The oppressors are responsible
JVL introduction
In a powerful speech addressing crowds at a Palestine solidarity demonstration in central London on October 19, Jewish Voice for Labour’s National Secretary Glyn Secker spoke for the Jewish Bloc, expressing the growing revulsion many Jews feel for Israel’s barbaric conduct in Gaza, the West Bank and the wider Middle East.
He rejected any association between Judaism and Israel’s “hate, supremacy, racism, extermination.” He placed responsibility for the crimes against humanity committed against Israelis on October 7 squarely on the shoulders of the Zionist state and its western backers. It was three quarters of a century of brutal oppression which generated violent resistance on October 7, not senseless terrorism or antisemitism.
Watch Glyn’s speech on video below. You can also read a transcript lightly edited for clarity.
NWI
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Transcription of speech by Glyn Secker, Trafalgar Sq, October 19, 2024
No way will I as a Jew
Be associated with this Israel,
With this barbarism,
With its dreadful fusion
Of religious Zionism, Jew, Yisrael
As an item,
Willingly led by neo-fascists,
A defiler and corruptor
Which banishes justice,
Which hollows out Judaism
To pack it with hate, supremacy, racism, extermination.
If this is the light unto nations
It’s the laser light of the IDF sniper,
The deathly spot on the child’s head,
If this is Jewish identity
Then I am not a Jew,
Because I am a Jew for justice
A Jew against genocide.
To understand Oct 7th.
In this Black History Month
We must learn from the 1791 Haiti slave rebellion
Against France and the UK,
25,000 white French civilians were massacred,
the elderly, women, babies,
It was a crime against humanity.
But no one describes it as an act of terrorists,
It was generated by the brutality of slavery
For which the oppressors bore responsibility.
The United Nations Secretary General was right,
the war on Gaza didn’t start on Oct 7th.
It started in 1936 with the evictions of Palestinians,
and the crushing, by Zionists and the British, of the Palestinian General Strike,
Then the Deir Yassin and 19 other village massacres in 1948 by the Stern Gang,
and the Irgun Gang, originally commanded by Zionist Jabotinsky,
And the ethnic cleansing of 3/4m Palestinians,
And another 340,000 Palestinian refugees in 1967,
And the brutal Occupation and violent settlers.
The 1982 massacres of Sabra and Shatila,
The blockade and bombardments of Gaza from 2007,
And 17 failed peace talks.
Three quarters of a century of brutality generated Oct 7th.
It was a crime against humanity,
But like Haiti, generated by oppression
For which the oppressors – Israel, the US, the UK – bear responsibility.
Zionism is an ideology. Without weapons it would be weak.
So back to colonialism, and America.
In 1986 Biden, the very same, said had Israel not existed America would have invented it.
America’s power was built on slavery,
Then transformed to fossil capitalism –
Literally fuelled by coal, then oil.
Oil is the driver of American power.
Israel – an army with a country –
its agent to control the region against Russia and China,
The Israeli lobby is its political voice,
It runs with the flow, it cuts with the grain.
Hence its power.
As Mandela said,
“Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”,
A deep truth for Jews,
For a people who oppress another can never themselves be free.
It’s not antisemitic to boycott Israel,
It is our duty,
We are two peoples with one future,
From all of the river to all of the sea
We shall all be free.
where is this Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis? Surely he is straining at the leash to gainsay Glyn Secker with his megaphone? Has Mr Secker been hauled up in front of the CST? Or been pilloried by Rosenberg an Falter? Incidentally, while I agree with the recent court ruling finding that anti-Zionism does not connote anti-semitism things have surely come to a pretty pass when anti-Zionism “… qualifies as a protected philosophical belief” It’s not a “belief system”. It’s just plain common sense. Anti-Semitism is racism. period. Anti-Zionism has little or nothing to do with Judaism – almost all of the early ‘pioneers’ of Zionism were secular Jews, they had binned the notion that YahWeh created the world on Thursday 7 October 3,761 years BCE. And of course ‘Semitism’ is not exclusively identified with Jews. Much as they would like to think it is! Semitism is an ‘identifier’. Zionism is an ideology, not a ‘philosophical belief’. You don’t have to be Jewish to be either pro- or anti-Zionist
A fine statement. And it is the truth of it all. The atrocities are fundameatlly instigated by extremist Zionists in and behind the terrorist state of Israel together with isolated shameful governments such as that imposed upon us.
Glyn Secker speaks the truth.
His truth adequately disposes of the nonsense spoken by the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis.
It is a truth that demonstrates why we need the courage of Jewish Voice for Labour.
Wonderful. i’ve met so many Left wing Jews who don’t like Israel. I think even more are joining the cause
Glyn Secker speaks the truth, rarely have I read a document and felt nothing was withheld.
Such a moving speech Glynn. I’m there in spirit. Still struggling on many fronts. Sending love and solidarity
A great speech, Glyn. Very well and thoughtfully constructed. Mazel Tov!
I was privileged to be there to hear Glyn’s magnificent speech. The support from the crowd was a lot louder and vociferous than the video (with its microphone trained on the speaker) allows us to hear.