Whatever happened to that Jewish prick?

Jews for Justice for Palestinians has a post about the Royal Institute of British Architects vote to call on the International Union of Architects to give their Israeli counterparts the boot and the Jewish Chronicle's rather nutty response to the same.

Actually, here are all the links:

1) Statement from JfJfP;
2) Richard Kuper: Absurd, malign and plain wrong, unpublished letter from Richard Kuper for JfJfP;
3) JC letter: RE: “Architects of Hate”, letter from Abe Hayeem, published with one omission;
4) RIBA V-P: A complex decision but not antisemitic, letter from Peter Oborn, published;
5) JC: Israeli architects ask David Cameron to block RIBA boycott, Marcus Dysch on Israeli architects with misguided beliefs on powers of a British PM;
6) JPost: Israeli architects appeal to Foreign Ministry, Britain against boycott threat, ditto, though it’s a propaganda point as it also makes a rhetorical link to women’s rights;
7) Jews sans frontieres: Bar Mitzvahs and Boycotts, welcomes the RIBA decision and points out the popularity of their building (photo above) for bar/bat mitzvahs;
8 – JC editorial: Boycott hypocrites, having read the above, the JC calls on the faithful to boycott the RIBA

When I read Stephen Pollard's desperate outpourings I thought, "what a fucking prick" and my mind wandered back to when The Jewish Chronicle called itself "the organ of British Jewry".  I remember I used to wince whenever I saw that.  Don't they know there's a double entendre in there somewhere?  Well I did notice that they no longer run that subtitle but when did they ditch it?  Whatever did happen to that Jewish prick?

And another thing, we know where Stephen Pollard is, well roughly anyway, but where is the Chair of The JC's board, Anthony Julius?  I remember there was a sighting some months ago but one between FUCU and now.

Now, where was I?  Oh yes, whatever did happen to that Jewish prick?

East End of London before the Bankers moved in

You must find something of interest in David Rosenberg's latest mailout:

David Rosenberg’s

 East End Walks Newsletter •24•

April 2014 

david@eastendwalks.com

 www.eastendwalks.com

In this bulletin:

Next 6 walks • Radical Bookfair • Cable Street – the bigger picture • Weinstein’s War • Mackay’s hell of poverty • 100th anniversary • Phil’s photos • Bread and brotherhood

• Remembering Bob Crow

My next 6 walks

Sunday 6 April, 11am-1pm: THE RADICAL JEWISH EAST END

Sunday 13 April, 11am-1pm: FIGHTERS FOR EQUALITY (Westminster)

Sunday 11 May, 11am-1.30pm: ANTI-FASCIST FOOTPRINTS: A WALK THROUGH THE 1930s EAST END

Saturday 17 May 10.30-1pm: VISIONARIES, DISSENTERS, REBELS (Islington)

Sunday 15 June, 11am-1pm: ACTIVISTS, MILITANTS, PIONEERS – WOMEN OF THE RADICAL JEWISH EAST END

Sunday 29 June, 11am-1.30pm: SPARK OF REBELLION IN BOW AND MILE END

These walks can be booked online at www.eastendwalks.com or by emailing: david@eastendwalks.com

SPECIAL OFFER TO RETURNEES: If you bring a friend on a walk you have already done, your friend pays the normal rate but you go free!

Radical Bookfair

The Bishopsgate Institute, near Liverpool Street, which borders the East End just near Spitalfields Market, will be hosting this year’s Radical Bookfair on Saturday 10^th May from 10am-5pm. It will be taking place on all three floors of the building and will include bookstalls and talks from authors. There is sure to be some literature relating to the radical East End traditions, as Five Leaves Publicatons, who have an excellent East End list and published my book Battle for the East End, are among the principal organisers.

Cable Street: the bigger picture

To coincide with the bookfair, the Bishopsgate Institute asked me to do a special short course relating to the fight against fascism in the East End. My course, Cable Street and fighting fascism in 1930s London will be taking place over three sessions –  two in the classroom (evenings of Thursday 8^th May, Friday 9^th May) and a third session outdoors – a guided walk from Aldgate to Cable Street on the Saturday morning (10^th May). Full details and booking on http://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/course/1661/Cable-Street--Fighting-Fascism-in-1930s-London?&Keyword=CABLE+STREET&Category=&TimeOfDay=&

Weinstein’s war

This is the title of a book that is based on the letters exchanged between an East End socialist activist Dave Weinstein, a gunner in the 8^th army, and his wife Sylvia during the Second World War. David Weinstein had been a street speaker for the Independent Labour Party in the 1930s East End when the ILP together with the Communist Party were the main forces confronting the growth of fascism in East London. Co-author Jeremy Weinstein will be talking about the book at a meeting organised by the Jewish Socialists’ Group at 7.30pm on Sunday 11^th May. Venue (central London) to be confirmed.

Email david@eastendwalks.com nearer the time for details of the venue.

Mackay’s hell of poverty

“The East End is the hell of poverty. Like an enormous, black, motionless giant kraken, the poverty of London lies there in lurking silence…”.  This oft-quoted piece of prose about the late 19^th century East End is taken from The Anarchists, a novel published in 1891, set in London in 1887, and based on the very real struggles of that period, both in the East End and West End. The author was the Scottish-German writer and poet, John Henry Mackay. I tracked down a copy recently – definitely well worth a read!

100^th anniversary

One hundred years ago, in March 1914, a new publication hit the streets of East London, often sold from a stall outside a shop at 321 Roman Road. That shop belonged to the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) and the newspaper was the Women’s Dreadnought edited by a leading figure in the ELFS – Sylvia Pankhurst. The newspaper’s title reflected both their preparedness for battle and that they dreaded/feared nothing and no one. Unlike most of their sisters in the West End, the ELFS stepped up rather than turned off their campaigning during war-time, being especially active in work for equal pay as women temporarily took jobs of men called up for war. They also launched many other local initiatives to support women struggling economically during the war.  The inspiring story of the ELFS and Sylvia Pankhurst’s role as and activist and organiser features in a couple of my walks: in Fighters for Equality on 13^th April and in Spark of Rebellion in Bow and Mile End on 29^th June. Book now at www.eastendwalks.com

Phil’s photos

Looking forward very much to getting to the tail end of the launch of my friend Phil Maxwell’s long-awaited book Brick Lane, which documents the area in and around this iconic street through the stunning photos he has taken over the last 30+ years. Brick Lane is published by Spitalfields Life Books. http://spitalfieldslife.bigcartel.com/product/brick-lane-by-phil-maxwell-published-on-april-3rd

Bread and Brotherhood

Solomon Lever was the General Secretary of one of the smallst but longest lasting Jewish trade unions in Britain, the London Jewish Bakers Union. Most of its members were concentrated in the Jewish bakeries of East London. Lever died in tragic circumstances in July 1959, when he was also acting General Secretary of the Workers’ Circle, set up as a Yiddish-speaking immigrant based socialist friendly society in East London. The Workers’ Circle moved to Hackney following the Second World War. Its original premises in Great Alie Street suffered major bomb damage. The details of Solomon’s life and the issues and activities he was part of have now been researched and documented by his great nephew Jason and these can now be accessed on a website that Jason has put up: http://www.unclesolly.co.uk/

Remembering Bob Crow

Early in 2009 I had a phone call from Adrian Scott, a trade unionist, eager to book a walk with me for members working at his union’s central office. I was really pleased to find that he was calling on behalf of Bob Crow, leader of the RMT. Adrian was very insistent about the timing: “It will need to end at 6pm because the men will need a drink”. Around 25 people turned up for the walk. They weren’t all men as it happened, though they did have a drink or three. But the heart and soul of this walking party was their General Secretary, Bob Crow.

This was the start of a friendship formed through these walks and through our common campaigning interests. It was a privilege and pleasure to take Bob and his comrades on walks on three occasions, and on each one of those events Bob contributed a great deal to my narrative from his own experience and his deep knowledge of London and labour movement history. We sat together on a platform close to the Cable Street mural in 2011, on the 75^th anniversary of the battle, where we were both addressing a commemorative rally, a stone’s throw form where he grew up. He was very proud of the role that railway workers had played alongside tailors and dockers in fighting fascism in the East End of the 1930s and of those who went to fight fascism in Spain.

I last saw Bob and spoke with him about three weeks before he died suddenly, at just 52 years old. Our last conversation was about football. Bob was a die-hard Millwall fan, and me, West Ham – absolute rivals. I asked Bob if he knew why Millwall were doing so badly this year, and I suggested it might stem from when they appointed an ex-West Ham player (Steve Lomas) as their manager. Bob came back instantly with: “We all know about secret agent Lomas!”

Alongside several hundred others lining the streets by the City of London Crematorium in East London, I attended the emotional farewell to Bob Crow. He was a true representative of the East End’s militant traditions of trade unionism and anti-fascism. And he made sure that these traditions continued under his stewardship of the RMT. Salud comrade!

Hope you have found this newsletter interesting and useful and I would love to see you and your friends on a walk soon…

These walks are looking more attractive the more ordinary Joes are being driven out of the East End by bankers and corporate lawyers pushing property prices and rents beyond their reach. Still the East End's loss is Dagenham's gain.

New Jersey Governor apologises for calling Occupied Territories, er, Occupied

See this from Politico:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized to Sheldon Adelson in a meeting Saturday for stepping on a fault line in Middle East politics during a speech he gave earlier in the day, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

Invoking a 2012 trip he and his family took to Israel, Christie recalled in the speech: “I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories across and just felt personally how extraordinary that was to understand, the military risk that Israel faces every day.”

So, he's made himself look utterly ridiculous suggesting that the occupied Palestinians are the threat to the State of Israel and not the other way around but still he did a wrong thing.  And what was that thing? Well, it was "occupied territories":

the term is rejected by some conservative Zionists like Adelson who see it as validating Palestinian challenges over Israel’s presence. Other supporters of Israel oppose the use of the term as well.

Not long after his speech, Christie met with Adelson privately in the casino mogul’s office in the Venetian hotel and casino, which hosted the RJC meeting.

The source told POLITICO that Christie “clarified in the strongest terms possible that his remarks today were not meant to be a statement of policy.”

And there's more:

Instead, the source said, Christie made clear “that he misspoke when he referred to the ‘occupied territories.’ And he conveyed that he is an unwavering friend and committed supporter of Israel, and was sorry for any confusion that came across as a result of the misstatement.”

Adelson accepted Christie’s explanation, the source said.

The mini-controversy and quick apology highlight both the importance of Adelson as the reigning mega-donor in GOP politics, as well as the tricky terrain that Middle East politics can pose for American politicians courting Jewish donors and voters.

Before the meeting, Adelson ally Morton Klein, president of the hawkish Zionist Organization of America, had confronted Christie about his use of the term, telling POLITICO he explained to the New Jersey governor that “at minimum you should call it disputed territories.”

At a minimum?  And at a maximum?  What about that?  Maybe this Christie guy should cut off his own balls, put them in a jar and hand them over to this Adelson chap until whichever elections he wants to win with this Adelson's help are out of the way.

When Amnesty International launched a preemptive strike against Israel

It was yesterday actually because it was all about Land Day which is today.  See this from YNET, aka Yedioth Ahronot:

Amnesty International fears that Israeli forces could violently oppress Palestinian "Land Day" protests on Sunday 30 March and is calling the Israeli authorities to refrain from using unnecessary force.

According to Amnesty, amid plans demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, the often lethal enforcement of military zones in Gaza, and forced evictions of Bedouin in the Negev  ‘Land Day’ demonstrations will protest ongoing policies as well as commemorate historical events.

"Israeli forces must not resort to unnecessary or excessive force as they so often have done in the past,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International.

“Israel’s authorities have failed to respect the right of Palestinians to exercise their right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Amnesty International’s researchers will be monitoring events on Sunday closely to examine whether the rights of demonstrators are respected,” said Luther.

Oh dear.  I'm old enough to remember when Amnesty International used to condemn human rights abuses after they occurred not before.  But of course Israel's human rights abuses are all too predictable.

Union calls on Theresa May to say FUCU to Tzipi Livni

This in from Stop the Jewish National Fund:

UCU Scotland condemns Israel war criminal visit to London JNF

 

The 2014 Annual Congress of the University and College Union Scotland Congress (UCU Scotland) today voted unanimously to condemn the planned visit by Israeli war criminal Tzipi Livni.  The Israeli politician was given a rare diplomatic passport by the UK Government in 2011 specifically to protect her from the risk of arrest and prosecution for complicity in Israeli war crimes.  Livni is planning to speak at a provocative Nakba Day meeting of the racist JNF (Jewish National Fund) at a secret central London venue on Thursday 15th May.  UCU Scotland Congress called on Theresa May to refuse Livni entry to the UK.

On Nakba (“Catastrophe”) Day, Palestinians remember the wave of Zionist ethnic cleansing that engulfed Palestine in 1948, and created the world’s largest refugee population.  Every year on 15th May Palestinians and human rights supporters protest Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing programmes, house demolitions and Israel’s apartheid system, of which the JNF is a central pillar.

Stop the JNF UK supports the demonstration called by Palestine Solidarity Campaign of England and Wales and the London Palestine Action in Central London on Thursday May 15^th to protest the racist JNF and its war criminal guest, Livni.

In late 2009 Livni cancelled a scheduled visit to London when she discovered an arrest warrant had been issued against her on the grounds she had been a member of the Israeli war cabinet which organised the massacre of more than a 1400 Palestinians.

Click here to write to Home Secretary Theresa May to demand that Tzipi Livni be prevented from entering the UK to participate in incitement to hatred and division.

Zionists play Whack-a-Mole; but the moles keep digging

This just in from Mike Cushman of BRICUP:

Recent weeks have seen an outbreak of BDS activity on North American campuses. Each student action has met a virulent reaction from Israel’s defenders; each Zionist reaction prompts further action elsewhere.

The current round started on 24 February at Northeastern University in Boston when Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) repeated a tactic used on other campuses and posted mock eviction notices under students’ doors. These notices:

 

bring Israel’s campaign of demolition and eviction to the attention of all students. It is frequently, and falsely, alleged that Jewish students are targeted for these notices in an act of antisemitic intimidation. No evidence of this has ever been produced and as the aim is to spread information such a tactic would be counter-productive. Such claims were dismissed by the authorities at Rutgers and Florida Atlantic Universities.

The administration at Northeastern responded brutally. They suspended the SJP chapter and involved the police and threatened the only women of colour in the group that distributed the leaflets with expulsion-level charges. The threat of expulsion was rescinded following a nationwide outcry. University president Joseph Aoun recently protested, on spurious free speech grounds, against the American Studies Association decision (see Newsletter 72) to adopt BDS; he obviously sees free speech on his own campus as less vital. 

This was followed on 1 March by a 798 to 585 vote by students at Windsor University, Ontario, to support BDS. University President, Alan Wildeman, immediately tried to undermine the validity of this well supported vote making claims of irregularity without providing evidence. On 12 March he announced he had hired a lawyer to carry out an “investigation” of the BDS referendum.

Worse was to follow when Richard Spencer, an alumnus and major donor posted: “I am reasonably certain that the majority, if not all, of this small percentage of the student body are of the Muslim faith, which promotes violence and hatred toward the Jews in the middle east.” Wildeman has very correctly distanced himself from these comments. However, it provokes a question about the due diligence the University conducts before accepting donations if it had been pleased to accept funds from someone prone to making such racist statements.

Despite these attacks the students at Windsor remain committed to putting their BDS policies into effect.

Next the focus moved to Barnard College in New York, an affiliate of the prestigious Columbia University. On 10 March Barnard/Columbia SJP kicked off Israel Apartheid Week by hanging a banner of a map of Palestine  outside Barnard Hall where groups conventionally post banners promoting their events. The campus former Hillel president wrote “The banner features a map of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, without any internal borders, colored uniformly green. That is to say, C-SJP's banner, brazenly displayed on the front door of Barnard College, entirely erases the Jewish State from the map. While I hesitate to use the term too loosely, I am at a loss as to how to categorize this display as anything less than anti-Semitic.” These claims are strange, not only because Israel frequently produces maps without borders, although they tend to colour the territory blue. More weird are Hillel protests against a map that does not detail Israel’s land grabs.

Barnard’s administration swung into prompt action on receiving these pleas and tore down the banner. An action that accords with their support for Zionist Birthright trips to Israel and tolerance of regular events on campus supporting and celebrating the Occupation.

These repressive measures have fallen foul of deep US attachment to free speech and the first Amendment and even some staunch supporters of Israel have denounced such censorship.

Hillel, the organisation that seeks to organise and support Jewish students has itself become an arena of contest. Many Jewish students are arguing that Hillel should represent all of them and not make support dependent on a commitment to Israel’s policies. National Hillel has been operating a policy of sanctioning any campus group that attempts to host any speaker critical of current Israeli policy, regardless of their attitude to the continuance of the state as a Jewish entity. Harvard Hillel even banned Avraham Burg, the former speaker of Israel’s Knesset. In reaction campus Hillel groups are declaring themselves to be Open Hillels and not subject to a rigid Zionist dogma.

On 18 March students at Loyola, a Jesuit University in Chicago, agreed to divest from companies complicit in aiding the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. They identified Caterpillar, General Electric, Hewlitt-Packard, G4S, Raytheon, Elbit Systems, SodaStream, and Veolia. The vote at the student senate was passed nem con with 26 votes in favour and 2 abstentions; it followed a year long campaign by Loyola SJP and a petition signed by over 800 students. It is just a year since students at San Diego State University, UC Irvine and UC Riverside passed similar resolutions. 

The senate revisited the issue on 24 March and confirmed their earlier decision, albeit by a smaller margin. Despite this the President of the Student Association unilaterally vetoed the resolution the following day. The spotlight moves back to the Senate who can override the veto with a two-thirds majority.

On the same day students at the University of Michigan started an indefinite occupation in protest at the student government’s refusal to hold a vote on divestment. Their campaign led by SAFE, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality ,forced the student government to convene a meeting on 18 March to hold a debate and a vote. Hundreds attended but the debate was cut short and a motion to indefinitely delay a decision was passed by 25 votes to 15 but it is significant that opponents did not have the confidence to try and vote BDS down outright.  Despite this setback the campaigners are sure they have ignited a debate about Palestine at Ann Arbor and increased knowledge about Israel’s actions enormously. The campus newspaper The Michigan Daily printed an editorial supporting SAFE’s campaign for the University to be more active in investigating the ethical status of their investments. They intend to bring the motion back and are confident of winning UM students to BDS. 

Meanwhile Vassar has been convulsed by a row over a study trip to Israel and the settlements to investigate water supply organised as part of the International Studies programme. On 6 February Vassar SJP picketed a meeting of the class, some of the students in the class claimed they felt intimidated and a meeting was held on 3 March to allow both sides to express their concerns. SJP argued the case about why the trip was discriminatory and how it embedded US support for Israel. Philip Weiss has written a detailed and nuanced account of the meeting and the events leading up to it and the wider significance of the turmoil at Vassar for the development of the campaign for Palestinian rights on US campuses.

On 19 March students at Arizona State University joined the campaign, again a motion moved by ASU Divest from Caterpillar Inc was postponed but it will be raised again on 1 April.

On 26 March McMaster University Student Union in Hamilton, Ontario passed a BDS resolution but at a well-attended but inquorate General Assembly meeting – opponents of BDS left the meeting to make it inquorate rather than staying to register tier opposition. 27 years ago McMaster students were among the first to support South African BDS.

This article is correct at the time of writing but this is a fast changing situation which we will try to track on the BRICUP website and is well reported at Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss and on twitter.[with Jews sans frontieres bringing up the rear]

Mike Cushman

28 March 2014 

I got this from Mike Cushman early yesterday and as Mike said there could be changes on the way, in fact it's fair to say, in light of the above, Change is gonna come.  Hey, that's a good idea for a song:

Sopranos and the genocidal hit parade

I'm just rewatching The Sopranos. I'm on season 4 episode 3 at a point where the Italians, Tony Soprano's people, want to make anti-Columbus Day demonstrations "go away".  It's round about 33 minutes in.

Tony Soprano asks his long-time Jewish friend, Heshy, for help thwarting the anti-Columbus Day demo, and Heshy has asked Tony, "what's wrong with free speech?"  The guy almost out of shot is Reuben, a native Cuban, who joins in with Heshy,  "They wiped out almost all of my people.....They were Taíno Indians who got raped by Columbus and the Conquistadors."

So Reuben is against Columbus because he nearly wiped out all of his people.  But why is Heshy with Reuben?  Let him explain. "I have sympathy for the red man......Jews, because of their history, have common cause with the oppressed.  Some Indians were deliberately given blankets tainted with smallpox."

Heshy and Reuben also agree that the European settlers invented bioterrorism but then Reuben oversteps it:

Reuben - Christopher Columbus was no better than Adolf Hitler.
Heshy    - Back up - Hitler? -
Reuben - Yeah. I'm not the only one who thinks so.
Heshy    - You're talking out of your ass. Columbus and Hitler? You're trivializing the Holocaust.
Frankly, Reuben, if you got that kind of covert anti-Semitism I'd like you to leave my house.
Reuben -  Anti-Semitism? -
Heshy    - That's right.
Reuben -  Fuck you, too, my man!
Reuben slopes off and Heshy decides he will help these knights of Columbus after all.

So what have we learned?  As it happens, Heshy's insistence that the genocide of the Americas was trivial when compared to the holocaust wasn't the only example of racism in the conversation.  But Heshy is Jewish, he claims this is why he sides with the oppressed but when it comes to the hit parade of genocide he so resents any challenge to the number one spot he accords to Jews he decides to support Columbus Day after all.

Rolling Stones to get more for playing Israel than for playing UK

Well that's according to some guy in the comments of a JC blog.  See this:

joemillis1959

Wed, 03/26/2014 - 11:24      

Rolling Stones to play in Israel with a minimum ticket price of 645 shekels (about £112) a pop. That's more than what they wanted for their O2 show last year. That's British prices on Israeli salaries (about 2/3). Forget BDS, the Israeli public should boycott this extortion!

Of course there are members of the Israeli public who would boycott this zionist publicity stunt even if the tickets were for free.

Rolling Stones take the racist shilling, 90 million shillings to be precise

Well it's been confirmed the Rolling Stones are to take the zionist shilling by playing for Israel in occupied Palestine.   Here's The Jewish Chronicle:

The Rolling Stones will perform their first-ever Israel concert, it has been confirmed.

Representatives said on Tuesday that the band would go ahead with its performance in Tel Aviv this summer as planned.

The Stones were reportedly offered £4.5 million to play the open-air concert in Park Hayarkon on June 4 – the largest sum ever offered for a music act to play in the country.

Wow! £4.5 million.  That's actually 90 million shillings, shillings being old money for 5 pence.  Who, apart from the Stones themselves could be profiting from this?  Did you notice it is "the largest sum ever offered for a music act to play in the country".  Clearly the propaganda value is enormous to the racist war criminals of the State of Israel.  Mick Jagger is notoriously mean with money and Keith Richards supported the Iraq war. So there's a lethal mix of love of money and contempt for Arabs going on here. 

There will be attempts by BDS to shame the Stones out of this propaganda coup for racists but since they clearly have no shame it's probably better to focus on other things.

How are targets selected for promoted Tweets?

Every now and then I get a promoted tweet for Corn Flakes or something for sale anyway but today I got this tweet:

@nytimes bias against Israel damages peace efforts. DON'T subscribe. http://t.co/T7CtyyAAxU
— CAMERAorg (@CAMERAorg) March 19, 2014

It's a coincidence I suppose that the tweet came to me close to this:

‘NYT Book Review’ owes readers an apology for printing blatant racism about Palestinians http://t.co/GUUrRpOwwX via @Mondoweiss
— Joe Catron (@jncatron) March 24, 2014

Now that wasn't a promoted tweet, I follow Joe Catron and MondoWeiss.

So who decides who should get these promoted tweets and how do they decide?

By the way, CAMERA attained some notoriety a few years back for tampering with Wikipedia entries about Palestine and zionism.

Bar Mitzvahs and Boycotts

First the good news: the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has voted to call on the International Union of Architects (UIA) to suspend the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA).  Here's the resolution:

Since the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) has paid no regard to the UIA resolution 13 of 2005 and 2009, the RIBA calls on the UIA, as the international guardian of professional and ethical standards in our profession, to suspend the membership of the Israeli Association of United Architects, until it acts to resist these illegal projects, and observes international law, the UIA Accords and Resolution 13.

The Jewish Chronicle's report on the motion was surprisingly factual but the editorial is lunacy itself:

Be in no doubt. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is now officially antisemitic. On Wednesday, it voted to support a ban on Jews from joining the International Union of Architects. It didn’t put it quite like that, of course. The wording of its motion referred to ‘Israelis’ rather than ‘Jews’. But in singling out the Jewish state for opprobrium, over and above every other nation on earth, and in seeking to ban Jews — sorry, Israelis — from membership, the driving force behind both the BDS campaign and its RIBA conspirators is clear. Jew hatred lives on in RIBA.

Actually the motion doesn't refer to "Israelis" but to "the Israeli Association of United Architects" and for reasons it makes clear.

Now it's no surprise to see false allegations of "Jew hatred" in the JC but when I looked for RIBA in the JC's search bar look what I found:

JFS student celebrates his barmitzvah with an art exhibit

By Zoe Winograd, January 11, 2013

Some barmitzvah boys ask for Beyoncé. But JFS pupil Ethan Djanogly is marking his barmitzvah next month with an art show — at the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Ethan is a passionate photographer and his parents have helped him stage his first exhibition, with 25 of his pictures going on show at RIBA in central London. His barmitzvah reception will be held at RIBA, too.

Some Jew haters they turned out to be.  I gather RIBA is still open for bar and bat mitzvahs, it just won't be collaborating with war criminals in future.  Apparently some, probably most, people at the JC can't tell the difference.

No such thing as a free lynch?

 

 From the Jerusalem Post.


See that pic? It's Israeli schoolkids dressed up for Purim. These youngsters educated to be both masters and servants of a racist state have clearly not got the hang of Purim. Purim is a time for celebration and fancy dress but fancy dress is what you wear to pretend to be something you're not, not to reveal what you are. I'm sure there are psycho-something-or-other-ists who suggest that people dress up as what they would like to be, in which case our Purim celebrants have managed a win-win, they have dressed up as a bunch of violent murderous racists. These people are said to be seventeen which means next year they can don another racist uniform, the uniform of the Israeli army. If they keep this year's robes, the Israeli army might save a few New Israeli Shekels on uniforms. Maybe there is such a thing as a free lynch after all.

Ben White in black and white

I already mentioned that Ben White's book launch last night was very successful in terms of turnout and presentation. I'd forgotten that I took some pics of the video feed in the lobby of which this is one.

The picture was taken on my phone and it shows quite a crowd. This might actually have been thanks to Zionists boasting in the Jewish Chronicle that they had bulk ordered tickets for the event to make attendance as low as possible. Their bragging about their own dishonesty undermined them. Next time they do the same thing they should save the boasts for after the event.

Ben White's Shoreditch gig tonight

The relaunch of an updated Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide is taking place tonight at Amnesty International's offices in London at 6:30 pm.

The address is:

Amnesty International UK
17 - 25 New Inn Yard
London
EC2A 3EA
United Kingdom

 

Sadly, in every sense of the word, The Jewish Chronicle has boasted that:

Representatives of one group of Israel advocates said they had booked free tickets for the launch but had no intention of attending.

and

They said they hoped to ensure that the event at the 200-capacity venue took place in front of as small an audience as possible.

So if you couldn't get a ticket there is still every chance of getting in as places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

If you're worried about not getting in, Shoreditch is a very lively place every night of the week and especially on Friday nights so you could still have a good night if you didn't get into Ben White's Shoreditch gig.

UPDATE:

Very successful event. Assuming 200 capacity I reckon there were about 190 people there.

Another Laughable Propaganda Site sticks boot into Ben White

Ben White's book launch tonight should be good. The zionists are going full tilt to trash his reputation.  Now it's the JC on his case:

Mr White has repeatedly been criticised after he wrote in 2002: “I do not consider myself an antisemite, yet I can also understand why some are”. [a movement calling itself the Jews is persisting in the colonisation, conquest and ethnic cleansing of Palestine and a ragbag of self-styled experts on antisemitism have no clue why there is such a think as antisemitism]

He also encouraged Twitter followers to protest against an Israeli theatre company’s performance in the UK in 2012 by posting a picture of Jewish author Howard Jacobson.[this was after anti-BDSrs posted a picture of Jacobson's face on an ad opposing BDS]

He said the Booker Prize winner’s face was “another reason to support the boycott”.

But I mentioned in an earlier post that the book launch at Amnesty International's office tonight was sold out.  Actually that is because a zionist group has taken up as many tickets as it could get to prevent people from hearing Ben White speak.  Here's the JC again:

Representatives of one group of Israel advocates said they had booked free tickets for the launch but had no intention of attending.

They said they hoped to ensure that the event at the 200-capacity venue took place in front of as small an audience as possible.

 Have these racists no shame?  Apparently not.

Right of Return not Law of Return?

I could have said, JC's Marcus Dysch nearly right, shock! but I think I use that shock headline or tweet too much.  But here's the Dysch article on the law/right of return in The Jewish Chronicle:
The headline states, Greece passes 'law of return' for Jews who fled.

The Law of Return is of course the main legal instrument underpinning Israel's segregationist system privileging Jews over non-Jews.

So, Law of Return, has been given a bit of a bad name among anti-racists.  But what does Dysch say in the article?

Greece has passed legislation allowing Jews who fled the country before the end of the Second World War the "right of return" and to claim citizenship.

Former deputy foreign minister Dimitrios Dollis instigated the new law - which will come into effect within a month.

He said it was unlikely many Jews would claim Greek citizenship, but that he had acted out of principle.

So the right of return, for Greece, and actually for international law, is a principle. Is that the JC's position?  Marcus Dysch might want to be careful what he wishes for.

Spectator's Absent Friends

I suppose any spectator can miss a lot of a game but The Spectator's Brendan O'Neill seems to have missed a whole team and a lot of the action in Palestine.  He had a dire article in last week's Spectator which I'm guessing elicited many adverse responses, only one (short one) or which was published:

Sir: Brendan O’Neill (‘Absent friends’, 15 March) wonders at length why Israel is so disliked, and he variously ascribes its unpopularity to fashion, bigotry or anti-Semitism. Perhaps there is another explanation. I read his article without once coming across any of the following words: settlement, Palestine or Palestinian.
John Hatt
Firbank, Sedbergh

He wonders why Israel is held in disdain but didn't mention the Palestinians. As I said, he didn't see a whole team. And he didn't mention Palestine itself.  Was he even at the ground at all?

In the interests of balance, The Spectator did publish a much longer letter from a zionist praising O'Neill's effort and promoting the plucky little Israel myth.  I won't reproduce it here. I just wouldn't want anyone thinking that The Spectator has gone soft on racist war criminals. It supports them as fervently this week as it did last week.

Amnesty International guest shamelessly links to racist website!

Ben White has a book launch, or relaunch tonight at Amnesty's place in London tonight.  It starts at 6:30 pm and the address is, Amnesty International UK, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London, EC2A 3EA.  That's a little too much information because there are no more tickets available.

What I want to focus on is Ben's article in Middle East Monitor about how Israel's embassy has tried to stop the book launch taking place.

Here's Ben:

Israel's diplomatic staff in London directly contacted the human rights organisation to demand the cancellation of the event. Amnesty UK naturally refused, pointing out that their building is a space where a diverse range of activists can meet, engage and debate issues relating to social justice and the promotion of human rights.

But it wasn't just Amnesty who the Israeli Embassy pressured - they also contacted David Hearst, who has kindly agreed to chair the event. Hearst, now Editor of Middle East Eye, told me about the "dramatic" change in tone in the embassy's communications with him:

One minute [embassy official] Yiftah Curiel was professing that he would love to get some coffee or lunch with me to talk about the new website, and plying me with exclusive invitations to the Ambassador's House for a discussion with the author Ari Shavit. The next he was shocked and horrified to learn that I had agreed to chair the launch of the second edition of your book.

Now here's where it gets a little murky and I worry that Ben may have inadvertently provided ammunition to his detractors:

In correspondence to Hearst, Curiel produced a number of claims about me clearly culled from laughable propaganda sites. Hearst replied, he told me, by pointing out that "the allegation of anti-Semitism should not be used casually to smear people whose views you disagreed with." Pathetically, Curiel withdrew the invitation to the Ambassador's house.

See that "laughable propaganda sites"?  Well Ben actually linked to the real life Harry's Place site.  Don't worry, I've replaced it with a cache link.  This linking to racist sites, no matter how laughable, is an easy mistake to make when you're making a point but a man with Ben White's anti-racist credentials really should be more careful.

Anthony Julius's FUCU demands being implemented on US campuses

Someone just sent me a link to Chris Hedges's article, Israel's War on American Universities in TruthDig.Com.  

See this:

The banning of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Northeastern University in Boston on March 7, along with a university threat of disciplinary measures against some of its members, replicates sanctions being imposed against numerous student Palestinian rights groups across the country. The attacks, and the disturbingly similar forms of punishment, appear to be part of a coordinated effort by the Israeli government and the Israel lobby to blacklist all student groups that challenge the official Israeli narrative.

Northeastern banned the SJP chapter after it posted on campus replicas of eviction notices that are routinely put up on Palestinian homes set for Israeli demolition. The university notice of suspension says that if the SJP petitions for reinstatement next year, “No current member of the Students for Justice in Palestine executive board may serve on the inaugural board of the new organization” and that representatives from the organization must attend university-sanctioned “trainings.”

In 2011 in California, 10 students who had disrupted a speech at UC Irvine by Michael Oren, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, were found guilty, put on informal probation and sentenced to perform community service. Oren, an Israeli citizen who has since been hired by CNN as a contributor, has called on Congress to blacklist supporters of the campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and to prosecute those who protest at appearances by Israeli officials. Some activists at Florida Atlantic University were stripped of student leadership positions after walking out of a talk by an Israeli army officer, and they were ordered by school administrators to attend re-education seminars designed by the Anti-Defamation League.

Now look at how the industrial tribunal in the FUCU case detailed Anthony Julius's "letter before action" against the University and College Union:

Complaint (10): The letter before action of 1 July 2011 and UCU's response

136 By the letter before action, Mr Julius charged the Respondents with harassing the Claimant. It was said that the union was not a place that was hospitable to Jews and that the union's treatment of the Claimant was not merely a violation of equality legislation but also a scandal. Reference was made to correspondence going back to 2008, the boycott motions, the management of the Activists List, the Bongani Masuku affair and other matters. It was said that the union was institutionally anti-Semitic and that the decision most recently taken to abandon the Working Definition was just the most recent of many "insults". That motion was characterised as a choice to legislate anti-Semitism out of existence. The letter continued in similar unbridled fashion and culminated in the demand for the abrogation of Motion 70 of 2011, an open an unqualified acknowledgment that the union had been guilty of institutional anti-Semitism coupled with a public apology, a commitment to abide by a code of conduct in respect of its Jewish members to be drawn up by a body comprising individuals approved by the Claimant and a further commitment to sponsor a programme (for a minimum of 10 years and conducted by that same body) educating academics about the dangers of anti-Semitism, "with special reference to the relationship between anti-Semitism and what now passes for 'anti-Zionism". 

I wrote about the case result here.  See the similarities between what Anthony Julius was demanding and what some US universities are forcing their Palestine solidarity activists to go through.

Of course what was so pleasing about the FUCU case and other court victories for the Palestine solidarity movement in the UK is that Israel/zionism rarely stands up to any forensic test.  But in the US, as Chris Hedges points out, Israel and its advocates are not having to stand up to a forensic test.  They can simply muscle universities into doing pretty much what Julius was demanding of the UCU.  It's particularly annoying because Julius managed to chalk up the biggest hasbara fail in the UK that anyone can remember.