Day: 4 May 2016

Jeremy Newmark is chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, that officially supports the pro-apartheid Israeli Labour party. Following the suspension of Naz Shah MP for alleged anti-Semitism, it appears he is undertaking her re-education: a ‘process’ that will doubtless end in her henceforth avoiding all strong criticism of Israel: In the words of Norman Finkelstein:

They’re making her pass through these rituals of public self-degradation, as she is forced to apologise once, twice, three times over for a tongue-in-cheek cartoon reposted from my website. And it’s not yet over! Because now they say she’s on a ‘journey’. Of course, what they mean is, ‘she’s on a journey of self-revelation, and epiphany, to understanding the inner antisemite at the core of her being’.

In the judgment in Fraser v. UCU, following a three-week employment tribunal in 2013, the judge Anthony Snelson said Mr Newmark’s evidence had been “false, preposterous, extraordinarily arrogant and disturbing”.

Look at where those words appeared in the judgment and what they related to:

False: already mentioned above. This was Newmark’s claim that there had been “booing, jeering and harassing of Jewish speakers”.
Preposterous: This was Newmark’s claim that he was being stereotyped as a “pushy Jew” over his attempt to push his way into a union meeting.
Extraordinarily arrogant and disturbing:  Again, mentioned above.  This was Newmark’s description of the UCU as “no longer a fit space for free speech”.

Mr Newmark said the tribunal’s finding that there could be no link between Jewish identity and support of Israel “cannot be left to stand”.
“That is a shocking and ignorant statement to make. It is something that will have to be followed up,” he said.

If a Jew is bullied or harassed in the work place or his trade union, and part of that bullying or harassment contains anti-Israel slogans, material or activity, then to take that forward to the judicial system is considered by this panel in their ruling as an attempt to usurp the British judicial process for political means – that’s something that is very, very wrong.

Jews Sans Frontieres observed at the time:

‘Did you see what happened there? He’s been called preposterous, and a disturbingly arrogant liar and he hasn’t hit back against any of that. He’s simply changed the subject whilst showing he has lost none of his propensity for untruth.’

What can such a person teach a principled MP like Naz Shah?

Elly Fryksos

Israel’s justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, who in 2015 published on Facebook a call for a genocide of the Palestinians, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure,” has employed rhetoric about BDS that has been echoed by UK Secretary of State for Justice, Michael Gove. In fact, her language is temperate compared to Gove’s.

Shaked said supporters of movements such as the non-violent BDS, which calls for putting economic and political pressure on Israel in a bid to force it to comply with international law and gain rights for Palestinians, are “using the same kind of anti-Semitism but instead of saying they are against the Jews, they say they are against Israel.”

In an interview with The Washington Post, Shaked said:

In the past, we saw European leaders speaking against the Jews. Now, we see them speaking against Israel. It is the same anti-Semitism of blood libels, spreading lies, distorting reality and brainwashing people into hating Israel and the Jews

Shaked had spoken earlier in the day at an international symposium in Warsaw marking the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Race Laws adopted by Nazi Germany.

Gove has also misrepresented a boycott of Israeli goods and institutions, claiming it involves:

the shunning of Jewish academics, the boycott of Jewish goods, the de-legitimisation of Jewish commerce. We have seen these all before. And we know where it takes us.

Continue reading “Far right Israeli Justice Minister & UK Justice Secretary agree on BDS”

In a further example of the conflation of criticism of Israel’s policies with antisemitism, the Likud lawmaker Nava Boker has compared Member of Knesset Dov Khenin to ‘Jews throughout history,’ whom she suggests were to blame for ‘bolstering’ anti-Semitic propaganda. Khenin called this accusation the ‘height of insolence.’

Via Times of Israel:

The sole Jewish Knesset member from the Joint (Arab) List has come under fire for accusing Israel, in an interview with Sky News, of demolishing Palestinian homes as a means of “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank.

MK Dov Khenin’s comments were broadcast at the beginning of the week, although he later said it was recorded some time ago.

Likud lawmaker Nava Boker accused Khenin of stoking anti-Semitic propaganda against Israel, telling Army Radio on Tuesday:

The only ethnic cleansing being carried out is in his delirious mind. With his deceitful expressions he is joining a long line of Jews throughout history who bolstered anti-Semitic propaganda with false claims.

Khenin responded that he did “have very serious criticism of the Israeli government,”

But from that to make accusations of anti-Semitism? That is the height of insolence.

The images from the Jordan Valley are terrible images — children whose homes are destroyed, their tents are evacuated there… It is a grave thing to say [ethnic cleansing]… [but] the reality is very grave.

The reality in the Jordan Valley is one in which they are expelling the Bedouins, evacuating them from their places of residence. They are not being allowed to build. When you evacuate Arabs and in their place you build settlements for Jews, that is a reality that must be addressed.

In an extraordinary article for Ha’aretz, the outspoken Israel apologist Baroness Deech has stated that it is right to treat ‘right-wing anti-Semites’ and ‘Holocaust deniers’ as ‘buffoons of no importance.’

Yes, there are right-wing anti-Semites and there are Holocaust deniers, but they have for long been treated as buffoons of no importance — which is true — and being of the “Right” they are not taken seriously, whereas to be of the “Left” is to be righteous, sanctimonious and beyond criticism or reproof.

She also calls renowned historians and scholars of the Middle East, including Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe ‘renegade Jews.’ (see note below)

Deech bemoans the lack of a ‘further investigation of [antisemitism’s] causes and roots’ before making it clear she believes its roots lie in Muslim majority communities.

The Baroness has been keeping a wary eye on the U.K. census:

The U.K. census of 2011 revealed that Bradford’s population was 24.7% Muslim, and no doubt it’s higher by now. There are wards of Bradford, Blackburn and Burnley (the suspended councilors’ constituencies) where British Muslims reach 70% of the local population.

She then blames British politicians for ‘appeasing their Muslim voters,’ specifically upbraiding Corbyn for not acknowledging that anti-Semitism is ‘special’ and has ‘roots in the religion and culture of Islam.’ Deech then implies that our government is putting at risk the lives of British Jews by allowing Muslims to make their home here.

So we have a failure of education, a craven attitude towards the supposed beliefs of Muslim voters (set to worsen as migration increases)…

The Baroness calls the non-violent, Palestinian civil society boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement ‘the program of the destruction of the only Jewish state, with its 6 million Jews conveniently gathered together,’ thereby invoking the spectre of a second Holocaust.

Deech refers to the recent ICM poll on ‘British Muslim opinion’ that has been widely criticised for its flawed methodology. Its findings have further been distorted by Islamophobic groups such as the pro-Israel ‘charity’ Campaign Against Antisemitism, which produced a report racially profiling Muslims. As Ashitha Nagesh wrote in Metro last month:

British Muslims aren’t anti-Semitic

According to the results, 61 per cent of people questioned viewed Jewish people favourably, while an additional 14 per cent of British Muslims had a sort-of middling opinion of Jewish people.

This might not seem like a lot – 61 per cent isn’t 100 per cent, after all – but it’s almost exactly the same as how favourably the Muslims surveyed viewed Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus, and people who are not religious.

Anti-racists and anti-fascists reading the Baroness’s words will recognise the parallels with early 20th century social attitudes to – and government racial profiling of – British Jews.

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Note: The Oxford English Dictionary definition of ‘renegade’:

• Having treacherously changed allegiance: a renegade bodyguard
• Having abandoned one’s religious beliefs: a renegade monk. Used in conjunction with ‘Jew’ its archaic meaning is equivalent to apostate.

Elly Fryksos

Jon Lansman, a founder of the Momentum campaign group, has said the ‘left must stop talking about Zionism‘, and instead “use ‘Israeli nationalists’ or ‘Israeli fundamentalists’ or better yet ‘Netanyahu’s regime’.”

Then today this initiative is launched by ‘We Believe in Israel’:

Zionism month is a joint initiative by We Believe in Israel and the Zionist Federation aiming to spread understanding both of the historical logic and context behind the Zionist movement and the creation of Israel, and promoting the contemporary necessity for Jewish (and other peoples’) national self-determination.

The Rabbi thereby implies that settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing are ‘integral’ to Judaism: a dangerous claim. Theodor Herzl founded the modern political ideology of Zionism in the late 19th Century. See more here.

Via the Jewish Chronicle:

Writing in the Telegraph, Rabbi Mirvis said it was “astonishing” that those on the hard-left of British politics were “presuming to define the relationship between Judaism and Zionism despite themselves being neither Jews nor Zionists.

“The likes of Ken Livingstone and Malia Bouattia claim that Zionism is separate from Judaism as a faith; that it is purely political; that it is expansionist, colonialist and imperialist.

“It is unclear why these people feel qualified to provide such an analysis of one of the axioms of Jewish belief. But let me be very clear. Their claims are a fiction. They are a wilful distortion of a noble and integral part of Judaism.”

Directly addressing those who had sought to “redefine…vilify…and delegitimise” Zionism, Rabbi Mirvis wrote: “Be under no illusions – you are deeply insulting not only the Jewish community but countless others who instinctively reject the politics of distortion and demonisation.

Zionism is a belief in the right to Jewish self-determination in a land that has been at the centre of the Jewish world for more than 3,000 years. One can no more separate it from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.

Read the Telegraph article in full here.