Liberal Rabbis on the Wrong Side of History

Recently, on the Jewish Chronicle website, Rabbi Aaron Goldstein drew attention to a composite sermon produced by him and his two rabbinical assistants at London’s Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue. He asked whether they could produce “the longest sermon in history”.

Since some of my best friends are Liberal rabbis – I had tea and scones with one yesterday afternoon – and since I’m inevitably drawn to matters historical, I decided to check it out.
http://www.npls.org.uk/Sermons/New/Civic%20Service%202011.html

I was most disappointed, and indeed perturbed, by the contribution to the sermon – a well-meaning but hopelessly rose-tinted celebration of multiculturalism in Britain – that one of Rabbi Goldstein’s colleagues, a young South American-born rabbi, had made. With what might seem a cavalier disregard for fairness towards the ethos and traditions of his adopted country, and a strange selection of "facts", Rabbi Hillel Athias-Robles opined, inter alia:

“British colonialism tried to anglicise and homogenise the different constituents of the Empire, and its missionaries sought to replace native religions with Christianity. UK Sodomy laws were exported to cultures that traditionally had more tolerant attitudes to sexual diversity. In 1864 the Anthropological Society of London concluded that Blacks were a separate species more akin to the ape, even though this was more than three decades after the Slavery Abolition Act was passed.... In the media and political discourse we constantly hear the tenets of multiculturalism come into question. We feel multiculturalism crumble as Islamophobia becomes more socially acceptable. The All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into anti-Semitism reported a sharp increase in anti-Semitic attitudes and incidents.

....Giving up on multiculturalism is not the solution to our social wrongs. It is in fact multiculturalism that prevents our social wrongs from deteriorating even further.”

It was not so much the last part of this quoted passage that I found objectionable, although I agree with Jonathan Hoffman’s observation:

‘What politically correct drivel. Even Trevor Phillips said that multiculturalism is not working. And "Islamophobia becomes socially acceptable" is the PC liberal way of saying "It's wrong to point out Islamic extremism." No it's not.’ http://www.thejc.com/blogpost/can-3-rabbis-produce-longest-sermon-history(Mr

(Mr Hoffman would no doubt have added David Cameron’s name to that of Trevor Phillips, who chairs Britain’s Human Rights and Equality Commission, had the former’s Munich speech already been given.  And see the following by the great Melanie Phillips: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6699875/hemming-the-lemming.thtml)

What I really deplore is the disparaging of Britain by Rabbi Athias-Robles, with the totally invalid implication that it is an endemically racist society. This picture shows some of "the great and the good" of Victorian Britain at a rally on behalf of persecuted Russian Jewry  – one of a number of such rallies held in Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to demand justice for oppressed Jewries; the participants came from all political parties, and from all branches of the Christian church, with "liberals" and Protestants predominating.  Many of the people at the nineteenth-century rallies had been active in the fights against slavery, for penal reform, for factory reform, and for Jewish parliamentary emancipation.

I’ve shown in other blogposts that post-Reformation England provided a climate conducive to philosemitism, and the rabbi’s assertion that British “missionaries sought to replace native religions with Christianity” is mischievously misleading. It was only animists – heathens – that such missionaries attempted to proselytise; they did not, and this was a matter of deliberate policy, interfere with the religions of the peoples of the British Raj, although as is well-known they did attempt to outlaw thuggee and suttee.

Disappointingly, the rabbi ignores Britain’s liberal tradition, he ignores the abolition of the slave trade and the Royal Navy’s proud record in enforcing abolition by intercepting slaver vessels and returning their human cargos to Africa, he ignores Britain’s lack of persecution of Jews (in contrast to the Continent) and the gratitude Jews showed in consequence for being in the land of freedom.  He ignores the great Wilberforce and instead invokes a bunch of obscure ratbags of the 1860s.  For he appears to have ingested the "received wisdom" of the self-hating British chattering classes that everything the British Empire did was automatically wrong, and that everything its subject peoples did was automatically right.  He ignores the fact that Britain exported parliamentary democracy to its colonies, and he has evidently imbibed the fiction that all cultures are created equal.

He implies that multiculturalism changed British attitudes from illiberalism to liberalism – when in truth some of the cultures represented are as hostile to liberalism as it is possible to get – hating secular democratic values, despising women, genitally mutilating girls, practising “honour” killings, persecuting gays, pursuing animist witchcraft that involves child sacrifice, indulging in explicit and often violent Jew-hatred, and delegitimizing Israel.  (The accompanying photos speak for themselves.)

In some ways, the rabbi's indictment of Britain is reminiscent of absurdities to be found on the website of the London-based Muslim Public Affairs Committee:

'Western States the real terrorists – not Muslims....

One must remember, it was not the Muslims that were responsible for such heinous crimes as the slave trade. [Their history is as dodgy as his!!!] ....

[ W]hen Britain went into India, ruling it for 200 years, massacring and imposing their rules upon the people, never integrating, never learning their languages and forcibly trying to convert its people to their customs and religion....

Much death and destruction has been committed by the British Government, yet it is British Muslims who label each other as terrorists, seeking to disassociate ourselves from fellow Muslims. It is not for us to disassociate ourselves from anyone, but rather British Muslims and the wider British population at large should hold their Government accountable over their foreign policies. We should be putting pressure upon our leaders to ensure such crimes against humanity are not repeated and that all forms of exploitation are ceased with immediate effect. It is not just for British Muslims to apologise....

We should not be seeking to apologise for anything, it is these war criminals that need to apologise to us and hang their heads in shame – not us.’ http://www.mpacuk.org/story/150211/stand-united-against-pimps-misery.html#ixzz1E94hkIfS

Elsewhere, Rabbi Athias-Robles has observed:

“You might have noticed that many of the sermons Rabbi Aaron [Goldstein] and I deliver have to do with the situation in Israel. Perhaps some might see them as political – beyond the remit of our task as a rabbi. Sometimes, it may seem that we mention to Israel too much. A few weeks ago I posted on my Facebook profile a link to an article about the enforced loyalty oath the Israeli government recently introduced for non-Jews seeking Israeli citizen, who are asked to pledge their allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state – an oath aimed mostly at Palestinians who marry Arab Israelis. Many people replied to the article I posted– some people who are usually very liberal wrote things like: It’s so easy to criticise Israel from abroad – if you want to change the country move there and vote, followed by a whole rant against Arab countries and Arab intolerance to Jews. On a similar note, when Mick Davis, head of the Jewish Leadership Council and a Zionist leader, decided to break the silence and speak out about the moral issues of the peace process, including the rights of minorities, settlements, etc. a wave of attacks ensued – he was using the language of our enemies, he was delegitimizing Israel, he had no right as a Diaspora Jew to speak out against the choices of the Israeli government. As Jews, we are expected to stay quiet – the raising of concerns equals a hateful attack against Israel”

And predictably goes on to defend his position. http://www.npls.org.uk/Sermons/New/Vayechi%205771.html

The unelected Mick Davis, by the way, is at it again, with the zealous cooperation of the Jewish Chronicle, in thral to the New Israel Fund.  (Robin Shepherd deals with this situation – and the Israel-is-an-apartheid-state canard – very nicely at http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/tag/mick-davis/)

Unlike most of their counterparts in Australia, Britain’s Liberal rabbis seem to have an ambivalent attitude towards the Jewish State. They seem to have a nineteenth-century mindset in some respects: Ma Yomru ha-Goyim? ("What will the non-Jew say?").  They have taken on the mantle of the "Gentlemen of the Mosaic persuasion".  Their full-bodied sense of Yiddishkayt is missing. And they seem to think that being left of centre religiously obligates a person to be left of centre politically. Israel is under existential threat, yet too many of them join the chorus of snipers. Their criticism, like Mick Davis’s, should be done in private, for their public condemnations serve the heinous purpose of Israel’s foes.

They remind me, indeed, of the Jacobin, famously described by George Canning as:

"A steady patriot of the world alone.  A friend to every country but his own."

Recently, British journalist Julie Burchill, known for her robust championship of Israel, revealed that she’s abandoned plans to convert to Judaism under the auspices of the Liberal movement. She’d been attending the Brighton Progressive Synagogue, but, as she explained in her final regular column for the Jewish Chronicle, the rabbi’s agenda drove her away:

‘You should know that the reason I'm stepping away for a while has nothing to do with the hysterical levels of abuse that greet any Gentile who expresses support for Israel; on the contrary, I very much enjoy a bit of a verbal scrap.

But don't get me wrong, my admiration for the Jews and Israel came first; the nasty name-calling is just a side benefit....

I realised that it wasn’t a Jew that I wanted to be, so much as a Zionist....

I began attending a shul, and took the first steps towards converting to Judaism, then threw in the towel on both.

Basically, I don't go to a synagogue on a Saturday morning to be preached at about how Islam is the equal of Judaism, and yet that's what I got the last time I was there – from a female, gay rabbi, already!

I'd love to see her walk into a mosque and tell the worshippers that Judaism was the equal of Islam, that women should be just as able to be preachers as men and that homosexuality is every bit as valid a personal choice as heterosexuality.

I wonder how many minutes she'd last?

Which makes my point completely: an intolerant religion is not the equal of a tolerant religion. And to say that it is, is surely pretzel logic of the most twisted kind.

I've also been back to Israel three times since my initial visit in 2004, and each time I have marvelled at the beauty and rudeness of its people.

At home I have witnessed the self-loathing Stockholm Syndrome of what my hero Howard Jacobson fingered in his Booker Prize-winning The Finkler Question as the ASHamed Jews, and came to the conclusion that it wasn't a Jew that I wanted to be so much as a Zionist.

And I can do this by helping to buy fire engines for frontline Israeli towns like Sderot, and by donating a good whack of cash each year to send care parcels to lone IDF soldiers - and still stay in bed with my husband of a Saturday without having to schlep off to a shul and receive lectures on the wonders of Islam.

Sorted!

Toffs For Terrorism or We Are All Hizbollah Now, Yah? Back in the summer I turned on the TV the day after the flotilla was floored, and there was a man called Lort-Phillips, bewailing the plight of his sister, one Alexandra Lort-Phillips.

A few days later a piece turned up on the society page of the Daily Mail explaining that Lort-Phillips is the great-niece of Dame Frances Campbell-Preston, a woman of the bedchamber (not as fun as it sounds) and friend of the late queen mother of England, who inexplicably claimed, "I am very proud of her. She is standing up for her principles."

Wow, from royalty-flunky to Hamas-groupie in two generations - that's the spirit that made this country great! At least, though, the old broad had the excuse of being 91 years old to spout such twaddle.

What was everyone else's excuse for sailing on the Ship of Fools?

The Jews: The Greatest Story Ever Told. You pick your team and you stay with them, through good times and bad. I may not be writing this column for awhile - but I'm not going anywhere.

L'hitraot!' http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/42900/my-loyalties-wont-fade-away

Raped and Beaten while the Cairo Mob yelled "Jew! Jew!"

On 11 February Lara Logan, of CBS News, was sexually assaulted and beaten by a mob in Tahrir Square.  According to some reports, she and her crew were earlier accused of being "Israeli spies," and although Ms Logan is not Jewish, her assailants yelled "Jew! Jew!" during the attack.

For more see:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/cbs_reporter_cairo_nightmare_pXiUVvhwIDdCrbD95ybD5N#ixzz1E8rBy4l1
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2011/02/cbs_shouldnt_have_withheld_lar.html
http://nation.foxnews.com/twitter/2011/02/15/despicable-nyu-fellow-attacks-lara-logan-war-monger-after-sexual-assault

Western Wets and their Penchant for Palestine

I’ve remarked more than once that The Australian is the national newspaper Down Under that’s most consistently fair to Israel. For a start, it has the perspicacious, pro-Israel columnist Greg Sheridan, who’s been with the paper for many years. Now, it’s proved its credentials yet again with a superb article by Brendan O'Neill, the editor of Spiked Online, entitled “Palestine an obsession of radical West, not Arabs”.

Tearing into the execrable John Pilger (an Aussie, I regret to say), O’Neill goes on to observe that while there was a dearth of anti-Israel placards in Tahrir Square,

‘on the pro-Egypt demonstration in London on Saturday [I assume he means the one sponsored by Amnesty International – see the video below], there was a sea of Palestine placards. "Free Palestine", they said, and "End the Israeli occupation". The speakers had trouble getting the audience excited about events in Egypt, having to say on more than one occasion: "Come on London, you can shout louder than that!" Yet every mention of the word Palestine induced a kind of Pavlovian excitability among the attendees. They cheered when the P-word was uttered, chanting: "Free, free Palestine!"

This reveals [continues O'Neill] something important about the Palestine issue. In recent years it has moved from the realm of Arab radicalism, where Egyptians and other peoples frequently demanded the creation of a Palestinian state, and has instead become almost the exclusive property of Western middle-class radicals, such as Pilger.

Emptied of its nationalist vigour and militancy, the Palestine problem, it seems, is now of little immediate interest to protesting Arabs and is instead the ultimate cause célèbre for Western liberal campaigners who like nothing more than having a victimised people they can coo over.

The power and allure of Palestine in Western radical circles is extraordinary. Palestine is the only issue they get excited about. But there is nothing progressive in their pro-Palestine fervour. It is not driven by future-oriented demands for economic development in a Palestinian homeland in the West Bank or Gaza. Instead it is driven by a view of Palestinians as the ultimate victims, the hapless and pathetic children of the new world order, who need kindly, wizened Westerners to protect them from Big Bad Israel.....

For these historically ignorant campaigners, Israelis are the New Nazis and Gaza is the new Warsaw Ghetto. As the title of a recent talk in London put it: "A New Hitler for a New Age? The Rise of Israeli Terror."

Palestinian pitiers have no time to think about the inconvenient fact that Hamas is an intolerant political entity that has no time for gay rights or women's equality. Instead, everything gets reduced to a Narnia-style story of wicked witches v happy fauns, because this is ultimately about providing vacuous-feeling Westerners with some much-needed momentum in their lives, not about untangling a messy political reality.

It's very revealing that Palestine has become less important for Arabs and of the utmost symbolic importance for Western radicals at exactly the same time. With the Palestinian people somewhat deflated, the Palestine issue can become perfect political fodder for the victim-oriented, fancy-dress radicals of the modern West.’

Read all of Brendan O’Neill’s article here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/palestine-an-obsession-of-radical-west-not-arabs/story-e6frg6zo-1226006572220

“The BBC Stood With the Revolution. We’d Like to Thank the BBC.”

Thus enthused a demonstrator in Tahrir Square, jubilant following Mubarak’s abdication, to the BBC’s reporter Ben Brown on Friday afternoon.

Payers of that compulsory extortionate poll tax called the licence fee, which funds Al Beeb’s activities, have helped to make history!

No doubt the Grand Vizier of the operation, Al Beeb’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, is feeling smug. His own “analyses” of affairs in Egypt and their implications for the wider Middle East continue to be substandard; trotted out for the ten o’clock bulletin by correspondent Lyse Doucet and/or whichever newsreader-cum-reporter happens to have been whisked from London to Cairo for a short stint (Brown...Alagiah...Wilcox...), grey-complexioned Jezza – looking in the harsh glare of the nighttime spotlight like a dyspepsic wraith who’s just as jaundiced as he sounds – provides nothing better in the way of “analysis” than any viewer of average intelligence could do.

And it’s not just me who thinks Jezza’s a woefully prejudiced (against Israel) journalistic mediocrity – just look at the comments on threads on the delectably magnetic Biased BBC website such as these (I promise you that none have been contributed by me):

http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/02/being-partial.html
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/02/muslim-brotherhood-largely-secular.html
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2011/02/kites-for-peace.html

Jezza’s apprentice, Jon Donnison, seems, by “talking up” a certain Facebook page, to be wanting to help foment a revolution in Gaza
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12398354)

On the weekend, Al Beeb newreader Martine Croxall accepted without demur interviewee Adel Darwish’s claims that there has been no anti-Israel sentiments expressed by those seeking Mubarak’s downfall.

And Clive Myrie, of whom I’d have expected better, since he’s one of Al Beeb’s more searching interviewers,warmly welcomed “Kamal” into the studio – that’s the fraudulently avuncular Kamal Helbawy or, as Al Beeb always bills him, El-Habawy, who knows how to play Western audiences as dexterously as Heifetz played the fiddle – and was soon apparently reassured by the old fellow’s fibs regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and the Peace Treaty.

Al Beeb’s frequent hosting of Helbawy continues despite the BBC's own Andrew Neil, who’d interviewed Helbawy on 3 February, observing on his blog that he was “suspicious” that Helbawy “was painting a misleadingly moderate picture of what the Brotherhood stood for” and that he’s found material which gave a very different side of the story. The Brotherhood’s own proclamations, warned Neil, suggest that it “is not quite the beacon of Western liberalism that our guest would have us believe.” For instance, its manifesto

 ‘would "bar women and Christians from becoming Egypt's president and establish a board of Muslim clerics to oversee the government, reminiscent of Iran's Islamic state" -- something Kamal El Helbawy denied today (claiming the Brotherhood would be happy with an Egyptian Thatcher as leader!).

The article states that there were a minority of moderates in the Brotherhood who preferred a civic government which respected Islamic principles but that the "hardline trend" had won out. It explains the manifesto was a draft for a Brotherhood political party, which the Mubarak government never allowed to develop. This might explain why our guest claimed the manifesto was never adopted. But there seems little doubt it sums up what the Brotherhood thinks.’

Neil, who correctly observes that getting the full measure of the Brotherhood is difficult since most of its material remains untranslated from Arabic, also cites a document

 “which suggests the Muslim Brotherhood's attitude toward minorities is not exactly progressive. It reveals that when Alexandria's Administrative Court issued a ruling on April 4, 2006 instructing the Interior Ministry to allow a citizen's identity card to state that the holder was a Baha'i [a religious sect], the Brotherhood reacted with outrage.

In the May 3, 2006 parliamentary debate on the ruling, MB deputies said that the Baha'is were apostates who should be killed. Quoting a hadith attributed to the Prophet Mohammed to support their position, they declared that they would draft a law making Baha'ism a crime and branding the Baha'is apostates. “

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2011/02/more_about_the_muslim_brotherh.html:)

Now, you’d think that Al Beeb – so insufferably “progressive” and politically correct itself in a myriad of ways – would steer clear of the representative of an organisation so unprogressive and unpolitically correct, wouldn’t you?  But such is Al Beeb’s agenda, that progressive initiatives by some regimes (and countries) are unavailing, and reactionary policies by some regimes (and countries and – dare I say it – creed) are overlooked.

Look, for example, at this: http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/bbc-highlights-exhibition-of-israeli-war-crimes-in-gaza-by-german-photographer-who-uses-nazi-analogies-with-israel/

and this: http://justjournalism.com/the-wire/bbc-wilders-documentary-relies-on-dubious-sources/

Of course, in view of its agenda, Al Beeb, whose reporters were generous with talk of Mubarak’s “thugs” – perhaps the “thugs” deserved that appellation, but it was a subjective one unworthy of Al Beeb’s obligation to report objectively – never bothered to remind us that in some respects (its outlawing of the horrible and often fatal practice of female genital mutilation, which is in no true way analogous to male circumcision, for example) the regime was progressive and beneficial.

In the absence of any worthwhile analysis from Jezza, I heartily commend this analysis by the distinguished British historian Niall Ferguson, who’s pro-Israeli and no leftist. He excoriates the dithering of the Obama regime towards the Egyptian crisis, deplores the fact that such an “inexperienced” president surrounds himself with advisers “who are, frankly, second- if not third-rate”, speaks with genuine sympathy at Israel’s current “dismay”, reminds us that history shows that revolutions don’t inevitably proceed to a “happy clappy” conclusion but undergo turmoil and “terror”, and is under no illusions regarding the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Britain's Trades Union Congress and the BDS Movement

The following article, entitled “The British Trade Union Movement, Israel, and Boycotts”, is by Ronnie Fraser, and has been issued by the Institute of Global Jewish Affairs. Ronnie Fraser is Director of the Academic Friends of Israel, which he founded in 2002. He is a doctoral student at Royal Holloway College in London, where his research focuses on the attitudes and policies of the British trade unions and the TUC toward Israel from 1945 to 1982. His essays include "Trade Union and Other Boycotts of Israel in Great Britain and Ireland" (2009), published online by the Institute of Global Jewish Affairs; "The Academic Boycott of Israel: Why Britain?" in Manfred Gerstenfeld, ed., Academics against Israel and the Jews (Jerusalem: JCPA, 2007); and "Understanding Trade Union Hostility towards Israel and Its Consequences for Anglo-Jewry," in Paul Iganski and Barry Kosmin, eds., A New Anti-Semitism? (London: JPR, 2003).

Writes Mr Fraser:

Over the past thirty years the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and member unions have regularly adopted resolutions containing anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian rhetoric. A whole generation of British left-wing trade union activists has been raised on a diet of conference motions whose only mention of Israel is in connection with its "brutality" and "oppression" of the Palestinian people. The current political position held by the leaders of Britain's working class reflects a historical bias and amnesia concerning the state of Israel.

At its 2010 Congress the TUC decided to strengthen ties with the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) and reinforce its BDS campaign against Israel. One outcome is that the TUC, which once encouraged peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, can no longer be considered a friend of Israel's trade union movement, the Histadrut.

The majority of the motions on Palestine that are submitted to annual union conferences in the UK tend not to represent the views of the general membership, but instead the political positions of the activists who are usually socialist and left-wing ideologues. This left-wing minority has made sure that in 2011 most of the major trade unions and the TUC have resolutions on their books supporting the BDS campaign against Israel as well as being affiliated to the PSC. //It is not clear whether the TUC will be as actively anti-Israeli as its PSC colleagues want it to be, especially in the current economic climate. The labor movement's priority for the foreseeable future is to concentrate on trying to save jobs and pensions especially in the UK public sector. Much will also depend on developments in the Middle East, and particularly the Israeli-Palestinian dynamics.

On the eve of the San Remo Conference in 1920, which formally recognized Britain as the mandatory authority for Palestine, the Labour Party and the TUC (Trades Union Congress), the representative body for the British trade union movement, signed a letter urging British prime minister David Lloyd George to accept the Palestine mandate and thereby make possible a Jewish national home.[1] Yet ninety years later, the TUC not only finds itself advocating sanctions against the Jewish state but is also on the brink of severing links with its fellow socialists in the Israeli labor movement and calling for the delegitimization of the state of Israel. The key moment in the changeover from support for the Jewish state to support for the Palestinian Arabs came in 1982 at the time of the First Lebanon War.

It is, however, abundantly clear that from the very beginning the TUC has given priority to British interests in the Middle East over its friendship with the Histadrut, the Israeli trade union movement. Over the past thirty years the TUC and the unions have regularly adopted resolutions containing anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian rhetoric, and a whole generation of British left-wing trade union activists has been raised on a diet of conference motions whose only mention of Israel is in connection with its "brutality" and "oppression" of the Palestinian people.

The current political position held by the leaders of Britain's working class unfortunately reflects a historical bias and amnesia concerning the state of Israel. They have disregarded the facts and are willing to boycott a country that was founded by socialist pioneers and was governed by a Labor Party for most of its history. They have forgotten that Israeli society has developed from one of the most successful socialist experiments in the world with its kibbutzim and cooperatives, as well as the strong part that the Histadrut played in the national economy. It was no wonder that in the 1950s and 1960s Israel was long seen as a role model for other newly independent, developing countries. What is clear is that it is political issues rather than trade union matters that have caused the current friction between the TUC and the Histadrut.

Britain's trade unions have always reflected the views of either the activists or the leadership. The consequence is that the majority of the motions on Palestine that are submitted to annual union conferences tend not to represent the views of the general membership, but instead the political positions of the activists who are usually socialist and left-wing ideologues. It is often these same activists who attend union conferences and vote on these motions, which decide the policy and future direction of the union.

Hence, this left-wing minority has made sure that in 2011 most of the major trade unions and the TUC have resolutions on their books supporting the global boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign directed at Israel as well as being affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC). Hugh Lanning, PSC chairman and deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, has said that:

 "The PSC is committed to not only building an effective campaign for boycotting settlement goods with the TUC, but also to work to take TUC policy further, together with individual unions, many of which already have policy supporting a full boycott."[2]

The PSC, as part of the global BDS campaign, supports the establishment of a Palestinian state and the right of return for all Palestinian refugees as well as campaigning for a full boycott of Israel, which includes an economic, academic, and cultural boycott until Israel "respects international law."[3] They also have called for full recognition of Hamas as the "democratic government of Palestine" and while not explicitly supporting Palestinian terrorism they refuse to oppose it, preferring instead to assert the right of the Palestinians to "resist occupation."

The Not-So-Sweet Smell of the Jasmine Revolution: an Islamist Mob Surging Outside the Tunis Synagogue (video)

Here's video footage of an angry Islamic mob outside the Synagogue in Tunis, yelling that blood-curdling war-cry: "Khyber, Khyber al-Yahud":

And just in case you missed it, here's video footage of anti-Israel Egyptians during the Lotus Revolution:



While Western Governments Looked Askance at Israel ...

Entitled “Egypt and Tunisia – The Power of Prediction,” the following article, by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, comes from the antipodean J-Wire service.


The West has been caught with its pants down following the popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia during the past month. I wonder why.

There was plenty of evidence floating around to indicate that Egypt and Tunisia were repressive states where human rights abuses were the order of the day and people power was set to explode.

Rather the West preferred to avert its gaze and focus its concentration on alleged human rights abuses carried out by Israel – the only true democracy in the Middle East – to the total exclusion of subjecting.dynastic Arab dictators to the same scrutiny. Iran was shamefully allowed to retain its membership of the United Nations and strut the world stage calling for the destruction of Israel to the applause of these dictators.

Trade unions, church groups and human rights organizations led the chorus of campaigns and campaigners to boycott Israel and delegitimize its right to recognition as the Jewish National Home – whilst abuses of human rights in Arab countries never rated a mention on their radar screens.

The terrorist government of Hamas in Gaza democratically elected to power by the choice of the West Bank and Gazan Arabs – and removed by presidential decree of Mahmoud Abbas – became the focus of the world’s sympathy as the Gazan Arabs became dragged into confrontation with Israel and the Palestinian Authority by a government they had freely elected.

That the mayhem in Gaza was the direct result of their own voting decisions seemed inconsequential as the West sent in flotillas and demanded an easing of the blockade instituted by Israel and Egypt.

Meanwhile hundreds of millions of Arabs in other countries suffered ongoing abuse and persecution perpetrated by rulers those populations were never given the opportunity to elect – or reject. Were any protests made for their redemption or flotillas sent to their aid?

The banning of blogging and web sites on the Internet in 2009 in Arab countries was allowed to happen without any whimper of international protest – as contrasted to the outrage this repressive practice has hypocritically – and belatedly – received in 2011.

The UN Human Rights Council (with Egypt as a member) led the howling pack against Israel whilst serious human rights abuses in Arab countries were ignored, America sought engagement with this outrageous organization rather than identifying and isolating it as an affront to human dignity.

In December 2009 I wrote about a highly critical Report that came out of Cairo indicating in detail the human rights abuses occurring in many Arab countries – including Egypt and Tunisia.

I guess all the advisers to Presidents, Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers, as well as the Gaza do-gooders – not to mention the media – had enough information and stage managed events being spoon fed to them to lambast Israel and allow these Arab dictators to continue on their merry way unchallenged and uncriticised in the face of this very comprehensive report. The silence following its release was deafening.

We are all going to pay the price for the chaos and suffering that must now inevitably occur.

The new buzzwords “orderly transition” are meaningless. They may have been relevant fourteen months ago had the fundamental concerns in this report been addressed then using a modicum of the time and diplomatic pressure spent in exerting pressure on Israel. But the genie has now been let out of the bottle as events of the last month in Egypt and Tunisia have proved.

My [i.e. David Singer's] article is reprinted below for your reading:
Arab Human Rights Abuses Uncovered In Explosive Report

Saturday, December 12, 2009

“A man spends his first years learning how to speak and the Arab regimes teach him silence for the rest of his life” Algerian writer Ahlem Mosteghanemi, “Memory in the Flesh”

The above quote forms the backdrop to an explosive report titled “Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of Reform” released this week by the Cairo Institute For Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) on the state of human rights in the Arab World for 2009.

Given the Report’s contents and the existence of CIHRS as a non government organization since 1993 - one wonders how it has managed to survive to continue its valuable work openly in Egypt exposing human rights abuses in the Arab World.

Perhaps the reason can be found in the associations CIHRS has built up over the years with other human rights organizations around the world that has now enabled it to produce this second comprehensive annual report in which it notes the worsening of human rights in the Arab world since 2008..

The CHIRS web site describes these associations as follows:

“CIHRS enjoys consultative status with the United Nations ECOSOC, and observer status in the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. CIHRS is also a member of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX). CIHRS is registered in Egypt, France and Geneva, has its main offices in Cairo, an office in Geneva for its work at UN human rights mechanisms and an institutional presence in Paris. CIHRS was awarded the French Republic Award for Human Rights in December 2007. “

The Report notes that in the Arab world in 2009

“Human rights defenders and advocates of democratic reforms were targeted for various threats and acts of repression.”

The Report cites Syria as the worst offender, describes Tunisia as a “Police State” and includes Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan as sanctioning state authorized acts of repression against human rights defenders. It lists a large number of specific individual cases and actions taken in these countries to support its claims.

The report is particularly revealing about three of the six Arab countries that currently sit on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) – Bahrain, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia – a body that spends most of its time and discussions on condemning human rights abuses committed by Israel.

Saudi Arabia is exposed as having no independent media and according to the Report

“… it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of internet websites are blocked. Some Saudi bloggers were subjected to arbitrary arrest, and one Saudi citizen was sentenced to five years in prison and 1,000 lashes on charges of publicly proclaiming a sin, following statements he made on a program carried by a Lebanese satellite channel…

… remains dangerous for human rights defenders and advocates of reform. Authorities refuse to grant legal status to the few human rights organizations that exist in the Kingdom and many reformers have been detained for long periods of time without trial and tortured. An Islamist reform activist was sentenced to a prison term for opposing government policies, and several rights defenders were banned from travel… a great many people detained in connection with terrorism cases were subjected to physical and psychological torture, including cuffing, beatings, sleep deprivations, and the denial of family visits. Some people detained for their advocacy of political reform were also tortured.”

Bahrain – according to the Report:

“… continued to block political, news, and advocacy websites, as well as online forums. In a space of just three months in early 2009, more than 70 websites were blocked, among them online newspaper sites. Lawsuits were filed against journalists on charges ranging from slandering officials to undermining the judicial authority to harming national unity…

…Torture remains a routine practice in Bahrain, used especially against activists in social and political movements seeking an end to the institutionalized discrimination against Shiites; several human rights defenders were also tortured.”

Egypt has been in a state of emergency for the last 28 years and according to the Report:

“The greatest infringements of freedom of expression in Egypt were seen in the broad attacks launched by the security apparatus on bloggers and internet activists, dozens of whom were placed under administrative detention, abducted, or temporarily taken to undisclosed locations, usually State Security police headquarters; some have been detained for more than two years without charge or trial….

… continued to top the list of countries in which torture is routinely and systematically practiced. In 2009 Egyptian authorities used torture not only against those accused of political crimes or terrorism, but also against adherents of minority religions such as Shiites as well as suspects of criminal offences. Indeed, the threat of torture hangs over anyone who steps foot in a police station, whether to give a statement or file an assault charge, or pursuant to a summons by an officer, who might discipline or abuse citizens on behalf of influential persons.”

The Report comments as follows on the consequences of the split governance by Hamas in Gaza and by Fatah in the West Bank :

“Under the cover of the war in Gaza, Hamas embarked on several repressive measures targeting Fateh members, figures who oppose Hamas’ rule, and suspected collaborators with Israel, and it is suspected that dozens of people were killed, either shot to death or as a result of torture. Hamas personnel also broke the legs and arms of dozens of other people to compel them to stay in their homes. Also, some government employees in Gaza were replaced with Hamas loyalists.

In the West Bank, under the authority of Fatah, hundreds of Hamas sympathizers remain in detention; it is thought that at least two of the detainees have died as a result of torture. The West Bank authorities fired civil servants and teachers suspected of Hamas sympathies, while the salaries of thousands of employees of the Palestinian authority inside the Gaza Strip were suspended. Licensing for associations and companies in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip is now preceded by a security check,and those organizations that have affiliations with the “wrong” party are refused Licenses.”

Few of the 22 members of the Arab League are spared criticism in the Report which should be required reading for anyone interested in seeing some balance restored in any deliberations regarding the numerous and ongoing conflicts in the region.

No doubt this Report will not even rate any serious review or investigation by the UNHCR.

Whilst the Arab man in the street is prevented from expressing his opinion freely and without fear – the Arab world shall continue to present the monolithic Arab view of those few repressive regimes who rule to the detriment of the rest of the populations they rule over.

Such is the state of denial that the world currently finds itself in where the Arab world is concerned.