Banning Gilad Atzmon from playing a jazz concert in Islington has nothing to do with opposing anti-Semitism

I oppose the ban on Atzmon not only because it's an attack on artistic freedom but because it's aimed at upholding not opposing racism

Gilad Atzmon has been banned by Islington Council from playing a jazz concert with the Blockheads under the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. Yet the IHRA policy itself is both racist and anti-semitic.  Ipso facto any ban enacted under it can only be aimed at supporting and entrenching racism and anti-semitism.

I recently wrote about the disparity in sentencing between Israeli Jews  and non-Jews in Israel. An Israeli, Evyatar Damari, who was part of a lynch mob that killed an Eritrean refugee, Haftom Zarhum, in Beer Sheba's bus station received 4 months imprisonment. That was the most severe sentence. Most of the lynch mob either received community service or in the case of members of the prison service were simply not prosecuted.

I contrasted this with 16 year old Ahed Tamimi whose cousin, half an hour before, had been shot in the head by a plastic bullet. Ahed slapped a soldier who invaded the grounds of her house.  She received an 8 months sentence and the Education Minister, Naftali Bennett suggested she should spend the rest of her days in prison. 

Yet if I call this racist then according to the IHRA misdefinition of anti-semitism, which states that calling Israel a 'racist endeavour' is itself anti-semitic, it is me who is anti-Semitic. Not only is the IHRA racist but in suggesting that Jews support Israeli racism it is also anti-Semitic. Yet this is the policy that is being used to ban Gilad Atzmon.  Clearly he isn't being banned on anti-racist grounds.

The Board of Deputies which opposes Atzmon's antisemitism is wholeheartedly in favour of Israeli snipers mowing down unarmed Palestinians - it sees no contradiction

Noone has been a greater critic of Atzmon over the years than me. Nearly 12 years ago I wrote one of the first critiques of Atzmon’s anti-Semitism, The Seamy Side of Solidarity in the Guardian’s Comment is Free, at a time when the Guardian wasn’t afraid of debating issues such as Zionism. I also organised a picket of Jews Against Zionism in June 2005 when Atzmon came to talk on Otto Weininger at the SWP’s Bookmarks.

Salvador Dalli was an admirer of Zionism, which he saw as a kindred spirit

My blog was initially set up in order to combat the pernicious influence of Atzmon in the Palestine solidarity movement. I have written dozens of articles analysing why Atzmon’s writings are both anti-Semitic and unhelpful to the struggle for Palestinian liberation. I produced A Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazzman and in a review of his book The Wandering Who I described it as  Worthless and Devoid of All Originality. Other articles included Gilad Atzmon Comes Out - Now an open anti-Semite .  I penned a number of articles in Weekly Worker such as Time to say goodbye. Atzmon was not reticent in attacking me either, e.g. The Green(stein)-Eyed Monster.

In a debate with Atzmon, which has been widely quoted, I demonstrated how he was undoubtedly anti-Semitic and sympathetic to the arguments of holocaust denier Paul Eisen. During the course of this debate Atzmon described Eisen’s Holocaust Wars, which was paean to Ernst Zundel, an open Hitler worshipper, as ‘a great text’.

Salvador Dalli's Theatre/Museum at Figueres - Perhaps this too is not kosher?

You might therefore think that I would welcome the decision by Islington Council to ban Atzmon from playing a concert. I don’t. My objection was always to Atzmon’s politics.  I have never objected to his music. Although jazz is not my preferred musical form I recognise that Atzmon is a brilliant performer. For example he won the BBC Jazz Record of the Year in 2003 with Exile. Nor is he a fascist like many of his detractors.

It is utterly indefensible as well as being undemocratic to ban Atzmon’s music. It fits in well with the police state methods of the Israeli state which recently gaoled an Israeli Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour for writing a poem.  This is the same Israeli state which does nothing and says nothing when hundreds of Israeli Jews add ‘death to the Arabs’ to their twitter id.

The Jewish Chronicle's opposition to the antisemitic Atzmon does not apply to the racism of Zionism

The ban on Atzmon has nothing to do with anti-racism and is part of the Zionist attack on freedom of speech for Palestinians and anti-Zionists in Britain. To support it or say nothing is to give comfort to the racist supporters of the Israeli state.

The Article I wrote on Why Atzmon is Antisemitic

The ban on Atzmon is nothing less than cultural McCarthyism. It is wrong in principle. When you prevent someone performing because you disagree with their politics it is a slippery road to an authoritarian state. Perhaps we should ban T.S. Elliot’s poetry and Wasteland since Elliot was, without doubt, anti-Semitic. Maybe we should also ban the works of Ezra Pound who was far worse and a sympathiser with the Nazis. Undoubtedly we should ban anything connected with Salvador Dalli since he supported Franco and Hitler. [See When The Surrealists Expelled Salvador Dalí for “the Glorification of Hitlerian Fascism” (1934)] I confess here to having recently visited his theatre-museum in Figueres and found it thoroughly enjoyable (and also learnt that he was something of a Zionist – not unusual in fascist circles).

Salvador Dalli's Museum/Theatre at 

For those doubting Thomases and professional searchers after anti-Semitism in the Jewish Labour Movement and other racist circles we should also ban Charles Dickens. Fagin, who ran a school of pick pockets, is perhaps the most notorious of all Jewish characters in English literature. In 1854 the Jewish Chronicle asked of Dickens why "Jews alone should be excluded from the 'sympathizing heart' of the author.

My review of Atzmon's Wandering Who

Dickens was a racist who also supported the infamous Governor Eyre, who declared Martial Law in Jamaica when there was a Black rebellion in 1865. Over 400 were hanged and 600 flogged (including women). This caused a massive controversy with Darwin on one side and Dickens alongside the white colonists and Tennyson.

And if the ban on Gilad Atzmon stands then we should definitely ban Shakespeare from the syllabus because there is no doubt that the Merchant of Venice with his pound of flesh is also anti-Semitic. Some people even believe that we should rewrite the Merchant of Venice and for good measure we should also ban Wagner’s music.

There is no love lost between Atzmon and myself but principles are somewhat more important

This is the cultural philistinism and barbarism that wretches like the Jewish Labour Movement’s Adam Langleben would have us indulge. The JLM, which is calling for the whip to be withdraw from Chris Williamson MP, whom it terms a ‘Jew baiter’ because he initially opposed the ban on Atzmon, is a group that has war criminal Ivor Caplin, a Defence Minister in Blair’s government at the time of the Iraqi invasion, as its Chair. At least Atzmon doesn’t have the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands but Langleben, Caplin et al would have Atzmon’s music, which has hurt no one, banned.

‘This is the cultural philistinism and barbarism that wretches like the Jewish Labour Movement’s Adam Langleben would have us indulge.’

Whereas the Nazis banned books, the Zionists would ban music. As Heinrich Heine presciently remarked, those who burn books later burn people. The same is true of those who would ban Atzmon. There is a debate over politics and art but it is not one that the Langlebens and Caplins would even begin to understand.

Chris Williamson wasn't aware of Atzmon's antisemitism but nonetheless he is wrong to support a ban

The relationship between the artist and what they produce has always been a difficult and controversial one. Artists can create great music and art despite themselves because of the influence of society in all its forms upon them.  Their art is greater than them. Art and culture does not belong to the individual who created it but the society in which it is created.

Artists often create what they do despite their own politics and preferences. To expect that only politically correct artists or musicians will produce acceptable music or art is a form of cultural barbarism that reminds one of the Stalinist concept of socialist realism and art as a function of politics. The Nazis and Hitler in particular had a similar attitude to what they termed ‘degenerate’ art.

The reality is that people like Bob Dylan produced great music not because of their own intrinsic worthiness but because of the impact of the wider society upon them and their ability to synthesise that music into the moods of the time.  The genius of Dylan’s music is despite his worthlessness as an individual.

The attempt to ban Atzmon should be laughed out of court but given the intellectual poverty of the Labour Party’s Zionist witchunters and its machine politicians with their endorsement of the incoherent fulminations of the IHRA, the decision of Islington Council has not met with any substantive criticism. People have been intimidated. Even Chris Williamson has been forced to row back and apologise for his initial opposition to the ban when apprised of Atzmon’s anti-Semitism.

This campaign is utterly hypocritical. Atzmon’s anti-Semitism is not dangerous to Jews. Atzmon’s nonsense is a danger to Palestinians. That was why Ali Abunimah and other Palestinians issued a statement Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon because it tarnishes their struggle. ‘Anti-Semitism’ today is primarily either verbal or on social media.  Noone has died because of a Tweet or Facebook post.

What anti-Semitism exists today is either on social media or a reaction to Israel’s murderous barbarities.  Where anti-Semitism does have strong social roots, as in areas of Eastern Europe – Poland, Hungary – then one finds that these regimes are the best friends of Israel!  Indeed the absurdity is that it is European’s far-Right governments which are the strongest supporters of the IHRA, e.g. the neo-Nazi Freedom Party in Austria’s Government. Indeed Israel has been arming the neo-Nazi Azov Batalion in the Ukraine.

In reality Atzmon, who sees Zionism as the authentic expression of being Jewish, is a Zionist who doesn’t like what Zionism has become.  Unfortunately he expresses his dislike in anti-Semitic terms thus reinforcing Zionism. That is why he spends most of his time attacking Jewish anti-Zionists like me! I fully agree with the statement of Ali Abunimah and the other Palestinians. That is also why I disagree with this stupid, reactionary and counter-productive ban.

Tony Greenstein

Fiasco In Islington

Richard Hugus

Gilad Atzmon

Jazz saxophonist and writer Gilad Atzmon was recently banned from playing at an assembly hall in Islington, a borough of London, by order of the Islington Town Council. This came about as a result of an e-mail from one person – Martin Rankoff – saying nothing more than that if Atzmon was going to be at the venue on December 21 he would give a ticket that was given to him to someone else.

Rankoff wrote, “Mr Atzmon’s news and beliefs I personally find repulsive and do not wish to be in the same place as him, let alone listen to his music.” Rankoff included links to ADL and Israeli news outlets accusing Atzmon of antisemitism. Incredibly, on the basis of this letter alone, the Islington Council went way out of its way and contacted the show’s promoter to get Atzmon banned—something Rankoff didn’t even ask for.

Imagine the situation in reverse: Gilad Atzmon writes a letter to the Council saying he is uncomfortable with Martin Rankoff appearing in the audience at Islington assembly hall. He refers to Mr. Rankoff’s pro-Israel Twitter page where Rankoff calls Jeremy Corbyn “A F***ing Antisemite and Racist” and where Corbyn is pictured on a bike with a comment suggesting Corbyn should be rammed by a car. Atzmon says that he doesn’t feel safe with Rankoff in the audience. He finds Mr. Rankoff’s support for Israel repulsive because Israel was founded on genocide against the people of Palestine. As proof he provides links to news reports on the slaughter of unarmed protestors in Gaza since March 30, 2018, and a story on the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948.

This imaginary second complaint would have been scorned as an abridgement of Rankoff’s rights. Indeed, since the Islington Council has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, in which criticism of Israel is deemed antisemitic, the Council would probably feel obliged to forward the letter to the authorities as evidence of hate speech.

The Council provided a statement on the banning in which it says:

“under the Equality Act 2010, the Council must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to foster good relations between different races and religions within the borough. The Council took account of the fact that Mr Atzmon’s presence at the Hall, and knowledge of his presence among residents of the borough, might harm such relationships, as well as the Council’s duty to tackle prejudice and promote understanding within the borough.”

This begs the question — in what way would either the “presence” of Gilad Atzmon or “knowledge of his presence among residents” harm the relationship between different races and religions in the borough? Atzmon was to appear at the venue as a saxophone player in a jazz group. It’s hard to imagine a more severe inversion of the concept of discrimination. On the basis of the feelings of one complainant, the right of a musician to work or even be present in Islington is taken away.

What lies behind this is a familiar tactic. Zionists have no argument to counter critics of Israel, so they try to shut them up by attacking their character and robbing them of their livelihood. Now AIPAC and other lobbies are working to make it illegal to criticize Israel, as we see in the recent case of a Texas speech therapist whose yearly contract was denied because she refused to sign a pledge not to support a boycott of Israel. One might ask, what does a teaching position in Pflugerville, Texas have to do with one’s opinions about a country seven thousand miles away? And why does that country have the right to compel anyone in the US to sign a loyalty oath?

If the BDS movement doesn’t do it, zealotry and fanatacism will be the undoing of the Zionist project. People don’t like being told what they are allowed to think and say. When our words and thoughts are policed, it makes us question all the more. What were once decent leftist positions against racism and discrimination have been twisted into a new kind of totalitarianism, one in which it is racist to question the racist, and discriminatory to question discrimination; one in which we are told to think something doesn’t exist when we can see with our own eyes that it does. The self-righteous members of the Islington Town Council have set a very dangerous precedent, and have been used as fools on top of it.

Debating with Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic Jazzman

For both anti-Semites and Zionists, to be a Jew is to be a Zionist

Just because 99% of supporters of the Palestinians are anti-racist it doesn’t mean that occasionally a supporter of the Palestinians is found to be anti-Semitic. Gilad Atzmon, a former Israeli Jew is one such person.  My first encounter with him was way back in 2005 when he wrote informing me Paul Eisen, that a Holocaust Denier, had written a ‘great text’ entitled Jewish Power and describing a Swedish fascist and resident of Israel, Israel Shamir, as a ‘unique and advanced thinker.’  

Eisen, the British director of the now-defunct Deir Yassin Remembered, went on to publish such insightful essays as Why I Call Myself a Holocaust Denier.  Shamir has gone one better.  In Who Needs Holocaust? he described Auschwitz as an 'internment facility, attended by the Red Cross’. Lest this be thought of as guilt-by-association Atzmon has also questioned whether the Holocaust has occurred'

Pictured here is Israeli Marxist Moshe Machover - Atzmon has developed a unique concept of Jewish as opposed to non-Jewish Marxism!

In Truth, History and Integrity Atzmon described how

‘It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense. ... If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war? I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators? I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative... We should strip the holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status and treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time and place.’

Atzmon went on to ask

‘65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should reclaim our history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people  stand up against their next door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their troubled history?’

When I challenged him on this passage Atzmon retorted that this essay had been integrated into his book The Wandering Who and if it had suggested Holocaust denial then ‘the book would’ve been  banned and I’d have been arrested” when he set foot in Germany since Holocaust denial is illegal there. What Atzmon omitted to say was that everything before ‘65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz..’ had been omitted from the book!

Blowing his own trumpet

In 2005 Jews Against Zionism held a picket outside the SWP’s Bookmarx shop when Atzmon was invited to speak to the collective faithful.  I have published a number of articles on Atzmon such as Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon and Time to say goodbye.

In mid-July Tony Gosling, who hosts a community radio station in Bristol invited me to debate Atzmon for the first time on a programme. Despite finding it difficult at times to hear everything he said, it was clear why Ali Abunimah, Omar Barghouti, Professor Joseph Massad and many other Palestinians had issued a joint statement Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon six years ago. (see below for statement).

From the Palestinian Ali Abunimah to the Zionist Alan Dershowitz everyone is out to get Atzmon

Atzmon’s paints all those who are what he calls politically Jewish as one and the same.  To him, regardless of whether your are an anti-Zionist or a Zionist if you are what he terms politically Jewish you are all the same. He takes particular exception to Jewish groups which are formed to oppose Zionism.  This is apparently a specific example of Jewish supremacy.

Atzmon is one of those few anti-Semites who opposes Israel, not because it is a settler-colonial state but because it is Jewish. Historically most anti-Semites supported the idea of a Jewish state as it was an ideal place to send all their unwanted Jews.

Throughout the debate Atzmon insisted that he cannot be anti-Semitic because he never mentions the word 'race', even though he consistently accuses anti-Zionist Jews of being 'racially oriented.'  It is clear to me that if you assert that all Jews are Zionists, i.e. politically the same, because they are Jewish, then you are invoking an anti-Semitic stereotype which says that all Jews share the same beliefs and opinions because they are Jewish. It is clearly as assertion of race by any other name.

In Not in My Name Atzmon declares that

By contrast, I really do not understand those who fight Zionism in the name of their secular Jewish identity. I have never understood them. I have never really understood what secularism means for the Jewish people.... To demand that Jews disapprove of Zionism in the name of their Jewish identity is to accept the Zionist philosophy. To resist Zionism as a secular Jew involves an acceptance of basic Zionist terminology, that is to say, a surrendering to Jewish racist and nationalist philosophy. 

As Atzmon conceded in the debate, Jewish identity is not and never has been fixed.  The idea that Jewish identity can only take the form of Zionism or Orthodox Judaism is an essentialist view of what it is to be Jewish.  In stating that to be Jewish is to be a Zionist Atzmon mirrors what Zionist ideologues themselves say. To say, as Atzmon says above that to oppose Zionism as a Jew is to accept basic Zionist terminology only makes sense if you accept that being Jewish and Zionist are interchangeable.

In Saying NO to the Hunters of Goliath Atzmon repeats a theme that he is particularly fond of.  The Jews were exterminated by the Nazis because they were ‘unpopular’. Nothing to do with fascism, racism, the need for a scapegoat.  And now Israel is ‘at least as unpopular in the Middle East as their grandparents were in Europe just six decades ago.’ In other words it not because Israel is a settler colonial state, rather Jews behave badly wherever they are. After all Israel is a Jewish state and being Jewish is a timeless quality. Atzmon wrote that:

Jews are now more than welcome in Germany and in Europe, yet, the Jewish state and the sons of Israel are at least as unpopular in the Middle East as their grandparents were in Europe just six decades ago. Seemingly, it is the personification of WW2 and the Holocaust that blinded the Israelis and their supporters from internalising the real meaning of the conditions and the events that led towards their destruction in the first place.

In the present climate when false accusations are the principal weapon of the Labour Right and the Zionists in their attempt to remove Jeremy Corbyn from the leadership of the Labour Party, then people like Atzmon can point to what is happening as an example of what he calls ‘Jewish Power.’

Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon

For many years now, Gilad Atzmon, a musician born in Israel and currently living in the United Kingdom, has taken on the self-appointed task of defining for the Palestinian movement the nature of our struggle, and the philosophy underpinning it. He has done so through his various blogs and Internet outlets, in speeches, and in articles. He is currently on tour in the United States promoting his most recent book, entitled, ‘The Wandering Who.’

With this letter, we call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions.

Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

Palestinians have faced two centuries of orientalist, colonialist and imperialist domination of our native lands. And so as Palestinians, we see such language as immoral and completely outside the core foundations of humanism, equality and justice, on which the struggle for Palestine and its national movement rests. As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.

We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.

Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism. In addition to its immorality, this language obscures the fundamental role of imperialism and colonialism in destroying our homeland, expelling its people, and sustaining the systems and ideologies of oppression, apartheid and occupation. It leaves one squarely outside true solidarity with Palestine and its people.

The goal of the Palestinian people has always been clear: self determination. And we can only exercise that inalienable right through liberation, the return of our refugees (the absolute majority of our people) and achieving equal rights to all through decolonization. As such, we stand with all and any movements that call for justice, human dignity, equality, and social, economic, cultural and political rights. We will never compromise the principles and spirit of our liberation struggle. We will not allow a false sense of expediency to drive us into alliance with those who attack, malign, or otherwise attempt to target our political fraternity with all liberation struggles and movements for justice.

As Palestinians, it is our collective responsibility, whether we are in Palestine or in exile, to assert our guidance of our grassroots liberation struggle. We must protect the integrity of our movement, and to do so we must continue to remain vigilant that those for whom we provide platforms actually speak to its principles.

When the Palestinian people call for self-determination and decolonization of our homeland, we do so in the promise and hope of a community founded on justice, where all are free, all are equal and all are welcome.

Until liberation and return.

Signed:

Ali Abunimah

Naseer Aruri, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Omar Barghouti, human rights activist

Hatem Bazian, Chair, American Muslims for Palestine

Andrew Dalack, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network

Haidar Eid, Gaza

Nada Elia, US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Toufic Haddad

Kathryn Hamoudah

Adam Hanieh, Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London

Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon! Canada

Monadel Herzallah, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network

Nadia Hijab, author and human rights advocate

Andrew Kadi

Hanna Kawas, Chair person, Canada Palestine Association and Co-Host Voice of Palestine

Abir Kobty, Palestinian blogger and activist

Joseph Massad, Professor, Columbia University, NY

Danya Mustafa, Israeli Apartheid Week US National Co-Coordinator & Students for Justice in Palestine- University of New Mexico

Dina Omar, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine

Haitham Salawdeh, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network

Sobhi Samour, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London

Khaled Ziada, SOAS Palestine Society, London

Rafeef Ziadah, poet and human rights advocate

Victory in Glasgow as Racist COFIS Kept Off Anti-Racist March

The Shame of the SWP/SUTR as they accept the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative

A replica of the Apartheid Wall was used to keep the racist COFIS away from an anti-racist march

Despite attempted obstruction from the march stewards Mick Napier of Scottish PSC captures what happened

Yesterday in Glasgow, despite the best attempts of the SWP/Stand Up to Racism leaders, the Zionists of the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland were kept off an anti-racist march.  Scottish PSC, Palestine solidarity supporters and anti-racists were sufficiently incensed by the arrogant and dismissive attitude of SUTR/SWP that they  built their own model replica of Israel’s Apartheid Wall in order to keep the Zionist racists away from the march.  The Zionists got a taste of what it must be like when you face a wall separating you from where you want to go!!

The Zionist contingent was cordoned off

How the Zionists saw their predicament

The march itself, was apparently only a few hundred strong and it set off almost immediately after the time scheduled for the marchers to rally.  It is clear that the leaders of the SWP/SUTR realised the counterproductive nature of their decision  to allow racists onto an anti-racist march and were determined to get it all over with as soon as decently possible.

How did it happen? The SWP formed a ‘united front’ (in fact a popular front) against racism appealing to the lowest common denominator politically with the Labour and Trade Union bureaucracy and just about anyone who would have them. The SWP is anxious to keep the support of the Labour bureaucracy at any price and is fully aware that much of that bureaucracy has fallen for the lie that being Jewish and being Zionist is one and the same thing. 

When the question arose of the participation of Zionists, supporters of the world’s only apartheid state, in their annual racist march, the SWP took fright.  If they told the COFIS that Zionist racists were not welcome on an anti-racist march it would mean the usual allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ and the possibility of the Labour bureaucrats taking away their ‘support’.  So the SWP decided that they would buckle first by swallowing their principles. 

This is of course not the first time that the SWP has found its principles to be a flexible and moveable feast.  When they were in Respect they kept quiet about abortion.  In Stop the War Campaign they kept quiet about gay rights.  Ten years ago they gave their support to Gilad Atzmon, an open anti-Semite and turned a blind eye to his anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. 'Anti-Zionist' holocaust denier, Time to say goodbye

COFIS's Facebook page talks of 'euthanising' Palestinians

Five years ago the SWP was embroiled in a crisis when a woman made allegations of rape against the National Secretary Martin Smith. Instead of Smith being suspended and the matter investigated or, if that were not possible, the Police being asked to investigate, the woman herself was penalised and made to feel responsible.  Another woman, a victim of serious sexual harassment was effectively sacked for making such allegations. 

In a series of articles that I and others wrote The Self-Destruction of the Socialist Workers Party – Now is the Time for a New Left Party, SWP Crisis Over Cover-up of Rape & Sexual Harassment Allegations against former National Secretary Martin Smith, SWP Central Committee - Rabbits Caught in the Headlights and Ten years on: a comment on the British SWP by the late Mike Marqusee the question was posed how this could happen in an allegedly revolutionary organisation.  My own view was not merely that the question of rape and sexism was not taken seriously but that the deformed internal political culture and lack of democracy in the SWP, whereby a self-perpetuating leadership slate is re-elected each year, resulted in an organisation which has no means of checking still less analysing its own behaviour.  In short there was no democratic accountability.  For the SWP leadership’s analysis of what went wrong see The politics of the SWP crisis.

Zionist marchers were hemmed in and isolated

In the front groups it sets up like Stand Up to Racism it replicates this lack of democracy.  None of its previous groups, Globalise Resistance, Unite Against Fascism, the Anti Nazi League etc. were remotely democratic.  They consisted of hand picked sponsors from the Labour Party, like Peter Hain in the ANL and SWP permanent full timers who effectively controlled the organisation.  In the Socialist Alliance they deliberately destroyed its democratic structures.

It is little wonder that when Palestinian supporters made demands on SUTR that an openly racist Zionist organisation should not be allowed to participate in their annual march, the SWP panicked.  Knowing full well the way that the false anti-Semitism campaign of Zionism had impacted on the Labour movement they took the decision that COFIS could participate because otherwise any decision would be painted as ‘anti-Semitic’. This was a deliberate concession to reformist and pro-imperialist currents in the Labour Party because the alternative was to stand up for international solidarity and anti-imperialism.  It is a concession to social chauvinism.

The lies of the Zionists who, by their own admission, couldn't take part in the march - calling Mick Napier a 'criminal' is like calling Ghandi a criminal, since he too was convicted of defying the British

Of course the obvious way out was simply to declare that Jews, whoever they were, were welcome on an anti-racist march but that supporters of Israel and Israeli flags in particular were not welcome.  Instead of confronting the Zionists’ attempts to confuse the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism the SWP simply caved in and made the situation worse. 

Even worse the SWP then went to the leaders of unions like the EIS (teachers union in Scotland) asking them to back them up, which unsurprisingly they did.  Equally unsurprising the Muslim Council of Scotland backed out of the march.  So the main representative of the community which is hardest hit by racism, the Muslim community, was not represented.  So Zionists, whose sole raison d'être is support of the Israeli state and who are not affected in any way by state racism, were welcome to participate on the march whereas the victims of state and fascist violence, Muslims, were forced into a position where they were not welcome.

Hemmed in an isolated in order to protect the public - Zionist racists

The dunderheads of the SWP, who parrot their opposition to Islamaphobia, fell at the first hurdle.  Islamapobia is the consequence of imperialist interventions in the Middle East and Afghanistan primarily.  A racism imported back to Britain in the same way as the racism used to justify the British Empire found is reflection in the anti-Black racism of the 1950’s and 1960’s as symbolised by Enoch Powell. 

However anti-Muslim racism is also spearheaded by Zionist groups, their neo-conservative and far-Right allies and the State of Israel.  It is no accident that some of the leading Islamaphobic groups, in Britain and internationally, love Israel so much.  Whether it is Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, Marine Le Pen in France or Heinz Christian Strache of the neo-Nazi Freedom Party in Austria, all are agreed that Israel is the first line of defence of the Western world against the Muslim hordes.  Indeed the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right in the USA, Richard Spencer, declares that he is a White Zionist. In Britain a similar line is taken by the British National Party and Britain First – Holocaust denial groups at home but Israel supporters abroad.

According to Wilders, his film ‘Islamization in the West’  will show “how the forces of Islamization are specifically targeting Israel in a fight against all free societies.”  The leader of Netherland’s fascist Freedom Party explains that ‘The film will demonstrate that the fight against Israel is not territorial, and hence Israel is only the first line of defense for the West.’  But the SWP is too stupid to understand the relationship between Zionism and anti-Muslim racism and because it lacks any internal democratic structure such decisions cannot be challenged. 

The racist CoFIS  repeats the myth that the Arab refugees who were ethnically cleansed left voluntarily at the urging of the Arab states - this lie has been repeatedly shown by people like Erskine Childers to be false

What the debacle over the Glasgow SUTR march shows is that the SWP’s formal anti-Zionism and pro-Palestinian politics are a dead letter.  When the crunch comes they simply abandon them in an opportunist and unprincipled attempt to retain the allegiance of the labour and trade union bureaucracy.

Practically this means that the SWP’s credibility in the Palestine solidarity movement is about zero.  They have totally discredited themselves. Brighton PSC affiliated to Stand Up to Racism but I would not wager that that affiliation continuing much longer.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign nationally sent a letter to SUTR asking them to issue a statement that organisations participating in their march ‘need to stand on a platform of opposition  to all forms of racism – which includes resistance to or, at the very least,  not supporting the policies and laws of any state that are clearly racist.’

COFIS hold their own demonstration after everyone has gone home!

Instead they received a cursory, insulting response which addressed none of their concerns and merely informed PSC who SUTR supporters are and what their criteria are, namely ‘opposition to the rising tide of racism, Islamophobia, Antisemitism and the scapegoating of refugees and migrants.’  This response completely failed to address the question of the participation of an openly racist, pro-Israel organisation in a supposedly anti-racist march.

One of the problems with the SUTR response is the crude equation it draws between racism, Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism. Racism is not simply a prejudice but is closely related to the class division of labour in society.  It is about the exercise of power and the role of the state.  Anti-Semitism today is not directed by the state.  Jews do not suffer from state racism.  For example there are no Jewish deaths in custody.  Jews are not subject to stop and search or immigration controls or even fascist violence.  Jews are not the subject of economic discrimination such as low wages.  Whereas Mosques are attacked with firebombs and an attempt was made at Finsbury Park mosque to run over worshippers, killing one, no such attack has been mounted on a synagogue. 

Yet the bulk of State funding for the protection of religious premises goes to the Zionist Community Security Trust not Muslim organisations.  Jews are also not demonised like Muslims in the press.  It is noticeable that all Britain’s racist papers – from the Express to the Sun and Mail – throw up their hands at ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party.  All of them are opposed to ‘anti-Semitism’ when the question of Israel arises.  Jews are not subject to the Government’s Prevent Strategy.  Jews are, for the most part, a privileged section of the White population.  Anti-Semitism is a marginal prejudice.

Anti-semitism in the UK and  internationally is far less than other forms of racism

This is born out by the Pew Global Attitudes Survey 2016 where by 7% of people hold negative attitudes about Jews compared to 28% in respect of Muslims and a whopping 45% when it comes to Roma.  The figures in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden are similar.  The failure of the SWP/SUTR to take this on board testifies to the crude simplicity of their anti-racist strategy.  It is a simplicity that hit the buffers last Saturday in Glasgow.

Tony Greenstein

Letter from PSC to SUTR:

We wanted to follow up our telephone conversations with a written note about our concerns over the presence of the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland on the SUTR Glasgow march on Saturday.

We are aware that a range of groups in Scotland including Scottish Friends of Palestine and SNP Friends of Palestine have raised their worries about the participation of the Confederation. These include the fact that this places Palestinians – including a group of Palestinian firefighters currently being trained by the FBU – in a hostile environment on a march they had intended to a join.

Whilst we understand that SUTR want to build a broad coalition of partners wishing to fight racism – including anti-Semitism, a brief visit to the Facebook page of the Confederation reveals them as propagators of the most offensive anti-Palestinian narratives. These include denying the Palestinian Nakba and posting material stating that no Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed prior to and after the establishment of the state of Israel; denying the status of Palestinian refugees and posting an article from the CEO of AIPAC which states that any Palestinian state is incompatible with Israel’s security. The Confederation is also part of a campaign to have student activism on UK campuses under the banner of ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ closed down. The Confederation has links with groups in the UK who – alongside Britain First and the EDL – have attempted to disrupt PSC marches and meetings.

We understand that the Confederation has framed its desire to attend within the context of an opposition to anti Semitism and that there is a concern that to indicate that their presence is not welcome will leave organisers open to the charge of anti-Semitism.

There are many definitions of racism, but to promote prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against people of a different race, ethnicity or culture, as the Confederation does, must surely give you as organisers cause for concern.

We would hope that there could be a clear statement that all of those organisations participating in a SUTR march need to stand on a platform of opposition  to all forms of racism – which includes resistance to or, at the very least,  not supporting the policies and laws of any state that are clearly racist. As organisers, we would hope that you would agree that anyone who cannot sign up to these basic principles would not be welcome and that behaviour designed to intimidate other participants will not be tolerated.

We would hope it is not too late for such a statement to be issued. Notwithstanding this, after the events of this weekend, we would wish – as the PSC – to have a more detailed conversation with SUTR about the long term strategy to address these issues.

Ben Jamal, PSC Director, and Hugh Lanning, PSC Chair.

SUTR Response

Dear Ben and Hugh,

For your information the SUTR Scottish Steering Committee unanimously agreed the following statement:

Stand up to Racism is a broad coalition comprising many civic organisations, refugee and migrant communities, as well as trade unions, political organisations and individuals. The key criteria are opposition to the rising tide of racism, Islamophobia, Antisemitism and the scapegoating of refugees and migrants. If you support these principles please come and join us on M17.

Signatories: Scottish Trades Union Congress, Unison Scotland, Unite the Union Scotland, Educational Institute of Scotland, University and College Union Scotland, Scottish Labour Party, Church of Scotland, Justice and Peace Scotland, Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, Scottish Refugee Council, Muslim Council of Scotland, Scottish Faiths Action For Refugees, Show Racism The Red Card, City of Edinburgh Unison, Glasgow City Unison, Unison South Lanarkshire, Edinburgh College EIS-Fela, Unite Scottish Housing Associations branch, Unite NHS Ayrshire & Arran, Unite GPM and IT Branch, Unite Glasgow retired members, MEND, Afghan Human Rights Foundation, Social Work Action Network, The People’s Assembly Scotland, Govanhill Baths Community Trust, Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees, Govanhill Against Racism, Maryhill Integration Network, Perth Against Racism, Women for Independence Glasgow, Scottish Jews For A Just Peace, PCS Scotland, RMT Scotland, FBU Scotland, Interfaith Glasgow.

We urge the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to join us.

Support Palestine - Stand Up to All Racism

The depraved racist views of COFIS (Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland) have not been a sufficient barrier to organisers allowing them to participate in the march tomorrow in Glasgow. COFIS, working in partnership with the Israeli Embassy, share posts about "euthanising" Palestinians, and jeer at a people under illegal occupation whom they call "Fakestinians". COFIS suppports EVERY Israeli crime against the Palestinian people - massacre, mass incarceration, home demolitions, and the brutal siege of Gaza.

Their presence on the march tomorrow has nothing whatsoever to do with anti-semitism - which they equate with opposition to Israel's crimes - but is part of the Israeli Embassy's psychological war against the Palestinian people and their supporters. It is an integral part of the Israeli State's war against the Palestinian people, and against their supporters in Scotland and internationally..

That well known anti-racist Rupert Murdoch's The Times today provides a platform to COFIS to cover up their nauseating racism. COFIS has announced they will bring their members from across Scotland for the march tomorrow. The same publication that promotes uber-racist COFIS ran a Goebbels-like attack piece some months ago calling Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign "an open sewer". The Murdoch press are drawing a line.

And some people are on the wrong side. The Israeli Embassy was shown in Al Jazeera's The Lobby series putting millions into shifting domestic UK politics, not only against a Tory Minister but especially the Labour Party and wider labour movement. It is simply unacceptable that SUTR organisers to fail to acknowledge this and to attack as "obssessed with COFIS" and "dividing the movement".all those who want the Palestinian people to be acknowledged among the victims of racism.

We want anti-racists to oppose state-enforced racism of an increasingly genocidal type. SUTR has quietly removed the name of the Muslim Council of Scotland from their published list of supporters for the march but have refused to engage with the MCS concerns, or the pain shared by all Palestinians in Scotland and communicated eloquently to SUTR Scotland by APCS. Along with anti-racist Jews, UK Palestine Solidarity groups, they are being ignored while COFIS prepares to exploit an ANTI-racist march in Israel's war against the Palestinian people.

A letter below was signed by a huge number of South African activists in a very short time and it should be some balm on Palestinian wounds caused by Israeli State agents marching and gloating about the surrender of Scottish anti-racist organisers to their intimidation. We remember that Stephen Hawking supported BDS and refused to attend an event in Israel in solidfarity with the Palestinian people. SUTR are now allowing the active enemies of the Palestinian people, extreme racists, to march with them in Glasgow posing as ANTI-racists.

Members of Nelson Mandela's family are shocked that a march passing near Mandela Place will fly Israeli flags while Palestine is occupied. They urge that "demonstrations on the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre should oppose all racism that blight our planet, especially the brutal apartheid system that still holds sway in Israel/Palestine." They acknowledge the role international solidarity played in their own struggle for liberation from state-enforced racial segregation and urge that we accept our "duty on this anniversary to build another example of successful international solidarity for the long-suffering Palestinian people.

Yet SUTR turns a deaf ear to all these concerns and seems determined to turn the march tomorrow into a dark farce by excluding Palestinians and their supporters (for how can we betray our principles of consistent anti-racism by marching alongside those who would "euthanise" Palestinians?) in order to admit a group onto their march that they acknowledge is racist and complicit in Israel's settler colonial regime.

The message from SUTR is clear and unambiguous: 'We are afraid to stand up to the false and weaponised accusations of anti-semitism that have led to anti-Zionist Jews being hounded out of the Labour Party. We will treat a racist pro-Israel campaign group as if it were a Jewish community group.'

Statement of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Voices of Scotland Apologists for Israel’s crimes not welcome on anti-racist protest

The Confederation of Friends of Israel in Scotland should be a pariah as we march in Glasgow, write MARGARET PACETTA and JOHN HILLEY

Morning Star,

15-year-old Muhammed Tamimi was shot in the head at point blank range and his sister Ahed has been in a Zionist prison for 3 months for slapping his attacker

ISRAEL is becoming increasingly isolated as worldwide criticism mounts over its illegal occupation, its siege of Gaza and its apartheid crimes. The rising support for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and widespread condemnation of Donald Trump’s endorsement of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has seen the Israeli state also step up its external lobbying and media campaigning.

This is evident in the propaganda offensive against the Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, who was labelled a “terrorist” for slapping a soldier. Ahed and her mother — imprisoned for filming the incident — have had their trial, before a closed military court, continuously delayed.

Those criticising Ahed have to explain the awkward fact that an Israeli soldier had just shot her 15-year-old cousin, Muhammad Tamimi, removing part of his skull. While awaiting surgery, Muhammad was again arrested in a night raid and forced to “confess” he had sustained his injury from falling off a bike. Even after his doctors had shown medical proof of the shooting, the lobby has continued to malign the Tamimi family.

This is all part of a relentless hasbara seeking to intimidate anyone inclined to criticise Israel. US comedian Sarah Silverman has been denounced for urging fellow Jews to stand up for Ahed. Over here, the lobby has turned on Gary Lineker for daring to question Israel’s brutal treatment of children.

Netanyahu has approved a new $75 million “public relations commando unit” to counter BDS, with Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan leading a ”black-ops” campaign against BDS.

Among those targeted for supporting BDS are Roger Waters, with pressure on sponsors to close down his shows, and New Zealand singer Lorde, who has refused to play in Israel. Two young New Zealand women — one Jewish, one Palestinian — who sent a letter asking Lorde to support BDS are being sued by pro-Israel legal group Shurat HaDin.

Online Palestine activists are being censored as part of the corporate clampdown on “fake news.” Glenn Greenwald notes how Facebook executives approved Israel’s requests to delete huge numbers of pro-Palestine accounts.

Escalating fears over BDS and Israel’s deteriorating image has also placed the US lobby on heightened political alert. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, now before the US Congress, will make any support for a boycott of Israel a criminal offence in the United States.

The same US lobby has also launched a vociferous attack on Al Jazeera’s forthcoming exposé of US lobby activity.

Here, a previous undercover Al Jazeera investigation revealed connections between lobbyists and the Israeli embassy.

With disgraced former international development secretary Priti Patel’s recent “family holiday” in Israel and co-lobbyist Lord Stuart Polak now exposed, Conservative Friends of Israel are working overtime with Michael Gove’s shrill warning of Palestine activists’ “dark and furious energy.”

The enduringly Blairite Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) remains on-message too, with Emily Thornberry delivering a speech to LFI that could have been written by a pro-Israel lobbyist.

The lobby’s relentless smearing of Jeremy Corbyn for “harbouring anti-semitism” goes on, no matter how much he denounces such tendencies. Encouragingly, newly founded Jewish Voice for Labour now provides a strong counter while Jews for a Just Peace has declared its support for BDS.

However, all this pressure on Israel has spurred other zealous lobbying.

A replica of the Apartheid Wall was used to keep racist COFIS away from an anti-racist march

One group pursuing that kind of mission here in Scotland is the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (Cofis). Ignoring multiple UN resolutions and international law, Cofis defends Israel’s illegal acts.

It approves of Israel’s apartheid wall, blames Israel’s mass killing in Gaza on Hamas and fails to condemn Israel’s shooting and incarceration of children. It applauds Trump and his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It denounces BDS and artists such as Waters and insists that Ahed be punished as a “terrorist.”

Besides evangelising for Israel and whitewashing its crimes, Cofis consistently attacks Palestine solidarity groups in Scotland, as does Glasgow Friends of Israel (GFI).

Much of the literature Cofis hands out to the public comes from the same visceral right-wing group in the US, Stand With Us.

Film director Ken Loach, writer Paul Laverty and actor Tam Dean Burn were among the signatories of the Artists’ Pledge for Palestine, organised by Artists for Palestine UK, which in 2017 opposed Cofis’s “misnamed Shalom Festival, which promotes, not peace, but the apartheid state of Israel and its occupation.”

Their letter stated that the festival, organised by Cofis founder Nigel Goodrich and GFI’s Sammy Stein, and endorsed by Stand With Us, was “part of the state of Israel’s attempts to counter BDS.’ It claims to support ‘peaceful coexistence’ in Israel/Palestine, while whitewashing Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.”

Cofis claims to be anti-racist, while denying the inhuman effects of the occupation, the calamity of Gaza and Israel’s colonial settlements. This mirrors the very same deception Israel has peddled for generations with its contrived “peace process,” using every opportunity to extend the settlements, imprison Gaza, and deepen its racist treatment of Palestinians.

Cofis has no support from Palestinian civil society. While it speaks of “shared interests” and “open dialogue,” drawing in unwary progressives, serious observers see this supposedly “pro-peace” line for what it is: a cynical charade serving to normalise Israel’s land thefts and prioritise its “security concerns.”

People of conscience, whatever their background or religious beliefs, should reject any organisation which seeks to defend Israel’s apartheid state. And they should be particularly alert to any group which seeks to conceal their real purpose through stealth insertion into parliamentary life, mainstream parties or civil movements.

There should be no place for Israel-protecting bodies like Cofis at any authentic anti-racism event or demonstration.

The left must defend its position with principled argument rather than capitulate for fear of being falsely labelled.

Campaigns which help hide Israel’s mass crimes have to be resisted with moral resolve and tactical intent. You cannot stand up to racism while lying down to Israeli apartheid.