I’ve been blogging a lot recently about the malign influence of the Israel lobby, and specifically about the its tactics of smearing good men and women as anti-Semites for daring to criticise and expose Israel’s appalling record on human rights and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. I’d genuinely like to get away from this subject, but it continues to demand my attention as its a persistent issue. Despite most of those accused of anti-Semitism, if not all, now having been cleared and reinstated as members of the Labour party, and Mr Segalov’s recent article in the press defending Momentum from the charges of anti-Semitism, the Israel lobby still carries on smearing decent people, including Jews and committed anti-racists. It erupted earlier this week, when the Jewish Labour Movement contrived to have Jackie Walker dismissed as vice-chair of Momentum because she questioned the exclusive focus of Holocaust Memorial Day at a recent training event on the Jews to the exclusion of the many other peoples that have suffered genocide, and the assumed need for Jewish organisations, including her daughter’s school, for high security.
Mrs Walker is not an anti-Semite. She is the daughter of Black civil rights activist mother and a Russian Jewish father. She has made it clear that when she was earlier smeared as an anti-Semite for the heinous crime of discussing with a Jewish friend on Facebook the participation of some Jews in the slave trade, she was speaking as a Jew. This is exactly like the many other communities and peoples, that are also confronting their participation in this inhuman trade. She is, rather a woman with a critical intellect prepared to ask awkward questions. It is awkward people like her that have done so much to move human civilisation forward. I am pleased to say that she had received messages of support from both Black and Minority Ethnic and Jewish members of Momentum.
Unfortunately, the Israel lobby is extremely powerful. Guy Debord’s Cat posted an article four years ago in 2012, citing and quoting the blog Occupied Palestine, the Guardian and PressTV, on the Zionist organisations within the three main political parties. Not only is there a Labour Friends of Israel, headed by Luke Akehurst, there is also a Conservative Friends of Israel and a similar organisation in the Lib Dems. 80 per cent of Tory MPs are members of the organisation, and from 2010 to the date the article was written the Conservative Friends of Israel spent £30,000 taking more than 24 Tory backbench MPs on trips to Israel and the West Bank. The Guardian notes that Labour Friends of Israel are less unquestioning in their support, but have taken more MPs on trips to Israel than any other party – 60 since 2001.
The Cat begins his post with the rhetorical questions ‘Have you ever wondered why British politicians are so keen to put Israel’s position across in a positive light? Have you ever wondered why Foreign Secretary William Hague went on television and seemed rather biased towards Israel?’ and says Now you know why nothing ever changes. Israel has bought political influence in this country.
See the article at: https://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2012/11/page/2/
Unfortunately, as it’s untitled, I can’t link directly to it. But scroll down until you reach the post marked November 24. That’s it.
The Cat also comments on the Christian religious reasoning behind some members of these groups’ support for Israel:
I suspect that these “Friends of Israel” see themselves as helping to hasten the Second Coming of Christ (yes, they genuinely believe that Book of Revelations gobbledegook). Of course, the bonehead Zionists can’t see that.
I take issue with the Cat’s dismissal of the Book of Revelations as ‘gobbledegook’, but otherwise agree with the point. The Book of Revelations is a very difficult text for Christians to understand. I was taught at school that you need to read it with a gloss to explain the dense and obscure imagery. One view of the Book, which I believe explains the real meaning of the text, is that it’s largely a coded description of the persecution of Christians during the reign of Nero. If you examine the Number of the Beast, 666, using the gematria, the alphabetical number system of the ancient world, where he letter of the alphabet has a corresponding numerical value, you find that it is the value of the name Neron, the Greek form of Nero, or Qsr Nero, the Syriac for ‘Emperor Nero’. And one of the Roman historians describe Nero’s literal bestial antics, when he was an indolent and bored young aristocrat. He used to dress up as a beast, and wander the streets of Rome at night, attacking people. The Book looks forward to the renewal of the Earth and the general resurrection of the dead at Christ’s second coming, but is not meant as a literal account of the Last Days, as it is supposed by book’s like Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series of Christian novels.
I also don’t think the Zionists are quite as boneheaded as the Cat believes in their acceptance of Christian Zionist support. I think that many of them are undoubtedly aware of the theology behind it, and simply don’t care. They’re just happy to exploit it for the support it gives them. I have come across books critiquing and refuting Christian Zionism. I shall probably try and get hold of one of them at one point, because of its importance in promoting Israel and justifying or excusing its crimes both in America and over here in Britain. It’s been pointed out that there are more American Christians, who support Israel, than Jews.
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