The 11-month-old son of a BBC staffer was killed yesterday during an air strike by the Israeli army on the Gaza strip.
Here’s a Nov. 15 Guardian report by Paul Owens and Tom McCarthy:
Note: Guardian caption is incorrect. The infant’s name is Omar. Ahmad is the brother of Jihad Misharawi.
The story began thusly:
A grim new feud opened up on social media on Thursday as pictures were traded of babies who died or were injured during the conflict in Gaza.
Pictures emerged of BBC cameraman Jihad Misharawi’s 11-month-old son Omar, who was killed on Wednesday during an Israeli attack. Misharawi’s sister-in-law also died in the strike on Gaza City, and his brother was seriously injured.
Harriet Sherwood reported the following on Dec. 11, in a follow-up on the aftermath of the war:
Of course, the death of an infant is always a horrible tragedy and anyone would be moved by images of Jihad Misharawi’s unimaginable grief.
However, as with any story deemed worthy of attention by professional journalists, facts matter – and, in contrast with the MSM,others in the blogosphere were skeptical about the veracity of the accepted narrative.
Elder noted that “the hole in the ceiling look a lot like what Qassam rocket damage looks like when they hit homes in Israel” and that the photos of the building where the child was killed looked nothing like the damage to Gaza buildings from Israeli airstrikes.
BBC Watch’s Hadar Sela noted, on Nov. 25, that the “BBC has doggedly avoided conducting any sort of investigation whatsoever into the subject of Palestinians killed or injured by at least 152 known shortfalls of rockets fired by [Palestinian] terrorists during [the Gaza war].”
Their skepticism was well-founded.
On March 6th 2013 the UNHRC issued anadvance version of its report on the November war and Elder of Ziyon thoroughly read the whole thing. The report states on page 14 that a UN investigation found that:
“On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.” [emphasis added]
A Palestinian rocket killed baby Omar, Hiba (the sister-in-law of Jihad) and Ahmed (Jihad’s brother who later succumbed to his wounds).
Whether or not the BBC, Guardian and others will revise their stories to note that Gaza terrorists (and not the IDF) were responsible for the death of Omar, Hiba and Ahmed Misharawi, Sela made the following point:
It is impossible to undo the extensive damage done by the BBC with this story. No apology or correction can now erase it from the internet or from the memories of the countless people who read it or heard it.
Sela, in her Nov. 25 post, argued that, “The tragic story of Omar Misharawi [was] used and abused to advance a very specific narrative of Israel as a killer of children.”
In short, when it comes to the activist media’s mad rush to judgement on every alleged Israeli sin, regardless of whether new facts contradicting the original conclusions are eventually revealed, nothing will be learned.
Lethal Narratives concerning the Jewish state’s ‘villainy’ will continue unabated.
In a BBC Watchpost which went viral - the effects of which are still reverberating today – Hadar Sela reported on a Tweet by BBC Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison with a photo he erroneously claimed was that of a dead child in Gaza.
The incorrect information sent to 7,971 of Donnison’s followers was originally Tweeted by Hazem Balousha – a Palestinian ‘journalist and social activist’ – and included the photo with the words “Pain in Gaza”, to which Donnison added his own commentary – “Heartbreaking”.
However, blogger Adam Holland replied to Donnison, informing the BBC journalist that the photo was not from Gaza – but, rather,from Syria.
Donnison later acknowledged his mistake and deleted the Tweet.
However, in addition to the sloppy journalism by Donnison, the man who originally Tweeted the photo of the child, whose judgment Donnison trusted, has an interesting background himself.
Quite interestingly,Balousha is also a Guardian journalist who has co-written pieces with Harriet Sherwood, Peter Beaumont and Chris McGreal – and was described as a “colleague” by the Guardian’s Richard Adams in a live blogon the Palestine Papers in 2011.
McGreal’s Jan 7, 2009 report written with Balousha – which McGreal cited in a recent report, on Nov. 23, 2012 – suggested, without any proof, that Israeli soldiers beat Palestinians in front of the their children to humiliate them, and even resurrected the Al-Durra libel in service of a broader narrative suggesting that IDF cruelty towards Palestinians “draws many into the cult of [suicide bombing] the ‘martyr’”.
The overwhelming majority of Balousha’s pieces at the Guardian were published between Dec. 28 2008 and Jan. 19, 2010, focusing on the suffering (most by children) during Cast Lead. However, he also contributed prior to the war and, in an articlehe wrote in 2007, for instance, he admitted to having an eldest brother close to Hamas.
Much of his Guardian work explores the theme ofdead children, and children otherwise victimized by the Israeli military, and many of Balousha’s tweets include pictures of dead or injured Palestinian kids. (Many of these pictures are from a photographer namedAshraf Amra, an activist who has a history of using children to engage in photographic propaganda.)
Interestingly, on Nov. 21, two days after the scandal involving Donnison’s Tweet, while the war was still raging, Balousha wrote a story at Deutsche Welle titled ‘Israel and Palestinians wage social media war‘.
Here’s a passage from his report:
“False information about the current war is also being spread via Twitter and Facebook – pictures of dead children, for example, that are actually from Syria. That angers [Gaza activist] Ebaa Rezeq. “We have to stick to the truth, or no one is going to believe us any more.” Ulla Papajak also believes that pictures and information need to be verified for accuracy – even if he also understands that there is no time to do so.”
It would be interesting to know if he and Donnison were similarly angry at themselves for casually propagating patently false information (to nearly 8,000 followers) about the horrific death of a child.
Hadar Sela, managing editor of BBC Watch, said:
“The reliance of Western media outlets upon local staff for information, translation and introductions is not a new phenomenon. Neither is the fact that some of those local journalists may have additional connections to regional actors, as was apparent a decade ago during the second Intifada. But as technology advances and social media increasingly cuts out the ‘middle man’ between the journalist and the audience, it is obvious that editors and journalists shoulder a greater responsibility for checking the reliability – and motives – of their local staff and sources.”
Such journalist activists – whether they’re at the Guardian or the BBC – are risking more than their own reputations. If Guardian and BBC editors continually allow their journalists to make such egregious errors with impunity, and report the news in a manner resembling political advocacy rather than professional journalism, whatever remaining credibility they may have will continue to erode.
Increasingly, as Gaza activist Ebaa Rezeq noted, “no one is going to believe [them]“.
Fans of this blog have often asked why we do not monitor British media institutions other than the Guardian for anti-Israel bias – a query to which we have not had an answer.
Until now.
Recognising the importance of the BBC in shaping world-wide opinion, a new site, BBC Watch, has been launched which will monitor BBC coverage of Israel and the Middle East.
BBC Watch – a sister project of CiF Watch with the independent support of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) – will provide comprehensive monitoring of the BBC’s coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to ensure adherence to the BBC’s own editorial guidelines.
A few of the more egregious problems at the BBC will be familiar to many CiF Watch readers:
The BBC demonstrates a disproportionate focus on Israel in relation to other countries in the Middle East – a trend which continued even through the ‘Arab Spring.
The BBC’s Middle East editor frequently displays an egregious lack of objectivity, portraying Israel in an overwhelmingly negative light and the Palestinians in a positive light.
Inspired by CiF Watch’s success in holding the Guardian accountable, BBC Watch will strive to curb the spread of inaccurate or misleading information and distortions at the BBC by fact-checking and providing relevant historical context and complimentary information .
In the case of an organisation as widely viewed, heard and trusted as the BBC, it is vital that misinformation be corrected before it spreads world-wide.
CiF Watch’s Hadar Sela, Managing Editor of the new BBC Watch site, explained the new site’s mission:
“Two organisations which formerly monitored BBC output – ‘Just Journalism’ and Trevor Asserson’s ‘BBC Watch’ website – have ceased operations in recent years, exacerbating the need for close and regular monitoring of the world’s most influential broadcaster”. BBC Watch will seek to build upon and develop the work already done by those organisations in order to continue the monitoring of BBC output on the subject of Israel and to examine the broadcaster’s adherence toits legal obligation to produce accurate and impartial reporting as a service to its funding public.”
The BBC’s responsibility, as defined in the Royal Charter, includes the obligation to inform its funders – i.e. the license fee-paying British public. This obligation is emphasized in the agreement between the BBC and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport:
“In developing (and reviewing) the purpose remit for sustaining citizenship and civil society, the [BBC] Trust must, amongst other things, seek to ensure that the BBC gives information about, and increases understanding of, the world through accurate and impartial news, other information, and analysis of current events and ideas.”
BBC Watch intends to diligently hold the BBC accountable to this standard.
The following essay, by Hadar Sela, was published at The Commentator
Most of us would probably like to believe that in this modern age we are better prepared than our grandparents and great-grandparents were in the task of avoiding the kind of mass carnage which the League of Nations failed to prevent and which shocked the world into dissolving that body and establishing the United Nations in its place in the aftermath of the Second World War.
As the preamble to the United Nations charter reads:
“We the peoples of the United Nations determined: to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small…”
However, on Wednesday this coming week – a mere 67 years since those fine words were written – the President of Iran will yet again stand on the UN podium.
Ahmadinejad has his plans in sight
Chillingly, the very body established as a result of the world bearing witness to the consequences of racial hatred and genocide will host an anti-Semitic denier of that same genocide.
Shockingly, the representative of a regime which, according to the founder of “Genocide Watch”, Professor Gregory Stanton, has already taken six steps along the eight-steproute to perpetrating yet another genocide, will be allowed to address the family of nations as an equal – despite the fact that the UN’s own Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide makes incitement to genocide illegal.
The following was written by Hadar Sela, and originally published at Harry’s Place
Kochava Shriki was pregnant with her first child after years of fertility treatments and was on holiday with her husband Yitzhak. Elior Priess and Maor Harush, both from Acco, were childhood friends. Itzik Kolengi became a father four months ago. He and his wife Gilat – who was seriously wounded in the attack – had gone to Burgas for a long weekend with their friends Amir and Natali Menashe. Natali was also wounded.
All these people were targets of terror because of the simple fact that they are Jews.
That is what it boils down to. And – although it ought to be so obvious that it should not need spelling out – that is the bottom line of what people such as Clare Short and George Gallowaywho visit and collaborate with Hizballah ultimately excuse.
In less than a month’s time – on August 17th – the Iranian-backed,Charity Commission approved, UN recognised, pseudo human-rights organisation known as the IHRC will be holding its annual Al Quds Day festival of hatred in London.
Yet again, we are likely to see Hizballah flags and pro-Iranian regime paraphernalia on the streets of Britain’s capital city, together with incitement from the regime’s usual apologists.
Until the British government stops turning a conciliatory eye to this and the many other terrorism support networks operating openly in the UK, its pro forma condemnations of terror will remain nothing more than empty rhetoric.
The following was written by Hadar Sela, and published at The Commentator:
It is by now pretty clear that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) hasno intentionof changing its stanceon the subject of the modestrequest for a minute’s silence to commemorate the eleven Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists forty years ago at the Munich Olympics.
IOC President, Jacques Rogge
In his letter of response to the request, IOC President Jacques Roggewrote:
“What happened in Munich in 1972 strengthened the determination of the Olympic Movement to contribute more than ever to building a peaceful and better world by educating young people through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit.”
But of course the real message which Rogge and his committee are transmitting loud and clear to the young people they claim to educate is that the ‘Olympic spirit’ is craven in the face of political pressures and that the IOC considers a ‘peaceful and better world’ to be one in which terrorism is appeased and overlooked.
That message, however, is neither new nor surprising.
The background to Rogge’s current stance begins with the fact that just eight years after Munich, Yasser Arafat – under whose leadership the PLO created the Black September terrorist group which carried out the murders - attended the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow at the invitation of the Soviet government and with an apparent blind eye from the IOC.
It continues with the Palestine Olympic Committee’s acceptance to the Olympic Council of Asia just 13 years after the terror attack and the IOC decision to accept Palestine as a full member in 1995, despite the fact that Arafatheaded the Palestine Olympic Committee in its early days.
Palestine’s first ever Olympic participant(at the 1996 Atlanta games) held a day job with Force 17 – Arafat’s elite security unit – which also engaged in terror attacks. Force 17 was founded and initially commanded by Ali HassanSalameh, who was also chief of operations forBlack September.
One of Force 17′s more notable alumni is Imad Mughniyah – who later went on to join Hizballah.
Today, the Palestine Olympic Committee is headed by Jibril Rajoub – himself no stranger to terrorism, having joined Fatah in his youth and been convicted of throwing a grenade at Israeli soldiers in 1970. Rajoub was released from prison in 1985 under the ‘Jibril deal’ prisoner exchange with the PFLP-GC.
His repeated re-arrest for terrorist activities and his role as organiser in the first Intifada caused him to be deported to Lebanon in 1988. From there he moved to Tunis, where he was the aide and advisor of Khalil al Wazir – aka Abu Jihad – the commander of Black September in the early 70s.
The Guardian’s infatuation with Raed Salah is not new. When the story of his arrest in the UK broke last year, the paper produceda plethora of articles, all eerily similarin their support for Salah and his British patrons and in the whitewashing of who Salah is (the various articles uniformly described him as a ‘Palestinian activist’) and what he stands for.
The Guardian’s Ian Black went so far as to describe the organisation its cause celebre heads in the following anodyne terms:
“The Islamic Movement campaigns for the rights of those citizens who refer to themselves as the “Arabs of 1948″ – those left behind while 700,000 others became refugees when Israel was founded. It fights discrimination and campaigns for the right of Palestinian refugees to return, as well as against house demolitions and expulsions in Jerusalem.”
Notably, the Guardian failed to report the fact that Raed Salah lost an appealagainst the deportation order in October 2011.
Now however, in the wake of the recent decisionby the UK immigration tribunal judge, the Guardian is back on the case, with twoarticles (so far) on the subject in one day. Along the way, the Guardian did not miss the opportunity to lash outonce again at the CST, quoting David Miller and apparently having learned little from thelast timeit relied upon information providedby that knownpurveyor of outlandish conspiracy theories .
There are many reasons why a newspaper which likes to describe itself as both ‘Left’ and ‘liberal’ should not be trumpeting the cause of the leader of a religious ultra-nationalist movement which practices ethnic separatism, sex segregation and suppression of the rights of homosexuals, women and religious and ethnic minorities.
One of those reasons is that Raed Salah and his Northern Islamic Movement stand for everything which the liberal Left supposedly abhors. But the Guardian’s puerile ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ stance means that it is dazzled by the fact that Salah is feted in anti-Israel circles as a leading ‘activist’, and so it is prepared to sell out its once firmly held Leftist and liberal principles and avoid exposure of Salah’s real background and agenda at all costs.
In 2003 the Or Commission – appointed by the State of Israel to investigate the riots of October 2000 in which 12 Arab Israelis, one Jewish Israeli and one Palestinian were killed – published its report.
”..thousands of demonstrators paralyzed the country, destroying Jewish property and attacking Jewish citizens on Israel’s main roads. In a number of instances Jewish citizens were just inches from death at the hands of an unrestrained mob.” One elderly Jewish man, Jan Bechor, was stoned to death as he sat in his car at an intersection on one of Israel’s main roads. The report also documented the use of firebombs, gunfire, rocks, and slingshots against both Israeli citizens and police.”
The report noted the incitement within the Arab sector which preceded the deadly riots:
“On September 18, 2000, two weeks prior to the outbreak of violence, more than 35,000 Israeli Arabs attended the seventh annual Northern Islamic Movement “peace” rally on the theme: “Al Aksa [Mosque] is in Danger,” hosted by Um el Fahm Mayor Sheikh Raed Salah. ”
“Salah reportedly told the crowd, “the Islamic world has exclusive rights to all the holy sites in Jerusalem and Israel has none.” The crowd responded with the chant, “In spirit and blood, we shall redeem Al Aksa.” Islamic affairs expert Dr. Guy Bechor noted that the entire rally took place as an act of incitement against the very existence of the State of Israel.”
The Or Commission did not recommend legal action against Raed Salah – a move which was severely criticized across the Israeli political spectrum.
“Former Meretz MK Amnon Rubenstein noted that “the Or Commission’s credibility was damaged by its refusal to recommend action against Arab MKs Abdel Malick Dehamshe, Azmi Bishara, and Um el Fahm Mayor and Northern Islamic Movement leader Raed Salah for inciting the Arab sector.”
“Former Defense Minister Moshe Arens wrote in Ha’aretz, ”It is difficult to believe that the Or Commission ignored the rapid rise of subversive activities and incitement against the state that occurred among a part of Israel’s Arab community since the Oslo Accords.” Druze MK Ayoub Kara said, “Israel must stop ‘touching up’ an ugly picture: the Israeli Arabs engaged in a civil rebellion to demonstrate their national solidarity with the Palestinians.”
Far from being the type of ‘human rights’ or ‘civil liberties’ movement as Ian Black suggested in his article quoted above, the Northern Islamic Movement is in fact the Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in Israel.
In 1997 it created controversy by attempting to build an unauthorized mosque on church-owned land outside the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. A year later it gained control of the local council and Christian residents of the city and visitors to it are still confronted by Islamist propaganda as they approach their holy sites.
Like its sister organization Hamas – also a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood – the Northern Islamic Movement rejects the existence of Israel completely and advocates the establishment of an Islamic state run on Sharia principles in its place.
Raed Salah’s ‘activism’ must be examined by any objective observer in that context, rather than in the cherry-picking manner adopted by those who choose to present him merely as a pro-Palestinian activist. Their support of Salah and, by extension, his movement’s aims is in fact support for an aspiring non-democratic theocratic regime with in-built persecution of minorities and discrimination against numerous sectors, not least moderate Muslims.
As cited in the Or Commission report, Raed Salah is well known for his ability to incite violence, conflict and unrest either through his signaturerabble-rousing speeches or by other – sometimes imaginative – methods. Here he is speaking at a rally after his participation in the Mavi Marmara flotilla, glorifying ‘martyrdom’.
Salah’s support for Hamas and its genocidal aims is not, however, confined merely to inflammatory rhetoric and boat trips. Its practical side includes the Northern Islamic Movement’s links to terror attacks.
“Nonetheless, three terrorist attacks have been carried out during the past decade by members of the Islamic Movement, primarily by its radical faction: The murder of soldiers near Kibbutz Gal-Ed in 1992; the murder of an Israeli couple in the Meggido Forest in August, 1999; and the explosions of the bomb-carrying cars in Tiberias and Haifa in September, 1999.”
Whilst the Northern Islamic Movement may not have provided the logistic support for these terror attacks (that apparently came from Hamas) it certainly did provide the background atmosphere to them.
“Members of the extremist faction maintain contacts with HAMAS in the Territories. Dr. Saliman Aghbariyya, an activist in this faction from Um el-Fahm, has been arrested more than once for having financial connections with HAMAS. Sheikh Ra’id Salah, leader of the extremist faction, is a member of the board of governors of the Islamic University in Gaza; the most important stronghold of the HAMAS in terms of organization and education. Sheikh Ra’id rushed to Jordan, at the head of a mission, to congratulate Khaled Mash’al for surviving an attempt on his life by Israel’s Mossad in September 1997. Similarly, he and his supporters went to Gaza to congratulate Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of HAMAS, upon his return home after being released from prison in Israel.”
As is well known, Raed Salah hasspent time inprison in Israel due to his role in thetransferal of funds to Hamas. That, of course, is no coincidence: Salah has been named as sitting on theboard of trustees of Yusuf Qaradawi’s ‘Union of Good’, the raison d’etre of which is to provide financial support for Hamas. On the basis of that support to a terrorist organisation, the ‘Union of Good’ was outlawed by the United States and by Israel – along with its varioussupporting charities.
Several of those supporting charities are based in Britain and, despite repeated public pressure, continue to function openly; rubber stamped by the Charity Commission of England and Wales.
Raed Salah’s 2011 speaking tour of the UK (cut short by his arrest) was promoted by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Palestinian Forum in Britain. The advertisements show that it was also a fundraiser for ‘Human Appeal International’ which is one of the members of the ‘Union of Good’.
‘Human Appeal International’ wasnamed in thetrial of Ahmed Salatna of the Jenin Zakat Committee as one of the organisations via which funds were transferred for Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist activities.
Raed Salah’s supporters (the Guardian included) in the UK have tried very hard throughout the entire affair to confine discussion of the case to semantic wrangling over his anti-Semitic statements and A-level English Literature-style dissections of his ‘poetry’. In that, they appear to have largely succeeded.
That ‘victory’ should, however, send chills down the spines of any genuine members of the liberal Left remaining in the UK. By focusing the public and legal discussions on the various interpretations of Raed Salah’s sermons and writings, interested parties have managed to create a smoke-screen of ‘Jewish over-reaction’, with an added measure of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory-style ‘untoward Jewish influence’, adding fuel to the fire of an already intimidating atmosphere as perceived by many British Jews and non-Jews alike.
But the ins and outs of British immigration law and Salah’s so-called poetry should – in theory at least – be of far less interest to Left liberal commentators than the fact that there are groups within their own society (some with members in very high places) who laud and support a man whose beliefs and ideas are the antithesis of the values of liberty, equality and human rights which Western liberals claim to embrace.
It is possible to agree or disagree with the principle behind Salah’s banning from the UK, but there is certainly no reason for any genuine liberal to invest as much energy as the Guardian has done into trying to disguise the fact that the aim of his visit was to spout his incitement, promote his ideas of theocratic-based separatism and do a bit of round-about fundraising for a terror organisation on the side.
The Guardian’s treatment of the whole protracted Salah affair shows how meaningless a term ‘Left liberal’ has become in the ‘progressive’ circles it inhabits. But that writing was on the wall right from the beginning of the saga when a Guardian editorialon the subject informed us that “[i]f the home secretary is unwise enough to start applying her “prevent” policy to all Palestinian activists Israel has a problem with, Britain will face a backlash in the Arab world.”
And that is precisely the trouble with the Guardian’s Israel obsession: it blinds it from seeing the world – and its own little corner of it – in focus and causes it to sell out the principles to which it – and too much of the liberal Left – used to once adhere.
Taking a post-event look at the Global March to Jerusalem, it is as important to identify what did not happen as it is to look at what did occur.
The most obvious conclusion is that the GMJ organisers failed to get the numbers of participants they declared having in advance, with only single percentage numbers of their vaunted one to two million marchers actually taking part. Despite GMJ organiser Ribhi Halloum’s feeble attempts at face-saving post-event spin, any objective observer can only conclude that the project’s organisers are clearly out of touch with majority concerns and opinion.
This was also reflected in the picture around the world with, for example, a mere 50 activists turning up for the GMJ event in Germany and 100 in Ottawa. Even in London – a major hub of anti-Israel activism and home to a significant proportion of GMJ organisers and their various organisations – the turnout to shout at an empty Israeli embassy was not particularly impressive.
Significantly too, in Deir Hanna – the site of the main Land Day march in Israel – and other locations in the Galilee, participation in the event was low, with organisers already expressing their disappointment on Israeli radio by early Friday afternoon.
With the majority of the world’s mainstream media giving the event very low profilehandling, it is also clear that the organisers failed to achieve another of their main objectives: the creation of an embarrassing PR event for Israel which would result in condemnatory headlines around the globe and create an opportunity for another Goldstone-style attack on Israel’s legitimacy.
That objective was in part thwarted by the actions taken by the authorities in the countries bordering Israel to contain the event to demonstrations and avoid the potentially fatal clashes which would have resulted had they allowed the would-be infiltrators to have their way.
In Syria the only GMJ event took place in Damascus, with the Iranian regime’s Press TV reporting that “ the Syrian government prevented them from reaching the nearest point to the Palestinian land, as a result of the accident that happened last year on Nakba Day where Israeli soldiers killed around 26 demonstrators who tried to cross the borders in the action called “Yawm al Awda”.
One must also factor in to that decision the rifts which appeared early on among GMJ organisers of a pro-Iranian/Syrian regime persuasion and those loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood which is heavily represented among the Syrian opposition, as the proliferation of Hizballah flags and Assad portraits at the Damascus event reflects.
Participation in the GMJ event in Lebanon, which was confined to the Beaufort castle, was reportedly low due to the fact that the Lebanese army declined to allow participants to approach the border. Some foreign activists expressed a clear – but typical – lack of understanding of the regional dynamics at play.
(Note that in fact, GMJ organisers – including Webber’s patron Paul Larudee– had been cooperating with Hizbollah since the early stages of preparation.)
The Global March to Jerusalem has undoubtedly helped shine the light of exposure on several important points, one of which is the unquestioning collaboration between so-called peace activists and human rights advocates from Western and other countries and extremist elements such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbollah, the Iranian regime and even the Syrian Nazi Party – SSNP – which was represented at the GMJ event in Lebanon.
In addition, it is clear that the professed GMJ slogan of non-violence is merely a tactic employed by this handful of extremists in order to gain sympathy and legitimacy for their cause among Western audiences. Just as there is nothing non-violent about intending to illegally breach a sovereign state’s borders and over-run its capital, there was nothing non-violentabout Friday’s riots in Bethlehem, Gazaand Kalandiya (lead, incidentally, by a professor from the Sorbonne and with approximately 8% of the rioters being foreign activists – probably members of the ISM).
Equally clear is the end-game agenda of the organisers of the Global March to Jerusalem and its supporters. Their common denominator is the rejection of a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict, the rejection of recognition of Israel’s existence and the aspiration of achieving an imposed settlement which would bring that about. The ample rhetoric we have heard over the past few weeks on such subjects as ’64 years of occupation’ and ‘liberating Jerusalem’ is clear indication of their aims.
The Global March to Jerusalem project has clarified just how little understanding this bunch of professional and semi-professional activists have of the dynamics of the Middle East as indicated by their indignant objections to the fact that various authorities and security forces acted to prevent the escalation of their provocation into a potentially serious cross-border event.
Fortunately, it has also exposed just how out of touch its mostly foreign organisers are with the aims and priorities of people who actually live in the region and how outlandish the ideas of their relatively small – if loud – cult movement are to the majority of the people they seem to have somehow persuaded themselves that they represent.
A guest post by Hadar Sela, a freelance Anglo Israeli writer
Jenny Tonge (far left) with Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh (third from left)
The recent tirade by Baroness Jenny Tonge – which resulted in her removal from the Liberal Democrats Party – included one of her more recurrent themes; the so-called ‘Israel lobby’.
Tonge said that Americans would tell “the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough” and accounts by those present at the event report that:
“Tonge, who describes herself as an “ethnic Christian” started by telling the audience to beware of the Israel lobby because “once they have decided to go for you, they will go for you. I bear the scars”. She cited the notorious writings of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, which have been widely discredited for effectively alleging a Jewish conspiracy – a charge that the authors have strenuously denied.”
This, of course, is not a new theme for Jenny Tonge. In 2006 she opined:
“The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the Western World, its financial grips. I think they’ve probably got a certain grip on our party”.
It is therefore interesting to note that on Baroness Tonge’s newly updated profile page on the House of Lords website she declares two overseas trips within the last few months, both paid for by theCouncil for European Palestinian Relations.
Visit to Cairo and Gaza, 20-25 November 2011; travel expenses and accommodation paid by Council for European Palestinian Relations (based in Brussels)
Visit to Qatar, 8-10 January 2012, for discussions with Crown Prince; cost of accommodation and travel met by Council for European/Palestine Relations (based in Brussels)
It appears on the Transparency Register of the Joint Secretariat of the European Parliament and European Commission (no. 60576433-83). According to that register we see that in the financial year 2010/2011 the CEPR had a total budget of 155,000 Euros, all of which came from donations, although no information is available as to the identity of the donors.
The CEPR declares on the register and on its website that:
“The CEPR is funded by individual donations from around the world in compliance with Belgian and UK legal requirements. It does not accept funds from any individuals or bodies whose objectives are inimical to the interests of peace and justice.”
So far, the CEPR perhaps sounds like any other lobbyist body, but the interesting aspects of this organization begin to come to light when one takes a look at the personalitiesbehind it.
The Director of CEPR is Dr. Arafat Shoukri (aka Arafat Madi Mahmoud Shukri). Shoukri is also Operational Director with the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) – a Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated organization based in London which is outlawed in Israel due to its clearlinks to Hamas.
Several of the PRC’s senior figures are Hamas activists who found refuge in the UK. Founded by Salman Abu Sitta in 1996, the PRC was born out of rejection of the Oslo Accords, denial of Israel’s right to exist and the agenda of ‘right of return’ for millions of Palestinian refugees to Israel, effectively annihilating the Jewish state. Its funding is not transparent.
Other PRC board members are connected to charities linked to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Union of Good’ umbrella organization – illegal in Israel and the United States due to its fundraising activities for Hamas. Several prominent PRC activists took part in the infamous ‘Durban Conference’ in 2001.
Since 2003 the PRC has organized an annual ‘Conference of Palestinians in Europe’ which is attended by figures from Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood along with representatives of their supporting organisations. Ismail Haniyeh – unable to travel to the conferences in person due to a European travel ban – has on several occasions addressed the conference by video link.
Arafat Shoukri is also chair of the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG) which was established by the Muslim Brotherhood’s European arm – the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE) in 2007 and shares the same London offices as the PRC. The ECESG is one of the coalition of groups which organizes the various flotillas aimed at breaking Israel’s maritime embargo on Gaza which was established in order to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Hamas. Jenny Tonge is a “supporting VIP” of the ECESG.
Here is Shoukri being interviewed in his ECESG capacity prior to the tragic 2010 flotilla:
The CEPR website is registered to ‘Save Gaza’, which was the address of the apparently now defunct ECESG website still promoted on the ECESG Facebook account.
Arafat Shoukri attended the recent ‘Conference for the Defence of Al Quds’ in Qatar, (alsoattended by Yusuf Qaradawi of the Muslim Brotherhood) which came to the conclusion that “the Israelis have no heritage in Al-Quds”.
Assistant to the Director at CEPR is Ramy Abdu (aka Rami Salah Ismail Abdo) who at least until2011was (and may still be) also the ECESGspokesman. In 2009 Abdu left hisnative Gaza (where he acted as spokesman for the pro-Hamas ‘Popular Committee Against the Siege’) and moved to Manchester to study at MMU. He also became an ECESG co-ordinator. Here is Abdu being interviewed in his previous role with the PCAS.
James Tuite is the Parliamentary Officer of the CEPR and as such is active at the European Parliament in Brussels and presumably in initiatives such as this.
Unsurprisingly, Reigeluth has also contributed articles to the antisemitic ‘Palestine Telegraph‘ which is run by Sameh Habeeb (aka Sameh Akram Subhi Habib – also originally from Gaza) who is alsoconnected to both the Palestinian Return Centre and the ECESG, having acted as the latter’s spokesman during its 2009 aid convoy. Jenny Tonge was patron of the Palestine Telegraph until sheresigned after it posted a David Duke video.
Julian Memetaj is listed as Communications Assistant on the CEPR website. In this recentarticle (written together with Reigeluth) he states that “Jewish Israelis are xenophobic towards Arabs”.
Further indication of the close level of co-operation between the CEPR and the other organisations with which so many of its staff are involved can be seen in their joint projects.
In 2011 the CEPR and the PRC together took a group of Parliamentarians from Britain and Europe – lead by Sir Gerald Kaufman – to Lebanon where they met representatives of the PFLP-GC and Osama Hamdan of Hamas. (Both these organisations are proscribed terror groups in the EU). Majid al Zeer of the PRC (a known Hamas operative) and Arafat Shoukri of the CEPR were also present in the delegation.
Also in 2011 a joint CEPR/ECESG project took a group of 50 Parliamentarians to Gaza, where they met with Ismail Haniyeh among others.
Whilst it is unsurprising to say the least that Jenny Tonge would collaborate with such a thinly veiled Hamas lobby as the Council for European Palestinian Relations, some of the manyothermembers of both Houses of Parliament who have taken part inCEPR tripsmight care to ask themselves exactly where the money for their travel expenses originated and whether or not their allowing themselves to be lobbied by an organisation with such clear links to a terrorist organisation their own government has proscribed is appropriate.
The European and British Parliaments – which allow the CEPR to lobby on their premises – would also be wise to verify that organisation’s claim that it “does not accept funds from any individuals or bodies whose objectives are inimical to the interests of peace and justice”.
Since the publication of thetwo-partreporton the Global March on Jerusalem scheduled for March 30th, further information and several new developments have come to light thanks to the work of some wonderful people.
Aaron took a look at the subject of the registration and hosting of the various GMJ websites and found that they share an IP address with the website of the AhlulBayt Islamic Mission – the Islamic Republic of Iran aligned Shia missionary organisation in the United Kingdom. The server hosting both the AhlulBayt site and the GMJ sites is registered to a Leicester resident named Shabbir Hassanally. Read all the details here.
Mr Hassanally appears to be quite a fan of Hizbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah. In fact he puts considerable effort into making English language sub-titles for Nasrallah’s frequent speeches which he then posts on his own blog – apparently unconcerned by the fact that Hizbollah’s military wing isproscribed by his own government and that the glorification of terrorism is a criminal offence in the UK.
Hassanally has also acted as rovingreporter in Lebanon for the Palestine Telegraph – founded and edited by Sameh Habib (aka Sameh Akram Subhi Habeeb) who is also spokesman for the flotilla-organising ‘European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza’ which was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood’s European arm – the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE) – in 2007. The Palestine Telegraph proved to be too extreme even for its former patron Jenny Tonge and it and itseditor have been involved in multiplescandals.
Here is Shabbir Hassanally celebrating the 32nd anniversary of the Iranian regime last year. Note his apparent subscription to the messianic Mahdi concept and his description of Israel as “the cancer occupying our beloved Palestine“.
If UK readers are now pondering the efficacy of their government’s ‘Prevent‘ counter-terrorism policy upon which so much of their taxes have been spent, they will certainly not be reassured by the fact that Hassanally has also been given a platform at the Muslim Shia Welfare Foundation in Leicester, which is – of course – a registered charity.
A variety of interested parties are making intense efforts to bring Jerusalem to the top of the publicity agenda ahead of theplanned marchnext month, including a conference in Qatar earlier this week (for some reason apparently attended by UN representative Robert Serry), an incendiary press release by the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual mentor Yusuf al Qaradawi and publicity on the websites ofHamas and ‘Unified Umma’.
However, it would appear that all is not rosy in the world of joint Sunni-Shia/Red-Green alliance project management.
From the Facebook account of ‘Viva Palestina Australia‘ (h/t to F.) we learn that initial enthusiasm for the GMJ project has been somewhat dampened due to apparentdifferences of opinion with co-ordinator Zaher al Birawi.
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Meanwhile, over at ISM California, Paul Larudee is chastising his fellow activists for not getting behind the GMJ in sufficient numbers.
Well well; it seems as though some people even within the ‘pro-Palestinian’ movements are waking up to the extremist nature of the GMJ venture and its leaders and organisers and the fact that such publicity stunts do nothing to help the Palestinian people.
As we saw in part one of this reporton the ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ (GMJ) scheduled for March 30th 2012, the organisers are a conglomerate of people representing the ‘red-green alliance’ the world over. Radical Leftists, Muslim Brotherhood-connected Islamists and representatives of and sympathisers with the Iranian regime have once more come together with the aim of engineering an event which will result in PR disaster for Israel and advance their long-term assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
The European chapter of the GMJ also represents a text-book example of what the Reut Institute termed the ‘red-green alliance’ in 2010 and in particular indicates that the naming of London as a hubof systematic assault on Israel’s right to exist in the Reut Institute’s report is still – two years on – very relevant indeed.
Jerusalem has been a centre of the three monotheistic world religions for more than 1,000 years. This plurality has been threatened since the creation of the state of Israel and more so with the occupation of east Jerusalem and its annexation, in violation of international law. Jerusalem’s Palestinian inhabitants are subjected to a continuous process of expulsion from the city.
85% of its territory has been robbed by foreign settlers, while the Israeli state systematically destroys the livelihood of Palestinians. Every day, the Apartheid state of Israel demolishes Palestinian homes. Armed Israeli gangs, supported by the state, terrorise the old city’s inhabitants demanding, “Arabs out, Jerusalem is Jewish!” Jewish religious fanatics even attack Jewish women if they don’t abide by the rules emanating from their extremist interpretation of religion. All this is happening while the people of the Arab world are clamouring for democracy and self-determination
……..
After decades of submission to a world order dominated by NATO and Israel, the Arab masses have begun to rid themselves of their dependent and dictatorial regimes.
………..
The sole reaction of the last settler colony in the world to the growing protest is increased brutality. The Apartheid state of Israel is hastening to create more facts on the ground, particularly in Jerusalem, before the balance of forces in the region turns completely against them. Once again, Israel’s claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East is exposed to be a racist fallacy – as only Jewish citizens are entitled to it.
As may be concluded from the type of language used above, many (though not all) of the endorsers of the European branch of the GMJ come from the radical Left
Individual endorsers:
Fatima Radjaie, Peace Movement, Karlsruhe, Germany
Thomas Zmrzly, Initiativ e.V. Duisburg, Germany
Ron Ridenour, author, Denmark
Benjamin Monnet, World Assembly Member, USA/Korea
Raymond Deane, composer and political activist, Ireland
Dekmak Haidar, coordinator Quds association in Lebanon
John Beeching, Hon. Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Yvonne Ridley, Vice President of the European Muslims League, England
Dr S Sivasegaram, retired professor, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
Nadine Rosa-Rosso, senior anti-imperialist activist, Bruxelles, Belgium
Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, publicist, Germany
Franz Fischer, Palestine activist and CC of the Labour Party, Switzerland
Organisations:
Canada Palestine Association, Vancouver, and the Voice of Palestine, Canada
Campaign against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq, Spanish state
Among the organisers, we find an interesting mix of radical Leftists and Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-linked veteran activists.
European preparatory committee for the Global March to Jerusalem
Rome, January 14, 2012
Zaher Birawi, leading Palestine activist, Britain Gretta Duisenberg, Chair Foundation “Stop the Occupation”, Board member Free Gaza Movement, Netherlands Leo Gabriel, Journalist and Anthropologist, Member of the IC of the World Social Forum, Austria Dr. Hafiz al Karmi, Chairman Palestinian Forum in Britain Mohammad Kozber, British Muslim Initiative Wilhelm Langthaler, Anti-imperialist Camp, Gaza must live coalition, Austria Mikalis Lukianos, Ship to Gaza, Greece Daniela di Marco, Chair of Sumud – Anti-imperialist Voluntary Association, Italy Moreno Pasquinelli, Anti-imperialist Camp, Italy Ismael Patel, Chairman Friends of Al Qqsa, Britain Attia and Verena Rajab, Palestine Committee Stuttgart, Germany Elsa Rassbach, Film maker, journalist and peace activist, Berlin, Germany Massimo de Santi, President of the International Committee for Education for Peace, Italy
Mikalis Lukianos is, as stated, connected to ‘Ship to Gaza, Greece’which is part of the coalition of groups behind the organisation of the flotillas and which includes the ‘European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza’ which was established by the Muslim Brotherhood’s European arm, the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe, (FIOE) in 2007 and includes Hamas operatives among its senior figures.
Greta Duisenberg is a long-time anti-Israeli activist from the Netherlands. She sits on the board of the ISM-linked ‘Free Gaza‘ movement chaired by Huweida Arraf and is the founder of ‘Stop the Occupation’. In 2003, during the second Intifada, her use of a Dutch diplomatic passport in order to visit Yasser Arafat in Ramallah provoked scandal , as have many moreof her actions and statements.
Leo Gabriel is a member of the Austrian Social Forum who took part in thefailed 2011 flotilla. A long time anti-Israel activist, Gabriel has participated in demanding that the partial embargo on the Gaza Strip (aimed at preventing the flow of weapons into that area) be lifted. He also campaignsfor the removal of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups from the European list of proscribed terror organisations. Here he is speaking in 2009 at a protest against the ‘Tel Aviv Beach’ project in Vienna.
The AIK (Anti-Imperialist Coordination), in particular, is involved in anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda activities and collaborates with Muslim extremists. During a “solidarity trip” to the Palestinian refugee camp Baka near Amman, leading AIK activist Wilhelm Langthaler asserted that the destruction of Zionism and the so-called state of Israel was “the only way to achieve justice” in the Middle East. He branded Israel “an apartheid regime worse than the one that existed in South Africa.” Before and during the US-led campaign in Iraq, the AIK together with other extremist left-wing and Muslim organizations organized pro-Ba`ath demonstrations against the US. In AIK publications, the murder of Israeli citizens (“occupants”) is supported.
Moreno Pasquinelli from Italy is also part of the Anti-Imperialist Coordination and aGMJ organiser. This former chef andlong-time communist has, as mentioned above, been involved in supportingthe Iraqi ‘resistance’ as well as Turkish extremists. In November 2011 heattended an ‘Anti-Imperialist’ conference in Bangladesh (together with Maan Bashour; see part one of this report) and the previous month was to be found in Tehran at the regime organised ‘Fifth International Conferencefor Defending the Palestinian Intifada’, also attended byKhaled Masha’al and the General Secretary of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Massimo de Santi is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Pisa who last year attended the Iranian regime organised ‘International Conference on Global Alliance Against Terrorism for A Just Peace’ at which Ahmadinejad stated that “The Zionist regime is the main base for exerting cruelty and terror acts of the main terrorisms around the world including South America, Africa and the Far East; and this regime is the main pillar of terrorism and the unjust system of arrogant world“. De Santi is director of the ‘International Committee of Education for Peace’ and apparently thinks that Franceis a “danger to world peace” and promotes the idea that Israel is the ‘real threat‘ in the Middle East.
Elsa Rassbach is an Americanfilm-maker living in Berlin. She is the founder of ‘American Voices Abroad Military Project’; an “initiative to support GIs who resist in Europe” and is involvedwith several other ‘anti-war’ groups. Her particular bête noire appears to be American military bases in Germany. Rassbach is also a memberof ‘Codepink‘ andtook partin the organization of the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ ‘flytilla‘ in 2011 together with Mazin Qumsiyeh (see part one of this report).
Ismail Patel is a well-known anti-Israel activist in the United Kingdom. An optician from Leicester, he founded ‘Friends of Al Aqsa‘ in 1997, which he also chairs, and which is described as being “concerned with defending the human rights of Palestinians and protecting the sacred al-Aqsa Sanctuary in Jerusalem”. ‘Friends of Al Aqsa’ is one of the organisations which collaborate with the Khomenist ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ in organizing the annual ‘Al Quds Day‘ events in London. It is also part of the ‘Britain 2 Gaza‘ campaign.
Patel is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked British Muslim Initiative (BMI) and also sits on the board of‘Conflicts Forum‘. He has been involved with Islam Expo and the Stop the War Coalition and collaborates with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He took part in the2010 flotilla aboard the Mavi Marmara and has also participated in the ‘Union of Good’-linked ‘Miles of Smiles‘ convoy to Gaza organized by Interpal – a banned organization in Israel due to its Hamas links. Here he is in Gaza, meeting Ismail Haniyeh (far right, second row).
(Note: second from the left at the back is Mohammed Kozbar; see below.)
An occasional contributorto the Guardian, Patel has tried to draw equivalence between British citizens serving in the IDF and those seeking to join terror organisations banned by his own country.
‘Friends of Al Aqsa’ was one of the groups involved with the UK speaking tour by Raed Salah of the Northern Islamic Movement last year and Patel was one of the public figures who rushed to Salah’s defence after his arrest.
Patel has made much of his self-described status as a “survivor” of the Mavi Marmara incident, using it as a platform to spread his anti-Israel rhetoric. Here he is at a ‘Rage against Israel’ rally in London in 2010 stating that Israel’s “days are numbered”.
Hafiz al Karmiis Chairman of the ‘Palestinian Forum in Britain’ (PFB) – another one of the organisations involved in the sponsoring of a speaking tour in the UK by Raed Salah, whom he also in prison.
In 2010 al Karmi took part in a conference on the subject of European foreign policy towards the Palestinian issue alongside Osama Hamdan of Hamas, Istanbul Declarationsignatory Daoud Abdullah, Alistair Crooke of ‘Conflicts Forum‘, Tariq Ramadan and a member of the Lebanese Al-Jama’a Al- Islamiyah.
Members of the Palestinian Forum of Britain are old hands at organizing anti-Israel demonstrations in collaboration with other Hamas/ Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups and the Iranian-linked ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’.
MAB: PALESTINE RALLY, London, UK 13 April 2002 Transport will be arranged from: Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD LAUNCH BIGGEST PALESTINE RALLY IN THE UK, INSHA ALLAH
Supported by Muslim Council of Britain, UK Islamic Mission, Islamic Human Rights Commission, Stop the War Coalition, Palestinian Return Centre, Mayfair Islamic Centre, Palestinian Forum, Dawat-ul-Islam. _________________________________________________________________________ Date: 13th April 2002 Venue: from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square: CONFIRMED
Join the Children’s Demo to show solidarity for the children in Gaza and all over Palestine. Bring your children along; let us not be silent any more.
Date: Sunday 8th February 2009 Time: 1.30pm – 3.00pm Place: Outside 10 Downing Street Nearest Tube Stations: Charing Cross (Northern Line), Westminster (Jubilee Line) and Embankment (District and Circle Lines)
Organised by: Islamic Human Rights Commission and Palestinian Forum of Britain.
Supported by: Islamic Forum of Europe, Friends of Al-Aqsa, British Muslim Initiative, Muslim Association of Britain, Young Muslim Organisation UK, Palestine Internationalist, Muslimaat UK, Friends of Lebanon, FOSIS, CAMPACC, Islamic Centre of England, Innovative Minds and Palestinian Return Centre.
Join us to protest for the rights of the oppressed and innocents in Gaza. Join the Struggle for Justice.
In 2010 the Palestinian Forum in Britain organized an ‘Al Aqsa in Danger’ gala which featured among others Ennhada‘s Rachid Ghanouchi and KamalHelbawywho joined the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 12 and functioned as its official spokesman in the West between 1995-7, establishing both the MCB and MAB. At the gala, Helbawy reportedly stated that:
“the resistance is the active heart of the Islamic nation, that resistance is the only language that the occupation understands, which Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, grasps well.” Helbawy called for action by everyone according to his capacity, “to liberate Palestine — all Palestine “.
Mohammed Kozbar (aka Kozber) is a senior member of the British Muslim Initiative (BMI) and a former director and member of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), both of which are connected to the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe(FIOE) – the Muslim Brotherhood’s European arm. He is also atrusteeof the Finsbury Park Mosque(also known as North London Central Mosque) and a project director for IslamExpo.
In hisBMIcapacity, Kozbar is involved with ‘anti-war’ groups such as the Stop the War Coalitionand the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In the same role, he also collaborates with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and in December 2011was to be found calling for the “end of Israel” at a London rally.
Here he is in 2010 at one of a series of anti-Israel rallies following the flotilla incident:
Kozbar is also a member and former directorof the Lebanese Association (or League) of Britain and represented that organization (alongside Hafiz al Karmi, see above) at a memorial to Lebanese Muslim Brotherhoodleader and Union of Good trustee Faisal Mawlawi. In this announcementfrom last year, Kozbar is also described as a member of the Lebanese Islamic Association.
Kozbar is atrusteeof a registered charity named ‘Lebanese Relief’ with an offshoot – also a registered charity – named ‘UK Care for Children’, of which he is also a trustee. Also on the board of trustees of the latter charity is Jihad Qundil– a senior Interpalemployee. Interpal is proscribed by Israel and the United Statesdue to its links to the Hamas-supporting and financing ‘Union of Good’.
Here is Kozbar (second from the right) posing for a photograph at the Gaza Legislature with members of an Interpal mission.
Zaher Birawi (also al Birawi) is officialspokesmanfor the ‘Global March on Jerusalem’. He is also spokesman /media officerfor the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) headed by Hafiz al Karmi (see above). The PFB states that it maintains the principle that “Palestine with its historic borders is an Arab Islamic land”.
As can be seen in the above announcement for the Raed Salah speaking tour, the PFB is involved in fundraising for the Manchester-based ‘Human Appeal International’ (HAI) – another registered charityin England & Walesproscribedby Israel due to its links to the ‘Union of Good’ headed by Yusuf Qaradawi. Human Appeal Internationalwas also directly named(along with Interpal) in the case of a Hamas activist tried for having been involved in fundraising for suicide bombings inside Israel. HAI is linked to the Muslim Association of Britain and partners for fundraising purposes with anotherregistered charityentitled ‘Syria Relief’.
The Palestinian Forum in Britain is also part of the coalition of organisations including Ismail Patel’s ‘Friends of Al Aqsa’, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the War Coalition and the BMI which came together to form the flotilla supporting and enabling ‘Britain 2 Gaza’forum. The PFB also collaborates with many of the same organisations and additional ones onotheranti-Israelprojects.
In addition, Birawi is a trustee of the registered charity ‘Education Aid for Palestinians’ – also part of the ‘Union of Good’ – and acted as head of programming for the Muslim Brotherhood’sAl Hiwar TVestablished by Azam Tamimi. He has also acted asspokesmanfor George Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ convoys.
Birawi is most well-known, however, for his activities as a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked ‘Palestinian Return Centre’(PRC) in London – an organization also banned in Israel due to its Hamas affiliations. Prominent PRC figuresare connected to Hamas and to the Muslim Brotherhood established ‘European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza’(ECESG -which shares PRC office space), Interpal,MEMOand the MCB.
Here is Birawi sitting on Ismail Haniyeh’s right at a function in Gaza. Readers will also recognize Kevin Ovenden (to Birawi’s right; see part one of this report), Hamas Shura council member Mahmoud al Zaharand – on the far right – one of the Mavi Marmara participants.
Below we see Birawi (second from the left) at a classic red-green alliance event in Downing Street last September together withSarah Colborneof the PSC, Mohammed Sawalha (see part one of this report), Lindsey German of the StWC, trade unionist Hugh Lanning, MP Andy Slaughter, former MP Martin Linton and member of the House of Lords and PSC & ECESG patron Jenny Tonge.
Conclusion:
The Global March on Jerusalem should be seen not only in the context of the broad alliance of anti-Israel activists of differing stripes brought together in order to get the project off the ground. It must also be assessed in terms of the interests of those providing considerable financial resources for its promotion and execution.
As pointed out on the ALAH blogspot, the campaign is obviously well-funded, allowing for publicity in several languages and frequent meetings of the organisers worldwide, including one for the European chapter scheduled for February 21stin London.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
The financial and ideological backers of the GMJ are –each for their own reasons – currently in need of a high-profile event with substantial media coverage in order to compensate for their failures on other fronts.
With Hizbollah having been unable to produce anything of major significance in the past four or five years and its ally in Damascus under ever-increasing pressure, and with Hamas feeling the financial pinch as a result of sanctions on Iran and ideological differences with the Tehran regime over Syria, a major and well-publicised distraction is at this time of vital importance to all.
Unfortunately, as we saw in the case of the 2010 flotilla, such a need for a high-profile event is likely to result in tragedy.
The deliberateexploitationof the subject of the Al Aqsa Mosque – unparalleled in its sensitivity in the Muslim world – by the organisers of the GMJ makes this unnecessary provocation even more potentially volatile.
Cartoon on 'Global March to Jerusalem' site
It is to be hoped that governments worldwide will recognize this counter-productive assault on a fellow UN member state for what it is. Hopefully they will also realize that the ability or will of surrounding countries to prevent their being used as a launching pad for the GMJ provocation is severely diminished and that they must therefore step up to the line and take action to prevent their citizens becoming involved in this foolhardy and potentially dangerous publicity stunt engineered by hardline terrorist sympathisers, the terrorist organisations themselves and their financial backers.
A guest post by Hadar Sela, an Anglo-Israeli freelance writer
Introduction:
As spring approaches, so the annual season for publicity stunts aimed at undermining Israel’s legitimacy begins once more. This year several high-profile events are planned and, building on the success of last year’s thwarting of the ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′by means of pre-emptive dissemination of information, this report (and those which will follow) aims to provide essential background about the aims and allegiances of the organisers which will be useful to those engaged in combatting the assault on Israel’s legitimacy, particularly in the media and social networks.
‘Global March to Jerusalem’:
The first large-scale event planned this year is a ‘Global March to Jerusalem’ scheduled for March 30th 2012 – Land Day. The concept behind it is to have a million people marching on Israel’s borders from all the surrounding countries – Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The aims, according to the project’s official website, are as follows:
“The march will demand freedom for Jerusalem and its people and to put an end to the Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Judaisation policies affecting the people, land and sanctity of Jerusalem.”
“The march will confirm that the policies and practices of the racist Zionist state of Israel against Jerusalem and its people are a crime not only against Palestinians but against all humanity.”
“The march will unite the efforts of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and all citizens of conscience in the world to put an end to Israel’s disregard for international law through the continuing occupation of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestinian land.
We aim to make this march a turning point in the nature of the confrontation, with the occupation having to face millions of protesters and demonstrators demanding Freedom for Palestine and its capitol (sic) Jerusalem.”
Obviously Israel, like any other sovereign country, cannot permit mass infiltration of its borders, especially by people who identify with terrorist organisations and enemy nations dedicated to its destruction. The results are therefore likely to be grave and perhaps similar to the consequences of attemptedinfiltrations of Israel’s northern bordersin June 2011. The march’s organisers are undoubtedly very much aware of those facts.
They will also be aware that the current turmoil and uncertainty throughout the Middle East means that the ability of the Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian or Lebanese governments to intervene in order to prevent such a dangerous scenario is now considerably reduced. Some idea of the mindset of the event’s organisers can be gleaned from statements made in the following e-mail exchange between two of them regarding a previous identical project. (All errors in the original text)
As I have written out in the report, the liberation of Jerusalem, of Palestine are at the core of all that we have done & will do. The point is that how do we build a movement that compells the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon & Syria to let us in (which is easy) & then let us march across the borders into Palestine, challenging the Israeli army (which is difficult). Thus the idea is to keep the idea simple – We are going to pray at the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre & the Masjid-i-Aqsa & the Qubattus Sakhra. We will not apply for visas or permissions from the Israeli’s obviously not, for reasons known to us all. But imagine a situation where we have more than a million people streaming in from four borders & israel fails to stop the human tide. Once we have broken this mental barrier, then its all over. next time we will have 5 million who will be marching in & it will ony grow from there. This is exactly the nightmare situation for Israel. How do you handle a million ordinary non-violent people who want to go back Home? – how do you handle a million non-violent people who just wish to pray in their Masjid in Jerusalem, which is under our Occupation? Thius will undermine the Israeli state, like no other strategy & then it will all begin to unravel & the Zionist edifice which is unraveeling as we speak, will soon fall. It’s a matter of time now, as we well know.
Revealingly, the following statement appears in the FAQ section of the website of the American chapter of the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ-NA):
Q: Why is there a separate GMJ-NA organization?
A: Because of the laws governing citizens of the U.S. and Canada, legal advisers in these countries have determined that it is better for them to operate separately and not to participate in the decision-making of the international movement, but rather as an autonomous coalition. This is because some of the groups in the international coalition are subject to legal reprisals in these countries, and there is some risk that any joint decision-making might place citizens of those countries in legal jeopardy. The risk may be small, but this is an extra measure of safety for those concerned.
In other words, the leaders of GMJ-NA are very much aware of the march’s links to proscribed terrorist groups, and yet its endorsers include a rather predictable list of organisations and US and other nationals, including a UN employee and a former British MP.
Ann Wright, former United States Army colonel
Clayborne Carson, Professor & Director, Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University
David Hartsough, Co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce
Edward Peck, Retired US Ambassador and career US Diplomat
George Galloway, British Member of Parliament
Dr. Ghada Karmi, Co-Director, Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter
Dr. Hatem Bazian, Senior Lecturer in Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Izzet Sahin, International Affairs Secretary, IHH
Joe Meadors, Veteran and Survivor of the 1967 Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty
Lauren Booth, English broadcaster, journalist and pro-Palestinian activist
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, American rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement
Mairead Maguire, , Nobel Peace Laureate
Marcy Winograd, Los Angeles teacher, peace activist and former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives
Medea Benjiman, Anti-war organizer and activist
Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian democracy activist and former presidential candidate
Richard Falk, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University
Roger Leisner, Radio Free Maine
Ronnie Kasrils, South African ANC leader and cabinet minister
Samuel F. Hart, U.S. Ambassador, ret.
Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian-American author and Founder of Playgrounds for Palestine
Tariq Ali, British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator
GMJ International Advisory Committee:
Some of the GMJ endorsers also sit on its ‘International Advisory Committee’.
INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR THE GMJ Maan Bashour (Lebanon), Dr. Ribhi Halloum (Jordan), Prof Paul Larudee (USA), George Galloway (UK), Khaled Soufiyani (Morocco), M K Sawalha (UK), Saud Abu Mahfouz (Jordan), Prof. Mohsen Saleh (Lebanon), Mazin Qumsiyeh (Palestine), Dr. Ghada Karmi (UK), Sheikhul Islam (Iran), Huseiyn Oruc (Turkey), Huwaida Arraf (Palestine-USA), Abdul Ghaffar Aziz (Pakistan), Sandeep Pandey (India),
Dr Ribhi Halloum joined the PLO in 1966 and was its regional underground organizer in the UAE until 1971. He was a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and the PNC until resigning in 1993 over opposition to the Oslo Accords. He heads the Jordanian preparatory committee for the march and according to an interview he gave in December 2011 prior to the recent GMJ conference in that country, “[t]he protest aims to move the right of return possessed by Palestinian refugees from theory to practice”
Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the ‘Free Gaza’and ‘Free Palestine’ movements as well as the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) with which he was active during the second Intifada. He took part in the 2008 and 2010 flotillas, was deported from Israel in 2006 for trying to enter the country under a false identity and allegedly volunteered as a ‘human shield’ for Hizballah during the second Lebanon war. He was also one of the organisers of last year’s ‘flytilla’. Here he is meeting Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2008 (from whom he also received an award the following year) – second from the left on the front row.
George Galloway is of course a well-known figure on the anti-Israel activism scene, his activities ranging from‘Viva Palestina’in its various incarnations, to working with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition and being employed by the Iranian regime’sPress TV. Galloway believes that “Hizbollah is not and has never been a terrorist organization” and that Israel is responsiblefor the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Here he is handing over cash to the Hamas Economy Minister at the culmination of one of his ‘Viva Palestina’ convoys.
Galloway also promoted the Global March to Jerusalem on Press TV prior to the latter being closed down by the UK authorities.
Khaled Soufiyani is a former chair of the Arab National Congress and co-ordinator of the Moroccan organization the ‘National Action Group (sometimes ‘Task Force’) for Solidarity with Palestine and Iraq’. In 2010 he called on a Moroccan Jewish advisor to the king to leave the country as a result of the former’s suggestion that the Holocaust should be part of the curriculum in Moroccan universities. He is strongly opposed to anynormalization of relations between Israel and Morocco, and in particular to the establishment of the Amazigh-Israel Friendship Association, and has made several attempts to use ‘lawfare’ against Israelis visiting the country.
Khaled Soufiyani
Mohammed Kassem Sawalha is also a well-known figure on the British anti-Israel circuit and a former Hamas commander who, since his arrival in the UK in the 1990s, has been instrumental in the founding of a series of organisationslinked to the Muslim Brotherhood including the Muslim Association of Britain and the British Muslim Initiative. Sawalha isinvolved in the organization of the various flotillas and convoys to Gaza through a variety of roles in organisations and charities linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and in collaboration with the Turkish IHH. Here he is at an IHH press conference last year (front row, far right):
Saud Abu Mahfouz is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front. He was a participant in the 2010 flotilla, along with several other Muslim Brotherhood members from Jordan, the former leader of which is on record as having stated:
“We in the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan see Palestine as part of the Islamic and Arab land that must not be relinquished – on the contrary, defending it is a national and jurisprudential obligation… We see Hamas movement in Palestine as standing at the head of the project of the Arab and Islamic liberation for which the Muslim Brotherhood calls… The Muslim Brotherhood supports Hamas and every Arab resistance movement in the region that works for liberation.” (memri.org report 4265)
Mohsen Saleh is a professor at the Lebanese University in Beirut who takes a consistently pro-Iranian line, opposes the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (accusing itof being a US-engineered attempt to destabilize Lebanon and weaken the ‘resistance’ against Israel) and defends Bashar Assad’sactions against the uprising in Syria.
Mazin Qumsiyeh is a well-known Palestinian political activist. He heads the ISM-linked ‘Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People’ (which wasinvolved in the organization of the 2011 ‘flytilla’), is a co-ordinator for the ‘Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements’ in Beit Sahour and was a co-founder ofAl Awda (the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition) in the US. Qumseiyehspoke at the 2010 Stuttgart conference which produced the Stuttgart Declaration – a call for opposition to a negotiated two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Ghada Karmi of Exeter University in the UK is also a signatory of the Stuttgart Declaration. A member of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) and apatron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Karmi hascalled for “the end of a Jewish state in our region”.
Sheikhul Islam is an ambiguous title in that it can be given to any high-ranking Shiite religious leader, but obviously the man concerned holds some prominence within the Iranian regime. The listing may possibly refer to Hossein Sheikh-ul-Islam; Senior Advisor to the Parliament Speaker for International Affairs of Iran.
Huseyin Oruc is a member of the board of trustees of the‘Union of Good’ linked Turkish organization Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), its deputy chairman and heads its public relations department. He was a participant in the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla and was involved in the planning of the failed 2011 flotilla.
Huseyin Oruc
Huweida Arraf is of course the American-born co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who also chairs the ‘Free Gaza’ movement which is behind the organization of the flotillas. She has taken part in several flotillas herself, including that of 2010.
Arraf is perhaps best remembered for her provision ofsupport to Yasser Arafat in Ramallah during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 when the Israeli army sought to put an end to the campaign of suicide bombings in Israel orchestrated by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, and for her part in the ISM’s collaboration with the terrorists who took over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem the same year. One of the more recent publicity stunts in which Arraf took part was the so-called ‘Freedom Ride‘ in November 2011 when she, together with Mazin Qumsiyeh and four others, attempted to enter Jerusalem without permits.
Abdul Ghaffar Aziz is a member of – and spokesman for – Jamaat e Islami – the Pakistani Islamist movement which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and was founded by Abul Ala Maududi.
Sandeep Pandey heads the National Alliance (sometimes ‘Association’) of People’s Movements in India. He was one of the organisers of the Asia to Gaza Caravan, in which he took part and reportedon extensively. The convoy included a variety of Islamist and human rights organisationsand received considerable en-route support from Iran, including an officialreception with Ahmedinijad. Pandey is currently involved inpromotionand organisation of the Asian chapter of the GMJ, describing it as an attempt to “counter the Judaisation of Jerusalem”.
GMJ International Executive Committee:
The ‘International Executive Committee’ for the Global March on Jerusalem also includes both familiar and lesser-known figures.
INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE FOR THE GMJ Feroze Mithiborwala (India), Nabil Hallak (Lebanon), Bashir Zmaili (Jordan), Izzet Sahin (Turkey), Zaher Birawi, Kevin Ovenden (UK), Ali Mallah (Canada), George Rishmawi (Palestine), Salim Ghafouri (Iran), Shaheen Kattiparambil (India), Ramy Zurayk (Lebanon), Mustapa Mansour (Malaysia), Roohulla Rezvi (Iran), Gauhar Iqbal (India), Irman Abdurahman (Indonesia)
Feroze Mithiborwala was a co-organiserof the 2010 Asia to Gaza Convoy and is a member of Awami Bharat – an Indian political group which describes itself as being involved in an “international struggle against imperialism, Zionism, and Brahmanism”. He is also a member of the Muslim Intellectual Forum of India and the South Asian Solidarity Initiative and is the ‘Free Gaza’ national coordinator in India. Unsurprisingly for someone who relies upon ‘Israel Shamir‘ for information, Mithiborwala seems to be rather fond of conspiracy theories: the Moscow subway terror attacks were, according to him, deliberately timed to deflect attention from the BDS movement and Osama Bin Laden died in 2001. He is also of the opinion that:
..the Arab Revolution presents new possibilities & the epic 94-year-old struggle of the Palestinian people, a proud & ancient nation, which has inspired the world for generations, will finally see a new awakening & with it, a new hope, a new Intifada, the Third Intifada!!
It is only the resistance on the ground, within Palestine, across the Palestine diaspora, across the Arab nations & then across the entire world, will we finally witness the rebirth of a nation.
Feroze Mithiborwala presenting Khalid Masha'al with a gift in Damascus whilst en route with the Asian convoy in 2010
Mithiborwala meeting Mahmoud al Zahar in Gaza, 2010
Mithiborwala and other GMJ organisers at a conference of the Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine in Karachi, 2-3 February 2012. Representatives from Palestinian organisations were also present.
Nabil Hallakis an Irish-Lebanese citizen who took part in the 2010 flotilla and acted or acts as co-ordinator for the National Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza. Here he is beingwelcomed upon his return to Lebanon after his deportation from Israel in the wake of the flotilla.
Nabil Hallak (top left, being carried)
Izzet Sahin is anemployee of the IHH. He was deported from Israel in May 2010 after having been found working for that organization which has been banned in Israel since 2008 due to its ties to the Union of Good which channels funding to Hamas.
Izzet Sahin
Zaher Birawi is a well-known Hamas operative resident in the UK. He is connected to the Palestinian Return Centre which isbanned by Israel, ‘Viva Palestina’, the Palestinian Forum of Britain and the ‘Union of Good’-linked charity ‘Education Aid for Palestinians’. Birawi’s connections will be further expanded upon in part two of this report. Here he is (far left) in Gaza along with Kevin Ovenden and Mohammed Sawalha receiving an award from Ahmad Bahar of Hamas.
Kevin Ovenden (pictured above, second from the left) was Parliamentary aide to the former British MP George Galloway. He is a former trustee of Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ and very active in the organization and leadership of its various projects. He was aboard the Mavi Marmara in 2010 and has received repeated recognition for his services to Hamas. Here he is in Syria, addressing a welcoming party for one of the Viva Palestina convoys whilst standing under the flags of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party.
Ali Mallah is Vice-President of the Canadian Arab Federation which supports the removal of Hamas and Hizballah from the list of proscribed terrorist organisations and an academic boycott of Israel. He is also a leader of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and a member of the ‘Gaza Freedom March Liaison Committee’.
George Rishmawi could beeither of two well-known Palestinian activists – cousins – both of whom have connections to the ISM and – like Mazin Qumseiyeh above – the Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement (PCR).
Salim Ghafouri from Iran acted asspokesman for the Asia to Gaza convoy. According to him, the “war with the Zionists” is not only an “Islamic-Zionist war,” but the showdown between the “truth,” represented by “the freedom-loving people of the world,” and the “lie,” represented by Israel and its supporters. Ghafouri also appears to be involved in advancing Iranianinterests in Kashmir and hasrepresented the ‘Iranian House of Latin America’ on visits to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Shaheen Kattiparambil was another Indian participant in the Asia to Gaza Convoy, and together with Pandey and Mithiborwala, issued this statement on behalf of of the Indian chapter of GMJ following its meeting on January 23rd 2012. All three, along with the Student Islamic Organisation of India of which Kattiparambil is a member, are endorsers of the statement by the ‘India Lifeline to Gaza’ according to which:
The Palestinian people must have the freedom to exercise their right to self-determination including their right to establish on all the territories that Israel has occupied, an independent sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital. The structure of Zionist apartheid, based on ethno-religious discrimination that Israel has established, must be dismantled and it must grant equal rights to all its citizens, including the “Right of Return” to the Palestinians refugees.
Rami Zurayk is a Lebanese agronomist at the American University of Beirut who has taken part in ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’and is currently promoting this year’s events on Twitter, where his profile picture is of terrorist Leila Khaled, and on his blog.
Roohulla Rezvi from Iran is cited by Feroze Mithiborwala as having been instrumental (along with Salim Ghafouri) in securing Iranian support for the 2010 Asia to Gaza convoy.
Gauhar Iqbal is a functionary of the ‘Human Welfare Trust’ which is included in the social service wing of the Indian Jamat al Islami. He also took part in the Asai to Gaza Convoy and is pictured here first from the left.
Irman Abdurahman is also agraduate of the Asia to Gaza Convoy and is a member of the board of executives of the Indonesian Society for Palestine Freedom (aka the Voice of Palestine) which states on its website that “[n]ative inhabitants of historical Palestine are people that are expelled and dispossessed from their lands and houses by force. Since 100 years to date the ultra-nationalist Zionist movement with support of some colonial powers has been doing this brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” The Indonesian chapter of GMJ has a Facebook group featuring a book by Gilad Atzmon, a speech by Khamenei at the ‘Islamic Awakening and Youth’ conference and this graphic:
Part two of this report will focus on the European chapter of the Global March to Jerusalem.
Both these documents contain an identical clause (in the former, article 41 and in the latter, article 55) regarding “Respect for the laws and regulations of the receiving state”:
“Without prejudice to their privileges and immunities, it is the duty of all persons enjoying such privileges and immunities to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State.They also have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State.” (emphasis added)
In light of this internationally accepted wording, let us consider the information provided on the website of the British Embassy in Tel Aviv (and recently promoted by it on social media outlets) in its “Human Rights: Quarterly Update” report. (Emphasis added)
“The UK welcomes Israel’s decision on 4 October to raise the age of legal majority for Palestinian children in the Israeli military justice system. When fully implemented, this will be an important step towards protecting children’s rights in the West Bank. We continue to lobby for further improvements…”
“The UK remains concerned by legislation proposed in the Israeli Knesset that would limit foreign funding of NGOs. This would have a serious impact on projects funded from the UK and elsewhere to support universal rights and values and would be seen as undermining the democratic principles the Israeli state is founded on. The passing of legislation is a matter for the Israeli Knesset and we note Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to suspend discussion of the bills. We will continue to monitor this issue and raise our concerns with senior Israeli officials as needed.”
“We continue to monitor and lobby on the Praver Plan…”
“The British Consulate in Jerusalem and EU Partners monitored the demonstration in the village of Nabu Salehtwice in December and have raised our concerns with the Israeli authorities.”
“On 28 November, the British Consul-General attended the trial with his German, French and Spanish counterparts. We will continue to have an EU diplomatic presence at every trial..”
“We continue to monitor legislation that could have negative repercussions on Israel’s minorities. We have lobbied the Israeli government at a senior level on the potential discriminatory repercussions of a new affirmative action bill for those who do not undertake military service…”
“We remain concerned about the progress of certain Knesset draft bills that could discriminate against minorities and limit the operations of NGOs which are critical of government policy.”
There are many more examples in the report itself and the picture is clearly one of a foreign diplomatic mission which is riding roughshod over its obligation “not to interfere in the internal affairs” of its host state.
Although the report does not cite the sources for many of its highly contentious claims, anyone familiar with the situation on the ground will recognise in this report the fingerprints of some of the many politically-motivated NGOs posing as human rights organisations which operate in the region
The past twelve months have seen unpredicted political and social upheaval throughout the Middle East and North Africa and currently just about the only certainty is that there is still much more to come.
With the cards still very much in the air and last January’s confident assertions on the part of the various Middle East experts – who informed us that the two countries in which revolution would definitely not be taking place were Syria and Libya – still ringing in our ears almost as loudly as Hillary Clinton’s bizarre assurance that Bashar Assad was ‘a reformer’, only fools would try to predict how the MENA region might look in five years’ time.
What is clear, however, is that the general trend appears to be towards a rise in power on the part of religiously motivated political elements and a deepening of the Sunni-Shia sectarian rift which has long existed in the region, alongside real cause for worry about the futures of other minorities.
In this volatile climate and with the fate of existing peace treaties between Israel and some of its Arab neighbours far from guaranteed, the Middle East Quartet (comprised of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States) is to meet next week in Jerusalem for another session of flogging the dead horse known as ‘the peace process’.
Amazingly, with the Palestinian Authority having trawled up every possible excuse for not renewing negotiations over the past three years, having opted to pursue the unilateral option at the United Nations, and with Hamas-Fatah reconciliation as much of a pipe-dream as ever, the Quartet is still promoting the anachronistic notion that a peace agreement can be reached by the end of 2012.
During the three weeks since I wrote my CiF Watch essay about Andy Newman’s CiF piece about Gilad Atzmon, Bob from Brockley has published a couple of pieces, at his blog, in reply which I think raise points necessitating some broader discussion, mainly because they appear to me to be symptomatic of the syndrome currently plaguing the British Left.
It is, of course, possible to discuss the ins and outs of various Socialist theories on the subjects of Zionism and anti-Semitism. It is also possible to dissect the assorted anti-Zionist tributaries and differing shades of anti-Semitism, but little of that seems to lead to honest examination of the real and very pressing question of why the British Left collaborates with and promotes racists and bigots and how that both effects British society as a whole and renders a much-needed Left increasingly irrelevant.
That examination obviously needs to be executed by British Leftists themselves; some have tried to plough the first furrows, but come up largely against stony ground. What is still sorely lacking is honest discussion based on the understanding that whilst Socialist theory has its place, its real test comes with practice. Unless human beings can be introduced successfully into the theoretical equations, the theory is surely of no use to those of us who regard Socialism as a moral concept rather than merely the inevitable outcome of the class struggle.
Anti-Zionism
In the first of his pieces on the subject, Bob from Brockley attempted to differentiate between different forms of anti-Zionism.
“… it seems to me that anti-Zionism that also takes a consistent opposition to all nationalisms (including Palestinian nationalism) is not antisemitic; Jewish religious anti-Zionism such as that of the Satmer Hasidim is not antisemitic; Jewish anti-Zionism which rejects the Zionist solution to the questions of Jewish survival and continuity (such as the position of the Jewish Socialist Group or others in the tradition of the Bund, folkism and other diasporist traditions) is not antisemitic; anti-Zionism from the perspective of Israeli citizens (Jewish or Arab) who want to see Israel as a democratic state for all its citizens (rather than a Jewish state) is not antisemitic; finally anti-Zionism which sees Zionism as a form of imperialism and takes a consistent opposition to all imperialisms without singling out Zionism as unique is wrong-headed, but not in itself antisemitic.”
Let’s take these one by one, with the easiest first. The fringe phenomenon of Jewish religious opposition to the modern State of Israel is, I believe, better described as ‘non-Zionism’ rather than anti-Zionism. The quibble here is not about the what, but about the when and by whom: the moment they perceive the religious conditions as being ripe the Satmars will be on the first plane to Tel Aviv too. Apart from a very small handful of much paraded extremists, few religious non-Zionists actually do anything to undermine existing Jewish self-determination and therefore cannot be described as anti-Semitic.
The other categories however are a different kettle of fish because whilst in theory Bob may well be correct, the all-important practice presents a different picture. Many of those supposedly opposing Jewish nationalism on principle are at the same time campaigning vigorously for Palestinian nationalism and any calls for the dissolution of other nation states (apart from the Jewish one) are either non-existent or dismissed as cranky. We (fortunately) witnessed no demonstrations by the far Left in London opposing the recent creation of the world’s newest state in Southern Sudan.
The Jewish Socialist Group style of anti-Zionism could possibly be seen as legitimate at a personal level (and indeed on a par with religious non-Zionism) but when advocated on a national scale it is ultimately a phenomenon proved anachronistic by history – one which promotes failed solutions and negates the right to Jewish self-determination.
The ‘anti-Imperialist’ style of anti-Zionism is, as Bob points out, wrong-headed from its foundations, but also must be called out for the fact that it is for the most part not consistent. The Jewish state appears to be able to incur an intensity of wrath in a manner which genuine imperialist or colonial projects (especially those conducted by non-white people – e.g. the take-over of Lebanon by an Iranian proxy militia) largely do not. Demanding of the Jewish state things which are not required from other countries (i.e. the application of double standards) is, of course, anti-Semitic.
Anti-Zionism within Israel itself is a more complicated subject and one which requires dividing into two parts. Jewish post-Zionism is a form of negation of self-determination. Arab anti-Zionism is for the most part a stepping stone to another version of both nationalism and imperialism.
The common denominator between all these forms of anti-Zionism is the rejection of the Jewish right to self-determination. Some may appear less malicious than others, but the bottom line in practical terms is that they all employ some kind of Socialist-related theory in the attempt to take from Jews a basic right afforded to other nations. Interestingly, we do not see Socialist theory being employed in order to promote the revoking of the emancipatory achievements of other minorities. One cannot, I hope, imagine a world in which Socialists would be found advocating the re-criminalisation of homosexuality or the repeal of equal rights for women or people of colour, but for some reason we do hear Socialist voices promoting the idea of the abolition of Jewish self- determination. That is undeniably racist.
No less importantly, the right which anti-Zionists attempt to deny Jews is not some theoretical one, but a right already exercised today by over half the Jewish nation and one which the majority of Jews want and support. Does the British Left really see the annulment of hard-won rights by an ethnic minority as part of its agenda? If not, it cannot condone anti-Zionism in any of its forms, however eccentric.
That fact in itself should perhaps prompt decent Socialist thinkers to take a less blasé attitude towards the anti-Semitic roots of anti-Zionism in all its different hues. But in addition, it should also be taken into account that the Jewish people have – within living memory – already experienced the trauma of having their hard-won rights and emancipation revoked by a supposedly enlightened Western society into which they were assimilated and with which they totally identified. It is easy to demand of Jews that they exercise a “sense of proportion” when criticising anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, but it is also vital to remember that what may be perceived as over-sensitivity by some has its roots in bitter experience rather than “hysteria” or “paranoia”. Jews have earned at a terrible price the right, the ability and also the obligation to call out anti-Semitism wherever we encounter it.
Antisemitism
However, in his second article, Bob from Brockley writes the following:
“One thing I am sure of is that there are lots of different antisemitisms, including lots of different left antisemitisms, and they are not all as bad as each other or equivalent to each other, and they are not all genocidal in their logic. We need a sense of proportion and more calmness in approaching them. We hurt only ourselves through hysteria and paranoia.”
This is a worrying statement coming from the anti-racist Left. One must ponder who exactly gets to define what is ‘bad’ or ‘not so bad’ anti-Semitism (in much the same way as some of us are asking ourselves who gets to define anti-Semitism as a whole) as well as wondering if the same yard-stick is to be applied to other kinds of racism and bigotry. Is there also bad homophobia and not so bad homophobia?
Whilst there are indeed forms of anti-Semitism and other types of racism which are not “genocidal in their logic”, surely the point should be that today we know that the path to genocide starts with small, often seemingly inconsequential, steps. Stereotyping and prejudice create a climate conducive to discrimination. Discrimination leads to scapegoating and then to violence and hate crime – an escalation which, in the 20th century, represented a path to genocide.
Whilst I am not for a moment suggesting that Britain is about to commit full-blown genocide of its Jewish population, I do think that there is every reason for British Socialists to be very concerned (and ashamed) about the fact that their nation has over the past thirty years or so climbed steadily up the pyramid of hate. Jewish self-determination is used as a scapegoat to explain away terrorism and conflict. Violence and hate crime against Jews are far from unheard of. And it is a casual or hesitant approach to anti-Semitism in all its forms – including the seemingly trivial – which facilitates these phenomena from the base.
No less important is the effect of Britain’s failure to deal with its expressions of anti-Semitism in the modern world of instant communications. Those elements in the Middle East which are of a genocidal bent are strengthened by the fact that the Jewish right to self-determination has once again become an acceptable subject for discussion in London living rooms. The same elements are enabled by the decisions of editors of Western media outlets such as the Guardian to provide their leaders and supporters with a legitimising platform despite the fact that those same leaders are responsible for actions which clearly contravene the UN convention on genocide. And of course they are also encouraged by the type of ‘we are all Hizballah/Hamas now’ parade which has become synonymous with the predominantly Left-led so-called pro-Palestinian movement in the UK.
So, rather than continuing to fail to comprehensively address the issue of anti-Semitism in the ranks of the far Left, rather than engaging in the type of mental gymnastics which deal with such nit-picking questions as to whether Gilad Atzmon comes from the Right or the Left or what kinds of anti-Semitism are not so bad after all, maybe it is actually the Left itself which needs to find a “sense of proportion” – mainly for its own sake.
As a first step, the Left surely needs to ask itself why its reactions to anti-Jewish racism (and Jewish objections to it) differ from its reactions to racism of other kinds. The uncomfortable fact is that if there is one group which stands as a constant reminder to the Left of its failure to make racism and discrimination a thing of the past, it is the Jews. Anti-Semitism is the hatred which will not go away; it continues to raise its ugly head time after time both on an individual and a national scale. In both cases, the response of the Left has all too often been to advocate assimilation, either as individual Jews or as a nation, by adopting the anti-Zionist stance which denies Jews their collective right to self-determination.
The fact is that the debate on whether Israel should exist or not is one which should not be given a platform by Leftists who believe in Socialism as a moral concept. Israel already exists, and to contemplate the annulment of the right of the Jewish nation to self-determination should be an atavistic concept in the Socialist world.
Unfortunately for modern Socialism, it isn’t. Indeed this is a path which Socialism has been down before with shameful results, as the writings of Nachman Syrkin as long ago as 1898 serve to remind.
“Socialist principles and theory are opposed to any denial of Jewish rights; yet it often happens that, for tactical and opportunistic reasons, socialist parties adopt passive attitudes or even abet attacks on the Jews. No matter how diametrically opposed the Social Democratic Party of Germany is to anti-Semitism in principle, there were numerous political occasions when the party rejoiced in anti-Semitism, or, at least, failed to attack it. Recent political history offers a number of examples to illustrate the character of the socialist parties. A case in point is the attitude of the French socialists toward the ‘Dreyfus Affair’. Just as the opportunism of the German Social-Democratic Party sometimes led it in a direction opposite to the basic principles of socialism, so, too, because of opportunism, the French Party excluded the Jews from its devotion to absolute justice.”
It is often said that history has shown that ‘what begins with the Jews doesn’t end with the Jews’ and it is that aspect of the British Left’s flirtation with racist and discriminatory elements which should also prompt it to urgently get its house in order. Jews are far from being the only ones currently being sold out by the Left’s inability to stick to the principle of Socialism as a moral concept based on universal human rights and it is that inability which is rendering the Left more irrelevant by the day.
