Quote Originally Posted by cyril evans awaydays View Post
Jon, the bit that I don't get is your last sentence that this is somehow a betrayal of the Palestinians. The stuff that got Long-Bailey into trouble was about the Israeli state's relationship or otherwise with US forces of law and order, which don't seem to have factual substance.

If the Labour Party was able to legitimately differentiate between what the Israeli State does to deny the Palestinians their legitimate rights and support them in that cause it might have more resonance than re-tweeting anything that shows the Israeli state in a bad light whether it has anything to do with their appalling treatment of the Palestinians or not.

You could equally betray the Palestinians because in your aim to support their cause you allow your legitimate concerns to be drowned out by highlighting everything anti-Israeli whether it impacts the Palestinians or not and allows lobbying groups to cry foul. This has been easy territory for the latter and the kind of trolling idiots that periodically pop up on this Board in their various guises.

In my opinion the way any legitimate resistance to oppression, expropriation and persecution of Palestinian Arabs by Israel (either in Israel proper or the occupied territories or West Bank/Gaza) is hamstrung by the way all those criticisms and solidarity actions are labelled 'antisemitic' - the false conflation of Israel with Zionism with Jewish people. That is the intention and it works. Kier Starmer reinforced that when he described the Maxine Peake comment about shared 'restraint' techniques as an antisemitic conspiracy theory - and I believe that idea (which has gained more and more currency in recent years) is a betrayal of the Palestinian resistance. Choke holds are used in both countries (loads of photographic evidence) and both countries share training programmes for police and military. That is not disputed.

I agree with your second point. It was naive to retweet that article and even more naive not to expect the reaction RLB got. It hasn't helped the Palestinian cause at all. The Israeli government and other agencies in Israel and the USA have been denying for weeks that choke holds were part of the training programmes. In the absence of hard evidence the claim should not have been made, and if made and refuted (the Amnesty clarification) should have been withdrawn and an apology made. Maxine Peake did that but RLB seems not to have been given the opportunity.

I also agree with your last point. This sort of argument - even if only with Ronnie and his clones on a football message board - is not productive (is a side issue or distraction) and could drown out the more important things that impact on justice, peace and security in Israel/Palestine and the wider world. I don't think I have ever started a thread on this subject but I have been wound up enough to reply - and I don't want to go through a repeat of that dialogue of the deaf that we had last year before the election. It is like Groundhog Day.

I have spent all afternoon discussing this with family and friends - most of whom think Starmer has played a blinder - and none of whom are interested in whether the original claim made by Maxine Peake (and thousands of others) was right or wrong or a comment on current events or a sinister conspiracy theory. They all saw it as a PR move that was a stunning success. They are probably right.