Thursday 25 June 2020

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”


It seems it is an offence in the Labour Party now to tell the truth if the conservative Zionist lobby and Israeli State officials in  Tel Aviv/Jerusalem  find it  politically inconvenient...

I am massively disappointed that Sir Keir did not stand up for truth over malign propaganda. The right wing anti-Socialist Jewish organizations have turned Labour's leadership into a version of Orwell's Big Brother, where truth means lies and war means peace.

As Orwell put it so concisely:“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

 

 “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

 

Rebecca Long-Bailey sacking reignites Labour turmoil over antisemitism

Swift decision by Keir Starmer is praised by Jewish groups but condemned by Labour left




Thursday 25 June 2020 19.59 BST 



Rebecca Long-Bailey was the shadow education secretary.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was the shadow education secretary. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

 

Keir Starmer is facing a showdown with the left of Labour after his ruthless sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey reignited the party’s internal turmoil over the issue of antisemitism.

In a swift and decisive move, Long-Bailey was summarily dismissed as shadow education secretary for sending an approving tweet about an interview in which the actor Maxine Peake said the US police tactic of kneeling on someone’s neck was taught by the Israeli secret service.

This was emphatically denied by Israel, and Peake later retracted the claim. By then, however, Long-Bailey had been fired.

Her approval of the interview led Jewish groups to demand she delete her tweet and apologise. Instead she sent another message saying she did not endorse “all aspects of the article”.

Less than three hours later, a brief statement from Starmer’s office said he had asked Long-Bailey to step down.

It said: “The article Rebecca shared earlier today contained an antisemitic conspiracy theory. As leader of the Labour party, Keir has been clear that restoring trust with the Jewish community is a number one priority. Antisemitism takes many different forms and it is important that we all are vigilant against it.”

In an online press briefing with reporters, Starmer went further. “I asked Rebecca Long-Bailey to step down from the shadow cabinet for sharing the article,” he said. “I didn’t do that because she is antisemitic, I did it because she shared the article which has got, in my view, antisemitic conspiracy theories in it.

“My primary focus is on rebuilding trust with the Jewish communities. I didn’t think sharing that article was in keeping with that primary objective.”

The swift action brought praise from Jewish groups and from Labour MPs who had been critical of Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of complaints about antisemitism in the party.

Marie van der Zyl, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said the decision showed Starmer was “backing his words with actions on antisemitism”.

She said: “After Rebecca Long-Bailey shared a conspiracy theory, we and others gave her the opportunity to retract and apologise. To our surprise and dismay, her response was pathetic. Her position as shadow education secretary was therefore untenable.”

The co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, Labour’s Catherine McKinnell and the Tory MP Andrew Percy, said they welcomed Starmer’s “zero-tolerance approach and decisive action”.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP who was one of Corbyn’s staunchest critics on the issue, tweeted: “This is what a change in culture looks like. This is what zero tolerance looks like. This is what rebuilding trust with the Jewish community looks like.”

But in sacking Long-Bailey, the only notable Corbyn supporter to still have a top shadow cabinet job, Starmer stirred intense anger from the left of the parliamentary party, and he faced pressure to reinstate her.

There were reports of MPs from the left-leaning Campaign group seeking a meeting with Starmer or drafting a statement of solidarity with Long-Bailey.

A series of individual MPs condemned the decision, some of them arguing that Peake’s view had not been antisemitic and others saying the move indicated a narrowing of views in the party.

John McDonnell, who was shadow chancellor under Corbyn, tweeted: “Throughout discussion of antisemitism it’s always been said criticism of practices of Israeli state is not antisemitic. I don’t believe therefore that this article is or ⁦⁦@RLong_Bailey should’ve been sacked. I stand in solidarity with her.”

Jon Trickett, a shadow Cabinet Office minister under Corbyn, said he was alarmed. “Keir said he wanted a unity cabinet and he wanted people from across the party. If he narrows the gene pool down much further, he will potentially get into trouble,” he said.

Momentum, the Corbyn-backing movement within Labour, said in a statement that Starmer “says he wants party unity, then sacks the most prominent leftwinger on the frontbench for no good reason. It’s a reckless overreaction.”

In a Twitter thread following her dismissal, Long-Bailey said her initial tweet of clarification had been made in “wording agreed in advance by the Labour party leader’s office”, but that Starmer’s team then instructed her to delete both her original tweet and the update, which she refused to do.

She said: “I could not do this in good conscience without the issuing of a press statement of clarification. I had asked to discuss these matters with Keir before agreeing what further action to take, but sadly he had already made his decision.”

Long-Bailey had initially tweeted: “Maxine Peake is an absolute diamond,” linking to an interview with the Independent in which the actor said the practice of kneeling on a person’s neck – which led to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis – was “learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services”.

Peake later said she had been wrong, tweeting: “I feel it’s important for me to clarify that, when talking to The Independent, I was inaccurate in my assumption of American police training & its sources. I find racism & antisemitism abhorrent & I in no way wished, nor intended, to add fodder to any views of the contrary.”

Long-Bailey was seen as the standard bearer for the pro-Corbyn wing of Labour in the race to succeed him as leader. She won just under 28% of members’ votes, while Starmer took 56%.

Upon taking over, Starmer pledged to tackle complaints about antisemitism within parts of Labour that many Jewish organisations said had been treated with insufficient seriousness under Corbyn.

Minn. police learn from Israeli counter-terrorism conference


ST. PAUL, Minn.

MPRN News, June 26, 2012 1:05 a.m.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2012/06/25/minn-police-learn-from-israeli-counter-terrorism-conference

About 100 Minnesota law enforcement officers attended a counter-terrorism training conference in Minneapolis Monday.

The conference was put on by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the FBI and Minnetonka police.

Deputy Consul Shahar Arieli said Israeli law enforcement officers shared techniques to prevent terrorist acts, such as suicide bombings.

"We have a police commander who is speaking from the point of view of the police chief," Arieli said. "And we have a bomb tech specialist who is actually speaking about the techniques and the improvised explosive devices that were used by the terrorists."

He said the conference was put on by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the FBI and Minnetonka police. This is the second year it has taken place.

"Every year we are bringing top-notch professionals from the Israeli police to share some knowledge and know how about how to deal with the terrorism with our American friends," Arieli said.

The half-day conference briefly touches on concerns that law enforcement operations could violate civil rights, but mostly focuses on terrorism prevention techniques," Arieli said.

Minnesota Cops Trained by Israeli Police, Who Often Use Knee-on-Neck Restraint

ANGLO AMERICA, 15 June 2020



2 June 2020 – Read four reports below:

https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Knee.neck_.Israel-Police.palestine-usa.jpeg

Israeli police officers detain a Palestinian protestor on March 12, 2019.

  • Over 100 Minnesota law enforcement officers attended a 2012 conference organized by the Israeli consulate in which Israeli police trained them. Israeli forces often use the knee-on-neck restraint on Palestinians.
  • Israel has been training law enforcement officers around the US for many years, despite the fact that Israeli forces have a long record of human rights violations.
  • (Meanwhile, Congress is poised to pass a bipartisan $38 billion package to Israel)…

Minnesota cops ‘trained by Israeli forces in restraint techniques’

By Jon Collins, reposted from the UK Morning Star newspaper (embedded links added by IAK)

Officers from the US police force responsible for the killing of George Floyd received training in restraint techniques and anti-terror tactics from Israeli law-enforcement officers.

Mr Floyd’s death in custody last Monday, the latest in a succession of police killings of African Americans, has sparked continuing protests and rioting in US cities.

At least 100 Minnesota police officers attended a 2012 conference hosted by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the second time such an event had been held.

There they learned the violent techniques used by Israeli forces as they terrorise the occupied Palestinian territories under the guise of security operations.

The so-called counterterrorism training conference in Minneapolis was jointly hosted by the FBI.

Israeli deputy consul Shahar Arieli claimed that the half-day session brought “top-notch professionals from the Israeli police” to share knowledge with their US counterparts.

It is unclear whether any of the officers involved in the incident in which Mr Floyd was killed attended the conference.

Israeli forces broke necks

But in a chilling testimony, a Palestinian rights activist said that when she saw the image of Derek Chauvin kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck, she was reminded of the Israeli forces’ policing of the occupied territories.

Neta Golan, the co-founder of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said: “When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.

“They started twisting and breaking fingers in a particular way around the same time. It was clear they had undergone training for this. They continue to use these tactics — two of my friends have had their necks broken but luckily survived — and it is clear that they [Israel] share these methods when they train police forces abroad in ‘crowd control’ in the US and other countries including Sudan and Brazil.”

Israeli training of US police is widespread

The training of US police officials by Israeli forces is widespread.

Even Amnesty was compelled to report that hundreds of police from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state and Washington DC had been flown to Israeli for training.

Thousands more have been trained by Israeli forces who have come to the US to host similar events to the one held in Minneapolis. According to the somewhat selective rights organisation, many of these trips are taxpayer-funded, while others are privately funded.

Since 2002 the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), it said.

The Minneapolis Police Department was contacted for comment.

[Editor’s note: Anoka County (north Minneapolis region) Sheriff James Stuart traveled to Israel last December for a similar training.]




The knee-on-neck, long a staple of Israel’s occupation of Palestine

Excerpted from TRTWorld

https://israelpalestinenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Knee.neck_.jpeg

….For Palestinians living under military occupation in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, the worst excesses of the kind seen in the US recently, are a near everyday occurrence.

In the aftermath of Floyd’s killing, Palestinians were quick to draw parallels between the final images of the man suffering under the knee of the officer, and similar choke holds used by Israel occupation forces.

“Crazy how the same thing happens in Palestine but the world chooses to ignore it,” Palestinian athlete Mohammad Alqadi wrote on his Twitter above four separate images of Israeli soldiers pinning Palestinians to the ground with their knees on their necks or head.

Israeli forces have killed numerous men, women, and children

Killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces are also a regular occurrence: in 2019, 135 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces with 108 in Gaza and another 27 in the West Bank, according to the UN.

[See a Timeline of Israelis and Palestinians killed here. See information about Palestinian rockets here.]

The similarities do not end there, as some activists have drawn parallels between the way US police have handled protests against police brutality in the aftermath of Floyd’s death and the way Israel has dealt with protests in Gaza.

Such comparisons come with caveats, as US police officers despite the controversy over their tactics have yet to kill anywhere near the numbers Israel killed in the Gaza right of return protests that began in 2018, for example. Nevertheless, some of the tactics used are the same, according to pro-Palestinian groups.

On Twitter, the BDS and Palestinian Solidarity working group within the Democratic Socialists of America wrote:  “The police violence happening tonight in Minneapolis is straight out of the IDF playbook. How many times have we seen uprisings in Gaza met w/ a storm of tear gas? How many times are Palestinians in the West Bank doused w/ skunk water during a protest? US cops train in Israel.”

***

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1234650882442174464/znsE6oZC_normal.jpg

Mohammad Alqadi  @ALQadiPAL

Crazy how the same thing happens in Palestine but the world chooses to ignore it

View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter


Police training in Israel

Amnesty International has warned that hundreds of police departments have been training in Israeli alongside military officers, who “have racked up documented human rights violations for years.”

The rights group notes that one of the departments involved in the training, the Baltimore Police Department, had been cited by the US Department of Justice for “widespread constitutional violations, discriminatory enforcement, and culture of retaliation.”

Both Amnesty and the US State Department have cited incidences of Israeli security officials engaging in brutality against Palestinians.

The rights group said: “Baltimore and other police departments should find partners that will train on de-escalation techniques, how to handle mentally challenged or ill citizens, on the constitutional rights of citizens concerning filming and how to appropriately respond to those using non-violent protest to express their opinions. Israel is not such a partner…”




U.S. Police are Being Trained by Israel—And Communities of Color Are Paying the Price

In recent years, Georgia has experienced troubling trends in fatal police shootings. As this has unfolded, the state continues to pursue a “police exchange” program with the state of Israel.

reposted from The Progressive

In recent years, Georgia has experienced troubling trends in fatal police shootings. These incidents nearly doubled in the state, up 77 percent between 2017 to 2018. By May 2018, Georgia was already reportedly experiencing a more rapid rise in officer-involved shootings than the rest of the country. According to an investigation of deadly police shootings in Georgia, in the six years after 2010, 184 people were shot and killed by police; almost half of them unarmed or shot in the back.

In 2019, Georgia has already recorded twenty-two fatal police shootings, The Washington Post reports.

As this has unfolded, Georgia continues to pursue a “police exchange” program with the state of Israel. Run through Georgia State University, the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange arranges for American law enforcement officials, corporate security executives, and police officers to engage in trainings, briefings, and seminars with governments including that of China, Colombia, Egypt, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the original and primary focus of the program, Israel.

For twenty-seven years, police departments in Georgia have received grants from the U.S. Department of Justice that subsidize these trainings. Since the program’s inception in 1992, it has trained at least 1,700 participants, including officers from the Atlanta Police Department.

Law enforcement from other U.S. states have participated in the program, including those from Tennessee, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Floria, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wahsington, D.C., and West Virginia.

Open records requests have forced program leaders to reveal some of its content topics, including border policing, community policing, and urban policing.

Activists in Georgia are pushing for an end to Atlanta’s police exchange program. Seventy local organizations and leaders—including our organizations, Jewish Voice for Peace-Atlanta and Project South—are demanding that Atlanta get out of these deadly police exchanges.

Among other objections, activists point to Israel’s clear record of human rights abuses and state violence toward Palestinians, Jews of color, and African refugees. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2018 brought a 69 percent increase over the previous year in Israeli settler violence toward Palestinians, and a rise in Palestinian deaths and injuries in Gaza. In the year since 2018 Great March of Return demonstrations began, more than 190 Palestinians were killed and 28,000 were injured by Israeli Forces.

Regardless of how the Israeli government coalition is shaped after its recent elections, its two largest parties show no indication of ending the fifty-two year Israeli military occupation of Palestine, nor its militarized tactics to control the Palestinian population.

This systematic repression of Palestinians by Israel warrants the U.S. public’s refusal to accept such training programs for their police departments. Racism and violence are endemic problems to police departments around the country, and the influence of Israeli military police trainings only threatens to exacerbates the problem.

Two examples of police violence in Atlanta bring this home. In 2006, one elderly Atlanta resident, Kathryn Johnston, was mistaken for a cocaine dealer and killed by SWAT team  conducting a “No Knock” drug raid. In January 2019, twenty-one-year-old Jimmy Atchison was fatally shot in the face by Atlanta police—even though the robbery he was accused of may have never taken place.

*****************************

In April 2018, the Durham, North Carolina city council voted unanimously to pass a policy barring Durham’s participation in militarized police exchange trainings with Israel and other foreign countries.

The initial petition, created by a coalition of ten Durham organizations states that “the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israel Police have a long history of violence and harm against Palestinian people and Jews of color.” One coalition member said, “training [with Israel] makes it worse in terms of racial profiling and use of force in crowd control.”

The victory in Durham highlights a national movement that seeks to disband military and police training exchanges with Israel.

In December 2018, grassroots organizing efforts succeeded in forcing the Vermont State Police and the Northampton, Massachusetts police chief to pull out of a police exchange program managed by the Anti-Defamation League.

Clearly, many in Atlanta feel it must do the same.

“As long as these programs exist,” says Dawn O’Neal of Us Protecting Us, formerly Black Lives Matter Atlanta, in an email, “as long as police are sent into war zones to train, there will continue to be Tamir Rices and Trayvon Martins. There will continue to be Kathryn Johnstons.”

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Morning Star Editorial: Sacking Rebecca Long Bailey is an attack on the whole left

Friday, 26 June 2020


https://morningstaronline.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/article_full/public/PA-49746022.jpg?itok=nqPQz7W7&c=b7df540a6bd6eb83c189b5cadd8befa9



Labour's Rebecca Long-Bailey

SIR KEIR STARMER’S decision to fire Rebecca Long Bailey is an attack on the whole of the left.

It is also a craven submission to those who accuse all critics of the Israeli state and its practices of anti-semitism.

The false narrative, trumpeted by almost the whole of the British media for years with the patent aim of derailing Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, that the Labour left is a hotbed of vile anti-semitic views has already done huge damage. Further capitulation has to stop.

Long Bailey was the only senior Corbyn ally retained in Starmer’s shadow cabinet. In the education brief she has done well, speaking up for teachers and their concerns over a premature full reopening of schools, which could have accelerated a deadly second wave of Covid-19.

Long Bailey’s presence in Starmer’s team was always a concession to the left. She was the only exception in a reshuffle aimed at making it clear the Labour Party was moving away from Corbyn’s politics, and as such Starmer may always have intended to remove her when convenient.

But the excuse used could do lasting harm.

Board of Deputies of British Jews president Marie van der Zyl described Long Bailey’s failure to apologise and delete a tweet recommending an interview with the socialist actor Maxine Peake “frankly pathetic.”

“Frankly pathetic” is a better description of the grounds for her dismissal. The interview covered a lot of ground: Peake’s acting career, her socialist beliefs, Black Lives Matter, the government’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It included an appeal for people to continue to support the Labour Party under Starmer so as to remove the Tories from office.

Starmer’s spokesman claims it “contained an anti-semitic conspiracy theory.”

This refers to a single line in which Peake refers to Israel’s training of the US police, and specifically suggests the knee-on-neck “restraint” technique used by George Floyd’s murderer was learned from Israeli officers.

Israel denies this. In fact use of the brutal method dates back decades in the United States and may be nothing to do with Israeli training, although an Israeli police spokesman’s comment to the Independent that “there is no tactic or protocol that calls to put pressure on the neck or airway” doesn’t clear that up: protocol or not, there is abundant photographic and witness evidence that Israeli police do use the knee-on-neck method.

But Israeli forces do train US police officers, including in Minneapolis. Amnesty International reported in 2016 that officers from numerous US states were sent for training in Israel and occupied Palestine, which puts “police and other US law enforcement employees in the hands of military, security and police systems that have racked up documented human rights violations for years.”

This training has been linked to the militarisation of the US police and its increasing resemblance to an “occupying army” in poor and black neighbourhoods, as depicted in Craig Atkinson’s 2016 documentary Do Not Resist.

Indeed, ending Israeli training of US police officers has become a demand of Black Lives Matter protesters in some parts of the US, which is why it was banned earlier this month in one North Carolina city.

Attempting to dismiss references to the relationship between the Israeli and US security forces as “an anti-semitic conspiracy theory” is a cynical bid by the Board of Deputies to warn people off attacking the Israeli government at a time when its plans to annex the West Bank are arousing widespread condemnation.

Using it as an excuse to sack Long Bailey looks like a cynical bid by Starmer to drop a shadow minister whose refusal to attack teaching unions and parrot his irresponsible push for schools to fully reopen more quickly showed up the weakness of his opposition to a Conservative government whose mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic has cost tens of thousands of lives.

 

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Minnesota cops 'trained by Israeli forces in restraint techniques'

Morning Star, 1st June 2020


OFFICERS from the US police force responsible for the killing of George Floyd received training in restraint techniques and anti-terror tactics from Israeli law-enforcement officers.

Mr Floyd’s death in custody last Monday, the latest in a succession of police killings of African Americans, has sparked continuing protests and rioting in US cities.

At least 100 Minnesota police officers attended a 2012 conference hosted by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the second time such an event had been held.

There they learned the violent techniques used by Israeli forces as they terrorise the occupied Palestinian territories under the guise of security operations.

The so-called counterterrorism training conference in Minneapolis was jointly hosted by the FBI.

Israeli deputy consul Shahar Arieli claimed that the half-day session brought “top-notch professionals from the Israeli police” to share knowledge with their US counterparts.

It is unclear whether any of the officers involved in the incident in which Mr Floyd was killed attended the conference.

But in a chilling testimony, a Palestinian rights activist said that when she saw the image of Derek Chauvin kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck, she was reminded of the Israeli forces’ policing of the occupied territories.

Neta Golan, the co-founder of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said: “When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.

“They started twisting and breaking fingers in a particular way around the same time. It was clear they had undergone training for this. They continue to use these tactics — two of my friends have had their necks broken but luckily survived — and it is clear that they [Israel] share these methods when they train police forces abroad in ‘crowd control’ in the US and other countries including Sudan and Brazil.”

The training of US police officials by Israeli forces is widespread.

Even Amnesty was compelled to report that hundreds of police from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state and Washington DC had been flown to Israeli for training.

Thousands more have been trained by Israeli forces who have come to the US to host similar events to the one held in Minneapolis. According to the somewhat selective rights organisation, many of these trips are taxpayer-funded, while others are privately funded.

Since 2002 the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), it said.

The Minneapolis Police Department was contacted for comment.

 

 

1 comment:

  1. Have you ever heard of the phrase "We failed, we made grievous errors, we were wrong, and we're sorry"? Or is that something the Left (especially the far-Left) can't bring itself to face, EVER? If that's the case, there is no sympathy to be had for RLB or her acolytes. She made her bed, lied about it, now she can goddamned well sleep in it .

    ReplyDelete