Of course protestors have a right to demonstrate in favor of Palestine, of Israel, or to call for peace between them. And in my mind, people even have a right to shout “Death to Jews” or “Death to Arabs” (I think it’s illegal in some countries). But in fact, pro-Palestinian demonstrations are burgeoning, while pro-Israeli ones are very rare and sometimes broken up by police, who can’t guarantee the safety of pro-Israeli demonstrators. While it should be legal to shout such things so long as it doesn’t lead to or encourage imminent violence, I deplore such hatred with every fiber of my being.
You can see a video from several European capitals here (as they say, you won’t see this in the Western media),
And from respected British journalist Tom Gross, observer of the Middle East:
As mentioned in the previous dispatch, there is so much happening at present that it is not possible for me to cover everything in dispatches and I recommend viewing items I am posting on my public Facebook page.
Among them:
“F* THE JEWS, RAPE THEIR DAUGHTERS” TOUR OF JEWISH AREAS OF LONDON TODAY
I recommend watching this video lasting a few seconds long:
https://www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia/posts/3948633571840799
It shows pure antisemitism in London, whipped up by elements in the mainstream media and by the total lies and often doctored images spread on social media. British Home Secretary (interior minister) Priti Patel criticize the Metropolitan Police for not stopping this hate convoy that toured Jewish neighborhoods in North London today, including St John’s Wood, Hendon, Hampstead, Golders Green and Finchley.
And this:
Yesterday in London, in a march addressed by former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, some protestors chanted: “Khayber Khayber Ya Yehud jaish Mohammad Sauf Ya’ud” (Khayber Khaybar oh Jews, Mohammad’s army is returning to wipe out the Jews.)
Video here: https://www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia/posts/3945734955463994
Now this kind of reprehensible death-wishing isn’t confined to Palestinian sympathizers, for extremist Jews in April were heard to shout “Death to Arabs.” If you have a video of anti-Palestinian demonstrations of this sort, by all means put it in the comments, as I haven’t been able to find any beyond the link above, which was a single demonstration in Jerusalem that was broken up by Israeli police, who arrested the Arab-haters.
I want to show the deep nature of the hatred involved in this controversy—a hatred that would seem to render a two-state solution impossible. For Palestinians don’t just want one country—theirs—but the widespread call for murder and rape of Jews—in Western Europe and London—brings me greater worry. For the very first time, I’m starting to think that a general hatred of the Jews is upon us, perhaps encouraged by Palestinians but certainly exacerbated by the British and American Left. After World War II, I never thought this could come back again, at least not in the West.
Cynically, the Holocaust bought Jews a few decades of relative tranquility in the West. That looks like it is coming to an end.
By now, I have been an adult for several of Middle East conflicts, and it always stuns me how much deception and lying goes on in the reporting. Deception and lying, which now because of the internet, can be debunked and seen through.
I want to draw attention to this article from 2014 in The Atlantic. Would it publish this today? Here is an excerpt:
“When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.)
Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying…”
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/?fbclid=IwAR2_hKIH3ODZPn1yfFxKZiUZRYVPjsFeC2nqH5iy9FIHzCGRVTCddGD2eTs
I typically respect Jerry Coyne’s opinions (and more than others I follow). However, I am not sure he is evenhanded in his selection of articles documenting the current conflict in the Middle East. Say it ain’t so Jerry.
Here is a good article about evenhandedness: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/responding-to-senator-bernie-sanders/
I read Bernie Sander’s article in the NY Times and was very disturbed to see he ended his opinion with the slogan, “Palestinian lives matter.” By equating the Palestinian struggle with the Black Lives Matter movement, he is positioning the Jews as oppressors and Palestinians as oppressed people of color.
I would suggest that if you doubt the evenhandedness of THIS post, do what I did: do a Google search for Palestinian demonstrations calling for the death of Jews, and then for Jews calling for the death of Arabs. That’s what I did to find what I wrote above.
But I am not sure what you mean by “evenhanded”: if you think that means I find both sides precisely equally culpable or moral in their behavior, then you best look elsewhere.
Hi Sian, not sure I understand your comment. But the article (from 2014) I posted from The Atlantic clearly states that the Associated Press (AP) was a tool for Hamas…..the building that Israel demolished yesterday house AP.
I suspect that Hamas was using it and the news agencies knew it and did nothing about it because they were intimated and/or are partisans of Hamas.
Is there hard evidence Hamas was using the building? I’ve thus far felt that Israel’s strikes against Gaza have been justified, but if the IDF destroyed the media building solely (or primarily) because it was dissatisfied with the reporting coming from it, that would be unconscionable.
In the Atlantic article from 2014 I excerpt above, it’s clear that AP knew of Hamas activity in the building…and cooperated with Hamas, and was intimidated into cooperation also.
And the way I suspect that it’s the same building as the one mentioned in 2014 is because in a news report I read yesterday, but have lost, I believe a big AP cheese says something like “in the 15 years we have been in this building”…..
If I am wrong about this, please correct me…..
Yes, there are hard evidence: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israel-showed-us-smoking-gun-on-hamas-in-ap-office-tower-officials-say-668303
Just the idea that IDF could possibly strike media building to punish media for their coverage is absurd. And it’s absurd because of two reasons: 1. the moral code and the philosophy under which IDF operates; 2. Such move would be so stupid and giving rise to so much more “bad press” that the most stupid officer in Israeli army would be ashamed even to propose something similar.
Not to mention the IDF gave them 1 hour warning. One hour! Then the AP complains they were being censored and silenced.
Sadly, the spread of disinformation comes from both sides: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57111293
That was an interesting article from The Atlantic, dd. A couple of paragraphs stood out to me, though the whole piece was informative:
Hey, when was Ringo ever off? As you say, there’ve been much flashier drummers (he was, after all, a lefthander playing a righthanded kit), but nobody but nobody kept a stronger back beat.
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Couple of minutes and much worth watching. Thoughts?
“This is just crazyDouble exclamation mark Syrian blogger Maggie Khozam explains to the Arab world everything about what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah.
It is amazing that a girl from Syria knows better than many people from the western world
Watch! You will not be disappointed!”
(I found it through Cathy Young’s excellent twitter feed.)
https://twitter.com/YosephHaddad/status/1393341642426486785
Just another observation here. I have no idea what the Palestinians long term plans have been for at least the last 50 years. It seems much of what they have done has driven nails into any chance of a peace process. However, when I look at the other side I see the same. Actions taken by Israel have been going the same. Why anyone would find the situation now as a surprise, I have no idea. I really do not care which side you are for or who is getting the bad press. It means nothing. The only thing to be done now is to keep killing each other until they either run out of things to kill with or everyone is dead.
Well, that’s not really correct. From the UN’s proposal 1947 to divide the country, Israel said “yes”, Arabs said “no”. BTW the stated goal of Hamas is to annihilate Israel and kill or expel all Jews. Even the Charter of the PLO (which was supposed to be changed after Oslo Accords but never was) says the same.
During all those years since 1947, Palestinians rejected many Israeli proposals to have their state on the West Bank and Gaza because not all their conditions were met. They never came with their own proposal. Because the real goal of Palestinian leadership (not necessarily of many Palestinians) is not to have an own state but to destroy the Jewish one.
I think I was agreeing with just about everything you said. I do not review every detail of the past as you do, that is why I simply said nothing being done has shown any will to end this war. Certainly taking up with Hamas was extremely stupid. But also the past several years with the leadership in Israel it has become more extreme right and extremely favorable to Donald Trump. Putting his son in law in charge of the process was really helpful. My question to you as an expert on this is – what is the answer?
Nobody has the answer as long as the Arab side doesn’t care about their own people and is only inciting hatred and as long as the world is supporting them in this endavour. I disagree with you about Jared Kushner’s proposals. There was at least a chance for the beginning of the beginnging. A few years ago Palestinians had unanimous support of all Arab states. This support crumbled now and Kushner used it. The moment the support to Palestinian dream about destroying Israel does not have support of Arab world, UN and the world in large, the moment they realize that Israel is there to stay and that the world will not help them in destruction of Israel, they will come to the negotiation table. I do not share your opinion about Netanyahu either. There was no other Israeli prime minister who would do as much as Netanyahu did to close theeconomic gap (yes, there exists a gap but it’s much smaller now thanks to Netanyahu policies) between Arab-Israelis and Jewish-Israelis.
“Nobody has the answer as long as the Arab side doesn’t care about its own people…”
I have never heard a more depressingly honest statement. We often view this issue in terms of history or politics, which is fair, but the issues are much deeper. How do you convince a group of people that life is precious and worth protecting? The cynic in me doesn’t feel that there is a solution to the problem, only new problems. Was it in Pinker’s Better Angels where he talked about life becoming more precious over time? It clearly hasn’t in all places, so why? Religion? Culture? Politics? Education?
I have no words left to describe my heartbreak. For every advance Homo sapiens make we have so many that are pathological in their eagerness to drag us spiraling back into the dark ages.
When and if Israel looses the U.S., what then?
The illiberal left seems to think that non-white antisemitism is just punching up, nothing to worry about.
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I am at a loss. It seems there can be no lasting peace, just sullen truces and periodic outbreaks where Israel “mows the lawn.” The Palestinians seem to be winning the propaganda war even if they are militarily weaker. I suppose this is a case where reality beats hope.
“Four men have been arrested by officers investigating a video which appeared to show antisemitic abuse being shouted from a car in north London, the Metropolitan Police says.” (link)
I was going to make the same point. The behaviour was totally unnecessary, but the police have reacted pretty quickly in this particular instance.
‘Kill the Jew, tape their daughters’ sounds like idirect incitement to violence to me. We know these slogans are not loose shouts. Arrest the lot.
Wouldn’t it make sense to simply ban tape recorders?
Also, I believe the disgusting hateful language used by the Palestinians partly reflects their feeling of relative powerlessness. They can’t really do much harm to Israel so they rage on about doing it. It is sad that they are encouraged to do this by elements of the Western left.
Is it fair to say that nobody cares about the welfare of Palestinians themselves? Not Hamas who has cancelled elections and uses them as human shields. Not Arabs…Not Hezbollah. And certainly not their friends-the Western Media
My understanding is that the elections were cancelled (again…) by President Abbas – his Fatah Party is likely to do badly, and Hamas as the main beneficiary would in fact happily see them go ahead.
Of course, postponing the elections also benefits the US since it refuses to talk to Hamas and if the party did indeed win then Biden would be in a tricky (make that “trickier” ) position.
How is that at all sensible? You feel powerless, so you…call for the rape of some innocent’s daughter?
This reminds me of Mel Gibson’s and Michael Richards’ racist outbursts. They can blame drink or anger or emotional stress, but ultimately, nobody expresses their stress that way unless there’s a grain of actual feeling behind that expression. We all may get nasty and rude when stressed, but a non-bigot simply doesn’t think to ‘go there.’
Oh I think they know exactly what kind of power they have. They know they can manipulate the media to their advantage and they have done this very well.
Don’t lump all of western media together. I consider Germany a western country, and the protests were the first item on the main national news today.
Most of the pro-Palestine demonstrations are by Palestinians or other Arabs and/or Muslims who live in Europe.
Many pro-Palestinian protests were broken up by the police, either for moving into anti-Semitic territory (note that for, let’s say historical reasons, even some forms of free speech are limited on this topic in Germany) and/or not respecting COIVD restrictions.
Jews violently attacked in Canada:
https://twitter.com/EliKohn3/status/1393744090844512263
When the anti-Israel protesters cry “Death to the Jews” and, rather commonly, the “Khayber Khayber” chant, they usefully reveal what is really at issue. The Khayber chant invokes the massacre of a tribe of Arabian Jews by Mohammed’s army 1250 years before there was a Zionist movement, let alone a state of Israel. It also reveals how seriously one need take the mirage of a “one-state solution” dreamed up by poseurs of the Peter Beinart or Democratic Socialists of America variety.
An illuminating article on how the conventional media distort public understanding of the wars between the state of Israel and Hamas (and its Islamist counterparts), by a former AP correspondent, is at:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-insider-guide
Indeed! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khaybar#Modern-day_references_and_in_popular_culture
This is all so disgusting and disheartening…racism never seems to go away, it just gets recycled.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57137151
It seems that there have been arrests made with likely charges of
“racially aggravated public order offences”.
Since they made calls to rape and murder, they are unlikely to get off by claiming freedom of speech, because they are inciting violence. The racial element is an aggravation.
“incitement to racial hatred under the Public Order Act 1986.”: Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incitement#England_and_Wales
To me, it shows that the laws are adequate, and are couched in terms which should protect any body, and which require no special definitions such as anti-semitism or anti-islamism.
I know few people agree with me on this site, but I find Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs increasingly upsetting. Here is a link to a BBC article containing a widely publicized video of an anti-Arab mob beating and almost killing a driver in Bat Yam. I don’t know if this counts as an “anti-Palestinian demonstration,” as Jerry was asking for, but it’s even more disturbing in my mind.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57097554
And here is an article on Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of a small but important political faction. He’s known for, until recently, having a photo of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein hanging in his living room.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-responds-to-bennett-fine-ill-take-down-baruch-goldsteins-picture
The front page article in the New York Times today mentions all this and more. It starts what sounds like an extremely provocative action by the Israeli police when they entered the Aqsa mosque during Ramadan and cut the loudspeaker cables.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/world/middleeast/israel-palestinian-gaza-war.html
I should add that I appreciate our host’s willingness to look at material supporting both sides of this agonizing situation.
These reports give the impression that these bad actions are somehow government policy. I think this often happens: the actions of some out-of-control hothead is taken as representing Israeli policy if he is a Jew but if he is an Arab he is just powerless and desperate and expressing his frustration–no mention that he has been subjected to non-stop antisemitic propaganda that IS official policy of the PA. The Israeli police who entered Al Aqsa mosque did so because it was being used to store rocks, fireworks, and Molotov cocktails that were being thrown down on Jews praying at the Western Wall. It is really a pattern–portraying the Israeli response as though it is just aggression with no cause! (I understand that you get extra brownie points if you manage to kill Jews around the end of Ramadan, so there is often violence then.) And there were some Jews chanting “Death to Arabs”, but few of the reports mention that before that a mob of Arabs were chanting “Death to Jews”. A thing may be true, but without context it can also be very misleading.
The Times account, which I linked to above, says that the Israeli police entered the Aqsa mosque and cut the loudspeaker cables not because there were weapons on the premises but because “The Israeli president was delivering a speech at the Western Wall, a sacred Jewish site that lies below the mosque, and Israeli officials were concerned that the prayers would drown it out.” That would upset me if I was a worshipper. Note that the Times article was written by the Jerusalem bureau chief, not some activist. I genuinely recommend that you check it out. I do agree that context often gets lost in these discussions.
A New York a protest sign, I guess in favor of Palatine:
“This 90 year old Jew says Zionism is a white supremacist ideology”.
How much longer can the Zionists hang on to their claim of the supernatural?
How can anyone claim that the creator of the universe gave them rights to a particular patch of ground at the eastern end of the Mediterranean? Without the supernatural dictates of property rights this situation wouldn’t exist. Violence creates only misery, but when both sides are insane with their delusions, what else can be expected? GROG
When Israel didn’t exist Zionism was a national liberation movement with the aim to save Jews dispersed through the world from persecutions by building their own state in the place where their state once was and from which most of them were expelled centuries ago by Romans, and to which they returned as soon as consecutive invaders allowed them. After Holocaust (which happened because there was no Jewish state) the world, temporarily ashamed, allowed their return. First Zionists in 19th century as well as people who build Israel after IIWW were secular Jews. None of them was any kind of supremacist, nor did they ground their statebuilding on any supernatural forces but on history. Today Zionism is a concept that Jews, like other nations, have the right to their own state and the right to live there in safety and security.
Why would the Holocaust not have happened had there been a Jewish state?
Simply because Jews fleeing from Europe would have a place to go. No country (well, with a very, very few exception who took some fleeing Jews) allowed Jews to seek shelter in their borders, Check what happened 1938 during Evian Conference.
Yes it is true that many countries refused entry to Jews leaving Germany during the Nazi times (famously the USA denied Anne Frank and her family the chance to enter the USA), but the idea that the millions who died in the Holocaust could have just moved somewhere else is absurd.
Not really absurd. From 1933 to the Wannesee Conference in 1942 (where the decision about extermination of European Jews was taken) was 9 years. If a Jewish state existed they would find a way to save most of them. After all, in a very few years after Israel was established as a state they took millions of refugees both from Europe (destitute and ill survivors of the Holocaust) and refugees from Arab and Islamic persecutions.
But if you take away the religious aspect, what have you got left? Historically, the Jews had a state that they controlled autonomously only for only about 100 years and then for about another 30 years as a client kingdom of the Romans. At what point does a cultural or ethnic group’s claim to a certain land become void? I’m a bit concerned because, by the same standard, the Celtic nations have a legitimate claim to England.
Two thousand years is a long time to be away from a piece of land. It’s plenty of time for new people to put down their own cultural roots and for their descendants to get upset when somebody takes what they think is their land away from them. (Not that this current conflict is about that. It’s just pure hatred of the Jews and the desire to wipe them out that fuels what’s happening now – in my opinion).
Of course, you can’t take away the religious aspect! Until the Enlightenment the only thing which kept the Jews as a separate nation was their religion. And for all this time there were those prayers “Next year in Jerusalem…”, “If I forget Thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither”. Add to this persecutions, pogroms, expulsions etc. and you get a cohesive culture of people who feel expelled from their homeland and yearn to return to it. When being unbeliever was no longer punished by death and many Jews left the religion this culture persisted (aided and abetted by persecutions). So the wish to return to the homeland was there but without the religious underpinning.
What happened in the meantime with their homeland? It was invaded by one empire after the other, it was always a province of an victorious empire and never a state of any group of people residing there. The last (before the British) empire was the Ottoman Empire (Turks, not Arabs) which governed (or rather, misgoverned) the place for over 400 years. Many different ethnic groups lived in the country: Turks, Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Circassians, Germans and god knows who else. But the population was small and Jews were in majority in Jerusalem from the middle of 19th century. When the modern Zionism started at the end of 19th century and when the Sultan’s power was weaker, Jews started to return in greater numbers (groups of Jews tried to return during all those centuries, when one ruler allowed it, the next one expelled them again). BTW, the first more substantial group of Jews that returned were Jews from Yemen, where the persecution was such that they were close to extinction. After IWW when British took over, Jews and the British accelerated the economic development of the land. Arab from surrounding areas started to immigrate in much greater numbers than Jews (Britain had nothing against Arab immigration but, regretting deeply Balfour Declaration, limited Jewish immigration as much as they could). Most of today’s Palestinians are the descendants of Arab immigrants from the end of 19th century to the establishment of Israel in 1948. Of course, there are some who are descendants of Arab invaders from 7th century but they are in a minority and they never had a state there.
So what you have is one people who were dispersed all over the world for centuries but with a culture concentrated on their lost homeland – for religious and secular Jews alike, fueled additionally by the hostile attitudes in their host countries.
On the other hand, there was no Palestinian nation with separate culture until approximately 1960s (now there is). Nobody promised Palestinian Arabs their own state. When 5 Arab armies invaded Israel 15 May 1948 they wanted to divide the land between Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Until 1948 Jews in the Mandate Palestine were called Palestinians and Palestinian Arabs were called Arabs. During 19 years when Judea and Samaria (re-named West Bank by Jordan after it invaded the area) was in Jordanian hands and Gaza Strip was in Egypt’s hands nobody talked about “Palestinian state”. PLO Charta stated that they want to “liberate Palestine” but have no claims on areas kept by Jordan and Egypt. They wanted only the Jewish land.
The Palestinians are hampered to put it mildly by having no inspirational leaders in the vein of Mahatma Gandi or Martin Luther King Jr.
They transcended hate and knew by way of visionary inspiration what was possible and desirable for their people.
Hate is not a catalyst for such a vision it’s an impediment, a cost that spirals into a shackled misery.
Power, control, ideology is all they care about.
It’s a shameful existence but when you’re told you’re bound for the afterlife, the cost of embracing the misery is worth wallowing in… so it goes, humanitarian leaders matter little and short on the ground, the current only need to enforce momentum of more of the same.
Yes!
If people were not so stupid as to believe in gods, none of this violence would happen. The poison of religion…
What has changed since the last big dust up between Israel and Palestine is….. social media. There’s a large cohort of the left hand side of the IQ distribution who get their news from (damn) Facebook now. Last big Middle East grudge match was in maybe 2008 (Hezbollah v Israel), a war I was actually IN in Lebanon at the time (minding my own business, bein’ bombed),.
D.A.
NYC
There are a few blogs at “Free(From)ThoughtBlogs” that have poisonous commentators spewing antisemitism and conspiracy theories. Predictably, Pharyngula is one of those.
Anyway, Magic Grandpa Jeremy Corbyn typically appeared in front of an “energized crowd” in London, chock full of the usual “Stop the War” and “Socialist Workers Party” protestors. Both of the latter have consistently defending Assad and Putin’s war crimes in Syria that have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims. In fact, these goons will often label any Muslim civilian killed by Assad/Putin as “a terrorist”. Or, they will insist the killings were “staged”.
Compare their behaviour when it comes to I/P. Very revealing. They don’t actually care about Muslim lives at all.
@Richard Sanderson
Do you think that Balfour or Trump cared about Jewish/Israeli lives? Another two goons for you.
Oh, and I thought of another one: Boris “piccaninnies with water melon smiles” Johnson who made the xenphobe’s dream of Brexit an unwieldy bureaucratic reality and thinks that Britain’s success against Covid is down to “greed and capitalism” as we see the government sinks yet again into the usual Old Etonian mire of Tory sleaze (see for example Randox and Owen Paterson).
Trump didn’t. He only cares for his own. Don’t know too much about Balfour.
Re: Boris. Yes, I’m aware of all that. Not sure what point you are making other than whataboutery, and if you think I am a supporter of Johnson just because I find Corbyn problematic, you’d be mistaken.
Indeed! If finding Corbyn problematic meant voting for Johnson the Tories would have a MUCH bigger majority than they do.
@Richard Sanderson
Rather long response I am afraid.
The point I was trying to make is not one of whataboutery. I was commenting on the fact that whenever a position is taken on the Israel/Palestine issue, out comes the anti-semitism card. I was commenting on historical, current and cynical manipulation of antisemitism as a political tool very often by the right:
I cited three right-wing closet racists who have used the issue of antisemitism to political advantage.
I did this because any mention of Corbyn and out come the accusations of antisemitism and I thought that the right wing should be put under the microscope.
The EHRC report on antisemitism in the labour party (I scanned the 140 pages, it being almost impossible to read in its entirelty for reasons of mental stamina and patience) is inconclusive and highly questionable for various reasons. It found that Corbyn was not guilty of any antisemitism, nor was the party executive, nor that there is systemic antisemitism in the labour party).
The major critique was that the party failed to investigate accusations, and claimed that some actions may have obfuscated the internal party investigation occuring prior.
The neutrality of the EHRC is also questionable (long discussion which I will omit here).
The EHRC took no legal action concerning ANY of the allegations (the EHRC has the power to prosecute). The report was highly confusing as to what legally constitutes “antisemitism” whether as an “attitude/belief” or a “criminal action”, only the latter being within its jurisdiction.
Corbyn at least was elected by the party membership. The antisemitism charge was a convenient method for Blairites in the centre to eliminate the far left from party leadership and remove “socialism” from the party identity. The party is now paranoid about being seen as antisemitic (see Starmer’s authoritarian sacking of Long-Bailey and suspending Corbyn for criticising the EHRC report).
You may not like Corbyn but at least he gave May a reasonable run at the elections, compared with Starmer against Boris or in the recent local elections. Maybe that is because Centre Right Labour has no appeal to traditional Labour voters. Losing disillusioned northern labour voters was a masterstroke of Starmer’s (New) Labour.
Trump in courting the Evangelical Zionist (end of days) Republicans (“I did it for you” [move the the embassy to Jerusalem]).
Balfour seems to have been a white supremacist (British Colonial model). As Prime Minister he introduced the 1905 Aliens Act which was introduced principally to block immigration of Jews from Russia/Ukraine and after antisemitic rioting in Britain in 1902 and 1903.
Anti-immigration was a vote-winner at this time, even though apparently emigration was about six times immigration.
Balfour in Ireland was known as Bloody Balfour due to his brutal supression of home rule.
Why exactly Balfour wrote his declaration to Baron Rothschild in 1917 is not clear:
Britain had massive debts as a result of WWI, not least with Rothschild.
Rothschild had political influence with the US and had possibly been influential in bringing the US into the war and also supplying funds. Britain was carving up the Middle East in competition mainly with France, so a British aligned, non-Arabic Israel/Palestine along with Iraq and Iran would have been politically useful against Egypt and French aligned Syria.
Balfour possibly thought that by giving the Jews a homeland in Palestine, they would leave the UK.
Interesting that a likely antisemite has a street named after him in Israel as a national hero.
I think the current I/P conflagration was waiting to happen:
2018: Israel passed the Jewish State Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Nation-State_of_the_Jewish_People)
“Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.”
“The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”
Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital and moved the embassy there.
Trump removed/reduced Palestinian aid.
Anexation of Golan.
Israel/UAE deal
Natanz explosion.
Netanyahu desperately flirting with the even more extreme right than he is to retain power and keep out of prison.
P.S. I don’t think the Palestinian and Arab/Muslim interests are angelic either.
I’ll let your response through but do be aware that it exceeds the word limits; we want comments, not essays. Please try to write more tersely in the future. Thanks!
Thanks, Jerry.
As you see I realised that it was long. It’s a complex argument though. I’m glad you let it through.