Walking through security at Portcullis House, the fabulously expensive building standing adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, is a bit like going through any airport anywhere in the world. But making your way through the spacious courtyard, past green trees and sun-dappled water features under the enormous sparkling glass dome towering overhead, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is still the seat of power of a great empire. The man I’m here to see, however, is one of the country’s most vocal critics of imperialism. George Galloway rises from his computer to shake my hand as I enter his office. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says. I remind him we met once before when he came to destroy a pro-war American politician at the Cambridge Union many years ago. “You’re far too young to say that,” he laughs.

Born in 1954, Galloway joined the Labour Party at the tender age of thirteen and has been a Member of Parliament since 1987. His strident opposition to the Iraq war, describing Bush and Blair as wolves and calling on British troops to disobey orders, led to his expulsion from the party in 2003. “His comments were disgraceful and wrong,” Tony Blair said. But Galloway has never been one to lie down in the face of his enemies. The following year he formed a new left-wing anti-war party, Respect, and in a stunning victory overturned a Labour majority of over 10,000 to oust Blairite Oona King in Bethnal Green and Bow. Since then, however, Respect has suffered a disastrous split, whilst Galloway has found himself having to fend off a barrage of media criticism for his famous decision to appear on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006. With a general election just months away, I ask George Galloway what he thinks his chances are of holding his seat.

“Well I’m not standing again in Bethnal Green and Bow,” he tells me. “Because I promised last time that I’d stand only once and if the people elected me, the next MP for the constituency would be a Bengali.” It’s a straight fight between Labour and Respect in Bethnal Green and Bow, Galloway explains, and with both parties selecting a Bengali candidate, his promise looks set to be kept. “For the first time, the Bengali community will have a member in the House of Commons and that’s something I’m particularly proud of.” Galloway has instead chosen to stand in the neighbouring Tower Hamlets constituency of Poplar and Limehouse. “We have a fighting chance of winning both seats,” he says. Galloway also believes Respect has a chance of breaking through in Birmingham – where the party came a close second in 2005 – and of Salma Yaqoob becoming the first ever Muslim woman MP. “If we could pull those three off, I could retire a happy man four years later.” Respect was founded in 2004 as a coalition seeking to bring together the disparate strands of perhaps the greatest mass movement in modern political history. In practice, what emerged was an alliance between George Galloway, a few prominent anti-war activists and the Socialist Workers Party. In 2007, for absolutely no reason that seems at all relevant, the party split in half and the SWP walked out. I ask Galloway if the split has harmed Respect’s chances of achieving the breakthrough he hopes for. “I don’t know if it’s damaged our electability. Certainly not if we do win three seats. Even having one seat in 2005 was almost unprecedented. It had been 60 years since a left of Labour party last won a seat in Parliament in 1945. And in the same constituency by the way.” Galloway has to admit, however, that the split has definitely affected the party’s power outside of Parliament. “The departure of key activists and leaders has weakened us. About half the members left.” I ask Galloway how many members Respect still has. “I don’t have the exact figure,” he says. “It’s a small number of thousands.”

In an interview with The Third Estate in June, Mark Steel told me that the feud in Respect was about nothing that anyone can work out. It has often seemed to me that whilst the left sits on the steps of the amphitheatre shouting splitters at each other and arguing about what society should look like after the revolution, it is failing to speak to ordinary people about the everyday issues that affect their lives. I ask Galloway how he would explain the split to voters who care about social justice and jobs and housing, but have little interest in sectarian squabbling. “With respect to you, and I don’t mean at all to be offensive, I wouldn’t care to explain it to anyone,” Galloway says. “I think that the arcane disputatious nature of the far-left in Britain is of interest only to the cognoscente and the cognoscente already know the reasons.” Galloway pauses as his phone rings. Sorting out a quick bit of business in ten seconds, he apologises before continuing. “For the rest of the public, Respect was always me, Salma Yaqoob, Ken Loach and so on, and it still is. So we’d rather go forward than look back.”

Respect, of course, will not be standing in every constituency at the next general election. “There are 649 seats, that’s beyond any small party of the left. We will be standing in more seats than just those three, but they’re the target seats.” In the constituencies where Respect is not standing, Galloway explains that they will back other progressive candidates. “Brighton, for example, where Caroline Lucas is standing for the Green Party and has a real chance of winning. I expect that we would support her, we haven’t made final decisions on these constituencies yet. Similarly Peter Tatchell is standing in Oxford, we would probably support him. There may be one or two other places where we would support a left, anti-war candidate.” I ask Galloway – who has branded the three main parties as “Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee and a half” – whether he would call for a vote for Labour to keep the Conservatives out, and am genuinely surprised by the firebrand MP’s response. “We definitely want the Tories to be defeated, so for the most part that would mean that we ask people to vote Labour.” It was understandable that Respect backed Ken Livingstone against Boris Johnson in last year’s election for London Mayor. But would Respect really ask people to vote for an arch New Labourite who voted for the war? “Most of them are arch New Labourites who backed the war, so we wouldn’t be able to have that as a hard and fast rule. It’s unlikely that the worst of the war criminals would attract our support, but we wouldn’t be able to use who voted for the war entirely as a yardstick.”

It’s surprising to hear Galloway say this – not least because he is Vice President of Stop the War Coalition and perhaps the most outspoken critic of New Labour’s neo-conservative foreign policy in the country – but because in June he called for an immediate election, arguing that the current Parliament is “utterly bereft of credibility.” I ask him if it’s possible that a Labour defeat at the next election could help bring back the party he once called home. “No, I don’t,” he says. “In any case, it would be too high a price to pay. The Tories will be a catastrophe for ordinary people in Britain, for the working people, the poor, the old, the sick, the disabled. So I want to see them defeated.” Galloway has to concede, however, that that’s not very likely. “Looking at the opinion polls, reading the runes, it would appear that the Tories are on course for a big victory. And if that happens, then we’ll have to see what happens to the Labour Party that I spent almost forty years in.”

Labour’s abandonment of the left goes part of the way towards explaining the success of Respect. But it is Blair’s utter betrayal of British Muslims, incensed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which explains why so many Labour voters in East London and Birmingham have turned to Respect. Not least because of Galloway’s standing amongst Muslims. When housemates on Celebrity Big Brother were asked to rank themselves in order of fame, he mused: “If we’re talking worldwide fame, I’m most famous. Virtually every Muslim in the world knows who I am.” Whether or not that’s true, George Galloway has done perhaps more than anyone else in the country to help politicise marginalised Muslim communities, introducing to them left-wing politics as an answer to racism, Islamophobia, imperialism and neo-conservatism. But there’s another, more reactionary, current amongst Muslim communities that seeks to present itself as the sole representative of Islamic identity. I ask Galloway if Respect could do more to challenge religious fundamentalism and social conservativism amongst the communities it represents? “No,” he says, “I think the first part of our agenda is big enough. The question of social conservatism within Muslim communities is a matter for them largely.”

It’s a contentious point, and one that many on the liberal left will disagree with, but Galloway has never been afraid of courting controversy. In 1994, he flew to Iraq to meet Saddam Hussein in an effort to prevent war and end the sanctions which were bringing further immiseration to the Iraqi people, saluting their courage, their strength and their indefatigability. More recently he has spoken out in support of Ahmedinejad in Iran following the disputed elections, attacking the protesters as class enemies and drawing a comparison with opposition to Chavez’s reforms in Venezuela. But despite the similarity in their anti-imperialist rhetoric, is it really fair to compare the ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Ahmedinejad with the democratic socialist Chavez? “I’m not sure that Chavez would describe himself as a democratic socialist,” Galloway says. “But I do think the comparisons between them are stark. Not just in their international rhetoric, though that is a very significant thing for me, but in terms of their social base. The social base of Ahmedinejad is the poor masses; the enemies of Ahmedinejad are the English speaking, highly-educated, well-off elite. I’ve been several times to Venezuela, and that’s exactly the polarisation that exists there.”

Galloway concedes that Ahmedinejad is not a socialist, whilst Chavez is. But both, he argues, are populists. “I do think you can measure a man by his enemies, and both have the same enemies. My main interest in Iran is that is should remain an independent country and not a puppet of the West like virtually all of the Muslim countries already are, and to that extent I’m glad that Ahmedinejad won over Moussavi who, whether he liked it or not, was riding a wave of people who wished to see the return of the Pahlavi dynasty and who wished to see Iran as an outcrop of the United States. And I’m sure that he did win.”

It’s an uncomfortable prospect, that the left must lend its tacit support to tyrants opposed to Western imperialism, and even though Galloway has described Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust as “a disgrace”, I ask him, if the enemy of my enemy must always be my friend? “No,” he says. “That’s why I could never line up behind the dictatorship in Burma. It’s anti-American, but I could never say that that enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Nevertheless, Galloway tells me that Ahmedinejad is the president of an important country and we’ll just have to accept it. “Iran is much more important than the sort of knuckle-dragging ignoramuses in the British media have realised. Its geo-political position is strategically significant, it has a very young population, it has an ocean of oil and gas and soon will have a nuclear power industry, famously as we know.” It is for these reasons that Galloway argues Iran must be treated with more respect. “Ahmedinejad is the president, that’s why he was speaking at the United Nations a fortnight ago, there’s no point in second guessing other people’s choice of their leaders. I believe strongly that every people have the right to choose their own leaders and not have them chosen by their adversaries.”

It’s a position to which Galloway has remained consistent throughout his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But with violence surging in Afghanistan, what is the answer to the country’s problems now? “The opposite of what we’re currently doing,” he says. “The war is doomed, it cannot be won. No one has successfully occupied Afghanistan, not even Alexander the Great, and Bob Ainsworth definitely isn’t Alexander the Great. No matter how many soldiers they pour in there, they’ll never pour as many in as the former Soviet Union did. That occupation failed as this one is bound to.” Galloway believes that a negotiated withdrawal is inevitable. “It’s better that that starts now rather than later. Many more people will be alive, the radicalisation of the Muslim world, which is a real danger, will be lessened, we’ll be able to spend the money we’re burning in Afghanistan on our own people at home, and we’ll begin to defuse the tensions that exist in our own country between Muslims and non-Muslims.”

But withdrawal brings with it its own dangers, not least the possibility of the Taliban returning to power. I ask Galloway what he thinks will happen to Afghanistan? “The first thing I need to say, and it’s a contentious point, is that it’s none of our business what happens. British people, after several hundred years of empire, have become used to the idea that we have some right, maybe even some duty, to determine what happens in other people’s countries. I never believed that and I certainly don’t believe it now when we’re an almost bankrupt set of islands off the coast of mainland Europe. The days when the building you’re currently in ruled a quarter of all the world’s population are gone. Hallelujah!”

That’s not to say that Galloway is unconcerned with the future of Afghanistan. “I have interests in that country as a British citizen and they are this: that it must not be a base for those who wish to harm me, us, our country and our legitimate interests.” However, he believes that it is important to separate the pan-Islamist al Qaeda from “Johnny Afghan who just wants foreigners out of his country.” These, he argues, were never the same thing. “Insofar as there’s an al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, it was we who sent it there, paid for it, armed it, glorified it, paraded it at the Tory conference and at Ronald Reagan’s Republican national convention, called them Mujahedeen and all that you know. To punish the Afghans for al Qaeda when we sent it there, is double jeopardy.” Instead Galloway wants to see a negotiated outcome with the Afghan forces to ensure that the country is not used as a base to harm Britain and its legitimate interests. “I can’t guarantee that Afghanistan will be a lovely place if the foreign armies withdraw, but I can guarantee it will never be a lovely place if they don’t.”

There are many far-from-lovely places in the world that Galloway is concerned about, but perhaps none more so than Palestine. He recently returned from a convoy to break the Israeli siege of Gaza, the occupied territory which would form part of any future Palestinian state. But, I ask him, is a two-state solution really the best way to achieve justice for the Palestinian people? “I’m pleased that Hamas and Fatah have signed a unity agreement,” he says. “I hope it works. The division within the Palestinian ranks has been catastrophic for them and for those of us who support them from the outside, as I have been doing now for almost 35 years of my life. As to what the final outcome is, this is really a matter for them.” Galloway says that if the Palestinians decide on a two-state solution then he, as a supporter of their cause, must accept that. “My own personal view, however, is that Palestine is too small, the issue of the refugees too great, the topographic and demographic cleansing that has occurred has been too extensive. The building of the wall, the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, the building of the settlements, which are really cities, have all been too extensive to make the separation of this small piece of land into two viable states realistic.”

Galloway is keen to point out that he does not support sectarian countries. “When Mandela was asked by the Boers at the end of Apartheid if they could have the Orange Free State as a white state, he said that he didn’t believe in white states or black states, only democratic states. One man, one woman, one vote, one government and everyone equal under the law. And if I believe that in South Africa, why should I change it for Palestine?” Instead he would like to see a democratic state, where everyone is equal, where all the existing inhabitants have the right to live, and all the people who were driven from the land have the right to return. “One state between the river and the sea is by far the best solution.”

In the meantime, Galloway believes that the convoys he is leading to Gaza to bring aid to the Palestinian people are crucial acts of defiance and solidarity. “I’m leading another one on the 6th of December to arrive on the 27th, which is the anniversary of the war. I think that these attempts to break the blockade are the most urgent priority for solidarity organisations around the world. We can march here, and protest here, and hold public meetings, but they make little difference.”

Somehow I didn’t expect George Galloway – the firebrand activist and unremitting radical who has always spoken his mind even when his opponents don’t like what’s on it – to say any different. His has always been one of the loudest voices for change and he has never lacked the courage of his convictions. I thank him for his time and make my way back through the courtyard and the green trees and sun-dappled water features under the enormous sparkling glass dome: the seat of power of an almost bankrupt set of islands off the coast of mainland Europe. On my way home, I pass Brian Haw, whose protest, like Galloway’s, will continue unabated till the people in power take notice.

http://www.georgegalloway.com/

Guest Post by David Rosenberg

“To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors”.

The author of these words was the Bundist Marek Edelman who has just died aged 90. He was one of the commanders of the ZOB – the Jewish Fighting Organisation that led the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943.

Edelman's funeral in Warsaw on Friday

To anti-fascists and human rights activists around the world he was a hero – plain and simple. He wrote one of the earliest Holocaust memoirs, The Ghetto Fights, which was published in Poland in 1945 and subsequently translated into several languages. It is an incredible text which pains and inspires the reader in equal measure.

After escaping the burnt-out ghetto through the sewers he continued underground anti-Nazi activity and then joined other Poles in the Warsaw Rising of 1944. After the war he saved countless more lives working as a cardiologist. In recent years he used the medical arena to make contact with Dr Mustafa Barghouti, director of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees.

Edelman was never a Zionist, and he opposed Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territory. He met with Palestinian political figures and expressed support for their struggle against occupation while at the same time urging them to firmly reject terroristic methods. He angered Israeli leaders by pointedly addressing the Palestinians he made contact with as “leaders of the Palestinian Fighting Organisations”. In Tel Aviv they were indignant that such a prominent figure in the Warsaw Ghetto resistance would choose to continue to live in Poland (his homeland!) after the war – a place they regarded simply as a Jewish graveyard. Even worse, he had the chutzpah not to take his political lead from less heroic and far more reactionary Zionist spokespersons and cheerleaders.

Not that Edelman was worried. This hero of the Jewish people and of anti-fascists had long been treated as persona non grata by the Israeli political establishment and its mainstream media. Edelman would not countenance Israel’s attempt to appropriate Holocaust resistance to justify its political actions, and he said so on several occasions.

He refused to allow the historical experience of the Ghetto fighters to be claimed by any group/nation exclusively. On the contrary, he argued that this history belonged to everyone and carried a universal imperative to fight for equality, democracy, human rights and dignity wherever these were threatened or suppressed

He continued to repudiate the Zionist narrative of Jewish history with its blinkered ultra-nationalism. Instead he remained loyal to the Bund’s socialist political tradition which, as its 1938 manifesto had declared, rejected “one’s own and foreign nationalism”.

Throughout his life Edelman worked for human rights, democracy and egalitarianism. He remained sceptical of nationalism in general and critical of state power. He was a brave and forthright opponent of the Stalinist regime in Poland and, in the 1980s, actively supported the Workers Opposition Movement – KOR.

In 1988 – on the 45th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising – he snubbed the official commemoration in Poland attended by Stalinist dignitaries from Poland and Zionist dignitaries from Israel, in favour of an alternative ceremony at the Warsaw Jewish cemetery, attended by 3,000 people, where he unveiled a monument to Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter – Bundist leaders of the 1930s who had been captured and murdered on Stalin’s orders during the War.

I treasure the fact that I had the good fortune to hear Marek Edelman speak and briefly meet him in 1997 at a conference in Warsaw marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Bund. Naturally a lot of people wanted to speak to him. He sat, relaxed, making time for everybody. He was a hero, a fighter and a true mensch. Koved zayn ondenk (honour his memory)

Leonard On Tour

You may know that a campaign has been gathering pace to prevent Leonard Cohen performing in Israel. Across the world there have been gatherings, petitions, facebook groups and indeed protests outside concerts calling on Leonard not to play in Israel. Initially the tone of the campaign was friendly if forthright. Activists addressed Leonard as fans who didn’t want to be disssapointed in him. Yet as his determination to press ahead with schedule has become clear the  tone has become decidedly more forceful, with people pledging to boycott Cohen for his failure to boycott Israel.

I must admit that my immediate, negative, reaction to the demand that Leonard stays out of Israel was in part emotional. Its not only that that I have seen Leonard twice on his current tour and hope others will have the opportunity to experience his brilliance. It’s also that several years ago – when rumours of Cohen’s first tour in over a decade first started to surface – I was hanging around with equally obsessive Cohenites on The Leonard Cohen forum. Many of us by this point had resigned ourselves to the idea that we were born too late to ever see him live. I remember the hope expressed by fellow Cohenites in Israel that he would return for them to see him. And i remember the dissapointment  when initial itineries were published without Israel on them. Quite simply Cohen is a cultural treasure, and I would feel churlish in denying anybody the opportunity to see him play.

Perhaps more importantly this particular manifestation of the ‘cultural boycott’ seems to be a slightly different ball game from the economic boycott. The latter has a clear and demonstrable connection to what we are fighting against. What Israel sells abroad ultimately helps fund the occupation and the military machine. There is no such comparable connection here and as such the calls to boycott Israel have, to some extent, fallen back upon the langauge of collective punishment, with loose talk about leonard playing for the ‘tormentors’ of the palestinians. On the major facebook group pushing the boycott it was stated that ‘When many of his Israeli fans are let down by his boycott they will remember it next time they enter the ballot box.’ Clearly this will work.

I felt some sympathy with a left wing Israeli who made the following intervention.

“no, this totaly sucks! when will ppl learn to distinguish the people from the action of their state?? we suffer enough as left wing israelis living in this fascist state, and now u wanna take away our the bit of culture we get in this little secluded island? u realy think it will affect anyone thats in high position?”

He was met by a response from one Pamela Hardyment who told him to ‘get off the land you stole’ and that ‘the more we isolate you, the more you will let go of your fascist principles, maybe not you personally but the country you call your own’. Clearly the distinction hardly matters. Now we know from elsewhere that Pamela Hardyment is a bona fide anti-Semite – and as such, I would hasten to add, is untypical of most of the boycott campaigners. Yet her comments met with no admonition from the other 650 members of the group.

The waters are made even murkier by the fact that Leonard has promised to give the proceeds from the concert to Israelies and Palestinians working towards peace. Now obviously, I would prefer the money went to some radical anti-occupation activists, but thats by-the-by. This gesture represents a substantial recognition that Tel Aviv is not just another point on the itinerary. The response of the boycott campaign is to attack any organisations that appear to be co-operating with this apparently tainted fund.

The real question for me is what would this achieve? If we want to deny Israelies who may or may not support the occupation access to this great cultural treasure that is Leonard Cohen, surely doing so must carry some serious benefit. And I cannot see that it will. Interestingly this is not the first time that Leonard has played in a territory governed by a dubious and reviled regime (and im not just talk about the UK here.) Back in the 1980s he performed in Poland – where his fan base was curiously huge – in the period of martial law. Opposition activists urged him to make a statement. In his concert he managed to use the word ‘solidarity’, provoking cheers from the crowd. Yet perhaps because of pressure from the government, or because he did not feel comfortable charging into a conflict that was alien to him he did not take sides in the full blooded sense. Yet did make clear his sympathy towards those who were currently struggling and suffering, as shown (along with a brilliant rendition of If it Be Your Will) in this must watch video below.

I would love it if Leonard got up on stage and flew the Palestinian flag. He won’t. But when he gets up on stage, and offers thousands of ordinary people to see him in the flesh and to hear his poetry, and – by donating money to peacenicks on both sides – gestures, in his own way, his sympathy with those who are suffering, I will not complain.

The proms don’t normally get much in the way of political coverage. In fact the last time they did was about a year and a half ago when Margaret Hodge decided to make some stupid announcement about them not being inclusive enough, so it was a real joy to have such a politically charged concert as the performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio last night as a highlight of the season. The opera was performed by the East-Western Divan Orchestra, which was set up ten years ago by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. The orchestra is made up of young musicians from around the Middle East, including members from both Israel and Palestine. Barenboim says that the idea of the orchestra was to find common ground in knowledge, and offer a chance for dialogue to young people.

Daniel Barenboim and members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (image taken from West-Eastern Divan Orchestra website)

In the context of the ongoing oppression in the Middle East, Fidelio is a poignant work to bring into the debate. It tells the story of Leonore, who rescues her lover from a prison, where he his being held by Rocco under the orders of the corrupt Don Pizarro. It is a story of bravery, hope, and ultimately emancipation. The political message is clear, that there is an analogy between the prisoners kept by Pizarro, and the oppression faced by the Palestinians, and yet there is rather more to the politics of this opera, and in fact the situation in Palestine, that warrants further discussion.

Beethoven is, in many ways, the first self-consciously philosophical composer of the Enlightenment era, and his philosophical concerns are tied to the idealism of the French Revolution, and later to Hegel. These may seem like big claims, not least when we are so often told that “music speaks for itself”, but the reality is that Western European music in the 19th century was completely inseparable from a number of philosophical and political debates. We would miss so much of what this opera has to say if we were unwilling to discuss it in these terms, and whilst new readings are always possible, and new significances can always be brought out, it is useful in understanding the motives of the opera to consider it in its own period and its own intellectual tradition.

The first act of the opera is concluded by a chorus of prisoners, who due to a deal Rocco has made with Leonore, are allowed out of their dungeons and into the open air. Their song of “O welche Lust! In freier Luft / den Atem leicht zu heben! / Nur hier ist Leben / der Kerker eine Gruft” [Oh, what joy! In the open air / to breathe with ease! / Only here is life / the prison is a tomb.] represents the ideals of the French Revolution, both of liberty and fraternity. The prisoners are a radical, or in fact revolutionary, collective, and this is an idea that Beethoven returns to throughout his oeuvre, most notably (and probably less successfully than the end of Act I of Fidelio) in the Finale of the Ninth Symphony. Leonore is the heroine, asserting too a revolutionary consciousness in order that she and Florestan (her imprisoned lover) may be together, where Pizarro, a signifier of the old feudal order, has previously prevented their love. And finally there is Rocco, the jailor, who in the course of the opera undergoes a complete transformation from being the bondsman of Pizarro, to becoming a collaborator with revolutionaries, for he has seen that what is being proposed is not simply humane but a path to a better, freer world.

There is lots to be taken from this opera in terms of a response to the Israel-Palestine conflict, we have to single act of bravery by Leonore, in rescuing Florestan, showing the difference that the bravery and responsibility of each person can make, we have the chorus of prisoners, who offer a glimpse of an imagined future, one in which freedom and solidarity are inextricably linked, and then most importantly Rocco shows that minds can be changed, that the possibility of a freer future is the emancipation not simply of those who are imprisoned, but of the consciousnesses of those who imprison.

Yesterday’s performance was prefaced by the showing of a film called Knowledge is the Beginning, which chronicled the progression of the orchestra from its inception in 1999 to a concert given in Ramallah in 2005. This film, like Barenboim, is relatively hard-hitting. It may not be hardcore anti-Zionism, but it is heavily critical of the Israeli government and the occupation.

(what is cut from the end of this short clip from the film is the Israeli Minister for Education accusing Barenboim of using the opportunity of receiving the award to attack the Israeli state)

Throughout the film there is yet more Beethoven, but it is never quite made explicit that Barenboim sees the politics of Beethoven as offering an ideological critique of the current state of affairs in the Middle East. Nonetheless, it is clearly important to him, although the superimposition of Beethovenian politics on the Israel-Palestine question does throw up some issues. The most notable, which came up a number of times in the short discussion after the film, is that this is possibly taking the form of colonial ideology, the idea that “we” in “the West” achieved this freedom with our bourgeois revolutions, and that maybe some place in “the East” has something to learn from it. Such an issue is backed up again by the description of music (Western classical) as a universal language, and along with that the freedom expressed in Beethoven, which is of course tied to his own time, and his own intellectual tradition is made transcendent and transhistorical.

These are easy remarks to make in an effort to discredit what the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra do, but I think our theoretical approach need be a bit more subtle than this, and the politics of this project are rather more subtle too. The point of the project is that it is not theoretical in this sense, but rather it is entirely pragmatic. If, as such, the ideas in Beethoven become a useful expression for the problems of the Middle East then we should be willing to accept them, despite the problems. The project, in offering dialogue, is not set out to offer an ideology of emancipation, but rather offers a politics of emancipation.

We should be wary of the possibility of Beethoven, or in fact Western classical music as a whole becoming an instrument of colonial discourse, but here they are being used simply because of their expressive capacity, rather than because an accurate analogy is being drawn. The consequence of this, though, is that we must do away with the notion of music as a universal language. It is only when we address each situation of oppression in its particularity and specificity, that we can come to political conclusions, and so the superimposition of transcendent notions of oppression and salvation (such as those that were inherent in French Revolutionary ideology) obscure rather than elucidate the issue at hand. Beethoven, and many revolutionaries of his era did believe in universal concepts of freedom, and universal concepts of emancipation, this is very much the essence of the idealism of that age, but we must reject the idea that these are universal, and I believe we can do this without throwing out the meaning of these works of art, and without accepting the complete enlightenment project, we can accept its striving for humanity.

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is an extremely important project. As Barenboim admits, it will not bring peace, but it is a step forward. It is the same bravery as Leonore, but unlike in the plot of Fidelio, it cannot bring about a revolution. Furthermore, the project is doing a great deal to repoliticise Beethoven, and music in general. That is not to say that music is being made instrumental to external political struggles, but rather that the music itself is being allowed once again to refract on to our society in a way that has been less and less common over the last fifty years.

The concert is available on view again and listen again on the BBC website for another six days.
For more information on the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra http://west-easterndivan.artists.warner.de/

The following is a message from the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign:

An arrest warrant was issued at Friday’s court hearing against Sofiah MacLeod, Scottish PSC Secretary currently in Palestine witnessing Israel’s racist dispossesion of Palestinians.  The warrant was cancelled shortly afterwards, however. Sofiah will bring her recent experiences of Israeli state-driven racism when she goes on trial accused of ‘racism’.  Three of the other four accused will similarly produce evidence from first-hand experience of Israel’s programme of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

On trial for ‘racially aggravated conduct’ are five Scots who responded to the Palestinian appeal for boycott of Israel.  We protested a visit by the Israeli state-sponsored Jerusalem Quartet to the 2008 Edinburgh International Festival. Next appearance in Edinburgh Sherriff Court is on Thursday October 1st, when our lawyers will argue to dismiss the case against us .

The Scottish legal authorities will attempt to prove that shouting ‘End the siege of Gaza’, and ‘Boycott Israel’ equals ‘racism’.  We five will argue that boycott of Israel is a duty while that State violates every canon of international law.

This is a political show-trial, encouraged by the stated positions of the British Government, and is aimed at intimidating Palestine supporters.  We shall certainly not be intimdated: last year we saw off some Zionist rascals from SCoJeC (Scottish Council of Jewish Communities) who were unwise enough to claim in print that Scottish PSC is anti-Semitic.  They then had to pulp 6,000 copies of a book, Scotland’s Jews, in open admission that the claim was without foundation and libellous.

We will show in our defence/attack that

• we are bound to oppose grave Israeli crimes and British Government complicity in those crimes, including political, diplomatic, economic and military support for Israeli Governments
• the nearest domestic political equivalent in Britain to the factions in the Isaeli Government is the neo-Nazi British National Party (BNP)
• Israel is an apartheid state as defined in international law
• the Palestinian-inspired BDS campaign is a duty for consistent supporters of human rights, i.e. those who repudiate a racist attitude that Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans and others have a lesser entitlement that others
• the Jerusalem Quartet are indeed, as we claim, institutionally linked to the Israeli Army and its State, and thus to be boycotted by human rights supporters

Expert witnesses - Palestinians, Israelis and others - will show that the growing support for the Palestinian BDS appeal is

justified by

• the history of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Zionist movement and its State from 1948 to the present
• the conscious determination of the Israeli State to continue with further criminal acts of ethnic cleansing
• the failure of the British Government to honour its international legal obligations to opppose Israeli apartheid, specifically the illegal Wall and settlement building

Witnesses who have agreed to give expert evidence or personal testimonies for the defence include:

• Leila Khaled, Palestinian refugee and resistance fighter, Member of Palestinian National Council
• Dr. Ghada Karmi, Palestinian writer and academic
• Omar Barghouti PACBI (Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott)
• Dr. Hisham Genayem, Palestinian refugee and surgeon
• Dr. Moshe Machover, Israeli academic and anti-Zionist political activist
• Dr. Michael Kearney, University of York (t.b.c)
• Dr. Keith Hammond, University of Glasgow
• Yael Kahn, Israeli human rights activist
• Marion Woolfson, Hon. President of Scottish PSC
• Liz Elkind, ex-President of the STUC, moved successful report and recommendation for BDS at STUC 2009 Perth Conference
• Tony Greenstein, (JBIG) Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods
• Rt. Hon. Peter Hain MP, veteran anti-apartheid campaigner in the 70’s, Chair of Stop All Racist Tours (awaiting reply)
• Members of the public who witnessed the protest during the performance
• BBC sound technicians who recorded the entire event (awaiting reply)

We are asking supporters to

• send letters of support to campaign@scottishpsc.org.uk
• invite one of the accused to speak and explain the background and aims of the campaign to your trade union, political party branch, mosque, church or campaign group
• turn up outside, and inside, the Court on October 1st and later sessions
• make a donation to the campaign (Judge Horseburgh criticised the Legal Aid board severely for refusal to provide legal aid to one of the accused.)
• boycott everything Israeli, except those Israelis supporting Palestinian human and national rights
• join the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign to help us build this campaign

Itzik Asher's Journey to the New

There is a trend these days for picking out funny bits of news and sending them around the globe, and in this week’s selection was a story from Florida. Parents have been complaining about a sculpture called Journey to the New, by Itzik Asher, which depicts an “anatomically correct man” and is situated 100 yards from a school. The statue is said to celebrate the journeys of Russian and Ethiopian Jews to Israel, but away from the idiocy of the prudish public, there is a greater political problem with this work of art.

Jews have been in Ethiopia for a very long time. In fact more than that, the Ethiopian community, the Beta Israel, is one of the oldest in the world. Far older than the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe anyway. In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of Ethiopian Jews ended up in Israel, mainly as a result of three military operations: Operation Moses, Operation Joshua, and Operation Solomon. These were carried out due to the suggestion that the Beta Israel were under threat from political instability in Ethiopia and Sudan. These airlifts are often painted as one of the “miracles” of Israel, and the story that is less often told is the plight of those Ethiopians once they reached Israel. To start with, the Beta Israel, were told by the rabbis that they were not real Jews.

The Ethiopian Jews had to go through a process by which they were integrated into the country, and this included “symbolic circumcision.” What this means is whilst they didn’t have their foreskins cut off (many were already circumcised), blood was drawn. Excuse me if I think this is just a tad barbaric, but it sure as hell doesn’t remind me of any miracles I know of. In fact the only thing I can think of is that moment in Exodus when Moses comes down to find the ongoing worship of the golden calf: “Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said Who is on the Lord’s side? Let him come unto me, And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and there fell the people that day about three thousand men.

Ok, so we don’t have people being killed for idol worship or orgies these days, but for some reason, the Israeli state thought that these brutal circumcisions were reasonable. This is not evening mentioning the rest of the story of the Ethiopian Jews, who were sent to live in Ma’abarot (refugee camps) which quickly became slums, and who since have suffered a great amount of racism, including complaints from parents that there are “too many Ethiopians in school classes.” The Ethiopian Jews were also forced to undertake a one and a half year “Return to Israel” course, including intensive study, and a commitment to observe orthodox rituals. More than any other Jew who wishes to settle in Israel.

The story of recent immigrants to Israel from Russia is rather different. The questions aimed at the Ethiopians are never asked of Russians. In fact Israel seemed so keen to import cheap skilled labour from Russia that they accidentally brought over a number of non-Jewish anti-semites, who were attempting to flee poverty in Russia. These Russian anti-semites then set up a fascist party, and tried to sell copies of Mein Kampf in bookshops in Israel. No circumcisions for them. And yes, the Russians have at times been persecuted in Israel, but their history is nothing like the oppression that Ethiopians have experienced.

All of this points to one thing: some old fashioned colonial-style racism on behalf of both the Israeli state and a proportion of the Israeli population. And what is worse is that it’s swept under the carpet by the myth of a miracle. Actually, on that point, no-one ever talks about those who were left behind in Occupation Solomon because they weren’t Jewish. Just like the “miracle” of the Six Day War that using conservative estimates cost the lives of 20,000 Arabs. Many people who really did need help were left behind in Ethiopia and Sudan simply because they were not Jewish. It is shameful that Israel is more concerned about people because they are Jewish than because they are human.

And so, returning to the sculpture, Journey to the New, maybe we can see that this statue is perverse. It isn’t perverse because there’s a penis on show, but rather it’s perverse because it demands that we conflate the history of the Russian and Ethiopian immigrants to Israel. It is perverse because it promotes an awful act of historical revisionism. It is perverse because it promotes the idea of a miracle of people saved, rather than people condemned to brutal rituals and racism in a moment of fear of something even worse with no thought for those who were not saved. It is only when we ask the question of whether that statue has a foreskin, that we can see the problems it holds within it unravel.

Guest post by Jon Small

The latest character from Sacha Baron Cohen’s entourage of grotesques to hit the big screen is Brüno, the gay-as-a-lamp-post presenter of Austria’s number one fashion show, Funkyzeit. Brüno began life as a minor character in Baron Cohen’s television shows for Paramount Comedy and Channel 4’s Da Ali G Show. As with the Borat film in 2006, Brüno’s transition from the small to the big screen has given Baron Cohen and his team of writers (including The Day Today’s Peter Baynham) an opportunity to widen and deepen the character’s satirical reach from the absurd skits and fake interviews which characterise the TV appearances to a sustained assault on good taste and mediocrity wherever they are found.

Borat is a tough act to follow, and some elements of Brüno will seem remarkably familiar. This film’s “plot” also centres on a peculiar foreigner who travels to the USA, engaging on a somewhat pointless quest. The film has the same story arc as Borat, and we even find some of the same scenes repeated almost verbatim, such as when Brüno, abandoned by his only friend, finds himself destitute and alone and has a sudden moment of self revelation: he must become straight! The plot is of course merely incidental, it’s simply an excuse to string together a series of carefully edited encounters with minor celebrities, PR gurus and ordinary people. Brüno’s faux-naivety acts as a tool to expose the prejudices and mediocrity of mainstream America.

The targets for Sacha Baron Cohen’s satire in Brüno are varied. Starting off in Brüno’s native environment of high fashion, the opening of the film reprises the TV series’ attacks on that absurdly shallow and self-important world. But a satire directed entirely against catwalk fashionistas would be thin indeed, and this was one of the limitations of Brüno’s character in Da Ali G Show: the fashion world is self-parodying and is in little need of even more comedic absurdity than can already be seen in haute couture and the journalism industry that surrounds it. Thankfully, then, after a faux pas involving a velcro suit, Brüno is sacked from his role as presenter of Funkyzeit and travels to America to seek global fame. Cue a series of encounters with members of the fame industry in LA: Brüno meets a high-power celebrity agent and two clueless valley-girl PR consultants. These can’t string together a coherent sentence and try to decide which would be the best cause to adopt in order for a newcomer to make a name for himself: “global warming is big these days,” “oh, fantastisch!”

Along with vapid celebrity culture, Brüno also tackles politics. He briefly travels to Israel and attempts to solve the Palestine question, in a parody of empty-headed celebrity meddling in the world of “issues”. Brüno brings together a former Mossad agent and a Palestinian politician, making huge advances towards peace in the Middle East by getting them to agree that hummus is actually a good thing. Sacha Baron Cohen even manages to interview a (genuine) member of the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade terrorist organisation, telling him that “King Osama looks like a dirty wizard,” demonstrating not only his own bravado but the dexterous verbal wit that marks the script’s intelligent humour. Most of the film’s subjects are either unsuspecting or actively hostile, and Brüno’s raison d’etre is to be abused and thrown out, which Baron Cohen pulls off with fearless disregard for his personal safety.

Half the fun is trying to guess which of the situations Brüno finds himself in are set ups and which are genuine unscripted encounters. As with Borat, there is a mix of both: it is part carefully-written and skilfully executed physical comedy and planned improvisation, and part genuinely dangerous and edgy media pranksterism. The interview with ex-Presidential candidate Ron Paul that turns into an attempt to make a celebrity sex tape is the latter, with an obviously shocked and flustered Paul storming out, declaring that the man is “as queer as blazes.” (Brüno apparently thought he was RuPaul, an easy mistake to make.) There is of course an element of cruelty in Sacha Baron Cohen’s pranks, but most of the people he chooses as the butt of his jokes are putting themselves in the public spotlight, or worse, declaring themselves authorities on their chosen subject. As such, puncturing their self-regard is fair game.

Those few subjects who respond with humour and largesse come off well, though Brüno keeps on pushing until he gets a response. One aspect of Borat which made me slightly uneasy was the inclusion of so many ordinary people who, while hilariously stupid, were nonetheless unsuspecting, and revealed nothing more than their own stupidity. The satire in Brüno is more sharply focused, with more minor celebrities and self-declared experts being lampooned. Those ‘ordinary’ members of the public who become the target of Baron Cohen’s penetrating derision in this film often turn out to be genuinely nasty pieces of work rather than simply dim.

The Alabama hunters with whom Brüno spends a night in order to overcome his gayness respond at first with strained good humour and some great comebacks, but when confronted by a fully nude Sacha Baron Cohen in the middle of the night (and Sacha is an impressively large man), they are pushed beyond breaking point. The satire is not consistently focused though, and some elements descend into what appears to be simply baiting for the sake of response. The studio audience of Richard Bey’s chat show may be homophobic and crass, but showing them Brüno’s adopted African baby being photographed with a swarm of bees or present at a gay orgy seems to be an attempt simply to enrage with no purpose other than to provoke an emotive reaction. What impresses about Sacha Baron Cohen’s humour is that it is consistently at the edge of what is acceptable, it is never comfortable, predictable or safe: this kind of comedy has to be dangerous, it has to make you cringe. Sometimes this film misses its target, but more often than not it hits it squarely between the eyes.

Criticisms of Baron Cohen’s approach are levelled quickly and loudly by those on all sides who miss the point he is trying to make. When Borat came out we were earnestly warned about the dangers of stereotyping and belittling the population of Kazakhstan, Borat’s home country. But anyone who regards the surreal representation of Borat’s village with its cast of clinically insane misfits and inbreds, and its annual “Running of the Jew” parade as a belittling stereotype has fallen right into the bear trap set by the satirist. Stereotypes have to be at least partly accurate, and this one is so absurd that to be offended by it demonstrates your own prejudice. The characters of Ali G, Borat and Brüno act as magnifying mirrors to the minds and personalities of those they interview, and of those who watch. Your response to these creations reveals your own assumptions, and we’re all tricked into revealing more about ourselves than we think. That’s where the genius of these characters lies, and it is the mark of successful and incisive satire. Brüno has quickly attracted the criticism that Baron Cohen’s creation presents a harmful gay stereotype: an image of mindless camp tastelessness. But it is precisely this lampoon which acts as possibly the sharpest tool of the film’s satire, revealing unthinking and viscerally prejudiced responses and attitudes towards homosexuality. What some seem happy to take as being broadly representative of homosexuality is in fact simply representative of crass stupidity, regardless of sexual orientation. Sacha Baron Cohen has a knack of pinpointing the small-minded assumptions of those who think they’re being politically correct.

Those who criticise this film for its supposed detraction of homosexuality utterly miss the point. Brüno uses his flamboyant and shameless gayness to reveal what are often aggressively homophobic responses from his interviewees. The deep south Christian “gay converters” and the Westboro Baptist Church’s “God Hates Fags” picket line are prime targets for Sacha Baron Cohen’s attack on prejudice, small mindedness and ignorance. Brüno telling the rather effete gay converter that he has “blow job lips” and becoming physically entangled with the God Hates Fags brigade while in flagrante, dressed in full bondage gear are not only hilarious but important and damning social criticism. At its best this film is true satire: an attempt to puncture and deride stupidity and prejudice. By confronting these bigots with their own worst nightmare Baron Cohen sometimes reveals the intriguing dichotomy at the heart of homophobia: the audience for the cage fight at the end of the film are eager to shout so loudly about their heterosexuality that you wonder exactly what they’re trying to hide. Brüno’s beautifully choreographed fight with his personal assistant turns into a tender scene of homosexual intimacy right before the eyes of the baying crowd, and he is confronted by an aggressive mob of individuals who can’t decide whether to cry or do him physical harm. The best comedy challenges and disrupts expectations, and this film is full of surprises and shocking absurdity; quite an achievement after Borat, which this film matches or betters. This is barbed satire with no tolerance for prejudice and ignorance. It’s a joy to watch because while the satire is pitiless, Baron Cohen’s insightful, intelligent and generous humanism always shines through. It’s funny as hell, too.