This fighting world, Zionism and Israel #2

In West Europe and in North America we may find a world on alert, having a ‘Terror alert’ introduced by their governments. Many lovers of God may find people trying to bring unrest between them, trying to set up Christians against Jews and Muslims and vice versa.

The hunt for anti-Semites eclipsed the foxhunt in the category of blood sports. Ken Livingstone, a very popular ex-Mayor of London, lifelong Labour political activist, has been expelled out of Labour for his anti-Israeli views, deemed “antisemitic”. This is a big victory in a wider campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, carried out by Friends of Israel, for Corbyn is a determined anti-Zionist with a long record of support for Palestinians and for other Resistance movements. {The Messiah in England, by Israel Shamir}

Jonathan Arkush, the outgoing president of the English Board of Deputies, said that Mr Corbyn

 “has views which are antisemitic and he has problematic views”

that could drive Jews to leave Britain if he becomes prime minister.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, he said that British Jews were asking:

“Do we have a future here?”

But where do they have to go to?

Martin Odoni, an atheist, ethnically Jewish by birth, writes

The eternally right-wing Jonathan Arkush, speaking to the eternally right-wing Daily Telegraph, claimed,

“Delegitimising the state of Israel is antisemitic. [Jeremy Corbyn] was a chairman of Stop the War, which is responsible for some of the worst anti-Israel discourse. If he shares the prevalent discourse about Israel, then that view is unquestionably antisemitic… [The BDI] will not accept a discourse which denies the existence of their own land to the Jewish people. I think we are all entitled to some clarity on his real views about Israel.”

This remark is either a cynical smear, or a call from the heights of deranged paranoia. Arkush and his allies in the Zionist (important; not Jewish) community keep levelling charges like this at the Labour leader, among many others on the left of the party. But each time, they put precious little meat on the bones of their accusations. There is never a coherent explanation from Arkush as to what Corbyn has really said that is so objectionable, examples are few-and-far-between, and what quotations are offered are usually taken out-of-context. {The Board of Deputies have made it all-but-official: If you are not anti-Arab, you are automatically anti-Semitic}

According to Odoni

Richard Anderson Falk – United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967

Arkush’s leading attempt to imply that Corbyn has a history of ‘delegitimising the state of Israel’ is an outrageous lie. Corbyn’s associations with the Stop The War coalition reveal not a shred of evidence of that; Stop The War are frequent critics of Israel, beyond doubt, but they have never argued particularly for its destruction. (And no, before anyone comments with the familiar urban myth, Stop The War did not publish an article four years ago literally demanding a war with Israel. The often-cited article by Professor Richard Falk was arguing for non-military action against Israel.) Stop The War question the decision to create Israel, and the process by which it happened – especially the much-under-discussed role of Zionist militancy in the mid-1940s – but that is quite different from wanting the country to be destroyed.

All over the world a lot of work is done to portray the Palestine’s as monsters or rebellious youths following Israel’s propaganda playbook attempts to reframe the Palestinian liberation struggle as a question of terror, not territory.

Thomas Suárez thinks that Zionist terrorism

“ultimately dictated the course of events during the Mandate, and it is Israeli state terrorism that continues to dictate events today.”

Too many people are heedless of the Zionist terrorism aimed to prevent Palestinian Arabs from exercising their right to self-determination. Suárez argues when an aggressor encounters resistance, it can hardly use self-defense as a justification for its own acts of violence.

“Otherwise,”

Suárez writes,

“all aggression would self-justify.”

Martin Odoni writes

The coalition, like most critics of Israel, want to see the country reformed with full rights for all Palestinians on an equal footing with all Jews, be it by a one-state or two-state solution. Condemnation of policy is quite different from condemnation of existence.

In our regions we can find several people who love to make use of the present crisis to show both their anti-Semitic, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim feelings.

Odoni who finds his ethnicity, and the ethnicity of every Jew living or dead,

is part of who we are as human beings

writes

Any person who uses the word ‘anti-Semitism’ to silence criticism of Israel or Zionism is himself/herself anti-Semitic. Even if the accuser is also Jewish, he/she is still being anti-Semitic (yes, it is possible for people to be prejudiced against their own race; ironically, the CAA is actually an anti-Semitic organisation). {In unwavering support of Mike Sivier}

Lots of Americans may think those who oppose the present ongoings in Israel to be wrong, openly opposing Israel’s inhuman treatment of the Palestinians they are against Jews, though they may forget many of those who are hurt and offended by Binyamin Netanyahu’s stance regret that the crimes are committed in the name of the Jewish people.

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Preceding

This fighting world, Zionism and Israel #1

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