British Plans for the Resettlement of Palestinian Arabs

Daphne Anson

Anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis will know that from time to time I delve into historical archives, and it’s something I’ll continue to do. The article below isn’t by me, however – it was written 30 years ago by Professor Joseph Nedava, a political scientist at the University of Haifa (citation details at the end).

Let me, as a prelude, explain who some of the people mentioned in the article are, since they may not be familiar to non-British or younger readers. Robert Boothby (1900-86) was a long-serving, very colourful Conservative MP who was given a life peerage as Baron Boothby in 1958. During the 1930s he was strongly anti-Appeasement. Richard Crossman (1907-74) was a Labour MP and Cabinet Minister well-known for his support of Israel. Like Boothby, he was familiar to television viewers , often appearing in political discussion programmes. William Ormsby-Gore (1885-1964) was a Conservative MP from 1910-38, when he succeeded his father as Baron Harlech. During 1921-22 he was British representative to the League of Nations' Permanent Mandates Commission, and from 1922-29 – except briefly in 1924, when Labour was in power – was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. From 1936-38 he was Colonial Secretary. Sir Alec Kirkbride (1897-1978), who served as an officer under General Allenby from 1916-21, was Governor of Acre (1922-27 and 1937-39). One of Britain’s principal advisors to King Abdullah, he was Deputy Resident in Transjordan (1927-1937), Resident (1939-46), and then Ambassador to Jordan. Richard Meinertzhagen (1878-1967) was an army officer who served under General Allenby, attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and was involved in the creation of the Mandate; he came of a non-Jewish merchant banking family and was, incidentally, the nephew of Beatrice Webb. Hugh Dalton (1885-1962) was a Labour politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1945-47. St John Philby (1885-1960), father of Soviet spy Kim Philby, was an Arabist explorer and intelligence officer.


Many a historian is responsible for the injection of a myth into recent Jewish history; they claim that the underlying causes of the present Israeli-Arab conflict are to be ascribed to the error of omission of the Zionist leaders in not perceiving the existence of a latent Arab problem – a problem which wide expansion of the Zionist settlement could only exacerbate.

This, however, is clearly a misconception. Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, was not blind to realities. When he visited Palestine in 1898 he found an almost empty country with a relatively small Arab population (estimated by some reliable authorities at 250,000). He saw no reason to regard them as a potentially hostile element, and he sincerely believed that they would easily be integrated into a sovereign Jewish State, reaping all the prospective benefits due to a loyal minority. In his Utopian novel Altneuland Herzl paints in most idyllic terms a multi-racial society in a prosperous Holy Land.


Israel Zangwill
Of the “Founding Fathers” of modern Zionism, Israel Zangwill was the only one to deny the possibility of peaceful Jewish-Arab co-existence in the future Jewish State. In his mind there was no room for both peoples in this small country, and as “we cannot allow the Arabs to block so valuable a piece of historic reconstruction ... therefore we must gently persuade them [the Arabs] to ‘trek’. After all, they have all Arabia with its millions of square miles ... and Israel has not a square inch.” (The Voice of Jerusalem, London, 1920, p. 93.)

Zangwill’s original view caused quite a furor [sic] in official Zionist circles in 1919, and Max Nordau expressed a well-established consensus when he wrote to him from Madrid (15 January 1919):

“...The stand you have taken in the Arab question seems to me regrettable. It’s no use qualifying your scheme as your own individual idea – we have not to count on the good faith of our eternal enemies, and henceforward they will quote you as their authority for the accusation that, not you Israel Zangwill, but ‘the’ Jews, all the Jews, are an intolerant lot dreaming only violence and high-handed dealings and expulsion of non-Jews and longing for the continuation of Joshua’s methods after an enforced interruption of 3400 years or so.” (Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem.)

Zangwill’s views, though unusual, had an impact on various British statesmen, and their effect was particularly felt on the eve of the Balfour Declaration (1917). Intimation of a possible transfer of the Palestinian Arab population to the neighbouring states can be seen in the early drafts of the Declaration. This was brought out as late as 1963 in Lord Boothby’s contribution to the BBC Third Programme’s tribute to Dr Weizmann. He stated that “the original Balfour Declaration made provision for the Arabs to be moved elsewhere, more or less”. (Jewish Chronicle, London, 3 January 1964, p. 7)


Richard Crossman
A lively controversy in the British-Jewish press followed Lord Boothby’s broadcast. The Jewish Chronicle categorically disclaimed the allegation, contending that all the versions of the Declaration were on record, and “the displacement of the Arabs was never considered or thought of, either on the British or the Zionist side”. (Ibid.) Lord Boothby stood his ground, reiterating in his rejoinder that “at the time of the original Balfour Declaration, some resettlement of the Arabs in Palestine east of the Jordan was envisaged following the establishment of the National Home”. (Ibid., 17 Jan., p. 7) He based himself on an essay written by Richard Crossman on Weizmann, as well as on Sir Alec Kirkbride’s memoirs. (Sir Alec Kirkbride, as a British civil servant, was closely associated with the Hashemite family in Transjordan for many years. In his book A Crackle of Thorns, London, 1956, pp. 19-20, he writes: “... the remote and undeveloped areas which lay to the east of the [Jordan] river... were intended to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine ... became an accomplished fact. There was no intention at that stage of forming an independent Arab state.”)

Moreover, Lord Boothby, who proclaimed himself a life-long Zionist, was absolutely convinced that a massive immigration of Jews to their small historic homeland, “without great natural resources, was quite unrealistic unless accompanied by some resettlement of the Arab population.” (JC, 17 Jan. 1964, p. 7)

Lord Boothby
In the wake of the Jewish Chronicle's rebuttal, Lord Boothby finally admitted his error in implying the existence of a written substantiation of his allegation, but he still insisted on the validity of his argument quoting Mrs Weizmann’s letter to him (The Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, London, 28 Feb. 1964) by way of support and having his contention confirmed by Mr Boris Guriel, senior staff officer of the Weizmann Archives. In a letter to the London Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, Mr Guriel writes:

”Serious substantiation can be found for Lord Boothby’s contention as to the original meaning of the Balfour Declaration prior to the final version... The Arabs were never mentioned in the original draft, and, by way of omission, the possibility of a transfer became plausible... Regardless of whether or not the actual draft contained the “transfer” point in letter, it is the spirit and the logical consequence which count.” (The Weizmann Archives, Rehovoth, Israel)

Further confirmation of Lord Boothby’s contention is found in some remarks made by Churchill concerning the prospects for a Jewish Palestine in years to come. Presumably having Zangwill’s views in mind, Churchill is quoted as having said that “there are the Jews, hom we are pledged to introduce into Palestine, and who take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience.” (Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, London, 1975, vol. IV (1916-1922), p. 484)

The prospect of an Arab transfer also occupied Emir Abdullah’s mind when the Churchill-Abdulla [sic] “settlement” was discussed in March 1921. The Hashemite prince wanted to know whether “His Majesty’s Government mean to establish a Jewish kingdom west of the Jordan and to turn out the non-Jewish population? If so, it would be better to tell the Arabs at once and not keep them in suspense.” Churchill may have been somewhat unhappy about a decision of the Allies to that effect, for he remarked sarcastically: “The Allies appear to think that men could be cut down and transplanted in the same way as trees.” (ibid., p. 561)

Even when the bitter experiences and cruelties of the Arab riots of 1929 clearly demonstrated that Jewish-Arab co-existence was nothing but an empty vision, Zionist leaders consistently refrained from airing suggestions of a possible Arab transfer. It was a British Royal Commission, set up to investigate the 1936 disturbances, that dared to bring up such a proposal openly. In its Report (1937), proposing the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab State, it dealt, inter alia, with the problems involving exchange of land and population, and suggested the transfer of about 225,000 Arabs from the Jewish to the Arab State. It cited as an example the precedent which saw some 1,300,000 Greeks and some 400,000 Turks exchanged following an agreement reached by Greece and Turkey in the wake of the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. (Palestine Royal Commission Report, London, 1937, cmd. 5479, ch. xxii, p.390)

The Partition proposal was hotly debated in the Zionist camp, and the provision for the Arab transfer no doubt greatly helped in strengthening its supporters. (See, for instance, the reasoning which led David Ben-Gurion to his final acceptance of the Partition Plan. Zichronot (Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1974, vol. 4, pp. 297-299)

The British Government was determined to implement the Partition Plan, fully subscribing to the Arab transfer provision. Appearing before the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, the British Colonial Secretary, Mr W. Ormsby-Gore, although emphasising that the Mandatory Power would not accept the proposal for compulsory transfer contained in the Report of the Royal Commission, pointed to the possibility of a voluntary transfer of Palestinian Arabs to the neighbouring states. “These people”, he said,

“had not hitherto regarded themselves as ‘Palestinian’ but as part of Syria as a whole, as part of the Arab world. They would be going only a comparatively few miles away to a people with the same language, the same civilization, the same religion; and therefore the problem of transfer geographically and practically was easier even than the interchanges of Greeks and Turks between Asia Minor and the Balkans ... if homesteads were provided and land was prepared for their reception not too far from their existing homes, he was confident that many would make use of that opportunity.” (Permanent Mandates Commission, Minutes, 13 August 1937, pp. 179-181)

In a conversation Dr Weizmann had with Mr Ormsby-Gore, the latter reassured the Zionist leader that the British Government was proposing to set up a Committee for the purpose of finding land for the Arab transfer (in Transjordan, and, possibly, also within the borders of the Arab State, in the Negev), and for arranging the actual terms of the transfer. Mr Ormsby-Gore mentioned the name of Sir John Campbell, who had much relevant experience in the field. (JC, 13 August 1937, pp. 22-25)

The recommendations of the Royal Commission became Dr Weizmann’s political platform for the following years up to the establishment of the State of Israel. In his article in Foreign Affairs (on the eve of the Biltmore Conference), he outlined the position of the Arabs in the prospective Jewish State: “In that state there will be complete civil and political equality of rights for all citizens, without distinction of race or religion, and, in addition, the Arabs will enjoy full autonomy in their own internal affairs. But if any Arabs do not wish to remain in a Jewish State, every facility will be given to them to transfer to one of the many and vast Arab countries.” (“Palestine’s Role in the Solution of the Jewish Problem”, Foreign Affairs, N.Y., January 1942, pp. 337-338)

Zvi Jabotinsky
A similar stand was taken by the Revisionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky, in the book which turned out to be his last (1940). He and his party have quite often been wrongly and maliciously attacked for their ostensible intention to drive the Arabs out of Palestine. (See, for instance, Hannah Arendt’s article in The Menorah Journal, Autumn 1945, vol. xxxiii, no. 2, reproduced in Zionism Reconsidered, edited by Michael Selzer, London, 1970, where she mistakenly states (p. 215) that the transfer of all Palestinian Arabs “is openly demanded by Revisionists”, and that “they [the Revisionists] were the first to advocate the transfer of Palestine Arabs to Iraq” (p. 218).)

Nowhere and at no time did Jabotinsky propagate the evacuation of the Arabs from Palestine. On the contrary, he expressed himself many times in favour of granting the Arabs in a Jewish State full equality, but, as he was not sure that all this would be sufficient inducement for the Arabs to remain in a Jewish country, he

“would refuse to see a tragedy in their willingness to emigrate. The Palestine Royal Commission did not shrink from the suggestion. Courage is infectious. Since we have this great moral authority for calmly envisaging the exodus of 350,000 Arabs from one corner of Palestine, we need not regard the possible departure of 900,000 with dismay.” (The War and the Jew, NY, 1942, pp. 218-219)

Chaim Weizmann
Jabotinsky based himself on the Greek-Turkish precedent of 1923, and Dr Weizmnn, too, often referred to the “Greek example”. At a meeting held in New Court, London, Dr Weizmann told the assembled representatives of British Jewry (Anthony de Rothschild, Lionel de Rothschild, Lord Bearsted, Sir Robert Waley-Cohen, Lord Victor Rothschild, Mr Leonard Montefiore and others), that the question of a Jewish State’s boundaries raised the question of transfer of population; "If, for instance, they could transfer those Arab tenants who owned no land of their own (he believed there would be about 120,000 of them) they would be able to settle in their stead about half a million Jews.” (Note of meeting held at New Court, Tuesday, 9 September 1941, Weizmann Archives).

Officially and publicly Dr Weizmann quite often expressed himself, in the late 20s and early 30s, against Zionist aspirations for a Jewish State in Palestine, or for a Jewish majority, but in informal gatherings and in his private correspondence he almost never repudiated what seemed to him the correct interpretation of the historic pledges made by the British concerning the fulfilment of Zionist aims. He referred to a Jewish State and the prospective evacuation of at least a portion of the Palestine Arabs to the neighbouring states. To cite but one example, in his letter of 17 January 1930 to James Marshall, the son of the well-known leader of American Jewry, Louis Marshall, he writes: "There can be no doubt that the picture in the minds of those who drafted the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate was that of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. Palestine was to be a Jewish State in which the Arabs would enjoy the fullest civil and cultural rights; but for the expression of their own national individuality in terms of statehood they were to turn to the surrounding Arab countries – Syria, Iraq, Hedjaz, etc.” (The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Jerusalem, 1978, vol. xiv, p. 206)

R. Meinertzhagen
The Royal Commission’s recommendation to the effect of an Arab transfer really proved to be infectious, and it caused great enthusiasm among British friends of Zionism. Col. Meinertzhagen insisted on the need to establish Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, and “if any Arabs have doubts about it, let them go to the large Arab territories bordering Palestine after full compensation”.

He believed that two or three million pounds would be enough to “buy the lot out”, and he was sure that thousands of Englishmen would follow his example in contributing to this cause. (R. Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary (1917-1956), vol. xx, p. 203)

The Partition proposal with its concomitant clause about a transfer of Palestinian Arabs was ultimately shelved by the British Government itself, mainly because of Arab opposition, but its basic principles seem to have lived on, and to have been implemented by the force of inexorable circumstances brought about through the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The British Labour Party too, on the eve of its coming to power, adopted the transfer proposal. Its Party Conference, held in December 1944, adopted the following Declaration on “The Post-War International Settlement” with respect to Palestine:

'There is surely neither hope nor meaning in a “Jewish National Home” unless we are prepared to let Jews, if they wish, enter this tiny land in such numbers as to become a majority. There was a strong case for this before the war. There is an irresistible case now, after the unspeakable atrocities of the cold and calculated German plot to kill all Jews in Europe. Here, too, in Palestine, surely is a case, on human grounds and to promote a stable settlement for transfers of population. Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in. Let them be compensated handsomely for their land, and let their settlement elsewhere be carefully organized and generously financed. The Arabs have many wide territories of their own... Indeed, we should re-examine also the possibility of extending the present Palestinian borders, by agreement with Egypt, Syria, or Transjordan.’ (Documents Relating to the Palestine Problem published by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, London, 1945, p. 81. See also Dr [Hugh] Dalton’s statement on behalf of the Labour Party Executive 1945, on the same issue – Ibid.)

This unexpected pledge caught Dr Weizmann completely by surprise. In his autobiography he tells us that he pleaded with Dr Hugh Dalton, the Labour statesman, saying that there was no need of their proposal, and that the Zionists “never contemplated the removal of the Arabs, and the British Labourites, in their pro-Zionist enthusiasm, went far beyond our intentions.” (Trial and Error, Phila., 1949, vol. 2, p. 436.)

St John Philby
Another British plan to solve the Palestine problem, involving the evacuation of the Palestinian Arabs, was afoot in 1938-1939, at the initiative, or at least, with the active participation of King Ibn Saud’s “confidant”, St John Philby. Under “Philby’s Plan”, “The whole of Palestine should be left to the Jews. All Arabs displaced therefrom should be resettled elsewhere at the expense of the Jews , who would place a sum of £20 millions at the disposal of King Ibn Saud for this purpose.” (J. B. Philby, Arabian Jubilee, NY, 1953, pp. 212-213) The price the British and American Governments were expected to pay for this was the formal recognition of the complete independence of all Arab countries with the exception of Aden. It was Philby’s allegation that the Plan failed because Dr Weizmann was unable “to interest his powerful friends [Churchill and Roosevelt].” (Ibid., p. 214. As for Dr Weizmann’s version of the story, see Trial and Error, pp. 427-428.)

Victor Gollancz
The readiness to entertain the idea of a transfer of the Palestinian Arabs to neighbouring states, which was a radical change in the accepted view of the Palestine problem, evolved as a result of the impact of the Holocaust on British public opinion. This also accounted for the change of mind regarding Zionism on the part of such a leftist intellectual as the publisher Victor Gollancz. Arguing for the Zionist cause he writes:

“Suppose that a few hundred thousand of the million Arabs at present in Palestine would consider life in a Jewish Commonwealth impossible ... is there no way out? Surely there is, and a very simple one. The world has recently been discussing the project of moving great hordes of men and women – not a few hundred thousand, but ten to twelve million – from their old homes to a new environment... Suppose the United Nations said to the Arab statesmen “We desire to establish, by the necessary stages, a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine, for we believe a settlement of the Jewish question on lines such as these to be an indispensable part of the world settlement. We give our guarantee that every Arab in Palestine shall have complete civic equality and religious freedom. But if, in spite of this guarantee, any Arab should wish to leave Palestine and settle elsewhere we would make it easy for him to do so; we will see to it that the change takes place in the best conditions, and we will provide ample funds, in each case, for the decure establishment of a new home.” (Nowhere to Lay Their Heads, London, 1945, pp. 28-29)

Mr Gollancz then points out that the agricultural and industrial development of the Arab lands is hampered by shortage of population. Iraq, for instance, openly invited Arabs to come and settle on its land.

Indeed, efforts were made during World War II and the years immediately following, to bring about a transfer of the Palestinian Arabs to Iraq. In one such project, the correspondent of the London Times, H. T. Montague Bell, was involved. In his article “Iraq To-Day”, he writes: “Iraq’s paramount requirement is an increase of population. With from 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 inhabitants, she cannot do justice to the potentialities of the land – the lack of labour is a constant problem – and she is at a disadvantage against Turkey and Iran with their far larger populations ... any substantial increase of population in the near future must come from outside.” (The Times, 27 Oct. 1938, p. 13. For a discussion of Mr Bell’s involvement with the plan for the transfer of Palestinian Arabs to Iraq, see my article “Exchanges of Population Plans for the Solution of the Palestine Problem” (Hebrew), Gesher, Spring-Summer, 1978, pp. 160-162.)

However, all these plans, too, failed to materialise either because of lack of goodwill or sustained drive.

(Article first published in Forum on the Jewish People, Zionism and Israel, No. 42/43, Winter 1981, pp. 101-107; pictorial content added for this blog by Daphne Anson.)
Posted by Daphne Anson at 02:04 0 comments
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Labels: Arabs in Mandate Palestine, Balfour Declaration, British Policy under the Palestine Mandate, Chaim Weizmann, Israel Zangwill
Sunday, 14 November 2010
On Jews Who Reject Israel
Very recently I posted Ray Cook's excellent blogpost concerning Jews who profess to be "ashamed" to be so in light of Israeli policy. Now, Avraham Reiss of Jerusalem has given a most interesting insight, from a Religious Zionist perspective, on this issue. Mr Reiss blogs at http://jcwatch.wordpress.com/ but this blogpost of his, entitled "Who Rejects Who?" was posted at the London Jewish Chronicle's blogs (thejc.com) on the evening of 13 November. (I've added the pictorial content):

Rabbi Zvi Yehudah HaCohen Kook was the son of the illustrious Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Eretz Yisrael. Rav Zvi Yehudah, as I knew him, was the Rosh Yeshiva of Mercaz HaRav here in Jerusalem until he passed away during the 'eighties. I had the honour of studying under him for a number of years.

Some months ago appeared a book dedicated to him, in which former students (many now well-known rabbis within the Religious Zionist movement) recounted their experiences while studying in Mercaz HaRav.

The book is named Mashmia Yeshua, which translates roughly as "Proclaimer of Salvation", an apt description of the legacy of Rav Zvi Yehudah's father [pictured], which expounded his attributing the 20th century Jewish renaissance in the Land of Israel to the swift approach of the Final Days of Redemption. Rav Zvi Yehuda was a very original thinker, but he subjugated his entire life to publication of the astounding number of books - in the spheres of both Halacha and Jewish Philosophy - written by his father. I once innocently asked Rav Zvi Yehudah if we are now at "the start of the Redemption" (itchalta d'geula), and he replied "Start? We are in the actual days of the Mashiach" (Etzem yemot HaMashiach).

The book contains 600 pages, and I am in the habit of taking it to shul and reading from it between Mincha and Maariv each day.

Yesterday night, Leil Shabat, on pages 237-238 I read the following story (which originally appeared in a book named Angels as Men), which immediately brought to mind the handful of Israel-haters which the JC is so happy to host and accommodate on these blog pages. I'm telling the story here because I doubt if the book will ever be translated into English (owing to lack of demand), and because I deem the story relevant to these blog pages.

One comment, and my apologies in advance to our lady readers for this sentence: they say that a translation is like a woman – either attractive or faithful, but never both. For that reason I am not translating word for word, but re-telling the story as I read it, in English.

The story was told by Rav Zvi Yehuda once at a shabbat meal in his house. It was told after Rav Zvi Yehudah heard that some Jewish tourists had returned to their country of origin and foul-mouthed the Land of Israel. The story was originally told by Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever [pictured, on an Israeli stamp], a 19th century founder of Religious Zionism and of the Mizrachi movement.

In a certain village there lived a young man who was very rich – and was as uncouth as he was rich. In the same village lived a very poor family, one of whose daughters was a very beautiful girl, who was also possessed of exceptionally good personality traits.

The young man was very attracted to the young lady, but despite his sending a few shadchanim (match-makers) to arrange a meeting between them, the lady was not interested and refused every suggestion. One day her father asked for his sake to meet with the young man just once, so that he would stop pestering her and the family. She agreed, and he was invited for shabbat lunch.

When he arrived, the young lady appeared in an old, not-too-clean dress, no make-up, her hair dishevelled, and in general showed him no affection whatsoever.

The young man left, telling everyone he knew that the stories about her beauty and character were a lie, that she was in fact ugly and ill-mannered.

This, said Rav Zvi Yehudah, is Eretz Yisrael. This is a holy land with special qualities, which will not accept people whose spiritual qualities are not suited for it. In such cases it makes itself appear to them in an unappealing fashion, so while they are going around saying how much the Land of Israel is not worthy of them, in fact it is they who are not worthy of living in the Land of Israel, which has in effect rejected them.

This is how one should react to Israel-haters; they are in fact rejects.
Posted by Daphne Anson at 05:52 0 comments
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Labels: Anti-Zionist Jews, Avraham Reiss, Avraham Yitzchak, Kook, Rabbi Zvi Yehudah
Saturday, 13 November 2010
It’s Time for Nick Clegg to Scrape this Foul Tonge – Spinning Jenny the Lib Dem Peer Slurs Israel Yet Again
Jenny Tonge – who sits in the House of Lords on the Lib Dem benches as Baroness Tonge, having been given a life peerage in 2005 after several years as an MP – is a veteran detester and demoniser of the world’s only Jewish State, and as a result has earned the epithet “Jihad Jenny”. In 2004 the then Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, sacked her as a party spokesperson after she had refused to apologise for saying of Palestinian suicide bombers: "If I had to live in that situation – and I say that advisedly – I might just consider becoming one myself."

In 2006 Tonge made headlines when she announced: "The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party." Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell – himself no great friend of Israel – called her remarks "unacceptable" and possessing "clear antisemitic connotations”.

An all-party group of members of the House of Lords led by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey noted that her comments "evoked a classic anti-Jewish conspiracy theory”. She retorted that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's article "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" that appeared in the 23 March 2006 issue of The London Review of Books – whose “as-a-Jew” editor Mary-Kay Wilmers is on record, incidentally, as describing herself as "unambiguously hostile to Israel” – bore out her contention that the "'Israel lobby' had a disproportionate voice in Anglo-American foreign policy".

In 2008 Tonge, along with Lord Ahmed, leftwing Labour MP Clare Short, and several MEPs, sailed to Gaza to break Israel’s siege; Tonge compared the situation there to South African apartheid. The following year, shortly after Operation Cast Lead, she was part of a small British parliamentary delegation which, in the hope that the Blair government, followed by Bush’s, would be pressured into opening talks with Hamas, met the terrorist organisation’s leader, Khaled Meshaal, in Damascus.

In February this year she caused a furore when she said that an independent inquiry should be established by the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association into allegations that the IDF was harvesting organs from earthquake victims in Haiti. As one Lib Dem parliamentary candidate observed: “It’s abhorrent that anyone should suggest that something as perverse and sick as this should be investigated”, while the chairman of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel remarked: “On this basis, there could be calls for an investigation to discover the ‘truth’ in the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Party leader Nick Clegg, not distinguished for any great sympathy for Israel, described her remarks as "wrong, distasteful and provocative" and added that he recognised “the deep and understandable distress they have caused to the Jewish community”. He therefore removed her as the party’s spokesperson on health matters in the Lords.

The Israel-obsessed baroness (pictured here during an interview with Ahmadinejad's propaganda satellite channel, Press TV) has been up to her spiteful, slanderous tricks again. In yesterday’s debate in the upper house on the Strategic Defence Review, her ladyship made the following outrageous and untenable claim (hat tip: Jonathan Hoffman, over at the jc.com blogs):

"Prevention of conflict also means that we must start being honest about international law and UN resolutions. It is a disgrace to us all that problems such as Kashmir and Palestine are still alienating Muslims all over the world. The treatment of Palestinians by Israel is held up as an example of how the West treats Muslims and is at the root cause of terrorism worldwide. Even Tony Blair has now admitted this publicly. [Jonathan Hoffman: No he has not.] Why do we let it continue? Is it Holocaust guilt? We should be guilty – of course we should. Is it the power of the pro-Israel lobby here and in the USA? I do not know. Or is it the need, maybe, to have an aircraft carrier called Israel in the Middle East from which to launch attacks on countries such as Iran? The cynic might think that that is why HMS Ark Royal and the Harriers can be dispensed with – we already have a static Ark Royal in a strategic position, armed to the teeth and ready to fight, provided that we do not offend Israel. I feel sorry for the people of Israel sometimes. Their Government's policies have made that country the cause of a lot of the world's problems, yet now they are seen in the middle as the remedy and the base for the West to fight back."

Ironically, on the same day that Spinning Jenny’s venom-coated tongue was indulging in its latest round of lashing the Jewish State, the Jewish Chronicle (12 November 2010) printed on its front page extracts from a speech to the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel (to many people's amazement, given the party's track record, such a body does exist!) by Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister Clegg, who apparently concedes that the party’s past pronouncements in favour of the Palestinians should have been “accompanied equally loudly and equally clearly, by an awareness of the security challenges faced by Israel and of the right of Israel to defend itself against the threats that it continually faces”.

Given her past and present form, Jenny Tonge, if not actually an antisemite, is doing her utmost to seem like one. Her remarks are ludicrous and malevolent. I’ve already mentioned, on a recent blogpost regarding the remarks of Lib Dem peer Lord Phillips of Sudbury, how Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile is convinced that Tonge’s previous outbursts against Israel cost the Lib Dems vital votes in certain constituencies at the General Election. Indeed, the Lib Dems have a number of high-profile Israel bashers within their ranks.

If Nick Clegg is serious about mending his party’s fractured relationship with Anglo-Jewry – nay, if he is serious about a committal to truth and fairness – he should do what is long overdue, and remove the party whip from the incorrigible Jenny Tonge. Now!
Posted by Daphne Anson at 09:49 4 comments
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Labels: Jenny Tonge, Liberal Democrats and Israel, Nick Clegg
Thursday, 11 November 2010
The Expulsion of the Jews from Muslim Countries, 1920-1970: A History of Ongoing Cruelty and Discrimination
This article by Professor Shmuel Trigano is a must-read in the light of the ruthlessly waged campaign of delegitimisation of Israel using the Nakba, the “Right of Return” demand, and the“Born in Sin” allegation as weapons. Professor Trigano is a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris-Nanterre. He is director of the College of Jewish Studies at the Alliance Israélite Universelle, editor of Pardes, a journal of Jewish studies, and founder of L'Observatoire du Monde Juif, a research centre on Jewish political life.

Between 1920 and 1970, 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab and other Muslim countries: from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Yemen, including places where they had lived for twenty centuries. The 1940s were a turning point in this tragedy; of those expelled, 600,000 settled in the new state of Israel, and 300,000 in France and Canada. Today, they and their descendants form the majority of the French Jewish community and a large part of Israel's population.

How does one explain this exodus? It is the blind spot of contemporary political consciousness and an object of denial. There is not even an expression to name this major event. "The Forgotten Exodus" is the most commonly used term. But it actually masks the nature and impact of this historical event. "Forgotten" by whom, other than ideologues? "Exodus" is an apt description of the situation but not of its causes, which the adjective "forgotten" occults even more. For those who underwent the expulsion have not forgotten it at all. Moreover, it is also an important historical fact.

This is a major transnational phenomenon. Jewish communities were expelled either in their entirety or almost so. Communities of some significance remain in Iran, Turkey, Morocco, and Tunisia. All the countries that expelled Jews have one thing in common: they belong to Islam (including Turkey and Iran, which are not Arab countries). However, it is hard to view this exodus as a whole. It largely took place over a thirty-year period (1940-1970) and covered a huge geographical area, from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Yemen.

In the countries that expelled Jews, a combination of six legal, economic, and political measures aimed at isolating Jews in society was instituted:
denationalization;
legal discrimination;
isolation and sequestration;
economic despoilment;
socioeconomic discrimination;
and pogroms or similar acts.
....

Anti-Semitism would have developed even without the existence of the state of Israel because of Arab-Islamic nationalism, which resulted in xenophobia. In the twentieth century, hostility toward Jews was spreading well before Israel's creation: in Yemen, Syria, Mandatory Palestine, Turkey, and Algeria.

It is the custom to say that Zionism was responsible for this development. But Zionism is to be understood, in the worldview of the Islamic mind, in another perspective. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of intolerant Arab nationalism, long-dominated nations (such as the Armenians and the Jews) sought independence. This was understood by the Arab world as a rebellion not only against the new Arab nation-states but also against Islamic law, which puts non-Muslims in the inferior status of a dominated nation: the dhimmis.

Both the Armenians and the Jews were subjected to violent repression. The former were massacred by the Ottoman Empire in 1894-1895 – around 300,000 victims – and suffered a genocide – 1,200,000 victims – by the Turks in 1908. The latter in Mandatory Palestine suffered pogroms in 1920, 1929, 1936, and 1939. And the Jews in Muslim countries ... were forced to leave. Hardly any Jews remain in the abovementioned countries, and the number of Christian Arabs is now dwindling in them as well.

The new Arab anti-Zionism contained classic anti-Semitic policies, as demonstrated by the "Statute of the Jews" that could be compared to the Vichy Statute of the Jews, except that it developed over a long time, in a huge geographical area, and at different periods. Jews were accused of being co-responsible with Israel for the war that the Arab states declared against the new state and then lost. Regardless of their ideological affiliation - communist, nationalist, Zionist, religious, and so on - they were subjected to special laws specifically aimed at Jews. They were expelled from all Arab-Muslim countries because a collective responsibility was imputed to them. This is typical anti-Semitic reasoning.

The Jews from Arab-Muslim countries were powerless. They had no army. They did not take part in the conflict. They were not responsible for triggering hostilities between the Arab states and Israel. That the Yishuv, the quasi-Jewish state that developed in Mandatory Palestine, became a state according to the United Nations Partition Plan was not also responsible for the war except for the scandal of its existence. Instead, the cause of the situation was the intolerance and imperialism of the new Arab states: before these attained independence, there were indeed no such states. Before the Western colonial empires there was another Islamic colonial empire, the Ottoman one. Palestine never existed as a political or cultural entity. The new nation-states – Israel included – were a product of the Western colonial empires and all were "invented." Why were these Jews in Arab countries persecuted and expelled if not as a result of an anti-Semitic ideology and policy? It was a continuation of the traditional Islamic anti-Judaism but defined in reference to the symbol of the rebellion of the Jewish dhimmis: Zionism.

The fact that these events have been obscured has served in the campaign to delegitimize Israel, and therefore to a large extent, the same population that suffered this oppression. The fate of Palestinian refugees, their proclaimed innocence, and the injustice they endured form the main thrust of this delegitimization.

About 600,000 of the Jews forced out of Islamic countries in those years attempted to reconstruct their life in Israel. They have suffered more than the Palestinian refugees and undergone greater spoliations.

They became citizens of the countries of refuge (Israel and France especially), while Palestinians were ostracized from the Arab nations. Unlike Israel, the Arab states have refused to integrate (Palestinian) refugees in the hopes of keeping hotbeds of conflict alive.

Today, 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinian Arabs, while the few thousands of Jews still living in Arab and Muslim states (almost exclusively Iran, Morocco, Turkey, and Tunisia) are tiny quasi-dhimmi minorities, probably destined to disappear. Except in Turkey, they depend on a despotic or monarchic regime that needs them for specific interests in international politics. Since 1922, a Palestinian Arab state has already existed on the territory of Mandatory Palestine: Jordan, with 75 percent of its population Palestinian. The Palestinian Authority rules part of the remainder in what became "Cisjordania" after its annexation by Transjordan in 1948, which then became Jordan.

The Palestinians' fate is mainly the result of the policy of their leadership, who have always rejected the further division of Mandatory Palestine (as proposed in 1937 and 1947). The creation of Transjordan in 1922 apparently was not sufficient. Arabs from Palestine were the allies of the five Arab states that attacked the newly created state of Israel: Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon, as well as the Arab League. Even today, both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas reject the division of the land, denying Israel its natural right to a national existence while defining Palestine as exclusively Arab and Islamic.

The Jewish people are a people with a long history – contrary to the Palestinians – and have the right of sovereignty in a land that has been the seat of three Jewish states since earliest antiquity. Zionism is the culmination of a process of self-determination, from a dominated nation in the Arab-Muslim world to an emancipated one within this world – that is, in the Middle East. There has been a population exchange. Israel's "original sin" is a fiction. These are the historical and political facts on which Jewish discourse must be founded. It is time to take back the initiative and restore the Jewish narrative.


You can read the entire article here http://www.mideasttruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=21921&sid
Posted by Daphne Anson at 14:10 2 comments
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Labels: Antisemitism in Muslim Lands, Dhimmi Jews in Arab Lands, Jewish Refugees from Arab lands
Which Wall Would That Be?
Have a look at these earnest senior citizens in central London, mutely demanding “Stop the Wall”. Few if any of us would even consider for a moment that they might be demonstrating against the construction of some high wall nearby that’s going to impede residents’ view of a park or of a lake or of a cathedral’s close or some other scenic vista, or against some stark modern structure that abides ill with the locality’s architectural heritage.

Alas, we’re all conditioned, we all respond on cue, like Pavlov’s dogs. Owing to the relentless crusade of delegitimisation of a certain tiny country in the Middle East – a country more sinned against than sinning – we all know which wall they, and others, mean by “the wall”. Israel’s “apartheid wall”, of course.

“Labelling Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ is the embodiment of the new antisemitism that seeks to deny the Jewish people the right of equality and self-determination among the nations”, Professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University has rightly observed.

The people who are so swift to do so seldom if ever utter a word in condemnation of the male supremacist gender apartheid committed by some Islamic regimes, who prohibit the public space to their female chattels unless those unlucky enough to be of the "inferior" gender suborn their identities by concealing themselves behind grotesque portable walls (such as these shroud-like garments which make their wearers look like a nightmarish regiment of risen corpses in a horror movie ) that impede their vision, hamper their breathing, make them perspire, and give their unborn infants rickets.

No, sirree! If you observe to your average common or garden lefty that gender apartheid is a violation of human rights – as my then schoolboy son, bless him, did to his trendy lefty teacher during a class discussion on South Africa –you’ll most likely be met, as he was, with a shrug and a dismissive “Oh, but it’s part of their culture”.

I’m really going to have to return to this whole “Israel is an apartheid state” canard in a future blogpost (or two). For, like so many of the monstrous lies that the far left and the Islamicists who find themselves in an incongruous embrace owing to their common hatred of the world’s only Jewish State have fed the public over the past few decades, this one has been swallowed and digested, emerging – as is the case with so many lies about “The Zionist Entity” – with the status of an unassailable truth.

It’s the same with that so-called “apartheid wall”. All countries have not merely the right but the obligation to protect their people from harm, and Israel's security fence has certainly done just that. Those senior citizens in the top photograph are Friends of Sabeel UK, whose website features as a kind of logo a picture of that wall. There’s an organisation called “Stop the Wall”. Palestine Solidarity Campaign groups erect mock-ups of the wall in order to demonise Israel. Now, I learn from the blog of Paul Martin, a Methodist minister in Devon who supports his church’s notorious anti-Israel boycott, that Mark Thomas (a self-styled “libertarian anarchist” who, I believe, began his comedy career on Al Beeb as a smut merchant) has got into the act:

'The activist comedian Mark Thomas has praised Palestinian Christians for their role in the growth of nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation.

Thomas recently walked the length of the wall surrounding the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in preparation for a book and a film on the subject....

Thomas, an atheist, said, “When Christians get it right, they really get it right”.

He applauded the decision of Christian churches in Jerusalem to describe the occupation as a sin. And he quoted one Christian priest who told him that he was resisting the occupation to “save our Israeli brothers and sisters from committing a mortal sin”.

Thomas made his comments while drawing links between military occupation and the arms industry in a speech to the annual National Gathering of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) in London on Saturday (6 November).

He said that seeing the wall in Palestine reminded him that campaigning against the arms trade is part of a wider struggle against militarism and all that keeps it in place. Thomas has used comedy alongside more traditional campaigning methods to work against the arms trade over the last decade.”' (hat tip: Richard Hall http://theconnexion.net/wp/?p=8897#comments)

Indeed, so fixed is the world’s attention on Israel’s “wall” that few of us realise that Israel’s security barrier – most of it a fence – is just one of several of its kind in the world. A gruesome barbed-wire barrier separates North and South Korea. Britain built this wall (pictured) in Belfast, to keep the warring Protestant and Roman Catholic factions apart. An unattractive structure was erected in Cyprus with the UN’s blessing – yes, that same UN that is a hotbed of anti-Israel rhetoric – along the dividing line between that part of the island belonging to Greece and that belonging to Turkey.

Then there’s America’s fence, erected to prevent illegal immigration from Mexico. There’s the fence Spain has erected, funded from the coffers of the European Union, in its Moroccan enclaves Ceuta and Melilla, to deter incomers from sub-Saharan Africa. This hideous barrier (pictured) stands between Botswana and Zimbabwe, ostensibly to keep diseased cattle from the latter country straying into the former, but very conveniently keeping economic immigrants out. A 460-mile barrier in Kashmir, lined with barbed wire and landmines, is India’s answer to infiltration from Pakistan. Israel itself had fences along its borders with Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, so its fence separating it from the Palestinian Authority can hardly be considered innovative.

In the Muslim world, Turkey erected a barrier in its formerly Syrian province of Alexandra, an area which Syria claims as its own. To combat terror raids from Sahrawi separatists bent on independence for their region (when is the Palestinian-loving far left going to rant and rave about the denial of Sahrawi autonomy, I wonder), Morocco built , in the 1980s, a massive structure of sand and stone, ditches, barbed wire and landmines that snakes across the Western Sahara for over 2,700 miles. (Part of it's pictured here.) Where are the thunderous protests from the international community?


Saudi Arabia constructed a 60-mile barrier along an undefined border with Yemen in order to stop incursions and arms smuggling, and in 2006 began work on a 500-mile fence along its border with Iraq – the head of Saudi Arabia’s border guard, Talal Anqawi, describing it euphemistically as “a sort of screen”. The Saudis are still in the expensive process of reinforcing barriers on the entire 5,590-mile boundary separating them from their neighbours. Their barriers are high-tech, and militarily very sophisticated.

As Shiraz Maher observed a year ago on Standpoint's “Focus on Islamism” blog (crossposted at http://www.spittoon.org/archives/3562) :

“Once the Saudi government lost confidence in Yemen’s ability to curb domestic terrorism, they decided to build a physical barrier. Much of it runs through contested territory. According to the 2000 Jeddah border treaty between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, a demilitarised ‘buffer zone’ should exist between both countries, protecting the rights of nomadic Bedouin tribes which live in the cross-border area.

Yet, parts of the Saudi barrier stand inside the demilitarised zone, violating the 2000 agreement and infuriating Yemen. The Foreign Minister, Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi, made official representations to the Saudi government in 2003 arguing This area is supposed to be for pasturing. That was part of the agreement. The tribesmen have been allowed to cross over from one side to another for pasturing. That is a traditional way of life for tribesmen in that area.

Not anymore. A prominent leader of the Wayilah tribe which occupies the disputed area explains The barrier has hindered grazing and free movement by many tribesmen. The tribesmen have the right to be free, but the barrier is taking away their freedom.

As far as I know, this ‘siege’ hasn’t been covered by Press TV but I’m sure Yvonne Ridley and George Galloway will soon be leading a delegation to support the heavily persecuted Wayilah tribe who are discriminated against mainly because they are Shia – a minority sect of Islam despised by Wahhabis.

More recently, Saudi Arabia has also built a physical barrier along its border with Iraq to stop jihadists from the Kingdom going over to join the mujahideen. Talal Anqawi hailed it a major success saying that cross-border incursions had dropped by up to 40%.”

On its 900-mile border with Pakistan, Iran has been busily erecting a 10-feet high, 3-feet thick reinforced concrete wall to halt drug trafficking and terrorism. That this wall has deeply upset the population of Balochistan, upon whose territory it encroaches, separating family members s from each other by cutting across their land, has gone unremarked – and certainly uncondemned – by a world community obsessed only with the “wall” constructed by Israel. To quote Shiraz Maher again:

“I’m hoping to join the next occupation of lecture theatres at universities around the country to protest against this insufferable outrage. I can hear it now: ‘Viva, Viva, Balochistina!’….

Twenty [one] years on from the collapse of the Berlin Wall physical barriers continue to be employed around the world. They may not be pretty, but they are effective. Indeed, even Israel’s biggest critics would have to concede that suicide bombings have fallen away sharply ever since the construction of the security fence in parts of Gaza and the West Bank. Yet, Islamists and parts of the political left obsess only about Israel but do not extend similar condemnation to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, or Pakistan.”

Posted by Daphne Anson at 03:04 11 comments
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Labels: Iran's Security Barrier against Pakistan, Israel's Security Barrier, Saudi Arabia's security barrier against Yemen, Security barriers worldwide
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Why Do Christians Remain Silent About the Persecution of Christians in Muslim-Majority Societies?
This very pertinent question – which is crying out for an answer – is posed by Professor Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal:

Christians in Iraq have been, and not for the first time, deliberately targeted in a major terrorist attack. Indeed, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Iraq, from the Gaza Strip to Egypt to Sudan to Nigeria, Christians are being assaulted, intimidated, and murdered by militant Muslims.

Yet virtually never do Christians in any of these countries – perhaps with some occasional exceptions in India – attack Muslims. In the West, there have been no armed terrorist attacks on Muslims or the deliberate killing of Muslims. There does not exist a single group advocating such behavior.

Have you seen any of this in the Western mass media? Have any Christian church groups – some of which find ample time to criticize Israel – even mentioned this systematic assault? Indeed, on the rare occasions that the emigration of Christians is mentioned, somehow it is blamed on Israel, as one American network news show did recently.

I'm not writing this to complain about double standards, since one takes this problem for granted, but out of sheer puzzlement. Presumably, much of the Western media and intelligentsia – along with a lot of the church leadership, assumes that it is impossible for a non-Western, "non-white" group to ever be prejudiced. There is also a belief that if one dares report the news about pogroms carried about by Muslims against Christians it will trigger pogroms by Christians against Muslims.

To read the rest of Barry Rubin’s blogpost go here: http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/11/why-do-christians-remain-silent-about-the-persecution-of-christians-in-the-middle-east

I also heartily recommend Robin Shepherd's recent blogpost on this very sad subject, in which he which he highlights the utter hypocrisy of the BBC's reportage:

http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/islamist-threat-to-exterminate-christians-again%20-shows-that-their-plans-are-jews-first-the-rest-of-the-west-next/
Posted by Daphne Anson at 07:56 4 comments
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Labels: Christians in Muslim Countries, Persecution of Christians in Iraq, Persecution of Christians in Islamic countries, Persecution of Christians in Nigeria, Persecution of Christians in Pakistan
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Judah's Lion told to Hop It – by a Kangaroo Court! The anti-Israel Russell Tribunal swings into action
‘Tis getting towards what’s commonly called “the season to be jolly”, but for many of Israel’s implacable foes in the UK – those incorrigible types who obtain their jollies by berating and defaming the Jewish State – that season has come early, for this month sees in London what Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation has aptly dubbed an anti-Israel “Hatefest from the Red/Green Alliance of As-A-Jews, Communists and Islamists” in the guise of the Russell Tribunal.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine is billed as “an International People’s Tribunal created by a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East.” The first Russell Tribunal was convened in 1966 during the Vietnam War by the distinguished leftwing Nobel Laureate, anti-nuclear campaigner, mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), whose phrase “May this tribunal prevent the crime of silence” has become the watchword of subsequent tribunals.

“The Russell Tribunal has no legal status but acts as a court of the people, a Tribunal of conscience, faced with injustices and violations of international law, that are not dealt with by existing international jurisdictions, or that are recognised but continue with complete impunity due to the lack of political will of the international community”, we learn from the present tribunal’s website.

"Today, and in the same spirit, the Bertrand Russell Foundation supports the setting up of a Russell Tribunal to examine the violations of international law, of which the Palestinians are victims, and that prevent the Palestinian People from exercising its rights to a sovereign State.

This Tribunal … will reaffirm the supremacy of international law as the basis for a solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It will identify all the failings in the implementation of this right and will condemn all the parties responsible for these failings, in full view of international public opinion."

On 20-21 November this “kangaroo court” will be in session on the premises of the Law Society, prompting distinguished barrister Jonathan Goldberg QC to observe:

"It is hard to think of any other learned profession in the United Kingdom which has benefited so much from its distinguished Jewish members over the centuries as the solicitors’ profession. Examples abound, right up to the present Supreme Court Judge Lord Collins of Mapesbury. It is deeply offensive to British Jews and lawyers that the Law Society is hosting this controversial political event. It is little more than an Israel-bashing fest, in the guise of a kangaroo court, which has arrogantly summonsed companies doing business with Israel to appear before it to justify themselves. Many of the usual cast of hard left-wing Zionist-haters are speaking."

And Jonathan Hoffman has added:

"It seems that the Law Society has been duped into thinking that this is some kind of high minded quasi-judicial inquiry. But it is a sham show trial with the result predetermined. By using the credibility of the Law Society, the organisers - utterly cynically - are trying to give it a veneer of respectability. They are bringing the name of the Law Society into disrepute and that should be sufficient to lead to the cancellation of the booking. Let's hope the Society's Officers make the right decision. If they do not, many lawyers will question why they should remain members and why they should hold events there."

Last evening, a preliminary session of the Russell Tribunal took place at the headquarters of Amnesty International. The panel comprised film director Ken Loach, well-known for his odious anti-Israel invective, journalist Ewa Jasiewicz (no stranger to readers of the Israel-hating Guardian), whose accomplishments allegedly include helping to desecrate a wall of the Warsaw Ghetto with anti-Israel slogans, and others of their ilk.

Standing sentry as the room filled up was Amnesty’s campaigns director Krystian Benedict, and when this flunkey of the kangaroo court saw Jonathan Hoffman about to enter he barred the man whose leonine courage in speaking up for Israel is legendary. Mr Hoffman protested, whereupon Mr Benedict wasted no time in summoning not one but four Mr Plods to escort Judah’s Lion off the premises.

“Rather than try to deal with my on-point objections to the speakers’ comments, I was censored”, notes Hoffman. “Bertrand Russell would surely be turning in his grave. Totalitarian societies begin with curbing free speech. It seems that Amnesty's espousal of 'human rights' does not extend to the right of Jews to protest at antisemitism during Amnesty meetings.”

However, on hand to report on (and photograph) last evening’s event was the doughty Richard Millett, who relates on his blog that “Last night at Amnesty felt less about the delegitimisation of Israel and more about the delegitimisation of Jews.”

Read more at richardmillett.wordpress.com/.../russell-tribunal-on-palestine-presents-ken- loach-at-amnesty/