Khader Adnan and "administrative detention"

Here's a post from Independent Jewish Voices on Khader Adnan:

IJV Supports all efforts to bring an end to Khader Adnan’s detention without trial

Posted on February 21, 2012 by IJV

Khader Adnan has been on hunger strike since 18 December 2011 in protest against his detention without trial by Israeli authorities. There are reports that he was interrogated under torture.

Adnan is being held under so-called administrative detention, a procedure where detainees are held without charge or trial for a period of up to six months. Administrative detention can be indefinitely renewed, and as such is a violation of detainees’ right to fair trial as assured by article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Israel in 1991.

IJV supports all efforts to end the detention without trial of Khader Adnan and has signed a petition with Amnesty International, as well as the petition with SignOn.org, which is to be delivered to the International Red Cross.

We urge anyone who wants to sign these petitions, and hasn’t so far, to do so by following either of the two links below.

Amnesty International petition

SignOn.org petition

To read more about Khader Adnan’s detention:

Click here for Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Click here for Physicians for Human Rights -Israel’s press release on Kader Adnan

The lobby in Europe and the dodgy definition

I can't quite gather my thoughts on this one but someone has emailed me with a suggestion for a post on the baleful influence of the Israel lobby, in this instance, the European Jewish Congress (EJC), on the European Union.  This has a bearing on the bogus working definition of antisemitism which seems to be developing a life of its with a little help from various hasbaraniks.

This is from the EJC's "about us" page:

1997 At the initiative of the EJC, the European Union (EU) establishes the European Union Monitoring Center (EUMC), an institute in charge of providing clear and objective data on racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic incidents in Europe.

A few years down the line and the EUMC (now Fundamental Rights Agency) would hang the bogus working definition of antisemitism on its website without any comment as to what its status is or ought to be.

The EJC lobbies openly, not against racism but actually in favour of racist rule. See this from 2009:

“The European Jewish Congress (EJC) and the 42 affiliated Jewish communities that it represents recognize the State of Israel as a sovereign, democratic state, with the city of Jerusalem as its historic capital.

In this regard, the European Jewish Congress reaffirms the commitment of European Jewry to the centrality of the city of Jerusalem to the Jewish people, in its historic, religious and cultural dimensions and reiterates that the city of Jerusalem should remain unique, indivisible and unified.

The peace negotiations that concern the State of Israel should reaffirm the centrality of the city of Jerusalem to the Jewish people and consider its universal nature for the other monotheistic faiths, in particular Christianity as well as Islam.”

So we have a group that takes credit for an EU organisation supposedly charged with monitoring and presumably preventing racism actively promoting a state, the State of Israel, whose existence is predicated on colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and segregationist laws and in its expanded form to include occupied Jerusalem. Supporting the State of Israel is bad enough, but to openly support it in its expanded form whilst bragging of the influence of its key supporters over an EU group supposedly opposed to racism is an absurdity.

Damn it feels good to be ethnic cleansers

Fans can find the lyrics here.

(H/T Phantastic Phan)

Jewish Chronicle's racism goes explicit

I think this might be the most repulsively racist article I have ever seen in the Jewish Chronicle or in the mainstream UK media as a whole. It's by a barrister, Clive Wolman. who is also, according to the JC, an award winning journalist, though smartly, it doesn't mention who gave the award, nor what for. Having read this article, I can't imagine.

Anyway, let's skip to its conclusion.

Some argue it would be racist to re-partition Palestine into two ethnic states with borders artfully drawn to ensure that as few Arabs as possible are in the Jewish state - and vice versa. But that was precisely the principle behind the complex UN partition plan for Palestine in 1947, and behind many other partitions before and since. Even today, the cultural, linguistic, religious and political gap between Arabs and Jews remains much wider than that between, say, Irish Catholics and Protestants, Czechs and Slovaks, Walloons and Flemish, Serbs and Croats, Hindus and Muslims or Greeks and Turks. The bi-national state, even if desirable in principle, will have to await the next century.

So, there we have it. No sooner has Norman Finkelstein gone on record denouncing the global Palestine solidarity movement for not supporting the two state solution, than the JC comes out in supporting a racially purer form of the State of Israel than exists already.  Perhaps it's time to be as explicitly against Israel's existence as the zionists are now confident enough to be open about the desirability of Israel's Jewish supremacism.

The desensitising effect of bogus allegations of antisemitism

I think Rachel Shabi, in The Guardian, is locking the stable door after the horse has bolted here but she's criticising the habit so many zionists have of falsely accusing Israel's critics of antisemitism.

the real danger in all this is that the rush to throw charges of antisemitism at people who criticise Israel will desensitise vigilance over the real thing. Such tactics are meant to intimidate and paralyse, choke and divert the discussion over Israel's occupation and policies in the Middle East. But for every person silenced, there are growing numbers who, surveying the quality of the argument, will dismiss the pro-right Israel lobby solely on the basis of the bullying. It isn't just the nature of the bashing, but its compulsive frequency, especially when set against the paucity of actual arguments presented.

The problem here is that Israel's supporters must know that they are cheapening the currency by flooding the market with the stuff.  It's almost as if they see a benefit from the confusion.

Witness Bahrain Activists facing deportation

No clearer example of where the US plutocracy really stands on the matter of liberty in the Arab world exists than Bahrain, where a non-violent popular insurrection against an autocratic and US firendly regime has been and continues to be violently supressed with the help of Saudi troops and tacit US support. No clearer example of the deep connection between the violence against the people of the Middle East and the repression of the poor and particularly of people of color in the US exists than the figure of Police chief John Timothy, who militarized policing in Florida and is now "advising" Bahrain "Interior" Ministry (a ehpemism for what is in fact the ministry of internal repression) on supressing the popular uprising.

Unlike in cases like Syria and Iran, where the duty of Western citizens is obfuscated by the repressive nature of the regime that is also opposed by the US, for purely imperialist reasons, no such complications exist in Bahrain. The US support for the repressive regime must be denounced, exposed and attacked, and people in the West have a particular role to play stopping their governments' war against the people in the Middle East.

So here is a press release from a new website, "Witness Bahrain," who rises up to the task. You will not fail to notice the role played by veteran Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activists.

[Manama, Bahrain] Six US Citizens were arrested by Bahraini security forces in Manama on Tuesday during a peaceful protest on the way to the Pearl Roundabout. Protesters had marched into the city center to reestablish a presence of nonviolent, peaceful protest on the one year anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising in Bahrain.

The international observers were in Bahrain as part of Witness Bahrain, an effort aimed at providing civilian presence to report and monitor the situation on the ground (witnessbahrain.org). Leading up to February 14, the one year anniversary of pro-democracy protests, Bahraini authorities had prevented journalists, human rights observers and other internationals from entering the country, leading many to fear a brutal crackdown.

Just yesterday, Secretary of State spokesperson Victoria Nuland stated that the US wanted to see the “security forces exercise restraint and operate within the rule of law and international judicial standards.” But she failed to condemn the violent arrests of US international observers, the detainment of numerous Bahraini pro-democracy activists (including President of the Bahraini Center for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab) and the ongoing use of overwhelming amounts of tear gas.

The six US citizens were part of a peaceful protest marching towards the Pearl Roundabout – site of last year’s peaceful round-the-clock protest in Bahrain, modeled after Egypt’s Tahrir Square – when they were attacked. Bahraini authorities appear to have targeted the Witness Bahrain observers, as one volunteer was told that she was detained for reporting on the February 11th Manama protest.

The six observers remain in Bahraini custory in the Naem Police Station in Manama. This group of internationals is the second to be deported by the Bahraini government. Attorneys Huwaida Arraf and Radhika Sainath were deported on Saturday, February 11th. The two were handcuffed for the duration of their flight from Bahrain to London.

Several international observers remain on the ground.

Biographies of the six arrested international observers:

Kate Rafael works at a San Francisco law firm and is a radio journalist, blogger and political activist from Oakland, California.

Flo Razowsky is photographer and community organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a Jewish anti-Zionist activist with Witness Bahrain and several Palestine solidarity organizations.

Linda Sartor teaches graduate school, and is a community activists based out of Northern California. She has been a human rights activist in Palestine, Sri Lanka, Iran, Afghanistan and Bahrain.

Paki Wieland is a retired social worker/family therapist educator in the Department of Applied Psychology, Antioch University, Keene, New Hampshire. Since the 1960s, she’s also been a dedicated anti-war and civil rights activist.

Mike Lopercio is a restaurant owner from Arizona and has visited Iraq with a Military Families delegation.

Brian Terrell lives and works at Strangers and Guests Farm in Maloy, Iowa. He is a long time peace activist and a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

This new deportation follows the violent deportation of Radhika Sainath and Huwaida Araf. It seems from what Sainath reports below that the Bahraini police was alerted about the activists, most likely by US intelligence.

 

Witness Bahrain holds regular updates and is well worth following. There is also a petiton for which they gather signatures. Don't however send this link to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who thinks the road to liberty passes through solidarty with the thugs of the Bahraini regime.

Norman Finkelstein on BDS and the two state solution

Here's Norman Finkelstein putting the final seal on his support for the two state solution. I find his logic bewildering at times but watch the thing and see what you think:

Arguing the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign with Norman Finkelstein from HuffPoMonitor on Vimeo.

Mondoweiss has a post on it here and the Israel advocacy site, Engage, is particularly excited by it.

UPDATE: Lenin's Tomb has a very good comment on Finkelstein's little chat..

Tax breaks for settlement expansion

I can't see how this changes much but who am I to argue with Ha'aretz?

Today - a few days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the reconciliation deal between Fatah and Hamas a sign of Palestinian refusal of the peace process - the Ministerial Committee for Legislation will discuss another project showing Israel's addiction to the settlement drug.

Coalition Chairman Zeev Elkin and his Likud colleague Zion Pinyan have proposed an amendment to the law governing tax breaks on contributions to foster the growth of communities. Donors will be able to deduct 35 percent of their contribution. Thus the state's tax exemption to institutions that promote public goals will be expanded to include organizations that promote the settlements.

The initiators of the legislation say the amendment has a "negligible" significance on the budget. But its political significance cannot be overstated.

The proposed amendment, like declaring the settlements a preferred development area and promoting the legalization of outposts, is a crude breach of Israel's international obligations. Ariel Sharon's government, in which Netanyahu served as finance minister, pledged in 2004 to U.S. President George W. Bush to stop allocating resources to encourage settlement in the occupied territories. This move was designed to stop creating hasty facts on the ground that would make it difficult to implement a two-state solution.

Actually the implementation of a two-state solution may have been impossible years ago but this editorial reminded me of The Jewish Chronicle's front page on Friday just gone:

The agreement between Fatah and Hamas for a Palestinian unity government, to be headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, almost certainly signals the end of the short-lived attempt to re-launch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. 

What peace talks? What two state solution. The capacity of zionists, of every hue, for self-delusion is breathtaking.

Peter Tatchell protests Israel's pinkwashing and endorses BDS

This is a bit of a turn up. Peter Tatchell has added his name to a letter supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel and protesting Israel's PR tactic of "pinkwashing", ie, presenting itself as a progressive democratic state on account of supposedly gay-friendly policies. Here's the letter:

Dear Editor,

February brings events marking Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month, and London will host this summer's WorldPride Festival, four decades on from the Gay Liberation Front's first Gay Pride events. Simultaneous and overlapping with the civil rights, anti-apartheid and Women's Liberation movements, GLF also drew inspiration from the national liberation struggles of people freeing themselves from colonialism. The LGBT rights we now celebrate originate in the groundbreaking work of that era.

How ironic it would be if, in an attempt to gain a veneer of respectability by promoting itself as a liberal, tolerant haven for gay people and a prime gay holiday destination, an oppressive regime which routinely violates human rights, practises institutional racism and dispossesses an indigenous population tried to co-opt that progress.

As long-term advocates of LGBT and women's rights, some of whom created the first Gay Pride events, we wish to express our concern at the cynical hijacking of those rights by Israel's 'pinkwashing' PR campaign. The specious freedoms enjoyed by some Israeli gay people and visitors to Tel Aviv's nightclubs bear no more relation to real equality than did the privileges accorded white people during South African apartheid. Pinkwashing tries to divert attention from the untold suffering caused by Israel's subjection of the Palestinians to siege, bombardment, military occupation, ethnic cleansing, land theft, settler violence, killings (180 in 2011 alone), imprisonment, forced exile, the crushing of economic, educational and social infrastructure and denial of legitimate aspirations to self-determination.

We write in solidarity with Palestinian LGBT and civil society organisations who initiated the burgeoning global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to bring pressure to bear upon Israel until it complies with international law, and endorse their insistence on the universality of human rights. We invite all who share our abhorrence of Israel's persecution of the Palestinians to observe the boycott of Israeli tourism and goods, and hope that LGBT people encountering pinkwashing will take pride in remembering the roots of our campaigning history and support the Palestinian quest for justice.

Sincerely,
Frankie Green, Mary McIntosh, Peter Tatchell, Stuart Feather, Miriam Margolyes O.B.E., Pratibha Parmar, Linda Bellos O.B.E., Rumana Hashem, Jane Lane, Sarah Colborne, Director, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Professor Oishik Sircar

The site is headed, Palestine Israel One Country: Say NO to apartheid.

I don't think Tatchell can have been very prominent in the campaign for BDS because he has been a favourite of Harry's Place and of Nick Cohen, the former having linked to the latter 60th birthday greetings to Tatchell back in January of this year.  If Tatchell sticks to his guns on this one I don't think either HP or NC will be wishing him well for his 61st, but who knows?  Pinkwashing is a remarkable thing.

We are Anonymous. We will kick your Zio-butts

Netanyahu on Palestinian unity

There's a piece in yesterday's print edition of The Guardian (Monday's online edition) by Harriet Sherwood about a unity government being formed by Fatah and Hamas.

The rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have agreed to form a new unity government in the West Bank and Gaza, which will be headed by Mahmoud Abbas, it was announced on Monday.

Reconciliation talks between the two factions have struggled to make progress since an agreement in principle was signed last spring.

I'm sure there have been many articles on this subject over the years but a couple of points stood out here. First, Sherwood, while highlighting a potential rift within Hamas, equates violence with rejecting Israel's "right" to exist and she contrasts both violence and rejectionism with "popular resistance:

There was no immediate response from Ismail Haniyeh, the de facto Hamas prime minister of Gaza. Over recent months, a rift has openedbetween the Gaza-based leadership of the Islamist organisation and its external leadership on the group's future strategy.

Israel and the United States have voiced concern about a closer relationship between Fatah and Hamas, and are opposed to any unity government that includes Hamas. Despite Meshaal's efforts to turn Hamas towards a strategy of popular resistance, it has not formally renounced violence and accepted Israel's right to exist.

The print edition contains a final paragraph missing from the online version. It's this:

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said if the new government went ahead, "Abbas will have chosen to abandon the way of peace and to join with Hamas".

Now why does any unity agreement among Palestinians amount to Abbas abandoning peace and not Hamas embracing peace? Regarding the latter, I'm not saying they should embrace peace as unconditionally as Abbas has done. I'm merely pointing out the scope for interpretation that Netanyahu has completely ignored.

Israeli citizens and Israelite nationals

The Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) has a series of articles on its site headed, Israel's Democratic Futures. This appears to be down to the worry that the idea of Israel being a democracy is becoming harder to defend. The article in the series which has gained the most attention from Israel advocates, is the one headed, In Defence of Little Israel: An Interview with Michael Walzer even though it appears to flatly contradict the idea that Israel is a state for Jews. The interviewer, BICOM's Alan Johnson and the various Israel advocates whose comments I have read don't appear to have noticed this but Ben White, in New Statesman, has indeed noticed.

At first glance, Johnson appears to be unafraid of posing the difficult questions - but Walzer's unchallenged replies are revealing.

Israel is not the state of the Jewish people; Jews outside Israel don't vote in its elections and non-Jews inside Israel do vote in its elections. The Jewish people are not sovereign in Israel; the citizens of Israel are sovereign there. I think there is a sense in which Israel, I mean green line Israel, is right now politically a state of all its citizens. The real difficulties are not political, they are cultural, and they arise in every nation state.

Unpacked, this is a wonderful illustration of the denial and diversion tactics deployed by those trying to reconcile the idea of a 'Jewish' and 'democratic' state. Walzer says "there is a sense" in which Israel is "a state of all its citizens" - but he presents no evidence, and quickly moves on in order to focus on "cultural" difficulties.

Walzer's response is just wrong (and he surely must know this).

Firstly, foundational to Israel's legal framework as a Jewish state is legislation passed in the first few years, specifically the Law of Return, the Absentee Property Law, and the Citizenship Law. These laws shaped an institutionalised regime of ethno-religious discrimination by extending Israel's 'frontiers' to include every Jew in the world (as a potential citizen), at the same time as explicitly excluding expelled Palestinians.

Incidentally, this notion that Israel is a state for all of its citizens was contradicted a couple of years ago by the then Israeli ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor, in a Guardian article:

Israel's raison d'etre is to be the "state for the Jews".

I can't help wondering how BICOM could get such a basic fact about their specialist subject so very wrong but leaving that to one side, a lot of Israel advocates, whilst falsely accusing anti-zionists of antisemitism, are fond of saying that they do not equate anti-zionism with antisemitism. Apparently, Jim Denham of Shiraz Socialist has no such qualms. He posted a copy of the interview with Walzer without any comment within the post, though he had the decency to allow comments below the post.

Here is Jim challenging an anti-zionist commenter:

You, apparently, would deny that bourgeois democratic right, supported by Lenin and enjoyed by the vast majority of the peoples of the world, to the Jews and the Jews alone. I’d call that (ie: your denial of the right of Jewish self-determination) a form of antisemitism.

Does this mean that all those Israel advocates who flatly contradict the idea of Israel being a state for Jews are being antisemitic. Is an Israel more exclusively Jewish than it is already part of their agenda?  If they support the "bourgeois democratic right" of Jews to statehood, self-determination, or whatever, at the same time as denying that that is what the State of Israel embodies, why do they support Israel at all?

The trick here is performed by Israel distinguishing between citizens and nationals. For the State of Israel, Jews are its nationals, you might say, Jewish "nationals" are its first class citizens. But why don't the advocates of Jewish statehood simply come out and say so?

Chosen people?

This is interesting. Zionists in the UK have scored some successes on the bad faith allegations of antisemitism front lately. Howls of protest have greeted any use of the expression "chosen people" in connection with the privileging of Jews as per the zionist project and worldview.  Playwright, Caryl Churchill, was accused of antisemitism over her play, 7 Jewish Children.  When specific allegations against the play were shown to be false, the false accusers tended to fall back on the fact that one of her characters in the play suggested telling his daughter that "we're chosen people".  More recently The Guardian's Deborah Orr came in for flak over her invoking of the "chosen people" motif when discussing Israel's prisoner swap over Gilad Shalit.

Well now, according to a survey published in Ha'aretz, it turns out that 67% of Israeli Jews believe Jews to be the chosen people.

Once there was a secular majority. No more. That's the finding of a comprehensive, newly published study, "Beliefs, Observances, and Values among Israeli Jews," conducted by the Guttman Center for Surveys, which operates under the auspices of the Israel Democracy Institute. According to the survey, 80 percent of Israeli Jews believe in God; 67 percent believe that the Jews are the chosen people; 65 percent believe that the Torah and precepts are God-given; and 56 percent believe in life after death. It's no longer a matter of popular fondness for traditional customs. This is definitely a matter of belief: three of every four Israeli Jews are not atheists. Even if they are not Sabbath observers, they cling to the basic belief system of the Jewish religion.

There's far more to the article than I've alluded to here but clearly the chosen people idea is a central theme in Judaism. It's no big deal as a personal religious belief but when it's the majority view of the people the State of Israel also holds to be chosen, it does look a little worrisome. As for the idea that it is antisemitic to suggest that the chosen people idea plays some part in zionist thinking, this is yet another example of bad faith allegations of antisemitism undermining those of us who really are opposed to all forms of racism.

Palestinians and the UN convoy to Gaza

Hey look at this in the Jerusalem Post, formerly the Palestine Post:

Dozens of Palestinians threw shoes, sticks and stones at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's convoy as it crossed into the Gaza Strip on Thursday, protesting against what they saw as a slight against Palestinians jailed in Israel.

No one was injured during the hostile welcome and the vehicles, which entered the Hamas-ruled territory from southern Israel through the Erez crossing, pushed through the crowd and sped away......

Many of those who protested as the UN convoy passed were family members of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons. They hit the vehicles with signs bearing slogans accusing Ban of bias towards Israel and of refusing to meet the relatives of Palestinian prisoners.

Bias towards Israel? Wherever did they get that idea from? The articles ends with this:

Upon completion of his visit to the Gaza Strip Thursday, Ban is scheduled to visit the Sapir Academic College near Sderot, which has been the target of numerous Kassam rockets from Gaza. He will then hold meetings with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Opposition Leader Tzipi Livni, and deliver the keynote address at the 12th annual Herzliya Conference.

Aha! It's the itinerary stupid!

Classic case of hypocrisy?

Well, classical really.  Apparently the classical conductor, Christoph von Dohnányi is lined up to perform with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.  Here is an appeal to von Dohnányi from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine:

Dear Christoph von Dohnányi,

We were impressed to read that last October you cancelled several appearances as conductor with the Hungarian State Opera, in protest at appointments made by the mayor to the New Theatre in Budapest.   You were quoted as saying that you did not want to appear in a city ‘whose mayor entrusted the direction of a theatre to two known anti-Semites of the extreme right’.

 We share your alarm at the growing power of racist and authoritarian parties in the Hungarian state, and we salute you for the stand you have taken.   But we‘re also interested to see that you actively support the withdrawal of cultural engagement as a means of expressing political and moral outrage.   Please allow us to suggest that moral and political considerations might therefore argue against your appearances this coming April as guest conductor with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

 Leave aside for the time being the painful fact that between 1947 and 1949 more than half the Palestinian population was driven out of what became Israel, and has never been allowed to return (many historians, including Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, have documented this; and then there is this old man, Amnon Neumann, describing on film exactly how his Palmach unit got Palestinians to leave).

 Leave aside for the moment the illegal military occupation of remaining Palestinian land since 1967, even though every day, dunum by dunum, it removes Palestinians from their land and abuses their rights (for example, the Guardian newspaper has just reported the systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons).

Please look at one event that has occurred since the start of this year.

On 11 January 2012 the Israeli Supreme Court decided that marriage to an Israeli citizen does not give Palestinians from the Occupied Territories or elsewhere the right to reside with their spouses inside Israel.   These people, and their children, are now liable to be expelled.   Articulating the court’s majority opinion, Justice Asher Grunis said, ‘Human rights are not a prescription for national suicide’.   Presumably István Csurka, whose role in the New Theatre in Budapest you understandably object to, might voice similar ethno-nationalist sentiments in relation to the presence of Jews and Roma in Hungary (and according to the Anti-Defamation League, he has done so, many times).   

Our argument is that racism is indivisible.   If one is outraged by the presence in power of racists in one place, one has to be outraged by their exercise of power elsewhere too.   Israeli poet Yitzhak Laor says the Israeli Supreme Court decision is motivated by the desire to ‘maintain a Jewish majority…The looming expulsion of thousands will be carried out with the silent agreement of enlightened members of society [for whom] maintaining a Jewish majority is an ideological common denominator’.

Some of those ‘enlightened’ members of society will be sitting in your concerts, Christoph von Dohnányi, enjoying your interpretation of Schumann and Mendelssohn.   Meanwhile, says Laor, ‘the expulsion of women and children from their homes will be carried out by a state that has never held Arabs to be equal before the law’.

We could suggest further reading – this account of the harassment and dispossession of the Bedouin in the Negev – Israeli citizens, but not Jews.   This interview with Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, who says: ‘Jewishness here means Zionism, not Judaism.   It is misleading to talk about a Jewish and democratic state; it is a Zionist state…To choose Zionism at the expense of democracy is now legitimate; you are defending the Jewish state’. 

We applaud the good example you have set by withdrawing from your concerts at the Hungarian State Opera.   We respectfully suggest that consistency should lead you to do the same with regard to the IPO.   Please don’t let those ‘enlightened’ members of Israeli society continue to believe that their racism is tolerable and excusable because it’s directed at Palestinians.   Please don’t go.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Haim Bresheeth
Mike Cushman
Professor Adah Kay
Professor David Pegg
Professor Jonathan Rosenhead

I hope he heeds the call.

Gove gave what to who and why?

This is weird. Harry's Place is very worked up about an article in The Guardian which they are suggesting shows insensitivity on Holocaust Memorial Day (yesterday).  The Guardian article says that the UK's Education Minister, Michael Gove, awarded a £2 m grant to the Community Security Trust (CST), a zionist group mostly funded by Gerald Ronson supposedly to provide security for Jewish premises, schools, shuls, etc.

Here's HP, under the headline, The Guardian’s Holocaust Memorial Day Surprise:

The Guardian has celebrated Holocaust Memorial Day by running a “gotcha” piece which implies that Michael Gove MP improperly provided government money to the Community Security Trust Michael Gove, the education secretary, awarded £2m of public money to an organisation that he promoted as an adviser for four years.

The education secretary personally made the decision to give taxpayers’ money to an organisation to fund better security at Jewish schools. Gove has promoted the Community Security Trust(CST) as an adviser since 2007.

Documents obtained by the Guardian show that Gove personally wrote to the trust confirming that the education department was awarding the money to it. He issued a public statement saying that he had “secured the funding” to the trust.

Richard Benson, the trust’s chief executive, replied to Gove twice thanking him for his “personal commitment” to providing the funding. Benson’s letter lists Gove as a member of its advisory board, along with more than 50 others.

The minister has taken a strong stand against antisemitism. However, questions are being asked over whether he should have taken any role in awarding the money to the organisation.

The Guardian article, according to its history, appeared in yesterday's print edition but it was updated subsequently to take into account the fact that the CST claims it was only distributing the money.  This paragraph was inserted:

All the money is distributed by the Community Security Trust to the schools which then employ the security guards. As the trust's role is essentially administrative, none of the money is retained by the trust or pays for any of the trust's work.

And the amendment is mentioned at the bottom of the online article thus:

This article was amended on 27 January 2012. The original may have implied that the Community Security Trust retained cash or employed school security guards.

Now if you scroll back up you will see that in the online article as copied by HP there is a link to the ministerial announcement.  Here it is again. And here's how the Department for Education announced the funding:

Education Secretary Michael Gove today confirmed up to £2 million to fund tighter security measures in Jewish faith schools. 

Community Security Trust (CST), a charity working to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish community in the UK, will receive revenue funding for the extra measure of security guards at 39 Jewish voluntary-aided faith schools across England. 

Parents of children at these schools currently pay around £1.6 million a year out of their own pockets, along with the CST providing £400,000, to ensure their children have a school environment safe from any potential anti-semitic or racist threats. 

Schools are responsible for funding general security measures such as fencing, gates and CCTV out of their main school budget. However, following assessments obtained by the CST, the extra security provided by guards in place at Jewish faith schools helps ensure pupils and staff remain safe. 

Confirming the funding on the last day of Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, Michael Gove said: 

Faith schools make a fantastic contribution to our education system and none more so than Jewish faith schools, which teach children the importance of ethos, values and a belief in social justice. 

Children and staff at these schools should feel safe at school and able to learn in an environment free from any anti-semitic or racist threats. That is why I have secured funding of up to £2 million for 2010-11 to be made to the 39 schools via the Community Security Trust. 

The first payment of £650,000 will be paid in arrears for the autumn 2010 term, with up to £2 million funding being provided for 2010-11, subject to further evaluation. 

Richard Benson, Chief Executive of Community Security Trust, said:

CST is grateful to the Secretary of State for recognising the importance of security provision at state-funded Jewish schools, and for the time he and his Department have spent assessing the problem and constructing a viable solution. We will work with the Department for Education and the Jewish school sector to ensure that the funding for school security is distributed efficiently and according to need. 

Joshua Rowe, Chair of Trustees at King David Schools in Manchester, welcomed the news: 

What a wonderful Chanukah present for the whole Jewish community. We hugely appreciate the support the Secretary of State for Education and the Government will now offer – to ensure that our schools and pupils receive the protection they require and deserve.

There's no mention of the rather technical issue of who handles the money or who is employed by whom. The fact is that The Guardian reported pretty much what appeared in the departmental statement together with a criticism of the fact that Gove has been an advisor to the CST. The article doesn't even mention the fact that some of the CST's reporting on antisemitism is, at best, controversial and that many of us see its role as defending and promoting zionism rather than protecting Jews.

Neither The Guardian article nor the Education Department's statement nor HP mention that Michael Gove describes himself as a "proud zionist", though surely this could be considered relevant. The Guardian article might also have asked if there are any strings attached to the allocation of funds by the CST but it didn't.

In other words, this is an HP rant about nothing. The Guardian reported what Gove's department reported with the additional information that Gove has been an adviser to the group to whom the funding was being given. And what did HP add to the Education Department and The Guardian reports?  Well, it reported the fact that yesterday, apart from being Friday 27 January 2012, was Holocaust Memorial Day. And how did Harry's Place "celebrate" Holocaust Memorial Day? By reporting what The Guardian reported, by lamenting the passing of some blogs and looking forward to the closure of The Guardian. In other words the only mention of Holocaust Memorial Day at Harry's Place on the day itself was in a piece decrying The Guardian for a straightforward factual report.

UPDATE: The Guardian article has now reappeared in Saturday's edition. Curiously there is no mention of this in the "article history" to the online edition which is still dated Friday 27 January 2012.

Abbas notices that peace process isn't happening

Wow! I've heard many times that Abbas got a doctorate for denying the holocaust so he won't be getting one for stating the bleedin' obvious, but he certainly deserves one this time; possibly more so than last time.

Here's Ha'aretz:

The time frame that the Palestinians have allowed for talks with Israel in Amman under Jordanian auspices expires on Thursday. According to diplomatic sources associated with the Middle East Quartet - the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia - last-minute efforts are underway to head off the talks' collapse, but the prospects seem slim.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's representative to the Amman talks, Isaac Molho, met on Wednesday in the Jordanian capital for a fifth time with the head of the Palestinian negotiating team Saeb Erekat - but at this point no formula has been reached that would enable the talks to continue. Erekat made it clear that because Israel has not presented its position on the issue of borders with a Palestinian state, from the Palestinians' standpoint, the talks have ended.....

......Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Amman with Jordanian King Abdullah and told the monarch from his standpoint talks with Israel had run their course without results.

No sh*t Sherlock?

Atlanta Jewish Times editor calls for lynching of Obama

Is that a fair description of what actually happened? See this from Ha'aretz:

The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, has suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu consider ordering a Mossad hit team to assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama so that his successor will defend Israel against Iran.

Adler, who has since apologized for his article, listed three options for Israel to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons in an article published in his newspaper last Friday. The first is to launch a pre-emptive strike against Hamas and Hezbollah, the second is to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and the third is to “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

As soon as I read this my mind turned to this lynching in Atlanta back in 1915.

h/t Matthew Tenzer.

Self-hatred in Manhattan?

Well it's still at the allegedly stage at the minute but what it looks like is another case of a Jew going round spraying anti-Jewish graffiti complete with swastikas and causing a lot of shock and horror in the process. I only heard about this today but it was even in the Daily Mail a few days ago.  The New York Daily News seems to have been the first mainstream paper in the US to cover the story. The local, DNAinfo.com appears to have been the first with the news:

MANHATTAN — A Chelsea man made several threatening and anti-Semitic phone calls over a month-long stretch to elderly women in his neighborhood and Brooklyn, police said.

David Haddad, 56, faces aggravated harassment as a hate crime charges for the alleged spree, which began last December and mainly targeted elderly women.

The first incident occurred Dec. 11 when an 80-year-old Brooklyn woman who lives in the 61st precinct—which includes Sheepshead Bay and several other neighborhoods—said she received numerous threatening calls containing anti-Semitic messages.

On Jan. 10, anti-Semitic symbols and messages were found on five apartment doors inside a Chelsea building. A female victim in the building said she also received a threatening anti-Semitic call, police said.

The next day, an 87-year-old Chelsea woman reported receiving a threatening phone message, also containing anti-Semitic statements.

Then on Jan. 12, a 78-year-old woman who lives in the 61st precinct claimed she received a threatening call as well.

It is not clear if Haddad knew any of the victims or why he allegedly targeted them. 

The various mainstream sources are saying that the motive involved a business dispute. I wonder what Judge Judy would say.

EU terrorises Netanyahu

Letter in The Independent:

Donald Macintyre's report from Jerusalem that the EU is giving up hope for a viable Palestinian state (12 January) is as extraordinary as it is appalling. The EU lists Israel actions: demolitions ; prohibitive planning for the Palestinians, but uninhibited for Jewish illegal settlements; the apartheid separation barrier; restricted travel except for the settlers; denial of access to water and other natural resources. This reads like the pogrom it is.

But what is worse is the mooted EU response, which consists of "calling on Israel to halt demolitions and building of settlements". Wow, I bet that makes Netanyahu plead for mercy!

Israel's main market is the EU, where Israel has special access, denied to her neighbours, with the associate status agreement. This agreement is supposed to be dependent upon a country's respect for human rights. The EU has suspended agreements where a country can be seen to be in breach. So I urge every one to write to their MEPs and demand the EU take such a course of action, before it is impossible for Palestine to exist.

Peter Downey
Bath

Here's a list of Members of the European Parliament.