Two shocking videos reveal the essence of contemporary extremism and its drivers.

The first video concerns the Greek far right party, Golden Dawn. This group received 6.97% of the vote at the Greek elections last week. Worse still, another far right group, LAOS received 2.9%, meaning that virtually 1 in 10 Greek voters supported far right groups. Imagine a scenario in which the British National Party and the National Front were obtaining such results nationwide.

Of course, this is not the first European democracy in recent months and years to see its nationalist vote soar, such as France, where the Front National received a record 18% of the vote in the first round of the 2012 Presidential election. Nevertheless, there is something different in tone and feel about Golden Dawn that sets it apart from most of its European counterparts. For example, one of its (failed) candidates smiling in front of a crematorium oven at Dachau. The photo went on his Facebook site, where friends joked that it “made good bread”.

Golden Dawn’s logo may look like a swastika, but it apparently derives from an ancient Greek meander. Whatever, in the video (showing a press conference after the election results), you can clearly see the chilling aggression and demagoguery of Greek Dawn’s leader and his bully boy skinhead poseur assistants.

The second video concerns the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. This group threatens to dominate the  Egyptian political scene.

2012 polling suggests that 61% of Egyptians want to annul their country’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel (a rise of 7% from 2011). The video shows that the Muslim Brotherhood will be only too happy to oblige. This is the campaign launch for its Presidential candidate. There are calls for a “United States of the Arabs” with Jerusalem as its capital; and mass chanting of “Allah Akbar” and “Millions of martyrs, march upon Jerusalem”.

This is followed by a mass chorusing of these catchy lines:

“Come on you lovers of martyrdom, you are all Hamas”

And

“Banish the sleep from the eyes of all Jews”

This is essentially the same Muslim Brotherhood that seeks to influence the ideology and  representation of Britain’s diverse Muslim communities, mosques and students. These are the people with whom elements of the British far left have made common cause; and whom many others think they can work with and welcome to tour this country with no ill effect for our society.

In both Egypt and Greece you have proud, ancient countries, whose civilisations have shaped their entire regions, if not the history of the world.

In Greece, the utter collapse of the centrist democratic parties means you can almost reach out and touch the political helplessness and frustration of the population.

In Egypt, the levels of Greek despair have not really been reached, because there is also a sense of coming change against the military rulers; and an ensuing mass empowerment. (You can feel this in video of the Presidential launch rally.)

The British media has reported upon the Greek situation and its extremists with all of the alarm and scrutiny that one would expect. Sadly, the coverage of the Arab Spring has been far more superficial: especially in its analysis of what may well lie ahead, how that will impact in Britain and across Europe; and how competing extremisms will, inevitably, feed off each other.

Jews have long known that antisemitism is an advance warning of deep societal despair and division. There are many others who should study these short videos and learn the lesson, fast.

Everyone at CST is sorry to hear the sad news that Vidal Sassoon has died at his home in Los Angeles, aged 84.

Vidal Sassoon speaking at a CST dinner, Manchester 2007

Vidal Sassoon became world famous as a hairdresser, but to many in the UK Jewish community it was his opposition to fascism and antisemitism that was an inspiration and a source of great pride. As a teenager Vidal joined the 43 Group, an organisation set up after the war by 43 Jewish ex-servicemen to physically confront Oswald Mosley’s fascists. While modest about his role in the group, which at its peak had 1,000 members including Jewish and non-Jewish men and women, Vidal gave several interviews in later life in which he talked about his days as an anti-fascist street fighter (see for example Hope Not Hate and the Jewish Chronicle).

Vidal wrote the Foreword to Morris Beckman’s book The 43 Group, published in 1992, in which he explained how he felt as a young man, growing up in the East End of London, when he realised that fascism could not be ignored:

How could I forget Petticoat Lane, especially on Sundays? It was a maze of colourful humanity, a kaleidoscope of people wanting to buy and to be amused. Love could be bought with a kind word, and hate was for sale on every street corner. Fascism was beginning to run rampant. It was impossible to conceive that not more than a borough away, people with hate in their hearts were planning our downfall. Why? We were the stranger in their nest, a bird of a different culture, not indigenous to their mother land. This was enough to stir the angst of the unenlightened in a world where exploration of the other was a frightening experience. We were not only the stranger, we were also the Jew.

I do not know the exact day when we decided to return the hate in kind, but the horror of the images coming from Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and seemingly so many other places triggered a sense of survival within the remaining Jewish population of Europe. Hearing of the heroics of Mordechai Anielewitz and his few thousand followers in the Warsaw ghetto nurtured our mood. They were young Jews who fought the Nazis with all the passion of Biblical Davids, who died fighting for their dignity.

‘Never Again!’ became a command not a slogan, and so the 43 Group was born.

The 43 Group, and the 62 Group after it, were the predecessors to CST. Although we combat antisemitism in very different ways now, their determination to face down prejudice and stand up for common values continues to inspire our work. CST’s Chairman Gerald Ronson CBE, himself a member of the 62 Group, knew Vidal Sassoon well, and Vidal spoke at CST dinners in London and Manchester. Gerald said on hearing the sad news:

“I am terribly saddened by the death of my friend Vidal Sassoon. Vidal and his comrades in the 43 Group were an inspiration to those of us who faced antisemitism in the 1960s, and saw how they had stood up to fascism after the war. They taught us to be proud and strong. Vidal’s contribution to the safety of Jews in Britain will never be forgotten.”

 In recent days, the British National Party leader Nick Griffin, and the Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn MP, have unwittingly demonstrated how modern day antisemitism and anti-Zionism work; and how people respond to them.

 On 19^th April 2012, Griffin reacted on Twitter to five far right activists having been arrested by counter-terror Police on suspicion of Public Order offences:

Govt using naked repression of free speech now. After arrest of our Mike Coleman in Stoke, key members of North West Infidels arrested today. Dawn raids for thought crime – Cameron a slimy Big Brother. Arrests also in Yorkshire…More arrests ongoing. Looks like State taking out those who refuse to be Zionist puppets… 

 The BNP and Griffin come from a Nazi tradition, making it legitimate to argue that when Griffin says “State taking out those who refuse to be Zionist puppets”, he is using the language of anti-Zionism as an expression of antisemitism.

 Where 70 years ago the BNP equivalent would have said that the State was under the thumb of “Jews”, or “Big Jews” or “Jewish Capital”, today they say “Zionist”. No matter, the underlying meaning and impact is straightforward.

 But what if someone else, someone who isn’t of this stripe, echoes Griffin’s depictions of Zionist “naked repression of free speech”; and of Zionist control ensuring that those who don’t toe the line are singled out for legal oppression?

 Step forward, Jeremy Corbyn MP, a man who is most certainly not Nick Griffin. It is hard to think of two politicians further apart in their ideology, yet Corbyn has strongly backed calls for an independent inquiry into “pro-Israeli lobby” influence upon Government behaviour. 

 Of course, no MP would back an inquiry into the “pro-Israeli lobby” if the demand came from the BNP. Rather, this demand came from the supporters of Sheikh Raed Salah, the Israeli / Palestinian Islamist leader who was banned from entering the UK, but ultimately won his appeal against deportation.  (The video footage of the inquiry demand is here: Salah’s lawyer explains the need from 40secs in. Corbyn echoes it from 2min51secs in.)

 The inquiry is supposedly required because

one might infer…a very serious problem with the Government’s relationship to the pro-Israeli lobby.

 One example cited is “changing laws to protect alleged [Israeli] war criminals”, but this inquiry demand is all about the Salah case. It includes a tentative suggestion that a certain Conservative Party funder is a trustee of CST and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The suggestion is wrong, but the implication still lingers. 

 Neither Griffin, Corbyn nor Salah’s team explicitly mentioned Jews, but there is an inescapable similarity between Griffin on the arrests of North West Infidels and the Corbyn-Salah crew on the “house arrest” of Raed Salah. Free speech is repressed through arrests.

 Corbyn is assumed, understandably, to be entirely different to Griffin in his opinion of Jews (and Salah’s team is totally not the BNP): but it is equally understandable that philosophical distinctions between “pro-Israeli lobby” and Griffin’s more crude “Zionist puppets” will be of little import for many Jewish observers, who fear the old antisemitic theme of Jewish financial control over politicians and lawmakers.

 However affronted or surprised Corbyn and his ilk may be, it is the impact of such words that matters. It is their impact upon Jews, it is their impact upon antisemites and it is their impact upon antisemitism.

 (See here for Corbyn’s response to some of the reporting of his inquiry support.)

 How to concisely and accurately explain concerns over similar language, from political polar opposites, is an extremely important matter for CST, as it is for anyone looking to grapple with such issues.

 Sadly, most of the far left, and way too much of the liberal-left and its media, are insufficiently concerned with grappling over the historically wrought language of today’s anti-Zionism. Yes, these people say they care about antisemitism, but their concern is always strictly conditional, always upon their own terms, not upon that of the victims (or perpetrators).

 The case was “starkly” put by Socialist Workers Party theorist, John Molyneux, who explained the “progressive” logic in his June 2008 article, “More than opium: Marxism and religion”.

 To put the matter as starkly as possible: from the standpoint of Marxism and international socialism an illiterate, conservative, superstitious Muslim Palestinian peasant who supports Hamas is more progressive than an educated liberal atheist Israeli who supports Zionism (even critically).

 Did you catch that? In plain English: if the situation relates to Zionism and you support “Zionism (even critically)” then you can forget about anti-racist solidarity from this section of political opinion; and from those who sympathise with it. (And that means Zionism as defined by the far left and/or its Islamist allies. It most certainly does not mean Zionism as defined by most Jews.)

 The Raed Salah example has demonstrated that if a Palestinian (in this case, actually Israeli) Muslim is found to have pushed the old blood libel (ie the one about Jews using the blood of Christian children to make matzos at Passover), then that’s just not relevant for his “progressive” allies. Similarly, the allegation that Salah pushed the new blood libel (ie the one about 4,000 Jews being pre-warned not to attend work in the Twin Towers on 9/11), appears irrelevant.

 Worse, complain about Salah, as CST and others have done; and you risk being derided as a Zionist lackey, an agent of Israel, or simply a fool who cannot distinguish between antisemitism and mere so-called “criticism of the acts of the Israeli state”, as implied by senior Guardian figure, David Hearst, on the Guardian’s Comment is Free:

As the CST makes clear in its reports, there is a world of difference between antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and criticism of the actions of the Israeli state. All three discourses have their own dynamic. There are grave dangers in conflating the three.

 Hearst, who both praised and criticised CST’s work, is correct in the above summary of CST’s reports, but (like so much of the Guardian’s Salah coverage) he only tells half the story. He neglects to say that CST’s reports also stress the way in which old antisemitic themes resonate within today’s anti-Zionism. CST’s reports clearly do not attack “criticism of the acts of the Israeli state”, but they do attack the manner in which the ridiculously vast mythology of modern day anti-Zionism resonates with old antisemitic themes.    

 The history of antisemitism shows what Griffin’s Zionists really are, but this is also why we fear Salah’s input into our already fraught local dynamic.

 In the case of Salah, move against him and you risk his supporters suggesting that this reveals a “pro-Israeli lobby” control mechanism over the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary; an anti-racist Labour MP champions their call for an inquiry, adding that he will take tea with Salah at Westminster; and, totally predictably, the Guardian sides with the oppressed Palestinian.   

 That is the state of anti-Zionism and antisemitism today.  The situation may not suit depressingly large sections of self-styled “progressive” society, but it certainly suits Jewish communities far, far less.

CST is taking part in the Community Fun Run 2012 on Sunday 20th May at London Maccabi. Over the past 5 years over £500,000 has been raised for Jewish charities through the Community Fun Run. This important communal event has grown from the involvement of 13 charities in 2007 to 39 charities in 2012.

 Please join us to complete either the 1km, 5km or 10km course and raise money for CST.

You can read more about the event here and sign up here.

The Guardian has removed a comment posted in Raed Salah’s name in a comment thread on their Comment Is Free website at CST’s request, which included a false and damaging allegation against CST.

Raed Salah wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian last Thursday, in which he did not mention CST. However, in the comment thread under the article, a comment was posted in his name which suggested CST had provided the Home Secretary with a “doctored” version of a poem he had written, “to make it appear anti-Jewish”. This allegation is untrue. Several other comments, by other people, making similar allegations against CST were also removed from the comment thread at CST’s request.

This particular allegation relates to a version of a poem written by Salah which was quoted by the Home Office in the Deportation Order (pdf) which was served on Salah in June 2011. According to the recent Immigration Tribunal ruling on Salah’s appeal, which overturned his deportation, the Home Secretary was “misled” as to the terms of this poem. However, despite the impression that some of Salah’s supporters have given, the ruling does not blame CST for this: it states that “It is not clear where this originally came from…She must have been provided with a version from elsewhere but we do not know where.” (para. 47)

As we have said previously, CST did not provide the version of the poem which was used in the June 2011 Deportation Order, which came from an article in the Jerusalem Post dated 20 June 2009. In fact, it was CST that provided the full, accurate version of the poem in July 2011.

There is more evidence that CST provided the accurate version of the poem, not the inaccurate one, in the ruling itself. In paragraph 45, the ruling notes that CST’s version of the poem “also refers to the Arab tribes of ‘Aad and Thamud who were destroyed in an earthquake as punishment for their behaviour.” These Arab tribes were not mentioned in the Jerusalem Post‘s inaccurate rendering of the poem that the Deportation Order relied on – so that cannot have been the version provided by CST.

The accurate version of the poem that CST provided was accepted by Salah’s supporters to the extent that Middle East Monitor, his hosts in the UK, used it (with just two very minor alterations to the translation) on p.19 of their report on the Salah Affair (pdf).

The false notion that CST provided inaccurate or doctored information to the Home Office regarding Raed Salah appears to have been encouraged by articles such as this one, by David Hearst of the Guardian, which accuses CST of providing a “dodgy dossier” and suggests that CST did not “get its facts right”. On the contrary, it is those who peddle this false allegation against CST who have got their facts wrong.

In February, CST Blog discussed Guardian Comment is Free headlines that wrongly claimed an article by Rachel Shabi revealed how “Israel’s rightwing defenders” make “false accusations of antisemitism“.  

We noted: 

The Jewish community has probably had more run-ins with the Guardian than every other British newspaper combined…

…In recent years, Jewish upset has been exacerbated by the Guardian’s Comment is Free (CiF) website, which carries many more articles than the print edition; and is fundamental to the paper’s future…

…last week it [Comment is Free] reverted to type with a particularly poor and offensive article by Rachel Shabi. Its title claimed to reveal how “Israel’s rightwing defenders” make “false accusations of antisemitism”.

We asked where the proof lay for such offensive claims and noted that there was none:

…So, surely the article is about how the NY Times new Jerusalem correspondent has been falsely accused of “antisemitism” by “Israel’s rightwing defenders”?

Well, no actually… The article’s first three paragraphs deal with the new [NY Times] correspondent, Jodi Rudoren. Shabi claims Rudoren has been called an “anti-Zionist”, but there is no mention here by Shabi of antisemitism, none whatsoever. The word doesn’t feature, nor in any of the three articles linked to by Shabi’s article (here and here and here). It isn’t even hinted at in any of them. The headline and sub-headline are simply wrong and insensible. This, despite their being so provocative and insulting.

Now, on-line, the Guardian has changed its “false  accusations of antisemitism” title to read:

Rushing to judge Israel’s critics is dangerous. Slicing and dicing commentary on Israeli policy can lose the bigger picture. The NYT’s Jerusalem correspondent is not the problem

The foot of the article now states:

headline and subheading on this article were amended on 17 April 2012. The originals incorrectly implied that the New York Times’s new Jerusalem correspondent had been accused of antisemitism

It was not the article’s author Rachel Shabi who came up with the heading and subheading about “false accusations of antisemitism”. It was Guardian CiF staff.

So, after contact from CST, this particular false accusation has been removed. It is very little and it is very late.

The damage is done: to Guardian readers’ perceptions of antisemitism and to many Jews’ perceptions of the Guardian (yet again).

Yesterday, CST Blog carried CST’s initial response to the 5th April 2012 decision by the Upper Tribunal to overturn the Home Secretary’s decision to deport Sheikh Ra’ed Salah.

Now, having read the Tribunal’s judgement, CST adds this, in addition to yesterday’s blog posting: 

CST was contacted by the Home Office to provide information relevant to Sheikh Ra’ed Salah’s deportation on the grounds of his presence not being conducive to the public good. CST provided information, in good faith, exactly as our community would expect us to. CST stands by its actions and notes, in particular, that the Tribunal (in paragraph 53) recognised that Sheikh Salah’s intemperate expression could offend and distress the Jewish community.  CST trusts that the Home Office will appeal this decision, which threatens to significantly undermine the Government’s Prevent anti-extremism policy.

Some of Salah’s defenders are attempting, for whatever reason, to move CST to the forefront of this story. The full judgement is 91 paragraphs long. CST features in three of them.