The Israel lobby is at it again. The Israel-supporting council in Barnet, long an epicentre of the antisemitism scam, has approved a motion declaring anti-Zionism to be antisemitism. The motion targets the Green party’s landmark declaration that Zionism is racism.
Anti-Zionism is opposition to the racist colonial ideology that has led to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its ongoing slaughter and violent displacement of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. Antisemitism is hatred of Jewish people for being Jewish. Many Jews are anti-Zionist and many Zionists are not Jews, but Barnet council works from the unfit, Israel-protecting, so-called ‘IHRA’ definition – which doesn’t define and whose creator says is used to prevent opposition to Israel’s crimes.
The weasel-worded title of Barnet’s motion – “Antisemitism is racism” – was a transparent tactic attempting to force every councillor to support it, but was transparently a cynical veil over its real attack on anti-Zionism.
Contempt and condescension
Turn Left‘s Curtis Daly and Kernow Damo’s Damien Willey have broadcast footage of the antisemitic contempt, condescension, evasion and nonsense spouted by Barnet councillors to an anti-Zionist Jewish questioner who dared challenge the council’s declaration. Daly also interviewed Barnet’s only Green councillor, Charli Thompson, about the abusive conduct of Barnet’s Labour councillors:
The Barnet nonsense forms part of a sewage-flood of smears directed at the Greens since their ‘Zionism is racism’ declaration. The abuse has backfired, sending the Greens higher in the polls.
as ! have been told barnet is the new Gants Hill
https://www.ilfordrecorder.co.uk/lifestyle/21200016.east-end-essex-story-redbridges-jews/
Absurd! If anyone should tell me ‘anti-zionism is antisemitism’ I will require a coherent argument in support of the contention. Thus far, the UK has found itself shackled at the outset by the accusation that even to discuss the idea that ‘zionism is racism’ is in and of itself antisemitism. Whereupon the mere idea can be shut down, as so often upon the BBC. Much like the Globe finds itself under the fascist fist of ‘American Exceptionalism,’ the UK, increasingly, is finding itself having to fight through a disingenuous cloak of ‘israeli exceptionalism.’