in the Tory support for Israel there’s a nasty whiff of bog-standard British imperialism. Whatever the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, AIPAC or the other pro-Israel groups say to the contrary, Israel is a White settler society. Its leader stated very clearly that this was the case, before decolonisation made imperialism unacceptable. Then they started lying about how it was movement of national liberation against the occupying Arabs. The vast majority of Zionist settlers were Jews from Europe and America. Ashkenazi Jews are still the dominant class in Israel today. And they despised the Mizrahim, Jewish Arabs, or Arab Jews, as racially and culturally inferior. They were segregated in different schools, in case their oriental manners and attitudes contaminated respectable White settlers, and given the dirtiest, poorest paid work to do. Discrimination against them was and is widespread.
While the British Empire is very much a thing of the past, some Tories seem to hanker for the days when Britain could and did conquer and colonise other nations. Way back when the war in Afghanistan was just starting, there was an article by right-wing historian Niall Ferguson in the Heil which made this very clear. It started reasonably enough by defending the Allied invasion as a response to 9/11, but ended with Ferguson looking forward to the Americans settling the country. It was, at least to this reader, a naked apologia for imperialism. Sheer undisguised imperialism, not dressed up as nation building, or the neo-colonialism of the trade tariffs and IMF recommendations to struggling developing nations. But real colonialism.
Mike’s right. It’s time to bring the curtain down on the Tory domination of charities. The Tory connection to the Samaritans has done disabled people immense harm and injustice by preventing the organisation recognising and condemning the way Tory welfare policies are driving disabled people to suicide.
And the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is strongly political. As well as not condemning the Tories, it also has little to say about the real Fascist groups, who do want to exterminate or harm Jewish Brits. But that’s not why it was set up. It was set up to defend Israel from criticism. And it’s frightened of Corbyn because he’s pro-Palestinian. But not, as I understand, anti-Israel, though you will never hear that from this pack of liars, bigots and frauds. They’re part of the true-blue, official, Conservative Jewish establishment.
And woe betide anyone one, no matter how anti-racist, whether Jew or non-Jew, who dares to break their party line. It won’t matter how many scars their victims have had fighting the storm troopers of the BNP or National Action. It doesn’t matter if the Jews they pick on are Torah-observant or secular, but self-respecting. Nor if they themselves have been abused and beaten by the real anti-Semitic thugs. Simply for condemning Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians automatically means that they’re all anti-Semites in the twisted thinking of these frauds and their political allies.
It’s time to end this charade. Get the Tories out of charities, and get the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s charitable status revoked. They aren’t a charity: they’re a party-political pressure group, and should be condemned as such.
This video from RT over here in Blighty discusses the controversy surrounding the plans to commemorate the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. This was the pledge by the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, that the British would support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. There have been protests and demonstrations by Palestinians in London, who argue that the Declaration should not be celebrated. Instead, the centenary should be used to apologise for the historic crimes and injustice meted out to the Palestinian people.
Eisa Ali, one of the presenters of this piece, then discusses how the Palestinian Mission here commissioned a series of posters to show the oppression and ethnic cleansing suffered by the Palestinians under what critics, like the Palestinian ambassador Manuel Hassassian, have rightly described as an apartheid regime. These show a series of ‘before’ and ‘after’ images. One is of a thriving Arab town, full of homes and with its mosque, as it was before the Israeli occupation. After the creation of Israel, it becomes ruins, containing nothing but rubble, although the mosque still stands.
These posters were banned by Transport For London, which didn’t want to put them up. However, some individual black cabs are showing them. The Palestinian ambassador states that he believes that there was pressure on TFL from two sides, including the government, not to show these posters. He states that to add insult to injury, Theresa May has also invited Benjamin Netanyahu over for a meeting.
Looking at Mr. Hassassian’s name, it seems to me that he might be a Christian, or of Christian descent. It should be remembered that 25 per cent of Palestinians were Christian before the establishment of the state of Israel. That proportion has gone down to one per cent. The American religious right has claimed that this is due to Muslim intolerance. That’s certainly there, as Christians have been victimised by Muslim Palestinians as suspected collaborators. But it’s also because they’ve also been subject to massacre and expulsion as Arabs, just like their Muslim friends, relatives and neighbours. As for Jewish Palestinians, they were tolerated only because their labour was needed. The leaders had inherited all the racist assumptions about Arab inferiority of the European countries they came from, and they believed that the Mizrahim, Jewish Arabs, like Arabs generally, were culturally if not racially inferior. In the 1960s tens of thousands of Jewish Palestinians were officially expelled from Israel, because they were held to be Arabs, not Jews, on the grounds of their cultural assimilation.
I mention the decline of the Christian Palestinian population simply to put the matter straight, not to stir up any more Christian anti-Semitism, which I absolutely condemn.
I just want to make the point that Christians in America are being deliberately given a very distorted view of events in order to bolster western colonialist attitudes towards the Palestinians as a whole, and generate Islamophobia against the Muslim population, in order to manufacture support for what is a White, imperialist settler state.
Theresa May has also said in the Commons that the Balfour declaration should be celebrated.
No. It shouldn’t.
This doesn’t come from any racism towards Judaism or the Jewish people. This country has benefited immensely from the contribution of its Jewish people in just about all areas of life, culture and endeavour.
It simply comes from the fact that Palestine was not ours to give. Its indigenous people had been there for millennia, even if Arabs were relative newcomers, having conquered the region in the 7th century AD. Palestine contained not only Muslims, but also Arabs and Jews, as well as the Samaritans, who are mentioned in the Bible, and who are gaining in numbers.
The result of the Balfour Declaration was their massacre and expulsion from their historic lands. Those that remain are forced into what have been described, with more than a little justification, as ghettoes, and are subject to a form of apartheid. This has all been described by many highly courageous Jewish and Israeli journalists, writers, and activists, as well as by the Palestinians themselves and others.
It has also resulted in immense harm to the wider Jewish people. At the time of the Declaration, the majority of Britain’s Jewish community, including its leading families, who had been here since the 17th century, were resolutely against it. They wanted to be accepted as fellow Brits, and were afraid that the passage of the Declaration would mean that they would be suspected of dual loyalty. The businessman and presenter of the British version of The Apprentice, Sir Alan Sugar, said in one programme that he had been a member of the Jewish version of the Boy’s Brigade. He didn’t mention it, but the lads enrolled swore an oath ‘to be a good Englishman and a good Jew’. You can also see the pride in British citizenship in paintings such as David Blomberg’s modernist depiction of the interior of a Jewish bath house, which is painted in the red, white and blue of the Union flag.
Similar views were held by the Jewish communities elsewhere across Europe and the world, in Germany, where there was originally much less anti-Semitism than Britain, and Poland. But the Declaration has contributed to anti-Semitism through the fear that Jews, or an influential portion of them, have more loyalty to Israel beyond that of the other nations in which they live. And Zionist groups have at time collaborated with the real anti-Semites, in the hope that rising persecution of Diaspora Jews will result in more of them emigrating to Israel. Tony Greenstein and others have shown on their blogs and writings, over and over again, using and reproducing contemporary documents, that this was the case. But simply repeating this historical fact will get you smeared as an anti-Semite.
This should not be to condemn Israelis. Professor Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, now at Exeter University, who was driven from his homeland because of his courageous defence of the truth against official lies and persecution, has defended his former compatriots as decent people. In one interview he described how he opened his house up, every Thursday night, to anyone, who wanted to visit him to hear his side of the story. He shortly found that his front room was full of people wanting to hear what he had to say, and find out for themselves whether he was the terrible anti-Semite the officials claimed.
It should be to condemn the actions of successive Israeli governments, in constructing a racist, genocidal state. And the actions of Britain itself, and our officials and politicians, for their part in the massacre and dispossession of an entire people.
Last week, Counterpunch published an interview by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb with Sami Awad, a Christian Palestinian, and Yoav Litvin, a former Israeli soldier, about their campaigns to bring about an end to the brutalisation of the Palestinian people and conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land, based on the Gandhian principles of nonviolence and civil resistance. For example, Sami Awad in the articles states that he is horrified that Palestinian children don’t have Jewish friends, thanks to the system of segregation. Rabbi Gottlieb also notes that apart from the well-known conflict between Israelis and Arabs there are also tensions between Eurpean and American descended Jews and the Mizrahim, the indigenous Middle Eastern Jews. She states that the myth of the Jews returning to their ancestral homeland after 2000 years of exile has resulted in the Jewish state erasing the long history of the region’s indigenous Jews.
In her introduction, Rabbi Gottlieb writes
Sami Awad and Yoav Litvin are two men whose lives have been deeply impacted by the events of 1948 and 1967 when Palestinians were collectively driven from their homes and villages in order to make room for Jewish settlement. The Israeli Occupation of Palestine is ongoing; Israeli policies that resulted from the events of 1948 and 1967 continue to create daily suffering in the lives of Palestinians.
Sami Awad comes from a lineage of Palestinian Christians from Bethlehem. He was influenced to follow the path of nonviolence by his uncle, Mubarak Awad, a follower of Gandhi. Sami created an alternative institution, The Holy Land Trust, which is part of the wave of nonviolent movement building dedicated to resisting Occupation, which grew out of the first Intifada.
Yoav Litvin went through a personal journey from acceptance of the pre-determined role of Zionist soldier-guardian, to a person who dissents from the Israeli status quo regarding Palestinians. He uses his skills as a psychologist/neuroscientist and writer/artist to promote accountability, healing and reconciliation.
People who resist the systemic violence of Israeli Occupation in Palestine and Israel have a lot to teach us about building nonviolent movements for justice and social change under extremely challenging conditions. Millions of Palestinians suffer under a settler-colonial regime that is engaged in continuous appropriation of land, ghettoization and isolation, the imposition of hundreds of check points that curtail freedom of movement and economic growth, destruction of homes, villages and farm land, forced water deprivation, the blockade of Gaza, constant military invasion and assault, two separate and unequal systems of justice and so many other features of Israeli rule that deprive Palestinians of their capacity to live peacefully and without fear upon the land of their ancestors or fulfill their personal dreams. In addition to the Israeli Jewish and Palestinian conflict, social, political, cultural and economic divides among Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews in Israel is another complex component of the process of conflict transformation. The Zionist myth of a 2000-year absence and subsequent return of Jews to the land erases the long history of the Jews of the Middle East who are indigenous to the region.
In response to Israeli apartheid, Palestinians have chosen to resist forced removal from ancestral lands with a variety of mostly nonviolent tactics. Inspired by the successful South African struggle to end apartheid, Palestinians called upon the international community to take up boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as a nonviolent solidarity tactic on July 9, 2005 after the International Court of Justice declared the Separation Wall illegal on July 9, 2004. In addition to BDS, Palestinians employ prisoner hunger strikes, Friday demonstrations against the Separation Barrier, the creation of ‘Tent Cities’, and Palestinian cultural arts to remain ‘sumud’, that is, ‘steadfast’ to their commitment to keep living on ancestral lands and preserving Palestinian culture. Palestinians refuse to be erased from history and place. Intifada, in its original meaning, means to shake off oppression through the art of resistance. This is a daily, and unavoidable practice for Palestinians, as it is a condition of existence under Israeli occupation for those who remain.
Israeli Jews who dissent from Occupation, although few in number, continue to create methods of solidarity in support of Palestinian human rights. Groups such as Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition (ICAHD), Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence, Who Profits?, Anarchists Against the Wall, Machsom Watch, Shministim, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and +972 are platforms of resistance to Occupation. The Palestinian community living inside ‘1948’ also engages in resistance through alternative institution building and human rights advocacy that includes groups like Adalah-the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Adammer (prisoner rights) and many more. Palestinians living inside Israel face ongoing assaults on their capacity to remain on traditional lands and neighborhoods as well as achieve equal rights under Israeli law. The ongoing atmosphere of racism is the price Palestinians pay for continuing to live in Israel.
This is a fascinating alternative insight into the activism of decent, honourable men and women, seeking to remove a monstrous injustice. Much of this is new to me. I don’t believe I’ve heard anyone talking about non-violent resistance by the Palestinians. The news you hear about from the region seems to be exclusively about bloodshed. I’ve come across the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, but have never come across many of the other Israeli groups mentioned in this article, such as Combatants for Peace. I’m not surprised, however. Amos Oz in his book, The Israelis, records the sorrow and guilt expressed by many Israeli soldiers for their role in expelling Palestinians during the Six Day War.
May the Lord bless all those striving to bring a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and indeed to everyone trying to create a better future in the Middle East, one without terror, sectarianism, and imperialism.
Last weekend’s online edition of Counterpunch carried an article by Ramzy Baroud, reporting that 99 years after the Balfour Declaration the Palestinians wish to sue Britain for giving away their homeland to the Zionist colonists. Balfour was the British Foreign Secretary, who, in a note given to Walther Rothschild, the leader of Britain’s Jewish community on 2nd November 1917, in which he pledged British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Baroud quotes the letter, which read
His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
And concluded
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Baroud puts this agreement in context, as part of a wider movement by the colonial powers to divide up the Middle East and the Arab nations for themselves. This was the geopolitical background to the Picot-Sykes agreement, drawn up a year or so earlier, which settled the boundaries of British and French mandated territories and colonial possessions in the region.
Last July, the Palestinian Authority took the step of asking for wider Arab support in suing Britain for the agreement. Baroud states that at the time the Declaration was made, and the Picot-Sykes Agreement signed – the latter in secret – Britain was not in possession of Palestine or the other territories, which were still part of the Ottoman Empire. This was dismantled after the War. Baroud reproaches the British and the West for their hypocrisy in supporting Zionist emigration and colonisation of Palestine. At the same time, Britain also gave a series of spurious promises to the Palestinians, including offering them independence. The Palestinians finally rebelled when it became obvious that the British were helping the Zionists. Nevertheless, the League of Nations mandated the new Arab territories to Britain. The Balfour Declaration prepared the international stage for the full-scale ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the decades to come, and that the British continued their support of the Jewish colony after it became Israel, while at the same time also promising some small measure of support to the Arabs.
Baroud concludes
While Balfour cannot be blamed for all the misfortunates that have befallen Palestinians since he communicated his brief, but infamous letter, the notion that his ‘promise’ embodied – that of complete disregard of the aspirations and rights of the Palestinian Arab people – that very letter is handed from one generation of British diplomats to the next, in the same way that Palestinian resistance to colonialism has and continues to spread across generations.
That injustice continues, thus the perpetuation of the conflict. What the British, the early Zionists, the Americans and subsequent Israeli governments failed to understand, and continue to ignore at their own peril, is that there can be no peace without justice and equality in Palestine; and that Palestinians will continue to resist, as long as the reasons that inspired their rebellion nearly a century ago, remain in place.
I think the Palestinians are right to sue Britain. We clearly had no right whatsoever to grant a territory we did not have to the Zionist Federation in complete disregard to the wishes of its indigenous inhabitants. There are also other aspects to the Balfour Declaration, which are not mentioned in Baroud’s article, but which give a different perspective on domestic Jewish support for the embryonic Zionist state. According to Lobster, many, perhaps the majority, of British Jews did not support its creation. Herbert Samuel, the only Jewish member of the Cabinet, opposed it, as did very many Jews, including many leading members of the British Jewish community. I think that Samuel may have presented the government with a list of 72 leading Jewish families, who were against it. Samuel, along with the majority of European Jews of the time, at least in western Europe, wished to be patriotic members of their European homelands, and to be seen and accepted as such by their gentile compatriots. Samuel was afraid, with considerable justification, that the creation of an independent Jewish state would lead to Jews being suspected of having double loyalties, of not really being ‘British’. It’s easy to see why he feared that. This is, after all, the attitude that has led to Jews being persecuted throughout history, and which has survived in stupid conspiracy theories like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and similar fantasies of the Nazis and the Alt Right.
It also needs to be pointed out that the Palestinian population also included indigenous Jews, who have also been exploited and expelled by Israel. About 60,000 Arab Jews, or Jewish Arabs, were forced out of Israel in the 1960s. The Mizrahim, Arab Jews, who were invited to immigrated to Israel to build up the labour force, were given the poorest housing and jobs, and looked down upon as inferior by the European Zionist colonists. As Counterpunch has also pointed out in previous articles, Israel sees itself as a Western state, and has maltreated its indigenous inhabitants according to the manner other western settler states have brutalised and ethnically cleansed theirs.
Balfour’s note states that he wanted the civil and religious rights of the indigenous Palestinians respected, and did not want it to prejudice the rights and the way Jews elsewhere were seen. But this has been what has occurred. And Baroud is absolutely right to say that there can be no real peace without a just settlement of the Palestinians and their right to a homeland of their own.
Mike today has written another piece about the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. This time they’ve been regurgitated by pieces in the Grauniad and the Heil.
The first piece Mike deals with is entitled ‘Why Jews in Labour Place Little Trust in Jeremy Corbyn’ on the paper’s website by Joshua Simons. Simons is a former policy adviser to Corbyn, who used the usual rhetorical smears of the Israel lobby against the Labour leader. He identified Israel with the Jewish people throughout the world, stating that Israel’s very existence has been used by the far Left to stir up anti-Semitism against Jews in Israel in the wider world. Mike points out that this statement would exonerate Corbyn from the anti-Semitism charge, as he’s centre-left, not far left. Simons then brings in the stereotype of the Jews as bankers and financiers, which Mike also criticises as strange, as the various debates about anti-Semitism in the Labour party haven’t mentioned them. He states that anti-Semitism isn’t rampant in the Labour party, only to go on to contradict himself by saying that Jews are let down by a leader, ‘who some believe traded a peerage for a favourable report into anti-Semitism’. Again, Mike points out how contradictory this statement is, as he has already admitted that anti-Semitism isn’t rampant in the party. If it isn’t, there would be no need for Corbyn to bribe Chakrabarti to get a positive report. He concludes that Labour is only thought to be anti-Semitic because it is led by someone who has a visceral contempt for America and Israel. Mike responds to this assertion with the comments
But ill-feeling about Israel’s political decisions is not anti-Semitic, no matter how often or how loudly the more strident Zionists claim it is. Again he contradicts himself by adding: “It is not at all true that antisemitism exists because of the Jewish state” and “Young Jewish people in Britain should not give up their criticisms of Israel’s policies.”
More interesting, to me, was the fact that he is a former policy advisor. Why did he quit? Does he have an ulterior motive in resurrecting these claims?
The Heil on Sunday article is about Corbyn supposedly re-igniting the race row by purging the party of Michael Foster, the Jewish donor who criticised his leadership. Mike begins by pointing out that the very title is inaccurate, as Corbyn can’t and doesn’t purge anyone. Johanna Baxter, the NEC members behind the purge of many of the Corbynites, has stated that the decision to expel members is taken by three member panels. Corbyn doesn’t sit on any of them. The appearance of the two articles in their respective papers at the same time suggests to Mike that they’re part of an orchestrated campaign against Corbyn. Foster isn’t a financier – he’s a show business agent, but he did donate £400,000 to the Labour party. This might explain why Simons in the Graun felt he had to rant about Jews being equated with banking. The article then goes on to make more allegations of anti-Semitism against the Labour leader.
This story, complaining about the purge of a right-wing candidate, has been published at the same time as the Blairites are carrying out a mass purge of low-ranking left-wingers within the party, most notably the leader of Broxstowe council this weekend. This suggests to Mike that these articles are to mask and obscure the purge of low-ranking members by playing up the purge of a single, high-ranking member of the party. And Mike also points out the irony of a Jewish man complaining about anti-Semitism in the Labour party in a paper that explicitly supported Adolf Hitler and the BUF before the Second World War. Other bloggers, like Tom Pride, have also produced headlines from the Heil attacking Jews and Jewish immigration during the same period.
Mike discusses a comment on Twitter by Eoin Clarke, remarking on the large number of people, who have been purged, who were also going to be delegates at the Labour party conference. Mike adds that Labour First, another Blairite body, has been contacting like-minded Labour members to attend the conference, in the hope of replacing the Labour leaders’ policies with their own. This is being done in the hope that this will force him to leave, either by making it impossible for him to do his job as leader, or to make him vulnerable to criticism. This is being done as they realise that he’ll probably win the leadership election on Wednesday.
Mike concludes
This is the real dichotomy in the Labour Party at the moment.
Mr Corbyn may be accused of the most vile behaviour – falsely. Meanwhile, just look at the underhand tactics employed against him.
There are a couple more things that can be said about these articles. Let’s deal with Joshua Simons’ article first. Part of his resentment against Corbyn and Momentum is that he believes they have a ‘visceral contempt for America and Israel’. This marks Simon out as Blairite Neocon. The Blairites were strongly in favour of the Atlantic alliance, and were partly the products of the Reaganite political initiative, the British-American Project for the Successor Generation, which wanted to guide suitable British politicians and media leaders – one of BAP’s other alumni was an editor of the Times – into a suitably pro-American stance. Reagan’s America was strongly pro-Israel, partly as psychological compensation for the America’s signal failure to win the Vietnam War. To make up for their country failing to quash the Vietnamese Communists, the American Right turned to celebrating Israel’s victories against the Arabs. And there are good reasons for despising the foreign policies of both countries. Having contempt for America’s long history of overthrowing democratic, left-wing regimes and installing brutal Fascist dictators, and Israel for its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians does not automatically make someone either anti-American or anti-Semitic. Many of the people, who despise America’s politics, admire other aspects of the country, such as its popular culture and music. And very many of Israel’s critics have been Jews. These include Harold Pinter, who was a bitter and outspoken critic of the barbarity of America’s foreign policy. The great playwright also was certainly not reticent about robustly expressing his opinions about anti-Semitism. I heard from a friend that he once decked a man in queue he was in, after this fellow said something monstrous in favour of the Holocaust.
As for the automatic connection between Israel and Jews around the world, this has been repeated a number of times by the Zionists, including Netanyahu. But it’s not true, and the ties between Israel and the Jewish community in America are becoming weaker. Norman Finkelstein has talked about how there was very little support, or even interest amongst Jewish Americans for Israel until the 1970s, and a growing number of young Jewish Americans are increasingly indifferent and critical towards it. As for his complaint that opposition to Israel leads automatically to hatred of Jews in Israel, that’s a very careful way of trying to avoid the reality that Israel was set up as the Jewish state. In this case, it is easy for Simons to claim that hostility to Israel equals hostility to Jews in Israel, as Israelis are Jews. But talking about Jews in Israel is away of trying to avoid Israel’s own self-image and identity as the Jewish state, and present it as another pluralist nation, of whom Jews are only one section of the population, and not the dominant population for whom the state itself was founded. George Galloway has pointed out that it’s difficult to avoid criticising the Israeli people for the atrocities committed by their country, as unfortunately Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition have the support of the majority of Israeli citizens.
I am also very much aware that it is unfair to hold the whole nation accountable for what Netanyahu and his supporters are doing. There are many Israelis, who have shown great courage in supporting the Palestinians. These people are also under by Netanyahu and his cronies. There was a recent poll of Israelis, which found that a majority agreed with the statement that Israelis, who sided with Arabs, should deprived of their citizenship and civil rights. Such a finding should chill anyone, who believes in democracy, pluralism and tolerance. This also adds another twist to Simons’ contention that hatred of Israel is also leading to hatred of Jews abroad. If that poll is to be believed, a fair number of Israelis also hate Jews in Israel – the Jews that protest against nearly seven decades of injustice against the Palestinians, as well as the Mizrahim, the Arab Jews, who were recruited by the Israelis as a cheap labour force, and then rigorously segregated and discriminated against in order to make them discard their Arab culture.
As for Simons’ rant about bankers, I’ve seen that used by the Republicans in America to try and rule out of bounds the entirely justified criticisms of the bankers and financiers responsible for the global financial collapse. The argument runs that as much anti-Semitism centres around the perceived Jewish control of the financial sector, then criticism of the financial sector is anti-Semitic. It’s a false syllogism. The people, who despite the financial sector, do so regardless of the particular ethnic or religious origin of its members. They’re outraged because the current financial system has destroyed the world’s economy, forced billions around the world into poverty, including destroying the economies of whole nations, like Greece, and then have the temerity afterwards to continue demanding the same bloated bonuses and pay rises for its chief executives, while shifting the burden for clearing up their mess onto the poor. But Wall Street, along with the other major corporations, heavily donate to the political parties in expectation that the politicos will enact legislation favourable to them. Shrillary Clinton is a case in point. She’s taken millions from Wall Street in fees for speeches, and is a firm proponent of the ‘light touch’ regulation that resulted in the financial collapse. Here in Britain, New Labour launched its ‘prawn cocktail offensive’ in the 1990s, aimed at gaining financial sector support, again by promising a ‘light touch’ on regulation. With exactly the same results as occurred in America. Part of Simon’s rant may also reflect Lord Levy’s role in funding the rise of New Labour. He was the link for the supply of money to Blair and his crew from the Zionist lobby.
In short, Simons’ rant is an attempt to prevent criticism of the Neocons and corporatists of New Labour. It is not a genuine response to anti-Semitism, however hard Simon tries to insinuate that there is still rampant Jew hatred in the party. His rhetorical introduction to the accusation that Corbyn corruptly traded a peerage with Shami Chakrabarti in return for her clearing the party with the words, ‘some believe’, is an age-old Fleet Street device to get round a possible libel claim. It’s not being asserted as fact, merely as a belief, which is protected under law.
As For Foster’s hit piece in the Heil, I think Mike and Eoin Clarke are exactly right. And underlying it is the same fear that New Labour and its corporate and Zionist backers are losing their grip on the party. And so Foster is doing everything he can to smear their opponents – Corbyn and his supporters – as anti-Semites, even though they aren’t, and include many Jews and activists with a long history of combating racism and anti-Semitism.
The Blairites have been falsely accusing anyone they can of being an anti-Semite. Most of those smeared have been so libelled simply because they were opponents of Israel’s oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. The victims of this disgraceful smear, as I have pointed out time and again, include Jews and anti-racist activists like Tony Greenstein, Rachel Nesbitt, Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone. One of the most disgusting examples of this was last weekend, when Mark Foster, a Jewish donor to Labour, denounced Momentum and the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn as Nazi ‘stormtroopers’.
This is more than a little hypocritical, considering the Israel lobby’s own attempts render Israel’s racist policies against the indigenous Arab population off-limits through the abuse of such accusations, and the appalling contempt the founders of the state of Israel had for Arab Jews and European Jews, who wished to stay in their traditional European homelands. Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion wished to see increased Nazi persecution of European Jews during the Second World War, in order to encourage them to emigrate to Israel. One of the two even said that if there was a choice, between all of the Jews in Europe emigrating to Britain, and being saved, or half of the European Jewish population emigrating to Israel, while the other half were murdered by the Nazis, he’d prefer the latter.
They considered the Mizrahim, Arab Jews, culturally inferior, and only took them in because there was a shortage of labour after their expulsion of the Palestinians. They were segregated, given the lowest-paid and most menial of jobs to perform, and taught in special schools in order to remove any trace of their inferior Arab culture. This included the theft of Arab Jewish children from their parents, who were then given to childless European Jewish couples to bring up.
Lobster has also been a persistent critic of Tony Blair and New Labour. It has also not been shy of pointing out the similarity between Blair and the Nazis. For example, Blair’s warmongering in Iraq is exactly the same war crime committed by the Nazi leader Ribbentrop. And Blair’s rhetoric was also very close to that used by Oswald Mosley when he was the leader of the British Union of Fascists. So close is this resemblance that Robert Henderson published an article on the similarity, ‘New Labour, New Fascism?’ in issue 38 of the magazine, for Winter 1999. He opened with the statement
Tony Blair’s rhetoric is heavily if unconsciously littered with fascist buzz words: NATION, NEW, RENEWAL and so on. But there is a greater similarity than single words: Blair frequently expresses ideas which have a remarkable similarity to those of Oswald Mosley. To demonstrate this, I have compiled a series of quotes from Blair and Mosley.
He then provides a series of quotes, and challenges the reader to decide which is Blair and which is Mosley. There was a key at the bottom of the article giving the answers. All the quotes from Mosley were taken from Eugene Weber’s Varieties of Fascism, shortened to VoF. Those from Blair came from Iain Dale’s, The Blair Necessities, and were abbreviated to BN.
Here are the quotes. See how you do. There is obviously no prize, but I feel that if there was one, it should consist of a speech in the winner’s favour by Tom Mann at the Nuremberg Stadium.
1. It combines the dynamic urge to change and progress, with the authority, the discipline and the order without which nothing great can be achieved.
2. It is largely from family discipline that social discipline and a sense of responsibility is learnt.
3. Our challenge to be a young country is not just economic, it is a social and moral challenge.
4. I believe we have broken through the traditional barriers of right and left; they were are developing a new radical economic approach for the left and centre.
5. Above all it is a realistic creed. It has no use for immortal princip0les in relation to the facts of bread-and-butter; and it despises the windy rhetoric which ascribes importance to mere formula.
6. One Britain. That is the patriotism for the future.
7. The steel creed of an iron age, it cuts through the verbiage of illusion to the achievement of a new reality…
8. It is no good waving the fabric of our flag when you have spent the last sixteen years tearing apart the fabric of our nation.
9. A young country that wants to be a strong country cannot be morally neutral about the family.
10. We have in unison in our case the economic facts and the spiritual tendencies of our age…
11. We need a new social reality.
12. We seek to establish a new ideal of public service, and a new authority based on merit.
13. It must be absolutely clear to the British people that we are apolitical arm of no one other than the British people themselves.
14. The mild tinkering with the economy proposed by the Social Democrats nowhere near measures up to the problem. A massive reconstruction of industry is needed… The resources required to reconstruct manufacturing industry call for enormous state guidance and intervention.
15. We will protect British industry against unfair foreign competition.
16. There is nothing odd about subsidizing an industry.
17. It is true that within the old parties and even within the old parliament are many young men whose real place is with us and who sympathise with our ieas. The real political division of the past decade has not been a division of parties, but a division of generations.
18. The market collapsed: its guardians, the City whizz-kids with salaries fractionally less than their greed, now seem not just morally dubious, but incompetent. They failed miserably, proving themselves ut5terly unfit to have such power.
19. Politically, the fall-out from the events of the past two weeks will be immense. There will be few politicians standing for election next time on a budget advocating ‘free markets’.
20. The new establishment is not a meritocracy, but a power elite of money-shifters, middle men and speculators… people whose self-interest will always come before the national or the public interest.
21. The case advanced in these pages covers, not only a new political policy, but also a new conception of life. In our view, these purposes can only be achieved by the creation of a modern movement invading every sphere of national life.
22. We will speak up for a country that knows the good sense of a public industry in public hands.
23. A nation at work, not on benefit. That is our pledge.
24. Social aims without economic means are empty wishes. By uniting the two we can build a better future for all of our people.
25. In our project of national renewal, education renewal must be at the forefront. Our watchwords will be aspiration, opportunity and achievement.
26.I want a negotiated settlement and I believe that given the starkness of the military options we need to compromise on certain things.
27. It is the primary responsibility of any government to defend the country. That much is obvious. But my contention here is that a strong defence capability is an essential part of Britain’s foreign policy.
28. To change our country, we must show that we have the courage to change ourselves.
29. I think that you should always put the national interest before any section of interest in your party.
30. Our task now is nothing less than the rebirth of our nation. A new Britain. National renewal…The task of building new Britain now to come.
31. We ask them (our supporters) to rewrite the greatest pages of British History by finding for the spirit of their age its highest mission in these islands.
32. Without an active interventionist industrial policy… Britain faces the future of having to compete on dangerously unequal terms.
33. [We aim to] convert the existing chaotic survival of laissez-faire liberalism into a planned economy serving the needs of the State as a whole.
Key
1. VoF p. 170.
2. BN p. 18 1993
3. BN p. 19 1995
4. BN p. 14 1996
5 VoF p. 170.
6. BN p. 13 1996
7. VoF p. 171
8 Bn p. 13 1996
9. BN p. 12 1995
10. VoF p.172.
11. BN p. 19 1996
12. VoF. p. 111.
13. BN p. 28 1996
14. BN p. 39 1982
15. BN p. 39 1983
16. BN p. 40 1983
17. VoF p. 172
18. BN p. 41 1987.
19. BN p. 41 1987.
20. BN p. 42 1994
21. VoF p. 171.
22 BN p. 521988.
23. BN p. 65 1995.
24. BN p. 65 1995
25. BN p. 69 1994
26. BN p. 89 1982
27. BN p. 90 1997
28. BN p. 94 1993
29. BN. p. 98 1996
30. BN p. 106 1995
31. VoF p. 175.
32. BN p. 57 1988
33. VoF p. 116.
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