dont you idiots realize what you have done?

your constant presence at M&S accross the country has gone on for so long that Jewish youth are now highly politicised and pissed off. First this happens in oxford street london, and now manchester. Where next?

I fear your presence will start to harm minority relations in this country and as most of you are whites to the outside observer you must see what this looks like.

Why are all the members of the anti M&S campaign white ? There must be black Britons who also care about this issue. Are they welcome ?

Hi there,
so you think that the M&S Picket is damaging Race relations here in the UK, do you?

Well I think demolishing houses, shooting children and stopping poeple on check points is not what you would call civilised behaviour now, do you?

Also, if it is thought that all the poeple on the picket are white, then quite clearly you have not been on the picket as Black people, Asian, white and even Jewish people take part in the Boycott Marks and Spencers Picket.

As a person whose family is Mancunian born and bred and having had relatives who fought Germany in the second world war against the NAZI's (and yes, my Grandfather helped to liberate Begen Belsen), Quite clearly the only people who are causing problems in our city are those at the Jewish Telegraph who are inciting possible violence here in Manchester, those Israeli Defence Force members who have come in to our city and are trying to cause street fighting, so who is causing the problems?

As a mancunian, I believe that fellow city members have the right to protest when we feel our voice is not being heared!

To the above post:

I have seen the pro palestinian pickets in both manchester and oxford street so dont give me that crap about there being black and asian people there too. Just because you have a token black or asian person every couple of weeks does not make your picket mutlicultural.

And seeing that you wish to include your personal bagage into the debate as your grandfather took part in the liberation of bergon-belson, i will add mine.

My father is north american and was an active member of the black panther party during the 1960s and 70s. He was a member of the chicago branch and worked along side Fred Hampton (rip, assinated by the FBI).

Save it for Oprah?

F**K YOU

So your family had all this politicised history? Pity then 1, that you haven’t learnt anything from that about people.

if jewish youths are politicised because of the m& s pickets, fine.

i've no problem with that but I think you are wrong making an assumption that jewish youths will automatically be pro-israel and therefore support the huge amount of money M and S send to support the Isreli rightwing which kills people (both Palestinians and indirectly, Jews, by their military actions and by increasing constantly the climate of oppression, by illegal occupation etc etc...)

if you are making this assumption, you are wrong. There are Jewish people on the picket in Manchester. Why do you assume young Jewish people are automatically pro-Israel? Look around you. In this country AND in Israel there is anger and dissent at the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Whats wrong with young people being politicised anyway? Or is it a thinly hidden threat and are we meant to be scared? If so, its weak and pretty sad.

And we are harming “minority relations in this country” are we?

Whereas the police, who protect M & S at the drop of a hat aren’t?

Lets look at the facts. Protesters give out leaflets and talk to people. The police who beat black people up in custody, stop black people and search them constantly, who harass a student on his way home from college because he missed the bus but was unfortunate enough to be black (yes, this was my friends son who has enough ‘producers’ to cover the wall in his bedroom, although he has never done anything more than any white person of his age).

Oh but, you mean by “minority”, relationships between Jewish people and er.. non-Jewish people? Total bollocks again. Don’t assume that all Jewish people in this country agree with the shit happening in Palestine. Its not just the young radicals who disagree. Many older people are deeply uncomfortable with the situation. Oppression is, after all, oppression, wherever its found. Do you think that many Jewish people don’t recognise the common humanity we share? What exactly do you mean when you categorise “Jewishness” to make your points?

Listen.

The landgrab of Palestine stinks. The West Bank is occupied illegally and because of that occupation, and the politics of oppression and brutality used daily against Palestinian people, Palestinians and Jewish people continue to die. And will go on dieing.

What feeds that, 1?

Could it be the lucrative arms trade between the US, UK and Israel? Could it be the money fed from M & S to Israels political rightwing which ultimately, builds ghetto walls around Palestinian villages, shoots at ambulances, keeps people in seemingly never ending stress and fear, just trying to live their lives. Don’t tell me it’s the young Palestinians who blow themselves up who are to blame here or I’ll tell you that its your fault for politicising these young Palestinian people by building roadblocks, killing people they know, keeping them in poverty when they can see that the Israelis have swimming pools, not letting them get to school, creating a culture of fear and more and more endless facts and stories.

But it doesn’t get through your head, 1, does it?

One of the things I like about people from anywhere, is that they know where the shit is. And most people know the shit is where someone has power over you that oppresses you. Doesn’t matter what form it takes. Also, if you asked most people in Manchester (regardless of colour, race, religion etc..) most would agree its important to get on with your neighbours. (if you don’t agree, go out and ask people).

M & S are a massive company who are using their power to influence the city council to use the law against a group of people whose only crime is to get in the way of business. I hope politicised young Jewish people will come and support the picket because they’ve learnt from the terrible events of their grandparents lives. And because, in the end, most people want simple things. Control over their own lives and neighbours they can live with. I reckon the people who died in Bergen Belsen and all other terrible places across the world, would agree with that.

Black Panthers eh?

Black Panthers in Israel:-

At the beginning of 1970s in Israel there was the beginning of a campaign to support Soviet Jews who wished to emigrate to Israel under the slogan "Let my people go!" This campaign was justified by discrimination against the Jews in the USSR, Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries. But at the same time Israel had for many years carried on a policy of discrimination and oppression of Jews who had come to Israel from Asia and Africa.

For the Ashkenazi (Jews from Europe) Israeli elite, the Eastern Jews (Sefardis) were seen as second class citizens. After emigrating to Israel in the beginning of the 1950s, they met with low pay jobs, life in the slums, poverty and discrimination. There was a quota for Sefardis in the Universities, where they were treated as "Arabs". There were even suspicions that some children from Yemeni Jewish families were kidnapped by the Israeli government and later sold for adoption by rich American families.

Sometimes the Eastern Jews spontaneously rebelled against this discrimination and oppression. These actions were brutally crushed by the state. The strongest action took place in 1959 in the Haifa suburb of Abu-Salib. The people used social and anti-Zionist slogans and the authorities dealt with this by a combination of force and demagogy. Then everything was left as it was until 1971.

In the end of 1970, a group of young people, mainly teenagers from Sefardi families - Saadia Marchiano, Charly Biton, Kochavi Shimshon, Reuven Avidz'al, Rafi Marchiano, Edi Malcha, Kuku Dery and others - decided to establish an organization to fight for Sefardi Jewish rights in Israel. They learned from the experience of the Black Americans' freedom fight, and called their organization "The Black Panthers".

Like their Americans predecessors, the Israeli Black Panthers wanted to combine the struggle for civil rights and the class struggle. The majority of the Black Panthers leadership were under influence of left-wing and Marxist ideas. The authorities at first looked upon the new movement with a mixture of snobbish contempt and indifference. But after the first Black Panther demonstration near the Jerusalem city council building, the Black Panthers' leaders were arrested on personal orders from prime minister Golda Meir. The Jerusalem "Labour" mayor Tady Kolek called out to the demonstrators from his office window - "Get off the lawn, you bastards!"

But the Black Panthers made a name very quickly. In the next month Golda Meir was obliged to meet with these "troublemakers" in her office. As a result of this meeting Mrs Meir pronounced her famous phrase: "They aren't nice." From the point of view of the Israeli establishment she was not so wrong.

On May 18, 1972, between 5,000 and 7,000 came to the Black Panthers' rally in the centre of Jerusalem. In the next few months demonstrations in solidarity with the Black Panthers had taken place in Tel-Aviv and other Israeli cites. In most of these demonstrations there were clashes with the police. In the first issue of the Black Panther magazine Black Panthers' Word the most usual terms were "resistance" and "rebellion". A Black Panther group was even established in Jerusalem university.

The authorities refused flatly to discuss the problems of poverty and discrimination of the Eastern emigrants. In an interview for the French magazine Le Monde, Golda Meir sad that the Eastern Jews themselves were responsible for their poverty, which they brought with them exported from their countries. This was a barefaced lie because everybody knew that before emigrating to Israel most Jews in Arabs countries had a high standard of living.

The peak of the confrontation between the Panthers and the authorities was in 1972. About 60 people were arrested on the May Day demonstration when they had chanted slogans not just against poverty but against the annexation of Arab lands. A few days later four Panther activists were arrested on suspicion of burning residents of Meir Kachane - well known fascists. After this, about ten people declared hunger strike in protest against this arrest.

The Black Panthers usually used the so-called tactic of "direct action". For example in March 1972 they stole all the milk destined for the wealthy Jerusalem Rechavia district and transferred it to the poor suburb of Kirjat-Uvel. In every bottle was a short letter, explaining that milk was more important for poor children than for rich people's cats.

Black Panthers opinion on Israel-Palestine:

Haim Hanegbi:

"If there was such a thing as “The Jewish brain”,

Zionism killed it. The Jews were able to be ironic,

laugh at themselves, Zionism took that as well.

So they say the biggest miracle of Zionism

Is the revival of the Hebrew language,

They are destroying the language:

“stripping the landscape”, “focused hit”,

“uprooting trees”, “shaving”, “a breathing siege”

“a suffocation siege”. Where did it come from ?

Have we forgotten tyrannies that have ruined

languages for generations? Look at the Hebrew

we are speaking, a language of conquerors,

disregarding the whole world. The IDF

is the most human army in the world,

the most moral. Have they checked ?

Done research ? Can they measure morality?

Giving themselves grades, disregarding the world.

One day the American will turn his back,

and everything will crumble."


What were the Black Panthers all about
""It meant being part of a worldwide movement against U.S. imperialism, white supremacy, colonialism, and corrupting capitalism. We felt as if we were part of the peasant armies of Vietnam, the degraded Black miners of South Africa, the fedayeen in Palestine, the students storming in the streets of Paris, and the dispossessed of Latin America."

I hope you will study the Black Panthers more, and come to realise that the struggle of oppressed people to be free includes fighting for the rights of the Palestinian. Noone is free until everyone is free. For Jewish people to be free means learning to live in peace with their neighbours, and this means a JUST settlement, ideally one in which all peoples can live in the same country together in peace.

I'm off for a week, so I can't respond anymore for a bit. I'm sure you'll all argue it out til the cows come home...

So 1, you think that just because your father was in the Black Panthers that this is some kind of justification for having a go at the M&S picket.

If you actually got off your winging backside and came down to the picket you would actually see that Black, Asian and Jewish people do come consistently every week to the picket and not once in a blue moon, as you seem to think!

Also, if your father was in the black Panthers, then have you asked him how black people were treated during the second world war, and no not by the NAZI's but the Allied forces.

Fact 1, an allied doctor was allowed to treat an allied soldier and a nazi soldier but a black solider on the "good guys" side had to go and see a Black doctor.

Also you would be aware, that if your father was in the same branch as that guy who got killed, then you may have an idea of what having your leaders assasinated is like, after all, you dont see Palestine firing missiles into the homes of Israel officials do you?

Another fact is that, when people fought in the second world war, it was not to replace one act of ethnic cleansing with another, to destroy the Ayrian State and replace it with the Jewish one, to give more rights to Foreigners than to the Palestinians.

And now in Manchester, we have the people who have killed children, the same people, those ex-IDF members who attacked the Marks and Spencers picket, that same organisation and its cohorts who killed Tom Hurndle and Rachel Corrie, those who have bulldozed houses and force women to give birth at checkpoints, coming into our city and causing possible violence here.

As a mancunian, I know for fact that this kind of behaviour may be deemed by some Israelis as being acceptable, but here in Manchester, here in Britian, No it is not.

And for those of you out there that do think like this, go to Madagascar!

Firstly let me state that i have stood up for my brothers in Palestine on many occasions. Indeed, i have demonstrated in solidaruty with them in the past.

As for the the Israeli balck panthers... i dont care. For your information Hermes Easten Jews are not Sephardi, they are called Mizrahi. Sephardi is jews of spanish origin. The Mizrahi Jews, for the most part, are the most right wing in Israel, supporters of Sharon and Likud. Indeed it was Likud who emancipated their social economic position in Israel. Also Hermes, you should know that the very people the israeli "black panthers" were protesting against were deeply rooted in socialism also - Golda Meir and the labor party and the histradut - trade union movement. Presently, no mizrahi jew would protest the jewish state - they support it.

But here is a question for everyone...

what have the palestinians and arabs done for us, for black people?

Answer: Nothing. I shall explain my position:

september 8th 2002 saw the end of the UN world conference against Racism. The aim of the black african countries was to condemn slavery and colonialism and more importantly, to get an apology over the slave trade and get aid and trade concessions.

The final declaration of the conference had these aims watered down. Arab countries were hell bent on getting an anti Israel agenda passed that the concerns of african nations were sacrificed. And the anti israel rheteric led to the departure of the US delegate and threats from other western nations to do the same. Africa objectives were sacrificed because of the shere disregard from arab countries.

And what about these arab countries. In Arab north africa there have been bursts of anti black rioting and the social economic possition of blacks is terrible. Blacks are discriminated in the job sector. In the gulf states black workers are treated in almost slave like conditions.

Before 1973 Israeli provided aid and development programmes to African nations. After 1973 Arabs oil rich countries forced us by threatening high oil rates to stop our trade with Israel. What did we get in return? nothing, no aid, no benifets, no cheaper oil.

Indeed, African nations will not be supporting the palestinian cause for much longer if this is how we are treated in return.

f**k it, you tell me why i should protest for the palestinians.

Because of Israeli incursions, house demolitions, and its illegal occupation.

Or shall i protest Arab anti semitism that started in the 1840s before zionism that is now present in school textbooks and the state media. You know what? No Israeli killed any black man. Palestinians kill black men in Israel. They killed in 2002, a member of the Black Hebrews - blacks from chicago who activly oppose racism in America(like the nation of islam). They kill eithopian jews who are citizens or members of the Israeli army.

And Ricki Lake what was that Madagascar comment about?
Why Madagascar? what black countries are barbaric are they?

As for the idf soldiers that attacked your picket:

first they were a bunch of kids
then they were beitar activists
then they were ex idf soldiers
now they are idf soldiers

what a joke.

"you dont see Palestine firing missiles into the homes of Israel officials do you?"

No - they generally choose softer targets, like Israeli schools.

This attack:
 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/444558.html
killed a toddler.

So Jenny jones Palestinians usually go for "Soft Targets", well when armed israeli soldiers target children and visible peace campaigners, I would not call them legitimate targets now would you?

Nor, would i call them weapons of mass destruction, nor militant splinter cells, and this is grown men and women with big guns, who outside of ethnic cleansing would have nothing to do but feel persecuted, who target these children and peace campaigners!

What are they scared of, these children may chuck a few stones?

Oh, I forgot, in Israel they send out the tanks to deal with children throwing stones and if the international community was to issue condemnation, then Israel would take its ball and walk of with the Yanks and sulk, cry and then scream the world hates us and the biggots then claim the whole thing is part of some big Anti-Semitic attack against the Jews, people cry but Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel needs Nuclear bombs because it is surrounded by hostile countries, Israel needs to build a big wall to protect the Jews from the Arabs.

My advice, stop being the victim!

"Or shall i protest Arab anti semitism that started in the 1840s before zionism"

well you'd look rather foolish, what with arabs being semites.

1 talks about Jewish youth be politicised - well the ex-IDF thugs who attacked on 3rd July were hardly youths and they were already highly politicised Zionists.

These was one or two young people who joined their attempt to "hound us off the streets of Manchester" on 17 July but most were much older. Most are active members of Likud and are not politicised by our presence but die-hard defenders of Israel who want to expand their racist state.