Can Stephen Fry be serious?

The trouble with asking comedians their view on a certain thing is that you don't know if their answer is a joke or not.  That is certainly the case with Jews for Justice for Palestinians signatory, Stephen Fry.  See this in the most recent New Statesman.  It's headed "What you can't say. Stephen Fry, Slavoj Žižek, Elif Shafak and more say the unsayable".  Now cop this:

Stephen Fry

Between the intense sanctimonious sensibilities of the left, on the one hand, and the brute moral certainties of the right, on the other, we squeezed liberals find ourselves (as ever) wringing our milk-white hands and wishing it were all otherwise. We don’t want to offend, but we cannot spend our lives walking on eggshells.

An example from each side. The truth has to be told about the genocidal madness of Hamas (read their “covenant” online if you don’t believe me. It’s not just every Jew across the world they want to kill, it’s also – I’m serious – Rotarians).The truth also has to be told about the failure of the west’s “war on drugs”. Not just a tactical failure, but a ­strategic and moral one.

So, from those two, more or less randomly chosen, subjects, here are two things that can’t be said. Israel has every right to resist coming to an accommodation with Palestine while it is led by Hamas. To save lives all over the planet, drugs must be legalised.

I knew I shouldn’t have spoken.

*tiptoes away*

Stephen Fry is an English comedian, actor, writer and activist.

Whether intentional or not, it is a sick joke to suggest, as Fry does, that the words of Hamas are somehow more problematic than the actions of the racist war criminals of the State of Israel but given the stance of most of the mainstream media on Israel and the Palestinians there is always more space for denouncing Hamas and using their ridiculous charter as an excuse for Israel's war criminality than there is to denounce Israel.

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2) Richard Kuper: Absurd, malign and plain wrong, unpublished letter from Richard Kuper for JfJfP;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?

In Your Eyes a Sandstorm - Ways of being Palestinian

Book Launch: IN YOUR EYES A SANDSTORM Ways of Being Palestinian

Posted by IJV

JEWS FOR JUSTICE FOR PALESTINIANS AND

THE LONDON MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE

Invite you to the book launch of

IN YOUR EYES A SANDSTORM Ways of Being a Palestinian

By Arthur Neslen

Introduced by Professor Gilbert Achcar

Who are the Palestinians? In this compelling book of interviews, Arthur
Neslen reaches beyond journalistic clichés to let a wide variety of
Palestinians answer the question for themselves. Beginning in the present
with Bisan and Abud, two traumatized children from Jenin’s refugee camp, the
book’s narrative arcs backwards through the generations to come full circle
with two elderly refugees from villages that the children were named after.
Along the way, Neslen recounts a history of land, resistance, dispossession,
exile and trauma.

Monday 23rd April 7.00 – 9.00pm

Room G50, SOAS,
Thornhaugh Street,
Russell Square,
London WC1H 0XG

www.jfjfp.org / jfjfp@jfjfp.org

Why write about Jews?

Beware – a publicity blurb about a book follows. The book is mine – Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights – and it analyses diaspora Jewish opposition to Israel. There'll be a description of what the book is about over at Mondoweiss. There’s another description from Zed, with blurbs from Omar Barghouti and Ilan Pappe, and you can buy it over at Amazon as well. But here at JSF we like to go deeper, and so I want to talk about what I was trying to do with this book.

Firstly, I was trying to research something positive. Whether in academia or activism there’s a focus on the negative, on the problems. This is necessary, but we also need to move beyond the ‘ruthless criticism of everything existing'. The piling up of critiques often leads to despair, when the point after all is to change the world. There’s no doubt how energising researching those of us trying to change the world was. It was a real joy, a privilege to chat to activists around the globe, asking whatever questions I felt like about their work. Listening to what these activists were doing and why was fantastic, a genuine education.

I also wanted to critique this movement. In fact, starting off, I was far more critical, suspicious that the movement was as much about ‘healing the Jews’ and fighting Jewish identity wars, than about Palestinians. My increasingly positive take on the movement was partly a result of ‘going native’, of growing respect for movement participants, but also because of a growing understanding of the actual work the movement does to promote justice in Israel/Palestine, something which takes up far far more time than any discussions of Jewishness. This positivity (mixed with criticism) was also because of my own deepening involvement with Palestinian solidarity work. While it’s important to critique tendencies that lead to Jewish groups treating Palestinians as unfortunate helpless objects of solidarity, I could see similar dynamics at work within wider solidarity. So I began to see this tendency as a function of distant issue activism, and analyse how it comes about and how it can be dealt with.

This leads to the other reason I wrote this book – I want people to be aware of this movement. Not coincidentally, this is also one of the movement’s aims – to achieve recognition that many Jews oppose Israel, so people stop conflating Jews and Israel. Without losing the run of ourselves, the growth of diaspora Jewish opposition has been a significant development in Palestinian solidarity and it is useful to understand it. So a lot of the book is empirical, concentrating on British Jewish groups, but also tracing the development of this movement in Europe and North America. It’s also beneficial for participants to understand the various facets of the movement. So I took a lot of pleasure in discussing the various stances movement members take on boycotting Israel. Although I take a pro-boycott position, it is helpful to delineate the good, logical reasons why movement members take different positions on the tactic, depending on what field of practice they are contending within.

And here’s the last reason I wrote – possibly the most quixotic. It was to make academic theory more movement relevant. The book is definitely an academic work, especially chapter one with its discussions of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and social movement theorising of identity. I wanted to deploy this theory in order to say something of use to movement participants, rather than engage in yet another abstract academic discussion which would treat this movement as an inanimate object, a means to produce lofty empty theories.

In the end, I wanted to produce a useful document for people in and linked to this movement. It’s not the summation of a monologue about this movement, but the continuation of a conversation that I’ve been glad to be part of.

Peace in Palestine?

Here's a letter in today's Independent by my friend Diana Neslen:

It was with deep concern that I noted the headline of your report about the bomb in Jerusalem (24 March), stating it had shattered "seven years of peace". During this time, Israel has invaded Gaza, laying waste to the land and killing 1,400 people, including 300 children. 

Daily, there are incursions into Palestinian territory, to arrest and on occasion to kill Palestinians; there is an ongoing land and water grab by Israel, and Palestinians, including children, are arrested with impunity and incarcerated by the Israeli occupying forces, and are constant targets for attack by Israeli settlers.

All this while demolitions of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem continue apace and violence is meted out to non-violent demonstrators against the Wall. This does not sound like any form of peace that a neutral observer would recognise.

Diana Neslen

Jews for Justice for Palestinians, London W9

False allegations, a Jew for Justice responds

And it's Deborah Maccoby doing the responding, in the Spectator, to the false allegation that there is anti-Jewish chanting on the demonstrations for Palestine:

Israel fuels anti-Semitism

Sir: I am a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and have participated in every one of the national demonstrations against Israel’s brutal onslaught against Gaza. I have never heard the slogans ‘Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas’ and ‘Death to the Jews’ that Douglas Davis (‘The terrible warning of a Holocaust survivor’, 24 January) claims are being chanted on these marches. I know that the stewards have strict orders to clamp down on any expression of anti-Semitism.

Like the majority of the demonstrators, I am not a supporter of Hamas. But though the Hamas Charter is indeed appallingly anti-Semitic, it played no part in Hamas’s election campaign, and the best way to ensure that Hamas repudiates it is to draw it into a genuine peace process. Hamas has already recognised Israel’s de facto right to exist by saying it is willing to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and has offered Israel a long-lasting hudna, or truce. Hamas expressed willingness to extend the recent ceasefire (which Israel broke) if Israel would agree to lift the blockade.

The recent Israeli massacre of Gazan civilians (two thirds of the dead were civilians) has only increased Hamas’s popularity and is not likely to make them any less anti-Semitic. Similarly, though any expression of anti-Semitism is of course to be condemned, it is inevitable that Israel’s actions have fuelled Muslim anti-Semitism, which is mainly political in origin, since Islam, unlike Christianity, does not have a tradition of hatred of Jews. Israel’s atrocities also give encouragement to the re-emergence of long-dormant European Christian anti-Semitism.

If Jews really want to reduce anti-Semitism, they should speak out to change Israel’s destructive and self-destructive policies.

Deborah Maccoby
London E5

What Deborah was responding to was beyond ludicrous. See this:

At my dinner table on Friday night, a holocaust survivor admits that she is trying to persuade her son to take his family out of Europe to America, Canada, Australia, Canada, Australia, Israel...’They say they can’t leave me, but I tell them: “Go, get out. My parents left my grandparents behind in Berlin and brought me to safety in England. Now I want you to leave so that my grandchildren will be safe.”’ There is an unbearable desperation in her plea. But she has a point.

I have to hand it Deborah. I just couldn't respond to that.

Irish Jews speak up against the war in Gaza, are told to shut up, speak up again.

Here’s a letter exchange in the Irish Times. A group of us wrote into the paper, as Jews, to condemn the war on Gaza. A few days later the Jewish Representative Council (the Irish equivalent to the Board of Deputies, and about as representative), wrote in with the familiar refrain that we weren’t real Jews. Real Jews support war.

Today I wrote back, and as the phrase goes, look forward to their response.

On more serious note, it’s been unreported but 148 Irish academics (including some of the signatories of the below letter) wrote into the Irish Times last week calling for the EU to suspend its funding of Israeli academia. The fact it’s been unreported just shows how unexceptional such calls are nowadays.

January 22nd
Madam, – We are people in Ireland who are Jewish or of Jewish descent.

We are appalled by Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. We have seen people justifying this on the basis of Israel’s “security concerns” and attacking supporters of peace for being anti-Jewish.

In this climate we feel it important to assert that it is not anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish to oppose Israel’s action.

Nor, however, can it be part of any progressive political vision to conflate what the Israeli state has done and is doing in Gaza as being supported by Jews worldwide.

Throughout the world, Jews have opposed the invasion of Gaza.

In Israel itself, tens of thousands protested this war; they have been attacked by police and right-wing mobs and many Israelis, predominantly non-Jewish but also Jewish, have been imprisoned.

We ask people to support these Israelis.

As for Israel’s security concerns, two points need to be made. Firstly nothing, but nothing, justifies the massacre of innocent people.

Secondly, peace will only come about through justice for the Palestinian people and through negotiations between Israel and elected Palestinian representatives.

One does not need to be Jewish to know this.

We ask people not to claim to speak for us when justifying Israel’s barbarity. – Yours, etc,

KATRINA GOLDSTONE,
CONOR KOSTICK,
GAVIN KOSTICK,
DAVID LANDY,
RONIT LENTIN,
ANTONIA LESLIE,
SUE PENTEL,
JONATHAN SUGARMAN



January 27th
• Madam, – As the representative body of the Jewish community in Ireland, we wish to distance ourselves from the letter published in The Irish Timeson January 22nd and signed by Katrina Goldstone and others. The authors of the letter may be Jewish, but they neither speak for the Irish Jewish community nor do they take any part in Jewish communal affairs here. They represent nobody but themselves.

The overwhelming majority of the Irish Jewish community supports Israel’s right – indeed, obligation – to defend its population against Hamas, recognised by the international community as a terrorist group, which for the past eight years has rained missile, rocket, and mortar fire on a daily basis, indiscriminately, on the men, women and children living in the cities and towns of southern Israel.

As Irish citizens and members of the Jewish community we are concerned by the tone taken against Israel by some of the media in recent weeks, ignoring altogether the steps Israel has been forced to take to protect its citizens.

Clause 1 of the Hamas constitution makes its position quite clear – the destruction of the State of Israel. Hamas is sponsored by Iran, whose position has been given many times by its president: to eradicate the state of Israel from the map. And Iran is working flat out to complete its nuclear weapons capability.

We are all deeply saddened by the deaths of civilians in the conflict in Gaza, largely caused by Hamas using the population as human shields and firing at Israel from sites adjacent to schools, hospitals, mosques and the UN compound.

We are also deeply saddened by the deaths and injuries of Israeli civilians, and the widespread destruction caused over the past eight years by over 5,000 Hamas rockets, along with numerous horrific suicide bombings, all deliberately aimed at killing civilians.

Even now, during the fragile truce, tunnels through which weapons are smuggled into Gaza are being repaired and rebuilt by Hamas, whose admitted master-plan, the destruction of Israel, has not changed. – Yours, etc,

LEONARD W. ABRAHAMSON,
Chairman,
STEPHEN MOLINS,
President,
Jewish Representative Council of Ireland,


January 28th
• Madam, – Leonard Abrahamson and Stephen Molins (January 27th) are correct in saying the Jewish Representative Council does not speak for me, a co-signatory of the letter of January 22nd which they condemn. Nor do they speak for an increasing number of Jews in Ireland who have been shocked and repelled by Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Their response to our letter reads like a transcript of the talking points put out by the Israeli embassy. It is not in any way a representation of how deeply troubled many Irish Jews are by Israel’s actions. I and other signatories have been surprised and heartened at the positive responses to our letter from some of our Jewish friends and acquaintances.

Openly supporting the war on Gaza – more a massacre that has killed over a thousand people and hundreds of children – is simply shameful.

What disturbs me, as a Jew, is most certainly not the many good people who have spoken out against this war but the development in Ireland of a right-wing Christian Zionist support of Israel’s actions.

Messrs Abrahamson and Molins are silent about these people, who believe that Jews are somehow “special”; who believe that our proper place is in Israel, not Ireland; who at their extreme believe that once all the Jews go away to Israel, then the awaited apocalypse can happen. After all, these people support the war on Gaza – what’s to worry about?

By claiming to represent the Jewish community in cheerleading this war, Messrs Abrahamson and Molins wish to prevent the wide diversity of opinions among Irish Jews from being recognised. More importantly, they wish to prevent us all from taking the necessary actions to ensure that Israel never again commits such atrocities. – Yours, etc,

DAVID LANDY,