By taking advantage of Britain's political freedoms and legal system, Islamic and leftist groups have made Britain the leader of an international effort to deny Israel's right to exist.From the Foreword:
This article considers the background of both the Islamic and leftist camps, maps the main organizations active in the delegitmization efforts and covers those who help "mainstream" these efforts.
Read the whole thing:In mid-December 2009, Member of Knesset Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former foreign minister, was due to arrive in London and make a speech at a Jewish National Fund (JNF) event, held at the Hendon Hall Hotel in London. Having had a warrant issued for her to be arrested for alleged war crimes while serving as a minister during the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead, Livni canceled her plans and never came to Britain. A clip, still available on YouTube, shows two and a half minutes of a demonstration held in front of the hotel. This is a rather small demonstration; the few dozen protesters chant slogans such as “Zionists are terrorists” and “Free Palestine.” They are holding signboards referring to “Apartheid in Palestine,” and calling to bring “war criminals” to justice and to boycott Israeli goods.
A closer look reveals that these signboards either carry the logo of the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), a main Muslim Brotherhood front in Britain, or of the Palestine Solidarity
Campaign (PSC) and its Boycott Israeli Goods (BIG) Campaign. Despite the small number of participants, top UK Brotherhood (Hamas’s parent movement) figures are featured such as like Dr. Kemal Helbawy, Muhammad Sawalha, and Zaher Birawi, alongside top PSC figures such as Betty Hunter. In the clip, Hunter says they will pursue “these people” wherever and whenever they can. She also tells the crowd about a decision taken the same week by the British government for supermarkets to label Israeli-settlement goods, and says they have to ensure that “this small step…is turned into a huge movement of boycotting all Israeli goods.”
Both the warrant for Livni’s arrest and this demonstration, organized by the same coalition, tell in a nutshell the story of the last decade, in which Britain has become the main leader of an international effort to deny Israel’s right to exist in its current form. This campaign is rooted in a network that includes rather strange bedfellows: hard-line Islamists, mainly led by Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters, along with far-left socialists, each having their own splinter groups that cooperate in the struggle against the Jewish state. For many years Britain has been a stronghold of the Brotherhood; its main publications, as well as the main publications of its Palestinian branch, Hamas, have been issued there, instead of in locales such as Cairo or Amman where doing so would be prohibited. Far-left movements have also been active in Britain for many years.
By taking advantage of Britain’s political freedoms and legal system, which allows designated “war criminals” to be brought to justice there, by working through both the country’s civil-society system and politics, these groups have been able to mobilize an anti-Israeli campaign in the country. Furthermore, by joining forces against the War on Terror proclaimed by President Bush after the 9/11 events, and against the British participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have succeeded to elevate and “mainstream” their efforts. In the process, a focus has been placed on the media based in Britain, whether electronic media outlets such as the BBC or Sky, or print media such as The Guardian, which today is read globally in the English-speaking world on the internet.
London, it should be noted, is also a hub for major Arabic media outlets with influence across the whole Middle East, such as Al-Hayat and Asharq Alawsat. Thus, this campaign also functions on a global scale. Hence, it is imperative to scrutinize the British hub of delegitimization in order to understand its sources and how it reaches out to the rest of the world.
This article will first consider the background of both the Islamic and leftist camps, then map the main organizations active in the delegitimization efforts, and finally focus on those who help “mainstream” these efforts.
Ehud Rosen specializes in modern political Islam, focusing on the ideology and history of the Muslim Brotherhood. He lived in London for five years, while working toward his PhD at SOAS, University of London. He currently teaches at Bar-Ilan University.
Technorati Tag: Great Britain and British Muslim Initiative and Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
No comments:
Post a Comment