by Oui
Sat Aug 11th, 2018 at 11:00:32 AM EST
Well, my instinct and analysis wasn't far besides the truth ...
○ War On BDS, Progressive Left Under Attack
○ Gaza Politics: Controlling a Sustained Depravity
Article published on August 8th:
The Israel lobby is leading a witch hunt against Corbyn. It has to stop | Middle East Eye | by Richard Silverstein
Britain seems to be going through a period of ritual flagellation. The Labour Party is tearing itself apart in order to assuage charges of anti-Semitism that seem to rain down on it from all sides.
In order to understand the true motivation
behind Labour's anti-Semitism charges, it's
important to focus less on the actual charges
and more on the organisations making them
Continued below the fold ...
No systematic anti-Semitism
Any dispassionate review of the UK Labour Party will not find any systemic anti-Semitic rhetoric among its leadership, though there have been instances among individual members and low-level local officials.
The real origin of the anti-Semitism scourge is in the UK's Israel lobby - including groups like the Board of Deputies, BICOM, the Jewish Chronicle, and Community Security Trust - and its enablers in the British press and the Israeli embassy.
As a Jew myself, I'm bemused to learn that charges of anti-Semitism against one party member are based on the claim that he stated that the campaign was the product of the Israel lobby.
Those who fomented this campaign don't fear anti-Semitism. Rather, they fear Jeremy Corbyn. He has shown that to lead the Labour party you don't have to be re-formed in the image of Tony Blair, the corporate politician who seeks power for its own sake and makes common cause with dictators and American presidents intent on waging war.
Even more pointedly, Corbyn has always supported the cause of Palestinian rights. He has always viewed Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians sceptically. To the Israel lobby this is tantamount to anti-Semitism.
Corbyn breaks the Blaririte mould of knee-jerk
support for Israel. He is a politician who will
question old orthodoxies and try new ideas
You may ask: how does criticising Israel come to be labelled as anti-Semitism? A good question: to answer it you must understand the role that Israel has come to play within Diaspora Jewish communities in the US and Britain.
Israel vs Judaism
At one time, Diaspora Jews had a strong cultural, ethnic and religious identity. Though many felt an affinity for Israel, it was considered only a single factor among many determining Jewish identity. But as Jews have become increasingly secular, they have disaffiliated from the traditional institutions that were once the loci of Jewish life: synagogues, community centres, Zionist groups and defence organisations.
In response, some of the wealthiest, most conservative voices in the community have issued a call to arms. Their view of the crisis is that the community is on life support and the only way to save it is by replacing the diffuse version of Jewish identity with a single central unifying principle: Israel.
Yair Lapid: Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer a defender of Israeli democracy | The Times of Israel |
And while Lapid goes to considerable lengths to challenge Netanyahu's persuasive assertion of Israel's economic and foreign relations renaissance, and to highlight Netanyahu's failures in tackling the threats posed by Iran, he says it is Israel's domestic cohesion that is most threatened by the prime minister's hold. What worries him most, as Israel turns 70 and he wonders how the country will fare in the years to come, is Israelis' capacity "to work together towards a common good" -- a critical factor in Israel's survival and one he claims that Netanyahu cynically undermines by fueling division for narrow political gain.
Therefore, if elected prime minister, Lapid, 54, promises he'll pass legislation mandating a two-term prime ministerial limit. And he'll pass it early, he says, before he too succumbs to the typical Israeli prime ministerial delusion that the country's very existence depends on him retaining the post, and that all means can be sacrificed to that end.
Under Netanyahu, Lapid asserts, the determination to retain power at all costs is coming to threaten Israel's very democracy -- with the courts, law enforcement and the media all under sustained attack. Asked what's wrong with legislation, currently contemplated by Netanyahu, that would prevent the High Court from striking down Knesset legislation it finds to be undemocratic, he answers starkly, with a rather unhappy laugh: "Because if tomorrow the 66 members of the coalition vote through a law saying we're hanging the other 54 opposition members of Knesset from a tree, who are we going to go to?"
Netanyahu and his government, he further charges, are exhibiting a "failure to understand politics as an ongoing process, in which sometimes you're in power and sometimes you're not, and that you have to protect the rights of the people who are not in power, including minorities." Lapid's most devastating critique? That Netanyahu is no longer a defender of Israeli democracy.
○ Lapid praises Trump as US president announces fresh tariffs on Turkey
○ Lapid says Netanyahu must 'admit failure' for not thwarting Iran nuclear deal | JPost - Sept. 2015 |
Exactly what has been happening, wealth buys influence, not only in corporate media, political lobby groups, pro sports but also inside the United Nations. The Iraq War pushed up the oil wealth of the Gulf States and we're suffering the consequences ever since. Well done Bush family, Clintons and the Saudi Royals ... you are all united now! Iran overthrow next?
Saudi Arabia Mocks the World with the Help of Its Wealth... and Some Help from Trump
The leaders of Saudi Arabia mock western values with supreme confidence by virtue of their money power. Democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, freedom to protest, freedom of expression, and other freedoms are treated as norms imposed by the West. If you wish to violate these sacred principles, all you have to do is pay!
The monarchy also defied the UN when in September 2017 a small group of Western nations sought to create a commission of inquiry to investigate its human rights violations in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East where millions face death, disease and famine because of western-supported Saudi bombing. And last but not least, a Saudi state media account, which promotes the Saudi Information Ministry's propaganda and is often retweeted by the ministry, appeared to explicitly threaten a 9/11 style attack featuring a plane headed towards a skyscraper in Toronto, Canada. The tweet was a response to the Canadian Foreign Ministry's tweet, expressing grave concern about recent arrests in Saudi civil society and official attacks on women's rights activists.
Samar Badawi Receives an International Women of Courage Award (U.S. State Dep't)
Saudi accuses Canada of what it calls "interference in its domestic affairs". This from the country which routinely advocates "change" in domestic affairs of others: its Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir threatened "ad nauseam", throughout the many years of war in Syria, that President Bashar al-Assad "will be removed by force." Saudi leaders have advocated regime change in Iran (the same Twitter account called for the death of the Supreme Leader of Iran earlier that day), held a Lebanese Prime Minister hostage (the French president intervened to obtain his release), and are bombing Yemen daily as the world looks impotently on, killing thousands of civilians and destroying a country whose only crime is to refuse to submit to Saudi rule and Wahhabi ideology. The world looks on these Saudi abuses with impotent eyes.
...
Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman has tried - with little obvious success, despite the support from Western media - to portray the kingdom as a country undertaking reform. But he has not been able to put a modern face on the extremist Wahhabist doctrine, Saudi Arabia's official religion. This doctrine is the "main source of global terrorism" and the same teaching followed by groups like al-Qaeda and the "Islamic State" (ISIS). These groups share Takfiri ideology with most of the kingdom's inhabitants. This teaching is notable for its rigidity, intolerance and willingness to kill infidels, whether defined as followers of other religions, secular people, or even Muslims who do not agree with a return to the practice of Islam by the sword.
