Open Letter to Nadhim Zahawi – Secretary of State for Hypocrisy & Education – on why he equates support for the Palestinians with ‘anti-Semitism’
‘Why is Ukraine’s Resistance to Occupation a Fight for Freedom whereas Palestinian Resistance to Occupation is ‘Terrorism’?
It is remarkable that some of the most virulent racists in the government are its Black members. The same is true of Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet. David Lammy, a Christian Evangelist and Labour Friends of Israel patron supports beating children.
The one exception to this in the Tory Party is Baroness Warsi who resigned from the Cameron government over their support for Israel’s Operation Protective Edge attack on Gaza in 2014.
Priti Patel is a byword for racism, with her ‘pushback’ scheme for ‘refugees in the Channel. Patel was previously sacked by Theresa May for lying about her holiday in Israel where she proposed diverting overseas aid money to fund the Israeli military.
Nadhim Zahawi, the second richest man in the Commons (2017), like his predecessor, has spared no effort, to support the Israeli state and its lobby, including the Union of Jewish Students.
Zionism is an integral part of British foreign policy today and Zahawi is its Black face. Zahawi recently distinguished himself by suggesting that anyone chanting Palestine should be free ‘from the river to the sea’ should be arrested! This is rich coming from a party that proclaims it supports free speech on campus and which has complained about the ‘cancel’ culture. It seems that the Right only support freedom of speech when they agree with it!
I therefore thought that in the interests of open government I should write to Zahawi asking for an explanaton. Not that I expect an answer but in order to demonstrate the lies behind Tory rhetoric:
Dear Nadhim,
Please forgive me for my naivety but until the advent of the current government I laboured under the impression that one of the qualifications for being Education Secretary was the possession of a modicum of intellectual, if not emotional, intelligence.
After the appointment of your predecessor, Gavin Williamson, whose credentials were that he was once an overpaid fireplace salesman, before being sacked for allowing his hands to wander in the direction of a more junior employee, I thought that just about anyone would be better than the man who was willing to take on the Chinese single handedly whilst wiping his bottom with an image of Putin’s face.
I realise that in a government led by a crook, standards are not high but you have taken them to a new low. In the Jewish Chronicle (where else?), in an article ‘River to Sea’ chanting is a police matter, says Zahawi you are quoted as saying:
That is the kind of, in my view, antisemitic, intolerant, murderous attitude of the organisation that’s proscribed (Hamas)”
Forgive me for my ignorance, but why is it ‘anti-Semitic’ to say that Palestine should be free? Are you really saying that opposing a repressive military tyranny is anti-Jewish? Isn’t that a teeny, weeny bit anti-Semitic?
Apparently your reasoning, if that is the right word, is that this is a Hamas slogan, Hamas is deemed a terrorist organisation and therefore the slogan is a form of terrorism. Adopting your ‘logic’, presumably if Hamas were to say that the Sun goes round the Earth then that too would be a criminal offence? In which case Galileo was also a terrorist?!
The decision to proscribe Hamas’s political wing was a political not an evidenced based decision. There was a time when Sinn Fein was called the political wing of the IRA, Although the IRA was proscribed as a terrorist group Sinn Fein was not, despite calls from Unionists.
Today Sinn Fein is the most popular party in Ireland. Even the most wooden headed Loyalist no longer calls for them to be banned.
Hamas, like the IRA, has a political wing and it was this that was made illegal under anti-terrorism legislation. A complete abuse of legislation which is supposedly about terrorism not banning those whose politics you don’t like. It would seem that in order to defend the world’s only Apartheid state, anything goes.
Hamas is the most popular party amongst the Palestinians because, unlike Fateh, which is now a footstool for the Israeli state, Hamas resists Israel’s military occupation. What you and your party are doing, supported by your echo chamber Starmer, is banning democracy amongst the Palestinians.
Since Hamas has never conducted military operations outside Palestine/Israel it is no more a ‘terrorist’ organisation than the Ukrainian resistance fighters who you are arming.
I don’t know whether or not your doctorate is one of those degrees that you can buy off the shelf from an on-line university but it is difficult to believe that you earned it. Perhaps you emulated Saif Gadaffi, who bought his Ph D for a mere £1.5 million from the LSE.
However I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was malevolence rather than stupidity that caused you to describe the Palestinian chant ‘From the River to the Sea’ as a police matter.
As you are well aware, Palestine is anything but free. Palestinians, who now constitute the majority population, live for the most part under permanent military occupation without any civil or political rights. Even those who are Israeli citizens possess fewer rights than Jews.
I will let you into a secret. I help raise funds for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin. Last May the ‘most moral army in the world’ wrecked it on the pretext of searching for arms.
Two weeks ago Mohammed a 15 year old boy was shot with a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli soldier. Today I received this message:
I am so sorry to share this terrible news ! Another child from the center has been shot at while he was going to take his treatment in Jerusalem today. Ali is 6 years old has cancer. He goes to Jerusalem every month. Please share his story he is a poor kid without father .. We rely on you to save our children.
These actions are increasing these days.. I wish the news could share this as they share what is going on in the other side !
It takes a particularly sick and twisted mind to describe opposition to war crimes such as these as anti-Semitic. That is what ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Must Be Free’ means. Palestine is anything but free.
Your concern about anti-Semitism might be slightly more convincing if the British government weren’t supplying neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine, such as the Azov Battalion, with advanced weaponry. I can only assume that you subscribe to the belief that there are ‘good’ as well as ‘bad’ neo-Nazis.
We were chanting ‘From the River to the Sea’ back in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, i.e. at least 6 years before Israel helped create Hamas. Clearly your ability to engage in even the simplest research is not one of your strengths. Which is why I can only assume that you bought or bribed your way into obtaining a PhD.
In your talk to vice-chancellors you told them that the adoption of the IHRA misdefinition of antisemitism was “essential not optional”. Why is it that you are so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ when you have nothing to say about the deportation of Black British citizens to the West Indies in the Windrush Scandal or the attempt to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda?
The reason why people oppose the IHRA is not because it has anything to do with anti-Semitism but because it conflates opposition to Israel’s war crimes with ‘anti-Semitism’.
Why do you need a definition of anti-Semitism? My dad took part in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. He didn’t need a definition of anti-Semitism to know who and what he was fighting. The Tory Home Secretary of the day, Sir John Simon, had agreed to Oswald Moseley’s fascist thugs marching through London’s Jewish East End. At that time Tory MPs were still engaged in a love-in with Hitler.
The Jewish Chronicle asked you whether Boycott Divestment and Sanctions had a place on campus and your response was “Absolutely not.” Four human rights groups – B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and now the Harvard Law Clinic, have declared that Israel is an apartheid state. How else can you describe a state which bars its Arab citizens from 93% of the land?
Perhaps you can explain why sanctions against Russia are fine, the more the merrier, but sanctions against Israel’s are anti-Semitic?
40 years ago Thatcher was hostile to Sanctions against Apartheid because she supported a system of White racial supremacy. Support for Jewish supremacy is the reason for your opposition to BDS.
You have threatened the National Union of Students with derecognition, not for anything it has done but because it has elected a Black President, Shaima Dallali, who ten years ago tweeted ‘Khaybar Khaybar O Jews … Muhammad’s army will return Gaza,”. Hardly the gravest crime given your support of neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
On the basis of one tweet you have accused NUS of ‘systemic antisemitism’. If one teenage tweet means NUS is anti-Semitic then how would you describe a party that elected a leader who said that Africans have ‘water melon smiles’ and described people like you as ‘picanninies’?
If Shaima is guilty of anti-Semitism how would you describe someone who spoke of a ‘Jewish cabal who run the American media complex’ and Russian Jewish oligarchs who fix elections? To say nothing of a ‘a middle aged (Jewish) man with a proud nose and curly hair’. If you don’t know who I mean you might care to read Boris Johnson’s 72 Virgins!
But you already know this. If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, then dishonesty is the price you are willing to pay for staying in a Cabinet dominated by an all-purpose racist.
Your outburst followed ‘concerns raised by the Union of Jewish Students.’ Even by your standards this is pathetically thin gruel. The UJS was revealed by Al Jazeera’s The Lobby to be funded by the Israeli Embassy.
UJS has a constitution (which has disappeared off the Internet) which commits it to ‘inspiring Jewish students to make an enduring commitment’ to Israel. In other words UJS has support for Israeli apartheid at its heart.
UJS has a history of trying to suppress views it disagrees with. Last year it did its best to ban Ken Loach, the world famous filmmaker from St Peters College because he once directed a play Perdition based on a real life Israeli trial which involved Zionist-Nazi collaboration. Apparently an 84 year old man was a ‘threat’ to the ‘safety’ of these Zionist snowflakes. See Outrage as Oxford college holds event with controversial filmmaker Ken Loach
As someone whose party is opposed to the ‘cancel’ culture it would seem that you are only opposed to the cancellation of racists.
It is perfectly understandable Nadhim that you should have found a home in Boris Johnson’s government. In 1994 Geoffrey Archer, later jailed for perjury, helped you campaign for a seat on Wandsworth council. And by way of thanks you were put in charge of Archer’s corrupt campaign for Mayor of London in 1998.
In January 2016 Labour proposed an amendment that would have required private landlords to make their homes “fit for human habitation”. According to the Parliamentary register of interests, you were 1 of 72 Tory MPs who voted against the amendment. You just happen to be a large private landlord.
In November The Sunday Mirror caught you out after you had claimed £5,822 expenses from the public purse for electricity for your riding school stables and a yard manager’s mobile home. It’s an easy enough mistake to make. I do it all the time. If you had been claiming social security you would have had the book thrown at you but dishonest MPs are granted immunity by the Met.
I am even more surprised that your concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ does not extend to sexism against women. In January 2018 you attended a men-only Presidents Club dinner at the Dorchester Hotel in London. You will probably recall media reports of female hostesses being subjected to sexual harassment, groping and sexist abuse. The mere fact that you went to a men-only event such as this speaks volumes.
It is no surprise, given that a Prime Minister who doesn’t even know how many children he has and who has been accused of serial sexual harassment by Sunday Times journalist Charlotte Edwards, that you should have found yourself so at ease in his Cabinet.
I have just one thing to ask of you. Do you think you could put a stop to this fake concern over ‘anti-Semitism’? You are no more concerned about Jews than Johnson or Starmer are concerned about the truth.
Yours,
Tony Greenstein
