Let’s talk about Zionism – and much else besides
JVL Introduction
Rosemary Bechler in her recent Splinters column, reproduced below, notes the emergence in recent years of unitary and exclusionary political formations – exemplified in Trump’s US, Modi’s India, Bolsonaro’s Brazil and Orban’s Hungary, not to forget Johnson’s Brexit Britain.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews plays its part in the “construction of a particular kind of symbolic identity formation that they claim to represent, which we might call the unitary ‘Jewish Us’”.
The answer to it, affirms Bechler, is not to stymie and chill debate, but to encourage it, to work for a deliberative democracy in which diverse perspectives are treated as equally important for the outcome of key debates.
Her argument is rendered particularly pertinent by reports this week of John Mann, our so-called Antisemitism Czar, calling on Keir Starmer to outlaw “the use of the words Zionist or Zionism as a term of hatred, abuse, of contempt, as a negative term “[emphasis added].
In his statement he clearly cannot distinguish between holding a critical view of Zionism and those “who choose to be antisemitic”.
In opposition to Mann, we affirm the need for more debate not less, more interrogation of the meaning of Zionism, the nature of the Zionist state and its history. And of the price that the Palestinian people have paid and continue to pay.
We at JVL intend to do pursue this debate with vigour.
This article was originally published by openDemocracy on Fri 1 May 2020. Read the original here.
A qualified welcome to a new Labour leader in the UK
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The linked JC article alleges that John Lord Mann is still a member of the LP.
Words fail me!
Great to read about a thoughtful and positive approach to debates. An interesting point about the Brexit phenomenon…. Any suggestions as to how we can combat the arrogance of the Board of Deputies and show the world that they don’t represent all Jews? This seems to me to be an increasingly urgent task.
“The misapplication of the MacPherson principle which insists that the victim should determine the definition of antisemitism, is here taken to its logical extreme in also dictating how it is applied and punished.”
I think it is really important to knock on the head the idea that there is a “MacPherson Principle” and that MacPherson said “victims” should determine the definition of antisemitism. Which Jews are to “define antisemitism”? As has been pointed out on the JVL web site itself, all the MacPherson report was trying to do was ensure that alleged racist incidents were recorded by the police. There was no assumption that if an incident is alleged to be racist then it must be racist. It was absolutely clear this was a matter for investigation and proof.
https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/article/the-macpherson-principle/
I suggest that John Mann change his title – he is giving men(n) a bad name.
There is a massive (and repulsive) irony in the way that the diversionary use of ‘antisemitism’ as misdirection has marked a significant general increase in the wider use of propaganda techniques and media control that were honed in the Third Reich.
Goebbels certainly honed propaganda techniques – but both he and Hitler acknowledged their debts to British WWI propaganda. Even extreme reactionaries such as Max Hastings in his history of WWII (“All Hell Let Loose”) point out that factual information about the scale of the Nazi holocaust was disbelieved or at least treated with scepticism because of the disproof of British lies about German behaviour e.g. in Belgium (‘babies speared with bayonets” – remember the Anglo-American propaganda about “the Kuwaiti babies torn from their incubators” told by the ‘nurse’ who turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US? the keen ear of the AngloAmerican propaganda machine has detected the social attraction of baby-atrocity propaganda).. Even SCOTUS Justice Felix Frankfurter, when shown Jan Karski’s factual report about Auschwitz, had to comment that he could not believe it – not because he thought it was untrue, but because his mind could not manage the feat of belief. Thus British imperial lying history helped prolong the Nazi holocaust.
When film of Bergen-Belsen was shown in Ireland, those of a critical mind demanded to know whether this was in fact footage of Churchill’s famine in 1943 Bengal. The Irish know a lot about British famines.
Too often the appalling character of the Third Reich is used to exonerate British imperialism. Have we really forgotten the Balfour Declaration? Or the 1936-9 British overt war against the Palestinians, comparable to Franco’s ‘crusade’ at the same time? It was then that Montgomery, who had won his spurs repressing the Irish, ascended the saddle of imperialist repression. (see John Newsinger’s article, available on this website)
Yet the May 2020 VE celebrations airbrushed the re-establishment of British (and Dutch and French) imperial rule, a re-establishment conducted through many a bloodbath and concentration camp – in Malaya, Kenya (Hola shocked Enoch Powell (!), though not the PLP except for Barbara Castle), Cyprus, the Yemen (where British forces are still supporting Saudi genocidal activities, often conducted with British arms and technical advice).
A bit less smugness from the Brit establisments might be welcome. High time the British war against the Arab masses, whether direct or collusive, including that operated by the LP GLU, was brought to a halt.