Dershowitz delays demolition?

A small diary column report in the Guardian's Saturday Review section seems to be saying that plagiarist and serial liar, Alan Dershowitz has delayed the release of Norman Finkelstein's latest offering, Beyond Chutzpah. This is rather strange because in one letter to Finkelstein's site, a Heinz Bartesch says that he purchased two copies. Perhaps he ordered them on-line. Anyway here's the article, which I found just a little bit sneery:

Norman G Finkelstein is no stranger to controversy, and he is stirring it up again. In The Holocaust Industry (2000) he argued that Jews should not elevate the Holocaust as in some way sacred, should not elevate their suffering above the suffering of others, should be careful about participating in a "memory" industry; in A Nation on Trial, he and Ruth Bettina Birn challenged, in detail, Daniel Goldhagen's bestseller Hitler's Willing Executioners. Now he has written Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, which is, according to Finkelstein's comprehensive official website, "a meticulously researched expose of the corruption of scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict."

This time Finkelstein has in his sights Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and his bestseller The Case for Israel. Dershowitz has hired lawyers. And "he's been sending us some letters," says Lynne Withey, director of University of California Press, which is to publish the book in the US. "He's not too happy about this, as you can imagine." The book was meant to appear this spring, but is delayed until August. They're doing "a lot of copyediting". And factchecking? Yes. And they have decided not to publish it in England themselves, as they feel the book, which has "major sales potential in Europe", should be taken on by a UK publisher. As yet, there are no takers.

There will be.

Finkelstein's a fair minded chap I think. He has torn Dershowitz apart on a few occasions now and Dershowitz has found it all so upsetting he has formed "The Committee to Expose Norman Finkelstein’s Close Connections to Neo-Nazism, Holocaust Denial, and His "Big Lie" of an "International Jewish Conspiracy"". What impresses me about Finkelstein, apart from his meticulousness and courage, is his granting of a platform to such a lying toad as Dershowitz.

Blair's first lie!

The Liverpool Daily Post carries the shock news that, unlike everyone else in the whole world, Blair has never told a lie. Well, that's what Blair said anyway and he wouldn't lie. "Look," it's just not his way.

Mr Blair hit back in an interview for Adam Boulton of Sky News: "I have never told a lie. No. I don't intend to go telling lies to people. I did not lie over Iraq."

There we have it.

What the Attorney General said

The Attorney General's advice has now been published. According to the Independent, the Blair was still lying about it when it hit the streets. Here are a few snatches from the report:

A key question is whether there is in truth a need for an assessment of whether Iraq's conduct constitutes a failure to take the final opportunity or has constituted a failure fully to cooperate within the meaning of OP4 such that the basis of the cease-fire is destroyed. If an assessment is needed of that situation, it would be for the Council to make it....

In other words, we would need to be able to demonstrate hard evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation....

you will need to consider very carefully whether the evidence of non-cooperation and non- compliance by Iraq is sufficiently compelling to justify the conclusion that Iraq has failed to take its final opportunity....

But a "reasonable case" does not mean that if the matter ever came before a court I would be confident that the court would agree with the view....

OPs 4 and 12 do requ1re a further Council decision in order to revive the authorisation in resolution 678....

And finally

If we fail to achieve the adoption of a second resolution we would need to consider urgently at that stage the strength of our legal case in the light of circumstances at the time.

Cue Jack Straw on BBC Radio 4 arguing how the legal advice is an unequivocal statement in favour of the legality of the war on Iraq.

"Give Blair a bloody nose"

This is a wonderful statement by the defecting prominent Labour MP, Brian Sedgemore. Here are some cuts but the whole thing's good.

His scorn for liberal Britain is surprising for one who had an expensive liberal education and who entered politics as an aspirant liberal lawyer, an ardent member of CND and a standard-bearer for the left.

People such as myself should have realised the writing was on the wall when a Labour government twice tried to abolish trial by jury. From there, it was a short step for Blair (but a huge step for the rest of us) to get suppliant backbench Labour MPs to vote for an unlawful war, the setting up of a gulag at Belmarsh for foreigners and deprivation of liberty through "control orders" and "pass laws" for British citizens....

The stomach-turning lies on Iraq were followed by the attempt to use the politics of fear to drive through Parliament a deeply authoritarian set of law and order measures....

I'm renouncing Tony Blair, the Devil, New Labour and all their works. I don't do this lightly. I know that some of my friends will be angry, and I will be rubbished by the New Labour spin machine. Mad Dog [John] Reid will be set on me. John Prescott will say, "Brian? Brian who?"

But I can let them into a secret. I am not alone. A small group of us - all MPs who are standing down - decided we would leave the Labour Party immediately after the election. Among the MPs, there are 150 who loathe Mr Blair, 50 more who have grave doubts about him and a further 200 who love him. They are sometimes called the Clones or the Stepford Wives.....

Those who listen to the Today programme know that most modern politicians would rather plead the fifth amendment than directly answer even the simplest of questions....

The problem with Tony Blair is that he tells big porkies as easily as he tells little porkies, whether it is watching Jackie Milburn play football, or being certain of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

He drags in the hapless Attorney General to back him up on the legality of the war. Lord Goldsmith says he was not leant on. The Attorney General can protest his innocence until the end of time, and people won't believe him, and neither do I.

But Blair is shameless. He used to act at school and he uses that talent now; every time he speaks, for example, at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales you can hear someone saying, "Cue broken voice, quivering lips, dropped shoulder, tear in left eye".[my favourite bit].....

Blair showed his contempt for the law by appointing an unholy trinity of home secretaries who have been deeply flawed:

Jack Straw was simply not up to the job. David Blunkett saw himself as some sort of deified demi-god, issuing new commandments on a daily basis for the six o'clock news.

And then there's poor Charlie Clarke, a bit of a chump preaching the politics of fear who was dealt a cruel hand by Blunkett over the Terrorism Act.

He is keeping very quiet during this election campaign for some reason. Charles was the housing chairman in Hackney when I was the MP and to describe him as bloody useless would be to heap high praise on him. [another fave]........

Some say I should have stayed for things to change under Gordon Brown. The "Iron Chancellor" has a massive intellect but no backbone. He stayed carefully away from the difficult issues:- the nature of parliamentary democracy; the illegal war; the denial of trial by jury; Belmarsh, the control orders and pass laws.

And John Prescott - the defender of the left - has done a Faustian deal with the Devil for the price of a cup of tea and a pat on the back from Tony......

Is it any wonder I urge everyone from the centre and left in British politics to give Blair a bloody nose at the election and to vote Liberal Democrat to ensure the tawdry New Labour project is dead?

But how long will such an outspoken man be able to stay in a party with Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell, two careerists who haven't the guts to call Blair a liar when we all know that that is just what he is?

UK Election: the ones to watch in order of importance

Here's a fairly useful website detailing constituencies, runners and riders and how they faired last time round.

DAGENHAM
Michael White (C)
*Jonathan Cruddas (Lab)
James Kempton (LD)
Lawrence Rustem (BNP)
Gerard Batten (UKIP)
2001: Lab maj 8,693 (31.52%) - Turnout 27,580 (46.48%)
Cruddas (Lab) 15,784 (57.23%); White (C) 7,091 (25.71%); Gee-Turner
(LD) 2,820 (10.22%); Hill (BNP) 1,378 (5.00%); Hamilton (Soc All) 262
(0.95%); Siggins (Soc Lab) 245 (0.89%)

Ok that's not really one to watch. It's more one to look away from. I was just looking for some sympathy because it's my constituency. What a choice huh?

BETHNAL GREEN & BOW
Shahagir Bakth Faruk (C)
*Oona King (Lab)
Syed Nurul Islam Dulu (LD)
John Foster (Green)
Ejiro Etefia (AFC)
Celia Pugh (Ind)
+George Galloway (Respect)
2001: Lab maj 10,057 (26.18%) - Turnout 38,414 (48.51%)
King (Lab) 19,380 (50.45%); Faruk (C) 9,323 (24.27%); Ludlow (LD)
5,946 (15.48%); Bragga (Green) 1,666 (4.34%); Davidson (BNP) 1,211
(3.15%); Delderfield (NBP) 888 (2.31%)

You can tell by the allegations of anti-semitism being hurled around, especially at Respect, that Labour are seriously rattled over this one.

SEDGEFIELD
Grp Capt Al Lockwood (C)
*Tony Blair (Lab)
Robert Browne (LD)
Jonathan Cockburn (BMG)
Berony Abraham (Ind Abraham)
John Barker (Ind Barker)
Julian Brennan (Ind Brennan)
Helen John (Ind John)
Reg Keys (Ind Keys)
Mark Farrell (NF)
Boney Maroney (Loony)
Terry Pattinson (Senior)
William Brown (UKIP)
Cherri Gilham (UKPP)
Fiona Luckhurst-Matthews (Veritas)
2001: Lab maj 17,713 (44.00%) - Turnout 40,258 (62.01%)
Blair (Lab) 26,110 (64.86%); Carswell (C) 8,397 (20.86%); Duffield
(LD) 3,624 (9.00%); Spence (UKIP) 974 (2.42%); Gibson (Soc Lab) 518
(1.29%); Driver (R & R Loony) 375 (0.93%); John (WFLOE) 260 (0.65%)

Lot of candidates for Blair's, for the time being, constituency. Now Blair will probably win this one but there is some serious money going on Reg Keys.

A vote for Blair is a vote for Bush. What a splendid signal the voters of Sedgefield could send the world if they elected Reg Keys.

That quote was from Richard Dawkins in Saturday's Independent, four days before Brian Sedgemore dropped his bombshell.

Zionists against democracy

I've been looking around the net and the campaign against the AUT on account of its Israel boycott is getting quite bitter. Perhaps I'm naive but zionists are calling on people to resign from the union over this. There have even been resignations from the union already, and it surprises me. I can understand the campaign of media lies, distortions and character attacks and I expected it. Look at the Jerusalem Post article linked above. It accuses the AUT of deliberately holding the conference at Passover to exclude Jews. But after all this talk of freedom, justice, democracy and learning, people are leaving a democratic association because they disagree with a majority decision. I'm thinking of the conference before this one when the boycott motion was defeated; I don't remember any anti-zionists leaving the union over it. They argued their points honestly and openly and then accepted a democratic result; then and now.

Sue Blackwell responds

From today's Guardian.

Michael Kustow (Letters, April 23) challenges my description of Israel as "an illegitimate state" (Report, April 22). How can any state be legitimate that is founded on ethnic cleansing (which Kustow accepts took place)? I would have said the same about apartheid South Africa. I look forward to a Holy Land in which people of all races and religions have equal status under an inclusive constitution - like South Africa today.
Sue Blackwell
Birmingham

Under the same heading, Battle of the boycott, Lord (aka Melvyn) Bragg has a letter with a gratuitous reference to "unremitting threats from Arab states that they will destroy Israel." Which Arab states are threatening to destroy Israel? He ends up telling us that the boycott is "dangerous and misguided." No wonder he got a peerage from Blair.

David Aaronovitch on Sue Blackwell!

Yuk!!! Sorry Sue, it's a terrifying image, I know. But in today's Observer. Aaronovitch has produced a vintage piece of garbage about the AUT boycott of two (watch this space) Israeli universities, inspired, of course, by Sue Blackwell. In that any Aaronovitch article on the Middle East promises nothing but tosh, this lives up to its promise, but in that it is titled "Why Israel will always be vilified" it doesn't measure up at all. It doesn't explain why, even in Aaronovitch's hallowed opinion, Israel will always be vilified. Citing the boycott as one example of "intelligent people behaving in a futile way," Aaronovitch sets out to "prove" his point.

First up Aaronovitch takes a personal swipe at Sue Blackwell for using the boycott motion to make herself feel better. He then says that the boycott will be counter-productive because it will make zionists pro-American or even insular. He doesn't know of the divestment campaigns going on in America right now it seems. It will reduce Europe's influence on Israel he says. What influence? you may ask.

Time for another personal swipe at Blackwell. Apparently (and I don't know if it's true) she's a former "Christian fundamentalist turned revolutionary socialist." This is bad. This is terrible. Is he objecting to Christian fundamentalism? He can't be can he? Bible thumpers are Israel's main supporters in America, numerically anyway. Or is being a revolutionary socialist bad? This would make most of the ANC's old guard (including, I think, Mandela) bad. Or is he objecting to turning? Can't be that either. Aaronovitch is more famous for turning from being a reactionary communist to being an equally reactionary New Labourite than anything else. So what's his point? He doesn't say. Within the same paragraph he tries the old "you shouldn't be looking" routine. You know the one. Why don't you look at human rights abuses elsewhere? But human rights abuses elsewhere are condemned more frequently in the media than Israel's abuses and the boycott acts as an exposé for those who see Israel as Aaronovitch portrays it: a plucky beleaguered "normal" state, surrounded by enemies.

He then names a few human rights abusers before criticising the characterisation of Israel as an apartheid state thus:

This is a genuinely, grade-A stupid argument, whether it emanates from the lips of Professor Steven Rose or the more sacred ones of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In itself, Israel is not anything like South Africa, where a majority was denied all political and civic rights on the grounds of race. What is analogous, however, is Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, which bears comparison with South Africa's occupation of Namibia or, some might say, Serbia's occupation of Kosovo.

This is completely wrong. Israel did not become an apartheid state with the occupation, it became an apartheid state when it was established as a state that grants superior rights to Jews from anywhere than it does for non-Jews who come from there. To take the view that Israel's system of legally enforced race discrination is not apartheid is to mistake apartheid for minority rule. A system of law that grants priveledges to one ethno-religious group over others is an apartheid system. But to ignore the fact that the Palestinians are a minority under Israeli rule thanks to the zionist movement's ethnic cleansing of most Palestinians from their land is a working definition of chutzpah. I should point out here that Moshe Machover (www.kibush.org.il) has said that calling Israel an apartheid state is dangerous because it underestimates Israel's capacity and desire for ethnic cleansing. But anyway,

So the object of those wanting peace and justice in the Middle East is to bring about an end to that occupation, and enable the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state. It is to persuade both sides that such a settlement is practical and to persuade both sides to make the difficult sacrifices that are necessary. It is to build confidence between Jews and Palestinians, and to strengthen, always, the hand of the peacemakers.

He's missing something out here. He mentions sacrifices but doesn't say what they should be. He also hasn't mentioned the Palestinians' right to return though in previous articles he has equated their abandonment of this right as equating to the racist war criminals giving up their settlements. Note here that the recognition accorded to Israel by the UN in 1948 (I think) was conditional on Israel allowing the refugees to return. Note also that the freestanding General Assembly resolution 194, reaffirmed every year since it was passed, calls on Israel to allow the refugees to return to their land. Now read on

Unless, of course, you don't believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state at all within any borders. And this, as it happens, seems to be the view of Sue Blackwell, who describes Israel as 'an illegitimate state'. Unlike the United Nations, she does not believe it should have been set up and she would rather it disappeared. As she pointed out in 2003 to a previous AUT council: 'From its very inception, the state of Israel has attracted international condemnation for violating the human rights of the Palestinian people and making war on its neighbours.' Or, to put it even more bluntly, everything is all the fault of the Israelis.

See the chutzpah there. I'm not a fan of the UN but Aaronovitch wants the Palestinians to give up their right of return in exchange for peace and a Palestinian state. The UN, according to itself, wants the Palestinians to have the right to return. When people suggest that the UN erred in recognising the state of Israel, this, to Aaronovitch is a terrible thing, but when zionists, the state of Israel and the great Aaronovitch insist that Palestinians give up one of the most basic of human rights, this is "the object of those wanting peace and justice. in the Middle East."(my italics) I can understand how bludgeoning a whole people into submission might be seen as a kind of peace, as in the absence of war, but justice? The acceptance of Israel's right to benefit from an ethnic cleansing campaign and to maintain an apartheid state is not justice, it is victory for racist war criminals and Aaronovitch surely knows it.

After some more mealy mouthed nonsense, Aaronovitch ends up with an even sillier swipe at Sue Blackwell than the previous ones. But go read the whole article and be thankful that Aaronivitch is "turning" from a reactionary Guardianista to an even more reactionary Murdochite at the Times.

"Blinkered, irresponsible and dangerous"

But that's enough about the Board of Deputies. Well it's actually their considered response to the success of the Association of University Teachers vote to sever links with Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities, and to consider a boycott of a third. The boycott vote is a tribute to the hard and courageous work of Sue Blackwell and all of those who have promoted the idea of boycotting the last of the colonial settler states for some years now.

As the time approached for the debate and vote, the Guardian. newspaper did its disingenuous best to undermine the case for the boycott and promote the interests of the racist war criminals of the state of Israel. It has editorialised that we shouldn't call Israel an apartheid state lest we offend the racist rulers. Today, the first quote in their article on what is a major victory for the anti-zionist cause, came from Britain's leading zionist organisation. The article, penned by three journalists, refers to the illegal, Jews only, settlement of Ariel in the West Bank, as "disputed". Conal Urquhart was one of the three but you would know that without reading his byline.

The Israeli ambassador to the UK compared the boycott to the nazi boycott of Jews at German universities in the 1930s. Danny Stone, the leader of the UK's World Zionist Congress students' wing, misleadingly known as the Union of Jewish Students, "urged the government to establish an inquiry into extremism on campuses - among students and staff."

But the most annoying passage in the article is this:

The Guardian understands that Jewish academics had been in contact with the AUT executive, and had received assurances that the Israeli position would be put forward and the executive would push for dialogue rather than a boycott.

Now, there can't be anyone at the Guardian. who doesn't know that there are many Jews, including academics, calling for and supporting various boycotts of the state of Israel. This reference to Jewish academics, whilst it panders to zionists, is actually an insult to all of those Jews who condemn all forms of racism and racist oppression. I'm not sure how many that amounts to but I like to think that we are not a dying breed.

More on the boycott

Here are two letters to the Guardian supporting the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

In Israel's universities, less than 1% of tenured full-time staff are Palestinian citizens of Israel, none of them women. About 3% are female Mizrahi (Jews who immigrated to Israel from Africa and Asia), and 5.5% Mizrahi males. For every four Ashkenazi (Israeli Jews of European descent) who are college graduates, there is only one Mizrahi and near zero Palestinians.

Israel's academics perpetrate and benefit from the systematic discrimination against Israel's 70% non-European majority (48% Mizrahim and 22% Palestinian). Israel's Ashkenazi "post-Zionist" professors, brandishing their progressive politics as they use Mizrahim and Palestinians for grantsmanship and as career advancement tools, are just the cynical tip of this apartheid iceberg.
Dr Smadar Lavie
Tel Aviv

I am astounded an army of academics has written to oppose the proposed boycott. The Israeli state practises apartheid policies that are codified in law, including legalised torture, and continues to systematically colonise Palestinian territory occupied by conquest. There is a deliberate programme of impoverishment and state terrorism against the Palestinians. Only days ago three teenagers were killed by Israeli soldiers after they went to retrieve their football in a "no-go area" in Gaza. Where were the protests then?
Surfraz Yousaf
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

The Guardian actually published eight letters on the subject, four in favour of the boycott and four against. One, shock horror, accused the sponsors of the boycott of anti-semitism.

Joseph Massad: All zionists are shmocks

I ought to point out from the start that Massad didn't actually say that but a zionist has accused him of saying "that the word "Zion" means "penis" and that therefore zionism is a macho movement." The allegation has now done the rounds of the New York media and, of course, the internet. I just put "zion means penis" into google and 38 sites came up:

1.New York Sun
2.Jihadwatch
3.Israel Insider
4.Campus Watch
5.Little Green Footballs
6.David Project - of which more later

Only the seventh site on the list has Massad's denial of what was a preposterous claim. This is therefore a classic example of what, I think, Juan Cole has called a "googlesmear."

Anyway the "zionists are shmocks" (that's a good idea for a UN resolution) thing is just one of the allegations against Joseph Massad, a Palestinian professor in the Middle East and Asian Language and Cultures (MEALAC) department at Columbia University.

The campaign against Massad involves a lot of detail but to cut to the chase (as Americans say) various zionist individuals and organisations are trying to tilt academia in favour of Israel and that means campaigning against anyone who criticises Israel or its zionist ideology. It began with disruptive zionist students in his class and ran the gamut from tabloid allegations, through mayoral and, even Congressional statements, ADL petitions, a film, and now Massad has had to stand before an ad hoc committee hearing at his own college.

For all the allegations against him there are only two of his former students in the film that is the main body of "evidence" for the committee. They are Noah Liben and Deena Shanker.

Here's Noah

As for Noah Liben, who appears in the film according to newspaper accounts (I have not seen the film), he was indeed a student in my Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies course in the spring of 2001. Noah seems to have forgotten the incident he cites. During a lecture about Israeli state racism against Asian and African Jews, Noah defended
these practices on the basis that Asian and African Jews were underdeveloped and lacked Jewish culture, which the Ashkenazi State operatives were teaching them. When I explained to him that, as the assigned readings clarified, these were racist policies, he insisted that these Jews needed to be modernized and the Ashkenazim were helping them by civilizing them. Many students gasped. He asked me if I understood his point. I informed him that I did not. Noah seems not to have done his reading during the week on gender and Zionism. One of the assigned readings by Israeli scholar and feminist Simona Sharoni spoke of how in Hebrew the word "zayin" means both penis and weapon in a discussion of Israeli militarized masculinity. Noah, seemingly not having read the assigned material, mistook the pronunciation of "zayin" as "Zion," pronounced in Hebrew "tziyon."

Ok, so Noah's a prick. What about Deena?

As for the claims made by Deena Shanker, whose story suddenly appeared in a report in the New York Sun after my posted statement dismantled the false claims made by Liben and Schoenfeld, her claims are also outright lies.

In her New York Sun account, Ms. Shanker stated that she asked me "if it is true that Israel gives prior warning before launching strikes in Palestinian Arab territories" "That provoked him to start screaming, "If you're going to deny the atrocities being committed against the Palestinians then you could leave the class," Ms. Shanker said…She said she was "shocked" by his reaction, and that Mr. Massad “usually answered civilly along the lines of, "No, you're wrong." She said Mr. Massad compared Israelis to Nazis during lectures in class.

Shanker later told the New York Times a different story: "She said that Professor Massad sometimes ridiculed her questions and during one class exchange yelled at her to get out. (She stayed.) 'People in the class were like blown away,' she said." Her account to the Jerusalem Post was also inconsistent with the other two accounts:

'If you're going to deny the atrocities being committed against the Palestinian people then you can get out of my classroom!' Massad shouted, according to Shanker's account…Shanker was shocked…"Sometimes teachers and professors yell at students - it
happens - but this was not like anything I've ever experienced. He was not treating me like a student," she said… Shanker said she had grown accustomed to Massad's antagonism toward Israel, but the professor's rage at her for speaking up was frightening… 'I felt - I wouldn't say 'intimidated' was the right word - I would say: humiliated, violated, scared. This was very overt and explicit."

Deena Shanker is lying in all three versions of her story. I have never asked her or any student to leave my class no matter what question they asked. In fact, I never asked any of my students to leave class for any reason. I have no visual memory of Deena Shanker who never came to office hours or spoke with me after class. The incident she describes has never taken place.

Joseph Massad has been pilloried beyond most people's endurance. The ease with which he refutes his detractors demonstrates the weakness of their case but it says nothing of the campaign of intimidation he has had to suffer for trying to relate a critical history of both zionism and Palestinian nationalism. For that, please read the whole statement.

More lies from Dershowitz

This is an article by a Regan Boychuk on Electronic Intifada. Like Finkelstein in interviews, articles and, forthcoming, a book, Boychuk exposes Dershowitz, beyond question, as a liar. In an earlier post I linked to a download of a recording of Dershowitz "debating" with Norman Finkelstein. Well actually, Dershowitz was shouting Finkelstein down while Finkelstein totally exposed him as a liar and a plagiarist. Well, among the many lies told by Dershowitz, most of which Finkelstein didn't have time (or volume) to deal with, he said that Israel doesn't use torture and that the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PACTI) admitted to him that they only used the word "torture" in their name because it got them media attention. He didn't explain why they needed attention or what the basis of their campaign was if it wasn't against torture. But Boychuk reports that Dershowitz was still telling the same lie as recently as March this year:

In the course of arguing that Israeli authorities no longer torture Palestinians, Dershowitz claimed he had a long conversation with the Israeli human rights organization, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), in which PCATI not only conceded that there was no longer any torture for them to investigate, but that they had decided not to change their name because it "helped them attract media attention"

Now I would have immediately smelled a rat here because torture by Israel doesn't get any media attention and of course only an idiot would believe anything that Dershowitz says. But Boychuk's intrepid and he decided to check his claim, first on the PACTI website - www.stoptorture.org.il - and then by phoning the group itself. Then reverting to Dershowitz and then back to PACTI. The exchanges are worth quoting at length.

"Dershowitz's claim that he had long conversations with PCATI and that we reported that there is no longer any torture in Israel," I was told by PCATI's Orah Maggen, "is totally false. We never met with him or spoke with him directly. I did meet him at the Knesset (Israel's parliament) when he spoke at the Law and Constitution Committee [but] I, and representatives of other human rights NGOs challenged most of what he said about torture, the role of human rights NGOs and other issues."

When I reported PCATI's denial to Professor Dershowitz, he replied: "During my conversation at the Knesset I asked the representative of the committee [Orah Maggen] why they kept their name, despite their acknowledgement that torture was no longer a significant issue? She responded - I remember clear as day - as follows: 'You have no idea how difficult it is to get attention to any human rights issues in this country. Maintaining our organizational name, with the word torture, is essential to getting needed attention.' I had an extensive argument with her about that tactic, focusing especially on the international implications and the misleading nature of the name outside of the country. I am certain she remembers the conversation because it was quite heated. It also took place in front of numerous witnesses."

When I emailed PCATI Dershowitz's "clear as day" recollection, Ms. Maggen replied that it is true that there was a heated exchange with others present, but "All other statements made by Professor Dershowitz are blatantly false and utterly preposterous. Neither I nor any other representative of PCATI acknowledged, claimed or in any way stated that torture is no longer a significant issue. On the contrary, it is our claim that the systematic and large-scale torture and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees and prisoners continues to this day."

She further stated that, "Neither I nor any other representative of PCATI ever stated that we kept our name to 'get attention' for any reason whatsoever. Considering the fact that torture is still widespread and that PCATI has its hands full struggling against the torture and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees (and others) by Israeli authorities, the claim regarding statements we supposedly made about our organization's name is totally absurd."

Sometimes it's demoralising seeing an outrageous liar in the public eye time and again trotting out the same old lies but then when an articulate challenger exposes those lies its very satisfying. Personally, I'm looking forward to Finkelstein's Beyond Chuztpah, which I imagine will have a thing or two to say about Dershowitz.

Academics against apartheid

Two Palestinians respond to yesterday's call by several zionist academics to oppose the boycott of Israeli academia:

Israeli academic institutions are all implicated in their state's racist and colonial policies by providing the practical and ideological support necessary for the maintenance of the occupation. For example, they provide consultancy services to the military and security establishment and sponsor research that justifies ethnic cleansing, extra-judicial killings, racial segregation and land expropriation. No Israeli university body has publicly censured academics producing racist work under the guise of scholarship.
Omar Barghouti
Lisa Taraki
Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Bir Zeit

While the Guardian itself produces one of its more disingenuous editorial comments opposing the boycott:

Singling out Israel raises other questions. AUT members are not proposing, after all, to boycott universities in North Korea, Zimbabwe or Sudan, where the government has been accused of perpetrating genocide against its own people. None of which is to deny that Israel is responsible for ongoing human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an abiding feature of a 37-year occupation which has distorted Israel's life and stained its reputation.

The Guardian knows that without apartheid Israel wouldn't exist, in fact, look at their final paragraph.

Supporters of boycotts often argue that Israel should be treated like apartheid South Africa. That is a controversial parallel which many Israelis see as delegitimating their state. Friends of the Palestinians should question whether this kind of boycott is not a blunt instrument that is unlikely to serve their cause well.

Zionists are fond of the word "delegitimise", or in the Guardian's case, "delegitimating". It suggests that a state based on colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid laws had some legitimacy to start with. It didn't and liberal opinion should support the boycott.

Academics for apartheid

There are three letters, in today's Guardian, about the proposed boycott of Israeli academia. Two are against the boycott whilst the other one seems to be for it, though frankly, I couldn't really tell since it was couched in extremely cautious terms. There are lots of names to the three letters. I notice Professor Geoffrey Alderman put his name to an anti-boycott one saying that "Neither party in this tragic dispute has a monopoly on suffering or injustice." I've never seen Alderman saying anything like that before. In fact the last time I saw him in print in the Guardian he was promoting one of the more recent zionist myths about the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Jews from Arab states. David Cesarani is so against the boycott, though like Sharon, he's against the occupation, that he signed both anti-boycott letters.

Then there's the article that I have linked in the headline. It quotes from one of the anti-boycott letters thus

Does anybody suggest that American physicists should be excluded from the academic community if they do not repudiate Guantánamo Bay?

Well no, nobody does. But then does the USA exist on the sole basis of Guantanamo Bay as Israel exists on the basis of apartheid laws? No to that one too.

Settlers versus the State

Here's Daphna Baram on the prospects for a settler war on Israeli soldiers.

Israelis are good at enduring civilian loses, but they have zero tolerance for attacks on soldiers. When the first settler shoots the first soldier, the settlement project may be over and done with.

What about when they shot and killed the old soldier, Rabin?

Poet prejudices proceedings

Here's a curious article by Richard Ingram's in today's Observer. It starts off ridiculing David Blunkett's poetry (yes, he's a poet now). And ends up exposing the court proceedings of the "ricin conspirators."

'Too much I read of that which I have written and if not written wished I had.' I quote from a newly published poem entitled 'Echo' from the pen of the former Education Secretary and Home Secretary, David Blunkett. The editor of Poetry Review, Ms Fiona Sampson, has explained: 'It is obviously written by someone who is visually impaired because it is about the sound of words.' To any readers who may have been puzzling over what exactly Blunkett was trying to say, Ms Sampson's explanation may come as a welcome aid. Others may unkindly conclude that if Blunkett was a disastrous Home Secretary, then he is an even worse poet. We had yet another reminder of Blunkett's blundering methods in the report of the Kamel Bourgass trial last week when it emerged that the judge hearing the case had written to the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, complaining about ministers prejudicing the trial. This followed a public statement by Blunkett claiming that 'al-Qaeda is seen to be and will be demonstrated through our courts to be actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives', a comment which, if it had been made by a newspaper, could well have led to an action for contempt of court, but is apparently permissible in a Home Secretary and amateur poet. As it happens, Blunkett's comment as far as Bourgass is concerned was not only prejudicial but inaccurate, most experts by now being of the opinion that Bourgass was a bit of a loony who posed no real terrorist threat, let alone proving the link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, as was claimed by the likes of Tony Blair and Colin Powell."

I think that, over this case, seven other men have spent over a year in prison on trumped up charges of some conspiracy or other. The fact that they were found not guilty doesn't seem to have made much of a splash in the newspapers. The fact that the "conspirators" had no ricin hasn't struck anyone in the mainstream media as a bit odd given the trumpeting of the "proof" of an al-Qaida presence in the UK by so many ministers.

The main coverage has focused on the fact that the one man found guilty of anything (murdering a police officer) was a failed asylum seeker. When it hasn't focused on that it has been suggesting that "terror" legislation isn't tight enough. The idea of such legislation is supposed to be to prevent terrorism, not put innocent people away and then on show trial to justify the war in Iraq. There must be more thorough coverage of this case in the serious media but I haven't seen it yet.

Self-praise? A disclaimer

I just tracked back a hit I got from Dogpile where someone had looked up "anti zionist blog sites". The first on a list of 67 was mine, which I'm quite chuffed about. What I'm not so chuffed about is the blurb under the heading "Jews sans frontieres." It's a direct link to my site but it says, as if it is a paragraph from my site:

Mark Elf's iconoclastic anti-Zionist blog. He scans the media like no one else, debunking propaganda and explicating the other Jewish perspective.

I've noticed the same thing around google before but I hadn't noticed that it looked as if it was culled from here. I've got two problems with this: first, it looks like I write it about myself and second, it's not true. I don't scan the media like no other. I check my email, read a couple of papers, listen to Radio 4, watch a tiny bit of telly, look at some blogs and other sites and I think that's it. I do, to be fair, try to debunk propaganda, but as for "explicating the. other Jewish perspective", a) I'm not sure what explicating means in the context (or at all) and I'm sure there are more than just two Jewish perspectives, for it is written, "two Jews, three. perspectives. So how did the description get there? That's a puzzle.

Lavon affair remembered by Israel for a change

This is the intro by David Shasha to a Yediot Ahranaot article on the honouring by Israel of the surviving members of the Lavon affair group.

For those of you not familiar with the so-called Lavon Affair - one of the most egregious scandals in the history of Israel - the recent honors accorded to its participants should force us to look back at the matter. The Lavon Affair was concocted by a person named Benyamin Givli in the Israeli Defense Department which was led by Pinchas Lavon. The basic idea was to compromise Egypt by bombing public locations such as movie theaters in order to create the suspicion that Nasser was seeking to harm Westerners. The affair was botched and the spies found out and brought to trial. The Lavon Affair, along with the Mas'ouda Shemtov Synagogue bombings in Iraq, have long been used as proof that the Israelis were intent on using subterfuge in the Arab world to compromise the Arabs and to force out the Jews who lived in those countries. It is unfortunate that these covert operations are not known to Western Jews. In our own Sephardic communities such matters are completely ignored. The two standard sources on the events are Ian Black and Benny Morris' Israel's Secret Wars and Shabtai Teveth's Ben Gurion's Spy. A more controversial and contested approach has been taken in Naeim Giladi's Ben Gurion's Scandals.

The full article is reproduced in Sephardic Heritage Update, published by David Shasha.

Lenin versus Nick Cohen

I read Nick Cohen's diatribe against Respect this morning and found so many allegations against Respect that I was sure they had refuted over the last week or so but I couldn;t really put my finger on them because I don't follow Respect that closely. Instead I waited for Lenin to turn in his Tomb.

Working by connotation rather than denotation - as per usual - Cohen avers that in the fight for the East End:

[T]here's a whiff of old hatreds in the air. Oona King, the Labour candidate, is getting fed up with Respect supporters bringing up her Jewish mother, although she says it makes a change from the British National Party bringing up her black father.

This charge has been repeated often enough, but with what cause? What evidence does King present to justify these ridiculous claims? Nil. King remarked that it was Respect "canvassers" who had told people not to vote King on account of her Jewish background, which would be disgusting if true. Sadly for her, Respect had not started canvassing in Bethnal Green & Bow when King made her remarks. Moreover, there is ample evidence to show that King has no particular respect for the truth, at least in this campaign. Here she is hoping the campaign doesn't get too dirty , here she is libelling her opponent and paying an out of court settlement, and here she is repeating the libel . When she was caught encouraging postal voters to send their ballot papers to her campaign headquarters, she claimed that "We are working to an agreed set of rules we have had for decades" , despite the fact that the laws allowing anyone to apply for postal voting were introduced in 2000.

Still go read the man himself as I couldn;t be bothered to html-ise the links he helpfully provides.

GUPS versus Zionism and Bolshevism?

I'm a bit stung by the pamphlet that is said to have appeared on a GUPS (General Union of Palestinian Students) stall at an NUS event. I have read the content on the net but I haven't seen the pamphlet itself. I don't know if carrying the pamphlet was an easy to make mistake, a malicious act by someone at GUPS with an agenda that undermines anti-zionism, if it was placed on their stall by a non-member to embarrass GUPS or if they are just a plain a sloppy, stupid or malicious group. A Palestinian friend of mine told me that GUPS is virtually defunct nowadays anyway and it's certainly true that no-one from the group has come forward to disown, apologise for or explain the presence of the pamphlet on a GUPS stall at an NUS event.

I said in an earlier post that the text read like Israel Shamir but it actually bears quite an uncanny resemblance to Winston Churchill's infamous anti-semitic article for the Illustrated Sunday Herald back in 1920. The main difference is that Churchill writes approvingly of zionism as a positive and useful Jewish conspiracy whereas communism is a menacing Jewish conspiracy "as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent." Churchill also has some kind, if essentialistic and downright obscurantist, words about Jews as if "this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical." The pamphlet, which is anonymous as far as I know, also, after some ridiculous and nasty anti-semitic outpourings ends on a conciliatory note, distancing Judaism from zionism but rather feebly when you consider that the buffoon who wrote it states, gratuitously and wrongly, that Lenin himself was a Jew.

The context for my writing this is that the pamphlet was referred to in a Guardian article (and in the Jewish Chronicle) by a Luciana Berger as part of her explanation as to why she, and two other zionist activists felt that they had to resign from the NUS National Executive Committee. The article itself contains far more innuendo than verifiable fact and the reference to the offending pamphlet, as clumsily as it was made (Ms Berger refers to it as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion") is just about the only significant verifiable fact in it. That is, it can either be confirmed or denied. If the former applies then GUPS should either explain or apologise; if the latter then we can simply put this down to yet more zionist deceit and move on.