I’ve blogged many times about how the Zionist establishment here in Britain and elsewhere doesn’t represent the entire Jewish community. It’s clear if you read left-wing, Israel-critical bloggers like David Rosenberg, Martin Odoni, and Tony Greenstein that there is sizable community of Jews, who despise the way Israel treats and has always treated the Palestinians and are adamant that it, and the Jewish organisations and institutions that support it, like the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jewish newspapers like the Jewish Chronicle and the various Zionist organisations do not speak for them. And many young American Jews are turning away from Israel for the same reasons, even those, who have been on the heritage tours Israel organizes to enthuse them about their country, and those, who have suffered real anti-Semitic abuse and assault. Many of the Israel-critical Jews are religious and Torah-observant. Some of them object to Israel because they feel the policies of the Israeli state contravene the principles of liberal Judaism in which they were raised. For some Orthodox Jews, the existence of Israel itself is a blasphemy, as the variety of the faith teaches that it can only be brought about by the Messiah. Until that time, they believe passionately that Jews should stay in exile, to share the lives of the non-Jewish people amongst whom they live and pray. And some of them are secular agnostics or atheists, but are nevertheless active, self-respecting members of their communities.
AJ+ is one of the other channels of the Arabic news broadcaster, Al-Jazeera. In this video below, their correspondent, Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, covers a protest in Washington DC against the pro-Israel Jewish lobbying organization, AIPAC by If Not Now, a Jewish group formed in 2014 protest at the assault on Gaza. The protesters march through the town chanting ‘A-I-P-A-C I won’t let you speak for me!’ and ‘We are ‘If Not Now’, we want freedom, freedom’. The protesters are prevented from getting to the convention centre by barricades, but break through them and rush to the doors, where they sit down, link arms and chain themselves to the front of the building.
One protester says she’s saddened its taken people so long to do this, she’s angry but also hopeful, and praises her fellow protesters chaining themselves up as ‘beautiful people’. Another woman also says she feels angry and empowered, and is not letting the people in that building speak for her anymore. Another young woman, shown amongst a group sawing wood to make banners, says that this is a transformation of her generation, a change in consciousness of what it means to be Jewish and support Israel.
A group of conterprotesters from the Jewish Defence League also appeared, wearing Kach T-shirts with its symbol of a raised fist within a Star of David. Shihab-Eldin asks one of them, a big guy with a bushy, reddish-brown beard and shaven head, why they’re there. He says it’s to defend Israel’s right to exist. Asked what he makes of the protesters, he calls them hypocrites. One woman with them declares that she’s Palestinian and that there is no such thing as the occupation. Shihab-Eldin tells her that he’s Palestinian too. She then contradicts herself by saying that there is no Palestine, only Israel and she’s from Israel and Palestinians are liars. Shihab-Eldin tries to tackle her about this, pointing out that she just said she was Palestinian. She simply replies ‘family’. He turns away, saying that the situation is confused.
Later on the JDL thugs do everything they can to provoke the If Not Now protesters, physically assaulting them, calling them ‘Nazis’ and ‘Kapos’ and even burning a Qur’an. But despite this the protesters remain calm. At the end of the video, one of the young women says she feels immensely hopeful, but says that she doesn’t think there will be a beautiful future for the Jewish community in America unless the older generation comes with them and joins.
Much of this will be familiar to Jewish protesters against the Israeli occupation over here. They’ve also organized boycotts of businesses and organisations supporting the occupation of Palestinian, and organized protests and consciousness-raising meetings. And they’ve also suffered abuse, intimidation and assault by pro-Israel thugs, who smear them as ‘self-hating’ as well as the insults they hurl at them in the video above. As for the Jewish Defence League, they’re another far-right bunch, who march about with the Islamophobes and Fascists of Tommy Robinson’s English Defence League. The Fascist sympathies of the JDL counterdemonstrators is plainly shown by their Kach T-shirts. Kach is a militantly nationalistic Israeli organization, which was banned by the Israeli government as a terrorist group. The JDL are just another bunch of Fascists intent on ethnic cleansing like their gentile equivalents in the western Fascist parties. The fact that they’re Jews doesn’t make an awful lot of difference. They still use the same anti-Semitic abuse towards their Jewish opponents that is used by gentile Nazis.
But groups like If Not Now, and their British counterparts, left-wing groups like Jewdas and the Jewish Socialist Group as well as the Jewish anti-Zionist organisations, are the groups the political and media establishment really don’t want you to know about. They’re the wrong kind of Jews, an attitude which in itself is profoundly anti-Semitic. Hence the Board of Deputies of British Jews or the Chief Rabbi, I can’t remember which, was outraged when Jeremy Corbyn attended a Passover Seder with Jewdas. They accused the Labour leader once again of anti-Semitism, because he was talking to left-wing Jews instead of the Conservative establishment.
But this demonstration and others like it shows that the Conservative Jewish establishment does not represent the entire Jewish community. And Israel-critical Jews, who may indeed support Israel but not it the occupation of Palestine, are increasingly organizing against them and showing very clearly that the Conservative establishment certainly doesn’t represent them.
This is a video from an Islamic website, though this is immaterial to the content of the video, which goes beyond religious or doctrinal differences. It’s a long, 25-minute extract from the Joe Rogan Show in which Rogan talks to Abby Martin. Martin’s a left-wing broadcaster and journalist, who was formerly with RT and is now with TeleSur. She talks about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, their brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians, America’s support for Israel and the country’s deeply entrenched xenophobia and racist indoctrination as part of the compulsory military service.
It’s very strong, very disturbing material. She states very clearly that its a Jewish supremacist, White settler state. Palestinians in the occupied territories have no freedom whatsoever. They are subject to constant military checks and interference through a system of apartheid. They have no precious little in the way of provision of water and electricity. The water comes from large cisterns, in which Israeli soldiers will spray Skunk, which makes the water taste of excrement so that it becomes undrinkable for the next month. Even though the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, this is ignored. Israeli mobs will come and occupy Palestinian homes, forcing the true owners out. If a Palestinian blogs about it, he will be tried and sentenced according to the number of hits on his site.
At the same time, Israeli soldiers shoot to kill and maim with impunity. They have a policy of ‘shoot to wound’, which means shooting people in the crotch. A woman was hit in her vagina, and men have their penises targeted. She also describes how a man, who was just drunk, was casually shot dead by Israeli soldiers. As was an Arab woman, who was shot at an Israeli checkpoint, and bled to death in front of her son.
It isn’t just Arabs gentiles, who are seen as inferiors, who can be ill-treated at whim. Martin states that the Israelis also look down on Black African Jews as racially inferior as well.
And official support for these illegal settlements goes all the way to the White House. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is the entrepreneur behind the Kushner Fund, a scheme which supports the construction of homes for Israeli settlers in the West Bank. She also talks about support for Israel by Richard Spencer, who describes himself as a White Zionist, who admires Israel as a racial state.
She also contrasts the popular reaction to the shooting of unarmed civilians by the authorities in Israel and the US. In America when the cops shoot an unarmed Black person, there’ll be a popular protest against it. However, in Israel, when the squaddie Elor Azaria shot an unarmed Palestinian, and was tried for it because of public pressure, there were also public protests against his trial. Rogan and Martin show footage of one of these demonstrations, in which the massed crowd chants ‘Death to Arabs’. Realising how bad this looks, they then change the chants to cries of supports for the troops. They even have a band rapping in Hebrew.
Martin pays due tribute to the courage of the Israelis, who film and speak out against these atrocities. In Israel many people will talk about treating the Palestinians better, but the idea of opposing Zionism is simply unthinkable, as this is their country. It’s like Americans opposing America. And the term ‘Leftist’ is a form of abuse.
As for crowds like that she filmed, they’ll also shout ‘Death to videographers’, as they hate the people filming this. Her team with her weren’t treated too badly, as they were Israeli Jews, but she says that there were attacked by people, who did wear Fascist-style cloaks.
She also talks about the immense amount of aide given by the American government to Israel. It’s $30 billion. However, in many cases, this is America giving a present to itself. Before then, Israel was able to do its own arms dealing, and was purchasing weapons from India. The aide has been given on the condition that it should be used to purchase American armaments.
As for the reason for America backing Israel, Martin states she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t believe its due to the power of the Israel lobby in the US. She states it’s more of a partnership, in the same way that America supports Saudi Arabia. Although Rogan points out that the Saudis have oil. Martin states that it’s probably to do with America using Israel as a point of leverage in the Middle East.
She goes on to make the point that the foundations for the country were laid after the Middle East was divided up by the colonial powers – Britain and France – by the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Jewish immigration to Israel, and support for the country was minimal until the Holocaust, when fear provided an instrument to increase support. The country was then partitioned by the UN, although she asks the rhetorical question of who gave them that power. She also states that it should have never been put in the Middle East, but should have been established somewhere like Australia, because of the immense amount of trouble it’s caused.
She says that several times in making her video, she thought she’d die. In Jerusalem she was asked if she was Arab. She also points out that the Zionists were also responsible for terrorist atrocities against Jewish communities in surrounding countries. These were false flag operations, which were blamed on the gentile communities, in order to create a climate of fear, which would inspire those Jewish communities to emigrate to Israel. And Israel itself grew through a number of massacres.
Rogan and Martin also discuss the role that national service plays in creating this massively xenophobic mindset. Rogan states that he knows people, who have joined the army in America, and its created a very strong bond between the service personnel, and a sense of separation, an ‘us and them’ attitude. He can only imagine the intense indoctrination that Israelis must undergo during their national service so that the hatred of Arabs becomes unquestionable.
As for the Arab settlements, she states that they are not as we’ve been told. She saw openly gay people, and the first time she filmed there she said there was weed in the air.
The interview concludes with Rogan asking her where her films can be seen. She says they’re at The Empire Files, and if you click on them, the various films she’s made about Israel will also be displayed.
This is very powerful stuff. It’s precisely what the Beeb and the other mainstream British broadcasters will not report, nor what the racists in the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement do not want severely normal people, Jewish and gentile, knowing about. Martin states in this video that the Israeli state and its supporters want this covered up, and do their level best to make sure it isn’t filmed.
Martin has called Israel a Jewish supremacist state. This is exactly what it is, with Judaism defined in racial terms. It’s comparable to the Christian clerical Fascist states which emerged in Europe prior to the Second World War, such as parts of the Fascist movement in Italy, where Fascist sympathisers in the Vatican saw Mussolini’s regime as a bulwark against materialism and Communism. As was Franco’s Spain, and the Slovak dictatorship of Monsignor Tizo, as well as elements of the Nazi party. It’s also similar to the viciously intolerant Islamist regimes in the Middle East, and the Hindu nationalist extremism of Modi’s BJP, as well as the militant atheism of the USSR and China. Shintoism also briefly became an intolerant, expansionist force during the Second World War. Israel isn’t unique by any means in its possession of a militantly intolerant nationalist ideology, which combines race with religion, or an official policy of anti-theism. But that does not mean that Israeli Jewish supremacism and Fascism should be ignored or excused.
As for the role national service plays in creating an intensely nationalistic, racial consciousness, political scientists have pointed to this as a major element in the construction of Fascism. Fascist and proto-Fascist ideologues admired the armed forces, not just from militarism and an admiration for military glory, but also because it offered an alternative and a tool against the expansion of socialism and democracy. The military was an ideal model, in their eyes, for society because it was hierarchical. At the same time, the uniform and common military identity and service under fire created a strong bond between men. This was valued as a way of stopping the development of working class consciousness and power.
And the bond of men under fire is very, very strong. The veteran BBC broadcaster on foreign affairs, Kate Adie, has said that it’s far stronger and ferocious than anything in the movies. So strong that it can’t really be shown on camera.
And the fundamental position of military service in Israel is comparable to that of Prussia. It was said of the Hohenzollern’s kingdom that ‘Prussia is not a country with an army. It was an army with a country’. The kingdom was held together through its army, which was well-funded, had a very high status, and wide-ranging powers over the civilian population. For example, under Frederick the Great army officers could compel civilians to carry their baggage and equipment.
Martin states that she doesn’t know if Richard Spencer of the Alt Right would like to impose universal conscription like Israel. Well, he may not, but that has historically been the demand of British Fascists and those on the Tory right. And in the 2010 election one of the policies of the BNP was that every Brit should possess a gun as part of his volkisch identity.
As for Palestinian Arabs tolerating homosexuality, Islam has been traditionally far more tolerant of gays than western culture. The Qu’ran condemns sodomy as a sin against which the Prophet Lut – the Biblical Lot in the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament preached. But the laws against it were a dead letter in Egypt as early as the 12th century. One of the most admired Arab poets of the 9th century was gay, so that even today, Arab poets often use the masculine 3rd person pronoun – ‘he’ – for the beloved, even when they are talking about a woman.
This point is important, as supporters of Israel will try to defend it as one of the few places in the Middle East which is tolerant of gays. Pamela Geller, of the Atlas Shrugs blog, one of the leaders of the ‘counter-jihad’ movement, has made this claim on her site. As has Michael Koren, a Canadian anti-Muslim broadcaster with Rebel Media. This week, a documentary on BBC 1 followed a Scots gay man from a Roman Catholic background, who was considering converting to Judaism because of Israel’s tolerance for gays. The Beeb filmed him travelling to the country, and Tel Aviv, which has been described as ‘the gayest place on Earth’. But this tolerance for homosexuality was traditionally shared across the Middle East. It is only in recent decades that attitudes have changed for the worse.
Despite Netanyahu’s insistence that Jews everyone are automatically Israeli citizens, there are very many Jews, who are bitterly opposed to it both from secular and religious principles. many of the supporters of the BDS movement are Jews or of Jewish heritage, as are several of the Counterpunch writers, who are also opposed to Zionism and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. One of these writers stated in a recent article that he is against Israel because of the liberal Jewish values with which he was brought up. A recent study has found that an increasing number of young Jewish Americans are becoming indifferent or hostile to Israel, because of its maltreatment of the Palestinians. As the very Jewish Sam Seder and his Jewish co-host, Michael Brooks, pointed out on their programme, Majority Report, criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism.
The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement, and other Zionist organisations and pressure groups, would have the world believe the opposite. It isn’t. Don’t believe their lies and smears. Instead, look at the exposures of Israeli racism and institutional brutality from anti-racist broadcasters like Abbie Martin, respected academics like Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappe, Lobster’s John Newsinger, and bloggers like Tony Greenstein.
In the three videos below, the left-wing American comedian Jimmy Dore gives an almost line-by-line, sentence-by-sentence commentary on Blair’s speech responding to the findings of the Chilcot inquiry into the invasion of Iraq. This has found that it was indeed an illegal war; that it was launched before all the opportunities of reaching a peaceful settlement had been exhausted; that there was no proper preparation for its conclusion and the restoration of peace afterwards; and that the invasion would result in further ethnic violence, bloodshed and the involvement of Iran.
Dore calls Blair what he is: a war criminal, who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of servicemen, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and for the rise of the bloody Islamist radicals of Daesh/ISIS. But these videos shows Blair is completely unrepentant. He tries to pass the blame instead on a ‘gridlocked’ UN, which could not come to a conclusion, and baldly states, against the evidence of the Report itself, that no-one could have predicted the sectarian and ethnic chaos that would follow the invasion. Except they did. They show he was desperate to join Bush, whom Dore also calls a rightwing maniac – and that he twisted the arms of the other 40 countries, who joined the coalition. Blair challenges his opponents to make an alternative decision, for what should have been done, as Saddam Hussein was a butcher who killed his own people. What do they think would have happened if Britain and America had not done anything? Dore makes it clear that nothing would have happened. There would have been no threat, no massacres, nothing. He also attacks Blair’s assumption of moral superiority in the violence he unleashed, as if western bombs were somehow kinder than those being used by Daesh/ISIS. As if rather than blowing people up, they hugged them to death. Blair also tries to shift the blame instead onto the rise of ISIS, but they only emerged after the Iraq invasion. And Dore also quotes John Prescott, who states that the radicalisation of British Muslims is probably due to the images they see on TV of their co-religionists being killed by western troops in an illegal invasion ‘rather than that book they read’. It’s not the Qu’ran that has encouraged so many western Muslims to join ISIS/Daesh. It’s western aggression.
These are angry, impassioned videos, and rightly so. Dore shows how the British press is uniformly condemning Blair, and how Blair, despite the evidence to the contrary, still won’t accept that he was wrong. Despite Blair’s pontificating, no lessons have been learned either. He shows a clip of Hillary Clinton mouthing off about invading Iran if they don’t get into line. And Dore states that Blair cut short his speech, after he went off to a dinner of arms manufacturers. I honestly don’t know whether that piece is real or satire. Considering how so many of the politicians connected to this conflict, including the Tory leader, David Cameron are cheerfully involved with the ‘merchants of death’, I think it’s all too likely to be real. Dore makes it very clear that Blair is indeed a mass killer, who should be behind bars.
A week or so ago I blogged about the horrific implications of the ISIS terrorist attack in Yemen, and the Saudi airstrikes against the Houthi rebel forces. ISIS are horrific, not just because of the mass death and terror they inflict on the territories they occupy, but also because of the massive cultural vandalism they also commit.
In Iraq they have smashed immensely valuable Assyrian antiquities and bulldozed the ancient city of Nimrod in order to cover up their looting and destroy the remains of the country’s pre-Islamic history. They have also destroyed mosques and shrines to St. George and Seth, one of Adam’s sons, who is revered in Islam as the Prophet Sheth. Yemen is also rich in history, as the centre of civilisations going back thousands of years. Its city, Marib, was the capital of the kingdom of Sheba, whose Queen visited King Solomon in both the Bible and the Qu’ran. There is thus a similar possibility that ISIS could attempt to destroy these ancient and vastly important remains as well.
I also blogged on the airstrikes against Yemen by the Saudis, and the terrible threat they also pose for peace in the Middle East. The Houthi are Shi’as, who have been marginalised and persecuted by the Sunni Gulf states. The attack on them by the Saudis could act as the catalyst for a wider war between Shi’ah and Sunni that could tear apart this entire region.
In this video from The Young Turks, they also discuss this possibility and the other political implications of the airstrikes. It hasn’t just been Saudi Arabia that launched the attack. They were also assisted by the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan, as well as Egypt. Pakistan was also considering sending ground forces if Iran became involved, while Turkey promised to provide logistical support. Iran, meanwhile, has possibly been supplying aid to the Houthis, but this is unclear.
The Turks point out how dangerous this situation is, especially when Turkey and Pakistan are both being drawn into it. Both are ‘tangential’ to the Middle East. Turkey in particular is a relatively modern, secular country, which has tried to position itself as a European as well as Middle Eastern country.
The Turks point out that the Saudis have probably acted because this time they can’t get America to wage war on their behalf, as they have so many times in the past. And aiding them would be very much against America’s interests. America needs to avoid a confrontation with Iran as it is negotiating with them over the country’s nuclear programme. Furthermore, both America and Iran are fighting ISIS in Iraq. The last thing America needs is to take part in attack on Yemen, and so find itself fighting the entire Shi’a population of the Middle East, as well as ISIS and al-Qaeda.
The one positive aspect to this is that America has not blindly done what the Saudis want. Several of the posters on the Islamophobic sites, were former members of the American armed forces. They had served in Saudi Arabia, and bitterly resented the arrogance with which the Saudis boasted they had the Americans wrapped around their little fingers and could get them to do their bidding. If America finally shows some independence from the Saudis in Middle Eastern policy, this might make some a little less prejudiced towards Muslims generally through experiences serving Saudi oil aristocrats.
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