Prof David Miller addresses the PSC meeting.
Meeting on Palestine and Israel goes off peacefully
The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign held a meeting on 10 June at which the speaker was Professor David Miller, who lost his job at the University of Bristol for his criticisms of the influence over public discussion wielded by the so-called Israel lobby. The room was full, to hear his criticisms of the state and government of Israel. Even the Hastings Borough Council (HBC) community safety manager got involved, but there was no trouble. Bernard McGinley reports on an apparently intractable problem.
The Hastings and Rye Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been going for nine years now. Among their previous meetings was one on Amnesty International’s report on the Israeli state’s policy of apartheid in Israel and the Occupied Territories which was covered by HOT a year ago.
Last weekend Professor David Miller was the speaker. The provocative title of his talk was:
Why Can’t We Talk About Palestine? Propaganda, Censorship and the Israeli Lobby
Those expecting a dour headbanger were disappointed. He proved to be a genial academic from Glasgow, dismissed by the University of Bristol though it still summarises his work. He explained how he had been formally cleared of antisemitism, and still had hopes of reinstatement through the Employment Tribunal.
What he said could be disagreed with (including about ‘Islamophobia’), but he said nothing that was offensive, and did not abuse Jewish people or citizens of Israel. Miller’s main shtik was not so much atrocities and apartheid in the Occupied Territories as the external and extensive network of organisations (including state and parastatal ones) that accept or promote the state of Israel.
The situation was analysed as ‘settler colonialism’. To his credit Miller said that ‘Zionist’ shouldn’t be a term of abuse, but it may be too late for that, even though the term is so widely, and officially, used. He also suggested that the world is moving from a unipolar (US dominated) world and rapidly becoming a multipolar one. Accordingly, old certainties are dissolving.
Flags on Hastings Pier
It went unmentioned that in 2021, an organisation named UK Lawyers For Israel (UKLFI) objected to HBC about Palestinian flags being flown on Hastings Pier at (and apparently after) a Palestinian cultural event that September. UKLFI’s objection – impressive but highly legalistic – was that flying the flags in this location without the Council’s consent breached planning law, since Palestine was not recognised by Britain, and so the flags constituted ‘an alteration of the character of the Pier’, which required the Council’s consent as the Pier is a listed building.
Flags not allowed
The chief executive of UKLFI commented:
Flying these flags is a highly political statement on a controversial issue of foreign policy, on which passions run very high, promoting hostility and even violence, and causing considerable anxiety in affected communities.
The Pier seems to have survived the brief flying of flags with no alteration of its character in any meaningful sense. Hostility and violence were not manifested. For reasons of history, Jewish anxiety cannot be denied, but the amalgamation of anti-Israel (‘anti-Zionist’) stances with antisemitism is a tired, overconvenient and unpersuasive assertion. Meanwhile, inhumane behaviours persist — in antisemitism and in West Bank irredentism.
Expressed concerns
In the days before the meeting, the HBC community safety manager got in touch with HOT to say that ‘residents have complained’ and to request that it not continue promoting such activity in order not to strain community tensions. Detail to substantiate these positions was unforthcoming.
A concern about ‘inflaming community tensions in Hastings’ cuts both ways, and disregards the detail that being descriptive of abuses is not promoting hostility. Attempted suppression of criticism creates tensions too, and discouraging publicisation of the meeting looks a lot like attempted censorship.
For this meeting, the PSC had difficulty in finding a venue. East Sussex College had declined to accommodate them: ‘This is not a ban, just a misalignment which doesn’t sit with the colleges [sic] current policies’. Hastings PSC is opposed to the government’s Prevent programme, which the college supports — apparently sufficient reason to deny a meeting room.
On a previous occasion, a PSC meeting only took place because the college made Stade Hall available at short notice after the other venues cancelled or refused a booking following intimidatory contacts from PSC opponents. Again questions of free speech arise, and the uses of dialogue.
What’s in a name?
Some thought the title of the talk a little insulting. In 2006-7 two American academics (Mearsheimer and Walt) wrote a provocatively titled book on The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. That is understandable at the corporate level, with organisations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but Jewish people in Sussex might feel insecure with the implied dismissiveness in the term.
Against that is the extent to which Israel is criticisable. Towards the end Miller referred to work with Labour Party Corbynistas on the highly nuanced question of defining antisemitism. There are several proposed new definitions, including the New Antisemitism.
Miller was particularly interesting on young idealists on the kibbutzim in the 1940s. They included Noam Chomsky (uncomfortable as an anarchist among statists), Tony Benn on VE-Day, future Senator Bernie Sanders, and Tony Cliff (later a longstanding British Trotskyist). The key problem with the Zionist project was that the socialist element was rapidly overwhelmed by the nationalistic one. It was intrinsically racist, he said, citing evidence.
Comments posted on HOT about Miller’s work for Iranian state broadcaster PressTV were raised. Miller defended himself as editorially uninterfered with (and freelance), and he described himself as ‘an empirical sociologist’. He also suggested the widespread and longrunning ‘hijab riots’ following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody last autumn in Iran had elements of fabrication, but did not explain further.
An adjacent comment in HOT was that:
This is not a game – the incidence of antisemitic attacks is at a record high in Britain. The old ‘Israel Lobby’ slur was invented in Stalinist Russia and the language of ‘powerful cabals’ is redolent of Nazi German propaganda. It is now being refurbished by a vociferous pro Iran pro Russia lobby. Yes these lobbies get everywhere. Not just Jews!
The vast majority of Britain’s tiny Jewish population (just over 200,000) want nothing more than an Israel at peace with its neighbours and for wrongs to be righted.
The HBC community relations manager has not commented further in response to HOT’s refusal to suppress mention of PSC events. Despite the meeting’s subtitle, the occasion was unobjectionable, though decolonisation might take longer than the PSC hope for. Miller saying ‘Al-Quds’ and not explaining to the room that it meant Jerusalem seemed unnecessarily precious.
As ever, issues of emphasis and interpretation remain — along with grievances and insecurities.
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By what twisted logic does one complain about being silenced while freely commenting on an openly published and overwhelmingly biased-in-favour article in a free-to-read propaganda sheet – sorry – ‘newspaper’?
The parallel universe occupied by Miller and his groupies hosts an all-powerful global Jewish cabal controlling media and minds to preserve its own infinite wealth and demonic power. So insidious is this orchestration, that no-one dare speak out for fear of vilification or violence, save for a few brave souls who devote their lives to defending justice and the rights of oppressed minorities (i.e. Muslims, who amount to over a quarter of the world’s population and 26 countries where Islam is the official religion).
Meanwhile (a posteriori), most of the rest of us recognise a tiny outpost of secular liberal democracy with universal franchise, successfully providing permanent sanctuary to the most oppressed and persecuted minority in history, despite being surrounded by hostiles who have repeatedly attempted to destroy it since the first day of its establishment as a recognised nation state.
For those occupying Miller’s Pallywood La-La land, we who support this heroic endeavour – sometimes by offering ‘intemperate’ comment to expose the hate by those who seek to destroy Israel and murder Jews – can only be part of the international Zionist conspiracy referred to here as the ‘Israel Lobby’ and we “must be directly targeted” (Miller in the video ‘Campaign for Free Speech! with Norman Finkelstein, Tariq Ali, Jackie Walker and others’ (29/07/2020)).
Miller has been exposed for what he is, but nobody is denying him his rights.
Comment by JC Hart — Thursday, Jun 22, 2023 @ 10:46
Thanks to HOT for an open commentary of David Miller’s talk. Miller’s central thesisc entred on how free and open discussion of Israel is silenced, principally by adherents of the Zionist Movement using political pressure and manipulation of both mainstream and social media. The meeting was open to the public and Miller was listened to and questioned respectfully. It is worth noting that the PSC is ‘a community of people working together for peace, equality, and justice … against racism, occupation, and colonisation’. A central PSC tenet ‘is opposition to racism, including anti-Jewish prejudice and Islamophobia, and the apartheid nature of the Israeli state’. The refusal by Hastings College to host the meeting, the attempt by the Hastings Council Community Safety officer to stop the meeting and the intemperate nature of some of the comments above provide a perfect illustration of and support for Miller’s argument. QED.
Comment by Robert Blizard — Tuesday, Jun 20, 2023 @ 18:03
A wiser person would not enter this maelstrom, but allow me to voice personal experience as one who values my close friendships with both semitic faiths, and none. As a child I played in Forrest Hill’s bombed-out cellars, I was shown images of Belsen and learned of the Holocaust… so I learned my hatred of Germany! As a youth I chose to join-up, to prevent a repetition and defend our shores, now abhoring war crimes like bombing populations. As a fighter pilot I refused to fly bombers for the navy, I offered my resignation and contacted Israel’s consulate as volunteer to defend Israel’s right to co-exist in middle-east. Israel’s air attache, [Col. Offer] interviewed me, surprised a gentile would want to fight for Israel’s survival in the obviously imminent 6-Days War but accepted my personal views. I watched the 6-Days War from an RAF Hospital bed with viral kidney failure. In middle age, I befriended Egyptian doctors then in Hastings, and I maintain that friendship in regular exchanges – once the guest speaker at a son’s wedding – learning by phoentics three languages. So what has this to do with your debates? For me, the intellectual tide began to change when Israel’s pragmatic President Peres was assasinated and Sharon’s voice prevailed. Of course the world knows Israel has the advanced weaponry and US support to ‘defend’ itself in any
conceivable conflict up to and including M.A.D. But flouting the UN does not engender followers of democracy. Dispossessions of homes and historic Palestinian lands allegedly owned throughout the Diaspora is a stone in Hammas’ shoes, whose rockets are unhelpful to their cause, resulting in air strikes on Palestinian cities and homes – reminiscent of the Nazi razing of the Warsaw ghetto. So taking sides is fruitless, bound to fail and prolong conflict. Where is the Solomon, or the Saladhin, whose pragmatic wisdom picks up the baton of enlightnment from assasinated Peres? The entire middle east awaits that person. Sorry to say, I am not he. I merely am a person whose experience of ‘beliefs’ has has abandoned beliefs, yet is told I am ‘Cosmopolitan’ – but helpless with it too.
Comment by Keith Piggott — Sunday, Jun 18, 2023 @ 22:48
Corrections for “S Moore”:
When I read these comments it saddens me. How can it be right to take someone’s home and land [?] How can it be Islamophobic to say one does not think it is right to abuse people in their own land [?] Other religions have ‘countries’ – most notably Saudi Arabia, there is no freedom of religion and apostasy is punishable by death, or even European nations such as our own, where church and state are intertwined. It is apartheid surely to treat people so differently in their own land – bearing in mind the hounding of Jewish people from virtually every Muslim nation, unlike Israel where the Muslim population has increased from under 200k in 1949 to almost 1.5 million today, sharing full citizen rights with Jews, Christians, Druze and other religions.
To call someone Islamophobic because they criticise the right of Jewish people to a homeland is weak.
You’re welcome.
Comment by JC Hart — Friday, Jun 16, 2023 @ 14:34
When I read these comments it saddens me. How can it be right to take someone’s home and land. How can it be anti Jewish to say one does not think it is right to abuse people in their own land. No other religion has a ‘country’. It is apartheid surely to treat people so differently and in their own land. Normally I would have my name left at the bottom, however knowing how nasty people can get just from having an opinion nowadays it stops many from having their say. When I was young people discussed things without resorting to nasty death threats and spiteful rhetoric. I do not support violence but I do get sick of hearing one sided news. To call someone anti Jewish because they criticise abuse to the Palestinian people is weak.
Comment by S Moore — Thursday, Jun 15, 2023 @ 19:41
This guy is disgusting. Shameful article and hurtful to those at the end of his slander and hate.
Comment by Toby — Thursday, Jun 15, 2023 @ 14:40
Rather than running a smug, self-satisfied article about ‘community tensions’, why not do the following:
– Define what you mean by ‘Zionist’, because when Jews use this term, it is to support our right to self-determination in our ancestral land. Hamas have yet to remove genocidal language about Jews from their foundational charter – they are working, alongside gullible Westerners, to completely dismantle the Jewish state, not just to implement a two-state solution. Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority still reimburses the families of ‘martyrs’ who murder Jews in Israel. Does the PSC, and this paper, support this aim to completely dismantle Israel, and if not then how do you differentiate between those supporting deoccupation of the West Bank and those supporting what would amount to a genocidal cleansing of Jews from Israel?
– Run an article where you talk to ethnic, cultural, and religiously observant Jews in Hastings, because these are distinct groups with different perspectives. In particular, religiously observant Jews tend to be Zionists, or at minimum non- or post-Zionists, and hold nuanced views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Jewish people who attend my synagogue certainly can’t be described as mindless members of the ‘Israel lobby’, and lumping all institutions facilitating Jewish life into this ‘lobby’ exposes Jews to real danger – we don’t have security at our shuls for funsies.
I mean, are you journalists or activists? If there’s a story here on community tensions arising due to the PSC inviting an Iran-funded antisemite to speak in Hastings, why not actually speak to the affected community rather than congratulate yourself on making our small community feel further unsafe?
Comment by D — Thursday, Jun 15, 2023 @ 11:18
There are days when I think that Hastings is so chock full of self righteous bigots that it is unredeemable. This is one of those days.
I find it astonishing how many Hastings residents do not see antisemitism when it is staring them in the face.
I can’t express how sad, disappointed and disheartened this makes me feel.
Comment by Dany Louise — Thursday, Jun 15, 2023 @ 10:44
Congrats on supporting racism, treason and for discriminating against/alienating the Jewish members of your community.
Comment by Rose — Thursday, Jun 15, 2023 @ 10:17
The anti-Israel lobby, well funded by Iran, is one of the most vocal in the world. The constant complaint of anti-Zionists that their voices are muted rings hollow.
Let’s be clear, Miller and is fellow anti-Israelist camp followers want nothing more than the destruction of the Jewish state. They never say how that would come about but the implication is clear: by violent means. Their backer Iran who supplies Hamas with the rockets to fire from ‘besieged’ Gaza has just announced a new long range missile created to reach Tel Aviv. So maybe Miller and his supporters won’t have long to wait for their ultimate goal.
The only way forward, totally rejected by the PSC, is to engage in dialogue with the huge anti government population in Israel. Unless the missile on Tel Aviv is the only solution, then surely dialogue with those willing to listen is the best route to a just ending.
Comment by MIKE LEVY — Thursday, Jun 15, 2023 @ 10:12