For Ben - No Safe Space for Jews at KCL

by Guest Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:27 am

Tuesday night’s heavily publicised Apartheid Week event at Kings College London was billed as the ‘Opening Plenary’. The speakers were Aja Monet Farid (a ‘poet’) and Farid Esack (a South African Muslim ‘liberation theologian’ at the University of Johannesburg). The title: “100 years of Palestinian resistance against settler colonialism.” 100 years ago the Jews who lived in Palestine were born there but hey comrades, who cares about historical accuracy when we have exciting things like intersectionality and liberation theology to tell you about?

Before the event began there was a huge “Safe Space” announcement on the screen:
‘KCLSU is committed to providing an inclusive and supportive space for all students. This policy is applicable to our whole student community, whether an individual or a member within a group, KCLSU ratified student activity group, representative forum or sport team.

KCLSU believes all students should be free from intimidation or harassment, resulting from prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, marital or maternity/paternity status, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity, trans staus, socio-economic status, or ideology or culture, or any other form of distinction. You can call/text a KCLSU Safe Space Marshall during this event on 077717 41631’

For Ben - No Safe Space for Jews at KCL Capture-300x170

For Ben - No Safe Space for Jews at KCL Capture-300x170

Given what was to follow, this announcement was a kick in the teeth to any Israel supporters in the audience, including most of the Jewish students there (see below). The speakers simply assumed that Israel was The Great Satan and needed to be boycotted. There was simply no discussion of this and also no mention of Israeli casualties, eg those who have died in the stabbing and car ramming incidents in recent months and of those in Judea and Samaria who have been killed by Palestinians. No mention. Zilch.

The Chair was Rafeef Ziadah, a ‘Palestinian poet and human rights activist’ (she also seems to have a position at SOAS). She was on her best behaviour but it is not hard to find her extremist connections. She claims her family was ‘forced out’ of Haifa. The truth is that the Arabs who left Haifa in 1948 were not ‘forced out’ at all. And she has praised a terrorist member of Islamic Jihad, Khader Adnan. As Richard Millett commented at IAW five years ago, ‘when he is not on hunger strike he does a nice sideline in inciting the killing of Jews.’. Ziadah has also worked for War On Want (who sponsored the KCL meeting).

Aja Monet Farid is from Brooklyn. She began with a ‘statement’ which included the phrase ‘Zionists, racists and colonisers demean me’. She is a member of ‘Black Lives Matter’. She wants ‘Intersectionalism’ which is the theory that all the causes of the Left are connected, so for example ‘Black Lives Matter’ and anti-Israel activists need to work together. Her metaphor for the Israel/Palestinian conflict: “If you have a foot on your neck, what are you going to do to get it off?”. She is not a fan of ‘safe spaces’ either. “We need to stand for what’s right .. What does love look like as a political technology?” Pretty meaningless stuff so far ….

Surprisingly little insights about (or even mentions of) Israel – just the assumption it’s the Great Satan.
Farid Esack’s talk included pretty much all the hard left pro-Palestinian clichés – and then some. He offensively (where’s that ‘safe space’ when you need it…..) compared the Palestinians to a woman beaten up by a man who was abused by his father. ‘Life in the shadow of Zionism is worse than Apartheid .. the Bantustans are a gift from heaven compared to what the Palestinians have ….Ethnic cleansing was always an objective of the State of Israel while white South Africans never wished for a country without blacks…… G-d is not an estate agent, ‘G-d told us this’ is the language of ISIS…..The oppressor needs liberation, the liberation of the Palestinians will lead to the liberation of Jews and Israelis’.

Farid Esack hosted the convicted terrorist Leila Khaled on her tour of South Africa. He also refused to condemn terrorist attacks in Paris and said instead “I walk away from your shitty racist and Islamophobic expectations that whenever your chickens come home to roost then I must feign horror.” In the Q+A I got the chance to ask him about both these. He refused to condemn terrorism, saying that Mandela was a ‘terrorist’ (of course there is a difference between using violence against an oppressive regime and using it against a liberal democracy such as the US and Israel). His risible explanation for his Paris comments was that he was tired of being asked to condemn Islamist atrocities!

Neither of the speakers was prepared to condemn or even mention murders of Israelis by Palestinians. So sitting in Row 2, I stood up and waved an Israel flag at them. My way of remembering the Israeli dead. Ziadah, Farid and Esack may be prepared to ignore them……….. Well I am not.

Indeed, afterwards it was reported that some Jewish students were reduced to tears by the condoning of terrorism and disregard of innocent lives being taken by terrorist attacks. They will be filing a complaint to KCL Union and complaining to the CST. So much for the ‘safe space’ policy. And Ziadah had the nerve to accuse me of violating the policy when I stood up with the flag!

Postscript: Here is a very moving blog by a First Year KCL student. Look at the blatant discrimination she points out (my emboldening):

‘For our Israel society, there are extensive rules which are applied scrupulously. We must have an impartial academic chair, a safe space policy, safe space marshalls and other extensive measures for our ‘controversial speakers’. The Palestinian society, KCL Action Palestine, however, is allowed to bring in speakers who promote terrorism and have been previously banned from other institutions - without an academic chair or any provisions for ensuring freedom of speech for others.’

http://hurryupharry.org/2017/03/01/no-safe-space-for-jews-at-kcl/

by Guest Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:29 am

La La Land may not have won ‘Best Film’ at the Oscars on Sunday but we were treated to a version of it at UCL the following day. Excepting that this production was set not in Los Angeles but in the Middle East. And no singing and dancing – just two and half hours of unadulterated vitriolic one-sided mendacity about the Jewish State, poisoning the minds of yet another generation (some 150) of students.

If there was an Oscar for ‘most duplicitous medieval disputation of the Jewish State at Israel Apartheid Week 2017’, this event is the odds-on favourite (though please be reassured that the rest of the week/fortnight/month will produce some close challengers).
The contender for ‘best actress’ was Dr Ang Swee Chai of Medical Aid for Palestinians. Undoubtedly she saw some terrible things in Gaza Hospital in Beirut during the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982. But that does not entitle her to present an entirely false and one-sided account of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Thanks to Richard Millett, her talk was familiar. As always she failed to mention that the Sabra and Shatila massacres were carried out not by Israel but by Lebanese Christians. And as always she showed the ‘map that lies’.

The ‘best actor’ contender was Abdelrahman Salayma. He lives in Hebron and is part of an organisation called ‘Youth Against the Settlements.’ In his entirely accurate account of the event David Collier calls Salayma ‘Mr Slick’. He presented himself as a lover of peace and ‘non-violent action’ but of course in the Q+A the mask slipped and he endorsed ‘armed resistance’.

But there was a third contender for an Oscar – for the ‘Most Biased Chair at Israel Apartheid Week 2017’. Enter Dr. Saladin Meckled-Garcia, Director of the UCL Institute for Human Rights and Senior Lecturer in Human Rights and Political Theory. If you Google him you will see that in 2009 he urged the Science Museum to cancel its Israel Science Day; that he believes the nonsense that the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism is ‘an attempt to silence campus discussion about Israel; that he [url=http://www.biu.ac.il/academic_freedom/about bricup.htm]supports a boycott of Israeli goods[/url]. And he began the evening with an attack on the IHRA Definition (“I want to say something a little bit political”). He suggested the Definition is “attack on free speech” … “it implies that events like this one …. shouldn’t happen.” Er ….. Precisely Dr Meckled-Garcia. If you want to chair a meeting where Israel is slandered, traduced and demonised, feel free to hire the room above The Marlborough Arms in Torrington Place. It’s just that we do not expect such events to happen in an Institute of Higher Education. In Tehran possibly – but not in London. And if you don’t like the IHRA Definition Dr Meckled-Garcia, you are also bound by the provisions of Prevent. This meeting should have been risk assessed; the speakers researched for the risk of drawing people into extremism; and possibly opposing speakers should have been invited. Was any of that done? No doubt we will find out………….

And, Dr Meckled-Garcia, you misrepresented the IHRA’s stipulation not to require of Israel ‘a behaviour not demanded of any other democratic nation’. It does NOT – repeat, NOT – mean (as you suggested) that you cannot discuss whether Israel is or is not ‘like any other democratic nation’. (And by the way your analogy of Israel with Turkey was absurd – to remind you, after the failed coup Erdogan fired 2700 Judges and closed down the key Opposition newspaper). It means what it says! That holding Israel to a higher standard than any other democratic nation is antisemitic. See the difference, Dr Meckled-Garcia? (I would imagine for a senior academic like yourself it’s not hard?)
In Salayma’s presentation there were so many falsehoods, we lost count.

“Being under military law means I am guilty unless I prove otherwise.”
… Referring to the ‘knife intifada’, “Many Palestinians without knives have been killed’.

“The settlers can do what they want and no-one can stop them.”
We heard about the Israeli ambulance driver who throws people out of the ambulance … and that Elor Azaria killed a Palestinian (Abdel Fattah al-Sharif) who apparently had been a mere bystander ….
And about the young girl student, Hadeel al-Hashlamon, who (we were told) was shot by the IDF for doing nothing (on September 22, 2015 Hadeel al-Hashlamon, a 19-year-old woman student, dressed in full niqab garb, approached a soldier at a Hebron checkpoint, pulled out a knife, and attempted to stab him)

About a 5 year old boy arrested for nothing (the truth is here).
In response to a question about the killers of the Fogel family, Salayma said the crime was committed not by a Palestinian but by an African! The truth of course is that Amjad Awad and Hakim Awad, two young Palestinian cousins from the village of Awarta, were convicted for the murders and later proudly confessed.
The bias of Dr Meckled-Garcia can be seen here (at -13.50 on the video). Salayma was asked by Harvey Garfield why his talk had entirely omitted any explanation of the context for Israel’s security measures – the stabbing intifada for example or the numbers of suicide bombers who came across to Israel before the protection barrier was built. Dr. Meckled-Garcia responded that in the UK, if a soldier assaults a prisoner, we do not say that there’s a problem with not mentioning that they are prisoners. But that’s a false analogy. Azaria’s crime (for which he has been convicted) happened minutes after al-Sharif stabbed the soldier – and was obviously connected to that initial crime. As well as being a false analogy, Harvey’s question was directed at Salayma – not at the Chair!
Back to the Doctor. In the Q+A I challenged her about her promotion in 2014 of a vile antisemitic David Duke video entitled ‘CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix’(watch the brainwashed students giggling as I read out hard core racist extracts from the video).

These extracts included the following obscenities from Duke:
‘…the Zionist Matrix of Power controls Media, Politics and Banking”
‘Globalist Zionist supremacism is the greatest single danger to the entire planet”.

Unfortunately the Doctor’s response is not clear (and very quiet) on the video. From what can be heard, she said she has seen the video but she can’t quite recall it. She has never heard that kind of ‘terminology’. Incredibly she ‘doesn’t think it’s entirely anti-Jewish’.
Take #2: Dr Ang Swee Chai doesn’t think that one of the most revolting examples of antisemitism that I have ever seen is “entirely anti-Jewish”. Physician, heal thyself!
She said she apologised. (Indeed she did — I wonder if she would have apologised if she had not been caught …)

La La Land is fiction (indeed it was nominated for Best Original Screenplay). Medieval-style traducing of Israeli Jews – and by implication the vast majority of Jews in the Diaspora who refuse to join the lynch mob – is unfortunately fact. It is to the shame of UCL that it was willing to produce this horror movie.

http://hurryupharry.org/2017/03/01/ucl-in-la-la-land-2/

The left claim to stand against racism, but turn a blind eye when its comes to hate of israel

by Guest Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:32 am

Dave Rich, author of “The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism,” is the deputy director of communications at the Community Security Trust, a group that monitors anti-Semitic incidents and provides protection services.

I can only recommend his book, which reveals how people on the British Left have tried to make sense of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how much of the Left stopped loving Israel, how some leftists moved from Anti-Apartheid to Anti-Zionism, how anti-racists banned Jews.
Nowadays leftist anti-Semites do not just deny antisemitism, they accuse Israel’s supporter of dishonesty and intimidation. David Hirsh named this phenomenon the Livingstone-Formulation, after Ken Livingstone wrote in 2006 that, “For far too long the accusation of anti-Semitism has been used against anyone who is critical of the policies of the Israeli government, as I have been.”

This came after he had told a Jewish journalist that he was behaving like a “concentration camp guard.”

Will his suggestion to “understand and appreciate the central place that Israel now holds in global Jewish life and Jewish identity while also campaigning for Palestinian rights” be heeded by leftwing antisemites? As long as the extreme Left does not understand Zionism’s essence as a national liberation movement of European origin that offered a solution to the modern Jewish Question in a world of nationalities, they will look on the Israel-Palestinian conflict as one that must end by the liquidation of the Jewish and democratic state of Israel.

Dave Rich has published a crisply written, balanced and comprehensive work for anyone interested to repair the rift between Jews and the Left in Britain.

Is it not strange that an Austrian journalist who was asked frequently about antisemitism in Austria has to make an interview with a British expert on antisemitism in the UK?

Every country has its history and its pattern how antisemitism operates and it is different from one country to the next, the antisemitism in Austria how it worked over the centuries is different from in the UK. However, that does not mean that there is no antisemitism in the UK. Of course there is. It has a long history. In medieval times, there was a very potent and lethal form of antisemitism. Therefore, we have our own patterns in each country and each one carries its own dangers.

When after the Second World War the Labour leaders Attlee and Bevin made anti-Zionist and antisemitic declarations, they did it in the perceived interest of the British Empire. Now when people from the left of Labour make anti-Zionist and antisemitic declarations they make it because they reject the British Empire and colonialism. Is it the same or is it not?

That is an interesting observation because leftwing antisemitism has a lot to do with anticolonial politics and with a kind of reaction to the history of the empire and the history of colonialism. It is strange how the British Left looks at the world. The empire is seen as intrinsically a bad thing and all anticolonial movements are respected and praised as freedom fighters in the mythology of the left. Except for the Zionist insurgency against British colonial presence in Mandate Palestine in 1946 and 1947. Jonathan Spyer made the point to me, that Palestine was the only anti-colonial struggle where it was OK for people of the British Left to support the British troops. The anticolonial fighters even called them terrorists and the British troops the good guys. It was the complete opposite of how the left has seen every other anticolonial struggle.

How come David Hirsh, a real sweet person who could not harm a fly, is attacked in a London university by students who smear him on the blackboard as a “Zionist” and as a “bitter Jew”?

It was in the Student Union, but we do not know if it was a student. It could have been a student, an academic or some other staff, could have been any one. The university has given Hirsh good support. David himself stated, when you have a policy that not only extreme rightwing Zionism but every form of Zionism is intrinsically racism and all Zionists are racists, when racism is not welcome in student unions at universities what follows is that you want to get rid of Zionists. So that becomes personalized, you want to get rid of David Hirsh. This is what I wrote in my book. If you have Jewish students societies being banned in some students union in the 1970s 1980s, it seems logical that the people who do it think it is antiracist. In addition, the person who wrote this about David Hirsh I am sure imagines to have made an antiracist statement.

How do you see the relations between the Jewish community and Labour? Once most British Jews voted for Labour. Now the situation is changing.

Yes, it has been changing for a long time. Traditionally if you look after the Second World War, most Jews were Labour voters. That began to change by the 1980ies maybe even by the 1970s because the Jewish community was changing, was no longer an immigrant community. It was now predominantly a professional middle class community. At the same time, you have a rise of anti-Zionism on the left and you have a reduction of traditional antisemitism on the Right.

When you say Right, you mean the Tories?

The Tories forget the far Right. The kind of old English antisemitism started to break up…
In clubs?

That kind of thing and Margret Thatcher was a member of parliament for Finchley with a very strong Jewish constituency, she was supportive of the Jewish community in many ways in the 1980s as prime minister and her brand of entrepreneurial capitalism really appealed to many people in the Jewish community. By then you started to see a significant change in voting patterns.

When Tony Blair was leader of Labour and prime minister there was very strong support for him in the Jewish community. That started to reduce under Ed Miliband as Labour leader.

Nevertheless, after Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader there is a real collapse of Jewish support for Labour. Now the support for the Labour party is as low as it can be possibly low; any Jewish people who still vote Labour would always vote Labour regardless of who is the leader.

Recently under Tony Blair, there was strong support for the Labour party. That support would still be there if the Labour party went back to the kind of party, it was 15-20 years ago.

However, the question is whether the Labour party would ever go back, because not only the leader has been changed but the whole membership has changed as well.

This year we will have 100 years anniversary of the Balfour-Declaration. Do you believe that Corbyn will continue with his line that this Declaration was a huge mistake? Theresa May said there will be festivities, will Jeremy Corbyn be against them?

There will be definitely a protesting campaign against the Balfour-Declaration by all the regular pro-Palestinian campaign groups. If Jeremy Corbyn were not leader of the Labour party, he would be involved in those protests.one hundred percent. The fact that he is the leader of the Labour party has changed things for him. His line on Israel and Zionism has changed since he became leader of the party. He has compromised his position. He is seen as a man of firm principles, who never changes his mind. There are people in the pro-Palestinian movement in this country who are very disappointed with him. Because since he became leader of the party, he said for example that he is for two states. What he will say about the Balfour-Declaration I do not know. I am sure he will not say it was a good thing.

Nevertheless, he may not be involved in the protests against it as he would have been if he still were a backbencher.

How do you think Brexit would affect Jews in Britain?

It depends on what will happen with Brexit. It has already contributed to an atmosphere where there is the perception that racism and xenophobia is being expressed more publicly and the figures of hate crime suggest that is on increase and that will have an effect on the level of antisemitism.

http://hurryupharry.org/2017/03/03/review-and-interview-with-dave-rich/

by Ben Reilly Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:33 am

I condemn all this. Sheez, now I have to chime in on everything or else I turn a blind eye to it?

by eddie Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:35 am

More to the point....did you read it all? Razz

by Guest Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:36 am

Ben Reilly wrote:I condemn all this. Sheez, now I have to chime in on everything or else I turn a blind eye to it?

Yes, when you constantly try to push this problem only onto the alt-right for this rise.
That is turning a blind eye and ignoring this hate from the left

by Guest Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:37 am

eddie wrote:More to the point....did you read it all?

I really fail to even see how that is funny?

by eddie Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:39 am

Thorin wrote:
eddie wrote:More to the point....did you read it all?

I really fail to even see how that is funny?

It amused me.

by Guest Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:40 am

eddie wrote:
Thorin wrote:

I really fail to even see how that is funny?

It amused me.

Let me know when you speak to a Jew you deals with this daily and ask them if its funny.

by eddie Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:53 am

Oh no. It's not the persecution of Jews that I find funny - it was my own joke. Granted, it was probably funnier in my head

by Guest Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:57 am

eddie wrote:Oh no. It's not the persecution of Jews that I find funny - it was my own joke. Granted, it was probably funnier in my head

So you decided to announce something funny to you. On a thread where Jews in both the US and Britain face unprecedented hatred, even far more than Muslims. Any hatred against Muslims, I stand up and speak out on and yet they are ten times in numbers than Jews here and yet Jews suffer far more hatred.
So what the fuck was the joke Eddie? Because to me, there was zero funny about how you totally belittled many views on this problem posted, as nothing more than a joke.

by eddie Sat Mar 04, 2017 12:59 am

Oh shut up didge and have a snickers.

by Guest Sat Mar 04, 2017 1:00 am

eddie wrote:Oh shut up didge and have a snickers.

No I wont shut the fuck up, when you made an arse of yourself

Show some humility

You belittled the views on this issue and proves further my point. That clearly even to this day. Some don't give a fuck about antisemitism.

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