UK: Jewish Voice for Labour secretary Glyn Secker tells pro-Palestine rally that Jews are ‘in the gutter’

Via Jewish Chronicle:

A leading member of the fringe pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice for Labour group has been filmed by the JC issuing a chilling “warning” to Jewish leaders opposing antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party suggesting: “You are part of the problem.”

Accusing the same “Jewish leaders” of “turning a blind eye to the extreme right”, Glyn Secker, JVL's secretary, told a Labour-backed pro-Palestinian march in central London at the weekend: “What on earth are Jews doing in the gutter?”

Dulwich and West Norwood Constituency Labour Party (CLP) member Mr Secker was loudly cheered by around 3,500 pro-Palestinian activists as he delivered his inflammatory speech at the start of the National Demonstration for Palestine in Portland Place, central London.

He said: “Here's a warning to the Jewish leadership.

“While you foment your campaign of allegations of antisemitism against Corbyn and the left to silence Israel's critics while you cry wolf, month after month, year after year in the Labour Party and remain blind to the explosion of the far-right and Islamophobia, you are not part of the solution - you are part of the problem.”

Mr Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell had openly supported the march on which there were regular calls for the destruction of Israel, the “right of return” for “seven million Palestinian refugees” and claims by one speaker that Israel, America, Australia and India are “despicable settler colonial states.”

Three counter-demonstrators - two of whom raised an Israeli flag while another professed “love for both Israel and Palestinian - needed protection from around ten Metropolitan Police officers on Regent Street after a succession of visibly seething activists attempted to lunge at them.

(...)

When confronted later by the JC over his remarks, Mr Secker claimed not to have spoken of “Jews”.

In a statement on Twitter, JVL suggested he had directed his comments towards “these Jews” - those who had allegedly aligned themselves with the far-right. The audio recording however shows no use of the word “these”.

Mr Secker - a former member of the far-left anti-Zionist Socialist Workers Party - has previously been the subject of complaints from Jewish members of his local Labour Party about his hostile comments.

He was also a member of the Palestine Live Facebook group which was littered with antisemitic remarks.

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Germany: foundation under fire for awarding prize to antisemitic BDS group

Via Jerusalem Post:

The Central Council of Jews in Germany and American Jewish organizations blasted the Roland Röhl Foundation for its decision to award in March a peace prize to a BDS group which is widely considered to be antisemitic.

(...)

The group is called Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East and is an energetic supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that targets the Jewish state.

The nearly 100,000 member Central Council of Jews in Germany classified Jewish Voice as an “antisemitic association,” according to a German DPA wire service report.

Dr. Josef Schuster, the president of the council, wrote a letter last week the city of Göttingen’s Mayor Rolf-Georg Köhler urging him to take a stand against the antisemitism prevalent in the group.

“The association is an active supporter of events of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel,” wrote Schuster, adding “I certainly do not have to explain which historical precursors have had boycotts against Jewish institutions or Jews in Germany, and what associations are created with such actions.”

Schuster was referring to Hitler movement to boycott Jewish businesses – a nascent phase in the Holocaust. Köhler, who is a member of the foundation’s board, announced on Wednesday that the city will not participate in the award ceremony this year, according to a report in the daily paper Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten by the journalists Thoralf Cleven and Ansgar Nehls.

In response to Schuster’s criticism, the mayor called for the slated March 9 event to be suspended until the antisemitic allegation could be clarified.

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UK: JVL chair sparks fury by comparing IHRA definition of antisemitism to homophobic Section 28

Via TheJC:

The chair of Jewish Voice For Labour has sparked fury by comparing the internationally recognised definition of antisemitism to controversial 1980s legislation that banned promoting homosexuality in schools.

Speaking at Wednesday's meeting of Finchley and Golders Green Labour Party, Jenny Manson claimed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition prevented support for Palestinians, in the same way Section 28 prevented support for gay pupils.

The comments infuriated many in the room.

Jack Lubner, 17, was said to have been left "upset and intimidated" after Ms Mason strode towards him after he said he objected to her remarks.

He tweeted: "Jenny should be ashamed of herself. How dare she."

Local Labour member Luisa Attfield, tweeted: "As a Jewish lesbian I am offended and as person with a brain its a baseless comparison."

(...)

JVL, a pro-Jeremy Corbyn group founded in September 2017, has backed a campaign to support the new antisemitism guidelines Labour's national body approved, which omit key examples from the IHRA Jew-hate definition about how criticising Israel can be antisemitic.

The issue has caused huge outrage among the Jewish community.

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France: A double whammy for the Jews of France

Via JNS (Lyn Julius):

France does not want to admit that its terrorism problem has ideological roots. It prefers to blame economic grievances, despair or mental illness.

The sun may have been shining, but these are dark days for the Jews of France. They have sustained a double whammy.

The first is that the murderer of Sarah Halimi, who shouted “Allah Hu Akbar” as he tortured and hurled the Orthodox Jew to her death from her balcony in April 2015, may not even stand trial. Kobili Traore has been declared “mentally incapable” by a panel of psychiatrists. After months of foot-dragging by the judge, the panel has reversed the findings of an earlier evaluation, which had retained the charge of anti-Semitism as an “aggravating circumstance.”

The second blow delivered to the Jewish community concerns the shoddy treatment of French historian and director of the Paris Holocaust memorial Georges Bensoussan. Over the last three years, Bensoussan has been fighting charges of “Islamophobia” and incitement to hatred against Muslims. In a television debate, he had said that Arab anti-Semitism was endemic, quoting the words of an Algerian sociologist that “Arabs sucked in antisemitism with their mother’s milk.”

Thus far, Bensoussan has been acquitted in the French courts. But his reward has been to be unceremoniously dismissed from his job after 25 years of faithful service. His contract had still had two years to run, but the lock to his office was changed. When he was eventually allowed in to collect his possessions, a minder looked over his shoulder.

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UK: Court forces apology from Israeli-born antisemitic activist for libeling of Jewish campaigner

Via The Algemeiner:

One of Britain’s most vocal antisemites was handed a humiliating court defeat in London on Monday.

Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli-born jazz musician and conspiracy theorist who refers to himself as a “former Jew,” was forced to deliver an apology in the High Court to Gideon Falter, the chairman of the UK’s Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). Atzmon will also have to pay undisclosed costs in legal fees and damages that the CAA described as “substantial.”

The CAA sued Atzmon for libel over an article he published in July 2017 entitled “Antisemitism is a Business Plan.” In the piece, Atzmon falsely claimed that “Falter and the CAA obviously fabricate antisemitic incidents” and that “Falter and the CAA need the Jews to be hated so they can collect more and more British taxpayer money.”

Unable to substantiate these and other charges against the CAA as summarized by High Court Justice Matthew Nicklin, Atzmon capitulated. Falter said afterward in a statement that he was “delighted” to have “been able to set the record straight and expose one such antisemitic liar for what he truly is.”

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UK: Labour expels controversial Jewish anti-Zionist Tony Greenstein

Via Jewish News:

One of the most notorious Jewish anti-Zionists, Tony Greenstein, has finally been expelled from the Labour Party for three breaches of the party’s regulations. These were “offensive comments online; offensive posts and comments on his blog; and an email in which he mocked the phrase ‘final solution’”.  

The ruling from Labour’s National Constitutional Committee (NCC) came after an all-day hearing in Greenstein’s home city of Brighton. The news was welcomed by the lobby group Labour Against Antisemitism, which issued a statement saying that he had “over many years made his abhorrent views widely known via public speeches, social media and on his personal blog. Anyone who has witnessed them will know that these views have often been antisemitic, highly offensive and entirely incompatible with Labour’s anti-racist ethos. Mr Greenstein has also personally targeted some Labour Party members for bullying. None of this is acceptable within a party that prides itself on diversity and whose catchphrase is “a kinder, gentler politics”. (...)  

Nevertheless, Greenstein was charged with “repeated use of the antisemitic and abusive term “Zio”, including in relation to Louise Ellman MP, Jeremy Newmark, and the Jewish Labour Movement”. Comments such as “Gay Zionists make me want to puke” or his description of Owen Jones as a “Janus-faced whore” were also cited in evidence against him.

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More about Tony Greenstein @ Harry's Place.  Israelly Cool looks at Greenstein's predictable reaction following his expulsion from the Labour Party: How NOT To Argue You Aren’t An Antisemite by Tony Greenstein

French-Jewish group that accused Israel of causing anti-Semitism loses state funding

Via JTA:

French officials asked a Jewish group that supports a blanket boycott of Israel to pay back state subsidies that it received to combat racism but had used to accuse the Jewish state of causing anti-Semitism.

The Jewish French Union for Peace, UJFP, received in 2016 more than $22,000 from the General Commissariat for Equality in France, an inter-ministerial body set up by the government in 2014 to combat racism, the conservative news website Causeur reported Wednesday, based on data collected by the NGO Monitor watchdog group in Israel.

UJFP used the money to make a series of 10 videos comprising interviews with activists affiliated with the group. The introduction to each video contains a picture of a banner advertising the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, a separate banner accusing Israel of stealing Palestinian land, and images of Palestinian flags. The videos had text slides stating they are sponsored by the commissariat.

Calling for a boycott of Israel is illegal in France, where doing so is a form of incitement to discrimination or hate. Corinne Gonthier, director of communications for the commissariat, said UJFP neither showed the videos to the commissariat nor ask permission to use its name.

“Alerted in December as to the contents of the clips, the commissariat concluded they neither correspond whatsoever with the agreed-upon subjects nor are they admissible because they deal with an alleged ‘state racism’,” she told Causeur.

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UK: Organization of British Jews gives cover to left-wing anti-Semites

Via Mosaic Magazine:

The fall conference of the UK’s Labor party saw more than its share of vitriol directed at Israel, not to mention naked anti-Semitism. In response, the Jewish Labor Movement—an established group for the party’s Jewish members—successfully pushed for new rules that would allow the party more effectively to combat anti-Semitism in its ranks. Opposing the change was the newly-formed Jewish Voice for Labor (JVL), which, according to Stephen Daisley, exists primarily to apologize for anti-Semites:

Although it failed to halt the new disciplinary regime, JVL’s intervention marks a turning point in Labor’s engagement with Jews and its attitude to anti-Semitism. Jewish groups within the party have hitherto been united in criticism of the leadership and the toleration of prejudice against Jews and conspiracy theories about Zionism. Now another group will purport to speak for Labor Jews, one ideologically wedded to the leader [Jeremy Corbyn] and the radical anti-Israel politics he practices. ... 

The [true] purpose of JVL is not to explore and debate complex questions or to represent the feelings of most Jews within the party; it is to muddy the waters. ... [Its] most noxious aspect ... is [its supporters’] eagerness . . . to leap to the defense of the most outrageous statements by the most extreme figures in the Labor party. Time after time, JVL has acted [by] providing kosher [certification, as it were] for the nastiest elements on the far left. When [London’s former mayor] Ken Livingstone pronounced Hitler a supporter of Zionism, Jenny Manson, now chair of JVL, issued a statement insisting his comments were “not offensive, nor anti-Semitic in any way.” ... 

So what do the anti-Zionist activists in groups like JVL get out of being used as a kosher stamp for anti-Semites—aside from proving their loyalty to the Labor party leadership? [The scholar David] Hirsh suggests a deeper motivation: “They would rather live in a world where anti-Semitism is provoked by Jews—and so, therefore, could notionally be stopped by Jews—than in a world where anti-Semitism is irrational. They prefer to imagine that Jews are in control of their own destiny than that they are simply victims of anti-Semitism.”

 Read more at Tablet

Russia: TV series claims Jewish Trotsky masterminded bloody 1917 revolution

Via The Times of Israel:

Leaving historians unsure whether show is anti-Semitic or simply sensationalist, upcoming drama accuses Marxist thinker of murdering tsar's family 

A hundred years after the Russian revolution, the Russians are claiming that a Jew was behind it — at least according to a new television drama. 

An eight-episode series entitled “Trotsky” argues it was Jewish revolutionary Leon Trotsky — and not Vladimir Lenin — who masterminded the revolution that brought the communists to power. The film also blames Trotsky for the execution of the Russian royal family.

The upcoming televised drama will be screened on Russian TV in the beginning of November, in time for the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. 

 “You can say that Trotsky wrote the music, and Lenin sang to it. Trotsky made the revolution happen; Lenin only lead it,” said Alexander Kott, the Jewish co-director of the TV series. (...)

But most historians don’t accept the new theory that it was Trotsky who masterminded the Russian revolution.

“This is utter nonsense. It doesn’t fit in with any historical facts. I totally disagree,” said Gennady Estraikh, a New York University professor who specializes in Jewish history in Russia. “It smells like anti-Semitism, the claim that the Jews were responsible for the revolution rather than the Russians. It’s very strange.”

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UK: Labour panellists question Holocaust, call for expulsion of Jewish Labour Movement

Via Daily Mail:

Jeremy Corbyn was urged to act after activists applauded panellists at a fringe meeting who likened supporters of Israel to Nazis.

One speaker even suggested Labour should be free to debate whether the Holocaust had happened.

(...)

The controversial meeting on 'free speech on Israel' was chaired by Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, who said there was a 'vicious campaign that's been directed at the Palestinian cause, misusing anti-Semitic allegations'. Although described as a free speech event audience members were told not to record it or tweet.

Miko Peled, an Israeli-American who sat on the panel, said 'they' – an apparent reference to Israel or the pro-Israel lobby – did not want Mr Corbyn to enter Number 10. 'This is about free speech, the freedom to criticise and to discuss every issue, whether it's the Holocaust: yes or no, Palestine, the liberation, the whole spectrum. There should be no limits on the discussion.'

He added: 'It's about the limits of tolerance: we don't invite the Nazis and give them an hour to explain why they are right; we do not invite apartheid South Africa racists to explain why apartheid was good for the blacks, and in the same way we do not invite Zionists – it's a very similar kind of thing.'

Michael Kalmanovitz, from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, was applauded for calling from the audience for the expulsion from Labour of the Jewish Labour Movement and the Labour Friends of Israel.

A Labour spokesman said: 'Labour condemns anti-Semitism in the strongest terms. We will not tolerate anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial.' 

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France: Diplomat said German Nazi occupation relatively inoffensive compared with 'occupation' of Palestine by Israelis

Via City Journal (Pascal Bruckner):

(...) In his 1978 book Orientalism, Edward Said observed that, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, cartoons in the Western press sometimes depicted Arabs with hook noses and standing next to gas pumps—clearly Semites, he observed. Thus, Said maintained, the target of anti-Semitism passed from the Jew to the Arab. Did not Said call himself, in an interview in Haaretz in 2000, the last “Jew of the Middle East, a Palestinian Jew”? In short, for him, the Western Christian world’s hostility toward Islam represented the equivalent of anti-Semitism and flowed from the same source. The philosopher Enzo Traverso similarly contends that “Islamophobia plays the role for the new racism that was once played by anti-Semitism”: the rejection of the immigrant, perceived, since the colonial era, as the Other, the invader, the unassimilable foreign body in the national community; thus the specter of terrorism replaces that of Judeo-Bolshevism. (...)

On the view of Islamic fundamentalists and many progressives, the Muslim should replace the Jew for another reason: the Jew has dishonored his status and become in turn a colonizer, with the creation of the State of Israel. The idealization of the Jew after the war prepared the subsequent smear campaign; in other words, the Judaizing of the Muslims entailed the Nazification of the Israelis. There is the good Jew of yesterday, eternally persecuted, and the bad Israeli who has taken hold in the Middle East, imperious and racist. Traverso makes the formulation candidly: in the past, he argues, Jews and blacks fought together as antifascists and anticolonialists; then the Jews broke through the color line and became “white”—that is, oppressors. Today’s true Jew wears the headdress and speaks Arabic; the other is an imposter and usurper. To quote one statement among thousands, here’s former French diplomat Stéphane Hessel, speaking to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in 2011: “If we compare the German occupation with the present occupation of Palestine by the Israelis, then it was relatively inoffensive, apart from exceptional elements such as incarcerations, executions, internments, and the theft of works of art.”

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(Note: Stéphane Hessel was Jewish and spent the last years of his life bashing Israel.  He, along with "juror" Roger Waters, was actively involved as a "juror" in a kangaroo court, the self-styled Russell Tribunal for Palestine, the brainchild of the Belgian socialist Pierre Galand.  When he died in 2013, aged 95, Stéphane Hessel was given a state funeral attended by former President François Hollande and many other French dignitaries and Belgian former P.M. Elio di Rupo.)

UK: Labour’s anti-Semitism scandal to be branded a “witch hunt” at party conference

Via Guido Fawkes:

Labour’s anti-Semitism scandal will be branded a “witch hunt” at a controversial meeting during the party’s conference later this month. The event, titled “Free Speech On Israel – Why We Oppose The Witch Hunt”, will be chaired by notorious anti-Israel campaigner Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi (note: she is Jewish), who is on record accusing Israel of “exploiting” the Holocaust and denies Labour has an anti-semitism problem. Idrissi, who is co-chair of Chingford Labour Party and a close ally of Jackie Walker, told LBC last year:  

“I’m not saying that Israel is committing a Holocaust. I’m saying they use and exploit the fact of the Holocaust to justify what are, in some cases, crimes against humanity.”

Idrissi is a real piece of work, she has also accused Jewish Labour MP Ruth Smeeth of fabricating anti-Semitic incidents

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United Kingdom: British theatre’s disturbing bias against Israel

Via Standpoint (David Herman):

This month two very different plays open in London. They raise disturbing questions about British theatre’s bias against Israel.  

On September 29 (coincidentally the night of Kol Nidre) a revival of the anti-Israel play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, opens at the Young Vic. First performed at the Royal Court in 2005, it tells the story of Corrie, a young American activist working for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who was killed trying to block an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bulldozer conducting military operations in the Gaza Strip in 2003.    

(...) The Times argued that “an element of unvarnished propaganda comes to the fore. With no attempt made to set the violence in context, we are left with the impression of unarmed civilians being crushed by faceless militarists.” 

This month’s revival has been condemned by Jewish organisations who have called the play “unapologetically anti-Israel” and “an opportunity to fan the flames of hatred”.  

More disturbing, however, is the larger picture of anti-Israel bias in British theatre. Over the past 20 years there have been a number of plays attacking Israel: My Name is Rachel Corrie, Alive from Palestine: Stories Under the Occupation, one of David Lan’s (*) first productions at the Young Vic in 2002, David Hare’s Via Dolorosa and Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza (both at the Royal Court). In 2014 the Tricycle Theatre refused to host the UK Jewish Film Festival because it received funding from the Israeli embassy. The Tricycle was supported by Nicholas Hytner, then director of the National Theatre. In addition, Harold Pinter, Michael Kustow and Arnold Wesker all became vocal critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Along with Churchill and Hare, these were major figures in British theatre and the Court; the Young Vic and the Tricycle are prominent theatres. At Edinburgh this summer, Jackie Walker, a left-wing activist suspended from Labour over accusations of anti-Semitism, had a one-woman show, The Lynching, which included predictable attacks on Israel. A banner draped in front of the audience read: “Anti-Semitism is a crime. Anti-Zionism is a duty.”  

Where are the pro-Israel plays? More important, where are British plays which treat this conflict in an even-handed way or which create interesting Israeli characters? 

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(*) The Jewish Chronicle writes: 

But David Lan, the theatre’s artistic director, who is Jewish, told the JC: “Gaza is a wound to the planet from which so many people are suffering.  “We welcome and hope to encourage as wide a discussion of this terrible situation as possible. Anything that keeps Gaza at the front of our consciousness is to be valued.”  (...)  Ivan Lewis, the Jewish MP and former Middle East Minister, is on the Young Vic’s Board of Trustees. He did not respond to a request for a comment.

Germany: BDS activists investigated by specialized unit for political extremism

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

A criminal complaint filed against three BDS activists who allegedly launched physical and verbal tirades at MK Aliza Lavie and an Israeli survivor of the Holocaust at a June event in Berlin has been sent to a police division responsible for political extremism, a spokeswoman for the authorities told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday. 

The criminal allegations were leveled against Ronnie Barkan, Majed Abusalama and Stavit Sinai, who face charges of trespassing for their activity at the Humboldt University event with Lavie. 

A spokesman for Yesh Atid’s Lavie told the Post on Wednesday that the MK “expects there will be some sanction against them, not only because of the offending behavior in this case, but mainly as a message against this type of violent discourse, whose consequences may be dangerous.” 

According to the complaint, a female BDS activist, who is believed to be Sinai, “swung [her fists] wildly around her and attendees” as she was escorted from the university room for disrupting the event. She “continuously attempted to reenter the lecture hall and pounded on the door.” 

Barkan runs a group called “Boycott from Within” in Israel and has been barred from delivering BDS talks in municipal buildings in the northern German city of Oldenburg. 

The Post obtained a June 20 letter from Humboldt University president Dr. Sabine Kunst to Lavie in which she wrote: “You came to Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on June 20th to talk about ‘Life in Israel – Terror, Bias and the Chances for Peace.’ Unfortunately, you were harassed by three individuals on that occasion. Please accept my heartfelt apologies for the incident at your talk with the German- lsraeli Society in rooms of our university.” 

Kunst added: “Criminal charges for trespassing have been filed against the three disturbers. lt is a matter of particular interest at Humboldt-Universität to prevent incidents like this from happening again.”

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UK: Director Mike Leigh, like Ken Loach, is happy to profit from Israel while "supporting BDS"

Via Elder of Ziyon:

British Jewish film director Mike Leigh 

Artists for Palestine released this:

Film writer and director Mike Leigh has criticised Thom Yorke and Radiohead for ignoring Palestinian suffering, two days ahead of their controversial Israel gig. Last week Radiohead front-man Yorke defended the band’s decision to play in Israel and ignore the Palestinian picket-line, arguing that music was about ‘crossing borders’ and ‘shared humanity’. Today, Oscar nominated Leigh, who is in production for his forthcoming feature film ‘Peterloo’, issued the following statement via Artists for Palestine UK –

‘On Wednesday Radiohead will perform in a Tel Aviv stadium built over the ruins of the Palestinian village of Jarisha. It is a sad fact that Radiohead have failed to engage with Palestinians who have called for them not to play, and that Thom Yorke’s comments are devoid of any reference to Palestinians at all.s the lights go out in Gaza and Palestinian cancer patients die because they are denied travel permits by Israel, while a Palestinian poet in Israel lives under house arrest for a poem she wrote on Facebook, while a young circus performer from the West Bank languishes in administrative detention without charge or trial – Thom Yorke speaks loftily about ‘crossing borders’ and ‘freedom of expression’. One has to ask, freedom for whom exactly?’ 

Ah, another moral force for good and against Israel. 

Except, as Sussex Friends for Israel noted, every single one of Leigh's films created after the BDS movement was started has been released in Israel. 

- Vera Drake, released in Israel on 3 February 2005. 

- Happy-Go-Lucky, released in Israel 19 June 2008. 

- Another Year, released in Israel 9 December 2010 under the title Od Shana. 

- Mr. Turner, released in Israel 11 December 2014 under the title Mar Turner. 

This follows Ken Loach's similar hypocrisy as he scrambles to claim that his films being released in Israel over the years were all a mistake.

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Germany, France, Italy TV stations are (re)broadcasting Mor Loushy’s misleading film, “Censored Voices"

Via Martin Kramer:

An Israeli tank in the Six-Day War (photo credit)

On this 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War, television stations in Germany, France and Italy are (re)broadcasting Mor Loushy’s misleading film, “Censored Voices" (https://youtu.be/QlkEyA1pAx8). Two years ago, I pulled back the cover on this project, and showed that it’s predicated on a fiction: IDF censorship. So it’s time to re-up my piece. (It’s also republished, with footnotes, in my 2016 book “The War on Error.”)

Via Mosaic Magazine (2015):

On January 26 (2015) the New York Times ran a prominent article by its Jerusalem correspondent Jodi Rudoren about a new Israeli documentary then premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. According to Rudoren’s lengthy report, the film, Censored Voices, was an attention-grabbing exposé about the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, also known as the Six-Day War, as told in conversations with soldiers conducted immediately after the war itself. 

Since its Sundance debut, the $1 million Israeli-German co-production has been screened at festivals in Berlin, Florence, Geneva, Madrid, Toronto, Warsaw, and Zagreb. Its Israeli coming-out party took place at the Docaviv documentary film festival in Tel Aviv (where I saw it), and it is now showing in the country’s theaters, generating reviews and feature articles in the major daily newspapers. An Israeli documentary channel will televise the film in August. Rights have been sold in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and across continental Europe, and the film’s sales agent will release it in Britain in the fall. An American distributor has purchased U.S. rights, and is planning a theatrical run later this year. 

Censored Voices is likely to make as big a splash as The Gatekeepers, the 2012 documentary featuring six former heads of Israel’s secret-service agency—if not a bigger splash. And for the same reason: it stars Israelis indicting their own country for falling short of high standards in the conduct of war. And the film encourages the conclusion that the allegations about misconduct must be true, because the Israeli authorities censored the original interviews—in fact, they consigned fully 70 percent of them to oblivion. 

Viewers, beware.

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France: Jews' show of unity against Le Pen may reinforce stereotypes

Via JTA (Cnaan Liphshiz):

(...) The communal representatives of French Jews and Muslims mobilized almost without exception for Macron. In both communities, even clergy abandoned their carefully cultivated nonpartisanship in an unusual effort, the likes of which had not been seen in at least 15 years. 

On Friday, French Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia co-authored, with the president of the Protestant Federation of France and a Muslim faith leader, a statement endorsing Macron. Tellingly, the Catholic Church of France, by far the largest Christian denomination in the country, sat out the declaration. 

“Fully aware that our roles require us to be nonpartisan,” the three clergymen wrote, “peace supersedes all other things and only a vote for Emmanuel Macron guarantees” it. 

The rare statement followed efforts by French Jews to prevent a Le Pen victory on “a scale that was last witnessed in 2002, ahead of the runoff led by her father,” according to Philippe Karsenty, a Jewish Macron supporter and deputy mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. 

Originally supportive of Francois Fillon, the Republicans candidate who lost in the first round last month and stands significantly to the right of Macron, Karsenty joined the Macron camp not because he believes in the candidate’s policies, but “to block Le Pen from ruining France,” as Karsenty put it in an interview with JTA Saturday. 

CRIF, the federation of Jewish communities of France, called on all Jews and non-Jews to vote for Macron, describing Le Pen as a “danger for democracy.” And the Union of Jewish Students of France held a string of rallies Friday against Le Pen, including a concert “against fascism.” 

While these efforts served as a show of unity within French Jewry and with other faith groups, they also cast a partisan light on French Jews and Muslims, which leaders of both communities have worked hard to avoid. And that has the potential of highlighting a distinction, favored by many Le Pen supporters, between these minorities and the general population. 

At the same time, this may also reinforce stereotypes held by many French about Jews and Muslims – presenting Le Pen and her party as the archenemy of groups that conspiracy theorists in France like to describe as cabals working in unison.

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Ireland: Mossad Agents Cheered 9/11, Claims American Jewish Academic at Anti-Israel Conference

Via Algemeiner:

A controversial conference that wrapped up in Ireland on Sunday included 9/11 conspiracy theories, according to live-stream footage from the event.

The three-day conference in Cork — “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Exceptionalism and Responsibility” – featured academics from various countries, including Israel, who had gathered to call the Jewish state’s right to exist into question.

In the question-and-answer period of one of the panels on the third day of the event, which, as The Algemeiner reported, was held at the University College Cork (UCC), American-Jewish professor emeritus Joel Kovel, former Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College and author of Overcoming Zionism, stated: “There are so many facts that aren’t known, and then they’re lost to memory. Did you know that, as the towers were burning on 9/11…the five painters who were cheering on the process from across the river…were Mossad agents?! And they were arrested and disappeared from the face of the earth.”

David Collier of the blog The Great Divide, who attended the event, wrote that this section of Kovel’s talk “will no doubt take the headlines, but in truth, his entire speech could be classified as a horrific antisemitic attack.” Collier said, as well, that the audience “seemed to appreciate [Kovel’s] suggestion that the world is ecologically doomed unless you can remove Israel from the Middle East.”

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UK: Students urged to read works of Holocaust denier David Irving at LSE event

Via Jewish News:

Complaints have been made to the London School of Economics following a talk by a disgraced former UN official during which one of his supporters told students to read the works of notorious Holocaust denier David Irving.

The alleged remarks came amid protests against the presence on campus of Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine from 2008 to 2014 who has been repeatedly condemned for inflammatory actions and statements by the UK. Today’s event was held to promote Falk’s new book ‘Palestine’s Horizon: Towards a Just Peace, in which he claims Jerusalem has been “ethnically cleansed”. 

UN Watch had called for Theresa May to expel Falk from Britain after highlighting the fact that in 2012 the UK Foreign Office condemned Falk for providing the cover endorsement for Gilad Atzmon’s book “The Wandering Who” which accuses “the Jews” of being “the only people who managed to maintain and sustain a racially orientated, expansionist and genocidal national identity that is not at all different from Nazi ethnic ideology”. In April 2013, the UK Mission to the UN condemned Falk after he blamed the Boston terrorist attack on “the American global domination project” and “Tel Aviv”. 

As Monday’s event descended into chaos with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian shouting accusations and at least two of the former removed for disruptive behaviour, post-graduate Sapan Maini-Thompson claimed Atzmon audibly claimed Jews were being removed for misbehviour, as in Germany. 

He told the Jewish News: “He said to those around him ‘the Jews were expelled from Germany for misbehaving’ – which he repeated when challenged. He was recommending to those around him to read the works of David Irving and said Israel’s actions in the occupied territories are Hitlerian. After the event I went up to the man and aggressively called him a Nazi. I’m not hiding that.” 

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Ireland: Pro-Israel speaker pulls out of conference over presence of Richard Falk

Via The Jewish Chronicle:

Alan Johnson

One of only two speakers due to argue Israel’s case at a conference questioning the existence of the Jewish state has withdrawn from the event over the appearance of an author who has endorsed a book espousing antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Professor Alan Johnson, BICOM’s senior research Fellow, confirmed he has pulled out of the conference in Cork, Ireland in protest at the organisers’ decision to bill Richard Falk as one of the keynote speakers.

In a statement, Prof Johnson, who also edits the Fathom journal, said:“I have informed the organisers of the Cork Conference that I will no longer be participating. The organisers have issued an invitation to Richard Falk to give a keynote speech. 

“I had agreed to participate in an academic conference to present a paper in defence of Israel’s right to exist. But by inviting a speaker who espouses antisemitic conspiracy theories the conference is now objectively an attempt to normalise antisemitism and I cannot attend such an event."

The Cork conference, which is titled “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Exceptionalism and Responsibility” and begins on March 31, will feature some of the most outspoken critics of Israel. Speakers include anti-Zionist historian Professor llan Pappe and the University of Southampton’s Professor Oren Ben-Dor, who has blamed the Jewish mind set for provoking antisemitism.

Prof Johnson had initially believed he had a duty to attend the event in order to “defend Israel’s right to exist”.

But he told the JC he had decided to withdraw because in his view Mr Falk’s appearance “changes the character of the event”.

He cited Mr Falk’s endorsement of a book by musician and writer Gilad Atzmon, who describes himself as “a proud, self-hating Jew”, as an influencing factor.

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