The NHS is Our Shield, Public Reading Rooms, 20 July 2020
Where is My Vote, Peoples Campaign for Corbyn FB, 06 January 2020
El Pepe, Peoples Campaign for Corbyn FB, 02 January 2020
In Defence of Simplicity, David Wilson website, 02 December 2019
The Crucible Re-staged, David Wilson website, 27 November 2019
Manifesto of Hope, The London Economic, 21 November 2019
Between the Wars, David Wilson website, 21 November 2019
Meeting Ken, David Wilson website, 9 November 2019
No More Tweedles, David Wilson website, 7 November 2019
Who Will Fight for the NHS, David Wilson website, 27 October 2019
Brexit Jokers, David Wilson website, 27 October 2019
Winning the Election is Easy, The London Economic, 20 July 2019
What
Isn't Reported about Julian Assange, The London Economic, 16
April 2019
Corbyn
must stand strong against attacks on Israel,
The People's News, 28 August 2018
Palestinians
have Right to Return and Live, The People's News, 20 May 2018
Israel's
Act of Terror, The People's News, 14 May 2018
Giving
the Finger to the DWP, The Canary, 11 May 2018
Disabled
Tribunal Victory, The London Economic, 10 May 2018
Disabled
victory in courts: The People's News 9 May 2018
Labour
Party Remains on the Up, The People's News, 4 May 2018
Theresa
May + husband + war = profit, The People's News, 26 April 2018
Criticising
Israel is not anti-semitic, The People's News, 23 April 2018
The
Pornography of War, The People's News, 12 April 2018
The
Overton Window, The People's News, 6 April 2018
The
Overton Window, The Internattional Times, 19 April 2018
Corbyn
is no Anti-Semite, The People's News, 26 March 2018
Corbyn
Wise not to Spoil for Fight , The People's News, 15 March 2018
Disabled
Man Taken off Disability Allowance, The People's News, 14 March
2018
The
Calabash Tree, having a heart operation, 17 Feb 2018
NHS
Privateers, The London Economic, 2 Feb 2018
Why
Boris Johnson, a Face to be Punched, Public Reading Rooms review
My
Disabled Son Stripped of Benefits, The London Economic, 24 Aug
2017
The
Fool is for the Many, Jaroslav HaĊĦek's novel The Good Soldier
Schwejk, 14 July 2017
Music
of the Spheres, Heathcote Williams play, 18 June 2017
Them
or Us in the Election, The London Economic, 7 June 2017
Exposing
Corruption in Charities, Guardian article about charity
corruption, 16 April 2017,
Abandoning
Refugee Children, The London Economic, 11 Feb 2017
In
The Living Years, for Stand Alone under pseudonym, 16 Sep 2016
Who
Speaks for the Refugee Children, Counterpunch after visit to
Calais, 20 May 2016
Planet
Zembar, Subdural Haematoma article in Huffington Post, 17 March
2015
Famous
anti-Zionist Jews, Stop the War Coalition, 12 Aug 2014
What
a Strange Way to Protect Civilians, article for US antiwar
website about depleted uranium weapons, 16 April 2011
Bush
in London, Counterpunch, 18 June 2008
The
Collapse of Iraq's Health Services, Counterpunch article about
collapse of Iraq's health services, 14 Oct 2006
Depleted
Uranium Weapons, Future Trust, 2006
Gloucester
Weapons Inspectors, Counterpunch, 30 Jan 2003
Music
and War, as published by the European Journal of Intercultural
Studies, Vol 10, issue 3, 1999 and in The Journal of Dramatic Theory
and Criticism, University of Kansas, Fall 2000, Vol. XV, No. 8 &
re-written for a chapter in Left Field
Books
Left
Field, The memoir of a lifelong actvist - read it online for FREE here
inteviews
BrianEno
interview
david@davidwilson.org.uk
+44
(0)7951 579 064
After
writing my blog about Miriam Margolyes I was very happy to have
received emails from her in response. In one of them she told me that,
after the Daily Mail attack on her ‘savage remarks’ about Boris
Johnson she had received some vile messages.
This
has left me wondering how many of these messages are a reflection of hostility to her for criticising Israel. An early example was Howard
Klineberg’s personal attack on Miriam in the Jerusalem Post. “There
is much that sickens me about you
including,
your blatant attempt to self-publicize your limited talents. Miriam
it’s people like you, especially the Jewish people like you, who
are to blame for the rise in UK anti-Semitism.”
Wrong
on two counts, ‘limited
talents?’ and ‘blame
for
anti-Semitism.’
Miriam,
you are in good company and join the following -
Sigmund
Freud:
“I
concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in
part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no
sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of
a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings
of the natives.”
Albert
Einstein:
“The
(Israeli) state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot
understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties
and a narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad.”
Erich
Fromm:
“The
claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic
political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in
which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world
would be a madhouse.”
Primo
Levi, Auschwitz survivor:
"Everyone
has their Jews. For the Israelis they are the Palestinians."
Marek
Edelman, One of the leaders of the 1943 Warsaw uprising who wrote in support of the Palestine resistance, comparing them
to ZOB, the Jewish fighters in Warsaw. He opened with, "Commanders
of the Palestine military, paramilitary and partisan operations - to
all the soldiers of the Palestine fighting organisations.”
Isaac
Asimov, novelist:
“I
find myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist ... I think it
is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any
one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human
heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater
interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important
than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.”
Hannah
Arendt, political scientist:
“The
trouble is that Zionism has often thought and said that the evil of
antisemitism was necessary for the good of the Jewish people. In the
words of a well-known Zionist in a letter to me discussing the
original Zionist argumentation: 'The antisemites want to get rid of
the Jews, the Jewish State wants to receive them, a perfect match.' “
I.F.
Stone, US journalist:
“Israel
is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry. In the
outside world the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance of
secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies. In Israel, Jewry finds
itself defending a society in which mixed marriages cannot be
legalised, in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist.”
Noam
Chomsky:
“In
the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than
apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by
"apartheid" you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s
happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse.”
Gabriel
Kolko, historian:
“The
large majority of Israelis are not in the least Jewish in the
cultural sense, are scarcely socialist in any sense, and daily life
and the way people live is no different in Israel than it is in
Chicago or Amsterdam. There is simply no rational reason that
justifies the state’s creation.”
Uri
Avnery, ex-Israeli army officer:
Avnery
wrote that after an Israeli military victory, “What will be seared
into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a
blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and
not prepared to abide by any moral restraints.”
Henry
Siegman, Rabbi and director of the U.S./Middle East Project:
“Israel
has crossed the threshold from ‘the only democracy in the Middle
East’ to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.”
Richard
Cohen, US columnist:
“The
greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that
Israel itself is a mistake … the idea of creating a nation of
European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has
produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing
now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but
its most formidable enemy is history itself.”
Rabbi
Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine:
“If
a Jew today goes into any synagogue in the U.S. or around the world
and says, 'I don’t believe in God or Torah and I don’t follow the
commandments,' most will still welcome you in and urge you to become
involved. But say, 'I don’t support the State of Israel,' and you
are likely to be labeled a 'self-hating Jew' or anti-Semite, scorned
and dismissed."
Richard
Falk, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories:
Israeli
policies in the Occupied Territories are
“a crime against humanity.” Falk has also compared Israel’s
treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi treatment of the Jews. Falk
has said, “I think the Palestinians stand out as the most
victimised people in the world.”
This
is a condensed version taken from articles I have had published in
recent years. I think it addresses issues which are sadly blocking
the road to a better future – perhaps any future.
In
recent days US
Vice
President
Mike
Pence and Sec of State, Mike Pompeo, have been urging Trump to attack
Iran. Both of them are supported by the Christian-Zionist
movement who can’t wait for a Biblical Armageddon
in the Middle East.
In
this country we have a Prime Minister who is happy to be the
fourth horseman of the Apocalypse
and many in the Labour Party too
ready to clamber up behind him .
The
Labour Party will soon
be choosing a new leader and, surprise surprise, accusations of
anti-semitism are once
again being used against those who dare
criticise Israel
and
who
speak out for the rights
of Palestinians.
After
claiming that Jeremy Corbyn scored 0 out of 10 as party leader
Emily
Thornberry said,
“We
need to get down on our hands and knees to the Jewish community and
ask them for forgiveness and a fresh start.” On
BBC Question time Clive Lewis ‘apologised’ for Labour’s
‘anti-semitism’.
Leading
party leader contender, Rebecca
Long-Bailey better be among the first to get
on her knees and ask forgiveness
after former
Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said she
was
was the candidate he "would worry about" adding, “she's
the continuity candidate, she stands for Corbynism in its purest
sense.” He
went on to criticise her for not joining Labour Friends of Israel.
And
forgiveness
for what?
Perhaps
forgiveness for agreeing posthumously with
Albert
Einstein who
wrote:“The
(Israeli) state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot
understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties
and a narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad.” Or
with Sigmund
Freud who
said,
“I
concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in
part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no
sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of
a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings
of the natives,” Perhaps
also for
agreeing with
Erich
Fromm: “The
claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic
political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in
which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world
would be a madhouse,” or
with
Primo
Levi, writer and Auschwitz survivor: "Everyone
has their Jews. For the Israelis they are the Palestinians."
Perhaps
we
should also seek forgiveness on behalf of
Marek
Edelman, last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw uprising: who
wrote
a letter in support of the Palestine resistance, comparing them to
ZOB, the Jewish fighters in Warsaw. He opened with, "Commanders
of the Palestine military, paramilitary and partisan operations - to
all the soldiers of the Palestine fighting organisations,” And
there is of course Hannah
Arendt who
wrote,
“The
trouble is that Zionism has often thought and said that the evil of
antisemitism was necessary for the good of the Jewish people. In the
words of a well-known Zionist in a letter to me discussing the
original Zionist argumentation: 'The antisemites want to get rid of
the Jews, the Jewish State wants to receive them, a perfect match,'”
Finally
a
voice from the living,
Noam
Chomsky: “In
the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much
worse than apartheid.”
It
has now reached the level of absurdity when these giants of our
political history are ignored or maligned and the rest of us must
bend the knee before criticising Israel.
My
father was one of the first Allied doctors to enter Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp. The photos he took there, and later showed me of
the skeletal prisoners, scarred my young mind. It was those haunting
pictures that led me to a lifetime of anti-fascism.
At
sixteen I had my first contact with real anti-semites. One Saturday
morning in Bromley High Street, thugs from the British Movement,
forerunners of Tommy Robinson's Britain First, and shouting “You bloody Yids”,
beat me up for selling Peace News. I discovered the
headquarters of the Zionist Federation and they gave me Star of David
badges. The following Saturday I, and a fellow pacifist wore these
badges and were beaten up again.
As
a member of the Anti-Nazi League in the 70s, I helped set up a
support and defence group in North West London for Asian shopkeepers
attacked by the National Front.
I
consider that I am in the proud tradition of anti-fascists, both Jews
and non-Jews,
many
of whom were or,
like
Chomsky,
are
anti-Zionists.
Amongst
the first Jews who opposed Zionism were those who set up the Jewish
Bund in Poland and Russia. They stressed the principles of socialism,
secularism, Yiddish and doyikayt or “localness.” Doyikayt was
encapsulated in the Bund slogan: “There, where we live, that is our
country.” “We Bundists”, wrote one of their early leaders,
Viktor Alter, “wish to shatter the existing economic frameworks and
show the Jewish masses how a new society can be built not by escape,
but by struggle. We link the essence of the Jewish masses’ life to
that of humankind.”
Their
contemporaries in this country can be found in Jews for Justice for
Palestinians, Jewish Voice for Labour and others.
Arthur
Miller’s play, The
Crucible,
takes place in 1692 during the Salem witch trials. It
tells the story of a group
of women
who accuse other villagers of witchcraft. The play was written as an
allegory during the McCarthy years and the House of Un-American
Activities trials in the 1950s. To be accused of being a member of
the Communist Part then ensured that jobs, reputations and, for some,
their lives, were lost.
It
mattered little whether the accusations were true or not.
It
mattered even less that membership of the CP at that time was
evidence of radical political consciousness and not criminal
inclination.
Our
Salem trials are an attempt to mask
the
real anti-semitism that has always been at the heart of the British
political Establishment.
It
started with poor Jeremy. “Now,
within living memory of the Holocaust, and while Jews are being
murdered elsewhere in Europe for being Jews, we have an anti-Semite
as the leader of the Labour Party” declared
the Chief Rabbi. He ommitted to add that one
of those countries where anti-semitism was
now rampant is Victor Orban’s Hungary. The
same Orban who was an honoured guest of the Netanyahu Israeli
government.
In
our own country, the
pro-Israel
Middle East Forum funded
fascist Tommy Robinson while he was in prison. In the words of their
Director, Gregg Roman, who has worked in Israel’s Defence and
Foreign Ministries, “we are helping Robinson in his moment of
danger in three main ways ... to fund his legal defence … bringing
foreign pressure on the UK government to ensure Mr. Robinson’s
safety and eventual release …” NOTE:
Robinson has recently joined
the Tory Party!
Let
us take a closer look at the ancestry of Zionism. Their founder,
Theodor Herzl, an admirer of the British Empire wrote to Cecil
Rhodes, who gave his name to the white settler colony Rhodesia, about
his passion for a Jewish state in the Middle East, “You are being
invited to help make history … it does not involve Africa but a
piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen but Jews … I turn to you …
because it is something colonial ..”
Chaim
Weizmann, who suceeded Herzl, wrote to the Manchester Guardian:
“Should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence and
should they encourage Jewish settlement … we could develop the
country, bring back civilisation and form a very effective guard for
the Suez Canal.”
Back
to those Chrisian Evangelicals, Iran and the Middle East. Prayers at the opening of
the US Israeli Embassy in Jerusalem, were delivered by Robert
Jeffries, a Dallas megachurch pastor who said Hitler was sent by God
to drive the Jews to their ancestral land. A busy God who, Jeffries
assures us, was also standing over the shoulder of Donald Trump and
those horsemen.
A lifetime of anti-fascism and anti-racism makes me
also anti-Zionist. If I was being beaten up today by those fascists
in Bromley Hight Street chances are that they and not me would be
wearing Star of David badges.
Chris
Williamson (re-suspended from the Labour Party) joins Jackie Walker
and Marc Wadsworth in their suspension from the party. All three are
left-wing, Corbyn-supporting actvists. The former London mayor, Ken
Livingstone remains suspended along with others such as Jewish
activist, Tony Greenstein.
Chris Williamson MP was suspended after
telling a Momentum meeting that Labour’s reaction to anti-semitism
allegations had led to the party being ‘demonised’. He was also
filmed saying he had celebrated the resignation of MP Joan Ryan,
former Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, and who has since quit
Labour because she claimed she was a victim of anti-semitism'.
Jackie
Walker, of mixed Black/Jewish ancestry and former Momentum Vice
Chair, was suspended after she criticised Holocaust Memorial Day for
commemorating only Jewish victims. “In terms of Holocaust day,
wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust day was open to all people
who experienced holocaust?” she said.
Marc Wadsworth, Labour
Party activist and founder member of the Anti-Racist Alliance, set up
after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, was filmed accusing MP, Ruth
Smeeth of working, ‘hand in hand’ with the Telegraph in smearing
the Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn. She claimed that, as a Jew, his
remarks were 'anti-semitic'.
The target is of course Jeremy
Corbyn, who has become the enemy of the Establishment media,
right-wing labour MPs and the Israeli Embassy. His anti-austerity
platform, support for the Stop the War Coalition, and for Palestine
and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement ensures his
demonisation.
When former Israeli lobby intern Alex Chalmers
claimed “a large proportion” of the student Labour club “and
the student left in Oxford more generally” had a “problem” with
Jews, his claims were highlighted by the press. No one mentioned that
Chalmers was a member of the far-right Progress faction in the Labour
Party and soon after he defected to the Liberal Democrats.
When, a
few months ago, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of
Deputies of British Jews organised a demonstration against Corbyn
outside Parliament, they were happy to use anti-Semitic abuse against
left-wing Jews who were holding a counter-protest in support of
Corbyn.
Ben Southern-Thomas, from Jewish Voice for Labour, said “I
came away crying” after anti-Semitic abuse from two demonstrators.
He was told he was “not a real Jew” and was just “pretending to
be a Jew.” He added that “being Jewish is a really important part
of my identity,”
And so it goes. Recently Jonathan
Goldstein, chair of the Jewish Leadership Council claimed on BBC
Newsnight that Jeremy Corbyn is “the figurehead of an anti-Semitic
political culture.”
We are involved in a struggle which is
way beyond waiting for the next election polls to open. If we want
any possibility of radical change ( no more wars, no more austerity,
defence of the dwindling NHS, action on climate change … the list
is long) we have to realise what is going on and act now. This means
supporting the three W's - Williamson, Walker, and Wadsworth
