Facebook share Share on TwitterRSS feed

Innovative Minds © 2014. All Rights Reserved. www.inminds.co.uk

[Boycott - Euro News]

Time to debate Israel


John Rose, Socialist Worker
17 April 2006

The All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism used an EUMC definition of antisemitism which includes the clause, “Denying Jewish people their right to self determination, by claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavour.”


Recent moves to define criticism of Israel as antisemitic have their roots in the growing questioning of the state among Jews, writes John Rose

An angry debate at the recent conference of the National Union of Students (NUS) failed to stop delegates adopting a dangerously misleading definition of antisemitism promoted by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC).

The part of the EUMC definition that declares antisemitism as the expression of hatred towards Jews, their property and Jewish community institutions and religious facilities was not in question.

The problem was with the EUMC’s inclusion that “such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”.

This decision follows a similar one by the authors of the recent All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism.

MPs here also used an EUMC definition of antisemitism which includes the clause, “Denying Jewish people their right to self determination, by claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavour.”

Ruqayyah Collector, the NUS black students’ officer, told the Guardian that she was worried now that real debate would be stifled. She may be right.

While individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project

Jewish Chronicle's ultra-neoconservative columnist Melanie Phillips


These “legalistic” and authoritarian manoeuvres need to be understood in the context of the mounting crisis of legitimacy for the Israeli state.

Its defeat by Hizbollah in Lebanon last summer has shaken to the core Israeli public confidence in its army.

In addition, because the cynical encouragement of Israeli terror in Lebanon by George Bush and Tony Blair was given such unusually stark media exposure, Israel’s role as a militaristic tool of Western interests is far more widely understood.

At the same time, even Israel’s traditional liberal supporters doubt its seriousness to conclude a lasting and just peace with the Palestinians.

A book by former US president Jimmy Carter attacking Israel’s increasingly “apartheid” style regime is a bestseller in the US.

International financier George Soros is part of an independent, high-powered US initiative calling for pressure to force Israel to start proper talks with the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

Serious splits are opening up in the Jewish communities. In Britain, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) is backed by some of Britain’s top intellectuals and artists, such as Eric Hobsbawm and Harold Pinter.

The IJV is challenging the traditional leadership of the Jewish community, the Board of Deputies, and its craven support for Israel.

In the last two weeks a very public brawl has broken out between the Jewish Chronicle newspaper’s top columnists, Jonathan Freedland and the ultra-neoconservative Melanie Phillips.

Freedland has launched a blistering and well deserved attack on Phillips for renaming the IJV group as “Jews for Genocide” and her remark that while “individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project”.

The Union of Jewish Students may have put on a brave united front over Israel at the NUS conference, but the disarray among young Jews is, if anything, even greater.

I was recently a guest speaker at a brilliant event, organised in disused rail tunnels underneath London Bridge station by Jewdas, in their words a “rootless cosmopolitan youth movement”.

Jewdas first hit the headlines when Jewish community leaders called the police to remove them from Trafalgar Square during a recent “Celebrate Israel” rally!

The problem for the Zionists (supporters of Israel) is that far too much truth is now in the public arena and they have to resort to illiberal means to stop it.

The recent publication of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé, Israel’s leading anti-Zionist scholar, illustrates this point.



The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
by Ilan Pappé

Pappé documents, Arab village by Arab village, the extreme violence used by Zionist militias in 1948 to “cleanse” the new Israeli state of its Palestinian Arab majority.

Pappé’s concluding argument is that peace in the region depends upon Israelis confronting the racist roots of their state. But the pro-Israeli Jewish community leaderships are concluding instead that laws must be used, and changed if necessary, to silence critics like Pappé.

Traditions of honest and democratic debate demand that those independent Jewish voices such as the radical US Jewish theologian Marc Ellis continue to speak out.

Ellis has written of a “civil war of conscience” over Israel, simmering under the apparent smooth surface of Jewish communities. As the surface breaks, the left must intervene.

Particularly on the campuses, we should not assume that the view of Israel held by leadership of the Union of Jewish Students is dominant among all Jewish students. It is not.

Many if not most of the thousands of Jewish students start their first year in university with very confused attitudes about Israel. What is required is a sensitive but sustained strategy of political and intellectual engagement with these students.

In every generation, a minority of Jews questions the narrow, pessimistic and bleak conservatism of the organised community’s leadership. We need to provide answers to those questions.

Source: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=11203


Also Of Interest

Page URL: http://inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10022
Support Us
If you agree with our work then please support us.

Give one time donation:

Setup monthly donation:
INMINDS Facebook Live Feed
Latest Video's
Latest News..
[all-by date]
[all-by category]
[all-by modify date]
INMINDS Twitter Feed
Boycott Israel Campaign
Featured Video's
You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video.
Why boycott Israel on Campus[1:50:05]
12 London universities discuss need for BDS on campuses. Speakers include Rafeef Ziadeh, Ilan Pappe, Karma Nabulsi & Mike Cushman
Love Letters to Gaza[31:08]
A unique theatrical event using personal messages of love, support and hope from people of all ages and all walks of life to the people of Gaza.
John Pilger[7:55]
journalist and documentary maker
Antiwar Mass Assembly 8 Oct 2011
Julian Assange[7:07]
founder of WikiLeaks
Antiwar Mass Assembly 8 Oct 2011
Lauren Booth, Sami Ramadani & Yvonne Ridley[6:28]
Reading the names of the dead
Antiwar Mass Assembly 8 Oct 2011
George Galloway[6:39]
Antiwar Mass Assembly 8 Oct 2011
Jemima Khan[8:42]
Antiwar Mass Assembly 8 Oct 2011
Why Boycott Marks & Spencer 2011?[23:29]
Demo outside M&S Oxford Street(24 Sept 2011)
Sean Clinton[4:59]
Israeli Blood Diamonds Campaign
Al Quds Day rally, Trafalgar Square (31 Aug 2011)
Lauren Booth[5:24]
Al Quds Day rally, Trafalgar Square (31 Aug 2011)
Lauren Booth - Prayer for Gaza[2:46]
Al Quds Day rally, Trafalgar Square (31 Aug 2011)
Benny Morris - Historian or Racist?[34:07]
Activists oppose visit of racist Israeli historian Benny Morris who justifies ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Is Israel applying apartheid?[2:12:56]
Speakers: Yael Kahn, Jody McIntyre and Ghada Karmi (5 May 2011)
Karen Mitchell[48:27]
Partner at Thompsons Solicitors
Life changing visit to Palestine in 2008 (21 Feb 2011)
Ramzy Baroud[1:59:32]
Editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle
"My Father Was A Freedom Fighter - Gaza's Untold Story" (25 Mar 2011)
Women United in the Intifada[2:31:36]
Speakers: Lizzie Cocker, Ewa Jasiewcz, Alaa Kassim, Yvonney Ridley, Isis Amlak, Sukant Chandan, Ramzy Baroud (14 Mar 2011)
George Galloway[1:01:48]
Solidarity with the Middle-East Revolution, support the people - oppose US/UK intervention (SOAS, 11 Mar 2011)
Omar Barghouti[55:08]
BDS Movement co-founder
"Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions" book launch (7 Mar 2011)
Shir Hever[1:49:09]
Alternative Information Centre
The Political Economy of Israel's Occupation, Kings College London (17 Feb 2011)
Why academic boycott of Israel[1:29:37]
Speakers: Mohammed Abuabdou(PSCABI), Mike Cushman(BRICUP), Jodey McIntyre(activist) (8 Feb 2011)
Dashed Hopes - Gaza Blockade[1:23:08]
Mohammed-Ali Abu Najela (Oxfam), Andrea Becker (MAP), Ewa Jasiewicz (Free Gaza Movement) (1 Feb 2011)
Jordan Valley: Apartheid[1:17:12]
Sarah Cobham(Brighton Jordan Valley Solidarity), Chris Osmond (Corporate Watch) (House of Commons, 1 Feb 2011)
Dump Veolia Demo[7:00]
Protesting at settlement supporter Veolia's sponsership of exhibit at the Natural History Museum (23 Oct 2010)
Boycott Israeli Dates [1/2][9:11]
Are you financing Israels brutal occupation this Ramadan?
Boycott Israeli Dates [2/2][9:05]
Are you financing Israels brutal occupation this Ramadan?
Lee Jasper [1/2][10:13]
[4 of 8] Genocide Memorial Day 2010 Session One, 17-1-2010
Lee Jasper [2/2][9:51]
[5 of 8] Genocide Memorial Day 2010 Session One, 17-1-2010
One Oppressor One Bullet[8:11]
Imam Achmad Cassiem, veteran of the armed struggle against apartheid in South Africa, speaks at the StW rally (London, 19 Feb 2005)
Salwa Alenat [1/2][9:56]
KavLaOved (Workers Rights hotline)
[1 of 8] Israel's Occupation - Abuse of Palestinian Workers (LSE 19 Nov 2009)
Salwa Alenat [2/2][8:57]
KavLaOved (Workers Rights hotline)
[2 of 8] Israel's Occupation - Abuse of Palestinian Workers (LSE 19 Nov 2009)
For Anwar [1of2][10:01]
Carmel Agrexco Valentines Action 7 Feb 2009
For Anwar [2of2][9:56]
Carmel Agrexco Valentines Action 7 Feb 2009
big
[all videos (over 200)..]
Featured MP3 Podcast

"The truth is this is not really an occupation of the West Bank at all, its colonisation - aggressive on going colonisation! There are now nearly half a million permanent settlers in the West Bank. Pristine hill top settlements are omnipresent and canonise the West Bank. What’s more they breed yet more electric fences, moats, Jew-only roads, road-blocks, checkpoints, soldiers - over 500 of them. Imagine if this situation was reversed, if it was the Palestinians doing this to the Jews would the reaction of this government and the world be the same? I don't think so."
House of Lords
Enough Occupation Rally, June 2007 [6min / 3Mb]
[need flash]

[all podcasts..]
Newsletter
To subscribe
enter your email:

COPY VERIFICATION CODEcopy this code —>
Feedback
If you wish to comment on this page:

(all fields optional)



COPY VERIFICATION CODEcopy this code —>
The opinions expressed on this site, unless otherwise stated, are those of the authors.
All logos & trademarks are the property of their respective owners and their use is covered under 'fair use' policy.
Copyright © 1998-2012 Innovative Minds www.inminds.com All Rights Reserved.
The opinions expressed on this site, unless otherwise stated, are those of the authors.
All logos & trademarks are the property of their respective owners and their use is covered under 'fair use' policy.
Copyright © 1998-2012 Innovative Minds www.inminds.com All Rights Reserved.