Zionist Federation fails to draw many to pro-Israel rally


July 22, 2014
Sarah Benton

1) Jennifer Lipman reports from the pro-Israel rally, 2) Owen Jones comments on Israeli occupation and Jewish trauma, 3) Philip Kleinfeld marches on Saturday and visits the ZF rally on Sunday.

London’s pro-Israel rally opposite the Israeli embassy, Sunday, July 20, 2014. From the Union Jacks it looks as though the rally was joined by supporters of Britain’s far-right, the only ones to stitch together the union flag, Israeli flag and English cross of St. George. Photo by Jennifer Lipman

London pro-Israel rally’s turnout far below past support

During the Second Intifada, 30,000 supporters turned Trafalgar Square blue and white. Sunday, only 1,500 showed up

By Jennifer Lipman, Times of Israel
July 20, 2014

LONDON — As Israel supporters gathered to show solidarity outside the country’s London Embassy on Sunday the overriding sentiment was, “Hamas has left Israel with no choice.” The, according to police figures, upwards of 1,500 supporters called for peace — and railed against the media’s portrayal of this latest outbreak of violence.

With Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza expanding and the reported Palestinian death toll rising to above 400, speakers made clear they felt Israel had been pushed into a corner and attendees waved banners calling for the rockets to stop and for peace to prevail.

But many who had attended a similar, if much larger rally in London’s Trafalgar Square less than five years ago, held little hope.

“I want it all to stop,” said Elisheva Klein, 18, whose brother is serving in the IDF and who used to live in Israel herself, echoing the tone of others present. “I have huge love for Israel, but we need or end it for everybody, not just for ourselves. Both sides want peace; it’s not fair on anyone that this is happening.”

Free Palestine stickers, leftover from Saturday’s 15,000-strong anti-Israel march at which activists declared “Israel is a terror state,” were still visible on the ground. But the crowd was defiant, draped in flags and singing Hebrew songs.

The majority of supporters were from London’s large Jewish community, with the full spectrum of age and religiosity represented; more than a few Christians were present as well. Taxi drivers and cyclists waving Israel flags drove up and down Kensington High Street to register their support.

Israel supporters on London’s High Street opposite the Israeli embassy on Sunday, July 20, 2014 (Jennifer Lipman/The Times of Israel)
Israel supporters on London’s High Street opposite the Israeli embassy on Sunday, July 20, 2014 (Jennifer Lipman/The Times of Israel)

Organized by the Zionist Federation and secured by the Metropolitan Police and the Community Security Trust, the rally was backed by a number of Jewish communal organizations, including the Board of Deputies and the Union of Jewish Students. Attendees included Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub and former Sderot mayor David Bouskila. The current British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis was a notable absence.

Midway through the afternoon a siren was sounded to “recreate the conditions that led to Operation Protective Edge” and give shoppers on upmarket High Street Kensington an idea of life under threat of terror. As the siren wailed, the crowd crouched somberly, a moment marred only by a pro-Palestinian activist shouting “shame on you.” Overall, however, counter-protesters were few and far between.

Although no politician from the governing Conservative Party spoke, MP and Labour Friends of Israel officer Louise Ellman issued a public call for an end to the rockets and for the British Government to work for a negotiated ceasefire “so that innocent civilians, whether Israeli or Palestinian, can live.” She spoke of the absolutely tragic number of civilian deaths, but was clear that responsibility ultimately belonged with Hamas.

Others agreed, acknowledging the growing number of casualties, but emphasizing that Israel has the right to self-defense.

“Hamas is leaving Israel with no option but to retaliate,” Board of Deputies President Vivien Wineman told the crowd. “The common enemy of Israel and the Palestinians is Hamas.”

“Of course we want an end to it,” said Steven Roston, from Hertfordshire, who said that the growing Israeli ground offensive was worrying given the potential for loss of life. But he emphasized it was essential for Israel.

“If any other country was under the same pressure they would react far more strongly,” Roston pointed out. “When Hamas send in rockets they don’t care who they kill. We use the Iron Dome to stop missiles, they use people. Israel has to protect its citizens. What choice is there?”

Elizabeth Rowan, a Christian supporter of Israel, criticized the media for ignoring why Israel had launched the latest offensive.

“They don’t speak the truth about what is actually happening,” she said. “They don’t understand if they were in a similar position they would want to protect their homeland, their children. They don’t seem to understand that Israel wants peace, that Hamas is a terrorist organization.”

Many had arrived by public transport, but were firm that they and others had not been worried to come and publicly display their solidarity, despite recent clashes in Paris and with public opinion in Britain widely critical of Israel.

Nevertheless, numbers were a far cry from the solidarity rally in London at the height of the Second Intifada, when upwards of 30,000 people turned Trafalgar Square blue and white, or even the Closer to Israel march from Hyde Park just over a year ago when thousands turned out to celebrate Israel’s 65th. Four and a half years ago, during Operation Cast Lead, tens of thousands attended rallies in London and Manchester. In contrast, support seemed diminished.

It was organized with very short notice,” pointed out Roston, who attended the 2009 rally. With many of the community’s younger activists in Israel leading tour groups, the timing surely had an impact, as did the location: Kensington High Street simply cannot cater to the numbers that Trafalgar Square can. But some Israel supporters had chosen to stay away.

“I probably don’t agree with most people there,” said Daniel Sommer, a 26-year-old doctor from London, who chose not to come along, despite having attended pro-Israel rallies in the past. “Also, I do think the situation is different. Obviously, I support Israel’s right to defend against horrific rocket attacks but I feel like Netanyahu is to blame for starting this.”

Nevertheless, for the organizers the rally sent a strong symbol. Addressing the crowd, the ZF’s Chairman Paul Charney thanked them for coming.

“Israel is looking at the UK and saying we have friends,” said Charney.



Israelis sit on a hill to watch air strikes on Gaza, some bring drinks and snacks as they cheer the explosions a few miles away. Photo from UPI/Landov/Barcroft Media

How the occupation of Gaza corrupts the occupier

It’s tempting, but futile, to demonise Israelis. To achieve peace, we have to understand the rationales behind the latest offensive

By Owen Jones, Comment is Free, Guardian
July 20 / 21, 2014

As CNN’s Diana Magnay reported on the bombs falling on Palestinian heads from Sderot on the Israel-Gaza border last week, a crowd of Israelis whooped and cheered. Watching the missiles and explosions light up the sky was, Magnay declared on-air, “an astonishing, macabre and awful thing”, but these locals had a different slant. “Israelis on hill above Sderot cheer as bombs land on #gaza;” she tweeted after the broadcast ended, “threaten to ‘destroy our car if I say a word wrong’. Scum.” Twenty minutes later, the tweet had been deleted, and CNN later reassigned its reporter to Moscow – actions which, in the social media age, guarantee a story goes viral.

A few days earlier, photographs emerged of young residents relaxing on folding chairs as they watched the bombing. Some smoked water pipes; others had brought popcorn. On one level, the “Sderot cinema” sums up the asymmetry of this so-called conflict: of Gazans huddled in terror as a military superpower pounds their overcrowded, besieged open-air prison camp; while on the other side of the border, Israelis joyously celebrate their country’s military might, whatever fear they have of Hamas rockets eclipsed by the thrill of bombs detonating in the near distance. It is also illustrative of how occupations corrupt the occupier. “What a misfortune it is for one nation to subjugate another,” Friedrich Engels wrote in 1864, referring to Britain’s oppression of Ireland. “All English abominations have their origin in the Irish pale.” And so it goes with Israel and Gaza.


This photo, tweeted by Danish journalist @allansorensen72, of Israelis celebrating on the hillside by Sderot as they watch the bombs fall on Gaza was widely retweeted. Sorensen’s tweeted message was “Sderot cinema. Israelis bringing chairs 2 hilltop in sderot 2 watch latest from Gaza. Clapping when blasts are heard. ” 8:26 PM – 9 Jul 2014

An important caveat is, of course, that most Israelis would not dream of treating a military offensive that inevitably spills blood as though it was a perverse video game. This is an extreme example of what occupations do to the occupier. To regard the lives of those your country is subjugating as being equal to your own would make even one death intolerable. If you think their children are much like your own, you would be unlikely to believe any military operation that kills dozens had a justification; you would demand an alternative strategy, however difficult it might at first appear.

It is believed that sociopaths make up just 1% of any given population; the rest of us have an enormous potential capacity for empathy. But empathy relies on a sense of shared humanity; once that is obliterated, it is possible to tolerate almost limitless suffering. That is why occupations have to “other” the occupied – because otherwise subjugation becomes impossible.

It is a process that is far from unique to Israel. The same phenomenon is evident throughout Britain’s colonial history: from Ireland, and the dehumanisation of its inhabitants, to events more recent than many of us would like to admit. In 2012 AT Williams published A Very British Killing, about the death of an Iraqi hotel receptionist at the hands of occupying British troops in 2003. Along with nine other civilians, a sandbag was placed over his head, he was bound with plastic handcuffs and subjected to humiliation and casual violence until he was beaten to death. In January, a 250-page dossier documenting allegations by Iraqis of torture, mock executions and sexual assault at the hands of British troops was submitted to the international criminal court. Such behaviour is all but inherent in any occupation.

There is a crucial difference with Israel, and it is too often downplayed or poorly understood by supporters of Palestinian justice. The moral corruption that comes with any occupation has fused with the collective trauma of the Jewish people. Angela Godfrey-Goldstein is a peace activist in Jerusalem: she tells me that Israel’s mentality “is very easy to understand in a way where people were traumatised over centuries. It bred a sense that people owe us, of ‘who are you to tell us what to do?’.”

A fellow human rights activist in Tel Aviv agrees. “In Israeli society there is a victim mentality that is deeply, deeply rooted in the Holocaust and encouraged by those in power, even though at the moment we’re not victims, we’re an incredibly powerful country with an incredibly powerful military.” The Jewish people faced persecution for millenniums: the 1190 massacre of the Jews at York, the pogroms of tsarist Russia, the Dreyfus affair of France. It culminated in a systematic, industrialised attempt at extermination in the Holocaust. There are Jewish people alive who remember SS guards screeching at them; some still have death camp numbers tattooed on their skin. “What has changed since the Holocaust is our ability to defend ourselves by ourselves,” declares Binyamin Netanyahu, and you can see why it resonates. The all too recent memory of the gas chambers encourages the sense that Israel can never be too strong, and that its people can never be oppressors.

When Palestinians die, says Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli, “Israelis don’t deny [they] have died, but they’ve simply done a mental process that blames the Palestinian deaths on Palestinians themselves.” Gaza residents are homogenised as Hamas supporters – even though most were not of voting age when the group was elected in 2006 – justifying collective punishment.

For those who want peace – including an end to the occupation and the dismantling of every settlement – it is tempting to demonise Israeli supporters of this latest offensive. But it is futile and self-defeating. The occupation will not end until the rationales that sustain it are understood. As Palestinian children are killed, that may seem like a lot to stomach, but it is no less necessary.

Twitter: @OwenJones84


2014-07-19 12.32.08
Demonstrating that not all Jews support Israel. Photo by Luke Hodgkin.

Not all Jews support Israel

By Philip Kleinfeld, Vice news
July 21, 2014

To both Jews and non-Jews the idea of an anti-Zionist Jew can sound like a contradiction in terms—an abuse of Rabbi Hillel’s most famous ethical aphorism, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me.” But for Sam Weinstein, and for around 30 others, me included, tucked together in a small Jewish bloc at Saturday’s Gaza demo in London, standing against Israel is precisely what our background demands.

“I come from a Jewish tradition that has always fought for the underdog,” Sam told me as he unfurled a banner of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network in the sticky heat. “One that has fought for social justice because historically we were the ones getting killed by the state.”

On the 8th of July, Israel began Operation Protective Edge, a military offensive which used the kidnapping and murder of three boys in Kfar Etzion, a settlement in the occupied West Bank, as a pretext for the bombardment and invasion of the Gaza strip. Since then, over 80,000 Gazans have fled their homes and more than 500 have died, the majority of them civilians.

For British Jews and other diaspora communities that oppose this, the added tragedy is that it is done in our name, in the expectation of our full, unflinching support. Before the Second World War, there were many Jews that refused to accept political Zionism as an ideology. But since 1948, when the State of Israel was established, support for it has slowly become almost unanimous.

“The Israeli state identifies Israel with all Jews,” Naomi Winborne Idrissi, a co-founder of Jews for Boycotting Israel Goods said to me as we passed Downing Street. “It aims to speak for all of us. But we say Israel and Zionism does not represent us.” Refusing to be wrapped up in a cause that is blindly and destructively nationalistic is why we were demonstrating in our capacity as Jews—both expressing our solidarity with Palestine and reclaiming ownership of our Jewish identity.

That’s not an easy thing to do. For a long time when I was growing up I felt that Israel did represent me. In 2002, during the Second Intifada, I remember standing with 40,000 people in Trafalgar Square, swept up in a haze of blue and white flags, proud parents and slogans I only half understood. 2002 was also the year I was bar mitzvahed. Every Saturday morning for nearly 12 months I sat in my local synagogue in Essex to hear stale one-sided sermons from the man supposed to be teaching me about Jewish values, ethics and intellectual life. In my early teens I was a member of the Federation of Zionist Youth, one of thousands of emotionally charged and politically naive kids, sent on summer camps and tours across Israel to sample Israeli culture in the most santitised, ideologically curated way.

In Britain, the United Synagogue, the largest Jewish denomination, puts “the centrality of Israel in Jewish life” as one of its defining values. The British Board of Deputies, the primary representative body of British Jews, claims in its constitution that it seeks to advance “Israel’s security, welfare and standing”. Dwelling on these facts is the only way I can make sense of why otherwise decent people, family and friends, show their support for what seems so obviously and monumentally wrong.

“The direction in which Jewish and Israeli people are going in is terrifying,” said Dan Nemenyi, one of the younger demonstrators in the bloc. “The Jewish establishment in Britain remains as right wing as ever, and still holds power over schools, synagogues and the representation of the community. In Israel a solution needs to be found for the situation of the Palestinians. But the response is full military occupation and war whenever it’s needed.”


The alternative rally, Sunday July 20.

It’s a depressing state of affairs, as a 2000-strong pro-Israel rally, also held outside the Israeli embassy the following day demonstrated. On Sunday alone more than 100 Palestinians were killed and 500 injured. In Shuja’iyeh, a small neighbourhood in the East of Gaza City, 66 bodies were found by medical authorities, 17 of them children. Horrifying videos have appeared online of civilians fleeing by foot, charred, bloodied bodies lying strewn around them.

Not a single reference to this reality was captured in the recycled platitudes held up by the demonstrators—no trace of irony or shame in proclaiming Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

“British Jews have come out because although we do not live in Israel we want the Israelis to know we support them,” one man told me. “If we are not there in body we are there in spirit. Israel is our land. And as long as they continue to do the right thing, they will get our support.”

“I’m out today because this is a time of crisis for Israel,” another man said. “What Israel is going through with rockets coming in from Gaza is absolutely abhorrent. It’s important I come out as a British Jew to defend against this anti-Semitism.”

As the rally continued, a growing number of counter-demonstrators arrived through the crowd to a small area cordoned off by the police. Almost all of them were goaded, booed and harassed as they passed. One pro-Israel demonstrator ripped a Palestinian flag out of a man’s hand before throwing it onto the street to loud cheers. Another was held back by the police as he lurched at a man with two young children holding what looked like an umbrella with Palestinian colours. “I feared for my safety and my children,” the father told me after.

Another demonstrator, Douaa Elterk, was driving through the crowd to join the counter-protest when the car she was in was attacked by pro-Israel demonstrators. “We were assaulted as we passed by holding a Palestinian flag,” she said. “We were hit with sticks and one of our flags was snatched. Water was thrown and we were spat at. Somebody then blocked the road to stop us before the police moved them on. The Israelis are holding banners saying peace not war but are attacking everyone passing by. It’s such hypocrisy.”

As the rally came to a close a number of younger, masked counter-demonstrators turned up to face the large section of Israel supporters that had peeled off from the main area. At one stage the new arrivals broke the police line and kicked the window mirror of a car driving past waving an Israeli flag.

As I left, I received a text from a close family member who spotted me at the rally. “So Philip who were you supporting today?” she asked. Whatever optimism can be taken from a small group of people saying, “Not in our name,” for most diaspora communities around the world, Israel should never be publicly condemned.

Follow Philip on Twitter, @PKleinfeld.
Photo below tweeted by Vilda Rachman Amir 12.@VildaRachman


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