French Author Reveals Mossad Activities In France

Fench writer Jacob Cohen has released a new book that reveals how the Israeli spy agency, Mossad manipulates ordinary Jews in France and recruits them as undercover agents.

The book, titled Dieu ne repasse pas à Bethléem (God won’t return to Bethlehem), deeply investigates Israel’s foothold in France, and is the first such publication in the country to reveal Mossad’s influence and activities inside France.

The book makes mention of Sayanims or undercover agents working for Mossad, a Hebrew word not widely known in France.

“…what are their connections I take as an example. Remember the soldier, Gilad Shalit. He was completely unknown and, in a few days, his name became famous in all the world. What’s the work of Sayanim?,” Cohen told a Press TV correspondent on Saturday.

Shalit, who also holds French citizenship, was an Israeli trooper, who was arrested by the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas in a cross-border raid on the Gaza Strip in 2006. He was held for over five years and released in 2011 as part of prisoner swap deal.

Himself a Jew with family members living in the Occupied Territories, Cohen has already been attacked for his books.

He says the way he was treated for his ideas and books has helped him know the Israeli apparatus inside out and led him to become strongly anti-Zionist.

“All this pushed me to write two books [on] how the Mossad manipulates a lot of Jews, who live in France, in the United States, in everywhere to help them in their propaganda.” 

A night before the book’s release, the venue was tagged with a graffiti.

Cohen, however, says he is not afraid and plans to write a third book.

Anti-Zionism Is NOT Anti-Semitism

In 2005, Palestinian human rights groups and civil rights organisations launched a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel. This campaign has multiple aims, one of them being to pressure the Israeli government to comply with United Nations resolutions and ensure that its policies conform with international law and the Universal principles of human rights.

Specifically, the BDS campaign intends to achieve the full recognition of Palestinians as equal citizens within the state of Israel, to achieve the right of return of Palestinian refugees displaced by Israel since 1948, as demanded by Article 11 of the United Nations general assembly resolution 194, to end Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Arab land, cease the building of settlements and dismantle the ongoing Israeli West Bank barrier (also known as the Apartheid Wall).

This campaign has attracted its supporters around the world, including Palestine solidarity activists in Australia. Various socialist and left groups have strongly supported the BDS campaign. But the campaign has received strident criticism from Zionist organisations, political parties supportive of Israel and the ever-hostile Murdoch media establishment. Professor Irwin Cotler, former justice minister in the Canadian government, warned of what he called the "de-legitimisation" of Israel, being promoted by campaigns like BDS. This de-legitimisation is nothing new, he argued, being based in anti-Semitism. Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, long known for his support of Israel, went further and attacked the BDS campaign for "abetting terrorism" and for being an obstacle to peace. The BDS campaign has faced charges of anti-Semitism by Australian politicians and trade union leaders as well. Indeed, criticism of the state of Israel, its policies and founding ideology of Zionism is routinely met with the charge of anti-Semitism.

This charge usually serves to silence any debate about Israel’s policies, slander the critic with a tag that is dripping with historic vitriol and delegitimise any measures by Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activists to achieve full human rights for the Palestinians and the associated Palestinian refugees. If a critic of Israel is motivated by good old ethnic-racial hatred, then their claims for equal rights and statehood recognition are discredited. The supporters of the Palestinian cause can then be ignored and their claims of Palestinian statehood rejected as the outpourings of the irrationally obsessed, mindlessly hateful partisans of anti-Semitism, motivated by revulsion of the Jewish people and their culture.

Let us examine more closely the issue of anti-Semitism, the claims of Zionism and its realisation in the state of Israel and the tactic of boycott, divestment and sanctions. Anti-Semitism is an irrational, xenophobic hatred of Jews as a people; regarding the Jewish people around the world as constituting one indivisible, biologically unchanging entity that comprise one nation.

Christian Hostility

Anti-Semitism is nothing new, being based in the traditional religious, namely Christian hostility to the Jewish culture and people. After the lifetime of Jesus, early Christian attitudes towards the Jews began to harden. Anti-Jewish attitudes and doctrines were part of Christian teaching and popular art from the earliest times of the established Christian church.

The gospel of John, written much later than the three other gospel books, contains the most decisive comments indicating a break with Judaism, though this book is less historical than the others. This kind of religious anti-Semitism was partly based on theological differences, competition for followers and misapprehension of Talmudic beliefs and practices.

The religious-based anti-Semitism of centuries past has been largely superseded by the more modern-sounding, pseudo-scientific anti-Jewish prejudice, which singles out Jews as incapable of assimilating into their host nation and motivated by a tribalist-racial hostility to non-Jews and unwilling to adapt to the secular, "modern" values of the West. Modern day, nationalistic anti-Semitism adopted a particular political dimension – to exclude the Jews as a people from the political and economic life of their resident countries. Forcing Jews out of employment, business, suppressing their language and schools; these became part of the political program of anti-Semitic parties across Europe.

Capitalism

In the 19th century, with the rise of secularism and nationalism, the religious ideologies were pushed aside and the traditional prejudice of anti-Semitism was adapted to the changing political and economic conditions of capitalism. Oppressed nations, particularly those in the Ottoman Turkish, Austro-Hungarian and tsarist Russian empires, were demanding their independence and fighting for it. The Jewish populations of Europe, hitherto assimilated into their respective nations, were now articulating their religiously based teachings of a return to Zion in a more nationalistic form. The Jewish people had been taught that a divinely inspired Messiah would restore them to the allegedly historical homeland of the Jews in Palestine. Never matter that Palestine was home to Arab Muslims and Christians. This yearning was always a vague aspiration; in the context of 19th century nationalism and secularisation, aspirations for a homeland were to take a different turn.

Throughout Europe, nationalist groups were agitating for independence; the Greeks, Serbs, Poles, Ukrainians and other nationalities long suppressed were rising. The authorities in tsarist Russia, Ottoman Turkey and other European states needed a convenient scapegoat to blame the rising nationalistic tensions. The growth of industrial capitalism broke the bonds of feudalism and undermined the position that many Jewish communities held in the feudal order. The capitalist system created its own inequalities and imposed suffering on the working class. Workers in various countries, among them the Jewish workers, made common cause to fight against the social and economic oppression of capitalism.

Anti-semitism was the usual outlet to divert growing anger at the economic and political injustices of the time. Immiseration could be blamed on the "Jewish usurer", the stereotype of the shifty, scheming Shylock, extorting the "average" (meaning non-Jewish) worker, gained traction in times of economic distress. Pogroms against Jewish communities were a frequent occurrence in Europe, particularly in imperial Russia under the tsar. In this charged context, the Jewish people of Europe began to join revolutionary, nationalist and socialist groups, joining the fight for social and economic justice.

Zionism

But a new response began to be articulated by a number of Jewish commentators and intellectuals in Europe. They regarded anti-Semitism as the inevitable and immutable consequences of living among non-Jewish nations and that assimilation was impossible. They began to elaborate a new nationalistically motivated yearning for a homeland – Zionism. Lance Selfa, in the International Socialist Review article "Zionism: False Messiah", explains that political Zionism defined itself the project of establishing an exclusively Jewish state, as a nationalist, colonialist project. Zionism maintains that Jews around the world are a single nation and thus need to establish a separate homeland. Zionism holds that anti-Semitism is an inevitable consequence of the Jewish presence in their host societies.

Moses Hess, a German Jewish contemporary of Karl Marx, was the earliest exponent of this abnormal nationalism. He wrote a book, Rome and Jerusalem: The last national question (1862), in which he expounded that German anti-Semitism was a fact of life and could not be changed. The Jews of Europe would always be regarded as the outsiders and that assimilation had failed. He argued that Jewish emancipation by joining the revolutionary struggles of the time was impossible and that there was only one solution – a separate homeland for the Jewish people.

However, it is with Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jewish journalist and author of the book The Jewish State (1896) and modern that political Zionism finds its most articulate exponent. Herzl argued that anti-Semitism was not only an inevitable product of Jews living as minorities amid a non-Jewish population, but was also a necessary political ally, compelling Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere to be driven out and thus further the goal of building a separatist homeland. Zionism is a particular form of Jewish communalism, very similar in goals to the Hindu supremacist and communist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that seeks to establish a Hindu-exclusive state in India by expelling Muslims and other minority communities.

Zionism shares with anti-Semitism the basic foundational premise that Jews around the world are a fixed entity and must be separated from non-Jewish populations in order to be emancipated. This kind of abnormal nationalism not only required that Jews dissociate themselves from the struggle for equality and economic justice in their home countries, but also find a place to call their homeland. Palestine was not the first destination chosen by the nascent Zionist movement; Herzl and the leaders of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) appealed to the major imperial states of the day for a territory to call their own. At various stages, Uganda, Argentina, Madagascar were all seriously considered as possible homelands for a new Jewish state.

They approached the Ottoman Turkish sultan, the German kaiser and the Russian tsar, whose regime was responsible for anti-Jewish pogroms, in the vain hope of acquiring recognition for their cause, helping to divert Jewish workers from the revolutionary struggle and demobilise Jews in the fight against the poison of anti-Semitism. Herzl even shook hands with the Russian minister von Plehve, in 1903. Plehve was the minister of interior and director of the police who oversaw the massive pogroms against the Jews of Kiev and other cities in the early 1900s. The Zionist leaders approached all the imperial powers for favours, no matter how criminal and murderous they were in relation to the Jewish populations in Europe.

Zionism, from its very inception, was always an ally of imperialism.

It is interesting to note that Herzl, Nordau, Weizmann and other Zionist politicians wrote about the Jews of Europe in the most disparaging, obscene terms, reflecting their acceptance of the basic ideas of anti-Semitism. Anne Zirin, in her article documenting the "Hidden history of Zionism", notes that the writings of Herzl, Nordau, Weizmann and other leading Zionists are replete with descriptions of Jews as aliens, parasites, bacteria, poisonous elements that cause harm to their hosts.

These views stem from the basic premise of Zionism – and anti-Semitism – that humans can be most logically and fundamentally divided into races and it is useless to struggle against such genetically based racial differences. Herzl himself regarded the anti-Semite as a necessary and dependable ally; he wrote in his diaries that the anti-Semitic countries would be the most interested in expelling the Jews from Europe and assisting their emigration to a Jewish homeland. Herzl surmised:

the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.

Not only were Jews considered a separate race, but also had to be defined as one of the "superior" races, able to build their own state.

With the end of World War I, the imperial patrons that Herzl approached had all been defeated – Ottoman Turkey collapsed and its territories divided among Britain and France; the Austro-Hungarian and tsarist Russian regimes had been toppled and newly independent states had taken their place. The one empire that Zionist leaders had approached during the war and that had committed to building a Jewish national home was Britain. The 1917 Balfour Declaration committed the British government to the Zionist project of building the Jewish population in Palestine. The British ruling class and Balfour, the then foreign secretary, were anti-Semitic; they had their own reasons for encouraging Jewish emigration to Palestine. The British military governor of Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storrs, bluntly declared that the Zionist movement was a useful ally of Britain, dedicated to building a "little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism".

British Anti-Semitism

Balfour’s anti-Semitism was not out of place in the English aristocracy and ruling class. Winston Churchill, a rising star of British politics and the secretary of state for air and war, wrote an article for the Illustrated Sunday Herald in 1920 entitled "Zionism versus Bolshevism". Churchill argued that Bolshevism was a devious product of the Jewish mentality, a perverted aspiration for equality that can never be fulfilled. Jewish people in Europe were gravitating towards this subversive philosophy. After all, were not leading Bolshevik figures in the Russian revolution of Jewish origin? So that is conclusive evidence; the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy is afoot to overturn the existing social order. But there is a solution; winning Jews over to Zionism. The best antidote to the virus of Bolshevism and its misguided ideas of racial and economic equality is the doctrine of Zionism; the British government has the responsibility to build a Zionist home for the Jews in Palestine.

The goal of the Zionist project was spelled out quite clearly by its leaders – Palestine must be colonised. The migration of Jewish settlers into Palestine was conducted from the turn of the 19th-20th centuries not just for creating a new market and acquiring natural resources, important as those goals were. The Zionist movement wanted to create a new type of society, one that demolished the indigenous people – namely the Palestinians – and created a settler-colonial society that was exclusively Jewish. The Palestinian economy had to be undermined and replaced by a new, settler project. This effort undermines the myth, peddled by Zionist groups, that Palestine was a "land without a people" and the Jews being "a people without a land".

Vladimir Jabotinsky, a leading figure of early Zionism and the political father of the hardline right-wing ideological tradition within the Jewish state, explained quite clearly that the Zionist movement had come to Palestine to colonise it and defeat the local population. In a 1923 article entitled "We and the Arabs", Jabotinsky elaborated exactly what the Zionist movement intended to achieve in Palestine: colonisation. He explained that the indigenous population would fiercely resist any attempts at colonisation and so it was necessary to construct an "iron wall" of separation, until the Palestinians submitted, were expelled or were simply liquidated. Jabotinsky expressed the racially biased colonial view of the Palestinians that settler advocates have had of indigenous populations.

Any native people – it's all the same whether they are civilized or savage – views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs. Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains.

I flatly reject this assessment of the Palestinian Arabs. Culturally they are 500 years behind us, spiritually they do not have our endurance or our strength of will, but this exhausts all of the internal differences. We can talk as much as we want about our good intentions; but they understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile. This childish fantasy of our “Arabo-philes” comes from some kind of contempt for the Arab people, of some kind of unfounded view of this race as a rabble ready to be bribed in order to sell out their homeland for a railroad network.

He went on to expound on how exactly he wished the Zionist movement to treat the indigenous people of Palestine:

Thus we conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say “no” and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.

Jabotinsky founded a school of thought within Zionism that was sympathetic to the fascist powers of the time. He admired Mussolini’s Italy and his organisation had cordial relations with leading fascist political leaders in Rome. In 1935, when Mussolini authorised a division of Zionist activists to take on military training in Italy, he described Jabotinsky to the Zionist emissaries of the time as "your fascist, Jabotinsky".

Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism and precursor of the Likud party in Israel, was not the only Zionist activist that sought the collaboration of the imperial powers. The mainstream of the Zionist movement, Labour Zionism, led by figures like David Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, were also applying to the various imperialist powers for their patronage. The Zionist leaders offered to make Palestine an outpost of "civilisation" amidst the ocean of native "savages", the Arabic-speaking peoples.

Annie Zirin, in her article about the history of Zionism for the International Socialist Review, quotes the writings of Theodor Herzl, who explained that the new Jewish state in Palestine would form an outpost of European cultivated civilisation against a tide of pan-Arab barbarism. This point is important and we will return to it later.

Britain remained the imperial patron of the Zionist project, assisting the passage of Jewish emigrants to Palestine throughout the 1920s and 1930s. With the revolt of the Palestinians in 1936, Britain changed its tactics and recommended partitioning the country along ethnic lines, allocating portions of Palestine to Arabs and Jews. What is important to note is that during all this time, the Zionist movements in Europe regarded the imperial states as allies and made decisive efforts to place themselves at their disposal.

Lenni Brenner documented the efforts of the Zionist leaders to ingratiate themselves with the fascist powers of the 1930s in his book Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. Brenner examines the attempts by the German Zionist federation to undermine the campaign against anti-Semitism in Germany, find ways to cooperate with the Nazi regime and appease anti-Semitic sentiments in Germany in order to facilitate Jewish emigration to Palestine. The visit of a top Nazi SS official to Palestine for six months, as a guest of the Zionist federation, was commemorated with the issuance of a gold medal: on one side, the Nazi swastika with the words "A Nazi travels to Palestine"; on the other, the Star of David. The Nazi official in question wrote several articles about his sojourn in Palestine and was enthusiastic about the Zionist project, describing how Jewish soil under a Jew’s feet “reformed him and his kind in a decade. This new Jew will be a new people.”

Brenner’s book is available online and makes for a fascinating expose on the willingness of the Zionist leaders to approach any imperialist regime, no matter how murderously anti-Semitic, in order to achieve their goals of colonising all of Palestine.

Israel and Apartheid

It is not the purpose of this article to go into a detailed examination of the 1947-48 ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israeli forces, establishing the Jewish state. The reader can refer to the excellent book by Israeli historian Illan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which documents the plans of the Zionist movement to attain ethnic supremacy in Palestine by expelling the indigenous population.

What is important to note is that after its official foundation in 1948, the Zionist state was not only dependent on imperial patronage for its survival, but also became a bulwark of reaction, establishing working alliances with other repressive regimes around the world. Zionism is an essential prop within the larger imperialist system. Nowhere is this aspect of the Zionist state more in evidence than in its extensive military, political, economic and ideological cooperation with the former apartheid state of South Africa.

In 2010, a book detailing this unspoken yet solid alliance was published, called The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s secret relationship with South Africa. The ultra-racist regime of apartheid South Africa was subject to sanctions and international condemnation throughout the 1960s and 1970s. United Nations resolutions called on states to terminate relations with the white supremacist state. But one state continued and even increased is economic and military cooperation with the white racist regime – Israel.

The Afrikaner outpost in South Africa was not just anti-black, but also had a history of anti-Semitism. The National Party, the South African party that implemented and extended apartheid, had sympathetic ties to anti-Semitic groups and even supported the fascist regimes in the 1930s. Many of its leaders were themselves members of pro-Nazi groups in South Africa. Yet this was no obstacle for ties between Pretoria and Tel Aviv to flourish.

The Israel-South Africa connection was driven by pragmatic considerations – sharing nuclear technology, military training of their respective armed forces, the development of business ties and the growth of cultural exchanges. But what is significant to note is that this axis was not just opportunistic; there was a deep ideological affinity between Zionism and white supremacist apartheid. The South African prime minister in the 1970s, John Vorster, described the common goals that both Israel and his regime had in confronting the enemies of "Western civilisation". Just as Israel was an outpost of white European civilisation up against an ocean of Arab-Muslim barbarism, white South Africa was engaged in a struggle against the onslaught of black African communism. Tel Aviv and Pretoria were "brothers in arms", forming a mutually beneficial and ideologically driven axis that reinforced repressive practices with regard to their respective indigenous populations.

Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African politician primarily responsible for the extension of apartheid and the creation of black African bantustans, commented in 1961 that:

The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.

John Dugard, a South African professor of law and former UN special rapporteur to the Human Rights Council on the human rights situation in the occupied territories, wrote an introduction to a book published in 2009 called Israeli Apartheid: A beginner’s guide, in which he examines the similarities and differences between the two societies. In 2009, Dugard wrote an article published in the Huffington Post that it is high time to treat the Israeli regime with the same exclusion as was applied to apartheid South Africa. In its treatment of the Palestinians, Israel is implementing its own version of apartheid, he noted.

Understanding the history of Zionism, its regard for anti-Semitism as a cement with which to build a new state and its role as an ally of racist and oppressive regimes, helps us to understand the importance of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, the starting point of this article.

So is boycotting Israel motivated by anti-Semitism?

Absolutely not says Sherry Wolf, an activist with the US Socialist Worker magazine and an advocate of BDS. Zionism’s supporters use the charge of anti-Semitism to deflect debate, shut down meaningful dialogue and downgrade the struggle by Palestinians for their rights. The BDS movement has condemned anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms. As Sherry Wolf explains it, the BDS movement is about achieving economic, political and social equality for the Palestinians.

Wolf herself is of Jewish background and she recognises the historic injustice perpetrated by the Zionist regime against the Palestinians. Brian Klug, senior research fellow in philosophy at Oxford University and a founder of the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights, explains that anti-Zionism has nothing in common with anti-Semitism. Do not poison the debate on Palestine with false accusations. This does not mean that charges of anti-Semitism can be dismissed lightly – far from it. As Tony Greenstein, anti-Zionist activist in Britain elaborates;

Like the boy who cried wolf, the charge of “anti-semitism” has been made so often against critics of Zionism and the Israeli state that people now have difficulty recognising the genuine article... One of the consequences of this abuse of the term “anti-semitism” is to devalue the currency. It renders it almost meaningless because people assume that allegations of anti-semitism are merely the last-ditch resort of those who are incapable of defending the Apartheid Wall that separates the people of the West Bank from their land, the bulldozing of civilian houses, the wanton destruction of olive groves and crops, to say nothing of the theft of their land.

Let us leave the last word to Omar Barghouti, one of the leaders of the BDS movement, who elaborated on why we should support the BDS movement:

A Jewish state in Palestine (“a state of the Jewish nation”), no matter what shape it takes, is by definition exclusionary; it cannot but contravene the basic rights of the land’s indigenous Palestinian population and perpetuate a system of racial discrimination that ought to be opposed categorically. Any other exclusionary regime in Palestine that denies citizens some of their rights based on their identity — ethnic, religious, gender, sexual, etc. — must be rejected just as strongly.

Accepting modern-day Jewish Israelis as equal citizens and full partners in building and developing a new shared society, free from all colonial subjugation and discrimination, as called for in the democratic state model, is the most magnanimous — rational — offer any oppressed indigenous population can present to its oppressors. Only by shedding their colonial privileges, dismantling their structures of oppression, and accepting the restoration of the rights of the indigenous people of the land, especially the right of Palestinian refugees to return and to reparations and the right of all Palestinians to unmitigated equality, can settlers be indigenized and integrated into the emerging nation and therefore become entitled to participating in determining the future of the common state.

It is time to advocate a secular, unitary and democratic state in Palestine, because this is the equitable, humane solution for all its people.

(Rupen Savoulian)

Repudiating Zionist Abuse Of The Anti-Semitism Charge

By MIKE MARQUSEE

Taunting and tainting opponents with the charge of anti-semitism is a long-standing Zionist ploy, familiar to everyone involved in the Israel-Palestine issue. As their support weakens in the face of evidence-based argument, Israel’s advocates have stepped up their use of the accusation as a means to close down debate, particularly on proposals for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

A key component in their armoury is what’s been called “lawfare”: attempts to use the courts to stifle opponents. This strategy, which has been employed in the US, France and Britain, suffered a significant reverse at the end of March, when an Employment Tribunal in London comprehensively rejected a claim made by Ronnie Fraser, of Academics for Israel, against his union, the University and College Union.

Fraser and his celebrity lawyer, Anthony Julius, argued that debates and decisions on Israel-Palestine issues within UCU amounted to “harassment” against Fraser as a Jew. They made ten specific allegations to support this charge; every one of them was dismissed by the Tribunal as false or irrelevant.

Jonathan Freedland once lauded Julius’s musings on anti-semitism as “forensic”. But when subjected to a genuinely forensic examination at the hands of the Tribunal, they were shown to be anything but. In fact, the Tribunal’s point by point demolition of Julius’s arguments shows just why Zionists are so fearful of open, fact-based, rational discussion. (For a thorough examination of the Tribunal’s findings and the aftermath, see Mark Elf’s excellent blog, http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.co.uk.)

The judges had harsh words for a number of Fraser’s witnesses, particularly the chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, Jeremy Newmark, whose testimony as to his alleged treatment at a UCU meeting was labelled “false”. Two Labour MPs, John Mann and Denis Macshane (still in Parliament when the hearings were held last autumn), appeared for Fraser but did him no favours. They were criticised by the Tribunal for giving “glib evidence…Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not to his liking.”

The Tribunal also found no evidence of the “atmosphere of intimidation” alleged by Fraser. UCU’s adherence to democratic procedures was fully exonerated. Unions in general should be relieved that the judges have found that they are not liable for psychological “damage” arising from debates among members.

Most significantly, on the core question of whether opposition to Israel or Zionism amounted to anti-semitism, the Tribunal reached a clear-cut, unimpeachable conclusion. “A belief in the Zionist project or an attachment to Israel or any similar sentiment cannot amount to a protected characteristic,” they declare, adding “It is not intrinsically a part of Jewishness.” 

It’s welcome to have this simple truth, so fiercely denied by Israel’s advocates, upheld as logical and lawful.

Julius had argued that although not all Jews were Zionists the great majority felt an affinity for Israel. 

The Tribunal found this argument unpersuasive; a political view cannot claim “protected” status simply because many members of a particular religion or “race” hold it. If that were to be the case, political debate would be shut down. 

The Tribunal was clearly aware of that danger, as their final words on the case indicate: “We greatly regret that the case was ever brought. At heart, it represents an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means… The Employment Tribunals are a hard-pressed public service and it is not right that their limited resources should be squandered as they have been.”

In the pro-Israel camp, the humiliating ruling has caused consternation. Some are now calling for what is known as “the European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia’s ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism” to be adopted in British law. According to this definition, opposition to Zionism, descriptions of Israel as an “apartheid” or “racist “ state, and calls for boycotts are all in themselves anti-semitic. It has never had any official status within the EU and has been quietly dropped by the EUMC’s successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency. 

Clearly, it would endow Israel and supporters of Israel with a protected status enjoyed by no other state or political opinion. This from people who accuse their opponents of “singling out Israel”. Worryingly, a similar definition was adopted last year by the California state legislature, without a single vote against.

It apparently does not trouble the self-appointed protectors of the Jewish community that inscribing the “working definition” into law would make the British state the adjudicator on what does and does not constitute Jewishness. Historically, Jewish freedom and equality has been advanced as and when the state’s role in relation to religion opinion has been diminished. Here we see again how the Zionists’ abuse of the anti-semitism charge actually undermines the real struggle against anti-semitism.

There’s been no mention of the Tribunal ruling anywhere in the mainstream media. Of course, had the judges found the UCU guilty of “harassing” its Jewish members, the story would have been on every front page.

Israeli's Want Apartheid Without Guilt Or Shame

By Allison Deger,

... according to a new poll by an Israeli data firm a majority of Israelis don’t want to play—or study, live, eat or drive anywhere near an Arab. Rather, they want an Apartheid state.

In two articles by Gideon Levypublished today in Haaretz the results of a survey by Dialog are presented: 58% of Israeli Jews believe Israel practices apartheid in the West Bank, and they are fine with that. In fact Israelis are so comfortable with institutionalized discrimination that a third said they do not want Palestinians citizens of Israel to have the right to vote and 69% do not think Palestinians in the West Bank deserve to vote in the case of Israel annexing the occupied territory.

Such displays of racism, or the desire to live separately from Palestinians, or even transfer them (code for ethnic cleansing) is not new to Israeli society—or survey results. Over the past decade Israeli universities have published data showing a rise from around 60% of Israelis wanting Palestinians to disappear to 68% today. Even back in 1991 during the height of the first Intifada, a quarter of Israeli-Jews said they wanted to transfer the Palestinians citizens of Israel.

But what makes me feel like I’m being whacked across the face when reading both of Levy's articles is not the percentages, it's the arrogance. In great numbers, of the 503 interviewed, around half think they deserve to be treated "better."

Levy writes,

59 percent, wants preference for Jews over Arabs in admission to jobs in government ministries. Almost half the Jews, 49 percent, want the state to treat Jewish citizens better than Arab ones; 42 percent don't want to live in the same building with Arabs and 42 percent don't want their children in the same class with Arab children.

In his op-ed Levy calls this comfort and desire for Jewish privilege at the expense of Palestinians "apartheid without shame or guilt." Where his first article, the reported piece, is all facts and figures, his second is his heart, which too is having an arrhythmia over the "certain innocent candor" expressed in the survey results:

Among its terrifying results, the survey discovers a certain innocent candor. The Israelis admit this is what they are and they're not ashamed of it. Such surveys have been held before, but Israelis have never appeared so pleased with themselves, even when they admit their racism. Most of them think Israel is a good place to live in and most of them think this is a racist state.

It's good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it. If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don't apply.

Or to put it more bluntly, Levy says the survey tells the world "We're racists," continuing, "we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state. Yes, this is Israel."

Via: "Mondo Weiss"

New California Resolution: Criticism Of Israel Is Anti-Semitism

Tom Carter reports in "WSWS",

Last month, the California State Assembly passed a resolution urging state educational institutions to more aggressively crack down on criticism of the State of Israel on campuses, which the resolution defines as “anti-Semitism.” The anti-democratic resolution is the latest step in the broader campaign to stifle and suppress dissent on California's increasingly volatile campuses.

The California State Assembly is the lower house of the state legislature, consisting of 80 members. The resolution—H.R. 35: “Relative to anti-Semitism”—was passed by a vote of 66 to 80, including a majority of both Republicans and Democrats in the Assembly.

The resolution was drafted by Republican Linda Halderman and passed without public discussion. The vote on the resolution came when most students were between semesters and away from their campuses.

The resolution (available here) uses the classic trick employed by defenders of Israel’s Zionist regime: lumping together any criticism of the Israeli state’s policies or of the US government’s support for them with racist attacks on Jews.

On the one hand, the resolution denounces “swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti in residential halls, public areas on campus, and Hillel houses,” and denounces those who accuse “the Jewish people, or Israel, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.”

On the other hand, the bulk of the resolution is dedicated to defining criticism of the state of Israel as “anti-Semitism.” It lists the following as examples of “anti-Semitism”:

• “language or behavior [that] demonizes and delegitimizes Israel;”

• “speakers, films, and exhibits” that indicate that “Israel is guilty of heinous crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing and genocide;”

• describing Israel as a “racist” or “apartheid” state;

• “student-and faculty-sponsored boycott, divestment, and sanction campaigns against Israel;”

• “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination;”

• “applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;” and

• “actions of student groups that encourage support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”

This list makes clear that the accusations of anti-Semitism are a red herring, employed to attack students’ democratic rights and stifle dissent. The resolution recalls the smear campaign against German author Günter Grass and his poem “What Must Be Said” earlier this year.

Defending the poem, the World Socialist Web Site explained: “Anti-Semitism is the term used to describe racist hatred aimed at the oppression and persecution of Jews—and in the case of the Third Reich, the extermination of Jews. Grass’s criticisms of the war policy of the Netanyahu government are not directed against Jews, nor against Jews in Israel. His overwhelming concern is the well-being of both the Jewish population in Israel and the Iranian people. This is in stark contrast to the Israeli government.

“The Israeli regime does not represent the interests of the Jewish population, but rather a tiny rich and corrupt clique that has always worked closely with American imperialism.” (See Defend Günter Grass!)

The aggressive narrowness of the resolution's definition of acceptable political discussion, combined with its broad definition of anti-Semitism, prompted the University of California to distance itself from the resolution, though without rejecting or denouncing it. “We think it's problematic because of First Amendment concerns,” UC spokesman Steve Montiel told the San Francisco Chronicle last week.

The resolution does clearly implicate the First Amendment, which protects not only criticism of the state of Israel, but generally protects anti-Semitic hate speech as well.

Moreover, it must also be said that the State of Israel is, as a matter of fact, guilty of crimes against humanity.

To cite only a more recent example, the 574-page UN Goldstone Report published in 2010 found that the State of Israel had deliberately targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza during the 2008-2009 “Operation Cast Lead.” The invasion of Gaza saw 1,400 Palestinians killed compared with 13 Israelis killed. More than 21,000 buildings, factories, and apartments were damaged or destroyed.

Under California H.R. 35, it appears that the Goldstone report is now to be considered “anti-Semitic.”

The resolution also contains a denunciation of “suppression and disruption of free speech that presents Israel's point of view.” This appears to be a reference to the “Irvine 11” incident last year, in which 11 students shouted down Israeli ambassador Michael Oren during his speech at the University of California at Irvine.

The 11 students shouted, “Michael Oren, you’re a war criminal,” and “You, sir, are an accomplice to genocide.” These students were later arrested, charged, and convicted of the crimes of “conspiracy” and violating Oren’s rights. (See University of California students convicted for protesting Israeli ambassador’s speech.)

The resolution goes on to state that the “Assembly recognizes recent actions by officials of public post secondary educational institutions in California [e.g., the prosecutions of the Irvine 11] and calls upon those institutions to increase their efforts to swiftly and unequivocally condemn acts of anti-Semitism on their campuses and to utilize existing resources . . . to help guide campus discussion about, and promote, as appropriate, educational programs for combating anti-Semitism on their campuses.”

On California's campuses, as on campuses and workplaces internationally, explosive class antagonisms are increasingly apparent. Massive tuition hikes year after year coupled with job losses and skyrocketing youth unemployment present an entire generation of young people with an increasingly impossible situation.

State authorities in California, which is controlled by the Democratic Party, have watched the large campus protests that took place across state campuses over the past two years with hostility, consternation, and fear.

Over the past year, at the behest of Democratic Party officials, demonstrating students across the state have been attacked by paramilitary police squads armed with batons, tear gas, and flash grenades, with hundreds of students arrested and jailed. The world's attention was captured when students peacefully protesting tuition hikes at UC Davis were pepper sprayed by police in cold blood.

In the face of increasing tensions and protests, state authorities are moving to clamp down on the campuses, intervening to “guide campus discussion” and criminalize criticism of both domestic and foreign policy. Under the guise of criticizing “anti-Semitism” the state government signaling that the persecution of student protesters will be tolerated or welcomed.

The resolution concludes that “strong leadership from the top remains an important priority so that no administrator, faculty, or student group can be in any doubt that anti-Semitic activity will not be tolerated in the classroom or on campus, and that no public resources will be allowed to be used for anti-Semitic or any intolerant agitation.”

Israel's Mistreatment Of Christians In The Holy Land

Israeli Officials: 60 Minutes Report on Treatment of Christians a Strategic Threat.

Diplomats Do Damage Control After On-Air Blow-Up of Israeli Ambassador

By Jason Ditz,
April 23, 2012
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

Sunday’s ’60 Minutes’ broadcast of a 12+ minute story on Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian Christians was a ‘strategic threat’ to Israel, according to top Israeli diplomats who are struggling to defend Ambassador to the US Michael Oren’s efforts to force CBS to kill the segment.

The story by reporter Bob Simon began as a segment about the disappearance of Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land, with emphasis on a family whose Bethlehem home, once on the busiest street in town, is now surrounded on three sides by Israeli military walls.

It became much more however, when Oren approached CBS before the story was even completed and demanded that the network not air the story, accusing Simon of a “hatchet job” on Israel.

Ensuring this story really was must-see TV, it included a sit-down between Simon and Oren, with Simon confronting the Israeli ambassador on his position, and insisting that he had never had a government try to kill a story before broadcast.

Oren started out smugly, insisting there was a “first time for everything,” but the segment quickly went off the rails as a visibly angry Oren insisted that the questions he was being asked “proved” that the story was a threat to Israel, and that it was his job as ambassador to see that it never saw the light of day.

Elsewhere in the interview, Oren was confronted about his government’s hostility toward Palestinian Christians, and in particular its angry condemnation of a pamphlet urging Palestinians to abandon violence and endorse peaceful protest as a means to oppose the occupation. Oren responded that the groups responsible for the pamphlet (shown in the segment to include Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican Christians) are “known” for their anti-Semitism.

Though the story more or less ends there in the US, Israeli press has been all over the story, with concerns that Oren’s behavior could do serious harm to Israel’s tourism industry, which is almost exclusively Christian in nature.

Officials maintain that Oren acted entirely appropriately, and diplomats say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “fully briefed” of the plan to try to kill the story. The Prime Minister’s office even crowed about the effort, saying that Oren’s efforts had managed to “delay” the report for several weeks.

De-Zionification Now

By Gilad Atzmon
Courtesy Of "The World News Network"

"It (immigration) was a politically motivated attempt by ministers to transform the fundamental make-up and identity of this country (Britain). It was done to destroy the right of the British people to live in a society defined by a common history, religion, law, language and traditions."


(Melanie Phillips, as quoted by mass murderer, Anders Breivik, in his manifesto)


Melanie Philips, a rabid Zionist and the author of "Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within" is not happy to be singled out by Andres Breivik in his 1500 pages manuscript. Are they suggesting that "my writing provoked the mass murder of some 93 Norwegians?" she wonders righteously on her blog. I guess that Phillips knows the answer, as much as she knows how to play with words. But I will use this opportunity to reiterate it for her, and for the rest of us -- there certainly is a clear and strong resemblance between Breivik's views and Philips' writing. The most obvious and immediate comparison is that both oppose Islamic immigration and multiculturalism of course, but it goes much further in that both identify the enemy within the 'left political circuit'.


Breivik cites Philips' take on Labour's immigration policy: "It was done to destroy for ever what it means to be culturally British and to put another 'multicultural' identity in its place."


I should clearly state here that I do not think that Philips provoked Breivik's murderous inclination. I also believe that Phillips is fully entitled to express her thoughts and ideas. Yet, it is surely reasonable to suspect that Phillips , amongst others, might have contributed to inspiring Breivik, ideologically and spiritually.


Though Phillips writes on her blog that the "the forces of spite, malice and venom (within liberal media) have been unleashed in a terrifying display of irrationality," it is obvious that it is completely rational to elaborate on the significant resemblance between Phillips' and Breivik's ideas.


Jewish media outlets in Israel and around the world are already aware of the deeply worrying fact that Breivik was inspired by right wing ideologies associated with Israel and Zionism. The JTA (The Global News Service Of The Jewish People) was quick to admit that numerous online postings, including Breivik's, attack a "mishmash of anti-modern principles" that call for "the deportation of all Muslims from Europe as well as from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip." Whether we like it or not, this 'mishmash' of 'global Islamophobia' and Israeli expansionism is the true face of contemporary Zionism and Israeli ideology.


And yet, there is a further central question that no one in the media has addressed yet: how is it that Melanie Philips is getting away with openly promoting vile Islamophobia in our midst? How is it that she and other Zionists prevail, exactly where the EDL and the BNP fail? Why is Melanie Phillips a celebrity, whilst the BNP's Nick Griffin is regarded as a vile racist, and a social outcast? Similarly, I find myself wondering what on earth the board of 'progressive' Guardian editors had in mind when they nominated the Zionist, pro-war and openly Islamohopbic Harry's Place as one of their favourite political blogs in 2005 -- bear in mind that The Guardian's nomination was made at more or less the same time that the very same Harry's Place blog won the 'Annual Islamophobia Awards 2006,' within the UK section of the Islamic Human Rights Commission's 'Annual Islamophobia Awards.'


I believe that the answer is devastating: within our so called, liberal democratic, allegedly 'tolerant' discourse -- it is only right wing Jews who are entitled and allowed to spread xenophobia and hatred.


This is hardly surprising, because unlike contemporary Westerners, who seem to be more than confused by their colonial heritage and notions such as nationalism, racism, expansionism, biological determinism, religion, and self-loving, Israel and Zionism actually celebrate all of these symptoms, in the open. It is far from surprising then, to see Israeli flags and Jewish symbols popping up in many far right gatherings in the UK and in other European countries, because Israel, it seems, makes racism look kosher.


The shocking ideological resemblance of the thoughts and ideals of the fearsome mass murderer Breivik and mainstream Zionist advocates such as Melanie Phillips, Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, and Harry's Place should surely be a bright red alert for any sensible humanist. If we want to save our society from being dragged into a violence with no end, we must de-Zionise every possible aspect of our culture, media and political institutions.

Anti-Zionism Growing Among Jews

• Image Credit: Gulf News
• The state of Israel, the manifestation of Zionism, declares IJAN, is “a colonial project that dishonours the memories of the European Jews who perished in the genocide in Europe”.

Pro-Palestine Jewish Activists and Organisations Blame Israel For 'Crimes Against Humanity'

By As'ad Abdul Rahman,
Special to Gulf News
Published: 00:00 July 9, 2011
Courtesy Of "Gulf News"

A large group of Jewish activists opposed to the Zionist ideology are challenging Israel's occupation, racist and colonial policies against Palestinians and calling for the return of Palestinian refugees.

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) of organisations and activists in western countries firmly support the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel as a moral tool in response to Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands.

The state of Israel, the manifestation of Zionism, declares IJAN, is "a colonial project that dishonours the memories of the European Jews who perished in the genocide in Europe".

Rejecting the Zionist ideology and institutions as "unjust…. leading to further entrenchment of an apartheid system and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people", the Network further indicates that such policies are implicating every Jew "in the oppression of the Palestinian people and in the debasement of Jewish heritages, struggles for justice and alliances with fellow human beings".

Along this line, IJAN has been launching campaigns to draw support to its activities, with one targeting and seeking to halt support to the National Jewish Fund, responsible since the early years of the twentieth century for capturing Palestinian lands or seizing their ownership papers.

In June 2010, IJAN hosted in Detroit, USA, the first anti-Zionist gathering, the ‘Assembly of Jews: Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid'. The gathering was declared a success. IJAN activists also joined campaigns in 2009 and 2010 in the USA, held in support of the BDS movement, led by a Palestinian coalition of civil society organisations.

Earlier in February 2009, IJAN published an appeal by an anti-colonialist Israeli citizen calling on Unesco to ‘revoke Israel's membership'. In fact, when in February, 2011, the Zionist organisations in America and around the world issued a statement condemning the BDS campaign, IJAN's 34 anti-Zionist Jewish individuals and organisations issued a counter statement declaring: (a) The BDS activities "are a moral tool of non-violent, peaceful response to more than 60 years of Israeli colonialism, and (b) "Rightfully place accountability on Israeli institutions (and their allies and partners) that use business, culture and academic ties to white-wash Israel's responsibility for continuing crimes against humanity".

These anti-Zionist Jewish activists and organisations put the blame for ‘crimes against humanity' on Israel and its colonial structure in order to prevent blaming all Jews for the actions of Israel.

They have categorically rejected the label of anti-Semitism attached by the Zionists to the BDS campaigns, saying such "campaigns the world over are not rooted in anti-Jewish sentiment against the daily, brutal occupation of Palestine and military threat to the region by the state of Israel."

False claims of anti-Semitism, according to IJAN, "distort the true nature of the Palestinian struggle and are an affront to, and betrayal of the long history of Jewish survival and resistance to persecution".

Such groups of Jewish activists are asserting the need "for justice in Palestine which does not include the domination and colonisation of the Palestinian people which have made Israel a racist state that is only for the privilege of Jews".

Law Of Reciprocity

These groups of Jews around the world have always considered themselves as the voice of conscience that should sound the danger bell against persecution based on gender, race, creed, colour or ethnicity. When a certain community was being persecuted by a racist/colonial system, Jews were the first to oppose it fearing they might be the next in line to face such an action.

Conscientious Jews take to their hearts the certainty of the law of reciprocity, sent down to Moses and which stood behind the ‘Golden Rule' that says: "Treat thy neighbour as thyself". The law of reciprocity is commonly known as "what goes around shall come around".

In the Torah it says: "Who lives by the sword shall die by the sword". Where the Zionist entity is concerned, it means that who live by dispossessing others of their lives and lands, shall be dispossessed in the same way. Ending the Israeli apartheid system is the strategy of the BDS campaign backed by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, a strategy that once brought an end to South Africa's racist regime.

Indeed, conscientious Jews are opposed to the Zionist ideology being aware of the fact that its basic principle is racist and discriminatory and is bound to lead to the destruction of the Zionist entity. They are trying to protect Jewish communities from the aftermath of the predicted destruction being anticipated by every Christian fundamentalist in the West, and by Western intelligence agencies.

‘The war against terrorism' is a battle with multiple fronts designed to prevent the use of mass destruction weapons hitting Tel Aviv and major western cities, especially New York City and Washington D.C.

This is why the safety and survival of the Palestinian people are linked to Jewish survival, both, according to IJAN, are being threatened by Israel's racist and colonial Zionism.

Professor As'ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopedia.