IT WAS DIFFICULT to ascertain on the basis of media reports whether Brighton played host this month to a Labour Party conference or a Nuremberg rally. This article investigates claims of antisemitism at the Labour conference and finds them to be without factual basis. The 2017 Labour Party conference was a success for supporters of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn snubbed a reception held by Labour Friends of Israel, a group which lobbies for close UK-Israel relations,
At this point, the script writes itself: Hamas threatens to moderate its position by amending its Charter, so Israel assassinates a senior Hamas militant.[1] Whenever a credible Palestinian force threatens by political moderation to undermine Israel’s pretexts for diplomatic rejectionism—by offering/adhering to a ceasefire; signalling acceptance of the international consensus framework for resolving the conflict; or participating in an internationally-acceptable national unity government—Israel resorts to violence in order to destroy it, or at least provoke it into abandoning its pragmatic
First, it was said that ‘a large proportion‘ of the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) specifically and the Oxford student left in general ‘have some kind of problem with Jews’; indeed, that the ‘student left’ is ‘institutionally antisemitic‘. John Mann MP condemned ‘rife’ and ‘[o]vert’ antisemitism ‘amongst certain elements at Oxford University’. ‘It’d be so much easier if these were just two rogue cases’, Jonathan Freedland sighed, but the allegations implicate ‘many’, while ‘Jews themselves… have been warning of this phenomenon for years, lamenting
New Left Project, July 2013: “we are approaching a potentially historic moment. Why? Because Palestinians are now the weakest they have ever been… Regionally, the Arab world is completely shattered and ready to do whatever the U.S. demands… It’s a shrewd move by the U.S. and Israel to exploit this opportunity to impose a settlement… the Palestinians and the Arab world are at their feeblest, and if we are ever to impose our will, now’s the time.” New Left Project,
Constant, high-profile whining from a position of privilege combined with unfair attacks on movements for social justice, a la the Board of Deputies, Jewish Labour Movement, Community Security Trust, and Union of Jewish Students? 50 inquiries chaired by John Mann MP into the use of the word “Zio”? Or actions like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9pfXtc1dtQ&sns=fb http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/victoria-islamic-centre-mosque-fire-texas-jews-give-key-synagogue-muslims-worship-gofundme-a7556331.html http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.769634 https://www.facebook.com/oiveyitsjewdas/posts/584979645024828
Earlier this month, former Israel Defence Forces (IDF) deputy chief of staff Uzi Dayan testified in defence of an Israeli soldier (Sgt. Elor Azaria) who was captured on film summarily executing a Palestinian man in Hebron who posed no threat. Dayan protested that, in opening an investigation into the incident, the authorities had violated the accused’s “right to innocence”: Azaria’s right to innocence was trampled on. My basic argument is that a fighter, even if he made a mistake and if he
In 1793 a great council was held, to which came the chiefs and headmen of the Delawares, and of twelve other tribes, to meet commissioners of the United States, for one last effort to settle the vexed boundary question. The records of this council are profoundly touching. The Indians reiterated over and over the provisions of the old treaties which had established the Ohio River as one of their boundaries. Their words were not the words of ignorant barbarians, clumsily
Moshe Ya’alon, then-Israeli defence minister (February 2016): Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon told defense officials attending the Munich global security conference this weekend that Iran is the ‘biggest generator of terrorism in the world’, and saying that the recently implemented nuclear deal with Iran posed an ‘existential threat’ to Israel. Moshe Ya’alon, now out of government, attacking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (June 2016): ‘The Iranian nuclear program, which was put on ice following the signed agreement, does not constitute an
Guest post by Jamie Stern-Weiner In a recent interview leading Israel-Palestine scholar Norman Finkelstein recounted a shocking, but revealing, encounter with Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland: [W]hen my book, The Holocaust Industry, came out in 2000, Freedland wrote that I was ‘closer to the people who created the Holocaust than to those who suffered in it’. Although he appears to be, oh, so politically correct now, he didn’t find it inappropriate to suggest that I resembled the Nazis who gassed my family. We appeared on a
Last week, prominent Momentum activist Jackie Walker was suspended from the Labour Party for alleged antisemitism. (Momentum is a grassroots movement affiliated with the Labour Party, which currently supports the elected leadership of the socialist and veteran Palestine solidarity campaigner Jeremy Corbyn.) There are five points to make about this. The antisemitism allegations against Walker are devoid of factual basis The evidence against Walker consists of two Facebook comments. In the first, Walker dismissed claims that Labour has ‘a major