John Hilley – Public Reading Rooms

Time for Jeremy Corbyn to stand up to his detractors and the manufactured media ‘crisis’

John Hilley — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 16:00:56 +0000

The Labour leadership’s mistaken capitulation to ‘sacred figures’ like Margaret Hodge only serves to embolden the entire Friends of Israel lobby.

As the media manufactured ‘crisis’ of antisemitism within Labour reaches ‘fever pitch’, it really is time for Jeremy Corbyn to end the futile appeasement and confront those determined to break him.

An entire herd media have now converted what should be a manageable ‘problem’ for Labour into a ‘major issue’, turned it into a ‘political furore’, and helped elevate it to an ‘existential crisis’.

In typical ‘concerned’ pose, Toby Helm at the Observer/Guardian ‘laments’ Labour’s ‘failure to be getting on with the important issues’:

Instead, the past week has seen Labour monopolise the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The only issue on which it has made waves is the interminable and increasingly tortuous row over antisemitism in its own ranks, and the resulting near-total breakdown in its relations with the British Jewish community.

In effect, the media create, generate and hype the headlines, then blame Corbyn for ‘monopolising’ them.

This, in turn, encourages even more shrill headlines, readily fed by the coup-makers, such as Tom Watson with his fatuous claim that the party is about to “disappear into a vortex of eternal shame and embarrassment.” All too dutifully, the Guardian continue reporting this cringing hyperbole without question.

Lamentably, much of the media onslaught against Corbyn has been given added impetus by a ‘woke left’ supposedly there to defend him. Leading this element is Owen Jones. Following Corbyn’s deeply-mistaken Guardian article, apparently intended to reassure his detractors, Jones rushed to laud him:

Corbyn telling the anti-Semitic fringe where to go. And as he says: “Anyone who denies that this has surfaced within our party is clearly actually wrong and contributing to the problem.”

In truth, it’s people like Jones who are contributing to the problem for Corbyn, by giving the charges against him and Labour even more undue airing and ‘significance’. All of which only helps in distracting attention from the associated aim of the Corbyn-destroying lobby: protecting Israel and negating Palestinian rights.

As Ali Abunimah responds to Jones:

Everyone can agree that racist “fringe” is not welcome in party like @UKLabour. But target of Israel lobby’s fake anti-Semitism smear is not a fringe that was always already marginal but rather mainstream support for Palestinian rights/opposition to Israeli racism and apartheid

Echoing Jones, Aaron Bastani and others, Barnaby Raine employs similar seemingly well meaning, yet deeply problematic, language in talking-up the “battle” and “war” against antisemitism inside Labour and the wider society. We can, Raine insists, criticize Israel/support Palestine, while ‘tackling the scourge’ of antisemitism.

In a searing response (39:19 into video), Norman Finkelstein dismisses Raine’s ‘walking and chewing gum at the same time’ line. And Finkelstein is, indeed, correct here in refusing to accept the very premise of Labour’s ‘deep problem’ with antisemitism, and the language of ‘battle’ and ‘war’ being used to ‘eradicate’ and ‘stamp it out’.

This kind of vocabulary only gives added weight and encouragement to those making such contrived claims of an ‘endemic problem’ and ‘crisis’ within Labour. And it’s all to no avail in helping to protect Corbyn. As Finkelstein knows all too well, these pro-Israel organisations and lobby groups will never be satisfied. They want nothing less than Corbyn’s political scalp. For Finkelstein, Corbyn should simply tell the truth, say what’s right, and face them down, rather than engage in the utterly mistaken appeasement he turned to in his Guardian piece.

The immediate wave of hostility to Corbyn’s article is proof positive that nothing will get in the way of the lobby’s determination to remove him. As the Jewish Labour Movement declared:

Today, other than another article bemoaning a situation of the party’s own making, nothing has changed. There is no trust left. We find ourselves asking once again for action, not words.

Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, also joined the immediate condemnation:

So Corbyn’s great move is a piece in the Guardian saying our worries are overheated rhetoric and all would be well if only we could just talk. And not a word of contrition about anything except process. He really is shameless

As Iain Macwhirter concluded, in response to Pollard’s brutal dismissal:

This confirms that there is nothing that Corbyn could conceivably say that would satisfy his pro-Israeli critics. Any concession will be seen as a confirmation of anti-semitic perfidy. [You] can’t appease a smear campaign.

Likewise, the party’s mistaken capitulation to ‘sacred figures’ like Margaret Hodge only serves to embolden the entire Friends of Israel lobby.

Rather than the kind of useless political ‘triangulation’ urged by Jones and the Momentum playmakers, and in assertive resistance to the unforgiving plotters around the Jewish Labour Movement, Corbyn should adopt the more direct and progressive guidance of Jewish Voice for Labour.

In a brilliant stand-your-ground article, taking apart the entire liberal-posturing narrative and craven media compliance, Manchester Jewish Action for Palestine also articulate the central issues here:

As Jewish people in Manchester, England, we resent the despicable racism shown towards the Palestinians by Guardian stalwarts such as Jonathan Freedland, Polly Toynbee, Jessica Elgott, Eddie Izzard, Nick Cohen, Marina Hyde and Gaby Hinsliff among others, all saturating comment sections on mainstream news websites with attacks designed to bring down the UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and to protect Israel from accountability.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Anti-Semitism definition guidelines the Labour Party are correctly omitting, are designed by Israeli propagandists to aid their many mass lobby attempts to stop international solidarity with the Palestinians and to deny Palestinians the right to express the nature of Israel’s 70 years of violence and racism towards them.

We call on everyone to see that creating a largely-mythical anti-Semitism ‘crisis’ in the Labour Party is one of the few tools left to ailing and desperate establishment hacks wanting to smear Corbyn and maintain UK support for Israel, no matter how many Palestinians the Israeli army slaughters, or how many houses, schools, and hospitals Israeli jets destroy in Gaza. In the face of this, Zionist groups with a history of uncritical support for Israel claim that Corbyn presents an existential threat to British Jews? This is obscene, hypocritical scaremongering.

I urge everyone to read this full, exemplary piece. In similar vein, I commend the superb, and timely-titled, article by Lindsey German: There’s only one way to stop the witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn – stand up to it.

John Hilley blogs regularly at Zenpolitics

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How the World Cup opened a window on Russian realities and British hypocrisy

John Hilley — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 23:11:22 +0000

Source: Zen Politics

While Russia is being isolated and boycotted, the perpetrators of vast Western war crimes are approved and celebrated.

With an outstandingly successful World Cup in Russia now drawing to a close, the praise and enjoyment of so many global visitors contrasts with the awkward and hypocritical absence of British dignitaries. Despite the England team lasting out till the semi-finals, neither Theresa May, her ministers or any member of the royal family attended the event.

Lamentably, nor did any member of the opposition – a perhaps more understandable avoidance by Jeremy Corbyn given the hateful media and political backlash he would have inevitably faced.

The official government reason for the boycott, we’re reminded, was the ‘Novichok attacks’.

May and Home Secretary Sajid Javid have placed Russia directly responsible for the poisoning of five individuals in and around Salisbury, including, now, the sad death of Dawn Sturgess.

With the police now treating this as a murder inquiry, linked to the original poisonings, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson wasted no time in raising the political stakes, again pointing the finger at Russia: “The simple reality is that Russia has committed an attack on British soil which has seen the death of a British citizen. That is something that I think the world will unite with us in actually condemning.”

Yet, to date, not a single piece of substantive evidence has been provided to the public proving any such “simple reality”.

The actual truth behind this whole murky affair may be a long time emerging, But it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see the propaganda opportunity for Britain in its efforts to vilify Putin and Russia. And what could have been more ‘timely’ than this latest tragic development right in the middle of Russia’s showcase World Cup?

Whatever one’s view of Putin, is there anyone in this situation less likely to order such ‘attacks’, or wish for such adverse publicity? One can only imagine Putin’s displeasure in discovering that some ‘in-house’ or errant element had carried out such actions ‘on his behalf’ or for ‘Russia’s benefit’.

One of the more facile variations put forward here is that Putin does these kind of things just to ‘sow confusion’, or to encourage ‘multi-conflicting’ narratives to keep the Western public ‘fixated on Russia’. All part of the ‘Putin playbook’, all-knowing liberals tell us. Again, the resort to slogan charges rather than evidence-based proof.

Beyond such limp conjecture, any half-savvy member of the public could come up with half-a-dozen more plausible scenarios and set of motivations.

Alongside the UK state’s unproven story of Russian culpability sits the vacuous conformity of British journalism. Any ‘quality’ media would be all over this story, seeking to mine the deeper truths. Instead, an effective silence prevails. Where are all the Pulitzer-spirited investigations?

This should be a golden moment for investigative journalism. Yet, there’s been little more than sheep-like repetition of government statements and, shamefully, obedient adherence to government D-Notice-type prohibitions on reporting about the Skripals.

It also now transpires that Newsnight’s senior diplomatic correspondent Mark Urban met with Sergei Skripal on several occasions in 2017, before he was poisoned. What, we may reasonably wonder, as Craig Murray does, was the ‘scope’ of Urban’s ‘research’, and why does his ‘understanding’ of the Salisbury events seem to fit so closely with the official line?

It’s remarkable how readily the BBC accept and amplify the standard narrative. Even while security correspondents like Frank Gardner mention competing explanations, there’s no serious scrutiny of the UK’s deeply suspect claims, silences and omissions.

British deceit and subterfuge over Salisbury is matched only by the hypocrisy of its selective support for other brutal states. Imagine if the World Cup finals, with English or other UK participants, were being played in Saudi Arabia or Israel. Would we be seeing such ‘moral’ non-attendance?

Unlike the unverified claims against Russia over Salisbury, here are two states with decisively proven records of murdering innocent civilians in Yemen and Gaza. Yet there’s been no major condemnation of the slaughter carried out by these regimes. Nor will our lofty media pursue and expose the dark part the UK plays in such killing, through arming, training and placating them.

Britain condemns Russia’s human rights record, but would never employ the same language or punishments against Israel or Saudi Arabia. What’s the likelihood of UK/Western sanctions being placed on these serial violators of international law?

In similar vein, Britain castigates leaders like Assad for ‘killing his own people’. Yet, why is the ill-treatment of one’s ‘own’ populace deemed so much more heinous than the bombing and killing of foreign ‘others’? Does this not count as abuse of human rights? Is this not part of any country’s human rights record?

Continuing its imperialist crimes, Britain has recently helped murder a million souls in Iraq, left Afghanistan in chaos, bombed Libya back to the dark ages, and fueled regime change catastrophe in Syria.

It’s not only the UK’s backing of sundry despots, it’s Britain’s own murderous conduct around the globe that renders it unfit to lecture anyone on human rights. And it’s a measure of the ever-assumed ‘but we’re the good guys’ mantra in the West that you will almost never see or hear that description of Britain as a criminally active rogue state even suggested by our deeply-conditioned media.

Citing the shrill UK media commentary and coy insinuations over Russia’s rights to host the event, Media Lens noted: “It would never occur to a Daily Mail/Guardian journalist that Britain and its leading allies might be considered ‘less enlightened corners of the world’, given their staggering record of selecting, installing, arming and otherwise supporting dictators in ‘less enlightened corners’, including Saudi Arabia as it devastates famine-stricken Yemen.”

While Russia is being isolated and boycotted, the perpetrators of vast Western war crimes are approved and celebrated.

The BBC’s Jeremy Vine and the Guardian’s Andrew Rawnsley have just conducted expansive interviews with Madeleine Albright, in which she warned about the dark forces of fascism, Putin and the ‘threat to Nato’. Yet, neither found time to challenge ‘Maddy’ on Nato’s own aggressive build up across the Balkans, or its criminality in places like Libya. Nor did Vine or Rawnsley think it appropriate to mention Albright’s own high criminal part in the elimination of half a million Iraqi children.

While such villains are feted, anyone questioning the prevailing anti-Russia narrative is deemed a ‘Putin apologist’. Such is the darkening climate of liberal McCarthyism. For Media Lens, the Guardian’s own gushing editorials on Nato suggests “a corporate newspaper that has now fallen under a kind of ideological military occupation.”

Following Russia’s elimination from the World Cup, Nato tweeted its own approval that the four remaining sides were all from Nato states.

In this ‘Manichean World Cup’, it’s ‘our’ team of ‘benign Nato protectors’ up against the ‘malign Russian menace’.

Inconveniently, while a posturing British establishment and Nato-friendly media have snubbed and demonised Russia, the World Cup has offered fans and observers much more positive insights on Russian life and society.

England manager Gareth Southgate also seemed averse to the pre-contest scaremongering, offering high praise to Russia over its well organised tournament and hospitable treatment of his team.

Bringing commendably balanced comment and illuminating images from Russia, Alex Thomson
offered this further key reminder over the poisoning story back home: “Worth noting at this point that the British Govt has yet to provide any evidence connecting Novichok poisoning of Skripals to the Russian Govt, still less the latest contamination.”

Thomson also tweeted a moving image of Volgograd (once Stalingrad), in commemoration of the millions of Russians sacrificed in the heroic battle against Nazi Germany: “And at the setting of the sun we might pause and remember Stalingrad. To no other place on earth does humanity owe such a debt.”

Here, at least, was a welcome window on the real complexities of Russia, past and present, rather than the ‘looming threat’ posed in David Dimbleby’s pre-World Cup propaganda piece, Putin’s Russia, in which he warned: “these are dangerous times for Russia, and dangerous times for Russia are dangerous times for us.”

As England prepared for their semi-final match against Croatia, a jingoistic Independent pondered the ‘diplomatic problem’ for the English players having to shake hands with Putin if they made it to the final.

Imagine the same media writing about the dilemma for those players having to meet with Theresa May on their return, a leader currently assisting in the annihilation of Yemen.

With England, rather than ‘football’, coming home, media-hyped ‘English expectation’ and ‘English entitlement’ has now given way to more reflective ‘English valiance’. England at play, it seems, is England at war, all part of the same metanarrative of an imperious, mystical and righteous nation, even in defeat: ‘our game’, ‘our bravery on foreign fields’, ‘our right’ to decide who is friend or foe.

Again, though, it’s worth remembering just how much a grandstanding elite and toxic media help feed such notions of ‘English exceptionalism’.

It’s good, and all too human, to get caught up in the passion of the ‘beautiful game’. Nor should we be in any doubt about the obvious connections between sport and politics, notably the ways in which they are most often used to serve powerful interests and ideas. The point is to understand how we are being played.

In a welcome tweet, Gary Lineker has taken Boris Johnson to task for jumping on the political bandwagon by hailing England as returning heroes, reminding us that, as Foreign Secretary, he had actually pushed for England’s withdrawal from the contest.

As this most memorable World Cup reaches its exciting end game, the ‘noble absence’ of the British establishment will have been no loss to the wider-watching world. Hopefully, it will have helped highlight their gross hypocrisy and the enduring crimes of the British state.

John Hilley blogs regularly at Zen Politics

Why Radiohead’s outrage at being asked to boycott apartheid Israel is fake

John Hilley — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 22:15:36 +0000

Source: Zenpolitics

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has now made a public statement rejecting calls from Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) and the wider Palestinian solidarity movement to cancel the band’s Tel Aviv concert. Disappointingly, it’s a piece riddled with liberal evasions, barbed charges, and unfounded assumptions about those making the case for a boycott.

Here’s Yorke’s full comments on the issue, as reported at Rolling Stone:

I’ll be totally honest with you: this has been extremely upsetting. There’s an awful lot of people who don’t agree with the BDS movement, including us. I don’t agree with the cultural ban at all, along with J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky and a long list of others.

There are people I admire [who have been critical of the concert]like [English film director] Ken Loach, who I would never dream of telling where to work or what to do or think. The kind of dialogue that they want to engage in is one that’s black or white. I have a problem with that. It’s deeply distressing that they choose to, rather than engage with us personally, throw shit at us in public. It’s deeply disrespectful to assume that we’re either being misinformed or that we’re so retarded we can’t make these decisions ourselves. I thought it was patronizing in the extreme. It’s offensive and I just can’t understand why going to play a rock show or going to lecture at a university [is a problem to them].

The university thing is more of a head fuck for me. It’s like, really? You can’t go talk to other people who want to learn stuff in another country? Really? The one place where you need to be free to express everything you possibly can. You want to tell these people you can’t do that? And you think that’s gonna help?

The person who knows most about these things is [Radiohead guitarist] Jonny [Greenwood]. He has both Palestinian and Israeli friends and a wife who’s an Arab Jew. All these people to stand there at a distance throwing stuff at us, waving flags, saying, “You don’t know anything about it!” Imagine how offensive that is for Jonny. And imagine how upsetting that it’s been to have this out there. Just to assume that we know nothing about this. Just to throw the word “apartheid” around and think that’s enough. It’s fucking weird. It’s such an extraordinary waste of energy. Energy that could be used in a more positive way.

This is the first time I’ve said anything about it. Part of me wants to say nothing because anything I say cooks up a fire from embers. But at the same time, if you want me to be honest, yeah, it’s really upsetting that artists I respect think we are not capable of making a moral decision ourselves after all these years. They talk down to us and I just find it mind-boggling that they think they have the right to do that. It’s extraordinary. All of this creates divisive energy. You’re not bringing people together. You’re not encouraging dialogue or a sense of understanding. Now if you’re talking about trying to make things progress in any society, if you create division, what do you get? You get fucking Theresa May. You get [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, you get fucking Trump. That’s divisive.

Noted musician and leading Palestinian campaigner Roger Waters has responded to Yorke, again as reported at Rolling Stone:

I read Thom Yorke’s interview in Rolling Stone. It needs a reply as it doesn’t tell the whole story. On February 12th, hoping to start a dialogue, I sent an email expressing my concern about Radiohead crossing the BDS picket line to perform in Israel. A few hours later, Thom replied. He was angry. He had misinterpreted my attempt to start a conversation as a threat. So I tried again.

“Hey Thom,I’m sorry. My letter wasn’t meant to be confrontational. I was reaching out to see if we could have the conversation that you talk about in your reply. Can we? Love, R.”

I didn’t hear back. So silence prevailed for three weeks until March 4th when I sent a long heartfelt entreaty to Thom asking him again to talk.

In Thom’s interview with Andy Greene of Rolling Stone, in referring to Ken Loach and me, he says, “It’s deeply distressing that they choose to, rather than engage with us personally, throw shit at us in public.”

That is not true, Thom. I have made every effort to engage with you personally, and would still like to have the conversation. Not to talk is not an option.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine by Israel. Fifty years living under military occupation. Fifty years for a people with no civil rights. Fifty years of no recourse to the law. Fifty years of apartheid.

The BDS picket line exists to shine a light on the predicament of the occupied people of Palestine, both in Palestine and those displaced abroad, and to promote equal civil rights for all the people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea no matter what their nationality, race or religion. All human life is sacred, every child is our child, exceptionalism is always our enemy. There is no Us or Them, only Us.

Restiamo umani.
Love, Roger Waters

The warm and patient tone of that letter from Roger Waters stands in stark contrast to Thom Yorke’s hostile lines. Waters also offers a quiet reminder to Yorke of just what Palestinians have endured over 50 years of illegal occupation, and that “the BDS picket line exists to shine a light on [their]predicament”.

Yorke is, of course, entitled to his viewpoint. But why, we might wonder, did he feel the need to respond with such invective-laden charges against BDS and its backers? Why such angry indignation?

Yorke makes a first attempt at moral cover by citing a list of those who oppose any cultural boycott, including JK Rowling and Noam Chomsky.

While nominally correct regarding Chomsky, it’s a disingenuous selection, failing to note Chomsky’s more selective and nuanced endorsement of certain boycott tactics, as well as a lifetime’s work exposing and resisting Israel’s crimes. In that assertive spirit, Chomsky has engaged with leading BDS figure Ilan Pappe over the boycott issue, helping to promote the actual narrative of tactical resistance.

Strikingly, although a short interview, Yorke doesn’t even mention the Palestinians, their treatment, the need to resist Israel’s aggressions, or how best to go about it.

Nor does Yorke care to note JK Rowling’s liberal Zionist contortions, or the criticism she faced across Palestinian civil society over her rejection of BDS and endorsement of the pro-Israel grouping Culture for Coexistence. Again, it seems, Yorke is seeking safe liberal cover behind major names, and evading the core issue of Palestinian suffering.

Yorke continues in more injured voice, claiming that it’s “deeply disrespectful to assume that we’re either being misinformed or that we’re so retarded we can’t make these decisions ourselves.”

Yet, why would Yorke himself make such facile assumptions about the understandings or motives of those campaigners? Does he really believe that bodies like BDS, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Artists For Palestine (including Waters and Loach), alongside groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, Radiohead Fans for Palestine, or anyone else asking them not to play Israel, take Yorke and his band to be so “misinformed” or “retarded” that they’re unable to take such decisions for themselves?

Why resort to such overblown, straw-man language? Why not simply accept that these are legitimate organisations and people making an open appeal based on rational argument, and that Yorke has the same rights and opportunities to oppose that view?

Yorke also says it’s “deeply distressing that they [Loach and others] choose to, rather than engage with us personally, throw shit at us in public.” Again, that’s a remarkably crass and inaccurate claim, as the context and tenor of the reply from Waters clearly illustrates.

But there’s a more particular problem with Yorke’s annoyance here: why shouldn’t this discussion be conducted in public, as an open and vital issue? Are we all to remain quiet and restrained about artists’, like Radiohead’s, part in legitimising Israel’s brutal and illegal conduct, because it’s too “distressing” for Yorke and his band?

Yorke also seems to think that fellow band member Jonny Greenwood has some kind of special emotional status in this regard. He’s “the person who knows most about these things”, claims Yorke, apparently because he has Israeli and Arab friends and an Arab Israeli wife: “All these people to stand there at a distance throwing stuff at us, waving flags, saying, “You don’t know anything about it!” Imagine how offensive that is for Jonny.”

Again, the inverted assumption about those flag-wavers. Why does Yorke presume to know, and dismiss, campaigners’ own comprehension of the issues? More importantly, might Yorke imagine how offensive his own prioritised defence of Jonny Greenwood and his ‘superior understanding’ is to actual Palestinians facing the daily experience of occupation, siege and constant threat to life in the West Bank and Gaza?

Nor is the label “apartheid” just simply thrown around by campaigners as some lazy slur. If Yorke and Greenwood really are so well-informed, they will know that the application of ‘apartheid state’ to Israel has been ably demonstrated through a wealth of academic studies, papers and books, UN findings and rapporteurs’ reports. Devoid of any serious counter-argument, Yorke can only say that this is “fucking weird. It’s such an extraordinary waste of energy.”

The call for an academic boycott is similarly derided and dismissed: “It’s like, really? You can’t go talk to other people who want to learn stuff in another country? Really?”

I have no idea whether Yorke has read the particular guidelines for academic disengagement laid out by bodies like PACBI. But it would, at least, be intellectually reasonable for him to know and reference them, rather than present the call for academic boycott as some random ploy to prevent people wanting “to learn stuff in another country.”

In particular, Yorke’s anodyne wish for ‘open exchange’ includes no recognition of an academic system deeply inter-connected with its occupier state, providing every form of support for Israel’s military aggression, weapons development and hi-tech surveillance, continued land seizures, control of water supplies and other key resources, as well as the whole vital field of cultural and ideological production helping to hide and excuse those crimes.

Pointing these things out is, apparently, antagonistic to Yorke, who finds it “really upsetting that artists I respect think we are not capable of making a moral decision ourselves after all these years. They talk down to us and I just find it mind-boggling that they think they have the right to do that. It’s extraordinary. All of this creates divisive energy. You’re not bringing people together. You’re not encouraging dialogue or a sense of understanding.”

Yet, without a trace of self-reflecting irony, here’s Yorke effectively shouting down to those who won’t any longer accept the relentlessly-peddled ‘need for dialogue’ and proclaimed ‘peace process’, as though that entire, exhausted posture hasn’t been seen, exposed and dismissed by BDS for the sham that it is.

“Not to talk is not an option,” Yorke says. Again, such assured liberal conformity. While voicing his own lofty disdain for those no longer willing to participate in the deceit, there’s not a single word here about how Israel and its backers have used that very ‘peace’ narrative as a weapon of evasion and expanded occupation for over half a century. That’s exactly why BDS have asked Radiohead not to give succour to Brand Israel.

In an impressive letter to Yorke, a list of Israeli musicians set out the same key points about Israel’s branding agenda:

Every international artist who plays in Israel serves as a propaganda tool for the Israeli government. International performances in Israel serve the government’s agenda of whitewashing its war crimes against Palestinians by creating a “business as usual” atmosphere wherein the status-quo, a reality of colonization and military occupation for Palestinians, becomes normalized. Maintaining this atmosphere relies heavily on creating a facade of Israel as a hip, advanced, progressive state with a vibrant and diverse cultural scene. In 2005 the Israeli foreign ministry decided to invest in a public relations strategy to “re-brand Israel,” diverting attention away from Israeli crimes by highlighting Israeli cultural and scientific achievements. Needless to say, the government which just celebrated 50 years of brutal military rule over the occupied Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip should not be assisted, even unintentionally. The government which legislated to suppress even the commemoration of the displacement of the majority indigenous Palestinian population in 1948 should not be given the chance to claim that artists and musicians are endorsing its policies. This effect of a performance in Israel can not be undone even with the best intentions. Any statement that you might wish to make on stage would be overshadowed by the fact that you would be crossing an international picket line established by the vast majority of civil society organizations in Palestine. On the other hand, if you decided not to play, it would send a strong message to the Israeli government that their racist policies and grave violations of Palestinian human rights will not be normalized. It would also send a message to the people of Palestine that you’re with them in their struggle in a very real way.

Their letter concludes, like so many others to Yorke, with an open invitation:

Please reconsider violating the Palestinian call for boycott. We remain at the ready to talk to you about any questions or concerns that you may have, and continue to welcome a conversation with you.

Again, note the studious argument behind that appeal, none of it intended to intimidate. It’s a laudable message of solidarity, serving to connect communities in pursuit of just resolutions.

Yet, for Thom Yorke, the boycotting of Israel, an occupier, apartheid state, is, apparently, “divisive”, resulting in the emergence of people like Netanyahu. That’s quite an inversion of cause and effect. By such logic, not only are BDS culpable, but a mass of Palestinians who support the boycott are responsible for creating their own oppressors.

If you create division, Yorke says, you get the likes of May and Trump. Once more, the recourse to liberal angst, rather than willingness to address the structural forces underpinning such villains. How easy to slate Netanyahu, May and Trump – what of Obama? – without identifying the very systems of power – neoliberalism, militarism, Zionism – that build and thrive on social division. How easy to wish for peace and dialogue. How noble to want an end to Palestinian suffering without doing anything seriously proactive to bring it about.

The purpose of BDS is not about creating social division. It’s about bringing people together in broad, tactical and effective opposition to the unbending, repressive power and divisive infrastructure of the Israeli state: its illegal wall, inhuman checkpoints and colonialist settlements; its ruthless imprisonment and disconnection of Gaza from the outside world; its apartheid divisions inside Israel and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

I have no idea whether or not Yorke and his band are able to see the merits of that case. But they should, at least, resist caricaturing those making it as “weird” and “patronising”. Yorke’s vociferous indignation looks a lot more like feigned liberal deflection of the actual issues.

It seems unlikely that Radiohead will change their minds now about performing in Israel. That’s their decision, their moral choice. But Yorke should refrain from slandering a BDS movement with serious, rational and well-supported ideas about how to advance human rights and justice for Palestinians.

There’s been no ‘talking-down’ or ‘telling’ Thom Yorke and Radiohead what to do, only fair and reasoned requests for them not to cross this picket line and partake in Israel’s whitewash. Accept or reject those arguments, but don’t run for cover behind faux outrage.