Supreme and Other Sacrifices

Here's a very good post by Mike Marqusee, Remembering Szmul Zygielbojm:

Seventy years ago, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was crushed. In London, Szmul Zygielbojm took his own life in protest. He was a Polish Jew, a socialist and the representative of the Bund (the Jewish workers’ party) in the Polish government in exile.

He left behind a letter in which he explained his action:

“The latest news that has reached us from Poland makes it clear beyond any doubt that the Germans are now murdering the last remnants of the Jews in Poland with unbridled cruelty. Behind the walls of the ghetto the last act of this tragedy is now being played out.

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenceless millions – tortured children, women and men – they have become partners to the responsibility.

… I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, in their mass grave.

By my death, I wish to make the strongest possible protest against the passivity with which the world is looking on and permitting the extermination of the Jewish people. I know how little life is worth today, but since I was unable to do anything during my life, perhaps by my death I shall help to break down the indifference of those who have the possibility even now, at the last moment, to save the handful of Polish Jews who are still alive from certain annihilation.

… My life belongs to the Jewish people of Poland, and therefore I hand it over to them now. I yearn that the remnant that has remained of the millions of Polish Jews may live to see liberation together with the Polish masses, and that it shall be permitted to breathe freely in Poland and in a world of freedom and socialistic justice, in compensation for the inhuman suffering and torture inflicted on them. And I believe that such a Poland will arise and such a world will come about…”

Zygielbojm’s suicide was a deeply reasoned and socially responsible act. But according to the values prevailing in our own society, it should be dismissed or even condemned as a “futile gesture”, a “pointless sacrifice” – and therefore something pathological, neurotic, “self-indulgent”. All my political life I have heard this said about any sacrifice made for a just cause. It was said in the 80s about the miners who tried and failed to save their communities, and about the councillors who stood up for local democracy against rate capping and got surcharged and chucked out of politics for their pains. It’s being said now about Palestinian hunger strikers. It has been the stock-in-trade of Third Way, post-social democratic politics, where to sacrifice one’s political career or “viability” by standing up against power and prejudice is viewed as a self-evidently self-defeating folly. Surely it is this ideology of self-serving “pragmatism” that ought to be dubbed “self-indulgent”? What’s truly pathological and neurotic is the “common sense” of egocentric individualism, the obsession with personal success and status, the desperation to conform to an inhuman, destructive social order.

The Real Noam Chomsky? II

Sheesh! Where does Noam Chomsky stand on boycotting Israel?  I just can't keep up with him.  One of my co-bloggers, Gabriel Ash, wrote a piece back in 2009 taking Chomsky to task for bad reasoning over his opposition to BDS.  More recently, last year, I wrote a piece expressing surprise that Chomsky was supporting BDS.  And I remember when Chomsky was barred from visiting the West Bank and/or Gaza and thereby preventing from addressing academics there, Chomsky said how the Israeli authorities seemed to take umbrage at him not addressing Israeli academic institutions.  He said then (though I can't remember when exactly) that he had no objection to addressing Israeli academic institutions.

Well now, according to The Guardian, it turns out that Chomsky was one of many academics who persuaded Stephen Hawking to blank the Shimon Peres shindig:

Noam Chomsky was among 20 academics who privately lobbied Professor Stephen Hawking to boycott a major Israeli conference, it has emerged.

Chomsky, a US professor and well-known supporter of the Palestinian cause, joined British academics from the universities of Cambridge, London, Leeds, Southampton, Warwick, Newcastle, York and the Open University to tell Hawking they were "surprised and deeply disappointed" that he had accepted the invitation to speak at next month's presidential conference in Jerusalem, which will chaired by Shimon Peres and attended by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

Hawking pulled out this week in protest at Israel's treatment of Palestinians, in the wake of receiving the letter and soundings from Palestinian colleagues. The 71-year-old theoretical physicist's decision has been warmly welcomed by Palestinian academics, with one describing it as "of cosmic proportions", but was attacked in Israel.

"Cosmic proportions" I wish I thought of that.

But look what this "liberal (read zionist) academic" had to say:

On Friday the liberal academic David Newman, dean of the faculty of humanities and social sciences at Ben Gurion University in Israel, warned that an academic boycott "just destroys one of the very few spaces left where Israelis and Palestinians actually do come together".

If that's the case, that people in the same country cannot come together based on their ethnicity then that is a clear admission that Israel is indeed an apartheid state and boycott, divestment and sanctions is the most appropriate tactic against it.

Anyway, welcome aboard Noam Chomsky.  Stick around!

A Tale of Two Twinnings

Good news from up north, the north of England that is.  See this report from the Lancashire Telegraph:

PLANS to twin Pendle with a town in the West Bank in Palestine have now been made official.

Pendle’s mayor, Coun Asjad Mahmood, accepted the invitation to become president of the Pendle Palestine Twinning Group (PPTG) and signed the letter of confirmation to approve the link between Pendle and Beit Leed.

This reminded me of something I read on the Socialist Unity site a few days ago.  It's actually a book review by Tony Collins of From Beirut to Jerusalem by Dr. Swee Chai Ang.  This is the bit that the above twinning reminded me of:

Before I left London, the representative of a Miners’ Support Group in Yorkshire had called on me and given me twenty-four greeting cards, from twenty-four mining families in her village, to take to the people of the camps. The coal-miners of Britain had been out on strike for a year, stretching from 1984 into 1985. Conditions were very difficult throughout the strike, and many mining families had to sell their furniture and possessions to survive.

During the strike, the British miners had their equivalent of the General Union of Palestinian Women. The miners’ wives, mothers, sisters and grandmothers organised themselves into Miners’ Support Groups, and these women ran soup kitchens to feed the community, travelled all over Britain on fundraising tours, and kept everyone’s morale up during the darkest moments. Like the Palestinian women, they formed the backbone of the community.

The British press scorned the ending of the strike as a “defeat”, but my Palestinian friends in Chatila camp called it a victory. Their reasong was simple: any group who could hold out for a whole year under those conditions won a great victory.

 Everyday tales of people in struggle.

A Brief History of My Previous Headline

Did you see my previous headline?  It was A Brief History of Stephen Hawking.  I tweeted the post thus:

We're on the move now like an idea whose Brief History of Time has come. Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott #BDS jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/a-brie…
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) May 8, 2013

Later on I saw some tweets touting a Daily Beast article on the Stephen Hawking affair.  Look at the headline: A Brief History of Hawking’s Boycott.  I must say it's a very interesting article by Matthew Kalman which was posted to the Beast site at 3 pm.  Mine was posted at 2:33 pm and my tweet was at 2:42.  Coincidence? Probably. I just don't want anyone thinking I copied the Daily Beast, that's all.

A Brief History of Stephen Hawking

It's big news that Stephen Hawking is boycotting some shindig in Jerusalem hosted by Israeli President and war criminal Shimon Peres.  Here's The Guardian:

Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president's conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres's 90th birthday.

Hawking is in very poor health, but last week he wrote a brief letter to the Israeli president to say he had changed his mind. He has not announced his decision publicly, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking's approval described it as "his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there".

Well that's not the history bit. This is:

Hawking has visited Israel four times in the past. Most recently, in 2006, he delivered public lectures at Israeli and Palestinian universities as the guest of the British embassy in Tel Aviv. At the time, he said he was "looking forward to coming out to Israel and the Palestinian territoriesand excited about meeting both Israeli and Palestinian scientists".

Since then, his attitude to Israel appears to have hardened. In 2009, Hawking denounced Israel's three-week attack on Gaza, telling Riz Khan on Al-Jazeera that Israel's response to rocket fire from Gaza was "plain out of proportion … The situation is like that of South Africa before 1990 and cannot continue."

Wonderful stuff.  As Dr Martin Luther King might have said, "we're on the move now, like an idea whose Brief History of Time has come".

Morgan Freeman to Cross the BDS line?

That's my guess at this late hour anyway.

It's very sad but it looks the veteran US actor, Morgan Freeman, is going to be crossing the BDS line tonight by accepting an "honour" at an event hosted by Canadian Friends of Hebrew University.

Here's what the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel had to say to Morgan Freeman last month:

The intention of the award is to honor your work in ‘combating racism and promoting knowledge and education worldwide.’ Given that Israel practices forms of racism through its system of colonialism, occupation and apartheid, and violates the rights of Palestinians to education and life, it is cynical, and nothing short of a dishonor to your lifelong achievements to be accepting an award from a group that is in deep support of an Israeli University complicit in Israel’s systematic violations of human rights and international law.

The Hebrew University is specifically implicated in serious violations in a number of ways. The University illegally acquired a significant portion of the land on which its Mount Scopus campus and dormitories are built. On 1 September 1968, about one year after Israel’s military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli authorities confiscated 3345 dunums of Palestinian land. Part of this land was then used to build the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University.

More recently one of Nelson Mandela's comrades, Ahmad Kathrada, who spent 26 years in an apartheid era prison wrote the following letter to Freeman published on the BDS South Africa site:

Dear Morgan - Friend of Democratic South Africa,

Allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Ahmed Kathrada.

I first met you in person when I had the privilege of guiding you on your visit to Robben Island some years ago. I was sentenced to life imprisonment together with Madiba and others in the Rivonia Trial, 1963/1964. After 18 years, together with Madiba and 3 others, I was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town where I spent the rest of my 26 years imprisonment.

On Robben Island I reminded you of the film of your prison escape “Shawshank Redemption” which made a huge impact on many of us.

I also met you in Los Angeles when Samuel Jackson bestowed on me an award on behalf of Artists for a New South Africa. At the same event, La Tanya presented an Award on my partner (and former prisoner) Ms. Barbara Hogan. In my mind, your presence once again confirmed you as a great friend of the new South Africa.

And this was followed later by Invictus.

What has prompted my letter to you has been the surprise that you are being given the “Key of Knowledge Award” by the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University Jerusalem!

What immediately came to mind were the words of Madiba: “…But we know too well that our freedom isn't complete without the freedom of the Palestinians…” 

I would have hoped that before you accept the award, you would have paid a visit to Palestine. I had heard and read a lot about the plight of the Palestinian people. The Russell Tribunal of imminent persons from different parts of the world have condemned Israel as an “Apartheid State.”

Last Friday, I returned from Palestine after spending a week there. To me, it was confirmation of a people living under worse forms of colonial rule, under Israel as a Colonial power, ruling under permanent conditions of Martial Law.

I was born in a South Africa that regarded people who were not white as lesser human beings. I have seen sign boards outside elevators and buildings that read “Non Europeans and dogs not allowed,” thus reducing those of us who were not white to the level of animals.

I have now personally witnessed the plight of the Palestinian people. They are living under conditions of permanent Martial law. I came back convinced that Israel is indeed an apartheid state. And in certain respects it is worse that apartheid.

Under the worst of apartheid times there were no roads strictly reserved for whites! There were no checkpoints manned by armed soldiers to ensure that Palestinians don’t break the restrictions. There wasn’t a 750 kilometer-wall, encroaching on Palestinian land, to separate Israel from Palestinians. There were no settlements springing up with impunity on Palestinian land. I can go on and on about an experience that will forever remain in my mind.

Finally, I am unable to comprehend how quickly Israel has forgotten the Holocaust, during which millions of Jews and thousands of Communists, gypsies, homosexuals, Russians perished. In 1951 I visited Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and saw what atrocities one set of human beings could perpetrate on another.

Forgive me for this lengthy email. It’s because my experience of Palestine is still fresh in my mind.

Warm regards, 


A.M.Kathrada 

There have been many other attempts at persuading Morgan Freeman not to lend his personal prestige to the racist war criminals of the State of Israel but the clock is ticking and we might have to chalk this up as a BDS fail.  Still with support from someone like Ahmed Kathrada we must be doing something right.

This is Zionism But don't call it Apartheid

I came to the infographic below via this tweet:

Discriminatory treatment of Palestinian children under Israeli law - infographic from @972mag #apartheid #Palestine goo.gl/kOCmN
— Gem (@whatgemmathinks) May 6, 2013

You'd think that Israel's treatment of Palestinian children might fall foul of some international humanitarian law about "cruel and unusual punishments" but of course there's nothing unusual about the way Israel treats them.It's been going on for decades.

The twitterer who linked to +972mag blogs at A Westerner in Palestine which is well worth a look at.

Barbara Dane: Hold On!

Kent State 4 Anniversary

Barbara Dane on the Kent State shootings:

More Barbara Dane here.

I only realised it was the Kent State Massacre anniversary yesterday from this tweet:

@mmflint Today, in 1970, 4 ppl gunned down by our own Natl Guard at Kent St U while protesting the Vietnam war. #gonixon #verysadday
— JoAnne McKee (@JoAnneMcKee33) May 4, 2013

which was retweeted by Michael Moore: @MMFlint

Google This! Google uses the P-word on its maps

This is from Middle East Online:

JERUSALEM - Israel on Friday questioned Internet giant Google's decision to replace the term "Palestinian Territories" with "Palestine" on the Palestinian www.google.ps page, after last year's UN decision to award Palestine observer status.

"This change raises questions about the reasons behind this surprising involvement of what is basically a private Internet company in international politics -- and on the controversial side," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.

The change went into effect on May 1, Google spokesman Nathan Tyler said in a statement.

"We're changing the name 'Palestinian Territories' to 'Palestine' across our products. We consult a number of sources and authorities when naming countries. In this case, we are following the lead of the UN ... and other international organisations," he said.

I wonder how Israel will react when they label the whole shebang, Palestine, rather than just the West Bank and Gaza. 

Denis MacShameless: Working Definition of Chutzpah!

Disgraced former Member of the UK Parliament, Denis MacShane was a witness for Ronnie Fraser in the FUCU case.  He was still an MP at the time.  Here's what the Employment Tribunal judgment says of his (and John Mann MP's) evidence:

We did not derive assistance from the two Members of Parliament who appeared before us. Both gave glib evidence, appearing supremely confident of the rightness of their positions. For Dr MacShane, it seemed that all answers lay in the MacPherson Report (the effect of which he appeared to misunderstand).....Both parliamentarians clearly enjoyed making speeches. Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not to his liking.

This was published on 22 March and since then I have been looking out for members of the motley crew around Ronnie Fraser to pop their heads above the parapet to explain away their shame.

Now MacShameless has a self-serving piece in Ha'aretz misrepresenting almost every aspect of the judgment:

I sought to make sense of the recent ruling on Ronnie Fraser, the college lecturer who sought to persuade an English legal tribunal that the ban decreed by his union against contact with fellow Jews in Israeli colleges and universities was anti-Semitic in its politics.

That's just from the intro but it gives you a taste of what's to come.  The judgment is remarkably straightforward and the language is perfectly accessible.  To imply that one has to struggle to make sense of it is itself a lie.

And here's  another taste since it takes him so long to get to the point:

To read in full the banal, contemptuous dismissal of Ronnie Fraser's efforts to show that a one-sided ban on contacts with Jewish academics in Israel, decreed by the U.K.’s University and College Union (of lecturers), was an assault on his existence as a Jew, was a miserable experience.

That might explain why he hasn't linked to the judgment itself.

Of course, trying to use an employment tribunal as a means to take on institutional anti-Semitism was always a risk......[an "epic folly" even]

To Ronnie Fraser's brave legal team I expressed my concern that employment law judges were not people who were intellectually equipped to deal with the UCU's action against Jews in the U.K. and in Israel. But they believed that the law exists to protect the individual against a powerful, wealthy organization like a trade union.

Now that is interesting.  Not the ludicrous notion that a zionist lawyer cares about the powerless against the powerful.  The bit where he claims he warned Fraser's legal team of a possible disaster.  I know he can deny that that is what he is saying, but that is certainly what he is implying.

The ugliness of the tribunal findings beggars belief. The European Union's definition of anti-Semitism is dismissed. The work of the House of Commons Committee of Inquiry into anti-Semitism that I chaired – which forced a change in government policy to acknowledge anti-Semitic attacks - is rubbished. The efforts of Fraser to use the law are openly insulted. The view of an important public Commission of Inquiry into the 1993 racist murder of a black youth, Stephen Lawrence, which stated that the police are obliged to investigate crimes that the victim of discrimination or attacks believes to be motivated by racial or religious hatred, is thrown away.

The European Union doesn't have a definition of antisemitism to dismiss.  He is of course referring to the what's commonly known as the EUMC working definition and it wasn't dismissed, it was discussed:

52....As we have mentioned (and will more fully explain in due course), the Claimant bases his case in part on the rejection by the Respondents’ Congress (in 2011) of the ‘Working Definition’ of anti-Semitism produced by what was then the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (referred to above and below as the EUMC). He was content with that definition. Others disagreed, regarding it as exposing critics of Israel to the unfair accusation of anti-Semitic conduct. They pointed to the fact that the definition might be read as branding attacks on Zionism as anti-Semitic and precluding criticism of Israel save where ‘similar’ to that levelled against any other country

The working definition is also touched on, though not in name, in paragraph 47 referring to an earlier case:

Unlike the instant case, the racial basis for the charges was not said to be Jewishness but Israeli nationality. The Sheriff dismissed the charges, holding that the prosecution must be content with a charge of breach of the peace (to which there was no apparent answer). On the subject of freedom of expression, he remarked (para 46):

And if persons on a public march designed to protest against and publicise alleged crimes committed by a State and its army are afraid to name that State for fear of being charged with racially aggravated behaviour, it would render worthless their Article 10(1) rights. Presumably their placards would have to read, “Genocide in an unspecified part of the Middle East”; “Boycott an unspecified State in the Middle East”, etc.

The judgment didn't simply rubbish the rubbishy All Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism, it exposed it as utterly bogus, especially in its treatment of the UCU:

157 Complaint (2) is also devoid of any merit. The Respondents defended themselves courteously but robustly against treatment by the Parliamentary Committee the fairness of which was, to put it at its very lowest, open to question.

Regarding the Stephen Lawrence Report, zionists have been misrepresenting one feature of it which is that victims of an offence are entitled to be taken seriously if they believe the offence against them to have been motivated by racism.  Zionists have been trying to make out since publication of what is more commonly known as the MacPherson Report that this means that representatives of minority groups are entitled arbitrarily to define what they believe to be racism against their community, period.  It's ludicrous and it trivialises a real issue for black and other minority communities in their dealings with various institutions.  But what did the judgment say again about MacShane and MacPherson?

For Dr MacShane, it seemed that all answers lay in the MacPherson Report (the effect of which he appeared to misunderstand)

You can say that again! Oh, I did say that again.

Of course there will be some Jewish legal experts in London who insist the case should not have been fought.

Hindsight's a wonderful thing. My guess is that MacShane read the withering criticisms of Adam Wagner and Jonathan Goldberg QC.  Also, he comes close to contradicting his earlier warning to the "Fraser's brave legal team". Thinking about that again, when he warned the legal team, he cannot simply have meant that this could go either way because any adversarial case could, in theory, go either way.  Ach, why even consider it? We've only MacShane's word for what he did or didn't say anyway.

Ok, that wraps it up I suppose.  Let's just see how MacShane is signed off:

Denis MacShane (@DenisMacShane ) is Britain’s former Minister for Europe and author of ‘Globalising Hatred: the New Antisemitism’ (Weidenfeld, 2008).

No mention of his being an Ex-MP.  Do they know he is an Ex-MP?  Do they know why he is an Ex-MP?  Dishonesty is the answer to that.

Another Critical Zionist take on the FUCU case?

This time it's Joshua Rozenberg, one time legal correspondent for the BBC, writing for Standpoint magazine's May 2013 edition.

Let's just establish his Zionist credentials.  I know I already said he used to work, maybe still works, for the beeb but let's see how he sets out his stall:

The UCU is far from being a supporter of the Jewish state. Fraser's view is that his union did nothing to stop institutionally anti-Semitic acts over several years. At its policy-making conferences in 2007 and in 2009, members supported academic boycotts of Israel. On legal advice, neither motion was implemented by the union's executive.

I can well understand how upset Fraser was by decisions such as these. In 2007, the National Union of Journalists voted at its annual meeting for a boycott of Israeli goods, a policy I could not possibly have respected. I resigned, after more than 30 years' loyal membership.

So he was a loyal union member until it took a decision he didn't like and that was to support the Palestinian cause. Now where's the criticism of the Fraser v University and College Union Employment Tribunal case?

Of ten complaints brought by Fraser, all but one were dismissed as without substance, devoid of merit, palpably groundless, obviously untenable or hopeless. The tenth had been brought 18 months too late. 

Well that's just factual and Rozenberg, as a Zionist, wants as badly as any antisemite to conflate Jewishness with support for the Zionist project so he's working within quite narrow constraints:

But, even if the tribunal was justified in concluding that Zionism was not a protected characteristic, this finding  — though not binding on other courts — is glib to the point of offensiveness. 

So what's the beef exactly?

Fraser cannot be blamed for bringing a misguided claim. But who transformed what the tribunal described as Fraser's "simple, down-to-earth" oral evidence into the "magnificent prose" of his written case? Fraser was represented by Anthony Julius, a leading campaigner against anti-Semitism. But the best advocate is one who can take a detached view of a client's case.

What explanation did Julius give the Jewish Chronicle? Since he is the newspaper's chairman, I was confident he would favour it with an interview. Alas, he was "unavailable for comment this week".

I didn't mention that Joshua Rozenberg is Melanie Phillips's husband.  She works for the Jewish Chronicle.  Why doesn't she get in touch with Anthony Julius?

Still no sign of Anthony Julius but his Wikipedia entry shows signs of life

I just did a quick google search for Anthony Julius and his Wikipedia entry was the first site to appear.  Look at this:

Anthony Julius (born 1956) is a British lawyer and academic, known for his actions on behalf of Diana, Princess of Wales, Deborah Lipstadt and more recently Heather Mills and Ronnie Fraser's "act of epic folly"[1]. He is Deputy Chairman for the London law firm Mishcon de Reya.

Good to see some Wikipedia editors are on the ball.

Zionists making presence felt at BBC?

No sooner had I read an Electronic Intifada article about how Zionist have taken top posts at the BBC than I read that a programme questioning the story of the exile of Jews from Palestine has been pulled from BBC 4.

The details of the programme are still up on the Radio Times website.  Here's the blurb:

The exile of the Jewish people has played a central role in Christian and Jewish theology for nearly 2,000 years, even being mentioned in Israel's national anthem and its declaration of independence. But what if the exile never actually happened?

This documentary by Ilan Ziv looks at new evidence that suggests the majority of the Jewish people may not have been exiled following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Travelling from Galilee to Jerusalem and the catacombs of Rome, the film invites us to review and rethink our ideas around the exile, raising important ethical questions about its impact on present-day Middle Eastern issues along the way.

Here's what The Commentator has to say:

BBC documentary set to air last night has been mysteriously pulled from the broadcaster's line-up and has so far failed to appear on its online iPlayer service.

The programme, entitled, "Jerusalem: An Archaeological Mystery Story" was set to air on BBC Four last night at 9pm but was sharply pulled from the line-up in lieu of a programme called, "The Man Who Discovered Egypt" - a repeat of documentary about the British Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie.

The Jerusalem programme was noted by the Guardian's Martin Skegg as, "likely [to] ruffle some feathers" as it deals with the sensitive subject of Jewish exile from Jerusalem in 70AD.

The documentary is closely linked to Ziv's feature film, "Exile" which holds a similar description.

The BBC told The Commentator over its audience participation telephone service that the film was initially brought in to "supplement" the BBC Four series on archaeology and history but that the station's planning department decided at the last minute that the documentary would not "fit editorially".

The BBC insisted that it "plans to show the programme in the future".

The Beeb's explanation doesn't fully explain why it was pulled from the schedule given that it was considered an editorial fit when the schedule was drawn up and for a long while after.  But it certainly doesn't explain why it's been withheld from iPlayer.

And the Beeb "insisted that it "plans to show the programme in the future"".  Well we shall see or maybe we won't.

Professor Alderman Hasn't got a Prayer

Here's a little noticed quirky comment from Professor Geoffrey Alderman in the Jewish Chronicle the week before last.  Last week's edition was the one that had Jonathan Goldberg QC ridiculing the notion of support for the Zionist project or attachment to the State of Israel being intrinsic to the Jewish identity.

Now let's have a look at what Alderman says:

The argument that "an attachment to Israel… is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness" is so manifestly absurd (I had only to consult my daily prayer book to reassure myself on this point) that I cannot believe any higher court would accept it. But if, indeed, at least for the moment, this ridiculous argument holds centre stage, it is blindingly obvious that it must be challenged - if not in a court of law then in some other public forum.

Now let's have a look at Jonathan Goldberg QC's comment on this:

The critics have chosen to take five words out of context from this much longer passage in order to condemn the court for allegedly not recognising the attachment between the Jewish religion and Israel.

In context, the court was saying no more than that an attachment to the modern State of Israel (“modern” is important here) is not intrinsic to Jewishness. And that is surely correct.

Apparently Geoffrey Alderman has a very modern or even post-modern Jewish prayer book.

Of course, if his prayer book does include prayers for the modern State of Israel this begs the question of what the Jewish identity consisted of before the state was established.  There's also the fact that prayer books in Hebrew and English which do mention or include prayers for the President and State of Israel also tend to include a prayer for Queen Elizabeth II, "Defender of the Faith".  Would Alderman say that royalism is intrinsic to the Jewish identity?  Maybe he would....

CORRECTION: According to Roland Rance in the comments

the prayer book includes a prayer for "the President OF the State of Israel", not "the President AND the State of Israel". Not quite the same thing...

Yup, not quite the same thing and it still begs the question, what does Professor Alderman's prayer book say that makes the Zionist project or the State of Israel intrinsic to the Jewish identity?

The Future or Maybe the Past of a Rotten Definition of Antisemitism

This article was first written and posted by my co-blogger, Gabriel Ash, back on 26 July 2009.  It's wonderfully prophetic except the attempt to work a bogus definition into the law may have suffered a fatal setback.  Now read on......

---

I have written at length about the excessively broad way in which the term 'antisemitism' is used, for example here. And a lot more on the subject and the much idiocy surrounding it can be found here on JSF through the tag cloud or the search function to the right. But this takes the cake. Hat tip to the post below for leading me to it.

From the REPORT OF THE ALL-PARTY PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO ANTISEMITISM of 2006:

We take into account the view expressed in the Macpherson report of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry that a racist act is defined by its victim. It is not acceptable for an individual to say ‘I am not a racist’ if his or her words or acts are perceived to be racist. We conclude that it is the Jewish community itself that is best qualified to determine what does and does not constitute antisemitism.

This paragraph is a fine example of spinning valid ideas and torturing them until they confess to unwarranted conclusions that serve sinister interests. The cited Macpherson report of 1999 examined institutional racism in the context of police investigations and policing in communities of color. The report, quite contrary to the poor reading above, did not identify racism as whatever the victim imagines. It cited plenty of hard objective evidence. For example:

One universal area of complaint was to do with the use of police powers of 'stop and search'. Statistics for 1997/98 showed that "black people were, on average, five times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white people. The use of these powers for Asians and other ethnic groups varied widely." Black people are also "more likely to be arrested than white or other ethnic groups". The Inquiry concluded that ' It is pointless for the police service to try to justify the disparity in these figures purely or mainly in terms of the other factors which are identified. The majority of police officers who testified before us accepted that an element of the disparity was the result of discrimination. (A Summary of The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (Cm 4262-I))

Only in this established factual context of disempowered communities policed in a manner that is obviously and indisputably discriminatory, the inquiry recommended that the police define as 'racist incident...any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person'. The report did not therefore define racism as whatever an alleged victim of racism believes. On the contrary, the report provided an objective definition of institutional racism that our antisemitism obsessed friends chose to ignore. However, faced with evidence of widespread, objective racism and clear evidence that police officers were unaware of their own prejudices, the report recommended that the perception of the victims be taken seriously (because hard evidence suggested that it was not) and an investigation of racism be conducted based on the claim of the victim rather than the perception of the officer. It does not follow that the perception of the victim alone should be sufficient for actually labeling behavior as racist. Classifying an incident as a prima facie 'racist incident' does not establish racism just as classifying a police investigation as a 'murder case' does not establish that a murder actually occurred.

The Macpherson report recommendation cited above is sound. It analyzes racism in the context of marginalized communities. In this context, the view and perception of members of those communities are systematically discounted. It is obvious that people who are subject to abuse have better understanding of that abuse than others; their opinion ought to count. That it doesn't is itself an aspect of racism and also an obstacle to overcoming it. Forcing authorities to take these perceptions seriously is therefore one tool in fighting racism. We should have a strong presumption that people whose perceptions of their own conditions are systematically discounted are victims of racism, and therefore, we should have a presumption in favor of the likely validity of these perceptions. However, it is not the perception that validates itself, but the objective evidence, including the evidence that the perspective of the victim is systematically discounted that creates the strong presumption in favor of it. Thus, the reason we need to pay more attention to what people of color think about racism is not the mere fact that people of color claim they are victims of racism but because there is solid evidence that they are and that ignoring their experience and perception is a salient aspect of it.

The easiest way to dispatch the ridiculous "racism is whatever feels to me like racism" interpretation of the Macpherson report is to generalize it. There are plenty of high earning tax payers who consider high taxes discriminatory. In their perception, they are victims. Are rich taxpayers in the best position to decide what constitute unfair taxation? They are plenty of men who think having to ascertain that a woman really wants to have sex with them is an unfair burden put on their frail male shoulders. In their mind, they are victims. Should men be the judges of what is a fair or unfair burden regarding sexual consent? There are plenty of self-described "nordic" people in the U.S. who feel federal policies such as Affirmative Action are unfair and discriminate against them. Are white supremacists "in the best position" to define what constitutes racism against white people? Closer to home, in our beloved Israel, there are plenty of Jews who believe that it is discriminatory against them that Arabs don't serve in the army and don't pay taxes on houses built without (unobtainable) permits. Should we really conclude that in Israel there is systematic institutional racism against Jews? These examples can be generalized in the following way: having one's expectation of privilege unmet is often experienced by the subject as discrimination. The superficial similarity of affect between the experience of suffering an abuse of a right and that of suffering a non validation of an unearned privilege does not of course warrant equal treatment for both; those whose rights have been trampled need to be defended whereas those whose unearned privilege has not been fully validated need to be educated.

In the case of the British Jewish community and antisemitism, there is no evidence that Jews are socially and politically marginalized in any way. There is no evidence of systemic discrimination by any state authority, and no evidence that the perceptions of Jews are systematically ignored by authorities. If at all, there is more evidence that the opinions of "the Jewish community" (a suspect concept to begin with) are taken way too seriously by public authorities. What other community can marshal so msny public inquiries and hearings on the basis of so little actual harm to its members? Sure, since antisemitism is directed at Jews, Jews have a more intimate experience of antisemitism than non-Jews. Their opinion thus warrants special consideration. But all the evidence suggests that the opinion of Jews is already given all the consideration that is warranted and then some. The appropriate level of special consideration should not include the discretion to define antisemitism in an unreasonable way for an illegitimate purpose.

That brings us to the next paragraph of that pathetic document. After telling us that the professional representatives of the Jewish community should be left to define antisemitism in whatever unreasonable way they wish, the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry proceeds to prove exactly why this level of discretion is unwarranted by providing a clearly unreasonable definition of antisemitism.

Broadly, it is our view that any remark, insult or act the purpose or effect of which is to violate a Jewish person’s dignity or create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for him is antisemitic.

Writing a good definition can often be hard, but there is a level of sloppiness that one does not expect from paid public servants with a degree in Law or two. According to the aforementioned definition, if I call Alan Dershowitz a douchebag (as I am happy to do), that is antisemitic because he is Jewish. Of course, it would be very different if I were to call Dershowitz a stinking crooked-nosed money-lending International Jew (to be clear, I don't; douchebag is fine, really). But the definition does not make this elementary distinction. This cannot be a mere oversight, as the report goes on to claim that the provided definition is based on an established legal model, and

...reflects the definition of harassment under the Race Relations Act 1976.

Let us examine this claim: The relevant paragraph from that act reads (3A):

1. A person subjects another to harassment in any circumstances relevant for the purposes of any provision referred to in section 1(1B)where, on grounds of race or ethnic or national origins, he engages in unwanted conduct which has the purpose or effect of-

• (a)  violating that other person’s dignity, or
• (b) creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for him. (UK Government)

Our drafters are somewhat cavalier with the truth. Their definition indeed "reflects the definition of harassment...." like a broken, scratched and foggy mirror. First, the whole matter of actual harassment, that is the question of relations of power and discrimination, which is the very core of the Race Relations Act, has been eliminated altogether. Then, so was the crucial phrase "on grounds of race or ethnic or national origins." Namely the drafters chose to broaden the definition of antisemitism by taking the legal definition of harassment from the Race Relations Act of 1976 and extending it to acts, insults, and even remarks that occur outside of any context in which harassment or discrimination can take place, and by extending it to such instances in which the "victimized" person merely happens to be Jewish even if the incident is not motivated by it in any way.

Sloppy? It stretches credulity. The drafters knowingly dropped specific language in order to define antisemitism as any instance of saying something nasty about a person who happens to be Jewish, regardless of whether this involves any discrimination or denial of rights or even any connection to the recipient's Jewishness.  The Race Relations Act and the Macpherson Report are both mentioned in order to create a false semblance of similarity to issues of racism facing communities of people of color. But these texts had to be gutted and mauled precisely because the agenda of the campaign against antisemitism is not to defend Jews from discrimination but to defend the unearned privilege that is accorded to (some) Jews in the West as a result of the role Israel plays within the global structures of imperialism. These sloppy definitions and their proliferation in official documents are both an example of the operation of this privilege and a strategy of expanding it by delegitimizing public challenges to some of the ideological beliefs favored by the representatives of Western Jewish communities, most notably the defense of Israeli apartheid.

Why go at length debunking a relatively unimportant paragraph in a three year old report? Note the MO. The All Parliamentary Inquiry did not actually use its own ridiculous definition in its own report. It knew better. For example, in paragraph 59, the report says "The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations...accept that when a Jew is attacked or a Jewish building is vandalised, this should not automatically be classed as an act of antisemitism." Nevertheless, the definition is there for a reason. This year, we find it quoted as if it were an authority of antisemitism by the recent EISCA report. (The same happened to the no less sloppy definition of the EUMC.) In this manner what started life as a trivial piece of bad writing slowly becomes received wisdom. Soon enough, someone will suggest writing this language into the law, citing all these previous citations as evidence of authorial weight and public consensus.

---

UPDATE from Levi9909: Maybe not after they read the judgment in the case of Fraser v University of College Union:

Complaint (2): The Respondents’ response to the report of the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism

77 The Inquiry was commissioned by Mr John Mann MP, Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group against Anti-Semitism, and a witness before us. A cross-party committee of MPs (‘the Committee’) chaired by the Rt Hon Dr Denis MacShane, also a witness before us, was appointed and began work in 2005. It reported in September 2006.

148....We did not derive assistance from the two Members of Parliament who appeared before us. Both gave glib evidence, appearing supremely confident of the rightness of their positions. For Dr MacShane, it seemed that all answers lay in the MacPherson Report (the effect of which he appeared to misunderstand). Mr Mann could manage without even that assistance. He told us that the leaders of the Respondents were at fault for the way in which they conducted debates but did not enlighten us as to what they were doing wrong or what they should be doing differently. He did not claim ever to have witnessed any Congress or other UCU meeting. And when it came to antiSemitism in the context of debate about the Middle East, he announced, “It’s clear to me where the line is …” but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to locate it for us.

 Now Denis MacShane is no longer an MP but he and John Mann MP were the charlatans who pulled this All Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism together.  Hopefully it will go the way of MacShane and the Fraser case.

Ask the QC about FUCU

Finally, the Jewish Chronicle article I posted about yesterday, you know, the one that was only online in pdf newspaper format, has gone online in normal website type format.  Is that html?  I don't know. It's titled Why the Ronnie Fraser case against the UCU was a legal and public relations disaster. and it's from the Ask the QC section of the JC.

As I've already posted on this I was going to just run my favourite bits but as I read through it again all sorts of questions ran through my mind.  So here's the whole thing:

Rebecca from Finchley writes: I was furious to read your comment last week that bringing the Ronnie Fraser harassment case against the University College Union was “an act of epic folly”. Surely it was high time the Anglo-Jewish community stood up for its rights, win or lose?

Rebecca, I am unrepentant in my view that bringing the Ronnie Fraser litigation was a legal and public relations disaster. All those concerned should first have reminded themselves of the rabbinical saying that “All Israel is accountable one for the other.”

It was misconceived in law, wasted a fortune in legal costs (rumoured in legal circles to be over £500,000) but worst of all showed no Jewish seichel or streetsmarts whatsoever. (Where did that money come from? I only heard about £50k and £70k)

You only litigate such hotly contentious matters if you are being dragged to court as the defendant and thus have no choice, or if, as claimant, you are sure to win. This case sent out the worst possible message to our many hate-filled enemies, namely that rich Jews threw huge resources at a failed attempt to stifle free speech. The result was entirely predictable and had been anticipated by several wise legal heads.(Well presumably there were rich Jews throwing huge resources at a failed attempt to stifle free speech but since many of the Palestine solidarity activists in the UCU are Jewish, I don't think they'll bring the Jewishness of the mystery donors into it)

Those who now react to this defeat with sour grapes should more carefully study the judgment, which even an old warhorse like me had to read three times for all the nuances. See http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/media/judgments/2013/fraser-uni-college-unio....

From a lawyer’s point of view, it is impeccably written and all too compelling. I cannot see any viable appeal arising from it and I would predict further damage and ignominious failure if such were attempted.

I do not accept that the court was antisemitic, as Dr David Hirsh and others have insinuated. Should Jews now be whiners who cannot admit we fought the wrong battle and miscalculated badly? (ah but Mr  Goldberg doesn't understand the political stakes. The court actually stated the obvious.  The court merely said what the Palestine solidarity activists were arguing all along. So what could Hirsh et al do? Own up to bad faith allegations of antisemitism? There was of course another path open to them, the technicality path tried by Paul Usiskin at Open Zion and Sarah Annes Brown at Harry's Place but their dishonesty is as transparent as Hirsh's, just not as ludicrous.)

Do those who so rashly suggest on such shaky foundations that an English court was antisemitic have any conception of the damage they are doing to our community thereby? (I don't think the courts will judge the whole Jewish community by the bogus reasoning and grandstanding of a bunch of chancers but Goldberg's the QC, not me)

Of the 10 factual complaints brought by Mr Fraser against the union, all but one were found to be unmeritorious after an exhaustive 20-day evidential investigation, with detailed reasons being given as to why the court rejected them. And even that one was brought out of time.

A main premise underpinning the claim — that the union was responsible in law for anti-Israel views promulgated by individual members in its annual congresses and in-house internet chatroom — was held wrong in law. (But it was only an error in law.  I wouldn't have known that and I don't think it would be obvious to everyone that things happening under the auspices of a union aren't the responsibility of the union.) Nor was that by any means the only error of law.(Nor was it the only issue period.) 

The underlying notion that a commitment to Zionism should be a “protected characteristic” in English employment law was in my view almost as fanciful as suggesting that supporting Tottenham Hotspur should be a protected characteristic, because so many Jews do so.(I've often said similar, at least I used to want to ask if it's antisemitic to not like smoked salmon beigels.  I'll use the Tottenham Hotspur argument now.  But this does blow the bogus concept of the "new antisemitism" away. Some zionists try to attach the more obvious forms of antisemitism to arguments against zionism but what they've been trying on for some decades now is the argument that simply opposing the State of Israel is antisemitic)

Who is qualified to say, unless they sat through the 20 days of evidence, that the particular criticisms made of the evidence of Jeremy Newmark and two MPs were not reasonable. And just as important, why did Mr Newmark and the others ever voluntarily place themselves in a position to be so criticised in support of a claim brought on such dubious legal foundations?(Regarding the MPs this is important.  Mann claimed to know where the line was between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. The judgment noted with a sneer that he was unable to locate the line for the Tribunal. Other witnesses couldn't agree on what amounted to antisemitism with regard to criticism of the State of Israel.  Fraser said that calling Israel an apartheid state was antisemitic whilst Mr Whine of the CST said it wasn't.  The dismissal of Denis MacShane's evidence was important too. He tried to use the MacPherson Report to support Fraser's case but the judgment said that MacShane didn't understand MacPherson.  The MacPherson Report arising out of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry has been used by many Zionists to justify the working definition of antisemitism.  See Gabriel Ash on this. Suffice to say, this judgment should blow the whole shebang away, the Zionist abuse of the Macpherson Report, the so-called EUMC Working Definition of antisemitism and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Antsemitism.

So much for the MPs. What about Newmark?  What possessed him to lie to a court about an incident involving himself?  He's the CEO of a group, the Jewish Leadership Council, many see as the main liaison between the organised Jewish community and the British public at large.  He is now claiming that the judgment was a travesty. Does he mean about him?  The judges said that "truthful witnesses" exposed him as a liar. Is he calling these "truthful witnesses" liars?  Another question about Jeremy Newmark is how come he is still the CEO of the JLC?  Is there no disciplinary procedure?  Does the JLC approve of lying about antisemitism? Is this how it works?  Shocking! Not!)

And why should the court be criticised, as so many have done in this newspaper, for saying “a belief in the Zionist project, or an attachment to Israel or any similar sentiment, cannot amount to a protected characteristic. It is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness and, even if it was, it could not be substituted for the pleaded characteristics, which are race and religion or belief.”

The critics have chosen to take five words out of context from this much longer passage in order to condemn the court for allegedly not recognising the attachment between the Jewish religion and Israel. (Writers in the JC have taken words out of context to alter their meaning? Surely not! Has the editor, Stephen Pollard, read the judgment and some of the ludicrous articles appearing under his watch and given more prominence on line than this one?)

In context, the court was saying no more than that an attachment to the modern State of Israel (“modern” is important here) is not intrinsic to Jewishness. And that is surely correct.

I yield to nobody in my love for Israel and my support for Zionism. But who can ignore the stark fact that many fellow Jews, including, for example, certain Israeli academics and at least one sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews, are among Israel’s most rabid detractors, whereas many gentiles are fervent Zionists (Lord bless them).(Well not a nice way of putting it but I've always thought that an insidious form of antisemitism is the smearing of Jewish anti-Zionists as being somehow unJewish.  I won't and I don't say that Jews can't be antisemitic but when so many of us refuse to identify ourselves with such a criminally racist project as the Zionist project or the State of Israel who can say that Zionism is part of the Jewish identity?  And that's without getting into the thousands of years when there was no such thing as Zionism)

Why was not a fraction of these legal resources used instead to bring a private prosecution against those activists who disrupted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra or the Batsheva Dance Company?(I suppose that's up to the people stumping up the resources whoever they are.)

Such cases would almost certainly have succeeded. Having recently attended the stellar AIPAC conference in Washington, Rebecca, I have to say this debacle would never have happened in America.(Actually something slightly similar did occur in America but Zionism is better organised there and to the Zionist movement's chagrin, anti-Zionists are better organised here.  This means that Zionists don't have to resort to the courts there whereas in the case of the UCU they thought they had no choice here. If they did have to resort to the courts in the USA who knows what might happen?)

Unlike in the UK, communal organisations there are not constantly jockeying with one another for power and prestige — and the left hand actually does know what the right is doing.(See what I mean, they're better organised there than here.  But where are they going to go now?  Get rid of Newmark? Get rid of Julius? Get rid of the bogus allegation of antisemitism?)

All sorts of possibilities but the bogus allegation has certainly been dealt a body blow as some rare honest Zionists are starting to realise.

Tribunal didn't understand the "new antisemitism" claims Ronnie Fraser

I'm guessing that Ronnie Fraser's lawyer, Anthony Julius, is still on the missing list because poor Ron is being a bit of a loose cannon regarding the FUCU judgment.  This time he's talking to the Times of Israel.

In an interview with Times of Israel, Fraser says he was “saddened” by the decision, but three weeks on is stoical, buoyed by a stream of supportive messages from around the world.

He lost, he says, because the judges did not clearly understand what anti-Semitism is, particularly the “new anti-Semitism” which seeks to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state, not just the Jewish people. Those who believe that Israel is not “intrinsically a part of Jewishness” probably do not understand Jewish heritage, he says. The problem is that there is no definition of anti-Semitism enshrined in British law.

Now the judges clearly addressed the fact that there is "no definition of antisemitism enshrined in British law".    They even addressed the fact that there was no definition of antisemitism agreed by everyone on Ronnie Fraser's own side.

51... Among the vast field of witnesses on the Claimant’s side, there was an interesting spread of opinions on where the line is, or should be, drawn. So, to take one of many examples, Mr Whine of the Community Security Trust, an organisation which provides security, training and advice for British Jews, did not consider that comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa were inherently anti-Semitic, whereas the Claimant did.

The Tribunal also found that the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism, John Mann MP, couldn't seem to define antisemitism with regard to the Israel/Palestine conflict either.

148....when it came to antiSemitism in the context of debate about the Middle East, he [John Mann MP] announced, “It’s clear to me where the line is …” but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to locate it for us.

The Tribunal "did not derive assistance from" former MP Denis MacShane either.

For Dr MacShane, it seemed that all answers lay in the MacPherson Report (the effect of which he appeared to misunderstand)

Actually, for MacPherson see this post by Gabriel Ash.

So instead the Tribunal looked at the basis for Fraser's complaint:

11 By a claim form presented on 25 August 2011 the Claimant sues the Respondents for harassment based on his protected characteristics of race (Jewish) and religion or belief (Jewish). Many of the allegations relied on featured in Mr Julius’s letter of 3 June 2008, but more recent matters are also pleaded.

Now harassment based on protected characteristics of Jews used to be known as antisemitism or anti-Jewish racism but as we have seen, even Zionists can't agree on what constitutes antisemitism so we're left with harassment based on protected characteristics.  I know I've covered this many times but I enjoy it so much and it is very important because it blows away Zionist definitions of antisemitism so let's see what the Tribunal says about those "protected characteristics" of Jews:

150 It seems to us that a belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel or any similar sentiment cannot amount to a protected characteristic. It is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness and, even if it was, it could not be substituted for the pleaded characteristics, which are race and religion or belief. Accordingly, if and in so far as the Claimant seeks to base his claim on what might be termed a sub-characteristic (we are bound to say that we remain uncertain as to Mr Julius’s position on this point), we find that it is not open to him to do so. A separate matter, which we will address in relation to the individual claims, is whether the treatment complained of, or any of it, was ‘related to’ his Jewish race or his Jewish religion or belief.

And now let's look at the logic poor Ron deploys to criticise the judgment and what he thinks must now be done to win a future case:

“If I was to call you a dirty Jew, the police could take action. If I call you a Zionist and a racist, they won’t – it’s deemed to be political discourse. But Zionist is a substitute word for Jew.”

One lesson from the trial, he believes, is that the community must set, publicize and insist on its own definition of anti-Semitism – a challenge he is willing to take on himself. It must also reclaim the narrative of Israel being central to a Jewish identity.

“We have to define it as Jews, for ourselves. We can’t let other people define what Jews are,” he says.

So Ron has decided that anyone referring to zionists must be referring to Jews.  He then goes on to say that zionist Jews like himself must be the ones to define who is a Jew and that Jews must be defined as Zionists.  But that problem has already been addressed in the judgment.  Look again:

belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel.........is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness and, even if it was, it could not be substituted for the pleaded characteristics, which are race and religion or belief.

So even if Ron succeeded in having Jews redefined as people who support the "Zionist project" or have an "attachment to [the State of] Israel" he still couldn't claim that as a "protected characteristic".  This is abundantly clear in the judgment.  This is what leads me to believe that he may not be the "sincere witness" the judgment says he is or his lawyer, Anthony Julius isn't around to explain these things to him.  But then when it comes to defining characteristics or "sub-characteristics" of Jews, the Tribunal did say "we remain uncertain as to Mr Julius’s position on this point."

John "glib evidence" Mann MP still active on "Antisemitism" Circuit

I noticed this tweet last night:

Hear @bengidley & others at @compas_oxford Integration, Disadvantage & Extremism symposium, 8 May, House of Commons: compas.ox.ac.uk/events/forthco…
— Melanie BE Griffiths (@MBEGriffiths) April 18, 2013

 I wouldn't have thought much of it but I followed the link to here and found this announcement:

Integration, Disadvantage and Extremism

Wednesday 8 May 2013, 13:00 - 17:45
Attlee Suite, Portcullis House, House of Commons

The aim of this symposium is to reflect on the government's integration strategy and to do so in the light of both contemporary developments and recent scholarship. We intend to bring the most current evidence-based research to bear on urgent issues of policy for an invited audience of academic experts, policy makers and parliamentarians.

John Mann MP will open the symposium, which is organised into three panels.

Integration and disadvantage today
Rob Berkeley (Runnymede Trust)
Anthony Heath (University of Oxford)
Ben Rogaly (University of Sussex) and Becky Taylor (Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London)

Integration and extremism
Matthew Goodwin, (University of Nottingham)
Nasar Meer (Northumbria University)
Dave Rich (Community Security Trust) 

Is localism sufficient?
Ben Gidley (COMPAS, University of Oxford)
Dean Godson (Policy Exchange)
Maleiha Malik (University College London)

The symposium is being organised by the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London and COMPAS, University of Oxford, in partnership with the All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism.

Please note, places are limited and by invitation only. If you would like to participate please let us know by replying to pearsinstitute@bbk.ac.uk, stating your institutional affiliation and/or area of interest.

Apparently there are some good eggs in there but there are some rotten ones too.  The first thing I noticed is that the notice doesn't mention whose integration, disadvantage and extremism is being discussed.

Four participants I was already aware of are John Mann MP, Ben Gidley, Dave Rich and Dean Godson.

John Mann MP

Let's remind ourselves of what the recent Employment Tribunal in the case of Fraser v University and College Union had to say about John Mann MP.  Mann was one of the celebrity witnesses for the Fraser side and appeared in tandem with an even more discredited MP, now former MP, Denis MacShane:

148 ..... We did not derive assistance from the two Members of Parliament who appeared before us. Both gave glib evidence, appearing supremely confident of the rightness of their positions. For Dr MacShane, it seemed that all answers lay in the MacPherson Report (the effect of which he appeared to misunderstand). Mr Mann could manage without even that assistance. He told us that the leaders of the Respondents were at fault for the way in which they conducted debates but did not enlighten us as to what they were doing wrong or what they should be doing differently. He did not claim ever to have witnessed any Congress or other UCU meeting. And when it came to antiSemitism in the context of debate about the Middle East, he announced, “It’s clear to me where the line is …” but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to locate it for us. Both parliamentarians clearly enjoyed making speeches. Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not to his liking.

And John Mann is the Chair of these proceedings on Integration, Disadvantage and Extremism and, as far as a I know, he is still Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism.  Actually, on that latter, let's have a quick look at what the Tribunal said about the Parliamentary Group.  It comes out of Complaint (2) of Ronnie Fraser's case against UCU which was the UCU's response to the report of the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism:

157 Complaint (2) is also devoid of any merit. The Respondents defended themselves courteously but robustly against treatment by the Parliamentary Committee the fairness of which was, to put it at its very lowest, open to question.

There's a lot more to it than that but between paragraph's 148 and 157 you get the full measure of John Mann MP and his All Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism.  You may also be left wondering what he is doing chairing anything at the House of Commons.

Dave Rich

The fact that Dave Rich is from the Community Security Trust, who even Geoffrey Alderman criticises for its self-appointment as Jewish community representatives.  Many of us have noticed that they seem to concern themselves more with defending Israel from criticism than Jews from antisemitism.  Here's a tweet from late last year by Dave Rich:

Hard to take @guardian opposition to #antisemitism seriously when they publish letter comparing #Israel to Nazis. guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov…
— Dave Rich (@daverich1) November 20, 2012

The letter he complained of was from a holocaust survivor but, of course, we all know that zionists are the guardians of the memory of the holocaust, not people who were actually in it.

Ben Gidley

Next up we have the Talentless Mr Gidley (h/t or apologies to Patricia Highsmith).  Ben Gidley tweets as @bengidley where he self-describes as "Posting on migration, cities, multiculture, antisemitism, Jews, London, Europe."  He also runs or contributes to some Israel advocacy blogs, one of which being Bob from Brockley, which I have already described as a one stop shop for hasbara.  He often runs bogus allegations of antisemitism and in common with the few remaining Zionist members of the UCU he was no slouch in falsely accusing the UCU of harassing Ronnie Fraser.

Institutional antisemitism
There is currently in London an employment tribunal concerning the long-harassment of one Ronnie Fraser in UCU, a trade union. I intend to write about this, but only after the Tribunal concludes, but here in the meantime is some commentary: from Ben Cohen in Commentary, from Marcus Dysch, from the Times of Israel.

Look at the impeccable sources he links!  But sadly he has been a bit of a slouch when it comes to making good on his intention "to write about the long-harassment of Ronnie Fraser in UCU, a [Ben Gidley's] trade union".  As Ben Gidley he's tweeted links to a couple of dodgy articles on the judgment.  He hasn't linked the judgment itself and he has steered well clear of even the articles by Zionists which show what a humiliation FUCU was for all concerned on Ronnie Fraser's side.

Dean Godson

The last one that I knew anything of when I saw the notice is Dean Godson.  Here's how Irish journalist, Ed Moloney, on his The Broken Elbow blog, describes Godson:

Dean Godson’s two passions in life are Israel and Ireland, or to be more specific the cause of Likud and Ulster Unionism whose twin fates he saw threatened by the temptations of dialogue with untrustworthy terrorist adversaries, the PLO and the IRA, in the search for peace and political accommodation.

And the rest

I've never known anything about the other people involved though I have heard that Rob Berkeley, Nasar Meer and Maleiha Malik are well worth a listen.  That's of course, not to say that the others aren't.

Also I was told that the Pears Institute is a serious group though it may be trying a little too hard to be broad and inclusive.

I suppose we can hope that the rotten eggs present in the august surrounds of Portcullis House won't render the whole thing a curate's egg.