Israel’s Campaign of Repression & Terror Included a ‘Torture Room’ in Nazareth Police Station

 Despite Video of the Beating Up of 50 Palestinian Prisoners in Ketziot Prison Israeli Police Were Unable To Find Out Who Was Responsible!

When Human Rights Watch’s Report ‘A Threshold Crossed - Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution was published the Board of Deputies, who style themselves ‘the Voice of the UK Jewish Community’ leapt into action.

Marie van der Zyle described the Report as ‘a sham which puts rhetoric above fact.’ Van der Zyl emphasised that Israeli Palestinians were ‘fully-enfranchised’ and that

‘Israel’s Arab citizens have been appointed as ambassadors, professors, Supreme Court judges, hospital directors, and other key roles throughout Israel’s socio-economic landscape.’

This is the usual excuse for Israeli Apartheid, as if the appointment of a token Israeli Palestinian as ambassador to a nondescript country justifies the entrenched discrimination against Israel’s Palestinian citizens and the violence that it metes out to them.

Israeli police chase protesters

The report by Adalah, the Israeli Palestinian Legal Centre, What happened in the ‘torture room’ at Israel’s police station in Nazareth?’ makes disturbing reading.

Israel is the only country in the world where torture is legally sanctioned. As Amnesty International noted, Israeli judges are complicit in the use of torture. Only in very rare cases where the same methods are used against Jews are Israel’s judges prepared to rule that such confessions are inadmissible.

The pretext for torture is the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario, a pretext that Israel’s colonial judges dreamt up in order to allow Shin Bet, the Internal Security Service and the Police to continue to torture Palestinians. That the so-called representatives of the Jewish community in Britain are prepared to justify all actions of the Israeli state, calling their critics ‘anti-Semitic’, is shameful but not surprising.

The Board of Deputies Constitution enjoins it to ‘Take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel's security, welfare and standing’ regardless of what it does. By claiming to speak on behalf of all British Jews the Board actively does its best to increase anti-Semitism.

The IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism says that it is anti-Semitic to ‘Holdi(negligence) Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’. I agree and its equally anti-Semitic to support Israel on behalf of all Jews.

The Torture Room in Nazareth Police Station

Adalah’s attorneys described the violence handed out to Palestinians in Nazareth during the attack on Gaza and the attacks on them. Palestinians were grabbed off the street and held in the station:

Israeli “police officers led the detainees to a room located on the left side of the entrance corridor to the station, forcing them to sit on the floor handcuffed, to lower their heads towards the floor, and began to beat them on all parts of their bodies, using kicks and clubs, slamming their heads against walls or doors, and more. Officers wounded the detainees, terrorized them, and whomever dared to lift his head upwards risked more beatings by officers. According to affidavits, the floor of the room was covered in blood from the beatings.”

The report says that

Most of the violent arrests of and attacks on Palestinian citizens of Israel in the city were carried out by Israeli special police forces, including undercover mista’aravim officers posing as Palestinians. Israeli officers would continue beating, shoving, and choking detainees while walking them from the scene of their arrest to the city’s police station.

Israeli police in Nazareth even attacked Palestinian lawyers attempting to provide legal help as well as children. This is the answer to apologists for Apartheid like Marie van der Zyl Given the Israeli police record of exonerating their colleagues, we can be sure that no action will be taken or prosecutions brought.

Israeli Prison Violence

Torture in Ketziot, an Israeli Prison

This comes in the wake of an article describing what happened in Ketziot Prison in 2019 ‘Israeli Officers Were Filmed Beating Palestinian Inmates. No One Arrested, Case Closed:

‘At least 10 officers were filmed beating prisoners and dozens more were present, in one of the most violent events to ever take place in an Israeli jail. Only four officers were questioned, none were arrested.’

The evidence is on camera, as you can see, but the Police Investigation Unit was only concerned to protect the prison officers. In the videos the faces of at least 2 prison officers can clearly be seen.

If it was impossible to identify those involved then the obvious action would have been to dismiss every single prison officer. The continued employment of these thugs as prison guards could not be tolerated. But the authorities were not interested in punishing those responsible.

Guards at Haifa Court seal off the entrance whilst an Administrative Detention hearing was taking place

Administrative Detention

Under Israel’s ‘emergency laws’ which date from the British Mandate, prisoners can be gaoled without trial for up to 6 months renewable at a time. This is a law that only police states possess.

Until recently this had been used mainly against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories but now it has begun to be used again Israeli Palestinians (not Jews of course).

Demonstration against Administrative Detention

It was reported that on June 4, as part of a mass detention campaign in Umm al-Fahm, the police arrested Zafer Jabareen, a former security prisoner. Benny Gantz, the Defence Minister, then signed a four month prison sentence. This is the face of Israel’s new government. But when your judge is your oppressor, to whom do you complain?

Israel is engaged in a policy of mass arrests against its Arab citizens (& a few left wing Jews). Three Jewish racists who took part in a brutal mob attack on a Palestinian man in Bat Yam this month were charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault. More than 20 attackers were seen on video beating the victim but only four have been arrested and just three charged.

Since May 9 Israeli police and Shabak (security services) have detained more than 2,000 Palestinians inside Israel. The detention of Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib in Kafr Kanna (north of Nazareth) on May 14 was the most dramatic. As the police surrounded the Sheikh’s home, local residents spontaneously organized a mass demonstration against his detention, and soon there were clashes with the police. The police used live ammunition to disperse the crowd, and Mako reported that eleven of the demonstrators were evacuated for medical treatment, at least four of them in severe conditions.

The Israeli Police never use live fire against Jewish citizens. Even in the case of Shira Banki, the 16 year old girl who was murdered at Jerusalem’s gay pride demonstration in 2015 by Yishai Schlissel, a religious Zionist fanatic, the Police physically tackled him despite him wielding a knife, rather than shoot him. When Palestinians wield knives they are always shot at.

A ‘Death to the Arabs’ march – no one ever gets arrested for incitement at these marches

Sheikh al-Khatib, the Deputy Head of the Northern Islamic Movement, which Israel made illegal as part of its Islamaphobic policy, was arrested for ‘incitement’ remarks . No Jews are ever arrested, for racial incitement and Lehava, which physically attacks Israeli Palestinians suspected of sexual relations with Jews, is a legal organisation. Israelis whose Facebook name includes ‘Death to the Arabs’ are legally untouchable. This is Israeli Democracy in action.

'Maavet La'aravim' (Death to the Arabs) is Israelis favourite Facebook Moniker

Following the attack on Gaza and the General Strike of Palestinians, inside Israel and the West Bank, the Zionist pretence that Israeli Arabs are equal citizens has been abandoned. Apartheid is becoming more and more obvious as Israeli security forces engage in overt repression . This demonstrates, not their strength but their weakness.

The solidarity movement needs to recognise what is happening to argue that the Israeli state as a Jewish state is an illegitimate state.

Tony Greenstein

What happened in the ‘torture room’ at Israel’s police station in Nazareth?

Lawyers from Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel have collected multiple sworn affidavits testifying to rampant, systemic Israeli police attacks and brutal beatings of Palestinian protesters, innocent bystanders, children, and even attorneys inside Nazareth’s police station during the period of protests in the city in May.

The graphic testimonies from victims, attorneys, and paramedics on the scene tell a story of systemic Israeli police brutality and physical, verbal, and psychological abuse of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the northern city, and indicate that Israeli officers ran a “torture room” inside the Nazareth police station – an informal term whose initial use may be traced to the recent detainees and lawyers on the scene.

Adalah submitted a formal complaint to senior Israeli officials today, Monday, 7 June 2021, regarding serious failures on the part of Israeli police and investigators in Nazareth that amount to grave criminal offenses, starting on 9 May 2021 and continuing for a number of days.

In their letter, Adalah attorneys Nareman Shehadeh-Zoabi and Wesam Sharaf highlighted brutal, overt Israeli police violence in Nazareth in breach of the rights of Palestinian citizens grabbed off the street and held in the station, including the rights to liberty, dignity and bodily integrity, as well as the right to counsel and due process.

Israeli “police officers led the detainees to a room located on the left side of the entrance corridor to the station, forcing them to sit on the floor handcuffed, to lower their heads towards the floor, and began to beat them on all parts of their bodies, using kicks and clubs, slamming their heads against walls or doors, and more. Officers wounded the detainees, terrorized them, and whomever dared to lift his head upwards risked more beatings by officers. According to affidavits, the floor of the room was covered in blood from the beatings.”

Most of the violent arrests of and attacks on Palestinian citizens of Israel in the city were carried out by Israeli special police forces, including undercover mista’aravim officers posing as Palestinians. Israeli officers would continue beating, shoving, and choking detainees while walking them from the scene of their arrest to the city’s police station.

Additional testimonies indicate Israeli police prevented Palestinian detainees in the Nazareth station from receiving urgent medical care for wounds resulting from beatings and attacks by officers, also another extremely serious criminal offense.

Almost every night during the Nazareth protests, ambulances were summoned to the police station and wounded Palestinian detainees were evacuated to the city’s hospitals. Other detainees appeared in court following their arrests displaying clearly visible signs of abuse and violence, including stitches on their head, facial swelling, scratches, and extensive bruising.

Sworn testimonies collected from attorneys on the scene indicate Israeli police in Nazareth also attacked them and their colleagues, who were seeking to provide legal aid to Palestinian detainees, used force to distance them from the station, seized telephones and even detained a lawyer.

Adalah demands immediate criminal probe of Israeli police torture

“What happened inside the police station in Nazareth amounts to torture and ill-treatment, and requires the immediate opening of a criminal investigation to examine the circumstances and conditions of the protesters’ detention at the station – including the investigation and prosecution of police officers involved in the violence,” Adalah attorneys wrote in the letter.

Faiz Zbedeiat, 21, university student, Nazareth resident

The protesters stood in a circle … and I stood about 6-7 meters away from them. After a while, a police officer approached the scene and announced over the loudspeaker that the gathering was forbidden and demanded that the participants disperse. When I heard this, I stepped back so that it was clear that I was not part of the rally. I was on the phone with a friend, and a second after I hung up, the cops threw a stun grenade into the street. Suddenly, I noticed a Border Police officer running towards me, and when he got to me he punched me in the nose. I immediately said: “I’m standing far away [from the protest], what have I done? I didn’t do anything.” He suddenly started yelling at me, cursing me, hitting me again, and he said, “Don’t talk to me, talk to the interrogator.” I immediately said that I was not resisting… Two more policemen arrived, grabbed me and pushed me towards another Border Police officer who grabbed me, hit me, and tried to slam my head against the wall. I asked why they were hitting me when I’m not resisting. I even I put my hands behind my back even though they didn’t handcuff me. Nevertheless, the same Border Police officer hit me in the nose with the walkie-talkie that he was holding. I raised my hands above my head to protect myself, and this angered him and he started cursing and threatening me.

The cops dragged me, grabbing me by the head and forcing me to look down. I was taken to the police station a few minutes’ walk away. On the way to station, the same cops continued beating me even though I wasn’t resisting at all. On the way, we met a policeman who appeared to be an officer, and he started laughing and said to them: “Did you only arrest him? That’s not enough. We need more.”

[In the Nazareth police station], police brought more detainees into the room, some of them minors who were nevertheless held together with us rather than being separated. At this point, the cops started beating us and kicking us with their feet and batons. [My friend] who was next to me, received a blow that caused a head wound which began to bleed. The blood could be seen on the floor. I told him he should ask for immediate medical attention, but he was afraid that if he asked for help they would beat him again. The cops kept saying “Close the door.” No one was allowed to raise their head; whomever raised his head or spoke was beaten more. I saw one guy who had a broken nose, his face covered in blood, and yet they kept hitting him inside the room. One of the police officers had an M-16 rifle and I saw that he used it to hit detainees. There was a moment when I could take a glance back and see that a police officer who was beating the detainees was masked.

The cops hit us in the back, slapped us in the face. I personally was hit in the back. They tried to hit me in the head but I dodged the blow, so they hit me in the stomach and slapped me in the face. I remained calm and composed the whole the time, but those who resisted or reacted were beaten more. The cops kept trying to provoke us, they cursed and threatened us. For example, during the adhan (Muslim prayer), they started laughing and saying “Pray that God will get you out of here.” After awhile, a police officer approached me and whispered in my ear, threatening me. He cursed my mother, my sister, and my wife. He then asked, “Did you understand?” I didn’t answer, and he immediately slapped me in the face. He asked me again: “Do you understand?” I still didn’t answer and he slapped me again in the face. Finally, he said “Go explain to your friends”. He pushed me back down to the floor and hit me again.

I saw deliberate humiliation of the detainees. I saw one of the cops kicking a detainee in the leg. Another officer came over and said to him “That’s not how you beat someone,” and kicked the detainee harder. The two cops started laughing.

Omaiyer Lawabne, Nazareth resident

On the eve of Eid el-Fitr and the last day of Ramadan, my brother and I and two other friends decided to go out and celebrate with two friends. We left the house around 21:00, and went to the “Checkers” store near the parking lot on Hagalil Street in Nazareth. I parked the car there, and we went to withdraw money from an ATM. I immediately noticed many police forces in the area, some of whom were well-equipped and looked like special units, as well as a demonstration that was taking place nearby. When I saw this, I started to walk away slowly in order to distance myself a bit. At one point, I looked to my right and saw a police officer in full gear running towards me with his fist raised in the air. The officer hadn’t appealed to us, hadn’t called out to us, hadn’t demand that we identify ourselves or stop. As soon as he saw us, he came running towards me with his fist raised in the air. But the thing is, we were just standing there, away from the demonstration, in a place where no one was gathering.

When I saw the police officer running towards me, I was scared, and I knew he was going to hit me. Out of fear, I started running. I wanted to stop and explain to him that I hadn’t done anything, but when I looked back I heard someone call out “Throw it, throw it,” and I realized that they were referring to stun grenades. The cops started throwing grenades at me, and I kept running because I knew that if I stood still I could be badly wounded by the grenades… While I was still running, one of the policemen raised his hand and hit me in the left eye, and I fell to the ground.

I covered my face while begging the cops who surrounded me to release me because I hadn’t done anything. Suddenly, one of the cops started kicking me in the face and head, stepping with his boot on my head and then on my shoulder. Several cops gathered around me as I lay on the ground. They began to hit me, both kicking and punching. I felt intense pain all over my body, from my head to my legs. One of them started kicking me in the artery behind the ear. At that moment, I thought I was going to die.

After a few minutes, two of the cops dragged me to the city police station. I tried to explain to them that I hadn’t done anything, but when I tried to speak they started punching me in the stomach… I saw that every detainee they brought into the station, they would slam his head against the door. I tried to keep my head away from the door as I didn’t want a scar that would stay with me for life but they still tried to slam my head against the door.

When we entered the station, we continued straight and turned left through a doorway. One of the officers immediately started cursing me and my family, and another slapped my face. There were a lot of detainees in the room, and I was shocked to see that they looked like prisoners of war: They were forced to sit on the floor, with their legs folded under their bodies and their heads held down. One masked officer was walking around the room with an object in his hand – I couldn’t tell if it was a club or something else – but everyone who raised his head was hit on the head with this object. They pushed me down into a corner and I lowered my head and curled up. Nevertheless, the same police officer hit me hard on the head with that object.

Seconds later I felt a great pain in my head, I saw that there was a large amount of blood coming down from a head wound, and I felt very dizzy… When they saw this, the police dragged me out, and ordered me to put my head under a tap of water. I told them I wouldn’t put my head under the tap because it would aggravate the pain and aggravate the bleeding, that they are also not doctors, and I didn’t need diagnosis by cops but rather professional medical treatment. One of the cops told me to shut up and hit me on the stomach. I felt threatened so I followed his orders and put just part of my head under the tap, so that it wouldn’t harm the wound. The officer then told me to “put my whole head under the faucet”, held me by the neck, and forced me to put the wound under the faucet.

A few minutes later two paramedics came to me. As soon as they saw me, they immediately decided to take me to the hospital… When the ambulance arrived, the officer who hit me in the head demanded to explain to the paramedics what had happened. I replied that the officer had beaten me with some object, but the officer – in an attempt to cover up my accusation – rejected my explanation and said, “Wrong. You were hit by a rock” [thrown during the demonstration]. I replied that I was not at the demonstration at all, and that police had in fact photographed me at the entrance to the station without any wounds and without bleeding, so it could be seen that I was therefore wounded only after being brought into the station.

That night I was released from hospital directly home rather than back to the police station. I couldn’t sleep for two nights because of the pain and dizziness. I couldn’t eat because of pain from the blows to my stomach. If I tried to eat, I would start vomiting. My chin hurt and I couldn’t speak well. It was the first time I had been arrested, an arrest that I believe was illegal, pointless, and very violent. Since then, I have not been summoned to the police station for any questioning or to provide testimony.

See ‘Death to Arabs’: Israeli ‘Flag March’ features racist anti-Palestinian chants and further examples of torture from Adalah 

https://twitter.com/AdalahEnglish/status/1405145853820559363 

A Coalition Whose Only Common Factor is Opposition to Netanyahu - Meet Israel's New Prime Minister

The Zionist 'Left' Joins Hands with the pro-Transfer Far-Right in Israel's New Government

The following article first appeared in Weekly Worker 10 June 2021 as House Built on Sand

On Sunday, assuming the coalition of eight parties holds together and there are no defections, the hardline, former settler leader, Naftali Bennett, will be sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Israel. However if anyone believes that this coalition will put an end to the run of four General Elections in two years, then they are likely to be disappointed. It would be a brave person who gave this government even a year before it breaks up.

Netanyahu doing his best to play the Arab card with the inclusion of the conservative Ra'am Party in the new coalition

Netanyahu, the original Donald Trump, whose incitement is widely believed to have led to the assassination of Israeli Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, is not going quietly. With his imminent departure from office, Netanyahu can hear the sound of prison doors clanging behind him. Currently he is facing 3 charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

On June 3 Netanyahu tweeted that ‘Bennett sold the Negev to RAAM! All right-wing Knesset members must oppose this dangerous left-wing government.’ RAAM is a reference to the one Arab party in the coalition, the United Arab List, a conservative Islamist party headed by Mansour Abbas, which broke away from the left wing and nationalist Joint List dominated by Hadash, the Israeli Communist Party.

Speaking to the right-wing Channel 20 Netanyahu called Bennett “a habitual liar” and that the emergent government was “more dangerous than the [2005 Gaza] Disengagement and Oslo [Accords].” For Netanyahu to call anyone ‘a liar’ is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Mansour Abbas and Netanyahu with whom he had previously been negotiating

Netanyahu accused Bennett of engaging in a “liquidation sale” of the country and claimed the incoming government was in league with the so-called “deep state.” All the paranoid racism and conspiracy theories of Trump rolled into one by the master thief himself.

When his back is against the wall then Netanyahu has no hesitation in playing the ‘Arab card’ as he did six years ago when on his Facebook page he warned, in a video that

“The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.”

None of it was true and in fact the turnout by Jews was higher than that by Arabs but it did the trick. Right-wing voters did come out in droves and they voted for Likud.

Bennett has responded by asserting that the government he hopes to lead “is 10 degrees to the right of the current one” whilst appealing to Netanyahu to “let go” that “People are allowed to vote for a government even if you do not lead it.” Netanyahu, is Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister at more than 15 years.

Israel is a Jewish Supremacist state and it is natural for political leaders to argue as to who is the most anti-Arab. In is this is what right-wing means. All parties, including the Israeli Labour Party do it.  Isaac Herzog, the new President of Israel, when leader of the ILP was a past master at dog whistling. He told Labour MKs that

“A false impression exists that we take the needs of Palestinians into account before the needs of the State of Israel,”

He also told Labor activists that

“his faction’s MKs needed to correct an impression that they are always “Arab lovers…. God forbid, and without giving the impression – from what I have heard after meeting with the Israel public – that we always like Arabs.”

Of course this was true. The Israeli Labour Party was the original party of anti-Arab incitement and the Nakba, the expulsion of ¾ million Palestinians in 1947/8. The ILP was the party that instituted military rule over Israeli Palestinians until 1966.

But what is the truth? Is Bennett about to lead the Tel Aviv Soviet? Is he preparing to storm Israel’s equivalent of the Winter Palace?

The new Israeli government, if it comes to power, is no less right-wing than Netanyahu’s putative coalition government with the exception of the neo-Nazi Jewish Power led by Itamar ben Gvir, a disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who believed in the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel and the Occupied Territories.

What has infuriated Netanyahu and the Israeli Right is that, for the first time in its history, an Arab party is a formal part of a government coalition, albeit that it won’t be taking ministerial posts. The irony is that Netanyahu also held talks with Mansour Abbas, in order to persuade him to support his coalition whilst remaining outside the government. This however was vetoed by Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism bloc which includes Jewish Power. They refused to have ‘terrorists’ (for which read Arabs) associated with the government.

Bezalel Smotrich - leader of Jewish Zionism

Netanyahu and Likud have therefore focussed on ‘persuading’ individual MKs from Yamina, the party that Bennett heads, to refuse to support the new government. For Netanyahu, ‘persuasion’ should be interpreted in the same sense as the mafia would use the term when convincing their clients to had over ‘protection money’.

Bennett has already been depicted in a kaffiyeh and with a swastika and his picture has been burned. Social media is full of death threats against him and his family. He is being called a traitor and a court Jew. At least 4 members of Yamina have been provided with extra security by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.

Protests outside Yamina MK Orbach

Idit Silman MK can’t even send her son to school because of the threats. Six leading religious-Zionist rabbis, led by Chaim Druckman issued a letter on Saturday calling on the public to do everything in their power to prevent the new government taking power as the religious right and the Ultra-Orthodox parties – Shas and United Torah Judaism - try to come to terms with the fact that they will not be in government for the first time in a generation.

Yitzhak Rabin is widely believed to have been assassinated as a result of his decision to rely on the support of an Arab Party

‘Everything in their power’ should be interpreted as meaning just that. There is no doubt that Yigal Amir, Rabin’s assassin had received authorisation from unnamed rabbis, as well as the declaration that he was a din rodef, a traitor.

Silman complained that a car with a loudspeaker on the roof followed her vehicle around town. The Army Radio reported that her children had been “banned” from attending their youth movements. In Zionism attacking children is seen as a legitimate way of getting at their parents. Not for nothing is Israel known as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East.’

Silman and Orbach MKs Yamina

Those who think I am exaggerating should recall Richard Goldstone, the South Africa Jewish Judge who chaired the UN Inquiry which issued a Report accusing Israel of war crimes in Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9 was banned from attending his grandson’s bar mitveh. It was only after an outcry that South Africa’s Zionists backed off and Goldstone was allowed to attend. But one result of the attacks was that Goldstone attempted to have the Report withdrawn although the other two members of the Inquiry refused to support him.

The head of Shin Bet, Nadav Argaman, issued a rare warning this week that Netanyahu’s campaign of incitement could lead to political violence.

“This discourse may be interpreted among certain groups or individuals as one that allows violent and illegal activity and could even lead to harm to individuals,”

It is a measure of how far to the racist right the Israeli state has gone that what is in effect a choice between two far-right coalitions is subject to such tactics. The proposed coalition government consists of

right wing settlers in Jeruslem

Yamina, a religious settler party which has 6 seats, one MK Amichai Chikli having already defected. Bennett was former head of the Yesha Settlers’ Council. When it comes to anti-Arab comments Bennett can outdo anything that Netanyahu has to offer.

In 2013 he said that Palestinian “terrorists should be killed, not released”, and in 2018 – the same year Israeli snipers were murdering unarmed Palestinian demonstrators at the Gaza fence – Bennett said Israeli troops should have a “shoot to kill” policy, including for minors. Asked about the army targeting children, he replied: “They are not children. They are terrorists. We are fooling ourselves.”

Bennett is also famous for saying ‘I’ve Killed Lots Of Arabs In My Life And There’s No Problem With That”

Gideon Saar’s New Hope, a breakaway from Likud has 6 seats and is to the right of Netanyahu.

Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu has 7 seats. A secular party of the far-Right, it depends mainly on Russian voters. Lieberman can only be described as a fascist who is on record as saying that Israeli Palestinians who don’t take a loyalty oath should be either expelled or beheaded. He has also said that it would be better to drown thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, ‘since that’s the lowest point in the world.’

Yesh Atid with 17 votes is headed by Yair Lapid. In Israeli terms it is described as a ‘centrist’ party but in Britain it would be on the Tory Right.  Lapid is, in the unlikely event that the coalition lasts, scheduled to take over as Prime Minister in two years time. However that is highly unlikely.

Benny Gantz, leader of what is left of Blue and White with 8 seats, entered the last government as Defence Minister with Netanyahu. He was supposed to become Prime Minister by rotation but Netanyahu outwitted him. He is supporting the new government and will retain his position as Defence Minister.

The Zionist Left, or what’s left of it, has had no compunction in entering the coalition with the sole purpose of removing Netanyahu. The Israeli Labor Party, led by Merav Michaeli, the grand daughter of the famous Zionist collaborator with the Nazis in Hungary, Rudolf Kasztner, has 7 seats.

Meretz, led by Nitzan Horowitz, which in Zionist terms is seen as far-left but in Britain would be seen as right-wing Labour, at best, has 6 seats. It too has agreed to go into coalition even though gay rights are supposed to be its hot issue and the coalition includes anti-gay parties.

It says everything about the Zionist ‘left’ that it is prepared to enter a coalition of the far-Right under a hard right former settler leader who has no intention of agreeing to any peace deal with the Palestinians and who is on record as favouring the annexation of the West Bank.

Mansour Abbas, who just scraped into the Knesset with 4 seats, has signed the coalition agreement but he is effectively supporting the government from the outside. It is after all too much to expect an Israeli Arab party to actually hold ministerial posts.  Abbas will instead accept the Chairmanship of two Knesset Committees.

What Abbas hopes to gain is extra funding for Israel’s Palestinian communities, the recognition of three ‘unrecognised’ Bedouin villages in the Negev, which means they will then receive basic facilities such as electricity, schools and running water, and a repeal of a law which heavily penalises illegal construction in Arab towns. Since land is so scarce in Palestinian Israeli towns, and since building permits are hard to come by, people build homes regardless and the authorities regularly demolish them. Whether or not he manages to secure these concessions remains to be seen.

I have little doubt that if Bennett manages to survive to the weekend and no further Yamina MKs are peeled off that the government is not likely to last. The pressure from those even further to the right will be immense. Abbas too is likely to come under massive pressure from Israeli Palestinians, especially if there are further attacks on the Al Aqsa mosque and worshippers.

Already Netanyahu has supported a new March of the Flags by thousands of settler youth through Arab East Jerusalem. The march has been rerouted away from  the Arab quarter for the time being but there will be pressure for the right to demonstrate that they have every right to hold a pogrom in Arab Jerusalem.

Also the question of the evictions at Sheikh Jarrar is looming. Already Attorney General Mendelbit has announced that the government will not be opposing the evictions as the racist laws which allow the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem are quite clear. Which is true. Jews can reclaim houses they once owned in East Jerusalem before Jerusalem was partitioned between East and West in 1948. However Palestinians are not able to reclaim homes they abandoned in West Jerusalem.

The justice of evicting Arabs for the crime of not being Jewish poses no problem to Israel’s Supreme Court. Whether the new governing coalition will step in seems doubtful but if Jerusalem explodes as a result, then Abbas may yet be forced to pull his support for the coalition.

Tony Greenstein

Why Anti-Semitism is no longer a form of racism –it’s a Marginal Prejudice confined to the fascist fringe

 The major cause of anti-Semitism in Britain today is the Board of Deputies & those who claim to represent Britain's Jews whilst supporting Zionist War Crimes

The Medieval Blood Libel and Abe Foxman

If anti-Semitism was still a form of racism in Britain today then the equation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism would not find an echo amongst the majority of Jews.

If anyone is in any doubt that supporters of Israel routinely make false accusations of anti-Semitism, then the reaction of Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, when the New York Times published pictures of the 67 Palestinian children murdered by Israel should put those doubts to rest, Foxman saw red. This was a ‘blood libel’.

The medieval blood libel was an accusation that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood for Jewish religious rituals. Thousands of Jews perished as a result of such baseless accusations.

To suggest, as Foxman did, that publishing Palestinian children’s faces was a ‘blood libel’ means that he believes the original blood libel was true.

Separating genuine anti-Semitism from its fake imitation

Labour’s anti-Semitism witchhunt involved the suspension and expulsion of dozens of anti-Zionist Jews. You wouldn’t expect a campaign against Islamaphobia to focus on Muslims. Yet because Labour’s ‘anti-racism’ was not about the fight for justice or equality but purging peoples minds it led to the purging of people themselves.

The problem is separating genuine anti-Semitism from what Zionism calls ‘anti-Semitism’. I except Eastern Europe from much of the following as anti-Semitism there is more central to the political base and ideology of the ruling class in countries like Poland and Hungary.

Just over a year ago, three academics – Ben Gidley, Brendan McGeever and David Feldman – wrote Labour and Antisemitism: a Crisis Misunderstood. They talked of a

‘historical parting of the ways between anti‐racism and opposition to antisemitism. An anti‐racism defined solely by conceptions of whiteness and power… has proven unable to fully acknowledge and account for anti‐Jewish racism.’

What Gidley et al were saying was that though Jews were politically White and economically privileged in the West they were nonetheless oppressed. It begs the question - how are Jews are oppressed?

Their argument is the logical outcome of the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ smears. Zionist and right-wing opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ never had any connection with opposition to racism. It had everything to do with support for racism and Zionism in Israel.

Why Does the Board of Deputies Invite Attacks on Jews?

According to the Community Security Trust, which collates & manipulates statistics on anti-Semitism, in the 11 days when Israel was attacking Gaza, there was a 500% rise in anti-Semitic incidents. There was also a 430% increase in anti-Muslim incidents but this was given little publicity. Dave Rich of the CST was quoted as saying:

“It is a depressingly familiar pattern that antisemitism rises whenever Israel is at war, but this does not make it any less disgraceful that British Jews are being threatened, harassed and abused.

The CST described the rise in anti-Semitism as ‘utterly predictable” which renders it strange that the Board of Deputies did everything in its power to increase the number of such attacks.

Attacks on Jewish people in Britain because of Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians should be condemned unreservedly. Such people are not helping the Palestinians, quite the contrary. But who is to blame for these attacks? The BOD and Zionist groups which claim that British Jews are supporting Israel.

At a time when Israel is attacking Palestinians in the name of ‘world Jewry’ you might think that the BOD would emphasise that Israel’s attacks have nothing to do with British Jews. Quite the contrary.

When Israel was deliberately wiping out whole families, what does the BOD do? It issues a joint statement supporting Israel’s ‘right to defend its citizens’ and condemning Hamas for retaliating.

Even worse the BOD organised a demonstration in support of Israel’s attack on Gaza stating that :

This was an important moment for Jews from all parts of the community to come together to show our support for the state of Israel.’

The actions of the BOD in associating Jews with Israel’s attacks were an open invitation for people to attack Britain’s Jews. Yet the liar who edits the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, in a Readers Letter pretended to be perplexed at what was happening:

Quite why people going about their daily lives in parts of North London should be linked to Israeli military action is something which lies in the mind of the Jew haters and their fellow travellers.

However there is a very simple remedy if Pollard and the BOD oppose anti-Semitic attacks then next time Israel wages war against the Palestinians there can be a joint statement by the different Zionist groups deploring Israel’s attacks and informing the public that British Jewry dissociates itself from Israel’s actions and that it bears no responsibility for them. Until then they should put up or shut up.

The link-up between Zionists and the neo-Nazi right was demonstrated at the demonstration when Tommy Robinson was welcomed onto the demonstration with a hug and cheers.

Do Jews bear any responsibility for anti-Semitism?

“Anti-Semitism as an ideology has nothing to do with the behaviour of even one single Jew , let alone of all Jews.’

wrote Steve Cohen, in That’s Funny You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic.

Zionism was founded in the belief that Jews were to blame for anti-Semitism. The founder of Political Zionism, Theodor Herzl wrote in The Jewish State that it was the Jews who were ‘carrying Anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.’ Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President, likewise believed that

‘‘Whenever the quantity of Jews in any country reaches saturation point, that country reacts against them.’

Nathan Birnbaum, who coined the term ‘Zionism’ ascribed anti-Semitism to the

‘The base spirit of usury that has kept our hand from the labor of the plow and the hammer, the senseless deceit that eagerly anticipates the undoing of others...’ [Selbst-Emancipation ‘Our Drawbacks’]

Anti-Semitism had a great deal to do with what Jews did. Jews were the agents of money in pre-capitalist society. They performed an intermediary role as tax collectors, money lenders etc. to the nobility, arousing the hostility of the peasantry.

Today the majority of Jews are performing a similar role, politically not economically. Barnaby Raine wrote that

Once they saw us as dangerous Semites infesting European society. Now instead we are their favourite pets: heroic colonists in the Middle East and successful citizens in the West…. Jews are conscripted as the alibi of white society. We are the useful props for a moral panic

Jews, not the ‘wrong sort’ of course, were used as a battering ram against the Left in the Labour Party with the complicity of the BOD and the majority of British Jews.

In August 2019 I overheard in a Brighton supermarket two people discussing how ‘the Jews’ had tried to stop Chris Williamson speaking in Brighton.  One wonders where they got that idea if not from the Board of Deputies which claimed that it is ‘the voice’ of British Jews. It was reasonable for people to believe ‘the Jews’ were engaged in trying to silence critics of Israel. If that is anti-Semitic then the responsibility clearly lies with Jews who did not speak out.

Not only the Board but a host of Zionist groups, claiming to be Jewish, such as the Jewish Leadership Council and the Holocaust Education Trust joined in the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn. Why should people not assume that this was in the name of all Jews?

Is it anti-Semitic to ask Jews to dissociate themselves from Zionism?

As the Institute of Race Relations observed in their submission to the Chakrabarti Inquiry, identity politics ‘personalises the political and individualises the social’. Thus it is claimed that it is anti-Semitic to expect Jews to dissociate themselves from Israel’s actions. Erica Burman, a liberal Zionist wrote that it was ‘objectionable’ for people

‘to demand that Jews uphold a specific, deemed ‘correct’, position because they are Jews… This demand is antisemitic.

Steve Cohen also asked

 ‘Why should we be obliged to speak out ‘as Jews’ about what is happening in the Middle East any more, for example, than Italians should speak out ‘as Italians’ (p.50  That’s funny You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic)

There is a very obvious answer. The Italians are not carpet bombing Gaza and Italian organisations in Britain are not declaring their support for such atrocities. Jewish organisations are. When the Israel state, which declares that it represents, not its own citizens but ‘the Jewish people’ ethnically cleanses the Palestinians and Zionist organisations that claim they are Jewish, like the BOD, give Israel unconditional support then it is incumbent upon Jews to speak out. There is nothing anti-Semitic about such an expectation.

Racism and anti-Semitism has always been the preserve of the Right including the Labour Right

Some of the main actors in Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ purges, such as Tom Watson and John Mann, were to the forefront in demonising asylum seekers, defending racist Labour MP Phil Woolas and supporting the Tories 2014 ‘hostile environment’ Immigration Act which led to the Windrush Scandal.

Racism is the preserve of the Right not the Left. It is how capitalist society divides its opponents. When the Czarist pogroms spread across Russia it was the Bolsheviks who outlawed them. When Jews were persecuted in Germany it was the left which fought it.

Brendan McGeever has recently published a book which argues that the Bolsheviks used anti-Semitism and launched pogroms in order to maintain power. McGeever has rewritten the history of the Russian Revolution.

It is the Left which has always opposed Anti-Semitism

The narrative that says that the Left is anti-Semitic began with the ex-Trotskyist Alliance for Workers Liberty. Many of the neo-cons in the US, such as Nathan Glazer and Irving Crystal, also began life as Trotskyists under the influence of Max Schachtman, who ended up supporting the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

Opposition to anti-Semitism has always been confined to the Left. Historically the Right has been the mainstay of anti-Jewish racism. Of course some on the Left such as Proudhon, especially in its earlier years, were anti-Semitic. That the Right today purports to oppose anti-Semitism is an indication that not only has anti-Semitism been redefined but that it has also changed. Holocaust historian Ian Kershaw wrote of his

admiration for the courageous minority – overwhelmingly communist workers – who fought uncompromisingly against the Nazis… is boundless…the vast proportion of them workers’ were put in ‘protective custody’ after 9 March 1933. [Popular Opinion and Dissent in Nazi Germany]

Zionist historian Robert Wistrich of Tel Aviv University wrote in Socialism and the Jews that ‘opposition to anti-Semitism had become a badge of honor for the workers movement (in Germany).’

Anyone who doubts this should read my review of ‘Anti-Nazi Germans’ by Steve Cushion and Merilyn Moos. Whilst Tory MPs from the Anglo-German Fellowship were wining and dining Nazi diplomats, communists and trade unionists were placed in concentration camps, tortured and beheaded. It was only the working class and the Left who provided any resistance to Hitler.

The Right and its academic fellow travellers have adopted Jews as if they were pawns in an attack on the Left. Foremost amongst these is David Feldman of the Institute of Anti-Semitism.

Remember the confected hysteria against Corbyn for not mentioning, in his introduction to John Hobson’s Study of Imperialism, his anti-Semitism? Feldman penned The historical left really was ‘for the many, not the Jew in the anti-Palestinian Jewish Chronicle. It was academic prostitution. Writing what you want others to hear. As Black intellectual Claude MacKay wrote, Bolshevism:

“is the greatest and most scientific idea afloat in the world today… Bolshevism has made Russia safe for the Jew. It has liberated the Slav peasant from priest and bureaucrat who can no longer egg him on to murder Jews to bolster up their rotten institutions. It might make these United States safe for the Negro… If the Russian idea should take hold of the white masses of the western world… then the black toilers would automatically be free.”

It was conservatives not socialists who supported Hitler

It was Germany’s conservative parties which put Hitler in power and supported him until they perceived he was a threat to their own interests. Prime amongst the supporters of Hitler when he came to power were Winston Churchill and Lloyd George. Churchill proclaimed that

‘if our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.’

American Consul General Kehl wrote, on March 31 1933, that 

‘It must be admitted that the National-Socialist organization before it came into power and since then the Nazi-Nationalist Government, have rendered invaluable services to the world at large in crushing Communism in Germany.’

Lloyd George was lyrical writing that:

‘Whatever one may think of his methods – and they are certainly not those of a parliamentary country, there can be no doubt that he has achieved a marvellous transformation in the spirit of the people, in their attitude towards each other and in their social and economic outlook.’

‘He rightly proclaimed at Nuremberg that in four years his movement has made a new Germany.’ (Daily Express, 17.9.36.)

The Daily Mail of 20 August 1938, warned that

"The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage:  the number of aliens entering the country through back door - a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed" ‘German Jews Pouring Into This Country’

Daily Mail Lord Rothermere, the Mail’s owner, visited Hitler and wrote in the Daily News on 4 September 1933 that

‘I WRITE from a new country on the map of Europe. Its name is Naziland. Of all the historic changes in our time, the transformation of Germany under Hitler has been the swiftest, most complete,’

 ‘They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call 'Nazi atrocities,' which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consists merely of a few isolated acts of violence.’

These ‘few isolated acts of violence’ included gaoling thousands of communists and trade unionists in concentration camps. In 1933 alone 60,000 communists were gaoled, of whom 2,000 were killed.

In Britain Moseley’s British Union of Fascists conducted a reign of terror in the East End of London. My father told me that there were certain streets where Jews could not walk down without taking their life in their hands. Yet it was the left, the Communist Party and the ILP, not the right, who organised physical opposition in the Battle of Cable Street (4 October 1936) which stopped the fascists. Yet the BOD, now so ‘concerned’ about ‘anti-Semitism’, told Jews to stay at home and not oppose them. Labour too did nothing.

The Tories were hostile to the entry of Jewish refugees. In 1905 Arthur Balfour, the Zionists’ hero, introduced the Aliens Act whose purpose was to prevent the entry of Jews.

Weizmann described a conversation he had with Balfour, who told him that he had met with Cosima Wagner, the widow of Richard Wagner. Balfour explained that ‘he shared many of her anti-Semitic postulates.’ Instead of protesting Weizmann

‘pointed out that we, too… had drawn attention to the fact that Germans of the Mosaic persuasion were an undesirable and demoralizing phenomenon…’

The Police and the civil service were infested with anti-Semitism and fascists. The Labour Party expelled Bevan, Foot and Stafford Cripps for working with the Communist Party’s Popular Front.

Although my dad moved to the right he never forgot or forgave the Tories for their sympathy for Moseley and remained till the end of his life a Labour voter. When anti-Semitism was a real and living phenomenon in Britain, the Tory Party was the enemy of the Jews.

Tory and right-wing labour opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’

Why are right-wing Labour and Tory MPs concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’? Why should a White Supremacist like Donald Trump attack Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar for being anti-Semitic? Clearly their real concern is not anti-Semitism but anti-Zionism.

Historically Zionists and the Zionist movement had no problems with anti-Semitism. In the words of Jacob Klatzkin,

‘If we do not admit the rightfulness of anti-Semitism we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism... Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends, who desire to defend our rights.’

If you don’t believe Jews belong where they live and that they should live in Israel then you are either an anti-Semite or a Zionist (or both). Trump combined ardent support for Israel with the belief that Israel was the ‘real home’ of American Jews.

In 2004 Boris Johnson wrote 72 Virgins which depicted Jews as controlling the media and fiddling elections. Yet those who were busy digging up tropes and quotes of Corbyn were not concerned about Johnson because he supports Israel.

The campaign to paint Labour as anti-Semitic was about as genuine as an 11 bob note. Statistically a party of over ½ a million was bound to have a few anti-Semites in it but it was no more overrun by anti-Semitism than it was by paedophiles, who it was also bound to have.

It was not a left wing Labour MP who consigned thousands of Jews to Auschwitz by refusing to admit them as refugees to Britain but Peter Mandelson’s grandfather Herbert Morrison. [Excuses Excuses The Failure to Amend Britain's Immigration Policy Lesley Clare Urbach].

Ramsay MacDonald when visiting Palestine in 1922 spoke of

‘the rich plutocratic Jew, who is the true economic materialist. He is the person whose views upon life make one anti-Semitic. He has no country, no kindred... he is an exploiter of everything he can squeeze. He is behind every evil that Governments do... He detests Zionism because it revives the idealism of his race.’

And where was this printed?  In a pamphlet published by Poalei Zion, (today’s JLM)! Yet somehow Feldman failed to spot it.

State Racism and Anti-Semitism

The Editors of Jewish Currents wrote that

Though some may regard every oblique—or even straightforward—trope as a track laid on the way to an American Auschwitz, it’s difficult to point to a contemporary state-backed or structural regime of antisemitism to stake it in the ground. In this context, antisemitic tropes seem to function largely as vacant signifiers—the shed skins of venomous snakes.

Racism is structured into the State and how it operates. It is about oppression and discrimination not tropes or stereotypes. The great trope hunt by Labour’s staff was about anything but racism. When you redefine racism, from objective actions to subjective feelings then anything and anyone can be racist, including the victims of racism.

Posts additional to Labour’s Leaked Report showed John Stolliday, head of the Compliance Unit, referring to Ed Miliband as ‘beaker’. Referring to Jewish people by their noses is normally anti-Semitic.

According to Black writer Jewish Currents John Stolliday, head of the Compliance Unit, referring to Ed Miliband A Sivanandan there is “The racism that discriminates, and the racism that kills.” Yet for Jews in the West, anti-Semitism neither discriminates nor kills. There is a third type of racism. The racism that offends. Except that it isn’t even racism. What offends establishment Jews in Britain is opposition to Zionism.

Are Jews oppressed as a minority?

Geoffrey Alderman’s The Jewish Community in British Politics (1983) was subject to a concerted effort by the BOD to persuade him to censor the parts concerning racism in the Jewish community. What Alderman showed was that nearly 400 Hackney Jews had voted for the neo-Nazi National Front compared to zero for the Communist Party candidate.

Compare this to 1945 when an estimated half the votes for Phil Piratin in the Mile End constituency were Jewish resulting in the election of England’s first communist MP.

Alderman noted (p.137) that in 1961 40% of British Jews were to be found in social classes A&B compared to less than 20% nationally. It is this, not Israel, that explains both Jewish voting habits and also the fact that British Jews are not the targets of state racism. There is no reason to believe that British Jews are poorer today than 60 years ago.  If anything the trend has probably been reinforced.

According to the Pew Report for 2016 44% of American Jews earn more than $100,000 a year compared to 19% of the general population.  By 2020 this had increased to 54% with 23% of Jews earning $200,000 a year compared to just 4% of non-Jews. At the other end of the scale 10% of Jews have incomes of less than $30,000 a year compared to 23% of non-Jews. Does anyone serious suggest that America Jews are oppressed, deprived or go hungry?

Jonathan Freedland, in one of his regular apologetics for the Israeli state, asked that Jews should be treated ‘the same way you’d treat any other minority.’ In other words because the majority of Jews identify with Israel people should accept Israel’s legitimacy.

82% of American Jews say caring about Israel is either “essential” or “important” to being Jewish. ‘Anti-Semitism’ has become a defence of Jewish privilege, which is itself bound up with support of Israel. Perhaps we should accept the identity of Hindu racists with India’s occupation of Kashmir because they too are a minority?

But the Kashmiris too are a minority so what we have is a clash of minorities! The problem of identity politics is that there is no means of resolving such clashes. If everyone has the right to define their own oppression then the oppressor too can become the oppressed.

There are no guiding anti-racist principles because identity politics accepts all identities as equal. All is subjective. It becomes a clash of subjective opinions. This leads, as David Feldman wrote to ‘conceptual and political chaos’.

Freedland is adept at using the language of identity politics to protect Zionism and Jewish Supremacism. That is why Zionism hates intersectionality which relates oppression and exploitation to objective factors such as race and class. Oppression isn’t one dimensional.

It’s true that Jews are a minority but they are not an oppressed minority. Millionaires are also a minority but they are not oppressed. Racists are also a minority which is why the far-Right identitarian movement uses the language of identity politics.

In the United States police violence is a leading cause of death for young Black men, 1 in every 1,000 of whom can expect to be killed. Despite being only 13% of the population  Black men make up nearly a quarter of those murdered by the Police. The names – Eric Garner, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor trip off the tongue.

In 2020 out of a total of 1021 people killed by the Police 241 were Black. In the first 5 months of 2021, 71 out of 371 killed were Black.

I don’t recall the names of Jewish people murdered by the US Police. I’m sure that some Jews were killed but not because they are Jewish. There was a time, in the 1930s and 1940s when Jews too were targets for state violence. However that was then not now.

There is no offence of driving whilst Jewish but driving whilst Black is a crime. Jews are not victims of police violence, imprisoned or found dead in police custody because they are Jewish. There is no discernible discrimination against Jews.

Of course there is individual prejudice, a legacy of the past. Occasionally, as with the shooting dead of 11 Jews at the Pittsburgh synagogue, Tree of Life, that can turn fatal. This was a consequence of Trump’s campaign against Latin American refugees.

Israel immediately sent over Education Minister Naftali Bennett to provide political cover for Trump along with Israel’s Ambassador Ron Dermer. As Alison Kaplan wrote American Jews May Never Forgive Israel for Its Reaction to the Pittsburgh Massacre.

British Jews have changed. They no longer live in London’s East End. This is best symbolised by the demise of Blooms the famous kosher restaurant in Whitechapel. I remember as a child queuing half an hour for a table. Yet in 1996 it closed its doors. Why? Because Jews have migrated to north London and Golder’s Green.

There is no longer a specific Jewish working class. Jewish voters gave up voting for Labour long ago. It had nothing to do with Corbyn.

In April 2015, well before Corbyn became Labour’s leader Marcus Dysch wrote Blame toxic Ed for Labour's loss of support. According to Dysch 69% of Jews intended to vote for the Tories compared to just 22% for Labour.

Jewish Racism and Islamaphobia

The misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, a Zionist organisation published in April 2016 a report “British Muslim anti-Semitism.” It included a graphic “profile” of the ‘typical Muslim male’. If such a profile had been written about Jews it would have been called anti-Semitic. The CAA alleged that:

On every single count, British Muslims were more likely by far than the general British population to hold deeply antisemitic views. It is clear that many British Muslims reserve a special hatred for British Jews... yet astonishingly British Muslims largely do not recognise antisemitism as a major problem.

It has long been suspected that sections of the British Muslim population harboured hatred towards British Jews. This survey goes some way to identifying pockets of prejudice, but it also shows that the prejudice is horrifyingly widespread. [see Campaign Against Antisemitism is a campaign against Palestinians]

The Elephant in the Room – Jewish Racism

The elephant in the room is the attitude of British Jews to Arabs and Muslims. In my experience it is extremely high. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than 50% of the Jewish community could be characterised as anti-Arab racists and Islamaphobic. An Opinion Poll has never asked British Jews about their views of Muslims because opinion polls are reserved for the victims of racism, Muslims.

Anti-Semitism as a form of Anti-Racism?

When the French National Assembly and President Macron declared that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism what they were telling people was that to support the Palestinians they must support anti-Semitism. Some people will accept that as a price worth paying. They are being forced to make a binary choice between opposing Zionism and Israeli racism or opposing anti-Semitism.

Since the suffering of the Palestinians, at the hands of those calling themselves Jewish, is infinitely greater than that of Jews, the choice is not a difficult one. The false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations force people into becoming or considering themselves as anti-Semites.

At the same time the Zionist movement consolidates its alliance with anti-Semitic US Evangelists and people like Viktor Orban.

Displaying Israeli flags inside & outside synagogues

It might seem like a no-brainer. Surely if someone attacks a synagogue then that is an anti-Semitic attack? In most cases yes but not necessarily so. There is a growing tendency among synagogues in the United States to display Israeli flags, not only inside but outside the synagogue.

To Palestinians the Israeli flag is the equivalent of the swastika to Jews. It is the flag of a state that has massacred and ethnically cleansed them. If during the recent Israeli attack on Gaza a Palestinian who had lost friends or relatives had attacked a synagogue because it was flying the Israeli flag, would that have been an anti-Semitic attack or revenge for the death of loved ones? The motivation for the attack would have been because of the identification of the synagogue with his friends’ killers not because it was a place of Jewish worship.

When Zionist organisations deliberately conflate Jewish premises with the actions of the Israeli state they are inviting anti-Semitic attacks. One does not have to be cynical to realise that Zionist organisations will not be unhappy at such a scenario.

Herzl wrote in his Diaries that ‘the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.’ Joachim Doron in Classic Zionism and modern anti-Semitism described this as the Zionist dialectic: ‘anti-Semitism was the historic force that “would always strive toward evil but work for the good.”

The rise of anti-Semitism has always meant Jewish emigration to Israel which is one reason why we should oppose anti-Semitism. Ordinary people, horrified at Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians, will understandably blame Jews when Jewish organisations go out of their way to support and identify with the Israeli state. See Why Israeli Flags Don't Belong in Synagogue — or American Ones, Either

Why does the far-Right oppose ‘anti-Semitism?

There is no more fervent opponent of ‘anti-Semitism’ than Alternative for Germany, a party riddled with neo-Nazis. AfD calls itself ‘‘Israel’s one true friend in parliament’ as it pushes for stronger legislation against BDS. This is not without consequences.

The President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schäuble, summed up the reactionary character of the State’s anti-Semitism campaign. He agitated against immigrants “calling for the destruction of Israel,” spoke of the “problem of an imported anti-Semitism from Islamic-dominated countries,” and denounced the “anti-Semitism of the far-left.” At the same time, he defended the AfD against the accusation of anti-Semitism and praised them as an ally in the struggle against it!

 “In parliament, the AfD is also awkwardly attempting not to be pushed into the anti-Semitic corner. Like all other parties, it voted unanimously for the establishment of an anti-Semitism commissioner for the federal government and for a resolution on anti-Semitism.”

German neo-Nazis are integrated into the political mainstream via their support for Zionism. Meanwhile the German Jewish community is left facing two ways – they support Israel but oppose the AfD. See Once more on the issue of anti-Semitism in Germany

Conclusion

Anti-Semitism is not a form of racism and it hasn’t been for well over half a century. There is no evidence that Jews are subject to discrimination or singled out for violence. Ipso facto anti-Semitism is no longer a form of racism. Anti-Semitism of course persists as a form of prejudice and should be condemned on that basis but as the IRR argued, it is necessary to

“distinguish(ing) between ideas/ attitudes/prejudices – which are all subjective and ‘not provable’ – and the objective acting out of such prejudice – in discriminatory acts, physical violence, institutional bias…

It is because Jews don’t experience racism that Tory Ministers, the Labour Right and the Tory press are concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’. If anti-Semitism was a form of racism today does anyone seriously believe that the Mail and Telegraph would be concerned about it?

The CAA claimed that more than half of British Jews felt that anti-Semitism today echoed that of the 1930s. As Ha'aretz’s Anshel Pfeffer observed, if the CAA and British Jews

“actually believe that, then it’s hard to take anything they say about contemporary anti-Semitism in their home country seriously.”

Pfeffer added that such a belief showed

“a disconnect bordering on hysteria … not only are they woefully ignorant of recent Jewish history but have little concept of what real anti-Semitism is.

The majority Jewish identity today is bound up with Israel. Jews in Britain are neither an ethnicity nor a religious group. Synagogue going Jews form a political community. Identification with Israel is their religion. The ‘anti-Semitism’ they experience is the same as that which Muslims experienced when Salman Rushdie brought out Satanic Verses. It is an anti-Semitism of offence not persecution.

Challenges to identity may be offensive but giving offence is not racist although racism is always offensive. For a majority of British Jews, opinions which they find offensive are deemed racist. Witness the hysterical reaction of Jewish students when Ken Loach was invited to St Peter’s College, Oxford. They felt their safety was jeopardised because he was invited to speak. The young ruling class snowflakes of Wadham College were more than happy to support them, even while the statue of Cecil Rhodes is allowed to stand.

To Marie van der Zyl, President of the BOD, the decision of St Peter’s College to invite Loach to speak was “entirely unacceptable.” If anything causes anti-Semitism it is arrogant behaviour such as this.

The campaign to dismiss David Miller at Bristol University is based on having given offence to the Israeli funded Union of Jewish Students. British Jews define anti-Semitism, not in terms of violence or discrimination but in terms of Zionism i.e. the oppression of others. This in itself proves that anti-Semitism is barely alive. 

Anti-Semitism like Jews themselves has changed. As Hajo Mayer observed, ‘An anti-Semite used to be a person who disliked Jews. Now it is a person who Jews dislike.’ As anti-Semitism has changed so have the Jews. Zionism is likely to be the last Jewish identity since there is now no distinctive Jewish socio-economic role in society.

Tony Greenstein

Below is a petition by Jewish people. Please sign it.

Open Letter Take Down the Israeli Flag

We Jewish people internationally appeal to Jews and Jewish organizations around the world to remove Israel flags from communal spaces, whether at Jewish schools, Jewish Federation offices or synagogues. It is clear to us - and much of the world - as the reports of B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch have demonstrated - that the Israeli State is an Apartheid regime and therefore, as international law correctly confirms, it is an ongoing crime against humanity.

The government of Israel, since its start, has been determined to totally subjugate or remove the indigenous Palestinians from the land they’ve lived in for centuries. The Jewish supremacist state of Israel is deeply discriminatory and necessarily violent towards Palestinians who naturally resist oppression and expulsion. Israel logically allies itself with Far Right and Anti-Semitic forces even though this endangers Jews worldwide. That may seem astounding, but these noxious alliances have long been the practice of the Zionist organizations that worked to create Israel.

It is increasingly important for Jews to distinguish between Judaism and the State of Israel and its policies. By featuring an Israeli flag prominently in our communal institutions we permit anti-Semites to believe that our interests are inextricably linked to those of a state whose policies we abhor.

The Israeli flag has the status of the Confederate flag.

We are appalled at the idea that it represents us.

It should be taken down.