Lobby defeats Corbyn
on antisemitism definition, but Zionist leaders face Deselection
Newsletter published on September 12, 2018
(1) Lobby defeats
Corbyn on IHRA antisemitism definition
(2) Labour branches
pass No-Confidence motions against Zionist Blairite Labour MPs
(3) Corbyn refuses to
intervene to stop deselection of Zionist Blairite Labour MPs
(4) Corbyn and the
Jewish Question - Gilad Atzmon
(5) Palestinian Arab
MPs in Israel back Corbyn
(6) Jews and
Gentiles, by Gilad Atzmon
(1) Lobby defeats
Corbyn on IHRA antisemitism definition
From "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics and Engineering Physics)"
(sadanand@ccsu.edu)
Labour adopts IHRA antisemitism definition in full
By Dan Sabbagh ,The Guardian,
Labour’s ruling body has agreed to adopt the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s
definition of antisemitism in full after a tense meeting in which an accompanying
clarification put forward by Jeremy
Corbyn was not accepted.
The party leader
withdrew his additional statement when it was clear it could not be agreed
upon and instead, after a discussion that overran its allotted time by several
hours, the national executive committee
(NEC) approved the release of brief remarks emphasising freedom of expression on
Israel and the rights of Palestinians.
The most controversial passage in the draft statement
proposed by Corbyn said: “It cannot be
considered racist to treat Israel like any other state or assess its conduct
against the standards of
international law. Nor should it be regarded as antisemitic to describe Israel, its policies or the
circumstances around its foundation
as racist because of their discriminatory impact, or to support another settlement of the
Israel-Palestine conflict.”
Labour sources said Corbyn spoke about the importance of the
NEC being united on the issue and
said his statement was not formally moved. They added that there were “no votes”
on antisemitism and the party’s code
of conduct at the meeting because decisions were reached by consensus.
Corbyn spoke of Labour’s commitment to “eradicating the
social cancer of antisemitism”, the
party sources said, and recognised “deep concern and pain” across the party over the
loss of confidence among Jewish
communities.
He made no reference in the meeting to arguments about his
own conduct. Last month, a video
from 2013 reemerged that showed him
accusing a group of Zionists having no sense of English irony, prompting him to clarify that he was
using the term in a its “politically
accurate” sense.
Peter Willsman, a Corbyn-supporting member of the NEC, who
had accused Jewish Trump fanatics of
making up some of the allegations of
antisemitism in the party at its previous meeting, recused himself from the first part of the discussion
on the IHRA code before rejoining
proceedings.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews welcomed the outcome of
the meeting. Marie van der Zyl, its
president, said adopting the IHRA
definition “had to be the right call”. She said: “It is very long overdue and regrettable that Labour
has wasted a whole summer trying to
dictate to Jews what constitutes offence against us.”
The Jewish Leadership Council initially suggested that Labour
had taken a necessary step, but
later retracted that statement, saying it had been based on a “disingenuous
presentation of what the NEC
decided”.
In a second statement, the JLC’s chief executive, Simon
Johnson, said Corbyn had “attempted
shamefully to undermine the entire IHRA
definition”, adding that the free speech caveat “drives a coach and horses” through that definition. “It
is clearly more important to the
Labour leader to protect the free speech of those who hate Israel than it is to protect the Jewish community
from the real threats that it
faces,” Johnson said.
MP Chris Williamson, a close Corbyn ally, insisted the row
was overblown. “It’s been alleged
that Labour hasn’t accepted the full
IHRA definition. We have accepted the full IHRA definition. The argument is about examples,” he told
Talk Radio.
Some of the examples “fetter free speech”, Williamson said,
adding: “Jewish academics have said
these examples are not fit for purpose.”
(2) Labour branches
pass No-Confidence motions against Zionist Blairite Labour MPs
Britain: No-Confidence Motions Passed Against Leading
Blairite MPs
PAUL MITCHELL • SEPTEMBER 8, 2018
Cheers greeted the passing of a no-confidence motion, by 94 votes to 92, on Thursday night at a
meeting of Enfield North Labour Party
against Blairite Labour MP, Joan
Ryan. Ryan, who chairs the Zionist
Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), has been at the forefront of the campaign to oust Labour leader Jeremy
Corbyn.
The same evening, Labour MP Gavin Shuker also lost a
no-confidence vote after 33 members
of his Luton South local party voted
against him, with five abstaining
and only three supporting him.
Ever since the failed 2016 leadership putsch against Corbyn,
Ryan has been at the centre of the
destabilisation campaign involving MI5,
Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency against the Labour leader. Her speciality is fabricating
accusations of anti-Semitism against
Corbyn and his supporters. The goal is to discredit socialism in the hope of preventing any challenge by
the working class to austerity and
the escalating pursuit of militarism and war in the Middle East and globally.
The no-confidence motion against Ryan took place despite an
email dispatched earlier this week
by the chair of the Enfield North
Constituency Labour Party branch, Siddo Dwyer, claiming that the motion had been excluded from the
agenda.
The motion declared, “Our MP has on numerous occasions
contributed to and written articles
that have been seized upon by a press unjustly hostile to Jeremy Corbyn.” It called
on local party members to express
“no confidence in our MP Joan Ryan” and “the removal of the party whip and an open selection process for our
next parliamentary candidate.”
Ryan confirmed the anti-communist narrative that underpins
the bogus anti-Semitism campaign
against Corbyn’s supporters. Demonstrating her contempt for the membership, which in
Enfield North has grown from 300 to
1,000 since Corbyn was elected leader, she tweeted that the narrow margin was “hardly [a] decisive
victory and it never occurred to me
that Trots, Stalinists, Communists and assorted hard left would gave [sic] confidence in me. I have none in
them.”
According to the pro-Corbyn Skwawkbox blog, Ryan supporters intimidated members in charge of
ballot-counting on the
night—including threats of physical violence and at least one death threat.
Skwawkbox reported eyewitness accounts of a Ryan supporter
lunging at a young Labour Party
member, saying: “I will fucking kill you.” In a second incident against the same young
person, a Ryan supporter “threatened
to assault him and then lunged at him again”… “On both occasions, say shaken witnesses, the
Ryan supporter had to be physically
restrained by others to prevent an assault. The incidents were serious enough to be reported to
the police.”
This incident confirms that the real source of
anti-democratic violence and
thuggery emanates from the right. Not a single mainstream media outlet—including the BBC and
Guardian—has reported the attacks by
Ryan supporters, as this would undercut their lying narrative portraying Blairite MPs as political
martyrs.
In all the mainstream media coverage of Ryan, she is
presented as the victim of the same
“hard-left.” Little or nothing is said of her filthy political record.
Ryan first gained notoriety during the parliamentary expenses
scandal that dominated the headlines
a decade ago, after she claimed more than any other MP—£173,691 in 2007. In
2012, The Independent was still
reporting that “[a]t least 10 attempts have been made from computers in Parliament to remove information
about [Ryan’s] expense claims and a
further 20 efforts to delete the information, some from her constituency of Enfield North, have
also been recorded in Wikipedia’s
logs.”
In 2008, as Labour’s vice-chair and prime minister Gordon
Brown’s envoy to Cyprus, Ryan called
for a leadership election as part of a
group of 12 MPs affiliated to the Progress think-tank, seeking to replace him as prime minister for
being insufficiently Blairite.
Most significant has been Ryan’s work as chair of Labour
Friends of Israel, a lobby group
that acts as a front for the Israeli embassy and is funded by it. Israel has been a key
protagonist in the campaign against
Corbyn and his support for the Palestinian cause.
In the film The Lobby, broadcast last year by Al Jazeera,
LFI parliamentary officer Michael
Rubin declares, “We work really closely
together,” but “publicly we just try to keep the LFI as a separate identity to the embassy.”
Rubin revealed that Ryan was in almost daily contact with
Shai Masot, an Israeli embassy
staffer in London, caught on camera plotting to “take down” MPs perceived as hostile
to Israel. Masot is also filmed
discussing with leading figures in Conservative Friends of Israel, including Maria Strizzolo, a senior
aide to Education Minister Robert
Halfon and a former political director of CFI, about whether Strizzoli could help “take down” Foreign Office
deputy, Sir Alan Duncan. The affair
now looks like a practice run for the operation mounted against Corbyn.
Last month, Luton South MP Gavin Shuker was identified in the
press as one of a dozen Labour MPs
threatening to quit in the hope of
triggering a no-confidence vote in Corbyn’s leadership. Others in the group include Liz Kendall, Chris
Leslie, Luciana Berger, Iain Austin
and Ruth Smeeth.
Friday morning saw their ideological leader, Tony Blair,
confirm the anti-socialist agenda of
the planned split. Echoing Ryan’s tweet, he told the BBC he was “not sure” whether
it was possible for Labour
“moderates” to take the party back from Corbyn’s supporters, who came from a tradition on the fringe of the
party, including Communists and
“Trotskyist groups” before suggesting the emergence of a new “progressive, moderate” party in time
for the next general election.
Blair told the BBC’s Nick Robinson that voters would not
“tolerate” a situation where the
choice for the next leader of the UK was Corbyn or a Conservative Party led by Boris
Johnson: “I don’t know what will
happen and I don’t know how it will happen, but I just don’t think people will find that in the country
as a whole an acceptable choice.
Something will fill that vacuum.”
At the Enfield North meeting, Socialist Equality Party (SEP)
members distributed copies of the
WSWS perspective comment “ Reject the
anti-Semitism slurs against Jeremy Corbyn! Drive out the Labour Party right wing! ” Many stopped to talk,
explaining they wanted an end to
domination by the right wing and a fight against austerity. One Labour Party member said he wanted young
people to rise up against the high
cost of rents and housing. Another thanked SEP campaigners for the leaflet saying it had an impact, and
that young people had to drive out
the right wing.
The no-confidence motions show the sentiment among thousands
who have joined the Labour Party,
but they have no official force and leave the right wing in place. The Blairites
have no compunction over defying
Labour members and will only go if they are forced out.
Frank Field, who quit the parliamentary party by resigning
the Labour whip, faced a
no-confidence motion in his Birkenhead constituency party. But he is refusing to stand
down as a Labour MP.
Ryan declared following the vote, “Just to be clear, I am
not resigning. I am Labour through
and through and I will continue to
stand up and fight for Labour values.”
Shuker tweeted a message to his constituents that the
no-confidence vote was “not part of
any formal procedure, so it changes nothing about my role as Labour MP for Luton
South.”
Yet all Corbyn and the leaders of Momentum are calling for is
“greater democratic accountability”
in the selection process for MPs, in which Momentum “will work with NEC [National
Executive Committee] members, the
trade union movement, and [Constituency Labour Party] delegates” to “ensure the best possible rule
change is passed at this year’s
party conference to achieve this end.”
Instead of denouncing Blair as a war criminal plotting to
split his party, Corbyn urged “Tony”
to “recognise that the party membership is now much bigger than it’s ever been”
and to understand that this reflects
“aspirations” for social change and that “people are not prepared any longer to live in a
society that’s so unequal.”
Blair is fully aware of this sentiment and, like his
acolytes, is determined to prevent
such aspirations cutting across the interests of the financial oligarchy. If Corbyn
were serious about honouring the
mandate he has been given, he would be urging Labour members to expel all right-wing MPs immediately.
(3) Corbyn refuses to
intervene to stop deselection of Zionist Blairite Labour MPs
Jeremy Corbyn refuses to intervene to stop deselection of
Labour MPs
Anger over 'motion of censure' against shock Labour winner
in Canterbury - but party leader
says it 'would be wrong' for him to step
in
Rob Merrick Deputy Political Editor
Jeremy Corbyn has refused to intervene to stop the threatened deselection of some of his
backbench critics, as fourth MP faced action.
Some fellow Labour MPs reacted with anger after it emerged there will be a “motion of censure” against
Rosie Duffield, who won Canterbury in shock victory last year.
The move, to come on Wednesday night, follows comments she
has made criticising Mr Corbyn's
handling of the antisemitism row which has gripped the party in recent
months.
But, speaking to Labour MPs on Monday night, Mr Corbyn again
refused to step into what he
insisted were decisions for local Labour
branches.
Instead, he referred to Labour MPs thwarted attempt to topple
him as leader in 2016, saying: “I
know what it feels like to be the target of a no confidence vote but it would be
wrong for me to intervene in the
democratic rights of any part of the Labour party.”
Speaking to the parliamentary party, Mr Corbyn instead urged
his critics to “turn our fire
outwards”, after months of bitter internal recriminations.
“The Labour party has always been a broad church and I'm
determined it remains so.
“We will always have some differences of opinion and we must
protect the right of criticism and
debate but our first and overwhelming
priority is to deliver for the people we represent and remove this Conservative government from
office.
“We must focus on that priority and turn our fire
outwards.”
At the meeting, the party leader was challenged over the fate
of Ms Duffield and even urged to go
to Canterbury to show his support for
him.
In June last year, she pulled off a stunning triumph by
winning the seat with a majority of
just 187 from Conservative Julian Brazier, who had been the constituency’s MP for
nearly 30 years.
Ms Duffield had warned that MPs could “go on strike” unless
the party fully adopted all the
internationally-recognised examples of
antisemitism, which it finally did last week.
The motion of censure also criticises her for attending a demonstration against antisemitism in
the Labour party in Parliament
Square earlier this year.
Following the MPs’ meeting, one Labour MP told The
Independent:
“Jeremy is vulnerable unless he acts on this, because Rosie
is not a factionalist in any way and
is being targeted purely because of
speaking up on antisemitism.”
Last week, former minister Joan Ryan, the Enfield North MP
who chairs the Labour Friends of
Israel group, and has spoken out about
antisemitism, narrowly lost a confidence vote.
Two other MPs - Luton South’s Gavin Shuker and Chris Leslie,
the Nottingham East MP - will also
face a vote of all local party members
after losing no confidence motions.
Mr Leslie said his party had been infiltrated by the
“intolerant hard left” and the move
had been “orchestrated nationally”.
(4) Corbyn and the
Jewish Question - Gilad Atzmon
Corbyn and the Jewish Question
By Gilad Atzmon
August 31, 2018
It doesn’t take a genius to detect the present volatile state
of British Jewish institutions. To
the outside observer, some of the
actions of Britain’s so-called Jewish ‘leaders’ may seem to be a form of collective insanity. Yet, the Brits
do not seem to be at all impressed.
They are perplexed by the self-propelled collective hysteria. Naturally, many Brits do not
agree with Corbyn on issues; some
may not agree with his pacifist politics, others see him as a naïve delusional lefty, a few are
upset by his association with
controversial characters, but no one except a few Israel firsters sees Corbyn as a crazed ‘anti-Semite,’ let
alone as a Hitler type who puts
Jewish life under an “existential threat.” While it isn’t clear whether Corbyn can unite the Brits
against their horrid government, it
is increasingly likely that the Zionist lobby has the capacity to unite the Brits behind Corbyn. A
comment on twitter the other day
noted that “not supporting Corbyn at this point is an act of treason.” This week the ex-chief rabbi, Jonathan
Sacks, became completely unhinged;
comparing Corbyn to Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech. In an interview Rabbi Sacks maintained
that Corbyn “undermines the
existence of an entire group of British citizens by depicting them as essentially alien.” What had Corbyn
said that provoked such an extreme
reaction from the celebrity rabbi?
Apparently, in 2013 Corbyn
criticised British Zionists by suggesting that they have two problems. “One is they don’t want to study
history and, secondly, having lived
in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony.”
This raises some obvious questions: 1. What is it in
Corbyn’s statement that sparked
Rabbi Sacks’ outburst, and 2. How is it
possible that when Corbyn speaks about Zionists, Rabbi Sacks hears ‘Jews’?
One possibility is that in Rabbi Sacks’ mind, Jews and
Zionists are one and the same. After
all, Rabbi Sacks believes that “anti Zionism is the new anti-Semitism.” The rabbi freely associates ‘Zionists,’ ‘Semites’ and ‘Jews.’ Someone should remind the rabbi that the suggestion that ‘Jews’ and Zionists are somehow the same
might fall within the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitsm.
According to the definition,
manifestations of anti-Semitism “might include the targeting of the state of Israel,
conceived as a Jewish collectivity.”
In his interpretation of Corbyn’s words, Rabbi Sacks seems to expand the term ‘Zionists’ into meaning
‘Jewish collectivity.’ I am afraid
that our ex-chief rabbi may have fallen into the IHRA trap, something you might expect from a Talmudic
Jewish scholar but not from an Oxford
graduate.
The truth of the matter is that Corbyn has managed to touch
the most sensitive Jewish collective
nerve. In Corbyn’s universalist
egalitarian offering there is no room for tribal exceptionalism. In Corbyn’s universe, Jews are just
ordinary people and not God’s chosen
people. Corbyn’s ‘for the many not the few’ doesn’t conform to chosenism, Jewish or identitarian. But
we can see that this universalist
perception of the ‘many’ is interpreted by British Jewish leadership as a casus belli – a call
for a war. Corbyn’s reference to
Zionists’ ‘lack of British irony’ touched the rawest Jewish nerve. He stumbled upon
the Jewish ‘assimilation
complex.’
Since the emancipation of European Jewry, a 19th century
political transition, Jews have been
struggling to define their identity and
role in the wider society. Emancipation invited assimilation, it offered Jews the ability to become an
indistinguishable part of the
‘many,’ but this transformative
shift would have entailed a loss of Jewish identity. This dilemma is known as
the ‘Jewish Question.’ Zionism was initially an attempt to resolve the
Jewish question and the assimilation
dilemma. It offered Jews the ability to be ‘people like all other people’ but in a
different place. Zionism promised to
take the Jews away while allowing Jews to assimilate, although as a distinct nation amongst nations. Zionism gave Jews a way to resolve the tension between assimilation and
preservation. The Jews were saved
the danger of integrating into their host nations and allowed them to preserve many if not most of their
cultural traits, as Israel proves on
a daily basis.
The Jewish fear of assimilation is not a secret. Golda Meir
who served as Israel’s Prime
Minister at the time of October War (1973), believed that Jews who assimilate are
essentially partners to the Nazis, since
through assimilation they are exterminating the continuation of the Jewish people. For Meir, mixed
marriages, and not the Arabs, were the
greatest danger to the Jewish people. With Meir’s anti assimilationist view in mind, it is clear why Corbyn’s
traditional socialist view of ‘the
many’ poses an existential danger to those who insist upon being ‘the few.’ Corbyn’s well meaning
invitation to the Jews and everyone
else to fully integrate into British society is interpreted by
Zionist Jews as a threat of extermination (to use Golda Meir’s loaded terminology).
Rabbi Sacks’ reaction, however, takes us to a new level in
our understanding of the Zionist
mindset. The rabbi actually accused
Corbyn of implying that “Jews are not fully British.” But that was not what Corbyn said or implied. He
suggested that “Zionists” are not
exactly British, a statement that poses no problem for most Zionists since they openly and voluntarily
swear allegiance to another state,
one that is nationalist, racist and expansionist and shares few, if any, values with Britain or the
West.
In order to grasp Rabbi Sacks’ recent outburst we may have to
appeal once again to the famous
French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s astute observation:“unconscious is the
discourse of the Other.” The
unconscious, according to Lacan, is the fear that the Other, in this case, the gentile, the humanist or
shall we say Corbyn and the Brits
see you truly. It is the tormenting thought that the Goy may be able to detect the lie.
It is the unbearable anxiety that the Brits know that British Zionists aren’t exactly
Brits, they are deeply devoted to
another state and its foreign interests, they never assimilated and do not plan to assimilate in the near
future. The Lacanian unconscious is
the fear that a Goy may stand up one day and decide to call a spade a spade or, way more a disturbing, refer
to a celebrity ex-chief rabbi as
a “far right extremist,” as Trade Union
activist Eddie Dempsey suggests in
the video below.
(5) Palestinian Arab
MPs in Israel back Corbyn
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics and Engineering Physics)
[mailto:sadanand@ccsu.edu]
'With the Netanyahu government ramping up the racism, our
struggle for survival is more precarious than ever.'
Palestinian Arab MPs in the Knesset commend Jeremy Corbyn for
his 'longstanding solidarity with all oppressed peoples around the world'
Sun 2 Sep 2018
The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.co.uk/letters
As Palestinian Arab MPs in Israel, we salute Corbyn as a
champion of peace and justice
As members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament,
representing our fellow Palestinian Arab citizens of the state of Israel and
Jewish supporters of peace and democracy, we are writing to express our
solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour party in the United Kingdom.
Palestinian Arabs constitute about a fifth of Israel's citizenry. As such, we
have a deep understanding of the vulnerability that many minority communities
feel, in the UK and around the world. We respect the vigilance with which
minority groups monitor the actions and statements of their local leaders, to
ensure that their rights are not infringed upon, and to defend their members
from unwarranted attacks on the basis of their group identity.
Palestinian citizens
of Israel have yet to experience a single day of equality, de jure or de
facto - to say nothing of the millions of Palestinians under military occupation
in the West Bank, under siege in the Gaza Strip, and the 6 million in exile
abroad, prevented from returning to their homeland simply because they are not
Jews. As part of the Palestinian people, this has been our lived experience of
the Zionist movement since day one.
In the Knesset, in the streets, and on the world stage, we
Palestinian parliamentarians have always argued that it is not possible for any
ethno-state, Jewish or otherwise, to also be a state that guarantees equality to
all its citizens; for the state of Israel to be both Jewish and democratic. Now
Benjamin Netanyahu has proved that we were right all along, by passing the
constitutional nation-state law, which explicitly raises the rights of Jewish
people to paramount status, downgrades the Arabic language and eclipses any
mention of equal rights, regardless of race or religion.
Emboldened by the rise of far-right forces in the US and
other parts of the world, the Netanyahu government has made it abundantly clear
that Palestinians will never have a state of their own, and that they will never
be allowed equality inside Israel. Emboldened by Netanyahu's ultra-nationalism,
Israeli racists are stepping up their violent vigilante attacks on Palestinian
people, putting the spirit of the nation-state law into practice.
Incredibly, instead of taking that government to task for its
unadulterated racism, the British political class ignores the Palestinian
historical plight, and attacks and abuses the British and European leader who
vocally supports the Palestinian cause of peace and equality. With the Netanyahu
government ramping up the racism, our struggle for survival is more precarious
than ever. But while we focus locally, defending what's left of our
ever-diminishing rights, we feel that we must speak out now and register our
repugnance at these recent attempts to complete our erasure, by forbidding
within the UK Labour party any mention by name of the forces allayed against the
Palestinian cause.
As long as efforts to curb anti-Jewish sentiment in the UK
are focused on combating the disparagement of Jews merely for their membership
in a minority group, they have our full support. But when some try to force the
Labour party into using as its litmus test a definition of antisemitism that
goes far beyond anti-Jewish animus to include anti-Zionism, we must raise our
voices and decry these efforts.
We commend Jeremy Corbyn for his decades of public service to
the British people, and for his longstanding solidarity with all oppressed
peoples around the world, including his unflinching support for the Palestinian
people. We stand in solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn and we recognise him as a
principled leftist leader who aspires for peace and justice and is opposed to
all forms of racism, whether directed at Jews, Palestinians, or any other
group.
Ahmad Tibi MP Deputy speaker of parliament, Joint List/Arab
Movement for Change Masud Ganaim MP
Joint List/United Arab List
Yousef Jabareen MP Joint List/Democratic Front for Peace and
Equality
Jamal Zahalka MP Joint List/National Democratic Assembly
On behalf of all 13 members of the Knesset who are part of
the Joint List
US cuts to Palestinians stir existential fears in Jordan Jordan views the prospect of absorbing
its entire Palestinian refugee population as a threat to its demographic
balance By Jonathan Gorvett, Asia
Times, August 29, 2018 , http://www.atimes.com/article/us-cuts-to-palestinians-raise-existential-fears-in-jordan/ Friday's announcement by the Trump
administration that it was slashing $200 million in aid to the Gaza Strip and
West Bank was only the latest in a series of moves targeting relief for
displaced Palestinians and their descendants. For Jordan - home to millions of
Palestinian refugees - there is growing concern these developments could have
profound implications at home. The
US moves "raise existential fears," Amman-based political commentator and
columnist Osama al-Sharif told Asia Times. "The Palestinian refugee issue is
something that touches major sensitivities on all sides of the political
divide." Some fear the cuts in
funding to refugees is but the first step in dismantling their refugee status,
removing the Palestinians' right of return to their ancestral homes - now in
Israeli-controlled territory - and irrevocably shifting the demography of the
kingdom Wishing away five
million
Since 1948, when advancing Israeli tanks first pushed columns
of Palestinians to flee across the Allenby Bridge into Jordan, these displaced
people and their descendants have been a major presence in the kingdom.
Whole suburbs of the capital, Amman, have formed out of the
camps set up to house them, while many Palestinians have gone on to become
important leaders in business and commerce.
Following the deadly events of Black September in 1970, when
the Jordanian military moved to expel the Palestinian Liberation Organization
from its territory, the kingdom has managed a delicate political balance between
ethnic Palestinians and indigenous Jordanians.
As refugees, the ethnic Palestinians have also continued to
press their right of return to their former homes - and those they inherited
from their parents and grandparents.
Since 1948, those refugees - and the many who have joined
them since - have enjoyed the support of the UN Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine (UNRWA).
Now catering to 5.3 million registered refugees in Lebanon,
Syria, Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, UNRWA provides
education, health, micro-finance and community services across this wide
geography.
Yet now, in its 70th year, it is facing a profound
crisis.
Its biggest donor - the US - has embarked on some major
policy shifts in how it deals with the Palestinians and the UN.
Last Friday's announcement from Washington was part of that
shift, as was the Trump administration's decision in January to freeze $60
million of its funding to UNRWA, while seeking "a way to better manage" the
agency's budget and finances.
In July, a number of US Republicans introduced a bill to
Congress aimed at severely restricting UNRWA's beneficiaries, by limiting aid to
those who fled Mandate Palestine during the original 1948 exodus - roughly
40,000 people. That would cut out the generations born into refugee camps in
Jordan and the wider Middle East, as well as those Palestinians who fled their
lands during subsequent wars.
The Republican proposal was soon followed by a report in
Foreign Policy magazine that suggested President Trump's Middle East czar, Jared
Kushner, and his colleague Jason Greenblatt actively wanted to disrupt
UNRWA.
The plan further envisioned revoking the refugee status of
Jordan's 2.17 million-strong Palestinian population, effectively forcing the
kingdom to submerge those numbers into its own population.
While the Jordanian government subsequently denied such a
request had been made, the report touched a nerve in the kingdom and the
proposal was widely lambasted in the local press.
It also triggered a response from UNRWA chief Pierre
Krahenbuhl, who told the Associated Press on August 24: "One cannot simply wish
five million people away."
Economic strains
(6) Jews and
Gentiles, by Gilad Atzmon
Jews and Gentiles
By Gilad Atzmon
Sept 11, 2018
Early Zionism was a significant and glorious moment in Jewish
history; a moment of dramatic
epiphany fueled by self-loathing. The early Zionists promised to save the Jews
from the Jew and to liberate the Jew
from the Jews. They were disgusted by the Diaspora non-proletarian urban Jewish culture which they
regarded as parasitic. They promised to bond the new Hebrews with labour
and soil. They were convinced that
they could transform what they saw as a greedy capitalist into a new ‘Israelite hard working peasant.’ They believed that they could make the ‘international cosmopolitan’ into
a nationalist patriot, they believed
that they knew how to convert Soros into a kibbutznik: they were certain that it was within their
capacity to make Alan Dershowitz
into a Uri Avneri and Abe Foxman into a peacenik. They promised to make Jews into people like all other
people while failing to realize that
no other people really want to resemble others.
Zionism has been successful on many fronts. It managed to
form a Jewish state at the expense
of the indigenous people of Palestine. The Jewish state is a wealthy ghetto and
one which is internationally
supported. But Israel is a state like no other. It is institutionally racist and murderous. It begs for American taxpayers’ money
despite being filthy rich. Sadly, Zionism didn’t solve the Jewish problem, it
just moved it to a new location. More significantly, not only did Zionism fail to heal the Jews as it
had promised to do, it actually
amplified the symptoms it had vowed to obliterate.
Accordingly, the IHRA
Working Definition of Antisemitsm should be regarded as a Zionist admission that the task of making
Jews people like all other people has been a complete failure. No other
people have so intensely and
institutionally engaged in the suppression of other people’s freedom of speech. Jewish and Zionist bodies work openly and
in concert to silence every possible criticism of their state. The real
reason for the fight to make the IHRA definition law is that the Zionist position on antisemitism is
indefensible. If the Jews need a special definition of hatred against
them (as opposed to a definition
of hatred that includes hatred of any people based on race or religion) it proves that, at least
in the eyes of the Zionists who push
for the definition, Jews are somehow different.
In addition, and for quite some time, history laws and regimes of correctness
have been employed to block our access to the Jewish past. This is paradoxical given the fact
that the Zionist project is a
historically driven adventure: while Zionists often claim their right to self determination on their
so-called ‘historical land,’ no one else
is allowed to critically examine the Jewish historical past. The Jewish past is, instead, what Jews
consider to be their past at a given
moment, and as the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand suggests, this so called ‘narrative’ is often an
‘invention.’ No one is permitted to look into the validity of claims made
about Jewish participation in the slave trade. Gentiles are not entitled to look into the role of
Jewish Bolsheviks in some colossal communist crimes. The Nakba is legally isolated by walls of Israeli
legislation. And it is axiomatic
that no one may freely engage in critical thinking on any topic that is even tangentially related to the
holocaust. For my suggestion that
Jews should self reflect and attempt to understand what it was that led to the animosity against them in
the 1930s, I am castigated by some
Jewish ethnic activists as a holocaust denier.
French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard taught us that
history claims to tell us ‘what
happened’ but in most cases it actually does the opposite: it is there to conceal our
collective shame. To suppress their
shame, Americans build holocaust museums in every American city rather than explore their own slave
holding past. Rather than deal with
their dark imperial history, the Brits allocated a large part of their Imperial Wars Museum to a
Holocaust Memorial. Both American and
British holocaust museums fail to address the shameful fact that both countries largely blocked their gates
to European Jewish refugees fleeing
the holocaust. According to Lyotard, the role of the true historian is to unveil the shame,
removing layer after layer of
suppression. This painful process is where history matures into ethical awareness. And then, there is
no examination of responsibility for
historical wrongs in the Zionist narrative, for the notion of shame, that instigated the Early
Zionist ideology, is totally foreign
to Zionist culture and politics.
Israel not only couldn’t be bothered to build a Nakba museum:
it does not even acknowledge the
Nakba. Zionists didn’t express remorse that their Jewish state deployed snipers to
hunt Palestinian protestors, killing
hundreds and wounding thousands of them.
Neither Zionists nor Israelis feel the need to find excuses
for the fact that their laws are
racist: Palestinian Israeli citizens are 7th class citizens and the rest of the
Palestinians who live in Israeli
controlled territories are locked up in open air prisons. Zionism doesn’t have to deal with shame
because shame involves uncanny
introspection, it entails humility, ordinariness. Unlike the Americans and the Brits who made other
people’s suffering into their
empathy pets, the Zionists, the Israelis and Jews in general are clearly happy to celebrate the primacy
of Jewish suffering while making
sure everyone else adheres to this principle.
Zionism skillfully put into
play the means that suppress criticism all together. But by doing so, Zionism
essentially blinded its followers to
its own crimes, and it put an end to the dream to become people like all other people.
Although Zionism was an apparatus invented to fix the Jews,
to make them ordinary, it had the
opposite effect. It made it impossible for its followers to integrate into the
rest of the nations as a people
amongst people. While Zionism was born to obliterate choseness, as it was practiced it was hijacked by the
most problematic form of Jewish exceptionalism. Interestingly enough,
today, just ahead of the Jewish new
year, Haaretz revealed that 56% of Israeli Jews see themselves as chosen. I guess the rest see
themselves as exceptional.
If some Zionists out there are still committed to the
original Zionist dream, then owning
the shame that is attached to the Zionist sin is probably the way forward. Because as
things stand at the moment, the only
public figure who insists upon seeing Jews as people like all other people and
actually act upon it is, believe it or not, Jeremy Corbyn.
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