Four-year-old is abused by school racists

This piece, by Leon Symons, is from the Jewish Chronicle.

A four-year-old girl has been withdrawn from a West London infants’ school after being subjected to repeated antisemitic remarks by other pupils.

Her father, journalist Nick Johnstone, has accused the head teacher, Philip Eaton, of failing to deal with his complaints. He has since complained to the local education authority about Mr Eaton and has also reported the matter to police and his MP, Mark Field.

In an email to Mr Johnstone, the head admitted that both he and the school “have let your family down”.

Mr Johnstone’s daughter, whom he asked not to be named, joined Hallfield Infants’ School in Paddington, a multi-faith but predominantly Muslim school, in January.h

Physical and verbal bullying of the girl started some time ago and escalated last week to religious abuse.

He said: “A girl told her that ‘Jewishes are yuck’, ‘Jewishes don’t care about people’, ‘you can’t trust Jewishes’ and ‘you can’t throw a ball to Jewishes because they kick it in your face’. Another girl told her ‘Jewishes are not nice people’.” She was told that “Allah would burn her in the fire” because she was not Muslim.

“My wife and I had never heard, let alone used, the word ‘Jewishes’ before. We were absolutely shocked and appalled that this had happened in a state primary school. We felt that it was a disgrace that a four-year-old should have suffered such racist episodes while under the school’s care.”

Mr Johnstone reported the incidents to Mr Eaton as they happened. “At first, he seemed to take it seriously and said he would speak to the children. But he didn’t. Then he told me he doubted that all of this had happened. He seemed more concerned about not upsetting the other parents than us,” said Mr Johnstone.

Mr Eaton said he had wanted time to work out a strategy for dealing with the problem “because children of this age have very short memories of what they are saying. There is a bigger issue of where they are getting this from and it must be somewhere outside.”

He added that he planned to speak to the children and their parents, and that staff would be encouraged to work more closely to try to eliminate racist comments.

This piece, by Leon Symons, is from the Jewish Chronicle.

Understanding racists

Ben White understands.

See also Rosie Bell on Ken Loach, who also understands.

An academic version of Durban

Here.

Celebration of Steve Cohen’s life , this Sunday.

Celebration of the life and achievements of Steve Cohen. Manchester Town Hall.
Sunday 5th July 11am.- 5pm

There’ll be various speakers, including speakers on antisemitism, friendship, Ireland, anti-deportation, Steve’s life, various speakers from campaigns Steve was involved in,and also a reading by Julie Hesmondhalg from Steve’s recent novel . Followed at 2 pm by the Immigration Law Practitioners Association 25th anniversary celebrations “Perspectives on Immigration”
All welcome.

Hal Draper: How to Defend Israel – a Program for Israeli Socialists (1948)

Cross-posted on Greens Engage:

Hal Draper and his political party, the Workers’ Party, rejected the idea of partition and believed the ultimate decision to set up a new nation state of Israel in 1948 was a regrettable one. But, recognising that most socialists had not pursued an argument against nationalism in general and should not do so with Jews in 1948, and cognisant of the nature of the enemies of Israel at that time, he authored How To Defend Israel: a Political Program for Israeli Socialists.

This was a time, note, when religion was eclipsed as an influence in Middle East conflicts by a raft of other warring ideologies, and so does not receive the emphasis he would probably give it if he were writing today. The idea of Britain being part of the Big Three is also quaint. And the notion of ‘imperialism’ is, as ever, left unpacked (in my previous post Moishe Postone examines how anti-capitalism became internationalised as anti-imperialism). It was also a time when Palestinians who had suddenly found themselves as Israel’s Arab citizens were living under military rule; since that time a great deal of progress has been made (notwithstanding the present Israeli government – as Mohammad Darawshe remarks “There have been worse”). However, Hal Draper’s thinking about Israel is worth revisiting because of his distinction between elites (which he terms ‘Zionist leadership’ and ‘Arab lords’ or ‘effendis’) and the interests of two peoples, and his acknowledgement of their right to self determination.

“… socialist thinking on this subject must start by understanding the distinction between (a) the Jews’ right to self-determination, and (b) the correctness or advisability of exercising this right to the point of separation under given conditions. We need only refer to the fact that, before and after the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks’ program called for defense of Finland’s right to self-determination: before the revolution, Marxists in Finland advocated separation; after the revolution, the Communists in Finland advocated unity with Russia; but both before and after, there was no question in their minds but that the Finns had the right to separate if they so willed. Never under Lenin did the Soviets attempt to deprive them of that right by force of arms.

But in the present case we do not even have the complication of a workers’ state being involved. Far from it! The attack upon the Jews’ right to self-determination comes from a deeply reactionary social class – the Arab lords – whose reactionary aims in this case are not alleviated by the fact that they themselves suffer from the exploitation of British imperialism (at the same time that they cling to that imperialism in order to defend their privileges against their own people).

In this conflict, as socialists – that is, as the only thoroughgoing and consistent democrats, we not only support the Palestine Jews’ right to self-determination but draw the necessary conclusions from that position: for full recognition of the Jewish state by our own government; for lifting the embargo on arms to Israel; for defense of the Jewish state against the Arab invasion in the present circumstances.

But for us this is not the end of the question but only the beginning.

…

The question which we have asked, following Lenin’s method, was: What politics does this war flow from? War – so goes the platitude – is the continuation of politics by other, forceful, means. In the case of every concrete war, we try to analyze concretely the politics of which that war is the continuation. The Spanish loyalist government was an imperialist government; it exploited Morocco and oppressed the peasants (and shot them down when they revolted!). But when the Franco fascists sought to overthrow even this miserable government, we called for its defense – in our own way, by revolutionary means, and without giving the slightest political support to the bourgeois People’s Front leaders – because our analysis of the concreteness of events showed that the anti-Franco war did not flow from the loyalist government’s imperialist character but from the fascists’ attack upon its democratic base.

This was ABC once.”

Read on.

(I also got a lot out of Hal Draper’s his ABC of National Liberation Movements. I have yet to read his much-cited Two Souls of Socialism. See also Sean Matgamna, whose organisation Workers’ Liberty frequently draws on Draper’s thinking, and who cautions “Draper, I think, did contribute more than a little to the Zionophobe conquest of so much of the left”.)

Via Contested Terrain.

A message from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns 1969–2009

Dear Museum Friend,

On Friday, June 19, our Museum community joined the family and friends of Officer Stephen Johns at a deeply moving service that mourned his loss, celebrated his life and paid tribute to his legacy. Officer Johns’ pastor challenged all of us to do more to honor the ideals that our beloved colleague sacrificed his life protecting. We are moving forward with renewed dedication to our work, but our first priority is Officer Johns’ family.

Therefore, the Museum has established the USHMM Officer Johns Family Fund. One hundred percent of your gift will be forwarded directly to the family of Officer Johns. Please note that under IRS regulations gifts such as this are not tax-deductible.

Gifts can be made in any of the following ways:

•	Visit http://web.ushmm.org/officerjohns
•	Mail a check payable to USHMM Officer Johns Family Fund to USHMM, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW, Washington DC 20024.
•	Call toll free 877-91USHMM (877-918-7466) from 8:00am to 8:00pm Eastern time.

We are most appreciative for the outpouring of support and messages of condolence we have received from so many concerned citizens and organizations across the country and around the world. Officer Johns will be deeply missed by his Museum family and all who knew him.

Sincerely,

Sara J. Bloomfield
Director

Particularism on the left, and its critics

Where is the outcry in my trade union about the murder of Iranian students by the Iranian authorities and its executors, the Basij militia? Why is Israeli state violence against Palestinian universities so much more important to UCU members in Britain than Iranian state violence against its own universities and students?

Intellectual historian Moishe Postone talked about this sort of particularism at his SOAS presentation on Monday.

Update June 30th: see Martin in the Margins’ UCU does something right (hat tip Kellie):

“On Saturday UCU general secretary Sally Hunt represented the union at a protest outside the Iranian embassy, as part of the Justice for Iranian Workers campaign.

The UCU has also condemned the Iranian government’s arrest of 70 university professors, as part of the crackdown on opposition protestors.“

More from Norm on the Guardian’s equivocations on 7 Jewish Children

Here on Normblog.

Incidentally, he has a word to say about Seumas Milne’s defence of the vile Ahmadinejad.

TULIP & TUFI at UNISON

Trade Unions linking Israel and Palestine (TULIP) was represented by Eric Lee at the Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI) fringe meeting at UNISON Conference.

Read the report of an excellent event on the TULIP website.

UK pro-Palestinian group accused of hypocrisy

Jonny Paul reports in the Jerusalem Post Here.