Zios with Attitude?

I'm trying to establish when the word or abbreviation, Zio, became a thing.  Obviously Zionists are falsely accusing Israel's critics, opponents and victims of antisemitism all the time but I hadn't noticed anyone try to make an issue out of the abbreviation Zio before that former BICOM intern, Alex Chalmers, mentioned it on his Facebook resignation as a co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club:

It is with the greatest regret that I have decided to resign as Co-Chair of the Oxford University Labour Club. This comes in the light of OULC's decision at this evening's general meeting to endorse Israel Apartheid Week.

I originally ran for the position of Co-Chair back in Trinity, after our crushing defeat at the general election, because I was increasingly worried about the state of OULC. The club I had invested an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and emotion in during my first two terms at Oxford, which had given me a network of close friends, was becoming increasingly riven by factional splits, and despite its avowed committment to liberation, the attitudes of certain members of the club towards certain disadvantaged groups was becoming posionous.

Whether it be members of the Executive throwing around the term 'Zio' (a term for Jews usually confined to websites run by the Ku Klux Klan) with casual abandon, senior members of the club expressing their 'solidarity' with Hamas and explitictly defending their tactics of indiscriminately murdering civilians, or a former Co-Chair claiming that 'most accusations of antisemitism are just the Zionists crying wolf’, a large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews. The decision of the club to endorse a movement with a history of targetting and harassing Jewish students and inviting antisemitic speakers to campuses, despite the concerns of Jewish students, illustrates how uneven and insincere much of the active membership is when it comes to liberation. [emphasis added]

For the orchestrated smear campaign against Labour's left and Palestine solidarity supporters this utterly bogus statement marks the kick-off.  Shortly after that I did a little post noting:

It all looks very strawman. Let's break it down a bit:

 members of the Executive throwing around the term ‘Zio’ (a term for Jews usually confined to websites run by the Ku Klux Klan) with casual abandon.

The term, "Zio" is simply short for Zionist and is not confined to sites run by the Klan.

That could and should have been that but the Oxford University Labour Club seems to have decided that supporting the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and other forms of racist oppression against them is a price worth paying for, well, I'm not sure what for.

They submitted themselves to an inquiry by Baroness Royall which she then reported on to the so-called Jewish Labour Movement.  JLM used to be called Poale Zion or Workers of Zion.  They are active within the World Zionist Organisation.

Something Zionists do when they dare not make a direct allegation of antisemitism is accuse an organisation of "institutional antisemitism".  This is how the Zionists exploit the Stephen Lawrence murder and subsequent inquiry but that's another story.

Where was I?  Oh yes.  Baroness Royall in her investigation of Oxford University Labour Club couldn't find any specific instances of antisemitism and couldn't even report that she found evidence of institutional antisemitism:

I know that you will share my disappointment and frustration that the main headline coming out of my inquiry is that there is no institutional Antisemitism in Oxford University Labour Club.  That is true, but it is only part of the story.  I am clear that in the OULC there is a cultural problem which means that Jewish students do not always feel welcome.

This is downright weird.  Unable to find specific instances of antisemitism she looked for "institutional" and couldn't even find that.  So she fell back on "cultural" which looks deliberately meaningless to me.  But what else?

Words like ‘Zio’ and tropes such as ‘blood libel’ are obviously anti-Semitic but there are other words in which the context in which they are used is critical so guidance is necessary.  

How anyone can seriously liken a simple abbreviation like Zio to the idea that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood for unleavened bread for the Passover is beyond me.  I'm going to have to ignore the fact that Baroness Royall has implied here that Oxford Uni students actually promote the blood libel without her giving any examples or evidence but what's she on about Zio being "obviously antisemitic"?   Apart from Alex Chalmers, I never saw it being raised as an issue and the use of Zio has been around ever since we all started typing more than talking.

Now this bogus allegation definitely starts with Alex Chalmers.  Since he made an issue of it David Aaronovitch and the Community Security Trust's Dave Rich have both weighed in on Twitter but never before February this year.

Here's Dave Rich:

@jewssf @TonyGreenstein oh sure, it's so standard that the only people outside the British Left who use 'Zio' without 'nist' are neo-Nazis.

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) March 24, 2016

And here's Aaro:

@BDSJustice 'Anti-Zio'? Did you get that off some neo-Nazi website by mistake? @JoeSucksmith

— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) April 23, 2016

Clearly Aaro and Rich have never heard of Avi Mayer, a leading Twitter voice of hasbara:

@ArnoRosenfeld No, its identification with BDS is not *why* "Zio BDS" is the wrong tactic, but it certainly helps it look bad. @TheJewEgg

— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) February 5, 2014

Avi Mayer's no slouch when it comes to bogus allegations of antisemitism.

Off the top of my head I could remember hasbara blogger Bob from Brockley using the expression "Zio"  in comments in both his and my blog so I googled "Zio Bob from Brockley".  I found this post from 2010:

Izzy/Pal and Zio/Anti-Zio: Ignoblus has been reading some of the same things as me (Linda Grant, Tony Judt, Ralph Seliger), and has interesting things to say.

Note how he says "Izzy/Pal" for Israel/Palestine.  Kind of chumsy and casual.  And straight after that, "Zio/Anti-Zio".  Now in real life Bob from Brockley is Ben Gidley, a Zionist academic.  He even did a sub-report for the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism.  Search the report.  Not a mention of "Zio".  Why not?  It wasn't and isn't a thing, that's why not.  And if it was, Ben Gidley could hardly denounce his alter-ego.  That would be like Clark Kent denouncing Superman.

What about Wikipedia?  Here is the current Wikipedia entry disambiguating Zio:

Zio can refer to the following:

• Zio, Togo, a prefecture in southern Togo
• Zio, the Italian word for uncle
• Zio a major antagonist from the video game Phantasy Star IV
• The Zonal Informatics Olympiad of the Indian Computing Olympiad
• Franck Zio, a Burkinabé long jumper
• Toyota Mark X ZiO, a crossover vehicle sold in Japan
• A pejorative abbreviation of Zionist, often regarded as antisemitic

 It's interesting that the Zionist thing only comes up at the bottom.  What decides the order? I wonder.  Let's check the edits.  The penultimate edit was back in March 2015.  Here are the details:

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Discospinster (talk | contribs) at 12:44, 23 March 2015 (not sourced). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Zio can refer to the following:

• Zio, Togo, a prefecture in southern Togo
• Zio, the Italian word for uncle
• Zio a major antagonist from the video game Phantasy Star IV
• the Zonal Informatics Olympiad of the Indian Computing Olympiad
• Franck Zio, a Burkinabé long jumper
• Toyota Mark X ZiO, a crossover vehicle sold in Japan.

I don't know what the editor changed from previously but that was the last edit before a later one added in the Zio as an abbreviation for Zionist but here's the latest:

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Sammy1339 (talk | contribs) at 14:57, 15 March 2016. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Zio can refer to the following:

• Zio, Togo, a prefecture in southern Togo
• Zio, the Italian word for uncle
• Zio a major antagonist from the video game Phantasy Star IV
• the Zonal Informatics Olympiad of the Indian Computing Olympiad
• Franck Zio, a Burkinabé long jumper
• Toyota Mark X ZiO, a crossover vehicle sold in Japan
• A pejorative abbreviation of zionist, often regarded as antisemitic

Now this is actually wrong.  Remember hasbaristas, Ben Gidley and Avi Mayer?  They are hardly Zios With Attitude.  Zio isn't necessarily pejorative, it's descriptive.  And as for "often regarded as antisemitic", how about "recently claimed to be antisemitic".

The involvement of David Aaronovitch and some huckster from Gerald Ronson's private army. Sorry, did I say Gerald Ronson's private army?  I meant the Community Security Trust, in promoting this bogus allegation suggests to me that the Zios are going to dig in on this one.   I would further guess that they'll press on with this without providing any evidence for their claim that the word Zio is only or even mostly or often found on far-right websites and in defiance of evidence that no one considered "Zio" problematic before a wannabe Israel lobbyist couldn't find anything else to throw at the Oxford University Labour Club when it voted to support Israeli Apartheid Week.

Now my big worry over all this is that it seems like a small part of what is a very big smear campaign by the Zionist movement against Israel's detractors.  Using the word "Zio" doesn't seem like an issue worth fighting for and maybe we shouldn't fight over it, we should just use it as casually as we (and they) have done in the past.

The significance of this is that it is yet another false allegation of antisemitism and that false allegation is being used to bar honest anti-racists from political activity and to even incite violence against them.  It's only a small word, not a whole word even, but if a senior antisemitism hunter can bring it up in the same sentence as the "blood libel" then it ought to signal that it means a lot to the Zionists to use it as yet another way of victimising Israel's critics.

Some people might avoid using the word Zio in future so as not to give the Zios another thing to whinge about but to accept it was ever a real issue would be bad faith; a bad faith acceptance of a demonstrably bad faith allegation of antisemitism.

AntiSemitism is a poison that shouldn't be cheapened by misleading allegations

Remember this Oxford University Labour Club antisemitism allegations malarkey began with the resignation of a chap called Alex Chalmers who set out a rambling strawman argument on his Facebook page.  When I read it I saw a comment from a co-chair or former co-chair claiming that he had avoided acknowledging her because she was Jewish and she didn't share his (I think she said) unnuanced view of the Israel/Palestine situation.  Maybe I imagined it because it isn't there now.  My guess is he deleted it.  Another curious thing is that this Alex Chalmers wants his views known and yet his Twitter account is invisible to non-followers and he has to approve the followers rather than block those he doesn't want as many of us do from time to time. Clearly a guy with something to hide. [Alex Chambers has gone visible on Twitter. Not a pretty sight]

But no never mind. Here's an encouraging chunk of an article on the affair in the Oxford Uni students on line magazine, Cherwell:

And Aliya Yule, a member of OULC and organising member of Oxford Jewish Students for Justice in Palestine, said "We are saddened to see the very serious allegation of anti-Semitism being used as an argument against those standing up for Palestinian human rights: it is imperative to reiterate that being critical of Israeli apartheid is not in itself anti-Semitic. Oxford Jewish Students for Justice in Palestine is delighted that OULC voted to endorse Israeli Apartheid Week, and we are proud to be helping organise a week committed to anti-racist, anti-colonial politics.

"As Jewish students, we are committed to the ongoing battle against anti-Semitism, and we don't tolerate it from any quarter. The OULC meeting saw much healthy debate, and none of it was anti-Semitic. Passionate supporters of Israel like Alex Chalmers are of course entitled to their strongly held views, but so too are those of us profoundly concerned by Israel's human rights abuses. Anti-Semitism is a poison, and it shouldn't be cheapened by misleading allegations like this."

Well done Aliya! I never thought I'd find myself praising Aliya.

Something rotten about allegations of antisemitism in the Oxford University Labour Club

I first caught wind of these allegations of antisemitism within the Oxford University Labour Club from Harry's Place.  I immediately suspected that the allegations were false not simply because they appeared on Harry's Place but because they have come in the wake of the OULC deciding to support Israel Apartheid Week on campus, something which, of itself, is clearly not antisemitic.

Now look at the quote in the Harry's Place post:

“Whether it be members of the Executive throwing around the term ‘Zio’ (a term for Jews usually confined to websites run by the Ku Klux Klan) with casual abandon, senior members of the club expressing their ‘solidarity’ with Hamas and explitictly [sic] defending their tactics of indiscriminately murdering civilians, or a former Co-Chair claiming that ‘most accusations of antisemitism are just the Zionists crying wolf’, a large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews. The decision of the club to endorse a movement with a history of targetting [sic] and harassing Jewish students and inviting antisemitic speakers to campuses, despite the concerns of Jewish students, illustrates how uneven and insincere much of the active membership is”.

It all looks very strawman. Let's break it down a bit:

 members of the Executive throwing around the term ‘Zio’ (a term for Jews usually confined to websites run by the Ku Klux Klan) with casual abandon.

The term, "Zio" is simply short for Zionist and is not confined to sites run by the Klan.

 senior members of the club expressing their ‘solidarity’ with Hamas and explitictly [sic] defending their tactics of indiscriminately murdering civilians, 

Solidarity with armed resistance to Israel whatever form it takes is not, of itself, antisemitic.Of course if attacks are indiscriminate or target civilians then that is to be condemned but the failure or refusal to do so or even to support such attacks is not of itself antisemitic.

a former Co-Chair claiming that ‘most accusations of antisemitism are just the Zionists crying wolf’ 

Most allegations of antisemitism are false and many are themselves antisemitic.

a large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews.

This isn't just vacuous, it's antisemitic as it conflates Jews, Zionists and Israel.  That of course is without noting the absence of any links, names or anything that could qualify as evidence.

Now, given the flimsy and inarticulately expressed nature of the charges I would hope for this to be a repeat of the Zionists' biggest public humiliation involving false allegations of antisemitism.  I'm referring to the Fraser v University and College Union case which had the great and the good of the Zionist movement in the UK denounced by the tribunal as a bunch of "exaggerators, manipulators and arrogant liars".  But whereas this latest batch of allegations hasn't gone forensic it has got more legs than the FUCU case did.  Harry's Place has run the *story* as have The Telegraph (twice*) and The Guardian. Ironically one of the Telegraph pieces was written by one of the people described as an arrogant liar by the FUCU tribunal, Jeremy Newmark.  Now that might be a good omen for the cause of truth.  The problem right now is that it is all evidence free mud slinging and the sellouts at the Labour Party have decided to take the Zio's seriously but let's just see what happens.

*Woops. three times