Anti-Semitism. Orchestrated Offensive against Jeremy Corbyn in the UK
by Jonathan Cook
For months, a campaign has been aimed at destabilising British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, accused of anti-Semitism. The right-wing party, Tony Blair’s heir, and pro-Israel circles are targeting both Corbyn’s left-wing line and his support for the Palestinian people.
Britain’s opposition leader should have plenty on his plate at the moment, but Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is spending much of his time instead putting out fires as he is attacked from within and without his party for failing to get to grips with a supposed “anti-semitism crisis” besetting Labour.
Late last month leading Jewish groups organised a large “Enough is enough” march on parliament, attended by prominent Labour MPs, to accuse Corbyn of siding with anti-Semites.
In response to the rally, Corbyn issued a statement acknowledging that “anti-semitism has surfaced within the Labour Party,” apologised and promised “to redouble my efforts to bring this anxiety to an end.”
Under Media Attack
But there are no signs that Corbyn’s problems are about to end. On April 17, he had to endure the bizarre spectacle of a parliamentary debate on anti-semitism convened by the Conservative government in which his own backbenchers spent hours lambasting their party and him as leader.
In fact, 18 months earlier, Britain’s parliamentary home affairs committee had found “no reliable, empirical evidence” suggesting Labour had more of an anti-semitism problem than any other political party.
But the anti-semitism claims should be understood in a wider context: of the backlash to Corbyn-led Labour Party.
From the moment of his surprise election by party members nearly three years ago, Corbyn has found himself under relentless attack from the British media, including the state broadcaster the BBC and the liberal Guardian newspaper.
His chief offence seems to be that he harks back to an era before Margaret Thatcher stamped a neoliberal orthodoxy on British politics, requiring the Labour Party under Tony Blair to reinvent itself as “New Labour” by renouncing its socialist, and even social democratic, roots.
Corbyn’s election as leader brought a surge of new members into the party, making it now the largest political party in western Europe.
Nonetheless, Corbyn’s MPs, most of them survivors from the Blair era, have been in near-permanent revolt, even forcing him in 2016 into a rerun of the leadership election, which he again won decisively.
But despite the attacks and dismal ratings, the Labour leader shocked his critics in the June 2017 election by nearly overturning the large Conservative majority. He won the largest share of the vote for Labour since 1997, when Blair enjoyed a landslide victory.
Holes in the Narrative
For a while, Corbyn’s media critics and the Labour parliamentary party were stunned into silence. But in recent weeks they have revived concerns about anti-semitism more aggressively.
There is an unstated implication in the so-called “anti-semitism crisis”: that it has been triggered by Corbyn’s long-standing support for the Palestinian cause, his vehement opposition to imperial wars, and his historical sympathy for third-world liberation movements.
His critics have mostly left it unclear whether they are suggesting his worldview stoked a previously dormant anti-semitism in the party, or whether he has been secretly encouraging Jew hatred, despite his long and well-known record on anti-racism.
Though there have been isolated examples of anti-semitism among Labour party activists, as there are in any walk of life, Corbyn’s critics are making a far stronger claim. They argue that the Labour Party under Corbyn is uniquely vulnerable to, and infected with, anti-semitism.
But there were holes in the anti-semitism narrative from the outset.
Many of the alleged examples highlighted after Corbyn’s election as leader predated his rise to power. These cases were identified after critics scoured the social media accounts of Corbyn supporters, often focusing on the period during Israel’s devastating attack on Gaza in late 2014, when online tensions were at a peak.
Though it is rarely mentioned, a significant proportion of those who were summarily suspended,or expelled, for anti-semitism by a Labour party bureaucracy still dominated by anti-Corbyn Blairites were Jewish or had Jewish ancestry, such as Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, Cyril Chilson and Glyn Secker.
In one case, a respected Israeli Jewish academic based in the UK, Moshe Machover, found himself expelled until an outcry forced party leaders to grudgingly reinstate him.
The thread connecting these high-profile cases was that all of them were vocal critics of Israel.
Livingstone Comes a Cropper
The biggest scalp in the anti-semitism row, however, was Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London who was seen as firmly in Corbyn’s ideological camp. Livingstone, we should recall, was so reviled by Thatcher that she abolished London’s main local government body in the mid-1980s to be rid of him.
Livingstone has been indefinitely suspended from the party, and there are angry calls from many Labour MPs for his expulsion.
His case became the defining moment in Labour’s “anti-semitism crisis,” which is a reason to examine it a little more closely than has generally been done.
Livingstone is an outspoken, independent-minded politician by nature, and so can hardly be said to represent the general state of Labour. But even so, the attacks on him highlight the ideological muddle, and possibly bad faith, of those advancing claims of an “anti-semitism problem” in Labour.
During a radio interview on anti-semitism in May 2016, Livingstone ventured on to incendiary historical ground:
“When Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
There were lots of problems with Livingstone’s foolhardy statement. The date should have been 1933; there was no Israel then, it was Palestine; and the phrase “went mad” implied that Hitler’s earlier expulsion policy might be seen as sane.
But the mix of inaccuracy and clumsiness of Livingstone’s off-the-cuff remarks are not what got him into trouble: it was the claim that Hitler “was supporting Zionism.” Almost immediately the media reformulated Livingstone’s statement as “Hitler was a Zionist”, even though it seemed patently obvious that was not a fair summary of what he said or meant.
In English, the formulation “Hitler was supporting Zionism” is ambiguous and could mean either that Hitler liked or sympathised with Zionism as an ideology, or that he assisted or facilitated Zionism’s aims, possibly unintentionally.
The distinction is important because there are plenty of respectable historians of that period who would agree with the second meaning, and almost none who would concur with the first. Certainly, the second meaning is no proof of anti-semitism.
But no one in the media or among Corbyn’s critics was interested in raking over the troubling but documented ties between early Nazis and sections of the Zionist movement, even though it was the key to understanding Livingstone’s remark.
Toxic Row Brews
Corbyn hoped to draw a line under the mounting row about anti-semitism by setting up an internal review in June 2016. Barrister Shami Chakrabarti concluded that the party was “not overrun” by anti-semitism, as critics claimed, but that there was an “occasionally toxic atmosphere” which needed to be addressed.
The conference where these findings were issued, however, was overshadowed by just such a toxic row, this time provoked by a Jewish Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth. She made a very public exit from the conference in tears.
She accused a Corbyn supporter, Marc Wadsworth, a black activist and founder of the Anti-Racist Alliance, of promoting “vile conspiracy theories about Jewish people” at the event by accusing her of leaking stories to the right-wing press to harm Corbyn. Wadsworth argued that he didn’t know that Smeeth was Jewish, but was suspended for anti-semitism nonetheless. It was hard to avoid the conclusion that Smeeth was implying that because she was Jewish, criticism of her was anti-semitic by definition.
For good measure, she dragged Corbyn into the fray, saying he “stood by and did absolutely nothing . . . a Labour Party under his stewardship cannot be a safe space for British Jews.”
Smeeth later claimed to have received 25,000 abusive messages online, most of them via Twitter, in the days immediately following the spat over the Chakrabarti inquiry’s findings.
But a study by the Community Security Trust, a UK Jewish lobby group, in March 2018 blew a large hole in her claim. It identified only 15,000 anti-semitic tweets for the whole of the UK in a 12-month period that included June 2016.
Nonetheless, following a hearing this week attended by Smeeth, to which she was ostentatiously escorted by some two dozen Labour MPs serving as a “bodyguard”, Wadsworth was expelled for “bringing the party into disrepute.”
The concern is that Corbyn’s opponents in the party have made common cause over anti-semitism, a charge of such gravity that they know party members will be reluctant to come to the defence of those accused. The media has seemingly been an enthusiastic accomplice.
Corbyn’s supporters argue that the main Jewish lobby groups in the party, most notably the Jewish Labour Movement, the UK’s sister organisation of the Israeli Labour Party, dread a future in which a Corbyn government may become the first in Europe to prioritise the Palestinians over Israel.
And the dominant faction of Blairite MPs fear losing their party to someone they view as a political dinosaur and a threat to the political and economic order they champion.
There is a substantial overlap between these two interest groups, with some 80 prominent MPs also members of Labour Friends of Israel.
These suspicions appeared to be confirmed early last year when the Qatar-based satellite channel Al Jazeera aired four episodes of a documentary into the role of the Israeli lobby in the UK. Three were on the lobby’s role in the Labour Party, while a fourth dealt with Israeli embassy efforts to “take down” a Conservative government minister, Alan Duncan, highly critical of Israel’s settlements.
Significantly, Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter exposed the intimate and covert ties between the leaderships of two key Labour groups—the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI)—and Shai Masot, of the Israeli embassy in London. Both organisations, which are seen voicing their hostility to Corbyn, have been at the forefront of the campaign to claim that Labour under the new leader has an anti-semitism problem.
Although Masot claimed to be an embassy official, there were strong indications that he actually worked for a secretive unit of Israel’s strategic affairs ministry.
According to the Israeli media, the unit is charged with carrying out smear campaigns against overseas Palestinian solidarity activists, especially those in the growing boycott (BDS) movement.
It also emerged that the director of the JLM, Ella Rose, previously worked at the Israeli embassy and has boasted of her close ties to Masot.
Conference Clash
The Al Jazeera documentary created surprisingly little fallout. Masot was removed by Israel, but no investigation was launched by the Labour Party into the activities of the JLM or LFI.
In reaction to the unchallenged dominance of the JLM as the voice of Jews in the Labour Party, a new breakaway group, one that was pro-Corbyn, launched at the Labour party conference last October called Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL). The new group quickly found itself tarred with claims of promoting hate speech at the conference.
There were wells of general resentment among a section of delegates towards the JLM for its role in seeking to discredit Corbyn that had been exposed by Al Jazeera. There were even a few calls for the JLM to be expelled from the party.
This context was entirely missing from media coverage, serving instead to offer yet more proof of the party’s anti-semitism problem.
At the heart of the dispute between the JLM and JVL were efforts by the former to broaden the definition of anti-semitism to include “the holding of beliefs” that might be “perceived” as offensive. Corbyn supporters and others warned that the move would create “thought crimes”.
The JLM also hoped to incorporate more fully into the party rule book a controversial definition of anti-semitism formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an inter-governmental body.
Faced with resistance from party members at the conference, the JLM was forced to water down its proposals.
The JVL and its supporters, such as the award-winning film director Ken Loach, also found themselves dragged into yet another anti-semitism row—this time over reports that a fringe meeting had included a speaker arguing that people should have the right to question whether the Holocaust happened.
The allegations again looked deeply mischievous. The speech was not made at a JVL event, and there was no recording of it. But more significantly, the speaker in question was not a Labour activist but Miko Peled, a well-known Israeli whose father had been one of the country’s most famous generals.
Friend with the “bad” Jews
Nonetheless, the conference clash helped to clarify what was at stake for many of those involved. Jonathan Freedland, a senior columnist at the Guardian, waded in to support the JLM, arguing that the traditional definition of anti-semitism — that it was a hatred of Jews for being Jews — was too limited.
Instead, he claimed, it was a mood that could be perceived only by its victims, even if there was no tangible evidence that outsiders could detect. Further, anti-semitism included attacks on Jewish identity. And because Israel was now central to most Jews’ identity, attacks on Israel could be evidence of anti-semitism too.
The implications of Freedland’s argument came fully to the fore early this month when Corbyn, hoping to dampen the tensions sparked the march on parliament, enjoyed a seder meal with Jewdas, a group of left-wing (and satire-loving) Jews who are highly critical of Israel. They had been among those warning that the recent anti-semitism protests in London were “cynical manipulations” organised by the Jewish establishment.
Corbyn found himself facing a barrage of criticism for spending time with Jewdas, which was used as further evidence of his indulgence of anti-semitism. Corbyn, it seemed, was friendly with the wrong kind of Jews.
Critique of Capitalism and Caricature of Bankers
Where is this “anti-semitism crisis” heading for Labour? A clue was provided by recent attacks that have dragged Corbyn deeper into the fray.
He was accused last month of having exposed his own anti-semitism in a social media post from 2012. In it, he supported an artist, Mear One, whose London mural was about to be removed following complaints to the local authorities. Corbyn did so, he originally said, in defence of public art and free speech.
For the first time, however, the sustained attacks forced Corbyn decisively on to the back foot, eventually agreeing that the mural was anti-semitic, apologising for his post, and promising to work harder to root out anti-semitism in the party.
It was a given in all the mainstream reporting that the mural was blatantly anti-semitic, portraying “Jewish bankers” seated around a Monopoly-style game board supported on the backs of workers.
Mear One, however, insisted instead that it was a radical critique of capitalism, and that the “bankers” portrayed were caricatures of real-life capitalists, most of whom were not Jewish.
The expedience of the mural row to Corbyn’s critics soon became clear. It could be exploited to launch a wider assault on his political programme, cementing the alliance between Labour’s ardent Israel supporters and its neoliberal Blairites.
Two academics used the pages of the liberal New Statesman magazine to argue that much of the language traditionally used by the radical left to critique capitalism and imperialism was actually code, concealing its anti-semitism.
Corbyn had fallen into the trap of backing the mural, they argued, because of “deep-seated theoretical underpinnings of left critiques of capitalism that have anti-semitism as their logical consequence.” When socialists or Occupy movements critiqued globalisation — speaking of “global elites,” “a rigged system,” “a parasitic 1 per cent” — they were not just indicting a ruling class. According to the authors, they were also echoing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery claiming that Jews controlled the international financial system.
The advantage of this line of attack for a capitalist class keen to maintain its privileges hardly needs pointing out. Any effort to articulate a programme for radical change, for socialism, becomes inherently vulnerable to the charge of anti-semitism.
Daniel Finn, editor of the New Left Review, recently set out what the stake is. The primary goal of the Blairites and the Israeli lobby in Labour—and his opponents in the British establishment — “is to destroy Corbyn altogether.”
And if that fails, a secondary aim is to get him to capitulate on Palestinian rights. “If we can’t hold the line in defence of Corbyn’s eminently moderate stance on Palestine, we certainly won’t be in any condition to resist the pressure that is still to come.”
In short, his critics inside and outside the Labour Party need Corbyn crushed or tamed. And the inexhaustible anti-semitism crisis offers a route to one or the other solution.
Jonathan Cook is a British writer and freelance journalist, based in Nazareth. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Award for Journalism. Author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006) ; Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008).
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Raving lunatic Israeli puppet lying his f’ing head off at the UN. What a vile sick specimen and this they no doubt consider moderate. Are there no sane, no moderate Israelis left there?
About 40% I think, but none in power. There it is fascists and Talmudic goy-haters wall-to-wall.
I wanted to make the point that Thornberry’s statement is hypocritical, as she is also a prominent member of Labour Friends of Israel …who made their own accusatory “statement”; blaming Hamas …but, as usual, Tony Greenstein beat me to the punch:
http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2018/
Also, LFI members form a vocal, some might say totalitarian minority , that seek (if they have not already achieved their goal) to control the Labour party. If they are not in control, they are only two expulsions away from assuming control.
I’m not the only one to note that the leading Zionist racist anti-racists, and the leading anti-Corbyn group form a mutually inclusive society. But currently, there is no means of removing them. All the calling for mandatory reselection is in vain. Current members of the party will have to take it to conference to ensure the tabled rule change (if it is carried forward as it should be) is adopted. Until then, they are the Labour party, wheeling inordinate influence over its affairs. Jeremy Corbyn is not a plenipotential singularity, there is enormous influence wielded upon him …influence he has thus far chosen to accomodate rather than ammend.
The very essence of ‘antisemitism’ is any situation where the Zionists do not call the shots. Their innate sense of superiority, their unmatchable arrogance, their infinite capacity for hatred and vengeance, add up to a force that is destroying UK Labour right before our eyes. If the rank and file resist, the party will be destroyed as ‘antisemitic’. And if the Zionists win, and BDS is banned and support for the Palestinians outlawed, then it will wither from within. Heads they win, tails you loose-anything else is ‘antisemitic’.
Things change. And are changing. Thornberry’s position is much more than ‘hypocritical’, she has been forced by events and opinion within the Labour Party to adjust her tune. Give her credit for it! Encourage her! Add to the momentum towards Palestine.
LFI have been given all the rope they could possibly want, please allow them to hang themselves:
https://skwawkbox.org/2018/05/15/calls-for-labour-and-mps-to-sever-ties-with-lfi-after-gaza-tweet-causes-outrage/
Emily Thornberry is a xenophobe. That’s a polite term. OK, so. on the face of it I can give her credit for a speech that was written, possibly by Seamus Milne [?] that she read out. “Support” and “encouragement” for her involves ‘support’ for re-armament, NATO’s Operation Barbarossa, Russophobia, Magnitsky sanctions etc …all of which are positions she has taken; and all are positions I vehemently oppose. Sure, all of LFI should go, but they won’t …not without a rule change. Mandatory reselection should have been brought in years ago. Just to give you an idea, I supported the issue in the late eighties. If it comes in, I will celebrate it. It is not the grassroots that is against it, it is the party elite …including Jeremy. He got the Chief Whip to say that he did not support it. He’s very good at keeping quiet on key issues. In fact, I’m not sure what he thinks any more: but I know I do not support him. I do not want an intensification of the already gone too far on baseless fabrication Cold War: do you?
As you noted elsewhere, and I have noted as well the key lies in Conference.
Already several CLPs have adopted motions which would make LFI’s position untenable. What needs to happen is for as many CLPs as possible to put forward strong motions, using the recent events ion Gaza as introduction to a principled declaration of opposition to imperialism and colonialism with specific reference to Israel and the guilt of Labour as a party for sponsoring Zionism in the past.
So far as re-selection is concerned it is nonsense for you to insist that Corbyn opposes it, clearly he is refusing, as he ought to do, to anticipate the will of the Party. It is up to the membership, acting through the CLPs and affiliated organisations to insist at Conference on a dismantling of the anti-democratic constitutional structures and the building of a means of ensuring that the will of the majority and the rights of all individual members are enshrined in a constitution in which MPs and Councillors report regularly to the parties sponsoring them.
As to Corbyn, he is bound by the rules until they are changed. He cannot change them nor should he attempt to do so,. This fixation with Corbyn’s supposed treachery is unfair and a diversion. The problem in the Labour Party is that there are ancient, encrusted opponents of socialism who are going to have to be winkled out one at a time.
Right now there is a clear opportunity to make subscription to the Corbyn and Thornberry statements on Gaza tests of loyalty, which will allow the CLPs to act against any MPs refusing to denounce the Israeli fascists.
In immediate terms that is an important step on the path to re-selection.
As to mandatory re-selection I supported , in the sixties on the EC of my CLP, the idea of procuring a letter of resignation in advance from all candidates for office, resignation to take effect when the General Management Committee, after proper notice, decided.. Re-selection ought to be part of the regular process.
Then there is the nonsense of these imposed lists narrowing the choice of prospective candidates to ‘women’ or ‘BAME’ members, which notoriously has had the effect of preventing CLPs from choosing workers and directed them to choose university graduates, professionals and bureaucrats. The NEC should have no role at all in the selection of local candidates.
I might add that if Seumas Milne is indeed writing Thornberry’s speeches for her that is a very good thing. He should be writing statements for most of the Shadow Cabinet: or you could, why not? These MPs are meant to be working for the Party. (Which is really what Burke was telling the ‘electors of Bristol’.)
Bevin: I agree with everything you say, it is easy to see how the party could be democratised. You and I and many, many dedicated stalwarts (far more dedicated than me) have been trying to do it for decades. Where we differ, is I do not see it happening, not because I don’t want it to happen …but the party itself resists change. The party is in the grip of the right wing, and they are orchestrating a coup to gain full control …that is how I see it. Do I endorse that coup? Of course not: it will be the death of democracy. Where we really disagree, is that I see that Jeremy has been compromised …his support for the White Helmets and his anti-Russian Magnitsky sanctions stance are just two key red flags for me. And those opinions appear to be his own. You say he could do nothing about Marc Wadsworth: he could have appeared as a witness in his defence? He was there, and they spoke on the way out. Instead, he denied that he had offered him support. Purging the party won’t change what I and many others see as a betrayal.
Yes-Corbyn is UK Labour’s Bernie Sanders. A ‘limited hang-out’ intended to defuse real opposition to elite control.
There is an enormous difference between the Labour Party and the Democratic party, not to mention the Independents of Vermont.
I’m sure that you can see that: there is a very real possibility of mobilising mass support behind a programme which challenges the capitalists’ Establishment.
See today, for example, the Military Coup talk in the Telegraph.
See also:
https://skwawkbox.org/2018/05/15/petition-launched-labour-mps-censure-after-massacre-apologism/
She, and all her loathsome ilk, seem more xenomorphs to my jaundiced eye.
Thanks. I’m a fan of Cook’s brave truthtelling. Happy to have been mistaken.
Happy to see this statement today too:
“The confirmed death toll has now reached fifty-five, with 2,700 wounded.
Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry issued a strongly-worded condemnation on behalf of the Labour Party:
We condemn unreservedly the Israeli government for their brutal, lethal and utterly unjustified actions on the Gaza border, and our thoughts are with all those Palestinians in Gaza whose loved ones have been killed or injured as a result.
These actions are made all the worse because they come not as the result of a disproportionate over-reaction to one day’s protests, but as the culmination of six weeks of an apparently systemic and deliberate policy of killing and maiming unarmed protestors and bystanders who pose no threat to the forces at the Gaza border, many of them shot in the back, many of them shot hundreds of metres from the border, and many of them children.
Throughout that six-week period, the UN’s Secretary General has been calling for an independent investigation into these incidents, one that should urgently determine whether international law has been broken, and hold the Netanyahu government to account for their actions. The UK should lead calls for the UN Security Council to order such an investigation today.
These incidents must also be the catalyst for urgent and concerted international pressure on the Netanyahu government to lift the blockade on Gaza, and end Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. No longer can Netanyahu act as a law unto himself, under the protection of the Trump administration, whose decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem today has further inflamed the situation.
In the meantime, we urge the Israeli forces serving on the Gaza border to show some long-overdue responsibility to their fellow human beings, and stop this vicious and utterly avoidable slaughter of peaceful protesters demanding the right to return to their homes.
Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry issued a strongly-worded condemnation on behalf of the Labour Party:
“We condemn unreservedly the Israeli government for their brutal, lethal and utterly unjustified actions on the Gaza border, and our thoughts are with all those Palestinians in Gaza whose loved ones have been killed or injured as a result.
“These actions are made all the worse because they come not as the result of a disproportionate over-reaction to one day’s protests, but as the culmination of six weeks of an apparently systemic and deliberate policy of killing and maiming unarmed protestors and bystanders who pose no threat to the forces at the Gaza border, many of them shot in the back, many of them shot hundreds of metres from the border, and many of them children.
“Throughout that six-week period, the UN’s Secretary General has been calling for an independent investigation into these incidents, one that should urgently determine whether international law has been broken, and hold the Netanyahu government to account for their actions. The UK should lead calls for the UN Security Council to order such an investigation today.
“These incidents must also be the catalyst for urgent and concerted international pressure on the Netanyahu government to lift the blockade on Gaza, and end Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. No longer can Netanyahu act as a law unto himself, under the protection of the Trump administration, whose decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem today has further inflamed the situation.
“In the meantime, we urge the Israeli forces serving on the Gaza border to show some long-overdue responsibility to their fellow human beings, and stop this vicious and utterly avoidable slaughter of peaceful protesters demanding the right to return to their homes.”
That is more like it.
Link: https://labour.org.uk/press/emily-thornberry-responds-killing-palestinians-gaza-today/
And you, dear aurora-what is your opinion of this, the latest ritual slaughter of Gazans. by your Zionist idols? Nutty yahoo called it a ‘glorious day’, and the coward butchers of the Israeli Death Forces as ‘brave’. What think you of that?
The only reason you came to the conclusion that I’m a ‘Zionist’ is because I called you up on your racist use of the term ‘the Jews’ in the statement ‘not all the Jews are the enemy’. As have others here, but you’ve singled me out. I’ve repeatedly condemned Israel’s policies towards Palestinian people and lands here, which you simply ignore, and elsewhere, including on the Guardian, where my comments are consistently deleted – hence my arrival at this site. Your anger at being called out as a racist seems to be becoming psychopathic in proportion. You need help.
Dear aurora, thank-you for stating your position. As for you lurid misrepresentation of facts, it was you that went full hasbara, twisting my words in one case where I refuted your typical slander. Typical of the Zionists. You know, if it waddles like and duck, and quacks like a duck etc. And here you are YET AGAIN, repeating the same mendacious smear. So I do not accept your statements AT ALL, because you repeat your twisting, lying, smears over and over again-pure Zionist hasbara vilification. No-one else here as vilified and slandered me as repeatedly, despite my refutations of their lies-only you.
If you really believe that she “needs help” it is difficult to explain why you keep this fruitless exchange going.
Oh and you’re an abject coward. You list very good reasons why holocaust denial is absurd, but then appease such deniers with the line ‘it just plays into Zionist hands’ – meaning, what? ‘Keep quiet about those denials, it doesn’t play well’? Have some courage mumblebrain.
@mulga mumblebrain and auroraschreib
The exchange between you two is deteriorating into nothing but name-calling. Time to move on and leave each other alone for a while?
Fine, though I merely object to your reference to ‘deteriorating’ since the insults have been aimed at me from day one and my first posts for the audacity of challenging the racism, antisemitism, transphobia and homophobia (and now holocaust denial). It’s your site, do as you see fit.
Not a hope, Admin. When a blatant hasbara troll turns up and commences, as they do, twisting my words, taking them out of context and misrepresenting my position, repeatedly, even after I have carefully explained her misrepresentaion, all standard vilification tactics of the ‘antisemitism’ stand-over thugs, I REFUSE to not keep defending myself from those odious tactics.
You, and everyone else, have an obligation to correct untruths and defend yourself against them. But, at risk of sounding patronising, I humbly invite you to consider doing so with less vitriol and fewer hyperbolic adjectives. As I see it, the manner in which you defend yourself virtually ensures further attack and does little to nothing to invite your opponent towards compromise, towards understanding your position more richly and completely.
I admire your passion. It would be better wielded if your very real compassion, which is its source, were as immediately evident as your anger.
Sorry, Toby. Come back when a hasbara troll has repeatedly misrepresented you, twisted your words and slandered you as as a racist. Let’s see how you react. I admit that your opinion is surely honestly held, but our definitions of ‘vitriol’ probably differ, and our expectations that hasbara trolls will ever change their behaviour surely do. I’ve been smeared by these creatures for years, often with really vile inventions like ‘Holocaust denier’, so my fuse has been burned very low.
BeautyVitriol is in the eye of the beholder, it’s true, but that makes the beholder’s perspective equally valid, something to talk about, learn from. Meaning is contextual, not objective.I have been a partner to many flame wars and other fights and experienced again and again how they go nowhere. Indeed, I have a lot of anger issues. It’s not easy staying calm, but it is what is required, I believe. And the calmness I invite you to consider is not really meant as a tactic to convince others of one’s rightness cynically, calmness should be cultivated in the interests of the process of discovery that conversation and discussion are, in the interests of the people/cause one seeks to represent, and on the off-chance that one’s opponent is inspired to reconsider their perspective.
If you ever notice me becoming vitriolic or personal in my comments here, I hope you’ll pick me up on it. This is a group effort, not a solo crusade. I’m on your side. Or, better, on the side of the truth, whatever it may be. I want truths to come to light and be seen by as many people as possible. That is by no means a small undertaking, as you well know.
You and Aurora have now made Cook’s original thesis “Anti-Semitism. Orchestrated Offensive” all about you. No longer following this convo.
How do you react, man, when people lie about you to paint you as a racist bigot? In any case I’ve promised Admin to ignore the hasbara troll, so I will.
I don’t believe anyone commenting or writing at this site would ever want to harm or kill a person simply because they are a member of some out group. I also do not believe that anyone at this site is racist in that they think a person inferior to them by simple virtue of their ethnicity. What is true is that people are angry and afraid. These are confused times with PC rules so wide ranging and all encompassing that we all trip up over them. The squabbles and mudslinging emerge, imo, directly that fear and confusion, but not from racism.
I invite everyone who reads this comment to think of it this way. It is in all of our interests to treat each other with openness and respect no matter how ‘abhorrent’ that other person’s viewpoint may initially seem. If we at OffGuardian, who are more or less on the same page, cannot talk through our differences of viewpoint, what chance do we have, as a species, in overcoming the divide-and-conquer tactics we must overcome if we are to stop or at least properly address the multiple and horrific injustices of imperialism?
More twisting hasbara smearing. My statement that denial of the Nazi Judeocide plays into Zionists’, like you, hands, is a simple statement of fact. It is only a portion of why I abhor Nazi Judeocide denial, which I mostly loathe because it is wrong, factually and morally. To omit and in practise deny that fact, and to have the filthy audacity to call me a ‘coward’ is loathsome, but typical Zionist hasbara twisting. You give yourself away as a humbug as surely as all the Zionist hypocrites assailing UK Labour.
Craig Murray has a good piece on the latest Gaza massacre today
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
This ought to be of special interest to Corbyn and the NEC who appear to be living still in the era when the MSM ruled and the media dictated the limits of political debate. That is no longer the case.
“…The overwhelming force of the political and financial Establishment is behind Israel in the West, in the Russian oligarchy and even in most of the horribly corrupt leadership of Arab states. But the situation is not as dire as it seems, because the hold of those Establishment elites on the people they exploit has never been more shaky. Israel remains a touchstone issue. In order to help redress the terrible agony of the Palestinians, we must first effect a change in our own system of elite exploitation of the people at home. That change is coming.’
It is indeed, the martyrs of Gaza are not dying in vain.
As the Angry Arab As’ad AbuKhalil reminds us, nothing will be forgotten.
“Our Country is a Graveyard” by Tawfiq Ziayd:
“Gentlemen, you have transformed
our country into a graveyard
You have planted bullets in our heads,
and organized massacres
Gentlemen, nothing passes like that
without account
All that you have done
to our people is
registered in notebooks”
Again the ‘paradox’ of an article rightly critical of the false equating of criticism of Israeli policy with antisemitism being followed by an endless stream of comments reeking of… antisemitism. Difficult to tell whether this is deluded self-sabotage by those claiming to support the Palestinian cause. but actually motivated far more by racist, sociopathic hate, or deliberate and cynical sabotage by precisely those people who are making the false equation in the first place. But I mostly suspect the former.
Zionists thrive on anti-semitism. And they will go to considerable lengths to provoke it. It not only allows them to smear anti imperialists as anti-semites, that is a small bonus, the real point is to make it impossible for Jews to integrate themselves in society while continuing to identify with their religion/culture.
Hence the attacks on Jewish socialists as anti-semites, hence too the eagerness to conflate capitalists with ‘mainstream Jews’ exemplified by the insistence that the muralist’s portrayals of Carnegie, Morgan and Rockefeller (not to mention Aleister Crowley !) are anti-semitic stereotypes.
It is with great delight that some of the more fanatical and racist zionists see critics of Israel degenerating into mumbling about the Rothschilds, the power of Jews in the media and in US politics, until, inevitably they fall back on those old favourites “Jewish Bolshevism” and the Elders of Zion. It matters little that Jews are simultaneously charged with being both Communists and the enemies of Communism, when the racist’s blood is up logic is forgotten. All that matters is to smear the enemy.
Most friends of the Palestinian cause are as opposed to anti-semitism as they are to every form of racism but, as the movement gains strength and as the criminal provocations of the Israelis become ever more flagrant, there is bound to be a tendency among critics towards conflating the crimes of the Zionists with Judaism. This plays into the hands of the Zionists while weakening the moral authority of anti-imperialists and poisoning the left by breaking the unity of the masses.
The wonder is not that some supporters of Gaza, for example, lapse occasionally into anti-semitic language but that there is not only within the pro-Palestinian movement but among ordinary Arabs so scrupulous a drawing of the line dividing criticism of Israel from slandering those who identify as Jews.
Nor should it be forgotten that the real context in which we discuss these matters is one in which by far the greatest threat to social solidarity is islamophobia, a plague raging throughout the ‘western’ world. And that much of this islamophobia has been encouraged and inflamed from the disgraceful hatred of muslims and Arabs which is central to the modern Israeli political discourse, and is at its most virulent among the politically powerful ‘settler’ movements which are openly racist as well as crucial components of the right wing coalitions which run Israel.
A MOST excellent contribution, in my opinion at least.
“Nor should it be forgotten that the real context in which we discuss these matters is one in which by far the greatest threat to social solidarity is islamophobia, a plague raging throughout the ‘western’ world.” – I agree with much of what you say, but not this final point.
The power of anti-semitism arose because the holocaust, a kind of end stage for Jew-hatred, represents the low point of human behaviour, an abomination that would never have ever come about without a long tradition of persecution preceding it.
Even today it is difficult to make sense of the terrors that were visited across Europe although there are some spell binding accounts which try to capture it (‘Bloodlands’, or ‘If this is a man’ to name but two).
One of the questions after the holocaust is why such crimes were allowed to be carried out; one of the stock answers is that too many people were either blind to the warnings or at some level on board with what subsequently took place.
In some respects these failings are being exploited today but the opportunity to do so would carry nothing like the same weight if the holocaust was not a dreadful warning of what happens when race hatred goes off the scale.
The question of Islamophobia is an interesting one but in my opinion most western fears are driven by the simple fact from a western perspective there are few Islamic states that stand out as particularly good role models. The west is entirely to blame for imperial wars in the region (which also feed negative perceptions) but this still doesn’t alter the fact a lack of seperation between religion and state is never a good idea, especially for women or gays.
I don’t agree with the expulsion of Labour MPs for the odd twitter melt-down, while the attack on Corbyn is obviously a media confection even so latent hatred must have existed at some point if things were so bad that men, women and children were made to dig pits before being machine gunned into them for the crime of being Jewish.
I think that you underestimate the dangers inherent in the raging islamophobia that Israel so wantonly encourages.
Today alone another four dozen Palestinian protesters were killed, essentially for the fun of it by the IDF. The idea that Palestinians are not people is spreading. the danger is upon us.
I disagree with nothing you write about the ‘holocaust’ except that it would appear that capitalist society has learned nothing from that terrible outbreak of racism
The Zionists are the driving-force behind Islamophobia in the West. Once they have had their political stooges ban the BDS movement, all support for the Palestinians and all criticism of Israel in the West, they will move on, as they always do because their extreme narcissism dictates that they must dominate TOTALLY, to make the Zionist hatred and dehumanisation of Palestinians, Arabs and Moslems MANDATORY in the West. Any resistance will be ‘antisemitic’ ie criminal.
Just saw a video of that Zionist uber-harridan, Melanie Phillips, denying that Islamophobia even exists, a favourite Zionist Big Lie. Uncle Adolph would be so proud how her type has turned out. ‘Antisemitism’ in contrast, is EVERYWHERE.
Mulga – try slowing down with the speed and number of comments! It can start to look like you’re spamming
Once again, hasbara droog, aurora, proving the thesis that ‘antisemitism’ is now, more often than not, a totally false charge, used to vilify, intimidate and outlaw all criticism of Israel and its multitude of barbaric crimes, and of Zionism, the Jewish fascism. And to similarly smear all support for the Palestinians and the other victims of Zionism.
No, I’m just challenging fake personas like yourself who use phrases like ‘not all the Jews are the enemy’ and don’t expect to be challenged.
Drop the ‘hasbara’ crap and accept responsibility for what you write. It’s not my fault you slip into antisemitism/racism on occasion. On other points you’re quick to detect homophobia, holocaust denial etc. and criticize them. But always with the weasling line ‘don’t play into the Zionists’ hands’. Have some ethical courage and condemn these without having to offer a salve to racism, Nazi falsehoods, homophobia etc.
Like the vilest hasbara thugs, you readily return to your hateful vomitus. As I pointed out when you defamed me before, that statement which you take out of context and twist, like the vile hypocrite you are, was an admonition to another who WAS speaking of Jews as a great, undifferentiated mass, the very definition of stupid racism. I reject such an attitude to ANY group, ABSOLUTELY. But some Jews ARE enemies of humanity, or are you going to deny that?
See above. Your dishonesty isn’t worth my time.
I love your pathopsychological projection, aurora-so very Zionist and hasbaranik. Your vilifiers run into a cul-de-sac when your intendedvictims refuse to surrender to your mendacious smears. Tough.
No more personal bickering please. Use private email for that if you wish. This forum is for the exchange of facts/opinions and the debate of ideas. “Hasbara” btw refers specifically a propagandist defence of Israel – not all and any criticism of you or all and any opinions you happen not to like.
OK, no more retorts to her lies. I differ from you in the definition of hasbara. It certainly, in my opinion, includes the vilification and slander of anti-Zionists, not just lying about Israel’s barbarity.
How about calm rebuttals?
Even if you are fully justified in an assessment that the other fellow is immature, wrong, cynical, whatever, how does it help you to “retort” rather than refute? Even if your anger is entirely justified, what good does it do you to allow it to fill your retorts with venomous acrimony?
I rudely interject, again, because it seems worth it to me to do try. Again, if we can’t talk to one another, calmly, when the situation is a simple website where not one of us is getting shot or tortured (as far as I’m aware), what hope do we have when the shit hits the fan? Surely the most important skill we need to acquire is how not to become divided via the easy-to-pick front door of our negative emotions.
The technique, designed to ensure that neither socialists nor anti-imperialists make their way to Labour benches in future Parliaments (it is some years, I suspect since any such candidates did run the Mandelson designed gauntlet and make it into Parliament) is exemplified by the current situation in Lewisham East where
“ the frontrunner to be Labour’s candidate in Lewisham East, Phyll Opoku-Gyimah quit the race. Opoku-Gyimah, the head of equality at the PCS union, said “the unexpected happened” despite preparing to launch her campaign on Sunday. “It has not been an easy or happy decision for me not to put myself forward so I ask for my privacy at this time,” she said in a statement posted on Twitter.
Comments by Opoku-Gyimah comparing the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the Holocaust were unearthed by the Guido Fawkes blog at the weekend.
..Guido Fawkesin conjunction with the Board of Deputies, will be exercising a veto on any future Parliamentary candidates, thus ensuring that anyone who has ever expressed public revulsion at the pitiless massacres Israel carries out as a matter of policy, will be banned from running for Labour. And that the next time that there is a massacre in Gaza, Parliament will look away in embarrassed silence whileIsraels right to defend itself`is confirmed, lest offence be caused.Jeremy Corbyn ought to know that if the price of unity is the inclusion of fascist sympathisers (for that is what apologists for the Israeli government are) in the leadership the Party would be better off with the Fifth Column sitting where it belongs beside the DUP.
..Comments by Opoku-Gyimah comparing the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the Holocaust were unearthed by the Guido Fawkes blog at the weekend...``t close the quotation marks.My keyboard is not working properly: I didn
That is plainly the operation-purge everyone from public life who is NOT a groveling stooge of the Zionist swine. But essential to its success is cowardice-this woman is plainly a gutless wonder, not prepared to fight these smearing, bullying, thugs. At least Ken Loach stood up to the vermin.
An interesting alternative to democracy here from a predictable source:
“..Richard Angell, the director of Labour’s centrist pressure group, Progress, said: “Labour needs to treat party selections like they are deciding which future cabinet minister is to represent which local community and stop using it a volunteer opportunity or redundancy plan for Unite officials.”
This is the final paragraph of an article in The Guardian about the view of the Shadow Attorney General Chakrabathi that the Labour Party must expel Ken Livingstone, a view which appears to be widely shared in the PLP.
Ominously for a person shadowing the Attorney General, not only is no evidence given for the sentence but the verdict is given in advance of any trial.
It is shocking how little the Labour front bench understands about either democracy or justice.
@various posters (you know who you are)
Please don’t take the opportunity to rant about “the Jews” under this article. It more than slightly undermines the entire case Jonathan is making. “The Jews” are not the issue. Cynical right wing Blairites using false allegations of antisemitism to expel Corbyn supporters and undermine his ability to pursue his policies is the issue. Israel may even be the issue. Not “the Jews” en masse.
If you rant about “the Jews” you are not only missing the point, you are playing the Blairites game. If that is not your intention – don’t do it!
Admin
Both the greatest danger and saddest truth of all fanaticism is its power to divide. It is this power we resist and eventually defang by remaining calm and inclusive, strong and courageous. Our goal in justice, not war. This does not mean all fighting is off the table, far from it. But it does mean we are sincere about fighting being a last resort.
From the article, and apparently paraphrasing Jonathan Freedland:
How do you propose to deal with this line of argument? You’re going to contradict the claim that “Israel is now central to most Jews’ identity”? If that turns out to be true (is there evidence to the contrary?), what then?
If people claim that your egalitarian politics is itself AN ATTACK ON THEIR IDENTITY, refusing to address the issue is not really a viable strategy. Nor is fudging the issue of what proportion of them hold that view, when everybody knows, and all available evidence indicates, that it is a large majority.
These are entirely serious questions. Nobody seems to want to address them. This article accurately describes the results of the failure to do so. Continuing to ignore the issue is going to continue to produce the same results.
http://www.gilad.co.uk/literature/
“Establishment” is the key word, indeed the final word in that statement. But it does highlight the tightrope of context truth seekers face in discussing these issues. However quite why you chose to highlight this, and thus be the only person to misrepresent him, is baffling.
I don’t see how I can misrepresent somebody by quoting them directly, but I’ve grown familiar with this style of argument, and I decline to play the game.
Toodle-oo.
“I don’t see how I can misrepresent somebody by quoting them directly…”
— milosevic
“Qu’on me donne six lignes de la main du plus honnête homme, j’y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.”
— Richelieu (or not).
Oh, come on, just translate it idiomatically please… My French is very rusty.
“Qu’on me donne six lignes de la main du plus honnête homme, j’y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.”
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I will find there enough to hang him.
You can see the words match, and idiomatise (nail his ass!) as you like.
That’s the credo of the ‘antisemitism’ vilifiers like aurora..Take six words, or even six punctuation marks, and twist them into a new Mein Kampf.
I want to address them.
How do you propose to deal with this line of argument? You’re going to contradict the claim that “Israel is now central to most Jews’ identity”?
Two points: It is merely a “claim”. And it claims “most”, not all.
If that turns out to be true (is there evidence to the contrary?), what then?
My response is probably going to sound like a stuck record. Address that truth inclusively, firmly and honestly, in a ‘Love the sinner, reject the sin’ manner. Let how you tackle the issue be an open invitation to those with ears to hear. This has the charm of being both morally right and expedient at the same time. Is has the curse of being dull and lengthy. And it’s no guarantee of success. But nothing is.
And Palestine and Jerusalem, al Quds, are central to the Palestinian’s identity (and existence)but they don’t count, do they, because they are, by their very existence, ‘antisemitic’, and deserve all they get, for ‘getting in the way’ of a ‘superior’ people.
Do you feel that my position necessarily leads to the one you just caricatured in your response? I don’t see it, but will stand corrected if you can demonstrate how.
No, I rather agree with your position. I was critiquing the quotes you had in your response, which turn out to be by Freedland, quoted by Milosevic. Sorry to confuse.
‘How do you propose to deal with this line of argument? You’re going to contradict the claim that “Israel is now central to most Jews’ identity”? If that turns out to be true (is there evidence to the contrary?), what then?’
Use facts. Of course there is evidence to the contrary. The fact that the majority of Jews don’t even live in Israel shows it’s not ‘central’. The fact that there are large groups of jewish people who disagree with Israel as a state for either religious reasons, or political ones is evidence. Opinion polling is another way to find out.
Lol: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement:-
“Caring about humanity is a very important part of my being a human. ? ! ”
🙂
P.s Do let me know if you to poll anything or anybody like Bananrama ..
“it’s not what you say , it’s the way that you say it ..”
and dat’s what gets results 🙂
“Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: “Caring about Israel is a very important part of my being a Jew.”
Agree Strongly 48%
Agree Somewhat 24%
Disagree Somewhat 18%
Disagree Strongly 9%
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ajc-poll-2017
Lucky for the polled that they’re not Japanese Americans, whether they cared for Japan or not, and this is not the 1940s.
Japan has a right to exist, having done so continuously for several thousand years.
Israel doesn’t have a right to exist, since its existence is predicated on the destruction of somebody else’s country by a gang of foreign invaders, within the memory of people who are now still living.
Does that clarify the situation?
No country, or state has a right to exist!
If the people of that entity have enough weaponry, then they remain in control.
Native North Americans didn’t have the numbers or armoury so lost their continent to European ‘barbarians’!
Yugoslavia was a state, where is it now after all the bloodshed? Did it have a right to exist?
I’ve worked in Palestine, Ramallah and Nablus, in more hopeful times- But even then you could see the contempt of Israelis, especially check-point soldiers towards Palestinians- It is inevitable that I will leave the Labour Party as will many others, when Corbyn is ousted- As he will be. After all, as a supporter of a COMPLETE Palestine, I’m an anti-semite.
as a supporter of a COMPLETE Palestine, I’m an anti-semite.
All the best people are anti-semites, now; it’s like being an anti-nazi in the 1930s, before it became fashionable.
See below for a T-shirt suggestion to express your advanced social consciousness. Make sure to beat the rush; after the Iran War starts, everybody will be an “anti-semite”.
Conversely, for current members of the Jewish Club — now would be a good time to resign from it, while most people still believe it’s a self-chosen identity. After another decade or so of zionist God’s Chosen People propaganda, when the exits are on fire, it’s going to be a lot more difficult.
Many Jewish observers predicted that Zionism would be bad for Jewry, particularly after it became plain that Palestine was thickly and long inhabited. The task of usurping the Indigenous, stealing their land and expelling them was bound to have a bad effect on the moral character of the community. After the 1967 war, other Jewish figures predicted that keeping an entire people under brutal repression and occupation, would further worsen the moral and spiritual decline, into the sort of barbarism we see every day from Israel. All things considered, Zionism is perhaps the greatest threat, not just to Israel’s neighbours, and the citizens of the captive Western states, but to Jewry as well.
Milosevic, you are selectively reporting from a poll of American Jewish people and misrepresenting what its results.
The question itself could be very misleading in the way it has been phrased as a Yes / No question. Are most people who consider themselves Jewish likely to say No to such a question? The respondents do not appear to have been given an opportunity to qualify what they mean by “caring about Israel”.
Caring about Israel could also mean the respondents are critical of the way the country has been taken over and run by sociopaths and religiously inclined fanatics, or of the country’s dependence on US to carry out policies favourable to Israel’s interests in the Middle East. Indeed, scrolling down the poll on the JVL’s website, readers here can find the overall response to Israeli policies privileging the treatment of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews over other Jews is negative (if only because most American Jews are neither Orthodox nor ultra-Orthodox).
“Caring about Israel could also mean the respondents are critical of the way the country has been taken over and run by sociopaths and religiously inclined fanatics”
Taken over by? T’was ever thus.
I for one am heartily sick of hearing about I, J and Z and the whole shooting-match. I simply don’t give a fig about them or the place. Complete indifference however is impossible, they are the elephant in the room and I’m not prepared ignore it, to submit to their monstrous impostures, pernicious hypocritical whining, presumptuous prima-donna status, projected guilt-complex, destruction of our national cohesion and identity and all semblance of democracy, or to give a blank pass to their past crimes or present-day ongoing ones.
They’re pushing their luck well past its bounds. If this is not to turn extremely exceptionally nasty then a period of silence and introspection on their part is strongly advised. Is humility any part of their repertoire?
What he said.
Exactly, Jen. Pretending that the clerico-fascist Zionist regime in charge of Israel is some sort of morally good entity is a Big Lie. Zionists who absolutely INSIST that foreigners agree with that depiction or be abused as ‘antisemites’ are, in my opinion, lying stand-over thugs. Israel can do better, and must, or its vile behaviour will cause its own destruction, something that groveling goy stooges like the Blairite swine seem not to have the nous to realise. Or perhaps they know it, but don’t have the guts to stand up to the Zionist fascist bully-boys.
If Israel is central to most Jews’ identity, that could very well be the result of generations of Jewish people within and without Israel since 1945 being brainwashed by their own political and community leaders who might have derived personal benefit from deliberately conflating and confusing the interests of the global Jewish community with the more narrow secular interests of Israel’s ruling elites and their supporters, both Jewish and non-Jewish.
All Jewish history and culture before the late 1800s, in whatever lands Jewish people lived, seem to be in the process of disappearing. All this and its preservation should be central to Jewish identity, if only to demonstrate that whatever the Nazi Shoah has done to the Jewish people physically, it cannot do to them spiritually. The present path taken though is a great tragedy.
By the way, shouldn’t we also be asking if the existence of Israel is central to the identity and beliefs of extreme Christian cults whose members happen to be part of the US and UK ruling elites / deep state?
Jerusalem is central to Jewish identity. It is also central to Christian identity, Moslem identity, and most particularly, Palestinian identity. Central to the Zionists’ monstrous racist, sectarian and xenophobic ideology, is that those other human beings are untermenschen whose beliefs are NOTHING compared to that of the Jewish ubermenschen. And the entire Western world is being coerced to adopt that filthy ideology by a campaign of false accusations of ‘antisemitism’ of vicious malevolence and intensity.
I don’t give a damn whether it is central to “most Jews” identity or not.I will continue to criticise Israel for its actions as and when I think fit.The need for that criticism is become more apparent every day.I simply do not accept the argument that to criticise Israel is to criticise all Jews,anymore than me criticising the USA,which I do often, is attacking all US citizens.Nor would I be concerned whether it offends most US citizens.
Agreed (with a mild caveat). The label is irrelevant. What matters is how to stop the rot.
Caveat: Offence caused by criticism can often be a sign of defensiveness and a lack of willingness to examine one’s faults. As long as we are equally prepared to deal with the motes in our eyes, this is just part and parcel of criticism. If we are not, then we are hypocrites and our criticism is ignored. It is ineffective and pointless.
That comment from Admin is dated ’13th May’.
Thinking ahead ?
I would suggest pinning it to the top of the thread is more likely?
Test.
My time machine still not working.
The accusation of Corbyn as “anti-Semitic” is so pathetically stupid that I suspect that, in itself, it’s completely impotent. I think the administrator has hit the nail on the head about “playing the Blairite’s game” i.e. the accusation is meant to provoke genuine anti-Semitism so that the media can then – with some justification – rant about “anti-Semitism”. In short they are trying to divert and recast all dialogue in the old WW2 format with the old antagonists that are so familiar throughout the Western media.
We suffered a similar Zionist campaign in Austfailure when the Sydney Peace Institute awarded its annual Sydney Peace Prize to Hanan Ashrawi in 2003. The local Zionists went ape-shit, with a ferocious campaign of abuse, threats, vicious slandering of Ashrawi and bullying, led by the Murdoch cancer, naturally. In one example, the current Prime Minister, Turnbull, who was running to usurp the country’s richest electorate, Wentworth, where he resides in a multi-million mansion, booty from his years as a Goldman Sachs bankster, required the support of the electorate’s large Jewish community.
So his wife, Lucy, then Lord Mayor of Sydney, also leaned on the Sydney Peace Institute, threatening to withdraw funding for the prize. One politician, Kathleen Greiner, committed ‘antisemitism’ by mentioning that the billionaire Frank Lowy, a die-hard Zionist, was going bonkers at the decision. And even the local branches of international banks joined in the bullying campaign.
Somehow the Sydney University, that hosts the Peace Institute. withstood the pressure, due in large part to the stand of Bob Carr, the NSW Premier. Carr, of course, loves to kiss Israeli and sayanim backsides, but, as he said, it was a very bad look to engage in such vicious bullying thuggery. So the Zionists capitulated, grudgingly, before they revealed their power too openly, but one local grandee observed that ‘.. at least it flushed out the ‘antisemites’.
In all the time I’ve been reading this excellent site I’ve never seen the phrase, ‘the Jews’ deployed even once. You seem to be actively misrepresenting a section of your audience who have been pointing out certain inescapable facts about the concentration of power in our world.
Aren’t you really saying that any mention of Jewish power would be equivalent to using the stupid generalisation, ‘the Jews’, and therefore racist?
I hope I’ve misunderstood.
Suggest you check out some recent comments. If you want to misrepresent our pretty clear and moderate statement of course you can, and will. Not much point in correcting you.
@FS. I once wrote “The Jews” and was quite properly called to order by Admin.
Would you quote yourself by way of illustration, please, Vexarb? I assume you know I’m not talking merely about the word combination but the intention behind it. You don’t strike me as the Alf Garnett type.
Given that you (FS) were apparently commenting on the recent thread were this issue flared up, your failure to notice precisely this use of ‘the Jews’ (https://off-guardian.org/2018/05/03/the-disappointing-jeremy-corbyn/#comment-117527) – and the numerous subsequent comments on this usage – either means you are inattentive and makes any experiential evidence you might wish to offer on this point essentially worthless, or you’re being disingenuous.
Just today I was reading the harrowing final letter of a Jewish woman about to be sent to the Nazi gas chambers. A reminder of what was the most brutal, dehumanizing episode in human history. Of course the Israeli state has been guilty of brutality and dehumanization many times in the nation’s relatively short history, never on the same scale and never with the same absolute murderous programmed intent, but on a scale that has deeply marked, terrorized and murdered Palestinean populations for decades, including sniper execution of unarmed protesters just a few weeks ago. Discussing both without being falsely accused of being a ‘zionist’ or alternatively an ‘anti-semite’ is probably impossible, given the deep bad faith on many sides, but it has to be attempted and that means being careful with language and accepting responsibility for what you’ve written and what you’ve witnessed.
BOLLOCKS.
Or rather gosh what a coincidence, I’ve just been reading a letter written by a Belgian nun who was just about to be nailed to a barn-door and do you know who was there too, laughing -none other than Kaiser Wilhelm himself, who was touring the western front in disguise. Fortunately for her they all went off to look for more babies to bayonet and fat people to make soap from and she managed to wriggle free, but the fiends had already posted her letter.
Her name was Olga Benário Prestes. A German communist, also Jewish, who engaged in anti-fascist activities in various countries, including Britain and Brazil in the 1930s. She was arrested in Brazil by the Vargas regime and extradicted to Germany and imprisoned at various concentration camps before being gassed at the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in 1942 along with hundreds of other female political prisoners.
A real life, unlike your miserable existence, evidently.
A German communist, also Jewish, who engaged in anti-fascist activities in various countries, including Britain and Brazil in the 1930s. She was arrested in Brazil by the Vargas regime and extradicted to Germany
In other words, an authentic leftist, who happened to be ethnic Jewish. Three guesses as to which of those identities was more significant to her various persecutors.
Strangely, the zionists managed to survive the war without suffering so much as a disheveled haircut.
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
Tony, you’re rather insensitively overlooking the possibility that she dictated the letter as she was being nailed to the barn door.
What a load of unadulterated, pompous, virtue-signalling tosh, aurorashreib.
Get off of your mustang, Sally, and bugger off while you’re at it. I’m here to engage with commenters who aren’t raging geysers of diarrhoea, thanks.
What’s up, annoyed your call for clarification of anyone here using the term ‘the Jews’ in a racist form has been exposed as fake, given you know full well that it has? Also that you’re a holocaust denier, despite your denial of the term as fit for yourself – as though that convinces anyone who isn’t like you. You’re a racist with Nazi sympathies, spreading fascist falsehoods. Nothing else.
Sure, aurorashreib. If it speeds up your post-lobotomy recovery and restores to you some semblance of self-esteem and moral rectitude, I’ll be a Nazi for you. Just keep exposing them there closet SS apologists with your skilled argumentation, you one-man Simon Wiesenthal Centre, you.
Denying the existence of the Jewish holocaust, along with the murder of Roma, gays, communists and anyone else ‘offensive’ to the Nazi regime, makes you either insane, or a sympathiser with genocide and violent political suppression, or a counter-saboteur intent on smearing opponents of Israeli policy as closet racists and fascists. I really don’t care what you decide to tell yourself that you are.
I can be all of those things for you, aurorashreib, and I also confess to being the person who shat in your cheerios this morning.
The depth of hatred exhibited by some Zionists, particularly the ultra-Rightists, secular fascists and religious fanatics alike, is akin to the hatred shewn by some Germans towards Jews (and Roma, Slavs, gays etc). Human hatred for the despised other is boundless, in those dangerous types who suffer from it, in every society. The results of Zionist hatred have not, yet, caused as much suffering as that inflicted on the Jews by the Nazis, but the absolute numbers, counting the dead Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, Syrians, Lebanese, Yemenis etc, murdered by Israel or one of its allies ie the USA, Sordid Arabia etc, is approaching the numbers of victims of the Nazis, and Zionist mass murder has lasted far longer, is only growing more violent and determined, and is vastly more powerful in the world than the Nazis ever were.
” a Jewish woman about to be sent to the Nazi gas chambers”
That looks like hate-speech. Are you saying that it’s not OK to say “the Jews”, but it is OK to say “the Nazi”? I believe I have heard Jewish women talk about “the Jews”.
And which gas chambers are you talking about? Please answer, and be specific. An accusation of murder is a serious thing.
Having just read your comment on the ‘holohoax’, obviously this conversation isn’t going to go anywhere remotely productive.
“Having just read your comment on the ‘holohoax’, obviously this conversation isn’t going to go anywhere remotely productive.”
I agree, at least while you’re trying to hold up your end of it with your Spielberg-inspired claptrap.
It is simply ridiculous to deny the Nazi Judeocide, and plays right into the Zionists’ hands. Do you deny the genocide of the Roma and Sinti,too, or the Nazi euthanasia campaign, or the mass murder of gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists etc, and the genocide of six million Poles and twenty-five million Soviet citizens?
There may be some dispute over whether it was four or six million Jews killed, deliberately, by the Nazis and their fascist allies, but that’s pointless. Four or six thousand would be bad enough. What needs to be criticised is the vile manner in which the Zionists today exploit the Judeocide as a justification for their own crimes, which seems to me to be a very great insult to the memory of the victims.
And we ought, I believe, criticise the manner in which the Zionists and captive Western regimes have turned the Nazi Judeocide into the ‘Holocaust’ pseudo-religion, where this one genocide of all the genocides, hecatombs, exterminations and mass murders in human history receives more attention and devotion than all the other crimes against humanity combined-and then some. That sticks in the craw when the captive regimes like the UK, France and the USA devote so much effort in promulgating the ‘Holocaust’ pseudo-religion, while ignoring the genocides that they, themselves, inflicted on human beings, in India, Africa, Algeria and throughout Latin America, but most particularly in the USA itself, with the extermination of tens of millions of Indigenous.
There is a difference between “holo-” and “partio-“.
In its own way this mild admonition by the mods reminds us how volatile discussions about Israel and anti-semitism invariably become, and it is this very volatility that makes it such an effective mechanism for smearing various targets (not least because rational discussion is seemingly impossible, while antecedents are mired in a long and complex history making it difficult to unravel the long history of hurts on either side).
Jonathan Cooks basic thesis is corrrect in my opinion – social stigma associated with accusation of antisemitism is being used to weaken Corbyn, a leader with a number of failings, but racism is not amongst them.
As I see it the Jews have learned the hard way that when push comes to shove no country outside of Israel will do enough to protect their interests.
It goes without saying that the many chances to agree a 2 state solution have been lost because neither side could ever get past the long standing antagonism between the Arab world and Jewish settlers who had managed to survive the East European ovens.
As an aside I don’t think the neighbouring states care that much for Palestine but instead use the issue as a proxy to attack a religion that has long been problematic for them.
Against this backdrop right wingers in Israel have been expert in exploiting the worst in their supporters as the issues around population grow and finite space become more and more evident – the only thing that will change this overall dynamic is a war (as I see it).
All fair minded people would like to see a much better deal for the Palestinians, and that’s about worst that can be said of so called anti-semites in the Labour party; giving their support to such a supposition.
The situation in Palestine/Israel is more or less the graveyard of reason.
There is a ‘moral equivalence’ here asserted that does NOT exist. In all the years of Zionist colonism in Palestine, and the murder, expulsion and perpetual imprisonment of the Palestinians, with its routine torture, extra-judicial killings, land theft, the destruction of thousands of family homes, theft of olive trees or their destruction, killing of herd animals, poisoning of wells etc, and in the regional wars of aggression and the unceasing subversion of Israel’s neighbours, and their destruction and genocide of their people, the Zionists have been the aggressors. As they are in the relentless campaign of Islamophobic hatred assailing the West, to justify Israeli aggression, and in the mounting campaign to destroy ANY Western public figure that dares criticise Israel or support the Palestinians. Israel is the victimiser, and the Palestinians, Israel’s neighbours and decent human opinion in the West are the victims of their unrelenting hatred and aggression.
A fair deal for Palestine means a viable contiguous state, deep port access, control over their airspace and coast, a return to pre-67 if not pre-48 territorial limits, or a unitary state, with right of return, compensation for losses, human and material. Peace, truth and reconciliation. A fair deal seems due too for Egypt, Syria and Lebanon for what they’ve suffered, lost and endured. And how can the tragedy of Iraq ever be put right? The whole Zionist project has been one comprehensive disaster after another, from the deliberate prolongation of world war one to seize the middle-east from Turkey, through the Balfour Declaration, a second world war, to the present day. One unholy epic fail and still no end in sight, excepting nuclear holocaust.
@TonyM. God forbid another nuclear holocaust; Hiroshima and Nagasaki were enough. Complete nuclear disarmament — convert all weapons grade fissionable material to electric power generation — Now.
Not Now, Not Ever.
Present use of nuclear power, never mind any more can and will and is killing us even now. It has already gone far too far, cumulative doses from nuclear-power-generation added to the contaminants from hundreds of tests, above ground and in the upper atmosphere have taken us up to and past a tipping point already reached in the mid-60s. Heritable damage, cancers, leukiemia, birth defects and more subtle damage autism, IQ drop off, cognitive and developmental defects have gone exponential and off the scale, we blew it and nothing we do between now and extinction matters.
Even in normal nuclear power plant operation there are significant releases 24/7, periodic spikes due to scheduled operations and the absolute certainty, probablilty of 1 that there will be further meltdown/fire incidents, soon, very soon given the state of the worlds decrepit jerry-built nuclear-power ‘fleet’ cum bomb-factories. Hiroshima and Nagasaki do not even compare with any one of Windscale, Chernobyl and Fukushima in contamination released and spread planet-wide. It’s in the air, water and soil, permanently.
Even so-called ‘depleted’ uranium is not pure, while mainly uranium-238, never occuring in nature in such purity, it contains a mix other radioisotopes and decay products including uranium-235, uranium-234, uranium-236, thorium-234, protactinium-234m, protactinium-234, neptunium-237, plutonium-238, plutonium-239, plutonium-240, americium-241, technicium-99. These have all been found, detectable everywhere, not just battlefield sites.
The entire nuclear industry, “civilian” or otherwise, is an expression of racism, fascism, and imperialism. The ruling class assumes, probably incorrectly, that they can always offload the consequences onto poor people, indigenous communities, and the third world. The people responsible for it should be locked up, for the rest of their lives, in institutions for the criminally insane.
And what sort of ‘state’ has been offered by the Zionists out of the depths of their race hatred? NO external borders. NO army. The Jordan Valley infested by Zionists, forever. Zionist control of the airspace and electronic space. Israeli veto over foreign relations. Etc. As others have observed an ‘electronic zoo’. And THAT is the EFFING ‘Two State’ policy.
“As I see it the Jews have learned the hard way that when push comes to shove no country outside of Israel will do enough to protect their interests.”
An absurd statement. They’ve largely been reared on a mythos of victimhood and self-justification, and hijacked the Western psyche accordingly. The reality is that most countries in the West protect Jewish interests at the expense of their own well-meaning, brainwashed populations.
I see that Admin has not seen fit to admonish you for using the phrase, ‘the Jews’, by the way, probably because it’s used in the service and promotion of the victim myth and the holohoax.
no country outside of Israel will do enough to protect their interests.
I considered commenting on this when I read it yesterday, but chose not to. Your comment, FS, makes it seem worthwhile now.
My observation is that this applies to all states generally, and more broadly to all livings systems. The issue is not whether we act in our own self interest above that of others, but how to properly understand the (sophomoric) concepts of selfishness and selflessness, in my opinion. A tangentially related observation is that it is childish to cling to victimhood, cynically so when that becomes a lasting and deliberate strategy.
And you make a good point about Harry’s use of “the Jews”. This is tricky stuff: positive and negative discrimination. My own view is that we are all racists, as we cannot help but have varyingly granular ways of judging others. As soon as we take sides between groups, we flirt with ‘racism’ in one form or another. That said, I find the very term to be racist. In the end, humans are humans. One of the things we find hard is understanding others from different cultures and different points of view. ‘Twas ever thus’. Anyway, I would welcome a response from Admin on this point.
A question for you, FS: What do you mean by “holohoax”?
By ‘holohoax’, I mean that there was no Jewish holocaust, there were no gas ovens, no Final Solution, no 6 million Jewish victims of Nazism etc etc. It is a Zionist falsehood in which all Jews are wittingly or unwittingly complicit and of which all are also the psychological victims.
But rather than being someone with an inquiring mind who has looked into the matter and reached an inevitable conclusion, one must be termed a ‘Holocaust Denier’ in order for stigmatisation to have its maximum effect, just as the term ‘racist’ is hopelessly outclassed by its much bigger brother, ‘anti-Semite’.
Questioning the unthinkable crime has itself become unthinkable (as well as illegal in many countries), and this is so because the Big Lie has to be protected at all costs. Like other lies, it collapses on cursory inspection, but I suggest these assertions are enough to incur the wrath of Admin, who’d rather we confined our ruminations to abstractly contemplating governments and countries instead. Psychology is a no-no, apparently, because it’s too personal. The collective unconscious? Forget it. That’s racism.
‘Next time in Jerusalem!’, proclaimed the Israeli Eurovision Song Contest winner, Netta Barzilai, yesterday evening.
Yet she isn’t a right-wing politician, I guess. She isn’t a Neo-Con. She doesn’t belong to those subsets of human we’re allowed to criticise. She’s apparently an ordinary civilian, reared on lies we’re being extremely foolish to avoid talking about. I have no doubt whatsoever that she feels entirely justified in disregarding the lives of occupied, genocided, brutalised Palestinians while thanking the audience for accepting that fatsos are people too.
FS:
I have no doubt there are many lies around the holocaust, but do not doubt there was a holocaust. What I do doubt are the figures and motivations purported by the official narrative, not from any conviction that I know what’s correct, but because:
Zionists, being humans, lie to promote their agenda, and they and their agenda have been around for a long time;
I’ve seen very convincing information, much of it from ‘revisionist’ Israeli historians such as Benny Morris, that gives me the reasonable doubt about the official narrative of the holocaust;
it should not be as controversial as it is to question, deeply and openly, the details of how the holocaust came to be. We must understand properly and fully how it came to pass to have the best chance of preventing such events from happening again. On this last point, we are doing very badly as a species.
I have to admit to being afraid of ‘fessing up to these positions and logic. That I am afraid is a sign of the times. I am one those infamous humble seekers after truth, a full supporter of open-minded skepticism. If it is a ‘crime’ to ask such questions, to be so oriented, so be it. But I really don’t like that it is so.
BigB:
You took my position in slightly the wrong light. I meant my definition of ‘racist’ more poetically than sociologically. I’m aiming at how racism comes to be a problem in the first place, and see its roots in the real problem of how difficult it is to understand people from a different culture, even of a different set of sensibilities, family members even. There are reflexes in all of us to judge others, both negatively and positively, we don’t/can’t know very well. This simple observation, however, does not mean we are not obliged to learn how to handle such reflexes wisely, both as individuals and as societies.
But, as with my attitude to Zionists or anyone else on earth, I reserve the right to engage in civilised conversation with anyone in my own attempt to understand just what the f*** is going on. Times is well and truly messed up. All bets are off. “We’re through the looking glass here, folks.” I mean no offence, I just believe in dialogue.
Toby: OK, my point is that ‘difference’ and ‘racism’, an extremised form of difference, are socially and personally constructed (codified signs and symbols: socio-culturally and ethno-religiously received.) If they are constructed, they can be deconstructed and/or reconstructed to be less different, more tolerant. We CAN know our reflexive categorising and choosing processes: by simple and sustained self-observation (particularly by practicing mindfullness). And if we can discover our biases, we can change them within an ethical framework.
This becomes particularly pertinent today when the received cultural symbology and narrative are being controlled, manipulated, and commodified by others. But we are not simple passive receptors of the media and interpersonal culture, we are the creators of culture too. Society may shape us, but we may shape society too …one day, with enough good intent?
Agreed.
A little more on what I meant by “poetic”. I play with charged words like “racist”, aim them inwards at myself and examine how they resonate there, to keep myself from judging others and to ensure my dealings stay on a human-to-human basis. I find this to be essential, otherwise all those very well executed divide-and-conquer tactics tend to work, and we become ineffective at bringing about the justice we seek.
Toby, just what is the nature of the ‘many lies’ you are convinced surround the holocaust’ but which are somehow insufficient in magnitude to challenge the conviction that at the core of these lies there is an unquestionable truth. I’m fascinated to know.
Well, FS, you’re right, I used too strong phrasing. I pondered this last night at the pub and realised I wouldn’t be able to prosecute the case that a holocaust had happened, or that it hadn’t. That doesn’t mean it didn’t, just that I, personally, am not in possession of all the facts. As an open-minded skeptic, I ditch all beliefs that don’t stand up to scrutiny. But I have not yet taken a forensic knife to the holocaust, so will simply remain open.
The “nature” of the many lies would be that of war time, as in ‘first casualty’ stuff, but more specifically relates to precisely how many people were killed in concentration camps, how they were killed, and for what reason, as I said.
I just read milosovic’s response which echoes my reading of wars generally, and of imperialism/statism more specifically. Humans do bad things to humans. Once we have large amounts of ‘wealth’ accumulated by some state entity, the bad things become much badder, the lies much bigger and bolder, all in the interests of protecting that wealth and the system that generates it. In short, we can’t trust that version of events given to us by those people fiercely protecting said wealth.
Pointing the finger at one race or the other is not my thing. I’d say it’s counterproductive, but some do it so well I’m beginning to doubt that too (divide and conquer). And yet I have chosen love over fear as my guiding process, which does, at times, require a smidgeon of faith. I note that the trench warfare typical of this very difficult topic is much in evidence in this discussion, with all sides accusing the others of closed-mindedness. As BibG phrased it on some other thread, I “choose to believe” we humans can do better, that we can entertain all possibilities while not giving in to hate and fear. This requires painful compromise from all of us. We must be prepared to “kill all our darlings” to be able to understand one another. To repeat, things are clearly royally messed up, trust is gone, everything is cynical perception management, rapacity, narcissism and exploitation. Not an easy situation to navigate!
A little note on my openness, which, it seems, some here find offensive. As with my views on 9/11, my views of the holocaust are not primary to me. That’s not to I don’t want to see justice served (I do), it’s that my focus, and thus how I spend my time, is on the deeper system that generates such criminality. How did that system come to be? Can humanity generate a different, more egalitarian, love-based and transparent one? One of the things that seems most clear to me, is that oppositional, I’m-right-you’re-wrong, the-only-language-they-understand-is-violence approaches are part of the problem. I therefore do my utmost to avoid them.
Thanks for your answer, Toby. I’m glad you gave me the benefit of the doubt in not taking the tone of my question as facetious. I phrased it badly enough for you to have been justified in doing so.
I agree wholeheartedly with your points here, and I’m not pushing any dogma about the holocaust. We cannot deal in certitudes here, especially faced with the real risk of offending both the living and the dead.
All I will say is that the facts I’ve seen, and the efforts involved in promoting certain historical details while obscuring and suppressing others have left me more or less convinced we’ve been fed a lie. The distortions involved in protecting that lie are themselves heinous crimes leaving an unending trail of victims throughout the world, and that’s where my anger lies.
Once again, FS, you give me pause for thought.
I read your reply yesterday and was touched. But that’s the same day you engaged in childish mudslinging with a couple of other commenters here.
My sense of your ‘dual personality’ is that you are quite impish on the one hand, and fed up with PC over-sensitivities on the other. That combination causes you to poke that PC nest again and again, somewhat defensively I might add, somewhat jadedly also, but I don’t think it’s in your interests and it certainly doesn’t serve the position you present in the comment I respond to here. I think it merely feeds/entertains your ego, which is at the impressive end of the scale. 😉
Consider the position of the people organizing the Nuremburg War Crimes Trial in 1946.
Something like seventy million people had been killed, in the worst war in human history, and there were ominous indications that the genocidal weapons which had been used at its end were going to be used from the outset of the next war, which was already being planned. A rational person might have regarded this situation as an indictment of the entire capitalist-imperialist system, and concluded that the eradication of that system was an urgent priority for human survival. A very large proportion of the world population arrived at exactly that conclusion. For the tiny minority who were committed to the maintenance of capitalism and imperialism, it was clear that something had to be done.
Rather than being a natural outcome of capitalism and imperialism, the war had to be presented as just a Nazi/Japanese crime. The problem with that story, however, was that enormous war crimes had been committed on all sides, and it was not at all clear that the Nazi/Japanese crimes were the worst.
mass murder? Once the US Air Force got properly organized, they were able to kill a hundred thousand people in a single night, and they did it multiple times — Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, never mind Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was no single day of the war when the Germans and Japanese killed a hundred thousand people; they didn’t have the technical ability to do it.
racism? The Nazis simply copied the apartheid regime of the United States, which had been pioneered by the world-spanning British Empire.
genocide? The United States had spent the entire nineteenth century eliminating the indigenous population of the territory it was expanding into. Nobody bothered to count how many millions of untermenschen were exterminated.
slavery? The entire industrial development of the United States was predicated on two hundred years of race slavery. The British Empire effectively enslaved hundreds of millions of people in its Indian colony; if they didn’t like it, they were free to starve, as four million did in Bengal, during the war. The “socialist” USSR operated more and bigger slave labour camps than the Nazis ever did.
Clearly, accusations of that sort were inadequate for the occasion, and even somewhat counter-productive, in that they tended to dilute the supposedly unique evil of the regimes that had lost the war. What was needed was a crime so unbelievably lurid and grotesque, as to completely eclipse the crimes of the victors, at least in horror, if not extent.
At this critical juncture, with the survival of international capitalism hanging in the balance, the “socialist” USSR boldly rose to the occasion, with a highly imaginative accusation, based on the same standards of evidence that they had developed during their counter-revolutionary (defendants or prosecutors?) show-trials in the 1930s. THE NAZIS HERDED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE INTO INDUSTRIAL-SCALE EXTERMINATION FACTORIES AND GASSED THEM TO DEATH. For good measure, they added the usual sort of atrocity stories which have accompanied every imperial war in history — shrunken heads, human-skin lampshades, “Jewish soap”, etc. If baby incubators and Viagra had existed at that time, presumably they would have added that, too.
Nobody had ever accused the United States, Britain, France, and Russia of anything quite like that. Problem solved — US good / Germany bad. End of story, unless you’re a Nazi sympathizer — are you?
Seventy-three years after the end of the war, in the countries where these things supposedly happened, questioning the Official Story is still a Thought Crime, with appropriately harsh penalties. The entire Imperial propaganda system depends on it. Whatever the US did to Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Iraq, and Libya, or Israel does to Palestine, at least they didn’t repeat the crimes of the Nazis, which shall remain uniquely evil for all time.
So, contrary to appearances, everything is really quite OK. There’s nothing to see here, so please move along.
(question for GoodThink-ers: does the above constitute the high crime of “Holocaust Denial”? Should I fear a midnight visit from the Thought Police?)
Toby: we are not all racists – but we have to use a descriptive signifier (in this case the collective noun ‘Jews’) to differentiate race, cultural, and political orientation. The problem is when we add secondary descriptive signifiers to characterise the term. The terms ‘Jews’ is no more racist than ‘Norwegians’ or ‘Jamaicans’, or should not be considered so. The terms ‘Norwegian oligarchy’ or ‘Jamaican bankers’ are not racist, providing they are correctly applied to an existing demographic. You can immediately see the problem if the words are prefaced by ‘Jewish’? But in correct application, are they illegitimate terms and should they cause offence? I would say no.
The weaponisation war is being conducted to add racist connotations for you. It is presumed that you have an unconscious bias against Israel and the Jews. THIS IS THE RACISM ..or reverse racism that is termed the ‘new left antisemitism’. This is a form of thoughtcrime and oppression originating in the mind of the victimiser, not the victim. This is the real problem of the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn has chosen to side with the victimisers who want to weaponise speech and use it as a form of repression, indoctrination and thought control. It is not only wrong, racist and discriminatory in itself, it is a deliberate assault on free speech. And democracy. It has already led to a purge of the real anti-racists and anti-Zionists.
Extend this repressive ideology to the world stage, and you have the current situation. A state that choose victimhood as its statist foundation will never “mature”. It de-legitimates itself by its own action, whether or not it is acting for the common good of its constiuent people. It is de-legitimated by its own lack of restraint and absent morality. It should be incumbent on the ‘International Community’ of mature and moral states [please try not to giggle] to censure its actions. Now you can see the international crisis of appeasement and de-legitimation. In terms of morality, it is a race to the bottom and any state that stands tacitly by is complicit and de-legitimates itself by its complicity. This goes for supra-national bodies too (UN, EU, etc)
Of course, everything I have just said marks me out as a nu-antisemite. Worse, I am conscious of my actions and am not self-censoring …so I must be a racist? This line of regressive and repressive ideology leads to the ultimate breakdown of democracy, and crypto-Fascist repression. The only real question is: have we already crossed that event horizon? I would say we are dangerously close.
[Please don’t encourage real racists to expound their Holocaust denial …that really is racist!]
It’s about time somebody mentioned those bloody Norwegians.
Now JC will have to reveal whether he was secretly rooting for Netta in the Eurovision Song Contest – which is the real barometer of social, political, economic and democratic integration and acceptability, )as any fule kno).
It is extraordinary how many anti-Semites have shown up here to comment upon “the Jews” and to say how there is no such issue as anti-Semitism on the Left.
It would be laughable were it not so alarming.
It would be laughable were it not so alarming.
#thegoyimknow
What anti-semites…? Talk about jumping on a bandwagon… Honestly…
Being passionately against the belligerent words and deeds of some Jews, some Israelis, or some Zionists is not anti-semitic, yet it is extremely clear that some will label it as such nonetheless, either because they are prejudiced, or because they have ulterior motives for doing so.
What is laughable is the idea that anti-semitism doesn’t exist in all countries and in all political parties, just like anti-anythingelse – while the real reason for this attack is that Corbyn cannot be counted upon to kneel before the political “elite”, whatever their cultural background. This obviously upsets them.
But where does this end?
Is it normal that Wagner’s staggering music (no, I don’t mean the Ride of the Valkyries…) is still considered toxic in some circles just because he reflected a very general view in his day, which a certain person in 1933 – decades after Wagner had died – happened to exploit for his own purposes? This despite the fact that Wagner was surrounded by Jews all his creative life, and even gave in to the Jewish conductor whom he most admired, (Levi) when the latter refused to be baptized in order to receive Wagner’s blessing to conduct the first performance of that most Christian of music dramas: “Parsifal”. Wagner needed Levi because he was the best, and Wagner knew it. He let Levi conduct the performance, unbaptized.
His “anti-semitic” comments need a context, and we should remember that there had been no “holocaust” in his day for the universal outrage we now experience to give a free pass to anything and everything which any and all Jews might decide to do in world politics.
When did we last see a Jew coincidentally castigated in the press for doing anything at all, yet millions of people, some of them Jewish, are extremely concerned about one particular Jew today. Is that disconnect really so difficult to see? We are clearly supposed to be afraid of seeing guilt in one of our fellow men – if he happens to be Jewish – because we might be accused of anti-semitism…
You might as well condemn Beethoven because he was a German, and therefore culpable along with all those other Germans in 1933. You might also just as well condemn anybody who can read, since at some time in their lives they have probably seen some real anti-semitic literature.
This isn’t 1933 any more, and there exists the same ratio of good to bad amongst modern Jews, Israelis and Zionists as exists in any other group. Some are wonderfully good, and others are appallingly immoral.
Deal with it. (Given all due respect, and my infinite sympathy for the shocking things that happened all those years ago)
This is a frank and honest discussion about an objective article on the plentiful and vociferous accusations of anti-Semitism in Corbyn’s Labour.
It really is pretty ironic and frankly unjustified for you to blindly accuse contributers of being anti-Semitic. You are ironically making a strong case for the counter argument that such accusations as those against Corbyn and Labour are unreasoned, indiscriminate and unjust.
Your robotic hasbara vilification is proof positive of the truth of comments you seek to abuse.
Making any religion or race, be more important than any other is racism.
From the point of view of someone who does not have a vast knowledge of Judaism or anti-Semitism and therefore arguably an objective viewpoint; it appears to me that, a high percentage of the accusations of anti-Semitism, as someone else described: ‘are of an narcissistic nature’ – in that any criticism or counter argument is unacceptable and is consequently attacked with accusations of anti-Semitism.
It brings to mind the catch-phrase of the character Ali Gee, who says:’It’s cos I is black innit?
If it is anti-semites in particular, or anti-semitism in general you are looking then you really ought to try Ukraine. How about this from a leading figure in the neo-nazi milieu.
”“Our National body should start with a racial cleansing of the Nation…a healthy racial body will revive…culture, language and everything else.”
“We must pay attention to the question of the value of race. Ukrainians are a part (and one of the largest and the highest in quality) of the European White Race.”
“The historical mission…is to head and lead the White Peoples of the whole world in the last crusade for their existence. A crusade against Semite-led subhumanity.”
Yep, I give you, Andriy Biletsky (Ukrainian: born 5 August 1979[3]) is a Ukrainian Member of Parliament, Lieutenant Colonel of police, former political prisoner and university instructor. He is a co-founder and former leader of the multi-organizational ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi movement “Social-National Assembly” that has transformed since 2015 into political youth organization “Azov Civil Corps” and later into National Corps political party, of which he is the leader. He was also the first commander of the volunteer-based Azov Regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine. Other neo-nazi groups include Praviy Sektor, and Svoboda, the Azov and Aidar Battalions who openly and brazenly voice their neo-nazi views and follow it up with action. This is not some fringe grouping, next to the oligarchs it is the only other political force in Ukraine. Yet the west was not only behind the coup in 2014, the coup itself was spearheaded by these groups.
It is quite disgraceful that those accusing Corbyn of anti-semitism are noticably quiet on their neo-nazi allies in Kiev.
The Zionists have expended much energy in recent years in forging Islamophobic alliances with fascists and neo-Nazis in Europe. Anders Brievik is typical of the type, and before his massacre of seventy odd children, Norway, the Norwegian Labour Party and its youth wing were subjected to a villainous campaign of abuse by Zionist sayanim in the Western media, for the crime of supporting the Palestinians. The alliance was also pretty obvious when the ‘English Defence League’ appeared, with the give-away Kahanist nomenclature, and the waving of numerous Israeli flags, besides the Union flags, at their anti-Moslem parades. A little research, and the Zionists behind the EDL were soon apparent.
This is an alliance of convenience between racist fascists who still, not far beneath the surface, hate one another, but are united in Islamophobic hatred-for now.
There are increasing and strong links between Israel and Ukraine, with many Israeli tech companies moving or basing operations to Ukraine, and collaborations in the fields of black-hat IT, i.e. hacking/cracking and other cyber-criminality. By deception thou shalt make war and blame Russia.
Ukraine would be fertile ground for Israeli human organ traffickers, too. It is an industry that they dominate.
Already happened, I’m afraid.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/war-crimes-committed-by-ukraines-military-in-donbass-from-illegal-arms-trafficking-to-human-organs-trade/5404389
Israeli human organ traffickers
also:
https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-costa-rica-israelis-trafficked-in-organs-1.5282869
begin countdown for zionazi shills to start shrieking about “blood libels” — three, two, one…
Calling someone “anti-Semitic” without proof is nothing more than mere name calling and ought to be dismissed as such. Trying to prove one’s innocence simply plays into the accusers’ hands: anything that is said is simply construed as proof, apology is demanded, which, if given, is seen as absolute confirmation, which justifies the demonisation and dehumanisation of the accused.
Rather than trying to prove one’s innocence, the appropriate response is to defend the universal human right to freedom of expression.
Under Judaic Law, there is no such thing as a ‘..universal human right’. Just ask the Yesha Council of Rabbis and Torah Sages, and numerous other such groups.
The concept of universal human rights is notably absent from all religions. It is a secular concept.
Fair point, but the rejection by Talmudic Judaism, Wahhabism and sundry other supremacist cults is most marked. On the other hand, Buddhism might be said to venerate all living creatures, if you leave out the militant monks of Myanmar and some others. Hinduism was historically quite tolerant, with violent exceptions, like the current Hindutva fascism of Modi the BJP, and the RSS et al. How about the Jains? They don’t even like walking on insects accidentally.
Narcissists imagine they are perfect. They hate criticism. They will hate you for criticising them. Nevertheless, the worst way of dealing with narcissists is to pretend to share their self-delusion.
Corbyn is wrong on this one. It’s the only stick the B.Liarites have to beat him with, and it’s a twig.
To be fair, almost everybody imagines they are perfect and hates criticism…
It’s one of the hardest lessons we all have to learn…
Not a bad bit of journalism , that .. pretty objective.
Not that I believe in the death sentence, torture or anything like that, but if I were on any battlefield again, with Tony Blair on my side (officially declared) ever , i would have to put a bullet in his head and carry on regardless, with no sense of guilt or shame in any way, because Tony Blair would constitute a very serious danger to others in the ranks & command strategy of common causes, also in terms of psychology and objectives, militarily speaking, (were he able to communicate further to any body I would be fighting with & alongside .. simply said disruptive, counterintuitive, disingenuous &&& dangerous!). And If i were the last man standing, i would know unequivocally that under no circumstance could I Trust or Rely on Tony, except to work for his own selfish sociopathic best interests as pathological liar & prostitute of all & any principle !
I have profiled him for decades: watched his body language up real close, his wrinkles, his twisted mouth, his evil eyes , his bluster & false bravado and listened very carefully to his every excuse & word declared publicly, intensely, (far too often) , unfortunately: and to this day i still firmly believe that Tony Blair demonstrates far more than just his ‘SOCIOPATHIC’ tendencies towards self interest. He is a pathological liar and wholly untrustworthy in every sense of any human being .. and the belated , wholly delayed with malice aforethought & heavily redacted & often sickening Chilcot report is all you need to know .. Bye Bye Tony! He should be in prison for life, no bail, no probation & half rations till he dies !
BOOM !
Next job .. on we go!
or put him in Solitary to write his memoirs for posterity and recording & programming A.i. on how never to become Evil incarnate .. Whatever society decides finally is just, in ‘Sociopath Blair’s case’, I don’t want to see him or hear from or of him anymore & about anything associated with Blair’s negative energy & societal influences , coz’ he IS “The Devil You Know” as Jesus Jones would say ..
Any Bl’air time is just “Wasted Time” for the Eagle’s eyes focussed on future societal development that incorporates Tolstoy’s Moral revolution , the one permanent revolution and it shall come from within the hearts, minds & souls of real people who are prepared to sacrifice pure SELF interest, unlike Tony Blair who is Dostoevsky’s perfect working model example of ‘OBSEBENE’ >> the “Possessed” with / or “Demons” , dependent on your translation ..
Purgatory in Solitary for all Eternity >>
Blair’s best punishment ..
(But not whilst @War, (plain dangerous) !!
NOT Worth Acknowledging >> N.W.A. >> this one’s for you Tony .. listen up carefully
T.B. (lungs diseased from birth, or did someone drop him on his head ?)
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair – d’Prostitute !
& his Tony Blair Ground Zero Faith Foundation !
FFS FT ForgetTony ! !
Thats oh so simple. You use words, as you did.
The correct URL for the broken link to the Moshé Machover fiasco (penultimate paragraph in the “Holes in the Narrative” section) is:
http://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/labour-party-policy/branch-motions-resolutions-expulsion-moshe-machover/
Cook writes that the ‘Enough is Enough’ march was ‘large’.
I think that is to be contested:
https://youtu.be/kve_uImZAf8?t=142
Certainly less than a thousand people in attendance I would estimate. In the history of marches on Parliament that cannot accurately be labelled as ‘large’.
About 200 I believe. If you took away the Jewish counter-demonstration by JVL – the Jewish constituent of the actual demonstration was outnumbered by quislings, Tories (Red and Blue – including Javid and “cricket test” Tebbit), the DUP (no racists there), and the media. I can’t find it now, there was a picture on social media showing Parliament Square almost completely empty at the height of the rally. Political largesse maybe?
Wot, lol ?
C.T.Tebbit >> does that mean a debit & a Golden Duck for the M.C.C. ?
😉
A humorous and educating tale with a lovely payoff ending https://medium.com/@chabadcam/how-to-weaponise-anti-semitism-a-cautionary-tale-dda34609de22
Firkin’ excellent link, duly bookmarked: crash bang wallop >> humanity..
Humour saves the day and avoids feeding societal ‘Angst’ !
Many thanks , Andy 🙂
Reblogged this on circusbuoy.
Meanwhile the BBC is denying that photoshopping Jeremy Corbyn with a Lenin-style cap, and superimposing the resulting picture onto a Moscow skyline, was in any way prejudicial to the Labour leader.
?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=2cb17e96f12ca288634c1fc500f7febf
The Graun – which has a revolving door with the BBC – takes up the story thus:
The corporation’s complaints unit said the decision to show a photo of the Labour leader wearing a “Lenin-style cap” in front of the Moscow skyline was not designed to convey an impression of pro-Russian sympathy on Corbyn’s part but was in keeping with an editorial decision made on the basis of “sound news judgment”.
‘Sound news judgment’ ? FFS.
Dear oh dear, Jews demanding to tell all others what they can or cannot say about Jews.
Well, I have news for all Jews and it is very simple: YOU ARE NOT SUPERIOR IN ANY WAY! NOT SPECIAL IN ANY WAY AND GOD HAS NOT MARKED YOU OUT AS SUPERIOR.
If you are not guided by those three truisms every minute of your waking lives, you are racist and belong only in incarceration. Any attempt to find any justification to call yourselves a superior people and you are just KKK racists calling blacks niggers. Eliminate the word GOYIM from this day forth: A MILITARY COMMAND! NOT A POLITE REQUEST……
You are a very insignificant and minor population on earth. You are not important to the survival of the human race, any more than the 70 million British subjects are in a world of 7 billion people.
As for Jonathan Freedland, that murderous bomb-demanding psychopath is a disgrace to every Jew worldwide. Killing Arabs for Greater Israel is policy, is it, Mr Freedland? Lebensraum is your guiding principle, is it not? The Palestinians are Israel’s equivalent of Jews in Nazi Germany. Gaza is like the Warsaw Ghetto. Oo dear, going to throw a tantrum because I have triggered your toddleresque emotions into overdrive? Well face reality because the world has had enough of you and your kind. We will not read the Guardian because we know it will contain your filth.
Nothing I have said in the last paragraph is anti Semitic. Greater Israel is a stated policy goal and murder, land seizing and evicting inhabitants is historical Israeli state action. No ifs, no buts, no argument. HISTORICAL FACT. Gaza is a ghetto, an enclave fenced in by Israel, its inhabitants utterly controlled by Israel if they wish to leave. Just like a Jewish ghetto in Nazi Germany. No ifs, no buts, no argument. HISTORICAL FACT. Lebensraum is a term used to describe a demand for more land followed by military invasion and Anschluss. Israeli seizing of agreed Palestinian land is the exact same. No ifs, no buts, no argument. HISTORICAL FACT. Israel has 200+ nuclear weapons yet demands Iran have none. For that alone, Netanyahu should die as racist scum saying one rule for Jews, another for Arabs. And the supine US State should cut all ties to Israel unless denuclearisation is multilateral, not unilateral (and that means Israel denuclearising, removing ALL chemical weapons, all BIOLOGICAL weapons etc etc).
It may fill many Jews with horror and revulsion that anyone could state that the state created for their people has behaved just like Nazi Germany. That is unfortunate but necessary. Until the majority of Jews renounce violent Zionism, those comparisons will only grow stronger.
The involvement of Jews in 9/11 was but a continuation of terrorism starting with the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem decades ago. They were involved in 7/7 in London and much, much more. They have their own death squad, it is called the Mossad. Kristallnacht had nothing on Mossad involvement in 9/11…..
If Jews cannot cope with the truth, that is their problem.
They are not special at anything but emotional dramatics in God’s eyes.
And until they face up to how racist they are as a tribe, the 95%+ of the world not Jews will continue to lose patience, tolerance or even interest in their fate.
Israel has 200+ nuclear weapons yet demands Iran have none. For that alone, Netanyahu should die as racist scum saying one rule for Jews, another for Arabs.
Persians aren’t Arabs. They don’t even speak the same language.
the supine US State should cut all ties to Israel unless denuclearisation is multilateral, not unilateral (and that means Israel denuclearising, removing ALL chemical weapons, all BIOLOGICAL weapons etc etc).
The US government isn’t in much of a position to issue demands about anybody else’s nuclear weapons, being the only one that ever actually used them. They’re clearly a dangerous rogue regime, if the evidence of the last fifteen years is anything to go by. Why don’t they set a good example, and disarm themselves first?
Very well put I agree 500% if we let these bastards get away with this nonsense, Israeli criticism will be shut down
completely, I’m not a follower of David Icke by any means but these Zionists have shut down three of his shows up to now, threatening the venue with adverse publicity and succeeding, horrible bags of filth.
@rtj
Brilliant, I love a good rant too, when due or even overdue 😉 .. and i thoroughly enjoyed your heartfelt, soulful & logical rant (alà Basil’s Fawlty style 😉 ) .. Venting ! nothing beats it and I got yer’ intonation & indignation to the core !
Music (i find) often seriously helps harmonise die Haß ! Chilling minds >> soulfully ..
One4rtj&i2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq0XJCJ1Srw
(one or the other depending on your musical taste 🙂 maybe even both ?)
Best wishes,
balkydj
Corbyn and the Labor Party are in good company in being attacked as anti-semitic- just ask Natalie Portman. Portman was born in Israel, she is Jewish and supports Israel. She does not support the BDS movement. Yet by simply taking a principled stand and refusing to accept an award in Israel where Netenyahu would be present she is being called by some government officials in Israel – get ready for the punchline – “anti-semitic.”
You can’t really make this stuff up and I think it gets kind of crazy when you try to rationally defend yourself against such crazy. In fact I’d say it isn’t possible to rationally defend against crazy – you simply get caught up in it. Today simply refusing to publicly support non-stop Israeli war-mongering and it’s ongoing inhumane violence against Palestinians is currently the very “definition” of what it means to be called – “anti-semitic” in the West. One need not be the proverbial “rocket-scientist” to understand that this is of course nothing but immoral BS propaganda of the highest order and such accusations should not be taken seriously for that very reason.
There is absolutely no sense in cowering before the Zionist ‘antisemitism’ lynch-mob. They are driven by a hatred so extreme that capitulation only draws more and ever more demands, to betray old comrades (Wadsworth, Livingstone) and the victims of Israeli barbarity (the Palestinians and the Iraqi, Syrian and Libyan victims of the Oded Yinon Plan) and to GROVEL to Israel and the Zionists. The lynch-mob seeks total humiliation, abasement and self-denigration-ANYTHING less is ‘antisemitism’.
Moreover, as we see in France, Zionist power gets ALL criticism of Israel or Zionism, or support for the Palestinians, criminalised as ‘antisemitism’. This leads to people being arrested for wearing ‘Free Palestine’ T-shirts. Apart from the odiousness of this situation, and the ready destruction of Free Speech and Freedom of Conscience simply on orders from the Zionist grandees, this can only lead to increasing Judeophobia- real Judeophobia, not the invented type. But that, alas, is PRECISELY what the Zionists want, in order to stampede more Jews to move to Israel and live on top of one of the 400 Palestinian villages extirpated in the Nakbah, or in illegal West Bank colonies, and makes them more likely to support the Israeli fascist and theocratic Right, and that path leads to disaster-for everyone.
Ms. Natty’ Portman rejected not just the award , but bucked a $2 million bucks prize monetary reward, in that morally profound stand, that she took ..
She should get an award for that, just suggesting .. 😉
Most of those folks who have joined the Labour Party since Corbyn became leader would be suspicious, or at least cynical, of the unreasonable influence that the Jewish/Israeli lobby has around the world.
The Conservative attack may destabilise his position within the Party, but it won’t affect his standing in the eyes of his rank and file supporters and most voters.
Corbyn for PM.
Sadly, in order to elect Corbyn as PM you have to elect all the Blairite Yvettes, Chukas and Jesses MP’s as well…
They might sing from a different hymn book when Corbyn is elected.
If not, he will have a mandate to SHUT THEM UP.
If Corbyn wins, the Blairites will leave, form a new, Blairite, party, and enter a coalition with the Tories. Nothing is more certain. Corbyn will NEVER be allowed to be PM. The new Blairite party will be drowned in Zionist funds.
You nailed it ..
“Modern Israel is a beacon of freedom, equality and democracy.” Emily Thornberry (at a BICOM/Jewish News event. If you are not sure who BICOM are: they are part of the witch-hunt. Smeeth was a former spinmeister for the Israel lobby.)
What is the sound of appeasement?
Is it the sound of silence when a young girl incarcerated for a slap; who should have been kneecapped instead?
Is it the sound of silence when a poet is incarcerated for writing a freedom song?
Is it the sound of silence when a fisherman is shot for fishing: or a farmer shot for farming?
Is it the sound of silence when children are kidnapped at midnight and imprisoned for “throwing stones”; and detained indefinitely in “administrative detention” until they pay the unpayable fines?
Is it the sound of silence when a Bedouin community has its water cut off and given one week to vacate their village before the bulldozers come in to make way for the settlers: settlers who will be illegal squatters on Palestinian land?
Is it the sound of silence when journalists are specifically targeted for reporting on the indiscriminate murder of unarmed civilians: protesting the “Right to Return”?
Or Is it the sound of a dum dum round tearing the limb from a young athlete: who will now never be able to work, in an open prison where there is little opportunity to work …but he could have been a star?
Is this the modern Israel – that is a beacon of freedom, equality and democracy – of which Thornberry speaks? I know, Israel has a right to self-determination; and a right to self-defence. What rights will Palestinians have under a biased (that’s the polite word) Secretary of State?
Thornberry grovels nicely. Similar lies would readily pass the lips of ALL politicians and fakestream presstitutes in Austfailure, believe me. The last media figure to dare cross the Zionists and the local sayanim, Mike Carleton, once the biggest name in radio in Sydney, was crucified for his support for the Gazans during one of Israel’s regular ritual blood-lettings there. The Zionist lynch-mob was led by the Murdoch cancer, naturally, and Carleton’s employers, Fairfax, buckled quickly. He was set up very easily. He attacked Israel’s butchery, so local Zionists swamped his Tweetering and other Internet sites with vicious, foul-mouthed abuse, which he was foolish enough to reply to in kind. That, of course, made him ‘antisemitic’ in a way that the Zionist abusers are never accused of ‘antigoyism’, and he was history.
Most Labour members will say “good riddance to them” and once the Chukas are replaced, Jeremy will win the election by a landslide.
Deselection, deseletion, deselection…
As Tony Blair will not have said.
Most of those folks who have joined the Labour Party since Corbyn became leader would be suspicious, or at least cynical, of the unreasonable influence that the Jewish/Israeli lobby has around the world.
That’s what qualifies them as “anti-semites”, right there. Stubbornly perceiving social and political reality.
It’s like a mediaeval witch trial (or Identity Politics) — denying the accusation only serves to prove its veracity. Mocking it would be a more effective policy.
Except that it IS anti-Semitism to identify Jews collectively with the Israeli lobby. Do you not know that a principal target of the right-wing anti-Corbyn witch-hunters has been anti-Zionist Jews, e.g. Tony Greenstein (expelled), Glyn Secker (witch-hunted), Moshe Mac;hover (expelled but reluctantly reinstated with the anti-semitism charge still standing), and Jackie Walker (witch-hunted)?
We must not give Zionists the gift of a stick with which to beat us.
Except that it IS anti-Semitism to identify Jews collectively with the Israeli lobby.
Except for the very large proportion of them that quite openly make this identification for themselves. Everybody knows this, but it’s impermissible to venture an estimate, because then the game would be up.
It’s the zionists that always go around chanting “anti-zionism is the same thing as anti-semitism”. If only four anti-zionist Jews can be found to contradict them, then they might have a point. But it’s anti-semitic for anybody else to notice it.
It’s impossible to argue with logic like that.
The numbers of Jewish people supporting Zionism is a) unknown and only estimated b) irrelevant to the point.
Even if every Jewish person supported Zionism you still do NOT criticise their Jewishness, you criticise ZIONISM.
Unless your aim is to undermine the position you claim to support.
I decline to enter into debates with people who repeatedly, and apparently deliberately, misrepresent what I’ve said, and then delete my attempts to point that out.
Lol. I agree you were misunderstood and I personaly value your every input.
I’ve seen the Palestinian cause bend itself into pretzels and making every intellectual contortion to avoid the anti-Semitic label and tarring by ‘association with anti-Semites’ and quite frankly, am sick and tired of people trying to limit what is acceptable speech or not.
Yes, I appreciate there are good Jewish people speaking out on behalf of the human rights of Palestinians. On the other hand, when the instruments of Jewish power equate criticism of Israel with “AS” and call it “the Jewish State” then enough, already.
Corbyn ought to come out against REAL Judeophobia, but insist that it is no more, or less, vile than any other such racism, sectarian hatred or xenophobia. And he should state UNEQUIVOCALLY, that the oppression of the Palestinians is NOT their fault, but that of Israel and the Zionists, and DEMAND that it end. All other Western leaders ought to do so, for reasons of moral decency, and out of concern that Zionist intransigence and barbarity will destroy Israel, as well as the Palestinians.
Well said.
How about this logic: Until you know by way of provable fact that all Jews conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, do not tar all Jews with that brush? Because you cannot find them does not mean they are not there.
You’d do a fine job of both moderating & media(-)ting, after some meditating , i thought – lol >>
(Still chucklin’ ..)
True Susanna, but even if you are quite meticulous in asserting that it is only that fraction of Jewry acting badly, (so very badly that if they were goyim they would be universally condemned), with which one has a dispute, and that those Jews not acting in the manner of the Israeli and Zionist Right, or those others actively acting against that bad behaviour, are not in any way an object of criticism, the Zionist ‘antisemitism’ lynch-mob will just invent it. They will twist your words to mean the opposite of what you intended, and, in the end they will simply invent and lie. And their lies and inventions will be presented as Truth and endlessly repeated, until your public life is over, and, in coming years, you are in prison, or have lost your job and God knows what else.
”Mocking it would be a more effective policy.”
What like;
”If x makes me an antisemite, then I am a proud antisemite.”
”If opposing apartheid Isral makes me an antisemite, then I am a proud antisemite.”
”If opposing zionist supremacy makes me an antisemite, then I am a proud antisemite.”
”If opposing Rabbi calling Africans ”Monkeys” makes me an antisemite, then I am a proud antisemite.”
”If opposing the ethnic cleansing of Christians in Palestine makes me an antisemite, then I am a proud antisemite.”
”If opposing the IDF executing unarmed children makes me an antisemite, then I am a proud antisemite.”
That sort of stuff? I’m sure the t-shirts would sell out at the Labour conference as quick as the SS uniforms do at the Tory one.
That sounds like an anti-semitic Business Opportunity. Somebody should get cracking on it.
Replace Bart Simpson with Ahed Tamimi, and send all T-shirt proceeds to her defence fund. That’s the right way to do mockery.
“ANTI-SEMITE” — AND PROUD OF IT, MAN!
WOW! A five-pointed star!
That is SO antisemitic!
As I noted a few minutes ago, to a mixed audience, Israel was going to win Eurovision in exactly the same manner that Ukronazis ‘won’ a couple of years back, with its fascist, Russophobic, dirge in praise of WW2 collaborators with the Nazis. By rigging the phone-in votes. A very easy prophesy, really. I mean, everybody loves Israel, right?
The truth is Zionists lobbied Hitler to introduce several initiatives directly designed to encourage the migration of German Jews to Palestine. Despite the many incentives both rewarding and coercive most German Jews in the 1930s were not Zionist and had no wish to leave the lives they had at home in Germany. The Zionists were much angered by that. It was after the failure of their efforts to get a mass exodus of Jews to Palestine that the Nazi party started introducing discriminatory measures against Jews. The Moscow Technical School funded by the Rothschilds spawned many special ops Zionists included Alfred Rosenburg who somewhat disengeniously self identified as a protestant. It was he that seeded Hitler with his anti Semitic opinions and indeed was the architect of the pressure cooker attitude toward German Jewry designed to force them to become part of the Zionists occupation army in Palestine. Such context is of course taboo and leads to the implication that the Holocaust itself was engineered by the Zionists, for obvious reasons. In that light my oft made assertion that Zionists care nothing for ordinary Jews is justified.
They wanted only young fit wealthy assimilated geniuses keen on agricultural labour and fluent in Hebrew. With such impossible demographic requirements and conditions they didn’t make it easy for themselves to find willing volunteers.
As Ben-Gurion said, if he had to choose between saving half the German Jewish children by sending them to Palestine, or saving all the children by sending them to England, he would choose to save only half. For the Zionist grandees, the Jewish community was often simply human shields for Zionist operations. And among the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Talmudists who are so powerful in Israel, the opinion that the Judeocide was Divine Retribution for Jewish secularism among European communities, is widespread, and strongly held.
It is my belief having been raised on the standard diet of historical narrative then with the birth of the WWW gaining access to actual documented historical fact that the Zionists always knew that their role in the Nazi holocaust was pretty self evident. Hence their zero tolerance attitude to Any alternative reading of historical fact. Any real scrutiny of what happened to bring the Nazi party to power and build their war machine traces back to the same Zionist banking elites in New York that have been behind every other western conflict/deployment of the 20th and 21st centuries. Ordinary Jews are indeed the pawns of Zionist ambition and are sacrificed without remorse when expedient.
Israel is the second most unequal OECD economy, after the USA. And that is among the Jewish Israelis.
Such context is of course taboo and leads to the implication that the Holocaust itself was engineered by the Zionists, for obvious reasons.
You ought to provide references for such claims; that would be more successful in convincing people.
It won’t save you from accusations of “anti-semitism”, of course. Reality is anti-semitic. Right-thinking citizens of Oceania must always be conscious of what they must always be unconscious of.
To call my statement antisemitic you would also have to bend over backward through a hoop preaching the Earth is flat and Michael Jackson was Christ resurrected. It does not discriminate against any religious or ethnic group.
I hope two Wikipedia links will suffice? Or is Wikipedia now antisemitic too?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Rosenberg
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement&ved=2ahUKEwiW0oDH4f_aAhVpJsAKHWzABpEQFjAAegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw2tnzjCnzEtP-tiZrnpEc97
There is also the fact that with immigration into Palestine limited to a annual quota, and conditions in the Nazi-controlled areas deteriorating it was entirely due to the Zionist authorities preferences and the control delegated to them that the greatest number entering Palestine before and during the war were those previously domiciled in the US, in New York especially, US citizens, with a hefty wealth qualification and in no physical peril whatsoever. They certainly didn’t want the poorest of their co-religionists which the Nazis were keen to organise and supply them with, that opportunity soon passed however as the Nazis quickly realised they could not do without their labour. Those rich New Yorkers could have and should have contented themselves and waited their turn. They must have been even more exceptional than the already exceptional.
This had consequences after the Nakba, as having brutally ethnically-cleansed the Palestinian Arabs a great many of whom would die of disease and hunger, the old and the sick especially in the inhospitable desert region camps in which they were dumped, the new Israelis had no interest or desire in tilling the land, and none of the requisite skills. The Palestinians expelled and dying in camps whom the world and the United Nations cruelly ignored and left to perish had expertly and skillfully obtained an abundance from their lands and now the crops and fruit rotted in the fields and on the ground. The new arrivals much preferred wielding guns to wielding hoes and frantically had to scour the middle-east and north-Africa looking for settled Arab Jews and coerce and uproot them by violent means to form a new underclass to do the actual work whilst the rest lorded it over them.
What was it about Ruth Smeeth that was in the leaked US diplomatic cables, the she was an asset of the US to be protected at all costs or something similar. She should be expelled from the Labour Party and possibly prosecuted as a traitor under treason laws or something, don’t we still have hanging for that?
We would probably have to hang most of the CFI/LFI/LDFI lot for the same, it is simply unconscionable that their principle loyalties are to the lobby or a foreign country, a rogue state, and international scofflaw at that: Israel and not to the countries of Britain or the constituencies that elect them, and for many them to go off on expenses-paid visits to Stolen-land for indoctrination is shocking, My own local Tory MP’s website depicts him looking like the insufferably smug expenses-fiddling twat he most certainly is, on the Golan-Heights, I wonder if he was actually aware he deep inside Syria, or even cares a toss. As long as the balance in the tax-haven bank-accounts continues to grow and the ballot-boxes are duly stuffed to his advantage come election time.
It is no paradox that so many of the CFI/LFI mob as ardent Zionists had so much in common with Nazism, they are the mirror image of one another, with Netanyahu as their Fuhrer, there is so much of fascism too in the policies of the Con-Lab uniparty, that they have become indistinguishable from them, all they need is a minority to bash and Muslims and/or Catholics fill that role for a great number of them.
If you choose to hang around with radical Islamists then anti-Semitism is the obvious result. I don’t see why anyone is surprised.
I would be much more interested in articles about the bewildering and long-lasting love affair between the left and radical Islam.
The left traditionally are atheistic, and care not for the deluded mentally weak-minded and morally deficient fools who believe in all that god stuff past childhood indoctrination bordering on mental cruelty and abuse inflicted on them, teaching them lies and fables forked from the original big magic book of claptrap. Religions are outdated dark-age instruments of control of the masses, which have brought humanity nothing but grief but such believers remaining are no more than superstitious throwbacks who are well on their way to being out-evolved, but alas seem determined to take the rest of us with them into irrelevance and extinction. In a comparision of Islam with Judaism, the former seems the much more benign, the latter the more terrifying manifestation of collective insanity. Both of them distasteful and retrograde but also comic and absurd. You would think human-beings have enough to divide themselves with which to deal with and overcome without inventing other totally imaginary divisions amongst ourselves with which to other the other.
You did however simply want to kick Jeremy Corbyn, and being no doubt religious therefore have no mind of your own with which to reason and are therefore not responsible for your actions however objectively evil they might be. You have abdicated thought to some others on your behalf.
As “radical Islam” is the creation of Zionists in absolute collusion with their allies the Gulf Monarchies your point is moot. Radical Islam is a kind of pinata created by the Zionist alliance to serve multiple purposes. Including getting gullible lefties and fascist righties utterly distracted and flailing hither and nither with their indignation.
Says it all. Perfectly.
Do you think if you replaced the US character with an Israli one you would be labeled an antisemite or admin would allow it to remain milosevic?
It appears to me that the US is much more directly involved in running “ISIS”, than Israel is, so I have no particular inclination to try the experiment.
As for who pulls the US government’s strings, that’s a different question.
Israel had direct responsibility for al-Nusra and its offspring.
You’re at the wrong site then: try Tommy Robinson, Sam Harris or Guido Fawkes.
Did you actually read what I wrote? As always BOTH sides are orchestrated. I personaly have antipathy to ALL religions for what they do to sanity and collective human experience. Islamiphobia, Antisemitism and the myriad Christian sectarianisms are all equally perverse to me. And they are only given power by the fact that so many people give the religions any legitamacy at all. Muslims, Jews and Christians, ( and every other such fakery) need to take responsibility and recognise that it is their clinging to iron age myths that allow any of this to happen.
Sorry, Candide, that was addressed to Emily Durron above, maybe I missed the nested posts?
May 11, 2018
“If you choose to hang around with radical Islamists then anti-Semitism is the obvious result. I don’t see why anyone is surprised.”
She makes the disingenuous conflation of “radical Islamists” with anti-Semitism and conjures a left wing alliance with them, when I agree that ‘Salafists’ tend to make unholy alliances with um, Zionists?
Ahhh… makes sense now. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
And you are perfectly correct. Even this very day Israeli lookout posts are directing the mortar fire of Salafists upon civilian villages south of Damascus. Emily evidently has fallen hook line and sinker for one of the false narratives, and there is one for every prejudice!
There is an interesting article on Dissident Voice outlining how the Israeli regime and Diaspora sayanim are behind much of the tsunami of Islamophobic hatred that has gripped the West for decades. The motive is plain enough-to foster hatred of Moslems and Arabs to make Israel’s destruction of the Palestinians and theft of their land more acceptable to Western publics. The efforts of Hollywood, where Arabs, Moslems and the Palestinians in particular are always portrayed in negative, often viciously so, fashion, is another front in this Zionist hate campaign, in which you seem to be a happy foot-soldier.
I said it before & I’ll say it again , (not for your benefit Mugla Mumblebrain) ..
The very notion of “Mad Mullahs” was started in The SUN ..
by d’Mad’dog Murdoch, in the Jerry ‘Halls of MSM Fame’, better said infamy !
More MSM G/Jerrymandering of weak minds: speaking of which, I wonder if Vogue could get an interview with Ms. Hall on the life n’ times with Murdoch contrasted with her life n’ times with Bowie ..
Bwahahahaha .. 😉 🙂
Oh dear Emily,
I think you are well and truly out of your depth, here & now: diving straight in to the deep end of this pool of dialogue , with people who swam through oceans of reading matter & journalism, (before reaching conclusions far more profound than any of your shallow ended needs), in order to stay above water & avoid being drowned out .. (even momentarily sunk) by kids & being stunned by their flailing cries for help, on precisely what needs & interests you/they have in your/their feeble minded , poorly trained efforts to swim, yet .. you are a potential danger to others, swimming breathlessly to catch the crest of the big new wave, before it pounds down ..
You will find what you are looking for & of interest elsewhere in places like The Guardian & the Indy &&& i could list you a whole history of publications & literature that will teach you to swim in the shallows the way you want to believe is stylish .. for your afflicted mindset.
But the concept here is that you must at least be able to swim, without further elementary (even primary school) education ..
Get my drift !? Tread water & watch & listen to others for a while, in order to lighten your load, not dragging others down to your level & base techniques, in order that we may all swim & surf freely, without having to dodge or assist you during the approaching Tsunami ..
Best wishes,
balkydj
“the bewildering and long-lasting love affair between the left and radical Islam”.
It’s almost as bewildering and long-lasting as the love affair between Western intelligence agencies and radical Islam.
The bewilderment mostly dissipates when you start to notice what results “radical Islam” usually produces.
Of course, the same thing could be said for “left” Identity Politics.
[[ Livingstone has been indefinitely suspended from the party, and there are angry calls from many Labour MPs for his expulsion.]]
Whilst Tony Blair – who stands accused of responsibility for the deaths of 2+ million civilians in Iraq. or 1/3rd of the overall total number of Jews claimed to have been slaughtered by the Third Reich – is still a member of the Labour Party, with no steps taken to expel him or discipline him. Funny old world, isn’t it?
I won’t argue the point but Cook is wrong: the Nazis did support Zionism, which was the mirror image of their own hatred of the Jews.
Be that as it may. The problem with the ‘anti-semitism’ campaign is that it is really an “anti-anti-imperialism” campaign.
And the way to deal with it is simple: Labour must adopt, as a party, a policy of opposing imperialism. This will naturally, include a forthright statement of a principled opposition to the actions of the Israeli government in Palestine and a re-statement of the right of Palestinians to return to the homeland from which they were expelled, and are being expelled.
The case of Palestine is crustal clear: the zionists, following the lead of the fascist revisionist factions, are pursuing racist, colonialist policies with a cynical abandon that would have made Ian Smith or Verwoerd blush. For a party of the many, for a party of Labour in the 21st Century there can be no alternative to total opposition to the policies of the “state of Israel.”
Making the matter all the more urgent for the British Labour Party are the long and sordid tales of Labour’s acceptance of imperialism and, in particular, its role as the enabler both of Israel’s foundation and of the training and arming (remember Orde Wingate) of Zionist terrorists.
As to anti semitism, of course Labour should not tolerate it or any variety of racism. And making this clear is all the more urgent because, as a cursory glance at comments on the internet will reveal, there is a massive potential shift in popular opinion away from automatically sympathising with Hitler’s victims yo an irrational and dangerous identification of Jews with the appalling excesses of imperialist governments in the middle east. And, in this case, the attempt to torpedo a nascent socialist impulse bu conflating its opposition to capitalism and imperialism with ‘anti-semitism.’
As it happens the Israeli Labour Party, in its latest manifestation has severed its links with the British Party. It is long past time that the “JLM” was disaffiliated and members in cahoots with the Israeli Embassy treated in the manner that those working with the Soviet Embassy were.
Sorry for the typos, above.
No worries whatsoever: I sincerely hope in future we are able to avoid, (in these columns), singular point scoring pedants & ‘pedo-files’ ..
I might add, whilst I’m at it .. ‘sincerely’
“Great Comment” ! !
an irrational and dangerous identification of Jews with the appalling excesses of imperialist governments in the middle east
Maybe if a large majority of people who self-identify as “Jewish” would stop doing that themselves, other people would follow their example. Assuming that the fascist terror state of Israel is one of the governments of which you speak.
I don’t know if “excesses” was really the word you wanted; do you mean to say that if the Terror War had only killed a hundred thousand Iraqis, instead of well over a million, that would have been unobjectionable?
the attempt to torpedo a nascent socialist impulse by conflating its opposition to capitalism and imperialism with ‘anti-semitism’
Again, it would be extremely helpful if the majority of people who consider themselves to be real or potential victims of “anti-semitism”, would publicly clarify what they mean by it. Otherwise, that conflation is eventually going to harden into “a massive shift in popular opinion”, which will at some point become irreversible.
If the situation continues that all serious opposition to the depredations of late-stage capitalism is smeared as “anti-semitism”, and only insignificant numbers of the supposed target group object to this, then eventually large numbers of the victims of capitalism are going to conclude that group is also their enemy, having heard no substantial argument to the contrary. As can be seen in Occupied Palestine, where probably a majority regard “Zionists” and “Jews” as entirely equivalent categories.
When that happens, it will be fair to say that most of those threatened by “anti-semitism” are the authors of their own misfortune. If they are lucky, they will have failed to convince very many people that Jewishness is a “race” category, rather than an identity accepted by choice, and will be able to avoid any unpleasant consequences by simply dropping the label.
I’m sure this comment will immediately be labelled as “anti-semitic”, if not disappeared altogether, with no reference to its actual content. You may infer that I am one of the rapidly increasing number of people, as above, who fail to see why we should believe in a distinction which a very large majority of self-identified “Jews” themselves reject — “anti-zionism = anti-semitism”, after all. It’s certainly not my place to tell them that they’re wrong.
If humanity is going to make progress here, we need truth and transparency from all sides, at a minimum. This can only happen if all sides want this to happen. What will cause that to come about? I don’t know, but fear it only has a chance after serious, probably global, catastrophe. It is beyond doubt that some humans can be so stubbornly and fiercely identified with their birth-based belief system that death and destruction are far preferable to open-minded skepticism. I see this as the root problem, not the wide variety of belief systems in which this happens. I also see little to no benefit in identifying that belief system that is most guilty of this problem and attacking them by whatever means. Simple logic should suggest that attack is the worst possible strategy here. I.e., such a people would rather die and destroy than think skeptically about their own humanity.
Ergo, head on confrontation won’t work. That said, speaking truth to power with courage has to continue as a matter of principle. We would have nothing left by way of dignity if we compromise on truth and transparency. Here, though, there is a problem. Leading by example is only as effective as people’s willingness to be led by that example. Many are simply blind to acts of dignity and truth telling at best, and at worst hate them. And yet there can be no perfect approach or strategy that ensures ‘success’. We are left, therefore, with the unsatisfactory “Doing the best we can.” Of course that must include being honest and transparent, being courageous, but also, I believe, a truly non-judgemental attitude that is in effect a continuing and open invitation to those who can be led by example. To get caught in fierce opposition to and thus trench warfare with those who live by fierce opposition to all ‘enemies’ is to become part of the problem.
Do you agree with this, milosevic?
I’m all in favour of continually pointing out the insane hypocrisy of people who themselves go around chanting “anti-zionism is the same thing as anti-semitism”, and then shit on anybody else who presumes to take their statements at face value.
I’m not sure if that’s what you mean by “truth and transparency”. Alternatively, you can file it under the category of “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”.
a truly non-judgemental attitude that is in effect a continuing and open invitation to those who can be led by example
It’s important to firmly reject ideas of “race” identity, so that people who are starting to question various “birth-based belief systems” understand that they could choose to just walk away from them, rather than being stuck with it for their entire life, like the colour of their skin, or the shape of their nose.
Agreed.
More “Great Comment” ..
Abstract: which is also why anybody contemplating physical harm to Cardinal Sinner George d’Pedo Pell, is barking up the wrong tree ..
Cardinal Pedo’-Pell should be permitted to write his memoirs, confined too, & in history , if we are to advance any form of cognisant Scientific Humanity & comprehension , above the levels of Pavlov’s dog training sessions, also even transcending Schroedinger’s Cat : one day hopefully ..
Even more Abstract & more fun ..
Lol, anybody confused ? ! ? !
http://messybeast.com/moggycat/pavlov-cat.html
“I won’t argue the point but Cook is wrong: the Nazis did support Zionism”
You’ve mis-read. Jonathan Cook didn’t say this, he said precisely the opposite, thus agreeing with your point, he even provided a link.
Thanks. I’m a fan of Cook’s brave truthtelling. Happy to have been mistaken.
Happy to see this statement today too:
Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry issued a strongly-worded condemnation on behalf of the Labour Party:
“We condemn unreservedly the Israeli government for their brutal, lethal and utterly unjustified actions on the Gaza border, and our thoughts are with all those Palestinians in Gaza whose loved ones have been killed or injured as a result.
“These actions are made all the worse because they come not as the result of a disproportionate over-reaction to one day’s protests, but as the culmination of six weeks of an apparently systemic and deliberate policy of killing and maiming unarmed protestors and bystanders who pose no threat to the forces at the Gaza border, many of them shot in the back, many of them shot hundreds of metres from the border, and many of them children.
“Throughout that six-week period, the UN’s Secretary General has been calling for an independent investigation into these incidents, one that should urgently determine whether international law has been broken, and hold the Netanyahu government to account for their actions. The UK should lead calls for the UN Security Council to order such an investigation today.
“These incidents must also be the catalyst for urgent and concerted international pressure on the Netanyahu government to lift the blockade on Gaza, and end Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. No longer can Netanyahu act as a law unto himself, under the protection of the Trump administration, whose decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem today has further inflamed the situation.
“In the meantime, we urge the Israeli forces serving on the Gaza border to show some long-overdue responsibility to their fellow human beings, and stop this vicious and utterly avoidable slaughter of peaceful protesters demanding the right to return to their homes.”
That is more like it.
I meant to say, that mix-up aside, your earlier comment ( https://off-guardian.org/2018/05/11/anti-semitism-orchestrated-offensive-against-jeremy-corbyn-in-the-uk/comment-page-1/#comment-119087 ) was great stuff.
This statement from E Thornberry with her platitudinous faux-humanitarian hat on, was unexpectedly on the mark, especially given her BICOM bilge quoted upthread by BigB: ( https://off-guardian.org/2018/05/11/anti-semitism-orchestrated-offensive-against-jeremy-corbyn-in-the-uk/comment-page-1/#comment-119157 ) “Modern Israel is a beacon of freedom, equality and democracy.” which could not be further from the truth, it being more of a black-hole inside a deep cave – an anti-photon perhaps. A false light to guide the good ship of state onto the rocks and hole it below, sink it in the deep with all hands and without trace. One or another statement must presumably have been made through gritted teeth, or she’s demonstrating that most ice-cold and charmless and most nauseating of all politicians’ arts of being all things to all men, to appear to harbour two or more contradictory mutually-exclusive opinions as circumstances and audiences and expediency dictate.
Which is real, which is playing to the gallery?
3 out of 5 Muslims in the UK report hate crimes and assaults on a regular basis. Black and brown people suffer discrimination all the time, some of it directly from the Home Office. British Jews have a cheek saying they suffer most: they don’t. They are a priveliged elite who are treated like whites.