Free Speech on Israel

Associate editor of the Electronic Intifada, David Cronin is one of the authors of a new report, The Israel lobby and the European Union.

He reports in his EI article (below) that the source for the EU’s anti-Semitism coordinator’s claim that antisemitic incidents rise after BDS activities on campuses, is the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS). At last month’s ‘Stop BDS’ conference hosted by the Israeli mission to the UN and the World Jewish Congress, EUJS endorsed a call for Zionist students to report their schools and professors, and its president Benny Fischer said that BDS activists are really calling for the destruction of Israel.

.@WorldJewishCong : Will fight BDS differently than before: we want students to report any kind of activity and we will publish it #StopBDS

— (((EUJS))) (@EUJS) May 31, 2016

„[email protected] – if your school or professor is backing #BDS publicly, contact us” – Ronald Lauder #StopBDS

— (((WJC))) (@WorldJewishCong) May 31, 2016

This week, World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder told a Board of Deputies of British Jews meeting in London that BDS is “evil” and even more absurdly that it “has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

David Cronin, Lobby Watch, 20 June 2016

Read the article in full on Electronic Intifada.

Has a senior European Union official been smearing the Palestine solidarity movement based on hearsay?

A few days ago, I learned that Katharina von Schnurbein, the EU’s anti-Semitism coordinator, felt that comments she made at a recent pro-Israel conference had been misquoted. So I called von Schnurbein asking precisely what she had said.

Von Schnurbein confirmed that she did not regard an article on the European Jewish Press website as accurate.

The article claimed that she viewed the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel as motivated by a hatred of Jews.

After a brief telephone conversation, von Schnurbein emailed me what she described as her “exact words” at the conference, which was organized by the European Coalition for Israel, a Christian Zionist group.

According to the transcript she provided, von Schnurbein told the conference that “anti-Semitism can hide behind anti-Zionism,” before stressing the “EU’s firm rejection of the boycott, divestment and sanctions attempts to isolate Israel.”

“In the context of fighting anti-Semitism here in Europe, we are particularly worried about the discriminatory repercussions activities by the BDS movement might have on Jews and, in particular, Jewish students across Europe,” she added. “Reports show that anti-Semitic incidents rise after BDS activities on campuses.”

Von Schnurbein’s message did not refer to any specific “reports,” so I sent her a follow-up query asking for an example.

She replied: “On the Internet, you will find many reports from across the world. Also, the European Union of Jewish Students regularly report incidents on their website.”

Vibes

Eager to find out about such incidents, I checked the website she mentioned. A search for “BDS” yielded 14 results. None of them detailed a correlation between Palestine solidarity campaigning and anti-Semitism.

Instead of solid information, I found an article in which one student spoke of “anti-Israel vibes” in European universities.

As well as having to feel such “vibes,” students had to deal with seeing posters defending Palestinian rights in the corridors of some colleges, according to that article. In some cases, it added, students had to walk by fruit counters in supermarkets where stickers urging a boycott of the Jaffa brand have been posted or a swastika had been carved into a few oranges.

If that is the kind of “incident” that von Schnurbein is worried about, then I humbly suggest she needs to do a bit more research.

“Vibes” are, by definition, intangible. And this is the first time I have ever heard of anyone complaining about a swastika being engraved in a Jaffa orange. The idea that such a tactic is being widely employed by BDS activists — if at at all — is ludicrous.

I have no objection in principle to having an EU coordinator against anti-Semitism. Every form of religious and racial bigotry should be carefully monitored so that effective strategies for combating that bigotry can be developed.

Yet von Schnurbein does not appear to be interested in careful monitoring. Rather than assessing how widespread hatred of Jews is in Europe today, she spends much of her time hanging out with the pro-Israel lobby.

Continue reading here.

As attacks on the growing Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement become more frenzied – with Israel’s hawks denouncing it as “evil,” fuelled by Jew-hatred and an existential threat – Israel is simultaneously creating a ‘dirty tricks’ unit to smear BDS groups, and turning to liberal Zionist groups to give its campaign a progressive gloss.

Haaretz reports today that Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, Gilad Erdan, has begun talks with the liberal, pro-Israel advocacy group J Street over the possibility of joining forces to counter BDS. An equivalent liberal Zionist group in the UK is Yachad.

‘Erdan, who is in charge of fighting the BDS movement for the Israeli government, revealed that he met with J Street’s top representative in Israel, Yael Patir, last week to examine the possibility of working together against the movement on U.S. campuses.

‘[…] In recent years, the Israeli government has avoided any direct official contact with J Street. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never met with any representative of the group, nor has Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer. Israel’s previous U.S. ambassador, Michael Oren, even boycotted the group during the beginning of his term, but later opened a dialog with its leaders.

‘As of late, the Jewish community in America has increasingly come to understand that J Street is strategically positioned in the struggle against the BDS movement, due to its ability to communicate with progressives and liberals – the target audience of the boycott movement.

‘J Street’s student branches are active on many U.S. campuses and its membership numbers are constantly on the rise. On some campuses, the group’s members have even succeeded in thwarting boycott efforts.’

Writing in Haartez former official at the European Commission, Mose Apelblat concludes that the Israeli government’s response to BDS – well funded though it is – has been “shoddy, uncoordinated and incoherent.”

‘Besides the Foreign Ministry, the lead ministry responsible for the coordination of the state’s efforts in this area, two other ministries – the Strategy Affairs Ministry and the Ministry for the Diaspora and Public Diplomacy – have been charged since 2009 to join Israel’s communication effort. The Foreign Ministry alone has 68 permanent officials, 10 interns, eight external advisers and 30 people at 15 representations abroad all busy dealing with Israel’s image. But all their efforts have failed. Millions of shekels in budgets have either been wasted or left unused. The audit report lists shortcomings in the planning, management and implementation of information activities.’

As Apelblat explains, the Israeli government either ignores public opinion abroad or overreacts,

‘just as it did when the European Union published guidelines on funding projects in the occupied territories (2013) or on labeling of products from the settlements there (2015). Israel’s government often tends to dismiss legitimate criticism abroad as bottom-line fueled by anti-Semitism.

‘Anti-Semitism is hardly a charge which can be raised against Israeli patriots such as the deputy commander in chief and the former minister of defense when they criticized the erosion of the military code of ethics in Israel’s army. Would the same criticism have been aired by non-Jews abroad, they would have been accused of anti-Semitism. Jews abroad would have been accused of “self-hate”. Thus European criticism of Israel can be conveniently categorized as illegitimate, interfering and motivated by hatred.

‘Instead of taking criticism from its friends abroad seriously and reconsidering the actions that might have given rise to the criticism, Israel’s automatic reaction is to act according to the doctrine of “attack as the best defense”, and to initiate new measures whose effect can only make an already bad situation worse. Attributing reservations about Israel’s policy by other countries entirely to anti-Semitism is too easy and absolves Israel from responsibility for its own actions.

‘[…] With a poor international image Israel will suffer greatly, not least from the resulting international isolation, the alienation of Jews in the diaspora and the emigration of Israeli Jews to other countries which can offer them security and a decent living. The BDS threat, contrary to what Pfeffer claims, is real and is already affecting investment decisions, sales abroad and academic cooperation.’

Also in Haaretz this week, Amir Oren reveals that “in the absence of persuasive arguments to counter boycott calls, much less any plan to change its policies,” Israel has issued a tender for a counterdelegitimizer-in-chief. The official tender calls for someone to be the “head of a tarnishing unit, with a 41-43 rank in the social sciences ranking.” This rank is equivalent to a colonel in the army or a department head at the Shin Bet:

‘The demon confronted by the Netanyahu government is the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. While the Israel Air Force has precision-guided munitions, the war against BDS calls for new tools. Not, heaven forbid, for changing the policies which so upset many people across the world, who make a distinction between Israel proper and the settlements.

‘Nor does the state comptroller delve into the distinctions among Israel, its government and its policies. He was oblivious to the underlying roots of the world’s reservations regarding the latter, which do not imply a disqualification of the former. The comptroller’s approach is to keep his head down, asking only how much and not why, as if there were a direct causal relationship between action and result, and standards for success. This spring the comptroller published a rather negative report on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance since returning to office seven years ago, with regard to the “diplomatic and media campaign against boycott movements and the expressions of anti-Semitism overseas.” Continue reading “Israel’s shoddy, incoherent and losing battle against BDS”

The former secretary of state for international development has told the Guardian in an interview about the Chilcot report, that UK groups are using antisemitism as a smear to prevent criticism of Israeli policy, as part of an organised offensive against the BDS movement. Short believes the investigation Jeremy Corbyn has commissioned into antisemitism within Labour will find absolutely nothing to corroborate the charge:

There’s lots of good writing by lots of organisations, including Jewish organisations, saying what a load of nonsense it is. Just allegations and smearing. There is not a current of antisemitism. I’ve lived girl and woman inside and around the Labour party, and the people who are critical of Israel’s policy – and of course, lots of Jews are part of that movement of criticism – don’t say ‘Jews are horrible.’ 

She adds that the memory of arriving in Leeds as an undergraduate and hearing “a drunken man at the bus stop singing a song about ‘Hitler was right’” still haunts her. “So, I’m not saying antisemitism doesn’t exist. But I’m saying, no, I do not believe there is a problem with antisemitism in the Labour party.

“It’s not to say,” she goes on, “that there might not be people who’ve said antisemitic things. I haven’t heard them, but I find it believable that they clumsily go from their critique of Israeli policy to saying things that are antisemitic. But there isn’t a big climate of antisemitism, there isn’t. It’s just not true.”

Unlike most Labour members currently accused of antisemitism, Short has never described herself as an anti-Zionist. Despite this, she says: “Anyone who is persistently loyal to the Palestinian cause and critical of Israeli policy has been smeared as an antisemite. That’s been going on for a long time. I mean, they did it to me years ago. And it culminated and became a public issue just before the [London] mayoral election, interestingly – and now it’s all gone quiet.”

She did wince at “clumsy Ken” Livingstone’s comments about Hitler and Zionism days before the mayoral election, but insists the allegation of Labour antisemitism was an orchestrated lie. “I’m certain it was organised. I mean, it’s a matter of record that Israel is very worried about the boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions, and has organisations that try to change opinion. These people use antisemitism as a smear to prevent a fair critique of Israeli policy.”

In his ‘Farewell to the student world‘ blog in Jewish News, outgoing campaigns director of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), Russell Langer, takes a parting shot at the Malia Bouattia-led NUS. He criticises her rhetoric that included “hinting that having a large J-Soc was problematic, and repeated references to the influence of Zionist lobbies.” In the lead up to her election in April, an open letter signed by over 50 JSoc presidents accused her of antisemitism. Langer adds that,

The 2014/15 NUS National Executive Council (NEC) were so obsessed with hating Israel that it passed two boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) policies within a year and their successors even attempted to boycott Coca Cola. When these incidents happened in the past, Jewish student activists could rely on the leadership to properly condemn it but the Jewish students who were with me at this year’s conference watched the majority of delegates vote for a president who still hadn’t fully addressed the concerns of Jewish students.

[…] When those on NEC choose to play the politics of division by importing foreign conflicts onto our campuses and blaming what they see as anti-Muslim policies on ‘Zionist lobbies’, NUS is failing all students.

The ex-UJS campaigns director complains about the importation of “foreign conflicts onto our campuses,” but UK Jewish Societies make major efforts to promote Israel on those same campuses, working closely with the Israeli state.

On Tuesday, Jewish News reported that “in the wake of a Jewish society campaign led by high-profile groups and individuals including the Israeli embassy and Jonathan Turner, the chair of UK Lawyers for Israel,” the UCL Board of Trustees decided that the resolutions and mandates of its BDS motion passed on 8 March “cannot be legally implemented.”

Speaking to the Jewish News, Adam Schapira, the former President of UCL Jewish Society, said that he ‘expects to see this motion entirely removed from UCLU’s record’. He blasted UCLU’s actions in passing the motion as a ‘serious failure’ – but billed their latest announcement part of a ‘significant wave of success’ in overturning BDS legislation.

STATEMENT REGARDING BDS AT UCLU:

We are delighted that the Board of Trustees have overturned this insidious BDS… https://t.co/hiRRHonHXK

— UCL Jewish Society (@UCL_JSoc) June 13, 2016

In the updated motion the inoperable parts have been crossed out. They include the resolution to “raise awareness of the Palestinian suffering amongst our students explaining the union stance,” and “to work with students to publish a report on academic, corporate and economic links between the university and companies or institutions that participate in or are complicit in Israeli violations of international law.”

With the departure of Langer, Liron Velleman is the new Campaigns Officer of UJS. Velleman is also Youth & Students Officer of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), and recently referred to non-Zionist Jews as “contrary” imposters. JLM is an affiliate both of the Israeli Labour Party which in office has promoted the building of settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories, and the World Zionist Organization, which has channelled funds to the illegal settlements. As veteran human rights campaigner Diana Neslen noted last month, some Labour MPs that are members of JLM “are not only dissatisfied with the witch hunt that they have unleashed in the Labour party, but are also in league with a foreign political party whose ethos is distinctly racist.” Continue reading “Student Israel apologist sees divisiveness – but only when on the losing side”

Read the article in full here.

Tony Greenstein replies to Paul Bogdanor’s ‘An Antisemitic Hoax: Lenni Brenner on Zionist ‘Collaboration’ With the Nazis’.

Fathom is the on-line journal of BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre.  Its editorial advisory board is a who’s who of Zionist academics, journalists and ex-military personnel.  It is a good example of how Zionist academics seamlessly intertwine with Israel’s military industrial complex.  Fathom’s editor is the right-wing British academic Professor Alan Johnson

When Ken Livingstone stated, during the course of defending Naz Shah MP against accusations of anti-Semitism, that ‘when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.’ , the Zionists and their sycophants were outraged.  How could anyone make such an accusation?  Livingstone’s statement focused attention on the murky history of Zionist relations with Nazi Germany.

The hypocrisy of  Zionism’s defenders is breathtaking.  Zionists never tire of wheeling out the holocaust whenever it suits them.  It was Abba Eban, the Labour Zionist Foreign Secretary who called the Green Line between pre-1967 Israel and the West Bank the ‘Auschwitz borders’.  Netanyahu compared the Boycott of Israeli Goods to the holocaust:

‘We have a historical recollection of what happens when Jewish products are marked’

Nor is it just the Israeli Right.  Veteran Israeli holocaust historian, Saul Friedlander, who no longer calls himself a Zionist because of the way Zionism has been captured by people like Paul Bogdanor, stated that he ‘regrets that his colleagues in the Israeli left prefer not to base their arguments more on the lessons of the Holocaust.

“It’s a mistake of the left to keep clear from such a major part of our history. They are afraid of dragging the Holocaust into the political game but we can turn around the way the right uses it.”’  

Cardboard cutouts of Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister used to be dressed up in Nazi uniform by his opponents.

In short those western Zionists who pretend that the holocaust has no lessons for today are not merely mistaken but hypocritical too, since the holocaust is almost the standard metaphor in debate in Israel.

The holocaust has served as the primary justification for Israel ideologically.  It has been the alibi for every atrocity of a state based on ethno-religious supremacy.  When Israel lay siege to Beirut and bombed it, Israeli Prime Minister Begin justified it by comparing Yasir Arafat to Hitler in his bunker.  Israel’s enemies, such as Nasser and Ahmedinajad were the new Hitler.  The Palestinians have been transformed into the new Nazis.  We even had the spectacle of Benjamin Netanyahu, at the 2015 World Zionist Congress, seeking to exculpate Hitler for the extermination of European Jewry.  According to this revisionist version of history, it was the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was responsible for the Nazis adopting extermination rather than expulsion as the solution to the Jewish Question.

Zionism arose as a reaction to anti-Semitism which accepted the assumptions of the anti-Semites, viz. that Jews did not belong in other peoples’ territories – they were strangers.  Zionism understood anti-Semitism and saw it as a perfectly justifiable and understandable movement.  As the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl noted:  ‘In Paris…, I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.’

It is equally a surprise to people that the Zionists had no principled objection to the Nazis Nuremberg laws, “the most murderous legislative instrument known to European history”  Who would believe that the Zionist movement was in agreement with the Nazis over the need to for racial separation?  As the Introduction to the Nuremberg Laws of 15th September stated:  

‘If the Jews had a state of their own in which the bulk of their people were at home, the Jewish question could already be considered solved today, even for the Jews themselves. The ardent Zionists of all people have objected least of all to the basic ideas of the Nuremberg Laws, because they know that these laws are the only correct solution for the Jewish people too.’

It was because of their ideological congruity that collaboration between the Zionists and the Nazis came easily.  The Zionists were focussed on building their state, not saving Jews.   Continue reading “Why Ken Livingstone Got It Right Over Nazi Support for Zionism”