Category: Israel Lobby

Galloway faces the ‘Jewish Defence League’

George Galloway on Channel 4 News (UK) facing the national director of the ‘Jewish Defence League’ (JDL) of Canada, Meir Weinstein, on Galloway’s banning from Canada.

Looking at the JDL Canada website we find the group was established “in the late 1960s to confront and fight anti-Semitism.”  One might wonder why they are interested in blocking Galloway from entering Canada; the story was originally that he was banned for his views on Canada’s military presence in Afghanistan.  Perhaps it is their first principle, ‘Ahavat Yisroel’, Love of Israel, and Galloway’s recent aid convoy to Gaza that is the real problem.  I was surprised to see Weinstein on Channel Four, as he considers helping the starving people of Gaza a crime, you’d expect to see him on the BBC.

Also worth noting is that the JDL was described as a violent extremist Jewish organization in an FBI 2000/2001 Terrorism report.

Ian Paisley launches Northern Ireland Friends of Israel

In response to increasing boycott calls, by organisations such as the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Zionists have launched a Northern Ireland Friends of Israel lobby group.  It would be more aptly titled Northern Ireland Friends of Occupation, Apartheid, Racism, Massacre and Continued Colonisation.  From the Jerusalem Post:

The Northern Ireland Friends of Israel marked its launch in Belfast last week with addresses from trade unionists, politicians and community leaders, including veteran unionist Rev. Ian Paisley.

Paisley, “the controversial firebrand preacher turned peacemaker,” in NIFI’s words, spoke of the similarities between the struggles of Israel and of Northern Ireland against terrorism, prayed for peace in Jerusalem and called for peace in the Middle East akin to the past few years of calm Northern Ireland has enjoyed due to power sharing between his Democratic Unionist Party and the Irish Republican Sinn Fein.

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Thoughts on the Death of Rachel Corrie

David Bromwich is a noble human being with a brilliant mind. He was unsparing in his condemnation of Israel during its recent massacre in Gaza. Here he pays tribute to the martyr Rachel Corrie.

Today is the sixth anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie. On March 16, 2003, in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, she was run over by an armor-plated Caterpillar bulldozer, a machine sold by the U.S. to Israel, the armor put in place for the purpose of knocking down homes without damage to the machine. Rachel Corrie was 23 years old, from Olympia; a sane, articulate, and dedicated American who had studied with care the methods of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. At the time that she was run over, and then backed over again, she was wearing a luminous orange jacket and holding a megaphone. There is a photograph of her talking to the soldier of the Israel Defense Forces, in the cabin of his bulldozer, not long before he did it. None of the eyewitnesses believed that the killing was accidental. Perhaps the soldier was tired of the peace workers; it was that kind of day. Perhaps, in some part of himself, he guessed that he was living at the beginning of a period of impunity.

The Israeli government never produced the investigation it promised into the death of Rachel Corrie (as her parents indicate in a statement published today). The inquiry urged by her congressional representative, Adam Smith, brought no result from the American state department under Condoleezza Rice. Her story was lost for a while in the grand narrative of the American launching of the war against Iraq. Thoroughly lost, and for a reason. The  rules of engagement America employed in Iraq were taught to our soldiers, as Dexter Filkins revealed, by officers of the IDF; the U.S. owed a debt to Israel for knowledge of the methods of destruction; and we were using the same Caterpillar machines against Iraqi homes. An inquiry into the killing of Rachel Corrie was hardly likely, given the burden of that debt and that association.

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BBC rejects play on Israel’s history for impartiality reasons

The Guardian reports today that the BBC declined to broadcast a play examining Israeli history and attitudes to war despite believing that it is a ‘brilliant piece’.  This follows some criticism of the play in the right wing press.

The BBC has declined to broadcast a radio version of Caryl Churchill’s controversial new stage play about Israeli history, claiming it needed to remain impartial ‑ the same reason given for declining to air the Gaza emergency appeal.

In a move likely to resurrect the row over the BBC’s refusal in January to broadcast the appeal to help the people of Gaza, Radio 4 rejected an unsolicited manuscript of the play, Seven Jewish Children, which recently finished a short run at the Royal Court theatre. BBC sources suggest that a significant factor in the decision was awareness of the controversy stirred by Seven Jewish Children during its theatre run and the fact that the BBC has only recently survived the onslaught of criticism for its refusal to broadcast the Gaza appeal. In an email seen by the Guardian, Radio 4’s drama commissioning editor Jeremy Howe said that he and Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer thought Churchill’s play was a “brilliant piece”.

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Charles Freeman’s Victory

Justin Raimondo argues that although forced to withdraw, “Chas” Freeman took the Israel lobby down with him.

The nixing of Charles “Chas” Freeman from a post as head of the National Intelligence Council is not, as is commonly averred, a victory for the Israel lobby. It is, instead, a Pyrrhic victory – that is, a victory so costly that it really amounts to a defeat for them. Sure, they managed to keep out a trenchant critic of their Israel-centric and grossly distorted view of a proper American foreign policy, and, yes, they managed to smear him and put others on notice that someone with his views is radioactive, as far as a high-level job in the foreign policy establishment is concerned. And yet – and yet ….
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Gaza and the Westminster ‘Friends of Israel’

Stuart Littlewood writing on the Zionist lackeys in Westminster:

In January, while Israel’s military was pulverising Gaza for 22 days and nights and incinerating its women and children with phosphor bombs, the Liberal Democrat Party in the UK published an article by its Friends of Israel wing, entitled ‘Israel has no option but to defend itself against Hamas and Iran’.

According to this, “Israel is fighting in Gaza to stop the firing of rockets at towns and cities well within Israel’s internationally recognized, pre-1967 borders. These rockets are not home-made fireworks; they are sophisticated weapons, which often kill innocent people. They are fired without precision…”

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Robert Fisk on Flashpoints

Note: The interview begins at 3:40.

Today on Flashpoints: Internationally-renowned Middle East reporter Robert Fisk talks to Dennis Bernstein about Afghanistan, Iraq and the recent attacks in Gaza and the way in which the Western press continues to fail in covering these stories

UN World Conference Against Racism and the Israel Lobby

In mid-February Obama met with Jewish leaders to explain why the government had decided to participate in planning the “controversial” World Conference Against Racism.  The Haaretz reported that:

The closed-door talks were led by the White House and the State Department, according to the JTA, and the content of the meeting was off-the-record.

The meeting was held after the State Department sent a high-level team to an informal preparatory session in Geneva this week, but declared that a “change in direction” was required before it could commit to full participation in the April meeting.

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Science Museum Takes Political Stand – for Israel

More on the Zionist Federations PR operation “Israel Day of Science” designed to distract from Israel’s criminal behaviour by implanting a positive image of the state in those that it can.

It is ridiculous for the Science Museum to say it will not cancel the event because that would be taking a political stand.  Do they fail to see that holding an event that promotes Israel is a political stand too?

The Zionst Federation are not a neutral body interested in educating children about science.  They are interested in education children about, what they see as, a positive side to the Zionist state as a PR offensive attempting to control the public mind.  It’s perception management by a lobby group for a foreign criminal state and the Science Museum should not be a party to its manipulation.

The Science Museum, one of Britain’s most prestigious public institutions, was embroiled in a row last night after being accused of promoting Israeli universities whose research was used in the country’s military campaign in Gaza.

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Empire – Israel and the US

You won’t see anything like this on the BBC. The Al Jazeera show Empire on the US relationship with Israel.  Interviewees include Stephen Walt, Jim Lobe, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Anatol Lieven, Stephen Walt and Aaron David Miller. There is a hard hitting segment on AIPAC towards the end of the Part 1. However, despite the excellent contributions from interviewees, especially Lobe, Shlaim, Lieven and Stephen Walt, the host keeps imposing the tired old Leftist view of Israel as a ‘strategic asset’ to the US on the narrative. The program could have also done without the Egyptian idiot in the second part of the show.

In this episode of Empire, Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, and his guests zero in on the special relationship between the US and Israel.

They explore who benefits from the special relationship and whether the status quo will prevail.

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