Thread: The Holocaust was a product of fascism, "race" hatred, ultra-nationalism, dehumanisation. Today, when more Jews globally question+challenge Zionism than at any time since 1948 + Israel's government includes self-declared fascists, Fraser's statement is peculiar. 1/7

https://twitter.com/giles_fraser/status/1787017593829679181

In a brilliant 1983 essay, the Israeli writer Boaz Evron said the 2 tragedies Jews suffered in the 20th century were "the Holocaust – and the (nationalist+mystical) lessons drawn from it", which fuel an ideology where all who challenge Zionism are seen as antisemites. 2/7

After Israel's government declared war in response to Hamas massacre 7 October, it moved swiftly to ban anti-war protests within Israel. But the authorities could not sustain that. Protests have taken place but have faced violence from the police and far-right activists. 1/6 They continue to grow as the death toll rises massively in Gaza, and pogroms continue in the West Bank. At the end of December protests took place within Israel at several locations. In Tel Aviv crowds were chanting "Bibi, Bibi, you can't hide, you're committing genocide." 2/6

So I watched Stephen Fry’s “Alternative” Xmas broadcast yesterday hoping for some enlightenment, but was left wondering what it was an alternative to, and what a missed opportunity it was. 1/12 A Christmas message focusing on rising racism against a range of communities, in a year when leading politicians have ratcheted up rhetoric against refugees and extended that to attacks on multiculturalism itself would have been a welcome alternative. 2/12

Not impressed by David Miller's recent posts about “imaginary Judeophobia”; Jews being “over-represented" in Europe and America (N&S) "in positions of cultural, economic and political power” and being “in a position to discriminate against actually marginalised groups” 1/6 He casually removes antisemitism from “actually existing racism”+seems to homogenise and stereotype Jews as if they have a common and nefarious political agenda. He seems to ignore socio-economic differentiation among Jews, and their political, cultural and ethnic diversity. 2/6

I made the mistake last night of watching Kendall v Corbyn on Peston. Corbyn answered questions directly and assuredly, Kendall just threw insults, pathetically trying to play the bully. She displayed the Labour Right's deeply dishonest, phoney war on antisemitism 1/7 Objective commentator know this claimed "war on a/s" was nothing of the sort. It was a factional war against the Left by the LP Right. They feared Corbyn's domestic agenda to redistribute political+economic power +challenge media monopolies as much as the Tories feared it. 2/7

When I left the Labour Party in February this year I likened the methods of its internal regime to those of a right-wing dictatorship. The blocking of @emmadentcoad from standing as Labour's candidate in Kensington suggest this might be an understatement. 1/4

https://twitter.com/emmadentcoad/status/1582003419463569410

Emma's dogged campaigning for "the many" for 20 years in Kensington produced an astonishing result, when she won the Tory stronghold in 2017. Her care and support for the community who endured and survived the Grenfell catastrophe a week after the election, was phenomenal. 2/4

Message for @Keir_Starmer at Labour Conference 2022. Please don't treat us to more nauseating, self-serving, bad faith comments about how, under your leadership, the party has challenged antisemitism.
It hasn't. 1/9 The one Jewish woman elected to the NEC by LP members has just been suspended on spurious grounds. Many Jewish members are under investigation, or have been disciplined for having legitimate, self-determined views on Israel-Palestine+ the right wing Jewish establishment. 2/9

In the last pathetic acts of the Johnson pantomime, we we will be sold a narrative that credits Johnson with the 2019 election victory over Corbyn-led Labour. He was a bit-part player. Those who hold the reins of power in Labour now, were much more significant. 1/8 It was a victory of the total-establishment war machine against the challenge from a political leader/party armed with a genuinely transformative programme of fundamentally redistributing economic and political power in the country. 2/8

When Starmer tells Labour Friends of Israel that "Anti-Zionist antisemitism… denies the Jewish people alone a right to self-determination" + "focuses obsessively on the world’s sole Jewish state..." he forgets that political anti-Zionism was invented by Jewish socialists! 1/6 It was developed by Jewish internationalists and anti-racists who fought for freedom, equality and Jewish self-determination wherever Jews lived; who opposed building an ethno-nationalist state on the dispossession; discrimination, oppression and expulsion of Palestinians. 2/6

3 days ago Tory ministers denounced LSE students protesting against a racist who defends an illegal occupation which inflicts daily human rights abuses, as "antisemites". Today Tory ministers send UK troops to Poland to assist its antisemitic, anti-refugee government 1/8 They are helping prevent asylum seekers crossing into Poland from Belarus at the forests on the Poland/Belarus border. In recent weeks the Polish border guard presence has multiplied. They have created a 2-mile deep militarised zone. 2/8

Visits to Auschwitz are, of course, "moving and humbling". I have been 5 times, once on a guided educational tour, 4 times since 2016 helping to lead educational trips for trade unionists and anti-racist activists through Unite Against Fascism. 1/6

https://twitter.com/nadhimzahawi/status/1458339533951541250

But if Zahawi's conclusion is that more Unis should adopt the deeply flawed IHRA definition, widely condemned for confusing antisemitism with attitudes to separate issues of Israel/Palestine, and for muzzling rather than promoting free speech, then he has learned little.2/6

Remembering victims of reactionaries/Nazis on November 9 - a crucial date in German/Austrian history. Solidarity with all whose dreams were shattered on one November 9th or another. No doubt some actions were taken to erase memories of earlier events on November 9th. 1/4 In the 1848 uprisings the left-liberal leader Robert Blum was executed. In 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm ll was dethroned + Karl Liebknecht proclaimed on behalf of the Sparticist movement a "Free Socialist Republic". On this day in 1923 Hitler's Nazis attempted their beer hall putsch. 2/4

1 year ago @jeremycorbyn was unjustly suspended by the LP for a measured, honest response to the EHRC Report. Starmer and the msm put the perverse spin on it that Corbyn had said that "antisemitism was exaggerated". He said nothing of the sort. 1/7 He said: "Anyone claiming there is no antisemitism in the LP is wrong... and sometimes it is voiced by people who think of themselves as on the left." But he rightly exonerated the vast bulk of LP members from the disgusting stain of being unjustly accused of antisemitism. 2/7

In recent years @jeremycorbyn was one of shamefully few politicians warning of the menacing growth of far right politics in central+E. Europe. His condemnation of the Johnson-Orban meeting was consistent with that. Stephen Pollard’s deranged response is consistent too. 1/4

https://twitter.com/cmonehen/status/1398263911707820039

It is consistent with his obsessive anti-left politics, his own praise of very right wing Islamophobes (eg Douglas Murray), and with his defence in 2009 of a far right (pro-Israel) antisemite invited to Tory Conference. 2/4

Watching with horror the recent wave of pogrom-style thuggery by Far Right Israelis and settlers, I've been recalling the prescient of critiques of Zionism made by Henryk Erlich, prominent leader of the Jewish Workers' Bund in late 1930s Poland. 1/5 In 1938 he said: "The Zionists regard themselves as second-class citizens in Poland. Their aim is to be first-class citizens in Palestine and make the Arabs second-class citizens." That same year he wrote an article entitled "is Zionism a liberating democratic movement?" 2/5

Very pleased to see the release of the "Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism" this afternoon. It is everything that the IHRA definition is not!
It stems from serious and sustained, work by academics across continents, who have seen the weaknesses of the IHRA in action. 1/6 The have seen how it has been easily used and abused to delegitimise not only views, but also the purveyors of views, which are actually not antisemitic. Whatever the intention of IHRA's original author, it has become a witch-hunter's charter (he has protested against that.) 2/6

The chutzpah of @BoardofDeputies knows no bounds. As willing soldiers in the British establishment's war on Corbyn, they helped to install Boris Johnson, while turning a blind eye not only to Johnson's Islamophobia, anti-black racism, homophobia, his antisemitic novel, 1/2 but also the verifiable links of the Tory Party with other racist and anti-immigrant parties and government across Europe. BoD are continuing their personal vendetta by issuing a joint statement with a Zionist advocacy group in Canada attacking a scheduled event on 20 March. 2/7

If ICC set the beginning of the investigation earlier, the BoD would find another excuse to rubbish it or call it "compromised". The BoD sees its role as defending the interests of Jews in Britain. Why should that mean defending the Israeli government+military from scrutiny? 1/5

https://twitter.com/BoardofDeputies/status/1367486664436760578

Why fear investigation if you think Israel's actions are defensible? You could ask that the investigation start in 2013 but you do know that B'Tselem reported: "Three times as many people were killed in the West Bank in 2013 as were in 2012." Most were Palestinian civilians. 2/5

2 years ago today I was fuming as I heard the Blairite Labour MP, Siobhain McDonagh, agree with John Humphreys on Radio 4, that "to be anti-capitalist you have to be antisemitic". She was doing her best to undermine Jeremy Corbyn at the time instead of attacking the Tories. 1/4 How stupid must she feels today, knowing that she helped usher in our most murderous Tory Government ever, which is now trying to salvage itself by borrowing some economic policies from Corbyn's 2017 manifesto! Starmer, meanwhile, opposes Tory plans to raise Corporation Tax. 2/4

Glad the Estonian government collapsed this week in a corruption scandal, especially as the ruling coalition has included the Far Right Conservative People's Party (EKRE) - a virulently anti-immigrant party led by Martin Helme, which went from 7 to 19 seats in 2020. 1/4 In a 2013 interview, Helme stated: "Our immigration policy should have one simple rule: If you're black, go back", adding "I want Estonia to be a white country." When EKRE joined the Gov't in 2019, Estonia's small Jewish community expressed its grave concerns for minorities. 2/4

Earlier this week, a prominent Labour politician was asked in an interview at a Zoom event, which Tory politician he most admired. He answered “I had a degree of admiration for Teresa May. I knew what her moral framework was.” 1/4 Astonishing, given that a few years ago, as Home Secretary she proudly celebrated the introduction of the Hostile Environment from the rostrum at Tory Conference and oversaw the implementation of every cruel aspect to it. We know what that "achieved": 2/4