Freedland Calls on the Palestinians to Support Those Who Expelled Them and Stole Their Land in an Internal Jewish War over the Supreme Court

If there is any journalist, and I use the word advisedly, who can claim the credit for the media’s ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn then that person is Jonathan Freedland. It was this that prompted me to ask, just before Britain’s General Election in 2019 Is Jonathan Freedland the most dishonest journalist in Britain?

One month before the 2019 election Freedland wrote ‘Many Jews want Boris Johnson out. But how can we vote for Jeremy Corbyn? If Freedland had been genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism, as opposed to anti-Zionism, then he would have had no difficulty answering his own question.

Leaving aside Johnson’s racist comments about ‘Watermelon smiles’, ‘piccaninnies’ and ‘letterboxes’. Johnson’s anti-Semitic comments in his novel ’72 Virgins’ should have sufficed. Johnson wrote:

Maybe there was some kind of fiddling of the figures by the oligarchs who ran the TV stations (and who were mainly, as some lost no time in pointing out, of Jewish origin)

There was ‘the Jewish cabal who run the American media complex’. Even the Jewish Chronicle mentioned how 72 Virgins had

‘described a Jewish character as an unethical businessman with a large nose, who exploits immigrant workers and black women’.

But here’s the strange thing. Not a word about Johnson’s anti-Semitism crossed Freedland’s lips. In all his tiresome tirades Freedland never once quoted an anti-Semitic phrase that Corbyn had used yet Johnson served them up on a plate.

Freedland’s main theme was about how Jewish identity was bound up with Israel and if you attack an identity then that is anti-Semitic.  What if there had been a few thousand South Africa exiles in this country. Would it have been racist to oppose apartheid?  How about German exiles pre-1939?  Would opposition to Nazism have been anti-German? That was the heart of Freedland’s bogus argument for Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’. A completely specious argument.

As the former Jewish Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, said when questioned about Corbyn: ‘I’ve never detected so much as a whiff of anti-Semitism’.

Professor Geoffrey Alderman, a die-hard Zionist and the historian of the British Jewish community, in ‘Is Jeremy Corbyn really anti-Semitic?’ wrote:

The fact of the matter is that Corbyn has an impressive record of supporting Jewish communal initiatives…. In 2010 he put his name to an Early Day Motion (tabled by Diane Abbott) calling on the UK government to facilitate the settlement of Yemeni Jews in Britain. Indeed I could fill this entire article with a list of philo-Semitic EDMs that Corbyn has signed since he was first elected… in 1983.

Alderman was a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle for 14 years before Editor Stephen Pollard banned him for dissent! Not a word of this made its way into the Guardian under Freedland.

These are just a sample of Freedland’s articles during the Corbyn years – he didn’t write even one article about the racism Muslims and Black People Experience – Just About a Privileged Section of White People

During the Corbyn years I wrote a number of blogs such as Why Freedland Felt the Need to Lie to The Guardian’s Readers and why the Guardian Refused to Allow Any Reply to Freedland in its Comment Pages. See here, here, here and here culminating in an attack on Ken Loach and a refusal of a right of reply.

Freedland produced an endless series of articles about Labour ‘anti-Semitism’. He celebrated Starmer’s sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey because ‘at last, Labour is serious about antisemitism’.

The Guardian refused to cover Al Jazeera’s series The Labour Files about the dirty tricks campaign against Corbyn, which included spying, bugging and monitoring Labour activists, the racism of Labour’s staff and even their hacking of a journalist’s computer.

Even the saint-like Corbyn referred to the ‘’utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness’ of Freedland. Corbyn’s comment, in a fly-on-the wall documentary ‘Corbynism: the post-mortem’ so unnerved Freedland that he devoted a whole Jewish Chronicle column to it!

Despite pretending not to notice Freedland admitted that

In truth, though, it left me quite shaken. It’s unnerving to see yourself torn into by a frontline politician — the man who would be prime minister — with such venom.

Like most bullies Freedland was happy to accuse people of ‘anti-Semitism’ but when his victim bit back he cried into his column. It is unfortunate that Corbyn didn’t do this a bit more often.

Freedland thought nothing of targeting Muslims with bogus accusations of ‘antisemitism’ in his desperation to prove that Jews were under attack in the Labour Party

It is instructive that when Freedland recently wrote a book about a Jewish holocaust hero, Rudolf Vrba, who escaped from Auschwitz he chose an anti-Zionist Jew! As Hilary and Steven Rose observed, Vrba ‘found some of the same Zionist leaders in positions of power (in Israel) who had helped betray the Jews of Budapest’.

I haven’t yet read Freedland’s book but I strongly suspect that he has glossed over or omitted Vrba’s opposition to Zionism. But let us recall what Vrba wrote in the Daily Herald (February 1961):

I am a Jew. In spite of that – indeed because of that I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr Kasztner. … I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks’ notice that Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers… Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.’

Having Described the Palestinian Struggle as ‘anti-Semitic’ Freedland now asks them to rescue Israel’s ‘Jewish Democracy’!

One of the features of ethno-nationalist states is that the police state apparatus that is created to suppress the indigenous population is sooner or later turned against dissidents amongst the herrenvolk. Once you have got used to murdering the Untermenschen you soon find that you are also surrounded by Jewish traitors and fifth columnists. 

The Nazis not only murdered millions of Jews they also murdered at least three-quarters of a million Germans. Israel is no exception to this because an ethno-nationalist state breeds a fascist mentality and the goal of racial purity is the chimera which drives it along. That is what is happening in Israel today.

Freedland Appeals for Palestinian Support!

It was with astonishment and amusement, that I read Freedland’s latest screed Netanyahu is an existential threat to Israel. He can be resisted – but only with Palestinian support. As Netanyahu and his Coalition proceed to neuter Israel’s Supreme Court, Freedland has woken up to the 20% of Israel’s population who are Palestinian. Realising that the ‘Jewish Democracy’ that liberal Zionists have venerated is disappearing, even for Israeli Jews, Freedland now looks around for allies. Having demonised support for the Palestinians as anti-Semitic, Freedland now appeals to the victims of ‘Jewish democracy’ to come to its rescue.

Israel’s Palestinian Citizens See the Furore Over the Supreme Court as an Internal Zionist Dispute

Netanyahu and his Jewish Nazi friends in Otzmah Yehudit (‘Jewish Power’) and Religious Zionism do not care what others think of them. This contrasts with the Labour Zionists for whom Hasbarah (propaganda) was important in maintaining western political support for Israel. They went out of their way to emphasise Israel’s ‘democratic’ features and its token Arabs. Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich want the Arabs out – all of them. 

As Smotrich told Arab members of the Knesset ‘you are here by mistake – because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948,”. So much for the ‘Arab lie’ of the Nakba. The Judeo-Nazis that Netanyahu has allied with don’t deny the Nakba.  They complain that it was not far-reaching enough!

Israel’s Supreme Court is a Colonial Court

The proposals to neuter Israel’s Supreme Court should be opposed as the alternative is the Nazi rule by decree. Even the façade of the Supreme Court is better than no legal process at all. However when Freedland claimed that

the supreme court has regularly protected the rights of minorities – including the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian Arab

this is what is known as a dirty fat lie. On the contrary Israel’s Supreme Court has presided over the theft of Palestinian land, both within Israel itself and the Occupied Territories.

It has failed, even once, to rule against the more than 65 laws which discriminate against Israeli Palestinians. In the West Bank it has ignored international law. The Supreme Court has presided over the theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank using a variety of legal tricks. In July 2022 it ruled that the Mitzpeh Kramim settlement could stay because the land was stolen in ‘good faith’.

The Supreme Court created the legal architecture of Israeli Apartheid. It has consistently upheld claims by right-wing settlers in Jerusalem seeking to evict Palestinians because Jews once owned the land when Jordan captured East Jerusalem in 1948. Yet it has never once ruled that Palestinians who owned property in West Jerusalem before 1948 were entitled to its return.

The Supreme Court has ruled that demolition of the homes of relatives of ‘Arab terrorists’ is fine, because it deters terrorism but has ruled against demolishing Jewish terrorists homes. Former Supreme Court Justice Menachem Mazzuz retired early, at least in part, because he was overruled in his belief that demolitions were ‘illegal and immoral’ and a form of collective punishment.

In July 2021 the Supreme Court held, by 10-1, that the overtly racist Jewish Nation State Law was constitutional even though it explicitly discriminated against Israel’s Palestinian citizens. In the process they affirmed that that Arab citizenship was all but worthless.

The one Supreme Court justice who ruled against the law was its only Arab member, George Karra. Not one Jewish judge was prepared to leave their racism and Zionism at home. This is the Supreme Court that thousands of Israeli Jews are taking to the streets for. See Israeli courts legitimized the state’s worst policies. We must still protect them

Today it is the Supreme Court which is leading the drive to evict the Palestinian villagers of Khan al Ahmar on the West Bank having already ruled that the 1000 Palestinian inhabitants of Masafer Yatta should be evicted to make way for an army firing range.

Freedland knows all of this yet he lies about the role of Israel’s Supreme Court in protecting Palestinians. The Supreme Court is and always has been a Colonial Court of Zionism.

The objections of Religious Zionism and Likud to the Supreme Court have nothing to do with its record over the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It is about an entirely different matter. Internal Jewish/Zionist disputes.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that Reform and Liberal Judaism conversions must be recognised for the purposes of who is a Jew. It has taken the view that the definition of ‘Who is a Jew’ must be broad whereas the Orthodox Religious parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, want to narrow the definition of a Jew, excluding those who qualify under the ‘grandfather’ clause in the Law of Return.

This is an internal Zionist debate irrelevant to the Palestinians. Who cares who qualifies as Zionism’s Ubermenschen. Indeed it serves our interests that the definition of who is a Jew is as narrow as possible because then Jewry in the diaspora will wake up to the narrow, racist and nationalist state that Israel is. We have no irons in the fire.

As Ha’aretz wrote in an editorial, the Supreme Court is ‘the Occupation’s Rubber Stamp’. Chief Justice Esther Hayut stated that

‘there is no need to make a ruling…on the question of the applicability of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty to the Palestinian population in the area.’

The Supreme Court is perfectly happy with a situation where Israeli civil law applies to Jewish settlers and military law applies to Palestinians. See When the Exceptional is Regular: The Supreme Court on Israel’s Landgrabs by Hagai El-Ad of B’Tselem.

Jonathan Freedland knows all of this. One thing he isn’t is stupid.  Malevolent yes, dishonest yes, but stupid no. He also knows that a Jewish Democratic state is an oxymoron. The state is either Jewish, in which case Jews are entitled to preferential treatment or it is Democratic. As it stands Israel is Jewish for Arabs and Democratic for Jews.

What Freedland wants is for Israel’s Arab citizens, who possess a citizenship which relegates them to the status of tolerated guests, to rescue the democracy in ‘Jewish democracy’ even though they themselves will not benefit from it.

Although I knew it wouldn’t be printed, I sent the Guardian a letter.  However Freedland does not do criticism. Today the letters column of the Guardian has also been Freedlandised.

The Supreme Court as Israel’s Iron Dome & Flak Jacket

But if the Supreme Court doesn’t protect Palestinians what it does do is to protect Israel’s army of occupation. In the Jerusalem Post former MK Rachel Azaria described the High Court, as

‘the flak jacket of IDF soldiers, it is protection for our sons and daughters that serve in the army, from attempts to petition against IDF soldiers at the International Criminal Court in The Hague,”

Likewise Alan Dershowitz, explained how:

“It will make it much more difficult for people like me who try to defend Israel in the international court of public opinion to defend them effectively, It would be a tragedy to see the Supreme Court weakened.”

Aharon Barak, the former Chief Justice, made the same the argument.

The High Court has acted as a kind of legal “Iron Dome,”. Without a credible independent court, deemed as ensuring Israel’s democratic functioning, including in its treatment of the Palestinians, “our chief of staff and government ministers will immediately be arrested when they travel overseas…  The leaders of the country will be put on trial in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”President Isaac Herzog told the Knesset’s that“Israel’s diplomatic and legal institutions, including our Supreme Court, will continue to be a diplomatic and legal defensive shield for us on the international front.”

In January 2019 Supreme Court President Esther Hayut argued that

one of the important side effects of judicial review is its contribution to Israel’s international legitimization.” Its intervention helps “bolster Israel’s claim of ‘complementarity’ when it deals with criminal proceedings in foreign courts, whether international or those of other countries.”

In other words, contrary to Freedland’s lies, the Supreme Court protects Israel’s war criminals not the Palestinians. Neutering the Supreme Court strips away the illusions in Israeli democracy.

Tony Greenstein

A Short Email to Freedland

Dear Jonathan,

Having spent the Corbyn years equating support for the Palestinians with anti-Semitism you are now calling on them to rescue Israel from the consequences of Zionism and settler colonialism.

And as we both know the ‘antisemitism’ you wrote interminably about was nothing of the kind. Otherwise you might have spent a little time on Boris Johnson and Rees Mogg’s undoubted antisemitism.

It is difficult to know whether it’s just malevolence or just stupidity that drives you.  Perhaps it’s both.

It is no coincidence that the only Jewish hero of the holocaust that you could find was an anti-Zionist.  I’ve yet to read your book so I will reserve judgement on whether or not you had anything to say on this aspect of Vrba.

Oh and speaking of the holocaust I have brought out a book Zionism During the Holocaust about the true record of the Kasztners and Ben Gurions.

Either way I somehow doubt that many Palestinians will be queuing up to support a Supreme Court which, contrary to the little lie in your article, has consistently negated Arab rights in and without Israel.

tony greenstein