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

Book Review: The Left's Jewish Problem by Dave Rich

I was asked to review Dave Rich's book for an academic website.  I was asked to take it seriously and write about it as befits a scholarly work.  I found that impossible and wrote the following instead.  Now read on.....

The Left's Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism by Dave Rich

I suspect the book is timed to cash in on Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to the leadership of the UK Labour Party as Corbyn seems something of an afterthought for its author, Dave Rich.  Dave is a committed Zionist so no doubt he also wanted to play his part in undermining a left Labour leader who has a high profile in the Palestine solidarity movement.

The book has lots of Zionist staples like the Jewish right to national self-determination. There are lots of stretches of people’s meaning and out of context quotes to portray Israel’s opponents and even victims as being antisemitic.  The holocaust is instrumentalised to justify Israel’s existence without the author realising that this undermines the idea of Jews being a standard case for national self-determination which is supposed to accrue to communities with territorial contiguity and raises the idea that, instead, Jews are a special case.

Dave avoids analysis or even definitions of terms.  He avoids analysis of what Zionism means to its victims.  He avoids saying what it means to or for its Jewish beneficiaries except to say that this ideological choice is an integral part of their identity.  He avoids details around implementation of the Zionist project and he mostly avoids the various imperial supports the project has received and without which Israel couldn’t exist.

Remarkably for a book supposedly about antisemitism, Dave fails even to define that. He doesn’t mention, for example, the so-called EUMC working definition which his employers at the Community Security Trust learned to love.  He certainly uses parts of the definition.  For example, when Israel is compared to the Nazis, this is offered by Dave as an example of antisemitism.  His failure to analyse Zionism or Nazism or refer to the racism essential and common to both enables this given.

Dave’s only mention of Israel’s founding war on the Arabs is plain wrong. Dave claims “five Arab armies had invaded their new Jewish neighbour”.  Arab armies have never invaded Israel. The Zionist movement had already ethnically cleansed 300,000 Palestinians by the time Arab armies mobilised against an already expanding Israel.

He fails to consider the Eurocentrism that would allow for the Labour Party to propose in 1944 the “transfer”, ie the ethnic cleansing, of all of Palestine’s Arabs.  For Dave, the labour movement was all cloth caps, trade unions and Poale Zion (now calling itself the Jewish Labour Movement, JLM).  And somewhere between the old days and the rise of the new left, the youth wing of the Liberal Party, the Young Liberals, decided to call Israel out as a state not significantly different from the apartheid regime of the Republic of South Africa.  Without analysing either Zionism or liberalism, Dave doesn’t have to consider the glaringly illiberal tenets of the former to see how repugnant they are to the young activists of the latter.

And so to the new left whose ideas and genealogy get mangled by Dave.  Where he quotes work, he doesn’t seem to understand it.  Abram Leon for example, is chastised by Dave, of all people, for mostly ignoring Palestine.  But Leon was explaining the Jewish identity, hostility to Jews and the ahistorical nationalism of the Zionist movement. So why mention Leon? Because his book is called The Jewish Question and an idiot called Gerry Downing claims that global affairs are run by what he calls “the Jewish question”. If Downing claims inspiration from Leon then, like Dave, he hasn’t understood him.  Contrary to Dave’s claim, we do not have to read Leon to understand Downing. But the spurious linkage is made because Downing was suspended from the Labour Party during Corbyn’s time as leader even though he survived Kinnock, Blair, Brown and Miliband.

The new left was hostile to Stalinism but not for Dave.  The anti-Zionism that was coming to the fore as Israel’s atrocities became more widely known, is attributable, according to Dave, to the failure of the new left to rid itself of an important tenet of Stalinism: anti-Zionism, itself an aspect of Stalin’s antisemitism. 

The new left together with mass immigration ushered in the rise of identity politics.  For Dave the new left likes identity politics like children used to like playing cowboys and Indians.  New leftists like to be the Indians, then they can wear keffiyehs and run around upsetting cowboys like Dave.  Dave doesn’t consider the various issues arising out of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural working class and how the leftist demand for equality means more than simple bread and butter issues.  He doesn’t dismiss identity politics out of hand.  He even admits that Zionists have played identity politics themselves and even got away with it for a while which is presumably why they are now trying it on again.  The problem here is that for Zionists it is a game of pretending that ideology is identity and that’s too absurd to sustain.

For Dave, organisations, like ideologies, become identities.  There’s a whole chapter on When Anti-Racists Ban Jews.  Back in the late 1970s some university Jewish societies were banned over their affiliation to the World Zionist Organisation and Congress.  The ban was under students’ union’s “no platform for racists” policy, it wasn’t the banning of Jews as Jews. There were leftists who opposed the ban because they claimed that it was wrong tactically. Dave seems to have tried but could not find a former supporter of the no platforming of Jewish societies who would now say that the policy was actually antisemitic.

Dave’s Conclusion doesn’t actually conclude.  It’s anecdotes about events since he wrote the book.  Among others, there’s Jackie Walker’s hacked facebook conversation with a Zionist friend about Jewish involvement in the slave trade. Dave attributes this to the influence of an antisemitic Farakhan disciple rather than a clumsily and privately expressed statement of fact.  He then berates her for saying that she was being targeted for her support for the Palestinians. There was a clue in that she was hacked by the Israel Advocacy Movement.  But to add to his omissions, Dave doesn’t do detective work.

A response to Melanie Phillips's "Tunnel Vision"

Melanie Phillips had a typically extreme piece in last week's Jewish Chronicle denouncing aid to Gaza as the funding of "mass murder".  To its rare credit, the JC has published a response by Deborah Maccoby.  The JC doesn't publish letters on line so here's the letter which Deborah copied to me:

Tunnel Vision

Melanie Phillips (JC, August 19) writes: "Israeli officials have claimed that every month, Hamas builds another six miles of tunnels whose sole purpose is to deliver killers and weapons to wipe out as many Israelis as possible."

Does it ever occur to her that Hamas builds tunnels as self-defence, in preparation for yet another murderous onslaught on Gaza by the Israeli Army?

Phillips goes on: "A Hamas operative captured by the Israelis last June revealed that terrorists can travel underground throughout the whole of Gaza".

In July 2014, when Israeli launched Operation Protective Edge, which killed 1,400 Gazan civilians, including 500 children, only 12 of the tunnels passed under the border into Israel and these could easily have been sealed off on the Israeli side. The tunnels are built so that Hamas militants can emerge within Gaza and engage with invading Israeli soldiers.


Deborah Maccoby
Leeds

We're not sure who the JC is suggesting is tunnel visioned but Mel does seem to spend more time on hasbara than Deborah does on debunking the same.

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.

Focus on the horrific impact of the occupation not how nice some Zionists want to look

Here's an amusing twitter thread. One of its participants might be so embarrassed by her attempt at hasbara failing miserably she might disappear her own tweets so I "snipped" them. But let's try embedding first:

17. She tells us about the Shabak blacklist ppl are put on, barred from crossing. She also tell us of MachsomWatch's efforts to get ppl off.

— Mori Rothman-Zecher (@Moriel_RZ) June 7, 2016

I don't know who "she" is but hang in there.  Here's novelist and hasbarist (if there's a difference) Linda Grant blowing her own trumpet about one of her Guardian G2 pieces:

@Moriel_RZ I Interviewed the same people in 2004, nothing changes https://t.co/GaDbp0LFry

— Linda Grant (@lindasgrant) June 7, 2016

 Then these Labour2Palestine people step in:

@lindasgrant @Moriel_RZ we owe so much to people from @machsomwatch and other organisations who bear witness to the occupation.

— Labour 2 Palestine (@Lab2Palestine) June 7, 2016

And now Linda Grant moves from self-promotion to selfless Zionism promotion:

@Lab2Palestine @Moriel_RZ @machsomwatch It should make some rethink their use of the word Zionist as a synonym for evil.

— Linda Grant (@lindasgrant) June 7, 2016

Now how could an account calling itself Labour 2 Palestine give such a notorious hasbarist an opportunity to use the checkpoints of all things to promote Zionism?  Answer? They didn't.  Sorry, it's late. I mean the answer to the question, how could they? is, they didn't.  Look:

@lindasgrant @Moriel_RZ @machsomwatch we would prefer to focus on the horrific impact of the occupation.

— Labour 2 Palestine (@Lab2Palestine) June 7, 2016

It's good to see that there are still people in Labour who see opposing Israel as more important than massaging the egos of high profile Zionists.

Zios' campaign defaming Anti-Zionist activists is "making Jews something of a laughing stock" and worse....

Here's a good couple of letters in today's Jewish Chronicle by Tony Klug and a chap called Andy Coombes.  The JC doesn't publish letters online so here's a pic I snaffled from Ben White's tweet:

Curiously the JC hasn't gone in too hard on named individuals like The Telegraph and Times did in the case of Tony Greenstein, only to find themselves humiliatingly having to retract.  It's also curious that the JC has allowed any criticism of its own sheer dishonesty. 

Given that both the letters focus on what is most obvious to anyone which is simply the dishonesty and exaggeration, it's gratifying that Tony Klug has touched on a very important aspect of specifically Jewish anti-Zionist activism: the question of inter-community relations.  Zionist have been trying for a few years to get Jewish supremacy recognised as a protected characteristic of being Jewish above ethnicity and religion.  That is, they claim their Zionist ideology or their support for Israel to be an integral part of their identity. Given the obviously racist nature of their ideology this means placing the Jewish identity above others; a disaster for community relations.  Now look at Tony Klug's words:

The incessant campaign is drowning rational thought and analysis and making Jews something of a laughing stock in the wider public, especially among the young and other demographics with their own serious problems.

Yes, Zios are making Jews look like a bunch of Woody Allens (when he used to be funny) but the impact of their dishonest racist antics is harmful to community relations and that's no laughing matter.

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.

3 Stooges?

From a tweet by Ben White linking this Jewish Chronicle article by Alan Johnson:

Charitable objects of Israel advocacy?

I was just checking the website of the Britain Israel Communication and Research Centre (BICOM) to see who its personnel were and I noticed this on the "About" page:

BICOM is funded through private UK philanthropy and our education and research work is supported in part by the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) in pursuance of its charitable objects.

How is Israel advocacy a "charitable object"?

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.

Zionists Demonstrate against the No Antisemitism

I just read a write up in Jewish News of the Zionist demo today at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand in central London.  I did a word search to see if I could see anyone using the expression "New Antisemitism" and the word "New" didn't appear anywhere.  But let's take a look at the piece:

An estimated 4,500 people rallied outside the Royal Courts of Justice this afternoon to demand zero tolerance to anti-Semitism, writes Justin Cohen.

Now let's have a look at the picture accompanying the piece:

Now does that look like 4,500 to you?  I don't know but I reckon there are no more than 100 in the picture plus, the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, so let's say 101 to be kind.

A friend of mine emailed to say that the BBC had said they numbered in the hundreds but that's still not the claimed 4,500.

Oh look, I found another pic:

I might have to up my estimate to 150.  Remember these people weren't marching, they were rallying in front of this building here:

And what's all this about the No Antisemitism?  See what Douglas Murray - yes that Douglas Murray - had to say:

“Don’t wait weeks and weeks and then for people to have to take the initiative with things like this,” he said. “Expect more, demand more from the people who say they speak in your name.”

Murray also urged community members to write to MPs and “help stop the lies”. If people don’t speak out when Israel is accused of genocide or of committing war crimes, he warned, “you help to feed the lies”.

 Accusing Israel of genocide or of committing war crimes is stating facts, how can that be antisemitism, old or new?  That's it, there was a demonstration today by Zionists against the No Antisemitism and let's face it, if they do ever find such a thing, on past performance they'll ignore it or collude with it.  They won't try leading a merry dance outside courts on a day when they're closed.

When Dodgy Dave met Uncle Joe

I had a bit of a twitter exchange with David Aaronovitch the other day.  I went into it with some trepidation because I thought some troll might pop up to derail the thread, simply insult Dave's interlocutor or even come out as a zionist sympathiser having been anti-zionist in the past.  I even thought that Dave himself might be on good form but it was not to be.

It all started when I noticed an unremarkable tweet from @ejhchess to @Flying_Rodent:

@flying_rodent A friend of yours is engaging in logic https://t.co/h4LGAS0Zo2
— Justin Horton (@ejhchess) August 21, 2014

From David Aaronovitch's "logical" tweet I saw Dave angrily challenging someone called i was id (@iwasid to "Find me a single thing either of us has said or written that supports right-wing racism anywhere. One."

Well as coincidence would have it I noticed something Dave had written only the day before for the Jewish Chronicle that I thought was racist so, with some trepidation (see above) I mentioned it in a tweet:

.@DAaronovitch this looks like a crude right wing racist generalisation "new minorities now hate old ones" http://t.co/1dPK0JCl0M @iwasid
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) August 22, 2014

To which Dave replied:

@jewssf It only looks like that to you, Mark, because that's what you want to see.
— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) August 22, 2014

To which I responded:

.@DAaronovitch your statement "new minorities now hate the old ones" is racist for all to see http://t.co/1dPK0JCl0M not just me
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) August 23, 2014

And another guy joined in:

. @jewssf Yes, that comment from @DAaronovitch is overtly racist, obnoxious and unacceptable. Islamophobia becoming ever more mainstream.
— Alex Snowdon (@luna17activist) August 23, 2014

 And Dave responded, warming to his subjectivity theme:

@luna17activist In what way is it racist (obnoxiousness being in the eye of the observer)? @jewssf
— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) August 23, 2014

 At this point it started to look like he wasn't simply being slippery, he really didn't know what was racist about generalising about whole minority groups so I explained:

.@DAaronovitch Objectively, negative generalisations about minorities (old or new) are racist, not in eye of the observer @luna17activist
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) August 23, 2014

Now he did start to get slippery:

@jewssf This was a comment about France (as you know). I suggest you read Andrew Hussey's book The French Intifada. @luna17activist
— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) August 23, 2014

 Yes I did know it was about France but how does that change anything?

.@DAaronovitch whichever countrys minorities you were referring to, such generalisations are racist as you must surely know @luna17activist
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) August 23, 2014

I also mentioned that his last tweet was a non sequitur but now tetchiness was setting in as a nerve seems to have been struck:

@jewssf Yet again the use of the word "surely" to mean its opposite. You are a true Stalinist, Mark, in psychology and practice.
— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) August 23, 2014

Wow! What was that all about?  How does using "surely" amount to Stalinism?  Reading back I wish I hadn't used the word surely because it should have been clear by then that he really didn't know that his generalisation was racist.  Also I if I didn't say "surely" I could have put the apostrophe in "countrys" making it "country's".  Still never mind, it was worth the bad grammer to see Aaro lose it like a complete idiot.

It must have been while I was tweeting something else that Aaro tweeted to a @rico_hands and me that "You retweeted this earlier: "The Zionist Jews own all the Media the Film Industry and are all Corrupt."  It didn't look like a comment I'd approve of and I said so and Aaro said it wasn't me, it was that Rico chap.  I know some people put all their addressees at the beginning of a tweet but if you're making an accusation you should only put the target of the accusation at the beginning and other addressees at the end.  Just a word on protocol because people can get the wrong idea. Anyway, I asked Aaro for a link and he told me it wasn't me that retweeted it.  So that was nice.

But I still responded to the stalinist thing:

.@DAaronovitch you're getting desperate now. Negative generalisations about minorities in any country are racist.
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) August 23, 2014

 So now he tried to modify what he actually said:

@jewssf To say that new minorities in France can be rife with anti-Semitism is not racism. If you want to argue that it’s not true, do so.
— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) August 23, 2014

 Now actually I don't think that's much better but is better in that it's not a generalisation.  But it is a rather bland assertion and it's devoid of any analysis as to what he means by antisemitism or any explanation as to why he thinks it's the case but anyway back I came still focused on the undeniably (though he did deny it) racist  generalisation:

.@DAaronovitch you didn't say new minorities are rife with antisemitism you said they hate old ones.
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) August 23, 2014

 Noticing that Aaro's reference to antisemitism meant that he was alluding to Jews when he said "old ones", I asked then what he meant by "new minorities" but heard no more from him.

Now all the while this was going on I was surprised that no one came along to help Aaro dig himself out of the hole he had dug.  None came until that Gerasite/Unrepentant Jacobin chap, Jamie Palmer appeared with this little gem:

@jewssf @DAaronovitch "Ethnic hatred has become a basic element in the everyday life of Israeli youth" Also a racist generalisation?
— Unrepentant Jacobin (@jacobinism) August 23, 2014

I just couldn't be bothered with him and I was truly feeling too sorry for Aaro to point that Jacobin's use of the word "also" meant that he was agreeing with me, that what Aaro had written was indeed a racist generalisation (also).  Aaro smartly ignored the "supportive" tweet too and he was promoting the young Gerasite only recently

But what of the statement itself?  "Ethnic hatred has become a basic element in the everyday life of Israeli youth".  Of itself, it isn't making a generalisation.  As it stands it could simply be a reference to the racist environment that Israeli youth inhabits.  I found its origin just now.  It's a Ha'aretz headline.

Of course, Ha'aretz is an Israeli newspaper.  Israelis are not a minority in Israel so the headline wasn't even about a minority.  So a great help Aaro's protégé turned out to be.  He confirmed my own point about Aaro's racist generalisation and lifted a Ha'aretz headline out of context.  I'm sure he'll go far but he and Aaro have to bear in mind that context is all.

Israel advocates becoming "discredited, irrelevant and marginal"

Cor, this is exciting. The Board of Deputies of British Jews is starting to realise that the game is up for hasbara, in particular over the merry dance formerly known as the, ahem, peace process.

See this in Jewish News:

Confidential documents have shed new light on concerns of the Board
of Deputies ahead of the suspension of Middle East peace talks and their
fears of over the potential for growing polarisation within the
community over Israel.


A draft document seen by the Jewish News looks to set out the possible consequences whether the nine-month process ends in failure or with an agreement, as well as to examine how community leaders should respond. It is believed to have been written around six weeks ago......


It warns: “The risk of arguing for the fault of failure lying squarely
with the Palestinians while many will at least partially blame Israel,
is that supporters of Israel will become increasingly discredited,
irrelevant and marginal.”

Alright, they still want to have their cake and eat it, "many will at least partially blame Israel" indeed!  Just a quick reminder here that Israel is the one that keeps building or expanding racist colonies in the West Bank and blockading Gaza and it was Israel who reneged on the commitment to release prisoners.  The Palestinian negotiators response was to apply to join some toothless international organisations and, after Israel had broken off talks, the PLO, with whom Israel was no longer dealing, went for a unity pact with Hamas with whom Israel had not been dealing in the first place.  This actually means that the breakdown is entirely down to Israel, much as it was back in 2000.  The difference now is that the Board of Deputies, for zionism in the UK, recognises that the old blame the Palestinians card isn't going to work this time, or ever again.

So what do we know?  The Board appears to know it is now becoming out of touch with the UK Jewish community and more general public opinion.  Its support for Israel is as firm and uncritical as ever but it has to watch what is supposed to be its raison d'être: British Jews.  Its real raison d'être has been Israel for decades now.  But it now recognises that to support Israel and to honour its members is a balancing act.  How it performs that is very much an open question.

Dershowitz and the truth: are they by no chance related?

Check this out in the New York Times.  It's various lawyers, academic, practising and both, commenting on the Pistorius case in South Africa.  They asked Alan Dershowitz for his take on the whole thing.  Of course, Dersh defends criminals for a living and for a hobby:

Mr. Dershowitz said....there are numerous ways to interpret Mr. Pistorius’s demeanor. One possibility is that he is telling the truth and is filled with horror and remorse at a genuine, horrific mistake. Another is that he is lying but is tormented by guilt, regret and the burden of having to stick to a fake story.

He could also be lying but have come to believe his account to be true. “I’ve had people who have really persuaded themselves that they didn’t do it, because they’ve been rehearsing and rehearsing and now it’s become part of their psyche,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

 See anyone you recognise there?

How are targets selected for promoted Tweets?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anti-Defamation League ditches antisemitic stereotype

It's here in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency mailout:

Abraham Foxman retiring from ADL

February 10, 2014 4:23pm

Abraham Foxman, the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League, says he’ll be stepping down in 2015. (David Karp)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, and one of the longest-serving and highest-profile American Jewish organizational leaders, is retiring from his post.
Foxman will step down on July 20, 2015, according to an announcement Monday by the ADL.
“For almost five decades, ADL offered me the perfect vehicle to live a life of purpose both in standing up on behalf of the Jewish people to ensure that what happened during World War II would never happen again and in fighting bigotry and all forms of oppression,” Foxman, 73, said in an ADL news release. “My years at ADL, particularly the 27 spent as National Director, could not have been more rewarding.”

That's right, at least half a million dollars a year. Bullshit can't get much more rewarding than that.

Uppity Rodent Part II

Being sympathetic to Flying Rodent on Ben Gidley's Bob from Brockley blog I attempted a comment not that long ago.  I signed it off with my usual Levi9909 but as far as the tech goes it was anonymous.  Well it got deleted within minutes of appearing.  I'm just posting it here so I can draw this Flying Rodent's attention to it on Twitter:

 

Anonymous said...

Flying Rodent - I think you may have been a bit too specific about the spelling of "as a Jew". Norm railed against these types all the time as do a whole ragbag of racists around here, HP and Engage, but Norm only employed the "zz" spelling and the "pet" prefix once. Sadly Bob here too likes to be precise, especially when it helps him duck and dodge his way around a critical comment about his condemnation of Israel's opponents. When he relaxes the precision he can "verbal up" like the old bill on the case of an Irishman/woman back in the day but you were precise so he repaid in kind.

You also missed Bob's presumptiousness about the lack of Jewishness of Israel's Jewish detractors. Apparently Israel's Jewish supporters do (or have) a lot more Jewish stuff than Israel's Jewish detractors. And what stuff might that be? Well you'll just have to ask Bob if you can stand the inevitable twists and turns. I think he means that supporting Israel is more Jewish than opposing Israel but it would be uncharacteristically honest for Bob to admit he meant that.

And don't miss either Bob's assertion that ""AsaJews"...claim their position is *the* authentically Jewish one." The definite article is vital here. These people are usurpers. They are not saying that they are as Jewish as the next Jew. No, they are saying they are more Jewish than Hirsh, Geras, Garrard, and Uncle Bob Brockley and all. Except of course, they aren't and Bob has already claimed that mantle for his brand of authenticity. They are actually a mixed bag altogether. You were right that some, not all, use their Jewish identity to bat away the bogus allegation of anti-Jewish racism. Some want to reclaim the Jewish identity from racist war criminals and their supporters. Some want to show solidarity with non-Jews falsely accused of racism for supporting the Palestinian cause and some want Palestinians to see Jews through a lens other than the barrel of a supremacist's gun. And there are still others, too numerous and varied to categorise. But for Bob, there is only one and it's a bad one.

Anyway, you've already been subjected to the old one two. One being the false allegation of antisemitism, two being the accusation of trolling. But then there's three and four, three being Bob's pretence at accuracy and four you being banned for one and two unless you stay away for a while which I think you might do without being told.

Levi9909

Actually the fact that the comment has now been deleted suggests that my points three and four, indeed, one, two, three and four were all quite accurate.

UPDATE: He's now reinstated my comment and replied to a tweet I sent but what a dodgy character.

@jewssf I did not delete that comment. It's probably in the moderation queue. But if you harass me I will delete stuff
— Bob From Brockley (@bobfrombrockley) January 27, 2014

But to be honest I'd rather get a reply from Ben Gidley about his alter-ego's plan to write about "the long-harassment of one Ronnie Fraser in UCU, a trade union." The "trade union" is actually his own trade union, you know, the one that some of his comrades left and at least one joined simply to attack it.

Zionists use Crystal Meth to Bust the Boycott

It's true, Zionists in the UK are trying to use the Co-Op Bank's former CEO's alleged drug abuse to get the bank to call off its boycott of goods from Jewish only settlements in Palestine.  Admittedly Marcus Dysch of the Jewish Chronicle isn't the most reliable of journos but here he is anyway:

The Co-operative movement has confirmed there are no plans to alter its policy of boycotting companies which source produce from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Israel supporters have appealed to the organisation to revisit the issue following the resignation of Co-op chairman Len Wardle, who quit the business after revelations about the conduct of its former banking chair, Reverend Paul Flowers.

The Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council this week requested a meeting with the Co-op’s new leaders to discuss the issue.

Rev Flowers, who was believed to be a key supporter of the boycott campaign, is being investigated by police over claims he bought, sold and used Class A drugs, including crystal meth and crack cocaine.

In May last year the Co-op implemented a full ban on engagement with any Israeli suppliers known to work with the settlements.

A campaign led by the We Believe group has also seen Israel supporters write to the movement’s new chair, Ursula Lidbetter, asking her to reconsider the boycott.

They seem to be suggesting that there is a link between using crack cocaine and crystal meth and supporting a boycott of the State of Israel.  Maybe they'll end up making the boycott look cool.  That's what the "just say no" campaign did for drugs.  Or maybe they're on drugs themselves.

Fathom This! Addressing the Hasbara Shortage

See this banner ad:



"Fathom fills a real gap"!? I didn't know there was a hasbara shortage. Obviously I was wrong...again.

Enrage Online?

We just picked up another follower on Twitter. They're called @Enrage_Online and they self-describe thus:

A non-Zionist, anti-racist force within the labour movement, we oppose
the oppression of Palestinians nearly as much
as we oppose doing anything about it.

And here's their first tweet:

We strongly denounce the antisemitic costs decision of the Employment Tribunal in the #FUCU case...wait, they granted the recusal
— Enrage (@enrage_online) November 11, 2013

Seeing that was a nice start to my working day.