Video: British Jews Against Genocide Protest

Further to the previous written report of the protest held outside the offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the video above captures the testimonies of people from British Jews Against Genocide who participated.

Here’s selections from some of the powerful speeches at the event:

Selma James: I have to remind people of the stories that Jews told when they came to England to ask for English help because they were being taken to the death camps. And the Foreign Office said that the Jews were hysterical, that it wasn’t really true, that it wasn’t really happening, and when they finally convinced Churchill to bomb the tracks to Auschwitz, the Foreign Office refused to do it and I am reminded of that because today what’s happening to Palestinians is being dismissed by the media, is being demeaned by the media. It’s the same history repeating itself because the people who are being slaughtered are not being listened to, are not being taken seriously.

Yael Kahn: Intentionally Israel sees the women and the mothers and children as their main targets. Israel’s fight is not against Hamas, Israel is fighting against the people of Gaza.

Barnaby Raine: We’re here to present the other tradition in Jewish history, the tradition of solidarity of standing with the oppressed. Not just standing with Jews but standing with whoever they are when they are oppressed. So that’s why we stand with the Palestinian people and we as Jews and human beings support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the state of Israel.

 

Related Links

Over 100 Jewish Survivors and Descendents of Survivors of Nazi Genocide Condemn the Massacre of Palestinians

British Jews Against Genocide Protest Outside the Offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is condoning genocide in Gaza. They don’t represent us.

British Jews Against Genocide Protest
British Jews Against Genocide Protest (Copyright)

Today, 4 August 2014, outside of the offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, on the 27th day of Israel’s military attack on the Gazan people, Jews in Britain Against Genocide staged a die-in to commemorate the hundreds of Palestinian children deliberately targeted and killed by Israel. We displayed toys, clothes and replicas of mutilated children and babies smeared red to symbolise the blood of Palestinian children murdered by Israeli forces.

We are Jews in Britain outraged at the Board of Deputies’ uncritical support for Israel as it commits genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The Board of Deputies claims to speak in our name when it lobbies in defence of Israeli violence. It organises with the Zionist Federation rallies in support of Israel’s slaughter. It demands that John Prescott be punished for comparing Gaza to a concentration camp (Daily Mirror, 26 July 2014). It attempts to intimidate local councils for flying the Palestinian flag as an expression of solidarity with Gaza, and has written to the prime minister thanking him for his support for Israel’s massacre in Gaza. It cynically uses the Nazi genocide of Jews to silence critics of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

We Jews know, from our history, about persecution, concentration camps, starvation and murder. Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a concentration camp by imposing a seven-year military siege, by restricting access to food, water, fuel and medical supplies, by imprisoning 1.8 million people and squeezing them even further by imposing no-go areas within the Gaza Strip.

In the current assault on Gaza, entire families are killed and neighbourhoods obliterated. UNICEF has condemned Israel for deliberately targeting women and children. Nearly 400 children have been murdered in less than four weeks, and more than 2000 have been injured and maimed. Gaza’s dead children are dead simply because they are Palestinians – this is genocide.

At least a quarter of a million Gazans are homeless because of Israeli bombing. There is nowhere safe to escape to — Israel has bombed UN-protected schools, hospitals and other UN buildings, killing civilians seeking refuge. Ten thousand people have been killed or injured. The bombardment of Gaza from the sea, land and air increasingly turns Gaza from a concentration camp into a death camp.

We support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and in particular we demand that the British government end its complicity in genocide by first of all ending its arms trade with Israel.

The Board of Deputies claims it wants Israel to be treated fairly and impartially within British society, but in fact it demands exceptionalism. It wants Israel to be exempted from any sanctions in spite of its apartheid and now its genocidal campaign against Gaza.

We accuse the Board of Deputies of condoning the atrocities the State of Israel commits in Gaza by attempting to silence Israel’s critics. This massive blood stain will not go away.

We accuse the Board of Deputies of joining with the anti-Semites in equating Zionism with Judaism and telling the world that all British Jews support Israel. That is a lie.

Jews in Britain Against Genocide

________________________________________

NOTES

Genocide is defined by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as any act committed with the intention of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. http://www.un.org/pubs/cyberschoolbus/treaties/genocide.asp

Concentration camp is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labour or to await mass execution’

Children As Grass

golden sheaves
spread in school yard
salt coast grown,
resistant stems
of native centuries
warned from homes
to wretched refuge
without respite
no shafts to freedom
where none are safe

threat of grass
and budding seed
shields real estate
coveted by
lawnmower men
with tunnel vision
of western pretexts,
colonial deterrents
to permanence,
not never again,
but again and again

unseen drone buzz
no fertilising bee
searing scythe
explodes from thirsty sky
row on row ripped
before flower blown
monstrous harvest
in Gaza charnel house
beneath earth strewn
with blood and bone
olive tree kernels awaken

August 2014

Names of Palestinians Killed in the War on Gaza since 8 July

AUGUST 1 UPDATE: Child death toll in Gaza approaches 200 and rising

Related Links

The IDF prepares to attempt to cover its tracks, but thousands of photos of disproportionate death and destruction don’t lie. Israel has been engaged in a deliberate, planned act of genocide, with accompanying war crimes. Its attack on the Occupied people of Gaza breaches the Geneva Conventions in the first place. Israel to the Hague!

Another vile story calls for genocide of Gazans in the Israeli media, this time in JPost and phrased as ‘humanitarian relocation of the non-belligerent Arab population’

The author of this scurrilous piece of incitement, Dr. Martin Sherman of the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies, has the gall to quote Einstein in support of his solution for the Palestinian question “No, periodically mowing the lawn is not a policy that can endure for long – it simply will not cut it. The grass needs to be uprooted – once and for all.”

How do these drooling fascists live with themselves?

More zionist genocidalists – Prof. Efraim Inbar is director and Dr.Eitan Shamir a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Against an implacable, well-entrenched, non-state enemy like the Hamas, Israel simply needs to “mow the grass” once in a while to degrade the enemy’s capabilities.

Another genocidal Israeli lawnmower man: David M. Weinberg is Director of Public Affairs at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies

Racism is the Foundation of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge Joel Beinin:

The viciousness of Mordechai Kedar, lecturer in Arabic literature at Bar Ilan University, was even more creative than Shaked and Elitzur’s merely genocidal proposal. “The only thing that can deter terrorists like those who kidnapped the children and killed them,” he said, “is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.” As a university-based “expert,” Kedar’s heinous suggestion is based on his “understanding” of Arab culture. “It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East,” he explained, hastening to add, “I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts.”

Racism has become a legitimate, indeed an integral, component of Israeli public culture, making assertions like these seem “normal.”

Israeli security officials sardonically call these operations “mowing the lawn” because well-informed observers know that Hamas cannot be uprooted and is capable of rebuilding its military capacity. There is no long-term strategy, except, as Gideon Levy put it, to kill Palestinians. Major General (res.) Oren Shachor elaborated, “If we kill their families, that will frighten them.” And what might deter Israel?

Times of Israel publishes a zionist’s defence of genocide – the article was withdrawn but is archived.

Behind the Lying Eyes of Mark Regev

Behind the lying eyes of Mark Regev from One Democratic State Group on Vimeo.

Discrimination against Arab families:

‘In an attempt to lure the small ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism into his new government, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has agreed to pay extra child allowance to religious Jewish families with many children in a way that guarantees the extra payments do not also go to large Arab families.

This is the latest in a long line of manoeuvres by successive Israeli governments to ensure that Jewish and Arab citizens receive differential child allowances so that higher birth rates among Jewish families can be encouraged without also encouraging increased fertility among Arab families.

Such schemes are widely seen as being part of government initiatives to counter the perceived “demographic threat” posed by high Arab birth rates and maintaining Israel’s Jewish majority. Child allowance was only equalised for Jews and Arabs in the mid-1990s.’

Olmert and the ‘demographic threat’:

‘The time is fast approaching when Arabs will constitute a majority in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. Then, Olmert said, Palestinians will abandon their calls for an independent state and instead will demand a one-man-one-vote system in a binational state that they will control.

“The day we come to that, we will lose everything” Olmert said. “Even when they carry out terror, it’s hard for us to convince the world of the justice of our cause.”

“How much the more so,” he continued, “when all they ask for is one man, one vote? I shudder to think that the same liberal Jews who led the struggle against apartheid in South Africa will be at the forefront of the struggle against us.”’

More Olmert:

‘Mr Olmert said it was not the first time he had articulated his fears about the demographic threat to Israel as a Jewish state from a faster growing Palestinian population.

He made similar comments in 2003 when justifying the failed strategy of unilateral withdrawals from Israeli-occupied land which holds large Palestinian populations.

“If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished,”

Rape of Palestinian women:

‘If the Or Yehuda banner only hinted at rape and the WhatsApp image played coyly with it, a leading Israeli academic blatantly floated the idea of using rape against the Palestinians at the very start of the current round of hostilities.

On July 1, just after the bodies of three Israeli teens who had gone missing in the West Bank were found, Bar Ilan University lecturer Dr. Mordechai Kedar spoke on Israeli radio about raping Palestinian women in order to deter “terrorism,” saying that only the knowledge that Israel could dispatch agents to rape a Palestinian militant’s mother or sister, as retribution for his crimes, could deter him from carrying out those actions.’

Here’s Netayahoo in 2003 bemoaning the ‘demographic threat’ of Palestinian wombs in Israel:

Israel’s growing demographic problem is not because of Palestinians, but of Israeli Arabs, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday.

Speaking at the Herzliya Conference on security, Netanyahu said Israel had already freed itself from control of almost all Palestinian Arabs. He said he could not foresee a future in which “any sane Israeli” could try to make Palestinians either Israeli citizens or “enslaved subjects.” The Palestinians would under all circumstances rule themselves and administer their own affairs, he said.

“If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens,” he said. The Declaration of Independence said Israel should be a Jewish and democratic state, but to ensure the Jewish character was not engulfed by demography, it was necessary to ensure a Jewish majority, he said.

Joseph Massad – “Are Palestinian Children Less Worthy”

Who could forget these IDF T-shirts?

Deliberately killing children:

“Monica Awad, the spokeswoman of the UNICEF, condemned Israel’s targeting of women and children in its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.”

In an interview with Al-Jazeera on 31 July, Awad said “Israeli forces had deliberately killed 264 children in Gaza, which is equal to 11 children per day, and injured more than 2,000.”

“Where’s the international community’s reactions to the slaughtering of children in Gaza? Where are the international human rights covenants?”

IDF Sniper Admits On Instagram To Murdering 13 Gaza Children

To Neil Young, from a Farmer in Gaza

Dear Neil Young

My name is Nasser Abu Said, I am a farmer in the Gaza Strip, Johr Al Deak.

We were poor but we had a family and we had a life, even if we lived by the Israeli border where incursions and regular shooting at our farm workers from Israeli soldiers and jeeps limited how much we could farm there. They knew who we were, it is open land, and they did not attack us during Cast Lead in 2009.

Then, on a quiet day in July 2010 my wife Na’eema and 5 children were enjoying the sunshine. They fired 5 tank shells and a flechette shell at our house. My five children were there and my wife Na’eema ran outside to bring in Jaber the youngest. She was hit by the nails of the flechette shell and I could hear small noises coming from her. I knew she was dying. For hours the Israeli military prevented an ambulance from coming. The children watched as she lay dying in front of their eyes. I was holding myself in, especially in front of the children. The children were crying hysterically and some had wet themselves. I lost my wife and the children have never recovered.

They attacked again with missiles in April 2011, this time burying 2 of my children in the home, injuring others but we all survived. We gave up once the house was half destroyed a second time, and have been living in tents ever since.

By going and entertaining the Israeli audience, many of whom will have committed similar atrocities while in uniform, you are giving a green light to Israel, telling them its business as usual, even if my story has happened so many times in Gaza. Is the blood of my wife not worth anything? There is a chance to help make a difference and joining the boycotts until Israel stops ruining families through occupation and siege, like they did for mine.

The international community must do something and it’s up to people of conscience to lead, so that what happened to my wife and family does not happen to any other farmers in Gaza.

Related Links

Neil Young, Tell Me Why You Would Play for Apartheid Israel

There are 2 petitions you can sign: http://cjpme.nationbuilder.com/neil_young (signed by nearly 7,000), and http://ijvcanada.org/campaign/palestinian-civil-society-call-for-bds/neil-young-dont-play-israel/

From Gaza to Moddi – Thank You

4 January 2014

Dearest Moddi,

Besieged Gaza, Palestine- We, academics, students and youth from besieged Gaza, wish to salute you for your principled and audacious decision not to entertain apartheid and violate the cultural boycott of Israel – a key aspect of the general BDS call from Palestinian civil society.

The moment we learned about your cancellation of the Tel Aviv show, we celebrated, with an obvious relief, the fact that someone is hearing our voices. Such a relief has become a rare commodity with the many escalating difficulties and challenges we have been enduring since Israel has imposed a medieval siege on our tiny strip. Just yesterday, 16-year-old Adnan Abu Khater died of his wounds after Israeli soldiers shot him in the leg east of Jabaliya. As this letter is penned, Gaza, the coastal, old and beautiful city that is no longer remembered for being the hub of historical sites, cultural hideaways and vibrant commerce, sinks into darkness with a continuous power outage for long hours daily. But you have reached us. Your act of solidarity has replaced our anxiety and frustration with hope, true hope, and replaced our pessimism with inspiration that there are more people in this world who won’t turn their backs on the calls for justice to arrive on our shores. Your connection with us goes beyond the mourning of our broken hearts.

By heeding our call, you have chosen to join a list of principled artists who have prioritized principles and altruistic commitment to human rights over immediate personal gains.

With deep regard and gratitude,

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Gaza BDS Working Group

The One Democratic State Group – Gaza

University Teachers’ Association

Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel

SOURCE

Related Links

Moddi, Don’t Entertain Israel, the Oppressor of Palestinians