Harry's Place

This is Ben Cohen’s take on Bob Marshall-Andrew’s article about Gaza. It is a cross-post from the Z-Word blog.

A group of friends in London alerted me to this grubby little piece by a British Labour Party Member of Parliament, Bob Marshall-Andrews, concerning his recent visit to Gaza. Upon reading it, I was struck by various thoughts, not least the degree to which Marshall-Andrews words will be welcomed by the Hamas cheerleaders who compose the Palestinian solidarity movement, in marked contrast to the fierce condemnation with which this blog, and others like it, will greet his compendium of antisemitism-laced falsehoods. Why bother to refute such lies, one might ask, when those of us who defend Israel are at irreconcilable odds with those who demonize her, when any charge of antisemitism we make is bound to be dismissed as another tired attempt to muzzle debate? The most satisfactory answer I can come up with is that some things – and Marshall-Andrews article is one of them – are so odious that they cannot pass without rebuke.

To work, then. Here’s how Marshall-Andrews sets the scene:

“Bags of cement are slit open by grinning ringletted guards. Having destroyed they maintain the destruction.”

The “ringlets” he refers to are known, in Hebrew, as pe’ot, the sidelocks worn by ultraorthodox Jews. Now, I’ve spent a great deal of time in Israel and I can tell you that most Israeli soldiers don’t wear pe’ot. So what visual image is Marshall-Andrews trying to conjure up here? One of a people that rejoices in radical evil, their grinning faces framed by those unmistakeably Jewish ringlets. Something a little like this, perhaps:

But of course, he’s not antisemitic. That’s just a device to smear supporters of the Palestinians.

Then he goes on to talk about the devastation visited upon Gaza. He describes a scene of apocalypse, in which a population living in the shadows of bombed sewage plants, cowed by chronic shortages of basic foodstuffs, somehow survives. Still, Marshall-Andrews can’t resist telling us that, amidst all this horror, his Hamas hosts provided him and his colleagues with a “generous lunch.” Continuing on the gastronomic theme, he then tells us that breakfast the next day consisted of boiled eggs and cheese, “because of the blockade.” Actually, that’s pretty standard fare at most hotel buffet tables, and a much healthier start to the day than that enjoyed by large numbers of inner-city kids who don’t live in war zones.

His stomach still rumbling from that unsatisfying repast, Marshall-Andrews steps up the hyperbole. “This ruthless, genocidal repression is the worst in today’s world,” he states. “It is worse than the Sudan, worse than the Congo, worse than Burma – a large claim but true, and that truth lies not in the identity and suffering of the victims but in the identity and nature of the perpetrators.”

In fact, this is a shameful, bare-faced lie. Those tempted to believe it should question the credentials of a man who, a few paragraphs earlier, confesses that he has “little experience of extensive war damage in civilian areas.” Then again, reality is incidental to all this: the Israel-hatred swamps Marshall-Andrews judgment, just as it did with London Times hack Janine di Giovanni, who ludicrously claimed, in the wake of the Battle of Jenin in 2002, “[R]arely, in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.” There was, by the way, no massacre in Jenin.

One fact which Marshall-Andrews does get right – though no doubt he’d inflate the figure if he could get away with it – is that 1,400 died during Operation Cast Lead (he omits to mention that at least 60 per cent of those were bearing arms on behalf of Hamas.) Worse than Sudan – or “the Sudan” as he calls it, with touching colonial nostalgia? In Darfur, 300,000 died, either through violence or diseases caused by the displacement which drove 2.7 million people from their homes. Worse than Congo? According to an International Rescue Committee report, that conflict may have claimed a staggering 5.4 million lives; there are other, more cautious estimates, but even these do not dip below 2 million. Worse than Burma? After Cyclone Nargis killed 140,000 people in 2008, the 3.4 million survivors were deliberately blocked from receiving aid by the Burmese junta, which went so far as to arrest ordinary Burmese civilians who attempted to bring relief to the stricken area.

On this last point, it’s worth remembering that repressive regimes, whether prosecuting war or minimizing public scrutiny of their responses to humanitarian disasters, want to make their targets suffer more, not less. They want the victims to be hungry and scared, unable to predict when the next aid convoy might arrive. In their siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian Serb militias perfected this into a grotesque art form.

Life in Gaza, to the contrary, has – by comparison to these other situations – an enviable predictability. No, I’m not denying that Gaza needs humanitarian aid. I am saying that Gazans can be sure that the aid will arrive, just as it did over this last week, when 13,919 tons of aid rolled in. Close to 1.4 million liters diesel fuel and 832 tons of cooking oil crossed in as well, courtesy of the same state which Bob Marshall-Andrews obscenely accuses of carrying out a genocide in Gaza.

True, those figures come from the IDF. If they are massaged numbers or outright fabrications, then those who believe so should say so – and come up with credible evidence to counter them. I am confident – given the parallel universe inhabited by people like Bob Marshall-Andrews, in which the degree to which a statement is true depends on how intensely the person issuing it hates Israel – that they will not be able to do so.

This is a guest post from Amie

This event at LSE last night was billed as a discussion of the Goldstone report, in which Panellists would also examine the state of the peace process. The ‘also’ part turned out to mean, by and large, ‘instead’.

The make up of the panel was problematic from the outset. Chinkin and Travers were two of the Goldstone Commissioners. Then there was Karma Nabulsi.

Ami Ayalon provided the “balance”. Oh, and then there was the chair, Lakhdar Brahimi. This senior UN aide has publicly described Israel as a country whose policy constitutes “the great poison in the region.”

Those who still had hopes, even with this line up, of gaining an insight into the way the Goldstone commissioners had managed to arrive at their astonishing conclusions and to have the opportunity to put their methodology and findings under scrutiny, were instead treated to the following:

Chinkin’s contribution was so ineffectual my notes seem to have faded. Just one irony sticks out – her contention that Commissions such as this are good at bringing peace because they are objective assessment of disputed facts.

Ayalon discarded Goldstone from the outset, asserting that neither international law nor war could bring peace. Forget justice, look for fairness (whatever that meant). He was antiwar because there is no way of winning against Hamas who have changed the rules of war which separated combatants and non combatants and try and lure the Israeli military into civilian areas and fight behind human shields. The way forward is imagination, responsibility not blame, peace process not Goldstone. And er..that Kind of Thing.

Karma mentioned the Commission only as a peg to hang her prescription for Israel Palestine . She disagreed with Ayalon and saw the Commission as the means of enforcing Justice upon the region. She swiftly left Gaza 09 and it was back to 48 and ethnic cleansing. The area allocated to Israel under partition had almost an Arab majority then, so what would have been so terrible had they remained? What would be so terrible now, if all the refugees came back, she wondered.

And what of Col Travers? He at first concentrated exclusively on making a laudable, thoughtful informative case for a move to declare a range of very unpleasant weapons outlawed in International law. He made it clear that these currently perfectly legal weapons like white phosphorus were used universally in all armies. This was not in any way especially targeting Israel, it seemed, until imperceptibly he slid into the Tonge manoeuvre:

The Mission had found no evidence of the use by the IDF of DIME with tungsten other than anecdotal, but just to let us know this is nasty if used.

He then speculated about the use of depleted uranium to harden warheads. This might or might not have been used by the IDF, but still best to test at some point to check.

Never mind, the seeds of suspicion have been planted. Just sayin’.

Then the question I had drafted was put to Travers:

In your interview with Middle East Monitor last month, you deride the report of Colonel Tim Collins who visited a mosque that you had previously investigated. He said that there was evidence of secondary explosions in the basement, which was an indication that it had been used to store weapons. You called Collins’ findings “drivel and propaganda”. You also dismissed as “spurious” several photographs that were on an Israeli website showing weapons and munitions found in mosques. Are you saying that all this evidence is spurious and falsified, and if so, is not the credibility of your bare assertions undercut by your next statement in that interview that: “ Britain ’s foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists. I find it interesting that the two former military officers [Colonels Tim Collins and Richard Kemp] quoted in the media in defence of Israeli military actions in Gaza are both British.”

His answer begins by attacking Hoffman for being economical with his selectivity of the quote, in leaving out the part where he praised Collins. Yes well, this was praise of the kind where you preface an attack on your legal opponent: “with the greatest respect to my learned friend but..”

When he finished, I called, “What about the Jewish lobby?” Jonathan Hoffman shouted, more loudly “What about the Jewish lobby?” The chair tsked and called for the next question.

For more of Travers logic and wisdom see here (pdf). He is happy to divine Jewish influence on British policy, but even contemplating the hiding of munitions in mosques is taboo, as “Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion.”

I do wish Col Travers had had the opportunity to explain his Jewish lobby remark. I think he should be asked to do so whenever he appears on a public platform in future.

Paul Goodman MP, the outgoing Shadow Minister for Communities, has an important post up at Conservative Home, in which he calls for a Select Committee on Anti-Muslim Hatred.

His piece – which you should read in full – is excellent, and makes many of the points I would want to make myself. I think that there is a serious problem in this country with both Islamophobia – that is, treating Islam as a monolithic, undifferentiated, and unchangeable ideology, to be despised and feared – and the visceral hatred of Muslims. As Paul explains, the two phenomena are different and require different analyses and responses:

There’s a difference between Islamophobia and the hatred of Muslims – although the two are indisputably linked.  The target of the first is a religion.  The target of the second is people.  There’s a crucial distinction between the two – one vital if the free society’s to be preserved.  If a person hates a religious faith, the law should be drawn very widely, if at all.  If he hates religious people, it must be framed more tightly.  In short, hatred of Islam, like (say) hatred of Christianity, shouldn’t be a matter for the law (though I believe very strongly that it should be deplored); but the hatred of Muslims – like the hatred of Christians – should be such a matter, and laws against incitement should be in place.

There is also the problem that groups linked to extreme and vicious political parties use the ‘Islamophobia’ smear in order to prevent criticism of their activities. Paul makes an important point in relation to the activities of these groups:

For some Islamist organisations, Islamophobia is less a testing problem than a rhetorical device to delegitimise criticism – a shield behind which to advance on Ministerial patronage, taxpayers’ money, and legal concessions.  Let’s be clear.  When David Cameron said that the Cordoba Foundation shouldn’t get taxpayers’ money, he wasn’t being Islamophobic.  Nor was Michael Gove when he argued that Hizb-ut-Tahrir shouldn’t control schools.  Nor was Pauline Neville-Jones when she called for Ministers to review Tablighi Jamaat’s plans for a mega-mosque in East London.  Exposure of such Islamist groups as the Islamic Forum of Europe – often voiced by mainstream Muslims themselves, who are Islamism’s main targets – is legitimate and necessary.  Islamophobia/anti-Muslim hatred is too important a problem to be left for extreme groups to manipulate for their own ends.

I agree with him.

This is what Paul Goodman proposes:

There are calls at present for an all-party enquiry into Islamophobia– mirroring the previous all-party enquiry into anti-semitism.  I doubt whether the comparison holds.  As I wrote earlier, there’s no Muslim equivalent of the Community Security Trust.  This is doubtless because Britain’s Jewish and Muslim communities are very different: the national background, ethnicity, languages, and theological approach of the latter vary enormously.  It’s hard to envisage an All-Party Group on Islamophobia representing the interests of all Britain’s diverse Muslim communities.  It’s easy to imagine such Islamist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood or the Jamaat e Islami infiltrating such a group for their own purposes.

For this reason and others, some will want either to declare that Islamophobia/anti-Muslim hatred aren’t real problems at all, or that government and Parliament have no role in tackling either.  I disagree with this view.  There’s evidence – like that cited earlier - that the hatred of Muslims and anti-Muslim violence are serious problems .  Something should be done.

I suggest a proper Select Committee inquiry to take place during the next Parliament.  The most suitable vehicle would be the DCLG Select Committee, since the DCLG deals with community cohesion.  It would collect written submissions, take oral evidence, issue a report, make recommendations.

It should take evidence as widely as possible.  If the Jamaat e Islami or the Muslim Brotherhood wanted to make representations, they should be allowed to do so.  So should think-tanks specialising in counter-extremism, such as the Quilliam Foundation or Centri.  So should the police.  So should those who believe (wrongly, in my view) that Islamophobia is an imaginary construct, and doesn’t exist at all.

Could such an enquiry be exploited by Islamists?  Yes.  Is that a good reason for not having it?  No.  Why?  Because the problem of the hatred of Muslims and anti-Muslim violence, in particular, is grave.  It’s a wound that can only fester.  Parliament has a role to play in drawing the poison.

I agree that there is a need for an inquiry, that Parliament is the appropriate venue, and that the DCLG Select Committee - rather than an All Party Group – is the appropriate host of such an investigation.

I have some additional thoughts on this issue, and I hope to share them with you over the next few days.

So this is how it goes, really. The government bans guns so thugs take to knives. The  government bans knives, so thugs breed attack dogs.

You can’t win. The problem is the thugs, not their current weapon of choice.

But since you can’t really ban dogs, ow there is a new plan. The BBC reports:

“All dog owners in England and Wales would have to insure against their pet attacking someone under Labour proposals to tackle dangerous breeds.”

So, all that happens now is that regular dog owners get punished with having to take out insurance and deal with stricter licensing, and dogs get abandoned in pounds because genuine owners can’t afford to keep them, or don’t want to hassle of adopting them.

The government’s plans to tackle the problem are wrong-headed and will result in damaging the welfare of dogs.

And the thugs?

Well, because they are criminals who thumb their noses at the law to begin with, they won’t bother with all that red tape anyway.

So effect on thugs: none.
Upset and inconvenience to law-abiders: double.
Effect on animal welfare: Potentially catastrophic.

Obviously, there are a small number of dog attacks every year, as there have always been, which are not related to dogs deliberately bred as attack-dogs. Any dog owner would be well advised to take out some liability insurance. But making it the law is taking it a step too far, particularly since – according to the BBC – this plan is a response to “concerns about the use of animals to intimidate or threaten people” and not about day-to-day personal liability issues facing the average citizen.

It seems very much to me as if the majority, once again, will be punished and inconvenienced because the political will to deal with the specific problem head-on is lacking.

The Socialist Party (SV) in Norway have awarded a local Muslim politician, Mahdi Hassan, a member of the Equality Committee for the Hedmark union their “Trollkjerring Prize” for being a “role model and inspiration, energetic and active!”.

[Google Translation] “The jury has emphasized that Hassan through his work has shown a knack for grasping various issues and challenges in a positive and constructive way… The jury believes that the Mahdi with his behavior has been a strong and solid contributor when it comes to erase prejudices many Norwegians have in relation to people from other cultures.”

The trouble is a storm is brewing over remarks Mr Hassan made about lesbians and gays.

According to a Norwegian newspaper, Hassan is in favour of banning homosexuality:

[Google Translate] Forbilde year’s 2009, Mahdi Hassan Mouhoumed from Tynset, wants a ban on homosexuality.

This is very little exemplary, “said head of the National Association for lesbians and gays Norway, Karen Pinholt.

The statement “Homosexuality is forbidden in the Koran, and I believe in my religion”, was uttered by the Mahdi in an interview with Arbeidets law last summer.

He confirmed to the court that he had not changed position.

What’s more, the Socialist Party has defended him. A spokesperson told Arbeidets Rett newspaper: ”There is freedom of speech in Norway and in the Tynset Socialist Left Party we consider it unproblematic that Mahdi is opposed in principle to homosexuality.  It is in accordance with his religion.”

According to the Norwegian LGBT group, the leader in Tynset SV, Stein Petter Løkken insistedthat Hassan’s “efforts for children and young people on Tynset overshadows his attitude to homosexuality.”

Karen Pinholt, a spokesperson for gay group ”Landsforeningen for lesbiske, homofile, bifile og transpersoner” (LLH) said that the ‘inclusiveness’ Hassan was rewarded for obviously doesn’t include inclusion for LGBT people.

Hassan, while in favour of outlawing it, is apparently against the death penalty of homosexuality but says it is up to other countries to decide what they do.

So, once again we see a Socialist party refusing to regard support for the equality and dignity of gay people as a shibboleth. If an open and unrepentant homophobe can win a “Role Model” award from a leading European Socialist Party, I think it is fair to deduce that - increasingly – The Left, as it now too courts the religious Right, is abandoning gay people in every way but lip-service.

We’re just a pesky inconvenience, really. Aren’t we?

This is a press release from Peter Tatchell

Call for “Prisoner of Conscience” status for Steven & Tiwonge

London, UK – 9 March 2010

Amnesty International is being urged to adopt Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga as “Prisoners of Conscience.” The two men are in Chichiri prison in Malawi on charges of homosexuality, after they celebrated their relationship in a public ceremony last December. Their trial verdict is expected on 22 March.

The call for Prisoner of Conscience status comes from the London-based LGBT human rights group, OutRage!. The group’s campaign coordinator, Peter Tatchell, has written to the Director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen. He wrote to Ms Allen:

“We urge Amnesty International to adopt Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga as Prisoners of Conscience…Everyone is very appreciative of the statement that Amnesty has already issued, which deplores the men’s arrest and calls for their release. We are now hoping that Amnesty will go one step further and recognise them as Prisoners of Conscience.”

“OutRage! has made the appeal for Prisoner of Conscience status following a request for help from Mr Monjeza and Mr Chimbalanga. The two men have asked me and others to increase Malawian and international pressure to secure the dropping of all charges and their immediate release.

“Adoption by Amnesty as Prisoners of Conscience would be a great morale boost for Tiwonge and Steven. It might also help encourage a less harsh sentence, if they are found guilty when their trial verdict is announced on 22 Match. They face a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment,” said Mr Tatchell.

A full copy of the OutRage! letter to Kate Allen of Amnesty International UK follows below.

Dear Kate Allen,

As you know, Steven Monjeza (26) and Tiwonge Chimbalanga (20) were arrested in Malawi on 28 December 2009 on charges of homosexuality, after they celebrated their engagement to be married in a traditional African ceremony.

They have been refused bail and held in Chichiri Prison ever since – for nearly three months. If convicted, they face a sentence of up to 14 years jail. The trial verdict is expected on 22 March.

We urge Amnesty International to adopt Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga as “Prisoners of Conscience.”

I am acting in response to their request for me and others to assist them and at the request of their friends and supporters in Malawi.

Everyone is very appreciative of the statement that Amnesty has already issued, which deplores the men’s arrest and calls for their release. We are now hoping that Amnesty will go one step further and recognise them as “prisoners of conscience.”

Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga have not committed any crime by holding a same-sex engagement ceremony. This ceremony is not illegal under Malawian law.

Moreover, no one has witnessed them committing any illegal same-sex act and there is no forensic evidence to prove that they have committed criminal offences.

Even if they did have a sexual relationship, it is ethically wrong to prosecute them for consenting private behaviour that harms no one.

Their prosecution is illegal. It is contrary to section 20 of the Malawi constitution, which outlaws all discrimination. Criminalising adult same-sex relations when similar opposite-sex relations are lawful is discrimination and is unconstitutional.

The prosecution of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga also violates the equal treatment provisions of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Malawi has signed and pledged to uphold.

See details of the Malawian constitution and the African Charter below.

I would be most grateful if you could confirm Amnesty International’s willingness and intention to adopt Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga as “prisoners of conscience” and to campaign for their release.

Yours with much appreciation of your human rights endeavours,

Peter Tatchell

Over the weekend, there was more in the Telegraph on the impressive influence of the Islamic Forum Europe – an emanation of the South Asian political party, Jamaat-e-Islami – within Tower Hamlets.

What that evidence suggests is that Ken Livingstone invested heavily in cultivating the vote controlled by the IFE. The calculation appears to have been that the additional votes captured by this strategy would compensate for those Labour voters who turned away from Ken Livingstone, in disgust at his cultivating of the South Asian extreme Right:

In an election lost by Mr Livingstone, the Islamic Forum of Europe helped secure massive and unexpected swings towards him in its east London heartland.

In one ward, Spitalfields, his vote share rose from 29.6 per cent in 2004 – an election he won – to 68.4 per cent in 2008, a rise of nearly 39 percentage points.

In every other ward in Tower Hamlets and Newham with a sizeable Muslim population, his vote rose by between 23 and 36 percentage points. His vote in other Muslim and ethnic minority areas of London also rose, but by far smaller amounts.

As is often the case with Ken Livingstone – and reminiscent of the Lee Jasper scandal – the story appears to have involved handing over large sums of public money:

Mr Livingstone’s economic development body, the London Development Agency, had agreed to pay more than £1.3 million to the East London Mosque, controlled by the IFE, and described by critics as hardline.

Emails leaked to The Sunday Telegraph show that a senior LDA official furiously protested against at least £500,000 of this grant, saying there were “major concerns” about the mosque project and “no case” for giving it the money.

However, the official was overruled and the grant was paid.

There is also discussion of the role of the”Muslims4Ken” campaign, in which IFE members – including the supporter of violent jihad against British troops, Azad Ali – played a prominent party. You will recognise their fingerprints all over the campaign: lie about your own extremism, accuse others of racism.

Muslims 4 Ken made a series of false and inflammatory claims against Mr Livingstone’s main opponent, Boris Johnson.

It leafleted mosques claiming that Mr Johnson had “expressed his hatred against Islam” and also claimed that he wanted to ban the Koran.

Muslims 4 Ken’s website quoted Mr Johnson as saying that “racism is natural” without adding the sentences which followed (“It is as natural as sewage. We all agree that it is disgusting.”)

In the Mayoral elections, the strategy failed. However, the IFE have learnt not to put all its eggs in one basket, and have now managed to place its activists within the Tory Party as well. No wonder the London Tories are now sucking up to the IFE. They have clearly concluded that they are a force which is better accommodated than opposed.

The rest of the article contains all the other to-be-expected details – dramatic fluctuations of the number of people registered to vote, pages of names and addresses written in the same handwriting, and the concerns of public officials being ignored and overruled.

The responses from Livingstone and Azad Ali are instructive. Here’s Livingstone:

Mr Livingstone said he could not recollect the project, or whether he had been personally involved in approving the payment. He refused to comment on the activities of Muslims 4 Ken and said: “You are a liar who is stirring up racism.”

That’s right. To criticise a specific political party is to encourage racism.

Here’s Azad Ali:

He said the IFE did “encourage people to register to vote” as part of its task to promote political engagement, but he categorically denied registering any electors who do not exist, or any involvement in the mayoral petition.

“That would be criminal,” he said.

It would indeed be criminal.

One of the odd consequences of this country’s draconian defamation law is that the worse people behave, the greater leverage they have if they decide to sue. Azad Ali enthusiastically backed the killing of British troops in Iraq, but outrageously sued when this was pointed out. He lost. However, by bringing that libel action, he managed to silence other newspapers who could have pointed out the outrageous fact that a man who is a disgusting traitor also headed up the Civil Service Islamic Society and, even more remarkably, has been treated as an adviser and trusted confidant of the Metropolitan Police. You can therefore be certain that attempts will be made to use the law to prevent reporting about the activities of the IFE.

Now, consider the position of a Bangladeshi democrat and secularist in Tower Hamlets, facing the prospect of a Jamaat-e-Islami takeover of their local government and community. Precisely how courageous do we expect them to be, in standing up to a political party which enjoys political favour, some of whose activists are prepared to issue pretty serious threats, and which receives pots of public money. Would you have the guts to stand up against such an organisation, particularly if they libelled you as a racist, and then issued its own libel proceedings against you?

Welcome to the Kingdom of IFE.

Read the whole thing, but here is David Aaronovitch talking about those blessed souls who forever will “feel” the pain of Iraq and the sting of Blair’s personal betrayal of their “values”:

It is (I am told) “understandable” that many sensitive Britons feel “wounded” by the circumstances of the war. Well, it certainly was understandable, but it isn’t any longer. Seven years on, it’s gone well beyond the original wound, and we’re at the stage where many folk twist the knife in their own scar to keep it bleeding. They want to stay wounded — they enjoy their wounds. And I’m not even talking about that corrupted part of our body politic that took sides with the murderous insurgents and described them as liberators.
[...]
there is huge pressure from the re-wounders, the knife-twisters, for Chilcot and his committee not to learn the long-term lessons of Iraq but to emerge with a conclusion that would effectively hobble future governments in taking action abroad. I note the pressure that Shortists of both Left and Right have put on the historians, Lawrence Freedman and Martin Gilbert, because they haven’t grandstanded, cross-examined like barristers or got all arsey and sarcastic with Messrs Brown, Blair and Miliband.

We know what the Shortists want. They want Chilcot to say, in effect, that it shouldn’t have happened and mustn’t happen again. Some explicitly want Britain to turn away from the troublous world and its bleeding peoples, and to isolate ourselves, leaving tyrants alone and hoping the resulting refugees can be stopped at Calais.

Even years on they won’t want Chilcot, or anyone else, to look at Iraq now and say that there is definitely an important new democracy in the Middle East, and that its existence is one of the most hopeful changes in recent times. And yet, miracle that it is (Iraqi miracle that it is), it’s true.

I tend to ignore these people now. They have got their inquiry. They can keep wailing and gnashing their teeth, saying “whitewash” and casting allegations of lying about as if the mere fact a war happened is evidence enough of a lie (afterall there can be no good reason for a war, can there?). They are beyond reach. No rational outcome of Chilcot would have sated their thirst for the “truth” as they already have it in their heads – fully formed and crafted for years. There is no balancing of considerations to take place, not the mildest of grudging acceptance that any good might have come out of Iraq. While I’d not go so far to suggest these individuals are conspiracy theorists, there are some parallels: the obsessive concern about minutiae (Who said what at Crawford) rather than the larger narrative, the inability to accept proven facts from previous inquiries (making off the cuff comments about David Kelly’s death do not yet make one a crank in polite company, unlike conspiracies about Diana’s death).

Let it go.

Bob Marshall-Andrews is Labour MP for Medway.

Last week he attended a meeting of the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) and the self-styled Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East at Westminster.

The PRC are the Hamas supporters who invited Hungarian neo-fascist Krisztina Morvai to one of their London meetings last year. Sameh Habeeb, the hate publisher who runs the Palestine Telegraph, was one of the organisers of that meeting and this Westminster event too.

The Labour group lists the Palestine Telegraph under a “The best coverage of Palestine and the Middle East” heading on its website. Habeeb’s blog is also “recommended”.

In what appeared to be a sneaky move as criticism of the meeting grew, the Labour Friends removed Jenny Tonge from the list of speakers before the meeting. They also dropped Habeeb’s name from the organiser contacts. The PRC is nowhere near so shy. Here is Tonge, pictured on their website, next to Marshall-Andrews at the meeting.

Other Labour politicians who spoke at the meeting included Lord Ahmed, Jeremy Corbyn, Gerald Kaufman and Martin Linton.

This background helps to explain a putrid piece by Marshall-Andrews about a visit to Gaza that has appeared on Labourlist.

It dives deep into the mire almost straight away:

Construction materials cannot cross the Israeli blockade. Bags of cement are slit open by grinning ringletted guards. Having destroyed they maintain the destruction.

Did Mr Marshall-Andrews actually see those nasty swarthy types at it? He doesn’t say.

On to allegations of cold-blooded murder, which just must be true:

The quiet testimony of children telling of their families being removed from their homes and shot in cold blood by Israeli soldiers. None of us doubted the veracity of what was said.

Some admiration for the wonderful people of Hamas:

We spoke to the elected leaders of the Hamas Government. If these are terrorists they are the best educated terrorists in the world. Middle-aged, clever men and women who welcomed us into the wreckage of their Palestinian parliament.

“Oh, but not the rockets!” – they are only fired by “factions” anyway – weasel words from a Hamas helper and the sneering, facile and misleading invocation of Northern Ireland come next:

Of course there are terrorist factions in Hamas. Of course rocket attacks on Israel are indefensible and we said so, repeatedly. But equally indefensible were IRA bombings of London and Birmingham which killed far more people. Had we responded by laying waste large areas of Belfast and Derry, slaughtering hundreds of civilians and systematically starving the rest we would have anticipated and received international condemnation and certain trial.

Never mind the Hamas charter:

Of course they still retain an unsustainable and futile charter calling for the end of the Israeli state. It is a position they will undoubtedly relinquish, but overtures to negotiation with Israel or America are met with the silence of stone.

“Undoubtedly relinquish”? It’s been over 20 years. And it calls for rather more than “the end of the Israeli state”:

With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.
…
Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

Oh, but they are “middle-aged, clever men and women”, and this stinking Jew hatred, echoed to this day in Hamas media, just doesn’t matter, because Mr Marshall-Andrews says so.

I mean, who would give any credence to Hamas leader Mahmoud al Zahar?

After voting in the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said the group “will not change a single word in its covenant” calling for the destruction of Israel. He said Hamas would continue its path of “resistance” against Israeli occupation in the West Bank even as it serves in the Palestinian parliament.

Israel, on the other hand, is a “pariah state” committing genocide, worse than the mass murderers of the Congo and the dictatorships of Sudan and Burma:

The actions of Israel towards Gaza are indefensible at any level. This is now a pariah state. This ruthless, genocidal repression is the worst in today’s world. It is worse than the Sudan, worse than the Congo, worse than Burma – a large claim but true, and that truth lies not in the identity and suffering of the victims but in the identity and nature of the perpetrators. This deliberate policy of mass starvation, intimidation, destruction and casual slaughter is not perpetrated by warlords or Juntas. It is not the work of the Lords Army or the Ton Ton Macoute. This is the deliberate systematic, lawless cruelty of an apparently democratic state allied to the most powerful nation on earth, a nation which daily colludes in its atrocities and provides impunity for its swaggering extra judicial murder.

Labour is a party that claims to oppose antisemitism.

By Andrew Murphy

When Nick Cohen wrote earlier in the year that “when it comes to promoting democracy, the emancipation of women and the liberation of the oppressed, Barack Obama has been the most reactionary American president since Richard Nixon,” my first initial response was to think, “that is a bit much.” However those who perhaps were skeptical of the Obama in Nixonland hypothesis had our skepticism confronted this week with the Congressional panel calling for a vote on recognizing Turkish genocide of Armenians . Current score: Nick Cohen 2, Skeptics O.

Last week, the US congressional panel approved a nonbinding resolution which would, some 95 years later, allow the US government to officially recognize as genocide what happened to the Armenians in 1915 by the Turks. The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 23-22 in favor. Besides the ‘Turkish Lobby’ (made up defense contractors), the other group involved in trying to scuttle to keep this resolution from being voted on was the Obama administration. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “we will work very hard” to keep this from passing.

Turkey of course has been a virtual state of denial for 95 years about what happened and they have used their influence and money to try and silence those who suggest otherwise. Turkey recalled their USA ambassador after the Foreign Affairs vote. In 1915 Turkey, massacred, deported and forced marched 1.5 million ethic Armenians. The parallels between the Armenian genocide and the Nazi Holocaust are obvious. Scholar Yehuda Bauer writes:

The Nazis saw the Jews as the central problem of world history. Upon its solution depended the future of mankind. Unless International Jewry was defeated, human civilization would not survive. The attitude towards the Jews had in it important elements of pseudo-religion. There was no such motivation present in the Armenian case; Armenians were to be annihilated for power-political reasons, and in Turkey only… The differences between the holocaust and the Armenian massacres are less important than the similarities—and even if the Armenian case is not seen as a holocaust in the extreme form which it took towards Jews, it is certainly the nearest thing to it.

Not only does Turkey use diplomatic pressure, but their arms merchants in the USA (e.g., Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Raytheon Co., United Technologies Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp.) work to prevent the USA government from officially recognizing this atrocity. Turkey has since the 1930s been using money in the USA to spread disinformation and prevent the truth from coming out. They pressured the State Department to get MGM studios to scrap making a movie on the subject (Forty Days of the Musa Dagh) and they fund professors in the USA who offer disinformation as history.

Add this to Nick Cohen’s indictment of Obama’s lack of liberal values, the engaging with the Burma junta and ignoring the pleas of Burmese democracy activist, Nyi Nyi Aung, who languishes in solitary confinement, the Iranian Green movement who shouted, “Obama, Obama – either you’re with them or you’re with us,” and his scrapping of the Bush’s missile defense to appease Putin, and one gets the full picture: Obama is no liberal or neocon.

Perhaps the next time a Fox News rightwinger bangs on with their triangulating nonsense about Obama being a “socialist,” one should issue the following retort: what sort of socialist allows Lockheed Martin to wag the dog?