“A seditious project:
Asa #Winstanley’s book [‘Weaponising #AntiSemitism’] shows how the #IsraelLobby facilitated the influence of a foreign government's interests in dictating who gets to lead the @UKLabour #Labour Party, causing the downfall of Jeremy #corbyn

by Jonathan Coulter in @mondoweiss

This article is well worth a read because of the additional light it sheds on the complicity of British mainstream media is undermining democracy in the country they continually claim is a ‘bastion of democracy’! It also reinforces the extent to which, if any reinforcement is necessary, the ‘Lobby’ has managed to ‘insulate’ pretty much all the upper eschelons of British government from any anti-Israel/ Zionist leanings!

The article touches on the success of the Israeli #Apartheid government in ‘manufacturing’ & helping to resource a wide range of pro-Israel ‘astroturf’ civil society organisations as part of its strategy to counter the #BDS movement. A much fuller account of this activity is provided in author Hil #Aked’s excellent recently published book: “Friends of Israel: The Backlash Against Palestine Solidarity” (Verso)

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/a-seditious-project/?ml_recipient=98386965117797818&ml_link=98386660054533380&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-09-04&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines

I’ve just started reading Hil #Aked's new book “Friends of #Israel: the Backlash Against Palestine Solidarity” (Verso, 2023) in order to get a better handle on what the #IsraelLobby in Britain today looks like and how it works to enable and sustain the regime of #Apartheid oppression by the Israeli state against Palestinians.

#Palestine solidarity activism globally, especially the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (#BDS) movement, is facing a major pro-Israel backlash. Aked’s book tells the story of this repression in #Britain with detail and nuance, explaining the role of the #Israeli and #British governments and the #Zionist movement.

By pushing back against efforts to conflate criticism of Israel with #antisemitism and demystifying the #IsraelLobby actors defending Israeli apartheid, Aked carves out a space for an anti-racist discussion about the pro-Israel networks standing in the way of Palestine solidarity, situating them as part of the long history of British #complicity in Israeli #Apartheid.

Quoting briefly from an early section of the book entitled “Britain’s historic responsibility”:

“Britain’s historic and ongoing role on Palestinian oppression cannot be overstated. In the early years of Zionist settler colonialism, British imperialism had something of a symbiotic relationship with the Zionist movement; indeed, the former nurtured the latter in its formative years.

[..] The original foundation, then, of British support for the Zionist project was its usefulness to the British Empire, just as Israel’s ‘special relationship’ with North America today rests, to a very significant degree, on its utility to US imperialism.

This book therefore attempts to situate the birth and ongoing activities of the British Zionist movement within the broader history of British state racism which continues to this day. [..] The same racist political logic shaped Britain’s treatment of colonial populations, from Palestinians to the Windrush generation, and both groups continue to suffer the consequences today.”

Tonight in #Juneau
#AlaskaEd #AkEd #AkLeg
#MyAlaskaWx

https://twitter.com/forrestdunbarak/status/1617754707040309248?s=46&t=kHofZ3EDDwjgD72DLLZ0nA