Israel kills another child

Ok not exactly news. I just found this paragraph tacked onto the end of an Independent article about Palestinians possibly suing the UK for its recent collusion with the Israeli invasion of Jericho.

* Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 10-year-old Palestinian girl yesterday during an arrest raid in a West Bank village.

Whose baby is AIPAC or who is AIPAC's baby?

Here's an article in the London Review of Books outlining just what support Israel gets from America and AIPAC's role as a conduit for that support.

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.

Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy ‘step-by-step’ process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: ‘Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation.

It's also got some useful historical notes:

Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 – all of this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police force, let alone an army that could pose a threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, ‘the strategic balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s opponents.

Now the article drifts into a controversial area. It argues, correctly in my opinion, that there is no moral case for supporting Israel. Ok, so far so obvious. But it also says that there is no strategic case for supporting Israel. I don't think it makes that case convincingly but let's run with it to where AIPAC comes on the scene.

Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in the Washington ‘muscle rankings’.

The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.

The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so.

In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers’ unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby’s task even easier.

The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.

A key pillar of the Lobby’s effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues. Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002: ‘My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.’ One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel’s interests.

Another source of the Lobby’s power is its use of pro-Israel congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, ‘there are a lot of guys at the working level up here’ – on Capitol Hill – ‘who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.’

AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby’s influence in Congress. Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates.

There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had ‘displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns’. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: ‘All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians – those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire – got the message.’

AIPAC’s influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, ‘it is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.’ More important, he notes that AIPAC is ‘often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes’.

The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, ‘you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.’ Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, ‘when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: “Help AIPAC.”’

Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates ‘depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money’. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them.

Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the foreign policy establishment.

When Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more ‘even-handed role’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused him of selling Israel down the river and said his statement was ‘irresponsible’. Virtually all the top Democrats in the House signed a letter criticising Dean’s remarks, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported that ‘anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the email inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning – without much evidence – that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel.’

This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his campaign co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely suggested that to ‘bring the sides together’, Washington should act as an honest broker. This is hardly a radical idea, but the Lobby doesn’t tolerate even-handedness.

During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often visits the country. These men were among Clinton’s closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace process and favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel. The American delegation took its cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals. Not surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were ‘negotiating with two Israeli teams – one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag’.

The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by organisations in the Lobby.

Now here's the rub. Marxists argue that the state is guided by materialist considerations. As far as I can tell, the philosophical conservative position wouldn't be significantly different but since for some reason the field of genuine enquiry about Israel has been left to the left I'll focus on that. Israel is clearly a loss leader for imperialism as it costs America money. So the materialist view of why America supports Israel is that it safeguards the assets on which America, or its corporations, do make money. Is that a fair, but brief analysis? Ok let's run with that then. So why does the lobby spend so much money on politicians? It's like the tobacco industry saying that advertising cigarettes doesn't increase smoking. Then why advertise? So this is perplexing. That's without getting into a materialist analysis of why Jews who support Israel do so. I'll leave that for another time. Is it possible that the American state has sound imperialist reasons for supporting Israel and that the lobby is being duped into funding a political system (or at least most of its elected officials) that perpetuates support for a regime whose structure and conduct, if they were publicised, should be repugnant to most Americans? I don't know, that's why I'm asking.

Starving the Palestinians continues

From the Financial Times:

Palestinian business groups have called off a showcase government-backed conference for overseas investors after Israeli authorities made a last-minute decision not to allow Arab participants to attend, Mazen Sinakrot, Palestinian Authority economy minister said yesterday.

Cancellation of the meeting, widely promoted in the Arab world and scheduled to take place in the West Bank town of Bethlehem next month, was seen as exacerbating Palestinian economic isolation in the wake of elections that brought Hamas to power.

You won't believe this but while Israel is having the Palestinian comprehensively boycotted there are those, even in the labour movement, who say Israel shouldn't be boycotted. Incredible!

Two new blogs, one topic

There are two recently established blogs hosted by the Guardian. One is that of George Galloway and the other is that of Professor Stephen Rose. Galloway's started with the Israeli invasion of Jericho.

Al-Jazeera is broadcasting footage of a brutal Israeli raid on a prison in the Palestinian town of Jericho.

In what looks like a pre-election stunt, the Israeli government is trying to seize Ahmed Sadaat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and five of his comrades.

One Palestinian guard is already reported dead and there have been further casualties, according to al-Jazeera.

And did Professor Rose's:

Back in 1956, when Israel, France and Britain invaded Egypt, Anthony Eden's government tried to maintain the barefaced fiction that there was no collusion. Now this government has done the same, withdrawing UK monitors from Jericho prison to allow the Israelis (within 15 minutes) to storm the jail and capture for interrogation the prisoners held within. This morning the Foreign Office email site has been unavailable, preventing the wave of protest in this country from reaching Jack Straw's ears. Condoning or colluding in Israeli state terror is of course nothing new. Only a few weeks ago, Straw actually apologised to the Israeli government about the warrant issued for the citizens' arrest of an Israeli general charged with war crimes. The international court of justice finds Israel's apartheid wall illegal, but the UK government offers barely a whimper of protest; the double standards that pardon Israel any excess whilst threatening the Palestinians with sanctions because they have the audacity to elect - democratically - an inappropriate government are breathtaking. Of course, it isn't just the government. When the Church of England synod votes to disinvest from Caterpillar because its armoured militarised bulldozers are being used to demolish Palestinian houses illegally ­ and, incidentally, killing protesters like Rachel Corrie - the former Archbishop of Canterbury issues a grovelling apology and the chief rabbi claims that the divestment will increase the danger of anti-semitism. (Anti-semitism is the cheapest rallying cry of Israel's Zionist apologists and one that I, as one of Jewish ethnicity, find particularly nauseating.) And then, of course, there is the Richard Rogers affair, where the architect was forced to crawl to Jewish interests in New York to save his contracts because his office hosted a meeting of architects and planners, which called on their colleagues not to participate in building and related contracts associated with illegal Israeli activities in the occupied territories.

Both have commenting facilities, unlike some pro-Gulf war zionists I could mention, if I haven't already.

More on British duplicity

Here's a letter from Roland Rance in today's Guardian about collusion between Britain and Israel in the recent Israeli invasion of Jericho.

PFLP leader Ahmed Saadat was held without charge by the Palestine Authority under Israeli instructions. The PA has consistently refused to honour a ruling from the Palestinian supreme court four years ago, ordering Saadat's immediate release. So much for the rule of law. Israel insists Saadat was responsible for the murder of the right-wing cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi - an attack for which four other Palestinians were convicted in a Palestinian court. Meanwhile, nobody has been arrested or charged over the earlier murder by the Israeli army of Saadat's predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa. The collusion of the British government in this display of double standards is another shameful act in the long history of British duplicity in the Middle East.
Roland Rance
London

Perfidious Albion?

Here's a Counterpunch article by Jonathan Cook about Britain's duplicity with regard to the Israeli raid on the Jericho jail.

In the looking-glass world of Middle East politics, it is easy to forget that Ahmad Saadat, the imprisoned Palestinian leader Israel summarily arrested in Jericho late on Tuesday, is wanted for masterminding the killing of the Jewish state's most notorious racist politician-general.

Rehavam Zeevi, head of the Central Command in the late 1960s and early 1970s, personally developed and managed Israel's brutal regime in the newly occupied West Bank. After retiring from the battlefield, he waged a relentless war against "the Arabs" on the political front. His Moledet party, founded in the 1980s, advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Greater Israel--in other words, from Israel and the occupied territories.

His thinking became so acceptable after the outbreak of the intifada that he was appointed tourism minister in Ariel Sharon's first cabinet. Maybe Sharon thought that, with Zeevi for company, he really might start to look like a man of peace.

Zeevi's killing by gunmen in a Jerusalem hotel in 2001 was about as close as the Palestinians have managed to get to emulating an Israeli-style targeted assassination--with the difference that, in the Palestinian operation, no bystanders were killed.

There you go; a little bit of context but now for the Britain's duplicity bit:

Britain reneged on its understandings with the Palestinians and quit Jericho, but not before telling Israel it was going. As if waiting for its cue, Israeli armour rolled into Jericho at once to capture Saadat and a handful of other wanted men.

To Palestinians, the British broken promise, as well as the hasty exit from Jericho and apparent collusion with Israel, all smacked a little too painfully of other episodes of British foreign policy in the Middle East. There were echoes of 1956 and London's pact during the Suez Crisis with Israel on the invasion of Egypt. And there were echoes too of 1948, when Britain hurriedly abandoned Palestine, though not before it had effectively fulfilled the Balfour Declaration's promise of creating a Jewish homeland by allowing hundreds of thousands of Jews to immigrate.

That in large part explains the outpouring of rage from Gaza to Ramallah on Tuesday, as well as the kidnapping of foreigners. Britain's duplicity was a reminder--if it was needed--that nothing has changed in a century of Western "diplomacy".

And of course the Palestinian backlash against British duplicity has made British "security concerns" a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Anti-war resources in context

My attention has just been drawn to this site. It's called the War in Context and on its home page has many intros and links to many good articles. Try this one by Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom.

Attacking the IDF siege of the Jericho prison as a campaign ploy by Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, leftist activist and ex-MK Uri Avneri Tuesday termed the 2001 assassination of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi a targeted killing, and said that slain Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin "was certainly of a higher rank" than Ze'evi.

"This was an almost-uncamouflaged campaign ploy by Olmert, prepared in a cabal with the British and the Americans," Avneri said of the IDF operation, in which a nine-hour siege ended with the surrender of Ze'evi's killers.

It also has intros and links to some really appalling articles. Try this. But context being all these are very useful resources.

Jonathan Freedland and the "too negative" review

Did you see the negative review of Jonathan Freedland's book in the Guardian? No. That's because he spiked it. He, Jonathan Freedland, spiked it. Not his editor, him. Here, according to Private Eye magazine (not much of it appears on line - you'll have to get the hard copy), is how and why.

Last month we reported the Grauniad's spiking of a review from eminent crime writer Michael Dibdin begause it was "too negative" about a new thriller, The Righteous Men, by Sam Bourne. The problem? Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of Grauniad bigwig Jonathan Freedland, making a desperate (and doomed) effort to break into the Dan Brown market.

Lord Gnome has now learned more about how the piece came to be suppressed, which sheds fascinating light on the Grauniad's editorial processes. When the Dibdin review arrived, hilariously trashing Freedland's thriller, literary editor Claire Armitstead went to editor Alan Rusbridger and asked what to do about it. Amazingly, Rusbridger then referred the piece to Sam Bourne himself, aka Jonathan Freedland, asking if he wanted it to run.

Surprise, surprise, Freedland said no. And so it came to pass.

Not that this spared the wretched Freedland. Angry at the Grauniad's censorship, Dibdin took his article to the Times, which was delighted to print it. A month after publication, it remains the only review of any kind for The Righteous Men.
Still fuming, Freedland has now advised Armitstead that she should never ask Dibdin to write for the Grauniad again.

Here's the Times Review:

READING THIS BOOK IS like dating someone who seems attractive if rather conventional at first, then maybe a little eccentric in a colourful way, but gradually gets weirder and weirder until finally, around four in the morning, you realise that you’ve invited a raving lunatic into your life.

But let’s go back to the beginning, when you were just getting to know each other. The background information looked reassuring: Jonathan Freedland, the respected Guardian columnist, has written a thriller, a traditional mid-life career move for male journalists, dating back to Ian Fleming and Frederick Forsyth. But thrillers are now essentially movie treatments, and any agent will be looking for an attention-grabbing concept on which to base the big pitch that gets the big numbers.

Well, how about this? A cabal of extremely rich and powerful New York Jews is conspiring to bring about the end of the world by murdering a seemingly random bunch of lowlife do-gooders, only to be foiled by a newspaper reporter in league with members of a community of ultra-orthodox Christians who have kidnapped his wife but help him defeat the evil Jews in the shootout climax.

No, but there’s something there. How about flipping the whole thing 180? Make the Jews the good guys — Hassidic instead of Amish reclusives — and have the killers be a bunch of reborn Ivy League Wasps. It’s The Da Vinci Code meets The Brotherhood and begets Rosemary’s Baby. Let’s get rich! Maybe they will. The hero of The Righteous Men is Will Monroe, a British journalist working for The New York Times — promising some interesting bicultural insights that never emerge — and the style is very much that of the most boring newspaper in the world since Pravda reinvented itself: a mixture of plonking facts and breathless platitudes.

That’s how thrillers are meant to sound, and the content is at first equally typical, with the cub reporter on the beat winning accolades from management and resentment from colleagues for filing on two apparently unconnected and motiveless murders. The only flaw is that Will takes a lot longer than the reader to notice that both victims are described by someone who knew them as “righteous”, as opposed to “good” or “kind”.

The looming concept finally steps out of the shadows when Will’s wife disappears and he starts getting mysterious text messages on his mobile and e-mails on his BlackBerry, for this is cutting-edge wi-fi paranoia. He enlists the help of a former lover and a computer geek and soon we are knee-deep in cryptography, acrostics and numerology. At this stage it’s all basically good clean fun, and the scenes of Will's incursion into a Hassidic community in Brooklyn are the best in the book, with real tension and drama. This could have resulted in a study of hard moral ambiguities in the John le Carré manner, but instead the the novel’s spinal column dissolves in a puddle of chicken fat.

The key to the killings is hidden in Jewish mysticism about which we are informed in reverentially hushed tones and that are taken at face value. For The Righteous Men to work in the rational world, which we have by now left far behind, the reader must accept that an Oxford-educated British hack could be so bowled over by the sheer wisdom, learning and, well, righteousness of the Hassidim that he comes to believe that You-Know-Who has a preordained plan for mankind encoded in scripture and that their rabbi possessed accurate real-world information about it.

Oh, and that Will’s unborn son may be the Messiah if the big guy upstairs decides he needs one any time soon, but (this is a helpful parenting tip) that Will shouldn’t make a big deal about it.

Still, you read on, if only out of morbid curiosity about which bit of kabbalistic hokum you’re expected to swallow next, and since Dan Brown — a name curiously similar to this pseudonym — has done all right, there must be a market for this sort of stuff.

At least really bad writing can be relied upon to throw up those great lines that you don't find anywhere else — like this reflection on the healing issues of a man who has blown his dad’s head apart with a pistol: “Whatever Freud said about Oedipal fantasies, killing one’s own father shook the psyche to its foundations.” How true.

I wonder if Freedland got the chance to vet this Observer review:

In truth, despite the welter of Jewish arcana, mysterious bumpings-off and the introduction of a brilliantly sinister newspaper editor called Townsend McDougal, it isn't much of a book, either. But neither is it the worst example of a genre whose day probably has some time to run, and Sam Bourne, unless Jonathan Freedland is hiding his light under a bushel in the manner of the pseudonymous activist collective Luther Blissett, should not feel shy to call it his own.

He may have even written it for

Matilda Lisle is the nom de plume for an Observer staff writer

I'd better set myself a task for 1st April like "don't be so gullible".

Jericho invasion, Guardian "might" know the answer

What happened in Jericho? and how? and why? Well the Guardian editorial this morning thinks it might know....maybe.

The sequence of events that led to the confrontation at the jail in Jericho yesterday, and to protests, arson and kidnapping elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza, is not entirely clear.

So let's speculate a little shall we?

But it seems likely that Hamas, still in the process of forming a government after its victory in the Palestinian elections, sensed that it could win a small victory over the Israelis by releasing the militants held in Jericho.

Ok we won't just speculate, we'll ignore the fact that Hamas's election victory was itself a massive victory over Israel. But let's continue speculating all the same:

Hamas may have calculated that in the new situation following the January elections and with a de facto ceasefire more or less holding, Israel might not carry out the assassination threat, so that it was now safe to release them. Jack Straw may have calculated that the British could not be party to that so it was better to withdraw.

Ok the editorial does go on to apportion some blame on the invasion of Jericho to Israel but its starting point, indeed its main thrust, is to ignore the tradition of incumbent Israeli governments committing acts of massive violence as an election gimmick. We have been here before with Shimon Peres killing lots of refugees in a UN compound in Qana.

Israeli forces storm Jericho jail

It's all over the news now. Israeli troops have stormed the jail in Jericho and captured those it believes to be responsible for the killing of Rahavam Ze'evi, the minister most notable for advocating the expulsion of all Arabs from former mandate Palestine.

Some 80 Palestinian prisoners, including a man Israel says was responsible for the murder of an Israeli government minister, have surrendered to Israeli soldiers, ending an Israeli siege of the prison near Jericho on the West Bank.

The prisoners, who at first refused to surrender, filed out with their arms raised. Among them was Ahmed Saadat, who Israel says ordered the 2001 murder of tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi. Saadat had earlier told Al-Jazeera television he would rather die than surrender to Israeli soldiers.

Israeli officials say the siege began after the Palestinian Authority said it was prepared to release Saadat and other jailed militants.

Britain and the United States had removed their monitors ahead of the siege, but they say they had no advance notice that Israel would storm the prison.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised a demo at Downing Street this evening.

Lots of Jews, no synagogue

According to last Friday's Jewish Chronicle (subscription only), a shul has barred a meeting of European Jews for Justice for Palestinians from its premises. Here's the article in full.

Shul bars Jews who back Palestinians

09 March 2006

By Daniella Peled

A pro-Palestinian Jewish group has been barred from holding a meeting at the West London Synagogue for fear that congregants would be offended by its views.

The UK branch of European Jews for a Just Peace — supporting a targeted boycott of Israel — had booked the synagogue for a March 16 meeting on “The Unheard Voices of Israel.”

Cancelling the agreement, the West London management offered assistance to EJJP in finding an alternative venue.

“In hiring out [our premises], we wouldn’t knowingly engage with a group or individual who we believe might be contradictory to the beliefs and views of a substantial majority of our members,” West London executive director Alan Shapiro told the JC.

EJJP spokesman Dan Judelson commented that it was ironic that the unheard voices of Israel would continued to be silenced at the West London.

The JC actually got the date wrong. Here are the details of the meeting though it's tonight at 7.30 so unfortunately I won't be going:

THE UNHEARD VOICES OF ISRAEL

YEHUDIT KESHET AND ART NESLEN

will introduce their recently published books on the Israelis we rarely hear from

Chair: Michael Kustow

YEHUDIT KESHET is the author of Checkpoint Watch: Testimonies from Occupied Palestine, published by Zed Books. She is a veteran activist, co-founder of Machsom Watch, and writes about the Israeli women involved, day-in-day-out over the last five years, in monitoring Israeli checkpoints.

ARTHUR NESLEN is the author of Occupied Minds: A Journey through the Israeli Psyche, published by Pluto Press. He is a journalist who has worked for the BBC and AlJazeera as well as writing for the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, Red Pepper, the New Statesman and Private Eye. In his new book he explores the dynamics, distortions and incredible diversity of Israeli society from the mouths of more than fifty Israelis: soldiers, settlers, sex workers and the victims of suicide attacks.

TUESDAY MARCH 14TH AT 7.30PM
THE MONTCALM HOTEL, 34-40 GREAT CUMBERLAND PLACE, LONDON W1 (NEAR MARBLE ARCH)

EJJP brings together Jews opposed to the Israeli occupation; its UK affiliates are
the Jewish Socialists' Group, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Joint Action for Israeli-Palestinian Peace and Just Peace UK

The day after Paddy's Day

It's Paddy's Day on Friday 17 March. The next day is an anti-war demo assembling at 12.00 at Parliament Square in Westminster. And that night there is Punk Purim, laid on by the Jewdas people.

What: jewdas and New York’s Heeb Magazine present Punkpurim
Date: Saturday, March 18
Time: 9pm

Place: rampART, 15-17 Rampart Street , Whitechapel , E1 2LA

Cover: FREE

dresscode(optional): hassidic

Extras: DJs, bands, art, projections, food, drinking… you know
Radical Jewish culture returns to the East End as The New Rabbis of Liberty head down to rampART, a squatted social centre in the heart of Whitechapel. Bringing on the spirit of Yiddish subversion with klezmer hip hop/drum n bass bands Ghettoplotz and Emunah; Radical Torah will be taught by a motley crew of Jewish renegades; films and art showcasing the best of revolutionary Diaspora culture; and djs spinning the speeches of Ariel Sharon.

Punkpurim is Jewish hipsterism meets Israeli hardcore metal meets UK anarchist collectives meets anti-nomian Chassidism. It reclaims the carnival heart of the Jewish festival of Purim. Think of it as the meeting of Walter Benjamin, Noam Chomsky and Barbara Streisand in a Brick Lane Bagel Bar. Think of it as the revenge of subversive diasporists everywhere.

Punkpurim is brought to you by:

jewdas.org the focus point of radical Judaism in the UK and beyond.  Promoting heimische culture on acid, jewdas whips up Talmud, satire, heresy and cream cheese into a chicken soup of underground Diaspora culture. Jewdas fully supports the Anglo Jewish establishment and would never criticise the state of Israel.

Heeb is a New York based Jewish Culture Magazine. It is the roiling product of so many drunken postmillennial nights on the mean streets of the Lower East Side . It is an ambitious antitrust investigation into the monopoly on God. It is a sweaty prizefight between hip hop and sushi in this corner and klezmer and kugel in the other. It is the bastard love child of Emma Goldman and Lenny Bruce. It is a plague on modern-day pharaohs replete with miraculous jailbreaks and a nice little riot or two. It is a Carnival cruise to the Garden of Eden with all-you-can-eat cheesecake and Parliament as the house band. Hallelujah.

For more info, contact us at info@heebmagazine.com

Currently confirmed:
live music from Ghettoplotz and Emunah
poetry from angry sam, adam cohen
radical torah from Jeremy schonfield, simon eder
film curated by Charlie Phillips
VJ Miki Grahame (ghettoplotz)
slides curated by Sarah maxwell (heeb magazine)
Deconstructive megilla from florian

Zionist "left" as racist as the right

Just in case further proof were needed that the zionist left is as racist as the right here's an article in Ha'aretz on the left zionist parties' embrace of yet another transfer monger in the Israeli political mainstream.

The 2006 elections will go down in Israeli history as the first elections that legitimized ripping the heart out of the Declaration of Independence - the undertaking to "uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex." True, Yisrael Beiteinu is not the first party to call for denying Israeli citizens the right to live in the state on the grounds of religion and race. Rehavam Ze'evi's Moledet was in the Knesset and was even a coalition partner in one of the right-wing governments. But Ze'evi was never invited to eat pickled herring at Yossi Beilin's table, and was never showered with a smidgen of the praise bestowed by the Meretz chairman upon Avigdor Lieberman.

In a nutshell, the principal difference in the plans of the two transfer-mongers with regard to the Arab citizens of Israel is that Lieberman is proposing border adjustments that would place them and their homes (that would instantly plumment in value) outside their state, while Ze'evi proposed deporting them from their state (and paying them suitable compensation for their homes).

With the architect of Oslo and Geneva giving Lieberman friendly pats on the back, it's no wonder serious political analysts are mentioning him, in the same breath as Meretz and Labor, as a natural partner in a Kadima-led government. And it's no surprise either that a resident of Ra'anana, who identifies himself as a veteran left-winger, had no shame in writing to Lieberman that he is the only one "who is guiding us to a situation in which the Jewish people, too, will indeed finally have a Jewish state of its own." The man, who participated in an on-line readers' forum with Lieberman on the Haaretz Web site, asked Lieberman to elaborate on how he proposes removing Wadi Ara and the Triangle region from the boundaries of Israel and turning them into a part of Palestine.

I wonder what supporters of Geneva will have to say about this.

Jack Straw to disarm Israel

Oh dear! The Jerusalem Post reports that Jack Straw has said that the UK will address the issue of Israel's nuclear weapons after it has dealt with Iran's. But cop this:

Straw gave a lengthy television interview in Britain Thursday, following the decision to send Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. When asked about a "double standard" regarding Iran, Straw replied: "I want a nuclear-free Middle East. It's the policy of her majesty's government. We've been working to achieve that. We have ensured over the last few years that two of the four countries [in the Middle East] which posed a nuclear threat, Libya and Iraq, have had their nuclear weapons removed," he said.

"Libya and Iraq, have had their nuclear weapons removed?" Did no one think to ask him what nuclear weapons?

Settling the dispute?

It's been doing the rounds for a while but since I was just looking at the Anthony Lowenstein site I thought I'd do a quick post on it. Apparently Israel knew that it was breaking the "explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention" when it began the settlement of territory it conquered in 1967. All a bit silly really given that they couldn't possibly not have known that but, as everyone knows, Israel's opponents have to work to a far higher standard of proof than Israel and its allies do (WMD anyone?). So here's Gershom Gorenberg in the New York Times describing the relinquishing of the settlements as Israel's Tragedy Foretold.

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the front-runner in the March 28 vote, plans to evacuate more West Bank settlements unilaterally, a top figure in his party said this week. Mr. Olmert himself announced he would stop decades of investment in infrastructure for settlements. Those promises reflect a change not only in Mr. Olmert, a lifelong rightist, but in the electorate. Polls show that a strong majority supports parties ready to part with settlements.

The pattern is a familiar one from other countries. An endeavor once considered the epitome of patriotism leads to a quagmire. Sobriety and sadness replace euphoria. Arguments that once turned dissidents into pariahs now seem obvious: in this case, that to keep the West Bank will require Israel either to cease being democratic or to cease being a Jewish state. Not only settlers but national leaders have eroded the rule of law in pursuit of what they considered a patriotic goal.

As an Israeli who has pored over the documentary record of the settlement project, I know there is one more painful, familiar element to this story: the warnings were there from the start and were ignored, kept secret or explained away. Leaders deceived not only the country's citizens, but themselves. So begin national tragedies.

Here is one critical example. In early September 1967, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was considering granting the first approval for settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights, conquered three months earlier in the Six-Day War. An Arab summit meeting in Khartoum had rejected peacemaking. The prime minister believed that the Golan and the strip of land along the Jordan River would make Israel more defensible. He also wanted to re-establish the kibbutz of Kfar Etzion near Bethlehem, which had been lost in Israel's 1948 war of independence.

The legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, was asked whether international law allowed settlement in the newly conquered land. In a memo marked "Top Secret," Mr. Meron wrote unequivocally, "My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

In the detailed opinion that accompanied that note, Mr. Meron explained that the Convention — to which Israel was a signatory — forbade an occupying power from moving part of its population to occupied territory. The Golan, taken from Syria, was "undoubtedly 'occupied territory,' " he wrote.

So much for the expansionism but Israel's official racism gets some coverage here too:

Mr. Meron took note of Israel's diplomatic argument that the West Bank was not "normal" occupied territory, because the land's status was uncertain. The prewar border with Jordan had been a mere armistice line, and Jordan had annexed the West Bank unilaterally.

But he rejected that argument for two reasons. The first was diplomatic: the international community would not accept it and would regard settlement as showing "intent to annex the West Bank to Israel." The second was legal, he wrote: "In truth, certain Israeli actions are inconsistent with the claim that the West Bank is not occupied territory." For instance, he noted, a military decree issued on the third day of the war in June said that military courts must apply the Geneva Conventions in the West Bank.

There is a subtext here. In treating the West Bank as occupied, Israel may simply have been recognizing legal reality. But doing so had practical import: if the land was occupied, the Arabs who lived there did not have to be integrated into the Israeli polity — in contrast to Arabs within Israel, who were citizens.

Eshkol and other Israeli leaders knew that granting citizenship to the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would quickly turn Israel into a binational state. In effect, the Meron memo told Eshkol: you cannot have it both ways. If the West Bank was "occupied" for the Arab population, then neither international law nor Israel's democratic norms permitted settling Jews there.

The memo did note, however, that settlement was permissible if done "by military bodies rather than civilian ones" in bases that were clearly temporary. A week after receiving the memo, Eshkol informed the cabinet that Kfar Etzion would be re-established — through a branch of the army called Nahal, which created paramilitary outposts. By the end of September, settlers arrived at Kfar Etzion. Publicly they were described as "Nahal soldiers." In fact, they were civilians. The ruse acknowledged Mr. Meron's opinion. It also showed a sadly mistaken confidence that the legal, ethical and diplomatic difficulties of settlement could somehow be avoided.

There, you see? Israel cannot annex the West Bank without watering down its Jewish majority to near or actual non-existence or without more "transfers" of Arabs. The idea of a state that isn't specifically a state for Jews negates the zionist project which is about Jewish exclusivity or supremacy. So what now? Transfer or withdrawal? The way the piecemeal withdrawal is being played out with land grabbing and economic dislocation, both by the wall. It seems a combination of the two is on the cards.

The wrong sort of courage

Here's Robert Fisk on the cancellation of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie in New York. It first appeared in the Independent yesterday but I've nabbed it from the Information Clearing House. It's not that long so here's the whole thing. It's nice that he gives Anthony Loewenstein a bit of a mention. Ok, here goes:

The erosion of free speech

It was the wrong sort of courage and she was defending the freedom of the wrong people

By Robert Fisk

You've got to fight. It's the only conclusion I can draw as I see the renewed erosion of our freedom to discuss the Middle East. The most recent example - and the most shameful - is the cowardly decision of the New York Theatre Workshop to cancel the Royal Court's splendid production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie.

It's the story - in her own words and emails - of the brave young American woman who travelled to Gaza to protect innocent Palestinians and who stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer in an attempt to prevent the driver from destroying a Palestinian home. The bulldozer drove over her and then reversed and crushed her a second time. "My back is broken," she said before she died.

An American heroine, Rachel earned no brownie points from the Bush administration which bangs on about courage and freedom from oppression every few minutes. Rachel's was the wrong sort of courage and she was defending the freedom of the wrong people. But when I read that James Nicola, the New York Theatre Workshop's "artistic director" - his title really should be in quotation marks - had decided to "postpone" the play "indefinitely" because (reader, hold your breath) "in our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities (sic) in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas. ... we had a very edgy situation", I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

So let's confront this tomfoolery. Down in Australia, my old mate Antony Loewenstein, a journalist and academic, is having an equally vile time. He has completed a critical book on the Israel/Palestine conflict for Melbourne University Publishing and Jewish communities in Australia are trying to have it censored out of existence before it appears in August. Last year, Federal Labour MP Michael Danby, who like Loewenstein is Jewish, wrote a letter to the Australian Jewish News demanding that Loewenstein's publishers should "drop this whole disgusting project". The book, he said, would be "an attack on the mainstream Australian Jewish community".

Now the powerful New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies has weighed in against Loewenstein and efforts are under way to deprive him of his place on the board of Macquarie University's Centre for Middle East and North African Studies.

A one-off bit of skulduggery on Israel's behalf? Alas, no. A letter arrived for me last week from Israeli-American Barbara Goldscheider whose novel "Naqba: The Catastrophe: The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" has just been published. She has been attacked, she told me, "merely because I chose an Arabic title to my novel on the conflict... My brother-in-law has broken his relationship with me before he even read the book ... From members of my 'Orthodox' Jewish congregation in Bangor (Maine), I received a phone call from an irate 'friend' sputtering ... out: 'Don't you know the Arabs want to destroy Israel?'"

A talk on her new novel scheduled to take place last month at a conservative synagogue was cancelled "due to the uproar about my novel". A Boston professor has mercifully written to Goldscheider with what I regard as bloody good advice. "There's a vicious campaign out there," he said. "Don't cave in."

But what do you do when a publisher - or an "artistic director" - caves in? I found out for myself not long ago when the Military History Society of Ireland asked permission to reprint a paper I had published some years ago on a battle between the Irish Army's UN battalion in southern Lebanon and Israel's proxy - and brutal - Lebanese militia, the so-called "South Lebanon Army", whose psychotic commander was a cashiered Lebanese army major called Saad Haddad.

In the paper, I mentioned how an Israeli major called Haim extorted money from the inhabitants of the south Lebanese village of Haris and gave the code name of an Israeli agent - "Abu Shawki" - who was present at the murder of two Irish soldiers.
I had published these details many times, both in my own newspaper and in my previous book on the Lebanon war, Pity the Nation. Major Haddad died of cancer more than 10 years ago. I actually met Haim in the early 1980s as he emerged from a meeting with the mayor of Haris from whom he demanded money to pay Israel's cruel militiamen - the UN was also present and recorded his threats - while "Abu Shawki", whom the Irish police would like to interview, later tried to arrest me in Tyre - and immediately freed me - when I told him I knew that he was a witness to the murder of the two Irish soldiers.

So what was I supposed to do when I received the following letter from ex-Brigadier General Patrick Purcell of the Irish Army? "Unfortunately we have been forced to withdraw (your) article in view of a letter from our publisher Irish Academic Press. It is clear from our contract that (our) Society would be responsible in the event of a libel action." The enclosed letter from publisher Frank Cass advised that his lawyer had "cautioned" him because I had described Haddad as "psychotic", named the blackmailing Israeli major and named the Israeli agent present at the two murders.

It's interesting that Mr Cass's lawyer believes it is possible to libel a man (Haddad) who has been dead for more than a decade, even more so that he should think that publishing a military code name would prompt this rascal to expose his real identity in a court of law. As for Major Haim, he remains on UN files as the man who tried - and apparently succeeded - in forcing the people of southern Lebanon to cough up the cash to pay for their own oppressors.

And the moral of all this? Well obviously, don't contribute articles to the Military History Society of Ireland. But more to the point, I better remember what I wrote in this newspaper just over six years ago, that "the degree of abuse and outright threats now being directed at anyone ... who dares to criticise Israel ... is fast reaching McCarthyite proportions. The attempt to force the media to obey Israel's rules is ... international". And growing, I should now add.

You still blog against the illegitimate state but don't expect to make a career out of it.

Brave potshots at the powerless

I just found this Gary Younge article in a rather convoluted way. I was looking at the Aaronovitch Watch blog which led me to a David Aaronovitch article attacking Gary Younge for criticising the fact that Aaronovitch received an award for bravery for supporting the war on Iraq.

So, here's a bit of the Younge article:

But the days when courage referred to those who take on the mighty against all odds and face the consequences are, apparently, over. For, when it comes to attacking the weak and backing the strong, "bravery" has somehow become the mot du jour. A couple of years ago a British journalist won a major award for columns supporting the Iraq war on the grounds that to do so was "brave". Whether the award was deserved is irrelevant; the judges' adjective is the issue.

What, after all, is "brave" about supporting the policies of both your government and the sole global superpower against a country that posed no threat? Likewise, when David Goodhart, the editor of Prospect magazine, published his blueprint for racial exclusion two years ago ("To put it bluntly," he wrote, "most of us prefer our own kind"), he was praised for being "bold". As though maligning diversity constituted an act of courage in a country where black people are overwhelmingly more likely to be stopped, searched, jailed, murdered in jail, unemployed and marginalised. It is not the validity of these arguments that is at issue here but the characterisation of those who make them as audacious that is problematic.

The next paragraph is what gives Aaronovitch his window to launch a mindless ad hominem attack on Younge:

Note, however, his operating assumption:

"To align yourself with the powerful and then take aim at the powerless takes not one ounce of valour. To prop up prevailing hierarchies and orthodoxies rather than challenge them demands not a scintilla of bravery. True, like Summers (of Harvard), you may run into trouble. But just look who's covering your back. With the prevailing winds of war, prejudice or the state on your side, the odds are with you."

In other words, he is the brave one. It is in challenging "prevailing hierarchies and orthodoxies" that true bravery lies. Propping them up takes no courage. This line is full of unwitting irony, as any person who has attended a Guardian editorial mass meeting would know. But look, a writer needs his image. Later on I'll try and show what I think courage looks like.

There is nothing in that paragraph to suggest that Younge is describing himself as brave. He is merely pointing out that if you align yourself with the powers that be you will attract all manner of inappropriate compliments.

Like me, Aaronovitch moderates his comments. Here's an extract from a comment that was allowed through:

Younge you are the worst kind of coward.

Worse you have attacked a colleague, not because of an issue relating to a misguided awarding of a gong for bravery, but rather as a result of the fact that his work is so far superior to yours.

David's work is not only a cut above yours with regard to his ability to put things down in words but also his focus on issues that require debate.

In future Mr Younge take your spiteful jealousy and put it where it belongs - children's comics.

Now Aaronovitch himself claims to have discouraged the use of the term brave to describe his work when he collected his award. So what's so terrible about others criticising it? And Younge didn't even name Aaronovitch.

Another brick in the wall II

I posted earlier on Roger Waters's refusal (so far) to call off a gig in Tel Aviv. Here's a video report on the Beeb's website on the same subject.

War criminal dies

No not that one. This one.

The power of protest or the power of zionism?

The leader comment in yesterday's Jewish Chronicle was a celebration of three recent zionist victories. The first, how a deliberate falsehood by the Chief Rabbi in the JC itself led to the Church of England pledging to continue to invest in Israeli war crimes. That is, they are continuing to invest in Caterpillar, the manufacturer of militarised bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian homes. The Chief Rabbi had accused the C of E of being asked by the Synod to "heed a call to divest from companies associated with Israel." It was actually one company associated with one of the more heinous aspects of the occupation. And the victory, based as it was on sheer dishonesty and very public too, is no cause for celebration by people of integrity. The C of E has a long standing policy of non-investment in military equipment so its continued investment in Caterpillar is in breach of its own policy, not on zionism or war criminality, but on militarism. Great victory Chief!

The second victory was to have Lord Rogers prostrate himself before the zionists of New York so that he could retain the commission to redesign a building named after a leading zionist. To watch this dog jump through hoops to appease the zionists has been as unedifying a spectacle as you could imagine. He has gone from facilitating the inauguration of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine to denouncing their main aim of opposing the wall built (or being built) through occupied territory. And now Rogers can keep his buck (ouch!).

The third victory, though even the JC is smart enough to realised that this is a tainted one, is the suspension of Ken Livingstone from office. Far too much was made of a throwaway drunken insult by the Mayor for London in the first place. By the time Livingstone was suspended even Eric Moonman was balking at what the zionists had done. A commentor here said that there were 25 complaints to the Standards Board on this and that one had come from the Commission for Racial Equality. I asked for more info on this but none came. I am not sure that Oliver Finegold, Ken's victim actually complained and I haven't met one Jew who said they were offended by what Ken said even though most Jews I know don't particualrly like him. It does seem that it was Ken's long-running spats with zionism and zionists that did for him, insofaras it has done for him in this instance. After all, many commentators think that he will be returned to power the next time the electorate gets a chance.

So what does it all mean? The Chief Rabbi demonstrably lied about the C of E and won his "case". The Archbishop of Canterbury could have exposed him but opted not to. Now the C of E is breaching its own rules for the sake of zionism. And the zionists at the JC are proud of this.

Rogers keeps the big buck by shredding his integrity in public under pressure from zionists in New York and a big hurrah echoes from the JC. Whilst crying "uncle!" he managed to blurt out that Israel is a democracy and the Palestinian Authority is a trrorist state which doesn't quite tally with the fact that Israel and its friends are refusing to accept the result of democratic elections to the PA. He also praised the wall as having thwarted terrorist attacks on Israel whilst ignoring the role of the Israeli army and ignoring Hamas's ceasefire. So Rogers joins the long list of high profile liars for Israel. And the JC calls it a victory for protest.

And Ken, who expressed regret for any offence caused to the Jewish community and/or holocaust survivors is suspended on the say so of a Jewish communtiy organisation for refusing to apologise to an individual.

Here's the whole editorial:

The British Jewish community has traditionally favoured the don’t-make-waves approach when faced with a stern challenge, preferring a word in the ear of someone in authority to a full-scale demonstration on the streets of London. Three recent incidents have proved, however, the efficacy of a more determined stance. In this newspaper last month, the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, fiercely condemned the Church of England’s general synod’s resolution to re-open the issue of whether the Church should withdraw its investment in the Caterpillar company. Rabbi Sacks, in unusually strong language, warned of the resolution’s “most adverse repercussions” on Jewish-Christian relations. This week’s welcome decision by the Church of England’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) not to recommend divesting from Caterpillar shows that the Chief Rabbi was right to confront the issue head-on rather than rely on polite conversation over tea at Lambeth Palace. In announcing its decision, the EIAG recognised the contentiousness of the topic, something the synod had studiously ignored. The original vote was itself part of a disturbing trend to boycott either Israel directly, or firms that do business with it. While the Church’s clerics were discussing divestment, a group of British architects, under the Architects and Planners for Justice in Pal-estine banner, called for sanctions against architects and construction companies working in the territories. This group’s inaugural meeting was hosted by the eminent architect Lord Rogers, who has since learned that sanctions can be a double-edged sword. Lord Rogers is bidding for a prestigious New York project to redesign a convention centre in memory of Jacob Jav-its, a firm supporter of Israel and, for many years, the only Jewish Senator in Washington. Jewish groups in America are questioning Lord Rogers’s suitability to head the project. Lord Rogers has now felt the need to dissociate himself from the Ar-chitects and Planners for Justice in Palestine and issue a statement in support of Israel’s security fence. Again, a direct protest has achieved a positive result. The third example — that concerning the mayor of London — is less clear-cut, in view of the punishment handed out to him. Nevertheless, the initial offence was not allowed to pass and the Board of Deputies, in reporting the mayor to the Standards Board, showed that British Jews’ feelings cannot be ridden over roughshod.

So help war criminals where you can and don't insult journalists who happen to be Jewish, lest you offend a whole community and wind up feeling the "power of protest."