This week’s postings@JfJfP.com

This week, November 28th – December 4th, 2016 contains a welcome medley of articles. The Trump makes only one appearance – a critique from Times of Israel for his video use of antisemitic images (which also rely on his conspiracy theories of how power works):
Conspiracy ‘common sense’ usurps reality

Trump dumbs down his own intelligence to speak the ‘common sense’ of everyman. This imaginary common sense assumes all those who exercise power are corrupt and part of a conspiracy to do down the common man. Americans may be particularly responsive to this skew of events but it is a integral part of the populist rebellion.

However, too late for this posting, it was a primary part of the feared victory of populist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim right-winger Norbert Hofer. He lost but the anxieties he aroused are still worth discussing:
Austria’s far-right hopes to win from populist swing

It is the linked victories of Brexit and Trump that have aroused such widespread horror at the thought of neo-fascism triumphing. A candidate for a state seat in Tennessee put up billboards round the state saying ‘Make America white again’.  He wanted to return to the no-crime, no-immigrant [sic] days of the 1960s. The ever-thorough and reliable Southern Poverty Law Center has documented the surge in hate crimes since Trump’s campaign. The largest number were ‘anti-immigrant’ (a more respectable term than anti-Muslim) and were carried out in a spirit of triumph:
‘Celebratory violence’ of nationalist right

Many of those Trump has appointed to his Cabinet are known for their hostility to Muslims says Richard Silverstein. But can a government packing in so much bitterness and resentment wrapped in fantasy survive? He thinks it will implode – after doing a lot of damage.
Muslim-haters get top jobs

American Jews have long enjoyed their high status in the USA and they have, on the whole, held onto the belief that they are ‘a community’. No longer. Extreme developments in the USA and Israel, and a new generation of young American Jews, means the Jewish establishment does not know what to do. The young have no more respect for Netanyahu than they do for Trump. The Jewish establishment is either going to find it hard to recruit the next generation of liberal Jews (the Orthodox are increasingly illiberal) or it’s going to split:
The Jewish centre cannot hold

When people are blinded by anger and hatred (of, for instance Jeremy Corbyn) rationality has no place. While no evidence was ever found that the Labour party offers a warm home for antisemites this has not stopped sensible people (including, sadly, Julia Neuberger) from believing the trumped up accusation and for failing to see it was used as the one crime no-one can excuse. Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead, JfJfP signatory, returns to the battle with:
Masking an attack on the left as an inquiry into antisemitism

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, also a JfJfP signatory, also takes on the Home Affairs SC report an antisemitism. As we have a simple definition of antisemitism from Brian Klug – Antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are – why does the committee insist we need a new definition? Because it doesn’t include the word Israel. As antisemitism is the most unspeakable form of racism this new definition could lead the disciplining/expulsion of many Labour party members including its leader. Which may be the point of the whole exercise:
Sacred Jews

A question that has not been asked, and is a theme this week, is why are people so credulous, e.g. believing in wild conspiracies (Mossad bombed the twin towers) rather than more mundane facts. One might say that those who believe Israel is a shining beacon to the world, the only democracy in the middle east, which would be universally applauded were it not for antisemitism, are too credulous. Palestinians are more clear-sighted (though rather inclined to conspiracy theories themselves).  A story told about Israel’s secret service Shin Bet by one Palestinian about another reveals that the truth for them is that they are living not in a democracy but in:
The Shin Bet state

As Israel’s defining logo is Security, which covers virtually every action of Palestinians, the costs in manpower of all this surveillance and arresting and imprisoning are immense. As a member of the neo-liberal brotherhood Israel has contracted out a lot of that work making:
Private security – fastest growing industry in the start-up nation

Wishful thinking and factual reality were in collision when John Dugard, esteemed lawyer (‘father of human rights in South Africa’) became U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories. He put first and described it as an apartheid system. Rather than seeing this as a dispassionate judgment it was, of course, dismissed in Israel as antisemitism. A recent interview with Michael Brull:
The man who broke the wall round ‘judicial impartiality’

The most disempowered people in the Middle East are Palestinian women. Israeli forces threaten them with rape if they don’t provide the information they want, they struggle with lack of fresh water and food, they are roughly treated by soldiers, crimes against them by Palestinian men – who regard them as part of the nation’s assets – are virtually impossible to register as complaints because of Palestine’s woman-unfriendly judicial system:
Women’s bodies are national property

Just as there are two Israels when it comes to democracy so there are two when it comes to trade and the economy. Official Israel is an enthusiastic member of the neo-liberal economy. In relation to Gaza in particular, Israel is like an old communist country that treats free economic activity as subversive. Gisha, the free movement NGO, reports that soldiers and border police have become more and more restrictive in the last few months letting in only the smallest trickle of movement through the Erez crossing. As Gaza businesses are prevented by the IDF from exporting by air or sea and Egypt only opens the Rafah crossing erratically, many feel they are not independent adult humans but penned animals:
Choking Gaza in the name of ‘security’

Such issues are part of the defining conflict – who owns and controls the land? An initiative by religious MKs threatens to intensify that conflict. A bill is going through the Knesset to prevent the issuing of calls to prayer through loudspeakers on minarets. Loudspeakers have been introduced so the call be heard over traffic and other urban noise. It is seen by Palestinians as an unacceptable interference in and repression of their practice of their religion:
Bringing religion into it

Aida is one of the oldest refugee camps, set up as a safe space by Palestinians fleeing the Zionist militias. It is often invaded by the IDF. But it has a thriving centre of music and dance, the Lajee centre which has toured Scotland and Ireland and is planning another UK tour. It gives young people a skilful activity to learn and perform and feel pride in themselves – and not forgotten:
We make culture, Israel makes refugees

British student Jake Cohen, who defines himself as a Zionist, writes about his realisation that Zionists act as though Palestinians don’t exist or, as a Liberal Zionist humself, that he can determine their trajectory for them. There is only one way – for them to be equal partners:
What can a Liberal Zionist do about Palestine?