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On Thu, March 5, 2015 17:51, Ken Hiebert via Marxism wrote: > > Some scattered comments. Most of Ken's comments were welcome, but the following segment has left me rather confused: > The question of our relationship with one strand of right- wing > "anti-Zionism" was posed sharply at the AGM of the Palestine Solidarity > Campaign in the UK at the beginning of 2012. > > http://site.lalkar.org/article/566/palestinesolidarity-movement-on-the-defensive-as-agm-votes-for-zionist-formulations > The meeting voted to endorse a paragraph that the PSC executive had > recently added to the campaign website stating that Any expression of > racism or intolerance, or attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust have > no place in our movement. Such sentiments are abhorrent in their own right > and can only detract from the building of a strong movement in support of > the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people. (My emphasis)` Perhaps just a bit of context was missing, but it wasn't clear if Ken posted the above link in approval or otherwise. The quoted policy statement looked perfectly good to me, but the article pointed to (of the journal Lalkar, apparently connected to the CPGB-ML, neither of which was I familiar with) took issue with the statement. The underlined text, lost as it got sent by email, was "attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust" and the Lalkar article laments that "they voted to give the PSCs executive the ability to discipline and expel sincere and useful solidarity activists for committing a crime that exists only in the zionist imagination the crime of minimising the holocaust." I trust that this is NOT Ken's view! [Just as a point of list procedure, I'd expect that if a quotation or link is introduced without any introduction or disclaimer, then the poster is generally agreeing with it or at least introducing it as a source of useful information.] Without denying the holocaust, the article in Lalkar implies that the formula of "minimization" was vague enough that it could be misused. Well, almost any rule can be misused, but the spirit of the above statement is certainly on the mark. I had mentioned in an earlier post that the Dutch Palestine Committee (NPK) has a strict policy against displays at demos which are even vaguely antisemitic. Cynics dismiss that as motivated solely by the fact that antisemitism doesn't look good. Well no, it doesn't look good, because it ISN'T good, and it isn't who we are. I don't think it is the responsibility of Palestinians or their supporters to concentrate on fighting antisemitism, which is already discredited in most mainstream circles (at least officially). But it is our responsibility to clean up our own quarters when it becomes infected with racist filth. And a positive by-product of that policy happens to be that some right-wingers who (as I have argued) may act as friends of Palestine but only due to their antisemitism, will find themselves unwelcome. But on a more subtle note, I was also surprised that the demo policy also prohibited signs comparing the Nazi's to the Israeli government, such as drawing the flag of Israel with a swastika on it, or a Hitler mustache on Netanyahu. I disagreed, because surely there ARE parallels between the Zionists and the Nazi's, and making such a comparison, even when inaccurate, surely doesn't qualify as "anti-semitism." However I came to learn that the point of the policy is to avoid the debate shifting away from Israel to the holocaust, in which the Zionists could arguably claim that the crimes of the Nazis were far beyond anything that Israel has ever been accused of, at least in terms of scale. That's an opening for the Zionists' favorite game: justifying anything they do with endless references to the holocaust. Accepting the terms of that debate, the crimes of Israel will appear secondary until the Palestinian death toll approaches 6 million (i.e. all of them), so it's a terrible reference point. - Jeff _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
