By David Semple
According to Sky News and other media outlets, there is a Palestinian uprising in “Occupied East Jerusalem”. The western media accuses Israel of oppressing the Palestinians in “the Occupied Territories” or the “West Bank”. The use of the term “occupied” to describe Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria is completely wrong. The truth is that east Jerusalem is occupied by Palestinian Arab settlers, not Israelis. The occupiers are not Jews, they are Arabs. The land of Israel, formerly the colonial territory of Palestine, belongs to the Jewish people under international law, which is the British Mandate White Paper, which was recognised by the League of Nations in 1922.
Most people who live in Israel today are descendants of immigrants from Europe, North Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the West, who came to the Ottoman areas around Jerusalem, Mandate Palestine, and the State of Israel during the twentieth century. Those immigrants were Jewish, Christian and Muslim. There are some Arabs descended from Ottoman Muslims. There are some Jews descended from the ancient Hebrews of Judea and Israel. Others are descended from Middle Eastern and European Christians, most of whom came during the late Ottoman period, which ended in 1917. The native people of this land, however, are the Jewish people. Israel is a Jewish state governed under secular laws.
The occupation referred to constantly by the Western media was created by Jordan’s invasion of Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem in 1948. Jordan illegally annexed these territories in 1950, calling them the West Bank, meaning the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Israel liberated the so-called West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967 when Jordan attacked Israel during the Six-Day War. Israel has not annexed the West Bank, but governs most of it, whereas the Palestinian Authority governs the eight cities of Zone ‘A’ of Judea and Samaria.
There are no Jewish settlers in Israel. Nor in the so-called West Bank. The West Bank is land that is part of Mandate Palestine, recognised as the Jewish homeland under international law in the 1920’s. As such, there are no occupied territories in Israel. The concept of “the occupied territories” was invented by the Soviet Union and the international Marxist Left after Russia lost its sphere of influence in the Middle East following the 1967 war. Lefty Russian stooges, such as Vanessa Redgrave (who had supported Israel till 1967) then frog-marched themselves into the Russian, anti-Israel camp. Likewise, today’s youth at university campuses have aligned themselves with the Soviet-inspired anti-Zionist movement and are totally ignorant of Israel and Middle Eastern history. Such people just mouth the slogans of the genocidal Marxist Palestinian supporters. All of the Arab countries, including Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, wanted to annihilate Israel long before the concept of “the occupied territories” was invented. The BDS movement is merely an extension of the decades-old Arab desire to destroy Israel. The genocidal intent of the Palestinian Arabs and their BDS stooges is clear.
The phrase “Palestinian people” is part of the BDS arsenal used to discredit Israel. Used correctly, “Palestinian people” refers to both the Jews and the Arabs who were born there before 1948. Everybody born there since 1948 is either an Israeli or a Jordanian. Jordan, of course, is Arab Palestine. But a misunderstanding of geo-politics is only part of the problem. Islamism is a growing threat. The Arabs who are now revolting against the Israelis are Islamist terrorists who want to destroy Israel and restore the Muslim occupation that ended in 1918 (in 1967 in the West Bank and east Jerusalem). All attacks on innocent Israelis are part of a Muslim “holy war”, or jihad, designed to annihilate the Jewish people, Judaism and the secular state of Israel. They want to replace it with a Muslim state. The international BDS movement, which comprises hard-line Islamists and socialists, is an extension of the jihad against Israel.
The media is obsessed with the notion of Israeli occupation. But the truth is, the real occupation is happening elsewhere, predominantly in the West on campuses and in cities such as Manchester. The occupation to which I am referring is the BDS occupation. As well as physically occupying our universities and public spaces with their banners, anti-Semitic protests and marches, BDS is an occupation of the mind. It is totalitarian in nature and turns its followers into dhimmis of the Palestinian Muslim terrorists who have been at war with Israel for almost a hundred years.
In 2014, the protesters occupied Manchester during and after the Gaza War, when they not only picketed a cosmetics shop called Kedem (on King Street) for several months, they also shut down huge chunks of Manchester’s city centre. Historically a liberal-minded city, Manchester became a place of intolerance and thuggish anti-Semitism. Not that the BDS occupation ever left town after the end of the Kedem boycott last autumn. They continue to occupy Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens every weekend, spreading hatred of Israel and the Jewish people. But after the Muslim firebombing of the al-Aqsa mosque in September, the BDS occupation, inspired by the pro-Hamas politics of Jeremy Corbyn, spread once again to other parts of Manchester city centre. First, they formed the front line of the anti-Tory protests outside the Conservative conference. It started with a constant barrage of “Tory scum”. It ended with Jew-hatred when Jewish Conservatives were called “kikes” and told to “f–k off back to Auschwitz”. On my final day at the conference, they chanted “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” when they recognised myself and two Jewish Tory council candidates as we left the security gates outside the Midland Hotel.
Following Abu Mazen’s speech at the United Nations and the terrorist murders of Jews in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel in recent weeks, the BDS occupiers returned to Kedem. In an echo of 2014, around sixty protesters occupied King Street, intimidating the public and chanting words of hatred towards Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people. As usual, they screamed “Free free Palestine from the river to the sea”. You could see the hatred in their eyes when they were confronted with a small defensive counter-protest by members of the Jewish community and some Christian supporters.
The occupation of King Street is just one battlefield in a wider war. The boycotts, divestment’s and sanctions movement is an assault not only on Jews but on liberal English values. Many of the BDS people are Muslims who are openly fronting a radical Islamist/pro-terror agenda. The non-Muslim participants of BDS may look English and talk with English accents, but they are enemies of liberal English society that has been built up over the last three hundred years and successfully exported to Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand. In effect, they are post-English and post-liberal. How can they not be when they have allied themselves with both international Marxist-Leninism and Islamic supremacism?
Such people are not confused or naive. They know exactly what they are doing. And what they are doing is threatening and dangerous. If they could get away with it, they would gladly throw rocks at Jews in Manchester. That is the problem with BDS. It’s not a peace movement. Far from it. It’s thuggish, anti-Semitic, anti-Western and totalitarian. The BDS boycotters in Manchester are the new face of post-English totalitarian intolerance.
If we want peace on the streets of Manchester, then we must do everything we can to end the occupation. No, not the so-called occupation of east Jerusalem or the West Bank, but the BDS occupation of Manchester.
David Semple is a filmmaker and writer from Canada. He is currently writing a book called Jerusalem in the Age of Imperialism and is writing a film script about Field Marshal Allenby’s Palestine campaign.
[The opinions, facts and any media content are presented solely by the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Jewish Media Agency.]