Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitic
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The Labour party has apologised “unreservedly” and paid out a six-figure sum to seven former employees and a veteran BBC journalist, admitting it defamed them in the aftermath of a Panorama investigation into its handling of antisemitism.
In the programme, eight whistleblowers, seven of whom then sued the party, broke non-disclosure agreements to tell the BBC that they felt fatally undermined by senior Labour bosses in their attempts to tackle antisemitism, alleging consistent interference in complaints.
The ex-staffers, Withers-Green, Sam Matthews, Kat Buckingham, Dan Hogan, Ben Westerman, Martha Robinson, and Michael Creighton, worked in the Labour party’s governance and legal unit and were responsible for investigation of allegations of misconduct by party members.
And they can say whatever they want against the Palestinian and the Arabian and nobody says anything
What a despicable bunch of chancers not to say blackmailers. They knew that the Labour Party under its new leader would do all it could to avoid being accused of anti-semitism and played thus to the full, walking away quite a bit richer.Nice one.
Indeed it seems that the “liberal” media has been soft on those Corbyn critics
The 851-page report blames former Labour officials opposed to Corbyn for hampering his efforts to tackle abuse and sabotaging the party’s 2017 general election campaign.
Corbyn’s former chief of staff, Karie Murphy, is called “medusa”, a “crazy woman” and a “bitch face cow” that would “make a good dartboard”.
I think this media story is a classic example of an unpopular political leader stoking up war fears to distract from his personal and political problems at home.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53511336
Yet the BBC once more accepts and adopts the pro-Israeli narrative
I thought this interview was useful
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/29/seth-rogen-israel-palestinians-jewish-actor
Jonathan Cook defends Corbyn
https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/07/uk-labour-party-teeters-on-brink-of-civil-war-over-antisemitism/
And this from Jewish Voice for Labour:
An interesting article on the change of attitudes among liberal Zionists now calling for a one-state solution is now being seen as calling for the destruction of Israel.
“That advocacy, if actualized, would ultimately destroy Israel.” – US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman,
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/peter-beinart-crisis-liberal-zionism-200808113107258.html
So we now have Zionists guilty according to those who consider questioning the existence of the Israel as a Jewish state to be anti-semitic
I find the title of this thread deeply troubling. As I understand it, socialists are opposed to nationalism but we are not “anti” any nationalism in particular. For instance, we wouldn’t (I hope) say that we were anti-Scottish independence or anti-Catalan independence. That would mean socialists taking up a position as bad as the nationalists.
Since we are not “anti” any other nationalism but apparently we are “Anti-Zionist” the non-socialist observer could gain the impression that we are anti-Semitic.
Semitic is a language, it is not a race or an ethnic group, biblical semitism is a mythology. Nationalism is a bourgeois conception and it is class collaboration and it is divisive
“Semitic is a language…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic-speaking_peoples
Since we are not “anti” any other nationalism but apparently we are “Anti-Zionist” the non-socialist observer could gain the impression that we are anti-Semitic.
Lew’s point is still valid. The whole thing is indeed problematic. ‘Anti-Semitic’, now generally being equated with anti-Jewish (racist) sentiment and anti-Zionist with opposition to a peculiar and particular form of nationalism, which is not the usual indigenous type of declaring independance for a specific area, but the usurpation of the previously shared territory of Palestine for a specific religious group of indigenous and incoming Jewish settlers.
” which is not the usual indigenous type of declaring independence for a specific area, but the usurpation of the previously shared territory of Palestine for a specific religious group of indigenous and incoming Jewish settlers.”
I would argue that most nationalism has the usurpation of territory at the base of it somewhere. US nationalism? Australian Nationalism? New Zealand Nationalism? anybody. If you go back far enough, Turkish nationalism, Arabic Nationalism, Scottish Nationalism (wither the poor old Picts, defeated by the lowland Saxons of North Northumbria).
Allegedly (if you believe the bible) the Jewish People originally kicked the Canaanites off the “promised land”, although to be fair god had promised a little bit more to Abraham –
“To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaite, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
As for religion, most invaders use religion as part of the reason for invasion (Spanish in South America, British in Africa, etc.)
As we oppose Nationalism, by default we oppose Scottish Nationalism, Irish Nationalism, and every other form of nationalism. Nationalism divides the working class.
“we wouldn’t (I hope) say that we were anti-Scottish independence or anti-Catalan independence.”
Independence and Nationalism are however, two separate things Lew has conflated them, we wouldn’t oppose independence nor would we support it. It’s a capitalist reform, that won’t help the working class, the same as a one or two state solution wouldn’t help the working class of Israel or Palestine.
Surely we are anti Zionism (The Ideology if Jewish Nationalism) in the same way as we oppose Pan Arabism (one of the Ideologies of Arab Nationalism), in the same way we oppose all other Nationalism related to the artificial concept of “nationhood”
The Papal Bull emitted by the Vatican known as the Doctrine of Discovery is a form of nationalism which gave the right to the Europeans powers to form their nations and take territories around the world,
The Calvinists and the Puritans who emigrated to North Americas applied that concept to claim lands and territories that were given by God to them, similar to the Old Testament who gave the right to the Israelite to take Canaan.
The Catholics Castilians also had the right to form their nations and take territories around the world as they did in South America, Central America, the Caribbeans, and Australia, those territories were also given by God to them.
Catholics and Protestants religions were ideological vehicles used to justify all their invasions, and justifications for killings, as well, Islamic was a religion used to invade and conquer territories. Nationalism is a poison worst than the poison for rats.
The so-called Bolivarian revolution is a form of bourgeois nationalism ( falsely called socialism ) which also divide the working class and create friction between the Latin American working class, and the USA working class, it is a movement of national liberation which only liberates one ruling class from the domination of another ruling class.
Blacks and African nationalism also create division among the world working class, a concept that was promoted by Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam
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