This week’s postings@JfJfP.com

This week, October 3rd-9th, the row centring on Jackie Walker seems, like most moments of hysteria and hyper-aggression, to be dwindling as anger about her persecution has spread. Many have sprung to her defence:
Jews for Jackie.

The Jewish Labour Movement has been handing out accusations of antisemitism like a neurotic headmaster faced with a school full of disobedient children. Latest to receive this accolade is Jonathan Cook from Nazareth:
Can’t get Corbyn, let’s get Walker

Over in Seattle, USA West Coast, Richard Silverstein also takes up her case, seeing the hand of the Israel lobby in it (no doubt with the JLM tucked in its pocket). He applauds her questioning of various issues that have reached the status of sacred and thus beyond question. Israel should have given her the handbook:
Invention of the sacred and the heretic

Ms. Walker obviously (she is a JfJfP signatory) knows that antisemitism exists. She suggested that David Schneider’s test of Are you Antisemitic was a good place to start:
The Schneider definition of antisemitism

Gideon Levy has declared the death of antisemitism. Evidence? The flocking of world leaders – mostly the historic Christian carriers of antisemitism – to the funeral of Shimon Peres.  It may not be the best example but his sense of the decline of antisemitism as a force in the world accords with the evidence – if not with those still whipping the antisemitism horse – of the loss of salience of antisemitic feeling. Israel is now the best friend of western leaders of the rule of international capital v. the Muslim dissidents:
Farewell to all that antisemitism – the world longs to love Israel

The Women’s Boat to Gaza – a symbolic effort to break the Gaza siege – with 13 women aboard was stopped by the IDF navy on October 5th and for a time nobody knew what had happened to the women:
Alarm goes out for Women’s Boat to Gaza

In an outrageous act of piracy – are ReCAAP, a multinational body that combats piracy, and the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Maritime Bureau (IMB) investigating? The Israeli navy had boarded the boat in international waters, towed it to an Israeli port, and imprisoned the 13 women aboard. This is surely kidnap on the high seas. A good report from Ma’an News:
IDF kidnaps 13 women from boat to Gaza

The precise whereabouts of the boat will have been tracked by Unit 8200 from its first movements. This unit has a unique freedom of action and a unique, and ungoverned, range of cyber equipment. Much of it is used to track Palestinians’ movement and record their conversations. It has produced a small clutch of refuseniks, horrified by this use of their skills and state equipment. But given the unit’s prestige – it recruits the top 1% of the top 1% and guarantees that graduates can go on to make lots of money with a start-up – the conscience of most will be in a dormant state:
Unit 8200 – kills, spies and makes the path to riches

If anyone still believes that Israel is a ‘beacon to the world’ in its love of democracy and civilised behaviour they should follow Israel’s new response to BDSers. There’s now a government unit to identify and track them and, if they dare come to Israel, deport them after a hard few days of interrogation. Look what you can do when you control your own borders!
Foreign BDS supporters deported from Israel

Robert A.H. Cohen, who is highly popular amongst our readers, is anathema to all elements of the Jewish establishment – which supports the crushing of Palestinians. He never receives an invitation to speak at any their events. Thus excluded he wonders what sort of Jew he is – marginalised yes. But more importantly a Kairos Jew. Kairos Palestine is a Christian initiative which “believes that liberation from occupation is in the interest of all peoples in the region because the problem is not just a political one, but one in which human beings are destroyed”. Though coming from a Palestinian Christian initiative there is every reason why non-Christians should support it too.
What kind of Jew am I?

What kind of Arab is Mahmoud Abbas? Facing considerable hostility at home he took the brave, or foolish, decision to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres where he was largely ignored by Netanyahu – deliberate humiliation? – who did remember to praise the Duke of Luxembourg (who he?) for attending. As long as Netanyahu is in power, Palestinians will not be able to find a partner for peace.
Palestinians shun fake mourning for Peres

It seems unlikely that if Israelis elected enough Labour candidates to form a government, policy would be significantly different. In fact the party is split. Some think the best option is to be a distinct left-wing opposition. Some think Labour should shift and adopt the PM’s ‘security before all else’ agenda. So the possibility of a split is in the air.

Social-democrat parties round the world are facing similar dilemmas:
Labour’s gamble – twist or split?

History, interpretations of it, are at the heart of all disputes of Israel/Palestine hence the importance of the ‘new historians’. Hillel Cohen goes back to 1929 to find the point at which Arab/Jewish conflict produced new communities of Palestinians in want of a state and Zionists in want of the largest state.

According to reviewer Yonatan Mendel, Hillel Cohen has not been admitted to the group of ‘new historians’ because he finds failures on both sides, though accepts that the ability of the IDF to secure Palestinians collaborators depends on their ability to secure blackmailing information (see also Unit 8200 – kills, spies and makes the path to riches above):
Making Zionists and Palestinians by blackmail and spying

The company telesur [multi-state funded, pan–Latin American terrestrial and satellite television network] has, interestingly, decided to support two documentaries on Palestine – on the refugee camps and on how Palestine was colonised. This marks, like the campaign Black Lives Matter, the embrace by others of Palestinians as classic victims of racism and colonisation. Perhaps not news for regular readers but valuable documentary films for anyone having to present the conflict:
How Palestine became colonised and Inside Palestine’s refugee camps.

We could run a story every week about Palestinian children (under 18) who have been killed by the IDF or border police. 56 have been killed since last October, more than one a week. That’s 56 more families who have endured the killing of a child, who see the IDF as trigger-happy killers. This posting features a 15-year-old child whose head burst into flames when an Israeli soldier aimed a flare gun directly at him.
Most of Israel’s ‘crowd control’ weapons can cause sickness, injury and death:
Palestinian boy killed by direct shot of flare-bomb

There are complaints that we only post the bad news from Israel. This is true. But given our remit – Jews for Justice for Palestinians – it is very hard to find any good news. If you know of any send to postings@jfjfp.org