The Video the Board of Deputies, Momentum's Jon Lansman & Politics Home tried to ban

Sheesh, I thought this video was lost and gone forever.   I first heard about it via this piece in Politics Home.  Here look:

A controversial video criticised as a “slap in the face” by Jewish campaign group is still posted on Jeremy Corbyn’s official Facebook page, PoliticsHome can reveal.

The film, made by Mr Corbyn’s campaign team, features his supporters responding to a number of accusations often levelled at the Labour leader’s backers.

One of the questions is ‘Do you promote anti-Semitism?’ – in reference to a string of suspensions and expulsions over the last year.

One of the participants in the video throws away a piece of paper with the question written on it and says “so that’s gone as well”.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews spoke to veteran left-winger Jon Lansman, Mr Corbyn's campaign director, who apparently agreed to withdraw the video.

It has since been taken down from YouTube and the main page of Mr Corbyn’s Facebook account, but it is still available to view on the ‘videos’ section of his page.

“The dismissive video was a ‘slap in the face’ for the Jewish community,” said Board of Deputies chief executive Gillian Merron in a statement released last night.

“Having spoken directly to campaign director Jon Lansman, the Jeremy for Labour campaign now recognises the inappropriate message conveyed and has committed to remove the video and apologise. This is the right result.

Now, after a couple more paragraphs Politics Home hosted the video that the Board of Deputies had complained about and Jon Lansman had apologised for but now look:

I think we can guess that under the capitulationist advice of Jon Lansman, Jeremy Corbyn's Facebook probably zapped the video too.  I asked one of the participants if they retained a copy but they hadn't. I was getting frantic.  Even when Politics Home hosted the video it couldn't be downloaded.   But when you see the video you will see that there was nothing in it to complain about or to apologise for which I am guessing is why Politics Home removed it.  And now thanks to Jamie Stern-Weiner who found it on YouTube here it is:

So just like the whole of the antisemitism smear campaign against leftists and Palestine solidarity supporters this is yet another case of "nothing to see here", which in the case of Politics Home and probably Corbyn's Facebook page is now literally true.

PS: I've just seen that Harry's Place has missed the point of the removal of the video and hosted it on their racist site.  It was actually HP's David Toube (he calls himself Habibi) who uploaded it to YouTube but rather smartly disabled the comments.

What the lobby could learn from the lobby

For some reason the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, seemed like a watershed event to many people.  There was an immediate demand for more gun control followed by a defence of the status quo by the gun lobby led by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

On Christmas Eve, The Algemeiner (the self-styled "fastest growing Jewish newspaper in America) reported that the CEO of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, was touting Israel as a role model in preventing these mass shootings in schools.

Israel had a whole lot of school shootings, until they did one thing. They said we’re going to stop it and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then.

So said LaPierre.

Well the Israelis didn't like that:

Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told the New York Daily News that the situation in Israel was “fundamentally different” from that in the United States.

He then set out what he felt was "fundamentally different" but this is the bit that stood out to me:

It would be better not to drag Israel into what is an internal American discussion,

Perish the thought that Israel might feature in "an internal American discussion". Has Yigal Palmor ever heard of Mitt Romney or any other American presidential hopeful, successful or not?

Tangled Webb on Jewish and White supremacy

Ugly language and issues over cause and effect from one of the founding Fabians but see this from the Diary of Beatrice Webb anyway:

2 September 1929
Roused by the tragic happenings in Palestine there has buzzed around him (Sidney Webb who worked at the Colonial Office) Jews and the admirers of Jews, great and small in a state of violent grief and agitation demanding revenge and compensation. It is noteworthy that no representative of the Arabs – not even a casual admirer of the Arabs – has appeared on the scene. What one gathers from these excited persons is that the British officials on the spot, are held to be perniciously pro-Arab – not because they love the Arab but because, for one reason or another, they hate the Jew …- this may or may not be true-. Is there any principle relating to the rights of peoples to the territory in which they happen to live? I admire Jews and dislike Arabs. But the Zionist movement seems to me a gross violition of the right of the native to remain where he was born and his father and grandfather were born – if there is such a right. To talk about the return of the Jew to the land of his inheritance after an absence of 2000 years seems to me sheer nonsense and hypocritical nonsense. From whom were descended those Russian and Polish Jews? The principle which is really being asserted is the principle of selecting races for particular territories according to some peculiar needs or particular fitness. Or it may be some ideal of communal life to be realized by subsidised migration. But this process of artificially creating new communities of immigrants, brought from any parts of the world, is rather hard on the indigenous natives! The White Settlers in Kenya would seem to have as much right, on this assumption to be where they are, as the Russian Jews in Jerusalem! Yet exactly the same people – for instance Josiah Wedgwood – who denounce the White Settlers of Kenya as unwarranted intruders, are hotly in favour of the bran new Jewish colonies in Palestine…But the case for the Arab has not yet been heard; whilst the case for the Jew has been vehemently and powerfully pressed on the Government. The Zionist Movement and the mandate for a National Home for the Jews in Palestine seems to have originated in some such unequal pressure exercised by the wealthy and ubiquitous Jew on the one hand and the poor and absent Arab on the other.

Many thanks to my friend, Georgina, for typing this out. As Georgina said in her email, plus ça change.

Clause 151

Another one of those infamous clauses tucked away in a large bill going through the UK parliament.  The bill is mostly about the bill, ie the police and its full title is the police and social responsibility bill but clause 151 is included so that Israeli war criminals can visit the UK without fear of arrest for war crimes.  Here's the Morning Star from a couple of days ago:

Clause 151 would give the Director of Public Prosecutions a veto over whether an arrest warrant could be issued for war crime suspects.

This would essentially allow the government of the day a political veto over what is a legal question.

War crimes are closely defined under international law and all legal administrations have a responsibility to apply the law strictly and impartially.

Yet Israel believes that different rules should apply to itself or that conduct which would be a war crime in any other circumstance should not be viewed as such when committed by the zionist state.

And the British political Establishment supports Tel Aviv on this issue, which is why David Cameron and Gordon Brown undertook to propose this measure after former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni cancelled a visit to London to dodge a war crimes arrest warrant.

The Israelis were furious because, in common with the European Union and the US, they believe that war crimes are committed only by Africans or by countries at odds with the western allies.

Tel Aviv complained of being "singled out" for special treatment. The opposite is the case.

The demand to arrest Livni for the well-documented crimes carried out by Israeli forces in their merciless assault on Gaza was a bid to ensure that Israel is bound by the same international law as other states.

Yesterday The Guardian published a letter to show that justice still has support even in the UK parliament:

We are joining the chorus of voices against government proposals (contained in the police reform and social responsibility bill) to give the director of public prosecutions a power of veto over arrest warrants for war crimes suspects who are visiting the UK. These warrants are issued very rarely by extremely senior district judges in Westminster, and only in response to submissions from victims accompanied by substantial evidence against the suspect. Giving a power of veto to the DPP would risk: political interference by ministers in the arrest of war crimes suspects; delaying proceedings, allowing suspects to escape justice; and would constitute a gross interference with the rights of the victim and the responsibilities of the judiciary.

Ministers and diplomats are already protected by immunity when carrying out their public duties, but this change in the law would risk creating a culture of impunity in the minds of those politicians and military leaders who already treat international law with cavalier disregard. We call on parliamentarians in both houses and of all parties to support international law and reject these proposals.

Richard Burden MP 

Jeremy Corbyn MP  

Alex Cunningham MP

Mark Durkan MP

Jonathan Edwards MP

Clive Efford MP

Paul Flynn MP

Mike Hancock MP

Cathy Jamieson MP

Gerald Kaufman MP

Ian Lavery MP

Andy Love MP 

Caroline Lucas MP

Kerry McCarthy MP

John Mcdonnell MP

George Mudie MP

Ian Murray MP

Sandra Osborne MP

Yasmin Qureshi MP

Joan Ruddock MP

Bob Russell MP

Baroness Jenny Tonge

Mike Wood MP

Billy Hayes, CWU

Paul Kenny, GMB

Chris Kitchen, NUM

Kevin Courtney, NUT

Hugh Lanning, PCS

Bob Crow, RMT

Betty Hunter, Palestine Solidarity Campaign

John Austin

Victoria Brittain

Caryl Churchill

Jocelyn Hurndall

Dan Judelson

Bruce Kent

Ken Loach

Kika Markham

Prof Karma Nabulsi

David Polden

Prof Hilary Rose

Prof Steven Rose

Alexei Sayle

Clare Short

Keith Sonnet

Ahdaf Soueif

Dr Benjamin Zephaniah 

Revd Canon Garth Hewitt, Amos TrustAbe Hayeem, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine

Len Aldis, Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society

Chris Doyle, CAABU

Estella Schmid, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC)

Kate Hudson, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

Ismail Patel, Friends of Al Aqsa

Brenda Heard, Friends of Lebanon, London

Liz Davies, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers

Mary Nazzal-Batayneh, Human Rights Legal Aid Fund

Pat Price-Tomes, ICAHD UK

International Solidarity Movement (ISM) London

George Farebrother, Institute for Law Accountability and Peace

Diana Neslen, Jews for Justice for Palestinians

Martin Linton, Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East

John McHugo, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine

Daud Abdullah, Middle East Monitor (Memo)

Pat Gaffney, Pax Christi

Frank Barat, Russell Tribunal UK

Dr Alan Mackinnon, chair, Scottish CND

Hugh Humphries, Scottish Friends of Palestine

Michael Marten, Scottish Palestinian Forum

Lindsey German, Stop the War, Tahrir Swift, Women Solidarity for Independent and Unified Iraq

John Hilary, War on Want

Sarah Lasenby, NOW Network of Oxford Women for Justice and Peace

Marguerite Finn, Norwich Branch Of Women's International League Of Peace And Freedom (Wilpf)

Nigel Day, Oxford Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) ,

I wonder how LibDems are going to vote on this.

Lobby seeks ban on children's books

See this article from the American Publishers' Weekly magazine:

For the second time in four years, a Jewish group is calling for the removal of a title published by Canadian house Groundwood Books from recommended-reading lists at schools and libraries.

Anne Laurel Carter's novel The Shepherd's Granddaughter tells the story of Amani, a Palestinian girl who wants to be a shepherd. Her flock and family are threatened by encroaching Jewish settlements. This last plot point does not sit well with Jewish advocacy group B'Nai Brith. The organization issued a statement calling the book "anti-Israeli propaganda" and "a one-sided work of fiction which demonizes the Jewish State."

B'Nai Brith has written to a provincial ministry of education and Toronto's board of education to request the book's removal from recommended-reading lists. "It's not an appropriate tool. And an inappropriate tool should not be in the classroom," said Anita Bromberg, national director of legal affairs for B'Nai Brith.

Carter's novel, since being published in 2008, has been honored in eight award programs, and Groundwood thinks B'Nai Brith is unfairly targeting the title. Patsy Aldana, publisher of the Toronto-based house, said the book is "about a very important subject, and it's about a people whose stories never get told. She added: "The book has won the CLA (Canadian Library Association) award. Surely all of us are not people who are trying to invoke hatred of Israel."

The book is not part of the Toronto school board's curriculum, but it is one of 10 nominated titles in an Ontario Library Association voluntary reading program for children in grades seven and eight.

"For an organization to say to a school, you must remove this book, that's censorship," OLA executive director Shelagh Paterson said. "We would not be removing this book. And we hope that schools would not as well."

In 2006, the Toronto District School Board, the fourth largest school board in North America, restricted access to another award-winning Groundwood title about the conflict in Israel -- Deborah Ellis's Three Wishes -- after pressure from the Canadian Jewish Congress. The move was condemned by newspaper editorials and PEN Canada.

This is a mainstream American publishing industry magazine exposing the lobby. Good stuff!

The lobby in Canada

The Israel lobby in Canada is as nasty as it is anywhere if the case of Canadian MP, Libby Davies, is anything to go by. They are not content with hassling people who have made comments condemning this or that atrocity by the racist war criminals of the State of Israel, they have to get in people's faces now, ask them what they think of something or other and then go nuclear when they get an honest response. See this from Straight.com:

Vancouver East MP Libby Davies got bushwacked by a pro-Israel activist posing as a neutral – if not pro-Palestinian – blogger. After a rally for the Palestinians criticizing Israel’s deadly assault on the aid flotilla, a man approached Libby asking for an interview. As she always does, because she never hides her views, she complied. He immediately set her up with what he called a “background question.” He asked when the occupation began, 1948 or 1967.

Libby hesitated then said 1948. She made the point that the date was not important – that whatever the date the occupation was the longest in the world – and far too long.

The next day the interview appeared on YouTube. But in 24 hours it had gone nowhere – just 28 views. Then the most vociferous supporter of Israel in the NDP caucus, Thomas Mulcair, got wind of it and it escalated out of control. He went on a relentless campaign to punish Libby. The spin he helped create was that if Libby believed the occupation began in 1948 then she, ipso facto, believes that Israel has no right to exist. Libby has always gone to great lengths to make it clear that she supports Israel’s right to exist and the two-state solution endorsed by the NDP. But suddenly Jack Layton was in full-panic mode. He apologized to the Israeli ambassador. He hung Libby out to dry. He forced her to issue a public apology.

Apology? For what?

Some have criticized Libby’s statement as evidence that she does not know the history of the occupation which most mainstream commentators date from 1967 – when Israel militarily occupied the West bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights. But Libby’s problem was not that she didn’t know enough. She knew too much.

Sadly, she did indeed apologise and the lobby seems now to have gone into a feed frenzy. Her apology is here but she has many supporters in the comments that show people are far more focused on the truth that she told than the backtracking and apology.

I'm grateful to Dawg's Blawg for linking to us here at JSF. If I hadn't tracked a couple of hits from there today I wouldn't have picked up this story.

The who-ish lobby?

From today's Independent:

Israel lobby

I would thank Brian Hennessey (letter, 19 February) not to refer to the supporters of and apologists for Israel's crimes (in the US or elsewhere) as the "Jewish lobby". Many such people are not Jewish and, more to the point, many Jews (including many in the US and even Israel) deplore them as much as Mr Hennessey does.

Laurie Marks

Cambridge

That's the stuff.

Now Congress goes to the circus

Ok, it's a different circus but it's for the same "cause":



Check out the way the senators try Hebrew greetings and slogans. They look like Vulcans greeting earthlings or maybe it's the other way round.

Incidentally, like another piece of caricaturing, this is being circulated by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

US Israel lobby claims another academic victim

Here's a disturbing story in Inside Higher Ed about the Israel lobby in America trying to ruin yet another academic's career so as to stifle criticism of Israel. It's quite long but I think you'll get the gist here:

Everyone involved in the dispute over William I. Robinson talks about lines being crossed.

A tenured professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Robinson said that his critics have crossed lines of fairness by equating his criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, and that the faculty judicial system is crossing lines that are supposed to protect academic freedom by investigating him.

His critics say that he crossed a line of professionalism by sending e-mail to all of the students in one of his courses material about "parallel" images of Nazi and Israeli attacks. Some students view the material as anti-Semitic, and they quit the course and filed a grievance against him.......

At issue is an e-mail message that Robinson sent to the approximately 80 students in January in a course about sociology and globalization. The e-mail contained an an article criticizing the Israeli military's actions in Gaza. Part of the e-mail was an assemblage of photos from Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews and from Israel's actions in Gaza. Students were invited to look at the "parallel images." A message from Robinson argued that Gaza would be like "Israel's Warsaw."

In February, the Anti-Defamation League's Santa Barbara office wrote to Robinson to protest the e-mail and to urge him to repudiate it.

It's always a toughie when cutting bits from an article. What to include, what to omit, that sort of thing. Here's a professor, a tenured professor, he's sent an email to eighty or so students comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto and two of the students have gone to the Anti-Defamation League about it who in turn seem to have advised the students to make a formal complaint. The complaint appears to have no substance, if you read the article in full you will see that, but the college is pretending at least to take it seriously but not so seriously that it will adhere to its own procedures, just so seriously as to save themselves from hassle from the ADL but that much could leave the professor without a job. But please read the whole thing, see if I'm wrong.

Counterpunch has something on it here.

A petition has been got up for William I Robinson has been got up here.

Leading Zio-lobbyist changes tune on Tescos boycott hotline

This is bizarre. You remember that Tescos had set up a hotline for people inquiring about Israeli goods? The Jewish Chronicle picked up on the case explicitly with regard to the hotline thus:

Zionist Federation co-vice-chair Jonathan Hoffman said Israel had been made a scapegoat. “The risk is that supermarkets will say it’s too much of a problem to stock Israeli goods.”

Well then the Guardian reported on it drawing on the Jewish Chronicle thus:

Jonathan Hoffman, the Zionist Federation co-vice-chair, said Israel had been made a scapegoat, the Jewish Chronicle reported. "The risk is that supermarkets will say it's too much of a problem to stock Israeli goods," he told the newspaper.

But now Ha'aretz is on the case and Hoffman's a little more laid back about Tescos:

The supermarket chain Tesco shouldn't be blamed for introducing a special U.K. helpline for complaints about it stocking Israeli products, a leading member of Britain's Zionist lobby told Haaretz.

In yet another series of articles about this controversial topic, British media reported last week that pro-Israel groups attacked Tesco for the decision to set up the helpline, which coincided with government talks on labeling Israeli products.

"Blaming Tesco is ridiculous and unfair," said Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice chairman of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. He explained the chain store had set up the helpline in anticipation of a spate of calls by promoters of a boycott on Israeli goods responding to the government talks.

"Tesco acted as any business would act," he added. "The finger should be pointed at the British government for holding these discussions in the first place and thereby fueling efforts by seekers of a total boycott of all things Israeli."

So what happened then? The Guardian simply followed the Jewish Chronicle (plus sa change!). But how did the JC get it so wrong?

Well the answer, I'm guessing, is that they didn't get it wrong. The ZF got on Tescos case but it was indeed the UK government that responded to Palestine solidarity pressure by calling in all the big stores to get them up front about their collaboration with the Israeli occupation. It just took the ZF a little while to realise who was responsible for what was compliance with a government ruling.

Zionist academic boycott fells Finkelstein again

Zionists have had an address by Norman Finkelstein cancelled at Clark University in Massachusetts, USA according to Boston Globe:

Clark University canceled a campus talk scheduled for later this month by controversial Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein, saying his presence "would invite controversy and not dialogue or understanding," and would conflict with a similar event scheduled around the same time.

What could be similar? Are we sure that this isn't some kind of Israel lobby intervention?

The Clark University Students for Palestinian Rights, a student-run group on the Worcester campus, had arranged for Finkelstein to speak on April 21, said Tom MacMillan, the group's president. School administrators, however, contend the topic and the timing conflict with a similar university-sponsored event.

Well of course it wasn't the Israel lobby, what a thing to say. I mean it's obvious there just happened to be someone just like the most hated man in the Israel lobby's cross hairs attending the same uni to address the same topic at roughly the same time.

In a letter to the university's campus newspaper, Clark's president, John Bassett, wrote: "The university remains committed to inviting a wide range of speakers to encourage diversity of opinions on controversial topics. My decision was predicated on its untimely and unfortunate scheduling."

Well if the university president confirms the university's reasoning, who could argue?

But what's this:

Finkelstein's address would conflict with a similar conference hosted by the university's Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, scheduled for April 23-26, two days after Finkelstein's speech, Bassett said in his letter. That conference could draw Holocaust scholars who MacMillan said may disagree with Finkelstein.

Although Bassett wrote that he did not believe that students intended Finkelstein to be an affront to the conference, he said he believed it could be viewed that way.

"It is possible that our understanding of the Middle East conflicts would be enriched by conversations with Professor Finkelstein," Bassett said in the letter. "It is my judgement, however, that having Professor Finkelstein speak on the same evening as our planned conference would only invite controversy and not dialogue or understanding."

Ah so it wasn't the fear of duplication then. But we still shouldn't assume Israel lobby influence here, should we?

The dispute came to the attention of college administrators after Hillel, a Jewish campus group, objected to Finkelstein's scheduled appearance.

Bassett met with MacMillan, two other members of the group, and a handful of other campus administrators, including public safety personnel, on Monday to discuss Finkelstein's speech, MacMillan said.

At that meeting, the administration suggested that as many as six uniformed or plain-clothes security officers attend Finkelstein's speech, in case the forum became violent, MacMillan said.

Oh my goodness! What did these Hillel types say that made the campus authorities think that such security was required?

Still, it wasn't the Israel lobby and it's antisemitic to say it was. This was Hillel. This was the Jewish lobby, not the Israel lobby at all.

Zionists and the crying of "wolf"

Tony Greenstein has a letter in the Independent today ridiculing the ridiculous Mark Gardner, Director of Communications of the Community Security Trust (CST).

The CST masquerades as the provisional wing of the Board of Deputies of British Jews though apparently the link is tenuous (see this comment from David Rosenberg). He wrote into the Independent recently to protest the use in an article of the expression "Jewish lobby" as if he would have been happier with the expression "Israel" or "zionist" lobby.

The article on the resignation of Charles Freeman was headlined, "Israel lobby blamed as Obama's choice for intelligence chief quits". The opening sentence, however, stated, "Fears over the Jewish lobby's excess influence on US foreign policy flared anew".

At root, the failure to distinguish between Israelis, pro-Israelis and Jews is the same analytical meltdown that occurs in the minds of those who physically attack and threaten British Jews every time there is a flare-up in the cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The Independent really ought to do better.

Mark Gardner

Community Security Trust

So here's Tony, two weeks later:

I agree with Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust (letters, 14 March). The failure to distinguish between Israelis, Zionists and Jews leads inexorably to attacks on Jewish people. This kind of "analytical meltdown" inevitably tars all Jewish people with the war crimes of the Israeli state.

Is this the same Mark Gardner whose organisation stewarded a solidarity rally on 7 January in support of Israel's attack on Gaza? The rally was organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, whose president, Henry Grunwald, spoke of "our", that is, Jewish, "solidarity for the people of Israel". Why did Gardner not protest about an organisation calling itself the "representative body of the British Jewish Community" organising a pro-Israeli demonstration when the Zionist Federation could have called it instead?

Or if it is the term "Jewish lobby" that Gardner objects to, then perhaps he can inform the Israeli press that this word is verboten. I refer, for example, to Israel's daily Haaretz, whose article "US Jews are losing their bond to Israel" refers to the "ever-present strength of the Jewish lobby in the US".

For years, Zionist groups have conflated Israel, Zionism and Jews, thereby accusing opponents of Israel of being anti-Semitic. Now that some people have begun to take them at their word, they are like the little boy who cried wolf so many times that when finally the wolf appeared no one believed him.

Tony Greenstein

Brighton, east sussex

It's strange that this took two weeks to appear. In the age of emails letters usually appear the next day. I wonder what they were trying to balance out here since it can't have been what it was that Tony was criticising. Ah never mind. It was published and that's what counts.

Jewish lobby clashes with Israel lobby

Here's quite an informative story of how zionism can be, horror of horrors, bad for Jews. A Jew was murdered in Yemen back in December 2008. There has been an increase in anti-Jewish feeling in the country since Israel's attack on Gaza that began in the same month. Here's the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

About three weeks ago, the Jewish Agency for Israel announced that it had brought 10 Jews to Israel. Meanwhile, the United Jewish Communities has been working behind the scenes to arrange for the immigration of some 113 members of the Yemenite community to the United States. The operation was a joint effort that included the Satmar community of Rockland County, N.Y. -- the community has ties to Yemenite Jewry and is determined that they preserve their traditional religious practices -- as well as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, FEGS, UJA-Federation of New York and the U.S. State Department.

But after Israel's daily Ma'ariv published an account this week of the UJC's effort, Jewish organizational officials involved in the emigration effort said they were worried the Yemeni government would clamp down on Jewish emigration -- especially to Israel -- possibly to placate Arab critics.

"We’re concerned this will endanger this operation and will strand the Jews there," one Jewish organizational official said of the publicity.

But now look at the sheer arrogance of the so-called Jewish Agency, or the Jewish Agency for Israel, to give it its full name and a more accurate description:

For its part, the Jewish Agency, which was the first group to go public with its effort to spirit Yemenite Jews out of the country, issued a harsh condemnation of the operation to bring the Yemenites to the United States.

"We vehemently oppose the immigration of Jews, wherever they are, to the United States, including the group of Jews from Yemen that is not going to the State of Israel," the Jewish Agency said in a statement. "The place of all Jews from the entire Diaspora -- and included in this are the Jews of Yemen -- is in their homeland, Israel."

Given that most Jews don't come from Israel shouldn't it be for individuals to decide what their homeland is? Not according to the Jewish Agency for Israel it's not.

U.S. Jewish organizational officials said they simply were following the wishes of Jews in Yemen who had expressed a preference to immigrate to America.

"Our efforts were aimed primarily at trying to get them to Israel," Joe Berkofsky, a UJC spokesman, told JTA. "Some did not want to go to Israel; they wanted to go to the States.

"Our primary mission is to help Jews in need and save Jewish lives. And if some want to come to the United States and that’s going to save their life, that’s what we need to do."

Now, assuming what's left of this ancient Jewish community is in danger, I can't help but be reminded of Ben Gurion's infamous words following Kristallnacht:

If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter----because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People.

I think roughly translated that means that the Jewish state is more important than Jewish people and that's what they call zionism.

Jaffa Orange?

Guess who launched Northern Ireland Friends of Israel? Yes, the good reverend himself, Ian Paisley. Here's the Jerusalem Post:

Ian Paisley launches Northern Ireland Friends of Israel

The Northern Ireland Friends of Israel marked its launch in Belfast last week with addresses from trade unionists, politicians and community leaders, including veteran unionist Rev. Ian Paisley.

Paisley, "the controversial firebrand preacher turned peacemaker," in NIFI's words, spoke of the similarities between the struggles of Israel and of Northern Ireland against terrorism, prayed for peace in Jerusalem and called for peace in the Middle East akin to the past few years of calm Northern Ireland has enjoyed due to power sharing between his Democratic Unionist Party and the Irish Republican Sinn Fein.

Paisley, who turns 83 on April 6, spoke at Great Hall Stormont on March 12, the seat of the Northern Ireland government, last Thursday. He is a British MP and a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and a former Northern Ireland cabinet member.

More than 200 people attended, including Northern Ireland government ministers, British MPs, and members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Also in attendance were members of the Belfast Jewish community and representatives of Christian groups.

There has been a upswing in anti-Israel activity in Northern Ireland recently, according to attorney Steven Jaffe, the lead organizer of the launch, who represents Belfast on the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

The future is orange, it would appear.

Last word on Chas Freeman

O.K., he's a professional former diplomat with a rather rare capacity for being undiplomatic, i.e., blunt, occasionally. He was done in by the Israel Uber Alles Washington cabalists, the usual suspects; he was accused of lack of integrity by hacks, knaves and thieves.

Fine. How we did we get from that to the new conventional wisdom: "he's an iconoclastic thinker"? What, did he do to earn that title? In what sense is he a "thinker" at all, let alone an iconoclastic one? Just asking.

The world in typecasts: McCain is a "maverick". Obama is a "community organizer." Chas Fremann is an "iconoclastic thinker." I'm a submarine. Please, from now on, I demand to be addressed as Your Profundity. Broadcast to you from 20,000 feet below sea level.

Zionism and the "Hitlerian concept" of statehood

Here's a remarkable opinion piece By Ben Ehrenreich in the Los Angeles Times, which will surely have the author and the editor hauled across the coals. The advertising people aren't going to be too happy either. Check out the headline and sub-title:

Zionism is the problem

The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace.

And then a flagrant breach of a law the zionists are trying to have enacted in Europe to restrict criticism of Israel to the bland and not too serious:

It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept." For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.

I'm going to leave it there and go read the rest of the article.

Did Chas Freeman know about Qastina?

I don't know but I only heard of it moments ago. It actually no longer exists since being ethnically cleansed and razed by zionist, actually Israeli, forces in July 1948. You can read about it at Palestine Remembered.

I first heard of Qastina from a throwaway line in an Uri Avnery article on the Gush Shalom site, unfortunately headed The Rape of Washington, which, since I haven't even finished reading the article might be an expression metaphorically linking the Israel lobby public execution of Chas Freeman with the prosecution of the former Israeli President, Moshe Katzav, for rape and sexual harassment.

So Katsav called a press-conference in his remote home-town, Kiryat Malakhi (the former Arab village of Qastina, now within reach of the Qassams). It was an unprecedented performance. The ex-President spoke solo for nearly three hours, airing his grievances against the police, the Attorney-General, the media, the politicians and almost everybody else. All this was, incredibly, broadcast live on all three of Israel’s TV channels, as if it had been a State of the Union address. Katsav rambled on and on, repeating himself again and again. No questions were allowed. Respected journalists, hungry for scoops, were evicted if they dared to interrupt.

So when I came back yesterday morning, I found this feat dominating the front pages of all our newspapers. Everything else was banished to the back pages.

BECAUSE OF this, Charles Freeman got hardly a mention. Yet his affair was a thousand-fold more important than all the sexual activities of our ex-President.

Freeman was called by Barack Obama’s newly-appointed Chief of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, to the post of Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. In this position, he would have been in charge of the National intelligence Estimates (NIE), summarizing the reports of all the 16 US intelligence agencies, which employ some 100,000 people at an annual cost of 50 billion dollars, and composing the estimates that are put before the President.

In Israel, this is the job of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, and the officer in charge has a huge influence on government policy. In October 1973, the then intelligence chief disregarded all reports to the contrary and informed the government that there was only a “low probability” of an Egyptian attack. A few days later the Egyptian army crossed the canal.

Throughout the 1990’s, the man in charge of intelligence estimates, Amos Gilad, deliberately misled the government into believing that Yasser Arafat was deceiving them and was actually plotting the destruction of Israel. Gilad was later openly accused by his subordinates of suppressing their expert reports and submitting estimates of his own, which were not based on any intelligence whatsoever. Later, as the guru of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Gilad coined the phrase “We have no Palestinian partner for peace”.

In the US, the intelligence chiefs famously supplied President George W. Bush with the (false) intelligence he needed to justify his invasion of Iraq.

All this shows how vitally important it is to have an estimates chief of intellectual integrity and wide experience and knowledge. Admiral Blair could not have chosen a better person than Charles Freeman, a man of sterling character and uncontested expertise, especially about China and the Arab world.

And that was his undoing.

Typical Avnery. Israel lobby bad therefore non-Israel lobby good. Israel bad, Saudi Arabia good. Very clever or, for those who don't do irony, very stupid.

But the article has the lot. Israel's ethnic cleansing, a disgusting creature for a president of the State of Israel deposed for alleged rape so that the more typically zionist mass murderer, Shimon Peres, could take the post and of course there's the Israel lobby and Uri Avnery's notion that a man up to his eyeballs with the Saudi regime can somehow be "a man of sterling character". Anyway, in these days of increasing globalisation I'm sure you can be a character in any currency, not just sterling.

The misery of oil companies

One of the facile claims bandied around the Iraq war is that it has nothing to do with oil. these claims are just thrown around, and the people who throw them show sub-zero intellectual curiosity. Mearsheimer and Walt, for example, wrote their famous book arguing that the Israel Lobby is behind U.S. policy in the Middle East. I scanned the book for all their discussion of oil. You'd assume they'll spend some work on debunking or relating to alternative arguments. You'd assume wrong. There are altogether two measly pages about oil in the book, with a level of analysis that doesn't even raise to the level of "shoddy":

Many Americans believe that that [the Iraq war] was a "war for oil" (or for corporations like Haliburton), but there is little direct evidence to support this claim and considerable evidence that cast doubt on it. ( The Israel Lobby, p. 230)

You'd think M&W would examine that evidence they allude to, argue with the arguments of those who make these claims. They might look for example for such formations as the "energy task force." They might have read Gregh Palast's very detailed chapters about the Iraqi oil industry in Armed Madhouse and debunked them. But why bother? What are they, intellectuals? Scholars? Investigative journalists? After reading their statements on the subject the word that comes to my mind is Avi Shlaim's "hackademics."

Instead of opening with it, they finish their "analysis" with the sentence

The oil companies, as is almost always the case, wanted to make money, not war (p. 255)

Which is of course true, but how do oil companies make money? Is that not something that must be understood before making sweeping claims about which foreign policy benefits oil companies? Not for our experts. They just decide, without bothering to investigate the economics of oil and the business model of oil companies, that

If Arab petrodollars or energy companies were driving American policy, one would expect to see the United States distancing itself from Israel and working overtime to get the Palestinians a state of their own....one would expect Washington to curry favor with big oil producers like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Gaddaffi's Lybia, or the Islamic Republic of Iran. (p. 143)

But why would one expect that? Do oil companies make more money when peace appears to be advancing in the Middle East? Hardly, the Clinton years and the Oslo process were one of the worst periods in the annals of oil companies. What about oil producers? Don't oil majors need to cultivate them? Yes, but not always. U.S. oil majors have always had good relations with some oil producing governments but not with all. You'd suppose that as experts on U.S. foreign policy these authors would have read John Blair's seminal book "Control of Oil." But the book, which is foundational to discussions of oil and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, is not even mentioned and there is no evidence our experts know it exists. Otherwise they might have known that Iraq has been traditionally the country in which oil companies prefer not to dig:

Although its original concession of March 14, 1925 covered all of Iraq, the Iraq Petroleum Co., under the ownership of BP (23.75%), Shell (23.75%), CFP (23.75%), Exxon (11.85%), Mobil (11.85%), and Gulbenkian (5.0%), limited its production to fields constituting only one-half of 1 percent of the country’s total area....From almost the beginning of its operations IPC not only suppressed production in Iraq (as well as in nearby lands) but went to considerable lengths to conceal that fact from the Iraqi government... (Blair, Control of Oil).

Mearsheimer and Walt note that the Arab Oil Embargo cost the United States 2% of GDP in the first year. This is supposed to buttress their claim that support for Israel does not help Americans. But their curiosity is very selective. The same embargo caused the profits of the oil majors to skyrocket. By the way, you don't have to "dig" to find this out. The oil companies are happy to tell you that:

...the immediate result of OPEC's move was to boost sales and profits at all the oil majors. Mobil Oil's sales nearly tripled between 1973 and 1977 to $32 billion, and 1974 profits hit record highs, prompting a barrage of congressional and media criticism that was answered by Mobil Oil's own public relations department. (fundinguniverse)

So it did help some Americans after all. But then what can you expect from someone who can write that

The overwhelming goal of U.S. foreign policy is to ensure the safety and prosperity of the American people. (337)

This pollyanna perspective is motivated. Mearsheimer and Walt promote a Washington that is technocratic, capitalist and corporatist, and whose conversation is limited to the topics of conversation approved in the leading Harvard departments that churn out the besuited servants of the corporate state. From this vantage point they wish to debate how best the U.S. can project power" (333) into the Middle East and they exalt about "the profound disagreement among [presidential candidates] on almost every...important issue facing the United States" except Israel (4). I must have missed the vehement debate about the fact that one in every forth jailed person on the planet languishes in the American Gulag. I also missed the spirited debate about the need to support the new democratic experiments in Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia. Was the necessity of the Drug War that is destroying Mexico debated when I wasn't paying attention? The stilted conversation in Washington is unbelievable narrow and limited to an extremely limited menu of options, whether on healthcare, banking, war, or anything else except cultural wedge issues. The narrowness of the conversation on Israel is somewhat more extreme that other similarly narrow debates. Although even than is arguable. How many U.S. representatives call for cuts in the defense budget? The exaggeration of the Lobby and its uniqueness is part and parcel of the thrust of the book to defend the underlying innocence and justice of the exercise of U.S. power, supposedly now polluted by the all too successful Lobby. And part of that is portraying oil companies as the poor victims of Douglas Feith's arrogance.

Just as an exercise, I picked up the biggest oil company, Exxon Mobile, for a little perfunctory inspection. If you had bet all your fortune on Exxon Mobile 10 years ago, about the time you learned that a former oil executive, George W. Bush, was running for the White House, you'd have today (pretax) more than doubled your wealth. You'd have in fact grown it by 123%. That is already impressive in a time when money seems to be vanishing like smoke. But it is still misleading. As a competitive owner of capital, what you'd really care about is how your success compares with the Joneses (or the list of top Billionaires, pick your choice). Well, if the Joneses invested all their wealth in the stock market, say the SP-500 index (a good proxy for U.S. corporate "prosperity"), at about the same time, their wealth is now 71% of what it use to be when George Bush made his entry into national politics. If you and the Joneses used to be equally wealthy neighbors, you are now almost three times richer than they are thanks to betting on oil. (And don't even mention the Greenbergs, who believed Jews were the best investment and gave all their money to Uncle Bernie.) Of course, you still did a lot worse than your friends who actually run Exxon Mobile, with their exorbitant "compensation packages," stock options and what not. Hard to be wealthy these days.

What about Iraq? Why care about the bottom line when the news are so grim? Don't know about Mearsheimer and Walt, but I pay my bills in dollars, not in anecdotes.

How is this possible that Exxon Mobile was such a good investment, depsite the growing Arab hatred towards the U.S., the bungled occupation, the tough posture of the Maliki government, the travails of the Iraqi Oil Law, etc.? To begin with, Exxon Mobile has so little business in Iraq that the country isn't even mentionned in its annual report. Do they even need new Iraqi fields? Maybe some day. Iraq has anywhere between 60 and 400 billion oil barrels underground. That is a lot, and it will be valuable to access it one day, with oil reserves depleting and consumption rising. The US government is doing what it can to ensure that pie doesn't fall in the "wrong" hands. But that does not mean that oil companies are suffering from not getting these contracts today. There is hardly any reason to hurry. The oil can stay there, underground, until it is profitable for US oil majors to let it see the light of day. For now, it is more profitable to wait. How so? Well, listen carefully to the management of Exxon Mobile:

In the Upstream a $1 per barrel change in the weighted-average realized price of oil would have approximately a $375 million annual after-tax effect on Upstream consolidated plus equity company earnings. (10-K, 2008)

Got this? A $3 rise in the price of oil is worth over a billion dollar a year to Exxon Mobile and its owners. A $30 rise is worth $11 billion a year. Last year Exxon Mobile made a net profit of over $45 billion, roughly the GDP of Ecuador (or Luxembourg)! If this is pain, let us all suffer.

The fluctuations in the price of oil is thus the single most important factor affecting profits. But how does one convince oil prices to rise? The US government has some good advice:

Events in crude oil markets that caused spikes in crude oil prices were a major factor in all but one of the five major run-ups in gasoline prices between 1992 and 1997, according to the National Petroleum Council’s study “U.S. Petroleum Supply - Inventory Dynamics.” Rapid gasoline price increases occurred in response to crude oil shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo in 1973, the Iranian revolution in 1978, the Iran/Iraq war in 1980, and the Persian Gulf conflict in 1990. (EIA, Gasoline Price Primer)

Here's the graph:

See why Iraq can contribute more to the wealth of Exxon Mobile's owners when its oil stays firmly in the ground? And why the fact that U.S. foreign policy often results in wars, revolutions, and instability in the Middle East is not keeping oil executives awake at night?

Don't get me wrong. I have no interest in the craven denials about the influence of the lobby on U.S. foreign policy. The Israel lobby (and the smaller Jewish lobby) are major ruling class formations. They matter, and they are powerful and nefarious. They must be exposed, opposed and stopped. But they must not be used as scapegoats in the service of rescuing U.S. imperialism from its growing internal contradictions. This a rotten goal resting on an equally rotten analysis.