Sunday, 31 December 2017

Abuse of Palestinian Children that Liberal Zionists Jonathan Freedland and Jon Lansman keep silent about – ‘anti-Semitism’ is far more important

Remanded in a military prison for a slap - 16 year old Ahed Tamimi is depicted as a ‘threat’ to armed soldiers in Israel's colonial court


All of Israel was in an uproar ten days ago.  Ahed Tamimi had been filmed slapping an Israeli soldier, one of two who had invaded the grounds of her house.  It must be understood that resistance to Israel’s army, according to the Jewish Labour Movement and Momentum’s Jon Lansman is ‘anti-Semitic’. 

The fact that her 15 year old cousin Mohammed had been shot half an hour ago with a rubber bullet directly in the face and had had to be put in an induced coma to survive was not of course broadcast in Israel.  If it had been it would no doubt have been ignored because the death of Palestinian children is not a matter of any great interest.
Michael Oren MK, former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, expressed the view that Ahed had been ‘dressed’ by her family, which apparently is not a ‘real family’.  This is of course understandable because Palestinians are sub-human in Israeli eyes and sub-humans don’t have families or that kind of attachment.  They are, according to Deputy Defence Minister Eli Dahan, ‘animals’ and we all know that animals have no feelings.
Ahed Tamimi in Ofer military court, December 28, 2017. (Photo: Mariam Barghouti)
There are some people who believe that comparing Zionism and Zionists to Nazis is ‘anti-Semitic’ but I just prefer to believe that a belief that some people are less than human is a Nazi idea.
Nearly quarter of a million people have signed the petition to free Ahed.  Please sign below.
One of my charges before my expulsion hearing is calling the detestable Labour MP Louise Ellman a supporter of Israeli child abuse.  This execrable woman defended Israel’s abuse of Palestinian children in a debate in  the House of Commons in January 2016.  See Louise Ellman MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv South is a Racist Supporter of the Child Abuse of Palestinian Children

Israeli soldiers regularly fire at demonstrators and beat them in Nabi Saleh, the village where Ahed lives.  That is the nature of a military occupation.  However Ahed, despite her tender years, has shown remarkable resilience and bravery.  The least you can do is to:

Please sign the petition to free Ahed.  Demand that no more children are imprisoned by the Zionists

Below are two articles from the excellent Mondoweiss site and I have also included an article at the end of these on the death of a young child, Dalal Lawlah, who lived in Awarta near Nablus, after Israeli soldiers at Huwara checkpoint prevented her father from taking her swiftly to Rafidia hospital.  Just one more child death but we can be assured that Louise Ellman or that other  mouthpiece for Israel, Joan Ryan MP, will not lose any sleep over it.  After all the purpose of the Labour Friends of Israel and Jewish Labour Movement is to defend Israel not criticise it.

Tony Greenstein


On the evening of Thursday, December 28th, family members and friends of Nariman, Ahed and Nour Tamimi gathered in the courtroom at Ofer military camp waiting to hear the latest verdict in regards to the three Tamimi women.

Ahed and Nour, were arrested by Israeli forces after a video of them slapping and pushing armed soldiers out of their yard was spread. Nariman Tamimi, Ahed’s mother, was arrested when she went to Binyamin police station to inquire about the well-being of her 16-year-old daughter, and to be present as her guardian since Ahed is a minor.

During Thursday’s court hearing Nour, 20, was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs, her small body surrounded by four prison guards. She wore a bright pink jacket, her face pale and her hair parted to the side. She blew kisses to her mother and father in the back of the courtroom and asked in whispers about her siblings. As her family tried to send her love and support, the prosecution laid out its demand to extend her detention for five more days. The prosecution later asked that the Nariman’s detention be extended for six more days, and Ahed’s for seven.
Nariman Tamimi (l), Nour Tamimi (r) in Ofer military court, December 28, 2017. (Photo: Mariam Barghouti)
As of yet, no official charges have been brought for the Tamimi women. Nariman is suspected of “aggravated assault of a soldier, incitement and obstructing a soldier” as well as partaking in “public disturbance.” Similarily, Ahed Tamimi is also being held under the pretext of “assault” and “insulting” soldiers. Nawal Tamimi, who is Ahed’s aunt, told Mondoweiss, “in the end, this is an occupation. If they could they would officially charge us with the crime of being born Palestinian.”

Nour’s mother, Boshra Tamimi, tried to hold herself together as her daughter sat just a few meters away. Her palms held tightly in her lap, and her face clearly pained despite the smiles that kept erupting every time she caught Nour looking in her direction. After Nour and Nariman were escorted out of the room, Boshra lit a cigarette outside and tried to focus past the frustration. “This is a kangaroo trial” she said. When Ahed’s hearing was about to take place, Boshra made way back into the courtroom and sighed, “back to the madness.”
Ahed’s hearing was chaotic, and the proceedings were held in Hebrew as a translator echoed a poor interpretation of what was being discussed. At one point, the translator for the Tamimi’s seemed as though he was falling asleep in his chair, and in another moment he casually walked out mid-translation for a phone call.

When Ahed was brought into the court her father, Bassem, spoke to her of her siblings. He smiled and told her they were okay while her aunt kept telling her she loves her.
The prosecution began to build its case against Ahed as she tried to make sense of what was being said. She had enacted her right to remain silent throughout the interrogation. “[Israeli interrogators] had put her through a rough process, long hours of no food and in rooms with terrible conditions, but she expressed her right to silence” Bassem told Mondoweiss.

In the court, Ahed sat in a brown prison jacket that was twice her size. She smiled at her friends and family and mouthed “I’m okay” to them and checked in on her cousins, sending kisses and love to them through her aunt. “If a stranger were to hear about the way the prosecution is speaking about my daughter they’d think they were talking about some large being that’s some sort of frightening boogyman,” said Bassem after the first part of Ahed’s hearing.

Gaby Lasky, the Tamimi’s lawyer, reminded the court of “the right to resist the invasion of one’s home” and “right to object to occupation.” While the charges the prosecution is pushing against the Tamimis are assault, incitement, and violence, there is no mention of the soldier’s violence during the trial, nor the fact that they were on a land that is deemed occupied in international law. After the end of the hearing Bassem walked out with pessimism. “I think they [Nariman and Ahed] will be sentenced to their prisons,” he said.

While it seemed that Ahed and Nariman would be facing a harsh conviction at end of the court hearing, the judge agreed to the possibility of releasing Nour Tamimi on bail early next week, if the prosecution did not appeal. However, he affirmed that Ahed and Nariman must remain detained until the indictment process begins. Their next hearing will be on January 1st, 2018.

As the final part of Ahed’s hearing ended, the young girl was escorted out and her father was left with the fear that his teenage daughter may be facing jail time. Nawal fell into tears after loudly proclaiming to Ahed as she was being hauled out, “we love you, we are with you, stay strong my dear!”

Outside, the family gathered their belongings and made their way out of Ofer. In the car, Nawal and Boshra begin to ask about Nariman’s cousin, Manal Tamimi. Just hours before the trial Manal was also arrested by Israeli forces as she stood in support of prisoners outside Ofer’s gates.
“I think [Israel] is planning to open a special section for us Tamimi women,” Nawal joked. After updating others on the outcome of the hearing, the Tamimi family begins another set of phone calls to inquire about Manal. “She is going to Hasharon.

“Our people, continue to be taken by the occupation in the name of justice,” Nawal sighs. They begin their journey back to their village of Nabi Saleh, and the homes that are missing the voices of their mothers and daughters.

Why liberal Zionists have nothing to say about Ahed Tamimi’s slap and arrest

The Ahed Tamimi case is one of the most important events we have covered because it exposes to the eyes of the world the difference in moral tone between the two sides of the conflict.

Consider the optics of the case. On December 15 in the tiny occupied village of Nabi Saleh, a 16-year-old girl with long blonde hair, Ahed Tamimi, slapped a heavily-armed Israeli soldier who was occupying her back yard, not long after another Israeli soldier had shot Tamimi’s cousin in the face; and when video of the slapping came out, all of Israeli society called for the girl’s arrest, and many were enraged that the soldier was passive. The next night Ahed Tamimi was arrested in a midnight raid; and she is being held without charges, as leading Israelis urge that the key be thrown away, and worse.

Meantime, images of the imprisoned girl’s calm precocious face, framed by the obdurate shoulders of uniformed guards, go round the world, radiating strength and resistance.

As Ben Ehrenreich writes at the Nation, the slapping has revealed Israel to the world as a bully because it exposed “a hideous nerve” in Israeli society. Scott Roth detailed that nerve: Israelis are in “sheer denial” that their country has any responsibility for the “humiliation, violence, and terror of the occupation.”

Which brings me to liberal Zionists. As readers know, I care more about liberal Zionists than anyone in America because they are gatekeepers to the Democratic Party, and when the Democratic Party turns, Israel will become a partisan issue and we will win (because Chuck Schumer and Tom Perez and Haim Saban have more power over the Palestinian future than John Hagee and Sheldon Adelson).

The Tamimi case exposes the utter paralysis of liberal Zionists, their inability to face what Israel has become.

The main response of liberal Zionists has been silence. The three leading liberal Zionist orgs, Americans for Peace Now, the New Israel Fund and J Street (until yesterday), see these images of brutal occupation ricocheting around the world, and have had almost nothing to say about the case.
Then when they do have something to say about it, they praise the Israeli soldiers for not responding violently to Ahed Tamimi in the moment. Peace Now called the soldiers “heroes.”

Then they shut up again.

Why are they acting like this? Because liberal Zionists still deeply believe in Israel– they are Zionists before everything else– and therefore the first thing they see is the good side of Israel, the fact that a soldier doesn’t respond violently to a girl who is slapping him.

When they see the world responding with expressions of outraged compassion for the girl, the liberal Zionists would like to join in but they really can’t. Because ultimately, as Zionists, their community is Jewish Israelis; and they know that just about all of Jewish Israel hates Ahed Tamimi, so they can’t really champion her.

But as soon as you say, I’m not a Zionist, I care about all people equally– then you embrace Ahed Tamimi.

This can be seen in the responses to the case from two Jewish groups, IfNotNow and J Street.
IfNotNow are young Jews who are taking on the Jewish establishment over the occupation; and since the Tamimi case broke they have been vocally on her side. IfNotNow salutes the power of this young woman to challenge the occupation.

They regularly call for Ahed Tamimi to be freed:

The group has expressed outrage at the Israeli viciousness toward Tamimi, and over and over identified with the victim. Eve Westheimer:

When I was 16- I didn’t have to worry about the govt abducting me.

“If I had a foreign occupier standing on my doorstep, I too would want to push them off. Had my friends and family been hurt by soldiers, they would see no compassion from me.” -IfNotNow leader

As for J Street, the leading liberal Zionist group finally got around to the case yesterday. After a week of international headlines, J Street couldn’t keep ignoring the story. So J Street CEO Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote an anguished piece saying that the case exposes the “tragedy” of the conflict.

The most prominent emotion in Ben-Ami’s article is “pride” in the Israeli soldier, whose “restraint prevented the situation from deteriorating further.”

Ben-Ami does not mention the shooting of Tamimi’s cousin, nor the calls for violence against Tamimi. He does not say that Israel should free Ahed Tamimi and barely touches on that “hideous nerve” in Israeli society– “some of the country’s leaders have called for lifetime imprisonment of a 16 year-old girl for simply slapping a soldier.” Really! They did– who?

Everyone talks about how awful the identity politics of the left are; but the identity politics of Zionism are worse: Zionists are simply not allowed to identify with proud Palestinians.

No, the emphasis in Ben-Ami’s piece is the hearts of liberal Zionists who “love the country.” They teem with “conflicting emotions.”

On the one hand, we truly honor and respect the individual men and women – teenagers and young adults really – who day-in and day-out serve their country dutifully in the Israel Defense Forces.
We can relate to the love and respect that every Israeli family has for their teenage children who are sent to carry out difficult and dangerous assignments put on their young shoulders by the nation’s leaders – whether they agree with them or not.

On the other, we feel compelled to criticize and fight the very policies that these brave young men and women are enforcing – often at great personal risk – every single day.

The feelings of Palestinians get second place in this article. Though Ben-Ami does honor them:
There is no compelling security or military justification for the way in which families, including the Tamimis, have been treated over the decades, and it should come as no surprise when young men and women like Ahed choose to resist.  It doesn’t take a textbook to bring about resistance in young people; it results quite naturally – without need of instruction – from the human impulse to resist injustice against one’s community and family….

We are obliged to take a long, hard look at the underlying policies that could lead a 16 year-old girl to slap fully-armed soldiers in the first place, and to risk years in jail.

It’s too bad those words couldn’t be the thrust of Ben-Ami’s article. But they can’t. Because in the identity politics of the Jewish state, Jewish souls matter most.

No wonder young Jews are saying they’ve had enough with that set of values and are seeing Ahed Tamimi for who she is, a brave leader.

9 year old Dalal Lawlah died after Israeli soldiers delayed her passage to hospital at a checkpoint NABLUS, (PIC)

A Palestinian child with special needs, from Awarta town in Nablus, died on Friday evening after Israeli soldiers obstructed her transfer to hospital.

Palestinian medical sources said that nine-year-old Dalal Lawlah died after Israeli soldiers at Huwara checkpoint prevented her father from taking her swiftly to Rafidia hospital.

The sources added that Dalal was unable to breathe and needed urgent medical intervention, but delaying her transfer to the hospital for about half an hour led to her death.

The child’s father, Deeb, told the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) that he tried at first to use the main road through Awarta checkpoint to take her daughter, who was a child with special needs, to a hospital in Nablus after she suffered a health problem, and argued with soldiers to convince them to let him through, but to no avail.

Later, he said, he had to go to Huwara checkpoint, which was closed at the time because of skirmishes in the area.

After a long hold-up on the road, the ambulance carrying the child arrived at the hospital, where she was pronounced dead, the father added.

The father held the Israeli occupation army fully responsible for the death of his daughter, accusing Israeli soldiers of firing tear gas grenades at the ambulance.
 

Friday, 29 December 2017

When Judas Iscariot abandoned Jesus it was for 30 pieces of silver and a kiss – Momentum’s Jon Lansman appears to have betrayed his comrades for no reward

Jon Lansman is a Jewish Chauvinist & Apologist for Apartheid who betrayed Jackie Walker & Marc Wadsworth  


It was most out of character for Jon Lansman, Momentum’s Dictator, to pay me a compliment. In the Jewish Chronicle last week he was quoted as describing me as ‘“probably the rudest person I know in politics. He says many offensive things, most of the time”. 

If I’ve offended Jon Lansman then clearly I’ve been doing something right.  The occasion for Lansman’s vitriol was an interview conducted during the Limmud Jewish festival in Birmingham.  Lansman was asked how Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker and myself could remain members of the Labour Party.  (easy – we pay our subscriptions!)

Instead of defending Ken, who pioneered anti-racist policies in London local government Lansman cast him to the wolves in order to ingratiate himself with the Jewish Labour Movement [JLM], an overtly Zionist group.  As he told the Independent just before Jackie Walker was suspended:

“I spoke to Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement this morning, he’s very upset and I can understand that – I work closely with Jeremy,

Jackie Walker was Vice-Chair of Momentum until October 2016 before Lansman knifed her in the back at the behest of Newmark, the JLM's Chair.  I have written extensively on how Jackie was deliberately targeted and framed.  Even before she was suspended following Labour’s 2016 Conference I wrote that the JLM was engaging in a political lynching of Jackie.  According to the Jewish News I was the first writer to use this metaphor.
Lansman speaking at Limmud
When I read Lansman’s recent remarks I wrote asking if his comments were accurately reported.  It would appear that for once they were. In his response Lansman makes his views plain:

I am not going to defend Jackie and Mark because whilst they may or may not be antisemites, actions or statements they made certainly could reasonably have been seen as such at the time, and they should have apologised at the very least. Jackie’s original statement about Jews and slavery was clearly antisemitic in its content whether or not it was intended as such and I believe she knows that. 

Note the weasel words - Jackie or Marc 'may' be antisemitic.  Antisemitism (if you leave out the torturous Zionist IHRA definition, some 450 words) is a quite easy concept.  It is hatred of Jews as Jews.  I think I know both Jackie and Marc well enough to know that they don't hate anyone because they are Jewish.  Ipso facto they are not anti-semitic, unless like Lansman you are a Zionist.

Whatever else can be said about Lansman he is not naive.  Despite the fact that he has never been an active anti-fascist or anti-racist , he is fully aware that Jackie and Marc are anti-racists of long standing.  Marc’s ‘offence’ was to criticise Ruth Smeeth, a right-wing Zionist MP who
Wikileaks revealed to be a United States asset.  Marc called her out at the Chakrabarti press conference because she was trading information with The Telegraph’s reporter.  Marc didn’t even know she was Jewish, but criticising someone who happened to be Jewish is considered by Lansman to be ‘anti-Semitism’.
Jackie Walker, in a private conversation with a friend on Facebook about her African and Jewish roots stated that ‘my ancestors too, were among the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade…’  Because she omitted the word in bold , in a private conversation which was broken into by a Zionist lobby group, she has been pilloried as an anti-Semite.  This is the ‘evidence’ that Lansman refers to.

The JLM, which is behind the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt, is the ‘sister party’ of the Israeli Labour Party, a viciously racist party that believes in segregating Jews and Arabs. Its current leader Avi Gabbay has criticised Netanyahu for not being tough enough in forcibly deporting Black African refugees from Israel who are being deported because they are not Jewish. 

As Ha’aretz reported a month ago:  The main opposition list, the Zionist Union, of which the Labor Party is partner, will support a government bill advocating the expulsion of asylum seekers.’

The former leader of the ILP Isaac Herzog described his nightmare of waking up to 61 Arab members of the Knesset and an Arab Prime Minister.  Imagine if, in Britain, a Labour leader described the possibility of a Jewish Prime Minister as a nightmare?  Herzog also declared that the ILP was not an ‘Arab lovers’ party.  Again imagine if a British politician had declared that their party was not a ‘Jew lovers party.’ 
A month ago Ha’aretz led with The World Zionist Organization’s Land Theft Division. The WZO is engaged in the theft of Palestinian land in order to transfer it to illegal Jewish settlements.  The JLM is affiliated to this racist organisation.  Lansman is fully aware of the racist pedigree of the JLM.

Jon Lansman has himself lived on a Jewish only kibbutz, established on stolen Palestinian land.  It is little wonder that he supports the JLM’s witchhunt of anti-racists. 

On Left Futures Lansman argued that the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’.  Why?  Because Zionism is the ideology that underpins Israeli Apartheid.  It is Zionism which says that in order to preserve Israel's ‘Jewish identity’, non-Jewish refugees must be expelled. Lansman has also justified the ethnic cleansing of ¾ million Palestinians using the Holocaust as the justification.

No More Excuses – Israel is an Apartheid Society

What Lansman is consciously doing is supporting  Labour’s apologists for Israeli Apartheid in their attempts to demonise critics of Israel as ‘anti-Semitic’.  It is no accident that they have chosen to single out Black and Jewish critics.  In South Africa it was White critics of Apartheid who were also demonised as ‘traitors’ or indeed racists (to White people).

If there is any doubt about whether Israel is an apartheid state we only need to listen to the activists of the ANC, who overthrew Apartheid in South Africa 


A month ago Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, after visiting the West Bank was reported as saying that “Israel is the worst apartheid regime... Palestinians are being subjected to the worst version of apartheid.”
Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Archbishop of Johannesburg, Desmond Tutu stated 

I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces.  Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government."
Ronnie Kassrills, the Jewish former ANC Minister
Ronnie Kassrils, a veteran of the liberation struggle recalled that ‘as far back as 1963 the assertion that Israel is an Apartheid State ‘were not the words of Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu or Joe Slovo, but were uttered by none other than the architect of apartheid itself, racist Prime Minister, Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd.’ Verwoerd was irked by criticism of South Africa Apartheid in contrast to the West’s unconditional support for Zionist Israel.

When Lansman supports the false anti-Semitism allegations against Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth or Ken Livingstone he is consciously aiding Israeli Apartheid.


Labour’s Witchhunt of Socialists and Anti-Racists is Anything But Fair
Perhaps the most unbelievable of all the claims by Lansman in his interview was that ‘“The party has a process and it’s right to have a fair process.”  Even by Lansman’s abysmal standards this was a new low.  Thousands of people were suspended during the elections for Party leader on the basis of searching through social media posts for anything which might provide the flimsiest of justifications for suspending them and preventing them voting.  If this had been done in a local authority or parliamentary election, Iain McNicol would be doing gaol time for corrupt electoral practices.

Shami Chakrabarti in her report, which has been secretly removed from the Labour Party’s web site but which can be downloaded from here, recommended that ‘The Labour Party should seek to uphold the strongest principles of natural justice, however difficult the circumstances, and to resist subjecting members to a trial by media.’  These recommendations have been observed in the breach by Iain McNicol and Labour's civil service who are determined to ensure that the disciplinary process is loaded against those hauled before the National Constitutional Committee. 

In my own case the first time I knew what I had been suspended for was when I read about the allegations in the Telegraph and Times.  Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth have both been leaked against.  After being suspended for 20 months I first knew I had a disciplinary hearing soon from a leak to the Jewish Chronicle.

Not only has Lansman’s Momentum said nothing and done nothing about the witch hunt but he has failed even to call for the implementation of the Chakrabarti Report’s proposals on a fair procedure.  The reason?  Because the Zionists have attacked it for not equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.  The last things the Zionists want is a fair process and it would seem that Lansman too would prefer to keep the present system whereby you are guilty until (or if) you are found innocent.  Not for nothing have I labelled the NCC the National Kangaroo Committee (with apologies to kangaroos!).

Who & what is behind the False Anti-Semitism Campaign

Lansman is deliberately lying when he says that there is an ‘anti-Semitism’ problem in the Labour Party. He is fully aware that this campaign began with Jeremy Corbyn himself a target. During the first leadership election the Daily Mail printed an article EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Corbyn's 'long-standing links' with notorious Holocaust denier and the Jewish Chronicle followed this up.  From here it was but a short step to the false anti-Semitism campaign.

If anyone wants a history of this campaign they should read Asa Winstanley’s excellent article How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis

Lansman is neither a fool nor an idiot.  He is fully aware that this ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is state manufactured.  The Al Jazeera programme The Lobby detailed the role of the Israeli Embassy and its agent Shai Masot in destabilising the Labour Party.

What we have seen is a state inspired campaign to destabilise Labour under Corbyn.  Anti-Semitism has become the chosen weapon.  If anyone doubts this all then they have to explain why it is that the Tory press – the Sun, Express, Mail etc. are so worked up by ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party when they are happy to print any amount of lies about refugees from people like Katie Hopkins?  ‘Anti-Semitism’ i.e. anti-Zionism is the Right’s anti-racism.  It is a new form of anti-communism.

Its not hard to work out who is behind this campaign. When the US Embassy first learnt that the leader of the second biggest party in their closest European ally, the United Kingdom, was anti-NATO and anti-Trident one can imagine their reaction. The false anti-Semitism campaign was cooked up in conjunction with MI5 and the Israeli Embassy.  No doubt their friends such as Tom Watson and Iain McNicol were briefed and before long any utterance, however innocent or foolish was seized upon as ‘proof’ of anti-Semitism.

The little anti-Semitism that does exist occurs because Israel claims to be a Jewish state and when it commits its war crimes it does so in the name of all Jews.  It is a ‘Jewish state.’  This is not anti-Semitism as it has been understood historically. If we wish to root out anti-Semitism then we must also root out Zionism.  The JLM’s special status as a Labour Party affiliate must end.  It is outrageous that the representatives of the world’s only apartheid state have special privileges in the Labour Party.

Lansman’s other idiocy was to claim There's as much antisemitism in Tory Party as in Labour .  No there’s not.  The Tory Party is institutionally anti-Semitic.  It is linked in the European parliament, via the European Conservative and Reform group to the anti-Semitic Polish Law and Justice Party and the Latvian LNNK.  Only this week Theresa May went to Poland to assure their racist government that the Tories supported them in their battles with the EU.
The Chair of the ECR group, Michal Kaminski, was an open apologist for the Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne, in which village up to 1600 Jews were burnt alive in 1941 by fellow Poles.  Kaminski campaigned vociferously against the apology offered by President Aleksander Kwasniewski on the 60th anniversary of the pogrom. Ironically in this case the Zionist Jewish Chronicle leapt to Kaminski’s defence, because he was also a Zionist!

Theresa May and the Tories also have close links with Hungarian leader Viktor Orban who is openly anti-Semitic and who is trying to rehabilitate Hungary’s war-time leader Admiral Horthy, who presided over the deportation of nearly ½ million Jews to Auschwitz.  If Lansman or the JLM want to know about anti-Semitism they should ask Israel's Prime Minister who paid a visit to Orban in July, shortly after an anti-semitic campaign against George Soros had ended, a campaign supported by Netanyahu.

Lansman has the audacity to state that ‘All of you have continued to act in a manner which has made things more difficult for Jeremy and the Labour Party whether or not your actions have been antisemitic.’  It is not Jackie, Marc or myself who have made things difficult for Corbyn.  It is Lansman, who by giving support to Jeremy Newmark and the JLM, has continued to give credence to the false anti-Semitism campaign.  If this campaign had been opposed from the beginning, if Corbyn had been advised both to condemn anti-Semitism and the making of false accusations of anti-Semitism then he would not have made what is a continuing rod for his own back.

I will make a prediction.  If Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Marc Wadsworth are expelled from the Labour Party, this campaign will not disappear.  On the contrary having fed the Zionist crocodile they will have merely whetted its appetite.  It will look for more victims and the story of ‘Labour Anti-Semitism’ will, with Lansman’s backing, continue to damage Corbyn.  The only way to fight this political extortion is by standing up to them and not appeasing them.

The JLM, which presents itself as the ‘progressive voice’ of Zionism has never, not once, criticised Israel’s military occupation or called for an end to what is a permanent martial law in the West Bank.  It has never opposed the visceral racism of the Israeli state and its marginalisation even of Israeli Arabs.  You would look in vain on their web site for any criticism of Netanyahu  still less of the ILP.

Lansman destroyed democracy in Momentum at the beginning of the year in the name of One Member One Vote.  This was also a lie.  When it came to drawing up a slate of 3 for the NEC elections, there was no OMOV.  Lansman couldn’t risk it.  Instead Momentum’s undemocratically constituted National Co-ordinating Group imposed a slate of 3 including Lansman.  This is on a par with the continuing scandal whereby Lansman personally owns Momentum via a private limited company rather than making the directors accountable and directly elected.

The false anti-Semitism campaign will not go away because it is not in the interests of either the Israeli, British or American states to do so.  It is for Labour members themselves to take control of their destiny and to oppose this witch hunt.  That is why we have formed Labour Against the Witchhunt.

Below is correspondence between John Lansman and myself

Tony Greenstein


Tuesday, 26 December 2017

Why Israel is a Settler Colonial State - Colonisation did not stop in 1948


 
Despite its pretence that it is a Western democracy, Israel is the only active settler-colonial state in the world. It's not just that it has Administrative Detention (in Ireland this was known as Internment) i.e. indefinite imprisonment without trial, a permanent state of emergency, censorship and a system of segregated schools, employment and residential living areas, which replicate many of the features of Apartheid society.  

Zionism from its inception was clear that it didn’t want to share Palestine with its original inhabitants.  It intended eventually to transfer most if not all of them in order that it could form a Jewish majority state.  In the meantime it intended, behind the protection of British bayonets, to evict the Palestinians from the economy and create an apartheid Jewish economy.

Between 1904 and 1948 Zionist Organisations such as Keren Hayesod and the Jewish National Fund bought up land, primarily from absentee landlords and then evicted the peasants who had been working the land.  In this it was unique because it didn't reemploy that labour on the land as landless labour but sought to exclude it altogether.

The situation was best summed up in the 1930 Hope Simpson Report, which the British Government commissioned.  It describe the leases issued by the JNF:

" . . . . The lessee undertakes to execute all works connected with the cultivation of the holding only with Jewish labour. Failure to comply with this duty by the employment of non-Jewish labour shall render the lessee liable to the payment of a compensation of ten Palestinian pounds for each default. ... Where the lessee has contravened the provisions of this Article three times the Fund may apply the right of restitution of the holding, without paying any compensation whatever."

The lease also provides that the holding shall never be held by any but a Jew. If the holder, being a Jew, dies, leaving as his heir a non-Jew, the Fund shall obtain the right of restitution. .
Keren-Hayesod Agreements: Employment of labour.—In the agreement for the repayment of advances made by the Keren-Hayesod (Palestine Foundation Fund) to settlers in the colonies in the Maritime Plain the following provisions are included :—

Article 7.—The settler hereby undertakes that he will during the continuance of any of the said advances, reside upon the said agricultural holding and do all his farm work by himself or with the aid of his family, and that, if and whenever he may be obliged to hire help, he will hire Jewish workmen only."...

In the similar agreement for the Emek colonies there is a provision as follows : —

Article 11.—The settler undertakes to work the said holding personally, or with the aid of his family, and not to hire any outside labour except Jewish labourers."

Zionist policy in regard to Arabs in their colonies.—.... Attempts are constantly being made to establish the advantage which Jewish settlement has brought to the Arab. The most lofty sentiments are ventilated at public meetings and in Zionist propaganda. At the time of the Zionist Congress in 1921 a resolution was passed which “solemnly declared the desire of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people in relations of friendship and mutual respect, and, together with the Arab people, to develop the homeland common to both into a prosperous community which would ensure the growth of the peoples.” This resolution is frequently quoted in proof of the excellent sentiments which Zionism cherishes towards the people of Palestine. The provisions quoted above, which are included in legal documents binding on every settler in a Zionist colony, are not compatible with the sentiments publicly expressed.  (my emphasis)

... The effect of the Zionist colonisation policy on The Arab.— Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extra-territorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. Nor can anyone help him by purchasing the land and restoring it to common use. The land is in mortmain and inalienable. It is for this reason that Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the Zionists in view of the policy which the Zionist Organisation deliberately adopted. 
Umm al-Hiran - a Bedouin village in the Negev demolished to make way for the Jewish town of Hiran
To this day the policy of all Israeli governments has been to deprive the Palestinians of any right to the land.  From 1948 onwards a series of land regulations and ordinances were passed, culminating in the 1950 Absentee Property Law which declared that Arabs who had stayed in Israel during the Nakba in 1948, even if they had taken shelter from the fighting a mile away from their home, were rendered landless.  The concept of a Present-Absentee was created.  You could be present and yet absent . 

A series of laws were passed from 1948 onwards with the sole intention of depriving of their right to land even the 15% of the Palestinians who weren’t expelled.  See Israeli land and property laws.  Some 93% of Israeli land is state land, managed either directly or indirectly by the Israeli Land Authority and JNF.  This is the basis of Israeli apartheid and the demolitions and dispossessions in the article below are a consequence of this policy, which is to reserve ‘national’ i.e. Jewish national land for Jews only.  Laws such as the Reception Committees Law allow hundreds of Jewish only communities to retain their Jewish only status (as well as to exclude Black Ethiopian Jews ).

It is this underlying Zionist policy which results in half Israel’s Arab villages being ‘unrecognised’ and the continual demolition of such villages such as Al Arakabh in order that Jewish settlements can be established in their place.  It is important to understand that this takes place in Israel proper not the Occupied Territories.

The reference below to 'Absentee Property' means land from which its original Arab inhabitants has been expelled.  In the Orwelllian terminology of the Zionists they are 'absentees', having gone missing

Tony Greenstein

Corruption does not begin with Netanyahu’s cigars or pink champagne. It begins with an ideological system that sees entire segments of the population as undesirable and unnecessary, and as temporary residents in their own homes.

A Bedouin woman after authorities demolished her village of Al Araqib, January 16, 2011 (Keren Manor/Activestills.org)
Last night, a striking episode in Amnon Levy’s documentary series, “The Real Faces,” aired on TV. The episode followed the residents of the Tel Kabir, Givat Amal, and HaArgazim neighborhoods, whom the government has designated as trespassers in their own homes. The government is now trying to evict them, to the benefit of real estate tycoons.

Yesterday, a court in Be’er Sheva convicted Sheikh Siakh A-Turi, 68, of trespassing, sentencing him to ten months in prison with a fine of 36,000 shekels. Sheikh Siakh, is a resident of the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib.
Caduri Halif stands among the rubble of his demolished house, Givat Amal neighborhood, Tel Aviv, September 18, 2014. A third eviction of families in the neighborhood left 20 residents homeless and without proper compensation or an alternative housing solution. (Activestills)
The residents of Givat Amal and Al-Araqib share the same tragic fate: they are among the most marginalized people in a country whose government has declared them trespassers on land on which they have lived for decades. In both instances, the government prevented them from formalizing their property ownership by a range of deceptive means. The government, in contrast, moved quickly to formalize and recognize the ownership of those citizens whom it actually values, in some cases spitting distance from where these “trespassers” live.

To truly believe these stories, you must hear them again and again. The Mizrahi residents of these Tel Aviv neighborhoods could not formalize their ownership of the land on which they have lived for 70 years because they “missed” a small announcement in the Davar newspaper in 1951, inviting “any person who de facto owns, without a deed, an apartment or business on absentee property” to submit a request to formalize their ownership. Like their Ashkenazi neighbors—Mapai supporters and employees of the Tel Aviv municipality and the Custodian for Absentee Property—they, too, settled on property that belonged to Palestinians before 1948.

However, unlike their Ashkenazi neighbors, the Mizrahi residents had no way of hearing about an announcement published once in the Mapai party newspaper, and which allowed for a short window of two weeks to formalize property ownership. Those who read the announcement got recognized as legal landowners. Those who didn’t, didn’t; they continued to live in their houses without knowing that eventually, when their land had become desirable real estate, they could be declared “trespassers” in their own homes.

At the same time as the Israeli government was defrauding the residents of Tel Aviv’s Mizrahi neighborhoods, it was expropriating vast tracts of land in the Negev—permitted under a 1953 law to allow the government to easily seize land to promote “development, settlement, and security.” Residents of Al-Araqib were expelled by the government from their land, despite the fact that the land has since gone untouched; the government expropriated the land seemingly for no reason.

When Al-Araqib residents attempted to appeal the expropriation in court, the government refused even to hold a hearing. As Michal Rotem writes, “according to the state and its representatives, not only do the native inhabitants of the Negev lack ownership of the land, they lack even have the right to pursue their claim in court.”

Over the years, the residents of Al-Araqib have attempted to maintain their connection to the land, working their crops, watching their flocks, and burying their dead there. While lone farms — for Jews only — continue to proliferate in the region, since 2010, the government has destroyed the village of Al-Araqib 120 times.
Police stand guard as bulldozers demolish Umm al Hiran
Sheikh Siakh, a man nearing his 70s, will be imprisoned because he dared to resist this injustice. Perhaps it should comfort him that he was not shot to death by police, like Yaqub Musa Abu Al-Qian, killed in Umm Al-Hiran — a man whose only crime was attempting to get away from his village before it was destroyed so that a Jews-only town, Hiran, could be built in its place.

For months, thousands of people have joined the weekly protests against government corruption in Petah Tikvah and now Tel Aviv. But government corruption does not begin with Netanyahu’s graft investigations, nor with his cigars and rosĂ© champagne.

Government corruption begins with an ideological system that works to demographically design the country’s territory according to the criteria of ethnic and national origin. Government corruption begins with a way of seeing entire segments of the population as unnecessary and undesirable, as temporary residents in their own homes. Government corruption begins with the criminal violence of calling people trespassers in their own houses. If we want to fight this deep moral corruption, the place to look is not Rothschild Boulevard or the Attorney General’s house, but the line that that connects Givat Amal to Al-Araqib.


Torture couldn’t happen to a Jewish child - 16 year old Ahed Tamimi’s Detention is Extended by Israel's Military Court

Please Support – Crowdfunding Appeal to Sue fake Zionist charity ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’




Labour’s Zionist Apologists Ellman, Newmark and Ryan keep silent as the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ incarcerates children



A posse of heavily built soldiers - all for one slightly built 16 year old girl
Ahed Tamimi appeared in an Israeli military court on Xmas day, after 4 days inside without seeing a parent or a lawyer.  She appeared in handcuffs.  This slightly built child is in the warped fantasy of the settler regime perceived as a danger to Israel’s military might.

Israel’s military courts have a 99.7% conviction rate, higher one suspects than the Labour Party’s National Kangaroo Court!

Ahed Tamimi’s ‘crime’ was to slap and mildly chastise armed Israeli soldiers who invaded the grounds of her house, after a cousin of hers Mohammed Tamimi 15 was shot in the head with a plastic bullet at close range.

Israel’s racist media ignored the fact that her cousin had nearly been killed and focused on the insult to national pride occasioned by Ahed’s slaps and the soldiers failure to strike back.
Miri Regev, Israel’s ‘Culture’ Minister, who previously compared African refugees in Israel to ‘cancer’ and then apologised to cancer victims for comparing refugees to them, spoke of her ‘humiliation’ and suggested they should have opened fire.

Naftali Bennet, the Education Minister went further and stated that she should end her life in prison.  Of course from his perspective it is logical.  A non-Jew striking a Jewish Israeli soldier is a heinous offence whereas shooting a Palestinian child in the head is just one of those things.  After all Bennet is on record as boastingI’ve killed many Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that.’
Ben Caspit, a senior journalist on Maariv, Israel’s major evening newspaper, makes what amounts to a call for Ahed to be raped.

Ahed, a 16 year old girl who, in the West would be thinking of exams, the latest boy (or girl) friend, going to concerts and doing all the things that teenagers of her age do, has to cope with the presence of soldiers and an army in her village, walking into her house, shooting her relatives and acting with impunity.

Ahed in the court case today came in looking tired and strained.  Her lawyer managed to snatch only a few words with her, such is the nature of Israeli justice, before she was whisked away again. Clearly she is being put under immense pressure to confess without the benefit of a lawyer or relatives.  It is reported that she has been physically assaulted and almost certainly deprived of sleep.  This amounts to torture.  Yet where is the pressure from Theresa May or indeed Jeremy Corbyn?  Why have just 12 MPs, 5 of whom are Labour, signed an Early Day Motion condemning Ahed’s incarceration? 

Shackling and handcuffing a child is in itself a war crime.  Transferring her out of the West Bank is yet another breach of international law but Israel is allowed to break the law with impunity. 
Tony Greenstein

Ha’aretz, Yotam Berger Dec 25, 2017

Ahed Tamimi, who was recently filmed slapping Israeli soldiers, gets four more days as judges say she might obstruct investigation, with one saying she could endanger soldiers

Ahed Tamimi, the 16-year-old Palestinian girl who was recently filmed slapping Israeli soldiers in her village, Nabi Saleh, had her detention extended on Monday for four additional days, through Thursday.

Her cousin, Nour Tamimi, the second girl who appeared in the clip, and Ahed’s mother, Nariman, also had their detention extended. Nariman is suspected of incitement by filming the incident and posting it on Facebook.

According to police, the investigation of the incident in Nabi Saleh has developed and Ahed and Nariman are suspected of being involved in additional incidents of attacking IDF soldiers.

Police said the extension of their detention was necessary due to the danger Ahed poses, and to prevent obstruction of the investigations.

A judge in the military court of Judea, Major Chaim Bililti, wrote in his decision that while he was not sure her release would pose a danger, there was a chance she would try to obstruct the investigation, and so he was extending her detention. He added that the investigation has led to developments that Nariman Tamimi is connected to other offenses, and is suspected of other charges not yet presented to her.

The court postponed the appeals regarding the extension of Ahed Tamimi’s custody, and during the deliberations police brought up additional suspicions against her. According to the president of the court, Col. Netanel Benisho, “The evidence consolidated a framework regarding three other incidents that took place in May 2017 and in April 2016.”

Judge Benisho accepted police claims that Ahed Tamimi presents a danger, and that she could impede soldiers in their work.

Last week, Judge Maj. Limor Drachman of the Minor’s Court in Judea extended Ahed’s detention to Monday, on suspicion that she would try to injure IDF soldiers.

Video: Resistance icon Ahed Tamimi in Israeli military court

Israeli military court


 This video shows Ahed Tamimi in an Israeli military court on Sunday.


The 16-year-old appears to be in handcuffs as she is led in by Israeli officers. As a lawyer talks to Ahed, a woman, likely the person filming the video, can be heard asking her how she is doing.
Ahed looks at the camera and nods and smiles in answer, indicating she is doing fine.

The video was shared on the Facebook page “Free the Tamimi women.”

Ahed Tamimi has become an international focus of solidarity since Israeli occupation forces seized her from her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh during a night raid last week.

Boy shot

That followed an incident the previous Friday, when Israeli occupation forces shot and gravely wounded her cousin 14-year-old Muhammad Fadel Tamimi.

Ahed and two women from the family – her mother Nariman and cousin Nour – then attempted to remove Israeli soldiers from the family’s property. Ahed was seen in a video lightly slapping and shoving one of the armed men.

Bassem Tamimi, Ahed’s father, explains in an article for Newsweek that less than half an hour before this incident, “a soldier shot Ahed’s 14-year-old cousin in the face at close distance with a rubber-coated steel bullet, causing severe injuries and leaving him in a coma. Then, two soldiers had jumped the wall of our backyard and forced their way on to our property when Ahed confronted them in an effort to make them leave.”

“Israel’s military occupation is in contrast to all that is just and humane, from the abuse of our children to the abuse of our land,” Bassem adds. “As parents, we try to shelter our children against the occupation and all its violence, inequality and lack of freedom, but there is only so much we can do to protect them.”

According to Naji Tamimi, Nour’s father and one of Muhammad’s uncles, Muhammad barely survived his injury.

But he is now recovering after a complex hours-long surgery and will require long-term care and rehabilitation. A photo posted by Naji Tamimi on Facebook shows the extent of the injuries to Muhammad’s face and head.

Nariman and Nour were also arrested as part of a revenge campaign instigated by Israeli political and military leaders bent on expunging the humiliation of heavily armed men being confronted by women from a family known for its sacrifices as part of Nabi Saleh’s ongoing resistance to military occupation and settler-colonization.

Damage control

According to family sources, Ahed’s lawyer requested the hearing on Sunday in an attempt to get the teenager released.

Ahed was held in the notorious Russian Compound interrogation center in Jerusalem overnight and was previously in Ramleh prison.

The Free the Tamimi women Facebook page stated that Ahed “spent the night alone in a cold cell” after enduring several transfers between Israeli prisons.

According to her father Bassem Tamimi, Ahed, Nariman and Nour had previously been held in HaSharon prison.

Arbitrary transfers between prisons under harsh conditions are another way Israel abuses detainees.
Ahed Tamimi is one of hundreds of Palestinian children who each year are subjected to night raids and Israeli military detention each year, where many suffer abuse including torture and solitary confinement.

Concern over this systematic violence against Palestinian children prompted US lawmakers last month to introduce a historic bill to prevent US military aid to Israel being diverted to such practices.

Revenge in the dark

The Israeli army’s attack on the Tamimi family was meant to appease its virulently right-wing and anti-Palestinian domestic audience, but it has become an international embarrassment, prompting The New York Times to go into damage control mode to mitigate further harm to Israel’s tattered reputation.

Writing at Mondoweiss, James North notes that the Times’ coverage “does everything it can to reduce the power of the case” and “make the Israeli soldier look like the victim.”
Ben Caspit, a journalist with Israel’s Maariv newspaper and the online publication Al-Monitor caused shock Saturday when he was quoted by the Associated Press stating in reference to the Tamimi family, “In the case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.”

This was widely interpreted as incitement to violence including possible sexual assault, though Caspit has vehemently denied this.

Caspit claims that comments he made in a radio commentary were taken out of context and mistranslated.

But as Jonathan Ofir points out, also at Mondoweiss, Caspit had also made the statement in his Maariv column.

After calling for revenge in the dark with no witnesses present, Caspit writes that the “Tamimi family needs to learn the hard way that such systematic provocations against Israeli soldiers will cost them dearly.”

He added that the Israeli army has the “capabilities, creativity and means” to do this “without paying an exorbitant public price.”

Ahed, Nariman and Nour are due to appear in military court again on Monday.
This article has been updated since initial publication.

The New York Times tries to make the Ahed Tamimi story go away
James North December 23, 2017

The New York Times ran a piece today on the very different ways that Israelis and Palestinians see the slapping incident involving 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi and an Israeli soldier. It is titled, “Acts of Resistance and Restraint Defy Easy Definition in the West Bank,” and is by David Halbfinger.
The article does everything it can to reduce the power of the case, in which a brave 16-year-old girl whose cousin was just shot stands for the inhumanity of the occupation. No, the whole point of the article is to make Israel supporters who may have heard about the incident shake their heads over Dual Narratives, and then move along.

Here is the Times‘s model for the whitewash:

1. Make sure the print edition does not include a single one of the striking, now-viral photos of Ahed Tamimi’s brave resistance.

2. State nowhere that Israelis are occupiers, and settlements (colonies) are illegal under international law.

3. Slyly slip in the following paragraph: “That her family appears to encourage the children’s risky confrontations with soldiers offends some Palestinians and enrages many Israelis.”

4. Barely mention the fact that the illegal settlement/colony of Halamish has taken over the village of Nabi Saleh’s access to its spring, and make no effort to report on who is right. Instead treat the matter as On the One Hand/On the Other.

5. In the first sentence, make the Israeli soldier look like the victim: “A teenage girl, a kaffiyeh over her denim jacket, screaming in Arabic, repeatedly punches, slaps and kicks a heavily armed Israeli army officer, who faces her impassively, absorbing some blows, evading others, but never hitting back.” (Make sure you stick in the kaffiyeh and the “screaming in Arabic:” perfect Orientalist gems.)

6. Have settler Yossi Klein Halevi drive home the point, that the Israeli is the victim: “My first reaction was I was proud of the soldiers, but I was also ambivalent: Is this going to invite more attacks, and more serious ones?”

7. Add another obnoxious paragraph: “.  .  . the scene of the young woman being hauled away may have given the Palestinians the clear-cut propaganda coup they had been denied by the original confrontation.”

8. Leave till the 13th paragraph the information that hours before the encounter an Israeli soldier shot Ahed Tamimi’s cousin in the face. Leave out the cousin’s name, Mohammed, and the extent of his injuries. No, you have to go to al Jazeera for that.
Mohammed Tamimi, who is 14 or 15, following a six hour operation after being shot in the face. Photo from Al Jazeera.
9. Quote 6 Jewish Israelis, and only 4 Palestinians. But above all, don’t quote any member of the courageous Tamimi family, even though they were featured in Ben Ehrenreich’s landmark New York Times magazine piece on Nabi Saleh. And even though the slapping incident took place when the soldier had invaded their property.

P.S. Louis Allday, a PhD candidate at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, who is digitizing colonial records, agrees:

[A correction: The original post said, “(Most people still engage with the Times on paper).” In fact, the Times has 2.5 million digital subscribers vs. 1 million print subscribers.]