Mick Hartley

The fight against Oswald Mosley's fascists has been crystallised in memory as the 1936 Battle of Cable Street in the East End. As Michael Crowley informs us, though, the struggle was playing out in the early and mid-1930s in Manchester, where the local Jews successfully organised and defeated Mosley on his home ground, in the the face of intimidation and violence – with little or no support from the left.

Worth a read for the historical background. Crowley's conclusion:

In the shape of the anti-Israel movement, Britain’s Jews today face a different threat. But it’s one that bears comparison with the Blackshirted menace that once stalked Britain’s streets. Once again, Jewish people find themselves confronted with a movement shot through with anti-Semitism. A movement that wants to drive Jewish people out of public spaces, just as it wants to drive Israel off the map. A movement that wants to efface all expressions of Jewishness.

In 1930s Manchester, Cheetham’s Jewish community, led by young Communist radicals, fought back. They did so courageously and determinedly. But they also did so alone, without the support of the mainstream left. There is a danger that Britain’s Jews now find themselves in a similar position, left alone to face the oldest hatred in its new Islamist and identitarian guise.

They need the solidarity of those outside the Jewish community more than ever. To defend synagogues, Jewish schools and businesses. To defend Jewish people from the Israelophobia that now seems to grip a significant minority of the population, much as fascism once did.

The legacy of Cheetham’s struggle against the Blackshirts is one of courage, conviction and resistance. Young radicals fought back against the most reactionary ideology of the era. It’s time we started doing the same.

Photographer Steve Hammond, in another Cafe Royal Books production:

[Photos © Cafe Royal Books/Steve Hammond]

In honor of Lou Reed’s birthday, Keith has recorded a cover of “I'm Waiting for the Man.” The digital single & music video are out now and featured on the upcoming album ‘The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed’. Vinyl & CD available at fine independent record shops… pic.twitter.com/dxmveZazNc

— Keith Richards (@officialKeef) March 1, 2024

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Full video here.

A pedant writes – "I'm Waiting for my Man”, surely.

This, the hideous suffering of the children of Yemen caught up in a proxy war between Iran and SA, has been going on for years. Where is the outrage, the anguish, the mass protests outside embassies and at University campuses? Why does no one care? https://t.co/OJqKCFM5qk

— Marika Cobbold (@Marikacobbold) March 1, 2024

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See also: the Houthi Hypocrisy.

We wanted to see if there was a connection between the justification of Hamas’ atrocities on October 7 and a trendy campus ideology that portrays Jews as “white” and “oppressors” and Israel as “colonizers” and an “imperialist” force.

Our recent conversations with students at the… pic.twitter.com/VpnmuKHS8o

— Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (@jilvorg) February 29, 2024

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"Students enrolled in courses influenced by postmodernism, Critical Theory, and its offshoots, such as Postcolonial Theory within the Humanities and Social Sciences, are taught to view the world through a simplistic societal model. This model categorizes individuals by their identity traits, ranking them as either “oppressors” or “oppressed” in an ongoing conflict for power.

"These divisive ideas have gained dominance in Western societies, posing a threat to their foundational liberal values."

An enlightening report from Yigal Carmon at MEMRI on the two faces of Qatar:

The Al-Jazeera TV network is an arm of the Qatari regime. It is owned by the government and carries out its foreign policy by means of indoctrination of the Arabic-speaking masses worldwide. Al-Jazeera, therefore, should not be discussed as a means of telecommunications, but instead as an unyielding and forceful political tool of Qatari foreign policy under the guise of a mass media network….

Qatar is a Wahhabi/Muslim Brotherhood extremist entity in the guise of a supposedly modern nation state. Wahhabism is an 18th-century movement espousing a return to 7th-century Islam, including uniting the Muslim world under the banner of Jihad. Indeed, former Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Aal Thani (father of the current Emir) praised himself as being directly descended from 18th-century cleric Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, the hardline ideological founder of Wahhabism.

Qatar's implementation of its doctrine of Wahhabi/Muslim Brotherhood Islam is three-pronged: it promotes Islamist terrorist organizations worldwide; it strives to topple secular authoritarian regimes in the Arab and Muslim world under the guise of fighting dictatorships; and it uses its wealth for educational, social, religious and political movements in both the East and the West in order to expand its influence and further its aims.

In order to disguise its Wahhabi/Muslim Brotherhood goals, Qatar has adopted a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde persona….

Meanwhile, in Newham:

A council meeting in Newham, East London was suspended after Jewish councillor Joshua Garfield was hissed at by attendees in the public gallery.

Garfield, a Jewish Labour councillor for Stratford and the only Jewish councillor in the borough, approached the microphone at a Newham council meeting to contribute to the discussion on setting the budget, but was met with the sound of hissing and jeering.

David Rose at the JC:

Members of Parliament from both main parties have revealed new details of the threats and abuse they have faced for supporting Israel after October 7, saying that they and their colleagues have been forced to adopt unprecedented security measures.

One Labour MP told the JC of an anti-Israel mob that pickets his weekly advice surgery, chanting the genocidal slogan, “from the river to the sea”. A Conservative MP, meanwhile, received emails calling him a “Zionist c***” and expressing the hope that his children will die….

Dame Margaret Hodge, the veteran Jewish Labour MP for Barking, who earlier in her career faced down threats from the extreme right-wing British National Party, told the JC she had never known a period comparable to that since October 7.

“Every time something happens, there’s been a spike,” she said. “But this has gone on and on. I’ve had to have plainclothes police officers accompany me everywhere I go in my constituency. My staff have dealt with most of the abuse, and they have been fantastic. If I’d looked at all of this material, I’d have gone crazy.”…

Tory backbencher Andrew Percy said that as a Jewish MP, he had felt safer on a recent visit to Israel than he did on returning to Britain. In the past, he has had to take out restraining orders against individuals who had abused and threatened him in his constituency. “One woman called me ‘f***ing Israeli scum’, hit my arm, then said now she would have to wash herself because she had touched me,” he said.

Since October 7, Percy said, he has faced a continuing torrent of abuse. One message he showed the JC told him to “leave my country, pack your bags, go to Israel, I hope your kids suffer the same fate u wish on others”. Another told him “put on the uniform of the IDF and f*** off to Israel.” He had also received messages that denied the Holocaust, asserted that “no one cares about the Jews” and called him a “Zionist c***” and a “lying fascist bigot” who should “tramped in the gutter” and “burn in hell”.

Percy told the JC: “I’ve given up forwarding most of them to the police because there’s nothing they can do.”

He has been given enhanced security but remains fearful that “something really bad is going to happen – to a politician or the Jewish community. I worry that something is going to blow”. Percy blamed the police for failing to take decisive action against hate speech when the protest marches began after October 7, which had seemed to legitimise them.

It's clearly vital for these people to deny any Jewish connection with the land of Israel.

Former Lebanese MP Fadi Al-Awar: "The [Zionist] entity finds itself in a confusing psychological state. This is why you can see today that these settlers have no faith in their leaders. This is the main reason a lot of them are leaving the settlements and the country. They live in a country that offers them nothing but death, because they are plunderers. It is natural that they would die, because they are plundering other people's rights. How long will they stay there? Eventually, they will flee to where they came from."

Interviewer: "Do you think that this is an irrefutable fact? Will they return to where they came from?"

Al-Awar: "This is an imperative process in history."

Interviewer: "These are the historical facts."

Al-Awar: "Absolutely. It is an imperative historical process. Europe resolved its problem with [the Jews] by throwing them our way. Now, the [Jews] want to go back. Perhaps Europe, the U.S., and all the countries that support Israel are doing this so they will not get [the Jews] back.

"The [Jewish] people are incapable of integrating in society. Their entire history and record of human relations are black. These relations are not the foundation for understandings in the societies they live in. They moved from the Khazar countries to Europe, and from there to us in Palestine. Now the direction is the other way around, but it will take time. People who study Jewish mentality and the Talmudic mentality of the Jews know that they are capable of doing worse [than what they are doing in Gaza]."

Interviewer: "Their faith allows them to kill children."

Al-Awar: "Exactly. This is what is happening in Gaza, and this is what they were doing to the Europeans before they were banished our way."

Or try this MEMRI clip with Fatah official Yasser Abu Sido on Egyptian TV:

Why did the Holocaust happen? I am not a fan of Hitler, but when Hitler perpetrated the Holocaust, he had obvious reasons. The Jews and global Zionism were offered various places in the world – in Argentina, in Uganda, in the north of Sinai, in the south of Iraq… But they chose Palestine, for other reasons that we may mention later…

It's like the Al-Ahli Hospital story back in October, when the Israeli bombing caused horror and outrage across the world – except it didn't happen. A stray Islamic Jihad missile hit the car park. Hamas news reports hit the headlines, and the truth came limping along afterwards. 

So yesterday we were treated to headlines, courtesy of Hamas, about the IDF shooting and killing some hundred or so Gazans trying to get to some aid trucks. "Despicable", "a new low", were typical comments. We waited for a while to hear what really happened:

Dozens of Palestinians were killed Thursday in Gaza City as they swarmed aid trucks that entered the city.

Hamas blamed the IDF for the deaths. The military said most of the casualties were caused by a stampede and being run over by the supply vehicles. Gunmen also opened fire in the area as they looted the supplies.

The army said it did not fire at the crowd rushing the main aid convoy. It acknowledged that troops opened fire on several Gazans who moved toward soldiers and a tank at an IDF checkpoint, endangering soldiers, after they had rushed the last truck in the convoy further south….

The Israel Defense Forces published drone video showing thousands of people swarming around the aid trucks as they reached the area in northern Gaza. In some cases, the vehicles continued to try and push past the crowds.

The trucks were being driven by “private contractors,” the IDF said.

According to an initial IDF probe of the crush, the vast majority of the casualties were a result of trampling and being struck by the aid trucks.

The incident began at around 4 a.m., when some 30 trucks carrying humanitarian aid arrived at the coast of Gaza City, to deliver food to Palestinians in the Rimal neighborhood.

Thousands of Palestinians rushed the trucks after they passed an IDF checkpoint in central Gaza, leading to a stampede in which dozens of Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded, some after being run over by the trucks, according to the probe.

The IDF’s initial investigation found that some of the trucks managed to continue further north, where armed men reportedly opened fire at the convoy near Rimal and looted it.

Dozens of Palestinians who rushed the last truck in the convoy, further south, began to move toward an IDF tank and troops stationed at the military’s checkpoint, the investigation found.

An officer stationed in the area ordered soldiers to fire warning shots in the air as the Palestinians were within a few dozen meters, as well as gunfire at the legs of those who continued to move toward the troops, the probe said.

The IDF said that fewer than 10 of the casualties were a result of Israeli fire.

The IDF has coordinated several aid deliveries to northern Gaza in recent weeks, although this one was larger than usual. It said it would now look for a solution to prevent such incidents from happening again and was conducting probes into the incident.

The story has now largely disappeared from the headlines, as the less exciting truth has dampened the initial barely-disguised glee at this further Israeli outrage. 

Who do you believe, then? An Islamist group that makes no secret of its strategy to kill as many Jews as possible and to destroy Israel with extreme violence, and which welcomes the death of as many Gaza civilians as possible to provoke a world-wide backlash against the Jewish state…or the IDF? For most major news outlets here the answer's clear enough. The Hamas version is given priority as the default truth, while further down there may be some brief mention of a different IDF story. 

It's a strange war where the "attackers" do their best to minimise civilian casualties, while the "defenders" want to see as many dead as possible.