Tag: zionism

The Real Threat to Jewish People comes from the far-Right!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

The UK threat level has been raised to severe. Fear levels have been raised as a consequence. The leader of the Conservative Party say we are in “a national emergency” after the horrific stabbing of two jewish men in Golders Green, London, last week. Thankfully, they are both now out of hospital.

The BBC and mainstream media have repeated for days that antisemitism is endemic in British society. It is reported that Jews are now living in fear of their lives, although the BBC’s Broadcasting House interviewed a number of Jewish teenagers last Sunday only to find they hadn’t experienced antisemitism, were shocked by the attack but were not worried for their own safety. “I love living in London, probably the best city in the world”, said one.

The UK’s entire Jewish population is not under terrorist attack. Appallingly last Wednesday, the British citizen, 34-year old Essa Suleiman knifed two Jewish men in Golders Green. It is not widely publicised that he is also charged with having stabbed a Somali Muslim man, Ishmail Hussein, less than an hour earlier.  

This changes the narrative, doesn’t it? Stabbing friends and strangers alike. Suleman has a history of violence connected with mental illness, and was discharged from the Prevent programme aimed at identifying terrorists. That he stabbed a Muslim seriously undermines the assumed antisemitic motive. He’s ill. A single man in an individual act creating terror is not the same level of threat as an organised terrorist group. He should not evoke the same response. Is the declaration of a terror threat to Jews actually a propaganda exercise to counter the widespread criticism of Israel? 

The big media companies all report that Jewish people living in Britain are looking to leave and emigrate to Israel due to the rise in antisemitism here. The statistics to not bear this out. Britain is one of the safest countries in the world for Jews and indeed, because of our secular and multicultural policies, for all ethnic groups and religious faiths. 

By contrast many Israeli citizens are leaving Israel, and many more protesting inside Israel in protest at the illegal war on Iran, the corruption of Netanyahu and the self-declared fascists inside the Israeli leadership. The Israeli Government has introduced a law that renders all residents of Israel who are not Israeli citizens subject to the death penalty for serious offences. 

The hanging law is one piece of evidence that proves Israel has a racist legal system of Apartheid that affords Jewish Israelis much greater civil rights than non-jewish residents. Israel is a racist State, borne of a Zionist political doctrine of a separate country for Jews, or are we not allowed to say that? 

The historic and illegal occupation of Palestinian land, the catastrophe or “Nakba” for Palestinians, is another example of illegal “ethnic cleansing”, currently best exemplified by the continued violent expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank by Israeli Settlers facilitated by the Israeli Defence Forces, and, undeniably, the continuing genocide in Gaza and the truce-breaking destruction of Southern Lebanon.

Western States culpable in the continuation of this current mass horror perpetrated against an entire People are keen to emphasise the threat to Israel and the world’s Jewish peoples by external, and specifically Muslim groups and nations. It is now alleged that the fear is being exaggerated and promoted by Prime Minister and the entire Establishment for their own ends. A charge worth investigating. 

Antisemitism undoubtedly led to the Holocaust at the hands of Hitler’s fascist Nazi Party, at least 6 million jews industrially murdered in an attempt to eradicate their ethnicity, an activity supported by fascist regimes everywhere, then and now. The supreme lesson for humanity never to allow racism, ultra-nationalism and xenophobia to take hold of any society ever again.

The neo-fascists and Nazi-sympathisers today are flying Israeli flags alongside the Union Jack in probably the greatest hypocrisy of recent times. They do so in the certain knowledge that Zionism represents the same separation of humanity into “races” with an order of supremacy (based upon skin colour as well as  religious belief) that is the creed of the fascist.

Opposing Zionism is not the same as opposing jewish people or Judaism. We cannot blame jews anywhere in the world for what the Israeli government is doing. Every anti-racist, every person demanding equality and human rights must challenge all levels of anti-semitism and hatred of Jews, including all narratives suggesting a “global Jewish conspiracy”.Antisemitism exists, to be opposed and stopped. 

Anti-zionism is not antisemitic. Zionism is a political creed, not a religion or Faith. But there are attempts at Establishment level, to join antisemitism and anti-zionism together and call us racist for opposing racism!

This all comes before the Nakba Day on 16th May. London’s Metropolitan Police and the Starmer Government want to ban marches in support of Palestine. In fact, the march happens each year in  commemoration of the forced expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in order for the establishment of a new country and state of Israel as a home specifically for Jews. Nakba is the Arabic word for “catastrophe”, and represents all that has happened there since, including the recent expulsion of over 450,000 more Palestinians during the destruction of their homes in Gaza. 

London’s Metropolitan Police together with Starmer wish to ban the Nakba march, despite it being a family occasion without any arrests or incidents over the past decades. 

But when far-right groups rampaged through Epsom last week, whipping-up anti-Muslim hatred across the country without any evidence, there’s no suggestion that fascist-organised violence represents terrorism. The controversy is deepened by the fact that the same Met Police seeking to ban marches for justice for Palestine have allowed and prioritised the march and demonstration by “Unite the Nation, called and hosted by the outspoken Islamphobe Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, for the same day. 

This self-identified white-supremacist has invited well known far-right extremists to address his crowd in Parliament Square on the 16th, the same day and time of the Nakba commemoration, in a political statement of ultra-nationalist defiance. One of the far-Right speakers has already been denied permission to enter Britain because they represent a threat to public safety. This protest is led and funded by fascists.  What’s not to understand?

These questions are of fundamental importance. Why is the Government supporting fascist organisation over democracy. Why is the entire media so unquestioning of the political assertions of the Met Police that there is a generalised terrorist threat to Jewish people? On what grounds is the government considering the banning of protest for the first time in post-war history? Why is the stabbing of a Muslim man not stated alongside the stabbing of two jewish men? Why are the three Golders Green stabbings by the mentally distressed Suleiman considered sufficient evidence of a generalised terrorist threat to raise the level of militarised policing and introduce even more restrictions to civil liberties and freedom of speech?  

And finally, does the British State value and unquestionably support the Zionist political creed? We must protest! Join the Plymouth transport to London on Saturday 16th May – https://may16coach.eventbrite.co.uk

Coach from Plymouth via Buckfastleigh to London (and back) to attend the national demonstration against the genocide in Gaza. 6am: Leaving Plymouth from Home Park / Milehouse 6.25: Pickup at Buckfastleigh – Furzeleigh Mill Inn Get into London for about 12.30pm Leave London at about 5pm Get back to Buckfastleigh for 10.40 and Plymouth for about 11pm

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It Is OK to Support the People of Palestine!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (8.7.25), written to evade censorship and to a deadline 12 hours before the Netanyahu/Trump talks. There, they finalised a plan to transport 600,000 of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza to the destroyed city of Rafah in the far South, as the first trenche of clearing North and Central Gaza completely.
They are looking to create a beach-side Mediterranean holiday resort for the super-Rich, Trump part of the billionaire property-speculating investments. Partying on the bodies of tens-of-thousands of Palestinians. This is Capitalism/Imperialism on steroids. Quite beyond words, really.
This is a catalogue of multiple war crimes, crimes against all humanity, undertaken in broad daylight, recorded and broadcast globally. We can and will hold these bastards to account.
Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Netanyahu, not so surprising when you think of the previous warmongers who have won. But their sheer audacity and narcissism, their sociopathy, is a statement of absolute Power that exposes their real weakness. Our protests, our boycott, our worldwide outcry can build such a movement as to mobilise billions and overturn their entire system.
Keep protesting. Build the Campaign. Free Free Palestine (and all of us)! We are all Palestinians!

The article (for what its worth):

It is OK to Protest for Palestine (Fly the Flag!)

Amidst all the confusion it is important to note that it is not illegal to offer support for the civilian population of Palestine, themselves subject to an illegal invasion and occupation. It’s OK to fly the flag!
Palestine is recognised as a sovereign State by 147 countries of the United Nations, including Spain, Ireland, Norway, and the huge nations of Venezuela, Brazil, China, Russia and India. Palestine is recognised and politically supported by most countries of the Global South, and UK trade unions. Palestine sits at the UN General Assembly.
Palestine is seemingly only not supported by the countries of the North West, especially the UK and USA. These two countries, more than the rest of the world put together, are arming Israel from their citizens tax-money, exporting munitions, military equipment and military advisers, training to facilitate the ongoing genocide (illegal under international law) in Gaza and settler colonialism in the West Bank.
Palestine’s two non-contiguous territories have been separated by illegal military invasion, land clearances and military occupation over the past 77 years. Israel has constantly waged military and political warfare against its Palestinian neighbours before and since its inauguration.
The current catastrophe of disproportionate death and destruction of Gaza by Israel – possibly 1500 Israelis killed and at least 60,000 Palestinians including 20,000 children (the bodies are there to be counted) since October 2023 means this is not a war of two sides, it is the drive towards the continuous extermination of just one people and an entire nation.
Supporters of such Israeli action justify the ethnic clearance (illegal under international law) on the grounds of Israel’s right to exist, whilst critics of this genocide are labelled as “Islamist sympathisers” and even “terrorists” by some, for demanding an immediate ceasefire, help and reparations for the people of Palestine and security for the Palestinians’ homeland.
Ironically, the fascist descendants of Hitler and Mussolini who systematically rounded-up and killed over 6-million Jews in the horrific Holocaust during the Second World War are now supporting Israel alongside far-right white supremacists and racists here and across the West. Why?
Because Israel is a racist colonial Apartheid State with a constitution which render Israeli citizens much higher rights and powers than any non-Israeli citizen.
The country’s laws are very similar to those of Apartheid South Africa which was supported by fascists everywhere as representing the separation of so-called human “races” and the domination of the superior “Whites”. In the Israeli context, the term “White” represents a political allegiance to Zionism rather than skin-colour.
White-supremacists in the UK, including the notorious Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson, would like Britain to develop an Apartheid system, Whites over Blacks, from a belief in racial superiority and genetic ethnic purity. They whip-up anti-Muslim hatred and blame refugees and migrants for the crisis of housing and health services that, in truth, have been sucked dry by privatisation and corporate greed.
At this time, the overwhelming majority of the British people do not share such beliefs or sympathies, our friends and relations ethnically diverse and multicultural.
The active support for Palestine by ordinary people includes Jews not affiliated to the political creed of Zionism – a world view distinct from Judaism. It is not anti-semitic to oppose Zionism.
Across the West we have seen huge political protests for Palestinian rights. These must continue and grow. It is therefore of extreme concern that Starmer’s Government is clamping down on support for Palestine, targeting those of the progressive Left seeking Peace with Social Justice. It appears the government would prefer us proscribed rather than the far-Right. Democracy ensures the right to protest for Palestine. We are not illegal!

Continued Support for Palestinians is Essential

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (18.3.25), identifying the end of the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. I had to cut it right down to 600 words for the print, and still there’s more to say than in the full 900 words I offer here. Burning refugees alive in their fragile tents overnight is beyond barbarism, in many ways beyond words. All we can do is protest and expose our government. Stop Arming Israel!

Last Saturday saw fifty thousand people march to London’s seat of government, Whitehall, on the 25th national demonstration demanding a permanent ceasefire and reparations for the people of Palestine. Millions have marched here, across Britain and indeed the world since Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, home to over two million Palestinians, reducing it to rubble after October 7th 2023.
On that day, Hamas fighters had broken-out of the open-air prison of Gaza and reportedly killed or captured over 1,000 Israelis in nearby territory, land recognised by the United Nations as Palestine and illegally occupied by Israel. 17 months later, at least 50,000 (that’s 50 times the horror of 7.10.23) Gazans are dead, at least 200,000 horrifically injured as living casualties, and one-million-eight-hundred-thousand human beings displaced, homeless, unable to leave and facing disease and starvation.
The disproportionate killing and suffering inflicted by one side on another, happening whether in Gaza or anywhere in the world, should warrant outrage and protest. Trade unions here and everywhere have long recognised the injustice of the treatment of Palestinians since 1948 as immoral and illegitimate.
As part of the trade union quest for social justice we have always exposed and challenged crimes against humanity, our purpose being the political struggle for human rights and equality.
Trade Unions have consistently said Never Again to challenge anti-semitism, remembering and organising against any repeat of the industrial murder of at least six-million Jewish people by Hitler’s fascists in the Second World War.
At the same time, following the formation of Israel by European Jews migrating to the Middle East after the War, we have witnessed this colonisation as the ethnic clearance of Palestinian lands by military force, called in Arabic the Nakba or “catastrophe” ,and we have lobbied for a just solution.
It’s possible to do both. We can commemorate both Holocaust Memorial Day and the Nakba as crimes against humanity. The targeting and mass killing of a specific ethnic group, forcibly removing a people from their homelands or murdering them en masse is unconscionable – racist, predatory and barbaric. For the sake of all, this is not the way humanity should proceed.
Palestine Solidarity groups have been long established across Britain, supported by trade unions. We have never been under greater attack than today. There was a time when almost every Labour Party member supported Palestine but now their Party of Government is shutting down all criticism of the Israeli military. The right to protest for Palestine is being curtailed , Police instructed by politicians to close down the spaces.
At street stalls there is more challenge, supporters of the actions of the Israeli government claiming Palestinians (and indeed Arabs) to be less than human and supporting their “extermination”, up to and including slogans of “nuke ‘em all’. Fascist groups in the UK, caught in the political cleft stick of hatred for both Jews and Muslims, favour Israel at this juncture as if it is a war between Black and White. We observe that the fascist hatred of Jews has not gone away, their theories of a global Jewish conspiracy still everywhere across the Internet.
It is not by accident that Israel has been created at a focal point of geopolitical and financial power, a crossroads of global networks, the precisely constructed centre of the Middle East, funded by Europe and the United States to maintain the power of western imperialism in the Arab World and into the East. Little wonder that Trump, Starmer and the EU states support Israel’s actions and seek to shut-down active criticism. It is about western power and control.
Whilst we, the humanists and socialists of the international workers’ movement, care about and campaign for human rights across the West and in Russia, China, Yemen, India, Sudan, Syria, the Congo and many other examples of human suppression, Palestine overarches all other injustices. The Palestine protests sum-up the international working class struggle against exploitation and oppression.
Some attend the demonstrations for the sense of international solidarity with the oppressed, some argue from a moral wish for peace and reconciliation there and everywhere, some attend as a statement against imperialist domination of peoples and regions. Palestinian protesters amount to a tiny proportion of our mass mostly because there are so few in the UK and they are rarely granted asylum under British law, despite the facts.
Jews across the world are also protesting against the military actions of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli Defence Forces. Hundreds are occupying Trump Tower in New York demanding the release of Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil, a US resident and student now incarcerated and threatened with deportation for peacefully speaking-out for Palestinian rights.
And in Palestine itself the situation is deteriorating faster than ever: the ceasefire talks cancelled; the Israelis once again blocking food aid, cutting of all electricity and therefore essential water and medical services; ethnically cleansing the Palestinian West Bank as now part of “Greater Israel evicting more than 40,000 from their homes; reports of torture and rape of civilians by IDS soldiers; and shooting and bombing civilians crouched amongst the rubble every day.
The size and scale of opposition to the actions of the Israeli State have never been larger nor more profound. The great majority of the world’s countries and people’s support the Palestinians. Historically, those with power always explain their massacres in terms of righteousness. The continuation of that support, especially here in the West, breeds hope, both for the Palestinians and for peace with social justice.