Don't let religious authorities decide what can and can't be published!
Praised for it (and probably pressurised) by the Blair-Brown government, the British press has unanimously refused to let its readers see the anti-Islamist cartoons in the row which fills its front pages. We do not believe that religious authorities should decide what can or can't be published, and so republish the cartoons.
To see the cartoons, click here.
To Muslim workers and young people who are not admirers of the Saudi hierarchy or of the political Islamists like Al Muhajiroun (who have organised the anti-cartoon demonstrations in London), we say: free speech is vital for democracy, for social change, for the possibility of challenging what has been laid down by established authorities.
It is also vital for clearly-defined minority opinions of any sort.
Freedom, as Rosa Luxemburg put it, is always and exclusively the freedom of the one who thinks differently. Freedom only for those who think much the same as the authorities - or freedom only for those who do not offend, annoy, and irritate entrenched authorities - is no freedom at all.
We protest against the suppression of these cartoons on the same grounds as we protested against the suppression of the play Bezhti (written by a Sikh, but offensive to conservative Sikh authorities) or the attempts of some Christians to suppress "Jerry Springer - the Opera".
By publishing these cartoons, we are not by any means endorsing the content of all of them. Some of them are not from a progressive point of view, and at least one of them - the image of the turban/bomb - could be interpreted as suggesting that all Muslims are terrorists, which is blatantly untrue and fuels racism. We want to make it very clear that we strongly reject the notion that all Muslims are somehow responsible for Islamist terrorism. But we are printing the cartoons in order to reiterate the basic idea that freedom of expression must include freedom to be offensive - and our conviction that, in refusing to reprint them, the British press is undermining free debate on these issues.
We defend the freedom of Muslims to practise their religion. We oppose any persecution of Muslims for being Muslims.
Only, we demand the same freedom for all religions, and for the anti-religious too.
To return Europe to the times when Christian authorities had a very big, sometimes decisive, say in what could be said and published, would be very bad (for Muslims, too!) In many countries those times are not so long ago. In Britain, where the hold of the religious authorities on politics has been weakening for centuries, there is still a law banning "blasphemy" against the Christian religion.
It would scarcely be better to have the big religious authorities in each country - Christian, Muslim, maybe Hindu - helping each other get sufficient power that they can jointly prohibit whatever is uncongenial to any one of them, thus marginalising minority religious views and the anti-religious.
We recommend readers also to look at:
This blog by a secular-minded Saudi, in which he argues that the whole "scandal" is a beat-up by the corrupt Saudi authorities. (Images of Muhammad are offensive? Then why aren't the boycotts directed against... the Islamic Republic of Iran, where pictures of Muhammad are commonplace).
Article in the Guardian explaining how the row has been deliberately built up by conservative Islamists and the Saudi authorities since the cartoons were published last September (and why they were published in the first place).
Wikipedia's detailed account, with many links.
Nico Dessaux's site on the controversy (mostly in French).
This article has been revised since originally posted.
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1) It was extremely offensive
1) It was extremely offensive to publish the cartoons and i would not have done so.
2)Islamists have made it into the issue it is by spending 4 months trying to raise the temperature , inserting several false cartoons.
3)The reaction against the cartoons in terms of its threat to freedom of speech etc has been totaly beyond anything reasonable.
4) I've just seen the cartoon of Hitler in bed with Ann Frank that's doing the rounds and it makes me sick.
5) If it wasn't the cartoons that Islamists had hijacked it would have been something else
cartoons from the USSR
I am amazed that some people who claim to be on the Left claim that cartoons against islam are racist.
The journal of the Soviet League of Militant Atheists published a number of anti-religious cartoons. Such as http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/bezbozhnik/b1924-5-cv.html
Would anybody seriously call that racist?
Jews demonized = 'free speech', Muslims demonized = 'hate speec
[From Anja Partanen on Sweden]
Thanks for very good article and specially thanks for publishing if those cartoons.
In Sweden, the country where i live, one website which published cartoons has been shut down yesterday (without any legal proceeding !)
by coward swedish authorities.
It's remind me political opression in former USSR.
Is new worldwide religious GULAG will be our future?
I wonder why no similar outcry and apologies have come after viciously anti-Semitic cartoons are published on an almost DAILY basis throughout the Arab world.
The Palestinian Authority State Information Center regularly posts ugly anti-Jewish cartoons, including this reiteration of the anti-Semitic blood libel that Jews kill non-Jewish children.
see
http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm
Where is violent protest?
Not just in the Arab world. We still have Radio Islam, blatant jew-hating website, which run by far-right winger Ahmed Rami.
There are thousand and thousand neo-nazi sites, which never shut down.
Even in some swedish mainstream newspapers I can read that Jews 'run swedish media', they are 'christ.killers', 'wealthy and powerful' etc etc.
When Jews demonized - this is a 'free speech' (or 'Israel critic') , (there wasn't any violent protest with embassy-burning , deadthreating etc)
When Muslims demonized - this is 'racism' and 'hate-speech' + violent demonstrations all over the world...
Why double standard ?
[posted on Anja's behalf because she was finding technical difficulties with the website].
Reply To Anonymous - "All These Questions"
“All these 'questions' are have the character of 'have you stopped beating your wife yet'.”
No they don’t they have the point of determining whether the statements I and others have made that the SWP has formed a Popular Front with clerical fascists are true or not. Up to yet all you have done is denounce the fact that the charge has been made. What is far more important is whther it is actually true that the SWP has in fact entered a Popular Front with political islamists, and has supported the election of political islamist groups such as Hamas, whether it has invited such people to this country to SWP events and so on. You do not actually now deny that these charges are true. So at least on that we are agreed.
”No, the Muslims and Muslim organisations mentioned are not 'fascist' or anything like it.”
Really???? So you want to tell us that an organisation that routinely issues the most vile racist, anti-semitic propoganda, which has as its aim the destruction of the State of Israel which could only be achieved through a genocidal war against Jews, which calls for gays and lesbians to be executed, which bans any material which might criticise this attitude to gays and lesbians, which assigns for women the role merely of servants to men, which calls for the whole world to be made into a Caliphate under the barbaric Sharia law, which is the immediate enemy of the working class and Labour Movement in many parts of the world through its systematic and violent attacks on socialists and workers as with the Tehran busworkers at the moment or the daily attacks on workers organisation in Iraq, which opposes the principles of democracy and freedom which socialists and democrats have fought and died for over several centuries – you want to tell us that such organisations are not clerical-fascist????
If so then you clearly do not know your arse from your elbow.
“If they were, you should have been advocating that the Labour movement counterdemonstrate and even organise the physical dispersal of Saturday's anti-Islamophobia demonstration, or for that matter the smashing up of Respect meetings in a similar manner.”
I would certainly and have advocated as any socialist should that workrs and socialsist organise workers defence squads in Iraq, Iran or anywhere else including in Europe to defend workers and socialists against attacks from political Islamists. The demonstration on Saturday was aimed as much if not more at those sections of Political Islam that called for censorship, beheadings, and other vilent and terroristic attacks as it was a protest against blasphemy. As someone who, unlike you is in favour of free speech, I am totally in support of people having the right to protest and express their views so there would have been no reason for me to oppose the demonstration on Saturday. Had the protest been seeking to impose censorship, or had been advocating violence against those that published the cartoons, or had been openly promoting racist or fascist ideas, then yes I would have been in favour of a counter-demonstration. That was not the case. As for smashing up Respect meetings a similar point could be made. I think that you have clearly misunderstood the slogan of No Platform for Fascists, and would refer you to the post I have made on this, and the post Cathy Nugent made in that regard.
”I presume you now regard the bulk of Palestinians, who voted for Hamas, as 'fascists'. I dont.”
No, I don’t anymore than I regard all those people who voted for the Nazis as fascist, that I regard the SWP as fascists. It is you that seems incapable of drawing distinctions, and understanding categories. As I said before you are clearly politically primitive.
”I regard them as an oppressed people”
Me too.
“who have tired of being sold down the river by 'secularists' who collaborate Vichy-style with the Zionist regime in its systematic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,”
Total crap. Yasser Arafat achieved his position as a result of organising and leading a long struggle against Israeli occupation. Arafat refused even, and quite rightly, to “collaborate” or “sell down the river” the Palestinians over the deal brokered by Clinton, and initiated the second Intifada. The Palestinian people rejected Fatah in favour of Hamas partly out of desperation, and in large part not because of Fatah collaborating with Israel, but because Fatah was thoroughly corrupt. It is one of the reasons that Marx and Engels argued during the 19th century against supporting the demand for self-determination for some small nations that could not achieve it through their own internal strength and solidaity. It always leads in such circumstances to the people becoming dependent upon, and resorting to all kinds of reactionaries to achieve their goal, and leaves htem dependent upon such reactionaries for their continued survival.
“In context, the election of Hamas is considerably less reactionary, for instance, than the Zionist project itself, which right from the very start had as its aim the massive theft of Arab land and the expulsion of Arab inhabitants from that land in order to create a Jewish ethnic-defined state.”
Whether its less reactionary (and you are right to phrase it that way because at least you are recognising that what we have in Hamas is something that is reactionary and not progressive) than Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is besides the point. Ted Heath was perhaps less reactionary than Margaret Thatcher, would you have advocated workers support Ted Heath??? The job of socialists is not to send workers to their doom by recommending that they support reactionaries just because they are marginally less reactionary than someone else. It is to oppose all reactionaries, and advocate independent organisation of the workers against them all on the basis of socialist ideas. As for the state of Israel it is an historical fact. It exists, and has existed for 60 years. It isn’t going away, and even if it were it would require a genocidal war in the Middle East which would be ruinous to the working class of the entire area for decades to come. You may just as well call for the return of the United States to the Native Americans, or Australia to the Aborigenes. That does not mean that socialists are in favour of Israel occupying the Palestinian territories, or any of the oppression of Palestinains that that occupation entails. That is why the AWL opposes that occupation and oppression both in its propoganda, and in its practical activiies. But as socialists our goal is not national self determination on the basis of even at best bouregois democratic principles – and that would ot even be the case with a Hamas led state. Our goal is international socialism, and that requires forging the greatest possible unity of workers across borders including between Jewish and Palestinain workers. You seem to have completely lost sight of socialism being a goal, and hitch your wagon to whatever reationary might be fighting for reactionary nationalist ideals.
”You can scream about the 'fascist' character of Islamic political currents till you are blue in the face - that politics, as a mass phenomenon, is a flawed response to savage national and ethnic oppression.”
Even were that true, which it isn’t, why should socialists accommodate to it, rather than pointing out precisely that it is flawed, that it will lead workers to disaster, and almost certainly won’t even achieve the limited objective of national liberation, where that is still to be achieved, and that really just amounts to the Palestinian territories and possibly Iraq. But of course it isn’t true anyway. Egypt achieved independence after the Second World War. The fight against national oppression ended there more than 50 years ago. The oppression in Egypt is not national or ethnic oppression, but class oppression. The answer to that class opression there as elsewhere is not reactoinary religion, but independent working class organisation and a fight for socialism. But the political islamists you are so keen on are the bitter enemies of that. In Egypt the political islamists are not fighting national or ethnic oppression they are fighting to establish an Islamic state which would oppress workers there far more than they are oppressed by the Egyptian bourgeoisie. The same is true in Syria, in Saudi Arabia, in Lebanon and of course in Iran the political Islamists are already in control, and rule over a regime that is as much a gaol house for workers as was Stalin’s Russia.
”and socialists have a duty to work with those who support such ideas (where openings exist for such common work) to attack that oppression in order to reconquer authority for the left.”
Complete and utter, and dangerous rubbish. Have you no understanding of socialist principles? Have you not read any of the literatiure by Lenin and the Communist International on the role of socialists in the fight against bourgeois nationalism, clerical nationalism and Pan-Islamism? Do you have no knowledge of the disater your proposed course has led the working class to in the past? Socialists have a duty in those cases where such a struggle is progressive to advocate national liberation, but in large part that struggle ended long ago, colonialism was defeated. But as lenin and the Communist International pointed out socialists even in such struggles, and it could be argued that such struggles still aplly in Palestine and Iraq, maintain their own separate organisation – which the SWP has not done by liquidiating itself into Respect – and criticse the limited nature of nationalist forces. Indeed, Lenin argues that any collaboration with other forces in such cases is conditional on these other forces accepting that the communists will organise the workers (at the time Lenin referred to the peasantry as they were the dominant class in such countries) as a military unit which would fight not just for national liberation but for socialism. If no agreement was forthcoming then Lenin argued even against social-democratic forces, the communists would treat them as the enemy. Yet you want to join up with the clerical-fascists, the Pan-Islamists, the very people who Lenin argued a determined fight under any circumstances must be waged!!!!
As for reconquering authority for the left, the quickest way to destroy the left is to support thoroughly reactionary forces, and to abandon independent working class organisation, and the most thorough criticism of the enemies of the working class both the bourgeois enemies, and those that act as the agents of the bourgeoisie – the reactionary Islamists.
”Not ally with the oppressors in some kind of crusader alliance based on the myth that in opposing Arab/Muslim 'fascism' one is re-fighting the Second World War, or some other social-chauvinist myth.”
But who are the oppressed that socialists side with? The workers that will create socialism and in some instances the peasants that will be drawn in behind them. The AWL is siding with those oppressed workers is siding with those for example in Iraq, that are trying to build independent, socialist organisations, and trade unions. It is the SWP that is supporting the reactionary Islamist forces that daily attack those workers, students, women, gays and socialists.
Wake up, your backing the wrong side.
Arthur Bough
Poke fun at all religion
None of our beliefs should be held so high that we can not deal with criticism. If you are really confident in what you believe you can understand the motivation and thoughts of non believers since you too were at one time a non believer, or have thought of why you believe and under what circumstances you would not.
If your do not allow criticism or discussion, it's time for self reflection as to why you can not defend your beliefs. Beliefs that can not be challenged or lampooned must be weak, since they can not stand up to scrutiny.
Check out FlushAHolyBook.com where all the major religions are flushed away.
the cartoons
Let's not forget that a lot of the outrage around the cartoons was fuelled by 3 extra cartoons that some Danish Muslim extremist went on a tour of the Middle East showing. He made those up and claimed those were in the paper. That sounds fairly sinister. As the poster above points out, some islamists have been spending 4 months raising the temperature on this issue.
Fundamentally, as France Soir stated "On a le droit de caracaturer Dieu" (one has the right to caracature God). This is a right that must be defended - whether exercised by right-of-centre Danish newspapers or by the Left.
Cartoons from the USSR
The subtext, and indeed on some occasions explicit intent, of several cartoons and caracatures in the Soviet Union were anti semitic under the cover of political arguments. These modern cartoons are similar to the extent that they purport to be funny while at the same time showimg a sterotyped arab including a turban, which as somebody has already pointed out is a mistake. The Soviet cartoon quoted has the same possibly racist overtones and could indeed be used by right-wingers to fuel anti arab feeling but only in a modern setting and without the associated text. The original 1924 context made this unlikely.
Really????
Really???? So you want to tell us that an organisation that routinely issues the most vile racist, anti-semitic propoganda, which has as its aim the destruction of the State of Israel which could only be achieved through a genocidal war against Jews, which calls for gays and lesbians to be executed, which bans any material which might criticise this attitude to gays and lesbians, which assigns for women the role merely of servants to men, which calls for the whole world to be made into a Caliphate under the barbaric Sharia law, which is the immediate enemy of the working class and Labour Movement in many parts of the world through its systematic and violent attacks on socialists and workers as with the Tehran busworkers at the moment or the daily attacks on workers organisation in Iraq, which opposes the principles of democracy and freedom which socialists and democrats have fought and died for over several centuries – you want to tell us that such organisations are not clerical-fascist????
That really is your bottom line, isnt it, safeguarding the 'state of Israel'. A racist state that was founded by means of the expulsion of the Arab majority, and the creation of a new 'majority' through ethnic cleansing. A state that is no less racist than Apartheid South Africa, and in is in some ways worse, as the apartheid regime never actually expelled the black majority from the territory of 'its' state (though that was mooted).
There is nothing 'anti-semitic' about supporting the destruction of the apartheid, racist state of Israel and the right of its expelled inhabitants to return there. The first demand is arguable - ther is more than one way to achieve justice, just possibly. But regarding the latter, anyone who doesnt support this elementary demand for justice against racism is a 'socialist' all right -- in the mould of Slobodan Milosevic.
Free to wear a 'fuck Israel' t-shirt , but not to piss on koran
If anyone dared to attack the symbols of Islam in the same way as those of Judaism have been attacked, that rise to burning of embassies, violent actions and hysterical furore.
go look at the standard cartoons in the (state-run) Arab press. They frequently include the same anti-Semitic stereotypes used in Nazi Germany. Where's all the shrieking?
Bottom Line
"That really is your bottom line, isnt it, safeguarding the 'state of Israel'."
Actually, no it isn't if you read what I said. I said that the state of Israel isn't going away. It doesn't require me to assist it to stay in existence its done that very successfully on its own, including annhihilating several attempts by surrounding Arab regimes to destroy it. I have no particular reason to protect the state of Israel anymore than protecting the copntinued existence of any other bourgeois state. On the contrary I want to get rid of them all. That's the difference between us. I am a socialist and you are a nationalist - the enmy of socialism.
And as a socialist what I pointed out was that even were it possible for the state of Israel to be destroyed it would in fact be an extremely reactionary event. Firstly, it would involve a genocidal war. Generally, speaking socialists are opposed to genocide whoever it is aimed against. For you it seems quite acceptable, but then you have clearly demonstrated that you are a racist because for you genocide against Jews is fine, just as it was for Hitler. Secondly, the result of this genocidal conflict would be the rise of all kinds of reactionary elements within the Middle East, and as always happens in wars the victims would be the workers sent off to die in their thousands. It would also be the pretet under which these reactionary regimes clamped down on any independent working class or socialist acivity. In short as I said it would be disastrous for the working class of the Middle East. As a socialist that is my main concern. For you obviously it doesn't matter because you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist prepared to side with whatever reactionary nationalist cause is flavour of the day today.
To argue that Israel is equivalent to South Africa just again demonstrates that you do not know your arse from your elbow, and that perhaps you should check on some basic facts first. Fir example, blacks did not even have the right to vote in South Africa, whilst Arabs in Israel not only have the right to vote, but also have MP's. That Arab rights in Israel could be advanced is not in doubt, but that does not require a racist genocidal war against Jews. Moreover, as I pointed out to you if your argument were sound then why don't you call for the settlers to be thrown out of Australia, or New Zealand, and give the country back to the Aborigines and Maoris. Or perhaps all the European settlers in the US should be forced out by a genocidal war against them by Native American tribes. Why don't you call for that?
I note that you have not defended any of the other points detailing the reactionary, clerical-fascist nature of the organisations you champion. At least in Israel their are legal equal rights for women, and gays and lesbians do not face judicial murder, and of course workers are organised in Trade Unions,a nd political parties. But what would you care you have no interest in workers rights, women's rights, or the rights of gays and lesbians. After all you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist.
Arthur Bough
Arthur...
...just to reply to a point you made near the start of this debate.
There would be no reason for the AWL to publish a picture of a naked woman in a story about Page 3 because we all know what a naked woman looks like.
The cartoons, however, are one-off drawings, alleged by some to be racist or otherwise offensive, and if we are to make a judgement on them we need to be able to see them. If it was a particular image of a woman that feminists were protesting about, we would need to be able to see that too.
I wonder if the cartoonists will come after the AWL for royalties, incidentally. Now that *would* be funny.
That Was Partly My Point
The point I was trying to make in that analogy - obviously not very well - was that the argument you should publish in order to assert the right to publish, as an act of solidarity, is not altogether solid because for example I doubt the AWL publish a picture of a Page 3 girl in solidarity with the Sun if it was facing a similar campaign of bombings, and murder to censor it.
The argument that you should publish in order to know what you are talking about is stronger in that respect. But the cartoons are different from another perspective to a Page 3 girl. There is an argument over the nature of the cartoons. The AWL, and I would dissociate from any racist connotation that might be put upon them, but that connotation seems to be peculiar to certain sections of the "Left" in Britain. Mostly, and by Muslims they are seen as offensive not because of being racist, but because of being irreligious. As the AWL is in favour of criticism of religion - though would not necessarily choose this form of religious criticism in other circumstances then defending the right to religious criticism and publisghing irreligious cartoons is not incompatible.
For an organisation that opposes the portraying of women as sex objects there would be an incompatibility in showing a Page 3 girl just for the sake of it.
Arthur Bough
Actually, no it isn't if you
Actually, no it isn't if you read what I said. I said that the state of Israel isn't going away. It doesn't require me to assist it to stay in existence its done that very successfully on its own, including annhihilating several attempts by surrounding Arab regimes to destroy it. I have no particular reason to protect the state of Israel anymore than protecting the copntinued existence of any other bourgeois state. On the contrary I want to get rid of them all. That's the difference between us. I am a socialist and you are a nationalist - the enmy of socialism.
"Annihilating several attempts by Arab regimes to destroy it" he says approvingly. An apologia that in a slightly different context, David Irving himself could be proud. Let us examine these 'defensive' wars. In 1948, Israel was brought into existence by a war in which 67% per cent of the Arab population of the territory it would subsequently comprise were forcibly driven out. That is the only way a Jewish majority could be created where there was previously an Arab majority. From your statement above, you evidently approve of that. that approval is because you are a rabid anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist.
In 1956, Israel conspired with British and French imperialism to attack Egypt because of its entirely progressive and supportable measure, which was not even by the way aimed against Israel, of nationalising the Suez Canal. You evidently approve of that, because again you are a rabid anti-Arab racist and pro-imperialist. In 1967 Israel attacked its neighbours in order to humiliate them as a pre-emptive strike because its leading circles felt Arab nationalism was getting too powerful and resonant in its mass support. In 1982 Israel attacked and invaded Lebanon in such a brutal manner that even many Israelis likened its activities to Nazism - it also massacred Palestinians in alliance with the overly fascist, historically pro-Hitler Christian Falangist movement.
Only in 1973 could Israel claim to have been attacked - and even then, the main aims of its enemies were defensive - to seize back territory, in Sinai and Golan mainly, that had been siezed in 1967. Or rather to make a show of trying to do so, in order to break a political log-jam and force Israel to negotiate the return of these territories.
And as a socialist what I pointed out was that even were it possible for the state of Israel to be destroyed it would in fact be an extremely reactionary event. Firstly, it would involve a genocidal war. Generally, speaking socialists are opposed to genocide whoever it is aimed against.
This statement is itself deeply racist against Arabs. Why could Israel only be dissolved as a racially-exclusive entity by a genocidal war? Why could a war for liberation by the victims of ethnic cleansing, for the right to live in the territories they were born in, only be genocidal? Answer - because our friend considers Arabs and Muslims to be Nazi monsters. That is why he approves of these cartoons - because for him they ring true. He is like a anti-semite who sees nothing wrong with caricatures of Jews as parasitic money-lenders - because he has analogous views of Arabs and Muslims, and their historically evolved culture.
For you it seems quite acceptable, but then you have clearly demonstrated that you are a racist because for you genocide against Jews is fine, just as it was for Hitler.
He is also a crazy liar. He can nowhere quote me as saying that any racist abuse against Jews is acceptable or supportable, let alone genocide. This is an hysterical lie plucked out of thin air.
Secondly, the result of this genocidal conflict would be the rise of all kinds of reactionary elements within the Middle East, and as always happens in wars the victims would be the workers sent off to die in their thousands. It would also be the pretet under which these reactionary regimes clamped down on any independent working class or socialist acivity. In short as I said it would be disastrous for the working class of the Middle East. As a socialist that is my main concern. For you obviously it doesn't matter because you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist prepared to side with whatever reactionary nationalist cause is flavour of the day today.
The bizarre process of reasoning that produced this hysterical gibberish is similar to the means by which he earlier accused me of 'anti-semitism' for saying that Searchlight had dodgy connections with the British state. There is no rationality in it, they are the product of a too-fertile imagination and a particularly foul kind of bigotry.
To argue that Israel is equivalent to South Africa just again demonstrates that you do not know your arse from your elbow, and that perhaps you should check on some basic facts first. Fir example, blacks did not even have the right to vote in South Africa, whilst Arabs in Israel not only have the right to vote, but also have MP's. That Arab rights in Israel could be advanced is not in doubt, but that does not require a racist genocidal war against Jews.
Yes, the Arab minority has the right to vote. Since the Arab majority has been expelled from its own land and is denied the right to live there, it is not necessary to deprive the remaining Arabs of the franchise in order to maintain a semblance of formal democracy. However, even this has limits, Israeli Arabs are banned from owning land, from marrying exiled Palestinian spouses (if they do they have to leave to be together), and whole number of other basic human rights. Whereas Jews who have never set foot in Israel have the right to 'return' to it. These are openly racist laws.
In South Africa, the black majority was still resident and therefore had to be deprived of the franchise in order to maintain white minority rule. But it is the fact that the Arab majority has been expelled, and therefore Jewish minority ethnic rule maintained by even worse means, that makes Israel even worse that apartheid South Africa in its treatment of Arabs. Our friend evidently thinks that exclusion is just. In other words, the ethnic cleansing of Arabs is completely just. Arkan would be very proud of this reasoning.
Moreover, as I pointed out to you if your argument were sound then why don't you call for the settlers to be thrown out of Australia, or New Zealand, and give the country back to the Aborigines and Maoris. Or perhaps all the European settlers in the US should be forced out by a genocidal war against them by Native American tribes. Why don't you call for that?
The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew.
And actually, were it not for the fact that enormous numbers of the aboriginal peoples of the former British dominions were simply wiped out, that would be the right approach there also. Indeed, for the remnants of these peoples it still is the right approach - fight against all racism and exclusion, for full social equality. But the Palestinian Arabs are not mere remnants of a genocide, but a living mass of people, a nation, in a diaspora. They have the right to full social and economic equality in the land of their origin. If you have a problem with that it is because you are an anti-Arab racist, Islamophobe and ethnic cleanser.
I note that you have not defended any of the other points detailing the reactionary, clerical-fascist nature of the organisations you champion. At least in Israel their are legal equal rights for women, and gays and lesbians do not face judicial murder, and of course workers are organised in Trade Unions,a nd political parties. But what would you care you have no interest in workers rights, women's rights, or the rights of gays and lesbians. After all you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist.
No, you are a racist who would make Goebells blush. I did not respond to your stereotypical rant because I saw no need to - it says more about you than it does about me. The many different Islamic currents are not monolithic and homogenous, nor is the psychological root of their mass support uniformly reactionary. They are the product of oppression - as Marx put it 'the heart of a heartless world'. Take away that oppresion, and many of these things will simply wither and die. But you have to take away the oppression. You, unfortunately, support the oppression.
A Lot Of Words, Not Much Thought, & No Answers
""Annihilating several attempts by Arab regimes to destroy it" he says approvingly."
Not said approvingly at all, said factually. The reason I amde the point that they won these wars decisively is precisely to point out that any idea that you might have of the Israeli state simply disappearing is delusional. It would require a phenomenal war to destroy it, a war so destructive that it would be devastating for the working class of he Middle East for decades to come. As a socialist I am concerned at the effect that would have on the Arab working class, you seem to have no concern for them at all, but see them just like the Arab ruling classes and Political islamists you support see them - as cannon fodder to be used to achieve your anti-semitic, nationalistic aims.
" In 1948, Israel was brought into existence by a war in which 67% per cent of the Arab population of the territory it would subsequently comprise were forcibly driven out."
Actually, the state of Israel was brought into existence as a result of a UN decision to turn over part of the British mandated territory of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state. From the beginning the Jews faced attacks from Arabs set on preventing the establishment of such a state. The Jews not only fought those attacks back, but as you rightly state went on to the offensiive and drove out Palestinian Arabs. You might also want to tell us what the actions of the Arab regime in Jordan was in respect of the Palestinians. As part of this the Israelis came into conflict with the British forces who they also forced to withdraw.
But what does any of this have to do with 2006, anymore than the Battle of the Little Bighorn and annihilation of millions of Native Americans has to do with the existence of today's United States, or the massacre of thousands of Aborigines in Australia has to do with the modern state of Australia. Would you perhaps also like to see Britain returned to the Celts?
"From your statement above, you evidently approve of that. that approval is because you are a rabid anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist.
No I don't approve of it, I simply accept it as being an accomplished historical fact, just like the establishhment of the United States and Australia on the back of some pretty horrible things done to the previous inhabitants are accomplished facts. I prefer to deal with reality not some fantasy. Moreover, how someone who argues in favour of democratic rights for Palestinians and some resolution of their demand for national rights, who has been an active anti-racist all his adult life in a country where most racism is targetted at Asians and Arabs can be accused of being a racist at all let alone a "rabid" racist beggars belief. As for being anti-Muslim, no I am an atheist and therefore anti-religious. Peoplec an believe what they like provided they don't want to impose it on me, and as long as I can continue to try to convince them they are wrong.
"You evidently approve of that, because again you are a rabid anti-Arab racist and pro-imperialist."
Could you show me where I said I was in favour of that? I don't recall ever having mentioned it. I think your just raving a bit like a loony now aren't you? As for pro-imperialist, agains show me some evidence of that. I have even argued against the AWL's position of not calling for Troops Out Now from Iraq, so I will be most interested to see how you justify that wild accusation, but then of course you won't will you just as you've avoided answering any questions put to you from the beginning.
"This statement is itself deeply racist against Arabs. Why could Israel only be dissolved as a racially-exclusive entity by a genocidal war?
Are you completely naive or what? The state of Israel exists it is a fact. Like any other state it has the right to defend itself, and to protect its own existence. Jews in Israel are not going to simply give up their state, as you have yourself pointed out they have fought several wars to establish it, only an idiot could believe they are simply going to turn round and say okay we'll liquidate ourselves and our state. That being the case the only way that the State of Israel as a Jewish state is going to cease to exist is if it is forced to cease to exist by a war being waged against it. As previous wars and your own testimony have shown such a war is not going to be some small skirmish, especially as Israel is probably the sixth biggest nuclear power in the world. So yes a war to destroy the state of Israel will be a genocidal war - it will be thoroughly reactionary because of the consequences it will have for the working class in the region. How is pointing out that fact, which is obvious even to a casual observer, "deeply racist against Arabs"? On the contrary it is your approach which sees the Arab workers who would have to do the fighting and dying in such a war as mere pawns with which to vent your own hatred and anti-semitism, which is racist, not just racist against Jews but racist towards Arabs.
"Answer - because our friend considers Arabs and Muslims to be Nazi monsters."
No genocidal for the reasons given above that the isrealis will not give up their state after the first gunshot as previous wars and your own account testifies.
"That is why he approves of these cartoons - because for him they ring true.
But I have not said that I approve of the cartoons, I have said that I oppose attempts by clerical fascist, political islamists to censor them by the threat of violence in the same way that they tried to censor Salman Rushdie. Unlike you I think freedom of speech is very important for workers, without it we have no chance of challenging the reactionary ideas of capitalism, imperialism, or indeed clerical-fascism.
"He is also a crazy liar. He can nowhere quote me as saying that any racist abuse against Jews is acceptable or supportable, let alone genocide. This is an hysterical lie plucked out of thin air."
But you have repeated above that you are in favour of a war to destroy the state of Israel. You said, "Why could a war for liberation by the victims of ethnic cleansing, for the right to live in the territories they were born in, only be genocidal?
In other words you accept that in order to bring about the situation you desire the dissolution of the state of Israel it requires a war. Given the history you have set out above of the determination with wwhich Jews have already fought for their state in the past how on earth could anyone you least of all believe that they would simply give up in such a war with little or no fight? You know and the world knows they won't. The only conclusion any honest or sane person could draw then is that any such war as that you propose would be fought to the last drop of blood - in other words it would be genocidal. But I repeat you seem to find this of no consequence. Your hatred of Jews it seems is so great that no cost is too high to pay in human life Arab or Jew to achieve your personal aim of the destruction of israel.
"The bizarre process of reasoning that produced this hysterical gibberish is similar to the means by which he earlier accused me of 'anti-semitism' for saying that Searchlight had dodgy connections with the British state. There is no rationality in it, they are the product of a too-fertile imagination and a particularly foul kind of bigotry."
How this realtes to the quote you had preceded by is anyone's guess. That quote was,
"Secondly, the result of this genocidal conflict would be the rise of all kinds of reactionary elements within the Middle East, and as always happens in wars the victims would be the workers sent off to die in their thousands. It would also be the pretet under which these reactionary regimes clamped down on any independent working class or socialist acivity. In short as I said it would be disastrous for the working class of the Middle East. As a socialist that is my main concern. For you obviously it doesn't matter because you are not a socialist you are a reactionary nationalist prepared to side with whatever reactionary nationalist cause is flavour of the day today."
Let's take that bit by bit, and given that as usual you haven't and can't actually dispute any of it, let me challenge it for you, and see if it fits your rather odd diatribe in response.
1. In the event of a genocidal conflict there would arise all kinds of reactionary elements. Don't we have more than enough evidence of that from past such conflicts. Hitler arose in Germany partly on the back of the crushing defeat of germany in WWI and the humiliation it suffered after. And wherever the working class have been decimated as a social force reactionaries step in to take advantage of that weakness.
2. Do you deny that it is workers who are always the ones sent off to die in such wars?
3. Haven't bourgeois governments always used conditions of war as pretexts on which to clamp down on the rights of workers. Isn't that what Blair and Bush are doing now, isn't that what the clerical-fascist regime in Iran is doing at the moment?
4. Isn't it true that in everything you have said you have shown no consideration for the interests of the working class or socialists whatsoever, indeed the words working class and socialism have not once been mentioned by you as having any importance whatsoever in the curent situation, but you have on every occasion shown plenty of support for narrow minded reactionary nationalistic ambitions, plenty of interest in racially motivated wars in which workers will die in their tens of thousands, and plenty of support for the reactionary enemies of he working class, the clerical-fascists, and reactionary Arab bourgois regimes.
"However, even this has limits, Israeli Arabs are banned from owning land, from marrying exiled Palestinian spouses (if they do they have to leave to be together), and whole number of other basic human rights. Whereas Jews who have never set foot in Israel have the right to 'return' to it. These are openly racist laws."
Quite true, and both I and the AWL condemn those limitations and call for an extension of democratic rights for Arabs within Israel. Indeed I did so again in that last post. But as socialists both I and the AWL beleive that the way to achieve the extension of those rights is by forging class solidarity between Jews and Arabs within Israel (and without if possible). You as a nationalist have no such interest, You would drive a further wedge between Arab and Jewish workers by calling as you have done again above for a war against the state of Israel to bring about its destruction.
"Our friend evidently thinks that exclusion is just. In other words, the ethnic cleansing of Arabs is completely just. Arkan would be very proud of this reasoning."
I have pointed out earlier that it is not a matter of me thinking it is just anymore than me thinking the genocide against Aborigines or Native Americans was just. It is a matter of historical fact, it happened 60 years ago, not yesterday. Like any socialist I am opposed to Immigration Controls. I would be in favour of the State of Israel not having such controls. But part of the right to self determination for nation states is to make their own laws even laws which socialists dislike. Many nation states have immigration controls, socialists oppose them, but we don't say a nation state should cease to exist just because it has them.
"The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew."
How a reference to Australia or the US can be linked to Zionist reasoning I really don't know, or even what Zionist reasoning is for that matter. I think your anti-semitism is showing. But you are again being disingenuous. On the one hand you pretend that this could all be achieved peacefully, all the Jews have to do is open the doors allow their state to be taken over by a majority of Arabs, and then everything will be fine. But you know that isn't going to happen which is why you talk about a war by Arabs against Israel above to bring about your desired result. Moreover, given the anti-semitic filth poured out even on children's TV in the Arab states surrounding Israel such as that shown on BBC recently in Iran and Lebanon of Jews turning into dogs, or a Rabbi looking for the a young Christian boy to murder in order to obatin blood to make unleavened bread, or when they hear the president of Iran call for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map, and deny that the holocaust ever happened, is it any wonder that ordinary Jewish workers feel they would like to keep control of their state, thank you very much, and doesn't the right of self-determination mean they have every right to do so?
"No, you are a racist who would make Goebells blush. I did not respond to your stereotypical rant because I saw no need to - it says more about you than it does about me."
There is only one person ranting here and its you. Time and again I have given a reasoned argument and asked you to defend your wild statements, and have put perfectly normal questions to you that could be answered with a yes or no answer, but on each occasion you have failed to respond. Why? Because if you answered honestly your entuire position collapses, and if you answer dishonestly, because every one knows the facts, you would make yourslef look even more ridiculous and ignorant than you have done already.
"The many different Islamic currents are not monolithic and homogenous, nor is the psychological root of their mass support uniformly reactionary."
Nor have I said that it is. My argument is against the clerical-fascist political islamists that you have aligned with.
" They are the product of oppression - as Marx put it 'the heart of a heartless world'. Take away that oppresion, and many of these things will simply wither and die. But you have to take away the oppression. You, unfortunately, support the oppression."
All religion is a product of the suffering of the masses a palliative that is "the opium of the people" as Marx put it. Yes before religion can die, the suffering and the cause of the suffering has to be removed. But religion like opium has the effect of numbing the pain and dulling the mind, it stands in the way, therefore, of what is necessary to bring about the end of that suffering, which is why Marxists oppose religion, whilst not condemning those still trapped by it. But political islam is not the product of oppression it is a distinct current of political thought aimed not at removing oppression, but of replacing one oppression with an even worse one as winess the curent situation in Iran, the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the attacks on workers and socialist in iraq by political Islamists. For millions of workers around the world political islam is the real immediate source of oppression. Socialists side with workers, women, gays, and other oppressed sections of society against it - you side with it.
Arthur Bough
Actually, the state of Israel
Actually, the state of Israel was brought into existence as a result of a UN decision to turn over part of the British mandated territory of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state. From the beginning the Jews faced attacks from Arabs set on preventing the establishment of such a state. The Jews not only fought those attacks back, but as you rightly state went on to the offensiive and drove out Palestinian Arabs. You might also want to tell us what the actions of the Arab regime in Jordan was in respect of the Palestinians. As part of this the Israelis came into conflict with the British forces who they also forced to withdraw.
The only way a Jewish state could be established was by driving out the Palestinian Arabs, since they were a majority. The war of the Arab population, notwithstanding the treacherous conduct by the bourgeois Arab regimes, was a justified war of self-defence against that. The colonialist 'mandate' of the UN had no legitimacy for a socialist. And as for the conflict of the Zionist forces with British imperialism, that was a genuine example of a reactionary colonialist force coming into conflict with a colonial power, deserving no support from socialists.
But what does any of this have to do with 2006, anymore than the Battle of the Little Bighorn and annihilation of millions of Native Americans has to do with the existence of today's United States, or the massacre of thousands of Aborigines in Australia has to do with the modern state of Australia. Would you perhaps also like to see Britain returned to the Celts?
If a population of several million diaspora Australian aboriginal refugees were living in miserable camps in New Guinea or the numerous other islands close to Australia, denied the right to return to Australia because their return would 'swamp' the white population of Australia, then the duty of socialists in Australia (and elsewhere) would be to support the right of the Aboriginals to return to Australia. Of course history turned out differently - the population was wiped out rather than driven out - but in such circumstances the principles would be identical. Anyone who did not so support such demands would deserve to be branded as a white supremacist. Such endorsement of racist exclusionism has nothing to do with socialism - it is its negation.
Moreover, how someone who argues in favour of democratic rights for Palestinians and some resolution of their demand for national rights, who has been an active anti-racist all his adult life in a country where most racism is targetted at Asians and Arabs can be accused of being a racist at all let alone a "rabid" racist beggars belief.
I could say the same thing about your branding of lifelong socialists who disagree with you as anti-semites, as fascists, as supporters of Hitler. You can dish it out, but when it blows back at you you squeal in a most undignified manner.
I think your just raving a bit like a loony now aren't you? As for pro-imperialist, agains show me some evidence of that. I have even argued against the AWL's position of not calling for Troops Out Now from Iraq, so I will be most interested to see how you justify that wild accusation...
So you have some platonic disagreements with the social-imperialism of your allies and co-thinkers? Your criticism of them means very little, since you side with them even against the more decent of their own members on questions like these cartoons.
The state of Israel exists it is a fact. Like any other state it has the right to defend itself, and to protect its own existence. Jews in Israel are not going to simply give up their state, as you have yourself pointed out they have fought several wars to establish it, only an idiot could believe they are simply going to turn round and say okay we'll liquidate ourselves and our state.
Fine, so you believe not only that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis in terms of their aspirations towards the Jews, but also that Jewish working people in Israel are irredemiably committed to racial exclusivism and can never be won to the idea of co-existence with the Palestinian Arabs according to the norms of elementary democracy, to which all forms of racial exclusion and segregation are anathema. In my view you have not only a bigoted view of Arabs, but also a bigoted view of Jews also. This segregationist worldview has nothing to do with socialism.
I have pointed out earlier that it is not a matter of me thinking it is just anymore than me thinking the genocide against Aborigines or Native Americans was just. It is a matter of historical fact, it happened 60 years ago, not yesterday. Like any socialist I am opposed to Immigration Controls. I would be in favour of the State of Israel not having such controls. But part of the right to self determination for nation states is to make their own laws even laws which socialists dislike. Many nation states have immigration controls, socialists oppose them, but we don't say a nation state should cease to exist just because it has them.
I don't support immigration controls either. But I am doubly or triply opposed to the 'right' of any state to exclude people from its territory en masse who were originally born on its territory. This has nothing to do with opposition to immigration controls, this has to do with opposition to ethnic cleansing. It seems to me that you oppose immigration controls in theory, but support them in practice when they are linked to a programme of ethnic exclusion that you consider fundamentally just. In that sense, you are not a socialist, but a reactionary cheerleader for apartheid (albeit one with contradictions in his own head about this.)
(Myself, earlier) However, even this has limits, Israeli Arabs are banned from owning land, from marrying exiled Palestinian spouses (if they do they have to leave to be together), and whole number of other basic human rights. Whereas Jews who have never set foot in Israel have the right to 'return' to it. These are openly racist laws.
Quite true, and both I and the AWL condemn those limitations and call for an extension of democratic rights for Arabs within Israel. Indeed I did so again in that last post. But as socialists both I and the AWL beleive that the way to achieve the extension of those rights is by forging class solidarity between Jews and Arabs within Israel (and without if possible). You as a nationalist have no such interest, You would drive a further wedge between Arab and Jewish workers by calling as you have done again above for a war against the state of Israel to bring about its destruction.
Whatever you may think, the AWL supports the reactionary 'law of return' for all Jews to Israel (how can you 'return' to somewhere you never lived in your life - a reactionary nationalist piece of doublespeak if even there was one?). And the AWL opposes the right of return of diapora Palestinian Arabs to present-day Israel: even those who were born there or whose parents were.
The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew.
How a reference to Australia or the US can be linked to Zionist reasoning I really don't know, or even what Zionist reasoning is for that matter. I think your anti-semitism is showing.
No, you dont know what 'Zionist reasoning' is. That is because being an ethnic nationalist and spewing forth lying accusations of anti-Semitism is as natural to you as it was to the late Menachem Begin. And anyone who does not support Jewish racial exclusionism is to you, as to most Zionists, an anti-semite. This is the cry of the charlatan, crying 'wolf'.
Incidentally, you dont have to be Jewish to be a Zionist. Not at all. The Christian-Zionist phenomenon in the US is proof of that - these people's conception is that the emergence of Israel is a sign of fufillment of the prophesy of Revelation - at the end of which all the Jews will supposedly go to the (Christian) hell. But they are ardent supporters of Israel.
And it is perfectly possible to be both a Zionist and and anti-semite. Richard Nixon, who came within a whisker of starting a nuclear war in Israel's defence in 1973, putting US strategic nuclear forces on alert, was also a gutter anti-semite, as the White House tapes (e.g. his continuous vile references to Kissinger as 'jewboy') reveal.
But you are again being disingenuous. On the one hand you pretend that this could all be achieved peacefully, all the Jews have to do is open the doors allow their state to be taken over by a majority of Arabs, and then everything will be fine. But you know that isn't going to happen which is why you talk about a war by Arabs against Israel above to bring about your desired result.
Moreover, given the anti-semitic filth poured out even on children's TV in the Arab states surrounding Israel such as that shown on BBC recently in Iran and Lebanon of Jews turning into dogs, or a Rabbi looking for the a young Christian boy to murder in order to obatin blood to make unleavened bread, or when they hear the president of Iran call for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map, and deny that the holocaust ever happened, is it any wonder that ordinary Jewish workers feel they would like to keep control of their state, thank you very much, and doesn't the right of self-determination mean they have every right to do so?
When in 1982, the Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, stood up in the Knesset and said that Arabs were 'beasts who walk on two legs' in order to justify the Nazi-like rampage of his troops in Lebanon, the Zionist rulers of Israel laid the basis for the demoralisation that leads to such symetrical reactions. And this was only the most blatant example of the racism that has been enforced, in deeds not words, against the Arabs by Israel since 1948. Unlike the degenerate crap you are referring to which is a product of powerlessness, the Israeli state has put its own vicious racism into practice as a political programme in numerous aggressive wars against its neighbours.
So there is cause and effect - historically the relations between Muslims and Jews were much better than those between Jews and the Christian polities of Europe - if anything has poisoned that, it is the Zionist colonial project of cleansing Arabs from the lands where they were born.
You can lie that I am 'anti-semitic' till you are blue in the face. The fact is that I have not supported the publication of any racist caricatures of Jews, whereas you support the publication of racist images of Muslims - these images of the prophet Mohammad as a terrorist and barbarian and thereby the epitomy of all Muslims. You have defended these racist posters (for that is what they are) against the allegation of racism, and generally apologised for them in the most nauseating manner. And you attempt to accuse others of being racist as a smokescreen to confuse people and hide your own racism.
No people has the right to 'self-determination' if their 'self-determination' can only be carried out by the expulsion or continued exclusion of millions of other people from the land where they were born. If it is OK for Israeli Jews to do this, why then cannot the Kosova Serbs 'self-determine' by expelling the majority of Albanians from Kosova? If you concede the one, and effectively say it is just (or 'natural'), then you must concede the other.
All religion is a product of the suffering of the masses a palliative that is "the opium of the people" as Marx put it. Yes before religion can die, the suffering and the cause of the suffering has to be removed. But religion like opium has the effect of numbing the pain and dulling the mind, it stands in the way, therefore, of what is necessary to bring about the end of that suffering, which is why Marxists oppose religion, whilst not condemning those still trapped by it. But political islam is not the product of oppression it is a distinct current of political thought aimed not at removing oppression, but of replacing one oppression with an even worse one as winess the curent situation in Iran, the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the attacks on workers and socialist in iraq by political Islamists. For millions of workers around the world political islam is the real immediate source of oppression. Socialists side with workers, women, gays, and other oppressed sections of society against it - you side with it.
Some currents of political Islam are indeed grotesque. But they are a flawed response to imperialist and Israeli crimes against Muslim peoples in the Middle East, in their worst manifestations a mirror image of imperialist crimes. In some of these worst manifestations (e.g. the Taliban) they were in fact products of imperialist meddling and manipulation. Its is really strange that you attach such odium to a secondary effect of imperialist and Israeli crimes, and excuse the primary cause.
Reply to A.Nonymous
”The only way a Jewish state could be established was by driving out the Palestinian Arabs, since they were a majority. The war of the Arab population, notwithstanding the treacherous conduct by the bourgeois Arab regimes, was a justified war of self-defence against that. The colonialist 'mandate' of the UN had no legitimacy for a socialist. And as for the conflict of the Zionist forces with British imperialism, that was a genuine example of a reactionary colonialist force coming into conflict with a colonial power, deserving no support from socialists.”
Was the decision to establish an Israeli state on land settled by Palestinians morally reprehensible? Yes? Should socialists have defended Palestinian Arabs against an attempt to impose it on them? Yes, and they should have fought for the Palestinians to have self-determination in the British mandated territory and against British colonialism. Would it have been better if a state could have been created in which both Jews and Arabs could have lived alongside each other peacefully? Undoubtedly. But none of that happened, and we have to deal with the world as it is now, not how we would have liked it to have been. Once the Jewish state was established, and became settled by Jews it became as much a real political entity as any other state, most of which have also come into existence as the result of a lot of bloodshed and the stealing of land from other peoples. The State of Israel exists it is a real living political entity, and as such whatever you might wish to be the case, and however much you would like to turn the clock back 60 years, it has all the rights of any other nation state, including the right to determine who it allows across its borders. We may as socialists diagree with its policies just as we disagree with Britain’s Immigration polices but fundamentl to the right of self determination is the right to make such policies.
“If a population of several million diaspora Australian aboriginal refugees were living in miserable camps in New Guinea or the numerous other islands close to Australia, denied the right to return to Australia because their return would 'swamp' the white population of Australia, then the duty of socialists in Australia (and elsewhere) would be to support the right of the Aboriginals to return to Australia. Of course history turned out differently - the population was wiped out rather than driven out - but in such circumstances the principles would be identical. Anyone who did not so support such demands would deserve to be branded as a white supremacist. Such endorsement of racist exclusionism has nothing to do with socialism - it is its negation.”
But again you are being disingenuous. I have no problem with arguing for the right of Palestinains to return to Israel. I am completely in favour of arguing for an extension of democratic rights for Palestinians living in Israel and other Arabs living there. But it is beside the point isn’t it? Israel is not going to agree to that, are they? You know that they are not, which is why you have again called above for a war to force Israel to basically be destroyed as a Jewish state, and for it to be taken over by Arabs. Moreover, if we take your case of Aborigines living in New Guinea, if what was being proposed was a war by the Aborigines in order to force Australia to let them in, and if the Aborigines had basically said that once back in they would take property away from the current inhabitants, let alone force them to accept some ancient Aboriginal law and religion, then socialists certainly would not support that, both because it would be reactionary, and secondly because the likely result would be that the Aborigines would die by the thousand at the hands of the superior force of the Australian armed forces. The same consequence would befall your proposed war against Israel. It is a thoroughly reactionary venture.
”.I could say the same thing about your branding of lifelong socialists who disagree with you as anti-semites, as fascists, as supporters of Hitler. You can dish it out, but when it blows back at you you squeal in a most undignified manner.”
But when people call for the destruction of the state of Israel and side with people who daily publsih the most foul racist, anti-semitic propaganda that is anti-semitism, you can find no instance whatsoever of me supporting racist abuse of muslims, of calling for any Muslim state to be destroyed (other than in the process of its own workers establsihing a socialist state), and so on as you have done against Jews. Moreover, I have not called the SWP fascists as I have demosntraed several times, and you are lying in repeating that accusation, as for calling people supporters of Hitler where have I said that either agaisnt political Islamists, or against the SWP????
”So you have some platonic disagreements with the social-imperialism of your allies and co-thinkers? Your criticism of them means very little, since you side with them even against the more decent of their own members on questions like these cartoons.”
What is imperialist about these cartoons, please explain? I have heard people describe some of them as racist, which at a severe push you could interpret some of them as being, the majority of muslims who are bothered, complain that they are irreligious, but how any of this has anything to do with imoperialism is beyond me. I think its another one of those terms you have picked up, and throw around as a piece of abuse without knowing what it means.
”Fine, so you believe not only that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis in terms of their aspirations towards the Jews, but also that Jewish working people in Israel are irredemiably committed to racial exclusivism and can never be won to the idea of co-existence with the Palestinian Arabs according to the norms of elementary democracy, to which all forms of racial exclusion and segregation are anathema. In my view you have not only a bigoted view of Arabs, but also a bigoted view of Jews also. This segregationist worldview has nothing to do with socialism.”
I have not said that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis, I would like to see your justification of that allegation. I have said that political islamists, such as the President of Iran, and the reactionary Arab leaders of some Arab states wish to destroy Israel, and in your statements you appear to support them in that ambition. Nor am I committed to the idea that Jews are irredeemably committed to racial exclusivism. On the contrary for the last 20 years I have argued against the two-states solution, and in favour of the Palestinaians being an autonomous region within a larger state. Oriiginally, I thought that the best solution would be a Democratic Federal Republic of Israel and Palestine, with the most thoroughoing democratic rights for both Palestinians and Jews, and control within their own areas. I still believe that would be – short of the creation of a Socialist United States of the Middle East – the best solution, but it isn’t going to happen, any more likely than after the election of Hamas a Two-States solution is going to happen, though far more likely that Israelis doing what you want them to do, and effectively commit suicide.
I now think that the best solution may well be for Palestinains to seek a federal solution with Jordan, or the same kind of arrangement that say Andorra has with Spain and France. On that basis Opalestinains could have their own autonomous region as part of a federal state, and begin to develop normal politics. Out of that attempyts to build unity amongst Arab workers and Jewish workers would provide the basis for a widerr anging solution to the problems of the area. Any solution which seeks to enforce an Arab state on Israel will, and can only result in a massive and destructive conflict which will be disastrous for the working class of the area. Anyone who does not recognise that is either very foolish or being politically dishonest.
”I don't support immigration controls either. But I am doubly or triply opposed to the 'right' of any state to exclude people from its territory en masse who were originally born on its territory. This has nothing to do with opposition to immigration controls, this has to do with opposition to ethnic cleansing. It seems to me that you oppose immigration controls in theory, but support them in practice when they are linked to a programme of ethnic exclusion that you consider fundamentally just. In that sense, you are not a socialist, but a reactionary cheerleader for apartheid (albeit one with contradictions in his own head about this.)”
But as I have said I would prefer that Israel opened its doors and reached an accommodation with Palestinains, but I certainly know that is not going to happen, and I suspect you know it isn’t going to happen too, which is why you favour a war to force Israel to let pople in. If Israel were ethnically cleansing people now of course socialists should oppose it, of course socialists should call on Israel to get out now from Gaza and the West Bank, but to oppose ethnic cleansing that happened 60 years ago, and call for it to be reversed is not only utopian, but it is in reality reactionary because it could only be achieved by a very destructive war. So again your accusation is completely wrongheaded. It is not a matter of me supporting Israel’s policies at all, it is simnply me recognising the reality of the current situation – something you refuse to do – and realising that a)Israel has very good reasons not to want to liquidate itself as a Jewish state given the daily foul anti-semitic outpourings of neighbouring Arab States b) Changing Israel’s mind on that would require some pretty astounding changes in those surrounding states c)in the absence of that the only way of bringing about your desired goal is a thoroughly reactionary and destructive war that would be ruinous for both Arab and Jewish workers and peasants.
”Whatever you may think, the AWL supports the reactionary 'law of return' for all Jews to Israel (how can you 'return' to somewhere you never lived in your life - a reactionary nationalist piece of doublespeak if even there was one?). And the AWL opposes the right of return of diapora Palestinian Arabs to present-day Israel: even those who were born there or whose parents were.”
I thought you said you were opposed to immigration controls??????? Once again your anti-semitism shows through. Immigration into Israel by Jews is to use your words above “reactionary”. So what you want Israel to introduce immigration controls against Jews. I think you will find that immigration requires that you migrate to somewhere other than where you were born. I wouldn’t want to speak for the AWL on whether they oppose the right of return for Palestinian Arabs, but for my part I do not oppose it. I just realise that Israel is not going to agree to it, so unless you are going to say that Israel cannot make laws on who it allows to cross its borders like any other state does, and that you want to fight a war to force it to accept Palestinaian Arabs – and then what are you going to force Jews out of their houses so that they can be taken over by Palestinians? – then it is a pretty redundant piece of demagogy.
”The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew.”
But again you are being disingenuous as well as engaging in another one of your silly rants. It is not a matter of advocating tit – for – tat expulsions of Jews, quite true it is a matter of you calling for a war against Jews to force them to do something they do not want to do – open their borders to Arabs. Moreover, as I have pointed out above, what happens when these Arabs return? Are they next then going to say I want my farm back, or I want my house back, or simply where am I going to live? Won’t the obvious result be – especially given the rabid anti-semitism displayed by Hamas and the other political Islamists that would be at the head of such a war – that Jews are thrown off their land and out of their houses? Deny it if you wish, but any honest person knows that is what will happen. In other words the ethnic cleansing you rightly complain about that happened 60 years ago will become a modern day reality. Who knows in 60 years time after that the SWP might be trying to recruit from a mass movement demanding the right of Jews to return to the land and property sytolen from them by political islamists, after all the SWP will jump on any bandwagon if it thinks it can pick up a few new members.
”No, you dont know what 'Zionist reasoning' is. That is because being an ethnic nationalist and spewing forth lying accusations of anti-Semitism is as natural to you as it was to the late Menachem Begin. And anyone who does not support Jewish racial exclusionism is to you, as to most Zionists, an anti-semite. This is the cry of the charlatan, crying 'wolf'.”
Well again I really have no clue what you are trying to say here, because it seems once again lacking even grammatical sense leave aside political sense. I do recognise that once again you have avoided answering any of the points I put, by instead going off on yet another psychotic rant. It is not your lack of support for Jewish racial exclusionism that makews you anti-semitic, I am opposed to racial exclusionism too, and that does not make me anti-semitic, it is your support denial of national rights to the state of Israel that are enjoyed by every other state, and your willingness to enagge in a race war against the State of Israel to force it to accept laws that you want or more particularly Arabs want that makes you anti-semitic.
”When in 1982, the Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, stood up in the Knesset and said that Arabs were 'beasts who walk on two legs' in order to justify the Nazi-like rampage of his troops in Lebanon, the Zionist rulers of Israel laid the basis for the demoralisation that leads to such symetrical reactions. And this was only the most blatant example of the racism that has been enforced, in deeds not words, against the Arabs by Israel since 1948. Unlike the degenerate crap you are referring to which is a product of powerlessness, the Israeli state has put its own vicious racism into practice as a political programme in numerous aggressive wars against its neighbours.”
But it’s a straw man. Neither I nor the AWL endorse the state of Israel and certainly not reactionary neo-fascist bigots like Begin. But just because Begin is a bigot is no reason to jump into bed with some other equally nasty set of bigots as you seem prepared to do. The job of socialists is to say a Plague on both your houses. It was something the SWP at least once used to understand and advocate.
”You can lie that I am 'anti-semitic' till you are blue in the face. The fact is that I have not supported the publication of any racist caricatures of Jews, whereas you support the publication of racist images of Muslims - these images of the prophet Mohammad as a terrorist and barbarian and thereby the epitomy of all Muslims. You have defended these racist posters (for that is what they are) against the allegation of racism, and generally apologised for them in the most nauseating manner. And you attempt to accuse others of being racist as a smokescreen to confuse people and hide your own racism.”
Disingenuous again. You have not condemned publicly the publication of anti-semitic material by political islamists or reactionary Arab regimes have you? Here’s your chance go on, condemn the president of Iran for calling for the Israel to be wiped off the map, condemn Iran and Lebanon for producing TV programmes for kids showing Jews turning into dogs, or Rabbis after the blood of Christian children, and perhaps you could condemn the Danish Muslim cleric who produced the three really fould cartoons which he tried to pass off as being produced by the Danish journal while you are at it. Go on here’s your chance to do it publicly.
Moreover, neither I nor the AWL have defended the publication of racist material as I have argued on numerous occasions. I do not believe that the cartoons are racist, and nor apparently do most Muslims whose complaint has been not that they are racist, but that they are irreligious. The only people using the racist argument are the SWP and certain other sections of the British Left who do so out of cowardice in defending religious criticism. Both myself and the AWL have said we dissociate ourselves from any racist connotation that could be placed on these cartoons. The argument over racism is in fact simply a smokescreen to cover the refusal to stand up for free speech against a virulent reactionary religious intolerance, in this instance from Islamists, but as likely to fuel similar calls by Christians and other religions against criticism of their religious mumbo jumbo.
”No people has the right to 'self-determination' if their 'self-determination' can only be carried out by the expulsion or continued exclusion of millions of other people from the land where they were born. If it is OK for Israeli Jews to do this, why then cannot the Kosova Serbs 'self-determine' by expelling the majority of Albanians from Kosova? If you concede the one, and effectively say it is just (or 'natural'), then you must concede the other.”
First neither I nor the AWL have said that it was alright for Israel to expel millions of Palestinian Arabs 60 years ago. At the time certainly I would have opposed it. But what we both say is that it happened 60 years ago it is not happening now. Yes israel refuses to allow people back now, but that is an expression of its right of self determination whether you like it or not. Israel has as much right to control who comes across its borders as any other nation, and the obnly reason anyone can want to treat Israel differently from any other country is anti-semitism. At one time Britain ruled part of France – Brittany, and lots of British people lived there. The French drove the British out. Will you next be calling for the right of return of millions of Britons to Brittant?
As for Kosova the answer is above its happening now not 60 years ago. Personally speaking I’m not sure I agree with the AWL’s position on Kosova anyway, but that’s a different debate.
”Some currents of political Islam are indeed grotesque. But they are a flawed response to imperialist and Israeli crimes against Muslim peoples in the Middle East, in their worst manifestations a mirror image of imperialist crimes. In some of these worst manifestations (e.g. the Taliban) they were in fact products of imperialist meddling and manipulation. Its is really strange that you attach such odium to a secondary effect of imperialist and Israeli crimes, and excuse the primary cause.”
I think you will find that Islam like Christianity has been around for a lot longer than imperialism. To argue that Islam’s attitude to women, gays, and other minorities is the result of imperialism is apologism, therefore, beyond belief. I have no problem with people following such beliefs if they so choose, though as a socialist I would of course try to convince them that they were wrong. What I do oppose is the attempt by political islamists to inflict these reactionary ideas on to everyone else through the establsihment of Islamic states, and through the use of terror and violence such as that occurring in Iran, and in Iraq, and in many Muslim communities throughout the world. I am equally opposed to imperialism as I am to political islam which is why I am in favour of the working class in Iraq building its own organisation and strength on the basis of a fight against both the occupation and the political islamists, and for the defeat of both as soon as possible. You make the claim that political islam is the product of imperialism without any evidence once again to support that allegation. Certainly it seems a difficult case to argue when the most powerful and concentrated forces of political Islam are in states already controlled by Arabs themselves, and in the case of Iran even by the Political Islamists. What I find strange is that you should show such little regard for the interests of workers and socialist in those countries oppressed by Politicial Islamists, and reactionary bourgeois Arab regimes.
Reply To A.Nonymous
”The only way a Jewish state could be established was by driving out the Palestinian Arabs, since they were a majority. The war of the Arab population, notwithstanding the treacherous conduct by the bourgeois Arab regimes, was a justified war of self-defence against that. The colonialist 'mandate' of the UN had no legitimacy for a socialist. And as for the conflict of the Zionist forces with British imperialism, that was a genuine example of a reactionary colonialist force coming into conflict with a colonial power, deserving no support from socialists.”
Was the decision to establish an Israeli state on land settled by Palestinians morally reprehensible? Yes? Should socialists have defended Palestinian Arabs against an attempt to impose it on them? Yes, and they should have fought for the Palestinians to have self-determination in the British mandated territory and against British colonialism. Would it have been better if a state could have been created in which both Jews and Arabs could have lived alongside each other peacefully? Undoubtedly. But none of that happened, and we have to deal with the world as it is now, not how we would have liked it to have been. Once the Jewish state was established, and became settled by Jews it became as much a real political entity as any other state, most of which have also come into existence as the result of a lot of bloodshed and the stealing of land from other peoples. The State of Israel exists it is a real living political entity, and as such whatever you might wish to be the case, and however much you would like to turn the clock back 60 years, it has all the rights of any other nation state, including the right to determine who it allows across its borders. We may as socialists diagree with its policies just as we disagree with Britain’s Immigration polices but fundamentl to the right of self determination is the right to make such policies.
“If a population of several million diaspora Australian aboriginal refugees were living in miserable camps in New Guinea or the numerous other islands close to Australia, denied the right to return to Australia because their return would 'swamp' the white population of Australia, then the duty of socialists in Australia (and elsewhere) would be to support the right of the Aboriginals to return to Australia. Of course history turned out differently - the population was wiped out rather than driven out - but in such circumstances the principles would be identical. Anyone who did not so support such demands would deserve to be branded as a white supremacist. Such endorsement of racist exclusionism has nothing to do with socialism - it is its negation.”
But again you are being disingenuous. I have no problem with arguing for the right of Palestinains to return to Israel. I am completely in favour of arguing for an extension of democratic rights for Palestinians living in Israel and other Arabs living there. But it is beside the point isn’t it? Israel is not going to agree to that, are they? You know that they are not, which is why you have again called above for a war to force Israel to basically be destroyed as a Jewish state, and for it to be taken over by Arabs. Moreover, if we take your case of Aborigines living in New Guinea, if what was being proposed was a war by the Aborigines in order to force Australia to let them in, and if the Aborigines had basically said that once back in they would take property away from the current inhabitants, let alone force them to accept some ancient Aboriginal law and religion, then socialists certainly would not support that, both because it would be reactionary, and secondly because the likely result would be that the Aborigines would die by the thousand at the hands of the superior force of the Australian armed forces. The same consequence would befall your proposed war against Israel. It is a thoroughly reactionary venture.
”.I could say the same thing about your branding of lifelong socialists who disagree with you as anti-semites, as fascists, as supporters of Hitler. You can dish it out, but when it blows back at you you squeal in a most undignified manner.”
But when people call for the destruction of the state of Israel and side with people who daily publsih the most foul racist, anti-semitic propaganda that is anti-semitism, you can find no instance whatsoever of me supporting racist abuse of muslims, of calling for any Muslim state to be destroyed (other than in the process of its own workers establsihing a socialist state), and so on as you have done against Jews. Moreover, I have not called the SWP fascists as I have demosntraed several times, and you are lying in repeating that accusation, as for calling people supporters of Hitler where have I said that either agaisnt political Islamists, or against the SWP????
”So you have some platonic disagreements with the social-imperialism of your allies and co-thinkers? Your criticism of them means very little, since you side with them even against the more decent of their own members on questions like these cartoons.”
What is imperialist about these cartoons, please explain? I have heard people describe some of them as racist, which at a severe push you could interpret some of them as being, the majority of muslims who are bothered, complain that they are irreligious, but how any of this has anything to do with imoperialism is beyond me. I think its another one of those terms you have picked up, and throw around as a piece of abuse without knowing what it means.
”Fine, so you believe not only that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis in terms of their aspirations towards the Jews, but also that Jewish working people in Israel are irredemiably committed to racial exclusivism and can never be won to the idea of co-existence with the Palestinian Arabs according to the norms of elementary democracy, to which all forms of racial exclusion and segregation are anathema. In my view you have not only a bigoted view of Arabs, but also a bigoted view of Jews also. This segregationist worldview has nothing to do with socialism.”
I have not said that Arabs are indistinguishable from Nazis, I would like to see your justification of that allegation. I have said that political islamists, such as the President of Iran, and the reactionary Arab leaders of some Arab states wish to destroy Israel, and in your statements you appear to support them in that ambition. Nor am I committed to the idea that Jews are irredeemably committed to racial exclusivism. On the contrary for the last 20 years I have argued against the two-states solution, and in favour of the Palestinaians being an autonomous region within a larger state. Oriiginally, I thought that the best solution would be a Democratic Federal Republic of Israel and Palestine, with the most thoroughoing democratic rights for both Palestinians and Jews, and control within their own areas. I still believe that would be – short of the creation of a Socialist United States of the Middle East – the best solution, but it isn’t going to happen, any more likely than after the election of Hamas a Two-States solution is going to happen, though far more likely that Israelis doing what you want them to do, and effectively commit suicide.
I now think that the best solution may well be for Palestinains to seek a federal solution with Jordan, or the same kind of arrangement that say Andorra has with Spain and France. On that basis Opalestinains could have their own autonomous region as part of a federal state, and begin to develop normal politics. Out of that attempyts to build unity amongst Arab workers and Jewish workers would provide the basis for a widerr anging solution to the problems of the area. Any solution which seeks to enforce an Arab state on Israel will, and can only result in a massive and destructive conflict which will be disastrous for the working class of the area. Anyone who does not recognise that is either very foolish or being politically dishonest.
”I don't support immigration controls either. But I am doubly or triply opposed to the 'right' of any state to exclude people from its territory en masse who were originally born on its territory. This has nothing to do with opposition to immigration controls, this has to do with opposition to ethnic cleansing. It seems to me that you oppose immigration controls in theory, but support them in practice when they are linked to a programme of ethnic exclusion that you consider fundamentally just. In that sense, you are not a socialist, but a reactionary cheerleader for apartheid (albeit one with contradictions in his own head about this.)”
But as I have said I would prefer that Israel opened its doors and reached an accommodation with Palestinains, but I certainly know that is not going to happen, and I suspect you know it isn’t going to happen too, which is why you favour a war to force Israel to let pople in. If Israel were ethnically cleansing people now of course socialists should oppose it, of course socialists should call on Israel to get out now from Gaza and the West Bank, but to oppose ethnic cleansing that happened 60 years ago, and call for it to be reversed is not only utopian, but it is in reality reactionary because it could only be achieved by a very destructive war. So again your accusation is completely wrongheaded. It is not a matter of me supporting Israel’s policies at all, it is simnply me recognising the reality of the current situation – something you refuse to do – and realising that a)Israel has very good reasons not to want to liquidate itself as a Jewish state given the daily foul anti-semitic outpourings of neighbouring Arab States b) Changing Israel’s mind on that would require some pretty astounding changes in those surrounding states c)in the absence of that the only way of bringing about your desired goal is a thoroughly reactionary and destructive war that would be ruinous for both Arab and Jewish workers and peasants.
”Whatever you may think, the AWL supports the reactionary 'law of return' for all Jews to Israel (how can you 'return' to somewhere you never lived in your life - a reactionary nationalist piece of doublespeak if even there was one?). And the AWL opposes the right of return of diapora Palestinian Arabs to present-day Israel: even those who were born there or whose parents were.”
I thought you said you were opposed to immigration controls??????? Once again your anti-semitism shows through. Immigration into Israel by Jews is to use your words above “reactionary”. So what you want Israel to introduce immigration controls against Jews. I think you will find that immigration requires that you migrate to somewhere other than where you were born. I wouldn’t want to speak for the AWL on whether they oppose the right of return for Palestinian Arabs, but for my part I do not oppose it. I just realise that Israel is not going to agree to it, so unless you are going to say that Israel cannot make laws on who it allows to cross its borders like any other state does, and that you want to fight a war to force it to accept Palestinaian Arabs – and then what are you going to force Jews out of their houses so that they can be taken over by Palestinians? – then it is a pretty redundant piece of demagogy.
”The reasoning of a rabid Zionist ethnic cleanser and racist. It is not necessary to advocate the tit-for-tat expulsion of the Jews to advocate that the expelled Arabs have the right to return. The only thing it is necessary to advocate is full and equal rights under a regime of democracy - and democratic means would decide the shape of the subsequent regime based on real social and economic equality between Arab and Jew.”
But again you are being disingenuous as well as engaging in another one of your silly rants. It is not a matter of advocating tit – for – tat expulsions of Jews, quite true it is a matter of you calling for a war against Jews to force them to do something they do not want to do – open their borders to Arabs. Moreover, as I have pointed out above, what happens when these Arabs return? Are they next then going to say I want my farm back, or I want my house back, or simply where am I going to live? Won’t the obvious result be – especially given the rabid anti-semitism displayed by Hamas and the other political Islamists that would be at the head of such a war – that Jews are thrown off their land and out of their houses? Deny it if you wish, but any honest person knows that is what will happen. In other words the ethnic cleansing you rightly complain about that happened 60 years ago will become a modern day reality. Who knows in 60 years time after that the SWP might be trying to recruit from a mass movement demanding the right of Jews to return to the land and property sytolen from them by political islamists, after all the SWP will jump on any bandwagon if it thinks it can pick up a few new members.
”No, you dont know what 'Zionist reasoning' is. That is because being an ethnic nationalist and spewing forth lying accusations of anti-Semitism is as natural to you as it was to the late Menachem Begin. And anyone who does not support Jewish racial exclusionism is to you, as to most Zionists, an anti-semite. This is the cry of the charlatan, crying 'wolf'.”
Well again I really have no clue what you are trying to say here, because it seems once again lacking even grammatical sense leave aside political sense. I do recognise that once again you have avoided answering any of the points I put, by instead going off on yet another psychotic rant. It is not your lack of support for Jewish racial exclusionism that makews you anti-semitic, I am opposed to racial exclusionism too, and that does not make me anti-semitic, it is your support denial of national rights to the state of Israel that are enjoyed by every other state, and your willingness to enagge in a race war against the State of Israel to force it to accept laws that you want or more particularly Arabs want that makes you anti-semitic.
”When in 1982, the Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, stood up in the Knesset and said that Arabs were 'beasts who walk on two legs' in order to justify the Nazi-like rampage of his troops in Lebanon, the Zionist rulers of Israel laid the basis for the demoralisation that leads to such symetrical reactions. And this was only the most blatant example of the racism that has been enforced, in deeds not words, against the Arabs by Israel since 1948. Unlike the degenerate crap you are referring to which is a product of powerlessness, the Israeli state has put its own vicious racism into practice as a political programme in numerous aggressive wars against its neighbours.”
But it’s a straw man. Neither I nor the AWL endorse the state of Israel and certainly not reactionary neo-fascist bigots like Begin. But just because Begin is a bigot is no reason to jump into bed with some other equally nasty set of bigots as you seem prepared to do. The job of socialists is to say a Plague on both your houses. It was something the SWP at least once used to understand and advocate.
”You can lie that I am 'anti-semitic' till you are blue in the face. The fact is that I have not supported the publication of any racist caricatures of Jews, whereas you support the publication of racist images of Muslims - these images of the prophet Mohammad as a terrorist and barbarian and thereby the epitomy of all Muslims. You have defended these racist posters (for that is what they are) against the allegation of racism, and generally apologised for them in the most nauseating manner. And you attempt to accuse others of being racist as a smokescreen to confuse people and hide your own racism.”
Disingenuous again. You have not condemned publicly the publication of anti-semitic material by political islamists or reactionary Arab regimes have you? Here’s your chance go on, condemn the president of Iran for calling for the Israel to be wiped off the map, condemn Iran and Lebanon for producing TV programmes for kids showing Jews turning into dogs, or Rabbis after the blood of Christian children, and perhaps you could condemn the Danish Muslim cleric who produced the three really fould cartoons which he tried to pass off as being produced by the Danish journal while you are at it. Go on here’s your chance to do it publicly.
Moreover, neither I nor the AWL have defended the publication of racist material as I have argued on numerous occasions. I do not believe that the cartoons are racist, and nor apparently do most Muslims whose complaint has been not that they are racist, but that they are irreligious. The only people using the racist argument are the SWP and certain other sections of the British Left who do so out of cowardice in defending religious criticism. Both myself and the AWL have said we dissociate ourselves from any racist connotation that could be placed on these cartoons. The argument over racism is in fact simply a smokescreen to cover t