"From the river to the sea" chant

[jon1959]

For the 10th time, chants like that don't help bring about peace. If anything it's the opposite. And whilst you are right that bombing is of course far more important, I don't see what we gain by making Jews in Britain afraid to go about their daily lives.

Just like you can be mad about Kay Burley and also recognise the horror of people dying, so too others can object to widely viewed racist chants and also recognise the greater picture.

There are rising numbers of real anti Semitic incidents in the UK and across the world and there are rising numbers of Islamophobic incidents. We need to come together to confront those wherever possible.

But there are also invented anti Semitic incidents deliberately designed to raise fears in the Jewish community and to gag all supporters of the occupied Palestinian people. No wonder some Jewish people in the UK get anxious if the media, commentators and those self-selected representatives of their community shout that a slogan for peace and justice is anti Semitic. That despite the fact that large numbers of Jewish people were on the various demonstrations in support of Palestine over the past few weeks and joined in chanting the slogan!

It is clear from the context and the wide range of people joining in the chant that the spin put on it by the Israeli government and their international cheerleaders is false. The focus should be elsewhere, but to the extent that 'from the river to the sea' is a cause of distress to some people, it is those peddling that cynical nonsense that are the problem. You are part of that problem James.

And in response to an earlier come back from you - you have never been even handed in your denunciation of the chant - even though it has been used by Zionists (especially Christian Zionists) for decades to promote the idea of a biblical Israel with Palestinian arabs ethnically cleansed. Your focus has only been one way - to join in the attempts to silence the solidarity movement and the Palestinian resistance. Every form of non-violent action and every form of criticism of the actions and state ideology of Israel is labelled as anti Semitic.

Decades of rolling land grabs, murders by armed settlers (backed by the IDF), imprisonment without trial, daily humiliations and barriers to movement, and the physical dismantling of any possibility of a Two State Solution produces nothing but mild hand wringing in Europe and the USA, backed by UN vetos and massive injections of money and arms. That has not changed even with the creation of an extremist government that includes fascists, a government that makes overt racist statements about non-Jews in the occupied territories, Gaza and Israel, and as the scale of killings of Palestinians in the West Bank has reached new heights.

The victims of this feel abandoned and desperate. It is a powder keg that creates the conditions for the mass terrorist atrocities by Hamas. It also provides cover for Netanyahu and his allies to speed up their move to create a single Jewish Supremacist state 'from the river to the sea'. Demonstrators in London and New York calling for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine is not the problem here.