Jewish Chronicle Web Site is Dangerous

Edited by an Idiot - But was it worth hacking?

Warning that the Jewish Chronicle site is dangerous for one's computer and mental health

I was sorry to hear that the Jewish Chronicle web site has apparently been hacked!  I say apparently, because the following message appeared ‘Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!’

Stephen Pollard - without doubt the worst ever editor of the Jewish Chronicle - presiding over a precipitous circulation decline

The thing is, it’s not the computer I’m worried about.  Visiting the JC's site is far likelier to damage your mind, especially now that its editor, Stephen Pollard, is in charge, having been fired by Britain’s largest porn operator, Richard Desmond, from editing that quality paper, the Daily Express.

On Question Time Pollard demonstrated the quality of his intellect, when he said of Rupert Murdoch that ‘he has done more to enrich our lives than any other single human being of the past generation and should be a hero for his commitment to freedom’.  Try telling that to the relatives of the Hillsborough dead, or the Miners battered in the Great Strike or any other workers involved in disputes, or the family of Milly Dowler.  It just shows the warped and distorted logic of the fool who edits the JC.

Rupert Murdoch - the Boss of a Criminal Empire who Stephen Pollard believes has made the greatest contribution towards freedom of any human being alive!

And when questioned by David Dimbleby about whether he really stood by this extraordinary statement, Pollard responded ‘absolutely, absolutely’. 

Jesus at the Checkpoint

Israel's Irish Embassy's Racist Thought for the Day

Jesus at Israel's Checkpoint



Israel's Irish Embassy's Racist Cartoon

 As any half-wit with a couple of brain cells to spare would know, Christianity developed out of a struggle amongst the Jewish community in Palestine. The poor Jews and farmers gradually became Christianised and today their descendants are the Christian Palestinians. The better off either emigrated and became traders or moved to the Hellenised cities of the Middle East like Alexandria or Damascus.

None of this stopped the Israeli embassy in Dublin issuing a post on the Israel in Ireland Facebook page which showed a picture of Mary and Jesus, accompanied by the comment: "A thought for Christmas . . . If Jesus and mother Mary were alive today, they would, as Jews without security, probably end up being lynched in Bethlehem by hostile Palestinians. Just a thought . . ."

The Israeli Embassy has apologised and taken down the post. Among the posts it attracted was one saying: "Have you no regard for honesty whatsoever? If Jesus Mary were alive today, they would be protesting against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, along with all the Palestinian Christians currently living in Bethlehem."

Crosspost from Jewssansfrontieres

Merry Xmas - Israeli Style

No Pride in Israeli Apartheid

Say NO to Pinkwashing

 

The video speaks for itself!

Connecticut School Killings – Part of an American Sickness

It's Not Gun Control but a Violent, Racist society that Killed 20 Children in Newtown Connecticut

 

Flags are flying at half-staff across Connecticut in remembrance of the victims of the Newtown elementary school shooting.  Unfortunately the Stars and Stripes are themselves dripping with blood.

No one can doubt for a moment the trauma and pain of the parents of the children in Connecticut at the act of savagery that took the lives of their children away.  However this is not the ‘one-off’ act of a madman. 


Sandy Hook Elementary School on morning of shooting. Newtown Bee/ZUMA Press

The response of much of the Left, people like Michael Moore, is to blame what happens in the USA on a lack of gun control, arising from the constitutional right to bear arms.  
There have been repeated acts of killings in schools and shopping malls in the United States. As the following history shows,  mass killings at schools and other public places are almost the norm in America. On May 20, 1999, Heritage High School, Conyers, Georgia, six students were injured by a 15-year-old shooter. On November 19, 1999, in Deming, New Mexico, Victor Cordova, Jr., 12, shot and killed 13-year-old Araceli Tena in the lobby of the Deming Middle School. And on December 6, 1999, at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, four students were wounded when Seth Trickey, 13, opened fire with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun at the Fort Gibson Middle School.

On February 29, 2000, at the Mount Morris Township, Michigan, six-year-old Kayla Rolland was shot dead at Buell Elementary School by six-year-old Dedric Owens with a .32-caliber handgun, which he had found in his uncle’s home.

On March 10, 2000, in Savannah, Georgia, two teenagers were killed by a 19-year-old, while leaving a dance sponsored by Beach High School. On May 26, 2000, English teacher Barry Grunow was shot and killed at Lake Worth Middle School by Nathaniel Brazill, 13, with a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol on the last day of classes. On January 17, 2001, a student was shot and killed in front of Lake Clifton Eastern High School in Baltimore, Maryland. On March 5, 2001, two students were killed and 13 wounded by Charles Andrew Williams, 15, firing from a bathroom at Santana High School in Santee, California. On March 7, 2001, 14-year-old Elizabeth Catherine Bush wounded student Kimberly Marchese in the cafeteria of Bishop Neumann High School in Williamsport, Pa.

On March 22, 2001, Jason Hoffman, 18, wounded a teacher and three students at Granite Hills High School, Granite Hills, California. On March 30, 2001, a student at Lew Wallace High School in Gary, Indiana, was killed by Donald R. Burt, Jr., a 17-year-old student who had been expelled from the school. On November 12, 2001, Chris Buschbacher, 17, took two hostages at the Caro Learning Center in Caro, Michigan, before killing himself.

On April 24, 2003, James Sheets, 14, killed Principal Eugene Segro of Red Lion Junior High School, Red Lion, Pa., before killing himself. On September 24, 2003, at Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minnesota, two students were killed by John Jason McLaughlin, 15.

On March 21, 2005, at the Red Lake reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, 16-year-old Jeffrey Weise killed his police sergeant grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend, then later drove his grandfather’s police vehicle to Red Lake Senior High School where, at 2:45 p.m. he began shooting, killed seven people on the school campus, including five students, one teacher, and an unarmed security guard, and wounded five others.

On November 8, 2005, in Jacksboro, Tennessee, a 15-year-old shot and killed an assistant principal at Campbell County High School, and seriously wounded two other administrators. On August 24, 2006, Christopher Williams, 27, shot two teachers and wounded another. Before going to the school, he had killed his ex-girlfriend’s mother.

On September 27, 2006, an adult male held six students hostage at Platte Canyon High School, Bailey, Colorado, then shot and killed Emily Keyes, 16, and himself. Two days later, on September 29, in Cazenovia, Wisconsin, a 15-year-old student shot and killed Weston School principal, John Klang.

On October 3, 2006, in Nickel Mines, Pa., a 32-year-old milk-truck driver, Carl Charles Roberts, entered the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School and shot 10 schoolgirls, ranging in age from six to 13 years old, and then himself. Five of the girls and Roberts died. A movie has already been made of this chilling tragedy.

On January 3, 2007, Douglas Chanthabouly, 18, shot fellow student Samnang Kok, 17, in Henry Foss High School, Tacoma, Washington. On April 16, 2007, in Blacksburg, Virginia, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech Student, Cho Seung-Hui, killed two in a dorm, then killed 30 more two hours later in a classroom building. His suicide brought the death toll to 33, making that shooting rampage the most deadly in U.S. history. Fifteen others were wounded.

On September 21, 2007, at Delaware State University, Dover, freshman Loyer D. Brandon shot and wounded two other freshmen students on the university campus. On October 10, 2007, 14-year-old Asa H. Coon shot and injured two students and two teachers before killing himself at Cleveland High School, Cleveland, Ohio.

On February 8, 2008, a nursing student at Louisiana Technical College, in Baton Rouge, shot and killed two women and then herself in a classroom. Three days later, in Memphis, Tennessee, a 17-year-old student at Mitchell High School shot and wounded a classmate in gym class. A day later, on February 12, 2008, in Oxnard, California, a 14-year-old boy shot a student at E. O. Green Junior High School causing the 15-year-old victim to become brain dead. Two days later, on February 14, a gunman killed five students, wounded 17 others, and then killed himself when he opened fire on a classroom at Northern Illinois University.

On November 12, 2008, a 15-year-old female student was shot and killed by a classmate at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

On February 5, 2010, at the Discovery Middle School in Madison, Alabama, a ninth grader was shot by another student during a class change. The boy pulled out a gun and shot Todd Brown in the head while walking in the hallway. On February 12, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Amy Bishop, a biology professor, shot her colleagues, killing three and wounding three others.

On January 5, 2011, in Omaha, Nebraska, two people were killed and two more injured in a shooting at Millard South High School. Shortly after being suspended from school, the shooter returned and shot the assistant principal, principal, and the school nurse. The shooter then left campus and took his own life. On that same day, in Houston, Texas, two gunmen opened fire during a Worthing High School powder-puff football game. One former student died, and five others were wounded.

On May 10, 2011, in San Jose, California, three people were killed at San Jose State University. Two former students were found dead on the fifth floor of the garage. A third, the suspected shooter, died later at the hospital. On December 8, 2011, at Blacksburg, Virginia, a Virginia Tech police officer was shot and killed by a 22-year-old student from Radford University on Virginia Tech’s campus.

On February 10, 2012, in Walpole, New Hampshire, a 14-year-old student shot himself in front of seventy fellow students. Seven days later, at Chardon High School, in Chardon, Ohio, a former student opened fire, killing three students.
 Yet Norway has a higher ownership of guns per head of population. Switzerland is similar, in that it has always had a citizens’ army. Yet in these countries you don’t have these repeated outbreaks of mass murder. Certainly in Norway there was the murderous rampage of Andres Breivik, the Norwegian fascist and Zionist. But his motives were clear, to kill as many young, left-wing people as possible. And what Breivik did was all but approved by people like ex-Fox News mouthpiece, Glenn Beck, who called those who died ‘Hitler Youth’ for supporting the Palestinians.
 The fact is that the 20 children who died in Connecticut are no different from the hundreds of Afghan children, Palestinian children and others who die, daily, because of US drones and missiles and other weapons of murder and mayhem. A violent society begets violence and the children of Newtown are the price that the United States pays for its approval, support and use of violence beyond its border.

Tony Greenstein

BBC’s Terms of Reference are set by Israel

Israel 'Reacts' to Palestinian Rocket Attacks & 

The Partisans 'Provoked' the German Panzer SS Division

Think how strange it would be if we considered France’s Nazi occupiers justified in carrying out ‘retaliations’ for attacks made on them by the Maquis.  Perhaps then we could rethink Oradour sur Glane, a village a few kilometres north of Limoges which was totally destroyed by the Nazi’s, 642 men, woman and children massacred by a German Panzer Division.  

The Government's 'independent' mouthpiece

After all, either the right of an occupied people to resist is a natural one, a human one, that no law can take away or it is a mere diplomatic convenience.  But such a right is not one recognised by the BBC when it comes to Israel/Palestine.  Despite occupying Gaza and the West Bank for 45 years, instead of barely more than 4 years, Israel is seen as on the defence, the victim, despite being the 4th most powerful state in the world militarily.

The pro-Zionist bias of the BBC is legendary, as many articles on this blog have detailed.  Its recent coverage of the attack on Gaza was no different from normal:

1. Israel’s attacks were in ‘retaliation’ for Hamas rocket strikes.
2. No mention was made of the fact that Ahmed al-Jabari had been assassinated after a ceasefire had been agreed and he had been the negotiator.  He apparently had ‘blood on his hands.’  Perhaps the Israeli General who doesn’t have blood on his hands would like to stand up.
3. No mention of the 7 Palestinians killed in Gaza prior to Israel’s attacks, or the fact that 5 of them were children.
4. No mention is made of the fact that the attacks are, as in 2008-9, close to an Israeli general election.
5. And to cap it off, an e-mail from a BBC Complaints official states that ‘Since the news of Israeli air strikes in Gaza our coverage has pointed out on numerous occasions that the attacks are in response to recent rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.”  Yes that was precisely the point of the complaint!  

It’s called circular logic but the only ‘logic’ in the BBC response is to hug the United States and Israel.  The BBC is its present parlous state, especially post-Savile, is unlikely to want to ruffle any feathers in the government by taking anything other than a strictly pro-Israeli stance.

Part of the problem with complaints about the BBC is the belief that it is capable of any significant change.  The BBC has always been a poodle of the British establishment, whether over Palestine, colonialism or strikes at home.  In the Miners’ strike they reversed footage at Orgrieve to show Police attacks as responses to Miner’s attacks.  

Only this year the Supreme Court upheld the BBC’s decision to refuse to release the Balen Report on  bias, which although brought by a Zionist (the BBC isn’t biased enough!) is widely believed to criticise the BBC’s endemic anti-Palestinian bias.  See Reporting on Israel and the Palestinians  

There is still the naïve belief that the BBC represents something ‘good’ – its Auntie rather than the home of the mass sexual predator Jimmy Savile, his accomplices and an establishment, not least the unlamented recent Director General, Mark Thompson, who turned a blind eye to Savile’s actions.  There is no democratic control of the BBC, instead it is left in the hands of the good and great, like Lord Patten, a failed but influential Tory politician.

The Nazi ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane - a 'reprisal' action according to the Nazis (& BBC)

Trade unionists don’t make up any of the membership of the BBC Trust or the previous BBC Directors.  Political conflicts within the BBC have almost always reflected divisions within the British ruling class itself, albeit with a right-wing orientation.  This came to head with the timorous  opposition of some in the BBC like Andrew Gilligan, when he talked of ‘sexed up’ intelligence on an early morning Today programme.  In fact the intelligence was a work of fiction.  But sure enough a reactionary Northern Ireland member of the House of Lords Lord Hutton produced a Report which backed Blair and Alistair Campbell, his propagandist against any semblance of BBC independence.  Director-General Greg Dyke was forced to resign and Mark Thompson took over, determined to learn the lessons, viz. to cowtow to the government politically.

In many ways the BBC is far worse than its commercial rivals.  No thinking person believes Fox News, whereas people see in the BBC an ‘independence’ which masks a bias which is the more dangerous for being its disguise.

The only way to force a BBC that can spend £½ m in rewarding its latest DG George Entwistle for abject failure is not to pay the licence fee.

Below is an excellent article crossposted from Electronic Intifada by Amena Saleem.

Tony Greenstein

BBC admits pandering to Israeli propaganda

Amena Saleem, The Electronic Intifada, London 14 December 2012

Israel’s 10 November 2012 killing of 18-year-old Ahmad Dardasawi was not deemed newsworthy by the BBC. (Ashraf Amra / APA images)

One of the most consistent aspects of the BBC’s reporting of Gaza and Israel is the insistence of its journalists that any “outbreak of violence” is the fault of the Palestinians.

When Israel bombs or shells Gaza, this is unfailingly reported by the BBC as being in “response” or “retaliation” to rockets being fired from the blockaded territory. The unflinching regularity of this one-sided reporting by the UK’s state broadcaster is meticulously recorded in More Bad News from Israel, the book by Greg Philo and Mike Berry which contains research by the Glasgow Media Unit into the BBC’s reporting of the occupation.

The BBC’s coverage of Israel’s most recent assault on Gaza in November was no exception. An article published on the BBC’s website the day Hamas commander Ahmed al-Jabari was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City stated that the killing “follows a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from the territory” (“Israeli air strike kills Hamas military chief Jabari,” 14 November 2012).

The article went on to feature an Israeli army spokesperson’s claim that al-Jabari had “a lot of blood on his hands” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that a “clear message” had been sent to “Hamas and other terrorist organizations.” Netanyahu’s comments ended with the words: “We will continue to do everything to protect our citizens.”

All of Israel’s key propaganda messages were conveyed, while the reality was carefully hidden. There is, of course, the ongoing reality that Israel is an occupier and a serial violator of international law — facts which are buried under the credibility and authority the BBC accords to its politicians and spokespeople and what they say.

Ignoring reality

On an immediate level, another crucial reality was ignored. By assassinating al-Jabari — itself an illegal act of extrajudicial murder which the BBC failed to examine, even as it printed Netanyahu’s triumphal “clear message” — Israel had violated a ceasefire brokered three days earlier.

This information, so casually ditched by the BBC’s journalists — online, on television and on radio news — was absolutely crucial. It emboldened the lie, disseminated across the BBC’s media outlets, that al-Jabari’s killing and the eight-day onslaught that came next followed “a wave of rocket attacks” from Gaza.
It didn’t. Al-Jabari’s assassination and the ensuing attack on Gaza which killed more than 160 Palestinians, including more than 30 children, followed a ceasefire, which the Palestinian groups in Gaza had been observing and may well have carried on observing if Israel hadn’t broken it. Couple this with the fact that, in 2008, Israel broke another ceasefire to instigate a three-week massacre in Gaza, killing 1,400 Palestinians, including 352 children, and a picture builds of an aggressive Israeli state, regularly bombing and shelling a civilian population with no regard for agreed truce arrangements.

Uneasy pattern

Take into account that both attacks on Gaza, in 2008 and 2012, came just months before Israeli elections, and an uneasy pattern begins to emerge — one which responsible journalists would, presumably, want to question and investigate.

Moreover, al-Jabari was killed as he carried with him, in the car that was hit, a draft agreement for a permanent truce with Israel, raising yet another vital question: was Israel trying to sabotage a possible end to the violence?

Such facts and the questions they prompted appeared to be irrelevant to the BBC’s presenters. On 18 November, four days after al-Jabari was killed, Samira Ahmed hosted BBC One’s Sunday Morning Live program. This included a 15-minute debate entitled “Are Israeli military actions justified?” featuring Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, and right-wing political commentator Charlie Wolf.
The justification for military action put forward by Ahmed to start the debate was “Hamas rocket attacks.” And this is where the debate stuck. Any attempt by Atwan to give depth or context to the discussion, by mentioning the blockade, the occupation, or Israel’s year-round attacks on Gaza, were batted away by Ahmed who unfailingly came back with the rejoinder: “But wouldn’t it all stop if Hamas stopped firing rockets?” The implication of course was that Hamas starts violence, and Israel responds because it has to protect its citizens.

That Palestinian rocket attacks might be a response to 45 years of ongoing occupation, combined since 2006 with a crippling blockade, is not a possibility the BBC is willing to discuss on its airwaves.
In just 15 minutes, the former Channel 4 News presenter revealed how completely she has attuned herself to the BBC’s commitment to the Israeli narrative by referring to “Hamas rocket attacks” 15 times, and never once to Israel’s ceasefire violations and the complicated questions these violations raise.

Blaming the victims

This fits in with what would appear to be her employer’s editorial policy on Israel and Gaza. In an email sent on 21 November to a member of the UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and seen by this writer, the BBC Complaints Department explains in some detail how the broadcaster had gone out of its way to lay the blame for the violence of the previous eight days on the Palestinians.

The email, signed off “BBC Complaints,” states: “Since the news of Israeli air strikes in Gaza our coverage has pointed out on numerous occasions that the attacks are in response to recent rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.”

It adds: “Our initial online report on 14 November pointed to how the attack on Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari and another Hamas official ‘follows a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from the territory’ and how ‘the United States said it supported Israel’s right to self-defense, and condemned militant rocket attacks on southern Israel.’”

Seemingly oblivious to or unfazed by the inaccuracy of its own reporting, the message goes on: “On the BBC’s News at Ten that same evening, the BBC’s Gaza and West Bank correspondent Jon Donnison’s report explained that ‘Israel says the strike followed a wave of rocket attacks from inside Gaza,’ before hearing directly from Israeli Army Spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich as she explained how ‘I can just elaborate that the target of the operation is to protect Israeli civilians. The same lives of Israelis that have been under constant rocket attack for the past year.’”

In a twist of almost comic absurdity, given eight days of reporting which squarely blamed Hamas for the violence and equated the fear caused by the 12-pound and 90-pound Palestinian rockets with the terror induced by Israel’s 500-pound to 2,000-pound bombs, the email ends with: “We will continue to report on developments from the region in a fair, accurate and impartial way.”

The email highlights the BBC’s willingness to ignore facts and important questions — for example, why did Israel really kill al-Jabari? — in favor of a narrative that, deliberately or not, echoes that of the Israeli government.

Child deaths unreported

Less than a week before al-Jabari’s execution, Israel had killed seven Palestinians in Gaza in the space of 48 hours. Of these, five were teenage boys (“New Israeli escalation against the Gaza Strip,” Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 11 November 2012).

The first to die, 13-year-old Ahmad Abu Daqqa, was shot in the abdomen by Israeli soldiers. Two days later, brothers 16-year-old Mohammed Harara and 17-year-old Ahmed Harara were killed playing football when Israeli forces fired shells at their playground. As people rushed to help, three more shells were fired, and an 18-year-old and 19-year-old were killed.

It is safe to assume that if five Israeli teenagers, including two brothers playing football and a 13-year-old, had been killed by Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza, it would be headline news for the BBC.

The Israeli killing of the Palestinian youngsters was ignored on BBC television and prime-time radio news. Even when al-Jabari was killed, four days after the Harara brothers lost their lives, and some kind of premeditated build-up to the eight-day assault began to emerge, the BBC still refused to mention Israel’s two-day killing spree in Gaza a few days earlier.

Official line

All BBC journalists stuck to Israel’s official line that the assassination of 14 November, and what followed, was in retaliation to Palestinian rockets — and conveniently omitted from their reports the fact that Israel had been engaged in killing Palestinian children in the days immediately preceding al-Jabari’s execution.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign wrote to the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs program Today on 12 November to ask why it had not covered the killing of the five Palestinian teenagers on 8 and 10 November.

The program’s assistant editor, Dominic Groves, wrote back to say: “Even in the space of a three hour program it is not always possible to cover every development in a story — especially one as long running and complex as the one in the Middle East.”

And yet the killing of five young boys by Israel isn’t a “development in a story;” it is news in itself. When the Today program can give prominent coverage to a Palestinian rocket attack on a bus in April 2011, which killed a 16-year-old Israeli schoolboy, how can Groves claim the same program has no room to report on the slaughter of five Palestinian boys by the Israeli army? (“Israeli boy Daniel Viflic dies after rocket hits bus,” 18 April 2011).

Since the latest “ceasefire” came into effect on the evening of 21 November, Israel has been flying its F-16s over the skies of Gaza, 40 Gaza fishermen have been detained by Israeli forces, and a 20-year-old Palestinian has been shot and killed by Israeli fire, while 54 Palestinians, including six children have been injured (“Protection of civilians weekly report,” UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 28 November - 4 December 2012 [PDF]).

Like the everyday struggle of Palestinians in Gaza, currently dealing with power cuts lasting eight hours each day, this has gone unreported by the BBC and other mainstream media because no one, yet, is firing rockets back.
Amena Saleem is active with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK and keeps a close eye on the media’s coverage of Palestine as part of her brief. She has twice driven on convoys to Gaza for PSC. More information on PSC is available at www.palestinecampaign.org.

Banning Arab Parties – A Demonstration of Zionist Democracy

Arab Parties Who Don't Accept Israel as a Jewish AND a Democratic State will be banned from standing in the General Election

Like the fascist he is, David Rotam, of the overtly racist Yisrael Beteinu seeks to ban Arab Parties

In January there will be a general election in Israel.  It is predicted that this will signify a further move to the right amongst Zionist parties.  The Labour Party, under Shelly Yachimovich, has made it clear that as the government moves to the right, so it will follow.

In 1949, the Israeli Labour Party gained 46 out of 120 seats in the Knesset and Mapam, a ‘Marxist’ Zionist party held a further 19 seats, making an absolute majority for left-Zionist parties, though Ben-Gurion didn’t desire this and consciously sought an alliance with the National Religious Party.
At the last elections in 2009, the ILP gained precisely 13 seats.  Mapam, which has disappeared into Meretz, the civil rights list, gained another 3 seats.  In its 60 years of existence, ‘left’ Zionist parties declined from 65 to 16, whereas the right and far-right of the Zionist movement, together with the ultra-orthodox has become an absolute majority.  Indeed today the ILP holds just 8 seats as its former leader, Ehud Barak, went off to form his own ‘party’ Atzmut, with a few followers.  Meanwhile ex-ILP leader Amir Peretz has deserted to the ‘centre’ party Kadima.

Hanan Zoabi - Balad MK - who is a particular target for Israeli racists

The ILP’s position on most issues is, in any event, little different from that of Netanyahu.  It supported the recent attack on Gaza, as it did Cast Lead in 1998-9.  It has nothing to say about racism in Israeli society itself, unsurprisingly since all the labour Zionist institutions such as the kibbutz were Jewish-only.  Yachimovich has nothing to say about, indeed is quite warm about, the settlers in the West Bank.  And on social policy issues, the ILP is an equally free-market party as Likud.

Indeed virtually the only independent element in the Knesset, apart from the Communist Party’s 4 representatives, unchanged since 1949.  Balad, with 3 seats, and Ta’al (United Arab List) with 4 seats make up the ‘Arab’ parties (although Hadash always has a Jewish MK, very few Jews vote for it).
Following the precedent in 1965, when Al-Ard, an Arab nationalist party, was banned from standing in the general election, there have been successive attempts by the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ to ban nationalist parties.  Although this attempt by the Elections Commission was overturned narrowly by the Supreme Court in the past 2 elections, there has now been further legislation, such as making it virtually illegal to commemorate the Nakba (expulsion of Palestinians in 1947-9).  Coupled with a move to the racist right in Israeli society, not least in the Supreme Court itself, there must be a chance that either Balad or its Hanan Zoabi, a fiery secular Palestinian woman,  who participated in the Mavi Marmara flotilla and who has been physically attacked in the Knesset, will be banned.

But if, Israeli legislators and judges are so stupid as to ban those parties they don’t like, which don’t accept the hypocritical maxim that Israel is both a Jewish and a Democratic state, when it is clear that the latter always gives way to the former, then it will strip Israel of its last vestige to any claim to be a democracy.  Democracies don’t ban parties unless they threaten democracy itself.  And the only threats to democracy in Israel come from parties like Yisrael Beteinu and its Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose followers march to the chant of ‘Death to the Arabs’, the racist Eli Yishai’s Shas or Michael Ben Ari of the National Union Party, whose most recent contribution to tolerance and understanding was to rip up a copy of the New Testament and throw it in a trash can.
I suspect, however, that there will be no proposals to outlaw Jewish racist parties, otherwise there would none but Arab parties and Meretz to contest the elections!

Tony Greenstein

Distortion of 'defensive democracy'

Disqualifying parties that represent the Arab public would be a serious blow to democracy and broadcast a message of exclusion to this population.

Haaretz Editorial  Dec.12, 2012

It's a recurring pre-election ritual: The Central Elections Committee invalidates the candidacies of Arab parties and candidates, and the Supreme Court voids the disqualifications. Since 1965, not a single Arab party has been disqualified from running for the Knesset.

This time, the CEC is being asked to invalidate the Balad and the United Arab List-Ta'al parties, as well as to ban Balad MK Haneen Zoabi from running. It would behoove the CEC to resist disqualifying anyone and not force the High Court to intervene.

The right to elect and be elected is basic to democracy and it must be carefully preserved. Disqualifying parties that represent the Arab public would be a serious blow to democracy and broadcast a message of exclusion to this population.

In the past, the High Court allowed the Kach party to be disqualified, but that was justified because the list threatened the essence of the democratic regime, and because by preaching racism it contradicted basic democratic values.

The concept of "defensive democracy" is justified when a party wants to use the democratic process to threaten democracy itself. That's why many countries have restrictions on anti-democratic parties. But in the Israeli discourse, this concept has been distorted, and it is being used to invalidate parties that don't threaten democracy but are perceived as a threat to the Jewish nature of the state.
While the Basic Law on the Knesset includes a ban on the participation of parties that reject the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, the courts have justifiably ruled that this clause must be invoked with the greatest possible restraint. It would be worth amending the clause to allow the disqualification only of parties that reject the existence of the state and its democratic regime.

The Basic Law on the Knesset also contains a clause that forbids a list to stand for election if it supports the armed struggle against Israel. It's understood that a sovereign state cannot give legitimacy to those who wish to harm its citizens. With that, this clause should not be utilized to categorically disqualify Arab candidates who oppose the occupation. There's something wrong with parties that support continuing the occupation, which denies and neuters democracy, asking to disqualify lists and candidates because they oppose the occupation.

Right-wing parties seek to ban Arab parties from upcoming Israel elections

MKs cite support for the 2010 Gaza flotilla and the denial of Israel as a Jewish state.

By Jonathan Lis | Dec.10, 2012 | 12:57 AM |  2

Right-wing lawmakers have asked the Central Elections Committee to bar United Arab List-Ta'al and Arab party Balad from the January 22 vote - citing support for the 2010 Gaza flotilla and the denial of Israel as a Jewish state.

MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu ) - chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee - wants the Balad slate banned, and Michael Ben Ari (National Union ) and Aryeh Eldad (Otzma Leyisrael ) want both Balad and United Arab List-Ta'al banned.

MK Ofir Akunis (Likud ) wants to disqualify MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad ) as a candidate for the next Knesset.

The Basic Law on the Knesset lets the election committee disqualify candidates or slates whose platforms deny the existence of Israel as a democratic state, incite to racism or support armed struggle against Israel.

Eldad and Ben Ari mentioned comments they say prove that the parties should not be allowed to run for the Knesset. They note Zuabi's presence on the Mavi Marmara, a ship that tried to run Israel's blockade on Gaza in May 2010. They added that Zuabi told Al-Jazeera that her party sought to "come out against the Zionist enterprise, against the definition of the state as the Jewish state."

Eldad and Ben Ari also cited a May 2010 Channel 2 interview with United Arab List-Ta'al MK Ahmed Tibi, who said "the way you pressure prisoners in jail, we will pressure Gilad Shalit." Tibi said Sunday that this statement had been taken out of context.

According to Osama Sa'adi, secretary general of United Arab List-Ta'al, "As in every election, the extreme right tries to revoke MK Ahmed Tibi's and United Arab List-Ta'al's basic right to represent their voters." Sa'adi said Tibi supported nonviolent struggle and that his party would fight the attempt to ban it from the election.

Zionist Community Security Trust in Dilemma over Islamaphobic Conference

When I criticised those Zionists who associated Jews with Israel's attack on Gaza (2008-9) Gardener of the CST was one of those who objected!

Gardener of the CST - Happy to associate with bigots like Richard Littlejohn

Should We Walk or Should We Stay?  Neither it would appear!!

As I have documented time and again, the primary agenda of the self-appointed, private charity headed by ultra-Zionist rightwinger, Gerald Ronson, is to paint anti-Zionist and support for the Palestinians as ‘anti-Semitic’. 

Unsurprisingly the CST, which styles itself as the defence wing of the Jewish community and is honoured as such by the Metropolitan Police and people like Michael Gove MP, is no stranger to working with Islamaphobes and anti-Muslim racists.

In particular, over the summer, it devoted its time to supplying false and misleading information to the Home Office concerning Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Northern Islamic League in Israel.  Sheikh Salah, whom the Israelis tried to murder on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, has been a thorn in the side of Israel’s leaders.  The CST’s misinformation led to the arrest and attempted deportation of Sheikh Salah before the Senior Immigration Appeal Tribunal, noting the false nature of the charges against him, ordered his release.

Community Security Trust Supplies False Information to Deport Sheikh Raed Salah
Immigration Appeal Tribunal's Racist Order to Deport Raed Salah
How the Zionist Community Security Trust and Theresa May Colluded at the Behest of Racists to Deport Raed Salah & Prevent Free Speech

Indeed it is impossible today to be a pro-Israel advocate and a Zionist without also being an Islamaphobe.  Support for Israel and anti-Arab racism are inseparable.  

It was only last week that I picked up on a tweet from Dave Rich, second-in command at the CST, who accused Professor Baruch Brent, a child refugee of nazism, of 'Antisemitism!' for daring to compare the Nazi bombing of Guernica with that of Gaza. 

What attracted Rich's attention was that I happened to mention that the CST had paid no regard to the fact that a demonstration that they had stewarded, in support of the killing of 9 activists on the Mavi Marmara, had also been supported by the EDL and some of their members.  Dave Rich wrote back furiously stating that

‘I personally (and my colleagues), have made our position on the EDL and similar Islamophobic groups very clear on the CST Blog, for example:…..
We have also done so to the wider Jewish community via the Jewish Chronicle:…..
Regarding CST's policies regarding securing demonstrations , we have stated publicly that we will not provide security for demonstrations where the EDL are present: http://blog.thecst.org.uk/?p=2556
Your allegation that CST was content for the EDL to join a pro-Israel demonstration in June 2010 is not true and is contradicted by the media reporting at the time:
http://jc-thn-ws3.thejc.com/news/uk-news/32425/hundreds-demonstrate-israel-london
…. CST has provided security advice to mosques that faced Islamophobic demonstrations and I personally act as an advisor to the Tell MAMA campaign that monitors anti-Muslim hate crime.
Regards
Dave Rich
CST

Mr Rich said it was untrue to say that they were not content for the EDL to join the pro-Israeli demonstration and that they don’t steward events where the EDL is present was contradicted at the time.  Even the overtly pro-Zionist Bob from Brockley in an article ‘The English Defence League and the Gaza Flotilla’ accepted that ‘A tiny number of English Defence League members turned up at a pro-Israel demonstration, some possibly from the semi-fictitious "Jewish Division" of the EDL (it also has a "LGBT Division" and of course prominent Sikh members).’

Dave Rich may indeed be an adviser to Tell Mama but by all accounts, this Government funded initiative is ‘Not Off to a Good Start!’  Since the government has been one of the main sources of the demonisation of Arabs and Muslims these are not particularly spectacular credentials.

But the CST demonstrated its real concerns with its campaign to deport Sheikh Salah.  It was a thoroughly racist campaign (or perhaps I have failed to notice the CST campaign to have Avigdor Liebermann deported – from memory I seem to recall that they helped guard his meetings!).

To get Raed Salah deported, the CST quoted uncritically from racist Hebrew University Professor Raphael Israeli (see e.g. The Community Security Trust cites the racist Hebrew University Professor Raphael Israeli to denounce the ‘anti-Semitism’ of Sheikh Raed Salah.

Professor Raphael Israeli makes the British National Party and National Front seem mild by comparison.  For example ‘When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems. That is a general rule, so if it applies everywhere it applies in Australia." and ‘Australia should cap Muslim immigration or risk being swamped by Indonesians.’

Sydney Morning Herald, 16.2.07. ‘Limit Muslim migration, Australia warned.  The CST's Professor Israeli was also quoted as saying that ‘Muslim immigrants had a reputation for manipulating the values of Western countries, taking advantage of their hospitality and tolerance.’ ‘"French people say they are strangers in their own country. This is a point of no return.’

It wasn’t no long ago that you could have substituted ‘Jewish’ for ‘Muslim’ to receive the approval of the owner of the Daily Express (today's owner Richard Desmond is a funder/supporter of the CST and his papers are equally defamatory and racist to Muslims as they once were to Jewish immigrants).  Yet when I phoned Mark Gardener about Professor Israeli, his only response was ‘no comment.’
The primary purpose of the CST has not been to defend the Jewish community against anti-Semitism in the normally accepted and understood sense of the term, but to categorise opposition to Israel’s actions as ‘anti-Semitic’.  There is no doubt that some people, taking Israel’s rhetoric at face value, do react to its behaviour in an anti-Semitic way.  Indeed it is an undoubted fact that the source of most anti-Semitism in the West today originates from the actions of Israel – the ‘Jewish’ state apparently set up to make them feel secure!  But irony is lost on the CST.  What matters is the anti-Semitism, not its causes.

Even worse, despite supporting the Zionist inspired European Union Monitoring Committee definition of ‘anti-Semitism’, which states that ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel’ is anti-Semitic, there is no recorded occasion when the CST has upbraided or even commented when leading Zionists and Jewish religious leaders expressed unanimous ‘Jewish’ support recently for the attack on Gaza. Unanimous UK Jewish communal organisations support for Israel over Gaza fighting

Symposium on ‘anti-Semitism’

It was therefore with some surprise that I read on Jewsansfrontieres that the CST had walked out of a symposia on ‘anti-Semitism’ at which some of the most dedicated anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigots you could hope to find were speaking.  Proud to be ashamed to be associated with islamophobes or ashamed to be proud?

By chance I had recently done a post on this exact conference, cross-posting from Tony Lerman’s Another faulty, pseudo-academic antisemitism initiative  Lerman wrote about how

‘The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism: a home for the ‘new antisemitism’ notion.  The JSA is a privately funded periodical founded four years ago. It has no institutional base and is privately published. … Even a cursory glance at the journal’s list of Board Members reveals a great preponderance of neoconservatives, Islamophobes, advocates of the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, pedlars of the ‘self-hating Jew’ accusation against Jewish critics of Israeli policies and out-and-out political propagandists.  The individuals funding the event are Daniel Pipes, Mitch Knisbacher and Jeff and Evy Diamond.
The three panellists will find much to agree on. For decades Bat Ye’or has been banging the drum about the ‘Muslim hordes’ who were about to take over Europe. Rather generously referred to as a ‘self-taught Jewish intellectual’, she now believes that Europe is dead, and in its stead ‘Eurabia’ has risen. Richard Landes, director and co-founder of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, told the Herzliya IDC conference in 2007:
European democratic civilization can fall before the Islamic challenge. Do not say that this will never happen in Europe and that Islam will not be able to take control of Europe. If Europe continues its current path, the fall will be sooner.
Winston Pickett was the director of the now non-functioning EISCA. He lavishes unreserved praise on Professor Robert Wistrich for his huge tome, Antisemitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, a book that, as its title suggests, sets out to justify the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’.
In panel 2, Mark Gardner of the CST and Robert Wistrich, who heads the Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), should feel comfortable with each other’s role in justifying and promoting the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, though it would be only fair to acknowledge that Wistrich’s influence in this regard far outstrips that of Gardner’s. Wistrich restated the classic definition of the ‘new antisemitism’ in a talk at the Hebrew University Jerusalem in June 2011 entitled ‘From blood libel to boycott: changing faces of British antisemitism’. … Gardner’s use of the ‘new antisemitism’ argument is clearly apparent in his and Dave Rich’s analysis of Caryl Churchill’s short playlet Seven Jewish Children. … http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/04/caryl-churchill-antisemitism-play

So the Jewish Chronicle article ‘Walk-outs over ‘Islamophobia’ at antisemitism symposium’ came as something of a surprise, especially as these 'walk-outs' were headed by the CST.  Maybe I had been unfair on Dave Rich after all.   According to the JC,

‘A seminar meant to highlight problems in dealing with antisemitism ran into trouble when audience members walked out — alleging Islamophobia on the part of some speakers. 
 

At the forefront were leaders of the Community Security Trust, who challenged remarks made by the Egyptian writer Bat Ye’or, and Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld, a founding member of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, which sponsored the seminar, held at London’s Wiener Library.
Bat Ye’or told the audience: “The source of antisemitism is the organisation of the Islamic corporation.”

But when Dave Rich, the CST’s deputy communications director, expressed concern that such a comment could be construed as Islamophobic, she responded: “Islam is denying the root of Judaism and Christianity with a profound belief in Jihad.”

David Hirsh, editor of anti-racist website Engage, left the room during Dr Gerstenfeld’s lecture.
He explained: “I was appalled by Gerstenfeld’s characterisation of Muslim culture as inferior. Nearly all the speakers on the day, including me, stressed that antisemitism must be understood and opposed within an anti-racist framework.

“I am as appalled by the Islamophobia which creeps into some opposition to antisemitism as I am by the way antisemitism also creeps into ostensibly anti-racist spaces.” 
But Dr Gerstenfeld said later: “I am touching upon the taboos that have to be broken, because a totally false narrative has been created in Europe.”
 
“The idea that all cultures are the same is absurd. If there is no hierarchy in culture, then Nazi culture is equivalent to democratic Western culture. There are Islamic groups which are equivalent in their language and ideology to Nazis. And I have no problem in saying that, because it is true.”
 
Mark Gardner, director of communications for CST, said after the seminar: “A minority of speakers said things about Britain, Europe and Muslims that we found to be incorrect, unacceptable and self-defeating. We made our concerns clear with a number of interventions and were correct to do so.”
 
David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute, and Philip Spencer, director of research in politics at Kingston University, also walked out in protest.
 
Mr Feldman said: “Unfortunately, the unfounded arguments of some speakers and expressions of religious prejudice from others did a disservice to Jews and others seeking to combat antisemitism.”
It was therefore appropriate that ‘At the end of the event, the former Labour MP, Denis MacShane, was given an award for his work in fighting antisemitism.’  Who better to reward this fallen pillar of Zionist hypocrisy than a bunch of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic racists?

But just consider some of these arguments. According to Dr Gerstenfeld there is a ‘hierarchy’ of cultures.  An interesting concept, one wonders how one can measure cultures?  He cites the ‘western democratic’ as opposed to the ‘Nazi’ culture.  But Nazism had no culture, unless the gentle art of book burning constitutes such – in which case Michael Ben Ari MK’s ripping up of the New Testament recently is a good example of Zionist culture.  Nazism hated culture and stood in opposition to it.  It was 'anti-cultural'.  But racism today is not primarily biological.  The campaign to repatriate Black people in Britain is recognised, even by most fascists, as a lost cause.

Racism in the biological sense has transmuted into a ‘battle of cultures’ in which Arabs and Third World refugees are seen as the bearers of ‘backward’ cultures.   That is why fascists who, 20 years ago, were engaging in 'gay bashing' now contrast the hostility of Islamic Orthodoxy to the 'backwardness' of Arabs/Muslims rather than seeing such hostility as an integral part of all orthodox religions.

When Dr Gerstenfeld says that ‘I am touching upon the taboos that have to be broken’ then he is doing no more than repeating the refrain of white racism through the ages – that there are ‘taboos’ that need to be broken, it needs to be ‘cool’ to be racist again.  It is a long-standing theme from the Daily Mail and its most virulent racist commentator, arch-Zionist Melanie Phillips.  Gert Wilders and a host of racist and chauvinistic European politicians dedicate their lives to breaking these ‘taboos’.  The hierarchy of ‘race; has been replaced by the hierarchy of ‘culture’.  Yet there is no ‘culture’ such as they speak of.

Lerman also notes that the funding sources for the symposia includes ‘Daniel Pipes, Mitch Knisbacher and Jeff and Evy Diamond. Pipes, the president of the right-wing Middle East Forum (MEF), is widely described as an ‘Islamophobe’. In 2009 his MEF established a legal defence fund for the far-right, populist, Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Pipes reportedly claimed that President Obama is a former Muslim who ‘practised Islam’. Knisbach, who is the founder and owner of 800response (America’s leading provider of shared-use 800-number services), is active in the right-wing Israel lobby AIPAC and funds Tazpit News Agency, a service set up primarily to popularize a positive view of settlement activity in the West Bank. Jeff Diamond, who heads the Jeff Diamond Law Firm, which has six offices in New Mexico and Texas, was installed in January as chair of the New Mexico Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Board of Directors.’

As Mark Elf wrote on Jewssansfrontieres ‘And here's the bit I just don't get.  Mark Gardner, David Hirsh and Dave Rich must have known about the other speakers because they were listed in the information blurb for the event.  How offended can they really have been when they only heard what they must have expected to hear? Are they proud to be ashamed to be associated with a ragbag of zionist islamophobes?  Or they are ashamed to be proud of the association?’

Actually it’s far worse, because despite the bigotry and racism of the platform speakers, as Tony Lerman points out ‘the CST officials didn’t walk out. They stayed. ‘We challenged the speeches we objected to’, they tweeted in a response to me. I then put this to them: ‘Surely u wouldn’t participate in a symposium with white racists. Why attend one with Jewish racists?’ Their response: ‘we behaved honourably and have nothing to answer to you for’.  I’m not so sure that’s such an easily defensible position.

Rich and Gardener are janus faced .  If someone had said that “The source of anti-German hatred is the organisation of the Jewish corporation.” as of course Nazis used to, then one would clearly recognise this as a staple part of the anti-Semitic diet.  The world Jewish conspiracy theory no less.  Yet when Bat Yeor says that “The source of antisemitism is the organisation of the Islamic corporation.” there is apparently a walk-out, or was it just a polite disagreement, from the session in question.  Would the CST walk out of a session at which David Duke elaborated on Jewish ‘crimes’ yet remained content to participate and even be guest speakers at other sessions of the Conference on Jewry?

According to the Jewish Chronicle David Hirsh, editor of anti-racist website Engage, left the room during Dr Gerstenfeld’s lecture.  What a noble gesture!  And what was he doing there in the first place is what those he has accused of anti-Semitism in UCU might like to know.

But if one looks at Rich and Gardener’s comments above, concerning Dr Gerstenfeld and Bat Yeor, then one notices just how lukewarm their criticism really was.

Dave Rich suggested that Bat Ye’or’s comment concerning the ‘Islamic Corporation’ ‘could be construed as Islamophobic’.  That is a strange way of putting it.  How about if someone started speaking of the ‘Jewish Corporation’ and how Jews control the world through it?  I suspect, given Rich and Gardener’s record in detecting the signs of ‘anti-Semitism’ in even pro-Jewish places like Carol Churchill’s play, that he would have been somewhat more forthright in his views.  It says a lot for the government's ‘Tell Mama’ that Dave Rich is an advisor.

Mark Gardner, director of CST communications was equally forthright:
“A minority of speakers said things about Britain, Europe and Muslims that we found to be incorrect, unacceptable and self-defeating.  We made our concerns clear with a number of interventions and were correct to do so.”

Clearly there was no walk-out, just a ‘number of interventions’.  And the virulently racist nonsense espoused?  Well this was ‘incorrect’.  So when anti-Semites (and Zionists) such as Glenn Beck go on about the Rothschilds being the source of the world’s economic crisis [see Is Glenn Beck an anti-Semite? Fox host slammed by Anti-Defmation League for attack on George Soros] he is presumably ‘incorrect’ or mistaken.

Self-Defeating

What is more telling is Gardener’s use of the term ‘self-defeating’.  What it demonstrates is that Gardener and the CST see themselves as part of one big tent, a Zionist tent, which inevitably includes the most virulent anti-Arab and Islamaphobic racists.  What they are doing is offering friendly criticism to those who share the same outlook but choose to express it differently.  It is a minor tactical difference of opinion amongst comrades.  The real game is defaming the opponents of Zionism through the use of wild allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Caroline Swords Acquitted of Attack on Zionist Goon Garfield

Anti-Israel Activist Wins Appeal’

Imagine my surprise when I read in the Jewish Chronicle that ‘Anti-Israel Activist Wins Appeal’.
According to Marcus Dysch (6.12.12.)

Harvey Garfield Fails to Frame Palestinian Activist

Garfield on the left, hand on hip, looking satisfied as the EDL are all around

‘A veteran anti-Israel campaigner has been cleared of hitting a Jewish man during a boycott protest.
Carole Swords, former chair of Tower Hamlets Respect Party, successfully appealed against a public order offence conviction which followed the pair clashing in a Tesco Metro store.
Harvey Garfield told Southwark Crown Court he had been struck in the face by Ms Swords in London’s Covent Garden in August 2011.
Mr Garfield said he had been volunteering at the store to assist staff and security guards and had worked to “protect” Israeli products from potentially being vandalised by boycott protesters who had earlier demonstrated outside the Israeli cosmetics company Ahava.
The court viewed CCTV footage which showed Ms Swords, of Bow, east London, entering the Tesco store and speaking to Mr Garfield and a security guard.
She walked down an aisle and Mr Garfield walked behind her. He told the court that Ms Swords had turned to shout: “Don’t you f***ing follow me.”
“It happened very quickly,” he said. “I turned, but before I said anything she had struck me. My glasses came off at an angle and fell to the floor.”
Ms Swords’ defence team argued that Mr Garfield had harassed and intimidated her inside Tesco, alleging that he had called her a “Nazi”, a” fishwife” and a “terrorist”. Mr Garfield repeatedly denied the accusation.
Chairing the hearing last Friday, Recorder Mukul Chawla QC said the CCTV footage showed Mr Garfield following Ms Swords in such a way that he was “virtually glued to her”.
“We are of the clear view that the appellant was entitled to demand in emphatic terms that he not follow her,” he said. “It’s clear Ms Swords raised her arm with her hand carrying a number of leaflets. What’s not clear is whether the hand or arm ever came into contact with Mr Garfield’s face. How his glasses came off we cannot say. ” The evidence meant the court “could not reasonably convict” and he allowed the appeal.(hat tip – Michael Shanahan)

Now I have a slight knowledge of Harvey Garvey myself.  Not only was he pictured dancing down Monmouth Street with his twin image Jonathan Hoffman and the EDL’s Roberta Moore, but he is even more objectionable than his twin.  This particular specimen of Zionist low-life, having no arguments of his own to make, has even tried to criticise my own views on Israel, not by reference to their own merits, but because my dead father would not have agreed with me!  Only a thorough racist, Zionist or otherwise, would buy into this old ‘kith and kin’ argument that ‘blood is thicker than water’ therefore you should turn a blind eye to injustice carried out in your name by those whose religion/race you share.

I even have knowledge of the violence of what Michael Shanahan describes as a ‘rick-shaw puller’ who masquerades as a London cabby.  At the anti-Habimah protests last year, I was taking a quiet stroll in the theatre, having appreciated how a Zionist troupe probably brought a whole new understanding to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (in fact their’s was probably one of the worst interpretations imaginable – hackneyed and timeless) when I was set upon by a group of Zionist hoodlums, including the said Harvey.  As Garfield climbed onto my back, I heard a sudden thump on the floor where the schmuck landed.  Immediately he started squealing and the Police detained me.  However I then informed London’s finest that in that case  I wanted to press charges of assault against Harvey, and hey presto, I was released inside of 5 minutes as it dawned on even the most thick Met Inspector that little ol’ me was hardly likely to want to take on 3 Zionist thugs at the same time!

Tony Greenstein

Kufr Kaddoum village in revolt forces retreat of Zionist soldiers

A Gratifying Scene of Resistance to Israel's Occupation

Israel Targets Journalists

 'The Only Democracy in the Middle East' doing its best to uphold freedom of expression

This report contains graphic scenes. Viewer discretion is advised. Watch full multipart The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza 

Community Security Trust's Dave Rich Accuses Child Refugee of Nazism of 'Antisemitism!'

Mark Gardener, main spokesman of the CST, with fellow believer in tolerance, Richard Littlejohn

Robert Wistrich, Tel Aviv Professor and Ideologue for the Belief that Islam and a 'new anti-Semitism' are partners

 Weaponising the holocaust and anti-Semitism in the cause of Israel

In an excellent post by Tony Lerman 'Another faulty, pseudo-academic antisemitism initiative' Tony Lerman,  one of the key academics in Jewish and Zionist life in Britain, who broke from Zionism (see his book 'The Making & Unmaking of a Zionist' (which I've just reviewed!), he shows how unscrupulous 'academics', whose main concern is the wielding of 'anti-Semitism' at Israel's critics, are doing their best to shut down debate.  In a comment I posted, in response to various comments, I add the following - full article underneath:

Sharon Klaff asks, all innocent and wide-eyed 'what your gripe is. Take a breath and ask yourself why you are so angry that there are people who recognize the rise again of a call for genocide of the Jews.' 

Sharon has therefore answered her own question.  When people take the term 'anti-Semitisim' and 'genocide' against the Jews and use it to falsely lable those who are anti-Zionist, , then that is the concern, which Antony Lerman has expressed very well in his excellent post above.

Richard Kuper has dealt neatly with Harvey Garfield's absurd suggestion that the slogan 'from the river to the sea' is in any way anti-Semitic.  The call for a unitary, secular state is the  most democratic and anti-racist solution to the conflict between a settler state and the indigenous people there is.  And as Richard says, the Israeli state does not recognise the Green Line so why the Palestinians should is a mystery!

And since Dennis MacShane, who was quite content to siphon off thousands of pounds of public money whilst berating 'benefit thieves' if they should earn an extra fiver to feed the kids, is being honoured with an Award of Merit, the cover of which is headed by Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionists, then Harvey needs to learn some Zionist history.  Because:
i.  The slogan of the Revisionists was the West Bank is ours and so is the East Bank too!!  (Apparently the tribe of Benjamin and one other resided there at one time)

ii.  Jabotinsky, although not a fascist himself, led a movement whose paper Daor Hayom in Palestine was edited by Abba Achimeir, who ran a column 'Diary of a Fascist'.  Achimeir wrote of how 'Yes, we Revisionists have a great admiration for Hitler. Hitler has saved Germany.  Otherwise it would have perished within four years. And if he had given up his
anti-Semitism we would go with him.'  This was expressed in the trial of Arlossoroff, the head of the Political Dept. of the Jewish Agency by the Revisionists who are widely considered to have assassinated him (for good anti-fascist reasons ironically)

In 1933 Jabotinsky wrote to Achimeir urging an end to this nonsense:  

'The articles and notices on Hitler and the Hitlerite movement appearing in Hazit Ha am are to me, and to all of us, like a knife thrust in our backs. I demand an unconditional stop to this outrage. To find in Hitlerism some feature of a  national liberation  movement is sheer ignorance. Moreover, under present circumstances, all this babbling is discrediting and paralysing my work ... I demand that the paper join, unconditionally and absolutely, not merely our campaign against Hitler Germany, but also our hunting down of Hitlerism, in the fullest sense of the term.'  Joseph Schectman, Fighter & Prophet, p.216.

Or there is the training of Jabotinsky's Beitar naval squadron at Civitavecchia in November 1934 when Mussolini was the darling of, not just the Revisionist Zionists.

It is no surprise that Mark Gardener and Dave Rich of the Community Security  Trust should throw their weight behind false accusations of 'anti-Semitism', since that is the real purpose of their organisation.  To create an image of anti-Semitism that doesn't exist and at the same time to use the 'old' anti-Semitism to frighten Jews into emigration.   One thing the CST has never done is to participate in any joint activity against anti-Semitic and racist groups like the NF/BNP/EDL.

Indeed they were quite content, as was Dave Rich, at the time of Cast Lead, for EDL members to participate in the glorification of the murders on the Mavi Marmara outside the Israeli Embassy.  Despite Rich's protestations at the time, no attempt was made to prevent EDL members attending that demonstration.  Indeed a mirror image of what occurred then happened at the pickets outside Ahava, with Zionist Federation and EDL members standing and chatting side by side.  The CST had nothing whatsoever to say.

The agenda is quite clear, as Prof. Klaff states.  Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, therefore it should be banned to protect Jewish students.  Ironically the Union of Jewish Students, which would quite like to do the same, OPPOSED no platform for fascists and racists when I was a student, in case it might be applied to them!

Brian Klug's definition, that anti-Semitism is a form of hatred and discrimination against Jews is pretty clear.  It is those who always saw anti-Semitism as a 'normal' reaction to the presence of Jewish strangers in their midst who can be considered as buying into anti-Semitism.  Yet that was the meaning of the Negation of the Diaspora.  Zionism accepted anti-Semitism as 'normal' with people like Israel's first Justice Minister Pinhas Rosenbluth going as far as to describe Palestine as an 'institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin' (Journal of Israel Studies 4, Autumn 1983).  But this is not the type of anti-Semitism Gardener and Rich are concerned about because theirs is a political campaign.

And if they ally with vehement anti-Islamic racists and fundamentalists who cares.  Manfred Gerstenfeld's article about 'anti-Semitism' in Norway is a good example.  Perhaps he would care to peruse the views of Andreis Breivich as to his attitudes to Muslims and Israel (though like the CST and the above symposia participants, he too detested Jewish 'traitors').
 
The problem for Wistrich, Klaff and the other Zionist McCarthyites, who brook no challenge to their theses or debates, is that all their efforts fall on stony ground.  Most people are quite capable of working out what anti-Semitism is and the question they ask is quite simple.  How come the Jews of all people, given their experience of racism, can indulge in the same.  It is our job to point out that Jews and Zionists are not one and the same and that in any event any group of people, given the right set of circumstances, can be victim or victimiser.
 
It says a lot about the CST's lack of anything resembling a considered thought pattern that Dave Rich can seize on the letter from Emeritus Professor Leslie Baruch Brent, which compared Israel's actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis in the bombing of Guernica.  Is Rich seriously suggesting that the Nazis were unique?  If it is right to compare US bombing in Vietnam with Nazi bombing of civilians, or that of the British in Iraq in 1920, why should Israel be given a free pass?  No one is suggesting that Israel is alone in this war crime.
 
It is somewhat ironic that Professor Brent, with whose letter I didn't totally agree, is himself a childhood survivor of the Nazis, a member of the Kindertransport.  I think he knows a little more about what it was like to flee the Nazi terror than a paid propagandist.

Tony Greenstein

Another faulty, pseudo-academic antisemitism initiative

Tony Lerman - dissident former Zionist

It was inevitable. Another Gaza offensive by Israel begins, ostensibly to stop Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel, and within a couple of days accusations of antisemitism were flying around.
 
Two particularly caught my attention. The first was the claim that Steve Bell, in his Guardian cartoon of 15 November, was ‘getting] away with using antisemitic imagery and tropes‘ because it showed Tony Blair and William Hague as puppets of Bibi Netanyahu.
 
The second was in a tweet about a letter to the Guardian from emeritus professor Leslie Baruch Brent who condemned the ‘disporportionate response of the Israeli government to the Hamas rocket attacks’ and concluded ‘Has the world learned nothing since Guernica?’  The text of the tweet read: ‘Hard to take @guardian opposition to #antisemitism seriously when they publish letter comparing #Israel to Nazis.’ 
I was especially interested in these accusations because the first was by Mark Gardner, the communications director of the Community Security Trust (CST), the private charity that acts as the defence organization of the UK Jewish community, and the second by Dave Rich, his deputy.
One of the things that is most worrying about what I believe were these false imputations of antisemitism (and I will explain my reasoning for this conclusion in my next blogpost) is that they come not simply from individuals expressing their own views, but from officials of a very influential, major registered charity, and in the case of the cartoon, writing in their capacity as officials of that organization. The view of the Community Security Trust is seen as, and is intended to be seen as, the view of the organized UK Jewish community. And yet that wider community has no means of calling the CST to account and therefore has to suffer the consequences of its officials’ doubtful and often damaging politically-motivated interventions in public debate.
 
The politicization of antisemitism research
 
The institutionalized politicization of antisemitism by bodies claiming to be non-political or academic is not new. And with regard to a charity like the CST, it is very troubling.

We saw this politicization in the now defunct Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), which was closed by the university authorities after it became clear that it was primarily an advocacy body and not a serious research institute. And it was also apparent in the now almost defunct European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (EISCA), established, it seems, with a mandate to grossly exaggerate the problem of antisemitism (the inaugural lecture given by the then Labour Europe minister Jim Murphy was entitled ‘Antisemitism: a hate that outlives all others’). There has been no activity on its website since June 2011, and that was an article by the now disgraced former Labour Party junior minister Denis MacShane, first published in the Jewish Chronicle and cross-posted on the EISCA blog.
 
While still thinking about the manipulation of antisemitism for political purposes, I received information about a symposium on antisemitism taking place on 2 December at the Wiener Library in London. Though clearly planned long before the latest Israeli offensive against Gaza, the holding of the symposium at this time is an extraordinary coincidence. And it was immediately obvious from the programme that it fell squarely into the category of an event dressed up in pseudo-academic clothes but which is, in reality, an exercise in political advocacy.
 
Although the symposium is taking place at the Wiener Library, a highly respected documentation, research and educational resource on the Holocaust and the Nazi era, it’s not mentioned anywhere on Wiener’s website. This is no doubt because the event itself is being organized exclusively under the auspices of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA), with the library’s prestigious central London premises simply hired for the occasion. Wiener’s director, Ben Barkow, is not speaking at the symposium.
 
The Journal for the Study of Antisemitism: a home for the ‘new antisemitism’ notion
 
The JSA is a privately funded periodical founded four years ago. It has no institutional base and is privately published. It describes itself as ‘ the peer-reviewed work of a select group of independent scholars’. Even a cursory glance at the journal’s list of Board Members reveals a great preponderance of neoconservatives, Islamophobes, advocates of the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, pedlars of the ‘self-hating Jew’ accusation against Jewish critics of Israeli policies and out-and-out political propagandists.
 
The individuals funding the event are Daniel Pipes, Mitch Knisbacher and Jeff and Evy Diamond. Pipes, the president of the right-wing Middle East Forum (MEF), is widely described as an ‘Islamophobe’. In 2009 his MEF established a legal defence fund for the far-right, populist, Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Pipes reportedly claimed that President Obama is a former Muslim who ‘practised Islam’. Knisbach, who is the founder and owner of 800response (America’s leading provider of shared-use 800-number services), is active in the right-wing Israel lobby AIPAC and funds Tazpit News Agency, a service set up primarily to popularize a positive view of settlement activity in the West Bank. Jeff Diamond, who heads the Jeff Diamond Law Firm, which has six offices in New Mexico and Texas, was installed in January as chair of the New Mexico Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Board of Directors.
 
The journal’s editors — Neal E. Rosenberg, a criminal lawyer, and Stephen K. Baum, a clinical psychologist — and the journal itself were mired in controversy early in 2010 when they sacked Dr Clemens Heni, a Berlin-based academic, from the editorial board for criticizing the Berlin Technical University’s centre for research on antisemitism for what he regarded as its ‘neglect of Islamic anti-Semitism and Israel’s security’ — and this was in an article Heni wrote for the journal. Various members of the board resigned in protest. The editors say they were pressured by the Berlin centre, which, a Jerusalem Post article claims, threatened to engineer the resignation of seven German members of the Board and the withdrawal of cooperation with the journal by three German antisemitism research centres. The editors soon relented, reinstated Heni and asked some of the resigning Board members to return. Some did and some didn’t.
 
Heni vigorously attacked the decision to close YIISA. In the wake of its demise, and no doubt after his experience being sacked and then reinstated to the JSA editorial board, in 2011 he set up a new German antisemitism research body, the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), the main focus of which is ‘anti-Semitism in the 21st century, particularly hatred of Israel.’
 
The symposium: a one-sided affair
 
The curious thing about this incident is that it’s quite clear that the journal’s posture is very close to the line Heni took in his attack on the Berlin centre. The programme and speakers at the forthcoming symposium demonstrate this. (A note of caution: the programme sent to me looks like the last word on who is attending and speaking, but may not be. It differs from the version of the programme on the JSA website.) Titled ‘Contemporary antisemitism in the UK’, the symposium kicks off with a panel on ‘Defining the new antisemitism’, chaired by Kenneth Marcus. The panellists are Bat Ye’or, Richard Landes and Winston Pickett.

Marcus heads the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which was founded in late 2011 and took over where YIISA left off when it was closed down. YIISA’s director, Charles Small is on the advisory board, the honorary chairman of which is Professor Irwin Cotler, former Canadian justice minister, who has probably done more than anyone else to promote the idea of the ‘new antisemitism’. Other like-minded board members, who were also YIISA supporters, include Professor Dina Porat, Professor Ruth Wisse and Professor Alvin H. Rosenfeld.
 
The three panellists will find much to agree on. For decades Bat Ye’or has been banging the drum about the ‘Muslim hordes’ who were about to take over Europe. Rather generously referred to as a ‘self-taught Jewish intellectual’, she now believes that Europe is dead, and in its stead ‘Eurabia’ has risen. Richard Landes, director and co-founder of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, told the Herzliya IDC conference in 2007:
European democratic civilization can fall before the Islamic challenge. Do not say that this will never happen in Europe and that Islam will not be able to take control of Europe.
If Europe continues its current path, the fall will be sooner.
 
Winston Pickett was the director of the now non-functioning EISCA. He lavishes unreserved praise on Professor Robert Wistrich for his huge tome, Antisemitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, a book that, as its title suggests, sets out to justify the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’.
 
Panel sessions 2 and 3 — ‘Mapping the rise of contemporary antisemitism’ and ‘Antisemitism on campus’ — present much the same picture. Both chairpersons, Manfred Gerstenfeld and Kenneth Lasson, see no real distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Gerstenfeld’s crude and wild assertions about antisemitism are legion. A recent online article about antisemitism in Norway is a good example of his continuing attempt to portray European countries as riddled with antisemitism, no matter what the data say. Lasson’s views are clearly laid out in an 80-page paper, ‘Antisemitism in the academic voice’, in which he writes that ‘Anti-Zionism . . . has evolved into antisemitism’ and reveals how ill-equipped he is to comment on this subject when he says: ‘The misnamed “occupation” allegedly began after Israel’s 1967 victory . . .’
 
In panel 2, Mark Gardner of the CST and Robert Wistrich, who heads the Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), should feel comfortable with each other’s role in justifying and promoting the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, though it would be only fair to acknowledge that Wistrich’s influence in this regard far outstrips that of Gardner’s. Wistrich restated the classic definition of the ‘new antisemitism’ in a talk at the Hebrew University Jerusalem in June 2011 entitled ‘From blood libel to boycott: changing faces of British antisemitism’. A Cif Watch post summarised his remarks: ‘efforts to boycott and delegitimize Israel (the Jewish collective) as a form of exclusion from the community of nations [are] not dissimilar from historical efforts to exclude the individual Jew from the communities where they resided.’ Gardner’s use of the ‘new antisemitism’ argument is clearly apparent in his and Dave Rich’s analysis of Caryl Churchill’s short playlet Seven Jewish Children. (My refutation of their analysis is here.) It is also unlikely that there will be much disagreement in panel 3 between Clemens Heni, Ronnie Fraser (fresh from the tribunal hearing his claim of ‘institutional antisemitism’ against the University and College Union), who runs the 
Academic Friends of Israel, and Dave Rich.
 
Some dissent at last?
 
Some serious diversity of views then appears possible when Lesley Klaff chairs a panel discussing ‘Addressing current approaches’. This would be unlikely, however, were Professor Klaff to proffer her own views. Linked to BICSA and the Brandeis Center, she has made her opinions on the connection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism perfectly clear. As she writes in the journal of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs:

University codes of conduct and UK law recognize that an important university goal is the promotion of equality of opportunity for minority students and their protection from discrimination, including harassment. Given the growing consensus that anti-Zionism is in fact anti-Semitism in a new guise, this goal is flouted with respect to Jewish students every time that anti-Zionist expression takes place on a university campus.

 So, no anti-Zionist views allowed on campus then. Period. While Günther Jikeli, co-founder of the International Institute for Education and Research on Anti-Semitism in London and Berlin, is under the false impression that the Fundamental Rights Agency of the EU endorses its predecessor’s ‘Working Definition’ of antisemitism, he, the PhD student Hagai van der Horst from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck University of London will hopefully be able to offer a stark contrast with what will have gone before. Feldman’s approach at the Pears Institute is a model of inclusiveness and variety; he creates a safe space for the expression of sharply different opinions.

Worrying about the left and boycott, and promoting the EUMC ‘Working Definition’
 
The speakers on the final panel, ‘Strategic interventions: what can be done?’, are not on record, as far as I could ascertain, as specifically subscribing to the JSA‘s line on the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The barrister Julian Hunt is described in the programme as ‘having experience defending pro-Israel activists’, which, from his July 2012 post on the Commentator blog, seems to refer to Jewish students on campus. With a title like ‘Criminalising the boycott bullies’, it seems fair to assume that he has an uncompromising attitude to anti-Zionism. Philip Spencer, an expert on the Holocaust and genocide, is director of politics and international Relations at the Helen Bamber Centre for the Study of Rights, Kingston University, and has a special interest in what he sees as the left’s less than glorious history of standing up to antisemitism. Francisco Garrett, a lawyer from Portugal, appears to have no significant track record as an antisemitism expert.
 
But there is little ambiguity in the position of the chair of this panel, L. Ruth Klein. In her 2009 report on antisemitism in Canada presented to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA), the national director of the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada refers to anti-Zionism as ‘that unholy hybrid of age-old and new-age bigotry’, calls for the criminalization of boycotts ‘against the Jewish state’ and for the adoption of the EUMC ‘Working Definition’ of antisemitism.
 
Giving the political game away
 
A spirit of free inquiry does not seems to govern these proceedings. And this view is strengthened further by the sessions of the symposium that are not panel discussions. The former chairman of EISCA, Denis MacShane MP, is given the platform to himself to speak on ‘The politics of fighting antisemitism’. I and others have drawn attention to his woeful lack of understanding of antisemitism, his propensity to exaggerate what it represents – ‘there is no greater intolerance today than neoantisemitism’ – and his readiness to vilify Muslims and pro-Palestinian activists. For a man fêted as such a friend of the Jews, his ignorance about Jews and Israel, as displayed in his book Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism, is deeply disturbing.

But having written a book with that title he will certainly be at home among the JSA‘s ’select group of independent scholars’ at Sunday’s symposium. So much so that he is being presented with ‘The Award of Merit: Righteous Persons Who Fight Antisemitism’. (Whether the organizers still think he is quite so righteous after being found guilty of fiddling his parliamentary expenses, we do not know.) At the head of the page in the programme detailing this award, and two others, is a photograph of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the right-wing, revisionist Zionist ideologue, whose ideas have inspired much of today’s ruling political elite in Israel and, so it clearly appears, the organizers of this symposium. Manfred Gerstenfeld receives the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ and Shimon T. Samuels scoops the jackpot with the ‘Jabotinsky Award’.
 
Samuels is the director for international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Paris and a long-standing promoter of the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’. In July 2011, after attending a UN meeting in Brussels titled ‘The role of Europe in advancing Palestinian statehood and achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians’, he wrote to the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon saying that the experience was akin to a ‘gangbang’. On 2 August 2012 he told the Jerusalem Post that the action of the Swiss Migros supermarket chain to label Israeli products from the West Bank was a boycott measure and must be viewed as ‘a continuation of Nazism’.
 
It shows just how far the academic study of contemporary antisemitism has become corrupted in some circles that the organizers of this symposium did not seem to feel a moment’s shame in so blatantly politicizing it by identifying so completely with the political ideology of Jabotinsky. As if this wasn’t enough to damn as bogus what’s billed as an academic event, the screening of Gloria Greenfield’s ‘documentary’, Unmasked Judeophobia, can leave no one in any doubt. The New York Times‘ reviewer Nicole Herrington wrote:

the film loses ground toward the middle, when it calls out individuals (often just by showing their images) and organizations for their passiveness or criticism of Israeli policies without giving a full account of the facts. The roster is long: the United Nations, feminists, the European news media, Alice Walker, human rights groups and American academics.

In the end the issues of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are conflated, weakening the filmmaker’s argument.

Less restrained, but equally reasonable, was this from James van Maanen’s film review blog:

I suspect there is some very good information in Gloria Greenfield’s new documentary, Unmasked Judeophobia: The Threat to Civilization (that sub-title alone should raise a red flag), but the repetitive, ham-handed manner in which it is presented is enough to make aware and thinking people — anyone, that is, who might find and be willing to admit as reprehensible some of the state of Israel’s current behavior toward its Palestinian residents — run for the exit.

This comment could equally be applied to the entire JSA symposium.
 
Anyone who disagrees with the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’ should always be prepared to discuss it with its promoters. And its promoters should always be willing to debate the notion with its critics. This is the only way that sense on antisemitism can be arrived at. By the nature and format of this symposium, the JSA has clearly shown that it has no interest whatsoever in such a dialogue, even if one or two brave souls may try to speak up for the values that underpin true academic exchange.
 
(Thanks to Ben White for drawing my attention to this symposium and for sharing information and sources.)
 
Even one of Zionism’s more vacant intellects, Deborah Lipstadt, primus inter pares among American holocaust historians, bemoaned in How To Study Anti-Semitism how Yale University’s Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism had been shut down because, in her words: ‘Too many students who take these classes find that they have entered a zone in which advocacy masquerades as scholarship.’  In other words, it’s not easy to marry propaganda and serious historical research and vigorous academic debate.  

See the Powerbase Article on the Community Security Trust


Needless to say this essay has set the cat amongst those who think of themselves as the more 'intellectual' Zionists e.g. Richard Millett, who questioned the fact that Dennis McShane was Islamaphobic as well of course as being a more general run of the mill reactionary!  See this      exchange:

1. I’m still waiting for proof from Tony Lerman that MacShane “vilifies Muslims”. Can you give a direct quote please?
• 

  Antony Lerman
  02/12/2012 at 10:08 pm | #21

  Reply | Quote

  MacShane’s book Globalising Hatred:The New Antisemitism (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2008) is a very confused book in which MacShane tries to portray himself as on the side of Muslims experiencing racism just as he is on the side of Jews experiencing antisemitism. Sadly, this is overwhelmed by the Islamophobia that suffuses the whole book. For quotes, read the book and take your pick. If you need help, try p. vii, the first page of the preface, lines 10 to 17. Or p. 163 where he writes: ‘An end to antisemitism is the beginning of a rebirth of the Arab peoples and their nations’ — tantamount to an accusation of collective guilt of all Arabs, which of course includes a very great part of the world’s Muslim population. Or read chapter 7, ‘Antisemitism or Antizionism’, which is an extended attack on one person, Tariq Ramadan, done in such a way as to vilify Muslims generally. Enough for you Richard?