This week's postings at JfJfP.com


August 23, 2015
Sarah Benton

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This week, August 17-August 23, 2015 the stand-out item is a peculiarly British matter: the election of a new leader of the Labour Party and more particularly whether the favourite candidate, Jeremy Corbyn, is antisemitic – as a strong supporter of Palestinians rights he is critical of Israel’s policy – or whether, in his conviviality, he has been careless about who he meets and how he greets them. We could hardly sit on the edge saying ‘nothing to do with us’ as the acccusations made against him are so close to the raison d’etre of Jews for Justice for Palestinans.

And JfJfP signatories piled in. After the Daily Mail accused him of antisemitism a letter organised by Tony Greenstein was signed largely by JfJfP signatories. Individual JfJfP signatories also had letters published in the Guardian (and some didn’t) including on the organisation Deir Yassin Remembered.

Coincidentally, Lord Jeremy Beecham attacked the silence of JfJfP on Syria contrasted with its vociferous criticism of Israel. This was obviously silly (the clue’s in our name).

All got responses, if not published, collected in the Signatories’ blog:
Jews and Jeremy Corbyn

[If you as a signatory have an opinion, a review, an analysis, a description you would like to see posted here, send to postings@jfjfp.org]

A second posting focusing on Corbyn’s foreign policy (and association with Dyab Abu Jahjah) is
Meeting and greeting Jeremy Corbyn

This includes the helpful information that the JC’s own poll found that ‘7 out of 10 British Jews fear the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader’. Very Jewish Chronicle – find a means of showing that British Jews are a very timorous lot and need maximum protection from nasty news.

An open letter to the Jewish Chronicle, on its sustained and untruthful attack on Corbyn, was again signed by many JfJfP signatories. It said “Your assertion that your attack on Jeremy Corbyn is supported by ‘the vast majority of British Jews’ is without foundation. We do not accept that you speak on behalf of progressive Jews in this country. You speak only for Jews who support Israel, right or wrong.” The JC claimed ‘Dozens of prominent anti-Israel activists have signed an open letter attacking the JC for highlighting of Jeremy Corbyn’s links to antisemites and Holocaust deniers.’ The signers are pro-Palestinian rights, not anti-Israel (the Jewish Chronicle can’t tell the difference).
Standing for truth against JC fantasies

Israel seems a thoroughly militarised society: universal (almost) military conscription, reverence for the IDF, the common belief that military power is the first and best answer to every problem. Yet there are Israeli Jews who are not whole-hearted about the military solution. For them, the IDF has launched a propaganda campaign through social media to make military service seem normal.

Football is one of the memes Israel uses to assert its status as a normal state. Where in Europe does one state use all is powers to deny the existence of another including mass imprisonment without charge or trial? Israel is not European and fails European standards of human rights. Join the protest.
Stick to fair play: Wales should not play coloniser Israel< Social media, IDF’s new must-have skill

The extreme introversion of Netanyahu is demonstrated by his choice of settler leader Danny Danon as Israel’s UN envoy. Danon will do Israel no good at the UN – but he’ll leave Netanyahu in peace.
Settler leader to be be public face of Israel

Many, many have tried to find a non-military way of establishing two states, Israel and Palestine. The UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not to do with the creation of states but with the non-negotiable, absolute content of state practice. Even here, Israel has ignored the norms of civilised societies by treating Palestinians as non-people:
Twisting international law

Quixotically, apart from Corbyn, another Labour politician, ex, is prominent this week. Tony Blair, formerly Quartet envoy, formerly British PM, still a millionaire, has emerged as the envoy to Hamas. Rumours have abounbded for months that Israel is in direct negotiation with Hamas. We don’t know. But the involvement of Blair has received maximum publicity. He is trusted by the US and Israel – and not by the Palestinians who fear that his direct talks with Hamas are a prelude to separating Gaza from the West Bank.
What has Blair got to offer Hamas?

and, posted before Blair’s talks were confirmed,
Tony Blair leads talks with Hamas

The governments of both Palestine and Israel get a definitive label this week.  With great reluctance, idealistic American immigrant to Israel Bradley Burston, decides it is an apartheid state.
Time to call it what it is: Israeli apartheid

And here strongly accepted by the citizens: the Palestinian authority is corrupt. Palestinian society is part modern alienated labour, part traditional clan/tribe based society, part oppressed colony. The last two allow the PA to use rewards to keep control:
Patrons and clients – the PA political system

The exodus / expulsion of Palestinians from their homes is one of the great injustices of our age. About 4.5-5 million are living in the refugee camps of neighbouring countries, as well as the countries to which the well-qualified have access. The most notorious camp is Yarmouk in Syria. Many Palestinians have been able to escape the fighting in that country by fleeing to Lebanon or Jordan. Those who remain in Yarmouk are those with the least connections and qualifications and, because of Syria’s siege of the camp, have now been hit by a typhoid epidemic, the classic, and lethal illness, of the malnourished living in insanitary conditions.
Typhoid enters the ‘the lowest reaches of hell’

Despite these horrors the new boys on the block are Youth Against Settlements pledged to oppose settlements – and violence. From a very small beginning they are building up support. We wish them well.
Resolute non-violence

Meanwhile a distraught Netanyahu is failing to find allies in his campaign against the Iran nuclear deal as a lethal threat to Israel. As this deal was laboriously arrived at by theP5+1 (China, France, Russia, the UK, the USA plus Germany) it is unlikely that Netanyahu will get international support. So he has to show that Israel is under threat:
IDF kills Syrians to ‘prove’ Iran deal is wrong

In all this, Netanyahu has insisted that Gulf states are with him in their opposition to the Iran deal. Wrong. Gulf states are wary of Iran’s power and intentions, but their formal support for Palestinians means they cannot join with Israel in any joint enterprise.
Palestine blocks Bibi’s belief that he has Arab allies

And more besides

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