Just published by Middle East Eye, this article is an explosive exposé of the forces – locally and nationally – behind the so-called antisemitism ‘crisis’ in the Labour Party. 

The article describes, in forensic detail, some of the groups and individuals that have targeted campaigners for Palestinian rights, attempting to discredit them using the largely spurious allegation of antisemitism. Many of the targets are based in Brighton & Hove, and several have been investigated, suspended and even expelled from the party as a result of this orchestrated campaign of disruption. As the article argues:

As an anti-racist party, Labour should be opposing Israeli apartheid policies and its latest annexation drive, due to be enacted by the new Netanyahu-led government. Yet by uncritically endorsing Zionism, conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and taking direction on disciplinary cases from pro-Israel bodies, it seems that silencing those voices is the main outcome of the party’s drive to “solve” the antisemitism crisis.

The Middle East Eye article builds on an earlier piece in Electronic Intifada that lifted the lid on a recent spate of suspensions from the Labour Party.

The Middle East Eye article draws on a large dossier of evidence collated by the news site. This evidence will form the basis for further exposés, on various sites, in the coming weeks and months.

11 June 2020
The following letter, signed by nearly 60 local campaigners for Palestinian rights, was sent to all Labour and Green City Councillors today, in response to the council’s public statement on 3 June 2020 Brighton & Hove City Council stands in solidarity with protesters in America

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Solidarity with Black Lives Matter and the victims of racism and imperialism

To: Nancy Platts, Leader Btn & Hove Council and Leader of the Labour Group
& Phélim Mac Cafferty, Convenor of the Green Group

Dear Nancy and Phélim, We are writing to congratulate you for issuing such a forthright statement of solidarity with Black Lives Matter and people of colour who are the victims of racism in the United States. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police is yet another shocking reminder of the visceral state-sponsored racist violence in the United States and the continuing murder of Black men by American ‘law enforcement’ – in most cases armed white men.

Israeli troops using the ‘knee on neck’ hold that was used to murder George Floyd

Just five days after George Floyd was murdered, Eyad Hallak, an autistic Palestinian, was gunned down in East Jerusalem as he was walking to his day centre. He was just 32 years old but with a mental age of 5. Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper described what happened:

‘He’s disabled,’ the caregiver screamed. ‘I’m with her,’ Eyad cried. The cop opened fire anyway.

Three Border Police pumped seven bullets into Iyad’s body, at least three at close range. There is however a difference with George Floyd. The first his parents learnt of his death was when the murderers burst into his home, searched it and then asked when is the funeral.

In Minneapolis all four police have been arrested and charged with murder and aiding and abetting murder. In Israel none of the police have been charged. Although there is a police investigation these rarely result in prosecution, still less imprisonment.

We welcome your statement that ‘As anti-imperialists we recognise that America has been built on the slavery, dispossession and subjugation of its native and BAME population’. However imperialism is not confined to the United States. Palestine too, from 1917-1948, was part of the British Empire, a Mandated territory as a result of the 1922 San Remo Conference and the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

In 1948 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and made refugees. In 1967 Israel completed its occupation of Palestine, including East Jerusalem where Eyad lives. Palestine is still a victim of colonialism and imperialism.

Yet in October 2018 Brighton and Hove City Council adopted the ‘working definition’ promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which purports to be a definition of anti-Semitism, although the majority of its examples of anti-Semitism include Israel. It was drawn up at Tel Aviv University, its purpose being to equate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Even the person who drafted the IHRA, American academic Kenneth Stern, now accepts that the IHRA is being used to ‘weaponise’ anti-Semitism against the Palestinians. In testimony to Congress Stern argued that the definition was being used to suppress free speech on Palestine. In his words to ‘chill, if not suppress, their [students’] political speech’.

When the Council adopted the IHRA it deliberately ignored the views of 17 local anti-racist, Black and Muslim organisations in the City. It instead preferred to accept the views of white members of Sussex Friends of Israel that the IHRA was essential to defend the Jewish community. It wasn’t and isn’t. The IHRA’s only purpose is to defend the Apartheid State of Israel and to silence those campaigning for justice for the Palestinian people.

In defending Israeli Apartheid the Labour and Green groups on the Council make a mockery of their statement of solidarity with George Floyd, and of their claims to be anti-racist.

Black Lives Matter has come under repeated attacks from American Zionist groups because of the movement’s support for the Palestinians and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).

Black Lives Matter supports the Palestinians because, like the ANC in South Africa, they recognise that their enemy is an Israeli state which is hand in glove with Donald Trump and the US military.

Using the knee-on-neck restraint on Palestinians is a speciality of Israeli police forces. Israel has been training law enforcement officers around the US for many years including the Minneapolis Police as the Morning Star reported last Monday.

Neta Golan, the co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said:

When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.

It was disgraceful enough that when you passed a motion supporting the IHRA you did so in conjunction with the Tories, the party of the British Empire and slavery. What is worse is that Labour Councillor Nicki Brennan, who was part of the picket of the Council when it was debated, has been singled out for victimisation and removed from the Housing Committee.

When those who fought against Apartheid in South Africa, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the ANC veterans, declare that Israel is an Apartheid State, who are you to argue with their view? When Ronnie Kasrills, the Jewish Commander of the ANC’s military wing, wrote that ‘I fought South African apartheid. I see the same brutal policies in Israel’ who are you to argue? Yet according to the IHRA saying that Israel is an Apartheid State is ‘anti-Semitic’.

Benjamin Netanyahu has just announced that Israel will annex 30% of the West Bank. He also declared that the Palestinian residents of the annexed territories won’t be given Israeli citizenship. If this isn’t apartheid please tell us what it is.

If the Labour and Green groups are sincere in your declarations of solidarity with Black victims of racism in America, and we would like to think that you are, we would ask you to give notice of motion at Council withdrawing support for the IHRA.

Yours sincerely,

Ben Steele Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Tony Greenstein Brighton and Hove Labour Left Alliance

Plus 57 signatories

Stand up to Trump

Brighton & Hove PSC had a very successful and well-attended Annual General Meeting on the 15th of June. More than 70 of our 265 members attended, to review our achievements over the past year and to plan next year’s activities. It was fantastic to see so many supporters and to be able to thank them for their involvement in the struggle for justice and human rights for the people of Palestine.

We were especially pleased to welcome Tom Suarez to Brighton as our special guest speaker. Tom is a professional violinist, a former member of major US symphony orchestras, and a former faculty member of Palestine’s National Conservatory of Music. He is also an author and historian, and has written extensively on the history of cartography. He is perhaps best known to solidarity campaigners for his book State of Terror: How terrorism created modern Israel (Skyscraper Books). He contributes regularly to Mondoweiss, the online site for news and analysis on Palestine/Israel.

The focus of Tom’s keynote talk was ‘Ending apartheid in the age of IHRA’. In his talk, Tom spoke of the need to resist the proliferation of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and to call it out for what it is: an attempt to smear and silence solidarity campaigners. It should not be difficult to discredit the IHRA definition. It is logically flawed and politically inspired. Imminent figures – many of them Jewish – have added their voices to the opposition to IHRA. But Tom urged us to mount a more assertive fight-back – one based on the argument that the IHRA definition is itself antisemitic.

Tom argued that the IHRA definition perpetuates a pernicious trope about the Jewish people – that they all long to return to ‘the homeland’, and that this yearning is an essential characteristic of Jewishness. If this were true, then any attack on zionism could be construed as an attack on the Jewish people, and would therefore be antisemitic. But it isn’t true. We know that many Jewish people reject and repudiate the zionist project, so it’s a racist stereotype to say that they all identify with it, and that it is antisemitic to oppose it.

Tom also summarised some of the main themes in his book State of Terror – in particular, the systematic way in which, from the beginning of political zionism, violence and terror were seen as legitimate tools to deny the rights of the indigenous inhabitants to the land they had lived on for generations.

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Our protest at Sunday’s screening of the Seret Israeli Film 
Duke’s at Komedia in Gardner Street in the North Lain

The film at Duke’s @ Komedia may have been a fantastic film.
That’s not the point.
The point is that the Seret Festival is being financed, and used, by the Israeli government to ‘art-wash’ Israel’s appalling human rights record, and its long history of flagrant violations of UN resolutions and international law.

The SERET London Israeli Film Festival is an Israeli government-sponsored event, ostensibly to showcase Israeli cinema but in reality a cynical exercise in using cinema to try to rehabilitate Israel’s reputation in the UK.

Palestinian civil society have called on us to protest, due to the festival’s heavy sponsorship by the Israeli government and its clear purpose as an attempt at normalisation. Learn more about the case for a cultural boycott of Israel here.

Twenty prominent film-makers, including Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, have signed a letter to The Guardian, demanding that UK cinemas boycott the Seret Festival. “We cannot understand why cultural institutions continue to behave as if Israel is an ordinary democracy”, they write.

The Seret Festival tries to project Israel as ‘a melting pot of cultures, religions and social backgrounds’ rather than as an apartheid and colonial regime that has more than 65 racist laws discriminating against its indigenous Palestinian citizens. This includes the recently-passed ‘Nation-State Law’, which formally relegates Palestinians to second-class citizens. Two sets of laws, rights and citizenship – one for Jewish Israelis, and another for Palestinians.

This is straight out of apartheid South Africa’s propaganda playbook and illustrates the way in which Israel uses the arts to try to deflect growing condemnations of its violations of international law and Palestinian human rights.

The Seret Festival is sponsored not only by Israeli ministries and diplomatic missions, but also anti-Palestinian Israeli government-backed agencies, including the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency. Both play a pivotal role in the planning of racist Jewish-only settlements at the heart of Israel’s illegal land grabs in the occupied Palestinian territory.

People of conscience and supporters of social justice worldwide are seeing through the smokescreen. As Israel’s popularity continues to dip worldwide, thousands of artists, including filmmakers Mira Nair, Ken Loach, John Greyson, The Yes Men and Mike Leigh, have heeded the Palestinian call, refusing to allow their art to be used to conceal Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.

By not performing or exhibiting their work in Israel, and by refusing to take part in Israeli government-sponsored events, artists send Israel a clear message that as long as it continues to deny Palestinian human rights, the cultural community won’t engage in business-as-usual relations with its regime.

In response to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, the Oscar-winning star Natalie Portman has boycotted a ceremony in Israel that would have honored her. The singers Lorde and Rag N Bone Man have recently cancelled their gigs, in response to the call for boycott.

Help us pull back the curtain on Israel’s crimes and end the impunity that has allowed it to carry on its oppressive and criminal policies for decades.

Palestinians are asking people to support them by boycotting this festival. Your active support would send a strong message to them that they are not alone, and also a message to Israel that its actions and policies have consequences.

Gaza Freedom Flotilla in Brighton
Schedule of events 5-8 June 2018

See coverage of ‘Freedom’ in Brighton by the Brighton Argus.

We are eagerly anticipating the arrival of the boat “Freedom” in Brighton next week. “Freedom” is one of four boats sailing from Scandinavia to Gaza, with a crew of activists bringing a message of solidarity to the besieged people of Gaza, and a message to the British government that its support for the 11-year illegal blockade of Gaza must end.

Of course there is a particular significance to this flotilla, in the light of the dreadful events in Gaza over the past few months.

The boat’s stop in Brighton is attracting widespread media interest, and we’ve received promises of help and support from activists across the country, as well as from politicians, artists and other public figures. We’re planning a range of activities to showcase the boat and its crew while they’re here, and to amplify their message of solidarity and resistance. 

The best way to keep up-to-date is to visit our website.

Tuesday 5th June – Welcome the boat “Freedom” as it sails into Brighton
Assemble 4pm for an estimated arrival time of 5pm. Details on the event page for this event.

Wednesday 6th June – Public meeting
7.30pm – 9.30pm
Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton BN1 1AF
Free Admission – Donations welcome
We’ll hear from the captain and crew of “Freedom”, from politicians, activists, artists and other public figures, and from members of the Flotilla Coalition. It should be a memorable evening!
Details on the event page for this event.

City centre stalls with the crew of “Freedom”
Wednesday June 6th 12-2pm at the Clock Tower
Thursday June 7th 12-2pm at the Old Steine War Memorial

Friday 8th June – Wave “Freedom” out of Shoreham Harbour as it continues its voyage to Gaza
Assemble 8.00am for an estimated departure time of 9.00am. Details on the event page for this event.