Tag Archives: Beastrabban\’s weblog

Hajo Meyer isn’t the only Holocaust survivor who has criticised Israel. Are we to think they are ALL anti-Semites?

Gabor Mate: “In Israel-Palestine the powerful party has succeeded in painting itself as the victim, while the ones being killed and maimed are the perpetrators.”

Over on Beastrabban\’s weblog, my brother – the historian Dr David Sivier – has been doing a little research into the vilification of Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer.

You will recall that this gentleman (now deceased) was vilified as a Holocaust denier (although not in so many words) by the mass media after some malcontents in the ‘Anybody But Corbyn’ camp tried to use him to attack the Labour leader.

Mr Corbyn had introduced Hajo Meyer at a Holocaust Memorial Day event, but had then been called away, so he did not even hear the Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz extermination camp denounce the Israeli government for behaving like the Nazis.

It was enough for his accusers, though. They like to make false and frivolous accusations of this kind in public.

And the only way they’ll be stopped is with legal action. That’s why I am crowdfunding for a libel action against my own accusers. Please visit my JustGiving page and donate, if you can.

The Beast has discovered cases in which other Holocaust survivors have spoken out, and raises strong issues:

Clearly, the Israel lobby has no problem with Holocaust survivors when they speak out against the persecution of the Jews, or other ethnic groups. Indeed, one of the criticisms of Israel is that it also exploits the Holocaust and its memory to promote itself as the Jewish state.

Holocaust survivors like Hajo Meyer explicitly challenge that identification and the assumptions of moral superiority Israel drawn through it, by discussing and attacking Israel’s own brutal persecution of the Palestinians and its seven decades’ old policy of ethnic cleansing. Their criticisms are particularly sharp and powerful because of their unique position of survivors and victims of Nazi persecution. A position, that surely qualifies them more than most to make the comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany.

Tony Greenstein has pointed out in his blog that Jewish critics of Israel, including Israelis, have regularly made the comparison between their countries, and even individual politicians, and the Nazis. He posted up a piece commenting and reproducing the text of an open letter a very well qualified and respected Israeli academic and researcher on the Holocaust, Dr. Daniel Blatman, ‘J’Accuse’, attacking Netanyahu and his ministers and bigoted supporters, explicitly comparing them to the Nazis and imperial Japanese during the Second World War.

Another Holocaust survivor, who embarrassed the Israelis by comparing them to the Nazis was the resistance hero Marek Edelman. Edelman had been a member of the Jewish Bund, whose motto was ‘Wherever we live, that’s our homeland’. He was also one of the leaders of the uprising against the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto. He declared that the Palestinians and their resistance to Israel persecution now had the spirit of the great heroes of the Warsaw uprising.

Four years ago during the Israeli attack on Gaza, the American alternative news site, The Young Turks, did a segment demanding the Israelis end their bombardment and harassment of the Palestinians. In the piece, which can be viewed on YouTube, they quoted another Holocaust survivor, a Jewish Canadian called Gabor Mate. And Mate, who supported Israel as a grand ideal, lamented what the country had become in its brutality towards the Palestinians.

Mate said: “In Israel-Palestine the powerful party has succeeded in painting itself as the victim, while the ones being killed and maimed are the perpetrators.

His conclusion:

Holocaust survivors need to be respected and listened to when they denounce racism, persecution and genocide. And this includes criticism of or denunciations of Israel. It does not make them anti-Semites, and abusing them as such debases British society and disgraces those who make such vile accusations.

Hear, hear. It will be interesting to see how those who use the Holocaust to justify their behaviour try to square that with their treatment of Holocaust survivors.

Source: TYT: Holocaust Survivor Laments the Brutality of the State of Israel over Gaza | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

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The Real Reason the Jewish Establishment Are Attacking Labour: They’re Tories | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

It’s good to see that people are catching on to the fact that the faked ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis in the Labour Party has been manufactured by Conservatives to hide their own problems.

My brother, Beastrabban, has been quick off the mark – you might expect that, knowing the he reads This Site. But he has his own points to make. For example:

The real anti-Semites are still present, and they are a genuine threat to Jews, as well as to other ethnic groups, feminists, Socialists, trade unionists and everyone else on the left. This week we’ve seen Jack Renshall, of the banned Nazi youth group National Action, convicted of terrorism. Renshall and his ‘national comrades’, to use a Nazi term for members of a Nazi group, are genuine anti-Semites, who really do believe all the vicious lies and myths about the Jews controlling everything and plotting to destroy the White race. Renshall was convicted of plotting to assassinate Rosie Copper, his local MP, as the local representative of ‘the Jewish state’. And there are chillingly videos on YouTube of Renshall and his storm troopers holding rallies in their cod-Nazi uniforms, screaming their bile against the Jews, and raising their hands in the Nazi salute.

Quite right. This is real – dangerous – anti-Semitism of the kind that the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism wouldn’t touch with a barge pole.

And this is despite the fact that:

Real anti-Semitism in the UK is actually very low. The vast majority of severely normal Brits either have positive views of their Jewish fellows, or else consider them to be no better or worse than anyone else. Only eight per cent of Brits are anti-Semites, or hold negative views of Jews.

Jews are far more trusted and protected than other ethnicities. And the Jewish establishment are well aware of this. That’s why they’re smearing Corbyn as an anti-Semite.

Another person who has caught on to the fact that the “anti-Semitism” crisis has been manufactured out of nothing by Conservatives is the blogger David Rosenberg. He writes damningly about the CAA, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and the Jewish Leadership Council ignoring genuine anti-Semitism in order to pursue their nonsensical accusations against Labour:

David Rosenberg has also described the fraudulent nature of the Jewish establishment’s smears and posturing in several of his blog posts. And he’s made it very clear that organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism aren’t interested in defending Jews from real persecution. For example, at the time the CAA, and then the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council were holding their squalid demos attacking Labour, the Jewish residents of Dollis Hill had awoken one morning to find anti-Semitic graffiti and SS symbols scrawled on the pavement outside their homes and on a bus shelter. One family had a brick thrown through their window. These people needed the help and support of a genuine group combating anti-Semitism. But the CAA wasn’t interested. They’re too busy attacking Labour.

There’s more:

And Rosenberg makes it very clear that this is because they’re Tories. He writes

If the larger protests in Parliament Square led by the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council on 26th March, alleging “endemic” antisemitism in the Labour Party, could draw a thin veil over a patently pro-Tory agenda, by offering speaker slots to anti-Corbyn Labour representatives, there were no pretences yesterday. One invited speaker, a former Labour Party donor who quit the party last month, who spoke of the need to rebuild relations between the Jewish community and the Labour Party, was shouted down with cries of “Off! Off! Off!” and “Vote Tory!”

He goes on to describe how the anti-Semitism in the Labour party has been grossly exaggerated by the Tories to disguise the rise in racism against other ethnic groups, which has occurred with the Conservatives’ complicity.

And it’s working, isn’t it? The faked-up bunk about Labour “anti-Semitism” is all over the news, while there’s nothing to be said about the real Conservative racism. I mentioned this a while ago, I recall.

Here comes the proof:

But that palpable sense of panic in Tory ranks has been pushed out of the news by an opportunist campaign that has latched on to a tiny number of real incidents involving Labour members and anti-Semitism that need to be addressed. That campaign has wildly and deliberately exaggerated their overall significance, thrown in ambiguous historical incidents as if they are of burning significance today; and completely obscured the bigger picture of rising racism against a range of communities that has occurred on the Tories’ watch and with Tory complicity.

One Tory activist, David Thomas, a former Conservative parish councillor was honest enough to tweet “It’s an actual stroke of genius we’ve been able to pull this off, perfect timing heading into the elections too”. He has since deleted the tweet.

Source: The Real Reason the Jewish Establishment Are Attacking Labour: They’re Tories | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

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George Galloway and Prof. Michael Rosen Attack Margaret Hodge’s Anti-Semitism Smear against Corbyn | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

Vile: Margaret Hodge.

Reblogged because you should read it – and then see the rest of the article on The Beast’s own website, which also has the link to the full interview.

A few days ago, Dame Margaret Hodge stood up in Parliament to denounce Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite, who didn’t ‘want people like me in the party’ because the Labour leader had failed to bow to the pressure of the Israel lobby and adopt the full definition of anti-Semitism now being foisted on everyone by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This attempts to outlaw as anti-Semitic criticism of Israel.

The media have just lapped up Hodge’s denunciation, and reacted with horror at the possibility that she might be disciplined for attacking her party leader in Parliament. A highly biased report in the I did its best to leave its readers with no doubt whatsoever that Corbyn was anti-Semitic, like the rest of the British press. In support of this the papers mentioned that Hodge was not only Jewish, but like very many Jews had lost family in the Holocaust. Further on in the I their columnist, Simon Kelner, wrote a piece arguing that Labour should adopt the I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism, because it was formulated by Jews, who were the people best placed to realise what anti-Semitism is. This is all despite the fact that very many Jews reject the I.H.R.A’s definition of anti-Semitism. According to what I’ve heard, 36 Jewish organisations from around the world concerned with protesting and combating Israel’s brutalisation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians gave messages of congratulation to Corbyn because he hadn’t caved into pressure and adopted the definition in toto. But you won’t hear that from the biased British press. Nor will you see it on TV. On the Andrew Marr Show, the eponymous presenter seemed to get very irritated and insistent with a spokeswoman from the Labour Party, Rebecca Long-Bailey, because Labour hadn’t adopted that definition of Anti-Semitism like everyone else. And then in parliament yesterday we had the revolting spectacle of right-wing Labour MPs standing up one after the other to denounce Corbyn as an anti-Semite.

[George Galloway’s radio talk show, The Mother Of All Talk Shows, recently featured a conversation between Galloway himself and Professor Michael Rosen, a children’s poet.] Rosen and Galloway have also known Jeremy Corbyn for a very long time, and Rosen himself is a Labour supporter, though not a member of the party. He’s also Jewish, and has a very different perspective on the accusations of anti-Semitism against Corbyn, which you certainly won’t read in the press. He and Galloway both state very clearly that knowing Corbyn for as long as they have, they know that he is certainly not anti-Semitic.

They go on to discuss Hodge’s splenetic attack in parliament. Rosen says that it sounds very much like it was staged to cause maximum exposure. He states that if Hodge really felt that Corbyn was an anti-Semite, she would instead have raised the issue through the organs within the Labour party itself set up to deal with such grievances. She hasn’t. Nor has she made this complaint before.

In short, Hodge is a vile individual, who is libelling Corbyn as anti-Semite simply to prevent a genuine Socialist getting into No. 10. And she is supported by the Blairites in the Labour party, the Tories and the mainstream media. And it’s about time this stopped, and was exposed for what it is.

Source: George Galloway and Prof. Michael Rosen Attack Margaret Hodge’s Anti-Semitism Smear against Corbyn | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

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Libertarian Alliance on Rightwing Entryism into Labour – Beastrabban\’s Weblog

150131DEMOS_logo

Further to Vox Political‘s article on ‘entryism’ into the Labour Party, the Beast has this to say:

Connected to the New Labour project was the thinktank Demos. This was ostensibly left-wing, but in fact contained a number of extremely right-wing business leaders and academics. It has been described by one of the leaders of the Libertarian Alliance as

a cavalry of Trojan horses within the citadel of leftism. The intellectual agenda is served up in a left wing manner, laced with left wing clichés and verbal gestures, but underneath all the agenda is very nearly identical to that of the Thatcherites.

See the article ‘Demos’, by William Clark in Lobster 45, Summer 2003.

There you have it. The Libertarians themselves have more or less stated that the free marketeers in Labour are entryists. It’s high time support was shown to Miliband, and these Trojan horses put out to grass.

Quite right.

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Northern Nazis Guard UKIP Meeting in Bolton – Hope Not Hate

Beastrabban really seems to have a bee in his bonnet about UKIP at the moment. He writes:

“The North West Infidels, a rabid anti-Islam group, offered to guard the Kippers attending a meeting in Bolton from demonstrating trade unionists.”

The story is on Hope Not Hate, with accompanying video. It states: “The neo nazi North West Infidels, a splinter of The English Defence League attempt to offer “protection” to UKIP members attending a meeting held at The Whites Hotel at the Macron Stadium in Bolton.

“NWI members chanted “There’s only one Nigel Farage” and applauded visiting UKIP supporters whilst making threats of violence to a group of trade unionists protesting UKIP’s presence at the venue.

“UKIP have so far failed to distance themselves from the actions of the NWI.”

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UKIP Donor: Replace ‘Luddite’ NHS with American System – Hope Not Hate

Arron Banks

Arron Banks

“More evidence that the Kippers really do hate and despise the NHS,” writes Beastrabban, linking to an article by anti-fascist website Hope Not Hate about comments Arron Banks made to the Financial Times. The article begins:

“One of UKIPs top funders has called for a major overhaul of the “Luddite” NHS and increased involvement of the private sector in the health service.

“Arron Banks, who recently donated £1m to the xenophobic party told The Financial Times: ‘The NHS is so Luddite because everyone believes it’s free, well it isn’t free, it comes at a massive cost, it’s unreconstructed, it’s almost communist in the way it does things’.”

For the full story, visit Hope Not Hate.

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Cameron Has Killed at 2,200 People’ : Frankie Boyle at the 2014 Television Festival – Beastrabban\’s Weblog

boyle_1510448c

This follows on from the question Mike raised in the previous post Class divide in the arts – are they just for the toffs? writes the Beast, so it seems logical to post a pointer to his article here. He writes:

The controversial Scots comedian Frankie Boyle was interviewed last year at the Guardian’s International Television Festival last year by Pointless’s Richard Osman. The interview was a review of the state of television. And Boyle made it very clear that he though British television was being held back by the desire of TV commissioning editors to remain safe. Boyle made it very clear that class attitudes were very definitely a part of this.

The article is quite lengthy, and all of it is worth reading – but you should visit Beastrabban\’s Weblog to do so. The part to which the headline refers runs as follows:

Boyle gave the murderous campaign of Cameron against the disabled. He said outright that Cameron had killed at least 2,200 people ‘bottom line’ through Atos and the fit for work test. But he was never challenged. [Richard] Osman raised the topic of the Channel 4 conspiracy drama, Utopia, as an example of television tackling difficult topics. Boyle stated in his usual forthright terms that the show was rubbish. It was based very much on the type of comics produced by Alan Moore and his ilk. However, Channel 4 had taken all the good material out of it. If they were really determined to produce quality television, they’d hire Alan Moore and co. Instead Channel 4 produced endless programmes genuinely exploiting deformity and sneering at the working class, explicitly mentioning Benefits Street.

Here’s the YouTube recording of the interview. Warning: Boyle’s language is at times very coarse, and the jokes about Katie Price and Rebecca Adlington may be offensive.

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Vintage Curtis: The Power of Nightmares – Beastrabban\’s Weblog

150123nightmares_banner

This is an attempt to provide a fuller answer to the question Mike over at Vox Political posed in his post Terrorism, Islam, and the need to keep the Western world in fear, writes the Beast. In that case, it’s only polite to let him have the floor. He continues:

Mike suggested that politicians were exaggerating the scale of the threat from Islamist terrorists, and, for that matter, Russia, in order to keep us down. Ten years ago the Beeb’s Adam Curtis produced the documentary, The Power of Nightmares, arguing that this was precisely the case.

The Power of Nightmares: Politicians and the Use of the External Threat

The Power of Nightmares is a superb documentary. I found it stored at the Internet Archive. Broadcast eleven years ago, it was a series of three films titled Baby, It’s Cold Outside, The Phantom Victory and The Shadows in the Cave. The series examined the rise of the Neo-Cons in America, the origins of radical Islamism in the ideas of Sayyid Qutb and the War on Terror. Curtis took the view that the scale of the terrorist threat had been exaggerated out of all proportion to reality in order to serve the Neo-Cons’ right wing agenda. Politicians, according to Curtis, had used external threats to restore their own power and authority. Whereas once they [had] power and prestige through offering the possibility of transforming the world for the better, people had now become disillusioned. In this post-ideological vacuum, politicians became mere managers. Now, by exploiting the fears of terrorism, and of terrible, unimaginable enemies that only they could correctly identify, they hoped to win back their status by presenting themselves as being the only people who could protect us.

The series can be found at:

https://archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares-Episode1BabyItsColdOutside

It’s very well worth watching.

To read the rest of the article, which features an in-depth analysis of the series, visit Beastrabban\’s Weblog.

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Farage: The Text-Book Islamaphobe – Beastrabban\’s Weblog

Last week Nigel Farage was criticised again for his comments about Muslims following the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo staff in Paris and the attack on a Jewish supermarket, writes the Beast.

150122farage-paintingThe Fuehrer of the party for the over-50s had said that while he recognised that the extremists were only a minority of Muslims, nevertheless there was a problem within the Islamic community that had allowed them to arise. Critics claimed that Farage had accused British Muslims of forming a fifth column within Britain itself.

This is actually text-book right-wing Islamaphobia. Literally. One of the anti-racist sites I was reading a little while ago stated that right-wing politicians and xenophobic groups had accused Muslims of forming a ‘fifth column’ in Britain promoting terrorism.

Which is precisely what the Kipper Duce had done.

There’s more on Beastrabban\’s Weblog – please give it a visit.

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Chequebook euthanasia – who’s the biggest threat to other people?

Here comes the reaper: Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Here comes the reaper: Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Believe it or not, the author of these blog articles doesn’t spend all his time at Vox Towers churning them out.

That’s why, earlier today (Monday), it was possible to gauge the veracity of this blog’s ‘chequebook euthanasia’ story by asking acquaintances at a local hotel for their opinion.

After hearing the circumstances of the case from beginning to end, one friend (who is today Christened, thanks to bar staff at the same hotel, ‘The Guinness Guy’) responded: “That’s bulls**t.”

Further questioning revealed that he’s not a fan of Russia Today; when he learned I’d been interviewed by that channel, he lost interest.

Then there’s the response on Beastrabban\’s Weblog. The Beast wrote: “Mike, in his article discussing Messers Appleby’s and Warner’s findings, suggests that the question [“Why haven’t you committed suicide?”] may even be a subtle strategy by the Tories and their corporate enablers to nudge the vulnerable into [doing so]. Their deaths by their own hands would allow the Tories to make savings on the welfare budget, while allowing them to deny any actual responsibility for their deaths.

“Mike may have a point here. I’ve a friend who used to be a psychiatric nurse. He told me that the law has been changed governing admissions to mental hospitals. It used to be the case that someone could be sectioned if they were a danger to themselves and others. Now, under Dave Cameron, it’s been altered. The law no longer requires that they be admitted if they are a danger to themselves, only if they are a threat to other people. Clearly, Cameron’s government have no interest in preventing people from taking their own life. And this question put to depressives of why they haven’t, suggests that they are in fact hoping that some may even do so.”

Of course, this blog places more credence with the Beast’s response. Not only does he provide evidence (albeit third-hand) but he also happens to be Yr Obdt Srvt’s big brother.

The change in the law is definitely worth researching. After all, if the law requires people to be sectioned if they are a danger to other people, isn’t it time David Cameron, George Osborne, Iain Duncan Smith and their entire ruthless cadre of bandits were locked up once and for all?

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