Have you considered joining the BNP?

Seriously though, these comments are innapropriate: like blaming all Germans for Hitler, or all Americans for Bush. Look at some of the stories in the alternative media and you will soon realise that the problem is caused by a relative minority of Jews, and that many of them are not zionists. Take the refuseniks, for instance, or the non-zionists campaigning for a boycott of Isreali goods in this country.

Although the majority of Israelis sometimes seem to support their government, we must beware this media smokescreen, and also remember that these people, like us, have been bombarded with propaganda from birth, and have possibly suffered from it more as a result of living in a semi-fundamentalist society beset by war and terrorism (partially self-caused).

Of course, all of this is assuming that you aren't already a member of the BNP, MI5/6, NF, Met., of any other far-right organisations, and are merely trying to divide the movement and give a false impressioin of our ideals to people who have visited this site to find out more about communism/anarchism/socialism.

PARDON MY INFLAMATORY REMARKS, IT IS JUST VERY DISTURBING TO ME TO SEE THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT GET AWAY WITH MURDERUS GENOSIDE AND ROBING THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE OF THEIR LAND AND BELONGINGS. THE WAY THE IDF SHOOTS LITTLE KIDS FOR SPORT IS PARTICURLY REPUSIVE. JUST BECAUSE U.S. TAX PAYERS CAN NOT CONTROL WHERE THERE TAXES ARE SPENT, AND MOST WORLD GOVERNMENTS WILL NOT TAKE ACTION BECAUSE MOST ARE CONTROLED
FASCIST ELEMENTS. AND TO TOP IT OFF THEY USE THE CORPORATE MEDIA AROUND THE WORLD TO SPIN THE FACTS TO TRY TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE THE POOR IDF IS THE VICTOM.

A passing drama in the daily life of Palestinians under occupation
Lucy Winkett (The Reverend Lucy Winkett is Minor Canon at St Paul's Cathedral) Thursday February 14, 2002 The Guardian (England) Perhaps I have lived a charmed life but I know I have been very lucky to have rarely felt myself to be in real physical danger in my 34 years. I can probably remember all of the times I have. In early February I added to their number as I was standing in a crowd at Qalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah in the West Bank. It was about 1.45pm and the crowd waiting to pass through the checkpoint was moving slowly. Cars were backed up for a mile, traders were calling out the knock-down prices of the clothes and trinkets they were selling and my throat, accustomed to central London fumes but not to the dust of the Holy Land, was dry.
I was with a small group of women priests, supported by Christian Aid, visiting different places and people on both sides of the conflict in Israel/Palestine. To my English eyes, the very sight of soldiers with machine guns on either side of us was unnerving; then we spotted five boys, probably about 13 years old, throwing occasional stones at the Israeli soldiers ahead of us. We stood and watched from our position in the crowd, secretly admiring their nerve if not their accuracy. One of the soldiers had clearly had enough and aimed his gun at them. He can't shoot, we thought; they're unarmed and they're only boys.

But he did. He took aim and fired directly at them. They scattered, and for a moment we thought one of them had been hit. Not content with this result, the soldier climbed up on to one of the concrete posts, clearly visible against the sky, and took slow aim and fired again, and again.

We took pictures, surreptitiously and with real trepidation before getting into our taxis and inching our way through the crowded checkpoint and then the streets of Ramallah. Almost more shocking than witnessing such a violation of human rights was the reaction of the crowd.

Palestinians were trying to get on with their daily journeys that Saturday as any other working day. Movements are severely restricted by the Israeli border closure policy and so a simple journey to work, to school, to hospital, to visit family and friends turns into a long and humiliating wait at one or more of the around 130 checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The crowd at that checkpoint were resigned; nervous, but un- responsive to the violence taking place just metres from them. It was, to my foreign eyes, a sign of the "everydayness" of it all; another checkpoint, another shooting.

British headlines are full of suicide bombs, raids on Jewish settlements, inter-Palestinian violence. My experience of the past few weeks, which has included listening to Israeli F16 bombers flying low over Gaza City for two consecutive nights, is that the real drama is being played out in the grim day to day existence of Palestinians who can't travel, whose children wet the bed at night as soon as they hear the planes.

One Palestinian social worker told us how children were asked at a school in Bethlehem to draw pictures of the olive harvest. The pictures came back of olive trees all right and even of people picking olives, but above their heads flew a helicopter gunship, or by their side lay the dead body of a relative. Red blood contrasted with the black and green of the olives in the distressed minds of children.

We heard stories from Palestinian refugees echoed by Jewish settlers; the same sense of history , of grievance, of soul-destroying fear. But the difference was that we heard these words from Palestinians in their bare rooms with no heating and little food. With unemployment running at 70% in the occupied territories, the birth rate is soaring and the economic situation is dire. From a Jewish settlement, we heard the same fear and well-founded sense of physical vulnerability; settlements of large houses are often built on a hill close to a Palestinian village and children go to school in bullet-proof buses; a guard stands outside the classroom.

There are traumatised children on both sides and it is invidious to try to quantify the suffering. There is no helpful measure of fear. But fear and suffering there is and it will take all of the costly dignity we encountered among ordinary Palestinians to withstand such trauma. It will take all of the goodwill we encountered among some ordinary Israelis towards Palestinians to encourage their government to rein in their well-trained and brutalised army that regularly shoots at children. It will also take the political will of the British and other European governments to speak bravely in defence of the human rights of all sides in the Middle East; but particularly now, to call for the end of the occupation and violation of the Palestinian people.

Sean - it really pisses me off when people like you make these fuckwitted and moronic comments about Jews and Israel. Not only are they extremely offensive, stupid and false, they also obscure the very real reasons for criticising the Israeli state's behaviour. If you've got nothing good to say, just shut your cake-hole, okay? Jesus.

Is this a sign of the Left playing the race card? Is it ok to abuse and kill Jews because most identify with Israel, even if they don't all support Sharon? When is the Left-Islamic alliance in the UK going to follow their French comrades and burn down the synagogues? It seems the Left is more than prepared to ally with Islamicist anti-Jewish militants, chant 'jihad' and hold up posters condemning Jews as the new Nazis. This posting is a logical extension of this tolerance of jehadis by the SWP and others. Absolutely disgusting.

Sean, however angry you are with the government and army of Israel, don't fall for this sort of anti-Jewish racism.

Blaming all Jewish people for the crimes of the Israeli state is like blaming all white Europeans for imperialism. It's the racist logic of the far right, who care nothing for the Palestinians and just want to spread hate and fear.


Dan, I'm a bit surprised you choose to blame the SWP for anti-semitism; not your usual measured approach! I know you think we should stay off pro-Palestine demos because anti-semitic groups also turn up; but as I've argued before, our view is that makes it even more important that we're there (with our allies in the Stop the War Coalition) to give the thousands who turn out an anti-racist, anti-imperialist focus to rally round instead. And our experience is that the vast majority of demonstrators are much keener on our ideas.

I couldn't agree more with the previous post. As a non-practising, left-leaning, non-Zionist Jew who remains unshakeably proud of my heritage, I have tried very hard over the past few months to take a dispassionate, reasoned viewpoint on Sharon's actions and the crisis in the Middle East. Unfortunately, no matter how justified I feel the Palestinian cause is, I cannot condone suicide bombing and feel that the Palestinians deserve criticism for this depraved cult as much as the Israelis deserve condemnation for the cynical way in which they built settlements in palestinian land and monopolised the water supply and flow of money into the territories.

But there is nowhere for me to go. I cannot turn to the Jewish community - they are blinkered by Zionism, blinded by historical falsehood and reactionary thinking. They are institutionally racist, and don't value Palestinian lives as much as Israeli lives. But I cannot turn to the left, because the left has allowed itself to be infiltrated by anti-semites masquerading as anti-zionists. Those like the man who started this thread. Those like Tom Paulin. These people will claim they are not anti-semitic, but will not waste their time coming to a conclusion that is anything other than racist and wholly predictable.

I know a Jewish human rights campaigner who works for palestinian rights and went on the march through london the other week, despite constantly having to deal with anti-semitic barbs from those he chooses to associate with. He is a bigger man than me to rise above this provocation.

All the current poverty of debate is doing is polarising opinion in britain as much - and as dangerously - as it is doing in the middle east. The radical and even the merely progressive left is deeply riddled with semite-scepticism, and that is something i as a proud Jew cannot tolerate. In fact it makes me sadder than constantly watching death and destruction in the Middle East.

At least we half expect it out there. If we have nowhere to turn when our heads are full of doubt, then what?