Name that war! Ease that pain!

Israel hasn't come up with an official name for last summer's war in Lebanon. In a Ha'aretz article I can only find the printable version of I saw the following:

Peretz also promised the families that in the near future, the war in Lebanon would receive an official name.

The parents complained that their children's gravestones are missing the war's official name, which was painful.

Why don't they just number them? Or are they losing count?

Lenni Brenner on "The Road to Tehran"

Let me be clear, I am not saying that Lenni Brenner is on the road to Tehran. He has tried to respond to a Wall Street Journal article by a Bret Stephens titled "The Road to Tehran." Luckily Jews sans frontieres is a cutting edge publishing concern and I've beaten the WSJ to it with publication of Brenner's response:

In "The Road to Tehran" (12/16), Bret Stephens charged "global polite society," i.e. Israel's critics, with "blazing" our "own merry trail" to Tehran's holocaust denial conference : "Once a country's policies are deemed Nazi-like, it necessarily follows that its leaders are Nazi-like." But what if a leader proclaims himself pro-Nazi?

In 1988, Ettela'at, a Tehran daily, pirated my book, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir. Yitzhak Shamir was then Israel's Prime Minister. Ettela'at did so because I reprinted a 1940 proposal by Shamir's anti-British National Military Organization, "to actively take part in the war on Germany's side." They had assured Hitler that "the NMO is closely related to
the totalitarian movements of Europe in its ideology and structure."

However my pirates were still not pleased. I wrote that six million Jews were killed, so Ettela'at added a footnote: "the number of European Jews massacred by the Nazis could not be greater than one million."

Stephens proclaims that "the road to Tehran is a well-traveled one, and among those who denounce it now are some who have already walked some part of it." Really? Hitler fought Stalin and Stalin fought Hitler. But denouncing Stalin didn't mean walking Hitler's road, and fighting Hitler didn't mean you were a Stalinist.

Similarly, exposing Zionism for its crimes doesn't mean sympathy for Shia fanaticism, and attacking Islamic despotism doesn't mean support for Israeli racism.

Lenni Brenner

I'm sure the Wall Street Journal will get round to it.

Comments on the Saddam execution

I've just seen two separate comments on the Saddam execution from women I know through Arab Media Watch. The first is by Gharda Karmi in today's Guardian and on the comment is free space:

The spectacle of Saddam Hussein's execution, shown in pornographic detail to the whole world, was deeply shocking to those of us who respect propriety and human dignity. The vengeful Shia mob that was allowed to taunt the man's last moments, and the vicious executioners who released the trapdoor while he was saying his prayers, turned this scene of so-called Iraqi justice into a public lynching. One does not have to be any kind of Saddam sympathiser to be horrified that he should have been executed - and, so obscenely, on the dawn of Islam's holy feast of Eid al-Adha, which flagrantly defies religious practice and was an affront to the Islamic world.

The second is a letter in today's Independent by Tahrir Swift:

Sir: I never thought I would hear myself objecting to exacting punishment on the former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. Two of my cousins were killed, members of my family were tortured by Saddam's government, members of my immediate and extended family were exiled. Yet, I feel that executing the president of Iraq after a flawed trial "marred by political interference", as Human Rights Watch stated, is a betrayal for all the Iraqi people, not just Saddam's victims.

What took place is a politically motivated show trial fit for a dictatorship. Why was the sentence not delayed until Saddam finished facing the charges over the gassing at Halabjah? This incident was often cited as a pretext for Bush and Blair's war on Iraq. What are the reasons for the urgent need to silence him?

Whenever I hear Bush and Blair's self-congratulatory claims that progress in Iraq is being made while the situation continues to deteriorate, I am reminded of Saddam's post-1991 war speech in which he calls on the people to rejoice as they have emerged victorious from this war.

Iraqis are living in an endless nightmare, fearing for their lives, inside their homes, outside their homes, in their place of work, in their markets, and in their own neighbourhoods. Iraqi towns and villages are being bombed from the air still, as an act of collective punishment on the pretext of "fighting terrorism". I believe a similar excuse was given by Saddam when he attacked Kurdish villages.

Three million Iraqis are displaced both internally and outside Iraq according to the UN. Iraqis top the league table for asylum-seeking in the West. I do not dare to think what would Iraq be like when the "job is done" as Blair and Bush wish.

TAHRIR SWIFT

ORPINGTON, KENT

Ghada Karmi is a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter and Tahrir Swift is a director of Arab Media Watch.

Zionism in decline?

Here's an article from the Lebanese Daily Star suggesting that zionism is going into decline:

By most measures, it would seem the Israelis are winning the Palestinian-Israeli war. They control and colonize Arab lands, enjoy military superiority and total American support, and unilaterally define most diplomatic parameters of the conflict. Yet this may be a mistaken assessment: The Palestinians and Arabs are perhaps starting to win some battles, while Israel is losing some of its dominance. Seven events in the past five months seem to lend credence to this view.

Now read on.

Execute Saddam, he didn't like Israel

Check out this bizarre report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

If there was any doubt as to Saddam Hussein's diehard hatred of Israel, it was dispelled by his declaration on the gallows: "Long live Iraq, Palestine is Arab!"

Yet while the deposed dictator's execution over the weekend was deplored by Palestinians who long saw him as their champion, reactions in Israel were more mixed.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, perhaps wary of stoking regional suspicions that the U.S.-led war in Iraq was part of a strategy to secure the Jewish state, had little comment on the death of a man who for decades had sown terror among Israelis whether through his Scud missile salvoes of the 1991 Gulf War or by bankrolling Palestinian suicide...

There's a registration required to read the rest but I tried googling that quote "Long live Iraq, Palestine is Arab!" and I have seen the official and unofficial footage of the execution itself. I can't find the expression on google and I can't hear him saying Falesteen on the gallows.

Help Israel, deny the holocaust

Article on holocaust denial by Azmi Bishara in al-Ahram. It's been around since just before Christmas:

the challenge of truly understanding and learning lessons from the Nazi phenomenon is reduced to something akin to a therapy session in which those in the role of victim help those in the role of perpetrator purge their guilt by satisfying the psychological and material demands of the former. There is something morally repugnant in this passing of the sins, or innocence, of the fathers to the sons, as opposed to engaging in an objective process of historical investigation with the aim of combating racism in all forms and in all societies. After all, the main victims of European racism today are not Jews, and in Palestine Zionism is not the victim but the perpetrator. Unfortunately, the Israeli- German therapy sessions ignore such stark realities and, in so doing, offer both the Israelis and the Germans carte blanche to vent their racism on others, as though the Holocaust were a purely German-Israeli concern and the greater phenomenon of racism something else entirely. It is as if through their mutual catharsis with regard to the former they exonerate themselves from responsibility for the latter.

Meanwhile, Zionism's unwarranted, illogical and historically unsubstantiated monopoly on the role of Holocaust victims' spokesperson sits well with Europe. Most of Zionism's aims and demands do not require Europe to engage in a serious process of introspection in order to uproot the deeper causes that gave rise to the Holocaust. Contrary to what one may logically expect, this suits Zionism's purposes because it keeps the monolithic discreteness of the Holocaust intact and diminishes, in comparison, the significance of Europe's other crimes. The upshot is to toss the entire Jewish question outside Europe and dump it in the Middle East. It may come as a relief to European officials to be able to exonerate themselves for the Holocaust by placating Israel with anti-Palestinian, anti- Arab and even anti-Muslim sympathies. If anything, however, this form of behaviour confirms the continuation of the underlying syndrome, a syndrome that is nevertheless glossed over with a fresh bill of moral health, authorised and stamped by Israel after every visit of atonement a European leader makes to the "Yad Vashem" Museum in Jerusalem.

It is for this reason that all victims of racism across the world should campaign to break the Zionist hold over the role of spokesman for victims of the Holocaust. Conversely, the Arabs and Palestinians who deny the Holocaust offer European and Zionist racism no greater gift than this denial of the occurrence of the Holocaust. What possible Arab or Islamic interest can it serve to even offer to exonerate Europe of one of the blackest pages in its history? To do so is not only to absolve Europe of a crime that was, in fact, committed, but also to earn its contempt and to wake up one day to find Europe and Israel joining forces against Arab or Muslim Holocaust deniers with such venom that one might imagine that the Holocaust had occurred in Egypt or Iran and that Holocaust denial is a far graver crime than the perpetration of the Holocaust itself. Holocaust denial is just plain stupid, also as a political argument. But Israel will be no less expedient in turning the provocation against its regional adversaries who had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

On the other hand, the Holocaust is a phenomenon that merits proper scholastic study, the purpose of which is to sort fact from fiction, and myth form reality. No incident in history lies beyond the realm of historical research. This said, Tehran can hardly be said to have a tradition of Holocaust studies; the subject does not rate very high in Iranian academic priorities. And a conference in Tehran that was proceeded by a political speech denying the Holocaust cannot be said to be an academic conference; it was a political demonstration, one that harms the Arabs and Muslims and serves only the ultra-right and neo-Nazi forces in Europe and the Zionist movement.

Oh yeah, happy new year everyone.

Merry ploughboy?

Moderating might take a little while longer than usual and here's a clue as to why:

1. I am a merry ploughboy and I plough the fields by day
Till a sudden thought came to my mind that I should roam away
For I am sick of this civilian life since the day that I was born
So I am off to join the I.R.A. and I am off tomorrow morn.

Chorus:
And we're all off to Dublin in the green,
Where the helmets glisten in the sun
Where the bay'nets flash and the rifles crash
To the rattle of a Thompson gun.

2. I'll leave behind me pick and me spade, I'll leave behind my plough
I'll leave behind me horse and me yoke, no more will I need them now
And I'll leave behind my Mary, she's the girl that I adore
But I wonder if she'll think of me when hears my armalite roar.
Chorus:

3. And when this war is over, and dear old Ireland is free
I'll take her to the chapel on the hill and a rebel's wife she'll be
Well some men fight for silver and some men fight for gold
But the I.R.A. are fighting for the land that the Saxons stole [alt. the land De Valera sold]
Chorus:

I'll be back on the 30th.

Christmas in Bethlehem

Here's an article I found in the Houston Chronicle by Matt Beynon Rees about life in Bethlehem over the Christmas period:

I've stopped thinking of Christmas as a convivial family occasion. The more time I spend in Bethlehem, the more I associate Christmas with secret assignations in cold, wet basements among masked men who'll be dead in a few months.

Now that paragraph probably doesn't do justice to the entire article but I found it rather poignant.

Matt Beynon Rees has a blog here.

Bethlehem birth and Bethlehem death

The front page of today's Independent carries Johann Hari relating the story of how one twin lived and another twin died when their mother was forced to give birth to them at an Israeli roadblock outside Bethlehem:

"It was 5pm when I started to feel the contractions coming on," she says. She was already nervous about the birth - her first, and twins - so she told her husband to grab her hospital bag and get her straight into the car.

They stopped to collect her sister and mother and set out for the Hussein Hospital, 20 minutes away. But the road had been blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning. "Obviously, we told them we couldn't wait until the morning. I was bleeding very heavily on the back seat. One of the soldiers looked down at the blood and laughed. I still wake up in the night hearing that laugh. It was such a shock to me. I couldn't understand."

Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. "I don't remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital," she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could "certainly" have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.

More blood libel I suppose.

A word of warning about Johann Hari, he has described support for the one state solution as antisemitic*. Some blogger hates Hari so much he has a blog called "Shoot Johann Hari." I'm not suggesting that you go out and do that but have a look at the guy's blog.

*Thanks to a commentor, Niko. Hari does not actually say that the one state solution is antisemitic, he says it is a "loathsome aspiration." The context was an attack of George Galloway.

Secular Jewish identity

Here's an article in this week's Jewish Chronicle [subscription only] about the identity and outlook of two leading members of the Jewish Socialist Group, Julia Bard and David Rosenberg.

Continuing our occasional series on the modern Jewish family, Simon Round talks to a rebellious left-wing couple who have rejected religion, but still hold a Seder and gave their twin sons a faith-free barmitzvah.

Journalist Julia Bard (56) and teacher David Rosenberg (48) live in Tufnell Park, North London. Their children, twins Jacob and Reuben (20), are students at Cambridge University

Julia Bard and David Rosenberg are committed Jews. They feel passionately about Jewish history, they have a strong Jewish element to their social lives and their children have inherited a love of Hebrew and Yiddish culture.

But David and Julia do not belong to a synagogue, do not believe in God and are antagonistic towards Zionism. They feel strongly that these factors should not exclude them from full acceptance as part of the mainstream Jewish community, yet they claim that the community is too narrow-minded to embrace them.

Both David and Julia come from traditional Jewish backgrounds. There is symmetry in how they questioned accepted values from an early age. Indeed, when both talk about their childhood and adolescence, it is as a political journey towards socialism, secularism and anti-Zionism.

For Julia, who was brought up in Hendon, North-West London, the first rebellion was over cheder. “Everything there was an imperative and nothing was up for discussion.”

Her introduction to socialism came through the Habonim youth movement, and from there her journey took her to York University, chosen because it possessed no significant Jewish community for her to be “sucked into.”

She adds: “It was a conscious decision to break away — not from being Jewish, which I’ve always been very upfront about, but from the conformist, traditional Jewish community.”

David was raised in East London, in a working-class Jewish community, and moved to Ilford, Essex, while still a child. He went to a Jewish primary school but was soon rebelling. “I was meant to turn out Zionistic and religious. Actually, I turned out as an anti-Zionist and an atheist.”

As a teenager he became involved in the anti-racist movements of the 1970s and it was then that he began to question Zionism. “One of the key slogans for black people in the ’70s was: ‘Here to stay, here to fight.’ They were struggling for their right to be treated as equals in Britain, but this was in complete contradiction to what I was hearing from the Zionist movement, which was that we should all run away and have our own state.”

He was one of the early members of the Jewish Socialists’ Group in the 1970s and it was as members of the group that in 1983 Julia and David met. They married in 1985.

Julia’s anti-Zionist perspective is coloured not only by the suffering of the Palestinians but also by what she sees as the marginalisation of diaspora history. “Zionism always portrays Israeli and Hebrew culture as a monolith and everything else as deviant.”

But unlike many Jews, who reject religion and drift away from the community, she is adamant about retaining her identity: “I wanted to remain Jewish. I understand my Jewish identity as an ethnic identity. I want to prove that there is a way of being Jewish that doesn’t involve saying prayers to a God you don’t believe in.”

She adds: “Those people who are bleating on about the Jewish community shrinking base it on a false assumption — that Judaism remains unchanging and that you can’t be Jewish without being religious.”

As secular Jews, David and Julia have had to invent their own template for Jewish life. For example, their Seder is secular and socialist. The couple usually invite along an outsider and previous guests have included the former PLO representative to London, Afif Safiyeh. In fact, their children, twins Jacob and Reuben, are similar ages to those of the Safiyeh’s and spent afternoons playing together.

Jacob and Reuben, now 20 and both at Cambridge, attended a local comprehensive. Says Julia: “Mainstream schools used to be full of Jews. But now the faith schools have taken the Jews away, which is a shame for all the other kids.” The boys were given a choice about whether they wanted a barmitzvah and were both very enthusiastic. The ceremony was non-religious, consisting of readings in Hebrew, Yiddish and English, with poet Michael Rosen acting as MC. The barmitzvah was also notable for being one of very few to be held at the Trades Union Congress’s banqueting suite, and to feature a Marxist magician.

The children gave David and Julia their biggest dilemma — to circumcise or not to circumcise. In the event, after an agonising debate, they decided to go ahead. Julia says they would make same decision now.

Ultimately, if David and Julia have a mission, it is to encourage Jews without religious beliefs not to feel intimidated by the religious establishment. “We want to give people the confidence to say: ‘I don’t believe in God, but, yes, I am Jewish.’”

Written by Simon Round the article is headed, Atheist, socialist — and proud Jews, though nowhere in the article is pride in an accident of birth mentioned.

UPDATE: David Rosenberg has commented thus:

Fame at last eh? Most of it is accurate. We have written a letter to the JC to correct 3 innacuracies which we hope they will print next week.

Our letter says:
The article states that our children inherited from us “a love of Hebrew and Yiddish culture”. In fact, they have inherited an appreciation of diaspora Jewish culture – in which Yiddish is significant – and, in particular, they value the internationalism of this diaspora culture. They share our dismay about the destructive impact of Israeli culture being imposed on diverse diaspora communities.

In reference to Jewish festivals the article states, “their Seder is secular and socialist. The couple usually invite…”. This is not our personal Seder but the Seder of the Jewish Socialists’ Group, an annual event that has been celebrated collectively by a community of secular Jewish socialists for the last 25 years.

Lastly some words have gone missing from the paragraph about our children’s circumcision, giving it the opposite meaning to what we said. According to your article, “Julia says they would make same decision now” (sic). In fact Julia said we would NOT make the same decision now. If we were faced today with a conflict between a longstanding tradition such as circumcision and children’s right to be free from unnecessary pain and harm, and to be protected from practices to which they have not consented, we would confidently uphold their human rights and seek more humane ways of being welcomed into Jewish life.

The rise and rise of Hamas

Here's an article by Rory McCarty in today's Guardian. McCarthy explains the rise of Hamas by reference to the failings of Fatah. He also looks at the divisions in Palestinian society by reference to the Qalandia refugee camp.

In the past, refugee camps like this one, housing families that fled Israel in 1948, would have been strongholds of Fatah, the secular movement that for the past generation has been at the forefront of the Palestinian struggle for independence.

But Mr Abu Latifa, 51, having been a lifetime Fatah supporter, voted for Hamas, the hardline Islamic movement that won the last elections. It was his way of punishing Fatah for its many failings. "They were crooks, thieves and warlords," he said, sitting on a plastic chair in the sun outside his shop. "They still haven't cleaned themselves up." The rest of his family, including his four teenage children and his brother and sister, are still Fatah supporters.

A few yards further along the street are others who vow to remain lifelong Fatah loyalists. Working next to them are overtly religious families who back Hamas. At least one other shopkeeper in the street refuses to vote at all. All speak anxiously about the factional violence and fear of civil war that has gripped the Palestinian territories in the past weeks. But many also share a profound frustration with all their political leadership.

HRW: Israel's ambulance bombing was no hoax

You remember when Israel bombed two ambulances in Lebanon back in July this year? You remember how a site called zombietime said it was a hoax by Hizbullah? You remember the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, denouncing the original report? And you remember Engage running with the "it was a hoax" line, even stooping so low as to link, apparently approvingly, to Melanie Phillips's site? Ah good. Well Human Rights Watch has done a thorough investigation and the report is on The Alternative Information Centre site.

During the Israel-Hezbollah war, Israel was accused by Human Rights Watch and numerous local and international media outlets of attacking two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances in Qana on July 23, 2006. Following these accusations, some websites claimed that the attack on the ambulances “never happened” and was a Hezbollah-orchestrated “hoax,” a charge picked up by conservative commentators such as Oliver North. These claims attracted renewed
attention when the Australian foreign minister stated that “it is beyond serious dispute that this episode has all the makings of a hoax.”

In response, Human Rights Watch researchers carried out a more in-depth investigation of the Qana ambulance attacks. Our investigation involved detailed interviews with four of the six ambulance staff and the three wounded people in the ambulance, on-site visits to the Tibnine and Tyre Red Cross offices from which the ambulances originated to review their records and meet with supervisors, an examination of the ambulances that were struck, an on-site visit to the Qana site where the attack took place, and interviews with others such as international officials with the International Committee of the Red Cross who were involved in responding to the attack on the night it happened.

On the basis of this investigation, we conclude that the attack on the ambulances was not a hoax: Israeli forces attacked two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances that night in Qana, almost certainly with missiles fired from an Israeli drone flying overhead. The physical and testimonial evidence collected by Human Rights Watch disproves the allegations of a “hoax,” made by persons who never visited Lebanon and had no opportunity to assess the evidence first-hand. Those claiming a hoax relied on faulty conjectures based on a limited number of photographs of one of the ambulances.

Now in fairness to Engage they did an update when The Australian stood by its story. So I wonder if they will update now that the hoax story has itself been shown to be a hoax. I'm guessing Melanie Phillips won't.

Leon Rosselson explains Israel boycott

Here's a letter from singer songwriter, Leon Rosselson in yesterday's Guardian:

As a signatory of the letter supporting a cultural boycott of Israel, may I make the following points? 1) The boycott is not, as the objectors seem to think, aimed at individual Israelis but at state-sponsored events and institutions. 2) There are apartheid-like laws in Israel - for example, the right of return that applies only to Jews, the ban on non-Jews owning state land, the bar on any Palestinian Israeli from living in Israel with a Palestinian spouse not resident in Israel. In the occupied territories roads are maintained for Jews only. 3) By defining itself as a Jewish state, Israel denies full citizenship to its non-Jewish population. 4) Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is threatened, in the long run, by what Israelis like to call "the demographic problem". To put it crudely, too many Arabs. The policy of "transfer", one way or another, will be put into practice, continuing the ethnic cleansing started in 1948. 5) I may not live to see it, but I believe the only just solution is a single secular state with equal rights for all its citizens.
Leon Rosselson
Wembley Park, Middlesex

And what's wrong with that?

Israel to hand Palestinians' money to Abbas

This is kind of Israel. They have been stealing money from and starving the Palestinians since Hamas was elected and now they are going to hand the money over to Abbas to help with his coup:

Israel is considering handing over millions of dollars in withheld Palestinian tax funds to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a move that could bolster him ahead of elections over his Hamas rivals, sources said on Wednesday.

Western diplomats and Palestinian sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the proposal under consideration called for releasing the tax money to Abbas in stages on the condition that it will bypass the Hamas-led government.

Transferring the funds would mark a shift in Israeli policy, and could allow the moderate Abbas to make payments to Palestinian civil servants, who have not received their full salaries since Hamas came to power in March.

Two sources said Israel was prepared in principle to transfer tax funds directly to Abbas once several technical and timing issues were addressed.

"No final decision has been made," an Israeli official said.

Olmert's office declined to comment on Israel's plans for the funds, which total about US$500 million.

"We have not been officially informed. We don't know how much the sum would be," top Abbas aide Rafiq Husseini said.

Another senior Abbas aide, Saeb Erekat, said Israel would not transfer the money directly to Abbas, but use it to pay Palestinian bills to Israeli utilities as it has in the past.

From Taipei Times.

Mazin Qumsiyeh on the conference in Tehran

Here's an article by Mazin Qumsiyeh in the Palestine Chronicle expressing condemnation but not surprise at the Tehran conference on the holocaust:

As a Palestinian-American, I am appalled that many people meeting in Teheran claim to support Palestine while denying or trying to minimize Jewish suffering. Few at the conference articulated that the Holocaust did happen, was horrendous, and it needn’t be denied in order to support Palestinian human rights or to oppose Zionism (throughout I refer to political Zionism not cultural Zionism).

This is not surprising, considering that Zionists constantly and intentionally conflate Zionism with Judaism. This is accomplished in many ways, using Jewish symbols for Israel, choosing a national anthem that speaks of Jewish yearning (even though 20% of the population is not Jewish), emphasizing Israel as a Jewish state, speaking of "the Jewish people" as united in support of Israel, even though most Jews are not Zionists, and countless other ways.

But to me the most dangerous Zionist myth that contributes to anti-Jewish ranting in Teheran and beyond is that political Zionism is the defender and protector of Jews against a hostile (gentile) world. The truth is otherwise, and is now well documented in declassified archives, in Zionist archives, in letters and books, and it is rather "inconvenient" (to put it mildly) to political Zionists.

And here's the rest.

Iran has an idea: inspect Israel for nukes!

This is from the Seattle Times:

Iran demanded Tuesday that the U.N. Security Council condemn what it said was Israel's clandestine development of nuclear weapons and "compel" it to place all its nuclear facilities under U.N. inspection.

Condemn Israel for its weapons programme? Now how come no-one thought of that before?

Lenni Brenner interviews Joachim Prinz on MP3

Who's Joachim Prinz? I mentioned him before here. Here's what Israel Shahak wrote:

In fact, close relations have always existed between Zionists and antisemites: exactly like some of the European conservatives, the Zionists thought they could ignore the 'demonic' character of antisemitism and use the antisemites for their own purposes. Many examples of such alliances are well known. Herzl allied himself with the notorious Count von Plehve, the antisemitic minister of Tsar Nicholas II; Jabotinsky made a pact with Petlyura, the reactionary Ukrainian leader whose forces massacred some 100,000 Jews in 1918-21; Ben-Gurion's allies among the French extreme right during the Algerian war included some notorious antisemites who were, however, careful to explain that they were only against the Jews in France, not in Israel.

Perhaps the most shocking example of this type is the delight with which some Zionist leaders in Germany welcomed Hitler's rise to power, because they shared his belief in the primacy of 'race' and his hostility to the assimilation of Jews among 'Aryans'. They congratulated Hitler on his triumph over the common enemy - the forces of liberalism. Dr Joachim Prinz, a Zionist rabbi who subsequently emigrated to the USA, where he rose to be vice-chairman of the World Jewish Congress and a leading light in the World Zionist Organization (as well as a great friend of Golda Meir), published in 1934 a special book, Wir Juden (We, Jews), to celebrate Hitler's so- called German Revolution and the defeat of liberalism:

The meaning of the German Revolution for the German nation will eventually be clear to those who have created it and formed its image. Its meaning for us must be set forth here: the fortunes of liberalism are lost. The only form of political life which has helped Jewish assimilation is sunk.

The victory of Nazism rules out assimilation and mixed marriages as an option for Jews. 'We are not unhappy about this,' said Dr Prinz. In the fact that Jews are being forced to identify them- selves as Jews, he sees 'the fulfillment of our desires'. And further:

We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of belonging to the Jewish nation and Jewish race. A state built upon the principle of the purity of nation and race can only honored and respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind. Having so declared himself, he will never be capable of faulty loyalty towards a state. The state cannot want other Jews but such as declare themselves as belonging to their nation. It will not want Jewish flatterers and crawlers. It must demand of us faith and loyalty to our own interest. For only he who honors his own breed and his own blood can have an attitude of honor towards the national will of other nations.

The whole book is full of similar crude flatteries of Nazi ideology, glee at the defeat of liberalism and particularly of the ideas of the French Revolution and great expectations that, in the congenial atmosphere of the myth of the Aryan race, Zionism and the myth of the Jewish race will also thrive.

Of course, Dr Prinz, like many other early sympathizers and allies of Nazism, did not realize where that movement (and modern antisemitism generally) was leading. Equally, many people at present do not realize where zionism - the movement in which Dr Prinz was an honored figure - is tending: to a combination of all the old hates of classical Judaism towards Gentiles and to the indiscriminate and ahistorical use of all the persecutions of Jews throughout history in order to justify the zionist persecution of the Palestinians.

So here are those Lenni Brenner/Joachim Prinz mp3s.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Leeds Uni "gagging" update

Two letters in the Jewish Chronicle this weekend disputing the "Jewish" Society's claim of being gagged by the university's Students' Union.

Leeds united
15/12/2006
The University of Leeds is proud to be multicultural, with over 100 nationalities and many faiths here. We expect all members of the university to behave according to our values, which include academic freedom, critical independence, diversity, and mutual respect. We will not tolerate any kind of harassment of students, staff or visitors on our campus.

We are committed to promoting and positively encouraging free debate and enquiry, which means that we tolerate a wide range of views, even when they are unpopular, controversial or provocative. We expect speakers to respect the values of our civilised, inclusive society, and in particular to demonstrate respect to all sections of our community.

The referendum decision (JC, December 8) does not remove any rights from Jewish students or conflict with the university’s values. People may criticise the policies of the state of Israel, but they may not be antisemitic. Be assured that we would act swiftly and decisively in the (very unlikely) event that any antisemitism were to emerge at Leeds.

(Professor) Michael Arthur,

Vice-Chancellor,

University of Leeds, Leeds

Contrary to your report that Jewish students had been “constitutionally gagged” and stripped of “basic rights enjoyed by others,” all students enjoy freedom of speech equally on the Leeds campus.

Following the outcome of the referendum, we will continue to build positive relationships between groups and individuals on campus, and we assure all students that, regardless of belief or background, their safety and welfare are paramount.

The motion in no way changes Jewish students’ right to support the state of Israel or debate the issue. The students’ union provides opportunities for debate and expression; we will not tolerate behaviour which strays into the realms of racial or religious hatred.

Michael Damola Timeyin,

Communications and Democracy Officer, Leeds University Union,

Lifton Place, Leeds

Now to get one letter flatly contradicting a front page story maybe considered a misfortune but two, well....

At last Palestine gets one man one vote

Unfortunately the one man is Mahmoud Abbas and his vote doesn't seem to be cast in favour of anything the majority of Palestinians were seeking last time they got a chance to vote.

I heard yesterday that Abbas was calling for elections. Now it seems he has actually called elections. I've been looking around the net for some firm confirmation but I'm not finding much. Here's something I did find on Canada's CTV:

White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo was hopeful the election would bring about positive change.

"While the elections are an internal matter, we hope this helps bring the violence to an end and the formation of a Palestinian Authority committed to the Quartet principles," she said, referring to the Quartet of Mideast mediators, which is comprised of the U.S., the UN, the EU and Russia.

Did you catch that? A White House spokesperson, that is a spokesperson for the institution that was seeking to overthrow the elected Palestinian Authority arguably before Abbas was, says that "the elections are an internal affair." An internal affair for who? the White House? No, far be it from the White House to interfere in another country's elections.

Death sentence for throwing stones?

Well it wasn't a death sentence. This was a Palestinian child so Israel's death sentence hung over him ever since he was born. Here's Gideon Levy's take on yet another child murder by a soldier of the Israeli army:

What is now going through the mind of the soldier who fired a loaded weapon at a boy on the Sunday before last - and killed him? What was he thinking when he aimed at the boy's head? Is he still thinking about his victim? Why does live ammunition have to be used against children, even if they are throwing stones at a armored vehicles? Don't the soldiers have other means of punishment? And what about the security cabinet's decision to promote calm in the West Bank, too?

On December 3, after all, the security cabinet decided that arrests in the West Bank would henceforth be made only with the authorization of the GOC Central Command - but apparently, in order to fire at the head of a boy and kill him, no authorization is required. It's enough to get out of the jeep, aim and fire. The Israel Defense Forces, we know, opposes a cease-fire in the West Bank, too.

Jamil Jabaji, 14, the "boy of the horses" from the Askar refugee camp in Nablus, had been throwing stones at an IDF Hummer making its way toward the camp, and a soldier killed him in cold blood. The vehicle was moving slowly, according to the children's testimony, stopping every once in a while, in what the youngsters thought was a type of provocation, as though trying to lure them closer, until it stopped and two soldiers stepped out, aiming their weapons at them. No teargas, not even rubber-coated bullets. Live fire. A death sentence for stone-throwing.

No, a death penalty. The sentence was passed long ago in spite of Anthony Julius's pleas for clemency.