Israel’s battle against the United Nations
JVL Introduction
United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has come under extensive criticism from the Israel lobby as previously reported on this website, e.g. here and here.
Avi Shlaim has written a fine defence of her in Jadalliya an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute.
He looks in detail at the relentless attacks on her, particularly on her social media posts, and evaluates them.
He is absolutely clear that “Implicit in the attacks upon her is the notion that holding Israel accountable for its violations of Palestinian rights is ipso facto anti-Semitic.”
This article was originally published by Jadaliyya on Fri 7 Jul 2023. Read the original here.
Oom-Shmoom: Israel’s battle against the United Nations
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The Simon Wiesenthal Center has been the promoter of some of the most scurrilous attacks on Jeremy Corbyn ever (and the competition was very keen).
Here is one of its comments, this one from 2019:
“‘No one has done more to mainstream antisemitism into the political and social life of a democracy than the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, the head of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the British Daily Mail.
Francesca Albanese is totally factual in her description of the stuation in the Holy Land. It refects badly on other pro-Palestinians who feel they have to defend her, rather than just taking up arms themselves and attacking the pro-Zionist lobby. Instead of being weak and divided, Palestinians should be making a concerted effort to attack colonial Zionism.
And of course it’s possible to be both a Zionist and and anti-semit, eg Boris Johnson and Donald Trump!
Keir Starmer, Michael Gove and others who promote themselves as Zionists would do well to read and read again the reports of successive UN Human Rights Special Rapporteurs who describe the atrocious and unlawful conduct of Israel towards the Palestinian people occupied since 1967 and dispossessed in 1948. Their right of self-determination is brutally denied by zealots from David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir onwards who deny that there was and is Palestine and a Palestinian people. Their only defence is false claims of antisemitism against others rather than facing up to their own crimes against the humanity of the Palestinian people both within Palestine and Israel.
Albanese’s report is a very powerful assertion of the fundamental right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. Her full report should be circulated as widely as possible because it is an authoritative indictment of the Zionist regime in Israel and the occupied lands. It also sheds light on the political regime inside the Labour Party, with the Starmer leadership determined to uphold Zionism come what may. The entire settler-colonial enterprise from its very inception relied on the complete denial of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. This does not inhibit Israel’s apologists from advancing a right to self-determination of “the Jewish people” without acknowledging in any way the antecedent right of the Palestinian people, including the so-called Arab Israelis, those living under occupation in the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and the forcibly created Palestinian diaspora whose right of return is denied as part of the denial of Palestinian self-determination.. The IHRA non-definition of antisemitism includes “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” Chutzpah is not in it.
Did anyone see anything about this report on the BBC?
We watch on as Israel, murders Palestinians, bulldozing their Farms and Villages and stealing their Land.
The only medium that allows us to spread the Word of all these Israeli crimes is through Social Media, ‘Facebook and Twitter’ in particular. If you are not on them, please join and help spread the word, especially of reports like this, pointing out that The BBC is silent and not reporting on such a significant UN Report.
We just might begin to make some headway.