Lauren Booth

Lauren Booth (Photo: © Unknown)

This week, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has revealed itself to be ethically compromised at the highest level.

In recent months it has become clear that the central office of the PSC, are increasingly pandering to the whims of Israeli hasbara activists. Joining with the likes of the rabid Zionist site Harry’s Place in efforts to silence some of this movement’s most outspoken and popular, thinkers.

Last week the British media carried a rare report into the pressure exerted on British news outlets including BBC, Sky News and Financial Times pro-Israeli lobbying group, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM). The report found that BICOM's efforts had produced results, in that major channels and papers had “changed their narrative” to meet the Zionist regime's demands. This week, we see the fruits of Zionist labours in a more surprising arena. Sarah Colborne, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, was quoted in the pro Israeli paper, the Jewish Chronicle, as supporting a boycott of the highly renowned musician and academic Gilad Atzmon. Atzmon was booked to perform in his professional capacity as a saxaphonist at an event celebrating political song in Bradford, called 'Raise your Banners.' The musician/author has recently published his best selling treatise on Jewish cultural identity called ‘The Wondering Who’. A work that, unlike Sarah Colborne, I have actually read, and can highly recommend, as it pulls no punches, when asking to what degree the racist idealogy - Zionism, when mixed with the Jewish sense of ‘Choseness’, is to blame for the existence of todays Apartheid Israel. It has been endorsed by some of the finest thinkers and writers on Israel/Palestine of our age.

But the subject matter alone (predictably) proved more than enough to have Atzmon, once again, falsely, branded an anti semite by the sections of the Jewish diaspora committed to stopping debate into their awkward, yet staunch, support for Israeli war crimes.

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Stephen Lendman

Is Israel a rogue state?

Rogue states spurn international law, treaties, conventions, and in Israel's case its own laws and Supreme Court decisions.

Daily examples offer proof, including from Ahmed el-Helah and Mariam Itani's new book titled, "The Suffering of the Palestinian Child under the Israeli Occupation," saying:

Over a million Palestinian children "live and suffer every moment of their lives under the painful reality of occupation."

Growing numbers are killed, injured, maimed, handicapped, arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. Most are impoverished and many hungry.

● "What about those who have lost their parents, friends, brothers and sisters due to" continuous Israeli oppression?
● "What about the children who live in fear and who suffer distress or cannot sleep, who feel unprotected in the face of a ruthless and arrogant Israeli occupation?"
● They're Palestine's children, out of sight and mind to most people everywhere. Who outside Palestine understands their suffering?
● Who can imagine the indifference of world leaders, supporting a ruthless, racist occupier, disdainful of human and civil rights?
● Who understands enduring daily assaults, police state justice, and fear of being bombed, shot, or otherwise harmed? How do you comfort young children to hold up in the face of what adults can't tolerate?

From September 29, 2000 (the start of the second Intifada) through December 31, 2008, Palestinian children witnessed around 5,900 killings and another 35,000 Israeli caused injuries. [If Americans Knew]

During Israel's war on Gaza, another 1,400 died and thousands sustained injuries, many of them permanently disabling.

Children enduring Israeli atrocities "lose their childhood and innocence, just as they lose hope and joy in their lives."

The occupation's extreme harshness causes physical and emotional problems. It also "ignite(s) the spirit of resistance and deepen(s) hatred" against a rogue oppressor disdainful of their rights.

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Evelyn Hecht-Galinski

Der Publizist Henryk M. Broder wird im "Manifest"
des norwegischen Attentäters zitiert. (Foto: BTS)

Henryk M. Broder hat es also geschafft! Er hat einen (mörderischen) Fan in Norwegen, der ihn vor seiner grauenvollen, unvorstellbaren Bluttat in einem schon monatelang geplanten "Manifest" zitiert. Dass Broder Fans hat, wissen wir. Diese Tatsache an sich ist normal in der heutigen Zeit. Schließlich hat Thilo Sarrazin auch viele Fans.

Gab nicht Broder einen an ihn gedachten Journalistenpreis des Deutschen Kulturrates aus Protest gegen "antidemokratische Äußerungen" gegen den Besuch von Thilo Sarrazin in Kreuzberg zurück? Ist dieser Schritt nicht die Konsequenz einer Zusammengehörigkeit zweier "Kleingeister"? Wird Broder im "Manifest" des mutmaßlichen Rechtsterroristen Anders Berhring Breivik nicht mit den Passagen aus dem "De Volkskrant"-Interview zitiert, dass junge freiheitsliebende Menschen Europa lieber verlassen sollten?

Ich zitiere weiter aus dem Berliner Tagesspiegel, einer Zeitung des Holtzbrinck-Verlages, für den Broder als Gastkommentator tätig war, wie folgt: Der Autor oder die Autoren des "Manifests", dessen Authentizität die norwegische Polizei inzwischen laut einer "Reuters"-Meldung bestätigt hat, zieht Broder vor allem als Kronzeugen dafür heran, dass sich Europa widerstandslos dem Islam unterordne. Dabei zitiert das "Manifest" einen drastischen Vergleich aus dem Broder-Gespräch mit der niederländischen Zeitung: Der in Europa dominante Ethos werde "perfekt ausgedrückt von einer dummen blonden Frau, mit der der Autor kürzlich diskutierte. Sie sagte, dass es manchmal besser sei, sich vergewaltigen zu lassen als schwere Verletzungen zu riskieren, weil man sich wehrt. Es sei manchmal besser, den Kampf zu vermeiden als das Risiko einzugehen, getötet zu werden."

Hier allerdings hakt Broder ein: "Nur ein Detail stimmt nicht", schreibt er in seiner Stellungnahme. "Ich habe mit keiner blonden Frau diskutiert, die vergewaltigt wurde, ich habe aus irgendeinem Artikel zitiert, in dem eine vergewaltigte Frau darüber räsonierte, dass es besser wäre, sich nicht zu wehren, wenn man mit dem Leben davonkommen will." Davon abgesehen, so Broder weiter in seiner Stellungnahme, stimmten aber insgesamt die ihm zugeschriebenen Zitate im "Manifest." Ende des Original Textes im Tagesspiegel.

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Gilad Atzmon

On the South Bank with the Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
Harry Potter and West Wing actor Jason Isaacs, Normandy
veteran, Kenneth Riley, Holocaust survivors Zigi Skipper
and Ben Helfgott and Searchlight's Nick Lowles.

Hope not Hate is presented as a British anti racist/anti Fascist organsisation but in fact it is an offshoot of the notoriously Zionist Searchlight magazine. As if this is not enough, its leader Nick Lowles also co-posts on Harry’s Place, the infamous anti-Muslim site and, according to Wikipedia, nominee for the Islamic Human Rights Commission's 'Annual Islamophobia Awards' 2006 (won by none other than Condoleezza Rice). Harry’s Place is known as a Hasbara pro-war Neo-Con outlet and is, in my opinion, far more dangerous of any English right wing party. Harry’s Place openly serves foreign interests, and promotes clear racist ideology in clear opposition to everything we hold to be associated with Western pluralism and tolerance.

Could you imagine any humanist, anti-racist posting news items on an Islamophobic Neocon, Zionist pro-war site? Well, I suppose this is the price that we pay in Britain for turning a blind eye for so long to Zionist stooges.

But now their game is over. I will not be silent about this or anything else - and I am not alone. Despite not being a member of any party, league or group and although I speak with my own voice, I am surrounded by the most supportive people. Hundreds of thousands of them who, just like me, believe in Truth, Peace and Justice, as opposed to the Lies, Falsification and Deceit of Hope not Hate, Nick Lowles, Harry’s Place and the rest.

So let us be clear about it: To oppose racism means also to oppose Jewish racism and Jewish supremacy. To oppose racism means to say YES to hope but NO to Zionist hate mongers such as Lowles and Harry’s Place.

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Paul Craig Roberts

On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35% of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private banks that hold the troubled sovereign debt from Greece, Italy, and Spain must accept part of the cost of their bailout by writing off some of the debt. The private banks want to avoid any losses either by forcing the Greek, Italian, and Spanish governments to make good on the bonds by imposing extreme austerity on their citizens, or by having the European Central Bank print euros with which to buy the sovereign debt from the private banks. Printing money to make good on debt is contrary to the ECB’s charter and especially frightens Germans, because of the Weimar experience with hyperinflation.

Obviously, the German government got the message from the orchestrated failed bond auction. As I wrote at the time, there is no reason for Germany, with its relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the troubled countries, not to be able to sell its bonds.

If Germany’s creditworthiness is in doubt, how can Germany be expected to bail out other countries? Evidence that Germany’s failed bond auction was orchestrated is provided by troubled Italy’s successful bond auction two days later.

Strange, isn’t it. Italy, the largest EU country that requires a bailout of its debt, can still sell its bonds, but Germany, which requires no bailout and which is expected to bear a disproportionate cost of Italy’s, Greece’s and Spain’s bailout, could not sell its bonds.

In my opinion, the failed German bond auction was orchestrated by the US Treasury, by the European Central Bank and EU authorities, and by the private banks that own the troubled sovereign debt.

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