Free speech? Not if you are Palestinian or a Jew who wants justice

Introduction by members of Greater Manchester JVL

At least  twenty-one Jews resident in the Northwest or with a connection to the University of Manchester, wrote to Professor Nalin Thakkar, Vice-President for Social Responsibility, University of Manchester to express “consternation and disgust” at the framing of the University’s public debate on the question ‘Is antizionism antisemitism?’ held on October 31st, 2024.   (Full text of the letter is below Ed)

They said “though we may have a variety of different political opinions, we judge the debate to be couched in terms which are divisive, inflammatory and wholly inappropriate”.

Thakkar replied stating: “The Whitworth Debate is designed to promote conversations about topics which are meaningful to our community and to encourage listening to the viewpoints of others, even when there is strong disagreement….. Now more than ever, it is essential to engage in difficult and honest conversations – not to deepen divides, but to foster understanding”.

It has been rumoured that the ‘debate’ was the new Vice Chancellor’s idea and it seems that no academics were involved in the debate.

Three Jewish organisations, Greater Manchester JVL, Manchester Jewish Action for Palestine and Na’amod protested peacefully outside the Whitworth hall with their banners while offering an explanatory leaflet to audience members entering the building. We were also supported by some local Muslim comrades. Other groups were inside including a group including students and Youth Front For Palestine who chose their own strategy for disrupting the debate.

Before the meeting started a number of obviously aggressive Zionists arrived and physically intimidated and insulted the protestors. They very assertively claimed the space and steps to the building with strong body language.  University security staff did nothing to intervene and over an hour or more claimed that they had too much to pay attention to and “if I didn’t see it, I can’t do anything”.  A source has informed JVL that the short, bald Zionist thug in the black jacket in the video had been previously identified with EDL/Britain First. He kneed a JVL solidarity member between the legs, narrowly missing a vulnerable area.

For many, including audience attenders who might have been independent of  the most aggressive Zionist counter- protesters, their opening gambit was to be to look us up and down and declare: “You aren’t Jewish!” swiftly followed by “you are disgusting” and other insults you can see on the video.

As can be seen, far from fostering understanding, the debate began and ended in extreme hostilities between all parties with pro-Palestinian protesters being forcibly ejected from the building. There was no recognition of the current genocide and no Palestinian on the platform.

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FULL LETTER

To: Professor Nalin Thakkar

Vice-President for Social Responsibility

University of Manchester

24 October 2024

Dear Professor Thakkar,

We are are writing to you as Jews resident in the Northwest or with a connection to the University of Manchester, to express our consternation and disgust at the framing of the forthcoming Whitworth debate on the question

‘Is antizionism antisemitism?’, scheduled for October 31st.

We wish to clarify at the outset that it is in our view entirely appropriate that the university should seek to promote rational debate on the outstanding political and social issues of our time, including those that may arouse strong emotions such as the present conflagration in the Middle East. The stated general aims of the Whiworth debates are therefore entirely praiseworthy, especially in view of the fact that the University has given the unmistakable impression in recent times of seeking to suppress free debate on the subject of Palestine.

The examples of suppression are both shameful and legion.  See in particular [1],   [2],  [3]

However in order for such a debate to be worthy of an institution of learning, let alone one which claims to be a world class university, its framing must satisfy certain elementary academic criteria.  We therefore note the following points:

1 

Any proposition to be debated must be formulated in such a manner as to have a reasonably clear meaning which is not obviously nonsensical.     Unfortunately the proposition.  “Antizionism is antisemitism” dramatically fails this test.While there may be some marginal variations in scholarly usage, there is general agreement that the word antisemitism refers to essentialist religious or ethnic hatred or prejudice against Jews because they are Jews.   This is not only the traditional vernacular interpretation but also the overwhelming consensus amongst eminent scholars of the Holocaust.

 The most widely accepted academic formulation, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) states: ”Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish)”.  

By contrast the JDA states that: “Criticising or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism, or arguing for a variety of constitutional arrangements for Jews and Palestinians in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean” is not of itself antisemitic, and specifically that

“It is not antisemitic to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants between the river and the sea, whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state, federal state, or in whatever form.” 

The political outlines suggested in this last sentence are in clear contradiction with current zionist beliefs.

An authoritative study of the evolution of the ideological conflation of antisemitism with antizionism is the book “Whatever happened to antisemitism?” by Antony Lerman.

On the other hand the word ‘zionism’ in its current usage refers to a political settler colonial doctrinefirst formulated in the 19th century by protestant Christians in the US and UK and subsequently elaborated  by Theodor Herzl and other mostly secular European Jews.  Since 1948 zionism has become the official ideology of the state of Israel, and is enshrined in its legal and constitutional framework.  It is a very specific form of settler colonial nationalism which now accords to the entire Jewish diaspora and even to those with a single Jewish grandparent, whether religious or secular,  national rights in Israel which are not accorded to the indigenous population of Palestine wherever they currently  live.

In more recent times an extreme messianic religious variant of zionism has gained increasing political power in Israel, especially in the settler movement, but though there is major conflict between this group and secular Jewish Israelis, their colonial attitudes towards Palestinians are remarkably similar.  Israelis sometimes note with irony that to be a zionist you do not need to believe in God, but you must believe that God gave to the Jews “the land between the river and the sea”.

It follows that the proposition that “Antizionism is antisemitism” is absurd. There is nothing to debate because there have always existed large numbers of antizionist Jews of otherwise very differing opinions – indeed prior to WW2 they even constituted a majority of European Jews.  In fact at the time of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the only Jewish member of the British cabinet, Edwin Montagu,  declared Zionism itself to be antisemitic and a “mischievous political creed”.

The largest Jewish political party in prewar Europe was the Jewish Socialist Bund which was strongly antizionist.

In a memorandum to the British Cabinet of extraordinary prescience, Montagu wrote in 1917:  “I wish to place on record my view that the [Zionist] policy of His Majesty’s Government is anti-Semitic and in result will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world.“   In this letter he correctly predicts the ethnic cleansing of Palestine which has now proceeded for over a century.   Montagu had good reason for his association of zionism with antisemitism. Both Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the two secular Jews who are today regarded as the founding fathers of Israeli zionist ideology, expressed  spine-chilling  antisemitic contempt for the vast majority of diaspora Jews. See e.g. popular recent articles by  Achcar or Rosselson, and the scholarly and prophetic 1978 (reposted) article Zionism and its Scarecrows by Machover and Offenberg.  

2

It is reprehensible that you have chosen as a motion for a debate relating to the ongoing Palestinian genocide a confused and nonsensical proposition and then compounded that offence by casting the historic Palestinian struggle for self-determination as a religious conflict  between Muslims and Jews.

For that is the clear implication of UoM’s advertised formulation that Jewish and Muslim ‘representatives’ are to ‘unpack what antizionism and antisemitism means to them and the impact of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians’.

And how else are we to interpret your own quoted use of the words “each side’s” in your comment that

“…being able to understand each side’s position can only be empowering for individuals and communities who so often feel marginalised and threatened by polarised views”.

Would you choose an executive of a Christian charity or even the Archbishop of Canterbury to ‘represent’ the supposed viewpoint of  ‘the UK Christian community’ on international or national politics?   One has only to pose this question to expose at once the patronising bigotry which underlies the formulation.

 It may be noted that exactly the same motion was debated in London in 2019 under the auspices of the debating forum “Intelligence Squared”.  However on that occasion the organisers had the intellectual decency not to present the motion as a matter to be debated as an inter-religious squabble, but commissioned inter alia an eminent Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé to oppose the motion.  The motion was defeated by a wide margin.

We suggest that you ask yourself how the Palestinian Christians who are  also being indiscriminately slaughtered by Israel in Gaza and ethnically cleansed from the West Bank and Jerusalem in defiance of international law might feel about your framing of their persecution.

Moreover the question chosen for debate is quite asymmetrical in that only Palestinians and Muslims are implicitly being accused of bigotry and racism:  the overtly genocidal rhetoric of Israeli government ministers and the vicious racism of their camp followers in the UK parliament and media are given a free pass.

If you had been trying to devise a debate designed to increase prejudice against Arabs and Muslims, reinforce the received bigotry rampant in our media and public institutions, and exacerbate intercommunal  tensions,  it would be hard to conceive of a more effective method than that which you have chosen.

3

The  proposition that “Antizionism is antisemitism” is itself clearly antisemitic, since it delegitimises the very existence of antizionist Jews,

Antizionist and nonzionist Jews include some of the most eminent academics, jurists, doctors, artists and other professionals in the UK, but their voices are systematically ignored by the media. They are also routinely insulted and marginalised as ‘self-hating’ , ‘kapos’ or ‘fringe Jews’  by zionists who feel empowered to malign or ignore them, confident that their own outpourings will remain unchallenged in a corrupt and pliant media – and now increasingly in universities, supposedly institutional bastions of free enquiry.

Over the last two decades, and especially since 2016, university senior managers have increasingly betrayed their staff, their students and the academic integrity of their institutions, following the lead of bigoted or opportunist politicians by severely censoring legitimate discussion of Israel’s crimes, and promoting  antisemitic intellectual gibberish in the guise of philosemitism and “defence of the only democracy in the Middle East”.

The vulgar communalisation of political thought whereby an ethnic or religious minority community is deemed to have a homogeneous political viewpoint which can mystically be accessed by consulting an approved  ‘representative’ is a symptom of the creeping intellectual collapse overtaking our society.   The effects of such communalisation on the social perception of Jews are different from typical effects on the perception of other minorities, but are equally insidious and dehumanising.

Indeed the myth that all Jews support zionism is at present the greatest driver of antisemitism.

For it is an agreed principle that to hold every Jew responsible for Israel’s actions is antisemitic.  Yet if it is asserted that all Jews support zionism then it is indeed tempting for the uninformed to conclude that all Jews are indeed responsible for – or ant least are complicit in  –  the actions of Israel. Such a conclusion may appear particularly natural since Israel, unlike any other state, vociferously proclaims itself to be the nation state of world Jewry and not just of those who are citizens of Israel.

4

Amidst the horror of the current genocide, livestreamed daily to those who do not choose to avert their gaze, had you genuinely sought to promote an intellectually illuminating debate on issues underlying the conflict, you could have chosen a to debate the proposition that “Political zionism is incompatible with self-determination for the Palestinian people”.

For such a debate you would have had no difficulty in finding respected   Palestinian or Jewish intellectuals to participate.  Indeed, as you will surely be aware, some of the most eminent academics who would support this motion are Jewish.

 Amongst them Ilan Pappé, Antony Lerman, Richard Falk, Neve Gordon,  Avi Shlaim, Norman Finkelstein, Haim Bresheeth, Judith Butler, Moshe Machover.

Instead, in conformity with the political complicity in Israel’s genocide of almost the entire UK political class and media, the University of Manchester has chosen steadfastly to ignore both Palestinian and Jewish antizionist voices, vainly pretending that the latter do not even exist or are of no consequence.

In May 2024 some 70 Manchester Jews wrote an open letter to the then Vice-Chacellor Nancy Rothwell  in support of the Manchester student encampment, drawing attention to alarming attempts to seek to represent the protests against the massacre of Palestinian civilians as being motivated by antisemitism.  The letter was copied to Professor Thakkar and other senior managers but did not receive the courtesy of a reply.  

In an earlier incident involving the Whitworth Art Gallery in 2021 a Forensic Architecture exhibition by British Israeli academic Eyal Weizmann was temporarily shut down as a consequence of a cowardly response by UoM senior mansgement to vexatious claims of antisemitism by UK Lawyers for Israel and others including local IDF apologist  Raphi Bloom,  In response  Manchester Jewish Voice for Labour wrote a strongly worded letter of condemnation   of the University’s behaviour to the then Vice-Chancellor Nancy Rothwell and to Nalin Thakkar.  They received only a brief and incoherent response from the Vice-Chancellor’s office.  See also the subsequent mass condemnation by UoM staff of attempts to remove the Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery.

In an extraordinary incident in 2017,  an antizionist holocaust survivor, Marika Sherwood, was compelled by UoM  to censor the title of her talk at the student union as a direct  result of clandestine pressure from Mark Regev, the then Israeli ambassador.

We call on you to cancel the present debate scheduled for October 31.

We urge the university to organise instead, as soon as practicable, a serious debate on the proposition we have suggested above [“Political zionism is incompatible with self-determination for the Palestinian people”] , inviting two eminent specialist academics to propose the motion.  Mindful of the university leadership’s evident fear of accusations of antisemitism, we also suggest that the university invite official zionist organisations to propose two academics to oppose the motion.

Adopting such a framework should ensure that the contentious political doctrine which lies at the heart of the century old conflict can be debated in the tradition of rational secular inquiry to which the University hopefully  still aspires.

Kind Regards,

[For Full List of Signatories See here]

cc:  President and Vice-Chancellor, UoM
Joseph Timan, (political editor of the Manchester Evening News)

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(Skwawkbox continues)

As in the US and worldwide, so in the UK: anti-genocide protesters are peaceful and seek only an end to murder and oppression – and suffer from the supporters of Israel some of the violence, contempt and repression that are inherent to Zionism, the political philosophy that reduces millions of innocents to obstacles to be removed, or killed if they refuse to leave.

Israel, built on Zionism and the settler-colonialism and apartheid it drives, has oppressed and killed the Palestinians for decades even as they protested peacefully, has massacred around 200,000 Palestinian civilians in just the last year and is engaged in the deliberate starvation and extermination of two million who remain – while targeting the journalists who report on Israel’s war crimes and the medics, rescuers and aid workers trying to save its victims. Solidarity with the Palestinians and all who stand with them against genocide.

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Robert Lizar’s Speech that he was prevented from delivering in full

I am here as one of many Jewish antizionists. I am a supporter of JAfP and JVL. (+ comrades from Na’amod).  Those attending the meeting here at the UoM may mistakenly believe it is about an open academic discussion.

And the UoM will no doubt, accuse us of stifling free speech. But it is WE who are here to champions free speech. We say that tonight’s so-called debate here is part of a widespread attempt to silence us and to silence Palestinians and their supporters in the call for justice and for liberation for Palestine.

How can their DEBATE be part of silencing? The answer is that their phoney debate is on the loaded question “Is antizionism antisemitism?” Loaded with Zionist assumptions and propaganda.

It is a Zionism which believes that Judaism IS nationalism, inherently, and so, they claim that opposing the Jewish state is opposing Judaism. And is therefore a form of antisemitism. This is the propaganda for the so-called NEW antisemitism – developed and promoted over recent decades by Israel and its pro-zionist organisations and supporters around the world. See the IHRA pseudo- definition and examples. They describe their NEW antisemitism in this way:

“Israel is the persecuted and collective Jew amongst nations.”

This is a nonsense. It is a category error – not accidental but a deliberate confusion of terms to compare a state to a person. A state has no will of its own, cannot think or feel or see – it has no agency separate to the human actions of its people.  This confusion of terms leads its Zionist supporters to the conclusion that the state of Israel can do no wrong. It leads to WORSHIP of the state.

To religious Jews this is a heresy, a form of idolatry. In secular terms it is the politics of dictatorial leaders and fascists. And more crucially for Palestinians and their supporters world-wide it weaponsises the NEW antisemitism to attack non-violent resistance.   SO – BDS? It’s ANTISEMITIC! Apartheid week on campus? Antisemitic! Teaching about the NAQBA? Antisemitic! Ethnic cleansing? Antisemitic! and now, calling out genocide in Gaza?  Antisemitic

At this crucial moment in history when the Zionist state is on trial for genocide in the highest court in the world, at this vital moment, the UoM chooses to run a phoney debate on IS ANIZIONISM ANTISEMITISM? – a proposition straight from the mouth of Benjamin Netanyahu, the man with a pending warrant for war crimes, when he protested to the U.N. that all these charges against him and against Israel are nothing but … antisemitic!

And remember – this shocking abuse and devaluation of the accusation of antisemitism seriously endangers Jews around the world from the risks of REAL antisemitism.

The UoM are not supporting free speech. It is a mockery of free speech. It is propaganda for Zionism. The UoM have framed the debate as a religious dispute by their choice of speakers, failed to involve any of the numerous academic experts in these fields. Instead, they’ve framed their debate about THE NEW antisemitism. And at the same time, they’ve taken Israel and its WAR crimes AND ITS GENOCIDE out of the frame completely. THEY’VE COMPLETELY ELIMINATED THE PALESTINIANS AND THEIR STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION FROM THIS DEBATE.

We have suggested to the UoM they should arrange a debate with authoritative speakers on “Is political Zionism incompatible with Palestinian’s right to self-determination.”

In the meantime, tonight’s charade should be CANCELLED so that there can be a debate which features those people whose voices are constantly SUPPRESSED here at the University, in the Labour and Tory parties, on the BBC and in all mainstream outlets – they are gagged. Palestinians and their supporters are entitled to free speech too!

Free, free, Palestine!.