Labour & Anti-Semitism.

[butchersapron]

This was a reply by MPAC to the criticisms of Bouattia and wider critiques of MPAC.

btw, the above site while having some very valid articles on what is happening in EU/Baltics, should be approached with the same caution as Bob Pitts Islamophobia Watch.

So why are you linking to it? And what was a reply to what?

 

[emanymton]

This was a reply by MPAC to the criticisms of Bouattia and wider critiques of MPAC.

btw, the above site while having some very valid articles on what is happening in EU/Baltics, should be approached with the same caution as Bob Pitts Islamophobia Watch.

I'm struggling to see anything anti-Semitic in the coment quoted.

 

[butchersapron]

If she opposed a motion against IS, she really does need to explain herself.

They/she did. As a seconds searching (or following the links in your own post) will tell you.

 

[emanymton]

If she opposed a motion against IS, she really does need to explain herself.

I'd be curious to see what the whole motion actually said myself.

I am actually more concerned about claiming that prevent is a strategy of the zionist lobby. If true that is heading into deeply dodgy territory.

 

[treelover]

Harrys Place are going ballistic, IP politics is going to overshadow basic student issues unless this is resolved.

 

[emanymton]

They/she did. As a seconds searching (or following the links in your own post) will tell you.

Bugger looks like the full text of the motion has been taken down.

 

[treelover]

'Mainstream Zionist Media',

in the U.K, really?

 

[Brainaddict]

It's worth reading to the end of the HP article, because it suggests the title of the article is dishonest:

Bouattia published a Facebook post on Monday on behalf of the NUS' black students' campaign, saying the union stood in "complete solidarity" with Kurdish people against the recent attacks by ISIS.

"We.. join many others in condemnation of [Islamic State's] brutal actions. In doing so we recognise that condemnation of ISIS appears to have become a justification for war and blatant Islamaphobia...

".. A motion will be taken to the next NUS National Executive which truly reflects the situation. This motion will pose a condemnation of the politics and methods of ISIS as well as unequivocal support for the Kurdish people. It will in no way pander to Western imperialistic intervention or the demonisation of Muslim peoples."

An NUS spokesperson said "of course" the union did not support Islamic State, and a new motion would be taken to the next committee meeting.

Which is not to defend anything else MB may have said (I haven't checked), but let's not get Huffington Hysteria.

 

[butchersapron]

That's Sukar the mad pro-assad freak. Sometimes poster. That she thanks and whose stage she appears on.

I wouldn't vote for someone who can't talk for two minutes without notes. They're bureaucrats.

Nothing she says about mainstream zionist media is a problem - she means, pro-israel and the intellectual support that buttresses that state taken as a assuptions in the media in this country.

Try responding to people on here.

 

[butchersapron]

It's worth reading to the end of the HP article, because it suggests the title of the article is dishonest:



Which is not to defend anything else MB may have said (I haven't checked), but let's not get Huffington Hysteria.

Was that other motion taken forward then - because it's easy to throw up distraction flares when under pressure. Did it happen?

 

[Brainaddict]

Was that other motion taken forward then - because it's easy to throw up distraction flares when under pressure. Did it happen?

I don't know. It's not the kind of thing that would be newsworthy (NUS condemns ISIS after all!) so we might need someone with access to NUS inner workings to check. Still, I think it's clear she's making the point that she was against the wording of the motion rather than the sentiment behind it. That also doesn't make good HP headlines.

 

[butchersapron]

I don't know. It's not the kind of thing that would be newsworthy (NUS condemns ISIS after all!) so we might need someone with access to NUS inner workings to check. Still, I think it's clear she's making the point that she was against the wording of the motion rather than the sentiment behind it. That also doesn't make good HP headlines.

It's not clear at all to me that she's telling the truth when she said that. I think some proof of that would be the claimed motion actually happening.

 

[treelover]

The Holocaust, the Left, and the Return of Hate

a long thoughtful essay on the issues, whether you agree or not.

 

[butchersapron]

The Holocaust, the Left, and the Return of Hate

a long thoughtful essay on the issues, whether you agree or not.

And do you? That's quite important to say.

Oh god, why am i bothering?

 

[cantsin]

If she opposed a motion against IS, she really does need to explain herself.

took me approx 3 mins to find out that the motion attacked IS AND Kurds alike, and that Bouattia wasn't having that - her condemnation of IS has been unequivocal.

 

[butchersapron]

took me approx 3 mins to find out that the motion attacked IS AND Kurds alike, and that Bouattia wasn't having that - her condemnation of IS has been unequivocal.

It didn't attack Kurds - it was put forward in support of the Kurds at that time in Kobane and so contained implicit support for the US strikes keeping them alive in that city. It was an explicitly pro-kurd motion proposed by kurds. Despite the motion being anti-external intevention.

Her not having that was on a different basis. I can't work out what though - can you help?

 

[nino_savatte]

The Holocaust, the Left, and the Return of Hate

a long thoughtful essay on the issues, whether you agree or not.

Oh dear. The subtext here is: "anti-Semitism is a uniquely leftist phenomenon" as this snippet from the title illustrates by deliberately conflating Jews with Israelis.

If history is any guide, it may be a long time before their solidarity extends to Jews and Israelis.

I guess the author hasn't bothered to actually check the numbers of Jews who are members of the Labour Party and the 'Left'.

There are more smears and tropes in this article than I can shake a stick at. This stands out.

The horror with which many Jews greeted the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party was outstripped only by the realization that his supporters felt that his fondness for the company of anti-Semites was unworthy of their concern.

The author of this piece then goes on a ramble around 20th century history (or his version of it) and comes up with gems like this:

For many on the Left today, the Holocaust is a curiously uncomfortable topic. At the far-Left fringes, one can find serious attempts at Holocaust denial. But in polite and acceptable Left-wing opinion, it is not uncommon to hear well-meaning people demand to know why Israelis insist on persecuting others just as they were once persecuted.

Long, yes. Thoughtful, no.

 

[cantsin]

It didn't attack Kurds - it was put forward in support of the Kurds at that time in Kobane and so contained implicit support for the US strikes keeping them alive in that city. It was an explicitly pro-kurd motion proposed by kurds.

Her not having that was on a different basis.

<<<gives up on any further half assed attempts to skim read on the subject>>>

 

[mk12]

According to thetab.com, this is the original motion:

Iraqi/Kurdish solidarity

Proposed: Daniel Cooper
Seconded: Shreya Paudel, Clifford Fleming

NUS National Executive Committee notes:

1. The ongoing humanitarian crisis and sectarian polarisation in Iraq – which has resulted in thousands of Yazidi Kurds being massacred.

NUS NEC believes

1. That the people of Iraq have suffered for years under the sectarian and brutally repressive dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the US/UK invasion and occupation, the current sectarian regime linked to both the US and Iran, and now the barbaric repression of the “Islamic State” organisation.

2. That rape and other forms of sexual violence are being used as weapons against women in IS-occupied areas, while minorities are being ethnically cleansed.

NUS NEC resolves

1. To work with the International Students’ Campaign to support Iraqi, Syrian and other international students in the UK affected by this situation.

2. To campaign in solidarity with the Iraqi people and in particular support the hard-pressed student, workers’ and women’s organisations against all the competing nationalist and religious-right forces.

3. To support Iraqis trying to bridge the Sunni-Shia divide to fight for equality and democracy, including defence of the rights of the Christian and Yazidi-Kurd minorities.

4. To condemn the IS and support the Kurdish forces fighting against it, while expressing no confidence or trust in the US military intervention.

5. Encourage students to boycott anyone found to be funding the IS or supplying them with goods, training, travel or soldiers.

6. To make contact with Iraqi and Kurdish organisations, in Iraq and in the UK, in order to build solidarity and to support refugees.

7. To issue a statement on the above basis.

Bouattia's response to the motion (again, according to thetab.com) was:

We recognise that condemnation of ISIS appears to have become a justification for war and blatant Islamaphobia.This rhetoric exacerbates the issue at hand and in essence is a further attack on those we aim to defend.

 

[Knotted]

The Holocaust, the Left, and the Return of Hate

a long thoughtful essay on the issues, whether you agree or not.

I glanced at this and read a single paragraph:

[A prominent example of this tendency appeared in 2003, when the late British historian Tony Judt took to the New York Review of Books torecommend a one-state outcome to the conflict. His essay, which was not terribly well-received at the time, has not dated well. The whole idea of a Jewish state, he sighed, is “an anachronism.” Judt would likely be untroubled by today’s alarming uptick in anti-Semitic violence that is causing European Jews to seek sanctuary in Israel in unprecedented numbers, since he claimed it was the hateful behavior of Israel, not Arab and Muslim pogromists, that was responsible for endangering the lives of Europe’s Jews.]

That's just spectacular. An obviously forced attempt at sliming Tony Judt, "I presume he would be untroubled...". Followed by an attempt at blaming anti-semitism in Eastern Europe on Arabs and Muslims. The logic of the whole argument of the paragraph just gives up and exits stage left by the time it reaches its end leaving a flabby pool of snarling.

I appreciate that this sort of angry idiocy is kind of fun, but you really do read an aweful lot of undiluted shit.

 

[bimble]

The Holocaust, the Left, and the Return of Hate

a long thoughtful essay on the issues, whether you agree or not.

Er. What's the opposite of thoughtful?
That article there, far as I can tell, is just a rabid bit of hate-filled lunacy. Its the same old shit, either you're an uncritical cheerleader of everything that state does or else you're an anti-semite, a self-loathing jewish antisemite being the worst kind of all, obviously.

"Today’s anti-Zionists invariably remind their critics that anti-Zionism was once a widely held position among Jews. But the calumnies they thoughtlessly circulate have no connection to the theoretical debates of the pre-war years. They are the poisonous legacy of Soviet anti-Semitism, appropriated wholesale by those who seek to destroy a flourishing UN member state. "

& just in case it wasn't clear;

"Anti-Zionist Jews or (better still) those prepared to renounce every last vestige of their Jewish identity will of course continue to be warmly welcomed and invited to join the Left’s tireless struggle against the baleful power of the Zionist entity and Jewish capital. "

 

[butchersapron]

"Anti-Zionist Jews or (better still) those prepared to renounce every last vestige of their Jewish identity will of course continue to be warmly welcomed and invited to join the Left’s tireless struggle against the baleful power of the Zionist entity and Jewish capital. "

a long thoughtful essay on the issues, whether you agree or not.

 

[J Ed]

I don't know enough about the new NUS President to make an informed comment on her but I have to wonder, does the exponential rise in accusations of anti-Semitism from right-wingers towards people opposing neoliberalism reflect 1) a sudden increase in anti-Semitism on the left 2) an attempt by increasingly desperate right-wingers to try and derail challenges to neoliberalism?

 

[butchersapron]

I don't know enough about the new NUS President to make an informed comment on her but I have to wonder, does the exponential rise in accusations of anti-Semitism from right-wingers towards people opposing neoliberalism reflect 1) a sudden increase in anti-Semitism on the left 2) an attempt by increasingly desperate right-wingers to try and derail challenges to neoliberalism?

Why have you put her on the left? Why have you put what she represents as a challenge to neo-liberalism?

 

[butchersapron]

It's fucking NUS bureaucrats who know who to play the game FFS - they're the enemy as much as anyone else.

 

[J Ed]

Why have you put her on the left? Why have you put what she represents as a challenge to neo-liberalism?

I haven't, I know nothing more about her than what I have read on this thread. I have no idea what her politics are beyond what I have read on this thread and it seems like typical mealy mouthed NUS careerist stuff, it just seems to fit a pattern, and the same types who make these accusations have put her on the left. That's a good point actually, increasingly I see those using this smear take outright obvious examples of anti-Semitism from people who are clearly not left-wing and then seek to use that as evidence of left-wing anti-Semitism.

 

[bimble]

The man who wrote the long thing above, he is it seems just as you'd expect. His latest tweet is this bit of excremental hysteria re the NUS election, starting with the opener "the jewish community was in shock this week..'
'Shock' as opposition to Holocaust Memorial Day amendment applauded at NUS - Jewish News

 

[butchersapron]

I haven't, I know nothing more about her than what I have read on this thread. I have no idea what her politics are beyond what I have read on this thread and it seems like typical mealy mouthed NUS careerist stuff, it just seems to fit a pattern, and the same types who make these accusations have put her on the left. That's a good point actually, increasingly I see those using this smear take outright obvious examples of anti-Semitism from people who are clearly not left-wing and then seek to use that as evidence of left-wing anti-Semitism.

It reflects the narrowing of and heightening of the competitive nature of student wanker politics ( i want a job and need to make sure i get this victory on my CV) - plus the very real effects of increased islamist organising on campus. The squeezing out of all but people prepared to pick a side on israel/islam is an intended outcome of both sides. The rest of the issues can go fuck themselves.

 

[butchersapron]

I don't know. It's not the kind of thing that would be newsworthy (NUS condemns ISIS after all!) so we might need someone with access to NUS inner workings to check. Still, I think it's clear she's making the point that she was against the wording of the motion rather than the sentiment behind it. That also doesn't make good HP headlines.

It doesn't appear to have happened. She was reduced to promising to make her own personal statement instead. So that doesn't clear up why she voted against an anti-isis anti-intervention pro-YPG motion only in order to make her own anti-isis anti-intervention pro-YPG when it became a public issue. Anyone else seen this statement? I doubt that it exists. Or that you'll care.

 

[belboid]

According to thetab.com, this is the original motion:

Shreya Paudel - the non-AWL seconder of that motion just tweeted his (clearly sincere) congratulations to Bouattia, so he can't have had much of an issue with her request for a rewording of it

Shreya Paudel ‏@Shreya_Paudel 6h6 hours ago
Omg,congrats to @MaliaBouattia! Yours & mine first @nusuk black woman president from July! Happy for her & the movement. #NUSConference