Geoffrey Alderman now and then...

I got this copy of a Geoffrey Alderman JC opinion piece from the very useful Newspaper Direct website.  I don't know how it works but when I look for a newspaper article that I can't find on the newspaper's own site I often find it here.  It appeared in the print edition of the Jewish Chronicle dated 3 April 2015:

Racists seeking to destroy Israel

 

They deny to Jews that which they allow other ethnicities

UNDER WHAT circumstances should criticism of the state of Israel be deemed “illegitimate?” The nowcancelled Southampton University conference, “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism”, brought this subject into focus. But the question is hardly new.

Those of you with long memories may recall that, in 1956, at the time of the AngloFrench invasion of Egypt, a number of Jewish and — ostensibly — Zionist members of the British parliament found themselves at the receiving end of much communal opprobrium because they criticised Israel, whose armed forces had taken advantage of the invasion in order to neutralise terrorist cells in Gaza and the Sinai peninsula.[it was Israel that invaded Egypt in the first instance.  Israel occupied Gaza and Sinai until the yanks ordered them out.  I thought everyone knew that. Apparently the historian, Professor Alderman doesn't know that]

The MP for East Willesden — the highly vocal career Labour-Zionist Maurice Orbach — voted with his socialist colleagues to condemn the Anglo-French-Israeli initiative, and was subsequently booted out of his seat in a campaign whipped up by angry Jewish constituents. But in North-West Leicester there were few Jewish voters, and the local Labour MP there, who also voted against the Suez adventure, survived wider, vicious criticism of him. His name was Barnett Janner and, at the time, he was president of both the Zionist Federation and the Board of Deputies. What is more, at the deputies’ meeting on November 18, 1956, a large majority expressed full confidence in him.

There was a time when anti-Zionism was not merely a significant force in Anglo-Jewish affairs, it was fashionable. We need to remind ourselves that a former British chief rabbi (Hermann Adler) denounced Zionism from the pulpit, that the founding father of the Federation of Synagogues (Samuel Montagu) was an enthusiastic anti-Zionist, and the founding father of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue (Claude Montefiore) went so far as to blame Zionism for the rise of Hitler. [whereas Alderman would become quite grateful for the rise of Hitler] But into this sombre history lesson we need to inject the word “context.” The handful of Londonand Manchester-based Satmar chasidim who routinely join anti-Zionist demonstrations are campaigning against a nation-state that exists. The Jewish intellectuals and media personalities who apparently sympathise with them want to dismantle a vibrant liberal democracy —Israel — to have it replaced with a larger political entity in which antisemitism will be permitted to flourish. On paper, the “one state” that these extremes of left and right desire would be a purely secular entity. In practice it would become an Islamists’ paradise.[do vibrant liberal democracies ethnically cleanse whole swathes of population on the basis of assumptions as to how they might vote?]

In principle, today, we ought still to be able to distinguish anti-Zionism from antisemitism. In practice, the one has merged with the other. Anti-Zionists do not oppose the creation of a Jewish nation-state — such a state already exists. What they oppose is the continued existence of a Jewish nation-state. In seeking to dismantle that state, therefore, they expose their antagonism towards the very concept of Jewish self-determination.[there's nothing wrong with opposing the concept and reality of Jewish self-determination]

This is true especially of those who deny that there is any such entity as a Jewish “nation”. These positions are inherently racist: they deny to the Jews that which they freely grant to other ethnicities, and they do so on purely ethnic or racial grounds.[I know of no community for whom national self-determination is demanded on grounds of ethnicity and we shall see where Geoffrey Alderman stands on the question of ethnic equality]

None of this means that policies of Israeli governments cannot be legitimately criticised. Of course they can. But we need to recognise that, fundamentally, what drives the BDS movement is not antagonism towards Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, but hostility towards the concept of Jewish nationhood. This truth has been recognised by no less an opponent of the settlements than Professor Norman Finkelstein who, in 2012, launched a blistering attack on the Palestine Solidarity Movement’s campaign for the “right of return”, condemning it as a cover for its ambition to destroy Israel.[actually the BDS movement makes no demand regarding one or two states because no one knows how the people of Palestine will want the area/s constituted.  Finkelstein condemned not so much the idea of abolishing the State of Israel as a Jewish state but what he claimed to see as BDS supporters' lack of openness about the consequences of the right of return. To be sure Finkelstein is claiming to support Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state but he certainly does not decry its opponents as being antisemitic]

Finkelstein was absolutely right. Criticise Israel, if you must, to your heart’s content. Demonstrate to your utmost against Israeli domestic or foreign policy.

But do not espouse a cause that calls, even if indirectly, for Israel’s destruction and expect not to be condemned as a racist. For that is what you are.[we'll see who is being racist in just a moment]

Now I don't know why that piece has not appeared on the JC website but Geoffrey Alderman's latest offering on line is dated 8 April 2015.  This is the proposal whose opponents Geoffrey Alderman accuses of racism:

 under international law and in principle ethnic Jews have the right of settlement throughout the area of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River (including what is known as the West Bank), that this right extends to Jews whether or not they are citizens of the state of Israel, but not to Israeli citizens who are not ethnically Jewish, and that the state of Israel has a legal obligation to take any step and all steps necessary to uphold this right. 

Now that pretty much sums up Israel as is but it is rare to see it set out in such obviously racist detail. It is also self-exposing as to why there should be no such thing as Jewish self-determination.

Let's now have a quick look at how Alderman deals with the idea of abolishing the State of Israel:

It has been argued that the ultimate purpose of the conference was to cloak in a veneer of academic respectability the campaign for the delegitimisation of the Jewish state. Let us assume for a moment that it was. There is no subject on God's Earth that cannot be discussed in a university. Nor is it true that Israel is the only country whose legitimacy is currently being called into question. The whole purpose of the Scottish National Party is to call into question the legitimacy of the United Kingdom. There has recently been a referendum on that very subject.

Of course, the Scottish independence referendum debate didn't include any discussion of privileging this or that ethnicity over any or all others and Alderman manages to avoid alleging racism against either the SNP or the unionist parties.

But what of the "miscellany of Jewish interests" that had the conference cancelled?

Some terrible precedents have been created. I refer not merely to the gross betrayal of academic freedom. It will be said - rightly - that this betrayal was perpetrated at the behest and with the active connivance of Jewish interests. For antisemites the world over this is indeed manna from heaven.

Well yes that's true but the professor wasn't always so backward in calling forth what he saw as Jewish power.  Back in 2012, Jonathan Hoffman, for the Zionist Federation suggested to the Board of Deputies of British Jews that they adopt a policy of boycotting The Guardian.  And here's Geoffrey Alderman in the Jewish Chronicle on 26 January 2012:

Earlier this month, the Board of Deputies declined to adopt a resolution urging "all those who oppose antisemitism to refrain from buying the Guardian or advertising in it". The proposal, tabled by Zionist Federation vice-president Jonathan Hoffman, had already been rejected by the Board's defence division but the division's own alternative motion (a wrecking tactic if you ask me), noting the paper's "continued biased and anti-Israel reporting", and deploring the lack of action by the Press Complaints Commission, was also rejected. So, apart from rejecting both propositions, the Board did precisely nothing......

......my primary concern is with the arguments deployed by those who opposed the motion, and who presumably lobbied to ensure that it was defeated and its message never sent.

There is, for example, the protestation of Jonathan Arkush, the Board's senior vice-president, who reportedly instructed the deputies that, although he himself found the Guardian to be "odious", he nonetheless believed that "a boycott would be counter-productive and would damage the Jewish community's reputation".

What did he mean by "counter-productive?" That the Guardian's circulation would increase? That more companies rather than fewer would rush to advertise in its pages? And what did he mean by "damage" to Anglo-Jewry's "reputation"? That instead of being thought of as a docile collection of trembling Israelites we would henceforth be viewed with a great deal more respect and even - who knows? - with a tinge, a smidgen, of anxious deference?

I am told that, within the Board's defence division, some arguments equally as foolish were also placed on the table: that the passage of Hoffman's motion might suggest that Jews control the media (we should be so lucky though, if this fear is genuinely held, then the Board really should condemn the closing down of Press TV, which Tehran is blaming on the Jews); that a substantive and perhaps heated debate on this would reveal that British Jews were not of one mind (when have we ever been so?); that the Board did not believe in boycotts (not even of Iranian oil?). But of all these arguments surely none was more brainless than the argument that the adoption of the motion would play into the hands of antisemites.

Now Geoffrey Alderman has a very funny idea about what's racist and what's not.  He's also a little inconsistent when it comes to arguing his case whatever that might be.  I must say that his proposal for the world's Jews in Palestine would have been a laugh riot read out to an academic audience, presumably by a straight faced Alderman, assuming that is, that he wasn't joking.  But it's disappointing that he wasn't able to put his case for Jewish supremacy to the Southampton conference because I'm fully confident that in putting his case for Israel he would have made the most eloquent case against it.

UPDATE 11:02 17/4/2015: I've now found the Racists seeking to destroy Israel article on line at The Jewish Chronicle website.

Strange case of Israel's Australian Prisoner X

Here's a very strange case where an Australian guy wound up in an Israeli prison totally cut off from the outside world. Apparently even his jailers didn't know who he was what he was supposed to have done.  Back in 2010 he killed himself and that could have been the end of that but word about him leaked out.

Here's The Guardian:

Like the fictional Man in the Iron Mask, Israel's infamous "Prisoner X" was allegedly held in solitary confinement in conditions of such strict secrecy that even his own jailers were told neither his name nor the crime he had allegedly committed.

The man's identity became the subject of intense speculation when he was reportedly found hanged in his cell in 2010, but the prisoner's existence has never been officially acknowledged by Israel's government, which has gone to extraordinary lengths to stifle media coverage of the case. Now, however, new evidence has been uncovered by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation [ABC] that strongly suggests Prisoner X was an Australian citizen, Ben Zygier, whom it described a Mossad agent.

Although there has been no intimation of the accusations against Zygier, commentators have suggested it could only suggest the most serious kind of security case, perhaps involving treason.

Ok, so an Australian was held prisoner by Israel without charge or trial and eventually seems to have killed himself though of course he could have been killed.  Let's just remind ourselves that this guy wasn't the only one to be held by Israel without charge or trial but that's not the point here.  This guy was a father of two from Australia and Australia is an ally of Israel.  Did the Australian government know anything about him?

Australia's department of foreign affairs and trade (Dfat) on Wednesday launched a review into how its diplomats handled the case.

The review, to be conducted by the department's secretary, Peter Varghese, was announced after it became known that certain department officers had been made aware in 2010 that Zygier was being held in jail in Israel but did not pass the information on.

"Dfat had [originally] advised that it was unaware of Mr Allen's detention in Israel," a department spokesman said. "Dfat has now advised that some officers of the department were made aware of Mr Allen's detention at the time in 2010 by another Australian agency."

Earlier the foreign minister, Bob Carr, had said consul officials were not aware of the man's circumstances until his parents asked for help in bringing his body back to Australia. Under normal circumstances foreign embassies are advised if one of their nationals is being held in prison.

So some officials knew some stuff but not the foreign minister.  So what does he do now he knows?

Commenting on ABC's disclosures, the Australian foreign minister, Bob Carr, said he was concerned by the claims. "Those allegations certainly do trouble me," he said.

"It's never been raised with me. I'm not reluctant to seek an explanation from the Israeli government about what happened to Mr Allen and about what their view of it is. The difficulty is I'm advised we've had no contact with his family [and] there's been no request for consular assistance during the period it's alleged he was in prison.

It could because I'm in the UK that ABC's own reports didn't come up prominently in the google search but there's a lot on this case including information about the family on the ABC News website.

But aside from all the questions about who the guy was and what was supposed to have done it does seem clear that he was Australian and Jewish and he died in an Israeli jail.  So what is Australia going to do about it?  My guess is they'll quietly drop it.

Tutu boycotts Blair

According to The Observer Archbishop Desmond Tutu has refused to attend a conference in South Africa on leadership because Tony Blair was going to be there and, because of the war in Iraq, Tutu didn't want to be anywhere near the lying toad:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for Tony Blair and George Bush to be hauled before the international criminal court in The Hague and delivered a damning critique of the physical and moral devastation caused by the Iraq war.

Tutu, a Nobel peace prizewinner and hero of the anti-apartheid movement, accuses the former British and US leaders of lying about weapons of mass destruction and says the invasion left the world more destabilised and divided "than any other conflict in history". 

Writing in the Observer, Tutu also suggests the controversial US and UK-led action to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003 created the backdrop for the civil war in Syria and a possible wider Middle East conflict involving Iran..

Look how much Blair got for attending the conference:

A longtime critic of the Iraq war, the archbishop pulled out of a South African conference on leadership last week because Blair, who was paid 2m rand (£150,000) for his time, was attending. It is understood that Tutu had agreed to speak without a fee.

It would have killed Blair to agree to speak without a fee.

Let's see how Blair responds to Tutu's criticism:

In a statement, Blair strongly contested Tutu's views and said Iraq was now a more prosperous country than it had been under Saddam Hussein. "I have a great respect for Archbishop Tutu's fight against apartheid – where we were on the same side of the argument – but to repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown.

"And to say that the fact that Saddam massacred hundreds of thousands of his citizens is irrelevant to the morality of removing him is bizarre. We have just had the memorials both of the Halabja massacre, where thousands of people were murdered in one day by Saddam's use of chemical weapons, and that of the Iran-Iraq war where casualties numbered up to a million including many killed by chemical weapons.

"In addition, his slaughter of his political opponents, the treatment of the Marsh Arabs and the systematic torture of his people make the case for removing him morally strong. But the basis of action was as stated at the time.

"In short, this is the same argument we have had many times with nothing new to say. But surely in a healthy democracy people can agree to disagree.

"I would also point out that despite the problems, Iraq today has an economy three times or more in size, with the child mortality rate cut by a third of what it was. And with investment hugely increased in places like Basra."

Priceless! The poor state of the economy and the numbers of children that died had nothing to do with "genocide by sanctions" then. And didn't the west side with Iraq in the war against Iran? And who supplied those chemical weapons together with the delivery capabilities? It would be wonderful to believe that the ICC will one day be able to put these questions to Tony Blair but I don't think that day will come.

So how was Finkelstein?

Not so great, I'm hearing.  Here's a feedback from Naomi Foyle on the British Writers for Palestine website:

On Friday Nov 11 2011, at UCL, world-renowned scholar and activist for Palestinian rights Prof Norman Finkelstein appeared in conversation with Prof Jonathan Rosenhead of BRICUP (British Committee for the Universities of Palestine), discussing the proposition:

The Palestinians having being denied justice for 63 years, those who support their rights must endorse their call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), including academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

Prof Finkelstein also gave a public lecture in the evening, which unfortunately I could not attend.  Following is my report on the afternoon conversation, which turned into a debate.  I won’t give a blow-by-blow account of the discussion, which was videoed and presumably will soon be available online.   Rather I will just summarise here the main disagreement between the speakers, and give my reaction to it.

Jonathan Rosenhead opened with a clear historical overview of boycott as a strategy, and ended by saying that in the case of Palestine, it should continue until the Palestinians ask us to stop supporting it – that is, until the system of oppression they suffer under has ended.  Norman Finkelstein responded by arguing forcefully that the Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign should work toward goals based in International Law, not some vague, impossible to define, outcome; and that we shouldn’t feel obliged to follow the Palestinians’ lead, as previously this would have obliged us to support suicide bombing.  He said much else, including giving a review of the state of International Law on Palestine, and the helpful advice to cite this more in our literature, but I want to focus on this essential point of discord.

Frankly I was very surprised to hear Prof Finkelstein’s criticism of BDS.   I, and others, spoke from the floor, reminding both speakers that the demands of the BDS movement, as stated by PACBI, are clearly based on International Law:

[that] Israel withdraws from all the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; removes all its colonies in those lands; agrees to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian refugees rights; and dismantles its system of apartheid.

Prof Finkelstein responded by saying that while the first three demands are sound in law, the last, the demand for Israel to dismantle its system of apartheid, is not, because Israeli apartheid hasn’t been recognised by the UN or other bodies of International Law.  He claimed that without this legal underpinning, the goal of ending apartheid in Israel is counter-productive – that it ‘turns people off’; that BDS will never become a mass movement if we try to get people to sign up to tampering with the state of Israel itself.

I also tried to discuss this with him afterwards.  I asked him why,  if the situation in Israel fits the UN definition of apartheid,  we shouldn’t work toward getting iron-clad legal recognition of this fact.  But Prof Finkelstein rejected this approach, saying ‘ that would take 100 years’.

Underlying Prof Finkelstein’s hostility to this key plank of the BDS movement appears to be the fear that the demand to end Israeli apartheid is a disguised call to ‘end the state of Israel’, rather than ending the way the state is currently organised, which is how all the people I know interpret the demand.  After all, South Africa still exists as a state.   Personally, I think Prof Finkelstein is sadly out of touch with the robust health and rapid growth of the BDS movement.

Far from being a threat to building a mass movement, the demand to end Israeli apartheid is one that everyone can understand – every ordinary person on the streets of the UK knows what South Africa was like; all they need is some basic education about Palestine to see that apartheid is operating there as well.  Especially considering that the South Africans themselves are taking such leadership in BDS, and separate campaigns to End Israeli Apartheid are evident all over the internet, it’s a nonsense to say that the demand is unrealistic.  On the legal front,  the very recent Russell Tribunal on Palestine Capetown Session has recommended (among other pertinent goals):

The UN General Assembly to reconstitute the UN Special Committee against Apartheid, and to convene a special session to consider the question of apartheid against the Palestinian people.  In this connection the Committee should compile a list of individuals, organisations, banks, companies, corporations, charities, and any other private or public bodies which assist Israel’s apartheid regime with a view to taking appropriate measures.

In my view, the current BDS strategy is right on target, and I wish Prof Finkelstein would put his considerable legal chops in the service of the goals of the Russell Tribunal.

I also wish to respond to his second criticism of the BDS movement – that it takes its leadership from the Palestinians.  To deal first with his counter-example – in my view, the BDS movement is not at all comparable to the suicide bombing campaigns, which made no formal call for international support, and were never, to my knowledge, endorsed by any UK solidarity group.   Rather, solidarity works to provide and support democratic alternatives to such desperate, tragic, violent and, indeed, as Prof Rosenhead stated, politically counter-productive measures.  The Palestinians themselves have turned en masse away from suicide bombing as a strategy – as comedian and ‘extreme rambler’ Mark Thomas recently recounted in his recent Walking the Wall tour, countless Palestinians get through holes in the wall daily, not to bomb civilians, but in order to work illegally in Israel.   Instead, Palestinian civil society has overwhelmingly endorsed BDS, and taking our leadership from them is an essential part of the moral legitimacy of the campaign.

First, if BDS was just a matter of personal conscience, then indeed I would be a hypocrite for spending so much time promoting the boycott of Israel and not other countries with terrible human rights records.  Second, as I have stated before, it is not up to us in the West to dictate to the Palestinians how they should run their campaigns.   Instead, we can choose which campaigns we want to support, and then do so wholeheartedly, and in a spirit of solidarity, dialogue and willingness to learn.   I don’t believe in capital punishment for any crime, and would never endorse any kind of violence that was not clearly in self-defense, in the strictest sense of the term.  But as I have argued before on this blog, Palestinian violence must be seen in the context of 62 years of oppression, and ending that systematic injustice, in a way that is 100% consistent with the principle of Palestinian self-determination, is the only way to end that violence.

By criticizing this key demand of the BDS movement, and dismissing the paramount importance of the need to work in solidarity with the Palestinians, Prof Finkelstein is playing Jenga with the Palestinian struggle – poking and pulling away the foundational planks of its existence.   We don’t need that at this time.  We need an atmosphere of mutual support and co-operation between the legal, civil disobedience, and BDS strategies. I thank Prof Finkelstein for his very useful summary of the legal position of the Palestinian cause and Prof Rosenhead for his profound commitment to the principle of solidarity, and I place these thoughts on record in hope that they may contribute to a spirit of unity in the popular movement for Palestinian human rights.

Note: Jenga is a game played with wooden blocks, which players take turns to remove from a tower and balance on top, creating a taller and increasingly unstable structure that eventually collapses.  The word is derived from the Swahili term for ‘to build’. 

Finkelstein has been stating the same case for some time now but I don't think it is simply grounded in international law. Rather, I think it is grounded in what Finkelstein sees as international consensus. Consensus is a far more subjective notion and it may well be that Finkelstein's position accords with the consensus of the circles in which he moves or in which he wants to be accepted.

Tony Greenstein did attend the Friday night session of the Finkelstein talk and his comments are to be found on his blog and in the comments below this post.

Marwan Barghouti supports Palestinian bid for UN recognition

I just read this in Ha'aretz.

Jailed leader Marwan Barghouti has called on Palestinians to stage mass rallies in September in support of a diplomatic bid to gain UN membership for a state of Palestine.

Barghouti, a figure widely respected among many Palestinians, said taking the statehood quest to the United Nations was part of a new strategy that would open the door to "peaceful, popular resistance".

Barghouti was convicted of murder for his role in attacks on Israelis during the Second Intifada and was sentenced to life in jail by Israel in 2004.

"I call on our people in the homeland and in the diaspora to go out in a peaceful, million-man march during the week of voting in the United Nations in September," Barghouti said in a statement written from his jail cell in Israel.

Well I suppose it would show that lots of Palestinians support the idea but I don't know what the idea itself would achieve and I recently has some difficulty trying to find a Palestinian I know who would want to speak in favour of the UN bid at a public meeting.

But let's see some more from Ha'aretz:

The United States, the main sponsor of the two-decade-old peace process, has objected to the Palestinian diplomatic offensive, instead calling for a resumption of negotiations that were derailed by an impasse over settlement construction in the West Bank. Israel says the Palestinians aim to isolate and delegitimize it.

A U.S. veto at the Security Council is likely to thwart the Palestinian bid for full UN membership for a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Ok, the great satan's against it as is the little satan but what's their beef?  It might just be the aversion to the very word Palestine. That could be Israel's beef.  I really can't see what the UN's recognition of a powerless state would achieve and for all I know the yanks could be engaging in a double bluff. They might want the UN to bless the efforts of the PA.

Hitchens and Chomsky: So this is war

Noam Chomsky issued a statement in Guernica magazine shortly after the American invasion of Pakistan and the summary execution of Osama bin Laden. Just to give a taste, here's the opening bit:

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

And a couple of days ago Christopher Hitchens issued a counter statement in Slate magazine. To give you a taste, the title is Chomsky's Follies.  He quotes from the piece above thus:

We have no more reason to credit Osama Bin Laden's claim of responsibility, he [Chomsky] states, than we would have to believe Chomsky's own claim to have won the Boston Marathon.

Here Hitchens has directly equated "rather like" with "no more reason". Rather like is not no more. No more is the same. Rather like is similar. And in a forensic sense, as an excuse for an invasion and an execution, bin Laden's "confession" has no more validity than the claim that Chomsky won the Boston marathon.

But what made me do this post was Hitchens's resort to what certain people said at the time of 9/11.

I can't immediately decide whether or not this is an improvement on what Chomsky wrote at the time. Ten years ago, apparently sharing the consensus that 9/11 was indeed the work of al-Qaida, he wrote that it was no worse an atrocity than President Clinton's earlier use of cruise missiles against Sudan in retaliation for the bomb attacks on the centers of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. (I haven't been back to check on whether he conceded that those embassy bombings were also al-Qaida's work to begin with.)

I don't see any evidence there for Chomsky "sharing the consensus".  What he said does not amount to "shar[ing] the consensus".

Hitchens goes on to take a swip at Michael Moore for what he said closer to the time of 9/11:

At the Telluride Film Festival in 2002, I found myself debating Michael Moore, who, a whole year after the attacks, maintained that Bin Laden was "innocent until proved guilty" (and hadn't been proven guilty). Except that he had, at least according to Moore one day after the attacks, when he wrote that: "WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden! Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!"

But the quote doesn't support the idea that bin Laden had been found guilty by Moore "at least according to Moore one day after the attacks".

But since he is resorting to what people said back in 2001 or 2002, let's have a look at what Christopher Hitchens himself had to say in The Guardian published two days after 9/11 though obviously written the day before:

One day into the post-World Trade Centre era, and the question "how" is still taking precedence over the question "why". At the presidential level, the two questions appear to be either crudely synthesised or plain confused, since George Bush has taken to describing the mass murder in New York and Washington DC as "not just an act of terrorism but an act of war". This strongly implies that he knows who is responsible; an assumption for which he doesn't care to make known the evidence. Instant opinion polls show the same cognitive dissonance at the mass level. Most people, when asked if they agree with the president about the "war" proposition, reply in the affirmative. But in follow-up questions, they counsel extreme caution about retaliation "until all the facts are in". This means, in ordinary words, that they have not the least idea whether they are at war or not.

Over the years since the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979, the public has become tolerably familiar with the idea that there are Middle Easterners of various shades and stripes who do not like them. The milestones of this - the marine barracks in Beirut, the Gulf war, the destruction of PanAm flight 101 - actually include a previous attack on the WTC in 1993. And on that occasion, the men convicted of the assault turned out to have backgrounds in a western-sponsored guerrilla war - actually a jihad - in Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden had pretty good name-recognition among American news consumers even before Tuesday's trauma. He's already survived a cruise-missile attack ordered by President Clinton in 1999 (in the same cycle of attacks that destroyed a Sudanese aspirin factory in the supposed guise of a nerve-gas facility). Bin Laden is perhaps unlikely to die in his bed, but his repeated identification as a "Saudi millionaire" - we thought the Saudi Arabians were on our side - makes consistency in demonisation rather difficult; the image somehow doesn't compute.

But of course, that was the old Hitchens. The new Hitchens of the Slate article even managed to misrepresent the position of the increasingly deranged David Shayler. Shayler was imprisoned in France and the UK for blowing the whistle on "mismanagement and incompetence" at the UK secret service, MI5.  Here's Hitchens in Slate mag:

 As far as I know, only leading British "Truther" David Shayler, a former intelligence agent who also announced his own divinity, has denied that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, took place at all. (It was apparently by means of a hologram that the widespread delusion was created on television.)

Now follow the links to the New Statesman and the Daily Mail. From the New Statesman:

They [including David Shayler] believe there weren't any planes on 9/11, just missiles wrapped in holograms

And from the Daily Mail:

in recent years he's been scratching a living giving talks to conspiracy theorists about the September 11 attacks - last year he was ridiculed for insisting that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre were brought down by a U.S. Government conspiracy using "missiles surrounded by holograms made to look like planes".

Ok, he's lost the plot and is claiming that he is G-d and that the World Trade Center was felled by hologram wrapped missiles. But that is not the same as saying that he:

has denied that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, took place at all.

Now that must be down to sloppiness on Hitchens's part. There is no reason to verbal up anything David Shayler has said in recent years. There are though many reasons for a born again imperialist to rubbish the likes of Chomsky and Moore, though I am no great fan of either.

Hitchens has completely failed to make a case against Chomsky or Moore and he even managed the get it wrong about Shayler. But how did he forget his own take in The Guardian on the appalling events of 9/11? Apostasy's a funny old business.

By the way, The Guardian article published two days after 9/11 was titled, So this is war.

Video of Goldstone debate at Stanford University

This is from Victor Kattan's website:

You can watch the Goldstone debate at Stanford University, which took place in the Law School on 28 March here. In addition to my participation in the debate, Noura Erakat from Georgetown University, spoke alongside me arguing in favour of the findings of the report. Avi Bell from San Diego University and Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution argued against it. 

The debate attracted some attention in the press because Goldstone commented on the report before and after the debate. Roger Cohen writing in The New York Times described the debate as 'bruising'. In Foreign Policy, Bell thought that the debate might have had an impact on Goldstone's infamous 'retraction' in the Washington Post. Personally I don't think the debate had any discernable impact on Goldstone's opinion of his report as he defended it well in the face of fierce criticism. 

But you can judge for yourself by watching the debate here. Continue Reading... 

So hot a clip it is that it isn't even on youtube yet but watch this space...

Woops, I meant human rights ABUSES

Darn it. I've had a letter published in today's Guardian but I, not they, made a balls of it and by the time I sent an erratum they'd already gone to print.  The letter was a response to Jonathan Freedland's why-oh-why pick on Israel piece from yesterday.  Here's my letter, fairly hot off the presses:

While Arab regimes are oppressive to maintain the governments in power, Israel's oppression goes to the heart of its existence as a state to which Jews from around the world have more right to live than the native non-Jewish population. This involves the ethnic cleansing of the native Arab population in order to secure and maintain a Jewish majority.

Other states have carried out ethnic cleansing in the past. But Israel owes its ethno-religious majority to a recent, current and ongoing campaign of displacement of the indigenous population. That was true of the US, it was true of Australia. It has been true of many states. But Israel's crimes are more recent and, therefore, its continued existence is predicated on its human rights.

Even hotter off the presses (and more complete) is the correction I sent them:

There are major differences between the State of Israel and other serial human rights abusers that Jonathan Freedland names. Whilst Arab regimes are oppressive to maintain the governments in power, Israel's oppression goes to the heart of its existence as a state to which Jews from around the world have more right to live than the native non-Jewish population.  Freedland must know that this involves the ethnic cleansing of the native Arab population in order to secure and maintain a Jewish majority.  Other states have carried out ethnic cleansing in the past and others will attempt it in the future.  But Israel owes its ethno-religious majority to a recent, current and on-going campaign of displacement of the indigenous population.  That was true of the US, it was true of Australia.  It has been true of many states.  But Israel's crimes are more recent and, therefore, its continued existence is predicated on its human rights abuses.

Ok, they ditched all the stuff about Jonathan Freedland's sad lament for all those victims of human rights abuses outside of Palestine and therefore not Israel's responsibility, but it was me that dropped the word "abuses" from the end.  It was rushed of course, I didn't even separate the paragraphs.  But only the most ludicrous of hasbaranikim would posit that Israel's continued existence is predicated on its human rights.

Sorry about that.

Why is Goldstone now covering for Israel?

I'm revisiting this Goldstone affair because it's so troubling:

If you see Goldstone's op-ed piece in the Washington Post about his report and how it would be different if only the Israelis had co-operated and if he knew then what he knows now, the immediate issue is that he wrote the op-ed on his own and without any reference to his colleagues on the original report team.  Why was that?  Who authorised him to do this?  If he simply woke up one morning and phoned the Post and asked if he could jot down a quick and implausible mea culpa that would be weird in itself.  But how did it happen that the Washington Post was prepared to allow an eminent judge, Goldstone, to write such a ludicrous article and hammer a nail into the coffin of his career or at least his credibility as a judge of international conduct?

So the mere fact that he has written the article, no matter what it was saying, is both bizarre and plain morally, and possibly legally wrong.  But his logic is bizarre too. In my previous post on this I took issue with his focus on one case to the exclusion of others. But let's look again at how Goldstone tries to exonerate Israel this time around:

the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly. The purpose of these investigations, as I have always said, is to ensure accountability for improper actions, not to second-guess, with the benefit of hindsight, commanders making difficult battlefield decisions.

But if Goldstone is telling the truth now, then second guessing is precisely what he was doing then. Poor old Israel thought that there was some kind of weaponry in a house that happened to have 29 civilians inside. Poor old Israel responded in the only way a responsible state could respond. Of course, it could have been negligent in which case, Goldstone is confident it will "respond accordingly". But when a suspect exercises their right to silence, judges usually direct juries to refrain from presumptions of guilt, don't they? If what Goldstone is saying now is true, then he presumed Israel guilty. But let's take a look at how the 29 members of the al-Samouni family died. Here's the Washington Post from the time:

Just before dawn on Jan. 4, a sledgehammer crashed through the living-room wall of the home of Almaz al-Samuni in this southern enclave of Gaza City, pounding a hole wide enough for someone to poke a rifle through while shouting in a language she didn't understand.

"Get out of the house now," an Israeli soldier ordered, this time in accented Arabic, she recalled. Almaz, small for her age of 13, and her family quickly did as they were told, heading for her uncle Wael's house nearby, where by daybreak 92 family members had packed in thigh-to-thigh. It was a week into Israel's 22-day war with Hamas.

So some al-Samouni's were ordered into the house of another al-Samouni. I mention that because Goldstone didn't.

At least 29 members of the Samuni family died over the next two weeks -- including Almaz's mother and two brothers. Sixteen or more were killed Jan. 5 when at least two Israeli shells smashed Wael al-Samuni's crowded house. 

So it took two weeks for Israel's possible negligence, over which it will "respond accordingly", to result in the killing of 29 members of the same family. Again, I mention this because from reading the Goldstone re-report you would never know that. And there's more:

At least six others wounded in that attack died more slowly, over more than three days when the Israeli army kept emergency vehicles from entering the neighborhood, according to another teenager who had been stranded and later rescued from the house.

So Israel "kept emergency vehicles from entering the neighborhood". Negligence? Is Goldstone calling the witnesses liars? Just a little caveat here:

This account of the Zaytoun attack and its aftermath was taken primarily from interviews with a dozen members of the Samuni family who survived the assault, as well as statements and patient logs from Gaza City's Shifa and al-Quds hospitals. The information largely parallels an earlier account given by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which concluded that by thwarting rescue efforts for four days Israel had "failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law."

It's that absence of Israeli testimony again but Goldstone has severely glossed over the case of 29 members of the same family as if they were killed in one erroneous shelling when it took two weeks for them all to be killed and many appear to have died specifically because the Israeli army denied them emergency medical attention.

Well, in fairness, Judge Goldstone was only writing an op-ed for the Washington Post. He wasn't rewriting his entire report. Otherwise he might have mentioned the complaints of Israel using blindfolded civilians as human shields.  But somehow he managed to mention the recent murders at Itamar. He doesn't mention Itamar by name but see this:

the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.

Now why should the Human Rights Council condemn a straightfoward, admittedly heinous, case of murder? Is Judge Goldstone accusing a political or state actor of these murders? If so, he has one up on the Israeli authorities who appear to be as clueless now about the atrocity that took place under their own jurisdiction in a very secure settlement from which Palestinians are barred as they were at the time.  Is he doing again what he is basically accusing himself of doing in his original report? Assuming guilt by accusation? And who is he accusing? Will he now involve himself in unsolved murders the world over? I'm guessing not.

So where does this leave us? Goldstone has pretty much shredded his credibility which means he has in many ways shredded the original report. We can speculate as to why he wrote such a ludicrous article but the result is to undermine his credibility on just about anything, certainly anything involving Israel or any other pet project of the west.

I should point out that there is a certain amount of hedging in the op-ed.  There are ifs and buts blaming Israel for not co-operating and little hints that there were individual cases if wrong-doing but the negation of a general policy of war criminality  whilst hurling tabloid style abuse at Hamas does shows the general thrust of the op-ed to be an apology to Israel and an apologetic for Israel.

The best zionist approach to this would be to simply leave well alone now but many want a feed frenzy as  Conal Urquhart reports on the op-ed in The Guardian.

Israeli media responded to Goldstone's article with jubilation. The columnists of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper offered a conciliatory tone to the judge for having the courage to question his initial findings, while Ma'ariv writers were unforgiving.

One wrote: "He is undeserving of either forgiveness or mercy" and had perpetrated "a despicable and shameful act".

Urquhart picks up, uncritically, the story of the 29 members of the al-Samouni family. I think that says as much about Urquhart as it does about the harm that Goldstone has now done whatever the latter's motive.

We can speculate as to why so eminent a judge has made himself look so ludicrous and in so widely read a newspaper. People will say that he simply couldn't take the pressure, I think we can rule out bribery.  He could have been directly threatened or had members of his family threatened but all of that speculation would miss the point that Goldstone has written an utterly ludicrous article in order to cover for the racist war criminals of the State of Israel.

Ahava megillah no more

Not in London anyway.  Ahava is leaving its current address in Covent Garden because the neighbours are sick of the protests.  Here's the Jewish Chronicle:

The UK branch of Israeli cosmetics store, Ahava, is moving from its central London shop after years of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. 

Protesters claim that the products sold in the store are manufactured in a factory in Israeli settlement, Mitzpe Shalom in the West Bank but are "misleadingly" labelled as produced in Israel.

The owner of the shop, currently in Monmouth Street, Covent Garden, is looking for other sites after owners of neighbouring stores complained to the landlord following protests.

Supporters claim it has been "chased out" of its location by regular "noisy and intimidating" demonstrations.

A spokeswoman for Shaftesbury PLC, which owns the property as well as several others in the Seven Dials area, said: "When Ahava's lease expires in September, we will not offer them a new one."

Pro-Palestinian protesters have been demonstrating fortnightly outside the shop, which opened in April 2007, for more than two years. A counter group of pro-Israeli supporters also demonstrate outside.

Police were drafted in to control the protests and set up a meeting last October between the protesters and other shop managers.

Last week, four demonstrators stood trial for aggravated trespass after they chained themselves to a concrete block inside the store last year.

Colin George, manager of clothes shop The Loft, next door to Ahava, said: "I'm pleased Ahava is leaving. It's brought the street down. I've complained to the landlords, as has everyone here. Everyone would like them to leave. I wish they had left two years ago.

This is highly significant. Notice the local shopkeepers aren't complaining about the demonstrators? And there's another significant thing.  See this:

Richard Millett, who attends the counter-demonstrations, said: "Maybe the neighbours could have had a more positive role and spoken to the protesters, rather than take it out on Ahava.

Whatever happened to Jonathan Hoffman?

Protecting countries from war crimes allegations

Daniel Machover in Comment is free on The Guardian website arguing against the idea of "protected countries" for the purpose of universal jurisdiction:

The rationale behind universal jurisdiction is that certain crimes – piracy, war crimes, genocide, torture, crimes against humanity and hostage taking – are so harmful to international interests that states are entitled, and in some cases even obliged, to bring proceedings, regardless of the location of the crime and the nationality of the perpetrator or the victim. In accordance with that principle, in December 2009 a British judge granted an arrest warrant against Tzipi Livni, who had been the foreign minister during Israel's assault on Gaza a year earlier. It was withdrawn when it emerged that she had not travelled here after all, but the Labour government, backed by the Conservative leadership, expressed outrage that the warrant had been issued.

The coalition government claims that it is in favour of applying universal jurisdiction here. But it has brought forward proposals to change the law on arrest warrants requested by private individuals in international cases that will, in practice, deny access to criminal justice to victims from those countries allied to Britain who are prepared to withdraw intelligence co-operation or use other political or economic pressure to achieve immunity for suspects.

If the law is changed, suspects from a list of "protected countries" that includes Israel, America, China, Saudi Arabia and potentially others, such as Bahrain, will visit our shores with impunity, making us a safe haven for some war criminals and torturers. This outcome would be a sick parody of true universal jurisdiction.

Echoes of the "white list".

Israel must own up to calorie counting in Gaza

From the Gisha website:

·         The Defense Ministry must reveal the "red lines document" in which the state apparently established the minimum caloric intake required for the survival of residents of the Gaza Strip.

·         The court also demanded that the Defense Ministry reveal the names and positions of the officials enforcing the closure of Gaza, which were blacked out in the documents previously provided to Gisha.

·         In a two-year-long legal proceeding, Gisha managed to reveal additional documents connected with the closure policy: the procedure for monitoring and assessing inventories in the Gaza Strip, the procedure for approving transfer of goods into the Gaza Strip and the list of humanitarian products whose transfer into the Gaza Strip is permitted.

Gisha is Israel's "Legal Center for Freedom of Movement.

EU threat to treat Israel like any other serial international law-breaker

Sheesh, this is a turn up for the books. Several former EU leaders have suggested that far from keep rewarding Israel for its persistent breaches of international law, the EU should impose sanctions instead, just like it would in the case of any other country in breach of international law. Here's the BBC website:

A group of 26 ex-EU leaders has urged the union to impose sanctions on Israel for continuing to build settlements on occupied Palestinian territory.

In a letter sent on Monday, they said Israel "like any other state" should be made to feel "the consequences" and pay a price for breaking international law.

The signatories include the former EU foreign affairs chief, Javier Solana.

But in a written response Mr Solana's successor, Catherine Ashton, said the bloc's approach would remain unchanged.

An Israeli foreign ministry official said the proposal represented "a giant leap of bad faith".

Israel complaining of bad faith. Anyone out there looking for a definition of chutzpah? Look no further.

Still this isn't quite as exciting as it might appear.  These people are ex-EU leaders.  Their careers are all sorted now so they can do what they didn't dare do when they were in office.  And according to EU Observer their plea is falling on deaf ears.  Also, this is on the BBC website.  I listen to Radio 4 every day and I haven't heard any of this on the radio and I am guessing it won't be on TV either.  Still it is another addition to the drip drip that is gradually turning the State of Israel into a pariah state so it is good news.

Judge states obvious, shock!

Many thanks to a Simon Natas for posting this Guardian online article to the Just Peace UK list. It has Melanie Phillips's husband, Joshua Rozenberg, worrying that protesters who caused damage at an arms manufacturer's factory successfully availed of a "prevention of a worse crime" defence.

People may remember the case from back in July this year:

His Honour George Bathurst-Norman presided over the trial of eight campaigners who were acquitted of conspiring to cause criminal damageat a company in Brighton involved in the manufacture of weapons components for Israeli F-16 fighter jets.

Bathurst-Norman – who retired in 2004 and, therefore, sat as a deputy circuit judge – correctly directed the jury that a defendant has a lawful excuse for damaging someone's property in order to protect property belonging to someone else.

For that defence to apply, it is also necessary to show that the defendant believed that the other person's property was in immediate need of protection and that the means of protection used were reasonable in the circumstances. That would cover the case of a firefighter who smashes a window because he/she believes that a building may be in danger.

In this case, the defendants argued that they had damaged property in Brighton to protect property in Gaza from being damaged by the Israeli air force.

They also argued that they were entitled to use such force as is reasonable in the prevention of crime – in this case, war crimes. Unlike the "lawful excuse" defence, this is an objective test.

It appears from Bathurst-Norman's summing-up that the Crown Prosecution Service had accepted the defendants' claim that the Israelis were guilty of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, nearly two years ago.

That led the judge to make his personal feelings very clear while, in the same breath, telling the jury to ignore them. He said, for example: "It may be as you went through what I can only describe as horrific scenes, scenes of devastation to civilian population, scenes which one would rather have hoped to have disappeared with the Nazi regimes of the last war, you may have felt anger and been absolutely appalled by them, but you must put that emotion aside."

Using the classic formulation that judges adopt when distancing themselves from their own remarks, he added: "You may think that perhaps 'hell on earth' would be an understatement of what the Gazans endured at that time."

There have been calls for Bathurst-Norman to be disciplined over these remarks. He would no doubt say he was doing no more than reminding the jury of the evidence they had heard. The regulations under which judges may be disciplined say that a complaint must be dismissed if "it is about a judicial decision or judicial case management, and raises no question of misconduct".

That leaves Bathurst-Norman in the clear. Even so, I would not be surprised if Lord Judge, the lord chief justice, took the opportunity to remind judges that they should not appear to be giving their own opinions when addressing a jury.

More difficult, perhaps, is the decision to be taken by Dominic Grieve, the attorney general. Under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1972, he may seek the opinion of the court of appeal on a point of law in a case that has led to an acquittal. Whatever the outcome, however, the acquittal remains unaffected.

Grieve has been asked – by me and, I believe, others – to seek a ruling from the higher courts on whether the end can justify the means in cases such as this.

To some extent, senior judges have said it cannot – particularly Lord Hoffmann when ruling on charges of criminal damage and aggravated trespass against defendants seeking to disrupt Britain's involvement in the Iraq war.

But that case dealt with different offences. Without a clear ruling from the courts, there is a risk that campaigners will regard Bathurst-Norman's summing-up as some sort of legal precedent. It is not.

Hmm. I don't know if it is or it isn't. As the article says, there have been other examples of such defences being successful though I couldn't find any mention of the Raytheon case.

Zionists are particularly anxious about this case. If you followed the link above to the Daily Mail article, you would have seen that the headline claimed that the judge was accused of, guess what, antisemitism. If you read the article you would see that no one is actually quoted as accusing the judge of antisemitism, not even Jonathan Hoffman of Zionist Federation notoriety. Now that could have been interesting and it still could be. The judge compared the Israeli army actions in Gaza to the wartime atrocities of the nazis and, of course, the zionists in Europe are trying to get that kind of thing made illegal as it forms one of the examples of the stupid EUMC "working definition" of antisemitism. If that got tested in (and thrown out of) court, where would that leave the zionist campaign to have criticism of Israel made illegal?