Has Britain really become ‘much like Israel’?
Has Britain really become ‘much like Israel’? When did this happen? Is Britain now the most militarised society on Earth? Are Christians and non-Christians no longer allowed to marry in the UK?
A defender of Israel waxes indignant in Saturday’s Independent. Ken Loach had supported the Palestinian appeal to boycott the Israeli State whose soldiers and settlers massacre Palestinians. Gary Sinyor deploys the usual threadbare arguments to drive from the field anyone who stands up to Israel. Apparently we must let Israel dispossess the Palestinians for another sixty years.
We are then treated to the oft-repeated claims about Israel’s great democracy. Israel, he and other Zionists claim, is behaving just ‘like any other country’, and would dearly love peace with its warlike neighbours. All this as if the world hadn’t finally woken up to Israel’s never-ending ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Israeli generals kill large numbers of Palestinians, while Israeli politicians (usually generals out of uniform) label any opponent a ‘terrorist’. Sinyor, a supporter of Israel’s illegal Wall, a cultural outrider for the generals, rushes to label as an ‘extemist’ and ‘blackmailer’ a supporter of Palestinian human rights. Sinyor doesn’t say openly that opponents of Israel are racist, driven by hatred of Jews; he slyly suggests, however, that Ken Loach’s ‘focus on Israel’ is ‘excessive’.
It is inconceivable, Sinyor suggests, that anyone can be driven by a passion for justice (as a glance at Ken Loach’s body of film work will attest). Forget the appeals for help from Palestinians; there must be an ulterior motive. And anyway, it is suggested, going on about fourteen hundred dead in Israel’s latest massacre is ‘excessive’.
The real problem must lie in Ken Loach’s psychology, his need to ‘vent political spleen’. (Locating a problem in the dissident’s psychology was also common in the old Soviet Union.) Israel shouldn’t attract attention from a normal person since it is, according to Sinyor, ‘much like Britain or any other country in the world’ (only a bit better, due to its ‘uber democracy’ and gigantic peace movement). Singling out Israeli Embassy money as tainted is like refusing support from the British Council.
Has Britain really become ‘much like Israel’? When did this happen?
Is Britain now the most militarised society on Earth? Are Christians and non-Christians no longer allowed to marry in the UK?
Are most of us living on land obtained, within living memory, by mass murder and ethnic cleansing? Did my father and uncles steal our home and farm and drive out its previous owners? Do most of the people who used to live here now live in refugee camps in Ireland, France or Norway? We would have to crawl on our bended knees to ask their forgiveness. Or do the great majority want the RAF to attack those refugee camps? Are we so ‘much like Israel’?
Have most people in Britain been confined to residential zones designated solely for one ethnic group? Are there BNP-types already in the Government, making speeches about the need to drive out the wrong kind of people, including my local shopkeeper and many of my friends? Are we really ‘much like Israel’ to such a degree?
Did Britain leap centuries into the past to become – legally – a state with economic and political privileges for Christians, even the atheists from a Christian background? Do we have open, state-directed discrimination for the non-Christians! Did the BNP win the election? What a nightmare that would be, to be so ‘much like Israel’.
Have virtually all my neighbours changed their minds since yesterday and now parrot the lies we once repudiated, and support the occupation of Iraq?
Are most people of different ethnic groups in Britain forced by Government policy to live in separate towns, with virtually the entire country designated as out of bounds for minorities to live? Tell me it isn’t true.
One thing both Britain and the US do share with Israel is a record of violent invasion of other countries. The difference is that most people here, unlike in Israel, do not support this aggression. If parts of the world were to organise a boycott of Britain to force the British Government to kick this violence, then many of us would support such a boycott as a wakeup call, a non-violent delivery of the bill for the atrocious violence of the British Government in Iraq.
Zionists always work to get the spotlight away from Israel – talk about anything other than mass kidnapping and murder by the Israeli Army, the lobbing of white phosphorous shells into schools, or burning UN food stores.
When supporters of Israel smear their opponents as ‘racist’ or ‘extremists’, however, it doesn’t work anymore. We refuse to believe that our university teachers, firefighters, Scottish, Irish and South African trade unionists, the Red Cross or Amnesty are driven by hatred of Jews. We recognise instead that they have a respect for the truth and support for the people of Palestine and their desire from freedom.
Let’s face it: opposition to Israeli crimes is mainstream public opinion, and the move from sympathy to active boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel is well underway. It is impossible to sustain the view that it is ‘extremist' and ‘racist’ to oppose the extreme racism of the Israeli State.
Sinyor admits to being ‘flippant’ about complicity in the supply of tanks and bullets to the same Israeli Army that committed the massacres in Gaza recently. He is also callous: there is not a scintilla of compassion for those murdered by the Army he supports, many still living in the rubble of their destroyed homes and schools. Palestinians only get a mention when Sinyor sneers at Ken Loach for his stand, suggesting that Loach is down in the dirt with those who support Israeli massacres of Palestinians.
Israel is busy wiping Palestine off the map – using bulldozers, thuggish settlers, and English supporters as outriders to stifle growing horror at what it is doing. Sinyor joins the hullaballoo over the prospect that Iran might be planning what Israel is actually executing: the disappearing of a nation. He is with the crazies who urge an attack on a Middle Eastern nuclear power station.
Gary Sinyor seems lost to human decency, but only time will tell. History knows many examples of peoples swept up in a maelstrom of violence and murder – as Israel is perpetrating now – but who come up against a brick wall, the realisation that they are headed for hell unless they change course. We will contribute, through a South African-type campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, a few sections to that wall which will help to stop Israel killing Palestinians until it has grabbed all the land of Palestine.
Israel can currently kill Palestinians at will, while the Sinyors of this world cheer them on. People are becoming increasingly aware, however, that Israeli F-16s can’t force South African dockworkers to unload Israeli cargo, nor can helicopter gunships force Scottish and Irish workers to abandon their commitment to support Palestinians.
Sinyor says the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism ‘makes little difference to’ him. For increasing numbers of people however, both Gentiles and Jews, the distinction is fundamental: one is a crime and the other is a duty.
The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign initiated the campaign to get the Israeli Embassy out of the Edinburgh International Film Festival and we will vigorously prosecute the campaign to isolate the Israeli State. When the Israeli bulldozers stop demolishing Palestinian homes, we will cease our work.
Israel and its supporters work to implicate all its citizens, and even all Jews anywhere, in its criminality. Far from us accusing all Israelis of being racist, we admire greatly those who have the courage to stand up to the brutes that run the country. Tough times make for strong people and we will leave the (almost) last word to one of many admirable Israelis, Michael Warschawski. As he watched the Israeli Army go about its killing in Gaza, he roared at the leaders of Israel whom Sinyor supports:
"Together with tens of thousands of other Jews, from Canada to Great Britain, from Australia to Germany, we are warning you: don’t dare to speak in our names, because we will run after you, even, if needed, to the hell of war-criminals, and stuff your words down your throat until you ask for forgiveness for having mixed us up with your crimes."
And we at SPSC echo Warschawski’s words, to those who would silence those answering the call from Palestine to help them in their freedom struggle: we will work tirelessly against your foul project to drive an innocent people from its land and to help the victims to reclaim their rights. The Israeli state is already a pariah state for decent people and the boycott movement is going to go from strength to strength.
Mick Napier
Chair of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign