Source: Middle East Eye

On  Nakba of all days an apartheid state is being rewarded by the glitz and glamour of an international song contest.

The choice of Israel as the venue for this glittering occasion is wrong in every way. Israel qualifies for the competition because the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) is a member of the European Broadcasting Union, which is responsible for the event. The country’s first participation in the contest came in 1973.

Nevertheless, Israel is not part of Europe. It likes to see itself as European, but that is not the same thing.

Secondly, it is likely that Expo Tel Aviv, like many other parts of the city, was built on land originally expropriated from the Palestinian village of al-Sheikh Muwannis and villages close by.

Like many others, the village was evacuated by the use of Israeli terror and brute force after 1948, and then demolished. This ugly history has not gone; it will hang over all the singing and the dancing at the Expo Centre.

Twenty minutes away from the Eurovision festivities lies the Gaza Strip, a tormented land of siege, poverty and hunger, of Israel’s own making. Eighty per cent of the population is aid-dependent, unemployment runs at between 50 and 70 percent, shortages of basic materials are frequent and severe, and hospitals can barely cope with the sick and wounded.

Nearly two million Palestinians are incarcerated in the open-air prison that is Gaza today for no crime other than that they are not Jews. It is a wonder the cries of the frightened children, the amputees and the wounded of Gaza do not reach the revellers in Tel Aviv.

The second Nakba

One year ago on 14 May 2018, the exact opening date of Eurovision this year, Israeli snipers stationed on the self-styled border with Gaza, shot and killed over 60 unarmed Palestinian demonstrators.

Then, too, another celebration was taking place in Jerusalem at the same time: the US illegal recognition of the city as Israel’s capital and the announcement of the US embassy move there. In the year since that time, Israeli forces have killed a further 267, according to Gaza’s ministry of health, and over 30,000 wounded with more than 7,000 people shot with live ammunition.

But the most significant coincidence of timing this week is the 71st anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba. On 15 May 1948, the second day of the Eurovision contest, the state of Israel was established, and with it the catastrophe that has blighted Palestinian lives ever since was set in motion.

Each year, at about this time, Israel celebrates its so-called Independence Day, oblivious to the tragedy its establishment caused for Palestine’s indigenous people.

Once a settled, cohesive society, Palestinians today are fragmented over different countries, 5.3 million of them still living in refugee camps. For years Israel has striven to escape or cover over its responsibility for this tragedy, and in that sense, the Eurovision contest has been a godsend.

Israel’s reality

Israelis have spared no effort to exploit every opportunity to show themselves off as a part of the Western world. Tel Aviv is bristling with signs in English, an army of local volunteers has been raised to assist visitors, and a free bus service provided, even on the Sabbath – to objections from Orthodox Jews.

A teaser video on Israel TV displays one of the Eurovision hosts, a token Arab in the shape of Lucy Ayoub, the daughter of an Arab-Christian father and a Jewish mother, singing a welcome to the guests. It tells them that, despite what they’ve heard, Israel is a “land of honey and milk, always sunny, and as smooth as silk.”

Many people are aware that the reality of Israel is very different. In 2017, the UN released an authoritative report on Israeli’s apartheid system that permeates its laws and conduct towards its non-Jewish citizens.

This was compounded in the summer of 2018, when Israel passed its Nation-State law, affirming its status as the nation-state of the Jewish people. In practice and in law, Israel is a state that discriminates against non-Jews in favour of Jews: apartheid in anyone’s understanding of the term.

Meanwhile, crimes against the Palestinian people and their culture continue apace. In August 2018, Israeli bombing destroyed the Said al-Mishal cultural centre in Gaza.

Palestinian artists are routinely denied exit visas to participate in cultural events abroad, and the Palestinian poet, Dareen Tatour, is in prison for “inciting terrorism” through her verse.

Rewarding apartheid

On what basis should a state of this kind be rewarded by the glitz and glamour of the Eurovision song contest? What message does this pretence that Israel is a normal state give when its policies and conduct obviously clash with so many civilised norms that the international community aims to live by?

What delusion drives people like the British celebrities, who include Stephen Fry and Sharon Osborne, to write a letter of protest defending Israel against a boycott of Eurovision as advocated by Palestinians and their supporters, on the grounds that Eurovision’s “spirit of togetherness” was under attack?

What togetherness is found under apartheid? Was the cultural boycott not accepted as part of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa?

A propaganda tool

Other artists have not been fooled. In January, a number of writers and artists such as fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and film director Mike Leigh, called on the BBC to cancel its planned coverage of the contest.

The musician Roger Waters has urged Madonna not to participate in Eurovision, and in September 2018, he wrote to all 41 contestants asking them to stand with the Palestinians.

Artists like Brian Eno, Lana del Rey and Annie Lennox have declined Eurovision’s invitation.

If anyone doubts Israel’s need to use the Eurovision contest for propaganda, its deputy minister of public diplomacy, Michael Oren, gave the game away.

As Israel agreed ceasefire terms with Hamas to end the military flare-up on 5 May, he said, “Hamas must go, but right after our holidays and Eurovision.”

Ghada Karmi is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. She was born in Jerusalem and was forced to leave her home with her family as a result of Israel’s creation in 1948. The family moved to England in 1949, where she grew up and was educated. Karmi practised as a doctor for many years working as a specialist in the health of migrants and refugees. From 1999 to 2001 Karmi was an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, where she led a major project on Israel-Palestinian reconciliation. In 2009, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Source: Middle East Eye

“As a Labour member, I expect the right to have a free debate about international conflicts respected within my own party.” Open letter to Jennie Fornby, Labour Party General Secretary, and John Cryer, chair of Parliamentary Labour Party

Dear Jennie Formby and John Cryer MP,

I’m writing to you as a longstanding Palestinian member of the Labour Party about the new code of conduct on anti-Semitism.

I have seen that there has been some criticism of the fact that not all the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working examples have been included word for word in the new code. But, if they were, this would silence me, as someone who has been directly affected by Israeli state racism.

Oppressed groups

It would be wrong, in drawing up guidelines about one form of racism, to prevent other forms of racism from being called out or to limit the rights of other oppressed groups to speak about their own oppression.

I was born in what is now west Jerusalem. During the war to establish the state of Israel, my family and I were forced from our home, when I was a young child. To this day, I have been prevented from returning to my home, simply because I am a Palestinian Arab – whereas any Jewish person from anywhere in the world could and can automatically become a citizen of the state.

The establishment of the Israeli state, as the ethnically defined state of what was then a minority of the population of Palestine, was discriminatory and racist. And laws and practices that discriminate on the basis of race and religion – against my people, the Palestinians – have continued to this day.

This is not only the case in relation to the occupied Palestinian territories, the illegal settlements, and the violence and abuses against Palestinian people in Gaza, but also within Israel’s borders.

Just this week, the Israeli government proposed legislation to allow the state to segregate Jews and Arabs. For Arabs who live in Israel, segregation is already their daily reality. But this new bill gives the state the permission officially and explicitly to discriminate on the basis of race and religion.

This attempt to emulate the policies of apartheid South Africa is a gateway, we believe, for the Israeli government to pass sweeping new laws to further erode the rights of Arabs and non-Jewish minorities and impose Jewish religious law in a country that brands itself a democracy.

Historical responsibility

The reference in the IHRA document to banning the identification of the state of Israel as a racist endeavour would prohibit me and many other Palestinians from speaking out about our first-hand experiences of that racism. To prevent us from speaking about the oppression we have faced would be both discriminatory and directly undermine our rights.

This point seems to have been entirely absent from the debate around the code of conduct.

To say that the founding of the Israeli state was racist, and that since its founding it has deployed racist policies and conduct towards Palestinians and other minorities, is a statement of fact, backed up by vast amounts of evidence. And this is a reality that many Jewish Israelis acknowledge, openly discuss, and campaign against.

Of course if, when highlighting that racism, someone were to use an anti-Semitic trope or blame Jewish people or Judaism for the actions of the Israeli state, that would be unacceptable. We simply demand the right to speak about our experiences and make legitimate, evidence-based criticism of Israel, its foundation, its laws and practices.

And we want everyone to have that right, not just us, as part of an open, free debate on a major international conflict, for which Britain bears significant historical responsibility. As a Labour member, I at least expect to have this right respected within my own party.

Many of those who are insisting upon a word for word repetition of the IHRA working examples are staunch advocates of Israeli government policies. What is driving this campaign is clearly an attempt to protect and improve Israel’s tarnished image, silence Palestinians and discredit those who support our rights.

A legitimate debate

Even Kenneth Stern, the lead author of the IHRA document, has said it was intended for data collecting purposes on anti-Semitism, and that it was not intended to curtail speech.

It’s right that Labour, as a political party, has clarified and contextualised this, making sure that the incredibly short, often vaguely worded IHRA document, cannot be misinterpreted or misused in a way that would stifle legitimate debate.

The code you have introduced ensures that anti-Semitism is not tolerated within the party, while also ensuring that the rights of Palestinians are not infringed and that free and fair speech about Israel is not silenced.

I hope that the party will maintain its code of conduct. If replaced with a word-for-word copy of the IHRA document, then I, as a member, would be prevented from speaking about what happened to me and my family – our dispossession, forced removal and permanent ban from our home purely because we were Arab.

This was conducted by the new Israeli state; a state that was founded on discrimination towards Arab people on the basis of religion and ethnicity. If that’s not a racist endeavour, I don’t know what is. And I should have the freedom, as the victim of that racism, to say so.

Yours,

Ghada

-Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian doctor, academic and author.

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