Young Women Shocked By Antisemitism At Palestine Solidarity Campaign Event

A young lady went to a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event entitled “Is criticizing Israel antisemitic?”

What she witnessed was antisemitism, terror support and a desire for Israel to be destroyed.

anti-israel-pamphletsLast night in my home of Bristol I went to a an event entitled ‘’Is criticising Israel antisemitic’’ held by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, they were hosting Tony Greenstein, an activist who had been suspended from the Labour party for calling people ‘zionist rats’.

The event started with a man wearing a fabric white poppy on his blazer introducing us to the event and to Greenstein, he talked about the turn against Palestine activism. He talked about the zionist agenda, how zionists secretly control the media and have brainwashed us all to support Israel.

His central point was that Zionism, and he didn’t specify how he was defining ‘Zionism’, was a form of antisemetism. All Zionism is, for the uninformed, is the belief that Jews should have a national home where they can practice their right to self-determination. But he believed that it was a form of antisemetism, because it assumes that Jews are an ethnicity, in the same way that antisemitism does.

A young man carrying a few magazines spoke next, he actually had things to say related to the ‘’Is criticising Israel antisemitic’’ question the event was based around. He said the left should be careful not to rehash old antisemitic tropes or to claim that Israel is uniquely illegitimate as a state, moreso than any other state. The room laughed at him. Greenstein asked him if he came from a rival activist organisation, apparently ‘out of curiosity’, he was, the room laughed at him again. They also laughed at him for supporting the two-state solution, according to Greenstein and others the two-state solution is just another Zionist ploy. I wondered what they would rather instead. Greenstein re-iterated that unlike every other country in the world, Israel is uniquely illegitimate and has no legal right to exist.

A somewhat sombre moment came when a very old looking man came up and simply asked what actual proof they had of Zionists influencing the media, a woman came up and said that when she worked at ITV they got letters from the government offering guidance on what to broadcast. Paraphrasing: ‘’If this is what ITV gets, imagine what the BBC gets, where do you think they get these notes? they get them from them’’, pointing upwards as if to imply something. The room clapped, I didn’t know what they meant by ‘them’ but the rest of the rest of the room seemed to, I dreaded to think.

As the evening processed the discussion turned more towards the Labour party civil war between Jeremy Corbyn and the ‘moderates’, Greenstien insisted that the antisemitism furor was simply a ploy both to unseat Corbyn and to silence criticism of the state of Israel. ‘’Antisemitism is not a problem in the left, it is a lie created by Zionists, and we must never forget it’’.

Greenstein and few others at the event said that, although they disagree with Islamism, they stand behind Hamas, because they are the biggest resistance against Israel.

If you can’t tell by his name, Tony Greenstein is a Jew himself, so I would feel uncomfortable calling him an antisemite, but a lot of the stuff he said sounded very antisemitic.

As I left the event, a few people came up to me to thank me, but as I walked down the stairs outside a large man barged past me and shoved me to the side. He muttered ‘Jew bitch’ at me as he carried on.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, here is another account of the evening from a young lady who seems to identify as being on the Left, and was similarly shocked by what she saw.

Last night for the first time in my life I felt the genuine threat of antisemitism. The event was a discussion titled “Is criticising Israel antisemitic?” led by Tony Greenstein, the political activist, who was recently suspended from the Labour party.

But unfortunately the problematic nature of the discussion, and the affirmation of antisemitism in Bristol and further through the UK and Europe, was achieved not only through the views of Greenstein himself, but worsened by the booming, loud, obnoxious voices of drunken white men, with no affiliation to Israel personally but whose speech and actions made countering any point impossible.

Ultimately this is not a feminist issue. I went in to the meeting with criticism of the image used on the Facebook group (inserted above), and the antisemitic (NOT anti-Zionist but specifically antisemitic) connotations of equating Israel/Judaism with the power and wealth of America as well as the use of age old rhetoric of the corrupt, capitalist Jew.

I felt bold enough to make my point in front of these people (having got cocky from 11 likes on my comment on the event’s post on Facebook) but ultimately I was so overwhelmed with the threatening voices of those who were so ardently anti-Zionist, that I don’t believe they would have felt held to account by an accusation of antisemitism, and I found it impossible to speak. And in fact the entire status of antisemitism was countered by the claims of Greenstein that “anti-Semitism is a tool by the right to destabilise the left”.

This was countered by a young researcher who had spent her last year in Russia investigating Ashkenazi Jewry, and concluded that, far from a continuation of the Nazi regime, and far from the suggested fabricated right wing push towards antisemitism in the left, Jews have made aliyah for multiple reasons – not least of the rising threat of anti-Semitism. She quoted statistics for the move towards aliyah from Jews in France, (nearly 8,000 French Jews moved to Israel in the year following the Charlie Hebdo attack) and was met with palpable scoffs and laughter from the rest of the room. I’ve never witnessed intolerance and othering of the Jews, as was evident in this room. The lack of consideration for the plight of French Jewry was overwhelming, but with the separation of the pond, and overwhelming plight of the Palestinians dictating the view of the room, there was no room for an understanding of antisemitism and thus they concluded it could not exist.

But in hearing that “Palestinians do not need to be the sacrificial lamb to appease past Jewish suffering”, I was shocked, and not only at the belligerent disregard for the place of Israel in the hearts and lives of Holocaust survivors and victims of antisemitism that only felt sanctity in the state of Israel.

I am not one to blindly defend Israel, and I am not of the belief that Israel is blameless, but I am sure that antisemitism is a threat that needs to be addressed. And it’s being held up under the guise of anti-Israel, and allows for age old motifs of anti-Jewish stereotypes, then that rhetoric needs to be stopped before it is able to develop into a more powerful force.

11 thoughts on “Young Women Shocked By Antisemitism At Palestine Solidarity Campaign Event”

  1. Norman_In_New_York

    So Britons at large are turning against these scumbags. My heart bleeds for them. And where did the money for this event come from?

    1. where is the evidence that mainstream brit has turned against these scum?
      mainstream brits are these scum
      jew hate in britain is genetic

  2. this guy greenstein is a real piece of work
    yes, he does hate the jew
    i still dont get why labour has to suspend anyone for speech
    people should know what they are voting for…and labour is a race pimping party that plays to its base’s common denominator…islam’s hate for the jew who refuses to be a dhimmi
    the end

  3. “Palestinians do not need to be the sacrificial lamb to appease past Jewish suffering”,

    Apparently the “Palestinians” disagree. If they agreed, they’d stop celebrating their own deaths with sweets and candies.

    As for Tony Greenstein… he can go F*ck himself with a stick of plastique.

  4. Kathy Prendergast

    I don`t understand how anyone on the left could still be surprised at the naked anti-Semitism that exists within it and is widely tolerated. Marxism itself was founded by a man who hated Jews and called them `the worst of all people.` And the political left has been staunchly anti-Israel since the 1960s. I have had arguments about it with men similar to the ones the author describes; they get so angry you start to fear for your physical safety. If you dare to suggest that the history of the region is complicated and perhaps they should actually visit Israel and see what it`s really like themselves, before virtually condemning it to nuclear annihilation (and yes, I have heard these folks say things like that), they get positively apoplectic with rage. The left is a lost cause; I was practically raised in it and I gave up on it years ago.

    1. I was raised in it, and I too came to see the problems.
      The fact is, the Left has succeeded in marketing itself as the political side
      that cares – it cares about the poor; it cares about the oppressed; it
      cares about the minorities who suffer from discrimination and racism; it
      cares about the environment. These are all important, good issues to
      care about. That the slogan is mostly a lie, when you get down to it, is
      another matter.
      Young people care about these issues, as they should. They are also usually not very wise about how the world works, how economies work, and are not yet saddled with the distractions/labors of working for a living and caring for a family. So they are
      susceptible to this marketing campaign.
      The Left has also completely succeeding in marketing the Right as
      racist, blood sucking robber barons who would exploit the environment
      and kill off the poor and disadvantaged in work camps all for an extra
      20 bucks (which they roll into cigars). There is *some* truth to this –
      we all “saw” the industrial revolution era and the injustices committed
      then by unregulated capitalist industrialists, as well as the criminal,
      imperial blood-letting committed for gods, gold, and glory. Among Jews,
      there is particular wariness regarding good-old-boys clubs and
      antisemitism from the Christian Right. That the Right has largely moved
      past these attitudes (though not completely), and that the Left has been involved in plenty of its own racism at home and imperialism abroad, is again, another matter. So
      too, their predilection for supporting the most horrible, corrupt, fascist mass-murderers the world has ever seen, so long as it helps “the cause” and they aren’t Westerners, is also besides the point.
      So, you take a young person who cares about helping the less fortunate and
      the vulnerable, and they believe that the political Left is actually all about doing that stuff, rather than it largely being a con. When they experience the real attitudes of so many die-hard devotees on the Left, it rightly comes as a shock – it contradicts everything they’ve believed about politics.
      Only after getting some kind of shock like this, do they maybe start to dig deeper and discover just how far the corruption goes. For me, it was seeing how unfairly Israel was treated 15 years ago. It’s all far worse now than it was then.

  5. There is good news in here, though I’ll admit its a bit of a stretch.

    One sees the fundamentally dishonest lengths these anti-Semites need to go to in order to justify their bigoted views. There is no searching for truth or looking for common ground with this. Just blind hatred with made-up lies and heavily distorted garbage used to fuel this hatred. Its not pretty, but its important to realize just how ridiculously flimsy the foundation of their bigotry is. These Palestinian supporters are just another version of hate groups like the KKK.

    Sometimes it helps to know you are on the right side of history. Events like this one make it very clear these Palestinian supporters are on the wrong side of history.

    1. Sure, it’s obvious to you and me. But to them, with their beloved hatreds and biases, they “know” they “are on the right side of history”, expressing solidarity with those who are “poor”, “oppressed”, and “victimized” by an “evil regime”.
      And indeed, opposing cruel, criminal regimes and defending the poor, oppressed, hopeless, helpless victims of those regimes are truly worthy things to commit oneself to. It’s just that, the country they’re fingering isn’t at all what they claim it is, and the “innocents” they’re championing are very different from the picture they choose to maintain of them.
      Much as, if Jews were really murdering innocent babies to steal their blood, opposing them would be a righteous thing to do. But it just happens not to be true, and Jewish values are actually overwhelmingly against anything remotely like that kind of behavior. The first victim in a pogrom is truth.

  6. “If you can’t tell by his name, Tony Greenstein is a Jew himself, so I
    would feel uncomfortable calling him an antisemite, but a lot of the
    stuff he said sounded very antisemitic.”

    I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable at all calling him that.

    If someone says something antisemitic, then they shouldn’t get a pass merely because they are Jewish.

    I should also note that the other major falsehood they said was calling their anti Israel sentiments “criticism”.

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