David Bellamy urged: ‘Pull out of Zionist talk’: The Jewish Chronicle
Botanist David Bellamy has been urged to pull out of a ZF event
The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (Bricup) has urged botanist David Bellamy to pull out of a Zionist Federation event at which he is expected to speak about Israel’s environmental achievements.
Mr Bellamy is due to appear at the ZF’s Israel Blue White and Green seminar alongside leading Israeli scientists on Tuesday.
The event, which is primarily aimed at non-Jewish schoolchildren, is a follow-up to last year’s Israel Science Day which Bricup also attempted to disrupt.
But the group’s protests fell flat after a small group of demonstrators turned up at the venue and left after an hour.
Bricup wrote to Mr Bellamy this week saying: “We are outraged, and think you ought to be too, at the prospect of Israel presenting itself (especially to relatively unformed minds) as a champion of environmentalist virtues.
“Their university scientists, as elsewhere, have made some useful contributions. These events, however, will try to use these to ‘greenwash’ the whole state of Israel.”
The letter was signed by 97 supporters including Lord Ahmed, Baroness Tonge, Clare Short MP and Tom Hickey of the University and College Union.
Among their allegations is the claim that untreated sewage from Israeli settlements in the West Bank is being dumped into valleys, polluting Palestinian agriculture and water sources.
Bricup’s Jonathan Rosenhead said: “For Israel to be held up as the environmental ‘good guy’ while it is destroying the environment of the West Bank and Gaza is like Machiavelli posing as a supporter of open government.”
The ZF declined to comment on the letter, but said it expected the event to go ahead as planned.
Mr Bellamy was unavailable for comment.
Gideon Levy / If Israel lets ex-pats vote, what’s to stop enfranchising all Jews?: Haaretz
Would you buy a used car from this man?
What rejoicing in America! How delighted they will be – Abe (formerly Avraham), Joe (formerly Yossi) and Sam (formerly Shmulik). From now on, they will be able to vote from afar.
We’ll have elections by text messages, governments chosen by remote control. We are legitimizing what used to be regarded as Israel’s great sin – emigration.
The most right-wing government in Israel’s history, which hunts down anyone who hasn’t done military service and declares war on anyone who questions its whims, is now opening its legs to those whom until recently it regarded as traitors.
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From now on, those who left Israel will be able to vote on its leadership. Tomorrow, maybe all the Jews in the world will do so. Anything to increase the support for the right-wing parties, anything to neutralize the “demographic threat.”
If worst comes to worst, maybe we’ll even let the Christian Evangelists – those friends of Israel – vote. Why make do with 5 million Israeli Jews? Let’s add another million.
Much water has flown through the Hudson River since Yitzhak Rabin called the migrants “dropouts.” Today we follow their success stories – whether real or imaginary – with envy. We read the stories about those who “made it” there, and every used car salesman on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio seems to have achieved the ultimate Israeli dream.
They come here once a year or two, stay at the Hilton and lecture us from the lobby to strike harder, to kill more, to deepen the occupation, to strengthen the settlements. It’s easy to be nationalist in Manhattan.
Now they will be our partners. War and peace, territories and settlements, subsidized medicine and Avigdor Lieberman. All these issues will be in the hands of about 1 million old-new Israelis who left shamefacedly. They will vote for racism and war, while we will eat the rotten fruit.
Israel won’t hear about a Palestinian right of return, and deprives all rights to every Palestinian who goes abroad, after his or her family lived here for generations. But it is opening its gates to people who haven’t lived here for decades. Now they will vote with their acquired American accent.
Benjamin Netanyahu knows a thing or two about them personally. Most of his uncles and cousins on his father’s side left Israel or were born to Israeli expatriates. Exemplary patriots.
Not all is clear yet. What about the ex-Israelis’ children? Will they be able to vote, too? How about their grandchildren? Are Arab Israelis included?
All this does not matter. Netanyahu and Lieberman have broken a new record for cynicism. A singer who did not serve in the Israel Defense Forces isn’t allowed to perform, left-wingers are seen as a traitors. But an Israeli who hasn’t stood in a traffic jam here for 50 years will be able to vote. Lo how the Zionism of once has become today’s cynicism.
An excellent expose of the nefarious context of the Anthony Julius publication about anti-semitism:
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Still no hope of common sense in the war against anti-Semitism: The Independent
These defenders to the end of all Israeli actions knowingly mix politics and race
One would not choose to roll around naked in a field of nettles. One learns that choosing to write on anti-Semitism is just as rash, possibly more so. Protesters and malicious maligners stalk anyone who ventures on to the subject. And for the only Muslim weekly columnist in the country (who knows for how long) to tread into that field is extreme recklessness. Or reveals a worrying proclivity for masochism. Stinging rebukes will arrive before I am awake and all manner of outrageous allegations will roam the streets of the internet, rogue rumours against which there is no defence. Every word typed can be distorted or has the potential to offend. The column will madden both hyper-Zionists and insufferable Islamicists. So divisive is the issue today that many who see themselves as “reasonable” Muslims and Jews may not be too happy either. Ah well so be it. No more procrastination. Unto the breach dear friends.
The lofty, intellectual lawyer Anthony Julius, whose most famous client was Diana, Princess of Wales, has written Trials Of The Diaspora, an erudite history of anti-Semitism in Britain. He convincingly exposes the “polite”, almost naturalised anti-Jewish attitudes still rife among genteel folk of this country. When Diana chose him as her divorce lawyer, to The Daily Telegraph Julius was a clever Jew who was unlikely to understand the “English” idea of fair play. The paper was obliged to publish a grovelling apology.
George Orwell wrote a stirring essay in 1945 on this English prejudice. Julius describes a train journey when he was a young boy. An Englishman who did business with his father praised the excellent manners of a young Jewish girl who knew his daughter, as if such good manners were remarkable and unexpected. Orwell describes such moments too and asks: “Was it a conscious effort to behave decently by people whose subjective feelings in many cases must have been very different?”
This week we had a report published by the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organisation that monitors hate crimes against British Jews. In 2009, there were 598 incidents and attacks, 56 per cent more than in 2006, another bad year. I believe both Julius and the CST. Wagner said: “I hold the Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and everything noble in it.”
In a coffee shop before Christmas, I overheard a group of yummy mummies of all races going on about Bernie Madoff and how “these people” got the world into the mess it is in. It really is all around us. Just look up the Jew-haters on the internet, the neo-Nazis and Islamicists and the bloggers who say anti-Semitism is exaggerated. Across Europe, even in Sweden, Jewish citizens say hatred against them is in the air once more.
More wounding than racism itself is the denial of it, the invalidation of lived and felt experience. Racist statements and judgements are today defended with unprecedented ardour and conviction. Black and Asian people are instructed to learn toleration, to understand banter and brave free expression, to stop inventing pain and to end their wretched PC whinges. Muslims too are suspected of making up stories, imagining humiliation and “using” discrimination for unholy purposes. Ironically, Julius rejects the claim that Muslims are facing increasing hostility in Britain. I know Muslim activists who say exactly the same about the rise in anti-Semitism.
We should trust witness and victim testimonies of bigotry. But we can’t and shouldn’t become credulous. Unquestioning accommodation would be naïve. Accusations of racism are used by all vulnerable groups to deflect legitimate concerns about, say, female genital mutilation, or forced marriages, or the too many young black men sunk into drug addiction and violence, or the lack of real democracy in the Muslim world.
Julius plays that game, dextrously extending the accusation of anti-Semitism to implicate principled critics of the Israeli state. Jewish objectors, like the esteemed American Tony Judt, are also cut down with a poisoned blade. Richard Goldstone, the South African Zionist, has found himself similarly discredited by Zionists for writing a scathing UN assessment of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Similar treatment is meted out to others who try to remain scrupulously fair yet tough when scrutinising the government of Israel.
These defenders to the end of all Israeli actions knowingly mix politics and race. Their enemies do the same: when Lebanon was attacked, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “This is a war that is fought by all the Jews.” It wasn’t. To say so is iniquitous, just as bad as the Jihadis who claim all of us Muslims are on their side or must be. The much admired writer Anne Karpf points this out in a beautifully articulated column: “If the Israeli government (wrongly) elides Israel with all Jews it is hardly surprising if anti-Semites do so too.”
By reproducing this conflation in his book, the eloquent Anthony Julius undercuts his powerful case that anti-Semitism, a very light sleeper, is up again. Doubters have been given a reason to repudiate him. Oh, the pity of it all.