Refuting Montefiore’s Decolonisation Diatribe: Mandate Palestine Revisited

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Zionism, without a doubt, is a British fostered settler-colonialism in occupied Palestine

Western elites have been unnerved by the outpouring of grassroots support for the Palestinian people over the last seven weeks. As such, the British establishment historian and bestselling author, Simon Sebag Montefiore, was quick off the mark to denigrate these popular pro-Palestinian sentiments. Writing in the American journal “The Atlantic” he generously wrote a 4,500 word essay in an attempt to disabuse humane people of their misplaced sympathies in light of the Zionist genocidal response to the Palestinian resistance’s military advance on October 7th. The erudite diatribe, titled “The Decolonisation Narrative Is Dangerous and False” argues the reason there is so much support for the Palestinian cause among “Western academics, students, artists and activists” is because they are ‘toxically’ taught a distorted account of history by intellectuals who have embraced the ideology of “decolonisation” which he defines as “a toxic, historically nonsensical mix of Marxist theory, Soviet propaganda, and traditional anti-Semitism from the Middle Ages and the 19th century.”

Whether this hotchpotch definition of decolonisation is correct or even intelligible is beyond the scope of this essay but what I shall do is identify and unpack some of the dubious claims, sleight of hand and factual errors in Montefiore’s elegant invectiveness.

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Pathologising Palestinians to Revive Eugenic Genocide

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The current Zionist barbaric onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza is a continuation of Britain’s Zionist-colonial project and the resistance to it ever since the project was officially launched when the British government issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to establish a ‘Jewish home’ in Palestine. In the three decades that followed the launch, European colonial-settler population increased by hundreds of thousands under British military auspices and against the wishes of the indigenous Palestinian population. In effect, Britain midwifed the Zionist colonial-setler project in occupied Palestine so it is no surprise the British establishment and its mainstream media have unanimously and enthusiastically defended the Zionist colonial project’s never ending wars against the indigenous population.

After the Palestinian resistance’s advance, led by HAMAS, on October 7th, the British and western media unsurprisingly whipped themselves into a frenzy and furnished their pages and websites with lurid and unsubstantiated stories about the resistance’s alleged indiscriminate killing which included tales about decapitated babies and raped women….

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In Defence of my Review of Winstanley’s book, “Weaponsing Anti-Semitism.”

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I don’t accept Asa Winstanley’s reply to my review of his book. I shall be very brief in this response as I intend to write something else about the book in more detail at a later date.

Winstanley claims that, “Abd al-Wahid writes as if he made up his mind about my book before reading it and then refused to let the actual text alter his foregone conclusions.” I would like to assure Winstanley this wasn’t the case. I read the book chronologically from front to back and I noted that Winstanley didn’t first mention the “Balfour Declaration” until almost two thirds into the book on pg.196 – I found this peculiar. Thereafter the defining document which laid the foundations for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is only mentioned a handful of times if that. Specifically, as he says, on pg.236 where he very briefly explains what the document is.  

The focus of Winstanley’s reply is mainly based around what he wrote between pages 49 and 53. In these pages Winstanley mentions Britain’s historical support for Zionism but within the context of Labour’s Party relationship with the Poale Zion group not within the context of the Balfour Declaration issued by the British government in 1917. So when he claims in these pages that Britain “began reneging on its pledge to hand Palestine over to the Zionist movement…” What exactly is the “pledge”? Keep in mind I’m reading the book in the aforementioned chronological order. Those of us who are au fait with some of the history should immediately recognise what this “pledge” is, but many more, probably the majority, simply do not. Continue reading →

Book Review: Appeasing Zionists is a Losing Game

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Asa Winstanley’s book, Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn is about the anti-Semitic slurs, smears, allegations, insinuations directed at the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership between 2015 and 2020. As a journalist for the pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist Electronic Intifada journal, Winstanley had a front row seat to the unfolding political drama in real time. Corbyn had primarily offered the British electorate an escape from domestic neo-liberalist policies which had dominated politics from the 1980s. Winstanley’s thesis is that certain individuals and Zionist advocacy groups sometimes working in tandem with elements of the Zionist colonial Apartheid state “brought down Jeremy Corbyn”.

The review can be read on the Mondoweiss website by clicking here.