Hypocrisy, Racism and Hate: North West Friends of Israel

 

Recent weeks have seen a sustained campaign of repressive bullying tactics against a Muslim doctor and vocal anti-racism, pro-Palestinian voice Dr Siema Iqbal by pro-Israel activist organisation North West Friends of Israel (NWFOI).  The retweets by Dr Iqbal, which were contested as “anti-Semitic”, were clarified three years ago.

Despite this, NWFOI has resumed its harassment.

Recently, Dr Iqbal was invited to read a statement on racism at the Assembly of Greater Manchester Citizens UK. Seemingly unable to stomach a Muslim woman with strong pro-Palestinian views, NWFOI restarted its harassment, this time led by the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), an organisation which Alastair Sloan highlights has defended Israeli leaders from the principles of universal jurisdiction and therefore accountability of potential war crimes. Declaring Dr Iqbal’s tweets/retweets anti-Semitic despite being political in nature and directed in response to the Israeli government’s aggression against Palestinians in Gaza, the JLC seems to have pressured Citizens UK into distancing itself from Dr Iqbal. These statements were then circulated in the Jewish Telegraph (complete with a statement from the NWFOI), Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish News, and shared by the far-right-linked Quilliam Foundation’s Haras Rafiq.

So what do we know about the NFWOI?

Where are the Neocon Free Speech Cheerleaders on the Topic of Israel?

Selective application and outrage of various freedoms is instructive of the neoconservative agenda to dehumanise and alienate Muslims as the manufactured enemy.

Neoconservatives have constructed their angst and hatred on the culturalist notions that the Muslim (“Islamist”) world is attacking free speech and therefore Western culture through responses to various provocations.  This is precisely the position held by anti-Muslim neocon Michael Gove.[1]

When Angela Merkel acceded to Ankara’s request to prosecute a comedian who recited an offensive poem about the Turkish president, neocons went into overdrive. To note, the Turks called on Merkel to enforce existing German law.

Ken Livingston: This is about Israel not anti-Semitism

An old article which, eleven years on, demonstrates that the tactics of the pro-Israel activists have not changed much. Smear criticism as racist to shutdown discussion about the crimes of a terrorising, racist state.

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CROSSPOST: Ken Livingston

Date: 04/05/2005

Racism is a uniquely reactionary ideology, used to justify the greatest crimes in history – the slave trade, the extermination of all original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the elimination of every native inhabitant of Tasmania, apartheid. The Holocaust was the ultimate, “industrialised” expression of racist barbarity.

Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz. That is why I detest racism.