Padraic Mac Coitir has been prompted to write by a so called split in the British Labour Party.

We have witnessed many splits in republicanism and socialism and this is one of the aspects of politics. I have to laugh though when I read about a 'split' in the British labour party.

Eight people have left and I'm sure the likes of Corbyn and McDonnell are glad to see the back of them. Since they took over the leadership of that party they've had to look over their shoulders as scumbags like Tom Watson have been undermining them at every turn.

Personally it doesn't concern me but lessons need to be learned with it. We all know that MI5 infiltrate political parties in Britain and there's no doubt they are up to their balls in political parties here in Ireland.

I have to laugh when I see some suspicious people briefing spokespeople on the steps of Stormont, Leinster House and Westminster as they face the media. Agents provocateur are there to undermine parties and obviously pass on information to their bosses in their secure offices in London and that unionist town of Hollywood.

So when I see those on our TV screens running about behind the scenes I say that I'm glad I have nothing to do with certain parties as they become even more part of an establishment that is controlled by spooks.


Padraic Mac Coitir is a former republican prisoner and current political activist.

Splits

Padraic Mac Coitir has been prompted to write by a so called split in the British Labour Party.

We have witnessed many splits in republicanism and socialism and this is one of the aspects of politics. I have to laugh though when I read about a 'split' in the British labour party.

Eight people have left and I'm sure the likes of Corbyn and McDonnell are glad to see the back of them. Since they took over the leadership of that party they've had to look over their shoulders as scumbags like Tom Watson have been undermining them at every turn.

Personally it doesn't concern me but lessons need to be learned with it. We all know that MI5 infiltrate political parties in Britain and there's no doubt they are up to their balls in political parties here in Ireland.

I have to laugh when I see some suspicious people briefing spokespeople on the steps of Stormont, Leinster House and Westminster as they face the media. Agents provocateur are there to undermine parties and obviously pass on information to their bosses in their secure offices in London and that unionist town of Hollywood.

So when I see those on our TV screens running about behind the scenes I say that I'm glad I have nothing to do with certain parties as they become even more part of an establishment that is controlled by spooks.


Padraic Mac Coitir is a former republican prisoner and current political activist.

74 comments:

  1. On the contrary, Labour has been taken over by far left extremists alien to its mainstream democratic socialist traditions. The resignation of nine Labour MPs was prompted by the most malign consequence of the far left - rampant antisemitism cloaked in the language of Soviet and Islamist antizionism as swell as Corbyn's collaboration with Brexit. I am staying with the BLP (in the perhaps forlorn hope that it can be taken back from the racists, Putinists and tankies) for now and support Tom Watson in his bid to create a democratic left alternative in the PLP to the poison of Corbynism.

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  2. Barry - was it not its democratic socialist tradition that democratically put Corbyn in? And was that not a move away from the anti democratic influence of Blairism?

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    1. Anthony

      Corbyn was elected largely because of the creation by Ed Milliband of the £3 registered supporters category in which new members could simply pay a once off payment enabling them to vote in the 2015 leadership election; Corbyn's team brilliantly exploited this loophole to the max. Many of these supporters came from Stop the War Coalition a grotesque alliance of right-wing Islamists, SWP and Stalinist Communists of which Corbyn was a Vice-Chair. He was also aided by the "moronic" decision, in the exculpatory words of Margaret Beckett, to help to put him on the ballot paper when otherwise he would not have received the required nomination of 35 MPs.

      I do accept that Corbyn won with the support of 59% of Labour Party membership in 2015 and that Labour needed a change of direction and an existential enquiry into its purpose (as Stella Creasy once said "The Labour Party has no divine right to exist") after the General Election defeat in 2015 (abstention by Labour MPs on the Welfare Bill that year on the advice of acting leader Harriet Harman also lit the touchpaper for the Corbyn bandwagon). I also accept that the Blair years did hollow out the Party.

      But Corbynism was not the direction to take. It is hardly conducive to party transparency and accountability to have the hard left controlling the key administrative organs of the Party such as the Leader's Office and the National Constitutional Committee as the revelations about the direct interference by Corbyn place people in the prosecution of antisemitism complaints are showing.

      Corbyn's version of Party democracy is the licensing of hard left activists in the Constituency Labour Parties to make life as miserable as possible for Labour MPs deemed to be insufficiently supportive of the Dear Leader ( who doesn't do "personal" but whose cultish followers most certainy do) through deselection motions and outright thuggery have driven good MPs such as Luciana Berger and Joan Ryan out of the Party.

      Although Corbyn has always been in the Labour Party he has all his political life associated with far left elements and with conspiracy theories, Holocaust deniers and reactionary Islamists to boost his anti-Western and pro-Palestinian street cred. That is why he can never be a suitable Labour leader and, more importantly, Prime Minister.

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    2. Barry - I don't follow party politicking that closely to know the internal mechanisms that get people elected. I just felt that it was more democratic system than letting the shysters in the parliamentary party decide. I think that he won despite not being able to get the 35 MPs to nominate him is telling in itself.

      I can think of no other in the BLP who would be a more suitable leader in a time of resurgent right wing nationalism. He is to be admired for his pro Palestine stance in the face of Israeli aggression and crimes against humanity. Does he bring all the authoritarian left baggage? I don't know but have no cause to doubt you. I know how they operate and corrode everything they touch.


      Can you name one person - either Tory or Labour - who held down the post going right back to Harold Wilson that made for a more "suitable" prime minister?

      Suitable to who?

      I can't think of one.

      He has been a huge disappointment on Brexit

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    3. Anthony- the "shysters" in the PLP are get their mandate from Labour voters rather than fly by night, Johnny-come-lately activists in the Constituency Parties.

      His pro-Palestine stance may be admirable to some where was his concern about crimes against humanity in Syria? And war crimes in Ukraine? Did he ever condemn human rights abuses in the former Soviet bloc. Human rights violations in his mindset are only human rights abuses committed by pro-Western forces not anyone else it would seem.

      Corbyn is mute (to put it charitably) on the role of Putin in stirring up populist right-wing nationalism across Europe most likely because of Seumas Milde, his spin doctor's, sympathy for Putin as a counterweight to "Western imperialism"

      Corbyn is not suitable to be PM because of his basic lack of decision making and deliberative experience in politics. Others decide for him and do his dirty work for him. Others such as the aforementioned Milne and his tankie comrade Andrew Murray. His handling of and role in Labour's antisemitism disgrace is further evidence of his utter unsuitability as PM.

      Tom Bower's biography "Dangerous Hero. Corbyn's Ruthless Plot for Power" is an excellent expose of his entire history of plotting and scheming in the nether regions of Labour's far left; his lying and subterranean nastiness belying his persona of unspun speaker of truth to power and pretty straight kind of guy.

      Talking of which I am also reading Tom Bower's biography of another flawed Labour leader "Broken Vows. Tony Blair. The Tragedy of Power" Riveting.

      Good luck to Liverpool this weekend and in Munich next week. Cannot allow Man Utd to hog all the CL glory!

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  3. Barry - I see it differently. The shysters get their vote not from Labour voters as such but from people who vote Labour just to make a point, are fed up with the government and probably vote Tory or Lib Dems the following election. The constituency party at least has Labour Party members in it. There is nothing more fly by night than the voter. His concern about Palestine is commendable. He opposes a war crime regime. That he does not do it in all circumstances is indefensible.

    Who from Wilson on has been more fit for PM? Others always decide and do he dirty work. There is nothing exceptional here.

    What Labour leader has not been a outright liar?

    I fully expect Liverpool to lose. Bayern are not Bournemouth.

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  4. Anthony

    My CLP has over 1,000 members in it of which 1% actually do any work leafleting, canvassing etc. The "activists" come to CLP meetings to push motions through slagging off local counsellors for not being part of what the sociologist David Hirsch calls Corbyn's "community of the good".

    All of the successors to Harold Wilson has had their flaws and skeletons in their cupboards. What marks out Corbyn as well as Trump is their utter lack of executive competence and unsavoury associates which potentially render them vulnerable to blackmail.

    Your assumption about "people voting Labour just to make a point" discounts the extent to which voting preferences remain solidly tribal in England. There are still many seats in which Labour and Tory majorities are weighed not counted.

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  5. Barry - I guess in parts of England there is entrenched support but it seems to me the floating voter is much bigger than you allow for. What else explains the extent of the victories a change of government can herald.

    Not one PM from the 1960s qualifies as a better PM than Corbyn would make. And those that were the best were Tories.


    The lack of executive competence means tome is that Corbyn is not a war criminal, has not waged illegal wars aboard, has not gunned down Irish civilian populations, is a not a paedophile or rapist, is not a loyal fan of Pinochet. Can he possibly be any worse than the 9 from the 1960s on? I find it hard to see how he could be.

    Slagging off the cosy cartel councillors is no bad thing either.

    Admittedly I am pretty ignorant of the anti-Semitism dispute but given that a lot of the accusations seem to flow from the Tories or the hard to tell the difference from Tories in Labour, the Windrush scandal tends to jump to mind

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  6. The anti-semitism ‘dispute’ is an MI5 propaganda ploy. The notion, repeated above in the comments section, that opposition to Zionism is a clever disguise for one’s hatred for Jews is not only balderdash, it is positively dangerous. Yes, we must take care not to adopt anti-semitism inadvertently but we can’t avoid reality either. The Israeli occupation of Palestine is a touchstone issue because it is a happening to have occurred post-the foundation of the United Nations. If the seizure of territory in this manner is to be accepted in this period then we have not moved forward at all. Arguably we haven’t in any event, as the happenings in Iraq exposed most saliently. Interesting exchange Barry and Tony.

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  7. Anthony

    Most of the antisemitism allegations have been from Jewish Labour and ex Labour MPs such as Ruth Smeeth, Luciana Berger and Margaret Hodge and members of the long-established Jewish Labour Movement which has seriously been considering disaffilation from the Labour Party as swell as academic analyses from David Hirsch, David Collier and Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust.

    Things have come to the stage whereby the Labour Party is to be the subject of an investigation by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission as to whether it has discriminated against Jewish people. Luciana Berger left after a torrent of rape, death and racist threats as she could no longer stay in an institutionally antismemitic party. Tom Watson is in possession of 50 complaints alone; there are 1,000 outstanding complaints concerning postings in Facebook pro-Corbyn groups with 4,000 members.

    Sean

    Your comment that the antisemitism crisis in the Labour Party is an MI5 propaganda ploy is an insult to the intelligence. Either through blissful ignorance or willfull blindness; you show no understanding of the specificity of the contemporary left antisemitism that has infected the Labour Party under Corbyn. It draws upon elements of anti-Jewishness that are found in Marxist ideology and of Soviet antizionist discourse which opposes the existence of the State of Israel on a primordial view that it was a racist enterprise as opposed to supporting a two state solution guaranteeing the rights to national self-determination of both Jews and Arab as in historic Palestine. Although distinct from the explicitly race based antisemitism of the Nazis and traditional Christian antisemitism it does draw upon tropes associated with both such as Jewish/Zionist control of the media and money and the disloyalty of Jews to the countries in which they reside. Yes Zionism as a nationalist movement is distinct from Judaism but there is no contradiction between supporting the right of Israel to exist and condemnation of the occupation of the West Bank as many Zionists do.

    Anthony

    Could Donald Trump be any worse than his flawed predecessors? I would say a big fat YES. I do not want to wait to find out if Corbyn can emulate his predecessors in No. 10. His handling of the aforementioned antisemitism saga is proof enough that he (and Trump) are threats to national security and community cohesion.

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    1. Barry - what little I know about it is that most of the complaints from within the party come from people who are not simply Jewish but supporters of the war crime regime of Israel. Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism but anti brutalism. The threat to the Jews has mostly come from the Right not the Left. Can you point me to something that shows people are being targeted within the BLP because of their Jewishness rather than their support for the war criminals? Anti-Semites are beneath contempt and should be afforded no cover. But there is very little in your response to Sean that would lead me to think the anti-Semitism allegation is not a labelling strategy. I think it very ethical to oppose war criminals. That a war criminal is Jewish is no reason to dilute the charge.

      Trump is worse than all his predecessors. We can say that because of our experience of him in office. We cannot say that about Corbyn. We know Labour had a war criminal as its leader so it is unlikely Corbyn could match that. Under Wilson and Callaghan we had the crimes against Irish people (Birmingham 6/ Guildford 4/ inter alia - we had torture, internment) so again Corbyn is unlikely to be as bad as those two. Brown oversaw foreign wars of aggression. It seems Corbyn is the best Labour leader in a long time - Kinnock/Smith/Foot never made PM.

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    2. Anthony

      I am about to go to bed so if I try to write at length about this subject I will not do justice to it. I keep promising myself to write a full length article(s) on how the relationship of Labour's antisemitism crisis to contemporary far left antisemitism.

      But I must state at the outset that those who are making the complaints are not "supporters of the war crime regime of Israel" but merely supporters of the right of the State of Israel to exist alongside an independent and viable Palestinian state as I am. We (I have recently joined the Jewish Labour Movement) emphatically do not support the policies and ideology of the Netatan yu government and DO NOT interpret all criticism of Israel as antisemitic and nor does the IHRA definition of antisemitism. What we do criticise is the demonisation of the State of Israel as somehow uniquely evil and the use of Nazi-Zionist comparisons to support this stance and other traditional antisemitic tropes such as the power of the Rothschilds and the accusation that British Jews are more loyal to Israel than their country of residence as well as holding British Jews accountable for the actions of Israeli governments. Other calumnies include Israel was behind ISIS, Mossad was behind 9/11, Israel harvests the organs of dead children I am frankly getting blue in the face from having to explain these distinctions.

      In the eyes of the part of the Left that Corbynism springs from Israel is constructed as part of the reactionary, white, capitalist world whereas movements and regimes in the developing world are seen as progressive despite dubious human rights and gender equality records e.g. Assad, the Iranian mullahs, Hamas and Hezbollah. The tie up between the far left and reactionary Islamists in Britain forms part of that worldview. I do acknowledge that you do not adhere to that worldview.

      If you have the time and inclinations these sources amplify what I am gtakling about

      Dave Rich "The Left's Jewish Problem. Jeremy Corbyn and Antisemitism" Especially Ch 7 Antisemitism under Corbyn pp. 195-238

      David Hirsch "Contemporary Left Antisemitism" Ch 2 "The rise of Jeremy Corbyn and how toleration of antisemitism came to function as a marker of belonging and Ch 7 "Antizionism: discourse and its actualisation

      Deborah Lipstadt "Antisemitism Here and Now" inc "Progressivism and Zionism: Antisemitism by Subterfuge? pp.192-204 and "Myopia: Seeing Antisemitism on the other side

      The Norman Geras Reader "What there is there" Part II "The Longest Hatred: Antisemitism" pp.133-134.

      The weblog Harry's Place www.hurryupharry.org and the independent blogger David Collier who has researched links to Holocaust denial and white supremacist and other antisemitic sites from groups from sites administered b y the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (who disgrace the legitimate cause of Palestinian rights) are online sources.

      Corbyn will most unlikely be a war criminal but will most likely suck up to war criminals like Putin and Assad because of his view of NATO as "an aircraft carrier for capitalism. Just as Trump has facilitated racism and anti-Muslim hatred in the USA and the Brexiteers likewise in Britain so Corbyn has with antisemitism which makes him (and the Donald and whatever Hard Brexiteer successor to the Maybot) unfit to be leader of a still major democracy.

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    3. Barry - the Israeli state is evil. Any state that does to Gaza what the Israelis have done is noting short of evil. I don't regard it as uniquely evil but what gives its evil a unique character is that what it does to Gaza and the Palestinians is something that for so long happened to Jewish people. They should have learned rom rather than copied war crimes and crimes against humanity.
      Your distinction is not going to work for many people - those who supported the right of Apartheid South Africa to exist cannot easily dissociate from the apartheid regime. Those who support the right of the war crime state of Israel to exist face similar problems. It is no crime to dissent from the two state solution; it is no crime to favour a single state with no built in religious majority.

      War criminality is the salient point of comparison with the Nazis. It is a justified comparison. Why Israel does not like it is simply because they know the effect of it being stated: how can you, a people who were the victims of state sanctioned war crimes, allow this to be done in your name?

      We are now getting admissions from the Israelis that they have been cooperating with Al Qaeda - so do not be so eager to dismiss all such suggestions as calumnies.

      I will probably not get the time to read the stuff you mention although I have read both Lipstadt and Geras, the first in particular on matters relating to David Irving.

      As for Corbyn, you have yet to point out which of the previous Labour PMs was more fit to hold the position than him.

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  8. Barry why don't you have any problem with Zionism...? There is a huge difference between being a jew and being a Zionist. And a week or so ago you asked on The Spiked online piece about freedom of speech/expression would Brendan O'Neil allow for the views of Mein Kampf and Der StĂĽrmer to be challenged. Short answer is yes. Just recently O'Neil was on William Crawleys BBC Ulster Talkback show challenging the anti muslim brigade within the Tories and he finished off touching on the similarities that certain Labour heads have separating Jews from Zionism..(you have that problem)...You should listen to Crawley 12-13.30 Mon-Fri..He is fair and balanced...(Brendan O'Neil appears on his show on a regular basis..)

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    1. Frankie

      Actually I do have a problem with the type of Zionism exemplified by the current Israeli government: chauvinistic populist nationalism a la Orban, Trump, Erdogan and have always opposed the occupation of the West Bank and building of settlements. It may surprise you but many self-professed Zionists (of the left-wing variety) also do.

      Sorry to disappoint, but I am not going to resile from my support for the two-state solution nor from the historical necessity of a Jewish homeland in the midst of the transformative event for Jews that was the Shoah/Holocaust (a necessity recognised by none other than Leon Trotsky; take note SWPers).

      Yes, Zionism is a distinct from Judaism but the distinctions between antisemitism and antizionism is not as easily separated as antizionists claim as the literature that I have cited and engaged with shows.

      Anthony

      I am not going to be drawn on which previous Labour PM was more fit to hold the position than Corbyn; all achieved major things but disappointed at the end.

      I guess we are never going to agree on the legitimacy of the State of Israel ( so let's agree to disagree because, from personal experience, such disagreements often descend into personal rancour and life is too short to lose friendships over stuff that do not actually matter to our daily lives as opposed to our ideological and ethical worldviews.

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    2. Anthony

      Here is just one example of the antisemitism virus in the Labour Party.

      The article tells the story of an image shared by Liverpool Labour activist Kayla Bibby of the Statue of Liberty with the tentacles of the Rothschilds and the Star of David superimposed on it What makes this offence particularly egregrious is that the wording visible on the bottom left had side of the photo which is "Incog Man"which is a far-right website and the picture Ms Bibby shafred came from a 2016 post on the site, titled "Bloodsucking Alien Parasites Killing America"

      So who are these parasites. For a start black... who still biking the slavery guilt, even though few White people have any ancestry" and that "our once beautiful cities are filled with lazy-ass, criminal blacks" but black lag behind to "the parasitic, Whitish looking, chameleon Jew... the virus that destroyed the proactive, protective White T-cells. If you can stomach any more read the full article below:

      https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/kayla-bibby-and-the-ever-present-question-on-labour-antisemitism-malevolence-or-stupidity-1.481299

      The other important point to note is the original decision not to suspend Ms Bibby from the Labour party was taken on the grounds that the image was "anti-Israel, not anti-Jewish"

      According to a Sunday Times investigation into closed pro-Corbyn FB groups such as Palestine Live and JC4PM in March 2018 such posting was prolific and, likewise, the researcher David Collier's analysis of the Facebook pages of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign revealed similar ordure.

      I really must write an article(s) for TPQ on this hobbyhorse of mine if only to distract myself from the tensions of the promotion race!

      You are welcome to interpret the said image in any way you want if you want to engage with it.

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    3. Barry,..

      Actually I do have a problem with the type of Zionism exemplified by the current Israeli government:"

      Every right minded thinking person on this rock has a problem with the current (and previous) Israeli Gov.

      You said you have issues with a certain type of Zionism. I am asking what part of Zionism you don't have issues with..What Zionist's get your vote? We know Netty wont get it...No one gets my vote.

      "I am not a Zionist because I am not a Jew; I would describe myself as an antiantizionist because I have serious issues with aspects of antizionist discourse not least the tendency to draw upon ancient conspiracy theories about Jewish power."

      You do not have to be Jewish to be a Zionist. Dr Martin Luther King is a classic example. The fact that some public figures who are openly Zionist also happen to be part of one of the biggest banking dynasties this rock has spawned, is simply a fact not a conspiracy.

      Barry, you want to ban 'BDS' for reasons that are your own..Sean made the point..

      Sean Not all Zionists are Jews. If not all Zionists are Jews then it is automatic that anti-Zionism does not conflate to anti-semitism. The true intent of this anti-semitism ruse is not to protect the Jewish people from undue discrimination, which they are rightly entitled to, but to bring people to heel. We see this playing out now in the United States too, with the attacks on the Democrat Omar Ilhan."

      Some of of the call outs on Ilhan Omar are justified but the vilification she has received is wrong. But has questions to answer...

      In an August primary debate held in a synagogue to specify “exactly where you stand” on BDS, Omar said that BDS was “not helpful in getting that two-state solution


      While recently tweeting her support for BDS....

      Ilhan Omar goes to a synagogue and tells a bunch of Jews she opposes BDS, gets their votes and becomes a member of the US Congress then tweets her support for BDSIrsael and #BDSSaudi #murderedjournalist

      Barry, whats your take on Ilhan Omar's turn around on BDSIsrael? And in the wake of the Jamal Khashoggi murder, do you agree/support her in BDSSaudi?


      Ilhan Omar is really no different to any other politician and will say anything to elected..and to stay elected.






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  9. It is evident from Barry’s replies not only that he mistakes or downplays the fundamental role of Intelligence in the working and direction of society — it seems he actually believes democracy is real and that the British Government governs through ‘sovereign’ Parliament and parliamentary process — but that he himself, too, is in fact a Zionist (though I could be wrong).

    Not all Zionists are Jews. If not all Zionists are Jews then it is automatic that anti-Zionism does not conflate to anti-semitism. The true intent of this anti-semitism ruse is not to protect the Jewish people from undue discrimination, which they are rightly entitled to, but to bring people to heel. We see this playing out now in the United States too, with the attacks on the Democrat Omar Ilhan.

    Those directing this insidious agenda serve not the people or the interests of the people but are agents of power and its continuing grip on society. They undertand fully the deceptive power of propaganda and have moulded these hate charges quite successfully to achieve a specific purpose — delegitimising opposition sections that they cannot more fully control, that they might better control them.

    This is nothing to do with conspiracy theories about British Jews running Britain from behind for the advance of Israel and its interests. It relates only to the realities of power and now politics actually works at the level of reality, not facade. Ultimately, all politics is power and power will use any means to uphold its position.

    As an aside, if Barry is in fact a Zionist then that is his business and he has the right to hold to that position. It does not, however, mean that the rest of the world must sit mute to the crimes carried out in the name of that project — whether that good old anti-semitism charge be levelled against them or not.

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    1. Barry - Amy Goodman, in 2002 in a discussion with Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli cabinet minister, teased out the point I seek to make in these discussions.

      Amy Goodman: Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called anti-Semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?

      Shulamit Aloni : Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic. And the organization is strong, and has a lot of money, and the ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong and they are strong in this country, as you know. And they have power…

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  10. Barry - if you are unable to cite which former Labour PMs were more fit for the position than Corbyn might be, it seems good enough reason to think Corbyn might be ok. I personally think they are all much of a muchness and have never got enthused about Corbyn. He sounds no where near as coherent on Brexit as Blair which is unfortunate because it is pretty clear what Blair is.

    Fair enough on Israel - it is not its legitimacy I am questioning but the right of people to dissent from that legitimacy without being categorised an anti-Semite for it.

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    1. Anthony

      First of all well done Liverpool for seeking off Alastair Campbell's lot! The dream is still on for both of us despite Raheem Sterling's offside goal to give City the lead last night.

      I do not seek to describe all of Israel's critics including those like you who advocate a one-state solution as antisemitic. But it is important not to allow legitimate criticism of Israel and Palestinian advocacy to segue in to antisemitic tropes consciously or unconsciously which is one of the cruxes of the BLP's current imbroglio on antisemitism real or imagined. It is no more appropriate for an Israeli government minister to shut down debate on the plight of the Palestinians by referring to the Shoah/Holocaust than it is for critics of the Catholic Church to be denigrated as "anti-Catholic" or critics of certain Islamic practices and regimes as "Islamophobic"

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  11. Barry - Burnley are not Bayern or Barca!! Didn't watch it - told my son I had no interest in watching Liverpool draw against Burnley. Got that part wrong anyway.

    I don't advocate a one state solution. I just happen to think it is legitimate to advocate one just as it is legitimate to advocate a two state solution. And I think it is wholly legitimate to dissent from attempts to smear people as anti-Semite when they are anti-Israel. I don't happen to believe in Catholic states, Jewish states, Muslim states, Hindu states. The democratic state in so far as it exists should stand up for its citizens not a section of them.

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  12. Barry, I am seriously struggling to understand a few things you keep mentioning. When to talk about democracy does it mean democracy or only if it suits your agenda. When Americans voted in the Donald you complained. When the BLP voted in Corbyn you complained..same with the Brexit vote. Also what part of Zionism sits ok in the space between your ears...?


    Why did you join the Jewish labour movement?

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    1. Frankie

      To turn your question on its head; what is it about your obsession with Zionism that you insist on interrogating me in your part aggressive, part patronising tone (what I mean by that is your use of phrases such "the space between your ears" and "You are hard work, Barry") on my views on it?

      I am not a Zionist because I am not a Jew; I would describe myself as an antiantizionist because I have serious issues with aspects of antizionist discourse not least the tendency to draw upon ancient conspiracy theories about Jewish power. Other than that I am under no obligation to engage with the last question in the first paragraph of your post.

      I have joined the Jewish Labour Movement as an act of democratic socialist and antiracist solidarity with Jewish Labour MPs like Luciana Berger, Ruth Smeeth and other members who have the subject of the most disgusting abuse from far right and far left racists and in protest at the abject failure of the Labour leadership to deal with the racism that is disfiguring the party I traditionally support but who just about remain a member of.

      On democracy, I support the liberal representative model in which MPs rather than acting as delegates deliberate in the public interest and in which there are effective checks and balances and separation of powers. This model sits very uneasily with the direct, plebiscitory model as the Brexit disaster shows.

      I have made these points before; you either willfully ignored them or were too lazy to take notice.

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    2. Barry - why should "Jewish power" be seen as anti-Semitic when Catholic power or Islamic power is not seen in comparative fashion? I can see how it is often used in an anti-Semitic tone but it does not always follow that it is. If there is there such a thing as Jewish power should people not be free to describe it in a factually correct manner rather than search for a politically correct alternative to it? We see this type of thing regularly in the Asian rape gang terminology debate. The PC mob move to silence the use of the term Asian gang but don't mind so much if a term like a white English gang is in use.

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  13. The issue with Zionist Israel, contrary to how its supporters prefer to present things, is not its right to exist. The issue is its right to exist on the land of the Palestinian people, indeed at the expense of their genocide. Upon what right does the state of Israel stand on the land of Palestine? What right do Zionists have to mount their state there, given that an entire body of people who already lived there, on those lands, were forced off of those lands? What supposed right permitted this is the question Zionists prefer to dodge by reverting to the anti-semitism charge, quite obviously because there is no right to undertake such an action in the first place — other than the illegal ‘right’ of conquest.

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    1. Sean

      Those are your opinions and you are entitled to them. I would respectfully point out that since both Jews and Arabs are indigenous peoples in historic Palestine (some Arabists argue that historically Palestine belongs to Syria) then both are entitled to live there and to have their national rights to self-determination enshrined in a two-state, one-state or any other mutually agreed arrangement. I would also point out that the State of Israel came into being as a result of a vote by the UN General Assembly in 1947; the UN tends not to admit settler-colonial states into its ranks.

      You also neglect to engage with the materiality and transformative effect of the Shoah/Holocaust on Jewry; for those European Jews who survived the extermination processes of the 1930s and 40s Zionism, rather then Bundism and assimilationism, was the only say forward and that Palestine was the destination of choice for the vast majority of Jewish displaced people in Europe in 1945-46.

      Sean, you talk of the "genocide" of the Palestinian people. It is a word that you resolutely refused to use in a TPQ post in the summer of 2017 in relation to the experiences of another Muslim community - the Rohyinga people of Myanmar/Burma- at the hands of the Burmese military and Buddhist nationalist mobs.

      It is a word that is absent from your support for the "anti-imperialist" Assad regime which in a far more planned and indiscriminate way ten times more Muslims that does Israel.

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  14. The comment accompanying this piece is:

    "This is an explicitly racist remark from the grotesque Netanyahu, and anyone who attacks Labour for its defence of the Palestinians as 'anti-Semites' is guilty of the most preposterous Orwellian 'blackwhite' thinking."

    "'Israel Is the Nation-state of Jews Alone': Netanyahu Responds to TV Star Who Said Arabs Are Equal Citizens

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    1. Anthony

      It certainly a grotesquely racist statement meant most likely to attract far right nationalist voters in the forthcoming elections and to deflect attention away from the corruption investigation into him.

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  15. The vile Greville Jenner used to call Geoffrey Dickens MP an 'antisemite' when he was endeavouring to expose the filth in positions of power. Lest we forget.

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  16. Barry - I would hazard a guess and say stupid. But we must always allow for the malevolence. Why I say stupid is because who in their right mind writes to a website they know to be far right/Nazi and ask for a photo?

    This is hardly an attitude that defines Labour, it being more to the periphery than the core.

    While it should be rebutted, it pales into insignificance against the crimes of those who act as propagandists for the war crime regime. I suppose at least, the official acknowledgement by the Israeli PM of Israel's apartheid nature is another nail in the coffin of its claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East.

    Sean Mallory in his piece scheduled for today makes some short but valid observations on the matter.

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    1. Anthony

      Unfortunately it is precisely such peripheral ordure that has migrated to the core since Corbyn became leader and I can furnish plenty more examples of such e.g. Joan Ryan MP former head of Labour Friends of Israel (LFOI) who is of Irish heritage was told she "should be shoved back into the ovens". I really need to say, admittedly as a Gentile, that membership of LFOI and the broad identification of 93% of British Jews with Israel most certainly does not represent acting as "propagandists for the war crime regime".

      I would like to know who in the BLP acts as propagandists for the "war crime regime"? For I would say that more than a few apologists for the antisemitic racists in the BLP also act, like for example Chris Williamson MP, as apologists for the war crime regimes in Moscow and Damascus as as well as the criminal regime in Caracas.

      As I shall explain when I get round to writing an article for you guys on this stuff it has been the pathological obsession with the existence of Israel on the hard left fringes (as opposed to reasoned advocacy for the Palestinian cause and reasoned critique of Israel's wrongdoings) and its symbiosis with Soviet style antizionism which has seeped into the mainstream since JC became leader that is the basic cause of Labour's antisemitism crisis.

      I am sorry if I appear to be like the proverbial dog with a bone on this matter but as a natural Labour supporter and member I feel visceral anger at what is being done in my name by the Labour Party's cavalier attitude towards the grievances expressed by our Jewish members and Jewish community organisations; the same visceral anger that many in Labour justifiably felt towards Tony Blair's Iraq venture and the deception therein.

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    2. Barry,

      I don't see this migration from the periphery to the core borne out. If it was at the core we would have the shadow cabinet giving expression to it and the bulk of the parliamentary party. It seems to me that the discourse around this is fuelled by unhappiness at Corbyn - a stick to beat him with. Who told this woman she should be shoved back into the ovens - a member of parliament, a shadow minister or some anonymous letter? If the latter which it seems it was you can hardly cite it as evidence of abuse having moved to the core. It has all the status of an anonymous troll - sure we even get them on TPQ at times.

      Anybody in the BLP who seeks to normalise the state of Israel while refusing to call for its leaders to be tried for war crimes are in my view propagandising for the war crime regime. It is like saying Assad builds good hospitals and is secular while ignoring the war crimes. That is propaganda. Israel is a war crimes regime. How can it possibly be normalised?

      You will hear no defence from me for those in the BLP who are propagandists for Syrian war criminals.

      I see it wholly different from you: it is those who are pathologically obsessed with ignoring Israeli war crimes who need our disapproval much more than the fools or fuckers who shout Jewish whore.

      Are the Palestinians treated any better under Israeli occupation than the Jews were prior to WW2 in Nazi Germany? If they are I would like to know how. How can a people with cultural roots in pre war Germany allow this to happen in their name?

      This is where I think the real comparison between Apartheid Israel and Nazi Germany lies - the Holocaust or Shoah as you sometimes refer to it is a league on its own.

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    3. Barry - I think your visceral anger is having a negative impact on your judgement. The evidence for that is that what goes on in the BLP seems to trouble you more than Israeli war crimes. You condemn them but they do not seem to induce the same visceral anger in you.

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  17. Anthony

    With the greatest respect, you are positing a false choice. The issue of antisemitism in the BLP despite its tangenital relationship to the Israeli/Palestine conflict is a qualitatively different one. When you say, that "Israeli war crimes do not seem to induce the same visceral anger" as what goes on in the BLP I feel, I am sorry to say, that I am being guilt tripped or reproved for not feeling the appropriate emotions. I do not react well to any such judgmentalism. You have a particular perspective on Israel. I get that. I do not propose to interrogate you on it. My view is that there are two competing narratives; both having the commonality of respective diasporic and transformative experiences (i.e. the Jewish Shoah/Holocaust and Palestinian Naqba) with neither seriously understood or taken seriously by the other (hardly surprising as the Naqba is not taught in Israeli schools and the Holocaust is taught in schools controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas). I endeavour to read as much scholarship from both sides as I can: best book recently IMO is Ian Black's "Enemies and Neighbours. Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017".

    Be assured that I feel the same visceral disgust for the populist racist nationalism of Netanyahu as I do for that of Orban, Putin, Erdogan, Trump and Brexiteers and the vile individuals (normally so PC when it comes to Asian grooming gangs, etc) who (with at least the tacit approval of High Command) who have spread their far left (and even far right) antisemitic poison throughout the BLP.

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    1. Barry - comment can be made on the incongruity of a position held without there being intent to guilt trip. How you react to what you call such judgementalism is of no concern to me. We are not or at least should not be snowflakes. I have no recollection whatsoever of you expressing visceral anger to the war crime state of Israel. When pressed you acknowledge that the Israeli state has on occasion carried out atrocities. That you uses the term visceral to describe your anger at something that seems more manufactured than real merits comment. If you are not guilty of bias, double standards and wilful inconsistency then you will hardly be guilt tripped.

      The more you argue the case for the existence of widespread anti-Semitism within the BLP, the less persuasive you make the case for its existence. Trying to relocate what exists on the fringe to the centre is the stuff that conspiracy theories are made of. There may well be a case but you have failed to make it.

      My perspective on Israel is much as it is on other brutal regimes who think citizenship is for one section of its people and use massive force and brutality to enforce it.

      My belief in the Palestine cause is not because of any admiration for Arab or Palestinian nationalism but is largely down to my feeling that the "Never Again" concept has to be something other than a mere slogan. When I look at Nazi Germany prior to 1938 and I look at Israeli occupied Palestine I think Never Again is simply a slogan for many people, a nice soundbite.

      Do you really think the Jews in Nazi Germany prior to WW2 were treated worse than the Palestinians of today are treated by Israel? I don't think they were. And how the Jews then were treated is appalling. That makes me very angry when I read it or watch it. Even to read a writer as allegedly thoroughly biased as Daniel Goldhagen, and absorb the experience of the Jews, induces anger that is close to visceral. Why would I park that anger in today's world? War crime states should be shunned not courted. And when the people in the BLP speak up and out against the war crime state of Israel, they should be applauded.


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    2. Anthony

      I had made a lengthy response to your last post but my Wifi went down in midstream. So for the sake of brevity, here is a summary.

      I reject the contention that the Labour Party antisemitism crisis is not a manufactufred onde. My belief that it is not will be strengthened should a current Metropolitan Police investigation find evidence of hate crimes that Labour bureacrats has not acted upon and an inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into alleged institutional antisemitism finds evidence of it.

      I accept that the examples of Labour AS are anecdotal; when I talk of AS having migrated from the periphery to the core by the core I mean the supposed mass membership of Corbyn's New Model Labour Party and the Constituency Labour Parties which are the sites of the Corbynista insurgency against the "Blairite, Red Tory" PLP and the AS controversy is one battle site in this struggle.

      Nazi Germany and Anti-Apartheid comparisons with Israel; yes the Bantustan conditions of the Palestinian Arabs on the West Bank bear comparison with South African Bantus in what can be legitimately termed a settler-colonial enterprise. But within the State of Israel, Arabs have the right to vote, form political parties and do not have to access separate municipal and restauraunt facilities in a parliamentary democracy which has a thriving civil society, activist judiciary - a democratic culture which I grant is being eroded by the toxic effects of the Occupation and of Netananyu's chauvinist nationalist project. Yes Arabs face discrimination in jobs property allocation in East Jerusalem but there can be no comparisons with the Nuremberg Laws, the Group Areas Act, Bans on Interracial Marriage and Sexual Relations as in SA in the apartheid era. But avowedly secular states like France have serious issues with institutional racism towards communities of North African heritage but which is concealed by the French state's resolute refusal to collect data on ethnicity.

      All of the above necissitateses a TPQ article(s). I am now ceasing comments on this thread apart from a formal condemnation of the author's name calling of Tom Watson and his casual dismissal of AS in the Labour Party.

      I need to go out now and do my newsheet deliveries in order to earn a few pence.

      Come on, you Kloppites!

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  18. Barry Gilheany would do well to note that aggression is a crime of Nuremberg stature — not just according to opinion but by legal definition according to the UN Charter. Though he brushed the matter aside earlier, it remains that the Zionist entity stands on the lands of the Palestinian people, its right to do so devolving from nothing other than the right of conquest — a medieval notion which of course the UN Charter has since classed as aggression and holds as a Nuremberg offence. Though he may attempt to downplay the stature of Zionist Israel — a clear war criminal state — like the efforts to present criticism of Zionist crimes as anti-semitic, it simply does not wash.

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  19. Sean

    You talk of crimes of aggression which describes perfectly the wars which Israel's Arab neighbours launched against it in 1948 (after the UN General Assembly vote to bring the Jewish state into existence), 1956, 1967 and 1973 (all within a generation of the Holocaust) to "liberate", in your words, Palestine from the "Euphrates to the Med" i.e. drive Jdews into the sea. You are entitled to your view that the "Zionist entity" (to borrow the words of those progressive democrats Sadddam Hussein and the Iranian allies) derives its right to exist from "the right to conquest". Obviously the UN did not think so in 1947.

    But, more fundamentally, you do not have a moral leg to stand on when you talk of Zionist Israel as a "clear war criminal state" when your social media pages are plastered with support for the war criminal state of Bashar al-Assad's Syria; when you are on record as stating that Britain was responsible for that sarin gas attack on Gouta in August 2013. It was Britain's and the USA's failure to uphold their professed "red lines" on the use of chemical weapons in Syria that has led to Syria becoming a site for the Great Game for Russia, Turkey, Iran and, yes, Israel.

    It is your attempts, Sean, to portray refugee survivors from the pograms of Eastern Europe and Russia at the turn of the 20th century and from the Shoah/Holocaust as conquerors that will not wash not my views on the virus of antizionist inspired antisemiism in the Labour Party which I can and will evidence.

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  20. Unable to present anything substantial as to what right, other than that of conquest, the Zionist entity was stood on the historic land of Palestine, Barry Gilheany instead resorts to the trusty tactic of ‘whataboutery’. If he thinks this in any way alters that Zionist Israel is a war criminal state, guilty of a clear breach of the Nuremberg standard, then he fools none but himself. Seeking to dismantle the criminal Israeli entity and attempting to drive Jews into the sea are not one and the same thing. Only the brainwashed, unaware that Arab and Jew lived together on the land of Palestine for century upon century, would ignore the actual dynamic of the Arab-Israeli conflict and present it as though the outworking of anti-semitism — the brainwashed or the paid trolls of the Zionist that should really say.

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  21. Sean

    You seem to undermine your own position by acknowledging that Arab and Jew (or those Jews not dispersed to the four winds by the Romans) lived for centuries in Palestine. It is precisely the fact that Jews were/are indigenous people to that region of the Middle East helps to underpin the Zionist case for a national homeland for the Jewish people, surely?

    Sean, you raise the crime of aggression as formulated at Nuremberg. This is purely an opinion which has never been formally adopted by the International Court of Justice or written into the laws of states like the US and UK. A pity actually because if it had we would not have had to live with the consequences of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But there you go.

    But I have not got time or space to adjudicate on the validity and veracity of respective ethnic groups claimms to historic Palestine. But since you mention "the war of conquest" perhaps you could explain which sovereign state attacked which sovereign state as this is the principle supporting the Nuremberg crime of waging aggressive war based as it is on the Westphalian model of international relations. Since the Zionist project commenced long before the Second World War so I cannot see how the Nuremberg judgment can be applied retrospectively.

    To repeat my support for the right of Israel to exist (as opposed to its conquest of the West Bank) rests on the UN Resolution that brought in into existence. Let's hope and strive for a similar resolution to support an independent Palestinian state.

    You still do not engage with the materiality of the Holocaust and the fact that 85% of displaced European Jewish persons in 1945 wished to go to Palestine

    Yes maybe there is a difference between dismantling the "criminal Israeli entity " and driving Jews into the sea. Such a distinction would be lost on the residents of Siderot regular recipient of Hamas rockets and certainly Hezbollah's head honcho Nasrallah who welcomes the concentration of Jews in Israel so that they can be more easily wiped out.

    And how is the State of Israel to be dismantled? By the tried and tested method of "armed struggle" which you endorsed so enthusiatically in your tribute to the two Brendans. That worked out very well in the North/Northern Ireland/Six Counties; didn't it?

    Lastly, I am not a paid troll of the Zionist (why the association of Jewry with filthy lucre) or any other foreign entity such as Putin's Internet Research Agency (IRA Wow!). While on the subject of Vlad is he not waging aggressive war in Ukraine? And what are the differences between the war crime regime of his chum Bashar and that of his neighbour to the south? Sorry to play the whataboutery tune again but the two words that make up that artificial noun was a staple of Provo (and the alphabdet soup of loyalist terrorism) self-justificatkion throughout the entirety of the Troubles

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    1. Barry, help me out. Anytime I say that once Balfour's 5th draft of his treaty was agreed over a dinner table in 1917 you call me 'mad' You rant and rave how Israel was created after some UN treaty to give Jewish people a homeland after the horrors they suffered in WW2...

      Then why say this to Sean..

      Barry "Since the Zionist project commenced long before the Second World War so I cannot see how the Nuremberg judgment can be applied retrospectively."

      My question is how long before WW2 was the Zionist plan put into action? Why not over a dinner table in 1917?



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  22. Barry – we shall have to hold judgement until there are findings from both bodies because to date (and I glance at it rather than follow it) I don’t see much that would support a charge of institutional anti-Semitism. Anecdotal examples do not ultimately get the matter across the line.

    There is certainly a deep anti-intellectualism strain in political circles including the BLP which attempts to suppress free inquiry and thwart the promotion of ideas that run counter to the those propagated by Israel. The very consistent statement by Sayeeda Warsi, that people in the UK should not be allowed to join a brutal force like the IDF, was met with howls of opprobrium and suggestions of anti-Semitism.

    Even within the core of Corbyn support where is the actual anti-Semitism as distinct from the criticism of Israeli policy?
    And who is carrying out these Nazi/South African type policies in the occupied territories? The Israeli state. Yet when authentic comparisons of it with Nazi Germany are made you are inclined, in spite of the evidence in front of your eyes, to level the allegation of anti-Semite.
    And as you accept the internal democracy of Israel is being eroded all the time.
    The practices and policies against the Palestinians in the Occupied areas are on a par with the Nuremburg laws. There is nothing anti-Semitic in pointing it out.

    The result against Bayern will only have sustainable value if they manage to avoid a draw against Fulham.

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    1. Anthony

      No comment until I write a substantive article(s) on BLP antisemitism and related matters. You are entitled to your views and not to have them censored. I am entitled to critique/disagree with them and I will in my forthcoming articles.

      I expect Liverpool to breeze past Fulham's non-existent defence.

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    2. Barry - they just about scraped by the non existent defence.

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  23. It remains as is Barry — you have offered nothing of substance as to based on what right the Zionist state stands on Palestine, other than one based upon conquest. A certain group of people sharing the same religion wishing to locate themselves somewhere does not give them the right to remove those who already reside there that they might do so — no matter the horrors they experienced themselves beforehand. That is the material reality and it is reflected in the Nuremberg standard. You have offered no right other than that of conquest, regardless how you seek to deflect. You cannot expropriate the lands of others, even by legal fiction, and present it as though anything else. The Zionist state will hopefully be dismantled by those who live on that territory, both Arab and Jew, and a united state of Palestine formed on its bones that respects both sides equally and allows all to prosper together in freedom and peace. Your warped view of armed struggle is irrelevant but comes as no surprise.

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    1. I take it you reject the legitimacy of the 1947 UN resolution that brought the State of Israel as legal fiction. Just seeking clarification.

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  24. Seán it should be obvious to you that some commentators on here agree with armed struggle just as long as it's the 'armed struggle' carried out by NATO, Israel and its proxies. Everybody else is wrong and are to be condemned. I know it's pathetic to toady after NATO fans but it is what's desired by some.

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    1. I expect you will take notice but I support a rules based international system where force is the last resort not the first resort. I actually oppose the taking of human life except in extreme conditions of self-defence or lawfully mandated military operations and even then beligerents have a legal and moral duty to avoid as far as possible the loss of civilian life.

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    2. These NATO cheerleaders often speak out of both sides of their mouths. They deliberately ignore international law when it suits and embrace it when it too suits. These cheerleaders virtue signal that they are all for equality etc etc but don't seem too no plussed in egging on the bombing of innocents of folk of a Muslim orientation. I am sometimes wonder do these fanatics realise the terror and damage that is visited upon a country when NATO is unleashed on a country. These same people would speak out of the other side of their mouths if it was a predominantly Christian/white country that was to be bombed by NATO......but there isn't a racist bone in their bodies of course!

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    3. Wolfe Tone

      Amidst all the straw men you construct two statements jump out: first "these cheeerleaders .. don't seem too nonplussed in egging on the bombing og innocent folk of a Muslim orientation" This from somebody who looked forward with relish to the eradication of "limb choppers" of the Sunni Muslim persuasion in Idlib by Assad's and his hired Russian bombers having previously "liberated" (in the words of the Morning Star) Eastern Aleppo.

      Secondly, you wonder about the reaction of NATO cheerleaders "if a white/Christian country was to be bombed?" Do you not rememember the bomdardment of Serbia two decades ago as a result of Milosevic's ethnic cleansing of Muslim Albanians?

      Those "fanatics" from the Syrian Democratic Forces have been reluctant to speed up the demolition of the last redoubt of ISIS becasue of the risks ito the lives of civilian non-combatants.

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  25. Shillheany’s found another one, God he’s good. And noble to do all this phobe hunting for free , cause he cares like.

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    1. Daithi

      "Shillheany", have you OD'd? Personally I prefer the "Batty Gilhooley" moniker of Grouch vintage.

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    2. It was that or Ayatollah Gilheany.

      Ps Grouch used his vast lexicon to great effect with Henry Joy, when he was good he was brilliant.

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  26. Barry - if you up your game for the article I am sure you will find receptive minds. Things I normally di not notice now seem to be leaping out at me from the pages each time I open the news feed. There was a great long read post in the Guardian which we will run here (in art plus link) given its strength, on why anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism are not the same thing. I also noticed that Leeds University students did not vote in favour of following the guidelines set down by the IHRA. I imagine that being your neck of the woods or thereabouts, you will be familiar with the case. People will simply not be censored into silence about injustice by the IHRA and that is commendable.

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    1. Anthony - you confuse the location of my PhD alam mater, Essex University, with that of the team that I am a long suffering suppporter of!

      Actually there has been an antisemitism controversy at Essex but not involving IHRA. I have not actually heard about the Leeds case. What I will say that is that I do not believe that the IHRA should apply in a academic settings. There has been a lot of Israel-Palestine related strife on campus in Britain. I have read said Guardian article and may comment on it.

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    2. Barry I thought your support for the team might have put you in proximity of the city.

      I would never be guided by the IHRA on any of these matters. For example it is unthinkable that we should resile from describing as Nazi-like
      This type of attack

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    3. Anthony

      I have been a season ticket holder at Elland Road but have not been to a game up there since our 1-0 defeat by Wolves on Easter Monday 2017 whuch went a long way to derailing our promotion play off bid that season. Getting to home matches if proving well nigh impossible thanks to the Bielsa revolution!

      I will deal with the controversies relating to Israel-Nazi comparisons in my article(s). Such crimes such as the one you link to have occurred in Iraq, Afganistan, Syria, Yemen, Vietnam indeed any conflict we can think of but Nazi comparison is never invoked in those cases.

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    4. Barry - I think people often confront bullies with their own hypocrisies. In the case of Israel, a state supposedly born in response to Nazi atrocities, engages in similar atrocities. I have often read of the Israelis accusing Palestinians, Syrians and others of behaving like Nazis. The gander can sup its own sauce.

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    5. Anthony

      Nazi analogies are used by a variety of campaigners to advance dubious causes from pro-lifers, Cold War anticomunists, Brexiteers, Stalnists, Putinists. Best put a moratorium on such comparisons except with proven genocides e.g. Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, Armenians, Darfur. I propose this both to Israelis and their supporters and Palestinians and their supporters albeit speaking neither as a Jew or Arab.

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    6. Barry - if you can show a substantive difference between how the Jews were treated in pre 1938 Nazi Germany and how the Palestinians of Gaza are treated, then you might have a point. But thus far you have still to do that.

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    7. Anthony

      The difference is that Palestinians are currently being repressed by their own Hamas government for protesting about food shortages, electrity outtages and bad governance. I am saying nothing more until my article(s).

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    8. Barry - so what Hamas does wrong completely nullifies the comparison between what is happening in Gaza and what happened in pre war Nazi Germany? You must know how unconvincing that sounds. I am not a Hamas supporter - and I think the way they have treated many Palestinians - summary executions is without a scintilla of justification. That does nothing to obviate the Nazi like behaviour of Israel in respect of Gaza. A simple reflection on who is the most brutal oppressor of the Palestinians in the region should be instructive enough for you

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    9. Barry - you always say it is the last thing you will say and then come back to say more! That is what brings us back to the subject You are like a moth to a flame!!

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    10. Anthony

      I was going to start my piece today but when I look my laptop to my local library I realised I had brought the wrong adaptor to plug the damn thing into the socket!

      Never mind will start tommorrow promise! Will spend the rest of the day delivering free newspapers around Greenstead/Longridge; an estate roughly the size of the Creggan.

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  27. Again we find nowhere in the comments of Barry Gilheany the right on which the Zionist entity usurps the lands of those on whose territory the artificial Israeli state has been built, the indigenous people who already lived there. While his ilk literally seek to write that people out of their narrative, it does not wash. This approach comes as no surprise as there is, underneath all that can be said and argued, no such right that can be pointed to and defended in turn, other than that of conquest — and thus his deflections. Given that conquest, as practiced by Israel, translates into the supreme crime of aggression — a fundamental violation of the Nuremberg standard — it is no wonder he avoids getting into the detail of this matter. All Zionists are trained in this way, to avoid and deflect from the material reality of how their state came to be. There is nothing here that has not been seen a thousand times and a thousand more on top. Nowhere, no matter, does it alter the core reality of the political basis of Zionist Israel: like the occupation of Ireland, it does not have one that can be defended outside of legal fictions — fictions established to circumvent under-arching realities. While colonialism has mastered this art and has it down to a tee, despite the efforts of its defenders, Barry among them, it has yet to find means to alter fundamental reality.

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    1. SeaN

      You are entitled to your opinions and to spout them ad infinitum but never let the facts get in the way of a good smear operation

      I have never soought to defend colonialism of any sort. My recognition of the State of Israel is not approval of all the methods used to create it not least the armed struggle inspired by the struggle for Irish independence and the atrocities it led to such as the bombing of the King David Hotel. You may not want to acknowledge it but the Zionist struggle was a cause celebre of anti-imperialists, socialists and Republicans of a certain generation e.g.Donal Donnelly from Omagh who writes of his affinity and that of others like Terrence "Cheeky" Clarke with Israel in his book describing his escape from the Crum as a 17 yeafr-old in 1957.

      You still do not engage with the legal basis of the UN resolution of 1947 bringing Israel into existence nor with the transformative impact of the Holocaust on Jewry not that I expect you to do so. I can think of many exterminionist campaigns carried out by colonists such that of Native Americas, First Nations and Aborigional peoples but I cannot think of any colonists who were escaping their own extermination.

      Lastly, the Nuremberg crime of waging aggressive war related specifically to the crimes of Nazi Germany Colonial expropriations and invasions prior to the Nazi can morally be seen as crimes of aggression but in law have never been covered retrospectively by Nuremberg.

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    2. And furthermore Sean the Nuremberg "crime of aggression" precedent has only ever been cited by anti-Iraq war campaigners such ss John Pilger and George Monbiot in calls for Tony Blair to be indicted at the Hague. It has never been cited in any other context because, unfortunately, colonialism was not deemed criminal under international law (I do stand corrected though)

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  28. Yet again there is nothing of substance from Barry and in truth it is little wonder — not when in reality, outside of contrived fictions, there is no legitimate right on which Israel stands on the land of the Palestinians. Thus his extended non answer.

    The horrific experience of the Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany, while in no way to be downplayed or excused, simply does not provide legitimate right or reason to usurp lands belonging to other people.

    Likewise, whether such was the wish of a large majority of a religious or ethnic group — to locate their state on a certain territory — no matter the strength of relevant percentages, it cannot be held as though a legitimate reason to forcibly usurp the lands of others. Where do we begin or end once we permit such logic?

    This is why the Palestinian cause is so central to those who seek justice in our world, not because those who advocate for it are somehow anti-semite. It is central not because people have an aversion to the Jews but because, one way or the other, it establishes precedent — either it is not ok to violently usurp lands belonging to others or it can be allowed for depending on circumstances.

    The implications of this for peace and order in our world should be obvious without further explanation.

    The bottom line here, at the finish, is that you simply cannot have it both way — no matter how those who defend colonialism may try to do just that. That they attempt to do so by labelling as anti-semitic those who confront the Zionist entity for what it is — a colonial aggression against an indigenous people — is only the more sickening given the brutal horror experienced by the Jews, which they use to bolster their latter day defence of aggression.

    The bottom line, no matter, is that either you are for aggression or against it — as, ultimately, there is no in between. We know now where Barry stands, despite his pretensions to be a moderate. He stands on the side of the line which holds that aggression — considered by international law as a supreme crime — is not a supreme crime at all but is ok in some circumstances, which makes a mockery of his earlier citing of the Nuremberg standard.

    I rest my case unless I see something of substance in any further replies.

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  29. There are even zealot Jews opposed to Zionism and the state of Israel. What's even more ridiculous is that the Arabs and Jews are all cousins.

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2000/10/jews-and-arabs-share-recent-ancestry

    But Israel itself is becoming fascist. Screw religion. Never does anyone any good.

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  30. Frankie

    Arms exports by any state to the Chetnik genocidaires were disgraceful. I defend the right of the State of Israel to exist not the actions of particular Israel govts. End off because I am getting tired of you getting on my case on Israel matters. Ask them yourself or an appropriate Israeli NGO because I cannot be arsed.

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  31. The interesting things this discussion leads us to notice that otherwise would have slipped past

    Title
    A letter from 12 Holocaust survivors, defending Jeremy Corbyn

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