To the Wizard of Oz, a Son?

I just saw the following Thomas Paine quote:

“something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.”

It's actually from Mike Marqusee's post titled, Thomas Pain on the "master fraud" of monarchy.

I assumed that, L.Frank Baum, the writer of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz must have been influenced by Thomas Paine but apparently not, not according to two Wikipedia entries here and here, anyway.

Mike Marqusee in Labour Briefing on the Fraser v UCU Employment Tribunal

From MikeMarqusee.com:

How a London court repudiated Zionist abuse of the anti-semitism charge

2013 JUNE 2

by Mike Marqusee

Tribunal blow to Israel’s advocates,
UCU vindicated

Labour Briefing, June 2013

Taunting and tainting opponents with the charge of anti-semitism is a long-standing Zionist ploy, familiar to everyone involved in the Israel-Palestine issue. As their support weakens in the face of evidence-based argument, Israel’s advocates have stepped up their use of the accusation as a means to close down debate, particularly on proposals for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

A key component in their armoury is what’s been called “lawfare”: attempts to use the courts to stifle opponents. This strategy, which has been employed in the US, France and Britain, suffered a significant reverse at the end of March, when an Employment Tribunal in London comprehensively rejected a claim made by Ronnie Fraser, of Academics for Israel, against his union, the University and College Union.

Fraser and his celebrity lawyer, Anthony Julius, argued that debates and decisions on Israel-Palestine issues within UCU amounted to “harassment” against Fraser as a Jew. They made ten specific allegations to support this charge; every one of them was dismissed by the Tribunal as false or irrelevant.

Jonathan Freedland once lauded Julius’s musings on anti-semitism as “forensic”. But when subjected to a genuinely forensic examination at the hands of the Tribunal, they were shown to be anything but. In fact, the Tribunal’s point by point demolition of Julius’s arguments shows just why Zionists are so fearful of open, fact-based, rational discussion. (For a thorough examination of the Tribunal’s findings and the aftermath, see Mark Elf’s excellent blog,http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.co.uk.)

The judges had harsh words for a number of Fraser’s witnesses, particularly the chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, Jeremy Newmark, whose testimony as to his alleged treatment at a UCU meeting was labelled “false”. Two Labour MPs, John Mann and Denis Macshane (still in Parliament when the hearings were held last autumn), appeared for Fraser but did him no favours. They were criticised by the Tribunal for giving “glib evidence…Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not to his liking.”

The Tribunal also found no evidence of the “atmosphere of intimidation” alleged by Fraser. UCU’s adherence to democratic procedures was fully exonerated. Unions in general should be relieved that the judges have found that they are not liable for psychological “damage” arising from debates among members.

Most significantly, on the core question of whether opposition to Israel or Zionism amounted to anti-semitism, the Tribunal reached a clear-cut, unimpeachable conclusion. “A belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel or any similar sentiment cannot amount to a protected characteristic,” they declare, adding “It is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness.” It’s welcome to have this simple truth, so fiercely denied by Israel’s advocates, upheld as logical and lawful.

Julius had argued that although not all Jews were Zionists the great majority felt an affinity for Israel. The Tribunal found this argument unpersuasive; a political view cannot claim “protected” status simply because many members of a particular religion or “race” hold it. If that were to be the case, political debate would be shut down. The Tribunal was clearly aware of that danger, as their final words on the case indicate: “We greatly regret that the case was ever brought. At heart, it represents an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means… The Employment Tribunals are a hard-pressed public service and it is not right that their limited resources should be squandered as they have been.”

In the pro-Israel camp, the humiliating ruling has caused consternation. Some are now calling for what is known as “the European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia’s ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism” to be adopted in British law. According to this definition, opposition to Zionism, descriptions of Israel as an “apartheid” or “racist “ state, and calls for boycotts are all in themselves anti-semitic. It has never had any official status within the EU and has been quietly dropped by the EUMC’s successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency. Clearly, it would endow Israel and supporters of Israel with a protected status enjoyed by no other state or political opinion. This from people who accuse their opponents of “singling out Israel”. Worryingly, a similar definition was adopted last year by the California state legislature, without a single vote against.

It apparently does not trouble the self-appointed protectors of the Jewish community that inscribing the “working definition” into law would make the British state the adjudicator on what does and does not constitute Jewishness. Historically, Jewish freedom and equality has been advanced as and when the state’s role in relation to religion opinion has been diminished. Here we see again how the Zionists’ abuse of the anti-semitism charge actually undermines the real struggle against anti-semitism.

There’s been no mention of the Tribunal ruling anywhere in the mainstream media. Of course, had the judges found the UCU guilty of “harassing” its Jewish members, the story would have been on every front page.

[Mike Marqusee is the author of If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew (Verso).]

Actually there has been one mention of the case in the mainstream media and that was in a complete pack of lies by Howard Jacobson, as predictable as a dog returning to its own vomit.

Supreme and Other Sacrifices

Here's a very good post by Mike Marqusee, Remembering Szmul Zygielbojm:

Seventy years ago, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was crushed. In London, Szmul Zygielbojm took his own life in protest. He was a Polish Jew, a socialist and the representative of the Bund (the Jewish workers’ party) in the Polish government in exile.

He left behind a letter in which he explained his action:

“The latest news that has reached us from Poland makes it clear beyond any doubt that the Germans are now murdering the last remnants of the Jews in Poland with unbridled cruelty. Behind the walls of the ghetto the last act of this tragedy is now being played out.

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenceless millions – tortured children, women and men – they have become partners to the responsibility.

… I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, in their mass grave.

By my death, I wish to make the strongest possible protest against the passivity with which the world is looking on and permitting the extermination of the Jewish people. I know how little life is worth today, but since I was unable to do anything during my life, perhaps by my death I shall help to break down the indifference of those who have the possibility even now, at the last moment, to save the handful of Polish Jews who are still alive from certain annihilation.

… My life belongs to the Jewish people of Poland, and therefore I hand it over to them now. I yearn that the remnant that has remained of the millions of Polish Jews may live to see liberation together with the Polish masses, and that it shall be permitted to breathe freely in Poland and in a world of freedom and socialistic justice, in compensation for the inhuman suffering and torture inflicted on them. And I believe that such a Poland will arise and such a world will come about…”

Zygielbojm’s suicide was a deeply reasoned and socially responsible act. But according to the values prevailing in our own society, it should be dismissed or even condemned as a “futile gesture”, a “pointless sacrifice” – and therefore something pathological, neurotic, “self-indulgent”. All my political life I have heard this said about any sacrifice made for a just cause. It was said in the 80s about the miners who tried and failed to save their communities, and about the councillors who stood up for local democracy against rate capping and got surcharged and chucked out of politics for their pains. It’s being said now about Palestinian hunger strikers. It has been the stock-in-trade of Third Way, post-social democratic politics, where to sacrifice one’s political career or “viability” by standing up against power and prejudice is viewed as a self-evidently self-defeating folly. Surely it is this ideology of self-serving “pragmatism” that ought to be dubbed “self-indulgent”? What’s truly pathological and neurotic is the “common sense” of egocentric individualism, the obsession with personal success and status, the desperation to conform to an inhuman, destructive social order.

Antony Lerman says "Enough already!" in The Guardian and Mike Marqusee says "Enough already!" to The Guardian

Two very different issues only related by my own perception.

Antony Lerman is saying, "Enough already!" to the Jewish establishment in the UK and not for the first time.  He has an article today in  the Guardian's Comment is Free section on line titled,  The abuse of dissenting Jews is shameful.

The Jewish establishment in the UK – which includes the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, the Zionist Federation and numerous private groupings of the great and the good – is highly experienced at this. I saw it happen in the 1980s when communal leaders sought to make life impossible for the small but highly active radical Jewish Socialists' Group. And I became a target for such treatment myself when I was appointed head of the influential Jewish Policy Research (JPR) thinktank for a second time in 2005, an experience I recall in my book The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist.

By then I had served the community professionally for 26 years. A Zionist for decades, I was one no longer. But I wished passionately that Israel would become a democratic state for all its citizens, end the occupation, recognise the Palestinians' right of return, and acknowledge that Israel's establishment in 1948 was a Nakba, a catastrophe, for the Palestinians. I had no intention of using JPR as a platform for advocating these views but rather made one of my principal aims creating space for Jewish critical thinking and debate about how Jews should relate to Israel, to its policies towards Palestinians and to the serious impact of its actions on European Jews. I believed that only through open and civil discussion of these issues could the necessary change in diaspora Jewish opinion occur.

I looked for the "article history" which used to be a feature of The Guardian's on line articles but they no longer have it so I don't know if the article appeared in print.  It made me think of a complaint Mike Marqusee made recently about how The Guardian exploits journalists by relegating their articles to Comment is free.  Here's Mike on MikeMarqusee.com:

I submitted the article (below), on the tension between the Olympic packaging and the reality of sports, to the Guardian Comment page, hoping that some of it at least would find its way into print. The editors liked the piece and asked me to cut it down to the appropriate length, which I was happy to do. Then, without consulting with me, they stuck it on the Cif website (not the print edition) under the crass and inapposite headline “Spare us the jingoistic Olympic hype.”

Inevitably readers responded to the headline rather than the article, and within hours there were hundreds of angry posts abusing me for being a killjoy and / or ‘anti-British’. The abuse is what you get for contributing anything contentious to Cif and it goes with the territory. But in this case it was made even more pointless than usual by the way the Guardian packaged the article.

Of course, this is only a minor irritation. Editors reserve the right to write headlines and I accept that, though I do think they have an obligation to write headlines that reflect accurately the content and tone of the articles.

There is however a more important issue involved, which is the Cif website and how it treats contributors in general.

Some time ago I resolved not to contribute articles to Cif (as opposed to the print edition) because the rate of pay was so insulting and so injurious to journalism. Many contributors are not paid at all and those who are, including me, receive £90 for 800-1200 words, a small fraction of the minimum NUJ rate, and not remotely a reflection of the labour, skill, research, and accumulated expertise involved in creating the article. I know that for many free-lance writers, including myself, £90 is not to be sneezed at, but the long term cost to our dignity and our craft is just too high. We all want our writings to be circulated as widely as possible, but the Guardian is exploiting that desire to secure virtually cost-free copy. This copy is then used to attract readers and generate revenues for the Guardian, none of which trickles back to the contributors.

If free-lancers enjoyed the slightest degree of industrial muscle, the Cif scam would have been busted long before now. All I can say to my NUJ comrades on the Guardian staff is that you shouldn’t be letting this happen.

There are, of course, other issues with Cif.

PS, In his article, Antony Lerman mentions but modestly doesn't link to his book, The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist.