Labour Friends of Extremists

According to the ‘Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East’ mission statement, the organisation has been set up ‘to provide a voice for Labour members and supporters who want to see the establishment of a viable and independent state of Palestine alongside Israel’. Given this laudible stated aim, one would assume that the Friends would want nothing to do with Hamas, an Islamist terrorist organisation that from its inception to this day has declared that it will never accept the existence of the State of Israel.

Not so, it would seem.

In an article by the Palestinian academic Ghada Karmi found on the Friends’ website, the author asks:

What is the basis for the western allegation that Hamas is a ‘terrorist’ organisation? After all, this is a Palestinian political party whose main objective is to fight Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, and whose operations, however unsavoury, are confined to the local area. Since when was resistance to occupation a terrorist activity?

Well, quite clearly, since such ‘resistance’ involves indiscriminate attacks on civilians through the firing of rockets into residential areas and the use of suicide bombing it is terrorism and Hamas is a terrorist organisation.

This article is not an aberration, it is merely the beginning, as a look at the Friends’ affiliates list quickly reveals, for here we find links to:

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign

This organisation states that the British Muslim Initiative (BMI) is ‘engaged with the campaign in the UK’. The BMI is a sister organisation of Hamas, and its President, Mohammad Sawalha, has been identified by the BBC as responsible for ‘much of Hamas’ political and military strategy’ and for directing funds to Hamas’ ‘armed wing’. The BMI’s supporters and associates include Azzam Tamimi, identified by the Malaysian National News Agency as ‘Hamas’ Special Envoy’.

In an appearance on BBC’s HARDTalk, Tamimi stated of suicide bombing attacks on Israel:

I would do it … If I have the opportunity I would do it … If I can go to Palestine and sacrifice myself I would do it.

Tamimi has also written glowingly of Hizbullah suicide bombers’ ‘love of death in martyrdom’.

Action Palestine

Action Palestine encourages visitors to its website to donate to Interpal, a charity proscribed by the US Treasury, which refers to it as ‘a principal charity utilized to hide the flow of money to Hamas’. Interpal employees were closely involved with George Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ convoy which delivered cash to Hamas earlier this year.

The Action Palestine website also links to an article by Israel Shahak, an Israel hating extremist much loved by the international neo-Nazi community, who claimed – amongst other things – that Jews worship Satan.

Peace Cycle

This organisation endorses a number of extremist organisations. Amongst its recommended links we find, for example, ‘Jews Against Zionism’, an organisation that refuses the right of the State of Israel to exist and which enthusiastically promotes material taken from Holocaust denial journals and websites. Peace Cycle also links to the Muslim Association of Britain, an organisation which includes a former military commander of Hamas among its members, which has been described in Parliament as ‘the British wing of the Muslim Brotherhood’ (the group which spawned al-Qa’eda), and which claims the would-be suicide bomber Azzam Tamimi as one of its ‘leading political thinkers’. Unsurprisingly, Peace Cycle also encourages donations to Interpal.

Friends of Al-Aqsa

This organisation also has links to Tamimi. In an article in its journal, he states:

[T]he weakness of the Arabs and Muslims is only temporary and will sometime in the future be reversed. Evidently, the Muslim world is witnessing a massive awakening that is destined to initiate the transformation from weakness to strength. When the Arabs and Muslims’ gain of strength and confidence coincides with the retreat of the World Order due to the shrinkage of the material and military resources available to it and as a result of the augmentation of domestic crises, the end of the Zionist project will come and the State of Israel will be no more.

Other articles on the Friends of Al-Aqsa site also express hatred for Israel. This article, for example, speaks of ‘Jewish Nazism’ and claims Israel is now ‘on equal footing with Nazi barbarianism’ and is ‘a sick and cannibalistic society that is as bestial as Nazi Germany was during the holocaust’. A recent article entitled ‘Is the Zionomedia Kingdom Invincible?’ states the following:

An August 17th article by Swedish photojournalist Donald Bostrom on longstanding suspicions amongst Palestinians that Israeli soldiers might have been involved in an illegal organ harvest conspiracy predictably sparked controversy and acrimony between the governments of Israel and Sweden.

With their exasperated and precipitate reactions, Israel officials once again underscored the accuracy and precision of an analogy made by the late founder of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who likened the Israel’s stability to a ‘Spy Nest’ some 30 years ago. A government whose very security and stability is threatened by the publication of a critical article should drastically review its policies to see what’s wrong with its trembling foundations. The same rule could be justly applied to Iranian authorities whose severe crackdown on the dissident media highlights major political shortages which the country suffers from; however, the Israeli lobby is so formidable and influential as to convince the ‘international community’ to take its side in the face of such a ‘legitimacy crisis’ while Iran has not ever nurtured such a network of lobbies worldwide.

Muslim Public Affairs Committee

This organisation has written of ‘the true nature of Muslim violence’ and justified turning to ‘violent ends’ in a statement which announces:

We will no longer be part of the deliberate attempt to keep the public confused on the issue of terrorism. We will not be part of the apologetic Muslim leaders who blame their own community for terrorism. We will not condemn, nor allow ourselves to be condemned by governing elites who are more interested in a political stunt than saving lives. No more politics and propaganda when it comes terrorism – its [sic] the truth and nothing else.

In December 2008, Asghar Bukhari, co-founder and spokesperson for MPAC was revealed to have written that ‘any Muslim who fights against Israel and dies is a martyr and will be granted paradise’, that ‘Zionists’ ‘murder little children for sport’, and that ‘Jihad is a beautiful thing’. In addition, Bukhari has donated money to the Holocaust denier David Irving.

Viva Palestina

This organisation, led by Israel hating MP George Galloway, publicly handed money to Hamas in a televised ceremony in March of this year. One of its trustees (and former chair of the Muslim Council of Britain’s ‘Europe & International Affairs’ committee), Sabah al Mukhtar, has happily appeared on an American anti-Semitic radio show where he claimed that the anti-Semitic fabrication ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’ (cited approvingly in Mein Kampf and the Hamas Covenant) shows ‘incredible insight’.

Conclusion

It is quite clear that Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East has chosen to align itself with anti-Israel extremists and supporters of terrorism. Its own website contains an article attempting to deny that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and its ‘affiliates’ include: an umbrella campaign with links to a pro-Hamas supporter of suicide bombing; a group that endorses a charity whose employees worked with George Galloway on his trip to deliver money to Hamas; a group that endorses pro-Hamas Islamists; a group whose journal offers a forum for the writing of a supporter of suicide bombing and the destruction of Israel, as well as promoting thinly veiled anti-Semitism in its ‘news’ articles; a group that refuses to condemn terrorism and even endorses it against Israel; and a group that organised fund raising for Hamas and delivered the money to them in person.

As such, its stated commitment to ‘a just and lasting peace’ in the Middle East is exposed as meaningless, if not deliberately deceptive, rhetoric. Any Labour Party member genuinely supportive of a Two State Solution to the Israel/Palestine question would do well to steer clear of this severely tainted group.