{"id":12341,"date":"2018-03-17T23:12:58","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T23:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=12341"},"modified":"2021-02-11T21:20:57","modified_gmt":"2021-02-11T21:20:57","slug":"scottish-stand-up-to-racism-bows-to-zionist-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/17\/scottish-stand-up-to-racism-bows-to-zionist-pressure\/","title":{"rendered":"‘SCOTTISH STAND UP TO RACISM’ BOWS TO ZIONIST PRESSURE"},"content":{"rendered":"

On \u00a0Saturday, \u00a017th March, the organisers of ‘Scottish Stand Up to Racism’ (SUTR) are organising a march in Glasgow in which the racist Confederation of Friends of Israel, displaying Israeli flags will be allowed to participate. Not \u00a0surprisingly this has aroused considerable opposition, not least amongst Palestinians who are victims of Israeli state racist oppression. Tony Greenstein \u00a0who lives in Brighton, and is a longstanding Jewish campaigner against all forms of racism, including Zionism, has written The Apartheid Flag of Israel<\/em> as an introduction to the Statement from Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Organisation<\/em>. This is followed by a Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign Statement on Stand Up To Racism<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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1. APARTHEID FLAG OF ISRAEL\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Putting Anti-racism and Anti-imperialism in Separate Compartments <\/strong><\/p>\n

The SWP’s\u00a0popular frontism in action<\/strong><\/p>\n

Below is a statement which has been issued by the Secretary of Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign.\u00a0 We, like many Palestinian supporters have been dismayed at the stance of the Scottish SUTR to allow supporters of Israel, the Confederation of Friends of Israel, to take part in Saturday\u2019s anti-racist march in Glasgow, along with the flag of Israel. <\/p>\n

This decision makes a mockery of the purpose of the march, to oppose racism.\u00a0 There can be no doubt that Israel is a racist state, in the same way that Apartheid South Africa was a racist state.\u00a0 It is a state with racism at its very core and essence.\u00a0 It is literally a State of the Jews, not just its own Jewish citizens even but of all Jews throughout the world.\u00a0 That is why when Netanyahu paid a visit to French Jews at the time of the killing of 4 Jews in a kosher Paris supermarket, he told them that they should \u2018come home\u2019. <\/em>\u2018Come home!\u2019 Israeli minister urges French Jews amid terror wave<\/a><\/p>\n

Palestinian refugees, driven out in 1948 in order to ensure a Jewish demographic majority in Israel are not invited \u2018home\u2019, despite they and their families having lived there for generations.\u00a0 Instead of being a state of its own citizens Israel is a state of its Jewish citizens and Jews outside the state.<\/p>\n

The fact that a plurality of Israeli Jews support the physical expulsion of Israel\u2019s Arab citizens bears witness to the degree of racism in Israeli society.\u00a0 The chant of \u2018Death to the Arabs\u2019 is a favourite one of Israeli right-wing demonstrations.\u00a0 At this very moment Israel is in the process of trying to deport 40,000 Black African refugees for the crime of not being White or Jewish.<\/p>\n

For SUTR\u00a0to allow people with Israeli flags to march as part of its demonstration is a disgrace which throws into question the purpose of SUTR.\u00a0 It is no secret that SUTR is a front organisation of the SWP.\u00a0 It runs and controls it behind the list of sponsors.\u00a0 This is how the SWP have always operated.\u00a0 Nonetheless many people have supported it who are not in the SWP, like Dianne Abbot, because it does good work in opposing Islamaphobia and the Prevent Programme.<\/em><\/p>\n

For SUTR to allow the flag of Apartheid Israel to be present amongst its ranks negates all of this.\u00a0 Of course no one objects to someone who is a Zionist participating in the march.\u00a0 But to allow the flag of Israel to be present is an entirely different matter.\u00a0 The Israeli flag to Palestinians is like the Apartheid South African flag was to Black Africans and the Swastika was to Jews.<\/p>\n

The reason for this debacle is the politics of the SWP itself.\u00a0 On the one hand they claim to be anti-Zionist, albeit in an extremely crude and unworked out way.\u00a0 On the other hand they prioritise racism domestically.\u00a0 They seem to have a blind spot for the fact that racism in Britain is a product of Britain\u2019s role as an imperial power and the British Empire.\u00a0 Although the SWP have no problem attributing the growth of Islamaphobia to the War on Terror and the Iraqi and Afghanistan invasions, they do not see that in the Middle East the bastion of Islamaphobia and unadulterated anti-Arab racism is the State of Israel and Zionism.<\/p>\n

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It is precisely the viciously anti-Islamic policies of the Israeli state, which tolerates fascist attacks by Lehava on Arab males who are\u00a0believed to be in mixed relationships, and which promotes anti-Islamic racism internationally that makes Israel so attractive to the European and American far-Right.\u00a0 Some of the most vehemently Islamaphobic politicians from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Heinz Christian Sprache, the Vice Chancellor Austria to our own Tommy Robinson ex EDL and Britain First admire Israel for its hostility to Muslims.<\/p>\n

This adulation of Israel by the far Right seems to have passed the SWP by.\u00a0 Pictures of fascist organisations marching and\u00a0demonstrating with the flag of Israel also seem to have passed them by.\u00a0 If Israeli flags appear on Saturday in SUTR\u2019s demonstration in Glasgow the shit as they say will hit the fan.<\/p>\n

Tony Greenstein<\/strong><\/p>\n

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2. Statement of Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Organisation<\/strong><\/p>\n

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EDL demonstrators with Israeli flag in Brighton, after failing to attack OSC stall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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I write on behalf of the Committee of Brighton & Hove PSC (BHPSC). As an organisational affiliate to Stand Up To Racism (since October 2016), BHPSC is shocked and disappointed to learn of the decision, by the organisers of Saturday\u2019s anti-racist march in Glasgow, to allow members of the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS), to take part in the march.<\/p>\n

In allowing representatives of an Israel advocacy group to take part (with banners and\/or Israeli flags) the organisers of the Scotland march have undermined the fundamental principle upon which the march was planned \u2013 ie opposition to racism in all its forms. Moreover, they have failed to recognise that COFIS is not a group representing Jewish people, but instead an advocacy group (composed in part of evangelical Christians) for the racist and apartheid Israeli regime. COFIS has cynically manipulated the situation to normalise the image of Israel in Scotland.<\/p>\n

The issue is not fundamentally one of support for the cause of Palestinian rights, or one of race hatred against Jewish people. It is about the racist nature of the Israeli regime, and the message that is conveyed to genuine campaigners against racism, and to genuine victims of racism, by allowing the visual symbols of that regime to be displayed in an allegedly anti-racist march.<\/p>\n

We have written to Stand Up To Racism Scotland to urge them to reconsider their decision.<\/p>\n

As affiliates to SUTR, and active supporters of the local SUTR group, we seek an assurance from SUTR that pro-Israel groups will not be allowed to take part in any overt way (and to carry pro-Israel banners and\/or Israeli flags) in the London march on Saturday March 17th<\/sup>. We also seek a public statement from SUTR, distancing itself from the decision in Scotland. Of course individual members of pro-Israel groups wishing to take part in a personal capacity cannot be excluded, but pro-Israel banners and\/or Israeli flags have no place in the anti-racist movement.<\/p>\n

Ben Steele,\u00a0<\/strong>Secretary, Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign<\/strong><\/p>\n

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3. Scottish PSC Statement on Stand up to Racism, \u00a013.3.18<\/strong><\/p>\n

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“Palestinians have situated their struggle, the BDS movement, as part of a wider struggle against racism. Week after week Israel\u2019s crimes escalate, fuelled by racism and genocidal discourse so malevolent that even Israeli generals, prominent journalists and Holocaust survivors have spoken out about how Israeli society develop ever more marked features resembling 1930s European fascism and Nazism.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As an anti-racist organisation, SPSC has participated over the years in Stand Up to Racism demonstrations; last year we provided a high-profile speaker, Prof Richard Falk, who co-authored the UN ESCWA report \u2018Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid\u2019<\/a> which concluded \u201cthat Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole\u201d<\/em>. A year later, the active agents of that apartheid state, defenders of its crimes against humanity are to be allowed onto the march.<\/p>\n

We understand that racism is a mortal danger to any project for a better future in Britain, threatens to hurl us backwards into the abyss and that ALL racist organisations need to be challenged and quarantined like\u00a0political and social Ebola.<\/p>\n

According to SUTR publicity, March 17th marks the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and is part of worldwide demonstrations called to combat all racism, including state-enforced racism.<\/p>\n

How did this come to pass that an organisation that represents and works on behalf of apartheid Israel can be welcome to participate in such an occasion, in a city proud of the internationalism and solidarity that led to the naming of Mandela Place?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>It is with great regret, that we have concluded that we cannot participate in Saturday\u2019s march since SUTR in Scotland and UK-wide has let it be known that the racist Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS), will be allowed to present itself as an anti-racist group on the march with a banner and Israeli flags.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>COFIS is a group that considers extreme racist Tommy Robinson to be \u201ca colourful character\u201d<\/em>, refers to Palestinians as ‘Pallys<\/em>‘ and ‘Fakestinians<\/em>‘ and posts about Palestinians being \u201ceuthanised<\/em>\u201d. COFIS is led by a Christian fundamentalist and is closely allied with Christians United for Israel. CUFI leader, Rev. John Hagee, asserts that Hitler was chosen by God to carry out the Nazi Holocaust to drive Jews to the only place they should live, Palestine.<\/p>\n

Ask why the extreme right across Europe and beyond fly Israeli flags and they will provide the answer; US White supremacist Richard Spencer calls himself a \u2018White Zionist\u2019 because Israel is already their model for a state built on racist principles, ethnic cleansing and permanent inferiority for the indigenous people.<\/p>\n

Palestinians have situated their struggle, the BDS movement, as part of a wider struggle against racism. Week after week Israel\u2019s crimes escalate, fuelled by racism and genocidal discourse so malevolent that even Israeli generals, prominent journalists and Holocaust survivors have spoken out about how Israeli society develop ever more marked features resembling 1930s European fascism and Nazism.<\/p>\n

An earthquake is sudden but it is the result of long-term movements in the earth\u2019s crust. The shock of what happened last Saturday is the result of several factors:.<\/p>\n