TO NASIM ALI OBE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE AND THE TRUSTEES OF THE KING’S CROSS BRUNSWICK NEIGHBOURHOOD ASSOCIATION
Dear Nasim Ali OBE,
Just 3 days before our “Muslim & Jew Tour: Beyond Israel” was due to come to London you have cancelled our booking. You and your trustees declared our event could divide the community, presumably the Muslim/Jewish community. You have been lobbied into so doing by the UK Lawyers for Israel and various Friends of Israel who virulently oppose our tour. These Zionists declared our speakers, Rabbi Dovid Weiss and Dr Azzam Tamimi, extremists for condemning Israel and declaring it had no right to exist.
Yet the Torah clearly states that there can be no return without the Messiah, a fundamental tenet of Judaism that the Israelis conveniently ignore. Orthodox Jews know that Israel is an illegal creation, facilitated by the British gift of Palestine to the Zionist Federation over 100 years ago. Our British colonialism created the strife we see today in the Holy Land, yet to say so is “extremist”? What is indisputable is that Israel pursues a religious war against all it considers non-Jews, as it ethnically cleanses its way to becoming an ethno-supremacist state, declaring that God has given them the land. That they do so whilst hiding behind the espousal of a two-state solution is a contradiction that our tour was intent on exposing. We declare that a state where Jews, Muslims and Christians share power is the only way forward. Is this an “extremist” view?
You, as the UK’s first Muslim Mayor should know how to stand against the racism perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians. You empower the Friends of Israel in the UK by know-towing to their demands. These people have made their colonial project into a religious war of Jews versus Muslims. Israel beats the worshippers at Al Aqsa mosque during Ramadan, leading to shock and anger amongst Muslims the world over, yet you cancel our event because you say it “could lead to more conflict between diverse communities”?! Does Israel itself not do this on a daily basis?
Our event declares that Muslims and Jews lived in close harmony for 1500 years until the British and the Zionists ruined it. We proclaim there has never been enmity between these two faiths. That you choose to cancel a talk that brings a Muslim and Jew together to condemn colonial Israel is a tragic misjudgement.
It is not us, but the Friends of Israel who use religion as a weapon, inventing strife by declaring Israel the Jewish state. We say it is not- there is little similarity between the European colony Britain helped create and that of the ancient Hebrews.
By allowing those who support apartheid Israel bully you into cancelling our booking, you only give licence for Israel and all who support it to continue its persecution of the indigenous Palestinians, who are of course mostly Muslim. By giving into Zionists here in the UK, you are silencing free speech on Palestine – the place that we British ruined—but your action only leads to increasing the silence on the persecution of Muslims in Palestine.
If you think that such silence strengthens community cohesion, as Israel wantonly beats Muslims at prayer and takes their land, actions that its Friends here condone- then your Trustees are deluding yourselves.
Our tour was aimed at reducing animosity between Muslims and Jews, by clarifying that this “conflict” was not religious, but colonial. Thus far, the many UK Muslims who have met Rabbi Weiss on the tour have been delighted to learn that there are Jews who oppose Israel.
By denying such Jews a voice, you are increasing community tensions, not reducing them.
You are in effect saying to those Zionists who attacked you for accepting our booking, that they had merit in their demands. That Israel has every right to do what it likes. That we have no right to protest and articulate an alternative future of a state that gives equal rights for all.
This is, in effect, giving into racism. The community is divided already and your committee are ignoring those divisions, which arise when the colonisers and those who support that colony are criticised for racism: they will not tolerate criticism; we can all see what happened to Corbyn for supporting Palestine. By law in Israel, non-Jews have far fewer rights. Yet all who say Israel is racist are now branded as antisemitic, under the fraudulent and politicised IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. This is the weapon that Israel uses to silence support for equal rights in Palestine.
Your action will do nothing to reduce the tensions that already exist between Muslims and those secular Jews here who support Israel. You only strengthen the hand of the Zionists by silencing debate on alternatives.
Remember Desmond Tutu’s quote to your trustees: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
Please pass this response onto your trustees.
Yours sincerely,
Pete Gregson (Chair)
One Democratic Palestine