Solidarity with Iranian political prisoners, students and workers! Demonstrate outside Press TV offices

Sunday 2 August 2-5pm

Press TV, Westgate House, Westgate, Ealing W5

* Two minutes walk from Hanger Lane tube station, Central Line
* Press TV is an Iranian state-funded English language station.

In the crackdown against last month’s Iranian protests the brutal Islamist regime arrested thousands of demonstrators and raided student dormitories. Some of those arrested have now been released, but still face prosecution. And the arrests continue. In Iran pre-charge detention can continue indefinitely.

Relatives have begun demonstrating outside Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, fearing the torture, ill-treatment and forced confessions of their loved ones.

Many people — perhaps much more than the official figures — were killed during and after the protests. Students were killed in their dormitories. Some students and other young people have disappeared. Their families do not know where they are.

In Iran protests and workers’ organisations are suppressed. In the recent past people organising for Iran’s minority populations, women’s rights, student activists and trade union leaders have been arrested and imprisoned. Mansour Osanloo, the leader of one of the most important new unions in Iran, the Tehran Bus Workers Syndicate, remains in jail.

Journalists have been forced to say on Iranian state-run television that they were supported by foreign powers, that they are guilty of “treason”.

And the role of Press TV? When one Canadian journalist was dragged onto Iranian state-TV Press TV reported it as “Detained Newsweek reporter comes clean” as if his “confession” could be taken at face value.

Last month, when millions of Iranians demonstrated for democracy and when the crackdown began Press TV refrained from criticising the government and was credulous about its actions. Neda Soltani’s death was said to be “hyped and dramatised by western media outlets.”

We are against all censorship but while the Iranian peoples’ human rights are suppressed, British journalists and commentators should have nothing to do with such a media outlet.

Let us send a message to the Iranian regime:
• We will not forget the prisoners — release all political prisoners now!
• For the right to organise against oppression, to demonstrate!
• For freedom of the press!
• For the right to join and organise in trade unions for worker’s rights!

Organised by British and Iranian socialists
To support this action or to find out more get in touch: 07951450370

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.“

Smantha Lishak on the Durban Review Conference

Samantha Lishak, second from the right

This piece is written by Samantha Lishak, Chair of Leeds University UJS

This week, one week after returning from the facade that was Durban II, has been a week of reflection for me. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what went on at that conference, and when people ask me “how was Geneva?” I’m never certain how to respond. How to explain what I went through at Durban II… According to my previous notes people had gathered that I’d gotten rather rageous, and been struck with dissapointment, at the United Nations. The truth is that there was so much emotion flying about that it was sometimes difficult to identify what I was actually feeling.

It is fair to say that Durban II was tainted from the start. The moment President Ahmadinejad was allowed to give the opening address to the UN, months after hosting a Holocaust Denial Conference, there was no way the conference could be seen as a legitimate conference against racism. Ahmadinejad’s racist, antisemitic speech overshadowed the entire week. Beyond his hateful words, what affected me was the repercussions of them. Speaking to NGO’s, I was told that actually Ahmadinejad’s speech was factually correct, that there is a force that controls the world. I was offered the chance to ‘admit’ the War in Iraq was my fault. I was offered the chance to explain how I controlled the media. I personally. I, because I am a Jew.

Never have I been more disheartened with the state of global affairs than after returning from Durban II. I went to Geneva with the naive hope of being able to “make a difference” by participating in a conference ‘against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerances’. As a Jewish Student, human rights issues are of utmost significance, and it is frustrating that human rights abuses across the world are being absolutely ignored; Abuses in Darfur, Sri Lanka, India, to name a tiny few, were finally going to be given the opportunity to speak to the world, at this conference. NGO’s had come from all over the world, many of whom had spent 8 years waiting to afford to come to Europe, to present their plea to the United Nations that their suffering be recognised, and be offer helped. The Jewish student delegations from across the world arranged a rally with Darfuri people against the silence of the UN with issues in Darfur. I learnt so much from that rally. I learnt more about the politics of the Sudan, and most importantly the personal experiences of Darfuri people. Experiences that were inexcusably not heard in the UN General Assembly.

One week later, having celebrated 61 years of Israel’s independence in Leeds on Yom Ha’atzamut, remembered fallen Israeli soldiers on Israel’s Remembrance Day – Yom Ha’zikaron, and having been asked again, by a student, if I thought the um, the um, ‘Israeli’s’ controlled the global media and were using Gilad Shalit as a means of deflection, I am still ‘getting over’ the conference. I am continually asked “how was it?”, and every time I give a different response. Every time another story. Some beaming with joy, such as the clown who threw a nose at Ahmadinejad in the circus we call the UN, some with sadness, such as Tibet being thrown off the podium due to China’s objections to their speech, some with concern, such as the last NGO I heard speak claim that 9/11 was an unsolved mysery that didn’t happen, and that his organization were starting a lobby to remove the word antisemitism from the Oxford English Dictionary as it is clearly racist, and so many more stories and emotions in between.

I’d thought by now I would be able to give a calm response to the question “how was Geneva?” but I guess it will take more time for my blood not to boil when I think about Durban II, the farce it was, and the tragic neglect of what is so urgent to talk about.

This piece is written by Samantha Lishak, Chair of Leeds University UJS

“Antiracists” think Ahmadinejad was right

“…Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s UN speech on 21 April struck many as obnoxious, but in terms of understanding the 1948 roots of the Middle East conflict he was spot on. Vilifying him may feel good, but it is a diversion form the real issue.”

Ghada Karmi, Author, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine

“However we may deplore the tone of President Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN conference on racism, it is difficult to deny the principal facts that he presented…”

Geoff Simons, Author, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Karmi thinks Ahmadinejad was “spot on” in his understanding of the roots of the Middle East conflict.

Simons agrees with the “principal facts” that he presented.

Neither stops to wonder why it is they agree with a genocidal anti-Jewish racist on the central question concerning Jews in the contemporary world.  Perhaps it is just a coincidence?  A stopped clock is right twice a day?

But perhaps there are other lessons to be learnt from the fact that they agree with Ahmadinejad.

And why is the Guardian printing this support for the understanding and analysis of the world’s most powerful antisemite on its letters page?

If people don’t understand what is racist about holocaust denial then they should make use of Deborah Lipstadt’s magnificent website, which is an excellent resource, Holocaust Denial On Trial.  http://www.hdot.org/

Holocaust denial is antisemitic firstly because denial was part of the crime itself.  Those who were murdered were told that nobody would ever believe that this happened and that nobody would ever know that they even existed.  Denial is not a response to the Holocaust but it is part of the Holocaust.

Secondly because Holocaust denial necessarily assumes that the Jews are sufficiently powerful and sufficiently evil to have invented such a horrible lie and to have made believing it a precondition for acceptability in public life.  It is antisemitic conspiracy theory.

John Strawson

UPDATE – John Strawson adds:

Karmi and Simons rely on ignorance of history  in order to make their case: a case that Ahmadnejad is able to trade on.

“Their” history is that Western guilt for the Holocaust meant that the Jews were given Palestine in order to make amends.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Reading the United Nations documents that led to the partition plan – debate in the General Assembly May through November 1947 and the report of United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) – there are no Western expression of guilt whatsoever. The only speeches that linked the creation of a Jewish State to the Holocaust were from the Soviet Union and Poland.

Indeed what is striking is that despite many anti-Semitic remarks, not one Western country rises to object. The partition plan itself explicitly stated that it was plan for the future of government of Palestine and not a solution to the “Jewish question” – the latter formulation being a reference to the survivors of the Holocaust in displaced peoples’ camps.  Far from guilt there is indifference bordering on callousness.  The Jewish population of between 600,00-650,000 (and 18,000 in detention in in Cyprus) [UN figures]) were of course in Palestine in 1947.

They constituted a clearly constituted a national community.  It is this national identity that the Karmi et al wish to deny. Modern anti-Semitism mainly takes the form of discrimination against Jews as national community – something that the Durban II statement reinforces when it places anti-Semitism between “Islamaphobia” and “Christianophobia.” (draft article 10)

John Strawson

Paxman allows antisemite Ahmadinejad to set the Newsnight agenda

David T on HP.

Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad speaks at UN antiracist conference on Holocaust Rememberance Day

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP, is working for Press TV, the propaganda wing of the Iranian regime

Jeremy Corbyn presenting on Press TV

From Harry’s Place:

Here he is, standing in for George Galloway.

Press TV publishes, approvingly, Holocaust denial material. Recently, it published an essay by the disgraced Holocaust Denier and neo-Nazi, Nicolas Kollerstrom, that concludes “that the alleged massacre of Jewish people by gassing during World War II was scientifically impossible”. PressTV’s introductory comment is as follows:

The distinguished academic was dismissed on April 22, 2008 without any explanation and a Holocaust conference held on 16-18 May in Berlin refused his article and warned that he would be arrested if he attended the conference and presented his essay.

The West punishes people for their scientific research on Holocaust but the same western countries allow insults to prophets and religious beliefs…

More recently, it published this:

Press TV has excelled itself by running a story that no reputable news outlet had reported: a supposed CIA study predicting the collapse of Israel within 20 years. The only authority cited for this study was “international lawyer Franklin Lamb”. Lamb is a political activist described by Hizbollah’s TV station in Lebanon as “persistent in his support for the just cause of the Lebanese people’s resistance”.

You can contact Jeremy Corbyn at corbynj@parliament.uk. His TheyWorkForYou page is here.

Is Ahmadinejad guilty of incitement under the Genocide Convention? Irwin Cotler

Ahmadinejad receives standing ovation at UN General Assembley, 2008

This piece, by Irwin Cotler, is from the National Post.

December 9 marks the 60th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, sometimes referred to as the “Never Again” Convention. Six decades have passed since this new era of genocide prevention was proclaimed in the wake of the Holocaust. On this oft-ignored anniversary, we must acknowledge our abysmal failure in preventing the most destructive threat known to humankind – the crime whose name we should even shudder to mention – genocide.

The enduring lesson of the Holocaust and that of the genocides that followed is that they occurred not simply because of the machinery of death, but because of the state-sanctioned incitement to hatred. As international tribunals have recognized and affirmed, the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers; it began with words. These are the chilling facts of history.

President Ahmadienjad of Iran is a Holocaust denier

Holocaust denier

Report from news-en.trend.az via HP.

The myth of the Holocaust is the grounds for Zionist crimes, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at the opening ceremony of the fourth conference on Palestine.

Ahmadinejad said the Israeli government was formed with the help of superpowers on the basis of lies. He called the Holocaust “fiction” and said the “function of the Zionist regime is to make constant threats and turn Eastern countries into a market for weapons of the West.” He said the only way to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is to respect the rights of the Palestinian people live on the IRINN television channel.

A general free referendum should be held to resolve this issue, he said.

“Israel’s crimes should be considered in the supreme courts. The UN Security Council should get out from under the influence of the Zionist movements,” Ahmadinejad said.

The fourth international conference promoting Palestinian resistance started today in Tehran. The conference will last two days. Parliamentary representatives from 80 countries will attend.

Mike Cushman’s ‘Protocols’ Moment

Mike Cushman

Although Mike Cushman is the leader of the movement in the University and College Union to exclude people who work at Israeli universities from UK campuses, he has always denied being antisemitic. Indeed, he speaks often “as a Jew”.

Now Cushman has approvingly posted an old antisemitic article from The Palestine Chronicle on the “Just Peace UK” website.

The article about “Zionist” influence begins by listing the number of “Jews” who sit in the British Houses of Parliament.

It goes on to construct a story to demonstrate how Tony Blair required Jewish “Zionist” money to run the New Labour project after he had cut Labour’s reliance on trade union funding.

The article is available on The Palestinian Chronicle website here. Cushman posted it here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/25717.

A pattern is beginning to emerge with Mike Cushman.

Cushman is the man who leapt to the defence of the UCU member who advised union colleagues to read a piece of conspiracy theory on former KKK leader David Duke’s website.

Cushman is also the man who came up with the following stereotype about Jews and their relationship to universities:

“Universities are to Israel what the springboks were to South Africa: the symbol of their national identity.”

He is the man who was feted by the Iranian state propaganda machine.

He is the man who wrote a fawning account of his recent trip to Hamas-ruled Gaza.

But surely now that he has posted an antisemitic article on a Palestine solidarity website, his reputation in the union will be in tatters and he will be forced to resign from his leadership position in BRICUP?

No. I don’t suppose it will make any difference at all.