Johnny Rotten invokes Clause 2 of the Israel apologists' charter

There's a piece on Johnny Rotten in today's Independent. You have to get to the end to find what an ignorant racist he has become over the decades since supporting the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. I remember a National Front supporter in a pub back in the seventies praising a report in the National Front newspaper at the time describing Rotten as a "white n-word" for supporting black liberation in South Africa but not "white liberation" (aka fascism) in the UK. Well now Rotten may have had a change of heart. Check out this interview in The Independent:

What I do know, having hung out with him for an afternoon, is that he's still always spoiling for a fight. As we're about to say our goodbyes, he pulls a sheaf of faxes out of his pocket. They are complaints, e-mailed to his manager, John "Rambo" Stevens, who lives in Arkansas, complaining that PiL will shortly be performing in Israel. One, from a fan called Lawrence Casin, declares: "I will destroy all my albums and paraphernalia that I have collected over the years if you bastards play that hell hole."

Most musicians, particularly those who have been around for 30 years, wouldn't let hate mail upset them. They probably wouldn't even read it. But John's anger is genuine. He wants me to record it, for posterity. "I really resent the presumption that I'm going there to play to right-wing Nazi jews," he tells me. "If Elvis-fucking-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he's suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians, then good on him. But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated."

That's funny. It wasn't that long ago that Rotten was saying that non-appearance in Israel was a betrayal of the fans. Now apparently Palestinians deserve ethnic cleansing, occupation, relentless aggression, slaughter of innocents, segregation and occupation because of the absence of democracy in Arab and Muslim states, where that is the case. This is the "they suck" argument that people will recognise from Gabriel Ash's list of classic Israel apologetics. I wonder if Rotten would be so "spoiling for a fight" if he wasn't being paid to perform for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel.

A tale of two Socialist Workers

Ah dear. This denunciation of Gilad Atzmon's undoubted racism on the Socialist Worker website raised a bit of a cheer at the Just Peace UK list:

On July 13, SocialistWorker.org published an interview with jazz musician and anti-Zionist writer Gilad Atzmon. After the interview's publication, we learned of many allegations that Atzmon has made not just highly inflammatory, but anti-Semitic statements about Jews, be they supporters or opponents of the state of Israel--and that he has associations with deniers of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. The evidence for these serious charges is damning.

We knew that Atzmon was a controversial figure among opponents of Israel when we ran our article, but not the full extent of these allegations. Needless to say, there was no trace of such ideas in his interview with SocialistWorker.org, or it never would have been published.

Nevertheless, we believe that our Web site, which is committed to the liberation of the Palestinian people and to the struggle against anti-Semitism, should not have published the interview without any reference to the controversy over someone who could make the comments and advance the ideas that he has--whatever his motives or reasoning. We therefore withdrew the article from our site.

Richard Kuper sent the link to the Just Peace list and Mike Cushman responded favourably, as well he might. I texted a woman friend of mine who is one of the few SWPrs who tackled the SWP leadership about what the eff it's doing with Atzmon to tell her the good news and I emailed Tony Greenstein for the same reason.  But our good cheer was not to last.  Richard Kuper issued a mea culpa to say that he had boobed and that the self-recrimination was from the American SWP, not the UK one and they are not sister parties.

So where does the SWPUK stand on or with Atzmon now?

It's almost five years to the day since the SWP hosted Atzmon at Bookmarx, their bookshop and many of us protested because of Atzmon's antisemitism and his association with and promotion of fascists and holocaust deniers. The SWP issued a breathtakingly disingenuous statement about Atzmon at the time and I wanted to post it here. According to Sue Blackwell's site the SWP statement should be here. Well whadya know? It's gone.

Undaunted, I remembered how Michael Rosen had written to the SWP questioning the appropriateness of someone like Atzmon attending the Cultures of Resistance events back in 2007. The responses he got were ludicrous and you can see them here. Now it wouldn't be cricket if the SWP published letters criticising Michael Rosen without publishing his own letter and sure enough there is a link with the critical letters. See here:

As the organisers of the Cultures of Resistance event we were disappointed to see Michael Rosen claiming that Gilad Atzmon is an antisemite and should therefore not have been invited to perform (Letters, 6 January).

So what did you see? Again, nothing.

Trotskyists getting handy with the airbrush. Sadder and sadder unless I've missed something. in which case perhaps someone can find the SWP's Statement on Gilad Atzmon for me.

Thanks!

UPDATE: Someone called g in the comments has sent me this link to a cache facility that could embarrass the SWP, yay even unto the third generation, or the 3G even. It has a replica of the original page from the SWP website:

There has been some controversy surrounding our invitation for the musician Gilad Atzmon to perform at Marxism 2005. One or two small groups are claiming that Gilad is an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. We would like to state the following:

Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli born Jew who served in the Israeli Defence Force and who now lives in “self-exile” in Britain.
He is an internationally acclaimed jazz musician whose album Exile won BBC Best Jazz Album of 2003.
The SWP would also like to make it clear, that we would never give a platform to a racist or fascist. Our entire history has been one of fierce opposition to fascist organisations like the National Front and the British National Party. We played a prominent role in setting up the Anti Nazi League in the mid-1970s and Unite Against Fascism two years ago.

One of our members, Blair Peach, was killed on an anti-fascist demonstration in west London in 1979. Our founding member, Tony Cliff, was Jewish and, like many of his generation, lost many members of his family in the Holocaust. Nazis in the British National Party and National Front have targeted our members for attack. In the last three weeks we have helped initiate two vigils in response to anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish cemeteries in Manchester and east London. Across the country our members are involved in campaigns to defend asylum seekers, oppose police brutality and defend communities from scapegoating.

We have a record of opposing fascism, anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, that is second to none.

The SWP does not believe that Gilad Atzmon is a Holocaust denier or racist. However, while defending Gilad’s right to play and speak on public platforms that in no way means we endorse all of Gilad’s views. We think that some of the formulations on his website might encourage his readers to feel that he is blurring the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti Zionism. In fact we have publicly challenged and argued against those of his ideas we disagree with.

We do not believe that Gilad should be “banned” from performing or speaking. “No Platform” is a principle that the left has always reserved for fascists and organised racists. Where other disagreements occur, the left, with the same vigour, has defended the right to freedom of speech, debate and the clash of ideas.

Oh yuk, I'd forgotten quite how low the SWP had stooped over this. I mean invoking the memory of Blair Peach to justify hosting an antisemitic cohort of fascists and holocaust deniers is truly beneath contempt. And that's without getting into the sheer dishonesty of the statement which I can't be bothered to get into now.

UPDATE II: I now have a copy of Michael Rosen's letter:

Inviting Gilad Atzmon to play is a bad move

Great news about the Cultures of Resistance musical programme, but I have to say I’m mightily dismayed that you have saxophonist Gilad Atzmon on board.

He is someone who has frequently expressed racist ideas and surely we have always said that you can’t fight racism with racism? I fear that the racism he expresses is seen by some in the liberation movements as a racism that doesn’t matter as much.

That’s to say, it’s said by some that racism towards peoples from countries oppressed and exploited by the West is the main racism we’re fighting, but a racism directed towards peoples seen as heavily implicated in the West’s oppression matters less.

Thus, antisemitism in the 21st century is seen perhaps as “mistaken” within the liberation movement, much as we might say that going on about Rupert Murdoch being Australian is “mistaken”.

This is a disastrous route to go down. Antisemitism imagines the removal or elimination of a group of people from the world system.

All we have to ask ourselves is: 1) would eliminating that group change the system for the better? 2) what ghastly processes would a state create in order to do the removing and eliminating?

I think Cultures of Resistance is making a great mistake taking Atzmon on board with them and this will undermine and weaken what we are all trying to do.

Michael Rosen, East London”

Actually I already had a copy here on JSF. See there was a link to the Cultures of Resistance programme:

Great news about the Cultures of Resistance musical programme, but I have to say I’m mightily dismayed that you have saxophonist Gilad Atzmon on board.

Now check out the link. Yup, broken. Another stroke of the airbrush. Another stroke pulled by the SWP. So where are the great defenders of the SWP's decision to host Atzmon now? Lindsey German has ceased to be a member but what of these two Cultures of Resistance peeps? They were Hannah Dee and Viv Smith who insisted that Gilad Atzmon is not racist. So where are they now?

Genocidal campaign against the Palestinians?

I was surprised recently to see someone whose opinion I usually respect saying that Israel's campaign against the Palestinians should not be called genocidal.

Some people have used the term genocide to describe Israel’s attack upon Gaza. Whilst it was a brutal assault aimed largely at terrorising the civilian population, the term is misused here. I’ve also heard the term used more generally for the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel; again, as bad as it is, I don’t think it is pertinent as we are not talking about an attempt physically to destroy an entire nationality.

I just don't agree. Well I agree that each attack on Gaza isn't of itself genocidal but I may well use the word "genocide" as shorthand for the fact that Israel's attacks on and blockade of Gaza are part of a genocidal campaign against the Palestinians. Surely the destruction of the Palestinians is what Israel and the zionist movement have been attempting since their earliest days?

Mike Marqusee puts it all better than I could:

Within pre-1967 Israel, the 18% of the population who are non-Jewish Palestinians, officially classified as “Arabs”, enjoy what is at best a second-class citizenship. More than 90% of the land is legally reserved for Jewish use, while Israeli Palestinians are confined to a separate and inferior educational system and denied benefits and jobs to which Jewish Israelis are entitled. Israeli law prevents Palestinians who marry Israeli Arabs from living in Israel, but anyone else who marries an Israeli is granted Israeli citizenship. Yes, Israel’s Palestinians have the right to vote, but even that is circumscribed. Any political group that advocates amending the “Jewish” character of the state by calling on Israel to become, like every modern state, “a state of all its citizens”, is banned from taking part in elections. Elected Palestinian Members of Knesset who have made such a call have been stripped of Parliamentary immunity and tried for subversion.

Some 10,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in Israeli jails, including over 300 children, some 50 elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, plus mayors, municipal councillors and even a few ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. 600 are being held without charge under “administrative detention”; others have been charged but await trial indefinitely.

Israel claims all this is necessary because of its unique “security” needs. If these actions are not taken, it is asserted, the Jewish State and therefore the Jewish people will be annihilated. In fact, it is the Palestinians who face an existential threat, who are being ground out not in theory but in daily practise.

And that's without getting into 1948 and all that.

More on Turkey less for Turkey

Here's a useful article by Asmi Bishara in Al Ahram warning against praising Turkey too highly over its support for the Palestinian cause:

Turkey's actions are built up to signify the emergence of a neo-Ottoman state, or even the resurgence of the Islamic caliphate. Ankara's tensions with Tel Aviv are exaggerated to the point where some forecast a Turkey invasion of Israel in retaliation for that attack on the Freedom Flotilla, whereas other minds mould Prime Minister Erdogan into the statue of the valiant hero loyal to the Arab/Muslim nation. "After all, Saladin wasn't an Arab," they say, as if there were such concepts as ethnic nationalism and modern nation states in the age of Saladin.

But...

There's always a butt.

Deborah Fink not responsible for mobilisation email shock!

I got an email yesterday purporting to be from Deborah Fink and asking why I was doing nothing about a ludicrous article in the National Post (whatever it is and wherever it is based. My guess is Canada but I don't know).

This is what the email said:

Why aren't you joining us in refuting these canards?

I asked Deborah what she was talking about and she wrote to me saying that she hadn't sent the email at all and that it was a forgery.

Scrolling down the email I saw this:

You received this email because your friend debbie fink thought you would be interested in the article linked above.

© 2010 The National Post Company. All rights reserved. Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited.

So I am guessing someone simply input Deborah's details into one of those "email a friend" thingies complete with message bar. I have been on line since 1999 and blogging since 2004 and this is the first time I have received such a hoax though I did climb the walls recently worrying about a friend in Edenbridge asking me to send him a grand to Nigeria.

Anyway, if you get a nasty email from Deborah Fink, chances are it's a hoax. On the other hand, you might want to get out there and do something for the Palestinian cause so you'll know the email is nonsense whether Debbie sent it or not!

When Turkey sent a flotilla

It didn't take us long to get back to the emerald isle but I have just been sent a link to the story of another time when a flotilla was sent from Turkey to aid those suffering from a lack of food because of the genocidal policies of their neighbours. I have only seen this on facebook and one other site but it all looks well researched:

Ireland was ridden with famine and disease between 1845 and 1849. Also known as the Great Hunger, this famine had lasting effects: at least one million people died due to famine-related diseases and more than one million Irish fled, mainly to the United States, England, Canada, and Australia.

Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid sent five ships full of food supplies and funds as charity. However, the British administration did not give permission for these ships to enter the ports of Belfast or Dublin. Taner Baytok, former Turkish ambassador to Ireland, recounts in his memoirs that these ships secretly discharged their load in Drogheda, a town approximately 70 miles north of Dublin.

On May 2, 1995, commemorating this charity, the mayor of Drogheda, Alderman Frank Goddfrey, paid honor to Baytok and erected a plaque in the Westcourt Hotel, which was then the City Hall where Turkish seamen stayed. Baytok says he first learned of this act of charity from an article by Thomas P. O’Neill published in The Threshold magazine in 1957.

The Otoman sultan declared that he would donate £10,000, but on the orders of Queen Victoria the British Ambassador in Istanbul informed the Sultan that he should reduce this amount, for the Queen’s donation was only £2,000. As noted in the letter of gratitude from the “noblemen, gentlemen, and inhabitants of Ireland,” the amount donated by Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid was reduced by the Queen to one thousand pounds.

I can only wonder what was happening in Armenia at the time but it's an interesting tale with an obvious parallel today.

More fallout over forged passports

Small but significant piece of news about the incremental distancing from Israel that is happening in Europe. The Irish government reaction to the forging of passports to kill a Hamas politician in Dubai had been fairly disappointing - the expulsion of a low-level diplomat on a heavy news day. However, this is more significant - the EU commission was proposing that member countries be allowed to transfer their citizens' data to Israel. Ireland objected, citing the forging of passports as reason not to trust Israel. So now the issue will be debated by an EU committee.

This is no spectacular victory, rather its a slow dawning among certain sections of the ruling classes in Europe that there's something a bit fishy about Israel. But perhaps this vague apprehension that they are not 'one of us' will mean that in the future there'll be less resistance to Palestine solidarity work and to Palestinian demands. Eventually anyway.

IPSC welcomes Irish Government move to block transfer of EU citizen data to Israel
Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Press Release, Thursday 8th July 2010, 6.30pm

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) today welcomed the move by Irish Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern to block a proposed European Commission data-sharing plan with Israel. If adopted the proposal would have given the green light to EU member states to allow the transfer to and storage of sensitive personal data on European citizens to Israel.

The European Commission proposal was for EU member states to give a green-light to a declaration that the EU recognises Israeli data protection standards as being sufficient to allow member states to transfer sensitive personal data to Israel. Without such a declaration, the transfer of sensitive personal data to Israel is illegal. As a result of the Irish objection, the move will now have to be debated in an EU committee that deals with protection of personal data.

Speaking about the government’s objections to such a declaration, Minister Ahern’s office said: “It may well be the case that Israel provides data protections which meet EU standards, [but] the Minister believes the EU committee has to take very serious account of the forgery of EU passports – including Irish ones – by Israel in recent months. Personal data provided innocently to Israeli officials by Irish citizens was used in forging passports. [This] is a matter of the gravest concern.”

Freda Hughes, Chairperson of the IPSC, today said: “The IPSC welcomes Minister Ahern’s intervention to stop this process. The Israeli state has been routinely committing crimes against the Palestinian people for decades and the EU should not be taking steps to normalise this abusive behaviour by a rogue state. Furthermore, the very idea that EU citizens private data would be provided to Israel after the passport abuse in the Dubai murder is absurd. Israel’s actions have, time and again, proven that it is not a ‘normal’ state and should not be treated as such.”

Ms Hughes concluded with a call to the Irish government: “We understand that this important issue will be discussed at a future meeting of a special data protection committee. We encourage the Irish government to maintain the strong line they have already taken on this issue and refuse to allow Israel access to sensitive data on EU citizens. To allow such a move would leave millions of people open to state-sponsored identity theft of the kind we witnessed in Dubai last January, and indeed would be a tacit acceptance the legitimacy of the such acts of state terrorism carried out by Israel.”

ENDS

Another ghetto is born in Palestine

I can only marvel at the sheer lack of conscience of the people responsible for this despicable monstrosity:

Omar Hajaj says he will soon be caged "like a zoo animal," with an electric fence encircling his house and his village hemmed in by the notorious West Bank barrier.

The rumble of bulldozers has become a common sound around this Palestinian village on Jerusalem's southern outskirts as earthmovers work on a huge trench which will be filled with towering slabs of concrete.

After years of interruptions, work finally got under way in April to lay the foundations for another stretch of Israel's "security fence" -- a section which will completely encircle this southern West Bank village.

At the moment, villagers have more or less open access to the nearby city of Bethlehem. But not for much longer.

"It is the only village in the West Bank that will be completely surrounded by the wall," says Willow Heske, of the Oxfam humanitarian group, which is helping villagers make their voices heard.

Since the 1967 Middle East War, half of Al-Walajah was annexed by Israel as part of municipal Jerusalem, while the other half remained in the West Bank.

The initial route would have sliced the village in two but following intervention by Israel's high court, it was changed to incorporate the rest of the village -- with one exception: the Hajaj family.

When the towering concrete wall is erected, it will cut directly through Hajaj's property, leaving half on the Al-Walajah side, and the rest -- including his house and nine acres of land -- on the Israeli side.

This would normally have given him free access to Jerusalem.

But last week, government officials told Hajaj his property would be hemmed in by an additional barrier -- a five-metre (16-feet) high electric fence.

His only way into the village will be via a gate in the concrete wall.

From his house, Hajaj can just make out Jerusalem's biblical zoo -- and fears his fate will soon be like that of the animals.

First Gaza, now this.

Israeli academics rebel against "proto-fascism"

Well a "proto-fascist mindset" but it's the same thing. Anyway, two articles on BDS have appeared on The Guardian website today and both of them were in today's print edition of The Observer. One is by Rachel Shabi and Peter Beaumont and is introduced thus:

An academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel has gained rapid international support since Israeli troops stormed a Gaza-bound flotilla of aid ships in May, killing nine activists. Israeli attention has focused on the small number of activists, particularly in the country's universities, who have openly supported an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

A protest petition has been signed by 500 academics, including two former education ministers, following recent comments by Israel's education minister, Gideon Saar, that the government intends to take action against the boycott's supporters. A proposed bill introduced into the Israeli parliament – the Knesset – would outlaw boycotts and penalise their supporters. Individuals who initiated, encouraged or provided support or information for any boycott or divestment action would be made to pay damages to the companies affected. Foreign nationals involved in boycott activity would be banned from entering Israel for 10 years, and any "foreign state entity" engaged in such activity would be liable to pay damages.

The other is more from the horse's mouth as it is by Neve Gordon who is an Israeli academic:

There is a considerable amount of misunderstanding about Boycott Divestment and Sanctions. BDS is not a principle but a strategy; it is not against Israel but against Israeli policy; when the policy changes BDS will end.

BDS is not about a particular solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the demand that Israel abide by international law and UN resolutions.

It is, accordingly, something that you can support if you are for a two-state solution or a one-state solution. You can even support it as a Zionist.

It arises from the realisation, following years of experience, that the occupation will not end unless Israelis understand that it has a price.

In a sense, the need for a boycott is a sign of weakness following the polarisation and marginalisation of the left in Israel. We are witnessing the development of a proto-fascist mindset. I am, for example, extremely anxious about the extent that the space for public debate in Israel is shrinking.

One of the ways of silencing dissent is through the demand for loyalty, so that a slogan you hear a lot now is "no citizenship without loyalty". This reflects the inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen and is accountable for inequities and injustices. The reversal of this relationship between state and loyalty, and the adoption of a logic similar to the one that informed Mussolini's Italy, is alarming.

Comments are still open on the Neve Gordon article which is interesting because the mods at The Guardian will ban comments that compare Israel to Hitler's Germany but what will happen now that an article has likened Israel to Mussolini's Italy?

An open letter to Anne Sofie Von Otter

This is very sad. I had never heard of this woman before but I have just seen this open letter from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine to Anne Sofie Von Otter, pleading with her not to play in Tel Aviv in occupied Palestine. I had to google her name and I settled on her entry in the not always very reliable Wikipedia. I don't have any reason to doubt this bit of her entry:

In 2007, she released a highly-praised album of music written by composers imprisoned in the Nazi "model" ghetto of Theresienstadt concentration camp (also known as Terezin) prior to their transportation to the death camp of Auschwitz. She collaborated on this project with Christian Gerhaher (baritone) and chamber musicians. She has explained that the material has special personal meaning for her as her father, Baron Göran von Otter, a Swedish diplomat in Berlin during WWII, had attempted unsuccessfully during the war to spread information that he had received from Kurt Gerstein about the Nazi death camps

Now let's see this open letter:

Dear Anne Sofie von Otter,

We are writing to you because we wonder whether a musician who has done as much as you have to make the world remember the Nazi ‘show camp’ of Theresienstadt might be willing to think about the implications of your performances in Israel, scheduled for this October.

Possibly among your audience will be survivors of the Holocaust – and no one would want to deny people who suffered so much the pleasure of hearing you interpreting the wonderful music you will sing. Unless your presence in Tel Aviv raised a moral question – and in our view, respectfully, it does.

Because scattered all over the world are survivors of another kind – some of the 750,000 Palestinian men, women and children – half the population – who were driven out of their country by Israeli forces in 1947/48 and have never been allowed to return. Of the roughly 450 Palestinian villages that were emptied this way – producers of wheat, barley, olives, almonds, cotton, goats, honey, peaches, figs, apricots, some from before Roman times – almost all were bulldozed. Beautiful ancient Palestinian cities – Jaffa, Lydda, Acre, Majdal – were suddenly

proclaimed Israeli. The Palestinians thus wiped off the map, their children and children’s children, in exile from Detroit to Adelaide, in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza – none of these Palestinians will be able to come to Tel Aviv and hear you sing.

You have said that as you researched the music written in Theresienstadt, you discovered that your father, a Swedish diplomat in Berlin during World War II, had learned about the death camps and alerted his government, to no avail.

If your father were alive today, what do you think might trouble him? Perhaps the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which has sealed off 1.5 million people, many of them still traumatised and homeless after the three - week carpet bombing Israel subjected them to early last year.

Perhaps the daily struggles of a West Bank farmer who’s lost her orchards to Israeli settlers, whose well has been sucked dry by the settlement, whose children can’t get to school because the Israeli army blockades the village and the settlers shoot at the children, whose harvest of tomatoes and cucumbers rots at a checkpoint at the whim of the soldiers – we could go on.

Richard Horton, editor of the reputable British medical journal The Lancet, writes about ‘the small daily atrocities that are continuously eroding the future of Palestinian families’.

Consider the appearance of civilised normality your concerts will give – a glass of wine after work; coffee and cake on a Friday afternoon; a chance to contemplate the meaning of Um Mitternacht in an atmosphere charged only with the beauty and drama of your voice. And yet forty minutes’ drive from the concert hall, a million and a half people will be walled up in the Gaza ghetto. While you are singing, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories will be facing the ‘small daily atrocities’ that Richard Horton evokes, and calling on their stores of resilience – because he also says that what he observes among Palestinians is ‘a quiet civic resistance and resilience to chronic terror’.

Your presence in Tel Aviv will implicitly condone that ‘chronic terror’. But you could make a different choice.

When the International Committee of the Red Cross inspected Theresienstadt in 1944, they believed the show the Nazis put on for them – that this cruel antechamber to Auschwitz was a model resettlement town for Jews, complete with parks and children’s playgrounds and concert halls. You, on the other hand, have access to all the information anyone could possibly need to understand the cruel situation in which the Palestinians live. You have knowledge, and the

power of choice. (Your one-time colleague, Elvis Costello, considered the evidence, and, to his very great credit, changed his mind about going: http://www.elviscostello.com/news/it-is-after-considerable-contemplation/44) Please, don’t sing in Tel Aviv.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Haim Bresheeth

Mike Cushman

Professor Hilary Rose

Professor Steven Rose

Professor Jonathan Rosenhead

The sad part for me is that her dad tried so hard to let the world know what the nazis were doing to the Jews during WWII. And here is Anna Sofie Von Otter doing her bit to cover up zionist crimes against the Palestinians by normalising the racist war criminals of the State of Israel.

Not a bad judge!

There have been a few reports on the not guilty verdicts for the Brightonians accused of criminal damage to arms equipment bound for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel but I didn't see this Jewish Chronicle report until just now:

The judge in the trial of seven activists acquitted of damaging an arms factory suggested that their leader should be awarded the George Cross for his campaign.

The seven were cleared after they successfully claimed they had acted to prevent Israeli "war crimes" when the broke into the Brighton factory on January 17, 2009.
Hailed a great victory by pro-Palestinian activists, the seven from "Smash EDO" were acquitted of causing £180,000 worth of damage to the EDO MBM factory in Brighton - which denied ever having supplied Israel with arms equipment.

In his summing-up speech, in which he attacked both Israel and the United States, Judge George Bathurst-Norman told the Hove Crown Court jury: "You may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered at that time."

He also said of group leader Christopher Osmond that "The jury may feel his efforts investigating the company merit the George Cross."

Mr Osmond, 30, Elijah Smith, 43, Robert Nicholls, 52, Tom Woodhead, 25, Harvey Tadman, 44, Ornella Saibene, 50, Simon Levin, 35, from Bristol, Brighton and London were all acquitted last week. The verdict was welcomed by Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavillion.

Hmm, see anyone we know? Nope. Try another paragraph:

Tony Greenstein, a veteran pro-Palestinian Jewish campaigner in the city, said: "The judge gave a summing up so favourable that some supporters were worried that the jury might react to what they perceived as an attempt to bounce them into a not guilty verdict. We need not have worried."

Aha, now we're into familiar territory. Brighton is Tony's turf and he knows how to savour a victory.But there is something disturbing in the report:

Jewish lawyers and jurists said it was unorthodox for judges to air their political allegiances in court.
London solicitor Jonathan Lux, Board Member of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, said: "This case appears to have disturbing implications and thought will need to be given to what the wider consequences are."
Barrister Oliver Mishcon said: "Judges must be careful about showing support for political causes."

I'm not sure why Jewish lawyers need special representation as Jews but why on earth are they giving the impression that they support the prosecution in any case at all let alone a case of people who were trying to prevent war crimes being committed?

Still, at least there was some light relief in the last paragraph:

The defence argued that criminal damage is excusable if the damage occurs while trying to prevent greater damage to other properties - in this case, homes in Gaza. But Stephen Shay, prosecuting, argued that the factory was so small that even if it had been supplying Israel, it would have made no difference to the war in Gaza.

Got that? The prosecution admitted that Israel's war crimes were worse than the offence it was prosecuting but that Israel would have committed war crimes with or without the factory's goods.

Woodcraft Folk boycott Israel

I don't know why the Woodcraft folk would have had dealings with the State of Israel in the first place but I suppose this highlights the fact that the boycott is still in its infancy and it's good to have more people and groups climbing on board. Here's the Jewish Chronicle on this latest declaration of support for BDS:

A children’s educational movement has voted to boycott Israel at their annual gathering in Sussex.

The Morning Star reported that the Woodcraft Folk, which runs weekly sessions for children including singing, dancing, craft and eco-projects, voted for the boycott at their conference in Ashdown Forest, west Sussex.

The emergency motion was proposed by international secretary Paul Bemrose, who said it had been prompted by the deaths of nine Turkish activists on the Gaza flotilla.
A majority of the 150 delegates at the conference backed a complete boycott until the Gaza blockade is lifted.

Ok a victory of sorts but is it really just about the flotilla and the blockade? Israel could end the blockade tomorrow and Palestine wouldn't be free. Ach! Just be happy that BDS is growing. We'll flesh out the details in due course.

BDS and the Jerusalem Film Festival

I know this is in the JSF quick section but it's worth more than a quick look-at. See this report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

In an apparent reaction to the Gaza flotilla incident, actors Meg Ryan and Dustin Hoffman reportedly have backed out of attending the Jerusalem Film Festival.

Ryan canceled her appearance the day after the Gaza flotilla incident, The Jerusalem Post reported, quoting Cinematheque associate director Yigal Molad Hayo.

Molad Hayo said Hoffman broke off negotiations, which had reached an “advanced" stage, the day after the incident in which Israeli Navy commandos boarded a Gaza-bound vessel attempting to break a maritime blockade, resulting in the death of nine passengers.

While neither actor said explicitly that the flotilla incident was the reason, “it became quite clear that this was the reason,” Hayo told the Post.

In addition to the actors, Prince Albert of Monaco canceled his participation in the event, which begins Thursday and runs for two weeks. The film festival is scheduled to have a tribute to actress Grace Kelly, the prince's mother.

What I find curious about this is that none of them out of Dustin Hoffman, Meg Ryan and Prince Albert have sought publicity for their non-attendance at the film festival. It's the associate director, Yigal Molad Hayo, who has publicised this. Perhaps he supports the boycott.

Whatever it all means, this is a major leap for BDS given that a prominent Jewish actor and (I think) a head of state are now boycotting Israel. Monaco can hardly be described as a radical state.

Retired judge says Israel should emulate the nazis

Like it doesn't already is so many areas. This time the State of Israel is being encouraged to emulate nazi propaganda techniques. Cop this from Ynet:

"We must learn from the Nazi tactics," Retired Israeli Judge Hadassa Ben-Itto said recently during a conference discussing ways to improve the State of Israel's PR efforts in the world.

The meeting, which was held last week in the English capital, was attended by some 150 senior Jewish legal experts.

Ben-Itto said during the conference that Israel should adopt the tactics used by the Nazis after they distributed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Refusing to reach a compromise and continuing their battle in the courts although they had no proof of the protocols.

I read and re-read the article and I can find nothing about anyone at the conference criticising the idea that Israel should emulate the nazis on the propaganda front.

Actually, I thought the nazis preferred to run with the proverbial "kernel of truth". Zios don't usually even have that.

The Ynet article was posted by Ron Cohen to the Just Peace UK list.

Restatement of the Israel lobby thesis

Here's Patrick Cockburn in today's Independent effectively restating the Israel lobby thesis:

Meetings between US presidents and Israeli prime ministers are usually preceded by speculation that the US leader will finally demand that Israel stop expanding settlements in the West Bank, displacing Palestinians in East Jerusalem and embarrassing the US by misjudged military actions.

Before yesterday's White House encounter there were particularly loud criticisms of Israel from the US security establishment. The influential commentator Dr Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said that America's commitment to Israel's security "does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily makes Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset".

Dr Cordesman said that Israel should be more careful about the extent to which it tests the limits of US patience and exploits the support of American Jews. He warned Israel against launching an attack on Iran in the face of a US "red light".

The US is particularly sensitive to the negative fallout of Israeli actions in the Middle East because America's strength in the region has been reduced by the failure of its military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq to achieve their objectives. On top of this Israel itself is getting politically and militarily weaker. The high point of Israel's influence in the Middle East was after the peace agreement with Egypt in 1979 which freed it to invade Lebanon in 1982. But intervention in Lebanon turned into a prolonged guerrilla war ending with Israel's final withdrawal in 2000. Military operations in Lebanon and Gaza in the following 10 years have uniformly failed to achieve their objectives. Meanwhile the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, said that America's need for Israel is less since the end of the Cold War.

It may be in the interests of the US to restrain Israel but this is almost certainty not going to happen. The reason why is shown by the strange story of the attempt by General David Petraeus, now commander in Afghanistan, previously head of Central Command and America's most prestigious general, to put on the record the fact that US support for Israeli actions in the Middle East was endangering the safety of US troops. He reiterated this in written testimony before Congress in March.

But no sooner had General Petraeus done so than he was swiftly rowing back. The explanation for General Petraeus's swift turnaround suggests that he wants to keep open the option of running for the presidency as Republican candidate in 2012 and does not intend to alienate Jewish voters or militant neocons.

The episode illustrates the domestic constraints on any American political or military leader constraining or even criticising Israel. It is possible that President Obama privately took a tough line with Mr Netanyahu yesterday, but he is unlikely to take effective measures to pressure Israel for fear of increasing expected Democratic Party losses in the mid-term elections. No crisis in US-Israeli relations is likely, though this is the one thing that might make Israeli voters reject Mr Netanyahu.

There are three other articles on Palestine in today's Indie, here, here and here.

Lobby seeks ban on children's books

See this article from the American Publishers' Weekly magazine:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shell shock!

Here's a curious cartoon from the Jewish Daily Forward website:



What do you think?

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that Ron Cohen, one of the mods at the Just Peace UK list, posted the link to the Forward. I mention that because Mike Cushman has now posted a link to the "whole archive".

Gideon Levy on Israel in Gaza

Here's a Guardian review by Nicholas Lezard of the book, The Punishment of Gaza, by Ha'aretz's Gideon Levy:

This makes for painful reading, and it is with a heavy heart that you realise, while reading it, that someone who has decided that Israel's rights in this matter outweigh all other considerations will dismiss each of this book's 148 pages as emotive propaganda. And then there follows the even more depressing knowledge that anyone who raises any objections to Israel's behaviour and policies is going to be slandered as an antisemite. This was indeed the fate of Judge Richard Goldstone, whose massive and exhaustive report on the conflict, released under the auspices of the United Nations, was rejected out of hand.

You can find it on the net easily enough, but Levy's book acts as a passionate footnote to it. The details are harrowing. The most obscene development is the increasing number of children being killed. Almost 100 were killed in 2009 – "a pretty quiet year, relatively speaking", says Levy. (However, in the chronology at the end of the book it appears that Operation Cast Lead, a three-week operation from December 2008 to January 2009, resulted in the deaths of 1,330 Palestinians, 430 of whom were children.)

Comments are open not just for the usual 24 hours or less.

The Warsaw Ghetto re-liberated

...Israeli and Polish activists met in the ruins of Warsaw’s old Jewish Ghetto.

The activists sprayed ‘Liberate All Ghettos’ in Hebrew, followed by ‘Free Gaza and Palestine’ in English on a wall of an original block in the ghetto. The block is across the street from the last fragment of the remaining perimeter wall of the Ghetto. They also hung Palestinian flags from the wall.

This was first time such an action took place in the ghetto.

Yonatan Shapira former Israeli Air Force captain and now refusnik and BDS activist said:

‘Most of my family came from Poland and many of my relatives were killed in the death camps during the Holocaust. When I walk in what was left from the Warsaw Ghetto I can’t stop thinking about the people of Gaza who are not only locked in an open air prison but are also being bombarded by fighter jets, attack helicopters and drones, flown by people whom I used to serve with before my refusal in 2003.

I am also thinking about the delegations of young Israelis that are coming to see the history of our people but also are subjected to militaristic and nationalistic brainwashing on a daily basis. Maybe if they see what we wrote here today they will remember that oppression is oppression, occupation is occupation, and crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity, whether they have been committed here in Warsaw or in Gaza’.

Ewa Jasiewicz, activist with Kampania Palestyna and one of the co-ordinators of the Free Gaza Movement who just returned from participating in the Freedom Flotilla said:

`Yonatan could have been the pilot in the Blackhawk that dropped commandos onto the Mavi Marmara that killed nine activists from our flotilla. I could have been one of them. Poland is full of the ruins of ghettos and death camps and shrines to those who sacrificed their lives in the defence of not just their communities but in resistance to fascism.

People here need to wake up and realise that occupations and ghettos did not end with the end of the second world war. These tactics and strategies of domination and control of other people and lands are present in Palestine today and are being perpetrated by the state of Israel. We have a responsibility to free all ghettos and end all occupations’.

Poland continues to deepen its’ military and political alliance with Israel whilst ignoring its obligations under international law to stop the ghettoization of the West Bank by Israel’s apartheid wall and to ensure the protection of civilians.

Kampania Palestyna together with the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, calls for an end to Israeli impunity and degradation of human rights and international law.

Ewa Jasiewicz said, ‘Poland can no longer be a Greenzone for the normalisation of Israeli apartheid. We all have the responsibility to end the occupation and ghettoization of the Palestinian people’.

Yonatan Shapira said: ‘I was always taught growing up that the atrocities that happened to the Jewish people here happened because the world was silent. And therefore I cannot be silent. The Jewish people needed to be liberated from the ghettoes, and now Israelis need to be liberated from the crimes of their own government. Each one of us can take part in this global struggle for justice, and support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for the sake of not just the Palestinian people but for Israelis too’.

www.kampania-palestyna.pl

www.bdsmovement.net

This is awesome action that underscores the role of memory and myth, and brings home the words of Walter Benjamin:

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious. (Theses of History VI)

Criminal damage: naughty but nice and no crime if goods are bound for Israel

I reported a few weeks ago on what I called a Raytheon re-run. Well news just in has it that 5 activists in Brighton have been acquitted of charges arising out of them causing £180 k worth of damage to a factory manufacturing arms for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel. Apparently the news hasn't yet been deemed fit to print by Brighton's Argus newspaper but The Guardian has run the story:

Five activists who caused £180,000 damage to an arms factory were acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent Israeli war crimes.

The five were jubilant after a jury found them not guilty of conspiring to cause criminal damage to the factory on the outskirts of Brighton.

The five admitted they had broken in and sabotaged the factory, but argued they were legally justified in doing so.........

In his summing up, Judge George Bathurst-Norman suggested to the jury that "you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time".

The judge highlighted the testimony by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, that "all democratic paths had been exhausted" before the activists embarked on their action.

Tony Greenstein has more on this over at his blog.