Deborah Maccoby clarifies Howard Jacobson's "Let's be clear...." article

I've just been having a bit of a natter with Deborah Maccoby by email and she mentioned Howard Jacobson's appalling Observer (in print, Guardian online) article headed,  Let’s be clear – antisemitism is a hate apart

I have now read Jacobson's piece, which was in print in the Observer on Sunday....it is typical Jacobson logic....what he seems to be saying is: the Palestinian solidarity movement thinks that Zionism is racism and that therefore anti-Zionism is not racist; Jacobson claims that on the contrary Zionism is not racism; ergo anti-Zionism must be racist; because it is racist it is antisemitic, because antisemitism equals racism; at the same time, antisemitism is unique and different from any other racism!  That is Jacobson logic.....

Brilliant! Short and to the point.

See also Tony Greenstein's blog here: http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/as-guardians-anti-semitism-campaign.html

Young Zionists censor themselves!

See if you can spot the difference between these two extracts from a post that appeared on the Israeli Labour Party's UK branch website.
This is what you see now:

In recent weeks The Guardian has published a series of letters (like this one and thisone) from groups of individuals setting out positions on Zionism & antisemitism that are far removed from mainstream Jewish Labour perspectives.  

 And this is what appeared yesterday:

Curiously I can't access the site via google cache to check the rest of what they wrote but I had a feeling they'd excise the offensive suggestion that Jewish critics of Israel aren't quite the real thing. They're actually complaining that their letter to The Guardian wasn't published and they lament The Guardian's lack of balance.  But have a good look at the letter.  Maybe The Guardian was doing them a favour by not publishing it but then The Guardian's been doing the Zionists quite a lot of favours lately.

PS: The Jewish Labour Movement is a "faction within the World Zionist Organisation"

Birmingham Uni JSoc & the World Zionist Organisation: how are they related?

Well it's not easy to find on line but it can be done in three steps.  Look:

1.  Here's the Union of Jewish Students' (UJS) website.  And here's a useful infographic taken from it:

Check out JSoc number 35.  It's Birmingham University Jewish Society.

2.  Here's the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) website showing the UJS to be one of its "Permanent Executive Unions"

3.  And here's the WUJS website partner page showing the World Zionist Organisation as a partner and revealing that the WUJS "holds various capacities within the WZO".  See the blurb:

The World Zionist Organization is committed to promoting the Zionist idea and enterprise as vital and positive elements of contemporary Jewish life, in accordance with the principles articulated in the Jerusalem Program.  WUJS holds various capacities within the WZO, sitting on their Board of Directors as well as various internal committees.

So, there we have it.  Disappointing then that in two days there were two Guardian articles (here and here) misrepresenting the Birmingham University Jewish Society not simply as a generalist group of Jews but as the Jewish community at Birmingham University.  This was in the context of the smear campaign against NUS President elect, Malia Bouattia, who had mentioned the Jewish society (JSoc) as being among the UK's largest and the fact that it is led by Zionists.

See The Guardian's Nadia Khomami:

But her campaign was controversial due to her past anti-Zionist activism, including comments in an article where she described the University of Birmingham – with its large Jewish community – as being “something of a Zionist outpost”, and made separate claims about “Zionist-led media outlets”

And The Guardian's Richard Adams:

Bouattia’s campaign was controversial due to her past comments describing the University of Birmingham – with its large Jewish community – as being “something of a Zionist outpost”, and made separate claims about “Zionist-led media outlets”.

Malia Bouattia has insisted that she was referring to Zionist activists as the following quote makes clear:

The University of Birmingham is something of a Zionist outpost in British Higher Education. It also has the largest JSoc in the country whose leadership is dominated by Zionist activists. 

Actually by stressing that the JSoc "leadership is dominated by Zionist activists" Bouattia allowed for the fact that some of the JSoc members may not be Zionists themselves.  She certainly wasn't conflating a Zionist organisation with the "Jewish community" as Zionists themselves tend to and as The Guardian did, twice!.

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

Guardian Opinion Editor denies all knowledge of Guardian Editorial Opinion

An utterly bogus hasbara piece on The Guardian website titled The Guardian view on the war of knives in Israel and the West Bank and subtitled Editorial prompted an interesting twitter exchange.

Here are some chunks from the editorial:

For openers:

Off-duty soldiers go jogging with submachine guns slung across their chests. Men and women who have never owned a firearm hesitate at the door of gun shops after the laws on weapon ownership were relaxed. People eat at home, and plan their trips to the supermarket or their bus journeys to avoid the places where the Palestinian stabbing attacks, which have surprised and frightened Israelis in recent weeks, seem most likely.

The issue here is "the Palestinian stabbing attacks" and the Israeli response.  Palestinian actions couldn't possibly themselves be a response.

On the Arab side, parents worry that a loved son or daughter will decide to trade their own life for that of an Israeli, or that a family member will be caught in crossfire.

Not deliberately killed by Israelis simply for being Palestinian.

at the last count, nine Israelis dead, although with more than 60 Palestinians killed as armed Israelis reacted to the attacks or tried to forestall attacks they thought imminent. The Palestinian dead include some who were demonstrators, not perpetrators, some who were killed in error, and some who just got in the way. 

Wow, a concession to the idea that Palestinians might, just might, get killed by Israelis simply for demonstrating.

Well it was only a small concession and it was soon marred by this little gem:

For one thing it is hard to imagine that the influence of jihad movements beyond Israel’s and Palestine’s borders has not played a part in inflaming young minds, a development that must be bad news for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Which brings us to Twitter and a tweet from Ben White:

.@guardian: "the influence of [regional] jihad movements" has "played a part in inflaming young [Palestinian] minds" https://t.co/hTwAnNGNp9

— Ben White (@benabyad) October 29, 2015

He quickly followed up with a question to Jonathan Freedland whose profile page at The Guardian reads:

Jonathan Freedland is the Guardian's executive editor, Opinion, overseeingComment is free, editorials and long reads.

Here's the question:

Just wondering, but perhaps @freedland can provide some insight into how such an 'observation' made it into the editorial.

— Ben White (@benabyad) October 29, 2015

And here's Jonathan Freedland's response:

@benabyad nope. Am on holiday for half term this week.

— Jonathan Freedland (@Freedland) October 29, 2015

Then David Aaronovitch appears in the thread:

@Freedland But Jonathan it must have been you because, well, you know.... @benabyad

— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) October 29, 2015

"Well, you know..", as Ben White points out, it's in Jonathan Freedland's job description and he often opines in The Guardian and elsewhere in favour of Israel.  I'm fed up with embedding, copying and pasting but you can follow the thread for yourself where you'll see that Aaro seems to be saying that there are lots of people at The Guardian with the same JD and who write about Palestine.  But I think there is only one person with the JD which states, that the person in question is the Guardian's executive editor, Opinion, overseeing Comment is free, editorials and long reads and that is Jonathan Freedland.

Now surely that makes it fair to assume that Jonathan Freedland was responsible for an editorial comment at The Guardian or if he's not directly responsible he could "provide some insight into how such an 'observation' made it into the editorial."

He claims that he can't.

Esther Rantzen, antisemitism and the threat of Maureen Lipman

To Flying Rodent's Twitter account again for this little gem:

None of the articles about Maureen Lipman fleeing persecution in the UK consider whether she might be, you know, a bit funny in the head.
— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) January 30, 2015

Now as far as it goes that seems to be correct.  There were a lot of articles following Lipman's interview on LBC radio including at least two papers that should have known better: The Independent and The Guardian.

But I remembered whilst waiting in a hospital for a passenger I read the Daily Mail in the reception and I was pleasantly surprised to see Esther Rantzen taking her friend, Maureen Lipman, to task over her, well, nuttiness.  Have a look at the headline:

As Maureen Lipman threatens to quit the UK because of anti-semitism, her friend ESTHER RANTZEN says... Sorry, Maureen, but you are being unfair - and ungrateful

Now googling "daily mail" "esther rantzen" "maureen lipman" yields 2,960 results.  I think it is only the Daily Mail that criticises Lipman but then it's the only paper that takes the idea of Maureen Lipman leaving the UK as a threat!

Spot the difference at The Guardian

The Guardian ran an article by Peter Beaumont on Friday with the headline, Why are French Jews returning to Israel in such numbers?  Someone emailed me about it wondering why The Guardian was promoting the idea that Jews settling in Palestine amounted to "returning".

I read the article and found that whilst Peter Beaumont referred to Jewish "immigration" he didn't once use the word "return" or "returning" so I tweeted this query to him:

.@petersbeaumont writes of Jews' "immigration" to Israel. @guardiannews headline says "returning" http://t.co/tmX2nDjQja … Who wrote latter?
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) January 16, 2015

Unfortunately I didn't do a screengrab but here is a screengrab of The Guardian's tweet of the article:

And here's the embed though, on past performance it might not last:

Why are French Jews returning to Israel in such numbers? http://t.co/WAi6XE93lq
— The Guardian (@guardian) January 16, 2015

Anyway, now look at the headline of the article itself:

Why are French Jews heading to Israel in such numbers?

Now scroll down the article and look for where they say they amended it.  Don't spend too long on it because you won't find it.  I thought it was standard practice at The Guardian to announce their amendments.

Anyway, I wonder what led to their correcting the headline.  In fact I asked Peter Beaumont:

Spot the difference at @guardiannews between this http://t.co/eDyqWJ1VWL and this: https://t.co/qthomIVBC7 Thank @petersbeaumont or me?
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) January 18, 2015

I'm guessing he won't answer but he does seem to be one of the good guys at the graun, in fact, he's well worth a follow on twitter.

A Guide to the Perplexed Owen Jones

Another day another article purporting to be about antisemitism in The Guardian.  I haven't actually read it yet and I only know about it because I suddenly found myself tagged in a twitter conversation involving Owen Jones, who penned the latest piece.

Without rushing in and reading it there are some immediate problems with the article.   It has come hot on the heels of two bogus allegations of antisemitism in the print edition of The Guardian on Saturday just gone. One was an editorial presumably written by Jonathan Freedland and the other by a Hadley Freeman.  Both falsely claimed that the Tricycle Theatre conflated Jewish identity with the State of Israel and both did exactly that themselves.  Both of those arose over the very limited action by Tricycle Theatre in refusing to accept funding (£1,400) from the Israeli embassy via the UK Jewish Film Festival.  And both of those followed a dubious Guardian article on Thursday just gone, listing a mixture of genuinely antisemitic actions with perfectly innocent anti-Zionist/Israel ones. By way, inadvertently, of an explanation for the sheer panic on Freedland and Freeman's part, The Observer published, Theatre's decision to ban Jewish film festival is 'thin end of wedge'. Hopefully it will be the thin end of the wedge.

Anyway, on top of all this, The Guardian hasn't just seen fit to carry a racist advert from some fanatical American Zionist group in today's print edition, it boasted about it in an article by the usually reasonable (as far as I know) Roy Greenslade.  The advert is so racist it was even rejected by Murdoch's Times newspaper.  By the small hours of yesterday morning I had counted 6 pro-Zionist propaganda Guardian pieces on their site in 5 days only partially redressed by a crop of letters in today's edition.

And now we have Owen Jones in The Guardian with Anti-Jewish hatred is rising – we must see it for what it is.  Now I've got to sort myself for work so I'll read the article on my phone.  But if Owen Jones is perplexed and reads this post he might get some idea of why some people are so suspicious of allegations of antisemitism which appear in the middle of a campaign of abject slaughter in Gaza by the self-styled Jewish State.  Meanwhile. if you're not Owen Jones, you might read the article before slagging it.  That's what I'm going to do.

Minor BDS Victory over Gaza has Zionist Lunatics taking over Guardian Asylum

The Guardian is sinking fast under a welter of Zionist penned articles wantonly blurring distinctions between opinion and fact and fact and falsehood.

It all began with a calm factual article about the UK Jewish Film Festival's withdrawal from The Tricycle Theatre because of the latter's objection to the receipt of £1,400 from the Israeli embassy.  There were Zionist reports of how the Tricycle had simply banned this generalist Jewish festival.  In fact the Jewish Chronicle has a front page article now with the headline, Film festival BANNED, in spite of the facts of the case now being well known.

There has been tremendous coverage of this throughout the print media and on-line but the Zionists are in such a panic they are swarming all over The Guardian to smear BDS supporters and the Tricycle people as antisemitic.

The first I noticed was an editorial that could only have been written by Jonathan Freedland who, a friend of mine told me, has considerable editorial influence at The Guardian.  I know The Guardian is often described as anti-Israel by Israel advocates but there are lines it rarely crosses so as to stay on the right side of the Zionist movement.  And of course, without getting into details, how can it be anti-Israel if Jonathan Freedland writes for it and wields editorial influence?

Anyway, the editorial is headed, The Guardian view on Gaza and the rise of antisemitism.*  I just did a word search for Gaza because I just had a feeling he wasn't writing about Gaza at all.  I was right. The word Gaza doesn't appear in the text.  Yup, in an article supposedly about Gaza and antisemitism Freedland has fulfilled an important part of the Zionist dream: he's made Gaza disappear.  Actually, he does nod to the slaughter by reference to the (you guessed it) "conflict between Israel and Hamas". 

He writes mostly about something that wasn't antisemitic at all and that's the Tricycle saga though he also detours to France and Germany where he writes of what would be genuine cases of antisemitism if only they could be verified by a more reliable source than himself.  Apparently it is true that synagogues have been attacked in France but the first report of an attack on a synagogue was actually a counter-attack by Palestine solidarity demonstrators against the openly racist terrorist group, the Jewish Defense League (banned as terrorists in the USA, the UK and even in Israel) who had come from the synagogue to attack the demonstrators, the JDL having the protection of the police.  Richard Seymour aka Lenin is very good on this.

Now, what else does he do?  Ah of course, he gets downright silly over the boycott campaign:

Some have made the argument that, if receiving money from a state implies endorsement of that state’s policy, then the Tricycle ought to return the £725,000 it receives from the taxpayer-funded Arts Council, lest that be read as backing for, say, UK participation in the invasion of Iraq.

This shows the anti-BDSrs' failure to consider what BDS is aimed at achieving and on whose behalf.  Many Palestinian groups have called for a boycott of Israel and that is what the solidarity movement supports.  Israel is a foreign aid junkie and it gets privileged access to EU markets.  The boycott movement is aims to neutralise that.  Who among those oppressed by the war on Iraq is calling for a boycott?  What could it achieve?  Boycotting is not simply a principle, it is a tactic that could work against Israel, a joint colonial project of western powers.

In the same paragraph he comes close to saying that support for colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and Jewish supremacy is an innate Jewish characteristic.  In fairness he falls just short of that but look at what he does say:

most, not all, Jews feel bound up with Israel, even if that relationship is one of doubt and anxiety. To demand that Jews surrender that connection is to tell Jews how they might – and how they might not – live as Jews. Such demands have an ugly history.

 It's tempting simply to say, "Oh fuck off!" but let's not be nasty to the self-indulgent prick.  He is saying that if most Jews support a political project then the rest of humanity has to accommodate that.  As it happens, it's impossible to know what most Jews want because it's impossible, in the west anyway, to know who most Jews are.  Thankfully, in spite of the ravings of one mad Zionist blogger, we don't have to register as Jews here.

But what if most Jews do support the State of Israel? So what?  Does everyone have to support or tolerate the political persuasion of most Jews?  I've seen Palestinian flags flying around London's East End.  What if most Jews object, should they come down?  No matter where you stand on the question of Palestine, support for a state, any state, is political and there is no reason why everyone should support the politics of a proportion or the entirety of any ethno-religious community, especially if the political persuasion is so clearly racist.

He ends on a totally bogus line:

Nor should [Jews] be required to declare their distance from Israel as a condition for admission into polite society. We opposed such a question being put to all Muslims after 9/11 and, though the cases are not equivalent, the same logic applies here

The logic is not the same.  The UK "Jewish" Film Festival came to the Tricycle declaring their support for and from Israel.  Tricycle said that they could not host Israeli embassy funded events at the present time.  The equivalent for Muslims would be if a Muslim group asked the Tricycle to host an event celebrating 9/11.  Tricycle did not ask the UKJFF where they stand on Palestine.  UKJFF volunteered the information, evidently with some pride.  And that flight from logic was in an editorial in a supposedly serious liberal newspaper of record.

So who's next?  Ah yes, someone I'd never heard of before called Hadley Freeman.  Now if that self-seeking tosh from Freedland wasn't enough, on the same day (yesterday August 8, 2014) we get a lecture from another zionist at The Guardian - two on the same day and both saying the same thing in response to the same thing.  Here goes, but we probably won't need as much detail as the previous one.

It's headed Please don’t tell me what I should think about Israel.  Now I suppose from the heading it could go either way.  Zionists are forever trying to impugn the Jewish identity of those who, like me, think the wrong thoughts on Israel but the sub-heading is an early giveaway:

To a liberal American Jew in Britain, the Gaza crisis reveals some very unsavoury attitudes among those on the left

Uh oh, it's those lefties again, those nasty people who as an article of faith object to colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing.  Right, a quick scan, I promise (myself).

Ah, I think I can use the Gabriel scale on this one.  You know, we rock, they suck, you suck, everything sucks.

Let's see:

Yes, there's a little glimpse of "we rock":

Israel, like America, was a country made from desperate immigrants

Well they certainly had a disproportionate number of refugees but the state was made by a well armed, well trained and well organised army, or armies if you count the minor terror gangs.  In fairness you can't quite tell if Ms Freeman is calling out the myth or promoting it.

How about, they suck?  Well she skipped straight to "you suck" with a false allegation of antisemitism leveled at the pro-Israel Rory Carroll:

This week it was reported in this paper that it’s “unthinkable” in Hollywood to criticise Israel (that pesky Jewish mafia – displease them and they’ll force-feed you matzos until you explode).

The article was actually about how new Israel-critical voices were being heard and support for Israel was rather muted. Needless to say this style guru offered nothing to refute the idea that criticism of Israel used to be ""unthinkable" in Hollywood". And then there came the "everything sucks" whataboutery with a swipe at "India’s not exactly perfect human rights record" and the UK's war on Iraq.

So what happened to "they suck?"  Well they, of course, are the Palestinians and like the Freedland editorial, Gaza gets a mention in the headline (well the sub-heading) but the Gazans are absent from the article. It's all about Jews according to these two articles that appeared in today's print edition of The Guardian.

Now the third hasbara by smear piece I saw on The Guardian website was published the day before the previous two.  Headed, Obsessive Gaza coverage is fanning antisemitism, thankfully it's so ludicrous I can dismiss it out of hand.  It's basically a plea not report on the atrocities committed by a state that's given more privileged access to EU markets than any other non-European state and receives more US aid than any other state.  Oh ok, here's a taste:

The Everyday Antisemitism Project, which I established two weeks into the current round of conflict

As it happens it used to be the case that you could tell when Israel was behaving badly without knowing what it was doing by the number of allegations of antisemitism that flew around.  This guy so realised that Israel was on the PR ropes he went out and formed yet another antisemitism project.  But now the media is reporting more the crimes of Israel.  The Daily Mail has been a bit of a revelation.  The Beeb was pretty dodgy at first but there have been some useful appearances and tweets by Orla Guerin and Jeremy Bowen.  Channel 4 too has been very informative on tv and in tweets.

Even The Times refused to take in an advert containing the nastiest racist hasbara I would ever have seen in a mainstream UK paper.  Israel's sheer ferocity has had the facts of its violent racist nature speaking for themselves and there does seem to have been a new-found openness in the media to reporting stuff that paints Israel in an unfavourable light.

Whatever has happened it has led to some influential hasbarista or other at The Guardian asserting enough control to get 2 articles in today's print edition that falsely allege antisemitism at BDS whilst clumsily coming close to insisting that support for the racist war criminal State of Israel is somehow intrinsic to the Jewish identity.

And hold that thought about The Times.  The Guardian has now, via the blog of Roy Greenslade, announced that it will be running the advert in its Monday edition.  This is particularly dismaying because Times owner Rupert Murdoch is very pro-Israel and The Guardian is supposed to be liberal or even left-leaning.  Let's have a look at what Greenslade is saying:

The Times is under attack for refusing to run an advert about the conflict in Gaza. The paper is accused of being part of a British media "infamously skewed against Israel."

Straight away there is something wrong here.  Greenslade must know that The Times of all papers is not "skewed against Israel".  He is also of course using his blog to announce that The Guardian is joining in this attack on The Times for a rare instance of it doing the decent thing.

Greenslade goes on to quote from the ad and one its makers,  Shmuley Boteach, without any question, criticism or correction of his own:

It [the ad] calls on President Obama and other political leaders across the world "to condemn Hamas's use of children as human shields", which amounts to "child sacrifice".

It's left to me to point out that no evidence at all has been presented to support the "human shields" endless run of repeat stories.  It doesn't point out that it is actually Israel killing this large number of children and even more parents.  Nowhere does Greenslade contradict what the ad or its maker says, so for one racist ad these extreme murderous Zionists get two bouts of publicity one of which is free.

And we get more quotes from Boteach:

At a time when Israel is fighting for its very existence against the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, the British media, already infamously skewed against Israel, refuses a paid ad that every major American outlet... was proud to run as a full page ad

Criticism came there none.

The only partial distancing of The Guardian from the content of the racist ad is Greenslade's parting line:

But the Guardian's acceptance of an advert does not mean, of course, that it endorses the views and claims made within it.

Well it definitely means that The Guardian finds such racism acceptable and it does mean that some Zionist or other at The Guardian wants the ad run because for the past 3 days they have been pulling out all the stops to place The Guardian firmly in the Zionist camp.

Curiously I noticed Roy Greenslade hasn't tweeted his article but he has recently done two tweets supporting demonstrations for Gaza.  It's almost like his heart wasn't in this piece.  I wonder why he wrote it.

Anyway, I have an update on Jonathan Freedland's editorial from reading the print edition.  Don't worry I didn't buy it nor would I.  The title is completely different.  Gone (again) is "Gaza" and instead it's headed, Intolerable Intolerance.  Got that?  Most of the article is about the Tricycle Theatre and after time to think The Guardian is accusing the theatre of intolerable intolerance.  So what, apart from self-indulgent whingeing, are the Zionists going to do?

Comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto at The Guardian or not....

I've just left the following comment using the name, Burgher (long story) at The Guardian's article on Ed Miliband's criticism of David Cameron's silence on Israel's attack on Gaza

burgher

03 August 2014 9:15am

Is The Guardian deleting any comments that compare Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, Israel to Nazi Germany or Zionism to Nazism?

Someone told me that comments that do any of the above are being routinely disappeared.

Let's see if anyone answers by saying "no" or by deleting the comment.

UPDATE: 10:00 am, Comment still in place and it's generated some replies, mostly to say that it does appear to be Guardian policy to delete such comments but none of the replies have come from the mods.  I'll check in again later.

When Israeli Hasbara serves the Palestinian cause

The Guardian's Comment is Free saw fit to publish some ludicrous hasbara in the form of an article by Dani Dayan.  Read the article and you might not need telling that Dani Dayan is some kind of ambassador at large specifically to promote the occupation.  Here's The Guardian's description of him:

Dani Dayan is chief foreign envoy of the Yesha Council of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria

Ok, so The Guardian describes him slightly differently from the way I do.  But rather than torture myself and yourselves by going through the article, here's one comment out of the now closed 565 comments that sums it up:

daysofhope

08 June 2013 6:46pm

Recommended

22

This article serves the Palestinian cause.

There can be very few readers today who are unaware of the facts regarding Israel's conquest, occupation and colonisation of remaining Palestinian territory. For the author to present a wholly fictive account of this process can only remind his public of the truth. The bizarre, parallel universe flavour of his narrative includes the long discredited claim- abandoned by Israeli officials themselves- that Israel was attacked in 1967, and that their military faced overwhelming odds in defeating the Arab armies. Who today even bothers with a myth of this type? Israel struck first in a co-ordinated pre-emptive manner, using superior force, technology and tactics. The war was over in six days.

As for Carter's statement that he could not foresee a dismantling of the settlement in question, nothing in his remarks indicates a sense of rejoicing. The tone is one closer to despair. He understands the colonisation process to be one of the most intractable obstacles to a just solution to the conflict.

In this article we are treated to the spectacle of a man talking into a mirror and imagining his reflection as the world. That's a measure of where Zionists stand today. Their propaganda becomes ever more revealing of the futility of "constructive engagement" with them. Whether they're even able to understand what it's like not to be them, not to live as they do, is an open question.

But as long as Western media outlets are willing to extend a welcome to the sort of grotesque apologetics offered by Major Dayan, the Palestinian cause will benefit.

While FIFA disregards calls to move its football tournament out of Israel, this article is a very timely own goal.

There's a rumour that The Guardian is now succumbing more than ever to Zionist pressure to tow a softer line on criticism of Israel or, put another way, to tow the Zionist line.  The article by Dani Dayan together with his benign self-description avoiding any hint of the occupation, of racist rule or of illegality, suggests that the rumour is true.

David Miliband and disproportionate representation

Here's a good piece in The Guardian by Aditya Chakrabortty:

In 1979, 40% of Labour MPs came from a manual occupation; according to analysis by the Smith Institute that is now down to 9%. Just 4% of all representatives in the Commons can claim a background in a manual occupation, which is roughly the same proportion as went to Eton. Over one in four of all Tory MPs were previously employed in finance; more parliamentarians came from jobs in politics than from health, teaching, the army, agriculture and voluntary services put together. With his frictionless ascent from thinktanks to backroom Labour politics to the cabinet, David Miliband is typical of the gilded class who masquerade as our delegates in Westminster. The consequences of this narrowness are easy to see. In this paper and elsewhere there has been much wistfulness about the Spirit of 45, after Ken Loach's recent film. But that spirit, as the film outlines, came from people's lived experiences. Think about the Class of 45: Ernie Bevin – a former lorry driver; Peter Mandelson's granddad, Herbert Morrison – a grocer's assistant. And, the father of the NHS, Nye Bevan: a bolshie ex-miner. However different their politics, it's hard to imagine any of these three accepting a retrospective law imposing benefit sanctions on unemployed people refusing private "workfare", as Ed Miliband's party did last month.

Perhaps Ed will follow his brother instead of leading him.

Correcting a Hasbarista

I got an email from Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi this morning via the Just Peace UK list:

Did anyone else read the feature in Guardian Weekend about the angst experienced
by a female IDF conscript after nearly but not being shot by a fellow soldier? I
feel the need to respond in some way, though I'm not sure how, other than to
make the unsubtle point that many Palestinians actually do get shot.

I've failed to find the piece online, though there is this in Corrections and
Clarifications:

The first-person piece in today's Weekend magazine in which the author recalls her days as a teenage recruit conscripted into the Israeli army is by Shani Boianjiu, not Shani Bouijani as a subheading says (Young gun, 9 March, page 49, Weekend).

Here's the link to Corrections and Clarifications.  Like Naomi, I couldn't find the original article either but Frank Fisher helpfully pointed out that Mondoweiss covered Shani Boianjiu's hasbara efforts some time last year.  Here's Mondoweiss's Adam Horowitz:

Boianjiu’s story begins:

Lea, the officer, had stopped feeling her own body. She lay on top of an anti-sniper barricade, holding up a page from a newspaper, blocking the stars. She had to stretch out her arms to hold the wide page above her head.

“Oh,” she said.

“The Army didn’t do it,” Tomer said. He flicked his cigarette butt down onto the asphalt of Route 799. He was talking about Huda, the little Palestinian girl on the beach. The picture in the newspaper showed her screaming on red sand, amid the body parts of the seven people who had been her family.

“I know,” she said. “This is a manipulation.”

The world said that the Israeli Army had done it with artillery fire, but the Israeli Army knew that the family had been killed by a dormant shell that Palestinian militants had left by the sea.

“The little Palestinian girl on the beach” is a real person. Huda Ghaliya was in sixth grade when her family was killed on the beach in Gaza, and her photo was broadcast around the world. The New York Times reported at the time:

Eleven-year-old Huda unwittingly became a symbol of Palestinian pain and loss during an afternoon picnic with her family on a hot day when a cameraman captured her shrieking “Father, Father, Father!” as she hovered over the bloody bodies of 13 dead or wounded members of her family, hit by what was apparently an errant Israeli artillery shell.

Exhaustive investigative work by Human Rights Watch established beyond doubt that the family were indeed killed by an Israeli shell but Israel exonerated itself.  Horowitz again:

Finally, from “Gaza Beach Investigation Ignores Evidence” (6/20/06):

The Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) investigation of the Gaza beach explosion that killed eight Palestinian civilians and wounded dozens is incomplete because it excludes important evidence, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch researchers met yesterday with Israeli Major-General Meir Kalifi, who led the internal IDF investigation, to discuss its findings. After the meeting, Human Rights Watch reiterated its call for an independent investigation into the deaths.

The meeting revealed that the IDF’s conclusion that it was not responsible for the deaths on the beach was based exclusively on information gathered by the IDF and excluded all evidence gathered by other sources.

Boianjiu uses this discredited Israeli investigation to ground her story where Palestinians cynically attempt to garner sympathy through staged encounters with the Israeli military. Boianjiu’s story is fiction, but the context is pure hasbara.

He concludes the Mondoweiss piece with this twitter exchange:

Ironically, Boianjiu responded to our earlier post over Twitter, chiding us that we didn’t understand the difference between fiction and non-fiction:

@mondoweiss 3 of them do in my *fiction! They also come wearing mattresses and lab goggles. Do you believe Harry Potter is really a wizard?
— Shani Boianjiu (@ShaniBoianjiu) June 19, 2012

Boianjiu’s narration of the deaths in Gaza is about as truthful as Harry Potter, but unlike that bespectacled wizard, her fictions are in the service of obfuscating a very real tragedy and an ongoing oppression.

So unless Shani Boianjiu has reformed in the last 8 or 9 months I think it's safe to assume that whatever appeared in last weekend's Guardian Weekend section was just another hasbara effort.

David Ward defended from antisemitism charge

I didn't see this letter from Tony Greenstein to The Guardian (6th Feb 2013).

Aida Edemariam writes that Lib Dem MP David Ward "still seems unable to comprehend why he has caused offence" ('The solid ground I stand on is that I am not a racist', G2, 6 February). David Ward's offence is accusing "the Jews" of inflicting atrocities on Palestinians, within a few years of their own liberation from the death camps.

This is much ado about nothing. Ward's error in referring to "the Jews" rather than "Jewish people" is entirely understandable. The sole purpose of the synthetic outrage Ward's remarks have generated is designed to stifle criticism of Israel and suppress free speech. Israel's occupation is carried out in the name of a state which calls itself Jewish and claims, according to the 2004 Jerusalem Program of the World Zionist Organisation, to represent "the Jewish people" as a whole. Ward's critics cannot have their cake and eat it. They cannot claim Israel represents not merely its own Jewish citizens but Jews worldwide and at the same time accuse people who associate "the Jews" with Israel's atrocities of antisemitism. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has repeatedly proclaimed the support of British Jews for Israel's attacks on the Palestinians and Lebanese. It has even organised demonstrations in support of those attacks. Perhaps the board is also antisemitic? Certainly they can't complain when people take them at their word.

Ward is accused of antisemitism for making comparisons between the Nazi period and what is happening to the Palestinians. Of course Israel has not set up death camps for Arabs. But when Gerald Kaufman spoke in the Commons about his grandmother who had been killed in her bed by a Nazi soldier, he stated that "my grandmother did not die in order to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza". Is Gerald Kaufman also antisemitic?
Tony Greenstein
Brighton, East Sussex

 These bogus allegations of antisemitism are coming in thick and fast these days so you might not know the story that Tony was referring to.  If that's the case then the link is in his letter above but here it is again. Also, here's the letter on Tony Greenstein's blog.

Tipping point?

I'm only posting this because it's a remarkable coincidence that I was chatting with a passenger in my minicab today about the tipping conversation in Reservoir Dogs about how some servers (who wait at tables) get tips and others (who serve at counters) don't.  She actually tipped me quite generously even though the fare for a short journey was already quite high.  Well here's a Guardian article by a server who wasn't as lucky as I was today:

Tips are not optional, they are how waiters get paid in America

An Applebee's diner refused to leave a tip for religious reasons. The waitress who exposed it wonders if Jesus will pay her bill

Chelsea Welch 

 

A customer at an Applebee's restaurant in St. Louis left no tip and a note saying, "I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?"

I was a waitress at Applebee's restaurant in Saint Louis. I was fired Wednesday for posting a picture on Reddit.com of a note a customer left on a bill. I posted it on the web as a light-hearted joke.

This didn't even happen at my table. The note was left for another server, who allowed me to take a picture of it at the end of the night.

Someone had scribbled on the receipt, "I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?"

I assumed the customer's signature was illegible, but I quickly started receiving messages containing Facebook profile links and websites, asking me to confirm the identity of the customer. I refused to confirm any of them, and all were incorrect.

I worked with the Reddit moderators to remove any personal information. I wanted to protect the identity of both my fellow server and the customer. I had no intention of starting a witch-hunt or hurting anyone.

Now I've been fired.

The person who wrote the note came across an article about it, called the Applebee's location, and demanded everyone be fired -- me, the server who allowed me to take the picture, the manager on duty at the time, the manager not on duty at the time, everyone. It seems I was fired not because Applebee's was represented poorly, not because I did anything illegal or against company policy, but because I embarrassed this person.

In light of the situation, I would like to make a statement on behalf of wait staff everywhere: We make $3.50 an hour. Most of my paychecks are less than pocket change because I have to pay taxes on the tips I make.

After sharing my tips with hosts, bussers, and bartenders, I make less than $9 an hour on average, before taxes. I am expected to skip bathroom breaks if we are busy. I go hungry all day if I have several busy tables to work. I am expected to work until 1:30am and then come in again at 10:30am to open the restaurant.

I have worked 12-hour double shifts without a chance to even sit down. I am expected to portray a canned personality that has been found to be least offensive to the greatest amount of people. And I am expected to do all of this, every day, and receive change, or even nothing, in return. After all that, I can be fired for "embarrassing" someone, who directly insults his or her server on religious grounds.

In this economy, $3.50 an hour doesn't cut it. I can't pay half my bills. Like many, I would love to see a reasonable, non-tip-dependent wage system for service workers like they have in other countries. But the system being flawed is not an excuse for not paying for services rendered.

I need tips to pay my bills. All waiters do. We spend an hour or more of our time befriending you, making you laugh, getting to know you, and making your dining experience the best it can be. We work hard. We care. We deserve to be paid for that.

I am trying to stand up for all of us who work for just a few dollars an hour at places like Applebee's. Whether a chain steakhouse or a black-tie establishment, tipping is not optional. It is how we get paid.

I posted a picture to make people laugh, but now I want to make a serious point: Things like this happen to servers all the time. People seem to think that the easiest way to save money on a night out is to skip the tip.

I can't understand why I was fired over this. I was well liked and respected at Applebee's. My sales were high, my managers had no problems with me, and I was even hoping to move up to management soon. When I posted this, I didn't represent Applebee's in a bad light. In fact, I didn't represent them at all.

I did my best to protect the identity of all parties involved. I didn't break any specific guidelines in the company handbook – I checked. But because this person got embarrassed that their selfishness was made public, Applebee's has made it clear that they would rather lose a dedicated employee than an angry customer. That's a policy I can't understand.

I am equally baffled about how a religious tithe is in any way related to paying for services at a restaurant. I can understand why someone could be upset with an automatic gratuity. However, it's a plainly stated Applebee's policy that a tip is added automatically for parties over eight like the one this customer was part of. I cannot control that kind of tip; it's done by the computer that the orders are put into. I've been stiffed on tips before, but this is the first time I've seen the "Big Man" used as reasoning.

Obviously the person who wrote this note wanted it seen by someone. It's strange that now that the audience is wider than just the server, the person is ashamed.

I have no agenda here. I seek no revenge against the note writer. I have no interest in exposing their identity, and, at this point, I'm not even sure I want my job back. I was just trying to make a joke, but I came home unemployed.

I've been waiting tables to save up some money so I could finally go to college, so I could get an education that would qualify me for a job that doesn't force me to sell my personality for pocket change.

While this story has garnered immense media attention, my story is not uncommon. Bad tips and harsh notes are all part of the job. People get fired to keep customers happy every day.

As this story has gotten popular, I've received inquiries as to where people can send money to support me. As a broke kid trying to get into college, it's certainly appealing, but I'd really rather you make a difference to your next server. I'd rather you keep that money and that generosity for the next time you eat out.

Editor's note: Chelsea added the final two paragraphs at 2:30pm EST on Friday.

I think it would only be fair to name and shame the person who left the note.

By the way, the article is still open for comments and at the time of writing they stand at 1,205.

Freedland avoids zionism as cause of Israel's rightward drift

Jonathan Freedland had a comment piece in The Guardian just the other day.  It was one of those where he tries to explain away Israel's increasingly overt racism by reference to anything other than its racist official ideology, zionism:

the blame can be shared evenly between the Israeli centre-left, Palestinian leaders and the international community.

But there were two responses in yesterday's Guardian, one offering an ideological explanation and the other being more technical:

While Jonathan Freedland's evident horror at Israel's shift to the right is welcome (Comment, 5 January), his explanations fail to account for the country's steady drift to the right since its inception and the ineluctable logic of imposing a Jewish state in someone else's country. The internal contradictions of a state in which the rights of Jewish and Palestinian citizens were supposedly "separate but equal" could only be resolved by the transformation of the state into one of genuine equality, ie a secular democracy, or by the rising hegemony of those who celebrated separateness and inequality.

That religious extremism and rightwing anti-egalitarians have become dominant in Israel is inextricably linked to the theocratic underpinning of the state. Like most other European Jews, I lost family in the Holocaust and I have experienced racism in the country of my birth, but my survival as an English Jew does not depend on the existence of the state of Israel and my right to "return" to a country to which I have never been. It depends on my being treated as a human being with the same rights and needs as everyone else. The same rights that everyone born in Israel or Palestine or anywhere else in the world should have.
Keith Lichman
London

• Jonathan Freedland's analysis that the nationalist right filled a vacuum is flawed. The radical right had been infiltrating the echelons of government for years. Ben Gurion's weakness in allowing religious parties into his coalitions has led to the fragmented nature of the Knesset, and its eventual dominance by settlers, and the rise of parties like Shas and now Jewish Home. Netanyahu's financial backers for the leadership of Likud, and the saviours of its finances in 1993, exerted their influence on the settlers and subsequent land-grabbing techniques. Politicians like Avigdor Lieberman and Sharon were purveyors of land and finances to the settlers.
Richard Morris
London

There just seems no other place for a self-defined state for Jews to go but to the right.

Minor victory for the antisemitism card

There have been many grotesque caricatures of Jews in the past and, of course, more recently.  One recurring theme is the power of Jews to manipulate apparently powerful politicians.  But what do we do when reality resembles these antisemitic caricatures?

Just recently Israel embarked on its equivalent of Super Tuesday.  It slaughtered a batch of Palestinians following the announcement of a general election.  In spite of Israel's clear escalation of the situation, Tony Blair, Israel's envoy to The Quartet, and William Hague, the UK foreign minister, both parroted Netanyahu's excuse which was something about Hamas firing rockets, without any mention of why Hamas might be firing those rockets.  As I posted earlier, Steve Bell, of the Guardian, ran a cartoon depicting Blair and Hague as glove puppets of Netanyahu.  Now this resembled an antisemitic cartoon of yore.

There were predictable complaints from the usual sources, here and here and of course not just there and there.  And eventually the Guardian readers' editor, Chris Elliott,  got on the case.  It's a strange title, readers' editor, because his job seems to be responded to the complaints of people for whom the Guardian can do nothing right. He set out a few complaints plus a defence of his own position by Steve Bell before concluding thus:

I don't believe that Bell is an antisemite, nor do I think it was his intention to draw an antisemitic cartoon. However, using the image of a puppeteer when drawing a Jewish politician inevitably echoes past antisemitic usage of such imagery, no matter the intent.

The Holocaust and its causes are still within living memory. While journalists and cartoonists should be free to express an opinion that Netanyahu is opportunistic and manipulative, in my view they should not use the language – including the visual language – of antisemitic stereotypes.

 Now how on earth did the subject morph from the sycophancy of western leaders towards the State of Israel to the holocaust?  Never mind.  It just did, that's all.  The Guardian readers' editor has come out in support of the zionists on this one and nowhere in his piece does it mention what gave rise to the cartoon in the first place, ie, the Israeli attack on Gaza and Tony Blair and William Hague's support for it.  It did mention Netanyahu's manipulativeness but not what it was deployed for.  So the last word in the Guardian on Israel's latest attack on Gaza is mention of the holocaust and condemnation of the kind of behaviour by Israel and its allies that resembles an antisemitic caricature.

By the way, I commented on the readers' editor's piece. I wonder if it will stay in place.

Israel's recent attack on Gaza follows a pattern of Israel killing lots of civilians in the run up to an Israeli election. Netanyahu offered a bogus excuse for the attack, as did Tzipi Livni before him, as did Shimon Peres over his attack on Qana. This time, Blair and Hague repeated Netanyahu's excuse as if it was a genuine explanation. That is, they behaved like glove puppets of Netanyahu. And there's the rub. There have been grotesque caricatures of Jews in the past but whose fault is it if an Israeli leader and high profile politicians in the west behave like those caricatures?

It's sad that one of the letters supporting Steve Bell says, "Mark Gardner can't be allowed to get away with the old trick of pretending all criticism of the Israeli government is antisemitic.". Unfortunately, looking at the last couple of paragraphs of the article above, he does seem to have got away with it. Shame.

Comments are still open at the time of writing.

Why bark when you have two dogs?

This is a Steve Bell cartoon from The Guardian. The picture appears to be saying that William Hague and Tony Blair are saying exactly what Netanyahu is saying even though Israel's latest assault on Gaza seems to be a typical Israeli election stunt.  But for Telegraph hasbara blogger, Brendan O'Neill, it is saying that "Jews [are] still running the world".

Elsewhere in the Telegraph there's a report on how the BBC apologised to Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, for catching him on the back foot with a question about Gaza.

Lord Sacks sighed, before replying: “I think it has got to do with Iran, actually.” Mr Davis’s co-presenter, Sarah Montague, was clearly concerned that Lord Sacks did not seem to know his remarks were still being broadcast and could be heard to whisper: “We, we’re live.”

Lord Sacks then swiftly adopted a more formal broadcasting manner and suggested the crisis demanded “a continued prayer for peace, not only in Gaza but for the whole region”.

“No-one gains from violence. Not the Palestinians, not the Israelis. This is an issue here where we must all pray for peace and work for it,” he said.

Mr Davis thanked his guest and announced that the programme would “move on” to the next item.

In a statement the BBC apologised for catching the Chief Rabbi off-guard.

A spokesman said: “The Chief Rabbi hadn’t realised he was still on-air and as soon as this became apparent, we interjected. Evan likes to be spontaneous with guests but he accepts that in this case it was inappropriate and he has apologised to Lord Sacks. The BBC would reiterate that apology.”

Hard to see what there was to apologise for here except that, when he thought he was off air, the Chief Rabbi responded like a politician and when he knew he was on air he returned to religion mode. Anyway, perhaps I should change the headline above to "why bark when you have three dogs?"

UPDATE at 5:20 am 9/12/2012: I just had an interesting chat with a chap called Dave Zeglen on the Fat Man on a Keyboard blog where he (Dave Zeglen) says why he thinks the Steve Bell cartoon is antisemitic:

Levi9909,

I don't think criticism of Israel is a priori anti-Semitic, and I also accept that there are certainly some people who respond to legitimate criticism of Israel with the charge that the accuser is being anti-Semitic. However, in this particular case of Steve Bell's cartoon, it is an anti-Semitic cartoon because it invokes an anti-Semitic stereotype for a man who is Jewish. Even if Steve Bell did not intend the cartoon to be racist, the symbolism is clearly racist given how the trope of the Jewish puppet master has been historically used to marginalize Jewish people. Netanyahu should rightly be criticized, but this was not the way to do it. Bell defended his cartoon with the same argument you put forward, that because it depicts a specific individual at a specific moment, it isn't anti-Semitic, but how can you ignore the fact that the person depicted is also a Jew? It's not the same when you invoke a puppeteer trope for a leader who isn't Jewish because there may not be that historical association with a non-Jewish leader. As a corollary, it might be acceptable to draw George W. Bush as a monkey to mock his incompetence, but it would surely be racist to do the same with Obama because of the historical use of such imagery regarding black people, right?

I did respond but I don't want to be ungracious by giving myself the last word here. If you want to see my response, go there. Ta.