Israel lobby UK - again

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that an Israel advocacy group in the UK can get a Palestinian put away in the UK and possibly deported from the UK but this Guardian article by David Hearst did surprise me when I first saw it.

The home secretary, Theresa May, was warned by senior officials in the UK Border Agency not to deport a Palestinian activist accused of antisemitism, saying the evidence against him was disputed, open to legal challenge and that the case was "very finely balanced".

Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Northern branch of the Islamic Movement, who has been in Britain, in prison and on bail since his arrest three months ago, will appeal against his deportation before an immigration and asylum tribunal on Monday.

Emails seen by the Guardian, show that May was determined to find a reason to exclude Salah, before the evidence against him had been verified.

Just 17 minutes after receiving a report on the activist, prepared by Michael Whine of the Community Security Trust, a UK charity monitoring antisemitism, Faye Johnson, private secretary to the home secretary, emailed about a parliamentary event Salah was due to attend.

"Is there anything that we can do to prevent him from attending (eg could we exclude him on the grounds of unacceptable behaviour?)" she wrote. Whine's report said Salah's record of provocative statements carried a risk that his presence in the UK could have "a radicalising impact" on his audiences.

The whole case against Raed Salah, apart from the fact that he is a Palestinian (with Israeli citizenship) critic of Israel revolves around a load of disputed quotes.

Salah's legal team say the quotes he is alleged to have said and written were doctored to make them sound antisemitic. There is no suggestion that CST doctored the quotes.

Ok, that's nice. The CST can get a guy banned or imprisoned then deported but, oh no, it doesn't doctor quotes.

The end of zionism?

This David Hearst article appeared in the main section of The Guardian yesterday.  In it he explores the possibility of a one state solution for Palestine:

 If Israel ends its occupation of the West Bank, and allows it to join with Gaza, the result could be two states – a Palestinian one alongside an Israeli one. But if you accompany that with a civil rights movement inside Israel, the goal could be very different – a secular, democratic state "for all its citizens", where Jew, Christian and Muslim are equal. A one-state solution in which Jewish citizens lose an inbuilt majority. The end of Zionism, no less.

It's a fairly innocuous article but it seems to have caused some panic at Harry's Place.

UPDATE: From Wodge in the comments:  The panic seems to have spread with Norman Geras reporting the article under the headline, To hell with the Jews, no less.  In his panic he went and let on as to why Jews are not a suitable case for self-determination which he takes to mean granting people of a given ethnicity a power of veto as to whether compatriots can come, remain or return to their homeland.  A quick surf around other usual suspects suggests that it must be August and some dodgy academics are on holiday.