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My first guest post at CiF Watch, before becoming managing editor, was devoted to critiquing a Ben White essay published at ‘Comment is Free’.
I noted then, with intentional understatement, that White seemed an odd choice to provide “analysis” on anything having to do with the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict for ‘CiF’ readers.
I observed that White, the author of “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide”, is on record expressing sympathy towards those who hold antisemitic views - as an understandable reaction to Israel’s “Racial Supremacy” and a justifiable frustration with the Western media’s “subservience to Israel”.
I similarly questioned why any media group which fancied themselves “liberal” would license a commentator who morally justified anti-Jewish racism, and opposes the existence of the Jewish state within any borders.
White’s CiF essay on May 11, 2010, “Israel seeks to silence dissent” championed the cause of ‘human rights defender’, Ameer Makhoul, head of the Israeli NGO Ittijah, whose arrest by Israeli security officials White characterized as an attempt to stifle voices demanding accountability, and as a “crackdown on dissent and human rights work.”
Strangely absent was any follow-up by White on the Makhoul case, owed, presumably, to the inconvenient fact that Makhoul is currently serving 10 years in prison for spying for Hezbollah, after pleading guilty to charges including contact with a foreign agent, conspiring to assist the enemy in wartime, and espionage.
White’s May, 2010 commentary defended Makhoul, but his broader polemical objectives were, as always, to attempt to delegitimize Israel by questioning its status as the region’s only democracy, and championing “heroic” anti-Zionist NGOs who are striving to bring about the end of Jewish self-determination.
In fact the protagonist in his current tale of Israeli villainy, “This smear against Israeli human rights activists is all too familiar“, Jan. 4, is one Hassan Jabareen, of the NGO Adalah, who is on record stating the following, in what could be White’s defining mantra:
“Activists should try to portray Israel as an inherent undemocratic state” and use that as part of campaigning internationally.”
Like White, Adalah – which, he noted, has received funds from NIF – also campaigns for the end of the Jewish state, which it has characterized as a “colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid”. Adalah also accused Israel of representing an “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.”
Beyond the particulars of his efforts to delegitimize Israel, it needs reminding the degree of malevolence White possess towards Israel, which are restrained by few if any moral boundaries. White is on record characterizing ”pure” Zionism as an ideology of “extermination”, has conjured a villainous Israeli caricature which forces Palestinians on “death marches”, and has even defended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from “charges” that he denied the Holocaust.
Beyond contextualizing White’s obsessive and malign anti-Zionism, and expressed sympathy for those who hold antisemitic beliefs, the decision by editors at ‘Comment is Free’ to continually sanction White’s campaign to rid the world of the malignancy of Zionism can not be easily dismissed.
Guardian Readers’ Editor Chris Elliott’s mea culpa “On averting accusations of antisemitism” warned the paper’s writers, reporters and editors to refrain from using language, and employing tropes, which evoke antisemitic narratives – a moral guideline, it would seem, that should similarly apply to commentators they chose to publish.
By licensing Ben White – whose antipathy towards the Jewish state, and comfort level with Judeophobia, is undeniable – as a voice somehow consistent with “respectable” liberal opinion, the Guardian again demonstrates that, whatever the solitary musings of one editor, the institution continues to be compromised by a callous disinterest in the dangers of modern antisemitic thought.
Related articles
- Guardian publishes letter by Tony Greenstein suggesting comparison between anti-Israel protests & those against Nazis (cifwatch.com)
- Why do they hate the Jews? The Guardian and the toxicity of liberal racism. (cifwatch.com)
- Richard Silverstein, evidently in an attempt to ‘heal the world’, exposes & endangers pro-Israel blogger (cifwatch.com)
- Is it possible to “understand” Ben White’s antisemitism? CiF again sanctions opposition to peace with Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Fight or flight? CiF Watch, David Yehuda Stern & Ben White (cifwatch.com)
- CiF piece critical of Gilad Atzmon elicits storm of antisemitic reader comments, including organ theft libels (cifwatch.com)
Riazatt Butt is CiF’s Religious Affairs correspondent, and her column, “Divine Dispatches”, in the Belief Section of CiF, represents a round-up of sorts on religious news in the UK and around the world. Her reports are sometimes cheeky and irreverent but, more often than not, sober and descriptive.
Her June 29th report focused on a group for those who have been alienated but wish to remain within the Anglican family, the LGBT issue within the Church of England, and the search for the next Chief Rabbi of the UK.
Regarding the latter issue, which touched on the Reform-Orthodox divide within the UK Jewish community, and other issues effecting the decision, Butt noted the “changing demographic of Britain’s small but powerful Jewish communities” – a narrative about Jewish influence, it should be noted, that Butt has explored on at least one other occasion.
Of course, anyone with a serious grasp of the history of anti-Semitism would immediately recognize this familiar trope about Jewry. No matter how small the Jewish community relative to the total population in the countries they live, their “power” and influence is always magnified – typically in the context of suggestions as to their injurious effects.
Even in the U.S., where Jews enjoy freedoms and prosperity unparalleled in Diaspora history, the term “Israel lobby” (or “Jewish Lobby”) has become shorthand, largely within progressive political circles - a pejorative suggesting that the organized Jewish community has a harmful influence on U.S. foreign policy.
In a previous post we commented on Haneen Zoabi’s CiF essay decrying the detention, by British Authorities, of radical Islamist preacher Raed Salah, where she accused the UK “Zionist” community of controlling British politics.
As noted in the post, the Jewish community in the UK (about 300,000) represents a minuscule percentage (less than 1/2 of 1%) of the overall British population.
Further, as anyone who reads this blog would surely know, this “powerful” Jewish community is somehow unable to control the Guardian’s habitual demonization of the Jewish state, nor other manifestations of obsessive Israel hatred (and anti-Semitism) in the media, as well as by Islamists, pro-Palestinian “activists”, and NGOs.
Globally, Jews make up approximately 2/10 of 1% of the world’s population.
Muslims make up 23%. Christians represent 30%.
Sixty-six years after the Holocaust, it is horribly dispiriting that the charge that Jewry is too (or, at least, disproportionately) powerful has become practically a banality.
Related articles
- The Guardian: Fuelling Denials of Antisemitism (cifwatch.com)
- Haneen Zoabi defends anti-Semitic Islamist preacher: Accuses UK Zionist lobby of controlling British politics (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian, Haneen Zoabi and Raed Salah – a Case Study of the Red-Green Alliance (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian: Platform of choice for Iranian anti-Israel propagandists (cifwatch.com)
- Professor Robert Wistrich: “The Guardian is second to none when it comes to the delegitimization of Israel” (cifwatch.com)
- “As a Jew” explained (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Notorious anti-Semite, Gilad Atzmon, a featured speaker at flotilla fundraiser (cifwatch.com)
- On why many liberals continue to ignore explicit anti-Semitism in the Palestinian media (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian grants licence to voice expressing alarm over the injurious effects of organized Jewish community in U.S. (cifwatch.com)
- Image accompanying Guardian ‘letters to the editor’ post condemning Israel evokes classic canard (cifwatch.com)
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On June 29th 2011, hours after Sheikh Raed Salah had been arrested in London, The Guardian published an article in his defence on its ‘Comment is Free’ website by Haneen Zoabi.
There are three elements to this story and despite the fact that they may appear to come from different worlds, they in fact have more in common than may first meet the eye. Their binding factor is one: Israel.
Haneen Zoabi is an Arab-Israeli (from Nazareth) member of Israel’s parliament on behalf of ‘Balad‘ – an acronym for ‘Brit Leumit Democratit’ or National Democratic Alliance. It is a secular far-Left Arab party formed in 1995 by Azmi Bishara and others as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Oslo Accords, which were supposed to bring about a two-state solution. Its members reject the concept of a Jewish State – and therefore Jewish self-determination – and seek to establish a bi-national secular one in its place to which Palestinian refugees would be given ‘the right of return’. Concurrently, it supports the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories captured by Israel from Egypt and Jordan during the Six Day War, including part of Jerusalem.
Raed Salah is also an Arab-Israeli – head of the radical northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel (or, as they prefer to be known, the ‘Islamic Movement in ’48 Palestine’) – and a resident and former mayor of the city of Um El Fahm. The movement’s origins can be traced back to the days of the Arab revolt in Mandate Palestine in 1936, but it gathered momentum as a result of the co-operation between Haj Amin al Husseini and its parent organisation (also that of Hamas), the Muslim Brotherhood. The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 was accepted by the movement’s more moderate southern branch –a move which created a permanent rift between it and the northern branch, which rejected the agreements. The underlying principles of the northern branch are similar to those of Hamas: the rejection of Israel’s right to exist, the establishment of an Islamic state (as part of the Caliphate) in its place and the implementation of Sharia law. It also supports the ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees.
In other words, despite the fact that, according to Salah’s ideology, Haneen Zoabi would no longer have the right to be a secular, uncovered, educated female Arab politician, the ‘red’ of the far Left finds common ground with the ‘green’ of the Islamist movement on one subject: the desire to eliminate the Jewish State from the map.
Salah and Zoabi have another thing in common: both were aboard the ‘Mavi Marmara’ last May when Muslim Brotherhood-linked IHH activists viciously attacked and wounded Israeli soldiers trying to prevent the ship from breaching the naval blockade on Gaza and nine of them were killed as a result. Photographs taken aboard the ship at the time yet only recently published apparently show Zoabi in the vicinity of Turkish activists armed with guns.
Here is Salah in action after the flotilla:
And where is the Guardian in all this? Well, it frequently gives a platform to anti-Zionists and in particular those of the far-Left variety, in accordance with the ideologies and activities of some of its own staff such as Seumas Milne. It also frequently acts as a voluntary platform for members of Hamas and sympathisers of that Islamist movement. It is, in other words, the place where red and green meet in order to promote their anti-Israel message and at no time was that more obvious than during the aftermath of the 2010 flotilla which was dutifully promoted by the Guardian according to red/green dictates.
Like Salah and Zoabi, the Guardian too appears to reject the option of negotiation as the preferred manner of solving the Arab-Israeli conflict; its active participation in the ‘Palestine Papers’ affair which effectively put the lid upon the Palestinian Authority’s ability to negotiate anything indicated that Farringdon Road is definitely in the Hamas camp.
So let us now examine Zoabi’s arguments in favour of Salah, as published by the Guardian. Immediately she tries to attribute the blame for Salah’s arrest to Israel and its supporters, whilst at the same time playing the ‘Islamophobia’ card. According to British statements on the subject, Salah was arrested under Section 3 of the Immigration Act of 1971 which, to the best of my knowledge,’ Israel and its supporters’ had no part in drafting. Obviously, Zoabi cannot credit the UK authorities with possessing minds of their own.
She refuses to recognise the unpleasant fact that, like many other countries, both Britain and Israel have seen a worrying rise in the popularity of various strains of the Islamist movement in recent years and that measures to limit incitement against non-Muslims, Muslim apostates, women, homosexuals and members of other ethnic groups are part and parcel of a democratic country’s responsibility towards its citizens of all stripes. Raed Salah is not the first (and will probably not be the last) Islamist (or other) hate preacher to be denied entry to or deported from the United Kingdom and that fact has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘Islamophobia’ or clandestine behind the scenes operations by a mythical ‘Zionist lobby’.
Is it surprising that the Guardian should permit Zoabi to promote such ridiculous claims on its virtual pages? Not in the least: it has frequently allowed Islamists and their supporters to sound warning bells of ‘Islamophobia’ (as opposed to the real phenomenon of anti-Muslim bigotry) on its pages as part and parcel of the campaign by British Islamists to silence debate. As for the all-powerful ‘Zionist lobby’; this, of course, is one of the favourite themes on CiF and is promoted by former Foreign Office types, Arabists and Islamists alike.
Zoabi’s falsehoods continue with the statement that:
“Because I took part in the first freedom flotilla to break the illegal and inhuman siege of Gaza, the Israeli establishment has waged a propaganda campaign against me, accusing me of “terrorism”, and demanding the withdrawal of my parliamentary immunity and citizenship. This will be difficult to implement, but it threatens my political legitimacy and defines me as a “risk”.”
Of course she conveniently forgets to mention that as a Knesset member she swore that “I pledge myself to bear allegiance to the State of Israel and faithfully to discharge my mandate in the Knesset.” Sadly for Haneen Zoabi, the right to collaborate with enemies of her country and to attempt to facilitate the increased influx of weapons from the Iranian regime she so admires into Gaza with the sole purpose of their being used to kill, injure and terrorize the civilians who pay her generous salary is not included in her job description. She also neglects to mention that the sanctions enacted against her following her flotilla escapade were at most symbolic; as she herself said in an interview with ‘electronic Intifada’ “ The three parliamentary sanctions are nothing — I mean nothing — because I can still use my civic passport”.
Zoabi then goes on to dismiss criticisms of Salah as ‘fabricated’:
“Unable to produce any legal evidence, the Israeli establishment and its supporters in Britain accuse him of antisemitism. Salah has rebutted the fabricated allegations behind these claims and instructed his lawyers to begin legal action against those repeating them.”
“It appears that the charge of antisemitism is being used as a way of suppressing criticism of Israeli policies. Since when has the struggle for equality become a form of racism? Since when have states that boast of their democratic credentials acquired the right to arrest people for their political views?”
A quick tour around Salah’s (Zoabi endorsed) ‘struggle for equality’ and ‘political views’ shows him to be a supporter of the notion that Jews were pre-warned about the 9/11 terror attacks, a condemner of America’s action against the “martyr” Osama Bin Laden and a radical homophobe. That alone would probably be enough to drastically reduce his Brownie points with the British Home Secretary but has nothing to do with Israel.
On his home turf, Salah is best known (apart from funding Hamas and having spent five months in prison for assaulting a policeman) for being a very successful inciter of violent riots. His favourite tactic is to whip up fervour by telling his listeners that Israel is attempting to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque.
“On Friday the leader of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch told followers that should Muslims have to choose between renouncing the al-Aqsa Mosque and becoming martyrs they will choose the latter.
“Should the State of Israel make us choose…we will clearly choose to be martyrs,” said Sheikh Raed Salah in the annual al-Aqsa convention in Umm al-Fahm. “We are a nation that does not give up, we will die and win; the al-Aqsa Mosque is not a matter that can be given up on, and we shall win, God willing.”
Thousands of Muslims heeded Salah’s call and made their way to Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday. Police initially restricted access to the compound – both to tourists and visitors – as a precautionary measure, after learning that residents of east Jerusalem were urged to “come to protect the Mount.” Large police forces were deployed in the Old City as well.”
At a lecture at Haifa University in 2009 he said:
“We love life, our families, our homes and our children, but if they suggest that we give up our principles and holy sites, we would rather die and we will welcome death.”
Salah claimed that the government continued constantly to dig tunnels under the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque, and that Netanyahu was planning to complete during his current term what he did not complete during his first one – “to dig additional tunnels under al-Aqsa and rebuild the Temple on the Temple Mount.”
The Muslim students responded by chanting, “Allahu Akbar” (God is great).”
It is, of course, the prerogative of the British Home Secretary to decide that it is not in the public interest to allow such an obvious master in the incitement of violence to have free access to the already problematic sections of radicalised youth in her society.
No amount of crying wolf by Haneen Zoabi can transform that into ‘Islamophobia’, just as Israeli opposition to the actions of those who seek to deny Jews the right to self-determination should not be categorised as racism. The Israeli public and government have nothing against Salah and Zoabi because they are Arabs or Muslims; any objections are to their (often violence-related) actions taken as part of their red/green campaign to destroy the Jewish State.
Salah, Zoabi and the Guardian obviously cannot understand the difference. That could well be because none of them have pristine reputations themselves when it comes to anti-racism, and their repeated references to a ‘pro-Israel (ie Jewish/Zionist) lobby’ influencing policy in foreign countries, both in this article and others, are just the tip of that particular iceberg.
Of course the rich irony of it is that of all the countries in the world, Israel and the United Kingdom are members of quite a small but select club of those which would allow people such as Zoabi and Salah such a free rein to disseminate their lies and propaganda, and that especially excludes the types of country which members of the red/green alliance revere and would emulate if their wishes concerning the end of the Jewish State ever came true.
Related articles
- Conal Urquhart quotes Ben White as a source in Guardian’s second whitewash of anti-Semitic preacher (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian’s bias in covering Sheikh Raed Salah (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian and Independent coverage of second flotilla omits key facts (cifwatch.com)
- Azzam Tamimi’s big ‘Arab Spring’ lie. (cifwatch.com)
- The tangled web they weave – the eminence noir behind the “Freedom Flotilla 2″ (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ – Update 4 – ‘Brothers’ in Arms (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian has now devoted four columns (here, here, here, and here) and one CiF commentary, encompassing over 2100 words, about Britain’s arrest of the Islamist preacher, Sheikh Raed Salah, all of which share a couple common denominators: They’re all viscerally sympathetic to Salah; they all but ignore his record of incitement and anti-Semitism, which includes a sermon where he advanced the Medieval blood libel, as well as his ties to Hamas; and they frame Salah’s opponents in the pejorative as either “right-wing Israelis” or as part of the “Zionist lobby”.
This latter charge is leveled explicitly by Haneen Zoabi, the Israeli Arab MK who was a participant on board last year’s pro-Hamas flotilla, in her CiF column, An Israeli trap for Britain, June 29.
Zoabi casually dismisses charges of anti-Semitism against Salah, accuses pro-Israel groups of complicity with “Islamophobia” in their criticism of the preacher, implicitly levels the Zionism is racism canard against Israel, and characterizes Salah’s arrest as evidence of racism by Zionists in the UK.
She concludes her apologia for the Hamas supporting hate preacher by an urgent plea to citizens of the UK not to allow “the pro-Israel lobby” to determine their politics.
For those of us schooled in the long and dark history of this charge – of the injurious effects of organized Jewry on the body politic of the nations where they reside – as well as the Guardian’s complicity in advancing this odious narrative of Jewish power, the continuing staying power of such tropes come as no surprise.
But, the predictability of Zoabi’s effort to blame the UK’s tiny Jewish population (less than 1/2 of 1% of Britain’s total population) on a decision by non-Jewish British government authorities doesn’t make it any less malicious, dangerous, or racist.
Related articles
- The Guardian’s bias in covering Sheikh Raed Salah (cifwatch.com)
- Conal Urquhart quotes Ben White as a source in Guardian’s second whitewash of anti-Semitic preacher (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian won’t report: Notorious anti-Semite, Gilad Atzmon, a featured speaker at flotilla fundraiser (cifwatch.com)
- On why many liberals continue to ignore explicit anti-Semitism in the Palestinian media (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian’s Mya Guarnieri has reached a new low. In a recent piece for Al-Jazeera, titled, “The death of Israeli democracy“, Guarnieri outdid, by several degrees, her previous anti-Zionist opus in the Guardian in the levels of hyperbole and pure malice.
In her Dec. 8 piece in CiF, “Israel Rabbi’s racist decrees strikes at the soul of Judaism”, Guarnieri contextualized the bigoted remarks of a small number of rabbis as signifying Israel’s “rising tide of religious fascism,” by claiming that such views were state-sanctioned, which, as we noted in an official complaint to the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor, was categorically untrue.
But, undeterred, and clearly not one to let facts get in the way of preconceived prejudices about Israel, Guarnieri decides to double-down, and raises the moral stakes even higher by advancing an even more inflammatory narrative about Israel’s supposed descent into political darkness – in Al-Jazeera, a media organization, it should be noted, that’s not exactly known for sharing her secular liberal outlook.
Guarnieri’s case, in her Al Jazeera piece, against Israel – helpfully illustrated with a photo of a sinister looking Orthodox Jew – is, of course, paper-thin, and includes, as exhibit A, a bill passed by the Knesset which merely denies government funding to groups who view the state’s very creation as a horrible tragedy.
But her polemical invective against the Jewish state then picks up steam when she – mirroring a narrative recently advanced by the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall who claimed that Israel merely “poses” as a democracy – informs us that its arguable that, “Israel was never a democracy in the true sense of the word.”
Guarnieri then quotes Knesset member Dov Khenin, of the Jewish-Arab party Hadash, who had just given a talk under the banner of “The Danger of Fascism”, about which she adds, “There [were] about 20 people present – a sad number considering what is at stake.”
Khenin – who later showed himself a fan of the father of Marxist thought, Fredrich Engels – said:
“Arab Knesset members have always been regarded with suspicion – the vicious verbal assault Haneen Zoabi faced in the Knesset after she participated in the flotilla comes to my mind”
Of course, the fact that Zoabi (an Arab member of Knesset) participated in a flotilla sponsored by known terrorists (IHH) who seek Israel’s destruction, and whose members, while on board the vessel, brutally attacked the citizens serving in her own country’s military, and then merely suffered a verbal assault, may at least partially explain why only 20 Israelis saw fit to turn out at Khenin’s event.
But, Guarnieri, undeterred by the fact that the overwhelming majority of actual Israelis don’t take the hysterical warnings about their country’s supposed descent into fascism seriously, pivots into even more odious territory, by asking, “Will Israel become out-right fascist?”, before adding:
At an October protest against legislation commonly referred to as the loyalty oath – a bill that would require non-Jews seeking Israeli citizenship to pledge allegiance to a “Jewish and democratic” state - Gavriel Solomon, a prominent academic and peace activist, likened Israel to Nazi Germany, circa 1935...That was the year that the Nuremberg Laws – racist legislation that led to the systematic and deadly persecution of Jews – were created….There were no [concentration] camps yet but there were racist laws,” he said. “And we are heading towards these kinds of laws.” [emphasis mine]
Guarnieri follows this insidious analogy by concluding:
“While meaningful change is probably a long way off for Israel – it may take something huge, like fascism, to wake Jewish Israelis from their apathy and dreams of maintaining both a Zionist and democratic state – change is in the air.”
For Guarnieri, it seems, the imminent regression into Nazi-style fascism would of course be tragic and abhorrent for Israel, but (on a more positive note) could also serve a quite progressive cause – the end of the Jewish state.
You have to burn the village in order to save it.
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Telling the Truth
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Hadar Sela
Lies, Damn Lies, and Guardian-approved (Ben) White Lies
February 4, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Balad, BDS, Ben White, Comment is Free, Flotilla, Guardian, Hamad Amar, Haneen Zoabi, Masud Ghnaim, Obsession, Said Nafa | by Israelinurse | 11 comments
Ben White
It would be reassuring to be able to write that the latest Ben White screed on ‘Comment is Free’ is the result of misunderstanding, ignorance or shoddy research.
Equally, comfort could perhaps be found were it possible to assign the fact that such crude anti-Israel propaganda passed the inspecting eyes of a Guardian editor to ‘hasn’t got a clue about a far-away place’.
Neither of these statements is, however, true.
Ben White is a prolific and energetic campaigner against Israel’s existence, as CiF Watch readers have known for a long time. The Guardian knows that too and hence the publication of this article amounts to nothing more than collaboration with White’s ugly campaign of incitement.
Let’s have a look at some of White’s recycled claims. He begins by stating that:
Actually, of the 120 members of the current (18th) Knesset, no fewer than fourteen are of Arab ethnicity. Eleven of them are not mentioned in White’s article, indicating that the vast majority do not, as he terms it, “face harassment”.
The Likud party includes in its Knesset members Ayoub Kara, a former deputy speaker of the house who also sat in the 15th and 16th Knessets. Kadima has Majalli Wahabi, also a former deputy speaker and acting President who was once a member of the Likud and has served in the two previous parliaments. Ta’al has Dr. Ahmed Tibi – now serving his fourth term. Labour includes Raleb Majadele – the first Arab Muslim Minister who is currently in his third term as a Knesset member. Yisrael Beiteinu includes Hamad Amar and the United Arab list has Ibrahim Sarsur, Masud Ghnaim and Taleb el Sana who is currently in the Knesset for the sixth time. Hadash is represented by Afu Agbaria, Hana Sweid and Mohamed Barakeh – also a former deputy speaker now in his fourth term of office. Balad has Said Nafa, Jamal Zahalka – on his third term – and Haneen Zouabi.
All of these representatives took an oath of office upon entering the Knesset. That oath states:
Indeed, like most citizens of democracies the world over, Israelis expect their lawmakers – regardless of ethnicity – first and foremost to uphold the country’s constitution and its laws. If they do not, then democracy is a sham. In the cases of the three Knesset members named by White, there have been alleged breaches of laws made in the parliament in which they sit.
Mohammed Barakeh of the communist party Hadash faces charges of assault. The fact that the incidents took place at demonstrations would presumably not excuse the alleged slapping of a policeman or choking of a soldier in any democratic country in which assault is a criminal act. Mr. Barakeh, incidentally, is a graduate of Tel Aviv University; hardly a mark of the downtrodden and persecuted.
Said Naffaa of Balad was indicted on suspicion of breaking the law which prohibits visiting an enemy state without the advance permission of the Ministry of the Interior. That law too of course applies to all Israeli citizens, regardless of religion or ethnicity. In addition he is suspected of having met with members of two terrorist organisations.
Haneen Zoabi – also a member of the anti-Zionist party Balad and a graduate of both Haifa University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem – is most infamous for her co-operation with the IHH (banned in Israel due to its connections to the Union of Good and Hamas) during the 2010 incident and her involvement in assaults on Israel’s legitimacy such as the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
White’s concluding paragraph states that:
There are indeed citizens of all ethnicities and religions in Israel working hard to close the gaps and improve the situation of its minorities. Some of them can be found in the Knesset. They are the majority of diligent Arab MKs – ignored by Ben White – who loyally serve their communities within the framework of the law and, whilst upholding their voluntarily given oath of allegiance to the state, work for equal rights and opportunities for all.
As a distant relative of Haneen Zoabi complained last year:
Rather than indicating persecution of Arab members of the Knesset, the three MKs championed by White serve to highlight the fact that all citizens of Israel are equal in the eyes of the law. In a true democracy, equality includes both rights and obligations – which cannot suddenly be shelved when it comes to prosecution for breaking the law.
But of course Ben White does not actually want people such as Zoabi, Naffaa and Barakeh to be bound by full equality with their counterparts of other ethnicities. He believes that those who actively work towards the dissolution of the State of Israel and sometimes co-operate with some of its most violent enemies should not simply get their day in court like anyone else, but should be permitted to carry on unhindered.
And if Israeli society balks at the transgressions of those using its very democracy to try to bring about its demise, White will play the ethno-religious card and scuttle to the pages of the Guardian or the New Statesman shouting ‘persecution!’ That very same tactic has long been used successfully by Islamists in White’s native country in order to deflect criticism of a whole host of problems within British society.
Fortunately, Israeli society is not yet cowed by so-called ‘progressives’ and ‘liberals’ who are prepared to sacrifice their collective values on the rotting altar of misguided political correctness.
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