On British colonialism, antisemitism, and Palestinian rights
JVL Introduction
Thanks to Middle East Eye we repost this article by historian Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford.
In it he explores Britain’s role in supporting the Israeli state from the Balfour Declaration onwards.
In the thirties, Britain over-fulfilled its promise to Zionists by helping the “national home” evolve into a Jewish state, while betraying its pledge to Palestinians.
It was Britain’s ruthless repression of the Palestinian uprising of 1936-39 that broke the back of Palestinian national movement, paving the way for the nakba.
In that year, too, Britain gave a green light to its client, King Abdullah of Transjordan to occupy the West Bank which had been reserved for the Palestinians in the grotesquely unfair UN partition plan.
The effective dismissal of Palestinian claims is the thread running through Britain’s policy to the present day, as Shlaim shows here.
“An unbroken thread of moral myopia, hypocrisy, double standards and skulduggery connects British policy on Palestine, from Balfour to Boris.”
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Mon 1 Mar 2021. Read the original here.
On British colonialism, antisemitism, and Palestinian rights
From the ‘original sin’ of 1917 to the government’s more recent adoption of the controversial IHRA antisemitism definition, Britain has always been firmly in Israel’s camp
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Brilliant.
I have never read such a frank and straight forward expose` of the IHRA “definition”.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for the most thorough, clear and authoritative analysis of the current situation regarding the IHRA definition I have yet read. This definition is being used as a powerful weapon to shut down legitimate debate, to defame those who are critical of Israel and who support Palestinian rights, and, ultimately, to cement the political power of nations who see Israel as an essential component of their regional economic/ military interests. It also -absurdly- insists that hundreds of thousands of Jews worldwide who are critical of Israel, are themselves anti-Jewish racists.
This is an excellent article unfortunately marred by a slip towards the end.
The paragraph beginning “We should simply ask whether what they say about Israel is true or false” makes no sense as it stands. It makes considerably more sense if the words “true” and “false” are interchanged in the rest of the paragraph, which makes me wonder if this is what the author intended. This seems to me the obvious explanation for an assertion which is otherwise absurd.
A separate minor quibble is that Avi Shlaim expresses dislike for the word “antisemitism” on the grounds that “Arabs are Semites too”. However as he certainly knows, the use of the word “semitic” as referring to peoples rather than languages is now more or less obsolete for the good reason that it has racist connotations arising from a popular belief originating ewith discredited 19th century theories that there exist “semitic races”. Nonetheless however dubious the etymology of the word “antisemitism” may be, today everyone understands that it refers to beliefs about Jews, so there seems little point in substituting a clumsier phrase such as “anti-Jewish racism”.
‘A local Labour Party branch recently tried to submit a motion endorsing B’Tselem’s latest report on Israeli apartheid. It said: “This Branch supports the call from B’Tselem for an end to the apartheid regime to ‘ensure human rights, democracy, liberty and equality to all people, Palestinian and Israeli alike, living on the bit of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.’”
The motion was ruled out of order at the national level of the party on the grounds that, according to the IHRA’s working definition, this could be seen as designating Israel a “racist endeavour”.’
Can we have details please as to which branch wanted to discuss the resolution and any subsequent developments?
On this argument I assume that an application by B’Tselem for a stall at a Labour Party conference would be rejected on the grounds of promoting antisemitism and members distributing the report would be charged with promoting the same.
At some point the supporter of such a position will overreach themselves.
Avi Schlaim is absolutely right to argue that we should replace the term ‘anti-semitic’ with the term ‘“anti-Jewish racism”. However to be clear this should be when the people in question who are labelled semitic are Jewish. The other peoples included under the dubious semitic description need to be protected from racism in an applicable specific fashion.
Avi Shlaim has made some very valid points .However in my opinion he has oversimplified the Problem of Palestine ( apologies to Edward Said for borrowing his book title ).
Indeed in some instances he echoes the sentiments of the conspiracy theorists who believe that the Jews (Zionists) control the American Presidency,the British Tory and Labour parties and that Bibi Nettanyahu and the Mossad every uncontrolled power in the Western media.Surely if Israel were indeed so powerful then it would have nothing to fear at all.