“One of the Most Disturbing and Cleverly Conceived Cases of anti-Israel Propaganda and Delegitimization Masquerading as Art” (Daphne Anson)

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Playwright Samah

As I reported on my own blog on 7 April (http://daphneanson.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/in-australia-schoolkids-study.html) “the play City by the Sea, by poet, writer and activist Samah Sabawi, a Gaza-born (1967) Australian/Canadian, is now on the 2016 playlist for school students taking the Victorian Certificate of Education [the school-leaving certificate in the Australian state of Victoria].  It means that students in years 11 and 12 will be attending performances of the play at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne in May….”

I quoted at some length from an official document by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) which says, inter alia, teachers should be aware that in some instances sensitivity might be needed where particular issues or themes that are explored may be challenging for students. Teachers are advised to familiarise themselves with the treatment of these issues and themes within the context and world of the play prior to students viewing the play and/or studying the playscript. This might involve reading the playscript, talking with the theatre company, researching the playscript, the work of the playwright, director and/or company, attending a preview performance and/or discussing the matter with the school administration. Information provided in this notice about themes and/or language used in specific plays is a guide only. In some plays, suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. This language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community”. 

I quoted a report in the Sydney Morning Herald that notes “A longtime vocal advocate for Palestinian rights, Sabawi recently made headlines when she was taken off the panel at an Israel-Palestine debate at the Wheeler Centre, only to be promptly reinstated four hours later. At the time, Sabawi said that she thought her ejection from the panel was due to pressure from those who object to her support for the BDS [Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions] movement against Israel” and continues “The City and the Sea is undeniably political …”and from a review in The Age of Melbourne that remarks “This gripping play is an act of resistance that implores its audience to take heed.” And I observed: “Tailor-made, wouldn't you say, for teachers who may be left-wing anti-Zionists, and indeed any teacher who relies for information about the Middle East on such biased sources as the Fairfax Press (The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald), the ABC and SBS, wittingly or unwittingly to poison young minds?”

I went on to cite the jubilation of those connected with the play: “Congratulations to all of us!   Palestinian play highlighting challenges of life in Gaza during the war of 2008-2009 has been selected for the 2016 Victorian Certificate of Education Drama list.   The play Tales of a City by the Sea by Palestinian Australian playwright Samah Sabawi was one of 16 of more than 50 submissions selected for the 3 VCE Playlists.   As a result, it will be seen and studied by hundreds of year 11 & 12 Theatre students in Victoria and it will be published by Currency Press and disseminated among these students.”

And when I realised that nobody in the Australian Jewish communal leadership seemed to be aware of the play, much less its inclusion on this year’s curriculum in Victoria, I (and perhaps others) alerted Dr Dvir Abramovich, an academic who chairs the Anti-Defamation League, and is one of the most effective and dedicated figures on the Australian Jewish communal leadership scene today.  Having read the transcript of the play he has roundly condemned it, declaring on the Special Broadcasting Station (SBS), an ethnic minorities’ and foreign-language public broadcaster not known for any great sympathy for Israel: “This is one of the most disturbing and cleverly conceived cases of anti-Israel propaganda and delegitimization masquerading as art that I’ve seen.  I think it's very troubling that this skewed play is now part of the VCE curriculum and it will certainly poison the minds of impressionable young people.”

To quote The Age (http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/vce-play-accused-of-being-antiisrael-propaganda-20160509-gopz96.html ): ‘The play is one of six selected for year 12 students studying VCE drama. Students will watch the performance and study the text throughout the year.  Dr Dvir Abramovich, chair of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission, a body raising awareness about anti-Semitism and hate speech, said the play portrays Israel as a "blood-thirsty, evil war-machine", without any explanation for the bombings, or the violence perpetrated by the Palestinian camp.  He took aim at the authority for including the "unabashedly one-sided" play in the curriculum, claiming the content was "anti-Israel propaganda".  "Nowhere to be found is the Israeli perspective ... the suicide bombings inside Israel, the deaths of more than 160 children who were forced to dig tunnels by Hamas, the offers of peace by Israel, the thousands of rockets fired at Israel from Gaza," he said. "What this play does, amongst other things, is to create a tremendously hostile climate in which any Jewish student who will see the play with their classmates … will be ashamed and worried about expressing any support for Israel or even admit that they have a link with the Jewish state."’

The Australian (behind a pay wall) has quoted Dr Abramovich as saying “I am genuinely concerned for any Jewish-Australian pupils who will have to deal with the outrage and visceral contempt of their classmates at school.”

And the ABC reports (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-10/'anti-israel'-play-in-vce-curriculum-government-questioned/7402176) the Opposition Liberal Party ‘has used a budget hearing to attack the Government over the inclusion of a play in the VCE curriculum that has been labelled anti-Israel…. Jewish groups have said the play is a one-sided depiction of the conflict, and conservative MPs seized on the issue during a budget hearing today. Liberal Tim Smith questioned why the play had been included in the curriculum… "I want to know why you've got clearly an anti-Israel play being taught to our children. This is a real concern from the Jewish community about clearly a play that is anti-Israel, that has been authored by an anti-Israeli activist. Why is this being taught in our schools that would give rise to an anti-Israel view coming out of our schools?" …. Education Minister James Merlino said it was not up to politicians to set the curriculum.  He said the Government was not in the business of banning books.  "Decisions regarding what is included in the curriculum ... those decisions quite rightly are made by the VCAA," Mr Merlino said. "Not the minister, not the Government. It's not the place of politicians to decide what books are to be placed on the reading list, what plays are to be delivered as part of the drama program. And that's how it should be."… But Liberal Party MP David Morris questioned whether the text would be allowed to remain if it attacked a different group, such as the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Intersex community. "This is a one-sided portrayal of what is undoubtedly a complex conflict," he said. "Surely when there's a play selected for study that's one sided, that's divisive, that will undoubtedly make students of Jewish background at the least feel extremely uncomfortable and potentially feel that they're at risk of persecution, surely then as the Minister there is a responsibility on your part to intervene?" Mr Merlino said he trusted teachers would focus on the dramatic elements of the play and explain the political context.’

Tellingly, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network has described the play as “an important opportunity to glimpse what life is like behind the wire.   Israel’s military attacks on Gaza and the blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt has cost thousands of innocent lives. The play also reports on the internal repression of the Palestinian political factions in the Strip….”

Tellingly, too, a hard core member of the leftist frequently Israel-demonising non-mainstream Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDC) has professed on Facebook to raise “a digit finger raised to Dvir Abromwich [sic] of the pro-defamation Anti-Defamation Commission”, while another AJDS stalwart (whose repugnant views regarding BDS can be read here http://www.ajds.org.au/2013/06/jewishpalestiniansolidarity/) declares: "It is vitally important that young people, including those who are Israeli or Jewish, are able to access these stories, and hear them articulated from a Palestinian perspective. Having this play on the VCE syllabus will help to open people's minds, not close them off."

On 11 May, beneath a report of the furore over the play here (http://www.jwire.com.au/not-education-propoganda/), a commenter called James Crafti declared: “I am Jewish and worked on the play. I was one of the first people Samah had review the script when she did a first draft in 2011. I also worked as the assistant stage manager on this remount of the play. It is a fantastic play and people should really see it. People should come and see it with an open mind”.

Ah, but Mr Crafti is not your common or garden member of the Aussie Jewish community.  He’s a hard leftist, a relentless critic and campaigner against Israel, about whom further information can be had here (https://redflag.org.au/author/james-crafti ) and here https://electronicintifada.net/content/victory-australias-boycott-campaign-charges-blockading-chocolate-store-dropped/11535), where with regard to a boycott of the Max Brenner franchise  he’s quoted as saying “while we were arrested for daring to stand up for Palestinian human rights, the Israeli state continues to carry out war crimes and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and are not held to account for their occupation and apartheid practices.”

Here (https://talesofacitybythesea.com/tag/james-crafti/) we learn that “James Crafti is excited to be working on Tales of a City by the Sea as it combines two of his passions: theatre and Palestine. On the former James has directed a variety of plays such as … Seven Jewish Children…. James has also been an organiser with Campaign Against Israeli Apartheid, Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine and Jews Against Israeli Apartheid”.

Needless to say, choosing (or not) to see the play at the theatre is one thing.  Having it thrust at impressionable young people via their school curriculum, quite another: it is unconscionable.  Unconscionable too that no consultation with Jewish leaders in Victoria seems to have taken place, so that they had no input into the matter until it was a fait accompli. The Jewish communities of the other states should be on their guard and not let this play or anything comparable pass under the radar. 

I don’t agree with all this left-leaning Australian Jew quoted below has said on social media, but he is absolutely correct in condemning the play creeping into the purview of school students and the attempted justification of such by elements in the Jewish Left: ‘The Palestinians are already winning the propaganda war against Israel by a mile in Western Leftist circles. We all know their suffering is real, and some of this suffering is no doubt caused by the excesses of the present hard-line, right-wing Israeli government. What is not true is that Israel is the only cause of their suffering. The main cause is the corrupt, duplicitous and divided Palestinian leadership, which uses aid money to enrich themselves and the materials that come into Gaza to build tunnels to attack Israel instead of building housing for their own people. They use their people as human shields and cannon fodder. They teach hate in their schools and Hamas still have a charter which calls for the complete destruction of Israel and the killing of every Jew. And let's not forget the complicity of the Arab countries, which could have re-settled the Palestinians long ago, but they chose to instead use them as pawns to show how evil Israel is.”

And again: ‘A love story it may be … but, according to an article by the education reporter of The Age, ‘Characters in the play describe Israeli rule as "tyrannical". One accuses Israel of leading a "massacre" of the Palestinian people, questioning: "What Holy Scripture gave the command 'Thou shall wipe out their villages and scorch their land?' ….The play was written by an anti-Israel Palestinian activist who supports the BDS movement. I guess you have to be someone who knows the history of the Middle East, and of the centuries of persecution of the Jews both there and in Europe to read between the lines and to appreciate the skewed emphasis here.’

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Louise, Livingstone, and Leftist Hypocrisy (Daphne Anson)

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From 1981 until she was elected to Westminster in 1997 as Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, Louise Ellman, who’s Jewish and a steadfast supporter of Israel, was leader of the Labour group on the Lancashire County Council. An October 1982 issue of “Red Ken” Livingstone’s Labour Herald (the paper in which, three years later, he disgustingly printed a cartoon depicting Begin as Eichmann –http://daphneanson.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/corbyns-da-joos-crisis-items-from.html – carried a letter from her that observed:

“Your recent adoption of the Neturei Karta group of Jewish fundamentalist extremists as your allies (Labour Herald, 27 August) is beyond understanding. Fortunately for Jewry, they are an infinitesimal percentage of Jews … Their intensely reactionary views, particularly in questions of social progress, are alien to the views of mainstream Jewry…. In their view Israel should not be recognised because it was created by human beings in the absence of the Messiah and secondly because, in their view, modern Israel is a secular, rather than a religious, state. Is support for such a group consistent with Labour Herald’s supposed stand for a secular state for Jews, Christians and Moslems? The answer can only be ‘no’. Your unprincipled use of the tiny and unrepresentative reactionary Neturei Karta is a display of opportunism of which you should be ashamed.”

Fast forward to 2016, and the use of the Neturei Karta nuts by individuals and organisations hostile to Israel is commonplace, despite their still tiny unrepresentative numbers, and despite the attendance of members of their group at Holocaust Denial conferences in Teheran. One would have expected them to be treated as pariahs, and to be shunned as screwballs, but the hatred of Israel on the part of far too many of today’s leftists ensures that these men in black are treated as heroes and rapturously welcomed at Al Quds Day and other Israel-demonising fests in western cities.

Five years ago, during a discussion of antisemitism in the House of Commons (20 January 2011), Louise Ellman asked Conservative MP Robert Halfon, who’s also Jewish, and who outlined his perceptions of the types of antisemitism in contemporary Britain, whether he shared her “concern that the antisemitism that he describes is rarely opposed by those who declare themselves anti-racist?” He responded: “As always, the hon. Lady puts her finger on the button. She has a strong track record in dealing with those issues, and I agree with her completely.”

Quite so.

As British readers will recall, the murder on a London street of black teenager Stephen Lawrence led to an inquiry headed by Sir William McPherson, who in 1999 issued an eponymous report that adopted this definition of a racist incident: “any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”. Controversial in many quarters, the definition was nevertheless welcomed with alacrity by most if not all on the political Left, and I believe that the McPherson definition was adopted in 2007 by the ECRI (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) General Policy Recommendation No. 11 on combating Racism and Racial Discrimination on Policing.

What a contrast to the political Left’s attitude towards antisemitism, as seen clearly in recent weeks, with the spotlight on the despicable comments of ex-London mayor Livingstone and others on Jeremy Corbyn’s wing of the Labour Party.

The Israel-hating Left that thinks it knows better than Jews the nature of antisemitism, and says so openly (choosing to legitimise only the views of dissenting as-a-Jews as unrepresentative of the Jewish mainstream as Neturei Karta are), has resisted the McPherson principle when it comes to Jew-hatred. In view of its own woeful attitude to Israel and Zionism, the Israel-hating Left and its as-a-Jew cohorts have always derided and denied those parts of the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism that address such attitudes:

‘…. “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” In addition, such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.” It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits. Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to: Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion; Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions; Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews; Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust); Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust; Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations; Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include; Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour; Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation; Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis; Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis; Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel; However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic; Antisemitic acts are criminal when they are so defined by law (for example, denial of the Holocaust or distribution of antisemitic materials in some countries); Criminal acts are antisemitic when the targets of attacks, whether they are people or property – such as buildings, schools, places of worship and cemeteries – are selected because they are, or are perceived to be, Jewish or linked to Jews; Antisemitic discrimination is the denial to Jews of opportunities or services available to others and is illegal in many countries.’

[Emphasis added. http://www.antisem.eu/projects/eumc-working-definition-of-antisemitism/]

The Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland can be infuriatingly naïve and even almost perverse and woefully ignorant regarding Israel and the Middle East, but in the course of a recent article – which in some ways confirmed as much – http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/29/left-jews-labour-antisemitism-jewish-identity – he was absolutely spot-on in observing, with regard to antisemitism in the British Labour Party: ‘On the left, black people are usually allowed to define what’s racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews they’re wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic – and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism really is. The left would call it misogynist “mansplaining” if a man talked that way to a woman. They’d be mortified if they were caught doing that to LGBT people or Muslims. But to Jews, they feel no such restraint.’

As for whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism, the Oxford scholar Emanuel Ottolenghi put it exceedingly well back in 2003, when he observed, inter alia, in The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/29/comment

‘The fact that accusations of anti-semitism are dismissed as paranoia, even when anti-semitic imagery is at work, is a subterfuge. Israel deserves to be judged by the same standards adopted for others, not by the standards of utopia. Singling out Israel for an impossibly high standard not applied to any other country begs the question: why such different treatment?

Despite piqued disclaimers, some of Israel's critics use anti-semitic stereotypes. In fact, their disclaimers frequently offer a mask of respectability to otherwise socially unacceptable anti-semitism. Many equate Israel to Nazism, claiming that "yesterday's victims are today's perpetrators" … equation between victims and murderers denies the Holocaust. Worse still, it provides its retroactive justification: if Jews turned out to be so evil, perhaps they deserved what they got. Others speak of Zionist conspiracies to dominate the media, manipulate American foreign policy, rule the world and oppress the Arabs. By describing Israel as the root of all evil, they provide the linguistic mandate and the moral justification to destroy it. And by using anti-semitic instruments to achieve this goal, they give away their true anti-semitic face.

…. To oppose Zionism in its essence and to refuse to accept its political offspring, Israel, as a legitimate entity, entails more. Zionism comprises a belief that Jews are a nation, and as such are entitled to self-determination as all other nations are.

.... [N]egating Zionism … claiming that Zionism equals racism … denies the Jews the right to identify, understand and imagine themselves – and consequently behave as – a nation. Anti-Zionists deny Jews a right that they all too readily bestow on others, first of all Palestinians….

... Noam Chomsky and his imitators are the new heroes, their Jewish pride and identity expressed solely through their shame for Israel's existence. Zionist Jews earn no respect, sympathy or protection. It is their expression of Jewish identity through identification with Israel that is under attack.

The argument that it is Israel's behaviour, and Jewish support for it, that invite prejudice sounds hollow at best and sinister at worst. That argument means that sympathy for Jews is conditional on the political views they espouse. This is hardly an expression of tolerance. It singles Jews out. It is anti-semitism….

Israel errs like all other nations: it is normal. What anti-Zionists find so obscene is that Israel is neither martyr nor saint. Their outrage refuses legitimacy to a people's national liberation movement. Israel's stubborn refusal to comply with the invitation to commit national suicide and thereby regain a supposedly lost moral ground draws condemnation. Jews now have the right to self-determination, and that is what the anti-semite dislikes so much.’

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Beyond Our Ken (and Back Again): British Labour’s Antisemitism (Daphne Anson)

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Regarding the current crisis in the British Labour Party regarding the pestilential antisemitism lurking in certain cliques on the party’s Left, British journalist Nick Cohen has observed with his customary insight (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2016/apr/30/labour-antisemitism-ken-livingstone-george-galloway):

“Challenging prejudices on the left wing is going to be all the more difficult because, incredibly, the British left in the second decade of the 21st century is led by men steeped in the worst traditions of the 20th. When historians had to explain last week that if Montgomery had not defeated Rommel at El Alamein in Egypt then the German armies would have killed every Jew they could find in Palestine, they were dealing with the conspiracy theory that Hitler was a Zionist, developed by a half-educated American Trotskyist called Lenni Brenner in the 1980s. When Jeremy Corbyn defended the Islamist likes of Raed Salah, who say that Jews dine on the blood of Christian children, he was continuing a tradition of communist accommodation with antisemitism that goes back to Stalin’s purges of Soviet Jews in the late 1940s. It is astonishing that you have to, but you must learn the worst of leftwing history now. For Labour is not just led by dirty men but by dirty old men, with roots in the contaminated soil of Marxist totalitarianism. If it is to change, its leaders will either have to change their minds or be thrown out of office.”

The torrid abuse on social media (Twitter and Facebook) directed at anti-Corbyn Labour MP John Mann, a blunt honest Yorkshireman who exemplifies what is fair and honourable in the Labour tradition, has been a bulldoggish champion of Jews and foe of antisemitism – http://www.mann4bassetlaw.com/my_speech_in_2009_on_antisemitism – and who has had the grit and integrity to tell fellow Labour MP Ken Livingstone just what is odious about the latter’s outburst regarding Hitler and Zionism, illustrates the antisemitic ratbaggery which infests many of the party’s present rank and file. That rank and file has of course been swelled by far leftists of the Israel-hating breed who joined the party last year in order to elect Corbyn as its leader. For, of course, Corbyn’s anti-Israel activism goes back a long way, not least in lending his name to a defence group for the London-based Palestinians Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh, post-graduates who, angry at what they foresaw as a peace deal, used their scientific training to make car bombs that exploded outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington and outside a Jewish charity in Finchley (The Times, 12 December 1996) – and also his championship of Mordechai Vanunu, the convicted Israeli nuclear secrets traitor who is on record as declaring that Judaism is a “backward religion” and that “efforts should be redoubled to create a Palestinian state rather than a Jewish one. There shouldn’t be a Jewish state.” (The Times, 20 April 2004).

The Labour Party’s infiltration by far left elements hostile to Israel began in the 1970s. (I was working at the London School of Economics and remember the era well, including how pro-Israel material left on notice boards would be torn down virtually as soon as posted.) At that juncture the Labour Party, with a few exceptions (notably MPs Christopher Mayhew – who in a BBC interview referred to Jewish MPs as “the Israeli army below the gangway” and who in 1970 told the Institute of Race Relations “I would like the Institute to consider the proposition that Mrs Golda Meir is most unlikely to have ancestors who once lived in Palestine, and far less likely to have such ancestors than Yasser Arafat” – David Watkins and Andrew Faulds) was still very much pro-Israel. Anybody with a serious interest in the topic of Labour’s relations with Israel and the pernicious influence of Mayhew and the gang should read the article “’Mayhew’s Outcasts’: anti-Zionism and the Arab lobby in Harold Wilson's Labour” by Dr James Vaughan, a lecturer at what is generally considered the foremost International Relations Department in Britain, the long-established one at Aberystwyth University:

http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/29429/Mayhew_s_Outcasts_pre_proof_draft.pdf?sequence=1

In order to illuminate what I write below, let me quote an extract from Dr Vaughan’s article (with footnote references omitted):

“An early sign that LMEC [Labour Middle East Council, founded after the Six Day War to counter “Zionist” influence in the party] and CAABU [the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding] were developing contacts with more radical pro-Palestinian groups can be seen in their members’ association with the Free Palestine newspaper in the 1970s. Free Palestine had begun life as a ‘violent and crudely written’ newsletter in 1968 and indirect links to CAABU were established when Claud Morris agreed to publish the newspaper in 1969. That business relationship proved to be short-lived but the newspaper continued to cultivate links with British MPs and activists. Its editor, Louis Eaks, brought his own connections to the Young Liberal ‘Red Guard’ faction, and Free Palestine received political support and journalistic contributions from LMEC regulars like Mayhew, Watkins and Faulds. Morris later claimed not to have been aware of Free Palestine’s links to Arafat and the PLO when he agreed to publish the newspaper in 1969.

Those connections, however, are not especially difficult to uncover. A February 1975 editorial stated that Free Palestine’s line was ‘determined by the political and strategy decisions of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Al Fatah’ whilst asserting that ‘this newspaper is not funded by either of these organisations.’ In 1981, inviting Andrew Faulds to join the editorial committee, Eaks claimed that Free Palestine was ‘independent of any specific Palestinian organisation’ although he noted that the newspaper was ‘committed to the Fatah/PLO line.’ A closer look at the newspaper’s parent company, Petra Publishing, however, reveals that among the firm’s directors was Khaled al Hassan (Abu Said), a founding member of Fatah and one of Arafat’s closest advisers. Another director was Saleh Khalili, who was also a member of Free Palestine’s editorial committee. Khalili has been identified by Alex Mitchell as a London-based agent of Abu Jihad, head of the PLO’s military operations. According to Mitchell, Khalili’s job as the PLO’s ‘man-at-large in London’ brought him into collaborative liaison with Gerry Healey’s Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), whose publications were subsidised by Libya’s Colonel Gadhaffi, and, through the WRP, to the Lambeth Council leader, Ted Knight, who sat alongside Ken Livingstone on the editorial board of the Labour Herald newspaper. Mitchell has even claimed that Knight met with Arafat, Abu Jihad and Khalili in Tunis and succeeded in soliciting a £15,000 donation to the Labour Herald from the PLO.

Whatever the truth of that, it is certainly clear that much of the Labour Herald’s content was, in its anti-Zionism, scarcely distinguishable from that of Free Palestine. Free Palestine was also connected to the Palestine Action group, founded by Ghada Karmi in June 1972. It was Eaks who first informed Andrew Faulds of plans to establish ‘an anti-Apartheid type of organisation’ to lobby on behalf of the Palestinians ‘within the Labour, Communist and Liberal parties’ in April 1972 and the new group’s political platform included support for:

1. The restitution of all the rights of the Palestinians, especially the right to return to their homes.

2. The creation of a unitary, secular, democratic Palestine in which all citizens have equal rights irrespective of race or creed.

3. The struggle of the Palestinians for the liberation of their homeland.

LMEC considered the desirability of cooperation with Palestine Action at a meeting of its Executive Committee in October. Evidently, there were doubts about the wisdom of a formal association and, noting that ‘an approach had been made to LMEC to support the newly formed Palestine Action group’, it was ruled that ‘no official support should be given to this movement.’ However, whilst LMEC resolved to keep its distance from Palestine Action, there were no such restrictions upon individual members. Indeed, Andrew Faulds, a member of LMEC’s Executive Committee since January 1973,became far more than a passive supporter of Palestine Action. In December 1973, Karmi wrote to Faulds to confirm that ‘you have been elected President of Palestine Action at our AGM’; an honorary position that Faulds happily accepted. Faulds played a key role in a major breakthrough for Palestine Action at the BBC. It came in the form of a television programme, ‘The Right to Return’, broadcast on 26 November 1976 as part of BBC 2’s ‘Open Door’ series. Faulds presented the programme, overseeing guest appearances from David Watkins and the anti-apartheid campaigner and Young Liberal chairman, Peter Hain. A few days after the broadcast, Karmi reported that no less a PLO luminary than Abu Lutof (Farouk Kaddoumi) had praised the programme as ‘the best film he had ever seen on the Palestine issue’ and CAABU’s John Reddaway also congratulated Faulds for making ‘a notable contribution towards the exposition and defence of Palestinian rights.’”

You wouldn’t know it from his Wikipedia entry, but former British Labour MP and Cabinet minister Peter Hain (once touted as a future prime minister and now ensconced in the House of Lords) was the Peter Hain mentioned above, an anti-Israel activist of intemperate views. See http://daphneanson.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/ah-old-secular-democratic-state-trick.html

As I note there, the Jewish Chronicle (5 September 1975) reported: “Calls for the destruction of Israel as a state and for British Government recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation were made by more than 1500 pro-Arab supporters who marched from Speakers’ corner to Downing Street on Sunday while the Jewish rally was in progress.” Flanked by some 500 police officers, marchers included Communists, Marxists, Young Socialists, Young Liberals, as well as hundreds of Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis and other Arabs. Hain called on “radicals on the left-wing in Britain” to fight for the Palestinian cause. (As will be seen in that blogpost of mine, Hain a few years ago attempted to put the “one state solution” – entailing the eradication of the sovereign state of Israel – back on the political agenda, but his views were disowned by the then party leadership.

On 16 September 1978 The Times reported “growing concern” that the ANL had been infiltrated by, and was increasingly beholden to, the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), which of course is so notoriously represented in anti-Israel protests today. The 16,000-strong Federation of Conservative Students had accordingly dissociated itself from the ANL, and Dr Jacob Gewirtz (d. 1996), head of the Research Department of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, ‘says he is convinced that the league was the brain-child of the SWP and that party has “other fish to fry”’.

In a letter published in The Times on 25 September 1978, concerned reader George Mandel stated: “The leaders of the ANL could dispel our doubts if they were to state publicly whether or not they believe that Zionism is fundamentally racist. If the answer is no, many Jews will be reassured. If it is yes, they should explain (not only to us but also to their own supporters) why they are inviting unrepentant racialists to join them.”

Disclosed a Jewish resident of Hove, Sussex, called J. [Jack] Garnel, in a letter in The Times (27 October 1978):

‘I am able to quote a reply to part of Mr. Mandel’s question. It was given to me by Peter Hain, who describes himself as the Press Officer of the Anti-Nazi League. In November 1977, I wrote to Hain protesting about an anti-Zionist article of his published in Free Palestine ... In his reply, dated November 11, Hain declared: “I believe Zionism to be a racist creed”. I agree with the decision of the Jewish Board of Deputies not to affiliate to the ANL. As a supporter of the right of Israel to exist, I am like most Jews classified as a Zionist. In combatting neo-Nazism, I have no desire to rub shoulders with anti-Zionists who support the PLO, which has been rightly described by Begin as a “Nazi organisation” and whose covenant is regarded by Israeli Jews as an Arabic Mein Kampf’.

On 1 November The Times carried a response from Peter Hain and the Jewish actress Miriam Karlin (whose name was misprinted as Karling at the foot of the letter), describing themselves as “Steering Committee, Anti-Nazi League”. Their letter began: “The Anti-Nazi League has been subjected to a number of specious criticisms in your columns recently. First, J. Garnel … attacks the League because some of its members are opposed to Zionism. But many others involved in all levels of the league are pro-Zionist. Indeed, the signatories to this letter disagree on this matter.” (That will certainly come as a surprise to those who remember the late Miriam Karlin as a leftist Israel basher and member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians; I suppose the alleged contrast between her and Hain suggests just how extreme Hain’s position was and seemingly still is.)

The letter continued: “The only criterion for membership of the Anti-Nazi League is opposition to the Nazi activities and racist ideas of the National Front. We have no policy as an organisation on other political issues and our neutrality on the question of Zionism has been accepted by the Jewish Chronicle, which endorsed the League in an editorial last week…”

That assertion elicited a clarification (The Times, 3 November 1978) from the Jewish Chronicle’s acting editor, David Nathan: ‘In a leader last week the Jewish Chronicle suggested that there might be opportunities for the Board of Deputies to “loosely cooperate with the ANL in those areas of anti-racialist endeavour where the Board can satisfy itself that there is no political gain to the Socialist Workers’ Party or other anti-Zionist forces …. That is very far from blanket endorsement of the ANL.’

Also worth reading, by anyone interested, is the joint letter from Hain and ANL Organising Secretary Paul Holborow in The Times of 21 September 1978, and the joint letter in the same issue from Neil Harvey and Ian Harvey of Birmingham. In response to the former letter, Graham Smith, Research Department, National Association for Freedom, observed that in the Socialist Worker of 27 May 1978 Holborow had appealed for funds for that paper in the following terms:

“The [ANL] has won support from people coming into politics for the first time. We must ensure that many of these people are won to the Socialist movement… We need to have Socialist Worker leading the way in this important job …. Any regular donation to the SWP will not only help to get rid of the Nazi rats, but to begin to get rid of the capitalist sewer that encourages them to breed.’

To quote Dr Vaughan again

‘The cry of ‘Israeli apartheid’ soon became a staple feature of British anti-Zionism. Writing in Free Palestine under the headline “Palestine must win”, Peter Hain likened Harold Wilson’s views on Israel to “statements rationalising and condoning racialism by right-wingers returning from South Africa”. The radicalism of Hain’s position at this time can be gauged from his rejection of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and his assertion that “the case for the replacement of Israel by a democratic, secular state of Palestine must be put uncompromisingly” …. The tactic of equating Zionism with Nazism was another distasteful feature of the emerging language of anti-Zionist activism…. Such imagery was not itself new … but there was something more calculated about the use of Nazi imagery as a means of delegitimising Zionism in the 1970s. Mayhew certainly flirted with the analogy, writing in 1971 that “Germans who massacre Jews are tried and executed. Jews who massacre Arabs are elected to political leadership” …. Free Palestine pioneered visual representations of the Zionism-Nazism analogy. The front page of its April 1975 issue was adorned with the image of a Palestinian prisoner reaching out from a prison cell window, the bars of which formed the shape of a swastika. Ken Livingstone’s Labour Herald newspaper adopted the “Zionism equals Nazism” trope with equal enthusiasm in the 1980s; perhaps the most notorious example being the 1982 cartoon which, under the caption “The Final Solution”, depicted Israel’s Prime Minister, Menachem Begin in SS uniform, standing atop a mound of bloodied corpses, making a Nazi salute.’

In The Times (31 May 1984) regular columnist Bernard Levin drew attention to a campaign against Freemasons instituted by the Labour-majority Council of the London borough of Brent – “which was marked down by Mr Ken Livingstone for his prospective parliamentary pocket-borough, [and] has long been in the forefront of extremist local government politics…. In March, the previously subterranean campaign against Masons broke surface [in the borough]….” To people who denied the analogy between the persecution of Jews and the persecution of Freemasons on the grounds that “a Jew cannot help being a Jew but a Mason does not have to be a Mason”, Levin pointed out scathingly that in a free society a person is entitled to belong to whatever group he wishes until such time long as an associated wrongdoing is involved, and added:

‘“Secret membership...” Thus do the kissing cousins of anti-semitism jusfify the new bigotry and discrimination … But I know a good many people who, though Jewish, go under an assumed non-Jewish name and do not admit their origin. Are they, too, unfit to serve on, or under, the Brent Council? And if I pass their names to a gossip columnist of The Guardian, will he, as he did with Masons, print a daily Jew-list, exposing them as doubly sinister, first because they are Jews and second because they conceal the fact?’

Levin went on: “anti-Semitism in Britain became socially and politically unacceptable when the world learnt just what it could lead to. But the bacillus was not altogether eradicated, and it has now found another potential group victim. And a group, so far from being safer than an individual, is more vulnerable, because it has no individual human identity, and can thus more easily be portrayed as truly diabolical.”

The Times of 7 March 1985 carried an article entitled “Why Labour is Losing its Jews” which is eerily pertinent to the present situation. I assume the author, Peter Bradley, described there as a member of the executive committee of Poale Zion, is none other than the Peter Bradley who from 1997 until 2005 sat as a Labour MP. Mr Bradley began by observing that whereas in the immediate post-war years perhaps 75 per cent of Anglo-Jewry supported the Labour Party, the figure was now around 40 per cent. Acknowledging that “many complex factors” underlay this downward trend, he held that one of them was “the fear that certain extreme forms of anti-Zionism are tainted with anti-semitism”. After citing Shadow Defence Spokesman Denzil Davies’s contention at the 1984 Labour Party conference in Blackpool that an “antisemitic strand” was running through some parts of the party, Bradley gave two more recent examples of antisemitism. One was the outburst of Sheffield Labour councillor George Moores, chairman of the South Yorkshire Police Authority, who said of Home Secretary Leon Brittan: “I don’t know how to describe him. But if I did, I’d be accused of being a racist. There are too many of his ilk in Parliament. It’s worth looking into, that, even though there are quite a few of them who are Labour.”

Bradley remarked: “In past decades such crudities might have served as isolated, proverbial exceptions to the rule of Labour tolerance, humanity, and, indeed, philo-semitism. But the apparent establishment of anti-Zionism as a cornerstone of Labour-left ideology has contributed to a significant change of atmosphere within the Labour movement which many otherwise tough-skinned Jewish socialists are finding altogether inimical.”

Of Ken Livingstone, then leader of the Greater London Council, he wrote:

‘In an interview with the Israeli trade union paper Davar, he seemed to go out of his way to cause offence to Anglo-Jewry. With what has been described as an “ignorance matched only by his own insensitivity”, he [Livingstone] alleged that the Board of Deputies of British Jews is “dominated by reactionaries and neo-fascists”. He [Livingstone] went on: “Progressive Jews support me; only Jews who hold extreme right-wing views oppose me” …. What really stung Jewish members of the Labour Party was Livingstone’s claim that Jews had traditionally supported Labour “not necessarily because they were socialists, but because the Conservative party was anti-semitic.” Nothing could have been calculated to offer greater insult to Labour’s Jewish activists …

The implication is clear: only that small number of Jews who subscribe to Livingstone’s kind of anti-Zionism can properly call themselves “progressive”; to be acceptable Jews must repudiate the cause that is central to Jewish secular life, Zionism, and must subscribe to a socialist triumphalism which asserts that Zionists are racists because they subscribe to a national liberation movement (while Palestinians who support their own are not); which identifies Israel’s leaders with the Nazi architects of the Final Solution … The list of campaign groups, sects and caucuses in which Zionists, and by extension Jews, are no longer welcome is a very long one. Is it really surprising, many Jews are asking, that the Jewish attachment to the labour movement is becoming tenuous? For in almost all sections of the “progressive” Left, Jews claim they are being made to feel they are welcome only if they are at least non-Zionist, and preferable sufficiently anti-Zionist to be paraded as token Jews who dispel all suspicion of anti-semitism …’

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