Fighting antisemitism

Who speaks for Britain's Jews?

While many, perhaps most, Jews globally do feel some sense of identification with the Israeli-Jewish nation (if not the nation-state of Israel itself), and while many Jews are understandably a great deal more sensitive to the threat posed by Hamas' anti-Semitic project than many on the British left, it is by no means the case that world Jewry is united in support for the colonialist adventures of the Israeli government in the occupied territories. The “Israel solidarity rallies” orgainsed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (the most significant and influential communalist organisation...

“Zionists” scapegoated for Sarkozy’s crimes

The left-wing website Indymedia seems to have allowed itself to be manipulated by the anti-semitic right again. A recent report on the site, citing the Iranian-government-sponsored Press TV (for which Yvonne Ridley works) as source, claims that French president Nicolas Sarkozy is a former agent of the Israeli secret police Mossad. The Indymedia posting adds: “This would explain the country’s new alignment with the ‘Neo-Cons’.” So if Sarkozy were a proper French bourgeois politician, he couldn’t be “neo-con” inclined, or friendly to the US administration? Only the secret intrigues of “the...

"The Zionists" blamed for Sarkozy's misdeeds

The left-wing website Indymedia seems to have allowed itself to be manipulated by the anti-semitic right again. A recent report on the site , citing the Iranian-government-sponsored Press TV (for which Yvonne Ridley works) as source, claims that French president Nicolas Sarkozy is a former agent of the Israeli secret police Mossad. The Indymedia posting adds: "This would explain the country's new alignment with the 'Neo-Cons'." So if Sarkozy were a proper French bourgeois politician, he couldn't be "neo-con" inclined, or friendly to the US administration? Only the secret intrigues of "the...

No Hizbullah speaker!

Eve Garrard has circulated the following on the activists' e-list of the lecturers' union UCU (first published here 22/11/07) . Our union is affiliated to the Stop the War Coalition, which is holding a conference on December 1st. One of the speakers it has invited to this conference is Ibrahim Mousawi, the editor of al-Manar TV, Hizbullah's broadcasting network. Al-Manar has circulated rumours that the attack on the World Trade Centre on 9/11 was a Zionist conspiracy, and has also broadcast soap opera episodes showing Jews killing Christian children in order to use their blood for ritual food...

No room for the BNP!

Mike Rowley is right to stress “the fullest freedom of speech” under what he calls “normal circumstances” (Solidarity 121), though it is not clear what these are, or whether they exist in the present climate. I have felt for many years that it is important that socialists — and others who share our views — should withdraw access to space for groups such as the BNP in property over which we have control or influence. They will always find space somewhere, but to withdraw access to public space is really important.

Oxford union: vigil or demo?

As reported in the last Solidarity, a lot is being done in Oxford by local unions, Labour branches, student unions and community groups to stop the Holocaust denier David Irving and the BNP leader Nick Griffin speaking at the Oxford Union student debating society on 26 November. However, the contribution of the Unite Against Fascism national office has been questionable. At an organising meeting two weeks ago they were put in charge of negotiating with the police. Apparently they told the police we were organising not a mass picket of the Oxford Union building where the fascists would be...

Why supporters of "two states" should not join the "smash Israel" boycotters— Solidarity, yes! Boycott, no!

Comrades: You, I believe, support a boycott as something to help bring about “two states” in Israel/ Palestine — Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, and the creation of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. On the goal of “two states”, I agree with you. But I believe the boycott will harm rather than help that cause, and in this Open Letter I want to explain why. The mood for boycott is backed by strong feelings of indignation and outrage against Israel, and by a powerful and unanswerable sentiment that something must be done by the British labour movement...

Don't let the hard right seem to be the ones who fight anti-semitism!

The good news: Channel Four TV next Monday, 9 July, at 8pm, will screen a programme about the growing threat of anti-semitism in Britain. The bad news: it will be presented by the grotesque right-wing newspaper columnist Richard Littlejohn. When genocide was raging in Rwanda in 1994, Littlejohn wrote: "Does anyone really give a monkey's about what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them." Nick Griffin of the BNP calls Littlejohn his favourite columnist. Susan Sontag famously remarked in 1982:...

The Lies Against Socialism Answered

For most of the 20th century, the common image of "socialism" was the USSR and the other states modelled on it, China, Cuba, and so on. There were always socialists who were critical of Stalin's or Khrushchev's USSR, seeing it as an unacceptably bureaucratic version of socialism, and keen to create a more democratic version in their own countries. By the late 1960s or early 1970s, a big majority even in the official Communist Parties was highly critical of Brezhnev's USSR. But most of those who criticised the USSR clung to the idea that some other USSR-model state - China, Vietnam, Cuba.... -...

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