Posts by Tony Greenstein

Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives Gilbert Achcar One of the most hotly talked about books issued this year has been Gilbert Achcar’s ‘Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives.’ Achcar is a Professor at the School of Oriental & African Studies. He is also a member of the Fourth…

News has just come in of the boarding of the Jewish boat, the Irene (named after Irene Bruegel one of the founders of Jews for Justice for Palestinians). Not content with a UN Human Rights Committee Report that branded the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla as illegal, having used brutality, torture as well as…

The Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission, established on 2nd June by the UN Human Rights Council into the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, is a devastating critique of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and its aftermath, in particular regarding the Mavi Marmara. That Israel has dismissed its findings as ‘biased’…

This is becoming serious. For 2 pickets in a row Jonathan Hoffman, Zionist Federation co-chair and leader of the activist wing, has been absent. How can this be? An illness perhaps? Well yes, it’s what’s called a diplomatic illness. After the debacle of his skipping down the road arm-in-arm (almost) with Roberta Moore of the…

Mass unemployment is an integral feature of capitalism. Every so often, as capitalism goes into one of its periodic crises, whether the collapse of share prices in 1929 or the current recession, there is one solution – to make the working class and poor pay the price. The recession and 2½ million unemployed in Britain…

Protest Against the Israeli Military is Itself Illegal Court Rules The arrest and conviction, on trumped charges, of Abdallah Abu Rahmah, for organising ‘illegal demonstrations’ [i.e. anything the military doesn’t like!] demonstrates that far from wanting to eradicte ‘terrorism’, the Israeli state is determined to prevent all peaceful opposition to its brutal occupation. Thus it…

There can be nothing more despicable than the mistreatment and torture of Palestinian children. Of the 10,000+ Palestinian prisoners that Israel holds, some 700 are aged 16 and under. There are no special rights for them. There is no right to see a lawyer in the first weeks of imprisonment or any other rights. Sexual…

Religion, when it gains power over the State, legitimates the worst evils. Be it in Iran or Israel. But in Israel there is no mass opposition to the rulers. On the contrary there is a solid civilian consensus behind its treatment of Arabs. So when the Orthodox Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who has just written a…

To those who say Zionism is not a form of racism and that the Israeli state is not racist, then there are a few questions that should be asked. Why is it that consistently in opinion polls we see a majority of those responding calling for the removal of democratic rights from Arab Israelis? In…

Report of Conference on Jews and Palestine It’s not often that you go to a conference and come away feeling that that was a really worthwhile and positive experience. Too many conferences are waffly and woolly and often set up to benefit primarily the speakers’ egos. Maybe it was because this was the first ever…