Free Speech on Israel

With barely a month to go to put forward motions to this year’s Labour Party conference, supporters of Free Speech on Israel are fighting back against the smear campaign which has branded anti-racist activists antisemitic because of their support for justice for Palestine. One of the most high-profile victims, Jackie Walker, had her suspension from the party revoked on Friday after taking an uncompromising stand.

Labour Party members have until June 24 to take decisions in their constituencies on resolutions, rule changes, constitutional amendments and delegates to represent them at the annual conference in Liverpool on September 24-28. The same deadline applies to nominations for places on the National Executive Committee (NEC).

The Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, backed by the right-wing “Progress” faction, is pushing relentlessly for a change to membership rules that would allow proponents of one particular ideology to intimidate and exclude people who oppose them. It is being deliberately rushed through in order to pre-empt the findings of the Shami Chakrabarti inquiry which is due to report after the June 24 conference deadline.

The rule change the JLM and Progress are proposing seeks to insert the following new paragraph E (at Clause I, section 4 (‘Exclusions’) in the party’s membership rules:

Where a member is responsible for a hate incident, being defined as something where the victim or anyone else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on disability, race, religion, transgender identity, or sexual orientation, the NEC may have the right to impose the appropriate disciplinary options ….(our emphasis)

This is a deliberate misreading of the Macpherson report recommendation that a victim’s perception must be taken into account in a case of hate crime. Macpherson did NOT intend to empower an alleged “victim or anyone else” to determine when a hate crime was being committed without reference to any other criteria. If passed, Zionists will use their new rule to claim that someone attacking their political beliefs is attacking their race or religion, making them an antisemite and therefore guilty of a hate crime.

The rule change is being presented as if it is needed to protect Labour Party members from racism and has received the backing of some on the NEC. But if a hate crime is committed there are laws that can – and should – be brought into play. The motivation of JLM and Progress – neither of which has any record of support for anti-racist struggles in British society at large – is to make it impossible to question the ideology which gave rise to the creation of a racially exclusive Israeli state on land stolen from the Palestinians.

This pernicious rule change motion needs to be opposed, and it is being opposed. There is a fine example here of the incredulity of its supporters when they were thwarted in Hampstead and Kilburn Labour Party last Thursday.

There are also a growing number of examples of positive resolutions being passed after thoughtful debate in labour movement organisations around the country. Below are just a few that we have heard about. Please let us know if you are aware of others.

You can download this leaflet about the JLM to hand out at labour movement meetings.

BELOW ARE SEVERAL RESOLUTIONS PASSED IN LABOUR MOVEMENT ORGANISATIONS IN SUPPORT OF FREE SPEECH ON ISRAEL Continue reading “Free Speech on Israel campaigners fight back against smears and intimidation in UK Labour”

You can download this leaflet here to hand out at CLP, TU, etc, meetings

Baroness Royall’s inquiry into charges of antisemitism against Oxford University Labour Club has concluded that there was no institutional antisemitism. But the inquiry recommends that all Labour student clubs receive training in antisemitism from the Jewish Labour Movement. This idea was first put forward in April by the Progress think tank: there is a strong overlap between Progress and the lobby group Labour Friends of Israel. Progress called for all Labour’s National Executive Committee members to be “properly trained on modern antisemitism by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) or its nominee.”

We deplore the proposal to task Jewish Labour Movement with training Labour Party branches and organisations. 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.

JLM has proposed a change to the Labour Party Membership rules that gives “due regard to the Macpherson definition of a racist incident which places particular value upon the perception of the victim/victim group.” This deliberately distorts the Macpherson report recommendation that a victim’s perception had to be taken into account in a case of hate crime; it was not intended to empower an alleged victim to determine when a hate crime was being committed without reference to any other criteria. It allows pro-Palestinian, pro-boycott or anti-Israel statements to be labelled antisemitic, thus shutting down debate on Israel.

Some Labour Party members are being persuaded to join the JLM in the mistaken belief that this is a way of showing solidarity with “the Jewish community.”

The Free Speech on Israel network strongly objects to the Labour Party’s cooperation with the Jewish Labour Movement on combatting racism, given the latter’s record:

• The Jewish Labour Movement, founded in 2004, is the successor organisation to Poale Zion. Earlier this year, the Israeli Labour Party to which it is affiliated, unanimously supported a plan that Israeli professor Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University said “would have been applauded by Apartheid South Africa.”

• Israeli Labour Party leader Isaac Herzog has stated that “we wish to separate from as many Palestinians as possible, as quickly as possible….we’ll erect a big wall between us. That is the kind of co-existence that is possible right now.” In  April, Herzog said the Labour Party shouldn’t give the impression of being “Arab lovers.”

• Since Poale Zion officially affiliated to the British Labour party in 1920, it has been able to retain an influence at the highest levels of the Labour Party, despite growing evidence of the existence, resistance and suffering of Palestinians, and the increasingly nationalist and colonialist character of the militarised Israeli state.

• Over the decades many Labour figures have remained supportive of Israel despite the devastating consequences of Israel’s occupation for the Palestinians, and the role of the Israeli Labour Party in segregationist and illegal policies.

Continue reading “Leaflet: Why the JLM does not represent Labour’s Jewish members”

You can view and download this leaflet here

See also Walthamstow Labour Party fundraiser suspended – who had it in for David Watson?

Please read the article in full on Electronic Intifada

by Michael Deas, 25 May 2016

The Netherlands has affirmed that activism calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel is a form of free speech. In response to parliamentary questions from Green Left MP Rik Grashoff, Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders said that

statements or meetings concerning BDS are protected by freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as enshrined in the Dutch constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Koenders also said that the Dutch government regularly discusses BDS with Israel and makes clear to Israel that it “opposes a boycott of Israel, but that endorsing BDS falls under freedom of expression.”

The Dutch foreign minister’s comments are a serious blow to Israel’s relentless efforts to criminalize BDS and silence supporters of Palestinian rights. At Israel’s urging, governments in the US, UK, France, Canada and elsewhere are introducing anti-democratic legislation and taking other repressive measures to undermine the BDS movement.

[…]  The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is inviting supporters of free speech and Palestinian rights to co-sign an appeal to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein urging him to take action to protect the rights of Palestinian, Israeli and international BDS activists.

Continue reading here

A Response to Didi Herman’s ‘Zionisms’

By Tony Greenstein

In an article ‘Zionisms’ in Critical Thinking of 29th April 2016 Didi Herman argues that the left should drop the use of the term ‘Zionism’. I disagree. The term Zionism is as relevant now as it has ever been.

This argument is not taking place in a vacuum but in the context of a concerted attempt to depict the anti-Zionist left, including Black and ethnic minority members of the Labour Party, as anti-Semites. Part of the narrative of the defamers is that Zionism has become a dirty word, a term of abuse. There are those on the left who have been seduced by this special pleading. Not only Didi Herman but Jon Lansman of Momentum. [Why the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’]

There is, as always, when dealing with the Zionist hasbara [propaganda] a certain amount of disingenuousness. On the one hand we have the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis asserting that ‘One can no more separate it [Zionism] from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.’ and then Didi writes that ‘scholars replace Jews and Judiasm with Zionists and Zionism, and label Zionism ‘racist’ or part of a ‘racial contract’ or ‘apartheid’.]  I’m sorry Didi, but it’s not left-wing scholars but right-wing Zionists who conflate Zionism and being Jewish. It hardly takes a logician to work out that if Judaism and Zionism are one and the same, then Jews must indeed be responsible for the actions of the Israeli state. Continue reading “Why Zionism is as relevant now as it ever was”

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.