Nazis then and now

What leftists believe (on boycotts)

So Israel considers barring entry to those people who campaign to stop people going to Israel, i.e. Israel has decided to boycott the boycotters. And the boycotters are now furious that they cannot enter Israel....

See:

• Leftist logic on Iran
• More leftist logic

Boycotting Jews and the Jewish State: Nazis then and now

See how different the current BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign against the Jewish State is from the Nazi boycott.

David Collier exposes the big lie behind the BDS movement.

Britain’s ‘official’ Jews: supreme hypocrites and not pro-Israel at all

Having previously condemned Donald Trump for daring to restrict Muslim terrorists entering the USA, the Board of Deputies has again decided it knows what 's best for a foreign country's security  by condemning Israel's long overdue law that bans entry to boycott activists (i.e. those who seek the destruction of the Jewish State). The BoD were inevitably joined in their condemnation by every
other one of the 'official' left-leaning Jewish organisations in the UK (including anti-Zionist ones like the New Israel Fund).

This would be the very same Board of Deputies who successfully lobbied the UK government to ban pro-Israel American bloggers (Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer) entry to the UK on the basis that they might 'incite Muslims'. Nobody does hypocrisy and fake Israel support as well as the Board of Deputies.

Bearing in mind that many of these 'official' British Jews also condemned Israel for defending itself against Hamas in 2014, it's a good thing they weren't making official pronouncements during World War 2 otherwise we would have seen headlines like

"British Jews demand Warsaw Ghetto residents surrender peacefully to German police"

See also

• BoD's obsession with 'Islamophobia'
• UK Jews blast 'undemocratic Israeli' law that bans boycotters
• UK Chief Rabbi condemns Trump
• UK bans Geller and Spencer

See also BOD links

Palestine Solidarity Campaign: Frinton-on-Sea branch*

Following David Collier's detailed exposure of the anti-semitism endemic throughout the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, it seems I might have to remove the 'satire' classification from this piece posted in 2015.

News and Events this week

Ron’s Record Store in Frinton Close: Following news last week that this shop was selling a copy of “The Israelites” by Desmond Decker, we are mounting a 24-hour vigil to stop anybody entering the store until a) it is permanently closed down b) Ron issues a statement disassociating himself with the Zionist entity ; and c) Ron is evicted from the Old Age Home where he has been living for the past 12 years. Remember: no violence is necessary (rocks through the windows are, however, permissible).

Pensioners Travel in the High Road: As you know this travel agents’ had been advertising cruises that stop at Israel-occupied Haifa. During our non-violent demonstration at the store last week in which we poured 8,000 gallons of red ink representing Palestinian blood on their floor, and burnt every brochure with the word ‘Israel’ in it, we discovered an invoice showing that Mr and Mrs Jones of Frinton Mews have booked a cruise stopping at Haifa for their Golden Wedding Anniversary. Hence see events below.

Starting Monday We will be holding a ‘lock-in’ outside the Jones's bungalow in Frinton Mews. We will peacefully stop anybody leaving or entering the bungalow until the Jones’s cancel their cruise booking  and donate all of the money for the trip (plus an additional donation of £28,000) to the Palestine Foundation for Homicide Bombers.

Tuesday: We are planning a new peaceful tactic called a “scream-in die-in” at Tesco Express on the High Road. Although we succeeded in banning all Zionist products from the store two years ago, the store manager has refused our reasonable request to donate 93% of all future profits from the store to the Palestine Training Centre for Teenage Stabbers. By starving this superb training Centre of desperately needed funding, Tesco is directly contributing to the brutal murder of 1000 Palestinian babies every day by the Zionist occupation forces.  Hence the "scream-in die in" will simulate these murders. Our members will scream for 2 hours and then lie on the floor pretending to be dead babies.

Wednesday: At Frinton Town Hall we will be debating the motion "Zionism is ten times worse than Nazism". Speaking for the motion is the esteemed scholar Farooq Hitler Hussain from the Iranian Academy of Anti-Zionism. To demonstrate our fair-mindedness we have invited a Jewess (Hannah Dumbfeld of the Jewish pro-peace Yucked organisation) who will propose the counter-motion "Zionism is only a little bit worse than Nazism".

Thursday: Singing and leafleting in the High Road. We have some exciting new leaflets with beautifully photoshopped images of dead babies and the banner headline: "Israel does this with YOUR tax money". We will be singing for 3 hours non-stop a new version of the song "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free". In this version after each 20 repetitions we will add the words "No Zionists in Frinton-on-Sea"

Friday: Demonstration outside WH Smiths for continuing to sell copies of the book "A Children's World Atlas" that includes a map of the Middle East with the Zionist entity named as "Israel".

Saturday: Trip to the nearest synagogue (Southend)  for "Zionism=Nazism" wall-painting. Note: we are NOT anti-Semites so please remember to scream “Zionist scum” and not “Jewish scum” when the worshippers come out after the Sabbath service.


*satire but not much different to the activities of dozens of local "Palestine Solidarity Committees"

Also see:
alternative version of this post 
Hugging the Jew haters

Theresa May banned American bloggers from entering the UK because they were 'pro-Israel'

In 2013 I wrote extensively about the banning of Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller from the UK. As part of their subsequent lawsuit against the UK Government, Spencer and Geller received documents confirming that their pro-Israel views had been a major factor in the decision to ban them.

It is important to note that Theresa May who - according to just about everybody - is shortly going to become the next British Prime Minister, is the person who was responsible for this decision as Home Secretary (and the Board of Deputies lobbied for the ban). Who needs Jeremy Corbyn......

See also:

• Shock move after May appoined Leader
• Geller and Spencer banned from the UK because they were 'too pro-Israel'.   
• The banning of Spencer and Geller 
• Board of Deputies statement on banning of Spencer and Geller
• More on the Jewish Board of Deputies disgraceful kowtowing to Islamists 

The day the Jews of London and their friends fought back

Update: see this follow-up for people who think none of this has anything to do with antisemitism.

Today, like so many days in London over the last 10 years, a group of antisemites who go under the laughable guise of 'Palestine supporters' planned to:

1. March through the streets of London shouting despicable lies against Israel without being challenged
2. Hand out leaflets spewing more lies, hatred and antisemitic blood libels to unwitting Londoners trying to enjoy a day out in the sunshine; and finally
3. Lay siege to a modest Jewish Israeli-owned shop with the explicit intention of forcing it out of business, without a murmur of protest against them.

But NOT today. They met their match because, thanks to outstanding work by Gemma Sheridan (see update* about this below), Paul Besser, Joseph Cohen, Yochy Davis,  and others, Israel supporters had found out their plans and, at short notice, got together an impressive counter demo. And for over 3 hours Israel supporters were right in the faces of the antisemites ensuring that not a single Londoner or tourist heard their lies unchallenged.

It all started when the antisemites gathered in Soho Square and were about to serenade the visitors there trying to have a peaceful lunch with their classic tune "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free".  They were greeted first by Ishmael Sali, who they assumed would be joining their hatefest.


The look on their faces was quite something to see when Ishmael pulled out a large Israeli flag (see more pictures of Ishmael below), followed by others doing the same. Within seconds the terrorist supporting goons were surrounded by more people with Israel flags (more people in fact than the antisemites) and for the 20 minutes they stayed there singing the Israel supporters drowned out their noise with their own, including with some impressive shofar blowing.

When the antisemites started their march toward Covent Garden they were surrounded and followed all the way. For the 2 hours they were outside Sabon Israel supporters made sure to counter their lies. In particular they made sure the lies in these leaflets they were handing out did not go unchallenged:

And their ludicrous stunts - like letting off smoke bombs in red and then in the colours of 'Palestine' and attempting to throw a bag filled with shit were muted.

Even when their demo outside Sabon ended (to a rousing rendition of Hatikvah) the antisemites were followed all the way back. For once they did not have the streets of London to their own and they did not like it one bit.

Although still relatively small in numbers today's direct action by Israel supporters was a thousand times more effective than anything done in the last 10 years by the entire set of organisations run by Britain's 'official Jews' combined (UPDATE: Note I am referring to those 'official' demos and not other direct action events like today of which there have been quite a few). In fact I have no doubt that if the Board of Deputies and CST were aware of what was going to happen they would either have tried to stop it or would have made sure the Israel supporters were penned in as far away from the action as possible (which they manage to do every time) to maintain the image of the 'trembling Jew' **(UPDATE: see below comments about this from the President of the BoD).

Every time the 'Palestine Solidarity Committee' plans one of these stunts I can't help thinking of this. And it's about time they are shown up for the bigots they are.

UPDATE: Look at the antisemitic abuse after a video of the counter demo was posted.


PS I like these photos from today (courtesy Sharon Zacks):

and this one courtesy of Israel Advocacy Movement which perfectly sums up the day:

And here is what Israel Advocacy Movement says about today:

***TODAY WE SCORED A DECISIVE VICTORY***
London Palestine Action tried to close down an Israeli cosmetics shop in London called Sabon, their reason? Because the Sabon factory is in Kiryat Gat, a city well within the 1949 Armistice Lines, this was not a protest against "settlements", disgracefully this was a protest against the very existence of Israel.
London Palestine Action promoted this event for over a month, yet without advertising we were able to mobilise far more activists than they had. For one of the first times in years, our chants of "1, 2, 3, 4 stop the boycott, stop the war, 5, 6, 7, 8 stop the boycott, stop the hate", drowned out their screams of "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"... a call for the destruction of Israel.

With our activists and supporters robed in Israeli flags we were successful in obscuring their message of hate.
The cherry on the cake, was when Chloe organised our supporters to end the day with a shopping spree in Sabon... the perfect response to a boycott.
For those that couldn't make it today, please take 5 minutes to head over to https://www.sabonuk.co.uk/en/ and support a great business that has found itself the focus of a vile and bigoted hate campaign.
Thank you so much each and everyone who came and continues to support Israel with us.

UPDATE: Wow it seems we REALLY got to them:

..and check the antisemitic abuse on the view comments

*UPDATE: Gemma Sheridan was working solidly on this - and the counter-demos that took place the day before - for six weeks and deserves special credit.

**UPDATE: Following my posting of this article the President of the Board of Deputies (Jonathan Arkush) wrote this response (which he is happy for me to share here):

Dear Edgar

I was very pleased indeed to read about the counter-demonstration.  You rather did the Board a disservice with your wide-of-the-mark comment.  The Board has always supported demonstrating and indeed has organised many of the leading ones.  The very last thing we would do is to have restricted this type of event !  Provided, obviously, any demonstration is conducted within the law I can assure you it will have the Board’s support.
I think you are aware that under my presidency the Board has spoken up and acted loudly and clearly for British Jews and Israel and I assure you will continue to do so without fear or favour.
What we need to do is to act with unity.  Let us support each other strongly and steer away from making derogatory comments – we can save those for the real opposition.
Regards  

Jonathan

UPDATE: a commentator expressed concern at the (well-meaning) banner saying "Israel is not an apartheid state etc") held up by one of the pro-Israel demonstrators, feeling it was far too defensive. I have written about this here.

See also:

• On the appropriate response to the lies and blood libels against Israel
• Israel's 'apartheid' system does not seem to be working too well ...
• Making Frinton-on-Sea a Zionist-free zone. 
• The antisemite test

Incredible new boycott announcement from Israel boycotting artists

1 March 2016 update (details below): Two 2016 Oscar winners (Mark Rylance and Asif Kapadia) are officially ASS-HOLES

"We are a group of 700 extremely important and famous artists and actors. One of us was in a pop group 35 years ago and another played a minor character in one of the Harry Potter movies. We even boast a comedian who appeared in an episode of the Young Ones 33 years ago. In our letter to the Guardian we announced a boycott of Israel, singling out the tiny Jewish state for punishment for a set of made-up offences communicated to us by a respected member of the peaceful Hamas organisation. Of course, even if these fabricated offences were true we know they pale into insignificance compared with the crimes against humanity being carried out by many dozens of countries around the world, but we would never dream of criticising those countries and we would love to offer our services if only they would have us.

Our letter therefore proves beyond doubt that we are all
Anti-Semitic Sanctimonious Hypocritical Old Leftist Egotistical Scumbags (ASS-HOLES)

Hence, we are announcing today that we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with ASS-HOLES - i.e. ourselves. We demand ASS-HOLES cease all participation in any event we have been invited to work on. This will be very painful as it means collectively we will have to turn down at least 3 jobs scheduled for the next 5 years. Since the boycott applies to all cultural and social interactions this also means that any ASS-HOLES who are married to each other must get divorced immediately. ASS-HOLES who have non-ASS-HOLES as partners should also ask their partners – and indeed all other family members - to cease speaking with them. For the sake of optimal family cohesion we recommend that ASS-HOLES remove themselves entirely from the family home and live in isolation.  ASS-HOLES will continue our boycott of all ASS-HOLES until we stop spewing our anti-Semitic lies and admit that not only do we know nothing about Israel, but that we only signed our letter in the desperate hope of reviving our moribund careers. To see the full list of supporters, go to ASS-HOLESforpalestine.org.uk."

Peter Kosminsky, Mike Leigh, Jimmy McGovern, Phyllida Lloyd, Max Stafford-Clark, Will Alsop OBE, John Berger, Miriam Margolyes, Maggie Steed, Riz Ahmed, Anna Carteret, Jeremy Hardy, Brian Eno, Richard Ashcroft, Gillian Slovo, China Miéville, Aminatta Forna, Hari Kunzru, Liz Lochhead, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Peter Ahrends, David Calder, Caryl Churchill, Sacha Craddock, Selma Dabbagh, Ken Loach, Roger Michell, April De Angelis, Andy de la Tour, Mike Hodges, Rachel Holmes, Ann Jungman, Kika Markham, Simon McBurney, Andrew O’Hagan, Courttia Newland, Michael Radford, Lynne Reid Banks, Kamila Shamsie, Alexei Sayle, Roger Waters, Mark Thomas, Susan Wooldridge, Laura Mulvey, Pauline Melville, Khalid Abdalla, Bidisha, Nicholas Blincoe, Leah Borrromeo, Haim Bresheeth, Victoria Brittain, Niall Buggy, Tam Dean Burn, Jonathan Burrows, Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso, Ian Christie, Liam Cunningham, Ivor Dembina, Shane Dempsey, Patrick Driver, Okin Earl, Leon Rosselson, Sally El Hosaini, Paul Laverty, Eyal Sivan, John Smith, Mitra Tabrizian, Siobhan Redmond, Ian Rickson, Tom Leonard, Sonja Linden, David Mabb, Rose Issa, Gareth Evans, Alisa Lebow, Annie Firbank, James Floyd, Jane Frere, Kadija George, Bob Giles, Mel Gooding, Tony Graham, Penny Woolcock, Omar Robert Hamilton, James Holcombe, Adrian Hornsby, John Keane, Brigid Keenan, Hannah Khalil, Shahid Khan, Sabrina Mahfouz, Sarah McDade, Jonathan Munby, Lizzie Nunnery, Rebecca O’Brien, Timothy Pottier, Maha Rahwanji, Ravinder Randhawa, Leila Sansour, Seni Seneviratne, Anna Sherbany, Eyal Sivan, Kareem Samara, Cat Villiers, Esther Wilson, Emily Young, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Jeremy Page, Sarah Streatfeild, Colin Darke, Russell Mills, Elaine Di Campo, Treasa O’Brien

Update: 1 March 2016. Two of the 2016 Oscar winners are officially ASS-HOLES.  Mark Rylance - the Brit who won Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars - is one of the signatories of the antisemitic boycott Israel campaign. The latest list is here. And of course Jeremy Corbyn is one of his mates (is there an antisemite he is not mates with?)

 
Another 2016 Oscar winner who is on the latest list of ASS-HOLES was Asif Kapadia who directed the film Amy which won the Best Documentary award. The film is about the late Jewish singer Amy Winehouse. Amy's father, Mitch called Kapadia’s film “a one dimensional, miserable and misleading portrayal of Amy”. But, of course, an ignorant bigot like Kapadia knows Amy better than her father....

See also: Schmucks: Oscar winner boycotting Israel

Update: 700 more artists now boycott Israel 

Update: See Daphne Anson's analyis of the boycotters.

It's official: LSE will not provide any balance to its anti-Israel propaganda

LSE: academic freedom means the right not to allow any conflicting voice to those who seek the destruction of Israel

This is an update to the long-running saga of the LSE's Arab funded anti-Israel propaganda unit (also known laughingly as the "Middle East Research Centre") and the many incidents of anti-semitism that have resulted from the climate of Israel hatred it propagates. This is a Centre which literally wiped Israel off its own map of the Middle East, bars Israeli students from its scholarships and is at the forefront of the academic boycott against Israel. In the most recent episode the LSE Director Prof Calhoun tried to cover for the Centre by saying it did not discriminate against Israel and Israelis since it held events discussing Israel and even employed a person 'with an interest in Israel'. My letter pointed out that the events he referred to universally called for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and the person with an 'interest' was an anti-Zionist Jew who could accurately be defined as an antisemite since she had also lobbied for Jews in the UK to be banned from carrying out one of the basic tenets of their faith (circumcision).

As Calhoun did not reply to my letter I sent the following reminder yesterday:

Dear Prof Calhoun

I have not had any response to my letter of 15 November which exposed the ludicrous inadequacy and errors in the response you made to my serious complaints.

I would be grateful if you could at least acknowledge the concerns I have raised, especially as the LSE was again in the news last week for an anti-Semitic article published by The LSE Centre for Human Rights:

https://cst.org.uk/news/blog/2015/12/04/cst-condemns-post-on-lse-human-rights-blog
http://hurryupharry.org/2015/12/06/whispering-in-the-lift-on-the-lse-and-anti-semitism/

Yours

The response I received today confirms that the LSE's official position is to allow and encourage discrimination against Israel and to refuse any attempt to balance the arguments.

Thank you for your email of 15 November addressed to Professor Calhoun. I am sorry for the delay responding to you.

I do appreciate that you feel extremely strongly about the issues you raise and that you have not been satisfied with what you have heard from us so far. I am afraid, though, that we must recognise that academics including those in senior positions frequently espouse causes in which they believe. As a liberal university, we don’t think it would be appropriate to infringe upon their right to do so, however controversial some views may be in some quarters.

I should point out that Professor Calhoun never claimed that the instances we cited earlier were uncritical of Israel.

We are legally required to defend academic freedom and to promote freedom of speech within the law. This does not extend to a requirement to present all sides of an argument on every occasion on which one arises. However, our guidelines for those chairing public meetings make clear that chairs should remain neutral, that they should ensure that they take questions from a balance of those in the audience and that an opportunity is provided for the views of the speaker or speakers to be challenged. Also, the encouragement of free debate is fundamental to teaching and other academic activity at LSE.

I am sorry that you do not have a good opinion of LSE at present.

Andrew Webb
Acting Secretary

I will now be writing to  Lord Myners Chair of the LSE's Board of Governers, since I note that one of their responsibilities is "provide the Council (the LSE ‘Board’) and the Director with insight as to how the School is perceived nationally and internationally."

Previous links

• LSE hosts event on Israel but only invites anti-Israel activists to speak
• LSE over-represented with jerks signing Israel boycott letter
• LSE 's New Middle East Centre eradicates Israel
• LSE's anti-Israel Middle East Centre: Update 
• Another update to the LSE Middle East Centre saga
• Yet another update to the LSE story
• LSE Director forced to resign  
• Israelis barred from applying to the LSE's Middle East Research Centre
• Guess which Israelis are welcome to speak at the Centre .... 
• Update on LSE Middle East Centre

See also:

• LSE hosts exhibition honouring Palestinian terrorists
• Murder of Israelis glorified at LSE
• Israeli ambassador's talk disrupted at LSE
• Academics vote to boycott themselves 

PSC and the Co-Op: boycotters to boycott the boycotters who boycotted the boycotters?

No the headline is not satire. In 2012 the Co-Op - under pressure from the anti-Israel PSC ("Palestine Solidarity Campaign") decided to impose an Israel boycott. Now its Bank has closed down the accounts of the PSC. The Israel boycotters (PSC) are claiming it is a conspiracy to stop criticism of Israel and will no doubt call for a boycott of the Co-Op (the Israel boycotters) who have now boycotted the PSC (UPDATE: just checked the PSC twitter account and indeed it is full of people saying they will now boycott the Co-Op). It is not quite on a scale of ISIS v Hezbollah, or even Alien v Predator, but it is nevertheless entertaining.

Below is my correspondence in 2012 following the  Co-Op's decision decision to boycott Israeli goods.


First to Co-Op Letter 25 June 2012

Dear Sir/Madam,

Withdrawal of funds (A/C XXXXXX) in protest at Co-Operative’s anti-Semitic anti-Israel policy

I would like you to know that I have today withdrawn all of the funds in this account as a small protest against the Co-op’s despicable anti-Semitic policy that specifically boycotts goods produced by Jewish communities in the disputed West Bank territories. Boycotting Jewish businesses is what the Nazis did in the 1930s. At least my action shows that boycotts can work two ways.

What is sad is that the Co-Op decision has been adopted due to pressure from the “Palestine Solidarity Campaign” – a group of anti-Semitic terrorist-supporting liars and con artists who actually have no interest whatsoever in the welfare of the ‘Palestinians’ but simply want to remove every Jew from the land of Israel. Shame on the Co-op for being hoodwinked by these thuggish goons. The Co-op really should do its homework and find out more about who the PSC really are and whether it really wants to be associated with them.

If you do reply to this letter, please do not bother insulting my intelligence by repeating the nonsensical statements already made about this ‘not being anti-Israel’ because it ‘only applies to goods from illegal West Bank settlements’. The PSC regards the whole of Israel as ‘illegal Jewish settlements’. If it is ‘human rights’ the Co-op is really interested in then there are many dozens of other countries it should be boycotting rather than Israel; one of these would be the Palestinian Authority which treats women on a par with cattle, creams off most of the billions of dollars of Western aid it receives every year into its officials’ Swiss bank accounts, and brainwashes its school children to ‘seek martyrdom’ by killing Jews.

Yours sincerely,

Edgar Davidson

Co-op response from Amanda Bailey (Customer Relations)  19 July 2012

Letter from the Co-Op

My response to Amanda Baily, 4 August 2012

Dear Ms Bailey,

Thank you for your letter of 19th July. I have a number of follow-up questions.

My first set of questions relate to your choice of criteria for boycotting countries. You assert that under your “Human Rights and Trade Policy” you withdraw all trade when there is a ‘broad international consensus a settlement is illegal’ and that ‘there are only two examples of such settlements: the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and the Moroccan settlements in Western Sahara”.  Before addressing the issue of the legality or otherwise of the Israeli settlements, I note from your website that the most serious humans rights abusers in the world, namely Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe are not on your boycott list. So my questions are:

1. ‘Occupation’  is the only criteria that you mention; what other criteria do you have as part of your “Human Rights and Trade Policy”?

2. Is denial of equal rights to women and/or minorities included in your criteria, and if not why not?

3. Is persecution of gays and lesbians included in your criteria, and if not why not?

4. Is the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities and political dissidents included in your criteria, and if not why not?

5. Is sponsoring and glorifying terrorism included in your criteria, and if not why not?

6. Is state sponsored anti-Semitism included in your criteria, and if not why not?

7. Assuming the answer to at least one of questions 1-6 is ‘yes’ then why are you not boycotting goods from every one of the 58 Muslim countries in the world?

8. Is “conducting illegal wars far from a country’s own borders” one of the criteria, and if so why is the Co-Op not boycotting goods from the USA,  France, Italy, Holland etc. In fact, how comes the Co-Op is not boycotting goods from the UK?

My next set of questions concerns the issue of ‘illegal settlements’ of which you say there are only two examples (one of which is the Israelis):

9. Are you aware that, even according to the United Nations (resolution 242), the West Bank does not belong to any national territory but rather is considered disputed territory whose borders are to be determined under a final status peace agreement?

10. Are you aware of the recent Levy Report that demolishes the false narrative of Israeli settlement and occupation by restating many of the obvious points of law; most significantly that Israel is not an occupying power and did not seize any land from another state. Indeed all of the land that Israel is accused of occupying in the West Bank is actually land that was seized from it by the invading Jordanian and other Arab armies during its 1948 War of Independence?

11. Are you aware that the only legal basis for denouncing the Jews who returned in 1967 to the homes that they had been expelled from in 1948 as “settlers” is by recognizing the Jordanian conquests of those territories. But those conquests were never recognized or accepted. Not even by the international community.

12. Assuming that your claim of a ‘broad international consensus’ is the 2004 International Court of Justice ruling (which Israel did not participate in and which has been demolished by the Levy report) are you aware that one of the  ICC ‘judges’ was  Al Khasawneh who had a blatant conflict of interest, since he was an advisor to the King of Jordan and later became the Prime Minister of Jordan?

13. Why does your notion of occupied territories fail to include the approximately 160 other territories around the world that are ‘disputed’ (each of which necessarily involves one country ‘occupying it’ against the wishes of some other country or national group)?

14. In particular why does your definition not include genuinely brutal occupations such as: the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus, or even the Russian occupation of Abkhazia, especially as China, Russia and Turkey all of have infinitely worse human rights records than Israel? 

15. You are presumably aware that one of the disputed international territories is the Falklands Islands, which Argentina claims is illegally occupied by the UK. A significant majority of countries in the UN now agree with the Argentine position. So, as per question 8 above, why is the Co-Op not boycotting the UK?

16. Are you aware that any notion of an ‘international consensus’ is fundamentally irrelevant because the United Nations contains 58 Muslim states – all  human rights abusers as described above - who provide a built-in ‘consensus’ on any anti-Israel motion that anybody cares to think of? 

My next question concerns your assertion that the Co-Op “continue to seek increased trade with Palestinian businesses.” The corrupt Palestinian Authority is not only guilty of all of the human rights offences listed above, but is actually one of the world’s worst offenders. For anti-Semitism the PA truly are world-beaters with their indoctrination of children (becoming a suicide bomber to kill Jews is the highest ambition of most Palestinians children); in the Palestinian Authority selling land to a Jew (not an Israeli please note) is punishable by death and numerous Palestinian citizens have been killed for this ‘crime’. So:

17: How is the Co-Op’s “Human Rights and Trade Policy” consistent with seeking increased traded with such a brutal, corrupt regime?

And finally, three general questions:

18. Do you believe that Israel – the only liberal democracy in the Middle East where all minorities have equal rights – is a worse human rights violator than Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Russia, China etc?

19. How is your policy to boycott goods produced by Jewish communities in the West Bank anything other than pure anti-Semitism?

20. How and why did the Co-Op get hoodwinked into a nonsensical hypocritical policy (that will ultimately be self-damaging) by a small group of congenital anti-Semites disguised as ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists.

Yours sincerely,

Edgar Davidson

Amanda Baily response , 4 September 2012

My response to Amanda Baily, 7 September 2012

Dear Ms Baily

The fact that you made no attempt to answer even one of my questions means it is safe to conclude that the only rational definition of what constitutes an abuse of the Co-Op's “Human Rights and Trade Policy” is that the country must be named "Israel". In particular we can conclude that:

1. ‘Occupation’ is the only criteria you consider as part of your “Human Rights and Trade Policy”

2. Denial of equal rights to women and/or minorities is NOT one of your criteria of interest

3. Persecution of gays and lesbians is NOT one of your criteria of interest

4. Brutal suppression of ethnic minorities and political dissidents is NOT one of your criteria of interest

5. Sponsoring and glorifying terrorism is NOT one of your criteria of interest

6. State sponsored anti-Semitism is NOT one of your criteria of interest

7. The Co-Op is happy to trade with all 58 Muslim countries in the world even though they are all guilty of the human rights abuses listed in 2-6.

8. Conducting "illegal wars far from a country’s own borders” is NOT one of your criteria of interest and that is why the Co-Op is not boycotting goods from the USA, France, Italy, Holland ... and the UK etc.

9. The Co-op is selective in which 'international consensus' it accepts. In particular, it rejects United Nations resolution 242, which specifies that the West Bank does not belong to any national territory but rather is considered disputed territory whose borders are to be determined under a final status peace agreement.

10. The Co-op also rejects the findings of the recent Levy Report.

11. The Co-Op is not aware  that the only legal basis for denouncing the Jews who returned in 1967 to the homes that they had been expelled from in 1948 as “settlers” is by recognizing the Jordanian conquests of those territories, even though those conquests were never recognized or accepted. Not even by the international community.

12. The Co-op are not aware that one of the ICC ‘judges’ who was responsible for the 'international legal ruling' they refer to was Al Khasawneh who had a blatant conflict of interest, since he was an advisor to the King of Jordan and later became the Prime Minister of Jordan

13. The Co-op's notion of occupied territories fails to include the approximately 160 other territories around the world that are ‘disputed’ (each of which necessarily involves one country ‘occupying it’ against the wishes of some other country or national group)?

14. The Co-op's definition does not include genuinely brutal occupations such as: the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus, or even the Russian occupation of Abkhazia, especially as China, Russia and Turkey all of have infinitely worse human rights records than Israel

15. The Co-op are not aware that one of the disputed international territories is the Falklands Islands, which Argentina claims is illegally occupied by the UK and that a significant majority of countries in the UN now agree with the Argentine position.

16. The Co-op are not aware that any notion of an ‘international consensus’ is fundamentally irrelevant because the United Nations contains 58 Muslim states – all human rights abusers as described above - who provide a built-in ‘consensus’ on any anti-Israel motion that anybody cares to think of

17. The Co-op is happy to “continue to seek increased trade with Palestinian businesses.” despite the corrupt Palestinian Authority being guilty of all of the human rights offences listed above

18. The Co-op believes that Israel – the only liberal democracy in the Middle East where all minorities have equal rights – is a worse human rights violator than Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Russia, China etc

19.  The Co-op's policy to boycott goods produced by Jewish communities in the West Bank is indeed pure anti-Semitism

20. The Co-Op did indeed get hoodwinked into a nonsensical hypocritical policy (that will ultimately be self-damaging) by a small group of congenital anti-Semites disguised as ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists.

Why has nobody called out these 'Israel supporting' Conservatives for their hypocrisy?

The EU labelling of Jewish (and only Jewish) products from the 'occupied territories' (which includes Jerusalem and the Golan Heights that presumably the EU wants Israel to concede to either the butcher Assad or ISIS) is the most blatant piece of antisemitic discrimination to come out of Europe since the Nazi Nuremberg Laws.  But what is puzzling me is why nobody from the Jewish community in the UK is questioning the role of 'Israel supporting' David Cameron in this. For once Cameron can't even pretend to hide behind the EU on this one because his government has actually been the main sponsor for this antisemitic law in the EU, continually pushing the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini whenever there were obstacles.

As is also clear from the current slavering over Boris Johnson (who has continually slammed Israel for 'disproportinate violence against Palestinians', claimed Iran poses absolutely no threat to anybody, and who insists that Islamic terrorism never has anything to do with Islam) the British Jewish Community sets spectacularly low bars over who it considers to be a 'true friend of Israel'.

See also

• Cameron: hypocrite and liar
• David Cameron: an ignorant bigot
• Variety of policies offered by UK political parties

JK Rowling: would actually really love to boycott Israel ..but not its anti-Zionist writers and academics

24 hours after signing a statement opposing the cultural boycott of Israel (a very weak statement anyway, since it assumes the flawed narrative that the Palestinians will be happy if they are given their own Jew-free state after the forced evacuation of nearly a million Jews from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria), JK Rowling has made clear her real beliefs:

The Palestinian community has suffered untold injustice and brutality. I want to see the Israeli government held to account for that injustice and brutality. Boycotting Israel on every possible front has its allure. It satisfies the human urge to do something, anything, in the face of horrific human suffering.

What sits uncomfortably with me is that severing contact with Israel’s cultural and academic community means refusing to engage with some of the Israelis who are most pro-Palestinian, and most critical of Israel’s government. Those are voices I’d like to hear amplified, not silenced. A cultural boycott places immovable barriers between artists and academics who want to talk to each other, understand each other and work side-by-side for peace.

Varda Epstein has written a superb response to Rowling's nonsense which should be read in full. She notes:

Rowling wants to encourage Jew-hating Jewish Israelis who damn their own people and ignore their suffering, thus strengthening the hand of Arab terror by giving the terrorists a pass for their brutal be‎havior.  Rowling wants to make Arab terror about something else: lack of hope, terrible treatment, humiliation, the usual lies. Instead of what it's really about: plain old, garden variety Jew-hatred.

Interestingly, Rowling's stance is identical to that of left-wing Jewish students in the UK who used exactly the same arguments last year to oppose the academic boycott. Here is the graphic I did then:

LSE and its antisemitic Middle East Centre over-represented with jerks signing academics' boycott Israel letter

No surprise that the LSE is over-represented with jerks signing the academics' boycott Israel letter in the Guardian (21 out of the 343). The LSE hosts the Arab funded Middle East Centre, which ever since it was set up in 2010 has been a focus of anti-Israel bigotry and discrimination.  I have been covering this from the start (see links below) - although this barely touches on the extent of their appalling behaviour (I have not had time to publish all the stuff I know). It is especially telling that the Centre Head, Prof. Fawaz Gerges, is one of the signatories as it confirms what a fraud and liar he is.  In my various correspondence with the LSE they have tried to deny, for example, not only blatant anti-Israel bias but also discrimination against Israeli academics and students. Yet, now we have the Head, no less, declaring openly that he is a boycotter.  And this is also the guy who claims to be an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict and is often used in that capacity by the BBC an Sky News, who go along with the pretence that he is somehow an even-handed expert.

In addition to the odious Gerges, Dr. John Chalcraft (who is on the Management Committee of the Centre) is also a signatory. It was Chalcroft who in 2011 proposed the LSE motion to boycott Israel  - a position hardly consistent with somebody managing a Centre that is supposed to be dedicated to research about the Middle East. But a quick look at the Centre's publications and seminars over the last 5 years confirms that genuine academic research is not what they do. They do political propaganda, much of it targeted against the one country in the Middle East that they actually have no knowledge of because they do not allow its representatives (except those who campaign for it destruction) to be staff, students, visitors or speakers.

For the record the rest of the LSE signatories are: Prof. Gautam Appa, Dr. Robert Boyce, Mike Cushman, Dr. Konstantina Davaki, Prof. Conor Gearty, Prof. David Graebe, Dr. Jason Hickel
Prof. Nick Humphrey,Prof. Richard Hyman,Prof. Frank Land, Prof. Ailsa Land,Prof. Susan Marks,
Dr. Claire Moon, Prof. Martha Mundy, Dr. Linda Pickard, Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead, Prof. Richard Sennett, Dr. Tony Whelan, Dr. Kalpana Wilson

Update 30 October 2015: LSE hosts exhibition honouring Palestinian terrorists

Previous links

• LSE 's New Middle East Centre eradicates Israel
• LSE's anti-Israel Middle East Centre: Update 
• Another update to the LSE Middle East Centre saga
• Yet another update to the LSE story
• LSE Director forced to resign  
• Israelis barred from applying to the LSE's Middle East Research Centre
• Guess which Israelis are welcome to speak at the Centre .... 
• Update on LSE Middle East Centre

See also:

• Murder of Israelis glorified at LSE
• Israeli ambassador's talk disrupted at LSE
• Academics vote to boycott themselves 

700 more artists now boycott Israel

* satire, but difficult to distinguish from the actual 'artists' statement below

Along with more than 600 other fellow dead artists, we are announcing today that we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with Israel. We will accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government. Although we are all long dead it is perfectly obvious to us that  Israel has inflicted upon the Palestinians the most brutal genocide in the history of the world. The human rights organisations Hamas and Islamic Jihad have sadly confirmed this. The genocide has resulted in the Palestinian population only tripling in size in the last 10 years, with the Israelis having the audacity to continue sending millions of tons of food and medicine into Gaza, along with electricity and gas, even while the Palestinians were expressing their democratic right to fire thousands of harmless missiles into Israeli cities. The Israelis disgracefully detain and treat injured Palestinian resistance fighters in their hospitals, and they have also built horrific security fences to stop Palestinians from carrying out their legitimate right to murder Israeli children on buses. And the merciless Israelis have forced Gazans to live in poverty because the 20 billion dollars of charitable aid given by Western countries in the last 5 years all had to be spent on building desperately needed tunnels from Gaza into Israeli kindergartens, to hide the Palestinians' harmless weapons and suicide bombers.

While these atrocities take place Israeli artists cause pain and humiliation by continuing to paint pictures in occupied Palestinian land such as Tel Aviv and Netanya.  They even do water colours in occupied Haifa and Jerusalem, while in Ashkelon they have been seen to use pastels, and even pen and ink. Now we are saying, NO MORE. If we were not all dead, we would have nothing to do with any of them; we would not paint any pictures, accept awards, attend exhibitions, festivals or conferences, run masterclasses or workshops in any place where there are Jews, until Israel respects international law and ends its colonial oppression of the Palestinians. To see the full list of supporters, go to deadartistsforpalestine.org.uk.

Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Toulouse LaTrec, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Salvadore Dali, Gustav Klimt, Paul Cezanne, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Titian, Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Francisco de Goya, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Edvard Munch, Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Piet Mondrian, Paul Gauguin......

.

See also: Incredible new boycott announcement from Israel boycotting artists 

Fighting Academic Boycotts of Israel

Elder of Ziyon reports on the good news that a referendum by the University of Sussex Students Union to boycott Israeli academic and cultural institutions has been defeated.

But, as he points out, the anti-boycott case made by the Jewish Students is itself an anti-Israel statement that essentially says that a boycott would be unfair to the many left-wing Israeli academics who support the Palestinian cause. The case includes this statement at the end

Instead, we should be encouraging co-operation with critical and progressive elements within Israeli academia. 

which confirms the overall message  that only left-wing Israeli academics who oppose their government should be heard. So the anti-boycott campaigners appear to be quite selective and are not averse to boycotting Israelis who do not agree with their left-wing views.

In the comments section of Elder's article someone called Gabriel (who seems to have been involved in the anti-boycott motion) claims that this approach was the only way to 'win people over'. But, as one commenter says in response:

it's very sad that in order to "persuade the electorate" they have to pander to the lies and distortions of the haters.

Personally I would have recommended the satirical approach (here and here) to highlight the hypocrisy and anti-semitism of the boycott Israel movement.

The boycott Israel campaign: absolutely no similarities with the 1930s Nazi boycott of Jews

While Israel continues to be subject to intensified terrorist atrocities - six attacks in the last 2 days - (ignored as usual by the main stream media), the campaign to boycott Israel also intensifies. Some people have suggested similarities between this boycott Israel campaign and the Nazi boycott of Jews in the 1930s. As the following table makes clear there is absolutely no basis for arguing that these boycott campaigns are in any way similar.

	Nazi boycott	Anti-Israel boycott
What was/is the ultimate objective	Physical destruction of the entire Jewish race	Physical destruction of the entire Jewish state
What was/is it based on	The singling out and demonization of Jews  based on a set of complete lies (propagated by anti-Semitic bigots) about the political, economic, social and religious behaviour of Jews	The singling out and demonization of the Jewish state based on a set of complete lies (propagated by anti-Semitic bigots) about political, economic, social and religious behaviour of the Jewish state
What was/must be ignored and covered up at all costs to maintain the momentum	The genuine atrocities committed by the Nazis and their proxies against the Jews	The genuine atrocities committed by the Arab states and their terrorist proxies against the Jews
Who was/is the real brains behind it	Hard core anti-semites, national socialists, and politically active academics and lawyers	Hard core anti-semites, socialists, and politically active academics and lawyers
Who else supports/supported it?	All the Arab states and also anti-Semites in the rest of the world	All the Arab states and also anti-Semites in the rest of the world
Business targets	Only Jewish owned businesses (or those working with them)	Only Jewish owned businesses (or those working with them)
Academic targets	Only Jewish academics (or those working with them)	Only Jewish academics (or those working with them)
Tactics: Direct Action 1	Anti-semitic mobs vandalised Jewish-owned shops and their products	Anti-semitic mobs vandalise Jewish-owned Israeli shops and their products
Tactics: Direct Action 2	Anti-semitic, swastika wearing, mobs daubed Stars of David on the windows, walls and products of Jewish owned businesses	Anti-semitic mobs daub Stars of David and swastikas on the windows,  walls and products of Jewish owned Israeli businesses
Tactics: Media propaganda	Cartoons of big fat Jews who control the world and eat non-Jewish babies; non-stop articles written by anti-Semitic liars demonizing Jews	Cartoons of big fat Jews who control the world and eat non-Jewish babies; non-stop articles written by anti-Semitic liars demonizing the Jewish state
Tactics: Lawfare	Special Nazi laws introduced to both outlaw Jewish-owned businesses and criminalise attempts by anybody else to work with them	Special EU and Arab laws introduced to outlaw Jewish-owned Israeli businesses and criminalise attempts by anybody else to work with them
Tactics: Secondary boycott	Non-Jews visiting Jewish houses and businesses were publicly vilified and threatened to be boycotted themselves if they did not cease their interaction with Jews	Non-Jews visiting the Jewish state and doing business with it are publicly vilified and threatened to be boycotted themselves if they do not cease their interaction with the Jewish state
Ultimately who other than Jews was/is affected	Rest of the world suffered from loss of scientific and cultural contribution from Jews	Rest of the world suffers from loss of scientific and cultural contribution from Jews
What was/will be the ultimate outcome of the boycott	Millions of Jews died, but it did not help the Nazis in any way at all	Millions of Jews may die, but it will not help the Palestinians in any way at all

So there you are, it is obvious we have to agree that the Israel boycott movement has nothing at all in common with the Nazis. And, of course, the ultimate proof of the difference between the 1930s and today is what was/is said througout Europe:

Then: Jews: go to Palestine
Now: Jews: get out of Palestine

For an alternative view of this post see here.

See also: The difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism;  How the boycott Isreael movement in the UK is being funded by Comic Relief,  Universities in shock move to boycott themselves and  What leftists believe
The Zionist barrier 
Update: see comparison between radical leftists and Islamists