[thread]

"Palestine Action" attacked a building of offices of
orgs and charities related to the Jewish community.

This was an attack on Bicom, which publishes the brilliant @fathomjournal, a huge resource for facts and discussion about the Israel/Palestine conflict ---> For 12 years, @fathomjournal published facts and debate based on the reality of what goes on in the Middle East; a democratic, anti-racist forum for argument, opinion and education.

One left tradition is based on these values.
The other wants to smash what it doesn't like. --->

[Thread]

The antisemitic tweet that got Galloway fired from Talk Radio: The antisemitic conspiracy fantasy by which Galloway defended Corbyn. Note that Galloway anticipates already in 2019 the now apparently respectable denunciation of Jews as Nazis:

This is what we have called, in left antisemitism, "The Livingstone Formulation".

It responds to allegations of antisemitism with counter-allegations of bad faith:

"Zionists" or "ADL" are "really":

"trying to silence criticism of Israel"

"trying to bankrupt Twitter"...

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1698754179148214495

...It's serious. It teaches people, when Jews raise their worries about antisemitism, to assume that they are speaking in bad faith, as part of a conspiracy to achieve some other selfish or tribal end.

And it blames Jews for "provoking "antisemitism by 'crying wolf'...

[thread]

This is a note about the allegation made by antizionist Jews, that they are designated as "the wrong kind of Jews" by the Jewish mainstream, and that this constitutes an antisemitic attack on them by "Zionists".

Therefore, it is said, Zionism is antisemitic... ...Social structures of unjust, power, like racism and antisemitism, sometimes offer special exemptions to members of the targeted community on the condition that they behave in a way that the racists, or the sexists, or the homophobes approve of....

[thread]

Peter Beinart inverts reality and gets things upside down.

It isn't "Israel's defenders" who lead a global movement of racists, it's antizionism that positions "Israel's defenders" as being central to, and symbolic of, "ethnonationalism" everywhere...

https://twitter.com/PeterBeinart/status/1674161525769027584

...It is in this way that antizionism appears as a whole worldview or ideology that makes Israel symbolic of all that is bad in the world. Antizionism in this form is wholly distinct from criticism of israel. It is the archetypical anti-Jewish ideology of the 21st century...

These points are the heart of Simon Mangin's claim that antisemitism in the Labour Party under Corbyn's leadership was "a scam" exaggerated by Jews who said they had experienced it, and pushed by Labour's enemies.

But the ten examples show that it was true, not a scam.

[thread]

https://twitter.com/simonmaginn/status/1639979937359618048

Chris Williamson, who now makes antisemitic videos in English for the Iranian regime, said Labour was too apologetic.

He showed he didn't understand the charge, he brushed it off as if trivial and he claimed Labour's record on antisemitism was the best.

https://t.co/ftGlJfmsFd

The overwhelming majority of Jews in the UK agreed that there was a problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party and that it was caused by the antisemitic politics of the Corbyn faction.

The Corbyn response isn't that they got it wrong but that they lied. All of them together...

https://twitter.com/HeidiBachram/status/1641801171047272448

...The Corbyn response is that Jews came together and decided to lie. They decided to pretend that there was a stink of antisemitism around the Corbyn faction, when really they were aware of no such stink.

The position is that they lied, as a community, to protect Israel...

This statement needs to relate to the fact that Sizer was tolerated and protected by many in the Church.

@JustinWelby needs to show he understands what Sizer did, why it was antisemitic, and that he understands why so many failed to recognise it as such for so long...

https://twitter.com/JustinWelby/status/1620155694078136320

...This wasn't just a story of one man's antisemitic behaviour and isn't explained by the assumption that Sizer is a secret antisemite in his essence (his soul?).

It's a story of a much wider culture in which good people stumble into antisemitism, thinking they're doing good...

Antisemitism, as a way of living with fury and shame so intense that it threatens to overwhelm the inner life of the antisemite, becomes obsessive. They project their own unacknowledged fantasies onto Jews. David Miller writes about himself, not about me...english.almayadeen.net/articles/featu… ...It is of course David Miller who works for a fascist regime. He writes antisemitic propaganda and he appears scholarly on its English language Press TV channel. He is paid by the same people who paid a man to slice a knife through Salman Rushdie's throat, arm and liver...

David Miller has wide support in British academia, not least from a significant section of the professoriate in social science and the humanities.

He did not become a prof without support.
He didn't lead hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of research projects by accident...

https://twitter.com/hurryupharry/status/1503377809024159749

...Sheffield Hallam UCU - our own union - repeats David Millers' claims....
engageonline.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/she…

...There is liberal common sense that assumes every war is more or less the same and every state is similarly dishonest.

Russia says Israel is fascist; it says Ukraine is fascist.

But Russia is the authoritarian regime that kills civilians and that specializes in propaganda... ...In 1903 Russian secret services forged the protocols, which said Jews were a conspiracy to run the world.

The protocols was an irrational, antisemitic response to the Basel Congresses; antizionist in their essence, they were a response to Jewish political self organisation...

Nuclear weapons are potential evil.
They can take out cities and there is no defence.
They can take out humankind.

So what do we, democratic states, democratic movements, what do we do about the fact that more than one lawless, murderous, gang has control of nuclear weapons?... ...During the Cold War there was "MAD".
Mutually Assured Destruction.

Nobody would use a nuclear weapon, it was hoped, because if somebody used one, everybody else would retaliate. It would not be in anybody's interests to end up with everybody dead...

Academic standards.

[Thread] Who remembers Bongani Masuku?

The SA Constitution Court publishes its judgment tomorrow.

Bongani Masuku was found guilty of antisemitic hate speech by the SA Human Rights Commission on 3/12/2009.

He spoke at a @ucu conference for boycotting Israel on 5/12/2009...

https://twitter.com/ConCourtSA/status/1493590023970693122

...2010 UCU Congress voted down a motion to 'dissociate itself from Masuku's repugnant views'...

[thread]

Lots of people are furious, accusing @ADL of "caving to wokism".

I think we need to take a bit of heat out of this, because the issues themselves are complicated.

They're also important. And there are lots of different things going on in this fight...

https://twitter.com/DavidHirsh/status/1487412716654395399

...Some people are angry because the 'new' definition excludes bigotry against white people from being counted as racism which, it says, privileges white people.

Trumpists don't like it, but I'm relaxed about it. Racism is a power structure, it's more than people being mean...

Holocaust Memorial Day is when we remember Jews murdered because too many of their fellow citizens failed to recognise the threat of antisemitism.

They said the Jews were privileged exploiters. They said we didn't care about "the people".

They cast Jews out of the community... ...If you can't oppose antisemitism, don't make pious speeches on HMD. Don't wear a kippa. Don't quote those who opposed antisemitism.

If you're an antisemite, don't talk about Jews. Not on HMD. Not on any day.

I gave this talk at Goldsmiths 2 years ago:
engageonline.wordpress.com/?s=holocaust+m…

[thread]

We know that @ucu is an institutionally antisemitic organisation.

And we know that @GoldsmithsUCU is emphatically itself a part of this antisemitic culture.

Yes, we know that, so what's new? ...

leftfootforward.org/2021/02/a-safe… ... What's new is that we're on strike.

I wrote a bit about that here. facebook.com/dhirsh1/posts/…

@GoldsmithsUCU is asking for my solidarity.

@ucu has never offered solidarity to Jewish members.

But when there's a strike they expect ours.

OK, what else is new? ...

Today, Sheffield Hallam UCU passed a motion supporting David Miller, saying his work is not at all antisemitic, and explaining his sacking and the accusations made against him by reference to a smear.

Engage brings to you both the motion and the amendment that was voted down... Here's the amendment that was defeated:

Part 1

[pdf] engageonline.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/ucu-am…

[thread]

Galloway's key issue in Batley and Spen is not "Palestine", it's "Zionism" and Israel. And then it's Jews who are positioned as having defeated Corbyn with lies and tricks, for their own selfish motives, and at the expense of ordinary working people in Britain... ...But it's not actual Zionism of actual Jews which is demonized, it's imaginary Zionism which is constructed by antisemites in their imaginations and which is then pushed as being true. It is a Zionism which is equivalent to racism, apartheid, Nazism, genocide, and pure evil...

[Thread}

Here is a list of things that some people in countries far from Palestine, who are very emotionally invested in Palestine, do not know.

It's obviously not an exhaustive list, or a complete history. It's some things that people don't generally know... ...the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, the recognised leader of the Palestinian Arabs, spent WWII in Berlin, helping Hitler plan the murder of the Jews in Palestine, organising a special SS brigade to do it, and broadcasting Nazi propaganda in Arabic to the Middle East...

Nice. Academic colleagues are now explicitly staking out the boundaries of the community of the good.

No Zionists.
Nobody who raises the issue of left antisemitism.

Both scholarship, and morality.

Miller style, this has implications for Jewish students. fathomjournal.org/the-corbyn-lef…