Harry's Place

Remember when the Liberal Democrats used to be the nation’s third biggest party?

Having done badly in two successive sets of local elections its share of the vote continues to slide.

Last night’s YouGov/Sun poll has topline figures of LAB 43%, Con 32%, UKIP 9% and Lib Dems 8%, from UKPollingReport.

This is a cross post from Richard Millett

Thank you very much for all the support I received in light of last Monday’s Palestine Society event at SOAS when I was manhandled and told I was a “typical Israeli”, even though I am a proud Brit.

I received incredible emails from all over the world with people appreciating my attempts to cover anti-Israel meetings in London and appalled by my treatment.

I received emails from those who completely disagree with my views on Israel, but were still appalled by the way I was dealt with.

I never got to the bottom of why I was called a “typical Israeli”. Only that student knows what was in his mind.

I had a very constructive chat with SOAS who said they had been inundated with emails from both sides but who wanted to continue to welcome me to SOAS and they said they will be reviewing their filming policy.

Much has been made of my not applying for consent to film, but when I was thudded in the shoulder from behind and shouted at to stop filming I wasn’t asked whether I had been granted such permission by SOAS. As it happens I didn’t know there was a filming policy as it has never been mentioned at any SOAS event I have attended (and I have attended a fair few).

There was also at least one other person filming who, it seems, didn’t have the required permission either. Meanwhile, I always see students filming on their IPhones.

And, unless I nodded off temporarily, none of the required announcements in accordance with the filming policy were made at the start of last Monday’s meeting by the organisers themselves!

I believe that in a public space such as a university freedom of speech is commensurate with a right to cover that freedom of speech without fear or hindrance. No one should be disallowed from filming solely because of their political views.

I was targeted last Monday night because of my political views. No one else filming would have been roughed up like that. And I have never disrupted an event, despite what is being put about by my detractors.

Sadly, SOAS students, it seems, have received a highly defamatory and incendiary statement from the SOAS Student Union on behalf of the Palestine Society, which has potential repercussions for my personal safety at SOAS and which was sent to me by a concerned SOAS student. One of the paragraphs states of me:

“By now, we are well aware of his intentions. He first provokes, intimidates and insults (including racially) speakers, organisers or members of the audience and violates generally accepted conventions of public meetings.”

This is reminiscent of another SOAS talk I attended on 16th April about Israel’s Arab minority where I wasn’t even filming. At the talk I was verbally insulted by Gilbert Achcar, a SOAS lecturer, who, after I had asked a perfectly reasonable question during the Q&A, told the room that I was a “professional disruptor”, that had he known I was coming he would have barred me from attending and that I had left insulting remarks on his answering machine. He then told me to get out.

Of course I didn’t leave messages on his machine. I wouldn’t even dream of it.

Aggressive targeting of those supportive of Israel is not confined to university campuses. At the beginning of the year I was put through a torrid few months when Peter Scott and Salim Alam of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign tried to have me prosecuted for harassment because of some videos and photos I posted of them demonstrating against Veolia outside the Natural History Museum in December.

I was at a reasonable distance while filming their political activism but I ended up being called into Notting Hill Police Station to be questioned about my filming and what I had written on my blog. Scott and Alam seemed to have failed to tell the police that I and others are constantly filmed and photographed for their anti-Israel blog.

To my relief the police eventually decided against any further action, but had it come to court the following footage might have made interesting viewing. It shows Salim Alam outside the now defunct Ahava shop in Covent Garden getting up close and personal to the camera of Roy from Campaign4Truth who was filming legally but still, as you can see, gets his camera whacked by one of Alam’s colleagues:

This piece originally appeared at Huffington Post UK

For those seeking peace in the Middle East, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) would be an unlikely role model. Yet the Far Left in Britain has chosen to listen to a PFLP plane hijacker tell them about intifada and Palestine, this July, at the Marxism Festival.

The PFLP [above] was founded by George Habash, who was born into a Greek Orthodox family. Habash left his hometown of Joppa in 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence. Habash was a zealous disciple of Gamal Nasser’s pan-Arabism. Habash would form the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group which has carried out hijackings, suicide bombings, and targeted murders.

The PFLP joined in the recent round of rocket firing from Gaza in March, which shows clearly that the PFLP is a violent organisation.

Fittingly, George Habash was described as “Terrorism’s Christian Godfather” by Time Magazine. Habash died in 2008, yet his image and influence are still palpable in Bethlehem , where PFLP slogans, posters and graffiti are daubed on walls and lampposts.

Following Habash’s death, the PFLP has supported Hamas agression against Israel, and has campaigned for an end for the international designation of “terrorism”, arguing that “resistance is not terrorism”.

For International Women’s Day in 2009, the PFLP celebrated by posting an image of a woman armed with a gun and holding baby, calling this its “Salute to the Palestinian Women“, praising “the fighter and the mother of the steadfast Palestinian resistance, the martyr and the mother of martyrs”.

The PFLP’s armed wing is the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades, who are responsible for multiple suicide bombings against Israeli citizens.

Mayor of Bethlehem Victor Batarseh is a PFLP member and identifies as a Christian. Indeed, Batarseh recently gave the opening address at the evangelical conference, Christ at the Checkpoint. In January, Batarseh attended a memorial service celebrating Habash’s life, organised by the PFLP. The Bethlehem of today’s Palestinian Authority has a Christian veneer, yet it bears the image of Habash’s PFLP strikingly.

Bethlehem is adorned with images of George Habash, PFLP flags, and graffiti of a smiling young Leila Khaled – the famous PFLP plane-hijacker – posed with a machine gun.

Leila Khaled, for her part, will address the British Far Left in July this year, despite her extreme actions and her lifelong affiliation with the PFLP. The Marxism Festival 2012 – hosted largely in Friends House – reveals:

It is an old adage that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. And Marxism 2012 is very proud to play host to some incredible freedom fighters.
Leila Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and has dedicated her life to Palestinian freedom. Most famously she hijacked two planes in the ’60s and ’70s. Banned from the UK, Leila joins us via Skype Sun, 3.45pm.

This is the event which will be hosted at UCL in its Cruciform Lecture Theatre:

Intifada! The struggle for Palestinian freedom Leila Khaled, Sarah Irving & Peyman Jafari #resistance #imperialism #palestine

Leila Khaled has been dubbed the “poster girl” of Palestinian militancy.

Yet the violence and extremism of the PFLP ought not to be perceived as chic, trendy or daring, in any way, as the PFLP fosters and practises murderous extremism.

Rather than sullying the British Left by allying with such violent people, UK Marxists ought to shun Leila Khaled and her PFLP forthright.

The passport Iranian television is claiming belonged to the alleged “Israeli spy” (see Gene’s story below) is a crude forgery copied directly from a facsimile of an Israeli passport on Wikipedia. Such was the ineptitude that the word “forgery” is in fact too generous – they made no effort to even change the details. The only difference is the new photo inexpertly pasted over the original (without even paying attention to the stamps). Details blacked out in the Wikipedia image are simply erased while visible details are left exactly as is.

Hat tip: Joe Millis

Potkin Azarmehr and Emanuele Ottolenghi raise doubts about Iranian claims that a “Mossad spy” was executed for the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist.

Iranian TV showed what it claimed was an Israeli passport issued to the alleged spy, Majid Jamali Fashi.

Ottolenghi writes:

I will leave it to others to decide whether Fashi’s execution was a fake. The passport certainly looks like a fake. This has less to do with the fact that the name and ID number of the passport holder have been erased and more with obvious flaws:

First of all, any passport issued since the mid-1990s by any country includes, at the bottom of its main page, a line with left-pointed arrows, much like in this picture. In an authentic passport, the line begins with the letter P followed by the three letter code of the country issuing the document (ISR for Israel), followed by the passport holder’s full name. In the snapshot, the line contains only arrows and no name – N.B. the name is not erased or blurred, it is simply not there.

Beyond this first surprising fault, the picture for Fashi is not suitable for passports – he is gazing away from the camera, whereas a passport head shot requires that the passport holder stare into the camera.

But there is something more – a small detail that Iranian state falsifiers–sloppy as ever–overlooked.

Fashi’s picture is very recent – yet the passport was issued, according to the snapshot, on 17 November 2003. Fashi’s biographical details tell us that he was 24 when he was hanged. If that is the case, he would have been 15-years-old – a teenager, with a much more boyish face with less facial hair than the picture shows.

For obvious reasons then, the year of birth of the passport holder is concealed as well.

Fashi might have been executed after all. But the attempt to turn him into a Mossad agent and gun-for-hire rests clearly on an orchestrated attempt by the regime to scapegoat someone who is innocent.

It is a year since he was identified by the only individual to have been arrested – and subsequently released – in relation to his horrific murder and almost three years since the individual suspected of smuggling him into this country was convicted of unrelated offenses. Yet, to date, no convictions have taken place for the ritualistic murder/dismemberment of five year old Ikpomwosa aka Boy Adam.

Although the investigation has not dropped of the MSM’s radar, the most consistent coverage from a single newspaper I can find is that of the Daily Mail. It carries an interview with Richard Hoskins whose specialist knowledge of African animist religions was sought by Police investigating Ikpomwosa’s murder. There he recounts the temptation which he faced and declined to engage with animal sacrifice in an attempt to save his infant daughter whilst living in western DR Congo.

Another case involving use of child body parts for ritualistic purposes which is likely to be resolved much quicker is the arrest of a British citizen in Thailand. Chow Hok Kue is reported to have been carrying dessicated corpses or foetuses in his luggage; although it appears unlikely that they were murdered for these purposes.

Earlier this month, tens of thousands of capsules containing powdered baby flesh were seized by South Korean customs officials. The Daily Telegraph reported that no sickness had been reported from ingesting such faith medication, although I can suggest that some is involved with those selling them.

The thoroughly unsurprising news that non-white births in the United States exceeded white births for the first time in history has thrown at least some rightwingers into a tizzy.

Representing the Republican id, the Eagle Forum website delcared:

It is not a good thing. The immigrants do not share American values, so it is a good bet that they will not be voting Republican when they start voting in large numbers.
[...]
Instead, the USA is being transformed by immigrants who do not share those values, and who have high rates of illiteracy, illegitimacy, and gang crime, and they will vote Democrat when the Democrats promise them more food stamps.

Here is a report about one of the immigrants who allegedly did not share American values.

I suppose most conservatives would not put it in such harsh terms. But let’s not forget that the “moderate” Mitt Romney won the Republican primaries by, among other things, denouncing relatively sympathetic views on illegal immigrants from Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry.

One problem for Republicans is that as the US becomes browner, their core voters are whiter and older than the population in general.

And despite Republican efforts, Hispanics– by far the fastest-growing population group in the US– vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

According to Guido, Mehdi Hasan has departed the  New Statesman for some sort of gig at the UK website of the Huffington Post.

He’s bagged a massive promotion in both status and influence by joining the Huffington Post. Guido just spoke to one of Mehdi’s fellow lefty hacks:

Lefty: Has he been fired?
GF: Well he’s going to the HuffPo, so you could put it like that.
Lefty: Oh god that’s worse than being fired. That’s worse than being dead.

Are they going to pay him?

I expect we’ll hear more.

Cross-posted from Eric Lee at TULIP

One of the lies told by the proponents of boycotting Israel’s national trade union center is that their campaign is on an unstoppable roll. Unions everywhere, they say, are refusing to have anything to do with “racist, Zionist, colonial, apartheid” Histadrut.

But last week, the International Union of Food workers, a global union federation of nearly 400 trade unions in 120 countries, representing some 20 million food and agriculture workers around the globe, held its 26th congress in Geneva — and the Histadrut was a welcome, and active, participant.

The Histadrut’s international affairs director, Avital Shapira-Shabirow, addressed the congress twice. In the photo above you can see Avital speaking, with her image projected on the large screen above the stage.

First, she spoke during the opening plenary on the subject of precarious work – a central concern of unions all over the world. Avital told delegates about the Histadrut’s fight against precarious work in Israel. When she mentioned that Israeli workers had managed to secure a contract for the very first time with a subsidiary of the multinational catering giant Sodexo, she was interrupted by applause. You can hear part of her speech – including the outburst of applause – on the 5 minute report on the day’s events at Radio Labour – click here to listen.

On the final day, Avital spoke following the speeches by trade union leaders from the newly independent unions in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Algeria and Palestine. The Palestinian union of agricultural workers had just been admitted to membership in the IUF – the first Palestinian union to do so. Avital warmly welcomed the Palestinians into the IUF and expressed the desire of the Histadrut to strengthen its relationship with the Palestinian labour movement. This speech as well was warmly received by delegates.

In the final session of the congress, delegates elected a new Executive Committee to run the organisation for the next five years; among those selected was a leader of the Histadrut’s food workers union.

Delegates ended the Congress with a singing of the “Internationale” in all their respective languages. The IUF prepared a booklet with the texts — and kindly included Hebrew for the Israeli delegation. Unfortunately, the text was not proofread by a Hebrew speaker, and appears incorrectly from left-to-right. The correct text can be found here.

Allowing same-sex marriage should be seen as a progression of civil rights. It should be of distant secondary importance that homosexual acts are not illegal in this country and social attitudes are tolerant of cohabiting same-sex couples.

On that note, although Malawi’s new President, Joyce Banda is not proposing same-sex marriage, her vow to repeal laws which ban homosexual acts should be seen as a progression of rights which bucks the trend of virulent gay-hatred across the region.

Whilst such a move would require a parliamentary vote, her United Democratic Front party commands a majority. Furthemore – and readers may correct me – attitudes towards gays in Malawi appears more convivial than elsewhere. Admittedly, in May 2010, Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza were convicted and sentenced to 14 years hard labour for pursuing a marriage ceremony, less than a fortnight later, Banda’s predecessor pardoned both men.

This decision may not have been entirely virtuous, as considerable international pressure and threats of denial of aid budgets had been brought to bear even though, as SarahAB discussed, some African countries would be prepared to forego aid if it meant repealing anti-gay legislation.

Hat-tip Alex Ross in the comments.

On a related topic, in response to John Pilger’s analysis on ABC.net of Obama’s support for same-sex marriage, Rodney Croome of Australian Marriage Equality campaign asks why Pilger is a complete and utter hate-riven anti-human nutter who now appears to be peddling the notion that Hollywood is in the grip of ‘homosexualists’ and a pink mafia.