The emperor's new clothes


June 7, 2015
Sarah Benton

This posting has these items:
1) Telegraph: Tony Blair’s new role fighting antisemitism – a kick in the teeth for Palestinians?;
2) Al Araby: Tony Blair to head European antisemitism group; ‘During his time in this role Blair come under increasing scrutiny for his expansive business interests in the region, his failure to deliver any tangible results and grievances among the Palestinian community for his perceived closeness to the Israelis.’
3) Independent: Palestinians baffled by decision to appoint Tony Blair to chair European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation;
4) Independent: Profile: The latest tycoon to hire Blair, who is Moshe Kantor?
5) Electronic Intifada: Tony Blair recruited by cheerleader for Israel’s crimes, David Cronin;
6) IB Times: Tony Blair’s legacy is a Middle East more divided, chaotic and sectarian than ever before;


Screenshot, BBC interview when Tony Blair puts Israel’s case for Operation Protective Edge, July 2014

Tony Blair’s new role fighting antisemitism – a kick in the teeth for Palestinians?

Former prime minister has already been accused of ‘taking sides’ in his previous role as peace envoy

By Maryyum Mehmood, The Telegraph
June 05, 2015

Just days after his resignation as Middle East peace envoy, Tony Blair has announced he will be taking on a new role, this time based in Europe. Blair is set to serve as Chair of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR), an “opinion-making and advisory body” seeking to tackle amongst other social ills, racism, Xenophobia and anti-Semitism across the Continent. Inevitably, Blair’s announcement has garnered hefty criticism. It beggars a few questions: how suitable is Blair in curbing Anti-Semitism? And how can we work towards ridding Europe of Xenophobia more generally?

 Many challenge Blair’s efficacy, claiming that his seven-year stint as lead diplomat of the Quartet, mediating between Israel and Palestine has proven overwhelmingly fruitless. Others question his foreign policy track-record, which for many is muddled by the Iraq War. These issues are very much engrained in the memories of his harshest critiques, considering how present-day Iraq is now a battlefield ripe for radical extremists, such as ISIS.


The Tony Blair ‘selfie’. A journalist takes a picture of ‘Photo Op’ by Kennard Phillips, depicting Prime Minister Tony Blair taking a ‘selfie’ in front of an explosion in Iraq, during a press viewing of the exhibition Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War

An article written jointly by Blair and Kantor, claims “it is the abuse of religion which then becomes a mask behind which those bent on death and destruction all too often hide”. No doubt religious extremism can be a cause for hatred, but there is danger in essentialising prejudices as exclusively stemming from faith-based radicalism. It is fact that throughout history and even at present, the bulk of Xenophobia in Europe be it racist, anti-Jewish or anti-Muslim is founded in neo-fascist or fervent nationalist movements.

Whilst it can be argued tougher legislations against hate speech can prove useful, many liberals declare this a curtailment of free speech. There are alternative means to countering Anti-Semitism in particular, and Xenophobia more generally. For example, community level action projects and inter-faith dialogue have proven crucial in eradicating Xenophobic prejudices, which are often borne out of fear or ignorance. More needs to be invested at grassroots levels to foster the medium of dialogue across Europe. While judicial crackdown can be advantageous, some argue fighting Xenophobia is more a matter of changing mindsets, in open environments that are accepting of free speech.

• What has Tony Blair achieved as Middle East envoy?
• Tony Blair ‘achieved very little’ and should never have been made peace envoy, says Britain’s former ambassador to Libya

Many of those campaigning against antisemitism and other forms of hate fear association with Tony Blair, considering his shaky past, will do great disservice to their cause. While those in support of Blair urge us not to be quick in passing judgment, his staunchest critics would much rather draw attention towards a long overdue Chilcot enquiry verdict than his new role.

Some analysts have suggested that Blair’s new role will further widen the gap between his supporters and critics; Blair, has been accused of ‘taking sides’ in his previous role as peace envoy. Many have immediately suggested that while Israelis will be happy, their Palestinian counterparts will treat Blair’s most recent endeavour with suspicion. This reductionist binary of Israel vs. Palestinian is perhaps why the peace process has been so ineffective. Moreover, it must be remembered that the role of ECTR Chair aims to challenge not only antisemitism, but also other forms of prejudice and Xenophobia. Although Blair is outspokenly pro-Zionist, equating challenging Antisemitism to a pro-Israel stance would be counter-productive in the context of fighting European Xenophobia.



Logo of European Council for Tolerance and Reconciliation, established in Paris on October 7, 2008, to monitor tolerance in Europe. The Chairman of the Council since 2013 has been President of the European Jewish Congress Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor.

Tony Blair to head European antisemitism group

Former British prime minister announces role as chairman of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation a week after resigning as the Quartet’s Middle East Peace envoy.

By Al-Araby al-Jadeed
June 04, 2015

Tony Blair has been appointed as chairman of a pan-European body that fights antisemitism and campaigns for the criminalisation of holocaust denial.

The former British prime minister’s move to the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, or ECTR, comes a week after he resigned as the peace envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East.

In a statement on Thursday Blair said: “The work they [the ECTR] are doing is crucial, because despite our best efforts to build a consensus around tolerance in Europe we still see injustice, discrimination and hideous acts of violence on the continent.”

In an article for the UK newspaper the Times, Blair said that he would campaign across European capitals for the implementation of the recommendations of a report from the council, which proposes legal parameters for tolerence, including greater power for judiciaries to prosecute hate speech, lower barriers to what constitutes incitement to violence and criminalising Holocaust denial.

Many of the recommendations reflect legislation Blair tried to implement when he was serving as prime minister, 1997-2007, which elicited challenges on the grounds of infringements on civil liberties.

The article co-written with Moshe Kantor, the president of the ECTR and of the European Council of Jews, said that 2014 was the worst year in the past decade for violent antisemitic incidents while drawing parallels to other periods in modern history where Europe experienced both economic malaise and rising extremism.

“There have been three points in the past 100 years when annual GDP growth in Europe fell below one percent: first in 1913, just before the First World War, second in 1938, just before the second broke out and third, in 2014. Economic decline fuels instability and we know these concerns are being felt across the world.”

The war in Syria is alluded to in the opening paragraphs as a source of rising extremism and intolerance. Blair states:

It is not religion or faith per se that causes or foments conflict. It is the abuse of religion, which then becomes a mask behind which those bent on death and destruction all too often hide.

Lessons learned from the Northern Ireland peace process are mentioned in a tip to one of Blair’s major political victories while in office, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

A controversial legacy

Blair’s new appointment comes on the heels of his resignation as special representative of the international quartet – the UN, US, EU and Russia – on the Middle East.

During his time in this role Blair come under increasing scrutiny for his expansive business interests in the region, his failure to deliver any tangible results and grievances among the Palestinian community for his perceived closeness to the Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority’s former chief negotiator Nabil Shaath said Blair had “achieved so very little because of his gross efforts to please the Israelis”.

The legacy of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars launched during Blair’s premiership also undermined his standing as a independent broker in the region.

The new post at the ECTR intersects with the work already done by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which he created to “counter extremism in all six leading religions”.

As well as lobbying politicians and law makers the ECTR also works in schools and universities around Europe to “encourage tolerance and reconciliation”, through lectures, workshops and academic studies.

The ECTR was established in October 2008 by Kantor and Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former president of Poland, but its conception dates back to the International Stockholm Forum on the Holocaust organised by the Swedish government in January 2000.



Tony Blair and a large security contingent visit the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, July 2010.

Palestinians baffled by decision to appoint Tony Blair to chair European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation

By Annie Slemrod, The Independent
June 04, 2015

JERUSALEM–Tony Blair’s globetrotting brand of peace has taken another unexpected step. In Jerusalem, where he kept an office as impartial envoy to Arab states for the Quartet, there was bafflement at his decision to become head of Europe’s pro-Jewish body fighting antisemitism.

Mr Blair’s appointment to chair the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR), which campaigns for tougher laws on extremism, even caused some concern among Palestinians. The region Mr Blair left behind when he stepped down as the Quartet’s Middle East envoy appeared wary about his new, reportedly unpaid, appointment. “He couldn’t do much to achieve Palestinian rights,” said PLO advisor Xavier Abu Eid. “If I were a European Jew I would be very concerned about what he could achieve for me.”

The Palestinian camp largely greeted his arrival eight years ago with optimism as he took up offices in East Jerusalem, but his tenure was marked by a stalled peace process and, later, accusations of pro-Israeli bias. “When he was appointed I thought, as a former UK Prime Minister, he had not come to play [around] … but he became irrelevant,” Mr Abu Eid added. Mr Blair’s role became to campaign for the Israelis, Mr Abu Eid told The Independent, noting his praise of Ariel Sharon at the former Israeli Prime Minister’s funeral last year.

But Mr Abu Eid, like other Palestinian commentators, was quick to note that Mr Blair’s choice should not be tied to his post as Middle East peace envoy. “The fact that there is antisemitism and it should be fought is a reality, like Islamophobia should be fought, and [this new job] has nothing to do with his role [as Quartet envoy],” he said.

The ECTR was established by Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, and campaigns for tougher laws on extremism and racism including the criminalisation of Holocaust denial. Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian politician and veteran of several rounds of peace talks, said he was reserving judgement on Mr Blair’s role at the ECTR. “As Palestinians we do not have any interest in the increase of antisemitism, in fact we pay a price for antisemitism … We are anti-Israeli occupation, not anti-Jewish.”

Mr Khatib argues that the former Prime Minister himself may have been fair-minded, but that the Quartet “is biased [in favour of Israel] … and a failure story … but it is not fair to hold him responsible for that”.

Former Israeli negotiator Yossi Alpher said he thought Mr Blair’s new chairmanship might add fuel to the fire for some of his critics. “It will probably reconfirm in the eyes of many Palestinians what they had always argued: that he was biased in favour of Israel.”

Mr Alpher has been critical of Mr Blair’s mission for different reasons, saying the Quartet’s focus on boosting the Palestinian economy and infrastructure is a flawed path to peace.

But Gilead Sher, head of Israel’s negotiating team at the 2000 Camp David summit, said these efforts “to create a reality that allows people on both sides of the trench to live more comfortably” were valuable. He called Mr Blair very capable and devoted to “making life here more peaceful and creating an environment of coexistence that would be bearable”. Mr Sher also said any suggestion that the former Prime Minister’s placement suggests favouritism towards Israel or Jews is groundless.


Moshe Kantor, head of the European Jewish Congress. Photo by Reuters

Profile: The latest tycoon to hire Blair

Tony Blair’s partner fighting antisemitism is Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, a Russian-born self-made billionaire who built his fortune from fertiliser and real estate.

The 61-year-old is worth $2.4bn, making him the 810th richest person in the world. He is married with four sons and a daughter and lives in London. Mr Kantor heads the Acron Group, which was a state-owned company under the former Soviet Union and is now one of the world’s biggest fertiliser producers.

As president of the European Jewish Congress, Mr Kantor is known for campaigning against antisemitism, racism and neo-Nazism. His website says he is “actively engaged in promoting tolerance and reconciliation in Europe”. He is also concerned by the spread of nuclear weapons. In 2007, he founded the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, designed to bring together experts on nuclear non-proliferation.

On a brighter note, he is president of the Museum of Avant-Garde Mastery in Moscow, which holds the world’s largest collection of Russian avant-garde art.

Ian Johnston



Tony Blair recruited by cheerleader for Israel’s crimes

By David Cronin, Lobby Watch, Electronic Intifada
June 05, 2015

Scanning the headlines about Tony Blair’s latest appointment, I wanted to believe that someone was playing a joke.

The war criminal who morphed into a Middle East “peace envoy” will now work pro bono for an Israel lobby group. For that is the most accurate way to describe Blair’s new “employer,” the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation.

While its name might give the impression that it is a dispassionate intergovernmental body, the ECTR is an initiative of the Zionist zealot and fertilizer tycoon Moshe Kantor.

As well as being the ECTR’s founder, Kantor is the president of the European Jewish Congress. Despite his claim to represent 2.5 million Jews, Kantor regularly panders to antisemites. By acting as a cheerleader for Israeli aggression, Kantor lends credence to the fallacy that Israel enjoys a universal blessing from Jews.

He is completely out of sync with the growing number of his co-religionists who are speaking out against Israeli apartheid.

Kantor’s stance is also at odds with that taken by Blair as prime minister. Officially, the UK views the construction of Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank as illegal under international law. Kantor, on the other hand, has argued that such colonization facilitates the “positive interaction” between Israelis and Palestinians.

In a joint opinion piece with Kantor published yesterday by British newspaper The Times, Blair identifies “creating clearer definitions of what is racist and anti-Semitic” and giving judiciaries greater powers to prosecute “hate speech” as priorities for his work with the ECTR.

Blurring the distinction

Careful scrutiny of Kantor’s activities indicate he is not really interested in bringing clarity. Whereas opposition to Zionism is very different from a blanket animosity towards Jews, he is seeking to blur the distinction between these two phenomena.

The ECTR has drafted a convention on “promoting tolerance.” Its preamble refers to “the current increase in anti-Semitism in many European countries,” alleging that “this increase is also characterized by new manifestations of anti-Semitism.”

Kantor’s European Jewish Congress has invested much energy into accusing the Palestine solidarity movement of being responsible for “new manifestations of antisemitism.”

I have obtained a letter sent by the EJC to the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency in April 2012. The letter — see original — alleges that “the new form of anti-Semitism, which emanates from pro-Palestinians, from Arabo-Muslim extremists [sic], is today considered by European Jews as a real threat, which creates fear and tension among European Jews. Therefore, the definition of anti-Semitism should be clarified: the new form of anti-Semitism emanates from Arabo-Muslim extremists, from pro-Palestinians, being one way importers of the mid-East conflict into Europe.”

Such lobbying has proven effective. In response to pleas from the EJC and similar groups, the EU’s agency decided to include calls for boycotting Israel — a key tactic of the Palestine solidarity movement — as an example of anti-Semitism in a report it issued during 2013.

Dodgy dossier

The agency, which has been tasked with monitoring racism and xenophobia across the Union, has failed to acknowledged that the Palestinian-led mobilization for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targets goods, companies and institutions — not individuals.

Blair’s call for a crackdown on “hate speech” should be seen against the backdrop of attempts to smear Palestine solidarity campaigners. The attempts have made an impact. Canada’s right-wing government is in trying to criminalize BDS campaigning by categorizing it as “hate speech.”

Violence against Jews is a real problem. Just this year, there have been attacks on a kosher supermarket in Paris and a bar mitzvah in Copenhagen. To tackle the hatred behind such incidents, it is necessary to remain focused. Smearing Palestine solidarity activists with bogus accusations is a distraction.

It would be comforting if Blair and Kantor could be dismissed as yesterday’s men. Sadly, both are influential.

Kantor even has a centre named after him in Tel Aviv University. It publishes annual reports that pretend to give a global overview of antisemitism.

According to the latest such report, Israeli soldiers were blamed for “every evil on earth” at demonstrations sparked by Israel’s 2014 bombing of Gaza. No evidence is provided to back up that wild assertion.

But such sloppiness does not seem to worry Blair and Kantor, who refer to the report in their aforementioned opinion piece.

Come to think of it, this isn’t the first dodgy dossier that Blair has endorsed. Didn’t he invade Iraq to search for weapons that did not exist?



Mahmoud Abbas meets with Tony Blair September 2011. “Tony Blair is of ‘no use at all’ says Palestinian leadership.  The Palestinian leadership has publicly called for the removal of Tony Blair from his position as Middle East peace envoy, raising fresh questions as to whether he can continue in the role.” Photo by REX

Tony Blair’s legacy is a Middle East more divided, chaotic and sectarian than ever before

By Orlando Crowcroft Executive Editor – Geo-politics, IB Times
May 27, 2015

As Tony Blair stands down as Middle East envoy, few in the region will mourn his departure. It is an almost unanimously-held view that the former British leader-turned-peacemaker-cum-millionaire consultant did little of substance in his role.

Much of that was the bloody legacy of the wars that Blair waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflicts that he and his American allies began and which still rage across the region today. Indeed, when he first announced his role at the Quartet, it was received variously as a bad joke or a grave insult to the region whose stability he had done so much to destroy.

But it would be far too easy to condemn Blair for the mess he left in the Middle East when he stood down as prime minister in 2007 – a year which was, coincidentally, the bloodiest on record in Iraq since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It was not only the cavalier and reckless way that Blair waded into the Middle East in 2001 and 2003 that wrote his epitaph.

His record of progress in the years since he became Representative of the Office of the Quartet in 2007 has been negligible at best. He has been largely absent over the issues of Syria and Iraq and in Israel and Palestine – which Blair has touted as his sphere of influence as envoy – he has achieved absolutely nothing as he stands down this week.

The peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are as non-existent as they have been since April last year and, despite frequent visits to the region, Blair has had no role whatsoever in any efforts to broker a deal between the two parties. Even the areas that Blair and the Quartet have trumpeted as achievements have proved to be illusions, say senior Palestinian figures.

It is an open secret in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Blair kept an office close to the leafy British Council building, that the Palestinians once toyed with making him a persona non grata in Palestine, so obstructive did they find any involvement that he had in negotiations between Ramallah, the Palestinian city in the West Bank, and the Israelis.

When IBTimes UK spoke to a senior Palestinian Authority figure in the wake of the initial announcement about Blair standing down as envoy earlier this year, he laughed: “What am I going to say? The man didn’t do anything,” he said.

One of the major achievements that Blair and his people like to talk about is Bethlehem, which he has seen as integral to his personal mission of developing the Palestinian economy. It is true that with Israeli’s easing of restrictions on checkpoints, tourist numbers have increased, up to a record-breaking four million in 2014 – but those gains are deceptive.

Of the millions of tourists that visit Bethlehem, only a fraction of them stay overnight in the West Bank, most travelling to and from Israel on Israeli tour buses, which have, perversely, benefited from the easing of restrictions as their Palestinian counterparts have gained little new business. That, officials say, is the true picture of Tony Blair in Palestine.

In an interview with Newsweek earlier this year, Blair was quizzed on what he was doing to rectify this problem by Palestinian Tourism and Antiquities Minister Rula Ma’aya. Asked to push the Israelis more to ease restrictions on movement for Palestinians, Blair said simply: “It’s tough. It’s really tough.” He then shrugged and avoided the questions.

Perhaps it is testament to Blair’s famous arrogance that he considered his failures as Middle East envoy to be down to the “narrowness of his role” and was looking for a more wide-ranging position on the world stage. After eight years supposedly involved in solving the greatest and most long-lasting conflict in the Middle East – perhaps the root of all of its conflicts – Blair considers the role narrow. You couldn’t make it up.

There is arguably only one place in the Middle East that Blair would comfortably be able to rely on a good reception from the locals, and that is Iraqi Kurdistan. Many Kurds consider that it was Britain and America’s intervention in Iraq in 2003 that paved the way for relative peace and stability in Iraqi Kurdistan, the last year or so notwithstanding.

But recent events suggest that even that is now fading. The Kurds face a menace in Islamic State that was born out of the instability in the Middle East that Blair and others created.

His failure in Jerusalem has only added insult to injury, with the blame both on Blair personally and for the Quartet for appointing him and accepting his catalogue of failures and, at times, appearance of complete disinterest in the conflict in Israel and Palestine.

Blair’s legacy is a Middle East more divided, chaotic and sectarian than arguably ever before and if he is really leaving the Quartet for a wider, more global role then, frankly, God help us all.

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