Day: 24 May 2016

Today, Hull University voted to disaffiliate from the NUS, citing largely financial reasons. That did not stop Jewish News and Guido Fawkes linking the decision to the election of the NUS’s first female, black Muslim president Malia Bouattia – an outspoken anti-Zionist. In her column for the Jewish Chronicle on Cambridge University’s own referendum, entitled ‘No one should have to compromise religion for politics – but the NUS elections made me doubt myself,‘ Noa Gendler makes no explicit reference to Bouattia, but is otherwise extraordinarily frank:

there’s no way I can decide whether or not [Cambridge University Students Union] should disaffiliate from the NUS without my Judaism coming into play. I’ve had to ask myself whether the NUS can offer me, as a Jewish student, representation and equality, and I’ve had to ask myself if its support for other minority students is more important than its support for me, as a Jewish student. Essentially, I’ve been forced to choose between two fundamental aspects of my life and values: being Jewish, versus liberation and equal opportunities for all minorities.

The final-year student at the University of Cambridge adds,

I’m ashamed to be part of a community which has asked me to make such a painful and irrational decision. No one should ever have to compromise their religion for their politics, or vice versa.

The clear inference is that the rights and needs of Jewish students do not accord with those of other minority student communities, and are incompatible with the struggle against oppression. She claims that choosing in favour of the latter would entail a compromise of her religious beliefs. It’s a dangerous attempt to blur the boundary between religion and political ideology. Gendler also attempts to make ‘her [Jewish] community’ complicit in this cynical calculation. Continue reading “Cambridge student says she is forced to choose between being Jewish and equal opportunities for all minorities”

Unlike liberal Zionist groups such as the Jewish Labour Movement, the Zionist right-wing have nothing further to gain from Naz Shah‘s public apology, suspension for alleged antisemitism and willingness to be ‘re-educated;’ they want to ensure she is branded an unreformable extremist – not just ‘anti-Israel,’ but a Muslim extremist that shouts Allahu Akbar.

Conservative Friends of Israel today uploaded a post to their website, ‘NAZ SHAH MP REVEALED TO HAVE ATTENDED SERIES OF ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTS,’ based on a Daily Mail article, ‘Proof that Labour MP’s anti-Israel outburst was anything but a one off.’

In a tone more suited to a high-profile exposé, the Daily Mail tells its readers that Shah,

Playing dead with her children on the floor of a fast-food restaurant […] it can be revealed… mother-of-three Miss Shah was part of a group that mounted a string of protests against Israel.[…] Miss Shah also co-ordinated protests at Sainsbury’s and Tesco, and carried a coffin at a pro-Palestine rally where she was filmed chanting: ‘Shame on you.’

The group stormed the Bradford restaurant, chanting: ‘Allahu Akbar.’ They staged a number of protests at the branch and smeared ketchup across the premises, according to activists. Footage shows activists chanting: ‘Free, free Palestine.’ It is not known whether Miss Shah joined in the chanting or smeared ketchup. The previous day – August 3 – the group had staged a protest at a Tesco store over its stocking of Israeli produce.

There are some wonderful, inspiring images of Shah showing her solidarity with Palestinians. They date from summer 2014, when Israel killed over 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children.

The latest attack on Naz Shah makes two things abundantly clear: in the eyes of pro-Israel lobby groups and press, her crime is an outspoken support for Palestinian human rights, including direct action. And while the Labour Israel lobby will be appeased once she publicly disavows her principled opposition to Israel, she is not likely to ever shake off her reputation in the mainstream media as a Muslim antisemite calling for the destruction of Israel.

A Board of Deputies of British Jews spokesman told the DM that Naz Shah was,

clearly involved in a lot of unacceptable activities’ but had shown ‘a significant amount of remorse, which, if proven to be genuine, must count in her favour.

The strategy of appeasing Zionists is always doomed: most of the accused begin by protesting their innocence while simultaneously accepting the premise that antisemitism is rife – in their Party or community – and vowing to confront and stamp it out. But as Shah quickly discovered that isn’t enough, and under pressure she appeared to confess to having been antisemitic; she is now undertaking a ‘journey‘ that will only be complete in the eyes of her new Zionist defenders once she has disavowed her wholehearted solidarity with Palestinians.

Shah’s case is an instructive one. Public figures known for their support of the Palestinian cause have one option if they are not willing to be publicly humiliated: insist that they are committed to combatting all forms of racism, of which Israeli apartheid is an egregious example, and express sadness that their words have been misinterpreted, providing the context for their remarks missing from hostile media reports. Zionist lobbies across the political spectrum will be outraged and never cease in their attempts to smear the target of their witch-hunt, but at least the hunted will retain their integrity, and win the respect – not pity – of genuine anti-racists.

Elly Fryksos

This is what the co-Vice Chair of the Chakrabarti inquiry, Professor David Feldman, said about the Macpherson principle, in his January 2015 sub-report to the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, chaired by John Mann:

Perceptions.

It is sometimes suggested that when Jews perceive an utterance or action to be anti-Semitic that this is how it should be described. In the UK this claim looks for support to the 1999 Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, written by Lord Macpherson of Cluny. There Macpherson wrote that ‘a racist incident’ is ‘any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.’ If we look at the context in which this quotation appears, it is unambiguously clear that Macpherson intended to propose that such racist incidents require investigation. He did not mean to imply that such incidents are necessarily racist. However, Macpherson’s report has been misinterpreted and misapplied in precisely this way. Its authority has been thrown behind the view that such incidents should, by definition, be regarded as racist. In short, a definition of antisemitism which takes Jews’ feelings and perceptions as its starting point and which looks to the Macpherson report for authority is built on weak foundations.