Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are the weapons of selection for the Mates of Israel of their willpower to protect their favorite racist colony. They may do and say something to silence criticism of Israel and forestall the exploration of alternate options to the occupation state that they’ve created in Palestine. However they and their political ideology will be crushed.
I’ve confronted their wrath a number of occasions over the previous 5 years. The primary was after I promoted a petition on Change.org entitled “Israel is a Racist Endeavour” calling upon Labour Celebration members to signal and present our disgust on the imposition of the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “Working Definition of Anti-Semitism” upon our social gathering. The IHRA doc supplies eleven examples of doable anti-Semitism, seven of which pertain to criticism of Israel. It’s clear that the Zionists wish to stifle any free and open dialogue of the entity that they’ve created and maintain; folks should not even dare to consider criticising it.
Primary amongst these is to utter the truism that’s central to the precept of Zionism: the creation of a state which favours Jews is a racist idea. That the Zionist state routinely places Jews above its different residents, 20 per cent of whom are usually not Jews. And but, to declare that “Israel is a racist endeavour” is one thing prone to get you expelled from any organisation to which you belong.
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The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism was cooked up in 2009. Even the lead drafter of the “working” doc, Kenneth Stern, has since warned that it has been weaponised in an try to silence critics of Zionism. However, from 2013 British Zionists have labored to have it adopted by our commerce unions, political events, police, governments, faculties and universities. Not to take action, they declare, is to make all Jews susceptible to verbal and bodily abuse. They’ve been phenomenally profitable on this. Public criticism of Israel’s apartheid state is prone to see you expelled out of your union, political social gathering or college. The media is aware of that that is nonsensical — anti-Semitism is against the law, and rightly so, however criticism of the political ideology upon which Israel is constructed is unquestionably professional freedom of thought and speech — however is frightened of exposing it. Any main publication taking the chance will face threats of boycotts, public condemnation from organisations such because the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and requires defunding by lack of promoting income. The Israeli Embassy in London performs a significant position on this. It has a community of supporters in Britain who will bombard with emails and abuse any publication or journalist who dares to cross the road. In a land of free speech, media and journalists are self-censoring themselves to appease an alien state.
Anybody sticking his or her head above the parapet is a goal. After I raised my Change.org petition in September 2018, on the day that Labour adopted the IHRA definition, I used to be instantly within the firing line. I used to be incensed that my freedom of speech was being taken away from me. My petition attracted 2,700 signatures (signal it at www.tinyurl.com/israelihra ) however led to my getting expelled from my commerce union. Within the course of, I uttered the second most forbidden IHRA phrase to my union bosses: “Israel exaggerates the Holocaust for political ends.” I used to be at all times clear that I used to be utilizing the phrase “exaggerates” to imply “overemphasises” however this nuance was misplaced by a media searching for scandal. So far as Zionists had been involved, I had stated that, “The Holocaust was exaggerated.” However I did not.
I’m now described by Zionists as a infamous anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. It is a slander that the Unbiased Press Requirements Workplace (IPSO) is seemingly unwilling to handle, regardless of quite a few complaints by me. Even the judiciary is not any assist; campaigner Tony Greenstein took the Marketing campaign In opposition to Anti-Semitism to courtroom for calling him a “infamous anti-Semite” and misplaced. The decide, like IPSO, took the view that calling somebody anti-Semitic is a matter of opinion, and that organisations are entitled to have opinions.
Because of the IHRA definition, anti-racist activists all around the world are actually defamed as Jew-haters and by inference, as Nazis by Zionists and a complicit media. The latter has little interest in defending our freedom of speech; attacking those that name out Israel for its violations of worldwide regulation does the precise reverse; it stifles free thought and free speech.
As soon as tarred with the anti-Semite brush it’s troublesome to marketing campaign for justice for the folks of occupied Palestine. All actions are attacked by Zionists who paint activists as evil racists, however motion is important if we’re to come clean with the truth that successive British governments have thrown the Palestinians beneath the bus. It was a British Overseas Secretary, keep in mind, who boosted the Zionist motion with the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration promising assist for a “nationwide dwelling for the Jewish folks in Palestine”. We helped to create a monster that pits Jews in opposition to Muslims — the latter are stated to be inherently anti-Semitic — and stays the reason for monumental strife on the earth. It behoves us to try to reverse this abuse of faith.
Criticisms of Israel labelled as antisemitism – Cartoon [Carlos Latuff/Twitter]
While Western colonialists used the Christian Bible to say that God was on their aspect of their conquest of America, Australasia and Africa, the Zionists declare that God gave the “promised Land” — Palestine — to the Jewish folks. Nonetheless, not all Jews are Zionists, and never all Zionists are Jews. It is a colonialist ploy to impose a “bastion of Western civilisation” within the Muslim Arab world. Lots of those that declare to be Jews in Israel have turned their again on Judaism. Spiritual Jews who observe the Torah insist that the Holy Ebook declares that there will be no Jewish state created by human beings; that the Jews have to attend for God to finish their exile. Zionists due to this fact use the Christian Bible — and right-wing Evangelists —to additional their declare on the Holy Land. We absolutely have an obligation to level out to Zionists, particularly those that declare to be Jews, that they’re pursuing a European colonial challenge to show the Holy Land right into a racist tremendous state.
However Zionists and Zionism will be crushed. Conscious of the truth that my dwelling metropolis, Edinburgh, spawned Arthur Balfour who gave away Palestine to the Zionists even earlier than the British had taken it from the Ottoman Empire, I set about getting Scotland’s capital metropolis twinned with Gaza, the a part of Palestine that has arguably suffered the best isolation and demonisation as a consequence of Balfour’s folly. Gaza is a potent image of the Palestinian refusal to bow right down to Zionist energy. I began by utilizing our Metropolis Council’s petitions process, which places issues earlier than Councillors to debate if sufficient residents assist it. Simply 200 signatures had been wanted, a quantity I surpassed simply. When the Zionists obtained wind of my intention, they declared that the twinning of Balfour’s dwelling metropolis with Gaza could be an existential assault on Israel’s existence; they got down to destroy my marketing campaign by the standard technique of attacking each the message and the messenger. Their favoured line was that to twin with Gaza was to assist Hamas, a proscribed organisation. The so-called UK Attorneys for Israel (UKLFI), a gaggle which exemplifies the worst of the authorized occupation and Zionist zeal, determined to mount what they prefer to suppose was a authorized problem.
UKLFI wrote to Edinburgh Council and indicated that even discussing the twinning bid was prone to be unlawful in that it confirmed “de facto” assist for Hamas. They threatened the 17 members of the Council’s Coverage Committee with as much as 14 years in jail; the Residence Secretary had, in November 2021, declared the Islamic resistance motion’s political wing — which had gained a “free and truthful” democratic election to control Palestine — to be a terrorist organisation, though it has by no means acted past the borders of historic Palestine or been any form of risk to Britain. “It’s a prison offence to belong to or invite assist for a proscribed group,” UKLFI identified to Edinburgh Council, which panicked and took the twinning proposal off the Coverage Committee agenda because it wanted to take authorized recommendation.
It was clear to me that the Council’s Chief Govt was in opposition to twinning with Gaza, for he persuaded the Council by no means to twin with any metropolis ever once more. What ought to I do? I handed myself in to the police, telling them that, in accordance with UKLFI, I used to be supporting terrorism by looking for to get my dwelling city twinned with Gaza, so they need to arrest and cost me. The police advised me that there was nothing unlawful in twinning with Gaza.
On this I have to confess that I used to be aided in my dealings with the Council by Michael Mansfield KC, who clarified that supporting Gaza wouldn’t be in opposition to the regulation. Edinburgh Council’s head of authorized affairs was delighted to get a authorized opinion freed from cost from Mansfield, a human rights specialist, and accepted that Police Scotland weren’t bothered both. In August 2022, due to this fact, Edinburgh Council selected to shrug off the UKLFI threats and voted to get Edinburgh Partnership, a physique that features all the town’s civic our bodies, to discover mutually useful tasks with Gaza.
Numerous “Mates of Israel” wrote to the Committee. A Freedom of Data Act request revealed that 32 emails had been despatched to the Council by Zionists who opposed my petition. The gist of their lies was that twinning with Gaza could be a present to Hamas; that poor Palestinians are harmless pawns being exploited by evil Hamas terrorists; and that if solely Hamas ceased combating Israel, Gaza would flourish. The Council ignored this nonsense.
I used to be advised by Councillors that there was little public assist for Gaza, so I spent months gathering letters of assist; each Councillor acquired between 12 and 60 letters, a lot of which I obtained by approaching Edinburgh’s 15,000 Muslims. I visited mosques after Friday prayers with a stall inviting them to signal a typical letter. This strategy was so profitable that even the Conservative group on the Council expressed minimal opposition to supporting Gaza through the Committee’s deliberations. Edinburgh’s Councillors realised that there was important assist within the metropolis to assist Palestine. The truth that Edinburgh has however 700 Jewish residents, a lot of whom present little assist for the occupation state, additionally helped.
The Mates of Israel and UKLFI determined to go on the offensive once more this yr, after they learnt of the “Muslim and Jew: Past Israel” tour which got down to go to fifteen British cities in April and Might, calling for the peaceable dissolution of the occupation state. The primary audio system had been Palestinian creator and broadcaster Dr Azzam Tamimi and Rabbi Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta USA — Jews In opposition to Zionism. That they had labored collectively previously and agree that Islam and Judaism are faiths which have by no means traditionally been at odds with one another. They’re pleased with the truth that for 1,500 years Muslims had lived amicably alongside Jews and had regularly given them shelter within the face of persecution by Christians. Each agree that Israel has no proper to exist in its Zionist type: Orthodox Jews like Rabbi Weiss cite the Torah when making clear that with none Messiah who brings world peace, there will be no query of Jews ending their exile and transferring en masse to the Holy Land. Each really feel that Zionists have abused faith to serve colonial ends. By claiming that Jews are prone to annihilation by Muslims if Israel is attacked, for instance, the state of Israel get $4 billion of navy support from the US yearly, which is used to suppress opposition and seize extra Palestinian land in apparent contravention of US support laws which “prohibit help to navy forces that commit gross violations of human rights.” It’s simple that the so-called Israel Defence Forces commit such violations virtually day by day.
The primary assault on the tour got here from the Jewish Chronicle, which printed the lie in September 2022 that Rabbi Weiss had stated that the Holocaust was exaggerated, one thing they knew that he had denied saying even because it went to print. The libel was made worse by the truth that the Rabbi’s personal grandparents and different family had been murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz. I complained to IPSO on his behalf, and on this event it agreed that the neighborhood newspaper had gone too far. In the course of the tour, the Jewish Chronicle was pressured to publish an apology.
UKLFI thought that it could scupper the tour by holding Rabbi Weiss out of Britain. The group was using excessive after getting the director of a Manchester artwork gallery fired for an exhibition which included pro-Palestine work and getting — imagine it or not — Palestinian youngsters’s artwork faraway from a London hospital. It was eager to mount a contemporary assault on freedom of opinion and expression.
In March, UKLFI known as publicly upon the Residence Secretary to exclude Rabbi Weiss from the nation, claiming that “his entry into the UK wouldn’t be conducive to the general public good”; that he was coming to create division; and that he would “fire up non secular and racial hatred in opposition to British Jews and serve to advertise extremism and encourage terrorism.” The identical themes had been expressed by Scottish Mates of Israel and likely different Zionist our bodies which echoed the UKLFI name. In response, I organised a marketing campaign that led to 200 folks writing to the Residence Secretary declaring that the Rabbi would cut back anti-Semitism within the UK as a really clearly practising Jew who holds a sympathetic view of the Palestinians. The letters defined that Rabbi Weiss was a peaceable, devoutly non secular man who knew solely too effectively the crime of anti-Semitism given the terrible homicide of his grandparents in Auschwitz. We identified that there have been many Jewish individuals who share his non secular views, and that his go to would convey Jews and Muslims collectively.
He duly entered the UK from New York on the day that our tour started, 24 April, with no issues by any means. The lawyer engaged on his behalf in London learnt that the Residence Workplace had not even opened a file on him. Clearly, UKLFI had did not persuade anyone within the UK Authorities that Rabbi Weiss was a risk to peace.
The legal professionals’ group and the Scottish Mates of Israel additionally set about making an attempt to sabotage the tour by telling our venues to cancel the bookings. On 1 April, the Scottish Mates of Israel wrote to all 15 venues, starting what could be a flurry of emails and telephone calls from Zionists throughout the UK to every venue’s Board members and associates. I’ve little doubt that UK Attorneys for Israel (and doubtless the Israeli Embassy) had been working in tandem with Scottish Mates of Israel, as precisely the identical arguments had been used in opposition to the tour. Digging out the contact particulars of as much as 100 trustees is not any small process. Most venues had been charities and the Mates of Israel and UKLFI knew this was a mushy spot; they steered that their charitable standing was in danger if the occasions went forward.
Politicians in whose constituencies occasions had been as a consequence of happen had been copied into the Zionists’ threats. Presumably it was hoped that public funding could be reduce, or planning functions could be turned down. No less than one of many venues pulled out fearing the latter. In Liverpool, the involvement of anti-radicalisation Prevent officers was invoked. The e-mail despatched by Scottish Mates of Israel contained the usual lies concerning the audio system.
As traditional with “Mates of Israel” teams, they accused pro-Palestine activists of racism, and but such “associates” assist a racist, apartheid state with out query. They described Rabbi Weiss as an everyday customer to Iran — three visits in his 66 years is hardly “common” — and claimed that he had expressed an “anti-Semitic trope” when he stated, “Zionism and Israel is the basis explanation for all of the bloodshed and animosity between Jews and Muslims together with Arabs… The one method to cease this bloodshed is to take away this illness, this tumour, the factor that’s inflicting bloodshed.”
By no identified measure can this be described as anti-Semitic, particularly coming from a discovered Rabbi. It’s a criticism of Zionism and a political entity — the Zionist state of Israel — not Jews. “Though he claims to talk for non secular Jews,” the Mates of Israel continued regardless, “he’s regarded by the overwhelming majority of Jews, non secular or not, as a renegade who provides encouragement to their worst enemies.” This uncovered the anomaly of non-religious Jews claiming that the God they do not imagine in (or do not imagine in sufficient to practise Judaism) gave them the land in Palestine.
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The idea is, in fact, that the overwhelming majority of non secular Jews assist Israel, when that’s clearly not the case. As Rabbi Weiss factors out in his talks, a go to to the non secular Jewish communities of Stamford Hill in London or Monsey and Williamsburg in New York, and even in Jerusalem, Israeli flags and symbols are noticeable by their absence. Genuinely non secular Jews eschew Israel on the premise of the teachings of the Torah and Solomon’s writings (the “Track of Songs”) which forbid the creation of a man-made Jewish state.
UK Attorneys for Israel, in the meantime, wrote to venues declaring that our occasions had been presumably unlawful. This had some success. Some councillors had been drawn into the fray, and venues cancelled in Coventry, Edinburgh, Manchester and — with simply three days’ discover — London. One allegation in opposition to the tour was that it could “sow division amongst communities moderately than foster tolerance and mutual respect”. I identified in my response to the London venue that what causes division is the sight of Israeli troopers performing on behalf of the “Jewish State” beating Muslim worshippers at prayer in Al-Aqsa Mosque through the fasting month of Ramadan. What may very well be extra divisive?
I used to be so disenchanted by the cancellation by the London Borough of Camden’s first Muslim mayor, Nasim Ali OBE, that I wrote an open letter to him. “Your motion will do nothing to cut back the tensions that exist already between Muslims and people secular Jews right here who assist Israel,” I identified. “You solely strengthen the hand of the Zionists by silencing debate on alternate options.”
However, our talks went forward in all 4 cities. Various venues had been discovered, and in Coventry we merely held the occasion in a neighborhood park.
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Michael Mansfield steered that we threaten an injunction in opposition to UKLFI for harassment. One other Muslim lawyer in London issued a letter on our behalf, which we used to reassure the venues that there was nothing unlawful in what we had been doing.
The Zionists thus failed of their goal of getting our tour cancelled. On this sense alone, we beat the Zionists and their pernicious ideology. Furthermore, the tour’s affect on social media has been unbelievable; a whole lot of hundreds of individuals, a lot of them Muslims, have now heard our message that Israel pursues a non secular battle in opposition to these it considers to be non-Jews, because it ethnically cleanses its method to changing into a state pursuing “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea“. This, as Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem declared in January 2021, “is apartheid.”
That Israel does this whereas barely hiding behind the facade of a two-state resolution is a contradiction that our tour was intent on exposing. We declared {that a} single state the place Jews, Muslims, Christians and other people of no religion dwell and elect the federal government is the one means ahead. And that’s the one factor that the Zionist state of Israel fears essentially the most.
The views expressed on this article belong to the creator and don’t essentially mirror the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
