Tony Greenstein's Blog

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM IN BRIGHTON & THE SOUTH COAST

2012-02-14T19:51:00.007Z

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM IN BRIGHTON & THE SOUTH COAST

Speaker Tony Greenstein

Tony has been active in the fight against fascism, both locally and nationally. Tony is also Secretary of Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre and a founding member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Price £8.99 please make cheques out to BUWC, 4 Crestway Parade, The Crestway, Brighton BN1 7BL

There will be a Pay Pal Facility Soon!

BRIGHTON BOOK LAUNCH

Saturday, 17 March 12 pm

The Friends Meeting House,

Ship Street, Brighton BN1 1AF

contact Terry on terrylhm@virginmedia.com www.labourhistory.co.uk

Brighton History Workshop

http://tinyurl.com/7xyd28t

No to Pinkwashing – No to Israel’s Use of Gay Oppression to Justify Palestinian Oppression

2012-02-12T16:35:00.004Z

Peter Tatchell and Others Support Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions

This letter from Peter Tatchell and other gay and Palestine solidarity activists is to be welcomed. It is certainly overdue. One of the more unpleasant features of recent years has been how the far-right has demonstrated how ‘tolerant’ it is to gay rights unlike those ‘backward’ Muslims. This reached its height with the killing of the gay fascist leader, Pim Fortyn in The Netherlands.

Even in Britain the English Defence League pretends to be sympathetic to gay rights and the BNP came out with the ludicrous position that although we may not allow you to adopt kids and have equal rights, we won’t kill you!

We have the obscene spectacle of the Israeli government, which follows a policy of ethnic cleansing, torture whilst seeking an unprovoked war with Iran, declaring how progressive it is. Support for gay rights is ‘cool’ in an even more ‘cool’ Tel Aviv. In fact Israel is anything but cool. World Pride in Jerusalem in 2006 , which Peter made a mistake in supporting, had to be held inside a stadium because the ultra orthodox who make up a large proportion of Jerusalem’s Jews, have the same attitude to gays as their fundamentalist Islamic counterparts.

I have personally been told by an Orthodox Rabbi that whatever crimes Hitler committed against the Jews he got it right with the gays.

There was a time when Peter Tatchell and his Outrage group wobbled a bit, especially with the advent of anti-Islamic racism and the appalling attitude of fundamentalist Islam to gay rights. In particular Peter turned up at PSC demonstrations demanding that we condemn the persecution of gays within Palestinian society, without realising that solidarity demonstrations probably aren’t the best place to do so. This was based on a lack of understanding that in a feudal style society issues such as gay rights, equality for women raise questions about the frozen nature of the society itself, distorted as it is by colonialism. It is only in the past 20 or so years that British society has begun to accept gay equality. Margaret Thatcher was famous for her hostility to gays and of course Clause 28 which prevented teachers including gay sexuality within the context of sex education. So to expect economically backward and repressed societies to adopt sexual liberation is a step too far.

One has to pay tribute to Tatchell’s fearlessness, whether it was attempting to arrest Robert Mugabe when he was viciously attacked by Mugabe’s henchmen, being punched to the head and still suffering headaches to this day, or turning up at Al Quds Day and both supporting a Free Palestine and opposing the Iranian states murder of Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh, a 16 year old girl who was a victim of sexual abuse before being hanged by the blood drenched murderers who use the Islamic regime to justify and legitimise their murderous rule.

This is not, as Mark Elf says, going to be popular with the BNP supporting site Harry’s Place. One suspects that HP isn't going to be wishing Peter many more happy birthdays! Boycott Divestment and Sanctions is a prime example of ‘anti-Semitism’ to these to these woodenheads.

Not sure what fellow Outrage member Brett Lock, who used to be very keen on HP (but seems to have disappeared of late) will make of this, but I remember back in the 1980’s Peter being very supportive of Palestine solidarity within the Labour Party when he was a member. He was a speaker at the Labour Movement Campaign on Palestine at County Hall, the headquarters of the Greater London Council in about 1984.

I can also remember trudging the Council estates in Bermondsey in support of Peter when he stood against that rank opportunist Simon Hughes in an election where Peter’s sexuality was made the key issue. Led by the scum of the Sun, Peter was pilloried for his open and honest admission of his sexuality as the old Labour Right, led by Bob Mellish backed people like the bigotted former leader of Southwark Council O’Grady. Simon Hughes of course came out as gay about 20 years later having benefitted from the vicious anti-gay witch hunt against Peter, who lived under permanent threat on a Bermondsey Council Estate. Come the night and of course the witch hunt was successful and the ‘Liberals’ took the seat.

Part of the problem was that useless Worzel Gummidge of a Labour Leader, Michael Foot, who instead of a forthright denunciation of the bigots hummed and hawed. The rest is history.

It is therefore very welcome that Peter has come out in support of BDS and one suspects that he won’t be a hero to Nick Cohen of the Observer for much longer!

It is also good to see the name of Linda Bellos. Linda resigned many years ago from the collective of Spare Rib because she was half-Jewish and identified at that time with Zionism. It was the time of the Jewish (i.e. Zionist) Feminist Group and Zionist Feminism, a current that has all but disappeared.All signs that Israel is no longer 'cool'!

Tony Greenstein
　

PRESS RELEASE (London 9/2/12):

LGBT and Human Rights Advocates Speak Out Against Israeli Pinkwashing

As Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month gets underway in the UK, human rights advocates are adding their voices to the global responses to Israel's attempt to 'pinkwash' its oppressive nature by portraying itself as progressive and liberal with regard to gay rights. In a letter to the press today, veterans of the Gay Liberation Front, Stop Clause 28, Outrage!, other campaigns and their allies express concern over the hi-jacking of LGBT rights as a propaganda smokescreen to divert attention from Israel's persecution of the Palestinians.

Pointing out that the gay rights movement originated at the time of civil rights, anti-apartheid and Women's Liberation movements, and drew inspiration from people striving for freedom from colonialism, they say it would be 'ironic if, in an attempt to gain a veneer of respectability by promoting itself as a liberal, tolerant haven for gay people and a prime gay holiday destination, a regime routinely violating human rights, practising institutional racism and dispossessing an indigenous population' tried to co-opt their hard-won progress.

Last year an anti-pinkwashing picket of a state-sponsored Israeli gay art exhibition took place in Soho, and more actions under the banner ‘No Pride in Israeli Apartheid!’ are planned. Trade unionists, feminists, Palestine Solidarity campaigners, activists, actors, academics and artists are rallying to express condemnation of pinkwashing and solidarity with Palestinian queer groups, who are part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, as are anti-occupation Israelis who oppose Israel's attempts to exploit LGBT rights to win legitimacy. ‘Marketing Israel to holiday-makers is particularly callous when there is a world-wide diaspora of ethnically-cleansed Palestinians prevented from returning to their homeland,' Sarah Colborne, Director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said. 'There are plenty of other places to enjoy beaches and clubbing without supporting a brutal, racist state at the expense of dispossessed people.'

'The state of Israel is increasingly desperate for positive PR, and is under huge pressure from the international BDS movement to end its apartheid system,' said campaigner Frankie Green, a GLF member in the 1970s. 'They are spending millions on rebranding Israel, and pinkwashing is a deliberate part of that. London is hosting World Pride 2012, and we hope anyone encountering pinkwashing will remember the movement's history and support the Palestinian quest for justice.'

No Pride in Israeli Apartheid!

Full text of letter below. For information contact 07999847254 or 07971424296
or see or pinkwatchingisrael or Israel & Pinkwashing, New York Times or Palestinian Queers for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions PQBDS or Israeli Queers for Palestine.

Dear Editor,

February brings events marking Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month, and London will host this summer's WorldPride Festival, four decades on from the Gay Liberation Front's first Gay Pride events. Simultaneous and overlapping with the civil rights, anti-apartheid and Women's Liberation movements, GLF also drew inspiration from the national liberation struggles of people freeing themselves from colonialism. The LGBT rights we now celebrate originate in the groundbreaking work of that era.

How ironic it would be if, in an attempt to gain a veneer of respectability by promoting itself as a liberal, tolerant haven for gay people and a prime gay holiday destination, an oppressive regime which routinely violates human rights, practises institutional racism and dispossesses an indigenous population tried to co-opt that progress.

As long-term advocates of LGBT and women's rights, some of whom created the first Gay Pride events, we wish to express our concern at the cynical hijacking of those rights by Israel's 'pinkwashing' PR campaign. The specious freedoms enjoyed by some Israeli gay people and visitors to Tel Aviv's nightclubs bear no more relation to real equality than did the privileges accorded white people during South African apartheid. Pinkwashing tries to divert attention from the untold suffering caused by Israel's subjection of the Palestinians to siege, bombardment, military occupation, ethnic cleansing, land theft, settler violence, killings (180 in 2011 alone), imprisonment, forced exile, the crushing of economic, educational and social infrastructure and denial of legitimate aspirations to self-determination.

We write in solidarity with Palestinian LGBT and civil society organisations who initiated the burgeoning global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to bring pressure to bear upon Israel until it complies with international law, and endorse their insistence on the universality of human rights. We invite all who share our abhorrence of Israel's persecution of the Palestinians to observe the boycott of Israeli tourism and goods, and hope that LGBT people encountering pinkwashing will take pride in remembering the roots of our campaigning history and support the Palestinian quest for justice.

Sincerely,

Frankie Green, Mary McIntosh, Peter Tatchell, Stuart Feather, Miriam Margolyes O.B.E., Pratibha Parmar, Linda Bellos O.B.E., Rumana Hashem, Jane Lane, Sarah Colborne, Director, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Professor Oishik Sircar
(message ends)

Israeli Jews? A Chosen People

2012-02-12T03:44:00.002Z

How the Herrenvolk Sees Itself

In an article, ‘The End of the Secular Majority’ Israel’s only liberal daily, Ha'aretz laments the advance of the ultra-orthodox and the decline of the secular majority. What the early Zionist pioneers chose to ignore was that by basing their claims to Palestine on the holy scriptures, they had handed the power of defining who was chosen and privileged to the religious. It was logical therefore, in order to prevent any breach between the Israeli state and the religious, that personal matters – divorce, marriage, birth – were handed to the Israeli rabbinate, even though the definition of a Jew for the purposes of the Law of Return was based on the Nazi Nuremburg Laws.

It is interesting that despite the continual whines and protests about ‘anti-Semitism’ 67% - two-thirds of Israelis consider themselves the chosen people. Chosen to serve was the original religious notion but that, along with much else, has gone by the board. Choseness now has been transformed into an ideological plank of current Israeli perception. There is no serving but rather having others serve them – the thousands of imported labourers from Asia (no problematic political claims of a right to return). The Chosen People idea has been transformed through Israeli settler-colonialism into a belief in a Jewish Herrenvolk, the master race with Palestinians destined, at best, to play the role of hewers of wood and drawers of water.

Hat tip to jewsansfrontieres for spotting this.

Tony Greenstein

The end of the secular majority

A new survey reveals that 80 percent of Israeli Jews believe in God and 65 percent in life after death. Does the religious revival mean there's no hope for a democratic Jewish state?
By Assaf Inbari

Once there was a secular majority. No more. That's the finding of a comprehensive, newly published study, "Beliefs, Observances, and Values among Israeli Jews," conducted by the Guttman Center for Surveys, which operates under the auspices of the Israel Democracy Institute.

According to the survey, 80 percent of Israeli Jews believe in God; 67 percent believe that the Jews are the chosen people; 65 percent believe that the Torah and precepts are God-given; and 56 percent believe in life after death. It's no longer a matter of popular fondness for traditional customs. This is definitely a matter of belief: three of every four Israeli Jews are not atheists. Even if they are not Sabbath observers, they cling to the basic belief system of the Jewish religion.

The illusion of a "secular majority" has been with us for many years, sabotaging the prospect of forging a pluralistic Jewish melting pot in Israel. The reason this did not happen is that atheists who believe they constitute a majority are as domineering as Haredim. It will happen only if we understand that it's not atheism - which is shared by ever-declining numbers of Israeli Jews - but pluralism, which is still shared by the majority, that is the basis for a democratic Jewish state.

The imaginary melting pot, into which Israel tried in vain to stuff the ultra-Orthodox and national-religious population groups, never had a chance. The smashing of the melting pot had the effect of reinforcing the insularity of the different communities. With separate education systems, separate cultural constellations, niche parties, separate residential areas and the selective application of the country's laws, each group did what it thought best for itself. Underlying the dandyish academic talk about "multiculturalism" is a frightening reality of ongoing intercommunal enmity that threatens to boil over into fratricidal war. Israeli statehood, built without foundations, is crumbling into a politics of crude, unrestrained, underhanded opportunism that is increasingly racist and less and less democratic.

This is what happens when the "secular majority" exempts itself from Judaism and leaves it in the hands of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox - as though Judaism were a given, frozen entity whose essence is known to the Orthodox and the Haredim. But Judaism was never a frozen entity. If it had been, the siddur - the prayer book - would not have replaced animal sacrifices; the oral Law would not have provided the written Torah with a revolutionary exegesis; festivals and commemorative dates like Hanukkah and Tisha B'Av would not have been set; and we would have continued to stone wayward sons.

The history of Judaism is the history of its transformation, not to mention the multitude of streams that have existed in every historical period (Israel and Judah, Sadducees and Pharisees, kabbalists and philosophers, Hasidim and Mitnagdim, religious Zionists and anti-Zionist Haredim ). In the face of Haredi rabbis for whom Judaism means the exclusion of women and evading civil obligations, the secular stream should have come forward as a Jewish group fearful for the image of Judaism and its enlightened, egalitarian and democratic realization. As a Jewish stream engaged in a struggle for the image of Judaism, the secular stream should have confronted all the national-religious rabbis for whom Judaism means ignoring the existence of the Palestinians, perpetuating the discrimination against Israel's Arab population and viewing themselves as the true commanders of the Israel Defense Forces. This will not happen as long as the secular stream continues to think it is the majority, and as long as it thinks that as "the majority" it can allow itself to ignore Judaism in its constellation of considerations.

Common ground

Demographically, there are no two ways about it. Since the natural increase rate of the Orthodox and the ultra-Orthodox is 10 times that of the secular population, the future is already here. We need to deploy for it. We are living in the final moments when processes may still be set in motion to shape Israeli society as a pluralistic Jewish community, because people of moderate outlook still constitute a solid majority here. Just as only three percent of those asked in the Guttman Center survey describe themselves as "secular, antireligious" (as against 43 percent who describe themselves as "secular, not anti-religious" ), the majority of the Orthodox and the ultra-Orthodox are also not militant zealots. Not yet. But they will become increasingly extreme as their demographic heft morphs into a critical mass and consolidates their lordship. We have a few years of grace left between the secular hegemony of the past and the - still preventable - religious hegemony of the future. These will be years in which a cultural and perhaps also political alliance can be forged among the secular, traditional, Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Israelis who share a view of Judaism as a living entity and wish to realize it in all the spheres of life from which it has been rabbinically excluded. A window of opportunity has been opened for cooperation between secular folk looking for roots and religious folk longing for the renewal of halakha - Jewish religious law. The question is whether we will act before the window closes.

Those who read the first Guttman Center survey on this topic, in 1991, were disillusioned early on about the "secular majority." That's because 56 percent of those asked at the time said, for example, that they believe wholeheartedly that the Torah is God-given (that 56 percent has now become 65 percent in the new survey ). The second survey, conducted in 1999, seemed to show that the erosion of the "secular majority" had been contained. In fact, that temporary turnabout was due to the mass migration from the former Soviet Union. That gave the Israeli body politic a secular blood transfusion for a few years, until the newcomers integrated into Israeli society and became traditional like the majority of Israeli Jews.

In other words, the wave of migration of the 1990s did not save the "secular majority," but only bought it time in its rearguard battle. In the meantime, right under the nose of this so-called majority, the Haredim and the Orthodox continued to be fruitful and multiply, and waxed exceeding mighty. As the executive summary of the new survey notes, "It is plausible that were it not for the mass immigration from the former Soviet Union beginning in the early 1990s, the increase in affinity to tradition and religion from 1991 to 2009 would have been constant."

Those are the findings, but the representatives of the "secular majority" are not confused by the facts. Take, for example, the poet Natan Zach, a prominent figure in Israeli secularism. "I don't think this country will last," he told the newspaper Maariv recently. "The society has disintegrated into fragments ... This nation has disintegrated into partisan factions permeated by hatred and zealousness ... It can't last."

But what held it together in the past, before the society Zach's answer might surprise his secular admirers. "The absence of a common base," he says, is what bothers him most of all. ""disintegrated into fragments"?The common bases - religion, history, remembrance of Zion, the Western Wall and the symbols that helped us perceive ourselves as one nation, which succeeded in shaping a Jewish image in the face of Christianity - all of those things disappeared. We actually have nothing."

Forthright words. But who would have believed that a secular leftist like Zach would invoke "religion, history, remembrance of Zion, the Western Wall and the symbols that helped us perceive ourselves as one nation" as our common ground?

Take note: It is this common ground, not the melting pot of the Ben-Gurion era, for which Zach now waxes nostalgic. Indeed, he dissociates himself from Ben-Gurion, who "thought that if you take different people from different faiths, from other parts of the world, from diverse traditions and cultures and put them all into the grinder in which our parents used to make meatballs, everyone comes out the same." Sixty years late, Zach acknowledges the baseless notion of the artificial melting pot, which demanded that non-secular Jews convert their concrete Jewish identity into a bland civil "Israeli" identity in the Tel Aviv sense of the word.

What Zach grasps now was understood 50 years before Israel's establishment by Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginsberg ), Hayim Nahman Bialik and the other cultural Zionists. Though they had a high regard for the initiative advocated by Theodor Herzl, they maintained that Zionism would not solve the Jewish question if it did not address the question of Judaism. Would the Jews in their state live by the lights of their distinctive culture, Ahad Ha'am wondered in 1903, "or will the state be no more than a European colony in Asia," as Herzl's vision suggested? If the Jewish state was not destined to arise "on the foundation of the eternal bond between the past and the future," why insist on the Land of Israel, or on speaking Hebrew? Let the inhabitants of the Jewish state speak French (the lingua franca at the time of the first wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine, 1882-1903 ), or German (as Herzl, whose native language it was, suggested ).

Secular and spiritual

"We want to create an autonomous life here, which has its own features and special character," Bialik declared in 1928, at the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Ohel Shem cultural center in Tel Aviv, adding, "In order to create original and true ways of life which bear a national aspect, the material for their creation must be taken from the foundation stones of the ancient ways of life."

Ahad Ha'am and Bialik were concerned that the Jewish state would not endure without a cultural base common to religious and secular: Hebrew, the Bible, the land, history, the legends of the ancient Jewish sages, classic and modern Hebrew literature, the Jewish festivals, the passages of life and the symbols. They proposed a free Judaism, not freedom from Judaism. They proposed that we live Judaism not as a religion that had congealed, not as a rabbinical package deal brokered back when Jewish men were forbidden to listen to women singing, but as a resurgent and relevant national culture. They offered us the common Jewish base whose loss Natan Zach is now remembering to lament.

The same approach was taken by the most prominent of the founders of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "It is not destined for the state that will arise to be a state of Jews, but a true Jewish state," the philosopher Martin Buber said in 1918. "I doubt that the secular ideal is capable of remaining strong for very long," the first rector of the new university, Samuel Hugo Bergman, stated in 1936, in remarks made at the start of the new academic year. The reason, he explained, was that the social and national ideals advocated by the various Zionist parties "are no more than forms derived from the comprehensive ideal of the Jewish people: to repair the world under the sovereignty of God." And Bergman was being gentle in comparison to Gershom Scholem, the scholar of the kabbala, who said in 1970 that "the severing of the living connection to the heritage of the generations is educational murder," and that "the State of Israel possesses value only because of the consciousness of Jewish continuity."

The spiritual leaders of the labor movement also wished to fashion a rooted national culture here, one not detached from its Jewish sources. "If the Jewish people will only be dragged in the wake of others, if what is created here will be only a Hebrew translation of European life, it will not be sustainable," A.D. Gordon wrote in 1920; and 20 years later Berl Katznelson added, "For a great many of those who are coming to us, or who are being brought to our shores from far as well as near (and, I fear, for no few of those who are being brought up here or were born here ) those shores have not yet become home. Our educational mission is to turn this land, and the spiritual world which gave birth to it, into a home for them, to which the soul clings and abides. That will not be achieved without an atmosphere of love with no scores to settle, respect without falsity, attachment to the nation and its destiny and to its tragic history, its spiritual values, its living creation and the vision of its revival."

Yitzhak Tabenkin, the spiritual leader of the Kibbutz Hameuhad movement, said in 1928, "Not to be moved by Tisha B'Av is barbarism." Meir Yaari, the spiritual mentor of the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair movement, wrote in 1923, "One thing only is clear to me: that a whole nation cannot continue to exist for long without a metaphysical principle and a religious symbol. Otherwise, it will decline. And no economic and social conception will help here."
If we want the native-born Israeli to understand what he is doing here, "we must implant in him the Jewish consciousness which draws on the great spiritual heritage of the Jewish people, on the riveting destiny shared, knowingly or not, by all parts of the Jewish people wherever they may be, and on the messianic vision, the vision of Jewish and human redemption imparted to us by the biblical prophets," the prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, wrote in 1956 in his cabin at Kibbutz Sde Boker.

No economic or social concept will render us a nation, nor will any civil concept void of identity. Social solidarity is dependent on national-cultural solidarity. Only social consciousness anchored in the biblical concepts of social justice, in the community-based sensitivity of the Jewish sages, in the precepts of charity propounded by Maimonides and in a sense of belonging to this nation and to its history; only a conception of Judaism as a dynamic culture to which each of us is invited to contribute his share; only this will make it possible for secular, Orthodox and Haredi, and also for the Arabs who dwell among us, to speak to one other and not only about one another.

Dr. Assaf Inbari is a novelist and the author of "Home" (2009), which tells the story of a kibbutz.

Save the life of Khader Adnan

2012-02-12T03:12:00.002Z

Release All Israel’s Administrative Detainees

Please sign the petition to try, even at the 11th hour, to save the life of Khader Adnan. Like all Palestinian administrative detainees, he is subject to ‘occupiers’ justice’ i.e. no justice at all. In Ireland internment, imprisonment without trial, was a major issue in the early 1970’s and its failure led to the fall of the Stormont Government.

Israel has routinely detained, without trial but with torture, thousands of Palestinian prisoners. This has merited no response from those who are so concerned at human rights in Syria. It has also merited no response from the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ICRC throughout the 2nd World War repeatedly failed to take up the case of the civilian population in Nazi occupied areas. They even allowed the Nazis to use them to whitewash the the ‘model’ camp of Thereinstadt in the Czech Republic. In anticipation of the ICRC visit, a few thousand detainees were ‘transferred’ to Auschwitz where they were murdered. Even at Auschwitz the ICRC allowed itself to be fooled by the Czech children’s camp, where in contrast to the rest of the camp, the children were treated humanely, until it was time to be gassed –after the ICRC had long left never to return or inquire.

Over Guantanamo and torture the ICRC has kept silent, so it is not surprising that the conditions of Palestinian prisoners merit no mention. Its record over the hunger strike of Khader Adnan is no exception.

But Israel is behaving like the most stupid occupier. It believes that the use of force is all that is necessary and it has behaved with the utmost brutality, failing to even understand the outrage at detaining people at will on secret evidence for months and years at a time.

Khader Adnan’s life at risk as He enters day 56 of hunger Strike - since 17 December 2011‏

By Anan Odeh (Contact)
To be delivered to: ICRC

We are writing to express our frustration at your slow acting in regards to the Palestinian detainee, Mr. Adnan Khader, who has been on hunger strike since 17 December 2011. Mr. Khader is protesting his being held under administrative detention by the Israeli occupation forces. Adnan's detention is based on military order with secret evidence that he and his attorney are not allowed to review. According to the order, he was sentenced to jail for a six month period that may be renewed without limitation. His detention is continuing without trial or charges. According to International Humanitarian Law, it is the responsibility of the ICRC to take active steps to save his life by applying pressure on the Israeli government to release him.

Reply to an Idiot Atzmonite - Ruth Tenne

2012-02-10T22:14:00.003Z

Or Why It’s Not a Good Idea to Accept Your Ideas from Zionists

Last week Ruth Tenne, an Israeli anti-Zionist sent a letter to the Weekly Worker, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, deploring our ‘witch-hunt’ against holocaust deniers in Palestine Solidarity Campaign. This followed on from our success at the PSC AGM when one Atzmonite, Frances Clarke-Lowes, was expelled for being a holocaust denier and policy was passed affirming PSC’s opposition to holocaust denial or its minimilisation, as well as anti-Semitism and all other forms of racism.

This week both Abe Hayeem, a prominent Jewish anti-Zionist and founder of Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine and myself had letters responding to Ruth Tenne’s muddleheaded nonsense. I reprint them because they help elucidate the muddle-headedness and utter stupidity of the average Atzmonite.

Tony Greenstein

Letters

Muddled denier

Ruth Tenne’s letter is a good example of the political muddle and confusion of Gilad Atzmon’s supporters in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (February 2).

Of course, the Zionist movement has exploited the Nazi holocaust for its own political purposes, thus demonstrating its contempt for those who were murdered. What makes this even worse is that, throughout the period 1941-45, the Zionist movement and its leadership ignored or minimised the holocaust, in some cases citing Nazi sources to rebut the reports that were coming out of Europe. Their one priority was building a Jewish state. They opposed the emigration of Jews from Europe to any destination other than Palestine. Between August and November 1942, at the behest of the US administration, the Jewish Agency sat on the Riegner cable from Switzerland that provided definite confirmation of the holocaust.

As Saul Friedlander observed,

“The rescue of the Jews in Europe was not at the top of the yishuv leaders’ list of priorities. For them, the most important thing was the effort to establish the state” (Tom Segev The 7th million London 1994, p.467).

Likewise, Noah Lucas, another Zionist historian, described how Ben Gurion saw the holocaust

“as a decisive opportunity for Zionism ... Ben Gurion above all others sensed the tremendous possibilities inherent in the dynamic of the chaos and carnage in Europe ... the forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must be harnessed to the advantage of Zionism” (pp. The Modern History of Israel pp. l87-88).

Even Ben Gurion’s own official biographer, Shabtai Teveth, remarked that:

“If there was a line in Ben Gurion’s mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one” (Ben Gurion: the burning ground 1886-1948 p.851).

It is therefore another example of their hypocrisy that the Zionists use the holocaust to justify their racist treatment of the Palestinians when theirs was a movement of collaboration and worse. And this is compounded by the fact that the Zionist movement used the reparations from West Germany after the war for their own pet projects, leaving the holocaust survivors, for whom the monies were meant, in dire poverty. Yet the more stupid and reactionary of the Palestinians’ supporters have instead taken to denying the holocaust, falling right into the trap that the Zionists have set for them.

Thus Ruth Tenne speaks of “alleged, or imaginary, holocaust deniers”. Yet the position in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was quite clear. As I wrote in my article, the supporters of Gilad Atzmon and Paul Eisen, who believe that denying the holocaust is the key to unlocking support for Zionism, have caused significant disruption in a number of branches (‘No room for anti-Semites’, January 19).

Francis Clarke-Lowes, whose appeal against expulsion was rejected at the conference, wrote in an email on the Brighton and Hove PSC list: “You are, of course, right that Paul, like me, is proud to call himself a ‘holocaust denier’” (April 4 2011). On April 8 he developed his theme: “the evidence for and against the six million figure, the gas chambers and the plan for Jewish extermination by the Nazis ... are quite technical issues ...” And two days later he wrote: “I do not believe that millions of Jews and others were gassed in an industrial process of extermination ... The traces of Zyklon B gas (hydrogen cyanide) are, I believe, far too low in the places at Auschwitz-Birkenau where the gas chambers are supposed to have been, and are much higher in the places where the decontamination areas were.”

Holocaust deniers are nothing if not stupid. They commissioned an execution ‘expert’, Fred Leuchter, to write a report based on traces he took from the walls of the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Compared to the residues where clothing, etc, was disinfected, they were of very low concentration. Here was their proof that the holocaust was a myth. Unfortunately, they forgot that human beings require very low concentrations of hydrogen cyanide to kill them, whereas bugs and such like require very high concentrations.

What Tenne fails to understand is that the holocaust occurred and there are countless witnesses to the selections, the disappearance of whole trainloads of Jews who only ever made a one-way journey. Where are the half a million Jews of Warsaw? What was the purpose of Treblinka and Belzec, since they were never labour camps, if not extermination? The evidence is overwhelming.

There is nothing that the Zionist ideologues want more than to see Palestinian supporters embracing holocaust denial. It is proof that support for the Palestinians is not because they are an oppressed people, but because we are anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, some people are stupid enough to fall into the trap that the Zionists set for them. Indeed, in his own speech to PSC conference, appealing his expulsion, Clarke-Lowes referred to the “holocaust myth”.

Tenne says that I will, by the definition of one Tanya Gold, “be regarded as ‘one of the leftwing anti-Semites [who] despise Israel, but are [not?] vocal on the crime of other oppressive countries’. Yet, Tony, like Ms Gold and the pro-Zionist camp, is bent on cleaning out PSC of any alleged holocaust deniers and anti-Semites.”

This is a non-sequitur. The second sentence bears no logical relationship to the first. Yes, I will be considered an anti-Semite by the Zionists’ definition. The point is that I don’t accept their definition! Ruth, like most Atzmonites, falls into the trap of believing the enemy’s propaganda.

The decision of Camden PSC to remove Gill Kaffash as secretary, in the light of her consistent support for Paul Eisen, an open holocaust denier, is to be welcomed. However, that was the decision of the local group. It had nothing to do with national PSC.

Ruth speaks of the definition of racism that she and Kaffash proposed. But what a definition. If it had been debated, it would have gone the same way as Kaffash’s other amendment and been overwhelmingly defeated. It was too clever by half. So clever that not only did it exclude holocaust denial, but also anti-Muslim racism and anti-Arab racism, from its remit, since they are primarily cultural, not biological.

The rest of Ruth’s letter is equally incoherent. It starts off by describing the death of her grandparents and relatives in the holocaust, then talks of the “holocaust narrative” of the Zionists. It is irrelevant whether five or seven million died. What makes one a holocaust denier is if you deny that there was systematic extermination and intentionality, coupled with the use of poisonous gas to aid this task. There can be no doubt about the use of poisonous gas. Even David Irving conceded this in his libel action against Penguin. It was, after all, mentally and physically handicapped Germans who were first gassed, between 1939 and 1941, so this is hardly something conjured out of thin air.

We simply don’t know how many Jews (or gypsies) were murdered. The records of many Jewish communities vanished with those communities. An unknown number of Jews fled into the USSR, possibly as many as 1.5 million. There are plenty of unknowns about the holocaust, just as there is in physics and astronomy, but who when debating the virtues of the big bang would start arguing that the sun goes round the earth?

The Palestine solidarity movement, by its very nature, is anti-racist. To allow anti-Semitism or any other form of racism to gain a foothold would be to undermine the very cause that we support.

Tenne speaks with authority, as a Jewish person whose relatives perished in the holocaust. I have to tell her that, according to Atzmon’s Not in my name, “Jews cannot criticise Zionism in the name of their ethnic belonging because such an act is in itself an approval of Zionism.” She too is, by her mentor’s definition, a Zionist!

Tony Greenstein
Brighton

Mischief-makers

Ruth Tenne’s letter draws a parallel between unravelling the Zionist mythology about the foundation of the state of Israel - which needs to be challenged to reveal the truth of events surrounding it - and ‘revisiting’ the facts and events of the holocaust, of which there is universally recognised and meticulous documentation.

She fails to see the distinction between the use of the holocaust as emotional blackmail (which every anti-racist is against) and denying or questioning the holocaust, which is a diversionary tactic employed by true anti-Semites. She conflates challenging the Zionist narrative of 1948 with the need to challenge the facts of the holocaust, a dangerously misguided and misleading approach. The PSC had every right to establish its anti-racist credentials against those mischief-makers who are detracting from the Palestinian struggle by introducing the deliberately fractious element of holocaust questioning, which has nothing to do with the Palestinian struggle and campaigning. This has the effect of diverting attention from action and campaigning, and playing into Zionists’ hands by trying to defend the holocaust deniers, and giving them meat to accuse the PSC of tolerating anti-Semitism.

Tenne erroneously quotes eminent historians like Pappe, Finkelstein and Mark Ellis in their challenging of Zionist history or the use of the holocaust. But they have never questioned the clear historical evidence of the holocaust itself - a tactic used by anti-Semites. Omar Barghouti, the leading Palestinian supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, very specifically stated at the PSC annual general meeting that there was absolutely no room for anti-Semitism, racism or for holocaust minimising or denial.

Anyone using the ‘witch-hunt’ description for the PSC places that person firmly in the court of defending the deniers, which does not enhance a reputation of the same person being a discerning critic of the Zionist state, and being able to sift out what needs to be challenged and what damages one’s case. Unfortunately, Ruth Tenne’s statement backing her and Gill Kaffash’s motion to the PSC executive will make them even more likely to confirm that the action taken by the AGM in removing avowed holocaust deniers was the right one and more likely to refuse their muddled and illogical motion and statement.

Abe Hayeem
email

Iran – the Danger of a Unilateral Israeli Attack

2012-02-10T20:59:00.004Z

For the past 4 years or so there have been continuous stories of how Israel is going to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. My own judgement has always been that the threat has been inflated out of all proportion. Certainly what is the case is that the United States didn’t, whilst it had its hands full in Iraq, have another war to take on, with the consequent instability caused in Iraq itself and throughout the region.

But in recent weeks it appears to me that the danger has become far greater and in particular, the signs are that Israeli leaders are seriously considering defying their paymasters in Washington. I do not doubt that the United States does not want a war with Iran, though I also have no doubt that there are powerful sections in the US Establishment who would like to take revenge for the 1979 revolution in Iran when the Shah was forced out.

In addition, with the likely defeat of the Syrian regime, Iran stands out as the only independent state in the Middle East in foreign policy terms, even if internally it engages in savage repression of the left and minorities. The removal of the Iranian fly in the ointment would indeed be a tantalising goal for the neo-cons. However those with a modicum of realism to their political outlook realise that in their desire to control oil supplies they may destroy more than they gain. In particular the whole neo-imperial settlement in the Middle East, despite the Arab Spring, is in danger of unravelling if Israel is able to unilaterally attack Iran.

An Israeli attack would inevitably be seen as an American attack especially if, as is likely, the US steps in to aid its close ally. There was a time when the US was not afraid to face down its allies. But the last time this happened was over 55 years ago, during the Suez crisis. Then Britain and France were cut off diplomatically by the US| and their currencies were effectively ambushed, with a massive run on the pound and the loss of reserves. This is unlikely to happen this time around. In 1956 Israel was forced to disgorge its conquests. As President Eisenhower stated, a country that engages in aggrandisement is not to be allowed to set conditions on its withdrawal. The chances of Obama saying the same thing is close to zero percent.

I am happy to purloin this article from Weekly Worker, the main paper of the socialist left in Britain. Although only a tiny group it has a newspaper which is downloaded by over 15,000 people each week which makes it the biggest circulation newspaper on the socialist left. The larger groups like the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party have papers which are not only as dull as ditchwater (especially the latter) but they contain a complete absence of any meaningful analysis or debate, preferring instead to concentrate on the latest strike (admirable of course in itself) and naked party/sect building. I amy return to this problem of the left in a futher article.

The article is by Moshe Machover, a founder of Matzpen, the Socialist Organisation in Israel and a veteran anti-Zionist, whose article, with Haim Hanegbi and Akiva Orr, 'The Class Nature of Israel' some 40+ years ago convinced me that Zionism was opposed to everything that socialism stood for.

Tony Greenstein

Weekly Worker 900 Thursday February 09 2012

Netanyahu's war wish

The threat of a military provocation by Tel Aviv against Iran is very real, warns Israeli Marxist Moshé Machover

One thing is beyond any doubt: a major aim of Israel’s foreign policy is the overthrow of the Iranian regime. What is not generally understood are the motives behind this aim, and the present Israeli government’s preferred means of achieving it. In this article I would like to say something about the motives, and then explain why prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s preferred means is war - one likely to ignite a major conflagration.

Motives

In my 2008 article ‘Zionism: propaganda and reality’,^[1] I quoted a recent Jerusalem Post report on a conference at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. That report deserves to be read very carefully, so here it is again:

“Iran’s success in obtaining a nuclear capability will deter Jews from immigrating to Israel, cause many Israelis to leave and will be the end of the ‘Zionist dream’, former deputy defence minister Ephraim Sneh said Tuesday.

“‘A nuclear weapon in Iranian hands will be an intolerable reality for Israel,’ Sneh said during a conference on Iran’s nuclear programme at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. ‘The decision-making process in Israel will be under constant [Iranian] influence - this will be the end of the Zionist dream.’

“Former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy slammed Israeli political leaders for calling Iran’s nuclear threat ‘an existential threat’. ‘There is something wrong with informing our enemy that they can bring about our demise,’ Halevy said. ‘It is also wrong that we inform the world that the moment the Iranians have a nuclear capability there is a countdown to the destruction of the state of Israel. We are the superpower in the Middle East and it is time that we began behaving like [a] superpower,’ he said.

“Iran’s real goal, Halevy said, was to turn itself into a regional superpower and reach a ‘state of equality’ with the United States in their diplomatic dealings.

“Sneh said that, while the military option was not preferred, Israel needed to keep it on the table, since such a possibility was the motivation for the international community’s efforts to use diplomacy to stop Iran. Sneh added that he was confident that the [Israeli Defence Force] was capable of successfully carrying out a military strike against Iran. ‘We grew up in a place that when the political echelon wanted something, the professional echelon knew how to do it,’ he said. ‘I believe this has not changed in 2008.’”^[2]

Two points in this report are particularly noteworthy. First, one of the experts, a former chief of the Mossad (Israel’s counterpart of MI6 and the CIA) is talking here about the prospect of Iranian nuclear capability rather than actual production and possession of a nuclear weapon. As all experts are well aware, there is no evidence that Iran has a programme for producing such a weapon. This is as true today as it was in 2008. Indeed, the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, confirmed this quite recently.^[3] (Nuclear capability is the ability to produce a usable nuclear weapon at fairly short notice. It is a policy pursued by several other governments, and is not prohibited by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran - but not Israel! - is a signatory.)

Second, contrary to Israeli and western hype, neither expert claims that Iran is actually planning to attack Israel, let alone subject it to a nuclear holocaust. The former Mossad chief is dismissive of the scaremongering propaganda alleging that Iran poses a credible military threat to Israel. Ephraim Sneh, a former brigadier general and senior Labour Party politician, does mention the (purely hypothetical) prospect of Iran producing a nuclear weapon, but even he believes that the threat it would pose to Israel is political rather than a direct military one.

Indeed, Israel’s worry regarding Iran is the real political threat it poses to Israel’s regional hegemony, not the imaginary threat of being attacked by the Islamic Republic. Possession of nuclear capability is certainly a component of this political threat, inasmuch as it would contribute to Iran’s diplomatic muscle in its dealings with other Middle Eastern states and with the US. But it is only a component. Even without the nuclear issue, the Zionist state has a clear interest in replacing the present Iranian regime by one compliant with global US hegemony.

Divergence

As far as this aim is concerned, the interests of US and Israel are in complete agreement. But, as regards the means, there appears to be a divergence between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government.

The US, smarting from the wounds of its adventurous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, would like to avoid an outright open military conflict with Iran, a state that can inflict serious damage to its attackers. Moreover, in the present economic climate a sharp rise in the price of oil - an inevitable concomitant of war in the Middle East - may have catastrophic consequences for the global capitalist economy. True, the scary game of ‘chicken’ the Obama administration is playing against Iran can inadvertently get out of hand and lead to disastrous unintended consequences. (Recall the classic James Dean film, Rebel without a cause …). But the administration is hoping to keep this danger under control and avoid outright war - at least for the time being.

Not so the Israeli government: there are increasing signs that Netanyahu and his defence minister, Ehud Barak, are considering - against the advice of some of their military and intelligence experts - a provocation that would lead to a major war. This causes the Obama administration serious worry: they do not wish to be dragged into such a war by their Israeli junior partner.

On January 20, while on an unadvertised and little noticed visit to Israel (no press conference, no public statement), general Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, “told Israeli leaders … that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington … Dempsey’s warning, conveyed to both prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak, represents the strongest move yet by president Barack Obama to deter an Israeli attack and ensure that the United States is not caught up in a regional conflagration with Iran.”^[4]

His warning seems to have fallen on deaf ears. On February 2, Associated Press reported:

“US defence secretary Leon Panetta won’t dispute a report that he believes Israel may attack Iran this spring in an attempt to set back the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.

“Panetta was asked by reporters to comment on a Washington Post opinion column by David Ignatius that said Panetta believes there is a ‘strong likelihood’ that Israel will attack in April, May or June. Ignatius did not say who told him this.

“Asked whether he disputes the report, Panetta said, ‘No, I’m just not commenting’ …

“He noted that Israel has stated publicly that it is considering military action against Iran. He said the US has ‘indicated our concerns’.”^[5]

In my opinion this is not just sabre-rattling on Israel’s part. There is reason to believe that Netanyahu is seriously considering a provocation designed to trigger off a major Middle East conflagration, despite the enormous risks, that include Iranian retaliation causing loss of many Israeli lives.

To explain Netanyahu’s reckless calculation we need to turn our attention to Zionism’s nightmare: the Palestinian ‘demographic peril’.

One state, Zionist style

By now most people are aware that the present Israeli government has done all in its power to torpedo a so-called ‘two-state solution’. What is less well known is that opposition to a sovereign Palestinian state in any part of Eretz Yisrael is not a mere quirk of a rightwing Israeli government, but a deep-seated and fundamental principle shared by all mainstream Zionist parties.

In 1975, General Moshe Dayan put it like this:

“Fundamentally, a Palestinian state is an antithesis of the state of Israel … The basic and naked truth is that there is no fundamental difference between the relation of the Arabs of Nablus to Nablus [in the West Bank] and that of the Arabs of Jaffa to Jaffa [in Israel] … And if today we set out on this road and say that the Palestinians are entitled to their own state because they are natives of the same country and have the same rights, then it will not end with the West Bank. The West Bank together with the Gaza Strip do not amount to a state … The establishment of such a Palestinian state would lay a cornerstone to something else … Either the state of Israel - or a Palestinian state.”^[6]

Thus, for mainstream Zionism any admission that “the Palestinians are entitled to their own state because they are natives of the same country and have the same rights” would undermine the legitimacy of the Zionist state, and eventually its very existence.

This has remained a cornerstone of Israel’s political strategy. For this reason, no Israeli government has ever signed a legally binding commitment to accepting a Palestinian Arab state. This applies, in particular, to the Oslo accords of 1993, which the second government of Yitzhak Rabin co-signed with the Palestinian leadership under Yasser Arafat. In this treaty there is no mention of a Palestinian state. This was not an accidental omission: when presenting the Oslo accords to the Knesset for ratification - on October 5 1995, a month before he was assassinated - Rabin pointedly stressed that what Israel was going to insist on was a Palestinian “entity which is less than a state”.

Many observers have been puzzled by Israel’s adamant rejection of any Palestinian sovereign state, however small, west of the Jordan River. This seems terribly short-sighted. For, if the whole of pre-1948 Palestine is to remain under Israeli sovereignty, that would mean that Israel would have to rule over a hostile Palestinian Arab people. In effect, the whole of that territory will be one state. Right now there is a rough numerical parity between the two national groups. Since no large-scale Jewish immigration is expected, and since the natural rate of increase of the Palestinian population is higher that that of the Hebrew population, the former will considerably outnumber the latter within a few decades. Surely, the Palestinian majority cannot indefinitely be denied equal rights; but equal rights would lead to the demise of the Jewish state. For Zionism this ‘demographic peril’ is worse even than a sovereign Palestinian mini-state. So it would seem that by sabotaging the creation of such a state, Israel is heading for what its own ruling ideology regards as the abyss.

This apparent contradiction disregards a third option: neither a two-state solution, nor a single state with an Arab majority, but ‘population transfer’. Large-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs would result in a single state in the entire territory, with a large Jewish majority, which is the ultimate aim of all mainstream Zionist parties.

But implementing ethnic cleansing on a sufficiently large scale - while technically quite easy, as explained by the Israeli military theorist, Martin van Creveld^[7] - is politically very tricky. It cannot be done in normal, politically tranquil circumstances. It requires what in Zionist parlance is called she’at kosher: an opportune moment of major political, and preferably military, crisis.

Interestingly, quite a long time ago, on November 16 1989, a junior minister in the Shamir government made precisely this point in a speech delivered at Bar-Ilan University, a hotbed of clerical ultra-chauvinist Zionism.

The Jerusalem Post of November 19 1989, quoting a tape recording of the speech, reported that the deputy foreign minister (roughly equivalent to parliamentary under-secretary of state in Westminster) “has called for Israel to exploit political opportunities in order to expel large numbers of Palestinians from the [occupied] territories”. He told students in a speech at Bar-Ilan University that “the government had failed to exploit politically favourable situations in order to carry out ‘large-scale’ expulsions at times when ‘the damage would have been relatively small. I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people’.”

Oh, the name of that junior minister: Binyamin Netanyahu.

A sacrifice worth making

A war with Iran would present a golden opportunity for large-scale expulsion of Palestinians, precisely because (unlike the Iraq invasion of 2003) fighting would not be over too soon, and major protests and disturbances are likely to occur among the masses throughout the region, including the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli rule. What better way to pacify such disturbances than to “expel many people”.

Of course, a decision to ignite a war against Iran is not one that any Israeli leader would take lightly. There is a non-negligible risk that Israel would suffer many casualties. This is not a price that even the most adventurous prime minister would consider paying, unless the expected prize is extremely high. But in this case the prize is the highest possible one from a Zionist point of view: eliminating the demographic threat to the future of Israel as a Jewish ethnocracy. So Netanyahu will be sorely tempted to make a sacrifice of his own people for the greater national good.

I assume that American policy-makers are aware of Israel’s special interest in a military denouement of the conflict with Iran, an interest not quite shared by the US. This is why they are worried, and issue stern warnings to Netanyahu and Barak - discreetly and behind the scenes, of course, because especially in this election year, when he will face Republican crazies, Obama cannot afford to appear pusillanimous.

However, Netanyahu cannot flagrantly go ahead and start a war without US approval. Therefore the most likely scenario is a series of provocations instigated by Israel, mostly by devious and covert means, in order to escalate the conflict and drag the US by degrees into mission creep.

I do not wish to sound too alarmist, but the coming few months may well be ‘interesting’ in the Chinese sense l

Notes

1. Weekly Worker September 18 2008.

2. ‘Iranian nukes mean end of Zionism’ The Jerusalem Post internet edition, September 9 2008.

3. ‘Panetta: Iran has not yet decided to make a nuclear bomb’ Associated Press, January 8 2012; reported by Fox News:

4. IPS report, February 1 2012:

5. Washington Post February 2 2012.

6. Ha’aretz December 12 1975.

7. Martin van Creveld, ‘Sharon’s plan is to drive Palestinians across the Jordan’ The Sunday Telegraph April 28 2002:

South African Government Considering Sanctions Against Israel

2012-02-10T03:21:00.005Z

It Takes the Victims of Apartheid to Recognise Apartheid

As the architect of Apartheid, Dr Henry Verwoerd said: “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a 1000 years. In this I agree with them. Israel like South Africa is an apartheid- state.” Rand Daily Mail, 23.11.61.

It is therefore doubly gratifying that the South African ruling party, the African National Congress, is considering sanctions against the world’s other apartheid state – Israel. It is a fitting punishment, if only for all those years when Israel broke the arms embargo on South Africa, developed a joint nuclear weapon with it (perhaps if they introduce apartheid in Iran…)!!!

And the most enthusiastic proponents of co-operation with Apartheid were the left Zionists of Mapai and Mapam. And the Histadrut, which these days tries to pass itself off as a trade union but then also owned 25% of the Israeli economy, encouraged its enterprises such as Koor Industries to partner white South African ones, thus enabling much produce to be passed off as ‘Israeli’ – much the same as West Bank produce today is passed off as the product of Israel. In fact Koor Industries formed a joint holding company with the South African Steel Corporation, Iskoor. So let’s look forward to the first official Boycott of Israel by a State.

Tony Greenstein

South Africa mulls imposing sanctions on apartheid Israel

The New Age Newspaper: (02 February 2012)

South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, is a long-time partner of the Palestinian people. This was the case during the 1980s, during the the anti-apartheid struggle and isolation of the Pretoria regime, at the United Nations during the Palestinian statehood bid, and now in the peaceful and nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

The South African Minister of Arts and Culture and a member of President Jacob Zuma's cabinet, Paul Mashatile, recently told the Johannesburg-based newspaper, The New Age:

"We want to step up our support of the Palestinians and are investigating a number of peaceful ways to upgrade this support. We have no problem with supporting the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel."

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS in SOUTH AFRICA (BDS SOUTH AFRICA)

W: www.bdssouthafrica.com | E: administrator@bdssouthafrica.com
www.facebook.com/bdssouthafrica | www.twitter.com/bdssouthafrica
BDS South Africa is a registered Non-Profit Organization. NPO NUMBER: 084 306 NPO
BDS South Africa is a registered Public Benefit Organisation with Section 18A tax-deductible status. PBO NUMBER: 930 037 446

SA Pledges Support for Palestinians

Mel Frykberg | The New Age Newspaper 02 February 2012

The South African government might consider supporting sanctions against Israel as it explores a variety of peaceful methods to step up support for the Palestinians' fight for freedom and independence.

"We want to step up our support of the Palestinians and are investigating a number of peaceful ways to upgrade this support. We have no problem with supporting the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel," Minister of Arts and Culture Paul Mashatile told The New Age.

Mashatile was addressing a press conference in Pretoria yesterday at the Department of Arts and Culture, during the signing of a cultural agreement between South Africa and Palestine.

During the signing Palestinian Arts and Culture Minister Siham Barghouti and Palestinian Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture Musa Abu Ghreibeh, exchanged gifts with their South African counterparts, Minister Mashatile and deputy minister Joe Pehle.

Later on in the year the Palestinians will host South Africa's Arts and Culture Week, where South African artists and cultural entrepreneurs will present cultural exhibitions from their country.

Mashatile's statement presents a considerable upping of the ante in South Africa's long-standing support for the Palestinians and the cementing of a relationship that goes back decades, to when the ANC was struggling against the former apartheid government.

"Your Excellency, we count the people of Palestine among those patriots who stood by us in our struggle for national liberation," Mashatile told the Palestinian delegation as he recalled former President Nelson Mandela's 1997 speech to honor the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

"Having achieved our freedom we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less human if we do so," said Mandela in 1997.

BDS supporters argue that Israel's continued illegal occupation of the Palestinians territories and expropriation of Palestinians land, water and other resources can only be stopped when sanctions against Israel begin to bite economically.

"We are grateful for South Africa's support for our efforts to become members of the international community and look towards you for guidance in our continued struggle," said Barghouti.

The two delegations agreed that future cooperation would include language development, heritage preservation, literature exchanges and exhibitions.

www.bdssouthafrica.com/2012/02/sa-pledges-support-for-palestinians-mel.html
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/south-africa-mulls-bds-sanctions-israel

Apartheid agents not welcome on our campuses

Tuesday, August 9. 2011

This afternoon at a joint press conference held at the student centre of the University of the Witwatersrand, national representatives of the South African Union of Students, the South African Student Congress and the Young Communist League slammed the pending trip of "Israeli Apartheid agents" to South Africa.

The Israeli mission to South African campuses are expected to arrive in South Africa on the 11th of August 2011. Palestinian students have written to South African colleagues asking South Africans to challenge and boycott the Israeli delegation.

An extract of the press statement is produced below:

"We, students and youth of a post Apartheid South Africa, who bear the scars of a racist history and who continue to fight for complete liberation, have a duty and responsibility to stand in solidarity with those facing oppression worldwide. Israeli apartheid is one such form of oppression. "Israeli media boast that a mission of 150 Israeli propagandists will be sent to universities in 5 countries to fix Israel's "serious image problems". The Israeli mission will begin on South African campuses, with a delegation that includes at least two aides from the Israeli parliament. A delegation member was clear about the intention of their trip: "We have to create some doubt in their [South African students’] minds."

"Don’t patronize us! We lived apartheid, we suffered apartheid, we know what apartheid is, we recognise apartheid when we see it. And when we see Israel, we see a regime that practices apartheid. Israel’s image needs no changing; its policies do! We urge Israeli students to instead join the growing and inspiring internal resistance to their regime, particularly the boycott from within movement, rather than waste time and money on these propaganda trips to deceive us Black students, South Africans have no need for these Muldergate-like trips.

"A "major focus” of the Israeli trip will be the University of Johannesburg (UJ). On 1st April 2011 UJ's Senate, with the full backing of UJ's Student Representative Council, terminated its institutional relationship with Israel's Ben-Gurion University. Indeed, UJ set an academic boycott of Israel precedent that all other South African and international universities can follow.

"Following UJ’s decision, and in response to a letter sent to us by Palestinian students, we urge all SRCs, student groups and other youth structures to strategize and implement a boycott of Israel and its campaigns. We declare that all SA campuses must be Apartheid-Israel free zones.

"As with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, international solidarity is key in overcoming Israeli Apartheid. In Nelson Mandela’s words: It behoves all South Africans, erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support, to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice….we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

"Issued by the South African Union of Student, the South African Student Congress and the Young Communist League of South Africa.

For the full statement visit

Israeli police remove worshipers from Al-Aqsa

Tuesday, August 9. 2011

Israeli police entered the Jerusalem compound housing Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday evening and forcibly removed worshipers, a Ma'an correspondent said.

Israeli police forces raided the Haram Ash-Sharif complex after the Tarawih, the additional extended prayers performed during the holy month of Ramadan after the last obligatory prayer, Ma'an's reporter said.

The police removed from the site a group of around 30 people, who were spending a special time of seclusion in the area where the mosque and Dome of the Rock stand, as part of Ramadan devotion.

They had at first refused to leave, the correspondent said, as they wanted to prevent further raids by right-wing Israelis on the compound, which is revered as the third holiest site in Islam.

On Friday night, a group of right-wing Israelis entered the Haram Ash-Sharif where they clashed with local youth.

An Israeli police spokesman could not be reached for comment.

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast during daylight hours and spend extra time in devotion and charitable giving. Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza strive to enter East Jerusalem to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque, where daily special prayers are held.

Source: Ma'an News

Jewish settlers storm the Aqsa Mosque

Posted by nakba in News Tuesday, August 9. 2011

Tension is running high in the holy Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem after Jewish settlers stormed and roamed the plazas of the holy site at the early morning hours on Monday.

The Aqsa guards said that Israeli occupation police escorted the groups of settlers who were roaming the mosque in provocative tours.

They said that the policemen were barricading the settlers in face of the angry Muslim worshipers, who were preparing to confront the settlers.

Israeli policemen and special forces broke into the holy site on Sunday night and forced out worshipers for the third straight night.

Source: International Solidarity Movement
Posted by nakba in News at 20:38

Check The Label - Boycott Israeli Dates

Tuesday, June 28. 2011

This Ramadan, don't break your fast with an Israeli date

Ramadan is a time of year when we remember those who are less fortunate than ourselves. It would be an affront if at such a time we helped support oppression

Every year, Israel exports millions of pounds worth of dates to the world, which many people unknowingly buy and use to break their fasts. These dates are grown in illegal settlements in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, on land that has been stolen from Palestinians. By buying these dates, we are in fact helping Israel to continue its occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.

For this reason, Friends of Al Aqsa will again be launching the ‘Check the Label’ Campaign.

Check The Label

Most of the major supermarkets will stock dates produced in Israel, West Bank and the Jordan Valley. Dates produced in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley are from Illegal Israeli Settlements and should also be boycotted.

Khader Adnan – 50 Days on Hunger Strike

2012-02-09T02:26:00.003Z

Palestinians take the Irish Road to Freedom

The parallels between the Partition of Ireland in 1920 and Palestine are many. The establishment of Ulster, a Protestant State for a Protestant People, as Lord Brookborough, later Unionist Prime Minister remarked, and the establishment of the Palestine Mandate are remarkable, not least because it goes so often unremarked. Republicans have always supported the Palestinians just as the Unionists have identified with Israel.

When I was in Northern Ireland in the early 1980's, during the Hunger Strike I met, along with others in a Labour Party delegation, the leader of the Ulster Defence Association, Andy Tyrie and his main political spokesperson John MacMichael, later assassinated by the IRA. The UDS made its admiration for Israel very clear, even as the NF - who whom they were linked - purported to oppose Israel. Today of course all fascists openly identify with Israel as the number one opponent of 'Islam'.

Britain’s very presence in Ireland was a consequence of the Plantation of the 15th and 16th centuries. Not only is Ireland England’s oldest colony but it was the test bed for other colonial experiments, not least the very British art of massacre. In 1920, after the East Uprising and having unleashed the thugs and criminals of the Black and Tans, the Lloyd George government made a proposal to Sinn Fein, which in 1918 had overwhelmingly won elections in the whole of Ireland on the basis of independence for Ireland, that either they accept Partition or face an intensified civil war. Michael Collins went down in the hall of infamy for having accepted and there followed a civil war in Ireland.

Likewise in 1920 at San Remo, the major imperial powers carved up the Middle East and Palestine was established as a proto-Zionist settler state. Common to both countries was the Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, an ardent Zionist, Unionist and colonial diehard, who resigned from the Shadow Cabinet in 1931 over its support for the Government of India Act. Churchill’s abiding passion in politics was the need to preserve the British Empire and he saw that as one of his major goals between 1939-49. He never forgave General Wavell for what he saw as the surrender of India under his Viceroyship. Both Palestine and Ireland in their own way were settler-colonial states, though in Ireland Partition was occasioned by the desire to keep the areas of major British investment in British hands, in particular the dockyards, ship building and heavy engineering factories of Belfast.

As Sir Ronald Storres, the first Military Govenor of Jerusalem wrote in his auto-biography of a Jewish settlement in Palestine: “It will form for England,” he said, “a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.” Today we see prominent Palestinians adopting the traditional weapon of the weak – the hunger strike. As many will recall, the hunger strike has been used repeatedly in Ireland against British intransigence and the Hunger Strikes of 1980 led to the death of 10 Irish prisoners and the eclipse of the SDLP, the ‘moderate’ nationalist party, as Bobby Sands was elected as a member of the British Parliament. So too in Palestine and we can see how Israel’s close collaborator, ‘Prime Minister’ Salam Fayyad, has been forced to give his support. And like the British, the Zionist state is stupid enough to let Palestinian prisoners die in order to preserve their right to torture them.

Thus, inevitably, Palestinian politics is increasingly taking up political and civil rights issues, of basic human dignity, as they oppose an occupation which accords no rights to the vanquished.

One of the great scandals of Israel's occupation is its use of 'administrative detention' to hold indefinitely some 7,000+ Palestinian prisoners. In Ireland this was called Internment and was another of Britain's historical mistakes. It may yet come to rebound on the 'only democracy in the Middle East' too.
Tony Greenstein

Otherwise Occupied / For the sake of his dignity

03:39 06.02.12

After over 50 days of hunger strike against what he terms humiliating Shin Bet interrogation techniques, Khader Adnan's health is deteriorating.

By Amira Hass

Khader Adnan has already broken a Palestinian record for the longest solo hunger strike. Yesterday he passed his 50th day as a hunger striker, protesting what he regards as humiliating practices exercised by Shin Bet security service interrogators. Posters displayed at support rallies have above his portrait the statement: “Dignity above food”, a statement repeated in a Facebook page titled “We are all Sheikh Khader Adnan.”

On January 8, 22 days after he was detained in his home in Arabeh in the northern West Bank, a four-month administrative arrest order was issued against him, owing to his “activity as a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which threatens the region's security.” Last Thursday, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad met with the hunger striker's father in Ramallah, and declared that the entire Palestinian people expresses solidarity with Adnan. A member of Adnan's organization warned about possible consequences, should he perish.

Khader Adnan has already broken a Palestinian record for the longest solo hunger strike.

On the night of December 17, masked soldiers raided his home, aiming their rifles at family members, elderly parents, a pregnant wife and two daughters. This account was provided in an affidavit submitted to an attorney engaged by the Physicians for Human Rights NGO. Adnan testified that his hands were tied behind his back, and that he was thrown onto the floor of an army jeep; during the journey in the vehicle, he says, soldiers kicked and slapped him. The jeep reached the Mevo Dotan settlement, where (he says ) he was held for several hours outside, in the cold, with his cuffed hands swelling. His lower lip was cut and bleeding.

The next day he was taken to the Kishon detention facility, for Shin Bet questioning. In his affidavit, Adnan testifies that he was tied to a chair and positioned in an excruciatingly painful way. Throughout the interrogation, he remained tied, his hands behind his back. Adnan says that Shin Bet questioners cursed him and threatened harm to his family. Was the moment he heard his wife and daughters being cursed when he decided to launch his hunger strike? Or was it when the interrogators forcibly yanked his beard? Or was it when one of the interrogators rubbed a finger on his shoes, and then smeared Adnan's moustache? Or was it when they did not allow him to pray?

Without any advance plan, he launched the hunger strike, and kept mum. Interrogators asked questions, pressured and tempted him, but he kept quiet. For days, he was interrogated twice a day. That is, the interrogators asked questions and spoke, while Adnan kept mum. And refused to eat.

He learned that he was an administrative detainee belatedly, on January 10, and this added a new motivation to his hunger strike: The protest is also against the fact of his detention without trial. Last Wednesday a third “judicial review” session was held at the military court for administrative matters, regarding the administrative arrest order. As in the preceding session, he was wheeled in a wheelchair into the caravan where the sessions are held. Military prosecutor Lt. Tamar Lejlem asked military judge Dalia Kaufmann to “authorize the administrative arrest order for the entirety of the requested period, owing to classified information which I will submit on a unilateral basis to the court. This is a senior member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad who is involved in organizational activity, and who was imprisoned in the past and has returned to subversive activity.”

Five attorneys were on hand to represent Adnan: Jamil Khatib, Tamar Peleg, Mahmoud Halabi, Mahmoud Hassan, Jawad Boulos and Nivin Hassan. This proliferation of attorneys bears witness to concerns about his deteriorating health and the implications.

The process of opposing administrative arrest turns into a guessing game, or a game of tag in which one side is blindfolded while the other side has a full view of events. There is no indictment, nor is there evidence to dispute. Questions posed by defense attorneys have the aim of causing the military court judge to review critically the order to deny an individual's liberty without allowing him or her to stand trial.

Peleg turned to the prosecutor, saying: “I understand, and ask for confirmation, that the questions asked during the interrogation of my client by the Shin Bet express the main suspicions pending against him, suspicions which presumably are reinforced by the classified information.”

The prosecutor rejoined: “The secret materials are more expansive than what has been disclosed.”

Peleg: “I am talking about the type of suspicions, and not their amount.”

The prosecutor: “The suspicions are the same ones featured in the classified materials. There is more expansive information and additional details that are not reflected in the Shin Bet's interrogation. The classified materials relate to a wider range of activities, activities on an organizational level that threaten the security of the region.”

The game of ping-pong continued in this fashion. As it concluded, Peleg stated: “The conclusion is that there is no intelligence information that warrants the administrative arrest, and, in particular, that the security officials do not have the option, nor do they have a desire, to put the accused on trial.”

The detained man was given the right to speak. “I will begin with what happened just a few moments ago,” Adnan told those present in the courtroom. “You went out to eat, in rooms that are surely heated and comfortable. I went off to the waiting caravan for detainees, despite my condition, and it was very cold. The doctors tell me that perhaps because of the fluctuating heat and cold, I might quickly develop cardiac problems.”

Last Tuesday he was moved from the Israel Prison Service medical facility to a private hospital in Bnei Brak. His legs and arms were cuffed to his bed. Three wardens sat in his room round the clock, smoking and chatting. Adnan initiated his hunger strike in the name of dignity, but “the insults continue,” he told the judge. He added: “when the wardens come into my room, they reach under the pillow and joke about how I might be hiding food. I have a Koran which I read, holding it with a handcuffed hand. Yesterday I prayed in a chair, with my arms and legs bound.” The judge's decision concerning the future of the administrative arrest order is pending.

The Prison Service spokesman relays: On January 17, the ethics committee for the rights of a patient (an external committee ) spoke with the detainee and concluded that he does not want to die. Thus the committee decided to respect his wishes, and not force medical treatment upon him. At the end of the hunger strike's 44th day, and following the submission of a medical report saying that his health is in genuine danger, the committee convened anew, this time with a religious figure (a Kadi ) in attendance, and the religious delegate met privately with the detainee.

“After it was made clear to the detainee that the committee is considering the forcible administration of an infusion, he agreed to be taken to a hospital for an examination, and the condition that he meets with a doctor sent by Physicians for Human Rights. On the advice of this doctor, he agreed to take potassium tablets, and he returned to the Prison Service medical facility. After he announced that he would stop drinking water, the committee decided to allow a Prison Service physician to administer intravenously salt and sugar [this has not happened].

“Last Tuesday, at the Prison Service request, the detainee was taken to the Bnei Brak hospital. There, he once again drank water, and met with Red Cross representatives and also the kadi. On Thursday, he was taken to a Jerusalem hospital. That day, the Prison Service consented to the detainee's request, and furnished unusual authorization for him to meet with family members.” So ends the Prisons Service statement.

It should be noted that as of last night, his family has still not been allowed to visit him.

According to the military spokesperson's office, following the information relayed in Adnan's affidavit to Physicians for Human rights, the military prosecution has instructed the military division of investigations to investigate the circumstances of his arrest.

By press time last night, the Shin Bet had not responded to this report.

Tony Greenstein's New Book on Combatting Fascism

2012-02-08T04:10:00.006Z

On July 2nd last year, I was invited by Brighton Labour History Workshop to do a talk on the fight against fascism in Brighton and on the South Coast. The invitation was extended to me because I have been prominent in the campaign against the fascists from the mid-1970's and have remained active ever since.

The talk, which was recorded, was written up into a book. I did, and am still doing, further research into fascism on the South Coast and it is extremely interesting. One fact which is virtually unknown was that it was the Daily Mirror which was most outspoken in support of Sir Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists with Viscount Rothermere advocating that they be given a ‘helping hand’.

Fascism of course hasn’t gone away and we have to remain vigilant. As the book makes clear, the fight against racism and fascism is indivisible – be it here in Britain or against Zionism and the Israeli state.

It is no surprise that today, the racists and fascists of the EDL see a role model in the actions of the Israeli state against Palestinians. We see it in the BNP style rhetoric about Muslims on far-right Zionist sites like Harry's Place.

Just as racists are coming together so must anti-fascists and anti-racists. The fascists have never gone away and neither have we.

Tony Greenstein

THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM IN BRIGHTON & THE SOUTH COAST

Speaker: Tony Greenstein
Tony has been active in the fight against fascism, both locally and nationally. Tony is also Secretary of Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre and a founding member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Guest Speaker Pierluigi Piatti
Will talk on Italian fascism and the current situation there

Tony's book The Fight Against Fascism in Brighton & the South Coast will be pre-launched at a meeting on:

Wednesday 15th Feb at 7.30pm The Labour Hall, Lyndhurst Rd, Worthing, BN11 2DE
for further details contact Richard Jones on 07931 682996 rjonescwu@hotmail.com

BRIGHTON BOOK LAUNCH Saturday, 17 March 12 pm The Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton BN1 1AF

contact Terry on terrylhm@virginmedia.com www.labourhistory.co.uk
Brighton History Workshop

Angry Arab asks: Is Atzmon a Sincere Anti-Semite or an Infiltrator?

2012-02-05T04:16:00.004Z

The Angry Arab Interviewed by Asa Winstanley

A very interesting interview with the Angry Arab by Asa Winstanley, whose articles on the Zionist Community Security Trust I have already covered.

I share his impatience at the feeble response of Palestinians who have no answer to the question ‘does Israel have the right to exist.’ The PLO after Oslo recognised that Israel did have a right to exist and a fat lot of good that did them. Having garnered that particular surrender, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Zionists now demand recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, i.e. the rightfulness of their own dispossession and expulsion. But to Abbas and co., fawning over Israeli and US leaders has become an art form. Nonetheless I disagree with As'ad Abukhalil, the Anry Arab.

Firstly, just as a matter of fact, Israel does exist. The question is whether the Israeli state should exist.

Secondly, no state has a right to exist. It is an absurd proposition. Does the British monarchical state have a ‘right to exist’? And is a state human? Does it breathe, sing, walk? No a state is, ultimately, a body of armed men (& women) in Marx’s definition. The real question is, should a racist and apartheid state continue to exist? And to that I say an unequivocal no. Angry Arab says that ‘Since Oslo there is a trend in the pro-Palestinian community, particularly those with links to the PLO, to make the case for Palestine palatable with a case for Zionism’.

In fact it is worse than that. Saeeb Erekrat and the rest of the Palestinian negotiators have accepted the case of Zionism with their offers of a ‘bigger Yerushalayim.’ It is the first time that the leadership of an oppressed people have offered to sell the mess of potage that is their birthright.

Nor do I t agree that BDS is an extension of the Arab Boycott. The Arab Boycott came to an end with Oslo. The fact that the PLO agreed to relinquish the boycott and to recognise without preconditions Israel, without even obtaining an acceptance of a Palestinian state, speaks volumes about the Palestinian leadership. Oslo was, as I warned at the time, a severe defeat and disaster in the making. I hate to have been proved correct.

I can remember attending a UN NGO conference in Geneva about 1988, with Uri Davies and others from Return. There were all these ‘peacemakers’ there – 2 statists and conflict resolutionists – all vying for a piece of the cake. Zionism? Oh that was old hat. All that was necessary was to find a form of words that would be acceptable to all and hey presto the lamb and the lion would lie down with each other of course it didn’t and couldn’t last.

BDS is a grassroots thing. The economic boycott was top down and the reaction of an Arab elite to their humiliation In practice the Arab ruling class opposed Israel in rhetoric whilst meeting privately to secure each their own interests. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the Saudi regime supported it unofficially as they also supported the Phalange. The collaboration of the Hashemites was legendary.

The real problem of BDS, which is quite unique since it focuses on companies that trade with Israel in their heartland and is part and parcel of an active political campaign, is that the solidarity movement is relatively strong. It is the Palestinians who are so weak. Contrast with the struggle in South Africa where BDS complemented the ANC’s own fight. In this case there is no fight on the official level and it is now an entirely grassroots struggle. A good thing of course but Israel has almost unlimited power to do what it does.

I understand what AA says on the personal and emotional level. My father would never go to Germany while he was alive and didn’t want any contact with Germans. But this is uncommon today among Jews. And such a reaction blamed all Germans regardless of their age or culpability. But I reject the suggestion that it is a form of racism.

If there is going to be any solution then clearly there has to be some form of rapprochment with Israelis and that means Israelis who have served in the IOF. The fact that Pappe has served is irrelevant to whether or not he has made a major contribution to the struggle for the right of return and much else. Israel is a state where it is compulsory for Jews to serve. Many don’t now but it is largely irrelevant, unless someone becomes a war criminal in so doing. It’s not ‘super BDS’ but a distraction from BDS.

Angry Arab does however make his anti-racist credentials extremely clear. Almost alone amongst prominent Arabs (Joseph Massad has refused to even respond to calls to declare his position, despite the article he wrote in Al Ahram in 2004 saying how anti-Semitism was a danger to the Palestinians, when his tenure was under threat) AA is very clear as to what thinks about Atzmon and anti-Semitism.

‘I have refused any contact with this guy and, you know me: I’m strict about many things… and one of them is refusing any association with anybody who has the slightest tinge of anti-Semitism. And he has more than a tinge of anti-Semitism… Call me paranoid... I know there are genuine anti-Semites who creep into our movement, but I do worry that there are some infiltrators who pose as anti-Semites to stigmatise the movement. I’m not sure which group he belongs to, but either way I don’t want him [around].’

Angry Arab has also put his finger on whether Atzmon is actually sincere in his anti-Semitism or an infiltrator who has been pointing the finger at others to avoid having to answer a few questions himself.

Tony Greenstein

Palestine is Still the Issue

In an in-depth and candid interview, academic and political commentator As'ad Abukhalil - a.k.a "The Angry Arab" - talks to Ceasefire columnist Asa Winstanley about Zionism, Hamas, Syria, Al Jazeera, BDS and much more.

By Asa Winstanley

Originally from Lebanon, As’ad AbuKhalil is professor of political science at California State University, a well known commentator on Arabic TV stations such as Al-Jazeera, and runs a popular blog, which he writes in English, called The Angry Arab News Service.

He is known for his radical leftist political stances and, in particular, his emphatic support for the Palestinian struggle. However, he has recently received criticism from readers and former fans for his stance on Syria (he is against both the Assad regime and the opposition’s Syrian National Council).

In January, AbuKhalil was in the UK for a speaking tour of university Palestine societies titled “The Case Against Israel”. The day before his first talk at Goldsmiths University, I sat down with the professor in an Edgware Road cafe to discuss his thoughts on the Palestine solidarity movement, the historical significance of the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, the uprising in Syria, as well as other regional developments. I started off by asking him about his speaking tour.

As`ad AbuKhalil: I am going around to speak on making the case against Israel. I’m not going to be making any qualifications, or any disclaimers. I think I am of a generation who have seen too many Arab intellectuals, particularly in the United States, who used to get awkward and nervous whenever, after giving a long talk about the Palestinians, they are faced with a Zionist in the audience who would ask them: “But do you accept the existence of Israel?” And I’ve seen so many famous names dance around that question… I have become influenced by it in a way to be very categorical about it. When I started speaking publicly about Palestine in the United States, in the first few cases I was confronted by these same people who would stand up and say “But do you recognise the state of Israel?” And to that I would answer “Of course I wouldn’t!”

Asa Winstanley: So they don’t bother now?

AA: That never comes [up] anymore! And I felt like: that was so easy, why didn’t they all do that before? Since Oslo there is a trend in the pro-Palestinian community, particularly those with links to the PLO, to make the case for Palestine palatable with a case for Zionism. And that’s why I am here to oppose it.

AW: Why do you think Israel seems to be so sensitive to the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement?

AA: Since I left Lebanon in 1983, I have seen an erosion in the standing of Israel, especially in the eyes of Western liberals. When I left, these were the hardcore supporters… Public opinion in Europe has markedly changed over the last few decades. So much so that in almost all countries, even Germany, there is more support for Palestinians than for Israelis.

In Russia, after the rise of the supposed Islamic fundamentalist threat over there, there has been in fact a rise in the support for Israel, but if you talk about Scandinavian countries, or England, or France, and so on. I mean the public opinion is now, in England, more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli when they are asked that question. But now of course that does not translate into the political parties of the House of Commons or places like that.

In America, it has remained the same. It’s still 63 percent for Israel, versus [about] 12 or 13 percent for Palestinians. But what has changed even in America is that the bedrock of support for Israel has shifted from American liberals to hardcore Southern Baptists, Republicans, conservatives. So Israel is aware that they have an image problem, that they did not used to have a few decades ago, and they are particularly sensitive about college campuses… Why? Because they know this is their future generation of leaders, and if this bug gets to spread all around, it’s going to be hurting Israel in the long term. Assuming Israel’s going to be around by the time they reach power. In America, of course, there is such a big gap between college campus activism on Palestine (or any matter) and the very closed, conservative nature of Congress, that Israelis have less to worry about – and yet they seem to be worried.

AW: Why do you think BDS has taken off so much in the last five to six years?

AA: Israel does not do the just thing in the new world after the Cold War. Zionists still operate the way it did back in the 1880s, when they arrived in Palestine. They still use the same brazen and blatant racist resort to war crimes and massacres that they used all along, and I think they realise that it is much more shocking and horrific by the standards of today, and as a result there is an avalanche of reaction against Israel that has been generated in Western countries.

AW: What are the differences between the BDS movement in its modern form, and the more historical Arab boycott of Israel?

AA: The Arab boycott of Israel was much more strict… On the popular level it is [still] extremely strict: refusal of travel to Israel for any purposes – tourism of any form… There are disagreements about the visits, for example, some believe that if you go to Palestinian areas for activism and you can stay in Palestinian areas, spend money there and it’s fine, as long as you boycott any companies who trade with Israel.

The Arab boycott has been extremely effective – the loosening of it has been at the official level. When I was growing up, there was this simultaneous double boycott of Israel. There was the popular level that did not need any instruction, and then there was the official level, which was bad… So the BDS movement is a continuation, I think, of an Arab League official plan.

AW: What is your opinion of activists, quite often from Europe and America, who go to occupied Palestine?

AA: I have no problems with that whatsoever. I have a distinction made about Arabs who go there – those who have Arab citizenship, even if they have a passport from elsewhere. I am not against Palestinians who hold citizenship in America to go to Palestine, because that’s their home. But as long as Israel is occupying the land, and to abide by the Arab League boycott of Israel, I still believe we should adhere, and that all Arab citizens should not pass through Israeli soldiers’ checkpoints to enter into Palestine. If you do, it’s in areas where you do not have to go through them.

AW: So what’s the material difference there?

AA: That we have an Arab League boycott. The Arab League never did anything good! But they did [make] this plan of boycott of Israel, which I believe is something we should support.

AW: Many activists who go to Palestine are actually from Sweden, Norway, Scandinavian countries.

AA: Amazing. Those countries, when you go there, sometimes if you will stay for a week you will see a demonstration about Palestine somewhere – posters about Palestine everywhere – it’s amazing. Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands – it’s advanced. Over there, being pro-Palestinian is becoming part of the definition of being a leftist. I mean it’s easy to be a leftist against war in general – the John Lennon version. The challenge is to be a leftist in a way that puts real challenge to the powers of government and the super powers around the world, because you can really expose the hypocrisy on the question on Palestine. This is why Palestine becomes more symbolic for many activists. It’s not only about Palestine, it’s about the hypocrisy of the Western world.

AW: I think I read in one interview a Scandinavian activist saying that Palestine had become the Vietnam of our time.

AA: Yes, absolutely. And I’m glad that Jane Fonda is not on our side. Who wants her?

AW: Western activists who go to Palestinian demonstrations in the West Bank will quite often come into contact with Israeli activists, some of whom are anti-Zionist. You’ve said on your blog that you’re against any contact with Israelis, basically. Is that a fair understanding of your position?

AA: This is not an easy position, but that is my position. I have taken that position for a while. [Once] I was giving a talk at SOAS here in London and my hosts were sitting with me, and one of them was a graduate student and it was clear that she is one of the activists on Palestine. So suddenly it occurred to me to ask her, based on her accent, I said: “Are you Israeli?” and she said “Yeah, I am”. I said “have you served in the army?” and then she told me yes, that she was an instructor in the Israeli army. And then I had to tell her, “Well, let me tell you my position: I cannot talk to you.” Everyone around her, even her teacher (and one of her teachers is a good friend of mine) are telling me that she’s a wonderful person, that she has made a radical transformation, and I said “But that’s my position.”

And it’s not because of ideological dogmatism that I take this position, at all. It’s really, like, emotional. I mean, I get bothered – I just get bothered. To be sitting and chatting with somebody, and then thinking that this person may have killed a brother or sister… You know, I just can’t do that. Even with Ilan Pappe – I was telling [my wife] Farah – I was with him on a panel once, I didn’t ask that question. He’s done great work, but he served, right?

AW: I read in his memoirs that he did.

AA: Yeah, and as a result I remember I made a conscious effort not to shake his hand. So it bothers me. There is one known Arab here, who has been an adviser to Yasser Arafat and I told him, I said: “Don’t you have a psychological barrier?” Because it’s huge in my case and I don’t want to cross it and he told me “I do, but I feel like I have to cross it for another purpose”… I mean it’s psychological and personal… and for me, I am not for the categorical rejection of anyone. I have elaborated a position which [laughs] which basically…

AW: You wrote on your blog you’re opposed to contact with any Israeli, except where they’ve taken armed resistance against Israel.

AA: … they are resistant against Israel, or if they leave the land. There’s this socialist, anarchist Israeli who keeps sending me email, and he wrote an open letter to me one time. I never responded to him, I couldn’t.

AW: So do you think Westerners who make contact with Israelis are breaking a boycott?

AA: Not necessarily. I’m not dogmatic about that. They have a different experience, and I know their motives are very good, and I’m sure [the activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer] Rachel Corrie, who paid with her life for the cause, had dealt with Israelis, and I’m not in any way going to to delegitimise what she does for that… But this is for me – I’m not in any way saying that this is national or international policy, you know, this is suitable for me, it may not be suitable for someone else. I know many Arabs who disagree with me. Farah disagrees with me on this…

AW: There is a difference between a personal opinion and a general boycott strategy.

AA: Yea, yea, of course. This is the suitable position for me. There are Arabs I know who are activists, who deal with Israelis and I don’t reject them in any way, I’m not judgemental like that. But for me, I cannot.

Farah Rowaysati: The BDS [movement] does not call for boycotts against Israelis as persons, it calls for the boycott of institutions.

AA: But I am for super-BDS.

FR: I’m against dealing with Israelis who are Zionists…

AA: One time I gave a talk in Berkley, and this guy came up to me and said, “I’m an Israeli and I really agree with everything you say, I’m going to go back and work for human rights after I finish my law degree for the Palestinians” and I was like “Well, you know I don’t speak to Israelis” and he said “Yeah I know, I understand: I just wanted you to know” [laughs].

I’m happier like this, you know what I’m saying? I have a huge psychological block… We come from South Lebanon, both of us, which is so directly affected. We both grew up in homes that are within a few miles from Palestinian refugee camps.

FR:We’ve experienced several wars.

AW: What do you make of Gilad Atzmon? He is an Israeli saxophonist – a jazz musician who expresses support for Palestinians.

AA: I have declared him an anti-Semitic person based on things I’ve read. And that upset many Western supporters of this guy, and Arabs. I have refused any contact with this guy and, you know me: I’m strict about many things… and one of them is refusing any association with anybody who has the slightest tinge of anti-Semitism. And he has more than a tinge of anti-Semitism – he basically, writes against –

AW: ‘Jewishness’ is what he calls it… He’s a strange character because he keeps cropping up every few years and there keeps being controversy about him. He lives here [in London] by the way.

AA: Oh really? Call me paranoid – I mean that, please do, call me conspiratorial – I know there are genuine anti-Semites who creep into our movement, but I do worry that there are some infiltrators who pose as anti-Semites to stigmatise the movement. I’m not sure which group he belongs to, but either way I don’t want him [around]. It would be funny if he was sitting here in the cafe, right now.

I have declared him an anti-Semitic person based on things I’ve read. ... I have refused any contact with this guy... I’m strict about many things… and one of them is refusing any association with anybody who has the slightest tinge of anti-Semitism. And he has more than a tinge of anti-Semitism

AW: [Laughs] With all this news about Israeli organisations that want to sabotage the “delegitimization” movement [like the Reut Institute], people are getting justifiably paranoid about spies or infiltrators. Especially in London.

AA: It’s legitimate to be paranoid. I have heard enough by people in the United States about their experiences in the 1960s and 70, and many of them tell me that the loudest big-mouths during the 60s and 70s were the ones who turned out to be turncoats, the ones who would say during meetings, you know: “Let’s go and bomb that building!”

AW: You recently commented on your blog about Hamas being “for sale”. What did you mean?

AA: Al-Quds al Arabi had this story on the front page in which [Hamas leader] Khalid Maashal was cited – he was under pressure by the Saudis, that they would not have any dealing with Hamas unless he cuts all ties with Iran. And he was quoted as saying something to the effect that “I would accept that, if Saudi Arabia was providing the same support that I’ve been getting from Iran.”

So to me that indicated that Hamas is up for sale. I have always been suspicious of this guy, and never liked him (I’ve always felt that he is leading the movement on the footsteps of Fatah)… Look how [Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza] Ismail Haniyeh, when he went for his tour recently, asked to stop in Saudi Arabia.

AW: So how do you think those comments are related to the wave of Arab uprising the previous year, and the rise to prominence of the Muslim Brotherhood?

AA: [Many Palestinians] are worried that the Arab uprisings are marginalising the coverage of the Palestinians, and I share that kind of worry. Ismail Haniyeh strikes me as much more sincere than Khalid Maashal despite my opposition to the ideology of the movement and its practices. On the other hand, I think they also want to take advantage of the rise of the horrible Muslim Brotherhood, and I think the lousy Muslim Brotherhood is one of the reasons why I find Hamas to be very problematic.

It is a by-product of the Muslim Brotherhood which has contributed really nothing to the struggle for Palestinians… Look at Rashid Ghanuchi [leader of Tunisia’s Ennahda party], who flies all the way to Washington DC to prostrate and speak before Zionist groups and offer to not include in the new [Tunisian] constitution an article that will ban normalisation with Israel — which tells you that they buy and sell.

AW: I put on Twitter that I was going to interview you, and I got several Syrians angrily Tweeting questions.

AA: On Facebook, if you read Arabic… both sides are very unhappy with me, and the Syrian regime side, they have a lot of supporters. And both sides are unhappy. What can I say? I have nothing to apologise for. If anything, I think the positions taken by the Syrian National Council have reinforced every single suspicion and doubt that I have harboured against them all along. I do believe there is a real conspiracy, and I believe there is an attempt to hijack a legitimate uprising against a repressive regime.

AW: One question on Twitter was: “How does it feel to be called a regime apologist?”

AA: If some intellectual goons of the Syrian National Council think that they can intimidate me or delegitimize what I do, by calling me a “regime stooge” or something like that, of course that’s not going to bother me, because I know myself. I mean, as long as I get a daily barrage of criticisms, and sometimes insults – not as obscene as the ones I get from the other side, but still from the side of the regime – I know where I stand.

When I was opposed to the Syrian regime in 1976 when they invaded Lebanon, to crush a great leftist movement at the time, these people who are criticising me now were not even born. So I don’t need any sermons about the stance against the Syrian regime. Their intellectual method is very clear. It’s quite funny, in fact – you may be opposed to the Syrian regime, you may call for its overthrow, you may support armed rebellion against the Syrian regime. But – if you don’t support the Syrian National Council, you are for the regime. What the fuck is that? It’s absurd. In other words, I want to reassure my enemies that their attacks on me and name-calling do not bother me in the least, and the more they come, the better. I want to make the life of my enemies miserable…

I don’t support the Free Syrian Army. Now I have received information that the Free Syrian Army of Riad al-Assad comes from the background of Hizb ut-Tahrir [a political-religious movement]. No, I don’t support that. I don’t support pawns of Turkish, Islamist intelligence. But the principle: I am in favour of the right of every Arab population to raise arms against its government. Absolutely, and I make no apologies about that.

AW: The Tunisian government as well?

AA: Absolutely!

AW: One of your criticisms of Al-Jazeera [the popular Arabic satellite TV channel owned by the royal family of Qatar] is that they now rely on anonymous sources a lot. Someone on Twitter wanted me to ask: “why then do you use anonymous sources on your blog?”

AA: I am not a newspaper. I am not a TV station. I am a blogger who is doing a very personal thing. I share whatever information I have, and even rumours. Sometimes I receive rumours and I share them with people. Sometimes they are true, sometimes they are not – and whenever I am given evidence that something I have put is wrong, I always say that I’m correcting it, and I don’t change it. I have a policy of never re-editing things I have posted after I’ve posted them.

On Al-Jazeera [Arabic], when they used to air Bin Laden’s tapes, they used to put the disclaimer every time: “We have not yet authenticated this statement” — even when it was very clear it’s Bin Laden! [But now] whenever they put various clips from YouTube, they never have any disclaimers…

AW: So don’t you think journalists might have reason to be using anonymous sources in Syria?

AA: I did not in any way oppose the use of anonymous sources in journalism. I was making the point about how Al-Jazeera is now comical. This is like a caricature of propaganda TV in the Arab world…

AW: What accounts for the shift? Is it purely [Qatari] reconciliation with Saudi Arabia?

AA: Absolutely… Basically, Al-Jazeera have become to me much more malleable, much more obedient in its service for the shifts in Qatari foreign policy than I’d expected. But it has become a campaign by Qatar and whatever Qatar represents… It has become so feverish, the campaign is so comical, it’s so lacking in credibility, and therefore lending an undeniable, unwitting hand to the Syrian regime.

AW: A final question on Palestine and Palestinian solidarity: what do you think is the main thing to focus on, strategically?

AA: Non-compromise on the total rejection of Israel. I believe the total rejection of Zionism in Palestine should be in the platform and the plan of every movement. I think all these attempts to reconcile Palestine and Israel, and “let’s live together as Israelis and Palestinians in two separate states” – all that is going to be at the expense of the lives and the cause of the Palestinians. And for me, any movement that does not reject – categorically – Zionism, is akin to a movement against apartheid South Africa that basically wants a reconciliation with apartheid, and there should be no doubt about that part. You know, we should insist on that part.

AW: Thanks for your time.

Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist based in London who has lived in and reported from occupied Palestine. His first book “Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation ” has been published by Pluto Press. His Palestine is Still the Issue column appears monthly. His website is

Israel's Boycott Law is Defended by Very Few

2012-02-01T03:23:00.004Z

The Law that Outlawed Free Speech -
even for Israeli Jews

It is difficult, amongst all the reactionary legislation that the Knesset now passes under its far-right settler government, to decide which is the worst. What is certain is that even within Israel, the law that has had the most reaction to it has been the Boycott law. At first this might be surprising but the law effectively outlaws free speech in the whole area of campaigning and criminalises large sections of Israel’s Arab citizens. who have good reason to want Israel to be subject of a Boycott.

However one should hold out no illusions about Israel's Supreme Court striking down the Act. Like its US counterpart, the Israeli Supreme Court is now stuffed with far right appointees, the latest being a West Bank settler, Noam Sohlberg. Israel's supreme court has always been an upholder of all things to do with Zionist values.

For example the court has always refused to recognise the concept of an Israeli nationality. Because if there were such a thing then Israel would be a state of its own citizens, rather than a State of the 'Jewish People'.

In 1970 a legal suit brought by Tel Aviv psychologist, George Tamrin, failed. Shimon Agranat, the 'liberal' head of the supreme court ruled that:

“There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people. … The Jewish people is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of diaspora Jewries.”

Today of course even Israeli Jews are subject to increasingly repressive laws if they step out of line. And with a Boycott Within movement, and Boycott seen as a challenge to Israel's legitimacy, Israel is dropping any pretence to be a democracy.

Tony Greenstein

Unenthusiastic defense of boycott law by reluctant Knesset legal advisor

More than six months after enactment of the "Boycott Law", the responseד of the Knesset and government to the Gush Shalom appeal against that law were at last presented to the Supreme Court.

In the response which he submitted to the court, the Knesset's legal adviser, Adv. Eyal Yinon, clearly distances himself from this law. He recalls that, prior to the final vote in the plenum, he had warned of constitutional difficulties inherent in considering a boycott on products made at settlements in the Occupied Territories ("an Area Under Israeli Control" as the law terms it) as being "a boycott of Israel", to be punished accordingly. He further notes that similar warnings had been made by the Deputy Attorney General and the Legal Advisor to the Knesset Judicial Committee.

Moreover, also the Foreign Ministry's legal experts – Advocates Ehud Keinan and Karin Dozortz - expressed reservations about the law and made clear their considered opinion that such a law would not help the struggle against boycott of Israel, and might actually harm it. Also the Ministry of Finance's legal adviser disapproved of this law, as did the Manufacturers' Association whose members' interests were supposed to be defended by its enactment.

The right-wing majority in the Knesset ignored, however, this advice from numerous legal experts, and insisted upon enacting the law. The Knesset's legal adviser was left duty bound to represent towards the Supreme Court the law they passed – but as he made abundantly clear, not out of his own personal conviction.

For example, the Knesset's Legal Adviser response to the Supreme Court includes extensive quotations from his own expert opinion submitted to the Knesset on the eve of its passage in the plenum: "This bill aims to change the legal standing of a call for a boycott – in case that such a call is designed to influence the political debate about the future of Judea and Samaria, an issue which is at the center of political controversy in Israel for more than forty years. (...) A call for boycott about one single issue, proceeding from one single political position, would become in law a tort, and those making such a call would become open to judicial proceedings and the payment of punitive damages.

At the same time, a boycott call proceeding from other ideological, social or religious motivations would continue to be a legitimate - even if controversial – act in the context of public debate. Such would be, for example, the case of boycott calls aimed at artists who did not serve in the IDF, at universities which do not play the National Anthem at their graduation ceremonies, at shops and restaurants which sell non-kosher food, or - to take the recent example – of consumer boycotts aimed at producers and retailers who sell their products at prices perceived as being too high. All of these would not constitute grounds for judicial sanctions of any kind, while calls for boycott in the context of the debate on the future of Judea and Samaria would become a legally unacceptable act, making those who commit it liable to be prosecuted and fined.

Under these circumstances, we believe that the bill's broad definition of 'a boycott on Israel' constitutes a fundamental violation of the Freedom of Speech in Israel. It brings these elements of the bill to the brink of unconstitutionality, and possible beyond that brink." So far, the considered opinion written by the Knesset's legal adviser on the eve of the vote in the plenum, and quoted by himself in the present defense, remarks also much like those of Adv. Sigal Kogut, the legal adviser to the Knesset Judicial Committee. For his part, Raz Nizri, Deputy Attorney General, had told the Knesset Members that this was "very much of a borderline piece of legislation", which would if enacted "raise great difficulties".

"We are appealing to the Supreme Court, asking the judges to determine that the Knesset's prohibition on a call for a boycott of the settlements is an anti-democratic gagging act, contravening the freedom of expression and of political activity. In this, we need to add very little to the arguments presented by the Knesset's own legal adviser" says Adam Keller, Spokesperson of Gush Shalom.

It should be noted that the state's response to the court reveals that, so far, there were no regulations made which would enable the Finance Minister to deny government funding to bodies which call for a boycott of the settlements - though the Boycott Law provided for such regulations to be made within ninety days of enactment, a deadline which is long past. In addition, to date not a (single) claim for tort was lodged by any settlers against those calling for a boycott of settlement products.

Based on this situation, the State Attorney's representatives asked The Supreme Court to reject the appeal on the grounds that the issue is "not yet ripe". Keller says that this argument is not serious. "The law created a situation where a sword is perpetually hanging over the heads of Israeli peace-seekers, so as to intimidate and deter them from struggling for the principles they believe in. The ability which this law gives to the settlers and their supporters, to strike a blow at any moment they choose, is having its anti-democratic effect even without their having to use it in practice. We will ask the Supreme Court to remove this hanging sword and see to it that the freedom of expression and freedom of political activity is restored in full".

In its appeal against "The Boycott Law", Gush Shalom is represented by lawyers Gaby Lasky and Neri Ramati - who intend to request that the Court shall appoint a broad panel of judges to hear the appeal, in light of the fundamental issues involved. "I hope the court will indeed determine this law to be unconstitutional. In their reactions, neither the Knesset nor the government have given a real response to the contention that this law violates fundamental civil rights in Israel, giving a precedence to the interests of those who benefit from the occupation and denying freedom of expression to opponents of the settlements" says Adv. Lasky. "It is unacceptable that the Knesset's response draws an analogy between this law and the French law which prohibits a boycott on the basis of race, nationality, religion or gender."
Besides Gush Shalom, appeals against the Boycott Law were also lodged by Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi and by a citizen group represented by Attorney Adi Barkai.

Contact: Adam Keller +972-(0)54-2340749, Attorney Gaby Lasky +972-(0)54-4418988

How to deal with Benefits medical examinations

2012-02-01T02:46:00.003Z

A Useful Guide to Benefit Claimants when up against ATOS Doctors

How to deal with Benefits medical examinations

Doctors were hanged at Nuremburg for following Nazi party racial theories and participating in medical experiments. Unfortunately Dr Mengele, the most notorious of them all, escaped the noose.

I’m not suggesting that ATOS doctors deserve to be hanged but a dose of their own medicine would be apt. Hard work for peanuts down a mine might help them understand the effects of illness and the ability to work. But just like the doctors who approve of and participate in making inmates at Guantanamo ready for torture (a practice that Israel has also adopted via the Israeli Medical Association) so ATOS doctors abandon their Hippocratic Oath and owe their first loyalty to the state rather than of those they treat. In that sense ATOS doctors also share the same mentality that Nazi doctors operated under.

Below is an excellent guide from the Edinburgh Autonomous Centre for those undergoing medical examinations and the first lesson is never go in alone.

Tony Greenstein

NEVER FACE THEM ALONE

This leaflet describes how claimants for disability benefits can deal with the medical examinations by medical professionals, which for many claimants are central in deciding whether or not you are entitled to disability benefits.

BEFORE THE EXAMINATION

The examinations are run by Medical Services (MS) which is operated by the private company ATOS on behalf of the Benefits Agency. Before a MS examination your own GP sends info to the Benefits Agency. It is important that this info is as full as possible and states clearly whether or not in their medical opinion you are fit for work at that time and in the forseeable future (at least 6 months ahead).

It is frequently the case that people with a long-term illness gradually minimise in their own minds the effect of their illness on their everyday lives and develop survival strategies to cope on a daily basis in an attempt to lead as normal a life as possible.

This can cause a problem as this habit when taken into a medical examination does not present a true picture of the illness and could be misleading. It might be helpful to discuss the reality of your illness and the limitations it imposes on your life with someone who knows both the illness and yourself well. The reality of your illness is what must be presented to the ATOS medical professional and to the DSS.

If you have a Medical Services examination, either at the MS office or at your home, always have someone accompany you. This is your right. We have often done this. They cannot refuse you this right - if they try then just insist you need someone with you.

To obtain benefits you are legally required to attend this examination, and the information obtained at the examination is used, within a legal framework, to decide on your benefit entitlement - it is therefore vital to make sure your legal rights are protected.

If the date for the examination is not suitable, eg your accompanying person cannot make it on that date, you can get the date changed. If you are unable to travel to the examination you can ask for a home visit instead. If you change the arrangements over the phone write to confirm the changes. You have the right to be seen by a Doctor of the same sex.
Meet the accompanying person beforehand to discuss what's going to happen. Before the examination you should be clear that -

- the examination can be halted to allow you to go to the toilet, have a glass of water, take a pill, or if you feel faint or ill. The examination should only proceed if you feel happy to continue.

- you should refuse to do anything that hurts or distresses you.

The person accompanying you should take a pen and paper and also a watch. If possible, take a tape recorder. Peter Mathison, then Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency, has stated that the taping of medical examinatons can be carried out. Take your medicines, and any aids you use, such as a walking stick or crutches.

You can claim travel expenses for going to the examination - but if you need to take a taxi you must contact the MS beforehand.

AT THE EXAMINATION
You should be aware that the examination begins on entry to the examination centre and does not end until you leave the centre. An evaluation of your medical condition does not only take place when you are in front of the examing medical professional, but also potentially on your way into the building, in the waiting room, and on your way out. They could note the length of time you can sit without apparent discomfort, how you pick up your bag, etc..

At the examination the medical professional should be:

courteous and considerate.

Spend some time explaining the purpose of the examination.
ASK if you are willing to be examined.

Ask you and give you time to explain YOUR OWN VIEW of how you are affected by your condition, including how it affects your ability to do day to day tasks like shopping, cooking, cleaning and so on.

The medical professional should not attempt to 'manipulate' parts of your body.

During the examination you should
Make sure the medical professional realises the full extent of your illness/ disability, including any other conditions/ illnesses you may have. Remember, unlike your GP, this medical professional does not know your medical history.

Describe how you feel on a "bad day", rather than on a "good day".

If you are accompanying a claimant, then you should

Write down the name of the medical professional, their qualification eg if they are a nurse, doctor or physiotherapist, the place of examination, the time of starting and finishing the examination.

Take notes on everything the Doctor and the claimant say, what the Doctor asks the claimant to do, what happens. Especially note any aggressive attitude or manner adopted by the Doctor. Note the exact words spoken.

Intervene and ask for the examination to be halted if the claimant becomes unwell or distressed. The claimant should have a break until they feel well enough to continue.
Object to and stop any attempt by the Doctor to have the claimant do exercises which could injure or distress them. You should have the examination stopped if the claimant is becoming ill or distressed for any reason. If the claimant is not fit to continue then the examination should be postponed until another day.

If the claimant's distress is due to mistreatment by the doctor, stop the interview, then say that you will be making a complaint with a request for an examination at a future date with a different medical professional.

Time the length of the examination and any breaks taken (some medical professionals have been known to exaggerate the length of time of the examination to make it appear more thorough than it was).

At the end of the examination ask the medical professional to read back their notes, to check they made an accurate record. If the medical professional refuses, then note that and what reason he/she gives for refusing. If there seem to be any inaccuracies in the notes, check with the claimant, then if necessary ask the Doctor to change their notes. If they refuse then make a note of that, writing down exactly what they said.

AFTER THE EXAMINATION
If the medical professional did anything wrong, then as soon as posible afterwards write a letter of complaint to BAMS and to the DSS - don't wait for the decision to come through. The letter should be signed by both the claimant and the accompanying person. There is more info on making a complaint in the Disability Rights Handbook (Disability Alliance), or contact us.

HOW YOU CAN BE FOUND INCAPABLE OF WORK EVEN IF YOU DON'T SCORE ENOUGH POINTS
Even if you don’t score enough points under the personal capability assessment – the medical test to decide if you’re incapable of work – you may still have a chance of being found incapable of work either at claim or appeal stage. This is because of the little known ‘exceptional circumstances’ rules.

There are a number of these, but probably the most important is regulation 27(b), which states that you will be found incapable of work if:
‘there would be a substantial risk to the mental or physical health of any person if he were found capable of work’’
This regulation could apply to you on physical health or on mental health grounds.
For example, if you experience severe anxiety attacks and might harm yourself or somebody else if placed in a situation you find threatening, then this might be grounds for applying regulation 27(b).

Or you may have a lung condition which is made much worse by stress and, in the past, such situations have led to a serious deterioration in your health and perhaps hospitalisation. If you would find being found capable of work, having to sign on for Jobseekers Allowance and take part in training or work experience very stressful, then that may be grounds for declaring you incapable of work under the exceptional circumstances regulations.

However, neither doctors nor decision makers are quick to identify people who might be covered by these clauses. And very few claimants even know they exist.

ATOS AND THE BIGGER PICTURE

ATOS are currently recruiting more staff to help meet Government targets to force more people off disability benefits to reduce the public debt problem caused by banks gambling in the financial markets. The process is driven by cost cutting not objective medical opinion. The most vulnerable in society are being made to pay for the greed of others and the inevitable booms and busts of capitalist economics.

Medical professionals, including physiotherapists, with no experience of mental health problems, for example, are only given a matter of days training before making assessments of claimants. They are paid substantially more than NHS doctors and nurses for leaving their ethical concerns at the door. ATOS claim that they do not make the decision as to whether someone can work and have their benefits reduced, but that the decision is made by the DWP from their report and that performance targets are based simply on the number of claimants seen in a day. However they admit that if a medical professional passes all claimants for disability benefits it will not go unnoticed.

We encourage and aid claimants organising together, and linking up with workers in employment, to oppose and take action against these government policies. Why should we put up with a system where everything is run for the profit of a rich elite? Why shouldn't society's resources belong to everyone, and be used for people's needs?

You can view or download the user instructions for the ATOS Lima computer assessment here:

EDINBURGH COALITION AGAINST POVERTY

is based at the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh (ACE), an open campaign space, infoshop and wholefoods co-op, providing resources and solidarity. Resources available include computer/internet access, cheap copying, free leaflets, books, pamphlets and mags for sale, a small wholefoods shop, and a library.

Every tuesday from 12 noon till 3pm advice and solidarity is available for benefits and debt hassles, housing and other problems. Please contact us at Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty c/o ACE, 17 West Montgomery Place, Edinburgh EH7 5HA 0131 557 6242 ecap@lists.riseup.net We invite you to join our solidarity phone tree, and get involved.
ACE is also open every Saturday 11am-6pm and Thursday 6-8pm, and other times for particular events (but the advice sessions are only on Tuesdays).

Fair Rents – The Answer to the Housing Benefit Bill

2012-02-01T02:26:00.001Z

How strange it is with all the recent talk of Housing Benefit cutbacks and benefit caps that no one has put their finger on the real problem. High rents as a result of a boom based on property price inflation which stoked a demand for imports that was unmatched by production of wealth.

When I first claimed supplementary benefit as it was then called (rent was also paid then by the SS) there were fair rents in unfurnished premises. Parasitic landlords couldn’t just hold people who need a roof over their heads to ransom, reaping vast rewards for no effort. But Thatcher abolished rent control for private tenants along with selling off council housing. Tony Blair at one time asked why rent controls weren’t being reimposed but when New Labour came into office, the free market was let rip and now we seen the consequences. If the Housing Benefit bill needs to be cut then landlords ability to increase rents beyond peoples’ ability to pay should be stripped away.

Better still, everyone should have a right to a home, squatting an empty property should be made specifically legal and there should be an end to a market in housing, the most essential of all things bar food that human beings need to live.

Tony Greenstein

Reimpose Rent Control

There has been a lot of fuss recently about high level benefit payments. One major component of high benefit payments is costs in terms of Housing Benefit for the unfortunate people stuck in private sector housing.

I'm struck by the fact that you can often see "To Let" signs on the council estates around Exeter were I live. It strikes me that there must be a significant proportion of council houses that were purchased using "Right to Buy" that are now in the hands of the private sector profiteers - people who own numerous properties who let them at exorbitant rents.

New Labour has apparently bought into the feeding frenzy about the enormous cost of Housing Benefit on society. See for example:

I agree that it is an outrage that so much money is expended in making a small proportion of the population stinking rich by exploiting the low paid and the unemployed. There are a vast number of people who can't get housed by the Local Authority and who can't afford to buy their own home. They have no security of tenure and a vast proportion of their wages goes into making someone else wealthy.

Protected Tenancies prior to the 1986 Housing Act allowed tenants to have both security of tenure and the right to demand that the local Rent Office determine a Fair Rent. A Fair Rent was a legal maximum rent that a private landlord could charge. My personal experience of getting a Fair rent fixed in the early 80s was that my rent was more than halved. In a household of 5 people this saved the tax payer a lot of money in terms of housing benefit for those that were claiming housing benefit and for the rest of the tenants their living stand on a low pay increased substantially. These days private sector tenants pay a ridiculous proportion of their income towards rent and they don't even know whether they will have the right to remain where they live 6 months later - it is a disgrace!

I have some questions for which I would love to see some answers, does anyone know the facts and figures:

Around 2 million council houses were sold using "Right to Buy" between 1980 and 1998.

1. How many of these are Owner Occupied and how many now privately rented?

2. What is the additional cost to the tax payer of former council properties being privately rented in terms of increase to the housing benefit bill?

I know these look like simple questions and there may be more complicated pictures behind them. For example it may be more constructive to look at the total number of properties in 1980, those council owned, and those owner occupied and those privately rented and compare with the figures today and then take into account Housing Benefit costs.

Also how many people are in a poverty trap where they can't get council housing and can't exercise "freedom of choice" to buy their own home?

There is an ideological battle over the benefits bill. Part of this relates to Housing Benefit. I don't think we should defend the status quo. It is an outrage that so many people are super exploited by being damned to the private sector. It is a scandal that there is so little public housing. I wonder whether it would be true that a fraction of the cost to the state in Housing benefit and B&B costs for the homeless could actually economically buy back a lot of housing - I don't know the answer to that - but it is worth asking!

Dave Parks

An Essay by a Young Jew as to Why he has Rejected Zionism

2012-01-30T03:21:00.005Z

Dietrich College News
2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. Writing Awards
Prose: High School
First Place (Tie)

One of the more remarkable signs of the cracks and crisis in the Zionist movement is the growing number of Jewish youngsters prepared to say ‘no’ to the blandishments of Zionism. Who refuse to accept the kith and kin argument that you must not criticise Zionism and Israel because blood is stronger than water, you are betraying your own, the Jewish tribe must protect itself etc.

The old charges of ‘self hatred’ are like water off a ducks back and it is something that is an accusation that simply draws attention to the lack of any intellect or analysis of the Zionist flunkey making it. Appeals to blood mean a lack of reason.

When I ‘came out’ as a Jewish anti-Zionist 40+ years ago there were no role models, no one to inspire you. The only Jews who were anti-Zionist were in far left groups. I joined the International Socialists (now the SWP) which was led by Tony Cliff (Yigal Gluckstein as the fascists never failed to call him) who was a Palestinian Jews expelled by the British for being a communist (with the support of the Zionist ‘trade union’ Histadrut). But Cliff rarely spoke about his experiences and wrote very little too.

The first anti-Zionist pamphlet which I read was the classic ‘Class Nature of Israeli Society’ by Moshe Machover, Haim Hanegbi and Akiva Orr (it was first printed in New Left Review). Although it was wrong in the belief that the incorporation of Palestinian labour from the West Bank and Gaza Strip would result in Israelis being dependent on those they had expelled (Israel today prefers migrant labour from Asia), virtually everything else was spot on. But Jewish anti-Zionists, of whom I met a few in Brighton and as I became more outspoken nationally, including Liverpool where I established a life-long friendship with American exile, Sam Semoff, were still a rarity.

But the 1982 war changed all that. A few years previously the Jewish Socialists Group had been formed. Although it had originally been set up by an ex-Communist Party member Aubrey Lewis, in order to attract those Jews who were drawn to the New Left it soon veered off in the direction of Bundism. But for the JSG Palestine was never a priority. Jews for Justice for Palestinians was also set up a few years later and although it was always considered the ‘soft left’ of the anti-Zionist left it undoubtedly contributed to changing the atmosphere.

When the JSG was set up, the Board of Deputies of British Jews held urgent talks about what to do about this challenge! But today there are hundreds of Jewish youth and not so young who reject Zionism in Britain and in the USA there are major splits appearing. Jewish Voices for Peace has over 100,000 signatures. It has steadily moved towards a Boycott position.

American Jews are in an invidious position because many of them are not recognised as Jews by those who control the rabbinical institutions in Israel. Converts will not be recognised at all, and nor will the offspring of a marriage where the woman is non-Jewish. There is also greater recognition that Israel is a positive liability for Jews today and a growing repugnance against its far-right policies.

It used to be said that Zionism insisted that American Jews leave their liberalism at the door when Israel was on the agenda. However today they can see that their anti-Semitic foes, people like Glenn Back and John Hagee, are the darlings of the Zionist institutions. This is an interesting essay, written for Martin Luther King day.

Tony Greenstein

Fighting a Forbidden Battle: How I Stopped Covering Up for a Hidden Wrong

By Jesse Lieberfeld 11th grade, Winchester Thurston

I once belonged to a wonderful religion. I belonged to a religion that allows those of us who believe in it to feel that we are the greatest people in the world—and feel sorry for ourselves at the same time. Once, I thought that I truly belonged in this world of security, self-pity, self-proclaimed intelligence, and perfect moral aesthetic. I thought myself to be somewhat privileged early on. It was soon revealed to me, however, that my fellow believers and I were not part of anything so flattering.

Although I was fortunate enough to have parents who did not try to force me into any one set of beliefs, being Jewish was in no way possible to escape growing up. It was constantly reinforced at every holiday, every service, and every encounter with the rest of my relatives. I was forever reminded how intelligent my family was, how important it was to remember where we had come from, and to be proud of all the suffering our people had overcome in order to finally achieve their dream in the perfect society of Israel.

This last mandatory belief was one which I never fully understood, but I always kept the doubts I had about Israel’s spotless reputation to the back of my mind. “Our people” were fighting a war, one I did not fully comprehend, but I naturally assumed that it must be justified. We would never be so amoral as to fight an unjust war. Yet as I came to learn more about our so-called “conflict” with the Palestinians, I grew more concerned. I routinely heard about unexplained mass killings, attacks on medical bases, and other alarmingly violent actions for which I could see no possible reason. “Genocide” almost seemed the more appropriate term, yet no one I knew would have ever dreamed of portraying the war in that manner; they always described the situation in shockingly neutral terms. Whenever I brought up the subject, I was always given the answer that there were faults on both sides, that no one was really to blame, or simply that it was a “difficult situation.” It was not until eighth grade that I fully understood what I was on the side of. One afternoon, after a fresh round of killings was announced on our bus ride home, I asked two of my friends who actively supported Israel what they thought. “We need to defend our race,” they told me. “It’s our right.”

“We need to defend our race.”

Where had I heard that before? Wasn’t it the same excuse our own country had used to justify its abuses of African-Americans sixty years ago? In that moment, I realized how similar the two struggles were—like the white radicals of that era, we controlled the lives of another people whom we abused daily, and no one could speak out against us. It was too politically incorrect to do so. We had suffered too much, endured too many hardships, and overcome too many losses to be criticized. I realized then that I was in no way part of a “conflict”—the term “Israeli/Palestinian Conflict” was no more accurate than calling the Civil Rights Movement the “Caucasian/ African-American Conflict.” In both cases, the expression was a blatant euphemism: it gave the impression that this was a dispute among equals and that both held an equal share of the blame. However, in both, there was clearly an oppressor and an oppressed, and I felt horrified at the realization that I was by nature on the side of the oppressors. I was grouped with the racial supremacists. I was part of a group that killed while praising its own intelligence and reason. I was part of a delusion.

I thought of the leader of the other oppressed side of years ago, Martin Luther King. He too had been part of a struggle that had been hidden and glossed over for the convenience of those against whom he fought. What would his reaction have been? As it turned out, it was precisely the same as mine. As he wrote in his letter from Birmingham Jail, he believed the greatest enemy of his cause to be “Not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who...lives by a mythical concept of time.... Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” When I first read those words, I felt as if I were staring at myself in a mirror. All my life I had been conditioned to simply treat the so-called conflict with the same apathy which King had so forcefully condemned. I, too, held the role of an accepting moderate. I, too, “lived by a mythical concept of time,” shrouded in my own surreal world and the set of beliefs that had been assigned to me. I had never before felt so trapped.

I decided to make one last appeal to my religion. If it could not answer my misgivings, no one could. The next time I attended a service, there was an open question-and- answer session about any point of our religion. I wanted to place my dilemma in as clear and simple terms as I knew how. I thought out my exact question over the course of the seventeen-minute cello solo that was routinely played during service. Previously, I had always accepted this solo as just another part of the program, yet now it seemed to capture the whole essence of our religion: intelligent and well- crafted on paper, yet completely oblivious to the outside world (the soloist did not have the faintest idea of how masterfully he was putting us all to sleep). When I was finally given the chance to ask a question, I asked, “I want to support Israel. But how can I when it lets its army commit so many killings?” I was met with a few angry glares from some of the older men, but the rabbi answered me. “It is a terrible thing, isn’t it?” he said. “But there’s nothing we can do. It’s just a fact of life.” I knew, of course, that the war was no simple matter and that we did not by any means commit murder for its own sake, but to portray our thousands of killings as a “fact of life” was simply too much for me to accept. I thanked him and walked out shortly afterward. I never went back. I thought about what I could do. If nothing else, I could at least try to free myself from the burden of being saddled with a belief I could not hold with a clear conscience. I could not live the rest of my life as one of the pathetic moderates whom King had rightfully portrayed as the worst part of the problem. I did not intend to go on being one of the Self-Chosen People, identifying myself as part of a group to which I did not belong.

It was different not being the ideal nice Jewish boy. The difference was subtle, yet by no means unaffecting. Whenever it came to the attention of any of our more religious family friends that I did not share their beliefs, I was met with either a disapproving stare and a quick change of the subject or an alarmed cry of, “What? Doesn’t Israel matter to you?” Relatives talked down to me more afterward, but eventually I stopped noticing the way adults around me perceived me. It was worth it to no longer feel as though I were just another apathetic part of the machine.

I can obviously never know what it must have been like to be an African-American in the 1950s. I do feel, however, as though I know exactly what it must have been like to be white during that time, to live under an aura of moral invincibility, to hold unchallengeable beliefs, and to contrive illusions of superiority to avoid having to face simple everyday truths. That illusion was nice while it lasted, but I decided to pass it up. I have never been happier.

See also Jewish Rebels Rally Against Zionism

A Jewish State or a Democratic State?

2012-01-30T02:59:00.002Z

Settler leader Benny Katzover no longer pretends to support democracy

When Rabbi Meir Kahane was elected to the Knesset for Kach, a Jewish Nazi party, Zionists who opposed him feigned shock when he said that Israel could be either a democratic state or a Jewish state. Yet all Kahane was doing was to be honest.

Either Israel is a Jewish state or a democratic state. Is it a state of its own citizens or only its Jewish citizens plus Jews in the rest of the world? The Zionist movement is quite clear about this. One of the most important Zionist organisations, the Jewish National Fund, has had more than its fair share of bad publicity recently.

This is an organisation which, with the Israeli Land Administration, owns and administers 93% of land in Israel. As the JNF only leases or rents land to Jews, it was not happy when in 2005, the High Court ruled in the Kadan case that the Israeli Lands Administration must sell or lease land to Arabs as well as Jews. The JNF was not best pleased as their web site indicates: We are told that:

A survey commissioned by KKL-JNF reveals that over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.

In fact the JNF originally put on their site the sentence that ‘for 2,000 years the Jewish people have not dreamed of a democratic state but a Jewish state.’ but clearly thought better of it. But the reaction of Arieh Eldad MK was to say that ‘Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has violated the declaration of independence by choosing a democratic Israel over a Jewish state.’ Land Decision Slammed - Politicians rage over Attorney General decision to sell JNF land; Shinui and Meretz welcome change

And following this up the Knesset passed the first reading of a JNF Bill by 64-16 (only 10 Jews were among the 16 against) which defined the leasing of land to Jews only as not being discriminatory. As simple as that! A well-known army refuser and pacifist, Jonathan Ben-Artzi, wrote an open letter to members of the Knesset which was printed in Ha’aretz:

‘I`d like to save you some work phrasing the new law regarding purchase of JNF lands. I hope you will be able to appreciate the help.
In May 4th 1939 a law was implemented, forbidding a certain minority in a certain country from purchasing and leasing the majority`s lands in that country. Instead of re-writing this law now, why don`t you translate and implement that law?’
[Ha’aretz Monday, July 23, 2007]

It doesn’t take much effort to work out which country Ben-Artzi is referring to.
But it was realised that the JNF Bill as proposed was too crude and might even be struck down by the High Court. Instead in March 2011 an ‘Acceptance to Communities Bill’ was passed which allows ‘community standards’ committees to reject applicants to live in a town or village based on the prejudices of existing residents. It is clear that this is aimed at Arabs, but other minorities such as single parents, gay couples etc. will be caught.

Today it is recognised openly by the present right-wing Zionist administration that if your key aim is the preservation of a Jewish state, then Arabs inside Israel can never be allowed to form a majority. After all how can you have a Jewish state if the majority of its inhabitants re not Jewish? In 1948 this conundrum was solved by the expedient of expelling ¾ million Arabs from their homes – the Nakba. Today this solution is also desired but at present isn’t politically possible. The alternative is pretty much what we’ve got. A mini-bantustan in the West Bank run by Mahmoud Abbas, his unelected Prime Minister Fayad and the various Palestinian security forces. The solution in other words is a form of ‘autonomy’ which justifies denying 3.5 million Palestinians the vote while continuing to rule over them. In other words Israel runs a nakedly Apartheid state in the West Bank and a more subtle on in Israel itself. That is why those who support a 2 State solution, whether they realise it or not, are doing the work of Zionism for it by advocating a position which reinforces Israel’s position as a ‘Jewish’ state.

But in Israel there is a ‘demographic fear’ not only in respect of the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories but within Israel itself, where there are 1.4 million Arabs. They are not wanted but tolerated for lack of any alternative, though a ‘peace agreement’ would be the signal to transfer most of them to the newly set up Bantustan.

Tony Greenstein

Settler leader Katzover no longer pretends to support democracy

Benny Katzover, one of the founders and prominent leaders of the settler movement, takes off all masks. He declares himself in clear and unambiguous words to be a sworn enemy of democracy, striving to dismantle and destroy the democratic regime in Israel and replace it with a "Jewish" dictatorship of a nationalist – theocratic – racist character. Katzover no longer sees any need to pay even lip service to democracy, as he and his friends did for many years. He now speaks openly and brazenly, without apprehension of being hurt by this candor. He sees and feels that the liquidation of democracy has now become a tangible and realistic option on the Israeli public agenda.

Indeed, it's impossible to go on avoiding a decision. Either the military and settler dictatorship already in existence in the Territories would penetrate into all parts of Israeli society, eliminating what is left of democracy in Israel and eventually bringing about an end of Israel itself - or the sane forces in the Israeli society will rally at the last moment to put an end to the occupation and settlement, maintain and strengthen democracy and achieve peace between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab World. Between these two choices there can be no bridging and no compromise.

Contact: Adam Keller, Gush Shalom spokesperson 054-2340749

Settler leader: Democracy must be dismantled
Sunday, January 8 2012|Yossi Gurvitz

Haaretz reports that settler leader Benni Katzover calls for dismantling democracy and “bowing to Judaism,” and the leader of the right-wing coalition aids “price tag” activists. Can we discuss the treason of the right yet?

The veteran settler leader, Benni Katzover, was caught (Hebrew) telling some meshigene Chabad paper, “Beit Mashiach”, that

“I would say that today, Israeli democracy has one central mission, and that is to disappear. Israeli democracy has finished its historical role, and it must be dismantled and bow before Judaism. All the events nowadays are leading to the realization that there is no other way except putting the Jewish issue before any other issue, and that is the answer to all the situation and the threats.”

Referring to the struggle against gender exclusion, Katzover sailed on the seas of conspiracy, saying, “The leftist activists are cooking timed campaigns against anything that smells of holiness, and they have two goals: One is political – undermining the government and gathering bonuses in public opinion, and the other is to act against all the foundations of Jewish faith.” It’s an interesting look into a leading settler’s world: On the one hand, gender exclusion is “holiness”; On the other, leftists are Erev Rav – Amalekites who pretend to be, or believe themselves to be, Jews, who are seen as such, and yet whose whole existence is undermining “anything that smells of holiness.” Katzover, when asked for comment by Haaretz, confirmed his comments.

Benni Katzover (R) with Yair Lapid on a tour of the West Bank (photo: Yesha Council)
Katzover gains a point for no longer pretending, as most settler leaders still do, that he values democracy. Religious Zionism, as that pig who shows his cloven hoofs so that people will mistake it for a kosher animal, always claimed to support “Jewish democracy.” As anyone who actually studied in that world knows, democracy is described there as a Greek construct, alien to Judaism. When democracy is spoken of, the rabbis kept mentioning the biblical injunction “thou shall not follow a multitude to do evil.” It would be interesting to know how many settler leaders think like Katzover, but do not, as yet, dare say so openly.

This isn’t the only time Katzover was mentioned in the news lately. On Friday, Shahar Ginossar – who is showing himself to be one of the bravest reporters around – demonstrated in “7 Yamim”, Yediot’s weekend supplement, that Katzover, together with Gershon Messica, inspire the “price tag” campaign. The two of them discussed the attacks on the IDF and random Palestinians openly on some internal settlements publications, arguing that without “price tag” attacks, the settlers cannot prevent the removal of illegal outposts. The local council of Shomron, led in the past by Katsover and now by Messica, transferred funds – government funds – to finance what could have led to “price tag” attacks. Messica and Katsover also refrained, time and time again, from denouncing those attacks.

You didn’t have to be a strategic genius to believe that the “price tag” activists, breathlessly described by the media as anarchists over whom the settlement establishment has no control, are in fact Yesha Council of settlement’s special forces. After all, the weapon the Council used to threaten Israelis with for the past 30 years was the “extremists” over which it ostensibly “had no control.” Well, it seems at least some of its members did have control over them.

Will the Yesha Council cast out Katzover and Messica? That’s a funny one. Its disavowal of “price tag” attacks is only meant to preserve its normal position as the political arm of Jewish terrorism. It’s time to remind people that the legendary Yesha leader, Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever, is a convicted terrorist. In the early 1980s, he tried to blow up a Palestinian activist, Dr. Ahmed Natsha. The device didn’t go off, and due to “health concerns,” Hever – then called Friedman – got off with just 11 months in prison. Hever’s terrorist past didn’t harm him any, and that’s an understatement. At the time, of course, the leadership of Gush Emunim spoke of “extremists” just as it does now, while trying to conceal the metaphoric hissing fuse coming out of its pocket.

Yesha Council’s quiet support of Jewish terrorism is not limited to attacks on Palestinians. In January 1996, two months after the Rabin assassination, a yarmulka-wearing young man, Ohad Bart, tried to run Meretz minister Yossi Sarid’s car off the road. He was then a Bnei Akiva instructor. He kept his status – which he would have lost had he been caught eating in a non-kosher restaurant – and ten years later, in 2006, he was a Yesha Council functionary and a Knesset candidate on behalf of Ha’Ichud Ha’Leumi, a settler party.
We’re not finished yet. Katzover and Messica, along with their local council, may have inspired and supported “price tag” attacks, but today we learned (Hebrew) that the pogromchiks had a very prominent collaborator: MK Ze’ev Elkin, the chairman of the coalition. He does not deny passing information to “price tag” people telling them where the army was not planning to act, enabling them to deploy their forces in a more accurate manner.

Now, Elkin is obviously not a spy, just as the “price tag” people who gathered information on the army’s activities aren’t. The question whether Elkin is a traitor, however – in the moral sense of the word, not, naturally, the legal one – is more complicated. Elkin took an oath to maintain “loyalty to the State of Israel and to faithfully execute [his] calling in the Knesset.” When he gave information to the “price tag” people, which was supposed to derail military activity ordered by the lawful government, did he commit treason, or not? Let’s just say that Elkin is lucky to be a Jew and not an Arab; Otherwise the Knesset would already be discussing the removal of his immunity. As he is a Jew, it’ll be a surprise if even the Ethics Committee bothers itself with his perfidy.

So: We have a senior Yesha Council operative saying Jewish democracy must be dismantled or killed, while conspiring with another to support “price tag” attacks – aided and abetted by the leader of the right-wing coalition. Isn’t it time we asked some hard questions about the loyalty of the right, particularly the religious right, to Israeli democracy?

Settler leader calls democracy an obstacle to Israel's higher calling

Veteran settler leader Benny Katzover: 'We didn't come here to establish a democratic state.'
By The Associated Press

Israel's democracy has long been a point of pride for its citizens, setting the country apart in a region of autocratic governments. But veteran settler leader Benny Katzover says democracy is getting in the way of what he believes is a higher purpose.

Katzover has been at the forefront of a religiously inspired movement to take over the West Bank, helping build a network of settlements over four decades that are now home to hundreds of thousands of Israelis.

Today, he argues that democratic principles, such as equality before the law, have become an obstacle to deepening Jewish control over all of the biblical Land of Israel - though he stops short of calling for dismantling Israel's democratic institutions. They are disintegrating on their own and losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public, he believes.

"We didn't come here to establish a democratic state," Katzover says. "We came here to return the Jewish people to their land."

Katzover's comments appear to reflect a growing radicalization among some right-wing religious groups, coming at a time of a rise in attacks on Palestinians by vigilante settlers and an increase in complaints by liberal Israelis that the country's right-wing parliament and government have launched an unprecedented attack on the pillars of democracy.
Katzover, 64, led the first group of settlers into the northern West Bank in the 1970s and helped establish the settlement of Elon Moreh in 1980. Like other prominent settlers, he has been a confidant and informal adviser to a string of prime ministers over the years.

"Across the country, these ideas, that democracy needs dramatic change, if not dismantling then at least dramatic change, these ideas are very widespread," he says.

The mainstream settlers' umbrella group, the Yesha Council, distanced itself from Katzover's comments, first made in a small ultra-Orthodox publication and picked up by Haaretz earlier this month. The Yesha Council was firmly committed to democratic principles, said its chairman, Dani Dayan.

Yair Sheleg of the Israel Democracy Institute said the radicalization of hardline settlers accelerated after Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Israel uprooted nearly two dozen settlements, including four in the northern West Bank, and the operation was deeply traumatic for the settler movement.

Sheleg said he was surprised by Katzover's tough tone, if not the content of his remarks. "We should be very worried," he said. "Benny Katzover was considered to be historically one of the mainstream leaders of the settler movement, and this really illustrates the way, the very far way, those mainstream settler leaders went."

McCarthyism in Israel - Human Rights is a Crime

2012-01-29T02:36:00.006Z

I’m reminded of Marx’s saying when news reaches me of yet another assault of human rights in Israel. ‘A nation that oppresses another nation will not itself be free.’ In the cause of the virulent and racist nationalism that stalks Israel, all dissent from Israel’s small left is being silenced in the cause of ‘national unity’ ‘Zionist goals’ an ‘existential threat’ and all the other manifestations of the mentality of a siege state.

You justify limitations on freedom in the cause of the national good (following on from good ol’ misunderstood Adolf) and you end up with no freedoms at all.

Israel has set itself on a course, the end of which will be that even the tokens of democracy that remain will be extinguished by the McCarthyist atmosphere that has taken hold. And because Israel is a settler state, there is no mass left-wing or working class politics there. Any alternative movements, like that of the tent protests, took place outside the political mainstream – although Israeli Labour tried to jump on the bandwagon.

Tony Greenstein

Israel Education Ministry blasts school for taking students to human rights march

Haaretz 30.12.11

'The students carried signs against racism, house demolitions, etc., which violates the director general's circular [i.e. ministry regulations],' ministry tells school.

By Talila Nesher

The Education Ministry reprimanded the Arara High School and demanded clarifications after the school participated in a human rights march in Tel Aviv at the beginning of the month.

"The students carried signs against racism, house demolitions, etc., which violates the director general's circular [i.e. ministry regulations]," stated the letter sent to the school.

"This was a praiseworthy initiative by the students as part of their assignment in civics class," countered one of the school's teachers. "What better way to express civic involvement and internalize the material?"

A bus with students from the tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades went to the march, which was sponsored by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, on Friday three weeks ago, another teacher said. All the students had approval from their parents and all the students chose to participate, with the encouragement of the student council.

"It was a celebration of human rights," the teacher said. "There were students who said at the end of the march that this was one of the most important and significant days in their lives."

"A thousand civics classes couldn't give what that hour they spent there could," she added.

But in its letter to the school, the ministry objected to the fact that "the students participated in a demonstration in the framework of a civics lesson on the subject of human rights" and carried placards, saying this goes against ministry regulations. It therefore asked the ministry's regional supervisor and the school's supervisor to deal with the matter and report back to the ministry.

The signs were prepared by the students at their own initiative, said one of the school's senior staff members. "The signs were against racism, for peace, equality and social justice. Did anyone thereby say that the state is racist?"

In its response to the ministry, the school quoted Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar's message in honor of International Human Rights Day in November: "Your role as educators, who serve as guides for your students, is to teach them that alongside protecting and defending human rights, there is an expectation that they demonstrate involvement and personal responsibility," Sa'ar wrote then.

No comment had been received from either the ministry or ACRI as of press time on Tuesday night.

Hundreds of Israeli professors protest at 'McCarthyite' right-wing education minister

Jonathan Cook Jul 11, 2010

NAZARETH // Hundreds of Israeli college professors have signed a petition accusing the education minister of endangering academic freedoms after he threatened to "punish" any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of Israel. The backlash against Gideon Saar, a member of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, comes after a series of moves suggesting he is trying to stamp a more stridently right-wing agenda on the Israeli education system.

The education minister has outraged the 540 professors who signed the petition by his open backing of a nationalist youth movement, Im Tirtzu, which demands that teachers be required to prove their commitment to right-wing Zionism. Two of Mr Saar's predecessors, Yossi Sarid and Yuli Tamir, are among those who signed the petition, which calls on the minister to "come to your senses … before it's too late to save higher education in Israel". Mr Saar's campaign to "re-Zionise" the education system, including introducing a new right-wing Jewish studies syllabus and bringing soldiers into classrooms, has heightened concerns that he is stoking an atmosphere increasingly hostile to left-wing academics and human-rights activists.

Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva who called for an academic boycott of Israel last year, has reported receiving death threats, as has a school teacher who refused to participate in Mr Saar's flagship programme to encourage high-school recruitment to the IDF. Daniel Gutwein, a professor of Jewish history at Haifa University, said: ""A serious red flag is raised when the education minister joins in the de-legitimisation of the academic establishment. This is a method to castrate and abolish Israeli academia."

Mr Saar's sympathies for Im Tirtzu were first revealed earlier this year when he addressed one of its conferences, telling delegates the organisation would be "blessed" for its "hugely vital" work. The youth movement emerged in 2006 among students demanding that the government rather than ordinary soldiers be held to account for what was seen as Israel's failure to crush Hizbollah during that year's attack on Lebanon. It has rapidly evolved into a potent right-wing pressure group.

Its biggest success to date has been a campaign last year against Israeli human rights groups that assisted a United Nations inquiry led by Judge Richard Goldstone in investigating war crimes committed during Israel's assault on Gaza in 2008. The human rights organisations are now facing possible government legislation to restrict their activities. Im Tirtzu's latest campaign, against what it calls "the reign of left-wing terror" in the education system, was backed by Mr Saar during a parliamentary debate last month. He told MPs he took very seriously a report by the movement claiming that anti-Zionist professors have taken over university politics departments and are silencing right-wing colleagues and students.

Mr Saar also warned that calls for boycotts against Israel were "impossible to accept" and that he was talking to higher education officials about taking "action" this summer, hinting that he would cut funds for the professors involved and their institutions. Yossi Ben Artzi, the rector of Haifa University and the most senior university official to criticise Mr Saar, warned him against "monitoring and denouncing" academics. He added that the Im Tirtzu report "smells of McCarthyism".

The universities are already disturbed by a bill submitted by 25 MPs last month that would make it a criminal offence for Israelis to "initiate, encourage, or aid" a boycott against Israel and require them to pay compensation to those harmed by it. The bill is likely to be treated sympathetically by the government, which is worried about the growing momentum of boycott drives both internationally and in the occupied West Bank. Mr Netanyahu has called the emergence of a boycott movement inside Israel a "national scandal".

Prof Gordon, who wrote a commentary in the Los Angeles Times a year ago supporting a boycott, said Im Tirtzu had contributed to a growing "atmosphere of violence" in the country and on campuses. Hundreds of students at his university have staged demonstrations demanding his dismissal. He was also recently sent a letter from someone signing himself "Im Tirtzu" calling the professor a "traitor" and warning: "I will reach Ben Gurion [University] to kill you."

Prof Gordon said: "I have tenure and Im Tirtzu cannot easily get me fired. But they are trying to become the 'guards at the gate' to make sure other academics do not follow in my path." He cited the recent case of Assaf Oren, a statistics lecturer and peace activist who had been told he was the leading candidate for a post in Ben Gurion's industrial engineering department until right-wing groups launched a campaign against him. Also in the sights of education officials are hundreds of Arab nursery schools, many of them established by the Islamic Movement, that have been accused of sowing anti-Israeli hatred in the minds of Arab children in Israel.

Mr Saar appointed a special committee last month to inspect the schools and shut them down if they were found to be teaching "anti-Israel" material. Arab MPs have called the claims "ridiculous", pointing out that the schools were set up after the education ministry failed to build nursery schools in Arab communities.

Successful Action Against Waitrose in Brighton today

2012-01-29T02:22:00.005Z

B&Q Visited to Stop Them Selling Keter Plastics from Israel

Today a group from the Brighton Palestine Solidarity Campaign visited Waitrose supermarket in Western Road to persuade its customers not to buy Israeli produce.

After a lively demonstration inside the store, the group continued leafleting and demonstrating outside.

Waitrose stocks assorted herbs, avocados, cucumbers, peppers, potatoes and citrus fruit from Israel - all of which produce is available from other sources.

The group received support from many customers who agreed that money spent on Israeli produce goes to bolster the Israeli economy which invests heavily in armaments to suppress the Palestinian and kill innocent civilians.

Many people were also aware that Israel itself has all the hallmarks of an apartheid state - denying equal rights to its Palestinian citizens with some 30 laws discriminating against them.

Waitrose supermarkets have refused to even consider banning goods from illegal settlements, as have sainsbury and Tesco.

So next time you shop boycott israeli goods and tell them why you are doing it

This morning a group of BDS activists visited B&Q on the Lewes Road in Brighton to speak to them about their sale of Keter Plastic products.

In 2005 Palestinian civil society called for a BDS movement against Israel until it complied with international law and ended its human rights abuses. Israel destroys Palestinian lives, homes and livelihoods on a daily basis. It is continuing its construction of settlements and the apartheid wall in the West Bank despite these actions being declared illegal under international laws. Nor will it lift its suffocating blockade of the Gaza Strip.

In Brighton, Palestinian Solidarity activists have now turned their attention to Keter Plastics. Keter Plastic is a large Israeli manufacturer of plastic products such as garden and indoor furniture, tool boxes and storage products. The products are widely available throughout the UK and several lines are stocked in the DIY superstore.

Keter has a factory in the illegal industrial settlement of Barkan, in the occupied West Bank. Here, as in settlement industrial zones across the region, some of the most harmful and polluting Israeli industries take place, exploiting the captive Palestinian workforce.

As well as being built on stolen land, the environmental effects of these industrial zones has a devastating impact on Palestinian communities. The Barkan settlement dumps industrial waste and sewage into the Al Matwi Valley – contaminating a vital water source for local Palestinian villages.

The manager took our letter and said that he had heard that head office was phasing out Keter products. We will write to head office and try to check out the veracity of this.

Keter products are also sold in Robert Dyas, Argos, Toys R Us and more

For more on Keter info see

Letter handed into B&Q store manager:
28th January 2012

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are writing to inform you that your store is stocking goods sourced from an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, which has been declared illegal under international law.
Keter Plastic is a large Israeli manufacturer of plastic products such as garden and indoor furniture, tool boxes and storage products. The products are widely available throughout the UK and several lines are stocked in B&Q Brighton.

Keter Plastic has a factory in the illegal industrial settlement of Barkan, in the occupied West Bank. Here, as in settlement industrial zones across the region, some of the most harmful and polluting Israeli industries take place, exploiting the captive Palestinian workforce.

As well as being built on stolen land, the environmental effects of these industrial zones has a devastating impact on Palestinian communities. The Barkan settlement dumps industrial waste and sewage into the Al Matwi Valley – contaminating a vital water source for local Palestinian villages.

In 2006 Palestinian civil society called for a global BDS movement against Israel until it complied with international law and ended its human rights abuses. Israel destroys Palestinian lives, homes and livelihoods on a daily basis. It is continuing its construction of settlements and the apartheid wall in the West Bank despite these actions being declared illegal under international laws. Nor will it lift its suffocating blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The BDS movement has had several successes in recent years in targeting businesses which operate unlawfully, profit from the military occupation of the Palestinian territories and contribute to the abuse of Palestinians' human rights.

We ask you to stop selling Keter Plastic goods and, as a person of conscience, to support the call to boycott Keter Plastics and other Israeli goods.

The Government Dismantles Disability Living Allowance

2012-01-28T22:00:00.005Z

Mobility Allowance to be Abolished for the over 65’s

How has the Government changed DLA?

Q Can the over-65s no longer get the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA), or is it meant only for new claimants and those already getting the DLA higher rate mobility component? Can those in care still receive it? Also, are children and over-65s to be assessed or is it only for people of working age?

Neil Coyle of Disability Alliance says:

The Government’s Welfare Reform Bill will abolish DLA for working age adults (16-64 years of age). People over 65 but receiving DLA appear to have avoided this round of cuts. Working-age disabled people will need to be re-assessed for the new “PIP” benefit, the Personal Independence Payment. The Government’s aim in introducing the PIP is to cut 20 per cent of DLA costs by 2015-16, a saving of £2.1 billion. They are hoping to do this by paying £675 million for a new assessment process to ensure the PIP is not accessed by as many people as DLA.

The PIP will also have no equivalent low-rate care payment, meaning that the 643,000 people receiving this support from DLA are now at risk of losing help. However, the Welfare Reform Bill does include provisions automatically to end PIP payments at the point when someone retires or turns 65 (whichever is higher). This means that people receiving PIP would have to apply for Attendance Allowance (AA). AA provides no mobility support and, if enacted, this change could see thousands of older disabled people losing support and the ability to stay independent. The changes also mean that a 61-year-old man who has recently qualified for DLA may face a new PIP test in two years’ time and a further AA assessment when he reaches 65, with potential cuts to support and independence with each new assessment. At Disability Alliance, we think the new PIP test will waste public resources. The Government’s plans may have knock-on costs during this tough economic period, through rising (but avoidable) NHS use, increased demands on council support and losses to the Treasury from disabled people and carers being forced to reduce or give up work.

Q Having recently had pins put in the top two or three vertebrae to stabilise my neck, I can no longer move my head in any direction, which makes it very difficult to carry out normal activities. Whom can I contact to see if I am eligible to be registered disabled? If I am, what does this entitle me to, and how do I go about getting my entitlement?

Agnes Fletcher says:

“Registered disabled” is a bit of a misleading term,

Elaine. Our experiences as disabled people are so varied that we are eligible for different things, and there’s no one definitive definition of what it means to be disabled.

I’ll give you a few examples. The Equality Act has a very broad definition, including those perceived to be disabled and those associated with a disabled person (e.g. a parent or partner). That’s because discrimination on grounds of disability happens in all sorts of ways to all sorts of people.

The situation for financial benefits is different, with far narrower criteria for determining who is eligible. The main ones you could look into are

• disability living allowance, to meet the extra costs of being disabled (such as getting around by taxi or someone to help you with shopping or cleaning the house)

• employment support allowance, if you’ve been in work but currently aren’t able to work

• disability-related income support benefits, which are means tested.

If you want to look into claiming any of these, visit:

You might be eligible for a Blue Badge. This would currently be either via receiving the higher rate mobility component of Disability Living Allowance or because you can’t walk more than around 100 metres. If you want to look into getting a Blue Badge, visit:

Finally, you could be entitled to some help with personal care in your home from your local authority’s social services department. For this, visit

Why not get in touch with your local disabled people’s organisation (do an internet search or look in the phone book). You may find it helpful to be in touch with people with similar experiences and you can pick up lots of useful advice too.

“The PIP will also have no equivalent low-rate care payment, meaning that the 643,000 people receiving this support from DLA are now at risk of losing help. However, the Welfare Reform Bill does include provisions automatically to end PIP payments at the point when someone retires or turns 65 (whichever is higher). This means that people receiving PIP would have to apply for Attendance Allowance (AA). AA provides no mobility support and, if enacted, this change could see thousands of older disabled people losing support and the ability to stay independent. The changes also mean that a 61-year-old man who has recently qualified for DLA may face a new PIP test in two years’ time and a further AA assessment when he reaches 65, with potential cuts to support and independence with each new assessment. “

Disabled activists and UK Uncut join to oppose ‘cruel and unnecessary’ welfare bill

On Saturday 28 January, activists from Disabled People Against Cuts, Disabled People's Direct Action Network and UK Uncut will occupy an area of central London in a ‘daring and disruptive’ act of civil disobedience in opposition to the government’s Welfare Reform Bill which is currently being debated in the Lords.

The activists are angry about the impact that the proposed Welfare Reform Bill will have on poor and disabled people. Recent reports have shown that as a result of the bill 500,000 families stand to lose their homes while others will become ‘imprisoned in them’. Nearly half a million people would lose their Disability Living Allowance, including disabled children. People with terminal illnesses would be forced into work, and 3.2 million will be put through demanding tests that have already pushed some to take their own lives. According to their own research, the government’s flagship reform will push 100,000 children into poverty.

The government has defended the bill on the grounds that it needs to cut the deficit. However, the activists point out that much greater amounts of money are lost through tax dodging by the super-rich each year, money which could instead continue current welfare provision. In January, Private Eye revealed a further £2 billion tax dodge by Vodafone, in addition to the £6 billion scam revealed in 2010(8). The most recent dodge by Vodafone is greater than the cuts to Disability Living Allowance, which will affect half a million people.

The bill continues to be debated in the Lords, but will have to return to the House of Commons, where MPs will vote on peer's amendments to the bill. In spite of strong criticism of the bill from disabled peers, David Cameron has already sworn that he will call on coalition MPs to overturn the amendments.

The target of the secret action is not being pre-announced, with UK Uncut only calling on people to travel to Holborn tube station in central London with a charged Oyster card, ready to travel to a secret location. The exact details of where the action is expected to be leaked through Twitter.

Richard Whitehurst of DPAC said:

“These vicious cuts have already led to at least 31 disabled people committing suicide and many more are now talking about it as they feel they have no future. In the 21st century, in one of the richest nations in the world, disabled people should not be forced to live in fear every day of their lives.

Cuts to disabled people's benefits and services will not save money but will ultimately cost the taxpayer far more as pushing disabled people into destitution and withdrawing care services will lead to an increased demand for NHS care. With the cap on benefits some single disabled people living in London will be left with only £25 a week to meet all their needs for food, heating and all other costs after paying their rent."

Sarah Evans of UK Uncut said:

“British people are proud of the welfare state because it has provided for the 99% for over 60 years. This bill will remove vital lifelines and force people into deeper poverty, making many prisoners in their own homes. This Bill is simply not needed or wanted by anyone. There are alternatives- we can afford a fair welfare system that provides for all."

“Instead of taking serious action against rich companies tax dodging and their ‘fancy corporate lawyers’ David Cameron is instead choosing to make the poorest and most isolated pay for the economic crisis they didn't cause. At least £25 billion of tax is avoided every single year by super rich companies and individuals, far more than the government hopes to save through this devastating bill. The welfare reform bill is cruel and unnecessary and it must be stopped.”

Tel: UK Uncut Media Phone: 07415063231 / DPAC: 01926842253 http://twitter.com/ukuncutEmail ukuncut@gmail.com

Why US Republican Candidates Support Israel

2012-01-28T21:35:00.006Z

Fri Jan 27, 2012 5:51PM GMT
Interview with Ralph Schoenman,

In a US Republican debate candidates Romney and Gingrich vent disinformation to demean the people of Palestine as they vie for Israeli lobby favoritism.

Press TV has interviewed Ralph Schoenman, Author of the Hidden History of Zionism from Berkeley about the entities that financially support Romney and Gingrich in their presidential campaign and how these financier's imperialist interests are being played out in the Republican debates. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Interesting comments coming out of debate in Florida. What do you make of it? It seems that Romney and Gingrich were basically trying to top each other almost as if they are running for prime minister of Israel instead of president of the US.

Schoenman: Actually, all of these candidates are basically front-men for the structure of power in the US, intimately linked to finance and corporate capital and to the military itself. The principal advisers of both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have close ties to the military industrial complex.

In fact, their national security advisers service corporations that have something like 7.3 billion dollars in contracts and benefit directly from the militarization of the Middle East, from military aid to Israel and from the general imperial onslaught on peoples of the region.

Specifically, the Adelson family that is financing Newt Gingrich, made its money out of corruption namely the bribing of people in Macao for the building of casinos. They are billionaires and have given over ten million dollars to Gingrich in the recent campaign - having previously funded Binyamin Netanyahu and his election campaigns in Israel.

These are people who are linked to the same corporate and financial apparatus that sustains Barak Obama and his administration in power.

A key advisor, for example, of Mitt Romney is Cofer Black and another is Rabbi Dov Michael Zakheim who ran Pentagon operations, notably computer ground control of aircraft, for the Bush Administration. Cofer Black is the person long associated with the CIA program of torture and assassination and is one of the principal figures in Blackwater-XIE, the mercenary apparatus that has sustained operations for Central Intelligence as a private contractor.

Indeed there are as many troops in Afghanistan that are mercenary troops run by the likes of Blackwater, directed by such as Cofer Black, as there are formal troops of the US government itself.

Press TV: If you were to talk to the average American trying to figure out what's going on and later on in November whom to vote for are you saying that it really does not make a difference because they are all coming from the same basic apparatus with the same perspective?

Schoenman: Yes. That's long been understood in the US. The two parties are what we call the one big property party with two names. It's financed by the same apparatus and they're all intimately linked to the Pentagon and to the corporations that benefit from military contracts and from imperial control over resources of the peoples of the world.

As I say, the key advisors of both Gingrich and Romney have the most intimate ties with the military industrial complex and with corporations that receive billions of dollars of benefit.

Now, in the case of Romney, in this particular debate he declaimed that Hamas is led by people who want to exterminate all Jews and who launched "thousands" of rockets upon Israel, both statements that are patently absurd and false.

He announced in this debate that he would immediately move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognize Israel as an exclusively Jewish state.

These political flacks for corporate capital are falling over each other in competing to sustain the legitimacy of the Zionist state and its most aggressive posture and to demean and, in racist terms, to denigrate the Palestinian people.

Israeli Military Arrest Patient for Purposes of Torture

2012-01-28T20:54:00.003Z

There doesn’t seem to be any depths to which ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ can sink. This includes arresting a patient, en route to a hospital for surgery. No doubt this is the ‘civilisation’ that Ehud Barak spoke of when he spoke of the ‘villa in the jungle’

Tony Greenstein

IOF Arrest Patient at Beit Hanoun (Erez) Crossing in the Northern Gaza Strip

Ref: 10/2012Date: 23 January 2012Time: 11:00

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns arresting a Palestinian patient from the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) at Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing. The patient was heading to a hospital in the West Bank for medical treatment. PCHR is concerned that he may be subjected to torture, especially as he was supposed to undergo a surgery.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, IOF arrested Bassam Sha'ban Fu'ad Raihan, 24, from Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on 19 January 2012, as he was traveling to al-Mezan Hospital in Hebron through Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing to undergo surgery. In her testimony to PCHR, the patient's aunt and companion, Na'ima Fu'ad Sha'ban Raihan, 49, said that the Israeli officer at Beit Hanoun crossing informed her that Bassam was arrested, gave her Bassam's belongings and ordered her to return to Gaza. Sha'ban Fo'ad Raihan, 50, the patient's father, said that he received a phone call from IOF informing him that his son is detained in Ashkelon prison. The patient has been detained so far.

PCHR believes that the policy adopted by IOF to arrest patients is a serious violation of international humanitarian law. Furthermore, it is a form of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, especially as it is part of the illegal closure imposed on the Gaza Strip that aggravates the suffering of patients whose treatment is not available in the Gaza Strip hospitals.

It should be noted that IOF positioned at Beit Hanoun crossing arrested two patients from the Gaza Strip while they on their way to West Bank hospitals for medical treatment in November 2011.

In light of the above, PCHR:

1. Strongly condemns the continued arrests of Palestinian patients by IOF in their medical treatment journeys. PCHR calls for the immediate release of all patient prisoners and to ensure not to endanger their lives. Besides, it holds IOF responsible for any deterioration of their health conditions while in detention;

2. Stresses that targeting patients, exploiting their need for medical treatment at hospitals in Israel or the West Bank and blackmailing them constitute serious illegal actions;

3. Calls upon the international community, including the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to fulfill their obligations and stop violations of international law committed by IOF against the Palestinian civilians.

**************************************
For more information please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 - 2825893
PCHR, 29 Omer El Mukhtar St., El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip. E-mail: pchr@pchrgaza.org, Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org/
-----------------------------------

Israel Arrests Palestinian Patient

The Israeli regime continues to impose punishing pressures on Palestinian residents in the besieged Gaza Strip, arresting a patient seeking to leave the enclave for medical treatment.

Aed Zeyadeh was arrested last week by Israeli authorities as he was about to depart Gaza for treatment, a Press TV correspondent reported on Monday.

“My children and I were totally dependent on my husband and all of a sudden he is not here, and now we have to wait five years to see him again,” said Zeyadeh's wife.

The health ministry of the Palestinian movement of Hamas has condemned the arrest and indictment of Zeyadeh.

Yousef Modallal of the Hamas health ministry said the detention of Zeyadeh proves Israel's ill-treatment of Palestinians at crossings and checkpoints.

“Zeyadeh wanted to receive treatment in the West Bank but was arrested even after being granted an exit permit by the Israeli security agency. This shows that the permit was nothing but a bait to lure him into prison,” Modallal added.

There has been a climb in the number of Palestinian patients arrested by Israeli forces at the Erez crossing in northern Gaza in recent months, according to the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO).

“Not only our patients are humiliated at the Erez crossing, but they are also being arrested now and then. The number of arrests continues to increase. We call on the international community to step in and put an end to sufferings of people in Gaza,” said Amjad al-Shawwa of PNGO.

The Israeli regime laid an economic siege on the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after the democratically-elected Hamas lawmakers took over the administration of the enclave.

The blockade has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the impoverished territory.

The Tel Aviv regime denies some 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza their basic rights, including the freedom of movement and their rights to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education.

Activists resisting Palestinian home demolitions face ‘IDF Price Tag' attack

2012-01-28T20:09:00.010Z

This is just another example of the horrors of Israel's occupation of the West Bank. The repeated demolition of Palestinian homes, under Regulations inherited from the British. At the time, when they were used by the British against (occasionally) the Zionist terrorists, they were denounced as 'Nazi laws'. This is a good description. Laying to waste the homes of civilians and making them homeless is what happened between 1933 and 1941 to Jews in Germany and Austria.

The Zionists have had very good teachers.

Tony Greenstein

The Demolition of Beit Arabiya

It has become commonplace among violent West Bank settlers to randomly attack Palestinian mosques, homes, olive orchards and individuals in order to send a message to other Israelis. They are called “Price Tag” attacks, after the “signature” the settlers leave scrawled on the walls of the burnt-out buildings. In the dark of night this past Monday, January 23, the IDF carried out its own Price Tag assault on ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

At 11:30 p.m. on that cold, rainy night, I got a panicky phone call from Salim Shawamreh, a Palestinian man from the West Bank town of Anata whose home has been demolished by the Israeli authorities four times and rebuilt as an act of resistance each time by ICAHD. “Army bulldozers are approaching my home,” he cried.

"Now they’re beginning to demolish it!”

As has become routine, I alerted our activists, plus journalists and foreign diplomats, and we rushed out to Anata. We knew we could not save the homes, but we could resist; stand in solidarity with the families, soaked, with their belongings, in the rain; document what was happening and broadcast this latest war crime to the world. It was another of those thousands of attacks on Palestinians that occur daily but never reach the newspapers – probably because there are so many and they are so routine by now that they are not, in fact, “news.”

By the time we reached Salim’s house – which we rebuilt in 2003 and have called Beit Arabiya ever since, the “house of Arabiya,” home to Salim’s wife and mother of their seven children – it was gone. Salim himself was afraid to go down the hill to see it because of the soldiers, but I ran down. Even in the dark and rain I could see the ruins of the home, and the family’s belongings that had been thrown out. But I couldn’t tarry. The bulldozers had moved up the hill and were in the process of demolishing a Jahalin Bedouin enclave there – part of the Jahalin tribe that was being removed and relocated on top of the Jerusalem garbage dump near Abu Dis.

Our activists were already there, scuffling with the army and trying to reach the bulldozer to hamper its destruction. The soldiers, claiming that this was a “closed military area” but unable to produce any proper military order, attacked the activists physically and verbally. Itay Epshtain, ICAHD’s Co-Director, was hit with a gun and thrown to the ground. All the while, the soldiers cursed at “the anarchists and leftists.” One yelled at Rabbi Arik Aschermann from Rabbis For Human Rights to take of his skullcap because “he was a disgrace to Judaism.” But it was the women who received the most violent verbal abuse, in addition to physical. “May the Arabs here rape you!” one soldier yelled at an activist.

In the end, Beit Arabiya, six Jahalin homes and most of their animal pens were demolished before the army left. The bulldozer, protected by dozens of troops, belonged to a commercial contractor who was paid well for the demolitions by the Civil Administration, Israel’s military government in the West Bank that uses the word “civil” to downplay its military connections, and to make it appear that demolitions of “illegal” Palestinian homes are simply part of “proper administration.”

After staying with the families and promising to rebuild, we finally left to send out press releases; put out information on our website and social media; and begin mobilizing activists abroad and, through them, governments and UN bodies. Only when we returned early in the morning did we learn that yet another house had been demolished: that of the Abu Omar family, a family of 17 people who lived in a home that had been demolished last year, which ICAHD had rebuilt in our 2011 summer rebuilding camp. We had thought the bulldozer and soldiers had left for the Border Police base on the hill opposite Beit Arabiya and the Jahalin, but in fact they had only gone around Anata. At 3:30 a.m. they pounced on the Abu Omar family, forced them out of their home, removed their belongings and demolished it. The family was so dazed by the sudden violence, terror, confusion and need to protect the terrified children that they hadn’t even thought of phoning us.
The IDF attack on three sites that for years have been identified with ICAHD’s resistance activities was clearly an official, government-sponsored, violent Price Tag assault on Palestinians in order to “send a message” to ICAHD. Out of the tens of thousands of demolition orders outstanding in the Occupied Territory, they chose these three. In fact, the “message” had already been delivered. Already at the second demolition of Beit Arabiya in 1999, Micha Yakhin, the Civil Administration official responsible for overseeing the demolitions in that part of the West Bank, told me: “We will demolish every home you rebuild.”

ICAHD has rebuilt 185 demolished Palestinian homes in the past 15 years, all as acts of political resistance – not humanitarian gestures – all funded by donations. We will rebuild the homes demolished Monday night as well. The coming together of Palestinian families and community members, Israeli activists and international peace-makers to rebuild homes is one of the most significant forms of resistance, solidarity and mobilization. But Israel demolished 200 homes last year alone in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, of more than 26,000 Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territory since 1967. Resistance cannot keep pace with the massive Price Tag assault that is the Israeli Occupation.

Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

Israel’s Torture of Palestinian Children

2012-01-25T11:47:00.009Z

The Beasts of Al Jalame – Electric Shocks Help the Children to Co-operate

It prides itself on being ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ with the world’s ‘most moral army’ but like all armies of occupation there is little that they are not capable of when it comes to violating basic human rights. And after 45 years they have honed their expertise in cruelty down to a fine art.

But even the animals that make up Israel’s Occupation Forces have excelled themselves in devising methods of torture of Palestinian children. Not merely striking, shackling, using electric shock torture, stress positions etc. In other words the normal methods of torture used by the occupation forces. Children are also imprisoned in isolation for weeks and months. Solitary confinement is, in itself, a form of torture as is the use of sleep deprivation.

And if not satisfied with their hidden methods of cruelty, the children are brought into court shackled and chained, like armed convicts. But it is in accordance with the law, according to Israel’s equivalent of Dr Goebbels, Mark Regev.

So a simple question. When was the last time that Jewish children were imprisoned in solitary confinement and beaten for having thrown stones? As the report of the demonstrations in Beit Shemesh against the attempts of Orthodox Jews to segregate the sexes and make young girls dress ‘modestly’, in response to attacks on an 8 year old girl Naama, ‘extremists have heckled and thrown eggs and rocks at journalists descending on town.’

Yet the Police haven’t arrested and thrown into solitary confinement even the adult stone throwers. Unlike the West Bank, live ammunition isn’t used against the demonstrators, on the contrary. Orthodox demonstrators in Jerusalem and elsewhere are treated with kid gloves. Perhaps more than anything else, this demonstrates the inherent racism in Israeli society (since live ammunition is used against Israeli Arabs’ demonstrations).

This also throws into question the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In Nazi Germany the Red Cross were used to provide a seal of approval for the concentration camp system by allowing itself to be shown round the 'model' camp at Thereinstadt (most of the inmates had been shipped to Auschwitz). They likewise visited the Czech children's camp at Auschwitz, which was exterminated shortly after the visit. Israel is now using the IHRC, like the Americans did at Guantanamo, to 'kosher' the torture of children. Hard questions need to be asked about the Red Cross, and their pledge not to reveal details of what they see, when the torturers use them as an alibi.

Tony Greenstein

The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel's Al Jalame jail

Special report: Israel's military justice system is accused of mistreating Palestinian children arrested for throwing stones

Harriet Sherwood in the West Bank 23rd January 2012

The room is barely wider than the thin, dirty mattress that covers the floor. Behind a low concrete wall is a squat toilet, the stench from which has no escape in the windowless room. The rough concrete walls deter idle leaning; the constant overhead light inhibits sleep. The delivery of food through a low slit in the door is the only way of marking time, dividing day from night.

This is Cell 36, deep within Al Jalame prison in northern Israel. It is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. One 16-year-old claimed that he had been kept in Cell 36 for 65 days.

The only escape is to the interrogation room where children are shackled, by hands and feet, to a chair while being questioned, sometimes for hours.

Most are accused of throwing stones at soldiers or settlers; some, of flinging molotov cocktails; a few, of more serious offences such as links to militant organisations or using weapons. They are also pumped for information about the activities and sympathies of their classmates, relatives and neighbours.

At the beginning, nearly all deny the accusations. Most say they are threatened; some report physical violence. Verbal abuse – "You're a dog, a son of a whore" – is common. Many are exhausted from sleep deprivation. Day after day they are fettered to the chair, then returned to solitary confinement. In the end, many sign confessions that they later say were coerced.
These claims and descriptions come from affidavits given by minors to an international human rights organisation and from interviews conducted by the Guardian. Other cells in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva prisons are also used for solitary confinement, but Cell 36 is the one cited most often in these testimonies.

Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are arrested by Israeli soldiers each year, mostly accused of throwing stones. Since 2008, Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected sworn testimonies from 426 minors detained in Israel's military justice system.
Their statements show a pattern of night-time arrests, hands bound with plastic ties, blindfolding, physical and verbal abuse, and threats. About 9% of all those giving affidavits say they were kept in solitary confinement, although there has been a marked increase to 22% in the past six months.

Few parents are told where their children have been taken. Minors are rarely questioned in the presence of a parent, and rarely see a lawyer before or during initial interrogation. Most are detained inside Israel, making family visits very difficult.

Human rights organisations say these patterns of treatment – which are corroborated by a separate study, No Minor Matter, conducted by an Israeli group, B'Tselem – violate the international convention on the rights of the child, which Israel has ratified, and the fourth Geneva convention.

Most children maintain they are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused, despite confessions and guilty pleas, said Gerard Horton of DCI. But, he added, guilt or innocence was not an issue with regard to their treatment.

"We're not saying offences aren't committed – we're saying children have legal rights. Regardless of what they're accused of, they should not be arrested in the middle of the night in terrifying raids, they should not be painfully tied up and blindfolded sometimes for hours on end, they should be informed of the right to silence and they should be entitled to have a parent present during questioning."
Mohammad Shabrawi from the West Bank town of Tulkarm was arrested last January, aged 16, at about 2.30am. "Four soldiers entered my bedroom and said you must come with us. They didn't say why, they didn't tell me or my parents anything," he told the Guardian.

Handcuffed with a plastic tie and blindfolded, he thinks he was first taken to an Israeli settlement, where he was made to kneel – still cuffed and blindfolded – for an hour on an asphalt road in the freezing dead of night. A second journey ended at about 8am at Al Jalame detention centre, also known as Kishon prison, amid fields close to the Nazareth to Haifa road.

After a routine medical check, Shabrawi was taken to Cell 36. He spent 17 days in solitary, apart from interrogations, there and in a similar cell, No 37, he said. "I was lonely, frightened all the time and I needed someone to talk with. I was choked from being alone. I was desperate to meet anyone, speak to anyone … I was so bored that when I was out [of the cell] and saw the police, they were talking in Hebrew and I don't speak Hebrew, but I was nodding as though I understood. I was desperate to speak."

During interrogation, he was shackled. "They cursed me and threatened to arrest my family if I didn't confess," he said. He first saw a lawyer 20 days after his arrest, he said, and was charged after 25 days. "They accused me of many things," he said, adding that none of them were true.

Eventually Shabrawi confessed to membership of a banned organisation and was sentenced to 45 days. Since his release, he said, he was "now afraid of the army, afraid of being arrested." His mother said he had become withdrawn.

Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when he was arrested last January, described similar treatment during arrest and detention. He says he was held in solitary confinement at Al Jalame for 17 days in cells 36, 37 and 38.

"I would start repeating the interrogators' questions to myself, asking myself is it true what they are accusing me of," he told the Guardian. "You feel the pressure of the cell. Then you think about your family, and you feel you are going to lose your future. You are under huge stress."

His treatment during questioning depended on the mood of his interrogators, he said. "If he is in a good mood, sometimes he allows you to sit on a chair without handcuffs. Or he may force you to sit on a small chair with an iron hoop behind it. Then he attaches your hands to the ring, and your legs to the chair legs. Sometimes you stay like that for four hours. It is painful.

"Sometimes they make fun of you. They ask if you want water, and if you say yes they bring it, but then the interrogator drinks it."

Ali Qadi did not see his parents during the 51 days he was detained before trial, he said, and was only allowed to see a lawyer after 10 days. He was accused of throwing stones and planning military operations, and after confessing was sentenced to six months in prison.The Guardian has affidavits from five other juveniles who said they were detained in solitary confinement in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva. All confessed after interrogation.

"Solitary confinement breaks the spirit of a child," said Horton. "Children say that after a week or so of this treatment, they confess simply to get out of the cell."

The Israeli security agency (ISA) – also known as Shin Bet – told the Guardian: "No one questioned, including minors, is kept alone in a cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession."

The Israeli prison service did not respond to a specific question about solitary confinement, saying only "the incarceration of prisoners…is subject to legal examination".

Juvenile detainees also allege harsh interrogation methods. The Guardian interviewed the father of a minor serving a 23-month term for throwing rocks at vehicles. Ali Odwan, from Azzun, said his son Yahir, who was 14 when he was arrested, was given electric shocks by a Taser while under interrogation.

"I visited my son in jail. I saw marks from electric shocks on both his arms, they were visible from behind the glass. I asked him if it was from electric shocks, he just nodded. He was afraid someone was listening," Odwan said.

DCI has affidavits from three minors accused of throwing stones who claim they were given electric shocks under interrogation in 2010.

Another Azzun youngster, Sameer Saher, was 13 when he was arrested at 2am. "A soldier held me upside down and took me to a window and said: 'I want to throw you from the window.' They beat me on the legs, stomach, face," he said.

His interrogators accused him of stone-throwing and demanded the names of friends who had also thrown stones. He was released without charge about 17 hours after his arrest. Now, he said, he has difficulty sleeping for fear "they will come at night and arrest me".
In response to questions about alleged ill-treatment, including electric shocks, the ISA said: "The claims that Palestinian minors were subject to interrogation techniques that include beatings, prolonged periods in handcuffs, threats, kicks, verbal abuse, humiliation, isolation and prevention of sleep are utterly baseless … Investigators act in accordance with the law and unequivocal guidelines which forbid such actions."
The Guardian has also seen rare audiovisual recordings of the interrogations of two boys, aged 14 and 15, from the village of Nabi Saleh, the scene of weekly protests against nearby settlers. Both are visibly exhausted after being arrested in the middle of the night. Their interrogations, which begin at about 9.30am, last four and five hours.

Neither is told of their legal right to remain silent, and both are repeatedly asked leading questions, including whether named people have incited them to throw stones. At one point, as one boy rests his head on the table, the interrogator flicks at him, shouting: "Lift your head, you." During the other boy's interrogation, one questioner repeatedly slams a clenched fist into his own palm in a threatening gesture. The boy breaks down in tears, saying he was due to take an exam at school that morning. "They're going to fail me, I'm going to lose the year," he sobs.

In neither case was a lawyer present during their interrogation.

Israeli military law has been applied in the West Bank since Israel occupied the territory more than 44 years ago. Since then, more than 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been detained under military orders.

Under military order 1651, the age of criminal responsibility is 12 years, and children under the age of 14 face a maximum of six months in prison.

However, children aged 14 and 15 could, in theory, be sentenced up to 20 years for throwing an object at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm. In practice, most sentences range between two weeks and 10 months, according to DCI.

In September 2009, a special juvenile military court was established. It sits at Ofer, a military prison outside Jerusalem, twice a week. Minors are brought into court in leg shackles and handcuffs, wearing brown prison uniforms. The proceedings are in Hebrew with intermittent translation provided by Arabic-speaking soldiers.

The Israeli prison service told the Guardian that the use of restraints in public places was permitted in cases where "there is reasonable concern that the prisoner will escape, cause damage to property or body, or will damage evidence or try to dispose of evidence".

The Guardian witnessed a case this month in which two boys, aged 15 and 17, admitted entering Israel illegally, throwing molotov cocktails and stones, starting a fire which caused extensive damage, and vandalising property. The prosecution asked for a sentence to reflect the defendants' "nationalistic motives" and to act as a deterrent.

The older boy was sentenced to 33 months in jail; the younger one, 26 months. Both were sentenced to an additional 24 months suspended and were fined 10,000 shekels (£1,700). Failure to pay the fine would mean an additional 10 months in prison.

Several British parliamentary delegations have witnessed child hearings at Ofer over the past year. Alf Dubs reported back to the House of Lords last May, saying: "We saw a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, one of them in tears, both looking absolutely bewildered … I do not believe this process of humiliation represents justice. I believe that the way in which these young people are treated is in itself an obstacle to the achievement by Israel of a peaceful relationship with the Palestinian people."

Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, who witnessed the trial of a shackled 14-year-old at Ofer last month, found the experience distressing. "In five minutes he had been found guilty of stone-throwing and was sentenced to nine months. It was shocking to see a child being put through this process. It's difficult to see how a [political] solution can be reached when young people are being treated in this manner. They end up with very little hope for their future and very angry about their treatment."

Horton said a guilty plea was "the quickest way to get out of the system". If the children say their confession was coerced, "that provides them with a legal defence – but because they're denied bail they will remain in detention longer than if they had simply pleaded guilty".

An expert opinion written by Graciela Carmon, a child psychiatrist and member of Physicians for Human Rights, in May 2011, said that children were particularly vulnerable to providing a false confession under coercion.

"Although some detainees understand that providing a confession, despite their innocence, will have negative repercussions in the future, they nevertheless confess as the immediate mental and/or physical anguish they feel overrides the future implications, whatever they may be."
Nearly all the cases documented by DCI ended in a guilty plea and about three-quarters of the convicted minors were transferred to prisons inside Israel. This contravenes article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention, which requires children and adults in occupied territories to be detained within the territory.

The Israeli defence forces (IDF), responsible for arrests in the West Bank and the military judicial system said last month that the military judicial system was "underpinned by a commitment to ensure the rights of the accused, judicial impartiality and an emphasis on practising international legal norms in incredibly dangerous and complex situations".

The ISA said its employees acted in accordance with the law, and detainees were given the full rights for which they were eligible, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross. "The ISA categorically denies all claims with regard to the interrogation of minors. In fact, the complete opposite is true – the ISA guidelines grant minors special protections needed because of their age."

Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the Guardian: "If detainees believe they have been mistreated, especially in the case of minors … it's very important that these people, or people representing them, come forward and raise these issues. The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors."

Stone-throwing, he added, was a dangerous activity that had resulted in the deaths of an Israeli father and his infant son last year.

"Rock-throwing, throwing molotov cocktails and other forms of violence is unacceptable, and the security authorities have to bring it to an end when it happens."
Human rights groups are concerned about the long-term impact of detention on Palestinian minors. Some children initially exhibit a degree of bravado, believing it to be a rite of passage, said Horton. "But when you sit with them for an hour or so, under this veneer of bravado are children who are fairly traumatised." Many of them, he said, never want to see another soldier or go near a checkpoint. Does he think the system works as a deterrent? "Yes, I think it does."

According to Nader Abu Amsha, the director of the YMCA in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, which runs a rehabilitation programme for juveniles, "families think that when the child is released, it's the end of the problem. We tell them this is the beginning".

Following detention many children exhibit symptoms of trauma: nightmares, mistrust of others, fear of the future, feelings of helplessness and worthlessness, obsessive compulsive behaviour, bedwetting, aggression, withdrawal and lack of motivation.

The Israeli authorities should consider the long-term effects, said Abu Amsha. "They don't give attention to how this might continue the vicious cycle of violence, of how this might increase hatred. These children come out of this process with a lot of anger. Some of them feel the need for revenge.

"You see children who are totally broken. It's painful to see the pain of these children, to see how much they are squeezed by the Israeli system."

Hypocrites (Harry’s) Place Carries BNP Style Posts Whilst Condemning PSC

2012-01-25T04:29:00.006Z

Decision to Ban Holocaust Denial and anti-Semitism Bamboozles Harry’s Place

Or perhaps I should call it Hypocrites Place. Following the decision of PSC to expel one holocaust denier and confirm a ban on holocaust denial or anti-Semitism, Hypocrites Place is finding it difficult to get its message right.

On the one hand, there is resident liberal Sarah’s (all things are relative) Holocaust denier’s appeal fails to impress the PSC before managing to agree with her ultra-Zionist comrades. Then there is foaming at the mouth Joseph W who is obsessed by the 20% (in fact 17%) who didn’t vote to expel Francis Clarke-Lowes. Facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way of a good (or in this case bad) story, so this becomes 20% of PSC approve of holocaust denial.

Of course a child of 10 could work out that because you don’t want to expel someone, it doesn’t mean that you agree with them. When I pointed this rather obvious point out on HP, I discovered that the post soon disappeared. It was the first of three posts, so it wasn't - contrary to Sarah's suggestion - one of these things that happens in the ether. I had hit too close to home.

In particular I had illustrated what I was saying with a simple example. So simple that even the Hypocrites Place could get their heads around it. When I was a student, it was the Jewish or rather Zionist society at Sussex University, led by one David Cohen, which had opposed No Platform for Fascists and Racists, on the grounds of freedom of speech.

Of course Zionists have never been keen on things like anti-fascism but we never suggested that all or most of the Zionist Society were therefore signed up fascist supporters. They simply preferred supporting Israel and opposing anti-Zionism to fighting anti-Semitism and opposing fascism. So why should those who voted against Clarke-Lowes expulsion, primarily Stalinists of a bizarre North Korean loving cult, be classified as holocaust deniers when they have explicitly denied such a charge? Doesn’t make sense except for HPers who inhabit a parallel universe where the normal rules of logic don't apply.

HP’s problem is that if Zionism = anti-Semitism PSC is already anti-Semitic. So why then should PSC take the time and trouble to formulate a policy on anti-Semitism and holocaust denial? Doesn't make sense. Hence why it is easier to ban me from posting than answering awkward questions.

And there I was thinking that HP actually meant it when they quoted George Orwell to the effect that ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear.’ Of course Orwell was a socialist and anti-fascist. He fought with the semi-Trotskyist POUM in Spain but of course he was also an anti-Stalinist, not a crazy US neo-con.

HP now seem to have reinterpreted Orwell to the effect that ‘Liberty doesn’t mean telling Harry’s Hypocritical Place what they definitely don’t want to hear’ i.e. the truth!

I therefore sought an answer to this conundrum. Unless HPers are natural born liars, how can one explain this glaring contradiction between the banner headline and day to day practice? So I went off in search of HP’s comments policy, which only confused me even further. Under ‘Freedom of Speech’ we are told that HP:

‘believes in freedom of speech and open debate… It is our conviction that adults in a free society can discuss ideas openly without, generally speaking, the need for policing. We do not delete comments simply because we do not agree with them. We want a vibrant marketplace of ideas, not an echo chamber. It should be kept in mind however that marketplaces can at times be loud and chaotic. It is our conviction that the best way to deal with contrary views – even objectionable ones – is to challenge them, to argue, to criticise them or, in some cases, to treat them with contempt by ignoring them. This is how a free society functions…. it is better that a bad idea is exposed to the light of day. We cannot prepare ourselves for ideological battles against ideas that lurk in shadow and are transmitted in whispers.’

Fine sentiments indeed. Well that is clear then. HP is opposed to banning people ‘simply because we do not agree with them.’ Yet according to reliable reports HP has been subject of a US neo-con takeover, so like most things of the American Right, it has preserved the form whilst gutting it of all substance. Theoretically HP doesn't ban people because of their ideas. In practice it has no choice given the level of debate and the quality of most of the posters.

But whilst I have been banned, a Zionist poster Lamia was able to post the following comment to Joseph's The national PSC on Holocaust denial and Gill Kaffash

In response to a comment about ‘The UK has the problem of the British colonial attitudes to their former colonies. Actually Fabian, we have the problem of their attitudes to us.’ We have the following outpouring of racist filth:

‘Including Jews. The Pakistani immigrant population alone have contributed a great deal to the anti-Semitic ‘culture’ of the country. The jury’s out on whether they’ve contribute much else. Oh yes, I forgot: white-child prostitution rings. How wonderfully multicultural.’

Contrast this with e.g. the BNP's Northern Ireland site. This too has a feature on white child prostitution with the banner headline ‘Nick Griffin has said it for years… now the media admits that Muslim Paedophile Gangs can no longer be ignored.’ Plus ca change.

Just as Hitler held that Jews were out to corrupt innocent Aryan girls, so HP’s contributors now label, BNP style, the Pakistani community as being responsible for (white) child prostitution rings. But whereas Lamia is welcome to continue posting his vile racist outpourings, with barely a tutter from people like the fragrant Sarah, anti-Zionist critics are regularly libelled and now banned for daring to provide an alternative analysis.

Actually I don't give Sarah credit where credit is due. After saying that 'Lamia – I’m not denying that antisemitism is more associated with some communities than others' (really? I do you mean Muslims or non-whites in general?) she goes on to protest 'but that seems a rather sweeping thing to say about people in the UK of Pakistani origin.'

Err yes, quite. It is rather sweeping. How about Jews are responsible for most financial crimes. Would that also be 'rather too sweeping' despite the fact that certain groups (Jews) are more associated with 'swindling' than others? Please do tell.

Tony Greenstein

PSC AGM – A Crushing Defeat For Gilad Atzmon and the Anti-Semites

2012-01-22T01:04:00.009Z

Holocaust denier Frances Clarke-Lowes Expelled by Massive Majority

The 30th Conference of PSC promised to be one of the more controversial PSC AGMs and it certainly lived up to it. Entering the conference, who was there giving out blue badges commemorating the massacre at Deir Yassin, but the eminence grise of the holocaust deniers, Paul Eisen - neo-Nazi apologist extraordinaire.

Despite his fulminations against what he calls ‘Zionism’ Eisen is remarkably similar to them. The Zionists exploit the holocaust for their own purposes and Eisen exploits the massacre of Palestinians for his own purposes, i.e. denial of the holocaust and rehabilitation of the Nazis.

The first item on the agenda was a closed session at which the appeal of Frances Clarke Lowes against his expulsion was to be heard. Last April, Francis declared on the Brighton & Hove PSC Discussion List that he was proud to be a holocaust denier. For his pains he was expelled from Brighton PSC and not one voice was raised in his defence in Brighton PSC. I reported his statement to the Executive and sometime in May he was also expelled from national PSC. Francis however had the right of appeal to the national conference and chose to exercise that right.

The speech is printed, in a highly edited version, on (who else?) Gilad Atzmon’s site.

It is fair to say that Clarke-Lowes speech did him no favours. It was extremely anti-Semitic, talking about the ‘Jewish narrative’ and speaking about Jews as a group with common properties. He openly stated that the holocaust was a myth (something Atzmon has not included in his version of the speech). People literally gasped as they heard him describe the holocaust as a ‘myth’ and a number of people told me that if he hadn't been expelled they would have resigned.

The speech from the Executive, from Hugh Lanning, was superb, moving and to the point. It ended by asking conference not to let evil enter our hearts. Conference upheld the expulsion by 165 vote to 35 with 6 abstension. A couple of days ago I had sent an e-mail to the Secretary of PSC, Ben Sofa, saying that in my opinion a majority was not good enough, we needed at least a 3-1 majority. In the end we got 5-1. In fact it was considerably more because I had not realised that the zany Communist Party of Great Britain – Marxist Leninist, the followers of the hereditary oligarchy otherwise known as the ‘socialist state of North Korea’ had taken a decision to oppose any condemnation of holocaust denial. Their amendment to the Executive’s Motion 2 read:

‘This AGM resolves that PSC’s chief focus shall remain that of building support for Palestine and Palestinians and against zionism and imperialism. It is not the PSC’s job to act as thought police on behalf of zionism and imperialism, and we refuse to ask the Palestinians to bend their narrative to one that is acceptable to zionist ears.’

That so-called communists, led by Harpal Brar and his daughter Joti Brar, think that the Palestinian narrative includes holocaust denial or that there is any contradiction between opposing the denial of the holocaust and opposing imperialism and Zionism is truly amazing. But as Harpal Brar made clear in a subsequent speech he cast no doubt on the fact of the holocaust.

In other words most of those who voted against Clarke-Lowes’ expulsion, did so despite his views on the holocaust and primarily as part of a wider disagreement with PSC Executive. And since they brought virtually all of their membership of about 20 to the conference, it is clear even that that stage that those who had any sympathy with Clarke-Lowes were a tiny handful.

After the lunch break we had a guest speaker, Omar Barghouti from the Palestinian Boycott National Committee. He detailed the increasingly open racism of the state, its attacks on the memory of the Nakba, which has been made unlawful, the shameful decision of the Supreme Court to uphold the Citizenship Law which prevents Israeli Arabs from living with their spouse in side Israel.

It must have been a shock when Omar went out of his way to make it clear that anti-Semitism and holocaust denial were no part of the politics of the Palestinians. ‘Ours is an anti-racist cause’ he stated, in case anyone had failed to decipher the meaning of the speech. He generously paid tribute to PSC as the world’s most effective solidarity organisation and to Britain for leading the way in Boycott. It is a compliment that are indebted to honour and repay.

After Omar’s speech the Executive motion 2 and that from Naomi Wimborne Idrissi were taken, along with all 3 amendments from Gill Kaffash/Rosemary Earnshaw, Exeter PSC and the CPGB-ML (above). All the amendments were heavily defeated with less than 20 votes out of over 250 delegates (the votes in the Executive elections indicate there must have been an increase in people arriving by at least 50). Harpal Brar was the only person to speak with any passion or conviction for the amendments. And to his credit he made it clear that of course he accepted that fact of the holocaust without reservation but that there were a number of other acts of genocide we should condemn – that of the Armenians for example, the Iraqis and others. In other words he was speaking agains the Zionists' holocaust exceptionalism - the idea that the holocaust of Jews is unique. I agree.

Even Gill Kaffash chose not to mention anything to do with holocaust and instead mounted a free speech argument, coupled with the assertion that we stick to Palestine not extraneous issues. But speaker after speaker, with the exception of Exeter PSC’s constitutionalist Dave Chappell (FBU), made it clear that it was not possible oppose the racism that Palestinians suffer from and yet tolerate holocaust deniers and their associates. A member of the Communications Workers Union, whose name I didn’t catch, made this clear in a particularly impassioned contribution, as did Roland Rance from Jews 4 Boycotting Israeli Goods and other speakers.

In the end both the Executive Motion and the one from J-Big were passed with barely 10 votes, if that, against. A humiliating and crushing defeat for the Atzmonites and holocaust deniers in the movement. In my own speech I quoted Atzmon’s statement that Jews who speak as ‘ethnic’ Jews, i.e. who are Jewish simply reinforced Zionism. I asked how is it that people agreed when UNISON passed boycott policy in 2007, that I should speak as someone who is Jewish precisely in order to take head on the Zionist lies that to support the Palestinians is anti-Semitic? I never received an answer from Atzmon’s few supporters. Nor will I. Because the growing number of Jews who are breaking from Zionism, partially or completely, has been growing, especially in the United States. Only the Zionists and the Atzmonites deplore this phenomenon.

It is the Zionists' supporters - be it the EDL and BNP in this country - or John Hagee of Christians United for Israel - who described Hitler as god's messenger sent to drive the Jews to Israel, who are the real anti-Semites, and on this of course Harry's Place is silent.

Many other motions were also passed including one on the disgraceful attacks on Palestinian children by the Israeli military. It is to the eternal shame of the West that they have nothing to say about the shackling and torture of children even, to say nothing of the shackling of Palestinian women prisoners, even while they are giving birth.

There were discussions about the growing successes of the boycott movement, in particular the loss of a £500m contract for Veolia in West London and tribute was paid to Angus Geddes for his sterling work in this area. The closure of Ahava, the Israeli store that traded in stolen goods was also highlighted as was the Judaification of the Negev. Bernard Regan in particular spoke well on the latter and his experiences when visiting Israel with a delegation.

This is also the 30th anniversary of the foundation of PSC and a motion was passed mandating the Executive to organise series of fundraising activities and celebrations. When you consider what we have had to battle against to build an organisation that has now achieved over 5,000 members, then this is indeed a success and tribute was paid to faithful stalwarts like Jeremy Corbyn MP, Baroness Jenny Tonge and Bruce Kent. It is a measure of our success that when I first became involved in Palestinian politics Gerald Kaufman and Tony Benn were both members of Labour Friends of Israel. Today Gerald Kaufman has sponsored an Early Day Motion with Jeremy Corbyn on the racist Jewish National Fund.

And conference also made us, including myself, realise, that whatever disagreements we may have with the Executive, what we have in common is far greater than that which divides us. For the first time ever I even voted for Bernard Regan for the Executive and he accused me of stealing his lines! A special mention should be made of Ben Sofa, the Secretary, who has never wavered in his support for tackling the issue head on.

Because the Executive realised that if the holocaust deniers had got their way, the trade unions – with their history of fighting fascism – would have disaffiliated and we would be a cacophony of noise without influence. Those who argued that we should concentrate on Palestine and Palestinians failed to recognise that that means you must politically engage with the mainstream of society and that you have, at all costs, not to hand your opponents weapons to attack you with.

People were angry at the constant misrepresentation of Palestinian activists you see on sites like Harry’s Place, a place where only rabid Zionists with cloth ears venture. However it was important when attacked by such people to recognise that whilst their accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ may be libels 99 times out of a hundred, there are occasions when we have to sit up and take notice.

So it is that Nahida, an Atzmonite in Liverpool branch, where there have been problems, could write that:
‘The crusade against PSC was ignited by Zionists from outside the movement beginning in September, following an article published on the Zionist hate-website Harry's Place (HP), and a letter from the Board of Deputies of British Jews” (BODBJ), accusing PSC and its branches of publishing anti-Semitic articles and linking to Holocaust denial websites, which arguably is a crude lie. However, the crusade was sustained, promoted and amplified by insiders with questionable loyalty, who roam freely within the Palestine solidarity movement.’ Following those attacks and demands by BOD of British Jews, certain elements inside the solidarity movement picked up where Zionists stopped. Since then they have initiated a campaign of defamation against Palestinian activists (including myself) and numerous other supporters.'

We, i.e. me and members of groups like J-Big, are the ‘inside’ Zionists as opposed to the honest ones. The problem with the Atzmonites is that their arguments and terms of reference are merely an echo of the Zionist argument. They are the reflection of Zionism in much the same way as Zionism was a reflection of anti-Semitism. And as I pointed out, to most Jews, in the pre–holocaust period, Zionism was considered a species of anti-Semitism.

All in a all a very good day for PSC and the Palestinians and an abject defeat for the apologists for Atzmon and Eisen.

Because I was heavily involved in the debate on specific motions, comments would be welcome both on this and the other issues debated at the conference.

Tony Greenstein

All Out for PSC AGM

2012-01-19T01:22:00.010Z

There's No Room for Holocaust deniers in an anti-racist campaign

Palestine Solidarity Campaign is a Racism Free Zone

It takes a certain kind of genius to turn attention away from the links between the Zionists and fascist/far-right parties and onto the Palestine solidarity movement. This is the solitary 'achievement' of the supporters of Gilad Atzmon, inside and outside Palestine Solidarity Campaign. It is to the eternal shame of Gill Kaffash, Roy Ratcliffe, Frances Clarke-Lowes et al. that they have managed to align themselves with those whose hatred of Jews is second only to that of Muslims.

Lest anyone be under any doubt even a post by Thomas Venner on the notoriouis Zionist site Engage was forced to admit that

‘a couple of the EDL members who were waving Israeli flags were also wearing poorly-concealed neo-Nazi insignia of various sorts at the same time. One man in particular was, while waving an Israeli flag, wearing a t-shirt with a picture of one of the crematoria at Auschwitz on it, with “Zyklon-B” emblazoned over it in large, gothic letters. After that, it’s difficult to take seriously all these claims about the EDL “supporting Israel”.’

Of course there is no contradiction between supporting what the Nazis did to the Jews and what Israel does to the Palestinians. Were not Arabs lower on the Nazi racial ladder than even the Jews? And this is to say nothing of how the Zionists, during the 1930’s, prioritised building the state over saving the Jewish refugees. This is not conjecture.

Most reputable Zionist historians, even Ben-Gurion’s official biographer, Shabtia Teveth in 'The Burning Ground - 1886-1948' describe his attitude to the holocaust as being a beneficial opportunity. Zionism not only blocked attempts by Jews to escape to places other than Palestine but actually sat on the first definitive report of the holocaust for 3 months, from August to November 1942 (at the request of the US Administration) and then sought to minimise if not deny that the holocaust was actually happening. The details are in Shabtai Zvi’s Post-Ugandan Zionism on Trial The Arabs of today are also the Jews of yesterday.

Teveth describes how Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister and Chairman of the Jew Agency 'concentrated all his efforts on the program, not to the tragedy of European Jewry. He maintained a puzzling silence about what was taking place in Europe and Riegner's telegrams.' [p.842] 'In spite of the certainty that genocide was being carried out, the JAE did not devite appreciably from its routine' [p.848] 'Regarding Jewish adversity as a source of strength had always been at the foundation of his thinking... "distress" could also serve as "political leverage".... "The harsher the affliction, the greater the strength of Zionism.' [850]. Unsurprisingly Teveth entitles the chapter on BG and the Holocaust 'Disaster Means Strength'. The disaster of 6 million dead was a source of strength to Zionism. Little wonder that Teveth, Ben-Gurion's devoted discipline wrote that 'If there was a line in Ben-Gurion's mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one.' [851] But again I digress.

At a time when even a French Parliamentary Report accuses Israel of Water Apartheid in the West Bank and when Israel’s Ambassador at the UN, Ron Prosor, holds friendly meetings over dinner with French fascist leader Marie Le Pen , to say nothing of our own Jonathan Hoffman demonstrating alongside the English Defence League, a handful of misguided supporters of the Palestinians believe that their salvation lies in digging up the bones of European anti-Semitism.

Gilad Atzmon’s mentor, someone he considers ‘unique and advanced’ (granted he’s certainly unique!) one Israel Shamir, even went as far as to berate the British National Party for not being sufficiently anti-Semitic! [e-mail to me 12.6.05.]

the far right of 1930s stood against what they considered 'Jewish onslaught', while you, Sir, join in it. Your joining forces with Zionism is a full betrayal of the English ideals whose best features were exemplified by Chesterton and Eliot. By your parroting of Jewish nonsense of "Islamic threat" you are supporting their drive on the Middle East though this step brings in the immigration you object to.
I do not feel at ease accusing you and your comrades of betraying the Britons and joining with the Jews, but if I'd keep mum, stones won't. I'd publish your response, and I hope you'll spread mine among your readers and members.
Israel Adam Shamir

On Saturday PSC will hold its AGM at Conway Hall, London. It takes place against the background of severe disruption to PSC’s work by a handful of supporters and sympathisers of Gilad Atzmon – the anti-Semitic ex-Israeli jazz player.

It should be no surprise that a minority, a very small minority, of PSC members have succumbed to the argument that ‘the Jews’ as a seamless entity, are responsible for the brutal oppression of the Palestinians. For years supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of Zionism have been told that they are anti-Semitic. Zionism was held to be synonymous with being Jewish. Unfortunately a few people have accepted this Zionist canard. As I wrote for the Guardian’s Comment is Free: ‘If you cry wolf long and loud enough, when anti-semitism does raise its head no one will bat an eyelid.’

Atzmon has the credentials, an ex-Israeli who has repented, as well as being a famous jazz player, to give legitimacy to this Zionist argument. In ‘Not in my name’ he wrote that:

‘To demand that Jews disapprove of Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity is to accept the Zionist philosophy. To resist Zionism as a secular Jew involves an acceptance of basic Zionist terminology, that is to say, a surrendering to Jewish racist and nationalist philosophy. To talk as a Jew is to surrender to Weizman’s Zionist philosophy.’

For Atzmon to be a Jew is to be a Zionist. His main target has therefore become ‘the enemy within’ - Jewish anti-Zionists within the Palestine solidarity movement. Zionists are at least honest. As he wrote in his review of Anthony Julius’s attack on Jewish anti-Zionists:

it is rather depressing to admit that his deconstruction of some large sectors of the Jewish political and ideological left is more than valid. As bizarre as it may sound, in places his criticism of his dissident anti-Zionists brothers and sisters is not far at all from the discomfort expressed rather often by Palestinians and Palestinian solidarity activists concerning Jewish anti-Zionism Anthony Julius and a journey to the dark Zionist world

And it is important to understand that, regardless of whether it is true that Atzmon has links with Mossad he is death to solidarity with the Palestinians. According to his former friend and close collaborator Mary Rizzo -

‘I wanted out and I especially wanted to be far away from a person who hung out with a person who was a known informant, though he insisted it could not be true, but I'd trust a Palestinian from Palestine before I would an Israeli from Israel any day of the week.’

After repeated inquiries, Atzmon informed me (e-mail 17.8.12.) re these allegations:

‘Re Mary Rizzo, and her fantasies, she was referring to Morris Herman, she quoted a Pls 'source,' at the time I went and asked the 'source' and the source admitted that she had no idea who Morris Herman..this put an end to my relationship with Rizzo..

However, I investigated the issue myself and didn't have any reason to believe that Herman was an informant….’

No doubt Atzmon investigated his links with an alleged Mossadnik very carefully! You might also think it is a choice between syphilis and gonorrhoea, but despite her undoubted anti-Semitism, Mary Rizzo is at least sincere in her support of the Palestinians. But I digress again.

To Atzmon, the holocaust was a ‘narrative’, a story whose ending could be changed at the flick of a pen. Of course Zionism has shamelessly used the holocaust as a political weapon to justify the expulsion, massacre and exploitation of the Palestinians. It is not surprising that a small minority of their supporters have responded by adopting holocaust denial, whilst not being pro-fascist or personally anti-Semitic in any way. Indeed Atzmon is quite unique among his followers in that he is genuinely anti-Semitic on a personal level. But if you are a sincere supporter of the Palestinians then Atzmon's holocaust denial acolytes must be cast out.

In Truth, History & Integrity, Atzmon wrote that:

‘If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?

I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?

I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments…’

Zionism and its propagandists, in what Norman Finkelstein termed the ‘Misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of History’ [Verso, 2005] have taken holocaust denial out of the confines of a small coterie of European neo-Nazis and helped popularise it in the third world. The argument is that since Israel claims legitimacy through the holocaust all one needs to do is deny the holocaust to deny Israel any legitimacy. However the holocaust is a fact and this ‘logic’ ends up as an endorsement of Israel!

It is precisely this phenomenon which has misled a small minority of PSC members and Palestinians. It is a product of an almost complete depoliticisation, coupled with a separatist reaction to oppression. Zionism was a separatist movement which adopted the framework of anti-Semitism. The anti-Semites said the Jews did not belong in non-Jewish society and the Zionists agreed. The same is true of radical feminism or Marcus Garvey’s meetings with the KKK.

If Zionism had remained at the level of ideology it would have been an interesting historical curiosity. But Zionism sought and obtained an alliance with western colonialism. German, French and British imperialists fell over themselves to endorse a ‘return’ of the Jews to Palestine. The British won with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, named after its author, Arthur James Balfour, the anti-Semitic Foreign Secretary who introduced the Aliens Act 1905, designed to keep Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia out of Britain. A British colony in Palestine would be strategically useful, being adjacenet to the Suez Canal, on the route to India. Indeed it was non-Jewish imperialists like Lord Palmerston who were the first Zionists.

And when coupled with the publication this year of Atzmon’s The Wandering Who? endorsed by at least 5 professors, including John Mearsheimer and Richard Falk, it is little wonder that a few of those inflamed by the persecution of the Palestinians should seek solace in holocaust denial.

It would be futile to pretend that this has not caused major problems for PSC. But unlike the Zionist movement, we are able to expel and remove the racists. If the Zionists did so they would have no movement. Four years ago, some of us tried to ban the group, Deir Yassin Remembered, a group led by an open holocaust denier, Paul Eisen. Unfortunately the then Executive took a sectarian stance, denying that there was a problem. Today that is not possible. Up and down the country individual branches have experienced problems. In my own branch, Brighton, former National Chair of PSC, Frances Clarke-Lowes came out as a holocaust denier. He was promptly expelled by the local branch and then by national PSC. His appeal against this expulsion will be heard on Saturday.

In Liverpool the Friends of Palestine website was taken over by a holocaust denier. In Exeter the branch had some involvement in the organisation of an Atzmon meeting at the university (although others protested strongly). In Bradford the Raise Your Banners group invited Atzmon to play at a left cultural festival and claimed PSC support, until PSC disowned it. In Camden PSC, the Secretary Gill Kaffash was forced to step down as Secretary after her holocaust denial sympathies became clear.

It is entirely to the credit of the PSC Executive and its Secretary, Ben Sofa and Director Sara Colborne, that last September they changed the statement ‘About our campaign’ on the front page of PSC’s web site to make its position absolutely clear:

‘Any expression of racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the holocaust have no place in our movement. Such statements are abhorrent in their own right and can only detract from the building of a strong movement in support of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.’

Atzmon immediately attacked the statement. He didn’t know what holocaust denial means!

These developments have been grist to the Zionist mill. The Jewish Chronicle and many other papers have run a number of articles, e.g. an attack on PSC by Atzmon’s supporters such as Lauren Booth, Tony Blair's sister-in-law. But the Zionists, trapped by their own racism, have been left struggling to find a response. Hence the JC has not only quoted my own blog frequently but in a remarkably fair article (for the JC!) Anthony Cooper wrote an article The Jews who can distinguish antisemitism from anti-Israel for which he was predictably savaged.

Even the rabidly Islamaphobic pro-war site, Harry’s Place reprinted this article though not unnaturally taking delight at what it sees the infighting in PSC. But the majority of Zionist propagandists have tried to pass this off as mere infighting among supporters of the Palestinians. Indeed Atzmon has been praised by Harry’s Place for his anti-Boycott stance!

On Saturday there will be one motion on anti-Semitism and racism on the agenda from the National Executive. A motion from Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and myself, which called for more internal education on Zionism, has been amended and accepted by the Executive.

Although there have been in the past, and no doubt will be in the future, disagreements between ourselves and PSC Executive over tactics and strategy, over one thing we are absolutely united. There is no place in PSC for any trace of racism or anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism today is primarily a marginal prejudice. It is not a danger to Jews so much as the Palestinians. Without anti-Semitism there would have been no Zionism. It was anti-Semitism which drove a minority of Jews to Palestine. It was Hitler and the extermination of European Jewry which gave Israel its legitimacy as a refuge for Jews, there to establish a settler-colonial state based on the very principles that the anti-Semites espoused. As the founder of Political Zionism Theodor Herzl wrote over a century ago: ‘Anti-Semitism has grown, and continues to grow and so do I.’ [Diaries, p.7]

At the AGM there is also a not very clever motion from Gill Kaffash and ex-Israeli Ruth Tenne, which seeks to define racism so as to exclude holocaust denial! They also manage to exclude Islamaphobia from their definition of racism by confining racism to its biological variant and its discriminatory effect. It is a stupid motion from the stupid.

Support for the Palestinians is an anti-racist struggle. It can be no other. I urge all supporters of the Palestinians and members of PSC to come to the AGM and vote to ensure that the main motion is passed overwhelmingly and Kaffash/Tenne’s motion is soundly defeated.

Tony Greenstein

Successful Boycott Action at Tesco in Brighton & Hove

2012-01-15T05:36:00.003Z

Even the Police Refused to Turn Up

Successful Boycott Action today in Tesco's, Hove.

About 20 of us from Brighton PSC branch went shopping at Tesco’s, anxious about the drop in their share price recently, when we came across a number of items of Israeli produce. Well we just had to protest!

After having been escorted out of the branch, albeit after about 10 minutes, and they seemed none too keen on me filming (!), we had a succesful picket outside. A couple of Zionists became aggressive and one tried snatching the megaphone out of my hand but the reception was very good apart from a few toe rags whose only response was ‘you’re on private property’!! It would seem that the level of Zionist aggro is increasing and is directly related to the succecss we are having.

Although the Police were called they didn’t turn up so after nearly an hour waiting for them we decided to call it a day!

Here is the footage I took, excuse some of the banter!

Clips include a Welsh action where blood red dye was sprayed over an overturned trolly of Tesco’s stolen produce.

Tony Greenstein

The Premature Death of Tony Greenstein & Roland Rance

2012-01-14T19:06:00.007Z

[CLICK TO READ]
Paul Bogdanor and/or Professor Steve Plaut Sink to New Lows as He Pretends To Be Gilad Atzmon on Sheffield Indymedia

(not that there's much difference!)

You will imagine my surprise when, googling the Internet in the small hours of this morning, I came across the announcement of Roland Rance’s and my own funeral. ‘The funeral of Stalinazi Tony Greenstein’. As Mark Twain notes, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

The announcement is posted in the name of Gilad Atzmon but there are good reasons to believe, for once, that he is not the one responsible. It would appear to be the work of either two far-right Zionists - Mad Mikey Ezra, an ex-collaborator of Atzmon and Zionist Paul Bogdanor, the deranged son of the eminently boring but sane constitutional historian, Vernon Bogdanor. or one Steve Plaut. The term ‘Stalinazi’ is not one that Atzmon uses.

Steve Plaut is an open supporter of the fascist Jewish Defence League (of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane) as is, believe it or not, a Professor at Haifa University!

Clues include the use of the word ‘cornhold’. This is, I am told, a homophobic remark and these Zionists frequently resort to such bigoted and infantile ‘humour’. Particularly against Roland Rance. It ties in with their politics. To my knowledge, Atzmon isn’t homophobic unlike the aforementioned Zionists.

Bogdanor is a virulent anti-communist who exaggerates the crimes of Stalin, associates them through ‘guilt by association’ with socialists and Trotskyites and of course has a selective blind eye when it comes to the crimes of the West and the USA e.g. Iraq, Israel, Vietnam etc. He has a particular focus on Noam Chomsky and has penned ‘200 lies’ about him. A good and reasoned expose of a sample of these ‘lies is here.

Bogdanor also seems to be camera shy. A book he co-wrote with Edward Alexander has the former’s picture but Bogdanor doesn’t seem to like being exposed to the light of the day.

What is pretty outrageous though is that this posting is still up on both Sheffield and UK Indymedia. Sheffield apparently thinks that ‘hiding’ the post somehow makes it alright. UK IM hasn’t bothered to do even that. I have written to Sheffield IM, who didn’t even have the courtesy to reply to my post before hiding Bogdanor's.

This blog was originally set up because UK Indymedia allowed Gilad Atzmon to post a variety of anti-Semitic holocaust denial nonsense and a couple of anti-Semites, led by Free The Peeps (Roy Bard) blocked any decision to take them down and indeed hid criticism of those who disagreed with Atzmon. See An Open Letter to IM, IM finally replies to its critics, IM update atzmon beats a retreat, The hornets nest and the stick an IM UK update,

Let us see if they have improved over the years. Below is my post to Sheffield IM. One can assume that other IMs may have been targeted. Let us hope they are not as stupid as Sheffield’s lot are.

Tony Greenstein

From: tony greenstein

To: "sheffield@indymedia.org"
Sent: Saturday, 14 January 2012, 6:13
Subject: Our premature deaths announced by Jazz Fascist Atzmon

Is there a good reason why you are posting an article by holocaust denier Gilad Atzmon announcing the death of 2 anti-Zionist activists - Roland Rance & myself?

Please take it down and ensure this rat doesn't post again

Tony Greenstein

I wrote a further e-mail to them:

I sent you an e-mail earlier today. You haven't had the courtesy to respond and you have instead hidden the post (after a fashion). In fact the post is probably not from Atzmon but a far-right Zionist Paul Bogdanor, but that matters little.

Fact is that this should have been scrubbed, you should have apologised for putting it up and provided some explanation for why it wasn't spotted.

It would seem that, once again, any fascist or their sympathisers can post on Indy Media - the 'alternative' news media. Some alternative.

From: tony greenstein
To: "tech@lists.indymedia.org.uk"
Sent: Saturday, 14 January 2012, 18:47

I have come across an article announcing the funeral of Roland Rance and myself. It is somewhat premature! It is allegedly posted by the anti-semitic Gilad Atzmon but given the style is more than likely to come from uber Zionist Paul Bogdanor. Please take it down, don't hide it, it is entirely without merit (and is also homophobic).

From: tony greenstein
To: "mrdemeanour@jackpot.uk.net" ; "chrisc@indymedia.org.uk"
Sent: Saturday, 14 January 2012, 19:01
Subject: Report of my 'funeral' by Atzmon/Bogdanor

I have just come across this disgusting post. It is allegedly by the anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon but I suspect it is the ultra-Zionist Paul Bogdanor. Regardless please remove, i.e. not hide, this post.

I would hate us to have to go to war again over something like this.

And please have the courtesy to inform me.

I shall also blog on this because you should not have allowed it to remain up.

Tony Greenstein