By Gerry Downing

1. This first link below is a straightforward defence of Zionism and the Board of Deputies, most of whom are members of the Tory party.

Note that all the statements he dubs as ‘lies’ are true and all the answers he gives as ‘Truth’ are lies. A few took my fancy:

Lie 3: A single state in the territory of pre-1948 Palestine, with religious but not national rights for Jews, is the just solution and the best solution.

Oh no it’s not, says Sean Matgamna. A two-state solution is just the ticket, a ‘solution’ which is increasingly seen internationally as a ridiculous lie.

Lie 15: The driving-out of the Palestinian people in 1948 was a unique crime. Because of it, there are now six million Palestinian refugees.

Oh no it wasn’t says Sean. That stuff happens all the time. Nothing to get upset about (If you are a Zionist like he is, of course)

Lie 18: The six million or more Palestinian people scattered around the Middle East and beyond it have an inalienable right to “reclaim” the territory of pre-1948 Palestine, including the entire territory of Israel.

Oh no they haven’t. We drove them out in 1948 and they are never coming back, Sean asserts in effect. How shocking that “Lie 18” now reads in light of the recent massacre in Gaza.

Here is the full justification he makes:

Truth: The corollary is that a majority of the people born in Israel and living there, many with their parents and grandparents also born there, have no right to be there, or anyway fewer rights than the six million “refugees”, most of them born outside Israel or Palestine. Why? How? How can the descendants of Palestinians have more rights in what is now Israel than the generations who have been born there and built up a society there?

Calculating from mortality statistics, of the Israeli Jews of 1948 there are maybe 200,000 still alive; of the Palestinian Arabs who fled or were driven out, somewhat fewer. By what principle of justice, or common sense, do the surviving Palestinian refugees of 1948 get to pass on rights over the territory of Israel greater than the rights of people born there, living there, and working there, to their second or third generation descendants?  [1]

2. In this second link the AWL can point to a real rise in antisemitism in the USA, neglecting to point to Trump’s combined antisemitism and pro Zionism. Instead the AWL always equate antisemitism with anti-Zionism, whilst protesting they are not doing this, it’s just the “kirch left” like the SWP are forever at this, according to these Zionist ‘comrades’.

And when it comes to Britain they quote the Community Security Trust (CST) to prove their case, not police statistics. He overlooks the fact that Dave Rich and his co-thinkers are Zionist propagandists and that their figures are widely discredited.

Unfortunately this bogus left wing antisemitism Zionist onslaught on Labour, so wholeheartedly supported by the AWL, is likely to lead to a rise in antisemitism. But then Zionism always needs antisemitism to encourage immigration to Israel so that would not be such a bad thing from their stance.

But he does assure us several times how supportive he is of Palestinian rights and how he wishes the Zionists would treat them a bit better. And give them some sort of a state alongside Israel, some bantustan thing obviously where the IDAF could regularly bomb with white phosphorus. Oh, they already have one of those called Gaza. That’ll do them! [2]

3. In this third link Martin Thomas, the “left wing” of the AWL, whilst giving us his hypocritical condemnation of the murders of 16 unarmed civilians by Israel, complains about hostility to the state of Israel and about the banning of the Israeli flag from an anti-racist demo by a grassroots mobilisation against the Socialist Workers Party mainly organised by the Revolutionary Communist Group in Glasgow recently. This Zionist is outraged at grassroots sympathy for the Palestinians in Glasgow and nationally on the left.

He tells us:

Last time there were big mobilisations in Britain over the plight of the Palestinians, at the time of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in 2008-9, they were dominated politically more negatively, by anti-Israel warmongering, than by positive efforts to help Palestinian rights. On the big demonstrations, calls to destroy Israel were made by some platform speakers, and explicitly contradicted by none. On a Sheffield demonstration, Workers’ Liberty supporters with placards criticising Hamas as well as the Israeli army had their placards and papers seized and ripped up.

With Zionists flying the Israeli flag recently banned by force from an anti-racist march in Glasgow (17 March), and a sizeable body of opinion in the Labour Party saying that protest against antisemitism is nothing but a contrivance to impede criticism of Israel, it will take effort to get a better outcome.

[1] http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2018-03-30/21-lies-ostensible-left-tells-itself-israelpalestine

[2] http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2018-03-28/big-rise-antisemitism-2013

[3] http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2018-04-01/gaza-killings-mobilising-democratic-and-internationalist-response