Laws of Return - compare and contrast?

Actually to speak of laws of return in the plural is a bit of a misnomer because I think Israel is the only country that actually has a law called the Law of Return. Also, Israel's Law of Return is a central theme for its citizenship rules whereas citizenship of most countries revolves around being born there or born to someone who was born there or born to someone who was born to someone who was born there. The classic case of a country having a citizenship law based on having one grandparent from that country is Ireland. This is not called the Law of Return, it is called the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act. It's been subjected to a potentially profound change since the beginning of this year. Now, children born in Ireland are not necessarily entitled to citizenship if they have no claim based on parentage or grandparentage. So, whereas previously if a tourist in Ireland gave birth while they were there, that child could become an Irish citizen automatically. Now that is not the case. This law, of course, is not aimed at tourists but at asylum seekers. It's a cruel law in that it could leave some children stateless and therefore in a legal limbo situation. If we take racism to be prejudice on the basis of colour, creed or origin - together with the power to enforce that prejudice, ie discriminate - then it is clearly a racist law.

Now let's look at Israel's citizenship law here, though the text of the law itself is here at the Jewish Virtual Library. The idea of the law is to allow all Jews to live in Israel. It has been through modifications and the way the law now stands is that anyone who has a Jewish grandparent can automatically become a citizen of the state of Israel. The more devious of zionist apologists use this grandparent aspect to compare Israel's Law of Return to Ireland's nationality law. They actually contrast, in fact they are diametric opposites. You see Israel has another law relating to citizenship: the Absentee Property Law (1950). This could keep the zionist apologist in sophistry for hours, even days, at a time. The effect of this law is to deny the Palestinians the right of return to their homes or indeed to their homeland. It refers to property only. The humanity of the Palestinians is secondary here. It was their land that the zionists wanted, not their labour or any other aspect of their basic humanity. I couldn't see anything in the law to say that it was directed against Arabs but then it doesn't need to do that. The law states that people must have lived in Israel, indeed in their homes, during the period 27/11/1947 - when the first planned round of ethnic cleansing began - to 19/5/1948 in order to be citizens of the state. Taking the Law of Return together with the Absentee Property Law, the people with an automatic right to Israeli citizenship are people who managed to remain in the state during the ethnic cleansing of the Arab population from 1947 to 1949 and Jews from anywhere, together with their descendants, yay even unto the third generation. Let's take it slowly, if you were in the state from shortly before its independence was declared to shortly after then you can have citizenship. The only other people automatically entitled to citizenship are people with one Jewish grandparent. It so happens that the majority of Palestinian Arabs were purged from Palestine during the crucial period. They are denied citizenship in Israel, as are their children and their children's children. This is the complete opposite of the legal position in Ireland.

A contributor to Nick Cohen's blog offered the following comment just recently:

Ireland has a Law of Return. Britain has a Law of Return. Germany has a Law of Return.

I expect other countries do, too.

This is lazy blogging by me I know. This oft repeated lie by zionists is probably all over the net but this was the last time I saw it. Frankly I don't know the UK or Germany's citizenship laws but I am fairly certain that Britain doesn't deny citizenship to natives who happened to be out of the country when Britain was engaged in ethnic cleansing. And if Germany tried that sort of thing again the outcry would be deafening. My children are Irish passport holders in spite of me not being Irish and none of the children were born in Ireland. But they have a mother from Ireland. This "from Ireland" bit is the decisive thing. This is because under international law everyone is entitled to a homeland. That is everyone is entitled to live in the country they are from or their country of origin. This is where the grandparent bit comes in. This is why Ireland's law against some children who have been born there is so despicable even without being tested in the courts. But look at Israel. To date most people who have a grandparent from Israel (ie Palestinians) are banned from Israel. All people who have a grandparent from Ireland are welcome in Ireland.

Now when the zionists realise that they can't get away with their lies about this they invoke the holocaust to say why they need a state with a Jewish majority that has to ethnically cleanse natives and enact laws to maintain a "demographic balance" of colonisers over natives. Again have a quick scroll down Nick Cohen's site to see this. For the holocaust wary zionist, the Law of Return is of paramount importance. This, for example, is Greville Janner's take on it:

During the Holocaust millions of Jews died because no country in the world was prepared to give them a refuge and a home (Ian Buruma, G2, March 19).

The right of return is a key foundation of the state of Israel. There could be no question of any Israeli government of any political persuasion reducing that commitment in any way - least of all by giving it up.
Lord Janner of Braunstone
House of Lords

Actually this letter is more hypocritical than I thought. He refers to the Law of Return as the "right of return." The "Law of Return" is simply the name of the law that froms the main pillar of Israel's segregationist structure. See more on this here. Ok here's a quick quote:

Non-Jewish citizens of Israel do not have the right to equality before the law. This discrimination is expressed in many Israeli laws in which, presumably in order to avoid embarrassment, the terms 'Jewish' and 'non-Jewish' are usually not explicitly stated, as they are in the crucial Law of Return. According to that law only persons officially recognised as 'Jewish' have an automatic right of entry to Israel and of settling in it. They automatically receive an 'immigration certificate' which provides them on arrival with 'citizenship by virtue of having returned to the Jewish homeland', and with the right to many financial benefits, which vary somewhat according to the country from which they emigrated. The Jews who emigrate from the states of the former UUSR receive 'an absorption grant' of more than $20,000 per family. All Jews immigrating to Israel according to this law immediately acquire the right to vote in elections and to be elected to the Knesset -- even if they do not speak a word of Hebrew.

So wrote Israel Shahak, describing the effect of the Law of Return on the gentile citizens of Israel. The "right of return" is a principle of international law, in the Palestinian case affirmed in UN General Assembly resolution 194 1948 and reaffirmed every year since. The right of return is the basic human right of all and the specific right of the Palestinians with regard to the land from which they were ethnically cleansed.

So, can anyone point to an equivalent law in Ireland, the UK or Germany? The fact is, Israel's Law of Return is the law that makes Israel unique, not for being a state with racists, though with official sanction Israeli racists can get away with far more racist speech and behaviour than is the norm in other western "democracies," but for being, by self-definition, a racist state.

Israel's Law of Return can be contrasted but not compared with the citizenship law of any other country in the world. No other country invites people from outside of its boundaries to come and live within those boundaries and enjoy more rights than the native population.

My next post will demonstrate the sheer hypocrisy of the zionists invoking the Nuremberg Laws to defend the Law of Return.

Also posted to Lenin's Tomb.

Knocking down the wall, but which wall?

According to Ha'aretz, Afghanistan is considering diplomatic relations with Israel. Israel's foreign minister, Sylvan Shalom used a wonderful turn of phrase to describe Israel's attempts at diplomacy among Arab and Muslim regimes.

The Afghani report coincides with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's efforts to knock down the "iron wall" between Israel and Arab and Muslim countries. "Muslim countries understand this is the right time to initiate contact with Israel because anyone who wants to be involved in the peace process must have contact also with Israel and not only with the Palestinians," the Israeli sources said.

Whose wall is it anyway?

Israel kills Jewish stone throwers at the Western Wall

Just kidding! Of course Israel wouldn't kill Jewish stone throwers no matter how big the stones, no matter how big the throwers, no matter how big (or small) the target. Israel has been killing Palestinian stone throwing children for years now, even luring and provoking them into their stone throwing action before killing them, but never does Israel kill Jewish stone throwers. Clearly some stone throwers are more equal than others in the only democracy in the Middle East. Anyway, what's all this stone throwing about? According to Chris McGreal at the Guardian,

Scores of worshippers at Judaism's holiest site stoned a senior Israeli army officer as he arrived to pray, because of his leading role in removing settlers from the Gaza strip. A crowd surrounded Major General Elazar Stern, the head of the army's personnel division, as he approached the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem's old city with his young son on Friday.

When police officers moved to protect the general, worshippers began throwing stones, bags of water, and other objects at him; he emerged unharmed.

As did the stone throwers. If only Israel would treat all stone throwers that way.

Guardian ran anti-semitic debate, shock!

This is Nick Cohen's contention in an article I have now read and alluded to more times than is good for a person. Here's what he actually wrote:

The moment when bewilderment settled into a steady scorn, however, was when the Guardian ran a web debate entitled: "David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man anti-Semitic".

Here's the Guardian's take on this:

In last week's New Statesman Nick Cohen wrote an article that stopped me and several of my colleagues in our tracks. In a piece about the rise of anti-semitism on the left he cited the unpleasant experience of "when the Guardian ran a web debate entitled: 'David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man anti-semitic'".

Of course the impression one would get from this is that we orchestrated or commissioned such an offensive exchange. The fact is that it was a thread started not by us but by a user, which has now been deleted and which would have been deleted as soon as we had seen it, as it clearly breaches talk policy. In that sense it had nothing to do with GU or the Guardian, yet it had appeared on our website talkboards. This raises the difficult question of whether allowing users to do what they wish is damaging to our editorial brand and whether that is a strong enough reason to impose more draconian rules on our users.

In this case the writer, Emily Bell, has chosen to be far more kind to Nick Cohen, a colleague at the Guardian's sister paper, the Observer, than he chose to be to his colleagues at the Guardian.

In this case it was a simple misunderstanding and an issue of terminology.

Yeah right.

Nick Cohen on the net

Just when you thought it was safe to surf, Nick Cohen has a website. Ok, it's not exactly earth shattering news but it is styled as a blog complete with comments. The comments, at first, read like Little Green Footballs which is mostly an anti-Muslim anti-left hate site. Old Nick is pretty chuffed about those. But, thanks to Stephen Marks, I have alerted a few people who have taken issue with his ridiculous claim that "all anti-semites are anti-zionists."

Israeli army appeals for human shields

The Israeli Supreme court recently ruled against the Israeli army's use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. The army is now, according to al-Jazeera, appealing against this ruling.

The Israeli High Court issued a ruling earlier this week barring the army from using Palestinian civilians as human shields, a practice used heavily in the West Bank, particularly since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada or uprising in 2000.

On Tuesday, Israeli military sources said the army would press the High Court to reconsider the ruling on the ground that it would complicate "army activities" in the West Bank.

Apparently the human shield policy is for the Palestinians' own good.

The army has sought to downplay the gravity of the "human shield practice", describing it as a "generally innocuous early warning procedure"....

The occupation army has further argued that the practice actually saves (Jewish) lives and that banning it entirely would inflict more casualties on the Palestinians themselves as the army would be forced to bombard and destroy entire buildings where "wanted persons" are barricaded.

See how al-Jazeera has had to insert the "Jewish" in brackets before the "lives." To the Israeli army, lives are a Jewish thing. The saving of Palestinian "lives" comes in as an afterthought and a bogus one at that.

No case for Israel, just fiction passing as fact

Here's a curious article on Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah in zmag.org. Written by Neve Gordon, it wreaks as much havock on Alan Dershowitz's already savaged reputation as Finkelstein does.

Academically, the section discussing Israel's human rights record raises serious questions about intellectual honesty and the ideological bias of our cultural institutions, since it reveals how a prominent professor [Alan Dershowitz] holding an endowed chair at a leading university can publish a book whose major claims are false. The significant point is not simply that the claims cannot be corroborated by the facts on the ground -- anyone can make mistakes -- but that any first-year student who takes the time to read the human rights reports would quickly realize that though The Case for Israel has rhetorical style and structure, it is, for the most part, fiction passing as fact.

I do have some issues with the piece though. Take this:

While Finkelstein's basic claims are on the mark, he makes a couple of serious mistakes. First, the Israeli case in no way constitutes an unprecedented assault on international law. Not only has the Iraq war, which Finkelstein mentions, led to more egregious violations, particularly if one counts civilian deaths, but one could easily come up with a series of other recent assaults on international law that have produced much more horrific results. One only has to think of Chechnya, Rwanda, and Darfur.

There are many problems with this argument. First up, it is precisely over Iraq, not just Irael, not even Israel, that Finkelstein says that the bogus allegation of anti-semitism has been used against leftists. Regarding Chechnya, Rwanda and Darfur the comparison with anti-semitism may well be legitimate so why mention it in a book that argues that the allegations of, and comparisons with, anti-semitism are misapplied?

The other is this:

Finkelstein convincingly maintains that a connection has been drawn between Israel's illegal actions in the Occupied Territories and the new Anti-Semitism. This link has a dual character. On the one hand, the literature discussing the new anti-Semitism is used to fend off all criticism of Israel, while, on the other hand, Israel's violation of the occupied Palestinians' basic rights has generated anti-Semitism. I follow Finkelstein thus far, but he then proceeds to an odd and troubling conclusion: the Jews, Finkelstein implies, are also to blame for the rise of anti-Semitism.

This is unfair. He doesn't say that. Here's the crux of what he says:

In some quarters anger at Israel's brutal occupation has undoubtedly spilled over into an animus toward Jews generally. But however lamentable, it's hardly cause for wonder.

This quote is preceded by some stuff about Sarte's peculiar philo-semitic pamphlet "Anti-Semite and Jew" that Gordon alludes to but there is still not enough there to accuse Finkelstein of accusing Jews generally of responsibility for anti-semitism.

Anyway, the digs at Dershowitz make the article well worth a read but I can't help feeling that Neve Gordon misrepresents Finkestein and in so doing, possibly indverently appeases an "offical" Jewish establishment that must take some responsiblity for the anti-semitism that is evident today, marginal though it is.

Jews against Cohen's "anti-semitism"

The New Statesman has published some letters, mostly critical, on Nick Cohen's absurd rant on "anti-semitism." These are my faves because I agree with what they're saying:

While it becomes increasingly impossible to defend Israel's policies, a new front has been opened by propagandists, namely Israel is singled out for criticism because of ongoing anti-Semitism. Nick Cohen fails to see that a country he lauds as a democracy is all the more culpable of human rights abuses, precisely because the inhabitants of that country, through the ballot box, are able to make the choice to oppress another people. He says that there is a free press, so Israelis do not have even the consolation of saying "we never knew", as often happens under dictatorships.

It is indeed true that Israel is treated differently from other countries. It is allowed to occupy another people's land, confiscate their resources and build walls to imprison the population.

Diana Neslen
Ilford, Essex

To suggest that Hamas is at the centre of a multiheaded, anti-Semitic hydra is political paranoia. Israeli soldiers and settlers, with fists, boots and bullets, bulldoze the houses and crops of poor peasants, steal their water and land, kill their children and humiliate their elders, all in the name of the Jews. It is, after all, a Jewish state. Nick Cohen wonders why the illiterates of Hamas echo the absurdities of European anti-Semites? He muddles cause and effect and persists in looking down the telescope the wrong way.

Tony Greenstein
Secretary, Jews Against Zionism, Brighton

This use of the anti-semitism smear has now been widened to cover not just criticism of Israel but also any criticism of American foreign policy. It's bizarre isn't it? These war party hacks are close to suggesting that imperialism is a Jewish thing.

Pinter's prize

Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature today and so I was looking for stuff on him when I stumbled on his website. My favourite bit was when he wrote to the Guardian to rebut what Christopher Hitchens had said about him in the wake of 9/11. It's in a section headed "Misrepresentation in Media"

Dissenters put the record straight
Guardian Friday September 28, 2001

In the last two months two assertions have been attributed to me by the Guardian. Both were serious and both were false. The first was "Milosevic is innocent - Pinter" (August 1). I had said no such thing. The second was by Christopher Hitchens (September 26), stating "that if one of the hijacked aircraft had crashed into the Capitol or White House, I would have found myself reading Pinter or Pilger on how my neighbourhood had been asking for it". I have said no such thing. Nor has John Pilger. The Guardian has apologised to "all concerned" in its Corrections column and explained that they were both "editing errors". I believe that the existence of such highly damaging "editing errors" at such a critical time should be more widely known, which is why I have written this letter.
Harold Pinter

It gets better when Hitchens tries to distance himself from what he had written.

Having been informed that Harold Pinter had made an incautious statement in the wake of September 11, I included two disobliging references to him in my column. Discovering I had been wrongly apprised, I asked the relevant editor for the mentions of Harold to be removed. Only one was spotted and excised and so I have inadvertently done him an injustice. At a time like this, it is very important that there be no jeering or witch-hunting***, so I would be grateful if you would give this retraction the same prominence you gave my original remarks.
Christopher Hitchens
Washington DC

*** Tell that to Cindy Sheehan.

Some synagogues are more sacred than others

Many thanks to the person who sent me this link to the Hackney Gazette report set out below.

Jewish Conflict

AN orthodox Jewish synagogue in Stamford Hill has been attacked and vandalised - not by anti-semetic thugs, but by fellow Jews who regard its leaders' outspoken condemnation of Israel as a betrayal.

Rising tensions over the forced evictions by Israeli troops last month of Jewish settlers from occupied Palestinian territory as part of the Middle East peace process has sparked a backlash among Stamford Hill's orthodox Jewish community.

Windows at the synagogue in Alkham Road were smashed after bottles were hurled at them last Thursday evening and the front of the building was covered with red spray paint.

The synagogue belongs to Neturei Karta, an ultra-orthodox sect opposed to the Zionist political movement that established the state of Israel as a national homeland for Jews.

The sect claims that the concept of a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to the teachings of the torah (Jewish law) and has led to the bloodshed in the Middle East.

In recent years it has staged the public burning of the Israeli flag on street corners in Stamford Hill.

This isn't the first such incident by any means. Incidents like this contrast with the expressions of horror at the fact that Gaza's Palestinians destroyed synagogues as symbols of zionist oppression. They also belie the claim that Jews cannot destroy synagogues. But where was the Community Security Trust when it was needed?

Also posted to Lenin's Tomb

Anti-zionist resources

I just had a comment setting out some books of interest to anti-zionists so here are some of them. I'm not necessarily recommending these but I would say they're worth a look at though I haven't read all of them.

The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black. I have read his War on the Weak and I do recommend that. If it's as good as War on the Weak then it's certainly worth a look at.

Just about anything by Israel Shahak - That's not the name of a book. I have read one of them - Jewish History Jewish Religion - and you too can read it in full here. Sadly one of his books has a foreword by the leftist formerly known as Christopher Hitchens, I mean the Christopher Hitchens formerly known as a leftist.

Lenni Brenner has produced some gems. I read his Jews in America Today back in the 1980s though it seems to have been updated since then and the copy I've linked is dated 2001. Also I can recommend Zionism in the Age of the Dictators which is a must read for details of nazi-zionist collaboration and it has some very useful footnotes. 51 Documents is very useful but it didn't do it for me as it shows (that's not to say it repeats because it doesn't) many of the documents alluded to in Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. One thing to highly recommend it though is the fact that one of the main British zionist groups, the Board of Deputies, tried to get Amazon to issue a health warning on it, saying that it was "dangerous and controversial. Well Lenni wasn't having that, because he hates to be "dangerous and controversial."

Last but not least for now is David Hirst whose most recent update of the Gun and the Olive Branch was in August 2003. I'm sure time hasn't withered it but it's still time for another I'd say.

Tell a lie - here's another that I really don't know anything about but the publishers sent me a shmoozy email. It's called Edges: O Israel, O Palestine and that's all I know of it.

Oops, and another. No list would be complete without The Myths of Zionism by John Rose even though the editor and the proof reader allowed Ber Borochov to slip through the net as Ben Borochov. Never mind, poet, raconteur and playright, Michael Rosen, found it a right riveting read.

Nick Cohen on anti-semitism, well he's on something anyway

Here is as ridiculous an article on anti-semitism as you will find anywhere on the internet. It was published recently in the New Statesman (dated 10/10/05) but it has already been re-published on various zionist blogs and I have posted it here.

It doesn't have a title as such. It's headed News Statesman Essay. followed by a bland assertion with no back up in what is (I warn you) a lengthy article:

'Anti-Semitism isn't a local side effect of a dirty war over a patch of land smaller than Wales. It's everywhere from Malaysia to Morocco, and it has arrived here'

It's interesting actually that Nick Cohen is saying here that anti-semitism isn't linked to the question of Palestine. The fact that he is trivialising the zionist project as being over "a patch of land smaller than Wales" shows what his motivation is for the article: to support the racist war criminals of Israel and their supporters in the media and various governments. But he seems not to have quite got the hang of the zionist campaign to try to, it seems, criminalise all criticism of Israel. For example, the Jewish Chronicle on Friday 7/10/2005 has the Chief Rabbi decrying the "new anti-semitism" as consisting of Attacks on Holocaust Memorial Day, the proposed academic boycott of Israel and the churches' discussions of divestment from Israel or companies that supply murder machinery to Israel. Smartly, the Chief Rabbi started on something of a more general Jewish interest than just zionism but no one can plausibly deny that the holocaust has been used to defend Israel from criticism. So we have three examples of the "new anti-semitism" and all three are bound up with, not the Jews generally, but zionism in particular.

It seems we are in the middle of an orchestrated campaign to smear the opponents of Israel so the zionists are running around telling everyone that anti-zionism is not necessarily anti-semitic but it can become anti-semitic if it is too vociferously expressed. If it is orchestrated then poor old Nick Cohen has been left out of the loop. He's gone back to the old chestnut that hostility to Israel is a product of the "oldest hatred" not the other way around.

If you read the article and have any critical faculty at all you will see that it is riddled with unsubstantiated bland assertions, non-sequiturs and downright falsehoods but I don't want to reproduce it here and debunk it line by line because I've read it twice and I've only just had my breakfast. Also I might have to repeat the exercise if I get round to writing to the New Statesman about this. Instead I want to look at arguably the stupidest thing he asserts in the article. Cop this:

As I'd had little contact with Jewish religion or culture, I'd rarely given anti-Semitism a thought. I suppose I'd assumed it had burned out in the furnaces of Auschwitz. When the subject came up, I dutifully repeated the liberal mantra that "not all anti-Zionists are anti-Semites" and forgot the corollary "but all anti-Semites are anti-Zionists".

Let's leave aside the fact that Nick Cohen feels that the only way he earn the trust of his readers by assuring them that he is not Jewish himself. This means that we can trust him just as we can trust, say, Conrad Black and whole ragbag of non-Jewish zionist smear merchants. Let's focus on the ridiculous whopper that "all anti-Semites are anti-Zionists."

I'm drawing heavily on Wikipedia here though some of their definitions are disputed. Theodor Herzl was not the first zionist by any means but he was the first leader of the zionist movement as we know it today. According to Wikipedia "Herzl did not foresee any conflict between Jews and Arabs." I'm not sure what is meant here but he definitely foresaw the ethnic cleansing of the Arabs from Palestine. He was the first leader of the World Zionist Organisation which was then, to oversimplify slightly, the Jewish state in waiting. whose aim it was to establish a state in Palestine for Jews, secured by "public law."

Anyway, Mr Herzl himself was more than a tad anti-semitic. Biographies of Herzl show that he was highly assimilated. At one point, he thought it a good idea to have all Jews converted to the Catholicism of his native Austria. He also seems to have believed that Dreyfus was guilty of treason against France and he clearly joined and led the zionist movement to stem the flow of Jewish immigrants into the west and divert it to the Middle East where he felt that Jews could make themselves useful to this or that great power. He also believed that one day western Jews would thank him for saving them from hordes of east European Jews. I'll return to this theme in a later post because with all the bogus allegations of anti-semitism doing the rounds these days, no one discusses zionist anti-semitism. So take it as read that Herzl was anti-semitic and trust me that I'll dig up some writings and sayings in due course.

I want to look at the various alliances that zionism has made with its kindred spirit.

To secure a land for Jews Herzl approached the Ottomans who controlled Palestine at that time. He invoked the anti-semitic notion of Jewish financial power bailing the sick-man empire out of its financial woes. But as Ben Gurion would later say, it wasn't just land that zionim required; it was Jews. To that end he approached the Tsar Nicolas II, or more accurately, his anti-semitic chief of the secret police and discussed ways of having Jews drop out of the Russian revolutionary movements (and indeed out of Russia altogether) and go to Palestine. Their meeting was as famous as any embarrassment to the zionists can be. That is not very famous at all except among anti-zionists and zionists who just won't tell. Theodor Herzl approached none other than Count Von Plehve, the author of the worst pogroms in Russia - the pogroms of Kishinev with the following proposition:

"Help me to reach the land [Palestine] sooner and the revolt [against Czarist rule] will end." Von Plehve agreed, and he undertook to finance the Zionist movement. He was later to complain to Herzl: "The Jews have been joining the revolutionary parties. We were sympathetic to your Zionist movement as long as it worked toward emigration. You don’t have to justify the movement to me. You are preaching to a convert." Herzl and Weizmann offered to help guarantee Czarist interests in Palestine and to rid Eastern Europe and Russia of those "noxious and subversive Anarcho-Bolshevik Jews".

As an aside here, John Rose demonstrates in the Myths of Zionism how the new cadre of battle hardened Jews after the failed Russian insurrection of 1905 were crucial in establishing the backbone of the zionist militia in Palestine. so from the zionist perspective this alliance with anti-semitism proved to be very fruitful indeed.

Speaking of 1905, that was the year when Britain's Arthur (later Lord) Balfour pushed through the Aliens Act. This act was aimed specifically at restricting the numbers of Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. As Lord Balfour the promoter of this anti-semitic measure would issue the notorious declaration pledging British support for the zionist project. Whilst I don't agree with all of his reasoning, significantly, the only dissenter over the adoption of the Balfour Delaration as British foreign policy on the British cabinet of the time was the only Jewish minister: Edwin Samuel Montagu

When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country, drawn from all quarters of the globe, speaking every language on the face of the earth, and incapable of communicating with one another except by means of an interpreter.

Clearly he failed to recognise, arguably, zionism's only impressive achievement: the reconstruction of Hebrew as an everyday working language.

The Balfour Declaration came in the wake of the Russian revolution so just as zionism had lost an anti-semitic benefactor it gained another.

Even after Israel was established the collaboration of zionists with anti-semites continued. Here's Israel Shahak's take, worth quoting at length

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.

For, insane as it sounds, it is nevertheless plain upon close examination of the real motives of the zionists, that one of the most deep-seated ideological sources of the Zionist establishment's persistent hostility towards the Palestinians is the fact that they are identified in the minds of many east-European Jews with the rebellious east-European peasants who participated in the Chmielnicki uprising and in similar revolts - and the latter are in turn identified ahistorically with modern antisemitism and Nazism.

I've been running all over the internet for evidence of this confluence of zionist and nazi aims, ie anti-semitic zionism and zionist anti-semitism, and there it was all along in Israel Shahak's Jewish History Jewish Religion. Read it in full here. It has all the evidence you need to show that Nick Cohen's article is an exercise in shmockery. To recap, he said that not all anti-zionists are anti-semitic but all anti-semites and anti-zionists. I hope that I have demonstrated here that many anti-semites have been fervent zionists, to paraphrase Eichman, the most fanatical zionists imaginable. And clearly, some, indeed many, zionists can be anti-semites. As a rule one should challenge all statements made by zionists. They very rarely stand passing, let alone close, scrutiny.

Dog wags tail: Official

From the Australian.

A PENTAGON employee admitted in court here today that he had provided classified defence information to an Israeli diplomat and two employees of a pro-Israel lobby group.

Lawrence Franklin, 58, a specialist on Iran, Iraq and terrorism issues, worked at the time of the events for a top Pentagon official, Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith.

Goodness gracious, someone at the Pentagon working for Israel. Actually I'm only surprised about this case because I didn't know it was illegal for Pentagon staffers to work for Israel.

Two America Israel Public Affairs Committee officials have also been charged with "conspiracy to communicate national defence information to persons not entitled to receive it."

Cry the shitty little country

Here's an article by Chris McGreal in yesterday's Guardian. Because of its plum location, the Israeli army occupied the house of Gazan, Khalil Bashir and his family. Explaining the occupation thus:

The army designated the living room as "Area A", after the part of the occupied territories where the Palestinians have control, and told all three generations of the Bashirs, from 81-year-old Zanah to her five-year-old granddaughter, that they were confined there for most nights and sometimes for much of the day. It was the only part of the house they could still call their own.

The bathroom, kitchen and bedrooms were "Area B", where Palestinians administer themselves but Israel has security control. In the Bashir home that meant soldiers had priority and the family had to ask permission to cook or go to the toilet.

And then came "Area C", where the Israeli military government runs everything and the Palestinians have no authority. The soldiers warned the Bashirs that all of their home above the ground floor was Area C and if they ventured up the stairs they would be shot.

Still, Mr Bashir took it on the chin.

The day the soldiers moved in to Mr Bashir's house he vowed that no matter what they threw at him, he would not hate; his energies would go into trying to understand and, in his words, love the Israelis. Mr Bashir, a headmaster, began by leading hundreds of his pupils in a chant for peace each morning.

Life was no bed of roses with a house literally militarily occupied:

There has been much to test Mr Bashir's resolve over the past five years. The military tried to prise the family out of the house. It made a wasteland of the greenhouses and fruit orchards, including 170 palm trees, that provided their relative wealth. Soldiers wounded Mr Bashir with a mortar and shot and injured two of his sons, leaving one with a bullet lodged next to his spine and in danger of paralysis. They also killed the family donkey.

But not wishing to go the way of the Palestinian refugees, still Mr Bashir hung in there.

At first he thought that being confined with the soldiers would provide an opportunity to break down the suspicion and persuade them that there were Palestinians who believed in peace and coexistence. But he found them unwilling to listen, or under orders not to. "They behaved professionally but they didn't leave room for human contact. Their orders were not to be friendly with us," he said. Mr Bashir was regularly forced to strip to his underwear on his own doorstep before entering the house, often in front of his children.....

All the time, Mr Bashir preached understanding - even when it generated the suspicion of armed groups such as Hamas. Then last year a soldier on Mr Bashir's roof shot his 15-year-old son, Yusuf, as the pair waved goodbye to a United Nations team that had come to check on their welfare.

And did his peace overtures work? Not quite.

Last month, after the soldiers hauled off the machine guns and finally drove away, Mr Bashir ventured up the stairs of his home for the first time in five years. What he found was a relatively small thing compared with the shootings of his sons and the destruction of his orchards, but it left him flummoxed for the first time since the soldiers arrived: placed around the walls were the Bashirs' cooking pots, each with a pile of human excrement in the bottom.

"The moralistic army used our cooking pots as lavatories," Mr Bashir said. "They dominate my bathroom and they use the toilet all the time. So why did they behave in this way? They used our cooking pots and they left them behind deliberately. They gathered everything, even empty bottles, sandbags and took it with them. But they left this as a souvenir."

Mr Bashir grappled to understand and reluctantly concluded that it could only be explained as a deliberate and provocative mocking of everything the soldiers knew he stood for.

Ah well, when you've got to go, you've got to go.

Also posted to Lenin's Tomb

Beeb appoints another zionism tsar

Reports in both the Guardian and the Independent say that the BBC is appointing yet another zionism tsar to appease Israel. The last one was last year. Malcolm Balen was the Beeb's last zionism tsar. Installed as a result of zionist lobbying, Balen reported in secret to the BBC high-ups on the Beeb's coverage of Palestine. I'm guessing that he advised the Beeb on how to avoid upsetting the Israelis. This is a toug assignment. Just an example, when the reports came in from Israel Army Radio that there were "hundreds of fatalities" in Jenin in 2002, the BBC picked up on the Israeli reports and repeated them. It turned out that the number killed was fifty-something. Ergo, the BBC is anti-semitic for taking its cue from Israel. Amid all the allegations against the BBC, it hasn't defended itself, it has simply pandered to the zionists. I doubt if this latest episode will herald a more even stance on the part of the Beeb towards the question of Palestine.

Conspiracies against Muslims and Arabs?

Yunus Yakoub Islam aka the Anarchist Muslim, or was it Muslim Anarchist? It's one of those. Anyway, he's set up a new blog - Muslims against Mumbo Jumbo - specially to debunk the absurd conspiracy theories doing the rounds about Jewish responsibility for all manner of disasters from 9/11 to the tsunami. Personally I don't see much need for this but then Yakoub is concerned that some of the conspiracy theories are both offensive and harmeful to any cause associated with Muslims and Arabs; certainly, he feels, they undermine legitimate, that is most, criticism of Israel. The way I see it is that the zionists actively want anti-semitism. There are clearly some people who feel that zionism cannot be defeated and so they like to say things that are offensive to Jews since, if they can't defeat zionism they can at least make zionists feel bad about themselves. This betrays a complete lack of understanding of what zionism is all about. It's true that zionism came into being as a response to anti-semitism but it has long since been a reaction to the assimilation of Jews and so zionism wants anti-semitism and where it can't find it, it invents it. In this sense anti-semitism is the enemy, not of the zionists but of the Arab and Muslim communities.

Anyway, let's have a look at some of Yakoub's instances of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories around 9/11. I am simply using Yakoub's headings and then googling them.

Blaming the Mossad.

Punching "Blaming the Mossad" 9/11, into google we find 296 sites all of which claim that this rumour is doing the rounds. Googling Mossad 9/11 we draw 304,000 sites, many of which do accuse the Mossad of responsibility for 9/11 but few that you could call credible. The most plausible story is that the Mossad knew what was happening and did nothing to alert the US.

"Israeli Art Student" Spy Ring

Is this so bizarre? The fact that Israel spies on America is well known. One spy for Israel, Jonathan Pollard, is serving time in America for his espionage. Also, some AIPAC seniors are currently under investigation for spying on America. I can't find anything weird about this story.

"Jewish Ownership" of the World Trade Center

This one clearly relies on an anti-Jewish stereotype involving insurance fraud on a near unthinkable scale but I can find no sites on this. True, googling whole sentences can yield imprecise results but where are these theories?

Four Thousand Israelis Told to Stay Home

Punch that statement into google and it yields 3 sites only. [update] A zionist has suggested that I was being deliberately dishonest in framing the search in the way that I did so I should point out that googling different but similar words and different permutations of words will yield different results - OBVIOUSLY!

I know many Muslims and many Jews and the only people who have said anything to me about these silly theories, where indeed they are silly, have been zionists. I have only read of them in the Jewish Chronicle. In fact, a couple of years ago a guy in the JC wrote of how he was sitting in an amusement arcade and a man "of Middle Eastern appearance" (not an Israeli then) came and sat beside him. He began to speak about 9/11, as people "of Middle Eastern appearance" do, and told the JC guy of how 4,000 Israeli stayed at home. In fairness I remember Abu Hamza saying on TV that the planes that were flown into the WTC were unmanned and when asked who he thought was responsible for 9/11 he said something like "who is the lobby who has most to gain etc?" But widespread? I'd say not. Worth devoting a new blog to? Maybe. It could be fun and it could direct people of goodwill to use their time more fruitfully than wasting it on silly stories that only serve to cheer the zionists and demoralise their victims. So check out the site - Muslims against Mumbo Jumbo - and try to find the origin of the stories. You might just find that conspiracy theories are themselves a conspiracy, but that's just my theory.

Robert Fisk book serialisation

Having survived decades dodging bullets from the likes of, among others, John Malkovich, Robert Fisk has published a book - The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East - which is being serialised in the Independent all this week. I read the offering in Saturday's Independent magazine and I was surprised by his calmness. I often find his writing a little over-emotional but Saturday's piece, on his meetings with Osama Bin Laden, was calm, detached and factual. And yesterday's didn't disappoint either. Short versions are available on the Independent site and full versions can be acquired on a pay per view basis. Brits can easily pick up the print edition from newsagents. Non-Brits will have to try a little harder to acquire their copy. The book is available here.

State of Israel versus the Land of Israel

I've only just been sent this Ha'aretz article by Tom Segev though it was published on 12/9 and it's all over the web now. Titled "The sky did not fall down" it suggests that the withdrawal from Gaza was a potentially great psychological leap away from the messianism that gripped zionism in the wake of the '67 war. There are some interesting reported comments from '67 "legends" like Dayan who didn't want Gaza, and Rabin, who didn't want it either, to Bar-Lev who wanted it and believed he could "cleanse" it in four hours. So why did they conquer Gaza? Because they could, is the shortest answer to that. War maybe a logical way of achieving political aims but once it begins, the illogic of war itself takes over. So argues Segev anyway.

As long as the alternatives facing the state ahead of the Six-Day War were considered in a level-headed manner, most of the decision-makers agreed that most of the territory that Israel was likely to occupy shouldn't be occupied. Nevertheless, the territory was occupied, because when the battles began, the decision-makers acted on gut feelings and from the heart, and not from the head.

And so

The Six-Day War led to nationwide agreement that Gaza is not to be given back "for all eternity" - even in return for peace. Gaza and Jerusalem were one and the same. And this consent formed the basis for the logic in establishing permanent Israeli settlements in the Strip. The residents were able to believe that that they would remain there forever.

So, taking the withdrawal of settlers from Gaza as the key factor in the disengagement, and ignoring the fact that Gaza seems to be as occupied as ever in terms of Israeli attacks and control over airspace and boundaries, Segev argues that a line might have been been crossed.

The immediate lesson to be learned is that settlements can be dismantled without the sky falling down. Most Israelis support this; there is no national trauma. Hence, the withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantling of the settlements may turn out to be a landmark in the cultural war that is taking place in Israel. The limited tactical nature of the withdrawal does not yet facilitate making a declaration that it signifies the victory of the State of Israel over the Land of Israel, but it could be one step back from the messianic trend that took over Zionism in the wake of the Six-Day War, and one step toward the rational trend that characterized it before the war.

It should be noted that this article was written before Israel began its recent bombardments of Gaza and so perhaps Segev was right to express himself in ifs and buts.

Just one per cent believe that "the British media is biased in favour of Israel"

Now there's a shock headline. Who are these people that only one per cent believe that our zionist controlled media is biased in favour of Israel? Well, according to the Jewish Chronicle, they are a self-selected sample surveyed by YouGov for the scrupulously impartial StandUp4Israel. The sample size was 2,018 but, of course, size isn't important when you "self-select" the sample with a view to a specific result. The issue at hand here is whether zionists should run a specific advertising campaign in the media rather than simply relying on the ragbag of zionists they have in the media already. Overwhelmingly the respondents felt that there should be one. Wiser counsel had it that only the most pariah of states has to resort to professional PR to promote their "cause". But anyway go here to read the whole article. You'll have to click on the image a couple of times. It's typical JC. You have to get almost to the end to realise that even YouGov have criticised the methodology.

Unfortunately I can't access the questions now. They were here but the poll's closed. From what I can glean from the JC article, as already stated, one per cent believe that the mainstream media is not biased in favour of Israel. Applying the usual, I believe, 4% margin of error, that means no-one believes that the media is pro-Israel. Further, 92% believe the media to be "biased against Israel." The JC very kindly pointed out that YouGov issued a warning that the results may have been skewed by the fact that the poll itself was only publicised in the JC itself. I get the JC every week and I didn't notice it. That's not to say it wasn't there, rather that when I see anything alleging that the mainstream media is anything but pro-Israel I tend to switch off. Anyway, kinder still, the JC notes, eventually, that YouGov, possibly fearing for their reputation, conducted another poll with the same questions using their usual sampling techniques and found that only 14% of a 2,288 sample believed the media to be biased against Israel. Now even that seems fairly high to me but then I have just joined YouGov's panel and it makes me wonder what kind of people are on it. To what extent can they be representative? and how much does YouGov do to make sure that their samples are representative? I'm asking because I don't know, not because I think I do know.

Yet another inquiry on anti-semitism

Totally Jewish and, presumably its print version, Jewish News, report that there is to be yet another inquiry on anti-semitism.

John Mann MP, the newly elected chairman of the Parliamentary Committee against Anti-Semitism, told delegates that the group’s inquiry would see MPs and peers scrutinising the government's actions in relation to the growing scourge.

"What growing scourge?" you might ask. Consider the fact that "demonisation of Israel" is now part of an official EU definition of anti-semitism and then consider the fact that the EU hasn't actually defined the term "demonisation" and you get some idea of what these "inquiries" are aimed at. They are aimed at defending Israel from legitimate criticism. These Parliamentary buffoons seem determined to make anti-semitism respectable.