From Allen Keep

Wednesday, 30 July 2025

It's been interesting to find out about the persecution of a number of religious/ ethnic groups via Vivienne's prompting. I knew very little for instance, about Coptic and Assyrian Christians although I knew more about the Maronite Christians in Lebanon. 

They were extremely influential in the Phalange whose militia acted as Israel's proxy in Lebanon during the civil war there. The militia, at Israel's behest, and following the agreed withdrawal of the PLO from the Palestinian camps in Beirut slaughtered up to 3000 Palestinian refugees in the Shabra and Shatila camps in under 48 hours and committed acts of mutilation and rape. All of which might sound familiar. No doubt the Maronites of today feel perfectly safe when Israel repeatedly bombs Lebanon.

I also knew about the plight of minorities in Iran and I'd be happy to take part in the support campaign that Vivienne no doubt has planned for these groups as I am against all persecution on religious/ ethnic grounds and absolutely against the Iranian regime. I certainly hope none of those minorities were killed or injured when Israel attacked Iran. No doubt the most moral and technically precise army in the world has ways of sparing the minorities Israel so obviously and publicly supports and campaigns for on the world stage from their bombs.

I knew too about the genocide of the Yezidis although I can't recall Israel or its allies intervening with its unmatched airpower in the Middle East to do anything specifically about it. The UK has somewhat belatedly recognised this genocide despite it not being taken through the ICJ unlike in the case of Palestine where we must await "proof" apparently. Of course the genocide was at the hands of ISIS and here's where Vivienne's argument kicks in. 

Vivienne appears to want us to believe that there is a fundamentally common link connecting these events which cumulatively amount to a genocide, not in Gaza of course, oh no, but in the Middle East as a whole against everyone who is not, drum roll please, Muslim and is perpetrated exclusively by Muslims. And so, for instance, we can neatly equate ISIS with, oh I don't know, who could it be?...ah yes, Hamas. No need to worry about any tiny details like ISIS detest Hamas and that Hamas are simply not comparable to ISIS apart from being Muslims who apparently all believe the same thing and have the same interpretation of their religion. 

Maybe Vivienne could remind me what we call people who believe all Jews have the same belief system and the same interpretation of their faith and are all committed to the same goal? 

But wait. Let's not miss an opportunity to demonise a particular Muslim people. For this it is necessary to name this group not just as "Arabs" (also all the same really) but as "Palestinians". They of course, all of them, and now their children and their children's children and probably their children too were hypnotised by Al Husseini the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Isreal's favourite bogeyman.

Apparently, he convinced the entire population of Palestine to believe in Hitler in 1941 and they remain dedicated to Nazism up until today or, as Vivienne says, in a chilling dehumanising  phrase, "locked into their present toxic stasis".

And there we have it. All Muslims in the Middle East are Nazis and are hell bent on the genocide of all non-Muslim minorities and especially tiny Israel, the perpetual minority in the region in a land they came to colonise from Europe. The perpetrators of Genocide are, in fact, the victims of genocide and, of course, it goes without saying that the one true democracy has an exemplary human rights and justice record when it comes to its own minorities. 

Of course it does. Ask the Bedouin or the "Arabs" in Palestine, or the Christians. Or indeed, ask about human rights and equality for Israel's own Jewish population if they happen to be Ethiopian or Mizrahi. Non-white, non-European Jews really thrive in Israel, just look at their representation in Israel's social elites (look hard).

But why is Vivienne saying all this? The only way to decipher the post is to understand that Vivienne speaks to a particular political ideology as a Zionist. While there are all sorts of Zionists from those who might see themselves as liberals, probably like Vivienne who opposes Netanyahu, to the openly fascist monsters like Smotrich and Ben-Givr the unifying factor, sadly but undeniably, is that Zionism is a racist and supremacist ideology.

It is vital to say, straight away, that Zionism is not Judaism and absolutely does not speak to or for all Jews, far from it. In fact Zionism doesn't even speak for all the Jews in Israel. We must therefore distinguish between a critique of Zionism from the labelling of all Jewish people as Zionists or indeed of any particular supposed negative characteristic as that would be racist. It is the state of Israel that claims to speak for all Jews, we do not categorise all Jewish people as the same in response. In simple terms, to be anti-Zionist/anti the Israeli state is not anti-Semitic no matter how often and how vociferously the defenders of Israel attempt to label us as such. 

Zionism is the political ideology of the Jewish settler colonial movement in Palestine and then the state of Israel and its subsequent history to the current day. It is the social DNA that connects the unbroken thread of that history from the Nakba (which Vivienne mistakenly thinks everyone knows about) aka the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their own land, through illegal and barbaric occupation from 1967 of the Palestinian territories to today's genocide in Gaza and the on-going ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

The project has a simple aim which has never changed, which is to secure the maximum amount of Land for the State of Israel in Palestine with as few as possible Palestinians in it. This however, creates a tension, a permanent and inherent problem of how to deal with the indigenous people which must be be solved. The state has struggled to find such a solution since its conception.

Despite the Vivienne's egregious and ridiculous claim that owning 0.18% of the Middle East is "too much for Jews" the truth is that the emerging violent, supremacist Jewish state founded on terror and ethnic cleansing was granted 60% of what remained of the British Mandate of Palestine in the UN partition agreement when the Mandate ended despite currently owning only 6% of the land. 

It was indeed not enough for the Zionist colonisers and the Israeli state is now in effective control of 100% of that land at least 20% of which is still via brutal and illegal force. This is of course, not withstanding the continued legitimate and rightful resistance of the Palestinian people there simply by virtue of their continued existence and their refusal to be destroyed, hence the slogan "existence is resistance. 

Meanwhile, Israel openly declares it's intention to re-settle the Gaza strip which has remained occupied continuously since 1967 while, just last week, the Knesset committed yet another democratic atrocity by uniting pro and anti-Netanyahu Zionists alike to vote for the annexation of the West Bank. In the meantime Israel denies the possibility of any sort of peaceful and democratic coexistence with the Palestinian people and always has which is why a "two-state" solution is a gaslighting fantasy. 
The final solution has therefore been an inevitability waiting to happen and the time is now. This is what we are witnessing. This is what the world can see, so clearly, for the first time for so many around the world. The name we give to this final solution is genocide.

If there is any doubt (and how can there be?) then consider Rafah which many will remember was the redline City and district that the Western allies of Israel said should not be occupied just over a year ago. It was also named in an order to Israel to mitigate against the crime of genocide by the ICJ. Israel, of course, occupied Rafah anyway. Rafah is now totally destroyed - it simply doesn't exist. On its ruins Israel now plans to re-build. Not homes for the Gazan people and not even a Riviera for their own people and a lucrative theme park for their Western allies. They are building a concentration camp to coral the remaining Gazans they haven't bombed or starved to death. 

Israel does not disguise this and the Zionist fanatical right revel in it. Vivienne evokes the Nazis in her argument but she has turned reality upside down. As the incredible Israeli Jewish journalist Gideon Levy said very recently when referring to the the Israeli state, "nobody but the Nazis spoke like this before now". 

That reality, and it is an undeniable reality, is breaking many Jews the world over and even from within Israel from Zionism although clearly not the author of this post. Vivienne does not speak for all Jews any more than Israel does of course and I am very glad and proud that we have many extremely active Jews in our ranks here in Calderdale who stand with our Palestinian sisters and brothers against the Zionist terror state of Israel as it nears that final solution.

Paradoxically however, while seemingly and terrifyingly at the point of the culmination of it's inherent purpose, the Zionist state itself is in utter turmoil. Unfortunately, for Zionists like Vivienne, Isreal may well tear itself apart and self-destruct just as it nears its final victory.

Israel can't defeat Hamas and short of total annihilation, which it has also not yet achieved despite its best efforts, it will never break the Palestinian people either. 

There is a resultant constant political upheaval which I believe could lead to civil war in Israel and deepening economic instability. The elites are leaving in droves back to their European or American homelands, the IDF is struggling to maintain discipline and morale and avoid desertions and refusals to follow orders. Israel's own human rights organisations now term the occupation of Gaza as a genocide and not a "defensive war" which in any case the majority of Israelis want to end via some sort of negotiated deal which the state will not allow.

Frakenstein's monster, made in Europe and  America is completely out of control. The state is now totally reliant on American aid and diplomatic cover from an unstable lunatic and his fawning political allies/fellow war criminals in the West. But these elites are increasingly vulnerable too and they are beginning to crack under pressure. 

Israel is as, Vivienne says (and rightly so), the state the world loves to hate, a pariah, becoming ever more marginalised, isolated, vilified and fragile. The game is up. For Israel, it is the beginning of the end.

Sorry Vivienne, but the reason for that is not that we are not lining ourselves up with Nazis, nor are we "self righteous". We are not aligned with "terrorists" and many of us have now learned enough and seen enough to understand the reality of your state. We are not anti-semites and we don't hate Jews although the behaviour of the Zionist state will only increase anti-Semitism which we will also fight. 

Many, many of us are Jews. Our leaders and speakers, our writers and theorists and scholars and journalists and activists and campaigners are Jews. We are Jews and gentiles, Muslims and Christians, all faiths and none. We are humanitarians and campaigners for justice, everywhere. We don't single Israel out, Israel has made itself an exception. 

We are just people and Israel has ignited millions of us across the world against its state. We won't be silenced and we wont be diverted. In our millions, we are all Palestinians and we are all the children of Gaza.

This Zionist state has created in Gaza a place unlike any other on the planet where an ethnic/ religious group are being exterminated as a people and it's witnessed, documented and live streamed for the world to see.

Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world by far to be a child. It is a place where no one is safe if they are Palestinian, where no one has any peace or security, where no one has a home, where everyone is starving, everyone. It is a place where you are assassinated for being a health worker, a provider of aid or a journalist or you are abducted, raped and tortured for being the same or your family is targeted and your children and your elderly are slaughtered while you work or seek rest. 

It is a place where there is no longer health care, transport, education, culture and barely no access to the absolute essentials of life. It is a place where when you try to access those essentials you are shot or bombed as target practice for the IDF. It is a place where the people cannot be a people and cannot, in the words of Omer Bartov the Jewish genocide scholar, re-constitute themselves as a people, that is  a place where the very existence of its people is all but impossible.

I am genuinely saddened that Vivienne seems unable to bring herself to recognise and accept this reality and oppose it. Instead, at this very moment, she chooses to serve up a double-down of Zionist propaganda, falsifications of history, distortions, deflections and obfuscations to distract and deflect from that reality.

Vivienne says she condemns "carnage" but it's irrelevant, meaningless, as empty as the words of Stamer and Lammy who are utterly complicit in this genocide. Even more sadly, there is not a single word of compassion or care for the Palestinian people in Vivenne's post, not a single one. No acceptance of Isreal's responsibility, no remorse, no contrition, none. 

Instead, as an increasingly desperate deflection we are offered only the demonisation and dehumanisation of the Arabs and Muslims of the Middle East, particularly the Palestinian people, and the denial of that people's alienable right to self-determination, freedom, justice and indeed existence as a people itself. 

No humanitarian can support that, it is literally unconscionable. And so, Vivienne, ask yourself who and what you are aligning yourself with. It is never too late to break with Zionism, to shed its racist and supremacist ideology and bring yourself onto the right side of history and humanity. 

I, for one, will welcome you with open arms.

Free Judaism from Zionism. Peace, security and freedom from racism for Jewish people the world over.

For a single, democratic, secular state for all in the land of Palestine with equal democratic rights and justice in peace for all its citizens.