Posts Tagged ‘British Mandate’


March 18, 2018










November 17, 2017





Political and Corporate Corruption in Iran


Iran Diverse and More Tolerant than Expected




The Balfour Declaration against Wishes Diaspora Jews




Suppression of Alternative Media by Western Neoliberal Elite


The Censorship of Alex Salmond by the Beeb



Which was a sheer, blatant, unashamed lie.



So more hypocrisy and scaremongering. No change, there then!

Galloway and Press TV


The Anti-Muslim Right and al-Jazeera


The War on Domestic Alternative News








Sargon of Akkad Defends Internet Personality’s Approving Comments on the Holocaust

October 30, 2017

Well, not the real Sargon of Akkad, one of the great founders of Assyrian civilisation in ancient Mesopotamia, obviously. He’s been dead for about 3,000 years.

No, this Sargon of Akkad is a British vlogger from Swindon, real name Carl Benjamin, who was a major figure in the internet sceptics’ movement. Unfortunately, he moved from simply vlogging on subjects like atheism and scepticism, to becoming a mouthpiece for all manner of extreme right-wing views. I have a feeling he’s one of those people, who consider themselves politically moderate, while pushing all manner of racist, misogynist and generally politically extremely illiberal bilge. I think he’s turned up recently to at least one Alt Right or manospherian conferences.

In this very short little video, Kevin Logan calls him out for his defence of some truly astonishingly horrific comments by another right-wing blogger, Mouthy Buddha. Mouthy Buddha claimed that Hitler was very lenient with the Jews in the Holocaust, and ‘was a decent man’. And, oh yes, that the Jews got what they wanted after the war – a Jewish homeland – because of the Shoah.

Sargon goes on to say that Mouthy Buddha ‘did nothing wrong’ and that he was ‘steel-manning’ the argument for the Holocaust. Ominously, he goes on to say that he intends to do a series on ‘the Jewish question’.

Logan has responded by intercutting Sargon’s comments with footage from Mouthy Buddha himself, and a film clip of a bloke on a train saying exactly what these views about the Holocaust are: ‘Bullsh*t’.

He ends by putting up in front of Sargon’s face the words ‘You F***ing Pr*ck!’

Sorry for the language, peeps, but I think that the obscenity is entirely justified in the context of rebutting an obscene view. And the attitude that Hitler was somehow humane in his maltreatment of the Jews is far more obscene than any foul language or profanity.

The ‘steel-manning’ Sargon refers to is supposedly a rhetorical device in which one tries to undermine one’s opponent’s argument by putting in even stronger terms, as opposed to ‘straw-manning’, which is deliberately misstating it in far weaker terms. I hadn’t heard of ‘steel-manning’ before, and I don’t think many other people have either. One of the commenters on Logan’s video on YouTube states that it was thunk up by an internet group, and isn’t recognised by professional philosophers and scholars of logic and rhetoric.

There was nothing humane or restrained about the Nazis’ brutalisation of the Jews. Nothing at all. And the evidence for their extreme cruelty is so widespread and well-known that it isn’t necessary to provide any sources for it. All you have to do is go and look at any of the books on the Third Reich or the Holocaust by a mainstream publisher to see for yourself how horrific the Holocaust was.

As for the ‘Jews’ getting what they wanted from the Holocaust in the foundation of Israel as an independent state three years after Nazi Germany’s defeat, in 1948, it’s true that some Zionist groups and organisations were certainly more than happy to collaborate with the Nazis in the hope of creating further Jewish emigration to Palestine, such as during the brief Ha’avara agreement and the Sterngang. That’s established historical fact. It’s acknowledge by Zionist historians, like David Cesarani. It is only apparently denied by some Zionist groups, who attempt to defend themselves from the charge of collaboration by smearing those, who raise the issue of ‘anti-Semites’.

However, the Zionists were only one section of the Jewish community. The vast majority of Jews wanted to remain in the countries of their birth, as fellow citizens with the same rights and privileges as their gentile fellow countrymen. And they fought hard and bitterly against the Nazis and the other Fascist, anti-Semitic regimes. Those Zionists, who collaborated with the Nazis are entirely unrepresentative of the Jewish people as a whole. This has been pointed out again and again by anti-Zionists, including self-respecting Jewish scholars and activists like Tony Greenstein.

But Israel as a settler colony for European Jews was founded before the Holocaust, after Britain obtained control of Palestine during the period of the Mandate granted by the League of Nations. The followed the Balfour Declaration, in which the British Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, pledged that the British Empire would support a Jewish state in the area.

So Mouthy Buddha’s very, very wrong there. Norman Finkelstein and other anti-Zionist writers have pointed out how the Holocaust has been exploited by Israel and its supporters to garner international support, and that, quite understandably, Jewish emigration to Palestine did increase after the War. But reputable historians have also pointed out that during the War comparatively few Jews went to Palestine. The majority fled elsewhere, particularly to America.

As for writing blog posts about ‘the Jewish Question’, there is no question at all about the Holocaust. I’ve already blogged about how an American judge in California officially ruled that the evidence for the Holocaust was so plentiful that it could not reasonably be doubted. The same should go for the brutality of the Nazis and their collaborators, who instituted and conducted it.

It is, however, entirely fair and reasonable to discuss the historical complicity of various Zionist groups and individual Zionists, who hoped to exploit Nazi and anti-Semitic persecution generally to support their political goals of an independent Jewish homeland in Palestine, but this is very different from claiming that the Jews as a whole were somehow complicit in their own persecution. And it is this latter claim Mouthy Buddha has apparently made here, and it can rightly be attacked as anti-Semitic.

I am absolutely astonished that anyone outside of the various Nazi groups and their own twisted, ahistorical worldview, could ever make those comments, and if they were intended as a rhetorical tactic, it was certainly a poor one. Not least because of the way such comments and will be used by the extreme Right to encourage support. But that’s if Mouthy Buddha’s remarks were simply a piece of ill-judged rhetoric as Sargon says. But from the looks of it, it doesn’t seem that it was. Either way, Sargon is wrong about Mouthy Buddha having done nothing wrong. His comments were abhorrent and dangerous, and he should never have made them. The Alt Right have risen to prominence through their use of the internet. They and their vile views should be attacked and refuted at every turn, not given more ammunition to assault democracy and decency.

Counterpunch: The More Young Jewish Americans Find Out About Israel, the More They Despise It

July 2, 2017

On Wednesday Counterpunch published a very interesting article by Jonathan Cook about the way Israel’s attempts to promote its image to Jewish American youngsters, and encourage them to settle there, is backfiring spectacularly. He discusses the various books that have been written to deny the very existence in history of the Palestinians and their connection with the land. These included the book, From Time Immemorial, which claimed that the Palestinians were recent immigrants from the Ottoman Empire. Norman Finkelstein, one of the great Jewish American critics of Zionism and Israel, tore that one to shreds when he was a doctoral student.

Now Brand Israel, an Israeli PR group, has found that many young people taking up the heritage tours offered by Israel to American Jews have taken the opportunity to make their own, unscheduled and decidedly unapproved tours of the occupied West Bank. And they are very definitely not impressed with what they’ve seen of the Israeli treatment of the indigenous population.

Cook writes






He also notes that when Israel passed a resolution saying that those who supported the Boycott movement against Israel wouldn’t be allowed in, hundreds of youngsters due to go on an upcoming Birthright tour signed a petition asking if that included them.

Cook also discusses the Sumud Freedom Camp, a joint project in the West Bank between anti-racist Israelis, foreign Jews and the Palestinians, to protest nonviolently against Israel’s maltreatment of the Palestinians. The camp has been repeatedly torn down by the Israeli armed forces, and this has further reinforced the negative opinion the Jews working at the camp have of the Israeli military. One American Jewish woman wrote a piece in the Israeli media about how her experience with the armed forces had shown her that they weren’t superheroes who’d protect her from harm.

Cook concludes




Norman Finkelstein has also predicted that the links between American Jews and Israel will gradually wither away. He and other Jewish critics of Zionism have pointed out that Israel only became important to American Jews, and was only supported by American Conservatives, after it successfully fought of the Arabs during the Six Day War. Before then, Israel was very much peripheral to American Jewish concerns.

Tony Greenstein, whose blog regularly tears into racists, Zionists, Fascists and Conservatives, also covered this issue. He wrote

It’s an ill wind that blows no good. Despite the adoption of the new fake definition of anti-Semitism and the attempt to depict anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic, the truth has a way of getting through. The American Jewish community is the most valuable to Israel, since it does its diplomatic bidding as well as helping to fund the pariah state.

What a surprise it must therefore be to Israel’s veteran propagandists, the Hasbarists who cry ‘anti-Semitism’ at the drop of a hat, that young American Jews no longer feel an affinity with Zionism and Israel’s racial nationalism. Settling other people’s land, seeing the vast disparity between poor Palestinian peasants and the rich and lush settlements isn’t a winner amongst progressive young Jews.

The far-Right messianism that believes in a racially pure Israel and building a 3rd temple as the way to encourage the return of the Messiah doesn’t hold too much attraction to secular Jewish kids.

The alliance with the anti-Semitic Christian fundamentalists like Pastor John Hagee of Christian United for Israel isn’t a vote winner either.


As for the Israeli armed forces not being the gallant heroes ready to defend Jews the world over against oppression and genocide, Mr Greenstein has published very many articles on his blog showing that Zionists have many times shown themselves to be completely indifferent to Jewish suffering, unless the Jews being victimised are prepared to immigrate to Israel. In one essay on the heroic resistance against the Nazis of the Warsaw Uprising, he stated that most of the real resistance was done by the Jewish Socialist party and groups, who wished to defend the right of ordinary, working class, Yiddish-speaking Jews to live in what they saw as their historic homeland, Poland. This pieces is particularly interesting, as he quotes one of the heroes of the Uprising, Marek Edelman, who took over its leadership. Edelman’s part in the resistance against the Nazis has been downplayed, because he wasn’t impressed with the way Israel treats the Palestinians and said so. A few years ago he stated that the Palestinian Intifada showed the same spirit as the fighters in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw.

It’s not hard to see how that might upset patriotic Zionists like Netanyahu’s crew.

Moreover, the early European Jewish colonists in Palestine were quite prepared to use deadly force against other Jews, if it would serve their ends. In one of his other posts, he describes the destruction of a British transport ship carrying Jewish refugees to Israel by the Zionist authorities during the War. The ship was due to arrive in Israel, but the British authorities in the Mandate decided that they should be taken to Mauritius instead. So the Zionists deliberately targeted and sank the boat, killing its passengers, to show their anger at being denied fresh colonists.

It struck me reading that, and other accounts of the brutality inflicted by the Zionists on non-Zionist Jews, that there is an entire book to be written there. The Israeli lobby has worked hard to make sure that their bogus definition of anti-Semitism, which includes criticism of the state of Israel, is the only one accepted. But as they have vilified and attacked other Jews, who do not share their support for Israel to the point, where many Jews feel that they particularly attack Jewish critics, it could be argued that they are also guilty of what they so frequently accuse genuinely anti-racist critics of Israel.

As for Brand Israel, I suspect that many young people, Jews, gentiles or whatever, would become even more sceptical towards Israel if they found out how the authorities were trying to use PR to raise its image. A certain section of the left, and the public generally, has always been against spin and PR. Way back in the 1990s the American comedian, Bill Hicks, joked about the way the PR industry really couldn’t understand him or people like him. Instead of realising that he was genuinely against the right-wing politics of Reagan’s America, and the power of big corporations, he joked that they really believed that he was trying to tap into some demographic as a sales strategy. That was nearly 30 years ago.

And if anything, people have become more cynical since. One of the reasons why the British public became increasingly hostile to New Labour was because the very high profile it gave to spin and PR, at the expense of actually listening to what the public really wanted. Everything had to be carefully scripted and micro-managed to make sure that people were ‘on message’.

And I dare say something similar has happened in America. It’s why many Americans voted for Trump over Killary, as Trump appeared to be more authentic, and more sympathetic to the needs and fears of ordinary Americans. They were wrong. He wasn’t, and isn’t. And the results are disastrous for the American working and middle classes. But for a moment he appeared different from the crafted spin of an increasingly distant political class, whether Democrat or Republican.

The mass surge in support for Bernie Sanders in America and Jeremy Corbyn here in Britain is partly due to the fact that they are genuine in their desire to improve conditions for ordinary working people. They aren’t the smooth-talking products of spin merchants, desperate to appear to be doing something for the public, but who are really deeply opposed to doing anything that will threaten the neoliberal status quo and alienate their parties’ corporate donors.

I suspect that if more people, who are currently pro-, or just indifferent to Israel, were to find out that the country is deliberately using PR to mould the public’s impressions of the country, and counter negative publicity, like the footage of the Israeli armed forces killing innocent civilians in Gaza, they’d also become sceptical of the country. If only in the sense that they wouldn’t automatically take anything its politicians and spokespeople said for granted.

Lobster on the Real Reason Britain Didn’t Deport Nazi War Criminal to the Soviet Union in ’70s

March 14, 2017

I found this little snippet in Lobster 41 for Summer, 2001, on reason Britain refused to deport Anton Gecas, a Nazi collaborator and war criminal, to the Soviet Union in the 1970s: he was a British intelligence and Special Branch spy during the 1974 miners’ strike. Here’s the article.

Gecas and Special Branch

A wonderful example of the reach and power of intelligence connections was provided in January. Why did the British state refuse to extradite Anton Gecas, the WW2 Lithuanian war criminal, to the Soviet Union in 1976? Turns out not only had Gecas worked for SIS at the end of WW2, he’d worked for Special Branch in the 1970s, snitching on the miners during the miners’ strike of 1974!

A report in the Edinburgh daily paper, the Scotsman (15 January):

‘Although Gecas was named by the Nazi-hunting organisation the Simon Wiesenthal Centre as the most wanted Nazi war criminal alive, a two-year investigation by the Special War Crimes Unit concluded that there was insufficient evidence. The decision, announced by the Crown Office in February 1994 caused many people to suspect that Gecas was enjoying protection. According to a source close to the inquiry, investigators were perturbed to discover that witnesses who had freely given evidence against Gecas in the defamation trial [brought by Gecas in 1992] were reluctant to testify in a criminal court or claimed they had forgotten much of the detail of the alleged atrocities. The source said: “I have absolutely no doubt that someone or something got to them before we did” (emphasis added).

‘Red’ Ken Livingstone devotes a couple of chapters in his 1987 book, Livingstone’s London, to describing and condemning the recruitment of Nazi war criminals by British and US intelligence as part of their campaign against Communism. He discusses how many of them were given jobs in the mining industry, where naturally there was friction, not least because the Nazis’ SS and other Third Reich tattoos were clearly visible in the pithead showers.

The Leninist newt-fancier was loudly denounced by the Blairites last year as an anti-Semite, because he dared to state the historical fact that the Israelis and Nazis initially collaborated in Jewish emigration to Palestine, then under the British mandate. As his book shows, the man Private Eye calls ‘Leninspart’ is very far from an anti-Semite. He was right about Zionist collaboration with the Nazis, as amply demonstrated by John Newsinger in Lobster. And he’s right about the British and American spooks’ recruitment of Nazis. They were here, in England, and spying on decent Socialists and trade unionists.

Counterpunch on Theresa May’s Plans to Celebrate the Balfour Declaration

March 7, 2017

Yesterday Counterpunch published a powerful piece by Robert Fisk, ‘Who Could Ever Feel Pride in the Balfour Declaration?’ attacking Theresa May’s plans to celebrate the centenary of the British Prime Minister’s declaration during the First World War to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Fisk is a journalist with the Independent, where the piece was originally published, and a veteran critic of Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the country’s indigenous, Arab population. He begins the article




He states that Balfour issued the Declaration in order to convince American and Russian Jews to continue to press for continuing the war against Germany, after Russia was forced to sue for peace the same year in 1917. He points out that Britain should, by rights, apologise to the millions of Arab refugees created by the Declaration, as Britain has done for the Slave Trade and the Irish Potato Famine. But he predicts that Britain won’t, because Theresa May needs Israel far more than she needs the support of the Arabs. Much of the article is really a discussion of David Cronin’s book Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel. Cronin’s an Irish journalist living Brussels, who very definitely despises anti-Semitism and Holocaust-deniers, and who faces up to the issue of the support of Mufti of Jerusalem for the Nazis and the Holocaust. The book details the British use of violence and repression against the Arabs, including the use of ‘extra-judicial execution’. Fisk also shows in his article how British prime ministers since Balfour, of both the Left and Right, have supported Israel at the expense of its Arab population. PMs who have supported Israel and its ethnic cleansing include Clement Atlee, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and, of course, Tony Blair. Fisk also details British complicity in supplying arms to the Israelis and that they gave no protection to Arab civilians when they were being massacred, such as at Haifa. Fisk states


But Britain’s support for Israel hasn’t always been reciprocated. When the PLO opposed the Falkland’s War, they were told very clearly by the British ambassador that it was no concern of theirs. At the same time the Israelis were selling Skyhawk jets to the Argentinians to shoot down our flyboys.

Fisk concludes the article



See: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/06/who-could-ever-feel-pride-in-the-balfour-declaration/

David Cesarani’s Book on the Holocaust on Sale in Bristol

January 28, 2017







Secular Talk on UN Condemnation of Illegal Israeli Settlements

January 4, 2017










November 27, 2016







It begins







Neve Gordon’s article rightly concludes




The Empire Files on the Foundation of Israel and Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians

November 21, 2016

This is part of a longer piece from The Empire Files, no. 37, presented by Abby Martin, formerly of RT and now, I think, a presenter with Telesur English. This tells the story of the shrinking of Palestine from the foundation of the early Zionist settlements to the carnage of the foundation of Israel in 1948. It’s a grim, ugly picture of organised, imperialist brutality, meted out by people Albert Einstein and other western Jewish critics compared to the Nazis and the Fascists, a view also held by one of the Israelis’ own army officers.

It’s entitled The Untold History of Palestine and Israel, and Martin states that this is the history that is not taught in schools. She and her team had been there filming the Israeli occupation of the West Bank for two weeks. It’s a brutal occupation that is funded by the US taxpayer to the tune of $30 billion in aid. But Israel is presented to Americans through the images of ‘Birthright Tours’, which show Israel as a fun-loving, peaceful land threatened by militant Muslims.

Palestine was originally a province of the Ottoman Empire. During Ottoman rule, it had a population of 500,000 people. 75 per cent of these were Muslims, 20 per cent Christian, and 5 per cent Jewish. Nearly all of them were Arabs. Its cities were centres of intellectual culture and art, drawing visitors and scholars from across the Middle East. Even before it had borders, Palestine constituted a distinct, recognisable nation through its peoples shared customs and culture.

Martin explains that the Zionist movement began in the late 19th century as a reaction to the anti-Semitic violence and pogroms, which broke out in eastern Europe. She correctly states that Zionism was the belief in an exclusively Jewish state. I make this point here, because Nazis used the term incorrectly to mean their stupid and imaginary Jewish conspiracies to enslave gentiles. The Zionists were at this point only a small minority within the Jewish people. Most Jews wanted to stop to anti-Semitism in their own countries. This is illustrated with an article from the New York Times about Jewish Ukrainians organising to stop anti-Semitism in Ukraine. Many Jews resisted leaving Europe on the grounds that this would be giving in to the anti-Semites.

Zionism became a fervent movement under its Theodor Herzl, who claimed to be its father. Herzl was an Austrian atheist. He first considered homelands in Argentina and Uganda, before finally deciding on creating a Greater Israel in the Middle East. As shown on a map, this would include not just Palestine, but also the whole of Jordan and Lebanon, and parts of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and a tiny section of Turkey. Herzl spent his time travelling around the West trying to gather support and sponsorship for his scheme. He wrote to the Duke of Baden, for his aid, saying

If it is God’s will that we return to our historic fatherland, we should like to do so as representatives of western civilisation and bring cleanliness, order and well-established customs, … to this plague-ridden, blighted corner of the Orient.

The Zionists promised to make Palestine a vanguard against barbarism, which meant that it would be an extension of western military power, and ‘build highways of the civilised peoples’, which meant trade for western millionaires. Their slogan was ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’. But the Zionists were all too aware that the land already had a people, and were determined to cleanse them. Another Zionist leader, Israel Zangwill, said

Palestine is not so much occupied by Arabs as overrun by them.

From the first the Zionists planned on the expulsion of the indigenous peoples. Much of the country was semi-feudal, with tenant farmers labouring for absentee landlords away in the cities of Jordan or Syria. From 1892 onwards the Zionists began purchasing this land. In many cases the new, Jewish owners evicted the original inhabitants. Jews, Christians and Muslims had lived in peace and harmony in the region for thousands of years, but these purchases and expulsions resulted in immediate conflict.

New opportunities for the further expansion of the Jewish settlements arose during World War I. The Zionists were aware that the Russians, British and French were planning to carve up the region. The infamous Syke-Picot agreement divided the Middle East between the French and British. Britain was given control of Palestine by the League of Nations. The British government, composed of lords, then issued the Balfour Declaration, which pronounced the British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The British Mandate resulted in riots in Jerusalem by the indigenous Palestinians, who naturally resented having their homeland given away without their consultation.

Again, the Zionist settlers were planning the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. In 1924 the US envoy stated

The Zionists look forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.

At this point, settlers comprised 10 per cent of the population. But this was already producing a refugee crisis. This section of the film shows a picture of rally of Palestinian refugees in Syria from 1929. Already there were 50,000 of such people, thrown out of their homes. As more land was purchased, and people evicted, David Ben Gurion, the future prime minister and mascot of Ben Gurion airport, declared

We were not just working. We were conquering, conquering, conquering land. We were conquistadors.

From 1920 to 1939 the settler population rose from ten to thirty per cent. Ben Gurion himself laid out the settlers’ plans for ethnic cleansing:

We must expel the Arabs and take their places.

This policy naturally produced a rise in clashes between the Palestinians and the Zionist settlers. In 1936 the Palestinians launched a general strike against British rule. This was initially peaceful, until the British declared martial law, and recruited Zionist settlers to attack dissidents and Arab villages. This provoked the strike to become an armed uprising. The British in response embarked on a policy of blowing up Arab homes. 200 were destroyed in the Arab village of Yaffa. The rebellion was eventually crushed three years later in 1939. The death toll was 5,000 Palestinians against 300 settlers and 250 British soldiers. The Zionists formed their own armed forces, which were later used in the war of independence. These comprised the Hagana, the official force recognised by the British authorities, and various unofficial militias, the largest of which was the Irgun. These militias began by attacking the Palestinians, before moving on to British soldiers. It was the Irgun which bombed the Kind David Hotel, killing 91 people, including 17 Jews. This was so popular that one of the militias’ leaders, Menachem Begin, later became president of Israel.

Abroad, many Jews were far less impressed. Albert Einstein and a group of other Jews wrote a letter to the New York Times condemning Begin’s movement. They wrote that it was


But the Zionists continued with their plans for the country’s ethnic cleansing. Joseph Weitz, the head of the Jewish National Fund, wrote in 1940

There is no room for both people in this country … and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries, to transfer them all.


The terror created by the Holocaust with its six million Jewish dead, along with the mass murder of other peoples, political prisoners and gays, propelled Zionism from the political fringe to a mass movement. In 1947 the British turned Mandated Palestine over to the UN. This finally gave in to 70 years of Zionist campaigning, creating the state of Israel. The new state was given 70 per cent of the area’s land. Palestine was divided into three zones. However, the new Israel still had a population that was forty per cent Arab. This was a situation that the Israeli founders and leaders were determined to remove. Ben Gurion announced that

There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of 60 per cent.

In 1948 the tensions culminated in a full-blown war, during which the Israelis launched Plan Dalet for the mass terrorisation, murder and expulsion of the Palestinian people. This was the Nakba, the Palestinian term for the destruction of their homeland, a word which means, ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic.

This section of the film describes some of the massacres that were committed, and the atrocities perpetrated against innocent civilians. One of the villages targeted for extermination was Deir Yassin, where there had been no terrorist attacks committed against the settlers. Israeli soldiers murdered nearly the entire population, raping the women before butchering them. One survivor described seeing his entire family lined up to be shot, including his mother, who was breastfeeding a baby. 200 people were murdered. A Red Cross official stated

Here the cleaning up had been done with machine guns, then hand grenades. It had been finished with knives.

!2 days after this, the Zionists attacked and massacred the people of Haifa. At the same time the Israelis broadcast radio messages intended to terrorise the Arabs. These included recordings of women wailing, and the message ‘Flee for your lives. The Jews are using poison gas and nuclear weapons.’ In Abu Shusha, the Palestinians who remained in their homes were raped, then hacked to death with axes. Those who tried to flee were shot on sight. 110 people were killed. At al-Dawayima 450 were killed, with a further 250 missing. In another village, the mosque was bombed, killing the 80 people, who had sought refuge within it. The remaining villagers were rounded up in the town square and shot, leaving a further 70 dead. In Lydda the Zionists massacred around 250-500 people, 250 of which were killed in about half an hour. This was supposedly in response to gun shots being fired from the local mosque. John Bagehot-Howe, a British army officer, commented

It would be an exaggeration to claim that great numbers were massacred. But just enough were killed, or roughly handled, to make sure all the civilian population took flight.

A senior Zionist officer, Joseph Imani, saw Palestinians shot after they came out of their homes waving white flags and carrying food. He said

Where did they come by such a measure of cruelty, like Nazis. Is there no more humane way of expelling the inhabitants than such methods?

During this period 800,000 Palestinians fled their homes, comprising 80 per cent of the Palestinian population of Israel. 500 villages were razed to the ground.

This is the history that you will mostly definitely not find taught in schools, as Abby Martin says. Nor will you see it covered on the mainstream news, whether in the US or over here, by the BBC. Lobster has remarked on the way the Beeb ‘ties itself in knots’ trying to tell itself that it is not biased towards Israel, while being biased towards Israel. And that monster and apologist for mass murder, Mark Regev, the Israeli ambassador, would scream blue murder if anyone in the mainstream media dared to do so, or called those responsible for these atrocities what they are – butchers and mass murderers. As Einstein and the other Jewish critics said, the Zionists responsible for such atrocities and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians are very much like the Nazis and Fascists. But Regev will scream that you’re an anti-Semite or ‘self-hating’, if you’re Jewish, if you dare to mention this.

But we do need to be aware of these atrocities, if we are to understand the paranoid mindset of the Muslim radicals in Britain today. Kalim Saddiqui, a vile bigot, who was one of those responsible for the hate campaign against Salman Rushdie in the 1980s and 1990s, was filmed at his mosque by the Beeb telling his congregation that


When the documentary team challenged him on this, he tried to bluff his way out of it by blustering about how Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses had been published as part of a propaganda campaign to prepare for a ‘holocaust of Muslims’. It’s a risible, stupid slander. But to some Muslims, it has a terrible verisimilitude. Many mosques do cover the atrocities committed against Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere around the world in their equivalent of Christian parish magazines. They’re acutely aware of campaigns of terror against their co-religionists. Hence such hysterical claims over here. But these atrocities are deliberately kept hidden from us, so that Islamic terrorism can appear as completely irrational, and Muslims presented as violent terrorists and butchers, killing for the sake of it. That is, admittedly, true to a certain extent of Daesh and al-Qaeda, though even with these cases there is more to it than simply that. If there is ever to be a just peace in the Middle East, we need to know about the real history of the region, how it has been conquered and its people brutalised by western imperialism and the rapacity of multinational corporations. Not only do we need to defeat the Islamists, we also need to defeat the thugs, genocides and corporate despoilers in our own societies.