Author: asa

Scottish activists lead the way on BDS

Liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Thursday that this year, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe did not host a single Israeli act for the first time in years.

“Because of the high costs and political tensions,” the reporter stated, “there have never been more than one or two Israeli productions at Edinburgh over the past two decades.”

A performance put on last year by Jerusalem’s Incubator Theatre (which is funded by the state of Israel) ultimately had to be cancelled: “BDS caused huge outlays on security … and the play collapsed.”

Protests led by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) in 2014 meant that there were fears of disruptions of the production at the Scottish venue, and police insisted that a large number of security guards would have to be employed. Neither the organizers or the venue had the resources, so consequentially it was called off.

Continue reading over at MEMO.

The socialist MP imprisoned by Israel for her opinions

On Monday, Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar faced a military hearing at Ofer, an Israeli army base in the illegally-occupied West Bank. Jarrar’s only “crime” is speaking out against against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and for the rights of Palestinian political prisoners.

At the hearing Monday, the two witnesses brought by the prosecution (an army officer) before the judge (also an army officer) said that false confessions had been extracted from them by Israel under the duress of torture in Israeli detention. The prosecutor then farcically had the witnesses designated by this kangaroo court as “hostile” and was able to cross examine them.

This was a brave move by the witnesses, who were essentially forced to testify and will likely now face ominous consequences when they head back to Israel’s notorious prisons system, which habitually tortures its victims.

The Israeli columnist Gideon Levy, who has been covering the case for Haaretz, says that the case demonstrates again that the whole of Israel’s military court system (used almost exclusively for Palestinians, and not for Jewish citizens) is a “ridiculous costume party … a system where the judge salutes the prosecutor, who outranks him militarily”.

Continue reading over at MEMO.

Is Tony Blair setting a trap for Hamas?

Reports have trickled out over the summer that Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect negotiations in Doha. The reports, some of which have originated with Middle East Eye, say that the talks have been facilitated by Tony Blair, and are aimed at establishing a long-term ceasefire in exchange for a lifting of the siege on Gaza and other conditions.

MEE first reported this in June, based on anonymous “European and independent Palestinian sources”. Since then, Blair has reportedly met with top Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal several times. The latest revelation is that Blair had even made an offer to Meshaal for a visit to London and that this offer was made with the knowledge of Prime Minister David Cameron himself.

A significant related development over the summer has been Meshaal’s attempt to reconcile with the Saudi royals. This has been met with mixed results.

Read the rest over at MEMO.

The Corbyn phenomenon

It has been the story of the summer, but there are still almost three weeks left to run in the Labour Party leadership election, believe it or not. What initially looked like it was going to be the dullest leadership election ever was electrified after the entry of left-wing MP Jeremy Corbyn in June.

Initially dismissed as the rank outsider allowed into the contest as a sop to the more leftist activist base of the party, Corbyn’s campaign soon gathered momentum. It has become a genuine phenomenon, and he has been packing out meeting halls for rallys all over the country. He leads the polls, and looks likely to become the leader of the opposition next month.

Nobody (including myself) saw this coming. Now it is happening, it’s not too hard to see the reasons why.

Continue reading over at MEMO.

Hilary Clinton’s failed attack on BDS

Earlier this month, The Scotsman reported that US presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton had tried to stop a cultural boycott of Israel in Edinburgh.

In 2009, the Edinburgh film festival returned small amount of funding from the Israeli embassysensitivity that Israel and its supporters have to BDS.. Famed left-wing director Ken Loach had been a prominent figure in the campaign.

The festival later admitted accepting the £300 was “a mistake” and publicly returned the money.

But newly published emails revealed this monththat Clinton, a strong supporter of Israel, had tried to intervene in the affair. (Her emails were released as part of the ongoing controversy in the US over her use of a personal email account to conduct official business in an apparent attempt to avoid freedom of information law.)

Read the rest over at MEMO.

Scandalous attempts to smear Jeremy Corbyn belie reality about Raed Salah

On Raed Salah:

As I reported in detail back in 2011 and 2012, when Raed Salah arrived in Britain he was subjected to a vicious Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian media campaign. This campaign was instigated by the pro-Israel lobby, at the vanguard of which was the Community Security Trust, a registered charity which is supposedly an apolitical organisation established purely to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.

Read the rest over at MEMO.

“Kahane was right” – but not in the way Israeli racists claim

On the history of the JDL and the posthumous victory of Meir Kahane:

But today we can say that Kahane was right in only one sense. He was an extreme ideologue of hatred, and never seemed to waiver in his belief that one day he would be vindicated and his ideas would become mainstream in Israeli society and in the Israeli government. In that sense, he was right. Today, there is no need for an Israeli Kach party, because many of its ideas have been adopted by more mainstream Israeli parties.

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

A forgotten Palestinian kidnap victim

On Dirar Abu Sisi:

Abu Sisi has now been in solidarity confinement for more than four years. His case has been largely forgotten and there are no western human rights organizations championing his case and calling for his freedom.

The real reason for the imprisonment of Abu Sisi, it seems to me, is that his technical expertise as a civil engineer made it harder for Israel to strangle the Gaza Strip with its unjust siege.

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

Iran deal a defeat for the Israel lobby

On the meaning of the Iran deal to the power of the Israel lobby:

On HuffPost Live, journalist Glenn Greenwald thinks this is a defeat for the Israel lobby: “I don’t think that they’re going to win this fight. And when they don’t, when they actually lose it I think that this kind of aura of invincibility that has surrounded the Israel lobby for so long will be severely compromised and weakened in a way that will be very positive”

With the slight danger of speaking too soon, I have to say I agree. Although the Israel lobby is obviously still rich, powerful and influential, this is a major defeat.

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

The definitive account of the 2014 war on Gaza

Here is my review of Max Blumenthal’s latest book, The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza:

max b book

And he covers every aspect. Through his eyes, and the eyes of his colleagues, contacts and friends in Gaza, we see the ruins, the rubble, the pain, death and destruction inflicted on the people of Gaza by Israel and its allies. We see hope and despair, but most of all we see the Palestinians people themselves.

In The 51 Day War, Max has an important section covering the military aspects of the war. But where the corporate media covering this would probably focus on the might and majesty of Israel’s overwhelming military force and its praise-worthy ability to kill Palestinian children, Max documents a most under covered aspect of the war: the defensive liberation struggle of the Palestinian resistance factions, led by Hamas, Palestine’s Islamic resistance movement.

Max lays out a short and readable history of the al-Qassam Bridages, Hamas’s military wing. He shows how the suicide bombings of the 1990s and 2000s were a reaction to Israel’s systematic killings of Palestinians civilians, and a desire to strike back at the oppressor. The first Palestinian suicide bombing in 1994 was a direct reaction to the infamous Hebron massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslims as they worshipped in a Mosque.

Read the rest over at MEMO.

Syriza-led government learns to “love Israel”

Greek foreign policy:

The party’s 2012 “40-point programme” called for the “abolition of military cooperation with Israel” as part of a wider anti-militarist stance. But what a U-turn now.

In a joint press conference in Jerusalem with the Israeli prime minister, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias seemed determined to continue the path of the former conservative government, which from 2010 started the country on a new path towards joint military cooperation and training exercises with Israel, despite its regular massacres of the civilian population of Gaza.

“We have to learn to love Israel,” gushed Kotzias, in a short statement last week, which seemed deliberately truncated in order to allow Netanyahu to dominate the press conference with his usual propaganda themes (mostly agitating against the deal to ease sanctions against Iran).

Read the whole article over at MEMO.

Israeli spy admits: we encouraged anti-Semitic conspiracy theories

#ZionistAntiSemitism:

Of some of the anti-democratic regimes in the region he was seeking to forge ties with he states: “we knew that the issue of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion plays a very important role for them. To a certain degree even, we played that card, so they’d think we have immense influence over the world, and could manipulate US policy in their favour in particular. The Moroccans, the Iranians, the Turks, Idi Amin – they were all sure that one word from us would change Washington’s position towards them.”

In other words, Israeli spies and diplomats (despite propaganda claims to be the protectors of the Jews of the world) actively encouraged the dissemination of a notorious anti-Semitic forgery for their own cynical power-political reasons.

Read the whole article over at MEMO.