Free Speech on Israel

Last year, former National Union of Students President, Megan Dunn, launched an independent review into whether the NUS is institutionally racist. The audit was ordered in response to claims that were made at a meeting of the national executive committee by Malia Bouattia, then NUS Black Students’ Officer. Times Higher Education reported on 5 October that Bouattia was not the only member of the union’s top team to make allegations of institutional racism:

Shelly Asquith, the vice-president (welfare), tweeted that the “student movement [and] its institutions are institutionally racist”. “People need to properly accept that before we can begin to overcome it,” she said. […] Earlier this summer, Sorana Vieru, the vice-president (higher education), criticised universities’ “white, male and stale” environment, and the fact that they employ so few black female professors, in an interview with Times Higher Education.

At the time, the organisation’s chief executive, Simon Blake expected the review to be completed by January. In a letter to NUS staff he said the appointees,

will be asked to explore and understand whether there is evidence of direct or indirect racism within [the] NUS’s culture, systems, policies, processes and structures and make recommendations about any changes we can make to ensure we fulfil our commitment to being an organisation that is truly fair, open, accessible and representative of all.

Six months later, Malia Bouattia was elected as NUS President, in spite of a vicious campaign led by JSocs to paint her as an anti-Semite and ISIS sympathiser. Aliya Yule described the reaction:

her election has sparked an array of attacks against her in the media based on racist lies. […] Calls to disaffiliate from NUS have largely been mobilised on the back of these attacks, alongside attempts to belittle and deride the work that NUS does.[…] Some students have argued that we should disaffiliate from NUS because of accusations of anti-Semitism levelled at Malia, many of which were derived from comments taken out of context. Articles reporting these accusations have taken recourse to Islamophobic stereotypes, suggesting they go hand in hand with her being Muslim.

Student campaigns to disaffiliate with NUS have been launched at several universities, including Oxford and Cambridge. JC reports that JSocs at both universities are officially supporting disaffiliation.

Lincoln and Newcastle have already disaffiliated. It has become a battleground between those who feel they should stay in order to force through change (see poster above), and those who seek to paint NUS as unreformable, or in the words of pro-Israel MP and former NUS president, Wes Streeting, “NUS is lost I’m afraid. It’s had good leadership from Megan Dunn, but it no longer represents students well.”

It is in this febrile atmosphere, that the internal review into institutional racism is being invoked by those in the ‘Yes to NUS’ campaign to win over Zionists.

In Cherwell yesterday, Rivka Micklethwaite made a heartfelt plea: expressing her strong support for Bouattia, she writes that “as a Jewish student at Oxford,” she believed leaving would be “damaging to the fight against anti-Semitism”: Continue reading “The battle for the soul of the NUS and a hijacked review into institutional racism”

In a further sign that the Palestinian civil society campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) is considered by Israel’s allies to be a threat to the impunity it has long enjoyed, the Prime Minister of France, Manuel Valls, invited Israeli students to study in France by denouncing BDS as motivated by antisemitism:

This invitation is…the most sincere response to those who talk of nothing but boycott. Behind this boycott we know well what there is: not only an opposition, but also a loathing of the State of Israel, the loathing of a Jewish home, and therefore of Jews as a whole.

Valls was addressing an audience during a ceremony on Sunday at Tel Aviv University in which the George Wise Medal was conferred on him. The medal commemorates Tel Aviv University’s founding President and is awarded to long-standing Israel advocates.

The Prime Minister said that it was France’s ‘role and duty’ to never give way before those that want to ‘hinder a democracy;’ that it was the ‘fight of a lifetime’ against antisemitism, ‘a battle of civilisation.’ To applause, Valls said,

When one attacks Jews, one of course attacks France and attacks civilisation.

Before receiving the medal, university officials praised Valls as ‘a friend of Israel.’ François Heilbronn, president of French Friends of Tel Aviv University, told Valls:

You are not one of those ministers that once appointed instantly forget that they are friends of Israel.

France has introduced anti-democratic legislation and taken other repressive measures to undermine the BDS movement. One activist was arrested simply for wearing a BDS t-shirt.

Tel Aviv University (TAU) is linked to an array of services to the Israeli state including in its most oppressive modes. TAU has particularly intense connections with the Israeli military. The cover story of its Winter Review 2008/9  is an account of the 64 projects for the military that were then ongoing. Continue reading “French Prime Minister tells audience in Tel Aviv that behind the boycott is a ‘loathing’ of all Jews”

This is a policy motion for organisations to define their stance and mandate their delegates; local branches of organisations might forward this resolution to their regional and national bodies. Another issue that organisations can cite as “not antisemitic” is the critique of Zionist ideology.

This (organisation) deplores antisemitism. But we believe the press outcry on alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party was designed, in league with Israel’s apologists and censors, to damage the party and its leadership. This does no service to a genuine fight against this hate crime.

We deplore the proposal to task Jewish Labour Movement with training Labour Party branches and organisations in recognising and defining antisemitism. JLM is an affiliate both of the Israel 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.

We oppose censorship of legitimate and valid political action such as Palestine solidarity. We assert our right to speak and organise against the State of Israel’s systemic, historic and ongoing ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and violations of human rights and international law, and to support Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against those complicit in these injustices.

This (organisation) therefore, urges the Labour Party to: Continue reading “Model motion for labour movement on antisemitism allegations”

Israel Labor ‘no place for radical leftists;’ JLM ‘no place for Palestine advocates’

Recalling Herzog’s anti-Arab racism, the Haaretz columnist Sayed Kashua mused today that, ‘The choice of the name “Zionist Union” left no room for doubt.’ Isaac Herzog is Chairman of the Zionist Union and leader of the Israeli Labour Party, which is affiliated to the UK Jewish Labour Movement (JLM).

Haaretz reports that Herzog has maintained there was “no place in Zionist Union for the radical left.” Here, the Jewish Labour Movement are trying to impose a rule change on the Labour Party that could see members (often labelled the hard left) suspended for using Zionist as a pejorative.

Herzog was referring to former leader Shelly Yacimovich and other party members who opposed his move to join the government. He added that his resignation from the leadership of the party following the failure of his negotiations to enter the Likud-led coalition would,

“provide dubious satisfaction to left-wing radicals… and the radical right who dragged along [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”

On Saturday, Herzog – who insisted in April that his party were no ‘Arab lovers’ – maintained that the failure of his coalition negotiations with the Netanyahu government had prevented him from taking “a step that would definitely have changed the entire region:”

With the launch of a regional diplomatic initiative, which I was planning with Netanyahu and international elements, Israel would for the first time have related positively to elements of the Arab peace plan and begun, for the first time, to negotiate with the Arab states.

Sayed Kashua is creator of the popular Israeli TV series ‘Arab Labour’ and was recalling an encounter he had with Herzog three years ago. His producer had suggested they offer the part of the character of a Labor politician based on Herzog to the man himself. In the course of their meeting the latter betrayed his casual racism towards Palestinian Arabs: Continue reading “Two sides of the Zionist Labour coin”

I had to read this twice, so sure was I that I had misinterpreted Phillips’ words. Framed by the usual vitriolic attack on ‘lefties’ and a scornful rejection of the European fascism/Israel analogy, the Jewish Chronicle columnist betrays an uncharacteristic unease with Israeli society:

In [Major-General Yair Golan’s] speech on, of all things, Holocaust remembrance day he said: “If there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe – particularly in Germany – 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016.”

The uproar over his apparent equation of Israeli society with Nazi Germany obscured other things he said which were sound. In an apparent reference to Sergeant Elor Azaria, whose trial for manslaughter after shooting a wounded Palestinian on the ground has divided the country, Golan said the IDF should be proud that it probes “problematic behaviour” with courage.

It is very troubling that so many Israelis seem not to grasp the moral distinction between shooting in cold blood someone who poses no threat and defending against attack. There are also disturbing trends indeed in Israeli society, from violent anti-Arab “hilltop youth” and “price-tag” terrorists to prejudice against Ethiopian Jews.

Phillips, alone, apparently believes one can disassociate Golan’s revulsion at the morally ‘flawed’ Israeli occupation forces, from his warning that Israeli society has become so callous, degraded, violent and bigoted in its rightwards drift that it resembles early 20th century European fascist regimes. Such is the muddle Melanie has got herself into, that the notorious Islamophobe can accurately illustrate fascist trends, without identifying them as such. And it doesn’t stop there; she seeks to bolster her anti-left rant by citing examples that can only give her readers pause for thought and win support for her opponents:

Yet demonising “the other” was what Golan was doing in comparing unidentified Israelis to putative or actual Nazis. That is also the signature motif of the left, demonising the non-left as fascists while accusing them of demonising “the other”.

In Israel, these are standard tactics. During the 2014 Gaza war Israel Prize laureate (and historian of French fascism) Prof Ze’ev Sternhell said there were “indicators” of fascism in Israel which was “on the brink of boiling over”, and compared the atmosphere to 1940s France. Last December Dr Ofer Cassif, a political science lecturer at the Hebrew University, called Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked “neo-Nazi scum” and wrote she was responsible for making Israel more fascist. He also told Israel Radio: “I think it’s fair to compare Israel to Germany in the 1930s, and not to the years of genocide.”

Ha’aretz does this all the time. Last December, Gideon Levy wrote that 2015 “heralded the start of blatant and unapologetic Israeli fascism”. I could go on, but you get the general idea.

Indeed we do, Melanie.

Elly Fryksos

We are told repeatedly that making any comparison between Israel’s actions and those of the Nazis is a form of antisemitism.

Reading the latest from Uri Avnery, a 92-year old Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement, it seems that both he and the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army must bear this badge of shame. Today, in a piece entitled I Was There, Avnery enters the storm of controversy surrounding comments made on Holocaust Memorial Day by General Ya’ir Golan.

Wearing his uniform, Golan recalled “the awful processes which happened in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago,” and confessed his fear at “finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in 2016.”

Avnery carefully examines what Golan said and to what extent they are true. “He compared developments in Israel to the events that led to the disintegration of the Weimar Republic. And that is a valid comparison,” writes the veteran peace campaigner who witnessed Hitler’s rise to power in person. “Things happening in Israel, especially since the last election, bear a frightening similarity to those events.”

Avnery’s article deserves to be read in full and can be found on the Gush Shalom website. Here is one excerpt:

The discrimination against the Palestinians in practically all spheres of life can be compared to the treatment of the Jews in the first phase of Nazi Germany. (The oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories resembles more the treatment of the Czechs in the “protectorate” after the Munich betrayal.)

The rain of racist bills in the Knesset, those already adopted and those in the works, strongly resembles the laws adopted by the Reichstag in the early days of the Nazi regime. Some rabbis call for a boycott of Arab shops. Like then. The call “Death to the Arabs” (“Judah verrecke”?) is regularly heard at soccer matches. A member of parliament has called for the separation between Jewish and Arab newborns in hospital. A Chief Rabbi has declared that Goyim (non-Jews) were created by God to serve the Jews. Our Ministers of Education and Culture are busy subduing the schools, theater and arts to the extreme rightist line, something known in German as Gleichschaltung. The Supreme Court, the pride of Israel, is being relentlessly attacked by the Minister of Justice. The Gaza Strip is a huge ghetto. 

Continue reading “Can Israel be compared to Nazi Germany? – A view from an Israeli who has witnessed both”

Mike Cushman

On Thursday I attended a strange event: a debate on antisemitism and anti-Zionism between Alliance for Workers Liberty, a sub-Trotskyist splinter group, and Progress, the Labour Party Blair legacy group.

But it wasn’t a debate it was a love-in between two factions you would be surprised to find in the same room without blood and severed limbs on the floors and walls when they departed.

What was their common object of affection? Why Israel, of course, but not the Israel we see every day abusing Palestinians and harassing dissident anti-Zionists. It was an Israel of their imagination moving gracefully to a two-state solution, abandoning settlements and occupation on the way.

They were joined in their embrace by representatives of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) and reciprocated their affection by continually praising the JLM as the true and only representatives of Jews in the Labour Party.

Everyone, including the JLM speakers condemned the occupation but never mentioned the Nakba. They appear to believe the occupation is an accidental aberration and not implicit in the Zionist programme from the start. Not only was the Nakba absent from their discourse so, largely, were the Palestinians even those living in 48 Israel: they were an unspoken context; only Jewish Israelis, and diaspora Jews, were objects of their concern.

In order to advance their argument they relied heavily upon a construct of ‘left antisemitism’ conceived as a visceral irrational hatred of Israel and variously described as a legacy of Stalinism and a core belief of the ultra-Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party. Obviously, like the Jew of antisemitic myth, left antisemitism is everywhere and capable of infinite disguise and malice. We were continually informed that left antisemitism was not racism but political opposition to Israel. If indeed it is a political stance one is entitled to oppose it so why is it, then, a marker for proscription and expulsion? Left antisemitism of course was not born in Stalinist Russia, they had enough old fashioned antisemitism there, they didn’t need a new variety: it was born in Israel. It was created to put a derogatory and delegitimising label on growing worldwide opposition to Israel’s crimes among progressive movements.

None of this is to deny that some people the left can be antisemitic, regrettably some fall short of the higher standards we expect of those on the left than those on the right; anyone who does fall short must be confronted, challenged and if necessary disciplined. This does not produce a political category of ‘left antisemites’ or a justification for witch hunting.

Both the speakers applauded the JLM and endorsed their claim to be the only authentic voice of Jews in the Labour Party and accordingly to be the only people who could, not educate, but train the Party on antisemitism. The JLM speaker informed us that the JLM was, in fact, highly critical of actually existing Israel and its current right-wing leadership and it was our fault for not knowing that. I have accordingly checked their website where there is no trace such demurral. What can be found is a proud statement that “We support Havoda (The Labor Party) in Israel.” The same Labor Party that, led by Ben-Gurion, orchestrated the Nakba. The party historically that has been the party of the Israel Defence (sic) Force and its assaults on Palestinians. The Party that, in its current guise of the Zionist Union, is angling to join the same right-wing coalition that the JLM claimed to abhor. No distance from Apartheid apparent there. Continue reading “A love-in with a mythical Israel”

This week, Rod Liddle was suspended from the Labour party, allegedly for Islamophobia. When he shared his thoughts with the Sun’s Harry Cole on why he had been suspended following his post on the Spectator Coffee House blog, 3 May, he coyly said that, ‘Perhaps it is my suggestion that many Muslims are not favourably inclined towards Jews that provoked my suspension from the party.’

As Zelo Street pointed out, both Liddle and Cole, as well as the Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, knew there was more; this is what Liddle wrote

Re the anti-Semitism. There are a number of broad points to make. First, it is absolutely endemic within two sections of the Labour Party – the perpetually adolescent white middle-class lefties, and the Muslims – the latter of which now comprise a significant proportion of Labour activists and voters in parts of London and the dilapidated former mill-towns of West Yorkshire and East Lancashire. And Luton. And parts of the midlands.

For many Muslims the anti-Semitism is visceral, an ingrained part of their unpleasant ideology. For the idiotic white lefties it is an adjunct to their self-loathing and hatred of firstly Britain and second the West. In both cases it is predicated as much upon envy – at Jewish success, worldwide and in Israel – as anything else. If you handed over Israel to the Palestinians they would turn it into Somalia before you could say Yom Kippur.

Liddle’s words are uncannily like those of a member of the House of Lords, Baroness Deech. Writing in Haaretz on 4 May, Deech blamed 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 implied that our government is putting at risk the lives of British Jews by allowing Muslims to make their home here. Like Liddle, she views English towns with large Muslim populations as hotbeds of antisemitism, and has been keeping a wary eye on the 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.

Even the Independent published an article by the Jewish Chronicle‘s new columnist Ben Judah that implied Bradford is a no-go area for Jews. Liddle has a well-deserved reputation as a foul-mouthed bigot whose opinions are commonplace in the right-wing media. But, as evidenced, you don’t have to look hard to see these views reflected in the liberal press, by Zionists. Pro-Israel groups with charity status are no less impolitic.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) was formed during the attack by Israel on the Palestinians in Gaza in 2014, during which over 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including 551 children. It was born from a desire not to combat anti-Semitism, but to support Israel right or wrong, and to portray anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic.

In April, within 48 hours of the publication of the flawed Channel 4/ICM survey of Muslim attitudes in Britain, CAA had produced a ‘report’ British Muslims and Antisemitism, which included this racist infographic: Continue reading “Rod Liddle and the Campaign Against Antisemitism”

In her exclusive blog post for the pro-Israel Jewish Labour Movement, Baroness Royall remarked that, although she found no evidence of institutional antisemitism,

There is too often a culture of intolerance where Jews are concerned and there are clear incidents of antisemitism. […] I am clear that in the OULC there is a cultural problem which means that Jewish students do not always feel welcome. And we have to take action to change this situation. Many students reported that should a Jewish student preface a remark “as a Jew …” they are likely to face ridicule and behaviour that would not be acceptable for someone saying “as a woman …” or “as an Afro-Caribbean”.  This should not be tolerated.

The Chakrabarti inquiry vice-chair concluded,

We should not rest until we can be confident that Jews once more feel comfortable in all parts of our Party and Movement.

No details of these ‘clear incidents of antisemitism’ have been released. However, the example Royall uses to prove OULC is an unwelcome place for Jewish students is particularly interesting in light of the recent labelling of anti-Zionist Jews as ‘Asajews,’ by Israel supporters who want to reserve the right to this preface for Zionists.

It is worth investigating what statement follows this preface, however: is it an apology for Israel, or a criticism of Israel? Jews are entitled to invoke their Jewishness to strengthen their political point, but if they do so in an attempt to legitimise settler-colonialism and racial segregation, is it any wonder they are greeted with exasperation and even derision by human rights defenders, including other Jews?

Royall’s recommendation has been taken on board by the supine Oxford University Labour Club:
The issue of a ‘cultural’ problem and the discomfort of young pro-Israel Jews has been brilliantly analysed by Robert Cohen in his article in March, ‘Young liberal Zionists, if you’re serious about peace, let go and move on‘.

Cohen’s piece is worth reading in full; here is a long excerpt:

‘Fear, intimidation, distress and discomfort. That’s the lexicon of life for young liberal Zionists in Britain today. The pro-peace, anti-occupation, two-state supporting Jews are certainly having a rough time of it.

‘So why aren’t I more sympathetic? After all, doesn’t the fact that moderate well-meaning Jewish supporters of Israel are under attack, point to what really lies behind all of this hostility? Old fashioned, straight forward, anti-Semitism. And isn’t it the political left that’s stoking all the trouble this time around?

‘While I’ve no doubt that anti-Semitism exists in the Labour Party (and across the political spectrum for that matter) there’s a whole lot more to it than that. Something else is at play here. What we’re witnessing is an uncomfortable reckoning for young diaspora Jews who are unable to see or accept what has happened to Jews, Judaism and Jewish identity over the last 100 years.

‘[…] On the 15 February Alex Chalmers, the Jewish Co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club, announced his resignation on Facebook after his fellow Labour Club members voted to support the forthcoming Israeli Apartheid Week activities on campus.

“…a large proportion of both Oxford University Labour Club and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews.”

‘He went on:

“Despite its avowed commitment to liberation, the attitude of certain members of the club towards certain disadvantaged groups was becoming poisonous.”

[…] ‘I know why it hurts

‘So a lot of unhappy and uncomfortable young Jews who think of themselves as progressive activists for Middle East peace. I can understand their pain. I too was stuck in the mindset of Liberal Zionism for far too long. Continue reading “Why it’s time for young Zionists to stop being offended by solidarity with Palestinians”

Writing of the antisemitism controversy in the Jewish Chronicle on 5 May, Tony Klug warned that,

this whole saga might generate a resentment against Jews…. It is time to calm down, end the hysteria and restore a sense of proportion…. While antisemitism is monstrous – and, like all forms of racism, should be vigorously dealt with – false accusations of antisemitism are monstrous too.

The groups orchestrating the controversy, in our universities and the Labour Party, including the Union of Jewish Students and the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), are unaffected by this reasoning. Indeed, in the case of JLM, the controversy has become an effective recruiting tool.

The saga – and accompanying hysteria – has seen people committed to universal human rights being charged with being antisemites, and suspended from the Labour party. It has also seen Labour members who consider themselves anti-racists joining the Jewish Labour Movement out of a mistaken wish to show ‘solidarity with Jewish people.’ A move that centre-left think tank, Progress has encouraged. JLM considers itself to represent the interests of ‘Jewish people,’ and has characterised non-Zionist Jews as imposters and ‘contrary’ for perversely disagreeing with what is expected or desired of them: loyalty to Israel.

JLM derives its legitimacy from being a formal affiliate of the Labour Party. But it also organises within the pro-settlement World Zionist Organisation, and alongside its sister party in Israel, Havodah – the pro-apartheid and anti-Arab Israeli Labor Party.

JLM is committed to undermining the Palestinian civil society, human rights movement that seeks an end to Israel’s serial violations of international laws, through the non-violent tactic of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Continue reading “Why are Labour members expressing ‘solidarity’ with an anti-human rights organisation?”