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Cross posted by Alan A at Harry’s Place
In the Guardian’s op ed by Raed Salah, the following footnote has been added:
In the thread below, there has been some discussion about statements that Raed Salah allegedly made. The Comment editor Becky Gardiner has commented, setting out the judgement here and here. Raed Salah has also replied here.
This is what Becky Gardiner says:
Raed Salah’s amanuensis adds in his name:
After a 10-month legal battle, I have now been cleared on “all grounds” by a senior immigration tribunal judge, who ruled that May’s decision to deport me was “entirely unnecessary” and that she had been “misled”. The evidence she relied on (which had been given to her by the Community Security Trust, a British charity, and included a poem of mine about oppression which been doctored to make it appear anti-Jewish) was not, he concluded, a fair portrayal of my views. The judge said the one short passage in a speech that May used as evidence that I had repeated the so-called “blood libel” [the medieval accusation that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make bread] “was not a sample [of my views], or ‘the tip of the iceberg’: it is simply all the evidence there is.” In reality, I wasn’t referring to any such thing. I reject any and every form of racism, including anti-Semitism. I don’t believe in the “blood libel” against Jews and I reject it in its entirety. What I was really referring to in my sermon was the killing of innocents in the name of religion, including children, from the time of the Inquisition to as recently as Bosnia and elsewhere in Europe whose governments support Israel’s action. In fact, what May has neglected to consider in respect of the speech is that I also said in the speech ‘we are not malicious and we will not be malicious, thus we will also protect the honour of the Jewish synagogues.’ I have no doubt that, despite this, Israel’s cheerleaders in Britain will continue to smear my character. This is the price every Palestinian leader and campaigner is forced to pay.
So, that’s the Guardian’s position.
On Holocaust Memorial Day.
There is a whole bunch of evidence, unused in the trial and unquestioned, that shows the nature of Raed Salah. Becky Gardiner is very much aware of it herself, because I know that “a senior Guardian figure” took it to her, in an attempt to get her to publish just ONE piece explaining why liberals and progressives ought not to back Raed Salah.
Articles were written. They were submitted by a number of people to the Guardian. They weren’t even acknowledged.
Becky Gardiner’s view, I’m afraid to say, was that Comment is Free should not offer a platform to those who wanted to oppose Raed Salah’s incitement and racism. She saw opposition to Zionism as a sort of Manichean struggle, in which she was on the side of the angels.
The “senior Guardian figure” was quite surprised. But obviously, he did nothing about it because, you know, we mustn’t make a fuss.
This is the year in which antisemitism became a mainstream “progressive” cause. Fancy joining the fightback?
Related articles
- The Guardian, Raed Salah and Yom HaShoah. (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian again defends Islamist antisemite Raed Salah, attacks Community Security Trust (cifwatch.com)
- Why is the ‘liberal’ Guardian still rooting for a reactionary antisemitic Islamist named Raed Salah? (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
A whole nation is at this moment remembering the slaughter of two-thirds of its members’ population in Europe.
That genocide was fuelled and enabled by the spreading of a racist supremacist ideology which sought to rid its subscribers’ country from ‘contamination’ by Jews.
That ideology was propagated in the minds of another nation by the spreading of false tales about Jewish evil-doing and coordinated scheming and by the dehumanisation of Jews to such a degree that even if they did not directly take part, millions stood by and watched as one of the most shocking events in human history took place.
Barely had the strains of the memorial siren which was sounded this morning all over Israel as a mark of respect for the six million victims of racist hatred faded away, when the Guardian chose to publish an article on its ‘Comment is Free’ website penned by Raed Salah – a man who holds beliefs and ideologies virtually indistinguishable from those which caused the events that siren commemorates.
The editors of the Guardian have fought in Raed Salah’s corner ever since the affair began.
Now, once again, their immature “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” stance has caused them to tarnish the battered reputation of a once respected newspaper (and prove themselves to be eminently lacking in taste) by publishing Salah’s bizarre claims of being the victim of a “smear campaign” by “Israel’s cheerleaders in Britain” and that his anti-Semitic ‘poem’ “had been doctored” in order to frame him.
Those editors also permit Salah to launch a tirade of lies and distortions on everything from marriage laws, municipal and government budgets and equal pay laws to the well-worn subject on Guardian pages of Al Arakib and deliberate misrepresentation of the Balfour Declaration.
More gravely still, they allow Salah an unfettered platform from which to make the ridiculous – and dangerous – claims that official Israeli policy includes transfer and ethnic cleansing and that Israel is destroying the al Aqsa mosque.
There can be little doubt that some at the Guardian actually subscribe to at least parts of the genre of lies propagated by Raed Salah. There can be even less doubt that those who do not must be so intimidated by the prevailing organisational culture that they cannot curb the publication of such a blatantly outrageous article by a religious supremacist and separatist who subscribes to Hamas ideologies and aspirations alarmingly similar to the one the victims of which are being commemorated today.
Raed Salah has made a career out of extremism and incitement. That is who he is and what he does. However uncomfortable it may be, it is necessary to admit that – as his planned speaking tour proves – there is an audience for that kind of extremism in the United Kingdom as well as the Middle East.
But extremists do not get very far without the middle-men who re-package and re-brand their ideas and move them into the mainstream.
There are too many of these middle-men in Britain today.
Some of them sit in the House of Lords and in Parliament whilst others hold office in churches or so-called human rights organisations and charities.
Still more are members of Trade Unions, the academia or the media.
These people take the lies and dehumanisation of extremists such as Raed Salah and wrap them in a veneer made possible by their own standing which allows pernicious ideas to be spread to a general public which would otherwise not come into contact with them.
This is not to suggest that the editors of the Guardian and others are plotting a new genocide against the Jews. Indeed they would doubtless be horrified by the very suggestion. But what they are doing by uncritically publishing and promoting the lies and libels of extremists such as Salah and various Hamas functionaries and supporters is shifting hate-speech against Jews and Israelis alike into the realm of mainstream opinion.
As we should all (Guardian editors included) know by now and as we are reminded today, Yom HaShoah, such hate-speech does not exist in a vacuum.
“The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility. Those who control the media are accountable for its consequences.”
Related articles
- Yom HaShoah: ‘Unto every person there is a name’. (cifwatch.com)
- Why is the ‘liberal’ Guardian still rooting for a reactionary antisemitic Islamist named Raed Salah? (cifwatch.com)
- Harriet Sherwood cynically exploits a Holocaust survivor on Yom HaShoah to criticize Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian again defends Islamist antisemite Raed Salah, attacks Community Security Trust (cifwatch.com)
The Guardian’s infatuation with Raed Salah is not new. When the story of his arrest in the UK broke last year, the paper produced a plethora of articles, all eerily similar in 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 appeal against the deportation order in October 2011.
Now however, in the wake of the recent decision by the UK immigration tribunal judge, the Guardian is back on the case, with two articles (so far) on the subject in one day. Along the way, the Guardian did not miss the opportunity to lash out once again at the CST, quoting David Miller and apparently having learned little from the last time it relied upon information provided by that known purveyor 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 signature rabble-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 has spent time in prison in Israel due to his role in the transferal of funds to Hamas. That, of course, is no coincidence: Salah has been named as sitting on the board 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 various supporting 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’ was named in the trial 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 editorial on 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.
Related articles
Global March to Jerusalem, scheduled for this Friday, March 30, is an anti-Israel publicity stunt that aims to have a million people marching on Israel’s borders from surrounding countries – Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt – with the aim of reaching Jerusalem. Concurrently, demonstrations are planned against Israel’s diplomatic missions in major cities throughout the world.
The organizers of GMJ are made up of members of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, far-left extremist groups and are backed by the Iranian government. Senior organizers include:
- Ahmed Abo Halabiya, a Hamas MP
- Zaher Birawi, a prominent Hamas activist in the UK and senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood linked Palestinian Return Center.
- Abdul Maqri, head of the Algerian delegation aboard the Mavi Marmara who in 2010 said “all our blood is Palestine” and declared that “Israel will be annihilated soon”.
Advisory board members include George Galloway, Mahathir Mohammed and Sheikh Raed Salah.
Official statements of the organizers of GMJ attempt to portray the movement as a peaceful protest aimed at highlighting the so-called “Judaization of Jerusalem”.
In 2011, GMJ general coordinator, Ribhi Halloum stated “[t]he protest aims to move the right of return possessed by Palestinian refugees from theory to practice”.
In practice, the right of return is subterfuge for the destruction of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Coupled with that, employment of the term “Judaization of Jerusalem” is hateful rhetoric designed to negate thousands of years of Jewish history and incite the Muslim world.
Combined with the terror groups behind GMJ and the rallying cry of “saving Al Aqsa (Jerusalem) from the Jews”, it seems likely that sufficient numbers the organizers will seek violent confrontation with Israeli forces with the aim of sparking another Intifada.
The Guardian, undeterred by such quotidian concerns as the possibly deadly results of such a terrorist provocation on Israel’s borders, provided a platform to Palestinian Solidarity Campaign’s Sarah Colborne, “Jerusalem is at the heart of the Palestinian struggle“, CiF, March 27.
Sarah Colborne is both a member of the GMJ International Executive Committee, its International Central Committee, and is also the GMJ national co-ordinator for the UK.
Colborne’s Lie #1, in CiF essay
“Jerusalem is a city that embodies the cultural heritage of three religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Yet Palestinians – both Christian and Muslim – are being driven out of Jerusalem….Just one example of this ethnic cleansing”
Since 1967, when Israel united Jerusalem, (based on the Israel Central bureau of Statistics) there were:
Jews: 195,700
Muslims: 54,963
Christians: 12,646
Then, by 2009:
Jews: 479,756
Muslims: 278,568
Christians: 15,476
So, far from being driven out of Jerusalem, the Muslim population of the city has increased roughly 5 fold, while the Jewish population has increased roughly by a factor of 2.8. So, the Muslim population has grown dramatically faster than the Jewish population.
Obviously, there is nothing resembling ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem.
Colborne’s Lie #2
“Jerusalem, the traditional centre of Palestinian social, religious and economic life , is increasingly being isolated and restricted by Israeli policies.”
Such a moral inversion, suggesting that religious life in Jerusalem for Palestinians is increasingly restricted, represents the nadir of anti-Zionist propaganda. Jerusalem, since 1967 – in stark contrast to Jordanian control of the city from 1949 to 1967, when Jews were forbidden from visiting Judaism’s most holy sites – has never been more free for citizens of all faiths to worship.
Muslim rights on the Temple Mount, the site of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa Mosque, have not been infringed, and the holy places are actually under the supervision of the Muslim Waqf. Although it is Judaism’s holiest site, Israel has left the Temple Mount itself under the control of Muslim religious authorities.
Colborne Lie #3
“The Global March to Jerusalem is bringing together an impressive coalition of Palestinian voices and organisations, with supporters from dozens of countries around the world travelling to Jerusalem, and to the border countries, to participate in the peaceful actions.”
“The struggle for Palestinian rights is at the core of the global movement for social and economic justice.”
As our research has demonstrated (which can be seen at our site, Exposing the truth about the Global March to Jerusalem), this coalition is led by members of proscribed Islamist terror organizations with backing from the Iranian regime.
Here are the real goals of GMJ, contrary to Colborne’s supremely dishonest polemic at ‘Comment is Free’.
- Destroying the “Zionist edifice”: Some idea of the mindset of the event’s organizers can be gleaned from statements made in the following e-mail exchange between two of them regarding a previous identical project.
“Imagine a situation where we have more than a million people streaming in from four borders & Israel fails to stop the human tide…next time we will have 5 million who will be marching…This is exactly the nightmare situation for Israel…Thus will undermine the Israeli state, like no other strategy & then it will all begin to unravel & the Zionist edifice which is unraveling as we speak, will soon fall.
- Using GMJ as a catalyst to begin a 3rd Intifada: Feroze Mithiborwala is a member of both the GMJ International Executive Committee and its International Central Committee was even more explicit regarding the movement’s aims, writing:
“..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!!”
- Rejection of a two-state solution, seeking the elimination of Israel from the “river to the sea”. GMJ promotional material refers to the 1948 occupation and supports the so-called “right of return” of Palestinian refugees, both euphemisms for the destruction of the State of Israel.
- Legitimizing Antisemitic ideology in the name of human rights: Organizers of GMJ have engaged in vile antisemitic discourse, such as Ahmed Abo Halabiya, a GMJ organizer and Hamas member, who gave a sermon which included: “Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them.”
Here’s an image on the official GMJ Facebook Page, portraying Jews as rats (a popular Nazi antisemitic motif) undermining the al-Aqsa Mosque:
Finally, equally as absurd as characterizing the GMJ as an endeavor consistent with peace, liberalism and human rights is the suggestion that Colborne embodies anything resembling such progressive values.
Her organization, PSC, has demonstrated, at best, a tepid approach to Holocaust denial and racism among its members. And, Colborne has shared a platform with the homophobic and racist leader of the Northern Islamic Movement Raed Salah, and leapt to his defence when he was apprehended by the British authorities.
Colborne and Salah also sailed together on the ‘Mavi Marmara’ in 2010 as part of the ‘Freedom flotilla’, during which Islamist incitement to violence was documented in , in which Salah can be seen in the first row, wearing a white skull-cap.
The Guardian’s decision to provide a platform to the organizer of a violent provocation – an organized act of incitement – led by terrorists with the explicit aim of destroying Israel represents a further erosion of the media group’s increasingly absurd veneer of liberalism.
The Islamists, terrorists, and their apologists who have planned and are behind the March to Jerusalem can only be described politically (based on their broader ideological orientation) as representing the antisemitic extreme right.
As such, Guardian Left politics is increasingly defined by this tendency to allow nearly anyone willing to mouth platitudes about “Palestinian rights” moral impunity for their reactionary, malign, racist agendas.
Our old acquaintance Pippa Bartolotti (best known perhaps for her fight last year with a pair of sliding doors at Ben Gurion airport) appears to have made a career move from agitprop to reality TV.
For those unfamiliar with the British Channel 4 show ‘Come Dine With Me’, the format involves a group of people holding dinner parties for each other which are then graded by the participants, with the winner receiving a cash prize. This week Ms. Bartolotti – described in the blurb as a ‘peace activist’ (which appears to have become an occupation; other contestants are described as a radio journalist and a housewife) hosted the meal.
Although it is not possible to view the show from outside the UK, the comments on the program’s Facebook account appear to suggest that Pippa did not make much of an impression on some of the viewers with her locally sourced spicy lettuce soup and egg curry.
Commenters’ remarks included “If i had that at my indian i would have sent it back”, “No offence but looked totally minging”, “Sounds disgusting”, “she mad as a box of frogs”, “That was a truly awful menu!!” and “Pippa’s food was slightly odd”.
The trick with important dinner parties is, of course, to stick to tried and trusted recipes one has used frequently in the past. Here then, is a suggestion for Pippa’s next soiree.
Menu:
Sliding Door Soup with Suitcase Croutons
Fascist Flag Fricassee served with a side dish of Steamy Islamist Rhetoric
Flambe a la Flynn with Dual-Loyalty Sauce
Ethically-sourced Free Trade Organic Caffeine-free Coffee substitute (produced in Merthyr Tydfil to reduce food-miles) with ‘Not the kind, loving British Jews I have known all my life‘ thin mints
And for entertainment, rather than fortune-telling with witch-doctor bones, perhaps Ms Bartolotti could go for something more conventional and show her guests some holiday snaps.
Pippa Bartolotti holding the flag of the Syrian Socialist National Party – a fascist organization: http://www.danielpipes.org/5788/radical-politics-and-the-syrian-social-nationalist-party.
Pippa Bartolotti with Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar
Pippa Bartolotti with Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh
Richard Millett’s recent post on the subject of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine’s (RToP) book launch held at Amnesty International’s London premises (where else?) provides a good opportunity to take a look behind the scenes of such an event and to examine the connections of some of the various players and the manner in which some anti-Israel activists attempt to co-opt legitimacy to their campaign by intellectualising it.
The book in question is entitled ‘Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation’ and is based upon the ‘evidence’ presented at the RToP session in London last year. Its editors are Asa Winstanley and Frank Barat and it is published by Pluto Press.
Asa Winstanley is heavily involved with the International Solidarity Movement and spent time in the PA controlled territories working on its behalf.
“The ISM training was yesterday and today. We had about eight new recruits, so it was a pretty good weekend session. At the end of today, we were planning how to spread ourselves around the regions that ISM covers and it was a really good vibe. We have some good activists here now and I am feeling more confident about the state of ISM. The majority of us here now are British, I think.”
Winstanley’s ISM links appear to have continued after his return to the UK and he has been involved in recruiting volunteers and fundraising for the organisation. He apparently considers his stint with the ISM to have turned him into a Middle East expert, and writes for a variety of outlets including ‘Electronic Intifada’ and ‘Ceasefire’. Winstanley’s level of ‘expertise’ on Israel can be appreciated in the following passage.
“When I lived in Palestine, on the few times I had to travel to Tel Aviv from the West Bank (via Jerusalem,) walking around the public bus stations I was struck by the sheer number of armed, uniformed soldiers who used the public bus system. Anyone who has used buses in Israel for any length of time will tell you they often have more soldiers than civilians on them.
The phenomenon is so widespread that it can only be a deliberate policy. Does some $3 billion a year in military aid from the US government not provide it with enough funding for its own troop transportation? So Israel not only uses Palestinians as human shields, but it even “hides” its soldiers amongst its own civilian population – exactly what Israeli spokespeople accuses Hamas of. Talk about projection.”
Recently Winstanley has invested much in defending the case of Northern Islamic Movement leader Raed Salah who was arrested earlier this year in the UK. (The Tribunal decision is here.) Here he is being interviewed on the subject by Dr Hanan Chehata (also press officer for Daoud Abdullah’s MEMO) on the Muslim Brotherhood-linked ‘Al Hiwar’ TV channel which was established in 2006 by Azzam Tamimi.
With lies and distortions in practically every sentence, not to mention the liberal sprinklings of ‘Israel lobby’ conspiracy theory and false accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ against the CST and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, it is easy to appreciate why Winstanley is such a hit in anti-Israel circles. Particularly interesting is his declaration that the new book he co-edited is designed to be a ‘handbook’ for those engaging in BDS.
The book’s other editor is the currently UK domiciled French activist Frank Barat who is also the co-ordinator for the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. Barat is also a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the UK branch of ICHAD.
In January 2010 Barat spoke as RToP representative at one of the Palestine Memorial Week events which the RToP now organizes annually together with the Palestinian Return Centre, the Palestinian Forum in the UK, the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza, the Islamic Forum of Europe, FOSIS, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Islamic Human Rights Commission, among others.
The majority of these organisations have direct links to Hamas – a proscribed terror organization in the UK – and the Muslim Brotherhood. The events are endorsed by the PSC, Friends of Al Aqsa, the ISM, the Free Palestine Movement (organizer of flotillas) and Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East.
Barat is also busy on the lecture circuit: here he is for example appearing alongside a Guardian reporter at a Tower Hamlets Jenin Friendship Association event, and here, alongside Ghada Karmi and Jody McIntyre, explaining why he is an ‘activist’.
Barat also appears to have links to the ISM and in addition writes for a number of outlets including Al Jazeera, ‘Electronic Intifada’, the Palestine Chronicle and others. Here is his report for Ma’an from the recent RToP session in South Africa, written together with Al Shabaka’s Victor Kattan who was reporting from the event on Twitter.
Barat also runs his own blog where he links to, among other extremists, Gilad Atzmon, whose antisemitic resume includes leveling the explicit charge, on his blog, that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world.
Barat is also the editor of a book by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe.
Here is Barat’s distinctly incomplete account of the death of Jawaher Abu Rahma.
“Jawaher probably chanted “la la el jidar” (no, no, to the wall) and walked, side by side with others, towards the Apartheid Wall and the line of soldiers, waiting on top of the hill. She then probably run away when the first tear gas were fired, regrouped, and walked back towards the wall again.
……Or maybe she did not. Not this time.
She inhaled a huge quantity of this most poisonous substance and was taken to a Ramallah hospital. She never recovered. She died. The Holy Land is not the land of miracles.”
Both Winstanley and Barat are obviously wedded more to the ‘narrative’ which promotes their careers as ‘activists’ than to the kind of objectivity and adherence to fact one would expect from the editors of books or serious publications. One must therefore ask why a publishing house would select them for that role and the answer to that question is probably best found in an understanding of the ideologies adhered to by founder and publisher of Pluto Press, Roger van Zwanberg.
Many of the authors on Pluto’s authors list are household names to those familiar with the anti-Israel scene: Alastair Crooke of Conflicts Forum, Sarah Irving, Mazin Qumsiyeh, Uri Gordon of ‘Anarchists Against the Wall’ and Ted Honderich - who published at letter at the Guardian morally justifying suicide bombing against Israeli civilians - to name but a few.
Pluto Press’ radical agenda is, however, not entirely limited to the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In 2005, for example, it published a book (preface can be read here) entitled ‘Conjuring Hitler; How Britain and America made the Third Reich’ which, according to reviews, leans on the works of Holocaust Denier David Irving among others.
The publishing house also has its own Youtube channel, organizes events at universities and other venues and dedicates a page on its site to the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
Roger van Zwanenberg
In addition to his activities at Pluto Press, Roger van Zwanenberg was also a trustee of the apparently now defunct ‘Gateway Trust’ (also known as the ‘Van Zwanenberg Charitable Trust’) which included Naomi Klein and former Guardian employee Victoria Brittain among its group of ‘international advisors’ and which was supported financially by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, UNESCO and Pluto Press.
He has also been a member of the advisory board of ‘Just Media’ (founded by the Palestine Chronicle’s Ramzy Baroud – also a Pluto Press author) along with Ilan Pappe, Noam Chomsky and John Pilger.
Here is Pluto Press described in its founder’s own words:
“Our niche, our rationale and our advantage in the marketing place of the world, is that we tackle the great issues of our day… the grandeur of Imperialism, war and peace locally and globally, the tyranny of oppression, and the domination of one people by another…. the great issues as seen through socialist writers (sic) eyes.”
Van Zwanenberg describes himself as a Marxist born into “a Christian family with deep Jewish roots; all my first cousins were and are deeply Jewish.” That fact is, apparently, sufficient grounds for pulling the ‘asaJew‘ card when deemed an advantage. Here van Zwanenberg has signed a 2008 ‘Jewish opposition statement to attack on Iran’ organized by ‘Jews against Zionism’. He is also a member of ‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians’.
In a 2006 article entitled “Jewish people of Israel re-enact the horrors of their German oppressors” (written as a response to the IDF’s attempt to locate and rescue the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit), van Zwanenberg wrote the following:
“Israel and its people are now behaving with impunity, just like the State of Germany did in prosecuting the final solution. We are schooled in the belief that we must say “never again!” to such barbarity. But Israel knows that all the surrounding states are too weak to intervene. As we watch with horror the invasion of Gaza, we all feel our helplessness. All the fine words, how the horrors of the Holocaust must always be remembered, are quickly forgotten by the world’s governments as the Jewish people of Israel re-enact the horrors of their German oppressors—the horrors that their mothers and fathers underwent 60 or more years ago.
Just as Nazi Germany could not survive for long, so too, a brutal Israel, brutalizing her own and all the surrounding people, cannot survive for long. As things stand, I cannot see how that demise will come about. But the acts of evil we are now witnessing cannot last without having deep and lasting effects on all of us.” [emphasis mine]
In 2008 van Zwanenberg lent his name to a campaign for the reinstatement of a German academic, Ludwig Watzal, removed from his tenure at an official periodical after making a series of anti-Semitic remarks. Coincidentally or not, Watzal had produced a glowing review of one of Pluto Press’ publications the previous year.
Van Zwanenberg appears to consider himself proficient in understanding what he terms “so-called Terrorism”, supports BDS and is an ardent promoter of ‘anti-Imperialism’:
“Western and Eastern interests are everywhere, shipping into and out of the Suez Canal; the struggle to own or control mineral resources; but above all, the fear of “Political Islam”. The Western powers fear of political Islam is a dominant force driving the US to war throughout the region. Some will argue, as I would, that this is thoroughly misunderstood. But the hatred of all things Islamic is a mantra which is everywhere in Western media. The ruling and political classes use this fear to drive their own “War against Terrorism”.”
In 2007, following the controversy over an American publisher’s distribution of the Pluto Press book “Overcoming Zionism”, van Zwanenberg said that:
“Many presses in the United States are frightened of the pressures that the lobby can place on them,” van Zwanenberg said. “We get authors from the United States, precisely because they can’t obtain adequate representation elsewhere, and we have a good reputation for scholarly work on the subject of Israel and Palestine, and we probably have the best collections of any university press in that area.”
“Van Zwanenberg added that the attempts by “the Israel lobby” to cut off Pluto’s American distribution channel were an attack on free expression. “The lobby is very powerful and very well-financed, and small presses like us could be destroyed by these people,” van Zwanenberg said. “They are a threat to our existence and to free speech.” “
Of course in reality no-one is threatening van Zwanenberg’s free speech or the existence of his business, but free speech is a two-way street.
Members of the public have the right (and perhaps the obligation) to be aware of the extremist ideologies which motivate the publication of the type of quasi-academic work produced by publishers such as Pluto Press, particularly when it comes as a result of collaboration with a ‘tribunal’ which misleadingly affords itself quasi-legal status and faux ‘human rights’ activists such as Winstanley and Barat with links to terror-enabling organisations.
Related articles
- ‘War on Want’ at Russell Tribunal on Palestine: “More direct action coming.” (cifwatch.com)
- Guardian Travel publishes article by Sarah Irving, former ISM activist (cifwatch.com)
- Channel 4′s lying subtitles in Guardian-endorsed “Going for Gold in Gaza” documentary. (cifwatch.com)
- The Tweets +972′s Joseph Dana didn’t want you to see (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
H/T Harry’s Place and Margie
The Guardian’s capacity to cover up clear and undeniable evidence of Islamist antisemitism has no limits.
In “May warned of weak case against Sheikh Raed Salah“, Sept. 26, the Guardian’s David Hearst suggests that the case against Raed Salah’s political extremism and antisemitism is quite weak, and is owed largely to efforts by the UK Jewish community.
Writes Hearst:
Emails seen by the Guardian, show that UK Home Secretary Theresa] May was determined to find a reason to exclude [Raed] Salah, before the evidence against him had been verified.
Just 17 minutes after receiving a report on the activist, prepared by Michael Whine of the Community Security Trust, a UK charity monitoring antisemitism, Faye Johnson, private secretary to the home secretary, emailed about a parliamentary event Salah was due to attend.
“Is there anything that we can do to prevent him from attending (eg could we exclude him on the grounds of unacceptable behaviour?)” she wrote. Whine’s report said Salah’s record of provocative statements carried a risk that his presence in the UK could have “a radicalising impact” on his audiences. [emphasis mine]
Added Hearst:
“Saleh’s legal team say the quotes he is alleged to have said and written were doctored to make them sound antisemitic.
The Home Office presented four allegations of antisemitism against him, all drawn from the Israeli press: [emphasis mine]
The doctored quotes have been repeated by the Israel’s press, pro-Israeli websites, two British newspapers and the CST.
In a classic ad hominem attack, Hearst insinuates that the fact that the quotes were reported by the UK Jewish community and “the Israel’s press” [sic], “pro-Israeli websites, two British newspapers and the CST” undermine their credibility.
In fact, the site which reported Salah’s comments, MEMRI, is a widely respected organization which provides English translations from the Arabic, Persian, Urdu-Pashtu, and Turkish media.
The credibility of of MEMRI’s translations has never been seriously questioned and, indeed, the organization routinely assists U.S. federal and local governments (as well as the U.S. military) in their counter-terrorism efforts.
As such, MEMRI reported the following about an article written by Raed Salah, in which he advanced the classic 9/11 antisemitic conspiracy theory:
Raed Salah wrote in Saut Al-Haqq Wa-Al-Hurriyya, “A suitable way was found to warn the 4,000 Jews who work every day at the Twin Towers to be absent from their work on September 11, 2001, and this is really what happened! Were 4,000 Jewish clerks absent [from their jobs] by chance, or was there another reason? At the same time, no such warning reached the 2,000 Muslims who worked every day in the Twin Towers, and therefore there were hundreds of Muslim victims.”
In a sermon in 2007, as reported by the Israeli left newspaper, Ha’aretz, Salah said:
“We have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children’s blood,” he said. “Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread.”
Most dishonestly, Hearst writes that “Salah has served two terms of imprisonment in Israel, two years for funding proscribed charities”.
Of course, one of the “charities” Hearst alludes to is Hamas – a group which cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its very founding charter to “prove” that Jews are trying to take over the world, is dedicated to Israelis destruction, and is designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., EU, UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, and even Jordan.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya holds a portrait of Sheikh Raed Salah, after the Islamist leader was arrested in London
Further, Salah, in 2007, incited Palestinians to engage in violence under the pretense that Israeli authorities were going to destroy the he Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Salah has also defended honor killings and said that homosexuality is “a great crime”, adding: “such phenomena signal the start of the collapse of every society. Those who believe in Allah know that behavior of that kind brings his wrath and is liable to cause the worst things to happen.”
During the space of about one week, in late June and early July, and again, more recently (Sept. 20th), the Guardian devoted eight posts (stories, commentary, and letters) to the UK’s decision to detain Salah – all of which, like Hearst’s latest piece, were sympathetic to the radical preacher.
After Salah was detained by UK authorities in late June, Salah’s Islamic Movement blamed the “Jewish lobby” for the arrest, which they said served to protect the “Zionist narrative.”
David Hearst’s latest apologia for the Islamic extremist preacher – which, tellingly, was published verbatim at the site of “Friends of Al-Aqsa“, a pro-Hamas UK organization which advocates Israel’s elimination – demonstrates that such antisemitic conspiratorial narratives continue to find fertile ground on the pages of the Guardian.
Related articles
Message from Managing Editor, Adam Levick
Friends,
Guardian Assistant Editor Michael White’s admission that his paper is indeed biased against Israel represented a rare flash of introspection and honesty from an institution which has shown itself otherwise to be remarkably thin-skinned in the face of criticism that their animosity towards Israel is inconsistent with their desire to be the “world’s leading liberal voice”.
More recently, the prolific Robin Shepherd characterized the Guardian’s “antipathy to the Jewish state” as nothing short of “fanatical.”
An overstatement? Hardly.
The Guardian’s coverage of the UK’s detainment of Sheikh Raed Salah, the extremist head of the Islamic Movement’s Northern Division, represented the ideologically driven anti-Israel bias of the paper at its worst. As we pointed out (and as you’ll see in posts linked to below), the Guardian continually airbrushed easily obtainable, and simply irrefutable, evidence of Salah’s anti-Semitism, extremism, and record of incitement. Inversely, those who opposed Salah were typically referred to as “right-wing” Israelis.
Salah’s kid glove treatment is further evidence that, for the Guardian, advancing the rhetoric of Palestinian rights inculcates even those who are most egregiously, and viscerally, hostile to Jews (and Israel’s very existence) from charges of anti-Semitism – a troubling dynamic which this blog arduously tries to expose.
Recent Highlights
On Anti-Semites and their enablers: Guardian editorial defends radical anti-Semitic preacher, Raed Salah
Adam Levick commented on the Guardian’s ideologically driven coverage of the Sheikh Raed Salah row – which included 7 reports (stories, commentaries, editorials, and letters) – and explains the significance of their consistent whitewash of Salah’s undeniable record of extremism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia in the context of their broader hostility towards Israel. (Read post here)
CiF Watch leads charge in opposition to Scottish council’s boycott of Israel
CiF Watch commented extensively on the 2009 resolution by West Dunbartonshire to boycott Israeli goods, and sent out an Action Alert notifying those concerned with the discriminatory act how they could take part in efforts to overturn the resolution. (Read post here)
CiF Watch exposes incriminating emails by West Dunbartonshire’s pro-boycott Councillor, Jim Bollan.
Adam Levick posted about emails, obtained by CiF Watch, by one of the passionate proponents of WD’s Israel boycott, Jim Bollan, where he explicitly referred to Hamas as “Freedom Fighters”. Additional posts revealed Bollan’s comparison between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews, and his refusal to even condemn the perpetrators of the Fogel Family Massacre.
Israelinurse exposes extremist and terrorist affiliations of “flytilla” activists
While efforts by Hamas-inspired flotilla (and “flytilla”) activists to break Israel’s Naval blockade (against deadly weapons being smuggled into Gaza) was a complete failure, that didn’t stop the Guardian from whitewashing the extremist, and terrorist, affiliations of the participants. (See Israelinurse’s stellar reports, demonstrating what the Guardian didn’t report, here and here.)
Recent Press
CiF Watch Managing Editor, Adam Levick, interviewed about CiF Watch and the fight against anti-Semitism.
Adam Levick was interviewed, about the issue of anti-Semitism and the role CiF Watch plays in exposing and combating this bigotry at the Guardian and Comment is Free, by Daniel Vahab, a freelance writer who’s currently conducting research for a book he’s writing on the subject of contemporary anti-Semitism.
CiF Watch ranked by Technorati as a Top 100 Blog
Technorati, the definitive blog ranking site, lists CiF Watch as a Top 100 blog, in the category of World Politics – a testament to both our increasing web traffic, as well as the number of other blogs who link back to us. To all of our loyal fans, and friendly bloggers, thanks, as always, for your support!
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(1) Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
(2) Forward this newsletter to at least 5 friends and as many others by clicking here.
(3) Email us at contactus@cifwatch.com if you see something in the Guardian that makes your blood boil.
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Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
CST secures amendments on the ‘Comment is Free’ website.
April 24, 2012 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Antisemitism, Comment is Free, Guardian, Rachel Shabi, The CST, Raed Salah, corrections and clarifications | by Hadar Sela | 2 comments
Readers may remember that back in February of this year, CiF Watch ran a cross post from the blog of the Community Security Trust regarding an article by Rachel Shabi posted on the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ website, the title of which suggested that “Israel’s rightwing defenders” make “false accusations of antisemitism”.
The Guardian has now amended that headline but, as the CST blog observes:
“So, after contact from CST, this particular false accusation has been removed. It is very little and it is very late.
The damage is done: to Guardian readers’ perceptions of antisemitism and to many Jews’ perceptions of the Guardian (yet again).”
The full CST blog post on the subject can be read here.
More recently, also on the ‘Comment is Free’ website, the Guardian ran an article by Raed Salah in which he claimed to be the victim of a “smear campaign” run by “Israel’s cheerleaders in Britain” and that a poem written by him “had been doctored”.
No reference was made in the article itself to the CST, but in a comment posted under the article in Raed Salah’s name, it was falsely suggested that the “doctored” version of the poem had been provided to the British Home Secretary by the Community Security Trust.
That comment has now been removed from the website. Details can be read on the CST blog here.
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